Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Bononiensis: Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies Bologna 26 August to 1 September 1979 (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies)

ACTA CONVENTUS NEO-LATINI BONONIENSIS

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ACTA CONVENTUS NEO-LATINI BONONIENSIS Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies

Bologna 26 August to

September 1979

EDITED BY

raeòieoal

SCHOECK

& Renaissance texts & sCaòies Binghamton,

New

1985

York

—

Medieval &. Early Renaissance Studies University Center at Binghamton State University of New York

for

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies (4th

1979

Bologna,

Italy)

Acta conventus neo-latini bononiensis. (Medieval &. Renaissance texts &. studies 37) Includes index. 1. Latin literature, Medieval and modem— History and criticism — Congresses 2 Latin language. Medieval and modem Congresses. 3. Humanism — Congresses. 4. Learning and scholarship— History —Congresses. I. Schoeck, Richard J. n. State University of New York at Binghamton. Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies. EI. Title. IV. Series. ;

PA8002.I57 1979

ISBN 0-86698-072-5

This book

85-4958

870'.9 (alk.

is set

paper)

Trump Medieval

typeface,

smythe-sewn and printed on acid-free paper to library specifications. It

will not fade, tear, or crumble.

Design and composition by

rnnts

Printed in the United States of America

Contents Preface

Presidential Address, R.

Schoeck

History (including the History of Philosophy and Science)

Zlata Bojovic, Gli Umanisti Jugoslavi e i Centri Umanistici Italiani Euan Cameron, Archibald Hay and the Paduan Aristotelians at Paris,

1530-1545 R.

W. Carrubba, A Seventeenth-Century Report on Charmers

the Snake

of India

James Dauphiné, Palingenius, Du Bartas, De Gamon, De Rivière et le Systeme de Copernic Stephan Fussel, Der Einfluß der italienischen Humanisten auf die zeitgenössischen Darstellungen Kaiser Maximilians Robert Ginsberg, De Juie Belh ac Pacis: The Contribution of Hugo Grotius to the Problem of War Howard Jones, Gassendi and Locke on Ideas Louis A. Knafla, The Influence of Continental Humanists and Jurists on English Common Law in the Renaissance Paul G. Kuntz, De Analogia Graduum Entis: On Cardinal Cajetan's Neglect of Thomistic Hierarchy Ettore Lojacono, Giorgio da Trebisonda: la tradizione retorica bizantina e l'idea di

metodo

44 51

60 72

Guy

Pitch Lytle, The Church Fathers and Oxford Professors in the Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation

McGrade, Constitutionalism Late Medieval and Early ModemLex Facit Regem: Hooker's Use of Bracton Angelo Mazzocco, Biondo Flavio and the Antiquarian Tradition Alain Michel, Dialogues et manuels de rhétorique à la Renaissance: A.

101

structures, philosophie, histoire

Mary

Ella

Milham, Platina and

his Correspondents

116 124 137 144

Philippe Morel, Architecture et stratégies pendant la contre-réforme: les Instmctiones fabrìcae ecclesiasticae de Saint Charles

Borromée Clare M. Murphy, The Turkish Threat and Thomas More's Utopia Erik Petersen, Humanism and the Medieval Past: Christiemus Petri as a Humanist Scholar Giovanni Santinello, Umanesimo e filosofia nel Veneto nella seconda metà del cinquecento

n. Education

149 158

172 177

and Language

Akkerman, Pauvreté ou richesse du latin de Spinoza Dietrich Briesemeister, Französische Literatur in neulateinischen

197

Übersetzimgen G. Chantraine, Langage et théologie selon

205 216

Ciceionianus d'Erasme

Gustavo Costa, The Latin Translations of Longinus's

Ilepì "Ycjjouç

Renaissance Italy Colette Demaizière, Convergences et divergences étymologiques chez Bovelles et Sylvius Marie Madeleine de la Garanderie, Marot Traducteur d' Erasme Paul F. Grendler, The Teaching of Latin in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Schools Marion Leathers Kuntz, The Home of Coronaeus in Jean Bodin's Colloquium Heptaplomeres: An Example of a Venetian Academy Thomas A. Losoncy, Language and Saint Anselm's Pwslogion

Argument

224 239 247 258 277

284

Herbert S. Matsen, Selected Extant Latin Documents Pertaining to the 'Studio' of Bologna around 1500 Fidel Rädle, Italienische Jesuitendramen auf bayerischen Bühnen des 16. Jahrhunderts Modrevius — écrivain latin J. Stamawski, Andreas Fricius John Webster, Temple's Neo-latin Commentary on Sidney's Apology: Two Strategies for a Defense

292

303 313 317

Seminai: The Role of Latin in Renaissance Education Hanna-Barbara Gerì, Zwischen faktischer und numinoser Gültigkeit: ni.

Lorenzo Vallas Theorie vom Vorrang der lateinischen Sprache Eckhard Kessler, Zur Bedeutung der lateinischen Sprache in der Renaissance

327 337

im Schrifttum des deutschen Späthumanismus. Argumentationsmuster und sozialgeschichtliche Zusammenhänge Raimund Pf ister, Grammatik und Lateinunterricht in Italien im 15.

W. Kühlmann, Apologie und

Kritik des Lateins

356 377

Jahrhundert

IV. Liteiatuie

Judson Boyce Allen, The Allegorized Mythography of Johannes

390

Calderia

Woods Callahan, Uses More and Andrea Alciati

Virginia

of the

Planudean Anthology: Thomas 399

John C. Coldewey, William Alabaster's Roxana: Some Textual Considerations Bernhard Goppel, Philomela in Bologna und Wittenberg. Die Nachtigall als Topos, Epigrammstoff und Vogelmaske in der propagandistischen Reformationsdichtung Katharine Davies, Leonardo Porzio in the 1527 De Asse John B. Dillon, Classical Myth and Geography in Renaissance Reference Books: Introductory Remarks and Two Miltonic Examples (Aracynthus and Zephyritis) Philip Dust, George Herbert's Passio Disceipta and Franciscus Lucas's

Commentaries on the

Clifford Endres,

New

Testament

413

420 430

437 451

The

Poetics of Imitatio: Joannes Secundus and his Models in the Elegiae

459

Francesco d'Episcopo, Realtà umanistica e tradizione classica nel "De laboribus Herculis" di Coluccio Salutati Philip Ford, The Hymni Naturales of Michael Marullus Ellen S. Ginsberg, The Amores of Joachim du Bellay: a Neo-Latin Cycle of Love Poems A. J. E. Harmsen, La théorie du ridicule chez Madius et le classicisme néerlandais CL. Heesakkers, Two Leiden Neo-Latin Menippean Satires: Justus Lipsius' Somnium (1581) and Petrus Cunaeus' Sardi Vénales (1612) Elizabeth McCutcheon, The Language of Utopian Negation: Book n of More's Utopia Adrian Marino, Mutations du Concepts de "littérature" à l'époque de la Renaissance Clare M. Murphy, Erasmus' English Pléiade E. Peter Nolan, Beyond Macaronic: Embedded Latin in Dante and Langland Howard B. Norland, The Role of Drama in Erasmus' Literary

Thought J. O'Neal, The Simile in Vida's Cbhstiad Ezio Ornato, La Redécouverte des discours de Cicéron en Italie et en France à la fin du XIV^ et au début du XV^ siècle Lee Piepho, The Organization of Mantuans' Adulescentia and

William

Stella P. Revard,

Thomas Chaloner: carmen panegyhcum

491

500 510 520 533 539

549 558 564

New

German Age Cari C. Schlam, Sir

483

577 583

Spenser's Shepheardes Calendar

Neo-Latin Commentaries on Pindar Lawrence V. Ryan, Conrad Celtis' Carmen Saeculare: Ode for a

464 475

592 In

laudem Henrici octavi 607 613

Peter Sharratt, Euripides latinus: Buchanan's Use of his Sources Andrew A. Tadie, The Popularization of English Deism: Lord

De Veritate and Sir William Davenant's The Rhodes Brenda Thaon, Spenser's Neptune, Nereus and Proteus: Renaissance Mythography Made Verse C. A. Upton, John Jonston and the Historical Epigram Simone Viarre, L'Elégie d'Ovide sur la mort de TibuUe et sa survie au seizième siècle Vladimir Vratovic, Su alcuni nessi tra l'umanesimo italiano ed i Herbert of Cherbury's Siege of

Index of Manuscripts

630 638 645

654

latinisti croati

Donald G. Watson, Humanism and Popular Culture in Erasmus' Moriae Encomium Marjorie C. Woods, Literary Criticism in an Early Commentary on Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria Nova Stefan Zablocki, Der neulateinische Humanismus Italiens in der teinischen Dichtung in Polen am Anfang des 16. Jh.

621

659 667

la-

674 686

Preface Held in Bologna from August 26 to September 1, 1979, the IV Congresso Internationale di Studi Neo-Latini was organized by Professor Lao Paoletti, whose untimely death only a few tragic months after the Congress was both a loss to scholarship and one of several causes for the most regrettable delay

volume of the Bologna Proceeddedicated to his memory with respect and collégial affection. The book here presented to Renaissance scholars is both thick and diverse: thick enough to offer most of the many papers and seminars of the Congress (and the seminars were an innovation at this Congress), and diverse enough to reflect the range of research of Neo-Latinists. It is a token of the importance of Neo-Latin scholarship that citation of some of these papers has already begun to appear in Renaissance and Reformation scholarship. It remains to thank the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Stanford University for grants in subvention of publication, as well as a number of individual scholars, without whose assistance this volume could not have appeared. Thanks are also due to Mrs. Koos Daley for her invaluable assistance in the reading of proofs and in the preparation of the index of manuscripts. in the publication of these proceedings. This

ings

Boulder, Colorado

December 1984

Presidential Address Illustrissimi ospiti, cari colleghi, fra coloro che sono membri dell'IANLS da parecchi anni, molti lo sono fin dai tempi di Louvain, altri fin da Amsterdam e Tours. Oggi siamo a Bologna e, fra di noi qui presenti, alcuni sono iscritti fin dalla nascita della nostra organizzazione. Un discorso qualsiasi può essere interrotto ma, come quello sul Petrarca o su Erasmo, i cui studiosi si trovano in tutte le parti d'Europa, il nostro discorso sarà sempre ripreso e continuato anche se non sarà mai concluso. Nel frattempo abbiamo raggiunto varie tappe: dal Collegio Trilingue (un ateneo che Erasmo tanto ammirava ma cui Erasmo era tanto inviso), ad Amsterdam (dove la cultura è stata sempre rispettata, e la differenze tollerate), ed a Tours, il luogo natale di Rabelais e la sede del CER. Ed ora ci troviama a Bononia docta. Come Erasmo avrà pensato nel mille cinquecento otto, era ora di venire in Italia. Siamo fieri di trovarci a Bologna: Bononia docta col suo grande influsso sul concetto dell'università e sul pensiero che tutta l'Europa ha avuto per tanti secoli come sviluppo del diritto romano (per Imerio e altri di mos italicus]. Al giorno d'oggi, e qui parlo a nome dei colleghi non'italiani, Bologna trova la sua espressione più vivida nella poesia del grande Carducci, premio Nobel per la letteratura che insegnò ininterrottamente durante quarantadue anni qui a Bologna. A Carducci, quindi, manifesta fra noi la continuità e quella qualità inesauribile della tradizione classica attraverso la cultura neolatina che ci è stata trasmessa per mezzo dei suoi poeti dall'era di Dante e Petrarca fino ai tempi del Carducci (e qui non mi riferisco ai poeti contemporarei) sia nel pensiero che nelle lettere. In questo Congresso presteremo la nostra attenzione alle conferenze che saranno tenute nelle sessioni relative alle varie discipline ed alle discussioni che ne seguiranno come pure inizieremo per la prima volta dei seminari a titolo sperimentale. Nonostante il fatto che avremo una sola sessione di conferenze ed un solo seminario direttamente concementi il problema dell'insegnamento, nel senso più vero noi tutti siamo profondamente interessati ai problemi dell'istruzione e quindi, da neolatinisti, tutti riconosciamo il grande debito che l'Umanesimo ha verso le fonti italiane.

Siamo, perciò, non solo fieri di trovarci a Bologna ma ne siamo immensamente grati e riconoscenti. Ein Wort muss gesagt werden über unseren Begriff "Neu-Latein," ein Begriff, der nicht bloss chronologisch, sondern auch begrifflich auf früheren Grundlagen ruht. Wie Jozef IJsewijn uns erinnert hat in ersten Kapitel seines unschätzbaren Werkes Companion to Neo-Latin Studies: Weil die lateinische Literatur durch die Epochen sich den Prinzipien Imitation und Emulation — Nachamung und Nacheiferung— verpflichtet geblieben ist, müssen die antiken Dichter zusammen mit ihrer Rhetorik und ihrer Transformation im Mittelalter

dem

Gelehrten vertraut sein. Wie Ernst Robert Curtius also in EuTopäische und Lateinisches Mittelalter kurz und bündig gesagt hat: "Es ist die verwitterte Römerstrasse von der antiken zur modernen Welt." In unserem Jahrhundert haben wenige Gelehrte sich mit einer so bewunderswerten und reichen Betrachtung der Formen der lateinischen Literatur und mit deren Ableitung von den lateinischen Klassikern innerhalb deren VerLiteiatui

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

XII

Wandlungen im Mittelalter beschäftigt wie eben Curtius in diesem Essay, der Medievalisten schon zu einem vade mecum geworden ist. Curtius' Begrenzungen sind leicht zu erkennen; aber doch möchte keiner von uns ohne seine Lesefiüchte sein. Die fortwährende Existenz bis in die heutige Zeit von so vielen Begriffen, Formen und Topoi (jeder ein Traditionsgeschichte), worüber er geschrieben hat — sei es auch in wechselnden Formen und gut-modulierten einzelnen Ausdrucken— ist das Erbe ganzer Scharen von Gelehrten, Lehrern und Forschern innerhalb der Epoche, innerhalb des Ge-

dem

wir

bezeichnen. noch nicht verzeichneten Bänden, die sicher in die Tausende reichen — jawohl, viele, viele Tausende— und in unzähligen Manuskripten, die besichtigt und imperfekt verzeichnet sind — auch dort, wo die Bibliotheken, worin sie einen so wertvollen Bestand darstellen — diese Vitalität, wie ich sage, neulateinischen Denkens imd neulateinischer Schriften bleibt heute noch ein Teil unserer lebendigen Tradition, wie Goethe selber wohl wusste und wie Curtius und andere uns dies zu verstehen geholfen haben. Ich denke besonders an den ruhreichen Essay, "The Medieval Bases of Western Thought" gehalten von Curtius bei der Aspen Goethe-Feier im Jahre 1949 und 1953 der Übersetzung von Europäische Liteiatui und Lateinisches Mittelalter beigefügt. Dieser Begriff von Kontinuität und— ihm weiter wesentlich— die Idee von Tradition als lebendiger Prozess— der Rolle des Gedächtnisses im Einzelnen sehr ähnlich— ist ein Begriff, dem ich persönlich aufs tiefste verpflichtet bin. Die lateinische Tradition imserer westlichen Kultur zu untersuchen und zu bewerten, sie zu erklären und zu vermitteln, ist der Anlass unseres heutigen Treffens. Es existiert eine starke Möglichkeit, dass diese Assoziation eine Einladung erhält, unseren Kongress im Jahre 1985 in Deutschland zu halten, obwohl organizatorischer Vorschriften wegen von selten des voraussichtlichen Gastgebers diese Einladung bei unserer Sitzung am Freitag nicht überbracht werden darf, weshalb ich nicht über die Erwähnung dieser Möglichkeit hinaus möchte. Auf jedem Fall werden wir dies bei unserem Treffen am Freitag besprechen wollen. Etwas will ich aber sagen über den ausserordentlichen Beitrag, der jetzt vom Wolfenbüttelkreis zum Studium der Ideenentwicklung von der Renaissance zur Afklärung geleistet wird. All dies gehört zu der Kontinuität, von der ich hier gesprochen habe und die ich weiter bezeichnen will als einen Grundstein des Baues des Gelehrtentums, woran unsere Zeit arbeitet zum volleren Verständnis unserer vermittelten lateinischen Tradition. Dadurch haben wir guten Grund als Neu-Lateiner stolz zu sein und stolz auf die Ziele, die wir uns gesetzt haben im Namen der Internationalen Gesellschaft für neulateinische Forschungen. Aus diesem Grunde, betone ich noch einmal, sind wir heute hier. bietes, das

Die

als 'Neu-Latein'

Vitalität all dessen,

was

Alors, en tant que Néo-latinistes,

nous nous situons à mi-chemin entre

classicistes et les médiévistes d'une part et les modernistes d'autre part.

mouvement

les

Dans

d'idées au travers des siècles, c'est à nous qu'il revient, de fournir le lien, de servir de charnière dans l'étude des conventions et des lignes de force du grand continuum culturel, des classiques à nos jours. le

vaste

me semble-t-il,

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

XIII

Les travaux de la Fédération des Instituts et des Sociétés pour l'Etude de la Renaissance sont donc d'une importance capitale pour l'histoire de l'humanisme, de tradition classique et toutes les disciplines qui s'intéressent à l'étude de la Renaissance. Le professeur Halkin a parlé davantage à ce sujet et nous sommes tous impatient de nous joindre à nos collègues de la Fédération pour notre séance commune, jeudi prochain. J'aimerais brièvement attirer votre attention sur le concours remarquable de deux de nos collègues: celui du professeur Margolin d'abord, qui a organisé le dernier congrès de Tours, a surveillé les Actes et a veillé à la publication des communications de ce Congrès. Directeur du Centre pour l'Etude de la Renaissance à Tours, il se trouve dans une situation privilégiée pour inspirer, diriger, et mener à bien de nombreuses études qui aident au travail des NéoLatinistes. Je voudrais vous parler ensuite du professeur IJsewijn, le bon génie et le mentor de notre première rencontre à Louvain il y a huit ans, puis — deux ans plus tard — de la formation de notre association à Amsterdam. Prodigue de son temps, le professeur IJsewijn a collaboré et pris part à plusieurs réunions du Comité executif. Sa succession n'est pas facile à prendre: comme on dit en anglais, c'est "a tough act to follow." Oui, nous somme fiers d'être en Bologna aujourd'hui. Aussi, nous sommes fiers d'être membres du Fédération des Institutions et Sociétés pour l'Etude de la Renaissance, qui joint avec nous. Jeudi nous nous joindrons avec FISIER pour une session à mains jointes, comme nous verrons. Finally, we are, as Neo-Latinists, placed between the classicists and medievalists on the one hand, and the modernists on the other. It is we, it seems to me, who must provide the connection, who must serve as the hinge in the great movement of ideas down the centuries, for study of conventions and forces in the grand continuum of culture from the classics down to our own times. The work of FISIER, therefore, is crucial to the history of humanism, to the history of the classical tradition, and to all of the disciplines which comprise the study of the Renaissance. But we shall hear more of that from Professor Halkin, and during our joint session on Thursday we shall share with our colleagues of FISIER the excitement of our joint program. I want to say a few words about the program and about future publication. There are more than one hundred papers, and these have been divided into nearly forty sessions. Each of these sessions ordinarily has three papers, and as chairman of the Program Committee I take full and personal responsibility

for the scheduling.

At Tours the Executive Committee was charged with instituting seminars Congress. We are grateful for the many suggestions from members, and acting upon these suggestions Pierre Tuynman and I, at our Frankfurt meeting last year, decided upon the seminars to be offered and I initiated correspondence to select directors of these seminars. I have asked these directors to write their comments and to recommend papers for inclusion in the Acta. But not all of these papers, and indeed not all of the papers presented here in Bologna can be published, owing chiefly to limitations of space. Above all we have come together from different countries and from different disciplines to share our common interests — and problems as well — in at this

XIV

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

We of the Executive Comittee hope that this Congress will contribute significantly towards that goal. I myself hope that you will all experience the enjoyment that has been the experience of so many of us at Louvain, Amsterdam and Tours, here in Bologna this week. Neo-Latin studies.

Schoeck

President (1976-1979)

ACTA CONVENTUS NEO-LATINI BONONIENSIS

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HISTORY Gli umanisti jugoslavi e

centri umanistici italiani Zlata Bojovic umanisti jugoslavi furono rapporti Numerosi limiteLe nostre considerazioni ed centri umanistici e vari

intercorsi fra gli

italiani.

ranno a questo momento, al periodo cioè di piena fioritura dell'umanesimo in Jugoslavia, e precisamente dal secolo XV alla seconda metà del secolo XVI. Durante il rinascimento frequenti furono i viaggi in Italia degli Jugoslavi: l'Italia li attraeva soprattutto per le sue famose università e per i suoi centri umanistici; e vi dimorarono per un tempo più o meno breve matematici, filosofi, poeti, pittori, costruttori, astronomi e clero. Nel periodo del rinascimento, infatti, nelle varie città jugoslave si potevano frequentare le scuole umanistiche, in cui si conseguiva un'istruzione generale. Ma per l'istruzione universitaria ci si doveva recare all'estero, in Europa. Un certo numero di giovani si recò a Parigi, Londra, Cracovia, etc.; in numero di gran lunga maggiore, però, giunsero ai centri umanistici italiani. Fra questi il più raggiungibile era Padova. A Padova, presso l'università famosa fin dal secolo Xn, accanto a celebri personalità italiane del medioevo e del rinascimento, studiarono giovani provenienti da ogni paese d'Europa. Fra loro erano presenti anche studenti jugoslavi, che si dedicavano allo studio del diritto canonico e civile, della filosofia, della letteratura e dell'arte. Oltre che quella di Padova i giovani jugoslavi frequentavano le università di Bologna, Ferrara, Roma, Brescia, Perugia etc. Menzioneremo soltanto alcuni fra di essi che compirono i loro studi universitari in Italia e che in seguito divennero famosi come scrittori, uomini di legge, diplomatici etc. Oltre a numerosi altri frequentò l'università di Padova il ben noto Marcus Marulus tardo umanista di Spalato che, fin dai tempi dell'università, attirò su di sé l'attenzione per il suo talento poetico. A Padova conseguirono il dottorato in legge decine di umanisti jugoslavi nel corso dei secoli XV e XVI. Già alla fine del XIV secolo, presso la stessa università, fu promosso dottore in legge, medicina e "artium" lo scrittore politico e pedagogo istriano Petar Pavao Vergerije il vecchio. Egli apparteneva alla schièra dei primi umanisti europei.

GLI UMANISTI JUGOSLAVI

poeta di Sebenico Georgius Sisgoreus conseguì il dottorato in legge a Padova, e celebrò quel momento in un componimento poetico dedicato ai pro-

che lo esaminarono. Ferrara fu un importante centro lunanistico e presso la locale università studiarono jugoslavi provenienti da diverse regioni del paese. Questa città più tardi attirerà importanti poeti — Torquato Tasso, Ludovico Ariosto, Giambattista Guarini. A Ferrara giunsero studenti provenienti dai più diversi paesi poiché molto famosa era la sua scuola umanistica, soprattutto nel periodo in cui era diretta da Ivan Guarino di Verona, ed è proprio a Ferrara che per sette anni studiò Janus Pannonius che più tardi occuperà un posto ragguardevole presso la corte ugara. Sempre a Ferrara soggiornarono per qualche tempo anche Aelius Lampridius Cervinus e Georgius Binignus de Salviatis, bosniaco, e molti altri. Molto apprezzata fu pure l'Università di Bologna, e numerosi studenti jugoslavi vi frequentarono la facoltà di medicina. Fra i più importanti umanisti che vi studiarono menzioniamo il poeta Jacobus Bonus di Ragusa, Jacobu fessori

Anche

Banisio di Corcira, etc. Molti di questi giovani sono stati molto apprezzati ed amati dai loro colleghi, tanto che ne divennero poi i rettori. Alcuni di loro, poi, compiuti gli studi, restarono presso le università italiane e divennero professori, guidandovi intere scuole, e costruirono i propri studi sulla base della locale cultura. Ad esempio il menzionato P. P. Vergerije, istriano (1370-1444) fu insegnante di logica a Firenze e Bologna, e più tardi divenne famoso come primo pedagogo umanista. Nell'anno 1402 compose l'opera De ingennis morìbus et libeialibus studiis adulescentiae. Fu sostenitore di un nuovo metodo educativo che potesse essere impiegato nella quotidianità. Georgius Benignus de Salviatis, di origine

bosniaca, fu a Firenze (1484) membro della Facoltà di teologia e rettore del liceo francescano, ed in seguito professore di metafisica e di teologia presso l'università di Pisa (1490). Il poeta Mathias Andronicus di Tragurio divenne nel 1503 professore di diritto civile a Padova. Dopo la caduta della città medievale serba Novo Brdo, le persone di cultura l'abbandonarono e raggiunsero le università italiane. Marinus Becichius di Scutari, originario di Pastrovic, diresse una scuola privata di letteratura a Padova, e fu insegnante a Brescia (1502) ed in seguito professore di retorica presso l'università di Padova (151926). Trifun Bizanti di Cattaro, dottore in filosofia e in legge, poeta, fu professore di letteratura greca e latina presso le università di Bologna e di Perugia. Alla fine del XVI secolo Franciscus Patritius insegno filosofia platonica e neoplatonica a Ferrara ed in seguito, su invito del suo compagno di studi Ippolito Aldobrandini, che diverrà poi papa

Clemente VHI,

Gli umanisti jugoslavi erano chiamati presso le corti

come

si trasferì a Roma. educatorri e godet-

tero la stima di molti mecenati degli umanisti e delle arti. Petrus Paulus Vergerius, che abbiamo precedentemente menzionato, si distinse come pedagogo al servizio dei principi di Carrara. Il filosofo e teologo Georgius Benignus de Salviatis, alla corte di Urbino, fu l'educatore del principe. In seguito con successo educò i figli di Lorenzo de' Medici a Firenze, Piero e

Giovanni, che più tardi diventerà papa Leone X. Grazie alla stima di cui furono oggetto in Italia, alcuni umanisti jugoslavi

ZLATA BOIOVIC

fecero un'ottima carriera diplomatica. Ivan Stafileo di Sebenico fu, all'inizio del XVI secolo, nunzio papale presso il re di Polonia, ed in seguito presso il il Giovane fu inviato nel 1530 dal papa come nimzio presso l'imperatore Ferdinando. Jacobus Banisius di Corcira fu assegnato alla legazione imperiale di Germania a Roma (1504) e per ben due decenni, a Trento, fu decano del capitolo (1512-32). I nostri umanisti soggiornarono in Italia anche come inviati di altre corti. Janus Pannonius come inviato del re ugaro, si recò presso il papa Paolo n (1465) a chiedere aiuto contro i Turchi. Anche il poeta Tranquillus Parthenius Andronicus (1490-1571) prese parte alla missione diplomatica del re ugaro Ivan Zapolja a Venezia e a Roma (1536) ed in seguito fu agente politico del re di Francia a Venezia. Gli umanisti jugoslavi non si limitarono ad essere dei semplici osservatori della vita che si svolgeva negli ambienti italiani più colti. Essi vi parteciparono attivamente e talvolta con vero successo, come ad esempio il poeta ragusano A. L. Cervinus che già come allievo di Battista Guarini, a Ferrara, si fece notare per i suoi versi umanistici. In occasione della morte del duca di Mantova compose tre epitaffi, ed alcuni anni più tardi si distinse presso l'Accademia di Pomponio Leto, a Roma. Recitò con successo in alcime tragedie e commedie. Fece anche un'importante scoperta, che negli acrostici del Prologo delle commedie di Plauto si nascondono i loro titoli. Alla fine del XV secolo gli furono tributati

re di Francia. P. P. Vergerius

componimenti poetici dedicati a Flavia fu

grandi onori e per

del titolo di Poeta

hmieatus e fu incoronato con

ebbero anche

altri

ciclo di

insignito

corona d'alloro. Simile gloria poeti di Cattaro, Ragusa, Sebenico, le cui opere sono anla

date in gran parte perdute. Nei circoh filosofici si distinse soprattutto il già ricordato Georgius Benignus, appartenente al circolo umanistico che si raccoglieva a Roma intomo al cardinale Baserione. Partecipò attivamente alle diatribe fra gli aristotelici e i

impegnandosi a rappacificare le due correnti contrastanti fra di loro. con la parola e con gli scritti si farà difensore del grande umanista Savonarola. Presso l'ambiente romano degli umanisti e degli ellenisti si distinse anche Nikola Pétris. Gli umanisti jugoslavi si immersero completamente nello spirito a nell'atmosfera delle città italiane. Essi vissero pienamente il proprio tempo e la nuova corrente che si andava infiltrando in ogni campo. In questo spirito Pannonius platonici,

Più

tardi,

celebrò in versi il luogo in cui si trova la tomba del Petrarca, l'antica Roma, e la celebre Arena di Verona. Vergerius descrisse un agone poetico dell'anno 1406. Damianus Benessa compose un epigramma di atteggiamento umanistico in occasione del ritrovamento dell'antica scultura di Laocoonte a Roma (1506).

M. Marulus

commentari sulle antiche epigrafi romane, etc. amicizie personali fecero sì che gli umanisti si avvicinassero fra di loro: Banisius fu in contatto epistolare con il poeta Pietro Bembo. Gli avvenimenti storici e locali che accadevano negli ambienti vicini agli umanisti venivano da essi celebrati in versi, così come le personalità della loro epoca (ad es.: l'epistola di M. Marulus a papa Adriano; "in funere Petru Cardinalis ..." di Orazio Nikola Modruski). Gli umanisti italiani seppero pienamente apprezzare il valore dei propri colleghi jugoslavi. Ne fanno testimonianza i numerosi volumi in cui riportarono scrisse alcuni

Le conoscenze e

GLI UMANISTI JUGOSLAVI

Opere di autori jugoslavi. Il redattore dell'edizione risalente al 1473 delle Comdi Terenzio, a Venezia, Raffaele Regio, riportò alla fine dell'opera l'epigramma di Alvise Cipicco di Tragurio (Cipiccus ad lectorem). L'opera di Urbano Averiosto "Expositio CommentanoTum Aveiiios super Arìstotelìs De physico audita" (Venezia, 1492) è preceduta da una poesia di un poeta di Zara indirizzata ai lettori {Ad lectorem] Fra le poesie di Palladio Dimitrio Soranus sono stampati i versi di Bernardino Pima di Cattaro, etc. Questi e molti altri legami letterari rendono testimonianza delle frequenti amicizie fra umanisti jugoslavi ed italiani— dei comuni interessi, dell'ap-

medie

partenenza alle stesse correnti letterarie, filosofiche e spirituali. Gli umanisti jugoslavi indirizzarono le proprie epistole ai propri amici italiani e dedicarono loro dei libri. Il ragusano Jacobus Bonus dedicò la propria opera Cerberi composta alla fine del XV secolo al cardinale Oliviero Carafa, munifico mecenate di letterati. M. Marulus dedicò la propria famosa opera De humilitate et gloria Christi (Venezia, 1519) al senatore veneziano Agostino Mula. Da parte loro gli umanisti italiani spesso dimostrarono simili segni di amicizia, e numerosi ne sono gli esempi. Battista Guarino nelle lettere indirizzate al proprio allievo Francesco Barbari ha parole piene di elogio per il giovane Janus Pannonius. L'umanista Aurelio Augurello dedicò una poesia celebrativa ad Alvise Cipico, sepolto a Roma. L'editore bolognese Filippo Pe-

De raptu

roaldo compose un epigramma di accompagnamento per l'edizione del De raptu Cerberi di Bonus, etc. Numerose opere di umanisti jugoslavi furono stampate in città italiane, ed essi stessi vi soggiornarono, e ne conoscevano le circostanze, gli stampatori, e vi avevano i propri mecenati. Alcuni incunaboli della seconda metà del XV secolo, furono stampati a Venezia— Petri Mocenici imperatoris gestorum di Coriolano Cipico, Elegiarum et carminum libri très di Georgius Sisgoreus, etc. Furono inoltre pubblicate discussioni, discorsi, poesie umanistiche, epistole, panegirici, statuti di città, volumi di astronomia e di filosofia. Un gran numero di opere di M. Marulus fu stampato all'inizio del secolo XVI a Venezia— De institucione bene vivendi per exempla sanctorum (1506), Quinquaginta parabole (1510), Evangelistarium (1516) etc. — e epiù di una volta. Ancora per

molto tempo verranno stampati libri jugoslavi in Italia dopo l'umanesimo presso i centri editoriali italiani. Lungo è l'elenco di quelle opere che sono state stampate nelle città italiane e che vi sono restate per sempre, custodite, in

un solo esemplare. Anche un gran numero di manoscritti dei nostri scrittori umanisti si conserva ancor oggi negli archivi e nelle biblioteche di Venezia, Pesaro, Padova, Roma, Firenze, etc. Infine, alcuni umanisti che soggiornarono per lungo tempo in città italiane vi conclusero anche i loro giorni. A esempio Banisio morì a Trento, come decano del capitolo nel 1532, e fu sepolto nella cattedrale locale. Alvise Cipico morì a Roma (1504), proprio il giorno della sua nomina a cardinale, e fu sepolto nella basilica di S. Pietro. A Roma la morte colse anche, alla fine del secolo XVI, il filosofo F. Patritius. Fu sepolto nella chiesa di S. Onofrio, vicino a Torquato Tasso, con cui in vita sostenne delle polemiche letterarie. Da quanto esposto è possibile vedere che i legami degli umanisti jugoslavi con i entri umanistici italiani furono vari e duraturi. Numerosi furono i gio-

ZLATA BOJOVIC

vani che in questo periodo di generale rinascita giunsero dall'altra sponda dell'Adriatico e anche dal continente per studiare presso le antiche università, e vi conseguirono l'indispensabile sapere, ritornando, nella maggior parte dei casi, nel proprio paese come dotti appartenenti del clero, avvocati, professori, etc., portando nel proprio ambiente lo spirito dell'umanesimo che avevano colto alla sua sorgente. Quel che è certo è che, durante il loro soggiorno nei centri italiani, essi non furono dei meri spettatori, ma partecipavano attivamente alla vita degli ambienti in cui vivevano. In tal modo crescevano intellettualmente, partecipavano alle diatribe letterarie, filosofiche, politiche, e componevano e stampavano le proprie opere. Ebbero qui l'occasione di venire a contatto con i più grandi umanisti italiani e con gli umanisti di tutta l'Europa; ed ebbero modo di penetrare la sostanza del rinnovamento generale. Molti fra loro furono assai stimati, e si affermarono in quegli ambienti, e di molti ne arrivò lontano la fama come di insigni poeti, pensatori, diplomatici. Noi ci siamo limitati a menzionare soltanto un piccolo numero di tali esempi. Quanto da noi esposto testimonia senza dubbio che gli umanisti jugoslavi parteciparono attivamente alla vita dei focolai italiani dell'umanesimo. Il loro soggiorno in Italia in tali ambienti fu del tutto propizio, perché in tal modo assorbirono lo spirito dell'umanesimo alla sua fonte e lo portarono nel proprio paese, e negli altri paesi d'Europa nei quali essi continuarono la propria carriera— a Budim (Budapest n. tr.), Vienna, Cracovia, Parigi, etc. Nei centri italiani dell'umanesimo essi molto appresero, e molto ritennero per sé; come tutti gli umanisti provenienti dagli altri paesi d'Europa che in tali centri si distinsero. E nello stesso tempo vi apportarono anch'essi qualche contributo. E tutto questo, nel senso più lato, avvenne secondo lo spirito di quanto

chiamiamo Humanitas. Università di Belgrado

Archibald

Hay and

the

Paduan Aristotelians at Paris, 1530-1545 Euan Cameion not difficult to understand why Archibald Hay {ciica 1517-1547), a scholar of great promise, has been neglected in all but the most recondite of college histories published to date. He lived only about thirty years, of which the adult part was spent between the University of Paris, and, latterly, St. Mary's College in the University of St. Andrews, where he presided as principal for the last year of his life. His works consisted of the Oratio pw Collega erectione of 1538, the Gzatulatonus Panegyiicus of 1540, a poem in an edition of Proclus' De Motu dating from 1542, and an exceedingly rare edition of Erasmus' translation of the Hecuba of Euripides.^ It was his generation that was to accomplish the Scottish reformation: Knox and Buchanan were contemporaries of his, and one of Hay's friends and colleagues, John Douglas, was to collaborate with Knox and others in drawing up the First Book of Discipline of the Scottish Church; but Hay, to the casual glance at least, appears to have no possible part in these events.^ Yet Hay had important connections. The two orations were dedicated to his uncle and his cousin respectively; the one, James Beaton, was archbishop of St. Andrews and the first founder of the college over which Hay was to preside; the other, David Beaton, succeeded to the archbishopric and the primacy in 1539 and was a successful curialist, becoming cardinal, protonotary apostolic and legatus a latere before his death by violence in Scotland in 1546. He was also the continuator, at the very least of it, of James' work at St. Mary's College.-^ On the French side, we know that Hay, while at Paris, was connected with a number of distinguished north Italian philosophers. The edition of Proclus' De Motu to which Hay contributed a poem (a piece of elegant advertisem*nt to which reference will be made later) was that of Spirito Martino. This Martino bore the surname Cuneas, and was referred to in the poem of 1542 as Primarius of the Lombard College in the University of Paris. He was also an Aristotelian philosopher and described by Francesco Vicomercato, François I's lecteur royal in philosophy, as "our pupil, most faithful, most studious, and most learned." Vicomercato himself taught in the 1530s and is

ItRenaissance

EUAN CAMERON

1540s at the Collège du Plessis; by 1543, certainly, Hay was there also. Martino spoke of another friend of his, Giovanni Ferrerio, styled "Pedemontanus," whose uncle Stefano, bishop-elect of Vercelli, patronised the group of disciples of Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples; Giovanni was himself the author of a tiny but

seemingly well-known collection of Adages. Should it then surprise us that had from as early as 1528 been familiar with Scots scholars, had visited and taught at the abbey of Kinloss, and left some of his books to the library of the same religious house?* Hay's humanist orations, which were described at the 1976 congress at Tours, show in themselves a blend of elegant philological scholarship, Erasmian satire of a fairly biting and personal variety against his uncle the archbishop (to whom he quotes some of the more scathing passages of the Praise ofPoUy without acknowledgment 1,^ and coming through it all a pungent and rhetorically laden denunciation of corruption and greed within the Church in tones reminiscent of the Consilium Delectomm Caidinalium. Were one unaware of Hay's scholarly milieu and the sort of exotic ideas that were being circulated within it, one might read the orations convinced that nothing further was to be found there. On inspection, however, there seems to be a further element continually but elusively evident, to explain which one must attempt some brief elucidation of the teachings and the ideas of Euhemethis Ferrerio

rus.

Euhemerus of Messene, who flourished around the year 300 B.C., would hardly be accurate, for he founded no school; yet to describe him as what he was, an imaginative novelist, belies the nature of

call

a philosopher, his influence.

He wrote

a novel with the title 'Itpà àva-fpaçri, or "Sacred Scrip-

which described life on an imaginary island whose central monument was a column recording the acts of Cronos, Uranus, and Zeus. These three Gods, it was said, had been mortals, and great kings in their day; because of their magnificent rule their people worshipped them as gods after their death. The novel, it has recently been suggested, was liable to be taken three ways: It could justify the traditions of Greek epic which drew no clear distinction between gods and great men; it could justify the ruler-cults of its own day; or it could rationalise all religions and support a philosophical atheism. The book enjoyed a certain vogue in Latin antiquity, thanks to a work, called ture,"

Eubeznerus, written by Ennius and transcribed at length by the christian writer of the third and fourth centuries, Lactantius Firmianus; with whom Archibald Hay in the Panegyiicus shows some degree of familiarity.^ "Euhemerism" thus becomes a blanket term for a wide number of views about the status of the ancient gods; it creates in the Renaissance something approaching a 'History of Religions' school. It has been defined by one of its scholars as "giving as the origin of religious dogma certain individual causes: heroes who by their exploits or their services have caused themselves to be divinised, kings who have come to be worshipped through their own cunning or audacity, or the ignorant fondness of their subjects; or physical phenomena which surpass the understanding."^ These ideas came to be written down long after Ennius: Plutarch's Isis and Osiris and his Life of Numa embodied the same theory. Cicero himself, in the book De Natura Deorum, made reference to this whole

ARCfflBALD

HAY AND THE PADUAN ARISTOTELIANS

corpus of theory; and what he said, in a Renaissance context, thy of quoting:

surely wor-

Then there are those who have argued that all our beliefs about the gods have been fabricated by wise men for reasons of state, so that men whom reason could not persuade to be good citizens might be persuaded by religion. Have not these also totally destroyed the foundations of belief? Or Prodicus of Chios, who ascribed divinity to everything which . . .

mankind: what room did he leave for religion? There are also those who teach that brave and famous men have been deified after death and that these are the gods whom we have now become accustomed to worship and reverence and to whom we pray. Are not such men devoid of all religious feeling? This line of thought has been especially developed by Euhemerus: and our own Ennius has been his foremost disciple and interpreter.... Does such a man seem to you to have strengthened religion or to have utterly undermined and destroyed it? ... benefits

These remarks, it should be noted, Cicero puts into the mouth of his fellowacademic Cotta, in Book 1, cc. 116-20. Before proceeding further one must distinguish some of the different strands of ideas that have come to be grouped under this heading. There are, it appears, at least four different forms in which the myth can present itself: First, that the ancient gods came to be such through the apotheosis of men who had been great in their lifetime; second, that gods only came to be thought of at all through the idolising simplicity of ly,

that all there

this

earth— in

men who lived in their day;

third-

and magnanimous to mortals other words, instead of elevating men to Olympus, one brings

godhead

to be generous

the gods down to earth; or fourthly, that to call a man a 'god' or equate him with the pantheon is simply a way of thanking him for his kindness. It will already be evident that it is the bearing of this mass of theories upon the official Christianity of the sixteenth century that provokes attention. Such a set of distinctions is then necessary, for the last of these varieties of Euhemerism can be assimilated with religious orthodoxy at a pinch (as Erasmus was to find out), while the third cannot; the first two appear to be safely on the secure side of the line that divided scholarship from speculation. Because of these distinctions, and because men of the Renaissance sometimes show little awareness of them, there are many paradoxes when one comes to deal with the state of Euhemeristic ideas in the Renaissance. Before Hay's time. Giovarmi Boccaccio in the Genealogiae Deoium Gentilium offered a history, in some respects dependent on Ennius, which explained many of the stories of the ancient gods in Euhemeristic terms. For example, he says of Jupiter secundus:

Theodontius would have it that he was a famous man, first simply amongst his own people; but because Lycaeon king of Arcadia set human flesh before him at a feast, he conquered Lycaeon in battle, and took his kingdom from him, and then first began to be called Jupiter on account of the just revenge he had taken on an evil king.^

EUAN CAMERON

However, as we shall see, Boccaccio is in the Genealogiae impeccably orthodox where the god of Christianity is concerned. The quotation here, also, appears to be quite orthodox in its ideas:

Antiquity thought that there was nothing more to being a god, than Hence the ancients held for Gods those who were the source of crops, wine, or laws, or who gave them anything which made life more pleasant.... Cicero refers to this, when he writes in the first book of De Natura Deomm, "So I conclude that beasts were worshipped by the barbarians because they were good and useful to them." to be of help to mortals.

The author here is Erasmus himself, in the adage hom*o homini deus.^ (It becomes even more 'safe,' so to speak, when a few lines later he includes a Ciceronian warning about worshipping the created instead of the creator.) It is also interesting that Erasmus regards this adage, even as a simple term of thanks to a friend, as so near to impiety ("apud Christianos Dei appellatio non

mortalium vel per iocum communicanda, neque omnino tam insignis, adulatio est in mores nostros recipienda") that he spends many lines giving several examples of how a modem author might without blasphemy use the phrase of the Greeks, avOptoTto; àvGpojTiou 8ai|xóviov. Yet he alludes to one source which would surely in the past have been accorded a great measure of respectability, that of Aristotle in the Nicomachaean Ethics, book eight, which says: est ulli

tamque foeda

Some friends there are who, when they wish their friends to have the highest good happen to them, they say for a manner of speaking that they wish them to be gods.^° Nevertheless, there are those philosophers in the Renaissance whose grasp more ominous. Etienne Dolet, the French rhetorician, classical scholar and printer, who was executed for heresy, said of his

of Euhemeristic ideas is

humanist

They

friends:

and parents of the immortal gods; not only title, but for the glory and excellence of their spirit; if one examines the divinity of the Gods, one will find nothing that they have in particular, that these souls do not possess. ^^ are of divine race,

for the similarity of

name and

There is one other scholar who is credited with teaching these doctrines, who nevertheless lived a life of nearly impeccable doctrinal respectability, was

numerous church benefices and stayed safe under royal protection He was Francesco Vicomercato. It is true that he was most distinguished for his work in the more technical side of Aristotelian philosophy; but one of his references to God and to Christ, rare enough in his works, occurs in a dedication to Pierre du Chastel, bishop of Macon: a holder of in France.

God and man are by their very nature infinitely separated from one another, and since the fall of Adam in the beginning they have been made altogether dissimilar; yet between them Jesus Christ was made an intermediary, God and man, and removed the difference from between

ARCHIBALD HAY AND THE PADUAN ARISTOTELIANS

them and bound them one

to another by the straitest of bonds.... So, myself to be separated from the King by so great a divide, I thought I had to find an intermediary who might bind these things so disparate in themselves from him as me and my commentaries, and of-

since

fer

realise

them

him

in a Latin version. ^^

This Christ-figure was to be Pierre du Chastel himself. Vicomercato, apparently, taught these doctrines while at Paris, and they were also discussed by one of his opponents, Guillaume Postel, in his De Concordia Ozbis of 1543.^^ Thus much for the milieu of ideas in which Archibald Hay worked. One must now turn to those examples which invite some comparison with the tradition which has just been described. This, for example, from the Ozatio: Socrates sapientissimus oraculo iudicatus non modo integritate sed et aliis naturae dotibus suscipiendus, dicebat, Deos omnium optimos, ac foelicissimos, et ad horum similitudinem, quo quisque propius accederet eo meliorem esse, et beatiorem. Et qua re alia magis divinam in se naturam efflorescentem quispiam declarabit, quam de singulis, quam maxime potest bene merendo, iuxta quod hominem homini dei vice esse dicebant veteres. Socrates, whom the oracle judged was the wisest of all, to be respected not only for the purity of his life but also for the other gifts of nature, said that the gods were of all things the best and the most fortunate, and the closer that any man came to resemble them, by so much did he become better and more blessed. And in what other way might anyone show that he had a more divine spark at work in his nature, than by doing the best service he could to individuals? Besides which the ancients

morum,

said that a

Hay

man might

at another point

be as a god to his

had made

fellow.^'*

this altered quotation

from Erasmus:

Si non inscite a quibusdam scriptum legimus: hoc demum esse deum iuvare mortales id quod lovis antiquorum divorum principis ethimologia innuit, si merito rudis maiorum nostrorum sapientia in Deorum numerum censuit referendos illos, qui unam aliquem insignem commoditatem hominibus ostenderant.... If it was no idle talk on the part of certain authors to say 'this is what being a god is, to help mortals'— which the etymology of Jove, lord over the ancient gods, suggests— if the homespim wisdom of our predecessors was right in putting in the number of the gods those who showed men one particular remarkable benefit.... ^^

does not seem that the reference to Socrates has anything intrinsicalabout it. Yet as soon as he has stopped quoting Hay seems slightly to overstep the mark of his authority,- he talks of a man having a "divinam naturam efflorescentem in se," that is, of a 'godlike' or 'divine' nature at work within him. Furthermore, the way in which someone is to prove that his being is divine is to help others. This evokes immediately the theory of Prodicos of Chios quoted earlier. Cicero is quoted, in the adage hom*o homini First, it

ly strange

EUAN CAMERON

the proper office of a god to help one, or to do one good." most popular Euhemeristic sententia of the age, that of Pliny the Elder in Natuial History, deus, as saying

There

"It is

also in this passage an allusion to perhaps the

n, vii:

Godhead,

for a mortal, is to

eternal glory.

be of help to mortals; this

the

way

Our Roman patricians passed this way; and now the greatest

way with his children, weary time. This is the most venerable way of giving thanks to those who have served well, that such should be numbered with the gods. ruler of all time, Vespasian Augustus, passes this

with

coming

celestial tread,

to help a

Then Hay refers to the well-known adage. hom*o homiui deus, having surely read Erasmus' article, where the quotation from Pliny is reproduced in full, though differing in minor detail from the one translated above (which is the most respected edition of Hay's day, that of Rabirius, Aldus, Venice, 1536).^^ However, we have even now not yet finished with Pliny. Of course, when Erasmus referred to a "certain author" saying that the essence of godhead was to help mortals, it was Pliny that he had in mind. In the second of the passages just quoted from Hay's Oratio, he has made only one alteration in the first line: The source is plural, a quibusdam — is he suggesting 'Erasmus and Pliny'?— not singular. Then something peculiar happens. With little regard for the balance of the sentence Hay inserts the parenthesis "the etymology of Jove suggests this"; in other words, he takes the assonance of 'Jove,' the stem, 'juvare,' 'to help,' and deduces from that. Yet what is the source for this idea? It is not in Erasmus, and I am not able to say with certainty; yet it is interesting that Boccaccio, not an author to be associated easily with illiberal ...

and

pietism, says of this etymology:

For there are Jupiter should

some

mean

serious

men who would

have

'helping father,' {iuvans pater)

that this

which

same

fitting on-

was from all eternity, and none other; likewise, he is for a help to all, and does evil to none, and helps in such a way, that ^^ if his help were withdrawn all must at once be thrown into peril. ly to the true

God. For he

will be to everlasting,

truly our Father,

which can be

The passage has been quoted

said of

some

length, for

shows

just

how

great

the divide between Boccaccio's conscientious scholarship, and scarcely less conscience-stricken orthodoxy, and what begins at this point to look like Archibald Hay's blasé paganism. In the quotation from Erasmus he is, of course, being ironic; but not, surely, in respect of his views about godhead, for he makes mention of them also in the first passage that was quoted, with no such ironic purpose. There are two further pieces of evidence to be considered on this question. Hay, as was mentioned earlier, had written for publication in 1542 a laudatory poem for Spirito Martino, introducing the latter's edition of Proclus' De Motu. The greater part of the poem is simply an elegant introduction of the book to the reader, describing, with perhaps more florid style than correct detail. is

ARCHIBALD HAY AND THE PADUAN ARISTOTELIANS

this philosophical discourse contains. However, sonal note:

what

begins on a very per-

Respondent magnis nonnumquam nomina rebus, Nominibus magnis res quoque, quis neget hoc? Spiritus e summo est demissum nomen olympo, Nomine quo nullum clarius orbis habet.

Hoc tantum

tarn insigne refert fausto

Qui Proclum docuit verba

omine nomen.

latina loqui.

Sometimes the name of a thing answers to its greatness; so who will deny that the thing itself may live up to a great name? Spiritus is a name sent down from the heights of Olympus, a name excelled in honour by none other in this world. This at least must be the meaning of such a fortunate

name

as his

who first gave

Proclus to speak the latin tongue. ^^

It is not much; but it is perhaps enough to tie in with what has already appeared of Hay's habits of thought. Hay seems quite at home in using the language of the ancient pantheon to describe his friends, even when it is simply in casual fashion. There is one other point at which Hay refers to a tradition which was treasured by the Parisian Euhemerists. Postel's De Concordia Orbis included a number of stories, not directly related to, say, the consecration of heroes, which are nevertheless part of the rationalising tradition. Postel treats of religion and cults as though they were in the first a means of deceiving an ignorant people into accepting what their legislators presented. In particular Postel referred to the fact that certain legislators claimed to have had meetings with gods in order to frame the laws they imposed; this might in a way prove a means towards their eventual deification. Doubtless another example of such ideas will come to mind: it is Machiavelli, in the Discorsi, I, 11, who puts forward the same ideas. One may compare with both what Archibald Hay has to say on this:

Minoem Cretensium Regem iustissimum accepimus leges praefixisse,

nisi a love traditas:

nullas populo nee minus vigilantissimum

lacaedemoniorum legis latorem Lycurgum Consilio Apollinis leges compositas (ut malore in praetio servarentur) se ferre, populo persuasisse: rerum scrip tores memorant. Idem faciebat Numa Pompilius a romulo

Rex romanorum primus qui monitu Deae cuiusdam solemnia Diis immortalibus sacra instituit. We hear that Minos, the most just king of the Cretans, gave no laws to his people save those that had been handed on by Jupiter: that Lycurgus, the no less prudent and watchful lawgiver of the Spartans, persuaded his people that he had given them laws composed (that they might be held in greater esteem) on the advice of Apollo: the historians bear us witness of this. Numa Pompilius, after Romulus the first of the kings of Rome, did the same when he instituted solemn worship of the immortal gods by the advice of some nymph or other. ^^

EUAN CAMERON

In fact, it is far less than clear just why Hay has included this particular legend when he has. He could have included others— Postel listed also Charondas, Zamolxis and Mahomet as well as the three above — and yet the context here is an attack on the neglect of religion and true piety by the churchmen of his day! Hay seems to suggest that the coherence of the state depends upon the maintenance of a zealous and faithful, and therefore impressive priesthood. He says as much:

These men in their great wisdom {Minos, Lycuigus, and Numa] would never have done this, had they not by many good reasons persuaded themselves that, if religion were neglected, nothing else could stand, nor could the human race apprehend anything immortal. I will not discuss in detail how far our age differs from the excellence of their days.... ^°

Without any doubt, then, in his incessant and

bitter attack

of the practitioners of the established religion of his day.

on the morals

Hay has equated the

moral function of pagan and Christian religion to the point where any matter of conventional truth is left distinctly in second place. And because he has made the equation between the religion of the church and that, say, of Lycurgus, he leaves hanging in the air, willy-nilly, the suggestion that what might have been a political fiction for Lycurgus could be a political fiction for the cardinals as well.

the major paradox. It would be far easier to make hasty deductions evidence that there is if Hay, like Vicomercato, scarcely alluded at all to Christianity in his writings. In fact, quite the reverse is the case. His rhetoric is saturated, from time to time, with quotations from the scriptures, reference to the fathers (he cited the fact that Jerome and Augustine approved of Plato's teaching as a point in favour of the latter) and with a lively and energetic concern to see the abuses of the church of his day put right. As much of the Panegyiicus is devoted to specifically religious as to specifically secular issues. All the talk which he borrows from the Praise of Folly about the significance of bishops' vestments, and which he amplifies considerably, was directed to warning an vmcle about the deficiencies of many contemporary clergy: one cannot fairly regard it as pure, unadulterated satire. A paradox has been put, and very tentatively, this is a paradoxical answer. Hay obviously cares about religion, in a way which his master (if I may presimie so to call Vicomercato by now?) does not seem to have done. Yet one is perfectly entitled to ask why he cared about it. In all his glib talk about the function of Christ as a refuge and strength, and a goal for mortal aspirations, there is not, I think, a spark of that highly personalised piety with which one is familiar in, say, Erasmus, Lefèvre, or Contarini. Hay, it seems, cares about religion because it is religion which lends dignity and sublimity to human life; and an awareness of man's need of the supernatural, of the eternal, is one of the things which protects him from barbarism. This, one may suggest, is a kind of religious practice and belief which is wholly compatible with the religionsaturated atmosphere of the age which was described in different but complementary ways by Lucien Febvre and Jacques Toussaert. It also makes no claim on the spirit in the way which either Renaissance mystics or reformers

This

from the

little

ARCHIBALD HAY AND THE PADUAN ARISTOTELIANS

stamp would understand the Christian faith as very essence. Further, to make a religious broadside in the early sixteenth century is hardly anything new — even the attacks on corrupt clergy must have been becoming a little jaded by 1538. To include in such a work, on the other hand, some exotic Euhemeristic ornamentation, and some rather lavish praise in Ciceronian language— of the kind that got Dolet, for one, into such serious trouble— is definitely imusual. One curious fact may finally be noted. There is only one copy of the Oratio in existence; though the printer, Pierre Vidoue, was of a high reputation and print-runs were presumably not tiny, it has virtually vanished from sight. Was it just too eccentric, too recherché in its philosophy and too close to the bone in its satire, for the authorities not to frown very hard on it, in Scotland at least? One copy survives in the library of York Minster. It is the copy that belonged to David Beaton, James's nephew and the head of what, for Archibald Hay at least, was a reversionary interest from which he stood to profit very largely. of the Lutheran or Calvinist

doing— of

its

Oxford, England

Notes 1.

Archibaldus Hayus,

Ad Reveiendissimum in

Chiisto patiem D. lacobem Be-

toun, S. Andieae aichipzaesulem, Scotiae Piimatem, ac Legatum Natum, pro Collega Eiectione Aichibaldi Hayi, Oratio, (Paris, 1538); Ad illustrìssimum titilli S.

Stephani in monte Coelio Caidinalem, D. Davidem Betoun, Piimatem Scotiae, S. Andieae, Episcopum Meiipocensem, De Foelici accessione dignitatis Caidinalitiae, giatulatoiius panegyiicus Aichibaldi Hayi, (Paris, 1540). For the information on the Proclus edition (of which there is a copy in Eton College Library, which I have seen), and the Hecuba I am indebted, as for much help and guidance, to Dr. John Durkan. 2. W. A. McNeill, "Scottish Entries in the Acta Rectoiia Univeisitatis Paiisiensis," Scottish Histoiical Review, 42 (1964), 66-83; Hay, Oiatio, sig. A3v; Panegyiicus, fol. 6r; for John Douglas, Oiatio, sig. Fir, and J. K. Cameron, The Fiist Book

Archiepiscopum

of Discipline, (Edinburgh, 1972), p. 4. 3. DNB; also the forthcoming Histoiy of St. Mary's College, by J. K. Cameron, R. G. Cant, and H. R. Sefton. 4. Henri Busson, Les souices et le développement du lationalisme dans la Litteiatuie Fiancaise de la Renaissance (1533-1601), (Paris, 1922, and reissued as Le ... ePc, Second edition, Paris, 1957), pp. 202-204, 218, and refs: references are to the 1922 edition imless otherwise stated. Also the epistle of Hay's edition of Erasmus' Hecuba-, and John Durkan, "The beginnings of humanism in Scotland," Innes Review, 4 (1953), 14-17.

Rationalisme

5. eg.,

Oiatio, sigg. B4v,

Dlv-D2r.

Classical Dictionaiy, edited by N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, (Oxford, 1973), art. "Euhemerus"; Hay, Panegyiicus, fol. 25r. 6.

The Oxfoid

EUAN CAMERON

Busson,

Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogiae Deoium Gentilium, a cura di V. Romano,

370.

2 vols. (Bari, 1951), i, 233. 9. Adagia, Id est, Pioveibionun, Paioemiaium, et Paiabolarum omnium quae apud Giaecos ... é)c., in usu fuerunt, collectio ahsolutissima, edited by J. -J. Grynaeus, (?Frankfurt, 1643), p. 590, art. hom*o bomini deus. This is taken from the edition many times printed in the seventeenth century, containing the adages of many humanists beside Erasmus and some of the most complete indexes. 10. Operum Aiistotelis TomusJI, (edited by Isaac Casaubon], (Lyon, 1590), p. 62. 11. Busson, p. 374. 12. Francesco Vicomercato, In viii libzos Aiistotelis de Naturali Auscultatione Commentaiii, (Paris, 1550), Epistle to Pierre du Chastel: "Inter deima et hominem, cum natura ipsa inter se infinite disiunctos, tum vero in primis ex Adae peccato dissimiles omnino redditos, lesus Christus médius constitutus est, qui deus et hom*o dissimilitudine sublata eos inter se arctissimo vinculo coniimgit.... Cum autem tanto me ab ipso Rege intervallo disiimgi intelligam, medium aliquem mihi inveniendum esse duxi, qui me, commentariosque meos, et in Latinum conversionem ei offeret, haecque tam inter se disparia coniungeret." Also quoted by Busson. 13.

Busson, (1957 edition),

342-43.

14. Oratio, sigg. B3r-v.

B4v. Secundi Natuialis Histona Prima Pars, edited by Andreas Rabirius Brixianus, (Venice, 1536), fol. 3r: "Deus est mortali iuvare mortalem; et haec ad aetemam gloriam via. Hac proceres iere Romani; hac nimc cadesti passu cmn liberis suis vadit maximus omnis aevi rector Vespasianus Augustus, fessis rebus subveniens. Hie est vetustissimus referendi benemerentibus gratiam mos, ut tales 15. Oratio, sig. 16. C. Plinii

numinibus adscribantur." "Volunt enim aliqui et graves viri quod quod soli vero Deo convenit. Ipse enim pater est et ab etemo fuit et erit in sempitemum, quod de alio nemine dici potest, similiter et juvans est omnibus et nulli nocens, et in tantum juvans est, ut si suum retrahatur juvamen pericl*tentur confestim omnia necesse sit." 18. Procli insignis Pbilosophi Compendiaria de Motu disputatio, edited by Spiritus Martinus Cuneas, (Paris, 1542), introductory poem. The poem is introduced as "Alchibaldi [sic] Hayi Scoti carmen in Spiritimi Martinum Cuneatem, Collegii Lombardorum Primarium." 17. Boccaccio, Genealogiae, vol.

idem

luppiter sonet

quod iuvans

p. 70:

pater,

19. Panegyricus, fol. 46v.

"Quod nimquam viri sapientissimi fecissent nisi plurimis rationibus sibi persuasissent neglecta religione nihil posse consistere, neque genus humanum immortale quidpiam apprehendere. Non discutiam sigillatim quam différât aetas nostra ab illorum integritate, non miscebam usque ad invidiam sacra prophanis; absit ut in meum unius caput tot egregie depastos sacrificulos commoveam, non committam ut illorum dementiae me opponam...." 20. Panegyricus, fols. 46v-47r:

Seventeenth-Century Report on the Snake Charmers of India Robert W. Carrubba Their graceful movements in the erect attitude they assume with the hood distended as they follow the movements of the snake-charmer's hands, make them an object of wonder as well as fear to all, and the superstitions of the natives about them are endless.

With

these words Sir Joseph Fayrer, M.D., President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, described in 1872 the complex emotions which are aroused by the dance of the Indian cobra. ^ Some two centuries earlier another European physician, a German in the service of the Dutch East India Company, had also observed the powerful and fascinating performances offered by itinerant snake charmers on the Coromandel Coast. Dr. Engel-

Kaempfer reported how in 1689 the snake charmers, positioned within striking-range of the cobra, appeared to so dominate the beast that it was incapable of striking and was compelled to dance to the music of its master. While Kaempfer admired the show, he, like Sir Joseph, utterly rejected the bert

claim of the snake charmers that their success was due to magic. Kaempfer maintained a rational skepticism until by eyewitness investigation he could discover the truth and share it with the scientific and lay community alike. Dr. Kaempfer and his untranslated account, published in Latin in 1712, are then the concern of this article. Engelbert Kaempfer, M.D. (1651-1716) devoted ajQ entire decade to cultural and scientific explorations. His travels began with his departure from Sweden in March 1683; they would end with his arrival in Holland in October 1693.^ The length and geographical scope of his journey through Russia, Persia, India, Siam, the East Indies and Japan complemented the breadth and depth of Kaempfer's curiosity and scholarship. He was among the most learned and surely he was the most widely traveled scholar of his era. Perhaps the finest accolade comes from the great Linnaeus who in the Critica Botanica said of Kaempfer: "No man deserved better of the Japanese." Bom in Lemgo just three years after the end of the Thirty Years War, Kaemp-

The Indian Cobra Top: The Mungo plant, a reputed antidote for cobra venom and the source of the supposed immunity of the cobra's natiural enemy, the mongoose. At the bottom

Mungo

right, a

mongoose

Center:

A snake charmer sticking his tongue in the mouth of a dead Indian python.

As the tongue

feeding on the

withdrawn, bloody stripes are made by the sharp teeth.

A snake charmer with fist extended makes the hooded cobra "dance."

Left:

root.

Right:

A Brahman

ware pot to

using an earthen-

train a cobra not to strike

during a performance.

Bottom:

cobra with the eyeglass marking on the back of the hood.

SNAKE CHARMERS OF INDIA

20 fer spent his early years at

the parsonage of Nikolai Lutheran Church where

his father, Johannes, served as pastor. He then enrolled at Danzig and continued his higher education at Cracow and Königsberg (1676-1681) with emphasis on language, history, natural science, and medicine: a happy blend of

the liberal arts and the sciences, without which Kaempfer's reports and discoveries would not have been possible. Despite a splendid education, Kaempfer's career opportunities in Germany were not promising, while to the north lay Sweden with its university, Uppsala, and a chance to study under the distinguished naturalist, Olof Rudbeck. Kaempfer's intellectual qualities impressed not only the faculty at Uppsala but King Charles XI of Sweden who offered him the position of court scholar. Kaempfer chose instead to join the Embassy of Charles XI to the Shah of Persia in the capacity of Secretary. Before reaching Isfahan in March of 1684, Kaempfer survived a perilous crossing of the Caspian Sea. When the Embassy had completed its commercial and political negotiations at Isfahan, Kaempfer faced a second significant decision. He was offered an appointment as court physician in Georgia and he himself considered traveling to Egypt. But Father du Mans, a Capuchin and interpreter for the Persian Court, persuaded Kaempfer to accept employment as a physician with the Dutch East India Company. It was during the period from March 1684 to June 1688 that Kaempfer, while not at work or ill with a protracted fever (probably malaria), compiled observations on the electric torpedo fish of the Persian Gulf, the bituminous liquid thought to be the authentic embalming of ancient Egypt, the Persian dracunculus or worm which infests the human body, and asafetida. Kaempfer saw Persia for the last time when he set sail from Gamron (Bandar Abbas), which commanded the Straits of Hormuz. Under Vice-Admiral Lykochthon, the Dutch fleet weighed anchor, bound for Batavia, Java, and calling at ports on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts of India. Within a period of one year (August 1688-May 1689) reports were compiled on: Andrum or endemic hydrocele of the scrotum; Perical or madura foot, an infection which greatly enlarges the foot; two supposed antidotes for snake venom: the root of the Mungo plant and snake stone; and the dance of the Naja naja, the hooded cobra of India. In Java Kaempfer continued his studies but his eye was on the Dutch factory on the artificial island, Dejima in Nagasaki, where he could collect books, botanicals, and any other Japanese materials.-^ From Kaempfer's three years at Java and Japan we have observations on acupuncture, moxibustion, tea and ambergris. Kaempfer returned to Holland in October 1693, ten years after he had left Stockholm on the mission to Isfahan. He documented some of his observations in ten sections of the dissertation which he presented to the faculty of medicine at the renowned University of Leyden in April 1694.^^ Instead of seeking an academic appointment for which he was eminently qualified, Kaempfer returned in August 1694 to the place of his birth, Lemgo, and to a demanding medical practice which frustrated his intention to rearrange and polish his vast store of materials for immediate publication. On December 18, 1700 he married Maria Sophia Wilstack, but the marriage proved less than harmonious. Maria Kaempfer bore three children, one son and two daughters; all died in their infancy.

mummy

W. CARRUBBA

It was nineteen years after his return to Europe that Kaempfer saw the pubUcation in 1712 of his first major work: Amoenitatum exoticanun politicophysico-medicarum fasciculi V, quitus continentui vahae lelationes, obseivationes &) descriptiones leium Persicarum eu Ulterìorìs Asiae (Meyeri, Lemgo). It was to be the last published during his lifetime, for after several attacks of colic he died at Lemgo in 1716 at the age of sixty five. Included in the Amoenitatum exoticanim {The Pleasure of the Exotic) as observation nine of fascicle three is Tripudia Serpentum in India Orientali (Snake Dance of Eastern India), pages 565-573. Kaempfer begins his report by observing that to the barefooted Indians no snake is more terrifying than the Naja naja which, when aroused, dilates its neck laterally and can inflict a fatal bite. Because of the early presence of the Portuguese in India, the Western world came to know the Naja naja under the title cobra de capello, the "hooded snake, "^ some of whom bore the additional curiosity of an eyeglass marking on the back of the neck. Here is Sir Joseph Fayrer's grim appraisal of the cobra's annual toll:^

The number of deaths caused yearly in India by these snakes is perfectly appalling. The cases in which recovery occurs are, it is to be feared, very few; treatment appears to be of little avail unless and then in the case of a genuine bite there is but

be almost immediate, hope of saving life.

little

Thus, native Indians and Western travelers alike were struck with both fear and wonder as snake charmers appeared to cast a spell on the dreaded cobra which rendered it harmless and, even more, compelled the beast to dance. The snake charmer, accompanied by an assistant or a boy, would journey from village to village where he performed for the public in the marketplace or he might go from door to door offering his services for a fee. Whether the show be public or private, the charmer would first reach into a cloth and take out a portion of a little root. By holding the root in his hand, the charmer proclaimed loudly, he rendered himself immune to the strike of the snake. He would shake the snake from a basket onto the ground and gently irritate it with a stick or with his fist which was protected by holding the root. Thus provoked, the cobra turns toward the charmer, raised the upper portion of its body, expands its hood^ and with vibrating tongue makes a hissing sound. But instead of striking, the snake is presumably charmed by the song which his master begins to sing and intently follows the rhythmic motion of the extended fist from side to side and back again over a distance of about eighteen inches. Kaempfer calculated that the dance of the cobra usually lasted for about twelve minutes, until the snake tired and dropped from the erect position to the ground.

Snake charmers claimed that they exerted a double compulsion on the cobra: the root held in the fist prevented the snake from striking, and the song caused it to dance. Kaempfer tested the supposed power of the root. It was not possible to identify the root because the charmers did not display a whole root but merely sold one-inch pieces to bystanders who wished to approach closer to the dancing cobras. The root resembled sarsaparilla in taste and shape but

was somewhat at a

thicker.

cobra while

was

Kaempfer purchased two pieces of root which he threw on the ground after a performance. As Kaemp-

resting

SNAKE CHARMERS OF INDIA

snake showed not the sUghtest fear of or aversion to the root. Having demonstrated the impotence of the root, Kaempfer expected to obtain positive results with garUc "in accordance with the principle of antipathy." Again, the cobra remained munoved, ignoring the substance— both the Oriental and Occidental myths had been discredited. On the basis of these two experiments, Kaempfer could assert his belief that "the ash tree and the various plants, which Pliny and other writers on natural magic claim put snakes to flight, are not any more effective." In the case of Pliny, the traditional claims were both extravagant and engaging: fer expected, the

Indeed the leaves of the ash are found to be serviceable as an exceptionally effective antidote for snake-bites, if the juice is squeezed out to make a potion and the leaves are applied to the wound as a poultice; and they are so potent that a snake will not come in contact with the shadow of the tree even in the morning or at sunset when it is at its longest, so wide a berth does it give to the tree itself. We can state from actual experiment that if a ring of ash-leaves is put round a fire and a snake, the snake will rather escape into the fire than into the ash-leaves. By a marvellous provision of Nature's kindness the ash flowers before the snakes come out and does not shed its leaves before they have gone into hibernation.^

In assessing the second compulsion which Indian charmers claimed to exon the cobra, Kaempfer could not have known that snakes are unable to hear airborne sounds and consequently that the song of the charmer had no effect. Nevertheless, he maintained: "In this century, no one but a fool is persuaded that serpents are charmed by song so as to dance.... It is fear alone and habit born of fear which induce that noble and docile beast to observe the chastizing fist and to follow intently its motion." We shall consider next ert

the discovery which justified Kaempfer's position. On India's Coromandel coast lies the city of Negapatam, a seaport which had been settled by the Portuguese and subsequently fallen under the power of the Dutch in 1660. Negapatam remained the most important Dutch possession in India for over a century until the British seized control in 1781. In a remote location outside the city of Nagapatam a Brahman, a member of the highest or priestly caste of Hindus, had under economic compulsion resorted to an unorthodox and exotic type of work quite foreign to the teaching and study of the Vedas and the performance of religious ceremonies. When stipends and temple offerings became inadequate, many Brahmans turned to unexpected occupations. In Malabar on the western coast of India, Brahmans enjoyed a monoply over the transport of goods, a grant from their monarchs. This particular Brahman had devoted his life to the training of cobras destined to become show animals— performers. The training of the cobras normally took place in the late afternoon and perhaps in the early morning, times when the sun is less strong. The cobras were kept each in its own clay pot large enough for the snake in a coiled position. On his visit, Kaempfer counted twenty-two pots arranged outdoors on the sand. Every cobra was trained individually. First the trainer removed the

W. CARRUBBA

and turned the pot upside down, shaking the snake to the ground. Ordinarily the cobra preferred flight to combat, but the Brahman would use a stick to prevent the snake from escaping. At this point the cobra responds willingly to the challenge. It expands its hood, assumes the erect position, and attempts to strike. But the Brahman by now had picked up the clay pot and held it out like a shield. Instead of a successful strike and the injection of venom, the cobra experienced pain on its face and frustration. Such a procedure, though not without considerable danger, is practical. The cobra's movement while striking is quite slow when compared with that of other snakes. For example, the cobra strikes with only one-sixth the speed of the rattlesnake. Hence an experienced and agile trainer who employs a fairly large pot is less prone to being bitten while intercepting the cobra's strike. The period of training might last for one-quarter or for one-half an hour, during which the cobra would strike repeatedly only to meet with injury and failure. At length, the cobra has learned its lesson and refrains from striking. With daily training, the snake will rise up with fangs bared and fans extended and follow the jar as the Brahman moves it about. It is important, Kaempfer notes, that during the course of training the cobra be neither tired excessively nor intimidated by the pot so as to flee rather than to maintain its position and cautiously imitate the movement of the pot. The Brahman must then at the critical point offer to the cobra no longer the pot but simply the fist of the trainer— exposed and unprotected. If the snake has been well and thoroughly trained, it will accord the bare fist the same cautious respect it has learned to give to the pot. Now Brahman and cobra have achieved the final phase of training as the snake follows the rhythmic movements of the fist which the trainer accompanies with a song. In the Tusculan Disputations (5.61) Cicero retells the famous tale of the sword of Damocles. The courtier Damocles, with the excessive zeal of a professional flatterer, claimed that no mortal was happier than King Dionysus of Syracuse. The king then allowed Damocles to sample this happiness with a couch of gold and a table lavishly set— except that a sword was suspended by a horse's hair above the head of Damocles, who promply begged to be allowed to remove himself. Cicero concludes the story by asking whether King Dionysus had made his point that nothing gives pleasure to a man threatened by death. Kaempfer was thinking of Damocles when he observed that snake charmers would not risk their lives hour after hour for a few small coins. Despite all the training of the cobras and despite the experience and agility of the charmer, snakes do occasionally strike successfully during a performance. A charmer bitten by his cobra faces at the best fear and pain, and at the worst death. Kaempfer reports that the Indian snake charmers minimized the risk to that of a "trivial" wound on the fist by removal of the cobra's venom before a performance. One method is to annoy a snake and then to throw at it a cloth or other soft and porous object which the snake is induced to bite several times. With each bite venom is injected through the fangs. A second method was to grasp the neck firmly and press it so that the cobra in its impulse to strike back releases its venom. This technique is termed "milking." Whatever venom lid

SNAKE CHARMERS OF INDIA

remains can be cleansed away by throwing a suitable item for the cobra to bite. The Indian handlers scheduled the emission of venom daily or on alternate days. It was believed and kept as a trade secret that one could prevent the cobra from replenishing its supply of venom by not allowing the snake to feed on fresh grass or any green vegetation. If this precaution was ignored, the snake could replace its venom within a few hours. It is interesting to note that in contemporary America carnival performers refer to snakes as "fixed" and "hot"; and that by a variety of techniques venomous snakes are regularly rendered harmless, "fixed." It was during the seventeenth century that the first systematic and scientifically acceptable studies of snake venom were undertaken. The Italian Francesco Redi argues that snake venoms had to be injected under the skin in order to create their usual effects and that venoms taken orally were ineffectual. Not all venom researchers of the period, however, realized the correctness of Redi's experiments and conclusions published in 1664.^ Foremost among the doubters was the Frenchman Moses Charas who ascribed the power of snake venom to the serpent's quest for vengeance. ^° As in so many areas of science, Kaempfer had read and studied the critical and current literature, to which he could, on the basis of first-hand observation, make his own contribution. As a kind of first appendix to his report on snake charmers, Kaempfer, while characteristically respectful of both "distinguished" investigators, offers a defense of Redi's position. We are told that Kaempfer had conducted a number of experiments whose results confirmed the work of Redi, but here Kaempfer relates only one case which he observed while at Batavia, the Dutch capital of the Indies, in 1689. One Sunday a young German enlisted soldier was keeping guard at the Watergate. Shortly before assembly he and Kaempfer had exchanged greetings but before the assembly was completed, the soldier met an unexpected death from a snake already dead itself. The young soldier, anxious to cover the scabbard of his sword with snake skin, made certain that he obtained while on guard duty a snake which a comrade had freshly killed nearby. Here in translation is Kaempfer's own account of the sequel:

Using his teeth the soldier took hold of the snake's head and with a knife cut the skin around the neck, as one does to eels. Scarcely had he begun to strip the loosened skin, when suddenly the soldier fell dying. Since the gates were closed for the assembly and there was no one to assist with a remedy, within a half hour he died of convulsions. I have no doubt that the skin on the tip of the man's tongue or on his lips had recently been broken and was then brought into contact with the viper's mouth still dripping with venom. The venom, absorbed by the capillary veins and carried to the seat of life, occasioned dire symptoms and death itself. Everyone in this country knows that snake venom, when drawn in by a slight and still bleeding wound, however tiny it may be, even if only a needle prick, can cause death, while if a person swallows even a large amoimt of venom he will suffer no harm at all. The people do not hesitate to assert the same about the venoms of other creatures (scorpions, spiders, wasps, etc.). Now what intention to harm or what idea of vengeance could there have been in our snake who was quite dead?

W. CARRUBBA

what we may term a second note or appendix to bis report on snake dancKaempfer discusses a rather gruesome side show which he witnessed. The performer is equipped with a long (in excess of six feet) thick and powerful snake which is variegated with light and dark patches, "sluggish and crude." With hands wrapped in protective bandages the performer violently breaks the jaws of the snake and proceeds to clean away with a cloth the salivous fluid about the upper teeth. Now with the dead snake draped over his shoulders and reaching down to the ground, the performer sticks out his tongue as far as possible and inserts it into the mouth of the snake and while withdrawing his tongue inflicts wounds with the points of the snake's teeth. These wounds or "bloody stripes" on the tongue are shown to the appreciative and amazed spectators. In this act the risk to the performer is calculated as minimal: the wounds are superficial and harmless since the snake is dangerous because of its great strength and not because of its venom. Kaempfer says that this type of snake belongs to the category which the Indians call constrictors, so named because "they are said by some sort of agility to seize, encircle and constrict quadrupeds to death, and then after suffocation to swallow them." Both laymen and herpetologists have speculated about how large a creature constrictors can actually manage to swallow. Here is one famous report from the engaging if not always reliable The Travels of Monsieur Tavemier Bernier (eighteenth century) "There are some serpents both in Asia and America of monstrous bigness, 25 foot long; as was that, the skin whereof is kept in Batavia, which had swallow'd a Maid of 18 years of age." During the latter In

ing,

German Academy of Science, Andreas Cleyer, a surgeon and botanist, had reported that constric-

half of the seventeenth century in a publication of the

and eating quadrupeds as large as and including oxen.^^ Having read Cleyer's account, Kaempfer attempted to verify it but was unable to find evidence nor could he locate trustworthy eyewitnesses. tors are capable of killing

"nonsense and myth generated by the peasants," just Madagascar and large enough to carry off elephants, the rukh appears in both Marco Polo and the Arabian Nights. During the fifth voyage of Sindbad the Sailor the merchants arrive at a large uninhabited island and break "an enormous white dome," which turns out to be a rukh egg. Seeking vengeance, mother and father rukhs pursue the ship and demolish it with a mass of rock torn from the mountain. But as Kaempfer observes, on Madagascar, the reputed home of the bird, not even its name is known. We should recall that Observation One of Book Three of the Amoenitates Exoticae reports on Kaempfer's futile attempt years earlier to track down the celebrated Borometz or Scythian Lamb, a plant growing from the earth but with the shape and characteristics of a real lamb — a tasty meal for wolves. Kaempfer searched the region of the Caspian Sea only to discover that no such zoophyte existed, although descriptions of it occur in Bauhin, Scaliger and elsewhere. ^^ Now thousands of miles more distant from home and less ready to give credence to travelers' tales, Kaempfer asserts indignantly: "People who believe such things are fools; people who concludes that

it is

as are the tales about the rukh. Said to be native to the Island of

demand

belief are scoundrels!"

Pennsylvania State University

SNAKE CHARMERS OF INDIA

Notes 1. Joseph Fayrer, The Thanatophidia of India (London, 1872). Dr. Fayrer was professor of surgery at the Medical College of Calcutta from 1859-1872 and president of the Medical Board of the India office from 1874-1895; in 1896 he was made

baronet. 2. See Karl Meier-Lemgo, Die Reisetagebûchei Engelbert Kaempfeis (Wiesbaden, 1968); and John Z. Bowers, "Engelbert Kaempfer: Physician, Explorer, Scholar, and Author," foumal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 21 (1966) 237-259. 3. See Kaempfer's monumental work. The History of Japan, trans. J. G. Scheuchzer, 2 vols. (London, 1727). 4. See John Z. Bowers and Robert W. Carrubba, "The Doctoral Thesis of Engelbert Kaempf er," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 25 (1970)

270-310. 5. The spelling varies; Kaempfer writes Cobras de Cabelo. Considerable material on the cobra had been published during the previous century by the physician and naturalist Garcia da Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas Medicinais

da India (Goa, 1563). 6. See above, note

page 5. the neck is achieved by raising and pushing forward the long anterior ribs as the elastic skin is stretched tight over this structure. 8. Pliny the Elder, Natural History 16.24.64. 9. Francesco Redi (1626-1698), Osservazioni intomo alle vipere (Florence, 1664), the first scientific treatise on snake poisons. First Physician to Grand Dukes Ferdinand n and Cosmo HI of Tuscany, Redi is also credited with the first significant attack on the theory of spontaneous generation. Kaempfer refers the reader to Vol. 2 of Opuscoli varj di F. Redi (Florence, 1684-1691). 10. Moses Charas (1618-1698), New Experiments on Vipers (London, 1670). The French edition, Nouvelles Expériences sur les vipères was published at Paris in 1669. 11. Andreas Cleyer, physician of the Dutch East India Company, published a large number of observations in the Ephemerides of the German Academia Caesarea Naturae Curiosorum. Probably his most famous publication is the Specimen medicinae Sinicae, sive opuscula medica admentem Sinensium (Frankfort, 1682), which contains very early reports on Chinese medicine with many illustrations. 12. The Scythian Lamb is the subject of the first observation of fascicle three of the Amoenitatum Exoticarum 505-508. 7.

The

laterial dilation of

Palingenius,

Bartas, de

Gamon,

Rivière et le système de Copernic James Dauphiné

Zodiacus vitae de Palingenius, le de Revolutionibus coelestium de Copernic et La Semaine de Du Bartas respectivement publiés en 1534, 1543 et 1578 n'entretenaient apparemment aucun rapport.^ Les exposés de Palingenius, les propositions de Copernic et la science encyclopédique de Du Bartas laissent entrevoir cependant des préoccupations commîmes, portant sur l'organisation et la conception du cosmos. Il est remarquable de constater que les questions d'ordre cosmologique, discutées dans ces ouvrages, ont été inlassablement reprises dans les multiples traités scientifiques écrits en latin qui ont fleuri de 1580 à 1650. Le latin était la langue de la science, de la culture autant que celle de la poésie. Cela explique les traductions latines de La Semaine préparées par Du Monin et G. de Lerm,^ permettant aux doctes de tous les pays de goûter les descriptions du "divin poète" gascon. Du Bartas avouait lui-même:

Bienheureuse Sepmaine alors que seulement

Tu portois mal-a couche un gaulois vestement Tu marchois mille pas après la Franciade. Mais si tost que du Lerm l'artifice t'orna D'un habit estranger, ta gloire talonna La Romaine Aeneide, et la Grecque Iliade.^

En même temps, on observe que pour mieux convaincre le grand public une polémique, en langue vemaculaire, s'engage entre les défenseurs du système de Ptolémee, comme De Rivière, et les tenants de la théorie héliocentrique comme T. Digges et de Gamon. ^ Il est révélateur que le dernier ait écrit La Semaine, ou Creation du monde contre celle du Sieur du Bartas et que. De Rivière, lui, ait traduit le Zodiacus vitae de Palingenius en prenant soin de réfuter ce qu'avançait C. de Gamon. ^ Le débat à l'origine limité à quelques cercles de lettrés et de savants parlant et correspondant en latin s'élargit singulièrement et prit une ampleur peu commune.

LE SYSTEME DE COPERNIC

Dans le Zodiacus vitae, mis à l'index en 1558, s'il est naturel de trouver l'emploi de poncifs cosmologiques ou la présence de concepts ptoléméens, il est étonnant de relever quelques intuitions originales qui confèrent à l'œuvre et un modernisme inattendus. du monde, "^ le sage a la possibilité de vaincre la Fortune,^ de triompher du sort injuste et de s'élever à la connaissance supé-

de Palingenius une richesse Jeté sur le "théâtre

rieure en parcourant "l'échelle" des êtres et de la nature.^ L'ouvrage divisé en douze livres, renvoyant aux douze signes zodiacaux, reflète par sa composi-

tion un attachement aux données traditionnelles de la cosmologie. Entre la disposition des constellations et l'ordre du livre se tissent des liens secrets que 1' Almageste n'aurait pas méprisés. Il ne fait aucun doute pour Palingenius que la terre, fixe, est le centre du monde autour duquel se disposent et tournent en silence^ les planètes et les cieux. Une illustration particulièrement réussie de cette vision du monde ouvre le IV ème livre — Cancro — lors-

l'auteur de

que

poète astronome se plaît à glorifier douze Maisons:

le Soleil, cet'œil

du monde qui fran-

chit les

perpetua mundum vertigine lustras parens rerum, coeli decus, et stellarum Princeps, aetemi fons luminis, undique cernens Omnia, puniceo dum Persida linquis ab ortu, Et pergens, tandem extremo tua lumina condis Hesperiae fluctu, Calpenque novissimus uris, Atque eadem rursus repetis vestigia semper; Per te cuncta patent, noctis quibus umbra colorem Abstulerat, tenebris tua non patientibus ora: Mundi oculus, qui transverso dum limite curris Per duodena means animantum idola, quaternis Dispensas annum spatiis, et temporas mutas. Et cum temporibus quicquid generatur in orbe.^° Sol, qui

Aime

La poésie est ici chant, hymne, mais aussi expression fervente d'une conception physique de l'univers qui dans son ensemble, et tout au cours de l'œuvre, apparaît conforme à la vision dominante développée par les hommes d'alors héritiers de Sacrobosco et de saint

Pourtant,

s'agit là

Thomas

d'Aquin.

que d'une apparence. La pensée du docte

ferrarais

nuancée. Il n'a ni le souci d'une rigueur scientifique, ni la volonté de tout soumettre aux leçons de la Bible. Son idéal scientifique, comme son élaboration poétique, ne provient pas d'un culte de l'harmonie. Palingenius est fasciné par le désordre au point d'ériger la "confusion" en principe littéraire. ^^ Aussi n'hésite-t-il pas à peindre un monde où l'indéfinissable a autant de crédit que le mesurable. Pour acquérir un savoir profond, une connaissance précise des mécanismes de la réalité, il faut certes suivre les traces de Ptolémée et des anciens, mais surtout entrer en contact avec les démons. ^^ Sans eux l'enest

treprise scientifique demeure superficielle, est vouée à l'échec. Sensible aux mille aspects de la matière, Palingenius en vient a se perdre dans la contemplation de ce qu'il décrit. Lucide pourtant, sa sensibilité le conduit irrésisti-

JAMES DAUPHINE

blement à imaginer une infinité spatiale. ^-^ Le Zodiacus vitae n'est pas un traité simple. Le système qu'il dévoile, bien que conforme aux données de Ptolémée, ne décrit pas un monde clos. La profusion de la vie, la puissance infinie du Créateur semblent annoncer un univers sans borne, illimité. La mise à l'index de ce livre n'a pas d'autre cause. Quant à G. Bruno, dans son De immenso, il saura porter jusqu'à leurs extrêmes conséquences les intuitions de son prédécesseur.

connu

les raisonnements et découvertes de Copernic qui médiéval et les dogmes religieux. Aussi n'a-t-il nullement temporisé. Copernic doit être accusé de légèreté et de fausseté. Prenant parti pour le sage d'Alexandrie, il critique l'astronome de Cracovie, en termes

Bartas, lui, a

menaçaient

l'héritage

non équivoques: Il

se trouve entre

Qui

nous des

esprits frénétiques

se perdet tousiours par des sentiers obliques,

de möstres forgeurs, ne peuvent point ramer Sur les paisibles flots d'une commune mer. Tels sont come ie croy, ces escrivains qui pgset Que ce ne sont les Cieux ou les astres qui dâsent A l'entour de la terre, ains que la terre fait: Et,

Chasque iour naturel un tour vrayment

Que nous semblons Tentent

parfait:

ceux-là qui, pour courir fortune

dos flotant de l'azuré Neptune,

Et nouveaux cuidët voir, quid ils quitet le port, La nef demeurer ferme, et reculer le bord. Ainsi tousiours du Ciel les médailles brillantes Seroient l'une de l'autre esgalement distantes. Ainsi le traict qu'en haut l'archer descocheroit,

plomb

Ains

sur nostre chef iamais ne tomberoit,

qu'une pierre qu'on iette vogante prouë en haut sur nostre teste, Qui ne chet dans la nef: ains loin de nostre dos, Où plus le fleuve court, retombe dans les flots. Ainsi tant d'oiselets qui prenent la volée Des Hespérides bords vers l'Aurore emperlee. Les Zephirs qui durant la plus douce saison Désirent aller voir des Eures la maison: Les boules foudroyez par la bouche meurtrière

feroit tout ainsi

D'un canon

affusté vers l'Inde matiniere,

Sembleroyent reculer, veu que le viste cours Que nostre rond séjour parferoit tous les iours, Devanceroit cent fois par sa vitesse isnelle

Des

boulets, vêts, oiseaux, l'effort, le souffle, l'aisle. de ces raisons ie combatrois en vain

Armé

Les subtiles raisons se ce docte Germain,

LE SYSTEME DE COPERNIC

Qui pour mieux de ces feux sauver les appargces, Assigne, industrieux, à la terre trois dances: Au centre de ce Tout le clair Soleil rengeant. Et Phoebe, l'Eau, la Terre en mesme rond logeant. Et pour ce qu'à ce coup le temps et la matière Ne me permettent point de me doimer carriere En un stade si long: ie prens pour fondement De mes futurs discours l'aetheré mouvement.^'*

On reste confondu devant la succession des arguments. D'ailleurs, la dérobade symptomatique. Du Bartas, toujours prêt à multiplier les digressions,

finale est

était en fait impuissant à démontrer les erreurs de Copernic. Ses commentateurs Goulart et Thévenin, ses imitateurs Du Chesne, Le Tasse ou ses

traducteurs n'ont pas procédé autrement: la théorie héliocentrique le

ou comme J.

ils

ont esquivé

problème posé par

Du Chesne se sont contentés d'adopter

point de vue traditionnel: quelqu'un, cependant, qui le Centre conteste Devoir bouger plustost que le grand rond celeste. Fermes tes fondemens Copemiques ie voy. Mais ie suy le chemin plus battu, quant à moy.^^ l'ay

D'un manière certaine. Du Bartas a senti le danger que représentait les hypothèses du de Revolutionibus, mais il n'est pas parvenu à le circonscrire. Sa réponse à Copernic est insuffisante, faible et pour le lecteur d'aujourd'hui, ridicule. C'est par sa production entière, de La Judith aux poèmes de La Seconde Semaine, qu'il a témoigné, avec enthousiasme, de la valeur qu'il attachait au plan cosmologique de Ptolémée et de l'église. La profusion de la nature à laquelle il était si réceptif ne l'a pas conduit, à l'image de Palingenius, à rêver d'un monde au-delà de celui des dix cieux qui ceinturent la terre.

C'est une attitude radicalement nouvelle que dévoile C. de Gamon dans sa Semaine, ou Creation du monde contre celle du Sieur du Bartas. Avec humour, vigueur, lourdeur parfois, de Gamon dénonce les faiblesses stylistiques de Du Bartas et raille ses conceptions scientifiques erronées ou périmées. Sans aucun ménagement pour l'auteur de La Semaine, ce "nouvel Orphée," ce divin poète comme on le glorifiait alors, il malmenait ses théories, condamnait "Ptolémée enflé d'un savoir si extresme" et entreprenait une "Apologie pour Copernicus, excellent astronome. "^*^ Il reprochait à Du Bartes de "trop foiiler sous les pieds de l'Envie, / L' incomparable honneur de ce docte Germain" qui "mist pour veritable / Le journal mouvement de la Terre habitable."^'' De Gamon est l'un des premiers à célébrer en Copernic les qualités de l'astronome. A la fin du XVI ème siècle, nombreux étaient les penseurs qui ne le qualifiaient que de mathématicien. Copernic astronome dérangeait. La Semaine de C. de Gamon au même titre que la Prognostication de T. Digges composée en 1605, est un plaidoyer en faveur des thèses modernistes du docte Germain, ^^ Copernic.

JAMES DAUPHINE

L'idée d'un univers centré sur le soleil n'effraie plus.

Au contraire,

elle séduit

Le temps des "voyages" de Campanella à Kircher, de Godwin

les écrivains et les penseurs, les lettrés et les rêveurs.

les empires de la Lune et du Soleil Cyrano de Bergerac, ^^ pouvait commencer. Quand en 1619. A. De Rivière donne Le Zodiac poétique, ou

dans à

la Philosophie de la vie humaine traduit de Palingenius, "Philosophe aussi grand que poëte duquel / (Il a) sucé maintes fleurs pour composer ce miel,"^° le texte latin du prestigieux ferrarais a servi un peu abusivement d'excellent terrain pour combattre Copernic et ses disciples. Pour mieux convaincre ses lecteurs De Rivière a recours au poème de Palingenius qu'il déforme ou enrichit à son gré. Habilement, il s'est efforcé de séparer, autant que faire se peut, Copernic de Galilée ou de Tycho Brahé "le plus exact Mathématicien de notre tems."^^ Le premier "qui fait croupir les cieux et la terre volter"^^ a tort, tandis que les deux autres, selon lui, plus ptoléméens ont raison. Ce Zodiac pœtique est la caricature d'un débat où passionné les erreurs scientifiques s'accumulent, les inexactitudes pullulent, les préjugés triomphent. A. De Rivière qui connaît mal les travaux de Galilée a beau jeu de le "récupérer" et d'isoler Copernic. Le texte latin de Palingenius n'a été ni un obstacle, ni un carcan. Il a servi de support à un autre discours. A. De Rivière a greffé sur les données tradi-

du célèbre poème cosmologique ses remarques et ses pensées. Du au français, le texte initial s'est appauvri parce que les surcharges et les modifications effectuées par De Rivière sont souvent discutables et maladroites. A n'importe quel prix l'auteur voulait maintenir l'image d'un monde clos. Ce qui comptait à ses yeux, c'était de terrasser C. de Gamon "au cerveau mal timbré, "^^ et à travers lui, Copernic. Le Zodiacus vitae où soufflait un esprit de liberté était devenu sous la plume d'A. De Rivière un poème partisan, tionnelles latin

plat et conformiste.

A l'aube du XVIIème siècle, le Zodiacus vitae, classique de la littérature cosmologique, a bénéficié de la vogue exceptionnelle de La Semaine de Du Bartas. Ses deux œuvres, en dépit de leurs différences se répondent; entre elles, et ce n'est pas un hasard, il y a eu le choc du de Revolutionibus. Aussi face au développement de l'esprit nouveau, était-il compréhensible qu'A. De Rivière avec une bonne foi réelle ait éprouvé le besoin de traduire le Zodiacus vitae et de s'en servir. Sans la querelle autour de La Semaine, Le Zodiaque pœtique De

Rivière eût été tout autre. à l'italien, à l'allemand, à l'anglais, à l'espagnol ou au français, le cheminement des traducteurs n'est pas facile. Rarement ces derniers ont su

d'A.

Du latin

unir finesse, justesse et objectivité comme J. Silvester.^'* Plus généralement la traduction est un prétexte à la création personnelle. Dans Le Zodiaque pœtique d'A. De Rivière, on perçoit aussi un chant du cygne: une conception de l'univers s'éteint, une autre s'affirme. Le règne de Copernic s'annonce.... Kepler et Newton n'auront pas peur des espaces infinis.

Faculté des Lettres et Sciences

Humaines de Nice

LE SYSTEME DE COPERNIC

Notes Pietro Angelo Manzolli dit Palingenius: Zodiacus vitae (Venetiis, B. Vitalis, [1534 ?]), in -8°, 205 ff.; Nicolas Copernic: de Revolutìonibus OTbium coelestium libi. VI ... (Norimbergae, apud J. Petreium, 1543), in fol. VI-196 ff; Du Bartas (Guillaume Salluste, sieur): Œuvres pœtiques (Genève, J. Chouët, 1608), in -8°, 705 p.; Foster Watson: The Zodiacus vitae of Maicellus Palingenius Stellatus: an old school book (London, P. Wellby, 1908), 92 p.; Luzius Keller: Palingenius, Ronsaid, Du Bartas, trois études sur la poésie cosmologique de la Renaissance (Lausanne, F. Berne, 1974), 141 p. 2. Jean-Edouard Du Monin: Beresithias, sive Mundi creatio (Paris, J. Parent, 1579), in-8*' (une autre édition paraît la même année chez H. Le Bouc, Paris); Guillelmi Sallustii Bartasii Hebdomas, opus Gallicum a Gabriele Lermeo Volca, Latinitate donatum, (Parisiis, apud M. Gadouleau, 1583), in-12, pièces liminaires, 102 p. Signalons aussi la traduction de l'èrudit Hadriani Dammanis: [...] qui de mundi creatione libri septem ... (Edinburgi, excud. R. Waldegrave, 1600), in-8°, pièces 1.

s.d.

312

liminaires,

Gabriel de Lerm, op. cit., p. a 9 verso. Sonnet du Sieur du Bartas, les tercets. 4. Christophe de Gamon: La Semaine, ou Creation du monde contre celle du Sieur Du Bartas (Genève, G. Petit, 1599), 258 p.; A Prognostication everlasting of right and good effect (by Leonard Digges) [...] lately corrected and augmented by Thomas Digges, his sorme (London, F. Kyngstone, 1605); Alexandre De Riviere: Le Zodiac poétique, ou la Philosophie de la vie humaine (Paris, J. Libert, 1609), 3.

551 5. 6. 7.

A. De Rivière, op. cit., livres XI et Xn, p. 389, 417, 454, 533, 543. Palingenius, op. cit., Virgo, vers 647-49. Ibid., Leo, vers 890-92 et Scorpius, vers 526-28 il précise cependant que

l'homme

soumis au destin. Scorpius, vers 35-52.

est

8. Ibid.,

Aquarius, vers 375-96. Cancro, vers 1-13. 11. Ibid., Aries, vers 62-69. 12. Ibid., Pisces, vers 335-38 et 341-48. 13. Ibid., Pisces, vers 20-69.

9. Ibid.,

10. Ibid.,

14.

Du Bartas

(Guillaume Salluste,

sieur): op. cit..

La Première Semaine, IVème

Jour, pp. 91-92, vers 125-64. 15.

Du Chesne: Le Grand miroir du monde (Lyon, B. Honorât, 1587), IVème livre, pp. 116-17. C. de Gamon, op. cit., IVème Jour, pp. 114-15. C. de Gamon, op. cit., IVème Jour p. 115. Thomas Digges, op. cit., pp. 1 recto-M 2 verso. J. Dauphiné: "L'argument Joseph

XVI-206 16.

17. 18.

Copernic dans la querelle de La Semaine de Du Bartas," Revue des Professeurs de Lettres (septembre 1979) no. 12, pp. 6-14. 19. Tommaso Campanella: Civitas solis poetica, idea reipublicae philosophicae, (...) (Ultrajecti, 1643); Francis Godwin: The Man in the moone, or a Discourse of a voyage thither, by Domingo Consoles, (...) (London, J. Kirton, 1638); le Père Athanasius Kircher: Itinerarium exstaticum (...) (Romae, typis V. Mascardi, 1656); Cyrano de Bergerac: Histoire comique [. .] contenant les états et empires de la Lune (Paris, C. de Sercy, 1657). .

JAMES DAUPHINE 20. A.

Rivière, op. cit., p. 544.

21. Ibid., p. 542.

22. Ibid., p. 543. 23. Ibid., p. 489. 24. J. Dauphiné, "L'Argument scientifique et l'argument religieux dans

La CréaLe Tasse, Murtola", XVI Convegno intemazionale di Montepulciano, 21-28 luglio 1979, (publié en 1982 chez L. S. Olsckki, Florence) et G. De S. Du Bartas poète scientifique, (Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1983) pp. 100-112 et 115-124. tion

du Monde

Bartas,

Der Einfluß der italienischen Humanisten auf die zeitgenössischen Darstellungen Kaiser

Maximilians

Stephan Fussel

Germania gloriosa, salve!^ Mit diesen begeisterten Worten preist Humanist im Jahre 1495 Deutschland, hebt die

ein italienischei

dortige Entwicklung der Buchdruckerkunst^ hervor, lobt die Feld-

und Bodenschätze des Landes und zeichnet ein Bild von den blonden, blauäugigen und kampfesmutigen Bewohnern. Dieses Endecasyllabum ad Germaniam stammt von Philippus Beroaldus il vecchio (1453-1505), einem angesehenen Lehrer für Rhetorik und Poetik in Bologna, einem engagierten Lehrer und Kommentator.^ Aus allen Teilen Europas scharte er Scholaren um sich und unterhielt mit ihnen auch nach Beendigung ihrer Studien oft recht regen Briefkontakt. Einem seiner deutschen Schüler, dem Markgrafen Jakob von Baden, dem späteren Erzbischof von Trier, widmete er sein Opusculum De felicitate und gab ihm das Endecasyllabum bei. Die Widmung ist der hohen Stellung des Empfängers angemessen, er nennt ihn darin seinen begabtesten Studenten, columen scholasticonim, und hebt vor allem auch früchte

dessen nahe Verwandtschaft zu Kaiser Maximilian hervor. Und Beroaldus ist nicht der einzige Italiener, der in dieser Zeit so voll Lob über Deutschland imd vor allem über den Kaiser dachte— trotz des weitverbreiteten kulturellen Überlegenheitsgefühls vieler italienischer Humanisten und ihres bekannten "Barbaren- Verdikts." Zwar war das Bild des draufgängerischen Landsknechtes, des trunksüchtigen, gefräßigen und grausamen Deutschen {fuTOT teutonicus], des geistigen Barbaren mit seiner lächerlichen Sprache, in der Volksmeinung sehr verbreitet, so daß Peter Amelung in seiner Dissertation Das Bild des Deutschen in der Literatur der italienischen Renaissance zu dem Ergebnis kam, daß "das italienische Deutschenbild der Renaissance fast keine positiven Züge"* hatte. Die andauernden kriegerischen Auseinandersetzungen in Oberitalien festigten weitgehend diese Vorurteile, und so berichtet Albrecht Dürer am 8. September 1506 aus Venedig seinem Freund Willibald Pirckheimer "... unsers künix spott man ser."^ Gern hätte Dürer

Maximilian auf dem geplanten Romzug zur Kaiserkrönung begleitet, durch umfangreiche Rüstungen der Venezianer, Franzosen und des Papstes wurde dem "künftigen Kaiser" aber der Eintritt nach Italien und damit der Romzug ein weiterers

Mal verwehrt.^

STEPHAN FUSSEL

Es ist jedoch wichtig festzuhalten, daß sich in den Reihen der italienischen Historiographen und Humanisten, deren Aussagen sicher unterschiedlich zu gewichten sind, zahlreiche bedeutende wohlmeinende Stimmen über den nördlichen Nachbarn und seinen König finden lassen— Beroaldus steht nicht allein! Diese positive Zeichnung Maximilians durch italienische Humanisten und die damit verbundene Verbreitung von des Humanismus und neulateinischer Dichtung um 1500 jenseits der Alpen wurde bislang in der Literatur nur angedeutet, etwa bei Joachimsen'' oder Ellinger® und danach bei Schlögl und Halper.^ Hier soll nun ein erster Überblick über besondere Exponenten italienischer Panegyrik Kaiser Maximilians gegeben und versucht werden, die Bandbreite der verwendeten literarischen Gattungen und ihrer Rezeption in Deutschland sowie ihren Einfluß bei den Zeitgenossen zu zeigen. ^° Die Histonogiaphen zeichnen in der Regel ein realistisches Bild von Kaiser Maximilian, in kritischer Distanz zu ihrem möglichen Kriegsgegner. Waas urteilt: "The politicians and political writers therefore looked at Maximilian with realistic eyes. They found him very much a mortal man, a man with good qualities, but weak and wavering, and usually involved in troubles of a very earthly sort."^^ Je nach Art der politischen Verstrickungen werten die Florentiner, Mailänder oder Venezianer die Persönlichkeit Maximilians. Stets werden seine Geldschwierigkeiten und sein Wankelmut angeprangert, sein Gerechtigkeitssinn, seine Güte imd auch sein Feldhermtalent auf der anderen Seite betont. Bekannt ist der Ausspruch Machiavellis: "se le frondi degli alberi d'Italia gli fusserò divinati ducati,

non

bastavno,"^^ die Blätter der nicht ausreichen. Noch stärker spotteten die Venezianer, sie nannten ihn: Massimiliano pocchi danarì.^^ Gerade Machiavelli lobt aber auch seine Talente als Heerführer und seine Gerechtigkeit: "... e perfetto capitano ... con giustizia grande."^'* Seine Liebe zu Kunst und Wissenschaft wird besonders von dem Geschichtsschreiber Paulus Jovius (1483-1552) in seinen Histoiiaium sui tempons libii hervorgehoben^^ und auch in einem panegyrischen Gedicht gepriesen. ^^ Diese Vorliebe machte Maximilian gerade zum Freund und Förderer der Humanisten, denn wie in Rom Leo X so war der Kaiser der großbe Mäcen der Dichter und Künstler nördlich der Alpen. Dies war für die aus deutschen Landen stammenden Humanisten, wie Celtis, Bebel, Locher, Hütten usw. nicht verwunderlich und was Vergil über das Zeitalter Augustus' sagte "iam regnat Apollo" [Ecl. 4, 10), glaubten sie unter Maximilian in Deutschland verwirklicht zu sehen. Aber auch italienische neulateinische Dichter und Rhetoren sangen ihr Loblied auf Maximilian; sie waren auf Gesandtschaftsreisen oder für einige Jahre als Sekretäre, Bibliothekare, Kapläne, Hofdichter oder Histriographen am Kaiserhof tätig. Meist wird von ihnen nur Enean Silvio Piccolomini als "Apostel" des Humanismus in Deutschland gekannt und erwähnt. Doch gerade unter Kaiser Maximilian nahm die Zahl der italienischen Gelehrten und Poeten, besonders an der Universität Wien und in den gelehrten Sodalitäten stark zu.^^ Zuerst wären hier drei Gesandte und Rhetoren zu nennen: Hermolaus Barbarus, Jason Maynus und Pandolfus Collenutius. Hermolaus Barbarus^^ (1453-1493), Dr. in utroque jure et in artibus, hielt 1486 als venezianischer Gesandter eine Lobrede auf Friedrich und den gegli

Bäume Italiens zu Dukaten verwandelt, würden ihm

DER EINFLUß DER ITALIENISCHEN HUMANISTEN

rade erwählten "römischen König" Maximilian in Brügge. In seiner formvollendeten Rede hob er alle Tugenden des neugewählten Königs sowie seine künftigen Taten hervor und pries, der Tradition des Herrscherlobs folgend/^ seine reichen Feldherrentalente wie auch seine Gaben in Friedenszeiten; sapientia, tempeiantia, placabilitas, innocentia, religio und auch fmgalitas. Diese Rede wurde zu einem bedeutendem lokalen Ereignis, sie wurde noch im gleichen Jahr in den Niederlanden gedruckt^o und brachte Barbarus seinen guten Ruf bei Erasmus und anderen Gelehrten jenseits der Alpen bei. Sein Landsmann Quintus Aemilianus Cimbriacus rühmt diese Oiatio giatulatona in seinen Encomiastica auf Friedrich und Maximilian. ^^ Zwei weitere panegyrische Lobreden wurden aus Anlaß der Hochzeit Maximilians mit seiner zweiten Gemahlin, Bianca Maria Sforza, von italienischen Gesandten gehalten. Im März 1494 sprachen der mailändische Gesandte, Jason Maynus,^^ und der Abgesandte des Herzogs Ercole von Ferrarra, Pandolphus Collenutius,^^ an der Festtafel in Irmsbruck. Im Namen ihrer Herren, wie des ganzen Erdkreises, beglückwünschten sie das Paar, Maynus rühmt dabei die Schönheit, Anmut und Reinheit von Bianca, in der Hauptsache aber feiert er Maximilian als den künftigen Türkenbezwinger, er lobt dessen Abstammung, seine Sprachkenntnisse und zeigt in einem Exkurs über seinen Namen, daß er den beiden bedeutenden Römern Maximus und Aemilianus (gemeint sind Quintus Fabius Maximus, der Cunctator, und Publius Cornelius Aemilianus Scipio, der Zerstörer Karthagos) gleichkomme, ja die Bedeutung beider in sich vereine und überträfe. Die Rettung der Christenheit sei bei ihm in sicheren Händen und die Unterstützung seines Herrn, Ludovico Sforza, sei ihm gewiß. Auch die direkten politischen Auswirkungen der Eheschließung werden genannt: Herzog Ludovico [leium Italicarum aibitei] werde die Reichsrechte in Italien schützen, während Maximilian gegen die Türken ziehe. Der Kreuzugslegat Kardinal Peraudi nahm die Rede begeistert auf und ließ sie als Flugblatt drucken. ^"^ CoUenutius lobt die Tugenden Maximilians, die er alle aufzuzählen gar nicht in der Lage sei (Unsagbar keitstopik), hebt dessen eigene schriftstellerische und wissenschaftliche Beschäftigung hervor und rühmt in zahkeichen Vergleichen mit antiken Herrschern dessen iustitia, libeialitas, foititudo und dementia. Er preist die Zeit und die Christenheit glücklich, die einen solchen Regenten besitzt.

Durch

die Hochzeit

nahm die Zahl der am Hofe beschäfvom Kammerdiener bis zum Beichtvater hatte Bian-

mit Bianca Maria

tigten Italiener stark zu,

ca in ihrem Hofstaat in der Mehrzahl Landsleute um sich,^^ unter denen sich auch Gelehrte und Schriftsteller befanden, wie z. B. ihr Sekretär, der Magister Franciscus Bonomus, der kleinere Dichtungen schrieb und später Mitglied der gelehrten Donaugesellschaft wurde. Zu den Poeten, die Maximilian ihre Werke widmeten oder seine Taten in Versen und Epigrammen besangen, gehörte auch der schon kurz erwähnte Helius Quinctus Aemilianus Cimbriacus (Giovani Stefano Emiliano) aus Vicenza.^'^ Seine Encomiastica auf Friedrich und Maximilian wurden 1504 von Johann Camers in Venedig bei Aldus herausgebracht^'' imd 1512 in Straßburg bereits wieder nachgedruckt.^® In epischer Form mit einer Fülle von

STEPHAN FUSSEL

Verweisen auf die klassische Literatur schildert er darin den Lebensabend Friedrich lU und die Wahl Maximilians durch das Kurfürstenkollegium (I + ü), seine Gefangennahme in Brügge (lU), die Reue der Brügger Bürger (IV) endlich seine Rückkehr zum Vater (V) und schließt mit der Apostrophe: Maximiliane,

tili

decus et veiissima secli Gloiia.^^

Cimbriacus wurde für seine Dichtungen zweimal zum Dichter gekrönt, 1469 von Friedrich in Pordenone und 1489 von Maximilian in Linz,-^° Cuspinian rühmt dessen Dichtkimst in seinen "Caesaies. "^^ Ein Schüler des Cimbraicus war C. Paulus Amaltheus;^^ um 1460 in Pordenone geboren, begrüßte er 1489 Friedrich HI in seiner Vaterstadt mit einem C armen i-^^

Maxime

rex salve, salve faustissime princeps,

115

Teutonicum regimen et Latiale caput Cui deus antiqui promisit Nestoris annos Ut regnet tecum Natus et ipse senex.

und wurde

dafür

ger in Linz,

zum Dichter gekrönt.

Er folgte mit in das kaiserliche HoflaTurnier Maximilians besang: Caimen de ludo Traiano Faustiss. Regis. Maximiliani."^^ Friedrich lU berief ihn als Poeten und Orator an die Universität Wien, wo er sich jedoch nur bis September 1493, kurz nach dem Tode Friedrichs halten konnte. Bis 1495 blieb er aber immatrikuliert und hielt Privat Vorlesungen.-^^ Mit den Artistenkollegen war es zu verschiedenen Streitpunkten gekommen, u.a. beschwerte sich Amaltheus 1493 bei der Fakultät, das es unmöglich, grausam und unanständig wäre, wenn er zwei Vorlesungen am gleichen Tage halten müßte ("... Quod esset impossibile, crudele et inhonestum, si deberet facere duas lectiones in die.").-^^ Nach seiner Entlassung schrieb er ein Epicedion auf seinen Förderer Friedrich, das er an Maximilian richtete und ihn zugleich verherrlichte.'^'' Die Lektur "in arte humanitatis" erhielt 1494 nach Amaltheus dessen Landsmann Hieronymus Baibus aus Venedig.^® Baibus, um 1465 geboren, studierte erst in Rom bei Pomponius Laetus, später in Padua Jura. Nach einem Aufenthalt in Paris wurde er 1493 von Maximilian als erster Vertreter des römischen Rechts an die Universität Wien gerufen, mit der doppelten Aufgabe zugleich an der Artistenfakultät zu lesen. Unmittelbar nach seiner Ankunft in Wien schrieb er ein Epithaphium auf Friedrich und zwei Carmina für Maximilian, in denen er die künftige Größe des Hauses Habsburg sowie dessen Rolle als Beherrscher der gesamten christlichen Welt schilderte :'^^ er ein

felix; spolia ampia trophaeis, Parta novis, domitoque ferens ex orbe triumphos; Semper cincta geras fiorenti tempora lauro.

Vive diu Caesar

gleichen Jahr schuf er sich allerdings mit einem Band Epigramme, die er zahlreichen Kaiserlichen Räten und Dichterkollegen zueignete, schwerwiegende Konflikte in der Artistenfakultät, da die Sammlung viele lockere Liebesgedichte und frivole Anspielungen enthielt. '*° Mit Celtis, Cuspinian

DER EINFLUß DER ITAUENISCHEN HUMANISTEN

Balous aber befreundet und war ein führendes Mitglied der Sodalitas Danubiana.

U.a. blieb

Ein weiteres italienisches Mitglied dieser Sodalitas war Petrus Bonomus/^ ein Bruder des vorgenannten Rates von Bianca Maria, Franciscus Bonomus. Petrus (1458-1546) war Kaiserlicher Rat und Kanzler Maximilians und auch

eng mit Celtis, Peutinger, Johann von Dalberg und anderen befreundet. Er schrieb ein Epithalamion zur Hochzeit von Maria Bianca und Maximilian, sowie Lyrisches über den Alltag und das Hofgeschehen'^^ Interessant ist seine

Romae ad Divum Maximilianum Caesarem'"*-^ in der er zur Intervention in Italien gegen Karl Vin aufruft und die künftige Größe des Hauses "Querela urbis

Habsburg

preist.

Alle diese Gedichte der letztgenannten Cimbriacus, Amaltheus, Baibus und Bonomus sind in einer Handschrift überliefert, die dem einflußreichen kaiserlichen Rat und Mäcen der Humanisten an der Wiener Universität, Johannes Fuchsmagen, gewidmet ist. Diese Handschrift aus dem Besitz Fuchsmagens befindet sich in der ÜB Innsbruck (Cod. 644) und wurde zum Teil von Zingerle 1880 ediert.'^'* Fuchsmagen (t 1510) war selbst Magister artium und Dr. juris, geheimer Rat bei Friedrich ÜI und Maximilian und vor allem für eine humanistische Universitätsreform in Wien zuständig. Er förderte vielseitig die Verbreitung der humanistischen Studien in Wien und wurde von den Humanisten als Mäzen gefeiert. So rühmte Cuspinian 1492 den von einer Gesandtenreise heimkehrenden Fuchsmagen und im Namen seiner Freunden, Cimbriacus, Amaltheus, Baibus und Celtis, sich auch weiterhin als Beschützer der Musen zu erweisen. '^^ An deutschen Poeten sind in dem Sammelband Celtis, Brant, Reuchlin und andere vertreten, die "Pioniere der neulateinsischen Poesie" aus Italien, wie EUinger^^ sie nennt, sind jedoch in der Mehrzahl. Ca. 20 Jahre später, 1518, widmete der schon mehrfach genannte Petrus Bonomus, nun Bischof von Triest, seinem ehemaligen KoUegen, dem kaiserlichen Rat, Blasius Hölzel, einen ähnHchen Sammelband mit Gedichten, die zumeist 1502 in Linz entstanden waren [Complurium eniditoTum vatum carmina. Augusta Vindelicorum 1518).*'' Hier nun sind die deutschen Beiträger in der Mehrheit, namentlich Celtis mit mehreren Gedichten, Cuspinian, Johannes Stabius, Heinrich Bebel u.a. Zwei neue Namen von italienischen Poeten tauchen auf, deren Beiträge erst kurz vor Erscheinen geschrieben wurden Richardus Sbrulius und Riccardus Bartholinus. Sbrulius, geboren um 1480 in Friaul, war ab 1507 in Wittenberg Hofdichter bei Friedrich dem Weisen, dem er wie auch Maximilian, Karl V. und Erasmus Gelegenheitsdichtungen zueignete. U.a. überbrachte er 1507 auf dem Konstanzer Reichstage Maximilian den Willkommensgruß.'** Seine zahlreichen epischen imd lyrischen Versuche sowie seine Übersetzungstäligkeit für den Kaiser (Theuerdark-Magranimus) wenig erforscht sind, sein Einfluß an der Hohen Schule in Wittenberg hatte jedoch großen Anteil an der Ausbreitung der neulateinischen Poesie noch dort. Riccardus Bartholinus,'*^ ca 1475-1529, Domherr in seiner Vaterstadt Perugia und als Kaplan Kardinal Langs 1513-19 am deutschen Kaiser hof, hatte dem Sammelband eine mit großer lyrischer Gewandtheit verfaßte Ode. (Fol. Bi v-Bii v) im Versus Asclepiadeus beigegeben. Bartolini kann in vielen Fällen als ein Musterbeispiel für die imitatio der italienischen neulateinischen Dicher

STEPHAN FUSSEL

Ahmte er hier Horaz nach, schrieb er auch einen heroischen Brief in Ovid-Nachfolge, femer ein Hodoeporicon und schließlich ein Epos Austiias zum Ruhme Kaiser Maximilians und seines Hauses. Sein Werk ist fast ausschließlich zur Verherrlichimg von Kaiser Maximilian ausgerichtet, im erheblich stärkeren Maße als bei den vorgenannten Dichtem. In seinem Epos Austhas schildert er in zwölf Büchern den siegreichen Kaiser Maximilian im Bayerischen Erbfolgekrieg 1503/4, der für dessen Stellung im Reich und gegenüber der Opposition der innenpolitisch von entscheidender Bedeutung wurde. Maximilian wird darin die Göttin Diana zur Seite gestellt, die ihn durch gelten.

alle Gefahren und Zweikämpfe sicher herausführt. Weitgehende Exkurse zeigen Maximilian als künftigen Türkenbezwinger— die Eikleidung in antike Terminologie hindert Bartolini nicht, Maximilian auch als frommen Herrn der Christenheit anzusprechen— schildern die Größe und Geschichte des Hauses Habsburg, beteiligen sich auch an den genealogischen Spekulationen des Kaisers und beschreiben, wie es viele Humanisten der Zeit anstrebten, die deutschen Lande. Die Epos verdient neben die anderen großen Vorhaben, die der Kaiser zu seinem "Gedächtnis" schaffen ließ, wie den Triumphbogen, die Ehrenpforte oder zug "Theuerdank" und "Weißkunig" eingereiht zu werden. Aber auch als offizieller Hofhistoriograph tritt Bartolini in Erscheinung, er schildert als einziger den vollständigen Verlauf des Augsburger Reichstages von 1518 und den "Wiener Kongreß" 1515 in seinem Hodoeporicon, parallel zum Diarium Cuspinians. Bartolini fand bei Maximilian und seinen Zeitgenossen hohe Anerkennung, der Kaiser krönte ihn 1517 in Antwerpen zum Dichter und ließ Jakob Spiegel einen Kommentar zu der Austrias erstellen, der 1531 in Straßburg erschien; für seine Kollegen und Freunde galt er als der Marone Perugino. ^° Abschließend sei noch kurz auf einige italienische Panegyriker Maximilians hingewiesen, die das Bild vom Einfluß der Italiener auf die humanistischen Lobpreisungen des Kaisers vervollständigen können, auf Ludovico Ticiano, loannes Antonius Modestus, Michael Tarchaniota Marullus und Pico della Mirandola. Ludovico schrieb einen Panegyricus "vom Lobe des Kaisers und der Deutschen," in dem er ihn als König der Könige preist, seinen Kriegsruhm wie seine Tüchtigkeit im Frieden hervorhebt, seine Gerechtigkeit, Milde und Frömmigkeit lobt und über die dauernde Geldknappheit Maximilians hinwegtröstet mit dem Hinweis, daß auch Cyrus und Alexander arm gewesen

seien. ^^

loannes Antonius Modestus aus Umbrien schrieb ein Carmen ad invictiseiner Dedikationsepistel von Beatus Rhenanus erschien. Rhenanus lobt darin das Gedicht des Modestus und

simum Maximilianum,^^ daß 1510 mit

schließt selbst die Hoffnung an, daß Maximilian nach siegreichen in Italien

Kämpfen

mm gegen die Hauptfeinde der Christenheit, die Türken, aufbrechen

kann. Rhenanus schließt: "Vivat igitur ac vincat, vivat inquam Imperator Caesar Maximilianus P. F. Aug., quo sospite omnibus est bene, ut de Marullus cecinit."

Rhenanus übernimmt damit einen Vers, den

bereits ein anderer

Epigramm

lü, 3

verwandt hatte. ^"^

huma-

seinem Marullus (1450-1500) wurde schon von

nistischer Lobredner der Kaisers, Michael Tarchaniota Marullus, in

DER EINFLUß DER ITAUENISCHEN HUMANISTEN

seinen Zeitgenossen, obwohl griechischer Abstammung, zu den italienischen und lebte erst in Neapel, dann in Florenz. In seinen vier Büchern Epigramme wandte er sich an verschiedene Gönner, sechsmal in kurzen Gedichten an Kaiser Maximilian. ^^ Zeigt schon das Rhenanus— Zitat die Verbreitung der Verse des MaruUus an, so weisen zwei weitere Epigramme, I, 10 Ad Maximilianum Caesaiem und n, 5 De Maximiliano Caesaie eine interessante Rezeptionsgeschichte auf. Der Nürnberger Arzt und Polyhistor Hartmann Schedel, der Autor der berühmten Weltchronik von 1493, schrieb sie sich mit eigener Hand in sein Exemplar der lateinischen Weltchronik, wie jüngst nachgewiesen werden konnte^^ (Fol. 309r; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Inc. ca. 2918). Ein eigenes Kapitel wäre eine Analyse der zahkeichen Widmungsvorreden an Maximilian, wie sie auch von italienischen Humanisten häufig zu finden sind. Auf nur einen bekannten Exponenten sei an dieser Stelle verwiesen: Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola^^ widmete 1500 sein Liber de imaginatione Kaiser Maximilian und rühmt darin in der bekaimter Manier seine Erfahrenheit im Krieg und seine Weisheit im Frieden, seine Sprachkenntnisse und seine Renaissancedichter^'^ gerechnet

Frömmigkeit. Die Reihe der italienischen Renaissancedichter, die ein Loblied auf Kaiser Maximilian sangen imd damit gleichzeitig zur Verbreitung der neulateinischen Lyrik und Epik wie auch des Humanismus in Europa beitrugen, ließe sich noch mühelos erweitem; hier konnte nur ein erster Überblick gegeben werden. Der legendary chaiactei Kaiser Maximilians I., sein Mäzenatentum und seine Förderung der Künste und Wissenschaften, die so viele deutsche Poeten zu enthusiastischen Äußerungen veranlaßte, erfaßte auch die italienischen Humanisten, über alle kulturellen Verdikte hinweg. Göttingen

Anmerkungen 1. Endecasyllabum ad Geimamam, in Philippi Beioaldi de felicitate opusculum (Bononia, 1495). Zitiert nach der Ausgabe Bononia 1502. Fol. Diu v.Diiii r. Ex: ÜB Göttingen: 8° S va IV, 2275. 2. Vgl. Peter Amelimg, Das Bild des Deutschen in dei Literatur der italienischen Renaissance, 1400-1559 (München, 1964) S. 80, bes. Anm. 23. 3. Vgl. zur Person: Konrad Krautter, Philologische Methode und humanistische Existenz. Filippo Beroaldo und sein Kommentar zum Goldenen Esel des Apuleius (München, 1971) S. 9-36, hier S. 18. — Georg Ellinger, Italien und der deutsche Humanismus in der neulateirüschen Literatur = Geschichte der neulateinischen Literatur Deutschlands im sechzehnten Jahrhundert Bd. 1) (Berlin und Leipzig, 1929) S. 107 ff. et passim. Das Endecasyllabum rechnete Ellinger aber dem Filippo Beroaldo jun. zu, vgl. S. 339f. 4. Amelung, Bild, S. 150-75, hier S. 175. (

STEPHAN FUSSEL Willibald PiTckheiiaeis Briefwechsel, hrsg. v. Emil Reicke Bd.

1940) 6.

416 Z.

(München,

6f.

Zum historischen Hintergnmd vgl. Hermann Wiesflecker, Kaisei Maximilian

S. 338-45, hier S. 339. Joachimsen, Geschichtsauffassung und Geschichtsschieibung in Deutschland unter dem Einfluß des Humanismus (Leipzig, 1910) deutet in seinen Studien mehrfach Beziehungen zwischen itaUenischen vmd deutschen Humanisten an, etwa bei den Weltchroniken, S. 80-104, oder bei der Ausarbeitung der Kaiserbücher etc., würdigt aber die Rolle der Italiener nie zusammenfassend, kommt sogar z.B. in bezug auf Bartholinus zu einer völlig verkürzten und einseitigen Aussage

Bd. 7.

(S.

(München, 1977)

Paul

197).

Neulatein, hier Kap. "Deutschland in der neulateinischen Lyrik S. 339-52. 9. Elisabeth Halper, Die Charakteristik Kaiser Maximilians I. in den zeitgenössischen und späteren Geschichtsquellen (Diss, masch. Graz, 1970) bietet leider nur eine summarische Zusammenstellung meist bekannter Zitate und zeigt keine Einflüsse oder Entwicklungen auf. Schlögl, Herwig, Lateinische Hofpoesie unter Maximilian I. (Diss. phil. masch. Wien 1969). Schlögl beschränkt seine Untersuchvmg auf die von Friedrich HI geförderten Literaten; zahheiche sachliche Fehler stören. Er folgt weitgehend Karl Großmarm, Die Frühzeit des Humanismus in Wien, in b. f. Landeskunde v. Niederösterreich NF22 (1929) S. 150-325 und Alphons Lhotsky, Die Wiener Artistenfakultät 1365-1467, in SB d. öster. Ak. d. Wiss, Phil8. Ellinger,

Italiens," Bd.

Hist. Kl. 247.2 Abh.

Wien

1965.

Die hier vorgetragenen Einzelbeobachtungen dienen zur Vorbereitimg einer Darstellung über den Einfluß der italienischen Humanisten auf die zeitgenössischen Charakteristiken Kaiser Maximilians I mit einer exemplarischen Analyse des Werkes eines bedeutenden Exponenten, Riccardus Bartholinus Perusinus (s.u.). 1 1 Glenn Edwood Waas, The legendary character of Kaiser Maximilian (New 10.

York, 1941) S. 58-64, hier S. 64. 12. Niccolo Machiavelli, Opere (Florenz, 1814) Bd. IV, S. 166. 13. Marino Sanuto, I Diarii, (Venedig, 1879) Bd. I, S. 841. 14. Machiavelli, Opere, IV, S. 168. 15. Halper, Charakteristik, S. 138-40. 16. Jb Maximilianum Caesarem, in Dehtiae CC Italorum poetarum huius superiorisque aevi illustris. Collectore Ranutio Ghero (1608) S. 1263-64. 17. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Die Verbreitung des italienischen Humanismus in Europa, in Humanismus und Renaissance II (München, 1976) S. 85-100, hier S. 89.

18. Zur Person des Barbarus vgl. Dizionario biograßco degli Itahani Bd. 6 S. 96-99. Zur historischen Situation vgl. Wiesflecker, Maximilian, Bd. 1 S. 182 ff. hier S.

202.

Europäische Lit.% 5 Herrscherlob, S. 184-86. 1486 (GW 3343). Oratio gratulatoria in Marquard Freher/ Burcard

19. Curtius,

20. Alost

Rerum Germanicarum Scriptores (Argentorati, 1717) Bd. H, S. 185-90; neu von Vittore Branca, Ermolao Barbaro, Epistolae, Orationes et Carmina (Firenze, 1943) S. 110-20 = Nuova collezione di testi umanistici inediti o rari VI).

Struve, hrsg.

(

21. Freher/Struve

Comes

184.

Palatinus (1435-1519). Vgl. u.a. Christian Gottlieb Jöcher, Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1750 ff.) Bd. H, Sp. 53.— Waas, legend22. Jurist,

DER EINFLUß DER ITAUENISCHEN HUMANISTEN

42 axy chaiactei

S. 57.

Das Epitbalamion

in Freher/Struve U, S. 222-28.

1500; vgl. Jöcher, Gelehrtenlexikon 1, Sp. 2015; Waas, legendary chaiactei S. 57. Omtio in Freher/Struve n S. 228-33. Zum hist. Hintergrund vgl. Wiesflecker, Maximilian, U S. 363 ff. hier S. 368. 23. Jurist,

24. Wiesflecker, Maximilian, U, S. 368, Anm. 39, weist darauf hin, daß die Türkenpläne wohl so stark herausgestrichen wurden, um die peinliche Verzögerung des Heiratsabkommens zu entschuldigen. 25. Vgl. die Angaben über die Innsbrucker Hofhaltimg bei Anneliese Gatt, Dei Innsbiuckei Hof zui Zeit Kaisei Maximilians I. 1493-1519. (Diss, masch. Innsbruck, 1943). Kapitel I. 3 "Der Hofstaat Biancas und das Frauenzimmer," S. 38-46. 26. Ellinger, Neulatein, S. 347 ff.; Gustav Bauch, Die Rezeption des Humanismus in Wien (Breslau, 1903). S. 20 f., 33, 76. Antonius Zingerle, De caiminibus latinis saeculi XV et XVI ineditis (Oeniponti, 1880) = Beiträge zur Geschichte der (

Philologie

Theil) S.

XLVI-XLVm.

27. Bauch, Wien, S. 168. 28. Ellinger, Neulatein, et

3A8.

Maximilianvm Regem Roman, 29. Ebd. S.

— V Encomiastica

in Freher/Struve

ad Divos Caes. Fedeiicvm S.

190-214.

214 Zeile 35-36.

30. Ellinger, Neulatein LS. 347. -Zingerle, 31.

Caiminibus

XL VU.

Hans Ankwicz-Kleehoven: Dei Wienei Humanist Johannes Cuspinian

Köln, 1959)

(Graz-

S. 10.

32. Ziu: Person des Amaltheus vgl. Gian Giuseppe Liruti, Notizie delle vite ed opeie scrìtte da' letteiati del Frìuli. (Venezia, 1762) Bd. n. S. 1-10.— Zingerle, Caiminibus, S. XLm-XLVI.; Bauch, Wien, S. 33-38; Ellinger, Neulatein, 1 S. 347 f. 33. Zingerle, Caiminibus Nr. 2, S. 2-7 "De Faustiss. Aduentu Diui Caesaris Federici lu."- Fuchsmagen-Handschrift UB Innsbruck Cod. 644, fol. lv-4v. 34. Zingerle, Caiminibus, Nr. 10, S. 11-17. Fuchsmagen-HS. fol. 7r-10v. 35. Bauch, Wien, S. 34-37; Ankwicz-Kleehoven, Cuspinian, S. 9/10. 36. Bauch, Wien, S. 34. 37. Zingerle, Caiminibus, Nr. 11, S. 17-38; Fuchsmagen-HS fol. llr-21v. Cuspinian lobt Amaltheus in seinen Caesaies und druckt den Anfang dieses Epicedions imd ein beigegebenes Epitaphium mit ab, vgl. Ankwicz-Kleehoven, Cus-

pinian,

S. 9.

Zur Person des Baibus vgl. Dizionarìo biogiafico degh Italiani Bd. 5, S. 370-74. -Bauch, Wien, S. 38 ff., hierS. 44. -Josef Ritter von Aschbach, Die Wienei Univeisität und ihie Humanisten im Zeitaltei Kaisei Maximilians I = Geschichte der Wiener Universität E) (Wien, 1877), S. 53f. und S. 145-69. Die Angaben Aschbachs sind allerdings nicht immer zutreffend, vgl. die Kritik Bauchs, Wien, S. 39 Anm. 4 in bezug auf Baibus. — Joseph de Retzer, De Vita et scrìptis Hieionymi Balbi, in Hieionymi Balbi Veneti, Opeia poetica, oiatorìa ac politico-moialia. (Vindebonnae, 1791/2), S. VH-XXIH. -Ellinger, Neulatein, I, S. 132-37. 38.

(

39. Ebd. S. 193-5, hier S. 195.

40. Bauch, Wien, S. 50 ff.— Ankwicz-Kleehoven, Cuspinian, S. 14

41. Dizionarìo biogiafico degli Italiani, Bd. 12, S. 341-46. Bauch, Wien, passim; Ellinger, Neulatein, S. 347; Zingerle,

Anm.

42. Vgl. die kleineren

Caiminibus,

XLVm

f.;

Aschbach

432,

fol.

53v

Dichtungen bei Zingerle, Caiminibus,

66 ff. Fuchsmagen-

ff.

43. Zingerle, Caiminibus, S. 74-76;

Fuchsmagen-HS

fol.

54v-55v.

STEPHAN FUSSEL

44. Zingerle, Carminibus, (wie Anna. 26); Über Fuchsmagen Wiener Univeisität, S. 73 f. u. Anm. 4. 45. Ankwicz-Kleehoven, Cuspinian, S. 10 u. Anm. 29.

46. Ellinger, Neulatein,

vgl. u.a.

Aschbach,

347.

(6) 4".— Zur Person Hölzeis vgl. u.a. Johanna Felmayer, Blasius Hölzel, in Tiroler Heimatblätter, 37 Jg. H. 10-12 (1962) S. 93-104. 48. Liruti, Notìzie, H S. 89-96; Ellinger, Neulatein, I, S. 350 ff. u. ü, S. 58. "Magnanimus," ONB Wien, Cod. Vind. 9976.

47. exemplar: Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbûttel, Sign.: 56.1. Poet

49. Dizionario Biograftco degli Italiani Bd. 6 (Roma, 1964) S. 625-27. 50. Seine Rolle beim Reichstag 1518 würdigt Friedrich Hermann Schubert, Riccardo Bartolini, in Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte. Bd. 19 (1959) S.

95-127. 51. Ticiano wird von Ludwig Geiger, Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland (Berlin o.J.) S. 346 vorgestellt. Der Panegyrikus lag ihm handschriftlich vor. 52.

Bll.

4°. Ex. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

München; vgl. die Dedikavon Adalbert Horawitz

tionsepistel in Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, hrsg. und Karl Hartfelder. (Leipzig, 1886) S. 578.

Marulh Carmina, ed. Alessandro Perosa. (Turici, 1951) S. 56 Das Epigramm HI, 3 hatte er ursprünglich an Lorenzo da Piero de' Medici gerichtet, nach dessen Tod 1492 aber auf Maximilian umadressiert. 54. Vgl. Jozef IJsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latìn-Studies (Amsterdam, 1977) S. 70 u. 73.; Ellinger, Neulatein, I, S. 62-64; Georg Luck Marullus und sein 53. Michaelis

Z. 30.

dichterisches Werk, in Arcadia 55. Epigr.

10; n, 5; H, 37;

(1966) S. 31-49. 3; ffl, 12;

53.

Ludwig Grote, Kaiser Maximilian in der Schedeischen Weltchronik, in Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg (MVGN) 62 Bd. (1975), S. 60-83. Transkription und Übersetzimg dreier Gedichte von Dieter Wuttke; Hartmarm Schedel zitìert Michael Marullus Tarchaniota, in MVGN 63 Bd. (1976) S. 362 f. 57. Harry Caplan, On the imagination (New Haven, 1930) = Cornell Studies in English XVI); Ellinger, Neulatein, I, S. 179 ff.-Zur Rolle von Maximilian als Empfänger zahlreicher Widmungen vgl. besonders Joachimsen, Geschichtsauf56.

(

fassung

196.

De Jure Belli ac Pads: The of

Hugo Grotius

to the

Contribution

Problem

War*

Robert Ginsberg

I have sought in De fuie Belli ac a theoretical contribution to the problem of

a philosopher and lover of peace

Pads by Hugo Grotius

war. It is OUT problem of war I have in mind, that is, the abolition, curtailment, prevention, or outlawing of war. I invite the reader to share my

disappointments Society, claims Grotius,^ sets the protection of individual property as its goal. State use of force, as in warfare, is permissible if it does not upset that purpose. The lawfulness of defensive war is supported by history, the Bible, and common sense. War is in accord with the law of nature (reason) if it aims at preservation of life.^ Grotius sees war to be a just, that is, lawful,-^ means to protect oneself against unwarranted injuries, including those of warfare. Hence, the identification of when war is just or unjust is crucial. Those who hold sovereign power have no common judge over them.'* In

from private war, there are no courts of justice to ameliorate the conflict.^ Grotius rules unlawful the usurpation or conquest of a State by a king, for otherwise the usurper could impose by force whatever grounds for war he wished for that State. ^ Rejection of the claim "might makes right" entails a prohibition of unrestrained might. In answer to those who argue that all laws are suspended in war, Grotius argues that war is similar to judicial process because it is aimed at enforcement of rights and is bound public, as distinguished

by laws.^ "Where

judicial settlement fails, war begins."^ This suggests that whatever kind of issue may be the cause of a lawsuit it may also become a possible justifiable cause of war. A menace to ourselves, for instance, may be a justifiable cause for war.^ The casus belli is a legal notion of what is appropriate to respond to by the process of war. If the cause of the war is unjust, then everything done in that war is wrong, or internally unjust. ^° Not everything may be done even in a lawful war.^^

There are three sources of valid legal claims: pact, injury, and statute. ^^ It is in these terms that the structure of Grotius' three-volume work on war becomes evident. Book I is the analysis of the status of a just war. Book n

ROBERT GINSBERG is

concerned with the causes

of going to war.

Book IQ

(legal

ground) of war, that

is,

deals with the effects of war, that

the justification is,

what

per-

missible in war.

The volitional law of nations [gentium juie voluntario) is distinguished from the law of nature (rules of reason) and from the laws of each nation (municipal law). The volitional law "takes its form according to the will of nations," rather than from definite reasons. ^^ Yet this law of nations might not be the agreement of all nations. It might only be that of "the better sort," or of "European nations, and of such others as attain to the higher standard of Europe," or of Christian nations.^'* Grotius' purpose is to inquire into what the will of such nations has been, but he admits it is still open to nations to establish whatever agreements they wish.^^ Moreover, the law of nations also can be modified by each nation's laws.^*^ By the law of nature (reason) we may justly enforce the rights of others.^'' Hence, what Hobbes would call the State of Nature in effect between nations gives a broader justification for war than mere injury or self-defense. As long as the cause (in the legal sense) is important and just, one may make war on behalf of anyone whatsoever. There are humanitarian grounds for war.^^ We may even help subjects oppressed by a ruler. ^^ This seems to be a ground for individual nations to take on the role of world policeman and liberator of the oppressed. The remarkable feature of Grotius' vision is that where law of one kind does not exist he is able to see that law of another kind does. There are no lawless domains in human affairs or natural events. Grotius reads the universe as conforming to a legal textbook. Thus, though the nations of the world do not constitute a State governed by legislated statutes (municipal law) which are enforced by a regular world police, yet other kinds of law are binding on them and can be enforced. These other kinds are the law of nations founded on their agreement, and the law. of nature founded on right exercise of reason. Both are enforced by the individual parties involved or by an other party. In the absence of a world police is the potential agency of enforcement. This is an analysis of effective international law without international government. But the method of enforcement is war or the threat of war. War, in Grotius' vision, can be an instrument of justice and a method of peacekeeping. It is a necessary instrument too, for there is no other way of obliging errant nations which are uncivilized or unchristian to conform to agreements and reason. Grotius is not aiming at the elimination of war or its replacement by a legal system. War serves as a kind of legal process. Grotius might be said to have in view the elimination of unjust war. But to accomplish that one must be prepared to wage just war. "Law fails of its outward effect unless it has a sanction behind it," Grotius tells us,^° making a point that was dear to Hobbes. But Grotius adds considerations ignored by Hobbes, for even without armed sanction law can have effect: "justice brings peace of conscience," and "in God injustice finds an enemy, justice a protector. "^^ Sooner or later a State may need the help and respect of other nations. ^^ Since other States may individually or in combina-

every nation

DE JURE BELLI AC PACIS

tion punish a transgressor of the laws of war, a State endangers itself by violaif it gains advantages in the short run.

tion of such laws even

What if the

State in question is being unjustly victimized by a stronger parThere is no need to violate the law of war in order to win in the conflict with that party, Grotius might urge. Other nations may punish the aggressor. But there is no guarantee they will. What is lacking in the world is that assured protection that comes with living under a common authority. Grotius makes the case^^ that a reputation for fairness in war is valuable for friendships and alliances. Having justice on one's side also strengthens one's efforts at victory. But it may be counterclaimed that a reputation for unfairness in war will frighten off potential agents of punishment for one's violations, while the Sovereign may persuade his subjects that their cause is just even if it not be. Grotius' argument against the alleged advantage in breaking the law of war is that the transgressor would slip out of and weaken those legal ties that would assure his future peace among nations. This applies in a parallel fashion to the citizen who violates municipal law for his own presumed advantage only to damage those very grounds upon which he is afforded a secure social ty?

existence.^'*

Hobbes would object that the two states of affairs are radically power to protect the citizen but none that

different, since there is a sovereign

reigns over nations. Grotius sees both states of affairs to be essentially the

same, since law operates in each domain and may be effectively enforced. Since States do associate with one another, they are governed by law in their dealings. Hence, should they be led to war, even over a violation of war, their warfare ought to be conducted according to law.^^ Grotius offers a number of methods for preventing war in chapter xxiii of Book in, but they are only proposed when the legal ground is dubious. He offers appeal to discussion, arbitration, and settlement by lot.^*^ Of course, when there is a casus belli that means war may be justly employed. Grotius criticizes Dante's argument for world government, pointing out disadvantages of size that mitigate against an effective single authority. ^^ Grotius rules out world conquest on behalf of the potential world government because it would not be a war waged for punishment, nor would the resulting government be consented to by its intended subjects. Anticipating the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Grotius calls for a league [fedus] of Christian nations to fight off infidel enemies, so that Christians, members of one community, may share their sufferings and assist one another. ^^ Yet this is not a league to prevent or quell warfare between the Christian coimtries, nor is it a league to forcibly propagate the faith. ^^ The Christian powers should serve as arbitrators to settle disputes and impose peace. ^° But an arbitrator must first be agreed upon by the conflicting powers. It is Grotius' keenness for what is lawful in one sense or another which leads him to criticize proposals for world union. Grotius is keen to the need to retrace his own steps in setting forth the kinds

law applicable to war and peace, for what is permissible in the law of war be overruled by higher considerations.-^^ Thus, it may be more just not to execute one's right to wage war when a just cause presents itself. ^^ Love, for instance, requires us to forego punishments to our enemies as well as to our friends. ^^ There are humanitarian and moral reasons for softening the apof

may

ROBERT GINSBERG

war.^ Even the laws of nature (reason) are to be tempered by the law of love {lex dilectionis] especially Christian love.^^ Christians should tell the truth even to the enemy. ^^ But as long as there are some to whom All's fair in love and war, the assurance of protection in Grotius' world is lacking. We are fellow citizens of that common society which embraces all mankind, ^^ the Great Society of Nations. -^^ Grotius had spoken at the outset of the "association which binds together the himian race" and which therefore had need of laws.^^ Divine law [lege divina) surpasses the "bare precepts of nature," and the stakes involved in adhering to it are higher than the paltry rewards within reach of human nature.'^ Thus, to the law of war composed of the law of nature (reason), and the law of nations (agreement), must be added the humanizing considerations of plication of the law of

the "moral law," the "divine law," the "law of the Gospel," the "law of Christ," or the "law of love," as Grotius variously calls it. It might be thought that the systematizing and inculcation of this higher law would lead to the disuse of the law of war, but this is rendered improbable by a number of points in Grotius' reasoning. First of all, there are nations who do not recognize the Christian message or even the European standards of international law. These barbarians are outside the law of nations, just as within nations there are outlaws. Secondly, the advanced Christian nations of Europe hardly have learned the lesson of love and applied it among themselves. They therefore have need of a law of war. Finally, there are times when a nation should go to war where adherence to a higher law does not prevent it; indeed, it may be out of a love for one's fellows that war is chosen as punishment of some transgressor.

Grotius leaves us with law but without government to assure its strict and universal enforcement. And though he codifies for us this law of war, he recognizes that we are not yet ready for the practice of the higher law that would remove the need for the law of war. In defense of Grotius we can say that he is not a political theorist nor a preacher of morality, but rather a student of law. His job is to identify and systematize the principles and agreements that do hold between nations. It is open to nations to adopt other laws, though Grotius does not plead the case for any new legislation. Indeed, there is no indication in Grotius of a proper legislative process for new agreements among nations. Past agreements seem to have been handed down over the centuries, drawing the gradual adherence of enlightened peoples. It is probable that the "volitional" law of nations was acquiesced in after observing the convenience of certain customary forms of behavior, rather than being principles given formal and simultaneous recognition by Sovereigns looking ahead to the regulation of their possible interaction. The law of nations is emergent, not postulational, or in Grotius' terms, it is volitional, not rational. This conception of law emerging operationally may be Grotius' greatest insight. It might be just as feasible and appropriate for nations to agree to principles that will lead to more wars as it would be to agree to outlaw war. Whatever the agreements are or might be between nations a method of enforcement is necessary. War is the sanction of international law.

DE JURE BELLI AC PACIS

48 There

may be different brands of international law available,

depending on one wishes to associate with as the "better sort." For his authorities on dictum, practice, and rule, Grotius has committed himself to an identification of the best peoples: Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Christian. Thus, he has not written the universal law of nations but the law of Western European nations. Grotius did not develop an antidote to war. Rather, he taught us how to live with it and make proper use of it. While there are seeds of possible solutions in a league of nations, a world government, a universally binding law of love, a law of nature (reason) extended internationally, and a supreme international law legislated by States, the vast weight of Grotius' erudite work stands as argument against their successful fruition. War is justifiable and necessary. Hence every State ought to know when and how. True, unnecessary and unjustifiable wars are to be avoided, and a knowledge of the law of war might save one from such conflicts. But that same knowledge also will lead one to war when the proper cause is at hand. De Jure Belli ac Pads is a legal handbook for waging just war. Not the creation of perpetual peace but the recognition of perpetual law — even in wartime— is Grotius' goal. He has compiled a guide to the waging of lawfare. "The jurisconsult of the human race," "the father of international law" is no rationalizer for the justness of all wars, but neither is he opposed to all wars as unjust. He has done service to humanity by clearing the grounds for dividing wars into the criminal and just. This is a matter of perennial significance. What defense do we have against criminal war? Grotius answers:

what group

of like-minded nations

just wai.

There are other occasions for just war, according to Grotius, in addition to response to criminal war. The important question is not whether to war or not war, but to always be just, even if that means war. War is built into the system of law. International law without war might be like municipal law without police force. We may have been misled by the title De fuie Belli ac Pads. The work does not offer a legal code for setting the world at peace and keeping it pacific. It does not contrast the superior law of peace within and between States against a lawless state of war. Instead Grotius shows that war and peace are both governed by a continuum of law, and that war can be a legal instrument to pursue ends dear to peace. At heart Grotius is— if one will permit the expression — a lawyer. Grotius does not contribute to the solution of our problem. On the contrary, the vision of the world so amply portrayed in his work is our problem. Grotius contributes ample justifications for continuation of such a system of war. Theorists of peace, then, are obliged to study him and to critically evaluate those grounds. The saving grace is that Grotius finds himself obliged to warn us on humanitarian grounds against strict adherence to the laws he has codified.

Such an

extralegal plea is

an affirmation of a sensitive humanity amid

the pedantic formalities of the dispassionate law. The lawyer has a heart. But on the stage of the world, concern for the general community of mankind and for the law of love that should govern our hearts as brethren is rudely displaced

ROBERT GINSBERG

by the wars waged between nations and justified by their principles venience, "the law of nations." Grotius closes De Jure Belli ac Pads with a prayer.*^

of con-

Notes Research for this study was conducted while Fellow of the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies, The Pennsylvania State University. 1 Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pads Libii Très, in quibus fus Naturae é) Gentium, item Juris Publid piaedpua explicantui (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1913; reprint of the 1646 edition). Grotius' work first appeared in Paris, 1625. The 1646 edition has been translated into English by Francis W. Kelsey et al., The Law of War and Peace (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, n. d.; reprint of the volume in the "Classics of International Law" Series, published by the Carnegie Endow*

ment for International Peace,

1925). Page references in

roman type are to the Kelsey

translation, while those in italics are to the Latin edition. Bk.

ch.

ii,

§ 17,

no.

5, p. 53, p. 16. 2.

3. [i.e.,

Bk. Bk.

I, I,

ch. ch.

ii, i,

throughout

S 2,

no. 4, p. 52, p. 16. 1, p. 34, p. 2: "For law

no.

fuze Belli ac Pads]

[jus]

term here than what is just

in our use of the

means nothing

else

[justum],..." 4. 5. 6. 7.

Bk. m, ch. XX, S 47, no. 2, p. 824, p. 585. Bk. n, ch. i, S 16, p. 184, p. 108. Bk. n, ch. xvi, S 18, p. 420, p. 281.

Prolegomena, § 25, p. 18, pp. xi-xii. Bk. n, ch. i, S 2, no. 1, p. 171, p. 101.

9. Ibid. Cf. Bk. n, ch. i, § 16, p. 184, p. 108. But the mere possibility of being attacked does not justify war, S 17, p. 184, p. 108. 10. Bk. m, ch. x, S 3, pp. 718-19, p. 510. 11. Bk. m, ch. xi. 12. Bk. n, ch. i, S 2, no. 1, p. 171, p. 101. Cf. Bk. n, ch. xvii, § 1, p. 430, p. 289. 13. Bk. n, ch. xviii, S 4, no. 2, p. 442, p. 296. 14. Bk. m, ch. iv, S 15, no. 1, p. 652, p. 461; § 19, no. 1, p. 657, p. 464; § 16, no. 1, p. 653, p. 462; § 19, no. 2, p. 657, p. 464. 15. Bk. m, ch. vi, S 8, p. 670, p. 476. 16. Bk. m, ch. vi, S 13, p. 673, p. 477. 17. Bk. n, ch. XXV, S 1, no. 1, p. 578, p. 411. 18. Bk. n, ch. XXV, S 6, p. 682, p. 413. 19. Bk. n, ch. XXV, S 8, no. 2, p. 584, p. 414. .

20. Prolegomena, § 19, p. 16, p. x. 21. Prolegomena, § 20, pp. 16-17, p. xi. 22. Prolegomena, § 22, p. 17, p. xi. 23. Prolegomena, § 27, p. 20, p. xii. 24. Prolegomena, § 18, p. 16, p. x. 25. Prolegomena, § 25, p. 18, p. xi.

DE JURE BELU AC PACK

26.

An interesting citation of diminishing the risks

tween the Chalcidians and Eretrians

ch. iv,

to refrain

from use

war

the agreement beweapons." Bk.

of "missile

16, no. 2, p. 653; p. 462.

27. Dante,

De Monaicbia

(c.

1310-1313), argued that the World Authority God made evident in world history

receives justification from the intentions of

rather than from Church doctrine. 28. Bk. n, ch. XV, § 12. 29. Bk. n, ch. XX, § 48, pp. 516-17, pp. 344-45. § 8, no. 4, p. 563, p. 396.

30. Bk. n, ch. xxiii, 31. Bk.

ch. X, §

no.

1, p.

32. Bk. n, ch. xxiv, "Warnings

716, p. 508. to Undertake

Not

War

Causes," § 1, no. 1, p. 567, p. 402. 33. Bk. n, ch. xxiv, § 2, no. 3, pp. 568-69, p. 402. Bk. 601, p. 425. 34. Bk. m, ch. 35. Bk. n, ch. 36. Bk.

xi, § 7, i,

ch.

§ 4,

37. Bk. in, ch. xi,

Rashly, Even for Just

ch.

§ 3,

no. 2, p.

no. 4, p. 733, p. 519. 1, p. 173, p. 102.

no.

20.

§ 16,

no. 4, p. 742, p. 523:

"commimis

illius

ex humano genere

constantis cives." 38. Bk. ni, ch. XXV, "Conclusion, with Admonitions on Behalf of Good Faith and Peace," § 1, p. 860, p. 608: "major ilia gentium societas." 39. Prolegomena, § 23, p. 17, p. xi.

40. Bk. n, ch. XX,

41. Bk. in, ch. XXV,

ness Grotius!

10, no. 1, p. 478, p. 323. § 8, p.

862, p. 610.

Even

this the jurist annotates.

Good-

Gassendi and Locke on Ideas Howard Locke,

not a

"Gassendus nunquam satis laudatus," Commonplace Book, MS. Locke, e. 33, f. 15.

new observation that not everything in John Locke's Essay Con-

Itcerning Human Understanding months

Jones

is original.

early as 1690, barely three

after the first publication of the Essay, Locke's friend Tyrrell

wrote from Oxford, saying "a friend told me the other day that he had it from one who pretends to be a great Judge of bookes: that you had taken all that was good in it: from ... divers moderne French Authours, not only as to the notions but the manner of connection of them."^ Now while our anonymous Oxford reader is undoubtedly guilty of exaggeration, that Locke owed some debt to the French thinkers of his age is clear. Indeed, in the case of Descartes Locke gives willing acknowledgment in his First Letter to Stillingfleet.^ One French author, however, whom Locke nowhere acknowledges is Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), and it is to an examination of the possible influence of Gassendi upon Locke's Essay, specifically on the question of the origin and formation of ideas, that this paper is devoted. Whether or not our Oxford reader had Gassendi in mind, we do not know. But the close association between Locke's philosophy and certain aspects of Gassendi's thought was certainly noted by others of Locke's contemporaries, notably by Leibniz, who placed Locke firmly in the Gassendist camp, and by the author of the first full-scale commentary upon Locke's Essay, Henry Lee.'^ Nor has the relationship between Gassendi and Locke wanted attention from modern scholars. Since R. I. Aaron's timely reminder of the affinity between the two in his influential John Locke, published at Oxford in 1937, several scholars have made careful scrutiny of the extent to which Locke's reading and travels brought him into contact with Gassendi's thought.'* We know that during his second visit to France (1675-1679) Locke made the acquaintance of a number of Gassendists and was introduced into circles where Gassendi's philosophy was favourably discussed. It is fairly certain that he lodged with the prominent Gassendist Gilles de Laimay, and likely attended the Wednesday meetings held at de Launay's house, at which de Launay expounded the Gassendist philosophy. On more than one occasion he conversed with Gassendi's most ardent disciple Francois Bemier, at the very time when Ber-

GASSENDI

AND LOCKE ON

IDEAS

was seeing through the

press his influential French abridgement of Gascopy of the Abrégé was with Locke on his return to England.^ In addition, Locke attended meetings of the circle of Henri Justel, where the Gassendist party is known to have been favoured over the Cartesians/ Locke's visit to France, therefore, placing him in an atmosphere in which Gassendism was the subject of lively debate, and bringing him into personal contact with advocates of the Gassendist system can only have served to heighten his interest in a philosophy with which he was already familiar from his Oxford days,® and this at a time when he was giving early thought to the subject matter of the Essay. So much by way of indicating that at the time when Locke was pursuing his inquiry into "the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge," Gassendi can be counted among the authors with whose work he was more than casually familiar. To bring us closer to our immediate concern, granted Locke's familiarity with Gassendi's work, with what truth can it be claimed that we need look no further than Gassendi's Institutio Logica (1658) to find the original of Locke's theory concerning the origin and formation of ideas? Among modem scholars (for Henry Lee made the claim in 1702) the suggestion was first made by Aaron in 1937: "... the reader should turn ... to the first part of Gassendi's Syntagma Philosopbiciun, and the section called Institutio Logica, so as to compare it with the Essay. The measure of Locke's debt to Gassendi will probably surprise him.... Here surely is the foundation upon which Locke erects the first two books of the Essay."^^ In 1955 the French scholar Gaston Coirault was more forthright. In a challenging paper entitled "Gassendi et non Locke créateur de la doctrine sensualiste moderne sur la génération des idées, "^^ he declared: "la théorie lockienne est, en fait, celle de Gassendi" and chastised the English philosopher for not making "la moindre allusion à la doctrine de Gassendi qu'en réalité il venait de s'approprier." It is exactly three hundred years since, to quote Aaron, "Locke left Paris for London with many regrets for the friends and entertainments he was leaving behind him."^^ Was there smuggled in his baggage Gassendi's theory on the origin and formation of ideas, a theory which Locke appropriated and marketed as his own? A look at the general outlines of the two thinkers' views will prove instructive. In the case of Gassendi we may look at Part One of his Institutio Logica, entitled "De simphci leium Imaginatione,"^^ and at Books HI, Vin, and IX of his Physics, which are devoted to a discussion of the soul, the phantasy, and the intellect respectively.^'* Gassendi distinguishes two souls in man — a corporeal or sensitive soul, which he shares in common with animals, "a very

nier

sendi's works. ^

gift

subtle substance, the flower of matter, a contexture of extremely fine particles, very mobile and active like those of fire,"^^ and a spiritual or rational soul, incorporeal in nature, created by God, and peculiar to man.^^ The faculty which belongs to the corporeal soul is the phantasy, whose three operations are the following: a) simple apprehension, the formation of an idea or concept of a thing without making a judgment concerning it;^^ in this the phantasy is entirely dependent upon the senses, for it is the role of the senses to furnish the phantasy with sensible impressions [species] of exterior objects

HOWARD

JONES

transmitted via the animai spirits along the nerves to the brain; ^^ b) composition and division, the act of forming a judgment or proposition;^^ this the phantasy accomplishes by comparing two concepts and joining them if they agree, separating them if they do not; and c) mtiocination, the act of inferring one thing from another;^ just as the phantasy is capable of making a judgment by comparing two concepts and determining whether or not they agree, so it is able to make an inference by comparing one of these two concepts with a third; if they agree, then it infers that the other agrees with the third also; if they do not, that it does not.^^ Thus for all three of its operations, the formation of ideas, judging, and deductive reasoning, the phantasy is dependent either directly or indirectly upon the senses. The faculty belonging to the spiritual soul is the intellectus, whose functions are of two kinds. At one level, it performs the same three operations as the phantasy, simple apprehension, judging, and deductive reasoning. ^^ At another level, it performs three operations which distinguish it from the phantasy: a) understanding of things of which there can be no image in the phantasy-, in forming a concept of a thing, the size of the sun, for example, the phantasy is limited by the material species transmitted through the senses; the intellectus is not; by using the concept formed by the phantasy as a starting point it can go beyond it to form a concept which is not tied to any material representation;^-* b) reflex action, whereby the intellectus understands itself and its own operations; ^^ in this it differs from the phantasy, which is able to direct itself only towards something outside itself; ^^ and c) the formation of universal concepts and the understanding of universality itself•,^^ this the intellectus accomplishes by using the general ideas supplied by the phantasy like stepping stones, as it were, in order to form a universal concept which is divorced from any material representation.^^ Throughout his discussion of the three operations which distinguish the intellect from the phantasy, Gassendi stresses that the intellect possesses the capacity to divorce itself from the corporeal species which limit the activity of the phantasy because, as a faculty of the incorporeal soul, it is itself incorporeal. At the same time, it is clear that there are no ideas which do not owe their existence directly or indirectly to the senses. The ideas which the phantasy employs in the second and third of its operations, judgment and ratiocination, are those which it has formed as a result of its first, simple apprehension, in which it is entirely dependent upon the material species transmitted through the senses. As to the intellect, the situation is the same with respect to the operations it shares with the phantasy. As for the operations which distinguish it from the phantasy, while it is true that the intellect has the capacity to form abstract ideas which are divorced from particular instances, it does not do so without starting from or using as intermediaries ideas of the kind formed by the phantasy. What emerges from Gassendi's discussion is a sensualist theory of ideation which is accurately summarized in Canon HI of Part One of the Institutio Logica: "Omnis Idea aut per Sensum transit, aut exiis, quae transeunt per Sensum, formatur," "every idea either comes through the senses, or is formed from those which come through the senses."^* As to Locke, the essentials of his empiricism are summarized in the open-

GASSENDI

AND LOCKE ON

IDEAS

ing chapter of Book n of the Essay: "Let us then suppose the mind to be, as it were, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? ... Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience) in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation, employed either about external sensible objects, oi about the internal operations of oui minds, is that which supplies out understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the foundations of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring. "^^ 'Sensation' and 'reflection,' the twin pillars of Locke's theory of ideation. By sensation Locke means that process by which "our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein these objects do affect them."^ By reflection, or 'inner sensation,' he means "that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them, by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the imderstanding."^^ Such are the ideas we have of thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, in short, all the activities in which our minds are at various times engaged. From these two sources, then, derive all the materials of knowledge. ^^ Now what we have offered here is the bare framework of Locke's theory of the origin and formation of ideas. We say nothing of the distinction which he goes on to draw between ideas derived from sense or reflection alone and ideas derived from sense and reflection together, between simple and complex ideas, between ideas of primary and ideas of secondary qualities; we say nothing of his treatment of ideas of modes, simple and complex, or that group of complex ideas which falls under the heading 'relation.' To treat of these and other topics would be to make an inventory of the contents of Book n of the Essay, and is not necessary for our immediate purpose. ^^ For we are permitted to note already that while Gassendi and Locke have this in common, that for both of them all our ideas are derived ultimately from sensation, sensation is not for both of them the same thing. In the case of Gassendi, sensation is sense-perception. Our mind is presented through the phantasy with sensible images, the ultimate materials of knowledge, and the source of these images or ideas is in every case the world outside. For Locke, on the other hand, this is not the case. The world outside does indeed provide us with most of our simple ideas, and this through sense perception in the same 'representative' way as for Gassendi. The remainder of our ideas, however, are derived from within, through reflection. It is here that Locke and Gassendi diverge. For there is nothing in Gassendi's account of the origin and formation of ideas which corresponds to Locke's 'reflection.' Now it is true, as we have indicated above, that among the operations of the intellectus which distinguish it from the phantasy Gassendi identifies what may be termed 'relex-action' {genus reflexarum actionum], whereby the mind takes notice of itself and its own operations {seipsum, suasque functiones intelligit, ac speciatim se intelligere animadvertit). It is important, however, that we do not confuse this with 'reflection' in Locke's sense. For Locke, 'reflection' generates ideas, concepts of all the various operations of the mind, and

HOWARD

JONES

gain from sense-perception to account has nothing at all to do with the origin and formation of ideas. In fact, as is clear from the examples employed, in Gassendi's accoimt of the origin and formation of ideas in the Institutio Logica the intellectus is involved only at the level of the three operations it shares with the phantasy. This is not to say that there is no place at all in Gassendi's theory of knowledge for the intellectus performing those operations which distinguish it from the phantasy. Operating at that higher level the intellectus, or reason, performs a vital function. But it is worth noting that of the three operations which Gassendi assigns to the intellectus at this level it is the first, whereby the mind understands things of which there can be no image in the phantasy, which is the most important. This is clear from Gassendi's theory of signs, where it is the function of the senses to furnish a sensible sign and the function of the intellectus to interpret what Ues beneath the sign.'^ In fact, it is not going too far to say that having identified 'reflexaction' as one of the operations of the intellectus which distinguish it from the phantasy, Gassendi makes no further use of the concept. Nor is this inexplicable, for it has served the purpose for which, we believe, Gassendi intended it. For it is important to recognise that Gassendi's attachment to the Christian faith placed him under an obligation to allow for the presence in man of an immaterial or spiritual element distinct from the sensitive element he shares with animals, and the attribution to man of the ability to introspect, an action which cannot be performed by the material phantasy, served Gassendi's purpose well enough. We have taken the time to clarify what is the meaning and the function these ideas supplement the ideas

for all the materials of thinking. For Gassendi, 'reflex-action'

of 'reflex-action'

and

'reflection' in

Gassendi and Locke respectively for this

reason: in the article referred to above, Gaston Coirault bases his argument for the dependence of Locke on Gassendi upon an identification of 'reflex-

and 'reflection.' Taking Gassendi's 'reflex-action' and Locke's 'reflecboth to mean reason as opposed to sense-perception, Coirault argues that the theories of both thinkers have the same double aspect— sense/reflex-action (Gassendi), sense /reflection (Locke). ^^ In fact, as we have indicated, neither Gassendi's 'reflex-action' nor Locke's 'reflection' can be taken to mean 'reason.' Nor are they identical. In short, Coirault's argimient that the theories of Gassendi and Locke are the same is based upon a misreading of both authors. action' tion'

Conclusion That there are parallels between the theories of Gassendi and Locke on the origin and formation of ideas, as there are parallels between other aspects of their philosophical thought, is undeniable. Both thinkers are agreed that what provides us with the ultimate materials of knowledge (and at the same time establishes the limits of

human

understanding)

experience:

". . .

magistra

rerum experientia, observationeque omnia prosequuntur." The quotation is from Gassendi. ^^ It could also have been written by Locke, except that experience would have included inner sensation or reflection (and we may be certain of Descartes' influence here) as well as experience of the world outside. It could also have been written by any one of Locke's fellow members

GASSENDI

AND LOCKE ON

IDEAS

of the Royal Society, and this is important to remark, because we must recognise that during the latter half of the seventeenth century, in England as well as on the Continent, it is to experience, observation, the works of nature as they are presented to the senses, that the philosopher and the natural scientist turn in their search for the true nature of things. We would suggest, therefore, that in his insistence upon experience as the source of all the materials of knowledge Locke was guided as much by his association with the English thinkers of his generation, Boyle, Sydenham, Newton and others, as by his reading of Gassendi.^'' This is not to say that Gassendi exercised no influence at all upon Locke's thinking concerning the nature, origin, and formation of ideas. It is to suggest, rather, that in Gassendi Locke found a thinker of importance whose views to a large extent coincided with and reinforced those ideas which he himself was forming through his own "historic, plain

method."

McMaster University

Notes 1. Tyrrell to Locke, 18 March 1690. MS Locke, c. 22, ff. 86-87, cited by J. W. Yolton, John Locke and the Way of Ideas (Oxford, 1965), p. 4. 2. "Though I must always acknowledge to that justly admired gentleman, the great obligation of my first deliverance from the unintelligible way of talking philosophy in use in the schools in his time, yet I am so far from entitling his writings to any of the errors or imperfections which are to be found in my Essay, as deserving their original from him, that I must own to your lordship they were spun out of my own thoughts, reflecting as well as I could on my own mind, and the ideas I had there; and were not, that I know, derived from any other original." {Woiks, 1801 ed. iv. 48-49). For studies of the influence of Descartes upon Locke's philosophy, see C. S. Ware, "The Influence of Descartes on John Locke: A Bibliographical Study, "i?é vue Internûtionûie de Piii/osopiiie 11 (1950), 210-30; S. P. Lamprecht, "The Rôle of Descartes in Seventeenth-Century England" in Studies in the History of Ideas, edited by the Department of Philosophy of Columbia University, New York, 1935, vol. iii, pp. 179-240; R. S. Watson, The Downfall of Cartesianism 1673-1 712: A Study of epistemologica! issues in late 1 7th-century Cartesianism

(The Hague, 1966). 3. Leibniz's judgment is recorded in his Nouveaux Essais, I. i, where Locke's spokesman, Philolathes, is made to say: "Now I feel myself greatly strengthened by the excellent work which an illustrious Englishman, with whom I have the honour of a particular acquaintance, has since published, and which has several times been reprinted in England, under the modest title of "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding...." This author writes in the spirit of Gassendi, which is at bottom that of Democritus; he is for the vacuum and for atoms; he believes that matter might think; that there are no innate ideas, that our mind is a tabula rasa, and that we do not always think; and he appears disposed to approve the most

HOWARD

JONES

which Gassendi has made to Descartes. He has enriched and strengthened this system by a thousand beautiful reflections; and I do not at all doubt that now our party will triumph boldly over its adversaries, the Peripatetics and the Cartesians." New Essays on Human Undeistanding, trans, by A. G. Langley, 3rd. edition (La Salle, 111., 1949), pp. 64-65. Lee's assessment appears in his Anti-Scepticism oi Notes upon each chapter of Mr. Locke 's Essay, 1 702, p 4 1 "... he might as well have said, in Gassendus's words, nihil est in intellectu quod non prìus fuerìt in sensu-, for it comes all to that, even according to his own principles." 4. See in particular, A. Adam, "L'Influence de Gassendi sur le mouvement des idées à la fin du XVIIe siècle" in Actes du Congrès du Tiicentaiie de Piene Gassendi, (Digne, 1957), pp. 7-11; J. Lough, (ed.), Locke's Travels in France (16751679) (Cambridge, 1953); G. Bonno, Les relations intellectuelles de Locke avec la Prance, University of California, Publications in Modem Philology, XXXVin, no. 2 (1955). 5. Abrégé de la philosophie de Gassendi, 8 vols., Lyon, 1678 and 1684. 6. On Locke's reading during his stay in France, see J. Lough, "Locke's reading during his stay in France (1675-1679)," The Library, 5th. Ser., Vm, pp. 229-58. For information concerning Locke's possession of Gassendi's works, see J. Harrison and P. Laslett, eds.. The Library of John Locke, 2nd. ed. (Oxford, 1971). 7. Adam, op. cit., p. 10-11. 8. It is probable that Locke was first introduced to Gassendi's philosophy by Robert Boyle, for whom the corpuscular philosophy of Gassendi offered an attractive alternative to the Aristotelian concept of 'substantial forms.' Boyle was a leading light in the Oxford scientific movement of the 1650's and later of the Royal Society, of which Locke was elected Fellow in 1668. For Gassendi's influence on Boyle, see A. Koyre, "Gassendi et la science de son temps" in Pierre Gassendi, sa vie et son œuvre (Paris, 1955), pp. 60-69. 9. The two earliest drafts of the Essay, Draft A and Draft B, can be dated to summer and autumn of 1671; see Locke's Essay: An Early Draft, ed. by R. I. Aaron and Jocelyn Gibb (Oxford, 1936), pp. xi-xiv. We know from Locke's journals, however, that throughout his stay in France (1675-1679) he remained busy with material which was to find its way into the Essay itself; see Aaron and Gibb, op. cit., pp. xxv-xxvi. 10. John Locke (Oxford, 1937), pp. 37-38. 11. The paper is published in Actes du congrès du Tricentaire de Pierre Gassendi (Digne, 1957), pp. 71-94. 12. Aaron, op. cit., p. 19. 13. Pierre Gassendi, Opera, 6 vols. (Lyon, 1658), I, 92 ff. 14. Opera, U. 237-59, Book m: De Anima-, U. 398-424, Book VIE: De Phantasia seu Imaginatione-, H. 425-68, Book IX: De Intellectu seu Mente. 15. n. 250 B: "Rxirsus, videri talem substantiam esse contexturam subtilissimorum, et summe mobilium actuosorumque corpusculorum, iis non absimilimn, ex quibus ignis, calorque creatur." 16. n. 440 A: "Superest de eo dicamus, quo, adstipulati Sacrae Fidei, dicimus Mentem, seu partem illam superiorem Animae (quae et proprie Rationalis est, et in unoquoque homine singularis) substantiam esse incorpoream, quae a Deo creetur, infimdaturque in corpus; ut sit in ipso tanquam forma informans, et non of the objections

simpliciter assistens."

GASSENDI

AND LOCKE ON

IDEAS

17. n. 409 A: "Prima autem, imo primaria, seu ilia, cui praesertim, ac proprie Imaginationis nomen competit, simplex est apprehensio, hoc est, nuda, et sine affirmatione, aut negatione cuiuspiam rei imaginatio." 18. 403 B: "... repetendum est, dum Sensus extemi obiecta sua percipiunt, motionem quandam fieri, tum in extemo ipso sensorio, in quod aut species, aut qualitas rei sensibilis incurrit, tuia propagatione quadam per nervös facta in intimo cerebro, qua parte nervi desinunt Tum autem duo quaedam contingunt, unum, et quae facultas sentiens illeic degit, rem sensibilem, a qua talis ictus advenit, percipiat: alterum, ut ex tali ictu remaneat quoddam vestigium, seu quasi character, typusque cerebro impressus." 19. n. 410 A: "Altera Phantasiae operatio est Compositio, et Divisio; sive assensi© et dissensio, quae affirmatio etiam, et negatio, itemque Propositio, Enunciatio, . . .

ludicium (intellege Enunciativum) appellatur." quae etiam Argumentatio, discursus, et consequutionis indicium vocatur"; 412 A: "Et sane cum nomine rationis, et

20. n. 411 B: "Tertia operatio est Ratiocinatio,

ratiocinandi facultatem, seu principiimi intelligamus, et ratiocinari nihil aliud quam unum ex alio cognoscendo coUigere."

sit,

21. n. 413 B: "Caeterum, ut dictum est prius posse Phantasiam simplices duas apprehensiones aut componere aut dividere, prosit mutuo congruae, aut incongruae fuerint, et hanc ipsam esse, quam enimciationem dicimus, ita iam addendum sic posse eam adhuc unam istarum apprehensionum cum tertia quadam aut componere, si congrua quidem fuerit, aut dividere, si incongrua, ut alteram statim cum eadem tertia aut tanquam simul congruam inferendo componat, aut tanquam sLmul incongruam inferendo dividat; et banc ipsam esse argumentationem." 22. n. 450 A: "Ut paucis dicam, pari passu, progressuque Phantasia, Intellectusque ita incedunt, ut prima fronte videri possint, una individua, simplexque facultas."

23. n.

440 B: "... verum heic quidem istud sufficiat, ut constet quidpiam nos quod imaginari non liceat, et Intellectum ita esse distinctum a Phan-

intelligere,

tasia, ut cum Phantasia habeat materialeis species, sub quibus res imaginetur, non habeat tamen Intellectus, sub quibus res intelligat." 24. n. 441 A: "Altemm est genus Reflexamm actionum, quibus Intellectus seipsum, suasque functiones intelligit, ac speciatim se intelligere animadvertit." 25. n. 441 A: "... atque idcirco, ne Phantasia quidem corporea cum sit, seipsam, suamque imaginationem percipiat, aut animadvertit se imaginari." 26. n. 441 A: "Tertium est earum, quibus non modo imiversalia, universaleisve notiones formamus; sed percipimus quoque ipsam rationem universalitatis." 27. n. 442 B: "... Itellectus utitur solimi bisce speciebus, quas esse constat Phantasiae proprias, quasi quibusdam gradibus ... ut supra omnem speciem corpoream emergat, assurgat, emineat." 28. I. 92 B. 29. Essay U. i. 2. References are to John Locke: An Essay Conceming Human Understanding, ed. John W. Yolton (London, 1961; rep. 1974).

30. n.

31. n.

32. n.

as high as

3. 4.

24: "Ali those

heaven

sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds and reach

take their rise and footing here: in aU that great extent where the mind wanders, in those remote speculations it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which sense or reflection have offered itself,

for its contemplation."

HOWARD

JONES

33. For Locke on 'ideas/ see J. Gibson, Locke's Theory of Knowledge and its Historical Relations (Cambridge, 1931); J. W. Yolton, John Locke and the Way of Ideas (Oxford, 1956; rep. 1968) and "Locke and the Seventeenth Century Logic of Ideas," Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (1955), 431-52; I. C. Tipton, ed. Locke

Human Understanding (Oxford, 1977); R. S. Woolhouse, Locke's Philosophy of Science and Knowledge (Oxford, 1971); S. L. Nathanson, "Locke's Theory of Ideas," Journal of the History of Philosophy 11 (1973); see further H. O. Christopherson, A Bibliographical Introduction to the Study of John Locke (Oslo, 1930), and R. S. Woolhouse and R. Hall, "Forty Years of Work on John Locke (1929on

1969)," Philosophical Quarterly 20 (1970) and the Locke Newsletter (1970- ). 34. I. 81 B: "Unde et fit, ut duplex in nobis possit distingui Criterium, unum,

quo percipiamus Signum, videlicet Sensus; altenmi, quo ipsam rem latentem ratiocinando intelligamus; Mens nempe, Intellectus, seu Ratio." 35. "Le rôle de la 'sensation' et de la 'réflexion' dans le système de Locke se trouve dans la théorie gassendiste, théorie antérieure à celle du philosophe anglais.... Locke ne s'est nullement soucié d'une dualité d'âme possible comme Gassendi. Mais cela ne change rien à la théorie de l'origine des idées. Deux series d'opérations semblables chez les deux auteurs: 'sensation, réflexion' chez Locke, et sens, phantaisie (âme sensitive) — 'Entendement' (âme raisonable), chez Gassendi," op. cit., pp. 84-85. 36.

m. 108

37.

On Locke and contemporary English thought, see Gibson, op.

Aaron, op.

cit..

Part One, passim.

cit.,

pp. 233-66;

The Influence of Continental Humanists and

Jurists

on English

Common Law

in the Renaissance^ Louis A. Knafla

The

influence of Continental humanism and legal thought on the English common law in the Renaissance has long been a topic of scholarly contention. Perhaps the major problem which has shrouded the topic has been the acceptance of Maitland's criteria in defining the basic terms of the subject.^ Maitland sought to find Continental influences on English law in the early and middle decades of the sixteenth century, the era of the advent of Renaissance Humanism into English courtly circles. What Maitland, his supporters and critics, failed to take into account were two simple historical facts: first, that the impact of Renaissance Humanism on the English professions was later than the early or mid-sixteenth century; and second, that the law, and lawyers, move slowly when confronted with cultural and intellectual change— with something different than that to which they have been accustomed. Thus only a careful examination of the educational developments in the universities and the inns of court, and of the literature of the common law— from the middle decades of the sixteenth century to the early decades of the seventeenth— can reveal both the development of Eng-

thought and its sources. Within the last decade several scholars have turned their attention to renewed research in English legal thought, and to a topic which we can begin lish legal

common law.^ In order to give a conceptual shape to this topic I would like to refine it into three sections: one, the Hemician period, 1510s-1530s; two, the Edwardian period, 1540- 15 70s; and three, the Elizabethan period, 1580-1620.'^ While the earlier Henrician era ento identify as the renaissance of the

compassed the origins of humanism in England, the Edwardian one can be characterized as the period in which a reception of the new philosophy and of Continental legal humanism occurred in the colleges of the university towns and the inns of court in London. The Elizabethan period, however, witnessed the specific use of humanist methodology and ideas in the thought and writing of the common law. A significant fact of common law writing by the early seventeenth century is that it began to deviate from the organizing devices, the methodology of analysis, and the substantive meaning of common law

LOUIS A. KNAFLA

literature a

hundred years

earlier.

The

rise of the

common law

as a sophisti-

cated, learned profession; the admission into the inns of students schooled

and colleges in ethics, logic and law; the expansion of the forms of action; and the origins of the doctrinal development of the common law; all comprise movements which evolved contemporaneously in the Elizabethan era. What common lawyers came to know in terms of method and of knowledge, and how they used this to meet the demands of their litigants, became important factors in the lives of the notable members of the profession. And the writings of the Continental philosophers and jurists provided an important element in the development of English common law literature. Lawyers such as Sir Francis Bacon, John Dodderidge, Sir Thomas Egerton, Sir Henry Finch, Abraham Fraunce, William Lambarde, and John Seiden reflected this element in their published and unpublished work. The purpose of this essay is to define some of the ways in which the Continental humanists and jurists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries influenced that development of English legal scholarship which formed an integral part of the common law renaissance. The important developments in the Henrician period lay in the growth of the Arts curriculum in European universities, and the patronage of those humanist scholars by members of the English royal family and the new nobility. On the Continent, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the preeminence of the traditional form of the Logic course in the Trivium — comprising the introductory courses of the Arts degree— was being questioned by the humanists, while the other two courses. Grammar and Rhetoric, were undergoing a revival.^ From the 1480s the study of Grammar was being fashioned by the Brethren of the Common Life and the Italian humanists from a long, complex examination of problems of definition and philosophical meanings and implications based on Aristotle and hundreds of pages of medieval glosses, to a clear and simple examination of language based on elegant, classical Latin. Thus scholars such as Poliziano, Bude and Alciati developed a new science of philology in the study of Grammar, believing that knowledge was formed on grammar. The science of language which emerged was formed on an understanding of words in a critical and historical perspective. Just as man could be seen in Neo-Platonic terms as a microcosm of the cosmos, so could language be regarded as a microcosm of knowledge. At the same time, the study of Rhetoric was also being transformed from the technical examination of speech, logic and debate, to the use of direct and elegant forms of classical speech and writing to challenge, shape and transform the laws of nature and of human society. Thus humanist scholars such as Pomponazzi. Agricola and Vives developed the idea that knowledge was senseperception, dependent upon a science of meaning which only Rhetoric could provide. Since the mind comprehended knowledge through the expression of bodily movements such as reading, writing or speaking. Rhetoric became a science of communication that went even beyond the Latin to the vernacular languages in order to challenge man's perception of his natural and historical worlds. Traditional Logic was very sophisticated, comprising the analysis of terms in the university halls

ENGLISH

COMMON LAW

and propositions for dialectical discourse. The study of Logic began to change on what terms meant and how they could be tested and used. But the real transformation of Logic occurred in the second decade of the sixteenth century, when— with the reformed Grammar and Rhetoric in hand— Logic could concentrate on the development of mental concepts and arguments. Using the new science of Grammar, Logic advanced a more critical approach to knowledge and its sources and used the reformed Rhetoric for its exposition. Developing an intellectual concept of discovery, and a single method to study and arrange empirically all the arts and sciences, the reformed Logic became a key to the structure of higher learning by the 1520s. This revived cycle of study was based on a shared methodology, brought new ways of looking at and doing things, and led to a classicized rhetorical culture that reflected a sense of history, a dialectical involvement in contemporary issues, and a genuine concern for truth and eloquence.^ Scholars and teachers of civil law had been at the forefront in developing the reformed curriculum of Grammar and Rhetoric in the late fifteenth century, and they made the law one of the first academic subjects to undergo a substantive transformation.'^ Fueled by the re-examination of the sources of the Roman law and the study of local customs particularly in France and Germania, legal scholars such as Alciati and Bude brought the critical study of Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric to bear on Roman and customary law in Continental Europe. Aided by the rise of the nation-state, and faced with the problems of severe religious, social and political change, the legal thought and as well in the late fifteenth century, centering

writing of sixteenth century jurists contained the origins of legal history as well as scientific jurisprudence. Students and lawyers were trained to evaluate problems of evidence, prove or disprove legal concepts, and develop new areas of legal thought. The era witnessed not only a rejuvenation of the civil law, but also of native, customary law. In the meantime, a different series of developments were unfolding in England. First, grammar schools and colleges were being refounded and created, nurtured in aspiration by the forces of Renaissance Humanism which had been at work for so long on the Continent.^ Second, the Protestant Reformation was underway, taking hold in the commercial communities which would lead the country into its first industrial revolution. Both of these developments were connected by forces which took over the Reformation Parliament of 1529-1536, a parliament which enacted a series of statutes whose implications for the law would be wide and profound.^ The forces were personified by the men who formed several new status groups in English society — artisans, merchants, and gentlemen. Replacing the old noble and knightly class in the political, economic and religious leadership of the new commonwealth, these men would come to dominate the grammar schools, halls and colleges, and inns of chancery and of court, comprising a new ruling and intellectual elite by the end of the sixteenth century. ^^ There were, however, no significant changes in the English common law or legal thought in this period. Judges still regarded themselves as umpires who steered an even course between the parties and left the final judgment in the hands of the lay jurors who represented the local community. And no

LOUIS A. KNAFLA

developed outside of the courts of equity. On a practical level there was a clarification of organizational defects in the central courts, the rewriting of the law of treason, abridgements to bring together the existing law in a more useful manner, and developments which would enlarge the amount of litigation before the central common law courts. But change was in the air. The presence of Continental humanists at the court of Henry VIU and the stately palaces of his new nobility gave shape to the concept of a Tudor commonwealth: a bureaucratic state in the hands of a newly legai procedures or doctrines

which would bring England into the mainstream of European statesman— which would eventually include that of the lawyer-statesman and jurist— was to seek out the ailments of society and proeducated

life.^^

elite

The

role of the

vide remedies. Springing from a new, positive attitude towards the public good, this role would lead to social analysis, the construction of social policy, and much law-making. It would also enable lawyers and judges to look at their profession more critically, and to react promptly and creatively in resolving

problems which arose in a new era of

social,

economic, political and religious

change. The English humanists did not omit the sphere of the law from their analysis of English society and its institutions in the Henrician period. Initially they made several attempts to draw the common lawyers into their orbit, particularly in the 1530s. But these attempts to influence the lawyers directly were not successful. Thomas Star key tried to promote the new Continental legal studies in the inns of court without any formal success. ^^ The schemes of courtly humanists such as John Hales, Richard Morison and Richard Tavener to organize and codify the common law by Roman, Civil law methods in classical Latin were not useful for the practitioner nor well regarded by legal authorities.^^ And the Denton-Bacon-Cary report to Henry VUI, which suggested a new law school in London for the royal service modeled after the structure of the iims of court and the method of humanist learning, came to no effect.^'* English lawyers could, however, as Professor Baker has noted, become "practical humanists," and there was room in their makeup for humanist influences to be revealed towards the end of the Henrician period. ^^ Pedagogically, there were new collections of precedents arranged alphabetically by writers such as Anthony Fitzherbert, a significant collection of definitions of legal terms and subjects by John Rastell, and a systematic treatise on the land law by John Perkins. ^^ Conceptually there was a renewed interest in the old authors such as Glanvill, Bracton and Britton, and the translation into English of basic medieval texts. These developments were due in part to the early English humanist's concern for philology, history, and natural reason. ^^ But they were also due to an attempt to discover the meaning of the law. Thus Saint-German wrote his famous dialogues on the doctor and the student to provide a comparison of the Roman law with the law of the royal courts. ^^ The minds of the doctor of civil law and the student of the common law interacted on a wide range of legal rules and theory. The interest of the doctor in seeing the law in terms of its true meaning, and not its bare words, ^' was an interest shared by the greatest humanist lawyer of the period, Sir Thomas More. The Chancellor believed that man should only swear in

ENGLISH

COMMON LAW

law to that which was True, not to that which was Right, and his elegant writing was unusual for an English lawyer.^ More's knowledge of Continental humanists cannot be regarded as exceptional by the end of the period. Chief Justice Mountague, for example, in addressing the new Serjeants called in 1540, cited Boethius, Cicero, Lefèvre d'Étaples, St. Gregory Sallust, Valerius

Maximus, and Ulpian,

St. Justin

Martyr, Livy,

in discussing their role

and responsi-

bilities.^^

The Edwardian period

1540- 15 70s witnessed presciant developments and thought of English common lawyers significantly. The particular form of humanist education that the EngUsh received was the trivium courses on the Continent which were redeveloped in the second quarter of the sixteenth century by Sturm and Ramus, and popularized by Ramus himself as the New Logic. ^^ Combining the new Grammar with the new Rhetoric, renaming and reordering the parts of each, and claiming that with this system all knowledge could be known by man in his vernacular language and all doubts and disputes resolved, the New Logic became the major part of the Arts program in many European universities. Students were instructed to systematize their language, develop arguments, and express their thoughts convincingly. They were also provided with technical training for the study of natural phenomena, human behaviour, and the concepts and principles of scientific and philosophical investigation. Developed for the lay and clerical professions, the New Logic had a particular appeal to the social, intellectual, and professional drives of the sixteenth-century middling and up-

which

of c.

affected the education

per classes.

The New Logic was introduced

into England first at

Cambridge in the

late

1550s, developed in the 1560s, and became the major part of the Arts program in several colleges in the 1570s. Christ's College was the centre, dominated in the 1570s by the famous lecturing team of Laurence Chaderton and Gabriel Harvey, Chaderton doing the Logic and Harvey the Rhetoric. The major texts

were Agricola, Melanchthon and Ramus for Logic, and Valla and Erasmus for Rhetoric. Students were drilled in Grammar and Rhetoric the first year, and in Logic the second and third years. But by 1580 the Arts course — based on Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric— was called simply Dialectics. The translation of Ramus' Logic and Talon's Rhetoric into English, John Seton's abridgment of Agricola and Melanchthon, Temple's commentary on the New Logic, and the publication of the lectures of Harvey and Temple, brought Dialectics into the forefront of undergraduate education at Cambridge by 1580. The program was extremely pragmatic. Students were taught to organize subjects, analyze written texts and spoken discourse, arrange arguments, and resolve problems. Thus by the 1580s the English Dialectics could be learned within two years of a university education in either the Latin or native language. ^^

reception of the New Logic had more difficulty at Oxford, where the program of the B.A. degree was more deeply entrenched. The first studies of the New Logic occurred in the 1570s, and John Rainolds of Corpus Christi College became the leading figure in its development. Students at Oxford had to rely more on extra-curricular learning, where they entered a hall or college to devote most of their two to three years of study to tutorial in-

The

traditional

LOUIS A. KNAFLA

was outside of the prescribed statutes of the curriculum.^ John Case's tutorials in Grammar and Logic held at his home in Oxford became a famous example. Led by Rainolds, Case and Charles Butler, the rise of Dialectics at Oxford formed a stream of academic enterprise by the middle of the struction that

1580s. Dialectics

became the introductory program

for the study of the professions.

Many gentlemen and merchants sent their sons to university halls or colleges not to receive the traditional B.A. degree, but simply to complete a knowledge of Dialectics in two or three years. This helps to explain the advent of the "matriculation revolution" which occurred at both English universities in this era. The university enrollment tripled at Cambridge from 1560-1580, and at Oxford from 1570-1590.^^ From there the students could go to London where the professional world was growing rapidly: law, medicine, science, mathematics, diplomacy, and the departments of state. Dialectics, linked both to the classical revival in Renaissance Humanism and the Protestant Reformation, affected dramatically both the structure and substance of the English educational system.^^ These developments, however, were not duplicated at the inns of court in the Edwardian era. While the inns continued to develop as a centre of social, intellectual, and professional life in London, few of their matriculants received a university education. In fact, less than 10% of the entrants to the inns had been to a university hall or college by the 1570s, and the emoUment remained constant in spite of a gradual increase in population. Some common lawyers, however, especially at Gray's and Lincoln's Irm, were becoming acquainted with the New Logic in the same period as its decisive reception at Cambridge and Oxford, and were using it to analyze, critique and assess the growth of statute law that began to loom so large in English society. ^^ They also became embroiled in its controversies, such as that between the "court" and "civic" humanists. Court humanists used Dialectics as "right learning," centering on Rhetoric to justify the policies and laws of the crown, while civic humanists centered on Logic to achieve a knowledge of the role of the state in furthering true religion and economic progress.^® Thus, learning the law was seen as an avenue to participate in directing the future course of the commonwealth. The inns of chancery and of court, just like the halls and colleges, were being challenged by the growth of the secular professions in the Edwardian period, and the inns more than the universities were the most direct and inexpensive way for the sons of the aspiring merchants, artisans, gentlemen and yeomen to achieve social status and professional employment. Just as these status groups in society sent numerous sons to the universities as finishing schools for a new aristocracy — and academies for the secular professions, so they sent others to the inns. But the social impulse at the inns was still quicker than the intellectual, and in this period the inns became famous for their social life: drama, music, dancing, fencing, and the gastronomical and sexual attractions of London. ^^ Calls to the bar were accompanied with great feasts, ceremonies and parades, and the speeches of Serjeants became so verbose that they were entered in the order and decree books for posterity. The New Rhetoric was especially popular in the same circles as the judges weaved in-

ENGLISH

COMMON LAW

and sometimes fantastic cases for students to unravel and debate in the moots, cases which were also occasionally reported in the law reports of the period.'^^ One cannot minimize, however, the intellectual importance of the philological and rhetorical tradition which had slowly developed at the inns in the sixteenth century, ^^ and that made possible the eventual reception of the New Logic in the last quarter of the century. It helped undoubtedly to contribute to benchers, Serjeants and judges debating the law after a trial at dinners, moots, or readings, and resolving questions of judicial authority. In other words, it assisted judges in becoming future law-makers instead of umpires. ^^ It would also lead them to prefer to "make" the law formally before a court, than to leave the law in the hands of jurors who would rule on the general issue. Hence the writ of latitat, the demurrer, and the special verdict became preferable modes of trial in this period, modes which rested on the learning and judgments of the Bench. The consideration of factual situations in more detail also contributed to the rise of equitable considerations at common law, as well as to the extension of the existing forms of action to different wrongs and the eventual formation of judicial doctrines.''^ The fact that these developments were underway prior to the Elizabethan period renders precarious a strictly chronological approach to the history of the law, and of legal ideas and reasoning. The development, thought and writing of the common law profession was transformed from 1580-1620 as the inns of court were drawn into the orbit of the educational revolution of the Edwardian period. A study of the admissions registers of the inns in the Elizabethan period indicates that in the years of 1580-1582 the entrants to the inns increased from an average of 140 to 230 per year, perhaps the most sudden increase in their history. These figures levelled off to an average of 240 in the early seventeenth century. Moreover, the entrants to the inns were no longer young men lacking advanced learning. An examination of the educational origins of entrants to the inns in the Elizabethan period reveals that the number of students who had devoted one or two years at a imiversity hall or college prior to admission to the inns had increased from 13% of all entrants in 1561 to 28% in 1571 and 42% in 1581, reaching 56% by the end of the century.^ The pattern which unfolded— that prospective common lawyers spend one to three years in the Arts program at Cambridge or Oxford seeking admission to the inns of court or chancery— became a major element in the educational program of the English common lawyer. The new common lawyer of the Elizabethan period was thus shaped by educational changes at both universities as well as at the inns of court. At the university the Arts student learned, as we have seen, Dialectics. In addition, it appears that more civil law writers were incorporated into the program in the late sixteenth century than had been present before. Thus the student could become familiar with Justinian and the Institutes from the classical period, in addition to contemporary Continental legal humanists such as Jacobus Acontius, François Baudouin, Jean Bodin, Jacques Cujas, Lambert Daneau, François Duaren, Hugo Grotius, Joachim Hopper, François Hotman, Philip tricate

LOUIS A. KNAFLA

Melanchthon, and Samuel Pufendorf .^^ The writings of Continental legal humanists became significant in the book lists of Cambridge and Oxford undergraduates in the seventeenth century. ^^ There is some evidence to suggest that by the early seventeenth century Arts students attended common law and ecclesiastical courts, and that common law books were being sold in Cambridge and Oxford bookshops. Thus the Arts student who matriculated to an inn of chancery or court from a university hall or college could have had not only a foundation in Dialectics, but also an introduction to the elements of the civil law, legal humanism, and canon and common law practice. The student embued with this learning was not, of course, the average entrant to the inns of court in the Elizabethan period. While undoubtedly some law students had a wide knowledge and interest in the study of the law as an intellectual discipline, others were merely interested in learning only as much of the technical material as was necessary to gain reputation and wealth in the profession. Some attended the inns simply to make connections and contacts, and acquire a semblance of law learning for legal and non-legal offices in local and central government, while others attended primarily to sow the energies of their youth in the dynamic social world of London. ^^ By the late Elizabethan period the feasts became more grand, the plays and masques more elaborate, and the drinking bouts and fisticuffs more pronounced.^® The inns had come to offer more than simply the law. Great effort was devoted to their architecture, horticulture, libraries, churches, music, literature, history, geography, and scientific interests.'^' The inns had by the early seventeenth century been called The Tbiid Universitie of England,^ and it is within this context that some of their members contributed to the renaissance of the com-

mon

law

itself.

and legal humanism in the common law renaissance can be assessed finally in three areas: 1) a historical conception of the law and legal change; 2) the systematization of statute law and common law precedents; and 3) legal treatises on the study and analysis of the common law system. The first was evidenced by lawyers such as William Lambarde who compiled collections of Anglo-Saxon law and customs, and viewed each court in terms of its origins and historical development.'^^ Lambarde, who was schooled in grammar, philology and history, was one of the first representatives of the common law renaissance in the 1570s-1580s, and his work was furthered significantly in the early seventeenth century by lawyers such as John Spelman and John Seiden. The second area can be seen in the writings of Sir Thomas Egerton and John Plowden in the 15 70s- 1580s, men who established philological schemes to interpret statutes, and who used method and history to devise an order for judging precedents and making new law.^^ Their work was continued in the early seventeenth century by jurists such as Sir Francis Bacon and William Sheppard who were more fully knowledge-

The

role of Dialectics

humanism. emerged in the common law literature of the Elizabethan period. Humanist lawyers like Abraham Fraunce, Henry Finch and John Dodderidge wrote not only academic treatises on Logic or Rhetoric, but they also attempted to epitomize and methodize the whole common law able in Dialectics and legal Finally,

new

legal treatises

ENGLISH

COMMON LAW

according to the new Dialectics."*^ While not wholly successful, their pioneering work led to the pillar of common law literature that emerged in the seventeenth century: Matthew Hale's History of the Common Law.^ Coming at the end of the common law renaissance, Hale represents the forging of a new

common law mind based on a language of mathematics, Cartesian philosophy, the scientific revolution, property and the social contract, and constitutional monarchy; a

legal

the pre-Tudor

mind

closer to that of

modem man than the legal mind of

era.

University of Calgary, Alberta

Notes 1 An earlier version of this paper was read for the Humanities Association of Canada at the Learned Societies, Toronto; and a much later version to a conference on legal thought and social control at Preston Polytechnic, Poulton-le-Fylde, England. I wish to thank the chairmen and participants for their comments and

suggestions. 2. F. W. Maitland, English Law and the Renaissance (London, 1901); T. F. T. Plucknett, "The Relations Between Roman Law and English Common Law down to the Sixteenth Century," University of Toronto Law Journal, (1939), 24-50; Sir William Holdsworth, A History of English Law (London, 3rd ed. 1945), IV, 252-93; H. E. Bell, Maitland (London, 1965), pp. 130ff; S. E. Thome, "English Law and the Renaissance," La Storia del Diritto nel Quadro Delle Scienze Storiche, I (1966), 437-45; and J. H. Baker, The Reports of John Spelman (London: Seiden Society, 1978), H, 23-46.

The background

assessed by

G. A. Poco*ck, The Ancient Constitution

and the Feudal Law (Cambridge,

1957), pp. 30-181; and his The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975), pp. 333-60. The early Tudor period has been analyzed by Baker, Spelman Reports, U, 23-46, 123-42; and the later Tudor period by Louis

A. Knafla, "Ramism and the English Renaissance," in Science, Technology and Culture in Historical Perspective, eds. L. A. Knafla, M. S. Staum, T. H. E. Travers (Calgary: Studies in History, 1976), pp. 26-50. A contrary view is that of D. R. Kelley, "History, English Law and the Renaissance," Past and Present, No. 65 (1974), 24-51. 4. The definition of these periods is made on literary and historical grovmds, and the periods are envisioned as reflecting phases in the history of English thought

and culture. 5. This transitional era is still in a state of flux. See especially Walter J. Ong. Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 92-150; J. E. Siegel, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Himianism (Princeton, 1968); Terrence Heath, "Logical Grammar, Grammatical Logic, and Humanism in Three

German Universities," Studies in

the Renaissance,

XVIU (New York,

1971), 9-64;

and Richard McKeon, "The Transformation of the Liberal Arts in the Renaissance," in his Developments in the Renaissance (Albany, 1972), pp. 158-223.

LOUIS A. KNAFLA

6. The context has been assessed by George M. Logan, "Substance and Form in Renaissance Humanism," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, VII 1977), 1-34. For the early legal humanists in France see the outstanding study of Donald R. Kelley, Foundations of Modem Histoiical Scholarship (New York, 1970); and in Germany the essays by G. Dahm and W. Kunkel in Post-Refoimation Gennany, ed. E. Strauss (1972), pp. 263-315. 7. James McConica, "Scholars and Commoners in Renaissance Oxford," in The University in Society, ed. Lawrence Stone (Princeton, 1974), I, 151-56. (

8. Ibid.

Stanford E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parhament 1529-1536 (Cambridge,

1970). 10. The thesis of Lawrence Stone, "The Educational Revolution in England, 1560-1640," Past and Present, No. 28 (1964), 41-80. 11. Arthiir B. Ferguson, The Articulate Citizen and the Enghsh Renaissance (Durham, 1965); and W. R. D. Jones, The Tudor Commonwealth 1529-1559 (Lon-

don, 1970). 12.

don

Thomas Starkey, Dialogue between Pole and Lupset,

ed. K.

Brurton (Lon-

ed., 1948), p. 195.

John Hales, "Oration in Commendation of the Lawes of England" (c. 1540), MS 4990, fols. 1-48; Richard Morison, "A Persuasion to the King that the Law of his Realme should be in Latin" (c. 1536), B. L. Royal MS 18 A. 50, and the corrected copy in B. L. Cotton MS Faustina C. 2, fols. 5-22, and his partial codification of the land law (imtitled, c. 1536) in Royal MS IIA. 16; and Richard Tavener, Institutions in the Lawes of Englande (London, 1540). 14. Published in E. Waterhous, Commentary upon Fortescue (London, 1663), pp. 529-46. 1 wish to thank Dr. Michael McDonald for allowing me to see his vmpublished work on this report. See D. S. Bland, "Henry Vni's Royal Commission on the lims of Court," Journal for the Society of Teachers of Law, X (1969), 178-94. 15. Baker, Spelman Reports, H, 29. The context has been ably set by R. M. Fisher, "Thomas Cromwell, Hvmianism and Educational Reform," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, L(1977), 151-63. 16. Anthony Fitzherbert, La nouvelle Natura brevium (London, 1534); John Rastell, Exposiciones terminorum legum Anglorum (London, c. 1525); and Perutihs tractatus magistri Joharmis Parkins interioris Temph socii (London, 1528). 17. R. J. Schoeck, "Sir Thomas More, Humanist and lawyer," University of Toronto Quarterly, XXXIV (1964), 1-14. 18. St. German's Doctor and Student, ed. T. F. T. Plucknett and J. L. Barton (London: Seiden Society, 1974). 19. The concept has been developed by J. L. Barton, "Equity in the Medieval Common Law," in Equity in the World's Legal Systems, ed. R. A. Newman (Brussels, 1973), pp. 139-55. 20. Pearl Hogrefe, The Sir Thomas More Circle (London, 1959); and R. J. Schoeck, 13.

B. L. Harl.

The Achievement of Thomas More 21. B. L. Harl.

(Victoria, 1976).

361, fols. 75-80, discussed by Baker, Spelman Reports, H,

127-28. 22. In addition to the

major study by Ong, Ramus-, see Reizer Hooykaas, 1958); and Neal Gilbert, Renaissance

Humanisme, Science et Réforme (Leyden, Concepts of Method (New York, 1960). 23.

Wilbur Samuel Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700 (Princeton,

ENGLISH

70 1956). This has

been up-dated with the

COMMON LAW

later literature for this period

by Knafla,

superb analysis of changes at Cambridge is that pp. 35-39, 46-48. of Lisa Jardine, "The Place of Dialectic Teaching in Sixteenth-Century Cambridge," Studies in the Renaissance, XXI (1974), 31-62; and Virginia F. Stem, Gabriel

"Ramism"

Harvey: His Life, Marginalia and Library (Oxford, 1979). 24. Mark H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 1558-1642 (Oxford, 1959), pp. 126-48. For OxJEord see more recently McConica, "Scholars and Commoners," pp. 151-81. 25. Lawrence Stone, "The Educational Revolution," pp. 47-51, 54-57, 60-68; and his "The Size and Composition of the Oxford Student Body 1580-1909," in University in Society, I, 3-37. 26. Hugh Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen (London, 1970), has some incisive ideas on this subject although his account of New Logic is deficient. The best study of the educational system is that of Joan Simon, Education and Society in Tudor England (Cambridge, 1966). 27. Louis A. Knafla, "The Law Studies of an Elizabethan Student," Huntington Library Quarterly, XXXH (1969), 221-40. 28. Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen, pp. 38-70, 383-403. 29. Kenneth Charlton, Education in Renaissance England (Toronto, 1965), pp. 165-99; and Wilfrid Prest, "Legal Education of the Gentry at the Inns of Court, 1560-1640," Past and Present, No. 38 (1967), 20-39. 30. For examples, see J. H. Baker, "A History of the Order of the Serjeants at Law" (Ph.D. Dissertation, University College London, Faculty of Law, 1968), pp. 80-89, 122-30. 31. R. J. Schoeck, "Rhetoric and Law in Sixteenth-Century England," Studies in Philology, L (1953), 110-27; D. S. Bland, "Rhetoric and the Law Student in Sixteenth-Century England," Studies in Philology, LIV (1957), 498-508; and A. Giuliani, "The Lafluence of Rhetoric on the Law of Evidence and Procedure," Juridical Review, VH (1962), 216-51. 32. S. F. C. Milsom, "Law and Fact in legal development," University of Toronto Law Journal, XVII (1967), 1-19; and his Historical Foundations of the Common Law (London, 1969), pp. 61-73, 92-100. 33. Louis A. Knafla, "Conscience in the English Common Law Tradition," University of Toronto Law Journal, XXVI (1976), 1-16. 34. Louis A. Knafla, "The Matriculation Revolution and Education at the Inns of Court in Renaissance England," in Tudor Men and Institutions, ed. A. J. Slavin

(Baton Rouge, 1972), pp. 232-64. 35. Donald R. Kelley, "Clio and the Lawyers: Forms of Historical Consciousness in Medieval Jurisprudence," Medievalia et Humanistica, New Ser. V (1974), 25-49. 36. N. R. Ker, "Oxford College Libraries in the Sixteenth Century," Bodleian Library Record, V (1959), 459-515; and the book lists transcribed by Mark Curtis, which are cited in Oxford and Cambridge, p. 285. I gratefully acknowledge the

use of these. 37. Wilfrid R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts, 1590-1640 (London, 1972), 21-70; and C. W. Brooks, "The Common Lawyers in England, c. 1558-1642," in Lawyers in Early Modem Europe and America, ed.

Wilfrid Prest (London, 1981), pp. 42-64. 38. A. Wigfall Green, The Irms of Court and Early English

Drama (New Haven,

LOUIS A. KNAFLA

1931), pp. 40-153; and W. C. Richardson, A History of the Inns of Court (Baton Rouge, 1975), pp. 211-44, 401-408, 474-89. 39. John Stowe's account in B. L. Harl. MS 542, fols. 125-4C; John Hentzner, A Journey into England in the Year MDXCVIII, ed. Horace Walpole (Edinburgh, 1881), p. 29; Bertie Johansson, Law and Lawyers in Ehzabethan England (Stockholm, 1967); R. M. Fisher, "William Crashawe and the Middle Temple Globes," Geographical Journal, CXL (1974), 105-112; and his "Sir John Denham at Law," Modem Philology, LXXl (1974), 266-76. 40. Sir George Bue, The Third Universitie of England, in John Stowe, Annales, ed. E. Howes (London, 1615), pp. 958-69. 41. Lambarde's discourse on the high coxats— Archeion, ed. C. H. Mcllwain and P. L. Ward (Cambridge, Mass., 1957); and the Chancery-B. L. Hargrave MS 227, fols. 193v-98v; and his Archaionomia (London, 1568). 42. This subject is discussed in Louis A. Knafla, Law and Pohtics in Jacobean England (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 39-64, 209-49, 282-96, 319-36. See also A Discourse upon the Exposicion €t) Understandinge of Statutes, ed. Samuel E. Thorme (San Marino, 1942), pp. 35-92. 43. Abraham Fraunce, The Arcadian Rhetorike (London, 1588), and The Lawiers Logike (London, 1588); Henry Finch, Nomotechnia (London, 1613); and Sir John Dodderidge, The English Lawyer (London, 1631), and "A Breefe Proiect," B. L. Harl. MS 5220, fols. 3-21. For recent, revealing studies of Finch, see Wilfrid Prest: "The Dialectical Origins of Finch's Law," Cambridge Law Journal, XXXVl (1977), 326-52; and "The Art of Law and the Law of God; Sir Henry Finch (1558-1625)," in Puritans and Revolutionaries, ed. Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (Oxford, 1978), pp. 94-117. 44. The History of the Common Law of England, ed. Charles M. Gray (Chicago, 1971), with some interesting observations on the structure of Hale's mind and thought at pp. xvii-xxvii. An early seventeenth century precursor of Hale was perhaps Sir John Davies, Le Primer Report del Cases eu Matters en Ley (Dublin, 1615).

Analogia Graduum Entis: Cardinal Cajetan's Neglect of Thomistic Hierarchy Paul G. Kuntz

our study of Neo-Latin authors has the cultural function of Since tablishing the continuity of our tradition from ancient and medieval es-

sources through the renaissance to our modem world, what author is more appropriate than Tommaso de Vio? I have chosen to comment on his most famous opusculum of 1498, De nominum analogia, based on Aristotle and on St. Thomas Aquinas, and this text of the Second Scholasticism is the most important in establishing St. Thomas as the paramount thinker of that significant modem movement of thought, Thomism.

Tommaso de Vio (1469-1534) is an appropriate subject to honor, for he had been a student of the University of Bologna, as well as of Naples earlier and Padua later. It is of great significance that his treatise De Dominum analogia is the first in history explicitly on analogy, and as such the ancestor of innumerable studies, not only in theology but in linguistics, logic, methodology of science, and metaphysics. The most important point of Brother Tommaso was undeveloped,

"An understanding of this docno one can study metaphysics, and ig-

left to posterity to justify:

trine is so necessary that

without

gives rise to many errors in other sciences."^ to greatness, it is to be lamented that we have slighted Tommaso de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, as a figure in history. Have we perhaps slighted continuity in favor of revolution by calling his age for the Protestant

norance of

With these claims

Reformer Luther and for humanist scholar Erasmus? It is never called the age of Cajetan, and he is forced to play a minor role in the Age of Luther and of Erasmus. Whereas they are available in many editions, he must still be read in rare old copies, such as a score or more in the Biblioteca Malatestiana. Whereas Luther and Erasmus have been studied from every angle and in every connection, there is of Cajetan no thorough study of his life and works. May we hope, given an author of a hundred and fifty works, that we enlarge the circle of our twentieth-century editions and translations beyond a selected few? There may well be prejudice still against him because he did not side with Luther after understanding his dissatisfaction, and Cardinal Cajetan became the strongest defender of papal authority against conciliarism. There may well

PAUL G. KUNTZ

be the feeling that the best minds in his age were hostile to Scholasticism, and he is made to appear worse than an arid logic-chopper, but a reactionary as well. He did indeed debate Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in Ferrara in 1494 and represent the Pope in relations with Luther in 1518-19. But he was not remote from the pressing issues of people of his age, and we should not prejudge him without examining his arguments. Perhaps the most appealing side is his concern with problems of business and human welfare. From the same period as De nominum analogia he is credited with De eleemosynae praecepto (1496), De monte pietatis (1498), De cambiis (1499), De usuha (1500), and any man who concerns himself with poverty, pawning, exchanging currency and interest rates is certainly a down-to-earth himian being who could be made more appealing to those who do not care for more general or abstract problems. Yet as things now stand, Cajetan is best known for De nominum analogia, and it is fitting to speak of it this year, for it has now completed its 480th anniversary (1498-1979).^ With this preamble, may I state boldly that I regard Cajetan's interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas as radically mistaken? Cajetan grasped the centrality of the analogia entis in St. Thomas, but missed the fact that his thought of being was hierarchical. Although the longest sustained discourse on analogy comes early in the Summa Theologiae, arising from a problem in the De divinis nominibus, the De nominum analogia does not acknowledge that Thomas found his problem in the Pseudo-Dionysius. That is: How it is possible from knowing the creation to name its Creator? That St. Thomas accepted the hierarchical character of the modes of being is clear. "In names predicated of many in an analogical sense, all are predicated through a relation to some one Such thing; and this one thing must be placed in the definition of them all. a name must be applied primarily to that which is put in the definition of the other things, and secondarily to these others accoiding as they appioacb . . .

more oi

less to the first."

God's nature surpasses all others. Hence these names apply primarily to God, because these perfections flow from God to creatures. "For the words, God is good, or wise, signify not only that he is the cause of wisdom or goodness, but that these exist in Him in a moie excellent v/ay. Hence as regards what the name signifies, these names are applied primarily to God rather than to creatures, because these perfections flow from God to creatures; but as regards the imposition of the names, they are primarily applied by us to creatures

which we know

first.

"-^

In historical rather than doctrinal terms, St. Thomas accepted the NeoPlatonic hierarchical vision and was not exclusively Aristotelian. The error of Cajetan was to read St. Thomas as exclusively Aristotelian, and this error we have been in the process of correcting. To show the Neo-Platonic coloring of the Aristotelian paradigm of analogical meaning, the extension of meanings of "healthy," consider, as Cajetan did not, this interpretation. Although the paradigm is indeed based upon a text of Aristotle, the context is Christian Neo-Platonism: "... Healthy is predicated of medicine and urine in relation and in proportion to health of body, of which the latter is a sign and the former a cause, or according as one thing is proportioned to another

DE ANALOGIA GRADUUM ENTIS

(thus healthy is said of medicine and animal, since medicine is the cause of health in the animal body) And in this way some things are said of God and creatures analogically, and not in a purely equivocal nor in a pure univocal sense.... Whatever is said of God and creatures is said according as there is some relation of the creature to God as a principle and cause, wherein all the perfections of things pre-exist excellently."* The correct interpretation of St. Thomas' doctrine is not only analogia entis but also analogia graduum entis. Cajetan so rejected analogia inequahtatis that some of his followers call it "pseudo-analogy." My criticism is that this "Cajetanist" doctrine is unThomistic. Cajetan's error can be understood. He found in an early work of St. Thomas, The Commentary on the Sentences, a passage distinguishing three kinds of analogy. It appealed to an Aristotelian love of distinction to say that there is analogy (1) "according to intention only and not according to 'to be'," (2) "according to 'to be' and not according to intention," (3) "according to intention and acording to 'to be'."^ St. Thomas did not in subsequent works apply this threefold logical distinction. But Cajetan invented a famous division, without any further basis in St. Thomas, and without texts from Aristotle, the doctrine that there are (1) Analogia Inaequalitatis (2) Analogia Attributionis (3) Analogia Proportionalitatis.^ What Cajetan wants to prove is that "according to the true sense of the term and the practice of Aristotle, only the last mode constitutes analogy, and the .

first

one

The crux

entirely foreign to analogy."^

is whether modus primus, analogia inaequalitatis is "alienus ab analogia omnino?" The text from Aristotle refers to the use of "equivocal terms ... in which [the different senses] are far removed from one another, while sometimes there is a certain likeness between them, and sometimes again they are nearly related either generically or analogically, with the result that they seem not to be equivocal though they really are."^ Since Cajetan assumes that the "true sense of the term" àvaXoyi'a gives us its nature and perfection by which we can grade the modes, we need to ask about how the language of Euclid got into philosophic usage. Euclidian àvaXoyCa clearly shows "proportionem sive proportionalitutem" that has a unity in difference. The relation between a:ß and y:h is quantitative. The analogy established between 2 and 4 and 4 and 8 is, as Kant later described it, "perfect." There is no philosophic problem beyond examining the logic of relations. There is a well established proof of the equality: the product of the means equals the product of the extremes. It is altogether understandable that any metaphysician is, as were Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, deeply impressed by finding a type of necessary and universal truths, albeit only a relation between abstracted quantities.^ To what extent can this then be the model for relations between qualities, between substances, between states and habits and functions, etc.? Are any of them necessary and universal? Are any of them demonstrable? The way Cajetan asks the question is whether any of them are "proper." "Likeness should be studied, first, in the case of things belonging to different genera, the formulae being 'A:B = C:D' (e.g., as knowledge stands to the ob-

PAUL

KUNTZ

sensation to the object of sensation), and 'As A is to is in the eye, so is reason in the soul, and as is a calm in the sea, so is windlessness in the air."^° Clearly there is a difference between exact equality of quantities, 2x8 = 4 X 4, or 16 - 16, and a similar relationship, as A to B, so C to D. The latter is a relation of relations. If one wished to be very literal and strict, we could raise doubts, as did Kant, about all but Euclidian avaXoyia, even though Kant used the term also of Analogies of Experience,- but he did question analogies beyond experience. Cajetan's motive is more or less shared by all subsequent treatises on analogy. That is, there are many unjustified likenesses men claim to find and ject of

knowledge, so

B, so is

assert

between

ut multa fieret,

to D,' e.g., as sight

different things.

"Adeo tamen extensum distinctumque

nomina abusive dicamus;

confusionem

est,

multarum distinctionum adunatio

pareret."^^

Now we are ready to examine the case for the least acceptable mode, "analogia secundum inaequalitatem" or "Analogy of Inequality." Cajetan has a very dense analysis of the bad kind of analogy, for which he cites no offenders by name, but who are thought to have been the Scotists who defended the univocity of being. ^^ By this "inequality" he means a concept that is "unequally participated in." What exactly is the "unity of indisjunction, of order, or of a prescinded concept which is unequally participated in?" If a "disjunct term is a case of amword "dog" used of "the dogfish and that of the ordinary dog,"^^ a negate or contrary of equivocation indicated by "indisjunct." But does this warrant the identification of "analogy of inequality" with univocity? I believe there is a logical error made by interpreters. If there are ambiguibiguity, as the

we have

ty, analogy, and univocity, analogy being a mean between ambiguity and univocity, both analogy and imivocity are non-ambiguous. There are degrees of opposition, and no ground has been given for supposing extreme opposi-

Hence, until there is further specific evidence, I doubt whether Cajetan here attacking the univocity of the Scotists.^* I think it is just as likely, since Cajetan is attacking the doctrine of analogy of "order," that this meaning of order is hierarchical order, particularly since the lower degrees of being are said to be by participation in Being itself. Is it not likely that the object of rebuke is some Neo-Platonic conception of the chain of being? Cajetan is attacking the discovery of unity in some transcendent reality. Because he calls the erroneous analogy "inaequalitas perfectionis," he must have in mind the relating of the inferior to the superior, and he does refer to the hierarchy of bodies. ^^ Only when one thinks or intends a common term is there any identity between the esse of God and the esse of man, when we say "God is" and "man is," for when we consider the esse, there is difference between the independent and dependent being of Creator and creature. It seems to me that St. Thomas employed the analogy of inequality, and indeed the error of using a term is failing to note the degrees (Esse differs between "corruptible and incorruptible bodies," but must be found in both).^^ Something may be said by analogy, writes St. Thomas, "according to intention. is

DE ANALOGIA GRADUUM ENTIS

tion and according to 'to be.' This happens when a thing is considered neither equal in common intention nor equal in 'to be.' For example being is predicated of substance and accident in this way. hi such cases the common nature must have a 'to be' in each of those things of which it is predicated, but this 'to be' differs according to a bighei oi a lessei degree of perfection. In this manner "I say that truth, goodness and all other similar terms are predicated of God and creatures by analogy. "^^ Cajetan seems to agree with this metaphysics. "Perfectius enim esse habet in uno, quam in alio, cuiusque generis ratio, ut in Metaphysica pluries patet. Non solum enim planta est nobilior minera; sed corporeitas in planta est

nobilior corporeitate in minera: et sic de allis."^^ There is, Cajetan says, "priority and posteriority": they "do not equally participate in the notion of the analogon."^^ It is not merely an established use

found in Averroes' commenting on

Aristotle's metaphysics;

it is

Cajetan's con-

clusion also.^° It is therefore a puzzle why Cajetan rejected the analogy of inequality. He and his interpreters provide every evidence that this is a way of relating God to man, and man to nature, and levels of being within the realm below man in the order of being. ^^ Rather than accept the Cajetanist interpretation of St. Thomas, which was until recently so established as orthodox that any other reading of St. Thomas was rendered heretical, recent Thomist thought has ventured interpretations that are as fresh and novel as was Thommaso di Vio's in 1498. Among these new treatises on analogy we can cite those of Ralph M. Mclnemy, David Burrell, and James F. Ross. The Polish historian of logic and philosopher, Bochenski, has found Thomistic parallels in Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica. The Swedish historian of analogy has given us St. Thomas without any constraint imposed by Cajetan. French literature has been enriched by B. Montagnes' writings. Perhaps the most learned is the Italian En-

zo Melandri, La linea e il circolo: Studio logico-filosofica sull' analogia.'^^ If only Cardinal Cajetan had had another summer vacation after that of 1498, he might well have returned to his theme and done more than the singular opusculum. Had he done so, in light of his subsequent Biblical scholarship, and related analogy to metaphor, his contribution would have transcended that of

De nominum

analogia.

Emory University

Notes 1 .This opening thesis of the treatise is implicit in a recent essay by B. Montagnes, "Analogie," Encyclopaedia Universalis (Paris, 1970), vol. I, pp. 975-76. The Latin edition used is edited by P. N. Zammit, O.P. and P. H. Haring, O.P.,

PAUL G. KUNTZ

Scripta Pbilosopbica: De Nominum Analogia, De Conceptu Entis (Romae, apud Institutum "Angelicum") 1952. There are signs of recent American concern beyond the 1953 translation by Bushinki and Koven. These are the Commentary of Being and Essence, tr. and Intro, of Lottie H. Kendziersk and Francis C. Wade (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1964), and John of St. Thomas, On Analogy (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, n.d.), John P. Reilly, Cajetan's Notion of Existence (The Hague: Mouton, 1971). Among the distinguished recent treatises on analogy are James F. Anderson, The Bond of Being, (St. Louis: B. Herder Co., 1949), Ralph M. Mclnemy, Logic of Existence (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1961). This essay is deeply indebted to Edward A. Bushinski and Henry J. Koren, transi., Thomas De Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, The Analogy of Names and The Concept of Being (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 1953). Of The Analogy of Names they write, "he systematically explains the whole Thomistic theory of analogy in such a way that neither he himself nor any subsequent philosophers have found reason to add anything to the fundamental principles. ..." On the authority of John of St. Thomas and Sylvester of Ferrara, Cajetan has the answers to all difficulties, and solves all the seeming "contradictions" which some have dared to suggest in

Thomas, pp. 5-7. The editors then claim

St.

that Cajetan's philosophy of analogy is the "one midbetween "the extreme vmivocity advocated by monism and the extreme equivocity of pluralism, between anthropomorphism and complete agnosdle ground"

ticism....' p. 6.

There is however a new tone being set in Thomistic scholarship by J. A. Weisheipl, "Cajetan (Tommaso de Vio), The New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill Co., 1967), vol. 1, pp. 1053-55. "In philosophy Cajetan stressed the Aristotelianism of St. Thomas, often to the detriment of St. Thomas' originality. Constantly attacking Scotist views of being and abstraction, he presented a concept of being, which, though analogical, might be considered too realistic and formalistic, depending as it does on the pseudo-Thomistic Summa totius logicae. In this doctrine of analogy he overemphasized the importance of proper proportionality. Thus for Cajetan the proper subject of metaphysics is attained by 'formal abstraction'." 2. Happily along with re-publication of a few of his commentaries there is Opuscula oeconomico-socialia, ed., P. N. Zammit, O.P. (Romae, apud Institutum Angelicum, 1934). 3. The Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Anton C. Pegis (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 121-22. The Passage ST, I, Xm, 6, seems the fullest statement. I believe the underscored phrases about "more or less" and "more excellent" introduce the hierarchy of being and explain why Cajetan began with the analogy

The Neo-Platonic character Thomas' thought (and we have also St. Thomas' Catena aurea. Exposition of Dionysius on the Divine Names) would account for an Aristotelian's desire to ignore this side of St. Thomas' heritage and Cajetan's hostility to a mode of analogy base on participation. After writing my hierarchical interpretation of St. Thomas, I discovered one of perfection, of order, or the analogy of inequality. of St.

who similarly diverged from Cajetan: Bernard Kelly, "The Metaphysical Background of Analogy," Aquinas Paper No. 29 (Blackfriars Publication, Aquin Press, London, 1958). Subsequent literature on the topic has unfortunately ignored this argument. It

predecessor

DE ANALOGIA GRADUUM ENTIS

is ignored, for example, by John P. Reilly, Cajetan's Notion of Existence (The Hague: Mouton, 1971). By identifying Thomas with Aristotle's doctrine of "the individual substance" there is no consideration that this might be reconciled with Plato's doctrine of being as "its approximation to the One." (13) Thomas is made to appear to have himself divided "proportional likeness into two types," proportion and proportionality. "Being, for instance, is predicated of substance and of accident because of the [determinate] relation that substance and accident have to each other." "The second type of proportional similitude is called analogy of proportionality. This is found when there is a similarity of proportions.... For instance six and four have no determinate relation to one another, but are alike inasmuch as six is the double of three and four is the double of two." (30) Does this mathematic example help us comprehend "the likeness and difference in being," when there is no common nature shared by the perfection of God and the perfection of creature? (28-29) Nor does it help to use an analogy our intellect and our sight, because these are both created. (29-30) There is quoted, however, a page from Father Maurice HoUoway that raises the issue of how "we come to know God through creatures." His answer is compatible with a doctrine of degrees of being, but the possibility

not explicitly developed. Since, as Kelly says, "the idea that being, reality, has is [at the present day] almost totally lacking," we may conclude that interpreters block out aspects of a doctrine that they consider unacceptable. 4. The Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, STI, Xm, 5, p. 120. 5. Quoted from I. Sentent, dist. 19, as translated by Bushinski and Koren, op. is

degrees

cit., p. 12.

6. Ibid., p. 10.

The

editors very kindly supply texts that are expected to con-

vince the reader. 7. Ibid.

The Greek text is an attack on mistaking hom*onyms names. 9. The Euclidian source is VE, Df 20, and the influence is seen in Plato, Repubhc 534a. Perhaps the most explicit adoption of the quantitative meaning is in Benedict de Spinoza, De Emendatione Intellectus. That the mathematical model a:ß::Y:8 will not work for the relation of nature to God was profoundly disturbing to Kant. In a mere metaphor is "no analogy, but rather a mighty chasm, the overleaping of which (ptexaßavic efç àXXo yivoc) leads at once to anthropomorphism." Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Tr. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, Intro. John R. Silber (New York: Harper &. Row, 1960), p. 59 note. 8.

Physics, Vn, 4, 249a 22ff

for univocal or analogical

10.

Topics

11.

De nominum

17 (108a 6ff), A. N., p. 10. analogia §2, p. 4.

N. p. 4 refers to Ramirez, who is quoted below, ft. 21. N. §63. 14. James F. Anderson, The Bond of Being: An Essay on Analogy and Existence (St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder, 1949), p. 274. 15. A. N. §4. 12. A. 13. A.

16. Ibid., p. 12.

Sent dist 19, Q5, 2, ad 7, quoted in A. N., Analogia, §6. 19. A. N., §100. 20. A. N., §7. 17.

18.

De Nominum

ft.;

imderscoring mine.

PAUL G. KUNTZ

quoted by A. N., p. 13 "Although analogy according to the 'to by the later scholastics, nevertheless Aristotle and St. Thomas frequently made use of it, and justly so, for the metaphysicist and the theologian, who consider the 'to be' of things, must pay careful attention to the grades and oidei of being of existing reality. " De analogia secundum doctrìnam Aiistotelico-Thomisticam (Madrid, 1921) p. 53. 22. A most convenient source for new Thomist thinking about analogy is James F. Ross, Inquiries into Medieval Philosophy: A Collection in Honor of Francis P. Clarke (Westport, Conn., Greenwood Publication Co., 1971). This contains James F. Ross, "Analogy as a Rule of Meaning For Religious Language," pp. 35-74; Ralph M. Mclnemy, "Metaphor and Language," pp. 75-96; I. M. Bochenski, "On Analogy," pp. 99-122. For further studies, see: Ralph M. Mclnemy, The Logic of St. Thomas: An Interpretation of St. Thomas, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961). David Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language (New Haven, Conn. Yale University Press) 21.

Ramirez

be' only is usually neglected

Hampus

Lyttkens, The Analogy Between God and the World (Uppsala, A. B. Lundequestska Bokhandeln, 1953). B. Montagnes, La Doctrine de l'analogie de l'êtie d' après saint Thomas dAquin (Louvain: 1963). Enzo Melandri, La hnea e il circolo: Studio logico-filosofia sull'analogia (Bologna: Il molino [Azzoguidi], 1968).

Giorgio da Trebisonda: la tradizione retorica bizantina

e l'idea di

metodo

Ettore Lojacono

fortunatissima Isagoge^ di Giorgio da Trebisonda è stata pensata e

redatta negli stessi anni in cui Lorenzo Valla faceva conoscere le sue Dialecticae Disputationes. Nonostante che i fini che i due umanisti

propongono— più apertamente il Valla, più pudicamente il Trapezunzio — non appaiano lontani, l'Isagoge, pur riprendendo per vari aspetti opere logiche della fine del XTV e dell'inizio del XV secolo,^ ha una sua struttura originale, si

un'impostazione particolare che ne spiegano in parte l'ampio successo. Si tratta di una "disposizione" di motivi antichi e nuovi, indice non tanto di un compromesso tra varie tradizioni, quanto della formazione di uno stnunento che, più agile delle parti logiche del "corpus" aristotelico-scolastico, costituisce una più semplice base per la determinazione dei procedimenti del nostro pensiero e l'organizzazione dei nostri discorsi. Una logica semplice e breve — come è stata infatti intesa da chi l'ha poi unita all' Invenzione Dialettica dell'Agricola^— concepita in vista dell'eloquenza e priva di vaste ambizioni tra cui, soprattutto, almeno in una certa misura, la pretesa di aver senso nella dimensione ontologico-metafisica. Dalla visione del Valla, che non di rado assumeva dimensioni speculative, si passa dunque ad ima concezione che, come ebbe a notare un attento filologo quale Lefèvres de Etaples, si dimostrò efficace specialmente nell'ambito più modesto, ma pur ricco di ampi sviluppi, dell'insegnamento.'* È in vista di questa attività che l'opera del Trapezunzio sarà

come strumento elegante, incisivo e soprattutto diverso dai testi che avevano imperato nelle scuole medievali e ancora apparivano dominanti in non poche istituzioni scolastiche del XV secolo: patrimonio di novità che non può certo essere oscurato dal fatto che l'aristotelismo, già ben presente nei RbetorìcoTiun librì, operante nell'Isagoge, almeno come frequente richiamo all'Organon, diviene poi, in puntuale direzione antiplatonica, aperta ideologia nella Compaiatio philosophowm Arìstotelis et Platonis.^ All'origine di questa possibilità irmovatrice che attribuiamo sll'Isagoge è certo quell'incontro tra logica e retorica cui il primo rinascimento fu sensibilissimo e che il Trapezunzio visse in prima persona. Il rinnovamento di cui Giorgio di Trebisonda si riconosciuta

ETTORE LOJACONO

presenta in forme rivoluzionarie, ma, piuttosto come poco conosciuti, apporti che implicano un ampliamento dell'area lessicale, arricchimenti concettuali e, quindi, un diverso modo di impostare, ordinare e pensare problemi che, per quel che riguarda i contenuti, erano patrimonio comune della riflessione retorico-logica che già traeva alimento da fonti aristoteliche e, soprattutto, ciceroniane e quintilianee.^ Accanto infatti a reminiscenze platoniche, al netto riflusso del pensiero dello Stagirita, al permanere di moltissimi motivi ciceroniani e dei retori latini, a frequentissimi richiami a Boezio, a cospicue assunzioni dei Svmimulisti, sono i bizantini, tra cui in particolare Ermogene,^ che condizionano l'intero impianto dell'opera del Trapezunzio, costituendo così, in questo campo del sapere, la base per un rinnovamento che nella sua forma costruttiva non darà i suoi frutti che in pieno XVI secolo.® Per il tramite dell'emigrazione bizantina, già in atto, come è ben noto, alla fine del XIV secolo,^ i manoscritti di Ermogene giunsero infatti in Occidente e con Giorgio di Trebisonda, tra i primi Greci a stabilirsi in Italia, la cultura retorica dell'autore del Ilepl JSewv divenne elemento vitale e attivo negli ambienti culturali di Venezia e Firenze. Al contrario del Crisolora, che non ci pare abbia fatto ricorso per il suo infa interprete

non

l'utilizzazione di apporti culturali

segnamento

Ermogene, il Trapezunzio già intomo al 1420 con il suo maestro Vittorino da Feltre, ponendo così le premesse per la sua Retorica (1433), che può considerarsi la fonte prima della diffusione in Occidente della grande tradizione bizantina. ^° all'opera retorica di

trattava largamente del retore di Tarso

Non è qui il luogo per analizzare l'incontro e lo scontro di varie posizioni, che avverse, anche se spesso complementari, si rifarmo o a Platone o a Cicerone o a Cicerone e Quintiliano insieme, o ad Aristotele o, infine, alla tradizione bizantina che abbiamo ricordata. Per il fine della nostra ricerca ci par invece di notevole interesse dir subito che la nozione di metodo, presente certo nelle opere platoniche e aristoteliche, sottesa alla topica ciceroniana e all'arte oratoria di Quintiliano — soprattutto nei capitoli consacrati alla "dispositio" — appare esplicita e funzionale solo nelle opere ermogeniane. Nel Ilepì JSeòiv, ad esempio, essa è così spesso evocata ed utilizzata che, se si analizzasse dal punto di vista della frequenza il lessico ermogeniano, il termine "metodo" apparirebbe tra le voci più spesso ricorrenti. Certo, l'uso del termine, tradotto da Sturmius^^ modus o ratio, non comporterebbe di per sé prova sufficiente della sussistenza di un certo orientamento concettuale se non fosse anche segno di procedimenti determinati che si ripetono e precisano nel contesto stesso dell'opera. E questo appunto il caso di Ermogene che, almeno ci pare, ha inteso rendere esplicite le forme cui avrebbero dovuto adeguarsi i discorsi per raggiungere l'efficacia che si esige dall'eloquenza. Queste forme, chiarezza (oaçTiveiaperspicuitas), grandezza ((xéyeGoç magnitudo), bellezza (xaXXóc pulchritudo), rapidità

{yop-f6vr\ç celeritas),

costxmie

(^Ooç

mores), verità

(àXriStia Veritas),

eloquentia), sono infatti da lui distaccate temporaneamente dalla dimensione concreta in cui sono iscritte ed operanti— per lui soprattutto le orazioni di Demostene— per essere poi tradotte in rappresentazioni nor-

gravità

(BeivÓTrjc

mative, cioè in schemi di ordinamenti sintattici, in formule esemplari per scelte lessicali, inflessioni di voce, atteggiamenti oratori. È così che è sorta la possibilità di prefigurare la via dell'eloquenza, di rappresentare cioè schemi

GIORGIO DA TREBISONDA

di comportamento per provocare determinate emozioni, di delineare insomma—utilizziamo pure il termine— metodi cui l'oratore potesse consapevol-

mente

ricorrere per raggiungere i fini che si proponeva. Tali schemi normativi, per quanto dati nella forma della molteplicità, sembrano non escludere una certa concezione unitaria preannunciata metafori-

camente e riproposta poi in forme

assai prossime ad autentiche definizioni. suo scritto, infatti, se pur in riferimento ad un campo più ricco e vasto di quel che poteva essere a suo parere l'attività metodica, presentare cioè e suggerire l'ordinamento generale di tutti gli elementi costituenti le varie forme del discorso, Ermogene si richiama immaginativamente alla costruzione della casa e delle navi,^^ le cui forme non sarebbero che il risultato della disposizione in un modo o in un altro dei molteplici materiali che le costituiscono, metafora legata all'arte del costruire, ripresa poi integralmente da Sturmius^-^ e destinata, come matrice immaginativa, a larga fortuna almeno

All'inizio del

fino a Descartes.

Quando poi restringe la sua prospettiva ed le varie

forme in cui

gli oratori

inizia ad analizzare e a proporre

dovrebbero calare

loro discorsi, tale

schema

traduce e precisa in sintesi, tra le quali colpisce immediatamente la formula in cui racchiude la sua concezione della chiarezza, che, forse non a caso, apre la serie delle idee. La chiarezza esclude la confusione, cioè la disposizione casuale e, conseguentemente, si definisce mediante l'ordine che, a sua volta, si identifica in una precisa disposizione delle parti, la cui struttura non appare però esplicitamente giustificata. In certi momenti chiarezza e metodo sembran quasi coincidere, ed Ermogene li considera di così gran peso per l'efficacia oratoria da non esitare a raccomandare anche il mutamento dell'ordine naturale purché sia rispettata la via che l'una e l'altro hanno fantastico

tracciato.

^"^

La distinzione, che con

purezza è poi elemento determinante per

chiarezza, ha parte fondamentale nella strutturazione metodica poiché sta a

base di quell'ordinamento ritmato attraverso un sistema di precedenze — indicazione del luogo che i vari argomenti debbono occupare nel flusso del discorso — che, attraverso Sturmius e il conseguente ramismo, si imporrà in gran parte del pensiero retorico-logico rinascimentale.^^ Questo metodo che, per riprendere una precisa espressione ermogeniana, é la struttura della proposizione,^^ si ritrova anche nella configurazione di altre idee, come ad esempio nel trattato "Sul metodo della gravità," dove il retore bizantino sostiene che é mediante un certo ordine che l'oratore può dar l'impressione di dir cose nuove anche se ripete cose già dette da lui o da altri.

Se cerchiamo poi sostegno, per l'interpretazione di questi frequenti, ma confusi abbozzi di teorie e pratiche metodiche, che ci fanno particolarmente avil distacco di altri tempi e altri contesti culturali, in quell'eccezionale cassa di risonanza che é l'erudizione della fine del XVI e dell'inizio del XVn secolo, nei testi cioè di Clauserus, di Nuimesio, di J. C. Scaligero, di Vossius, di Morophius,^^ nonostante anche qui non si giunga ad una delineazione "moderna" dei concetti (ciò che, tra l'altro, ci farà meglio valutare a suo tempo i contributi di Ramo e Descartes), troviamo dominanti i richiami alla

vertire

ETTORE LOJACONO

"scelta," alla "disposizione," allo "schema sottostante al discorso," tutti più o meno rapportati alla ovvia metafora che rappresenta il metodo come una guida e una via. J. C. Scaligero, ad esempio, che analizza a lungo, nella sua Poetica, le opere di Ermogene e di Trapezunzio, quando si domanda che cosa si debba intendere per metodo, così risponde: "Non è forse la determinazione della via che potremmo seguire nel comporre il discorso? Perciò, dato che questa composizione necessita di parole, dell'ordine delle parole, del suono, il metodo sarà dunque il modo secondo cui procediamo alla scelta e alla disposizione delle parole grazie alle quali la proposizione acquista significato. Il metodo non è dunque modo di spiegare la proposizione, come quello (Trapezunzio) stimava. Non è pertanto parte separata dalle altre, ma quasi, per così dire, forma di tutte e questa è forse la ragione per cui veniva chiamato artificio da Trapezunzio."^^ E Vossius, che riprende e discute questo felice passo scaligeriano nella sua Institutio Oiatorìa,^ rinvia l'autore all'interpretazione nunnesiana di Ermogene, secondo la quale metodo è fondamentalmente

schema del pensiero^^ ma, a differenza di Scaligero, attraverso una distinzione "schema del pensiero" e "mero schema," sembra lasciare aperta la via anche

tra

metodo, che lo vorrebbe come "artificium."^^ Questo dibattito in cui, a dire il vero, Vossius non sembra granché impegnato, ci è parso significativo per vari motivi. In primo luogo esso mostra che tra la fine del '500 e l'inizio del '600 Trapezunzio era considerato ermogeniano e la sua opera retorica inserita nella "quaestio" del metodo: in secondo luogo presenta un'alternativa tra un metodo visto come "artificio," come marchingegno estemo operante soprattutto a livello delle semplici proposizioni, e un metodo come ordine sottostante al discorso, insomma come struttura immanente al nostro stesso pensiero; e, infine, lascia quasi intendere che si sarebbe anche potuto trovare in Trapezunzio l'origine di quella trattazione distaccata del metodo che, al momento del dibattito, era già stata attuata da all'interpretazione trapezunziana di

Melantone e Sturmius.^"^ Quanto abbiamo qua scritto sul metodo come ordine^*— quasi

sintassi del

pensiero — ispirandoci ad uno dei momenti più ricchi ed originali della storia della retorica, ci pare indicare la via che si potrebbe seguire per intendere l'origine di questa tecnica che, pur se per breve momento, costituì negli ambienti più avanzati della prima metà del XVn secolo un'autentica alternativa a più vasti ed elaborati organi logici. L'esigenza metodica si insinuava però negli ambienti del primo rinascimento anche per altre e molteplici vie, tra cui ricordiamo il procedimento della 8ia(ptaiç, che, in forme diverse e anche contrapposte, conoscerà larga fotuna, presentandosi a volte come metodo a sé, a volte come momento di tecniche più vaste e complesse. ^^ Non si tratta— se ci teniamo all'ambito ermogeniano— della divisione dei generi e delle specie, ^^ che era stata largamente utilizzata da Platone e discussa da Aristotele e Galeno^^ e che é prossima ad un'operazione metafisica o comunque teorizzante, ma, piuttosto, di un procedimento in rapporto con la pratica forense, consistente nel definire attraverso partizioni le varie situazioni relative alla causa in discussione: un'analisi dei fatti per classificarli adeguatamente come possibili o impossibili, ambigui, manifesti, congetturali e cosi via, per poter poi stabilire l'"oratio" che più si adatti al caso.

GIORGIO DA TREBISONDA

Pur nella sua diversità questo procedimento non era d'altronde assai lontano da quello per noi fondamentale che tendeva alla determinazione dell'ordine, giacché può certamente essere considerato come mezzo per il distacco dell'elemento principale della causa che, una volta determinato, impone di per sé una gerarchia nella serie degli argomenti da utilizzare. Melantone stesso, sostenendo nei suoi Elementa Rhetoiices che l'arte relativa agli Stati^^ — e la Siaipeaiç si identificava quasi con la trattazione di questa parte della retorica— tra tutte la più utile proprio perchè mette in evidenza il tema principale cui debbon poi riferirsi tutti gli argomenti, sembra aprire la via a questo accostamento tra ordine e 8ia(peaiç che stiamo suggerendo. Tale metodo ermogeniano, di chiara origine stoica (almeno per quel che riguarda la sua struttura teorica), ^^ come ha ben messo in luce Jäneke,^^ è dunque nettamente iscritto nella dimensione retorica; è per l'azione tecnica: conseguentemente, è tenuto al concreto, al quotidiano, e non può esser vissuto ed attuato che in rapporto ad una concezione nettamente utilitaristica. E'dimque per la sua funzione (muovere da persone e fatti per determinarne lo stato in rapporto a leggi e a consuetudini vive ed operanti in ima società determinata) e per il suo oggetto (una situazione reale, particolare, finita) che il procedimento ermogeniano si distacca da quello platonico. Naturalmente questa diversa impostazione e queste differenti intenzioni comportano anche modificazioni dei criteri logici di suddivisione: le strutture logiche che ne sono alla base non possono infatti essere pensabili come quelle platoniche nel puro ambito della teoreticità, ma, piuttosto, debbono trarre origine dall'esperienza del vissuto sociale e politico. È anche in questa forma ermogeniana— cosi diversa da quella platonica e galenica— che la 8ta(peaiç è pervenuta agli ambienti rinascimentali e l'aver trascurato questa accezione, come è accaduto anche ai più seri studiosi di

questo

momento

culturale,^^

non ha potuto che

ridurre, in

misura non del

tutto trascurabile, la rappresentazione di quell'insieme farraginoso di idee che

ha portato

molteplici elaborazioni metodiche precartesiane. nel suo insieme, la 8ia(pe<jiç appare come matrice della pratica dell'invenzione,^^ ed è per essa che il procedimento metodico, sotteso a questo momento fondamentale della retorica, si rivela come aspetto tecnico della parola: forse si spiega così— almeno in parte — quell'ambiguità e potenalle

Comunque,

ambivalenza del metodo che gli ha permesso di sorgere e di attuarsi sia delle arti sermocinali che in quello delle arti fisico-matematiche, ambiguità e ambivalenza che la storiografia non ha certo affrontato nella sua

ziale

nel

campo

complessità.^^ Infine, nel suo insieme, quel che abbiamo visto in Ermogene non ha fatto che mettere in luce quanto era dato naturale della ricerca retorica e della sua compilazione, di un'arte cioè che comprendeva in sé, per la sua stessa natura, i

suoi fini e

valore assegnato alla psicologia, alla "dispositio" e alla ricerca

degU argomenti, esplicita e sviluppata, l'idea e la pratica del metodo. (Le riserve di Trapezunzio per la psicologia, ricordate dal Monfasani, ^'* non tolgono che l'umanista bizantino si sia poi di fatto ispirato e tenuto a quell'esigenza e pratica psicologica, che eran proprie della tradizione retorica che l'aveva preceduto e che saranno poi riaffermate da chi la continuerà accettando e rivivificando

ETTORE LOJACONO

tenuto l'umanista greco). ^^ La retorica non si limita a scoprire e a contemplare certe strutture costanti che si alternano nel fluire ininterrotto ed infinito dei vari discorsi umani, ma si prefigge di insegnare a riscoprirle e a riprodurle al fine di raggiungere consapevolmente determinati effetti. Nel suo insieme e nelle sue parti si propone quindi come via e guida per la confezione di messaggi destinati a persuadere lo uomo sia nell'ambito privato che in quello pubblico. Pur legata alla parola più d'ogni altra arte, produce tecniche per la modificazione della realtà, ^^ priva in generale di ambizioni teorico-speculative, è determinata dall'esperienza le stesse fonti di ispirazione cui si era

e costruita in vista dello

uomo,

essere cioè sensibile agli affetti, in-

può sentirsi protagonista o — a diversi livelli di consapevolezza— più modesto artefice. Al di là poi di questi necessari richiami al concreto, alla determinazione di regole o all'indicazione di vie per agire nel campo esperibile della vita sociale, la retorica, che a partire dal Fedro platonico e soprattutto dalla prima parte del n libro della trattazione aristotelica^'' esigeva accanto a prove oggettive accorgimenti e tecniche tenuti al momento mutevole della natura umana, ha teressato alle strutture giuridiche e ai disegni di cui

portato i logici all'interno stesso della dimensione psicologica, essenziale, come è noto, per l'elaborazione di progetti metodici. E'infatti da questo necessario interesse per le disposizioni e gli atteggiamenti umani che prendon consistenza non pochi dubbi sul valore delle trattazioni puramente formali, che, pur con non pochi limiti, apparivano dominanti nelle opere logiche tradizionali, specie

nei vasti capitoli consacrati alla sillogistica, che ne costituivano to e

fondamen-

il fine.-^®

Questo era stato il segno della differenza tra logica classica e retorica, un segno ben altrimenti profondo e diverso rispetto a quelli, pur reali ed effettivi, delle diverse aree d'azione— la necessità o la probabilità— e della veste disadorna od ornata del discorso, cui gli stessi protagonisti spesso si rifacevano. -^^

L'avvicinamento delle due arti— quasi fusione — che si pone come fondamento per una nuova cultura, poteva prodursi senza che una (vive) delle componenti, la logica, cedesse parte del primato che nella sua veste formale aveva sempre rivendicato e si trasformasse interamente nelle sue strutture e nelle sue esigenze fino a raggiungere una nuova e riscattata autonomia ove le antiche forme del corpus aristotelico-scolastico sarebbero state totalmente rinnegate.^ Trapezunzio è buona guida per l'intelligenza della sue stessa opera retorica. Consapevole della necessità di intraprendere al suo tempo un tale lavoro,*^ non avanza pretese di elaborare concezioni assolutamente originali'^^ — esigenza d'altronde scarsamente sentita all'alba del mondo moderno— ma si limita a ricordare che il suo contributo costituirà im arricchimento ed un ampliamento di questo o quell'argomento che si accinge a trattare, hifatti dopo aver sottolineato, in generale, nella prefazione ai Rbetoriconim libri la necessità della sua impresa— dato lo stato di abiezione in cui non l'eloquenza, ma Vais rhetorica era caduta ai suoi tempi— accenna poi in particolare, nel corso stesso del testo, all'originalità del suo lavoro per quel che riguarda l'aigumentatio, la natura del genere dimostrativo, la dispositìo e l'elocutio.^^ Questa sua relativa originalità si rapporta, nonostante tutte le riserve che al riguardo ,

GIORGIO DA TREBISONDA

sono state legittimamente avanzate, a concezioni non certo lontane da quelle umanisti suoi contemporanei che pure l'haimo avversato: si è detto a ragione che ha difeso posizioni scolastiche/'^ ma, ad eccezione dello scrupodi

Monfasani, '^^ non ci si è mai soffermati a sufficienza sulla pecuqueste sue prese di posizione, analizzandole anche in rapporto a quelle vaste elaborazioni che sono invece alla base di processi di rinnovamento sia nell'ambito della logica che in quello della retorica. Se, a proposito delle tradizioni, Trapezimzio ha difeso il valore della fedeltà, per quanto riguarda la retorica ha operato una vasta sintesi dei "classici," proponendola come uno strumento nuovo per la riflessione sull'eloquenza e la sua attuazione nel mondo

losissimo liarità di

civile.

Aristotele, Cicerone ed Ermogene avevano presentato la retorica come scienza profondamente umana e tenuta alla dimensione sociale e politica dell'uomo. Non v'è pagina delle loro trattazioni che non abbia rapporto — come abbiamo già accennato parlandone in generale — con il quotidiano, con l'uomo che si difende o attacca nell'ambito sociale, sulla base del diritto o del costume, che dà consigli in vista di decisioni fondamentali per la vita pubblica o privata o che elogia o biasima imprese determinanti per la vita della comunità.*^ Chi ha trattato in generale della retorica ha insistito a vite sul-la funzione dello stile [elocutio], ha parlato di "hom*o eloquens";'^'' a noi pare invece essenziale ricordare innanzi tutto come questa eloquenza, limgi dall'esser ricercata come fine in sé, fosse soprattutto concepita nel contesto della vita della città, in funzione della disputa giuridica e della lotta politica. Diritto e retorica sono atti complementari e non ci par possibile comprenderli appieno se si disgiun-

gono. Aristotele parla di quest'arte come di una forza, di uno strumento tecnico non violento per l'affermazione dell'uomo nella società.'^® Cicerone, ancora una volta fonte privilegiata del retore bizantino, riprende nel cosiddetto De Jnventione A mito dell'originario stato ferino dell'uomo per proporre la Retorica come strumento di evoluzione alla vita civile e come elemento di coesione della nuova società fondata sulla forza del diritto e rispettosa di una certa equità.'^^

La fusione delle varie tradizioni si rivela naturalmente tanto nel piano generale del suo lavoro che nelle parti che lo costituiscono. Già l'ordinamento in libri, che pur non riflette la struttura profonda dell'opera, rende trasparente la molteplice ispirazione del Trapezunzio: ill° tratta dell'ßxordiiim, della nûrsovrappone ad un inizio, ove prima parte della pseudo-ciceroniana teoria ermogeniana che, a sua volta, riprendeva

latio, della divisio e della teorìa degli stati e

l'autore segue quasi letteralmente la

Rbetorìca ad HeTennium, la temi di Ermagora; il 2° continua lo studio della teoria degli Stati e quindi del genere guidiziale secondo l'impostazione ermogeniana e più raramente secondo temi della Rbetorìca ad Herennium e motivi più specificatamente ciceroniani; il 3°, sulla scorta di materiali logico-retorici aristotelici, pseudociceroniani, ciceroniani e talvolta anche ermogeniani e boeziani e dei summulisti,^^ tratta abbastanza originalmente delle tecniche della prova e della dimostrazione; il 4° riprende gran parte del terzo libro della R. ad Herennium sia per quel che riguarda l'analisi dei generi deliberativo e dimostrativo che per i capitoli

ETTORE LOJACONO

non manca qualche spunto originale) e sulla memoria, dove invece riassume, riproducendone talvolta integralmente alcuni passi, la magnifica trattazione dell'opera pseudociceroniana; il 5° espone la teoria degli stui, prima sulla base della R. ad Heiennium, citata direttamente, poi in stretto rapporto con U Ilepì JSewv di Ermogene, e rivela così l'intenzione di colmare ima grave lacuna del sapere retorico e fornire di quest'Ars ima sintesi veramente compiuta. Al di là di questa strutturazione per libri, ovviamente estema e in una certa misura ingannatrice (la corrispondenza tra il numero dei libri e le parti della retorica porta ad attendersi un libro per ognuna di queste parti), ritroviamo in quest'opera im disegno ove l'ispirazione sintetico-eclettica dell' autore è ancora più traparente e motivata. Questa suddivisione profonda, per generi di cause e compiti dell'oratore, mantiene il privilegio che la tradizione ciceroniana accordava al genere giudiziario e all'invenzione e si pone, conseguentemente, come un ampio studio dell'invenzione per i vari generi— tre libri dedicati al giudiziario, con ampia parentesi sulla teoria degli stati, e uno al deliberativo e al dimostrativo— completato da precetti relativi alla Disposisulla dispositio (ove

tio, alla Pionuntiatio, alisi Memoria e, soprattutto, alla Elocutio. Ora se consideriamo, in questa luce, l'Ars rhetorica absolutìssima di Ermogene e il suo contenuto (gli Stati, il De Inventione, che in quattro vasti capitoli trattava dell'Orûtio nelle sue parti— £xordium, Narratio, Argumentatio e Figurae — e il riepì {8kôv), possiamo renderci perfettamente conto come, nonostante tutte le letterali imitazioni, U Trapezunzio abbia potuto immaginare un irmesto simmetrico delle grandi tradizioni l'una sull'altra e guindi intrawedere la possibilità di pervenire a un corpus retorico-logico che, distaccandosi dalle produzioni medioevali come dai timidi tentativi di rinnovamento del Guarino, del Loschi e del Barzizza, potesse proporsi in questo campo come una nuova Institutio oratoria. La materia così ordinata veniva presentata (meglio sarebbe

secondo un metodo— parliamo qui di procedimento di lavoro, Cicerone e ad Ermogene e che direttamente o per il tamite di Trapezunzio condizionerà tutte le opere di dire sezionata)

non

di rappresentazioni teoriche — comune a

retorica

almeno sino

alla fine del

XVI

secolo.

Cicerone lo aveva teorizzato nei topici, distinguendo tra la definizione per partitionem e quella per divisionem: la prima che divide, senza possibilità d'omissioni, l'idea proposta in ciò che potrebbero dirsi le sue membra; la seconda che mira invece a definire, utilizzando la classificazione in specie e generi

Ermogene, all'inizio del HI capitolo del De Inventione, denuncia chiaramente il suo modo di procedere: "abbiamo esposto per pûititionem l'arte dell'inventare" e il Laurentius nel suo commento, riferendosi all'intera opera del retore di Tarso, ^^ definisce nettamente questo metodo intemo: "le arti si fanno conoscere per partitiones." Questo è anche il metodo di lavoro di Trapezunzio, che divide continuamente in parti l'idea che vuol far conoscere, iscrivendo ovviamente il suo sapere nella dimensione verbale, che rimarrà l'unica sino alle opere di Galileo, di Descartes e dei ricercatori del XVU secolo. ^^ Giorgio di Trebisonda ha profondamente creduto^'* in questa sua Rhetorica pensata come sapere compren-

GIORGIO DA TREBISONDA

dente la logica: l'Isagoge, adattata, avrebbe potuto trovar posto nel terzo libro dedicato aììl'aTgumentatio in rapporto allay nuova immagine della prima cultura rinascimentale,

una cultura preminentemente ciceroniana, di cui Giorgio modo, come afferma alla

era insieme promotore ed irrequieto seguace. In tal fine del 4° libro dei

Rbetorìconun e in vari luoghi dell'Isagoge, ^^ e come penseranno pure i suoi commentatori Latomus e Neviomagio, si distacca sia da vasti manuali aristotelico-scolastici che dalle Summulae di cui pur ampia-

mente

serviva.

Questo nuovo corpus, inspiegabilmente tacciato da imo studioso benemerito come il Sabbadini e da H. Wilson di non essere che una vasta congerie di materiali retorici riuniti senza ordine e misura^^ (giudizio che peserà non poco sul tipo di avvicinamento a quest'opera di Giorgio da parte dei nostri più validi studiosi del Rinascimento), costituiva invece un'equilibrata e misurata trattazione che da una parte esaltava la tecnicità di questo sapere e dall'altra, nonostante la sua relativa mole, non contraddiceva quell'esigenza di brevità, affermata più volte tanto nei Rbetoncorum libri che nell'Isagoge.^^ Operare per fondare una cultura retorica equivale per Trapezunzio ad affermare il valore stesso di un sapere tecnico, di un'ars intesa come strumento per la formazione

sapere che, assente, rende l'oratore innaturale ed impacciato, presente, spontaneo ed efficace, a fornire insomma— e ciò ben prima di Agricola— una nuova dialettica "umana", cioè più attenta all'esigenza, alla varietà e agli umori degli ascoltatori che non a strutture a sé stanti del pensiero. Come lo Zeusi ciceroniano che, invitato dai Crotonesi ad affrescare un loro tempio dedicato a Giunone, rappresentò l'immagine della bellezza femminile traendola dalle cinque più belle giovani della città, Trapezunzio, sostenuto da questa fondamentale convinzione del princeps eloquentie, così esemplificata nelle prime pagine del De Inventione,^^ consegnava ai lettori del suo tempo un'opera che riproponeva ed adattava quanto, a parere del suo autore, i maggiori retori e logici del passato, in qualche caso anche recente, avevano più di

lo fa apparire

e vari settori di questo campo del sapere. l'elemento rinnovatore di questa sintesi sta nel fatto che essa comprende la tradizione bizantina, che a sua volta, soprattutto con Ermogene, se pur in forme teoricamente assai sfumate, richiamava l'attenzione sulla nozione di metodo— artificio, suggerendo pratiche e significati ben diversi da quelli che lo stesso termine aveva assunto^^ nei contesti culturali che l'avevano più o meno frequentamente utilizzato, da Platone ad Aristotele

acutamente elaborato nei numerosi

Come già si è ricordato,

fino ai Summulisti.

Trapezunzio, se pur più moderatamente di Ermogene, si serve di esso nei RhetoiicoTum libri, talvolta già nei capitoli centrali e ben più frequentemente nella seconda parte del libro sull'eiocutio, assegnandogli lo stesso valore pratico — teorico che abbiamo già visto in Ermogene in quel contesto retorico che a nostro parere, come abbiamo cercato di mostrare, già di per sé é perfettamente coordinato all'esigenza e allo sviluppo dell'idea di metodo. La scarsa conoscenza del greco, unita all'inesistenza di traduzioni latine almeno fino alla metà del XVI secolo, ha fatto sì che le dottrine di Ermogene, come ha ben documentato il Monfasani mediante il richiamo al numero dei manoscritti esistenti, alle varie edizioni— 11 tra il 1472 e il 1547 — e alla storia

ETTORE LOJACONO

della traduzione dei termini yopyoïriç e Beivó-oic,^ si diffondessero nella seconda metà del XV e nella prima metà del XVI per il tramite di Trapezunzio, dell'in-

sieme della sua opera e della sua eclettica concezione. Giorgio di Trebisonda è così l'iniziatore di una corrente retorica ermogeniana con un suo significato culturale originale che, in taluni casi, tenterà di dare il privilegio all'insegnamento del retore di Tarso, a scapito di quell'equilibrio tra tradizione greca e latina che, almeno in una certa misura, era pur stato prospettaro.^^ Non

potendo tracciare qui la storia di questa corrente, che si identifica in gran parte con la fortuna di Trapezunzio, limitiamoci a ricordare, considerando soltanto alcuni paesi europei, i principali artefici del movimento, alcuni dei quali sono stati dimenticati anche da Monf asani. Giorgio di Trebisonda è notissimo e discusso in Italia già a metà del XV secolo, come dimostrano i manoscritti esistenti, uno dei quali ha appartenuto al Manetti;^^ noto, anche se avversato, nella seconda metà del secolo a Parigi, ove pure circolavano manoscritti della sua opera, che solo la gelosia del Fichet ha impedito fosse pubblicata negli armi '70;^ imitato da Filippo Buonaccorsi, (Callimaco Esperiente) e da lacopus Publicius, commentato da Femandus Alphonsus Herrera,^ ricordato da Gaguin, da Erasmo e assai spesso da Vives che lo accomuna— ed è fatto significativo — a Giorgio Valla e a Melantone;^^ è ben presente nella chiarissima opera del Caesarius^*^ all'inizio del XVI sec. quando è anche riconosciuto maestro di retorica sommo accanto a Cicerone e a Quintiliano e consigliato come autore su cui fondare una lenovatio degli studi sia all'università di Heidelberg che a quella di Cambridge, due tra i più prestigiosi centri culturali d'Europa. ^^ Negli stessi anni l'impostazione che Giovanni Sturmius e i suoi seguaci Junius e Eritreo daranno alla loro opera non sarà certo lontana da queUa che Trapezimzio, sulla base di Ermogene, aveva dato alla sua retorica e ai suoi commenti a Cicerone.^® Su questa linea incontra stima e seguito nel traduttore di Ermogene, Natalis de Comitibus (Natale Conti), che ne ha scritto un elogio acuto e pertinente, ^^ in Nizolio, che l'apprezza per vari motivi, ma soprattutto per la sua trattazione degli argomenti, ^'^ in Antonio Lullus, seguace rigoroso di Ermogene,''^ in G.B. Bernardi, ^^ che fonda buona parte del suo Thesaurus su esempi tratti da Rbetorìconun libii, e in Nunnesius, Scaligero e Vossius.'''^ In questa traccia per un eventuale svolgimento di una storia dell'idea di metodo nell'ambito dell'influenza ermogeniana trasmessa da Trapezimzio non abbiamo ricordato G. Fichet, distaccandoci dunque da quell'impostazione storiografica che a partire dalla Position de Thèse di R. Barroux J1922)'''* fino al Monfasani, attraverso Ong e Vasoli,^^ ha accennato al Fichet come ulteriore tramite della diffusione della nozione di metodo ermogeniano nella cultura europea. Sta di fatto che nella magnifica edizione a stampa della Rhetorica del Fichet, apparsa a Parigi forse nel 1471,''^ non vi è traccia né del termine metodo né del contesto del Ilepì ìZtuìv ermogeniano, che ne era struttura portante. Il Barroux d'altra parte aveva sostenuto che il termine in questione e le concezioni ermogeniane non erano rintracciabili nel testo a stampa, bensì in un'ulteriore redazione rimasta manoscritta della stessa opera, nuova redazione che avrebbe mostrato un profondo mutamento nelle idee del suo autore. Il manoscritto latino della Nazionale di Parigi 16233, cui si riferisce il Barroux e che anche il catalogo

GIORGIO DA TREBISONDA

90 di

eh. Samaran e R. Maréchal dà come testo del Fichet, nonostante il dosso "Anonyme," non è che una copia precisa e com-

della rilegatura porti la dizione

pleta dei

Rhetoiicomm

libri

V di Giorgio di Trebisonda,

richiesto dal Fichet,

Barroux dunque aveva dato il Fichet come diffusore dell'idea di metodo sulla base di un manoscritto dei RhetoricoTum del Trapezunzio.^^ Il retore bizantino resta così non solo il primo portavoce delle concezioni ermogeniane all'inizio del rinascimento europeo, ma anche il solo autore moderno grazie al quale il "barbaro"''^ termine fi.£9o8oç sia caduto sotto gli occhi di generazioni di umanisti e li abbia sospinti ad un nuovo ordine di

evidentemente curioso di prenderne conoscenza.

riflessioni.

Bruxelles

Note MSS

Wien, B.N. lat. 2485 e Firenze che lo autore auspicava per la sua logica. Cfr. J. Monfasani, George of Tiebisond (Leiden 1976), p. 301, n. 4. 2. Ricorderemo tra poco i punti in comime tra l'opera di P. Veneto e la logica 1.

Secondo

Monfasani, che

BN. Magi. Vin 1418, Isagoge

fonda sui

dialectica era

titolo

di Trapezunzio.

Toscanella, traduttore dell'Agricola e del Trapezimzio: tradurre ... quella dottissima e bellissima e utilissima opera della hiventio Dialettica di Rodolfo Agricola ... che V. Illustre S. mi commise, ch'io traducessi anco la Dialettica del Trapezoncio; acciochè li studiosi havessero in un corpo e l'Inventione e il Giudicio; che l'una ha quel bisogno 3.

Ecco quanto scrive

"Non ebbi a pena fornito di

che ha il corpo dell'anima." G. Trapezontio, Dialettica, con le interpretazioni del Neomago et del Latomo, tradotta da Oratio Toscanella (Venetia, 1567), dedica. 4. Lefèvre d'Etaples racconta di aver avuto occasione di assistere a Roma a dissertazioni di due giovinetti che trovò tanto eloquenti da stimare che seguissero solo studi letterari. Il pedagogo che li seguiva lo contraddisse con queste parole: "... verum ad philosophiam praeclare sunt initiati," quindi chiese loro di dissertare dell'altro;

di dialettica ed essi lo fecero "peregregie, verum multo cultiore nasiis et cyclopediis." L'umanista francese si informò allora

eleganti disserendi peritia et

tam belle eos initiasset

. .

modo quam in gym-

"quibusnam in tam tempestate, quisnam hac .

. .

ubi Veritas grassante barbarie strata iacet et exulat, tam dignus comperietur auctor, a quo potissimum solide in valvis ipsis ipsisque philosophiae ingressibus sit ordiendum?" Al che ottenne questa risposta: "Non paucos eiusmodi Graecia misit, inter quos, Georgio Trapezontio duce, hi discipuli mei spem nobis bonam facere. Quid, inquam, audienmtne virum illum? Minime. Sed in quodam eius opusculo praelibamina quaedam gustarunt." Il passo è tratto da ima lettera di Lefèvre d'Etaples a R. Fortuné (I. F. Fortimatus), pubblicata come prefazione alla dialettica di Giorgio

da Trebisonda, apparsa a Parigi

20 novembre 1508. La lettera

può anche

leg-

ETTORE LOJACONO

gère in Rice Epistles of Lefèvzes, pp. 190-91. La stessa lettera era già stata citata da A. Renaudet, Piéiéfonne et humanisme (Paris 1916), p. 145. L'utilità del manualetto del Trapezunzio è d'altronde riconosciuta anche dal Vives

che lo accomuna — ed è fatto significativo — alle opere analoghe di Giorgio Valla e Melantone. Ecco quanto scrive Vives: "Ad hanc {lapais della logica consacrata al Giudizio) libelli quidam extant hominum recentium non omnino inutiles, ut Georgii Trapezimtii, Georgii Vallae, Philippi Melanchtonis...." Vives, Ioarmes L., De disciplinis Libri XII, Lugduni Batavorum 1636, p. 547 (Pars E, Lib. IV, cap. I). 5. E.

Garin, in Giorgio di Trebisonda e la difesa del

Medio Evo,

in Storia della

letteratura italiana diretta da E. Cecchi e N. Sapegno, IH (Milano, 1966), p. 55,

medievali, come il Gennadio; è; come lui, per contro il rinnovamento; o, meglio, per il Medio Evo contro quel pericoloso ritomo all'ispirazione ellenica che è, nei Greci come nei Latini, segno di ribellione e di rottvira." Garin si è interessato soprattutto del Trapezunzio conservatore ed antiplatonico. L'aspetto ideologico della visione

precisa: "Il

Aristotele.

Trapezunzio è per

È insomma per

la tradizione

messa in luce nella Postilla: "La nuova (Napoli, 1969), pp. 287-92.

del bizantino è da lui d'altronde magistralmente

distruzione di Platone del Trapezimzio" in L'Età

Garin riconosce con perfetta imparzialità le doti di finezza del Trapezunzio e, conseguentemente, ne tiene in gran conto le analisi e i giudizi. Che il pensiero di Giorgio di Trebisonda si iscriva in una visione conservatrice della realtà politicoculturale, per altro in forme assolutamente anticonformiste, come nel caso della sua polemica in favore delle traduzioni medievali, non toglie tuttavia ambivalenza all'insieme della sua opera che, per altre vie, quelle appunto retorico-logiche, tenderà piuttosto al rinnovamento che a un puro ricupero del passato. Ricordiamo infine che Monfasani (op. cit. p. 18), sulla base del "De suavitate dicendi" (MS Vat. Lat. 2926, f. 172 r-v) sostiene che nel '26 Trapezunzio era ancora platonico.

summus philosophiae magister. Il distacco da Platone e la conversione quasi fanatica ad Aristotele si inizierebbe dal 1430. Nella sua ammirazione per Aristotele ebbe certo parte— e ci par fatto significativo— l'ordine che ritrovava in certe opere dello Stagirita. Ecco infatti quanto scrive quasi a chiusura del I Libro delle Comparationes Philosopborum Aristotelis et Platonis, Venetiis 1523: "quantus in phisicis ordo, doctrina, splendor Aristoteli est! quanta " Platoni confusici 6. Ci riferiamo ai motivi di riflessione che incontrava necessariamente chi intendeva interessarsi di retorica all'inizio del XV secolo, ma non escludiamo certo, come abbiamo d'altronde ricordato nel testo, le grandi differenze, talvolta anche di fondo, sussistenti tra le diverse fonti d'ispirazione che abbiamo evocato. 7. Dopo la presentazione delle posizioni ermogeniane a Vittorino da Feltre, il Trapezunzio, da poco in Italia, redasse una synopsis del Iltpì ISetòv (MS Vat. lat. 6292). La sua devozione ad Ermogene è poi esplicita in vari passi dei Rhetoricorum libri V, dove, ad esempio, si legge "Nam si Hermogenes et clarius et distinctius caeteris omnibus, qui ante eum fuerunt, de dicendi formis, quas Graece eî8£aç vocamus disseruit, a multis tamen ille potuit tam praecepta tam exempla delecta, sine quibus haec res explicari non potest, colligere. Nam et veteres omnes rhetores usque ad Isocratem illam scholam multa de formis dixerunt et Minutianus quamvis confuse nimis, multa tamen et praecepta et exempla partim ab aliis designata, partim sua industria sumpta a clarissimis oratoribus, illi parate subiecit. Nobis in Latino sermone nullus est, qui in hac re nobis opera praebere possit. Nam Cicero quidem quum multa de oratoria facilitate nobis reliquerit, haec tamen ita subticuit. In questo scritto infatti Plato è ancora ipse

GIORGIO DA TREBISONDA

ut nil aliud nisi plura esse dicendi genera, in quibus necesse sit oratorem insudare, nos commonuerit." Trapezuntius G., Rhetorìcomm Libri..., Basileae 1522, p. 134 r-v.

Pur nella loro imponenza gli scritti di Giorgio da Trebisonda (i Rbetonconun una compiuta e vasta opera di retorica) non ci paion costituire molto di più— ma non è cosa di scarso rilievo— di im momento di riflessione e di ordinamento dei temi retorici quali erano stati trattati dal mondo greco-romano e bizantino. Le linee di originalità sono tracciate, ma non sviluppate organicamente. Sarà solo attraverso la mediazione dell'Agricola e dello Sturmius e soprattutto nelle chiarissime elaborazioni del Cavalcanti e del Nizolio che certi temi appariranno perfettamente decantati. Si cfr. quanto scrive ad es. Q. Breen a p. XXX della sua 8.

Librì sono infatti

al De veris piincipiis et veia latione philosophandi di M. Nizolio (Roma, 1956). È pero soprattutto con Pietro Ramo e nel ramismo— anche se in tale ambito la Retorica verrà subordinata alla Dialettica— che i frutti di questa elaborazione giungerarmo a perfetta maturazione. 9. Cfr. in proposito: H. Rabe: "Aus Rhetoren-Handschriften" in Rbeiaiscbes Museum füiPhilogogie, LXm (1908), pp. 512-30; G. Cammelli, I dotti bizantini e le orìgini dell'umanesimo, I, Manuele Crìsoloia, n G. Aigiiopulo (Firenze 1941),

Introduzione

pp. 7-19; E. Garin, il saggio nella Storìa delle Letteiatuia cit.; diamo infine l'elenco dei manoscritti di Ermogene in circolazione, tratto dalla nota opera del

Bolgar:

1425 Cod. Laur. CS. 51 of the Rhetorìca in the library left by A. Corbinelli. 1427 MS. of Hermogenes in the list sent by Filelfo to Florence (Traversar!, Epp. XXIV, 32). 1455 Seven MSS. of Rhetorìca and one of Theorìca in the catalogue of the library of Nicolas V.

1458 Cod. Vat. Ottobon. gr. 22 of the Rhetorìca owned by Palla Strozzi. 1475 Nine MSS. of Rhetorìca in the catalogue of the library of Sixtus IV. 1481 Cod. Paris gr. 2978 of the Ais Rhetorìca, de inventione oiatorìa and the de foimis oratorìis, marked as owned by Filelfo (Omont, Bibhothèque de Filelfo and Inventaire sommaire). 1491 Cod. Paris gr. 2960 of the Ars Rhetorìca, dated and marked as copied by F. Vemardo at Verona (Omont, MSS. grecs dates sod biventaire sommaire). 1492 MS. of Rhetorìca in the catalogue of the library of Lorenzo dei Medici. Bolgar^

The

Classical Herìtage

and

its Beneficiarìes,

Cambridge 1954,

475.

Monfasani, che così scrive: "In the last months of 1433 or the first of 1434, he (Trapezunzio) published his first major work, The Rhetorìcorum librì V, which introduced into Latin West for the first time on a large scale the Byzantine tradition of rhetoric, based on Dionysus of Halicamassus, Maximus the philosopher, and, most of all, Hermogenes of Tarsus." Monfasani, op. cit., p. 26. D'altra parte già lo Schottus, tracciando una prima mappa dell'ermogenismo nel XV e XVI secolo aveva dato un posto privilegiato al Trapezunzio: "Auxit et rei difficultatem in singulis auctoribus xpionç, idque Hermogenis potissimum de ideis methodo: quae ut Aristotelea ac Tulliana longe subtilior est, ita admiratores quidem plurimos, sed imitatores paucos hodie repperit. Praeter Dionysium enim Halicamasseum in Rhetoricis et Ulpianum Graecum Demosthenis explanatorem, quotus eam quisque hoc saeculo tractat? Trapezuntii olim talem rhetorìcam cum stupore vidit Italia (la sottolineatura è nostra): duos fortasse Germania numeravit 10.

E questa

la tesi di

ETTORE LOJACONO Sturmium

et Erithraeum: Gallia

lulium Scaligerum

iinum Uteris cognitum laudare potest Bibliotheca sive

lectomm

P.I.

de poetica: Hispania rhetorem...." Photius,

libris

Nunnesium

opera A. Schotti ...a giaeco latine teddita scboliis

Augustae Vindelicorum, 1606, Praefatio, p. I. Di tutto ciò non tien conto A. Patterson nel suo lavoro, Hennogenes and the Renaissance, (Princeton, 1970), dove Trapezunzio non è neppure ricordato. Hermogenis Tarsensis ... De Dicendi 1 1 Si veda la traduzione di Sturmius in geneiibus ... Libri II latinitate donati et scholiis explicati.... a J. Sturmio, Argenillustiata.

. . .

torati, 1571.

12. Questo il passo ermogeniano ove è data la metafora della casa: "... Veluti domus, aut navigij, aut similium; si lapides, vel ligna, hoc, aut ilio modo sint composita, atque hue usque perveniant: huiusmodi genus fit, aut huiusmodi, cum aliud quidpiam sit, verseturque circa compositionem et clausulam." Hermogenis Tarsensis ... De Arte Rhetorica praecepta, trad, di Natalis Decomitibus, Basileae, s.d., p. 161 (Nell'ed. del Rabe: Hermogenis opera, Lipsia, 1913, p. 220). 13. Così Sturmius rivede ed ampia la stessa metafora: "Sed non solimi oratorem oportet invenire, verum etiam disponere. Et quod faciendum est in aedibus extruendis, idem faciendum est in orationis compositione et quasi coedificatione. Architectus non solum comparât lapides et ligna sed seit etiam qui lapides et quae ligna quibus conveniant domus partibus. Sed Oratorem oportet habere 8uva|xiv xaxTixTiv, rationem collocandi et certo ordine disponendo" Hermogenis Tarsensis,

ratione inveniendi oratoria Libri in, latinitate donati et scholiis explicati a J. Sturmio, Argentorati 1570, p. 4. 14. Ciò ci pare risultare da questo passo ermogeniano: "Nam si piuritas apertam manifestamque orationem facere voluerit, atque aliquid illi contrarium accidat ob aliquam necessitatem (nam complures sunt errores qui circa orationes versantur) illud corrigit ipsa distinctio, plurimamque partem sui, quod antea dicebam, circa methodum vendicavit: nam coordinasse quid primum, quid secumdum indices expetere oporteat, cum ad distinctionem spectet, methodus est quaedam, ut arbitror ... non illud nunc vestigationem inquirendum, sed quod cum ut res confundat

futurus

sit

per gravitatem,

dicendo sicut voluit per dicendo, et

earumque ordinem subvertat

in ipsis rebus,

nilhominus

methodum perspicuitatem induxit, hoc ante illud minime

ipsum ordine praecedebat." Hermogenes

...

op.

cit., p.

174

(Ed. Rabe,

p. 235).

15. "Perspicuitatem igitur et puritas et distinctio in oratione conficiunt. Fitque pura oratio ex omnibus fere praedictis, sententia, methodo, elocutione et reliquis. Distinctio autem plurimam sui partem sibi circa methodum vendicavit, atque aliud fortasse aliorum distinctionem posset efficere ..." Hermogenes, op. cit., p. 167 (ed. Rabe, p. 226). 16. Cfr. Hermogenes, op. cit., pp. 161 e segg. (ed. Rabe, pp. 220 e segg.) 17. "Est autem duplex methodus ut cum eadem quis dixerit, sibique vel alteri similia, non similia tamen dicere videatur, ordinis mutatio scilicet, et longitudo ac brevitas. Est eadem methodus etiam aliena scripta interpretandi: vel enim ordinem trasmutans, quo üle usus est, vel metrum." Hermogenes, op. cit., p. 355.

Rabe p. 440) Conradus Clauserus (Tigurinus); Methodus analytica sive resolutoria ex Aristotele, Platone, Hermogene, Cicerone, aliisque opt. autoribus conflata, Basileae 1583. II testo, 84 paginette, non dà quanto il titolo promette. Ermogene, la cui (ed.

18.

dottrina certo

avverte nei precetti posti all'inizio del volumetto,

non è mai diret-

GIORGIO DA TREBISONDA

94 tamente

citato.

Lo ricordiamo comunue poiché sembra implicita

nell'autore

una

certa concezione unitaria del metodo. Ecco ad es. quanto scrive a p. 5 dell'opera cui ci riferiamo: "Hae sunt orationis partes quarum quidam pauciores, quidam

memoravimus, ut possimus evidentius nostram Nunez (Nunnesius), Pedro Juan Valentinus; Institutìonum ihetorìcamm librì quinque, Barcinonae 1593 (è la in ed. che abbiamo consultato). Scaligerus, Julius Caesar, Poetices libri septem, Heidelbergae 1607 (è la IV ed. che abbiamo consultato). Vossius, G. ]., Commentahonim Rbetoiicomm, Lugduni Batavorum, 1643 (è la IV ed. che abbiamo conplures profenmt: nos

illas

methodum, quam molimur,

cuivis ob oculos ponere."

Morophius, D. G., Polystoi LiteTorìus pbilosophicus et piaticus, Lubecae 1714. Questa raccolta contiene una vera e propria storia del metodo— De methodis vûriis— pp. 385-405 (è la seconda ed. che abbiamo consultato). Per quanto riguarsultato).

da il metodo cfr. la sezione ad esso relativa della bibliografia di Bolduanus P.; Bibliotheca philosophica sive Elenchus scrìptonun philosophicomm, Jena 1616.

Diamo

19.

Quippe

testo latino che

(léGoSov

quam

tradotto:

cum

positione separavit, ratio,

abbiamo

insistas

a sententia, figura, dictione, membris, numeris, comnon satis mihi facit. Quid enim (xéOoSoç est? Nonne viae ad componendam orationem? Quamobrem ea compositio

cum. eget verbis, verborum ordine et sono: erit profecto methodus ratio eligendi atque disponendi verba, quibus sententia exprimatior, non autem sententiae explicandae modus, quemadmodum putavit ille. Non est igitur ti£6o8oç pars ab aliis separata, sed omnium quasi forma quaedam, quae fuit fortasse ratio, propter quam a Trapezuntio artificium diceretur. (J. C. Scaligerus, op. cit.

Lib. IV, p. 412).

20. Vossius G.

J.,

op. cit., p. 490.

302 delle Istituzioni letoiicbe (ed. cit.) Nuimesio integra il metodo nel Iltpl töeöv e lo definisce come ßgura sententiae. Già Sturmius aveva presentato nel suo commento il metodo ermogeniano in questi termini: "Ne te moveat simplicitas orationis indigna oratore ipynwlav in hoc loco vocat èÇa^nreXiav, oratoriam expositionem et elocutionem, id est exçpowiv quae complectitur non solimi verbonmi ornamenta, sed etiam oxripwcTa tcòv iwoiöv (la sottolineatura è nostra), quae 21. In effetti a p.

ab Hermogene [xéGoSoç vocatur: id est, rationes tractandi sententias cum amplificatione, ut simt divisiones, enumerationes ..." Hermogenis Tarsensis ... De Ratione inveniendi ... scholiis a Joanne Stunnio, Argentorati 1570, p. 19.

"Hermogenes hoc loco per (léOoSov intelligit quae ànXux; axwaxa appellantur, illa dimtaxat signât quae dic*ntur. Sane Trapezimtiana quoque oxrifJuxTOç definitio solis convenit figuris dictionis: ut cui ea sint verborum expolitiones et modi, quibus tanquam colorata amictu rem et vestimus et decoramus," op. cit., 22.

Questa è

<jxri[JiaTa

la distinzione di Vossius:

StavoCaç,

quae iccirco

ipsis subjungit sententiis at per ea

490.

possibilità del metodo come artificium appariva evidente da alcuni passi di Trapezunzio, tra cui ci limitiamo a citare il seguente: "Tria igitur nobis videntur, sine quibus ne constare quidem orationem intelligimus, sententia, methodus vel artificius." Trapezuntius, op. cit., p. 135r. 23. È tra il 1537 e il 1547 che in Melantone e Sturmius appaiono le prime trattazioni separate del metodo. Non è qui il luogo ove cercare di stabilire chi per primo abbia trattato il metodo come a sé stante. A tal fine occorrerà confrontare — come suggerisce lo stesso Vasoli {La dialettica e la retorica dell'Umanesimo, Milano 1968,

ETTORE LOJACONO

p. 283, n. 7) e come è nostra intenzione — le numerosissime edizioni delle opere retorico-logiche dei due autori esistenti nelle varie biblioteche in Europa. Per ora possiamo solo affermare che in proposito anche tra gli studiosi più seri regna la

più grande incertezza. 24. Laurentius ha ben colto e riassimto questa intenzione metodica ermogeniana qiiando ne ha dato la seguente formula: "Est autem methodus via et ratio artificiosa aliquid inveniendi, agendi, praecepta artium exercendi. Medici habent suam methodum, qua exercent ea quae agenda praescribuntur: sic artes reliquae. Omnis enim methodus est in praxi. 'A[ié9o8oi perturbate, confuse temere et incerto ordine tractant...." Hermogenis, Ars Oiatorìa absolutìssima ... cum nova veisione

commentarìis Gaspai Lauientii, Genevae 1614,

p. 190. vasta discussione del problema, visto però nell'accezione platonica e galenica si trova nelle pagine delle Arìstotelicaimn Animadveisationum di Pierre de La Ramée, dove l'autore cerca appunto di isolare la 8ia(peaiç come unico metodo di fronte alla molteplicità dei procedimenti platonici. Non ci pare però si possa

25.

Una

affermare che questa discussione

svolga nell'ambito dell'impostazione ermoge-

comvmque Ramus P.; Anìmadveisatioimm anstotelicarum libri XX, Parisiis 1556. (È un'edizione particolare in cui i libri DC e X portano un titolo specifico: Anim. Arìst., librì DC e X in posterìoia analytica, dove sono contenute

niana. Si

cfr.

osservazioni di particolarissimo interesse sul metodo). 26. Diamo qua di seguito le precise parole di Ermogene all'inizio del trattato degli Stati: "... res mihi sane maxima videretur ea, quae ad divisionem demostrationemque eorum pertinet. Dico autem non generum in sibi subiectas species divisionem, ncque totius in partes: quamquam et haec haud exigua simt rhetorices pars." Hermogenes, op. cit., p. 1 (ed. Rabe, p. 28) 27. Per quel che riguarda Platone il passo più significativo, ove la 8ia(pt(jic viene considerata teoricamente, si legge certamente nel Fedio (265 e segg.), ma, come noto, il procedimento è utilizzato largamente nel Pilebo (16-17) nel Sofista e neir C/omo politic. Aristotele ne tratta polemicamente negli Analitici primi (46a31-46b25), riservandosi però in altri passi [Analitici secondi 91b29-32), im atteggiamento più conciliante. Per Galeno si cfr. soprattutto De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, ed Kuhn, V pp. 796-97. L'insieme del problema è poi discusso sia da

N. W. Gilbert, Renaissance Method (New York and London, 1960), pp. 137 e sgg. che da Vickers Fiancis Bacon, pp. 30-59. Particolarmente interessanti le osservaStaîptoiç e partitio e la successiva distinzione tra partitio e divisio. 28. Si confronti in proposito quanto dice Melantone. Melanchton, Phi. Opera quae supeisunt omnia, Halis Saxorum 1834-1860, ed. C. Bretshneider, Corpus Reformatorum, XUI, col. 429 (l'edizione è conforme a Elementa Rhetorices libri duo, Vitebergae 1542). 29. Vedi Diogene Laerzio, VII, 61. 30. "Toto vero modo, quo status explicantur ab Hermogene, adducimur, ut stoicorum vestigia extare suspicemur." G. Jaeneke, De statuiun doctrìna ab Her-

zioni di Vickers relative al rapporto tra

mogene

tradita..., Dissertatio

inauguralis Lipsiae, 1904, p. 62.

Monfasani hanno certo tenuto conto del problema e tutti hanno ricordato Ermogene come imo dei pimti d'avvio per l'elaborazione della nozione di metodo. Non ci pare tuttavia che a proposito della 8ia(pe<jiç sia stato messo par31 Ong, Vasoli e

ticolarmente in luce

valore operativo e concreto che essa

sugli Stati del retore bizantino, e,

conseguentemente, che

assume nel

trattato

sia stata sufficientemente

GIORGIO DA TREBISONDA

pé

distinta dall'analogo procedimento teorizzato ed utilizzato da Platone e Galeno. 32.

Questa sembra pure l'opinione

to della

ut clarius

di Trapezunzio, che, introducendo

capitolet-

"Quoniam breviter de argumentatione dictum est, nimc fons inventionis appareat, rem omnium in hac facultate difficillimam

hiaipvsii,

così scrive:

breviter tangemus." op.

Lib. IH p. 64.

cit.,

Eco di questo problema si trova nella polemica di Gilbert contro Randall. Cfr. N. W. Gilbert; "Galileo and the School of Padua," Journal of the History of Philosophy I, 1963-1964. II vero dibattito, che certo non abbiamo qua modo di 33.

impostare, dovrebbe però portare— e non ci pare che il Gilbert l'abbia fatto— sull'ambito (scienze sermocinali o matematiche?) in cui il metodo è stato concepito come parte complementare o assolutamente alternativa della logica. cit., p. 271 e, stessa pagina, n. 119. dei passi più eloquenti in proposito ci pare lo abbia scritto, ispirato dal

34. Cfr. Monfasani, op. 35.

Uno

De Ordine agostiniano "

...

Cavalcanti.

Ne diamo qua l'argomento centrale:

se si avesse a parlare

con huomini tanto virtuosi e saggi

(U, 13°), il

non negherò che

lasciassero guidare solamente dalla ragione non fussero da prohibire queste altre machine (cioè accorgimenti discorsivi fondati sulla psicologia) e da usare solamente gli argomenti, ma poi che i più di quegli con i quali, o parlando o scriven-

che

si tratta delle cose, le quali in questo commenaccaggiano, sono tali, che quello che è utile et honesto et giusto non si può da lor spesse volte ottenere se con queste violente machine non si espugnano, non veggo perchè le dobbiamo ricusare; se per via più diretta e piana non ci possiamo condurre al bene per qual cagione non vorremmo noi per alquan-

do publicamente, o privatamente, to della vita

to diversa al

humana

medesimo pervenire?"

Cavalcanti, Bartolomeo: Della Retorica, Venezia

1528, pp. 79-80. 36. Si legga al riguardo quanto ha scritto E. Garin a commento di certe tesi di Machiavelli sulla retorica: "Così Machiavelli: da un lato conoscenza storica della situazione unita a ideali e programmi, ossia a concezioni d'insieme; dall'altro tec-

niche persuasive, ossia retorica— queste le doti necessarie al politico, a colui, cioè, che ha l'arte di incidere sugli eventi." E. Garin, Dal rinascimento allo illuminismo (Pisa, 1970), p. 34.

37. Si veda in proposito Platone, Fedro, 271a-72b. Aristotele poi nel suo n libro della retorica seguirà fedelmente l'impostazione platonica e darà largo spazio alla

trattazione delle passioni. 38.

Ci par significativo che

Latomus commentando

l'Isagoge di

Trapezimzio

valore del sillogismo che vede in questi termini "Syllogismus praecipuus scopus est totius dialecticae et unica iudicandi régula de omnibus quae in questionem deduc*ntur." Georgius Trapezimtius, De re dialectica Mbellus ... cum

ribadisca

1554 s.p., ma p. 24. La posizione J. Noviomagi et B. Latomi, Coloniae centrale del sillogismo è stata sostenuta dalla quasi totalità dei manuali i cui autori scholiis

non l'harmo esplicitamente

rifiutato.

La differenza nei termini tradizionali si trova perfettamente espressa, ad es., sia in Melantone che in Vives. Si legga quanto scrive quest'ultimo "... quarum illa (dialectica) argumentum paucis et brevibus quasi pimctulis coUigat; haec (Rhetorica) vero dilatet et accomodet causis;" segue la notissima immagine di origine stoica rappresentante la Dialettica come pugno chiuso e la Retorica come mano aperta. Vives, L. op. cit., pp. 167-68 (Pars I, Lib. m, cap. I). 40. Questo mutamento si è iniziato in ambienti erasmiani ed è stato espresso con grande efficacia da Vives. Già nel XVI secolo R. Snellius si mostrava perfet39.

ETTORE LOJACONO

tamente consapevole della

rottvira

che

era prodotta in questo

grazie all'opera di Agricola, Sturmius e

Ramo.

campo

del sapere

Cfr. Snellius, Rodolfus; Snellio-

Rameum

pbilosophiae syntagma ... Francufurti 1596, soprattutto pp. 104-14. Segnaliamo nella storiografia recente sia le pagine del Risse (W. Risse Die Logik der Neuzeit, [Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1964], 1, pp. 14-78) che quelle di C. Vasoli, op. cit., pp. 214 e sgg., che ci paiono i proposito particolarmente lucide e chiare. 41. Ecco quanto scrive all'inizio della sua opera:

Cum

mihi in mentem venit, quanta oratoriae facultatis tum utilitas tum sit, non possumus non vehementer dolere, quod his nostris temporibus nulla fere bonarum artium tam abiecta atque contempta habeatur. dignitas

G. Trapezuntius, op.

cit. ed. cit., p. Ir.

Atque hoc faciamus, ne quis putet nostro arbitratu haec frustra interposuisse, verum recte intelligat, nos in hunc librum nonnulla praeceptionibus ipsius oratoris, noimulla a Graecis transtulisse, multa etiam Ciceronis orationes legendo nos invenisse ncque aliquid hic positum esse, quod usu eius comprobari non possit" G. Trapezuntius, op. cit. ed. cit. p. 63r. Trapeztmzio inoltre ha l'abitudine di rinviare alla fonte e assai spesso cita direttamente, se non il passo, almeno l'opera di Cicerone 42.

o di Ermogene da cui trae questo o quel precetto. "... de argumentatione panca disneglecta est ab omnibus scriptoribus ..." (op. cit., ed. cit., p. 56v). A proposito poi del genere dimostrativo sostiene contro ogni tradizione che esso non ha constituzione (si cfr. 10 Iv e 102r), infine afferma chiaramente di essere il primo che dà un certo spazio alla dispositio e ali 'eiocutio." Quas oh res danda nobis est opera, ut non minus breviter, quam dare dispositionis praecepta referamus: qua in re plus etiam laboris nobis erit, quoniam haec quoque pars, ut

43. Ecco quanto scrive all'inizio del libro DI:

serere,

quae pars

ita

eiocutio, cunctis fere neglecta est

(p.

108v).

44. Cfr. sopra, nota 5.

45.

Monfasani, op.

cit.,

pp. 152-53.

Trapezimzio lo utilizza assai meno degli come ha scritto Monfasani {op. cit., p. 26), è per lui modello che avrebbe voluto insieme imitare e superare. 47. Cfr. Vasile Florescu; La retorica nel suo sviluppo storico (Bologna 1971), p. 28. 46.

Non abbiamo ricordato Quintiliano.

autori citati. L'autore delle Institutiones oratoriae,

48. Aristotele, Retorica, 1355b.

49.

mito cui

riferiamo occupa le pagine iniziali del

Inventione

Ciceroniano.

Monfasani (op. cit., p. 277) istituisce un confronto pimtuale con Petrus Noi abbiamo costatato vari pimti di contatto tra la Logica parva di Paolo Veneto e l'opera di Trapezimzio, soprattutto per quel che riguarda materiali logici. Nonostante ciò i summulisti rimangono fonti sporadiche e occasionali, cui era im50.

Ispanus.

non rifarsi data l'enorme diffusione dei loro manuali. In generale però Trapezunzio si muove in tutt'altra orbita intellettuale e, con l'Isagoge Dialettica, che pm: ricorda l'opera di Paolo Veneto, tenterà, come ha scritto Vasoli, di soppiantare questi fortimatissimi testi tardo-scolastici (cfr. sotto nota 55). V. anche il rapporto istituito con il Porretano da Vasoli. (C. Vasoli, La Dialettica e la retorica possibile

cit., p. 90).

51. Cfr. Cicero, Topica, V, 28. 52. Cfr. Hermogenis Librum De Partitionibus Statuum ... Gaspari Laurentij mentarii, in Gli autori del ben parlare, TV, Venezia 1643, p. 719.

Com-

GIORGIO DA TREBISONDA

53. Tutta l'opera documenta quanto abbiamo affermato. Tutto è quasi spazialmente ordinato, secondo suddivisioni che presuppongono rappresentazioni immaginative. Ad es. {Rbetohcomm lihrì V, ed. cit., p. 30v) 1' "occasio est tempus idoneum ad aliquid faciendum"; la definizione viene subito tripartita nelle sue possibilità, cioè in pubblico, comune o singolare.... In genere questo procedimento sarà seguito da quasi tutti i manuali di retorica del XV e XVI secolo. 54. Ecco quanto scrive nella prefazione ai Rbetorìcoruin libri: "Ac multo magis medicina et ceteris artibus eloquentia est retinenda. Nam ncque gubemari respublica sine oratione poterit nec improbos cives arcebit et a gubemaculis civitatis

depellet nisi vis eloquentie." (op.

cit., p. 2r)

Ci pare assai significativo quanto scrive nell'Isagoge, là dove rinuncia a seguire i summulisti e a trattare la teoria delle suppositiones: "Quas si quis penitus tenere cupiat, dialecticos, qui ea de re multa et protensa volumina conscripserunt, diligenter evolvat. Nam eius rei diligentior doctrina et longior est et ad usum oratorum affert pene nihil." Trapezuntius, G. De re dialectica libellus, ed. cit., 55.

s.p.,

p. 194.

56. Così scrive

troppo ampio

Sabbadini dei

Rhetoncomm

libii:

"È

im ampio trattato, anzi come l'autore stesso

ciò che è peggio, disordinato e abborracciato,

confessa." Ben più recentemente H. Wilson ripeteva lo stesso giudizio: "Compared with that orderly treatise, however, George's Rhetoric is some thing of an imwieldy catch-all. His hasty prolixity, for which he himself occasionally apologizes, is every where apparent, and the whole work lacks balance and simmetry." Cfr. Remigio Sabbadini, La scuola e gli studi di Guarino Veronese (Catania, 1896), p. 61, e H. S. Wilson, "George of Trebizond and Early Humanist Rhetoric" in SP, XL (1943), p.

372. 57.

Nei Rbetoricorum Libri

veda ad esempio l'invito

Narratio, proposto sulla scorta di Cicerone (op.

alla brevità nel caso della

o nel caso della dispositio ima formula spesso usata. Ancora più intensa questa esigenza di brevità néu'Isagoge, dove appare come elemento distintivo dai "Protensa volumina" degli scolastici. Nella Rbetorica tuttavia non si poteva raggiungere un alto grado di concisione, iimanzi tutto poiché questa Ars sembrava inconcepibile senza esempi e, in secondo luogo, perchè a torto o a ragione era stimata più difficile della dialettica. Più tardi ciò sarà riconosciuto e quasi teorizzato da Robortellus e da Keckermannus. (Cfr. Robortellus, F. De Artificio dicendi ... Bononiae 1567 e Keckermannus, Systema Rhetoricae sive metbodus et introductio ad eloquentiam ... Hanoviae 1606 in particolare pp. 238 cit., p. llr)

(108v) che l'autore intende trattare "breviter ac dare," secondo

e segg.) 58. Cicerone, 59.

Inventione, I-IV.

Siamo perfettamente d'accordo con l'affermazione

Monfasani

{op. cit., p.

326), sulla base del Gilbert, secondo la quale il termine Metodo era largamente utilizzato prima di Trebisonda (ma non di Fichet, che, come vedremo, non lo utiliz-

ma ci pare che occorra distinguere tra i vari significati e, vista la opera dello Hegius (Hegius, A., Dialogi de scientia, Daventriae 1514), non crediamo che la Devotio moderna abbia avuto gran peso nella formazione delle idee di Sturmius in questo campo. 60. Cfr. J. Monfasani, op. cit., p. 318 e segg. 61. Si vedano in proposito i vari articoli di B. Gibert, Jugements des Savons sur les auteurs qui ont traité de Rhétorique, che occupano l'ottavo volume di Baillet, Jugements des Savans sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs, Amsterdam 1725. zava),

ETTORE LOJACONO

62. Cfr. Monfasani, op. cit., p. 20. 63.

Vedi sotto nota.

64.

Opus absolutissimum

ibetorìcoTuxn Georgii Trapezuntii

cum

additionibus

Alphonsus Herrera), in officina Arnaldi Guillermi ... in alma complutensi academia-1511. Purtroppo non ci è stato possibile consultare quest'opera herrariensis

(F.

di cui esiste copia alla Biblioteca del British

Museum.

Trebisonda nel Cap. DC del Libro IH della Seconda tiadendis disciplinìs, nel Cap. I del Libro rv° relativo alla logica e nel

65. L. Vives discute tra l'altro del

Pars del

Cap. in dello stesso

tiadendis disciplinis, ed. cit. septem libios, Lovanii 1539. Si veda ad esempio pag. 69 dove l'autore si richiama più volte a Giorgio. Il fatto è di qualche rilievo se si considera la fortuna dell'opera del Caesarius negli ambienti protestanti. 67. Per quanto riguarda Heidelberg si legga la sequente proposta di riforma pubblicata da N. Mieg in Monumenta pietatis et liteiarìa, I, pp. 276-79. Ne diamo libro. Cfr.

66. Ioannis Caesarius, Rbetorìca in

un brevissimo passaggio: "Alios quoque qui in Logicis et dialecticis idem faciant, non Tantaretos, Beredanos ac id genus sophisticas feces perlegentes, sed vel Trapesuntim vel Rudolphum Agricolam...." Il passo è tratto dal De emendanda academia Heidelbeigensi (1522) di Jacobus Sturmius, da non confondere con il più celebre umanista Johannes Sturmius, qui più volte già citato. Per quanto riguarda

Cambridge I,

veda Ch. H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1842), 1853,

375.

motivi di spazio determinati luoghi della vasta opera Sturmius e dei suoi seguaci di cui abbiamo già detto nella prima parte di questo studio. Sarebbe comunque oltremodo interessante studiare l'incontro di Trapezimtius e Agricola, che sono messi accanto in vari programmi di studio, in Sturmius, nel commento di Neviomagius e Latomus, veri portavoce della corrente agricoliana, 68. Impossibile citare per

e infine nel Toscanella.

De Comitibus su Trapezunzio:

autem genere, nonquorum ego sententiam magnopere sum admiratus G. Trapezuntius non ignobilis quidem Rhetor inter 69. Così

nulli in

dubium vocarunt, an

"In demonstrativo

esset ulla constitutio:

iuniores extimandus, libro rhetoricorum quarto, multis verbis conatur ostendere ita esse aliquando absolutum genus hoc, ut nihil cum aliis commimicet et ab omni prorsus vel sui generis controversia esse possit immunis quam ego sententiam

prorsus esse deliram ludico...." L'autore dei Rhetoricorum è citato a proposito di tesi specifica del suo lavoro e in generale apprezzato, nonostante il disaccordo sull'argomento in questione. Natalis de Comitibus, De Terminis Rbetoricis libri V, Basileae, 1560, p. 255. 70. L'opera del Nizolio è un testo fondamentale per comprendere il valore di

una

Trapezimzio nella storia della retorica. Nizolio,

Si confrónti

ad esempio,

tra l'altro,

veris principiis et vera ratione pbilosophandi contra pseudophilosopbos,

a cura di Q. Breen (Roma, 1956), H, 51-52, 130, 139, 141, 144. De oratione libri VII, quibus non solum Hermogenes ipse totus. Verum etiam quicquid fere a reliquis Graecis et Latinis de arte dicendi traditum est, explicatur. Basileae 1558, p. 106. 72. G. B. Bernardi, Thesaurus Rhetoricae, Venetiis, 1599.

libri IV,

71. Lullus Antonius,

73.

Vedi sopra ed.

citate.

de la Ramée et son influence philosophique (Ecole nationale de Chartes, position de thèse 1922). 75. Ecco quanto scrive Ong: "Hermogenes' preoccupation with method was begin74. Robert Barroux, Pierre

GIORGIO DA TREBISONDA

100

ning to work its way into humanist rhetoric in the fifteenth century. At this time, as Barroux has pointed out, the Parisian htmaanist-printer Guillaimie Fichet picked up the term from Greek rhetorician and used it in his own 1471 rhetoric." W. Ong, Ramus, Method and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), p. 231. Tesi analoga in Vasoli, La dialettica e la letorìca, cit., p. 34 N. 8 e in Monfasani, op.

cit., p.

322.

Monfrin, Les lectures de Fichet et de J. Heynlin, in BHR (1955), pp. 7-23 e 145-53. A p. 17 sostiene che la Rhetorìca di Fichet sarebbe apparsa nel 1476. 77. Si tratta del manoscritto del fondo latino 16233 della Biblioteca Nazionale di Parigi: "Papier encarté parchemin 158 + ff. 42/4 lignes 29, 5x21, 5, lettres filigranées, initiales de couleur, dos refait en bois ancien sur ais de bois. Il Catalogue des manusciipts datés en écriture latine de Ch. Samar an e R. Maréchal lo dà come " redazione autografa della Rhetorìca "que G. Fichet a écrìte pai lui même. 78. È Nizolio che dice il termine methodus "barbaro" in quanto non ciceroniano. Si veda l'appendice del lessico ciceroniano di M. Nizolio, NizoMus, sive Thesaurus 76.

Ciceronianus, Basileae 1583.

Che

l'espressione greca fosse avvertita

negli ambienti ciceroniani è indiretta dimostrazione di

come

come barbarica

adozione del termine nella sua "versione" greca abbia potuto indurre, per la sua estraneità, determinati ambienti dell'umanesimo europeo a riflettere su questo aspetto dell'Ars Rhetorìca.

la sola

The Church

Fathers and Oxford

Professors in the Late Middle Ages,

Renaissance, and Reformation*

Guy Fitch

Lytle

the recent, and much needed, flurry of research on Renaissance religious thought (both popular manifestations and the learned tradition),^ the role of the Church Fathers has rightly received considerable attention. Many of the historians involved in this work have been interested in tracing the influence of patristic sources on the Christian humanists and in assessing the value assigned by the Renaissance to the Fathers as pedagogical models and guides to more authentic religious understanding.^ As fundamental as such questions are, we must now recognize the need to expand our perspectives to consider the influence of Christian antiquity on Renaissance culture in other than purely intellectual aspects: e.g., the iconography of the Church Fathers in Renaissance paintings, drawings, and sculpture remains a largely neglected, but very important, subject.^ We must also extend our chronological perspective to see that while the periods labeled "late medieval," "Renaissance," and "Reformation" may be analytically distinct, they in fact overlap in the normal lifespan of a number of important intellectuals. Among the various current projects which are revising traditional misconceptions about the "humanist-scholastic" controversies of the 14th to the 17th centuries, research into the use and misuse of the Church Fathers and changes in contemporary attitudes about the relative authority of their writings throughout this whole period remains crucially rele-

vant.'*

Late in the second decade of the 16th century, the "reverend fathers of the University of Oxford," professors of the sacred page, received a letter from a former student which began, perhaps not ironically as is usually assumed, by praising them as "such a group of erudite gentlemen ... [that] any one of you is qualified by erudition to counsel thousands," and then proceeded to indict severely the current state of the curriculum and pedagogy at Oxford, including that in the field of theology.^ This letter of Thomas More's, as I have shown elsewhere, contains a number of hyperbolic formulae common to humanist attacks on universities at least from the time of Boccaccio.^ Still his comments on theology do provide a good introduction to my topic. One professor, against whom More focused his ire.

THE CHURCH FATHERS AND OXFORD PROFESSORS

102

declares that only theology should be studied; but

he admits even

that,

don't see how he can accomplish his aim without some knowledge of languages, whether Hebrew, Greek, or Latin; unless ... the elegant gentleman has convinced himself that there is enough theology written in English or that all theology can be squeezed into the limits of those I

questiones which he likes to pose

...

for

which a modicum of Latin would

But really I cannot admit that theology can be thus confined. Does she not dwell and abide in Holy Scripture? Does she not pursue her pilgrim way through the cells of the holy Fathers: Augustine and Jerome, Ambrose and Cyprian, Chrysostom, Gregory, Basil and their like? The study of theology has been based solidly on these now despised expositors of fundamental truth during all the Christian centuries until the invention of these petty and meretricious questiones which alone today are tossed glibly back and forth. Anyone who boasts that he can imderstand the works of the Fathers without an uncommon acquaintance with the language of each and all of them will boast for a long time before the learned trust his judgement. Further, this fellow called students of Greek "heretics".... I need hardly mention that the New Testament is in Greek, or that the best New Testament scholars were Greek and wrote in Greek For that reason all the Doctors of the Latin Church— Jerome, Augustine, Bede and a host of others — assiduously gave themselves to learning Greek; and ... counseled those among their successors who wanted to be theologians above all to do the same.^ . . .

suffice.

. . .

This indictment articulated most of the Christian humanists' case against the professional theologians of the time, accusations that puzzled and aimoyed the more serious among them. It also implied that the Fathers, collectively, provided a unique insight into the "fundamental truths" of theology, superior to all others. Both of More's opinions would come under sharp challenge almost as

soon as he wrote them.

Many Oxford professors would probably have been concerned about this letmore because it went on to threaten, as More was in a postion to do, the patronage and privileges of the University than because it repeated a rather familiar list of criticisms and advice, frequently voiced by people whose qualifications to speak on theological matters were, like More's, suspect. Two authors whom we know were widely read at Oxford in those days had recommended similar programs of theological study. ^ Erasmus' Enchiridion, a bestseller in the University in 1519-20, suggested that ter far

from the interpretations of divine scripture, choose those which go as far as possible beyond literal meaning. After Paul, the best explicators of this sort are Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine; for I see modem theologians more willing to stick to the letter and to spend their energy upon certain sophistical subtleties than upon the illumination of hidden meanings. I have heard several of these divines who were so smug . . .

about their trivial little fictions that they scorned the exegeses of earlier writers almost as they would the expounding of dreams; Duns Scotus gave them such confidence that they considered themselves master theologians without even reading the sacred texts. But even if they do

GUY FITCH LYTLE

IO3

Speak very cleverly, let other men judge whether they have said anything of the Holy Spirit. If you prefer to be sounder in spirit than cunning in debate, if you are looking for food for the soul rather than a show of ingenuity, then meditate most profoundly upon the ancient commentators, whose goodness is more reliably tested, whose learning is more copious and mellow, whose language is neither dry nor crude, and whose interpretations are more in keeping with the spiritual content.^

worthy

Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples

named Cyprian,

Hilary, Origen, Jerome, Augustine,

Chrysostom, Athanasius, Nazianzen, John of Damascus, "and other fathers" as proper guides to a reverent reading of Scripture, and "the divine Dionysius" as an instructor on the heights of contemplation. ^° Much similar advice was not hard to come by in the early 16th century. But I suspect that most Oxford professors were probably somewhat puzzled by all the fuss, and they would have been even more so if they could have known what modem scholars were going to make of it. On the one hand, debates about the relative merits of different styles or approaches to theology had been common at Oxford since the 13th century. On the other hand, historians have seriously misconstrued the realities of that time by overly exercising value judgements which assign high marks indiscriminately to the Christian humanists, who were brilliant self-publicists as well as fine scholars, while ignoring or condemning the cranky and contentious, but often dedicated and astute, professional theologians who, from the vantage point of a long academic tradition and a role as definers and transmitters of orthodox Christian truth, rightly perceived many far more serious problems on their horizon than an unnecessary debate about certain linguistic issues or false accusations that they despised the Fathers, or were ignorant of them, leveled by nontheologians. May I suggest an analogy which I developed in another recent paper? If we accept the implications of much humanist rhetoric about the hostility of the imiversities to their advocacy of innovations in grammar school pedagogy concerning Latin, we would have to conclude that a number of professors were urging students to learn bad Latin as a matter of principle. This idea totally misses the point of the growth of a necessary vocabulary to match the on-going development of an intellectual discipline and a professional mentality. One of the greatest scholarly lacunae is a history of theologians and theological faculties during the later Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation,

which would put these

issues into their proper context. ^^

moment, my point is this: Oxford stood the enormous value of the Church Fathers But

for the

professors had long underto a full

comprehension of

the Bible, Christian history. Christian doctrine, and the relationship of Christianity to neo-Platonic philosophy. This appreciation did not require them to repudiate all the contributions of more recent doctors or contemporary magistii, nor did the growing (and at times rival) discipline of systematic theology, as practiced by various more or less subtle doctors, imply a rejection or a grievous ignorance of the holy knowledge of an earlier age. (Theology has almost always had room for disparate approaches to God, and they have often

been in conflict.) Oxford was in the forefront of

patristic research during the 13th century, ^^

THE CHURCH FATHERS AND OXFORD PROFESSORS

104

and further contributions were made in the 14th century. If the 15th century witnessed less original work, this was in part compensated by the attention given to building libraries in which the Fathers stood prominently on their appointed shelves and were actively read. No stampede was started by the humanist critiques at the beginning of the 16th century, because none was perceived to be necessary. Oxford theologians were professional intellectuals, with a long patristics tradition of their own, but they were not so arrogant or isolated that they were unaware of what new sources, translations, and editions were becoming available, even though they were no longer participants in much of the original work. Many of these newly printed volumes were gradually acquired during the first half of the 16th century, but the theological curriculum experienced no quick and radical coup. Duns was set in Bacardo by young Protestants more than by Christian humanists; and, what is almost never noticed, they put the Fathers in the dock right along with him. In both cases they were soon paroled to join in the religious debates sweeping Europe. I am not arguing that there was an evolution so gradual that the 14th and 16th centuries are virtually interchangeable, but rather that scholars have for reasons of temperament, or lack of modem editions and research, failed to understand the complexity of the intellectual life of late medieval and Renaissance universities

and the fluctuations

of fashion in theological faculties (e.g., the

Scotist revival in the late 15th century) sional,

cultural,

and religious

which set the stage for various profesIt is not enough to brandish a

rivalries.

monolithic scholasticism as a polemical stick either to beat or defend our academic predecessors. Universities were as intricate and contentious then as now, and both as receptive and as hostile to the external trends, criticism,

and correction embodied in and offered by their self-appointed humanist scourges as most of us would be in a parallel situation. In this brief and preliminary paper, I would like to sketch answers to three questions about the relationship of university professors to the writings of the Church Fathers during the late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation: (1) the availability of that literature in Oxford between the mid- 14th and mid- 16th centuries; (2) the use made of those works by a few prominent Oxford theologians; and (3) the attitude of some dons and university-trained preachers about the religious value and authority of the Fathers. Part of my original plan of research was to produce a kind of imion catalogue of all the patristic writings known in medieval Oxford and an index of citations. While some progress has been made on such a list by several scholars, I have also begun to question the methodology of isolating one intellectual tradition out of its whole context and subjecting it to separate study. But one benefit of this spade work and the extraordinarily useful bibUographical scholarship of Ker, Mynors, Powicke, and others has been the ability to dispel completely the common libel that medieval academics knew their Fathers only through the meditation of anthologies.^^ One of the earliest surviving Oxford catalogues is a list of theological volumes available in about 1360 either in the library of Merton College or for circulation to the college fellows. Merton had the reputation of being the leading center of scholastic logic and natural philosophy, as well as being a

GUY FITCH LYTLE

IO5

prominent theology college. What can we learn from this catalogue? First, we can discover the categories used to classify their holdings. The manuscript gives the following seperate headings, with specific titles identified beneath each: Peter Comestor (9 or 10 copies), Eusebius (1), Other Histories (2), Chronicles (3), Postille on the Scriptures (27), texts of various parts of the Bible, glossed (43), Peter Lombard's Sentences (15), St Thomas' Commentary on the Sentences (14), Dims Scotus on the Sentences (5), other commentaries of the Sentences (23), Tractates and Summae of the Doctors (11 copies of various writings by Aquinas, one Summa of Henry of Ghent, and one by Merton's own Thomas Bradwardine). After these come Augustine (43 entries), Gregory the Great (12), Jerome (3), Ambrose (1), Bede (3), Chrysostom (1), Rabanus (1), Boethius (2), Dionysius (2), and Seneca (2), with other more

modem

authorities interspersed: Anselm (7), Bernard (4), Hugh of St Victor Richard of St Victor (1), and Bartholomew Anglicus (2). Of a total of some (3), 250 works, the ancient Christian Fathers accounted for 72 and Boethius and Seneca four more. Excluding the Scriptures, they comprised over 40 percent of the collection, and this makes no allowance for the teachings of the Fathers transmitted through Peter Lombard, Nicholas of Lyra, or other modem

commentaries

^'* .

we can get a quite representative, if far from exhaustive, list of works available for each Father. Of Augustine, the Mertonians had the City of God, On the Psalms, the De Tiinitate, On Genesis, his Retractions, the Confessions, Of Christian Doctrine, and his Letters, all in multiple copies, plus single editions of On Free Will, the Homihes, On the Sermon on the Mount, the De fide ad Petrum, De fide rerum invisibilium. De virginitate. De bono virginali. On Baptism of Children against the Donatists, his 83 Questionum, the De simbolo. De doctrina cordis. De Utilitae Psalmorum, De ordine ad sinobium, and other small tracts and fragments. Of Gregory's writings, they had five copies of the Moralia, four of the Pastoralia, two of the Dialogs, and his On Ezekiel, cum aliis. Of Jerome, the popular antifeminist treatise, Contra Jovinian, his Life of the blessed Virgin, and his Letters, cum aliis Augustini; Ambrose De fide trinatate-, Bede's History, his Homily on Mark and On the Letters of fames; Chrysostom On Matthew and John; Rabanus On Maccabees; and Dionysius' On the Divine Names and his Hierarchies. Virtually all of the above were genuine writings. During the next century and a half, Merton added more copies of many of these works, as well as other writings of Ambrose (De bono mortis, De incamatione. De penitentia. De spiritu sancto, the Hexaemeron, his On the 119th Psalm, On Naboth's vineyard, and several collections of genuine and spurious writings); Augustine (especially on heresies); Bede (especially commentaries on Scripture); Chrysostom; the pseudo-Dionysius (including the Secondly,

particular

Mystica theologia with the exposition of Thomas Gallus); Fulgentius' On Faith, which was ascribed to Augustine; Gregory (more Homihes] considerably more Jerome (especially his Biblical writings); Lactantius; Orosius; Origen's Homihes, On fudges. On the Song of Songs; John Damascenus; Isidore; a large number of collections and extracts from the Fathers; all the tabulae and other medieval guides to patristic literature; and the 14th-century commentaries on ;

I06

THE CHURCH FATHERS AND OXFORD PROFESSORS

God by Nicholas Trivet and Thomas Walleys.^^ Although Merton maintained the largest collection of patristic sources until Bishop Grey, a friend of Bessarion and a quite conservatively trained theologian, made his magnificent bequest to Balliol around 1480,^"^ other colleges had much the same blend of modem academic texts, sermons, the classical writings of the Christian tradition, and of course the Scripture with its commentaries. The libraries of the various religious orders, especially the Franciscans and Dominicans at Oxford, were also rich in patristic material; and after 1440, the University Hbrary, thanks largely to Duke Humphrey, con-

Augustine's City of

tained some of the Fathers, including a specifically prepared translation of the works of St Athanasius by Beccaria.^'' Grey's gift and other acquisitions brought the number of Balliol manuscripts to almost 400, of which perhaps 30 percent were patristic sources. In addition to the complete range of modem scholastics, primarily Scotists, and all of the standard works of the Fathers already listed, Balliol also possessed some important new items: Origen's homilies and expositions on Christ's birth and on the books of Judges, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel; genuine and apocryphal writings of Chrysostom; Aquinas' collection, the Catena auiea-, Lactantius' Divinamm Institucionum; and Tertullian's Apologeticum de ignoiancia Ibesu Cbhsti; as well as many other lesser works and letters of the Latin Fathers. ^^ The copying, commissioning, or otherwise acquiring these volumes was in itself, of course, an important scholarly activity during the last medieval centuries and the Renaissance. The Fathers had to be available to be useful, and they were both available and used. Some editions were chained in libraries to insure permanent access by members of the institution or interested visitors; others circulated to fellows for varying lengths of time and presumably were read for knowledge and inspiration, and regularly consulted in the preparation of lectures, disputations, and sermons. Still others were the personal copies of individual students or professors. Even a quick glance at most of these manuscripts and books is enough to show that their owners and readers were hardly passive. ^^ Fr. Callus and others have shown us how that brilliant generation of 13th-century Oxford academic friars, notably Kilwardby, developed a three-fold system of organizing and studying the patristic material: (1) the Intensio (a brief statement of the purpose of each work), (2) the Tabula (an alphabetical index of subject matter), and (3) the Concoidantia (a comparison of the use of crucial words in various Fathers j.^"^ These guides to reading and teaching, as well as finding-lists, anthologies of passages on special topics, etc., could be found throughout Oxford and were clearly in frequent use. Marginal annotations, comments, underlinings, occasional corrections, and hastily prepared tables of contents and indexes to specific manuscripts show a very active relationship between these late medieval scholars and their patristic texts. At least 15 of the Balliol manuscripts contain extensive notes scribbled by the 15th-century theologian Thomas Gascoigne.^^ It is not my purpose here, even if it were possible, to provide a detailed account of all the citations to the Church Fathers by Oxford scholars during this period. Nor can I comment on the pervasive influence of Augustinianism, the

force of Jerome's ideas

on the

hostility of university

dons toward women, or

GUY HTCH LYTLE

lOJ

similar themes. The latter problems have been written about often, and the former will require a number of historians and a variety of approaches. Professor Luscombe has traced the course of one Father (pseudo-Dionysius) through a number of university authors. ^^ Dr. Catto and some of his students are analyzing the sources of particular writers (Wyclif, Woodford, Netter) in great detail. ^^ Elsewhere I hope to present more evidence on the role of the Fathers in academic exercises, as well as on contemporary attitudes toward

them It is

as "authorities." safe to say that all

Oxford theology professors cited the Fathers, but

same maimer. The systematic theologians used them least, is perfectly natural, and (here Scotus is a good example) often made mistakes

few did

in the

in their references

and even in their quotations. Thomas Bradwardine perhaps

more than any other theologian

of the 14th century combined the traits of and polemicist. Professor Leff has classified the sources of his De Causa Dei into those who really shaped his thought, those he used to support a particular point, those whom he opposed, those who provided decoration.^ The first group consisted of St. Augustine, the Scriptures (especially St Paul), and St Anselm. The most popular works of Augustine were ins Retractions, Confessions, City of God, Contra fulianum, Contra Pelagianos, On Free Will, On Corruption and Giace, On Predestination, On the Trinity, On Genesis, On the Psalms, and the Enchiridion: i.e., those works "which deal with grace and the relation between God and man, and which oppose Pelagianism." Among the general authorities in the second category, Gregory is particularly prominent, but he also invoked Ambrose, Jerome, Cyprian, and Isidore frequently, and sometimes the Greek Fathers such as Chrysostom and Damascenus. He also borrowed important expressions like "super-essentiality" and "monad" from Dionysius. He opposed any position that gave man's free will any independent power, and that included some passages of Damascenus; so Bradwardine could be critical of his ancient sources. Wyclif relied primarily on St. Augustine and usually quoted directly from his sources.^ Although Bishop Peco*ck was relatively sparing in his citations generally, he did use Augustine's City of God, On Baptism, On Genesis, On the Trinity, the 83 Questions, the De bono confugah, and the Book of the Soul's Quantity. He also employed Augustine's sermons and used his Liber de Haeresiis for his own summary of the heretical sects who were precursors of the Lollards. Peco*ck further claimed that his interpretation of Scripture was based on the methods which Augustine had adopted. He also mentions works and ideas of Jerome, Ambrose, Hilary, Gregory, Isidore, Eusebius, Theodoret, Bede, and Dionysius, along with some lesser early writers. Usually he shows that he knew the sources directly, but occasionally he resorted to the Glossa Ordinaria for his material. Peco*ck also ventured to criticize the Fathers (Jerome and Gregory) on a few points, and this earned him the wrath of Gascoigne.^^ Thomas Gascoigne perhaps marks the turning point when Jerome, especially through his exegetical method, began to supplant Augustine as the most influential and valued Father among those Oxford professors who were more inclined towards historical theology and Biblical studies than toward systematic theology. According to Pronger, Gascoigne quoted Jerome 2200

scholar, philosopher,

THE CHURCH FATHERS AND OXFORD PROFESSORS

I08

times, Augustine 550, Ambrose 35, Gregory 44, etc. "Only fifteen places have been noted where he quotes rather from the Gloss than directly from the Fathers."^'' Of the modern masters, he cited Grosseteste 550 times, Hugh of Vienna 500, Duns Scotus 110, Aquinas 35, and Bonaventura 7. Although, with the exception of Dionysius, John Colet quoted few writers of any sort, his various treatises do cite Augustine (six times), Chrysostom (three times), Clement of Rome, Ignatius (twice), Jerome (five times), Lactantius, Origen (seven times), and Leo I. Sometimes he relied on Lyra for direct or indirect quotes of patristic ideas. ^^ If we can believe Erasmus, Colet

roamed with

great zest through literature of every kind, finding most pleasure in the early writers, Dionysius, Origen, Cyprian, Ambrose and Among the old authors there was none to whom he was more Jerome. unfavorable than Augustine. At the same time he did not omit to read Scotus and Thomas and others of that stamp when the occasion required .

. .

it.29

Erasmus thus seems to confirm my original point that different types of theology demanded different forms of argumentation and supporting authorities. Both Dr. Catto and I have found evidence of parallel and sometimes rival trends within the theological faculty at Oxford from the 13th century at least to the Reformation.-^^ Since these trends very often coexisted in the same college or priory, generation, and even within individuals, it is very difficult any longer to accept, except in rare instances, any simple humanist-scholastic dichotomy. The use of the Fathers by Oxford men was not limited to academic disquisitions or polemics. They provided a fund of exempla, rhetoric, historical context, and authority for preaching, which was one of the principal objectives of theological education. While much analysis remains to be done, we do know that Oxford graduates, such as Bromyard, frequently directly cited Augustine, Jerome, Fulgentius, Damascenus, Chrysostom, Eusebius, Ambrose, and above all Gregory. Of course sometimes words of these or other Fathers were drawn from popular florelegia, but that was equally true of many prominent 16th-

century preacher s.*^^ But after the great period of translations, collections, and commentaries in the 13th century, and the 14th-century "classicizing" movement which produced the studies by Nicholas Trevet and John Walleys on the City of God,^^ Oxford cannot be called a center of original patristics research. Courses on the Fathers never became part of the official curriculum, although my research on the manuscript grace books of Congregation has shown that in 1506, Edward Powell (who would later publish a long refutation of Luther) was lecturing at Oxford on Augustine's De Trinitate.^^ Otherwise virtually all we can point to for the 15th and early centuries are Gascoigne's life of St. Jerome, Abbot William Sellyng's translation of one of Chrysostom's sermons (1488), and the studies by Colet and Grocyn on the writings of Dionysius (which reached different conclusions about their authenticity).^^ These last works, although not produced in Oxford, showed both the mystical and the scholarly aspects of Christian humanism, and the latter would soon begin to under-

GUY FITCH LYTLE mine

for

some the very

IO9 authority of the Fathers

sought to establish more

firmly. It is possible that More would have conceded some of these foregoing accomplishments, even as he pointed out the inadequacies of the translations, the paucity of the library holdings of the Greek Fathers in any form, and other failings. But More's focus was on the present as well as the past. Concerning the study of Greek, he was of course right. But there were some changes taking place. A year or so earlier, Bishop Foxe had founded his tri-lingual college and thus added to the general resources of the University a public lecturer in Greek and a Reader in Theology who was to lecture on the Bible in the method of Jerome, Augustine, Origen and Chrysostom.-^^ Perhaps it was this appointment that provoked some understandable professional jealousy among other theology professors and ignited a small spark which More billowed into much smoke. But other indication exist to show that the Fathers were still highly valued by Oxford professors of all persuasions and that Scotus could coexist in their libraries and in their minds with any or all of the ancient Christian writers. Three almost exactly contemporaneous and important book lists support this opinion. Richard Fitzjames, whom Erasmus called "a superstitious and unregenerate Scotist" and who was often at odds with Colet,^^ named the following books among the 19 he left to Merton College in his will of 1518: six works by Jerome on various parts of the Bible; Origen on Judges and other Old Testament books; Ambrose on the Psalm 'Beati immaculati' and his treatises, the Hexaemeion, De Penitentia, and De Bono Mortis-, Augustine's De Tiinitate and a collection of his writings on Paul; and Isidore. Bishop Fitzjames also recieved the dedication of Bernard Andre's notes on Book XVII of the City of God.^^ William Grocyn's impressive collection of Latin and Greek Fathers of the same date is far too extensive to list, but it is worth noticing that he also owned a number of scholastic works, including Aquinas, Lyra, and three copies of Scotus on the Sentences.^^ And while grammars, Erasmus, standard theological and legal textbooks, and popular pagan or vernacular classics dominated the accounting of books sold by John Dome in his Oxford shop in 1520,^^ the Fathers were not ignored. Mostly in the new translations and printed editions of collected opera imported from the Continent, Oxford students and professors bought Ambrose, Athanasius, Augustine, Bede, Chrysostom, Dionysius, Eusebius, Jerome, Gregory, John of Damascus, Isidore, Lactantius, Origen, and Orosius. Sometimes a customer bought several books at once, and the combinations are interesting: an Opera Ambrosii, with an Opera Sancti Gregorii; one Augustine volume with the City of God and the De Trinitate, with an Opera Origenis (in 2 vols.) and a Theologia Damasceni, while another copy of the same Augustine volume went with a Greek grammar and the new Paris edition of Scotus (in 2 vols.); an Opera Dyonsii, with a text of the Sentences and a Theologia Damasceni. AU of these works were part of a complete theological education, a point many —but not all— Christian humanists failed to appreciate or accept. Finally, did the relationship between Oxford professors and the Church Fathers change radically during the first half of the 16th century? The new

THE CHURCH FATHERS AND OXFORD PROFESSORS

editions of the Fathers begin to appear regularly in scholars' personal libraries and more slowly find their way into institutional collections.'*^ In rare instances, we encounter a scholar whose sole interest seems to be in the Fathers: Thomas Walshe bequeathed to Corpus (in 1527) a Fulgentius, Cyru, Dionysius,

Damascenus, Athanansius, Irenaeus, Clement of Rome, TertuUian, Cyprian, five volumes of Jerome, a Hilary, and a Eusebius, out of a total of only 20 books. ^^ Much more common down to the 1550s and even into the 1580s were collections that included a clear interest in the Fathers, but also contained commentaries on the Sentences by Aquinas, Ockham, Orbellis, and especially still Scotus, along with works on 16th-century controversies, devotional manuals, and Renaissance editions of the pagan philosIgnatius, Polycarpus,

ophers, poets, and historians. With the exception of the work of Thomas Paynell, a former Augustinian canon, Oxford or Oxford-trained scholars were not active in patristic research or translation. Even Paynell, a prolific popularizer of Erasmus active between c. 1530 and 1560, translated only 12 sermons by St. Augustine, an Ambrosian prayer, and possibly Basil On Consolation, and compiled a Latin Flosculi from the various commentaries of the ancient Fathers, which he dedicated to Ed-

ward

VI.42

Oxford preachers continued to cite the Fathers. The pages of Bishop Longland's sermons are studded with quotations from Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and Gregory,- but he also made frequent references to the authority of the schoolmen, especially Aquinas and Scotus.'*^ Richard Tavemer used dicta from those Fathers plus Origen. It is clear that he drew some of his knowledge from the Glossa Ordinaria, Lyra's Postille, and Aquinas' Catena Auiea, as well as stories from the Vitae Patium.^ Old anthologies had not lost their usefulness, as any examination of the contemporary polemical literature will show. The immense challenge of the Reformation itself and the Royal Injunctions of 1535 produced a very considerable strain on the medieval and early Renaissance curriculum of the Oxford theological faculty. But this had little to do with simply replacing the schoolmen with the Fathers. In fact, the Reformation was in many ways a challenge to them both. There had always been isolated criticisms of particular Fathers or specific beliefs: I have mentioned the reservations of Bradwardine and Peco*ck above; Wyclif wrote that "when I understood as a child, I used to think that St. Ambrose was very ignorant of logic"; and Longland linked Luther with a long list of previous heretics, including Origen.'*^ Throughout the high and late Middle Ages, theology professors had constructed elaborate, rational systems of religious thought, while others had attacked them and praised and tried to emulate the holy eloquence of the Fathers. Renaissance humanist scholarship had gone far toward exposing spurious patristic writings and reassigning previously misattributed works to their proper authors. But in the process they called attention to the fact the Fathers could both err and disagree with each other. However much they were revered by 16th-century thinkers of all confessions, it could not be denied that in the final analysis the Fathers were human authorities. For some, that meant that they might be as much a hindrance as an aid to the proper

GUY HTCH LYTLE

III

understanding of the Gospel. It was safer that they go. It is ironic that at the beginning of this line of argument which would become a resoimding chorus in reformed Protestant, and even some Catholic, circles in the decades ahead, two of the staunchest defenders of the authority of the Fathers were Oxford theologians. In a sermon defending the doctrine of transubstantiation, William Peryn combined an extreme Ockhamist position on the mysteries of the Faith with a virtual catena of supporting dicta from Irenaeus, Ignatius, Basil, Tertullian, Cyprian, Juvencus, Hilary, Gregory Nazianzin, Ambrose, Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, Damascenus, Cassian, Athanasius, Fulgentius, Gregory, Bede, and others.'*^ In another sermon against modem heretics, William Hyberden, in the incomparable account of Foxe,

common texts out of the Scriptures, and then coming to the doctors, first to Augustine, then to Ambrose, so to Jerome and Gregory, Chrysostom and other doctors,... (and) made them every one

patched up certain

(after his dialogue manner) by name to answer his call, and to sing after his tune for the probation of the sacrament of the altar ... at last, to show a perfect harmony of all these doctors together first he called out Christ . . .

and his

apostles; then the doctors

and ancient seniors of the church, as in a ... ring all to dance together.... Now dance Christ; now dance Peter and Paul; now dance Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome. And thus old Hubberdin, as he was dancing with his doctors lustily in the pulpit how he stamped and took on I caimot tell, but 'crash' down came the dancer, and there lay Hubberdin, not dancing, but sprawling in the midst of his audience; where, although he did not break his neck, yet so he broke his leg ... and bruised his old bones, that he never came in the pulpit more, and died not long after.... . . .

. . .

'*''

Though Hyberden's demise was

less than wholly dignified, the Fathers would never lose their generally hallowed position among Christian writers. But their modem rivals in claims to theological truth were far more numerous and selfassertive in the age of the Reformation than others had been in those supposedly dark days dominated by Peter Lombard and the Dunce.

University of Texas, Austin

Notes * Slightly

were presented at the Folger Institute and Eighteenth Century Studies (Washington, 1976) and the American Historical Association convention (Dallas, 1977). In its present form, it remains a very preliminary essay, which stresses an argument rather than new archival discoveries, and is but one of a series of studies which will culminate in a book, tentatively entitled Professors of Orthodoxy: universities, theologians and different versions of this paper

of Renaissance

112

THE CHURCH FATHERS AND OXFORD PROFESSORS

heresy during the late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. Earlier related papers include my "Universities as Religious Authorities in the Later Middle Ages and Early Reformation," in G. F. Lytle, ed., Reform and Authority in the Medieval and Reformation Church (Washington, 1981); "Humanism and Heresy in Early Tudor Oxford" (St. Louis, Sixteenth Century Conference, 1980); and those in notes 6 and 11 below. I would like to thank the other panelists at Dallas: Eugene Rice, John Olin, and Deno Geanakoplos, for their conmients. Olin's contribution, "Erasmus and his edition of St. Hilary," appeared in Erasmus in English (Toronto), 9 (1978), 8-11. I have also benefitted considerably from numerous discussions with Paul Kristeller, Johannes Quasten, James McConica, Jeremy Catto, John Wipple, Richard Schoeck, Brian Copenhaver, and others. And I am very grateful to the American Philosophical Society, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Catholic University of America, and the University of Texas at Austin for their support of this research. Owing to restrictions of space, I have intentionally limited these notes to the identification of quotations and immediately relevant secondary sources. Full docimientation and copious manuscript citations will, of course, appear in the book. 1 It is not intended to be, and would not be taken as, an insult to the authors listed below to say that the comprehensive great book on Renaissance religion has yet to be written. However, a renewed scholarly interest in Renaissance religion has produced a number of very important books. There are good introductions to the literature in several bibliographical essays, especially C. Trinkaus, "Humanism, Religion, Society," i^euQ., 29 (1976), 676-713; and J. W. O'Malley, "Recent Studies in Church History," Cath. Hist. Rev., 55 (1969-70), 394-437. The best general surveys of religion during the 14th- 16th centuries now are S. Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250-1550 (New Haven, 1980) and F. Oakley, The Western Church in the Later J^iddle Ages (Ithaca, 1979). To mention but a few of the more specialized studies, see C. Trinkaus, "In Our Image and Likeness": humanity and divinity in Italian Renaissance thought (Chicago/London, 1970), 2 vols.; Trinkaus and H. A. Oberman (eds.). The Pursuit ofHohness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (Leiden, 1974); W. A. Christian, Jr., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, 1981); D. Hay, The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, 1977); N. Z. Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modem France (Stanford, 1975); and the very important study by J. W. O'Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: rhetoric, doctrine and reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450-1521 (Durham, 1979). 2. See especially E. F. Rice, Jr., "The Humanist Idea of Christian Antiquity: LeFèvre d'Étaples and his circle," SR, 9 (1962), 126-141; C. L. Stinger, Humanism and the Church Fathers: Ambrogio Traversari (1386-1439) and Christian antiquity in the Italian Renaissance (Albany, N.Y., 1977); E. F. Jacob, "Christian Himianism in the Late Middle Ages," in J. Hale, R. Highfield, and B. Smalley (eds.), Europe in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1965), 437-465; articles by Rice, Trapp, and others, in R. R. Bolgar (ed.), Classical Influences on European Culture, A. D. 1500-1700 (Cambridge, 1976) and C. Bene, Erasme et Saint Augustin (Geneva, 1969). R. Peters, "Erasmus and the Fathers: their practical value," Church History, 36 (1967), 254-261; R. J. Schoeck, "The Use of St. John Chrysostom in SixteenthCentury Controversy," Harvard Theol. Rev., 54 (1969), 21-27; and S. L. Greenslade's published lecture, EngUsh Reformers and the Fathers of the Church (Oxford, 1960) offer a more contextual approach. See also, among others, Natalie Z.

GUY FITCH LYTLE

II3

Davis, "Gregory Nazianzen in the Service of Humanist Social Reform," RenQ, 20 (1967), 455-464; J. K. Yost, "Tyndale's Use of the Fathers," Moreana 6 (1969), 5-13; R. Peters, "Who Compiled the Sixteenth-Century Patristic Handbook Unio Dissidentiuml", Studies in Church Histoiy, 2 (1965), 237-250; "The Use of the Fathers in the Reformation Handbook Unio Dissidentìum," Studia Patrìstica, 9 (1966), 570-577; and "John Colet's Knowledge and Use of Patristica," Moreana, 6 (1969), 45-59. 3. 1 am at present working on a paper about the influence of theologians on the iconography and patronage of art during the late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. On the Fathers per se, see, e.g., M. Meiss, "Scholarship and Penitence in the Early Renaissance: the Image of St. Jerome," Pantheon, 32 (1974), 134-140; R. A. Kantra, "Jerome and Erasmus in Renaissance Art," in the Proceedings of the P.M.R. Conference, 1 (1976) (Villanova, Pa., 1978), 105-110. Another subject worth study is the conception of the Fathers in the late medieval and Renaissance devotional writings (e.g. Kempis' Imitation of Chrìst, Bk. 1, chp. 18). 4. I am, of course, not alone in attempting to reformulate the relationship between humanism and scholasticism and other related questions: see, most recently, C. G. Nauert, Jr., "The Clash of Humanists and Scholastics: an approach to preReformation controversies," Sixteenth Cent. J., 4 (1973), 1-18; J. H. Overfield, "Scholastic Opposition to Humanism in pre-Reformation Germany," Viator, 7 (1976), 391-420; S. Ozment, "Humanism, Scholasticism, and the Intellectual Origins of the Reformation," in Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History: essays presented to G. H. Williams ... (eds. F. F. Church and T. George; Leiden, 1979), 133-149; O'Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome; W. Kömel, "Scholasticus Literator: die Humanisten imd ihr Verhältnis zur Scholastik," Historìsche Jahrbuch, 93 (1976), 301-355; P. O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought (New York, 1961), especially chapter 5; and the numerous books and essays of H. Oberman and W. J. Courtenay on nominalism. For the context of this paper, see Hanna H. Gray, "Valla's Encomium of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Humanist Conception of Christian Antiquity," in H. Bluhm, ed.. Essays in History and Literature ... to Stanley Pargelhs (Chicago, 1965), 37-51; E. L. Surtz, S.J., "'Oxford Reformers' and Scholasticism," SP, 47 (1950), 547-556; and J. K. McConica, Enghsh Humanists and Reformation Pohtics under Henry Vllland Edward VI (Oxford, 1965). 5. E. F. Rogers (ed.). The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton, 1947), no. 60; for easy reference, I have followed the well-known translation of T. S. K. Scott-Craig printed in Rogers, ed., St. Thomas More: Selected Letters (New Haven,

1961), 94ff. 6. Lytle,

"Fools and Knaves in Solomon's Houses: a literary

theme from Petrarch

to Swift," unpublished paper read to the World Petrach Congress (Folger Shakespeare

and developed further in my book. Rogers (ed.), St. T. More:... Letters, 99ff. 8. See F. Madan, "The Day Book of John Dome," in C. R. L. Fletcher (ed.). Collectanea, 1st Senes (Oxford, 1885), 71-177. 9. R. Himelick (ed. and transi.). The Enchindion of Erasmus (Bloomington, 1963), Library, 1974), to be incorporated 7.

53ff.

See the quotations and analysis in Rice, "The Humanist Idea" (note 2 above). See notes * and 6 above; the book will also incorporate my unpublished paper, "Scholastic Latin, Humanist Latin, and the Vernacular in the Age of the Reforma10. 11.

THE CHURCH FATHERS AND OXFORD PROFESSORS

114

tion" (Tours, IQ^ Congrès International des Etudes Neo-Latin, 1976). 12. For 13th- and 14th-century Oxford, see D. A. Callus, "The Contribution to the study of the Fathers made by the Thirteenth-Century Oxford Schools," /. Eccl. H., 5 (154), 139-148; D. A. Callus (ed.), Robert Grosseteste: scholar and bishop (Oxford, 1955); B. Smalley, English Pliais and Antiquity in the early Fourteenth Century (Oxford, I960); and other references below. There has been much important recent research on the use of sources by medieval writers, especially the work of Richard Rouse; but that is not the focus of this essay.

on Oxford Library collections, see, N. R. Ker Medieval Libraries of Great Britain (2nd ed.; London, 1964), 141-149. For all that follows, see F. M. Powicke, The Medieval Books of Merton Col-

13. For a bibliography of research (ed.).

14.

lege (Oxford, 1931), passim. 15. On these "modem" commentaries, see Smalley, English Friars, esp. pp. 88ff. Biographical Register of the Univer16. The bequest is listed in A. B. Emden,

sity of Oxford to A.D. 1500, (Oxford, 1957ff), n, 810-813. 17. In addition to the references in Ker, Medieval Libraries, 141ff., see W. R. Jones, "Franciscan Education and Monastic Libraries: some documents," Traditio, (1974), 435-445; and R. Weiss, Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century (3rd ed.; Oxford, 1967), passim. 18. R. A. B. Mynors (ed.). Catalogue of the Manuscripts ofBalliol College, Oxford (Oxford, 1963), passim. 19. See the references in Ker, Medieval Libraries, 141ff .; The Statutes of the Colleges of the University of Oxford (London, 1853), 3 vols.; Emden, Biographical Register; and my own personal research on individual manuscripts in Oxford and

London.

"The Contribution to the Study of the Fathers," 146ff. MSS in Emden, Biographical Register, H, 747. 22. D. Luscombe, "Some Examples of the Use made of the Works of the PseudoDionysius by University Teachers in the Later Middle Ages," in J. Paquet and J. IJsewijn (eds.). Les universités à la fin du moyen âge (Louvain, 1978), 228-241. 23. See the Oxford D. Phil, thesis of J. Catto on William Woodford, O.F.M. and the B.Litt. thesis of D. DuBois on Netter. 24. For what follows, see G. Leff, Bradwaidine and the Pelagians (Cambridge, 20. Callus,

21. See the list of

1957), especially pp. 11 Iff. 25. Among many other items, see B. Smalley, "The Bible and Eternity: John Wyclif's dilemma," /. Warburg é) Courtauld Inst., 17 (1964), 73-89. 26. See. V. H. H. Green, Bishop Reginald Peco*ck (Cambridge, 1945), 77ff. 27. W. A. Pronger, "Thomas Gascoigne," E.H.R., 53 (1938), 606-626; and 54

20-37 -especially the latter article. H. Lupton, A Life of John Colet, D.D. (London, 1909 ed.), especially p. 67 and n. See also, R. Peters, "John Colet's Knowledge and Use of Patristics" (note 2 above) and J. B. Gleason, "Studies in the Thought of John Colet" (Chicago Ph.D. (1939),

28.

thesis, 1957), 123ff.

Opus epist., IV, 507ff. There has been some scholarly debate about which I shall discuss, along with a complete reassessment of the relationships of Erasmus and Colet to the University of Oxford, in my forthcoming 29. Allen,

this letter,

Some preliminary ideas were presented in my 1980 St. Louis manism and Heresy in early Tudor Oxford" (see note 4 above).

book.

lecture,

"Hu-

30. In unpublished Oxford lectures and drafts of our respective chapters in the

GUY FITCH LYTLE

forthcoming multi-volume History of the University of Oxford (general editor, Trevor Aston). 31. See, especially, G. R. Owst, Literature and Pvdpit in Medieval England (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1961); J. W. Blench, Preaching in England in the late 15th and 16th Centuries (Oxford, 1964). 32. Smalley, English Friars, especially pp. 45ff. and 88ff. 33. Oxford, University Archives, Registrum G., fo. 24r. As

I have shown in the Louis lecture and will further demonstrate in my book, Powell was a major figure in the early Tudor Oxford Theology Faculty and the leading Oxford opponent of Luther in the 1520s. He shows an interesting blend of humanism and scholasticism in his important and unduly neglected work, Propugnaculum summi sacerdoti] euangelici,... aduersus M. Lutherum (London, 1523). 34. For Gascoigne, see Oxford, Magdalen College, MS. Latin 93, art. 31. For Sellyng, see London, B. L., Harleian MS. 6237; Add. MS. 15673, fo. 3; and Add. MS. 47675; Weiss, Humanism in England, especially chaps. X and XU; M. Burrows, "Linacre's Catalogue of Grocyn's Books, followed by a Memoir of Grocyn," inM. Burrows (ed.). Collectanea, Second Series (Oxford, 1890) 317-380, especial-

St.

ly 354ff.

35. See T. Fowler,

The History of Corpus Christi College (Oxford,

1893), chaps.

i-rv.

36.

Emden, Biographical

37. ibid., 692. 38. Burrows, "Linacre's Catalogue of Grocyn's Books," 317ff. 39. See full reference in note 8 above. 40. Ker, Medieval Libraries, 14 Iff; Ker, Records of All Souls College Library 1437-1600 (Oxford, 1971); Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford A.D. 1501 to 1540 (Oxford, 1974), passim, but especially Appendix B. 41. Emden, Biographical Register ... 1501-1540, 741. 42. ibid., 438, 728-730. 43. Blench, Preaching in England, 20ff., 75ff., 136ff. (especially 138), 210ff.

and

original references there.

44. ibid., especially 31ff. 45. Smalley, "The Bible and Eternity" (note 25 above), 79 and n. 24 (quoting from Wyclif's early De benedicta incamatione]-, Blench, Preaching in England, 248. 46. Thre godlye and notable Sermones, of the moost honorable and blessed sacra-

ment 47.

of the Aulter (London, ?1546). Foxe, The Acts and Monuments (ed.

477-478.

Pratt;

4th

ed.;

London, 1877), Vu,

Constitutionalism Late Medieval and Early

Modern— Lex

Facit

Regem:

Hooker's Use of Bracton A.

McGiade

Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, nificant

work

EngUsh

the

first sig-

in the fields of theology, philosophy, or

political theory, has always enjoyed a high reputation as a wise and eloquent defense of the Anglican way of religious life emerging from the Elizabethan settlement of the latter sixteenth century. Much discomfort has been felt, however, about Hooker's defense of the poUtical keystone or moving force of that way of life, the royal supremacy over the affairs of the church, the crown's power of 'ecclesiastical dominion,' as Hooker terms it. There is discomfort because Hooker is admired largely as a continuator of the finest classical and earlier Christian traditions, whereas an actively enforced royal supremacy in religion seems to be a blow in the face to those traditions.^ In 1971 there was discovered at Trinity College, Dublin a body of manuscript in Hooker's own hand which in conjunction with his defense of the royal supremacy in the concluding, posthumously published eighth book of the Laws makes possible a better understanding of these troublesome cruxes in his thought: religious life and secular supremacy, tradition and change. The manuscript, edited by Professor P. G. Stanwood, occupies sixty-odd pages in the third volume of the Folger-Harvard edition of Hooker's works. ^ It includes more than two hundred passages or references copied by Hooker from literary, theological, and, above all, legal sources, along with occasional draft paragraphs incorporating this material. Many of these working notes, including the Bracton passages discussed in this paper, are concerned with questions of immediate or ordinary ecclesiastical jurisdiction especially pertinent to Books VI and Vu of the Laws, rather than supreme jurisdiction or dominion, but there are also three successive outlines and collections of authorities and comments for Book VUI, and it seems clear that Hooker thought of the various aspects of jurisdiction together and planned the last three books as a unit. Hooker quotes the great thirteenth-century English jurist, Henry de Bracton, seven times in the Dublin notes and four times in Book VIQ of the Laws. It would be hard to imagine a more solid figiure from the English Middle Ages with whom to compare Hooker than Bracton, and the opportunity afforded

MCGRADE

II/

by the notes to observe Hooker at first hand reading and appropriating his predecessor's work seems too good to be missed. A brief consideration of Hooker's use of Bracton-^ will not, of course, settle the broad problems mentioned above, but it will, I believe, suggest an approach to those problems which may be worth following out in connection with other sources in Hooker. It will suggest that continuing the spirit of a tradition may require more changes in than a half-hearted, unengaged reader of older sources would need

its letter

make.

In his eleven references to Bracton, Hooker draws in each case on one or another of just three sections of Bracton's monumental work. De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae.^ Let us work through Hooker's uses of these three sections by turn, to see how far and in what way he was a faithful interpreter and continuator, or misinterpreter and discontinuator, of Bractonian tradition.

The first section of Bracton I want to consider is cited by Hooker five times, four times in the working notes, once in Book Vin. In this section of his work^ Bracton is concerned with the relations between secular and ecclesiastical legal jurisdictions. Some kinds of cases, such as matrimonial and testamentary ones, must be pursued in church courts, he says, simply because they are 'spiritual' cases; other cases which are not spiritual in themselves must nevertheless be heard by an ecclesiastical judge if they are 'annexed to' or 'accessory to' a purely spiritual matter. Disputes about dowries would be an example of this, or disputes about property held by inheritance, or in direct connection with tithes. On the other hand, just because a case incidentally involves a spiritual issue of some kind, the principal matter in dispute does not on that account come to be determined by a spiritual court. In this section, as elsewhere, Bracton writes in a balanced and judicious way, and he is at least as much concerned to uphold the jurisdiction of royal, secular courts as that of ecclesiastical, spiritual ones. Now for Hooker. In the first occurrence of this passage in Hooker's notes^ he simply quotes a statement of Bracton's that a secular judge can no more degrade a cleric than ordain one. A few pages later'^ he quotes more fully from the same place and systematically underlines all the words and phrases which emphasize the competence of the spiritual courts. In a later section of the notes, ^ we find him working this

material into a paragraph of his own composition, the explicit point of which is to defend the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, and those 'words' of Bracton which are useful for this purpose are duly alleged. Finally, on the same folio, we find a second reworking of the same material to make a still stronger case for the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts. Bracton's words have now become 'rules,' and, in a maimer of some interest for Neo-Latin studies. Hooker uses Cicero's Pro Domo to drive home the point that something which appears to be purely temporal, such as legal titles to a house, may in certain circ*mstances properly come before a spiritual court. In these rewor kings of Bractonian material. Hooker has quoted his source accurately, but in his shifts of emphasis and in his classical addition he has also been following a straight line of his own towards an effective defense of the church courts' jurisdiction. Such a defense would have complemented his refutation, in a lost early

hooker's use of bracton

ii8

Book VI of the Laws,^ of the Puritan proposal to replace bishops and courts (which had suffered considerable loss of authority in the course of the Reformation) with congregational lay-elders. But this section of Bracton is also cited by Hooker in a part of his work which does survive, Book Vin, Hooker's defense of the royal supremacy. He quotes Bracton in a note near the end of a chapter on the crown's power in ecclesiastical judgement. The thesis of the chapter is that the king has a supereminent authority in commanding and judging ecclesiastical causes, that no ecclesiastical official may by the authority of his own place command universally throughout the king's dominions. ^^ If we have managed to accept Hooker's pulling and reshaping of Bracton in his working notes to move him in a more clerical direction, we are bound to feel a certain shock when we see this same passage cited in Book VDI in defense of an ultimately unitary lay jurisdiction over all persons and causes. To be sure. Hooker cites Bracton here to show that within this unitary framework a distinction of civil and spiritual courts is still maintained, that "our lawes do neither suffer a spirituali Court to entertaine those causes which by law are civili, nor yet if the matter be indeed spirituali, a meer civili Court to give draft of

judgment of clesiastical

to find this medieval assertion of dualism in a setting of universal royal supremacy and ec-

it."^^ It is still startling

placed without

comment

dominion.

go on to consider Hooker's use — or perhaps from Bracton. ^^ This passage, too, involves the distinction of spiritual from secular cases. Hooker's first quotation in his working notes is very brief: "Ubi iudex saecularis non habet coertionem ibi Cognitionen! et executionem habere non potest. "^-^ This seems to be along the same lines as the section of Bracton already considered, and we may wonder what in particular struck Hooker's interest in it. The answer is provided in his second citation of the same section a little later, where he begins with a fuller quotation of the same statement: "Sunt enim causae spirituales in quibus iudex saecularis non habet cognitionem nee executionem cum non babeat coeitionem,"^^ but here he underlines the words cum non habeat coertionem. In these underlined words we have, I believe, the nub of

The shock

will increase

in the end his disuse— of a second passage

a great difference between Hooker and Bracton, a difference which may explain why this passage is not subjected to reworking in Hooker's notes and does not appear in his published writings. For Bracton's denial of 'coercion' to secular judges in spiritual cases rested on what he took to be a profound division between legnum and saceidotium. As he goes on to say immediately after the passage just quoted: "In his enim causis pertinet cognitio ad indices ecclesiasticos qui legunt et defendunt saceidotium. Simt etiam causae saecu-

quarum cognitio pertinet ad leges et principes qui defendunt legnum, de quibus indices ecclesiastici se intromittere non debent, cum eorum iura

lares et

quod gladius invare debeat gladium. Est enim magna differentia inter sacerdotium et regnum" (my emphasis). ^5 Now Hooker in his second transcription of this passage quotes everything except the last sentence, Bracton's assertion of a magna differentia between regnum and sacerdotium. And for good reason. From Hooker's point of view such a magna differentia, that is, an ultimate difference such as sive iurisdictiones limitatae sint et separata, nisi ita sit

MCGRADE

would exclude laymen from holding the final authority for coercion in ecclesiastical affairs, was simply unacceptable. The famous demonstration of the substantial identity of church and commonwealth at the beginning of Book Vin^^ is meant to refute those who make a "necessary separation perpetual and personall between the Cbuich and Commonwealth." Such a separation was urged both by Roman Catholic writers, with whom Hooker was much occupied in his working notes for Book VIII, and by his immediate opponents, the English Puritans. It is a separation that looks very much like Bracton's diffeientìa. Bracton's and Hooker's divisions of lay and ecclesiastical judicial systems, in other words, rest on diametrically opposite presuppositions, in the one case a fundamental division of lay and spiritual persons and causes, in the other case an ultimate judicial supremacy of the lay ruler over all persons and causes. There are many passages both in the published portions of the Laws and in the working notes which show Hooker's brooding concern with unity of (coercive) jurisdiction as a paramount necessity for human society. In one passage in the notes, he cites all of the following authorities to support the idea: Aristotle's Metaphysics, the book of Ezekiel, the Roman jurist Pomponius in a statement incorporated in the civil law, St. Paul (twice), St. Thomas Aquinas, the gospel of Luke, and the pseudo-Dionysius.^'' Here we have a quite concentrated expression of the reasons Hooker could not possibly have used Bracton's words to mean what Bracton meant by them. Thus far, we must confess. Hooker does not look like a very faithful follower of Bracton. In anxious hope, therefore, we turn to our third Bractonian passage. Will Hooker transmit his source accurately this time, or will he misunderstand, or misuse, the medieval tradition perfectly and completely? Our anxiety is only heightened by the fact that the passage is a famous one, in which, near the beginning of his work, Bracton discusses the supremacy of the king in relation to his subjects and in relation to the law. After stating that the king has no equal within his legnum, for otherwise he would be unable to rule, Bracton continues: "Ipse autem rex non debet esse sub homine sed sub deo et sub lege, quia lex facit regem. Attribuât igitur rex legi, quod lex attribuii ei, videlicet dominationem et potestatem."^® Bracton immediately goes on to frame a religious and moral plea to kings to rule in accord with law. Just as many ways were open to God to redeem the human race but Christ chose to be under the law himself to redeem those who lived under the law, and just as the blessed mother of God who, by an extraordinary privilege, was above the law, nevertheless did not réfuse subjection to it, so the king should do the same, even though no one may presume even to question his acts, much less contravene them. This eloquent plea seems to express an understanding of royal subordination to law as essentially a moral or religious subordination, a subordination which leaves the crown legally supreme or absolute in its own secular realm. Let us now turn to Hooker, who draws on this passage twice in his complex general discussion of the royal headship of the English church in the second and third chapters of Book Vin. Like Bracton, Hooker begins by emphasizing that there is no one higher than nor greater than a king in his own realm, and like Bracton he then goes on to place kings under God and the law: "But withall we must likewise note, that their power

magna

hooker's use of bracton

120

termed supremacie as being the highest not simplie without exception of any thing. For what man is there so brainsick as not to except in such speeches God himself, the king of all the kinges of the earth? Besides, where the lawe doth give Dominion, who doubteth but that the king who receiveth it must hold it of and imder the lawe according to that old Axiome Attribuât Rex Legi quod Lex attiibuit ei potestatem et Dominium And againe Rex non debet esse sub bomine, sed sub Deo et Lege."^^ The quotations are substantially accurate, although the order of the 'axioms' is reversed. But are the principles Hooker finds in these words really what Bracton intended? For better or worse, the answer seems to be, no. Our suspicions are aroused by the qualification with which Hooker introduces his axioms: 'Besides where the law doth give Dominion, who doubteth that the king who receiveth it must hold it of and under the law....' An explanation of this qualification may be found in the is

other passage in which Hooker uses the present section of Bracton. Discussing the 'measure' of the royal headship in the next chapter of Book Vni, Hooker treats royal subjection to law as a variable, a historically conditioned variable whose value in a particular case is determined by 'agreement and composition' or 'articles of compact' between specific kings and those over whom they are to rule. In this context Hooker proclaims strongly the novel truth that the English crown not only morally and religiously ought to rule in accord with law but is constitutionally obliged to do so. I trust that by the time we reach the Bractonian axioms at the end of this passage (axioms, yet again), it will be clear that Hooker attempted to give them a sense rather different from what they had for Bracton. I omit a citation of the Pythagorean philosopher Archytas in the middle of the passage (another illustration of Hooker's genius for weaving intellectual strands of widely different origin into a coherent texture of his own)

am not of opinion, that simplie always in Kings the most, but the best limited power is best, both for them and for the people; the most limited is that which may deale in fewest things, the best that which in dealing is tyed imto the soundest perfectest and most indifferent rule; which rule is the law. I meane not only the law of nature and of God but very nationall or mimicipall law consonant thereimto. Happier that people, whose lawe is their King in the greatest thinges then that whose King is himself their lawe. ... In which respect I cannot choose but commend highly their wisedome by whom the foundations of this Commonwealth have been layd, wherein though no manner person or cause be unsubject to the Kings power, yet so is the power of the King over all and in all limited that unto all his proceedings the law it self is a rule. The axiomes of our regali govemement are these. Lex facit Regem. The Kings graunt of any favour made contrary to law is voyd. Rex nihil potest, nisi I

quod

jure potest.'^^

What shall we conclude? The easy conclusion is that Hooker misunderstood Bracton or that he deliberately misued him for ends of his own. I am inclined to draw a different conclusion, for I am struck by the way in which Hooker's 'misinterpretations' of the three sections of Bracton he has used complement

MCGRADE

121

and balance one another. In using Bracton to support the idea of a separate ecclesiastical judiciary for certain sorts of legal cases, Hooker seems to ignore, or even to bury, his presupposition of a fundamental legal cleavage between legnuxn and saceidotium and instead fits Bracton's legal dualism into the constitutional monism of the royal supremacy. Bracton denies the secular judge coercion in spiritual cases. Hooker was convinced on many grounds, or on many levels— metaphysical, historical, and theological— of the need for unity of supreme coercive jurisdiction in human society,- hence for him any functional divisions of legal institutions had to be accommodated to a more basic unity. And yet, as a perceptive reader of the Bible, the classics, and Machiavelli,^^ Hooker was not at all naive about the moral character or spiritual integrity of human rulers. He was a realist on such matters, and I would suggest that this realism, along with the orientation of his whole work around the idea of law, dictated that his first misinterpretation of Bracton be compensated for by an opposite 'misinterpretation' of Bracton's remarks on the superiority of law to the king, a misinterpretation which changes the king's subordination to law from a merely moral and religious subordination to a constitutional limitation.^^ These two misinterpretations tend to balance one another. We have here, it seems, a case in which two hermeneutic wrongs make a spiritual-political right. For if we combine Hooker's monistic misunderstanding of Bracton's medieval legal dualism with his constitutionalist misunderstanding of what appears in Bracton as a royal absolutism within the limited secular sphere, the net result is not so much misimderstanding as it is a sort of sympathetic transformation, that is, a change which is indeed far-reaching but is at the same time loyal in spirit to the over all tenor of Bracton's teachings, hi a context of Reformation monarchism, I would suggest, Hooker attempted to promote a constitutionally effective supremacy of law over government, and in this attempt, I believe, he served somewhat the same spirit as the medieval dualism of legnum and saceidotium This result would gain in significance, I believe, from a consideration of the affinities of Bracton's medieval dualism with the dualism of church and Commonwealth advocated by Hooker's Presbyterian opponents. Here, too, we might find a surprising agreement in spirit on some matters behind a sharp polemical opposition in littera. hi any case, the moral of our present tale of two wrongs making a right for our general approach to a thinker like Hooker is, I think, the following, histead of reading him as an essentially passive defender of fixed interests — of 'the' royal supremacy, for example— limited in his use of tradi.

tion to the fixed ideas of his predecessors set in the concrete of their written

words — instead of this, I say, we should approach Hooker as a mind actively engaged on two fronts: on one front with his contemporaries, trying to appreciate the concerns even of his antagonists and shaping his own cause accordingly, on another front with the past, trying to work out the best over all reading of what his predecessors most hoped to achieve and appropriating their particular written utterances accordingly. let

make

the

most

this be misinterpretation,

it.

University of Coimecticut

hooker's use OF BRACTON

122

Notes 1. Peter Munz's The Place ofHookeiin the History of Thought (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952; reprinted New York: Greenwood Press, 1970) is the major statement of the thesis that Hooker's work is ultimately incoherent. On this problem see also my 'The coherence of Hooker's Pohty: the books on power,'

Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 163-82; and W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, 'The philosopher of the 'politic society': Richard Hooker as a political thinker' in W. Speed Hill, ed., Studies in Richard Hooker (Cleveland and London: The Press of Case Western University, 1972), pp. 3-76; and the first introductory essay in A. S. McGrade and Brian Vickers, eds., Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Pohty: An Abridged Edition (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1975). 2. The first two volumes of this edition were published in 1977 (W. Speed Hill, general editor. The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, I, Georges Edelin, ed.. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Pohty, Preface, Books I to IV; U, W. Speed Hill, ed.. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V; both volumes published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1977. The third volume is to appear in 1980. A later volume will include detailed commentary on the Laws. 3. This paper is limited not only in length but also, very narrowly, in scope. I have confined myself almost entirely to the passages in Bracton referred to by Hooker, and I have not attempted to incorporate the distinguished body of Bracton scholarship even in the interpretation of those passages, for my aim is to read Bracton as nearly as possible through Hooker's eyes and to determine what he

made

of him. Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England (a reprinting of George E. Woodbine, ed., Bracton De Legibus et Consuetudirübus AngUae with translation, revisions, and notes by Samuel E. Thome), 4 vols, to date, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Published in association with the Seiden Society by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968-77. 1 shall give references to this edition even when quoting Hooker, who (as is clear from his form of citation) used Tottellum's edition 4.

of 1569.

Ed. Woodbine-Thome, vol. 4, pp. 248-51. For Hooker's notes references will be given to folios of Trinity College Dublin Ms. 364 (TCD 364). The present quotation is on fol. 70r. 7. TCD 364, fol. 77r. 8. TCD 364, fol. 78r. 9. Notes on this draft made by two associates of Hooker are printed in volume 3 of Hooker's Works (n. 2 above). On the place in the Laws of the treatise on penance published, though often without much editorial conviction, as Book VI, see my 'Repentance and spiritual power: Book VI of Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Pohty,' Journal of Ecclesiastical History 29 (1978), pp. 163-76. 10. References to the Laws will be by book, chapter, and section (the section divisions are Keble's). The present passage is at Laws VIII.8.1. 5. 6.

11.

Laws Vin.8.9. Woodbine-Thome,

12. Ed. 13. 14.

TCD TCD

70v.

364,

fol.

364,

fol. 77.

vol. 2, p. 304.

MCGRADE

I23

16.

Woodbine-Thome, LûwsVin. 1.2-3.

17.

TCD

15. Ed.

364,

fol.

vol. 1, p. 304.

76v.

Woodbine-Thome, vol. 2, p. 33. Cf. pp. 109-10 and 305-6. 19. Laws Vin.2.3. 20. Laws VIII.2.13 (part of chapter 3 of Book Vm in Professor Stanwood's text). The second axiom may be taken from a passage following the one cited in notes 12 and 15 above. "Nihil enim aliud potest rex in terris, cum sit dei minister et vicarius, nisi id solum quod de iure potest." Ed. Woodbine-Thome, vol. 2, p. 305. 21. Laws V.2, Vm.8.5. 22. Munz {The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought, pp. 107 ff.) has speculated that Hooker may have failed to publish Book Vin because he could not reconcile his own constitutionalism with the principles and practices of Elizabethan government. However this may be, one must wonder how the tragic constitutional struggle of the early seventeenth century would have been affected by clear public knowledge that the most powerful apologist for the established church distinguished so sharply between legitimate royal supremacy and imlimited, ill-advised royal prerogative. Book Vni was not published imtil 1648, and it is only in this century 18. Ed.

that its authenticity has been fully demonstrated. I have discussed some of the issues raised in this paper in more detail in 'Richard Hooker and the Medieval Resistance to Modem Politics' in G. C. Simmons, ed., Paideia: The CultuTal and Intellectual Life of the Middle Ages, vol. 2 (State University of New York at Brockport, 1983).

Biondo Flavio and the Antiquarian Tradition Angelo Mazzocco

Contemporary scholarship has a rather restricted view of Renaissance antiquarianism. In fact, contemporary scholars tend to see Renaissance antiquarianism primarily as a history of classical archeology. 1 For example, Roberto Weiss, one of the most distinguished contemporary students of Roman antiquities, seems to view Renaissance antiquarianism essentially as the Renaissance's account of "the statues, the inscriptions, the coins, the ruined buildings ... of classical antiquity."^ However, a close reading of Renaissance antiquarian literature indicates that for the scholars of the Renaissance, antiquarianism implied much more than the reconstruction of archeological remains. What then was the nature of Renaissance antiquarianism? When did it come into being? Who were its major contributors? It

seems that Renaissance antiquarianism

discipline in the sixteenth century. Indeed,

first

was

emerged as a at the

full-fledged

beginning of the

six-

teenth century that a chair of humanities with emphasis on Romanae antiquitates was first established at the University of Bologna.^ Similarly it is in a sixteenth-century work, the Romananim Antiqiiitatum Libri Decern by the German scholar Joannes Rosrnus, that we find the first explicit acknowledgement of antiquarianism as a literary discipline.'^ In a letter to the reader, included in the 1583 edition of the Romananim Antiqiiitatum, Joannes T. Freigius, connoisseur of Roman antiquities and director of the Gymnasium of Altdorf in Switzerland, remarks that Rosinus' work had made a discipline of the study of antiquities. He thus hopes that in the future antiquarianism will find its place among the liberal arts: "Spero enim futurum, ut inter artes liberales Grammaticam, Rhetoricam, Logicam, Arithmeticam, Geometriam, Musicam, Astronomiam, et alias Antiquitatis cognitio pro arte ponatur."^ For the scholars of the sixteenth century, antiquarianism implied not only the study of the tangible remains of antiquity, as it has been assumed by contemporary scholarship, but also the reconstruction of classical institutions. In the "Epistola Dedicatoria" of his Romananim Antiqiiitatum, Rosinus notes that the rediscovery of antiquity had been carried out through four methods:

ANGELO MAZZOCCO

I25

the recovery and editing of literary sources, the description of archeological remains, the probing of ancient history, and the systematic reconstruction of single aspects of classical civilization. Of these methods he found the systematic reconstruction of classical antiquity the most praiseworthy: "Quarta classis est eorum, qui singulas antiquitatis partes sibi explicandas et declarandas sumpserunt. Quorum quidem omnium conatus est laude dignissimus."^ Thus, in his work he had molded into a coherent whole important elements from the best of these systematic reconstructions: "Ex horum praecipuis ego tandem ea collegi, quae videbantur esse notatu digniora, eaque in unum quasi corpus contuli.... "^ Rosinus does in fact produce a systematic survey which aims at nothing less than a total — archeological and institutional— reconstruction of the life of ancient Rome.^ To my knowledge Rosinus is the only sixteenth-century scholar to have undertaken a comprehensive reconstruction of the classical metropolis. The antiquarians of the sixteenth century dealt either with Roman ruins or with some aspects of classical life. However, more often than not, the objective of the sixteenth-century antiquarians was the total rather than the partial reconstruction of classical society. For example, in the forward to his book on the classical monuments of Rome (De Urbe Roma), Bernardo Rucellai notes that this study was to be followed by a series of works on Roman institutions which would ultimately provide a full account of Roman civilization.^ As for those scholars, such as Panvinio, Sigonio, and Lipsius, who limited themselves solely to the study of one or some aspects of classical life {singulas partes to say it with Rosinus), ^^ they often saw their undertaking as part of a collective effort to reconstruct the whole of Roman civilization. Roman life was much too vast and complex to be handled by a single writer. ^^

Why such a concern for Roman antiquities? Roman antiquities were studied because they were considered enormously useful. Indeed, as attested to by Rosinus, antiquarianism was useful for every type of scholarly endeavor: "Ncque vero dubium est, maximam cognitionis harum rerum esse ad omne genus studiorum utilitatem." It thus should be pursued by the rhetorician, the jurist, the historian, and even the theologian. ^^ Knowledge of classical antiquity, notes Joaimes Freigius, made it possible to understand and interpret effectively the large body of classical literature: "Nee vero necesse est, ut prolixius exponam, quantum utilitatis haec ars habeat ad antiqua poetarum, historicorum et iureconsultorum scripta intelligenda, et interpretanda."^^ Indeed, it was only through systematic reconstructions that one could appreciate fully the various aspects of classical civilization: "lucunditas certe tanta est, ut ex omnibus studiorum generibus (quae tamen plurimum habent admistum suavitatis) nullum hoc genere antiquitatis cognoscendae suavius, aut iucundius deprehenderim."^'* Because of this attraction for Roman antiquities, numerous sixteenth-century scholars undertook the arduous task of probing the tangible and literary fragments of classical civilization which had survived the ravage of time. The end result of this diligent effort were meticulous reconstructions of the topography of classical Rome as well as accurate and detailed accounts of ancient Roman institutions. ^^

BIONDO FLAVIO AND THE ANTIQUARIAN TRADITION

126

The dominant concern

of the antiquarians of the sixteenth century was Indeed, for the scholars of the sixteenth century antiquarianism meant primarily Romanae antìquitates. The various studies on the antiquities of European cities which flourished in the sixteenth century were spin-offs of Roman antiquarianism, being prompted, at least in the case of Italian cities, by the presence of Roman antiquities. Thus Onofrio Panvinio's Antiquitatum Veionensium Conunentaiioium Libii was a by-product of the author's interest in Roman antiquities. Panvinio notes that, having dealt with Roman antiquities, he felt compelled to study also the antiquities of Verona, his

Roman life.

hometown.

^"^

Such, then, was the nature of antiquarianism in the sixteenth century when, we have seen above, antiquarianism first emerged as a full-fledged discipline. How did this interest in antiquarianism come about? Was it a phenomenon peculiar to the sixteenth century? As Joannes Rosinus tells us, sixteenthcentury antiquarianism was traceable to the classical scholar Marcus Terentius Varrò. Rosinus notes that the interest in antiquities was quite strong among classical scholars, but it was Varrò who gave classical antiquarianism as

its

form and impetus.^''

Varrò was indeed a remarkable antiquarian. His fundamental work on Roman antiquities: the Antìquitates Rerum Humanaium et Divinarum became a source of inspiration for much of European antiquarianism. In fact, Varro's study may have provided the very name for the discipline of antiquitates.^^ Published during the reign of Julius Caesar, Varro's Antiquitates consists of two works: Res bumanae and Res divinae. Together they encompass fortyone books. Varro's objective in Reshumanae is to consider the men, the places, the times and the institutions of early Rome. The structure of the Res humanae is repeated in Res divinae. However, in the latter to the four categories— men, places, times, institutions— Varrò adds a fifth: deities. Thus Varro's Antiquitates provides a systematic reconstruction of all the aspects of the life of early Rome.^^

Varro's brand of antiquarianism was all but forgotten in the Middle Ages nothwithstanding the fact that his Antiquitates was summarized and discussed in St. Augustine's Civitas Dei. To be sure medieval scholars continued to write tracts on Roman antiquities, but their studies lacked the historical veracity and the systematic reconstruction of Varrò. The Graphia Aurea Urbis Romae, for example, the Middle Ages' most comprehensive account of Roman antiquities is fragmentary and historically inaccurate demonstrating a propensity for the absurd and the fantastic. Roman antiquities were, of course, very popular with the humanists. As evidence of the grandeur of classical Rome, they possessed a profoundly emotive and inspiring force for the scholars of the fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries. Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Dondi, Coluccio Salutati, Gasparino Barzizza, Andrea Fiocchi, Pier Candido Decembrio, Leon Battista Alberti, and Poggio Bracciolini wrote treatises on Roman antiquities. ^° Produced in the midst of much enthusiasm for classicism and in a climate of improved methodology, the antiquarian works of these humanists were by far more engaging and accurate than those of their medieval counterparts. Nevertheless,

ANGELO MAZZOCCO

12/

when

judged by the standards of Varro's Antiquitates, the works of these like those of the medieval scholars are fragmentary and inconclusive. They are limited to the study of ruins or to the description of some of the institutions. For example, Decembrio's De Munenbus Romae Rei Publicae provides a schematic description of civil and religious institutions. Likewise Poggio's Ruinamm Urbis Romae Desciiptio concentrates on Roman ruins and only on those ruins which were still extant. For an antiquarian work in the Varronian mold we must turn to Biondo Flavio. Antiquarian information is apparent in most of Biondo's works {Italia illusuata, Histoiiarum Decades, letters to Leonello d'Esté and Gregorio LoUi Piccolomini); however, the nucleus of his antiquarianism is contained in the Roma Instaurata (1446) and the Roma Triumphans (1459). The Roma Instaurata reconstructs the topography of classical Rome. After a reference to the location of Rome and to the etymology of its name, Biondo goes on to study the various gates and obelisks of antiquity as well as the monuments of the Vatican region. He then proceeds to the description of the seven hills paying special attention to the ancient baths. Having discussed those parts of the city which were most easily identifiable, he goes on to describe the remaining ancient structures by categorizing them into four groups. In the first group he considers the religious edifices (altars, temples, curia vetus]} in the second, the civil buildings (the senate-house, the comitium, the sacrarium, etc.); in the third, those edifices used for public spectacles (theaters, amphitheaters and circuses); and in the fourth, the several landmarks which had adorned the skyline of the classical city (Nero's palace, the Trajan forum, the Septizonium, the arches of Septimius Severus and Constantine, the house of Caesar, the Testaceus Mons, the Vicus Vitriorum-, etc.). In the introduction of the Roma Instaurata Biondo notes that it was his objective to reconstruct the ruins' pristine magnificence so that their memory would live forever. ^^ The nature of his work, therefore, would be purely archeological. Its archeological intent is reaffirmed by several other remarks throughout the work. Nevertheless, in spite of his intention to consider only the ancient ruins, on several occasions, Biondo does undertake a study of the institutions associated with the buildings. Hence, while discussing the structure and function of the theatres, sports arenas and circuses, he provides descriptions of the ludigladiatorii, the ludi circenses, the ludi troiani and the ludi apollinari^^ as well as a lengthy account of the origin and nature of the Roman theatre." He considers these institutions and customs because, as he puts it, a study of the buildings would be incomplete unless coupled with a description of the many games and performances that used to take place in them: "Nam si theatrum copiose volumus exponere, partes quoque illius oportet et simul ludos spectaculaque quibus aedendis illae institutae sunt

humanists

machinae describamus."^'* Whereas the objective of the Roma Instaurata is the description of the topography of classical Rome, that of the Roma Triumphans is the reconstruction of the public and private life of the ancient metropolis. The Roma Triumphans consists of ten books and is divided into five major parts. Part one (Books 1-2) provides an account of classical religion; part two (Books 3-5)

BIONDO FLAVIO AND THE ANTIQUARIAN TRADITION

128

Studies public administration; part three (Books 6-7) examines the

my;

part four (Books 8-9) deals

(Book

Roman ar-

with private institutions; and part

five

Roman

triumphs. Just as the Roma Instauiata was conceived solely as a topographical account of antiquity, so the Roma Tnumphans was intended primarily as a reconstruction of ancient institutions.^^ But just as in the Roma Instaurata it had been difficult for Biondo to overlook the study of Roman institutions, so in the Roma Tnumphans it was impossible for him to disregard the archeological matters. Having made new archeological discoveries since the completion of the Roma Instauiata, Biondo cannot resist the temptation to incorporate them in his new work on Roman antiquities. Hence, no less an important account than the description of the triumphal march has to be interrupted so that he can elaborate on his recent discovery of the temple of Isis.^^ The urge to discuss institutional matters in the Roma Instaumta and the need to supplement the archeological account of the Roma Instauiata in the Roma Tnumphans render these two studies complementary. Together they provide a total picture— topographical and institutional— of classical Rome.^^ Thus, Biondo produces an antiquarian account very much akin to the Antiquitates of Varrò. As in Varrò, Biondo attempts the reconstruction of the whole life of a nation. However, whereas the major division of Varrò is based on religion and secularism that of Biondo is determined by archeology and institutions. For the Varronian categories of men, places, times, institutions and 10) explores the

dieties. Biondo substitutes a fivefold classification of archeology, religion, public administration, the army, and the private life.^^ The objective of Biondo's antiquarianism is the emulation of classical civilization. In the introduction of the Roma Tnumphans he notes that it was his hope to give a portrayal of classical Rome when at the peak of its power so that its sound and good way of life and its many virtues could serve as an example for the learned men of his time.^^ Through his assiduous investigation of antiquity, certainly the most thorough in his time. Biondo had become convinced that classical Rome excelled contemporary civilization in every field of human activity. The rugged and practical roads, the colossal and efficient acqueducts, the imposing and harmonious temples, the spacious and elegant villas, indeed the whole architectural apparatus of ancient Rome were testimony to a superb engineering skill. Similarly, ancient Rome's military exploits, efficient administrative apparatus and exemplary family life were proof of a social and military genius unequaled in the history of the human race. The civilization of antiquity, therefore, should serve as an ideal which contemporary society should strive to attain. Rather than producing sober, exhaustive accounts of classical civilization, a method adopted by the antiquarians of the sixteenth century. Biondo strove to provide a succinct, pictorial view of the classical metropolis. Biondo tells us that he would be selective in the use of his sources. He would utilize only that information which is the most illustrative and pertinent, for an indiscriminate use of sources would make it impossible to produce an effective and vivid portrayal of the ancient metropolis. Moreover, an indiscriminate use of sources would lead to bulky studies, which would be nothing more than reproductions of classical works. -^

ANGELO MAZZOCCO

129

The

pictorial intent of Biondo's antiquarianism is affirmed several times throughout his works. For example, while describing the triumphal march he attempts to give a colorful, graphic rendition of the whole ceremony: "Aliqua tunc repetere libet, nostro huius temporis triumpho, quem hic verbis et

scripto

ducimus coaptanda."^^ The

pictorial intent of Biondo's antiquarianism

implicit in the very titles of his works. Rather than relying on descnptio and antiquitates the terms most commonly used by the antiquarians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Biondo opts for instaurata and thumpbans. is

Biondo's insistence on providing a vivid portrayal rather than an exhaustive account of classical civilization, as was the case with the antiquarians of the sixteenth century, is due to a perception of antiquarianism substantially different from that of his sixteenth-century counterparts. In fact, whereas Biondo sought to produce literary works that could inspire and prod his contemporaries,^^ the scholars of the sixteenth century strove to create manuals that could aid their contemporaries in the interpretation of classical civilization.

Despite Biondo's intention to create a succinct, vivid portrayal of classical his antiquarian works are anything but concise and pictorial. His Roma Thumphans in particular is so bulky and cumbersome that one finds it difficult to follow its train of thought. This work is often burdened with details notwithstanding the author's concern to be selective and precise. In the account of the ludi ciicenses, for example. Biondo not only lists numerous exotic animals, but he also provides descriptions of their physical characteristics as well as information on the year in which they were first introduced into the games and on the maimer in which they were utilized. ^^ The quotations from classical texts are so extensive and widespread that at times the Roma Thumphans does in fact become a reproduction of classical works. Except for major categories such as the army, religion, public administration, etc.. Biondo has little sense of the topical approach. For the most part his distribution of material has no logical pattern. The gladiatorial games, for example, are treated in the midst of the funeral ceremonies, when logic would dictate that they be included among the public spectacles. ^^ Ultimately, then, Biondo's reconstructions of Roman ruins and institutions are as extensive as those of the antiquarians of the sixteenth century, but they lack the coherence and range characteristic of their sixteenth-century counterparts.^^ The question arises: how could Biondo who had an awareness of stylisic elegance produce such awkwardly structured works? Stylistic awkwardness is congenital to Biondo's scholarship and constitutes its major weakness.^'' In the antiquarian works this awkwardness is compounded by the lack of specific models to follow and by Biondo's obsession to reproduce to the fullest every facet and characteristic of Roman life. Indeed, Biondo displays a mystical-like attitude towards classical Rome, comparable to the baibagliaie of Jacopone da Todi. He seems to be saying like Jacopone that "... la lingua barbaglia— e non sa che parlare / dentro non pò celare — tanto è grande lo

Rome,

•^'^

dolzore. "^^

The stylistic deficiencies of Biondo's antiquarianism, though severe, do not lessen the merit of his antiquarian works. His reconstruction of Roman institutions are

comprehensive and for the most part quite accurate. His account

BIONEX) FLAVIO

130

AND THE ANTIQUARIAN TRADITION

is detailed and rather exact. Speaking of this facet of Biondo's antiquarianism the distinguished Italian scholar,

of the juridical system, for example,

Guglielmo Savagnone has noted that Biondo,

romano

"...

gettò le basi della storia del

Roma Rome

Tiiumpbans...."^^ His description of the topography of classical is equally effective. '^^ Moreover, Biondo's exuberance towards classical civilization prompts him to consider topics — the prestige enjoyed by the men of letters, the implications of Roman virtus, the degeneracy of imperial Rome, etc. —which are normally excluded by the more techincal antiquarian tracts of the sixteenth century. Because of his refined method of research, certainly the most sophisticated in his time. Biondo was able to rid antiquarianism of its legendary and magical elements. To be sure, Biondo's antiquarian works are still beset by misconceptions,'*^ however, Biondo's errors, unlike those of the medieval and, to a certain degree, the fourteenth-century antiquarians, are due to lack of information rather than to diritto

nella

capricious and arbitrary interpretations. Biondo's antiquarian works were extremely influential. Because of their inspirational and exemplary intent, they played a vital role in the whole phenomenon of rebirth. Renaissance scholars pursued Biondo's antiquarian works as sources of information and as models of antiquarian scholarship. His fivefold classification— archeology, religion, public achninistration, the army, the private life— was institutionalized, becoming a standard procedure for the whole antiquarian tradition of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His antiquarianism was certainly influential in Joannes Rosinus Romanaium Antiquitatum, the first comprehensive account of classical civilization since Biondo, and in Thomas Dempster's revision of the Romanaium Antiquitatum^^ Traces of Biondo's antiquarianism are still noticeable in the first edition of the Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer (1843-1867) by W. A. Becker and J. Marquardt."*^

When one bears in mind the fragmentary and inconclusive antiquarian tracts and when one considers that Biondo lacked not

of Biondo's contemporaries

only concrete models to follow, but also the most rudimentary research tools, one must conclude that his achievement in the field of antiquarianism is remarkable indeed. In fact. Biondo must be acknowledged as the father of modem antiquarianism. That he is the father of modern antiquarianism is attested to by none other than Rosinus. Says Rosinus: "Post obitum Varronis, humaniores literae et antiquitatis studia sensim labi coeperunt, et tandem prorsus iacuerunt, donee patrum nostrorum memoria Flavius Blondus Foroliviensis ea ex tenebris eruere, et ab interitu vindicare primus studuerit, cuius vestigia multi sunt secuti.'"*'* I opened this study with the assertion that contemporary scholarship has a rather restricted view of Renaissance antiquarianism. Consequently I have attempted to define the nature of this facet of the Renaissance by noting its major features and by arguing that its major contributor was Biondo Flavio. It is my conviction that Renaissance antiquarianism constitutes one of the last and major frontiers in the area of Renaissance scholarship. Because of its encyclopaedic intent, Renaissance antiquarianism had far-reaching implications in the cultural life of Renaissance Europe. It provided the methodology

ANGELO MAZZOCCO for social history/^

I3I

fostered a highly classicized art

form/^ and

served

Moreby viewing mythological figures as socio-historical phenomena rather than as fictiones poeticae, it added a new dimension to classical mythology. In fact, classical myths became to be regarded not as repositories of hidden moral truths, but as manifestations of a heathen and misguided society.*'' Thus knowledge of Renaissance antiquarianism can shed much light on the origin and nature of these fields of study. To the extent that the objective of Renaissance antiquarianism is the interpretation of Roman civilization and that this interpretation undergoes different stages of development— fantastic and absurd in the late Middle Ages, exemplary and emotional during the humanistic era, dispassionate and functional in the sixteenth century — knowledge of Renaissance antiquarianism can broaden our understanding of the evolution of Renaissance itself. However, to appreciate fully the impact of the antiquarian production of the Renaissance we need a coherent and systematic account of all the facets of Renaissance antiquarianism. In studying Renaissance antiquarianism we must always bear in mind that its intention was the reconstruction of the whole civilization of classical Rome. as a source of information

and therefore as impetus

for legal history.

over,

Mount Holyoke

College

Notes 1 A noticeable exception to this view of Renaissance antiquarianism is provided by Arnaldo Momigliano's study "Ancient History and the Antiquarian," in his Studies in Histonogiaphy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), pp. 1-39. Momigliano sees Renaissance antiquarianism as the reconstruction of all the aspects of classical life; however, he says very little about this facet of the Renaissance: "The stages of the rediscovery of the Varronian idea (i.e. of the Varronian idea of antiquitates] from Petrarch to Biondo cannot detain us." (p. 5) Momigliano regrets the lack of an historical account of antiquarianism: "I wish I could simply refer to a History of Antiquarian Studies. But none exists." (p. 3) That antiquarianism implies essentially the study of classical archeology is reflected also by Webster's Tbiid New International Dictionary. Here the antiquary is defined as "one who studies the relics of antiquity (as monuments, remains of ancient habitations, statues, coins, or manuscripts): one who collects or studies antiquities." Much the same definition is provided by the Oxford English Dictionary which defines the antiquary as "A student (usually sl professed student), or collector, of antiquities. (Formerly used in a wide sense, of a student of early history; now tending to be restricted to one who investigates the relics and monuments of the more recent past.)" For the view of the antiquary in European literatures

see Momigliano, n. 15, p. 32. 2.

The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (New York: Humanities

Press, 1973), p. x. 3. See G. Zaccagnini, Storia dello studio di Bologna durante (Geneva, 1930), pp. 273-74.

Rinascimento

BIONDO FLAVIO AND THE ANTIQUARIAN TRADITION

132

Rosinus (Roszfeld) (1551-1626) was an historian and antiquarian. Besides (1583), he also wrote a Vitae Tiimn Saxoniae Ducum (1602). see Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, xxix (1889), pp. 237-39. 5. loannes Thomas Freigius "Benevolo Lectori S.," in Joannes Rosinus, Romanaium Antiquitatum Lihrì Decem. Ex Vaiiis Scnptoiibus Summa Fide Singulanque Deligentia CoUecti (Basilae: Ex officina Haeredum Petri Pemae, 1583). All references to Rosinus' Romanarum Antiquitatum are to this edition. 6. "Epistola Dedicatoria" in Romanaium Antiquitatum. 4.

the

Romanaium Antiquitatum

7. Ibid.

The following

Rosinus' accoimt of the content of his work:

meo opere primum locmn huius Reipublicae describe: urbem Romam: cuius originem, aedificationem, et amplificationem atque

Itaque in hoc videlicet

ambitum, quantum quidem ex vetenmi

et recentium ea de re scriptis editis ob oculos pono: atque simul praecipua aedificia iuxta quatuordecim regiones, in quas Augustus Urbem descripsit, indico. Urbe mûris circumdata, et aedificiis instructa, de incolis atque habitatoribus huius Urbis iure Optimo dicemdum est: quod etiam in hoc primo libro allatis praecipuis huius Populi divisionibus et differentiis, summa diligentia facio. lis cognitis, Instituta Populi consideranda. Ilia vero versantur vel circa religionem, vel circa Reipublicae gubemationem. Secundo igitur huius Commentarli libro de Dus, quos hic populus coluit, quibus de causis eos hoc vel ilio nomine appellarit, quae tempia, aedes, aediculas, aras et cetera in eorum honorem aedificarit, dissero. Inde libro tertio Deorum vel sacronun Ministros describo. Cum vero multi etiam dies in honorem illorum Deorum festive et celebriter fuerint peracti: de iis, quos Romani festos habuenmt, quarto libro ago. Ad festos dies pertinent Ludi, quos quinto libro explico. Absoluta ad hunc modum tractatione de Religione, Politiae descriptionem aggredior: ubi, cum praecipuae fere partes Reipubl. comitiis Populi sint peractae, de iis primo loco, libro videlicet sexto, ago. Magistratus postea libro septimo subiungo. Quae Leges huius Reipublicae, ad quarum normam ea gubemata est, fuerint, octavo libro trado. Gubemationis huius praxin, que in iudiciis consistit, nono libro expono. Ita et Religione et Reipubl. guberanatione explicata. Urbe egredior, et quae instituta, qui ritus huius Populi circa rem militarem fuerint, oratione persequor: et sic hunc totum tractatvun concludo. Romanaium Antiquitatum, p. 1. scire potui, fideliter lectoribus

That antiquarianism was intended to be the archeological and institutional reconstruction of ancient civilization is attested also by W. A. Becker. "There was once a period when no portion of classic lore was more zealously cultivated than the study of antiquities, by which is meant everything appertaining to the political institutions, worship, and houses of the ancients." Roman Scenes of the Time of Augustus, trans. F. Metcalfe (New York, 1898), p. xi. 9. De Uibe Roma in Reium Italicaium Sciiptoies ab Anno Aeiae Cbiistianae Millesimo ad Millesimum Sexcentesimum (Florence, 1770), n, 783-84. Rucellai did in fact write a work on Roman institutions: De Magistiatibus Romanoium Veteium Commentaiius. On Rucellais De Uibe Roma see Felix Gilbert, "Bernardo Rucellai and the Orti Oricellai," in The Journal of the Waibuig and Couitauld Institutes, Xn (1949), 122. Rucellai's need to reconstruct the whole life of classical Rome was shared also by Onofrio Panvinio, who had planned to write an Anti-

ANGELO MAZZOCCO

133

quitatuxn Romanaimn Libri Centum. "Quest'opera ci rimane abbozzata nel cod. Vat. Lat. 6783." D. Perini, Onofrio Panvinio e le sue opere (Rome, 1899), p. 89. 10. Panvinio, Fasti et Triumphi (1557); C. Sigonio, Fasti Consulares (1556), De

Nominibus Romanorum (1553-1556) and De Antiquo

Jure

Civium Romanorum

Liber (1586) and De Militia Romana (1595). 1 1 Such seems to be the implication of Rosinus in the following statement: "Ipse enim volui haec esse quasi rudimenta quaedam et initia, iis, qui porrò Antiquitatem inquirere volent." "Prefatio" in Romanarum Antiquitatum. 12. "Epistola Dedicatora," op. cit. 13. "Benevolo Lectori S.," op. cit. (1560);

Lipsius,

De Amphiteatro

14. Ibid. 15. Joannes G. Graevius, the editor of the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum (1694-1699), the most complete collection of sixteenth-century antiquarian works, says the following about the scholarly activity of the antiquarians of this period:

omne scriptorum, quos de rebus Romanis ex ilio naufragio tanquam tabulas quasdam nobis propitium quoddam Numen

Itaque genus rei litterariae

servavit, historici, oratores, poetae, philosophi, grammatici, Graeci Lantini-

que sunt evolvendi,

ex multis variisque locis

et particulis

tanquam ex longe

lateque sparsis ruderibus et parietinis quibusdam collapsiun aedificium veteris

Romae

fuit

redintegrandum.

Non

requirebatur tantum ad has tenebras

dispellendas multa et assidua lectio, ingens industria, memoria firma fidaque rerum lectarum custos, attentio maxima, ne quid retrusum et abditum preateriretur, acris ingenii vis et perspicacitas ad occulta pervidenda et ex latibulis

emenda, judiciique

summa subtilitas et ad discemenda,

tent banc, quae aliam reip. partem, et ad apte

componenda

quae spec-

lacera dissipata-

que membra, nodosque, qui passim occurrunt, difficillimos soUerter expediendos. "Praefatio Lectori Benevolo," in Thesaurus Antiquitatum

Romanarum

(12 vols.,

Venice, 1732-1737), I. 16. D. Perini, Onofrio Panvinio e le sue opere, op. cit., p. 88. 17. "Apud veteres quidem Romanos plurimi eruditione et prudentia clari et praestantes viri certatim hoc egerunt, ut veterum morum, rituum et cerimoniarum origines et causas scriptis comprehenderent, et posteritati proderent: quorum nomina apud grammaticos antiquos et alios scriptores miscellaneos passim reperiuntur, monumenta interciderunt. Imprimis autem Marcus Terentius Varrò, cuius illustria elogia apud Ciceronem et illud lumen Ecclesiae Aurelium Augustinum extant, tum alia de hac materia literis mandavit, tum quadraginta et unum libros Antiquitatum ad C. lui. Caesarem Pontificem Maximum scripsit, quos in res humanas divinasque divisit." "Epistola Dedicatoria," op. cit. 18. A. Momigliano, "Ancient History and the Antiquarian," op. cit., p. 5. 19. Cicero says the following about Varro's Antiquitates:

Nos in nostra urbe peregrinantis errantisque tamquam hospites tui libri quasi domum reduxerunt, ut possemus aliquando qui et ubi essemus agnoscere. Tu aetatem patriae, tu descriptiones temporum, tu sacrorum iura, tu sacerdotum, tu domesticam, tu bellicam disciplinam tu sedem regionum, locorum, tu omnium divinarum humanarumque rerum nomina, genera, officia, causas aperuisti.

BIONDO FLAVIO AND THE ANTIQUARIAN TRADITION

134

Academica (Harvard University Press: The Loeb Classical Library, 1961), I, 3. 20. F. Petrarca, De Rebus Pamiliarìbus, VI, 2,XXn, 14; De Rebus Senilibus, IV, 1, XrV, 1; Afnca, 140-262 and 862-951; G. Dondi, Itei Romanum, C. Salutati, De Laborìs Heiculis, G. Barzizza, De Nominibus Magistiatuum Romanonim; A. Fiocchi, De Magistratibus Saceidotisque Romanoium Libellus; P. C. Decembrio, De Muneiibus Romae Rei Publicae-, L. B. Alberti, Descrìptio Urbis Romae-, and P. Bracciolini, Ruinanun Urbis Romae Desciiptio in De Varìetate Foitunae. 21. Roma Instaurata, in De Roma Triumpbante Libri Decem, Romae Instauratae Libri Très, Italia Illustrata (Basel: Proben, 1531), p. 222. All references to Biondo's Instaurata and Roma Triumphans are to the 1531 Basel edition.

Roma

22. Ibid., pp. 263-266.

23. Ibid., pp. 259-260. 24. Ibid., p. 259. 25. While examining public administration. Biondo notes that he would not dwell on how Rome was built since it had aheady been done in the Roma Instaurata: "Sed permittendam fortasse quis dixerit, et causam et rationem condendae urbis, et ipsam aedificationem ab initio ad culmen, atque etiam inclinantis Imperii principia, brevi narratione perductam. Cui parti videmur satisfecisse in Roma, quam

descripsimus instaurata."

Roma Triumphans,

p. 54.

26. Ibid., p. 213. 27. For a more complete account on the complementarity of the Roma Instaurata and the Roma Triumphans see A. Mazzocco, "Some Philological Aspects of Biondo Flavio's Roma Triumphans," Humarüstica Lovaniensia, xxviii (1979), 10-15. 28. The Antiquitates was, of course, lost during the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, Biondo had indirect knowledge of it. His information was derived from Books V-Vl of Varro's De Lingua Latina, from St. Jerome, but especially from St. Augustine's Civitäs Dei. "Sed pliura ad eam rem a M. Varrò ne asseremus. Is vir sanctorum religionis nostrae doctissimorum Hieronymi et Augustini iudicio doctissimus est ..." and "Et Beatus Augustinus his verbis hoc exponit. Varrò asseruit Circem socios Ulixis mutasse in bestias...." Roma Triumphans, pp. 11 and 21. Biondo was also very familiar with the antiquarian literature of the Middle Ages and with that of the humanists. He knew personally all of the contemporary an-

tiquarians. 29.

30. 31.

Roma Roma Roma

Triumphans,

p. 2.

Instaurata, p. 246; Roma Triumphans, pp. 89, 101, 167. Triumphans, p. 213.

the humanists from Petrarca to Bernardo among others, the following remarks: F. Petrarca, "Ut hoc velut in speculo tete intuens ...."De Repubhca Optime Administranda, in Opera (4 vols., Basel, 1554), I, 421; P. C. Decembrio, "...aut disserere velimus qua eius urbis mores institutaque referre ... ut eorum penuria pene lugeat etas nostra!" De Muneribus Romanae Rei Pubhcae in Vaticano Latino 3416, f. 24v; B. Rucellai, "... statui ex Romanorum gestis, quaecumque obscuriora viderentur aperire, proque viribus ante oculos ponere priscum ilium 32. In this

Rucellai,

Biondo concurs with

who

treated

Roman

all

antiquities. Note,

ordinem civitatis, ut si minus aetatis nostrae civibus, posteris salutem, aut alienigenis conferre possemus. Nam etsi in tanta scriptorum copia, qui ea posteris tradiderunt, elici posse sensus videatur ..." De Urbe Roma, op. cit., in regenda Republica

p. 783.

33.

Roma Triumphans,

pp. 48-49.

ANGELO MAZZOCCO

135

Roman army, for example, De Optimo Imperatole, a

34. His account of the

mary

of Onosander's

terminates with a lengthy sumtreatise on the qualities of a

commander-in-chief. Ibid., pp. 152-159. 35. Ibid., pp. 40 and 46-50. 36. This structural weakness was to be reproached by no less a connoisseur of Renaissance antiquarianism than J. G. Graevius. Although appreciative of the pioneering work of Biondo and his school, Graevius was critical of their method, which he foimd quite deficient: "Nam qui ante hos [i.e. the antiquarians of the sixteenth century] in hac omanda Sparta desudarunt, Blondus Flavius, Raphael Volaterranus, Julius Pomponius Laetus, aliique nonnulli, non inutüem quidem, ut Ulis temporibus, rei Romanae studiosis navarunt operam, et probabile est eorum studiimi et egregia voluntas bene de Romana et litteraria re merendi; sed nondum satis politi erant, nec ea doctrinae copia, nec iis subsidiis instructi, quae hoc genus scribendi postulabat." "Praefatio Lectori Benevolo," op. cit. 37. Biondo is capable of sparkling prose when, as in the third decade of his Histonarum Decades, his account is derived for the most part from oral informa-

He is also quite effective in polemical tracts, such Locutionis. However, when his studies depend on the fastidious probing of numerous written and archeological sources, as is the case with his antiquarian studies, then his style suffers considerably. tion and personal experience. as the

Verbis

Romanea

38. Luigi Russo, I Classici italiani dal I,

Duecento al Quattrocento

(Florence, 1967),

p. 445.

39. "Gli umanisti italiani e la storia del diritto

XXXIV 40.

romano,"

Circolo giuridico,

(1903), 301.

The Roma Instaurata remained the indisputable source on classical topography handbook on Roman

until the publication of the second edition of Marliani's

topography (1544). 41. On the misconceptions of the Roma Instaurata see Dorothy M. Robathan, "Flavio Biondo's Roma Instaurata," Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, I (1970), 203-216. 42. The title of Dempster's revision is as follows: Antiquitatum Romanarum corpus absolutissimum in quo praeter ea quae loarmes Rosinus delineaverat, infinita supplentur, mutantur, adduntur. Excriticis, et omnibus utriusque linguae auctoribus collectum: poetis, oratoribus, historicis, iurisconsultis, qui laudati, explicatif correctique. Thoma Dempstero a Muresk, I. C. Scoto, autore (Lutetiae Parisiorum, apud loannem Le Bouc, 1613). 43. The first edition of the Handbuch encompasses five major parts: topography, the Republican and imperial form of government; the administrative, fiscal, and military systems; the cult; and the private life. 44. "Epistola Dedicatoria," op. cit. It should be noted that Rosinus' antiquarian work developed in the mainstream of contemporary antiquarianism. See "Epistola Dedicatoria," "Praefatio," and the letters to the reader in Romanarum Antiquitatum. Hence, in saying that Biondo was the father of modem antiquarianism, Rosinus likely expressing a view that was prevalent among the leading antiquarians of the time. 45. That social history has its roots in antiquarianism has been implied by several scholars. For example, Peter Stansky, says the following while reviewing the present state of social history: "I think the evidence is pretty convincing about what interests us at the moment. In many ways the trend is rich in its potentiali-

was most

136

BIONDO FLAVIO AND THE ANTIQUARIAN TRADITION

even though, at times, the new social history looks disconcertingly like the old antiquarianism." "History &. Biography," The New York Times Book Review, (5 June 1977),p.41, C0I.2. On the relationship between Renaissance antiquarianism and social history see Peter Burke, "The Sense of Historical Perspective in Renaissance Italy," Journal of Woild History, n (1969), 622. 46. See A. Mazzocco, "Petrarch, Poggio, and Biondo: Humanism's Foremost Interpreters of Roman Ruins," in Piancis Petiaich, Six Centuries Later: A Symposium, ed. Aldo Scaglione (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1975), pp. 353-363. 47. Petrarch and Biondo went so far as to consider classical deities as demons in disguise; consequently they had to be excluded altogether from the numerous classical elements to be imitated. For Petrarch's view of classical deities see A. Mazzocco, "The Antiquarianism of Francesco Petrarca," The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, YD. (1977), 220-224. ties,

Dialogues et manuels de rhétorique à la Renaissance: structures, philosophie, histoire Alain Michel

Pour

apprécier l'évolution et la portée des traités de rhétorique, il est mettre en rapport avec leurs sources antiques. Tel sera l'objet de l'esquisse que nous souhaitons présenter ici. Nous essayerons de lui donner des limites assez larges. Nous croyons en effet que la rhétorique, du fait qu'elle porte sur les structures générales de l'expression et de la penutile de les

d'une façon globale. La chose est aisée, si dans lesquels nos auteurs peuvent trouver leurs sources se présentent d'une manière nettement diversifiée. Ils appartiennent à des genres, dont il convient de définir la structure et les genèses. On se demandera ensuite comment les hommes de la Renaissance ont imité ou modifié ces genres. Nous pourrons ainsi étudier l'histoire de la rhétorique d'une manière structurelle, sans tomber dans le formalisme. Un tel défaut la menace d'ime façon particulière, mais on peut l'éviter en étudiant les textes à la fois dans leur histoire, leur généralité, leur rapport sée, doit toujours être considérée

l'on s'avise d'une réalité: les différents traités antiques

avec

culture et la philosophie.

Tout

cela intervient dans la constitution de la rhétorique antique et de ses

différents genres.

Parmi les textes que nous avons conservés, il faut placer en premier lieu Phèdre de Platon et la Rhétorique d'Aristote. Ainsi se définissent d'emblée deux genres: dans le premier cas, le dialogue; dans le second, le traité didactique. Encore les deux types d'ouvrages restent-ils également attentifs à la philosophie, à laquelle ils veulent l'un et l'autre subordonner la rhétorique. Un autre courant, qui venait de Gorgias et qui semble s'être développé avec Isocrate, produit des traités proprement techniques. Aristote doit s'en être inspiré pour sa Rhétorique, tout en rédigeant également des dialogues, célèbres dans l'antiquité, et que nous avons perdus. La synthèse entre les deux genres, en même temps que leur distinction, apparaît chez Cicéron. Dans sa jeunesse, il écrit le De inuentione. Cet ouvrage le

DIALOGUES ET MANUELS DE RHETORIQUE

138

ressemble fort à la Rbétonque à Hérennius, qu'on peut attribuer à Comificius. Les deux traités s'inspirent manifestement de l'enseignement donné dans l'école rhodienne. Ils ont forme de manuels méthodiques, faciles à apprendre. En 55, Cicéron leur oppose le De ozatoie, qui est le plus brillant et le plus nuancé de ses dialogues. Il y expose avec profondeur que la rhétorique n'est pas un art, susceptible d'être enseigné par les seuls préceptes. Elle doit plutôt être étudiée à la fois par la pratique créatrice et la critique philosophique. Le dialogue constitue la forme naturelle de ces démarches. Encore s'agit-il d'un dialogue original, où se combinent les influences de l'interrogation socratique et de l'urbanité majestueuse dont r"Aristote perdu" avait donné l'exemple. De ce fait, Cicéron, dans la composition générale de son ouvrage, met l'accent sur quelques structures fondamentales, dont l'influence va rester décisive. Nous dirions volontiers qu'il cherche à combiner les enseignements majeurs de Platon et d'Aristote. Avec le premier, il affirme que la véritable éloquence ne peut exister sans référence à la philosophie. Il montre que cela implique une recherche de la perfection. Dans les textes célèbres qui ouvrent VOratoi (7 sqq.), il affirmera, neuf ans plus tard, qu'il cherche r"idée" de l'orateur. Qui dit idéal dit avant tout plénitude: l'auteur d'un traité sur l'éloquence parfaite doit donc d'abord se représenter toutes les qualités possibles, puis les mettre ensemble et les accorder. Cette démarche semble avoir été celle d'Aristote, reprise et développée par ses successeurs et en premier lieu par Théophraste. Pour l'essentiel, elle pose une distinction, qui apparaît dès la Rhétorique, entre le fond et la forme ou, comme on dira chez les Romains, entre Vinuentio et la dictio.

Cicéron, qui travaille à partir des rhéteurs qui l'ont précédé, comme Hermagoras de Temnos, introduit aussi quelques notions d'une grande importance. L'une d'entre elles est la thesis ou question générale, à partir de laquelle il modifie la théorie des états de causes, que les manuels antérieurs au De oiatoie nous avaient fait connaître. Bientôt, en 44, Cicéron va rédiger ses Topiques, qui représentent une étude générale de l'invention dialectique; le problème des questions, sans être ignoré, se trouve rejeté au second plan. Cicéron étudie les lieux de l'argumentation en allant de la définition à la cause et aux syllogismes. La comparaison avec les Académiques U, 1, rédigés un an avant, nous permet de comprendre qu'ici encore, à travers Aristote, il rejoint les principes fondamentaux de la dialectique platonicienne (et donc du dialogue). Cicéron a donc doublement tendance à rejeter la forme des manuels, soit qu'il lui substitue le dialogue, soit qu'il

caractère précis et philosophique.

évolue vers des traités brefs, d'un

Une telle attitude se combine avec la défense

enthousiaste de la culture générale; celle-ci implique la connaissance et la pratique directe de textes nombreux et ne saurait se limiter à l'usage des manuels. Il

est inutile d'insister sur l'importance de la synthèse cicéronienne et sur

Mais il faut voir aussi— et ce sera une des idées maîtresses de notre exposé — qu'elle n'a pas toujours été pleinement acceptée. Les théoricians de la rhétorique avaient intérêt à se faire passer pour les dépositaires d'une technique. Tout enseignement se défend mal contre la tentation du manuel. Cicéron lui-même avait rédigé, en questions et responses, les Paititiones oiatoiiae, trop originales pour s'inscrire ensuite dans le prol'influence qu'elle a exercée.

ALAIN MICHEL

I39

gramme

ordinaire des imitations. Le véritable succès appatient à Quintilien, qui réalise une harmonieuse synthèse entre les manuels (dont il garde la présentation didactique) et le De oratore (dont il essaie d'intégrer la leçon philosophique). Nous ne devons pas nous arrêter ici quand nous parlons des sources antiques. Elles prennent encore quatre autres aspects, se présentent dans quatre autres genres. 1°. La déclamation étudie en pratique et par les exemples les différents modèles du discours. A partir de la fin du premier siècle, au temps d'Aelius Théon et de Quintilien, elle aboutit à la mise en forme des progymnasmata, ces "exercices préalables" qui vont de l'art de l'aphorisme et du récit jusqu'aux

questions générales. 2°. La critique littéraire se développe en liasison avec la rhétorique. Cicéron en avait donné l'exemple chez les latins en écrivant le Brutus. Il avait assurément eu des modèles chez les Grecs. Mais, parmi eux, nous ne trouvons que

des textes postérieurs, d'abord les opuscules de Denys d'Halicamasse, ensuite du sublime, qui nous paraît les suivre d'assez près dans le temps (fin

le Traité

1° siècle?).

Au second siècle vient la période de la Deuxième Sophistique, où la science des rhéteurs se déploie avec une ampleur et une subtilité admirables. 3°.

d'Hermogène dont l'oeuvre

est en la matière la plus accomplie de l'antend à concilier Platon, Aristote et Isocrate. Selon la tradition des manuels, qu'il pousse à son achèvement extrême et à laquelle il rend un caractère synthétique, il étudie la théorie des états de causes. Il développe aussi un sujet qui existait sans doute depuis Isocrate mais sur lequel nous n'avons pas gardé d'exposé écrit avant son époque: les "idées" du style, c'est-à-dire, dans l'acception particulière que prend alors le mot, ses principaux effets d'ensemble, douceur, gravité, vérité, véhémence etc. 4°. Il faut revenir aux latins pour signaler principalement le De doctrina Christiana et, de façon plus générale, le grand effort accompli par Augustin pour concilier avec le Verbe biblique les deux inspirations de sa jeimesse, celles du Platonisme et du Cicéronisme (perçu principalement à travers les manuels). Qu'on veuille bien excuser l'étendue de cette esquisse. J'ai voulu saisir dans leur ensemble les structures de l'éloquence antique. Cela est en effet nécessaire pour montrer dans quelle mesure elles ont été perçues par la Renaissance. D'emblée, nous pouvons indiquer un fait premier. Il ne se passera pas ici ce que Weinberg a signalé à propos de la poésie. On n'observera jamais un retour direct à le Rhétorique d' Aristote,- elle ne jouera pas le même rôle que la Poétique. C'est que nos auteurs, néo-latins ou autres, se trouvent en présence de doctrines beaucoup plus complexes et élaborées qui, dans tous les cas, ont dépassé l'état de réflexion représenté par Aristote. L'effort

tiquité,

A première vue,

l'influence

semble pas qu'aucun manière le précepte,

traité

du De oratore

dans

n'est guère plus importante. Il ne de la rhétorique accorde de la même pratique. L'originalité de Cicéron est ici

l'histoire

la critique et la

DIALOGUES ET MANUELS DE RHETORIQUE

140

souveraine. Pourtant nous voudrions souligner en commençant que l'influence et de VOrator a été la première à s'exercer à la Renaissance. Il me suffit ici de me référer aux travaux de lerold Seigel ou à mes propres observations sur Pétrarque. Celui-ci pratique le dialogue. Il a deux modèles: le

du De oratole

premier est constitué par le dialogue augustinien, principalement les Soliloques, dont l'auteur italien imite l'intériorité dans son Secretum-, mais, à travers Augustin, Pétrarque retrouve la source cicéronienne. Il pose le primat de la philosophie et de la vertu, en se référant peut-être aux textes que nous venons d'évoquer, certainement aux introductions des deux livres du De inuentione. Aussi n'est-il pas étonnant qu'on passe directement du pétrarquisme au cicéronisme, de Salutati à Bembo. Cela s'accomplit à travers une démarche spirituelle qui se manifeste particulièrement chez Valla et qui nous paraît essentielle à l'esprit de la Renaissance: il s'agit de revenir à la grammaire sans renoncer à la philosophie. En soulignant que les deux nuances restent liées, nous croyons — avec Cicéron! —résoudre une antinomie qui contrarie quelquefois la recherche actuelle, selon qu'on insiste sur l'un ou l'autre aspect. Valla retourne à la pratique directe des bons auteurs, vraie source de Velegantia. Il apporte ainsi une pièce décisive à la critique des manuels et il s'appuie sur fondamentaux du De oratore ou du Pro Archia, qui veulent qu'on étudie les bonnes lettres. Tout cela débouche sur la notion d'bumanitas, qui, chez Cicéron, se trouve essentiellement liée au grand dialogue sur l'éloquence. On voit donc qu'il serait tout-à-fait faux de nier son immense inl'un des préceptes

fluence. Elle s'étendra jusqu'à Patrizi, qui, se référant à Platon, fait apparaître

essentiellement les contradictions et les problèmes.

Mais revenons en arriére. Voici le premier manuel de la Renaissance. Il est dû à Georges de Trébizonde et date de la première moitié du quinzième siècle. Cette fois, les exigences de la technique et du didactisme se trouvent pleinement respectées. Il faut voir comment. Nous n'étudierons pas en détail le traité, qui fait dans notre Congrès l'objet d'une autre communication, mais nous en étudierons la structure et les sources. En ce qui concerne la structure, nous constatons à première vue l'influence dominante d'Hermogène, connu à travers la tradition byzantine, qui a prolongé la Seconde Sophistique avec une magnifique fidélité. Les trois premiers livres présentent une théorie des états de causes issue de son Ilepi otàoetou. Le cinquième et dernier s'appuie essentiellement sur le Ilepi Siwv. Le quatrième, qui fait transition, s'applique aux genres délibératif et épidictique. Toutefois, la tradition grecque tardive n'intervient pas seule. Nous observons d'abord que notre traité se présente sous une forme totalement synthétique.

embrasse tous

les aspects

la rhétorique.

traitent de Vinuentio, le dernier de Velocutio.

Les quatre premiers livres

Nous retrouvons

ici le

schéma

fondamental issu d'Aristote et transmis par Cicéron ou la Rhétorique à Hérennius. En fait, Georges de Trébizonde tente la synthèse de deux traditions. L'ime

Moyen Âge latin, qui s'était indu De inuentione. Il connaît l'essentiel

lui parvient par les Byzantins, l'autre par le

téressé de très près à l'enseignement

du Du oratore, dont il paraphrase notamment le premier discours de Crassus pour proclamer la grandeur de l'éloquence ou le livre lu pour affirmer les

ALAIN MICHEL

I4I

vertus d'Aristote, qui a uni la forme et le fond, la philosophie et le style. Nous sommes donc en présence d'une oeuvre particulièrement originale et féconde, qui tend à combiner les deux synthèses majeures proposées par l'antiquité gréco-latine et qui se sert de la tradition latine pour reconnaître les affinités profondes qui existent entre les doctrines de Cicéron et d'Hermogène: il s'agit toujours d'établir un accord entre Platon, Aristote et Isocrate. Cela se manifeste encore lorsque Georges de Trébizonde insiste sur la notion de sublime (il emploie indifféremment grandis, le mot cicéronien, ou sublimis, terme plus tardif) et lorsqu'il rédige des Topiques, dont l'importance nous paraît décisive. Il y montre à propos de la notion de thesis qu'il est inutile, d'après lui, de recourir à la notion médiévale de "supposition" pour savoir ce qu'implique une affirmation: il suffit de la situer dans son contexte. Une rhétorique de la connotation tend ainsi à se substituer à celle de la dénotation, une topique de Vadiectum à celle du subiectum.

Quittons Georges de Trébizonde. Dans un troisième temps nous rejoignons Érasme. Il pratique le dialogue, avec toutes ses nuances, notamment dans son Ciceionianus et on n'en est pas étonné (mais il s'inspire aussi des techniques du colloque ironique, telles qu'il les doit à Lucien) Il n'a écrit qu'un ouvrage de rhétorique pure: le titre en est De duplici copia leium ac ueihoium. Nous insisterons sur deux aspects: la notion de copia, le plan (ici aussi). Sur ce point, nous avons une surprise: il semble qu'Érasme s'oppose à la tradition cicéronienne, aristotélicienne, classique. Il traite des mots dans son premier livre, avant de passer aux choses. Chez lui, Velocutio semble précéder Vinuentio. J'ai interrogé à ce sujet M. Tuynman. Il m'a répondu qu'Érasme ne nie pas plus que Cicéron la priorité de res sur uerba-, mais le plan qu'il suit n'est pas celui des grands manuels. Il s'inspire (encore une fois dans la ligne des Grecs, des Byzantins, des auteurs tardifs) des Progymnasmata. Ce qu'il veut, c'est former ses élèves par des "exercices préparatoires." Or la pédagogie traditionnelle demande qu'ils commencent par ce qu'il y a de plus simple, le mot, la sentence, le trait, la formule, et aboutissent au plus complexe, la réflexion contradictoire sur la loi ou sur les questions générales. Au fur et à mesure qu'on avance, on passe du mot à la phrase et de la phrase à la pensée. Tel est le paradoxe d'Érasme, disciple d'Horace et Lucien, écrivain profondément attique, admirateur, de surcroît, d'Origene, d'Augustin et du dépouillement chrétien, qui aboutit cependant à susciter Shakespeare, Cervantes, Rabelais. L'abondance naît de la sobriété même, parce que la pensée accomplit le miracle de la multiplication des mots. ,

Il reste à franchir un dernier pas. Il nous ramènera à l'exacte pratique des manuels.^ Il consacrera ce qu'on pourrait appeler le triomphe de Quintilien. Nous savons en effet comment ce dernier concevait l'organisation d'un traité de rhétorique. Il s'agissait pour lui de concilier le plan du De oratore et celui de la Rhétorique à Hérennius. D'autre part, il devait combiner, dans une synthèse qui se voulait complète, les différentes classifications qu'il trouvait chez

les rhéteurs: genres

de l'éloquence (judiciaire, deliberative, épidictique); devoirs de l'orateur (prouver, plaire, émouvoir); parties du discours (exorde, narration.

142

DIALOGUES ET MANUELS DE RHETORIQUE

démonstration, péroraison): parties de l'éloquence (invention, elocution, disposition, mémoire, action); vertus de l'expression (clarté, pureté, ornements, grâce). Quintilien, s'inspirant de certaines idées cicéroniennes, esquissées notamment dans VOiatoi, avait proposé le schéma suivant: après une présentation générale, il avait défini au LIU les parties de l'éloquence et les genres de causes. Au 1. IV, il avait classé les parties du discours. A chacune d'entre elles, il avait rattaché ensuite une partie de l'éloquence: Vinuentio des arguments se rattachait à la preuve (l.V), les passions et le rire à la péroraison (l.VI). On revenait ensuite à la disposition (l.Vn), puis on passait à l'élocution (Vni-X), qui comprenait en particulier la théorie des figures et celle de l'abondance, et on finissait par une réflexion sur la grâce et sur la convenance (XI) et par une méditation sur rhétorique et philosophie (Xu). On reconnaît ici une magnifique mise en ordre de tous les concepts cicéroniens, accompagnée de quelques références à la déclamation ou à la théorie du sublime, alors naissante. Mais la Seconde Sophistique est absente, puisque Quintilien ne peut encore la connaître. Or, le plan qu'il nous propose va être suivi, avec peu de variantes, par plusieurs grands traités du XVIème siècle et de l'Europe baroque. Je citerai: Cavalcanti (Venise, 1550); le P. Cyprien Soarez (1595), qui rattache son ouvrage à la Ratio studionun des Jésuites; enfin, en 1622, l'énorme somme de Gerhard Voss. Celui-ci réintroduit beaucoup des enseignements d'Hermogène, mais, pour l'essentiel, il garde le plan de Quintilien.

ni. arrêterons ici. On voit que la simple étude des "genres" utilisés par les auteurs et les maîtres permet d'esquisser une histoire de la rhétorique à la Renaissance. Nous pouvons distinguer deux mouvements: le Quattrocento trouve dans une synthèse gréco-latine des traditions byzantine et médiévale le moyen de définir la renaissance originale de l'esthétique. Mais ensuite on voit décliner également la connaissance de l'hellénisme et celle du Moyen Âge. En revanche, on a découvert Quintilien. Ainsi s'esquisse une nouvelle interprétation, plus étroite et plus exclusive, du message cicéronien. Il est intéressant d'insister à ce propos sur les trois notions fondamentales du P. Soarez: amplificatìo; dispositio; elocutio. En fait, la forme, l'esthétique, la passion tendent à primer sur l'herméneutique et la dialectique. Évolution très dangereuse, qui, au XVin° et au XIX° siècles, conduira vers la sclérose: un tel résultat se trouve déjà dénoncé au XVn° par les Cartésiens et même au XVI° par Patrizi. Toutefois, je ne terminerai pas sur cette note pessimiste et j'esquisserai en finissant une dernière référence. Les traités spécialisés, qui venaient préciser ou approfondir les manuels généraux, ne sont pas oubliés à l'époque baroque. J'indiquerai trois tendances: 1°. la déclamation étudiait l'art de la sententia-, elle se trouve à l'origine de la théorie du concetto et de toutes les recherches sur la "matière de l'éloquence" (il faudrait ici noter l'influence de travaux originaux, issus du Moyen Âge, comme ceux de Raimond Lulle et de Giulio Camillo Delminio). 2°. Après 1550, la réflexion sur le sublime, liée notamment à des comparaisons entre Démosthéne et Jean Chrysostome, ne cesse

Nous nous

ALAIN MICHEL

143

de se développer. 3°. L'utilisation des Topiques cicéroniens, instaurée, nous l'avons vu, par Georges de Trébizonde, prend un caractère dominant chez un Ramus, qui se sert de la tradition académique trouvée à Rome pour réconcilier Platon et Aristote. Ainsi la brièveté de Tacite— et de Juste Lipse— le sublime de Sénèque et de Longin, la méthode de Platon et de Ramus, apparaissent comme les trois vertus fondamentales, issues de la bonne rhétorique, qui fondent le classicisme sans rompre avec le baroque. Université de Paris-Sorbonne

Note 1. Le dialogue n'a presque jamais été utilisé de manière cicéronienne pour traiter en eux-mêmes les problèmes de l'éloquence. Citons toutefois quatre exceptions. Dans le De lemediis, Pétrarque pose les questions cicéroniennes; mais il le fait uniquement dans l'esprit du moraliste et sans vouloir contribuer à la formation de l'orateur; Erasme, comme nous l'avons dit, écrit le Ciceionianus à côté du De duplici copia: c'est donc qu'il réserve le dialogue à le partie critique de son exposé; Sturm se sert aussi du dialogue, mais il s'agit d'un procédé pédagogique par ques-

non d'une imitation socratique: l'auteur s'inspire des Partitìones du De oiatoie. Enfin, il faut réserver une place spéciale aux dialogues de Patrizi sur la rhétorique. Cette fois, la méthode de Cicéron se trouve exactement imitée, avec, toutefois, une référence directe à la vivacité de l'intertions et réponses,

oiatorìae plutôt que

rogation socratique et platonicienne, dont l'écrivain reproduit exactement les procédés. Ici encore, cependant, toute utilisation didactique du procédé littéraire se trouve exclue: il ne s'agit pas de poser des préceptes mais d'évoquer l'ensemble d'ime problématique.

Platina and his Correspondents

Mary

Ella

Milham

Beginning in the 18th century much, but not

all, has been published Bartolomeo Sacchi, called Platina from his native town, Piadena. A complete biography was produced in Le vite di due illustri Ciemonesi (1856)^ and a shorter but more authoritative summary by Gaeda in Muratori,^ but of course there is much biographical evidence in Platina's works, their prefaces and the compositions

of the extensive correspondence of

own correspondence. It is notable, howtwo centuries the letters of Platina have drawn most attention they illuminate his two conflicts with Pope Paul II (Barbo) which resulted his imprisonments of 1464 and 1468. The latter of course is the more im-

of other persons as well in Platina's ever, that for

as in

its much wider scope, the Pope's charge of conspiracy against the Roman Academy and his subsequent imprisonment of several of their num-

portant for

Important as the "prisoner letters" to and from Platina are to this strange episode in papal history, there are other aspects of his correspondence, less well known, which still hold more interest and importance than they have usually been accorded. Platina was bom in 1421 and began his career as a soldier under Francesco Sforza but eventually reached the court of the Gonzaga at Mantua where he became a Latinist under Ognibene da Lonigo, whom he succeeded as teacher to the Gonzaga children, and under Vittorino da Feltre. Nearly a century ago Motta^ published the correspondence from the Milan archives and LuzioRenier^ that from the Mantuan archives which document Platina's career under the Gonzaga and the respect in which he was held by Lodovico and his wife, Barbara of Brandenburg. From this and other accounts we know that he conducted various studies of Vergil and wanted a monument to Vergil at Mantua but was at least able to arrange for miniatures of the city's most famous son; that he received correspondence, published fairly recently by Resta, ^ from Giorgio Valagussa of Ferrara, a fellow schoolmaster who had been trained by Guarino; that he knew Giovanni Piero Arrivebene; and that about 1456, at the age of 35, he decided, with the Gonzagas' approval and help, to study Greek, but his original plan to go to Greece was abandoned and instead he ber.

MARY

ELLA

MILHAM

I4S

Mantua for Florence in 1457. One of the many important results of Mantuan period was his lifetime friendship, protection and patronage by left

his his

one-time pupil, Francesco Gonzaga. It seems to me from examining the correspondence that Platina's years in Florence not only shaped his intellectual being but gave him most of the friends of lifetime importance. About the time of his arrival in Florence, with a personal letter of recommendation from Lodovico Gonzaga to Cosimo dei Medici, Cosimo brought Johannes Argyropulos from the east to teach Greek; also came Theodorus Gaza, and both of course knew the great Greek Cardinal Bessarion. To Argyropulos flocked a host of aspiring humanists, including Platina but also including the sons of the great Florentine houses. Platina also studied under Lorenzo Valla and was in turn a teacher of the young Marsilio Ficino. He knew Alamanno Rinuccini, of Florentine Academy fame, and even the Englishman Robert Fleming.*^ Delia Torre^ long ago published several letters concerning Platina from Florentine sources, including a request in 1459 by Pierfilippo Pandolfini that Platina prepare a special epigram for Cardinal Jacopo di Portogallo. Pandolfini's subsequent letter of thanks records that Lorenzo dei Medici had been billed and had paid 100 ducats for this service. A letter of Platina to Pandolfini was more recently published by Garin.® But in 1462 Platina left Florence, perhaps with his student-cum-patron Francesco Gonzaga, for Rome, where the then Pope Pius n (Piccolomini) was wellknown as a distinguished humanist. There Platina became a member of the College of Abbreviators, met Guilio Pomponio Leto, and became one of the group about Leto called the Roman Academy. But in 1464 Pius n died, and in the choosing of his successor Cardinal Bessarion, who was friendly to both the Florentine and Roman Academies, was defeated by Pope Paul n (Barbo),

no humanist and

in fact quite anti-intellectual. In the

same

year, the

Pope

disbanded the College of Abbreviators, and Platina's violent reaction to the elimination of his job was expressed in a vituperative letter to Paul n, printed by Bayle. ^ The Pope's reply was to cast him into prison, from which he was released after four months upon the intervention of Francesco Gonzaga but from that time on Paul n was personally embittered against Platina. Much has been written about the Roman Academy and Paul II's charge of conspiracy against it, by Zabughin^^ and many others, and it is very well known that in 1468 the Pope cast several of the Academicians, including Platina, into Castel Sant' Angelo, where they endured hardship, torture, and even death. As an old foe, Platina fared badly, suffering torture and injury, but it is his prison correspondence which remains one of the better sources for the history of the episode. These "prisoner letters" are mostly preserved in mss. in S. Savignano sul Rubicone, Venice and Fossombrone.^^ Two hundred years ago Vairani first published parts of this correspondence between Platina and his fellow prisoners, his powerful friends and his even more powerful enemies, seeking pardon and release from prison. ^^ The "prisoner letters" are exchanged with Academician prisoners Lucido Fazini, called Fosforo; Antonio Settimuleio Campano; Agostino Maffei da Verona; and the leader of the Academy, Guilio Pomponio Leto. Others are directed to fellow prisoners incarcerated under other charges, including Jacopo

PLATINA

146

AND

fflS

CORRESPONDENTS

Tolomei da Siena and Francesco di Everso, Count of Anguillara, who shared the deepest dungeon of the prison. It is interesting that Tolomei had been warden of Castel Sant' Angelo under Pius n and had been convicted of cruelty in that post. There is also a letter from Platina to Giovanni Capocci, prisoner friend of the Academician Lelio. Platina also addressed a number of imprecations to the Pope and his minions, quite predictably without success. To the Pope himself he sent a letter, with another to his nephew, Marco Barbo, Cardinal of Vicenza, and others to the vice-chancellor Roderigo Borgia (later Pope Alexander VI), to Borgia's cameianus Bartolomeo Valleschar, to Piero Morosini, a Venetian ambassador, and to the deeply anti-Academic ambassadors of Galeazzo Maria Sforza at Milan, Giovanni Bianchi and Agostino dei Rossi. The Sforza correspondence is held at Archivio di Stato, Milan, and one of Bianchi's letters was published by Motta in the 19th century. A nobler epistolary exchange, which exists in a number of ms. copies^-^ is that between Platina and the warden of Castel Sant' Angelo, Roderigo Sanchez de Aravalho, Bishop of Calahorra. Cast in the form of a dialogue, and published by Platina as Book I of Dialogus De falso et vero bono. Sanchez's five letters to Platina form a sort of Christian consolation of philosophy. Incidentally, Book n of this work is purportedly a dialogue with Theodorus Gaza, from Platina's Florentine period. Of course Platina also wrote for help to his powerful friends, many of whom were frightened by the Pope's strong stand. He wrote to Francesco Gonzaga, now Cardinal of Siena, to Cardinal Bessarion, and to Cardinal Jacopo Ammanati, whom he may have met at Florence through Ammanati's onetime pupils, the Acciaivoli. In a letter at Forlì, recently published by Prof. Meroldi Masotti,^'* he also addressed the young Piero and Tommaso Capponi at Florence, to whose father Gino he had dedicated his biography of their grandfather. Vita Neh Capponii. In his hour of trouble, he was turning once more to the Gonzaga and the great families of Florence whom he had met in Argyropulos' circle.

Platina

was eventually released,

after

more than a year's imprisonment, and

with the Gonzaga. The

last dozen years of his life, until from plague in 1481 at the age of 60, of course saw him reestablished as a humanist and in 1475 made first Vatican librarian under Pope Sixtus IV (della Rovere). The correspondence from this period is only partly published, but a letter to Ammanati, probably before 1470, describes the composition of De honesta voluptate}^ It is obvious that most of this late correspondence is with the old Florentine acquaintances, although Platina himself remained in Rome. An exception may be a letter to Academician Agostino Maffei which prefaces an unpublished ms. epitome of Pliny by Platina, held in the British Library, ^^ but this work is undated and may in fact belong to the floruit of

retired to recuperate

his death

Roman Academy in the previous decade. The Platinate correspondence from the 1470's begins with a letter of recom-

the

mendation of Platina from Jacopo Acciaivoli to Diotisalvio in 1470, reported by Delia Torre from the Caite Stiozziane.^^ Another Platina letter from the same Strozzi collection had been lost before the compilation of the modem

MARY

ELLA

MILHAM

147

index nearly a century ago.^^ Then in 1474 there is a very warm letter of thanks from Donato Acciaivoli on receipt of De Optimo cive, also published by Delia Torre. These letters clearly show the relationship between Platina, the Strozzi and the Acciaivoli. There is also a letter of 1474 from Filelfo to Platina, who was obviously already custodian of the Vatican book collection.^' This formal and supercilious missive requests the loan of Greek manuscripts, one to be used by Domizio Calderino. A 1475 letter is interesting in that Platina writes to the Council of Cremona, near his birthplace, for which he is mediator in trying to obtain a plenary indulgence for the Cathedral of Cremona from Pope Sixtus rv.^^ There are also a few letters in an unpublished exchange between Platina and his closest friend, Pomponio Leto, in Italian and Latin, all concerning one Gottefredus of Nuremberg. ^^ A letter of Girolamo Squarzifico da Alessandria about his editing of Platina's Live of the Popes is contained in the 1481 edition of that work published at Nuremberg. But the most interesting of the late letters may be those exchanged by Platina with his Florentine friend Lorenzo dei Medici, which also reveal acquaintanceship with Giovanni Tomaboni. Lorenzo's letters to Platina have been inventoried by Conti^^ and concern books, but three letters from Platina to Lorenzo in 1474, 1478 and 1481 are unpublished." All seek Lorenzo's intervention and clemency in the cases of persons subject to punishments under Florentine law, but one must be one of the last extant letters written by Platina, dated May, 1481. At the end of a plea for a special permission for a stone cutter in the employ of Francesco Gonzaga, Platina couches his request in terms of his and Lorenzo's common education, which can only mean at the feet of Argyropulos some 20 years before. This multiple reference to Florence, to Argyropulos' circle, to the mingling of humble humanists and sons of great families and to the heady intellectualism of the founding years of the Florentine Academy makes not only a fitting close to Platina's correspondence but also recalls the central and informing experience of his tumultuous life. University of

New

Brunswick

Notes Bissolatti, Le vite di du illustii cremonesi (Milan, 1856) 13-84. G. Gaida in L.A. Muratori, Remm Ital. Script, new ed. 3, 1 (Città di Castell,

1. S.

1913) ix-xxiv.

Motta, Bolletino storico della svizzera italiana 7 (1885) 175. A. Luzio and R. Renier, "Il Platina e i Gonzaga," Giornale Storico della letteratura italiana 13 (1896) 430-440. 5. G. Resta, Giorgio Valagussa, umanista del quattrocento (Padua, 1954) 180-181. 3. E. 4.

6. L. 7.

Einstein,

The

Italian

Renaissance in England (New York, 1902) 24. S. Casciano, 1903).

A. della Torre, Paolo Marsi da Pescina (Rocca

PLATINA

148

AND

HIS

CORRESPONDENTS

Garin, "A proposito ... Giov. Aigiioçulo," Rinascimento I (May, 1950) 106. Bayle, "Platine", Diet. hist, et crìt., new ed. 12 (Geneva, 1969) 164. 10. V. Zabughin, Guilio Pomponio Leto (Rome, 1909).

8. E.

9. P.

U.S. Savignano sul Rubicone 68; Fossombrone; Venice Marc. XI. 103. 12. A. Vairani, Cremonensium monumenta Romae exstantia (Rome, 1778). 13. See footnote 11, and Modena 1527; Vat. lat. 4881; Cambridge, Corpus Christi 166. 14. P. Meroldi Masotti, "Per la datazione di due opere del Platina," Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 20 (1977) 410. 15. Epistolae et Commentaiii focobi Picolomini Card. Pap. (Milan, 1506) e. 140. 16. L. Thomdike, "Epitomes of Pliny's Natural History in the fiteenth century," Isis 26, 1 (1936) 39.

17. Florence,

Archivio di Stato, Carte Strozziane 352.204.

18. Ibid., 136.64.

Milan: Bibl. Triv. 873, Bk. 39. E. Cosenza, Bibl. and Biog. Dictionary of the Italian Humanists 4 (Boston, 1962) 2843. 21. Vatican. Ottob. lat. 1982. 22. G. Conti, "Un frammento di protocollo di lettere di Lorenzo de' Medici (1474-77)," Rinascimento 2 (1951) 293-310. 23. Florence, Archivio di Stato, M.A.P. 30.950; 35.148; 73.382. 19.

20.

Architecture et stratégies pendant la contre-réforme:

les Instructiones Fabricae ecclesiasticae

de Saint Charles Borromée Philippe Moiel

pratique discursive qui vient se jouxter à l'activité architecturale prodite, au cours de la Renaissance, semble se caractériser par

prement

son régime symbolique. En effet, d'Alberti et de son De Re Aedificatoiia qui remonte au milieu du Quattrocento, à Scamozzi, auteur de Videa dell' Aichitettuia Universale, publié à Venise en 1615, les différents textes élaborés sur l'architecture présentent une sorte d'hom*ogénéité fonctionnelle, ressortissent à une même économie générale, dans la mesure où ils se donnent comme une interprétation du phénomène architectural, où ils constituent un déchiffrement de la logique qui lui est immanente, où ils tissent un réseau de similitudes entre l'objet architectural et ce dont il serait le double, la mar-

que ou

le reflet.

du bâtiment

ou plutôt manifester, harmoniques qui régissent la Nature et qui font se correspondre le microcosme et le macrocosme, le corps Vitruvien et l'ordre métaphysique de l'univers.^ Et, qu'elle soit identifiée aux mathématiques et à la métaphysique, comme chez Alberti ou Scamozzi,^ à l'astrologie comme chez Zuccari,^ qu'elle soit prise dans une analogie anatoAinsi, la structure

doit-elle reproduire,

à travers ses proportions mathématiques, les lois

mique,

comme dans

l'introduction à l'architecture des Vite de Vasari,* l'archi-

en ses modalités discursives

et théoriques, prend place au milieu des savoirs de le Renaissance, elle fonctionne d'une manière semblable, mettant à jour, ou désignant, elle aussi, des significations cachées sous l'espèce des similitudes.^

tecture,

Identification au savoir, dimension spéculative, régime symbolique, ces modalités d'existence des pratiques architecturales de la Renaissance vont s'effacer entre la fin du 16° s. et le début du 17 °s. Et les nouveaux discours qui commencent à s'élaborer autour de l'architecture dès la fin du 16° s., sont d'une tout autre nature et d'un tout autre effet. Transformation décisive des conditions de possibilité et des principes de fonctionnement, transformation par rapport à laquelle les Instructiones Fabricae Ecclesiasticae de Saint Charles Borromée apparaissent, sinon comme un facteur déterminant, tout du moins comme un symptôme particulièrement révélateur et caractéristique, en ce

ARCHITECTURE ET STRATEGIES

I50

qu'elles manifestent une nouvelle fonction normative corrélative à une nouvelle prise en charge de l'âme à travers le corps, à ce que l'on pourrait nommer une gestion ou une conduction physico-morale qui investit l'architecture

d'une tout autre matérialité politique, d'une tout autre façon de produire du pouvoir, comme nous allons l'examiner. La position tout à fait nouvelle de ce texte de 1577, ressort d'emblée du fait qu'il ne s'agit pas, à proprement parler, d'un écrit théorique élaboré par un seul auteur, mais du résultat d'un ensemble de décisions qui furent notamment prises lors du Concile Provincial qui s'est tenu à Milan en 1573. Décisions qui furent avant tout l'oeuvre d'un archevêque et d'un administrateur, de l'un des fers de lance et des modèles de la Réforme Catholique. Et il fut, ici comme ailleurs, assisté d'un certain nombre de collaborateurs. Notons au passage que le problème de la collaboration dans la mise en forme d'un discours normatif, n'est pas sans préfigurer le travail des Académies Classiques, et que la substitution de l'administrateur à l'humaniste, comme agent déterminant dans le processus de la création artistique, est l'un des aspects majeurs de la transformation qui intervient dans les conditions d'apparition et d'existence des pratiques artistiques, à l'aube de l'âge Classique. Que ces Instmctiones ne revêtent pas l'allure d'un traité théorique traditionnel, cela apparaît dès la présentation, où il est dit que les questions de morphologie et de typologie architecturales ont été volontairement laissées de côté (exception faite, dans la suite du texte, de quelques indications générales regardant le problème de la croix latine); il faudra donc recourir à l'avis d'architectes expérimentés, mais dûment contrôlés par les évêques et l'archevêque. Ce caractère non spéculatif se précise avec la manière selon laquelle est évoquée là question des mesures et des proportions, où plus n'est fait allusion à la possibilité d'un symbolisme harmonique. Ainsi n'est-il pas nécessaire de parler des dimensions et des formes des fenêtres, les règles en question devant résulter des exigences strictement architectoniques.^ Et si, nonobstant l'interdiction de tout ce qui est profane, on permet l'introduction des ordres doriques, ioniques et corinthiens, c'est plus pour répondre à des impératifs de solidité qu'eu égard aux proportions qu'ils portent en eux.'' La différence par rapport aux théories architecturales de la Renaissance, ne surgit jamais avec autant d'évidence que lorsque, à maintes reprises, se trouvent indiquées d'ime façon singulièrement détaillée, les dimensions des élé-

ments envisagés. Les marches d'accès à l'église doivent avoir une hauteur de huit onces et une largeur d'un coude ou un peu plus.^ Relativement au niveau de l'église, de huit onces à un coude pour les seize onces pour les collégiales et les cathédrales. Les degrés permettant d'y accéder auront une largeur comprise entre seize onces et un coude. ^ La hauteur du maître-autel sera, quant à elle, comprise entre deux coudes huit onces et deux coudes dix onces, sa longueur minimale sera de cinq coudes, sa largeur minimale de deux coudes et douze onces. ^° La predelle qui vient le décorer sera longue de deux coudes sur le devant, de seize onces sur les côtés, et présentera une hauteur de huit onces. ^^ Les dimensions minimales des chapelles secondaires se trouvent la chapelle principale doit être surélevée

églises paroissiales, de

un coude

un coude et

PHILIPPE

MOREL

I5I

aussi précisément notifiées, ^^ tout

comme

celles des

bancs qui seront con-

stitués de trois planches de cinq onces d'épaisseur, de trois coudes et seize

onces de longueur. ^^ Cette administration des détails culmine avec

les In-

stTuctìones Supellectilis Ecclesiasticae, où tous les objets liturgiques, tous les ornements sacerdotaux, tous les livres, sont répertoriés, décrits et situés. Ainsi, les formes, les inscriptions et les lieux de rangement des vases aux sainteshuiles, sont-ils prescrits avec la plus grande précision. ^'^ Nous sommes donc bien loin de la contemplation et de la spéculation

métaphysiques correspondant aux figures musicales et géométriques d'Alberti,^^ ou aux observations célestes de Zuccari. Comme on a pu déjà l'observer, le problème des mesures est maintenant abordé dans une tout autre perspective, à l'exactitude implicite des proportions harmoniques fixes, vient se substituer la fourchette dimensionnelle des limitations normatives. En fait cette attention aux détails, ou cette pratique des détails, doit être resituée dans le contexte de l'activité pastorale de Saint Charles Borromée et des multiples instructions, directives et réglementations qu'elle put engendrer. C'est ainsi qu'à l'occasion de la fondation d'un séminaire milanais,

en 1564,

pouvait écrire depuis Rome:

Ne manquez pas de m'instniiTc avec précision de ce qu'il advient jour après jour; et en particulier des études, de l'organisation des classes, des leçons qu'on y donne; dites-moi quels élèves se trouvent dans le séminaire, et lesquels vont à l'extérieur; dormez-moi une liste de leurs noms à tous. Ne pensez-pas que je tombe dans je ne sais quelle minutie. De même que l'organisation des séminaires,

réforme des multiples aspects

soumise à des codifications aussi précises et tatillones. Les prêtres devaient porter une tonsure visible d'un diamètre de trois doigts, l'aube devait tomber jusqu'aux talons et le vêtement clérical jusqu'aux chevilles. La propreté des habits sacerdotaux, la longueur des cierges, la scansion des signes de croix et des prières, dans le cadre des Ecoles de la Doctrine Chrétienne ou dans celui de la maison archiépiscopale, étaient définies avec une égale attention. ^^ Ce ne serait pas exagérer que de reconnaître ici la mise en place d'une sorte de tactique des détails qui se développera au cours de l'âge Classique, notamment avec les codifications académiques, les réglementations colbertiennes, ou encore avec Louis XTV dont Saint-Simon pourra écrire: de

la vie ecclésiastique et pastorale fut

ennemis

son esprit, naturelleIl entra sans cesse dans les derniers sur les troupes. ...Une s'en occupait pas moins sur ses bâtiments, sa maison civile, ses extraordinaires de bouche.... ...

ses

l'appelaient le roi des revues

ment porté au petit,

...

se plut en toutes sortes de détails.

On pourrait encore mentionner son opuscule sur la manière de visiter les jardins de Versailles. Cette tactique des détails trouvera son épanouissem*nt à partir du 18° s., avec les techniques disciplinaires à l'oeuvre dans les écoles, les

hôpitaux

et les armées.^''

Un souci très marqué pour les questions pratiques et fonctioimelles distingue encore cette approche de l'architecture, de celles qui avaient cours pendant

152

ARCHITECTURE ET STRATEGIES

La grandeur d'une église doit être calculée de sorte qu'elle puisse contenir la population locale et la foule des fidèles qui ne viennent qu'à l'occasion des fêtes solennelles. Il faut prévoir pour chaque personne, une surface carrée d'un coude et huit onces de côté, et ceci en plus de l'espace occupé par le colonnes, les piliers et les murs.^^ On sait qu'une des critiques majeures opposées aux plans en croix grec de San Pietro conçus par Bramante et MichelAnge, tenait justement au manque d'espace. La transformation du plan en croix latine qui, eu égard à un tel impératif, fut proposée dès la fin du 16° s., et qui fut réalisée par Mademo au début du 17°s., répondit de la sorte à ce propos éminement fonctionnel et pastoral. Un autre témoignage du primat de ce que l'on pourrait appeler la fonctionnalité, ressort du fait que si l'on conseille la croix latine en raison de sa valeur de tradition et de ses capacités spatiales, on n'en peut pas moins choisir une autre forme si le site l'exige. ^^ Le maître-mot est l'adaptation, comme ce sera le cas dans l'activité architecturale des Jésuites. Les positions de l'autel et des grilles, la grandeur des chapelles, seront de même déterminées en tenant compte des facilités de circulation pour l'officiant et ceux qui l'assistent. ^° Capacité, circulation, mais aussi propreté, protection et sécurité. Tout autel situé sous un plafond plat ou une voûte trop élevée, sera protégé des poussières et autres saletés pouvant tomber d'en haut, par un dais qui ne sera pas trop élevé pour que l'on puisse le nettoyer. ^^ Les grilles situées à l'entrée des chapelles seront telles que les chiens ne puissent pas passer au travers. ^^ Les images religieuses ne doivent pas être placées sous les fenêtres d'où elles pourraient recevoir de l'eau. ^^ S'ils peuvent paraître naturels à l'heure présente, ce prosaïsme et cette volonté de réglementation n'en étaient pas moins fort nouveaux à cette époque. Ce soin apporté aux questions pratiques fut l'un des aspects déterminants des réformes Catholiques et Protestantes, on le rencontre dans l'activité pastorale, voire même dans la théologie qui, selon Delumeau,^'^ devient alors plus morale et positive, qui raisonne moins sur les vérités nécessaires au salut qu'elle n'essaye de fortifier l'amour et la foi en Dieu. Théologie qui prend en compte le mariage, la sexualité, le prêt à intérêt. Théologie qui semble devoir restreindre ses envolées spéculatives au bénéfice d'une volonté de persuasion et de moralisation du grand nombre. Ce pragmatisme se retrouve dans la transformation du comportement et du statut de l'architecte qui se fait jour à la fin du 16°s., particulièrement dans la Rome post-tridentine, avec le rôle majeur joué par des architectes Lombards, plus réputés pour leurs qualités de constructeurs que pour leurs capacités théoriques. On voit ainsi Vignole s'effacer devant Giacomo della Porta qui, contrairement à son prédécesseur ou à des architectes Vénitiens comme Palladio ou Scamozzi, ne produisit aucun traité, et dont les constructions étaient dépourvues de tout symbolisme mathématico-harmonique. Cette pratique des détails, ce désir de pragmatisme et leur incidence normative, trouvent im prolongement avec l'organisation d'un champ de visibilité où s'élaborent les conditions mêmes du spectacle religieux et de son emprise sur les sens. Relevons au préalable le postulat général de luminosité à l'intérieur de l'église, qui se manifeste avec l'exclusion de tout bâtiment voisin étant la Renaissance.

PHILIPPE

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153

susceptible de gêner l'éclairage;^^ avec la multiplication des baies, tant dans chapelles et l'abside, que dans le tambour de la coupole; ^*^ et avec le choix de vitres transparentes, libres de toute peinture, permettant à la lumière de pénétrer plus abondamment dans l'église. ^^ Ce propos est contraire le nef, les

à la realité de maintes églises et chapelles gothiques, et s'oppose aux idées d'Alberti qui souhaitait voir bien éclairée l'entrée de l'église, mais plus sombre la région du maître-autel où la solennité devait prévaloir sur l'élégance. ^^ Ce champ de visibilité résulte d'un certain aménagement de l'espace, d'une certaine distribution des corps. Les chapelles secondaires ne seront pas trop

profondes de sorte que les fidèles assistant à la messe puissent voir le célébrant de tous les points de l'église. ^^ La partie supérieure de la cloison qui sépare les hommes et les femmes, devra se rabattre selon deux positions. La première, à trois coudes du sol, permettra aux personnes situées du côté opposé au prédicateur, de voir ce dernier lorsqu'il se trouve en chaire; la seconde, à deux coudes du sol, leur permettra, étant agenouillées, de voir l'officiant au cas où une messe serait célébrée dans une chapelle latérale située de l'autre coté de ^° l'allée centrale et de sa cloison. Ce qui se fait jour à travers cette réglementation minutieuse, c'est une nouvelle attention portée à l'expérience physique, au corps, à ce qu'il fait et à ce qu'il perçoit, c'est une prise en charge et une gestion encore sommaire de l'expérience, de l'activité émotionnelle. On peut donc y voir se dessiner les bases du spectacle baroque, de son potentiel affectif, de ses effets sur les sens et sur l'esprit, ainsi qu'une modalité de la discipline des corps, des formes d'investissem*nt physique et moral qui se sont développées au cours de la réforme catholique, avec la direction de conscience et la pastorale, avec les aspects physiques et matériels des Exercices Spirituels de Saint Ignace de Loyola, avec les activités sociales, éducatives et moralisatrices des nouveaux ordres et des nouvelles congrégations religieuses. Certes, il serait possible de répliquer que les effets sur les sens, que les capacités émotionnelles, ne sont pas choses nouvelles pour l'architecture, au moins en ce qui concerne les réalisations maniéristes. En fait, nous assistons ici à une sorte de déplacement fonctionnel et de réorientation tactique de ces effets, qui viennent désormais s'intégrer dans un systèmes hiérarchisé, une procédure graduelle, dans le jeu d'une progression. Cette procédure graduelle s'effectue avec la succession des niveaux, les surélévations respectives, de la nef par rapport à l'extérieur,^^ des chapelles secondaires par rapport à la nef,^^ surélévations qui culminent avec la chapelle principale, ^^ le choeur et le maître-autel. Elle est simultanément composée par la mise en valeur décorative de la façade et de sa porte centrale,'^ des chapelles de fond de transept relativement aux autres chapelles secondaires,-^^ du maître-autel richement décoré-^^ et éventuellement recouvert d'un dais supporté par quatre colonnes, qui ne sont plus nécessaires dans le cas d'un autel secondaire. ^^ Système progressif qui s'oppose à la distribution uniforme et isotrope des plans centraux de la Renaissance. On le retrouve dans la distribution hiérarchisée des sépultures correspondant au rang ecclésiastique, et il s'articule avec le principe des délimitations spatiales et des répartitions physiques. L'espace

ARCHITECTURE ET STRATEGIES

154

du choeur doit être séparé de celui où se trouve la foule des fidèles, et être fermé par des grilles, ^^ de même que les chapelles secondaires qui, dans le cas où elles seraient assez spacieuses pour pouvoir contenir im petit nombre de fidèles lors des messes, devront, en outre, comporter une barrière en bois autour de l'autel, afin que les fidèles soient à une certaine distance du prêtre.^' Toutes ces directives matérielles pourront servir de point d'appui et d'introduction à un conditionnement des esprits, à une production de l'imaginaire résultant d'une prise en charge physique et morale, d'une organisation de l'expérience, qui opèrent dans la cadre de structures hiérarchiées et qui définissent des rapports de sujétion et de subordinnation, comme il ressort encore des règles concernant les confessionaux, où le prêtre doit être situé du côté du maître-autel et ou le pénitent, agenouillé, doit être tourné vers celui-ci. *° Ce système de progression défini par les Instnictiones de Saint Charles Borromée*^ est corrélatif à la transformation contemporaine du régime morphologique des pratiques architecturales, à la mise en place des systèmes centralisés qui, avec des jeux de concentration spatiale, de gradation ornementale, de ressauts et d' élévations progressifs culminant avec le centre, produisent des effets de convergence, d'orientation vers le centre du regard et du parcours. Il y a corrélation, mais non pas détermination. Les discours théoriques et codificateurs qui furent conçues pendant la seconde moitié du 16°s. ont fait

changements morphologiques qui intervinrent en architecture dans le dernier tiers du 16° s., mais ils ne les ont pas préfigurés, ni formulés. Cela est d'autant plus vrai que les idées de Saint Charles Borromée en matière de composition architecturale, étaient assez traditionnelles, comme en témoigpartie des conditions d'apparition des

nent son goût pour

les portiques périphériques,'*^ et les réalisations

de son

ar-

chitecte préféré. Pellegrino Pellegrini. Les Instnictiones présentent en fait des d'idées, une orientation générale du propos et un ensemble de données concrètes, qui, tout en se rapportant à l'architecture, n'en appréhendent pas la spécificité morphologique. Ce sont les architectes et les artistes contemporains qui matérialisèrent, qui actualisèrent dans le traitement des formes et les agencements spatiaux, ces nouvelles tendances que les Instnictiones ont synthétisées, plus qu'elles ne les ont créées. Tendances qui, j'insiste sur

germes

ce fait, ne sont réductibles, ni à une individualité dominante et créatrice, ni à une instance discursive-théories, principes ou décrets— mais qui sont inhérentes aux nouvelles formes de relation de pouvoir qui apparurent alors au sein du corps social. J'ai pu faire précédemment allusion à la direction de conscience et notamment aux Exercises Spirituels de Saint Ignace de Loyola,- je voudrais revenir un instant sur ce point. On sait qu'en 1563, la conversion à l'ascétisme de Saint Charles Borromée, alors jeune cardinal et secrétaire d'état de son oncle Pie rv, s'effectua notamment sous l'influence de son directeur spirituel, le père jésuite Ribera, et qu'à partir de ce moment-là, il ne cessa pas de pratiquer régulièrement les Exercices de Saint Ignace. En tant qu'archevêque de Milan, il eut par ailleurs des relations privilégiées avec la Compagnie de Jésus à laquelle il confia la direction de tous ses séminaires (où il requérait, comme

PHILIPPE

MOREL

155

pour tous les prêtres de son diocèse, la pratique des Exercices Spirituels] Il importe de souligner qu'en deçà du propos général d'application des décrets .

tridentins qui domina l'activité de Saint Charles, l'un des facteurs les plus déterminants, pour son actualisation concrète et circonstanciée, tient à la nouvelle orientation donnée à la direction de conscience par Saint Ignace, ses proches et certains de ses contemporains. Par rapport aux Instructiones Fabricae Ecclesiasticae, les Exercices Spirituels qui furent publiés pour la première fois en 1543, laissent ainsi apparaître une semblable administration des détails dans la conduite de la vie quotidienne, qui va jusqu'aux règles pour s'ordonner dans la nourriture (3° sem.); un même souci des questions pratiques qui tient au caractère extrêmement méthodique des Exercices; une même attention portée au corps et à ses sensations: ce sont les compositions de lieu et l'application des sens qu'elles impliquent, et à travers lesquelles l'individu participe affectivement et physiquement aux scènes qu'il imagine. Application des sens où prédomine la visualisation, que marque aussi une démarche progressive suivie par l'âme pour que sa prière soit agréée, et qui véhiculent un rapport de subordination, le retraitant se mettant en scène pour vivre une expérience affective et relationnelle d'humilité et de soumission absolue. Je souligne le fait que cette mise en relation de deux textes de nature différente, n'a pas pour objectif de désigner un rapport de cause à effet, mais plutôt de montrer comment ils peuvent, chacim de leur côté, fonctionner comme deux foyers tactiques, dans la mesure où Us fournissent une instrumentation pour un certain type d'exercice du pouvoir. L'hom*ogénéité des techniques de pouvoir mises en jeu et des objectifs recherchés les fait s'articuler, prendre appui l'un sur l'autre dans une convergence stratégique. Je dirai pour conclure, que cette rupture dans le régime théorique des discours sur l'architecture, que nous observons avec les Instructiones de Saint Charles Borromée relatives à la construction des églises, est à la fois le symptôme et l'actualisation partielle d'une transformation des technologies de pouvoir qui sont à l'oeuvre dans les pratiques artistiques. Alors que pendant la Renaissance, une architecture non militaire n'avait d'effet politique que dans la mesure où elle pouvait justifier, glorifier, exalter une famille ou un individu, où elle était porteuse de signes manifestes ou de symboles à déchiffrer; les pratiques architecturales qui se mettent en place en Italie, à partir du dernier tiers du 16° s., manifestent des techniques et des effets tout autres. A une production de signes vient progressivement se substituer une conduction physique et morale, une prise en charge et un investissem*nt de l'âme et du corps; à une codification dont la nature était éminement symbolique — les proportions mathématiques venant refléter les lois harmoniques de l'univers —vient se substituer une codification normative, une adminstration des détails régulatrice des pratiques. Conduction physico-morale et codification normative, ce sont les deux techniques de pouvoir qui trouvent dans ces Instructiones, l'un de leurs points d'émergence dans le champ artistique et para-artistique, ce sont elles qui rendront possibles la théâtralisation baroque d'une part, et les règles académiques

ARCHITECTURE ET STRATEGIES

I$6

classiques d'autre part, ce sont elles qui constitueront le système binaire

(bi-

polarité et complémentarité stratégiques) de l'économie politique des pratiques

architecturales, jusqu'au milieu

18°s. Paris

Notes "La bellezza è accordo e armonia delle parti in relazione a un tutto al quale un determinato numero, delimitazione, collocazione, così come esige la concinnitas, cioè la legge fondamentale e più esatta della Natura. La quale concinnitas è seguita quanto più possibile dall'architettura." Leon Battista Alberti, L'Aichitettuia, ed. P. Portoghesi (Milano, 1966), IX, 5, p. 816. 2. "L'architettura si serve in astratto del numero, delle grandezze, delle materie, de motti naturali, e delle altre parti per via della speculazione; e si serve ancora della quantità discreta, della continua, e delle proporzioni e corrispondenze in que modi a punto che fa il Matematico, e il Fisico, e il Metafisico,- anzi appropinquasi tanto alle prime, che dove quelle finiscono essa Architettura perde i suoi principi onde perciò gli Antichi ... la chiamarono Scienza e la posero nel genere delle Matematiche." Vincenzo Scamozzi, Dellldea dell'Architettuia Univeisale (Venezia, 1

esse sono legate secondo

. . .

1615), 1° partie. Livre U, eh. 3. 3. "La sosjtanza finale dell'Architettura

non solamente

consiste nell'edificatione,

stende anchora alle osservazioni celeste, alla nell'edificatione gnomonica, alle machinationi." Federico Zuccari, L'Idea de' Pittori, Scultori e Aicbitetti (Torino, 1607), Livre n, eh. 8, p. 43. 4. Cf. Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite (Firenze, 1568); reed. (Firenze, 1966), pp. 32-60. L'édifice représente "il corpo dell'uomo, nel tutto e nelle parti similmente ... la facciata compartita come la faccia dell'uomo ..." (la porte correspond à la bouche, la cour au tronc, les escaliers aux membres ... ). 5. Cf. Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les Choses (Paris, 1966), pp. 32-60, pour cette notion de "similitudes." 6. Saint Charles Borromée, Instructiones Fabricae Ecclesiasticae (Mediolanus, si

1577), ch. 7. Ibid.,

eh.

bis.

8. Ibid., ch. 8.

9. Ibid., ch. 10.

10. Ibid., ch. 11. 11. Ibid., ch. 11. 12. Ibid., ch. 14.

13. Ibid., ch. 25. 14. Saint

Charles Borromée, Instructiones Supellectilis Ecclesiasticae (Medio-

lanus, 1577). 15. Leon Battista Alberti, op. 16.

cit., VII,

10.

André Deroo, Saint Charles Borromée, Cardinal Réformateur, Docteur de

la Pastorale (Paris, 1963), ch. 7.

PHILIPPE

17. Cf.

MOREL

157

Michel Foueault, Surveillei et Punii Charles Borromée, op. eit., eh. 1.

(Paris, 1975).

18. Saint

19. Ibid., eh. 2.

20. Ibid., eh. 11 et 14. 21. Ibid., eh. 15. 22. Ibid., eh. 15.

23. Ibid., eh. 17. 24. Jean

Delumeau, Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire

(Paris, 1971), n**

partie, eh. 6.

25. Saint Charles Borromée, op.

eit.,

ch.l.

26. Ibid., eh. 8. 27. Ibid., eh. 8. 28.

Leon

Battista Alberti, op.

29. Saint Charles

30. Ibid.. <JW. 31.

eit., VII, 12.

Borromée, op.

cit.,

eh. 14.

eh. 24. 1.

14. 10. 12. 14. 15. 14.

11. 15.

23.

41. Ces structures hiérarchisées, nous les retrouvons partout dans les activités pastorales de Saint Charles et dans les règlements qu'il a pu edicter. C'est ainsi que les Ecoles de la Doctrine Chrétienne, qu'il multiplia à Milan et dans tout le

complexe particulièrement hiérarchisée, avec des prieurs, des sous-prieiors, des moniteurs, des chanceliers, des grands maîtres et des officiers de moindre rang, dont les Pescatori, qui devaient parcourir les rues pour canaliser vers l'église les flâneurs et le indécis. Cf. André Deroo, op. cit. 42. Saint Charles Borromée, op. cit., eh. 4. diocèse, furent dotées d'une organisation

The Turkish Threat and Thomas More's Utopia Clare

M. Murphy

his later works, Thomas More refers openly to the Turks, to the Grand Turk, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively.* In his earlier Utopia, however, his references to the Turkish threat must be gleaned from read-

work in the light of the historical background against which it is writThese allusions to the growth of the Ottoman Empire, to its mores and to the situation among Christian nations which permitted and even encouraged Ottoman conquest, are as provocative and enigmatic as the tone of Utopia itself, as evasive as its meaning. One of the evident controlling elements of the work is that of the need for peace; Utopian society is structured therefore on two necessities: that of maintaining peace and its corollary, that of avoiding war. These necessities were strongly felt by More because of the genuine Turkish threat to the peace of Europe: "The Turk was the imminent danger, and that imminent danger was never long absent from More's mind." The expansion of European shiping the ten.

ping suggested the travels of Raphael Hythlodaeus: to avert the Ottoman threat and to profit from these expanding sea markets, Europe needed internal peace. ^ The immediate antecedent of the Turkish threat during the years 1556-1516 when More was writing Utopia had, of course, occurred more than sixty years earlier with the fall of Constantinople. The fall of Constantinople and the ensuing dramatic rise of the Ottoman Empire have their ironic parallel in the founding of the commonwealth of Utopia by Utopus. Like the Ottoman Empire, Utopia took its name from the ruler who had had the strength to create from it a national power. Ottoman, who about the year 1300 became the first ruler of the Turks to assume the title of emperor, was according to More's contemporary, the bishop-diplomat-historian Paolo Giovio, "myghtye 8k strong bothe in name, power, &. dignitye emong the Turkes."^ From Ottoman's time, the power of his empire increased; and if Utopia and the Ottoman Empire took their names from strong leaders, the overtaking of Utopia by Utopus— who was able to conquer Utopia only because of discord among the Utopians^— may be seen as a symbol of the conquering of the Byzantine Empire by Mohammed H, Giovio saw this victory as a reverse emblem of the

CLARE M. MURPHY

159

by the way worthye to be marked, and to be thought of as fatali: That lyke as the firste Emperour of Constantinople, was called Constantine and was the sonne of Helena, euen so he that succeeded hym Mcxxi yeres after, and was the last was lykewyse called Constantyne, &. was the sonne of Helena, also."* To Giovio the collapse of the Byzantine Empire was the photonegative of its rise. What if a commonwealth were constructed at the fall of Constantinople — a commonwealth of Utopia, based on principles opposite to those which precipitated the fall of Constantinople? Such a commonwealth would be constructed so as to avoid the situations which encouraged the growth of the Ottoman Empire — the desire for aggrandizement, the bad faith among Christian nations and the unity and discipline of the Ottoman forces, as opposite to the original victory of Constantine over the heathens: "This is a thing

opposites in the Christian armies. The fall of Constantinople began a century before

Ottomans took first hold

its

actual occurrence,

when

and their victories cut off Constantinople from Christian Europe^ as the island of Utopia had been cut off from the mainland (CW4, p. 113), and awaited the arrival of Raphael and his companions to hear of Christianity (CW4, pp. 217-19). The first entry of the Ottomans on European soil under Amurathes I (called in modem usage Murad I and U, these Ottoman rulers were known in More's time as Amurathes I and U) occurred because of discord and sedition between Greek nobles and the emperor of Constantinople, in violation of the truce made between Amurathes I and this emperor, who in turn had to seek liberal aid from Amurathes against his own seditious Greek neighbors, "the originali cause of the fall and distraction of the same Empire, and firste begynnyng of al our wretchednes and sorowe." The Turkish soldiers returning from Greece described to Amurathes the products and pleasures of Greece as well as the sedition of the nobles, and in 1363 Amurathes I sailed through the Hellespont in two Genoese ships. ^ Such broken agreements are numerous in the history of the relationship between Ottomans and Christians, and an important background reason for the refusal to make treaties found among the Utopians. "Treaties which all other nations so often conclude among themselves, break, and renew, they never make with any nation," relates Raphael, for, " 'what is the use of a treaty,' they ask, 'as though nature of herself did not sufficiently bind one man to another? If a person does not regard nature, do you suppose he will care anythin about words?' "(CW4, p. 197) The commentary of the Yale Utopia refers the reader to Thomas Elyot's The Govemoui, where the contrast is made between Gentiles, Turks, and Saracens who scrupulously observe treaties and Christians who frequently neglect them (CW4, p. 492). Raphael continues with a cutting irony to which he is oblivious, but which is shared by More and the reader, that in the parts of the world where Utopia is located "treaties and alliances between kings are not observed with much good faith." In Europe by contrast, in 1358 the

European

soil;

and especially in those parts where the faith and religion of Christ prethe majesty of treaties is everywhere holy and inviolable, partly through the justice and goodness of kings, partly through the reverence

vails,

l60

THOMAS MORE, UTOPIA

and fear of the Sovereign Pontiffs. Just as the latter themselves undertake nothing which they do not most conscientiously perform, so they command all other rulers to abide by their promises in every way and compel the recalcitrant by pastoral censure and severe reproof (CW4, p. 197).

Both the Yale edition of Utopia (CW4, p. 493) and the definitive French edition of André Prévost suggest that Popes Alexander VI and Julius n are attacked here by what Prévost calls "l'ironie cynique de ces remarques."^ A most dramatic example, however, of papal bad faith in the keeping of treaties had occurred in the disastous battle of Varna in 1444. Early in his reign as Ottoman emperor,^ Amurathes n made war with Ladislaus, King of Hungary and Poland. Ladislaus won the battle and forced Amurathes n into a peace, in the words of Heinrich BuUinger, "verye necessarye and profitable for the Christians," a peace confirmed by an oath. Christianity at that point had an advantage over the Ottomans, but Pope Eugenius IV sent Julianus Caesarinus (Cesarini) as ambassador to Hungary to convince Ladislaus that he was not bound by an oath with the Turks for no one should make peace with infidels or heretics, and promises made to them should not therefore be kept. Ladislaus consequenty made war with Amurathes U, the latter "greatly blaming the periuerie of the Christians, and their breakyng of the peace, where bee slewe the young king which had bin deceiued by other...." Not satisfied with this victory, Amurathes n took an army immediately into Greece, killed the emperor's brother and wasted the Peloponnesus. Any Christians who survived were taken into slavery. "And this was the great good prouision and commoditie, which the counsell of the bloody and periured Pope Eugenius purchased to the Christians."^ The chronicler Cuspinian reported that during this battle of Varna, "Amurathes beholdig the crucifixe in Ladislaus his standerd, and the crosses also which the souldyers had on their brestes, he sighed and sayd, o crucified, crucyed behold and se thy false forswome people, &. yf thou be a god take vengeaunce vpö their periury."^° The victory of Amurathes n at Varna led to that of his son Mohammed n at Constantinople in 1453, and the bad faith of a pope, which made the first victory possible, lends impressive irony to Raphael's naive description of European Christianity, and papal good faith: "Popes are perfectly right in thinking it a most disgraceful thing that those who are specially called the faithful

should not faithfully adhere to their commitments" (CW4, p. 197). Raphael's description of the lack of trust in treaties in the new world actually describes the broken agreements among Christian nations and their Ottoman foes. The treaty-makers Raphael outlines use every manner of cimning, fraud, and deceit to "break both the treaty and their faith." Thus the Utopians make no treaties (CW4, p. 199); if in war they make a truce with the enemy "they keep it even under provocation" (CW4, p. 215).^^ Another allusion to the battle of Varna may be in Raphael's rather long recounting of how the Utopians never pursue a fleeing army without a reserve force of their own, since such a pursuit may leave an apparently victorious army in disorder, letting the conquered enemy become "conquerors in turn" (CW4, p. 213). Such was the case at Varna when

CLARE M. MURPHY the

Ottoman forces had been put

for his life.

l6l

to flight

and Amurathes n was ready to

flee

Two rash Christian bishops pursued their fleeing enemies and the

Ottomans were

able to break into the leaderless Christian lines.

Amurathes

n was thus able to regroup his forces and the Ottomans "conquered their conquerors in tum."^^ Significant events precipitating the eventual Ottoman victory at Constantinople occurred under both Amurathes I and Amurathes U, Ottoman emperors whose names bear a close resemblance to Amaurotum, the city casually referred to by More in his introductory letter to Peter Giles (CW4, p. 41), and again specifically by Raphael as the centrally located chief and capital city of the island of Utopia (CW4, p. 113). With its literal meaning from the Greek, "made dark or dim" (CW4, p. 388), Amaurotum suggests the two Ottoman emperors Amurathes, whom Christian Europe allowed to

darken

its history.

fall of Constantinople and its antecedents created the recent Ottoman past to the writing of Utopia, the reign of Selim, begim in 1512, served as its immediate historical setting. ^^ Selim, known variously as "the Terrible," "the If

the

Grim," and "the Ferocious,"^* began his conquering career by marching from the Crimea to the Danube in the spring of 1512, forcing his father Bayezid n to abdicate on April 25. Bayezid died a month later unquestionably poisoned by his son.^^ Next Selim excluded any other possible contenders for Ottoman rule: "He began, in orthodox fashion, by ridding himself of all possible rivals for the throne. His two elder brothers and eight nephews were disposed of in rapid succession. "^^ "Thus Selim put into practice a ruthless law which had been enacted by the policy of Mohammed U, that it was lawful for a Sultan in the interests of the vmity of the realm,

which was the

first

condition of

and their children to death. "^^ The elimination of any possible rivals to the throne, practiced without scruple by the Ottomans, was justified by a verse in the Koran, " 'revolution is worse than executions." '^^ Richard KnoUes referred to this practice when he wrote that with all their virtues, the Ottomans thus "breake and infringe the lawes both of Nations and Nature," and that they excused these murders on grounds of its

prosperity, to do his brothers

By eliminating competitors, the Ottomans kept the emwhole and without division.^' The Yale edition, however, refers only to More's history of Richard HI (CW4, p. 503) as commentary on Raphael's description of what must surely be a Utopian adaptation of this Ottoman custom; since the Utopians do all in their power to avert war, one of their tactics is to reward handsomely one of the enemy who either assassinates, or better still safety to the state.

pire

captures alive, his king. "If this plan does not succeed," Raphael relates; "they sow the seeds of dissention broadcast and foster strife by leading a brother of the king or one of the noblemen to hope that he may obtain the throne" (CW4, p. 205).

Fortimately for the Christian nations, which "trembled"^ at his accession, Selim's wars were not with them. His activities just preceding the writing oif Utopia were concentrated against the Persians, over whom he eventually won a monumental victory at Chaldiron on August 23, 1514.^^ One of the features of warfare in Utopia— in those rare cases in which the Utopians go to war— is that both sexes receive military training: "Nevertheless men and women alike

THOMAS MORE, UTOPIA

l62

assiduously exercise themselves in military training on fixed days lest they should be imfit for war when need requires" (CW4, p. 201). When need does require, however: Just as

no one

of the

men is made to go to a foreign war against his will,

women

are anxious to accompany their husbands on military service, not only do they not forbid them but actually encourage them and incite them by expressions of praise. When they have gone out, they

the

husbands on the battle front. Each man is surown children and relations by marriage and blood so that

are placed alongside their

rounded by his

those may be closest and lend one another mutual assistance nature most impels to help one another (CW4, pp. 209-11).

The Yale

edition cites

somewhat

whom

parallel or analogous situations described

and Papers (which I read however as sarby Americo Vespucci on the New World Indians, and by Tacitus in several works (CW4, p. 507). Prévost also refers to Plato's Republic and to the Gennania of Tacitus, as well as stressing family and state solidarity in Utopian thinking (Prévost, p. 712). The Yale edition mentions also the third-century Greek historian Herodian, who wrote that "among the Persians, 'all the available men, and sometimes the women too, mobilize at the King's order' " (CW4, p. 507). A far more immediate parallel than any of these was available to More from the war of Selim against the Persians: "I was enfourmed by the relatiö of credible persons, which were present at this battayle, that manye of the Persiens wyues were foùde slayne emög dead bodyes, which beyng hameysed lyke manly soldiers, folowed theyr husbäds in al auen"^^ terous ieoperdies. These womë Selimus caused to be buried honorably. The background of the Turkish threat to European peace and the background of the discord and bad faith among Christian leaders that encouraged and sustained the Ottoman threat illuminate some aspects of Utopian society. Early in Book I, Raphael introduces the subject of sheep. In his discussion with Cardinal Morton on the subject of thievery, Raphael laments the turning of by

Plato,

by the British

state Letteis

castic in the instance cited),

tillable land into sheep-grazing pasture, so that sheep are devouring human beings (CW4, pp. 65-67). Wool production is a profitable industry, and the temptation of wealth leads "noblemen, gentlemen, and even some abbots" to lust after such profit to the extent that

are not content, by leading an idle and sumptuous life, to do no good to their coimtry; they must also do it positive harm. They leave no ground to be tilled; they enclose every bit of land for pasture; they pull down houses and destroy towns, leaving only the church to pen the sheep in. And, as if enough English land were not wasted on ranges and preserves of game, those good fellows turn all human habitations and all cultivated land into a wilderness (CW4, p. 67).

They

from their homes and left no recourse but thievand begging. This ruinous situation is producing a society of wretchedness for the many and of affluence for the few, and Raphael pleads: "Let farming be resumed and let cloth-working be restored once more that

The poor

are thus driven

ery, vagrancy,

CLARE M. MURPHY there

may be honest

163

jobs to

employ usefully that

idle throng,

whether those

whom hitherto pauperism has made thieves or those who, now being vagrants or lazy servants, in either case are likely to turn out thieves" (CW4, p. 71). In Utopia itself, by contrast: "Everywhere in the rural districts they have, at suitable distances from one another, farmhouses well equipped with agricultural implements." City dwellers and farmers regularly exchange occupations, soil is well cultivated, animals well cared for, harvesting accompUshed quickly by mutual labor (CW4, p. 115-17). Everyone on the island is instructed in

agriculture from childhood

(CW4,

p. 125).

Again, the history of Ottoman wars suggests itself. Since the most remote of times, the battle between herdsmen and farmers was fought in Europe and Asia. The first Ottomans as "the children of the steppes," nomadic clansmen of the Turkish tribe Oghuz, represented the herdsmen; and when under Amurathes I, "oriental nomads of an alien and intolerant religion were planted as the dominant race amid the Christian population,"" the metaphoric process of sheep devouring human beings began. Ottoman devastation of Greece in 1452 left to the Albanian shepherds who had settled there a century earlier after the Ottoman victories in Servia an even wider range for their herds, and Greek peasants were forced into overcrowded towns. ^ The Ottoman method of taxation, otherwise so well organized, was unintelligent in the handling of the land tax, levied in somewhat the manner of a tithe of the harvest. Harvesting could not begin until the tax collector came to each farm and had his portion set aside. Such a method proved a waste of time and a source of injury to crops.

The law also

stipulated certain primitive

methods

of agriculture

enforced by the tax collector." The Utopians, on the other hand, are able to produce more than they need and thus distribute supplies to their neighbors: "When the time of harvest is at hand, the agricultural phylarchs inform the municipal officials what nmnber of citizens they require to be sent. The crowd of harvesters, coming promptly at the appointed time, dispatch the whole task of harvesting almost in a single day of fine weather" (CW4, p. 117). In the framework of Utopia's construction as a book controlled in part by the need for maintaining peace and avoiding war, the agricultural practices on the island are directly connected with the avoiding of war. One of the outstanding features of that commonwealth is the absence of money as a means of exchange and the subsequent communal sharing of property, including food. By eliminating private ownership, both poverty and greed are — at least theoretically in the Utopian milieu— eliminated also. Both of these, and particularly greed, create a climate for war and the maintenance of a standing army or the employing of mercenaries. Warfare produced by greed was frequent among both Christian and Ottoman forces in their conflicts. During the reign of Mohammed H, the cities of Genoa and Venice had the most at stake in the east. Genoa was accustomed to dealing with the Ottomans and was the first Christian power west of the Adriatic Sea to make a treaty with the Ottomans. Genoa used this alliance without scruple against other Christian powers. Calata, a Genoese colony, sent Mohammed n the keys to its walled city in return for favorable commercial rights. Genoa itself was "feeble and indifferent" and unequal to the struggle of 1453, and its trade even-

THOMAS MORE, UTOPIA

164

tually declined. Venice prospered, even with the fall of Constantinople; the primary concern of Venice was not that of recovering the previous stronghold of Christianity from the Ottomans, but that of preserving its commercial privileges under Moslem rule. Venice therefore secured for itself a treaty guaranteeing trade freedom for Venetian merchants and protection for Venetians on Turkish soil.^^ Turkish trade regulations and duties during the period of the writing of Utopia were more liberal than those of Western powers, although "grasping officials" did not always follow the generous Turkish trade practices, and these "grasping officials" were usually "renegade Christians. "^^ The reasonable duties on Turkish exports and imports made Ottoman commercial interests flourish; and these duties were usually handled by Christians. Conquered Christians were in general more prosperous under Ottoman rule than they had been before their subjugation.^^ It might be concluded that accepting Ottoman rule was more economically advantageous to a Christian country than resisting it, thus encouraging the Turkish threat. The interdependence of the desire for wealth and the need for war are illustrated in Ottoman history, and an antidote for this interdependence is

described in the organization of

life

in Utopia.

The Ottomans loved splendor

and display. It was not enough for the emperor to be brilliantly arrayed. His huge personal bodyguard were also, as were their horses. The Spachi Oglani, the special warriors of the Porte, had the most beautiful and the most gorgeously trapped horses of the empire. Their own apparel was elaborate, and their servants the best dressed of any other kind of men in Turkey— except of course their masters. The spoils of Selim's victory in his Persian wars maintained this splendor, which had become more magnificent since the time of Mohammed H. Each of these 1000 Spachi had from three to ten servants. The Spachi wore garments of embroidered gold cloth and purple or other colored velvet, while their servants' hats were trimmed with golden lace. The 1000 Spachi, who rode on the emperor's right hand, were matched by an equal number of equally gorgeously arrayed Sulastri, who rode on his left.^' Although the outfitting of the highly trained standing army of Janissaries consisted mostly in protective garments against enemy weapons and the carrying of their own weapons, even they were treated to expensive golden lace hanging from their protective caps, and embroidered into the lace a sheaf to hold feather s.^° Maintaining such elaborate display, as well as paying such a valuable army, required constant revenue for the Ottoman Empire and even its generally wellorganized methods of taxation were often insufficient. Bayezid I once spared the lives of 300 Frenchmen taken prisoner because he could receive a high ransom for their rich dress,^^ and at a later date many well-dressed Italian captains were bound in chains and taken to Mohammed n since their attire would bring a high ransom. ^^ When Bayezid n recognized that his son Selim was looking for an an opportunity to murder him and take his throne, Bayezid tried to pacify Selim with much money, with treasure, with expensive clothing, with horses, and with servants. ^^ When Bayezid gave up the throne he took his treasure and went into exile, but Selim had his father poisoned before the completion of his journey so that Selim could have the treasure Bayezid was

CLARE M. MURPHY

165

taking with him: "Moreouer couetousness (mother of all cruelty, yea and of all other kynde of mischefe) was ready e &. at hande to pricke hym forwarde to worke this wycked and cruell dede." One of the reasons Selim needed his father's treasure was for payment of both the captains and the common soldiers with whom he had ingratiated himself for their support both in the displacement of his father from the throne and the claims of his brothers to it.^ In his battle with the Persians in 1514, Selim ransacked for treasure both the palace of the Sophy at Taurium and the homes of rich merchants, before the arrival of Ismael the Sophy with an army.^^ The skill of the Ottomans as conquerors was such that their wars gained rather than lost money; and by the time of Selim's successor, Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Emperor had more precious stones and treasure than all the other princes of the world

combined. ^^

The stark simplicity of the Utopian dress may be better appreciated if it is seen as an exaggerated contrast to the Ottoman love of lavish apparel for humans and horses; and the Utopian despising of wealth makes war for booty unnecessary. In Book I Raphael condemns those who profit from the sheepgrazing industry. Not only the nobles but their servants— as was the case with the Spachi Oglani and the Sulastri— live in "ill-timed luxury." All "are given to much ostentatious sumptuousness of dress and to excessive indulgence at table" (CW4, p. 69). All counselors of kings, Raphael insists, "agree and consent to the famous statement of Crassus: no amotmt of gold is enough for the ruler who has to keep an army" (CW4, p. 93). Raphael therefore praises the Macarians, neighbors of the Utopians. A wise king of the Macarians once decreed only a small treasury for their ruler. "He saw that this treasure would be sufficient for the king to put down rebellion and for the kingdom to meet hostile invasions. It was not large enough, however, to tempt him to encroach on the possessions of others" (CW4, p. 97). In his description of Utopia itself, Raphael claims: "No city has any desire to extend its territory, for they consider themselves the tenants rather than the masters of what they hold" (CW4, p. 113). Their horses are few and used only "for exercising their young men (CW4, p. 445). dress of the Utopians is and has been "of one and the

in horsemanship"

The

throughout the island and

down

the centuries

same pattern comely to the eye, convenheat and cold," with tailoring . . .

ient for bodily movement, and fit for wear in done by each family (CW4, p. 127). Their work clothes last for seven years, are covered with a cape for public appearance, and are of natural color only. "Consequently not only is much less woolen cloth needed than elsewhere, but what they have is much less expensive." Linen— needing less labor— is used more often than wool and no value is placed "on fineness of thread" (CW4,

Since all property is common in Utopia, the citizens are not greedy because of want, nor are they motivated by pride, "pride which counts it a p. 135).

personal glory to excel others by superfluous display of possessions. The latter vice can have no place at all in the Utopian scheme of things" (CW4, p. 139).

That More may have seen the "superfluous display of possessions" and the temptation to warfare as mutually dependent is demonstrated by the disdain

l66

THOMAS MORE, UTOPIA

with which Utopian society forces itself to regard gold and silver. A great deal of both are brought into the island through trade with other nations (CW4, p. 149), but these metals are regarded as inferior. "To gold and silver, however, nature has given no use that we cannot dispense with, if the folly of men had not made them valuable because they are rare" (CW4, p. 151). The use of gold and silver for chamberpots in Utopia follows the medieval tradition of associating gold with excrement, since greed often exposes the most despicable elements in human nature. ^^ Disdain for these precious metals — so often the incentive for war— reduces them in Utopia to chains for slaves and pieces of jewelry used as marks of infamy for criminals (CW4, p. 153). A tradition preserved by historians of More's time— although discounted by later historians^®— was that when Tamerlane defeated Bayezid I in 1402, he kept Bayezid in an iron cage, carrying him about for display through Asia and Syria until death relieved the defeated emperor of his disgrace. Like the slaves in Utopia, Bayezid— according to this popular tale— was bound with gold chains. ^^ If the lack of sufficient wealth and the desire for superfluous wealth precipitate wars, so also does the existence of a class whose only purpose in life is warfare. If money as a necessary means of exchange can be eliminated by common ownership of property and disdain for uimecessary display, another encouragement to war— as well as another costly expense to society — can be obliterated by eliminating standing armies. In Book I of Utopia Raphael equates soldiers with thieves, and derides the keeping of standing armies as a pretext for war (CW4, pp. 63-65). The Utopians hire foreign mercenaries only to spare their own, citizens (CW4, p. 149) when war is a necessity, but their derogation of a paid soldiery is clear, since they "do not care in the least how many Zapoletans they lose, thinking that they [the Utopians] would be the greatest benefactors to the human race if they could relieve the world of all the dregs of this abominable and impious people" (CW4, p. 209). The marginal notation identifying the Zapoletans with Swiss mercenaries was prudently eliminated from the 1518 edition published in Basel (CW4, p. 504), but Prévost doubts that historical precision validates this connection at all. The reputation of the Swiss for venality is unfoxmded and in fact, in 1513 the Swiss refused to fight for both the Pope and his enemy of the moment Francis I, claiming it unsuitable for soldiers from the same nation to confront each other in contending armies (Prévost, p. 711). These well-paid mercenaries so detested by the Utopians might perhaps be more subtly identified with the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire. In all Ottoman history, the contending emperor preferred by the Janissaries tended to defeat his rivals for kingship, and this emperor was always the most warlike of the contenders, since the Janissaries as an institution were incompatible with peace and always a danger to a peaceful ruler.'^o The term Zapoletan suggests "seller, buyer" (CW4, p. 504) which in turn suggests the popularly-derived notion that Janissaries were obtained as child tribute from subjugated Christian countries. The English word Janissary has no clear meaning, but exists only as an attempt to transliterate and Anglicize Turkish yani charì or new soldiery."*^ Another derivation suggested for Zapoletan, "a people

with numerous citizens" (CW4,

p. 504)

may indicate

CLARE M. MURPHY

I67

the endless source of children thus available to the Ottomans from their continuous victories over Christian nations. '^^ One of the highest officers of the Ottoman state was the Aga, or commander of the Janissaries. Although they were a powerful group, the Janissaries led highly regulated and disciplined lives. They had to obey their commander absolutely and fulfill the duties of the Moslem religion. They could not marry, practice any trade, nor leave their camp. "It is clear that the existence of such a body of warriors was in itself a constant incentive or even compulsion to were unpopular with warlike enterprises; and peacefully inclined Sultans the Janissaries who were more fanatical in fighting for Islam even than men of Muslim races." As ex-Christians separated from their families, and as men forbidden to marry, they had no family or native bonds. '*^ Whatever might be said against the existence of a class such as the Janissaries, their disciplined behavior in warfare was, however, admirable, the cause of Ottoman victories, and a shameful contrast to the behavior of the armies of Christian nations. The only breach of discipline among the Janissaries occurred at the death of one emperor, when they were allowed to despoil Jews and Christians with the assurance of pardon by the next emperor.^ It was through the power of the Janissaries that Amurathes H— the first to appoint them — and all his successors achieved mastery in war and conquered "all the great countreyes of the East."*5 European soldiers, on the other hand, were of "euill choice," taken from the ranks "of the promiscuous vulgar people," untrained, and serving for display and the swelling of numbers rather than for use. They could not be compared with the Janissaries who from their youth were trained in arms and in martial discipline, "the wholesome preseruative of the most puissant armies." The lack of discipline among Christian armies bred contempt for them in their Ottoman enemies, who realized that weak and discordant armies could not withstand them.'*^ It was, ironically, the Janissaries and not the Christian forces which were modeled on Byzantine legions, which had in their turn been modeled on Roman legions,'*'' just as at the fall of Constantinople, the Ottoman Emperor received the title "Kaisar-i-Rum" or Emperor of Rome.*^ And if the Ottomans loved luxury, their soldiery could easily dispense with it in the name of discipline and victory. The Ottoman soldiers excelled the Greeks and Romans in their strict and just observance of the laws of arms and the discipline of war. There were no contentions or brawls among them, since the pimishment for these was death. They could subsist without bread or wine, content with rice and water; and if rice was unavailable, they ate powdered meat. Lacking even these meager provisions, they could bleed their horses for drink and eat their flesh for food: "To be shorte, they beare their penurye, and wante of all things muche better then our souldiers, whiche nowe, yea in theyr tentes wyll not be pleased withoute dyuers dysshes."'*' If the incentive to war inherent in the existence of a group like the Janissaries could be eradicated, yet the discipline of their Uves and the simplicity of their needs under duress preserved, the resulting society would resemble that of the Utopians. The discipline of daily life in Utopia is almost military. The Utopians rise early, go to bed early, eat their meals in common, dress almost . . .

THOMAS MORE, UTOPIA

l68

uniformly. The original inhabitants of Utopia were Romans and Egyptians cast upon the island 1200 years earlier by a shipwreck. As the Ottomans practiced the Roman arts of war, the Utopians profit from the other Roman arts: "Now mark what good advantage/' says Raphael, "their industry took of this one opportunity. The Roman empire possessed no art capable of any use which they did not either learn from the shipwrecked strangers or discover for themselves after receiving the hints for investigation— so great a gain was it to them that on a single occasion some persons were carried to their shores from ours" (CW4, p. 109). Their political and legal hierarchies have a military structure (CW4, pp. 123-24) in which rank and seniority have their privileges, as does their seating at table (CW4, pp. 143-45) and even their family structure (CW4, p. 233) hi all matters of dispute or pardon, the governor of the island seems to act as a commander-in-chief with ultimate authority. If poverty, greed, and a standing army are absent in Utopia, one more deterent to peace and incentive to war— religious discord— is also banished. Utopus was able to conquer Utopia because of discord among the Utopians (see above, page 158). "Utopus had heard that before his arrival the inhabitants had been continually quarreling among themselves. He had made the observation that the universal dissention between the individual sects who were fighting for their country had given him the opportunity of overcoming them all" (CW4, pp. 219-21). The history of Ottoman-Christian conflicts recounts endless examples of divisions among Christians which made Ottoman victories easy. Most dramatic perhaps is the fact that Mohammed n was able to conquer Constantinople more easily because Greek and Roman Christians cared nothing for each other's welfare: "the bigoted hatred existing between the Latin and Greek Churches went far towards paralysing the sympathies of the Catholic countries." With complete success, Mohammed n encouraged the bad feeling between the Greek and Roman churches. To the Greeks, "the supremacy of the infidel Sultan seemed more tolerable than the supremacy of the heretical Pope."^° There is, therefore, freedom of religion in Utopia— even though one religion is seen as superior (CW4, p. 217) — and a freedom to proselytize but not to the point of harrassment of others (CW4, p. 219). One over-zealous convert to the new religion of Christianity, introduced to the island by Raphael, was in fact exiled "not for despising their religion but for stirring up a riot among the people" (CW4, p. 219), indicating once more the need to maintain peace as a controlling element in the aesthetic construction of More's book. Utopus himself saw peace and the lack of discord as indispensable to the flourishing of religion. "Utopus laid down these regulations not merely from regard for peace, which he saw to be utterly destroyed by constant wrangling and implacable hatred, but because he thought that this method of settlement was in the interest of religion itself." Violence and threats as forms of religious persuasion Utopus regarded as "insolence and folly." He thought on the contrary that "truth by its own natural force would finally emerge sooner or later and stand forth conspicuously," while "arms and riots" would overwhelm "the best and holiest religion" (CW4, p. 221). This idea of "une confiance totale dans la puissance propre de la vérité" (Prévost, p. 597, n. 1) was apparently More's own and remained in his think.

CLARE M. MURPHY

169

ing for the rest of his life, for in the Preface to The Debellacyon of Salem and Bizance (Jerusalem and Byzantium), first published in 1533, More writes of his exchange of arguments with "The Pacifier" (Christopher St. German, although More did not so realize) "Now had I supposed to remedy those things, &. make him an aüswer in three or foure leaues, with only pointing the reader to the places, with writing in what leaf e he should find the mater. For the wordes ones red: the trouth should shewe it selfe."^^ The mind of Thomas More played endlessly with every possibility, with the extremes of every possibility, with the opposites of every possibility. What if an author were to devise a commonwealth composed of Ottoman and Christian virtues and lacking the vices of either? Such a commonwealth would be neither Islamic nor Christian, lacking both the splendor of the Ottoman Empire and the varieties of nations of the Christian West. Such a commonwealth would be formed instead on a strict Ottoman military discipline and primitive Christian simplicity, yielding therefore a peace unknown in either world. Its religion would be neither Islam nor Christianity, but merely the best religion that the unaided natural mind could produce. Would such a commowealth be the dull and uniform, yet tolerant and peaceful, island of Utopia? :

University of Rhode Island

Notes *On figurative references to the Grand Turk, see R. J. Schoeck, "Thomas More's Dialogue of Comfort and the Problem of the Real Grand Turk," English Miscellany 20 (1969), 23-37. 1. R. W. Chambers, Thomas Moie (London: Jonathan Cape, 1935), p. 166. 2. Paolo Giovio (Paulus Jouius), A Shorte treatise vpon the Tuikes Chronicles, compyled by Paulus Jouius by way of Nuceme, and dedicated to Charles the .v. Emperour. Drawer Oute of the Italyen tong into Latyne, by Franciscus Niger Bassiantes. And translated out of Latyne into englysh by Peter Ashton (London: Edward Witchurche, 1546), sig. Aiir and v. 3. Edward Surtz, S.J. and J. H. Hexter, eds., The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Volume 4: Utopia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 219-21. All subsequent references to this edition will be given in parentheses in the 4.

body of the text as CW4.

Giovio,

sig.

Div.

The

last of the

Greek Emperors, Constantine Palaeologus,

May 29, 1453. See Roger Bigelow Merriman, Suleiman the Magnificent 1520-1566 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1944), p. 17. 5. J. B. Bury, "The Ottoman Conquest," pp. 67-103 in The Cambridge Modem History, eds. A. W. Ward, G. W. Prothero, Stanley Leathes, I, The Renaissance (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1902), p. 67. See also Merriman, p. 9. was

6. 7.

killed

on the day

of the taking of Constantinople,

Giovio, sigs. Aiiiir-Avr. ed., L'Utopie de

André Prévost,

Thomas More

(Paris:

Marne, 1978),

p. 705.

THOMAS MORE; UTOPIA

I/o

All subsequent references to this edition will be given in parentheses in the body of the text as Prévost.

Bullinger (see Note 9) gives the date as 1416, but Amurathes n did not come Merriman, p. 13). Bullinger is probably confusing the date of the accession of Amurathes n with the peace made in 1416 between Mohammed I and the Venetian commander, Loredana, at Gallipoli (see Merriman, 8.

to the throne until 1421 (see

p. 13). 9.

Heinrich Bullinger, The Tragedies of Tyrants ... Wiitten by Hernie Bullingei and now Englished (London: William How, 1575), pp. 84v-86r. See also

[1572],

Giovio, sigs. Cir-Ciiiiv. 10. Giovio, sig. Ciiir. These marginal notes of early chroniclers were added by Giovio's English translator Ashton. See also Merriman, pp. 14-15, n. 11, who mentions the retelling of this incident by Richard KnoUes and Cotton Mather. 11. Examples of the breaking of treaties and truces among Christian nations and of bad faith among leaders of Christian nations and among Popes are numerous in Christian-Ottoman relations. 12. Giovio, sigs. Ciiir-Ciiiir.

More began his

stay at Antwerp with Peter Giles, chief secretary of that city, September 1515, meeting there through Giles the Portuguese sailor, Raphael Hythlodaeus, whom More made into the narrator of a voyage to the island of Utopia. The manuscript of Utopia, originally entitled Nusquama, was completed by September 3, 1516, when More sent it to Erasmus. Sometime the following month. More changed the book's title to Utopia and sent it to Peter Giles with its dedicatory letter to him. The book appeared in print in Louvain in December 13.

in about

1516. Germain Marc'hadour, L'Univeis de Thomas Moie (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1963), pp. 221-37. 14. Merriman, p. 22; Bury, p. 90; Marc'hadour, p. 190. 15. Bury, p. 90; Merriman, p. 22. 16. Merriman, p. 23. 17. Bury, p. 90. 18.

Merriman,

19.

Richard KnoUes, The Generali Historie of the Turks (London,

p. 11.

Adam

Islip,

1603), sig. A5r. 20. Merriman, p. 36. 21. Marc'hadour, p. 206. 22. Giovio, sig. Kiiiir. 23. Bury, p. 67. 24. Bury, p. 74. 25. Bury, p. 102.

26. Bury, pp. 68-69. 27. A. H. Lybyer, "The

Ottoman Turks and the Routes of Oriental Trade," The English Historical Review, XXX, No. 120 (October 1915), 577-88, 582. 28. Bury, p. 102. 29. Giovio, sigs. Pviir-Pviiiv. 30. Giovio, sig. Qiiir and v. 31. Giovio, sig. Biir. 32. Giovio, sig. Dviir. 33. Giovio, sig. Giiiiv. 34. Giovio, sigs. Hiiv-Hvr.

CLARE M. MURPHY

I/I

35. Giovio, sig. Kiiiiv. 36. Giovio, sig. Pvir. 37.

Modem usage still illustrates such a connection in phrases like "filthy rich"

and "fUthy

lucre."

example the entry under "Bayezid I" in Chcanhei's Biogiaphical DicWm. Geddie and J. Liddell Geddie (Edinburgh and London, W. & R. Chambers, Ltd., 1953), p. 61. Merriman does not even mention the iron cage story in his treatment of the relationship between Bayezid and Tamerlane, pp. 11-12. 38. See for

tionary, eds.

39. Giovio, sigs. Biiiiv-Bvr. 40. Bury, p. 90. 41. Bury, p. 99. 42. Some historians doubt that the Janissaries were obtained through child tribute, but that view would still have been the prevailing one in More's time. See William M. Langer and Robert P. Blake; "The Rise of the Ottoman Tiurks and Its Historical Background," The Amencan Histoncal Review, XXXVn (Oct. 1931-July 1932), pp. 468-505 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932), pp. 503-4. 43. Bury, p. 100. After the time of the writing of Utopia, the discipline of the Janissaries lessened (under Suleiman the Magnificent), and they were permitted to marry. Bury, p. 101.

44. Giovio, sig. Gviir. 45. Giovio, sig. Bviiiv. 46. Knolles, sig. Avr.

and Blake, Merriman, p. 17.

47. Langer 48.

p. 504.

49. Giovio, sigs. Rvr-Rvir. 50. Bury, p. 103. 51. Thomas More, The Woikes of Sir Thomas More Knyght, sometyme Lorde Chancelloui of England, written by him in the Englysh tonge. 1557 (London: Scolar Press, 1978), p. 931.

Humanism and

the Medieval Past:

Christiernus Petri as a

Humanist Scholar Erik Petersen would probably be an expression of inappropriate, nationally founded optimism to presume that the name and literary contribution of Christiernus Petri (Christiem Pedersen in Danish) will provoke any joy of recognition, even in a learned circle of Neo-Latin scholars. Although Christiernus Petri in his whole production, both as an editor, translator and author sui iuris unmistakenly belongs to the international res publica of devoted litteiati within the northern European humanist movement, his efforts have remained strangely anonymous. Indeed, his two main achievements consist of an edition and a translation— namely the edition of the great medieval chronicle of Denmark, the Gesta Danorum, written in eloquent Latin around the year 1200 by Saxo Grammaticus, and transmitted in toto only in Petri's edition issued in Paris 15 14^ (only minor, though not insignificant manuscript-fragments have survived); and the translation into Danish of the Bible, which has given him the honourable name of "the father of the Danish language."^ Petri's achievements as editor and translator have, however, caused a slightly false impression of him. Petri was one of the earliest scholars in Denmark who tried to apply the results of humanist method and learning to the Danish past and present, and he had a lasting effect on the development of humanism

Denmark.

sources tell us when Petri was bom, but it must have been around the year 1480.^ He was bom in Zealand, and went to school in Roskilde. Petri does not seem to have studied at the University of Copenhagen, newly foimded in 1479, whereas his name occurs on the list of immatriculation of Greifswald University in 1496. Two years later he is mentioned as baccalauieus, and in 1505 a source calls him canonicus at the cathedral of Limd. Later he went to Paris, where he is mentioned as member of the natio Germanica in 1508 and magister artium liberalium in 1511. Petri stayed in Paris imtil spring 1515 and had several works printed during his stay. In February 1522 Petri occurs as chancellor to the archbishop of Lund (Johann Weze), but later on he supported the reformation-movement; his religious sympathies caused a ban on

ERIK PETERSEN

him

1/3

in 1525, and the following year he followed his king, Christian the Second, into exile. The following years he spent primarily in the Netherlands, and for a period he had his books printed in Antwerp. The political situation in his homeland allowed Petri to return to Denmark in 1531, and he now founded his own priating-house in Malmoe, which he had to abandon in 1536— again because of internal political struggles. He spent his later years in relatively peaceful circ*mstances until he died in 1554. Although almost his whole production is concerned with Danish material and Danish sources it is fair to conclude that the intellectual background of Petri is international, both what concerns his educational basis and in his professional career. Especially his stay in Paris seems to have been of major importance for the direction of his efforts — during these years he came into close contact with the great humanist scholar and printer Jodocus Badius Ascensius, who printed two of the most important of Petri's editions, the Saxo-edition of 1514 and the Petrus Laglandicus-edition of 1515. Petri's collected production of forty editions altogether can be divided into three groups according to the places of publication: Paris, Antwerp, and Malmoe. In Paris Petri had books printed and edited from 1510 to 1515; in Antwerp from 1529 to 1531; and in Malmoe from 1533 to 1534. According to content they can be grouped in these three categories: editions of sources, historical, liturgical and literary; translations; and his own writings and adaptations. Finally Petri's production can be categorized according to languages — with a unique exception in English: Latin and Danish. Characteristically, his production begins with a Latin-Danish vocabulary,'* and is, as a whole, mainly Latin during his stay in Paris, exclusively Danish during the Antwerp period, and mainly Danish during the Malmoe period. Typographical research has shown a certain unity in the typography of Petri's books from all the three periods of his printing activities, and it seems reasonable to assume that he owned his own printing material.^ On the other hand, he does not seem to have mastered the technical processes of bookproduction, and we are therefore forced to conclude that he must have asked a professional printer to do the technical work. But although Petri has not been able to unite the two functions, namely the editor's and the printer's, the unity of which in exactly this fruitful phase of humanism created such outstanding results, there can be no doubt that he followed his books with the greatest care even through the technical processes. This is obvious not only from the typographical design of his books, but also the fact that many of the books that Petri asked a foreign printer to produce contained Danish texts must have necessitated a close collaboration between editor and printer. But if we have to answer the queston of Petri's participation in the physical production of his books in modestly negative terms, we still have to ask another question of more far-reaching importance, namely: what did Petri do, intellectually, to the books he edited? And what was his background for editing exactly these books that he edited? In a certain sense, the answer is simple enough— he edited works from and on the Danish past, and he edited works which could help the refinement of learning in his native country; to point out the Saxo edition of 1514 and the Latin-Danish vocabulary of 1510 will

174

CHRISTIERNUS PETRI

probably suffice to show these tendencies in his efforts as a humanist. But whereas these two books barely give us an impression of Petri's humanist intentions and of Petri as a philologist— the Saxo being just a careful philological edition, and the vocabulary an instnimentum philologicum— his edition from 1515 of Petrus Laglandicus gives a much broader basis for an evaluation of Petri as a humanist scholar working on the national past, since he prints a running commentary of his own to the text that he edits. The Petrus Laglandicus collection, which in its present form can be dated approximately to the middle of the fourteenth century, consists of little more than twelve hundred paired proverbs in Latin and Danish. As to the identity of the supposed author of the collection Petrus Laglandicus (or Peder Laie, in Danish) it has only been possible to raise conjectures. The collection has caused quite a lot of discussion in modem research^ — the Danish versions of the proverbs are among the oldest literary remains in the Danish language, but we cannot say for sure whether the Danish proverbs are primary or secondary to the Latin. The Latin proverbs are certainly more artificial in structure than the Danish, composed as most of them are in leonine hexameters, but their stylistic and linguistic qualities are poor. Only few of the Latin proverbs are known from other sources apart from the Petrus Laglandicus collection. One might suggest then, that the Latin proverbs are the result of some not too eloquent schoolmaster who tried to compile or compose Latin parallel proverbs to Danish proverbs already known. In any case, the collection was widely known in Danish schools in the late Middle Ages, and it was mainly used in connection with the teaching of Latin. Christiemus Petri himself tells about his reading of Petrus Laglandicus in his time as a schoolboy.^ When Petri edited the proverbs of Petrus Laglandicus, two earlier editions of the collection had already been issued, in 1506 and 1508 (a reprint with minor corrections of the 1506 edition).^ In contrast to Petri's edition the two earlier editions bring only the text of the collection— and there can be no doubt about the intention of the editors: to produce a printed edition of the proverbs ad usum scholamm. The question is if Petri tried to show an equal care for schoolteaching when he edited the collection in 1515. Probably not. Not only did he find one of the best and most famous humanist printers of his time when he had it published, and the whole apparatus of the book, both physically and intellectually, speaks against the schoolbook-hypothesis; but furthermore he openly admits his doubts as to the utility of the book in relation to the teaching of good Latin— he finds too many obsolete words in its Latin, too many barbarisms and too many hopelessly wrong syntactical constructions. Interesting in this connection is the introductory letter from Jodocus Radius Ascensius to Petri which is printed as a preface to the book; ^° with a quotation from Juvenal, Radius cannot praise a bad book, but he moderates his judgement by quoting the words of Pliny, that no book is so bad that it may not be useful in some respect. And Radius finds the usefulness of the book in the gravity and occasional wit of the proverbs, whereas he warns the readers against imitating the Latin, either in style, vocabulary or metres— which in this period is in fact the same as to warn against using the book in the schools. It is remarkable, by the way, that Radius explains the miserable quality of

ERIK PETERSEN

175

the Petrus Laglandicus collection by referring to a too strong tradition of observant reading of the Doctiinale of Alexander de Villa Dei in Denmark. "If they could only detach themselves a little from Alexander's Doctiinale," he says, "they would soon find many more who could equal Saxo Grammaticus." Already in 1510 Christiemus Petri himself had warned the young pupils against using the Doctiinale, "on which they can spend their whole lives without getting much use out of it," he says in the preface to his Vocabulaiium.^^ The book therefore cannot have been primarily intended for schooling in Latin. But however poor the Latin was, the Petrus Laglandicus collection was of a considerable age already in the days of Petri, and exactly this has been the stimulus for him to publish it. In other words, his edition of Petrus Laglandicus must be interpreted as a parallel, if not in all respects equal, project to his editing of Saxo's splendid chronicle from the year before — in the search for literary and historical monuments of the national past. That Petri considers the collection as such can be seen also in his philological treatment of the text— for instance he does not try to modernize spelling and orthography in general according to humanistic standards of correct Latin, but edits the proverbs in a philologically conservative way; in this way the medieval idiom of the Latin proverbs is contrasted by Petri's own humanistic Latin in the commentary. And since his aim was to give the past and the literature of his nation a legitimate status in the modem Europe of his time, he published in Paris with Jodocus Badius Ascensius. For the Petrus Laglandicus collection this was certainly a strange metamorphosis: from the late medieval Danish class-room to the international market of humanistic reading. It must have been of some importance for Petri that a— probably old— tradition had given the name or legifei of legista to the supposed author; some of the proverbs are juridical in content. Petri calls him legista on the titlepage, and he quite evidently sees him as a representative of an old Danish legal tradition; just as he had published Saxo Grammaticus as the bistoiicus of the Danish past, he now tried to interprete Petms Laglandicus as the legista of the Danish past. It may soimd strange that he tried to give a sort of literary canonization to a work of rather poor linguistic qualities, but we must recognize that his motives were more ideological than pedagogic— he did not look for books for the schools but for

witnesses of the past, literary and historical.

The Royal

Library,

Copenhagen

Notes 1. Ph. Renouard, Bibliogiaphie des impressions et des oeuvres de fosse Badius Ascensius, imprimeur et humaniste 1462-1535, tome lU (Paris, 1908), p. 249-51. 2. Petri's translation in the original form has disappeared, but it was to a great extent incorporated in "The Bible of King Christian the Third" from 1550. 3. The standard work on the life and work of Christiemus Petri is still C. J. Brandt,

CHRISTIERNUS PETRI

1/6

Om Lunde-Kanniken Chnstiem Pedeisen oghans SknfteT (Kçrt)enhavn, also Carl S. Petersen in

Dansk Biogiaftsk Leksikon,

vol.

XVin

1882). Cf.

(KçrtDenhavn, 1940),

76-82 Vocabulaiium ad usum dacorum. Paris, 1510, edited in facsimel by I. Bom and N. Haastrup (Kgflbenhavn, 1973) {Det 16. arhimdredes danske vokabularier. I) 5. Lauritz Nielsen, "Christian Pedersen og Bogtrykkerkunsten," Noidisk Tidskiift for Bok- och Biblioteksväsen, V (1918), 45-60. 6. Edited in facsimile in Tver Kjar and Erik Petersen, Danmaiks gamie Oidspiog = DgO], vol. I, part 1 Kqrtjenhavn, 1979) p.

(

See the introductory postscript in DgO, 1, 2, p. 721-764. I, 1, p. 759; cf. also Petri's bçfm ath holde til Scole och Studium (Antwerp, 1531), edited in Chnstiem Pedeisens Danske Skiiftei, IV, ed. C. J. Brandt 7.

DgO,

(Kçrtjenhavn, 1854), p. 505. 9. The 1506 edition has been edited in facsimile in 10.

DgO,

11.

Vocabulaiium ad usum dacorum,

1, p.

DgO,

174. ed. cit., fol. Iv.

Umanesimo nella seconda

e filosofia nel

metà

Veneto

del cinquecento

Giovanni Santinello nella scuola di Rialto in Agostino Valier, maestro di filosofia morale fermamente convinto "con-

Venezia negli armi fra il 1558 e il 1561, è iimxisse veteres sapientiam cum eloquentia," e che essi, gli antichi, amarono molto "nexum artium et scientiarum."^ Ecco una maniera per esprimere il tema che propongo alla vostra attenzione, il nesso fra umanesimo e filosofia. E vorrei trattarlo facendo riferimento non ai grandi nomi degli studi umanistici e filosofici, ancora così fiorenti nel secondo cinquecento veneto, non ai maestri celebri dello Studio di Padova, ma piuttosto a personaggi di statura minore. Minore, rispetto all'Ateneo Patavino, ma non meno importante, è la scuola di Rialto di Venezia,^ con maestri quali Agostino Valier o Luigi da Pesaro; scuola certamente minore è il seminario vescovile di Verona, ove il Valier continua il suo magistero, divenuto vescovo della città e cardinale, in strette relazioni d'amicizia e d'azione con Carlo Borromeo a Milano. Cultura forse minore, ma più varia e libera di quella accademica, fiorisce nei ridotti e nei circoli di Padova e di Venezia.-^ Ad essa mettono capo giovani filosofi, quali Nicolò Contarini, Stefano Tiepolo, Pietro Duodo,'* le cui opere, esili di mole e d'impianto, hanno pur sempre alle spalle l'insegnamento di maestri padovani ufficiali, come Giacomo Zabarella e Francesco Piccolomini, ma mostrano un'inquietudine incipiente e un'apertura problematica ignota forse ai maestri, legati alla tradizione. Proprio in questi ambienti troverà un giorno amici e interlocutori Galileo Galilei; uno di questi giovani, legatissimo a Galilei, sarà fra Paolo Sarpi.^ Il tempo ed il luogo, la seconda metà del cinquecento veneto, è quello in cui va maturando un tentativo di mettere in discussione l'assetto politico italiano post-tridentino. La politica dei cosiddetti "giovani," che si riconoscono nel loro maggiore esponente, il futuro doge Leonardo Dona, sfocerà nel significativo, intenso episodio della contesa col pontefice Paolo V, culminata nell'interdetto, e nel lungo tentativo di uscire dalla tutela absburgica e di legare la vita culturale e politica della Serenissima alla Francia di Enrico IV, all'Inghilterra anglicana, ai Paesi Bassi calvinisti. Non remota preparazione culturale di questi eventi è la filosofia umanistica di alcuni dei "giovani" che incontreremo.

1/8

UMANESIMO

E FILOSOFIA

NEL VENETO

Ma il nesso umanesimo-filosofia ha mia più remota tradizione nella cultmra veneta. Basterà ricordare, tra i fatti più significativi, come l'iniziativa di tradmre e di far circolare testi filosofici, destinati a rinnovare l'aristotelismo della scuola, fosse venuta un secolo prima da patrizi veneti nutriti, soprattutto, di cultura letteraria, come Girolamo Donato traduttore di Alessandro di Afrodisia, ed Ermolao Barbaro traduttore di Temistio (oltre che di Aristotele), anche a voler tacere di Aldo Manuzio, con la sua editio princeps di Aristotele greco nel 1495-1498. In questa stessa età, negli anni 80 del quattrocento, il problema era stato dibattuto anche sul piano teorico. Leibniz, nel ricordare i "philosophi eloquentissimi" di allora, si richiama al celebre scambio e scontro epistolare Giovanni Pico ed Ermolao Barbaro, che ebbe risonanza europea. Quelle lettere, ricorda Leibniz, furono edite in Germania da Melantone, ben interessato al medesimo problema.*^ Pico aveva esaltato la filosofia, che è intenta ai "principi delle cose umane e divine," formatrice d'una umanità ben più profonda di quella nutrita dalle scuole dei grammatici, con le loro "nugae" letterarie e mitologiche.^ Eppure il Barbaro non era stato sommerso dall'empito speculativo di Pico, ma aveva lasciato in eredità un compito, quello appunto di mostrare non il contrasto, ma l'integrazione reciproca di eloquenza e sapienza. Proprio perché la filosofia è "munus divinum," sosteneva Barbaro, essa va accostata con reverenza religiosa, e va trattata con mani pure non immonde, ben lavate e pulite, e con un discorso casto, non sporco e fangoso.^ A questa eredità si richiama in modo esplicito il filosofo e vescovo Agostino Valier. Alla sua curia veronese, fuggendo la peste del 1577 che infieriva a Venezia e desolava la città, un giovane patrizio veneziano. Agostino Nani narra d'aver trovato rifugio e conforto. "Quel santo uomo — scrive il Nani— toccò l'animo mio, abbattuto e infermo, in modo tale da sollevarlo subito dalla disperazione alla speranza sicura, dalla tristezza alla tranquillità, dalle cose terrene alle celesti ... Io allora ne approfittai per chiedergli, con modestia e tremore, se non gli dispiacesse parlare di studi letterari, della stessa filosofia e del giusto metodo per filosofare {de lecta philosophandi latione]. Ed egli, coltissimo com'è, sebbene avesse già da tempo interrotto gli studi filosofici, costretto da più gravi occupazioni, me ne parlò tuttavia allora, ed in seguito, con tanta eleganza e competenza che mai nulla ho ascoltato con più grande gioia e vantaggio. Dotato d'una eccelente memoria, mi spiegò i metodi dei filosofi, non solo antichi, ma anche recenti. Multa ipse de Hermolao Baibaio, de Hieronimo Donato, de Gaspare Contareno caidinale ... disseiuit." Ecco così aprirsi lo scenario sui grandi della tradizione recente: Barbaro, Donato, Gasparo Contarini, ai quali seguono— nella rassegna del Valier narrata del Nani— nomi di minor peso, ma che suonavano non meno importanti per la cultura veneta all'orecchio d'un ascoltatore del tempo e, in buona parte, anche a noi oggi: Lorenzo Bragadin, Sebastiano Foscarin, Pier Francesco Contarini che fu patriarca di Venezia, Domenico Morosini, Giovanni Francesco Canale, Daniele Barbaro designato Patriarca di Aquileia, Andrea e Bernardo Navagero, Lorenzo Priuli poi Doge, e giù giù fino ai contemporanei viventi: Filippo Mocenigo vescovo di Nicosia, Nicolò da Ponte, Giacomo Foscarini, Francesco Venier, Giacomo Surian, Luigi da Pesaro, ed i più giovani nostri coetanei, conclude il Nani, "irmamoratissimi della filosofia, i quali hanno anche composto bei libri e pubblicato nobilissime dispute."^ fra

GIOVANNI SANTINELLO documento

Nani

1/9

da Prefazione all'edizione veronese nel 1577 del scritto che fu composto, però, quasi vent'anni prima, quando il Valier era maestro di filosofia morale nella scuola di Rialto, scritto affiancato in quell'edizione da molte Piaefationes o discorsi, ai giovani della scuola, da lui tenuti in pubblico o in privato, e da quattro opuscoli, tra cui quello importante dedicato al giovane Leonardo Dona, studente a Padova: Qua latione veisandum sit in Aristotele. ^^ Ma che cosa significa, più di preciso congiungere eloquenza e sapienza, il Leit-motiv di molta parte della cultura veneta del tempo? Al di là della semplice polemica contro la scrittura barbara dei filosofi, medievali e loro eredi rinascimentali, infinite volte accesa e ripresa a cominciare dal Petrarca e poi da Erasmo ed infine dal Valier stesso, che aveva composto in giovinezza, e non stampato poi, un Libellus adversus barbariem in scribendo, in quo multa contra Arabes et Scbolasticos (ut vocant) pbilosopbos,^^ quale significato si può dare, qui nel Veneto, nella seconda metà del cinquecento, a questo tema? Penso che esso equivalga, soprattutto, ad una questione di metodo per la filosofia. E' come se la filosofia chiedesse alla grammatica ed alla retorica limiti e freni da imporre alla sfrenatezza del pensiero e del linguaggio disputante del filosofo. Un metodo, una recta ratio philosophandi, può venire al filosofo anche da suggerimenti della filologia. In secondo luogo, congiimgere eloquenza e sapienza equivale ad una richiesta da parte della filologia, questa volta, indirizzata ai filosofi: la richiesta, cioè, di formulare una certa concezione dell'uomo, cui poter riferire come a sostanza, come a soggetto o res, la disciplina formale ed etica della parola. I due significati della questione, quello che emerge, per cosi dire, ponendoci sul versante filosofico, e l'altro emergente dal versante filologico, appaiono fra loro complementari. Agostino Valier, ^^ ed i suoi amici più giovani, sono stati istruiti a Padova, nella stagione del più fervido e maturo aristotelismo; haimo avuto maestri, che sono fra i più celebri letterati e filosofi dello Studio: Lazzaro Buonamici, Bernardino Tomitano, Marc'Antonio de' Passeri detto il Genua, Bassiano Laudi, Bernardino Petrella, Giacomo Zabarella e soprattutto Francesco Piccolomini. Usciti dall'Università, solo alcuni di loro hanno continuato con l'insegnamento, esercitandolo nella locale scuola di Rialto; i più sono invece passati all'impegno politico, o politico-religioso, o agli studi storici (pensiamo alla vita di Nicolò Contarini o del Sarpi medesimo). Ma nella giovinezza e nella prima maturità l'insegnamento di Padova, e la tradizione culturale nella quale si trovavano inseriti, hanno profondamente stimolato la loro riflessione sul significato dell'aristotelismo, o, comunque, della filosofia che hanno appreso, Il

del

De recta pbilosophandi ratìone del Valier,

sul valore delle dispute aspre e implacabili fra

Le loro questioni

metodo vengono

di qui,

maestri, cui

hanno

assistito.

da un'esperienza psicologica per-

sonale; però non solo di più, ma anche dalla situazione logica stessa del cosiddetto aristotelismo padovano, che, malgrado le sicurezze e la fiducia nella tradizione da parte dei maestri patavini, portava in se medesimo i germi del suo

tramonto, della lenta crisi verso la scienza nuova. ^^ Al compagno e quasi coetaneo Leonardo Dona, di soli tre anni più giovane di lui, il Valier indirizza nel 1556 l'opuscolo Qua ratìone in Aristotelis lectìone versandum sit; ma pochi anni dopo, rivolgendosi ai suoi scolari di Rialto, fra il 1558 e il 1561, la questione gli si allarga e dilata: non più il solo Aristotele

UMANESIMO

l80

E FILOSOFIA

NEL VENETO

ma la filosofia in generale: De lecta philosophandi latione}^ dubbi riflettonno antiche inquietudini cristiane nei confronti della filosofia, per la sua pericolosità, perché fonte inesauribile di eresia: ^^ averroismo ed alessandrismo padovani insegnino. Ma dubbi ed incertezze vengono dallo stesso carattere settario della filosofia. In primo luogo: s'è insegnato e si continua ad insegnare Aristotele,- ma non ci si è accorti, anche, della grandezza e della diversità— per molti aspetti— di Platone. E quale Aristotele insegnare, poi? Quello di Alessandro di Afrodisia o di Temistio, o di Simplicio più di recente scoperto; o non piuttosto il vecchio e collaudato commento di Averroè, o l'Aristotele dei commentatori cristiani medievali e più recenti? Ma anche costoro sono divisi e discordi: l'aristotelismo di S. Tommaso non è quello di Duns Scoto. ^^ Ecco, appunto, il settarismo della filosofia. Un dubbio più chiaramente metodico, espresso dal Valier, riguarda la questione se si debba procedere con la tecnica collaudata e ben disciplinata della disputatio scolastica, o non piuttosto con i nuovi procedimenti discorsivoè in discussione,

retorici appresi dagli umanisti. ^^

infine la situazione politica stessa di

Venezia riportava a galla un antico quesito platonico: è proprio utile la filosofia alla politica o non è, invece, dannosa? ^^ Venezia ha bisogno di formare

una classe politica, non di alimentare ima schiera di filosofi litigiosi e discordi. La risposta al primo e all'ultimo dubbio viene data dal Valier mediante un richiamo alla tradizione culturale veneta, che sembra rassicurante su questi punti, come lo sarà per il Parata del Della perfezione della vita politica. Sono stati buoni filosofi, buoni cristiani e buoni politici ad un tempo Ermolao Barbaro, Gaspare Contarini, Girolamo Donato. ^^ Non a caso vengono ricordati qui dal Valier proprio gli umanisti-filosofi. Sembra che gli studi umanistici possanono offrire im utile correttivo al razionalismo pericoloso ed unilaterale degli studi filosofici. Ed al giovane Leonardo Dona, il futuro Doge, il Valier raccomanda, fra le cautiones da usare nella lettura di Aristotele, di non prestar fede a questo filosofo in tutti gli argomenti che ha trattato, come fosse un Dio, e di non consumare nel suo studio tanto tempo da trascurare "omnia officia quae in hac vita praestanda sunt."^ Chiara allusione ai doveri politici. Il

carattere settario con cui si presenta la filosofia e la molteplicità di in-

dirizzi,

anche discordi, che essa

vorevole ad

un allargamento

offre,

non turbano

chi,

come

Valier, è fa-

culturale molto vasto, al quale lo predisponeva

formazione umanistica. Platone e Aristotele non vanno visti in alternativa l'uno rispetto all'altro, e nemmeno "miscanda sunt platonica aristotelicis"; penso invece, sostiene il Valier, che si debbano leggere e studiare entrambi, per giimgere a fame un confronto critico: "conferendas existimo Platonis sen la

tentias

cum sententiis Aristotelicis";

zarci di determinare ciò in cui

e così, per quanto sta in noi, bisogna sforconsentono e ciò in cui dissentono. ^^ Ecco un

nuovo atteggiamento, nuovo

sia rispetto alle passate dispute sulla superiorità dell'uno o dell'altro, sia rispetto ad un concordismo a tutti i costi, cui pur inclinavano filosofi come Ficino e Pico. Un discorso analogo vale, secondo il i commentatori che, in un passato non molto remo- to, dividevano maestri: averroisti, alessandristi, tomisti, e così via. Il Valier preferisce i com-

Valier, per i

mentatori greci a quelli arabi o latini; ma egli è disposto ad ascoltare tutti, senza legarsi settariamente a nessuno, a tutti chiedendo quell'aiuto che poi

GIOVANNI SANTINELLO

l8l

bisognerà valutare e sfruttare con prudenza e giudizio. ^^ Prudenza, giudizio, cautela: sono atteggiamenti caratteristici del Valier nei confronti della filosofia;" doti acquisite in misura diretta alla vastità degli orizzonti culturali che gli interessi umanistici gli hanno aperto. Un discorso analogo vale a proposito del linguaggio filosofico. Scontata la polemica contro la barbarie, il Valier richiede al filosofo, perentoriamente la conoscenza del greco e del latino. Egli compiange la povertà linguistica d'un Achillini o d'un Pomponazzi, nell'atto in cui pur riconosce l'altezza del loro ingegno.^'* Teme però anche ciò che egli chiama religio in sermone, una specie di superstizioso attaccamento alla proprietà e purezza linguistiche, le quali talvolta riescono solo ad oscurare il pensiero filosofico, che è per sua natura legato a formule tecniche, barbare se si vuole, ma efficaci e precise. ^^ Come noi siamo fatti d'anima e di corpo, così la scienza consta ex rebus et verbis; valga però la massima, per la quale rebus verba, non verbis res serviantP-^

Valore della parola, dunque, ma anche timore per il suo abuso. E contro gli abusi e le intemperanze nel parlare staimo le frequenti considerazioni del Valier a proposito del metodo scolastico della disputatio. Egli ha una specie di sacro orrore nei confronti di chi disputa con tutti, su tutto, in ogni momento. Ricorda di frequente il timore di Platone, che la dialettica non divenisse gioco nelle

mani

dei giovani, ed

suo proposito di vietarne l'insegnamento

minori di

trentanni. ^^ D'altra parte, riconosce la necessità, per la filosofia, della discussione, del dubbio critico, del confronto delle idee. Tutto

pregio della sua

trattazione di questo topos antiscolastico degli umanisti, la polemica contro il metodo della disputatio con tutte le degenerazioni ciarliere e cavillatorie, consiste nel moderare il metodo della disputa a tal punto, da trasformarlo in di lontana ispirazione socratica, ma che riesce ad avere un sapore quasi-cartesiano. Vi sono in filosofia cose così limpide e così chiare di per sé, osserva il Valier, che bastano la testimonianza dei sensi o una breve induzione a renderle evidenti. Però non dubitare mai è da onniscienti, proprietà che appartiene solo a Dio, o ad un ingegno tardo e pigro." Dubbio e disputa sono necessari, ma quando non siano oziosi. Si adoperi l'ingegno filosofico, ma stia lontana l'arroganza nemica della filosofia; si impieghi ogni diligenza nell'indagine, ma qualche volta almeno, tra filosofi, si giunga alla confessione di Socrate: id non scio.^^

un procedimento

Il Valier ha avuto altri scolari, rispetto a quelli di Rialto, in altra situazione, quando la sua vita aveva preso una direzione diversa, nell'impegno pastorale dopo la chiusura dell'ultima sessione del concilio di Trento. Egli succede allo zio Bernardo Navagero nella sede vescovile di Verona: vescovo prima, poi car-

dinale egli stesso. Per gli acoliti, i giovani seminaristi di Verona, egli traccia studi e di vita di largo respiro umanistico nel De acolytorum disciplina del 1570.^° Tutte le arti liberali sono soggette alla teologia: non

un programma di

poteva non essere così. Però sulla scorta del Poliziano che s'ispirava ai Greci, ed ispirandosi egli stesso al discorso Ai giovani, sulla maniera di trar vantaggio dalle lettere elleniche di

S. Basilio,"'^ egli

cautele, della dialettica;

consiglia

ampie

letture di poeti

con più mentre limita l'impegno nella matematica e nella fisica

e di storici, studio incessante della

grammatica

e della retorica e,

UMANESIMO

l82

E FILOSOFIA

NEL VENETO

a solo quanto basta per gli usi del futuro sacerdote. Interessante è l'esame del di teologia, nel quale ci sembra di avvertire una tacita impronta erasmiana. Non manca, naturalmente, lo studio del catechismo romano; ma quella che si può chiamare la teologia sistematica, d'ispirazione tomistica, o scolastice, si ferma qui. Ampio spazio, invece, assume la teologia biblica e patristica. Sono persuaso — egli scrive — che lo studio delle sacre lettere è della massima utilità ad recte instituendam vitam, et ad salutem consequendam, non solo per voi seminaristi, ma per ogni genere di persona. ^^ Lo studio dei Padri si estende dai greci Basilio e Crisostomo ai latini, e si arresta a Gregorio Magno. Dei dottori medievali, dello stesso S. Tommaso — che il Valier spesso apprezza grandemente— qui egli tace del tutto. Unici presenti del medioevo sono due scrittori mistici ed ascetici: S. Bernardo e il De miseria hominis di Innocenzo IQ; raccomandata invece la lettura edificante di due santi moder-

programma

ni: S.

Antonino e

beato Lorenzo Giustiniani, in

im significativo accostamento

tra Firenze e Venezia. ^^

Di risonanza europea l'altro scritto del Valier indirizzato ai giovani futuri Rbetonca ecclesiastica, edita a Verona nel 1573, ma

sacerdoti veronesi, la

ripubblicata di frequente lungo tutto l'arco d'un secolo, con significative edizioni a Parigi, a Colonia, a Jena.^* Precedono l'opera alcune riflessioni introduttive, sotto forma di Piaelectiones,^^ quasi eco lontana delle prefazioni ai suoi corsi nella scuola di Rialto. Allora era la filosofia che cercava un freno

ed una disciplina negli studi letterari; ora, si può dire, è la retorica che cerca guida nella dialettica. All'inizio della seconda Piaelectio c'è una lunga trattazione sull'ordo e sulla metbodus, con cui egli ha disposto la materia, che risente delle celebri discussioni padovane sui medesimi concetti. L'orde è chiamato da Platone anima rerum, e lo si potrà chiamare anche anima artium et scientiarum. E' un tema che fu oggetto della celebre disputa fra Zabarella e Piccolomini.^^ Di rilevante interesse, a mio avviso, le molte pagine dedicate allo indicium, che il Valier richiede al lettore del suo libro ed al futuro predicatore.^'^ ludicium doctus vir appellavit succum prudentiae, e consiste nel saper scegliere, nel riportare solo ciò che serve all'interpretazione d'un passo, nel tralasciare e rimandare ad altra occasione tutto il resto del nostro sapere, che si sarebbe tentati di esibire, ma che proprio non fa al caso in questione. Di questi tempi, osserva il Valier, c'è grande penuria di giudizio, dovuta in gran parte a superbia. Temendo di non esser ritenuti dotti abbastanza, i maestri del nostro tempo inculcant saepe quaestiones difficillimas, che nulla hanno a vedere con l'argomento in discussione. Si noti come l'aura tridentina da cui nasce questo libro del Valier, non abbia smorzato affatto la polemica antiscolastica deU'imianista. La cultura alimenta lo indicium che, d'altra parte, è anche dote naturale: a natura semina iudicii insunt. Sono perciò necessarie alla retorica la grammatica e la dialettica; quest'ultima le è particolarmente affine. Ma occorrono anche i contenuti: ed ecco la conoscenza e la lettura dei Padri. Cultura, ma non straripante, perché i troppi contenuti, esibiti senza freno e senza scelte, finirebbero per soffocare il giudizio. Per questo motivo nell'interprete della retorica ecclesiastica si richiede modestia non meno che dottrina; che egli non vi educhi all'ostentazione e che le sue sottigliezze non corrompano iudicii semina, quae divinitus vobis tradita sunt.^^ la propria

GIOVANNI SANTINELLO

183

L'ultimo frutto dell'aspirazione del Valier alla moderazione è quello che avrebbe dovuto essere nei suoi propositi anche l'ultimo suo scritto, composto a 58 anni nel 1589 in un atteggiamento quasi agostiniano di letiactatìo: è il De cautione adhibenda in edendis libiìs, rimasto inedito per oltre un secolo fino al 1719.^^ Il Valier risponde ad un quesito, che possiamo avvertire quasi analogo a quello che il Rousseau leggerà posto dall'Accademia di Digione sui progresso delle arti e delle scienze. Giova proprio, o non è piuttosto un male tanta abbondanza di libri stampati?,"*^ si chiede il Valier, dopo che da oltre un secolo l'arte della stampa— pensiamo all'esperienza veneziana che egli stesso ne faceva— aveva portato la cultura umanistica al progresso più vistoso. Sono troppo severi— dice il Valier— troppo impazienti ed ingiusti coloro che ritengono che grandi scrittori si siano avuti solo prima dell'invenzione della stampa. In tutte le età nascono uomini d'ingegno, che sanno escogitare qualcosa di nuovo, o almeno sanno spiegare con più chiarezza e con esempi nuovi, ispirati a questo nostro tempo, le cose oscure."*^ E il Valier fonda tale convinzione sul principio, che l'uomo è superiore agli animali, perché il creatore lo ha reso capace di ragione e di discorso; l'uomo perciò può lodare Iddio e imitarlo nell'atto in cui si fa benefattore dei suoi simili usando i mezzi della comunicazione. Egli è stato dotato della mente e delle altre facoltà dell'animo, della stessa lingua e degli organi vocali per essere, in qualche modo, ceteris hominibus veluti Deus. E' un hom*o homini Deus, proprio in virtù della comunicazione, orale e scritta.*^ Tuttavia il Valier esige cautela nel dare alle stampe i propri lavori. E comincia da se stesso; gran parte del De cautione è autobiografico. Come fa S. Agostino nelle Retiactationes il Valier passa in rassegna tutti i propri scritti, mostrando quanto siano numerosi e per quali ben ponderati motivi egli sia stato indotto a stampare soltanto quei pochi che sono apparsi. Tutto il resto egli desidera rimanga inedito e venga letto solo dai pochi amici nelle cui mani verranno le sue carte. Anzi fa il proposito, d'ora in poi, di non scrivere nemmeno più, di non indulgere più a quella pur libeialis voluptas che ha sempre provato nello scrivere, per mortificare, quasi, quella sua luxuries ingenii dalla quale è venuta tanta copia di lavori.^-^ Ma con quanta fatica dice queste cose, e con quanto rimpianto si stacca, nell'ultima pagina del De cautione, da questo che avrebbe dovuto essere l'ultimo suo libro, senno— dice— biemalibus noctibus, notti tormentate dai rigori del freddo, scritto come se stessi parlando con te a Roma— l'opera è dedicato all'amico Silvio Antoniano— per lenire il desidehum tui che a stento sopporto lontano dall'Urbe, libro dettato fra tanti impegni del mio dovere di vescovo, quasi tutto prima dell'alba. Mi leggeranno solo gli amici, se per la loro umanità ne avranno la voglia. Ma non è proprio necessario ch'io iimondi dei miei scritti la repubblica delle lettere.'^ E' il congedo d'un uomo che ha tanto amato la misura e la moderazione e che, se un pericolo vedeva nella filosofia, esso consisteva nella disputa smodata, nel torrente di parole, nell'attaccamento puntiglioso e litigioso ad un solo maestro. La misura, le cautele, il giudizio, la moderazione egli trovava nelle regole dell'eloquenza, nello studio umanistico così congiunto a quello ,

filosofico.'*^

Se passiamo ad

un successore

altro

maestro della scuola di Rialto, a Luigi da Pesaro,*^

del Valier negli anni 70 e 80, troviamo che egli cerca la stessa

UMANESIMO

184

E FILOSOFIA

NEL VENETO

misura e moderazione contro l'eccessiva fede aristotelica facendo ricorso, invece, alla storia, più precisamente alla storia della filosofia, se così vogliamo chiamare questa disciplina appena giunta ai suoi primordi moderni. Anche il Pesaro studiò a Padova, con Petrella e Zabarella, ma soprattutto con Francesco Piccolomini, il solo che egli ricordi con affetto come maestro suo. A 26 anni, nel 1567, stampò a Padova un piccolo lavoro, il De prìscomm sapientum placitis, di cui forse si sarà servito negli anni successivi, quando insegnò a Rialto.'*^ Gli storici ed i teorici della storiografia filosofica, a cominciare dallo Heumann nei primi armi del 700, ricordano quest'opera, molto modesta, come una delle prime storie della filosofia. In realtà, ispirandosi a Diogene Laerzio, il Pesaro si limita a raccogliere ordinatamente i piacila dei per sette contrapposte fra loro (epicurei-cinici, lungo su Platone e su Aristotele. Ma l'interesse della piccola opera del Pesaro sta nel proposito eclettico che la anima. "Da ciascima setta dei filosofi ho scelto [delegi] ciò che mi sembrava da approvare, ed ho tralasciato quanto mi appariva meno degno. E con questo metodo son venuto a riconoscere che in omnibus prìscomm sapientixm scholis posse ingenuum animum commoiarì aliquidque recti conspiceie."*^ Malgrado il proposito, o forse proprio perché l'eclettismo lo dispone ai più aperti confronti, il Pesaro riconosce nella filosofia di Aristotele l'optimum philosophandi genus. Però egli ritiene che l'Aristotele vero sia quello averroistico e Simpliciano, appreso dai maestri di Padova, le cui tesi sull'eternità del mondo, sulla Provvidenza, sulla mortalità dell'anima individuale appaiono in contrasto con le verità della fede cristiana. Quindi i Peripatetici, egli scrive, hanno un grande valore, perché stabilirono i confini oltre ai quali non è dato all'ingegno naturale dell'uomo di passare. '^^ La filosofia rivela il proprio limite, gli errori in cui è soggetta a cadere, e la necessità dell'intervento integratore della fede religiosa. Anche qui, dunque, il razionalismo esclusivistico dell'aristotelico di Padova risulta moderato. E' la fede religiosa che interviene, ma ad opera e su sollecitazione di un interesse umanistico, questa volta espresso dalla cultura storica e dall'insegnamento di Diogene Laerzio, autore così fortunato nel rinascimento e destinato ad alimentare molti altri aspetti della cultura storico-filosofica in filosofi post-socratici, disposti

cirenaici-stoici, e così via) e si sofferma più a

età moderna.

Se dalla scuola del Valier

seminario di Verona usciva una nuova classe

sempre attivo Studio Padova e dal fecondo e lungo magistero di Francesco Piccolomini) usciva la nuova classe dirigente politica di Venezia. Il ricordo di Luigi Pesaro, maestro, rimase impresso profondamente negli animi di tutti. Il compito di promuovere una buona educazione — scriveva di lui il Piccolomini, che gli sopravvisse — è da affidare a chi sia dotato d'autorità, di sapienza fondata sull'abito della virtù, di volontà nutrita di buoni costumi, perché mediante l'autorità, le parole e l'esempio egli sappia educare con maggior fermezza ed efficacia. Tale nella repubblica di Venezia per molti anni si rivelò Luigi Pesaro, non mai abbastanecclesiastica veneta, dalla scuola del Pesaro (oltre che dal

za lodato, cui fu affidato l'insegnamento della filosofia nella sua grande patria, un giorno mio scolaro così il Piccolomini. ^° A sua volta, Pesaro ebbe molti scolari, fra i quali i biografi ricordano il futuro doge Nicolò Contarini, lo storico e politico Andrea Morosini, il politico e ambasciatore Cristoforo Valier.

GIOVANNI SANTINELLO

185

Sono appunto questi "giovani" gli intellettuali che erano destinati a tentare d'imprimere una svolta nella politica di Venezia negli ultimi due decermi del secolo, e riconoscevano come loro capo la personalità forte di Leonardo Dona, il futuro doge dell'epoca dell'interdetto, al quale nella giovinezza abbiamo visto il Valier indirizzare lo scritto sul metodo nello studio di Aristotele; con loro, loro coetaneo, cresce nel pensiero e nelle convinzioni politiche e religiose fra Paolo Sarpi.^^ Negli anni universitari, e subito dopo, nella prima maturità, questi "giovani" patrizi sono stati filosofi e di loro, come diceva Agostino Nani, ci restano "bei libri e nobilissime dispute." Sono da ricordare il De perfectione leium di Nicolò Contarini, edito a Venezia nel 1576 (riedito a Lione nel 1588), gli Academicanun contemplationum libri di Stefano Tiepolo, editi a Venezia nello stesso anno 1576 (riediti a Basilea nel 1590), mentre un anno prima, nel 1575, Pietro Duodo pubblicava, sempre a Venezia, i suoi Perìpateticanim de anima disputationum libri (riediti a Venezia nel 1587); intomo a questi stessi anni risultano composti molti dei "pensieri filosofici" del Sarpi.^^ Quale motivazione del loro scrivere e pubblicare, vale per tutti quanto dice di sé il Contarini nella dedica del suo libretto all'amico Leonardo Dona. Dopo aver passato alcuni anni nella frequenza delle scuole di Venezia e di Padova, la seconda Atene, ove ho ascoltato dapprima i Peripatetici e poi gli Accademici, con grande vantaggio e gioia del mio spirito, ritenni di dover pubblicare questo mio libro, per mostrare a me stesso d'aver imparato qualcosa e per render ragione, in qualche modo, alla repubblica degli studi compiuti. ^^ Render conto allo Stato ed alla famiglia; ma anche, in fondo, è render conto a se stessi; una ricerca d'orientamento, un fare il punto, a chiusura degli studi, sul com-

un momento in cui s'avverte una crisi incipiente. Anche a Padova sta avvenendo il passaggio dalla vecchia scienza aristotelica alla nuova scienza galileiana; ma sembra che i maestri se ne rendano poco plesso del sapere acquisito, in

conto, sicuri della tradizione cui

appellano. Meglio di loro avvertono

momento della crisi questi loro giovani scolari. n Contarini, infatti, dopo aver parlato di aristotelici e di platonici e dei loro m'è sempre parso quel modo di filosofare che non si fonda sull'autorità degli uomini, ma sulla luce della natura e procede alla ricerca del vero solute et libere-, e son solito approvare ed ammirare coloro i quali non si votarono ad alcuna setta di filosofi, ma ricercarono con grande diligenza ed impegno la verità stessa, ovunque essa contrasti, esalta la libertà del pensiero. Nobile ed illustre

si trovasse.^'*

E Stefano Tiepolo, pur avendo sposato polemicamente la causa dei Platonici per confutare i Peripatetici, sente la drammaticità del contrasto fra Platone ed Aristotele. Malgrado gli sforzi finora compiuti da molti in mille modi per due massimi filosofi nelle tesi di fondo sono inconciliabili fra loro. non possunt:^^ l'espressione ritoma insistente nelle pagine degli Academicarum contemplationum a sottolineare la drammaticità ed insanaaccordali,

Conciliari

bilità dello scontro, a dir poco, lo

scacco della stessa filosofia. Infatti nella prefazione all'opera Tiepolo aveva cominciato col dire che Platone ed Aristotele sono come i due occhi dell'anima. Chi ne trascura uno è come se si orbasse d'im occhio per vederci meglio. Coloro, però, che tentano di ridurre ad unità i

loro pensieri, che sono diversi e sorti su fondamenti distinti, finiscono per

UMANESIMO

l86

E FILOSOFIA

NEL VENETO

corrompere in una pericolosa confusione ora il pensiero dell'uno, ora quello spesso di entrambi. Sic servandae sunt viae distinctae.^^ Aveva cominciato così. Però che cosa accade se le due vie non solo restano distinte, ma divergono ed entrano in conflitto fra loro? Proprio questo conflitto il Tiepolo dell'altro,

è portato a registrare

una volta

inoltratosi, in concreto, nella soluzione dei

vari problemi filosofici. L'aveva previsto, che sarebbe stato

mezzo

ben arduo, presi

al conflitto fra platonici e aristotelici, scegliere il partito

migliore

con l'accurata discussione delle tesi, di far rifulgere splendor aliquis veiitatis.^^ Tiepolo è dunque più pessimista del Contarini; entrambi, però, sono ben lontani dalla fiducia nella possibilità di compiere grandi sintesi e sforzarsi,

concordistiche del pensiero dei filosofi antichi, come era stato tentato, dai pensatori umanisti, quasi un secolo prima, se pensiamo a Pico, o anche abbastanza di recente se guardiamo all'imponente Philosophia perennis (1540) di Agostino Steuco. Il problema cruciale restava, comunque, quello dell'uomo. L'umanesimo ha sempre richiesto ai filosofi l'elaborazione di una dottrina dell'uomo: e proprio a questo fine erano stati scrutati a lungo i testi classici. Mai come allora erano state tormentate tanto le pagine aristoteliche del De anima. Ed anche ora, la stessa cosa fanno i giovani filosofi di cui ci occupiamo. Lo scritto del Duodo è un vero e proprio De anima, concepito però, socraticamente e quindi umanisticamente, piuttosto che alla maniera "fisica" di Aristotele. L'interesse per l'anima, egli scrive, risponde all'invito al nosce te ipsum: "tutti i sapienti di tutte le età pensarono che nulla vi fosse di megHo di questa conoscenza, niente di maggiore importanza per condurre una vita beata. "^^ Veri trattati complessivi, vere summae in piccolo sono invece gli scritti del Contarini e del Tiepolo, contenenti ima esposizione sistematica. Ma anche per loro, che cominciano a principio, da Dio, e procedono con un andamento di stampo neoplatonico a carattere discensivo, l'uomo rappresenta il punto di convergenza di tutto l'essere, il momento in cui ha inizio la conversione ed il ritomo dell'essere al principio.

punto cruciale dell'antropologia— e lo hanno imparato a Padova— maniera d'intendere il rapporto dell'anima intellettiva umana con il corpo, quell'unità d'anima e di corpo che è l'uomo. Su questo punto, osservava Stefano Tiepolo, gli accademici ed i peripatetici dissentono e le due vie restano distinte. Il dissenso è di fondo: eos in fundamentis dissentire, ^^ Ora,

costituito dalla

non mondo;

ammette le idee, un non ammette le idee separate,

e perciò

è possibile alcuna conciliazione. Platone

altro

e l'anima viene di

là.

Aristotele

im ente naturale, che non ha né origine né destino al di là del tempo limitato della vita. Aristotele è per la mortalità dell'anima;

e perciò l'uomo è la terra e del

quindi Tiepolo ritiene di doversi legare a Platone, anche se quell'immortalità dell'anima, che tanto gli sta a cuora, venga pagata a caro prezzo, ammetten-

la preesistenza corpo.

perciò, nella vita terrena,

un legame ben precario con

Anche il Contarini è convinto che l'uomo aristotelico

sia tutto mortale. Però dell'uomo aristotelico vada difesa, per il carattere concreto e naturale rappresentato dall'unità di materia e di forma, d'anima e di corpo. Non per questo— egli è convinto— si dovrà rinimciare all'immortalità.

egli pensa,

che

la struttura

GIOVANNI SANTINELLO

iS/

cum infonnatione achtez defendimus. Non è Aristotele che possa conciliare con la tesi dell'immortalità; ma è ben la ragione, libera dalla servitù aristotelica, che riesce nella dimostrazione. E gli argomenti usati dal Contarini sono, in parte, tradizionali (dalla tradizione tomistica),^ ma in parte sono nuovi, dovuti ad influenze del pensiero di Ficino, che egli liberava dall'impronta neoplatonica, e che noi avvertiamo con un sapore quasipascaliano. "Coloro che pensano l'animo doversi estinguere con il corpo, non s'accorgono di ritenere così l'uomo destinato a miseria etema. Che c'è di più misero del ricadere nel nulla? L'uomo sarebbe l'essere peggiore, fra quelli prodotti dalla natura; perché mentre tutti conseguono il loro fine, egli solo, destinato alla felicità, sarebbe condannato a mancarla. Infatti felicità e beatitudine non si conseguono in questa vita. Se beatitudine è appagamento di quell'insaziabile desiderio del bene che avvertiamo in noi, non riusciamo certo a conseguirla durante la vita. Infinita, nanque, est animi contentio, et non nisi ab infinito satiatui.^^ L'uomo del Contarini si trova dunque in un quasipascaliano squilibrio fra finito ed infinito in questa vita, destinato a placarsi, ImmoTtalitatem si

nell'altra, nell'infinito.

Qui nel mondo c'è una contentio animi, una tensione, un'inquietudine che non trova la propria misura, e pur la cerca. Non siamo lontani da quell'ideale l'umanesimo del anche se non sembri, a quella composizion d'animo, "cioè aver l'animo a poter ogni moto di fortuna soffrire ben composto," di cui parla Paolo Sarpi.^^ Queste tre immagini dell'uomo sono tra loro simili, in quanto l'equilibrio è per tutte non un punto di partenza, e nemmeno una conquista stabile, ma un'idea da realizzare, attraverso le incertezze e le insicurezze del vivere. Al di sotto dell'equilibrio, talora raggiunto, talora fallito, freme l'inquietudine della vita, alla quale cultura filosofica e cultura umanistica, con i loro valori tradizionali finora espressi, forse non bastano più. Se pensiamo all'età di Erasmo e di Tommaso Moro, come al momento della massima fiducia in una certa sintesi culturale promossa dall'umanesimo, dobbiamo constatare, alla fine del cinquecento veneto, come tale fiducia sia profondamente scossa ed incisa— anche se non abbattuta— dalle gravi prove subite. L'umanesimo e la filosofia veneti avevano avuto il loro momento erasmiano, se guardiamo alla figura ed al pensiero di Gaspare Contarini, al pensiero religioso suo e della cerchia dei suoi amici (quali Paolo Giustiniani, Vincenzo Querini, Giambattista Egnazio), all'azione politico-religiosa da lui svolta in relazione ai protestanti. Lo Jedin si chiedeva come l'eredità del Contarini fosse sfociata nella rivolta del Sarpi, che nulla lasciava prevedere. La cosa forse in spiega tenendo presente la latenza d'una crisi, nella secondo metà del cinquecento, quella che noi abbiamo tentato qui di portare alla luce.^^ La linea erasmiana uscì quasi del tutto sconfitta dallo scontro che aveva tentato di mediare, come ne uscì quasi sconfitto Gasparo Contarini. Ne sono testimodella misura, del giudizio, della cautela in cui si esprimeva Valier.

E siamo molto

nianza, fra

vicini,

tante altre,

segni dell'incertezza, dell'inquietudine, della

crisi,

che abbiamo rilevato qui nel Veneto in chi coltivava ancora quell'ideale, e cava nuove vie, non ancora aperte, per dargli espressione.

cer-

Università di Padova

l88

UMANESIMO

E FILOSOFIA

NEL VENETO

Note 1. A. Valier, De lecta philosopbandi mtione, Veronae 1517, f. 16v: Qua re [dopo aver portato testimonianze da Platone e da Aristotele] negari non potest, coniunxisse veteres sapientiam cum eloquentia, et nexum artium et scientiarum admirabilem incredibiliter amasse." 2. Sulla scuola di Rialto, oltre al fondamentale studio di B. Nardi, "La scuola di Rialto e l'umanesimo veneziano," in AA. W., Umanesimo europeo e umanesimo veneziano (Firenze, 1964) pp. 93-139, si veda ora J. B. Ross, "Venetian Schools and Teachers Fourteenth to Early Sixteenth Century: A Survey and a Study of Giovanni Battista Egnazio," in Ren Q, XXIX (1976), 4, pp. 521-566, e notizie ed elenchi di scuole e maestri in V. Baldo, Almwii, maestri e scuole in Venezia alla fine del XVI secolo (New Press Como, 1977). 3. V. Marchesi, Il lidotto Mauroceno— Andrea Meiosini isterìogiafo veneziano (Venezia, 1879); A. Favaro, "Un ridotto scientifico a Venezia al tempo di Galileo Galilei," in Nuovo Arcbivio Veneto, V (1893), pp. 199-209; O. Logan, Culture and Society in Venice 1470-1790. The Renaissance and its Heritage (London, 1972), pp. 71-73; G. Cozzi, Note introduttive a P. Sarpi, Pensieri (Torino, 1976), pp. XXIX-XXXI (già ed. Ricciardi); G. Cozzi, "Galileo Galilei, Paolo Sarpi e la società veneziana," in ID., Paolo Sarpi tra Venezia e l'Europa (Torino, 1979), pp. 135-234 (in particolare pp. 137-139). 4. Su questi "giovani" filosofi hanno richiamato l'attenzione A. Tenenti, "Il 'de perfectione rerum' di Nicolò Contarini," in Bollettino dell'istituto di storia della società e dello stato veneziano, I (1959), pp. 155-166, e, ritornando sulla questione, E. Garin, in Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, XL (1961), pp. 134-136. 5. Oltre agli studi di A. Favaro, Galileo e l'Accademia Delia;La società padovana al tempo di Galileo-, Galileo e Venezia: ora in A. Favaro, Galileo Galilei e lo Studio di Padova, Padova 1966, H, pp. 1-17; 52-68; 69-102, e di L. Lazzarini, G. Ricovrati di Padova, Galileo Galilei e le loro "imprese" accademiche, in AA.W., Scritti e discorsi nel IV centenario della nascita di Galileo Galilei, Padova 1966, pp. 183-221, il già citato studio di G. Cozzi, Galileo Galilei, Paolo Sarpi e la società veneziana. 6. G. W. Leibniz, Dissertatio praeliminaris, a Marii Nizolii De veris principiis et vera ratione philosophandi, in G. W. Leibniz, Die philosophischen Schrifi:en, ed. C. J. Gerhardt, Nachdruck, Hildesheim 1960, IV, p. 152: "Et exstant Epistolae amoeboeae Johannis Pici Mirandulani et Hermolai Barbari, quorum hic acerrime in Scholasticis invehitur, ille mollire eorum vitia ac tegere magis quam defendere, non improbabili pietate conatur. Tanti fecit eas Epistolas Philippus Melanchthon, ut addita dispositione edi in Germania curaverit." Melantone, infatti, prese le difese di Barbaro "rispondendo" a Pico in una lettera del 1558, pubblicata poi, assieme

due umanisti italiani, al seguito della sua Retorica: "Elementorum duo recens recogniti ...ah autore Philippo Melanchthone. His adiectae sunt Epistolae contrariae Pici et Hermolai Barbari, una cum dispositione Philip. Melanchth.", Witebergae 1573. La lettera di Melantone, ora, in "Corpus Reformatorum," IX, 687-703. Se ne veda le studio (e la traduzione inglese), assieme allo studio delle lettere di Pico e di Barbaro in Q. Breen, Christianity and Humanism. Studies in the History of Ideas (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1968), pp. 1-68. 7. G. Pico, Lettera ad Ermolao Barbaro, in Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, a cura di E. Garin, Milano-Napoli 1952, p. 806: "Viximus célèbres, o Hermolae, et alle lettere dei

rhetorices libri

GIOVANNI SANTINELLO

189

posthac vivemus, non in scholis grammaticorum et paedagogiis, sed in philosophorum coronis, in conventibus sapientum, ubi non de matre Andromaches, non de Niobes filiis atque id genus levibus nugis, sed de humanarum divinarumque rerum rationibus agitur et disputatur." Sul carteggio fra Pico e Barbaro si vedano le precisazioni di E. Garin, La cultura filosofica del rìnaschnento italiano (Firenze, 1961), pp. 256-257. 8. E. Barbaro, Epistolae, Oiationes et Connina, a cura di V. Branca (Firenze, 1943), I, p. 103: "Fige dictum esse ab iste [Pico] philosophiam rebus constare, verborum pompa nihil indigere: credo enim banc esse simimam omnium quae pro nobis dicantur. Contra illi: philosophiam, quae sit mimus divinum, sanctum, religiosum, religiose adici oportere, manibus non illotis sed puris, sed nitidis, sermone casto, spurce, non lutulente contrectari." A. Nani, Prefazione con dedica a "M. Antonio Priolo Constantini f. patritio veneto," al De lecta philosophandi ratione di A. Valier, Veronae 1577, ff. 2r-3v (numerazione nostra). Su Agostino Nani (1555-1627), figlio di Giorgio, ambasciatore a Roma nel 1603, fra i più accesi sosteniteri della politica antipapale veneziana nell'epoca dell'interdetto, cfr. G. Cozzi, Il doge Nicolò Contarìni. Ricerche sul patriziato veneziano agli inizi del seicento (Venezia-Roma, 1958), pp. 71-72; 96; 103. Rassegne storiche di scrittori veneziani, analoghe a questa del Nani, sono frequenti nel tempo. Una vera e propria piccola "storia della cultura veneta" viene tracciata dallo stesso A. Valier, De cautione adhibenda in edendis lihiis, Patavii 1719, SS 61-67, pp. 48-53, nell'atto, in cui egli ricorda, famiglia per famiglia, i contributi resi da ciascuna al mondo delle lettere; una cosa analoga il Valier aveva fatto nel suo Memoriale a Luigi Contarìni cavaliere sopra gli studii ad un senatore veneziano convenienti, ed. J. Morelli, Venezia, 1803, pp. 18-22. Ed il Nardi, La scuola di Rialto, pp. 125-131, cita la rievocazione "dei personaggi più in vista della cultura veneziana negli ultimo cento armi" fatta dal giovane Francesco Pisani, 1*8 novembre 1527, nell'orazione De universae pbilosophiae omamentis (edita in appendice al De cautione del Valier, pp. 245-267), ed il poemetto di Pietro Contarini, De voluptate Argoa, stampato a Venezia il 13 settembre 1541, nel quale, con la rievocazione della patria lontana, sfilano in rassegna "diciassette dottori veneziani dei primi quattro decenni del Cinquecento." 10. In De recta philosophandi ratione, ff. 54r-62r. 11. De cautione adhibenda, S 12, p. 11: "Scripseram etiam contra barbariem libellum nescio quem, im quo fateor me ingenio induisisse mimium meo, et illos, qui scholastici philosophi appellantur, Averroem etiam ipsum inter Arabes, non tanti fecisse, quanti fortasse faciendi sunt. Hermolaum Barbarum, qui Castigatienes Plinianas scripserat, et Themistium in latinam linguam verterat, Hieronyitem Donatimi, qui duos Alexandri Aphrodisiensis Hbros latinos fecit, adolescens admirabar maxime: coniungendam esse eloquentiam cimi sapientia disserebam saepe; nimiam quorundam subtilitatem in disputando non probabam." Un Catalogus dei lavori editi ed inediti, latini ed italiani, del Valier, con l'indicazione spesso dei manoscritti contenenti gli "anecdota" ha dato G. Ponzetti, in A. Valerli Commentarìus de consolatione ecclesiae ad Ascanium cardinalem Columnam, Roma, 1795, pp. XLHI-LXXX; un Index opusculorum aveva dato nel 1719 anche G. A. Volpi, editore del De cautione adhibenda, pp. XXUI-XXVIII. Entrambi risalgone ad elenchi contenuti in due codici Ambrosiani: P 217 sup., ff. 16r-18v [Index librorum, quos Augustinus Valerìus episcopus, et cardinalis Veronae scrìpsit diversis temporìbus], e 94 inf., ff. 53r-55r (Index opusculorum IH. mi et R. mi

non

mum

UMANESIMO

190

E FILOSOFIA

NEL VENETO

D. D. cardinalis Veionae], ove però i titoli sono molto più sommariamente tracciati, come nel case del presente epuscolo ivi intitelate Ubellus contra barbanem. 12. Agostino Valier nacque a Venezia il 7 aprile 1531 da Bertuccio e da Lucia Navagero, sorella di Bernardo Navagero; studiò a Padova; insegnò filosofia nella scuola di Rialto fra il 1558 e il 1561 (e riprese l'insegnamento fra il 1563 e il 1565) succedendo a Jacope Foscarini; vescovo di Verona nel 1565 e cardinale nel 1583. Dimorò a lungo a Roma, ove morì il 23 maggio 1606, poco dopo il decreto dell'interdetto contro Venezia. P. Sarpi, Istoria dell'interdette, in Scritti scelti, a cura di G. Da Pozzo, Torino, 1968, p. 245, nel riferire sui vari tentativi di accomodamento operati dai residenti dei principi in

Roma,

dice di lui:

"Ma

in contrario di tutti

Agostino Valerio cardinale, vescovo di Verona, prelato che sempre mostrò in ogni azzione l'affezzione sua sincera verso la patria e la devozione al suo principe, scrisse in altra forma, dicendo aver parlato col papa et averlo ritrovato di buona volontà inclimato a qualche temperamento." Fra i biografi antichi: G. Ventura, Augustini Valerii vita (1604), in Calogerà, Raccolta d'opuscoli scientifici e filologici, tomo XXV, Venezia 1741, pp. 49-115; G. Gradenigo, Tiara et purpura veneta ab anno 1379 ad annum 1759, Brescia 1761, pp. 535-541; fra gli storici più recenti, notizie biografiche in G. Cozzi, Cultura, politica e religione nella "pubblica storiografia" veneziana del '500, in "Bollettino dell'istituto di storia della società e dello stato," pp. 215-294 (sul Valier, pp. 244-255); M. M. e L. Tacchella, card. A. Valier e la riforma Tridentina nella diocesi di Trieste (Udine, 1974).

V-VI (1963-1964), Il

13. Sulla crisi dell'aristotelismo

za galileiana,

veda ora

padovano e

sue relazioni con

nuova

scien-

L. Olivieri, Galileo Galilei e la tradizione aristotelica,

in "Verifiche," VE (1978), 2, pp. 147-168, ove si fa anche il pimto sulle più recenti discussioni storiografiche in proposito (J. H. Randall, Jr., N. W. Gilbert, C. B.

Schmitt, A. Koyré). 14. De recta philosophandi ratione libri duo, quos Augustinus Valerius episcopus Veronae scripsit, quo tempore, Venetiis philosophiam profitebatur. Rem Praefationes ab eodem, eodem tempore babitae partim publice, partim privatim. Quibus accessere eiusdem Opuscula quatuor eruditionis plena, et lectu dignissima, Veronae, apud Sebastianum, et Joannem fratres a Dormis, 1577. E' l'edizione curata dal Nani, di cui si diceva all'inizio. Delle Praefationes la prima, senza titolo, è la prolusione all'insegnamento a Rialto; seguono: In libros de vita et de moribus Aristotelis; Praefatio publice habita armo MDLIX; In libros de moribus Aristotehs; In Cebetis tabulam-. In libellum Porphirii de quinque vocibus; In libros de caelo; Post reditum in patriam ab urbe Roma-, In libros de anima-, ultima è la Praefatio

Hermolai Barbali,

quum

libros Aristotelis

Qua ratione versandum

domi

caepit praelegere. Seguono gli

Leonardum Donatum-, Qui Aloysium Contarenum-, Quibus in artibus adolescens venetus debeat excellere ad Bemardum Zane-, De commentariis conficiendis memoriae causa ad Aloysium Contarenum. Opuscula:

15.

in cive veneto requirantur ad

De recta philosophandi ratione,

omnino non venenum." 16. 17. 18.

in Aristotele ad

sit

Iv.:

"Nam existimant nonnulli,

Christianis

morbum,

vel potius

esse philosophandum, et philosophiam esse

De recta philosophandi ratione, ff. lv-3r. De recta philosophandi ratione, ff. lv-2r. De recta philosophandi ratione, f. 9r: "Si hii

sunt morbi [ambitio, avaritia,

luxus], quibus civitatum status mutari, et in servitutem redigi solet, quos

medicos

civitatibus laborantibus constituemus, si philosophos inutiles reipublicae dicimus?"

GIOVANNI SANTINELLO 19.

ipi

De lecta philosophandi ratione, f. 9v. Qua latìone veisandum sit in Aristotele,

f 59v: Questo tema, dell'annonia l'impegno di studio e quello pratico-politico, ritoma nel Valier fra i consigli che egli rivolgeva ad Alvise Contarini, im suo scolaro, il quale si era dedicato alla politica, e che egli indirizzava agli studi storici (diverrà pubblico storiografo nel 1577): cfr. G. Cozzi, Cultma, politica e religione, cit., pp. 247-250, e O. Logan, Culture and Society, cit., pp. 61-63, a proposito degli scritti del Valier indirizzati al Contarini: Memoriale a Luigi Contarìni cavaliere sopra gli studii ad un senatore veneziano convenienti, cit., e Ricordi per scriver le historié della Republica di Venezia di questi tempi a M. Aloigi Contarini Cavalier, in Anecdota Veneta, a cura di G. B. M. Contarini, Venezia, 1757, I, pp. 172-192. Al medesimo Alvise Contarini il Valier indirizzò l'opuscolo Qui mores in cive veneto requirantur, in De recta philosophandi ratione, ff 62r-68r, raccomandando, come cosa necessaria allo Stato, che i giovani fossero educati ad studia litterarum et ad mercaturam, alla cognizione della storia, della filosofia, dell'eloquenza, ed ai "multa genera negotiationum, sed eas inprimis peregrinationes, ex quibus et opes augeri et usus rerum comparari potest" (f. 64r) Sia il Valier che Alvise Contarini appaiono come personaggi nel libro di P. Panata, Della perfezione della vita poUtica (1579), ed. C. Monzani, Firenze 1852, I, pp. 39-40. Nella generazione precedente, si era soliti vedere nel cardinale e filosofo Gaspare Contarini il modello dell'uomo che aveva saputo raggiungere un sofferto equilibrio tra vita attiva e vita contemplativa: cfr. G. Alberigo, Vita attiva e vita contemplativa in un'esperienza cristiana del XVI secolo, in "Studi veneziani," XVI (1974), pp. 177-225; O. Logan, Culture and Society, cit., pp. 49-67. 21. De recta philosophandi ratione, ff. 19v-20r. 22. De recta philosophandi ratione, ff. 22v-23r. 23. De recta philosophandi ratione, f. 6v: "Philosophandum esse caute et modeste"; 7v: "Quamobrem cautio semper est in hac scientia necessaria, timendum est semper, ne argutiis hominum [...] decipiamur." E il tema della cautela ritema di frequente, in questo come in altri scritti del Valier.

20.

fra

24. Qua ratione versandum sit in Aristotele, f 55r: "Nam (ut multos omittam) Achillino, Burleo, Petro Pomponatio, et plerisque aliis qui aliquo in honore fuerunt, ingenium non defuit, quo minus, et interpretari Aristotelem, et aliquid etiam ipsi .

excogitare possent; sed ea adiumenta

[...]

in eis desiderabantur, cognitio graecae

multarum rerum notitia; quas si contempserunt, contenmendi maxime, si id vitio temporum discere non potuenmt, sxmt magnopere

latinaeque linguae et

simt ipsi excusandi." Così pure in De recta f. 14v, ove sono compresi anche S. Tommaso ed il predecessore del Valier a Rialto, Sebastiano Foscarin: filosofi, tutti costoro, anche se non seppero il greco. 25. Qua ratione versandum sit in Aristotele, f 55v: "Etenim cavendum quidem est, ne indiserte vel barbare loquamur, sed animadvertere oportet, ne nostra in sermone religio rebus, quae in philosophia quibusdam vocibus, et explicari, et intelligi soient facillime, tenebras quasdam effundat." 26. De recta philosophandi ratione, ff 15r e 19r. .

27.

28.

Qua ratione versandum sit in Aristotele, f. 56r. De recta philosophandi ratione, f 18r: "Nam cum .

res sint ita dilucidae, ita apertae, ut

sensuum testimonio,

in philosophia

quaedam

et aliqua inductione pos-

sint comprobari, longas de Ulis, et acutas instituere disputationes, fortasse videtur

esse

hominis abutentis ingenio,

et litteris. Nihil

unquam dubitare,

est aut

hominis

UMANESIMO

192

nihil ignorantis,

quod

est

proprium unius Dei, aut

E FILOSOFIA

tardi, et

NEL VENETO

ad nuUam laudem nati

ingenii."

De lecta philosophandi ratìone, f. 22v: "Adsit ingenium philosophicum, abinimica philosophiae arrogantia; adhibeatur diligentia, et indagatio; admittatur a philosophis illud Socraticum, saltern aliquando, id non scio, non audiantur illae voces: demonstrationem affert Aristoteles de motu aetemitate." 30. De acolytorum disciplina libri duo, ad acolytos ecclesiae Vewnensis, Veronae 1570; citeremo dal'edizione congiunta al De ibetohca ecclesiastica del Valier, Veronae 1583 (v. sotto). 31. De acolytorum disciplina, I, c.IX, pp. 22-23: "[...] quam [artium distinctionem], cum essem admodum adolescens, didici et aliquot post annos descriptam legi in quodam Angeli Politiani opusculo, sumptum ab eo e Graecis scriptoribus"; I, cDC, p. 26: "Sunt qui putent, praeter has, quas dixi, artes reliquas omnes liberales esse vobis acolytis inutiles: quonmi sententiam B. Basilius in opusculo de usu, qui capitur ex libris gentilium, visus est refellisse." L'opuscolo del Poliziano è la Piaelectio, cui titulus Panepistemon, in A. Politiani Operum, t. DI, Lugduni 1546, pp. 27-52. 32. De acolytoTum disciplina, I, c.X, pp. 30-31: "Vehementer cupio hoc vobis persuasum esse, sacrarum litterarum Studium non solum vobis acolytis, sed omni generi hominum esse maxime utile. Nihil enim quaeri potest, quod ad recte instituendam vitam, et ad salutem consequendam pertineat, quod totum in sacris 29.

sit

scripturis

non

contineatur, in illisque expressum

non

sit."

cc.X-XX: il programma di studio teologico. Un programma analogo è nel Memoriale a Luigi Contanni, cit., ove la vastità del quadro culturale classicistico è appena velata da un lieve tono di scetticismo misticoreligioso, che accentua la vanità delle "tante sette e diversità d'opinioni dei filosofi" (p. 28). Un ricordo della erasmiana piiiiosopiiiû Christi mi pare il passo: "Non si può immaginare la più profonda filosofia, né la più vera, né la più facile, che quella che insegna il maestro di tutti Nostro Signor Gesù Cristo nell'Evangelio; della quale sono stati grandi ripetitori li Santi ApostoU" (p. 40). 34. G. Ponzetti, Catalogus, cit., pp. XL VI- VU, elenca 24 edizioni dell'opera del Valier fino a tutto il '700: la prima è quella di Verona 1573, curata da Marco Medici O.P., non quella di Venezia 1574 del medesimo curatore. Fra le edizioni straniere: Parisiis 1575, 1576, 1577, 1750 (in trad, francese: La rethorique des prédicateurs, traduite du latin de Valerio par l'abbé Dinouart); Coloniae 1575, 1594; Lugdtmi 1595; Jenae 1668. Citeremo da: Augustini Valerli episcopi Veronae de rhetorìca ecclesiastica libri très, cum synopsi et praelectionibus. Eiusdem de acolytorum disciplina libri duo. Omnia in unum collecta, et hac septima editione accuratissime impressa, cum indice locupletissimo, Veronae, apud Hieronymum et fratres Stringarios, 1583. Nell'edizione veneziana del 1578 l'opera del Valier è pubblicata assieme alla celebre Rhetorica ecclesiastica del beato Luigi da Granata, che è di qualche armo posteriore alla sua. 35. De rhetorica ecclesiastica, p. 1: "Praelectiones très ab Angustino Valerio episcopo Veronae ad clericos suos habitae: quibus totius artis rhetoricae ecclesiasticae prolegomena, breviter et dilucide, imo armo antequam opus ederetur, sunt explicata. Lucubrationes admodimi utiles iis, qui librum hunc audituri, et 33.

De acolytorum disciplina,

interpretaturi sunt."

autem ordo, dispositio partium inter se, et est haec autem est aut simplicium partium ad magis compositas.

36. Praelectiones, p. 9: "Est

quaedam

relatio;

GIOVANNI SANTINELLO

193

aut compositarum ad simplices, aut reductio partium ad unum. Unde très oriuntur ordines, resolutivus, compositivus, definitivus; resolutivus est aptus ad inveniendum, compositivus ad docendum, definitivus ad memoriam." Nella tripartizione dell'orde il Valier si dimostra, dunque, im tradizionalista, seguace di Galeno, come ha imparato a Padova,- lo Zabarella, com'è noto (a parte poi la distinzione fra orde e methodus) si riporterà alla bipartizione aristotelica— cornpositio corrispondente alla dimostrazione propter quid, e resolutìo corrispondente alla dimostrazione guid — eliminando il momento deßnitivus: cfr. A. Poppi, La dottrina della scienza in G. Zabarella, Padova, 1972, pp. 161-195, e la bibliografia ivi citata. 37. Praelectiones, pp. 14-16. 38. Praelectiones, p. 15: "Ob banc causam, non minus modestiam quam doctrinam, in Ecclesiasticae huius Rhetoricae interprete optamus, ne vos erudiamini ad ostentationem, et ne argutiis quibusdam ea, quae divinitus vobis tradita sunt, iudicii semina ita vestra aetate comimpantur." E poco dopo cita S. Gregorio Nazianzeno, "in libro de moderatione adhibenda in disputando"; la moderazione porta Gregorio a confessare la propria ignoranza: "se fatetur nescire quod non optime tenet"; (inquit] "se malie esse ignarum quam curiosimi, et stupidum quam audacem in pronunciando." Di qui il Valier trae motivo per ribadire la sua avversione alla disputatio senza limiti, e l'invito alla cautela: "cautio magis in sacra theologia est adhibenda" (pp. 15-16). 39. Augustini Valerli patricii veneti S.R.E. cardinalis, episcopi Veronensis opusculum nunquam antebac editum de cautione adhibenda in edendis libris (...], Patavii 1719, excudebat Josephus Cominus. Il curatore, e autore della prefazione di dedica ai "Patavini gymnasii moderateribus," è Giovarmi Antonio Volpi. L'opuscolo del Valier è dedicato all'amico, poi cardinale, Silvio Antoniano, autore del Dell'educazione cristiana de' ßgliuoli, Verona 1584. 40. De cautione adhibenda, § 2, p. 4: "Ubi vero tam facile libri imprimi coeperunt, amputanda quaedam luxuries ingenii apparuit; scripturire quamplurimi coeperunt; ingens librorum copia rempublicam literariam perturbant; librorum multitudine opprimimur, aut saltem obruimur." "Quas oh causas disceptatum est, et non immerito, inter pios, et eruditos viros, profueritne, an potius obfuerit typographica

imprimendorum librorum 41.

ars."

De cautione adhibenda, De cautione adhibenda, §

§ 5, p. 6.

1, pp. 3-4: "Rationis et erationis munere insignivit dominus Deus praeclarum animal hominem [...]; ad se laudandum, et ad se imitandum beneficiis in alios conferendis, mente, et facultatibus aliis animi, et lingua ipsa, vocisque organis omavit eimdem hominem, qui ratione aliqua ceteris hominibus esset veluti Deus, hoc est instrumentum divinorum

42.

caeli, ac terrae rex

beneficiorum, quibus alii erudirentur, et meliores fièrent; civitates, respublicae, regna ipsa conservarentur." 43. De cautione adhibenda, § 49, p. 39: "(...] ingenii nescio qua luscurie et non prorsus vituperanda voluptate, amicorum colloquiis, interdvmi etiam precibus coactum, tam multa scripsisse me, quae nec magni feci, nec magni faciendo arbitror esse."

fin dall'inizi, § 5, p. 6: "Liberalis

etiam voluptas, quae in scriptionibus

percipitur, permittenda est."

44. De cautione adhibenda, § 80, p. 60: "[...] quem [il presente libro] scripsi hiemalibus noctibus, vehementissimis et asperrimis frigoribus, ac si teciun loquerer Romae, leniens desideriima tui, quod vix in hac absentia mea ab urbe fero, in varus, et magnis pastoralis muneris occupationibus dictatimi est, totimi fere ante lucem."

194

UMANESIMO

E FILOSOFIA

NEL VENETO

"Amici mei legant, quasi mecum loquantur, si pro sua humanitate interdum Obrui meis scriptionibus rempublicam literariam non est necesse." 45. B. Nardi, La scuola di Rialto, pp. 137-138, accenna ad un breve giudizio sul pensiero del Valier, che però non è stato oggetto della sua ricerca; il suo sarebbe im "aristotelismo tomistico, ancora eclettico, per influssi neoplatoneggianti che si faranno sempre più evidenti," il quale subentra alla "tendenza averroistica" libuerit.

dell'aristotelismo rappresentata dal predecessore Sebastiano Foscarin. Il giudizio viene ripetuto da G. Cozzi, Cultuia, politica e leligione, pp. 244-245, che accentua, però, nel Valier la sua appartenenza al "rirmovamento spirituale e strutturale che aveva avuto sanzione e definizione al Concilio di Trento." E già H Jedin, Il tipo ideale di vescovo secondo la lifoima cattolica, tr.it. (Milano, 1950), pp. 96-100 aveva visto il Valier sulla scia dell'opera e della figura (dal Valier stesso idealizzata) di S. Carlo Borromeo. L'indubbia appartenenza del Valier al movimento di riforma cattolica in epoca post-tridentina viene giudicata da O. Logan, Culture and Society, pp. 85-87 con molta accuratezza e attenzione, per le sue luci e le sue ombre: è una posizione "unusually sophisticated" per i legami con l'umanesimo e la filosofia classicistica dell'età precedente da una parte, ma anche, d'altra parte, per l'espressione d'tma certa crisi di sfiducia che quei legami incrina. 46. Notizie sulla vita in N. Crasso, Pisauia gens, Venetiis 1652, pp. 73-76; G. Zabarella, Il Caiosio oveio orìgine regia et augusta della seienissima fameglia Pesati di Venetia, Padova 1659, pp. 17, 60-61. Egli era nato a Venezia il 23 luglio 1541, dottore a Padova, pubblico lettore di filosofia aristotelica nella scuola di Rialto, forse tra la metà degli anni '70 e la morte, avvenuta nel giugno del 1586. Il suo magistero a Rialto deve cadere fra quello di Francesco Da Ponte, elettovi il 7 aprile 1565 (Archivio de Stato, Venezia, Segietarìo alle voci, elezione deipiegadi 1568-1577, c.62v) e quello di Antonio Gradenigo, eletto il 21 giugno 1586 (Segretarìo alle voci, elezioni dei piegadi 1578-1588, c.l70r). 47. De prìscoTum sapientuxn placitis, ac optimo philosophandi genere, sententiae et theoiemata vatia, ad ingenuas disciplinas pertinentia, ab Aloysio Pisaurio Matini filio pattitio veneto pioposita, cum Patavii tum Venetiis pubUco congiessu ad vetitatis glotiam intei viios ingenuos discutienda, Patavii, ex officina Laurentii Pasquati, 1567; cfr. G. Santinello, Il "deptiscoium sapientum placitis" di Luigi Pesaro, in Medioevo e tinascimento veneto con altti studi, in onore di L. Lazzarini, 2 voi. (Padova, 1979), n, pp. 181-202. 48. De prìscoTum sapientum placitis, dedica a Daniele Barbaro, f. Iv (non numerato). 49. Deptiscoium sapientum placitis, f. 46r: "[...] ad sapientiae sacrum deduxerunt nos Peripatetici, quibus cognoscere valemus, neminem ex philosophis tam exquisite nobis monstrasse disciplinas, et tam prope attigisse scopum, ac Uli fecerint; adeo ut vere terminos nobis ostenderint facultatis humani ingenii. Nec hominum inventis emendari possunt." Le pagine successive, e ultime, dell'operetta sono sotto il titolo: "Lux vera, et emendatio Peripateticae sectae"; la vera luce è quella di Dio .

nella rivelazione. 50. F. Piccolomini, Universa philosopbia de motibus, Venetiis 1583, X, 33, p.

593 D. 51. Sull'ambiente politico e culturale dei cosiddetti giovani: G. Cozzi, 22 doge Nicolò Contarini, cit.; F. Seneca, Il doge Leonardo Dona. La sua vita e la sua preparazione politica prima del dogado (Padova, 1959); fra i vari studi del Cozzi sul Sarpi, ricordiamo l'ultima raccolta già citata: Paolo Sarpi tra Venezia e l'Europa (Torino,

GIOVANNI SANTINELLO

IpS

1979); una sintesi storica complessiva in G. Benzeni, Venezia nell'età della contioiifoima (Milano, 1973), specialmente pp. 25-78. 52. Oltre a questi scolari di F. Piccolomini, segnalati negli articoli citati del Tenenti e del Garin relativi al De perfectìone lenun del Contarini, nel Piccolomini si trova il ricordo di opere di altri patrizi veneziani, già suoi scolari: il De disciplinis ingenuis di Girolamo Capello, le Universales institutìones di Filippo Mocenigo, il De leium cousis di Francesco Morosini, il De habitìbus mentis di Andrea Duodo, fratello di Pietro. Sulla questione della dipendenza degli scritti di Contarini, di Tiepolo e di P. Duodo dal maestro Piccolomini, che ne sarebbe direttamente o indirettamente, il vero autore, si veda ancora E. Garin, Scienza e vita civile nel rìnascimento italiano (Bari, 1965), pp. 123, 141, 159; A. Poppi, Il problema della filosofia morale nella scuola padovana del rinascimento, in AA.W., Platon et Aristote à la renaissance (Paris, 1976), pp. 105-146 attribuisce la paternità di questi scritti agli scolari, non al maestro Piccolomini, e a ragione, ci sembra. Per i Pensieri del Sarpi: G. Da Pozzo, Per il testo dei "Pensieri" del Saipi, in "Bollettino dell'istituto di storia della società e dello stato veneziano," (1961), pp. 139-176 (seprattutto pp. 153-162); le studio di R. Amerio, "Il Sarpi dei pensieri filosofici inediti," in Filosofia (1950), pp. 541-575 (nonché l'edizione da lui curata: Fra P. Sarpi, Scritti filosofici e teologici editi e inediti (Bari, 1951); e la nuova edizione dei Pensieri a cura di G. e L. Cozzi, Torino, 1976 (che riproduce l'ed. Ricciardi

del 1969). filii patritii veneti de perfectione rerum sex ad virum amplissimum Leonardum Donatum, Venetiis, Joan.Baptista Somaschus excudebat, 1576, p. 6 (non numerata): "His ego in studiis cum aliquot aimis magno cum animi mei fructu et voluptate essem versatus, hos mihi libros edendos putavi, ut et mihi aliquid didicisse viderer, et reipublicae huius mei otii quasi redderem rationem." 54. De perfectione rerum, Praefatio, p. 1 (non numerata): "Praeclara semper et maxime illustris ea mihi visa est philosophandi ratio, quae non tam hominimi auctoritate, quam naturae luce subnixa, solute et libere in vero exquirendo versatur. Eosque in primis probare atque admirari solco, qui nulli sapientum sectae sese addixenmt, sed veritatem ipsam ubicimque censerent, magna industria studioque conquirunt." 55. Stephani Theupoli Bened.f.patric.veneti,academicarum contemplationum libri X. in quibus Plato explicatui, et Peripatetici refelluntur, 1590, s.l. (ma Basilea], IX, 7, p. 342: "In hoc tamen [circa l'innatismo] Arist. vere a Platone dissentit, nec conciliari potest, quia Aristoteles intellectmn, quem potestate appellat, ut omnia fieri valeat, omnibus intelligibilibus formis asserit esse denudatum; Plato vero solum asserit esse denudatum in respectu et in parte, non absolute; conciliari inquam non possimt, quoniam Arist. ncque ideas, ncque rationes ideis respondentes

53. Nicolai Contareni Joannis Gabrielis

libri

ostensum est." Academicarum contemplationum, l, 1, pp. 12-13. 57. Academicarum contemplationum, I, 1, p. 14: "Non me latet apprime esse arduum, in eorum dissensione partem potiorem eligere [...]; pro facultate nitendum, ut per accuratam sententiarum discussionem splendor aliquis veritatis refulgeat [...]. Propterea quod dum nitidam veritatem intueri cupimus, post lites philosophorum, animi universam aciem in Solem veritatis nobis munere fidei concedit, ut alibi 56.

divina revelatione conquiescere."

patefactum,

convertere

debemus,

felicissime

UMANESIMO

196

E FILOSOFIA

NEL VENETO

Duodi Fiancisci D. Marci piocuratorìs filii, patrìtii veneti, perìpatetianima disputationum libri septem. Ad illustrissimum, et reverendissimum Hieronymum de Ruvere S.R.E. cardinalem amplissimum. Nunc denuo in lucem editi, atque ab ipsomet auctore emendati et aucti, Venetiis, apud Nicolaum Moretum, 1587, f. 2v (non numerato). 59. Academicarum contemplationum, IX, 5, p. 335. 58. Petri

caiuxn de

De perfectione rerum,

sono

314-318) gli argomenti foni buoni vengano premiati ed i cattivi puniti), e sulla teoria della conoscenza e della libertà (che dimostrano che l'anima non dipende dal corpo, ed è quindi immortale). 61. De perfectione rerum, VI, 3, p. 312: "His praesidiis a natura muniti, consideremus an dum in corpore degunt animi beatitudinem nanciscantur. Sed si beatitudo insatiabilis illius boni cupiditatis, quae in nobis viget, expletione, perfectioneque consistit, hanc certe dum spiramus non conquirimur [...]. Nemo enim hanc nactus est beatitatem. Infinita nanque est animi contentio, et non nisi ab infinito satiatur. Infinitum autem nihil, nisi Deus. Quem cernere non possumus, et vivere." Una notevole affinità di pensiero con Pascal [Entretien avec M. de Sad surEpictète et Montaigne] c'è in Valier, Memoriale a Luigi Contarini, p. 53: "Non si può certo parlare senza laude di Epitteto e di Seneca: tanta copia di belli precetti sopra il dispregio del mondo haimo lasciato: ma sono stati veramente ciechi, poiché non hanno veduto, e non hanno voluto vedere l'infermità umana, e hanno fatto se stessi e gli altri uomini Dei, ponendo ogni cosa nella volontà dell'uomo." Fra gli inediti del Valier viene elencato dal Ponzetti, Catalogua, p. LXV, n.67 im Libellus: de utilitate capienda ex corporali aegritudine cardinali Sfortiae inscribendus (ricordato anche da G. Ventura, Augustini Valerti vita, p. 113), il cui titolo suona molto simile a im ben noto scritto di Pascal {Prière pour demander à Dieu le bon usage des maladies) Se noi abbiamo parlato di pensieri quasi-pascaliani, ü Cozzi, H doge Nicolò Contarini, p. 224, n. 1, avvicina la spiritualità etico-religiosa del Contarini e degli amici della sua cerchia a quella che caratterizzerà il giansenismo. 62. P. Sarpi, Pensieri, a cura di G. e L. Cozzi, cit., p. 20, n. 251; p. 24, n. 300. 63. H. Jedin, Gasparo Contarini e il contributo veneziano alla riforma cattolica, in La civilità veneziana del rinascimento, Firenze, 1959, p. 122: "Allora [nell'ultima fase del Concilio di Trento, 1562-63] non verme più da Venezia alcvm impulso notevole per la Riforma della Chiesa, ma nulla lasciava prevedere l'aspro conflitto che doveva scoppiare sotto Paolo V [...], niente annunciava il futuro attacco di Paolo Sarpi contro il Concilio di Trento." 60.

VI, 3, p. 310; vi

(pp.

dati sulla Provvidenza (che esige l'immortalità, affinché

EDUCATION AND LANGUAGE Pauvreté ou richesse du latin de Spinoza F.

Akkerman

publia son premier livre, Lorsque Spinoza propre latin,

il avait si peu de confiance en son qu'il en fit corriger le style par son ami Louis Meyer. ^ Quelques lettres de cette même époque ont également subi de larges remaniements, avant que Spinoza les fît circuler.^ La grammaire de ces écrits les plus anciens est simple et le choix des mots est limité. On n'y perçoit aucun ornement stylistique. Le premier livre est à peu près dépourvu de toute réminiscence classique. Ce sont des textes sans culture ni tradition, évidemment en dehors des doctrines scolastiques ou cartésiennes qu'ils traitent. Mais c'est bien sur ces doctrines-là qu'ils concentrent toute l'attention

du lecteur

concentration précise et lente qu'ils doivent leur D'une part les formules des propositions et corollaires, des définitions et axiomes deviennent plus arides, la langue des démonstrations plus sèche. Sans tomber dans un jargon trop technique, le texte obtient par cela l'aspect d'une implacable objectivité.^ D'autre part les scolies, les appendices et les préfaces font souvent contraste avec ces formules pour ce qui est de leur style, tout en remplissant des fonctions diverses:'* précision d'un point de vue de doctrine, polémique contre les opinions courantes des philosophes ou des théologiens, sommaire d'une partie du texte, établissem*nt de rapports entre les abstractions philosophiques et des notions de la vie commune ou de la langue quotidienne. Cet appareil supplémentaire du texte est souvent d'une simplicité et d'une clarté admirables.^ Tous ces éléments constituent dans leur ensemble la beauté de langue de VEtbique, une beauté qu'on ne peut pas bien séparer de la logique intérieure, c'est-à-dire de la méthode géométrique de l'oeuvre, mais qui a été, pendant un siècle et demi, une source d'inspiration et d'admiration pour plusieurs poètes en Europe. Le Traité théologico-politique est d'un tout autre caractère stylistique. Une citation de la Bible apparaît tout de suite sur la page de titre. Le but du livre entier est exprimé dans le titre du dernier chapitre pour lequel est employé une formule de Tacite: "Ostenditur in Libera Republica unicuique &. sentire, quae velit, ôi quae sentiat, dicere licere."^ La préface commence par une inefficacité.

et c'est à cette

style se diversifie dans l'Ethique:

198

LATIN DE SPINOZA

troduction de trois pages, qui respire l'esprit classique d'un bout à l'autre.

y trouve des emprunts à divers auteurs classiques: Terence, Tacite, Curtius Rufus, peut-être Lucrèce 7 Et en dehors de ces emprunts des mots classiques comme: fortuna prospera, faustiun —infaustum omen, prodigium, ira deorum, divina responsa pecudum fibris inscribere, divino afflatu et instinctu. Après cette introduction abstraite, dont l'abstraction est réalisée par ce classicisme même, la préface continue dans la première personne du singulier. Un moi qui ne représente pas le centre existentiel de la philosophie, comme dans le début du Traité de la réforme de l'entendement, mais le citoyen qui dans sa qualité de philosophe, intervient dans les choses de la religion et de la politique de sa patrie. Le style de la préface entière est direct et vigoureux, riche en couleurs, hardi ou même agressif. Dans l'Ethique on trouve plus rarement des références à la culture générale en dehors de la philosophie, mais parfois de telle façon qu'elles sautent aux yeux. Pour en voir un exemple, on peut lire un passage du scolie de V.20, où l'amour de Dieu est comparé avec l'amour des choses finies:

Deinde notandum, animi aegritudines, ôi infortunia potissimum originem trahere ex nimio Amore erga rem, quae multis variationibus est obnoxia, &. cujus nunquam compotes esse possumus. Nam nemo de re uUâ, nisi quam amat, soUicitus, anxiusve est, neque injuriae, suspiciones, inimicitiae, &.c. oriuntur, nisi ex Amore erga res, quarum nemo potest reverâ esse compos.

Les deux mots soUicitus anxiusve sont rares dans Spinoza,- ils sont empruntés au langage de l'amour des Anciens. On les lit dans une lettre de Cicéron: "novi enim te et non ignoro, quam sit amor omnis soUicitus atque anxius."^ Les injuriae, suspiciones, inimicitiae eue. provieiment d'une enumeration des vitia amoris dans une comédie de Terence.^ Ces mots classiques prêtent au texte de Spinoza en quelque sorte un second niveau d'abstraction au-dessous du premier de la langue rationelle, pour désigner la vie concrète. L'auteur fait donc un emploi métaphorique de ces mots. Un autre but auquel servent parfois ces références extra-philosophiques, c'est le soutien qu'elles prêtent à l'argumentation. Il est frappant, pour en donner un exemple, que chaque fois que Spinoza attaque dans la quatrième partie de l'Ethique ime des grandes vertus chrétiennes, ces éléments du dehors renforcent ou soulignent l'attaque, ou bien au contraire, aident à la mitiger ou à la rétracter partiellement. La proposition que la pitié est mauvaise et inutile (IV. 50) est soutenue par la maxime suivante: ^° "l'homme qui sait parfaitement que toutes choses suivent de la nécessité de la nature divine, n'aura plus pitié de personne, mais il s'efforcera, comme on dit, de bien faire et d'être dans la joie" (conabitur bene agere, ut ajunt, et laetari].^^ L'humilité et le repentir ne sont pas non plus de véritables vertus (IV. 53 et 54) pour l'homme qui vit d'après le commandement de la raison. Mais parce qu'il est difficile de vivre rationnellement, le philosophe voit ime utilité relative à ces vertus, comme d'ailleurs aussi à la pitié, à la crainte et l'espoir. "Si donc il faut pécher, que ce soit plutôt dans ce sens" dit-il avec les mots de Terence. ^^ L'humilité et le repentir, comme la crainte et l'espoir, sont recommandés en vertu d'une sentence empruntée à Tacite:

AKKERMAN

199

tenet vulgus, nisi metuat^^ — la foule est terrible quand elle est sans crainte, et c'est pourquoi Spinoza renvoie avec approbation aux prophètes qui prêchaient les-dites vertus. Une fois de plus il revient sur ce point dans le scolie de IV. 58, où il parle de la honte [pudor] qui, elle non plus, n'est pas une vertu, mais qui a sa valeur en tant qu'elle montre que l'homme désire encore vivre honnêtement. Cette pensée est illustrée par une très belle métaphore: "la honte est comme la douleur [d'une blessure] qui montre que la partie lésée n'est pas encore pourrie."^* Il est facile à comprendre que dans la mesure où la langue philosophique s'approche de la vie concrète de l'homme, il y a plus d'occasion de faire valoir ce genre d'allusions externes. Chez Spinoza elles sont aussi rares qu'expressives. Dans un paragraphe du Tiaité politique, on peut admirer un bel équilibre entre référence externe et abstraction philosophique (Vu. 1): Imperii Monarchici fundamentis explicatis, eadem hîc ordine demonstrare suscepi; ad quod apprimè notandum est, praxi nullo modo repugnare, quòd jura adeò firma constituantur, quae nec ab ipso Rege aboleri queant. Persae enim Reges suos inter Deos colere solebant, &. tamen ipsi Reges potestatem non habebant jura semel instituta revocandi, ut ex Dan. Cap. 6. patet; & nuUibi, quod sciam, Monarcha absolute eligitur, nuUis expressis conditionibus. Imo nec rationi, nec obedientiae absolutae, quae Regi debetur, répugnât; nam fundamenta imperii veluti Regis aetema decreta habenda simt, adeò ut ejus ministri ei omninò obediant, si, quando aliquid imperat, quod imperii fundamentis répugnât, mandata exequi velie negent. Quod exemplo Ulissis clarè explicare possumus. Socii enim Ulissis ipsius mandatum exequebantur, quando navis malo alligatum, &. cantu Syrenum mente captum, religare noluerunt, tametsi id modis multis minitando imperabat, &. prudentiae ejusdem imputatur, quòd postea sociis gratias egerit, quòd ex prima ipsius mente ipsi obtemperaverint. Et ad hoc Ulissis exemplum soient etiam Reges judices instruere, ut scilicet justitiam exerceant, nec quenquam respiciant, nec ipsum Regem, si quid singulari aliquo casu imperaverit, quod contra institutum jus esse noverint. Reges enim non Dii, sed homines sunt, qui Syrenum capiuntur saepe cantu. Si igitur omnia ab inconstanti unius voluntate penderent, nihil fixum esset. Atque adeò imperium Monarchicum, ut stabile sit, instituendum est, ut omnia quidem ex solo Regis decreto fiant, hoc est, ut omne jus sit Regis explicata voluntas; at non ut omnis Regis voluntas jus sit, de quo vide Art. 3. 5. é) 6. praec. Cap.

Le point de départ est la royauté constitutionnelle que Spinoza a esquissée dans le chapitre précédent, et dont il entreprend maintenant à démontrer les règles fondamentales. Non qu'il soit lui-même un partisan de la monarchie, mais parce qu'il veut indiquer par quels moyens la monarchie peut acquérir un maximum de stabilité. Dans notre paragraphe la première règle pour une telle monarchie est justifiée, c'est-à-dire la règle qui veut que les lois fondamentales de l'état obligent le roi aussi bien que ses sujets, encore que le roi luimême les ait proclamées. C'est que le roi aussi bien que les sujets est soumis

LATIN DE SPINOZA

200 aux passions. Lui aussi

est de nature varìus et inconstans.^^ D'abord Spinoza fait observer qu'il ne s'agit pas seulement d'un principe de théorie. La règle n'est pas en contradiction avec la réalité historique. Les Perses adoraient leurs rois parmi les dieux, et pourtant le roi Darius était obligé par son propre décret de faire jeter Daniel, qu'il estimait beaucoup, dans la fosse aux lions. L'intérêt que Spinoza prend à cette histoire est naturellement suscité

par "la loi des

Mèdes

et des Perses," expression biblique,

devenue proverbiale

en hollandais, pour désigner une loi immuable. Ensuite ladite règle est également en accord avec

la philosophie rationnelle politico-moral d'obéissance absolue qu'on doit au roi: "nam fundamenta imperii veluti regis aetema decreta habenda sunt." Qui n'entend pas dans ces mots l'analogie avec la conception spinoziste du "Deus sive Natura: leges naturae universales ... nihil esse nisi Dei aetema decreta. "^^ Il vaut mieux mettre l'accent sur cette analogie que de critiquer le mot aetema dans ce contexte, comme l'a fait un commentateur. La thèse est expliquée par le paradoxe d'Ulysse, qui avait ordonné à ses compagnons de ne pas lui obéir quand il serait ensorcelé par le chant des Sirènes. Cet exemple poétique est mieux approprié à l'intention de Spinoza que celui de l'histoire, car Darius n'était que dupe d'une ruse maligne de ses serviteurs et Ulysse agissait consciemment et à dessein, puisque lui se rendait compte des dangers auxquels il allait s'exposer, ou plutôt, parce que lui se connaissait soimême.^'' C'était un roi qui prenait des précautions pour ne pas faire souffrir la communauté de sa propre faiblesse. La prudence d'Ulysse est expressément louée dans le texte de Spinoza. C'est pourquoi l'histoire d'Ulysse seule est un exemplum à suivre pour le roi constitutionnel, une histoire qui est donc racontée par Spinoza en quelque détail, alors que dans le cas de Darius, l'auteur se contentait de donner la référence au texte de la Bible et d'en tirer la conclusion en langue commune. Aussi la raconte-t-il d'un ton poétique: choix du mot rare leligaie au lieu de solvere pour le mettre parallèle avec alligatum; emploi de la belle forme minitando emploi peut-être stimulé par la lecture

avec

commandement

de Terence et de Salluste;^^ deux fois allitération dans cantu ... captum et modis multis minitando, également un procédé de style qui est fréquent dans la langue archaïque ou archaïsante des deux auteurs mentionnés. C'est à cet exemple qu'est relié tout de suite l'indépendance du juge, comme xme des conditions les plus importantes de la stabilité d'une monarchie. Alors les deux références externes, celle à l'histoire et celle à la poésie sont, une fois de plus, réunies dans une seule phrase, confrontées avec la réalité. Les rois ne sont pas de dieux ainsi que croyaient les Perses, et même les rois des Perses ne disposaient pas d'un pouvoir absolu. Et l'exemple d'Ulysse est devenu maintenant une métaphore: "Reges enim non Dii sed homines stmt, qui Syrenum capiuntur saepe cantu." De nouveau Spinoza emploie pour le chant des Sirènes une langue poétique, caractérisée par l'ordre des mots qui est insolite et par l'allitération: Syienum ... saepe et capiuntur ... cantu. Le schéma métrique des mots qui suivent qui, en fait même un vers ou presque:

Syrê/nàm capiün/tOr säe/pe cän/tü

AKKERMAN

201

donc un hendécasyllabe phalécien, le vers bien connu de Catulle de Martial. ^^ Par cette métaphore le philosophe veut souligner une conception centrale de sa Politica, qui est exprimée une fois de plus dans la phrase qu'il fait suivre, cette fois par du langage courant: "Si igitur omnia ab inconstanti unius voluntate penderent, nihil fixum esset," la conception donc que tous les hommes sont toujours soumis aux passions: "hominem necessario passionibus esse semper obnoxium" {Etb. IV. 4. coroll.), et qu' à cet égard la nature de tous les hommes est égale. On trouve dans l'oeuvre de Spinoza cette notion plus d'une fois et il est frappant qu'il se soit efforcé pour exprimer cette notion, de chercher des mots empruntés à sa lecture classique. Veuillez regarder la petite liste qui suit: c'est-à-dire

Omnes namque tam qui regimt, quam

ex labore

scilicet proclives

qui reguntur, homines sunt ad libidinem (ITP eh. XVn = Gebh. m. 203.

16-17). 2. Nemo enim tam vigilans est, qui aliquando non dormitat (TP VI. 3 = Gebh. m. 298. 6). 3. Reges enim non Dii, sed homines sunt, qui Syrenum capiuntur saepe cantu (TP VE. 1 = Gebh. m. 308. 1-2). 4. At natura una, &. communis omnium est (TP Vn. 27 = Gebh. lU. 319. 28-29).

Pour le premier texte Spinoza s'est servi d'une comédie de Terence: "ita ut ingeniumst omnium hominum ab labore proclive ad lubidinem" (Andi. 11). La deuxième citation contient une allusion à la sentence bien connue d'Horace: "Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus" (£p. ad Pis. 359). Le quatrième texte est pris d'un paragraphe du Traité politique {VU. 11] qui termine ses considérations sur la monarchie constitutionnelle dont nous analysons le début. Dans ce §27 l'auteur fait d'abord descendre toute une pluie de citations classiques sur sa propre thèse:

Atque haec, quae scripsimus, risu forsan excipientur ab iis, qui vitia, quae omnibus mortalibus insunt, ad solam plebem restringunt; nempe quòd in vulgo nihil modicum, terrere, ni paveant (Tac. Ann. I. 29. 3), & quòd plebs aut humiliter servit aut superbe dominatur (Livius 24. 25. 8), nec ei veritas aut judicium (Tac. Hist. I. 32. 1) &.c. des citations qui font preuve de ce qu'on a appelle le Tacitisme noLr,^° un emploi donc du texte de Tacite (et d'autres historiens romains) au service d'un pouvoir absolu. Dans cette série se trouve encore une fois la sentence de Tacite qui,

dans l'Ethique

comme nous

l'avons vu, servait à soutenir une valeur du repentir: "terret vulgus nisi metuat."

relative des vertus de l'humilité et

C'est une sentence qui, chez Tacite, a été prononcée lorsque Drusus écrasa une sédition des troupes rhénanes. Cette fois pourtant elle ne sert à rien aux yeux de Spinoza, certainement pas à soutenir la doctrine absolutiste. Dans ce même paragraphe il la répétera encore une fois plein de sarcasme: "terrere, nisi paveant." Et il sait ce qu'il doit y répondre: "At natura una & communis

LATIN DE SPINOZA

202

omnium est." Et une deuxième fois vers la fin du paragraphe: "Sed, uti diximus, natura omnibus eadem est." Mais les mots ne sont pas repris exactement dans la même forme. C'est que la première iois ils étaient empruntés à un texte politique, la harangue enflammée qu'a tenue Marins devant l'assemblée du peuple chez Salluste, le célèbre chapitre 85 du Bellum luguithinum, un texte dont il est certain que Spinoza l'a connu. ^^ Je suis convaincu que Spinoza, dans ce contexte, a choisi exprès ce texte "rouge" pour en tirer ime réponse aux belles citations des absolutistes. "Superbiunt omnes dominatione," dit Spinoza, la domination rend arrogants tous les homme: tous les hommes "terrent, nisi paveant." cest d'ailleurs l'esprit anti-aristocratique du discours de Marins qui a inspiré une partie de ce paragraphe de Spinoza, et c'est im peu curieux de voir que ce chapitre du Tiaité politique, qui voulait expliquer les règles fondamentales pour établir une monarchie stable, finit par un absolutisme de couleur aristocratique. Le mot final est dit par le droit public dans ime belle antithèse: "... ut omne jus sit Regis explicata

défendre la démocratie contre

Revenons au et

de façon

§ 1

claire,

ch.

Vu du Ti. pol.

non ut omnis Regis voluntas

jus sit." Sous l'influence des auteurs Sénèque et Tacite, le dix-septième siècle avait développé ime grande prédilection pour cette figure. Spinoza ne fait pas exception. Seulement lui ne se rend pas coupable de "faire de fausses fenêtres pour la symétrie" comme disait Pascal. ^^ La nôtre aussi est parfaitement fonctionnelle et conclut le paragraphe de la meilleure façon qu'on puisse s'imaginer. C'est ainsi que dans un cadre étroit sont réunis: l'immutabilité de la loi comme condition pour la stabilité politique; un argument emprunté à la réalité historique; une argumentation par analogie en langue rationnelle; le commandement éthico-politique de l'obéissance absolue à l'autorité suprême; un exemple, qui est un paradoxe, tiré de la poésie en langue poétique-, la sagesse du prince qui par connaissance de soi respecte la loi; l'indépendance de la justice; la psychologie de l'homme qui entre comme facteur décisif dans la politique; ^^ une métaphore exprimée dans un veis; enfin encore le droit public dans une antithèse. L'auteur n'insiste pas ni trop ni trop peu sur les éléments particuliers dont il construit son discours. Je crois que ces quelques observations peuvent ajouter foi aux jugements des érudits de naguère comme Kuno Fischer ou Paul-Louis Couchoud qui prétendaient que Spinoza a écrit un latin "classique dans son genre" ou qu'il fut "un latiniste. "^^

voluntas; at

comme Salluste,

Rijksuniversiteit

Groningen

Notes

(Je remercie mon collègue le Dr. A. F. rédaction française de mon texte.)

Rombout pour bien avoir voulu corriger

V. Epistola 13, C. Gebhardt, Spinoza Opeia (Heidelberg, 1925; repr. 1972),

AKKERMAN

203

rencontre dans les Principia philosophiae et les Cogitata et des expressions qui respirent l'idiome "néo-latin" des écrits latins de Meyer plus que le "classicisme" de Spinoza, par exemple: l'article grec avec infinitif ou nihil; enucleare; speciatim; duntaxat; astmere; hquidissime constat; aibitiaii; zesultaie; patibilis; enonnis; facillimo negotio; insupei habere; peisaepe; singulatim; statim ac (pour simulatque) 2. Les Epp. 6 et 32. V. mon article sur l'édition de la correspondance dans Revue intern, de la philos., 119-20 (1977), pp. 8-11. 3. Cf. Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza, Pelican Books (1951; 1962), pp. 24-26, 93, 138-39, 152, 155-56, 170 sur les mots et le style de Spinoza. 4. James Collins a étudié les expériences et les procédés de style de Spinoza en rapport avec ses attitudes philosophiques, dans Siegfried Hessing, éd.. Speculum Spinozanum 1677-1977 (Londres, 1977), pp. 119-42. 5. Eth. EU. piéf.} IV. 18. schol. pour citer devix textes organisés de la meilleure vol. IV, p.

63.

metaphysica (1663) des mots

façon.

Tac. Hist. I. 1. 6. Cette citation se présente dans les oeuvres de Spinoza pour première fois dans une lettre de Oldenburg (£p. 14) et est reprise en partie par Spinoza dans Ep. 30. 7. Gebhardt, Spinoza Opera, lU, p. 5, 1.2 "si homines res omnes suas certo Consilio regere possent": cf. Ter. Eun. 57-58 "quae res ... eam Consilio regere non potes": Gebh. 5. 7-8: cf. Ter. Andr. 266; Gebh. 5. 22-23: cf. Tac. Hist. V. 13; Gebh. 5. 34 "Tantimi timor homines insanire facit" (après l'énumération des maux causés par la crainte qui est à la base de la superstitio): cf. Lucr. I. 101; Gebh. 6.2 sqq.; 5 sqq.; 30 sqq.: trois fois Curtius; Gebh. 7. 10 "in unius hominis jactationem sanguinem animamque impendere": cf. Cvirtius IV. 10. 39 "in unius hominis iactationem tot milium sanguinem inpendi." Gebh. 7. 21-22 "Cum itaque nobis haec rara foelicitas contigerit, ut in Republica vivamus, ubi unicuique judicandi libertas integra ... conceditur": cf. Tac. Hist. I. 1. 6. 8. AdAtt. 2. 24. 1; deux autres citations de Cicéron dans VEtb. touchent également aux choses de grand intérêt pour l'auteur: El. Aff. Def. 44. exphc: cf. Cic. Pro Archia 11. 26; le mot final du livre: "sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt": cf. Cic. De Amicitia 21. 79 "Et quidem omnia praeclara rara." 9. Ter. Eun. 59-60; maintes fois Spinoza a empnmté des mots à cette scène: cf. ma contribution aux Mededelingen vanwege bet Spinozahuis XXXVI, "Spinoza's tekort aan woorden" (Leyde, 1977), pp. 7-8. 10. J'ai fait usage des traductions françaises de Ch. Appuhn et de celles de l'édition de la Pléiade. 11. Ecclés. 3. 12 "Et cognovi quod non esset melius nisi laetari, et facere bene in vita sua." Cf. aussi W. G. van der Tak dans Chronicum Spinozanum I (La Haye, 1921), pp. 263-264. 12. Ter. Ad. 174. 13. Tac. Aim. I. 29. 14. On peut ajouter cette métaphore à la petite liste d'images spinozistes qu'a donnée J. Freudenthal, Spinoza, Leben und Lehre, éd. C. Gebhardt (Heidelberg, 6.

1927), p. 214. 15. Eth. IV. 33.

= Gebh. m,

16.

TTP,

17.

"La plupart des

ch.

hommes

18. Cf. Sali. Bell. fug.

p. 46. 1-3; cf. ibid. 82. 35.

eux-mêmes" (TTP, préf.]. 49.4 "pollicendo minitando obtestando"; Ter. Ad. 988 "ex s'ignorent

204

LATIN DE SPINOZA

adsentando, indulgendo et largiendo;: Andr. 912 "soUicitando et pollicitando;" Spinoza TP VII. 30 "ambiendo largiendo pollicitando." 19. Spinoza possédait un Martial dans sa bibliothèque (et aussi un Jean Second qui a également employé ce vers.). Il n'est pas du tout invraisemblable que Fr. van den Enden ait enseigné à ses élèves à écrire des hendécasyllabes. Il les utilisait luimême dans sa pièce de théâtre Philedonius, imprimée 1657 à Amsterdam (v. Judith C. E. Belinfante, J. Kingma, A. K. Offenberg, Spinoza. Troisième centenaire de la mort du philosophe (Institut Néerlandais, Paris, 1977), p. 31). On y trouve une série de 40 hendécasyllabes à partir de Hue hue languiduli venite fratres (p. 20). Mais l'hendécas. latin a toujours la septième syllabe du vers brève, règle contre laquelle pèche le vers de Spinoza. Sur Van den Enden un livre est en préparation de MM. J. V. Meininger et G. van Suchtelen, éd. Heureka, Amsterdam; titre prévu: Liever met wercken, als met woorden. 20. G. Toffanin, Machiavelli e il Tacitismo (Padua, 1921). 21. Deux autres emprunts à ce chapitre de Sali, dans Spinoza: TP X. 8 = Gebh. ni. 356. 35 "Deinde qui parentum triumphos &. imagines ostentant ... ": cf. Sali. Bell. lug. 85. 29; Ep. 76 fin = Gebh. IV. 324. 18-20 quibusque artibus ipse Romanus pontifex ... Ecclesiae principatum adeptus est: cf. Sali. o. c. 85. 1. 22. Pensées éd. Garnier, no. 27. 23. Cf. "Deinde notandum, quòd in jaciendis fundamentis [Monarchici imperii] maxime humanos affectûs observare necesse est" (TP VU. 2). 24. D'autre part les jugements négatifs ne manquent pas: v. surtout F. Sassen, Kemgedachten van Spinoza (Roermond-Maaseik, 1967), p. 34. Le fils de l'éditeur de Spinoza, J. Rieuwertsz Jr., racontait en 1703: "Spinoza hätte ... weder anmuthig noch zierlich geschrieben" (v. J. Freudenthal, Die Lebensgeschichte Spinoza's in Quellenschriften, Urkunden und nichtamtUchen Nachrichten (Leipzig, 1899), p. 226). L'ami fidèle Jarig Jelles loue dans la préface des Opera posthuma (1677) le style du Traité Pohtique comme d'une oeuvre mûre par opposition à celui du Tract, de Emend. Intell. (v. F. Akkerman &. H. G. Hubbeling, "The preface to Spinoza's posthumous works and its author Jarig Jelles" (éd. du texte en néerl. et en latin) dans LIAS VI (1979) 1, pp. 87-157, §70 et §71). Prudemment ont jugé J. Freudenthal, o.e. (v. n. 14), pp. 208-14, et J. H. Leopold, Ad Spinozae Opera Posthuma (La Haye, 1902), pp. 1-37.

Französische Literatur in neulateinischen Übersetzungen Dietrich Bhesemeistei man W. Leonard Grants Zusammenstellung neulateinischer Prüft Übersetzungen aus den europäischen Literaturen^ für Frankreich, so fallen die

Angaben im Bereich der

belies lettres sehr spärlich aus.

besonderen kulturgeschichtlichen Gründen weniger an jenem "curieux mouvement de traduction en une langue morte" teilgenommen haben, auf das Paul van Tieghem^ aufmerksam macht? Die im folgenden vorgetragenen ersten Ergebnisse einer systematischen Suche widerlegen diesen Eindruck gründlich, auch wenn die Nachforschungen auf gedruckte neulateinische Übersetzungen beschränkt blieben und das weite Feld Sollte also Frankreich aus

des religiös-asketischen, philosophischen, polyhistorischen imd wissenschaftlichen Schrifttums^ gar nicht berücksichtigt wurde. Die im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert zahlreichen mehrsprachigen poetischen Sammelbände {Tombeaux u.a.)* konnten ebenfalls nicht auf die dort enthaltenen lateinischen Übersetzimgen, Paraphrasen und Nachahmungen einzelner französischer Gedichte

hin untersucht werden.

Die Übersetzungen französischer literarischer Vorlagen ins Neulateinische dem Hintergrund der im frühen 16. Jahrhundert beginnenden und über die Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes hinaus in das 18. Jahrhundert reichenden contentio de primatu linguarum zu sehen. Dem Versuch, die Mutsind vor

tersprache "linguae latinae adacquare" (Charles de Bovelles, Liber de differentia vulgarium linguarum et Gallici sermonis varietale, Paris, 1533, cap. 51) steht das Programm der Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse (1549) gegenüber. Der immer heftigere Streit^ über den Bildungswert des Lateins und seine Verwendung als Unterrichtssprache begleitet die neulateinischen

Übersetzungsversuche durch die Zeit der französischen Klassik. In diesem bedürften die Wirkungsgeschichte von lateinisch-französischen Schullehrwerken, Stil- und Übersetzungshandbüchem, wie die Commissurae gallicolatinae (1649 u.ö) oder die Rapports de la langue latine avec la françoise pour traduire élégamment (1672) ebenso wie der Gang der philologischen Diskussion um Für und Wider der Übersetzung dringend der Erforschung. Die Standardwerke der französischen Literaturgeschichte (z.B. An-

Zusammenhang

206

NEULATEINISCHE ÜBERSETZUNGEN

toine Adam) berücksichtigen zudem kaum das lange selbstverständliche Nebeneinander und den regen Austausch von lateinischer und volkssprachlicher Dichtung selbst in hochklassischer Zeit. Während der Glanz jähre der Plèiade erschienen in Paris schätzungsweise zehnmal mehr poetische Bücher in lateinischer Sprache als auf französisch. Auch wenn sich dieses Verhältnis schnell und grundlegend verändern sollte, so gibt es dennoch bis weit in das 18. Jahrhundert hinein Schulmeister, welche die französische Sprache lediglich als eine Hinführung zum Latein betrachteten, obwohl sich in den Provinzakademien schon längst die Discouis contre la latinité des modernes häuften und die kritischen Abhandlungen über den Niedergang der neulateinischen Dichtkunst immer zahlreicher wurden. Den Zusammenhang zwischen lateinischer und französischer Literatur belegen indes nicht nur Übersetzungen ins Lateinische. Die im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert nicht selten mehrsprachigen Dichter lieferten neulateinische Versionen sowohl von der Lyrik ihrer Freimde als auch von eigenen Versen. Poetische Sammelbände vereinigen französische und lateinische Texte oder stellen Original und Übersetzung demonstrativ nebeneinander. Santeuils Hymnen, Les jardins von René Rapin, die Romane Barclays oder von Zacharie de Lisieux wurden in zeitgenössischen französischen Übersetzungen gleichermaßen erfolgreich wie Corneille mit einem lateinischen Gedicht über den flandrischen Feldzug 1667 allgemeine Bewunderung erntete; es wurde nicht nur französisch übersetzt, sondern wiederum in lateinischer Sprache nachgeahmt. Gewiß sind manche dieser neulateinischen Übersetzungen gebildeter Zeitvertreib, Gesellschaftsspiel oder Schaustellung der eigenen Virtuosität. Doch gibt es auch andere Motive, wie McFarlane^ anhand vieler, zum Teil sogar in Einzeldrucken verbreiteter Übertragungen von Ronsards Gedichten belegt.^ Im späteren 16. Jahrhundert war Ronsard nicht allein in Frankreich erklärtes Vorbild der neulateinischen Dichter, sondern wurde auch von Ausländem, wie dem Deutschen Paul Schede Melissus — er übersetzte auch Jodelle und Baïf ins Lateinische— dem Schotten Thomas Biccarton, dem Niederländer François de Thoor oder dem Portugiesen Antonio de Gouveia verehrt imd in die lingua franca der Gebildeten übertragen. Solche Übersetzvmgen sollten weniger volkssprachliche Dichtimg in lateinischer Gewandung vornehmer oder ihr gar Konkurrenz machen, als vielmehr Frankreichs Literatur in Europa als ermutigendes Vorbild Verbreitung verschaffen und den Vorrang der französischen Kultur bekräftigen. Ronsards Freund Scévole de Sainte-Marthe brachte in der Poetica parapbrasis ... Sylvarum libri II, Paris, 1575, p. 37r, ein Gedicht auf seine neulateinische Übersetzung von Auszügen der Franciade. Zwei weitere Abschnitte daraus fügte Denis Lambert seinem Kommentar der Horazschen Ars poßticu, Paris, 1567, pars U, pp. 359-361, bei— fünf Jahre vor Erscheinen des Epos, dessen Vorwort sich dann allerdings scharf von den grécaniseurs und latineurs distanziert! — zum Beweis, "ut intelligant exterae nationes quae et qualia ingenia efferat nostra Gallia, et quantopere apud nos floreant bonae litterae, Uberalesque doctrinae" (p. 359). Nach 1580 kommt es jedoch keineswegs zum "waning of the massive craze

wie McFarlane (a.a.O., p. 197) andeutet. Im Gegenteil, ihren ersten großen internationalen Durchbruch erzielt die religiös inspirierte französische Dichtung eines Du Bartas und der Georgette de Montenay in la-

for translation,"

DIETRICH BRIESEMEISTER

20/

teinischer Sprache. Das didaktische Alexandrinerepos La Sepmaine ou Création du Monde des Hugenotten Salluste Du Bartas erschien 1578/1579 und wurde trotz seines schwierigen Prunkstils bei den Protestanten sofort begeistert aufgenommen. Schon kurz darauf erschien die erste, in knapp zwei Monaten vollendete lateinische Übersetzung von Jean-Edouard Du Monin (1558-1586)^

mit dem gelehrt-hebraisierenden Titel Beresithias, sive mundi cieatio, Paris, 1579. Du Monin war zunächst ein fanatischer latineui, der sich beklagt, "quod Galli omnia pene Gallice scribant" (p. 116) und bedauert, daß der von ihm so verehrte Ronsard nicht lateinisch schreibt, was allein europäische Wirkung eröffne imd den Rückfall des Landes in "gotische Barbarei" verhindern könne. Die zweite lateinische Übersetzung von Gabriel de Lerm erschien 1583 in Paris (nicht 1573!) mit dem Titel Hebdomas (Nachdrucke 1584, London 1591 und Genf 1596); sie ist Königin Elisabeth I. von England gewidmet und steht am Anfang der europäischen Wirkungsgeschichte dieses Werkes. Im Danksagimgssonett an den Übersetzer spricht Ehi Bartas aus, daß er sich bewußt ist, was diese lateinische Hexameterfassung seines Epos strategisch für die Wirkung im Ausland beim Wettstreit mit Ronsards Fianciade bedeutet. Lerm seinerseits stellt sich selbstbewußt dieser Aufgabe und gibt die Sepmaine heraus "vestue toutes fois a la latine pour estre cognue des estrangers, et a donner leur conuoiteux soucy: c'est tousjours son estoffe, mais de ma façon" (p. a iiijr), um sich als truchement auch im Ruhm des übersetzten Autors zu sonnen (p. a vr). Mit einem dritten Anlauf versuchte sich der aus Gent stammende Niederländer Hadrian Damman de Bysterveldt, den George Buchanan als Lehrer nach Schottland gerufen hatte, im genus grande an der Sepmaine: Bartasias, de mundi creatione libri Septem e ... Septimana, poemate francico, liberius tralati et multis locis aucti, Edinburgh, 1600. Die von Du Bartas nicht vollendete zweite Sepmaine erschien 1609 in Lyon in der lateinischen Fassung von Samuel Benoît (Benedictus). Sie preist Du Bartas als "poetarum nostri saeculi facile Princeps" im Titel an, obwohl, damals bereits deutlich erkennbar, seine Wirkvmg in Frankreich selbst gegen die neue klassische Stilrichtung

mehr zur vollen Entfaltimg gelangen konnte. In Leipzig kam schließlich 1616 eine Ausgabe heraus, die beide Teile, sorgfältig mit Anmerkungen und Periochen versehen, vereinigte und das Schöpfungsgedicht als Muster für die

nicht

Poesis sacra vorstellte.^ Mit reformatorischen theologischen Fragen ist auch die Dichtung der Georgette de Montenay verknüpft, die am Hof von Navarra lebte und nach der Bartholomäusnacht in Genf Zuflucht fand. Ihre Emblèmes ou devises chrestiermes, Lyon, 1571, erschienen 1584 in Zürich in einer lateinisch-französischen Ausgabe. ^° Die zahlreichen in lateinischer Fassung international verbreiten französischen Werke der Devisen und Emblemkimst müßten, beginnend mit Claude Paradins Devises Héroïques, Lyon, 1551 —Symboiû Heroica, Antwerpen, 1562, fünf weitere Auflagen bis 1600— eigens untersucht werden.ii

Die von neostoizistischer Lebensweisheit geprägten Quatrains moraux (1574) des Guy Du Faur Pibrac (1529-1584) blieben ein Jahrhundert hindurch in vielen (vor allem lateinischen) Übersetzungen als Erziehungsbuch in pro-

testantischen Kreisen Europas ein Riesenerfolg. Die erste polyglotte Ausgabe

NEULATEINISCHE ÜBERSETZUNGEN

208

der 126 Merkgedichte veranstaltete der Hugenotte Florent Chrestien: Tetiasticba, Paris, 1584.^^ In Frankreich erschienen 1584-1585 mindestens drei verschiedene, mehrfach nachgedruckte lateinische Versionen. ^^ In Deutschland übersetzte Voir ad von Plessen, ein Berater des Kurfürsten Friedrich IV. von der Pfalz (1574-1610), die Quatrains in schwierige Senare.^'* Nach 1661 griff der Bremer Schulrektor Martin Nessel, sowohl auf Forent Chrestien als auch auf Martin Opitzens deutscher Übersetzung fußend, voll des Lobes für Du Faurs "incorrupta probitas, verus pietatis et de Re publica sensus morum comitas" auf die Quatrains zurück, die er erweitert auf lateinisch herausbringt. ^^ In den sechziger Jahren des 17. Jahrhunderts erregen sie merkwürdigerweise noch einmal das Interesse mehrerer Übersetzer. ^^ Der südfranzösische Ratsherr ist jedoch nicht nur durch seine Lebensweisheit, sondern auch durch ein bukolisches Gedicht Lesplaisiis de la vie rustique, Lyon, 1574, bekannt geworden, das zuerst 1598 in Paris und dann 1605 von Sébastien Rouillard^^ + 1639), einem Freund von Justus Lipsius, vervollständigt ins Lateinische übersetzt erschien. Chronologisch eröffnet sich nun bei den neulateinischen Übersetzungen französischer Literatur zunächst eine Lücke von fast fünfzig Jahren. die Wende zum 17. Jahrhimdert kommen in Deutschland nur einige lateinische Flugschriften heraus, die wahrscheinlich auf französische Vorlagen aus der Zeit der Religionskriege zurückgehen. Der Polyhistor Kaspar Barth, der mit lateinischen Übersetzimgen spanischer Literatur hervortrat, gab eine zweite lateinische Version von Philippe de Commines Mémoires heraus (Frankfurt 1629); diese hatten, von Joharmes Sleidanus übersetzt und teils mit Froissart und Claude Seyssel zusammengedruckt, bereits zwischen 1545 und 1599 über ein halbes Dutzend Auflagen erlebt. Auch der junge Georg Philipp Harsdörffer begann seine Laufbalm um 1620 u.a. mit der Übersetzimg politischer Schriften aus dem Französischen ins Lateinische.^^ Bühnenwerke sind allerdings im Laufe von fast drei Jahrhunderten unter den lateinischen Übersetzungen sehr selten geblieben. Auch sprachlich am interessantesten ist die älteste, nämlich die Bearbeitung der Farce Maître Patbelin durch den Humanisten Johann Reuchlin = Alexander Connibert) zu einer lateinischen Studentenkomödie: Comedia nova que veterator inscribitur, alias Patbelinus, ex peculiari lingua in romanum traductum eloquium, Paris, um 1512 (bearbeiteter ? Nachdruck 1543). Im 17. Jahrhundert soll Santeuil mehrerere Corneille-Stücke auf lateinisch gefaßt haben (A. Vissac: Tableau de la poésie latine en France au siècle de Louis XIV, Paris, 1879, p. 208) An Corneilles Nicomède versuchte sich noch 1764 in Ungarn der Jesuit Paul . . .

(

Mako. Aus der französischen Lyrik des frühen

17. Jahrhunderts kam ein erbauliches Gelegenheitsgedicht zu erstaunlichem Erfolg: das erstmals in den häufig aufgelegten Oeuvres chrestiennes (1634) enthaltene Poeme sur la vie de Jesus Christ von Robert Amauld d'Andilly, Sieur de la Pomponne (1588-1674), dem ältesten Sohn von Antoine Amauld. Zu Nutz und Frommen des Orbis cbristianus, das heißt wohl jansenistischer Gläubiger, wurde es in drei verschiedenen lateinischen Übersetzungen verbreitet. ^^ Amaulds Ode surla solitude wurde ebenfalls in lateinischer Fassung von Pierre Bastide {Solitudinis deli-

DIETRICH BRIESEMEISTER

209

und in Sammelbänden wiederholt bis ins 18. Jahrhundert gedruckt. Im späteren 17. Jahrhundert hat die zeitgenössische französische Dichtimg die neulateinischen Sprachkünstler wieder stärker gereizt. Bernard de la Monnoye übersetzte nicht nur Fragmente von Guarinis Pastoi Fido, sondern auch Boileau, Sarasin sowie die beiden berühmten Sonette Joh von Benserade und die 1649 der Streit zwischen Uranistes La beauté d'Uianie von Voiture, und Jobelins ausgebrochen war.^ Der normarmische Oratorianer Nicolas du Bourget de Chaulieu (1642-1721) brachte eines der bedeutendsten Kurzepen des französischen Marinismus von Germain Habert (1604-1654),^^ Les Métamorphoses des yeux de Pbillis en asties (1639), in lateinische Verse. Für Desmarests de Saint-Sorlin war dieses seinerzeit als Meisterwerk der neuen Lyrik geltende Gedicht 1667 immerhin der Beweis dafür, daß die Modernen die Alten an "esprit fin, et doux, et délicat" unendlich übertreffen. Ein hervorragendes Beispiel sowohl für die intensive Aneignimg klassischer Autoren durch die Neulateiner als auch für die Stellxmg der neulateinischen Dichtung im Rahmen der zeitgenössischen Literatur bietet Boileau. Sein über Jahrzehnte hinweg mit Brossette geführter Briefwechsel spiegelt das komplizierte Verhältnis zwischen neulateinischer und französischer Literatur. ^^ Boileau macht keinen Hehl aus seiner Geringschätzung für die Neulateiner (Brief vom 22. 7. 1669, t. 1, p. 29, sa. 6. 10. 1701 und 10. 12. 1701). Schon als junger Mann wollte er eine (fragmentarisch erhaltene) lateinische Satire schreiben "contre les Poètes François qui s'appliquent à faire des vers latins" (in Oeuvies, t. 2, Amsterdam 1729, p. 274)." Brossette übersandte Boileau immer wieder neulateinische Gedichte, konsultierte ihn in lateinischen Übersetzungs- imd Stilfragen, erörterte mit ihm die Frage, ob es auch in der Gegenwart noch möglich sei, korrekt lateinisch zu sprechen und zu dichten, ja er interessierte sich für die nicht wenigen lateinischen Fassungen von Boileaus Werken. Spöttisch schlug Boileau seinem Freund vor, in der Akademie von Lyon doch einmal die Frage erörtern zu lassen "Si on peut bien écrire dans une langue morte?" Demgegenüber ist Boileaus Verhältnis zu den neulateinischen Übersetzungen seiner eigenen Werke nicht konsequent. In der Préface zur Ausgabe der Oeuvies (1694) rechtfertigte er sich für die Aufnahme dreier lateinischer Übersetzungen seiner Ode sui la lepiise de Namui durch Lenglet und Charles Rollin, die 1692/1693 in Paris separat erschienen waren, sowie durch J. B. de Saint-Rémi (P. de la Landelle, S. J.) mit dem Argument: "Ces traductions ont été généralement admirées"; dies ehrte ihn. Andererseits äußerte er Brossette gegenüber nur geringes Interesse an den ihn gewidmeten lateinischen Übersetzimgen, als dieser ihn um Einsicht darin bat; er habe sie verschenkt oder verlegt (Brief vom 7. 8. 1708, t. 2, p. 236). Daraufhin will er sie künftig sorgfältiger aufbewahren: "Je vois bien que dans peu il n'y aura pas une de mes pieces qui ne soit traduite car le feu y est dans l'Université." Im Jahr zuvor schon hatte Boileau auf Brossettes Bitte um Zusendung lateinischer Übersetzungen geanwortet: "que voulez vous que je vous envoie, il y en a un si grand nombre, qu'il faudroit que la poste eût im cheval exprès pour les porter toutes" (Brief vom 24. 11. 1707, t. 2, p. 208). ^^ Und spöttisch triumphiert er: "Me voilà Poète latin confirmé dans toute l'Université" (6. 12. ciae, Paris, 1664)

NEULATEINISCHE ÜBERSETZUNGEN

210

1707,

1, p. 212).

Brossette sprach angesichts der sich häiifenden lateinischen

Versionen Boileauscher Werke von einer "heureuse conspiration," te,

daß Sie bald

alle auf lateinisch vorliegen

wurden

ja er hoff-

(19. 11. 1707, p. 201).

Schließlich zeigte sich Boileau zufrieden über Brossettes positives Urteil zu selbst sechs weitere gedruckte Übersetzungen auf, "qui ont toutes leur mérite" (6. 12. 1707,

den lateinischen Fassungen seiner Gedichte und führte sogar

2, p. 212). Brossette wiederum schmeichelte ihm mit dem Hinweis, daß diese Übersetzimgen in lauterem Latein (latinité pure, naïveté d'Horace, exactitude admirable) für den Dichter höchst ehrenvoll seien. Es gebe nämlich keine Zeugnisse dafür, daß je lateinische Werke eines antiken Autors zu dest.

sen Lebzeiten ins Griechische oder eine andere Sprache übersetzt worden wären (t. 2, p. 197). Sechsundzwanzig Jahre nach Boileaus Tod veranstaltete der ehemalige Rektor der Pariser Uiüversität Michel Godeau eine lateinische Ausgabe der Werke Boileaus, deren Approbation kühn behauptet (p. 452), "que les expressions Latines dévelopoient souvent ses pensées, avec plus de force et de l'éclat, qu'il n'avoit pu faire en notre langue." Der Band enthält außer Godeaus eigener Übersetzung der Satires, Epîtzes sowie der An poétique die in Paris 1707/1708 gedrucken Bücher eins und fünf von Le lutrin (Pluteum) in der Version von Denis Bizot, eines Rhetorikprofessors, (Neuauflagen Paris 1767, 1780 mit einem Discours préliminaire sur les auteurs qui ont traduit le Lutrin) .^^ Ferner fügt er einige Einzelübersetzungen von Satiren, Episteln und Gedichten bei, die noch zu ergänzen wären durch die Satira VIQ) ad doctorem sorbonicum, Paris, 1669 (von J. Maure), die ersten fünfzig Verse des Lutrin durch La Monnoye (erw. Ausg., pp. 234-39) und die von Brossette im Brief vom 26. 6. 1708 (t. 2, p. 231) zitierte Übersetzimg der sechsten Satire durch den Lyoner Oratorianer Sébastien du Treuil (1684-1754). Zu den seltsamsten Zeugnissen aus dem Übersetzerwettstreit um Boileaus Werke gehört schließlich das Buch (

Latinae et gallicae Linguae experimentum, sive Certamen quod ibi ludit Boelaeus versibus latinis et Juvenalis rhytbmis gallicis personatus. Essay de la langue latine et de la françoise ou un combat entre l'une et l'autre par la traduction des satyres du sieur Boileau en vers latins et au contraire de celles de Juvénal en vers françois ex ingenio et opera T. D.M., Toulouse, 1677.

Jahrhundert beherrschen drei große Namen das Feld der lateinischen dem Französischen: La Fontaine, Fénelon und Voltaire. Wie Boileau gehörten Fénelon und La Fontaine zu den Schulautoren. Ein Projet de règlement d'études an der Pariser Faculté des Arts sah 1762 die Lektüre u.a. ausgewählter Abschnitte aus dem Télémaque, der schönsten Fabeln La Fontaines sowie der Epitres und Satires Boileaus vor.^^ Die lateinischen Fabelübersetzungen^^ hängen offensichtlich mit den Schulerfordemissen zusammen, sie stammen zumeist von Lehrern imd erscheinen in häufig nachgedruckten, kommentierten und expurgierten Ausgaben. Besonders erfolgreich waren die Pabulae selectae der Oratorianer Modeste Vinot 1 692- 1751) imd Pierre Tissard 1 666- 1 740) - zuerst Troyes, 1 696 - sowie ihres Ordensbruders J. B. Giraud (Rouen 1769 u.ö.). Von Henri Delfault übersetzt,

18.

Übersetzungen aus

(

DIETRICH BRIESEMEISTER

211

erschienen Selectae fabulae La Fontaines 1694 in Amsterdam. Als Lehrer des de Bourgogne übertrug Fénelon etwa zur gleichen Zeit ebenfalls La Fontaines Fabeln in lateinische Prosa. ^® S. F. Bertrand ließ 1749 in Nantes Quaedam Fontani Fabulae senanis veisibus ledditae herausbringen. Ausgerechnet der erste Inhaber eines Lehrstuhls für neue französische Literatur am Collège Royal, Jean-Louis Aubert, übersetzte gelegentlich Fabeln von François-Joseph Terrasse Desbillons S.J., eines der berühmten fabulistes des 18. Jahrhunderts, auf lateinisch. Zum Freundesdreis des am Mannheimer Hof im Exil lebenden Desbillons gehörte dort auch der Oratorianer N. Caux de Cappeval (seit 1760 in Mannheim, gestorben etwa 1793). Dieser stand mit Voltaire in Briefwechsel und plante nicht nur eine neulateinische Übersetzung von Jean Chapelains Epos La Pucelle ou la France délivrée (Paris 1656), sondern auch von Voltaires Henriade.^^ Nur letztere erschien jedoch nach langjährigen, bis in die Jugendzeit zurückgehenden Vorbereitungen und Vorabdrucken (Chant premier vielleicht im Mercure de France, juin 1746, vol. 2) mit der Widmung an Kurfürst Karl Theodor 1772 in Zweibrücken/Paris. ^° Die 1723 veröffentlichte Henriade hatte Voltaires europäischen Ruhm begründet. Das Epos feiert König Heinrich rv. als Inbegriff von Bürgersinn, Vaterlandsliebe, Toleranz und Vorbild eines aufgeklärten, milden Herrschers. Daher empfiehlt es Caux de Cappeval auch seinem fürstlichen Gönner mit den Worten: "L'histoire de ce héros semble être la votre" (2. Ausg. 1775, p. viii) und stellt die Übersetzung des livre classique in zweisprachiger Ausgabe als Lektüre für die Jugend gerade auch im Ausland in den Rahmen schulischer Erziehung (p. XVm). Es sei zwar in alle Sprachen übersetzbar, "mais le plus sûr moyen de la produire aux yeux du monde entier, ne seroit-ce pas de l'habiller à la Romaine?" (p. XII). Nach dem Vorbild Vergils wollte Voltaire das Epos erneuern; diese geistige Nähe erleichtert dem Übersetzer die schwierige Aufgabe, denn "il faudroit des Virgiles pour traduire les Voltaires, et des Voltaires pour traduire les Virgiles" (p. XXX). Lateinische Verse seien der Würde des Epos am besten angemessen und ließen die Henriade als "templum quodammodo poeseos, veritatis, theatrum, decus historiae, virtutis heroicae schola quaedam, ac triumphus ipse religionis" (p. XIX) in hellstem Licht erscheinen.^' Die außerordentliche Beliebtheit von Fénelons Suite du quatrième livre de l'Odyssée d'Homère ou les aventures de Télémaque, fils d'Ulysse (1699/1717) gründet einerseits auf dem Ansehen des Erzbischofs und dem pädagogischdidaktischen Interesse des Werkes, andererseits aber auch auf dessen literarisch-stilistischen Qualitäten. Fénelon war ein hervorragender Kenner der klassischen Antike. Sein "Bildungsroman" stellt eine Fundgrube dar für den Freund der Altertumswissenschaft. Die wohlgeformte Sprache mit ihren epischen Vergleichen, Epitheta, Periphrasen und Bildern mußte die latineurs geradezu herausfordern, zumal die literarische Kritik den Télémaque bei Erscheinen der vom Autor gebilligten Fassung als Krone aller Epen einstufte. Außerdem wurde es zur damaligen Zeit als Utopie — "Staatsroman"— einer weisen, freiheitlich verfaßten Welt verstanden, in dem die Vorzüge und Nachteile der verschiedenen Staatsformen erörtert und ein Idealbild des Herrschers für schwierige sittlich-politische Konfliktsituationen gezeichnet wurden. Die

Duc

212

NEULATEINISCHE ÜBERSETZUNGEN

ersten fünf Bücher sollen 1729 in metrischer Fassung (man dachte von Anfang an daran, Fénelons Prosaepos in Verse zu bringen) von einem Professor der Universität Caen — Heurtant oder Her ault^^— vorgetragen worden sein. Die älteste lateinische Téiémûgue-Ubersetzung stammt jedoch aus Ungarn (1706) und ist bruchstückhaft erhalten. ^^ In den Odes sacrées. Poésies diverses des aus Martinique gebürtigen Pierre de Bologne erschien 1758 (pp. 197-224) der Eröffnungsgesang mit Widmung an Kardinal Quirini. In Deutschland sind, abgesehen von mehreren Fassungen in der Landessprache seit 1700, allein drei lateinische Übersetzimgen des Télémaque entstanden. Die anonyme Prachtausgabe der Fata Telemacbi, Berlin, 1743, bietet eine hexametrische Wiedergabe möglicherwiese aufgrund der deutschen Verseinrichtung von Benjamin Neukirch, Die Begebenheiten des Pnntzen von Ithaca, 1727-1739. Schon 1744 folgte in Frankfurt eine Prosafassung von dem Ulmer Prälaten und Kaiserlichen Rat Gregor Trautwein, Telemachus, "ob amoenissimam tum tradendae, tmn addiscendae Christianae politices methodum nitidiore Latinitate donatus."^ Die dritte lateinische Übersetzung innerhalb von fünfzehn Jahren steuerte Joseph Claude Destouches bei, ein Hofrat des bayerischen Kurfürsten Maximilian Joseph, dem der Prachtdruck als Fürstenspiegel in freier metrischer Zusammenfassung zugeeignet ist: Telemach Ulyssis fihus, seu Exeicitatio ethica moralis ...in carmen heioicum translata, München, 1759; Augsburg, 1764. Aus dem späten 18. Jahrhundert stammt eine weitere metrische Fassung der Gebrüder José und Joaquin Henrîquez de Luna y Rojas, Telemachi Peregrinationes, Madrid, o.J. Ebenfalls noch vor Ende des 18. Jahrhunders entstand die gute Übersetzimg des aus Louisiana gebürtigen Oratorianers Etienne Alexandre Viel (1736-1821), der 1791 in seine amerikanische Heimat zurückkehrte. Seine Schüler gaben die Telemachiados libri XXIV in Paris 1802 heraus (Neuauflage 1814). Noch ein anderer didaktisch-philosophischer Roman hatte nach seinem Erscheinen 1767 schlagartig riesigen Erfolg in Europa errungen und wurde in Deutschland sogar als Schullektüre empfohlen: Jean-François Marmontels Béhsaire. Bevor die deutsche Fassung dieses in Romanform gekleideten moralphilosophischen Traktats vorlag, erschien die von Michael Horvath besorgte lateinische Übersetzung Belisarius, Wien 1771. Diese Panoramaskizze der neulateinischen Übersetzungen französischer Literaturwerke offenbart eine ungeahnte Fülle und einen fast unbeachteten Aspekt der europäischen Rezeption französischer Dichtung zwischen dem 16. und 18. Jahrhundert. Die von den "Messieurs les latins" (Louis Le Laboureur) hervorgebrachten Übersetzungen sind gewiß nicht nur müßige oder pedantische Spielereien von Schulfüchsen, die einer vergangen Zeit nachliefen. Diese Übersetzimgsbemühimgen repräsentieren einen bis in die Spätaufklärung hinein kräftig ausgeprägten humanistischen Unterstrom, dem die bissige Kritik eines Jean Le Clerc jedenfalls nicht gerecht wird: "Les poètes latins modernes ressemblent aux Anciens, comme les singes ressemblent aux . . .

hommes. "^^ Johannes Gutenberg Universität

Mainz

DIETRICH BRIESEMEISTER

213

Notes 1. W. Leonard Grant: "Eiiropean Vernacular Works in Latin Translation," in Studies in the Renaissance, 1 (1954), pp. 120-56. 2. Paul van Tieghem: La littéiatuie latine de la Renaissance. Etude d'historié littéiaiie européenne, Genève (repr.), 1966, p. 239. Dietrich Briesemeister: "La difusión europea de la literatura espanola en el siglo XVn a través de traducciones neolatinas," in Iberoromania, 7 (1978), pp. 3-17.

Hierfür nur drei bezeichnende Beispiele: Pierre Boaistuau (1517-1566), ein

erfolgreicher volkstümlicher Kompilator, übersetzte seine französisch geschrie-

benen Werke Le Théâtre du Monde (1558) und Le href discours de l'excellence dignité de

Ihomme

(1558) ins Laternische. Blaise Pascals Les Provinciales (1656/57)

lagen bereits 1658 (Köln) in einer mehrfach später nachgedruckten lateinischen Übersetzung vor. Nicolas Malebranche gab die lateinische Fassung seiner Recherche de la vérité in Auftrag. 4. Frédéric Lachèvre: Bibhographie des recueils collectifs de poésies du XVIe siècle,

Genève

(repr.),

1967.

Bernard Beugnot: "Débats autour du latin dans la France classique," in Acta N-L Amstel, pp. 93-106. 6. I. D. McFarlane: "Pierre de Ronsard and the Neo-latin Poetry of his Time," in Res Publica Litterarum. Studies in the Classical Tradition, 1 (1978), pp. 177-205. 7. Pierre Ronsard, Hymnus in Bacchum, Paris, 1555 (übersetzt von Jean Dorat, mit französischem Text); Exhortatio ad milites Gallos, Paris 1558 (übersetzt J. 5.

Henricum III e gallicis versibus latinis reddita a F. Thorio, Paris, Calaidis et Zethiae e Gallico Latine expressus a Jacobo Grenerio, Paris, 1586 (mit französischem Text). Claude Faisant, "Un des aspects de la réaction humaniste à la fin du XVIe siècle, la paraphrase latine des poètes français," Dorat); Pax, ad

1559;

Hymnus

N-L Amstel, pp. 358-70. Jean-Pierre Nicéron, Mémoires

in Acta 8.

pour

servir à histoire des

hommes

illustres

30, pp. 198-206 (repr. Genève, 1971); Claude-Pierre Goujet, Bibhothèque françoise, Paris, 1748, t. 12, pp. 373-80 (repr. Genève 1966); A.-M. Schmidt, La Poésie scientifique en France au XVIe siècle (Pa-

dans la Répubhque des Lettres,

Paris, 1735,

Der manipulus poeticus im Anhang zur Beresithias enthält u.a. einige Du Monins, p. 45 und 80. 9. Die seit 1619 von Tobias Hübner erarbeitete deutsche Übersetzung der beiden Sepmaines entsteht im Kreis der Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft in Köthen, unweit von Leipzig, und schließt eng an die lateinische Vorlage an. ris,

1970).

lateinische Petrarca-Übersetzungen

10.

1602.

Emblematum christianorum centuria, Heidelberg, Monumenta Emblematum Christianorum virtutum, tum pohticarum, tum

Verschiedene Nachdrucke,

oeconomicaium, chorum centuria una adumbrantia, Frankfurt, 1619 (polyglotte Ausgabe).

Mario Praz, Studies in Seventeenth Century Imagery (Rom^, 1964), siehe J. Jacques Boissard, Desmarests de Saint-Sorlin, Antoine Du Chaffat, Jacques Le Vasseur, Claude-François Menestrier, Charles Perrault. 11.

u.a. Paul de Barry,

12.

Chrestien übersetzte außer Sophokles, Aristophanes und Euripides Aischylos

ins Lateinische; vgl. Brigitte Jacobsen, Florent Chrestien. Ein Protestant manist in Frankreich zur Zeit der Religionskriege (München, 1973). 13.

Anatole

Faur de Pibrac, Catalogue des ouvrages et éditions de

und Hu-

Guy du

NEULATEINISCHE ÜBERSETZUNGEN

214

Faui, seigneur de Pibiac, depuis 1542 jusqu'à nos jouis (Orléans, 1901), war mir nicht zugänglich. Gnomica ex Gallicis TetTasticbis Latina disticba facta, auctoie

Jacobo Guionio Heduo, Paris, 1584; Piaecepta naoialia, heioicis versibus expiessa ab Augusto Prevotio (A. Le Prévost), Paris, 1584, 1618; Tetiasticha gallica distichis latinis leddita a Joanne Richaxdo, Paris, 1585 (mit einer Versepistel von Pierre Carpentier).

Guy Du

Faur de Pibrac, Piaecepta ethica, sive legulae vitae ... peipetuis Herbom, 1588; im Anhang finden sich einige Rime des Ariosto in lateinischer Übersetzung. 15. Guy Du Faur de Pibrac, Nucleus doctrìnae etprudentiae civilis, sive Regulae vitae, quas pulchenimis sententiis, et lotundissimis Gallicis tetiastichis complexus est ... nunc Latinis, ac geminatis tetiastichis, commodo studiosae juventutis expiessit M. Maitinus Nesselius, Bremen, 1661. 16. Tetiasticha a Caiolo Feviet ... viio octogenano latine leddita, Toulouse, 1664; Tetiasticha gaUica, latine disticata, Paris 1666 (zwei Ausgaben, Übersetzer Nicolas Harbet); Les Quatiains du sieui de Pibiac, contenans une excellente moiale, tiaduits en veis iambiques ... pai F. Le Gal, Paris, 1668. 17. Agiochaiis, sive De luiis giatia et vitae lusticae laudibus, Paris, 1605, mit französischem Text. Rouillard schrieb auch das zweisprachige Gedicht Agiochaiitis ad Maitem. De agioium vastitate, et lusticomm belli tempoie miseiiis. 18. Richaid Nev/ald, Die deutsche Liteiatui vom Späthumanismus zui Empfindsamkeit 1570-1750 (München, 1963), p. 213. 19. De vita Chiisti caimen, übersetzt von Pierre Bastide, einem Priester ("Non est hoc artis, sed pietatis opus") Latina inteipietatio ... poematis gaUici ...De lebus a Chiisto gestis consciipti, autore Petro Bastideo Tausiano, Paris 1650; ^1664, auch in Amaulds Oeuvies chiestiennes, Paris, '1659, pp. 2-101 (mit französischem Text); Poemata varia gallica, latinis veisibus leddita a Petio Bastideo Tausiano, Toulouse, 1667. Femer von Jean de Montagut (Montaigu), Toulouse 1664, sowie von dem Theologen Gaspard de Varadier de Saint-Andiol, Arles, 1680; vgl. 14.

senaiiis latine expiessae,

Goujet, Paris 1756, t. 17, p. 338. Varadiers Juvenilia, Arles, 1679, enthalten lateinische Fassungen von provenzalischer Lyrik, von Gedichten Malherbes, Ben-

imd Corneilles sowie eine lateinisch-französische Gedichtfolge von Templery über die Sieben Todsünden. 20. Bernard de la Monnoye, Poésies, La Haye, 1716, p. 222ff. serades, des Tristan l'Hermite

metamoiphosis, sive paiaphiasis, Caen, 1677; auch Opeia miscellanea, Caen, co.J., pp. 33-50, s.a. pp. 155-175 "De origine, progressu, perfectione et occasu latinae poeseos dissertatio." 22. Letties familieies de Messieuis Boileau Despieaux et Biossette, Lyon 1770. 23. Vgl. Dialogue contie les modernes qui font des veis latins, in Boileau: 21. Phyllidis oculi in astia

in Chaulieus

Oeuvies, ed.

p. 167, Brief

vom

229-34; Letties familieies, t. 1, "Zur Stellung der neulateinischen Dichtimg in der französischen Klassik," in Die Neueien Spiachen, 67 (1968), pp. 490-505, hier 497f. 24. Namuicum expugnatum. Ex Gallico Nicolai Despieaux, Paris 1692 (P. de Lenglet); Ode in expugnationem Namuicae, Paris 1693 (C. Rollin, mit französischem Text), auch in Boileau, Opeia e Gallicis numeiis in Latinos tianslata a M. Godeau, Paris, 1737. Antoine Sabatier de Castres: Les tiois siècles de la littéiatuie fiançoise ou Tableau de l'espiiit de nos éciivains depuis Fiançois lei, jusqu'à jouis, Paris,

Bainville,

Amsterdam

2, (Paris, 1928), pp.

10. 1701; Dietrich Briesemeister,

1774,

2, p. 257f., schreibt,

daß M. Godeau

"n'est

connu que

DIETRICH BRIESEMEISTER

215

par la peine inutile qu'il s'est donnée de traduire en vers latins ou plutôt de travestir en vers latins de Despréaux. Le Virgile de Scarron approche plus de l'Enéide, ridicule, de son original!" Jahrhundert sind mir lateinische Übersetzungen des Lutiin durch J.-J. Laval (1824) imd Joseph Dalidon (1846) bekannt. Die Art poétique wurde von Abbé Paul (Lyon 1804), J.-A. Chambonnet (Paris 1820) imd J.-J. Laval (Paris 1822) übertragen. 26. Ferdinand Brunot, Histoire de la langue française des orìgines à 1900 (Paris

que cette Traduction 25.

Aus dem

19.

1926), t. 7, p. 97f. 27. Jean-Pierre CoUinet, "La fable néolatine avant et après

N-L Amstel., taine," in

pp. 244-57; R.

La Fontaine," in Actû

Desmed: "Une traduction latine des Fables de La Fon-

Latomus, 23 (1964), pp. 86-93. f. de La Fontaine, traduites en prose latine par François

28. Fables choisies de

de Salignac Fénelon. Introd. J. Bézy, Paris, 1904. 29. Vgl. Voltaire: Correspondence. Ed. Theodore Besterman, (Genève, 19531977), Nr. 6507, 6770, 16892 (über die Henriade-Übersetzung). 30. Zweite, verbesserte Auflage Mannheim, 1775, imd mehrere Nachdrucke, jeweils mit französischem Originaltext. 31. Eine weitere vollständige lateinische Versübersetzung der Henriade erschien in Paris 1811 "autore L.B. eloquentiae quondam professore." Sie entstand wahrscheinlich ebenso wie die Übersetzimg des achten Buches durch den Oratorianer François Etienne Bernard Alexandre Viel (abgedruckt in seinen Miscellanea latinogallica, Paris 1816) noch Ende des 18. Jahrhimderts. 32. Erwähnt in Telemachiados libri XXIV (E. A. Viel), Paris 1808, p. VI. 33. Béla Köpeczi, "Fénelon Telemachosànak elsö magyarorszâgi forditàsi kisérlete," in Filológiae Közlöny, 15 (1969), pp. 1-18. Femer Andor Tamai, "Lateinische Übersetzimgen französischen Schrifttimas im Ungarn des 18. Jahrhunderts," in Acta N-L Amstel., pp. 976-82. 34. Im gelehrten Vorwort bezieht sich Traut wein auf die lateinische Version des Hérault imd auf die beiden deutschen Übersetzungen von Ph. B. Sinold v. Schütz = L. E. von Faramond), 1733, und Benjamin Neukirch. Trautweins Fassung erschien 1750 in Ungarn und wurde 1758 in Stuttgart/Esslingen mit deutschsprachigen philologischen Kommentaren für den Schulgebrauch erneut aufgelegt. (

35. In Parrhasiana,

Amsterdam

1699,

1, p. 3.

Langage et Théologie selon le Cicewnianus d'Erasme G. Cbantiaine L'idée d'éloquence

Pourquoi Erasme critique-t-il les cicéroniens qui s'en tiennent à imtermes de leur modèle? Parce qu'ils "n'expriment pas vraientièrement Cicéron."^ Erasme n'a pas d'autre raison. Elle lui vient de son idée de l'éloquence. Pour lui, c'est la réalité qui se dit ellemême par les mots. "Res ipsa loquitur," comme il le répète partout. "Res ipsa clamitat," comme il dit dans le CiceTonianus.^ La réalité fournit à l'orateur l'abondance de son discours, comme les sentiments vrais et natifs. C'est ainsi seulement que son discours aura de la vie et du souffle, de l'action, du mouvement, de l'élan et l'exprimera tout entier.^ Réciproquement, les mots font connaître la réalité en la dévoilant, mais on peut aussi dire l'inverse: ils la montrent tout en la voilant, car "le discours est le vêtement des choses."* Sans être élaborée philosophiquement, la pensée d'Erasme semble ici plus proche de celle de Thomas d'Aquin^ que du nominalisme d'un Latomus^ ou d'une rhétorique formelle.'' Héritière de la rhétorique des anciens et des huiter tours et

ment

manistes, elle prescrit

comme norme suprême "d'adapter les mots aux choses,

non

dicit,

l'inverse."^

"Bene

qui apte dicit," répète Erasme après Quintilien.^

Cela exige d'abord de connaître et comprendre les choses dont on doit traiter^*^ et ainsi de se faire un avis motivé {sententia]M Mentionnons ici les topiques, qu' Agricola lui a fait connaître. ^^ En tant qu'elle se distingue de la dialectique, la méthode des topiques suppose une réalité historique. C'est à elle que l'orateur doit adapter son discours. Toutefois, les topiques, comme du reste les autres préceptes de l'art, sont insuffisants. C'est grâce "au jugement, à la prudence et au conseil, (qui ne peuvent être contenus dans les préceptes),"^-' que l'orateur prendra en compte "la condition des temps et des personnes."^'* Dès lors, Erasme peut dire avec la précision qu'il souhaite: "le discours est le vêtement des choses, dans la mesure où il s'adapte aux mœurs de l'époque. "^^ Au consilium, auquel il accorde la première place, ^^ Erasme relie le decorum. Cette notion d'ordre esthétique possède une connotation morale^^ qui

CHANTRAINE

21/

honnête ne peut pas ne pas être decorum. "^^ aux yeux de l'homme de bien, ^^ qui, selon Quintilien, est le seul orateur digne de ce nom; "il ne le quitte pas des yeux en parlant. "^° Le decorum est le rayonnement du bien dans le langage et la perlui est intrinsèque: "ce qui est

Aussi

decoTum

apparaît-il

fection esthétique de l'adaptation. Ainsi est atteinte la fin de l'éloquence qui est la per suasion. ^^

Aptum^ et decorum sont dès lors, comme Hanna Gray l'a finement observé, deux notions connexes. ^^ On pourrait dire qu'elles ont le même sens, l'un le disant à partir de la res, l'autre à partir des verba, l'une visant le contenu, l'autre la forme. D'où l'accord de la forme et du contenu notés par Hanna Gray et par D. Harth.^^

Par

jugement

ment choses

et le

decorum, nous entrons dans

mots y

sont-ils liés? Par le

est la source "d'où naît le discours."^'*

est

cœur

sphère subjective.

Com-

ou pectus]. Le cœur individue dans un ingenium ou (cor

genius.^^ L'ingenium, formé par la nature, qui cause la variété,^^ est "la

forme congénitale"^^ suivant laquelle chacim peut assimiler les connaissances comme une nourriture, les faisant passer dans "les veines de l'âme"^® et aussi —Erasme semble original sur ce point^^— les enfanter comme siennes;^ il est aussi la forme suivant laquelle chacun peut s'exprimer en trouvent sa dictio et son stylus^^ ou son genus dicendi;^^ il est encore "la force de la nature telle que celui qui est fait pour telle ou telle manière de parler {genus dicendi) s'efforce en vain d'en adopter une autre qui lui serait contraire. "*'' C'est ainsi que l'esprit {animus) d'un écrivain respire {spiral) dans ses écrits^ en même temps qu'il s'y exprime, car le discours est le "miroir de l'esprit" {speculum animi), un miroir animé et vivant, tendu aux autres, non à soi-même, ^5 comme l'est le visage: aussi le discours peut-il être dit égale-

ment "visage de l'esprit" {animi faciès). ^^ Ce qu'offre ce miroir, c'est Vimago mentis ou l'imago pectoris, d'un esprit ou d'un cœur "tout rempli de la connaissance des choses. "•''' La mens, en effet, est "l'archétype" de l'image^® que se reflète dans le miroir du discours. Et c'est en les aimant qu'elle se remplit de la connaissance des choses, car dans l'éloquence, le principal {caput), c'est "un cœur aimant ce qu'il proclame et poursuivant de sa haine ce contre quoi il

vitupère. "^^ Aussi nul n'est-il cicéronien, c'est-à-dire orateur accompli,

n'a "l'intelligence et l'amour des choses dont

s'il

traite."^

Parce qu'elle est principe d'intelligence et d'amour, la mens unit la sphère objective et la sphère subjective dans la sagesse, qui est, d'après Cicéron,'*^ la fin de l'éloquence, comme elle l'est d'après Horace de l'art d'écrire.*^ L'imitation des bons auteurs n'est donc qu'un moyen d'accéder aux choses elles— mêmes et à l'esprit qui les a conçues. En s'asservissant*^ aux mots, aux tournures, aux rythmes d'un seul auteur, fût-il Cicéron, on manquerait la réalité qu'il avait

lui— même en vue; on serait infidèle à sa méthode.** Pour

être vraie, l'imitation est intelligente: telligit,

nec

"Non enim imitatur

artenl qui

non

in-

intelligit nisi artifex.'"*^

Faute de cette intelligence, d'objet, préférant les

mots

cicéronianisme est une erreur:^^

à la chose, le miroir à l'esprit.

trompe

a la superstition

des mots. C'est une imitation superstitieuse.'*^ Il fait au plan du discours ce que le pseudo-moine fait au plan des observances; les mots de Cicéron lui sont

LE CICERONIANUS D'ERASME

2l8

comme des cérémonies. Inconscient de sa situation spirituelle, il se pose néananti-barbare. En fait, il dénonce comme barbares ceux qui ne pra-

moins en

tiquent pas son culte. Or Thomas, Scot et les autres scolastiques sont plus cicéroniens que lui, pour autant qu'ils usèrent de mots adéquats.'*^ Sans le dire, par souci d'éviter une inutile polémique, Erasme sousentend que, comme le pseudo-moine, le cicéronien qu'il critique est un barbare: l'un et l'autre en effet freinent ou même bloquent le dynamisme de la nature, ou plus précisément de la mens qui fait accéder l'homme à son humanité. Pour tirer le faux cicéronien de son erreur, il convient donc de réveiller sa raison, son logos, enlacée dans les filets de la superstition. La maladie du cicéronianisme se soigne par le logos. Or, ce que requiert celui-ci, c'est "l'esprit tout entier de Cicéron {totum Ciceionis pectus] /"^^ sans pourtant l'hypostasier, car Cicéron n'est qu'un homme. "... de Dieu seul rien ne laisse à désirer. "^° C'est donc par la mens ou le pectus que se définit Vbumanitas, plutôt que par son seul

ingenium. C'est bien pourquoi, autant que Vbumanitas, le cicéronianisme obnubile la veiitas. D'une part, il ne conforme pas les mots aux choses. Or cette conformité est leur vérité. D'autre part, au lieu de s'exprimer tel qu'il est, le faux cicéronien se présente sous le déguisem*nt de Cicéron, comme sous "un faux visage." C'est là im mensonge plus grand que de se déguiser le visage "sous le masque de quelque Adonis. "^^ Le cicéronianisme n'est donc pas seulement une erreur; c'est encore un mensonge. ^^ Cela ferme l'éloquence à la sagesse et du même coup au christianisme.

réalité chrétienne

L'idée d'adaption esthétiquement réussie (aptum et decorum] exclut pour le chrétien du XVIe siècle la possibilité du cicéronianisme: la réalité historique et sociale s'est complètement métamorphosée et l'exigence morale est tout

Dès lors, pour parler des choses chrétiennes, "de quel secours me serait l'éloquence de Cicéron, alors que n'ayant aucune coimaissance des choses dont il me faut parler, il n'a pu employer le vocabulaire qui est né après lui en même autre.

temps que

les notions nouvelles?".^"'

Dans ces conditions, le cicéronien superstitieux aura à choisir entre deux voies: ou bien se taire sur ces réalitiés,^^ ou bien les transposer dans le vocabulaire païen. ^^ La première est fermée au chrétien, la seconde est impraticable, par une telle transposition produit un galimatias ridicule: Erasme en fait la démonstration sur un exemple savoureux. ^^ On devine en outre quel obscurcissem*nt de l'intelligence de choses parfois obscures en elles-mêmes

pour l'esprit. ^^ Si l'on veut donc employer im vocabulaire adapté aux réalités chrétiennes, il reste à tenir undiscours dissemblable de celui de Cicéron. On ne s'écartera pas moins de son exemple^^ si l'on veut observer le decorum, cai toute la raison d'être des chrétiens vise à bien vivre bien plus qu'à parler de manierez ornée et soignée. ^^ Une telle exigence est en principe admise par Cicéron lui-

résulterait

CHANTRAINE

même,

219

ne requiert pas l'éloquence du philosophe. Or, tout chrétien que le plus sérieux des philosophes païens.^ Cette critique purement rationnelle ne fait encore que constater comme un fait le lien entre les réalités chrétiennes et les mots. Il importe maintenant d'en scruter la qualité. Les mots ou les expressions de la langue chrétienne, d'origine hébraïque ou grecque, "nous ont été livrés avec la philosopuisqu'il

est plus philosophe

phie chrétienne comme de la main à la main par le Christ, par les Apôtres, par les Pérès inspirés par l'Esprit Saint" et ils ont été "consacrés jusqu'à ce jour, avec le même sense, par le consentment de tant de siècles. "^^ Mots et choses sont donc liés entre eux par ce que nous appelons aujourd'hui la Tradition vivante. De celle-ci, le principe est l'Esprit Saint. C'est lui^^ "qui a donné à la sagesse divine son éloquence propre."^ "Il n'ya rien d'étonnant à ce qu'elle s'écarte un peu de celle de Démosthène et de Cicéron."^ Erasme précise en quoi elle diffère de celle-ci: si elle a les mêmes principes que la leur pour l'usage des tropes et de figures de rhétorique, elle lui est "de loin supérieure par la majesté des choses et par la foi."^ Seulement, pour être sensible à sa beauté, il faut un cœur de chrétien. Lui seul peut prononcer le nom de Jésus. Or c'est dans ce nom que se résume et s'accomplit l'histoire de notre salut, comme l'explique, comme le chante presque Erasme dans une belle page d'ime facture très ferme et d'ime inspiration presque origénienne.^ Qui a compris cela avec Erasme sait comme lui que le problème du langage masque un problème de foi, d'adhésion à la révélation telle qu'elle est donnée par l'Esprit Saint dans la Tradition de l'Eglise. "Par le moyen des mots, l'imagination païenne nous en impose et notre cœur [affectus] trop peu chrétien se laisse abuser. C'est pourquoi nous éprouvons de la répugnance pour des choses qui sont par elles-mêmes de la plus grande beauté, du fait que nous ne les aimons pas: puissions-nous cependant ne pas en arriver à les hair!"^'' Erasme n'a-t-il pas exagéré le danger du paganisme chez les Italiens? On peut observer que les membres du Club de Rome auxquels il fait allusion sont chrétiens.^® On peut observer aussi qu'à côté de l'un ou l'autre exemple de manie cicéronienne, bien des prédications faites à la cour pontificale rendaient un son chrétien. ^^ On peut donc concéder qu'en orateur éprouvé Erasme a dramatisé la situation. Cependant, à nos yeux, l'essentiel du Cicewnianus n'est pas dans sa véracité historique, que nous n'entendons pas pourtant évacuer, mais dans l'analyse du langage. Erasme a détecté la tentation du paganisme que le logos humain porte en lui: il a fait avouer au logos païen qu'il est de soi inapte à dire le Logos divin grâce à une analyse qui se sert des principes mêmes de la rhétorique ancienne. C'est par le seul Logos divin qu'on peut percevoir la tentation païenne et en être guéri. ^°

Le logos divin du langage chrétien doit "être dissemblable de Cicéron dans la mesure

C'est lui qui résout l'apparente contradiction à laquelle l'analyse

nous a mené:

220

LE CICERONIANUS D'ERASME

même où il essaie de lui ressembler." C'est Hypologus,

en dessous quoi Buléphore réplique: "Celui qui se bornerait à calquer Cicéron lui ressemblerait de moins en moins, tandis que celui qui s'efforce de pratiquer sa méthode mérite réellement l'appellation de cicéronien." Le mot cicéronien a donc deux sens: l'un matériel et l'autre formel. Au sens formel, un chrétien est en mesure d'être cicéronien. Qu'est-ce à dire? Nosopon n'est pas le seul à peiner. Car si le cicéronianisme est une notion purement formelle, le christianisme qui se l'unit ne doit-il pas l'être pareillement? Ce n'est pas ainsi que Buléphore l'entend. Mais alors qu'est-ce qui demeure cicéronien dans cette manière qui est entièrement chrétienne, si la règle du véritable cicéronianisme est de parler à des chrétiens en chrétien de choses chrétiennes, comme Cicéron parlait jadis en païen à des païens des choses profânes. "^^ En fait, répond Erasme, "il parle de manière cicéronienne celui qui parle comme Cicéron parlerait aujourd'hui en chrétien à des chrétiens, s'il était vivant."'''^ Mais, objecter a-t-on encore, n'est-ce pas trop facilement le convertir. Erasme ne s'en cache pas: "Cicéron apparaît, au temps des païens, comme un homme de bien et, s'il avait été instruit de la philosophie chrétienne, je pense qu'il aurait mérité de figurer au nombre de ceux que nous honorons aujourd'hui comme des saints à cause de la vie vertueuse et pieuse qu'ils ont menée."'''* Cette canonisation de Cicéron, nos esprits modernes ne la comprennent pas aisément, si elle ne leur répugne pas complètement. Elle a pourtant dans le raisonnement du CiceTonianus une fonction précise: elle empêche la règle du cicéronianisme véritable de devenir purement formelle: le Cicéron qu'Erasme a en vue n'est pas un modèle abstrait, construit théoriquement; c'est le Cicéron historique, non point en tant que personnage de l'histoire doué de tel ingenium, mais en tant que son cœur ou son esprit fut ouvert à la révélation du Logos divin. C'est ainsi que s'accordent les deux modes chrétien et cicéronien de parler. C'est que le Logos divin est capable d'élever le logos humain. Le Ciceronianus n'exlique pas pourquoi. La Lingua l'avait expliqué: "Ce qu'est le Père engendrant de lui-même le Fils, l'esprit [mens], source des pensées et de la parole, l'est en nous. Ce qu'est le Fils naissant du Père, le discours [oiatio] sortant de l'esprit {animo) l'est en nous. Le Fils est dit image du Père, étant à ce point semblable que celui qui connaît l'un connaît l'autre. Et en nous le discours (oiatìo) est le miroir de l'âme [animi]. "^^ Ainsi le lien entre les choses et les mots "Présuppose une idée du langage comme révélation où penser et parler sont en leur moyau identiques. "^^ Pour cette raison, la christianisation de Cicéron n'a rien d'une "récupération," comme on dit. Au contraire, elle permet d'affirmer à l'intérieur de la pensée chrétienne le rôle rationnel du talent, de la pratique de la parole et même de la connaissance des mystères. Le chrétien ne peut en faire l'économie; en n'étant pas ainsi cicéronien, il ne serait pas pleinement lui-même. Pour n'être pas entendue de manière abstraitement rationnelle, la méthode de Cicéron n'en est pas moins rationnelle. Ou plutôt elle l'est davantage. Car le Logos divin ne fait pas fi du logos humain. En le guérissant et en l'élevant à sa propre vérité, il le fortifie et le dilate. Du même coup, il le délivre du culte superstitieux du mot: "Verbis itaque non vincimur, imo vincimus potius:

logos, qui signale "cette

celui qui est

énigme digne du sphynx."^^

CHANTRAINE

221

sententia longe superamus."''^ Et avec cette liberté de parole éclate, loin de toute barbarie, la beauté du langage, magnifiant la majesté des mystères.

Notes Opus epistolaruxn Des Eiasmi Roteiodami, denuo lecognitum et auctum pei H. M. Allen et H. W. Garrod, I-Xn (Oxford, 1906-1948), epistola 2044, lignes 12-14 (=A 2044, 1. 12-14). "Exprimer" est un terme caractéristique dans 1.

P. S. Allen,

ce contexte; il n'a pas pour équivalent "se modeler sur" que proposent les traducteurs de La Correspondance d'Eiasme, sous la direction d'A. Gerlo (Institut Intenmiversitaire pour l'étude de la Renaissance et de l'Humanisme), t. VU (Bruxelles, 1978), p. 565, 1. 13-16. Bien plus, cette expression ne suffit pas à trancher la question de l'imitation, soulevée par le Ciceionianus. 2. LB I 992E. 3. LB I 1022D; Erasme, La philosophie chrétienne. Introduction, traduction et notes par P. Mesnard, Coll. De Pétrarque à Descartes, XXn (Paris, Vrin, 1970), p.

352

(

= PC352).

LB I 991 D, PC 298. 5. W. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Tubingue, 1965, p. 399, cité par D. Harth, Philologie und praktische Philosophie. Untersuchungen zum Sprach- imd 4.

Traditionverständnis des Erasmus (Munich, 1970), p. 69. 6. G. Chantraine, "Apologia ad Latomum. Deux conceptions de la théologie,"

Erasmianum, éd. J. Coppens (Leiden, 1969), H, 60. D. Harth, op. cit., p. 69. 8. LB I 1002 D; PC 317. 9. LB I 1005 A et passim-, BC 321. 10. LB I 1001 E, F; 1002 D, E; 1003 C, etc. 11. LB I 1002 D. F. 12. D'après W. Risse, cité par D. Harth, op. cit., p. 78. 13. LB I 1002 A.

in Serinium 7.

LB LB LB

1001 F. 991 D. 16. I 1002 D. 17. H. Gray, "Renaissance Humanisme," /H/ 24 (1963), 513. 18. LB I 1003 F. 19. LB I 1004 F. 20. LB I 1002 E. 21. LBI 1004 A. 22. LB 1 987 C; comparez avec la traduction de PC 291. H. Gray, op. et loc. cit. 23. H. Gray, op. cit., p. 506; D. Harth, op. cit., p. 65-66. 24. LB I 999 F, 1002 D. 25. Individuation: LB 1 1021 D. Ingenium: LB 1 1000 A, B; 1021 B, D, E et passim. Genius: LB I 1000 A, 1021 F, passim. 26. D. Harth, op. cit., 79. 27. LB I 1000 A. 28. LB 1 1002 C, E. De cette image, D. Harth conclut que le mot, au lieu d'être 14. 15.

I I

LE CICERONIANUS D'ERASME

222 retiré

tion {op.

concret, possède chez cit., p.

Erasme une subsistance qui s'oppose à

63-64). Cette conclusion ne s'impose pas.

que c'est au contraire l'abstraction, ici présupposée, qui permet au nourriture assimilable. 29. D. Harth, op. cit., p. 80-81. 30. 31. 32. 33.

LB LB LB LB LB

I I I I

1002 1021 1000 1000 1002

C, E,

l'abstrac-

On pourra même estimer mot de devenir

D. A. A, 1021 B.

I D. D. Harth, op. cit., 67. 36. Lingua (LB IV 927 B). 37. LB I 1021 E, 1002 D, 1001 A. 38. Lingua (LB IV 691 B). Cf. D. Harth, op. cit., 63. 39. LB I 1002 A. 40. LB I 1001 F. 41. LB I 1001 F. 42. LB 1 1002 A; Aispœti, v. 309. Cf. J. P. Boyd, The Function of Mimesis and its Decline (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 35-49. 43. Erasme à Philippe Nicolas, 29 avril 1526 (A 1701, 1. 24-26); à Jacques Tusanus, 26 mai 1526 (A 1713, 1. 15-18). 44. LB 1002 C. Aussi le véritable cicéronianisme peut-il être appelé une "imitatio imitationis," D. Harth, op. cit., 79. 45. LB I 1003 C. 46. LB I 994 C. 47. LB 989 F, 990 A; aemulatio supeistitiosa et addicta: LB 1 990 C; supeistitiose: 995 C; tanta supeistitione: 1003 B; imitationem nimis anxiam et supeistitiosam: 1024 E-F; 1025 B et passim. 48. LB I 994 D; PC 303 paraphrase quelque peu. 49. LB I 988 E: "totum Ciceronem exprimere." Dans sa lettre à Bude du 23 mai 1527, Erasme avait écrit avec plus de précision, parlant du cicérionanisme de Longueil: "Qui nihi totiun Ciceronis pectus refert, is vere ciceronianus est" (A 1794,

34. 35.

43-44). De même, à Vergara, le 13 octobre 1527: quiro" (A 1855, 1. 155). 50. A 3032, 1. 252-3. 51. PC 351; LBI 1022 A. 1.

LB LB

"Totum Ciceronis pectus

re-

992 D-E. 992 F. 54. Ainsi Pierre Cursius tait-il sa qualité de chrétien et de prêtre, qu'il a en commun avec Erasme et qui l'emporte tellement sur son origine italienne (A 3032, 52. 53.

I I

282-300). LB I 995

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

LB LB LB LB LB LB LB

I I I I I

C-D.

995 E-F; PC 305. 996 A, PC 305. 992 E. 1004 A. 1005 A. 996 F-997 B. 909 A, 998 A.

CHANTRAINE

63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

LB LB LB LB LB

I I I I

998 998 998 998 997

B; B;

223

PC PC

309. 309.

F-999 A. D-E. A.

Erasme note ce

fait à propos de Pierre Cursius {supia, n. 54) et de Alberto Pius (LB IX 1110 F). L. E. Halkin l'a également remarqué: "les grands adversaires italiens d'Erasme ne sont pourtant pas des païens: Aléandre, Scaliger, Carpi, Corsi" {Erasme et l'Italie in CET I, 52, n. 116). 69. John W. O'Malley, Pleaching foi the Papes, in: The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rehgion, ed. Ch. Trinkaus avec H. A. Oberman (Leiden, 1974), 408-439. 70. LB 1 1005 E. Cf. P. Mesnard, "La religion d'Erasme dans le 'Ciceronianus'," Revue Thomiste 68 (1968), 269-70. 71. LB I 1001 C. 72. LB I 997 B-C; PC 307-8.

68.

73. Ibid.

LB I 1024 C-D. Lingua (LB IV 698 76. D. Harth, op. cit., 77. LB I 987 C. 74.

75.

B). p.

66-67.

The Latin Translations

of Longinus's

Ilept 'T(l)Ouç

In Renaissance Italy* Gustavo Costa

The

On the Sublime (Ilepi "Ycjjouç), probably composed in the century A.D., is commonly considered a masterpiece of ancient rhetoric.^ It was the first published in 1554 by the Italian humanist Francesco Robortello, who attributed it to Dionysius Longinus.^ The latter was indentified with Cassius Longinus, a famous rhetorician of the third century A.D., who continued to be considered the author of the book until the beginning of the nineteenth century (1808), when Girolamo Amati, a "scriptor graecus" of the Vatican Library, demonstrated that the traditional authorship was not tenable.^ Modem philologists have accepted Amati's discovery, and have proposed various attributions without reaching a consensus.^ For practical purposes, everybody continues to call "Longinus" the anonymous author of On the Sublime, since such a name was associated with the book for almost two centuries and a half, and particularly in the highday of its success, corresponding to the eighteenth century. Indeed, it is rather difficult to consider the treatise apart from the fortune it enjoyed during the age of Enlightenment and the preromantic movement in England and Germany. The central role that the so-called Longinian sublime or bypsos played in European aesthetic thought, from Boileau's Traité du Sublime ou du Merveilleux dans le Discours (1674) to Kant's Kiitik dei Uiteilskiaft (1790), has been amply illustrated by various scholars.^ Important books have been dedicated to the further developments of the sublime during the nineteenth century.^ On the other hand, we know little about the influence that bypsos had on Renaissance culture. Yet I believe that the treatise was a significant component of sixteenth-century aesthetics, and I will try to substantiate such a claim in this paper by examining the Latin translations of On the Sublime which were made in Renaissance Italy. The first problem confronting us in dealing with our topic, is posed by an anonymous and unpubUshed version preserved in the miscellaneous Ms. Vat. lat. 3441, ff. 12r-31r: Dionysii Longini de altitudine et gianditate oiationis. This complete translation of On the Subhme has puzzled Bernard Weinberg who first described it in the following way: treatise

first

GUSTAVO COSTA

225

This MS, of which I have found no previous mention, has not been catalogued so far by the Vatican Ubrarians; nothing is known of its date, for which there are no indications in the MS itself. Cardinal Giovanni Mercati believes that the MS is definitely of the sixteenth century, probably of the first half. If this were so, the Latin translation might have preceded the princeps of the text in 1554. '^

Such a statement, reproduced almost veibatim in the Catalogus Tianslationum, has been fully endorsed by Demetrio St. Marin in his useful bibliography of the treatise On the Sublime.^ Strangely enough, Weinberg does not give any indication about the provenance of Vat. lat. 3441, although it is clearly stated in the table of contents, showing the abbreviated name of its former owner: "Ful[vius] Urs[inus]." It is therefore an undisputable fact that the said manuscript and the included Latin translation of On the Sublime belonged to the well-known Roman humanist Fulvio Orsini, who has been

the object of a thorough monograph by a scholar of the caliber of Pierre de Nolhac.^ At this point we are able to focus our research on a definite figure of sixteenth-century Roman intellectual life, whose name is closely associated with the history of some of the most precious items preserved at the Vatican Library, including the autograph of Petrarch's Canzoniere. ^° Following Nolhac's description of Orsini's library, we can easily identify our translation with manuscript no. 288 of the "Nota de libri latini scritti a penna" in the Inventarium libronim Fulvii Ursini.^^ Once the provenance has been established, we can examine the codex itself, in order to detect any possible clues concerning its authorship. Two important elements strike us: (1) this translation is a work-copy, since it presents various corrections in the same handwriting, and therefore we can safely assume that it is not a copy of someone else's version, but is to be attributed to the very person who wrote it; (2) the manuscript was written at two different stages by the same person, as it appears from the different color of the ink used on ff. 22v-31r. The translator interrupted his work after the following passage, corresponding to the beginning of section XXn, 3: "sed coacta quin etiam magis Thucydides, quae natura omnino constant, et indivisa sunt, tum transgressionibus et excessibus a se ipsis ducere gravissimus."^^ The same translator, after a lapse of time, resumed his work with the sentence "Demosthenes autem non sic ut iste audax,"^^ using a different ink (as we have already said) up to the completion of his version. If we keep the possibility in mind that this Latin rendering of On the Sublime may have preceded the princeps, as appropriately suggested by Weinberg, we

must presume

that the translator had at hand a manuscript of the original text. Eleven such manuscripts of the Greek treatise are extant, including one that belonged to Orsini, and that is listed in the "Nota de libri greci scritti a mano" of the Inventarium under no. 144: Libro de Dionysio Longino de granditate orationis, which Nolhac has identified with Vat. gr. 1417.^* This codex is probably a copy of Parisinus 2960, partially written by Francesco Bernardo da Verona in 1491, since it shows the same lacunae, unless both of them derive

226

LATIN TRANSLATIONS OF LONGINUS

from an unknown copy of Parisinus 2036, the oldest and best copy

the

Sublime. The latter was in Rome, in the library of Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi, a grandson of Lorenzo il Magnifico, until the year 1550, when it was bought by Piero Strozzi, a relative of Catherine de Medici, who inherited it from him, and left it in possession of the Royal Library in Paris. ^^ However, for the purpose of this inquiry, it is more interesting to note another peculiarity of Vat. gr. 1417: it was written in two different stages, by two different scribes, between the fifteenth and the sixteenth century. The break is visible in f 13v, almost at the beginning of section XXU, 4. Can it be a coincidence that Vat. gr. 1417 and the Latin version in Vat. lat. 3441, both from the Orsini collection, were interrupted almost at the same point? It is difficult to think so. Indeed it seems reasonable to suppose that the imknown translator was obliged to stop after the first phrase of section XXU, 3, because Vat. gr. 1417 did not go much further than that, and had to be completed before the Latin rendering could be resumed, and eventually brought to its end. All this presumably happened in Rome, at the initiative of Orsini himself, some years before the publication of the piinceps. At that time Orsini, a strenuous student of Greek, was a protégé of Gentile Delfini, and was in touch with Guglielmo Sirleto, Basilio Zanchi, and Giovanni Paolo Cesario. ^^ These clues are interesting, but they do not allow us to establish the identity of the translator. Weinberg called attention to two lost translations of On the Sublime: one by Marc-Antoine de Muret, which preceded the pnnceps, since it is mentioned in the said scholar's commentary on Catullus, published in 1554; the other one by Andreas Dudith, an Hungarian humanist, who referred to it in the dedication of a book printed in 1560.^'^ W. Rhys Roberts mentioned Dudith's lost translation in connection with another manuscript of the Greek original preserved at the University Library, Cambridge, the socalled Codex Eliensis or Cantabrigiensis, which, according to Roberts, should rank very high in the stemma codicum: "while El[iensis] carmot claim to have any independent worth when compared with Pfarisinus] 2036, it is in some respects superior to the remaining MSS. and to the editions of Robortello and Manutius."^® According to Roberts, the Eleinsis is probably to be identified with the so-called Codex Dudithianus, used by the Hungarian humanist to make his translation. Indeed, the Cambridge manuscript is characterized by marginalia in Latin and Italian, which might well have been written by Dudith who was imbued with Italian culture. ^^ This problem has been reproposed in an original way by Pierre Costil in his thorough book on Dudith. According to the French scholar, the Greek text of the Eliensis is in the hand of Francesco Porto, an Italian protestant, who made a careful philological study of On the Sublime, as attested by his edition of the Greek treatise, which appeared in Geneva in 1569, and by his notes, published for the first time by ToUius in 1694. As to the marginalia of the Eliensis, they have a great similarity to Dudith's handwriting. On the basis of these facts, Costil proposes a fascinating explanation that links together the lost translations made by Muret and Dudith. According to Costil, Paul Manutius had the intention of publishing an edition of On the Sublime accompanied by a Latin translation, and used the Eliensis for this purpose. He based his edition of the Greek text on Porto's .

GUSTAVO COSTA

22/

manuscript, and gave it to Muret in order to have it translated. When Robortello published tht phnceps in 1554, Manutius preferred to abandon his original idea of a bilingual edition, and published hastily, in 1555, the Greek text only. Later he decided to resume his original project, but this time he found it more convenient to entrust Dudith with the translation, and gave him the Eliensis.^ One may be tempted to solve the enigma of the authorship of the translation contained in Vat. lat. 3441 by attributing it either to Muret or to Dudith. But a comparison of the handwritings does not corroborate such a simplistic solution, which was in all probability already considered and rejected by Weinberg. There is, however, a third possibility, that has escaped the attention of the scholars, because they have not kept in mind the provenance of Vat. lat. 3441: the Latin version of On the Sublime may well have been done by its original owner, that is to say, Fulvio Orsini himself. At first this hypothesis seemed untenable to me, because I compared the said manuscript with the facsimile of Orsini's handwriting given by Nolhac in his basic monograph, ^^ and it was evident that they had nothing in common. I would have discarded the possibility of an attribution to Orsini, were it not for the fact that my attention was called to a masterly article in which the prominent paleographer Augusto Campana demonstrates beyond any doubt, that the facsimile included in Nolhac's book as a sample of Orsini's handwriting, is actually in the hand of the eighteenth-century librarian Guiseppe Simonio Assemani.^^ At this point I decided to ask Campana for an appraisal: he was kind enough to examine the translation contained in Vat. lat. 3441, and to verify that it is highly probable that Orsini himself wrote it. According to Professor Campana, the very fact that no authorship was assigned to the same translation in Orsini's inventory seems to prove that it is the work of the Roman humanist. I would also like to add that there is another clue pointing in the direction of Orsini. In 1593 Sertorio Quattromani wrote to Fabrizio della Valle from Naples: "Ho letto con infinita mia sodisfattione che U Sig. Fulvio Orsino, dottissimo sopra ogni altro, habbia tradotto Dionisio, et questa sarà ima delle maggiori cagioni, che mi farà venir a Roma."" The name "Dionisio" with no further specification may designate Dionysius of Halicamassus as well as any other Dionysius, including Longinus. But we must assume that Quattromani refers to the latter, because, according to Francesco Antonio Rossi's reliable testimony, his favorite authors were Demetrius Phalereus, Hermogenes, and Dionysius Longinus, "ne' quali fé' tanto profitto, che divenne il più critico huomo del mondo ... et de' poeti toscani dopo il Petrarca non ammetteva ninno, se non il Bembo e il Casa, che egli solca chiamare i tre buoni. "2* Orsini made use of his knowledge of On the Sublime in his learned edition of nine Greek poetesses, where he published Sappho's ode quoted by Longinus in section X, 2.^^ In his scholia the Italian humanist quotes a passage from section X, 1 which stresses the importance of pathos in the artistic process: "For instance, Sappho everywhere chooses the emotions that attend delirious passion from its accompaniments in actual life. Wherein does she demonstrate her supreme excellence? In the skill with which she selects and binds together

LATIN TRANSLATIONS OF LONGINUS

228

the most striking and vehement circ*mstances of passion. "^^ This quotation from Longinus, stressing the relevance of the careful rendering of pathos, is corroborated by a passage from Plutarch's Lives describing the love of Antiochus, son of Seleucus, king of Syria, for the daughter of Demetrius the Citybesieger: "but whenever Stratonicé came to see him, as she often did, either alone, or with Seleucus, lo, those tell-tale signs of which Sappho sings were all there in him— stammering speech, fiery flushes, darkened vision, sudden sweats, irregular palpitations of the heart, and finally, as his soul was taken by storm, helplessness, stupor, and pallor. "^^ What can be gathered from the use Orsini made of On the Sublime, is that he viewed the Longinian essay both as a quarry of precious philological data and as a work of criticism emphasizing the emotional component of the artistic process. Moreover it seems safe to assume that the Greek treatise influenced Orsini's taste and, through

the

medium

of the latter, the taste of Orsini's contemporaries.

The Longinian sublime became an essential component of the cultural and artistic achievements sponsored by the powerful Farnese family whose mentor was Orsini. A proof of this is the fact that Cardinal Ranuccio Farnese, brother of Cardinal Alessandro and Orsini's patron, accepted the dedication of the princeps, in which Robortello mentions the outstanding contribution of the Farnese family to Renaissance culture. ^^ But the most striking evidence of the role played by the Farneses in the early fortune of On the Sublime is perhaps to be found in the plastic arts. In fact. Orsini was a personal friend and an inspirer of various Renaissance artists, patronized by the Farnese family. Prominent among these was the great Michelangelo whose art was well represented in Orsini's private collection. The friendship linking Orsini to Michelangelo, already stressed by Nolhac,^^ appears even more relevant for the historian of taste, if we keep in mind Orsini's familiarity with the Longinian sublime. Indeed, Michelangelo's theory of art has been associated with the bypsos by Robert John Clements who called attention to the fact the "Longinus' treatise on sublimity was translated by Robortelli a decade before Michelangelo's death. "^ But no trace whatsoever has remained of the translation alluded to by Clements, who does not give any source. Yet a controversial passage of Robortello's De arte sive mtione coingendi antiquorum libios seems to confirm Clements' assertion: "Ego, ut de me aliquid dicam, cum Aeschylum adeo corruptum superioribus annis emendavi, cum Dionysium Longinum Ilepi ucIjouç et Aelianum de exeicitu instniendo moie Giaecoium edidi, et in Latinum verti, cum librum Aristotelis de arte poetica expurga vi et illustravi, nonne protuli semper nomina illorum, a quibus libros accepi, et bibliothecas nominavi, ubi asservantur?"^^ If we are to take this statement for its face value, Robortello not only edited, but also translated Longinus, a fact that has hitherto escaped the attention of scholars. But the Italian humanist may have simply alluded to the marginal notes in Latin that accompany the original text in the princeps. The fact is that Robortello is mentioned only as the editor of On the Sublime both in the works dedicated to him and in the bibiographies of the Longinian treatise. In any case, we can validate Clements' assertion concerning Michelangelo's familiarity with the hypsos by replacing the name of Robortello with that of Orsini

GUSTAVO COSTA

229

and by assigning an earlier date to the translation. In other words, Michelangelo in the last fifteen years of his life, with the ideas expressed in On the Sublime. This fact has no relevance as far as the development of Michelangelo's art is concerned, but it means a lot to the fortune of his art. Longinus provided an ideologic basis for the appreciation of Michelangelo's genius not only in the eighteenth century, when Richardson and Reynolds proclaimed his excellence against the prevailing taste of their age (a well-known and documented fact),^^ but also in the second half of the sixteenth century, when the artist had to struggle against the new climate of the Counter Reformation. Michelangelo, who created his David as a monument to the revived Florentine republic^^ and expressed his hate for the tyranny of Alexander de' Medici in his idealized bust of Brutus,^ could not fail to note the implicit plea for liberty contained in On the Sublime, XLIV, where Longinus cautiously asserts that "democracy is the kind nursing-mother of genius, and that literary power may be said to share its rise and fall with democracy and democracy alone. "^^ This passage had been carefully rendered by Orsini who had translated the word STjfxoxpaxia of the original text with "respublica," expressing a concept particularly dear to Michelangelo's heart: "respublica magnorum ingeniorum optima alumna est, in qua sola prope et floruere simul qui in dicendi arte valuere, et simul interierunt."^^ These words, paraphrased by Robortello in the formula "Libertas alumna et mater eloquentiae,"^^ were strengthened by the entire tradition of ancient thought, establishing a direct link between the flourishing of eloquence and liberty. ^^ Michelangelo who had always been jealous of his artistic freedom, was certainly inclined to extend this theory from the domain of rhetoric to the domain of his own art, particularly after the completion of the Universal Judgement in 1541, when he saw the very existence of his masterpiece endangered by the new climate of the Counter Reformation.-^^ Fortunately the work, that had been sponsored by Paul HI Farnese, survived the concentered attacks of the theologians, and fertilized contemporary art through its reliable copy, made by Marcello Venusti and preserved in the Farnese Palace in Rome, where Orsini was a permanent

became acquainted,

guest. *o I do not intend to linger on this tantalizing subject that goes beyond the scope of my paper. It is sufficient to say that On the Sublime exerted a considerable influence on the artists that worked for the Farnese family in Rome and in Caprarola, under the guidance of Orsini, whose portrait has been tentatively identified in a fresco of the Villa Farnese.'*^ Indeed the Greek treatise, having a strong Platonic component, was not at odds with the Neoplatonic orientation of Mannerism. Moreover, the hypsos was a versatile concept that could sanction very different artistic developments: from the grandiloquent style of the Baroque masters to the most daring technical experimentation of the school of Caravaggio. In fact, section XVQ, 3, identifying light (to çwç) with the pathetic (xà TudcOrj) and the sublime (xà u(|>r)), could easily be viewed either in terms of the manneristic conception of beauty as a reflection of God's splendor, strongly asserted by Francesco Patrizi,'*^ correspondent of Orsini'^^ and admirer of Longinus,*"* or in terms of Caravaggio's insistence on the con-

LATIN TRANSLATIONS OF LONGINUS

230

and darkness: "For although light and shade, as depicted in colby side upon the same surface, light nevertheless meets the vision first, and not only stands out, but also seems far nearer. So also with the mani'"^^ festations of passion and the sublime in literature. In 1597, when Caravaggio was entrusted with the decoration of the Contarelli Chapel in the Roman church of San Luigi de' Francesi which splendidly embodies the Longinian equation of light and hypsos,^^ the Greek treatise had become an essential component of Italian culture, thanks to two Latin translations: one published in Naples by Domenico Pizzimenti (1566) and the other published in Venice by Pietro Pagano (1572). Pizzimenti, a Calabrian humanist who was the teacher of Giambattista Della Porta, "^^ dedicated his translation to Aldo Manutius, the son of Paul, editor of the Greek text of On the Sublime. His dedication commences with an allusion to the greatness of the Venetian Republic, modeled after the pattern of the so-called myth of Venice, so dear to the Florentine republicans: "Ceteri omnes, qui primum se Venetias conferunt, urbis situm, cunctarum fere nationum conventus, merces trast of light

ours, lie side

undecunque

allatas,

armamenta

varie disposita,

navalia

maxima omni

navigiorum genere referta, thesauros ingentes, ac veterum monimenta mirari soient.'"*^ Then Pizzimenti proceeds to state his devotion to Aldo's father, Paul Manutius, attested also by a Greek epigram preserved in the Vatican hac potissimum de caussa pervenissem, ut a patre tuo Library:'*^ "Ego vero ... gratiam inirem, initamque auro et gemmis cariorem conservarem; nihil prius mihi, nisi ilium eruditissimum virum ac de re litteraria optime meritum quaerendum existimavi."^° Such a devotion was based on Pizzimenti's love for the Greek classics whose appreciation had been strongly promoted by the Manutian publications. Thus Pizzimenti found it perfectly proper to express his attachment to the Manutii by offering his translation to the son of Paul, the editor of the Greek text of Longinus: "Sed quem potius ego eligere autorem debueram, quam Dionysium Longinum, cui iacenti ac mortuo pater tuus, cui scimus omnes teretes aures esse intelligensque iudicium, tamquam alter Aesculapius vitam reddidit, eimdemque dignum existimavit qui cardinalium . . .

manibus

versaretur?"^^

is no doubt that this translation was founded on the printed by Paul Manutius in 1555, although Pizzimenti may well have read a manuscript copy of Longinus, and certainly knew the piinceps, since he explicitly alludes to it and basically reproduces Robortello's Latin marginalia.^^ It is also possible that Pizzimenti had read Orsini's translation, because the version published by the Calabrian humanist was accompanied by two Latin poems composed by Giano Pelusio, a friend of Orsini, who himself was a protégé of the Farnese family. ^^ Giano Pelusio was doubly linked to Pizzimenti, because they were both from Calabria and had studied in Cosenza under the guidance of the same teachers: Giovanni Paolo Cesario and Francesco Vitale. It is, therefore, understandable that he should praise in the warmest terms Longinus and Pizzimenti's translations:

Therefore, there

text published

Arcet hinc procul, hinc procul repellit Suffenos Baviosque Meviosque, Et qui pestifera dicacitate

GUSTAVO COSTA

23I

Acti praecipites pereleganteis Viros morsibus hinc et bine petessunt. Admittit nimis et nimis libenter Claros nomine rbetoras, poetas, Et qui scribere more Barbarorum Laudarunt minus, et minus probarunt:

His Dionysium, venusta non quem Enixa est Semele suo Tonanti, Sed quem Graecia proceavit una.

Una

Graecia, Palladis catervae

mater et artium bonarum, Noctes porrigit et dies vorandum.^'*

Altrix,

Pizzimenti was aware of the difficulties inherent in his task, which were mainly due to the corruption of the Greek text: "duram tamen provinciam video me ac Aethyopem dealbandum suscepisse, quippe cum Longino turba seculorum huiusmodi maculae inustae sint, ut vix a patre tuo, uberrimo eloquentiae ac litterarum Graecarum fonte ita elui et expurgari potuerint, quin nobis maximum negotium facesserint."^^ In any case, his translation proved to be inadequate, and Sertorio Quattromani wrote to Fabrizio della Valle in 1592: "Un Cavaliere, al quale io sono debitore della vita, desidera un Dionisio Longino. Veggia per gratia se si trova, comprilo et mandilo subito. Ma averta che la tradottione non sia del Pizzimenti, perché questo Cavaliere l'ha, et non gli sarebbe caro. E il Pizzimenti prende in ciò più granchi che egli non dice parole."^* It was probably because of Pizzimenti's failure, that Pietro Pagano decided to publish his own Latin translation of On the Sublime. Pagano, a professor of Humanities at Vicenza since 1566, is credited with having been the teacher of Paolo Gualdo, who was personally acquainted with Caravaggio and showed a considerable appreciation for his art. ^^ Pagano dedicated his version to the Doge of Venice, Alvise I. Mocenigo, asserting that, since Longinus was the greatest rhetorician of antiquity, his book was perfectly suited for the supreme ruler of the Venetian state: "In cuius igitur nomine Longinum latinitate a me donatum potius emitterem, quam eius principis qui usque a puero semper eloquentiam ac dicendi artificium adamasset, ac eorum qui de eo scripserint, lectione summopere fuisset delectatus? In quo quidem artificio tractando, ipse Dionysius noster ita caeteris praestat exquisitissimis praeceptis et exemplis gravissimis et ad praecepta ipsa maxime accommodatis, ut omnes et Graecos et Latinos scriptores in eo genere superaverit, in quo quidem tu tanquam in quodam speculo tuae eloquentiae praecepta inspicies, quibus in senatu semper es usus et adhuc uteris. "^^ Pagano, just as Pizzimenti had already done, links the Longinian sublime with the myth of Venice, alluding to the battle of Lepanto (1571): "Et fato quodam factum fuit ut, cimi, te auspice ac duce, bellum fuerit susceptimi contra tyrannum improbum ac perfidiosum, te quoque principem huius amplissimae ac illustrissimae reipublicae locum obtinente, in praelio navali quod cum Turcis factum fuit, gloriosa victoria ad

ipsam rempublicam pervenerit, eamque maxima

et incredibiU

omnixmi

laetitia

est amplexata."^^

Pizzimenti's and Pagano's translations remained the only ones available to

232

LATIN TRANSLATIONS OF LONGINUS

the general public in the sixteenth century, and they continued to enjoy a considerable success even in the seventeenth century, since they were reprinted, along with Gabriel de Petra's version, in 1644.^ They stimulated Giovanni da Falgano to complete his Italian translation of On the Sublime, dedicated to the Grand duch*ess of Tuscany in 1575, but still unpublished, as well as Niccolò Pinelli's Italian version, published in Padua in lóSP.*^^ Indeed, Falgano's version, the very first in any modem language, is also a product of the school of Piero Vettori, ^^ a Florentine humanist who was on excellent terms with Orsini^ and repeatedly quoted Longinus in his Latin works, ^ including the second edition of his commentary on Aristotle's Poetics, which was later annotated by Racine, a great admirer of Longinus. "^^ But Pagano's effort cannot be fully understood, unless it is interpreted against the background of the spirit of emulation created by Pizzimenti's and Pagano's rival translations. This competition for latinizing On the Subhme can well be illustrated through the studies devoted to Longinus by Leone Allacci, a Greek scholar who spent a considerable part of his life in Rome, where he was educated at the Collegio di S. Atanasio, receiving the degrees of doctor and magistei of Philosophy and Theology in 1610.^^ Allacci's contribution, which is still unpublished, is preserved among his papers at the Vallicelliana Library in Rome.^'' It consists of a Latin translation of On the Sublime as well as numerous philological and historical notes, which have escaped the attention of the scholars that have studied the fortune of Longinus. Allacci's version was already completed in 1631, as appears from a letter dated September 11th of the same year, and sent by the Greek humanist to a French correspondent, in order to propose some of his works for publication in France: "Così anchora, mentre vedevo che in queste parti si faceva gran conto di Dionysio Longino, e, di tre interpreti che l'haimo tradotto, non è stato nessuno che l'habbia bene tradotto, l'ho io tradotto et, aggiontovi le mie note et espositioni, ascenderà a fogli cinquanta o quaranta in circa. Qua è desideratissimo, è pregato da molti che io lo dia fuori. Quando lo stampatore si vorrà impiegare, lo manderò Grecolatino con le note e tutto quello che faìa di bisogno. "^^ It is interesting to note that Allacci criticizes not only Pizzimenti's and Pagano's translations, but also the one published by Gabriel De Petra in 1612.^^ Indeed he refers to the latter in his De erloiibus magnoTum viiorum in dicendo (1635), where he frequently mentions Longinus. But I have noticed that, at least in one case, when he quotes section Xn, 4-5 of the Greek treatise, containing the famous comparison of Demosthenes with Cicero, Allacci gives a Latin translation that corresponds neither to De Petra's nor to his ownJ^ In any case, the Greek scholar repeatedly expresses his dissatisfaction with Pizzimenti's and Pagano's versions in the notes accompanying his own rendering of On the Sublime. For instance, he notes that the phrase ouveTcixpivtîç àXrfii(na.za had been wrongly translated by Pizzimenti and Pagano who had not understood that àXTi9é<jxaTa was an adverb: "Pizimfentius]: Nobiscum una simul verissima iudicabis. Pagan[us]: nobiscum verissima iudicabis. Falso uterque: hie enim non epitheton est, sed adverbium."''^ A key passage from section I, 4 ("At every time and in every way imposing speech, with the spell it throws

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233

over US, prevails over that which aims at persuasion and gratification")^^ had been translated by Pizzimenti as follows: "omnino autem cum incredibili quadam persuadendi et delectandi vi semper dominatur admirabile."^^ Allacci bluntly remarks that this version is not correct: "Corrupit omnino sententiam, dum IxTtXriÇiv et constemationem idem quod incredibile valere voluit, et quae per se disiuncta sunt, temere iimxit. Nam quod admirabile est, dominatur persuadibili et honesto, et semper dominatur, et cum prostematione audientium dominatur."^'* In fact, Allacci's own translation reads as follows: "locis item omnibus semperque non sine animi constematione ad admirabili vincitur quod probabile est et ad gratiam comparatur."^^ These examples of Allacci's remarks should be sufficient to give an idea of the shortcomings of Pizzimenti's and Pagano's versions of On the Sublime. But it would be a mistake to disregard them because of their blemishes. They had an important role in the history of taste: they contributed to keep alive the scholarship dedicated to On the Sublime, and, at the same time, helped to spread the ideas expressed by Longinus. This happened in that transitional period going from the late Renaissance to the Baroque, a long time before Boileau translated the Greek treatise into French and conferred upon hypsos the prestige of the splendid age of Louis XTV.

University of California, Berkeley

Notes my research on the role of Longinian sublime in Italian on which I am presently working imder the sponsorship of the J. S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 1. G. Kennedy, The An of Rhetonc in the Roman Woild, 300 B.C. -A.D. 300 *This paper reflects

literature,

(Princeton, 1972), pp. 369-377.

Marin, Bibliography of the "Essay on the Sublime" (Iltpl uouç) (n. p., no. 22; A Carlini, "L'attività filologica di Francesco Robortello," Atti dell'Accademia di Scienze Lettere e Arti di Udine, Series Vu, Vol. VII (1966-1969), 2.

St.

1967), p.

p. 58.

Longinus, On the Sublime, ed. W. Rhys Roberts (Cambridge, 1907), pp. 3-4. Cassius Longinus cf. Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric, pp. 637-641. On Amati (1768-1834) cf. Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 2 (1960), pp. 673-675. 4. D. A. Russell has maintained that "guesses at authorship based on one detail or another are shots in the dark:" cf. 'Longinus,' On the SubUme, ed. D. A. Russell 3.

(Oxford, 1964), p. xxix. 5. See particularly S. H.

Monk, The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in XVni-Century England (Ann Arbor, I960); W. J. Hippie, Jr., The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetic Theory (Carbondale, 1957); J. Brody, Boileau and Longinus (Geneva, 1958); T. A. Litman, Le Sublime en France (1660-1714) (Paris, 1971); D. B. Morris, TheRehgious Sublime: Christian Poetry and Critical Tradition in 18th-Century England (Lexington, 1972);

LATIN TRANSLATIONS OF LONGINUS

234

P. Albrecht,

Dermis

The Sublime Pleasures of Tragedy: A Study of Critical Theory from

(Lawrence-Manhattan- Wichita, 1975). See particularly N. J. Perella, Night and the Sublime in Giacomo Leopardi. "University of California Publications in Modem Philology, 99" (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London, 1970), pp. 61-116; A. O. Wlecke, Wordsworth and the Subhme (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London, 1973); S. A. Ende, Keats and the Sublime (New Haven, 1976); T. Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence (Baltimore-London, 1976). 7. B. Weinberg, "Translations and Commentaries of Longinus, On the Sublime, to 1600: A Bibliography," Modem Philology XLVa, no. 3 (February 1950), p. 146. 8. Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, ed. P. O. Kristeller (Washington, D. C, 1960-1976), n, p. 194; St. Marin, Bibliography, p. 7, no. 21bis. 9. P. de Nolhac, La bibliothèque de Fulvio Orsini: Contributions à l'histoire des collections dltalie et à l'étude de la Renaissance. "Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences philologiques et historiques, 74" (Paris, 1887). The provenance to Keats

Ms. Vat. lat. 3441 is clearly stated in P. O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum (LondonLeiden, 1963-1967), n, pp. 363-364. On Nolhac cf. G. Billanovich, "Nolhac e Petrarca," Studi di letteratura e di storia in memoria di Antonio Di Pietro (Milan, 1977), of

pp. 315-331. 10. Nolhac, La bibhothèque, pp. 279-281; L'originale del Canzoniere di Francesco Petrarca, codice Vaticano latino 3195, riprodotto in fototipia a cura della Bibhoteca

Vaticana (Milan, 1905), pp. XXXm-XXXIV. 11. Nolhac, La bibliothèque, p. 380. 12. Vat. lat. 3441, f. 22v. 13. Ibid. 14. Nolhac, La bibhothèque, p. 348. On the manuscripts of On the SubUme cf. Longinus, On the Sublime (1907), pp. 163-165; Du Sublime, ed. H. Lebègue (Paris, 1939), pp. Xin-XX; St. Marin, Bibhography, pp. 1-2. 15. H. Omont, "Un premier catalogue des manuscrits grecs du cardinal Ridolfi," Bibhothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes, XLIX (1888), p. 318, no. 87; G. Mercati, "Indice di manoscritti greci del cardinale N. Ridolfi," in Opere minori (Vatican City, 1937-1941), m, pp. 126-129; R. Ridolfi, "La biblioteca del cardinale Niccolò Ridolfi (1501-1550): nuovo contributo di notizie e di dociunenti," Bibhoßha, XXXI (1929), p. 192. The codex had probably been acquired in 1527 from Janus Lascaris: cf. Ibid., pp. 178-179. In view of what I am going to maintain in this paper, it is important to note that Cardinal Ridolfi was in excellent terms with the Pamese family: cf. Ibid., p. 175.

Nolhac, La bibhothèque, pp. 4-6. Weinberg, "Translations," pp. 145-146. 18. W. Rhys Roberts, "Note on a Cambridge Manuscript of De Subhmitate," Classical Review, Xn, no. 6 (July 1898), p. 300. 19. Ibid., p. 301; Longinus, On the Subhme (1907), pp. 164-165. 20. P. Costil, André Dudith, humaniste hongrois, 1533-1589 (Paris, 1935), pp. 278-284. 21. Nolhac, La bibhothèque, pp. 490-491 (Planche, no. Vm). 22. A. Campana, "Scritture di umanisti," Rinascimento, 1 (1950), p.228n. On Assemani cf. Dizionario biografico degh italiani, 4 (1962), pp. 437-440. 23. Lettere di Sertorio Quattromani, gentil'huomo et academico cosentino 16. 17.

GUSTAVO COSTA

235

(Naples, 1624), pp. 90-91. Quattromani is mentioned in a letter addressed by Gianvincenzo della Porta to Orsini (Naples, September 28, 1584). Nolhac has published it, but unfortunately he has misread the name of the sender who appears as Sertorio

Qualamani:

cf.

La bibliothèque,

430.

24. Lettele di Seitorìo Quattromani, pp. üb-IIIa (Dedication). On Rossi, a personal friend of Quattromani, cf. L. Aliquò Lenzi-F. Aliquò Taverriti, Gli scrìttoli calabresi (Reggio di Calabria, 1955-1958), m, p. 160.

Carmina novem illustrìum feminarum (Antverpiae, 1568), p. 9. On the Sublime (1907), p. 69. Cf. Carmina novem illustrìum feminarum, p. 284. 25.

26. Longinus,

27. Plutarch's Lives, trans. B. Perrin (Loeb Classical Library)

XXXVm,

4],

[Demetrius, IX (London-New York, 1920), pp. 92-95. Cf. Carmina novem il-

lustrìum feminarum, p. 284. 28. Dionysii Longini rhetorìs praestantissimi liber de grandi sive de sublimi orationis genere, ed. F. Robortello (Basilease, 1554), p. 3. On Orsini's link with Cardinal Ranuccio Farnese cf. Nolhac, La bibliothèque, p. 9; F. Benoit, "Famesiana, " Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire (Ecole Française de Rome), XXXIX (1921-1922), p. 199. 29. Nolhac, La bibliothèque, pp. 15-16, 32,329-332. 30. R. J. Clements, Michelangelo's Theory of Ait (London, 1963), p. 234. Another critic has pointed out the fact that Vasari, "parlando del Giudizio Universale, si servi di formule coimesse alla poetica del sublime:" cf. E. Battisti, "Storia della critica su Michelangelo," Atti del Convegno di Studi Michelangioleschi, Firenze-

Roma

1964 (Città di Castello, 1966),

p. 186.

31 Francisci Robortelli Utinensis de arte sive ratione corrìgendi antiquorum hbros disputatio, ed. G. Pompella (Naples, 1975), pp. 53-54. On this edition cf. G. Martellotti's review in Annali della Scuola Normale Superìore di Pisa (Classe di Lettere e Filosofia), Serie m. Voi. VI, 4 (1976), pp. 1423-1428. 32: Monk, The Sublime, pp. 175-176, 182-188; G. Melchiori, Michelangelo nel Settecento inglese: un capitolo di storìa del gusto in Inghilterra (Rome, 1950), pp. 36-38, 59-65, 69; G. Vasari, La vita di Michelangelo nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568, ed. P. Barocchi (Milan-Naples, 1962), E, pp. 436-437; m, p. 956; Battisti, "Storia della critica," pp. 192-193. 33. C. Seymour, Jr., Michelangelo's David: A Search for Identity (New York, 1974), p. 55. 34. C. DeTohiay, Michelangelo (Princeton, 1943-1960), IV, pp. 131-134, plates 88-90; Vasari, La vita di Michelangelo, IV, pp. 1792-1802.

On the Sublime

(1907), p. 155. On the political orientation of the C. P. Segal, "Hypsos and the Problem of Cultural Decline in the De Sublimitate," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, LXIV (1959), pp. 121-146. 36. Vat. lat. 3441, f. 30v. 37. Dionysii Longini rhetorìs praestantissimi liber, p. 68. 38. H. Caplan, "The Decay of Eloquence at Rome in the First Century," in Of Eloquence: Studies in Ancient and Mediaeval Rhetorìc, eds. A. King and H. North (Ithaca-London, 1970), pp. 160-195; Kennedy, The Art of Rhetorìc, pp. 446-464.

35. Longinus,

Greek treatise

39. R.

cf.

De Maio, Michelangelo

e la Controrìforma (Rome-Bari, 1978), pp. 17-27

and passim. 40. On Venusti's copy of the Universal Judgement cf. Ibid., pp. 71-72 and passim. On Orsini's stay in the Farnese Palace cf. G. Celio, Memorìa deUi nomi dell'artefici

LATIN TRANSLATIONS OF LONGINUS

236

delle pittuie che sono in alcune chiese, facciate, e palazzi di

Roma,

ed. E.

Zocca

(Milan, 1967), p. 41; F. de Navenne, Rome, le Palais Farnese et les Farnese (Paris, n. d. ), pp. 591-592, 61 1; R. de Broglie, Le Palais Farnese Ambassade de France (Paris, n.d), pp. 44, 51-52.

41.

Orsini's active role in the arts

cf.

R. Martin,

The Farnese Gallery

(Princeton, 1965), pp. 39-48, 52-53, 100, 119, 202-203. On Orsini's supposed portrait cf. L. W. Partridge, "The Sala d'Ercole in the Villa Farnese at Caprarola, Part

n," Art Bulletin, LIV, no. 1 (March 1972), pp. 50-62. 42. E. Panofsky, Idea: A Concept in Art Theory, trans.

J. J.

Peake (New York,

1968), p. 94. 43. F. Patrizi da Cherso, Lettere ed opuscoli inediti, ed. D. Aguzzi Barbagli (Florence, 1975), pp. 11-12. 44. F. Patrizi da Cherso, Della poetica, ed. D. Aguzzi Barbagli (Florence,

1969-1971), 1, p. 44; n, pp. 64-65, 259-260, 264-265, 267-268, 303-304, 316, 324-325; m, pp. 112, 258-259, 293, 367, 387-388. Cf. B. Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1974), U, p. 785. 45. Longinus, On the Sublime (1907), p. 97. 46. On the Contrarelli Chapel cf. W. Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies (Princeton, 1955), pp. 101-116, plates 28-31. 47. L. Thomdike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York, 1934-1943,) VI, pp. 245-246, 418; L. G. Clubb, Giambattista Della Porta Dramatist (Princeton, 1965), p. 7. On Pizzimenti cf. L. Accattatis, Le biografie degli uomini illustri delle Calabrìe (Cosenza, 1869-1877), n, pp. 46-50; F. Priolo, Medici calabresi illustri da Pitagora ad Anìle (Catanzaro, 1952), pp. 114-115. 48. Dionysii Longini rhetorìs praestantissimi liber de grandi orationis genere, Dominico Pizimentio Vibonensi interprete (Neapoli, 1566), p. 3a. On the myth of Vencie cf. G. Fasoli, "Nascita di un mito," in Studi storici in onore di Gioacchino Volpe per il suo 80° compleanno (Florence, 1958), I, pp. 447-479; F. Gaeta, "Alcime considerazioni sul mito di Venezia," BHR, XXin (1961), pp. 58-75; R. Pecchioli, "Il mito di Venezia e la crisi fiorentina intomo al 1500," Studi Storici, HI (1962), pp. 451-492; E. Rosand, "Music in the Myth of Venice," RenQ, XXX, no. 4 (Winter 1977), pp. 511-537; E. Muir, "Images of Power: Art and Pageantry in Renaissance Venice," American Historical Reviev/, 84, no. 1 (February 1979), pp. 16-52. 49. Vat.

lat.

5227, Part H,

50. Dionysii Longini

...

423r.

liber de grandi orationis genere, p. 3a.

51. Ibid., p. 3b.

52. Referring to

Ilepi

{»(jiouç, I,

Pizzimenti notes: "Non Terentiane, sed Floren-

tiane legit Robortellus" (Ibid., p. 5a). Cf. the Robortello edition (1554), p. 4. a few notes were entirely written by Pizzimenti: cf., for instance, the one

23b, concerning

Mintumo's De poeta

53. Dionysii Longini

Pelusio

cf.

Accattatis,

(Venetiis, 1559), pp. 452-453.

Giano liber de grandi orationis genere, pp. 2a-b, 36a. biografie, H, pp. 53-56; G. Falcone, Poeti e rimatori calabri:

. .

notizie ed esempi (Naples, 1902), calabrese (Naples, 1977), p. 72. 54. Dionysii Longini

Only on p.

...

pp. 105-108; A. Piromalli, La letteratura

liber de grandi orationis genere, p. 2a.

55. Ibid., pp. 3b-4a. 56. Lettere di Sertorio Quattromani, pp. 87-88. 57. Pagano cf. F. Barbarano, Historia ecclesiastica della città, territorio e

GUSTAVO COSTA

23/

diocese di Vicenza (Vicenza, 1649-1762), IH, p. 233;

Miari, Dizionario storìco-

aitistico-letteiarìo bellunese (Belluno, 1843), p. Ili; Id.,

Gualdo

Cronache bellunesi

in-

Angiolgabriello di Santa Maria, Biblioteca e storia di... scrittori cosi della città come del territorio di Vicenza (Vicenza, 1772-1782), VI, pp. XI-XVII; G. Cozzi, "Intorno al cardinale Ottavio Paravicino, edite (Belluno, 1865), p. 209.

cf.

a monsignor Paolo Gualdo e a Michelangelo da Caravaggio," Rivista Storica Italiana, LXXin, no. 1 (March 1961), pp. 36-68; F. Bologna, "Il Caravaggio nella cultura e nella società del suo tempo," Colloquio sul tema: Caravaggio e i caravaggeschi, organizzato d'intesa con le Accademie di Spagna e di Olanda, "Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Problemi attuali di scienza e di cultura, no. 205" (Rome, 1974), pp.

158-160. 58. Dionysii Longini de sublimi dicendi genere hber, a Petro Pagano latinitate donatus (Venetiis, 1572), p. IV a-b. On Alvise I. Mocenigo cf. A. da Mosto, I Dogi di Venezia nella vita pubblica e privata (Milan, 1960), pp. 274-283, 572. 59. Dionysii Longini de sublimi dicendi genere, p. nib. On the battle of Lepanto cf. R. Cessi, Storia della Repubbhca di Venezia (Milan-Messina, 1944-1946), H, pp. 123-125; C. Dionisotti, "Lepanto nella cultura italiana del tempo," Lettere Italiane, XXm. (1971), pp. 473-492; M. Turchi, "Riflessi letterari in Italia della battaglia di Lepanto," Nuovi Quaderni del Meridione, DC (1971), pp. 385-434. 60. St. Marin, Bibhography, p. 10, no. 32. 61. Ibid., pp. 8, 10, nos. 27bis, 30. 62. On Giovanni da Falgano cf. Notizie letterarie ed istoriche illustri della

degh

Accademia Fiorentina, Part

intomo agli uomini

(Florence, 1700), p. 253; G. Negri, Istoria

scrittori fiorentini (Ferrara, 1722), p. 279.

On Vettori cf.

Niccolai, Pier Vet-

(1499-1585) (Florence-Leipzig, 1912); D. Giannotti, Lettere a Piero Vettori, ed. R. Ridolfi and C. Roth (Florence, 1942). 63. Nolhac, La bibliothèque, pp. 70-72 and passim-. Id., "Piero Vettori et Carlo Sigonio: correspondance avec Fulvio Orsini," Studi e documenti di storia e diritto, X (1889), pp. 91-152. 64. Petri Victorii commentarii in librum Demetrii Phalerei de elocutione (Florentiae, 1562), Preface; Preface; Petri Victorii commentarii in primum librum Aristotelis de arte poetarum, 2nd ed. (Florentiae, 1573), pp. 149, 295; Petri Victorii variarum lectionum libri XXXVIII (Florentiae, 1582), pp. 354, 395. 65. J.-B. Racine, Principes de la tragédie en marge de la Poétique d'Aristote, ed. E. Vinaver (Manchester, 1944), p. 5. On Racine's attitude toward Longinus cf. M. McGowan, "Racine, Menestrier, and Sublime Effects," Theatre Research Internatori

(October, 1975), pp. 1-13. cf. Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 2 (1960), pp. 467-471. 67. Vallicelliana Library, Ms. Allacci XXIX. 1-8. 68. Vatican Library, Patetta, Autografi e docimienti. Cartella H, f. 270v. The letter

tional,

66.

no.

Allacci

addressed as follows: "A Monsieur / Monsieur du Puy Advocat / en Parlement

Paris" (Ibid.,

271v).

de Petra's translation cf. St. Marin, Bibliography, p. 9, no. 28. 70. Leonis Allatii de erroribus magnorum virorum in dicendo dissertatio rhetorica (Romae, 1635), pp. 48-49. Cf. Dionysii Longini rhetoris praestantissimi de grandi sive sublimi genere orationis, trans. G. De Petra (Genevae, 1612), pp. 71-72; Vallicelliana Library, Ms. Allacci XXIX, ff. 51v, 209v-210r. On the Longinian content of Allacci's De erroribus cf. C. Jacono, Bibhografia di Leone Allacci (1588-1669) (Palermo, 1962), pp. 13-14. 69.

LATIN TRANSLATIONS OF LONGINUS

238

71. Vallicelliana Library, Ms. Allacci XXIX, ff. 66v, 157r. Allacci gives the following translation: "una nobiscum examinata verisime diiudicabis" (Ibid., ff. 45r, 177r). Cf. Ilept ucjjouc, I, 2.

72. Longinus,

the Sublime (1907), p. 43. ... liber de glandi omtionis genere, p. 5b. 74. Vallicelliana Library, Ms. Allacci XXIX, ff. 66v, 157v. 73. Dionysii

Longini

75. Ibid.,

45r, 178r.

ff.

Convergences et divergences étymologiques chez Bovelles et Sylvius Colette Demaizièie au XVIème siècle, engenun désir nouveaux de connaître son origine. On naïvement, par un "patriotisme enfantin et pédantesque, moitié

L'intérêt que l'on porte à la langue vulgaire, dre

une

espère

curiosité et

Lemaire de Belges et Ronsard nous racontent nos origines troyennes, d'autres tentent de rattacher notre langue à l'hébreu ou au grec voire à une langue germanique.^ Sylvius, homme de conciliation, reconnaît une place primordiale au latin mais se réclame, en partie, du grec et de l'hébreu: "Gallia Graecas dictiones pariter et Latinas in suum idioma foelicitate ea transcripsit, ut nullum prope verbum sit, quod Graecis et Latinis non debeamus. Nec desunt tamen quae Hebraeis accepta referimus sed non admodum multa"; ^ ayant ainsi sacrifié à la mode, il ne manque pas de préciser: "(Latini sermonis) ex quo maxima ex parte Galliens defluxit.'"* Bovelles, quant à lui, ne nous laisse aucun doute sur son sérieux, moitié fictif,"^ lui trouver de la naissance. Jean

opinion, puisque, dès le titre du chapitre I du Lïbei de diffeientia, il affirme: "il y a trois langues vulgaires: l'italienne, la française, l'espagnole, tout à fait

proches de la langue latine." Soucieux d'apporter des exemples à l'appui de ces déclarations, l'im et l'autre vont se consacrer, pendant un temps, à la tâche de l'étymologiste, tâche ingrate et dangereuse car il est difficile de répondre à l'attente du lecteur humaniste sans tomber parfois dans la fantaisie. Bovelles destine un chapitre du Lïbei de diffeientia (ch.XV) à 1' "Origine et etymologic de certains mots français," puis, tout son second opuscule à établir des tables: Tabulae breves Gallicanarum vocum, docentes quaenam earum factitiae et arbitrariae, vel baibarae sint, et quae ab origine Latina manarint." Sylvius a annoncé, à plusieurs reprises, un grand projet d'Etymologicum que, malheureusem*nt, il ne semble pas avoir réalisé bien qu'il en ait parlé comme d'un ouvrage effectivement commencé: "id quod initio nostri Etymologici pianissime convincimus."^ Malgré l'absence de ce volume, qui aurait pu être comparé commodément à celui de Bovelles, nous pouvons utiliser le travail de l'Isagoge où Sylvius, pour exposer les changements subis par les lettres dans le passage du mot latin au mot français, est conduit à donner l'étymologie d'un certain nombre de ces

240

BOVELLES ET SYLVIUS

mots. Notons cependant que notre tâche ne sera pas facilitée par le caractère très différent de ces deux traités. Bovelles réalise une sorte de dictionnaire étymologique pour 623 mots classés par ordre alphabétique.^ Comme il est naturel en l'état de ses connaissances, il ne trouve pas toujours une solution, mais quand il en propose une, il s'efforce de l'expliquer. Sylvius veut illustrer les changements d'une voyelle ou d'une consonne en une autre comme affie et vfifif ou les accidents phonétiques tels que la prothèse, l'élision, l'épenthèse Pour les besoins de sa démonstration, il ne peut donc choisir que des etc mots dont il se sente capable de donner l'origine, ce qui rend impossible un rapprochement statistique de l'ensemble. Ainsi, pour ne comparer que ce qui est comparable, nous avons choisi de retenir seulement, en vue de notre étude, les mots dont l'étymologie est donnée dans les deux ouvrages. Contrairement à la mode de l'époque, les etymologies grecques sont assez rares: une vingtaine chez Bovelles et une douzaine chez Sylvius. Parmi les mots qui reçoivent une telle origine trois seulement sont communs aux deux . . .

auteurs:'^

chèle: Xâipe (Bovelles, p. 87 et 134); Xaipov ou Xapà (Sylvius, p. 44 et 70); xdcpa, bas latin cara, (F. E. W., H, p. 348)

coup

et couper. xo;ciç et xoitTco (Bovelles, p. 88, 89, 134); xÓTtxto (Sylvius,

colaphus colapus, latin impérial, refait sur le grec xoXaçoç (F. W., n2) paillait (paillard): de pellex, mot grec^ signifiant concubine (Bovelles, p. 153); de palea ou pallace, transcription du grec TcaXXaxy (Sylvius, p. 104); paille {dG palea) + suffixe péjoratif ûrd (F. E. W., Vu, p. 498) p. 147);

Quoi qu'il en soit, on ne peut tirer de conclusions sérieuses de similitudes, de différences ou d'erreurs portant sur trois mots seulement, c'est pourquoi, nous allons nous pencher essentiellement sur les origines latines, en prenant pour point de départ le travail de Bovelles, le plus proche d'un vrai dictionnaire étymologique. Le chanoine picard propose une origine latine pour 402 mots dont 131 se retrouvent chez Sylvius. Sur les 131, 80 reçoivent, chez les deux auteurs, une etymologic identique et toujours admise, 7 une etymologic identique mais erronée. Ainsi, sui 131 mots, il y a conveigence poui 87 soit 66%. L'accord se fait entre les deux hommes, à bon escient, pour 80 mots sur 87, soit près de 92%, à tort, pour 7 mots sur 87, soit 8%. Citons quelques exemples de ces rencontres: a)

etymologies exactes:

bouche de bucca

(Sylvius, p. 35; Bovelles, p. 132; F. E. W., I p. 581); chief de caput (Sylvius, p. 51; Bovelles, p. 137; F. E. W., n, p. 334); dioit de diiectus (Sylvius, p. 20 Bovelles; p. 137; F. E. W., m, p. 87) b) erreurs:

écume de spuma (Sylvius, p. 137: skum germ.)

51 et 57; Bovelles, p. 138);

(F.

W., XVI,

maichei de meicaii (Sylvius, p. 17; Bovelles, p. 148); (F. E. W., XVI, p. 527: maïkôn, anc. frq) poids de pondus (Sylvius, p. 85; Bovelles, p. 154); (F. E. W., Vm, p. 204: pensum]

COLETTE DEMAIZIERE

241

Les divergences, plus ou moins graves, concernent (131-87): 44 mots, soit près de 34%. Ce sont naturellement ces divergences qui seront les plus révélatrices et nous permettront de discerner les causes d'erreurs et d'apprécier la qualité du sens linguistique de nos deux auteurs. Ces 44 mots sont les suivants:

Sylvius 1.

achever

Bovelles

F. E.

242 18. cuidier

BOVELLES ET SYLVIUS

COLETTE DEMAIZIERE 36. payer

244

BOVELLES ET SYLVIUS

en se laissant guider par: rapprochement des sons entre le mot français et latin ou, parfois, grec. C'est la raison d'étymologies comme attune pour addonc, xoopivoç pour cousin (prononcé courin dans certaines régions), ardeo ou ardor pour hardi, pretium (prononcé /presjum/) pour paresse (prononcé presse), Oueiv pour tuer. 2) une certaine concordance orthographique: cuneus pour cuin et conus pour coin, fallax pour faulx, xâipov ou xapà pour chère, à cause du x ) ch, compaganus pour compagnon, signator pour signeur etc ... Il arrive même que cette concordance orthographique soit un peu "forcée" après coup, ainsi, n'est-ce pas Sylvius lui-même qui choisit, pour le verbe'dîner'la graphie'dipner' (alors que l'orthographe ancienne la plus répandue est'disner') afin de la mettre en conformité avec le grec BeiTwêçiv? Rabelais écrivait aussi'dipner'^ et c'était pour s'interrogent avec persévérance

Ils

1) le

les

mêmes raisons. On connaît bien ces erreurs orthographiques qui ont attri-

bué un h à heur et un d à poids, en vertu des fausses etymologies: hora et pondus. 3) un rapprochement de sens: hrachium pour branche parce qu'elles sont comme les'bras' des arbres, conjungere pour coudre, parce qu'en cousant on réunit deux pièces de tissu, consanguineus pour cousin, parce qu'ils sont du même sang, fermage pour fromage parce qu'il clôt le repas, planus pour planche parce qu'une planche est une surface plane. Ce dernier procédé est le plus dangereux; en effet, quand l'auteur a découvert un rapprochement de son ou une concordance orthographique, il a souvent tendance à les compléter en forgeant, à tout prix, une concordance de sens. Cela risque d'aboutir à ces commentaires explicatifs dont se sont tant raillé les générations suivantes: le marchand de Sylvius qui "marche" jusqu'au fond des Indes, le garçon de Bovelles qui est surtout "bavard," le paresseux qui n'a de "prix" que pour lui-même, le poison qui semble être toujours dans une "fiole," l'heur que l'on prévoit d'après "l'heure" de la naissance, le bonet qui "bon est" pour se protéger la tête, le balet qui sert à "battre vallet" ou encore la cloche ou cloque, de coclea (escargot) "parce qu'on faisait les petites clochettes de forme ronde et sphérique à la façon des escargots."

Cette concordance sémantique peut, à l'inverse, engendrer des erreurs phonétiques, ainsi Bovelles déclare, avec beaucoup de naturel, que blanc vient de albus et que 1 et a sont passés après le b qu'en latin ils précédaient. N'accablons pas Bovelles et Sylvius à cause de quelques fantaisies et rappelons que, sur 131 mots communs aux ouvrages de l'un et de l'autre, Sylvius a donné au total 99 etymologies toujours admises soit 75% et Bovelles 91, soit 69%. Ce sont là de très beaux résultats pour l'époque! Les fautes étaient liées au système. Déjà Quintilien écrivait à propos de Varron: "Qui n'aura pas droit à l'indulgence après Varron, qui veut persuader à Cicéron que ager (champ) vient de agere (faire) parce qu'on a toujours quelque chose à faire dans son champ?"^° A la décharge de Varron, M. Jean CoUart a rappelé que l'erreur, commune à tous les grammairiens de l'antiquité, à l'exception de Diodore le Mégarique, était de "chercher un rapport de signe à chose signifiée, comme le conseillaient les Stoïciens enseignant "qu'il faut pousser son enquête jusqu'à ce que la chose {res) forme avec le son du mot {sonus verbi) un accord d'harmonieuse ressemblance."^^ Bovelles invoque bien l'arbitraire humain {or-

COLETTE DEMAIZIERE

245

bitnum) dans la constitution des langues mais il ne peut résister au plaisir de rechercher ces harmonieuses concordances. Bovelles et Sylvius ont le mérite d'avoir senti la parenté des langues romanes entre elles et de s'être penchés, non sans succès, sur le problème de leur origine. Certes, ils n'ont pas toujours évité des erreurs grossières mais il a fallu attendre encore deux siècles pour lire les judicieux conseils de prudence formulés par Turgot dans l'article Etymologie de la Grande Encyclopédie:^^ "Concluons de tout ce que nous avons dit, qu'il y a des etymologies certaines, qu'il y en a de probables et qu'on peut toujours éviter l'erreur, pourvu qu'on se résolve à beaucoup ignorer." Bovelles qui, semble-t-il, fait un peu plus de fautes d'interprétation que Sylvius, aurait, sans doute, eu besoin de ces conseils mais il a couru le risque de se lancer dans un travail délicat en demeurant conscient du danger. Les dernières lignes de ses tabulae le montrent bien: "... nous avons fait cela pour que, en nous occupant de quelques mots, nous amenions le lecteur avide de savoir à établir des tables plus vastes et plus étendues. Nous lui avons fourni la sem*nce à partir de laquelle chacun pût s'efforcer d'obtenir Que le lecteur plus connaisseur que moi soit une moisson plus abondante juge!" Nous ne pouvons savoir ce que Sylvius aurait dit à la fin de son "Etymologicum" inachevé. Pourquoi supposer qu'il aurait été éloigné des conclusions de Bovelles dont, sur bien des points (l'âge, l'origine, les préoccupations linguistiques) il était si proche? Ces deux hommes, curieux de tous les problèmes de leur temps, ne croient pas détenir la Science et la Vérité; ils sont modestes et ne prétendent pas avoir fait le tour de la question. Ils ont "débroussaillé" un terrain difficile, sans trop se faire d'illusions. Ils ont voulu donner l'impulsion à ce type de recherche, ce sont des "initiateurs," qui, par la proportion appréciable de leurs succès, font mentir à l'avance le Président de Brosses écrivant au XVnième siècle: ^^ "Un étymologiste doit s'attendre, sur le seul titre, à être peu favorablement jugé de la plupart des gens." . . .

Université Jean Moulin (Lyon IQ)

Notes Brunot, Histoire de la langue française (HLF), I, p. 1. cf. Claude Mitalier, De vocabulis quae Judaei in Galliam introduxerunt, lettre à Jérôme de Castillon publiée à la suite des Hypomneses d'Henri Estienne, 1582, Slatkine reprints 1968); Guillaume Postel, De originibus seu de Hebraicae linguae et gentis antiquitate atque variorum linquarum affinitate (Paris, 1538); Bibliander De ratione communi omnium linquarum et litterarium com1. F.

pour l'hébreu,

mentarius (Zurich, 1548). pout le grec: cf. Guillaume Bude, De analogia, 1532; Joachim Perion, Dialogorum de linguae gallicae origine, ejusque cum graeca cognatione libri TV, 1555; Henri Estienne, Conformité du français avec le grec, 1565. pour l'origine germanique: Goropius, Origines Antwerpianae, 1569; W. Himger, Linguae germanicae vindicatio, Argentorati, 1583.

BOVELLES ET SYLVIUS

246 3. Sylvius, Isagoge, p. 10. 4. Ibid. p. 119. 5. 6. il

dans l'adresse au lecteur, en tête de l'Isagoge. Cet ordre alphabétique tient compte de la première

lettre

seulement,

comme

est fréquent à cette époque.

En regard des etymons donnés par Sylvius W. en témoignage de l'exactitude de

F. E.

et Bovelles,

nous citons celui du ou des erreurs

origine proposée

commises. 8. Bovelles fait erreur quand ü croit que le mot pellex est grec, c'est le mot latin pellex ou pelex ou paelex qui désigne celui ou celle qui se prostitue. Le mot grec correspondant est na\X(xx-f\ ou itaXXax(ç: la concubine. 9.

Tiers livre, ch.

10. Quintilien,

XIV 6,

Quart

livre, ch. LI.

37.

CoUart, Varron grammairien latin, p. 280. 98-111. 13. Dans son Traité de la formation mécanique des langues, 1765. Cette phrase est placée en tête du petit volume de Pierre Guiraud: VEtymologie, Paris, PUF, 11. cf.

12. Encyclopédie, VI, p.

qsj

n° 1122.

NB: Les

références à Sylvius renvoient à l'édition de 1531 chez Robert Estienne, édition reproduite par Slatkine en 1971. Les références à Bovelles renvoient à notre édition commentée, avec traduction, parue sous le titre: Sur les langues vulgaires

et la variété de la langue française (Paris, Klincksieck, 1973).

Marot Traducteur d'Erasme Malie Madeleine de La Gaiandeiie I. le nom de Clément Marot est celui d'un poète célèbre, il est sans doute aussi celui d'un poète mal connu, et — tel est ici notre propos — celui d'un humaniste méconnu. Certes Marot est victime de la tradition universitaire qui l'a catalogué comme poète courtisan (avec connotations péjoratives et laudatives mêlées), réduisant le plus souvent aux limites d'un badinage élégant une œuvre que traversent pourtant les épreuves de l'exil et l'éventualité du martyre. En fait Marot, à cause de ce don qu'il avait de garder ses distances avec le malheur, à cause de son humour plein de tendresse, est victime de son propre sourire. Il est victime aussi de l'occultation (notamment dans les programmes scolaires) de la poésie des Réformés (l'audience des Psaumes resta longtemps limitée à l'Eglise qui les chantait). Il est victime enfin, et peut-être surtout, de cette énorme machine de propagande, et de guerre, que fut en 1549 la Défense et Ulustiation de la langue française, à cinquante pour cent dirigée contre Marot, sans pratiquement le nommer.^ En proclamant à son de trompe, cinq ans après la mort du poète exilé, qu'elle inaugurait la poésie humaniste, et qu'elle était la première à entreprendre r"illustration de la langue française," la future Pléiade rejetait dans les ténèbres de l'ignorance un prédécesseur illustre "encombrant" par nombre de ses entreprises; elle le gommait, elle le niait, pour s'arroger seule l'auréole de la poésie

savante.

Or l'œuvre erudite de Clément Marot représente un vaste secteur encore mal éclairé et qu'il importerait d'explorer et d'apprécier.^ Marot peut avoir à nos yeux (sinon à ceux de

la Pléiade) le mérite d'avoir concilié tradition classique et tradition nationale (il est, comme on sait, l'éditeur du Roman de la Rose et de Villon^). Il a traduit, à des âges très divers de son existence, et avec plus ou moins de bonheur, des auteurs aussi divers que Virgile, Ovide, Musée (Les amours de Leander et Hero], Philippe Beroalde, Erasme, Pétrarque,* ...et David. Ce qui prouve l'éventail très large de ses curiosités. Or la traduction, et surtout la traduction en vers, était un genre très prisé

MAROT TRADUCTEUR D'ERASME

248

à l'époque, et jusque 1560 environ^ — date à laquelle viendra le doute, et s'instaurera le débat sur la part d'activité créatrice qui intervient dans l'adap-

tation d'une langue à l'autre. C'est

cas particulier

du problème de

prétation. Ainsi pour Nicolas Hérault, qui enseignait les

bonnes

l'inter-

lettres à Paris

vers 1518, l'interprète (entendons le commentateur, le professeur) est un maillon de la chaîne aimanté de poésie qui relie le ciel à la terre. ^ Thomas Sebilet écrit en 1548 dans son Art poétique:

Pourtant t'averty-je que la version ou traduction est aujourd'huy le Poème plus frequent et mieus receu dés estimés Poètes et dés doctes lecteurs, a cause que chacun d'eus estime grand œuvre et de grand pris rendre la pure et argentine invention des Poètes dorée et enrichie de notre langue. Et vrayment celuy et son œuvre méritent grande louenge, qui a peu proprement et naïvement exprimer en son langage ce qu'un autre avoit mieus escrit au sien, après l'avoir bien conceu en son esperit. Et luy est deue la mesme gloire qu'emporte celuy qui par son labeur et longue peine tire dès entrailles de la terre le thresor caché, pour le faire commun a l'usage des tous lès hommes.'^ En revanche Du Bellay, dans la Defense et Illustration ... (1,5), estime que, si la traduction a contribué à enrichir la langue, elle ne suffit pas à son ilustration, et reste toujours inférieure en valeur à l'original. Toutefois Peletier du Mans se rangera à nouveau,^ en 1555, à l'avis de Sébilet ... Et l'on sait que du Bellay a lui-même traduit Virgile ...

n. "Dis-moi qui tu traduis, je te dirai qui tu es." La traduction est im phénomène de symbiose où se ressource le génie (Vingenium). Quand Baudelaire traduit Poë il semble qu'il en vienne à ne plus savoir ce qui est de lui, ce qui est de Poë Entre Marot et Erasme il est possible aussi de parler de symbiose. Même goût de la concentration qui suggère et laisse à penser, même discrétion, même sensibilité vite contrôlée par une etrême pudeur, même humour. Et aussi . . .

même

foi.

Marot a traduit deux (et peut-être trois) colloques érasmiens. On possède une première édition, sans lieu ni date (1548?) qui contient, sous le titre Deux colloques d'Eiasme, la traduction en vers d'Abbatis et eruditae (Colloque de l'Abbé et de la Femme scavante), suivie de celle de Vir^o misogamos (Colloque de la vierge méprisant mariage). Deux éditions semblables sont datées, elles, de 1549; l'une parisienne, due à G. Thiboust, l'autre lyonnaise due à J. Le Converd.^ D'autre part un manuscrit de la Bibliothèque nationale de Paris (fonds fr. 12795) rassemble la traduction de Virgo misogamos et celle du colloque qui en constitue en quelque sorte l'épilogue, Virgo pœnitens (Colloque de la vierge repentie). Le copiste présente cette dernière traduction comme étant également de Marot, et Guiffrey l'a publiée au tome n des Oeuvres de Clément Marot. Selon G. A. Mayer, ^° la présentation du manuscrit suscite, sinon une certitude, du moins une forte présomption d'authenticité.

MARIE MADELEINE DE LA GARANDERIE

249

L'examen inteme de la traduction nous incline vers la même conclusion. Toutefois nous bornerons ici notre étude, à cause des limites de temps qui nous sont imposées, aux deux textes imprimés en 1549.

Où et

quand Marot a-t-il traduit Erasme? D'après P. Villey, entre les deux D'après M. A. Screech, ^^ pendant le premier exil. Que l'on songe que l'édition parisienne des Colloquia pai Simon de Colines est de février 1526,^^ que l'on songe aussi que l'on trouve des souvenirs des Colloques dans des œuvres de Marot antérieures au premier exil (souvenirs de Funus dans la DeploratioD de FI. Robertet, 1527; souvenirs de Proci et puellae dans VEpitbalame de Renée de France, ^^ 1528)— et l'on serait tenté de situer plus tôt encore ces traductions. Du moins en ce qui concerne celle de Virgo misogamos, et éventuellement celle de Virgo pœnitens. Car une allusion aux "nobles dames de Soubise," dans le colloque de l'Abbé et de la femme scavante, nous renvoie sans ambiguïté au séjour ferrarais. Placé en tête par les éditeurs, ce colloque nous semble postérieur à celui de la Vierge méprisant mariage, non seulement pour la raison qui vient d'être indiquée, mais à cause de la qualité de sa traduction. exils. ^^

Afin de juger équitablement les traductions de Marot,

il n'est pas inutile de quelle était la doctrine du temps en la matière. On peut la trouver dans l'opuscule d'Etienne Dolet (imprimé par lui-même à Lyon en 1540) La maniere de bien traduire d'une langue en aulire. En voici les cinq principes

rappeler

ici

fondamentaux: 1.

3. 4.

entendre "parfaictement les sens et matière de l'autheur." avoir "parfaicte connaissance de la langue de l'autheur." ne pas s' "asservir jusque a la que l'on rende mot pour mot." se "garder d'usurper mots trop approchants du latin et peu usités par le passé." Bref ne latiniser qu'à bon escient, et, autant que possible "se contenter du commun." 5. Enfin la cinquième règle prescrit de rechercher l'harmonie du langage, d'observer les nombres oratoires, de veiller à la "bonne copulation des mots."

Ces principes s'appliquent parfaitement à l'œuvre de Marot traducteur d'Erasme.

Nous

allons examiner celle-ci successivement du point de vue de l'exactitude nous faudra en inventorier les erreurs, en apprécier les adaptations), puis du point de vue de l'idéologie et de l'esthétique: deux aspects de la marge par laquelle se révèle la vibration propre du traducteur. (il

Il est évident que Marot prétend à une parfaite exactitude. Il fait précéder chacune de ses traductions de courts poèmes qui le proclament. En tête d'Ab-

batis et Eruditae:

Qui le sçavoir d'Erasme vouldra voir Et de Marot la ryme ensemble avoir. Lise cestuy colloque tant bien faict, Car

c'est

d'Erasme et de Marot

le faict.

MAROT TRADUCTEUR D'ERASME

250 Et en tête de Virgo misogamos:

Amy

lecteur, sois adverty

Qu'au

latin n'a lien d'advantage ce qui est icy verty, Par Marot, en nostre langage.

Que

Effectivement une lecture cursive de la traduction donne une impression immédiate de fidélité tant à la lettre qu'à l'esprit. Mais il faut y regarder de plus près. La méfiance s'impose/^ et se trouve vite justifiée si l'on s'attache à Viigo misogamos. Quand la jeune fille exprime l'éblouissem*nt qu'elle a éprouvé dès l'enfance en assistant aux cérémonies d'un monastère, Erasme accumule les termes suggérant l'éclat: nitebant omnia atque etiam fiagiabant. Et Marot traduit:

Tout

reluisait jusques

aux franges. (v.

196)

Comment une telle bévue est-elle possible? Peut-on invoquer la suggestion du mot fiagiabant sur un poète particulièrement sensible aux sonorités? Il est dans le même texte une autre erreur grave, quoique moins grossière. Quand le jeune homme questionne la jeune fille et la presse de livrer le secret de sa tristesse, il présume qu'il s'agit d'un chagrin d'amour, et la jeune fille répond: Amoi est in caussa, sed non ejus generis, cujus tu suspicaie. — Quod genus tu mihi naiiasl— Divina. Marot traduit ces dernières répliques: Quelle amour est ce?— Amour divine. (v.

136)

Admettons

qu'ici la confusion ait été grammaticalement possible. Mais le contexte devait en détourner Marot; notamment la réponse du jeune homme:

Equidem consumpsi omnem divinationem = je suis à bout d'hypothèses; perds toute ma divination...), que Marot traduit mollement par (

Brief

j'y

quand dix ans je penserois, je ne scaurois....

Plus deviner

(v.

137-8)

Ainsi est perdu l'effet de répétition divina/divinationem. Et surtout est perdu le jeu de scène: le jeune homme, qui n'a pas encore deviné, et espère secrètement que c'est lui qui est aimé, presse la main de la jeune fille et celle-ci s'écrie: ut violentus es\ Chez Marot plus de malentendu dramatique; la main est pressée alors que l'énigme est déjà trop bien éclaircie. Autre contre-sens, supia, quand le jeime homme recoimaît dans sa compagne moium amabilia giatia, quam in felicissimis etiam foimis non laio desideiamus. Marot traduit: ... ceste bonne grace exquise, Laquelle est tousjours tant requise

la beaulte. (v.

97-9)

MARIE MADELEINE DE LA GARANDERIE au lieu de "laquelle

fait

souvent défaut

même en la beauté," — sens bien plus

riche, puisqu'il attribue à Catherine des qualités qui

ment

25I

ne sont pas nécessaire-

associées.

Plus légers sont les reproches que l'on peut faire à Marot, pour avoir traduit, le même dialogue, mores me dignos par "bonnes mœurs" (v. 101), bine nihil queioi par'je n'en doubte" (v. 107), et, à propos des mœurs saphiques dont la jeune fille risque de faire l'expérience au couvent Atque ideo haec veiba facio ne quando intellegas par le peu vraisemblable

dans

Aussi

l'ay je dit

que ne

fin

tout à poinct

fut entendu. (v.

354-5)

au lieu de "afin que vous ne le compreniez pas un jour," chargé de tristes pressentiments. On peut aussi être déçu de voir rendu par "plaisance" (v, 368) un nitoiibus qui connotait faux éclat et paccotille. D'autres taches semblent dues à la hâte du traducteur. Ainsi:

faict

de la loy se demaine

Ailleurs, et principalement

baptesme. (v.

506-7)

évidemment "le faict de la foy" (l'œuvre de piété par excellence s'accomplit au baptême). Ces remarques, qui n'épuisent évidemment pas le sujet, concernent toutes virgo misogamos. Le colloque de l'Abbé et de la femme scavante nous apparaît comme une œuvre plus élaborée. Toutefois on peut regretter que, dans la première partie de ce dialogue, Marot ait cru bon de varier les traductions de suave ou suavitei vivere (vivre à l'aise, à son aise, en grande liesse, en grande esbas, a plaisir, plaisamment, sans esmoy, etc), alors qu'Erasme avait précisément cherché un effet de répétition, et joué de l'ambiguïté du mot. alors qu'il faut entendre

Etudions maintenant des distortions plus licites. Par souci de toucher son mieux compris, Marot adapte. Souci d'efficacité et souci de fidélité interfèrent. Ainsi Marot change le nom des interlocuteurs. La Magdalie d'Abbatis et eruditae devient Ysabeau (prénom plus "à la mode"). Le nom d'Antron (qui signifie grand âne) disparaît. Aussi bien le personnage se montre-t-il âne à chacune de ses répliques sans avoir besoin d'en porter le nom; en revanche, pour la lecture, le fait de rappeler à chaque changement de voix son titre d'abbé a valeur satirique. Si la jeune fille de Virgo misogamos garde le prénom de Catherine, son partenaire, Eubule (le bon conseiller), entre dans la peau de l'auteur et devient Clément, — ce qui contribue à faire du texte une profession de foi. Dans la liste des femmes savantes, à la fin d'Abbatis et eruditae, les Allemandes et les Anglaises sont remplacées par des Françaises (Marguerite de Navarre, les dames de Soubise). Les livres Gallice scripti sont (au v. 181) désignés, pour plus de clarté, comme "romans." Le couvent où Catherine rêve de faire profession ne porte plus le nom de Chryserce (qui recouvre une allulecteur, et d'en être

MAROT TRADUCTEUR D'eRASME

252

Sion à Gouda totalement impénétrable pour un lecteur français), mais celui de Tempert: jeu de mots transparent. Un proverbe peut être remplacé par un autre, de même sens, mais plus connu (comme en Viigo misogamos v. 183). Des explications trop techniques sont supprimées: celles du mot latin hheii [ibidem, v. 429), de l'expression juridique veiha de pmesenti [ibidem, à propos des mariages clandestins, v. 595). L'exigence de la rime implique évidemment certaines modifications. Ainsi changent en Viigo misogamos les noms des moines. Jodocus devient Gervais (v. 266), Thomas devient François (v. 460). Mais ce dernier changement a pour effet de diriger contre les Franciscains la satire qui chez Erasme visait les Dominicains. Et ce n'est sans doute pas un hasard, car, en Abbaus et Eiuditae une modification différente aboutit au même résultat. Antron imaginait que la Vierge lisait les Heures de saint Benoit, il était donc bénédictin. Chez Marot la Vierge lit les Heures de notre Dame (v. 310), —ce qui est plus amusant. Quant à l'Abbé, il est appelé ironiquement "Monsieur le Bulliste" (v. 150), — ce qui le désigne comme franciscain.^^ Cette concordance des aiguillages nous fait passer insensiblement d'adaptations de pure convenance à des adaptations ,

tendancieuses. L'observation minutieuse des textes fait appaître de légères libertés du traducteur qui trahissent ses préférences idéologiques. Ainsi Marot ne respectet-il pas toujours les prudences d'Erasme:

— à propos de l'institution monastique.

Erasme a grand soin, comme on mettre en question sans s'attaquer à son principe même. Il limite sa condamnation à certaines circonstances de temps et de lieu. La vie religieuse est une servitude, écrit-il, nunc in pleiisque monastenis. Marot ne traduit pas ces derniers mots [Viigo mis., v. 436-39). Erasme a aussi une prédilection pour les tournures souples et nuancées telles que: non improbo ... tamen, non sum impiobatuTus ... quanquam. De ces formules concessives Marot retient surtout le second terme,- il traduit le premier de manière evasive, gommant ainsi tout ce qu'Erasme consait,

cédait à l'institution.^^

—Il en est de même en ce qui concerne les cérémonies. Erasme se contente de leur refuser tout pouvoir par elles-mêmes, tout pouvoir magique: ceremoniae quae per se nihil faciunt ad pietatem. Marot les ridiculise, et traduit à l'emporte-pièce par un terme de mépris: "des mines de mainte sorte" [ibidem, v. 568). D'autre part il est remarquable que Marot, poète de l'amour, dans un dialogue entre deux jeunes gens (qui se plaisent l'un à l'autre) tend à estomper l'expression de l'amour. Il néglige des expressions telles que mea Cathahna, mea lux, et surtout, à la fin du colloque, quand le jeune homme adjure la jeune fille de se souvenir de ses avertissem*nts: pro meo in te amore. Ce qui contribue encore à donner à la condamnation de la vie monastique ime valeur non subordonée à une situation personnelle, une valeur non relative. Déjà (comme nous l'avons vu plus haut) Marot avait retiré sa puissance au jeu de scène de la main pressée. Le discours du jeune homme qui pouvait chez Erasme être interprété

comme

propos d'un amoureux de bon conseil (Eubule) est bien

ici

propos

MARIE MADELEINE DE LA GARANDERIE

253

de Clément (Marot), un Clément plus candidement, plus intégralement antimonastique, plus marqué par le De votis monasticis de Luther. Il est aussi plus librement satirique, et, par voie de conséquence, plus agressif. On trouve dans les traductions de Marot une veine populaire qui se répand à plaisir aux dépens des moines. L'ironie d'Ysabeau est plus mordante que ne l'était chez Erasme celle de Magdalie. On notera aussi, en Virgo

misogamos, ces additions: ne sont châtrez ne sanez Et tout nuds ressemplent une

Ils

homme. (v.

et celle-ci, plus loin, qui attribue ...

frère

Gervais

238-9)

aspect equivoque:

(v.

270sqq)

Frère Gervais est si beau si badine...

De contenance

alors qu'Erasme s'était contenté pour crassos monachos: ...ces diables

d'écrire: fodocus...stupidus est.

Là où Erasme se borne à de

l'âge et

vin,

Quant au Je Il

encore,

de pourceaux

moynes... (v.

l'effet

235)

dire que le prieur du couvent a perdu Marot développe:

la tête

sous

prieur sur toutes bestes

vous la plevy la plus sotte! y a six ans qu'il radote

D'aage et d'ivrongnerie extreme. (v.

260-63)

en faisant profession, donne son bien au couvent, c'est, chez Marot, et chez Marot seul, "au prouffict de la canaille" (v. 442). Celui qui entre en religion doit servir plusieurs maîtres, "souvent grosses bestes champestres" (v. 488); Erasme avait écrit plenimque stultis et impiobis. Plus loin (v. 535) purìssime est traduit par "sans capharderie." De l'emploi de ce dernier terme on peut rapprocher celui d'autres mots familiers, tels que: chevaler, Si la religieuse,

dringuer, etc.

Ces emplois, toutefois, ne visent pas seulement à la satire. Ils contribuent à donner au dialogue une animation plaisante. Ils répondent à une certaine esthétique du colloque. Celle-ci sera l'objet de notre dernier point. La traduction de Marot est une traduction en vers. Or la versification impose des additions. On pourrait donc craindre une sorte d'empâtement de la brièveté érasmienne. Il n'en est rien. Certes on peut regretter que, devant la rose qui se fane, en Virgo misogamos, le jeune fille dise La comparaison

Que

est plus belle

propre, (v.

26-7)

MAROT TRADUCTEUR D'ERASME

254 au lieu du succinct

belle coUatio,

empreint

soit

de dépit, soit d'ironie.

On peut

même

colloque, après l'allusion aux "vierges-mères," de perdre la force de l'exclamation Ahominoi, remplacée par le plat regretter aussi, dans le

Vous Si

parleriez bien

autrement

vous vouliez. V.

344-5)

Mais en général l'allongement appelé par le rythme et la rime, en détendant le discours, le rapproche du langage parlé réel, lequel exige toujours un certain espace, pseudo-silence qui laisse place à la méditation, au rêve, à l'interrogation, à l'attente. C'est le rôle d'expressions

comme:

dites-moy, dites-moy,

pour dire vray, en ma conscience, sans rien omettre, voire, etc. Le dialogue érasmien est un modèle de clarté et de concision. Il tend à tirer du langage le parti le plus efficace. C'est une sorte d'épuré qui omet volontairement le tissu interstitiel. Or c'est ce tissu qui précisément étoffe le personnage, lui donne loisir de respirer, de vivre. Ouvrons le début du colloque de la Vieige meprìsant manage. Notons la multiplicité des "je," des "vous," le mot "ensemble" si heureusem*nt évocateur, au troisième vers, la répétition suggestive de "voyez." Remarquons, dans le colloque de l'Abbé et de la femme scavante l'addition d'une réplique

Quand

j'y

(v.

268):

pense,

deviens vieux.

capable de suggérer un jeu de scène comique. Un des types d'addiction les plus scéniques est Va parte. Le procédé est surtout pratiqué dans le dialogue de l'Abbé et de la femme scavante, où l'un des personnages tourne l'autre en dérision, sans que celui-ci s'en rende compte. Des exclamations joyeuses et malicieuses fusent de la bouche d'Ysabeau telles que: "Voicy rage!," "Le mieulx du monde!", "Voicy estrange fantaisie!" Elles associent le lecteur au plaisant jeu de massacre. Et la satire devient aussi plus explicite et plus crue. L'addition peut aussi fournir occasion d'évoquer le lieu de la scène. Dans le colloque de l'Abbé et de la femme scavante, "lieu de requoy" (v. 6) évoque la pièce pleine de livres et propice au travail intellectuel et à la méditation. Dans le colloque de la Vieige méprisant mariage le monastère de Tempert est "celuy qui appert Sur la montaigne par delà Le boys de vostre pere. (v.

252-4)

Erasme

avait écrit seulement: aedibus patemis vicinum. Marot ouvre le décor sur les bois et la montagne. Parfois, mais toujours avec mesure et sans infidélité, le poète tente une

échappée de pure poésie: Voyez, voyez tout à

Comment

rit

monde

ronde au monde {Virgo mis., v. 9-10)

MARIE MADELEINE DE LA GARANDERIE

255

ou:

Vierge plus blonde qu'un bassin {ibidem, v. 178)

Ce qui permet dans

la rime,

Marot de

comme

faire

don à Erasme de belles formules enchâssés gnomique {ibidem, v. 411-2):

ce distique

Vous avez en toute saison Jesus Christ en vostre maison.

cette belle fusée qui achève

rime

(il

s'agit

un passage polémique

sur le suspens d'une

robe du moine)

Laquelle Jesus Christ qui est Seigneur de tout, point ne luy donne. Et s'il dépouille et abandonne L'habit que d'ailleurs il a pris. en sera plus fort repris

Que

s'il

laissoit par grieve offense

La blanche robbe d'innocence Qu'il eust de Jesus Christ son

roy.

{ibidem, v. 468-75)

A la fin du colloque de l'Abbe et de la femme scavante, Marot prolonge le texte

érasmien par ce vers aux résonnances bibliques:

Le temps vient,

l'affaire est pressé.

qui couronne l'avertissem*nt prophétique de la

femme

savante.

m. Le statut d'une traduction en vers est nécessairement different de celui du texte dont il se réclame. C'est ainsi que, dans le cas d'Erasme et de Marot, le genre érasmien du colloque (où l'intention satirique relayait un projet primitivement pédagogique) se trouve remplacé par un genre tout voisin, mais qui accorde plus au geste, à l'espace verbal, —somme toute au théâtre. Genre que l'on pourrait rapprocher du Théâtre profane de Marguerite de Navarre. Dans ce cadre moins sobre se manifeste— peut-être à l'insu du traducteur, grâce à cette marge, grâce à cet écart inévitable d'un texte à l'autre— un projet critique plus radical que celui d'Erasme, plus proche de Luther, plus impatient du devenir immédiat ("Le temps vient, l'affaire est pressé"), et apparemment peu sensible aux prudences érasmieimes. Erasme, qui aimait les poètes, eût peut-être apprécié l'adaptation de Marot. Nul doute pourtant que le théologien en lui, constamment aux aguets, eût perçu que Marot avait franchi la ligne de démarcation, cette ligne si subtile sue laquelle il prenait quant à lui grand soin de se maintenir. A en juger par son comportement à l'égard d'un Berquin, il eût été amené, si de telles traduc-

MAROT TRADUCTEUR D'ERASME

256

tions avaient été publiées de son vivant, à répudier l'alliance que proclamaient et sans doute naïvement, les deux poèmes liminaires que nous

hautement, avons cités.

Université de Nantes

Notes Deux (I, 8 cinq mentions du nom de Marot dans la Défense ime troisième (H, 4), en vantant un poème mineur de Marot, rabaisse tout le reste de son œuvre; les deux autres (H, 1 et 9) sont strictement neutres. Le plus souvent (notamment en I, 3 et U, 3 et 4) Marot est visé 1

y a en

fait

. . .

et n, 1) sont méprisantes;

anonymement. 2. Dans l'ouvrage de J.

Plattard, MaTot, sa canièie littéiaine et son œuvre (Paris, chapitre est consacré à l'Humanisme de Marot. 3. Sur Marot éditeur de Villon, on peut consulter les articles de S. G. Nichols, in SV, LXn (1966) 2, 135-143, et LXIV (1967), 25-43; et de M. Lazard, in Etudes seizièmistes (offertes au Pr Saulnier), Paris, 1980. 4. La connaissance des langues chez Marot se limitant au latin et à l'italien, ses traductions du grec passent évidemment par des intermédiaires latins. On trouvera

1938),

une liste des traductions de Marot dans l'index du livre de C.A. Mayer, Clément Marot (Paris, 1972), p. 559-60. 5. Cf. C. A. Mayer C. M., p. 475. 6. Dans l'introduction de son cours sur le Rusticus de Politien, Paris, 1514. Cf. M-M. de La Garanderie, Christianisme et lettres profanes (Lille et Paris, 1976), 1.1, p. 69.

Ch. XIV (p. 186-91 de l'éd. F. Gaiffe). Art poétique, I, ch. VI (p. 105-11 de l'ed. A. Boulanger). 9. Cf. C. A. Mayer, Bibliographie des Œuvres de C. M. (Genève, 1954), s'agit des numéros 166, 167, 168. 7.

10. Bibliographie...,

p. 87.

Recherches sur la chronologie des Oeuvres de Marot (Chartres, 1921). 12. Marot évangéUque (Genève, 1967), p. 119. 13. Sur les Colloques d'Erasme consulter le livre de F. Bierlaire. Les Colloques d'Erasme: réforme des études, réforme des mœurs, et réforme de l'Eghse au XVIème 11.

siècle (Paris, 1978). 14. Cf. P. Leblanc, "Les sources hiraianistes du Chant nuptial de Renée de France," Bull.S.H.P.F, n^'lOO (1954), 64-74. Consulter aussi P. M. Smith, C. M., Poet of the French Renaissance, London, 1970, p. 177; et C. A. Mayer, C. M. (Paris, 1972),

156 et p. 197. Rappelons que l'on a pu faire un florilège des erreurs de Marot dans sa traduction de la première Eglogue de Virgile (Revue du XVIème s., 1931, 33-4). U est vrai que cette traduction est ime œuvre de jeunesse. Tous les historiens s'accordent pour reconnaître que Marot a fait des progrès notables à Ferrare grâce aux leçons de Celio Calcagnini (c F f. C. A. Mayer, C. M., p. 311).

15.

MARIE MADELEINE DE LA GARANDERIE 16.

25/

A la suite de conflits entre franciscains d'observances différentes, le pape Léon

X avait mis fin aux querelles par une bulle du 1er juin 1517 (cF. foumal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, p. 53). Le nom de "BuUiste" leur était resté. La valeur péjorative du mot est attesté par son emploi par Rabelais {Pantagruel, VU; et Pant. Progn, V) 17. Notamment aux vers 210 et 324 du colloque de la Vierge méprisant mariage.

The Teaching

of Latin

In Sixteenth-Century Venetian Schools Paul

Renaissance

Giendlei

above all.^ Pedagogical glowing colors the literary and moral rewards of a mastery of Latin and suggested means for achieving this goal. Teachers strove mightily to give their pupils a firm foundation in Latin grammar and the ability to read the great authors of classical antiquity. What techniques were used, and to what extent did they succeed? How did teachers and students in primary and secondary schools far from the humanistic academies of famous pedagogical reformers teach Latin to their young charges? An unexpected source has provided a series of archival documents that offers a glimpse into the teaching of Latin in a Venetian primary and secondary schools of the sixteenth century. On November 13, 1564, Pope Pius IV issued a bull demanding that all teachers make a profession of their Catholic faith before the local bishop or his representative. The pope wished to ensure that schoolmasters did not teach heresy as well as reading and writing. Two hundred fifty-eight Venetian schoolmasters swore the oath in 1587, apparently the first and only time that the papal bull was implemented in Venice, and the documentation survives.^ In response to questions, the teachers also provided information about their schools and what they taught. This information opens the door Italian schools taught Latin

treatises portrayed in

into the Latin classes of sixteenth-century schools.

Whether he attended a state-financed school, a neighborhood school run by an independent schoolmaster supported by the fees paid by the students' parents, or received private tutoring, the schoolboy normally began his study of Latin at the age of six or seven. ^ Teacher and student used a Latin grammar; it provided the program of study enabling the student to master the rudiments of the language and to begin to read. For several years, the grammar chosen by the teacher guided and tyrannized the student's life. Italian Renaissance schoolmasters could choose from a vast array of grammar manuals, for the history of Latin grammar is a continous and rich theme in western civilization.'* The Greeks pioneered the analysis of language, and passed on their insights to the Romans who applied Greek grammatical categories to Latin. Aelius Donatus, a fourth-century grammarian and rhetor

PAUL

GRENDLER

259

who

taught St. Jerome, wrote two grammars: the Ais Maioi, of which only the third part survived in the Middle Ages, and an elementary grammar in catechetical form usually called the De Paitibus Oiationis Ais Minor or simply Ais Minor. So popular was the Ars Minor that "Donatus" became a generic term for elementary Latin grammar in several European vernaculars.^ Priscian, who flourished in Constantinople about 515, wrote another famous grammar; too long and complex for the beginning student, Priscian's work became a sourcebook for many other grammars. Medieval pedagogues wrote speculative grammars that modem scholars of linguistics and logic find fascinating.^ Renaissance humanism inspired a burst of creativity in Latin grammar, especially in Italy.'' Guarino of Verona, Niccolò Perotti (1429-80), Pomponio Leto (1428-97), and many other Italian humanists wrote grammars. Aldo Manuzio (1449-1515), first and foremost a teacher, cared passionately about fostering Latin letters and good character in youth. A full year before he began to publish classical texts, Aldus composed and printed in 1493 his own grammar, one of the most attractive of humanistic grammars.^ Humanists outside of Italy contributed greatly in the sixteenth century; for example Manoel Alvarez (1526-82), a Portuguese Jesuit, published in 1572 a grammar that enjoyed enduring popularity. Thanks to the printing press, all the new gram-

mars were readily available. Although Venetian schoolmasters could pick from a multitude of medieval and Renaissance, elementary and advanced grammars, the majority preferred Donatus' Ars Minor and its variant. Donato al Senno (Donatus to Wisdom).^ But the grammar manual printed under the name of Donatus in the Italian Renaissance was not Donatus at all, but an anonymous medieval grammar very different from the fourth-century work. Scholars have named this pseudo-Donatus fanua from the eight-line verse that prefaced the grammatical material.

sum

lanua

Nee

sine

rudibus

primam cupientibus artem

me quisquam

rite peritus erit.

Nam

genus et casum speciem numerumque figuram His quae flectuntur partibus insinuo. Pono modum reliquis quid competat optime pandens Et quam non doceam dictio nulla manet. Ergo legas studiumque tibi rudis adice lector Nam celeri studio discere multa potes. ^"^ I

the door for the ignorant desiring the

first art;

Without me no one will become truly skilled. Because I teach voice and case, quality and number, and formation in their parts, which are inflected. I put method into the remaining parts of speech, explaining what agrees the best. And no use of the word remains that I do not teach. Therefore, unskilled reader, dedicate yourself and commit yourself to study.

Because you can learn

many

things with rapid study.

260

LATIN IN VENETIAN SCHOOLS

After the introductory exhortation, fanua began with a question:

Poeta quae pars est? nomen est. quare est nomen? quia significat substantiam et qualitatem propriam vel communem cum casu. Nomini quot accidunt? quinque. quae? species genus numerus figura et casus. ^^

The Ars Minor

Donatus began quite

differently.

Partes orationis quot sunt? Octo. Quae?

bium participium coniunctio

Nomen pronomen verbum adver-

praepositio interiectio.

DE NOMINE Nomen

quid est? Pars orationis cum casu corpus aut rem proprie communiterve significans. Nomini quot accidunt? Sex. Quae? Qualitas comparatio genus

numerus

figura casus. ^^

The differences between Janua and Donatus were striking and continuous. As the quoted passages show, the noun had five attributes according to Janua and six according to Donatus. Similar differences appeared throughout the two works. Both used the catechetical method and taught the same grammar. But organization, examples, and sometimes terminology varied. Janua owed little to

Donatus. ^^

The publication

shows that

Italians taught Janua rather than majority of the known Italian incunabular editions entitled "Donatus" are really Janua or its close variants. Donato al Senno (simply Janua with interlinear Italian translation) and the Donatus Melioi of Antonio Mancinelli (1452-1505).^'^ The reliance on Janua in the following

Donatus.

history

An overwhelming

centuries was even stronger. Thirty-six different Italian printings of Janua and variants of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth century have been located. (See Appendix I.) True Italian Donatus printings of this period its

are extremely difficult to find.

Renaissance Italy followed a different path from the rest of Europe. Italy preferred Janua-, the rest of Europe used Donatus. Outside Italy, over three hundred printings of Donatus or close variants appeared in the incunable period, but only a handful of editions of Janua.^^ Dépite their disdain for the

medieval auctoies, many Renaissance Italian schoolmasters taught the rudiments of Latin from a medieval manual. Most were probably imaware that Janua was not Donatus. Schoolmasters also used the new humanistic grammars, especially the Regulae Giammaticales of Guarino of Verona (1374-1460).^^ Written before 1418, when Guarino was teaching in Venice, his grammar was second in popularity to the Janua and as influential. ^'^

Many editions of Guarino's Regulae, especially those published in the sixteenth century, proclaimed the literary significance of grammar in an opening statement. Quid

est

grammatica? Grammatica est ars recte loquendi, recteque poetarum lectionibus observata.^^

scribendi, scriptorum &.

What

is grammar? Grammar is the art of speaking and writing correctly, observed in the reading of writers and poets.

PAUL

GRENDLER

26l

This passage stressed that grammar should be based on usage, i.e., the texts of (ancient) writers and poets, a fundamental Renaissance principle originating in Lorenzo Valla's Elegantiae linguae Latinae (c. 1444). But the definition of grammar probably did not come from Guarino. One cannot be certain, because the original manuscript of the Regulae has not been found, and because the text has not been established.^^ It is likely that the definition was borrowed from Perotti's Rudimenta giammatices (first published in 1468); several incunable printings of Perotti's work included the above definition of grammar verbatim. '^^ The inclusion of this statement of the literary purpose of grammar in sixteenth-century printings of Guarino's Regulae affirmed the humanistic aims of publishers and teachers. Guarino's Regulae followed classical norms by beginning with a very brief discussion of the four parts of grammar: letter, syllable, word, and speech or language (litteia, syllaba, dictio, omtio). Guarino next analyzed, using less space than the Janua, the eight parts of speech in conventional terms by listing the accidents. He did not conjugate and decline, as did the Janua, but left this for the teacher. Guarino went on to verb syntax, i.e., the construction of sentences according to the rules governing the use of verbs. Guarino gave more space to the verb than other elementary grammars. Renaissance grammarians usually referred to verb syntax as De constnictione, and handled it apart, even with a separate manual, after the parts of speech were inflected and memorized.^^ Guarino integrated inflected parts of speech into language more quickly and more thoroughly than other grammars. In this limited way Guarino treated language as living. Guarino related verbs to cases in order to explain syntactic agreement. He described how to form the first person singular in the present tense and active voice of a verb: amo. He called such a verb a "simple active verb." He then explained that the subject of a simple active verb should be in the nominative case and the object in the accusative case. He then made a sentence: Ego amo Deum. Next he listed several common verbs governed by this syntactical rule {amo, diligo, fero, porto, lego, canto, etc.) in four prin-

amas, amavi, amatum] and Italian meaning [per amare, to he added a three-line verse to help the student learn and memorize the verbs and rule just explained. He then went on to other syntactical procedures based on various subclasses of verbs, such as those that took direct and indirect objects in the accusative and dative. With the exception of the mnemonic verse, this part of Guarino's grammar looked strikingly modern, more so than other Renaissance elemantary grammars. Having spent ample time on verb syntax, Guarino passed to a variety of other grammatical topics mostly concerned with other parts of speech: hétérocl*te nouns, comparative and superlative adjectives, etc. He also discussed metrics. The ]anua did little of this. Very often printed with the Regulae Grammaticales were Guarino's Carmina differentialia, a series of poetic couplets demonstrating the differences between synonyms, hom*onyms, and the like.^^ They taught grammar and possibly provided beginning reading material. Guarino's Regulae had nearly all the features that teachers wanted in an elementary manual, as well as advanced material. The student could use it cipal parts (amo, love). Finally

262

LATIN IN VENETIAN SCHOOLS

It was concise but comprehensive, and well enough organized to make it reasonably easy to use. Guarino's grammar was both traditional and innovative. He labelled bits and pieces of Latin in the same abstract way as the Janua, but he also created functioning language out of the pieces.

throughout his career.

Guarino used several late medieval grammatical terms and borrowed sources. ^^ At the same time, he purged other medieval concepts, and simplified and reorganized the presentation in order to bring the student more quickly to grammar's purpose: reading and writing good classical Latin. Guarino's organization and procedure made the Regulae an important step in the evolution of grammar manuals. Perhaps even more than his school and theories, the Regulae confirmed Guarino's stature as a major humanistic pedagogical force.

The great popularity of Guarino's manual in the face of the traditional preference for the fanua underlined Guarino's achievement. At least forty-two Italian incunable printings are known. ^"^ Another twenty-five sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian printings have been located. (See Appendix n.) ha the later sixteenth century, Guarino and Janua were sometimes printed in tandem. ^^ As with the Janua, the surviving and known printings of Guaiino are probably only a small part of the total number of editions printed. Janua and Guarino's Regulae were equally popular, and were printed again and again in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeeth centuries. But the two works looked very different in print. The Janua was usually printed in large gothic type, very often with red and black title page, throughout the incunable period and the sixteenth century. A printing of Padua, 1608, was still printed in gothic type. (See Appendix I, no. 15.) Janua printings often ran lines on for more than a page without paragraphing, and they made no attempt to set off declension and conjugation paradigms. Janua editions displayed the type and layout that Italian printers customarily employed for chivalric romances and simple vernacular religious texts intended for a popular audience.^^ Long after italic and roman type were used for almost every other kind of book, Italian printers clung to this older format for the Janua. Printers probably used gothic type and crowded layout initially because manuscripts of Janua were written in that way. Early incunables usually looked like the manuscripts that they replaced. Later, antique type and format reassured the prospective purchaser that the new printing was a faithful duplication of previous editions. Teachers probably wanted to teach from the same grammar that they had studied; if it looked the same, they could comfortably use

it.

Publishers also preferred to repeat the same format. Since a press contained only one thousand copies on the average, new printings — often simply fresh press runs with new dates— were frequent. ^^ It was cheaper and easier to use the same type and format until the type wore out. Guarino was different. Most incunable, sixteenth-, and seventeenth-century editions of Guarino were printed in roman type. The layout included more paragraphing, and the partial paradigms of the four principal parts of verbs. Since Guarino's Regulae were composed in the fifteenth century, it is likely that the original manuscript, or its early copies, were written in humanist

^ PAUL

hand.

Roman

GRENDLER

263

type was the printer's version of fifteenth-century Italian hu-

manist hand.^^ Tradition and thrift ensured that future printings looked the same. Publishers were well aware of the different printing traditions of Janua and Guarino. In 1575, the Venetian publisher Giovanni Griffio published editions of both texts in the same sextodecimo size.^' The title page of his Janua displayed a mixture of gothic and roman type, red and black ink. The text was printed in gothic type with black ink. On the other hand, Griffio printed his Guarino exclusively in roman type with black ink. It followed the traditional Guarino layout and text. The respective printing traditions of fanua and Guarino only lost their strength in the last years of the sixteenth century. The elementary grammars determined the beginning teaching procedures. The students first studied Latin by the rules {latinano per le regole). This was further defined in terms of the stage that the pupils had reached. One teacher stated that he had a pupü of six years "who is learning by memory all the nouns, pronouns, and verbs at first. "-^ At the beginning, and possibly for two or three

memorized the parts of speech. They memorized declensions and conjugations, and uninflected parts of speech; then they learned active, passive, deponent, and impersonal verbs and so on.^^

years, students simply

Doing "concordances" came next.^^ The children wrote out exercises in which they learned to place noun and adjective in agreement according to gender, number, and case. They might also include noun, adjective, and relative pronoun: Poeta elegans, cuius; poetae elegantes, quorum; O Poeta elegans, a quo...."^^ The first Latin reader was the Disticha Catonis. Compiled in late antiquity, it was a collection of moral sayings ascribed to Cato the Censor (Marcus Porcins Cato, 234-149 B.C.), reputedly the author of rules of practical wisdom for his son. The Disticha Catonis was one of the medieval auctores, a group of readers, grammars, and glossaries, mostly written in verse. They taught Latin and good morals, and were the foundation of medieval schooling. The Disticha Catonis was possibly the most often used of the auctores, which also included the Ecloga Theodali, Pacetus, Chartula, Aesopus, and other works. Renaissance humanists scorned the auctores, because their Latin was not very good by classical standards. Only the Disticha Catonis survived the slings and arrows of outraged humanists, probably because it was almost exclusively classical with little of the medieval Latin and Christian morality that marked the other auctores. Cato was very strongly linked with the fanua as part of the curriculum to learn Latin. Nealy all fifteenth-, sxteenth-, and seventeenthcentury Italian printings of fanua, Donata al Senno, and Donatus Melior included the Disticha Catonis. They usually occupied nine to twelve pages in a fanua elementary grammar of forty-eight pages in its standard duodecimo or sextodecimo format. The distichs are short pithy sayings of moral and practical advice. They begin with very brief proverbs— "Parentes ama" (Love your parents), "Cognatos cole" (Cherish your kinfolk) — and move on to couplets of twelve to fifteen words each. ^5 The sayings are addressed to the child in order to shape the adult, and they served as practice in beginning to read Latin.

LATIN IN VENETIAN SCHOOLS

264 more advanced

pupils did translation exercise by and sometimes from Latin into Italian. ^^ These exercises came after the pupil had latinized and done concordances, probably after beginning to read.^^ Possibly the student began Slightly older and

translating letters

from

Italian into Latin

writing letters at the age of twelve or a little older. They were an important and continuing part of the effort to master Latin. The teacher wrote out a series of letters in Italian, and the student translated them into Latin. The letters might focus on one theme. For example, the letters might assume that the student had gone somewhere for a visit, and wrote to his father or tutor what he had seen and experienced. In one such exercise book of the 1530s, the letters assume that the youth, a Florentine, had gone to Arezzo for a period of two years. Each letter contained about 120 words and was filled with descriptions of life in Arezzo and observations about customs. The first one began with a description of the pretty garlanded girls of Arezzo, and cautioned that one must flee these perilous girls in the free and easy season of May.-^^ Renaissance teachers took advantage of every opportunity for moral exhortation, but the letters tried to inject realism as well. Another book of letter exercises of 1590 assumed that a Florentine youth was visiting Pisa. The first letter lamented the terrible state of the mail.-^' Letter composition exercises were designed to give the student that epistolary fluency on a variety of topics so prized in the Renaissance. Having emerged from the detailed study and memorization of grammar rules, concordances, beginning readers, and composition exercises, the student was ready to read Cicero, Virgil, Terence, Horace, and the rest. The first phase of his studies were finished; he went on to the humanist school. In the elementary grammar school, old and new, medieval and Renaissance, amicably intermingled. Renaissance teachers used much of medieval books and methodology, but they also taught from Guaiino. The printing press perpetuated the old and promoted the new, while maintaining the difference. Schoolmasters did not seem to notice the contradictions. Whatever the method, they wished to produce students fluent in Latin. The large body of Latin works that Renaissance man left to posterity confirms the efficacy of their labor.

University of Toronto

Appendix Italian Printings of Janua,

Donato

al Senno,

and Donatus Melioi of the

Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and early Eighteenth Centuries.

The printings are listed in short-title form with a minimum of additional information. I hope to prepare a more complete catalogue in the future. The following abbreviations are used in appendices and notes.

PAUL

GRENDLER

265 Abbreviations

Books Annali dei Gunti,

/ Giunti Tipografi Editori di Firenze. Armali

Firenze

1497-1625.

cura di Decio Decia, Renato

Delfiol, e Luigi Silvestro Camerini.

Two

vols.

Florence, 1979.

Paolo Camerini, Annali dei Giunti. Venezia. Two vols. Florence, 1962-63. Le Cinquecentine della Biblioteca Trivulziana. Voi. I: Le edizioni milanesi. Catalogo a cura di Giulia Bologna. Milan, 1965. Indice Generale degli Incunaboli delle Biblioteche d'Italia. Compilato da T. M. Guamaschelli e D. Valenziani. 5 vols. Rome, 1943-1972.

Annali dei Giunti, Venezia Cinquecentine della Trivulziana

IGI

Reference

made

also

to other incunable catalogues that

tion: Hain, Copinger, Reichling,

GW, and

need no explana-

Goff.

Libraries

Bologna, Archiginnasio Bologna, Universitaria Florence, Laurenziana Florence, Marucelliana

BU FLaur

FM FN FPed

Florence, Nazionale Florence, Nazionale Pedagogica

FRic

Florence, Riccardiana

Milan, Braidense Milan, Trivulziana Padua, Universitaria Rome, Alessandrina Universitaria Rome, Angelica Rome, Casanatense Rome, Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini Venice, Marciana

MT PU RAles

RAng RCas

RVE VCini

Janua 1.

Aelij

Donati

...

grämatices rudimenta.... (Venetijs, Lucantonij de Giun-

1510). 14.7 X 21 cm. Gothic type. Title page in red and black ink. Includes Disticba Catonis. VCini 219. Also listed in Annali dei Giunti, Venezia, no. 142.

ta,

2. Aelij

Donati gr amatici pro impeträdo ad rempublicam literariam aditu grammatices rudimenta quae aptissime dedicata

novitijs adolescentibus (Venetiis, per

Guilielmum de Fontaneto,

1525).

LATIN IN VENETIAN SCHOOLS

266

14.3 X 19.6 cm. Gothic type in red and black ink. Title page has figured border. Includes Disticha Catonis. University of Illinois Library. 3. Aelij

Donati

...

gramatices rudimenta.... (Venetijs, Luce Antonij Junta,

1525). 4°. Gothic type.

Not seen, but identical with printing of Venice, 1510, according to Annali dei Giunti, Venezia, no. 296. 4. Aelij Donati gr amatici pro impeträdo ad rempublicam liter ariam aditu novitijs adolescentibus grammatices rudimenta quae aptissime dedicata (Venetiis, per Guilielmum de Fontaneto, 1530). 14.3 X 19.8 cm. Gothic type in red and black ink. Title page has figured border. Very nearly identical, even to contents of individual pages, to no. 2. Listed in Columbia University Library catalogue as 1503. However, upon close inspection, the cropped date is 1530. Moreover, Guglielmo da Fontaneto was not active before c. 1512. Columbia University Library, Clark Collection. 5. Aelii Donati Grammatici Brevissimae Puerorum Institutiones (Brixiae, apud Ludovicum Britannicum, 1548). 14.3 X. 20.2 cm. Title in roman type in red ink. Text in gothic type in red and black ink. Title page has figured border with school scenes. Includes Disticha Catonis and De Constiuctione review material partially attributed to Priscian. University of Illinois Library, x475 D71b. 6. No title page. (Impressum Florentiae per Benedictum lunta, 1548). 14.1 X 20.8 cm. Roman type. Includes Disticha Catonis. FN Palat. 19. 6. 109. Also listed in Annali dei Giunti, Firenze, no. 260. 7. Aelii Donati rudimenta grammatices. Studio opera Barptolomaei Moirani.... (Mediolani, Ex officina Valerli &. Hieronymi fratrum de Meda,

1568).

14.6 X 19.3 cm. Semi-gothic type. Includes Disticha Catonis. This edition contains a small amount of additional material. 8.

Donatus ad lectorem

(Venetijs,

Apud

Io.

Gryphium,

tt V. 28.

1575).

9.6 X 14.3 cm. Text is gothic type. Title page is a mixture of gothic and roman type, red and black ink. Includes Disticha Catonis. RCas Misc. 452. 10. 9. Donati institutiones grammatices a Dionysio Malatesta ... recognitae (Romae, Apud Victoriam Elianum, 1575). 10.6 X 15.4 cm. Roman type. Includes Disticha Catonis. RAng 11. 1. 69. This edition expands the declensions and conjugations slightly, presents a little Italian translation, and sometimes groups together two or three words in order to make examples. It resembles the Donatus Melioi as much as Janua. 10. Aelii Donati rudimenta grammatices (Florentiae, apud luntas, 1578). 13.6 X 19.8 cm. Roman type. Includes Disticha Catonis. RVE 6. 2. D. 50. Also listed in Annali dei Giunti, Firenze, vol. H, no. 79. 11. Aelii Donati grammatices erudimenta (Romae, Apud Antoniam Facchettum, 1595?). 9 X 13.7 cm. Roman type. Title page in red and black. Includes Disticha Catonis. RVE 34. 5. A. 10. 4. The copy is badly cropped, rendering the date illegible. Because it is bound with a 1595 Guarino of the same printer, type, and format (Appendix n, no. 17), it is reasonable to assume that the date is

PAUL

GRENDLER

1595. This 12. Aelii

26/

is a Latin fanua with an occasional word translated into Italian. Donati grammaticale.... (Mediolani, Apud Franciscmn Paganellum,

1597). 14.8 X 21.1

cm. Roman type. Red and black

title

page.

MT H 1898/1. Listed

in Cinquecentine della Trìvulziana, no. 174. 13. Aelij Donati rudimenta grämatice incipimit. (No place, printer, or date,

but Lucca, Vincenzo Busdrago, second half of the sixteenth century.) 16°. Semi-gothic type. Incipit: lanua sum rudibus. Not seen. Listed by Francesco Pellegrini, "Saggio di un catalogo delle Edizioni Lucchesi di Vincenzo Busdrago (1549-1605). Appendice," in La Bibliofilia, 19 (1917-18), p. 237. 14. Aelii Donati ... Rudimenta Grammatices.... (Lucae, Apud Busdraghium, 1601). 16°.

Roman type. Incipit: lanua sum rudibus. Not seen. Listed by Pellegrini, "Catalogo di Busdrago. Appendice," in La Bibliofilia, 19 (1917-18), p. 38. 15. Donatus ad lectorem (Patavij, Apud Laurentium Pasquatum, 1608). 9.2 X 14.4 cm. Text is gothic type. Title page is roman type, red and black Misc. 642. 12. ink. Includes Disticha Catonis. 16. Aelii Donati Grammaticale (Mediolani, Apud Franciscum Paganellum,

1611).

14.5 X 20.1 cm. Roman type. Title page AB. XI. 73. Catonis.

red and black. Includes Disticha

Donati grammatices erudimenta (Romae, Typis Vitali Mascardi, instanza di Mauritio Bona all'insegna del Marion d'Oro). 9.8 X 15.2 cm. Roman type. Title page is roman and italic type, red and black. Includes Disticha Catonis. RAng 11. 1. 72. Janua text influenced by Donatus Melioi. Printed with (i.e., continuous signatures) Guarino. See Appendix n, no. 24. 17. Aelii

1638.

18. Aelii

Donati rudimenta grammatices (Florentiae, Typis Massae, 1645).

10 X 15.1 cm. Roman type. Includes Disticha Catonis. FM 6. G. XI. 22. 1. losephum 19. Donatus ad lectorem (Maceratae, Apud Curtium Gobbum,

Pandarum, 1645). 9.8 X 14.3 cm. Roman type. Includes Disticha Catonis. RVE

Donato 20.

title

page. (Venetiis,

34. 5. A. 10. 2.

Senno

Manfredum dç Monteferrato da Sustreno de

Bonelli, 22-IV-1503).

14.6 X 19.9 cm. Roman type with red and black title page. Includes Disticha Catonis. Rari V. 495. 21. No title page. (Venetiis per Melchiorem Sessa [sic], 29-rV-1508). 14.5 X 19.7 cm. Roman type. Includes Disticha Catonis and short review section. University of Illinois Library. 22. Donato al senno con il Cato (Mediolani per lacobum Girardonium, ad

Instantiam D. Matthaei Besutij, ad signum Stellae, 1570). 14.6 X 19.3 cm. Semi-gothic type. MB tt 5.28. 23. Donato al senno con il Cato (In Venetia, per Francesco de Leno, 1570).

268

LATIN IN VENETIAN SCHOOLS

9 X 14.6 cm. 24.

Donato

Roman

type with red and black

senno con

versi di

Catone

title

page. FLaur 22.5.15.

(In Trevigi,

1636, per Girolamo

Righettini.

Roman

9.4 X 14.8 cm. 25.

Donato

senno

type. et

no date but 1600-1650). 9.5 X 13.8 cm. Roman and

RAng IH.

Cato

(In

27.

Verona, Appresso Bortolamio Merlo,

italic type. Title

102.

Domenico

Bar-

page in red and black.

b. 220.

26.

Donato

bieri, 1654,

senno ... co' versi di Catone (In Bologna, Per instanza di Ciò. Francesco Barbetti).

10.4 X 14.6 cm. 27.

Donato

Roman and

senno

...

Italie type.

co' versi di

22. B. 9. 26.

Catone (Fiorenza

Si Bologna, per Giosef-

fo Longhi, 1670). italic type. FM 6. D. XI. 51. 1. Donato, e i versi di Dionisio Catone (In Firenze, nel Garbo, da Giuseppe Manni, no date, but 1650-1700). 10.2 X 15.8 cm. Roman and Italie type. 64. D. 185. 29. Donato al senno ... co' versi di Catone (In Firenze, 1715, Nella Stamperia di Sua Altezza Reale, Per Jacopo Giudicci, e Santi Franchi) 9.9 X 14.6 cm. Roman and italic type. RVE 24. 5 A. 10. 1. 30. Il Donato al senno, et il Catone (In Treviso, 1717, Per Gasparo Pianta). 10.1 X 15.6 cm. Roman and italic type. Misc. D. 2211.

10 X 14.3 cm.

28.

metodo

Roman and

d'Elio

Donatus Melior

Antonio Mancinelli

Antonio Mancinelli (1452-1505) was bom in Velletri and studied civil law in Perugia and Pisa. He then taught grammar in Velletri from 1473 to 1485. As his fame as teacher and scholar grew, he moved to higher paying teaching posts in Rome (1486-91), Fano, Venice, Orvieto, Velletri again, and Rome for the second time. He wrote epigrams, verses, humanist commentaries, and grammatical works, always in Latin. The Donatus Melioi, written in or before 1487, is Janua with the introduction of very limited vernacular translation of words conjugated or declined. Catonis Caimen de morìbus is the Disticha Catonis. De Aite libellus is a short commentary on grammatical points by means of quotations from various grammatical authorities. The three tracts were usually printed together, sometimes also with other grammatical and rhetorical works of Mancinelli under the title Omnia Opera. The only study on Mancinelli is Remigio Sabbadini, "Antonio Mancinelli, saggio storicoletterario," in Cronaca del R. Ginnasio di Velletri (Velletri, 1878), pp. 7-40. This was Sabbadini's first publication, written while he, like Mancinelli, was teaching at the liceo in Velletri. 31. Donatus Melior. Catonis Carmen de moribus. De Arte libellus (Mediolani. Per magistrum Leonardum Pachel, 18-V-1501). 13.4 X 19.5 cm. Roman type. Donatus Melior. Catonis

32.

FN Palat.

Misc.

3. E. 2. 12;

16. C. IV. 55. 3.

Carmen de Moribus. De Arte libellus

(Venetiis,

PAUL

GRENDLER

269

per loannem de Cerato de Tridino cognominatum Tacuinus, 29-X-1502). 14.7 X 20.4 cm. Roman type. BA 16. C. V. 43. 33. Donatus Melior. Catonis Carmen de moribus. De Arte libellus (Mediolani, Per magistrum Petrum Matirem De mantegatiis, 10-11-1506). Roman type. PU 107. b. 140/2. Printed as part of volume I of Omnia Opera-, hence, not necessarily intended for elementary school use. 34. Donatus Melior. De Arte libellus. Catonis comentariolus (Venetiis, per

loannem Tacuinum de Tridino, 5-Vin-1507). 1. 6. 150. Printed as part of volume I of Omnia Opera. Donatus Melior. Catonis carmen de moribus a Mancinello &. Ascensio explanatum. De arte libellus. (Venetiis, per Georgium de Rusconibus, 18

Roman type. FN Magi. 35.

Aprilis 1519). of

Roman type with red and black title page. BA 16. K. V. Omnia Opera edited by the Parisian publisher lodocus

(Josse Bade),

1462-1535. These three works have

collation distinct 36.

from the other

Printed as part

tracts.

Donatus Antonii Mancinelli Meliori

Verulano.... (Romae,

title

Badius Ascensius page, colophon, and

...

castigatos

Apud Antonium Facchettum,

D. loanne Martello

1594).

Roman and italic type, with red and black title page. RAng Contains Donatus Melior, Catonis Carmen de moribus, and De Arte

10.4 X 15.1 cm. 11. 1. 71.

libellus.

Appendix Italian Printings of Guarino,

Regulae Grammaticales, of the

Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. 1.

Guarini Veronensis

viri peritissimi

grammaticales regulae incipiunt.

De Quarengius Pergomensem, 27-V-1506). cm. Roman type. Includes Carmina differentialia.

(Venetiis, per Pietrü

15.1 X 20.8 Misc. 2585. 3. 2. Regulae Guarini nuperrime impressae.... (Venetiis, per loaimem de Ceretto de Tridino alias Tacuinum, 25-VIII-1507). 14.1 X 19.1 cm. Text is roman type. Title page is gothic type. PU 44. a. 134/1. 3. Guarini Veronensiis ... Institutiones grammaticales.... (Venetiis, per Magistrü Petrü Bergomensem, lO-XI-1515). 14.4 X 19.2 cm. Roman type. Includes Carmina differentialia. FN 1. D. 17. 12. 4. Guarinus Veronensis viri peritissimi. Gramaticales Regulae Incipiunt (Venetiis, per Alexandrum de Bindonis, 26-VI-1516). 9.6 x 15.6 cm. Roman type. Incipit: Quid est grammatica? FPed '500.61. 5. Grammaticales régule (Tusculani, per Alexädrü de Paganinis, no date,

but C.1520). 8°. Entry from Catalogue of Books on the Continent of Europe, 1501-1600 in Cambridge Libraries. Compiled by H. M. Adams. 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1967), item G 1437.

LATIN IN VENETIAN SCHOOLS

270

6. Grammatica Pyladis (Venetiis, in aedibus Francisci Bindoni ac Maphei Pasini sociis, 1534, Mensis lulii). 9.3 X 14.6 cm. Roman type. PU 105. b. 216/2. The author was Gianfrancesco Boccardo of Brescia, called Pyladus Buccardus (d. 1508). Nevertheless, the first half of the work is Guarino, and the whole influenced by Guarino. 7. Grammaticae institutiones Guarini Veronensis.... (Venetijs, per Fran-

ciscum Bindonum, &. Mapheum Pasinum socios, 1546). 10.3 X 15 cm. Roman type. Includes Carmina differentialia. RAles O.e. 16. In this printing, the Regulae are prefaced by conjugation and declension matter and vocabulary, much of it with Italian translation. In the Regulae proper the verbal syntax is expanded by means of additional sample sentences, again with Italian translation. 8. Grammaticae institutiones Guarini Veronensis.... (Venetijs, apud Petrum de Nicolinis de Sabio, Ad instantia Melchioris Sessae, 1549). 9.3 X 14.6 cm. Text is italic type, title page is roman type. PU 105. b. 216/1. This printing contains the same additional material as the Venice, 1546, printing. 9. Guarini Veronensis ... Grammatice institutiones.... (Lucae, Apud Vincentium Busdragum, 1551). 9.8 X 14.5 cm. Roman type. Not seen; this printing is listed by Luigi Matteucci, "Saggio di un catalogo delle Edizioni Lucchesi di Vincenzo Busdrago (1549-1605)," in La Bibliofilia, 18 (1916-17), p. 234. 10. Guarini Veronensis ... Grammaticae institutiones.... (Lucae, apud Vincentium Busdracum, 1562). 10.1 X 15.2 cm. Italie type. Not seen; listed by Pellegrini, "Catalogo di Busdrago. Appendice," in La Bibliofilia, 19 (1917-18), p. 130.

11. Guarini Veronensis grammaticales Regulae, Noviter diligentiori cura recognitae (Brixiae, Apud lacobum Britanicum, 1566). 15.6 X 20.8 cm. Title in roman type; text in semi-gothic type. Title page has border with portraits of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucretius, Terence, Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Valerius Maximus, and Pliny. Includes Carmina differentialia. University of Illinois Library. 12. Io. Alberti Bossii institutiones grammaticae ... a Bartolemaeo Moirano scholiaste recognitae.... Mediolani, apud Valerium ac fratres Metios, 1566). 14.6 X 19.3 cm. Semi-gothic type. tt- 5. 28. 3. This is a slightly modified version of Guarino, with a little borrowing from fanua in the early pages. 13. Régule grammaticales Guarini Veronensi denuo correcte (In Milano, Appresso Francesco Magrega, 1567). 13.4 X 18.1 cm. Semi-gothic and italic types. XM*. V. 11.

Ex Guarino Veronensi ... Regulae Grammatices ... à Dionysio Malatesta ... excerptae, &. ab ipso nuper castigatae, & auctae (Romae, Apud Victoriam Elianum, 1574. Colophon: 1575). 10.4 X 15 cm. Roman type. Incipit: Quid est grammatica? RAng 11. 1. 69. This is a slightly revised version of Guarino. Although with its own collation, it is bound with Dionysio Malatesta's version of fanua, also published in Rome by Vittorio Eliano in 1575. See Appendix I, no. 9. 14.

15.

Guarini Veronensis

Gryphium,

1575).

...

Regulae Grammatices.... (Venetiis, Apud

Io.

PAUL

GRENDLER

X 14.6 cm. grammatica?

8.8 est

2/1

Roman type. Includes Carmina RVE 34. 5. A. 1. 2.

diffeientialia. Incipit:

Quid

16. Io. Alberti Bossii institutiones grammaticae ... à Bartholomaeo Moirano scholiaste recognitae.... (Mediolani, Apud Pacificum Pontium, 1579). 14.5 X 19.6 cm. Title page is roman and italic type, text is semi-gothic type.

RVE

D. 50. 2. See no. 12. Guarini Veronensis ... Regulae Grammatices.... (Romae,

6. 2.

Apud Antoniimi Facchettum, 1595). 8.9 X 13.4 cm. Roman type. Incipit: Quid est grammatica? RVE 34. 5. A. 10. 5. This is a companion printing to Janua, Appendix I, no. 11. 18. Guarini Veronensis ... Regulae Grammatices.... (Veronae, Apud Petrum Diserolum, 1595). 9.5 X 14.2 cm. Title page is roman and italic type, text is roman type. Incipit: Quid est grammatica? Includes Carmina diffeientialia. Adds "Carmen loannis Sulpitii Verulani de moribus in mensa servandis" on sigs. B 15 recto 17.

B 16

recto.

2. b.

239/2.

19. Io. Alberti Bossii institutiones

recognitae.... (Mediolani,

grammaticae

a Bartholomaeo

...

Apud Pandulfum Malatestam,

Moirano

1597).

Roman type. Title page in red and black. H 1898/2. Also Cinquecentine della Tiivulziana, no. 81. See nos. 12 and 16. 20. Guarini Veronensis ... Regulae Grammatices.... (Patavii, ex Typogr. 15 X 20.9 cm.

listed in

Laurentij Pasquati, 1608). Misc. 642. 13. 9 X 14.4 cm. Roman and italic type. 21. Io. Alberti Bossii institutiones grammaticae a Bartholomaeo Moirano ... recognitae.... (Mediolani, Apud Marcum Tullium Malatestam,

Typographum Regium Cameralem, 1611). 14.5 X 20.1 cm. Roman type. Red and black

title

page.

AB.

XI. 73. 2.

See nos. 12, 16, and 19. 22. Guarini Veronensis ... Rfgulae [sic].... (Perusiae, Apud Ered [sic] Alexandri Perutij, 1616). 9.9 X 14.3 cm. Roman type. Includes Carmina diffeientialia. Incipit: Quid est grammatica? FM 6. D. XI. 51. 3. Printing full of typographical errors. 23. Guarini Veronensis viri peritissimi Regulae Grammatices.... (Maceratae,

Apud Curtium Gobbum,

ôi

losephum Pandarum,

1635).

Roman type. Includes Carmina differentialia. Incipit: Quid grammatica? RVE 34. 5. A. 10. 3. Slightly expanded version.

9.6 X 14.4 cm. est

24. Guarini Veronensis ... Regulae Grammatices.... (Romae, Typis Vitalis Mascardi, 1638. Ad instanza di Mauritio Bona all'insegna del Marion d'Oro). 9.8 X 15.2 cm. Roman and italic type. Includes Carmina differentialia. Incipit: Quid est grammatica? RAng 11. 1. 72. This is a companion printing to Janua (Appendix I, no. 17) with same publisher and date, and continuous collation. 25. Guarini Veronensis viri peritissimi Grammaticales Regulae (Bononiae, Typis lacobi Montij, no date, but seventeenth century). 9.5 X 14.7 cm. Roman type. Includes Carmina differentialia. BU Raro A. 25.

LATIN IN VENETIAN SCHOOLS

272

Notes 1. Research grants from the Canada Council in the summers of 1976 and 1977, and a Guggenheim Fellowship for 1978-79, have made this study possible. I wish to thank W. K. Percival, John D'Amico and Nelson Minnich for reading this article. Abbreviations used are listed in Appendix I. 2. Archivio della Curia Patriarcale di Venezia (hereafter ACPV), "Professioni di Fede richiesta agli insegnanti, 1587," a bimdle of 331 folios containing the professions of faith made by 258 Venetian schoolmasters between April 30, 1587, and May 27, 1588. The first 208 teachers appeared between AprU 30 and the end of May 1587; the rest drifted in over the next several months. I foxind these documents in May 1976. Now a study containing summaries of the documents has appeared: Vittorio Baldo, Alunni, maestii e scuole in Venezia alla fine del XVI secolo (Como,

1977).

For example, a teacher reported that he had a boy of six years "che impara tuti i nomi pronomi et verbi nel principio." ACPV, "Professioni di Fede," fol. 79r. Also see fol. 245r. References to pupils aged seven are more frequent. 4. In the large bibliography on the history of grammar, see in particular [Alfred] Gudeman, "Grammatik," in Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll, Real-Encyclopädie dei classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Neue Bearbeitung. Vol. 7 (Stuttgart, 1912), cols. 1780-1811, and articles on various grammarians; Aldo D. Scaglione, Ais Giaxnmatica. A bibliogiaphic survey, two essays on the giammai of the Latin and Italian subjunctive, and a note on the ablative absolute (The Hague and Paris, 1970). Also see the review article of Scaglione's book, with supplementary bibliography, by W. Keith Percival in Language, 51 (1975), pp. 440-56. 5. Wayl^d Johnson Chase, The Ais Minoi of Donatus, foi one thousand yeais the leading textbook of giammai, tianslated fiom the Latin with intioductoiy sketch. University of Wisconsin Studies in the Social Sciences and History, 11 (Madison, Wisconsin, 1926), pp. 6-7. 6. Geoffrey L. Bursill-Hall, Speculative Giammais of the Middle Ages (The Hague and Paris, 1971); and the same author's "A Check-List of Incipits of Medieval Latin Grammatical Treatises: A-G," in Tiaditio, 34 (1978), 439-74. 7. The history of Latin grammar in the Renaissance has yet to be written. However, see Remigio Sabbadini, II metodo degh umanisti. In appendice l'elenco di tutti i lavoii umanistici deU'autoie (Florence, 1922); Maria Corti, "Marco Antonio Carlino e l'influsso dei grammatici latini sui primi grammatici volgari," in Cultuia Neolatina, 15 (1955), pp. 195-222; Scaglione, Ais Giammatica-, W. Keith Percival, "Renaissance Grammar: Rebellion or Evolution?" in Intenogativi dell'umanesimo. Atti del IX, X, XI Convegni Intemazionali del Centro di Studi Umanistici, Montepulciano, 1972, 1973, 1974. A cura di Giovannangiola Tarugi. 3 vols. (Florence, 1976), n, pp. 73-90; and Percival, "The Grammatical Tradition and the Rise of the Vemaciilars," in Cunent Tiends in Linguistics, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok; vol. 13; Histoiiogiaphy of Linguistics (The Hague, 1975), pp. 231-75. 8. Camillo Scaccia Scarafoni, "La più antica edizione della Grammatica Latina di Aldo Manuzio finora sconosciuta ai bibliografi," in Lamberto Donati ed.. Miscellanea bibhogiafica in memoria di don T. Accuiti (Rome, 1947), pp. 193-203. 9. There are sixty-six references to Donatus (written Donato, Donado, or Donao) in ACPV, "Professioni di Fede." They are almost all noted in the summaries pro3.

mente

PAUL

GRENDLER

2/3

vided by Baldo, Alunni, maestii, pp. 45-81, passim. There are eight references to Donato al Senno (or Seno); ACPV, "Professioni di Fede," fols. 57r (Baldo, p. 51), 72r, 138v, 142v (Baldo, p. 61), 144r (Baldo, p. 61), 194r, 229r, 255r. Baldo was unaware that Donato al Senno was the title of an elementary grammar. 10. The eight-line verse is foimd in all the fanua printings cited in Appendix I. Sabbadini first named the fanua, and noted that it differed from Donatus' Ais minoi. See Remigio Sabbadini, La scuola e gli studi di Guarino Guaiini (con 44 documenti) (Catania, 1896), pp. 35, 42-44. The fundamental study is Wolfgang O. Schmitt, "Die Janna (Donatus) —ein Beitrag zur lateinischen Schulgrammatik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance," Beiträge zur Inkunabelkunde, Dritte Folge, vol. 4 (1969), pp. 43-80. In addition to a great deal of information, it contains on pp. 74-80 the text of the fanua based on 8998 (Pavia: Franciscus Girardengus,

8-IX-1481). 1 1 Schmitt, "Janna," in

Appendix

p. 74.

The same can be found in all the fanua

editions listed

Chase, Ars Minor of Donatus, p. 28. Schmitt, "Janna," p. 70. 14. The thirty-eight Italian incimable paintings of fanua or one of

12.

13.

its

variations

are as follows.

A. Twenty-six printings of the fanua: 9002-9015, 9017. B.

A additional fanua is not listed in GW, IGI,

8987-8994, 8997-8999,

Hain, Copinger, or Reichling:

grammatici pro impetrando ad rempub. / litterariam aditu: novitijs adolescentibus grammatices / rudimenta ^3 aptissime dedicata. / Colophon: Impressum Venetijs per theodorum de ragazonibus / de asula. Anno domini. Milliesimo quatrigentesimo / octagesimo. octavo Nonis mensis decëbris. / (8-Xn-1488). 13.6 X 20.6 cm. Collation: a 8, b 12, c 4. Gothic type with red and black title page and red capitals. VCini 218. It contains brief review-summary material in sigs. b xr-bxir, and Disticha Catonis in sigs. b xir through c iw. Lovely clean copy. C. Seven Italian incunable printings of the Donatus Melior of Antonio Man9018-9024. cinelli: 9025-9028. D. Four Italian printings of the Donato al Senno: Aelij donati

8994 (copy exI have examined the following incunable printings of fanua: Inc. V. 714); 9021 (copy amined: MB Inc. AM. XI. 13/2); 9007 (copy examined: examined: Misc. 2585.2). Schmitt, "Janna," pp. 74-80, prints the text of 8998. In addition, GW, vol. 7, col. 661, notes briefly the differences between the Donatus and fanua, calling the latter "Donatus, Ars Minor [Rudimenta grammaticas)." The listings provide enough information, viz., incipits of the fanua verse and the text proper ("Poeta quae pars est?"), for secure identification. Other individual Italian incunable printings of "Donatus" were close to the original Donatus: 8818, 8908. (GW 8908 begins with the fanua verse but then becomes Donatus. Copy examined: Misc. 1375.2.) Additional Italian incunable printings of Donatus, or its close variation, are composite works, i.e., printings that include the Ars Maior of Donatus, the Ars Grammatica of Diomedes, and/or other works, in addition to the Ars Minor of Donatus: 966, 8399, 8401 (copy examined: FRic Ed. R. 506), 8402-8404, 9031, 9032

LATIN IN VENETIAN SCHOOLS

274

(copy examined: FLaur D'Elei, 977). Such composite works were probably designed and teacher, not for classroom use. 15. Over three hundred incunable printings of Donatus or versions fairly close

for the scholar

8674-8817, 8819-8907, Donatus appeared outside of Italy: 8909-8986. GW, vol. 7 (Leipzig, 1938), cols. 582-84, notes that the Donatus printed in the Renaissance was not quite the original Donatus, but a late medieval version. It was much closer to the original Donatus than to Janua. On the other hand, only six printings of fanua appeared outside of Italy: 8995, 8996, 9000, 9001, 9008, 9016. No non-Italian incunables of Donatus Melioi of Mancinelli or Donato al Senno have come to my attention. Because both interjected Italian into the Janua text, one does not expect to find them printed outside to the original

of Italy. 16.

ACPV,

"Professioni di Fede," fols. 33v (Baldo, p. 49), 99r (Baldo, p. 57), 117v

(Baldo, p. 59), 133v (Baldo, p. 61), 162v (Baldo, p. 65), 257r (Baldo, p. 75), 264r (Baldo, p. 71], 268v (Baldo, p. 77]. In addition, possibly some references to "Régule

grammatica" meant that the teacher used Guarino. On Guarino's Regulae, see Sabbadini, La scuola di Guarino, pp. 38-47 (p. 39 for the date of composition); W. Keith Percival, "The historical sources of Guarino's Regulae Giammaticales: a reconsideration of Sabbadini's evidence," in Civilità dell'Umanesimo. Atti del VI, Vu, VIE Convegni Intemazionali del Centro di Studi Umanestici, Montepulciano, 1969, 1970, 1971. A cura di Giovannangiola Tarugi (Florence, 1972), pp. 263-84; and Percival, "Renaissance Grammar: Rebellion della

17.

or Evolution?"

found in the Guarino printings nos. 4, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, and Appendix H. It also appears in a Florentine manuscript of an anonymous fifteenth- century grammar noted in W. Keith Percival, "Textual Problems in the Latin Grammar of Guarino Veronese," in Res Publica Litteiarum, 1 (1978), 253, 18.

This

24, listed in

n. 25. 19. Percival,

"The

historical sources of Guarino's Regulae Grammaticales," p.

264; and "Textual Problems in the Latin Grammar of Guarino Veronese." Textual variations occur more frequently in Guarino printings than in fanua printings. 20. The statement is foimd in the following printings of Niccolò Perotti, Rudimenta

grammatices: Parisius, per

Magistrum Udalricimi Gering, 1479; Copinger 4682, Univercopy examined; Sig. a iiv.

sity of Illinois Library

Venetiis, 8-IX-1480; Goff, Third Census, P-317; U. of Illinois Library copy examined; Sig a iiv. Florentiae ad petitionem lohannis Petri de Bonominis de Cremona, 26-Vin-1486; Hain 12675, IGI 7474; FN copy examined; Sig. A2v. Venetiis, per Christophorum Pensis, 4-XI-1495; Hain-Copinger 12688*, University of Illinois Library copy examined; Sig a iiv.

Although Perotti offered no source, the definition of grammar the grammatical tradition.

"Grammatica quid

The following

may derive from

are possible sources.

est? Scientia interpretandi poetas

atque historicos et

recte scribendi loquendique ratio...." Audacis de Scauri et Palladii libris excerpta, in Grammatici Latini ex recensione Henrici Keilii, voi. 7 (Leipzig, 1880), p. 321, lines 6-7. Audax, a medieval grammarian.

whose dates

are

unknown, may have been

PAUL

GRENDLER

"Grammatica est

2/5

scientia recte scribendi et eniinciandi interpretandique poetas

usum rationemque verborum. ..." Aemilius Asper, Ais Giaxnmatici Latini, vol. 5 (Leipzig, 1868), p. 547, lines 6-8. The grammarian Aemilius Asper probably flourished in the late classical period. "Grammatica est specialiter scientia exercitata lectionis expositionis eorum quae apud poetas et scriptores dic*ntur, apud poetas, ut ordo servetur, apud scriptores, ut ordo careat vitiis." Diomedes, Ars giammatìca, Book H, in Keil, Gtamniatici per historiam formatam ad

giammatica, in

Keil,

Latini, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1857), p. 426, lines 6-8.

century

Diomedes was a well-known fourth-

Roman grammarian.

21. See, for example, the De octo orationis panium constnictione libellus (Basel, 1515) of Erasmus, his revision of the manual of William Lily (1468?-1522). The Lily-Erasmus De constnictione (under Erasmus' name only) was often appended to Italian printings of Aldus Manutius' Institutiones Giammaticae in the first half

But during the Covmter Reformation, Erasmus' name was inked out, and the De constnictione sometimes detached from Manutius' grammar. 22. See Appendix n for those printings that included the Cannina diffeientialia. 23. Percival, "The historical sources of Guarino's Regulae Giammaticales;" and "Textual Problems in the Latin Grammar of Guarino Veronese." 24. Forty-two Italian incunable printings are known: Hain 8105 through 8125 (the last two Italian translations); Copinger 2809 and 2811; Reichling 202, 203, 544, 545, 1747; Reichling Supplement 84; IGI 4529, 4533, 4534, 4536-4541. Those examined include Hain 8108 (copy examined: Memb. 64 [41404], a copy on vellum); Hain 8111 (copy examined: Ine 953 [40579]; IGI 4536 (copy examined: FN Landau-Finaly 26, an incomplete copy); IGI 4541 (copy examined: MB of the sixteenth century.

AI. IX. 37/2).

Not listed in any of the above catalogues are three additional incunables in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, listed by Percival, "The Historical Sources of Guarino's Regulae Giammaticales," pp. 282-3. Not listed in any of the catalogues is another incunable: Guarini Veronensis viri peritis / simi grammaticales re- / gulae incipiunt Colophon: Impressum Venetiis per Nicolaü dictü Castilia. Anno / MCCCCLXXXVm. [1488] Die viiii mensis Agusti / 12°. Collation: a 8, b 8, c 8, d 8, with last veiso blank. Roman type. The title page has a figured border including three school scenes. Includes Cul/

mina

diffeientialia.

25. See

Appendix

no. 17; Appendix 26.

The

VCini 284. no. 9, and Appendix H, no. 14; Appendix

no. 17, and H, no. 24. use of different type and format for different content

no. 11, and U,

press that has been

studied. See the suggestive remarks of

an aspect of the

Armando

Petruc"Alle origini del libro moderno. Libro da banco, libri da bisaccia, libretti da mano," in Italia medioevale e umanistica, 12 (1969), pp. 297-303. little

ci,

27. Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Piess, 1540-1605 (Princeton, N.J., 1977), pp. 9-12. 28. Petrucci, "Alle origini del libro moderno," p. 301.

29. See

Appendix I, no. 8, and Appendix H, no. 15. mente tuti i nomi pronomi et verbi nel principio." ACPV, "Pro-

30. "che impara à

fessioni di Fede," fol. 79r.

LATIN IN VENETIAN SCHOOLS

2/6 31.

ACPV,

"Professioni di Fede," fols. lOv, 13v, 205v, et passim; Baldo, pp.

45-81, passim. 32. "alcuni fanno concordantie,

latinano per le regole, et alcuni fanno 99v, and similar statements in fols. 194r (Baldo, p. 69), 205v (Baldo, p. 71), 216v (Baldo, p. 73), et passim. 33. The example is from Elio Donato Romano che fu del Glorioso San Girolamo, Dottore della Chiesa, Maestro: Overo di tutta la Grammatica Latina, e Volgare epistole."

ACPV,

altri

"Professioni di Fede,"

fol.

del Corradi Monsanpolitano d'Ascoli. Romae, Ex officina Michaelis Cortellini, MDCLIV, p. 218. Copies: RVE 42. 1. F. 2; FN Magi. 3. 3. 8. This large grammar includes pedagogical advice for teachers. 34. Guiseppe Manacorda, Storia della scuola in Italia: il Medio Evo. (Milan, Pa-

lermo, and Naples, 1913), vol. n, pp. 227-51; Eugenio Garin ed.. Il pensiero pedagogico dello umanesimo (Florence, 1958), pp. 91-104; Brother Bonaventure, "The Teaching of Latin in Later Medieval England," Stud., 23 (1961), pp. 1-20. 35. The critical edition is Marcus Boas and Henricus Johannes Botschuyver eds., Disticba Catonis recensuit et apparatu critico (Amsterdam, 1952). For a Latin and English edition, see Wayland Johnson Chase, The Distichs of Cato, a Famous Medieval Textbook. Translated from the Latin, with introductory sketch. University of Wisconsin Studies in the Social Sciences and History, 7 (Madison, Wiscon-

sin, 1922).

ACPV, "ProDomenicus Barchinus); "e che essercitano in tradur epistole latine in vulgar." ACPV, "Professioni di Fede," fol. 130r-v (Baldo, p. 59, under Christophoro Rholandus). Letter exercises are men36.

"li

propongo poi orationi in vulgar

et epistole

da redur in latino."

fessioni di Fede," fols. 126v-127r (Baldo, p. 59, under

tioned throughout these documents. 37. "I due più grandi fano epistole....

nominativi e

verbi."

ACPV,

doi più pizoli imparano a mente i fol. 150r (Baldo, p. 63, under

"Professioni di Fede,"

Francescus). 38. FN, Manuscript Fondo Nazionale, 11—158, fol. Ir. The letters were written by "loannes Angloriensis," and were dated April 29, 1534, through May 30, 1536. A few letters were not translated. 39. FN, Manuscript Fondo Nazionale, H. DC. 69, "Libro di pistole vulgari rivoltate in latino et date da mz. Gio. Bat. Conti mio maestro cominciate a scrivere ... a di 19 di Maggio 1590 in Fiorenza ... Ad usum Bernardi de Salvestris fu Inquilini,

Apud Plateam Antinoream." The manuscript contains seventy vernacular with space for translation, but only the first is rendered into Latin.

Florentiae epistles

The Home

Coronaeus in Jean Bodin's Colloquium Heptaplomeres: An Example of a Venetian Academy of

Maiion Leathers Kuntz

Frances Yates' monumental study of the French academies proves that

the influence of Italian academies on the French was significant. This thesis can be demonstrated by a sixteenth-century dialogue of a native Frenchman who places the setting of the work entitled Colloquium Heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis in Venice. The choice of Venice as a setting for the dialogue of seven men of seven different religious and philosophic persuasions as well as various academic interests demands our consideration at the outset. It would seem probable that Bodin would place his dialogue in France, since there is evidence that such an academy, or at least an informal gathering, was connected with the entourage of the Due d'Alençon, Henri El's younger brother, Francis.^ Bodin, as one recalls, was a member of Alençon's household for several years, as were La Primaudaye and Guy leFèvre de la Boderie, the beloved friend and amanuensis of Guillaume Postel. In spite of Bodin's association with the circle of Alençon he chose not a French setting but an Italian for his academic dialogue. One must ask— why? In the first place Bodin obviously wants to emphasize certain aspects of the Italian academy and especially the intellectual and political climate of Venice which supports the liberal atmosphere described in the Colloquium. Bodin himself explains his choice in the opening paragraphs of his work. The Italian academy described in the Colloquium is located at the home of Coronaeus in Venice

omnium fere gentium vel potius orbis universi portum communem, quia non modo adspectu et hospitio peregrinorum Veneti delectantur, sed illic summa cum libertate vivi potest; et cum caeteris civitatibus et regionibus civilia bella aut tyrannorum metus aut vectigalium acerbae exactiones aut studiorum cujusque molestissimae inquisitiones impendeant, haec sola propemodum civitas omnibus his servitutum generibus immunis et libera mihi videtur.^ Venice was the crossroads of East and West, and by its very location proits citizens with an enlarged world view. The Italian academy, cer-

vided

BODIN, COLLOQUIUM HEPTAPLOMERES

2/8

and early sixteenth centuries, reflected the universal world readily apparent in the Venetian republic.^ The Venetian academy described in Bodin's Colloquium is similar to the Florentine academy under the patronage of the Medici family with which the names of Ficino, Poliziano, and Pico della Mirandola are associated. One is also mindful of the Filleleni who gathered in the home of Aldo Manuzio in Venice. Like the fifteenth-century Italian academies the Venetian academy in the home of Coronaeus represents encyclopaedic interests in the semi-formal atmosphere of a Venetian palazzo. The seven savants live in the scholarly environment of Coronaeus' home, and here was formed "an intimate society, so that his home was considered a shrine of the Muses and virtues.'"* The host, Paul Coronaeus, set the tone for his academy for, although he was too frail to travel, he had an "incredible desire to understand the language, inclinations, activities, customs, and virtues of different people." Consequently, he had assembled a gathering of men from abroad— Fridericus Podamicus, Hieronymus Senamus, Diegus Toralba, Antonius Curtius, Salomon Barcassius, and Octavius fa*gnola. Each man was exceptionally well-trained in the disciplines of the liberal arts, yet each seemed to surpass the other in his unique knowledge. "They lived not merely with sophistication of discourse and charming manners, but with such innocence and integrity that no one so much resembled himself as all resembled all. For they were not motivated by wrangling or jealousy but by a desire to learn; consequently they were displaying all their reflections and endeavours in true dignity."^ The home of Coronaeus was well-equipped for the universal pursuits of the academic group. It was filled "with an infinite variety and supply of books, old records, instruments for music and for all sorts of mathematical arts.'"^ Indeed, Coronaeus' academy provides a detailed and intimate glimpse into the world of the sixteenth-century Italian academy. All subjects of interest to Renaissance men were also the topics of discourse for the international group at Coronaeus' home. They spoke of the order of the cosmos as well as events which seem to happen outside nature's laws. They spoke of demons and their relationship to God and man; they discussed the nature of true religion; together they read and discussed Plato's Timaeus; they displayed interest in mathematics and squaring the cube and the circle. They searched for the secrets of the universe hidden from the uninitiate. They had knowledge of peoples and their customs in the New World; they were fascinated by the invention of gunpowder. They often spoke on the nature of true religion and how God should be worshipped. They recited their original tainly in the fifteenth

view

of the

poems written in classical meters; they discussed the relative merits of diatonic and chromatic

scale,

and they listened each evening, at the conclusion of their simimoned to sing hymns of praise to God.

discussions, to choirboys who were On occasion they sang in unison.

The dialogues in which the seven learned men engaged reveal PythagoreanPlatonic orientation. From the numerous elements which reveal Pythagorean influence I shall focus upon only two. Of particular significance are music and th^pantotheca, an amazing cabinet for scientific study.

MARION LEATHERS KUNTZ

2/9

As we have indicated above, music was a part of the daily routine at the home of Coronaeus. The seven men listened to the choirboys who were summoned to sing at the close of each day. Often the seven friends entertained themselves by singing to the accompaniment of lyres and flutes/ In addition, music and musical harmonies were topics for one of the most significant discussions in the Colloquium.

The host, Coronaeus, begins the conversation

by questioning harmonic theory. He

states:

Often I have wondered why there is such sweetness in a tone that has the full octave, the fifth and the fourth blended at the same time; just now you have heard the sweetest harmony with the full system of the highest tone blended with the lowest, with the fourth and fifth interspersed; although the highest tone is opposite to the lowest, why is it that harmonies in unison, in which no tone is opposite, are not pleasing to the trained ear?^

Then various and often conflicting ideas about four of the other scholars. I quote: Fridericus:

Many

think that the harmony

harmony

are suggested

more pleasing when the

ratios of nimibers correspond.^

am amazed that the most learned men approve of this, since seem to combine more aptly than geometric progressions; the members accord with the first, the middle with each, all with all,

Curtius:

ratios

last

and also positions and orders are related, as 2, 4, 8, 16. Still in these systems that most pleasing harmony fails. When the numbers are arranged in this manner, 2, 3, 4, 6, and the ratios have been separated, we delight in this harmony. Indeed, what is the reason that the interval of the pure fifth (3/2) is most pleasing, but the apotome (9/8) is heavily offensive?

Octavius: I think harmony is produced when many sounds can be blended; but when they cannot be blended one conquers the other as the sound enters the ears, and the dissonance offends the delicate senses of wiser

men. Senamus: I do not think a ratio of numbers or a blending of tones produces this sweetness, since a variety of colors presented to the eyes is more pleasing than if all are mingled simultaneously. Likewise, the flavor of fresh oil and vinegar is very pleasing, but it cannot be mingled by any force. Also the most dissimilar songs of birds, blended by no ratio, produce a most pleasing delight for the ears. Plato thought it strange that no dissonance is perceived in the song of birds, however much it is joined with men's voices or lyres. ^° This discussion of musical harmony is related implicitly to the theme of harmony which pervades the discussions at Coronaeus' home. The harmony which is suggested is the harmony of nature which is dependent upon the

280

BODIN, COLLOQUIUM HEPTAPLOMERES

cidentia oppositomm. To emphasize this underlying leit-motif Bodin concludes his work on a musical note and makes explicit the theme of harmony which is

applicable not only to

music but

and to the lives of inCoronaeus siunmons the choir-

also to the state

dividuals. In the final paragraph of the dialogue

boys to sing the following song: Lo,

how good and

it is

pleasing

for brothers to live

in unity, arranged not in

common diatonics or chromatics, but in enharmonies with a certain, more divine modulation. ^^ The members of Coronaeus' academy have progressed, beyond the enjoyment

as the song indicates,

and chromatics, to enharmonies. Enharmonies, as one recalls, provide a method of presenting the same tones but with different designations. For example, upon instruments which are tuned in equal temperament, the same notes serve for C sharp and D flat, for F sharp and G flat, for G sharp and A flat.^^ The tone is the same regardless of the term used to describe it. In the academic setting of the Colloquium seven men speak about God, nature, true religion, man, and harmony from seven different viewpoints just as a musical tone may be called by several designations. Bodin uses the harmony of music as a key to unlock the truth about God and the cosmos. Truth, as we learn from the seven men in the Colloquium, has many aspects and many names which in their totality reveal the One Truth which is God. Therefore, one can say that the Pythagorean interest in musical harmony serves as a philosophic foundation for Coronaeus' academy. Here at least two of diatonics

One is based upon the contrariety of opwhich opposite notes are blended; the other concept of harmony perceives each part of a whole independently and individually as it contributes to a totality, as in enharmonies where C sharp and D flat may be viewed independently although the sound is the same. Now let us consider the most remarkable treasure of Coronaeus' home, that is, the pantotbeca, built from olive wood. This large cupboard, six feet square, was subdivided in six square compartments per foot, making a total of 1,296 concepts of harmony are revealed.

posites as in chromaticism in

boxes. This unusual armoire contained all things as its name implies. housed the universe, goods and materials which Coronaeus had prepared to be placed in the pantotheca little

likenesses of sixty fixed stars, then the replicas of planets, comets and phenomena, elements, bodies, stones, metals, fossils, plants, living things of every sort, which he could secure, each in its own class. But since the form of all plants and insects could not be contained in the limited pantotheca nor, because of their rarity, acquired, each was similar

marked

in its

box by a drawing or a description or according

to its

own

classification.... ^^

Coronaeus had arranged the boxes

an angle

for easy

viewing so that

after

MARION LEATHERS KUNTZ

28l

lengthy study they could be remembered more easily, and to be sure, Coronaeus had mastered the contents of this micro-macrocosm. Coronaeus' pûiitotbeca reminds one of Guilio Camillo's Memory theatre which represents the universe "expanding from First Causes through the stages of creation."^'* The pantotbeca, however, serves a function even more important than that of a memory theatre. It presents a vertical ordering of the cosmos and also a horizontal ordering. For example, each little box in the pantotheca contained a particle or drawing of all parts of the imiverse, each in its own genus in a descending, hierarchical order, so that "the last was connected to the first, the middle to the beginning and the end, and all to all in its appropriate — 'all to all in its appropriate class' — is especially class. "^^ The last phrase significant for

suggests, in addition to a vertical ordering, a horizontal order-

To view each genus

vertically one sees the relationship of each part to the other in a descending and ascending order, but one is seeing only the interrelationships of one genus, that is, the vertical ordering. However, one must remember that when the curtain of the pantotbeca was drawn, as Bodin describes, to reveal all of the 1296 capsulae, it would be extremely difficult to view this "little universe" without observing horizontal relationships as well as vertical. ^^ And this is indeed the purpose of the pantotbeca-, the student of the pantotbeca after careful study learns not only the relationship of each genus but the interrelationships of the genera which is perceived when one views the little boxes in a horizontal fashion. True perception of the universe must involve then both vertical and horizontal ordering. This leads us back to the significance of music in the Colloquium. The seven friends of Coronaeus' academy finally approve of the more divine modulation of enharmonies. This preference for enharmonies at the conclusion of the dialogue reveals implicitly that the international gathering has come to understand that "all things resemble all" as they themselves are described and that Truth is called by various names. Each, however, continues to use the names he chooses to describe Truth just as the note C may be called B sharp and also D double flat. The seven learned men by their preference for enharmonies represent horizontal ordering. No opinion of any participant is posited as higher than or better than another. The ordering of the seven speakers can be described not as vertical but rather as horizontal, that is, an order of balance. The host, the Catholic Coronaeus, is essential to this balance, for he is more like to each of the others than any other one is like to another. The home of Coronaeus, this shrine of the Muses and Virtues as Bodin says, provides an atmosphere in which the harmonious blending of opposites can occur and also the preservation of individual views which are, as enharmonies, the same sounds with different names. In conclusion several assumptions can be made about the home of Coronaeus in Bodin's Colloquium Heptaplomeres: (1) Vertical and horizontal orders intersect in the home of Coronaeus as demonstrated by the analysis of musical modes and by the description of the pantotbeca. This vertical-horizontal ordering is typical of the Pythagorean scheme of creation as described by Timaeus Locrensis. "This hierarchy provides for a horizontal scale at each level of creation; with each line of the chain ing.

BODIN, COLLOQUIUM HEPTAPLOMERES

282

This articulation of the scheme is necessary to account within each category for the different kinds of stones and of plants and of animals and of angels. "^^ The Venetian academy of Coronaeus, then, can be described as one which continues the Pythagorean-Platonic orientation of the Florentine academy so dear to Ficino and Pico. (2) The home of Coronaeus probably represents a real not a hypothetical academy. One knows that Guillaume Postel was said to have acted as secretary for a group of men in Venice who met regularly to discuss, among other things, the nature of true religion. One also realizes that some influence of Postel is apparent in the Colloquium Heptaplomeies. (3) One can also suggest that the early Italian academy, of which the home of Coronaeus is an example, has some relationship to the Utopian societies described in the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (4) And finally the relationship of the Italian academy to Utopian societies and to concepts of universal monarchy and priesthood, such as Postel proclaimed as the restitution of all things, merits further consideration. Bodin's academy serves as a microcosmic model of the macrocosmic state. If seven men of seven different persuasions practicing brotherly love and the pursuit of knowledge of divine and human things can live in peace and harmony so that "no one resembles himself so much as all resemble all," why, Bodin seems to ask implicitly in the Colloquium Heptaplomeies cannot "seventy times seven," indeed all men, live accordingly. there also

diversity.

for differences

Georgia State University

Notes 1. Frances A. Yates, The Piench Academies of the Sixteenth Century (London, 1947) p. 124. 2. Jean Bodin, Colloquium Heptaplomeies de leium sublimium aicanis abditis, ed. Ludovicus Noack (Schewrin, 1857) p. 1. 3. For a study of Venetian social and political institutions see especially, Brian Pullan, Rich and Pool in Renaissance Venice (Cambridge, Mass., 1971); Frederick Lane, Venice and Histoiy (Baltimore, 1966); William Bouwsma, Venice and the

Defense ofRepubhcan Libeity, Renaissance Values in the Age of the Countei Refoimation (Berkeley, 1968); Renaissance Venice, edited by J. R. Hale (Totowa, N.J., 1973). 4. The citations in English translation are to this author's work. Colloquium of the Seven about Seciets of the Sublime of Jean Bodin, translated by Marion Leathers Kimtz with notations and critical reading (Princeton, N.J., 1975). All citations from this work will appear as Kuntz, Colloquium. See Ibid., p. 3. 5.

Kuntz, Colloquium,

6. Ibid.

p. 4.

283

MARION LEATHERS KUNTZ 7. Ibid., p. 89. 8. Ibid.,

pp. 144-45.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., p. 471.

See Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians edited by J. A. Fuller Maitland (PhUadelphia, 1925) Vol. I, p. 783. Also see Wüli Apel, Haivaid Dictionary of Music (Cambridge, 1973) 2nd ed., pp. 366-75, pp. 293-94. 12.

Kuntz, Colloquium, p. 4. Fiench Academies, 15. Kuntz, Colloquium, p. 5.

13.

14. Yeats,

p. 141.

16. Ibid., p. 5. 17.

Heninger, Touches of Sweet Harmony,

p. 48.

Language and Saint Anselm's Proslogion Argument Thomas

A. Losoncy

Anselm wrote the Proslogion what he meant, and sometimes over what he said, functions as an unbroken principle of interpretation among its readers and commentators alike. How to explain this phenomenon has proven equally controversial. However, two explanations of the long embattled

the over nine hundred years since Saint

steadfast disagreement over

history of the Proslogion are feasible. One is that access to the complete Proslogion

was impossible

for

many

Anselm's successors, including such renowned reviewers of the work as Aquinas, Scotus, and the noted modem critic of the ontological argument, Immanuel Kant. A second, applying more to recent times, appears to be a failure to exercise due regard for the language of the work.^ This is further evidenced by a tendency to concentrate only on part of the Proslogion, principally chapters two-four.^

Certainly earlier interpreters and commentators might pose conflicting views argument as a result of sketchy familiarity with the work. Whether, for a fact, this was a factor in producing their differing assessments is a matter for the historians to determine. More recently, however, one cannot explain conflicting views of this work as arising from the lack of a suitable text, even a critical text. On the other hand, if the source of disagreement among interpreters is a neglect of the language employed this would seem scandalous in an age where philosophical analysis of language is the proclaimed forte of the philosophical scene. This paper endeavors to show that any study of Saint Anselm's Proslogion argument depends upon an analysis of the Saint's precisely selected terminology. Procedurely this will involve studying his formulation of the problem and examining the argument to see whether or not it conforms to the guidelines stated in posing the problem. This examination of Anselm's consistency with the problem initially posed will be extended to the entire Proslogion as a means of discerning how its language is central to developing key notions of the argument. Finally the very basis for the argument will be studied briefly for its use of language and to illustrate a consistency in Anselm's reaof the Proslogion

THOMAS

LOSONCY

285

soning both in the Pioslogion and in related works. Discussion and studies of the Pioslogion argument usually focus on Saint Anselm's expression, "... aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit."-^ This phrase occurs after Anselm's request for God's assistance that he may understand God to be as he believes. The phrase is translated as saying we believe that God is "something than which no greater can be thought.'"* What is essential in treating this expression is the meaning of this thinking about God. Generally it is taken to mean that somehow one has obtained an idea of God. Anselm is thought to be formulating the first premise of an ontological argument, that is, he is claiming to have an "idea" of a being than which no greater can be thought.^ Such an understanding of Anselm's phrase reflects later formulations of the ontological argument, especially Descartes',^ rather than the carefully controlled argument Anselm is structuring. One must turn to chapter one of the Pioslogion and its precise language to discover the thinking about God Anselm intends in this work. In chapter one, Anselm establishes the problem, as he sees it, by inquiring "how" and "where" one is to look for and seek after God. His adverbial queries are obvious in such questions as the following: ... doce cor meum ubi et quomodo te quaerat, ubi et quomodo te inveniat. Domine, si hic non es, ubi te quaeram absentem? Si autem ubique es, cur non video praesentem?''

These questions have a threefold

significance. First

Anselm

indicating that

God's existence is not self-evident. Second, he is affirming his purpose to try to know God's existence. Third, he deploys definite guidelines on how one is to gain knowledge of God's existence. The attainment of such knowledge is to be "modal" in character. The way in which God exists rather than who or what God is acts as the key to one's grasp of God's existence. Anselm's modal approach to one's knowledge of God's existence is explicit when he states that he desires only to know God "in some measure" or "a little bit" (aliquatenus) .^ One might well wonder what a knowledge of God "in some measure" might be. But one thing is clear. This knowledge is of a modal sort rather than a knowledge of God's very quiddity or substance. Thus, when Anselm selects the phrase, "something than which no greater can be thought," he is citing a modal knowledge of God that is not to consist of a knowledge of who or what God is, as through an idea of the highest being. This is rather an indication of the way in whjch God exists, the highest way of any being. Chapter three employs this modal sense in observing that God exists so truly that his non-existence is unthinkable. This superlative manner of existing is then contrasted with all other modes of existing when Anselm notes, "hideed, except for you alone, whatever else exists can be thought not to exist. "^ The contrast is definitely modal. One way of existing is said to be open to nonexistence and the other to exclude the possibility of non-existence. And Anselm's reasoning is that beings open to non-existence in any manner whatsoever necessitate a being not so disposed. Two issues must be engaged at this point. Their resolution is crucial to

LANGUAGE AND SAINT ANSELM

286

understanding Anselm's claim at the end of chapter four that "he now so understands God's existence that even if he did not beUeve it to be true he could not help but understand it to be true."^° First one must investigate whether or not Anselm's understanding remains true to the guidelines of his quest in chapter one, that is, to seek to understand God in some measure. Second, one must ask what is the basis of the understanding reached, if it is not simply the unfolding of the content of an idea. In both instances, Anselm is obliging in the remainder of the Proslogion and elsewhere in his writings. In chapter five of the Proslogion Anselm proceeds to elaborate on his newly achieved understanding by entertaining a question about God that is clearly not modal. This suggests a break with the earlier rubrics of chapter one. Anselm asks, "What, then are You, Lord God, than whom nothing greater can be thought?" {quid igituz, es, Domine deus, quo nil maius valet cogitarii]^^ The response, however, evades the precise question asked because Anselm's reply shifts into the modal pattern he initiated in chapter one. He responds that God is, "the highest of all beings, existing through himself alone, who made things from nothing. "^^ In fact, then, Anselm tells the reader that God is justice itself, mercy itself, life itself, unlimited, eternal, truth and mercy but always to the highest degree. Chapter fourteen, as a result of the efforts of chapters five-thirteen, reminds the reader that one has both truly seen God in recognizing the way in which he must exist and yet has never known God directly as he is. He is consistent with the avowed purpose of chapter one when Anselm observes, "Or is it that it (the intellect) saw both the truth and the light, and yet it did not see You because it saw You only in some measure (aliquatenus) but did not see You all

You

are?"^^

Chapter fifteen, then, recasts Anselm's original formula to reflect precisely man's modal knowledge of God. God is found to exist in the highest manner of any being. This manner of existing, however, is knowable to man only somewhat. Thus Anselm writes, "Lord, not only are You that than which a greater cannot be thought, but You are also something greater than can be thought. "^"^ Again the influence of chapter one is manifest. Man cannot know what God is because God's way of being exceeds the capacity of human comprehension. Only the maimer of existing falls within the range of human knowing in this life. Chapters eighteen to twenty-two further scrutinize the way in which God exists as that than which no greater can be thought. Yet when Anselm concludes this detailed analysis he realizes that he still does not know who or what God is but rather only the manner in which such an absolute being exists. In chapters twenty-four to twenty-six of the Proslogion, Anselm launches a last appeal to man's experience of the goods of this life for insight into the nature of God.^^ And, once again, he is led to concede that such a knowledge is not forthcoming in this world. Man can only hope to progress and grow in the knowledge of God in this life, (knowledge in some measure) a knowledge that will only be made complete in the next life.^^ Clearly the Proslogion reflects, in its totality, Anselm's avowed desire and full

compliance with his original goal, to

know God

some measure. This

^ THOMAS

LOSONCY

iSj

small measure of knowledge goes only so far as to show the necessity of a supreme being possessing a supreme mode of existing. The modal nature of this "measure of knowledge" is reflected elsewhere in his Rejoindei to Gaunilo and in the Monologion. In both cases, the language chosen is deliberate and rigorous.

In the Rejoindei, section eight, Anselm insists, contra Gaunilo's claims, that there is a way to gain some measure of knowledge of God. The knowing activity he cites each time^^ is a matter of "puzzling out" or "conjecturing to" a superlative manner of being. The word employed is conicele and its usage is consistent with his approach in the Pioslogion, namely, that one cannot

achieve an idea of God's nature. ^^ This limited knowledge of God is likened to the kind of knowing one experiences when endeavoring to grasp something not completely comprehensible or understandable. In section nine of his Rejoindei, Anselm contends that this type of knowing is appropriate for an object that is ineffable to man.^^ He reasons similarly in the Monologion, chapter sixty-five, when he concludes that:

word "wisdom" does not suffice for disclosing to me this Being all things were created from nothing and are kept from (falling away into) nothing. Nor can the word "being" express that (reality) which is far removed from all things by virtue of its own nature. So, then, the

through which

this

and

Nature is ineffable because words cannot at all express it as it is; if tmder the instruction of reason we can apprehend something

yet,

about

obliquely, as in a dark

manner

(this

apprehension)

not

false.

The language of the Pioslogion reveals that man's knowledge of God is limited and not of God's essence as such. The knowledge to be obtained is of the highest way of being, a way of being that remains ineffable to man. This knowledge in some measure, is further explained and argued for in Anselm's Rejoindei to Gaunilo and reflects the earlier Monologion. It is appropriate, at this point, to consider the second issue mentioned, the basis of such a modal knowledge of God. Anselm elaborates on the basis he selects for man's knowledge of God in section eight of his Rejoindei to Gaunilo. He enlists a Platonic metaphysics of participation. This does not exclude, however, certain adjustments to bring the metaphysical enterprise into allignment with the Christian notion of a supreme being. Anselm indicates that reason may proceed from lesser goods to a highest good beyond which there is no other. Likewise he contends that reason may consider various modes or levels of being until it reaches a highest beyond which there can exist no greater. The focal point of the argument hearkens back to Parmenides' own questioning of being. If being is, then one must ask. Was it always? Or did it come from nothing? Anselm adjusts this question to the context of his own world view and asks himself: If beings are do they come from nothing? From others like themselves? Or from some supreme being beyond which there is no greater? He argued for the last alternative in the Monologion.^^ He succinctly repeats the same preference in the latter part of the Pioslogion. In chapters eighteen to twenty-two of the Pioslogion, Anselm contrasts the

LANGUAGE AND SAINT ANSELM

288 supreme way

of being (absolute being)

with

all

other ways of being witnessed

in the universe. Ultimately the contrast he points out

as follows:

And what began

(to exist) from non-existence, and can be thought not and returns to non-existence unless it subsists through some other; and what has had a past existence but does not now exist, and a future existence but does not yet exist — such a thing does not exist in strict and absolute sense. ^^

to exist,

Taking lesser beings as his starting point Anselm has two alternatives, either they originate from nothing (an alternative he rules out in Parmenidean fashion) or they come from a being beyond which no greater can be thought, namely, a being that has none of these limiting features. His choice is the latter option.

In claiming that all beings originate from a being beyond which no greater can be thought Anselm both reflects the contrast he had argued for in chapter three of the Pioslogion and breaks with the Platonic metaphysics of participa-

The

highest or supreme nature, in this case, is totally unlike the beings in being. Their being is one of dependence upon the highest being and yet they do not affect its nature at all because it is utterly simple and unchangeable.^ Thus the basis for Anselm's argument is the world of beings of experience. The directing of reason to God (to a knowledge in some tion.

which participate

measure)

which

a matter of proceeding from differing modes of existence, none wholly simple, complete and unchanging, to the highest mode

of being.

In assessing the language of the Pioslogion, one finds the following: 1) an argument that there exists a supreme way of being necessitated by and knowable from the mode of existence exercised by beings in this world; 2) a modal approach to being that relies upon a Platonic metaphysics of participation with a modification in the case of the supreme instance of being; and ,

a selective language prevailing throughout the Pioslogion (and other

is tailored to meet the demands of no. 1 and no. 2 above. In such an analysis renders the "ontological interpretation" of Saint Anselm's Pioslogion unacceptable. A positive evaluation of Anselm's work, that recognizes its use of language, would view the Pioslogion as an introspective pronouncement upon the knowledge of God attainable by man from the world of experience.

writings) that short,

Villanova University

Notes 1.

Two recent

discussions of the Pioslogion deserve notice in this regard. ProAnselm and Talking about God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), time to talking about the interpretation a large tradition has placed

fessor G. R. Evans,

devotes more

THOMAS

LOSONCY

289

upon the Proslogion argument than to an analysis of the argument's language as such. See, especially, chapters two and three, pp. 39-75. On the other hand. Professor Gregory SchuJfreider's study, "The Identity of Anselm's Argument," The Schoolman, LIV (1977), pp. 345-61, breaks genuinely new ground in its search for the argument in Anselm's Pioslogion instead of a new search for confirmation of an old rendition. In arguing that Saint Anselm has a single argument in the Proslogion Schufreider provides a careful analysis of Anselm's use of "vere esse" in chapter eleven's heading and chapter three's text (pp. 349-52); of "absolute" in chapters twenty-two and twenty-eight of the Monologion (pp. 353-58) and the modal quality of the Ptoslogion's "vere esse" (p. 360). The conclusion Schufreider reaches reinforces the argument of this paper from a different perspective. 2. The "snippet collections" of the numerous Readings in Philosophy available today, as well as some Histories of Philosophy, have had much to do with fixing this approach to the Proslogion. It would be nearly impossible to enumerate such

Modem

instances here. 3. Proslogion, caput H; in S. Ansehni Opera Omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, vol. I (Edinburgh, 1946), p. 101. All page references to Saint Anselm (and Gaimilo) will be to this volume. 4. See, for instance, M. J. Charlesworth. Saint Anselm's Proslogion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 117; and more recently Anseim of Canterbury, ed. and tr. by Jasper Hopkins and Herbert W. Richardson (Toronto &. New York: The Edwin Meilen Press), 1974; vol. I. p. 93. English translations are my own but their indebtedness to the translations of others and the helpful comments of others are gratefully acknowledged. 5. See E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: Random House, 1955), pp. 133-34, for the traditional interpretation. Also Jasper Hopkins in his, A Companion to the Study of Saint Anselm (Miimeapolis, Minn. University of Minnesota Press, 1972), chapter HI, p. 71, outlines what has been called the "First" (traditional) Ontological Argument and presents the so-called "Second" in the same chapter, pp. 78-89. For a rebuttal of this latter approach see, especially, Gregory Schufreider's article, supra, n. 1. 6. Meditation V. :

Proslogion, cap.

8. "...

p. 98.

sed desidero ahquatenus intelligere veritatem tuam...,"

ibid., p. 100. Italics

mine. 9.

"Et

cap.

10.

non

quidem quidquid est

aliud praeter te solum, potest cogitari

non esse." Ibid.,

p. 103.

"...

iam

sic intelligo te illuminante,

si te

esse nolim credere,

non possim

intelligere." Ibid., cap. IV, p. 104.

11. Ibid., cap. V, pa. 104. 12. "... id

de nihilo?" 13.

quid

summimi omnium solum

existens per seipsum,

omnia

alia fecit

Ibid.

quod vidit, et tarnen nondum te vidit, quia vidit non vidit te sicuti es?" Ibid., cap. XTV, p. 111. Italics mine. "Ergo domine, non solum es quo mains cogitari nequit, sed es quiddam mains

"An

et Veritas et lux est

te ahquatenus, sed 14.

quam 15.

cogitari possit." Ibid., cap.

The opening

XV,

p. 112.

lines of the three chapters are striking

this point: "Excita

nimc, anima mea, et erige totum intellectum tuum et cogita quantum potes, quale et quantum sit illud bonimi. Si enim singula bona delectabilia sunt, cogita intente

LANGUAGE AND SAINT ANSELM

290

quam delectabile sit illud bonutn, quod continet iucrmditatem omnium bonorum; non qualem in rebus creatis sumus experti, sed tanto diff erentem quanto differt creator a creatura." Ibid., cap. XXIV, pp. 117-18. "O qui hoc bono fruetur: quid illi erit, et quid illi non erit! ... Ibi quippe erunt bona corporis et animae, qualia et

'nee oculus vidit nee aiuris audivit nee cor hominis' cogitavit." Ibid., cap. XXV, "Deus meus et dominus meus, spes mea et gaudium cordis mei, die animae

p. 118.

meae, si hoc est gaudium de quo nobis dicis per filium tuum: 'petite et accipietis, ut gaudium vestrum sit plenum.' " Ibid., cap. XXVI, p. 120. 16. "Oro, deus, cognoscam te, amem te, ut gaudiam de te. Et si non possum in hac vita ad plenum, vel proficiam in dies usque dum veniat illud ad plenum. Proficiat hic in me notitia tui, et ibi fiat piena; crescat amor tuus, et ibi sit plenus: ut hic gauditmi meimi sit in spe magnum, et ibi sit in re plenum." Ibid., cap. XXVI, p. 121.

17. Five

times Anselm states sentences and phrases which affirm a knowledge

God in some way and the series is worth noting: "... nee eam ex alia simili potes conicele: palam est rem aliter sese habere." Responsio Editons, Vin, p. 137. "Quoniam namque omne minus bonum in tantum est simile malori bono inquanof

bonum: patet cuilibet rationabili menti, quia de bonis minoribus ad malora conscendendo ex lis quibus aliquid malus cogitar! potest, multum possumus conicele illud quo nihil potest malus cogitari." Ibid. "Aut non est hoc ex iis quibus malus cogitari valet, conicele id quo malus cogitari nequit? Est igitur imde possit conici, 'quo malus cogitari nequeat.' Sic itaque facile refelli potest insipiens qui sacram auctoritatem non recipit, si negat 'quo malus cogitari non valet' ex aliis rebus conici posse." Ibid. Italics mine. 18. It is interesting to note how this important notion has fared in two recent translations. The Charlesworth translation, supia n. 4, renders conicele as "to conjecture about" only once in section Vni of the Rejoindet. In the remaining four instances conicele is rendered as "forming an idea of something" (p. 187). Apart from a lack of consistency in translating the latter rendition is not faithful to Anselm's intent and language. The Hopkins and Richardson translation also, supia n. 4, renders conicele as "to conceive" throughout their translation of this passage (pp. 132-33). In this second case adherence to the view that Anselm offers an "ontological argument" obviously is controlling the translation. 19. "Sicut enim nil prohibet dici 'ineffabile,' licet Ulud dici non possit quod 'ineffabile' dicitur; et quemadmodum cogitari potest 'non cogitabile,' quamvis iltwax est

lud cogitari non possit cui convenit 'non cogitabile' dici: ita cum dicitur 'quo nil cogitari', procul dubio quod auditur cogitari et intelligi potest, etiam si res ilia cogitari non valeat aut intelligi qua malus cogitari nequit." Responsio,

malus valet IX, p. 138.

20.

"...

nec

nomen sapientiae mihi sufficit ostendere illud, per quod omnia facnec nomen essentiae mihi valet exprimere

ta stmt de nihilo et servantur a nihilo;

illud, quod per singularem altitudinem longe est supra omnia et per naturalem proprietatem valde est extra omnia. Sic igitur ilia natura et ineffabilis est, quia per verba sicuti est nullatenus valet intimari; et falsum non est, si quid de ilia ratione docente per aliud velut in aenigmate potest aestimari." Monologion, cap. LXV, pp. 76-77. 21. Monologion, cap. HI, pp. 15-16. 22. "Et quod incepit a non esse et potest cogitari non esse, et nisi per aliud subsistât redit in non esse; et quod habet fuisse quod lam non est, et futurum esse

THOMAS

^9^

LOSONCY

quod nondum est: id non est proprie et absolute." Pioslogion, cap. XXn, p. 116. 23. "Et quidem quidquid est aliud praeter te solum, potest cogitari non esse. Solus igitur verissime

est

non

omnium,

et ideo

sic vere, et idcirco

maxime omnium habes esse:

minus habet

quia quidquid aliud

esse." Ibid., cap. HI, p. 103.

Selected Extant Latin

Documents

Pertaining to the 'Studio' of Bologna

around 1500 Herbert

Matsen

this paper I shall refer to and illustrate the rich archival treasures relevant to the 'Studio' (in our terms 'University') of Bologna, particularly to Arts and Medicine, during the period from approximately 1475 to 1525, preserved in two important Bolognese libraries, viz., the Archivio di Stato and the Archivio of the Collegio di Spagna. Since the focus of my work in Bologna has been on the life, career and philosophy of the famous philosopher and physician Alessandro Achillini (1463-1512), whenever possible I shall cite documents relevant to his activity.^ In 1968, I published a paper in which I used records owned by the Archivio di Stato of Bologna (and of Venice) to document two years of Achillini's life, 1506-1508, when he 'read' philosophy at the 'Studio' of Padua. ^ More generally, in two places I list seven types of archival documents preserved in the Bolognese Archivio di Stato relevant to the careers of masters (professors) and students of the Bolognese Studio.^ Briefly, they are as follows: 1) Copies of letters from the Commune of Bologna, including letters to

professors."* 2)

Volumes containing authorizations by the Commune of appointments among many others, to teach in the Bolognese 'Studio' and salary

of professors,

increases.^ 3) Quarterly records, which are in fact proof of salary disbursem*nts (except in unusual circ*mstances as, for example, in 1512, when the 'Studio' was closed for several months) for the professors of the 'Studio,' with an indication of the tax, if any, each had to pay.^ 4) Records of doctoral-promotion-meetings: for our period, there are two important manuscript volumes, one covering the years 1481 to 1500 and the other 1504 to 1575.7 5) The Rotuli or lists of 'Legisti' (Law professors) and 'Artisti' (professors of Medicine and Philosophy, primarily), from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries (with gaps). This document, a large single sheet (one for the 'Legisti' and one for the 'Artisti') for each academic year, beautifully written and illuminated, contains first the rules or regulations pertaining to the masters

HERBERT

MATSEN

293

(professors) and students of the 'Studio' and then the names of the professors and student-lecturers with their various academic titles.^ In one instance, we are even told the actual books on which the various 'arts' professors had to

lecture.^ 6) A carton of 'penalties/ called "Puntazioni dei Lettori," issued every three or four months recorded the infractions of those professors who either did not 'read' on an assigned day or who did not have the requisite number of

students. ^° 7) One carton called "Disputes of Scholars," in which one finds loose sheets (one or two, usually) for each student-disputation-exercise, that served as the 'examination' for certain foreign students who wished to be eligible for one-

year lectureships in their respective subjects. ^^ To identify the relevant documents in the Archivio di Stato, one consults the invaluable book with inventory by the late Professor Giorgio Cencetti, viz., Gli Aicbivi dello Studio Bolognese, ^'^ and the more recent provisional inventory of the entire Archivio di Stato called Inventano Generale dei Fondi. ^^ For the Archivio of the Collegio di Spagna, I understand that work is well advanced that will provide a comprehensive list of documents preserved. The order of the selected documents to be illustrated will be roughly chronological, starting from the first occurrence of a young scholar's name and proceeding with documents pertaining to a developing academic career. First, I shall refer to a young Spanish scholar at the time when he was admitted to the Collegio di Spagna. His name was Jacobus Velasquez, and it is found in the important document belonging to the Archivio of the Collegio di Spagna called "Liber Admissionum," that recorded, among other things, when young scholars from Spain were approved for admission to the Collegio di Spagna, in order to commence advanced instruction in such subjects as canon law, theology or medicine.^* In this instance our document tells us the names of the Rector and of those of the examiners in canon law, in theology and in medicine. It also says that the applicant passed the scrutiny without defect and thus was admitted on April 21, 1501 to the Collegio di Spagna in order to study medicine. There is a second important document preserved in the same Archivio, in which Jacobus Velasquez appears. It is found in the record called "Acta Sodalium," which contains separate items for many who lived in the College. Typically, as in the present case, the documentary notice consists of two folios on which is a 'riassunto' or simimary of the scholar's career, including his background, the names and origins of his parents, his education and later biographical and professional details. Even more important, one finds included for many students actual original documents including letters of introduction and of proficiency from parish priests or other officials of the Church and others in Spain. The concluding sentence says that Jacobus was appointed Professor [i.e.. Lecturer of the University of Students, in Philosophy] in the Studio of Bologna in 1504, and that he became Rector of the Collegio di Spagna on the Kalends of May [i.e., on May 1st] in 1506. ^^ The second type of document to be illustrated is that of the student-disputation-exercise. As stated elsewhere, certain foreign poor students had an opportunity to hold one-year lectureships in their respective subjects. But in

THE 'studio' OF BOLOGNA

294

order to be considered eligible for such a position, it was necessary to undergo satisfactorily a disputation of a special type, that served as a 'prova' or a qualifying examination.^^ The above named Jacobus Velasquez, for example, appears several times in the extant student-disputation-exercise record. The most important is on Carta 201, the record of his disputation. The Notary employed by the Commune of Bologna says that Jacobus Velasquez Hispanus disputed medicine and philosophy on February 25, 1504, as the candidate himself says in the 'pro forma' preliminary paragraph.^'' He also says that his Sponsor was Alessandro Achillini, that he disputed dubia and conclusions in medicine and in philosophy; and he names the other doctors present and refers to other interested persons who attended. The medical dubium has to do with a possible cause of pain (Utrum dolor causetur a calido?) and in his physical question, the issue he discussed was, are heaviness and lightness so-called 'substantial forms' of heavy and light [things] ?^^ On c. 202 of the same document, we find the actual appointment of Jacobus Velasquez as a "Lecturer of the 'University' " in Philosophy for the following, 1504-1505 academic year, to which the entry in the "Acta Sodalium" refers. The appointment was made on April 10, 1504 by the duly constituted body chosen for that purpose, the so-called "Reformers of the Studio," and the document was prepared by the Notary, Giovanni Andrea Garisendi.^^ On the reverse side of the same carta are a few of the regulations to which would-be "Lecturers of the University" had to conform: 1) He who holds a disputation must have studied in Bologna for one year in the subject in which he seeks the Lectureship. 2) He who holds a Lectureship must begin lecturing and continue to lecture under penalty of having his salary withheld. 3) He who desires a Lectureship must prove that he is poor, either by two sworn witnesses, or by his own and one other sworn statement to that effect.^ The printed faculty roll confirms that the said Jacobus Velasquez was appointed "Lecturer of the University" in Philosophy for the following,

1504-1505, academic year.^^ The next document I shall illustrate is the doctoral-promotion-record. In the famous Secret Book of the College of Medicine and of Arts, during the first trimester of 1508, when Hieronymous de Bombaxia was Prior both of the Doctoral Colleges of Medicine and of Arts, and, incidentally, when Achillini was still absent from Bologna and still teaching in Padua, ^^ Magister Jacobus Velasques hispanus was promoted on January 15, 1508. The document is interesting and tells us a number of things: 1) It says that Jacobus was eligible for promotion because of his Lectureship of Philosophy held previously. 2) We learn that he was granted a supplement of eight gold Bonenorum per year.

On the day preceding the promotion,

on January

14, 1508, Jacobus Jacobus Benatius. His 'promotors' were Leonellus de Victoriis, who gave him the insignia of his degree, as well as Jacobus Benatius, Ludovicus de Arengeria and Ludovicus de Vitalibus.^'^ 3)

was presented

to the Prior

viz.,

by one of his teachers,

viz..

HERBERT

MATSEN

295

When a professor did not 'read/ i.e., teach on an assigned day, or if he did not have the required number of students, he was penahzed where it hurt most, in his pocket book. For each such professorial lapse, a certain amoimt of money was deducted from his salary. Our next document to be illustrated provides the evidence of one such list of infractions. It is foimd in the record now called "Puntazioni dei Lettori."^* In this document, we note that for the months of December, 1506 and for January, February and March, 1507, Alessandro Achillini failed to 'read' thirty-three times, for which he was to be penalized 351 Bolognese Lire.^^ The crucial sentence is worth repeating: "Dominus Magister Alexander de Achillinis, cuius salarium est L[ibrarum] 600, habet punctationes 33, retineantur libre 351. Est absens, nunquam legit, nihil debet habere."^6

should be noted that Achillini's lapses were recorded in the next docuto be mentioned, the quarterly payment record of the Commune, called "Quartironi degli Stipendi." For the first 'distribution' of 1507, in Col. 1, No. 43, we read: "Dominus Magister Alexander de Achillinis — L600— punctationes L 351."^^ Another type of document to be considered is the letter written by the Commune. On four occasions, the Commune of Bologna wrote letters concerning Achillini. The first two— both dated July 13, 1495— one in Latin, sent to the Apostolic delegate in Bologna, Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza, and the second, in Italian, almost identical in content, to the Archbishop of Pisa— were laudatory in tone, commended Achillini for his ability and industry, and urged that his salary be increased from 100 to 200 Lire as had been authorized two years previously by the then Apostolic delegate. Cardinal Aloysio.^^ But the next two letters of the Commime, written to Achillini himself, were not so flattering. On the contrary. Achillini, by leaving Bologna in the fall of 1506, regardless of turbulent political conditions, and by going to teach in Padua, had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. In two letters, composed in Italian but reflecting language close to a simplified Latin, the first dated August 31, 1507 and the second, dated September 11 of the same year, Achillini was warned in the strongest terms that his departure was unauthorized, and that unless he returned at once, he would be penalized severely (500 ducats of gold, to begin). ^^ In view of the severity of the letters, it is more than a little surprising that Achillini did not return to Bologna to resvune his instruction until the following year, the fall of 1508. The next type of document I should like to mention is from the record of the Commune in which appointments of professors and others were authorized. The series is called "Libri Partitorum." Under the date of September 14, 1508, we find that all nineteen present of the 'Forty' governing the Commune of Bologna officially reappointed Achillini as Professor of the 'Studio' of Bologna, with an annual salary of 900 Bolognese Lire, subject to the proviso that he 'read' two subjects — theoretical medicine in the mornings and philosophy in the afternoon.^ Another type of documentary notice informs us of the end of a professor's career, namely the obituary. I shall refer to two, one for the famous contemporary of Achillini, the physician, historian and orator Giovanni Garzoni (1419-1505) and the other for Alessandro Achillini himself. Both are found It

ment

THE 'studio' of BOLOGNA

296 in the "Secret

Book of the College of Medicine and of Arts." The current Prior he (Garzoni) He wrote a time when Bologna was suf-

of the Doctoral College, Clarus Franciscus de Genulis, says that

was without doubt

in our time the

most famous

orator of all ages.

Giovarmi died on January 28 [1505] at from earthquakes.^^ For evidence, I refer you to Francesco Francia's "Madonna del Terremoto" in the Palazzo Comunale, Primo Piano. The obituary notice on Achillini explains that he died on Monday, August 2, 1512, near the end of his forty-eighth year. The elogium, even allowing for some exaggeration, is quite impressive and shows how highly Achillini was regarded by his College, his colleagues, his students and his fellow citizens. The Prior of the College of Medicine for the second trimester of 1512 was Federicus Gambalunga, who wrote the elogium. Among other things, he suggests one of the possible reasons why Achillini died at a relatively young age: also that

fering severely

overwork.^^

Even with a person's death, we may not have seen the last of him in the documents. A case in point is Achülini, who, because the Studio of Bologna was closed for most of the spring of 1512, was due salary not paid him. For

name continues to appear in the extant archival records until 1530, or eighteen years after his death. On December 1, 1516, the Commune authorized the payment of salaries of those professors (or their heirs) employed by the Communal Studio of Bologna in 1512.^^ From the "Quartironi," we learn that a total of 970 Bolognese Lire was paid to Achillini's heirs, in five installments of 54 Lire each and seven installments of 100 Lire each. The first this reason, his

document

dated February 17, 1517, and the twelfth and

last,

December

23,

1530.34

From this survey, we can get some idea of the pertinent types of documentary records preserved in the Archivio di Stato and in the Archivio of the ColBut it gives no idea of the frequency with which the names and students appear. In Achillini's case, for example, his name appears in the extant records literally hundreds of times. At some point I should like to publish and annotate all of them, but for the present I wish to refer to two of the most interesting and important documents in which Achillini appears frequently, first the doctoral-promotion records and second, the stulegio di Spagna.

of masters

dents'

'arts'

disputations.

Achülini appears for the first time in the doctoral-promotion records on April 3, 1487. The docimient in question records an important fact: it notes that the Prior of the College of Medicine and his two Councillors are selected by lot from among the eligible members of the College of Medical Doctors subject, in this instance, to the approval of one Antonius Christophorus a Peregrino, who received his degree in Arts in 1483. To illustrate the procedure of choosing the Prior and Councillors of the College, I shall quote: die 3 ApriUs [1487]

Extractus fuit per Magistrum Andromacum Priorem Colegij medicine proxime praeteriti in presentia magistri Floriani de Cereolis, magistri Egidij de Antaldis, magistri Alexandri de lachillinis [sic] ad aprobationem [Antonii] Christophori a Peregrino, Magister Florianus de trimestris

HERBERT

MATSEN

29/

Cereolis in priore presentis trimestris secundi per totum mensis Junii, et consiliarii eiusdem Magister Andromacus de Millanis et Magister

Nicolaus de

Savijs.'^^

But the primary business of the College was to examine and promote worthy candidates. Ideally, the notices about each candidate should be two: first, when he is assigned by his teachers 'puncta' (points), often in the form of traditional texts or problems in 'authoritative' texts in subjects in which he was to be examined, to which he was obligated to reply within a few days. Second, the record should contain the statement that, because he had defended successfully the assigned 'puncta,' he was with great honor and praise promoted to the doctor's degree. The former was called the 'private' examination and the latter was called the 'public' scrutiny. Sometimes, there was a third notice, viz., when the new doctor was added to the Roll of the College, but that happened rather infrequently. In the case of one Franciscus de Panzarasijs, we have both notices together, but Achillini was not one of the examiners:

Die xxiiij Octobris 1487 Convocato et congregato Collegio Artium in numero quattuordecim in totum computatis Magister Andrea de Crissimbenis et magister Nestor de Morandis promotoribus in Sacrestia veterj Ecclesie Cathedralis Bononienfsis] presentatis punctis per magistrum Franciscum Gasparis de Panzarasiis sibi hoc manu [?] per doctores dictj Collegi) assignatis ut moris est...

Approbatus fuit dictus magister Franciscus in per duodecim fabas albas et nullam nigram.^^

. . .

artibus et philosophia

Note that this document points to the ecclesiastical authority which actually granted the degrees, since the meeting was held in the old Sacristy of the Cathedral of Bologna, now the San Pietro in Via dell'Independenza near Piazza Maggiore. Finally, we observe that Magister Franciscus passed his 'puncta' successfully and was consequently promoted to the doctorate in arts and in philosophy: the vote was 12 in favor and opposed. At the end of the same volume of documents there are a number of brief entries, and the one on our Franciscus reads:

24 Octobris [1487] ap[p]robatus in artibus

nemine discrepante

fuit

et in

Magister Franciscus de Panzarasijs cum una lepwbatoria ...

medicina

(emphasis added)^^

According to the last clause, Franciscus was promoted in medicine as well, but there was one negative vote.-*^ The last appearance of Achillini's name in a doctoral promotion notice to which I wish to refer has to do with an alumnus of the Collegio di Spagna who became a famous philosopher and theologian in his own right, viz., loannes de Montesdocha. The scholar in question was promoted in arts (meaning philosophy, primarily) on Jime 10, 1499. The document reads:

Die X

Junij [1499]

Ap(p]robatus fuit in artibus magister Johannes hispanus nemine discrepante promotores eius fuerunt infrascripti videlicet magister Alexan-

298

THE 'studio' of BOLOGNA

der de Achillinis magister Lionellus de Victorijs magister Galeotus de bechadellis et magister Petrus bemardinus de Pizano et dictus magister Alexander dedit insignia.^^

Another indication of Achillini's professional contribution to the Studio of Bologna is reflected in his frequent participation in student-disputationexercises. In that document alone, his name appears forty-four times, from 22 February 1488 until 22 March 1510, either as a disputing or as a supervising master. As stated elsewhere, the main problems examined in these disputations, as reflected in the extant record, were twenty-five in [natural] philosophy [including fourteen in what we would now call Physics and five in Psychology], fourteen in Medicine, the most prestigious of the 'Arts' at Bologna and at Italian Studia of the time, in general, eleven in Logic, four in Rhetoric, four in

Astronomy and one in Theology.'*^ On the twenty-eighth occurrence of Achillini's name, the subject of the philosophical disputation was one Ludovicus Staccolus of Urbino, who disputed the important subject of universals. According to the preliminary paragraph, Ludovicus says that he disputed the problem [on imiversals] and accompanying conclusions on February 20, 1502. He also states, in accordance with custom, that he had obtained the permission of the Apostolic Protonotary and the Rector of the 'University' of Medical and Arts' Students. Finally, he states that his sponsor was Alessandro Achillini:

Ego Ludovicus Staccolus de Urbino disputavi infiascriptum dubium una cum conclusionibus die xx Februarii 1502 de licentia Reverendissimi Prothonotarii [Antonii Galeatij] de Bentivolis Archediachoni [sic] dignissimi ac etiam impetrata licentia a domino Bartholomeo Serra artistarum et medicorum universitatis Bononie Rectoris dignissimi disputavi dico sub excellentissimo domino Magistro Alexandro Achillino quam pluribus doctoribus ac scolasticis presentibus de quibus omnibus fidem faciet vobis notarius Universitatis Artistarum ac Medicorum gimnasii Bononiensis etc. Dubium: Utrum imiversalia sint?'^^

the bottom of the same sheet, the Notary observes that on the last day 1502, in the Sacristy of San Francesco, Ludovicus was apppointed "Lecturer of the University" in Logic by the Magnificent Rector and by the Reformers of the Studio: of

March in

[Notary:] .1502. die ultimo Martii in Sacristia Sancti Francisci. Collato

Lectura Logice suprascripto Magistro Ludovico Staccolo de Urbino per Dominum Rectorem et Reformatores qui sub hoc die alias Lecturas contulerunt.*^ fuit

purpose in this paper has been to name and illustrate some of the important extant Latin documents pertaining to the Studio of Bologna [especially Arts and Medicine] around 1500, preserved in the Bolognese Archivio di Stato and in the Archivio of the Collegio di Spagna. I have used illustrations from the following types of documents: 1) "Liber Admissionum" and 2) "Acta Sodalium," both in the Archivio of the Collegio di Spagna.

HERBERT

MATSEN

299

3) "Dispute di Scolari," 4) "Registri d'atti del Collegio, (1481-1500)," 5) "Libro Segreto del Collegio (1504-1575)," 6) "Puntazioni dei Lettori (1465-1513)," 7) "Quartironi degli Stipendi," 8) "Libri Litterarum," 9) "Libri Partitonim," and 10) Obituary notices in "Libro Segreto," which are ali preserved in the Archivio

di Stato.

Finally, I highlighted two of the most important documents preserved in the Archivio di Stato, the doctoral promotion-records in arts and medicine and the students' 'arts' disputation-notices in the same, because the name of Alessandro Achillini appears frequently therein and because they illustrate con-

temporary academic practice. University of South Carolina

Notes 1. On his life and selected philosophical issues, see my Alessandro Achillini (1463-1512) and his doctrine of 'Universals' and 'Tianscendentals': a study in Renaissance Ockhamism (Lewisburg, Fa., 1974). 2. See "Alessandro Achülini (1463-1512) as Professor of Philosophy in the 'Studio' of Padua (1506-1508)," in my Achillini (above, n. 1], "Appendix I," pp. 185-197. 3. See Achillini, pp. 178-179, notes 2-10. Also see my "Giovanni Garzoni (1419-1505) to Alessandro Achillini (1463-1512): an impublished letter and defense," in Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, edited by E. P. Mahoney (Leiden &. New York, 1976), pp. 518-530, at 518-519, n. 4. 4. ASB [i.e.. Archivio di Stato of Bologna], Archivio del Comune, "Libri Litterarum." 5. Ibid., "Libri Partitonim." 6. Ibid., Riformatori dello Studio, "Quartironi degli Stipendi." 7. ASB, Archivio dello Studio, Busta 217. The two volumes are: 1. Registri d'Attì del Collegio, 1481-1500, also called Acta. 1481-1500. 2. Libro Segreto del Collegio (di Medicina e d'Arti) dall'armo 1504 a

tutto

1575.

ASB, Riformatori dello Studio, "Rotuli dei Lettori, 1438-1800." The Rotuli have been published by Umberto Dallari. Unfortunately, the editor published the regulations at the head of only a few of the Rotuli. See Umberto Dallari, / Rotuh 8.

dei Lettori, Legisti e Artisti dello Studio Bolognese dal 1384 al 1 799. 4 vols. (Bologna,

1888-1924). See Vol. I (1384-1513), cited hereafter as "Dallari, I." 9. I.e., 1466-1467. See the "Roll" of the 'Artisti' in Dallari, I, p. 73. 10. ASB, Riformatori dello Studio, "Puntazioni dei Lettori (1465-1513). 11. Ibid., "Dispute di Scolari (1487-1512)." See my "Students' 'Arts' disputations at Bologna around 1500, illustrated from the career of Alessandro Achillini (1463-1512)," in History of Education (London), Vol. 6 (1977), pp. 169-181. In this paper I provided a preliminary report and illustrated it by using a few disputation-notices in

which Achillini appeared,

either as a disputing or as a super-

THE 'studio' OF BOLOGNA

300

vising master. In the near future, I plan to deal more thoroughly with this important indication of students' disputation-exercises. 12. Bologna, 1938. For the

most pertinent

sections, see

my Achillini

[above, n.

186.

1], p.

13. Bologna, 1977.

ACS [i.e., Archivio del Collegio di Spagna], "Liber EI Admissionum DD. Colab Anno 1496 usque A. D. 1557," C[arta] 9' (cf. 19), published in part by Fr. Celestino Piana, Nuovi documenti sull'Università di Bologna e sul Collegio di Spagna (Bolonia: Real Colegio de Espana, Studia Albomotiana, XXVI), Voi. I (1976), 14.

legi

p. 125, n. 30.

ACS, "Acta Sodalium,"

15.

Vol.

No. 36,

e. 1:

Litterae praesentatitiae una cum primis actis pro Domino Jacobo Velasquez: Ortus est in Loco Juguero sub iurisdictione Oppidi Niella Diaecesis Hispalensis Parentibus Martino Fernandez de Johar, et Catharina Ramirez. Avos habuit ex parte Patris Petrum Fernandez, et Catharinam Fernandez, ac ex parte Matris Jacobum sue (?) Didacum de Velasquez, et Johanam [sic] Ramirez. Nobiles eiusdem Oppidi Litteras ad Praebendam Medicina impetravit a D. Didaco Hurtado Praesule Hispanelsi die septima Februarii an [no] millesimo quingentesimo, et a Capitulo sua Ecclesia nona Julii armo millesimo quadringentesimo nonagesimo nono, eas Rectori, et Consiliariis exhibuit una cum sui generis actis decima octava Julii an. 1500, et toga decoratus est prima Aprilis anno sequenti quingentesimo primo Rectore Johanne Soto "Lib. 3 Admiss.," fol. 9, pag. 2' [i.e., fol. 9^].

Publicus Philosophiae Professor creatur in Gymnasio Bononiensi an. 1504 et RecMail an. 1506. 16. See above, n. 11. 17. ASB, Riformatori dello Studio, "Dispute di Scolari," e. 201 (recently published, for the most part, by Piana [above, n. 14], I, 125). (On this document, see Cencetti [above, n. 12], pp. 84-85.) 18. Ibid., c. 201: Dubium Medicinale: Utrum dolor causetur a calido? Dubium phisicale: Utrum gravitas et le vitas sint forme substantiales gravis et tor CoUegii Kalend.

levis?

202

19. Ibid., e.

and not April 20. Ibid.,

published by Piana,

(also

125 [but the date

April 10, 1504,

19]).

202':

Oportet quod fecerint disputationem quod studuerint per annum Bononie in ea facultate in qua Lecturam petent. Tenentur legere Lecturas, quas obtinuerint et continuare sub pena amissionis salarli.

Divitibus distribuì

non debent

duos testes iuratos, aut (For a

more extensive

21. See Dallari,

phie:"

cum

Lecture, sed probantibus paupertatem per suo Juramento per imum testem.

list eligibility criteria,

189b:

M. lacobus Velasquez

see

paper, above, n. 11.)

LECTURE UNIVERSITATIS. "Ad lecturam PhUosohispanus. (Cf. Piana [above, n. 14],

p. 125, n. 30.)

22. For proof, see above, note 2.

23.

ASB, Archivio dello Studio, Busta 217, "Libro Segreto del Collegio dall'anno

1504 a tutto

1575,"

e. 10':

HERBERT

MATSEN

3OI

Die XV Januarij [1508] doctoratus fuit Magister Jacobus Velasques hyspanus tarn in liberalibus artibus quam in sacratissima medicina pro Lectura supplemento octo aureorum aimj sicut prius apparet deterimmediate precedente per Magnificum Jacobum Benatium mihi Hieronymo Bombaxio utriusque Collegij priori presentatus fuit, promotores Magister Lionelus de Victorijs ellectus, qui ipsum insignivit et Magister Jacobus Benatius et Magister Ludovicus de Arengeria et Magister Ludovicus de Vitalibus.... Phylosophie

minatum

fuisse per Collegia nostra, qui die

(A useful compilation, based on a later list of those who received degrees in various was published by Giovarmi Bronzino, Notìtia Doctoimn, in Univeisitatìs Bononiensis Monumenta, IV (Milano, 1962). For our Jacobus, seep. 10). (The five insignia of the degree, as listed by St. Antoninus of Florence {Summa Tbeologiae, in, 5, 2, 2; tr. in Lyim Thomdike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages [New York, 1944], p. 309), are: 1. a closed book, 2. an open book, 3. a ring, 4. the biretta (cap) and 5. the kiss of peace.) 24. ASB, Riformatori dello Studio, "Puntazioni dei Lettori, 1465-1513." On this document, see Cencetti, pp. 77-79. 25. For the document, see my Achillini, p. 187 and Document VI, pp. 192-193. subjects,

26. Ibid., p. 193. 27. Ibid., p. 187

and Document V,

p. 192.

the "Quartironi," see Cencetti,

pp. 83-84. 28. ASB, Archivio del Comune, "Libri Litterarum," Vol. 5 (1491-99), cc. 224-224'' (Latin version); 224^-225 (Italian version). Both letters, with some errors

and omissions, have been edited by Ladislao Muenster, "Alessandro Achillini, e Filosofo, Professore dello Studio di Bologna (1463-1512)," Rivista di

Anatomico

Storia delle Scienze Mediche e Naturali, Series 4, Vol. 15 (1933), 7-22; 54-77, at pp. 12-14. For the previous authorization, see "Libri Partitorum," Vol. XI, c. 59 (i.e.,

Oct. 22, 1492). ASB, Archivio del

Comune, "Libri Litterarum," Vol. 7 (1506-1509), c. 11-lV and 81-8^. They are published in my Achillini [above, n. 1], "Appendix I," p. 187, Documents Vm-DC (pp. 193-194). 29.

30. Ibid., "Libri Partitorum," Vol. 13 (1506-08),

MDVin." The document

printed in Achillini,

136': "Die 14 Septembris

Document XTV,

p. 196.

See also

p. 187.

31. ASB, Archivio dello Studio, "Libro Segreto del Collegio" [see above, n. 23], carta 3, for the crucial sentences:

Erat enim Garzo[nus] citra contentionem omnium aetatis nostrae oratorum eminentissimus. [The entry begins:] Magister Johaimes de garzonibus 28* Januarii mortuorum numerum anxit dum urbs nostra subterraneis ventis agitata et cives metu perculsi maximo tremore tremerunt. (See

paper on Garzoni [above, n.

32. Ibid., carta 19 (see 33.

3],

my Achillini,

pp. 522-523, nn. 23-24, 26.)

211, n. 45).

ASB, Archivio del Reggimento, "Libri Partitorum," Vol. 15 (1514-20),

cc.

88'-90 {Ste AchiUini, p. 25, n. 54 [212]). 34. See Achillini, pp. 25-26, n. 55 (p. 212). 35. ASB, Archivio dello Studio, Busta 217, "Registri d'atti del Collegio, 14811500" [also called "Acta" or "Atti"], e. 19. For the date of Antonius Christophorus a Peregrino's degree in Arts, see Bronzino [above, n. 23], p. 1: "1483, 4 Die."

THE 'studio' OF BOLOGNA

302 36. Ibid.,

23'.

37. Ibid.,

97, 14th item.

38. His

promotion in medicine

39. See above, n. 35, 14],

52.

is not noted by Bronzino, p. 1. loannes de Montesdocha, see Piana [above, n.

and other literature cited in that place. Matsen [above, n. 11], p. 175. ASB, "Dispute di Scolari" [above, n. 16], c. 169. 114, n. 21

40. See 41.

42. Ibid.

Italienische Jesuitendramen auf

bayerischen Bühnen des 16. Jahrhunderts Fidel Rädle

Als

die Jesuiten nach der Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts anfingen, in ihren Schulen und Kollegien regelmäßig lateinische Schauspiele aufzuführen, war der Vorrat an geeigneten Stücken sehr gering. Nur einige entschieden katholische Dramen niederländischer Autoren, wie vor allem die des Georg Macropedius^ oder auch der "Euripus" des Löwener Minoriten Levin Brecht,^ haben den Vorstellungen und den Zielen des Ordens ganz entsprochen. Die antiken lateinischen Dramatiker, im wesentlichen Plautus, kamen nur in Ausnahmefällen und in purgierter Form auf der Je-

suitenbühne

zum

Zuge.

Nach einer Anfangsphase von etwa zwanzig Jahren hatte sich der Orden mit seinem Schulsystem, als dessen Teil das Theater zu gelten hat, so etabliert, daß man das Repertoire nicht mehr mit fremden Stücken auffüllen mußte. Der Rhetorik-oder Poetiklehrer jeder Schule war verpflichtet, für die festen Theatertermine des Jahres jeweils ein Stück zu schreiben und es selbst, als "choragus," zu inszenieren. In der Regel lag also jeder Aufführung ein eigens geschaffener Spiel-Text zugrunde, der mit dem Ereignis der Aufführung entbehrlich wurde. Zumindest sind diese Texte nur in den seltensten Fällen als denkwürdige Literatur in Handschriften konserviert oder gar gedruckt worden. Aber auch wenn es für jedes Kolleg Ehrensache war, ein eigenes Stück auf die Bühne zu bringen, gab es natürlich den Austausch besonders bewährter Texte zwischen den einzelnen Niederlassungen, innerhalb der einzelnen Provinzen oder gar über nationale Landesgreûzen hinweg. Die prinzipielle Mobilität des Ordens, zumal der häufige Ortswechsel seiner Mitglieder, ermöglichte ein müheloses Hin- und Herwandem auch von Dramentexten. Es haben sich zahlreiche Briefe erhalten, in denen um fertige, spielbare Dramen gebeten wird, und manche davon sind direkt an die römische Zentrale des Ordens gerichtet. Auch die Stücke der beiden Dramatiker, von denen hier die Rede sein soll, Francesco Benci imd Stefano Tucci, sind zum Teil auf ausdrückliche Nachfrage des Münchner Jesuiten-Kollegs in Handschriften nach Bayern gebracht worden. Im Herbst 1574 ersuchte der Münchner Rektor Paulus Hoffaeus den Jesuiten-

304

ITALIENISCHE JESUITENDRAMEN

Rom, einen italienischen Jesuiten mit der Abfassung eines Spiels über Konstantin den Großen zu beauftragen. Der bayerische Herzog sei so general in

von der Gestalt dieses christlichen Herrschers, daß er bei den Jesuiten in München für das folgende Jahr ein großes Konstantin-Schauspiel in Auftrag gegeben habe. Von den Einheimischen aber sei keiner dieser Aufgabe gewachsen.^ In Rom bemühte man sich zunächst eifrig ein solches Drama, aber schließlich brachte auch dort niemand etwas zustande, und man schickte als Ersatz das Spiel über das Jüngste Gericht, den "Christus Iudex" des Stefano Tucci. Der Herzog wollte aber von diesem Stück nichts wissen und bestand auf einem Konstantin-Drama, das schließlich überstürzt von fasziniert

einem, wie sich erst jetzt nachweisen ließ,'* Ingolstädter Jesuiten verfaßt werden mußte. Der Prolog des "Constantinus" verrät die Nervosität imd Unsicherheit dieses unfreiwilligen Autors,^ und das ganze Stück zeugt davon, daß die Entscheidung für diesen "Constantinus" und gegen den "Christus Iudex" keineswegs nach literarischen Kriterien gefallen sein kann. Der "Christus Iudex" war das erfolgreichste Drama des Sizilianers Stefano Tucci (geboren 1540 in Monforte), der zwischen 1562 und 1569 im Jesuitenkolleg von Messina mehrere Stücke, darunter einen "Nabuchodonosor," einen "Goliath" und eine "Judith" auf die Bühne gebrachte hatte. Später war Tucci am Römischen Kolleg tätig. ^ 1597 ist er dort gestorben. Der "Christus Iudex," erstmals 1569 in Messina aufgeführt, ist ein überaus eindrucksvolles Spiel vom Ende der Welt, mit der Ankunft des Antichrist, der auf Befehl Christi von der Hölle in die Welt losgelassen wird, und dem abschließenden Weltgericht.^ Das Stück ist mit Ausnahme des Prologs und der klassischen Chöre am Aktschluß ganz in Hexametern geschrieben, weil— so erklärt der Autor im Prolog— dieses feierlichere Versmaß den hohen und zum Teil heiligen Personen, die im Stück auftreten, angemessener sei als der kimstlos gewordene Jambus. In Aguileras Geschichte der Sizilianischen Jesuitenprovinz liest man, daß es in Europa kaum eine "praeclara civitas" gebe, in der Tucci's "Christus Iudex" nicht aufgeführt worden sei. Erst nachdem sich die Bühnen mit diesem Stück müde gespielt hätten ("ea tragoedia postquam pulpita delassaverat"), sei es endlich 1673 in Rom im Druck erschienen.^ Tatsächlich gibt es schon einen Druck des Jahres 1641.^ In Italien sind heute mindestens vier Handschriften des "Christus Iudex" aus dem 16. imd 17. Jahrhundert nachzuweisen.^^ Nach den Untersuchungen von Freches wurden Tucci's Dramen schon früh in Abschriften nach Portugal gebracht und dort zum Teil auch gespielt. ^^ Für die Länder deutscher Zunge verzeichnet Johannes Müller lediglich drei frühe Aufführungen des "Jüngsten Gerichts": Trier 1585, Graz 1589 und Olmütz 1603.^^ Ob der "Christus Iudex" nach der ersten Ablehnung von 1575 auch in Bayern in seiner ursprünglichen Gestalt doch noch gespielt worden ist, läßt sich nicht eindeutig sagen. Immerhin hat sich zumindest eine frühe Handschrift aus dem 16. Jahrhundert in Dillingen a.D. erhalten, die mit der späteren Druckfassung identisch ist. Außer ihr werden in der Regel noch zwei Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München als Textzeugen des "Christus Iudex" in Deutsch-

FIDEL RADLE

3O5

land erwähnt. ^-^ Bei näherer Prüfung stellt sich aber heraus, daß es sich daum eine Bearbeitung des Stücks von Tucci handelt. Die Hexameter sind hier, zum Teil mit sichtlicher Mühe, in jambische Senare umgesetzt, nur die Chöre am Aktschluß hat der Bearbeiter unverändert übernommen. Die Handlung ist im wesentlichen beibehalten, stellenweise etwas gestrafft. Neu eingeführt sind u.a. die Personen des Papstes und des Kaisers, die in zwei großen Szenen (1, 1 und 11,7) zusammen mit Ecclesia die heillose Lage der Welt und besonders der Kirche beklagen und Christus zu Hilfe rufen. Im Gegensatz zum originalen Stück, das in einem politisch nicht definierten zeit-und ortlosen Rahmen abläuft, spiegelt die Bearbeitung sehr deutlich die nachreformatorische Situation der katholischen Kirche wieder. Ecclesia klagt in der Eröffnungsszene darüber, daß Germania ihre Einheit völlig verloren habe, daß der Türke nur auf eine Gelegenheit warte, die Kirche zu zerstören, und daß vor allem Britannien in schnöder Weise von ihr abgefallen sei. Ähnlich verzweifelt wie Ecclesia äußern sich der Papst und der Kaiser. Durch einen glücklichen Zufall ist es möglich, den Bearbeiter des "Christus Iudex" und die Umstände einer Auffühnmg dieses neugefaßten Stücks zu ermitteln. Ignatius Agricola berichtet in seiner Geschichte der Oberdeutschen Jesuitenprovinz, wie in Regensbiurg am 24.Februar 1597 die Erhebung des dortigen Bischofs Philipp von Witteisbach (der ein Bruder des bayerischen Herzogs war) zimi Kardinal gefeiert wurde. Man führte bei diesem Anlaß ein großes Schauspiel von Wolfgang Starck auf, und dieses Drama begann mit der Klage der Ecclesia, die in Trauerkleidung ihre schwere Not in der damaligen Zeit beweinte.^* Es kaim kaum bezweifelt werden, daß hier von unserm Stück die bei nur

Rede ist. Wolfgang Starck, geboren 1554 in Innsbruck, gestorben 1605, hat in Ingolstadt bei Jacobus Pontanus studiert und dann viele Jahre in Dillingen und, nun als Kollege von Pontanus, in Augsburg gelehrt. Seine erfolgreiche Tätigkeit als Dramatiker wird sogar in seinem Nekrolog gerühmt, ^^ durchaus eine Seltenheit bei den Jesuiten. Drei erhaltene Stücke können diesem respektablen Autor nurmiehr zugewiesen werden: die hier zur Debatte stehende Bearbeitung des "Christus Iudex," die von Valentin^^ ausführlich behandelte Tragödie "Mundus-Contramundus" sowie der "Misoponus," der 1592 erstmals in Dil-

und der in drei Handschriften erhalten ist.^* Francesco Benci wurde 1542 in Aquapendente geboren. Bevor er mit 28 Jahren in den Jesuitenorden eintrat, hatte er in Rom Philosophie imd die Rechte studiert imd war sieben Jahre lang Schüler des Philologen Antonius Muretus gewesen. Als Jesuit lehrte er für kurze Zeit Rhetorik in Siena und Perugia und kehrte dann an das Römische Kolleg zurück, wo er bis zu seinem frühen Tod im Jahre 1594 als Rhetoriklehrer und Autor tätig war.^^ Zahheiche Gedichte, Reden imd Briefe von ihm sind in oft wiederholten Ausgaben gedruckt worden, darunter auch die beiden Dramen "Ergastus" und "Philotimus."^ Im "Ergastus" erlebt der Zuschauer, wie der Titelheld sich an die Welt zu verlieren droht und nur mit Mühe für ein Leben zurückgewonnen wird, das von Virtus, Labor imd Honor bestimmt ist. Das Stück gehört in die Tradition der "Hercules" — Dramen und erinnert im einzelnen an den "Euripus" von Levin Brecht. Er unterscheidet sich von Benci's eigenem "Hercules in bivio," lingen aufgeführt wurde^^

306

ITALIENISCHE JESUITENDRAMEN

erwähnen ist, durch eine deutliche Verchristlichung des Geschehens. ^^ Der "Philotimus" ist thematisch und in einzelnen Szenen dem "Stratocles"^^ des Jacobus Pontanus eng verwandt. Philotimus, der Musen überdrüssig, möchte statt literarischer Bildung künftig Kriegsruhm erwerben. Erst nach vielerlei Verwirrung imd Verblendung (durch die von Dolus, einer diabolischen Gestalt, gespielte Figur des Mars) sieht er ein, daß menschenwürdiges Leben nur in der Sphäre der "litterae" möglich ist. Die beiden Stücke sind, nahezu gleichzeitig mit ihrer Uraufführung im Römischen Kolleg, auch in Bayern gespielt worden: der "Ergastus" im Jahre 1588, zusammen mit dem "Stratocles" von Pontanus, in Augsburg,^ was bisher nicht bekannt war, sowie 1590 in Dillingen, der "Philotimus" ebenfalls in Dillingen im Herbst 1589, d.h. sogar einige Monate vor der römischen Aufführung. Außerdem spielte man den "Philotimus" noch 1592 in Luzem, 1593 erneut in Dülingen und 1601 in München. Die damalige Universitätsstadt Dillingen war das Zentrum der BenciRezeption in Bayern, und das hängt zweifellos mit der Person des bereits genannten böhmischen Jesuiten und Humanisten Jacobus Pontanus zusammen, der Jahrzehnte lang in Dillingen und im benachbarten Augsburg Rhetorik und Poetik lehrte. Pontanus war mit Benci befreundet.^'* In seiner Poetik zitiert er als Muster zeitgenössischer Lyrik einige Hymnen seines römischen der gleich noch zu

Freundes. ^^ Zwei weitere Stücke von Benci sind nur in Handschriften erhalten. Es handelt sich um den bereits erwähnten "Hercules in bivio" und um den "Baal eversus," eine formal deutlich von Sophokles beeinflußte Tragödie über den Sturz de§ biblischen Götzen Baal und seiner Anhänger. Von diesem letzteren Stück liegen in Dillingen und München je zwei untereinander differierende Texte, ^^ die zum Teil starke Spuren der Bearbeitung zum Zweck von Aufführungen verraten. Dazu gehören auch sehr detaillierte, theatergeschichtlich wertvolle Regieanweisungen, aus denen z. B. hervorgeht, daß die Aufführung im einen Fall in der Kirche stattgefunden haben muß. Der Späher, der das Herannahen des feindlichen Heeres meldet, soll nämlich "ex sacristia," aus der Sakristei, gelaufen kommen.^'' Schluß der 2. Szene des IV. Aktes ist vom Regisseur ein Schlachtgetümmel ("pugna") vorgesehen und dazu folgender Hinweis in die Handschrift eingetragen: "Der Organist und der Chorleiter sollen hier für den Fall, daß eine Verzögerung (bis zum Beginn der Schlacht) zu überbrücken ist, darauf vorbereitet sein, etwas Kampfmusik erklingen zu lassen. ^^ Im anderen Fall muß man wohl mit einer Aufführung im Freien rechnen, für die großzügig gemalte Kulissen verwendet wurden. Eine dem Text vorangestellte Notiz bestimmt, daß die drei Hauptorte der Handlung (Israel, Ramoth Galaad und Samaria) gemalt und in der Mitte bzw. zu beiden Seiten der Spielbühne angebracht werden sollen, damit das Geschehen an seinem entsprechenden biblischen Ort, d.h. vor der jeweiligen Kulisse, ablaufen kann. Der V. Akt z.B. soll "ante Samariam," vor dem als Kulisse gemalten Samaria, gespielt werden. Die abschließende technische Orientierung über den Tempel des Baal auf der Bühne macht vollends klar, daß die Aufführung kaum im Saal statt-

FIDEL RADLE

30/

gefunden haben wird. Es heißt dort: "Nahe bei Samaria ist ein prächtiger Baalstempel aus Fichtenholz errichtet, der in der Schlußszene des Stücks in Brand gesetzt werden soU."^^ Im Drama wird das Standbild des Baal zusammen mit den Opferpriestem unter dem einstürzenden brennenden Tempel begraben. Benci's "Hercules in bivio" ist in zwei Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München erhalten. ^° Über dieses Stück herrschen in der Forschung ganz unzutreffende Vorstellungen. Anton Dürrwaechter hat eine Notiz in der Chronik der Dillinger Universität über die Aufführung einer "Comoedia Hercules" des Pater Benci im Jahre 1596 vorschnell in Verbindung gebracht mit einem in Dillingen erhaltenen hexametrischen "Dialogus qui Hercules inscribitur."^^ Seither gelten diese 613 Hexameter als Benci's Werk und obendrein als sein vorletztes Stück. ^^ Dabei fällt der Dialog in formaler Hinsicht und wegen seiner noch unentwickelten, auffallend statischen Struktur völlig aus dem Rahmen der dramatischen Produktion Benci's. Man hat übersehen, daß der Dillinger Handschrift eine Adresse beigeschrieben ist,^^ die einen terminus ante quem für die Entstehung des Textes bietet. Der Adressat Stephan Frey ist nämlich bereits im Jahre 1566 gestorben, zu einem Zeitpunkt also, da Benci dem Jesuitenorden noch gar nicht angehörte. Somit scheidet er als Autor des "Dialogus" aus. Trotzdem: Benci hat, wie aus der Dillinger Chronik hervorgeht, ein "Hercules"-Drama geschrieben, und es ist, wie schon gesagt, in zwei Münchner Handschriften überliefert. Die eine trägt das Aufführungsdatum 1580.^ Unter diesem Jahr liest man in den Annalen des Münchner Kollegs, es sei vor dem vollzählig versammelten bayerischen Adel eine Comoedia gegeben worden, die man des großen Erfolges wegen dreimal habe wiederholen müssen. ^^ Im Clm 2202 ist der Prolog nachträglich ergänzt durch einen Einschub, in dem die "Serenissimi Boiariae Principes" als Zuschauer eigens willkommen geheißen werden. ^^ Daß dieser "Hercules" aber ursprünglich vor römischem Publikum gespielt wurde, läßt sich glücklicherweise ebenfalls aus dem Prolog^^ nachweisen. Hier werden die Zuschauer gebeten, sich für die Dauer der Handlung im Geiste von Rom nach Theben entführen zu lassen und sich nicht als Römer, sondern als Thebaner zu fühlen. ^^ In der bearbeiteten Fassung des Clm 611 ist hier an die Stelle von "Rom" später "München" eingesetzt worden. -^^ Benci's "Hercules" ist also nicht der kurze Dillinger Dialog, in dem Luther namentlich für die Ausschweifungen der Fastnacht verantwortlich gemacht wird'^° — schon das will nicht so recht zu einem italienischen Autor passen— sondern das weit anspruchsvollere Münchner Stück, das den Helden Hercules in einer rein antiken Welt ohne spezifisch christliche Normen vorführt. Neben dem "Hercules in bivio" gehört, entgegen der bisherigen Ansicht, auch der "Baal eversus" in die frühere Schaffensperiode unseres Autors. Der Text ist unter dem Titel "Jehu" (dem Namen des Protagonisten) bereits 1579 handschriftlich in einer von Benci noch nicht endgültig freigegebenen Fassimg nach Deutschland geschickt und 1580 in Speyer aufgeführt worden.'*^ Eine bisher unbekannt gebliebene Aufführung des "Jehu" ist für den 30. Oktober 1589 in Ingolstadt nachzuweisen.'*^ Im Jahre 1595 ist das Stück unter seinem

ITALIENISCHE JESUITENDRAMEN

308 latinisierten Titel "Hiaeus" in Polen

an zwei Orten, in Pultusk bzw. in Kalisz,

gespielt worden.*^

Es ist hier natürlich unmöglich, die Eigenart dieser italienischen Stücke im Vergleich mit der zeitgenössischen imd späteren bayerischen Jesuitendramatik darzustellen bzw. die möglichen Impulse aufzuspüren, die vom italienischen auf das bayerische Jesuitentheater ausgegangen sein könnten. Nur einige charakteristische Punkte sollen notiert werden. Benci und Tucci zeichnen sich aus durch eine formale Kultur, die in Bayern kaum einmal erreicht wird. Ihre direktere humanistische Deszendenz verrät sich in einer ungewöhnlich bewußten und sicheren Haltung gegenüber der Sprache und den poetischen Normen, in einer souveränen Kenntnis der antiken Literatur, die ohne erkeimbare Anstrengung zitiert oder sogar als Modell nachgeahmt wird, und in der Beherrschung der vielfältigsten metrischen Formen. Gerade bei Benci, dem es im "Ergastus" imd im "Philotimus" um die Aussöhnung zwischen Renaissance und Christentum, und das heißt um die Legitimierung und Rettung der humanistischen Kultur für das jesuitische Erziehungssystem geht, kann man feststellen, wie die formale Gestalt schon ein Teil des Inhalts, ein Teil seines Programms ist, und nicht nur Vehikel für eine Doktrin. Seine Stücke haben nichts von dem hektischen Eifer vieler mittelmäßiger Jesuitendramen aus dem Norden, sie ruhen mehr in sich selbst und sind, mit einem Wort: klassischer. Entsprechendes gilt für Tucci. Mit dieser klassischen Objektivierung des Uterarischen Werkes hängt zusammen ein weitgehender Verzicht der Italiener auf eindeutige Aktualisierung ihrer Stoffe. Tucci's "Christus Iudex" paßt natürlich in das Jahrhundert der Reforaber an mation, das man als Endzeit, als Zeit des Antichrist empfand, "^"^

keiner Stelle wird diese Gleichung ausdrücklich hergestellt. Das Stück ist zeitlos, ganz im Gegensatz zur pointiert gegenreformatorischen Bearbeitung

von Wolfgang

Starck.

Bei Benci ist für den Hellhörigen im "Sturz des Baal" natürlich die Häresie der Reformation angeklagt,*^ doch fällt wiederum kein Wort, das diesen Zusammenhang klar aufzeigen würde. Auch hier blieb es den bayerischen Jesuiten vorbehalten, wesentlich deutlicher zu werden: Eine der Dillinger Handschriften enthält einen deutschen Epilog, in dem Deutschland durch die Erinnerung an das Geschehen des Dramas aufgerufen wird, der Ketzerei

abzuschwören *^ Auf Seiten der Italiener dominiert also die Kultivierung der literarischen Form. Ihre Inhalte bleiben der Wirklichkeit meist etwas entrückt. Die deutschen Jesuiten forcieren die Aktion und legen stärkeres Gewicht auf Aktualisierung. Ein in diesem Zusammenhang bezeichnender Unterschied ist noch besonders zu betonen: Die italienischen Stücke sind zwar weniger angestrengt und weniger düster als die deutschen, sie sind im Fall von Benci stellenweise sogar ausgesprochen virtuos und auch witzig, aber sie sind doch nur sehr selten wirklich komisch. Ihre Gelöstheit und Heiterkeit ist eher von atmosphärischer Art. Das bayerische Jesuitendrama vertraut mehr auf Komik nach plautinischer Maiüer. Die Einführung komischer Szenen und komischer Personen zum Ausgleich der Affekte war eine entscheidende Voraussetzung dafür, daß in Bayern das Jesuitentheater für einige Jahrzehnte vom exklusiven gelehrten Schultheater zum Volkstheater geworden ist. .

FIDEL RADLE

309

Benci und Tucci haben, wie die Aufführungen in den 80er und 90er Jahren des 16. Jahrhunderts beweisen, die bayerische Theaterszene zweifellos bereichert. Vor allem durch Benci sind einzelne Autoren (wie z.B.Pontanus) geprägt und in ihrem Kampf für das humanistische Prinzip in der jesuitischen Erziehung unterstützt worden. Es hat jedoch nicht den Anschein, als ob Benci und Tucci über die Jahrhundertwende hinaus inhaltlich und vor allem als artistische Modelle weitergewirkt hätten. Der Hexameter im Drama hatte keine Zukimft — dagegen wurden prosaische Stücke durchaus geläufig— der Sinn für die raffinierte Kultur der Sprache überhaupt war nördlich der Alpen offenbar nicht mehr so stark entwickelt. Hier mußte man den wachsenden Scharen des Publiku*ms, die ja zum weitaus größten Teil gar nicht lateinkundig waren, ein leicht verstehbares, aktionsreiches und wortesparendes Schauspiel bieten,'*^ das mehr die Sinne als den Intellekt ansprach. In dieser volkstümlich bestimmten Blütezeit des bayerischen Jesuitentheaters waren die zwei feinen Italiener Benci und Tucci wahrscheinlich schon ganz vergessen. Universität Göttingen

Anmerkungen 1. vgl. Jean-Marie Valentin, Le théâtre des Jésuites dans les pays de langue allemande (1554-1680). Salut des âmes et ordre des cités. Berner Beiträge zur Barockgermarüstik, 3 (Bern-Frankfurt a.M.-Las Vegas 1978), I, S. 389-392. 2. Krit. Ausgabe in Lateinische Ordensdramen des XVI. Jh., mit deutschen Übersetzimgen hg. von Fidel Rädle. Ausgaben Deutscher Literatur des XV. bis XVm. Jh., Reihe Drama VI (Berlin-New York 1979), S. 1-293 und 530-555. Zum "Euripus" auf der Jesuitenbühne vgl. Verf., "Aus der Frühzeit des Jesuiten theaters." Daphnis, 7 (1978), 403-462, bes. 428-437. 3. vgl. Bernhard Duhr, Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher Zunge

(Freiburg i.Br. 1907),

352.

4. vgl. Verf., "Anonymität

und große Namen im bayerischen Jesuitendrama"

Deutsche Barockliteratur und europäische Kultur. Dokumente des Internationalen Arbeitskreises für deutsche Barockliteratur, hg. von der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, Band 3 (Hamburg 1977), S. 245. Das Summarium de variis rebus Collegii Ingolstadiensis verrät unter dem 1575 den (Vor-)Namen des Autors: "Magister Joannes Baptista." Er war im gleichen Jahr 1575 in Eichstätt zum Priester geweiht worden; vgl. Diözesanarchiv Eichstätt B 184, S. 23. 5. vgl. Clm 573, fol. 3r-6v, besonders fol. 3v-4r. 6. Er hatte maßgeblichen Anteil an dem Entwurf der Ratio Studiorum des Jesuitenordens aus dem Jahre 1586; vgl. Allan P. Farrell S.J., The Jesuit Code of Liberal Education (Milwaukee 1938), S. 224ff. und passim, sowie R. G. Villoslada S.J., Storia del Collegio Romano dal suo inizio (1551) alla soppressione della Compagnia di Gesù (1773) (Roma 1954), S. 97f.; vgl. auch M. Scaduto S.J., "Le origini dell'Università di Messina." Archivum Hist. Soc. Jesu, 17 (1948), 140. 7. vgl. Klaus Aichele, Das Antichristdrama des Mittelalters, der Reformation

Damm

ITALIENISCHEN JESUITENDRAMEN

310

und Gegemefonnation (Den Haag 8.

Emmanuel

Aguilera

S.J.,

1974), S. 86-89. Provinciae Siculae Societatis Jesu ortus res gestae

ab anno 1546 ad annum 1611 (Panormi 1737), I, 178. 9. So Karl von Reinhardstöttner, "Kleinere Mitteilungen." Forschungen zur Kultur- und Litteraturgeschichte Bayerns, 4. Buch (Ansbach und Leipzig 1896), 238,

Anm.

12.

Milano, Bibl.Ambrosiana J 205 inf. cart, misc., fol. 104-158, vgl. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum, 1 (London-Leiden 1977), S. 326; Roma, Bibl. Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele U, Fondo Gesuitico 223 s. XVn, vgl. ebda. H, S. 119; Città del Vaticano, Fondo Chigi J V 184 s. XVI, vgl. ebda. S. 475f.; Trento, Bibl. Comunale 2348 mise. XVI; Kristeller ebda. S. 190 versehentlich: "Steph. Luccius (!), Indicium, a tragedy." 11. Claude-Henri Freches, Le théâtre néo-latin au Portugal (1550-1745) (ParisLisbonne 1964), S. 424-433. Eine Handschrift des "Christus Iudex" liegt in Coimbra (cod. 993, vgl. ebda. S. 424). 12. Johannes Müller, Das Jesuitendrama in den Ländern deutscher Zunge vom Anfang (1555) bis zum Hochbarock (1665). Schriften zur deutschen Literatur, Band 7 und 8 (Augsburg 1930), TL, S. 108. Für das Olmützer Spiel nennt Müller (vgl. auch ebda. S. 55) irrtümlich den Kardinal von Dietrichstein als Verfasser. Tatsächlich fand die Aufführung zu Ehren des Kardinals statt. Die Wiener Handschrift (Vindobonensis 13918, fol. 69r-79v) stammt erst aus dem 18. Jahrhundert und hat nichts mit den frühen Aufführungen zu tun. 13. Clm 19757^, S. 23-119, und Clm 24674, fol. 91v-131r. 14. vgl. Karl von Reinhardstöttner, "Zur Geschichte des Jesuitendramas in München. " Jahrbuch für Münchener Geschichte, 3 (Bamberg 1889), 163, Anm. 236. Das sehr ernste Stück mündete in eine heitere Schlußszene, die sich ausdrücklich auf den zu feiernden neuen Kardinal bezog und die verständlicherweise in den 10.

tradierten Texten fehlt. 15. vgl. Historia sitaire

Collega Dilingani, Fribourg, Bibliothèque Cantonale et Univer-

89, fol. 36r.

Le théâtre, I, S. 467ff. Acta Universitatis Dilinganae, Dillingen, Studienbibliothek cod.

16. Valentin, 17. vgl.

XV 226,

S. 127.

18. Dillingen, Studienbibliothek cod. XV 237, fol. 123r-154v und XV 277 (eine Abschrift von XV 237) sowie Clm 1554, fol. 79r-91r. 19. vgl. R. Negri in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 8 (Roma 1966), S. 192-193, und E. Lamalle in Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie Ecclésiastique, vol. 7 (Paris 1934), Sp. 1047. Benci's dramatisches Werk ist von Valentin, Le théâtre, I, S. 491-500, ausführlich interpretiert. Über die notwendigen Korrekturen bezüglich des "Hercules"-Textes und der Chronologie der Stücke vgl. die

folgenden Ausführungen. 20. vgl. Anton Dürrwaechter, "Aus der Frühzeit des Jesuitendramas. " Jahrbuch des Historischen Vereins Dillingen, IX. Jg. (1896) Dillingen 1897, S. 3, Anm. 8. 21. vgl. etwa die Rolle des Schutzengels Trophimus. 22. Krit. Ausgabe in Lateinische Ordensdramen (vgl. Anm. 2), S. 296-365 und 556-562. 23. vgl. Historia Collegii Augustani, Fribourg, Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire

95, S. 315.

24. Briefe

von Pontanus an Benci enthalten die beiden Handschriften Roma, Pon-

FIDEL RADLE

311

Università Gregoriana, Archivum Pontificiae Universitatis Gregorianae Nr. (vgl. Kristeller, Itei Italicum, U, S. 136). 25. Jacobi Fontani de Societate Jesu Poeticaium Instituüonum libii ties (In-

tificia

532 und 533

golstadii 1594), lib. H, cap. 34, S. 155. 26. Dillingen, Studienbibliothek cod.

XV 219, S. 385-459; cod. XV 228, fol. 3r-42v; Clm 531, fol. lr-49r; München, Universitätsbibliothek Cod. ms. 521, fol. 116r-152v. Der Verf. wird an anderer Stelle auf Benci's Dramen zurückkommen.

27. Dillingen cod.

228,

fol.

24v.

28. "Organista et rector chori sint parati, ut, si

cantent. " (ebda.

opus

sit

mora, aliquid bellicum

fol. 28r)

prope Samariam extructtmi est templum abecete Baalis magnificum, quod incendendum est." (Dillingen cod. XV 219, S. 386). Das in der Handschrift stehende "abecete," das sonst nirgends belegt ist, könnte beim Abschreiben durch Verlesen von ursprünglichem "abietale" (einer Nebenform zu "abiegnum") zustande gekommen sein. 30. Clm 611, fol. lr-59v, und Clm 2202, fol. 525r-588r. 31. Dürrwaechter, Frübzeit, S. 3 mit Anm. 8. Der Verf. bereitet eine Edition dieses Dialogs vor. 29.

"...

in extrema fabula

Le théàtie, I, S. 495-497. "M. Stephano Liberio mittit has Comedias M. Ludovicus Backrelius.

32. Valentin, 33.

" (Dil-

lingen cod. XV 219, S. 1076). 34. "Pro praemiorum distributione A" 1580. (Clm 2202, fol. 584r). Auf fol. 591r begirmt das deutsche "Intermedium trium personarum" mit dem Eintrag: "Aimo

1580 Monachii. " 35. "Exhibita comoedia est argumenti gravitate totique Nobilitati Bavariae

gratiam repetita est actio. Mscr. I, 45, S. 15).

admodum

Actorum venustate Principibus

probata; itaque tertio

demum

in illorum

(München, Archiv der Oberdeutschen Provinz

S.J.,

36. Fol. 528v. 37. Außerdem ist der erste imd ursprüngliche Epilog (fol. 586v-587v) in einer aus lateinischen tmd italienischen Formen humoristisch gemischten Sprache geschrieben. Er beginnt mit dem Vers: "Quid me guardatis? non sum malus ille

Cupido...." 38.

Clm

2202,

fol.

530v:

Verum poeta banc exigit vobis fidem. Ne Civitas haec Roma credatur hodie. Nee genere Romani esse vos credamini. Thebana vult haec esse vobis moenia, Vos genere Thebanos in horas bas duas. 39.

Clm

611,

fol.

3av (unpaginiertes Blatt nach fol. XV 219, S. 1069 und 1074.

3).

40. vgl. Dillingen cod. 41.

Duhr, Geschichte,

42.

Summaiium

43. vgl.

(vgl.

S. 352f.

Anm.

4), S. 60.

Heinz Kindermann, Theateigeschichte Europas, U (Salzburg

Auflage), S. 409. 44. vgl. Aichele,

s. a.,

Das Antichiistdiama, S. 164ff.; über die auf das Papsttum bezogenen Antichrist- Vorstellungen der evangelischen Seite vgl. Karl Reuschel,

ITALIENISCHE JESUITENDRAMEN

312

Die deutseben Weltgeiicbtsspiele des Mittelalteis und dei Refonnationszeit (Leipzig 1906), S. 83. 45. vgl. Valentin, Le théâtre, I, S. 499f. 46. DUlingen cod. XV 228, fol. 42v:

... Teutschland laß dein Ketzerey, Sündt, Secten, Zwitracht, Schwermerey, Thue waß heit Jehu hat gethan Mit dem Baals Pfaffen, laß dire ann Gelegen sein dein altenn glauben, Schau wol denn Ketzern auf die Hauben.

47.

Über die naiven Ansprüche,

die

von den deutschen Fürsten an

dien" gestellt wurden, vgl. Duhr, Geschichte,

352.

die

"Komö-

Andreas Fricius Modrevius — écrivain latin /.

Stamawski

d'une oeuvre "De Republica emendanda," connue dans le fut l'objet d'une monographie de grande valeur de StanisJaw Kot /2™^ édition 1923/. Cette excellente monographie présente Fricius Modrevius— penseur humaniste. Son oeuvre littéraire comme oeuvre d'art fut longtemps présentée par de banales généralités. Une première tentative d'une nouvelle conception fut accomplie en 1972 lors d'une conférence à Varsovie. Les résultats de cette conférence furent publiés en 1974. Parmi huit dissertations quatre concernent Fricius comme écrivain-artiste. En 1978 Mirostaw Korolko a consacré ime monographie à Fricius non seulement comme penseur humaniste, mais aussi comme écrivain. Fricius — auteur d'un traité sur l'état — se proposait non seulement de docere ses lecteurs mais aussi de les delectataie par des éléments des belles lettres. Il discerne différents genres littéraires. Il débuta par "Lascius sive de poena homicidii oratio" en 1543. C'est une monographie dont code pénal est l'objet, mais qui a aussi deux aspects expressément littéraires. C'est un discours ayant dans son titre le nom de Hieronymus Lascius militant contre les distinctions injustes entre les peines de mort prononcées contre les criminels. En mettant en pratique la méthode de Cicéron, Fricius mit à la tête de son discours le nom de Lascius pour se référer à son autorité. On peut citer "Lelius sive de amicitia"; "Cato Maior sive de senectute." C'est à sept de ses oeuvres que Fricius a donné la forme du discours. Une fois seulement il s'agit d'un discours vraiement prononcé ("Oratio Philaletis Peripathetici"). Toutes les autres sont des pamphlets en forme de discours à l'instar de Cicéron, auteur d'un cycle "Orationes Verrinae" dont une seule fut pronocée mais toutes furent publiées. En Pologne c'est Petrus Skarga qui fit de même dans ses "Sermons de diète" ainsi que Martinus Cromerus et Stanislaus Orichovius dans leurs prétendues oraisons funèbres à l'occasion des obsèques du roi Sigismond I qui étaient en réalité des brochures en l'honneur de ce roi (1548). En donnant à ses démarches politiques la forme de discours il avait en vue les devoirs d'un orateur: docere (instruir), delectaie (divertir), moveie (émouvoir), n se souvenait des genres rhétoriques: genus demonstrativum, genus deliberativum, genus iudiciale.

L'auteur

monde,

ANDREAS

314

Le plus souvent

les différences

FRICIUS

MODREVIUS

parmi des genres de la rhétorique étaient

ef-

de ses discours, "Equitibus Poloniae ac reliquae Sarmatiae," est une proclamation (un appel au peuple) d'ici il n'y a qu'un pas à une lettre de dédicace. Fricius composait souvent des lettres de dédicace adressées aux personnages de haut rang: au roi, au pape, aux savants— comme avant-propos de ses oeuvres. C'est ainsi que le desinataire participe à un certain degré à la formation d'une oeuvre littéraire. Fricius traite chaque fois avec une grande habileté les sujets qui intéressent ses destinataires. Dans la correspondance privée de Fricius qui nous est parvenue on retrouve la matière qui ne cessait pas de le tenir et dont il voulait intéresser ses facées. Fricius les effaçait aussi.

correspondants.

La majeure partie d'oeuvre littéraire de Fricius — les traités moralisants — appartient au genre de la prose parénétique. C'est de la littérature appliquée. En l'étudiant il faut toujours tenir compte des circonstances qui leur ont donné occasion, et situer leur auteur dans le contexte historique. Cependant l'ambition littéraire ne cesse pas d'y jouer un rôle prépondérant. Le titre "Commentarli de republica emendanda" dont il se sert souvent n'est pas sans importance. Chez les écrivains latins antiques "Commentarii" étaient des leçons, des réflexions. Tel est surtout le caractère de l'Emendanda bien qu'il est possible que Fricius fut stimulé par l'oeuvre de Jules César dont le titre est "Commentarii de bello Gallico." La prose parénétique de Fricius, la prose de ses traités moralisants est d'une logique toute nette, chaque proposition est bien fondée par ce qui précède. L'héritage du passé ni les réalisations les plus classiques de ses contemporains ne lui étaient étrangers. Il puisait à la prose latine de Cicéron ainsi qu'à la prose d'Erasme me l'humaniste. Cela saute aux yeux. Mais il s'appropria aussi la

méthode d'argumentation de

la scholastique

médiévale.

A l'époque de l'activité littéraire de Fricius les oeuvres politiques,

sociales,

en forme de discours mais aussi de dialogues pour stimuler l'imagination de lecteurs de la Renaissance. Au temps de la Réforme, on érigeait dans des églises deux chaires l'une vis à vis l'autre: une pour un prêtre qui prêchait des thèses catholiques, l'autre pour un autre qui expliquait les thèses, des adeptes de la Réforme. Les auteurs des dialogues (Erasme de Rotterdam et d'autres) renouvelaient la tradition de Platon. Les publications dialoguées abondaient en Pologne du XVI™^ siècle. L'activité littéraire de Fricius dans ce domaine paraît médiocre en comparaison. A vrai dire il évitait cette structure. Ce n'est que pour discuter "les deux espèces" de la Sainte Cène qu'il a composé trois dialogues entre Harpagus et Arator, en faisant d'Arator son propre porte-parole. Il se glorifiait à juste raison d'avoir traité son adversaire avec le respect qui lui était dû sans l'avoir présenté comme im illettré. En cela ü surpasse son contemporain Stanislaus Orichovius, le plus eminent styliste parmi des auteurs des dialogues polémiques en Pologne religieuses etc. étaient le plus souvent publiées

du XVI™«= siècle. La forme du dialogue mettait Fricius mal à son aise: il était moralisateur par excellence. Son elocution restait toujours claire, son argumentation logique, sa composition habile et nette. C'est évident dès les premières pages de son oeuvre "Commentarii de republica emendanda." Il y commence par ime

STARNAWSKI

315

exposition solide de ce qu'est la république pour expliquer ensuite les différents genres de républiques etc. Dès les débuts de son activité littéraire Fricius est un eminent narrateur. Dans sa première oeuvre de l'an 1543 d'intéressants épisodes et récits sont entrelacés parmi discours et traités. Il n'était pas polémiste né. Il polémiquait bien rarement. Conformément à la convention de la Renaissance il mettait souvent la définition du genre littéraire au lieu du titre. Le titre "Silvae" exprime qu'il estimait cette oeuvre plutôt comme inachevée, imparfaite. Il composait aisément, sautait d'un sujet à l'autre, plaçait cà et là des épisodes détachés. Son oeuvre commence en Pologne les essais. La gamme des genres littéraires cultivés par Fricius n'est pas riche, mais il en a des innovations. Son style est exquis. Fricius a composé son oeuvre capitale quand la convention du latin cicéronien était déjà bien établie. Stanislaus Orichovius de son vivant fut nommé le Démosthène et le Cicéron polonais. L'oeuvre de Fricius étant composé plutôt pour une élite ne pouvait se faire une telle popularité. Son style était irréprochable. La totalité de son oeuvre littéraire fut publiée en 5 volumes Opera omnia. Le style des Romains y est sans tache. Il avait prédilection pour des phrases courtes et simples. Là où un autre auteur aurait tenté une période cicéronienne Fricius était d'avis que plusieurs phrases courtes alignées dans un ordre logique peuvent aussi atteindre leur but. Quelquefois se trouvent chez Fricius des phrases plus longues ou la répétition est la figure rhétorique de prédilection. On y trouve aussi des hypotaxes, mais des parataxes sont beaucoup plus nombreuses. Des périodes sont aussi présentes, toujours correctes. Fricius se servait avec habilité de l'interrogation rhétorique. Par exemple:

Qui contra legem divinam, contra omnes honesti causas, contra naturae vocem obduruenmt, intantum quidem, ut haec omnia contemnenda putent partim utilitatis causa, quam ex mortibus aliorum percipiant, partim ultionis cupiditate, partim vere partium contentione? Quod si isti ipsi putant res ex sententia sua geri debere, quo tandem animo existimant bonos viros id ferre? Quis enim probus ad tantam imperandi licentiam non ingemiscat? Quis non ardeat dolore? Quis non angatur numerari istorum sententias magis quam contrarias ponderari? Quis aequo animo ferat honestis viris virtute sua in ferendis sententiis uti non licere? Quis est enim, quod propugnatores numationis pro se afferre possint contra Dei veritatem? Quid, nisi nolle se a maiorum decretis discedere? Qui sunt igitur maiores isti? Qui et quanti? Quibus studiis praediti? Qua prudentia singulari? Il ornait aussi son style de temps en temps avec succès par des phrases exclamatoires. L' "o!" est lié plus souvent avec l'accusatif qu'avec le vocatif. Des dérogations de cet usage établi sont plus nombreuses dans des héllénismes p. ex. "O hom*o ..." (dans la citation de lettre du saint Paul aux Romaines, 9,20). C'est aussi en adressant la parole à quelque personnage de haut rang qu'il unit

"o" avec le vocatif.

"O similitu"O tempora! o

trouve aussi quelques beaux paradoxes:

dinem dissimillimam!" ou "O religionem mores!" de Cicéron retentit plusieurs

irreligiosissimam!"

fois

chez Fricius.

3l6

ANDREAS

FRICIUS

MODREVIUS

Les lectures de Fricius étaient nombreuses et universelles. Il prenait soin de bien donner des références des sources des passages cités ainsi que de présenter la liste des auteurs et des oeuvres dont û faisait usage. La prose latine de Fricius abonde en tours de poésie et de prose latines. A côté des écrivains latins Ü cite souvent la Bible, parfois des auteurs médiévaux ou des humanistes. La paremiographie de Fricius est bien intéressante. Des proverbes sont entrelacés dans le texte de Fricius. Des enumerations sont composées selon les règles de la grammaire latine: la conjonction est répétée avant chaque élément de l'énumération ou bien omise avant tous. La répétition comme figure rhétorique est souvent et habilement employee. Des belles anaphores ne lui étaient pas étrangères. Les généralisations étaient employées bien à propos, les comparaisons étaient pittoresques. Dans toute son oeuvre Fricius se voulait un enseignant, mais ce pédagogue était aussi un écrivain eminent.

Poland

Temple's Neo-Latin Commentary on Sidney's Apology: Two Strategies for a Defense John Webster

the first major document of English literary critcism, Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry has elicited commentary ever since its initial publication in 1595. But the first commentary on the Apology, written by Sidney's secretary, Sir William Temple, is even now almost totally unknown. Temple's 66 page neo-Latin treatise has never been printed, and exists only in a single MS copy at Penshurst.^ Given the importance of the Apology, and especially given the scope and nature of Temple's disagreements with Sidney, the commentary's state of relative neglect is surprising.^ In this paper I want to set out some of the aesthetic issues over which Temple and Sidney disagree, and I then want to argue that these differences suggest an even more basic disagreement about the strategy to be used to defend poetry in the first place. Where Sidney argues that poetry is essentially different from all other arts. Temple maintains that it is to be valued for what it shares with those arts. Like a number of Renaissance theorists, among them Torquato Tasso in the Discouises on the Heroic Poem, Temple argues that it is as a vehicle of reason that poetry teaches, and consquently he repeatedly stresses its dialectical nature. Before I take up Temple's objections, however, I want first to say something about the context in which the Apology appears, and the importance that the aesthetic it describes represents. Years ago, Yvor Winters divided the poets of the sixteenth century into the plain and the Petrarchan; C. S. Lewis followed twenty years later with a similar division between the Drab and the Golden.^ What both characterize is a split the century itself saw between the old and the new. Thus E. K. in his epistle to The Shepheardes Calender announces "Our new poete" as one whose pithiness and difficulty put him in an entirely different class from "the rakehelly e route of our ragged rhymers" who then controlled the field.'* The Renaissance text which develops most clearly an aesthetic to support this new surge of poetic energy is, of course, Sidney's Apology. With a wit and force of exposition itself worth note in the history of English prose, Sidney argues for a conception of English verse founded on what he conceives to be poetry's special and essential power to move. In living well, Sidney tells us, "moouing

3i8

temple's

commentary on Sidney

and poetry is the art that can move us As Sidney says, "Nowe therein of all Sciences ... is our Poet the Monarch. For he dooth not only show the way [something that even dull is

of a higher degree then teaching,"

best.^

philosophers can do], but giueth so sweete a prospect into the way as will intice any man to enter into it" (p. 172). For Sidney then it is not simply knowing and understanding that deserve our highest praise. Our greatest difficulty in a fallen world is that our "will" is often unwilling to do good, even when it knows what good is.^ "Our erected wit maketh vs know what perfection is," Sidney tells us, "yet our infected will keepeth vs from reaching vnto it" (p. 157). Consequently, while other arts like history and philosophy can inform us about good and evil, only poetry can "gild" "brazen" nature such that the resulting "speaking picture" will compel us to action. All of this is heady stuff, for it gives to poetic "imitation" an active, moral role in shaping the world that is matched only by the preacher's. Though the poet's imagination "delivers forth" universals of virtuous action, and thus imitates those Ideas that underlie and inform the actualities of the ordinary world, the truly important "imitation" for Sidney's poet is finally not his, but ours. For the poet does not just help us see virtue's essential worth; he also moves us to re-shape our actions to imitate his golden example. As Murray Krieger has written, "it is for us, in aping the fictional product of his wit, to bring the perfections of an ought-to-be golden reality into a brazen world of will...."^ In Sidney's hands, the doctrine of imitation becomes the means by which man can at least in part recover that perfect world long lost by "that first accursed fall of Adam" (p. 157). Sidney's view of poetry is thus of an exciting, almost messianic vehicle by which the true end of life can be attained, but while certain to please poets and most of those who read poetry, Sidney's view was also bound to elicit a certain skepticism among those scholars who practiced any of the arts which suffered so by comparison to Sidney's virtuous juggernaut. Temple was precisely such a man, trained in philosophy and dialectic, and many of his remarks are qualifications aimed to deny to poetry its exclusivity. In addtion to these cautions, however, there also emerges from Temple's commentary a general outline for a theory of poetry with a very different emphasis from Sidney's own. The remarks Temple intends to restrain or correct Sidney's exuberance in his championing poetry over any of the other arts are models of even-handed rationality. When Sidney, for example, says that the moral philosopher, "setting downe with thorny argument the bare rule" is "hard of vtterance" because "his knowledge standeth so vpon the abstract and generali that happie is the man who may vnderstande him" (p. 164), Temple replies that though his sort of obscurity may be a fault in particular philosophers, it is not a fault in the art itself. "For rightly described and set out in all its parts, ethics contains not only precepts but examples as well, through which we are to be instructed how to achieve happiness" (p. 22). And as for the obscurity that comes from the abstract and general consideration of things, this. Temple argues, "is no more fittingly argued against ethics than against poetry and other arts whose precepts deal with anything general" (p. 23). More than once Temple shows his sense that Sidney is seeking to have his

JOHN WEBSTER

319

cake and eat it too. Later when Sidney argues that poetry is "more Philosophical! and more studiously serious then history" because it deals "with the universali consideration" Earlier, ethics

(p.

167),

Temple

replies:

of a certain obscurity because it is made up But here, the poet, because he considers things

was accused

of universal concepts.

and not singularly in

specie, is said for that reason to teach considering things through universals is to be approved of in the poet, it ought not to be condemned in the teacher of ethics (p. 25).

universally,

better than the historian. But

Similarly, when Sidney argues that history, "beeing captived to the trueth of a foolish world, is many times a terror from well dooing" (p. 170), and thereby at times actually discourages virtue and encourages vice, Temple again notes

that Sidney's argument tends to contradict positions he takes elsewhere in the Apology. In defending comedy's representations of vice, for example, Sidney argues that comedy should be allowed to show us vice in order to teach us

we see. Temple observes: "the same things you use to defend can be very nicely transferred to the defense of history. To the extent you wound history in one argument, you heal it in another. And the historian will deny absolutely that the poet is the only author of so clear an understanding [of vice]" (p. 28). Not all of Temple's remarks, however, simply qualify claims of superiority. Others aim to offer an explanation of the poetic process that differs substantially from Sidney's by allowing poetry a much more limited realm of exclusive control than Sidney would give it. For while poetry for Temple neither gains nor loses by comparison with disciplines like history and moral philosophy, in its relation to dialectic, poetry, along with all the applied arts, is decidedy subordinate. To "dialectic," or "logic" (the terms are equivalent here). Temple attributes the traditional, humanist role of the ars cutis, or scientia sciento hate the vice

comedy

...

tiamm, whose subject is the actual processes of rationality itself, and whose precepts must therefore underlie any art which functions by virtue of thought and language.* "Logic" in this sense, of course, is not limited to its modem sense of "formal inference"; rather it includes the study of any of the general processes that underlie human thinking. As such, logic was the over-arching discipline under which all modes of knowing were ranked. Thus for Temple, as for many traditional theorists, the question was not whether poetry was "logical," since no one doubted its dependence on thought and language.^ Instead there were disputes over just which part of logic was most appropriate for poetry. Mazzoni, for example, classes poetry as a branch of sophistic, the logic of apparent truth, because he held poetry's images to be false. ^° Poetry for him does not imitate the true; rather it works to make the false believeable. Even so, however, the poetic process involves rationality, and so falls under logic. Similarly, for Tasso, while poetry is emphatically not sophistic, it is still very much a logical art.^^ Like Sidney, Tasso holds that poetry takes universals for its imitational objects, and though its images are feigned, they are not on that account false. Accordingly Tasso classes poetry not with sophistic, but

with

dialectic, or "probable logic,"

because

it is

that branch of

320

temple's

commentary on SIDNEY

whose precepts make these universals conceivable to the mind. Unlike these more traditional theorists, however, Sidney does not class poetry with any branch of logic, and in fact he specifically appropriates to poetry alone the access to universals that for Tasso belongs to dialectic. Not surprisingly, this becomes the issue on which Temple's most sustained oblogic

jections are based. is

The main part of Temple's argument that poetry is subordinate to dialectic made in reply to Sidney's definition of poetry. "Poetry," Sidney writes, "is

art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word Mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfetting, or figuring foorth: to speake metaphorically, a speaking picture: with this end, to teach and delight" (p. 158). Tem-

response to this definition divides the issue of imitation from the issues and delighting, and to the second of these his objection is technical. In strictly logical terms "defining" characteristics are only those which mark off the specialness of a thing, rather than simply describing it. Thus while a sentence like "Man is an animal" is a true description of man, it is not a proper definition, since lions and rabbits are just as much animals as is man. On the other hand, "Man is a risible, rational animal" is a defining statement, since the qualities of risibility and rationality (at least by Renaissance tradition) are peculiar to man alone. In the present case. Temple tells us, "teaching and delighting" cannot be defining ends of poetry since neither of them is peculiar to poetry alone. "Teaching" [doceie] is clearly not an end proper to poetry alone; rightly that distinction. Temple tells us in good humanist fashion, belongs to dialectic. Similarly, though poetry certainly delights, so do many other things, and so again it is inappropriate to make delight a definple's

of teaching

ing end of poetry. In contrast to this argument's concentration on terms. Temple's answer to Sidney's defintion of poetry as an art of imitation has a more important theoretical basis. In the paragraphs immediately preceding this definition,

Sidney has prepared the way by suggesting that poetry's fictive nature allows alone to escape being subject to nature: "There is no Arte delivered to mankinde that hath not the workes of Nature for his principali obiect, without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend, as they become Actors and Players, as it were, of what Nature will have set foorth.... Onely the Poet, disdayning to be tied to any such subiection, dooth growe in effect another nature, in making things either better than Nature bringeth forth, or quite a newe ..." (p. 156). According to Sidney, then, the power to invent fictions belongs to poetry alone, and it is to this bait that Temple rises. "You want the essential nature of poetry to be seen as a kind of fiction. But can it be that this fiction is anything but the invention of something that has never existed" (p. 13)? How can one formulate meaningful scenarios. Temple would ask, feigned or not, except through the conceptual conventions that any language presupposes and that dialectic codifies as Invention? "Whoever feigns," Temple says, "he shapes what are logical arguments [i.e. rational concepts], namely causes, effects, subjects, adjimcts, contraries and comparisons ..." (p. 13). When Ovid, for example, creates the realm of the sim, while that realm is obviously a fiction, it was nevertheless created by Ovid's feigning it

JOHN WEBSTER

321

"an efficient cause by which it was constructed, matter out of which it was put together, and adjuncts by which it was decorated." But Ovid's poetic feigning of such things is not essentially different from his inventing them logically, and therefore "a fiction will be the same thing as the [logical] invention of something that does not exist" (p. 13). A thought may be a fiction, but it will only have sense in the first place by virtue of the conventions of language and the categories of thought, and it is precisely these which form the subject matter of dialectic. Consequently, when poets make fictions, "they do so not by something peculiar to the gift of poetry, but by the faculty of the art of dialectic"

(p.

13).

Temple's animus in this argument is in part proprietary. As a dialectician, it must hurt to be left so thoroughly behind. But his more important concern is that Sidney seems here to be taking for granted the whole process by which the poet first conceptualizes and then embodies the "Idea" he sets out to imitate. Though Sidney tells us that the poet can conceive of universals, and that they are in fact what keep his fictions from being "wholly imaginative," like "castles in air," still, should anyone ask how we are to be sure that the poet's image has in fact been truly derived from its corresponding Idea, Sidney simply replies: "That the Poet hath that Idea is manifest, by delivering them forth in such excellencie as hee hath imagined them" (p. 157). For Sidney, one knows an Idea is there by a kind of intuitive recognition; no further reflection is necessary. For Temple, by contrast, relations between images and Ideas cannot simply be intuited, because while invention can certainly lead one to true universals, and from there to "true" fictions, it can mislead as well. Only if the concepts one delivers forth have been derived by the proper precepts of rational thought — the rules of dialectic— can one be assured of their truth. Put somewhat differently, for Temple the poet must concern himself with two truth relations and not one. One is (as Sidney says) truth to the natural world. But the other is truth to the ideal world, and this second is a relation which Sidney scarcely acknowledges. In his criticism of Sidney's definition, this dual truth relation is largely implicit; the same issue arises, however, when Sidney defends poetry against the charge of lying, and there Temple explains his position more fully. In refuting the lying charge, Sidney proceeds just as he does in defining poetry, first pointing to the ties other arts have to reality, then describing poetry's freedom. "[0]f all Writers vnder the sunne, the Poet is the least lier...." "[T]o lye," Sidney explains, "is to affirme that to be true which is false." Other artists, "Affirming many things, can, in the cloudy knowledge of mankinde, hardly escape from many lyes." but "for the Poet, he nothing affirmes, and therefore never lyeth" (p. 184). Sidney's argument is beautifully made, and as far as it goes it is also valid. But here as in his definition of poetry, Sidney addresses only one truth relation — that of the poetic representation to the world. Yet as different scholars have pointed out, that is not the truth relation that poetry's sophisticated critics have in mind.^^ Ascham's complaint, about romances and "Italianate books," for example, is not that they tell of things that never happened, but rather they show in both example and precept how to act ill.*^

temple's

322

Even Gosson avoids the of

moving

Instead he attacks poetry for its immoral principles which, by the

literal lying charge.

ability to insinuate true-seeming but still

same powers

commentary on SIDNEY

that Sidney elevates as poetry's great virtue, rapt

wrongly think excellent and imitable. "Cookes did never shew more crafte in their junckets to vanquish the taste, nor Painteres in shadowes to allure the eye, then poets in theaters to wounde the conscience." Cooks and painters merely deceive the senses, but poets, "by the private entrys of the eare, slip down into the hart, and with gunshotte of affection gaule the minde, where reason and vertue should rule the roste." ^'^ However neatly Sidney's poet-not-affirming-and-thence-not-lyiog argument listeners will

more sophisticated charge, that poets present Ideas that misrepresent virtue and therefore lie, Sidney provides no very good reply. For while arguing that poets do not affirm will protect poets from charges that they mislead, it also forecloses the claim that one of poetry's main strengths is its capacity for teaching. If the poet does not affirm things as true, then what are we to say about universal Ideas? Does the poet not in some manner affirm them? Does he not hold them for true and is that not in fact the basic moral justification for poetry? Sidney has in fact worked himself into a dilemma. If the poet does not affirm, then he cannot be said to lie. But unless the poet affirms, he cannot be said to tell anything for true. Temple's response to Sidney's dilemma begins by questioning Sidney's definition of a lie. Sidney says that to lie is to affirm something which is false to be true, but by "affirm" he means something more than simply "say." Temple distrusts this. Suppose someone should say, "Man is not an animal." Is this not a lie? "You will perhaps reply that [a true] axiom has been negated, and is false, but not that it lies, if the person who denies something this way should be expressing arguments that (as it were) agree with each other in his mind" (p. 41). Temple, however, argues that a lie is not to be judged simply by whether the speaker knows what he has uttered to be false— and then says so. Rather a lie is judged by whether the proposition in question has been properly derived "in accord with the precepts of logic." "Just as a statement is true when one utters it, as long as the nature of the matter agrees, similarly, that axiom will be false and lying when something is said which does not agree with the nature of the matter, even if another affirmation is not added on" (p. 41-2). In this position Temple seems at a disadvantage. Surely, in ordinary usage if one utters a falsehood while thinking it true, one has not "lied"; but Temple sees this as the only way to avoid Sidney's dilemma about telling truth: "if there is no lie except by our affirmation then certainly truth will not exist if you do not bring mental assent and testimony to proving or disproving a further statement. But truth does not depend upon this mental assent and testimony, but arises from the [true] nature of things and [by subsequent argument]" (p. 42). After all, one does not need facts drawn from experience to evaluate conceptually derived universal truths. Such truths are deduced from a priori principles through logical precepts, and thus even in the absence of arguments from experience, "the essence of truth can still be established." Finally, having set up the truth problem such that he can both agree and parries the literal lie attack, to this

. . .

JOHN WEBSTER

323

disagree with Sidney's assertion that the poet affirms nothing, Temple concludes: "that [assertion] is certainly true, if it is understood that your [claim] deals not with an affirmation that arises, as it were, from the amicable assembling of one argument with another, but rather from that affirmation that

has the force of testimony to setting out that further claim. But if you consider that first kind of affirmation, poetry is rich in the affirmation of axioms" (p.

42).

Temple's dual-division of the truth/lying problem thus not only allows the defense that poetry does not "lie" when a London company puts on a show set in Rome, it also allows both for affirmations of universal truths, and for a way of guaranteeing their truth. Poets are not off merely "making up" things disconnected to any sort of reality, unverifiable except by insight; instead they are imagining rationally and intelligibly, and their imaginations are neither any more likely to lie than anyone else's, nor any less subject to correction when they do. The arguments I have described are not Temple's only comments; they are, however, representative. We have no idea of Sidney's response. Even had Sidney agreed, there is still reason to doubt that he would have changed his text. For what we have here is more than a question of wrong or right, or even of what tactics to use in defending the poet. Rather, the differences between Sidney and Temple suggest a larger question of poetic principle. Sidney's golden aesthetic is an exciting and productive one; but the enormous importance he gives to "will" and to "moving" also leads him to ignore problems of truth and understanding that other more philosophical aesthetics (and Tasso's is a good example) take as their very foundation. Though Sidney includes "teaching" in his definition of poetry, and though he speaks of poetry's capacity to entertain "the diuine consideration of what may be and should be" (p. 159), Sidney never projects the more truly Platonic sense of complexity and difficulty in attaining to a vision of the perfect Idea that the dialectical view of poetry presupposes. In responding to Sidney, Temple consistently reflects this second, more contemplative attitude toward poetry. Though his format never allows him to set forth fully his own statement of what poetry should be, his text

such other positions were in fact circulating and just as available to the new poets as Sidney's own. The brilliance of the Apology may at times lead us to think of Sidney's as the only Elizabethan aesthetic; Temple's positions should remind us that it was not.^^ is still

sufficient to assure us that

in the late 1570's,

University of Washington

Notes 1. Temple's MS "Analysis tiactatioDis de Paesi contextae a nobilissimo viro Philippe Sidneio equite aurato" is among those included in the ACLS British Manuscripts Project. Its checklist reference is J 375, no. 1095, Camb. 785/2-6.

temple's

324

commentary on SIDNEY

quote from the MS by the kind permission of Lord De Lisle. Because the MS has no pagination of any kind, I have numbered its pages 1-66, beginning with the first page of analysis proper. 2. The only study of Temple's MS to date is J. P. Thome's "A Ramistical Commentary on Sidney's 'An Apologie for poetrie,'" MP, 54 (1957), 158-64. Thome summarizes Temple's major position, but his main interest lies in laying bare what he sees as the impositions of Ramist logic on the English intellectual scene. He has little sympathy for Temple's enterprise. 3. Winters' terms are in "The Sixteenth-Century Lyric in England," Poetry, 53 (1939), 258-72. Lewis' distinction is from English Liteiatuie in the Sixteenth Century: Excluding Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), pp. 64-5. 4. E. K.'s comment is in his Epistle to the Shepheardes Calendar. See Ernest de Selincourt, ed., Spenser's Minor Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), p. 6. 5. References are to the G. Gregory Smith edition of the Apology in Ehzabethan Critical Essays (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1904), I, 150-207. This reference, p. I

171.

An Emerging Renaissance Aesthetic" (in Spenser and the Middle Ages, 1978 [Cleveland: Cleveland State Univ., 1978], pp. 1-17) I outline similarities between Temple's aesthetic posi6.

In "Gabriel Harvey's Ciceronianus:

David Richardson,

ed.,

tion and Harvey's, and contrast

them

to Sidney.

My outline there is by no means

complete, but it does try to suggest that Tudor aesthetics do not begin and end with the Apology. 7. Theory of Criticism: A Tradition and Its System (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976), p. 76. 8. Renaissance "logic" differs greatly from modem logic. It is much closer to "rhetoric," in the sense of "writing course," as in "Freshman rhetoric." As Thomas Wilson writes in The Rule of Reason, Conteinying The Artes of Logique (Richard S. Sprague, ed. [Northridge, Calif.: San Femando Valley State College, 1972], p. 7), "He that speaketh logique speaketh nothing els but reason." For general discussion of logic in Tudor England see Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1974), esp. pp. 1-65; Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958); W. S. Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England: 1500-1 700 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1961). The best history of European logic between 1500 and 1640 in Wilhelm Risse, Logik der Neuzeit (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedriech

Frommann

Verlag, 1964),

summary of poetry-as-logic theories, see O. B. Hardison, Jr., The Enduring Monument (Chapel Hül: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1962), pp. 11-18. 10. In Allan H. Gilbert, ed.. Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden (New York: 9.

For a short

American Book Co.,

1940), esp. pp. 367-70.

473-8. See Jacob Bronowski, The Poet's Defense (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1937), pp. 21-3. See also Arthur Kinney, Markets of Bawdrie: The Dramatic Criticism of Stephen Gosson (Salzburg: Institute fur Englische Sprache, 1974), p. 48. 13. The Schoolmaster (1570), ed. Lawrence V. Ryan (Charlottesville: Univ. of Virginia Press, 1967), pp. 63-9. 11. In Gilbert, see esp. pp. 12.

Kinney, p. 89. Research for this paper was supported in part by the Graduate School Research Fund of the University of Washington. 14. In 15.

Seminar: The Role of Latin in Renaissance Education Director: Eckhard Kessler, München Members: André Bude, Lictenvoorde Paul Clogan, Denton, Texas A. P. Dobsevage, Bethel, Conn. Karsten Friis-Jensen, Copenhagen Hanna-Barbara Gerì, München Paul F. Grendler, Toronto Gerhard Jäger, München Minna Skaffe Jensen, Copenhagen Konrad Krautter, Konstanz Wilhelm Kühlmann, Freiburg

Bo Lindberg, Göteborg Erik Petersen, Copenhagen

Raimund

Pfister,

München

Peter L. Schmidt, Konstanz Primoz Simoniti, Ljubljana

Christoph Stolper, Hameln James M. Weiss, Boston Karl-Ludwig Weitzel, Waldshut Lore Wirth-Poelchau, Erlangen Paula P. Witkam, Den Haag

The members

of the seminar had been asked a year ahead of the congress submit papers early enough to have them circulated in advance, in order to provide a well defined basis for the seminar discussion. As a result, the following five papers were prepared:

P. Dobsevage: De duarum loannis scilicet Miltonis et loannis Amos Comenii per usum docendi methodorum conceptione Hanna-Barbara Gerì: Zwischen faktischer und numinoser Gültigkeit. Lorenzo

Alvin

Vallas Theorie vom Vorrang der lateinischen Sprache Eckhard Kessler: Zur Bedeutung der lateinischen Sprache in der Renaissance

Wilhelm Kühlmann: Apologie und Kritik des Lateins im Schrifttum des deutschen Späthumanismus. Argumentationsmuster und sozialgeschichtliche Zusammenhänge Raimund Pfister: Grammatik und Lateinimterricht

in Italien

15.

Jahrhun-

dert

Three of the papers (Kessler, Kühlmann, Pfister) were circulated in the beginning of August, one (Gerì) was distributed in the beginning of the congress, one (Dobsevage) could not be included in the discussion, since it existed in

seminar: the role of latin

326

only one copy and its author was present only during the second half of the seminar. At the beginning of the seminar the authors of the papers gave a five-minute abstract of their argumentation, followed by a brief account of topics that seemed worthy to be discussed. The discussion itself started with the general question, whether or not it is possible or even necessary to relate the "revival of learning" to a concept of "Büdung" as was done in the papers of Gerì, Kessler and Kühlmann, instead of envisaging the necessity and usefulness of such a revival for a further

development of civilisation on

that the concept of "Bildung"

all levels. It

was

agreed,

indeed not a specific heritage of 19th-century Germany, but it was present in Renaissance Humanism in the concept of the studia bumanitatis, understood as eruditio, being the overcoming of the rude natural status of man and the acquisition of man's specific nature. On the other hand the tendency in the German concept of "Bildung" towards a dualism between "Bildung" as an aim in itself and science and knowledge as means for mere usefulness was acknowledged as possibly misleading for the imderstanding of the Renaissance revival of learning. Regarding more specifically the submitted papers, it was questioned whether Barbara Gerì had succeeded in proving that Valla's theory of the superiority of Latin is grounded on a philosophically acceptable basis instead of on ideological preoccupations and whether she had been sufficiently aware of the rhetorical character of Valla's argumentation. Regarding Kessler's paper, it is doubted whether there ever existed a real grammar which might deserve to be called "nominalistic," and the author tried to defend his position by pointing out that "nominalistic grammar" was used as a concept of historical reconstruction, describing an understanding of grammar that is in accordance with the main nominalistic assumptions and has been the object of humanistic polemics. Finally, in Raimund Pfister's paper, the concept of the "situation of the average Latin teacher," central for its argumentation, inspired a vivid discussion of how to account for the reality of Latin teaching in the Renaissance, and the extreme varieties of school conditions. It was agreed that in order to clarify further the questions raised in the discussion, there should be a seminar during the next congress on "The curriculum and the textbooks of Latin teaching in the Renaissance." is

E.K.

Zwischen faktischer und numinoser Gültigkeit: Lorenzo Vallas Theorie

vom

Vorrang der lateinischen Sprache Hanna-Baibaia Geil

Karl-Otto Apel hat das Sprachdenken des Humanismus eingewiesen von Cicero bis Vico latent oder manigegen andere Modelle sich durchhält^ und seit Petrarca insbesondere eine Ideologie der Latinität erneuert,^ wie sie bei Cicero vorgebildet ist. Zugleich sei diese Sprachauffassung insofern dogmatisch, als sie nur "vorin eine "Sprachideologie/' die

fest

theoretisch" argumentiert,^ d.h. ihre Grundtheoreme zwar als universal gültige setzt, sie aber nicht logisch, sondern nur kulturprogrammatisch verifiziert,* nämlich ihren Ansatz nicht kritisch begründet. Trotzdem kommt Apel zu dem letztlich positiven Urteil, daß ungeachtet dieser reflexiven Schwäche im Humanismus zimiindest die Grundlegimg einer

"Kulturanthropologie" bzw. der Geistewissenschaften geleistet wurde. ^ Es denn nicht, um zu einem so positiven Ergebnis zu kommen, im einen oder anderen Fall und nicht erst bei Vico eine mehr als ideologisch-dogmatische Überlegung bei den Humanisten anzutreffen sei. Zur Diskussion unter dieser Hinsicht sollen die Vorreden Vallas zu den ElegantiaTum linguae latinae libri VI gestellt werden, freüich im Kontext anderer Werke, u. a. der an seinem Lebensende gehaltenen "Oratio habita in principio sui studii" von 1455. Gerade weil Vallas Eie^ontiûe— nicht nur bei Apel— als Höhepunkt des lateinischen Sprachformalismus, ja als spiritueller Sprachimperialismus und sakramentaler Sprachkult^ oder auch als "philologischideologisches Manifest"^ gelten, ist ihre Begründungs- und Reflexionsebene einmal aufzuhellen. bleibt aber die Frage, ob

Valla hat unter seinen vielfältigen Versuchen einer humanistischen Innovation des Denkens* auch eine Renaissance des klassischen Lateins in Angriff genommen. Zu einer Zeit, da der Gebrauch des Volgare auch in wissenschaftlichen Abhandlungen an Bedeutung gewann,^ stellte Valla mit der für ihn typischen Leidenschaft noch einmal die imüberholbare Effizienz des Lateins im Vergleich zu den anderen Sprachen heraus. Zum Ausweis dieser Über-

zeugung verfaßte er erstens mit den Elegantiae ein Lehrbuch über den grammatisch korrekten und zugleich eleganten Gebrauch dieser Sprache, wobei

seminar: the role of latin

328

diese beiden Qualitäten aus den klassischen oder für klassisch geltenden autores erhoben wurden. ^° Dieses Lehrbuch, geschrieben zwischen 1435 und 1444, galt bis ins 19. Jahrhundert als Maßstab der Latinität und wurde bis dahin auch im Schulunterricht verwendet. ^^ In den Vorreden zu den Büchern bis IV und VI (die fünfte enthält nur Persönliches) gab Valla die hier interessierende Begründung seiner Theorie. Das zweite, emphatisch die Bedeutung des Lateins unterstreichende Werk ist eine Inauguralrede zu Beginn des Studienjahres an der Universität Rom vor

dem

Kollegium. ^^ Das einleitende Versprechen, etwas noch nie Gesagtes zu entwickeln, ^^ zielt auf die These, Bedingung der Möglichkeit von Wissenschaften und freien Künsten sei die lateinische Sprache, was durch 'welthistorische' Betrachtungen, im Vergleich von Afrika, Asien und Europa aufgezeigt wird. Problemgleichheit und Problemverschiebung von den "Elegantiae" zur "Oratio" werden nun in der Untersuchung klar werden. Valla entwickelt in den genannten Werken drei Hinsichten über die Sonderstellung des Lateins vor allen anderen Sprachen.

Faktische Normativität

Die erste Art der Hinsicht betrifft eine rein quantitative Beobachtung: Latein ist die territorial am weitesten verbreitete und international am meisten gebrauchte Sprache: "multarum gentium una lex, una est lingua Romana."^'* Hinzugehört die empirisch belegbare Feststellung, daß Latein kraft allgemeiner imperialer Ausdehnung zur Sprache einer Weltkultur wurde, spezifisch zu Sprache der Wissenschaften und freien Künste von übernationaler und einheitlicher Prägxmg. Diese faktische Gültigkeit verdankt sich also einem politischen Moment: der römischen Expansion, welche die Sprache gewaltsam verbreitet hat. "... nullos tamen ita linguam suam ampliasse, ut nostri

— "Romana potentia propagata effecit, ut pleraeque gentes uterentur lingua latina et inter se consuetudinem haberent."^^ f ecerunt"

. .

Spracheiche Normativität nimmt also zunächst ihren Anfang in einer histoiiscben Ursache, in einer geschichtlichen Tat, Normativität wird mit einer kontingenten Ursache zusammengedacht. Gerade diese Kontingenz aber erlaubt nur eine bedingte Begründetheit für den Vorrang des Lateins. Jeder politische Wechsel, der eine Ablösung der Sprache nach sich zieht, hebt die bloß empirische Durchsetzung einer Sprache und folglich aller spezifisch

sprachgebundenen Wissenschaften auf. Valla registriert diesen vorderhand monokausal gesehenen Zusammenhang am deutlichsten in der Beobachtimg, daß der Zusammenbruch des Imperiimis, und mit ihm derjenige der römischen Sprache, den Untergang der Wissenschaften in der gesamten nichteuropäischen Welt verursachte (ein Hauptthese der "Oratio").

Diese monokausale Betrachtung kann offenbar nicht die einzig gültige wenn der Gedanke eines Vorranges unter den Sprachen nicht durch bloß statistische Häufigkeit ausgewiesen werden soll. Insofern bildet dieser bleiben,

HANNA-BARBARA GERL

329

Komplex zwar

eine Basisüberlegung, die aber erst zu einer eigentlichen sprachtheoretischen Reflexion vertieft wird, worin die Lösung von der zufälligen Faktizität vollzogen sein muß.

n. Qualitative Normativität Valla denkt auf einer zweiten Ebene nicht mehr Zufälligkeit, Kontingenz, sondern Notwendigkeit einer bestimmten Durchsetzungskraft von Sprache, die ihr aus ihrer eigenen Qualität, ihrem spezifischen Charakter zukommen muß. Über die vordergründige politische Ermöglichung des faktischen Auftretens der Wissenschaften hinaus wird die Folgerichtigkeit behauptet, mit der die Wissenschaften gerade aus der Latinität hervorgehen müssen: "sine qua = Latinitate et elegentia) caeca omnis doctrina est, et illiberalis."^^ Dieser weiterführende Gedanke von der zwingenden Verknüpfung von Latein und Wissenschaften enthält in sich noch einmal zwei verschiedene Argumentationsebenen. Einerseits stellt gerade das Latein das sprachliche Instrumentarium, nämlich eine erforderliche differenzierte Begrifflichkeit zur Verfügung, die— unabhängig von politischer Pression— instrumenteil, als "fertige" übernommen werden kaim. Valla sieht in dieser Qualität die Bedingung (

einer— modern ausgedrückt — "unbegrenzten Kommuiükationsgemeinschaft" der Wissenschaftler, die kraft einheitlicher Terminologie alle gedachten Inhalte zu gemeinsamen machen.^'' Hier wird Sprache sowohl als "Währung" aufgefaßt ("nummus") wie zugleich als "Ware" ("mercimonia"), also als Kommimikationsmittel und Gegenstand der Kommunikation selbst: Medium und Inhalt der Wissenschaft fallen zusammen. In dieser Qualität eines Instrumentes, das seinen Gegenstand zugleich "mittransportiert," relativiert das Latein vorteilhaft den Leistungsabstand der Provinzen gegenüber Rom, ja dieser wird hinfällig, weil von beiden Seiten aufgehoben: Latein vermittelt die Kultur Roms an die anderen Völker, in einer rückläufigen Bewegung können aber die Provinzen ihr "Eigenes" zurückmelden, und zwar bereichert, weil im Denken geschärft, durch die immanente Kraft des Mediums. ^^ Damit wird bereits eine ursächliche Beziehvmg zwischen einer spezifischen Sprache und der Leistung des Denkens, der Denkkraft über-

haupt (Ingenium) mitbehauptet. Allerdings ist auf dieser Argumentationsebene noch nicht klar, weshalb für eine imbegrenzte Kommunikationsgemeinschaft aller Wissenschaftler gerade diese und keine andere Ware und Währung— um in Vallas ökonomischer Metapher zu bleiben— denkbar ist. Selbst wenn der Werkzeugcharakter der Sprache seinen Inhalt präjudiziert, worauf der Gedanke offenbar zielt, so kommt doch eben jeder Sprache dieses instrumentelle und Inhalte tragende Moment wesentlich zu. Bevor diese generische Qualität jedes Sprechens nicht zu einer besonderen Qualität präzisiert ist, kann auch dieses Argument letztlich nur als ein austauschbares angesehen werden. In der Perspektive des inneren, logischen

Zusammenhanges von lateinischer

Sprache und Wissenschaften bzw. Künsten muß Valla daher zu einer spezifischen Begründung ansetzen. So entwickelt er auf der anderen Seite die den

seminar: the role of latin

330 Mittelpunkt bildende und eben

als ideologisch verdächtigte These von der "Göttlichkeit" der lateinischen Sprache.

Essentielle Normativität

Latein rückt bei Valla schlechthin in eine Begriindungsrolle für verschiedene Phänomene. Diese Begründungsrolle kann nur mehr anfänglich, also ihrem historischen Ersterscheinen nach, mit der konstitutiven Macht eines politischen Imperlimi Romanum gekoppelt werden, hat sich aber in der Zwischenzeit von diesem Promotor emanzipiert. Latein ist als eine sich selbst tragende, sich selbst ausweisende Größe anzusehen— imter verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten oder Funktionen, die dieser Sprache geradezu als einem substantiellen Träger aufruhen. Erstens ist Latein für die Wissenschaften nicht ausschließlich instrumentell anzusetzen: es muß vielmehr überhaupt konstitutiv verstanden werden, in Vallas Sprache: institutiv. "Haec = lingua latina) enim gentes illas populosque omnes omnibus artibus, quae liberales vocantur, instituit."^^ Als "cunctarum doctrinarum seminarium"^^ kommt dieser Sprache die Bedeutung des Ursprungs der Disziplinen zu: Latinität ist ihr Wesen ("exiles ac prope nuUae = ante linguam latinam").^^ Denn im Gegensatz zu den Arbeiten der Handwerker, bei welchen die Sprache dieses zwar unentbehrliche, aber äußerlich bleibende Medium vorstellt, sind die Künste und Wissenschaften mit der Sprache, imd kraft ihrer historischen Genesis eben mit der lateinischen Sprache identisch: "Quod si in iis artificiis, quae manu fiunt, necesse est, communionem sermonis intercedere, quanto magis in iis, quae lingua constant, id est in artibus liberalibus atque scientiis."^^ Diese Auffassung ist die folgerichtige Weiterentwicklung der Relation von res und verbum, wie sie in den "Dialecticae Disputationes" gesehen wird. Deim nach Valla wird die res zwar vorgefunden, aber erst durch das verbum als solche konstituiert; d.h. Objektivität wird erst durch Sprache zur Wirklichkeit des Menschen. Es liegt in derselben Logik, daß auch die Wissenschaften imd freien Künste als Teilbereich der menschlichen Wirklichkeitsbetrachtung oder— interpretation durch die lateinische Sprache nicht nur mediatisiert— durch Worthülsen— mitgeteilt werden, sondern aus dieser Sprache überhaupt hervorgehen. Denn bei Valla liegen in den sprachlichen Aussagen schon Reflexionsstrukturen, steckt darin schon Vernunft. ^^ Aus der Umgangssprache selbst können schon Regeln von allgemeiner Relevanz erhoben werden: Sprache selbst ist sachhaltig. Im Gegenzug z.B. zu der hochscholastischen Überzeugimg von der Sprache als Ausdruck bereits erkannter Wahrheit ist bei Valla (lateinische) Sprache ein selbsttätiges Erkeimen der Wahrheit: im Sprechen selbst (

vollzieht sich Erkennen. ist femer bei Valla grundlegend für die "urbana quaedam Kennzeichen des wahren "eruditus" oder der wahren "humanitas." Zusichselbstkommen des Menschen vollzieht sich— bei Valla wie allgemein in der humanistischen Überzeugung^^- nur in der "urbs" oder

Lateinische Sprache

morum

civilitas,"^'*

HANNA-BARBARA GERL

33I

Aufgabe der Humanisierung kann vom Einzelnen her weder noch überhaupt gestellt werden; jeder außerhalb der civitas Stehende fällt notwendig unter das Gesetz der inhumanitas, weil dieser die Struktur der Sozietät (des aristotelischen zoon politikon) fehlt. Die von der civitas definierte Menschlichkeit, morum civilitas, ist wiederum in voller Gültigkeit erst eine Schöpfung der lateinischen Sprache: nicht nur weil sie wie jede andere Sprache erst die Bezüge, Funktionen der Menschen untereinander und zu den Dingen benennt, sondern weil sie — wieder getragen von der Basis des politischen römischen Imperiums— die einzige und erste Sprache einer weltweiten civitas vorstellt, wie sie auch in Griechenland nicht vorzufinden war. Denn Bedingung der civitas muß die gemeinsame Kommunikation sein, weshalb Griechenland wegen seiner fünf "civitas": die

begriffen

verschiedenen Sprachen nicht als ein Staat, sondern als "in Republica factiones"^^ angesprochen werden muß: Erst im lateinischen Raum wurden für Valla Begriff und Wirklichkeit der civitas geschaffen, worin der Mensch seine Zuordnung auf die Gemeinschaft, d.h. seine Relationalität als essentiell menschlich begreift und lebt. Denn diese Sprache bringt überall "civitas" mit sich, sie selbst enthält das exemplum des Handelns unter einem gemeinsamen Bild des Menschlichen. Dies beweist Valla auch durch die enge Verknüpfung von Latein und Recht, die ihn von der "Latinitas iuris civilis"^^ sprechen läßt, "ubi male accipiat leges ignarus linguae Latinae, ubi leges interpretandi perversitate corrumpat."^^ Humanitas ist vorzüglich an die lateinische Sprache gebunden, weil in ihr der staats-und gesellschaftsgründende ordo wurzelt, der auf den Gesetzen aufruht: "Et apud Romanos, rusticanos adhuc, et agrestes, cum parvae et rarae litterae essent, tamen leges ... in aes fuenmt incissae Adeo dua maxima in rebus . . .

humanis, diutumitatem temporis,

et forttmae violentiam, vincit

ta Providentia."^^ Providentia oder prudentia, die politische

circ*mspec-

und zugleich

ethische Kraft schlechthin, welche die "Zeit" und das "gewalttätige Schicksal" durch die richtige Voraussicht des Kommenden, durch die richtige Erfassung des Notwendigen bannt, bedient sich der lateinischen Sprache, ist in sie eingegangen und befähigt sie so vor allen anderen zur Verwirklichung des dauernden ordo, dessen die menschliche Welt bedarf.

Wie Ethik in ihrer bestimmten, hochentwickelten Form nur im lateinischen Sprachraum denkbar ist, so gilt dasselbe für Geschichte oder geschichtliches Dasein, das dieser Sprache als seiner konstitutiven Bedingung bedarf. Denn wiederum nur in dem von der lateinischen Sprache geschaffenen "weltweiten" Handlungsfeld ist für Valla auch das Bewußtsein nicht von Stammesgeschichte, sondern von Geschichte überhaupt entwickelt worden, "sine qua = historia) nemo non puer est."^ Geschichtliche Tradition ist dabei— erneut ein gemeinsamer humanistischer Meinungsbestand^^— nicht als objektivierte Historie im Sinne rekonstruierender Forschung aufzuarbeiten, sondern ist für Valla neben ihrer kognitiven Seite vor allem eine ethische, aus Beispielen^^ analog zu erschließende Lebensanweisung, was unter dem topos "sapientia" vereinigt wird: "ex historia fluxit plurima rerum naturalium cognitio ... plurima morum, plurima omnis sapientiae doctrina."^-^ (

seminar: the role of latin

332

Diese Weisheit darf gerade nicht zu einem theoretisch-philosophischen Gegenstand verkürzt werden, sondern ist wesentlich als "civilis sapientia" zu begreifen, ^^ wie sie paradigmatisch in der Geschichte Roms entfaltet wurde. Diese Geschichte ist die praktische Entwicklung der Weisheit der Sprache, das Leben innerhalb der von der Sprache richtig gedeuteten Wirklichkeit. Wenn Valla von dem römischen Weltreich spricht, legt er daher nicht primär eine politische Auffassung zugrunde, sondern versteht darunter das Reich einer Deutung des Menschen durch die lateinische Sprache, weshalb dieses Reich auch nach seinem äußeren Zusammenbruch immer noch lebendig ist: "Per hunc splendidiorem dominatum (= linguae) in magna adhuc orbis parte regnamus ... Ibi namque Romanum Imperium est, ubicumque Romana lingua dominatur."^^

Aufgnmd der Differenzierung von politischem und sprachlichem Reich entwickelt Valla sogar die neue, allen damaligen Geschichtsauffassungen widersprechende These, daß das römische Imperium nicht auf das germanische, weströmische Kaisertima übergegangen sei, welches überall als legitimer Nachfolger des römischen betrachtet wurde, sondern auf den Papst, und zwar wegen seiner Eigenschaft als Hüter der Sprache: "Est enim ille ... nunc non modo Romani

Romani

Romani eloquii modePolemik der Konstantinischen Schenkung vor allem gegen das Imperium der Päpste, aber eben nur gegen das pontificatus, ac

imperii, verunetiam

rator et princeps."^^ Freilich richtet sich die

äußerliche, der alten Ingeniosität der lateinischen civitas entbehrende Reich. Es ist bemerkenswert, daß Valla sogar das weltliche Imperium der Römer kritisiert, indirekt dort, wo er die Früchte und Methoden des politischen und des sprachlichen Imperiums vergleicht: "Neque enim armis, aut cruore aut bellis dominatum adeptum est: sed beneficiis, amore, concordantia."^^ Direkt aber heißt es in der Konstantinischen Schenkung, wo sich Valla gegen das gewalttätige Machtstreben äußert imd dabei die Römer als schlechtes Beispiel erwähnt: "Noli me ad istam vocare quaestionem = iuris belli), ne quid in Romanos meos cogar dicere. "•^^ Valla schreibt schließlich dem Latein— als Ermöglichung eines optimalen Verhaltens zur Wirklichkeit— numinosen oder sakramentalen Charakter zu: "(latinam linguam) quasi Deum e coelo demissum, apud se retinuerunt. Magnum ergo Latini sermonis sacramentum est, magnum profecto numen, quod apud peregrinos, apud barbaros, apud hostes, sancte ac religiose per tot saecula custoditur."^^ Die Urheber dieser "wahrhaft göttlichen Frucht" werden mit "göttlichem Lob" verherrlicht, sie erhalten eine Lebensgemeinschaft mit den Göttem.'*° Diese heidnische Terminologie wird in der "Oratio" abgelöst von der christlichen, aber der Gedanke der Sakramentalität bleibt derselbe: Valla geht zunächst von einer "Heiligung" der lateinischen litterae durch die Inschrift am Kreuz aus— ein Argument, das wegen der gleichzeitigen Heiligung der griechischen und hebräischen Buchstaben aber fallengelassen wird. Entscheidend sind dagegen die drei Argumente, daß die lateinischen litterae bei der Abfassung der beiden Testamente (der Vulgata des Hieronymus), femer durch die zahlreichen Interpretationen ausgezeichneter Männer und schließlich durch die Verwendung im Ritus und als Amtssprache der Kirche einen Vorrang vor allen anderen Sprachen erhielten. Valla spricht geradezu von einer (

HANNA-BARBARA GERL

333

von Christentum und LaVerschmelzung beider Elemente, wenn er sagen kann: "Hi, qui Christiane censebantur nomine nefas putaverunt repudiare linguam romanam, ne suam religionem profanarent/"*^ Diese Identifizierung von Religion und Sprache erfährt noch eine bezeichnende Erweiterung, wo nämlich Valla in derselben Rede Latein nicht allein als Sprache, sondern in einem umfassenderen Sinn als "litteratura" versteht: "usque adeo mihi videntur religio "latina fides'"^^; ja die gegenseitige Verwiesenheit

tein nähert sich einer

sancta et vera litteratura pariter habitare et ubicumque altera non est, illic et quia religio nostra aetema, etiam latina litteratura

neque altera esse posse, aetema fore.""*^

Diese eigenartige "Numinosität" der lateinischen Sprache sollte— bevor sie nur als dogmatisch-ideologischer Schlußpunkt der Argumentation genommen wird— doch aufgrund der angeführten, dieser Sprache zugeschriebenen Funktionen als Sachargument in Betracht gezogen werden. Denn einerseits hat Valla zweifellos die lateinische Sprache als ein durch die geschichtliche Überlieferung besonders reich gewordenes Ausdrucksmittel aufgefaßt, in welches die Momente der ethischen (individuellen und staatlichen) Ordnung, der geschichtlichen Erfahrung und ihrer klugen Auswertung, der wissenschaftlichen Bereitstellung der Begriffe und Methoden eingegangen sind — alles dies auf der Basis internationaler Kommunikation. Andererseits— was für das Verständnis Vallas noch wesentlicher ist — hat sich dies nicht nur im nachhinein angelagert und entfaltet, sondern konnte erst hervorgerufen werden durch das der lateinischen Sprache eigene und eigentümliche Sinnapriori, welches als Bedingung für das späterhin Geleistete, von der Sprache Abhängige anzusehen ist. "Haec (lingua latina) enim gentes illas, populosque omnes omnibus artibus, quae liberales vocantur, instituit, haec optimas leges edocuit, haec viam ad omnem sapientiam munivit, haec denique praestitit, ne barbari amplius dici possent."'^

Hier ist der Ort, die von Valla angewandte Methode des Argumentierens zu durchleuchten. Der Verweisungszusammenhang der drei genannten Hinsichten ist ja nicht einlinear aufzurollen.: denn das eigentliche, "letzte Begründungsmoment" für den Vorrang der lateinischen Sprache ist zwar ihr "numen" — ein Begriff für das, was sich durch sein Erscheinen selbst rechtfertigt, als Träger für alle folgenden Funktionen sinnvoll erweist. Aber doch muß dieses numen stets, wo sein Auftreten konkret belegt wird, gestützt werden durch die beiden anderen Hinsichten: durch das Faktum der (politischen) Verbreitung gerade dieser Sprache und ihres zivilisatorischen Hintergrundes sowie durch ihre hohe qualitative, den artes dienende Befähigung, die wieder aus dem historischen Entstehungsprozess dieser artes erklärbar oder doch plausibel

ist.

Bei der Prüfung dieser Argumentationsstruktur ist festzuhalten, daß es sich hier nicht um einen metaphysischen Begründungszusammenhang handelt. Valla kennt ein Erstes, aber weder als metaphysischen noch als transzendentallogischen Ansatzpunkt des Denkens, von dem in irreversibler Kausalität Folgerungen abgeleitet, Realitäten denkerisch fundiert werden können. Vielmehr kennt Valla sein (absolutes) Erstes immer zugleich als (relative) Größe: die (transzendentale) Bedingung der Möglichkeit ist ihm immer eine

seminar: the role of latin

334

Daraus entsteht nicht nur eine grundsätzhch geschichtsimmanente Argumentation, sondern auch eine Zirkelbegründung: sowohl ist die lateinische Sprache Bedingung der Möglichkeit für die civitas/civilitas des römischen Reiches (mit allen aufgezählten Momenten) wie auch dieses Reich andererseits seine civilitas, seine vielfältige Faktizität in die Sprache einbrachte. Die wechselseitige Verwiesenheit von geschichtsbedingender und geschichtsbedingter Sprachlichkeit ist nicht aufzulösen. Was Valla damit erstellt, ist eine Frühform hermeneutischen Denkens: Philosophie wird von der Frage nach den apriorischen Bedingungen des Erscheinenden abgelöst"^^ und auf Deutung des Phänomens selbst zugeordnet, wobei aus dem Phänomen unmittelbar der zureichende Grund seiner Erscheinung erhoben wird. Erstes Phänomen der Betrachtung wird in diesem Vorgehen die lateinische Sprache; Philosophie fällt mit Sprachprüfung zusammen. Ist dies bereits notwendig ideologisch? Eher erscheint dies als ein Problem, das unter einem imifassenderen Anspruch verstanden werden muß, nämlich von der versuchten Überwindung der (sprachfreien, sprachunabhängigen) Metaphysik und Ontologie her. Daß dieses Problem nicht in einem Wurf und auch nicht in der nötigen reflexiven Schärfe durchgedacht, sondern eher intuitiv-postulatorisch formuliert wurde, mindert nicht den methodologischen Wagnischahistorische, also kontingente Bedingung.

rakter des Unternehmens.

München, Deutschland

Notes 1.

Karl-Otto Apel, Die Idee dei Sprache in dei Tiadition des Humanismus von bis Vico, in Archiv füi Begriffsgeschichte, Bd. 8 (Bonn, 1963), 84.

Dante

2. Ebd., 95. 3. Ebd., 89, 190, 86f.

"Der logisch universalen, naturontologisch verifizierbaren Latinität der Scholastik) tritt die kulturprogrammatisch universale, menschlichheilsgeschichtlich verifizierbare Latinität entgegen." 5. Ebd., 162. 6. Ebd., 183, 243. 7. Dietrich Harth, Philologie und piaktìsche Philosophie. Unteisuchungen zum Spiach- und Tiaditionsveiständnis des Eiasmus von Rotteidam (München, 1970), 122. 8. Siehe Hanna-Barbara Gerì, Rhetoiik als Philosophie. Loienzo Valla (München, 4. Ebd., 162:

1974). 9. Zu nennen sind hier Vallas Zeitgenossen Vespasiano da Bisticci (1421-1498), Matteo Palmieri (1406-1457) und Leon Baptista Alberti (1407-1472), welche ihre Werke aus unterschiedlichen Motiven im Volgare verfaßten, während die Humanisten des 16. Jahrhunderts, ein Bembo (1470-1547), Caro (1507-1566), Castelvetro (1505-1571), Muzio (1496-1576), Tolomei (1492-1551), Trissino (1478-1550),

HANNA-BARBARA GERL

335

Varchi (1503-1565), um nur die wichtigsten zu nennen, schon aus der Defensive in die Offensive übergingen und grundsätzlich die Vulgärsprache verwendeten. — Vgl. auch Helene Harth, Einleitung zu 'Sperone Speroni, Dialogo delle lingue' (München, 1975), 7-56. 10. "Quod ad elegantiam pertinet, ego pro lege accipio quicquid magnis auctoribus placuit." (I). Die Elegantìarum linquae latinae libri V7 werden nach der Ausgabe Basileae 1540 zitiert, die in der von Eugenio Garin besorgten Ausgabe der 'Opera omnia' (Torino, 1962), den ersten Band (im Nachdruck) bildet. Römische Ziffern verweisen auf den Band, arabische Ziffern auf die Seitenzahl dieser Opera omnia. 11. Erstdruck Romae/Venetiis 1471; zwischen 1471 und 1536 erschienen 59 Ausgaben!; Erasmus brachte eine Kürzimg mit alphabetischer Ordnimg des Inhaltes und ohne die Vorworte heraus. Für den Schulgebrauch neu angelegt wxirde der Anhang L. Vallae de reciprocatione sui et suus liber, denuo ed. J. Fridericus (Richlinghusii, 1846). 12. Die "Oratio" war völlig in Vergessenheit geraten; die Erstedition erfolgte durch Johannes Vahlen, Laurentii Vallae opuscula tria, in: Sitzungsberichte der phil.-bist. Kl. der Kais. Ak. der Wissenschaften 61 (Wien 1869); Nachdruck in den bereits zitierten Opera omnia, Tomus alter. 13. n, 281: "quod a nemine ... antehac dictum sit." 14.

15.

3 und n, 283.

16.

80.

"tunc ab his omnibus ad omnes disciplinas latine scriptas tamquam ad optimam mercimoniam properatvun est ... ut illius = nmnmi) beneficio omnes omnia, quae usquam essent, mercari et sua ipsi aliis venditare possent, sic accepta lingua latina velut aureo nummo nationes cuncta, quae apud alios scripta erant, discere potuerunt et sua vicissim docere, cum antea nihil aliud legerent, nisi quod a popularibus suis compositum esset." 18. n, 284: "Sic propagata lingua latina non solum hae artes ad provincias simt profectae, sed etiam provincialium ad istas ingenia accessere, ut multo plures eximii in his scientiis provinciales extiterint, quam Romani, nec plures modo sed etiam propemodum praestantiores." 17. n, 283:

(

19.

20.

249; vgl.

21. n, 283. 22. n, 283.

23. Dialecticae Disputationes,

non

751: "Id

fit

consuetudine sermonis hiunani, qui

nihil etiam rationis habet."

24.

633.

Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444) wird dieser Zusammenhang nachgewiesen Hanna-Barbara Gerì, Philologie und Philosophie. Leonardo Brunis Übertragung der Nikomachischen Ethik in ihren philosophischen Prämissen (München, Fink, 25. Für

in:

1981). 26.

27.

273.

643; vgl. I, 80: "Omne ins, aut in aut aequi, pravique discrimine." 28.

29.

30.

774.

verborum interpretatione positum

est,

seminar: the role of latin

33^

31. Vgl. Eckhard Keßler, Einleitung zu Theozetikei bumanistiscbeT Geschicbtsschieibung im 16. Jabibundeit (München, Fink, 1971). 32. n, 6: "Nulla enim alia causa huius operis est, quam ut per exempla nos docet."

33. n, 6. 34. n, 6: "Etenim quantum ego quidem indicare possum, plus gravitatis, plus prudentiae, plus civilis sapientiae in orationibus historici exhibent, quam in praeceptis ulli philosophi." 35. 1, 4. Vgl. I, 271: "urbem vestram = Romam), non dico domicilium imperii, sed parentem literarum." 36. I, 249. Dies ist vor allem die Grundthese der "Oratio." (

37.

38.

791.

39.

1, 3: "optimam frugem, et vere divinam" - "divina potius laude celebrantur linguae vero suae ampliatione seipsis superiores fuerunt, tanquam relicto in terris imperio, consortimn deorum in coelo consecuti." 41. n, 285. 42. n, 285. 43. n, 285 f.

40.

...

44.

45. Vgl. dazu

Lorenzo Valla,

nunmehr Richard Waswo, The 'Ordinary Language Philosophy' in:

BHR

XLI

(1979), 255-271.

Zur Bedeutung der lateinischen Sprache in der Renaissance Eckhaid Kessler

Die

Absicht dieses Beitrages ist es nicht, neue historische Forschungsergebnisse vorzustellen, sondern einige Beobachtungen zur Bedeutung der lateinischen Sprache in der Renaissance, die beliebig erweitert und ergänzt werden können, rekonstruktiv in einen Zusammenhang zu bringen, der als Rahmen und Hintergnmd für eine Diskussion über die Rolle des Lateinischen in der Erziehung und Bildung der Renaissance dienen kann. Es ist kein nur historisches, rein antiquarisches Interesse, wenn es ein solches überhaupt geben kann, das diese Diskussion initiiert, sondern das Bewußtsein, daß die Stellung, die das Lateinische in der Erziehung und Bildung der abendländischen Tradition besaß, gefährdet ist. Aus diesem Bewußtsein der Krise sind in den letzten Jahrzehnten, zuletzt mit dem von Karl Büchner herausgegebenen Sammelband 'Latein und Europ,'^ Versuche unternommen worden, die Bedeutung des Lateinischen zu verteidigen und durch neue Initiativen zu befestigen— wie es überhaupt ein Gesetz zu sein scheint, daß Werte, Institutionen und Traditionen erst in der Krise einer neuen Reflexion zugänglich werden und damit die Chance einer Erneuerung erhalten.

Einer solchen Krise des humanistischen Bildungsideals, dessen integrierender Bestandteil das Latein ist, verdankt nicht nur der Humanismus seinen Namen, ^ sondern auch die Humanismusforschung im 19. Jahrhundert ihre ersten Anstöße, und der Krise der westlichen Kultur verdankt sich, so möchte es scheinen, das gegenwärtig zu beobachtende wachsende Interesse

Wurzeln hat. Die Frage nach der Bedeutung des Latein in der Renaissance zielt daher nicht auf die Feststellung und Klärung eines beliebigen historischen Tatbestandes, sondern sie will die Ursprünge jenes Verständnisses der lateinischen Sprache aufdecken, das durch das neuzeitliche hmnanistische Bildungsideal tradiert wurde imd dessen Krise uns in der Gegenwart zu neuer Reflexion zwingt. Sie fragt nach den Ursprüngen und Quellen jenes Lateinverständnisses, um eine historische Wesensbestimmung des humanistischen Bildimgsideals zu gewinfür die Renaissance, in der die europäische Neuzeit ihre

seminar: the role of latin

338

nen und durch

diese aufhellen zu können.

Wesensbestimmung

die Problematik der

Gegenwart

Selbst wenn man diesem— in seinem Kern selbst schon wieder himianistischplatonistischen— Verfahren einer historischen Wesensbestimmung des humanistischen Bildungsideals nicht zustimmt,^ kann man nicht umhin, eine weitgehende Parallelität zwischen der Situation des Latein zu Beginn der Renaissance und in der Gegenwart festzustellen, eine Parallelität, deren gemeinsamer Nenner die Krise ist, die in einer neuen Reflexion auf die Bedeutung dieser die abendländische Tradition bestimmenden Sprache gelöst werden

muß. Es

ist ja

nicht so, daß die lateinische Sprache

Mittelalter vergessen

von den Humanisten wieder entdeckt wurde — im Gegenteil, das Latein war selbstverständlich und bruchlos aus der Spätantike in das Mittelalter als Sprache der Kirche und der Wissenschaften, der Bildung und der Literatur übernommen worden. Wer im Westen überhaupt schreiben und lesen konnte, also überhaupt eine geistige Ausbildung genossen hatte, der verstand Latein und bediente sich des Lateinischen, um seine eigenen Gedanken und Erfahrungen auszudrücken. Die Kirche, die sich aus der Spätantike kontinuierlich in das Mittelalter hinein entwickelte, war das Zentrum der Büdung, so daß der Begriff des cleiicus identisch war mit dem des litteiatus, des Gebildeten,'^ und da sie ihre institutionelle und dogmatische Entwicklung, ihre Auseinandersetzung mit der sich wandelnden Realität, lateinisch formulierte, erfuhr auch die lateinische Sprache eine kontinuierliche und

gewesen wäre und

erst

lebendige Weiterentwicklung. Erst als— seit dem 13. Jahrhundert— die Laien, die per definitionem als NichtKleriker auch illitteiati, ungebildet,^ sind, beginnen, ihre eigene, an der Vulgärsprache orientierte Kultur zu entwickeln, wird die Differenz zwischen einer an den unmittelbaren Erfahrungen und Bedürfnissen des bürgerlichen Lebens orientierten Sprache des Volkes und der von diesen Erfahrungen unabhängigen Regeln gehorchenden Literatur-und Wissenschaftssprache deutlich und bewußt, ha den ersten vulgärsprachlichen Übersetzungen aus dem Lateinischen wird dieses als grammatica bezeichnet, als die Sprache, die grammatikalischen Regeln folgt, die man nur durch Grammatikunterricht lernen kann und die deshalb der Laienkultur nicht unmittelbar zugänglich ist.^ Dieses Bewußtsein wird sehr deutlich reflektiert im ersten Traktat, der sich mit der Frage einer nicht-lateinischen Literatur auseinandersetzt und sie, in lateinischer Sprache geschrieben, in den Kontext der lateinischen Tradition

Dantes De vulgan eloquentia. die Vulgärsprache von der Grammatik dadurch unterschieden sein läßt, daß erstere ohne jede Regel von Kindheit an durch einfache Nachahmung der Umgebung gelernt werde während letztere nur durch intensives Studium erworben werden könne, daß diese den Menschen natürlich, jene aber etwas Künstliches sei,^ so dokumentiert er damit, daß das lebendige Latein des Mittelalters nunmehr zu einer toten Sprache abgestorben einführt, in

Wenn Dante

ist,

deren Existenz nicht

sichert

mehr

selbstverständlich

ist,

sondern reflexiv ge-

werden muß. Und wenn das Ergebnis dieser Reflexion bei Dante lautet,

ECKHARD KESSLER

339

daß eine solche regulierte aber tote Sprache den Sinn habe, jenseits der nach Zeit

imd Ort unterschiedlichen lebendigen und natürlichen Sprachen ein stanKommunikationsmittel über Zeiten und Räume hinweg, eine

dardisiertes

Universalsprache, an die Hand zu geben, ^ so spricht er damit der künstlichen lateinischen Sprache eine Funktion zu, die auch von den ihm nachfolgenden Humanisten vertreten werden wird, nämlich, ein von Raum und Zeit unabhängiges, dem Wandel widerstehendes Bildungs-und Kulturmittel zu sein.^

Die Tatsache aber, daß die Funktion, die Dante der lateinischen Sprache grammatica zuspricht, von Petrarca der lateinischen eloquentia zugesprochen wird, zeigt, daß sich für den Humanisten eine zweite Front eröffnet hat, an der er das Latein verteidigen muß. Es geht nicht nur darum, wie bei Dante, die Grenze zwischen dem neuen Anspruch des Volgare und der traditionellen Funktion des Latein zu ziehen und zu behaupten, sondern auch darum, innerhalb des Lagers des Lateinischen selbst einer Aushöhlung der traditionellen Bildungsfunktion vorzubeugen und eine klare Grenze zu ziehen zwischen dem Vermittlungsinstrument der lateinischen Sprache als eloquentia und dem zum Selbstzweck erstarrten und unter logisch-formalen Gesichtspunkten gelehrten Regelwerk der Grammatik. Dieser zweite Krisenherd, diese zweite Bedrohung der lateinischen Tradition entsteht aus der Entwicklung der spätscholastischen Philosophie zum Nominalismus, initiiert durch Petrarcas älteren Zeitgenossen Wilhelm von Ockham und in den italienischen Städten sich etwa gleichzeitig mit dem Humanismus ausbreitend. ^° Werm nach nominalistischer Lehre, deren historische und systematische Begründung hier nicht weiter erörtert werde karm,^^ die Universalbegriffe, ohne die keine Aussage möglich ist, keine reale als

Basis, kein fundamentum in le, besitzen, sondern lediglich beliebige Bezeichnungen sind— noiniiiû significant adplacitum—dann verliert auch die semantische Funktion der Sprache, und das heißt in diesem Falle der lateinischen Sprache, jede erkeimtnisvermittelnde Bedeutung; nicht beUebig und daher der wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung und Vermittlung zugänglich bleibt allein die formallogische Regelstruktur der Sprache, wie sie in der Grammatik festgeschrieben und in der Logik reflektiert wird. Wenn der Humanist, wenn Petrarca daher die semantische Dimension der lateinischen Sprache und ihre damit verbundene Bildungsfunktion— die Schaffung einer gemeinsamen, gedeuteten Welt im Lichte der lateinischen Tradition durch die lateinische Sprache^^— verteidigen will, daim muß er diese nominalistische Reduktion des Latein auf die grammatischen Strukturen und die damit verbimdene Verabsolutierung der Grammatik und Logik bekämpfen, nicht, um die Grammatik, die Regulierung des Lateinischen überhaupt aus-

zuschalten—die Grammatik bleibt eines der humanistischen Fächer ^•^— sondern um sie zu refunktionalisieren im Ganzen der artes sennocinales und sie der Vermittlungsaufgabe unterzuordnen, die sich im Begriff und in der Sache der eloquentia manifestiert.^'*

Die Proklamation der lateinischen eloquentia durch die Humanisten ist also, so könnten wir sagen, die Verteidigung der an die semantische Dimension

gebundenen Bildungsfunktion der lateinischen Sprache

einerseits gegen das

seminar: the role of latin

340

Aufkommen einer auf Regelung und Normierung verzichtenden 'natürlichen' Sprache, die für sich beansprucht, unmittelbar aus der jeweiligen historischen

und gesellschaftlichen Situation ihre Fähigkeit zur Vermittlung zu beziehen— das Volgare— und andererseits gegen eine Reduktion von Sprache auf formale Strukturen unter Verzicht auf ihre inhaltliche Vermittlungsfunktion— die nominalistische Grammatik. So unterschiedlich die Zielsetzungen der beiden die Krise der lateinischen Tradition auslösenden Positionen sind— im Volgare die ausschließliche Konzentration auf das Semantische, im Nominalismus die ausschließliche Konzentration auf die logischen Strukturen— so manifestiert sich in beiden doch als identisches Grundverständnis von Sprache das Auseinanderfallen von semantischem und formalem Aspekt der Sprache. Während das Semantische historisch bedingt, konventionell beliebig und einer Normierung nicht zugänglich ist, ist das Formaiunhistorische

Strukturale imhistorisch, logisch-notwendig, aber gerade

darum

inhaltlich leer.

Beide Positionen sind daher Ausdruck jenes nominalistischen Prinzips des nomina significant ad placitiun.^^ Wenn man daher sozial-und bildungsgeschichtlich das Aufkommen des Bürgertimis für die Entstehung einer vulgärsprachlichen Literatur verantwortlich machen kann,^*^ so wäre philosophieund geistesgeschichtlich die nominalistische Trennung von Inhalt und Form der Sprach als Voraussetzung dafür zu nennen, daß das Volgare, als ungeregelte aber vermittlungsfähige Sprache den von der nominalistischen Grammatik aufgegebenen Raum des Semantischen einzunehmen begiimt. daher auch nicht verwunderlich, daß der Humanismus, im Bestreben, von Form und Inhalt, res und verbum, von struktureller imd semantischer Dimension der Sprache, die er im Lateinischen verwirklicht sah, zu verteidigen, sich vor allem mit diese nominalistischen Grundthese auseinandersetzt. In seiner 1519 geschriebenen, in Briefform gehaltenen Polemik /rz Pseudodialecticos^^ faßt der spanische Himianist Juan Luis Vives diese Auseinandersetzung zusammen und entwickelt damit die Grundposition einer humanistischen Sprachtheorie, aus der die himianistische Verteidigimg des Latein verständlich wird. Voraussetzung für Vives' Sprachtheorie ist, daß er nicht, in Reaktion auf die nominalistische Zerstörung der Einheit von semantischer und formaler Dimension der Sprache, sich auf eine realistische Position zurückzieht, nach der die Einheit der Sprache in der unhistorischen Notwendigkeit beider Aspekte, des semantischen und des formalen, garantiert ist, sondern daß er das nominalistische Grundaxiom durchaus akzeptiert: "Die Worte bezeichnen nach Belieben. Sicherlich ist es so. Aber man muß immerhin schauen, nach wessen Belieben imd Wollen die Worte bezeichnen, deim nicht nach dem Gutdünken der Parther oder Inder bezeichnen die römischen Worte-und ebenso wenig bezeichnen nach dem Wunsche der Römer die Worte der Parther nd

ist

die Einheit

dem Gutdünken der Römer die römischen und nach dem der Parther die parthischen."^^ Die semantische Gestalt einer Sprache ist kontingent, beliebig, aber diese Beliebigkeit und Kontingenz ist eingeschränkt durch die Tatsache, daß Sprache nicht nur irgendein willkür-

Inder-sondem nach

Gutdünken

liches

System von Zeichen und Bezeichnungen ist, sondern als Ganzes Instru-

ECKHARD KESSLER

341

der menschlichen Kommunikation/^ einem jeweiligen Kulturkreis — den Indem, Parthem oder Römern— eigen und gemein imd darum das Produkt von Tradition und Erziehung auf der einen, von Erfahrung und Auseinandersetzung mit der Realität auf der anderen Seite. ^° Die semantische Gestalt der Sprache ist daher zwar historisch bedingt, aber sie ist nicht subjektivistisch willkürlich, sondern reguliert und regulierbar, sie ist die normative Repräsen-

ment

im jeweiligen Kulturkreis gedeuteten gemeinsamen Welt, in die der muß, um in dieser gemeinsamen Welt lebens-und handlungs-fähig zu sein.^^ Weim aber so einerseits auch die scheinbar regellose, unvermittelte und tation der

einzelne, das Subjekt, sich, die Sprache erlernend, einfügen

kontingente semantische Gestalt der Sprache, wie sie in den Idiomen des Volgare eine selbständige Existenz zu führen schien, Strukturen aufweist und Regeln unterworfen ist, so ist andererseits— nach Vives — die logisch-formale Struktur der Sprache, wie sie die nominalistische Grammatik und Dialektik unabhängig von dem semantischen Gehalt imtersucht, nicht a priori vorhanden und unhistorisch notwendig. Auch sie unterliegt der historischen Entwicklung der Sprache als Ganzes, ist abhängig von der je entwickelten semantischen Gestalt und wird gewonnen aus der Analyse der konkreten Sprache, nicht aber a priori aus reinem Denken deduziert. ^^ Das nominalistische Problem der Sprache— der Hiatus zwischen semantischer Beliebigkeit und formallogischer Notwendigkeit, der die Kommunikationsfunktion der Sprache zerstört — wird also

vom Humanisten dadurch gelöst, daß er eben jene zerKommunikationsfunktion der Sprache als deren unverzichtbares Wesensmerkmal definiert, auf das semantischer Gehalt und formale Struktur gleichermaßen ausgerichtet sind und von dem her sie verstanden werden müssen. Semantischer Gehalt und formale Struktur sind— transzendentalphilosophisch gesprochen — Bedingung der Möglichkeit von sprachlicher Kommunikation überhaupt und müssen daher in jeder Sprache, die Kommunikation ermöglichen soll, also wirkliche Sprache ist, vorhanden und aufeinander zugeordnet sein. Beide sind daher weder absolut notwendig noch absolut beliebig, sondern bedingt durch die Kommunikationsgemeinschaft, den sensus commimis^^ des Kulturkreises, innerhalb dessen die jeweilige Sprache gestörte

sprochen wird und dessen Realität

sie repräsentiert.

Von diesem durch Vives entwickelten allgemeinen humanistischen Sprachverständnis aus lässt sich die Haltung der Humanisten zur lateinischen Sprache, ihre Beschäftigung mit dem Latein und die Probleme, zu denen diese Beschäftigung führt, verständlich und einsichtig machen. Wenn Sprache überhaupt eine Kultur und die in ihr geleistete Deutimg der Realität repräsentiert und vermittelt, daim ist die lateinische Antike mit ihren Werten und Wirklichkeiten in der lateinischen Sprache gegenwärtig und kann durch Erlernen der lateinischen Sprache wiederum erworben werden. Jeder, der der lateinischen Sprache mächtig ist, hat einen Zugang zur römischen Antike, und kann die Realität nach den Kategorien der lateinischen Tradition begreifen, und jeder, der seine eigenen Erfahrungen lateinisch auszudrücken vermag, vermittelt sie damit in das Denken und das Realitätsverständnis der römischen Kultur. Darum kann Valla, in der Praefatio zu den Elegantiae davon

seminar: the role of latin

34^ sprechen, daß überall,

wo lateinisch gesprochen werde, das römische Imperium

durch den Verlust der Kenntnisse und des Gebrauches der lateinischen Sprache der Untergang Roms besiegelt worden sei^^ und daß durch die Rückgewinnung der lateinischen eloquentia die römische Kultur und die geistige Herrschaft Roms zurückerobert werde. ^^ fortbestehe,^'*

daß

erst

Diese Verbindung von Rückeroberung der lateinischen Kultur und Erlernen der lateinischen Sprache sichert dem Sprachenlemen selbst eine bildende Funktion: das Latein ist nicht nur Mittel, die Inhalte der lateinischen Texte verstehen zu können— dies ließe sich allenfalls auch durch Übersetzungen erreichen— sondern die lateinische Sprache in ihrer Begrifflichkeit und ihrer

formalen Struktur bildet das Denken und Vestehen nach den Kategorien der römischen Tradition. Es ist darum notwendig, formale Struktur und begriffliche Differenziertheit des Lateins historisch korrekt zu erforschen und zu lehren, um die römische Antike richtig verstehen und sich aneignen zu köimen, um die Bildung an der

Antike leisten zu können. Auf dem Gebiet der formalen Struktur des Lateins, also der grammatikalischen Kongruenz oder Syntax, übernimmt der Humanist im Großen und Ganzen die Lehren der mittelalterlichen Grammatiken.^^ Diese Tatsache mag zunächst befremden, wenn man an die heftige Polemik der Humanisten gegen das mittelalterliche Latein denkt. Sie wird jedoch verständlich, wenn man sich erinnert, daß diese Polemik, wie oben gezeigt wurde, nicht einer Überwindung der grammatica mittelalterlicher Tradition galt, sondern ihrer Refunktionalisiering für den Bildungsprozeß, und sie wird notwendig im Lichte der Theorie von Juan Luis Vives, nach der grammatische Strukturen— auch die durch die mittelalterliche Grammatik gelehrten— nicht û priori deduziert, sondern aus der konkreten Sprache erhoben werden. Nicht die syntaktischen Regeln der mittelalterlichen Grammatik selbst, sondern ihre Isolierung aus dem gesamtsprachlichen Kontext und von der semantischen Dimension der Sprache, ihre formalistische Verabsolutierung, muß vom Humanisten bekämpft werden. Der gegenüber dem Mittelalter eigentümliche Akzent humanistischer Forschung imd Lehre auf dem Gebiet der lateinischen Sprache liegt daher auf der historischen Klärung der BegriffHchkeit: was bedeutet ein lateinisches Wort in klassicher Zeit, zu welcher Familie gehört es, was ist seine Etymologie, wie ist es gebildet, wie ist es von anderen, verwandten Begriffen imterschieden. Die bekannteste und einflußreichste dieser Untersuchimgen sind Vallas schon zitierten Elegantiae, aber es gibt daneben eine große Zahl anderer Werke von Guarino Veronese und Gasparino Barzizza über die neue Edition von Festus De verboTum signißcationibus bis hin zu Scaliger und Sanctius im 16.

Jahrhundert.^^ Zu diesen Bemühungen die Sicherung der historischen Gestalt der klassischen lateinischen Sprache gehören auch die Untersuchungen zur Orthographie imd Interpunktion und ein Ergebnis dieser neuen Interessen und Kenntnisse war die Fähigkeit der Humanisten, Fälschungen wie z.B. die Urkunde der Donatio Constantini aufgrund der verwandten lateinischen Worte zu entlarven. ^°

ECKHARD KESSLER

343

Das Ziel dieser Bemühungen um die klassische lateinische Sprache ist es jedoch nicht nur, die klassischen Texte verstehen zu können, sondern ist die aktive Beherrschung des klassichen Lateins, an der der Grad der individuellen Bildung und der Wiedereroberung der klassischen Kultur abgelesen werden kann: wer sich in seinem lateinischen Stü mit den klassischen antiken Autoren messen kaim, beweist damit, daß er selbst Teil der klassischen Welt und Kultur geworden

ist.-^^

Diese Identifikation von aktiver Beherrschung der klassischen lateinischen Sprache und Bildung, die aus dem humanistischen Verständnis der Sprache als Repräsentanten des einem Kulturkreis eigenen Realitätsverständnisses folgerichtig abgeleitet werden kann, birgt jedoch in sich bereits den Keim neuer Krisen.

Die Normativität des klassischen Lateins verlangt vom Gebildeten, sich in seinem Denken und in seinem Verständnis der Realität in den Erfahrungshorizont und das Weltverständnis der römischen Antike, die im klassischen Latein gegenwärtig sind, zu integrieren, die Realität im Lichte der Antike zu betrachten. Nun ist auch dieses Licht, weil einer bestimmten historischen Epoche angehörend und definitorisch auf diese beschränkt, nicht grenzenlos, auch die klassische lateinische Sprache lässt nur eine begrenzte Zahl von Realitäten, von Differenzierungen und individuellen Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten zu.^^ Ihre normative Verabsolutierung übt zwar einen positiven Bildungsdruck aus, die in ihr angebotenen Instrumente zur differenzierten Realitätsbewältigung sich allgemein anzueignen, sie verhindert aber gleichzeitig die Entwicklung neuer, der gewandelten Realität angepaßter Beschreibungskategorien und individueller Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten. Schon Petrarca hatte dieses Problem eines Klassizismus gesehen, der zwar die Akkomodation der Gegenwart an die Vergangenheit fordert nicht aber deren Assimilation an die Erfalurungen und Bedürfnisse der Gegenwart erlaubt und hatte daher in seiner Theorie der Imitiatio die Normativität der Antike relativiert und das Recht der Beurteilung, Auswahl, Veränderung und Neuschöpfung ausdrücklich für sich in Anspruch genommen. ^^ -^-^

Dennoch entwickelt sich, als Ergebnis der intensiven Erforschung des klassischen Lateins im 15. Jahrhundert und als Folge der durch lange Übung erlangten virtuosen Beherrschung der Sprache Ciceros, jene Schule des Ciceronianismus, die das reine ciceronianische Latein zum Selbstzweck der Bildung erhebt und damit in der Pedanterie eines formelhaften und leeren Klassizismus erstarrt, dessen stilistische Normativität nichit weniger bildungsfeindlich und lebensfern ist als die logizistische Normativität der nominalistischen Grammatik. -^^ Es bedarf des entschiedenen Widerstandes der vom humanistischen Bildimgsgedanken geprägten Geister wie Angelo Poliziano und Erasmus, um gegen diese 'humanistische Scholastik' eine lebendige, den Bedürfnissen des Individuums und den Anforderungen der Zeit gerecht werdende Bildungsfunktion des Lateinischen zu verteidigen.^^

Weim Polizian und Erasmus in dieser Diskussion auf die Relativität und historische Bedingtheit des ciceronianischen Stilmusters hinweisen und der

seminar: the role of latin

344

Normativität ciceronischer Stilfonnen die Verbindlichkeit seines Stilideals einer der Sache und der Person angemessenen Ausdrucksweise entgegenstellen,

dann bewegen

einem Argumentationszusammenhang, der schon Humanisten beschäftigte und der, wie die Übernahme dieser Argumentation durch Bembo zeigt,^'^ langfristig zur Aufwertung der Vulgärsprachen und zur Ersetzung des Lateins durch moderne Literatursprachen führt. Ausgangspunkt dieses Argumentationszusammenhanges ist wiederum das auch bei Vives beobachtete Bewußtsein, daß die lateinische Sprache imd ihre Normativität im semantischen wie im formalen Bereich nicht unhistorisch sie sich in

in der ersten Hälfte des Quattrocento die

und absolut

sondern

als Ergebnis einer kulturellen Entwicklung, an diese Kultur gebunden ist. Wenn dieses Bewußtsein der historischen Bedingtheit auch der lateinischen Sprache einerseits dazu führt, ihre klassische Gestalt als Repräsentant der klassischen Kultur zu erforschen imd sich anzueignen— der Weg, der zum Klassizismus führt — so wirft es andererseits notwendig auch die Frage auf, was dazu berechtigit, die klassische lateinische Sprache als normatives Ausdrucksmit-

gültig

ist,

als Kulturleistung, historisch

veränderten kulturellen Situation aufzupropfen. Solange und insofern das Lateinische an Differenziertheit und Vielfalt der Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten dem Volgare überlegen ist, ist eine solche Berechtigung gegeben, denn dann bedeutet Erlernen der lateinischen Sprache Erwerb eines differenzierteren Verhältnisses zur Realität. Sobald und insofern jedoch die vulgärsprachlich gedeutete Welt Realitätsaspekte enthält, die über die Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten des Lateinischen hinausgehen, werden die historischen Grenzen des Lateinischen als Einengung der gegenwärtigen kulturellen Eigenständigkeit fühlbar bzw., um mit Vives zu sprechen, es wird deutlich, daß das Latein nicht mehr vom sensus communis getragen ist.*^® Es bedarf folglich, will man nicht sich des Lateins überhaupt entledigen, einer neuen Reflexion über dessen Bedeutung. Als ersten Ansatz zu dieser Reflexion lässt sich jenes Gespräch über das Verhältnis von Umgangssprache und Literatursprache im antiken Rom verstehen, das in den Vorzimmern des Papstes Eugen IV. von dessen humanistischen Sekretären, unter ihnen Leonardo Bruni, Antonio Loschi, Poggio Bracciolini und Flavio Biondo, geführt wurde und 1435 von letzterem in einem Brief an Bruni zusammengefaßt imd beendet wird.^^ Wenn die Frage überhaupt aufgeworfen wird, ob in Rom vom normalen, ungebildeten Volk eine dem zeitgenössischen Volgare vergleichbare, von der grammatisch geregelten Literatursprache unterschiedene Umgangssprache gesprochen wurde'^ und wie das Verhältnis zwischen beiden gedacht werden müsse, so ist damit auch das Problem der Vulgarsprache, der zeitgenössischen Umgangssprache, und ihres Verhältnisses zum Lateinischen in die Diskussion eingeführt. Vertritt man, wie Biondo von Bruni berichtet, die Auffassung, daß die römischen Redner, um vom Volke überhaupt verstanden zu werden, sich der römischen Vulgärsprache bedient und erst nachträglich diese ihre Reden kimstvoU in die lateinische Literatursprache übersetzt hätten,'*^ daim wird der Zustand des 15. Jahrhunderts, die Kluft zwischen zwei völlig verschiedenen, gleichzeitig nebeneinander bestehenden Sprachen und Kulturen, in die römische Antike protel einer

ECKHARD KESSLER

345

jeziert und als eine quasi notwendige Kulturerscheinung legitimiert. Der unüberbrückbare Abstand zwischen Volgare und humanistischem Latein ist dann nicht ein Ergebnis der historischen Entwicklung, sondern Voraussetzimg für die Möglichkeit einer Literatursprache überhaupt, dem Klassizismus des Ciceronianismus ist der Weg geebnet. Vertritt man dagegen, wie Biondo selbst, die Auffassung, daß es in Rom drei Formen ein und derselben lateinischen Sprache gegeben habe, poetische Sprache, Prosasprache und Umgangssprache und daß Poesie und Prosasprache das Ergebnis eines allmählichen Veredelungs- und Regulierungsprozesses der sind,'*^ dann ist die Kluft zwischen Umgangssprache und Literatursprache, wie sie sich in der Differenz zwischen Volgare und Latein

Umgangssprache

im Quattrocento darstellt, keine unüberbrückbare Kultumotwendigkeit, sondern kann überwunden werden durch einen Prozess der Veredelung und Regulierung des Volgare zur Literatursprache. Die Normativität des Latein besteht dann nicht mehr in der klassizistischen Verbindlichkeit jener Gestalt, die sich im Werk Ciceros und Vergils manifestiert, sondern darin, daß es die veredelte und regulierte Form einer ihr zugrunde liegenden Umgangssprache ist und damit der angemessene imd repräsentative Ausdruck der sie tragenden lebendigen Kultur.

Schon ein Jahr bevor Biondo dieses sein antiklassizistisches Verständnis des Lateinischen gegen Leonardo Bruni verteidigt, vertritt Leon Battista Alberti, auch er an der päpstlichen Kurie beschäftigt, in der Vorrede zum 3. Buch von Della Famiglia den gleichen Standpunkt.*^ Obwohl Alberti durchaus, wie Valla, das Ende des römischen Imperiums mit dem Untergang der lateinischen Sprache und Kultur in einen ursächlichen Zusammenhang setzt,'^ ruft er doch nicht zur Rückeroberung Roms und seiner Kultur mittels der lateinischen Sprache auf, sondern zur Ausbildung einer eigenen, italienischen Kultursprache. Es war das Bestreben der lateinischen Schriftsteller, von allen Mitbürgern verstanden zu werden.*^ Daher kann einerseits die Umgangssprache in Rom nicht mit dem italienischen Volgare identisch gewesen sein*^ und muß es andererseits auch das Bestreben der modernen Schriftsteller sein, sich ihren Mitbürgern verständlich zu machen. Und mag auch die lateinische Sprache zunächst reicher und angesehener sein als das Volgare, so bedeutet dies nicht, daß nicht auch das Volgare durch die Anstrengimgen der Gelehrten zu einer reichen und angesehenen Literatursprache werden könnte.*^ Alberti ist zur Arbeit an der Veredelung des Volgare selbst bereit; er schreibt— auch— italienisch, und ebenso handeln andere Humanistenkollegen oder humanistisch beeinflußte Autoren."*^ Die Einsicht in die historische Bedingtheit des klassischen Lateins, in seine Gebimdenheit an die lateinische als Grundlage der literarischen Ausdrucksmöglichkeit und Voraussetzung ihrer allgemeinen Kommunikationsfähigkeit, führt also zumindest bei einigen Humanisten dazu, das Latein, wenigstens partiell, als Literatursprache aufzugeben und sich der Förderung einer Literatursprache zuzuwenden, die als Veredelung imd Regulierung des Volgare die Beziehung des klassischen Latein zur lateinischen Umgangssprache zu wiederholen sucht

Umgangssprache als

und nach dem Vorbild der lateinischen Literatursprache Kommunikations-

34^

seminar: the role of latin

instrument, Ausdrucksform der zeitgenössischen lebendigen Kultur sein will. In dieser nicht-klassizistischen Variante des Renaissancehumanismus wird deutlich, daß die Verehrung und Verteidigung der lateinischen Sprache nicht notwendig die Unterdrückung der vulgärsprachlichen Literatur bedeutete oder

bedeuten mußte. '^^ Beide Varianten, die klassizistische wie die nicht-klassizistische, sind Ergebnis des humanistischen Sprachverständnisses und der humanistischen Verteidigung der lateinischen Sprache. Sie sind beide jedoch nicht in der Lage, die tote lateinische Sprache auf Dauer wiederzubeleben, obwohl sie bis ins 16. Jahrhundert hinein und darüber hinaus nebeneinander und gegeneiuander existieren. In Sperone Speronis zwischen 1530 und 1542 entstandenem Dialogo delle lingue, der über DuBellay einen entscheidenden Einfluß auf die Entstehung und Theorie der französischen Literatursprache haben sollte, ^° erscheint der klassizistische Humanist als elitärer Pedant, der zwar noch die Argumente des 15. Jahrhunderts— größerer Ausdrucksreichtum der lateinischen Sprache, barbarischer Ursprung des Volgare, Einheit von römischer Kultur und lateinischer Sprache — im Munde führt, aber den Gedanken der universalen Bildung der Gegenwart an der Kultur der Antike durch Rückgewinnung des Latein aufgegeben hat zugunsten eines elitären Bildungsideals, das eine Vermittlung zwischen Volk und Gelehrtem, zwischen Latein und Volgare, als unzulässige Vulgarisierung streng ablehnt. ^^ Ihm antwortet der nicht-klassizistische Humanist in Gestalt Pietro Bembos, der in seinen 1525 veröffentlichten, aber schon bald nach 1500 verfaßten Piose della volgai Lingua das Toskanische als die verbindliche italienische Prosasprache theoretisch zu begründen unternommen hatte. ^^ Speronis Bembo hält durchaus an der Vorbildlichkeit der klassischen Sprachen fest, aber diese Vordbildlichkeit bedeutet nicht, daß Latein die einzig mögliche Bildungsund Literatursprache ist. Im Gegenteil, die Vorbildlichkeit meint, daß so, wie das Latein als Ergebnis eines Entwicklungsprozesses zu verstehen ist, auch andere Sprachen, auch das Volgare, rhetorischen und poetichen Regeln unterworfen und zu einer Kultursprache weiterentwickelt werden kann.^-'

Man könnte in Bembos Position, im Nebeneinander von Hochschätzung der lebendigen, organisch gewachsenen Vulgärsprache und Forderung nach deren verbindlicher Normierung, einen Widerspruch sehen, der das Problem von Latein und Volgare nun in die Vulgärsprache selbst trägt. 5"* Aber dieser Widerspruch ist, wie mir scheint, auflösbar in der Dialektik von kultureller Normativität und lebendiger Weiterentwicklung, von Akkommodation individueller, neuer Erfahrungen an eine gegebene Tradition und Assimilation dieser Tradition in die veränderte Realität, als die Dialektik, in der eine Kultur

lebendig bleibt und die, für das humanistische Verständnis von Sprache und ihrer Bildungsfunktion, auch auf die Sprache übertragen werden muß. Speronis Bembo ist in diesem Sinne ein echter Vertreter des humanistischen Gedankens sprachlicher Bildimg, der nicht an die lateinische Sprache gebunden ist, aber aus ihrem Studium und ihrer Tradition erwächst. Daß dieses Ideal im 16. Jahrhundert schon oder schon wieder von ganz anderer Seite in Frage gestellt wird, verdeutlicht eine weitere Gestalt in Speronis Dialog, die des Pietro Pomponazzi, der die berechtigte Kritik an der

ECKHARD KESSLER

347

klassizistischen, pedantischen, elitären Sprachanffassung des Latinisten

Vorwand nimmt,

zum

die prinzipielle Gleichwertigkeit aller Sprachen als

Ausdrucksmittel der Wahrheit zu propagieren und damit die Unabhängigkeit des Wahrheitsgehaltes einer Aussage von ihrer sprachlichen Gestalt. ^^ Diese Position greift zurück auf das nominalistische nomina significant ad placitum, gegen das, wie sich bei Vives zeigte, die humanistische Sprachtheorie gekämpft hatte. Diese Position leugnet den Aussage- und Bildungswert der historisch gewachsenen, Geschichte tradierenden Sprachgestalt und vertritt einen von der jeweiligen Formulierung unabhängigen Wahrheits- und Erkenntnisbegriff, für den Geschichte und geschichtliche Entwicklung keine Relevanz mehr hat.

Wenn man bedenkt,

daß es exakt diese Position des Speronischen PomponazDescartes ein Jahrhunder später zusammen mit seinem neuen, naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisideal verkündet, ^^ daim gewinnt man eine Vorstellung davon, welche Bedeutung die Diskussion um das Latein im 16. Jahrhundert, wie sie von Speroni dargestellt wird, für die Neuzeit und auch für die Gegenwart noch hat. Der Gedanke, der die Humanisten befähigte und motivierte, die lateinische Sprache aus der Krise des späten Mittelalters zu retten, war die Überzeugung, daß Sprache überhaupt weder natürlich noch beliebig, sondern Ergebnis eines historischen Prozesses der Kulturentwicklimg ist, daß in der Sprache daher eine ganze Kultur repräsentiert und zugänglich ist und daß daher sprachliche Bildung den Menschen selbst kultiviert und befähigt, sich in eine Kultur zu integrieren und aus einer Tradition heraus zu zi ist, die

leben.

Dieser Gedanke

ist an die lateinische Sprache nur insofern gebunden, als Begegnung mit der lateinischen Tradition diese Bedeutung der Sprache zuerst erfahren wurde, ^^ als sie der empirische Ausgangspunkt für die Entwicklung dieses Gedankens wurde und die in ihr repräsentierte lateinische Kultur als überlegen und vorbildlich empfunden wurde. Daß dieser Gedanke, einmal entwickelt, auch auf andere Sprachen übertragen werden kann und muß, beweist die Tatsache, daß die Humanisten schon sehr bald beginnen, auch andere Kultursprachen wie das Griechische und das Hebräische in ihre philologischen und kulturellen Bemühungen einzubeziehen und daß sie den

in der

Vulgärsprachen eine Entwicklungsmöglichkeit zur Kultur-und Literatursprache zuerkennen und diese Entwicklung fördern.

Wie

sehr, andererseits, die erefolgreiche Verteidigung des Lateins

und

seiner

Bedeutung von einem Festhalten an diesem Sprachverständnis und dem daraus sich ableitenden Bildungsideal abhängt, zeigt die Bedrohung, die ausgeht von einer unhistorisch verabsolutierenden, klassizistischen Haltung, die Kenntnis und Gebrauch der klassischen lateinischen Sprache als Selbstzweck betrachtet. In normativen Formeln erstarrt, vermag sich dieser Klassizismus nicht in die jeweilige historische Situation zu vermitteln imd spielt damit unbeabsichtigt jenem Nominalismus in die Hände, der, ebenso blind für die Dimension der Geschichtlichkeit, allein einem sprach-und geschichtsunabhängigen Wahrheitsgehalt Bedeutung beimißt. Klassizistische Sprachpedanterie ist ebenso bildungsfeindlich wie logizistischer Sprachverzicht: beide sind in normativen unhistorischen Formeln

seminar: the role of latin

348 erstarrt

und inhaltlich leer. Wenn die lateinische Sprache verteidigt, wenn ihre

Krise ins Positive gewendet werden soll, dann kann dies — im 20. Jahrhundert nicht anders als im 15. und 16. Jahrhimdert— nur geschehen im Kontext jenes Bildungsgedankens, der Sprache ganz allgemein als Medium und Instrument der Kultivierung des Menschen versteht und der sich, im Unterschied zu den in der Nachfolge Descartes' entwickelten naturwissenschaftlich-analytischen Methoden, in der hermeneutischen Methode der Geisteswissenschaften weiterentwickelt hat.^®

München, Deutschland

Anmerkungen 1.

Karl Büchner (Hg.), Latein

und Europa. Traditionen und Renaissancen,

(Stutt-

gart, 1978). 2.

Vgl.

Niethammer, Dez

Stieit

des Pbilantbiopinismus

und des

Humanismus in dei Theorie des Eiziehungsuntenichtes unsezei Zeit (München 1808), wo zum ersten Mal der Begriff des Humanismus geprägt wurde, in kritischer Absetzung gegen das aufkommende Bildungsideal des Realgymnasiums. 3. Der Versuch, über die historische Klärung des Ursprungs zu einer Wesensbestimmimg zu gelangen, ist selbst wiederum Erbe der Renaissance, eingeleitet durch Ficinos Zurückfühnmg der Philosophie auf ihren primus inventor Hermes Trisme-

zu seiner Plotinübersetzung {Opera, Basel 1576, Reprint Turin, 1962, vol. ü, 1537 f.) und fortgeführt durch zahlreiche historische Untersuchmigen wie Polydorus Vergilius, De rerum inventoribus, Venedig 1499; Alessandro Sardi, De rerum inventoribus, Mainz 1577 etc. Vgl. jedoch schon das Werk des Petrarca-Freundes Guglielmo de Pastrengo, De originibus rerum, ca. 1350, gedruckt Venedig 1547. 4. Vgl. zu diesem Sprachgebrauch Lorenzo Mehus, Historia litteraria Fiorentina ab armo MCXCII usque ad annum MCDXXXIX (Florenz, 1 759, Reprint München, 1968), p. 297: "Clericus idem erat per ea tempora ac litteratus," vgl. auch Henri d'Andeli, La bataille des sept arts, ed. Paetow (Berkeley, 1914), p. 37 ff. gistos in der Einleitimg

5. Vgl. 6.

Mehus,

a.a.O.

Anm.4.

Vgl. die Zeugnisse bei

in volgare per

Mehus

Bono Giamboni";

Anm.4) 156: "Traslato della gramatica "Qui comincia il tractato della spera com-

(a.a.O.

167:

Alphagano Phylosafo traslata di gramatica in volgare"; 174: "però che buono per grammaticha, a suo modo non suona buono, n'è bene trasferrelo a quel modo per volgare," ähnlich 176; 184; 280: (über Giovanni Villani) "L'autore e compositore della presente fruttuosa e laudabile Cronica fu il savio e discreto mercatante della casa e famiglia de' Villani, il cui nome fu Giovanni di Firenze, huomo di grande ingegno, morale e d'alta autorità, cittadino molto onorato per le sue virtù, e bontà, il quale non istante, che grammatico non fussi, di molte deUe arti liberali volgarmente ebbe piena notizia." Dazu der Kommentar von Mehus: "Vides Grammaticum minus fuisse loannem Villanum. Latinarum scilicet litterarum omnino erat expers. Grammatica enim idem erat ac latina lingua. Hinc Grammatiealis latinus." pilata per

quello, ch'è

ECKHARD KESSLER 7.

Vgl. Dante,

vol. n,

383

349

De vulgaii eloquentia l,

f.: "...

dicimns

...

l, in: Opeia omnia (Leipzig, Insel, 1921), quod vulgarem elocutionem appellamus earn, qua

infantes assuefiunt ab assistentibus,

quod brevius

dici potest,

cum primitus distinguere voces incipiunt;

vel

vulgarem locutionem asserimus, qam sine omni régula,

nutricem imitantes, accipimus. Est et alia locutio secundaria nobis, quam Romani grammaticam vocaverunt. Hanc quidem secundariam Graeci habent et alii, sed non omnes; ad habitum autem huius pauci perveniunt, quia non nisi per spatium temporis et studii assiduitatem regulamur et doctrinamur in illa. Hamm quoque tum quia tum quia naturalis est nobis duarum nobilior est vugaris, tum quia . . .

cum

potius artificialis existât.: 8. Dante, De vulgaii eloquentia I, 9 (a.a.O. Anm. 7, p. 395): "Hinc moti sunt inventores grammaticae facultatis: quae quidem grammatica nil aliud est quam quaedam inalterabilis locutionis identitas diversis temporibus atque locis. Haec cum de communi consensu multarum gentium fuerit regulata, nulli singulari arbitrio videtur obnoxia, et per consequens, nee variabilis esse potest. Adinvenerunt vero illam, ne propter variationem sermonis, arbitrio singularium fluitantis, vel nullo modo, vel saltem imperfecte antiquorum attingeremus auctoritates et gesta, sive illorum quos a nobis locorum diversitas facit esse diversos." 9. Vgl. dazu Francesco Petrarca, Familiales I, 9, 8 (Le Familiari, edd. V. Rossi/U. Bosco, (Florenz, 1933-1942), I, 47): "Adde quod hoc studio multis in longinqua regione degentibus prodesse permittimur; ad quos enim nostri copia et convictus nunquam forte venturus est, sermo perveniet. lam vero quantum posteris collaturi simus, optime metiemur, si quantum nobis contulerint maiorum nostrorum inventa, meminerimus." 10. Vgl. Eugenio Garin, 'La cultura fiorentina nella seconda metà del Trecento e i 'barbari Britanni, in: E. G., L'età nuova, (Napoli, 1969, 139-166); Paul Oskar Kristeller, 'Humanismus und Scholastik in der italienischen Reanissance, in: P. illa

O. K., Humanismus und Renaissance I, (München, 1974), 87-111, bes. 105; Eckhard Keßler, 'Humanist Thought: A Response to Scholastic Philosophy, in: Res Publica Litteraium n (1979) 149-66. 1 1 Eine knappe Darstellung der spätscholastischen Situation der Philosophie gibt Gordon Leff, The Dissolution of the Medieval Outlook. An Essay on the Intellectual and Spiritual Change in the Fourteenth Century (New York, 1976). 12. Vgl. Petrarca, Familiäres I, 9, 7 (a.a.O. Anm. 9): "Non referam tibi nunc que de hac re Marcus Cicero in libris Inventionum copiosius disputât (De inv. 1, 1 ff .) — j".st enim locus ille notissimnus — nee fabulam Orphei vel Amphionis interseram, quorum ille beluas immanes, hie arbores ac saxa cantu movisse et quocumque vellet duxisse perhibetur, nonnisi propter excellentem facundiam, qua fretus alter libidinosos ac truces brutorum animantium moribus simillimos, alter agrestes et duros in saxi modum atque intractabiles animos ad mansuetudinem et omnium rerum patientam creditur animasse." 13. Vgl. P. O. Kristeller, "Die humanistische Bewegung," in: Humanismus und Renaissance I (a.a.O. Anm. 10) 17 ff. 14. Vgl. Petrarca, Familiäres I, 7, 17 (a.a.O., Anm. 9, p. 38): "Quid autem queso ad omnen disciplinam tam utile, imo tam necessarium est quam ipsarum literarum prima cognitio, in quibus omnium studiorum fimdamenta consistimt? Sed, ex diverso, quid sene ridiculosius in talibus occupato?" Familiäres XII, 3, 18 (a.a.O. Anm. 9, vol. in, 21): "Adde quod nee grammatica nee Septem ulla liberalium digna est in qua nobile senescat Ingenium, transitus est ille, non terminus." Vgl. auch Familiales '

seminar: the role of latin

350 X,

9-10; XVI,

Humanismus,

14 passim.

Vgl.

z.B. P. P. Vergerio,

ebenso die pädagogischen Traktate des

ingenuis moiibus et libeialibus studiis

memorie della R. Accademia di Padova 34 (1918) 75-156, p. 123: "Ante onmia igitur, si quid proficere de doctrinis volimius, congrui sermonis habenda est ratio." 15. Man könnte einwenden, daß die Qualifikation des Volgare durch Dante als 'natürliche' Sprache dieser einen Charakter unmittelbarer Notwendigkeit und nicht konventioneller Beliebigkeit gibt. Aber es ist gerade die jeder Regulierung und Normierung sich widersetzende Unmittelbarkeit, die eine über das jeweils Gegebene, das hie et nunc des Kontingenten hinausweisende Allgemeingültigkeit unmöglich macht und daher in subjektivistischer Beliebigkeit mündet." 16. Vgl. August Buck/Max Pfister, Studien zur Prosa des Floientinei Vulgäibumanismus im 15. Jh., Abh. Marburger G.G. 1971, Nr.5 (München, 1973). 17. Juan Luis Vives, In Pseudodialecticos, in: Opeia, (Valencia, 1782, Reprint London, 1964), vol. lU, 37-68; engl. Übersetzung von Charles Fantazzi in: Renaissance Philosophy. New Translations, ed. Leonard A. Kennedy, (The Hague/Paris, 1973), 69-108. 18. Vives, In Pseudodialecticos (a.a.O., Anm.l7) 47: Nomina significant ad placitum: sane ita est: sed videndum est tamen, ex quorum placito et voluntate adolscentiae, ed. A. Gnesotto, in: Atti e

nomina significant, non enim arbitrio Parthorum aut Indorum significant nomina Romana, nec e contrario pro Romanorum libito significant Parthica vel Indica, sed pro arbitrio Romanorum Romana, pro arbitrio Parthicorum Parthica." 19. Vgl. Vives, In Pseudodialecticos (a.a.O., Anm.l7) 45: "si legem unusquisque de verbis feret ut apud se significant, quid attinet, non dico latinam linguam, sed ne uUam prorsus addiscere, quum illud facilius sit verba id demum significare, quod unicuilibet visum fuerit, et quot erunt mente concipientes, tam varios habebimt significatus, ita tandem, ut nemo alterum intelligat, quxmi imusquisque verbis suo more utatur, non communi." 20. Vgl. Vives, In Pseudodialecticos (a.a.O., Armi. 17) 62: "Ego sane sic a parentibus, sic a prudentissimis viris accepi, sic

rerum usu ac

experientiis didici

com-

pluribus."

Anm.l7) 60: "Uli quidem, etiam scholarum fervore, ubi nihil potest ipsis clamosius fieri, nil loquacius, quos citius vita deficiat quam vox, cum ad conventum prudentiorum hominum ex scholastico tecto educ*ntur, ita stupent, ac si essent in silvis educati; mira ibi et insueta illis facies omnium rerum, in alium quendam orbem perductos eos esse 21. Vgl. Vives, In Pseudodialecticos (a.a.O.,

in ipso

credas; ita usum vitae et communem sensimi ignorant; ita impeditos, ita implicitos eos videas, sive quid agant, sive loquantur, ut illos non esse homines jures; adeo sicut sermo ita et mores et actus omnes ab homine abhorrent, ut nihil illis cum ceteris hominibus commune praeter formam judices; bine quoque fit, ut negotiis gerendis, legationibus obeundis, administrandis rebus, aut publicis aut privatis, tractandis populorum animis ineptissime sint, non plus in ejusmodi rebus valeant

quam homines

foenei."

22. Vgl. Vives, In Pseudodialecticos (a.a.O., Anm.l7) 41: "stmt enim hae très artes (sc. grammatica, dialectica, rhetorica) de sermone, quem a populo accipiunt,

non ipsae tradimt; nam prius fuit sermo latinus, prius graecus, deinde in his formulae grammaticae, formulae rhetoricae, formulae dialectices observatae sunt, nec ad illas detortus est sermo, sed illae potius sermonem sunt secutae, et ad eum se se accomodanmt, ncque enim loquimur ad himc modum latine, quia grammatica

ECKHARD KESSLER

351

latina ita jubet loqui, quin potius e contrario, ita jubet sie Latini loquuntvir, res

eodem modo

grammatica

loqui,

quoniam quarum

se habet in rhetorice et dialectice,

utraque in eodem sermone versatur" p. 42: "antequam ulla dialectica inveniretur, ea erant, ut dialecticus esse docet, quae idcirco docet, quoniam loquentium sive Latine sive Graece consensus approbat, quapropter pracepta dialectices non minus quam gramma tices atque rhetorices, ad usum loquendi communem aptanda sunt." Ein Beispiel für diese Abhängigkeit der logischen Struktvir der Sprache von ihrer jeweiligen historischen Ausformuliening ist das Problem der doppelten Verneinung (a.a.O. p. 47): "An quemadmodum in latina lingua duae negationes unam affirmationem reddunt, ita esse vellent in hispana, in gallica, in graeca, apud quas, uti et apud reliquas fere omnes, negatio geminata majorem habet negandi vim quam simplex?" 23. Vgl. oben, Anm. 21. 24. Vgl. Lorenzo Valla, In sexUbios Elegantianun praefatio, ed. E. Garin in: Piosatoii latini del Quattrocento (Milano/Napoli, 1952), 594-600; p. 596: "Nostra est Italia, nostra Gallia, nostra Hispania, Germania, Pannonia, Dalmatia, lUyricum, aliae nationes. Ibi namque romanum Imperium est ubicumque romana lingua dominatur." 25. Lorenzo Valla, In sexlibios Elegantianun (a.a.O., Anm. 24) 598: "Nam quis litterarum, quis publici boni amator a lacrymis temperet, cum videat banc (sc. latinam linguam) in eo statu esse, quo olim Roma capta a Gallis? Omnia eversa, incensa, diruta, ut vix capitolina supersit arx? Siquidem multis iam saeculis non

multaeque

modo nemo

latine locutus est, sed ne latina quidem legens intellexit." Lorenzo Valla, In sex libros Elegantianun (a.a.O., Anm. 24) 598 f.: "Quare pro mea in patriam pietate, immo adeo in omnes homines, et pro rei magnitudine cimctos facundiae studiosos, velut ex superiore loco libet adhortari evocareque et illis, ut aiunt, bellicum canere. Quousque tandem Quirites (litteratos appello et 26.

romanae linguae quilini), perii,

cultores, qui et vere et soli Quirites stmt, eteri

enim potius

in-

quousque, inquam, Quirites, urbem nostram non dico domicilium im-

sed parentem litterarum, a Gallis captam esse patiemini? id est latinitatem

a barbarla oppressam?" 27. Vgl. W. Keith Percival, Giammatical Tradition and the Rise of the Vernaculars, in: Current Trends in Linguistics vol. 13: Historiography of Linguistics

(The Hague/Paris, 1975), 231-275. 28.

Von

von Ausgaben. Ich benutze Lyon 1551 gedruckte. Guarino Veronese, De vocabulorum obser-

Vallas Elegantiae gibt es eine große Zahl

die bei Gryphius in

Modena M.S. K 4, 17 (415); Gasparino Barzizza, Vocabularium breve, Venetiis, 1515; Bartolomeo Fazio, De differentia verbonun latinorum, in: Pseudo-Cicero, Synonyma, ed. Paulus Sulpitianus, Romae, 1487; Franciscus Marius Grapaldi, De partibus aedium Dictionarius longe lepidissimus nee minus fructuosus, Argentinae, 1508; Nicolaus Perottus, Comucopiae seu Latinae Linguae Commentarli locupletissimi, Basileae, 1532; Sexti Pompei Festi, De verbonun significationibus, Romae, 1471; Venetiis, 1474; Mapheus Vegius, De verbonun significatione in iure civih, Vicenza, 1477; Andreas Alciati, De verbonun significatione libri TV, Lugduni, 1548; Julius Caesar Scaliger, De causis hnguae latinae hbri XIII, Lugduni, 1540; Franciscus Sanctius, Minerva sive de proprietate sermonis Latini, Salmanticae, 1587. Zur Geschichte der lexicographischen Arbeit der Renaissance vgl. Remigio Sabbadini, Il metodo degh umanisti, (Firenze, 1920), 29-34; De Witt T. Stames, Renaissance Dictionaries. Enghsh-Latin and Latinvatione, in: Biblioteca Estense,

35^

seminar: the role of latin

English (Austin, 1954). Zur Bedeutung dieser semantischen Untersuchungen vgl, Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Oiatois (Oxford, 1971), 1-50. 29. Vgl. z.B. Tortelli, De orthographia, Vat. lat. 1478, an dessen Abfassung Valla nicht unbeteiligt war, vgl. Ottavio Besomi in: Italia Medioevalia e Umanistica 9 (1966) 75-121. Vgl. Remigio Sabbadini, Il metodo degli umanisti (a.a.O, Anm. 28) 3-15. 30. Vgl. Lorenzo Valla, De falso eredita et ementita Constantini donatione, ed. W. Setz, in: W. Setz, Lorenzo Voilas Schrift gegen die Konstantinische Schenkung (Tübingen, 1975). Schon vor Valla hatte Petrarca, Ep. sen. XVI, 5 (hg. v. P. Piur, in: Petrarcas Briefwechsel mit deutschen Zeitgenossen (Berlin, 1913), 114 ff. zwei angebliche Urkimden Caesars und Neros mit gleichen Argumenten als Fälschimgen entlarvt.

'Who began the revival of learning? The Renaissance point Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters XXX (1944) 625 ff. Die Meinung der Humanisten darüber, wer als erster die klassische Bildung, die studia humanitatis, wieder belebt habe, differieren durchaus— in der Regel ist es immer ein Vertreter der vorhergehenden Generation. Das Kriterium aber, nach dem diese Leistung bemessen, an dem sie demonstriert wird, ist der lateinische Stil, also nicht nur Rezeption der lateinischen Literatur, sondern auch und vor allem aktive Reproduktion. 31. Vgl. H. Weisinger,

of view,' in: Papers of the

32. Baxandall (a.a.O., Anm. 28) 11 ff. gibt ein eindrucksvolles Beispiel der imterschiedlichen Differenzierungs-imd Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten von klassischem Latein und Volgare anhand zweier in den beiden Sprachen verfaßter Aussagen über die Malerei Pisanellos aus dem 15. Jahrhundert. 33. Hierher gehören z.B. die von Eduard Fueter {Geschichte der neueren Historiographie, München/Berlin, 1911) als Anachronismus verurteilten Bemühungen etwa Leonardo Bnmis, die politischen Institutionen des zeitgenössischen Florenz in der Terminologie der römischen Republik zu beschreiben. 34. Vgl. Petrarca, Familiäres I, 8, 2 (a.a.O., Anm.9, vol. I, 39): "Apes in inventionibus imitanda, que flores, non quales acceperint, referunt, sed ceras ac mella mirifica quadam permixtione conficiunt" (Zur Tradition dieses Bienengleichnisses vgl J. V. Stackeiberg, Das Bienengleichnis, in: Romanische Forschungen 6 (1956) 271 ff. Pamihares XXH, 2, 20 (a.a.O., Anm.9, vol. IV, 108): "sum quem similitudo delectet, non identitas, et similitudo ipsa quoque non nimia, in qua sequacis lux ingenii emineat, non cecitas, non paupertas; simi qui satius rear duce caruisse quam cogi per omnia ducem sequi. Noli ducem qui me vinciat sed précédât; sint cuna duce oculi, sit indicium, sit libertas; non prohibear ubi velim pedem ponere et preterire aliqua et inaccessa tentare." Vgl. dazu auch E. Keßler, 'Geschichtsdenken und Geschichtsschreibung bei Francesco Petrarca,' in: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 51 (1969) 109-136. 35. Vgl. zimi Ciceronianismus Remigio Sabbadini, Storia del ciceronianismo e di altre questioni letterarie nella età della rinascenza (Torino, 1886). 36. Vgl. den Briefwechsel zwischen Angelo Poliziano imd Paolo Cortese in: E. Garin (Hg.), Prosatori Latini del Quattrocento (a.a.O., Anm. 24, 902-911); Erasmus, Dialogus Ciceronianus, ed. Io. C. Schönberger (Augsburg, 1919). 37. Vgl. G. Santangelo (Hg.), Le epistole 'De imitatione' di G. F. Pico della Mirandola e Pietro Bembo (Firenze, 1954). 38. Vgl. oben, Anm. 21. 39. Vgl. Flavio Biondo, De verbis Romanae locutionisadLeonardum..., in: Scritti

ECKHARD KESSLER

353

Nogara (Roma, 1927), 115-130. Anm.39) 116: "Magna est apud doctos aetatis nostrae homines altercatio et cui saepenumero interfuerim contentio, materno ne et passim apud rudem indoctamque multitidinem aetate nostra vulgato idiomate, an grammaticae artis usu, quod latinum appellamus, instituto loquendi inediti e ran di

Biondo Flavio, a cura

40. Vgl. Flavio Biondo,

more Romani

De verbis

di B.

(a.a.O.,

...

orare fuerint soliti."

41. Vgl. Flavio Biondo,

memini, Luscus

verbis

(a.a.O.,

...

Anm.39)

"Tecum enim, si recte quoddam et plebeium, ut

117:

et Cintius sentire videbantur, vulgare

Romanis fuisse loquendi genus a litteris remotum, quo doctissimi etiam oratores apud populum illas dicerent orationes, quas postmodum multa lucubratione in grammaticam latinitatem redactas posteris posteriora habuerunt saecula.

reliquerunt." 42. Vgl. Flavio Biondo,

verbis

...

dictionis formas tunc fuisse, poeticae

(a.a.O.,

Anm.

39) 120

f.:

imam numeris astrictam,

"...

très latinae

oratoriae alteram

nee contextam numeris nee carentem, vulgaris tertiam fluentem et quaquaversum sine numero sine ordine dilabentem abiectum vero genus tertium tamquam natura ipsa omnibus in commime datum, etsi iisdem quibus superiora duo conficiebatur verbis, nulla tamen arte, nullis habebatur regulis, sed dissolutum ac pervagatum erat, cumque in vulgi possessione remaneret, malora ilia attingere .

. .

non valentis, vulgare appellabatur. Ncque tamen ideo non latinima vel, quale nostra habent tempora vulgare, omni latinitate carens erat.... Pari itidem forma, quam Romani prima loquendi consuetudine communem habuerant dictionem, bonarum artium studiis excolentes nonnulli reddidenmt meliorem; et partim eloquentiae artibus illustratam in orationis solutae instrumentum redegerunt, partim modulatione vestitam pressa et angusta carminis aptitudine concinnatam poema esse fecerunt." 43. Leon Battista Alberta, Delia famiglia, ed. Cecil Grayson (Bari, I960); ich zitiere nach der deutschen Übersetzimg von W. Kraus (Leon Battista Alberti, Über das Hauswesen, übers, v. W. Kraus, eingel. v. Fritz Schalk, Zürich/Stuttgart, 1962) Zur Abfassungszeit der ersten drei Bücher (1434) vgl. die Einleitimg von Schalk, p.

vm.

Über das Hauswesen Glanz unseres Reiches erlosch nicht 44. Alberti,

(a.a.O.,

Anm. 43)

196:

"Und

ich glaube, der

früher, als gleichsam alles Licht, alle Kennt-

und Literatur verblichen war." Über das Hauswesen (a.a.O., Anm. 43) 197: "Obgleich ich meine, kein Gelehrter wird bestreiten, was man meines Erachtens in diesem Punkte annehmen muß: daß alle alten Schriftsteller in einer Weise schrieben, daß sie von nis der lateinischen Sprache 45. Alberti,

allen Mitbürgern verstanden sein wollten."

Über das Hauswesen

(a.a.O., Anm.43) 196: "Und ich möchte mich Meinimg derjenigen anschließen, die ... behaupten, daß zu jener Zeit und auch früher immer in Italien diese imsere heute im Gebrauch stehende Gemeinsprache gesprochen worden sei." 47. Alberti, Über das Hauswesen (a.a.O., Anm.43) 198: "Gern gestehe ich, daß die alte lateinische Sprache gar reich und schön ist; ich sehe aber darum nicht ein, wodurch unser heutiges Toskanisch solche Abneigung verdient, daß auch das Beste,

46. Alberti,

in dieser Frage keineswegs der

wenn es in dieser Sprache geschrieben ist, vms mißfallen müßte. Ich liebe es, recht genau auszudrücken, was ich meine, imd in einer Weise, daß ich auch verstanden werde.... Mag jene alte Sprache, wie sie sagen, bei allen Völkern das höchste Ansehen genießen, nur weil in ihr viele Gelehrte geschrieben haben, so wird gewiß

seminar: the role of latin

354 die unsrige ebenso ausgefeilt

und den

Fleiß ihrer

und zugeschliffen sein, wenn die Gelehrten ihren Eifer

Nächte daran setzen."

August Buck, Studien zut Piosa ... a.a.O., Anm. 16. Oskar Kristeller, 'Urspnmg und Entwicklung der italienischen Prosasprache,' in: P.O.K., Humanismus und Renaissance II (München, 1976), 48. Vgl.

49. Vgl. Paul

132-148. 50. Vgl. Sperone Speroni, Dialogo delle lingue, in: I Dialoghi di

Messer Sperone

Speroni, Vinegia 1542 (Sperone Speroni, Opere, edd. N. dalle Laste/M. Porcellini, 5 vol., Venezia, 1740, voi. I, 166-201; ital./dt. hg. u. eingel. v. Helene Harth, Mün-

chen, 1975). Ich zitiere nach der Ausgabe der Opere und der deutschen Übersetzung. Zur Datierung vgl. die Einleitung von H. Harth, p. 50; zum Einfluß auf DuBellay p. 40-48. 51. Vgl. Sperone Speroni, Dialogo ... (a.a.O., Anm.50) 168/67: "Mir scheint, wenn ich es recht betrachte, daß sich die toskanische Volkssprache im Vergleich zum Lateinischen verhält wie der Bodensatz zum Wein, weil diese nichts anderes als das verdorbene Latein ist, welches durch den langen Gebrauch, die Gewalt der Barbaren oder auch durch imsere Rohheit nimmehr verunstaltet ist. Deshalb fehlt denjenigen Italienern, die dem Studium der lateinischen Sprache das der Volkssprache vorziehen, entweder die Fähigkeit, das Gute vom Schlechten zu unterscheiden, oder sie haben, völlig des Verstandes beraubt, nicht die Kraft, das Beste zu besitzen.... Allen müßte man daher folgendes zam. Gesetz machen: dem Volk, nicht lateinisch zu sprechen, um den Ruf dieser göttlichen Sprache nicht herabzusetzen; den Gebildeten, niemals die Volkssprache zu gebrauchen, wie die Unwissenden, sofern nicht irgendeine Notwendigkeit sie dazu zwingt, um dem dreisten Pöbel durch das Beispiel und die Autorität bedeutender Männer nicht einen Vorwand zu liefern, seine Grobheiten der Nachwelt zu bewahren und seine Ignoranz als Ktmst erscheinen zu lassen." 52. Vgl. Pietro Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua, a cura di M. Marti (Padova, 1955). 53. Sperone Speroni, Dialogo ... (a.a.O., Anm.50) 183 ff./97 ff.: "Wenn also die Griechen und Römer, Leute, die sich um die Kultur ihrer Sprachen mehr bemühten als wir uns um die unsere, Eleganz des Ausdrucks erst nach einiger Zeit und mit viel Mühe fanden, darf es vms schon gar nicht wimdem, daß wir in der Volkssprache noch nicht genug davon besitzen, und man sollte hierin keinen Gnmd sehen, sie als schlecht oder wertlos zu verachten. Gewiß, die lateinische Sprache ist um vieles wertvoller, besser gesagt, war es, ist es aber nicht mehr. Doch mag man sie in der Vergangenheit auch noch so geschätzt haben, der Tag wird kommen, an dem die Volkssprache gleiche Vollkommenheit erlangen wird." 54. Auf einen solchen impliziten Widerspruch weist Helene Harth in ihrer

Einleitung (a.a.O., Anm.50, p. 31) hin. 55. Sperone Speroni, Dialogo ... (a.a.O., Anm.50) 194/119: "Lieber glaube ich mit Aristoteles und der Wahrheit, daß keine Sprache der Welt das Privileg besitzt, die Vorstellungen des Geistes von Natur auszudrücken. Alles liegt vielmehr bei der freien Willensentscheidung des Menschen. Wer daher in mantuanischem oder Mailänder Dialekt über Philosophie reden will, dem kann es aus keinem vernünftigen Grund verboten werden, wenn ihm nicht das Philosophieren und das Verstehen der Ursachen der Dinge überhaupt verboten werden soll." 56. Vgl. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, Leiden 1637, 1, 9 (franz. /dt. hg.v.L. Gäbe, Hamburg 1960, 13): "Jemand der den schärfsten Verstand hat und seine

ECKHARD KESSLER

355

Gedanken am besten zu ordnen versteht, um sie klar mid verständlich zu machen, kann die Leute am besten von dem, was er vorbringt, überzeugen, selbst wenn er nur niederbretonisch spräche und niemals Rhetorik studiert hätte." 57. Vgl. die Beschreibung von Petrarcas 'Spracherlebnis' bei Walter Rüegg, Cicero und dei Humanismus, Formale Unteisucbungen über Petiaica und Eiasmus (Zürich, 1946), 7-65. 58. Vgl. Helene Harth in ihrer Einleittmg

zu Speroni

(a.a.O.,

Anm.

50) 38.

Apologie und Kritik des Lateins im Schrifttum des deutschen

Späthumanismus

Argumentationsmuster und sozialgeschichtliche

Zusammenhänge

(gekürzte Fassung) W. Kühlmann

20. Mai 1623 schreibt der nachmalige Rothenburger Bürgermeister Johann Georg Styrzel (1591-1668) -ein später Vertreter des stadtbürgerlichen Gelehrtenhumanismus, produktiv als Verfasser lateinischer Lyrik und mit zahlreichen Zeitgenossen in reger Korrespondenz— an den Ulmer Patrizier Hammonius Besserer. Die Erinnerung an die gemeinsame Schulzeit leitet über zum Lob der musischphilologischen Interessen des Brief-

partners, . . .

praesertim

cum magno meo cum

gaudio videam, seculum nostrum

praesens, utut ad pristinae aetatis barbariem sensim relabi videatur, non tamen adeo esse effoetum bonarum literarum, quin aliqua subinde, licet non ita tamen multa veluti trunca, &. ad solum usque recisa, ncque plane adhuc arida arbuscula germina producat, quale modo te lubens-laetusque cerno. ^

einen emphatischen Preis der Philologie schließt sich der Appell an:

AGE QUOD

AGIS,

osores &.

alij

qui

aestimes

...

& PERGE VELUT PERGIS: neque quid literarum modo REALES se dici volunt, ogganniant unius assis

Die hier benutzten Bilder und Formeln— die Metapher von beinahe verdorrten Baum (der Renaissance) und die Vorstellung von der drohenden Barbarei—gehören zu einem in sich zusammenhängenden Argumentationssystem, das als Basis epochaler Selbstverständigung und Teil eines weitreichenden zeitgenössischen Diskurses nicht nur die Briefliteratur, sondern auch das Deklamationsund Traktatschrifttum des deutschen Späthmnanismus etwa der Jahrzehnte von 1580-1640 durchzeit. In dieser Zeit wird im Gegenzug zur obrigkeitlichen Restauration des nachreformatorischen Schulhimianismus imd im Zuge komplexer politischer, sozialer imd wissenschaftsgeschichtlicher Prozesse auch das Verhältnis des Lateins zur Muttersprache unter den verschiedenen Aspekten des Spracherwerbs imd der Sprachverwendung erneut programmatisch diskutiert und problematisiert.

KUHLMANN

35/

Diese Auseinandersetzung kann nur verstanden werden als Moment einer übergreifenden Funktions— und Legitimationskrise des Melanchthonschen Erziehungs— und Bildungssystems, in deren Folge als Reaktion auf den Pro-

blemdruck der sozialen Praxis zwar die traditionellen Axiome jenes Systems nicht außer Kraft gesetzt, aber doch durch veränderte, d. h. auf neue Interessen und Bedürfnisse zugeschnittene Qualifikationsbilder kultureller Kompetenz überlagert werden. Die Desintegration der humanistischen Gelehrtenrepublik

und lateinischen Gelehrtenkultur in Richtung auf ein sich um Nobilitierung imd Qualifizierung der Muttersprache bemühendes außerscholastisches Publi-

kum

hängt insofern mit

zusammen,

dem Prozeß

der frühabsolutistischen Staatsbildung

Voraussetzung für die Entstehung jenes Publiku*ms zu betrachten ist. Praktiken, Ziele und Methoden des humanistisch-scholastischen Enzyklopädismus wurden von jenem Teil des Gelehrtenbürgertums selbst problematisiert, das sich nach Maßgabe sozialer Selbstbehauptung sowohl auf die spezifischen Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse wie auch auf die Vorbedingungen von Aufstiegs— und Partizipationschancen einzustellen hatte, die sich aus der Eingliederung in die zunehmend ausgeweitete staatliche, um das Machtzentrum des Hofes organisierte Bürokratie ergaben. Der genuin bürgerliche Geltungsanspruch der nobilitas litteraria war weiter nur erfolgreich zu vertreten durch eine praxisbezogene und nach dem Prinzip von Aufwand und Nutzen kalkulierte innere Umformimg humanistischer Erziehungstraditionen (politisch-historische Textegese, Neostoizismus, Tacitismus), verlangte zugleich auch die nicht konfliktlos verlaufende Integration überkommener Bildungsvorstellungen [litteiata pietas] in die Rollen— und Verhaltensmuster einer aristokratisch-höfisch geprägten Gesellschaftskultur, in der Bürgertum und Geburtsadel zunehmend in Konkurrenz traten. Die Synthese zwishchen Gelehrtenerziehung und Verhaltenskultur prägt jene auch literarisch bestimmende Elite des Barockzeitalters, die sich aus der Überformung der altständischen Gesellschaft durch das Prinzip der 'Nähe zum Hof herauskristallisierte. Der Übergang von Philologie— dies die Formel des Lipsius— bracht einen Vorgang auf seinen Neimer, angesichts dessen ästhetisch-lials dieser als

von Kennern zugenschnittene sprachund systematisch aufbauende Gelehrsamkeit {solida doctrìna) im den Einzelnen nur dann ihren Sinn behielten, wenn sie zugleich einen persönlichen Habitus beförderten, der geistige und moralisch-praktische Wegweisung für die individuelle Selbstbehauptung in der Gesellschaft, aber auch die Anpassung an die spezifische Rationalität und Ordnungsmentalität terarische Erziehung, die auf einen Kreis

lich-poetische Virtuosität

des frühbarocken Poiicey-Staates implizierte. Es ist sehr aufschlußreich, die Spuren dieses Prozesses-darin eingelagert die Auseinandersetzung um das Verhältnis von Latein und Muttersprache— nicht nur wie bisher vom Standpunkt und im Schrifttum der barokken Sprachgesellschaften und der Reformpädagogik (Ratke, Comenius) zu verfolgen, sondern als Thema innerhalb des lateinischen Schrifttums selbst auszumachen. Die übergreifende Perspektive der drohenden Barbarei als Topos konsevativer Kulturkritik wird dabei selbst Indiz einer 'Spätzeitlichkeit' des Späthumanismus im Sirme einer historisch gebotenen bewußten Reflexion von Überlieferungen und einer Problematisierung kultureller Kontinuität.

seminar: the role of latin

358

Matthias Bemegger (1582-1640), Straßburger Geschichtsprofessor, bedeutender Exponent der deutschen Lipsius-Schule und maßgeblicher Vertreter der die barocke Literarizität mitbegründenden politisch-historischen Philologie, nicht unwichtig auch als Mentor und Propagator der muttersprachlichen Literatur, macht die Krise der humanistischen Studien zur quaestio seiner 1622 gehaltenen Rektoratsrede. Dabei werden ausführlich Beobachtungen, Erfahrungen imd Beweisgründe von fiktiven, aber nicht fingierten Kulturkriti-

kem

referiert, die

in Germania nostra doctrinam humaniorem, ut antiqui loquebantur, delinquere putant, &. cima non habet, quo progreditur ulterius, incrementis omnibus consumptis, ex lege mortalitatis ad occasum spectare, paulatim obsolescere, ipsa vestustate iam frigere ac praeter istos ex plebe eruditos, &. hanc proletariam turbam, paucos omnino superesse rei literariae proceres, qui velut familiae extremi, Musarum nomina atque insignia secum sint in sepulcra tracturi.^

nunc enim

Die Frage nach dem "Greisenalter der Studien" wird zur Frage nach dem Schicksal eines Moribunden, für den keine Therapie zur Verfügimg steht: Sed quid si, cogitabam, aeger ipse (fingam enim Ol ego studiorum hoc ceu corpus quoddam, circa quod medicorum occupetur industria), quid si, inquam, hie aeger aut ita senio defectus &. exhaustus viribus sit, ut ne possit quidem etsi maxime velit; aut ita contumax ac refractarius, ut ncque velit, si possit ullius opem admittere medicam?.... Atqui sunt perfecto magnae in Uteris famae viri, qui studia haec nostra ad extremam deducta senectutem, ac propemodum in limine fati nunc haerere dictitant, imo Parasiti Terentiani dictum illud lepidissimum, quo in senem a se modis omnibus exagitatum festivissime ludit... Exequias Uteris ire, quibus est commodum iam tempus est.^ . . .

Die hier zur Diskussion gestellte These vom zwangläufigen Untergang der Studien, eingebettet in ein mechanistisch-pessimistisch formuliertes Zyklus-

Theorem, wird bei anderen zeitgenössischen Schulhumanisten in ähnlichem Zusammenhang mit z.T. anderen Bildern illustriert. Wir finden die Metapher vom Schwanengesang,'* das Gemälde der sinkenden Sonne^ oder das Gleichnis vom Wachtposten in beinahe aussichtsloser Stellung.^ Die "Krankheit" des corpus litteiaiium erscheint als Signum allgemeiner Zerrüttung: sie spiegelt sich^ — so exemplarisch bei Bemegger— in der Abscheu vor aUem der vornehmen Jugend vor den Zwängen der reputatuons-schädigenden Artistenfakultät,® in der Vemachlässigimg der "klassischen" Autoren,^ im vorschnellen "progrediren" schlechthin, d.h. in dem aus Kosten— gründen forcierten Streben nach Aufstieg in die höheren Fakultäten. ^° Georg Calixtus in Helmstedt und Augustus Buchner in Wittenberg konstatieren übereinstimmend, daß die "solida eruditio" in der "täglichen Erfahrung" ("quotidiana experientia") mit "Haß und Verachtung" verfolgt werde. ^^ Bereits in einer 1578 in Frankfurt /Oder gehaltenen großen Rede über den Verfall der Universitäten und der humanistischen Bildung wird scharfsinnig diagnostiziert, daß die Studien "vom Volke bearwöhnt, von den Magnaten verachtet" und von der neuen Schicht der

KUHLMANN

359

höfischen Verwaltungsaristokratie allein nach Nutzen und Wert für die bebemessen werden. ^^ Daß den "bonae artes" von Seiten der Gesellschaft weder adäquate ideelle noch hinreichend materielle Anreize und "Prämien" geboten werden, gehört zu den immer wieder begegnenden Klagepunkten. Verantwortlich wird dafür nicht zuletzt eine geistige Atmosphäre gemacht, die im Zeichen der "pansophia politica" steht. ^^ Daraus ergibt sich einerseits die betrübliche Prognose, wie sie wiederum Bemegger exemplarisch formuliert: rufliche Praxis

ergo fasces, quas nemo iactatas inflammat, spontanea remissione languentes extinguuntur denique: sie mirum videri non debet, non honoribus nee praemiis excitata studia magis magisque languere, OL ad priscam omnia barbariem spectare.^"*

Andererseits gewinnen die auf sich selbst gestellten Studien gerade durch den Verlust an Anerkennung eine besondere Aura und Weihe; der Humanist befreit sich von der drohenden Melancholie,^^ indem gegen die Gelüste nach Geld und Macht das Bewußtsein der Tugend gesetzt wird:

Semper contra fortunam luctata etiam

citra

virtus,

omnibusque perfuncta

officiis,

effectum propositi operis enituit.^^

Troststrategien dieser Art

münden

in Appelle

wie etwa denjenigen Augustus

Buchners:

Quae tamen omnia de

non debent, quin incenpugnemus barbariem, & utut ad eruditionis arcem non possimus ascendere ad illam tamen semper . . .

statu nos deturbare

tivo potius esse, ut fortius alacriusve in Seculi

anhelemus.^^

Gegenüber den zahlreichen Humanistenklagen in und nach den sog. Sturmjahren der Reformation (1521-1525) sind sich die Apologeten des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts sehr genau bewußt, daß es nun nicht mehr darum geht, die "Studien" gegen die Angriffe einer populistisch-spiritualistischen Kultur der "ilzu verteidigen, sondern daß man sich mit den 'Gebildeten unter den Verächtern' zu unterhalten hat, Leuten, die selbst Akademiker sind, aber sich befangen zeigen in einer speziellen Art von "Unwissenheit": literati"

. . .

inscitia,

tur,

sed

commista

&. omnimoda, per quam artes penitus ignorancum nonnulla eruditionis particula sit conjuncta sive einer) "ignorantia pravae dispositionis, quam purae

non ea simplex

alia,

quae

(d.

negationis.^^ Bis auf die Briefzeugnisse

stammen die Zitate aus der akademischen Deklama-

der— institutionalisiert

in den SoUemnitäten des actus publicus— das corpus scbolasticum sich nicht nur nach außen repräsentierte, sondern auch nach innen in Hinsicht auf Bildungziele sowie Methoden— und Wissenschaftsbegriffe ideell perpetuierte und stabilisierte. Klagen der zitierten Art erwachsen im Gegenzug aus der topischen Paraenese der artes und der Disziplinen, indem sie externe und interne Kritik rezipieren und mit den Mitteln der rhetorischen Kontroverse verarbeiten. Auch die Verteidigung der lationsliteratur, in

360

seminar: the role of latin

teinischen Sprache als Schulsprache, Sprache der Wissenschaft und der Kultur ist integriert in die Abwehr jedweder Erschütterung des akademischen cursus, seines Telos und seiner methodischen Axiome. Es entspricht dem analogistisch-systematischen Denken der Zeit, daß jedwede Einzelverstöße, alle Phänomene kulturellen Wandels als Signale eines allgemeinen, nicht zuletzt

auch die soziale Ordnung bedrohenden Ordnungsverlustes artikuliert werden. Kennzeichnend für die soziale Note des beklagten 'Kulturverfalls' ist die Tatsache, daß der "cyclopicus contemtus disciplinarum" der ostentative Widerwillen vor dem "pennälerhaften" Lateinsprechen und den exercitia loquendi, scnhendi, disputandi, declamandi ausdrücklich den "Reichen und Vornehmen" zur Last gelegt wird.^^ Die große Masse der nur die Artistenfakultät durchlaufenden, auf Schul- und Pfarrstellen angewiesenen Studenten gerät unter den Einfluß einer Schicht der sich im wesentlichen nur juristisch-politisch qualifizierenden Aufsteiger, die mit der Übernahme oder Zur-Schau-Stellung aristokratischer Lebensformen die Praktiken und den Zwang der bürgerlichen Gelehrtenschule mißachten:

Darzu bringen sie die Exempel seines Gleichens / von Geschlecht: Ehr und Alter / die im reiten / fechten / tantzen / springen / instrumentirn / Ballenschlagen manches grosses Lob gewonnen und ihnen selbsten die güldene Pforten an Königlichen und Fürstlichen Höfen zu Ämptem unnd Würden geöffnet. Mit jenen armen Schluckern in schwartzen Kleidern und langem Mantel sey wenig zuerwerben ...^

Auf

die A-la-mode-Studenten zielt die empörte Feststellung:

In lateinischer Sprache schöne Exempel der Tugend an Helden, Märtyrern, lind Bekennern / redlichen Leben imd Thaten / vorzustellen / ist Baccantisch / Bäwrisch / pennälisch / die mögen die Rhetorica, Oratoria ... treiben. ^^

Die Humanisten des 16. Jahrhunderts— etwa Johann Sturmhatten versucht, auch die gesellschaftliche Elite, zumal den Feudaladel, der sich nunmehr zusehends dem akademischen Studium öffnet, auf das Ideal der "nobilitas litterata" zu verpflichten. Es ist typisch, daß sich gegen Ende des reformatorischen Jahrhunderts ein Mann wie Caselius gerade in seinem Bemühen um die Ausbildung des politeusomenos gegen den Vorwurf wehren muß, er halte durch zu aufwendige Sprachexerzitien die begüterten und adeligen Studenten vom Studium des Jurisprudenz ab.^^ Die Erziehung des peifectus orator wird gerade für die Ambitionierten zur mora pbilologica.^^ Die alten Sprachen— als Hilfs- und Gelehrtensprache imangefochten— haben sich, was die Methodik des Erwerbs angeht, der reformpädagogischen Forderung des cito, tute et jucunde zu stellen. Gegen diesen externen, von geänderten Verwertungsbedürfnissen und rationalen Verwertungskalkülen bestimmten Legitimationsdruck muß das scholastische Studium der Autoren und der Wert der alten Sprachen verteidigt werden. Ins Feld geführt wird dabei eine Reihe größtenteils überkommender Argumente. Gegen bloßes Handbuchstudium, gegen die Konzentration auf die Modernen [récentes], aber auch gegen den Gebrauch von Übersetzungen bleibt

KUHLMANN

361

der Verweis ad fontes in Kraft.^ Wissen aus zweiter Hand zerstöre die Einheit von res und verba und unterhöhle die "Fundamente der Disziplinen, da die modernen Völker sich nicht in der Lage der alten sehen, Wissenschaft in ihrer

Muttersprache zu besitzen. "^^ Es gehört zum janusköpfigen Bild der Zeit, daß die derart argumentierenden Apologeten nicht selten in anderen Schriften die Gebrechen des Systems und die schädliche Exklusivität des lateinischen Universalismus sehr genau artikulieren. Die 'Diglossie' der frühbarocken Kultur in Deutschland ist Resultat einer Lösung des Problems durch die differenzierte Zuweisung von Latein bzw. Muttersprache auf je diverse Kommunikationsräume, Kommunikationszwecke, Kommimikationsformen und Kommunikationsrollen. Im Erhalt des Lateins vor allem als Organ der Diplomatie und Verwaltung steht z.B. auch die Einheit des orbis christianus auf dem Spiel. In solcher Begründung der lateinischen Sprachverwendung wurde zwar auf die Praxis der Sprachwirklichkeit Bezug genommen, doch nicht einbeschlossen waren damit die Ideale der umfassenden Antikerezeption und der lateinischen Eleganz, die VorsteUimg des Lateiners zugleich als einer grammatisch gedrillten

perfectus oiatoi. An diesem Pimkte taucht als entscheidendes Moment der sozialsymbolische Wert der Gelehrtensprache als Signum sozialer Exklusivität auf, sein Wert als Statusmerkmal und seine Funktion als Träger sozialer Distinktionsbedürfnisse:

per quam summae reipubl. subInventus ilia, de qua nos loquimur, veniri iudicamus, si ea inscitia contenta erit, nemo se pacto e vulgo exemerit, ne forte admodum supra vulgus sapiet, quod magis patebit, ubi dixero, quid boni adferat lectio accurata veterum.^^

Ein angesichts der Proletarisierung der Artistenfakultät, der Verschulung der Studien, der damit verbundenen Vulgarisierung ein durchaus nicht mehr durchschlagendes Argument. ^^ Ganz abgesehen davon, daß gerade in den für den fürstlichen Kameralismus und Etatismus wichtigen Disziplinen-Technik einschl. Militärtechnik, Ökonomie und Naturwissenschaft— gerade die nur muttersprachlich Gebildeten einen eigenen Geltungsanspruch anmelden konnten. ^^

n Die Reorganisation der muttersprachlichen Dichtimg und Literatur durch Opitz und die Sprachgesellschaften läßt sich einerseits als spezifisch deutsche Variante des europäischen umanesimo volgale klassifizieren, erhält andererseits ihre besondere Note durch den Kampf gegen die drohende Abwanderung einer gesellschaftlich-höfischen Elite zum Französischen. Das Ringen um die einheitliche deutsche Sprache vollzieht sich unter der Bedingung, daß in der Zuwendung zur Sprache des 'Volkes' die Distinktionsbedürfnisse des vornehmen Publiku*ms und die sprachlich repräsentierte soziale Hierarchie berücksichtigt werden. Es geht um die 'Nobilitierung' des Deutschen, wobei gerade die Forderung nach der weiterhin unabdingbaren humanistischen

seminar: the role of latin

362

Abwehr jeder sozialen Nivellierung dient. Opitz und seine Nachfolger appellieren an das politische Eigeninteresse der Fürsten; um sich als unentbehrlich beim Aufbau des Staates zu empfehlen, bedurfte es der Leistungsnachweise in der Muttersprache, zugleich aber auch um jenes Publikimi zu erreichen, von dem Wohl imd Wehe des Literaten als

abhing:

Welches denn der grosseste lohn ist / den die Poeten zue gewarten hadas sie nemlich irm königlichen vnnd fürstlichen Zimmern platz finden: von grosssen vnd verständigen Männern getragen / von schönen leuten (denn sie auch das Frawenzimmer zue lesen vnd offte in goldt zue binden pfleget) geliebet / in die bibliothecken einverleibet / öffentlich verkauffet vnd von jedermann gerhümet werden. ^^ ben,-

Entscheidend für die skizzierten Prozesse ist also nicht der nationale Gedanke se: er war von je her im Kulturpatriotismus auch des lateinischen Humanismus präsent. Vielmehr ergeben sich die wesentlichen Impulse aus der Rationalität einer nun auch die ökonomisch-technischen Aspekte kultureller Leistungen bedenkenden Verwaltungslehre. Die "ästhetische Vorausprojektion" (C. Wiedemann) eines machtvollen Einheitsstaates in Konkurrenz zur westeuropäischen Entwicklung, die Ausbildung des Deutschen zur Grundlage einer zumal die merkantilen Interessen fördernden Wissenschaft und Literatur machen jeden lateinischen Perfektionismus nicht nur für den Einzelnen, sondern auch für die Wohlfahrt des Staates unrentabel. Hilfestellung für die Propagandisten der Muttersprache leistete eine Anzahl bereits in der gesamteuropäischen Spätrenaissance aufgeworfener Probleme: die im Ciceronianismusstreit diskutierten Aporien einer kanonischklassizistisch, d.h. material verstanden Nachahmungsideologie führen zu der Forderung, nicht mehr bestimmte perfekte Modelle der Antike einzuholen, sondern an ihnen das Gesetz der Perfektabilität zu studieren imd auf die nationale Kultur zu übertragen. Das Problem des delectus veiborum implizierte angesichts einer gewandelten und wandelbaren Welt der Empirie die Spannung von Norm und Gewohnheit ("usus"), von res und verba. Dies betraf das Latein der Wissenschaft, das Latein als Verkehrssprache, aber auch die Würde des Laper

teins als Inbegriff einer einheitlichen idea loquendi.

In diesem Sinne legt auch Martin Opitz in seinem Aristarchus (1617), der Programmschrift der muttersprachlichen Barockdichtung, Wert darauf, das

Bemühen eine humanistisch-lateinische Restitution einer eleganten einheitlichen Literatursprache als hoffnungslos zu diskreditieren:

und

lam

quilibet nostrum singularem loquendi ideam aut proponit sibi ipaut fingit. Utut loquamur, dummodo non sileamus, perinde est. Salustius antiquum nomen audit et Criticis curiosissimis mortalium relinquendus. Cicero, praeclarus ille orator, sed qui perpetuo hoc laborat sa,

vitio,

quod

corum

intellegi

non

erubescat....

cohorti intentatur.

Novorum

Haec Censura Universae classiquorundam et terra f ilio-

interea

rum inusitatam ac portentosam dicendi rationem, miro judiciorum applausu, colimus et amplectimur. Sic elegantissimam illam Venerem

KUHLMANN

363

Romanam

et fraudamus décore nativo et spurio fuco corrumpimus.... sensim ... Latina illa puritas ad fatalem metam tendit: quam brevi elapsam prius quam elabi sentiemus.^

Ita

Die Qualitäten, die hier der lateinischen Sprachwirklichkeit abgesprochen werden, sind genau diejenigen, die es auf muttersprachlicher Basis zu verwirklichen gilt. Das Bewußtsein der Historizität der lateinischen Sprach- und Literaturentwicklung ist allgemein verbreitet und trägt maßgeblich zur Legitimation mutter sprachlicher Bemühungen bei. Gerade am Beispiel des Aiistaichus läßt sich zeigen, daß die Exegese eines isolierten Textes nicht genügt, um den Gesamtzusammenhang der Argumentation und der tragenden Impulse zu erfassen. Opitz veröffentlichte diesen wohl aus einer Deklamation entstandenen Traktatim oberschlesischen Beuthen. Er studierte dort am humanistisch-calvinistisch geprägten Gymnasium Schönaichianum, gefördert und maßgeblich beeinflußt von Caspar Domavius (v. Domau: 1577-1632).^^ Dieser Mann war nicht nur bedeutender Anhänger und Theoretiker der Reformpädagogik, nicht nur Exponent einer die westeuropäischen Anstöße aufgreifenden ästhetischmoralischen Gesellschaftserziehung, sondern verteidigte auch dezidiert das wissenschaftlich-kulturelle Eigenrecht der Moderne gegenüber einer humanistischen Heroisierung der Antike. Domau war nach dem Studium der Philosophie und Medizin Reisebegleiter eines vornehmen böhmischen protestantischen Magnaten. Die 1606/07 in England, Frankreich und den Niederlanden gewoimenen Erfahrungen prägen deutlich seine Schriften. Nach Beuthen wurde er als professor morum beruf en. ^^ Sowohl die Stellenbeschreibung wie die Antrittsrede zeigen, daß es ihm darum ging, "Theologen, Pastoren und Philosophen" mit den Grundpostulaten der westeuropäischen Höflichkeitslehre bekannt zu machen. Die Anpassung an die Formkonventionen des Umgangs und des Verhaltens bilden ein besonderes Auslesekriterium, das eine Qualifikation durch gelehrte Studien überlagert. Die hier vorgetragenen Bedenken gegen die Beschränkungen des christlichen Sprachhumanismus werden 1619 in einer radikal reformpädagogischen, auf die Fortschritte des Auslands blickenden Schrift ergänzt. Sie wurde in deutscher Übersetzung noch im 18. Jahrhundert gelesen. Es zeigt sich, daß Eintreten für den "Realismus" imd Plädoyer für die deutsche Sprache

zusammenhängen

Habet seculum nostrum, inter caeteras delitias, nobile artificium Chymiatrae: in qua Tyroni inexercitato difficile erit scitu; quid sit calcinare, filtro si

depurare, reverberare, edulcorare: piane vero atque perspicuum; quomodo artifex manum adhibere consverit.

oculo ipse usurpaverit:

(Es folgen Beispiele der militärischen Erziehung). Perinde

cum Tyrone Grammaticae:

comparatum

clara, &. frequenobvia illa Ol visibili, ti exemplorum inductione, breve est iter ad quascunque scientias: sed Ol efficax &. minus atque expeditum: longum vero perplexum ac taediosum per praecepta.^^

est

Die Anlehnung an den italienischen "Vulgärhimianismus" ergibt sich aus der Passage:

seminar: the role of latin

364

est haec oscitantia: qua supine procubui, illud videmur de industria cavere: ne Patriae nostrae honor ex cultura vemaculae linguae accedere unquam possit. (Nach dem Beispiel der Türken:) Quasi vero Ciceronis fama ad nos tot seculis retro pervenisset: quia exotico sermone captavit laudem: &. non potius Latinum, hoc est, vemaculum elegantiis excoluit, ut potuit, omnibus. Est perinde nostro seculo planum: inclaruisse Franciscimi Petrarcham, Actiima Sincerum, Petrum Bembum, alios tota Italia: non tam cultura Latinae linguae; qua laude minime

Pudenda quippe

spoliandi: quam vel hoc nomine: quoniam Italico non minus sermoni decus addiderunt.... Vitae vivimus; non luctandum cum verbis duntaxat.

In einer großen Rede De felicitate saeculi nimmt Domau Stellung in der gesamteuropäischen querelle des anciens et des modernes. ^^ Er wendet sich gegen die laudatio tempoiis acti und gegen die "Lüge" von der aneinhobaren Überlegenheit der Alten Gegen die zeitgenössischen Dekadenztheoreme (Alter der Welt, Verfall der Natur) feiert Domau unter dem Eindruck von Galileis Sidereus Nuncius (1610) nicht nur die fortdauernde vis ingenii des Menschen, sondern entwirft ein breites Panorama von Fortschritten auf allen Gebieten der Kultur, Zivilisation und Technik. Wichtig für die Sprachenfrage ist dabei die Struktur der Beweisführung: am Beispiel der Glas- und Textil- Produktion wird die Ebenbürtigkeit gegenüber der Antike zugleich zum Qualitätsnachweis gegenüber der ausländischen Konkurrenz. ^^ Die Apologie der Muttersprache gegenüber den antiken Idiomen wie gegenüber den europäischen Nationalsprachen gehorcht der gleichen Logik des Gedankens. Opitz Entwicklung und die der Sprachgesellschaften verläuft in den hier

vorzeichneten Bahnen:

Antiquos colimus submissis fascibus: aetas non tamen ex ausis exOmnibus ex merito pretium est. Laudare solemus Sic nimimos veteres, nee reprobare novos.^^ ...

cidit ista suis.

m Es kann in dieser Vorlage nicht darum gehen, die weiterwirkenden Momente herauszuarbeiten, welche die Diskussion der Theoretiker des 17. Jahrhunderts im Blick auf die Spannung von Latein und Muttersprache mitbestimmen: die Wendung zu einem radikalen ökonomisch-bürgerlichen 'Realismus' bei Schupp, die Integration der sich nach Vorbildern der europäischen Salonkultur stilisierenden "honnêtes hommes" bei Harsdörffer, schließlich der Vorstoß des Thomasius, bei dem die argumentative Plattform des Vülgärhumanismus endgültig verlassen wird. Ich möchte stattdessen zurückkommen auf die übergreifenden Zusammenhänge der Akademismus-Kritik mit der Entwicklung einer spezifisch politischen Rationalität. Es zeigt sich nämhch, wie ich meine,

daß die Auseinandersetzung in der akademischen Literatur des Späthumanismus als Reaktion auf die korrespondierenden Argumentationen innerhalb des politischen Schrifttum gelten muß. Dieses überschwemmte mit einiger

KUHLMANN

365

Verspätung, dafür aber beinahe sturzflutartig den deutschen Büchermarkt unmittelbar nach der Jahrhundertwende. Es umfaßte die Traktate der Gesellschafts—und Höflichkeitslehre, das akademische Schrifttum der politischhistorischen Philologie und systematischen Staatstheorie sowie— das Spektrum der Textsorten ist dabei längst nicht erschöpft— die Lehr- und Handbücher der Fürsten- Regiments- und Verwaltungslehre. In der Theorie der civilis pmdentia wurden dabei die speziellen Tugenden, Fähigkeiten und Qualifikationen des Herrschers und seiner Beamten in bewußtem Bezug auf die Erfahrungen der Praxis in Geschichte und Gegenwart behandelt. Bereits in der Politik des Justus Lipsius, deren ungeheure Wirksamkeit gerade in Deutschland G. Oestreich nachgewiesen hat, findet sich— betont am Ende des ersten Buches — die

mit einem Seneca-Zitat kontaminierte Festeilung:

Nam nos plerique hodie,

omnium

rerum,

sic literarum

intemperan-

quoque laboramus: nec vitae, sed scholae discimus. Quo veriloquio claudo ÔL consigno hunc librum.^^

tia

Diese und andere Passagen verpflichten die artes nicht nur auf eine individualistische ais vivendi, sondern auf ihren Nutzeffekt bei der Regelung der öffentlichen Angelegenheiten. Nach Maßgabe der politischen Klugheit wird eine rein formalistisch-ästhetische Bildung abgelehnt: contra habeto earn non ad pompam aut speciem, nev ut nomine magnifico segne otium veles, sed quo firmior adversum fortuita rem-

publicam

capessas.-^^

Allgemeinbildung und Herrschaftserziehung, Büdung der Herrschaftselite und Erziehung des Untertanen klaffen auseinander: Alia

autem

est Institutio

gubemandam educantur:

eorum, qui Principes sunt, vel ad rempublicam alia Privatorum, qui ad Subjectionem informan-

tur. Hi pro captu quisque suo, tum animi, tum corporis honestiis studiis, reliquisque Reip. necessariis artifiis; Uli artibus potissimum Imperatoris

sunt erudiendi.'*^ Positionen wie diese prägen sowohl die Fürstenspiegel sowie das politisch-pädagogische Traktaschrifttum des 17. Jahrhunderts. Daß im Gefolge des Neostoizismus auch die von Serzecû— prononciert im 88. Brief der Epistolae morûies— vorgetragene artes- Kritik, vor allem die Angriffe gegen den Grammatiker übernommen werden, läßt sich auch sehr deutlich an der entsprechenden Apologetik bei den Theoretikern des humanistischen Enzyklopädismus ablesen. '^^ Die nun auch in Deutschland rezipierte Pedantensatire der Romania (Zincref, Schupp, Moscherosch, Harsdörffer, Gryphius) reflektiert Vorstöße, wie sie etwa in Georg Engelhardt Löhneys' voluminöser Programmschrift Aulico-Politica (zuerst 1622-24, sodaim 1679) formuliert sind:

mich offtmahls verwundert / daß etliche vornehme Fürsten jhre junge Herren so schlimmen Pedanten untergeben und vertrauen / die ausserhalb der Schülerey nichts wissen / vermeynen / wann sie jhren Discipulis in sechs oder sieben Jahren die Lateinisch und Griechische

Ich habe

seminar: the role of latin

366

Grammaticam, Praecepta Dialeciticae &. Rhetoricae lehren / daß sie alle und figuras von Wort zu Wort außwendig können / und etwas aus dem Cicerone und Virgilio zu recitiren wissen / sie haben es gar wohl ausgericht und getroffen / gleich als wann diß das Vornemste an einem

régulas

Fürsten wäre?

...

sol

auch ein kluger

Institutor,

dem

ein junger Herr in

seine disciplin untergeben / denselben von andern Privatpersonen zu unterscheiden wissen. Dieweil deren etliche darum studiren / daß sie Doctores, Advocati, Procuratores, Prediger/ Schulmeister etc. werden ... Ein

Fürst aber studiret darumb, daß er wisse Land und Leute zu regiren / sol derowegen mit denen minutiis Grammaticorum, Philosophorum oder Poetarum seyn beste Zeit nicht verlieren / imd mit dergleichen Schulpossen lang auffgehalten werden.... '^^ . . .

Die Kritik der humanistischen Basiserziehung entfaltet sich nicht nur in der politischen Pädagogik, sie ist auch ein wesentlicher Gesichtspunkt in der systematischen Staats- und Verwaltungstheorie. Leitmotivisch ist die Frage, die Matthias Bemegger in einer seiner Tacitus-Quaestionen (zuerst 1614) aufwirft: "Num sit e Republica literas ignorari." Das Problem ergibt sich hier aus der Diagnose:

Duae causae

quam

male audiunt, tamiuvandam communem vitae

sunt, ob quas hodie litterae in vulgus

vel ad nequitiam magistrae, vel ad

societatem parum idonea. '^^

Die Kulturpolitik des frühbarocken Poücey-Staates basiert auf einem ebenso moralisch wie ökonomisch-praktisch definierten Nutz-Kalkül. Aufschluß darüber gibt exemplarisch das Kapitel "De Educatione, studiis Literarum, Peregrinatione, &. cura Religionis" in den Politiconim Libii Duo (1620) des seinerzeit sehr bekannten Tübinger Professors Christophorus Besoldus."*^ Das

Thema

wird dort unter dem leitenden Gesichtspunkt der "subditorum gubematio specialis" abgehandelt, d.h. der Sorge für das leibliche imd geistige Wohl der Untertanen. Gefordert wird hier nicht nur die Säuberung des Staates

von "scandala" aller Art (Fastnachtswesen, Bordelle usw.), die Einrichtung von "Zuchthäusern," sondern auch Liquidierung ebenso nutzloser wie unmoralischer Literaturformen (Amadisroman, Liebesdichtung, 'Volksbücher'). Unter dem Stichwort "Die Gelehrten-die Verkehrten" wird humanistische Bildung nur als politish-moralische Gesellschaftserziehung legitimiert. Besoldus tritt ein für eine "sapientia, peritia quae erat in Republica versandi, Ol ad actiones accomodata prudentia."*^ Betroffen von der Polemik gegen jede Philosophie "ultra usum"— hier die Anekdote von Thaies, der beim Betrachten des Himmels in den Brunnen fiel— ist auch das humanistische "otium litter arium." In diesem Zusammenhang wird nicht nur die Pedantenkritik Montaignes rezipiert, sondern sammeln sich die verschiedenen Gesichtspunkte der Kritik des humanistischen Akademismus: der durch den Monopolanspruch der Gelehrtenerziehung stets präsente Konflikt mit dem Eigenanspruch der artes mecbanicae, die Frage nach der in Methode imd Lernzielbestimmung gebotenen Rücksicht auf die verschiedenen Begabungen, aber auch das Drängen

KUHLMANN

36/

auf die Ausbildung der Muttersprache durch Erziehung in der Muttersprache. Es ist nicht ungewöhnlich, daß Besoldus hier auch auf die bereitliegenden zeitkritischen und satirischen Texte zurückgreift; in diesem Fall auf Schriften seines Tübinger Freundes Johann Valentin Andrea. Hingewiesen wird nicht nur auf die dramatischen Gelehrtensatire der Komödie Tmbo, sondern auch auf das satirische Epochenfresko des Menippus sive dialogonun satyncoium centuria inanitatum nostratium speculum. In giammaticoium gzatiam castigatum.^^ Diese Schrift stellt wohl die bedeutendste und schärfste Abrechnung des Frühbarock mit der zeitgenössischen akademisch-scholastischen Literaturkultur dar. Sie ist getragen vom Ethos einer altreformatorischen Christozentrik; die Maßstäbe der praxis pietatis treimen Andrea gewiß vom Praxisdenken der sich aus einem ethischen Universalismus lösenden Theorie der politischen Klugheit. Doch gerade in der Frage des Lateins ergeben sich demungeachtet grundsätzliche Übereinstimmungen mit der von den 'Politikern' vorgetragenen Kritik. Da diese Schrift wie überhaupt der weite Bereich des lateinischen Späthumanismus in Deutschland kaum durch die Forschung und— bis auf wenige Ausnahmen— erst recht nicht durch die Editionstätigkeit der Germanistik erschlossen ist, muß ein längeres Zitat in Kauf genommen

werden. Ich möchte damit meinen Überblick abschließen. Dies in dem Bewußtsein, daß die vorgelegten Thesen und Materialien gewiß nicht die Totalität des Gesamtprozesses erfassen und— zumal bei der diffusen und zersplitterten Situation der deutschen Kulturszene — der Ergänzung, Weiterführung und ggf. Konkretisierung bedürfen. Zumindest als ein Ergebnis läßt sich allerdings, wie ich meine, festhalten, daß die Erforschung der Eigenart und Dynamik des die Barockkultur formierenden literarischen Prozesses auf die Erkenntnisse nicht verzichten kann, die sich aus der Beschäftigung mit den lateinischen Zeugnissen des Späthumanismus ergeben. Hier bereits finden sich nicht nur mitentscheidende geistige und literarische Impulse, die im Raum der Mut-

immer so deutlich und auf breiter Front z.T. erst viel späzeigen, nur hier läßt sich auch konkret die Entwicklung in

tersprache nicht ter

Wirkungen

Deutschland mit den Vorgängen der gesamteuropäischen Spätrenaissance zu allererst

verknüpfen.

Johann Valentin Andrea schreibt in seinem erwähnten Menippus zur Frage des Lateins (es handelt sich um einen fiktiven Dialog zweier anonymer Gestalten):

A. Latinae linguae ambitionem semper quidem, quamvis aegre, toleravi,

quod in Ecclesiam tyrannidem agit, Tyrannidem ais? quae una tot egregios,

contulit, ut reddendae gratiae

Non nego

fuisse

admodum

nimium

est.

&. sacros scriptores Ecclesiae

nimquam simus

pares?

benefica, at cur ea sola

nunc

res

omnes

administrât?

Quia humanas par iter &. divinas scientias non continet tantum copiossime, sed exprimit at explicat quoque prae reliquis felicissime. A. Non Graecam tibi opponam, aut Hebraeam, quae utinam inter nos essent frequentiores, utinam studiosis prae exoticis commendatiores, B.

seminar: the role of latin

368

sed vulgares solum hodiemas, quae nihilo infelicius rebus &. scientiis omnibus deserviunt. B. Si quid tale est, id sane a latina mutuo sumptum est. A. A nostro vitio fit, qui in Latinam dudum iuravimus, nee de nostra vel adaugenda vel polienda laboramus stolidi, secus atque Itali, Gallique faciunt, qui vemacula lingua omnem eruditionem possident. B. Dum commode latina utamur, quid opus est alia? A. Ne ea passim ineptissimos ac irreligiosos Ecclesiae &. Reipublicae obtrudat, quibus nullo alio nomine animarum &. corporum salus committitur, nisi

quod

latine balbutiunt.

nam latina lingua humaniorum artium notitiam praesupponit. A. Insanis, qui id nobis persuadere conaris, qui quotidie crassissimarum rerum omnium inscitiam in illis ferimus. B. Ergo opifices tu post hac conduces &. suggestis impones? A. sarcasmum! nobis ergo adorandi simt, qualescunque e schola tandem B. Erras:

etiam nee latine nee artes gnari; nostri viri boni, pecus vobis videbuntur, quia non grammatici?

emittitis, soliciti,

de salute

B. Ulis ligones, nobis libri curae erunt. A. Libri? quos pulvis obtegit, situs &. squalor erodit, quos transferre, explicare multi potestis. B. Satis est

semel

nedum

didicisse.

A. Ea, quae in sutrina nostri aliud agentes perdiscerent.

Bona

verba.

A. Bonis &. literatis nulla sit iniuria, hoc vero iniquissimum est, literatos &. illiteratos eodem loco haberi, nomenclatorem Rhetori aequiparari. B. Male de Ecclesia egeretur, si quid Latinae linguae maiestati decederet. A. Nempe satius fuisset Christum nobis latinam Grammaticam reliquisse, quam Evangeliimi?^^

Freiburg

Anmerkungen 1. Handschriftlich in einem Augsburger Briefkonvolut: Epistolamm Centuria Nr. 1, fol. a: Stadtbibliothek Augsburg Signatur 4" Cod. H. 20; dort auch das folgende Zitat.

Matthias Bemegger, Oiationes academicae (Straßburg, 1640), Rede Nr. V., 148-180, hier S. 161 f. 3. Ibid. S. 153 f. 4. Vgl. Maturinus Simonius, De littens peieuntibus libellus (Frankfurt, 1618), 2.

spez. S. 187.

"Verum ut solis iam iam cadentis lumen dulcius esse videbamus, nobis gratiores esse debere abeimtes litteras; Rei Pereuntis, &. nunquam amplius reversurae novissimum aspectum, etiam féroces retinere: sive quod consumpta 5. Ibid. S. 142:

sie

KUHLMANN

369

indignatione, ac saevitia misericordia subeat, sive

amplius in potestate nostra non

sit

quod

rei praeteritae, &.

quae

memoria lenocinium commendationis sum-

ministrat." 6. Der Helmstedter J. Caselius in einer Magisterrede aus dem Jahre 1602, eben jenem Jahr der vorläufigen Ausbootimg der Helmstedter Humanisten unter dem Druck der Stände und der Orthodoxie, dem schließlich auch der kunst-und literatur-freundliche Herzog Heinrich Julius von Braunschweig weichen mußte: "Nam quis nescit, alicubi studia linguarum frigere, alijs in locis alia liberalium artium

quae ita proprie appellantur, aut lacere aut tractari segniter adCrebros enim nos tum studiosorum adolescentiim, timi doctissimorum sermones cognoscimus: quorum Uli aetatem neglectam queruntur, hi, &. cum primis senes, barbariem ex ijs, quae vident, posteritati cum dolore denunciant: quibus tamen non assentio, cum videam Musas nondum dare manus, quamvis truci Barbariae, &. eas interdum benigne sublevari. Haec autem omnis cura tametsi potissimum ad principes pertinere iudicatur, quod inficiari nolim: quos magni facere &. tueri non minus artes pacis quam militiae decet: tamen neque nos stationem litterariam, quo loco a Deo collocati sumus, deserere debemus." {Diagraphe znagisterìi pbilosopbici oratio. Helmstedt, 1602, fol. D 2). 7. Der Altdorf er Professor Jacob Bruno (1594-1654) hält 1622 eine Oratio de caussis politiorì litteraturae ruinam inferentibus (erschienen Altdorf 1622). Dort fol. A3: "Circ*mspice, quaeso, in Germania, videbis quam aegre structura corporis literarij cohaereat, caput dolet, cor languet, manus &. pedes tremunt &. palpant, quia, quod propositum mihi dicere, horrida barbaries ab omnibus mundi cardinibus &. ordinibus irrumpit tempestas " Auch hier merkt der Kranke das Unheil nicht einmal (ibid. fol. A 3): "Lethale enim semper medicis Signum fuit, quando aegrotus morbum ipsum non sentit, interrogatus nihil dicere potest, ubi doleat, ut ohm docuit medicorum oculus Hyppocrates." 8. Vgl. Bemegger, Orationes academicae (1640), S. 162: "Quotus enim quisque studiosorum est, qui non decolorari, imo poUui, incestari metuat, si auditorio, subsellia premat saepius, recitationesque Professorum, quas vulgo lectiones appellant, fréquentent. Metuunt probrosum in vulgus a penna nomen haec eis diligentia conciliet." Ähnlich u.a. auch Calixtus, Orationes selectae (Helmstedt, 1660) S. 37 f.: "Solent enim nobiles &. divites fere persuasum habere, studia non esse sua nobilitate &. divitiis digna" (in einer 1627 gehaltenen Rede De recto iuventutis informatione et praeceptomm officio). 9. Bemegger, Orationes academicae (1640), S. 171: "Quotus quisque studiosorum adolescentum, qui veteres &. classicos istos boni succi plenissimos autores, prae recentibus illis, &. adhuc lactentibus, &. magnam partem ineptis rhapsodis inspiciat, legat, terat. Quis eorum non immani saltu, ex ergasterio Grammaticae Dialecticaeque non delibatis caeteris philosophiae partibus, non eloquentia, non antiquitate, non historia cognita, transilit ad Facilitates quas vocant superiores." Man vgl. auch a.a.O. Bemeggers Rede Nr. X (S. 268-296), die er zum Antritt der vorübergehend übernommenen Rhetorikprofessur hielt. Dort S. 281 die Klage über Cicero als Ladenhüter. Bemegger beschäftigt sich hier mit dem allgemeinen Geschmacksverfall, dem Verlust des stilistischen "sensus communis," d.h. dem "indicium naturale." Die Verteidigung Ciceros imd der Straßburger Tradition zeichnet sehr deutlich die zeitgenössischen Tendenzen einer manieristischen, d.h. nicht mehr durch Modus-Postulate und Kanonvorschriften gebundenen Stilgebung (S. 282 ff.): "In aliis penitus hunc (d.i. Cicero — W.K.) aspematis, aut fex cottidiani &. scientiarum,

modum?

seminar: the role of latin

370

sermonis, foeda ac pudenda vitia depraehenduntur, nusquam nervi, nusquam sannee color quidem verborum, nisi ciun cerussa &. fuco: aut, si quid magnum praestant, a Paccüvio usque &. Ennio demortua accersimt verba; Plautino, Apuleiano, Sidoniano, vel ex his sub imam Myconem vocatis permixto mimico quodam dicendi genere utuntur: ut nullus in purpura pannus aeque foedüs turpisque sit, atque horum variegata e poeticis, historicis atque oratoriis vocibus oratio. Ampullae ubique, corybantiasmi ubique ac timiida sesqûipedalium verborum congeries, Hac ii, si diis placet, elosingulas voces cum cristis &. superciliis natas diceres Tanta quentia dum stultiis eruditos se probare volunt, stulti eruditis videntur mercede, tanta temporis ac laboris impensa constat, ut discamus, nil sapere."— Es ließe sich zeigen, daß die hier anvisierte Stilauflösung, darunter die Wendung zur archaischen imd silbernen Latinität, maßgeblich von Lipsius und den Lipsianem inauguriert wurde, wobei freilich soziohistorisch bedingte gesamteuropäische Tenguis:

. . .

denzen mit zu berücksichtigen sind: dazu mit reichem Material, wenn auch mit mangelnder Reflexion der geschichtlichen Bedingungszusammenhänge H.-J. Lange: Aemulatìo vetenun sive de optimo genere dicendi. Die Entstehung des Barockstils im XVI. fahrhundert durch eine Geschmacksverschiebung in Richtung der Stile des inanieristiscien Typs (Bern-Frankfurt, 1974 = Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe I, Deutsche Literatur und Germanistik, Bd. 99). 10. Vornehmlich aus wirtschaftlichen Gründen widmeten sich Dreiviertel der Studenten des 17. Jahrhunderts nur den propädeutisch-artistischen Fächern, von diesen schloßen aber nur etwa 25% mit dem Baccalauréat, nur 5% mit dem Magisteriimi ab: vgl. J. Bucking, Reformversuche an den deutschen Universitäten in der frühen Neuzeit, in: Festgabe für Walter Zeeden. (Münster, 1976 = Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte, Suppl. Bd. 2), S. 335-369. Es handelt sich also eigentlich nur um die drohende Abwanderung einer kleinen, aber wichtigen gesellschaftlichen Elite. Vgl. Benjeggers Diagnose und Analyse [Orationes academicae, 1640, S. 166/67): "Nihil tam egregium, quod idem diu piacere possit.... Quid ergo mirum. studiorum etiam, quae per octingentorum deciursum, ad hoc usque duravere tempus, tandem aliquando satietatem oboriri?praesertim cum in earn molem excreverint, ut iam copia magnitudineque laborent sua, non secus ac vitis, nisi subinde amputetur, ipsa sua fecimditate gravüescit ac perit. Olim non nisi nobiliores &. ad

spem nati Reipubl. literarum

destinabantur, eo quod,

monente

populo supervacanea est calliditas. At iam plurimis annis, nullis non etiam imi subselli hominibus, Musis operari concessum. Est autem verissume pronunciatum a Nicephoro Gregora: Quae promiscue sunt omnibus exposita, fere fastidiuntur ac negliguntur.... ita quo maior universitatum, Gymnasiorum, Scholarumque numerus existit, eo minor hominum solide Sallustio, Patres Consilio valere decet: in

doctorum copia

fieri

videtur."

G. Calixtus, Orationes selectae (Helmstedt, 1660): Quaestio De Caussa odii, quo exercetur hodie Philosophia et decrescentis apud nos indies sohdae eruditionis ... Aimo MDCXIXalicui e Candidatorum numero recitandam suppeditavit: S. 125-139. Zahheiche Zeugnisse in A. Buchners Briefwechsel, Epistolarum opus posthumum. Ed. secunda (Dresden, 1680); vgl. etwa dort Pars H, S. 170 ff. den undatierten Brieftraktat an Aegidius Strauchius. 12. Caspar Hofmannus, De barbarie imminente (Frankfurt/O., 1578). Diese Rede erschien noch mehrfach, u.a. 1620 zusammen mit Caspar Domaus Ulysses scholasticus sodann 1726 zusammen mit dem Traktat eines gewissen Joachim Negelein {Ulysses hterarius...). In dieser Ausgabe S. 186: "Nimc eo res rediit, ut contempta 11. Vgl.

KUHLMANN

3/1

jaceant &. frigeant studia, &. disciplinae Reipublicae utiles velut ex alto despician-

summos pariter &. imos eruditi nomen propemodum invisum sit, partum Scholasticae dignitatis testimoniura tantum non contmneliosum esse incipit, apud eos, quibus Panico comuum sono nihil est antiquius. Mirum autem est, ab istis quoque negligi, &. in odio esse studia &. Scholas, qui ob hoc ipsum quod didicisse aliquid & scire putantur, in honore &. existimatione sunt." 13. So Johannes Simonius (Professor in Rostock) in einer dort erschienenen Rede Pio eloquentia contra Ciceionimastyges €û Pbonniones, fol. B 2v: Dominetur licet in foro iactantia: volitet in aulis ostentatio, quae ad maxima Reipubl. negotia nil tur, ita

ut apud

&. virtute

nisi calliditatem ingenii, &. linguae volubilitatem, sine ulla solidiore doctrina, af-

quae armata

impudentia, clamore, vestitu florido &. famulitio frehomines locum tenere se autumet." 14. Bemegger, Oiationes acadeznicae (1640), S. 169. 15. Der zweite Teil von Bemeggers Rede widmet sich hauptsächlich der Widerlegung der "Melancholie der Besten" (so die Formulierung in Anlehnung an Aristoteles). Der Zusammenhang von Melancholie xmd "Verachtung der Studien" findet sich auch bei Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy Ed. in three volumes (London, 1893), Bd. I, S. 399 ff.: "Love of Learning, orovennuch study. With a Digression of the Misery of Scholars and why Muses are Melancholy. " Statt weiterer Ausführungen über das in der neueren Forschung vielfach behandelte Melancholy-Syndrom der Spätrenaissance möchte ich nur eine wohl in sich aufschlußreiche Stelle aus J. B. Schupps Von der Einbildung zitieren (zuerst lat. De opinione; dt. in: Schrifften. (Hanau, 1663), S. 521 ff., hier 547/8): "Bald wurde ich eines Magisters gewahr / der ziemlich alt und betaget / in einem zerlumpten Mantel / zerrissenen Hosen und zerlapten Schuhen einher gienge: Saß und stützete den Arm unter den Kopf und grilisierte überauß sehr / wie die lustige Melancholici zu thun pflegen / wenn sie Calender uff die Franckfurter Meß machen. Der stunde geschwind auff / trug ein Arm voll Holz zusammen / und machete ein Feuer: darein warff er den Plutarchum, Plinium, Livium, den Cicero und andere ferat;

quenti,

inscitia,

omnium primum

inter

seine Bücher / daß diese mit der Flammen auffuhren. Dessen ich mich derm sehr wunderte und sprach / bey lieber Mann / was für eine Thorheit kömt dich an? Warum wütest also in die gute Bücher und verstorbene Leute? Die weil sagt er / sie mir Ursache alles Unglücks sind. Deim in deme ich dieselbe gleichsam Tag und Nacht lese und durchblettere / und gerne wolte zu einem Dienste kommen / ist es doch alles umsonst und vergebens / flehe ich meine Patronen an (welche ich nicht rathe / daß man sie unter die Heiligen zehle:) sie sind imerbittlich: Ich bitte und schreye / ich weiß nicht wenn an / das man mich doch wolte auß dem Schulkoth ziehen / geschihets / daß als sie nimmehr von mein täglichen Anlauffen fast müde und matt werden / sie vom Tode oder anderm Zufall übereylet und weggeraffet: Muß ich andere Neue suchen zu gewinnen. Unterdessen aber und in deme sie mich mit leerer Hoffnung theils abspeisen / theils mit mir über das Glück klagen / so ehrlichen Gemühtem gemeiniglich zu wider ist / verläufft die güldene Ziet / der Verstand nimbt ab / imd wird durch die grosse Ungedult geschwächt / die Pfeimige werden alle / und das gantze Gemühte von desperation angefochten. Die fümemste in Patria beförderen und haben ihren Anhang / und theilen gleichsam das Land unter sich / auff die Weyse kommen sie empor und ziehen alles nach sich. Wir armen Teuffei sitzen binden an. Derhalben weil weder die Studia noch der Gelehrten lamentiren mehr etwas gilt / will ich alle Weißheit verschweren / und will das Bier brauen lernen ..." . . .

seminar: the role of latin

372 16.

Bemegger, Orationes academicae (1640),

17.

Aus einem undatierten Schreiben A. Buchners:

174. Epistol.

opus posthumum.

Ed. secunda (Dresden 1680), Pars H, Nr. LV. S. 174-214, hier S. 175. 18. G. Calixtus, Oiationes selectae (Helmstedt, 1660), S. 129 f. 19. Neben den bisher erwähnten Texten aufschlußreich in dieser Hinsicht die

Rede De imminente haibaiie des Rostocker Professors Johannes Posselius: Oiationum octo babitae in publicis congressionibus academiae Rostochiensis (Frankfurt, 1591), spez. S. 120-135 sowie ibid. S. 101 ff. die Rede De disciplina bonestae in academiis conservando. Die Apologie des Lateins ist hier— ganz typisch— eingelagert in Angriffe gegen jede Art von "mißverstandener Freiheit" seitens der Studierenden imd vor allem deren Eltern. Rekapituliert wird der theokratischpatriarchalische Anspruch des scholastischen "magisterium." Zum Latein u. a. S. sanitate deturbatos esse, 127: "... ut non dicam quosdam adeo de sua mente

ut eos pudeat latini sermonis. Existimant enim exercitium latine loquendi ad Beanos (ut vocant) in particularibus scholis. Uteris operam dantes, &. non ad studiosos, in Academias discendi causa missos, pertinere: ideo non desunt, qui irrideant &. subsannent eos, quos audiunt latino sermone uti. Hinc fit, ut nunquam fere audias studiosos inter se loqui, sed ubique locorum vemaculosa lingua garrire, idque gravitas quaedam studiosis digna existimatur." Auch hier die Perspektive (S. 128): "Cum igitur praesentis seculi labes quaedam sit &. macula, disciplinam negligere &. aspemari, ac omnia media quibus salutaris eruditio comparatur, fugere, odisse, detestari, fieri non aliter non potest, quin interitus literarum &. doctrinae sequatur." 20. Johannes Matthaeus Meyfartus: Cbiistliche Eiinnerung von dei Auß den Evangeliscben Hocben Scbulen in Teutscblandt an mancbem ort entwicbenen Ordnungen vnd Eibaien Sitten / vnd bey dißen Elenden Zeiten eingescblicbenen Baibaieyen ... Schleißingen = Schleusingen) o.J. (1636), S. 397. Das mehr als 500 Seiten starke Werk hier zu würdigen ist unmöglich: vgl. E. L. T. Henke, Geoig Calixtus und seine Zeit (3 Bde, Halle 1857-60): Bd. 2/1, S. 82 ff.; zur Person neben den einschlägigen biogr. Nachschlagewerken vor allem H. Leube, Refonnideen in dei lutbeiiscben Kiicbe zuiZeit dei Oithodoxie (Leipzig, 1924), S. 115 ff.; femer Nachwort imd Apparat zur Neuausgabe von Meyfarts Teutscbe(i) Rbetoiica (1634), hgg. von Erich Trunz (Tübingen, 1977 = Deutsche Neudrucke. Reihe: Barock 25). 21. Ibid. S. 139 (in einem ausführlichen Porträt des "alamodischen" Studenten S. 138-160). (

22. Johannes Caselius, Politeusomenos (i.O. griechisch). Quemadmodum piimaiius, idemque ingeniosus adolescens matuie et? lecte educetui ad lespublicas. Ad Tobiam Pauimeistei V.Cl. (Helmstedt, 1607), hier fol. I 2: "Nee in eo peccari a nobis putem, qui advolantes primum e scholis puerilibus, profectu &. aimis pueros, erudiiubemus, non illotis manibus, sed initiatos quibusdam Musarum sacris tione unius alteriusque pemesessaria &. studio humanitatis ... ad disciplinas 'praktikoteras' (i.o. griechisch) transire ... Iniuria quoque gravi me afficiunt, qui tam a nobili &. necessario legum studio per me abstrahi susurrant, praesertim non neglectos a fortima, &. nobili loco natos. Haec autem est, si non calumnia est? Quod si quis aberrantem e cursu revocet, qui rectiorem tibi semitam monstret, eine succenseas?". Vgl. auch ibid. fol. E 3 ff. zum Verhältnis Muttersprache-Latein. Es ließe sich vor allem anhand der auf den künftigen "juridico-politicus" zugeschnittenen Bildimgsplädoyers nachweisen, daß man sich im Sinne der althumanistischen Idee einer ethischen "Billigkeit" (aequitas) gegen eine nur tech.

. .

KUHLMANN

373

diesem bestimmt auch Caselius den Wert von ratio imd oratio in Opposition zimi Tyrannen (a.a.O., fol. E 1): "Tyranni enim est, sua lussa velie fieri, non persuadere rationibus." Der Kampf gegen die "contemptores" und gegen die "Barbarei der Zeit" ist getragen von dem Impuls, sich gegen jene "imperi) Tyrannorum arcana" zu wehren, zu denen nach Nicolaus Vemulaeus unter anderem zählt: "Academias &. scolas evertere, quasi explosis artium omnium rudimentis legere scribereque sit satis. Ut nimirum nemo plus quam Tyraimus sapere audeat" {Instìtutìonum Politicanim Libri IV. nizistisch-positivistische Ausbildung wandte. In

Köln, 1628, Buch

Titulus XXI,

S. 154).

Der Ausdruck bei Caselius, Politeusomenos (s.o), fol. I 1; von J. V. Andrea stammt eine Moia pbilologica excusata betitelte Schrift (1609), angebunden an 23.

bene meiitos gratitudo (Straßburg, 1633), S. 161-196. Als autobiographischen Anlaß berichtet Andrea sehr realistisch das Erlebnis einer im Kreise bekatmter "literati" vorgetragenen Kritik der brotlosen Künste. Daraufhin wendet sich Andrea traurig an seinen Lehrer, den berühmten Tübinger Rechtsgelehrten David Magirus: "Ego subtristior, meum infortunium, respondeo, quod indixerunt mihi, quotquot linguas, Mathesin, &. historiam, studia mea habent exosa, quid agam autem, si hoc ingenio insolito nemo futurus est, ut illi ajunt, qui me ferat, nedum alat?..." Die Schrift verteidigt den humanistischen Enzyklopädismus, freilich in Abwehr einer rein formalistischen Spracherziehung (vgl. bes. S. 171) imd in Empfehlung der empirischen imd mechanischen Wissenschaften (S. 172/73). 24. Vgl. C. Hofmaim, De barbarie imminente (s.o. Anm 12) S. 226 ff.: "Refrixit in animis discendi ardor, successit pigritia, impatientia curae &. laboris, crescit indies negligentia, ut plurimis nunc degustatio saltem studiorum tiunultuaria &. jejima allubescat, eaque non ex bonis Autoribus comparata, sed ex summariis, collectaneis, rhapsodiis, indicibus &. centonibus decerpta &. mendicitate collecta Nimirum properant ad altiores quaestus, eique se studio tradere malunt, quod in pretio esse vident." Die politische, praxisbezogene Exegese der "Klassiker" sollte die Abwanderung von den "autores" verhindern: vgl. etwa die Vorrede in Janus Gruters Vaiii discursus sive piolixioies commentaiii ad aliquot insignioia loca Taciti. (Heidelberg, 1604), S. 3: "... si inquam, baud absurde nobilem adolescentiam aut excitaverim ad lectionem Veterum, aut monstraverim qualemcumque rationem colligendi a classicis haud quamquam infoecimda, in utramque partem disserendi semina, assecutus sum plus quam volo. Nam quod hodie fere neglectis Antiquis versemus Novitios, idem est profecto ac si relicta viva fontis scaturigine, assideremus aquae, &. derivatae per foetidum canalem, &. collectae in paludem longe ders.. In

foetidiorem." 25. Eine Formulierung aus Bemeggers Apologie der alten Sprachen, in Oiationes academicae (1640), Nr. IX, S. 231 ff.: De bumaniorum 'piognosei' (i.o. griechisch) ad Studium histohcum requisita (1613), spez. S. 241 ff.: "Atque hie audire mihi videor illorum voces, qui omnia ilia praeclara, quae dixi, monimienta, aut e graeco sermone in latinum, aut ex utroque in vemaculum, &. et eum, qui salsamentariis notus est, esse conversa dictitant, ita ut neutro illorum sit opus, aut altero certe tantum: ciun ilio peregrinitatis quasi cortice detracto, nucleis vesci, &. velut osse confracto succum ac medullam ipsam exsugere liceat. A qua opinione viri prudentes atque docti sic dissentiimt, ut avocandis a Graecae &. Latinae linguae studio adolescentibus, ipsa fimdamenta disciplinarum convelli ac labefactari putent: ncque ullam pestem praesentiorem, aut uUum certius exitium non historiae modo, sed omnibus omnio Uteris adferri posse arbitrentur, quam si linguae illae, quae

seminar: the role of latin

374

quaedam &. promae condae earum sirnt, negligantur. Quod qui negat, avorum nostra memoria, cum pestifera quaedam opinio invaluisset, exquisitiorem latinae linguae cultum non magnopere prodesse: graecas vero literas, etiam impedimento esse, quanta &. quam densa barbariei caligo universum prope terrarum orbem obtexerit; quanta linguarum neglectum rerum ignoratio consecuta sit: quantum praestantissimum autorum &. historicorum praecipue, istis tenebris immersum perierit. Quod si quis in translationes ita iuratus est, ut earum fidei nihil derogandum opinetur, nae ille, saniorum iudicio magnopere decipitur. Ut enim aquae non gratius modo, sed saluberius ex ipso fonte bibuntur, quam decuctis inde limosis rivulis, aut sordidis lacunis: ita quis non malit praestantissimos quosque &. quasi maiorum gentium historicos ipsos audire loquentes, quam per quasi sacraria ignorare,

multum de nativa semper autoris gratia permentem eiusdem haudquaquam assecutos ..." Vgl. zum Aspekt

internuncios ac interprètes, &. eos dentes: nec raro

der Wissenschaftssprache auch ibid. Or. II, 1619, S. 39 ff., spez. 45 f. 26. Caselius, Politeusomenos (s.o. Anm. 22), fol. E 3. 27. Der Begriff "Proletarisierung" ist kein unangemessener terminologischer Anachronismus. Er findet sich außer bei Bemegger (s.o. Zitat Anm. 23: "proletaria turba") der Sache nach auch in Janus Gruters Vorrede (unpag.) zu der von ihm herausgegebenen Sammlung neulateinischer Lyrik: Delitiae poetarum GennanoTum huius supenozisque aevi illustrìum. Parl-IV. (Frankfurt, 1612). Er vergleicht das Elend der Gelehrten des 16. Jahrhunderts mit der Gegenwart: "... Caeteri omnes agunt inter capite censos, inter proletarios; contenti totam vitam sordido oblectari pane. Nam cedo sis mihi vel profusißimae munificentiae Mecoenatum, ostendam tibi rursus eundem hactenus amare literas, quatenus ipsis indulgent alimenta carceris; quibus quidam vivant in diem, sed non etiam instruant rem familiärem. Unde quotidie videmus a funere eruditißimi quique, uxorem eins liberosque ad pudendam illico dilabi egestatem." Aus einer zeitgenössischen muttersprachlichen Schrift: "Dann was verdient oftmahls ein wolberedter / geübter gelehrter Mann? Die meisten seind ein häufen bettler / und haben nicht so vil / daß sie sich und ihr können erhalten: man zehlt jhnen die bißlein in den mund / und gibt jhnen nicht mehr als sie kaum essen können. Vil feiner frommer geschickter gesellen / und fûrtreffliche ingenia müssen im land herumb terminieren und können keinen underhalt haben. der schnöden Welt!" (Justus Reifenberg: Politische Beantwortung folgender aufgestellter dreyer Fragen: 1. Wer den Hochgelehrten hey Hofe den meisten schaden ... thuel..., Herbom, 1619, hier S. 60). 28. Zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen Muttersprache und Latein auf diesem Sektor hat bekarmtlich L. Olschki wesentHche Grundlinien ausgezogen: Geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen Literatur. Zweiter Bd. : Bildung und Wissenschaft im Zeitalter der Renaissance in Italien (Leipzig, usw. 1922), bes. 1 12 ff Die entsprechenden Prozesse im Deutschland des 17. Jahrhunderts liegen noch weitgehend im Dimkeln, da vor allem Sachschrifttum außerhalb der Belletristik kaum erschlossen ist. Bezeichnend für den Argumentationszusammenhang des hier interessierenden Zeitraums ist z.B. die 1604 in Rostock erschienene Schrift eines gewissen Magnus Pegelius, Thesaurus rerum selectarum, magnarum, dignarum, utilium, suavium, pro generis humani salute oblatus. Das Werk ist Kaiser Rudolph

und

gewidmet. Der Verfasser (1547 bis nach 1612), vorübergehend Mathematik in Helmstedt und Rostock verspricht u.a. die Kirnst, Luftschiffe und Unterseeboote zu bauen, das Schießgewehr zu verbessern, in der Nacht zu sehen, Schiffbrücken zu machen u.a.m.— Der technische Utopismus ist Teil allen Ständen

Prof. der

KUHLMANN

375

indem der Autor —als Vorläufer der muttersprachlichen Reformpädagogen— auch die Reform der Schulen, der Universitäten und der eine "Nobilitienmg" der MutPhilosophie ins Auge faßt. Hier geht es nicht die Partizipation der "illiteraten": Bürger, die tersprache—dazu s.u. — sondern sich gleichwohl durch "ingenium, judiciimi" und "prudentia" auszeichnen. Dementsprechend die Grundthese: "Res a verbis propter res usurpatis distinguendae," imd der Maßstab: "Et ea lingua inter linguas praeferenda, quae brevius &. significantius Res désignât, &. sic finem suum rectius assequitvir ..." |S. 87/88). Zu Pegelius eines breiten Kulturprogramms,

vgl.

ADB XXV,

29.

30.

315-318.

Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey, Kap. VIE, fol. K I v. Opitz, Ges. Werke, hgg. von G. Schulz-Behrend. Bd. I (Stuttgart, 1968), S. 59, Z. 16-36. Vgl. die zweisprachige Ausgabe des Aiistaichus von G. Witkowski (Leipzig, 1888). Die zitierte Stelle reflektiert Feststellvmgen wie die eines Muret: "Quasi nos hodie quid sit latine loqui sciamus" (vgl. Ch. Dejob: Marc-Antoine Muret ... Paris, 1881, S. 243) oder zahlreiche ähnliche Feststellimgen bei Lipsius. Opitz:

31. Zur Person s. den Artikel von Palm: ADB 5, 1877, 351 f.; im Zusaminenhang der Reformpädagogik A. Sellmaim, Caspar Domau (Langensalza, 1898). Über den Gesamtumkreis des calvinistisch beeinflußten schlesischen Späthmnanismus immer noch sehr lesenswert J. F. A. Gillet, Crato von Ciafftheim und seine Freunde, 2 Bde. (Frankfurt 1860/61); femer neuerdings R. J. W. Evans in seinem überaus wertvollen Buch Rudolph II and his world. A Study in intellectual history 1576-1612 (Oxford, 1973): zum Breslauer imd schlesischen Kreis bes. 148 ff. 32. C. Domavius, Charidemus, hoc est, de morum pulchritudine, necessitate,

adcivilem conversationem, oratio avspicaUs ... Beuthen, 1617: abgedruckt Orationum aliorumque scriptorum Tomus I-Tomus II ... opera &. cura Antonii Schmiedt. (Görlitz, 1677), (Bd. I, S. 354 ff.). 33. Ed. Schmiedt -s. Anm. 31 a, Bd. H, S. 345. utilitate,

in: ders.:

359 f. Domavius, Fehcitas seculi, hoc

34. Ibid. S. 35. C.

est oratio, quaprohatui; artes

€i>

hberales

nostra aetate cultiores esse, quam multis retro seculis, in: Orationum..., ed. Schmiedt — s. Anm. 31 a, Bd. I, S. 267 ff. 36. Ed. Schmiedt-s. Anm. 31 a, Bd. I, S. 302: "... Carbasum vero, lintei genus subtilissimum, tam anxie requiremus? ut alias regiones taceam; est profecto é>

machanicas

(sie!)

Nam

felicissima Silesia nostra: quae

non

ignobilius genus carbaso suppeditat:

quod

omnes Germaniae provincias: quid

dico Germaniae: ad remotissima loco exterarum gentium, ad Africae usque oras (Indorum historiae referunt) exportatur, magno totius patriae quaestu, majori gloriae magmento." 37. M. Opitz, Cum hodiemos Oratores et Poetas antiquis contuhsset (1617), in: Ges. Werke, Bd. I, hgg. von G. Schulz-Behrend, Stuttgart, 1968, S. 35/36 (Auszug). 38. Justus Lipsius, Politicoruxn sive civilis doctrinae Ubri sex. Qui ad principatum maxime spectant. Frankfurt, 1590 (I. Aufl. 1589), Liber I, caput X, S. 42. 39. Ibid. 40. Christophorus Besoldus, Pohticorum Ubri duo (Frankfurt, 1620), S. 537; vgl. etwa die Version bei Saavedra Fajardo, Abriß Eines Christlich-Politischen Printzens (deutsch 1674), S. 47 f. "Wird also einem Printzen genugsam sein, die Künste unnd Wissenschafften oben hin durchgangen zu haben / und wird ihm viel ersprießlicher sein / auß der erfahrung deß im friede / und kriegswesen eine Wissenschafft zu haben; und auß den künsten nur so viel erlernen alß genug hat den verstand zu erleuchten / unnd eine Sache zu lurtheilen." :

seminar: the role of latin

3/6

Urn Vermittlung der divergenten Erziehungsideale sind dann zahlreiche Traktate bemüht wie etwa die von J. M. Moscherosch hgg. Schriften eines gewissen Georg Gumpelzhaimer, Gymnasma de exeicitiis academicomm in quo pei discuisuxn dissentili de eoiuxn necessitate, modo, tempoie, peisonis, utìlitate. {Straßburg, 1652, 2. Aufl.). 41. Vgl. A. J. Stückelberger, Senecas 88. Biief. Über Wert und Unwert der freien Künste. (Heidelberg, 1965 = Bibl. der Klass. Altertumswissenschaft N.F., Reihe 2); zur zeitgenössischen Reaktion etwa Johannes A. Wowerus, De polymathia tiactatio.... Leipzig, 1665 (zuerst 1604), bes. cap. ^J^VQ. Adveisus Stoicos é) Epicuieos, qui lïbeialia Studia lejiciebant; im Zusammenhang auch wichtig ibid. cap. XXX

caussis conuptae disciplinae.

42. G. E. Löhneyß, Aulico-Politica. Daiin gehandelt wiid

Infoimation jungei Herten. 2. Bestellung deiselben Rath und

Vom Ampt Officiiei. 3.

1. von Eiziehung vnd Tugent und Qualitet dei Füisten / vnd

Von Bestellung dei Concilien

. . .

(Frank-

furt, 1679), hier S. 18.

Ex C. Comelii Taciti Geimania et Agrìcola quaestiones Freinshemius (Straßburg, 1640) quaestio 100. 44. Besoldus-s.o. Anm. 39 -S. 534 ff. 43. Matthias Bemegger,

...

ed. 10.

45. Ibid. S. 546.

auch ein Hinweis auf Taubmanns des öfteren angezogenes im Vorwort seiner Ausgabe des Ps.- Vergil' sehen Culex (Wittenberg, 1609). Andreas Menippus erschien zuerst 1617, ich zitiere im folgenden nach der Ausgabe Straßburg 1618. Zu Andrea jetzt umfassend mit kompletter und kommentierter Bibliographie J. W. Montgomery, Cioss and Ciucible. Johann Valentin Andieae (1586-1654). Phoenix of the Theologians. 2 Bde. (The Hague, 1973). 47. Andreae: Menippus — s. vorstehende Anm. — S. 26 f., Nr. 13. Die vorliegenden Ausfühnmgen verwenden Thesen, Formulierungen und Materialien aus meiner Habilitationsschrift, die zur Zeit der philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Freiburg vorliegt (Titel: "Gelehrtenrepublik imd Fürstenstaat. Entwicklimg imd Kritik des Späthumanismus in der Literatur des Barockzeitalters"). 46. Ibid. S. 549; hier

Plädoyer für die Muttersprache

Grammatik und

Lateinunterricht in

Italien

15.

Jahrhundert

Raimund

Pfistei

Vorbemerkung

Der

Verfasser des vorliegenden "Papers" ist kein Spezialist der Renaissanceforschung. Er befaßt sich als Latinist und Sprachforscher mit der Gesamtgeschichte der lateinischen Grammatik, für die das 15. Jahrhundert keinen Höhepunkt darstellt. Infolge einer jahrzehntelangen praktischen Tätigkeit im Sprach- und Grammatikunterricht interessiert er sich auch für die Geschichte der Lehrmethodik, allerdings weniger für die idealen theoretischen Konzepte als für die realen Verhältnisse in den Schulen. Diese haben sich zu allen Zeiten mehr oder weniger stark von jenen unterschieden, sind aber angesichts der Quellenlage für den Historiker schwer greifbar; auch sind hier Verallgemeinerungen besonders problematisch. So können hier in die Diskussion des Seminars weniger Ergebnisse eigener wissenschaftlicher Arbeit als Fragen eingebracht werden, dabei Fragen, die vielleicht dem Vertreter geistesgeschichtlicher Forschung als abwegig erscheinen köimen, aber trotzdem legitim sind. Unter diesen Umständen lag es nahe, auf die Vorlage eines "Papers" zu verzichten; es wurde auf ausdrücklichen Wunsch des Leiters des Seminars vorgelegt.

Allgemeine Fragen 1.1 Umfang imd soziale Herkunft der Lateinschûler. Wieviel Prozent der Gesamtbevölkerung Latein lernten, dürfte höchstens grob abschätzbar sein. Aber man kann wohl sicher annehmen, daß die Zahl wesentlich geringer war als etwa der Prozentsatz der Jugendlichen, die heute in Bayern am Lateinimterricht teilnehmen (womit noch nicht gesagt ist, daß sie Latein auch wirkich lernen). Es tritt die Frage auf, wieweit das Latein damals in Italien eine Klassensprache war. Heute wird der Lateinimterricht in Italien stark bekämpft; imter den Argumenten wird— in Zusammenhang mit der Aufgabe, die der

seminar: the role of latin

3/8

dem Latein gegeben hat— auch der Vorwurf gemacht, das Latein sei die Sondersprache einer eÜtären Klasse. Man wird wohl sagen müssen, daß der Lateinunterricht der Renaissance der Elitenfaschistische Erziehungsminister Gentile

bildung diente (über die Diskreditierung, in die dieser Begriff gegenwärtig weithin geraten ist, braucht der registrierende Historiker hier nicht zu befinden). Aber die Sprache einer geschlossenen Klasse war das Latein nicht. Daß pädagogische Traktate als Auftragsarbeiten sich speziell mit der Prinzenerziehung befaßten, liegt an den Umständen und ist nicht kennzeichnend für die Gesamtlage. An den Fürstenschulen in Mantua und Ferrara gab es Freiplätze, und Pädagogen aus Leidenschaft wie Vittorino von Feltre imd Guarino von Verona opferten sich auf in der Fürsorge für unbemittelte Schüler. Das ist wohl nicht nur im Rahmen der Nachwuchsfürsorge der katholischen Kirche zu sehen. Lateinlemende Mädchen gab es freilich wohl nur im hohen Adel. Weiteres zu diesem Bereich muß ich Kundigeren überlassen. 1.1.1 Hier sei fügt.

nur einiges aus

dem

engeren Bereich meines Themas ange-

Um Ausleseschulen mit sehr hohen Anforderungen handelt es sich auf

Fall; das zeigen schon die verwendeten Lehrbücher. Humane Pädagogen wie Guarino haben sich das Jahrhundert hindurch bemüht, unsinnige Forderungen einzuschränken. Aber sie waren nicht wie die Philanthropinisten des 18. Jahrhunderts und der Gegenwart, die mit einem Minimum an Anforderungen und einem Höchstmaß an Motivierung dem Lateinimterricht dienen wollen. Und auch ihre maßvollen Reformbestrebungen hatten es bis gegen das Ende des Quattrocento schwer, sich durchzusetzen. Der Hauptstreitpunkt war das übliche grammatische Lehrbuch, das Doctrinale des Alexander von Villadei, von dem noch eingehender zu sprechen sein wird. Das Buch ist mit Quisquilien überladen und so knapp und schwerverständlich formuliert, daß heute auch ein spezialisierter Grammatiker große Verständnisschwierigkeiten hat und dankbar zu der knappen Kommentierung in der Ausgabe von Reichling greift. Trotzdem hielt die große Masse der seit eh und je konservativen Lateinlehrer mit geradezu religiöser Verbissenheit an dem durch schließlich

jeden

dreihimdertjährige Tradition geheiligten Buch fest. Aufschlußreich ist das 1470 geschriebene Vorwort des Sulpizio Verulano bei Percival 1976 S. 87: "Puto aliquos invidisse iunioribus, ut ea quae ipsi didicerint difficulter alios non minore docerent labore discentium, nee posteris apertior esset ad emergeneine Hürde dum via...." Die Lateingrammatik muß also schwierig sein, für den sozialen Aufstieg zu bilden. Das erinnert an die lateinische Schulgrammatik in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert, die bis gegen Ende des Jahrhunderts mit ausgeklügelten Regeln und Ausnahmen, die der Schüler beherrschen mußte, vollgestopft war. Der Grund war, wie man in Franz Schnabels Geschichte des 19. Jahihundeits nachlesen kann, nicht zuletzt der, daß der Zugang zu den Universitäten eingeschränkt werden sollte; denn arbeitslose Akademiker waren als prädestinierte Revolutionäre gefürchtet. . . .

1.2 Die Lateinlehrer. Auch hier muß ich mich auf allgemeine Vermutungen beschränken, die ein Forscher, der die literarischen Quellen für diese Zeit genau kennt, vielleicht noch präzisieren kann. Das hohe Lob, das hervorragenden

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Pädagogen wie Vittorino oder Guarino gesungen wurde, dürfte auch dadurch bedingt sein, daß sie sich als Ausnahmeerscheinungen aus einer trüben Masse hervorhoben. Die soziale Lage der Lateinlehrer war wohl beengt und ungesichert, die Fluktuation groß. An der geistigen Entwicklung des Jahrhunderts hatte die Mehrzahl wenig Anteil. In dem eben (1.1.1) zitierten Vorwort des Sulpizio Verulano heißt es: "Illum (d.h. den Alexander) solum ex grammaticis norunt, illimi praecipue habent, illum evolvimt nee alios attingunt, illum pueris explanant, in ilio totos conterunt dies semper discipulos infelices per quam regulam rogitando." Der so gescholtene Lehrer hatte wohl gar kein Geld, um sich zu der Abschrift des Alexander, die er aus seinen Studententagen hatte, noch andere Bücher zu kaufen.^ 1.3

Die Lehrziele. In der Gegenwart

schäumende

gibt es seit

sprachler führend sind; spätere Historiker rials

etwa 15 Jahren eine über-

öffentliche Lehrzieldiskussion, in der besonders deutsche Alt-

werden

die Fülle des Quellenmate-

kaum bewältigen können, auch wenn sie sich auf die in den Ministerial-

blättern amtlich sanktionierten Lehrziele beschränken.

Trotzdem werden

sie

im Dimklen tappen

bei der Frage, was von diesen hochgestochenen Zielen auch wirklich erreicht wurde. Noch viel mehr muß dieses Tappen im Ehmklen von unserer Epoche in dem politisch zersplitterten Italien gelten, in dem es

eine Schulbürokratie— zumindest im heutigen Ausmaße— nicht gab. In ganz anderer Lage befindet sich der Forscher, der etwa eine Darstellung des Lateinunterrichts in den Jesuitenschulen zu geben hat. In diesem mit dem Prinzip des Kadavergehorsams straff organisierten Orden hat der spanische Jesuit Emmanuel Alvarus 1572 mit De institutìone giammatica libri III für die Jesuitenschulen ganz Europas eine didaktische Grammatik geschaffen, die (mit den bei Schulgrammatiken immer üblichen Überarbeitungen) 200 Jahre lang normativen Charakter hatte. Es entstand ein festgefügtes "Lehrgebäude," in dem die Lehrziele und die Lernstoffe mit einer Verteilung auf die einzelnen Klassenstufen festgelegt waren, wobei auch die Methode durch ausführliche Lehrbücher weitgehend bestimmt war. In unserer Epoche kann von derartiger Normierung keine Rede sein, und auch der Spezialforscher wird, sobald er über singulare Feststellungen hinausgehen wül, impräzis bleiben müssen. Für meine Einblicksmöglichkeiten ergeben sich etwa folgende Lehrziele: 1) Fähigkeit, lateinische Texte zu verstehen; 2) Fähigkeit, privaten und amtlichen Schriftwechsel lateinisch zu führen; 3) Fähigkeit, lateinische Gedichte, vor allem Epigramme, zu machen (Dieses Lehrziel galt an deutschen Gymnasien bis ins 19. Jahrhundert; ihm galten in den Grammatiken ausgedehnte Abschnitte über die Prosodie, d.h. die Länge und Kürze der Silben, die heute als überflüssig entfallen sind); 4) Fähigkeit, lateinische Festreden zu verfassen und vorzutragen; 5) Fähigkeit, lateinische Gespräche zu führen. Wieweit das letztgenannte Lehrziel mit Konsequenz angestrebt und was dabei, von Spitzenschülern abgesehen, wirklich erreicht wurde, ist mir etwas zweifelhaft. Denn gerade die Italiener scheinen mit dem freien Lateinsprechen besondere Schwierigkeiten zu haben, was nur scheinbar paradox ist, da bei der großen Nähe der Muttersprache störende Interferenzen besonders naheliegen. Wenn der jüngere Guarino (vgl.

seminar: the role of latin

380

1.4.1) empfiehlt, die Schüler in lateinischen Gesprächen zu üben, so kann man auch herauslesen, daß es nicht selbstverständlich war. Einiges ist im 15. Jahrhundert wohl erreicht worden; denn im 16. Jahrhundert häufen sich die Klagen über den Niedergang der Fähigkeit des Lateinsprechens, worin man sich von den "Barbaren" übertreffen lassen müsse. ^ Das Lehrziel war nicht mehr zu halten. Sigonius sagt 1552 in Venedig in einer Rede: "Sunt enim, qui ... hoc tempore ia nostro hoc Uterarum curriculo ita versantur, ut novam hanc vulgarem, quam vocamus, linguam unam amplectantur, latinam illam veterem penitus aspementur."

Ausgespart wird hier das Lehrziel, das heute als das eigentlich "humanistische"

und allein bedeutsame Lehrziel des altsprachlichen Unterrichts gilt, näm-

durch Beschäftigung mit den Inhalten der Schriften der Alten. Ich wollte das ohnehin weitgespannte Thema nicht überschreiten, vor allem aber ist mir nicht klar, wieweit ein Lateinunterricht, der in seiner Normalform nach verbreiteter Klage viele Jahre mit grammatischen Spitzfindigkeiten verbrachte, dieses Lehrziel überhaupt entschieden ins Auge faßte.^ Muretus sagte 1572 in einer Rede in Rom: "Hodie enim, ut quis vulgaria rhetorum praecepta utcumque didicit, et in Ciceronis scriptis tantum posuit operae, ut ... possit orationem aut epistulam scribere, cuius tum singulae voces, tum ipsa etiam structura et coUocatio Ciceronem oleat, protinus magno eorum consensu, qui nihil altius aut sublimius cogitant, eloquentis nomen assumit. Itaque, si de quopiam istorum percunctere, num Platonem, Aristotelem, Theophrastum legerit, denique nimi philosophiam adtigerit, negabit; se enim relicto aliis philosophiae studio eloquentiae gloria contentum fuisse." Ich möchte vermuten, daß auch im 15. Jahrhundert in der Regel die eloquentia das höchste Lehrziel des Lateinunterrichts war, lasse mich aber gern eines Besseren belehren. lich die höhere Bildung

1.4 Die Lehrmethode. Gerade beim guten und wendigen Lehrer ist die Methode von den jeweiligen Verhältnissen abhängig und davon berichtet keine Quelle. Die äußeren Umstände wirken bis in die Lehrziele hinein,wenn die Schüler keine Bücher und die Lehrer kaum Bücher haben, ist die

Klassikerlektüre schwierig. Klassikerinterpretation setzt eine einigermaßen einheitliche Klasse voraus, und die wird es im Normalfall nicht gegeben haben. Die Methode im Einzelfall wird viel mehr als durch Theorien durch ganz banale Zwänge bestimmt. Mit einem Trostbrief an den kranken Großvater kann der mittlere Schüler einige Stunden beschäftigt werden, und mit einem Huldigungsgedicht an den Fürsten der Spitzenschüler ein paar Tage und er braucht dazu, anders als der heutige Kollegstufenschüler, keine Bibliothek. Die Phantasie, die sich die Methodik des damaligen Schulbetriebs vorzustellen sucht, muß grundsätzlich von den in der eigenen Schulzeit gewonnenen Vorstellungen absehen und etwa an die methodischen Schwierigkeiten denken, mit denen der Lehrer einer ungeteilten sogenannten Zwergschule zu kämpfen hat. An anschaulichen Beschreibungen des früheren Schulbetriebes besteht für den deutschsprachlichen Kulturraum kein Mangel; schon die Seite 198 des Orbis pictus des Comenius gibt ein instruktives Bild. Über die Erkenntnisquellen für die italienische Renaissance weiß ich wenig Bescheid;

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381

kunstgeschichtliche Quellen dürften hier ergiebiger sein als literarische. Genauere Kenntnis der Verhältnisse kann vieles erklären, etwa die Klagen über den Leerlauf im Grammatikunterricht; der in einer wenig gegliederten Schule kaum vermeidbar ist.

Der gefeiertste Pädagoge der Renaissance war Vittorino da Feltre (gest. Mantua am Hofe der Gonzaga aus christlichem und humanistischem Geist eine wegweisende Schule begründet hat. Man kann oft lesen, daß er keine Schriften hinterlassen hat; es gibt aber von ihm einen kleinen Traktat 1.4. 1

1446), der in

über die lateinische Orthographie (Nachweise bei Percival 1976 S. 76). Jedenfalls wissen wir über sein methodisches Vorgehen beim Lateinunterricht kaum etwas.

Mehr wissen wir

von 1429 hochberühmter Lehrer des Griechischen und des Lateinischen am Hof der Este zu Ferrara wirkte, nach unseren Begriffen Hochschullehrer und Gymnasiallehrer in einer Person. Es gibt eine Monographie von Remigio Sabbadini, La Scuola e gli Studi di Guarino Guarini Veronese (Catania, 1896). Aufschlüsse gibt neben der unten (2.3) zu besprechenden Grammatik Guarinos ein in seinem Geist geschriebenes Büchlein seines Sohnes Battista De ordine docendi ac studendi (1459) (so der Titel nach Percival 1976 S. 78). Von Beatus Rhenanus warm empfohlen, wurde das Buch noch 1514 in Straßburg gedruckt unter dem Titel De modo et ordine docendi bis

in dieser Hinsicht über Guarino da Verona, der

zu seinem Tode 1460

als

ac discendi (in München in der Staatsbibliothek und im Institut für Geistesgeschichte des Humanismus)."* Hier sei nur einiges herausgegriffen. Obwohl Guarino als "Reformpädagoge" gelten kann und Battista von der Grammatik seines Vaters sagt, sie enthalte "nihil superflui"— gemeint ist allerdings nicht für die Lektüre, sondern für das Lateinschreiben ("ad orationem recte struendam") — so wird doch auf die Grammatik großer Wert gelegt ("de Grammatica omni ex parte perfecte docendi sunt"). Es wird auch der Gebrauch des Doctrinale Alexanders, das gegen Ende des Jahrhunderts als Marterwerkzeug verdammt wird, durchaus empfohlen, allerdings nicht die Benützung der besonders problematischen Abschnitte über Regimen und Constructio. Diese werden durch praktikablere Formulae ersetzt (vgl. Percival 1976 S. 78). Ohne die Prügelstrafe ging es auch hier nicht ab; Battista empfiehlt einen sparsamen Gebrauch, was ein bezeichnendes Licht auf den üblichen Brauch wirft. Nicht ohne Grund wird ja die Grammatik auf allegorischen Darstellungen durch eine Rute gekennzeichnet. Moderne Pädagogen mögen hier nicht vergessen, daß sie in einheitlich vorgebildeten Jahrgangsklassen imterrichten dürfen. Hingewiesen sei noch auf eine bezeichnende Einzelheit: Die Schüler sollen lernen "ornate componere, ut (exempli causa) oratio plerumque verbo claudatur et quidquid ab ilio pendet (d.h. das Appositum des Mittelalters) anteponatur atque id a quo dependet (d.h. das Suppositum des Mittelalters, unser Subjekt)." Das Mittelalter arbeitet zur Erklärung der Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse im Satz mit einer Konstruktionsordnung (die man mit einem modernen Terminus einer Tiefenstruktur zuschreiben kann), bei der das Verb in der Mitte stent. ^ Es hat das Subjekt (Suppositum) "ante se," das Objekt und andere Bestimmungen des Verbs "post se." Dementsprechend werden auch

seminar: the role of latin

382

die frei erfundenen Demonstrationsbeispiele gebildet: Socrates percutit Platonem. Socrates albus currit bene. Guarino behält in seinen Regulae gram-

maticales das mittelalterliche System durchaus bei; z.B. hat ein passives Verb den "nominativus personae patientis ante se," den "ablativus personae agentis (mit a) post se." Dieses System ist in der Grammatik bis gegen Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts üblich und wird dann allmählich durch das Satzgliedsystem mit Subjekt, Objekt usw. ersetzt. Das "ornate componere" (in der "Oberflächenstruktur") —Gegensatz wäre etwa "grammatice componere" — ist also eine gewisse Befreiung von der Grammatik des Mittelalters. Ob dieser stilistische Rat zur Endstellung des Verbs (den ich in den Grammatiken erst wieder am Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts kenne) aus einer Beobachtung des (keineswegs einhelligen) antiken Sprachgebrauchs stammt oder aus dem von Poggio wiederentdeckten Quintilian (9, 4, 26) übernommen ist, vermag ich nicht zu sagen.

Wir erfahren auch die Einteilung in drei Stufen (nicht Jahrgangsklassen): die Elementarstufe, in der die regelmäßige Flexion gelernt wird, die nach der

Grammatik als Hauptgegenstand benannte Stufe, in der bei Guarino auch Geschichte gelernt wird, und die Rhetorikstufe.

Die Lehrbücher. Wer

sich ein auch nur einigermaßen zutreffendes Bild der tatsächlichen Verhältnisse verschaffen will, hat wieder eine Reihe recht banaler Fragen an den Kulturhistoriker. Besaßen die Schüler selbst Bücher? Im 15. Jahrhundert wohl auch nach dem Aufkommen des Buchdrucks in aller Regel nicht. Wie hoch waren die Papierpreise? Ich habe selbst noch als Schüler mit dem Griffel auf die Schiefertafel geschrieben, die deshalb eingeführt war, weil das

sowohl aus Sparsamkeitsgründen wie auch

Handhaben von Tintenfaß und Stahlfedern eine Quelle ständigen Verdrusses war; bei den früheren Gänsefedern war es noch viel schlimmer. ^ Auch die Vorstellung, daß die Schüler alle vor Schreibpulten saßen und der Lehrer ihnen die Grammatik diktierte, wäre offenbar falsch (das zeigt auch noch das Bild der Schulstube bei Comenius). Der Unterricht in Grammatik war offenbar im wesentlichen mündlich; die Grammatiken waren Bücher für den Lehrer. Was der Lehrer mit ihnen machte, entzieht sich weitgehend unserer Kenntnis. Schon für imser Jahrhundert ergeben die Versuche von Nicht-Augenzeugen, an Hand von Verordnungen und Schulbüchern den Unterricht der Zeit von 1933-1945 darzustellen, ein unzutreffendes Bild; um so mehr gilt das für frühere Jahrhunderte. Die äußeren Umstände erklären die auch von Guarino geteilte Vorliebe für zum Memorieren geeignete Versregeln. Sie sind wohl auch dafür mitverantwortlich, daß auch in der Hochblüte der Renaissance der Grammatik gegenüber der Lektüre ein nach imseren Ansichten unverhältnismäßig großer Raum gewährt wird. Für den Geschichtsschreiber der Grammatik bestehen vor allem zwei Schwierigkeiten. Fortschritte in der grammatischen Wissenschaft erfolgten vorwiegend nicht in monographischen Abhandlungen, sondern in Grammatiken, die, auch wenn sie den Namen Schulgrammatik tragen,

RAIMUND

PFISTER

3^3

vielfach nicht reine Schülergrammatiken sind. Beim Verfassen der Grammatiken werden lange Partien mehr oder weniger von Früheren abgeschrieben; das ist unvermeidlich und in Hinblick auf die Kontinuität des Unterrichts gar kein Schaden. Aber an einigen Stellen, besonders in der Syntax, können

Neuerungen stehen, die nicht als solche gekennzeichnet sind imd auch für den spezialisierten Fachmann schwer zu erkennen sind, die aber für Jahrhunderte maßgebend geblieben sind. Die andere Schwierigkeit liegt darin, daß Grammatiken mit bekanntem Namen und Rang von Verlegern oder vielfach anonym bleibenden Bearbeitern ohne Kennzeichnung ergänzt oder verändert werden. Besonders schlimm steht es hier mit der Grammatik von Guarino. Bei der Behandlimg der Grammatik der Renaissance kann im Rahmen dieses Seminars nicht auf Einzeluntersuchungen eingegangen werden und es ist im Rahmen seines Themas wohl kaum nötig. Hier muß auf die Arbeit des derzeit wohl besten Kenners der Materie, W. Keith Percival, verwiesen werden: Renaissance Giammai: Rebellion oi Evolution^ Dort sind weitere Literaturverweise; ergänzend hinweisen möchte ich auf J. GoUing, Einleitung in die Geschichte dei lateinischen Syntax (1903, s. Anhang), eine Arbeit, die wenig bekannt und außerhalb Deutschlands wohl kaum erreichbar, aber, wenn auch für das Mittelalter durch neuere Forschung teilweise überholt, immer noch höchst wertvoll

ist.

2.1 Für den Elementar kurs wird bei Guarino Bearbeitung der Ars minor des Donat benutzt.^

eine

mittelalterliche

Wer

nicht nur feststellen will, was die Renaissance Neues geschaffen auch wissen will, was damals in den Schulstuben getrieben worden ist, kann an dem Doctrinale des Alexander von Villadei nicht vorübergehen. Obwohl seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts, angefangen mit Vallas Elegantiae, auf das heftigste bekämpft, hat es sich bis in das 16. Jahrhundert behauptet und wurde noch 1580 in Brescia gedruckt (moderne Ausgabe von D. Reichling, Berlin 1893). Die Urteile über das Werk gehen sehr auseinander. Wer auf praktische Brauchbarkeit sieht und an Einzelheiten An2.2

hat, sondern

stoß nimmt, wird es verdammen. Wer sich bemüht, die oft rätselhaft knappen 2645 Hexameter zu enträtseln, kann es als spannende Lektüre ansehen. GoUing S. 22 nennt den aus Villedieu in der Normandie stammenden Verfas-

1170-1250; Erscheinungsjahr 1199) die weitaus bedeutendste grammaVon den 12 Kapiteln behandeln 1-7 die Formenlehre, 8-9 die Syntax, der Rest Akzentlehre, Prosodie imd Figurenlehre. Der problematischste Teil ist die Syntax mit Regimen und Constructio. Hier sind Mängel in der Konsequenz, die manche zur Annahme von Interpolationen veranlaßt hat. Die Syntax war aber auch der schwierigste Teil, weil hier die Forschung noch im Fluß war. Die lateinische Syntax war ja, wie GoUing S. 28 mit Recht sagt, eine Schöpfung des 12. Jahrhunderts. GoUing (29-37) hat den Gang der Syntax Alexanders ausführlich analysiert. Guarino hat diesen Teil durch Eigenes ersetzt, sonst aber die Benützung Alexanders durchaus empfohlen und nach alter Grammatikermanier Formulierungen Alexanders in sein eigenes Werk übernommen. Die Behandlung des Werkes ser

(c.

tische Erscheinung des Mittelalters.

seminar: the role of latin

384

mitsamt den zahlreichen Kommentaren und Glossen dauerte im Unterricht mehrere Jahre. 2.3 Guarinos lateinische

während

Grammatik,

die Regulae giammaticales, entstand

seiner Lehrtätigkeit in Venedig (141 4- 1419). Es gibt eine

Menge von

Manuskripten; Percival hat etwa 20 eingesehen, die Inkunabeln belaufen sich auf etwa 50 (Percival 1976 S. 77]. Der Text wurde schon zu Lebzeiten Guarinos willkürlich verändert und dabei, wie Spätere beklagen, verschlechtert. Die Erstellung eines authentischen Textes ist eine mühsame Philologenarbeit, die wir vielleicht von Percival erwarten dürfen, und wohl nicht vollkommen lösbar. Eine Ausgabe müßte wohl die Form einer Konkordanz annehmen. Golling S. 40 verzeichnet noch ein zweites, posthumes Werk Guarinos Giammaticae institutiones, zuerst erschienen s. 1.1475 (s. Copinger, Supplement to Hain's Repertorium U 1 No. 2821) und benützt es in einer Ausgabe Venedig 1544. Es ist eine vollständige Grammatik mit Hinzufügung von in den Regulae nicht behandelten Gebieten. Ob das ein Werk des Guarino, wie Golling annimmt, oder ein Verlegerprodukt ist, muß vielleicht erst noch geklärt werden. Was im Folgenden über Guarinos Grammatik gebracht wird, ist aus der genannten Sekundärliteratur, insbesondere der ins Einzelne gehenden Darstellung bei Golling 38-40 gewonnen.

Das Hauptanliegen Guarinos ist, auf einfache Form gebracht, folgendes: Zum Übersetzen ins Lateinische (was bei Guarino auch betrieben wurde) und zum Lateinschreiben bedarf der Schüler die Kenntnis der Rektion (heute würden wir sagen der Valenz) der lateinischen Verben. Später und heute bedient man sich der Hilfe eines Wörterbuches mit Konstruktionsangaben. Ein solches Hilfsmittel schuf erst Antonius Mancinelli mit seinem Buch De vaiia constTuctione thesaurus, Rom 1490, einem alphabetischen Verzeiclmis von Verben imd Adjektiven mit ihren Kasuskonstruktionen (Golling 42). Heute würde man das ein Valenzwörterbuch nennen. Bei Guarino muß der Schüler, der nicht nachschlagen konnte, die Rektionslehre möglichst vollzählig im Grammatikunterricht lernen. Dabei woUte Guarino nur das für den erstrebten Zweck Notwendige bringen und verzichtete deshalb auf Teilgebiete der mittelalterlichen Grammatik. Er verzichtet auf ins Sprachphilosophische reichende Überlegungen, aus welchem Gnmde ein bestimmter Kasus steht (bei Percival 1976 S. 74 explanatory concepts genannt). Die mittelalterlichen Termini Suppositum und Appositum gebraucht er kaum; die mittelalterliche Methode der Satzgliedbestimmung durch ante und post in Beziehung auf das in die Mitte zu setzende Verb (vgl. oben 1.4.1) reichte bis gegen Ende des 18. Jahrhimderts aus, wo dann Subjekt und Prädikat und etwas später das Objekt in der Lateingrammatik aufkamen. Ganz verzichtet er auf die Sprachphilosophie und die Termini der nach den von ihnen behandelten Modi significandi benannten Modisten des Mittelalters, denen erst wieder die Gegenwart Aufmerksamkeit widmet (Literatur bei Percival 1976 S. 75). Die von Guarino aufgestellte Liste von Verbklassen in Hinblick auf die regierten Kasus (dargestellt bei Golling 39) ist freilich noch kompliziert genug, imd der heute in seinen Anforderungen sehr bescheiden gewordene Grammatiklehrer kann die Meinung, sie enthalte "nihil superflui" (vgl. oben 1.4.1), nicht teilen. Ein Beispiel: Separativa regieren

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385

den Abi. personae agentis mit a und einen zweiten Abi. mit a

lectio auditur

me a magistro. Wenn Sabbadini

1896 S. 45 schreibt: "Guarino ha liberato la grammatica ingombro dialettico, sotto cui l'aveve sepellita la scolastica," so meint er damit nur die eben genannten Punkte, nicht aber eine radikale Verwerfung der mittelalterlichen Grammatik. An anderer Stelle sagt er (S. 39): di tutto queir

"... il

metodo

delle Regulae è tutto medievale."

libri VI erfordern von dem Leser große Liebe zu der Überfülle von grammatikalischen und lexikographischen Einzelheiten. Man sucht in diesem mehr zum Nachschlagen geeigneten Meer von Stoff nach lesbaren Inseln und gerät dann an die Verdammung der mittelalterlichen Grammatiker in der Vorrede zum zweiten Buch. Wenn Voigt schreibt, daß das Buch (nach Golling vor 1444 abgeschlossen) bei seinen unmittelbaren Zeitgenossen wenig Gefallen gefunden habe, so kann man das gerne glauben; wenn er weiter schreibt, daß er mit glänzendem Scharfsinn die moderne Grammatik begründet habe, so ist das zwar nicht völlig falsch, aber für den, der das Buch nicht selbst zur Hand nimmt, höchst irreführend. Denn Percival 1976 S. 81 schreibt mit Recht: "In matters of grammatical theory Valla was no great innovator." Valla behält den größten Teil der spezifischen Terminologie der mittelalterlichen Grammatik bei. Wesentlich ist, daß er— allerdings durchaus nicht ausnahmslos — seine

2.4 Vallas

ein hohes

Elegantiamm linguae Latinae

Maß von Geduld und

Belegbeispiele nicht auf der

Gnmdlage

seiner

Sprachkompetenz

selbst bildete.

So machten es die mittelalterlichen Grammatiker und so machen es, allerdings nur in der eigenen Muttersprache, in der modernen Linguistik die Generativisten. Valla wählte dagegen seine Beispiele in der Regel aus der antiken Literatur. Dabei geht es ihm um die Frage, was echtes Latein ist, was der Sprachgebrauch der besten Autoren (vor allem Ciceros und Quintilians) ist

und was unlateinisch

ist.

Die Tirade im Vorwort zum zweiten Buch (zu ähnlichen Äußerungen Vallas an anderen Stellen vgl. Percival 1976 S. 79f.) hat zwar Aufsehen erregt, aber auf die Grammatiken der unmittelbar folgenden Zeit keinen Einfluß gehabt. Aber die Auswirkung auf die folgenden Generationen war sehr erheblich; das Buch hat nicht nur die Diskussion im Pro und Contra bis zur Gegenwart angeregt, sondern auch die sprachliche Gestalt des Neulateins erheblich beeinflußt. Hier kaim nur auf einige ausgewählte Gesichtspimkte hingewiesen werden. Die Elegantiae des Valla werden in den lateinischen Grammatiken bis in das 19. Jahrhundert für grammatische Einzelheiten zitiert, und zwar nicht etwa als Kuriosa der Wissenschaftsgeschichte, sondern im Rahmen der

modernen Gelehrtenliteratur. Da er in der Regel der erste ist, der zitiert wird, erscheint die Ansicht Voigts, er habe die moderne Grammatik begründet, vom Standpunkt des 19. Jahrhunderts aus nicht ganz abwegig. Der Vorwurf, Valla habe das Latein zur toten Sprache gemacht, würde in der Sprache der moderen Linguistik etwa so aussehen: Valla hat das Latein zur Sprache eines abgeschlos-

senen Corpus gemacht, d.h. die Entscheidung, was in der Spracht akzeptabel ist

und was

nicht,

trifft

nicht der ausgebildete Lateinschreiber, der hier den

muttersprachlichen "native speaker" ersetzen muß, auf Grund seiner Sprach-

seminar: the role of latin

386

kompetenz, sondern die Entscheidung wird auf Grund des ein für allemal abgeschlossenen Corpus des überlieferten Schrifttums der Antike getroffen. Dazu kommt, daß dieses Corpus nochmals auf die "besten" Autoren eingeschränkt wird, also nach einem Qualitätsmaßstab, wie die einen meinen, in einer wissenschaftlich unhaltbaren Willkür, wie die anderen meinen. Der Ciceronianismusstreit der Renaissance kann hier als bekannt vorausgesetzt werden, deshalb bringe ich nur einige Randbemerkungen. Die historische Sprachwissenschaft seit dem 19. Jahrhundert lehnt die Wertung von Sprachperioden grundsätzlich ab und sieht in Vorstellungen vom Aufstieg und Verfall einer Sprache einen unwissenschaftlichen Romantizismus. Im Einflußbereich dieser Sprachwissenschaft steht W.Kroll {Gesch. d. Mass. Philo!., Berlin 1919, S. 81), wenn er über den vom ihm hochgeschätzten Valla schreibt: "... ohne es zu ahnen, betrat Valla damit die zum extremen Cicerionianismus hinführende Bahn." Das ist als Freispruch von Schuld gemeint. Wie es mit dieser Ahmmgslosigkeit wirklich steht, kann ich nicht entscheiden. Von ganz anderen Denkvoraussetzungen gehen moderne Soziolinguisten aus, wenn sie die Wertimg von unterschiedlichen Erscheinimgsformen von Sprache ablehnen; für sie weist die Sprache einer Unterschicht gegenüber der einer Oberschicht nur eine (wertneutrale) Differenz, nicht aber ein Defizit auf. Die ideologische Voreingenommenheit liegt hier klar zutage, aber die Frage nach den soziologischen Hintergründen des Spottes der Humanisten über das Küchenlatein ist nicht illegitim. Meine eigene Stellungnahme ist vorbedingt durch eine jahrzehntelange Tätigkeit als Sprachlehrer an Gymnasien, als Leiter von lateinischen Stilübungen an der Universität und als Verfasser und Herausgeber von lateinischen Unterrichtswerken, und im Rahmen des Themas unseres Seminars erscheinen mir diese Vorbedingungen nicht unpassend. Ich bin entschieden der Auffassung, daß das Latein der Humanisten insgesamt "besser" war als das des ausgehenden Mittelalters. Ich verstehe durchaus die Leute, denen das freiere Latein der früheren Humanisten besser gefällt als das gebundenere, vielleicht etwas sterile Latein der Zeit, in der Vallas Elegantiae zur vollen Auswirkung gelangt waren. Aber hier sind auch die Bedürfnisse der Spracherziehung ins Auge zu fassen. Ein an Cäsar (der damals nicht die Rolle spielte wie heute) und Cicero ausgerichteter Sprachstil kann aus Gründen, die durchaus im einzelnen ausgeführt werden könnten, verhältnismäßig leicht nachgeahmt werden. Diesen Stil kann auch der geeignete Durchschnittsschüler lernen, während etwa den Stil Senecas nach einem Worte Quintilians nur jemand nachahmen könnte, der auch seinen Geist hätte. Nach Gudeman {Gesch. d. lat. Lit. n, Berlin 1923, S. 121) ist dies nur Justus Lipsius gelungen. So sehe ich die späteren Auswirkungen von Vallas Elegantiae durchaus nicht negativ. Spätere Humanisten wie Muretus haben ein Latein geschrieben, das sich für die Anfangslektüre an unseren Gymnasien hervorragend eignet. (Zimi Ganzen vgl. J.IJsewijn, Companion 15-24, bes. 22f) 2.5

letzten Drittel des Jahrhunderts erscheint eine größere Zahl

Grammatiken, zu denen ich kaum etwas aus Eigenem sagen kann Geschichtsschreiber der

Grammatik

(die für

von den

interessante Zeit ist erst das 16. Jahr-

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387

hundert). Es erübrigt sich auch; da Percival 1976 S. 82ff mit für mich unerreichbarer Sachkenntnis das Wesentliche skizziert hat. Deshalb bringe ich auch hier nur einige Randbemerkungen. In den Handbüchern, die ja notgedrungen voneinander abschreiben müssen, erfreut sich einer auffallenden Be-

vorzugung Niccolò Perotti, der 1468 Rudimenta gzammatices verfaßt hat, die nach Golling S. 41 "wie es scheint" zuerst 1473 zu Rom gedruckt wurden. Im Tusculum-Lexß^on (ist dort Perotti mehr als ein Druckfehler?) wird dieses Buch als "die erste lateinische Schulgrammatik der neueren Zeit" bezeichnet, während bei Guarino dessen Regulae gar nicht erwähnt werden, die doch diesen Ruhm in erster Linie in Anspruch nehmen können. Nach Golling 41 behält Perotti im wesentlichen Guarinos Plan bei, allerdings "mit nennenswerten Besserungen von Guarinos Vorgang." Perotti wurde seinerseits von Späteren überarbeitet oder ausgiebig benützt. Das gilt nach Golling 51 auch für Giovanni Sulpizio Verulano, der aber anderseits im Gegensatz zu Perotti mit seiner Kritik der mittelalterlichen Grammatik, insbesondere des Doctrinale Alexanders, in Vallas Fußtapfen tritt (Percival 1976 S. 82). Der Interessent für die Geschichte der Grammatik bedauert natürlich, daß die eben genannten Grammatiken schwer zugänglich sind, was auch zu den

Handbücher führt, und ist für ausführlichere wie sie Percival gibt, äußerst dankbar. Er muß sich aber auch fragen, wieweit sich ein Nachdruck von Werken, die jeweils nur zu einem geringen Teil Originelles bieten, wirklich lohnen würde. Aber auf jeden Fall ist zu beklagen, daß die grammatischen Werke des Giulio Pomponio Leto (1427-1497) nur handschriftlich erhalten sind und deshalb in den Handbüchern gar nicht erwähnt werden (wertvolle Angabe bei Percival 1976 S. 84f). Dabei war er, der antike Grammatikertexte gesammelt und Varros De Lingua Latina zum Druck gebracht hat, wohl der bedeutendste italienische Grammatiker des 15. Jahrhunderts. Ich zitiere Percival 1976 S. 85: "Pomponio's ... was the first humanistic grammar to step out of line in any radical fashion, and it is perhaps for this reason that it was never as popular as such works as Perotti's Ruditradierten schiefen Urteilen der

Zitate,

menta which adhered

closely to tradition."

2.6 Zusammenfassung zur Grammatik. Schon 1896 hat Sabbadini die Entwicklung der Grammatik in der Renaissance unter das Motto gestellt: "Non ribellione, ma evoluzione!" (45). Der lange Kampf gegen das Doctrinale Alexanders, das schließlich im 16. Jahrhundert überall aus der Schule verschwindet, geht in erster Linie um die methodische Brauchbarkeit und nur teilweise gegen den Inhalt. Mit dem Alexander verschwindet keineswegs die gesamte mittelalterlich Syntax aus der Grammatik. So beherrscht die mittelalterliche

Konstruktionsordnung

(bei

Alexander V.1388ff) die Grammatik bis

zum Ende

des 18. Jahrhunderts.

Allgemeine Schlußbemerkung. Der Verfasser

ist

sich der Lückenhaftigkeit

und

Einseitigkeit seiner Aus-

führungen bewußt. Diese sind darauf berechnet, daß

erst

durch das Zusam-

seminar: the role of latin

388

menwirken

aller Teilnehmer des Seminars ein abgerundetes Bild der Rolle des Lateins in der Erziehung der Renaissance entstehen kann. Ihm kam es nicht auf die Theorie der Erziehung an, sondern auf den Versuch, etwas von der Erziehungswirklichkeit zu erfassen. Er glaubt und hofft, daß dieser Versuch von guten Kennern der Zeit insbesondere aus der reichlich erhaltenen Briefliteratur ergänzt oder korrigiert werden kann.

München, Deutschland

Anmerkungen Vom

Doctnnale gab es Holztafeldrucke, Eckstein 66. Ein Zitat aus Muretus bei Eckstein 73. 3. Eine reiche Lektûreliste des Battista Guarino gibt Eckstein 71. Selbst wenn diese mehr für die Artistenfakultät als für die Lateinschule gedacht war, vermute ich hier einige Hochstapelei, wenn ich daran denke, was in meiner eigenen Zeit 1.

von stolzen Lektüreempfehlungen

in der Praxis übriggeblieben ist. Eckstein 69 verzeichnet eine Neuausgabe mit bemerkenswertem Vorwort durch Struve in Jena 1704. 5. Näheres dazu in meinem Aufsatz zur Geschichte der Tiefenstruktur in der lateinischen Grammatik, Müncbenei Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft Heft 37, München 1978, S. 131-147. 6. Abwegig sind in diesem Zusammenhang angestellte Überlegungen, warum Guarino die historia als einen Teil der grammatica ansehe. Grammatice ist auch bei den Jesuiten die schulorganisatorische Bezeichnimg einer bestimmten Gruppe von Klassen, imd noch bis in dieses Jahrhimdert hießen an den französischen Gymnasien die 6., 5. und 4. Klassen classes de grammaire. 7. Nach Eckstein 47 haben sich mit Wachs überzogene Holztäf eichen bis in das 15. Jahrhundert in der Schule erhalten. 8. Auch für die Ais minor des Donat gab es Holztafeldrucke, Eckstein 66. 4.

Verzeichnis der abgekürzt zitierten Literatur In dem Vorausgehenden sind einige Gedächtniszitate bzw. Zitate aus nicht zitierfähigen Büchern der eigenen Bibliothek. Interessenten gibt der Verfasser gern nähere

Auskunft.

Alexander de Villa-Dei, Doctrinale, hrsg. von D. Reichling. Mon. Germ. Paed. Bd. 12 (Berlin, 1893). Aug. Eckstein, Lateinischer und griechischer Unterricht, hrsg. von H. Heyden (Leipzig, 1887); ein Nachdruck war bei Olms-Hildesheim zur Subskription angeboten, ob er erschienen ist, weiß ich nicht. Ein Werk ohne geistigen Tief-

Fr.

RAIMUND

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389

gang, aber mit einer überwältigenden Fülle noch übertroffen wird. J.

von Literaturangaben, wobei GoUing

GoUing, Einleitung in die Geschichte der lateinischen Syntax. In Historische Sprache, hrsg. von G. Landgraf, dritter Band, erstes Heft (Teubner: Leipzig, 1903). IJsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies (North-Holland Publishing Company,

Grammatik der lateinischen

Amsterdam New York Oxford, 1977). W. Keith Percival, Renaissance Grammar: Rebellion or Revolution} In Interrogativi dell'umanesimo Volume n S. 73-90. Leo S. Olschki (Firenze, 1976). R. Sabbadini,

La Scuola e

gli studi di

Guarino Guarini Veronese (Catania, 1896).

Tusculum Lexikon griechischer und lateinischer Autoren des Altertums und des Mittelalters, neu bearb. von W. Buchwald, A. Hohlweg, O. Prinz (Heimeran, München, 1963).

LITERATURE The

Allegorized Mythography of

Johannes Calderia Judson Boyce Allen

The

price that the pagan gods paid to survive, as Jean Seznec showed long ago, was to become medieval.^ Of this becoming, the great medieval monument is the mythography of Alberic of London, known from its modern edition as the third Vatican mythography.^ In this book, the assimilation of the pagan gods as good citizens of medieval exem-

plary culture was substantially completed and definitively illustrated; its popularity as the reference work of centuries after the twelfth was thoroughly deserved.^ What Alberic accomplished, with help from the commentary of

Amulf of Orleans on the Métamorphoses, was to present mythographic information in a form acceptable and convenient for use. Pierre Bersuire gives us notice of this accomplishment when he announces that he is going to make a "exposicionem moralem et allegoricam" of Ovid, because "verum quia de litterali fabularum intellectu iam plurimi tractavenmt, scilicet Fulgencius, Alexander vius et

[id est

the third Vatican mythographer, Alberic of London], et Ser-

alii nonnulli....

'"^

By moral and allegorical, Bersuire apparently meant Christian, for his commentary is full of interpretations in terms of quidam bonus prelatus, quilibet virgo martyr, Deus patera In his hands, the stories of the Metamorphoses become material which may be applied, which may be used by being interpreted, and which, being interpreted, become indirect statements of Christian doctrine and moral principle. His commentary, though it circulated independently and was variously attributed to Robert Holkot, Thomas Waleys, and Nicholas Trivet, as well as correctly to Bersuire himself, was in his own intention but one book of his great encyclopedic interpretation of all things, including the Bible and the natural universe, in these same terms. Another book of the same character was the French Ovide Moralisé,^ which indeed Bersuire read after he had finished two drafts of his own commentary, and whose allegories he added if he had not already thought of them ("si eas antea non proposueram, suis locis assignare curavi").'' Still another, which Bersuire also found late in his work, and which, if it does not indulge quite the kind of explicit Christianizing which Bersuire favors, does moralize in im-

JUDSON BOYCE ALLEN

391

new ways, is the Fulgentius Metaforalis of John Ridewall.^ All these books are well known; together, they exemplify and define the kinds of use late medieval writers made of these immigrant and naturalized gods and portant

goddesses. All these kinds

come together in the work of John Calderia, a fifteenthcentury Venetian physician who fancied himself a humanist, and whose mythography is foimd in a book advertised by its sixteenth-century publisher as "Concordantiae Poetarum Philosophonmi et Theologorum, loanne Calderia Phisico Authore Opus vere Aureum. Quod nunc primum in lucem prodiit ex antiquo exemplari authoris. Nemo igitur post hac poterit errare in via poetarum vel philosophorum nam ut apud theologos ita et apud hos, continentur dogmata salutis" (Venice, 1547). In addition to this printed version, the book exists in a manuscript in Fossombrone (no. 134) and a Vatican manuscript (Palat. lat. 985), both of the fifteenth century.^ In addition to the Concordances, Calderia wrote a commentary on the Distichs of Cato,^° a commentary on the Psalter, ^^ a book on astrology, ^^ a book on medicine, ^^ a book on the polity of Venice which describes the arts and crafts of the city as well as its virtues,^'* and a collection of speeches. ^^ Copies of all these works survive. Beyond these, British Library Additional manuscript 15406, a copy of the Cato commentary, lists possibly seven additional works, including a commentary on Dante's Commedia and a collection of "Familiäres epistolas ad omnis mundi principes. ^^ We know he had a daughter, because he wrote the Cato commentary and the Concordances for her instruction.^'' He had the chair of medicine of the university of Padua, but associates himself most with Venice, where he died in 1474 at an advanced age.^^ He tries without total success to write good humanist Latin, but his mythographic materials and attitudes, as well as the procedures of his Cato commentary, are thoroughly medieval. His mythography is interesting for three reasons. First, his figures include both genuine pagan gods and personified abstractions, taken as of identical being and status. Second, his mythography stands, in the total of the Concordances, for poetry. Thus, since his succeeding treatments of philosophy and theology are also essentially poetic, the mythography permits us to account medievally for that "poetry" which is a part of the poetry that also includes and enacts philosophy and theology. Third and finally, Calderia's interpretations of his mythic figures are explicitly Christian and, at the same time, selfconscious in a way which permits us to understand precisely what he meant by them. Calderia begins his work and his mythography with a discussion of the presence of divine truth in all being. Men may find divine things by means of four kinds of commimication: vita, cognitio, intellectio, and appetitus sive amor.^^ Thus poets, philosophers, and theologians have foreknowledge of God. Calderia discusses natural reason, the prophecy of Christ by the Sybil, and the tendency of a town to relate its god to the virtue or power— riches, military might, wisdom, or whatever— which chiefly characterizes the town.^ With chapter three, entitled "De misterio trinitatis quod antiqui obscura poesi tradiderunt," Calderia begins the procedure normal in most of

MYTHOGRAPHY OF JOHANNES CALDERIA

39^

the following thirty-five chapters: a Christian-theological title introduces a description of a pagan deity or mythographic story, for which Calderia gives in turn a moral and a spiritual exposition. The moral exposition may be euhemeristic or scientific instead of strictly moral; the spiritual exposition relates the mythographic material to the chapter's Christian title. As the work progresses, the method sometimes breaks down. The theological material is occasionally so fully developed as to lose entirely its mythographic base. At the end there are, among others, chapters on the moon (81r-85v), on Mercury (85v-91r [cod. 83r]), the supercelestial (94v-98r) and the terrestrial (98r-103r) Venuses, the other planets (lllv-122v), and Bacchus (134r-136v), in which the theological exposition is not always fully developed, or is submerged in discussion of astrological matters, or— in connection with Venus, Mars, and the fires of love — the kinds of magic. For the most part, the mythographic material itself is conventional and well known, and since his arrangement is his own, it is difficult to be certain of his sources. He may have used Robert Holkot's Moialitates and perhaps the Ymagines Fulgencii as well.^^ He used the late medieval collection of the descriptions of the gods either in Bersuire's version,^^ or in the version Seznec calls the Libellus.^^ Probably he used the mythography of Alberic,^'* and possibly also Boccaccio's Geneologie though he may have referred directly to ,

Fulgentius.^^

But Calderia is not significant for his scholarship so much as for his interThese are of the kind which Rosemond Tuve defines as "imposed allegories; "^^ Calderia, as we shall see, is well aware of this himself. His method depends on the ingenious exploitation of similitudes. There is time only for thp briefest of examples: first, a passage from the chapter entitled, "Quare Christus assumpsit naturam humanam," which explains three of the pretations.

amours

of Jupiter:

Taurum conversus Europam rapuit, nam Marquae circa frequens domus ministerium versabatur Tauro similatur,

lupiter etiam noster in ta

quare necesse

ut a Tauro, quia fortibus Christi rationibus vinceretur, [sic] mores in vaccam sicut Ysis conversa fuerat, et miraculis, et Christi praedicationibus prioris humanitatis formam accepit. Haec vero Inaci Fluminis filia fuit, quia Ecclesiae catholicae cimi propter merita ipsius sola fuerit ad apostolatum assumpta, praeterea ab ipsius oculis duo flumina efluxerunt, quibus Christi pedes lavit, et capilHs abstersit. Hie etiam lupiter auream Daphnem rapuit quia Beatam virginem. Nam cum forti ac maxima continentia turri contineretur, ut virginitatem servaret. lupiter in aurea nube conversus custodem seduxit et mulierem rapuit, nam Angelus qui tanquam alumna virgini nimtiaverat illam concipere significasset admiratione ducta tremula voce ac singulari rubore perfusa respondit, quomodo fiet istud, quia virum non cognosce time Angelus auro suasus, quia virtute aurea et

fuit,

Maria Magdalena, quae obturpes

Spiritus Sancti.

(32r)

In the following chapter, which deals with the Eucharist, Calderia continues with the rape of Leda, who represents the Church, and whose egg, composed

JUDSON BOYCE ALLEN

393

white and yolk, represents the double nature of the Eucharist (35r). For those worthily, Helen, Castor, and Pollux represent concord, peace, and eternal life; for those who commimicate unworthily, the same three of

who communicate

children represent sloth, pernicious war, and eternal punishment (35v). In other chapters, Aeolus, the wind, represents evil spirits or the devil, apparently because a wind blew down on the children of Job (49v); but Juno, who is associated with air, represents the Holy Spirit; her fourteen ministering nymphs, who are the fourteen natural qualities of air, such as serenity, fog, wind, etc., represent the ways the prophets may be inspired (53v). Vesta represents pure conscience (27v); Janus, John the Baptist (45r); Neptune, the

Church (59v). In a number of places, Calderia makes comments which show that he understands what he is doing. In the first place, he knows clearly that he is dealing with fictions: "Poetae igitur qui praeclara fictione dignificare Principes voluerunt, et illos supercoelestibus diis comparare" (29r). These fictions, because they "a veritate aliena prorsus existunt," the interpreter must verify, or justify (Calderia's word is "verificare"), by referring to the "moralitatem

potius quam figmentum" (lOOv). Fiction, in short, exists to be interpreted; interprétable fiction is what the poet makes. This, as Glending Olson has recently shown, is probably standard doctrine in the late middle ages; according to Jacques LeGrand, a preacher and writer of the time of Charles VI of France, who was influenced by Boccaccio, "Poetrie est science qui aprent a faindre et a fere ficcions fondées en raison et en la semblance des choses desquelles on veult parler. "^^ In response to fiction, the interpreter intends his interpretation. Calderia's "verificemus" is in the subjunctive. One may or should verify. He makes the spiritual exposition "si ad

Deum nostrum hec omnia referamus"

(3r).

His

at-

titude precisely reflects Bersuire's habitual terminology, in beginning yet another interpretation: "Vel die" — Or say— that such and such a god represents

such and such a Christian truth. a meditation in similitudes.

The

Then everything

else follows,

validity of this procedure has four elements: the

create fictions

which

are in

some way

power

by means

of the poet to

like the truth, the ontological character

^^ of similitude itself —reality exists so that only true likenesses are possible,

the existence of natural, moral, and spiritual truth as the answering half of similitude, and the devout determination of the reader to verify all this with an explicit interpretation. Like our own procedure, this one is a Hermeneutik, but it is a Hermeneutik to which not only language, but also the real world, is constituted to respond. Among the pagan fictions which Calderia interprets, two might seem out of place: the god of clemency and the god of benevolence and love. Both may be found in Robert Holkot's Moialitates-^^ the second, imder the name of "Friendship" also occurs in the Ymagines Fulgencii^ (since Calderia refers to "Friendship," he probably saw the Ymagines). Neither is really a god, nor even a

mythic

Clemency is a winged figure, and "I expect," whose heart is inscribed "the God of Clemency" (3r).^^ The second is more

figure; both, rather, are personifications.

whose wings

are inscribed "I promise"

remit," and

whose

title is

MYTHOGRAPHY OF JOHANNES CALDERIA

394

inventive: a beautiful youth, bareheaded and barefooted, dressed otherwise in a green garment inscribed "Winter and Summer." Through his open side

may be seen a heart inscribed "Near and Far;" on his hem is "Death and Life" (6v-7r).

Both figures

really exist for the sake of their inscriptions,

on which

based. But for Calderia, they have equal being and status with Jupiter and Jimo, Apollo, Diana, and the rest. They are a part of mythography. Such a combination confuses mimetic fiction with personfied abstraction. interpretation

It is a confusion condemned by Samuel Johnson in his analysis of Milton's Paradise Lost,^^ but it is a confusion typical of the late medieval and probably Renaissance poetry, from at least the time of the Romance of the Rose. I have elsewhere shown how such an abstraction may acquire both the reality and the status of mimetic fiction, by tracing the progress of the figure of Reason with a mirror from the Anticlaudianus of Alanus, through commentaries, to the Ymagines Fulgencii;^^ here it is interesting because it occurs in a work which does observe something like Johnson's distinction, by classifying allegorical abstractions in its third book as theology. In his three-part scheme, then, Calderia uses the pagan myths and their gods to represent poetry, properly so called. Poetry is fiction which contains Christian truth by virtue of being suitably interpreted. In addition to poetry, there are philosophy and theology. Calderia's second part. De inquisitione libeialium disciplinarum, presents the truth of which philosophy is capable. It is an allegory in the standard

with a temple of Jupiter in which one meets the liberal arts (137r-141v); and a wood (141v), through which one must pass to reach the river of the island of the philosophers (142r). This is a high marble place, reminiscent of the ice mountain of Chaucer's House of Fame. One gets to this island by means of seven bridges, which are stable only at their further ends (142r-142v). Here live the philosophers, who discuss with Calderia their doctropical sense,

trines. Eventually he meets both Aristotle (144v) and Philosophy (146r), and learns about the seven mechanical arts (155r-157v). The section eventually turns into praise of Francisucs Foscari and of Venice and her people — their

and their other achievements (157v-163v). De Trocheo beate virginis Mariae, represents theological truth. It is obviously adapted from the end of Dante's Purgatorio. Calderia begins with a rough climb which ends at two flowing streams (164r-164v). Here he meets an old man, apparently Noah (164v), and other personages who compose a procession of biblical history. After John the Baptist (165v) comes the expected chariot, drawn by the bi-form griffin, in which rides a glorious lady (166r). Accompanying, in procession, are various allegorical characters, including the Gospels (167r), the apostles (who repeat the Creed a phrase each) (167r), prophets, saints, martyrs, the pope, St. Frandress, their navy,

Calderia's third part, entitled

the four doctors to the church (167v-168v). In addition to Christian history (169v-170r), pagan history is summarized (170v-171r). The author is invited into the chariot himself (171v), and gets various explanations and interpretations (171v-173v), a ride through the heavens, and a return trip home (173v-179v). cis,

The most

significant thing about this remarkable compilation

that

ex-

JUDSON BOYCE ALLEN

395

ists at all. Many of the axioms that it presumes, of course, are common in the culture of the time: that there is divine truth in pagan fables, that the arts and philosophy are the outlines of the known and the knowable, that history is processional rather than just a succession of events, that fable, doctrine, and religion illuminate one another. But this rare, late, and quite personal treatise of Calderia's seasoned as it is with Renaissance patriotism, is the most fully and pedestrianly enacted presumption of these axioms that I know. What it achieves is the reconciliation of poetry, philosophy, and theology by a profoundly medieval presumption that everything is poetry. Again, I think he knows what he means. At the beginning of his second part, on philosophy, non veterum sed nostro ingenio he defines his essay as "banc itaque poesim elaboratam" (137r-137v). His third part, on theology, is borrowed from the most famous poet of his Italy. Further, Dante is a poet for whom Calderia has enormous respect, and about whom he makes a number of revealing comments. Calderia calls him "praeclarus vates" (lOOv), one who, with "caeteri sacrarum literarum scriptorum banc sententiam ... exemplis et rationibus tradiderunt" (24v). Further, Calderia says "quod praeclarus ille vates Dantes cuius omnem comediam cum maxima omnium admiratione memoria tenens . . .

omatissimae

[sic]

conscripsit" (8v).

memory, Calderia neatly anticipates and confirms Charles More important, he evokes the memory which is the first third of prudence, in which exists the fictions, the examples, the images, the doctrines, and the definitions under whose guidance life is lived. In understanding the truth, one may remember in the light of fit interpretation the stories In his reference to

Singleton.^"*

one may know the doctrines of the philosophers and teachers of the arts, and one may rise on the borrowed images of Dante's allegory to that insight which is true theology. Everything is poetry. In such a universe, the fictions of the ancient gods are completely at home. of the ancient gods,

University of Florida

Notes Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, tr. Barbara Sessions, Bollingen (New York, 1953). 2. G. H. Bode, ed., Scrìptoies Renan Mytbicanun Latini Ties Romae Nupei Repelli (Cellis, 1834). Subsequent references will be in the form: m. 3. Judson B. Allen, The Priai as Ciitic (Nashville, 1971), p. 38. 4. De foimis figurisque deorum, ed. J. Engels (Utrecht, 1966), p. 2. 5. "Sed exponamus allegorice &. dicamus quod iste deus nature potest significare ipsum verum nature Deum, Dominum nostrum Ihesum Xristum ... Vel ad litteram die quod talem forman &. ymaginem debet habere bonus prelatus qui s. proprie nature sue dicitur, deus, inquantum eius appetitus refrénât ut dominus." Engels, 1.

Series

XXXVm

p. 40.

MYTHOGRAPHY OF JOHANNES CALDERIA

39^ 6.

C. de Boer, ed. (Amsterdam, 1954.)

Engels, p. 3.

8. See my article, "Commentary as Criticism: The Text, Influence, and Literary Theory of the Fulgentius Metaphored of John Ridewall," in Acta Conventus NeoLatini Amstelodamensis. 9. I have seen Palat. lat. 985; Kristeller makes reference to the Fossombrone

manuscript in IteT Italicum (London, 1967), H. p. 520. 10. The manuscripts of the commentary on the Distichs of Cato, Catonis disticha

which survive are British Museum Additional MS. 15406; Fondo Campori MS. 293 (Gamma T 5, 5); Napoli Biblioteca Governativa dei Gerolamini MS. cart. 29 (xiv-iv); and Padova Biblioteca del Seminario MS. 40 and MS. 7. 11. The commentary on the Psalter survives in Modena Biblioteca Estense MS.

cum commentano, Modena

1000 (Alpha 12.

etc.,

Biblioteca Estense

3, 6).

The book on

Biblioteca Marciana 13.

The book on

canonum astiologiae, etc., exists in Venice Latini classe viii 72 (3273). medicine, Consilia medica, etc., survives in Vatican City

astrology, libei

MS.

Biblioteca Apostolica Baticana MS. Palat. lat. 1115. 14. The book on the polity of Venice, De piaestantia Venete politie, etc., exists in Venice Biblioteca Marciana MS. Latini classe x 356 (3261-62), copied from MS.

Bodleian Laud 717z; Firenze Libreria Olschki 1936 MS. 24068. Laurence Witten.

Now owned

15. The collection of speeches exists in Udine Biblioteca Commimalis Fondo Manin MS. 1335 (176) cart, and in Venice Biblioteca Marciana MS. Latini classe xi 102 (3940). See also the miscellanies in Venice Biblioteca Marciana MS. Latini classe vi 132 (3564) and Vatican City Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS. Palat. lat.

1086.

John Calderia lists his own writings (lOOr-lOOv): Speculum divinale, Speculimi sapientiale. Speculimi historiale, Gemman medicinalem, Lucidatoriima, "omnes partes philosophie descripsimus," Librum de causis et causatis, Expositio psalmorum, Expositio comédie dantis aldigeri, Concordantia poetarum philosophorum et theologorum, Expositio Catonis, Familiäres epistolas ad omnis mundi 16.

principes. 17. Padua Biblioteca del Seminario MS. 40 is addressed "pro filia erudienda;" the Concordantia was written "pro filia erudienda." 18. Nouvelle biographie générale depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à nos jours, avec les renseignements bibliographiques et l'indication des sources à consulter (Paris, 1855-1185), 46 vols., vol. 8, sv. Calderia. 19. Constat enim unam esse causam et quidem primam in qua omnis causandi perfectissima ratio continetur ab ea vero esse, vita, cognitio, intellectio, appetitus sive amor, et caeterae perfectiones in rebus a primo causante distantibus multiplicantur [cod. muliiplicantur] Quanto igitur spirituales illae formae divinitus productae et natura et dignitate priores sunt tanto haec perfectius suscipiunt atque continent. Ideo prima intelligentia essendo rationem accepit a qua tamen vitae et intelligendo ratio non excluditur, secimdo vero vitae rationem accepit, continet tertia intelligendo, quales igitur ea prima et utilissima causa perfectiores acceperunt tales caeteris inferioribus communicant et tribuvmt. Ideo esse Dei a Deo multiplicatur similiter vita cognitio intellectio et amore suae tamen causalitatis vim omnem in rebus causatis significantes. Omnium igitur rerum perfectiones .

JUDSON BOYCE ALLEN a

Deo sunt quae

39/

ab hominibus et caeteris entibus subriperentur prorsus

nostrum divinum esset, similiter vita cognitio et amor a Deo stmt quae tamen in caeteris entibus secimdima perfectionem illorum continentur quoniam omnis perfectio secundum dispositionem passi suscipitur et suae perfectionis causam significat atque demonstrat in quam res omnis naturali cognidesinerent, esse igitur

primaevi itaque homines effectus multos a natura produceorum tamen causas ignorabant quidam postea philosophantes rerum primas causas studisius animadvertentes ignem quidam, aerem noimulli, aquam alii, terram et quidam plura dementa componentes rerum omnium [cod. tione et

amore

dicitur,

tos conspiciebant

omnirun] principium oppinabantur qui ingenio virtute doctrina superabant." Concoidantìa (Venice, 1547), 20. "Athenienses

fol.

lv-2r.

cum moribus ac legibus instruere cives cuperent quibus totius

Imperium assequerentur ex omni ordine ac professione convenire praestantissimos homines voluerunt, et quibus laudibus qua suprascriptione maximum Deorum extoUere deberent reipublicae significarent, huius tam praeclari collegii quisque pro ingenii viribus rationes adducebat nam, cives pecuniosi Deum divitiarum praedicabant. Hiis quidem respublica tuettir, et augetur, res enim quaeque publica dus morem gerint, praeterea causa prima veterum philosophantium auctoritate est dives primum. Sed caeteri omnes horum sententiam impugnabant, quia multi propter divitias perienmt et res puplicae [sic], maxime quandoque propter abusum divitiarum subvertuntur. Milites autem qui rem publicam viribus civium disciplina et militari auctam noverant Deum potentiae praedicabant. Istis tamen caeteri omnes vehementius contradicebant quia etiam multi propter fortitudinem perienmt, sermo civium valitudo saepenumero in re publica seditiones pariter deinde seniores quidam dignitatem literanmi et praestantiam bonarum artivmi animmadvertentes [sic] Deum sapientie praedicabant quia sapientiam ex lovis Cerebro exortam voluenmt nam pacis et belli temporibus, res publicae sapientia civium melius gubemantur et populo res publicas beatas esse voluit, si a sapientibus regerentur, hormn tamen dignitati ac praestantiae plurimiun adversantur quia nunquam consilium domi prodesset nisi armis et divitiis respublica tueretur. Multi praeterea eruditi homines et humanas et divinas institutiones suppeditant ultimo senior quidam qui etiam Deorum mores studiosius noverat et quo pacto dii conferre hominibus plerunque soleant maximum Deorum, alatvmi oppinabatur ex dextrae alae inscripserat promitto. Sinistrae expecto, prope cor remitto suprascriptio Deus clementiae" (2v-3r). The preceding passage is quoted at some length as an example of Calderia's style. Subsequent references will be much more condensed because, though the book itself is excessively rare, it is easily legible on film. 21. The description Calderia gives of clemency gets its name from Holkot and its inscription from the beginning of the Ymagines, but since the Moialitates and the Ymagines often circulated together, Calderia may have made his own conflation or may not have even distinguished the two books. 22. Iste super caput portabat tripodam auream; in ima vero manu habebat sagittas arcum, et pharetram, in altera vero tenebat citharam; sub pedibus eius erat pictum quoddam monstrum terrificam cuius sc. corpus erat serpentinum triaque habebat capita, caninum, s., lupinum &. leoninum que, quam vis inter se essent diversa, in corpus unum tamen coherebant &. unam solam caudam serpentinam habebant. Engels, p. 17. Cf. Calderia, 103v: dextera manu fert arcum et sagittas et sinistra Citheram. Supra caput vero auratam tripodam quae Phitonis serpentis orbis.

MYTHOGRAPHY OF JOHANNES CALDERIA

398

monstrum continet quod habet tria capita, Caninum, Leoninum, sed huius monstri corpus et cauda erant serpentina. 23. Seznec, pp. 170-79. The following quotation is from the Libellus printed in Auctoies Mythogiaphi Latini, ed. by A. Van Staveren (Leiden and Amsterdam, 1742), p. 901. Iste super caput portabat tripodem aureum. In dextro vero manu habebat sagittas, arcum &. pharetram. In sinistra autem citharam tenebat. Sub pedibus eius depictum erat monstrum terrificum, cuius corpus erat serpentinum, triaque habebat capita, scilicet caninum, lupinum, et leoninum. Quamquam inter se forent diversa, in unum tamen corpus coibant, unam solam caudam serpentinam habentia. 24. Hercules igitur quasi Tiptowv x^ioç viionim foitium gloiia, interpretatur. Hie Alcaei nepos dicitur, unde et Alcides nominatur; àXxh enim Graece piaesumtio dicitur. Nam et Alcmenam matrem habet, quae salsum interpretatur. Nee minim. Etenim ex igne ingenii, ut ex Jove; ex praesumptione, id est animositate, ut ex avo Alcaeo; et ex sale sapientiae, ut ex matre Alcmena, virorum fortium nascitur gloria; quae tamen a libidine superatur. OficpaX^ enim Graece umbilicus dicitur. Libido autem in umbilico mulieribus dominatur. Ostenditur ergo, quod libido etiam invictam domat virtutem. MV IQ, p. 246. Cf. Calderia 127r: Hercules id est Heriscleos quod virorum fortium gloria interpretatur et lovis parentis, quia ab inferiore igne fit corporis valitudo ex quo praesumptio et animositas nascitur. Sed a love supercoelesti dignitas atque praestantia et Alcmena matre id est falsum [sic] quod sapientia interpretatur et Alceo quod est, praesumptio nascitur, Hercules quia virorum fortium gloria atque praestantia, haec ab iole superatur, quae umbilicus interpraetatur, libido enim quae in umbilicis mulierum prospicitur et continetur omnem virtutem super at et gloriam et hominis dignitatem suppeditat. 25. Boccaccio mentions a Sun bom from Oceanus (p. 382) as well as one bom from Vulcan and Minerva (p. 282). (Cf. Cicero, De natuia deoium, HI. 22). Calderia mentions these two possibilities rather than the normal story of Latona. Elsewhere Boccaccio names Apollo's horses and gives etymologies for them (p. 159-160); Calderia's information is similar: primus Eritheus quia rubeus secundus Atheon corio tegitur sub pedibus

Vulpinum,

quia splendens tertius Lapos quia lucens, quartus Philogeus quia terram ülimiinans. however, have gotten as much directly from Fulgentius. Boccaccio and Calderia agree in association Aristotle's three kinds of friendship with a discussion of the kinds of love and the progeny of Venus, but there are no convincing verbal correspondances. 26. Rosemund Tuve, Allegorìcal Imagery (Princeton, 1966), p. 227 ff. 27. "Making and Poetry" in Comparative Literature, 31 (1979), p. 282. 28. One way and reciprocal metaphors: "wingage of oars" and "oarage of wingS;" but "sea of grain" and not "grainfieldly sea." 29. Robert Holkot, Moralitates (Venice, 1514), fol. 12v and fol. 23v-24r.

He could,

30.

MS.

Biblioteca Mazarine

MS.

986,

fol.

16v.

31. See note 20.

32 Samuel Johnson, "Milton" in Uves of the Poets (London, 1952),

pp. 128-129.

"Commentary

as Criticism" pp. 35-37. 34. See Charles Singleton, An Essay on the Vita 33. See

Nuova (Cambridge,

1949).

Planudean Anthology: Thomas More and Andrea Alciati

Uses

of the

Virginia

Woods Callahan

August 11, 1494, Laurentius de Alopa published in Florence Johannes Lascaris' edition of the Giaeca Anthologia, described as "one of the most beautiful books of the fifteenth century."^ The Lascaris volume is not to be confused with the Anthologia Palatina, a collection of Greek epigrams made in 900 by Constantine Cephalas, the manuscript of which was not discovered until 1606. What Lascaris edited is a compilation of epigrams finished in 1299 by the monk Maximus Planudes in Constantinople, usually referred to as the Anthologia PlanudeaPThe purpose of this paper is to review briefly the extent to which Thomas More and Andrea Alciati utilized the poems of the Planudea and to examine in some detail their treatment of two themes therein: the reciprocal aid of the blind and the lame, and the dedication of her mirror to Aphrodite by Lais, the most famous of the Corinthian courtesans. For More and Alciati, their translations of the Greek epigrams were peripheral to their professional occupations as statesman and professor of jurisprudence, but these extraneous efforts were to have lasting effects in England and on the Continent. In a recent article, Lawrence V. Ryan noted that More's Epigiammata marked the beginning of Neo-Latin poetry in England and that his extensive translation and his writing "in the spirit of the Anthology prepared the way for widespread imitation of its contents throughout Europe."^ As for Alciati, of the two hundred and twelve poems which make up the final

number

of his Emblemata at least fifty are drawn from the Anthology and, according to James Hutton, it was "probably these which give the character to the whole."* With his book of emblems Alciati created a literary genre which was to enjoy popularity well into the eighteenth century. In the first two decades of the sixteenth century in England there was a striking recognition of the desirability of knowing Greek if one were to make a serious attempt to understand ancient philosophy and the Scriptures. There is no need to rehearse here the impetus given to the study of Greek by the presence of William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre, the sponsorship of John Fisher and John Colet, and perhaps most of all by the energetic example of

400

MORE AND

ALCIATI

Erasmus. Once the rudiments of the language were mastered there was no way to progress than to translate from Greek into Latin, a process whereby one's Latin was also improved. By choosing for translation such diverting material as that at hand in Lucian or in the poems of the Gieek Anthology the exercise was also a source of "innocent merriment." In three of his letters Erasmus mentioned More's early involvement with Greek letters.^ Writing to Johannes Proben from Louvain in August, 1517, he averred: "Epigiammata lusit adolescens admodum ac pleiaque puer." In his well-known sketch of More sent to Ulrich Hütten from Antwerp, July 23, 1519, Erasmus wrote: "Bonas litems a piimis statim annis hauseiat. luvenis ad Giaecas litems atque pbilosophiae Studium sese applicuit. ." To Germanus Brixius, the irascible critic of More's epigrams, he wrote in June, 1520: "Apuero félicitez imbibit Latinas litems, Giaecas iuvenis; idque sub doctissimis pmeceptoiibus, cum aliis, turn pmecipue Tboma Linacio et Gulielmo Giocino." In November 1501 More reported to John Colet from London that he was putting his Latin studies aside to learn Greek with Grocyn and Linacre.*^ Craig Thompson believes that it is tempting to think that the translations from the Greek epigrams which More did "in friendly rivalry" with Willaim Lily (Grocyn's godson) were made as early as 1503 and 1504.'' By 1505 he was translating with Erasmus certain dialogues of Lucian which were published in 1506. From 1514 to 1516 he was working on his Utopia. You will recall his description of Raphael Hythlodaeus as "no bad Latin scholar, and most learned in Greek."® His account of the Utopians' eagerness to learn Greek may reflect something of More's own experience: "In less than three years they were perfect in the language and able to peruse good authors without any difficulty unless the text had faulty readings."^ The Greek Anthology, alas, was not in thé sarcina librorum^^ which Hythlodaeus took to Utopia on a return voyage, Plato and Aristotle taking pride of place. Aristophanes, Homer and Euripides were included, however, together with Sophocles "in the small Aldine type." In their comment on the inclusion of poetry Surtz and Hext er quote More's defense of poets who "make a man among other thynges well fumyshed of one special thynge, without which all lemynge is hälfe lame a good mother wyt."^^ By June 1516 a number of More's epigrams had accumulated and it was Erasmus who thought them worthy of publication. More himself was more diffident about them. On about June 21 of that year he wrote to Erasmus: "De veisic*ms nostrìs nihil sciibo: tu vide statuas."^^ And in September he advised Erasmus that, if the epigrams were to be published, it was he, not More, who must decide which poems should be printed. ^^ In May 1517 Erasmus reported to More that his Epigiammata and Utopia had been sent off to Proben together with some works of his own.^'* In August he suggested to Wolfgang Angst, an assistant of Proben's that Beatus Rhenanus might provide the preface for More's two works, and that they should be printed in the same volume. ^^ At the same time he wrote to Proben, reminding him that the Piogymnasmata and the Utopia had been sent to him, and he intimated shrewdly that if More's work were to appear under the aegis of the house of Proben it would find favor with men of erudition. ^^ In December 1517 Erasmus was asking Beatus for better

. .

VIRGINIA

WOODS CALLAHAN

4OI

news

of the progress of the publication of the EpigTommata and the Utopia, maintaining that More's works were of more importance to him than his own.^'' Finally in March 1518 Erasmus' wishes were fulfilled. Proben published a 356-page volume containing More's Utopia and EpigTommata and Erasmus' Epigrams. In the preface Beatus commends More's skill as translator, since "in the process of translation an author is more severely taxed than when he produces something of his own." A second edition (a reprint) appeared

November 1518, and on December 20, 1520, a third in a volume containing only More's epigrams, corrected and revised. It was this 1520 edition that Leicester Bradner and Charles Arthur Lynch used for their edition of The Latin in

Epigrams of Thomas Moie, published with an English translation and notes by the University of Chicago Press in 1953.^^ A new edition of the Epigrams will be published as part of the Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More. Of the 275 poems contained in the 1520 edition of the Epigrams more than 100 are derived from the Greek Anthology. More would doubtless have known both the Lascaris edition of the Anthology and the Aldine edition of 1503. The poems which More chose to translate into Latin are on the whole moralistic and didactic. But with his penchant for wit and humor he was drawn too to some of the more farcical epigrams and predisposed to feast handsomely on the irony and paradox afforded by the Greek epigrammatists. Alciati's Greek came to him earlier and more easily than it did to More and Erasmus, for in his adolescent years in Milan he had excellent instruction in Latin and Greek by distinguished teachers. It has been conjectured that he may have attended the lectures of Lascaris.^' In a letter to his friend Cal vus Alciati complained that Boniface Amerbach, having copied out a number of his translations from the Anthology, when he was studying with him at Avignon in 1520, had given them to a printer Bebellius without consulting him. Many of these, he insisted, had been produced while he was still a boy (erant a me tum puero edita). ^^ James Hutton in his indispensable work The Greek Anthology in Italy to the Year 1 800 has shown that Alciati in his writings from his earliest student days quoted his translations of the Greek epigrams. ^^ It was in his Emblemata, however, that he was to make the most remarkable use of them. The original collection of what Alciati called "Emblems" was presented to his friend Ambrogio Visconti as a New Year's present in December 1522. Although no copy of that collection is known to exist today, it is reasonable to suppose that a number of the poems therein would have been his translations from the Anthology. In 1525 Joannes Soter, in his Epigrammata Graeca included eleven translations by Alciati which had already appeared in his early works. Of more than five hundred new translations in Janus Comarius' Selecta Graeca ex Septem epigrammatum graecorum hbris published in 1529 one hundred and fifty-four were by Alciati. The first printed edition of Alciati emblems appeared in Augsburg in 1531. Of the one hundred and four emblems therein forty are translations from the Greek. As we have already mentioned, by the time of his death in 1550 Alciati had published two hundred and twelve emblems, more than fifty of which

MORE AND

402 were derived from the Anthology. Throughout his

life

ALCIATI

he continued to use

the epigrams in his professional writings. In the Paieiga Juris, for example (1536, 1543, and 1551), twenty-one epigrams are quoted. By concentrating now on the two themes from the Anthology which I mentioned at the outset— the mutual aid of the blind and the lame and the dedication of her mirror to Venus by the famous Greek courtesan Lais of Corinth— want to demonstrate the different ways that More and Alciati exploited their translations from the Greek. ^^ The mutual aid of the blind and the lame is the subject of four Greek epigrams, two of which need to be quoted for our purposes: The simplest of the four is attributed to Plato the Younger and consists of two lines:"

A blind man

carried a lame man on his back lending his feet and borrowing from him his eyes.

In the six-line epigram attributed to Philippus or Isidorus^^ the treated in a fashion typically Greek:

theme

One man was maimed in his legs, while another had lost his eyesight, but each contributed to the other that of which mischance had deprived him. For the blind man, taking the lame man on his shoulders, kept a straight course by listening to the other's orders. It was bitter all-daring necessity which taught them all this, instructing them how, by dividing their imperfections between them, to make a perfect whole. For this theme the Greek particles

word that the Loeb

|x£v

and

8é are especially

convenient; the

Greek tuxt); the word line embodies succinctly the Greek

editor translates as "mischance" is the

translated as "necessity"

is àv&yxr\;

the last

preoccupation with the concept of to xéXoç, the final cause or the chief good. (Cf. Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics 1097a.) In the other two Greek epigrams on the theme^^ the two cripples are strolling beggars and the point of emphasis is that one nature («puoiç) supplies the needs of both, the two incompletes combining to form one nature. In the fourth and fifth century Ausonius and St. Augustine were users of the theme. Ausonius has two four-line versions of it^*^ in both of which he takes pleasure in the alliterative sound of the initial letter in caeco-clauduscaptus-commodat. Augustine in his Enanationes in Psalmos^^ in his commentary on Psalm CXXV-12 usurps the image of the "one who is able to walk lending his feet to the lame, and the one who sees lending his eyes to the blind" in a section

For

on Caritas and almsgiving. the theme had a special

Thomas More

appeal, for there are seven ver-

sions of it in his Epigiammata.'^^ Five of these (9, 10, 11, 12 and 15) are reminiscent of the Greek epigram attributed to Plato, being simple distichs, but in the other two (13 and 14) he expands the theme to include ideas close to his heart: friendship and kingship. In No. 13, a six-line epigram, the sad mis-

fortune (tristis fortuna] of the two men is overcome, their common misery [sots] unites them, by cooperation {communi opera] they mitigate each other's

VIRGINIA

WOODS CALLAHAN

403

handicaps. In No. 14 of the eight lines that make up his epigram four do not correspond to anything in the Greek; two quite new ideas are added at the beginning and the end. Lines 1 and 2: "There can be nothing more helpful than a loyal friend, who by his own efforts assuages your hurts." The concluding lines: "The love which unites {conçois amoi] shims the castles of proud kings and prevails in the humble hut." These lines have an almost Aeschylean tone. Recall Aeschylus' Agamemnon, 773-781, the Chorus on Righteousness {Dika) "which shines in the homes of the poor, and shuns the gilded halls of the rich."

A consideration of Alciati's treatment of the theme in his Emblem Mutual Aid (No. 161 in the 1621 edition) illustrates how economically the (emblem) form lends itself to an adaptation of a poem from the Greek Anthology. The Renaissance emblem, as created by Alciati, you will remember, consisted of three parts: motto, wood-cut and poem, cleverly related and calculated to offer to eye and mind the thought that the emblematist wished to suggest. In this emblem the three parts are remarkably straightforward: The motto: Mutual Aid (Mutuum Auxilium) The woodcut: two cripples successfully making their way thanks to their reciprocal assistance.

The poem:

a simple statement of the facts:

Loripedem sublatum humeris fert lumine captus Et socii haec oculis munera retribuit.

Quo

caret alteruter, Concors sic praestat uterque:

Mutuat hie oculos, mutuat

ill

pedes. (1621, p. 680)

blind man is carrying the lame man on his shoulders, and he repays this service of his comrade with his eyes. Thus in agreement {conçois) the one provides what the other lacks: the one gives his eyes in exchange, the other his feet.

The

The poem seems to reveal Alciati's awareness of the versions of his Latin predecessors, although it is quite close to the Greek of Leonidas {Gt. Anth. IX. 12). There are three words in Alciati which are reminiscent of Ausonius: captus, munia, and alteruter. P. S. Allen has informed us (in his prefatory note to Erasmus' Epistle 2157) that in 1529 Johannes Proben, the Basel printer, sent

Opera of Augustine, so we know that would have known Augustine's reference to the theme, mentioned above. The woodcut in Alciati is a visual representation of Augustine's written description of the scene. As for Alciati's familiarity with More's Epigrams, a clue may be seen in the word Concors and in loripedem, the first word in the Alciati poem. Germanus Brixius, among his many criticisms of More's epigrams, had objected to More's calling the lame man claudipedem, insisting that loripedem would have been more accurate. The patterned symmetry of

Alciati Erasmus' recent edition of the Alciati

Alciati's last line:

Mutuat hie

oculos,

mutuat

ille

pedes

MORE AND

404

ALCIATI

his own and with the motto Mutuum Auxilium neatly forms a frame for the emblem as a whole. In the woodcut in the 1531 edition the two men are standing side by side, a rendition of the scene which Alciati must have found unsatisfactory (Plate I). The 1534 version is an improvement, since the blind man is carrying the lame man on his shoulders (Plate H). By 1621 the figures have become elongated in a rather manneristic fashion (Plate IQ). The woodcut in the 1621 edition is similar to that in Geoffrey Whitney's adaptation of the Alciati emblem in his 1586 Choice of Emblèmes, p. 65 (Plate IV). A rich visual setting was given to the two beggars as they make their way by Johannes Sadeler in about 1599 (Plate V), to which he added two quotations from the New Testament [Charitas Nunquam Excidit 1. Cor. 13; Qui habet Det Non Habenti Luc. 3) and his own epigram: is

Arida sylva viret densis vestita corymbis Pert claudum caecus; monstrat ille viam, Praebet largus opem poscenti dives egens Tu nunquam miseros deservisse velis.

The dry forest grows green clothed in thick clusters The blind carries the lame; he points out the way. The generous rich man furnishes aid to the needy. Never would you wish to abandon the wretched. ^^

And now for the second theme: the aged Lais' dedication of her mirror to Aphrodite. She was acknowledged by all Greece as the most beautiful courtesan of her time. The chief source for the details of her life is Athenaeus, who quotes from several Greek literary works (now lost) in which she is mentioned. According to him Lais was bom in Hycara in Sicuy, brought to Corinth (Ephyre) by Athenians and sold there. Athenaeus quotes a certain Polemon who said that she was murdered by Thessalian women out of envy and jealousy in a temple of Aphrodite. ^° However, in an earlier passage^^ he had quoted a line from a play (now lost) in which the question was asked: "Did not Lais die of excessive commerce?" (This is the translation of G. B. Gulick). The scholiast to Aristophanes' Plutus 179 puts her death at 392 B.C. Pausanias^^ reports that the grave of Lais was to be seen outside the city of Corinth, upon which was set a lioness holding a ram in her forepaws, a fact rejected by Athenaeus who declares the place of burial to be Thessaly. I regret that time does not permit a recounting of some of the incidents in Greek literature denoting not only Lais' venality but also her wit. The source for the motif of Lais dedicating her mirror to the goddess of love is four epigrams in Book VI of the Greek Anthology. Of these I shall quote only one in

its

entirety :^^

Lais, whose haughty beauty made mock of Greece, I who once had a swarm of young lovers at my doors, dedicate my mirror to Aphrodite, since I wish not to look on myself as I am, and carmot look on myself as I once was.

VIRGINIA

WOODS CALLAHAN

4O5

others^'* emphasize her great popularity and her loveliness laid low by old age and creeping time, and one even mentions specifically her gray hairs whose actual sight she cannot bear. A poignant image of Lais in her old age is found in Claudian.^^ Referring to Eutropius' skill as a pander, Claudian recalls Lais of Corinth, who in her old age dressed other prostitutes for the part "haunting still the brothel she loved so well and so long, and still pandering to the tastes old age forbade her." Ausonius' version of the theme^^ is close to the Greek epigram quoted above (VI. 1) although he foregoes the image of the throng of Greeks at Lais'

The

door: Lais anus Veneri

aeterna

speculum

dico:

dignum habeat

aetemum forma ministerium.

At mihi nuUus in hoc usus, quia cernere talem, qualis sum, nolo, qualis eram, nequeo. Lais, grown old, to Venus dedicate my mirror: let eternal beauty have the eternal service, which befits it. But for me there is no profit in this, for to behold myself such as I am I would not, such as I was, I cannot.

may have been the last in Latin that caused

was not one

of his

line of the

Greek and Ausonius' masterly rendition to try his hand at this epigram and

Thomas More

most successful attempts :^^ Lais anus ad speculum, e graeco

arrisi tibi quae modo, Graecia, amantum Turbam in vestibulis Lais habens iuvenum. Hoc Veneri speculum dico, nam me cernere talem Qualis sum nolo, qualis eram nequeo.

Nequiter

Lais,

As an Old Woman,

at her Mirror,

from the Greek I

had

Lais,

who

not long ago laughed wantonly at you, Hellas,

this mirror, for the I

The

when

my doors a throng of youthful lovers. woman I am

But now I dedicate to Venus do not wish to see, the woman I was

cannot.

which might lead one

to expect to learn what the aged courtesan discussed by Bradner and Lynch in their Introduction.^^ More has simply translated the first distich of the Greek epigram, with the image of the proud beauty and her swarm of lovers, with line one and line four of Ausonius' translation, and he gives his rendition a peculiar twist by having Lais address Hellas. Alciati's treatment of the Lais theme is Emblem 74 in the 1621 edition. For him the theme of the alluring harlot was one of practical interest. It is clear from his orations that he felt it necessary to warn his students against the enticements of such ladies. ^^ For this the figure of Lais served him well. The motto of the emblem is Tumulus Meretricis (The Tomb of a Courtesan); title

said to her mirror

MORE AND

406

ALCIATI

the woodcut: a female corpse is lying on top of a sarcophagus; along the side tomb is sculptured a lioness with her left paw on a ram's backside; the

of the

epigram

in effect a dialogue:

Quis tumulus? cuia urna? Ephyraeae est Laidos, ah, non Erubuit tantum perdere Parca decus? Nulla fuit tum forma: illam iam carpserat aetas, lam speculum Veneri cauta dicarat anus.

Quid scalptus sibi vult aries, quem parte leaena Unguibus apprensum posteriore tenet? Non aliter captos quod et ipsa tener et amantes: Vir gregis est aries, clune tenetur amans.

What tomb

is this?

Whose

urn?

It is

that of Lais of Ephyre.

Ah, did not Fate blush to spoil such splendor? There was no beauty then: old age had already plucked it — the shrewd old woman had already dedicated her mirror to Venus. What means the sculptured ram whose buttocks a lioness has caught in her claws? This is because exactly thus did she herself hold her lovers captive.

A ram

the "lord of the flock," a lover

clutched by

his hind-quarters. Alciati has combined Pausanias' reference to the lioness and ram on Lais' tomb with the mirror motif from the Greek Anthology. In his emblem her beauty is past, her lovers long gone. The effect is apotropaic. He may have seen the ancient Corinthian coin*° which has on the obverse a female head and on the reverse the top of a column with a capital on which a ram is prone and a lioness standing on top of him. The vulgarly put comparison between the two animals and the courtesan and her prey would be a clear warning to scholars, young and old, to be ware of ladies of the the night lest the enervating results affect their studies. In all of the editions except that of 1621 the woodcut depicts a female corpse stretched out on the top of a tomb, on the side of which in sculptured relief is a lioness pursuing a ram. The 1621 edition has no cadaver. As always the woodcut of the 1531 edition is quite primitive (Plate VI). The woodcut in the 1551 edition is typical (Plate VE). In 1526 Hans Holbein the Yoimger, a member of the Erasmus circle at Basel, painted a splendid portrait of a courtesan*^ identified by the inscription Lais CoTintbiaca (Plate VOI). There are several references to Corinthian courtesans and to Lais in particular in the writings of Erasmus, notably in his long discussion in his Adagia of the famous proverb: Non est cujuslibet Corintbum appellere. Not just anyone can get to Corinth.*^ Geoffrey Whitney has an emblem with the motto Saepius in auio bibitui venenum*^ in which Lais, decked in furs and using musk as perfume, is the symbol of lasciviousness. He puts the consequences of being involved with a harlot more delicately than Alciati:

VIRGINIA

WOODS CALLAHAN And hee, that moste The more he lookes,

40/ the house of Lais hauntes, the more her face enchauntes.

The two emblems of Alciati that I have discussed rather cursorily in this paper will be given a fuller commentary in the edition of Alciati's Emblemata (a facsimile of the 1621 edition of Padua together with an English translation and commentary), which is being prepared by Professor Wuliam S. Heckscher and myself. I want to thank Professor Heckscher for his as always invaluable suggestions for this paper and to express my appreciation to Mrs. Agnes Sherman of the Princeton University Library for making available the Sadeler landscape.

Florence, Mass.

Notes 1. James Hutton, The Greek Anthology in Italy to the Year 1800, Ithaca, New York, 1935, p. 117. 2. For a discussion of the sources of the Planudea and its relation to the Palatina see Allen Lesky, A History of Greek Literature, New York, 1963, pp. 741-43. 3. Lawrence V. Ryan, 'The Shorter Latin Poem in Tudor England,' Humanistica Lovaniensia, xxvi, 1977, p. 104. 4. Hutton, op. cit. p. 204. 5. P. S. Allen, Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, Oxford, 1906-1956,

No. 635, No. 999, No. 1117. 6.

Elizabeth Frances Rogers, The Correspondence of Sir

Thomas More,

Prince-

ton, 1947, No. 4. 7. Craig R. Thompson, Translations ofLucian (Vol. 3, Part I in the Yale Edition of the Collected Works of St. Thomas More), New Haven, 1974, p. xxvii. 8. More's Utopia edited by Edward Surtz, S. J. and J. H. Hexter (Vol. 4 in the

Yale Edition of the Collected Works of St. Thomas More), New Haven, 1965, p. hnguae non indoctus, et graecae doctissimus." 9. Idem, pp. 180-81. 10. On the sarcina librorum (p. 180 in the Surtz-Hexter edition of the Utopia) see their note p. 467 where they refer to it as "More's list of 'Great Books' in Greek." 11. Idem, p. 470. 12. Allen, No. 424. 48: "latinae

No. No. Allen, No. Allen, No. Allen, No.

13. Allen,

461.

14. Allen,

584. 634. 635. 732.

15. 16. 17.

18. All references to the text and translations of More's Epigrams are based on the Bradner-Lynch edition. 19. Ernst von Moeller, Andreas Alciat, Breslau, 1907, p. 11.

MORE AND

408 20.

Gian Luigi Bami, Le Lettere

ALCIATI

Andrea Alcìato, Firenze, 1953, No.

21. Hutton, op. cit., p. 206. 22. Since copies of the Planudea are not easily accessible references to the

58.

Greek

epigrams are from the five-volume Loeb edition of The Greek Anthology, edited with English translation by W. R. Paton, London and New York, from 1916. 23. Gr. Anth. IX. 13, Loeb ed. Vol. m, p. 9 {Plan. la 4.3). 24. Gr. Anth. IX.ll, Loeb ed. Vol. m, p. 7 {Plan. la 4.1). 25. Gr. Anth. IX. 12, Loeb ed. Vol. m, p. 7 {Plan. 4.2) and Gi. Anth. 13b, Loeb ed. Vol.

p. 7 {Plan. la 4.4).

Opuscula edited by Rudolf Peiper, Leipzig, 1886, p. 422, Poems and VI in Book XXm. 27. Aurelii Augustini Opera, Pars. X.3, Enarrationes in Psahnos, CI-CL, p. 1854, in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina XL, 1956, ed. E. Dekkers and J. Fraipont. 28. Bradner-Lynch edition, Epigrams 9-15. 26. Ausonius,

29. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae Xin. 588c.

30. Athenaeus,

Xm.

589ae.

31. Athenaeus, 587e. 32. Pausanias, Description of Greece n.4-5. 33. Gr. Anth. VI. 1, Loeb ed. Vol. I, p. 299 {Plan. VI.49).

The epigram is attributed to Plato. 34. Gr. Anth. VI. 18, 19, and 20, Loeb ed. Vol. I, p. 307, all attributed to Julianus Prefect of Egypt {Plan. VI.50, 51, 52). 35. Claudian, Book XVm Against Eutropius I, 90-97. 36. Ausonius Book XIX. Ixv; translation by the Loeb editor H. G. Evelyn White. 37. Bradner-Lynch edition, Epigram 36. 38. Bradner-Lynch, p. xvii. Bradner-Lynch translate the ad in the title as 'to.' After consultation with Professor Clarence Miller I concur with his opinion that the

standing or sitting at her mirror. warned them not to gamble, engage in brawls, or be ensnared by love {capti amore). 40. See E. Q. Visconti, Iconographie Grecque, Paris, 1808, Part I, Ch. Vin 'Femmes Célèbres I — Lais,' p. 179f. and Plate XXXVHI. Visconti calls the scene on the coin an emblem of her "insatiable avidité." 41. For a discussion of the Holbein painting in the Basel Kunstmuseum see Erwin Treu, Die Malerfamilie Holbein in Basel, Basel, 1960, p. 205f. 42. Erasmus Adagia I.FV.I (Leyden ed. Vol. I.150D); see also Erasmus De Conscribendis Epistolis (Leyden ed. Vol. I. 448F) where he equates Lais with the luxury of court life and Erasmus' Apophthegmata (Leyden ed. Vol. IV. 318E) in a section on the greed and rapacity of courtesans. 43. Geoffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblèmes, Leyden, 1586, p. 79. title is

nieant to suggest that Lais

39. In his addresses to students Alciati specifically

toripedem lubUtü hunuris ßrt lumitie Tltfoctj l:£c oailis

captili

muncriretribuit

Quocdretdltvrutvrjconcorsfu prxjht utvrq^^ ^T/z^u jf hic ocu^oi.mutudt illf òfdfs. Plate

Andrea

Alciati:

Emblematum

Libei 1531.

Mutuum duxUium*

Loripedem fubUtum hmeris fcrt lumine cdpluSt Et

Quo

foci)

lAutMt

Plate n.

hxc ocdis minera retribuiti

caret alteruter ^concors

ßc

prjejht utcr^,

hic oculos,mutU4t lÜe pedes.

Andrea

Alciati:

Emblematum

Libei 1534.

-J-. t*

V 3 T3

V-- .r^'VNk'aj: »wai»-''*^ tJar^TPOJ -"v

;_=.:—/

Ëi

ï!

W < Jt-

-ï5

(

tURITA*

VVNOAM

1^>U

IXl fDIT

John and Raphael Sadeler:

Plate V.

TVmVLVS * m'

Plate VI.

Andrea

IHhn

Emblems

l>l

N'lN

IIVBIMI

1599.

MEPvETRlCl«'. i«^

Alciati:

Emblematum

Liber 1531.

e«

NO in

William Alabaster's Roxana: Some Textual Considerations John C. Coldewey

Among

the

many

universities,

Renaissance plays written in Neo-Latin at English William Alabaster's Roxana is perhaps the most widely

fact that it is rarely read. The reason for this that the frontispiece of Alabaster's play, a woodcut, contains one of two known depictions of an actual academic stage, ^ and has been reproduced in virtually every pictorial history of the theatre. Very few theatre

known, despite the

curious fact

historians, however,

mary

seem

actually to have read the play; even Boas' plot

Diama in the Tudor Age is for Argumentum prefixed to Alabaster's

in his UniveTsity

sum-

the most part a literal printed edition.^ This

rendering of the is a pity, since Roxana is a play of twisted intrigue and bloody spectacle, and its author enjoyed a reputation as one of the finest Latin stylists of his age. This reputation seems to have continued at least a hundred and fifty years after Roxana was published, for Dr. Johnson knew the play and characterized Alabaster as the best Latinist before Milton. Professor Brian Copenhaver and I are currently preparing a new edition and translation of Alabaster's play, and I propose today to treat briefly of its textual history, to recount the circ*mstances under which it was published, and, considering Alabaster's strange and interesting career, to give some idea of the kinds of changes he made between the time the play was written and when it was published some forty years later. The text of Roxana has survived in four Latin manuscripts: three at Cambridge, in Emmanuel College Library, Trinity College Library, and the University Library; and a fourth at Lambeth Palace.^ A contemporary English translation, in iambic pentameter rhymed couplets and doggerel, exists in a manuscript at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C* A pirated copy of the play was printed in 1632 by a man named, mirabile dictu, Andrew Crook, and only a few months later Alabaster himself had a corrected and enlarged version printed by his customary publisher, William Jones. ^ Thus, there are four extant manuscript copies of the Latin text, and one English translation. A collation of the Latin versions shows, as we would expect from their probable dates, that the four manuscripts agree very closely and contain only a few

WILLIAM ALABASTER, ROXANA

414

substantive variations from the pirated 1632 edition. The English manuscript translation was based on this text. But our copy text is the final authorial version of the play —Alabaster's 1632 edition, which differs in many respects from the earlier versions. Alabaster made substantive and stylistic changes affecting between a quarter and a third of the lines, and added many wholly new lines to the older text.^ It is with these changes that we are ultimately concerned. In a dedicatory letter to Sir Ralph Freeman which is prefixed to his edition. Alabaster describes with some wit the circ*mstances imder which Roxana was published, and he confesses to having composed the play around 1591 while he was still a student at Trinity College. Some of this is worth quoting, since he tells the story much better than I could: "About forty years ago, more or less,"

he begins,

not yet of full age, I brought forth in two weeks this aborted carcass— destined for the playing of one night. And after it had lain quiet for so great a span of time, I had hoped that fictitious Roxana would sleep forever among the ghosts of her comrades. When behold, recently, a certain plagiarist, deservedly named Crook, stumbled upon a corrupt copy of this poem. He waked Roxana, sleeping and reluctant and conscious of her own faults, and brought her forth once again into the theatre of fame so that she might act out her own tragedy. And beyond those faults she derived from her hasty birth, he has added so many blunders of his own that he seems to have contended with me as to which of us would err more frequently. What to do? Either allow a miscreant book to roam about bearing my name, from behind if not in front, or — me, a man nearly seventy— to entreat the youthful Muses, with my talent withering and my life in an abhorrent condition. Paternal instinct has won out, and I have not deprived the offspring of youth of the care of age. Therefore I have put back in print many things which be left out as defects, acting either out of his own genius or in the depraved company of copyists. So now Roxana comes forth, marked more with blemishes than with learning, and wrinkled with frequent interpolation of lines, so she resembles her father all the more.... If I had torn out every weed in this piece, the field would be lacking a great part of its turf. Be warned to recite it with frothy voice. ., as the poets used to do with their tragedies when they used oral bombast to improve them and make them some.

how

grander.^

Alabaster concludes with the discouraging comment that "for this [play] I set the price at the will of the reader." Whatever his misgivings and caveats concerning Roxana, Alabaster was widely recognized as an excellent Latinist long after his death in 1640. As I have already indicated, Roxana in particular was singled out by Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the English Poets, where he made the claim that "if we produced anything worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was perhaps Alabaster's Roxana."^ But even in his early days Alabaster's poetic talent had been praised by Spenser, in "Colin Clout's Come Home Again":

JOHN

COLDEWEY

4I5

And

there is Alabastez throughly taught, In all this skill, though knowen yet to few.... Nor Po nor Tyburs swans so much renowned, Nor all the brood of Greece so highly praised.

Can match that Muse when it with bayes And to the pitch of her perfection raised. (11.

crowned,

400-2, 412-15)

Wood in Athenae Oxonienses was to call Alabaster "the rarest poet and Grecian that any one age or nation produced."^ Other allusions to Alabaster as a Latin poet are found in William Covell's Polimanteia (1595), Thomas Farnaby's Index poeticus (1634), Peter Heylin's Microcosmos (1636), Edward Leigh's Treatise of Religion and Learning (1656), and Fuller's Worthies (1662), as well as in the commendatory poems by Hugh Holland and Thomas Farnaby at the begiiming of Roxana.^^ My point is that by the time the final version of Roxana was published. Alabaster had already secured himself a place in the ranks of respected Renaissance writers. But since his play was written at the beginning of his career, and rewritten nearly at the end, we might profitably spend a few moments reviewing what is known about this impressive polyglot. Certainly he cut an odd figure in Tudor and Stuart learned circles. His training, experience and interests all found their way into his violent tragedy. Later,

Alabaster was

bom in

1568, matriculated pensioner of Trinity College,

Cam-

became Scholar on Westminster election in the same year, B.A. in 1588, Fellow in 1589, M.A. in 1591, and D.D. in 1614.ii He was incorporated of Oxford in 1592, a year after he took his M.A. (this date, incidentally, gives us a clear terminus ad quem for Roxana). In 1596 he went on the famous Cadiz expedition as chaplain to the Earl of Essex, and returned to what looked to be a promising career in the service of the Church of England. Then the unthinkable happened: he became a Catholic. No doubt his conversion was a profound experience for Alabaster, but he had the bad sense to write about it in public — in Seven Motives, which he seems to have passed around in manuscript. This caused an angry stir, a house arrest, and two printed replies. ^^ With his conversion. Alabaster had set off on an erratic course of vacillation between the Church of England and the Catholic Church, a course which was to last for twenty years. ^^ By 1600 he had left England for Douai in Belgium, moved on to the English College in Rome, and then returned to

bridge, in 1584,

England — and to prison. In 1603, with the accession of James to the throne. was pardoned, and two years later he offered his services to the government as a spy against radical English Catholics. He published a tract on cabbalistical theology in 1607, the Apparatus in Revelationem Jesu Christi, ^^ which was amost immediately put on the list of prohibited books by the Catholic Church. In 1609, however, he was back at Rome, where he repented of his revolt; in 1610 he was back in England, a Protestant; in 1611 he was again under lock and key, declaring he would live and die a Catholic. ^^ We learn in 1612 that "Alabaster goeth on in his fooleries, "^*^ and by 1614 he was Protestant again, preaching before the King at Whitehall, and Alabaster

WILLIAM ALABASTER, ROXANA

4l6

is referred to as "Alabaster the double or treble turncoat. "^^ It was at the King's command in 1614 that he was created a Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge and given a lucrative living in Hertfordshire. In 1618 he became Chaplain to the King and began at last to settle down. He married the widow Catherine Fludd that same year, thus becoming stepfather to the alchemist Robert Fludd,

and he seems to have devoted most of his energies to a further study of mystical thought. He published Commentaiia de Bestia Apocalyptica in 1621/^ the revised Roxana in 1632, then two works, one entitled Ecce Sponsus Venit,^^ and the other, Spiracula Tubamm, in 1633,^° and an abbreviated version of Valentin Schindler's Lexicon Pentaglotton in 1635.^^ Throughout his life he wrote poetry, in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and he composed more than eighty sonnets in English. He died in 1640. The play that Alabaster left us is in some respects— though not very many— more tension-ridden and violent than his life. His plot is taken straight from Luigi Groto's La DalidaP- More than the names are changed, however, and Alabaster's play is far more than a simple translation from Italian to Latin. The tragedy takes place in Bactria, a conveniently obscure and exotic nearEastern country. The plot concerns the domestic troubles in the household of the King, Oromasdes, and his wife Atossa. Oromasdes had come to power some time before the play picks up the story, by murdering his uncle, Moleo, in a coup d'etat, and at the start of the play Moleo's ghost appears, along with the allegorical figures of Death and Suspicion, to seek revenge. It is not for himself alone that Moleo craves revenge, but also for his daughter Roxana. Atossa, it seems, was barren, and Oromasdes desired an heir. One day while out hunting he had stumbled upon the secret tower where Moleo earlier had shut up Roxana as a vestal virgin. Oromasdes, fired by lust and fueled with rhetoric, seduced her and now, at the time of the play, has kept her as his mistress for ten years. During this time Roxana— who for her part has fallen in love with her seducer— has bom him two children. All this we discover in Act I. Now, enter Bessus, Secretary and confidant of Oromasdes, who longs passionately for Queen Atossa. In order to gain her bed, he tells Atossa of Oromasdes' secret laison with Roxana and of their children. Then the horrors begin. Atossa invites Roxana to court, claps her into a dimgeon, verbally abuses her, has her savagely whipped, and then forces her to stab her own children

and herself. Meanwhile, Oromasdes, learning of his wife's affair with Bessus, him murdered to protect Roxana, ignorant of the fact that Bessus has already compromised them. In the final act Atossa invites Oromasdes to a birthday feast, which turns out to be a gruesome banquet indeed. Atossa has the bodies of Roxana and the children served up in a poisoned stew, and, at the end of the meal, has their heads brought in on a platter. Oromasdes, in return, crowns Atossa with a garland of poisoned flowers, and presents hei with the head of Bessus. In the end of course they both die, but only after some long-winded speeches of mutual recrimination, delivered as the play has

comes

to its close.

Like any number of other Elizabethan playwrights. Alabaster in Roxana uses sensational events in a distant land to counterpoint and comment on the contemporary political scene. The fears that Oromasdes entertains, for example,

JOHN

COLDEWEY

41/

about his barren Queen and the future of Bactria echo the widespread anxieties, shared in every circle of Elizabethan society, about what could happen to England when Elizabeth died— an imminent possibility in 1591. And Atossa's cruel murder of her fertile cousin who would be Queen is not without political significance four years after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. When Moleo and Death, in Act I, scene 1, discuss tyrants making and unmaking gods at whim and convenience, clearly the policies of the Tudor reign, not the Bactrian, are being attacked. The same is true when in Act HI, scene iv, after an argument with the King about Royal privilege, the King's counselor indulges in a long and bitter speech about the dangers, dashed hopes, pandering and corruption at the royal court. The many contemporary references found in Roxana lead us to consider one kind of change that Alabaster wrought on his final text, for it is easy to see why he would have been chagrined at the publication of the play as it stood in 1632, when he himself had enjoyed the fruits of Kingly patronage— had, as it were, joined the ranks of those whom he had earlier maligned. The observations, the fears, and the judgments regarding the Tudor reign that found expression in Roxana were no longer relevant; but the unspecific political allusions of 1591, particularly those condemning tyraimy and royal prerogative, could apply all too easily to other times, including those of Charles I. Hence Alabaster's emphasis in his preface on the youthful composition of the play. And in the text, in passages concerning the illegitimate wielding of power, we find the repeated substitution of ius — the rule of law, for Rex— the King himself, which softens speeches that would otherwise have professed a political bias now quite foreign to Alabaster. One of the most interesting changes in the text is a reference to the Gunpowder Plot. It occurs in the middle of a scene between the characters Death and Suspicion in Act I, as they discuss a King's responsibility to his kingdom. Alabaster inserts five lines here: in them. Death turns the discussion to the question of legal sanctions against a King, and Suspicion suddenly leaps to his feet; when Death asks why, Suspicion responds "Lest the fiery powder should lay concealed there," and their conversation turns to the sources of danger to a king. Such a reminder, of course, weights the entire interchange in favor of royal power. But the other, far more numerous, changes Alabaster made in the final version of the play are stylistic, and of two kinds. He corrects grammatical mistakes or misprints, and he renders with more precision and more elegance those passages he seems to have felt were clumsy. The examples of three such emmendations will have to stand for many miore. The first two lines of the play in the older version reads:

Utrumne

noctis

ille

Tartareus vapor

Obnubit oculorum radiantes In the second line, "orbitas" plural,

and in his

orbitas,

an awkward invented third declension accusative

final version Alabaster gets rid of

Utrumne

it,

changing the lines to read:

noctis ille Tartareae vapor Depinxit oculos ludicris mundi notis?

WILLIAM ALABASTER, ROXANA

4l8 This

preferable both for its correct

grammar and for its new vitality.

some

emphasis and adjusts the meter — as, for example, where he substitutes "Est Orcus hie, et si quid Oreo saevius," for "Namque orcus hie et si quid Oreo saevius." In other emmendations he displays an ease and familiarity with the poetic possibilities of the language which is not always apparent in his earlier version. When he changes, for example, "Vindicta vivax omnibus vivacior" to "Vindicta viva, et aequilibris ultio" (Li. 26), Alabaster is trading in alliteration for chiasmus, with the nounlines Alabaster simply strengthens the

adjective— adjective-noun pattern falling neatly on either side of the "et." In such ways the final version oiRoxana clearly reflects the mature reconsiderations of a now accomplished Latinist and a careful scholar. What we find then, in this dark and sometimes melodramatic tragedy, is more than the sensational working out of a Senecan formula by a schoolboy. The peculiar circ*mstances of its first printing and of Alabaster's odd life forced him to invest his talents in the play anew, to change in some places its political sentiment and in others its language. While he may have regretted Roxana's survival, we can be grateful for the imique glimpse it affords us of a Renaissance academic playwright at work with his text University of Washington

Notes

The other is

the frontispiece to Nathaniel Richards' Messalina, written in 1635

and published in 1640. See STC 21011. 2. Frederick N. Boas, University Draina in the Tudor Age (Oxford: Clarendon, 1914), 286-87. 3.

Emmanuel

College Cambridge

MS in.I.17; MS

R. 17. 10; University Library, Cambridge, Ff.2.9; 4. Folger Shakespeare Library Vb.222.

Trinity College Cambridge MS Lambeth Palace Library MS 838.

5. 6.

STC 249 and STC 250. W. Bums deals with some of these changes in "Seneca and Neo-Latin Tragedy

See J.

in England," in Seneca, ed.

by C. D. N. Costa (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,

1974), 207-15. As he points out (p. 210), the actual additions are not so numerous as Alabaster wovdd have us believe. The stylistic emmendations however, of which

there are hundreds, indicate that Alabaster 7.

STC

250, Sig.

went over the play thoroughly.

A3-A5.

8. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the EngUsh Poets, ed. by G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905), I, 87-88. 9. Anthony à Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (London: Knaplack, Midwinter, Ton-

son, 1721)

Fasti, 144.

10. References to these allusions

have been conveniently collected in The SonM. Story and Helen Gardner (Oxford: Oxford

nets of William Alabaster, ed. by G. University Press, 1959), 63.

JOHN

COLDEWEY

4I9

Other treatments of Alabaster's

life can be found in the D.N.B., Bertram notice of Alabaster's sonnets in Athenaeum, 3974 (Dec. 26, 1903), 856-58, L. I. Guiney's Recusant Poets (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1939), 335-46, and the "General Introduction" to Sonnets. 12. See William Alabaster's Seven Motives Removed and Confuted, by John Recster (STC 20601) and An Answeie to William Alablastei his Motives (sic), by

11.

Dobell's

first

Roger Fenton (STC 10799). 13. See Guiney, Recusant Poets, 335-42; Story and Gardner, Sonnets, xii-xxi, for more detailed accounts of Alabaster's religious upheavals. 14. In the B.L., Shelfmark 1017.h.l4. 15. Guiney, Recusant Poets, 341. 16. H. Foley, S.J., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (London: Roehampton, 1875-83), Vn, 1021; ref. in Story and Gardner, Sormets, xx. 17. In a letter from John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, 5 January 1614. Cal. S. P. Dom., fames I, LXXVI, No. 2; ref. in Guiney, Recusant Poets, 342; ref. in Story and Gardner, Sonnets, xxi. 18. Copy in the Bodleian, Shelfmark N.1.15 Th. Seid. 19.

20. 21.

STC STC STC

246. 251.

247, 248.

22. In the B.L., Shelf

mark

11715.b.24.

Philomela in Bologna und Wittenberg. Die Nachtigall als Topos, Epigrammstoff

und Vogelmaske in der propagandistischen

Reformationsdichtung Bernhard Goppel

Das

Zwitschern der Vögel bringt uns, und meiner Ansicht nach auch den Tieren, tatsächlich viel Trost und Vergnügen. Und das liegt, vermute ich, weniger an der Aimiut der Töne, so groß sie auch sein mag, und auch nicht an ihrer Vielfalt und Harmonie, sondern an der Freude, die sich naturgemäß in jedem Gesang, und ganz besonders im Gesang der Vögel, ausdrückt. Er ist sozusagen ein Lachen, mit dem der Vögel bekundet, daß er sich wohl und zufrieden fühlt." Dies ein Zitat aus dem Lob dei Vögel (Elogio degli uccelli) von Giacomo Leopardi, einem Prosastück der Operette morali des Jahres 1824, in der neuen Übersetzung von Alice VoUenweider.^ Die Lobrede auf die Vögel ist einem Philosophen Amelius in den Mund gelegt, der, die Sorglosigkeit im Namen tragend, an einem Frühlingsmorgen mit seinen Büchern im Schatten seines Landhauses sitzt und über das leichtlebige, heitere Volk der Vögel ins Meditieren gerät, deren Gesang ihm wie ein Lachen vorkommt. Leopardi begreift, über das Naturverständnis des Compte de Buffon^ hinausgehend, die Vögel als Symbole einer dem Menschen versagten Heiterkeit. Diese neue Mythisierung der Vögel ignoriert die seit den Anfängen der griechischen Literatur bekannte, die ganze europäische Dichtung durchziehende Erzählung von klagenden Vogelstimmen imd entsprechenden ätiologischen Verwandlungsschicksalen.

gall

Wenn Hölderlin,

im zweiten Vers

ein Zeitgenosse Leopardis, in seiner

die

Ode An

die Nachti-

Anrede wählt: "Dir, süße Tränenweckerin", so be-

dient er sich hierbei eines dichterischen Topos, der vom ersten Vorkommen einer klagenden Nachtigall an eine reiche Vorgeschichte in Mythos und Poesie

aufzuweisen hat.^ Ausgehend von der ältesten Schicht des Nachtigallstoffes, dem Tiermärchen, bildete sich im jonisch-böotischen und im attischen Sagenbereich ein Metamorphosenmythos aus. Auf dieser Entwicklungsstufe bemächtigte sich die griechische und römische Dichtung, zum ersten Male Homer im neimzehnten Buch der Odyssee, des Nachtigallthemas. In drei verschiedenen Sagenversionen lautet der Name für die klagende Nachtigall Aedon, Procne (Progne) oder Philomela. Aedon und Procne haben als gemeinsames Schicksal, daß sie

BERNHARD GOPPEL

421

und nach ihrer VerKind klagen. Anders

durch eigene Hand ihren Sohn Itylos oder

Itys verlieren

wandlung

in eine Nachtigall für alle Zeit

ihr totes

geartet ist das Verhältnis zwischen Procne und Philomela. Diese beiden figurieren in derselben attischen Sage als Schwestern, die nach dem aus Rache für das barbarische Verbrechen ihres

Gatten bzw. Schwagers Tereus gemein-

sam ausgeführten Mord an Itys zu Nachtigall und Schwalbe werden, zu zwei Vögeln also, in deren Stimmen antike Ohren einen Klageton vernahmen. Aber nur eine von den beiden Schwestern hat einen ganz imvergleichlichen Grund zu ewiger Klage. Sie, die ihr eigenes Kind ermordet hat, Procne, wird in eine Nachtigall verwandelt, Philomela in eine Rauchschwalbe, einen Vogel, in dessen Gefiederfärbung und auffälligem Gezwitscher man bleibende Male furchtbarer Verbrechen sah. In dieser Version begegnet man der Doppelmetamorphose in der ganzen griechischen Literatur und bei einem Teil der Römischen Dichter. Ab der augusteischen Epoche aber kennen Dichter und Mythographen den Procne-Philomela-Mythos auch mit vertauschtem Verwandlungsschicksal. Nur diese letzte Version, in der Philomela zur Nachtigall und Procne zur Schwalbe wird, lebte und wirkte bis in die Neuzeit weiter. In ihr steht zwar Philomela mit ihrem sprechenden Namen, den man in offensichtlich falscher Etymologie als iXoüa [LÌ\r\ = 'Lieder liebend' gedeutet hat, für den Vogel mit dem reichsten und kunstvollsten Gesang. Aber weil

Procne weiterhin die Mutter des Itys bleibt,'* beraubt diese Version die Nachtigall mit dem Verlust der Mutterrolle im Mythos ihres spezifischen Motivs für den Klageton in ihrem Gesang und für ihr weltflüchtiges Leben in der Einsamkeit des Waldes. Konsequent, wie Martials PhilomelaMonodistichon 14, 75 das Klagen der Nachtigall nach der neuen Version als epigrammatisches Paradoxon präsentiert: Flet Philomela nefas incesti Tereos, et

muta Das

quae

puella fuit, garrula fertur avis.

Leid, über das die Nachtigall klagt, besteht in der Vergewaltigung Philo-

melas imd in

dem Verlust

ihrer

Zunge, aber nicht wie vorher in

dem

Verlust

ihres Kindes.

Die mythologische Umbesetzung bei der Vogelmetamorphose von Philomela um es möglichst vorsichtig auszudrücken, mit der Änderung oder Erweiterung der poetischen Philomela-Typologie in indirektem Zusammenhang stehen, die in der lateinischen Dichtung ab der Spätantike festzustellen ist. In Band V der von E. Baehrens herausgegebenen Poetae Latini Minores stehen zwei längere distichische Gedichte mit dem Titel De Philomela. Das erstere, Nr. LXI,das am Anfang des Altertums entstanden ist, setzt mit einer einzigartigen Prädikation der Nachtigall ein:

und Procne könnte,

Dulcis amica veni, noctis solatia praestans; inter aves etenim nulla tui similis. Tu, philomela, potes vocum discrimina mille, mille vales varios rite referre modos. Nam quamvis aliae volucres modulamina temptent, nulla potest modules aequiperare tuos.

PHILOMELA IN BOLOGNA

4^2

UND WITTENBERG

Insuper est avium spatiis garrire diumis, tu cantare simul nocte dieque potes.

Außer der Metonymie pbilomela = luscinia erinnert hier nichts mehr an die Sage von der klagenden Schwester der Procne, aber alles an die hymnische Beschreibung des Nachtigallgesangs in der Historia Naturalis des Plinius 10,43) Alles Lob gilt der virtuosen Sängerin mit den vocum disciimina mille, wie der Ausdruck ab jetzt für das Stimm volumen und Gesangsrepertoire im Preislied auf die Nachtigall (und den Papagei) lautet. Ein anderes spätantikes Gedicht hebt wieder wie die ältere Dichtimg auf die affektive Qualität des Nachtigallgesangs ab. Die folgenden vier Verse stammen aus dem Schlußteil des Pervigilium Veneris (V. 85-88): (

lam loquaces

ore rauco stagna cygni perstrepunt,

Adsonat Terei puella subter umbram populi, Ut pûtes motus amoris ore dici musico Et neges queri sororem de marito barbaro. Karl Büchner, der dieses berühmte Gedicht in seinem Buch Die Römische Lyrik^ übersetzt und interpretiert hat, deutet Terei puella (V.86) gegen die communis opinio^ als Schwalbe. Doch wird man wohl nicht puella als Frau des Tereus, also Procne, verstehen. Puella kann die Geliebte sein. Geliebte wider Willen— Ovid sagt paelej^— ist aber Philomela. Der Dichter des Pervigilium Veneris, der vor dem Aprilfest der Venus die Pracht des sizilischen Frühlings und die Macht der Liebe verherrlicht, stellt nicht nur eine ausdrückliche Beziehung zum Mythos der Philomela her, er deutet auch seine höchst eigene Version von der Beziehimg zwischen Tereus und Philomela an, eine Version, die auf einen geänderten, erstmals hier belegbaren neuen Gefühlswert des Nachtigallgesangs abgestimmt ist. Vielleicht war Florus (wenn er der Dichter des Pervigilium Veneris ist) der erste, der im Schlag der Nachtigall nicht mehr einen Klageton, sondern motus amoris (V.87), Regungen der Liebe, vernahm. U. v.Wilamowitz-Moellendorff hat sich über dieses neue Hören von Naturlauten gewundert: "Ist ein solcher Wandel in der Auffassung derselben Naturklänge, ein völliger Umschlag in das Gegenteil, nicht fast beängstigend? Wird er sich nicht wiederholt haben? Und wenn das innerhalb eines ununterbrochenen Kulturzusammenhanges vorgekommen ist, wie erst bei ganz gesonderten Kulturen oder gar Kultur anfangen."^ Die neulateinischen Dichter hören die Natur mit zweierlei Ohren. Man trifft auf Stellen wie die folgende von Georg Sabinus, wo der Gesang der Nachtigall als heiter empfunden ist: quasi Daulias volucris, quando la e ta canit sonante luco.^° Aber es überwiegen bei weitem jene Stellen, an denen das klassizistische Ohr, das hier als Bild für eine an Musterautoren orientierte Grundhaltung steht, im Lied der Nachtigall die Klage einer Unglücklichen hört. Diese Ambivalenz ist ein erster Punkt, der bei der Verwendung des Nachtigallmotivs in der neulateinischen Dichtung der Renaissance auffällt. Darüber hinaus gehen die Neulateiner in Form und Inhalt bei der Gestaltung dieses Urmotivs der Poesie neue Wege. Auf diese neuen Ansätze und Entwicklungen konzentriert sich im folgenden unser Interesse. Zunächst zur Form

BERNHARD GOPPEL

423

der Motivdarbietung: In der Dichtung des Altertums hat sich ein NachtigallTopos herausgebildet, für den ein melancholischer Tenor, die Orientierung an einem ätiologischen Identifikationsmythos und ein feststehendes Naturtableau (die Nachtigall in der schattigen Laubkrone eines Baumes) charakteristisch ist. Der Topos kann, wie etwa in CatuUs Hortalus-Gedicht (c. 65, 12-14), ein Ausdrucksmittel für die lyrische Situation eines Dichters sein. Aber

immer bleibt

das Nachtigallthema als ein Einzelmotiv, etwa in der Form des Vergleichs, auf eine dominierende Aussage dienend oder nur ausschmückend

bezogen. Es verselbständigt sich nicht zum Tierepigramm nach der Art der passei— oder psittacus — Gedichte. Die neulateinische Dichtung kennt neben dem Nachtigall-Topos, der Einzelmotiv bleibt, die Ausformung des lusciniaStoffes in

einem eigenen Gedicht.

dem neuen Rahmen eines eigenständigen Philomela-Gedichts erfährt das

Nachtigallthema auch inhaltliche Erweiterungen. Jetzt thematisieren Nachtigallgedichte das ganze, in Plinius' Naturgeschichte oder in zeitgenössischen Omithologie-Büchem wie etwa dem dritten Band von Konrad Gessners Historìa Animalium^^ ausgebreitete biologische Wissen oder Fabulieren über die Nachtigall: Melodienreichtum und Variationsfähigkeit des Gesangs, jahreszeitlich bedingte Gesangsunterschiede, Individualität und Kunstcharakter der

Stimmführung, leidenschaftlicher Wettstreit der Stimmen um den ersten Tod der unterlegenen Sängerin, ungewöhnliche Fürsorglichkeit bei der Aufzucht und Gesangsschulung der Jungen, Gelehrigkeit, Freiheitsliebe usw. Einen Querschnitt an Enkomien in Dichtung und Prosa, an Epigrammen vor Platz,

allem, darunter Trauer- und Trost-, Fabel-, Gratulations- und politische Epigramme, und an Nachtigall-Emblemen bietet das Ampbitheatnim Sapientiae Sociaticae loco-Seiiae von Caspar Domavius mit Texten aus 25, zumeist italienischen und deutschen Neulateinem.^^ Auf zwei bei Domavius abgedruckte Gedichte soll näher eingegangen

werden.

ist

zunächst ein Nachtigall-Emblem aus den Symbolicae Quaes-

tiones des Achilles Bocchius,^^ die 1555 in Bologna erschienen sind

LVSCINIAE HAVD DEFIT CANTIO CONTENTIO LVSCINIAE OB VICTORIAM Propter limpidum aquae caput Illimis zephyro dum genitabili Arridens aperit se humus. Dum se moUia passim viridantium Densant germina frondium. Fiorenti tenerae ramulo ab arboris Dulci garrula murmure Cantabat Philomela, interea nemus Promptis undique voculis Argutum resonare, inde sua nitido Umbra fontis in aequore

Visa, forte timens vincier, intégrât Certatim varium, novum, Mellitum, lepidum cantum animosior.

(111,86):

PHILOMELA IN BOLOGNA

424

UND WITTENBERG

Porro suspiciosula

Paulum

constitit.

hinc praecipiti volans

Lapsu falsae ad imaginem Fonnae undam oppetiit. Naiades interim Risere, ilia ubi plumulas lam tota uvida se denique fallier Sensit,

mox vacuum

secat

Euro diffugiens ocius

aera.

Das Epigramm besteht aus

elf epodischen Strophen. Ungefähr das erste Dritexponiert ein Frühlingstableau mit knospenden und blühenden Bäumen an einer Quelle, mit dem Hauch des Zephyr und einer singenden Nachtigall als eigentlichem Zielpunkt der Ekphrasis. Das nächste Drittel schildert das Crescendo vom süßen, schwatzenden Singen der Nachtigall zu einem immer leidenschaftlicher werdenden Zweikampf mit einer vermeintlichen Stimmkonkurrentin, die Philomela in ihrem eigenen Spiegelbild auf dem Wasserspiegel des Quellbeckens vor sich zu haben meint. In der letzten Phase greift die Sängerin in ihrer Hilflosigkeit zu anderen Waffen und stürzt sich auf ihr Gegenüber, das im Gesang nicht zu besiegen war. Über den Sturzflug ins Wasser lachen die Najaden, die den Kampf mitverfolgt haben. Mit nassen Flügeln kommt die Nachtigall davon. Das Epigramm ist, teilweise bis hin zur Wortwahl, in enger Anlehnung an das iusciniû-Kapitel bei Plinius entstanden. Die sowohl bei Domavius als auch im Handbuch von Henkel und Schöne^"* fortgelassene Pictuia zeigt im Vordergrund das Quellbecken mit einem Baum links, einer Nachtigall und ihrem Spiegelbild. rechten Rand des Beckens eine Gruppe von fünf Najaden, im Hintergrund ein Waldgebirge, das die Entstehung des Echos erklären soll. Das Motto des Bocchius-Emblems lautet: Lusciniae haud défit cantio. Das ist die sprichwörtliche Redensart, die sich am Anfang von Plautus' Bacchides findet und in die Adagia des Erasmus aufgenommen worden ist. Unter Lusciniae deest cantio^^ bemerkt Erasmus in den Adagiomm Cbiliades 3, 6, 77: PToverbialis allegoria, peiinde quasi dicas mulieri desunt verba, poetae versus, oratori color, sopbistae cavillum. Die Adagia des Erasmus haben häufig als Quelle für die bildliterarische Gattung des Emblems gedient. Wenn Bocchius in seinem Motto die Negation iiûud hinzufügt, so ersetzt er damit die ironische Stilfigur des Sprichworts durch eine objektive Feststellung naturgesetzlicher Realität. Dieselbe Sachlichkeit spricht aus der an den Wortlaut des Pliniuskapitels anklingenden Epigramm-Überschrift Contentio lusciniae ob victoriam. Das Emblem deutet graziös auf ein inneres, spirituell erfahrbares Gesetz der Natur hin, ein Gesetz des Spielerischen und der Heiterkeit. Domavius hat in sein Nachtigall-Kapitel noch ein zweites Gedicht aufgenommen, das den gesanglichen Ehrgeiz und Wettstreit mit einer vermeintlichen Konkurrentin zimi Thema hat. Dieser Text ist nicht eben unbekannt. G. Herrlinger bringt einen Abdruck in seinem Buch Totenklage um Tiere.^^ Dazu die Anmerkung: "Inhaltlich belanglos." Hierbei wurde wohl übersehen, daß dieses Gedicht nicht nur und nicht in erster Linie ein Tierepikedion ist. Seine Bedeutung erschließt sich aus einem anderen Blickwinkel.

tel

BERNHARD GOPPEL

425

Geschrieben hat es ein deutscher Neulateiner, der 1555 und 1556, also in der Zeit der editio pnnceps der Symbolicae Quaestiones des Bocchius, an der Universität Bologna studiert hat, Petrus Lotichius Secundus aus Schlüchtern in Hessen. Lotichius hat Bocchius in seiner fünften Italienelegie ein Denkmal gesetzt, wo er ihm mit der Bezeichnung pater vatum seine Reverenz als Dichterkollege erweist. Natürlich kannte er die Symbolicae Quaestiones. Das läßt sich sogar nachweisen. Der bemerkenswerteste dichterische Ertrag der Beschäftigung mit dem Emblembuch des Bocchius ist, was bisher noch nicht gesehen wurde, die Umsetzimg des Emblems IQ, 86 Lusciniae baud défit cantio in eine Kurzelegie mit dem Titel De Philomela (El. V, 1):

Dum

sedet ac itérât Philomela querelas. Pendula qua vitreas arbor opacat aquas, Alitis effigiem subiectis spectat in undis Blandaque vicinis vox redit icta iugis. Iliaque dum queritur, simul ipsa videtur imago Aemula sub ramo dulce virente queri. Tum stupet et vere volucrem putat esse, quod umbra Et sibi divini carminis esse parem. Perstat et invidia maerens tabescit inani,

est,

Certa, nisi vincat, vieta dolore mori.

Omnia depromit

discrimina gutturis, omnes Elicit innumeris flexibus usa modos. Postremo multas frustra dum certat in horas Seque repercusso decipit ipsa sono,

Unguibus

et rostro

simulacrum invadit

et alis

Inque necaturas inscia fertur aquas. Vidit et

exanimem

vicino cespite texit

Triste genus leti conmiseratus Acon.

FALSUS QUAM PERDIDIT ERROR, 20 DAULIAS HIC VIRIDI CONDITUR ALES HUMO.

Addidit et titulum: Infelix fatum,

Fallor

quae laudis tanta cupido est? miseras nos imitamur aves?

Hier wird die Dreiteiligkeit des aus Motto, Pictuia und Epigramm bestehenden Emblems in der Eindimensionalität des bloßen Gedichts zur dreiteiligen Struktur einer Elegie, vergleichbar am ehesten vielleicht jenen emblemartigen Fabeln La Fontaines, "in denen auf eine knappe Beschreibung der Szene (des Emblems) eine kurze Sentenz (das Motto) uùd moralisierende Reflexionen (das Epigramm) folgen."^^ Die Elegie des Lotichius gliedert sich in einen ersten Teil, in der Lotichius die Pictuia des Bocchius beschreibt, wie er sie sieht (V. 1-16), in einen zweiten Teil, in der ein Hirt Acon für die ertrunkene Nachtigall auf dem Rasengrab eine Tafel mit einem Grabspruch anbringt (V. 17-20), und in einen Schlußteil mit einer moralisierenden Betrachtung zur Übereinstimmung von Vogel— und Menschenschicksal (V. 21 f). Den stärksten Eindruck empfing Lotichius von der Pictuia des Bocchius. Hinter der suggestiven Wirkung, die das Naturbild als ein hieroglyphenartiges Sinnbild der Wirklichkeit auf den Lyriker des Emblemzeitalters ausüben konnte,

426

PHILOMELA IN BOLOGNA

UND WITTENBERG

blieben die deutenden Textbestandteile des Emblems, Motto und Epigramm, an Verbindlichkeit weit zurück. Das Bild des Bocchius-Emblems enträtselte sich dem Betrachter Lotichius mit einer anderen Auflösung, er las aus ihm eine andere Gleichung des Lebens ab als Bocchius. Das im titulus ausgedrückte Motto (v. 19 f) schlägt einen tragischen Ton an: Ein falsus error stürzte den Vogel in den Tod. Die daran anschließende Reflexion des letzten Distichons moralisiert über die Fatalität übersteigerter menschlicher Ruhmsucht, mit der es kein besseres Ende nehmen kann. Wenn das arme Vögelchen sterben muß, ist auch für die Randepisode der lachenden Najaden kein Platz mehr. An ihre Stelle tritt der Hirt Acon, eine im Philomela-Epikedion des Giambattista Amalteo^^ vorgeprägte Figur, als sinndeutender Totengräber. Dementsprechend ist auch der erste Teil, die Beschreibung der Naturszene, mit anderer Ponderierung und anderem Kolorit erzählt als bei Bocchius. Die Nachtigall ist unter Einbeziehung des Topos als Philomela maerens stilisiert, ihr Gesang ist Klage. Der Schmerz artikuliert sich in den anspruchsvollsten Melodien, die von dem großen Ehrgeiz und Selbstbewußtsein der Stimmvirtuosin gekennzeichnet sind. In einer neuartigen Kausalkette erklärt die Trauer die künstlerische Vollendung und die künstlerische Vollendung ein von Ehrgeiz imd Ruhmsucht geprägtes Selbstbewußtsein. In kühner Verdichtung wagt Lotichius ein aus Trauer und Neid zusammengesetztes Psychogramm: invidia maerens tabescit inani (V.9). Damit befindet er sich auf dem Experimentierfeld manieristischer Psychologie. Dazu paßt die schillernde Bedeutimg von dolor in V.IO, einem Begriff, der ebenso zum Motivkomplex maeioi wie zu dem der invidia gehört. Umbra, der Schatten der Nachtigall auf dem Wasserspiegel, bei Bocchius ein deskriptives Element mit funktionaler Bedeutung, aber ohne weitergehende Bewandtnis, ist in der Elegie des Lotichius (V.7) zu einem Motiv von hochpoetischem Eigenwert und Assoziationscharakter geworden. Besonders fallen Andromeda- und Narziss-Reminiszenzen (Ovid Met. 4, 711-713 und 3, 416 f)^^ auf. Die sprachlich besonders enge Anlehnung an Ovid Met. 3, 417 kommt einer Ineinssetzung mit Narziss nahe. Echo, die von Narziss verschmähte Nymphe, die vor Kummer vergeht und in ihrer Stimme weiterlebt, spielt als Widerhall der Nachtigallstimme auch im Schicksal dieses weiblichen

Narziss eine Rolle (siehe V. 4 und V. 14). Echo und umbra werden im Zusammenspiel einer doppelten Sinnestäuschung der Nachtigall zum Verhängnis. Aus dem Nacheinander von akustischer und visueller Täuschung in Ovids Narziss-Erzählung^ wird im Schicksal der Philomela des Lotichius die erst recht unentrinnbare Gleichzeitigkeit eines komprimierten Wahns. Was dort die Liebe zmn eigenen Spiegelbild bewirkt, das bewirkt hier der Haß auf dieses: einen tödlichen Ausgang der Verblendung.^^ Man wird die Elegie als ein Meisterwerk der "meditierend-deiktischen" Dichtung bezeichnen können. ^^ Es wäre interessant, der Frage nachzugehen, ob zu dem Kreis derjenigen, auf deren poetische Phantasie dieses Gedicht direkt oder indirekt eingewirkt hat, in der deutschen Dichtung des 18. Jahrhunderts vielleicht Christian Fürchtegott Geliert gehört hat, in dessen Fabeln und Erzählungen dasselbe Vogelmotiv vorkommt." Doch eine andere Gegenüberstellung, eine zeitgenössische, erscheint mir wichtiger. Die contentio

BERNHARD GOPPEL

42/

von Bocchius wahrscheinlich direkt aus Plinius geschöpfte Emblem-Thema, hat sich bei Lotichius zum Tier-Paradigma und Gleichnis

lusciniae, das

durch das Kûnstlertum gefährdetes Menschsein entwickelt. Dieses Gedicht scheint unter dem Eindruck der von Individualismus und Paganismus beherrschten Welt des italienischen Humanismus und seiner Ruhmesidee entstanden zu sein. Mit cupido laudis ist der zentrale Nerv der RenaissanceKunst imd -Literatur angesprochen^'*, die ihr Bild vom Menschen und ihren für ein

Ruhmesgedanken nach antikem Vorbild geformt haben. Der Gedanke, daß Ruhmesstreben eine ins Unglück stürzende Veranlagung sei, deutet auf eine antiklassische Position, auf das Menschenbild der christlichen Ethik und auf die christlich-humanistischen Bildungsprinzipien der Schule Philipp

thons in Wittenberg, die Lotichius,

Doch

Melanch-

wenn auch nur kurze Zeit, besucht hatte.

dieser Feststellung ist sogleich eine Präzisierung nachzuschicken. Lo-

zwar bei Melanchthon studiert, aber aus ihm ist in dieser Schule kein Wittenberger Humanist strenger Observanz geworden. Auch das läßt sich an der Art imd Weise, wie das Thema der Philomela behandelt wird, zeigen. ^^ In Deutschland beherrschte für ein Vierteljahrhundert eine ganz andere Nachtigallstimme die Dichtimg. Den Anfang machte 1523 Hans Sachs mit seiner Wittenbeigisch Nachtigall, einer allegorischen Reformationsdichtung, in der die Nachtigall für Martin Luther steht, "der uns auffwecket von der nacht," wie es in der Auflösung der Allegorie V.103 erklärend heißt. Nach dem Tode Luthers ist es Philipp Melanchthon, dem von Freunden und Schülern der Ehrentitel einer Wittenbergischen Nachtigall zuerkannt wird. Adam Siber, Michael Haslob, Johannes Franciscus Ripensis, Johann Major u.a. nennen Melanchthon in ihren Versen Aedon oder— viel häufiger— Philomela. Vogelgesang steht hier allegorisch für Streit und Konfrontation zwischen guten und bösen Vögeln, wobei das Lager der bösen Vögel von dem 'Kuckuck' Flacius lUyricus und das der guten Vögel von der 'Nachtigall' Melanchthon angeführt wird. Philomela war für Philipp Melanchthon ein treffend gewählter omithologischer Übername, einmal weil sich in ihm die Anfangssilben von Philipp und Melanchthon wiederfinden, dann aber auch, weil die Philomela-Symbolik den Anhängern Melanchthons dessen wissenschaftlich-humanistischen Geist tichius hat

zu charakterisieren schien, der zwischen den in Flügelkämpfen zerstrittenen protestantischen Gruppierungen einen Ausgleich suchte. Nicht nur der Name als solcher, auch das Hauptwerk der allegorischen Propaganda für Melanchthon, die Synodus Avium^^ das Jahres 1557, stammt von Johann Major. Diese satirische Dichtung beschreibt in einem Verkleidungsstil, der alle Mitwirkenden unter wertsignifikanten oder phonetisch naheliegenden Vogelnamen vorstellt, den gescheiterten Versuch, auf insgesamt drei Versammlungen einen Nachfolger Luthers zu wählen. Ende kann man sich auf der Vogelsynode nur darauf einigen, daß jeder Vogel fortan so singen soll, "wie ihm der Schnabel gewachsen ist" (cantus pro rostri fingere sorte, V. 355). Auf dieser omithologischen Quasi-Bühne, auf der sich die glücklichen und unglücklichen Vögel der klassischen und klassizistischen Dichtung zu guten und bösen gewandelt haben, taugen die Vögel noch einmal wie einst in der Komödie des Aristophanes zu einer Darstellung politischer Verhältnisse, jetzt allerdings in der Form eines allegorischen Vermummungsspiels, das sich in seiner Deszen-

PHILOMELA IN BOLOGNA

428

UND WITTENBERG

denz nicht auf die poetischen Vorbilder der Antike berufen kann. Nicht allen sagte solche Dichtung zu, auch nicht allen Wittenberger Studenten Melanchthons. Lotichius, der 1546 und 1547 bei Melanchthon studiert hat, hat zwar ein großes, von bemerkenswert persönlichem Tone geprägtes Trauergedicht zum Gedenken an Melanchthon geschrieben (El. IV, 4), aber mit keiner Zeile der so naheliegenden Synodus-Symbolik Tribut gezollt. Das kann eigentlich nur bedeuten, daß er die allegorisierende Aktualisierung der aus der klassischen Literatur rezipierten Naturthematik vom Standpunkt einer immanenten Dichtungskonzeption aus abgelehnt hat. Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg

Brsg.

Anmerkungen 1 Giacomo Leopardi, Gesänge, Dialoge und andere Lehrstücke, übersetzt von H. Helbling und A. VoUenweider, (München, 1978) S.419. Italienische Ausgabe: G. Leopardi, Tutte le opere, con introduzione e a cura di W. Binni, (Firenze, 1969) I,

153. 2.

In Buffons Discours sur la nature des oiseaux heißt es: Cette classe d'êtres que la nature parut avoir produits dans sa gaîté (zitiert von A. Vollenweider,

légers

a.O.S.549).

Zum Folgenden siehe M. C. van der Kolf, "Philomela"; RE XIX, 2, 2515 ff. Ovidius Naso, Die Fasten, hrsg., übers, imd komm, von F. Borner (Heidelberg, 1957 und 1958), Kommentar zu Buch n, 629; Band n, S.128 (mit Belegstellen und 3.

Sekundärliteratur)

Hygini Fabulae, Nr. 45: Progne filium Itym ex se et Tereo natum occidit ... factum est, ut Progne in hirundinem commutaretur, Philomela in lusciniam. 5. Anstelle von mille auch orrmia oder ohne Attribut vocum discrimina. Papagei: Petrus Lotichius Secundus, El. V,8 (nach der Ausgabe von Burman, Amsterdam, 4. E.g.

1754), V.5.

Karl Büchner, Die Römische Lyrik (Stuttgart, 1976), S.314 ff. Siehe z.B. M. Schanz, Geschichte der Römischen Literatur bis zum Gesetzgebungswerk des Kaisers Justinian. Dritter Teil (^ 1905), S.74. 8. Met. 6, 537 und 606. 9. Reden und Vorträge, Band I (1925), S. 194. 10. Poemata Georgii Sabini Brandeburgensis (Voegelin, Leipzig o.J., 1563?), 6. 7.

EU.

und Z

Conradi Gesneri Tiguiini Historiae Animalium Liber m, qui est de ajnuin natura (Tiguri apud Chr. Froschoverum Anno M.D.LV.]. 12. Caspar Domavius, Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Socraticae loco-Seriae ... (Hanau, 1619). Bd. I, S.386-398. 13. Achillis Bocchii Bonon. Symbolicarum Quaestionum de universo genere quas serio ludebat libri quinque. 14. A. Henkel / A. Schöne, Emblemata. Handbuch zur Sirmbildkunst des XVL und XVn. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1967), Sp.871. 11

BERNHARD GOPPEL 15. Siehe

Romei

429

auch A. Otto, Die Spnchwöitei und spiicbwörtlichen Redensarten dei 1890, reprographischer Nachdruck Hildesheim, 1962), s.v.

(Leipzig,

lusciniola, S.201. 16.

G. Herrlinger, Totenklage

Anhang

(Stuttgart, 1930), Nr. 74, S.129

mit einem und neuhochdeutschei Tieiepikedien

Tieie in dei antiken Dichtung

byzantinischei, mittellateinischei f.

Buck, Die Emblematik in Neues Handbuch dei Liteiatuiwissenschaft Bd. 10, Renaissance und Baiock II, hrsg. von A. Buck (Frankfurt/M., 1972), S.344. 17. A.

18. Bei 19.

Domavius

Met.

(siehe

Anm.

12) S.392, V.6.

711-713:

Cum

subito iuvenis pedibus tellure repulsa abiit. ut in aequore summo Umbra viri visa est, visa fera saevit in umbra.

Arduus in nubes Met.

41116

Dumque Spem Met.

imagine formae

sine corpore amat: corpus putat esse,

unda 20.

bibit, visae correptus

{Variante:

umbra)

quod

est.

385:

altemae deceptus imagine vocis Met. 3, 430 f Quid v i d e a t nescit: sed quod videt uritur ilio, Atque o c u 1 o s idem qui decipit incitât error. 21. Verf. arbeitet an einer neuen Edition des Lotichius mit deutscher Übersetzung und Kommentar. Näheres dazu in "Bericht über Vorarbeiten zu einer neuen Lotichius-Edition." Daphnis 7 (1978), 55-106. 22. Bezeichnimg von K.O. Conrady, Lateinische Dichtungstradition und deutsche :

Lyrik des

17.

Jahrhunderts (Bonn, 1962), S.185

ff.

Band I, S.252 ff: "Die Lerche" (vom Dichter verworfene Fassung aus den Belustigungen). 24. Siehe A. Buck, Die Kultur Italiens (Frankfurt/M., 1964 und 1972), S.80. 25. Zum folgenden siehe A. Blaschka, "Wittenbergische Nachtigall. Stemstimden eines Topos." Wissenschafthche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität HalleWittenberg. Gesellschafts- und sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe, Jg. X (1961), S.897-908. 26. Synodus Avium, depingens miseram fadem ecclesiae pioptei ceitamina quoiundam, qui de piimatu contendunt cum oppiessione lecte meiitoium. Enthalten in lohan. Maioiis loachimi Opeium pais piima (Wittenberg, 1574), BU. T 2-V 1. Vgl. das Idyllion de Philomela, ibid. BU. X 2-X 3. 23. C.F. Gellerts Sämtliche

Werke

(Karlsruhe, 1818),

Leonardo Porzio in the 1527

De Asse

Kathaiine Davies

The

dispute as to whether the researches of Guillaume Bude on ancient coinage and measures had been preceded by those of Leonardo

Porzio of Vicenza has been known basically from three letters preserved in the correspondence of Bude: from Bude to Egnatius (Giovanni Battista Cipelli) of 27 November 1518;^ from lanos Lascaris to Bude of no date;^

from Bude to Lascaris of

The gist

August 15 28.-*

view of the case uncompromisingly he agrees to delete from any further edition of De Asse which might appear during his lifetime a passage concerning this affair which Lascaris regarded as unjustified. Louis Delaruelle in a note on the letter in his Répertoire analytique et chronologique de la correspondence de Guillaume of Budé's letter to Lascaris is that while reiterating his

Bude observes that although Bude introduced many changes into the successive editions he has not found the least allusion to the dispute with Porzio.'* This is perfectly true of the edition of 1541 (which as the last which Bude himself

corrected may be regarded as the authoritative one and to which Delaruelle in Guillaume Bude. Les origines, les débuts, les idées maîtresses (Paris, 1907),

gave his references for this good reason), of those up to 1524, and of that of 1532. But in that of 1527 (Badius, Paris), and also in a peculiar and perhaps pirated one of 1528 (Soter, Köln), there occurs a substantial insertion (18 pages of the folio 1527) devoted entirely to the subject. It begins after "... & veluti gentilitatem agnoscerent" on f. 168r. of 1527. According to the account which it gives. De Asse had already been three or four times reprinted, and in the opinion of Bude and every one else (as he heard) nothing appeared to belong so much to him alone as the treatment and establishment of weights and measures and currency, which were expounded there indisputably for his own and later ages. Then, a little less than two years ago, when he was at Lyon with the court, a book chanced to be shown to him under the name of Porzio, published with no indication of place or date. He only had opportunity to read one or two pages and turn the others over rapidly, so that he was able to note the purport and argument of the work but not its essential character. After this he neither saw nor heard anything of

KATHARINE DAVIES

431

began to be sold and distributed generally in Paris in emended form promising magnificent things; this also bore no date, and the only evidence of place was the imprint of the publishing house of Frobenius. A copy of this had recently been given to Bude, and he had read it with much curiosity and even pleasure imtil he found to his amazement that it was copied from De Asse. His first impulse was to raise a controversy, but he restrained it and for a long time was resolved to pass the matter over in silence. At last however he was persuaded by his friends that this was a conspiracy against him and that he owed it to himself to rebut the dishonouring implication that his work it

until

imder a

title

was not original.^ The allusions here to dates

are useful for a story in which dates are crucial. true that they are imprecise in themselves and could be interpreted as showing that the insertion was composed either early in 1524 or late in 1526.

It is

1524 came out on 4 January, 1527 on 1 January, and Bude was at Lyon with the court from April to the end of July 1522 and in November and December 1524.^ But the later date is almost certainly correct. The opening words ("Horum librorum editione tertium iam aut quartum sub proelo repetita") are ambiguous, and it is admittedly odd that Bude should be in doubt as to how many editions there had been; but there is good reason to believe that there has been only two before September 1522.'' Porzio's De Sesteitio probably did not come out so early as 1522.^ Finally, Bude speaks of the publication of the Annotationes in Suetomum of Egnatius as "about ten years ago."^ This was in 1516; and with all allowance made for the elasticity of "about" 1526 is suggested rather than the beginning of 1524. Bude concludes this introduction by saying that in consequence of the pressure from his friends he will give as brief as possible a statement of the facts of the case. Unfortunately this undertaking is not very adequately fulfilled. The insertion, like all the writings of Bude, is prolix; and its factual content is by no means in proportion to its length. It does however make some genuine addition to our knowledge, both in itself and by drawing attention to other sources. Its own information consists in indications of date similar to those in the opening passage. Some of these concern the publication of De Sesteitio. It is customary to regard the edition of Minitius Calvus (Rome, 1524) as the first. But Bude is explicit that the first was at Venice, the second at Basel, ^° although neither gave place or date, except that the second bore the imprint of the house of Frobenius. ^^ Copies of editions corresponding exactly to this description and markedly early in typographical style are held by both the Bibliothèque Nationale^^ and the British Library. ^^ Bude says that Porzio "wrote and disseminated" the book in Venice when eighteen months earlier De Asse had been published there. ^* The Aldine De Asse of 1522 has no month date. It is said to have come out in September; ^^ so if Bude is correct the first publication of De Sesteitio would have been either in the spring of 1524 or (if the Aldine De Asse were earlier in 1522) in the later part of 1523. Either date would involve there being three editions in different places within a year, which seems unlikely. One explanation would be that Bude was unaware of the edition of Calvus, following soon after that in Venice, and re-

432

LEONARDO PORZIO

garded that of Frobenius as the second, whereas it was really the third and perhaps appeared early in 1526. But it is possible, although not probable, that Bude was mistaken both here and in his letter to Egnatius, in which he assumes (he does not say upon what grounds) that De Sestertio was still unpublished in 1518.^^ He was not in Italy, and we do not know how well informed he was on affairs there,- and when he wrote the insertion he was in a state of strong excitement which might have caused him to unconsciously arrange his impressions in the way most unfavourable to Porzio. Lascaris in his letter,^'' although deplorably imprecise as to dates, suggests strongly that De Sestertio was in print by 1516 or 1517;^® and although his memory is open to doubt, since he was writing more than twelve years after the event, his testimony deserves serious attention, all the more as it is not given to show priority of De Sestertio but rather implies that of De Asse. In that case Bude perhaps supposed the edition of Frobenius (the one which he had had opportimity to examine and which he knew to have come out in 1523 or 1524) to have been much more closely preceded by that in Venice (at which he had merely glanced, and of which his recollection could have been only indistinct) than in fact it was. All this is no more than conjecture, and it cannot in itself overthrow the positive statements of Bude. But it is not wholly to be discounted as an alternative chronology, especially as it would obviate some minor difficulties in the story as it now stands. The indicated sources are available elsewhere, but they are not all obvious or convenient of access, and some of the quotations from them are of considerable length. There is the tribute to Porzio by Egnatius in his Annotationes in Suetonium which started the whole trouble, containing the remark that Porzio had devoted a book to the subject of ancient coins and measures "five years ago."^^ This cannot mean that it had been published then; but it would take back to 1511 the existence in manuscript which we know of in 1515 from the letter of Lascaris to Budé.^° Its circulation in this state occurs again in the quotation from an important letter of Andreas Alciatus to Bude showing that in 1515 Porzio had developed his own theory on the question of the sesterce which figured so largely in the controversy and was imwiUing to agree

with that of Budé.^^ The remainder of the insertion is taken up by examples of what Bude regards as Porzio's thefts and by abuse of Porzio and more restrained but still bitter reproach of Egnatius for his patronage of him. The examples cannot be said strictly to be an addition to our knowledge, since De Sestertio is available and any one can make the comparison for himself; but they show the grounds on which Bude based his accusation. They deal with two kinds of theft, first of Budé's arguments, which Bude asserts that Porzio had either muddled through misunderstanding or deliberately altered in order to avoid detection, and secondly of quotations from authorities. In both cases it is difficult to bring conclusive proof of the charge. In the first. Bude and Porzio were dealing with the same topics, and it was only to be expected that their reasoning, especially if correct, would to some extent run along the same lines, and where Porzio's was so remote from Budé's as Bude implies in his accusation of distortion the suggestion might more

KATHARINE DAVIES

433

naturally appear to be that it was original. In his letter to Egnatius Bude had expressed the wish that De Sestertio should be published, so that he might see whether they had attained the object of their hunt by the same tracks;^^ but in the insertion he treats any such resemblance as proof of plagiarism. It is true that on the crucial point of the controversy, i.e., the sesterce, the

examples are of considerable weight. Although the sestertius nununus (sometimes by abbreviation simply sestertius or nummus] was a coin of small value, it was the standard for calculation of sums of money, and the large figures to which it ran were expressed by a variety of contracted locutions. Thousands of sestertii might drop mille before sestertium, which was perhaps a syncopated genitive plural but was treated as a neuter nominative singular with a plural sestertia-, millions might be represented by the numeral adverbs from decies upwards with ellipsis of centerm rmllia. Bude deals with both these in the latter part of Book I of De Asse. Over the first his tone is that of the treatment of an established fact, which is however not widely known and frequently misunderstood.^ The second he claims as the peculiar discovery; and his greatest wrath was roused by any hint that he might have been anticipated in it. But the real proof that Porzio had not done so lies rather in the arrangement of his book itself, taken in conjunction with the letter of Alciatus:^ the clumsy insertion of a chapter^^ adopting Budé's theory not only without acknowledgment but with actual implication that it was the result of his own observations;^^ the mixing of it with his different one in the next^^ for exposition of the passage in one of the Verrine orations of Cicero on the frauds of Verres in connection with the customs dues^* which Bude had brought forward as one of its main supports;^' and the return thereafter to calculating in accordance with his own as though he had never admitted any other. ^° In view of this, Budé's parallels are corroborative evidence; but in themselves they could not serve as proof. Indeed, disputes which concern priority arguments from resemblances tend to assume precisely what requires to be

from whom? more to the examples given by Bude of authorities cited by both. Some of these certainly are markedly suggestive of copying by Porzio; but even where this is apparently most obvious there are circ*mstances indicating the possibility (although a remote one) of alternative explanations. It is rather strange that the two worst-'^ are not pointed out by Budé,^^ whereas he adduces many instances which could well have been come on upon by both independently. The surprising thing would in fact have been that Bude and Porzio should never have coincided in their choice of illustrations. The body of surviving classical literature is even now not enormous, and at the beginproved:

who

stole

This applies

still

ning of the sixteenth century not all which we possess was accessible in comprehensible and reliable form; and it would have been fairly obvious to any scholar which out of this limited number of sources were likely to supply relevant material. Of the invective the less said the better. Controversy is by its nature an ugly thing, and it is particularly disagreeable to contemplate some one of Budé's general candour and good feeling being impelled by it to lapses into pettiness and spite. Indeed, it might be questioned whether it were not wrong, even

LEONARDO PORZIO

434

after an interval of centuries, to exhume the passage in face of his decision in response to the representations of Lascaris that it should if possible be removed from the memory of man.^^ The justification for so doing lies not in

of posterity to know what an author chooses not to tell but in our reaction to his reluctantly conceded but steadily pursued change of purpose.^ Few authors are willing to delete what they have once composed ("Everything which is our own" says Quintilian, "is pleasing to us when we have given birth to it; otherwise it would not be written"^^), fewer when it has been composed on a point in dispute, fewer still when the deletion in any sense suggests admission of an error. But Bude, under the influence of conscience, was able to do all this; and if it detracts somewhat from our esteem and affection for him that he could have thought, and written, and published, things unworthy of him, it enhances them to a higher degree that he had the

any assumed "right" it

and self-command to recall the words phrase) escaped the barrier of his teeth. rare generosity

which had

(in

Homeric

Edinburgh

References Opera: Omnia Opeia Gulielmi Budaei (4 vols., Basel, 1557; reproduced photographically by the Gregg Press, Famborough, England, 1966). De Asse: De Asse et Paitibus ejus. For the sake of consistency references are all to thé edition of 1527 (Badius, Paris), by folio number alone in the case of the insertion (which is wholly in Book V), by Book and folio number in the case of the other passages. De Asse is Vol. U in Opeia above. Ep. Lat. Epistolarum Latinanim Libn V, in Vol. I of Opera above. Rep. Louis Delaruelle; Répertoire analytique et chronologique de la correspondence de Guillaume Bude (re-issue as No. 38 of Burt Franklin Bibliographical and :

Reference Series, New York, of original edition, Toulouse, 1907). De Sestertio: Leonardi de Portis lurisconsulti Vicentini de Sestertio, Pecuniis, Ponderibus, et Mensuris Libri Duo. This is the title of the first edition (n.p., n.d.; see below, n. 10. For the sake of convenience the references here are to the Thesaurus Graecarum Antiquitatum of Jacobus Gronovius (12 vols, and Index vol., Leiden, 1697-1702), Vol. IX (1701). The title in this {De Re Pecuniaria Antìquorum, ac de eorundem Ponderibus, etc.) follows, with some slight verbal variations, that of the edition of Mameranus (Köln, 1551), which is the one included by Gronovius in his collection. This text is a faithful reproduction of the earlier editions, with the omission of a few rubrics and a lacuna of 106 words at the beginning of

Chapter

Book

KATHARINE DAVIES

435

Notes 1.

Ep. Lat.,

3. Ep. Lat.,

Book I, p. 259; see Rep., No. xxiv, pp. 47-9. Book V, p. 386; see Rep., No. clxiii, p. 224, n. 1. Book V, pp. 387-90; see Rep., No. clxiii, pp. 224-5. The

letters be-

tween Bude and Lascaris are given in this order in all editions, but the order entails some difficulties which would be solved if it were reversed, viz. if the letter of Lascaris answered that of Bude, not that of Bude that of Lascaris, and the missing letter preceding them (there must have been at least one) were from Lascaris to Bude, not Bude to Lascaris. The correspondence is not arranged chronologically, so existing position in itself proves nothing. Delaruelle, who in his Repertoire has sorted the letters into order of date, does not comment on that of these two. He

does not analyse the letter of Lascaris, presumably because it is to, not from. Bude. the only letter in the collection where this is the case, which is one of several circ*mstances suggesting that its status in the correspondence is somehow anom-

It is

alous. 4. Rep., p. 224, n. 4.

A letter from Bude to Andreas Alciatus

June 1530), not included in Ep. Lat., by the date of Budé's letter to Lascaris. It was displayed in the quincentenary Bude exhibition at the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1968. I owe this notification to Prof. M. M. de La Garanderie of the University of Nantes and M. M. T. Pelou of the Bibliothèque Nationale. 6. See Rép., pp. 191, n. 2, 208-14. 7. See n. 15 on the edition. 8. See below, n. 10. 5.

indicates

specifically the inclusion of the insertion in 1527 implied

168v.

9. F.

Bude throughout calls this Frobenius edition the "German" one. Basel, previously a Hapsburg dominion, had joined the Swiss Confederation in 1501. 10.

11.

Asse,

168r.

12. J.6127; J.6128. 13. 541.b.l5.(3); 1473.C.8.

De Asse, f. 174r. See Opus Epistolanim Desidera Erasmi, ed. F. S. Allen et. al. (12 vols., Oxford, 1906-1958), Ep. 831, (1913), 297. Allen cites no authority, and the reference cannot be the same as that for a statement earlier in the note in connection with the publication of this edition (Vatican MS Reginae 2023, f. 190). The fact, therefore, thus unsupported, cannot be taken as certain. 14. 15.

Book I, p. 259. Book V, pp. 386-7. The prefatory Note to the Reader

16. Ep. Lat.,

17. Ibid.,

of Egnatius shows that it had been preAnnotationes in Suetonium, which came out in 1516. 19. F 168v. The gloss of Egnatius is on the accoimt in the life of Julius Caesar, Chapter xxvi, of what was spent on the site of his Fonun. Bude appears not to have noticed that there is nothing on this point in De Sestertio. Egnatius presvunably forgot that he had really found it in De Asse (Book EI, ff. 84v., 85r.), to which his wording is very similar, as Bude points out {De Asse, f. 168v.). 18.

ceded by his

own

20. Ep. Lat.,

Book

V, p. 386.

LEONARDO PORZIO

43^

end of Chap, ii of Book HI too long and not sufficiently relevant to the context, he moved it into his correspondence. It is No. vii, pp. 18-23, in Le Lettere di Andrea Alciato, Giureconsulto, ed. Gian Luigi Bami (Florence, 1953). The reply of Bude is in his correspondence [Ep. Lat., Book H, pp. 310-11; Rép., No. Ixxxvi, pp. 136-7), but its association with the Porzio affair is not obvious until 21. F. 171r. Alciatus first printed this letter at the

of his Dispunctiones; later, feeling

it is

related to Alciatus' letter.

22. Ep. Lat., 23.

Bude

Book

cites

p. 259.

Menila (Giorgio Mirlani), Sabellicus (Marcantonio Coccio), and

Philippus Beroaldus. 24. See above, n. 21. 25.

Book

Chap,

vi, cols.

1459-60.

26. Ibid., col. 1459. 27. Ibid.,

28. Actio 29.

30.

De He

Chap, vii, col. 1461. Secunda in C. Verrem, Book H, Chap. Ixxv, 185.

Asse,

Book

31r.

alludes to the force of the

liquely at the beginning of Chap, ralis of Pliny,

numeral adverbs again momentarily and obBook H, where he quotes the Historia Natu-

Book XXXffl, "Chap, x" ("Chap,

xlvii,

133" in

modem editions),

showing that the ancients had no numbers higher than a hundred [thousand] and expressed those above it by multiplying, "as ten times, twenty times, a thousand times, etc., which in many places are lacking or superfluous, whence errors and confusions arise." Both the two early editions omit "thousand" after "himdred"; the passage occurs in the lacuna in Thesaurus Graecarum Antiquitatum (see above. References). 31. Use in separate places (De Sestertio, Book I, Chap, v, col. 1458; Chap, vii, col. 1461; Chap, viii, col. 1462) of three illustrations all of which occur on one page of De Asse (Book HI, f. 69r.); accoimt, in connection with reference to Tacitus

and publication of some of the lost Books of the Anwith echo of the word "recently" {De Sestertio, Book U, Chap, i, col. 1469;

for military pay, of discovery

nales,

Asse,

Book

168r.).

an incidental mention of military pay on f. 173r. But it concerns treatment, not author, and it is quite general, not in any way bringing out the really damaging aspects of the passage in De Sestertio, which is not specifically cited. 32.

There

33. Ep. Lat.,

Book V,

388.

He either was not in time to prevent its inclusion in the edition of 1528 or did not know of this edition (see above). But thereafter his promise was faithfully 34.

kept. 35. Institutiones Oratoriae,

Book

X, Chap,

iii,

Renaissance Reference Books as Sources for Classical Myth and Geography: A Brief Survey, with an Illustration from Milton John B. Dillon is a fact of life today that even among highly educated people knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman culture is often neither very deep nor particularly extensive. This situation has the unfortunate effect of cutting off most modem readers from much of the background of imaginative literature written by and for those to whom the classical tradition was more vital. Whereas only certain portions of the Western vernacular literatures are so affected, virtually the entire corpus of Neo-Latin literature labors under this handicap. Not only does the latter share with other literatures the frequent

such features of classical antiquity as its mythological constructs geographic nomenclature, it is also by definition a resuscitation and continuation of a linguistic vehicle to which these were either indigenous or else fully or very largely acclimatized. The present paper discusses one means of overcoming this cultural separation in the two specific areas of mythology and geography: the use of reference books roughly contemporary with authors or works under study. It falls into two parts, the first dealing with Renaissance reference books useful for this purpose and the second with a geographic name in one of the Latin poems of John MUton. Although its Renaissance focus is hardly coextensive with the literature as a whole, the restriction to this period (defined broadly as from ca. 1350 in Italy to ca. 1660 in northern Europe) may in view of the dates of most of the major artistic achievements in Neo-Latin not seem unduly severe.

utilization of

and

its

By "reference book" I mean a work that through its arrangement and treatment is capable of ready consultation for discrete items of factual information, which latter it contains in an amoimt sufficient to justify its recurring use in this fashion. It may or may not be expository in nature, but its salient characteristic for our purposes is that it is organized or indexed in such a way as to facilitate the retrieval of a substantial quantity of isolated data pertain-

438

CLASSICAL

MYTH AND GEOGRAPHY

ing to its subject or subjects. Successful reference books tend also to undergo alterations over time: indexes may be improved, the contents may be rearranged or made more accessible through the addition of new headings, further substantive material may be added in order to achieve a higher degree of comprehensiveness, and some matter may be deleted either for reasons of accuracy, as knowledge changes, or simply to create more space for fresh material added by the redactor (s). Such developments are observable for many of the titles considered here, a circ*mstance which may of course have considerable bearing on the choice of editions used in any particular study. Recourse to reference books is a routine activity in scholarly labor, even if the conventions of scholarly documentation often lead to its suppression in the presentation of one's work, hi the case of unfamiliar classical material it is a necessary expedient. We use classical atlases and dictionaries and modem

compendiums of mythology; sometimes, though less often than we might, we also use the great collective encyclopedias familiar to every classicist, e.g., the Roscher Lexikon and the Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll Realencyclopädie.^ From these we may learn much that is relevant to our needs — the location and the literary, religious, or historical associations of a topographical feature, for example, or the multiple and often contradictory versions of a myth which we must control in order to know where in a given modem instance received tradition ends and authorial innovation begins. But what we learn in this fashion comes to us through the medium of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship and does not necessarily reflect what was known or believed in some earlier period. Unless we attempt to account for the difference several centuries may make, we may thus find ourselves viewing an earlier text through a distorting glass of our own providing. What is needed, rather, is an appreciation of the phenomena of classical culture as these are likely to have been understood at the time that such a text was actually composed. Such an appreciation, it has long been recognized, may be gained in part from information sources similar in character (if not always in intent) to those just referred to but contemporary with the work in question. Recognition and practice are, however, two entirely different things, and the principle of seeking assistance from contemporary as well as modem reference books is often honored more in the breach than in the observance. Admittedly, the ideal is a difficult one. So many of our perceptions of classical minutiae have not changed significantly over the centuries that it may hardly seem worthwhile to inquire about each and every one encountered in our work. But many perceptions have changed, and unless we do inquire we run the risk of misconstruing or misrepresenting our author even in what appear to be matters of longestablished fact. Consequently, and when time allows, it is advisable to test our knowledge against that which may have been available to the writer with whom we are concerned. Another difficulty lies in the relative scarcity of these older reference books, but in this age of photographic reprints and of micropublishing the situation is slowly improving. Furthermore, there still remains the traditional, albeit inconvenient, recourse of travel to libraries known to possess copies of these works, and in this we are helped not only by the

JOHN

DILLON

439

printed catalogues of great research libraries and by union catalogues for a by the increasing provision of copy locations in bibliographies devoted to books of the period. In the following paragraphs I shall survey by type some of the more standard Renaissance reference books that may be of assistance in matters of classical myth and geography, returning thereafter to some more general considerations about their particular country or region but also

use.

Monographs, discursive treatments of a single subject or group of related (e.g., a literary history), can when suitably organized or indexed be especially valuable reference sources in that they permit one not only to locate specific data but also to view these in a contextual framework. For ancient geography there is a paucity of Renaissance works of this sort: Philipp Clùver's Italia antiqua (first published in 1624) is the great example, and its appearance comes very late in our period. But Sebastian Münster's very successful Cosmogiaphia univeisalis (first published in 1544) is for the territories of the ancient Greco-Roman world very largely a classical geography and so may be considered as serving in much the same capacity.^ Analogous works in the area of classical myth and religion are more common. An early instance is subjects

Boccaccio's Genealogia deoium gentiliiun (third quarter of the fourteenth century; first printed in 1472); later examples include Lilio Giraldi's De deis gentium (first published in 1548) and Natale Conti's Mytbologia (first published in 1551, supposedly),^ as well as Vincenzo Cartari's iconographical treatise. Le imagini de i dei de gli antichi (first published in 1556).* Whereas these and similar books are often lumped together under the rubric "mythographies," they often represent rather different approaches to the same body of material. Such differences are in turn reflected in the nature and amount of information each purveys.^ In addition to monographs with reference functions there is a whole host of Renaissance dictionaries, encyclopedias, and even lowly phrase books providing information on contemporary views of classical antiquity. Starting with the first of these categories, we may begin by citing the much maligned and much used Dictionahum of Ambrogio Calepino (first published in 1502), which offers a considerable amount of mythographical and geographical material. As a dictionary of classical Latin it has its shortcomings, but even though it was overtaken in this regard by Robert Estienne's Dictionahum, seu linguae latinae thesaurus (first published in 1531), it was frequently reedited and added to, and it long survived in several different forms, most notably as the Latin base of a polyglot dictionary encompassing up to as many as eleven different languages.^ Somewhat similar in content to the earliest editions of Calepino is Niccolò Perotti's Comucopiae (first printed in 1489), a commentary on the Latin language so extensive that once it was adequately indexed it served as a general dictionary, though it is actually arranged as a series of annotations on the poet Martial.'' Both of these works contain proper nouns and adjectives; the first edition of Estienne's Dictionaiium ... thesaurus does not, but this deficiency was remedied in the edition of 1536 and, more fully, in that of 1543.® At least one bilingual dictionary of the period is also noteworthy as a source for items of classical mythology and

440

CLASSICAL

MYTH AND GEOGRAPHY

geography: Thomas Cooper's Thesaurus linguae lomanae et bntannicae (first published in 1565 and furnished with a reasonably detailed onomasticon of proper names ).^ Proper-name dictionaries themselves, as opposed to general dictionaries with good proper-name content, can thanks to the very restriction that gives them their generic designation be both less and more helpful that the latter in the areas with which we are concerned. Less, because they exclude much that is potentially useful; more, because greater space can at least in theory be devoted to their entries than would be the case in a more general work of the same size. Once again, Boccaccio heads our list of examples, this time with his De moDtibus (written ca. 1355-1360; first printed in 1473), whose entries are arranged alphabetically in broad subject divisions (mountains, lakes, rivers, etc.). Like its classical model, the somewhat smaller work of Vibius Sequester, the De montibus was designed as an aid in reading the poets. ^° A later instance is the Thesaurus geogiaphicus of Abraham Ortelius (first published in 1578 under the title Synonymia geographica), the first work of its kind to give both ancient and modem geographical designations. There are also a number

composite proper-name dictionaries (geographical, historical, mythographaimed at helping readers of literary works, notably the Elucidarius carminum of Hermann Torrentinus (first published in 1498; later expanded by Robert Estienne) and its very popular successor, Charles Estienne's Dictionarium historicum, geographicum, poeticum (first published in 1553). This lastnamed work was several times augmented (e.g., by material from Ortelius' Thesaurus) and was frequently reprinted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. References, often in precise form, to ancient and modern authorities are a standard feature of this large handbook; they can, however, be wildly inaccurate. One major geographical source is the late Greek grammarian Stephen of Byzantium, routinely cited as Stephanus and of course not to be confused with one of the Estiennes. All of the entries are in a single alphabet. ^^ Finally, a good deal of material on aspects of classical antiquity may be foimd in Renaissance encyclopedias and phrase books, two very different forms of publication closely linked in our period through their participation in the traof

ical)

communes. Whereas the latter now survives chiefly in synobooks and in dictionaries of quotations, its emphasis on the provision of illustrations and even words with which to exemplify and express facets of human experience once shaped encyclopedias as well. A good example of an encyclopedia of this sort is the Polyanthea of Domenico Nani Mirabelli dition of loci

nym

(first published in 1503), a long-lived work whose ultimate manifestation bears the revealing title Florilegium magnum but whose practical assistance in matters specifically classical is unfortvmately quite limited. ^^ More valuable for our immediate purposes is the Officina of Ravisius Textor (first published in 1520); although primarily a collection of examples, it does contain mythographical and geographical definitions. A rearrangement of the Officina' s contents in the 1550s by Conrad Lycosthenes made the book, which by this time had also been epitomized, much easier to use.^^ Raffaele Maffei's Commentarti urbani (first published in 1506), with its abundant geographical matter, is another useful encyclopedia in this tradition, as is also the

JOHN

DILLON

monumental Tbeatnim bumanae pubhshed

44I vitae of the elder

Theodor Zwinger

(first

in 1565). ^^

Phrase books, collections of synonyms and descriptive terms for persons, and concepts, can be helpful as regards mythological figures. Textor's Officina has the rudiments of one in its section Synonyma quaedam poetica, and certain other sections (e.g., Musae novem] also give synonyms and illustrative quotations. But the phrase book par excellence of the Renaissance is Textor's Epitheta (first published in 1518 as Specimen epithetorum); this work also circulated in an epitome, often re-edited and lacking the quotations that give the full Epitheta much of its bulk. Later editions, at least, of the epitome also have the Synonyma appended to it. ^^ A worthy successor is the early seventeenth-century Thesaurus phiasium poeticaium of Johannes Buchler or Büchler, most often encountered in the revised and enlarged version edited by Nicaise Bax.^*^ The foregoing survey hardly exhausts all types of Renaissance reference books, let alone all individual titles of reference utility in the specific areas under discussion. Nothing has been said, for example, about emblem books or about more general iconographies with ample illustrations however exiguous their text (Cesare Ripa's influential Iconologia, first published in 1593, is a good example of the latter^^). The former's combination of text and image and the latter's graphic representations of ancient divinities and personifications may sometimes be helpful in elucidating allegorical significances of a mythological reference or description. Nor should it be forgotten that earlier reference books continued to be used during much of the Renaissance. The relatively late dates of many of the items mentioned above should indicate the potential value in some instances of data provided by such medieval encyclopedias as the De piophetatïbus rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus or by such encylopedic dictionaries as Giovanni Balbi's Cathohcon and the Repertorium morale of Pierre Bersuire, to say nothing of the ancient mythographers, geographers, and encyclopedists themselves. This last consideration leads directly to the matter of the utility of these Renaissance reference books for Neo-Latin scholarship. Sweeping claims have been made for their formative effect upon literary productions of the period, but many of these assertions are if not without some foundation at least beyond the realm of demonstrable proof. I should, for example, not wish to associate myself with the view that Boccaccio in his Genealogia, Conti, and Cartari were probably "more influential than the classics themselves. "^^ Assuming that by "the classics" one means more than Vibius Sequester or Stephen of Byzantium, to espouse such a position would be to deny everything we know about the central position of the ancients in humanist educational schemes of the Renaissance. Rather, these books, though they were widely disseminated and, depending on their nature, more or less heavily used in the schools, played an important but distinctly secondary role.^^ They furnished schoolmasters with illustrative material and they provided answers to specific questions arising out of set exercises or the study of certain authors, but they were never intended to supplant the latter. They may have done so, perhaps, in the minds of poorer students; our concern, however, is with persons whose continuing places, things,

CLASSICAL

44^

MYTH AND GEOGRAPHY

familiarity with classical literature manifested itself in the production of literary texts in a Latin according generally with the ancient usus loquendi.

Furthermore, in view of

the various sources of classical information from his (rarely, her) memory— the ancients themselves, the results of scholarship as furnished by annotated editions and by treatises, adveisaria, and the like, and finally the multitude of available reference books— it is normally very difficult to establish the specific influence of any single one in the latter category upon some aspect of an author's work unless isolating verbal congruities are present. ^° Instead, one should regard these works of reference primarily as repositories of what was generally available in the way of received knowledge pertaining to the subjects that they cover. ^^ It should also be remembered that received knowledge is frequently not uniform and that what an author could have learned from one source might well be complemented or, for that matter, contradicted by others. Bearing this in mind, one may use the information provided by these books to furnish the modem reader with comment that seeks not only to explain some potentially troublesome mythological or geographical item but also to approximate as closely as possible the author's own understanding of it. The following discussion of a geographical reference in Milton's In quintum Novembns illustrates, partly through the use of some of the reference books mentioned earlier, the differences that may exist between modern and Renaissance views of classical antiquity. In this case the matter is of no great consequence for our understanding of the poem, but annotations on it have managed, by implication anyhow, to misrepresent what is most likely to have been Milton's own view. The example is merely cautionary: pitfalls abound, even where we least expect them. all

which a Neo-Latin writer could have stocked

n In

quintum Novembiis, 64-65: Bromius, Bromiique caterva, Orgia Gantantes in Echionio Aracyntho,^^

Modem scholarship tells us that Aiacynthus is the classical Latin designamountain or chain of mountains in Aetolia which Pliny the elder, however, and others after him placed in neighboring Acamania.^^ There is, moreover, a good deal of evidence that it was also the name of some elevation in Boeotia, notably the statement to that effect by Stephen of Byzantium, s.v. 'Apàxuvçoç, and the couplet of Propertius, Praia cruentantui Zetbi, victorque canebat / paeana Ampbion rupe, Aracyntbe, tua (3. 15. 41-42), which comes from a handling of the Theban legend of Antiope and Dirce wherein the other geographical names are recognizably Boeotian.^ Since Milton's epithet Echionius must here, as often, mean "Theban" (the mythical Echion, one of the Cadmean spartoi, has no known connection with Aracynthus itself), the site of his Aracynthus is evidently Boeotia, too. So far all is clear enough, but some of Milton's commentators, zealous for geographical as well as for poetition for a

JOHN

DILLON

443

cai truth, have muddied the waters either by castigating the poet for his ignorance of Aracynthus' "real" location in northern Greece or else by furnishing an inappropriate gloss in order to place the mountain where they think it should be, namely, on the border between Boeotia and Attica. These approaches, of which the second is now quite widespread, can hardly be considered satisfactory when viewed in light of Renaissance sitings of Aracynthus. Schoolmasterly upbraiding of Milton for an allegedly inadequate grasp of classical minutiae is a practice that has largely ceased. In the present instance both castigations date from the nineteenth century; they are more important for the rebuttal they provoked than for any intrinsic merit of their own. Few today, in view of the evidence cited above for a Boeotian Aracynthus and for

that underlying the accepted location in Aetolia, would care to follow Thomas Keightley and David Masson in correcting Milton by stating that the mountain was really in Acamania. Keightley at least attempted to excuse Milton

by suggesting that he had been "misled" by Vergil, Eel. 2. 24, Amphion Diicaeus in Actaeo Aiacyntho (where Actaeo has been interpreted as "Attic") But even this partial recognition that antiquity (and Milton) may have known of more than one Aracynthus was too much for Masson, who in his first revised edition of Milton's Poetical Works ignored his predecessor's comment and in the second dismissed it, preferring instead to fix the blame for this supposed .

inaccuracy directly upon the poet himself. ^^ If Masson's remarks constitute the nadir of editorial comment on this passage, Walter MacKellar's more influential response is not much better. Defending Milton against the criticisms of Keightley and Masson, MacKellar proamong later writers that there claimed that there was "ample testimony was a mountain of this name on the frontiers of Boeotia and Attica" and cited Servius ad Eel. 2. 24 and Propertius 3. 15. 42 as his evidence. ^^ Since Propertius, as we have seen, does not mention Attica at all, and since Servius (who states categorically that Aracynthus is Theban) refers to Attica only to say that some take Aetaeo in Vergil's line as "Attic" because in their view Vergil's pastoral speaker by so calling it is displaying rustic impehtia, it is perhaps not surprising that MacKellar failed to quote any of their "ample testimony" on behalf of his position. One does, however, miss a reference to Allan H. Gilbert's earlier but undocumented gloss, "A mountain on the boundary of Attica and Boeotia," or to Keightley's comment on the Vergilian locus, which also proposes a location on the Attic-Boeotian border and to which Keightley refers the reader in his note on Milton's line.^'' Some verbal parallels, though, and the classification of the Augustan poet Propertius as a "later writer" suggest that MacKellar's immediate source is more likely to have been an offshoot of Sir William Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography than either of these predecessors in Miltonic exegesis. ^^ The placing of Aracynthus on the border between Boeotia and Attica recurs with some frequency in post-MacKellar editions of Milton: Merritt Y. Hughes and John Carey, for example, have each presented it as a matter of fact without supporting their asertions, whereas Douglas Bush more cautiously describes the mountain as "commonly placed" in such a location, though without telling his readers when or by whom it has so been placed, let alone admitting .

CLASSICAL

444

MYTH AND GEOGRAPHY

any other viewpoint into his note.^^ The same attitude informs this last scholar's treatment of the matter in the Vaiioram Commentary, where the placing on the border is now done by "some writers" (apparently Servius and Propertius, cited on the authority of MacKellar) and where contrary opinion

More circ*mspect comment does

exist, but it has evidently than simply acknowledging Milton's Aracynthus to be somewhere in Boeotia, prominent Miltonists have continued to assign it specifically to the latter's boundary with Attica. Yet the inadequacy of their documentation bespeaks a major weakness in this posiis

again absent.^

failed to secure universal assent. ^^ Rather

tion.

MacKellar to the contrary, not only

there not any "ample" testimony

among ancient writers to the effect that there was an Aracynthus in this locanone at all. Rather, there is the testimony cited earlier Boeotian Aracynthus and some further testimony, none of it very compelling, for one in Attica. ^^ The location on the border of the two regions is a modem hypothesis aimed at reconciling these two separate sets of data; opinions as to its validity have varied, and whereas it seems now to have won widespread acceptance, that was not always the case.-^-^ The earliest instance of its formulation that I have found is the undocumented comment of the fifteenth-century scholar Giulio Pomponio Leto (Pomponius Sabinus) at the beginning of his remarks on the Vergilian passage where he says, Aiacynthus mons est Boeotiae versus Atticam legionem.^^ Pomponio's Vergil commentary, despite its early date, first saw print only in 1544 and was thereafter seldom reprinted; the border hypothesis itself seems to have found no subsequent spokesman in the Renaissance, and its next occurrence known to me is in F A. G. Spohn's comment on the same passage printed in Wagner's revision of Heyne's Vergil. ^^ Certainly it does not appear in such standard Renaissance Vergil commentaries as those of Antonio Mancinelli, Jodocus Badius Ascensius, Giovanni Scoppa, and Jacob Spanmueller (Pontanus), nor is it in any Renaissance annotation on Propertius that I have seen. In this regard, at least, Pomponio was apparently well ahead of his time. Given the number of sites for an Aracynthus occurring in one or another ancient author, it is not very surprising to find that the Renaissance had little enthusiasm for positing yet another one unauthenticated by any single source. Instead, the typical procedure was to cite several locations and to settle on the one best according with one's own critical judgment, if the situation so demanded; if it didn't, as would be the case in a reference book, then no choice needed to be made. Thus Boccaccio in his De montibus could say of Aracynthus, Verum veteres in qua sit regione non concordant, and then list several sites, of which the first two are those in Attica and in Boeotia; thus the 1565 edition of Cooper's Thesaurus (a work to which Milton may well have been exposed in his school days) mentions four sites, beginning with the Boeotian and Attic ones; thus the 1590 Basel edition of Calepino's Dictionarium lists in the Onomasticon propriorum nominum locations in Acamania, Attica, and Boeotia; and thus the 1596 Geneva edition of Charles Estienne's Dictionarium historicum, geographicum, poeticum lists one in Achaia, one in Aetolia, one ^^ in Acamania, and one in Boeotia, as well as a city in the last-named region. tion, there is in fact

for a

JOHN

DILLON

445

Thus, too, Juan Luis de La Cerda in his monumental edition of Vergil's Bucolica et Geoigica (Lyon, 1619) can list locations in Acarnania, Boeotia, and Attica, discard the Acamanian site as irrelevant to the Vergilian passage, dismiss the Attic one as inconsistent with the testimony of ancient geographers, and settle on that in Boeotia as the one referred to, explaining Actaeo in another fashion. '^^

Returning now to the text of Milton, we may note that it here describes Bacchic revelry, an activity closely connected with Thebes and its environs. The description goes on for another two lines, each of which contains another geographical name. These are Asopus and Cithaeron, both very Boeotian and both, perhaps not coincidentally, the other geographical names in Propertius' handling of the Antiope and Dirce story.^^ Furthermore, as their post-caesural similarity indicates {in followed by a proper adjective of Greek origin ending in an unelided long "o" before Amcyntho], Milton's line 65 is obviously emulative of Vergil's line quoted earlier. ^^ We cannot say how Milton interpreted Actaeo there, but we can say how he viewed Echionio here. He meant it as "Theban," thereby letting the reader know which of the several Aracynthuses generally known to the Renaissance he was speaking of. But despite the suggestion present in certain annotations, he did not mean to put Aracynthus on the border between Boeotia and Attica. There is nothing in the context of his

words to suggest that so

view he even knew of the Atticappearance in comment on this

specific a location is intended, nor, in

of the evidence presented above, is

likely that

Boeotian border hypothesis. The latter's passage may represent a laudable desire to impart some classical learning, but its relevance either to the text itself or to Milton's knowledge of ancient geography is highly questionable. State University of

New

York

Binghamton

Notes 1.

Wilhelm Heinrich Röscher,

römischen Mythologie

ed.,

Ausfühiliches Lexikon der gnechiscben und

(Leipzig, 1884-1937);

Georg Wissowa, Wilhelm

Kroll, et

Paulys Realencyclopädie dei classischen Altertumswissenschaft, neue Bearbeitung (Stuttgart, etc., 1893-1980; here abbreviated as RE). 2. For listings (with copy locations) of Miinster's Cosmographia in its German, Latin, French, Italian, and Czech versions, cf. Karl Heinz Burmeister, Sebastian Münster: eine Bibliographie (Wiesbaden, 1964), pp. 62-88. 3. Although the date of the first edition of the Mythologia is often given as 1551, the earliest edition of which I am aware is dated Venice, 1567; a similar observation is made by Don Cameron Allen, Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance (Baltimore, 1970), p. 227, n. 86, with instances of the "1551" citation. The title page of the 1581 Venice edition claims authorial augmentation in more than six hundred places, ut patebit al., eds.,

CLASSICAL

446

cum

antiquis confeientibus.

MYTH AND GEOGRAPHY

The Frankfurt edition of the same year is the first on Conti; Geoffroi Linocier's Mythologia Musa-

to carry Friedrich Sylburg's notes

rum, Sylburg's annotations thereon, and Antonio Tritonio's Mythologia (a condensation, with moral allegories, of Ovid's Metamorphoses) were added in the Paris edition of 1582. These supplementary materials continued to be printed along with the amplified text of Conti's Mythologia until well into the seventeenth century, as did also the Anonymi In totum de diis gentium hbellus (a set of Christian equivalencies for various classical myths), which latter first appeared in two 1596 editions of the Mythologia (Toumon and Geneva). A thorough bibliography of Conti et socii remains a desideratum. 4. Good general introductions to these works may be found in Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art (New York, 1953; rpt., Princeton, 1972; a revised English translation of his La survivance des dieux antiques, Studies of the Warburg Institute, vol. 11 [London, 1940]), pp. 219-56 and 279-80, and in Allen, op. cit., pp. 201-47. 5. Giraldi's De deis gentium, for example, is essentially a treatise on the externals of ancient religion, giving functions, attributes, places of worship, local identifications, and cult names for virtually the entire Greco-Roman pantheon; it ends with a lengthy discussion of religious sacrifices in antiquity. Conti's Mythologia,

on the other hand,

is a study of various allegorical significances of the major gods Greece and Rome plus a number of lesser deities, heroes, and other mythological figures, ending with a series of very sparse summaries of the significances of many of the above. Giraldi's attempt at completeness and his citing, often with reasonably precise locations, of a wide range of pertinent sources earned for him the younger Scaliger's verdict, optimus locum coacervator et iudiciosus {ScaUgerana, 1669 Groningen ed., p. 94 of the ScaUgerana altera-, regularized, like all quotations from Neo-Latiri authors in this paper, according to modem conventions). But Conti can be at least equally complete and precise in citing texts bearing on the interpretations he discusses, and his use of Greek sources is said to be more extensive than Giraldi's (so Allen, op. cit., p. 224; cf. also Seznec's remarks on Conti's knowledge

of the

Greek

tragedians, op.

cit., p.

234).

The

alleged greater scholarliness of Gi-

by Stephen Orgel in his headnote to the Garland reprint of the 1548 Basel ed. of the De deis gentium [New York, 1976]) may be no more than greater sobriety in a book whose tenor and purpose are closer to modem notions of productive scholarly research than are those of the Mythologia. 6. Because of the numerous changes this work underwent, it is generally adraldi (touted, e.g.,

visable in using

for evidentiary purposes to cite

only editions or entries therein

whose contents can be considered available at the historical moment with which one is dealing (but bear in mind that many editions are essentially reprints of earlier ones). Much help on this score is provided by the notes in Albert Labarre, Bibliographie du Dictionarium d'Ambrogio Calepino (1502-1779), Bibliotheca bibliographica aureliana, 26 (Baden-Baden, 1975). 7. The view that Calepino did little more than plagiarize Perotti has long been discredited; for a discussion of this point, cf. Edgar Ewing Brandon, Robert Estienne et le dictionnaire français au XVIe siècle (Baltimore, 1904), pp. 28-29. 8. On Estienne's Dictionarium ... thesaurus cf. Brandon, op. cit., pp. 30-46, 55-61, and Elizabeth Armstrong, Robert Estienne, Royal Printer: An Historical Study of the Elder Stephanus (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 84-86. It perhaps bears repeating that the 18th-century Thesauri Linguae Latinae bearing Robert Estienne's

DILLON

JOHN

name

are universal Latin lexica departing significantly

447 from the

latter's strictly

classical orientation. 9. On Cooper's Thesaurus cf. DeWitt T. Stames, Renaissance Dictionaries: English-Latin and Latin-English (Austin, 1954), pp. 85-110, esp. pp. 100-101 on the subject of proper names. Basel editions of Calepino begiiming with that of 1544 (Labarre no. 66) also have proper names in a separate onomasticon compiled by

Conrad Gessner and

others.

An indication of the scope of this work, whose dissemination in the Renaissance is closely tied to that of the Genealogia, may be seen in its full title: De 10.

montions,

silvis, fontibus,

lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis sen paludibus et de no-

minibus maris. For further information cf. Manlio Pastore Stocchi, Tradizione medievale e gusto umanistico nel De montibus del Boccaccio, Pubblicazioni della facoltà di lettere e filosofia dell'Università di Padova, voi. 39 (Padua, 1963). 1 1 On Torrentinus's Elucidaiius and its expansion by Robert Estienne, cf. Stames, Robert Estienne's Influence on Lexicography (Austin, 1963), pp. 86-90; for its subsequent growth into Charles Estieime's Dictionarium historicum, etc., cf. ibid., pp. 90-99 and, more concisely, Stames and Ernest William Talbert, Classical Myth and Legend in Renaissance Dictionaries (Chapel Hill, 1955), pp. 8-9. In the later of these two works it is argued that Robert Estieime is the "real author" of the Dictionarium historicum, but whereas Robert can be shown to be responsible for the majority of the entries in the 1553 edition no such proof obtains either for the remainder of these or for the final editorial work on this book published two years after Robert's flight to Geneva and Charles's assumption of responsibility for the printing office in Paris. Under these circ*mstances the traditional ascription of the work to Charles (whose name appears on the title page) may stand as representing the latter's contribution in seeing it through to completion and ultimate publication. 12. For a capsule history of this work cf. Giorgio Tonelli, A Short-tiÜe List of Subject Dictionaries of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries as Aids to the History of Ideas, Warburg Institute Surveys, 4 (London, 1971), p. 25. Entries are in alphabetical order, but for the physical world they are too general and for the metaphysical world too Christian to be of much use for ancient myth or geography. Allegorical descriptions do crop up, however, in treatments of such topics as iustitia and superbia (the latter includes quotations from Mantuan's personification in the De calamitatibus temporum). The 1626 Lyon ed. organizes its entries as follows: definition and etymology, loci biblici, sententiae bibhcae, patrum sententiae (where applicable), poeticae sententiae, sententiae philosophicae-, Ramist diagrams are reasonably frequent. 13. For an excellent introduction to the Officina, cf. Walter J. Ong, "Commonplace Rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwinger and Shakespeare," in R. R. Bolgar, ed.. Classical Influences on European Culture A. D. 1500-1700 (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 91-126, esp. pp. 95-100 and 107-110. One part of the Officina of particular interest to Neo-Latinists is the section De poetis latinis, which includes brief remarks on thirteen Neoterici ranked in descending order of merit (Pontano leads the list; the next five are Politian, Marullus, the Strozzis, and Mantuan). 14. The first twelve books of the Commentarli urbani (so named because written in Rome) are in fact a systematic geography. On Zwinger's encyclopedia, cf. Ong, op. cit., pp. 111-120, and, for further bibliographical information, Tonelli,

op. cit., p. 52.

448

CLASSICAL

MYTH AND GEOGRAPHY

15. On the Epitheta cf. Ong, op. cit., pp. 100-101 and 107-111; also Ian D. McFarlane, "Reflections on Ravisius Textor's Specimen Epithetomm," in Bolgar, op. cit., pp. 81-90. 16. On Buchler cf. J. Franck in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, HI, pp. 483-85. The earliest edition I have seen of the Thesaurus phzasium poeticaium is dated Cologne, 1615 and calls itself the eighth revised and expanded ed.; it accompanies (as usual) Buchler's Institutio poetica ex R. P. lacobi Fontani ... potissimum libiis concinnata in a seventh ed. of the same date. John Brinsley's Ludus liteiaiius: or, The Grammar Schoole (London, 1612; rpt., Menston, 1968), p. 196, refers to an edition of 1607 which is not the first. As this work of Buchler's is not listed in the Index Aurehensis I assume it to have appeared in print only after the year 1600 (unless the first ed. is earlier but no longer survives). The revision by Bax is entitled Sacrorum profanorumque phrasium poeticarum thesaurus-, all London editions from at least that of 1624 to the eighteenth of 1679 are of this version, as are also the 1626 Cologne and 1633 Douai editions. 17. On which, cf. Gerlind Werner, Ripa's Iconologia; Quellen, Methode, Ziele, Bibliotheca emblematica, 7 (Utrecht, 1977). 18. S. K. Heninger, Jr., A Handbook of Renaissance Meteorology (Durham, N. C, 1960), pp. v-vi. 19. Stames and Talbert, op. cit., pp. 11-27, provide a fairly detailed picture for late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England that may be taken as a convenient example, although one should note that their pardonable emphasis upon the reference books themselves is not as balanced as it might be by other considerations (e.g., content of the study text, information provided by annotated editions, opinions of the schoolmaster). 20. The word "isolating" should be stressed. For a discussion of this point, cf. James Sledd, "A Note on the Use of Renaissance Dictionaries," Modem Philology 49 (1951-52), 10-15. 21. For a cogent presentation of this position, cf. John M. Steadman, "Renaissance Dictionaries and Manuals as Instruments of Literary Scholarship: The Problem of Evidence," in Howard D. Weinbrot, ed.. New Aspects of Lexicography: Literary

Criticism, Intellectual History, and Social Change (Carbondale, 1972), pp. 17-35; with considerable abbreviation of some argumentative and bibliographical

reprinted,

footnotes, as pt. 1, chap. 2, "The Lexicographical Approach," of his Nature into Myth: Medieval and Renaissance Moral Symbols, Duquesne Studies, Language and

Literature Series, vol. 1 (Pittsburgh, 1979), pp. 46-63. 22. Cited according to the text in Frank Allen Patterson et

al., eds.. The Works (New York, 1931-40), I, pt. 1, p. 240. 23. Cf., e.g., Hermaim Bengtson and Vladimir Muojòié, eds.. Grosser Historischer Weltatlas, 1. Teil: Vorgeschichte und Altertum, 5. Aufl. (Munich, 1972), p. 26,

of John Milton

C4; also Gustav Hirschfeld,

s.v. "Arakynthos,"i?£, ü, pt. 1 (Stuttgart, 1895), col. 377. Testimony for the location in Acamania (not given by Hirschfeld, who presumably considers it a variant of the one in Aetolia): Pliny, N. H. 4. 6; Solinus 7. 22; Martianus Capella 6. 651; Philargyrius I ad Eel. 2. 24; Vibius Sequester 221

Gelsomino. 24. Cf. also Servius ad. Eel. 2. 24, sane

Aracynthus mons est Thebanus, and the

on the same line, amoeno monte Thebano. 25. Keightley, ed.. The Poems of John Milton (London, 1859), ü, p. 429; Masson, ed., The Poetical Works of John Milton (London, 1882 and 1890), m, p. 308, and

gloss of pseudo-Probus

in, p. 330, respectively.

JOHN

DILLON

26. MacKellar, ed.,

(New Haven,

449 The Latin Poems of John Milton, Cornell Studies

in English,

1930), p. 266.

27. Gilbert, A Geogiaphical Dictionary of Milton, Cornell Studies in English, 4 (New Haven, 1919), p. 29; Keightley, Notes on the Bucolics and Georgics of Viigil (London, 1846), pp. 19-20. 28. Cf. Smith, op. cit. (1854-57 Boston ed.), I, p. 185, which, however, presents the location "on the frontiers of Boeotia and Attica" as only a possibility, differentiates

between

"later writers"

and "the Roman poets," and

cites Servius for a

Boeotian location only. 29. Hughes, ed., John Milton: Paradise Regained, The Minor Poems, and Samson Agonistes (New York, 1937), p. 65; Carey, ed., John Milton: Complete Shorter Poems (London, 1971; first printed in his and Alastair Fowler's edition of The Poems of John Milton [London, 1968]), p. 39; Bush, ed., Milton: Poetical Works (Boston, 1966), p. 35. Hughes subsequently changed his mind; for his later position cf. note 31, below. 30. Bush, "The Latin and Greek Poems," in Hughes et al., eds., A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton (New York, 1970- ), I, pp. 1-361, p. 181 ad init. Since the present paper was written Gordon Campbell has aimonated the Latin poems in his revision of B. A. Wright's Everyman's Library edition of John Milton: The Complete Poems (London, 1980); on p. 529 he says, "Aracynthus here refers to a mountain on the border of Boeotia and Attica." 31. Hughes in his edition of Milton's Complete Poems and Major Prose (New

York, 1957), p. 17, dropped his earlier siting of Aracynthus "on the Attic frontier of Boeotia" in favor of a location simply "in Boeotia"; unfortimately, he followed up this salutary change with an inaccurate reference to Ovid, Met. 3. 702, which names Cithaeron (but not, as Hughes would have it, Aracynthus) as a site for "the rites of Bacchus." Edward S. Le Comte, A Milton Dictionary (New York, 1961), p. 23, and John T. Shawcross, ed.. The Complete English Poetry of John Milton (New York, 1963), p. 15, both gloss Aracynthus here as "in Boeotia" without fiirther geographical specification. 32. Ancient sitings of Aracynthus in Attica: Sextus Empiricus, Adv. math. 1. 257; Lactantius Placidus ad Th. 2. 239; Philargyrius n ad Eel. 2. 24; Vibius Sequester, loc. cit. All of these probably derive from an interpretation of the Vergilian passage, which latter is hardly incontrovertible testimony for this location. 33. Hirschfeld, op. cit., thinks that the locations in both Attica and Boeotia are probably erroneous; he does not mention the border hypothesis. Papillon and Haigh in their edition of Vergil's Opera (Oxford, 1892), H, p. 11, take no notice of it at all, whereas T. E. Page in his edition of Vergil's Bucohca et Georgica (London, 1898), p. 105, accepts it only as an explanation of what Vergil may have thought. This late nineteenth-century opposition, of which other examples could be given, has long since given way in most quarters: recent commentators on Vergil (e.g., Robert Coleman in his edition of the Eclogues [Cambridge, 1977), p. 96) and on Propertius (e.g., W. A. Camps in his edition of Elegies, Book III [Cambridge, 1966], p. 42, and L. Richardson, Jr., in his edition of Elegies I-IV [Norman, 1977], p. 384) now generally accept the hypothesis. 34. Quoted from the 1587 Basel ed. of Vergil's Opera, col. 19. Whereas the words versus Atticam regionem are apparently Pomponio's own, their surrounding matter derives from the gloss in Stephen of Byzantium. 35. Pubhus Vergihus Maro ... illustratus a Christ. Gotti. Heyne. Editio quarta, curavit Phil. Eberard. Wagner (Leipzig, 1830-41), I, p. 85.

450

CLASSICAL

MYTH AND GEOGRAPHY

36. Boccaccio, 1494 Venice ed. (appended to the Genealogia of the same year; both reprinted, New York, 1976), fol. 133^; Cooper, ed. cit. (rpt., Menston, 1969), proper-name onomasticon, sig. Cl^; Calepino, ed. cit. (Labarre no. 152), Onomasticon, p. 38; Estienne, ed. cit. (rpt., New York, 1976), fol. 6F. 37. Op cit., p. 28. Raffaele Maffei's Commentarìi urbani form an exception to this rule of multiple siting: in the 1506 Rome ed. Aracynthus is mentioned only twice, both times as a mons Boeotiae (foil. CXVmP, with A. also being an urbs of the same region, and CXXIF, with citation of Rhianus, frag. 56 Powell [preserved in Stephen of Byzantium]). 38. This correspondence with Propertius has also been noted by Carey, loc. cit. 39. Milton's line also recalls lolas' address to Mount Tabumus at Marcantonio Flaminio, Cairn. 4. 17, line 19, Tu quoque pai esses Amphionio Aiacyntho, where the precise location is indeterminable: although Ampiiioiiio may mean "Theban" in the same way that Echionio does, it may here simply allude to Vergil's placing Amphion on Aracynthus in Eel. 2.

George Herbert's Passio Discerpta and Franciscus Lucas's Commentaries on the New Testament Philip

Dust

While

it is common knowledge that George Herbert's English and Latin poetry are based solidly on Holy Scriptmre, it is not so generally known, nor has it been looked into, that the poet was also familiar with biblical exegesis. And yet Herbert himself alludes to it when he says in his last will and testament.

Then I bequeath to Mr. Hays the Comment of Lucas Brugensis vppon the Scripture and his hälfe yeares wages aforehand.^ Clearly the commentary meant a great deal to Herbert. The only other influence on his work mentioned in his will is that of St. Augustine. Franciscus Lucas, or François o Luc, was known from the city of Bruges where he was born in 1549.^ After he was ordained, he was named dean of Saint Omer where he died on 19 February 1619. He was barely twenty-six years of age when he achieved the distinction of having played an important part in the Vulgate edition of Anversa (1574). Charged with the task of emending Giovanni Hentenius's edition of the Vulgate (1547) and not having been able to alter it, Lucas contented himself with adding new variants and notes taken from Greek codices, the Hebrew text, and citations of the fathers and scholastics. From this resulted the Notationes in Sacra Biblia quitus variantia ... discutiuntui (Anversa, 1580). The son-in-law of Plantin, Giovarmi Moretus, entrusted him with the task of editing the Vulgate again in 1599. In addition to his continual work on the text of St. Jerome's Bible, Lucas published a Concoidantia Sacrorum Biblionim vulgatae editionis and a Commentaiius In sacTosancta quatuoi Jesu Christi Evangelia.^ It is with this last work that my essay will be concerned. From the twenty-one poems of George Herbert's Passio Discerpta, there are influences from Lucas's commentaries for over a third of them: "In sudorem sanguinem" (No. H), "In Sputum et Convicia" (No. V), "In Coronam spineam" (No. VI), "In Arund. Spin. Genuflex. Purpur." (No. VU), "In Flagellum" (No. IX), "In Christum crucem ascensurum" (No. Xn), "Ad Solem deficientem" (No. XVI), and "Velum scissum" (No. XIX).'* In both the commentaries and Her-

HERBERT AND FRANaSCUS LUCAS

45^

poems the following themes are stressed: Christ's suffering as an intensely personal event, Christ's passion as a means for the forgiveness of sins, the failure of the Jewish people to accept the redeemer, and Christ's power over the world. While the themes common to both commentaries and poems are the universal themes found in Christian teaching, the specific associations with details, as well as the poet's principles of selection, warrant the conclusion that Lucas influenced Herbert's poetic development. Christ's passion and death were an essentially redemptive act, purifying sinners and bringing grace to all men. While Lucas's commentaries take up bert's

linguistic and historical problems, they also frequently make theological connections between Christ's suffering and the salvation of mankind. Lucas in his commentaries very often bridges the gap between historical scriptural events and a theological interpretation of those events, thereby having provided Herbert with a catalyst for the working out of his poems in Passio

Discerpta. It

significant that Lucas disclaims allegorical interpretation of the

Scriptures. Veritas erat, ilium unum seligere sensum, qui verosimillimus, illumque ita solide statuere, ut caeteros sive referre sive refutare non esset opus. Nam quod a mysticos sive spirituales sensus attinet, allegoriam inquam topologiam, &. anagogiam, cum illi nitantur historiâ sensuque primo ut fundamento, unde etiam facile elici

Curavimus enim, ubi

effert

queant, nos

illos,

aut praeterivimus, aut

uno solum verbo

attigimus.

This method of linguistic precision had been that of Erasmus and was carried on not only by Lucas, but also by the Jesuits Maldonatus, Sa, Sanchez, the Dominican Foreirius, and culminated in the work of Cardinal Bellarmine. ^ Lucas was staying close to the spirit of a decree of the Council of Trent in April 1546 which had enjoined that the Vulgate Bible alone be used in public readings, disputations, and sermons. In fact, Lucas was the first, following the lead of Sixtus V, to carry on the work directed by the Council.^ Herbert's direct and simple term Discerpta as well as what has been called his "plain style" reflects his use of Lucas. Each and every individual aspect of Christ's passion is seen by Lucas as bearing a relationship to the sinful lives of those Christ is redeeming.

Quamvis enim unico actu potuisset, &. pro peccatis nostris omnibus satisfacere, &. vitam nobis omnibus aetemam mereri: quia tamen varia ac multiplicia

hominum peccata solvenda susceperat,

multiplicam quo-

omnibus tum animi facultatibus tum corporis membris, quibus homines ad peccandum abutuntur, affligi, ne ilium peccati genus omitteretur, quod non propria in ipso esset ultum: &. vitam aetemam Deique gratiam locupletissime que ignominiam

ÔL

poenam

subire voluit,

nobis promereretur, ita ut copiosa esset nostri redemptio. in each of the poems comparisons will follow the order of Lucas's commentaries: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Primarily stressed will

This

precisely the spirit

which informs the reflections

of the Passio Discerpta. In this essay

PHILIP

DUST

453

be the theological implications in both commentaries and poems. The relationship between Christ's suffering and the forgiveness of sins seen in Lucas's commentary on Matthew 27:29.

Duplex poena

est

ludibrium

cum tormento conjunctum.

Porro in bac

spinea corona suscepit Dominus spinas peccatomm nostioTum, quod ait Origines, intextas in capite suo. Peccatomm est enim, inquit Hilarius, aculeus in spinis, ex quibus Chiisto victoiiae corona contextitur.

This

the thought of Herbert's "In

Coronam spineam" when he

Christe, dolor tibi supplicio,

says,

mihi blanda voluptas (VI. 1)

As Lucas says

further,

expanding on Origen and Hilary,

Vere itaque Domine Jesus, spinas peccatomm nostrorum suo ipso capite portavit, ut nobis acquireret

coronam

gloriae.

Christ's purification from sin of those coming after Herbert's "In Arund. Spin. Genviflex. Purpur."

him

expressed in

cum quo magis angar acuto Munere, Rex tanto verlor inde prober.

Quam

nihil illudis flectens!

namque

Posteritas flectet córque

integra posthâc

genûque mihi. (Vn. 3-5)

Especially noteworthy is the emphasis on a "pure people" (integra posthac / Posteritas) in Lucas's comments on Matthew 27:30.

Nam

etsi

sum

ceperat: id

nulla camis concupiscentia infestaret,

quam

tamen qua praesentes nesciebant (indutus enim

virgo con-

erat simili-

tudine camis peccati) causa ipsi erat erubescentiae, ac proinde etiam poena nuditatis, non minor quam nobis. lUe itaque dignatus est erubescere, ut impudicitiam atque impudentiam nostram auferret a nobis.

Herbert says that the kingdom of Christ false kingdoms of this world.

not mocked by the scarlet of the

Quam

nihil illudis! si, qua tua purpura fingit, Purpureo melius sanguine Regna probem.

(Vn. 7-8)

Lucas says. Veste coccinea passus est se illudi, primum quidem ut pro abusu vestium nostro satisfaceret, deinde ut etiam stolam gloriae nobis promereretur.

comment on

the eclipse of the sim, Lucas relates what happened at book of Genesis and to the final night at the end of the world. In his

Christ's death to the creation of light in the

quomodo Joel

cap.

Apocalypsis cap. 6

2 v. 31. v. 12.

fiet

niger

tamquam

saccus cilicinus, quomodo Deo auferente, quam ab

Obscurabitur autem,

HERBERT AND FRANOSCUS LUCAS

454

lucem. Ut primosa lux nascentem, postremae tenebrae morientem loquentur mundum.

initio creationis ipsi dedeiat,

The

close association of Christ with his Father in the act of creation

in Herbert's lines of

sic

caught

"Ad Solem deficienteum."

Nempe Dominus aedium Prodegit integrum penu,

Quamque

ipse lucis tesseram sibi negat,

Negat familiae suae. (XVI. 5-8)

And

little further,

Carere discat verna, quo summus caret Paterfamilias lumine. (XVI. 9-10)

But in keeping with Christ's injunction not to worry about what will happen at the end of the world, Herbert says.

vero mentem neutiquam despondeas, Resurget occumbens Hems: Tunc instruetur lautiùs radijs penu. Tibi supererunt mihi. (XVI. 11-14)

Herbert is

in this

particularly hard

poem

on the Jewish people

"Velum scissum."

now rather obscure notion of phylacteries to complex and narrow scope of the Old Law as opposed to the that he uses the

symbolize the open nature of Christ's

New

Dispensation.

Nunc Arcana

patent, nee inuolutam Phylacteria complicant latrîam. (XIX. 9-10)

Lucas, in his

comments on Matthew

23:5, discusses the use of phylacteries.

Pharisaei porro, quo ostentarent se caeteris magis pios, membranulas latiores, splendidiores, &. magis conspicuas, pluraque Dei praecepta, aut certe majoribus litter arim formis exarata, complexas, gerebant, his gloriantes ac stulte se jactantes, nihil interim minus quam observan-

dorum Dei praeceptorum memores. Praecepta Legis, cum in vita ipsorum nusquam apparerent, in membranis ostentabant inscripta, quae animis inscribi &. in corde portari oportuerat, &. vita exprimi.

Much

of the harsh nature of this exegesis is retained in Herbert's poem. Again, Herbert's preoccupation in "In Sputum et Conuicia" is with the responsibility of the Jewish people for the spitting and insults heaped upon Christ by the Roman soldiers. He begins the poem,

Barbares! (V. 1)

DUST

PHILIP

But

455

we discover later that the barbarians are not only the soldiers but the Jewish

nation.

maledicta Ficus arescens

Gens

tota fiet (V. 6-7)

Men of other nations

are therefore invited to share in the waters of baptism.

Parate situlas, Ethnici, lagenasque, Graues lagenas, Vester est Aquae-ductus. (V. 8-9)

When we

turn to Lucas's commentary on Mark 10:34 we find a preoccupasame question of who it was who mocked Christ. He says,

tion with the

Et illudent

ei] scilicet

gentes, vel principes ipsi Judaeorum, ministerio

gentium.

Although instrumentally it was the Roman soldiers who insulted Christ, these insults were perpetrated imder the auspices of the Jewish leaders. The reference to the fig tree also reflects Herbert's knowledge of Lucas's comments on Mark 11:12,

where the commentator

says,

Inveniret in ea] id est habuit se eo modo ac si venisset visum an nihil forte in ea fructus esset quo famen suam posset sedare: caeteroque noverat ipse certo, nihil fructus illic inveniendum.

But about Christ's coming, he

says,

Atqui adventus ipsius in camem omnino fidei justitiaeque ex Judaeis perciperet.

eum

habuit fine, ut fructum

The universality of Christ's message, a Gospel preached to both Jew and Gentile alike, is stressed by Lucas in his comment on Mark 15:38. He says the veil was in the temple quo ea quae Judaei habebant sanctissima, sancta sanctoTum, à conspectu, non solum multitudines, sed &. sacerdotum arcebat. Herbert elaborates,

namque velum Diffisum reserat Deum latentem. Et pomoeria terminósque sanctos Non vrbem facit vnicam, sed Orbem. (XIX. 2-5)

Lucas's

comment on Luke 22:44 established the direct relationship between

Christ's bloody sweat

Jam quare

and the place of the sinner in the scheme of salvation.

Jesus sudare voluerit etiam sanguinem, quid melius dicas,

quam ut copiossissime nos redimeret,

et largissime pro nostris peccatis

HERBERT AND FRANCISCUS LUCAS

45^

enim licet, quam fervidus amoris ignis occuparit vivum sanguinem per corporis poros distillare coegerit,

satisfaceret? Considerare

cor Jesu, qui

quemadmodum vehementia, nimirum volebat sacrificio odorem suavitatis

ignis facere solet, ut

Patri pro nobis

aqua a

rosis

emanet:

mox offendendo addere hunc

The element

of personal redemption is strong in Herbert's expansion of this interpretation in "In sudorem sanguinem."

nam quanto indignior ipse. subueniens dignior esse potes.

forte petas;

Tu mihi

(n.

Lucas's image of the rose

5-6)

echoed in the poem "In Coronam Spineam" when

Herbert says.

Tu spina misere pungeris, ipse Rosa. Spicula mut emus: capias Tu serta Rosarum, Qui Caput es, spinas Si tua Membra tuas. (VI. 2-4) And

in this image, as Lucas has implied, the element of salvation for the Mystical Body, with Christ as its head, is also predominant. In "In Christum crucem ascensurum," Herbert's association of Christ ascending the cross with the story of Zachaeus climbing the tree to see Christ could very well have come from Lucas's comment on Luke 19:2.

Zacheus.]

Nomen Hebraeum

sine Syriacum Zacci,

est à munditiâ, innocentiâ, seu justitiâ

Christ, the innocent victim, fulfilled the plan of dying for us on the cross and thereby

Nobis

deductum.

God

the Father's justice by

facilitas cedat

(xn. 3)

Two

events from the passion are singled out by Lucas as exceptional: the sim and the tearing of the temple veil. Herbert devotes one poem to each of these events, relating each to the divinity of Christ: "Ad Solem deficientem" and "Velum scissum." Citing Augustine, Lucas comments that the two occurrences are miraculously caused by Christ's death. eclipse of the

Lucas volens miraculum miiaculo adjungeie, ait Augustinus, lib. 3 de Cons, evang. cap. 19, cum dixisset: Sol obscuratus est, continuò subjugendum existimavit: Et velum templi scissum est medium piaeoccupans videlicet, quod expirante Domino factum est.

A miracle is defined theologically as a divine suspension of the natural order. Miracles associated with Christ in the New Testament are traditionally used by Christian apologists as proofs of Christ's divinity. It is this point which Herbert makes in "Ad Solem deficientem" when he says in all irony.

PHILIP

DUST

457

Nempe Dominus aedìum Prodegit integrum penu (XVI. 5-6)

And he

says

directly later in

"Velum scissum,"

namque velum

Deum

Diffisum reserat

latentem. (XIX. 2-3)

The

relationship

whipped and the remission of our commentary on John 19:1 and Herbert's "In the "flagellati spes &. victoria mundi," (1.1) takes on the

between

Christ's being

sins is the subject of both Lucas's

Flagellum." Christ, suffering due to

men

because of their

sins.

Lucas says,

Nimirum hoc pati voluit pro nobis, multa Dei flagella promeritis, se

non secus ac pia mater, quae patri irato occurrens pro filio

gerens

se flagellis

exponit.

And he

says further,

Flagellatus injuria fuit, inquit CyriUus, ut a vulneiibus, quae jure peccati nostiis perpessi sumus, nos libeiet.

Herbert says,

Crimina

cum

turgent,

Suauiter admoueas

& mea poena prope est,

notum

tibi

came

flagellum. (IX. 2-3)

Though brief, very important is Lucas's comment on John 19:5, when Christ stood before the mob, Christ crowned with thorns. Ecce hom*o, cui nobiscum communis est himiana natura. This mystical sharing of human nature with God is expressed in Herbert's "In Coronam spineam"

when he

says,

mutemus: caipias Tu serta Rosarum, Qui Caput es, spinas &. tua Membra tuas. Spicula

(VI.

All

3-4)

Christians are united in one body with Christ who stands as the mystical

head of that body.

The

influence of Franciscus Lucas's commentaries

in Herbert's Passio Important for a whole concept of the relationship between scriptural exegete and biblical poet are the theological suppositions which both share. Both details of interpretations and larger theological conclusions in Lucas find their way into Herbert's poetry. Troubled with a sense of sin as Herbert was, the true meaning of Christ's pas-

Disceipta, subtly determining the nature of the poet's

sion as an act

which

obliterated that sinfulness and

own

made redemption

possi-

Herbert's legacy not meditation on Holy Scriptures, but of his careful study of

ble for us appealed to the poet.

only of his

The

art.

Passio Disceipta

Lucas's biblical exegesis of them.

Northern

Illinois

University

HERBERT AND FRANCISCUS LUCAS

458

Notes 1.

The Works of George Herbert,

ed. F. E.

Hutchinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1959), p. 382. 2. Enciclopedia Italiana (Roma: Institute Della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1951), 21, 555-56. 3. Lucas's Commentarius in sacro-sancta quatuor Jesu Christi Evangelia is in four volumes: Commentarius In Sanctum Jesu Christi Evangelium Secundum Mat-

thaeum (Antverpiae: Vermey, 1712); Commentarius In Sanctum Jesu Christi Evangehum Secundum Marcum (Antverpiae, n.d.); and Commentarius In Sanctum Jesu Christi Evangehum Secundum Joharmem (Antverpiae, n.d.). My quotes from these editions. But my quotes from the fourth, the Commentarius Sanctmn Jesu Christi Evangehum Secundum Lucam, are taken from the Scripturae Sacrae Cursus Completus, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1862), 22, col. 228-1446. 4. All quotations from Herbert's Passio Discerpta are taken from The Latin Poetry of George Herbert, ed. Mark McCloskey and Paul R. Murphy (Athens, Ohio: Ohio

are taken

Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 62-79. 5. The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West From The Reformation To The Present Date, ed. S. L. Greenslade (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1963), 6.

92.

Cambridge History,

JR, 68.

The

Poetics of Imitatio:

Joannes Secundus and His Models in the Elegiae Clifford Endres

The

notion of imitatìo is central to the literature of humanism, yet remains an imperfectly understood principle of poetic composition, perhaps because in our time it has so often been viewed pejoratively in contrast with its apparent opposite, "originality."^ But these terms are not, as they may seem, mutually exclusive, and nowhere is a proper understanding of imitatio more important to an appreciation of a poet's originality than in Joannes Secundus's Elegiae. Written earlier than the poet's more famous Basia, the Elegiae consists of three books of love elegies modelled upon those of the Roman elegists TibuUus, Propertius, and Ovid. Book I, the Julia MoDobiblos, follows Propertius's Cynthia Monobiblos in taking its title from the central subject of its poems, the poet's mistress, his domina. Book n deals with several new dominae, while Book HI consists largely of occasional poems, some of which have little in common with the classical love elegy beyond the shared meter. Instances of imitatio aie many and various throughout the Elegiae-, this paper will confine itself to a brief discussion of the principle of humanist imitatio and a significant example of its practice it

in the Elegiae.

The Roman amatory elegy itself was a highly conventionalized genre that owed many of its characteristic qualities, thematic and stylistic, to Hellenistic poetry, Greek New Comedy, Roman comedy, and the innovations of Catullus and his "neoteric" circle of poets. ^ The Roman elegiac poets enjoyed then, ready to hand, an extensive tradition from which to borrow themes, situations, and images as occasion arose. Possession of literary riches such as this, however, is restrictive as well as liberating, for an audience familiar with the conventions of a tradition will hold certain expectations toward a new poem in the genre. The poet was therefore called upon to keep faith with the rhetorical expectations of his audience as well as with the truth of his experience. This external element integral to maintaining fides, as the Romans termed the quality, has largely disappeared from the modem concept of "sincerity," in our usual English translation. Nevertheless, keeping in mind that poetic creation for Propertius, TibuUus, and Ovid involved a "rhetorical"

JOANNES SECUNDUS AND HIS MODELS

460

or "generic" sincerity as well as the personal kind may deepen our appreciation of the kind of poetry we find in Secundus's Elegiae-, for humanist imitatio,

own kind of fides.^ Conscious of their debt to Greek literature, the Romans evolved a general theory of imitation; it was, however, concerned primarily with the oratorical tradition, though not limited to it (as we learn from Horace's Ars Poetica). Cicero based his De oratole on the idea of imitation, and Quintilian followed a century later with his Institutio Oratoria. Acknowledging the importance too, requires its

went on to point out that imitaOrat. 10.2.4), and declared that development is impossible for those who restrict themselves to the practice (Inst. Orat. 10.2.9). It is Petrarch, of course, who marks the great divide between the Middle Ages and the modern world, and whom we acknowledge as chiefly responsiof imitatio [Inst. Orat. 10.2.1), Quintilian

tion

not sufficient

{Inst.

would issue in the distinguished Petrarch from his medieval predecessors was that he was able to see the past as past, as something other than an extension of the present moment uniformly stretching away toward the horizon. Petrarch would never have presented, for example, Greek and Trojan heroes in medieval costume, or Christian figures in classical garments, as did many artists of the Middle Ages."* His pursuit of historical reality led Petrarch to seek to return to the ancient sources —ûd fontes was the cry— and thence to the discipline of philology, the work of studying an ancient text in order to understand fully the distant truth behind it. Having pored over a classical text with diligence and love, Petarch's logical next step as an author was to attempt to emulate the beauties he discovered there. In this it i§ important to remember the enormous amount of labor and devotion that Petrarch, and humanist authors after him, lavished upon their beloved classical texts. To indicate the quality and quantity of reading necessary to produce the proper kind of imitation, Petrarch used the analogy, derived from classical sources, of a bee digesting pollen to make honey: ble for the revival of interest in classical literature that

full-blown

humanism

of the Renaissance.

Standum denique Senecae scribamus

Consilio,

What

quod ante Senecam Flacci

erat,

scilicet apes mellificant,

non

servatis floribus, sed in favos

unum

fiat,

idque aliud et melius. {Farn.

versis, ut ex

multis et varus

23:19)

the substance of Seneca's counsel, and Horace's before him, that not storing up the flowers but turning them into honey, thus making one thing of many various ones, but different and better. ]5 [This

we should write as the bees make sweetness,

and Horace, Carmina would become a favorite of Renaissance authors, and would be used again by Erasmus in his Ciceronianus to distinguish correct Petrarch's sources are Seneca, Epistulae morales 84.3-5,

4.2.27-32.

The

figure

(read "creative") imitatio from, servile copying.^

One may doubt whether a poet like Joannes Secundus gave much thought to literary theory, but fortunately it is not necessary to be a theorist in order to be a poet.

That imitatio constituted a poetic principle

for

Secundus, and

ENDRES

was not merely

461 a schoolboy exercise,

apparent from a reading of his work.

To view Secundus's Latin love elegies in their proper perspective, it may help to think of a poem not as a single text, the expression of the poet's personal voice, but as a multiple text that gives utterance to the voices as well of Propertius, TibuUus, Ovid, and other classical predecessors of the Renaissance

marks the presence Indeed, even without overt reference

poet. For a quotation, an allusion, an echo of an ancient text of another author in the

modern poem.

to a specific text, the composition of verse according to the

form and

struc-

ture of classical models implies a relationship between model and imitator. All too often in Neo-Latin verse this relationship remains inert, consisting merely of an uninspired conflation of materials; but at the level of creative imitatio the energy is reciprocal— the modem context, that is, illuminates the ancient passage just as the earlier text fleshes out and adds depth to the modem poem. Such a poem thus becomes not a static "object," whose truth may be

disclosed by careful critical hermeneutics, but a dynamic interplay between "surface text" and "sub-text" (to use terms introduced by T. M. Greene in a recent article on Petrarch and imitatio], that resists exhaustive analysis because

operates in the "elusive domain of style. "^ This "intertextuality" is what modem readers of Secundus's love elegies. In the light of these comments, let us consider Eleg. 1.1, the first poem of Secundus's Julia Monobiblos. This elegy is clearly a programmatic poem of the type known as the lecusatio, that is, an apology for writing lighter, personal poetry rather than "serious," more public poetry such as epic or tragedy. Such defenses are common among the ancient poets, Callimachus Aetia i.fr. 21-41 Pf., for example, Vergil Eclog. 6.3-5, and Horace Cann. 1.6; 4.15.1-4. In every case, the poet disclaims the capacity for writing serious and heroic poetry in the weighty mode of the vates.^ It was in the Roman love elegy, however, that the lecusatio assumed particular prominence. The lecusatio was more than a rhetorical flourish in the poetry of Propertius and Tibullus, who give the impression that their patrons, Maecenas and Messalla, had urged them repeatedly to produce something more "substantial" than erotic verse (Prop. 2.1, 2.10, 3.9; Tib. 1.1, 1.10). But by the time Ovid published his Amores some 15 years after Propertius published his Monobiblos, the Empire was enjoying the Pax Romana, and Vergil's Aeneid had splendidly satisfied the demand for epic. Ovid's response was to treat the lecusatio as a convention to be handled with irony and humor. In his Amoies 1 1, for example, he plays off Propertius 3.3, in which the poet is commanded to desist from writing epic by stem Apollo. Using verbal echoes to link the poems together, Ovid produces a mild parody of the earnest Propertian stance (compare Prop. 3.3.41-42 and Am. 1.1.11-12), and so establishes the ironic playfulness that will characterize the Amores. Ovid's allusions thus place him in the elegiac tradition— the camp of Propertius, after all — at the same time that they demarcate his own particular tone and values, his "originality." These allusions, then, are not simply thoughtless borrowings, but in fact contribute to a dialogue between the two poets.' In the same way Secundus's Eleg. 1.1 delineates the poet's relationship to his classical models. Again, the persona's rejection of epic for elegy is adopted it

interests us as

JOANNES SECUNDUS AND HIS MODELS

462

from the conventional lecusatio as established by Propertius, but his tone is Ovidian, characterized by a mocking self-irony aimed at his own presumptions as would-be poet. Just as Ovid created a distance between himself and Propertius by "framing" the Propertian allusion in a new context, so Secundus "frames" Ovid in the context of a modem historical sensibility. The result is an intertextuality, a play between the Ovidian sub-text and the Secundan serface text that serves both the renewal of the classical Latin love elegy and the expression of Secundus's

own poetic voice, rooted as it is in the poet's own

moment. In Propertius 3.3, the poet is dissuaded from writing epic by Apollo; in 1 1 Ovid replaces Apollo with Cupid as the intervening agent, who then mischievously removes a foot from the hexameter line— the epic meter— to create the elegiac couplet. In Secundus's Eleg. 1.1 the poet drops even the pretense of writing epic: Piérides alius dira inter bella cruentet I ... I Nos Puerum sancta volucrem cum Matre canamus [Eleg. 1.1.1, 5). But his problem, of which he is ignorant, is that his knowledge of love is purely theoretical. Abruptly, however, Cupid appears, just as he does in Ovid, and prepares to fire an arrow at the poet. In language that virtually mirrors Ovid's, the poet pleads to be spared; but Cupid refuses:

Amoies

lUe nihil motus, lunato fervidus arcu, Accipe quae, dixit, multa diuque canas. [Eleg. 1.1.17-18)

Compare Ovid: lunavitque genu sinuosum fortiter arcum quod que canas, vates, accipe, dixit, opus.

[Am. 1.1.23-24)

The dramatic and verbal parallels are unmistakeable; indeed, we might be forgiven the suspicion at this point that warmed-over Ovid is all we are going to get. But whereas Ovid's speaker utters a conventional cry of dismay [me miserum\], describes his pain in conventional elegiac language [uror], and closes the poem with a jocular aside to the Muse, Secundus moves quickly to the conclusion: Vix ea personuit, sonuit simul arcus et una Cum jaculo in venas sensimus isse Deum. [Eleg. 1.1.21-22)

Embedded in this distich is an allusion to a line of Propertius (1.9.21: quam pueri totiens arcum sentire medullis); yet in the spondaic rhythms of the last line, building to the final fall on Deum, we hear the accents of Secundus's own voice. In this change of tone, in view of the multiple connotations invested in the word Deum by fifteen centuries of history, we may not be wrong to discover a serious respect for the power of Amor that differs significantly from Ovid's benign immunity to passion. The Propertian allusion then, as an implicit criticism of Ovid, is appropriate to the serious ending of the poem. The poem is thus a comment upon Secundus's predecessors, not merely a

ENDRES

463

mosaic of allusions: it operates on the principle not of contaminatìo but of That is to say, in other words, that Secundus is aware of the historical gap between himself and his models, that his sensibility is not that of the ancient Romans. This distance, indeed, constitutes part of the subject of the poem. It is manifested in the conscious manipulation of the poet's sources and supplies much of the poem's interest. Here, in this double concern with the past and the present, is where we find the exercise of fides, a pledge of allegiance to the poet's classical models as well as to his own historicity. The dance of the poem occurs in the exchange of energy between ancient and modem. And finally, it is precisely this assertion of independence from the ancient texts that contributes most dramatically to the renascence of the spirit of the classical Latin love elegy, its erotic passion and learned irony, in Secun-

imitatio.

dus's Elegiae.

University of Texas, Austin

Notes 1

This

a revised version of a paper presented at the Fourth International

gress, International Association of

Con-

Neo-Latin Studies, Bologna, August 26-Sep-

tember 1, 1979. 2. Georg Luck, The Latin Love-Elegy, 2nd ed. (London: Methuen, 1969), provides an excellent introduction to the Roman elegy. See also A. A. Day. The Origins of Latin Love-Elegy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1938). 3. For a discussion of fides, see A. W. Allen, "Sunt Qui Propertium Malint," in Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Elegy and Lyric, ed. J. P. Sullivan (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 107 ff. 4. Myron P. Gilmore, "The Renaissance Conception of the Lessons of History," in William H. Werkmeister, ed., Facets of the Renaissance (New York: Harper and

Row,

1963), p. 79. Petrarch, Le famihare, ed. Vittorio Rossi and

Umberto Bosco, 4 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 1933-42). Translation from Letters from Petrarch, trans. Morris Bishop (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1966). Cited by Thomas M. Greene, "Petrarch and the Humanist Hermeneutic," in Italian Litera5.

ture: Roots and Branches, ed. Giose Rimanelli and Kenneth J. Atchity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 215. 6. Erasmus, Ciceronianus, ed. Pierre Menard, in Opera omnia (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1971), I, LB 985.17-19. 7.

Thomas M. Greene,

pp. 210, 213 (see note 5).

am much

indebted to Pro-

work for clarification of my thinking on the elusive topic oi imitatio. 8. On vates, see J. K. Newman, The Concept of Vates in Augustan Poetry, Collection Latomus, 89 (Brussels, 1967); on the recusatio, see W. Wimmel, Kallimachos in Rom, Hermes Einzelschrift 16 (Wiesbaden, 1960). fessor Greene's

See Kathleen Morgan, Ovid's Art of Imitation: Propertius in the Amores, (Leiden, 1977), pp. 7-15, for an extended discussion of the relationship between Ovid and Propertius in these two poems. 9.

Mnemosyne, Supp. 47

Realtà umanistica e tradizione classica nel "De laboribus Herculis" di

Coluccio Salutati Francesco d'Episcopo quattro libri del De laboribus Heiculis impegnarono l'intera maturità di Coluccio Salutati, com'è noto, uno dei pionieri del nostro Umanesimo, nato a Stignano, in Valdinievole, nel 1331.^ Essi, infatti, furono composti dal 1378, anno "terribile" del tumulto dei Ciompi, corrispondente al terzo an-

no di attività del Salutati come anno di morte dell'umanista.

cancelliere della res publica fiorentina, al 1406,

Il quasi trentennale arco di tempo impiegato dal Salutati per elaborare la complessa struttura del suo trattato suggerisce la misura esemplare di un impegno particolarmente dilatato ed ininterrotto su un tema critico storicamente coinvolgente, qual era, nella seconda metà del Trecento, quello della "difesa della poesia." Il De laboribus Heiculis, infatti, costituisce una delle punte di diamante di quel dibattito sulla poesia, che impegnò, dall'alba al tramonto del Trecento, su fronti opposti, da un lato intellettuali laici, quali Albertino Mussato, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, protesi a difendere strenuamente la liceità del culto della poesia, in particolare della poesia classica, da riserve antiche e moderne; dall'altro religiosi, quali fra' Giovannino da Mantova (nel caso di Albertino Mussato), fra' Giovanni da San Miniato e Giovanni Dominici (nel caso di Coluccio Salutati), attestati su posizioni di rigida ortodossia e preoccupati di non far guadagnare terreno alle artes humanae, in particolare alla poesia e al suo cattivante corredo di seduzioni terrene, rispetto a quelle divinae, che si identificavano poi essenzialmente con la teologia.^

De laboiibus Heiculis non rappresenta in tal senso un'opera isolata nella parabola intellettuale del Salutati, ma si riconnette organicamente agli altri interventi dell'umanista in difesa della poesia, ma non solo in difesa della poesia. Sembra in altri termini potersi affermare che nel De laboiibus Heiculis il Salutati miri a far convergere, come in un testamento intellettuale, pur se nel campo specifico di una riflessione sulla poesia e sulla tradizione classica, le molteplici direzioni di un impegno, sorretto da un attivismo e da un volontarismo storicamente coinvolgenti e destinati ad infrangere le statiche barriere dello scolasticismo medievale, in funzione di una visione maieuticamente più dilatata e controversa del vivere culturale. Se poi si tende a valuIl

d'episcopo

465

il messaggio estetico del Salutati all'interno della traiettoria diacronica segnata dai contributi degli altri difensori trecenteschi della poesia, sarà interessante constatare come, se nel De labohbus Herculis vengono ripresi e rivisitati moduli ideologici e motivi formali del dibattito trecentesco sulla poesia, essi tuttavia si prestano ad essere caricati di specifiche valenze storicistiche e critiche, che rinviano necessariamente alla "contemporaneità" di una ineludibile realtà storica, qual era appunto quella in cui il Salutati si trovò ad operare. Passando dal campo delle lucide enunciazioni teoriche a quello delle impervie dimostrazioni pratiche, se il motivo contingente della composizione del trattato deve ricondursi alla necessità da parte del Salutati di dare una risposta esaustiva ad un quesito del notaio fiorentino Viviano, divenuto collega di Coluccio nel 1378, sull'Hercuies fuiens di Seneca^ (queU'ffercuißs furens, sia detto per inciso, il cui richiamo aveva scandito un passaggio-chiave di un'anonima declaratio della lettera di risposta di fra' Giovannino da Mantova ad uno scritto, purtroppo mancante, di Albertino Mussato in difesa della poesia'*); tuttavia le prime battute dell'opera del Salutati costringono, si direbbe naturalmente, il lettore ad imbattersi in una realtà culturale coinvolgentemente contemporanea. Il De laborìbus Heicuhs si apre infatti con l'aspra polemica del Salutati contro i barbari britanni, vale a dire i logici occamisti, i quali con la loro ventosa sopbistica, fatta di consequentiae e di obligationes, rischiavano di creare una pericolosa confusione di domini e di ruoli

tare

all'interno e all'esterno delle arti liberali e, soprattutto,

porre

alienante diaframma tra les e veiba, tra

minacciavano

uomini

di frap-

e cose:

Nam cum per logices, imo (ut corrupto vocabulo dic*nt) loyce, et philosophie cacumina volitare se iactent et de cunctis disputatione garrula discutere sint parati (proh pudor!), textus Aristotelicos nec intelligunt nec legunt sed nescio quos tractatus apud "toto divisos orbe Britannos," quasi noster eruditioni non sufficiat situs, querunt. Quos totis lucubrationibus amplectentes sine libris et sine testium adminiculis et dialeticam et physicam et quicquid transcendens speculatio rimatur edisc*nt, sive potius edidicisse relictis sui magistri traditionibus gloriantur. Pudor est ipsos disputantes aspicere cum texentes quandam quodam modo cantilenam questionem verbis inintelligibilibus formatisque proponunt. Multa cavillosis sectionibus, in quarum altematione respondendo versentur, quasi resumenda premittunt, propositiones spargunt, coronaria adiciimt, conclusiones accumulant.^ Il Salutati identifica una delle ragioni di questa speciosa commistione ideologica e formale nell'arbitrario stravolgimento, operato dai maestri britanni, della originaria lezione aristotelica. La forzatura, in chiave di sclerotica

funzionalizzazione dottrinaria, del genuino messaggio aristotelico ha fatto sì che i nuovi e falsi auctoies antepongano le proprie mire contaminatorie al verbum del "vero" Aristotele, che il Salutati si propone invece di "restaurare" e, se necessario, di discutere:

nesciunt hi magistrum suum Aristotilem non sprevisse sed allegasse poetas. Nesciunt et ipsum, ut sermocinali philosophie tr äderet com. . .

TRADIZIONE CLASSICA NEL SALUTATI

466

plementum, de arte poetica singular! libro specialiter tractavisse. Adeo princeps ille philosophorum ... poeticam non contempsit. Quam hi successores studiorum suorum,

tarnen id esse vel potius dici merentur,

non minus nesciunt quam reprehendunt. Sed hoc mirum non Aristotile quidem volunt Aristotelici nominari.^

n frequente richiamo del Salutati ad Aristotele,

est: sine

definito a più riprese prìnceps

philosopboTum^ e liberato dalle falsificanti superfetazioni critiche dei suoi pseudoseguaci contemporanei, acquista un valore emblematico nel campo specifico della difesa ad oltranza condotta dall'umanista della poesia e delle

sue prospettive di hberazione esistenziale e storica. Dalla Poetica di Aristotele, che conosceva soprattutto attraverso la tianslatio proposta da Ermanno Tedesco del commento di Averroè, il Salutati, infatti, deriva quello che sarà uno dei motivi conduttori della sua poetica: la concezione cioè che il poema deve necessariamente essere o una laudatio o una. vitupeiatio^; mentre dalla Metafisica dello Stagirita, alla quale attingeva attraverso l'esemplare parafrasi tomistica, l'umanista riecheggia quel topos, che era stato di Dante del Convivio,^ di Petrarca dell'Êpistoiû al fi^atello Gerardo, ^^ di Boccaccio del Trattatello in laude di Dante, ^^ e che rimbalzerà sino a Vico della Scienza nuova,^^ della funzione civilizzatrice svolta dai poeti-füosofi-teologi agli albori dell'umanità.^^

Ma ciò che conta soprattutto rilevare è come il Salutati, nel De laborious Herculis, se tende da un lato a confermare quella commistione/distinzione tra poesia e filosofia, ^'^ che era stata formulata dal Boccaccio nel De genealogia deorum gentilium,^^ mira dall'altro, alla luce di quella riflessione sempre più matura sulle sfere di incidenza delle due discipline, che era esplosa nella sua Epistola a fra' Giovanni da San Miniato in una aperta dichiarazione di superiorità della poesia sulla filosofia, ^^ ad inglobare la filosofia nella illimitata area di influenza della poesia. ^^ Il processo di corrosione delle statiche barriere che la scolastica tendeva a frapporre tra le due discipline, sulla scorta dell'autorevole mediazione di S. Tommaso, che relegava la poesia tra le più basse attività dello spirito, si realizza allora nel Salutati attraverso la dilatazione delle forme, delle funzioni, dei significati di ciacuna disciplina all'altra e attraverso l'attribuzione di una dignità di privilegio alla poesia, che diviene così il polo di attrazione di un'attività creativa, che non conosce con-

o ostacoli intellettuali. da dove Coluccio derivasse questa dinamica concezione di una poesia-filosofia e di una filosofia-poesia. Non sembra doversi escludere, anzi è forse da proporsi con rinnovata forza critica, l'incidenza che può aver esercitato, direttamente o indirettamente, sull'umanista quel robusto revival classicheggiante, che si registrò nella Francia del secolo XU e che fece capo ad autori, quali Alano di Lilla, Bernardo Silvestre, teorizzatori, rispettivamente, della funzione introduttiva delle arti liberali rispetto alla teologia^^ e della poesia rispetto alla filosofia^^ e, soprattutto, elaboratori di una fascinosa teoria del poeta come creatore di miti. A rinsaldare questa sperimentale concezione di complementarietà e di interdipendenza tra piano filosofico e poetico può in tal senso aver concorso anche fini naturali

Vien fatto

di chiedersi

d'episcopo

467

ermeneutica di Alberic of London, Mitogiapbus tertius vaticanus, la cui influenza sul Petrarca e sugli umanisti che lo seguirono è stata studiata, come ha felicemente ricordato Eugenio Garin, ^° da Eleanor

la dilatata esperienza

il Salutati attinge a piene mani nel corpo del suo tratottima edizione del De lahorìbus Herculis, curata dallo UUman, aiuta a confermare a più riprese. ^^ Lo stretto rapporto interpretativo che lega Coluccio al Mitogiaphus tertìus vaticanus conferma come uno dei tramiti fondamentali attraverso i quali si

Rathbone tato,

e dal quale

come

realizza l'equiparazione tra

livello filosofie e quello poetico, e viceversa, sia

strumento escatologico di interpretazione della realtà del mito, ma anche prezioso elemento di coesione della duplice dimensione di edonismo immaginativo e di destinazione moralistica, insita nel messaggio poetico. La profonda conoscenza da parte del Salutati di Fulgenzio, che aveva elaborato una parossistica concezione allegorica dell'Eneide virgiliana, ^^ come del prosimetnim De mundi univeisitate di Bernardo Silvestre,^-^ emblematico esponente di quella poesiû filosofica o, se si vuole, filosofia poetica del secolo Xn, alla quale si è fatto riferimento, testimonia in forma, si direbbe, inequivocabile la dipendenza del Salutati da autorevoli e diffuse fonti medievali.^* Ma, al di là di queste sottili mediazioni, sembra che acquisti uno spessore di complice specularità nella riflessione del Salutati sulla poesia l'esperienza l'allegoria,

Dante Alighieri, ^^ il quale, nel corso della sua opera, come ha dimostrato con una fitta sequenza di argomentazioni e di testimonianze August Buck, sottolineando la non casuale conoscenza dantesca déû'Anticlaudianus di Alano di Lilla,^*^ e come del resto il Tiattatello in laude di Dante del Boccaccio consente storicamente di comprovare in forma esemplare,^^ aveva una lucida coscienza della orientata funzione teologale del proprio metodo poetico e critico, affidato all'allegoria. Quell'allegoria, che del poeta-teologo per eccellenza.

per

Salutati,

come

per tutti

teorici dell'estetica del poeta-teologo, riecheg-

gianti gli istituzionalizzati canoni medievali, resta l'anima della poesia, che, nella

nuova dimensione di un "fare"

storico più coinvolgente e controverso,

tende ad acquistare, a livello ermeneutico, una più sconfinata dialetticità di una più aperta disponibilità di comprensione.^^ L'imprevisto, corposo rilievo che tende ad assumere la poesia nel De laboiibus Herculis permette di considerare l'opera come la punta più avanlettura e

zata e matura della riflessione tardotrecentesca sulla poesia. In tale direzione, se il De labohbus Herculis continua in forma consapevole e trasparente la problematica elaborata dal Boccaccio negli ultimi due libri del De genealogia

deorum

gentilium,^'^ tuttavia ü trattato registra, in positivo, una serie di scare di progressioni rispetto all'esemplare modello boccacciano, a livello di latitudine ideologica, ma soprattutto di corrosione di alcune prospettive inti

che nell'opera del Boccaccio appaiono ancora saldamente ancorate ad un misurato universo di confronti e di rapporti. -^^ Se il rapporto poesia-filosofia si carica, come si è visto, di specifiche valenze ideologiche e formali, destinate a segnare profondamente tutta la prospettiva estetica del Salutati, un altro rapporto tende ad acquistare un valore decisivo nel processo di restauro della perduta, o smarrita, "dignità della poesia" che l'umanista mira a proporre: quello tra poesia e retorica. Il recupero della poesia tellettuali,

TRADIZIONE CLASSICA NEL SALUTATI

468

uomini e delle cose, tradito dalle fuorvianti sperimentazioni della neosofistica del suo tempo, si realizza infatti attraverso l'inserimento dell'ars poetica nel novero delle artes sennocinales, di quelle "arti del discorall'universo degli

che il Salutati tenta di liberare dalle indebite commistioni, operate dalle avventure retoriche contemporanee, e di ricondurre ad ima consapevole distinzione dei propri fini e, per dirla con Vico, delle proprie "degnità": so,"

Ut certissime audeam

cum

affirmare,

quelibet sermocinalis scientia

suis contenta limitibus taliter ab aliis distinguatur,

quod

artifices officia

non confundant. Nam grammaticus, prout grammaticus rhetorici non usurpât. ^^ Particolarmente sintomatico è poi rilevare inserire la poesia tra le arti del trivio,

superiorità, che le consente

pur separano

come

Salutati

est,

non

officium

limiti ad

ma rivendichi ad essa una dignità,

una

ab imis di abbattere quelle obbligate barriere che

le varie scienze tra loro:

talis est potest et solet cuncta perficere Et cum omnium predictarum scientiarum que in dictione versantur sit intellectum imbuere vel inserendo novas species vel antea perceptas excitata memoria renovando, et demonstratio intellectum cogat, probatio rationem, persuasio vero voluntatem, poetica simul om-

Vel e contra sola poetica ut

que predixi

...

imaginativam thesaurumque perceptarum rerum, et reducit in actum, per assumptas res atque similitudines res rebus applicatione delectabili coniungendo (quod quidem nulla prorsus alia facultas potest efficere), addendo super hoc dulcedinem admirabilis armonie. ^^

nia

perficit

memoriam, movet

All'interno di questa sorprendente dilatazione del lavoro creativo la poesia la propria capacità di coesione anche alle arti del quadrivio:

estende

Simul etenim congruitatem grammatice, logice proprietatem,

natumque rhetorice coniungentes, ab arithmetica numéros,

or-

a geometria

mensuras, a musica melodias, ab astrologia vero similitudines mutuarunt [poetae], ex his omnibus narrationem sive artem poeticam componendo, que sola digna foret sublimitate et pulcritudine sua excellentiam creaturarum et presertim hominum prosequi et commendationi divinarum rerum ac inenarrabilis deitatis laudibus adhiberi;^ e alla filosofia:

Que siquidem

dieta sunt, quod cogitatio nostra et reliqua que iam omnibus composita sit scientiis et etiam ipsa scientiarum philosophia, et quod in eadem et celestis et mundane armonie .

. .

ipsa poesis ex scientia

ratio contineatur, intelligentibus, ut reor, demonstrat, persuadet incredulis, et protervis atque renitentibus probat inconvincibili congruentie ratione.^"^

L'estensione delle prerogative della poesia all'universo "scientifico" e medievale si regge quindi su un definitivo, paradossale ribaltamen-

filosofico

d'episcopo

469

to proprio dell' "ordine" culturale medievale, che si fondava sulla unificante

superiorità della filosofia sulle altre artes.

La riconquista, in verità lenta

Salutati propone dello spazio

storica ed

umana si appoggia alla ricon-

e faticosa,

che

poetico

come di una privilegiata realtà

quista,

promossa dall'umanista, del "vero" Aristotele^^

attraverso lo Stagi-

rita,

dell'Orazio dell'Ars poetica, ^^

lida,

anche se talvolta sotterranea, giustificazione teorica e pratica nella

è destinata a rinvenire la sua più so"ri-

visitazione," in chiave di funzionalizzazione "poetica," del messaggio retorico latino, soprattutto ciceroniano e quintilianeo. E' infatti soprattutto Cicerone,

maestro della retorica

classica, per intendersi l'autore del

De oratore, che aveva

esteso, in area di riflessione estetica, alla retorica le prerogative originarie della

a fornire al Salutati quel ricco e composito "materiale da costruzione," reimpiegherà e adatterà alle rinnovate funzioni della poesia. Questo processo di trasferimento delle prerogative dell'oratore ciceroniano al poeta è stato acutamente rilevato in territorio rinascimentale da studiosi, quali lo Spingarn'^^ e il Barilli,^^ ed è stato documentato da chi scrive, in altra sede, proprio nell'opera del Salutati. ^^ Sarà qui sufficiente accennare come questo processo non si risolvesse in un gratuito sincretismo ideologico ma comportasse anche un fondamentale spostamento di piani storici: così se Cicerone aveva trasferito il privilegio di avere primieramente civilizzato l'umanità, che i filosofi stoici rivendicavano per sé, agli oratori,'^ il Salutati estende quell'antica "degnità" ai poeti, specificandola tuttavia, in chiave dichiaratamente cristiana e, questa volta, polemicamente antiaristotelica, come profetica capacità dei poeti classici a intrawedere ante diem la luce della fede fra le tenebre del paganesimo: filosofia,

che

egli

Nec poetas irrideat quasi mendaces sed se potius, dum veritatem inenarrabilem scrutatur, deceptum suis rationibus recognoscat, et saltem intelligat cum poetis eos qui pro deis colebantur veros homines ex attributione humanorum affectuum extitisse, non deos. Nec mordeat poetas aut arguât falsitatis, quibus si fuisset creditum, sicut ipsorum carmina recepta fuerunt et inter sacra deorum veluti sanctum et religiosissimum quiddam reposita, imo, quod plus est, ab illis ipsis diis non solum postulata sed extorta, suos illos deos ceca gentilitas quid et quales essent perspicue cognovisset, et ipse idem Aristotiles poetis tanquam veritatis revelatoribus et honorem et gratiam habuisset.*^ L'antico conflitto tra artes humanae e divinae, che, pur prestandosi ad essere composto, almeno in sede teorica, da S. Agostiiio in im testo-chiave della coscienza letteraria del Medioevo, il De ordine, era esploso in forma virulenta nella Epistola ad Magnum di S. Gerolamo,*^ aveva impregnato di sé alcuni momenti decisivi del dibattito umanistico sulla poesia. La dissoluzione di questo dissidio nel Salutati appare, ancor più che negli altri teorici della "difesa della poesia," affidata a quegli strumenti, proprio dalla tradizione classica e

medievale reclamati ed

atti a garantire la liceità del culto della poesia contro accuse antiche e moderne di gratuità favolosa e fantastica. Tra questi strumenti è destinato ad acquistare complice valore operativo quel sermo metricus e figurativus, che le teorie di Lattanzio delle Divinae Institutiones'^^ e dei

TRADIZIONE CLASSICA NEL SALUTATI

470

come insostituibile strumento umano:

neoplatonici medievali consentivano di valutare di coesione tra sfere celesti e universo

atendum sit artem poeticam inter sermocinales scientias sublimem quasi celum quoddam cunctas musici concentus armonias, quas celo sive celi speris assignaverunt Platonici, comprehendisse, cuius instrumentum, quoquo verteris et in quascunque etiam minutias dividatur, ratione musica carere non potest et omnes

Ut iam

. .

sine dubitatione

. .

quadriplicatas illas continet armonias/'*

La definizione che

come "vir optimus, laudanmetrico figurativoque sermone sub alicuius narra-

Salutati propone del poeta

di vituperandique peritus,

sembra così conciliare in una visione organicamente unitaria il messaggio di Cicerone e di Quintiliano a quello di Aristotele; di Gerolamo, di Agostino, di Lattanzio a quello di Platone e dei tionis misterio vera recondens,'"*^

suoi seguaci medievali.

Le argomentazioni conciliative del Salutati acquistano tuttavia decisivo rilievo critico solo se riconducibili a quella visione "profetica" e "teologale"

della poesia classica, alla quale si è fatto in precedenza riferimento. L'inten-

sificazione che

Salutati opera, nella definizione del poeta, dell'attributo

bonus, assegnato da Catone all'oratore'*^ e poi ripreso da Cicerone,'*'' in optimus, infatti, oltre che coinvolgere un preciso riferimento alla definizione quintilianea dell'oratore,

come uomo

di doti naturali e di virtù morali, "op-

tima sentientem optimeque dicentem,"^® sembra in tal senso esprimere una ferma posizione dell'umanista nei confronti delle accuse, che venivano formulate da più parti, ma soprattutto da parti religiose, contro i poeti, in particolare contro e bugiarde.

poeti classici, rei di essere stati cultori idolatri di favole inutili

Ma il sostrato più rigorosamente teorico della propria difesa della

il Salutati lo deriva ancora una volta da un auctoi classico, Varrone (citato da S. Agostino nel libro sesto del De civitate Dei], il quale aveva proposto una suddivisione della teologia "in physicam, scilicet, polyticam et mythicam, quam fabulosam dicimus", specificando che mentre "prima est philosophorum, secunda populorum et principum civitatis, tertia vero poetarum.'"*^ Il rilievo è particolarmente importante perché una delle caratteristiche topologiche del De laboiibus Heiculis risiede anche nella aperta

poesia-teologia

distinzione, professata dal Salutati, tra la "teologia dei poeti," di derivazione varroniana, e la "teologia spirituale," che era propria della tradizione ecclesiale cattolica:

Ceterum ut

hoc aliquando concludam, hoc precipue differunt humana et seculari, quoniam illa tota vera est, sive litteram considères sive sensus abditos contempleris; hec autem veritatem amplectitur quandoque sub cortice, exterius autem, licet possit esse verax, ferme tamen semper solet esse figmenttmi. Illa cum autorem habeat spiritum sanctum, ad infinitos sensus ordinata est. Nec potest excogitari veritas littere congruens quam illa infinita sapientia de cuius throno processit ab initio non intenderit. Hec autem, in quantum hominis est inventum, sic ad id quod intenditur ordinatur quod ab rerum in

spiritualis et divina poesis ab

d'episcopo

471

autore deo ad aliud quod hom*o non cogitat quandoque relata aliquando solum id quod hom*o voluit habeat importare. Sed quia infinite sunt rerum similitudines, possunt non inconvenienter ad alia trahi, quo desinant qui plures expositiones viderint admirari.^^

omnium sit,

Con questa dichiarazione di distinzione "teologale" il Salutati mirava essenzialmente a salvaguardare la propria posizione di intelletuale cristiano, preoccupato di non contravvenire le verità fondamentali della fede e dell'ortodossia religiosa. Ma, nonostante simui professioni e preoccupazioni teoriche, è palese tuttavia come molti fossero i rischi inerenti nella appassionata difesa, con^^ dotta dall'umanista, della poesia e dei miti della classicità. Tanto più che il ribaltamento delle funzioni proprie dell'oratore al poeta non si limitava, come si è accennato, ad ima innocua formulazione di principio della insostituibile azione civilizzatrice svolta dai poeti all'alba del mondo, ma si estendeva e specificava come acquisizione di una coscienza monoteistica e precristiana contro il diffuso evemerismo del paganesimo idolatra.^^ Affermazione, quest'ultima, carica di audacia, ma anche di intrinseca forza eversiva, che costringerà il Salutati a smarrirsi in una selva di astratte formulazioni di principio e di non sempre convincenti dimostrazioni pratiche, quando tenterà di documentare storicamente che i poeti della classicità furono essenzialmente "ottimi"^^ e immuni dalla diffusa piaga del politeismo pagano.^'*

A svelare la fragilità teorica della costruzione del Salutati interviene infine lo stesso

uso che l'umanista propone

dell'allegoria,

quando, nel cuore della

trattazione, tenta di dipanare la imbrogliata matassa di allegorie legate ad Ercole e alle sue mitiche fatiche. ^^ Ercole personifica per il letterato la lotta le passioni per la stoica conquista della virtù, ^^ ma il mito presta tuttavia ad essere investito di alcune valenze, proprie dell'at-

dell'uomo contro classico

tivismo e del volontarismo salutatiani,^'' che rischiano frequentemente di sfaldare il pur compatto organismo ermeneutico dell'umanista, portando alla luce, in una forma criticamente dialettica, quel conflitto tra vita attiva e contemplativa, che, tra avanzamenti e ritomi, appare destinato a permanere irrisolto nell'opera di Coluccio.^^ I rischi inerenti a questa prima stagione umanistica, come ha opportimamente ricordato Hans Baron,^' furono aspramente denunciati da Gino

Rinuccini in quella sua disarmante Invettiva contro a cierti calumatoli dì Dante, Petiaica e Boccaccio. Il titolo non deve trarre in ingarmo: se il Salutati, infatti, può essere ritenuto tutt'altro che calunniatore dell'aulica triade trecentesca, tuttavia il suo atteggiamento di difesa dell'antichità, pur se tra ingenuità e contraddizioni, era proiettato necessariamente ad esprimere una notevole forza di rottura nei confronti di quella tradizione di ortodossa osservanza religiosa, che intellettuali del clero, quali Giovanni da San Miniato e, soprattutto, Giovanni Dominici erano intenti a difendere. Gli strumenti ai quali il Salutati fa prevalentemente ricorso (tra questi: l'allegoria, il mito, il metro, ü monoteismo, il moralismo) per giustificare una innocua consentaneità di fondo tra realtà classica e cristiana, se appartengono in gran parte proprio alla tradizione classico-cristiana, si prestano tuttavia ad

TRADIZIONE CLASSICA NEL SALUTATI

47^

essere gradualmente forzati dall'interno e a svelare clamorosi momenti di debolezza e di corrosione. Il ricco apparato della classicità diviene così nelle mani della nuova generazione di umanisti, che nel Salutati rinviene uno dei suoi rappresentanti più consequenziari, un materiale esplosivo, oltre che un alibi cattivante, atto a dare corpo e spessore a nuove esigenze di impegno storico e civile.^ sarà forse grazie soprattutto a questi alibi e a questi audaci tentativi di conciliazione che la tradizione classica riuscirà ad infiltrarsi nel nuovo "cor-

si presterà ad essere "rivisitata" alla luce di un impegno storicamente più dialettico e vitale. In tal senso la difesa della poesia, condotta dal Salutati, e prima di lui dal Petrarca, dal Boccaccio, ma dallo stesso Dante, e in sede di più impervia sperimentazione letteraria, deve ormai ritenersi la frontiera culturale, oltre la quale si schiude im sicuro futuro teorico alla poesia e al suo liberatorio destino storico.

so" umanistico e

Università di Napoli

Note 1. Per un profilo biografico ed intellettuale del Salutati, cfr. A. Petrucci, Coluccio Solutati (Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana [Bibliotheca Biographica], 1972). 2. Per ima organica ricostruzione documentaria dei termini della vexata quaestio,

cfr. E. Garin (a cura di). Il pensiero pedagogico dell'Umanesimo, ini classici della pedagogia italiana (Firenze, Coedizioni Giuntine Sansoni, 1958), pp. 2-89. 3. Cfr. C. Salutati, De laborìbus Heiculis, a cura di B. L. Ullman (Zürich, Thesaurus Mundi; ora Padova, Antenore, 1951), voi. I, Praefatio, p. VII. 4. Cfr. A. Mussato, Epistolae, in Historìa Augusta Henrìci VII Caesarìs et alia, quae extant opera (Venetiis, Ex Typographia Ducali Pinelliana, 1636), p. 75. 5. C. Salutati, De laborìbus Heiculis, ed. cit., I, p. 3. 6. Ibidem, p. 4. 7. Ibidem, p. 10. 8. Cfr.

op.

cit., p.

Dante,

10.

Convivio, E, I, 3-4. 10. Cfr. F. Petrarca, Le famiìian, a cura di V. Rossi (Firenze, Sansoni, 1968; ristampa anastatica della prima edizione del 1934), H, pp. 301-303. 11. Cfr. G. Boccaccio, Tiattatello in laude di Dante, in Opere in versi. Corbaccio. Trattatello in laude di Dante. Prose Latine. Epistole, a cura di P. G. Ricci, (Milano-Napoli, Ricciardi, 1965), p. 621. 12. Cfr. G. Vico, La Scienza nuova, a cura di F. Nicolini (Bari, Laterza, 1928), I, pp. 86-87, 89, 92-93, 146-149, 195-196. 13. Cfr. C. Salutati, De laborìbus Herculis, ed. cit., I, p. 35. 14. Cfr. C. Salutati, op. cit. pp. 19, 50-51. 15. Cfr. G. Boccaccio, Genealogie deorum gentilium librì, a cura di V. Romano (Bari, Laterza, 1951), H, p. 730-732. 9. Cfr.

d'episcopo

473

16. Cfr. C. Salutati, Epistolario, a cura di F.

Nevati (Roma, Istituto Storico

201-202.

Italiano, 1905), IV, pp. 17. Cfr. C. Salutati,

laborìbus Herculis, ed.

18. Cfr. A. Viscardi,

orìgini, in Storìa letteiarìa d'Italia (Milano, Vallardi,

cit.

p. 53.

1973), pp. 431-432. 19. Cfr. E. Garin, La cultuia filosofica del Rinascimento italiano (Firenze, Sansoni, 1979), p. 36. 20. Cfr. E. Garin, op. cit. p. 35. 21. Cfr. C. Salutati, De laborìbus Heiculis, ed.

cit..

H, Index

auctoium,

p. 650.

22. Cfr. F. P. Fulgenzio, Expositio viigilianae continentiae, a cura di T. Agoz-

zino e F. Zanlucchi (Padova, Università degli Studi. Accademia patavina di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. Istituto di Filologia latina. Società Cooperativa Tipografica, 1972). 23. Su Bernardo Silvestre, cfr. Th. Silverstein, The fabulous cosmogony of Bernaidus Silvestrìs, in Modem Philology, XL VI (1948), pp. 92-116. 24. Cfr., sulla vasta problematica filosofica testé suggerita, T. Gregory, Anima mundi. La filosofia di Guglielmo di Conches e la scuola di Chaities (Firenze, Sansoni, 1955); E. Garin, Studi sul platonismo medievale (Firenze, Le Mounier, 1958), e, nel caso specifico del Salutati, La cultura filosofica del Rinascimento italiano, ed. cit., pp. 95-99. 25. Cfr., sul rapporto Salutati-Dante, E. Garin, L'età nuova (Napoli, Morano, 1969), pp. 188-191. 26. Cfr. A. Buck, Gli studi sulla poetica e sulla letorìca di Dante, in Atti del Congresso intemazionale di Studi danteschi per il Vn anniversario della nascita del poeta (20-27 aprile 1965) (Firenze, Sansoni, 1965), pp. 249-278, soprattutto pp. 264-270. 27. Cfr. G. Boccaccio, Ttattatello in laude di Dante, ed.

cit.,

pp. 616-618,

620-621, 642-650. 28. Cor. C. Salutati,

laborìbus Heiculis, ed.

Medioevo

cit.,

p. 46.

Rinascimento (Bari, Laterza, 1973), pp. 75-76. 30. Cfr. R. Stefanelli, Boccaccio e la poesia (Napoli, Loffredo, 1978), soprattutto il cap. H; A. Buck, La difesa della poesia nelle Genealogie deorum gentilium del Boccaccio, in Misure crìtiche, Vm (1978), 26-27, pp. 27-38. 29. Cfr. E. Garin,

31. C. Salutati,

laborìbus Herculis, ed.

cit.,

p. 22.

32. Ibidem, pp. 22-23. 33. Ibidem, p. 19. 34. Ibidem, loc. 35. Cfr. op.

cit., p.

36. Cfr. op.

cit., p. 68.

37. Cfr.

Spingam, La

53.

cit., loc. cit., p. 4.

crìtica letteiarìa del

Rinascimento

(Bari, Laterza, 1905),

p. 56.

38. Cfr. R. Barilli, Poetica e letorìca (Milano, Mursia, 1969), p. 70. 39. Cfr. F. d'Episcopo, Retorìca ciceioniana e poetica umanistica nella difesa della poesia di Coluccio Salutati, in Esperìenze letterarìe, I (1976), 4, pp. 47-61.

De inventione, I, 2, 2-3; De oratore, I, De laborìbus Herculis, ed. cit., I, p. 67.

40. Cfr. Cicerone, 41. C. Salutati,

30-34;

43. Cfr. C. Salutati,

conflitto tra

(Torino, Einaudi, 1968). laborìbus Herculis, ed.

35-38.

cit., pp. 433-436, ma anche paganesimo e crìstianesimo nel secolo IV, a

42. Cfr., su questi temi, A. Viscardi, Le orìgini, ed.

volume collettaneo II cura di A. Momigliano

cit.,

p. 71.

TRADIZIONE CLASSICA NEL SALUTATI

474 44. Ibidem, p. 40. 45. Ibidem, p. 63. 46. Cfr. op.

cit., p.

61.

47. Cfr. op.

cit., p.

61.

48. Quintiliano, Instìtutionis oiatoiiae libri duodecim, 49. C. Salutati, Epistolario, ed. cit., IV, p. 197. 50. C. Salutati, De laborìbus Heiculis, ed. cit.,

XU,

25.

87.

tema particolarmente "scottante" della problematica critica H. Baron, La crisi del primo Rinascimento italiano (Firenze, Sansoni,

51. Cfr., su questo

del Salutati,

1970), soprattutto, pp. 319-324. 52. Cfr. C. Salutati, De laboribus Herculis, ed. 53. Cfr. op.

cit.,

cit., loc. cit., p.

67.

pp. 61-69.

54. Cfr. op. cit., pp. 76-87. 55. Cfr. op. cit., pp. 116-351. 56. Cfr. C. Salutati, Epistolario, ed. cit.

p. 299.

57. Cfr. F. Gaeta, L'avventura di Ercole, in Rinascimento,

(1954), 2, pp.

255-256; E. Garin, Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. cit., pp. 76-77. 58. Cfr. H. Baron, La crisi del primo Rinascimento italiano, ed. cit., pp. 117-131. 59. Cfr. H. Baron, op. cit., loc. cit., pp. 319-324. 60. Cfr. M. lannizzotto. Saggio sulla filosofia di Coluccio Salutati (Padova,

Cedam,

1959), p. 19.

The Hymni Naturales of

Michael Marullus Philip Ford

preliminary reading of MaruUus's Hymni naturales tends to leave the scholar in a state of some confusion and bewilderment. The problem does not lie so much in their amazing range of literary sources, extending from the Bible, through Greek authors, some of them quite obscure ones, to the whole gamut of Latin writers; such eclecticism is encountered in other Neo-Latin poets of the Renaissance. Rather, it is the apparent absence of any underlying consistency in MaruUus's vision of the world as portrayed in the collection of hymns. That Pallas should be described as "eadem virago, mas eadem" (1, 2, 65) does not surprise us too much: most religions delight in paradoxes. But when several divinities are pictured as possessing identical, seemingly nontransferable qualities, we begin to worry. Thus, the opening hymn attributes the parenthood of the gods to Jupiter: "hinc magni divum tot numina mundi" (1, 1, 3); but further on in the collection.

Amor is invoked as "alme coelestum genitor"

(1, 3, 1),

Bacchus

called "geni-

deorum" (1, 6, 27), and Coelus is addressed as "sanctissime deorum pater" 19). These inconsistencies have worried many of MaruUus's critics in2, (2, cluding Pier Luigi Ciceri and Augusto Sainati, who sums up the feelings of many when he writes: "Ciò che manca agi' Inni naturali e una seria organicità che stringa le varie parti in una visione unitaria."^ There is general agreement, however, that Marullus does not use the pagan gods as Christian allegories, but as Zakythenos indicates, as "living symbols in whose revival he tor

apparently believed."^ Apart from the content of the Hymni naturales, scholars have also been worried about their form and apparent discrepancies in intention. Thus, Zakythenos would divide the hymns into two categories: those which are "the consequence of phUosophical convictions," and those, of Horatian inspiration, which are essentially lyrical odes to the gods.^ However, in considering the hymn as a poetic medium, it must be remembered that it can take on many different forms, and that Marullus would have had a wide range of models available: the Homeric hymns, the hymns of Callimachus, and the Orphic hymns in Greek; invocations to the gods in Lucretius, CatuUus, Horace, VergU,

HYMNI NATURALES OF MICHAEL MARULLUS

47^

and Claudian in Latin, to mention only a few. Menander the Rhetor, probably writing in the third century A.D., distinguished no fewer than nine categories of hymn of varying intention, length, and form,'* while Francis Cairns makes the following illuminating remark on the classical hymn: not a genre in the sense in which propemptikon or is it a genre in the other common sense of the word, in which it is used to refer to kinds of literature like epic, elegy, or lyric; for these kinds of literature are each characterized by metre and length, and more important they are mutually exclusive. 'Hymn' is not characterized by metre or by length, and hymns can be found in epic,

'Hymn' therefore

komos

Nor

a genre.

elegy, lyric, etc.^

The purpose of this paper, however,

show that beneath the apparent diver-

MaruUus's hymns do contain an essential unity which binds the collection together into an organic whole. Marullus's stylistic eclecticism can easily put the reader on the wrong track. Not suprisingly for an editor of Lucretius (and one indeed whose emendations have stood the test of time), MaruUus imbues his hymns with Lucretian diction and reminiscences. But as Ivo Bruns points out, Lucretius has had little effect on the philosophical content of the hymns. ^ Ovid too figures prominently, along with Catullus (especially in the galliambic hymn to Bacchus), Vergil, Statius, Horace, Claudian, the Homeric hymns, Callimachus, even Persity of intention

and

literary form,

Perosa indicates in his notes in the Index nominum of hymn to the Sun, and sections of Pausanias. Marullus considered the whole corpus of classical literature as grist to his mill, and his connexions with Pico della Mirandola, Poliziano, Lascaris, Pontano, and the Medici would have ensured him a plentiful supply of manuscripts to supplement the limited number of Greek authors printed in his own lifetime.^ Very probably, it was through the Florentine Neo-Platonists that Marullus came into contact with the body of writings which most influenced his own hymns and which lends an essential unity to them: the sius. Martial, and, as

his edition, Julian the Apostate's prose

Orphic hymns and related Orphic writings.® Superficially, there are some obvious resemblances between Marullus's hymns and the Orphic compositions. While it is now generally agreed that the latter cannot have been written before the second century A.D., the Renaissance tended to view them as extremely ancient repositories of wisdom.^ Addressed to divinities and natural phenomena, they generally consist of an opening in which the subject is apostrophised in the first line, followed by a list, of varying length, of epithets, adjectival phrases, and relative

The hymn usuends in a prayer. As in Marullus, it is not infrequent for the same, apparently non-transferable, epithets to be attributed to different deities, for example Tia-n-evexcop applied to Ouranos (Orphic Hymn 4), Herakles (O.H. 12), and Kronos (O.H. 13); and for a single deity to be given seemingly contradictory qualities, e.g. Aphrodite described as caivófxevT), x'àçavTiç (O.H. 55, 10), Athena who is aporiv [xèv xaì Ô^Xuç (32, 10). There is no narrative content in these hynms, all of which are written in hexameters. While Marullus does not follow clauses, defining the divinity in all its various manifestations. ally

PHILIP

FORD

477

these aspects, he does incorporate a number of them into his own hymns: the list of epithets and short descriptions attributed to the deity in question, the direct address at the start of the hymn, the prayer at the end. These points are illustrated by Marullus's "Hymnus Coelo" (2, 2). all

Audi, felix patria superum, Omnia ferens, omnia continens, Munde pater, sedes alta Io vis: Qui par nulli, similis uni. In te totus, tuus es totus;

Qui fine carens, terminus omnium, Longo terras circuis ambitu Opibusque

late pollens tuis

Sortis degis nescius aegrae;

Qui Naturae sancta potentis

Ipsos vocas sub iuga coelites;

Qui totus

teres undique et integer Sua cunctis semina dividis.

prona, pater, saecula parturis

Indefessam terens orbitam, Tu perpetua cuncta catena Prima soUers nectis ab aethra, Pater incertum rexne melior. O sanctissime deorum pater. Pater Naturae, adsis, precor, et,

Utcunque mihi

Tua

rite vocatus,

dexter nos ope sospita.

The opening word, "audi," a direct address to the deity concerned, is typical of the Orphic hymn, for whereas none of the Homeric hymns or those of Callimachus begins in this way, there are no fewer than fifteen of the hymns attributed to Orpheus which open with the word xXûOt or xXCxt. The central section of the hymn is taken up with appositional phrases, epithets, relative clauses describing the properties and nature of Coelus (or Ouranos), while the hymn closes with a general prayer for assistance, a pattern which we have seen closely follows that of the Orphic hymn. There are even textual similarities between Marullus's hymn and the Orphic "©[xvoç Oùpavoû (4), cf. "felix patria superum" (line 1) and olxe öecöv (laxàpwv (line 4); "mimde pater" (line 3)

terminus omnium" (line 6) and àpx^ nàvz(ù\> "longo terras circuis ambitu" (line 7) and açaipriSov 'eXiaoofxevoç Ktpl yaîav (line 3); "Qui Naturae sancta potentis / Ipsos vocas sub iuga coelites" (lines 10-11) and iv oxipvoioiv exwv çuaetoç qctXtitov àvdtyxriv (line 6); "Pater naturae" (line 20) and izayytvitcjip (line 1).^° More important than these superficial similarities, however, is the Orphic philosophy latent in both the Greek hymns and Marullus's, which makes sense of the contradictions they seem to contain. The Neo-Platonic writings of Proclus, who was widely read by the Florentine Neo-Platonists, are an important source for our knowledge of Orphic theology and beliefs, and it is no doubt

and

xó(j|xe n(x-u\p

(line 3); "fine carens,

Ttàvxœv xt TeXeuxTi (line 2);

4/8

HYMNI NATURALES OF MICHAEL MARULLUS

largely from here that Marullus developed his own knowledge of Orphism.^^ While using and assimilating the gods of the traditional Homeric pantheon, the Orphies saw them and their relationships with each other in a very different light. In broad outline, their theogony, which is for the most part expounded by Proclus, is as follows. ^^ In the beginning was Chronos. From him was bom Aither along with Chaos and Erebos. Chronos formed in Aither an egg which, in splitting into two, produced Phanes (also known as Protogonos, Dionysos, Eros, Metis, and Erikepaios). Phanes is thereafter the creator of the physical universe and the gods. Being of both sexes, he bore on his own a daughter. Night, and uniting with her sired Gaia, the Earth, and Ouranos, the Heavens. These became the parents of Kronos, Rhea, Okeanos, Tethys etc., and henceforth we are in more familiar ground. Kronos castrated his father Ouranos (from whose genitals Aphrodite was born) and with Rhea produced Zeus and his siblings. Despite Kronos's efforts to avoid his son's ultimate supremacy, Zeus becomes the ruler of the universe and creator of the world by the process of swallowing up Phanes. As Proclus cites, commenting on the Timaeus 29a:

Therefore together with him all things within Zeus were created anew, the shining height of the broad aither and the sky, the seat of the unharvested sea and the noble earth, great Ocean and the lowest depths beneath the earth, and rivers and the boundless sea, and all else, all immortal and blessed gods and goddesses. ^^

By his mother Rhea, Zeus has a daughter (Kore/Persephone), and by her a son Dionysos, who will take over as ruler of the universe. Athena, as in the traditional mythology, was bom fully grown from Zeus's head. This pattern of creation and re-creation, if applied to the Hymni naturales, explains most of the apparent inconsistencies, and Marullus's own, slightly different theogony can be worked out as follows. In the beginning were Aether ("rerum benignum / ... parentem" 4, 1, 7-8) and Chaos. Amor (we are not really informed of his origins, but cf. "geminaeque duplex / Gloria matris," 1, 3, 3-4) is the first true creater of the physical world and the gods, for it was he who put order into Chaos: Quid, quod et novas Chaos in figuras Digeris primus docilemque rerum Mutuis nectis seriem catenis Pace rebeUi? (1, 3, 21-4)

He is also described as "coelestum genitor" (1, 3, 1). He overcame Anance or Necessity (1, 3, 25), and like the Orphic Eros, is probably identifiable with Bacchus. For Bacchus too is described by Marullus as "Genitor deorum idem atque idem germen amabile" (1, 6, 27), almost certainly a reference to the Orphic Dionysos who, while being identified with the original demiurge Phanes, is later reborn as the son of Zeus and Kore, thus being both father and son of the gods. Amor and Bacchus are probably the same as Protogonus (2, 4, 29) the father of Rhea, a goddess who produced the Earth and Sky ("Terrarumque parentem et liquidi aetheris," 2, 4, 30, cf. O.H. 14, 10 ix aoû yàp xaì yaia xaì

PHILIP

FORD

479

oùpavòc eùpuç) but

who united with Satumus

to produce Jupiter,

cf. 1, 4,

(traditionally the

son of Ouranos)

26-7:

Eodem magnanimo patre Eodem coniuge maximo.

lovis,

Rheae

There seems to be some confusion about the exact place of Sol in MaruUus's theogony. He is the son of Hyperion and Thia (in Orphic writings the siblings of Kronos or Saturn), but seems to be assimilated with Saturn in 4, 3, 60-1 where he is seen as the father of Juno and Jupiter. Jupiter, however, has his Orphic role as re-creator of the world (cf. 1, 1 passim, especially lines 60 sqq., where his act of creation is spoken of in terms strongly reminiscent of the opening chapter of Genesis). Like the Orphic Zeus, he seems to engulf everything:

Quem Non

mare, quem tellus, vacui quem nubila coeli capiimt sanctique patens plaga lucida regni. (11. 22-3)

71 he seems to be assimilated with Pan in the words "Pan rite et Of the other divinities mentioned by Marullus, Venus is the daughter of Jupiter ("lovis propago / Aurea," 2, 7, 89-90) and mother of the Amores (2, 7, 6), while Mercury is the son of Maia (2, 8, 10), grandson of Atlas (3, 2, 63), and acts as psychopomp. Pallas, however, poses a number of problems. She is bom from Jupiter's head ("sola patris vertice ex ipso edita," 1, 2, 43), but is also referred to as "vere Phaneta splendide" (1, 2, 64). Whereas in Orphic theology, Phanes is identified with Eros, Dionysos etc., he is not seen as identical with Athena. Marullus describes her as bisexual ("eadem virago, mas eadem," 1, 2, 65), and: In 2,

idem

rite Diespiter."^'*

Hastae potentem nobilis viraginem.

Quam

Phorcis asperat ferox. multilingue sibilis quassans caput Procul profanos submovet. (1, 2, 3-6)

Cum

(1, 2, 68). It seems possible, therefore, that Marullus, seeing similar qualities in Phanes and Pallas, has equated the two, possibly aided in this by depictions of the god like the Modena bas-relief of Phanes.*^ In Orphic theology, Phanes was bisexual like MaruUus's Pallas. In the Modena relief, he is holding a stick or spear; he has a wild-looking face on his abdomen, which might appear like the Gorgon's head, although it is in fact a lion's head. In his right hand he holds what might appear to be a firebrand. All these attributes might easily have led Marullus to make the equation. However, Marullus was not simply setting out in his Hymni natuToles to produce an exposé of Orphic doctrine. The variety of metre, style, and diction points to an equally important literary intention in the hymns, and this can perhaps be illustrated by considering the hymn to Bacchus (1, 6). Written in the rare galliambic metre, the poem falls into three sections: lines 1-23 dealing with the poet's inspiration deriving from the god; lines 24-57, a list of the god's epithets, attributes, and events in his life; and lines 58-61, a valediction and prayer. There are four main literary sources for this relatively

She also has a fire-brand

HYMNI NATURALES OF MICHAEL MARULLUS

480

one of the few extant classical poems in the galliamOvid Métamorphoses 4, which deals with Bacchus; Horace Odes 2, 19 and 3, 25 which also deal with Bacchus; and the Orphic hymns, of which seven (30, 45-47, 50, 52 &. 53) are dedicated to Dionysos. Much of the hymn is devoted to the traditional view of Bacchus (cf. lines 30-38), covering ground contained in Ovid and Horace. ^^ But the Orphic Bacchus is also present in the hymn. There is an allusion to the god as the subject of a mystery cult in line 16, "Orgia verendis arcana recondita calathis," while line 27, "Genitor deorum idem atque idem germen amabile," seems to refer to Bacchus in his twin role (cf. "gemine" line 29) of Bacchus/Phanes and Bacchus son of Jupiter. "Pater optime maxime" (line 29), with epithets usually applied to Jupiter, also goes beyond the traditional view of the god of wine. Marullus attributes the institution of laws, cities, and civilisation to Bacchus (line 43) as he had done to Pallas (1, 2, 51-62), perhaps reinforcing the idea that Pallas is simply another manifestation of Phanes/Dionysos; and he seems to be assimilated with Amor in his ability to renew life on earth, cf. lines 50-53 and 1, 3, 29-32 and 37-38. The description "deum et pater hominum" (line 58) and the association with Themis seem to emphasise the Phanes aspect short

poem: Catullus

63,

bic metre; the opening of

of his nature.

The movement of the poem tends to reflect its sources. The galliambic metre and CatuUan reminiscences successfully evoke a wild, breathless, exotic atmosphere, a feeling of the frenzy which has overcome the poet, while the liturgical use of epithets and final prayer conjure up the feeling of the Orphic hymns. The brief allusions to events in the life of Bacchus, on the other hand, produce the more urbane tone of a Horatian ode. But despite the fact that the literary appeal of this poem is obviously meant to outweigh the philosophical message, the underlying Orphic doctrine does give unity and meaning to this

hymn,

as it does to the entire collection. thing which it is not easy to assess is the extent to which Marullus actually understood the Orphic writings, or indeed how much of them he had read. He was obviously acquainted with the Orphic hymns, but his theogony, as reconstructed through piecing together scattered references in the Hymni natuiales, is not always entirely self-consistent, even in a framework where a single divinity may be referred to by many names (or be TcoXuœvufjioç, to use a frequently employed Orphic epithet); there is no direct mention of the Orphic egg from which Phanes was bom; and traditional mythology at times proves stronger than Orphic teaching (as in the attribution of Bacchus's parentage to Semele rather than Kore/Persephone in 1, 6, 2). However, the Orphic fragments themselves do not provide us with a clear, consistent picture of Orphic theology, being second-hand accounts (however ancient) of a mystery religion. Marullus has evidently applied his eclecticism in this direction too. Despite these reservations, however, it is Orphic doctrine which seems to lie behind the Hymni natuiales and to transform them from a miscellaneous hotch-potch of rather empty philosophy and lyrical outpourings into a unified collection of addresses to the gods.

One

University of Aberdeen

FORD

PHILIP

481

Notes 1.

p. L. Ciceri,

"Michele Manilio e

suoi

'Hymni

naturales'/' Giornale storico

della lettezatuia italiana, 64 (1914), 289-357 (p. 326), and A. Sainati, "Michele Manilio," in Studi di letteratura latina medievale e umanistica raccolti in occa-

sione del suo ottantacinquesimo compleanno (Padua, 1972), pp. 113-75 (p. 150). For other studies which cover Marullus's hymns, see Benedetto Croce, Michele Manilio Tarcaniota: le elegie per la patria perduta ed altri suoi carmi (Bari, 1938); Ivo Bruns, "Michael MaruUus: ein Dichterleben der Renaissance," in Vorträge und Aufsätze (Munich, 1905), pp. 380-412; Alessandro Perosa, "Studi sulla formazione delle raccolte di poesie del Manilio," Rinascimento, 1 (1950), 125-56 and 257-79; Georg Luck, "MaruUus und sein dichterisches Werk: Versuch einer Würdigung, "ArcadÜfl, 1 (1966), 31-49; and Dionysios A. Zakythenos, MixocP)X MàpooXXoç TapxocvitOTTiç, "EXX7]v TtoiirrPiç Tœv xpóvwv rr\^ àvafewrioetoç, 'EneTTipiç 'ExapeCaç BuÇavrivciv SjtoüStöv, 5 (1928), 200-42. References to Marullus's works will be taken from Michaelis Marulli Carmina, ed. Alessandro Perosa (Zürich, 1951). 2. Zakythenos, art. cit., p. 225. 3. Zakythenos, art. cit., p. 227: 8èv elvai 8X01 01 u(xvot àìtóppota çiXoooçixôiv «eTtoiOrioMov, àXXà ... noXXoi toutuv elvai ànXcôç Xupixoi ufxvot, coSai tlç xouç çeotjç. 4. See Leonardus Spengel, ed., Rhetores graeci, 3 vols (Leipzig, 1853-6), HI,

333-44. 5.

Francis Caims, Generic Composition in Greek

and Roman Poetry (Edinburgh,

1972), p. 92. 6.

Bruns,

art. cit., p.

403: "Seine

Hymnen

dagegen haben ihrem eigentlichen

Inhalt nach mit Lucrez nichts zu tim." 7.

On Marullus's friends,

and Croce,

art. cit., pp.

patrons, and other acquaintances, see Bruns, 14-23.

art. cit.,

8. The edition of the hymns referred to will be the Orphei Hymni, ed. Guilelmus Quandt (Berlin, 1955). The other Orphic writings may be consulted in Orphicorum fragmenta, ed. Otto Kern (Berlin, 1922), while an excellent study of Orphism is to be found in W. K. C. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion: a Study of the Orphic Movement (London, 1935). On the influence of the Orphic writings on the Florentine Neo-Platonists, see D. P. Walker, "Le Chant orphique de Marsile Ficin," in Musique et poésie au XVIe siècle, éd. Jean Jacquot (Paris, 1954), pp. 17-33. 9. On the probable age of the hymns, see Quandt, ed. cit., p. 44, and Guthrie,

op.

cit., p.

10.

O.H.

15. 4, line 4:

"the beginning of

all

"home

of the fortunate gods"; line 3: "world father"; line 2:

and the end

of all"; line 3: "revolving like a globe about the

earth"; line 6: "holding the unchallengeable necessity of line

11.

Nature in your heart";

"father of all."

See Kern, ed.

cit.,

pp.

369-73

for a list of

Orphic fragments supplied by

Proclus. 12.

the Orphic theogony, see in particular Guthrie, op.

13. Guthrie's translation of

xouvexa oùv àyXotòv

xû

Sci«)?,

xat vtCaxa

nâtvza Aioç TtàXiv ivxoç

TtóvTou x'atpuyexou

Tàpxapa

cit.,

Orphic Fragment 167, whose text ixùx^j aîGépoç

yalm x'èpixuôioç

yaCriç xai 7toxa[ioi xoi

fôpr],

eùpeCric 1^8'

oùpavoû

— Oxeocvoç xe [dya,^

«ovxoç àntfpixoç &XXa xe nàvzcx

it&vxtç x'àGàvaxoi [làxaptç tftol i\hi 6iaivai.

pp. 78ff. as follows:

HYMNI NATURALES OF MICHAEL MARULLUS

482

14. On a similar assimilation amongst the Orphies, see Orphic Fragment 54: "And this theology sings the praises of Protogonos and calls Zeus director of all and of the whole world, wherefore he is also called Pan." 15. See Guthrie, op. cit., p. 254 and plate 12. 16. The following list indicates some of the principal reminiscences of the poem: 1. 1, cf. "agedum" (Cat. 63, 78); 11. 1-2, cf. "Bromiumque Lyaeumque / ignigenam-

que" (Ov. Met. 4, 11-12); 1. 3, cf. "radiantibus oculis" (Cat. 63, 39); 1. 4, cf. "furenti rabie" (Cat. 63, 4); 1. 5, cf. "tui / plenum" (Hor. Od. 3, 25, 1-2); 1. 7, cf. "vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis" (Verg. Aen. 6, 281), and also "nodo coerces viperino" (Hor. Od. 2, 19, 19); 1. 8, cf. "capita Maenades ... iaciunt hederigerae" 11. 9-10, cf. "unguis trepidantibus ululât" (Cat. 63, 28); 1. 10, cf. tripudiis" (Cat. 63, 26); 1. 11, cf. "capita ... ui iaciunt" (Cat. 63, 23); "pando ... asello" (Ov. Met. 4, 27); 1. 14, cf. "velox mente nova" (Hor.

(Cat. 63, 23); "citatis 1.

12, cf.

Od. 1.

...

3, 25, 3); 1. 19, cf.

20, cf.

"reboant" (Cat. 63, 21) and "citato

"pulveream nubem" (Verg. Aen.

593);

25,

pede" (Cat. 63, 2); (Orphic Hymn eûiov (O.H. 30, 4); 1.

...

cf. SixépcùTa

30, 3), 'Ap^tou (O.H. 30, 4), [xtipo-cpeç^ç (O.H. 52, 3); 1. 26, cf. 27, cf. Geöv Ttdexep i\Zi xal mi (O.H. 52, 6); 1. 28, cf. vuxtépie (O.H. 52, 4) or "Nycteliusque" (Ov. Met. 4, 15); 1. 29, cf. Sicuri (O.H. 30, 2); 1. 30, cf. "Oriens tibi victus, adusque / qua tinguitur India Gange" (Ov. Met. 4, 20-1), and "marmora pelagi" .

. .

(Cat. 63, 88);

11.

31-2,

cf.

"cum

...

cohors Gigantum scanderet impia, /

Rhoetum

Od. 2, 19, 21-3, and also Od. 3, 4, 53-5); 1. 33, cf. Ov. Met. 4, 22-4; 1. 35, cf. "de stamine pampinus exit" (Ov. Met. 4, 397, a reference to the daughters of Minyas who were turned into bats for ignoring Bacchus's festival); 1. 37, cf. "latibula" (Cat. 63, 54); 1. 38, cf. "mox tamen Acrisium ... / tam violasse deum ... / paenitet" (Ov. Met. 4, 612-14); 1. 39, cf. "truculentaque pelagi" (Cat. 63, 16); 1. 41, cf. "a Baccho mella reperta" (Ov. Fast. 3, 736), and "de viridi stillabant ilice mella" (Ov. Met. 1, 112); 1. 58, cf. AixvCttiv Aióvuoov (O.H. 46, 1); 1. 61, cf. "Corycidàs nymphas et numina montis adorant / fatidicamque Themin" (Ov. Met. 1, 320-1). retorsisti" (Hor.

The Amoies

Joachim du Bellay: a Neo-Latin Cycle of Love Poems of

Ellen

Ginsberg

Several times in the Regrets and in the Poemata, both published in 1558 from Rome, Joachim du Bellay felt the need to apologize in Latin. These Latin poems have been praised by some critics, denigrated by others, neglected by most.^ Few of the poems have been examined in detail for their literary merit or assigned a place in the poetic tradition. To this end, let us consider one section of the Poemata, the Amoies. The Amoies form part three of the four-part Poemata which were written by du Bellay during his sojourn in Rome, 1553-1557. The Amoies, preceded by a dedicatory poem, contain 33 poems, of which the first 24 concern Faustina. Poems 25-27 are erotic poems not directly related to Faustina and poems 28-33 after his return

for writing

poems

subjects. The poems to Faustina which we shall discuss (25 in including the Dedication) are in elegiac couplets except for the Dedication and poems 22, 23, and 24, which are in hendecasyllables, and 19, which is in Sapphic stanzas. The identity of the lady Faustina has not been ascertained, although several learned scholars have given themselves to the task. Emile fa*guet argued that her family name was Colomba, because one of the Amoies, entitled "Cognomen Faustinae," says Faustina's "nomen gentUe" should be Colomba, but this poem seems to refer to a nickname or pet name that the poet would like to give her.^ Others have suggested that she was the Roman courtesan whom Olivier de Magny names in one of his poems and who is mentioned elsewhere and perhaps pictured in a Renaissance medal. ^ But according to du Bellay, Faustina was married. Could she have been a noble Roman lady? It has also been suggested that she never existed at all and that du Bellay borrowed the name either from several sixteenth-century busts of Roman Faustinas or directly from one of the Roman empresses named Faustina.'* She remains a mystery. But her role in the Amoies should remain no mystery. In the dedicatory poem "Ad Gordium," du Bellay says that he is giving his friend Cordes^ a "novum libellum / Quo raptum refero meae puellae,"^ (a new little book or pamphlet in which I recount the abduction of my mistress)

are

all,

on other

484

THE AMORES OF JOACHIM DU BELLAY

Indeed, an examination of the mini-sequence of 24 poems reveals that they are centered about Faustina's abduction by her husband, her imprisonment in a convent, and her eventual release and return to the lover's arms. All the poems are in some way connected to this incident, although du Bellay goes beyond it in referring back to his first falling in love with Faustina, then his happy moments with her, and in ending with a kiss-poem after Faustina has been returned to him. This "Basia Faustinae" poem is no. 23. No. 24, also dedicated to his friend Gordes, contains a list of famous love poets and their mistresses, to whom du Bellay compares himself and Faustina. The first and last poems indicate clearly that we are dealing with an episode in a "roman d'amour." The poet loves a lady, his mistress, who has been abducted from him. In the last poem, she has been returned to him and he hopes to immortalize her in his poetry as other love poets have immortalized their mistresses. Du Bellay has unified the sequence by creating a simple plot with a single peripeteia (Faustina's abduction and return to him), and by organizing the poems in clusters with recurring and overlapping themes and images. Themes which are first presented separately or successively are later combined, or vice versa, and all the themes resolve themselves in final unity. The clusters of poems are carefully ordered in terms of poetic development and thematic relationship; their sequence is not the result of chance, nor of strict historical

chronology.

The first poem contains direct references to six of the most prestigious long poems of Latin antiquity: the Pharsalia of Lucan, the Thebaid of Statius, the Aeneid of Virgil, the Métamorphoses of Ovid, The Rape of Proserpina of Claudian and the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius. Du Bellay cites these works only to reject them. His poetry will not deal with such lofty subjects, but with love. It is Lucretius who provides the link with the rest of du Bellay's poem and the rest of the sequence. Lucretius glorifies love as an all-powerful and omnipresent force. So du Bellay says that the ancestor of Aeneas (Aeneadum genitrix), i.e. Venus, who has given him the beautiful Faustina, is the subject of his work. But Faustina has been taken from him, and as a result he has lost all his enthusiasm, inspiration, and intelligence. He asks Venus to return these gifts to him by giving back Faustina, the source of his "genius." The Dedication mentions the abduction of Faustina as the chief matter of the sequence. Poems 1-3 present this theme in terms of the abduction of Proserpina, mentioned first in the allusion to Claudian's poem: "Raptoris stygii nee memorantur equi." In the second poem, the abduction of Faustina is introduced by direct comparison with the abduction of Proserpina: "Qualis tartareo quondam Proserpina curru." The husband is imphcitly compared to Pluto, and Faustina's mother is compared to Ceres searching for her missing daughter. Du Bellay compares his own rage to that of a bacchant, declaring his readiness to break down the door to rescue Faustina even if he has to endure the chains of Pirithous, who did attempt to rescue Proserpina but failed. Poem 3 describes how the lover became enamored of Faustina in the traditional fashion: Cupid fired an arrow as the lover first beheld Faustina. The poet uses the image of Ceres to describe how four springtimes had passed since he came to Rome but before he fell in love: "Et jam quarta Ceres capiti nova

ELLEN

GINSBERG

serta parabat."

his mistress

485

The chains bound:

of Pirithous are transformed into those

"tradit

formosam

in vincla puellam."

by which

He confesses

that

she has been in his arms three or four times before the abduction: prius ilia tamen nobis erepta fuit, quam Venit in amplexus terque quaterque meos.

Haud

No wonder that Venus

continues to burn

him and Cupid anchors

love in his

breast.

In poem 4, the chains are those of the door which refuses to open to him despite his threats and tears, while in poem 6 the chains become those by

which Vulcan trapped Mars and Venus. The

lover would like to be in the position of Mars. The chains now have positive associations as a means of wishfulfillment. In poem 5, the lover laments his inability to see Faustina, blames

the Gods for her absence, and promises to remember her face and words forever. Even the Gods cannot take this memory from him. Poems 6 and 7 are an attack on the husband. As Vulcan, he should have caught Venus and Mars together and exhibited them to Rome. Only thus could he have been a true Vulcan. Poem 7 condemns the husband, though not for having abducted Faustina and locked her up. He has not kept such a charming wife for himself but forced her into another's bed:

Hoc inquam

Damnamus

est

saevum quod

te facit,

improbe, quodque

nostris, impie, versiculis.

Abandoning his futile threats to the door and insults to the husband, the lover turns to Faustina, and his imagination leaps into the convent with her. Poems 8-1 1 are based on an opposition between sacred and profane love. First the lover describes Faustina surrounded by the Graces, Love, and Venus, who i.e. chaste, things. Poem 9 reveals the desire of the poet to be in the convent with Faustina, where disguised as a nun by day, he would be metamorphosed into a lover by night, as Jupiter transformed himself into the chaste Diana to woo Calisto. In poem 10, the lover suggests that the perpetual fires of the sanctuary of Vesta are preserved in the fires of love with which the sacred virgins burn. The lover hopes that Faustina's love will also be perpetuated. In poem 1 1 the lover addresses himself to the priest, the doorman guarding Faustina, threatening and insulting him as he had the door and the husband. Cerberus and the other monsters of Hell relented under the spell of Orpheus and his song, but the priest remains deaf and disdains the lover's supplications. This poem ends in typical epigrammatic fashion with a conceit. How can the priest hope that his tears will move the Gods, when he himself is insensitive to human suffering? Poem 12 returns to the theme of Faustina's beauty and the lover's suffering when she was taken from him. Faustina is endowed with Venus's charms. Love's arrows. Mercury's eloquence (reminiscences of poem 8). She is his light, his hope, his life, and his heart. Therefore the jealous husband who abducted her has stolen his eyes, his senses, his mind and will, so that the lover is now entirely alienated from himself. The rather heavy repetition of parallel charms,

are being initiated into holy,

epithets,

and parts of the poet

similar to the technique of "vers rapportés."

THE AMORES OF JOACHIM DU BELLAY

486

Poems 13 and 14 deal with Faustina's name. The name of Pandora would have suited her better, says the lover, for she was the recipient of the gifts of all the Gods (as in the previous poem) and the source of good and evil, but since she is gone, all hope is taken from him. Poem 14 however, says that the name of Colomba would be more suitable: her white breasts, her games, her sighs, her long kisses are like those of doves. Who but Jupiter himself could have sent an abductor to carry her off? No, it was a cruel vulture. How can doves be sacred to Venus when such a delightful dove is dying? As in poem 13, du Bellay turns a metaphor upside down to produce a conceit. Poems 15-19 are united by military imagery as the lover addresses himself to the attempt to rescue Faustina. Since she, who embodies the divine power of love, is in prison, only savage Mars and war seduce men. In poem 16 young men, enflamed by Faustina, prepare to join the lover in fighting against her barbarous husband. Faustina is more worthy than Helen of being rescued after ten years of war. Poem 17 pictures in more detail the abduction and refers to poem 2 with its similar theme. Now du Bellay uses Virgil's description of Cassandra being carried off by Ajax, with Coroebus attempting to come to her rescue. The lover would have done what Coroebus did even at the risk of being killed. This section concludes with a poem contrasting the French soldiers going off to free Naples, with himself, soldier of Venus, trying to free '^

his mistress.

Poem 19, the longest of all the poems, and the only one in the Sapphic stanza form, resumes all the themes presented thus far. It is addressed to a Polydorus, apparently a friend of du Bellay's in Rome. Du Bellay describes his illness, which may be at once real and metaphorical, but which is growing worse thanks to Venus and Cupid who have wounded him. He burns with love for the imprisoned Faustina. There follows a description of Faustina— black eyes and hair, rosy cheeks and lips, white forehead, breasts sculpted by Cupid — and of the joys they have known together. She is accompanied by Pleasure, Grace, Cupid, Venus, as in poems 8 and 12. Her absence is the sickness which torments him. She must be won back, even if it takes ten years (another allusion to Helen and the Trojan war) This poem marks the culmination of the poet's suffering and longing. It enumerates Faustina's charms and presents his physical suffering in detail. It marks a turning point in the narrative. Poems 20-23 detail the return of Faustina to her lover. No. 20 is a dream poem, in which Cupid in all his regalia appears before the lover. Cupid's pity is aroused by the lover's tears, and he tells the lover to stop weeping since Faustina is going to be returned to him. The doubting lover asks for a token of Cupid's good faith, and received a feather as a symbol of Cupid's promise. Du Bellay has here taken the motifs of the erotic dream and the shooting of the lover by Cupid's arrows (sign of the innamoramento) and turned them inside out. Cupid is friendly and sympathetic to the lover. Instead of shooting him with an arrow, Cupid presents a feather and denies that he is responsible for the poet's suffering. To underline this irony, the lover is not at all convinced that Cupid's promise is genuine: .

Sed quid ab hoc tandem sperandum pignore Firmatura fidem si mihi penna datur?

certi,

ELLEN

GINSBERG

487

Yet the change in Cupid's behavior prefigures the lover's changing fortunes. Poem 21 offers a vow to Venus: if she returns Faustina to the lover, he will offer the goddess flowers, two doves and a votive tablet. And poem 22 describes the joy of the lover as Faustina is finally returned to him: "Jam mihi reddita est Columba." He abandons sad elegies for tender hendecasyllables and once again catalogues Faustina's charms (now compared to those of Lesbia's sparrow) At the same time he once again threatens those who took her from him, and he also fulfills his vow to Venus. This poem is a patchwork of passages .

from Catullus.^

Poem 23 is a kiss-poem which describes the poet's rapture at Faustina's kisses (imitated from the Basia of Janus Secundus and from the Nugae of Nicolas Bourbon).^ In keeping with the light-hearted erotic tone of this poem, the lover asks Faustina for the greatest favor, to which kisses are only a prelude, suggesting that she has not yet granted them. This contradicts previous descriptions in poems 3 and 19. This may well be a case where the biographical veraci-

means nothing, as his willingness to allow a contradiction to him to explore different kinds of poetic possibilities. Thanks to Faustina's kisses, the poet is become like a God, sitting at the table of Jupiter. ty of the poet

stand permits

is, there is the palace of the Gods. A kind of transfiguration or apotheosis takes place. The last poem in the sequence firmly links du Bellay and his love to their predecessors. It repeats the theme of friendship by being addressed again to

Wherever Faustina

Gordes, underlining his sympathy for the loving couple. Moreover, it reaffirms the value of love poetry as a means to immortality. Thus, love, literature, and friendship are linked as at the beginning. Poems 23 and 24 promise a double immortality to the couple: in this life the lover and his mistress are like Gods, while afterwards their memory will live eternally, thanks to his poetry.

This sequence of poems gains its effectiveness because of its unity of theme and image and also because of the personality of the poet-lover, the true subject of his work. The lover, as in the Roman and Petrarchan traditions, plays a generally passive role. He suffers, he weeps, he threatens, he imagines, he hopes, but he does not act. He is not successful in freeing his mistress, either as Orpheus the singer, Pirithous, Coroebus, one of the Greeks who rescued Helen, or as himself. Much as he would like to be Mars or Jupiter, in the end it is only through the intervention of Venus and Cupid that Faustina is returned to him. Indeed, it is Venus the all-powerful rather than Faustina who dominates the lover's universe as she reigns over the poet's world. She is addressed and invoked more often than Faustina. She is present while Faustina is absent. If du Bellay rejects epic poetry at the beginning, it is so that he may incorporate himself all the better into the lists of singers of Venus at the end. It is ultimately as a poet rather than as a lover that du Bellay is successful.

The

last

poem

of the sequence points to possible sources of the cycle,

Bellay's predecessors.

They

are Catullus, TibuUus, Ovid, Propertius, Gallus, Pontano, Sannazaro, Marullus, Petrarch, Beza, Macrin, Ronsard, Tyard, Baïf,

and du Bellay himself. Du Bellay lists the four Roman elegiac poets, three Neo-Latins of Italian origin (although Marullus had originally come from

488

THE AMORES OF JOACHIM DU BELLAY two Neo-Latin poets

French

lar poets in French, including himself.

parallel list of the mistresses of

Greece), Petrarch,

origin,

and four vernacu-

these poets is added. One is tempted to assert that du Bellay is listing his sources as an aid to future critics. Yet, even the brief review of the poems undertaken here reveals that du Bellay left out several important names, whose influence on him is not to be doubted, notably that of Janus Secundus, whose Basia surely are a source of at least one poem, and of Naugerius, whose Lusus may be compared to poems 21 and 22. Other possible sources may come to mind, particularly Neo-Latin ones, including those poets whom du Bellay himself frequented in Rome— a fruitful topic for further research. ^° Although it may be impossible to find specific sources for all of the poems, since these themes and images had become clichés, still certain distinctions

can be made.

The limited extant criticism of the Amoies often speaks of the passion, tenderness, and sincerity of these poems when compared to du Bellay's Olive or the XIII Sonnetz de Ihonneste amoui. This effect is due partly to the concentration of the sequence around the single episode of the abduction, and partly to the nature of du Bellay's sources, rather than to any intrinsic difference in intensity of feeling. The Amores certainly reflect a literary tradition as much as a personal and historic reality. Part of the difference lies in the nature of the specific literary tradition from which du Bellay borrowed. Faustina is much closer to the Lesbia, Delia, or Coriima of Catullus, Tibullus, and Ovid than to the Laura, Cassandra, Pasithée, or Olive of Petrarch, Ronsard, Tyard, and du Bellay. The heritage of the Latin erotic poets plays a large role in the formation of du Bellay's Amores. This more "realistic" vision (as opposed to the idealistic vision which Petrarch inherited from the amoui courtois tradition), is seen in most of the poems. The liaison between Faustina and her lover is clearly adulterous. Several times the lover mentions the love games he and Faustina played in bed. His suffering is caused by his separation from the lady, due to her husband's vigilance and not to her own virtue. Her return to him is celebrated in the triumphal "Voti Solutio" where he gives up "tristes eligi" for "moUiculi versus," and in the "Basia," where the physical effects of Faustina's kisses are described: they are kisses "in the Italian style," i.e. using tongues as well as lips. Other Roman themes include the prayer to the door and the doorman, the imprecation against the jealous husband, the comparison of the lover to a soldier, the frequent references to Cupid and his arrows, the vow to Venus and the ex-voto dedicated when the prayer is granted. All these are Roman (often originally borrowed from Greek erotic poetry) rather than Petrarchan. The Roman poet whose influence can most directly be documented is Catullus. As Mary Morrison has shown, ^^ du Bellay uses lines, half-lines, and expressions borrowed directly from Catullus, although he sometimes transfers them to other situations. There is a considerable amount of imitation of Catullus in these poems, but it is contamination rather than sustained imitation. Nor does du Bellay imitate the structure of Catullus's collection of poems, ^^ or construct his love affair along the same lines as Catullus— or any of the other Roman poets for that matter. From Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid,

ELLEN

GINSBERG

489

he borrows situations rather than

specific verses.

Bellay consciously tries to give a Roman, pagan flavor to his work by imitating themes, situations, and verses from Roman poets. He also seeks consciously to avoid the time-worn clichés of Petrarchism and thus follows the program he laid out for himself in "Contre les Petrarquistes" (entitled "A une Dame" in its first appearance in 1553^^), with its repudiation of Petrarchism and its pronouncements in favor of physical love. In his satire, du Bel-

lay proclaims his desire for sincerity ("Je veux d'Amour franchement deviser") and attacks those who only feign love through the use of exaggerated periphrases, hyperboles, métaphores, antitheses, by which they flatter the lady and disguise their own feelings. Space does not permit enumeration of the marvelous list of clichés which du Bellay directs at the Petrarchans (not excluding himself); what he is chiefly attacking is the exaggerated rhetoric by which such poets describe their mistresses and their own suffering. This rhetoric does not ring true. One must be more simple and direct. It is not a question of sincerity but of expression. In the Amoies du Bellay abandons the elevated Petrarchan manner for a simpler, more natural style, which immediately appears to be more sincere. By eliminating most of the clichés of the

Petrarchan repertoire (the paradoxes, the antitheses, the contradictions, the nature imagery, the periphrases and hyperboles), by limiting his mythological allusions to those which help translate his theme, by condensing the number of themes attached to the one central episode, du Bellay creates an effect of simplicity and intensity. Although the role of imitation is still very significant in the Amoies, the models are different from those of du Bellay's earlier love poetry. Yet the poetic preoccupations and interests of du Bellay are similar in Latin to what they are in French. The two sets of works do not contradict each other, but they show how the poet has evolved from his imitation of an elevated Petrarchan or neo-Petrarchan style to a simpler, more direct, and apparently more sincere and personal poetry in the Amoies as well as in the Regiets and the feux nistiques.

The Catholic University

America

Notes 1. For early criticism see Henri Chamard, Joachim du Bellay, 1522-1560 (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1969), pp. 359-360. For more recent criticism see Emile fa*guet, Seizième siècle. Etudes littéiaiies (Paris: Société française d'imprimerie et de librairie, 1898), pp. 316-320; Chamard, pp. 360-361; Guido Saba, La Poesia di

Joachim du Bellay (Massina-Firenze: Casa Editrice G. d'Anna, 1962), pp. 104-105 and Verdun L. Saulnier, Du Bellay (Paris: Hatier, 1968), pp. 109-113, imei alios. 1. fa*guet, p. 316. See Charles Moulié, "Joachim du Bellay à Rome: Les Amours de Faustine," Revue Ciitique des Idées et des Livies, XXDC, No. 168 (1920), 477-79 and Maurice Rat, "La Faustine de Joachim du Bellay," Revue des Deux Mondes,

THE AMORES OF JOACfflM DU BELLAY

490

373-74 for a discussion of the question. See Adrien Blanchet, "Une Faustine à Rome au milieu du XVIe siècle," Aréthuse, 2e année, 2 avril 1925, pp. 41-49, and Gladys Dickinson, Du Bellay in Rome (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960), p. 73, note 6. 4. Cf. Dickinson, p. 7, and H. W. Lawton, Introd., Poems, by Joachim du Bellay (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), pp. xix-xx. 5. On Gordes see du Bellay, Oeuvres poétiques, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris: Cornély et Cie., 1910), H, 93. 6. Ail quotations from the Amoies come from Poésies françaises et latines de Joachim du Bellay, éd. E. Courbet (Paris: Garnier, 1918), I, 484-99, and have been checked against the original edition: Joachimi Bellaii Andini Poematum Librì Quatuoi (Paris: Fédéric Morel, 1558). 7. Cf. Virgil, Aeneid, E, 402-426. 8. See Mary Morrison, "Catullus and the Poetry of the Renaissance in France," BHR, XXV (1963), pp. 50-51. 9. See V. L. Saulnier's edition of Du Bellay's feux rustiques (Lille: Giard; Geneva: Droz, 1947), p. xxxii. 10. Chamard {foacbim du Bellay, 1522-1560, pp. 342-46) mentions some of the poets and humanists whom he frequented: Annibale Caro, Basilio Zanchi, Lorenzo Gambara, Lelio Capilupi, inter alios. 11. Morrison, pp. 50-52. 12. Morrison does suggest (p. 50) that the poems of Catullus offered a model for the Poemata as a whole, since they are also a mixed collection of chiefly occaJuillet-Août 1967, pp. 3.

sional poems. 13. See

Bellay,

Oeuvres poétiques,

ed.

Chamard,

IV,

205-215 and V, 69-77.

La théorie du ridicule chez Madius et le classicisme néerlandais A.

Haimsen

Traduction de G. Bostoen

1669 une dizaine de poètes d'Amsterdam formèrent une société ayant comme devise 'Nil Volentibus Arduum'; quelques uns d'entre eux avaient déjà fait leurs preuves comme auteurs de pièces de théâtre ou d'un autre genre de travail littéraire. Les membres les plus importants étaient Andries Pels et Lodewyk Meyer; ce dernier était un ami et d'art

confident de Spinoza.^

Meyer avait traduit en néerlandais La conquête du toison d'oi de Corneille sous le titre Het ghulde vlies (1667) et, dans la préface de celle-ci, il fut le premier à introduire aux Pays-Bas certains points des conceptions littéraires formulées par Corneille dans ses trois Discours Bien qu'avant ce temps-là Corneille fût déjà connu en Hollande par ses pièces de théâtre {Le Cid avait déjà été traduit en 1641 par Johan van Heemskerck), l'intérêt qu'on témoignait en Hollande pour les théories du classicisme français était encore presque inexistant. Le seul auteur ayant pris connaissance de la doctrine classique fut Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679), le dramaturge le plus important des lettres néerlandaises; dans ses pièces ultérieures Vondel prit comme modèle les tragiciens grecs en utilisant à ce propos la critique littéraire de la tragédie formulée par quelques auteurs français entre autres Jules de la Mesnardière. Vondel cite le nom de celui-ci dans la préface de sa pièce feptba (1659) pêle-mêle avec les noms d'Aristote, d'Horace, de Robortello, de Madius (Maggi), de Vossius et .

d'autres encore.

Les théories des professeurs néerlandais Heinsius et Vossius qui foumèrent à Vondel successivement sa base et qui jouaient également un rôle important dans la formation de la doctrine classique en France ne trouvaient ce-

pendant presqu'aucun écho auprès des autres auteurs néerlandais; dans la préface de sa tragédie Medea (1667) le poète très admiré Jan Vos put même s'opposer carrément à l'autorité d'Horace. En revanche les théories de J. C. Scaliger dont les Poetices libri septem sont cités favorablement jusqu'au bout du dix-septième siècle, avaient plus de poids. Ses théories concernant la tra-

492

LA THEORIE

RIDICULE

gédie trouvent leur expression dans l'oeuvre de P. C. Hooft par exemple dont la pièce Baeto (1617) présente des réminiscences de Médée de Sénèque: l'horreur, les machines et les invraisemblances jouent un rôle prépondérant dans le spectacle. Ce n'est qu'avec l'apparition de la société d'art 'Nil Volentibus Arduum' qu'un courant qui se réclame du classicisme français est né dans la littérature néerlandaise: sous l'autorité suprême de Corneille on s'applique maintenant aux unités, à la vraisemblance et à une conception éthique de la littérature.^

membres de la Société d'art marquèrent leur début par une polémique. traduisaient quelques pièces de théâtre qui, très peu avant, avaient aussi été traduites par d'autres; il s'agissait d'Agiippa (1669) d'après Quinault, Het

Les Ils

spoockend weeuwtje d'après L'esprit folet de Le Mètel d'Ouville et De gelyke tweelingen (Les jumeaux identiques) d'après les Menaechmi de Plante. Ils apportaient des corrections non seulement par rapport aux traductions néerlandaises antérieures, mais aussi par rapport aux textes originaux.

A ces traductions qui parfois s'éloignaient tant des originaux qu'elles puissent passer presque pour leurs propres créations, ils ajoutèrent des préfaces programmatiques. Dans celles-ci ils expliquèrent les théories du classicisme français concernant le théâtre et jugèrent sévèrement des traductions mauvaises dues à leurs adversaires. Ces traductions et ces préfaces furent rédigées en partie lors des séances que la Société d'art tenait chaque semaine, suivant en cela l'exemple de l'Académie Française. Un autre part de ces réunions était réservé à la rédaction d'un manuel de dramaturgie, d'une grammaire et d'une logique. Trois fragments exceptés de la grammaire, le manuel de dramaturgie était probablement le seul à être imprimé; il parut en 1765, donc presqu'un siècle plus tard, et il fut imprimé pour l'éditeur de Leyde C. van Hoogeveen sous le titre Naauwkeuhg onderwys in de tooneel-poëzy en eenige andere deelen der kunst (Enseignement précis dans la poésie du théâtre et dans quelques autres genres de l'art). Le livre compte trente-neuf chapitres traitant chacun un certain point de la théorie littéraire. Cette théorie est un mélange de théories existantes. Parfois la matière est très Conventionelle, comme par exemple quand il est question du problème préliminaire d'être poète par nature ou bien par l'art. La résolution de ce problème est une constante de la théorie littéraire, mais dans le cadre de cette matière commune on entame d'autres questions moins connues. On rejette par exemple la conception aristotélicienne selon laquelle la poésie est liée exclusivement à l'imaginaire: de cette façon Lucain est accueilli dans la corporation des poètes. Comme sources de leurs conceptions les rédacteurs du Naauwkeurig onderwys citent Aristote, Horace, Scaliger, Vossius, D'Aubignac et surtout Corneille. En outre il nous est possible d'indiquer d'autres sources et cela surtout pour les chapitres traitant des passions que provoque le théâtre auprès des spectateurs. Il faut penser ici entre autres à Spinoza et à Descartes. Dans

HARMSEN

ce qui suit

493

me bornerai

notamment où

à discuter un seul des trente-neuf chapitres, celui sont traitées les passions provoquées par la comédie.

L'auteur de ce chapitre, Reinier van Diephout, commence en remarquant que la plupart de ces passions sont provoquées aussi dans la tragédie: "Les passions générales," dit-il, "sont celles qui sont provoquées dans tous les genres du drame, comme l'étonnement, la curiosité, le désir et la satisfaction."^ Pour la discussion de ces passions il nous renvoie aux chapitres concernant la tragédie. Pour ce qui est des passions spécifiques de la comédie il n'en voit qu'une seule: la joie. "La joie," nous dit Van Diephout, "est une passion gaie, qui est provoquée par quelque chose de ridicule.'"* Ainsi se termine chez lui la discussion sur la joie: pour le reste il ne parle que du ridicule. Les théoriciens de la littérature ne pouvaient pas consulter Aristote à ce sujet. Celui-ci, dans sa Rhétorique,^ se réfère à sa Poétique pour l'explication du ridicule et pour les diverses sortes de ridicule, mais cette partie de la Poétique a été perdue. Cependant depuis l'Antiquité déjà les théoriciens de la littérature ont rédigé une théorie de la comédie en se référant à la théorie aristotélicienne de la tragédie. Dans la Renaissance également quelques auteurs de poétiques se sont efforcés d'obtenir une théorie complète à partir des remarques faites par Aristote au sujet de la comédie: Madius (Maggi), Mintumo, Riccobon et Robortello ne sont que quelques exemples du réservoir particulièrement riche où put puiser Van Diephout.^ Et à côté de la poétique la rhétorique elle-aussi (celle d'Aristote lui-même en tête, puis celle de Cicéron et de Quintilien et enfin celle de la Renaissance) fut une source assez riche de théories au sujet des passions qui concernent la comédie.

Van Diephout commence en donnant une définition du ridicule; ensuite illustre cette définition en donnant nombre d'exemples. Sa définition est la suivante: "Le ridicule est une erreur (dwaling) sans douleur ni dommage, ou un défaut (misstal); et cette erreur ou ce défaut se trouvent dans la peril

sonne ou dans

raison

ou dans

les

moeurs ou dans

l'acte."''

Surtout pour

préciser la division en erreur et défaut l'on se sent sollicité de rechercher la source de la description du ridicule chez Van Diephout. Il faut donc trouver qui, avant Van Diephout, ait caractérisé le ridicule comme étant sans douleur ni dommage et qui le classait en formes de ridicule qui concernent la personne, la raison, les moeurs et l'acte. Aussi nous faut-il trouver une bipartition qui pourrait correspondre au classem*nt de Van Diephout des

un auteur

formes du ridicule en erreurs et défauts. Les principaux exemples que donne Van Diephout sont les suivants: une erreur dans la personne est ce qui se passe quand on prend une certaine personne pour une autre; une défaut est ici une difformité. Une erreur dans la raison est par exemple un calembour, une impossibilité ou un malentendu, et éventuellement de l'ironie. Il ne donne aucun exemple d'un défaut dans la raison, ni aucun exemple d'une erreur dans les moeurs non plus. Un défaut dans les moeurs contient du langage séditieux et des blasphèmes; Van Diephout

LA THEORIE

494

RIDICULE

ne nous donne pas d'exemples de ceux-ci, "puisqu'ils ne conviennent guère à une comédie qui soit bonne et convenable."^ La laesio de la comoedia vêtus est également rejetée ailleurs dans le Naauwkeung onderwys. Tomber et trébucher sont des exemples d'une erreur dans l'acte; agir malhonnêtement en est un d'un défaut. Dans sa Poétique Aristote donne du ridicule la périphrase suivante (je cite d'après la traduction latine d'Antoine Riccobon dont se servaient les membres de 'Nil Volentibus Arduum'): "Et enim ridiculum est erratum quoddam et turpitudo sine dolore, et non habens vim interimendi, ut statim ridicula facies, turpisque ac distorta sine dolore."^ A erratum et turpitudo pourraient correspondre T'erreur' et le 'défaut' de Van Diephout; à sine dolore et non habens vim interimendi sa caractérisation de 'sans douleur ni dommage.' Dans les sources du seizième et dix-septième siècles citées par les membres de 'Nil Volentibus Arduum' ces notions ne sont pas élaborées. Les plus importantes de ces sources sont formées par Heinsius, Vossius et Corneille. ^° Vossius prescrit dans ses Poeticamm institutionum libri très que les mores d'une comédie doivent être "solutiores, et jocis, ac salibus conditi. "^^ Mais il ne dit plus rien du ridicule. Corneille montre même un dégoût pour le ridicule, comme celui-ci est conçue par Van Diephout. Quand en 1660 il écrit un Examen pour Mélite, sa première comédie, il soutient les honnêtes gens contre les personnages ridicules: "On n'avait jamais vu jusque-là," dit-il, "que la comédie fît rire sans personnages ridicules, tels que les valets bouffons, les parasites, les capitans, les docteurs, etc. Celle-ci faisait son effet par l'humeur enjouée de gens d'une condition au-dessus de ceux qu'on voit dans les comédies de Plante et de Terence, qui n'étaient que des marchands. "^^ Non seulement les auteurs français tiennent-ils en piètre estime le ridicule, ils ne le mentionnent presque pas. Raymond Lebègue fait là-dessus la remarque suivante dans son livre Le théâtre comique en France: "Mais nos auteurs de préfaces et de traités n'ont pas pris la peine de définir le risible et de préciser les moyens de provoquer le rire."^"^

Bien

une vaste littérature française de farces la valeur littéraire donc tenue en piètre estime par les auteurs officiels de la doc-

qu'il existe

ridicule est

trine classique.

Ce dédain paraît

sius par exemple, dont

très clairement

dans l'oeuvre de Daniel Hein-

tragoediae constitutione et In Quinti Horatii Placci opera omnia animadversiones et notae constituent la base théorique de beaucoup de conceptions sur la littérature en vogue dans le dix-septième

Dans le premier ouvrage Heinsius, en discutant les passions, part de certaines conceptions platoniciennes-stoïciennes: "Nihil autem magis esse a bono viro alienum, quam affectibus duci, et Plato, et post eum Stoici docuerunt."^^ Alors il invoque surtout le passage dans la République où Platon blâme les poètes et particulièrement Homère parce qu'ils représentent les héros siècle.^*

et les

cela

dieux

effet

commes

des êtres efféminées et ridicules et qu'ils exercent par démoralisant sur le public. Selon Heinsius le rire est la passion

HARMSEN

495

moins soumise au contrôle de la raison. Il invoque pour cela les Pères de d'âme du Christ: "Quemadmodum Ecclesiae doctores, servatorem nostrum non risisse unquam, sed imprimis foedam illam gaudii exuberationem fugisse notant. "^^ Dans le même ordre d'idées Heinsius dit explicitement que les Pères de l'Eglise répudient donc la comédie: "Quare et comoediam plebi relinquebant."^'' Son propre point de vue cependant est moins sévère: il ne répudie pas toute forme de comédie, mais seulement celle qui contient des éléments ridicules, c'est à dire la comoedia vêtus et celle d'Aristophane et de Plante; en revanche il admire profondément Terence et Ménandre pour leurs tableaux de moeurs si pleins d'esprit. Dans le second ouvrage, les Animadveisiones et notae, Heinsius s'exprime sans aucune ambiguïté au sujet du ridicule: "Nec movere risum, sane constituit Comoediam, sed plebis aucupium est, et abusus."^^ Les membres de la

l'Eglise décrivant l'état

Volentibus Arduiun' se défendent contre l'argument que les Pères de l'Eglise la comédie en démontrant qu'il s'agit ici d'une période temporaire d'abus. Ils ne partageaient que très partiellement d'aversion de Heinsius pour Plaute, puisqu'ils firent une adaption comique, purifiée il est vrai mais non pudique, des Menaechmi et que leur pièce De verwaande HoUandsche Fianscbman (Le Hollandais présomptueux francisé) était une adaption libre du Miles Glorìosus.^^ Il faut signaler ici que le différence la plus frappante entre Heinsius et les membres de 'Nil Volentibus Arduum' consiste dans ceci: Heinsius répudie la provocation de rire tandis que les membres de Nil la 'Nil

condamnent

recommendent.

Comme je l'ai remarqué déjà antérieurement l'on traite du ridicule dans la doctrine des affections; cette doctrine appartient à la rhétorique traditionelle. Ainsi faite par Van Diephout, selon laquelle le ridicule peut être donné personne, la raison, les moeurs et l'acte, peut être ramenée en partie à une distinction faite par Aristote dans sa Rhétorique. Aristote distingue à cet endroit les choses ridicules en hommes, mots et gestes. ^° Alors la catégorie des moeurs seulement serait la part apportée par Van Diephout; comme nous avons constaté déjà celui-ci suit à nouveau là Poétique d'Aristote en utilisant les termes "une erreur ou un défaut sans douleur ni dommage." Il est aussi possible que des thèses soient empruntées à la rhétorique latine comme le montre la remarque de Van Diephout que le ridicule serait la cause de la joie. En un certain sens celle-là correspond à l'observation faite par Quintilien au début de son exposé sur le ridicule: "(...) illos tristes solvit adfectus et animum ab intentione rerum frequenter avertit, et aliquando etiam reficit et a satietate vel a fatigatione rénovât. "^^ Plus clairement toutefois apparaissent les différences entre la conception de Van Diephout et celle de Cicéron et de Quintilien: car dans la comédie le dramaturge crée un ou plusieurs personnages comiques qui sans aucime objection, peuvent donner au public l'envie de rire. Non seulement dans la pratique de la rhétorique est-il exclu que l'orateur ou le parti défendu par lui pro-

remarque

dans

LA THEORIE

49^

RIDICULE

rire, mais aussi il est tout à fait inadmissible que le parti adverse en étant rendu ridicule; ainsi Quintilien donne un exemple comment le juge peut être négativement influencé par l'humour aux frais de quelqu'un d'autre. ^^ Il y a là à observer une différence identique dans les livres écrits en Italie au seizième siècle et destinés à l'étiquette de la cour. Un exemple connu est celui de J. J. Pontanus qui dans son livre De sermone (1499) discute les genera iocandi et qui condamne à ce sujet la grossièrité {msticitas] tandis qu'u loue libeialitas et suavitasP La même chose vaut également pour le traité Galateo de Giovanni della Casa (1559), qui a été traduit plus tard par les membres de 'Nil Volentibus Arduum,' et qui n'a pas eu d'influence apparante sur la théorie du ridicule dans le Naauwkeurig ondeiwys quand même.^'^ Les indications données dans Galateo au sujet de la conversation comique reflètent une atmosphère de courtoisie tout à fait différente de celle du théâtre comique.

voquerait le soit offensé

veux rappeler les traités écrits sur le ridicule par les humanistes du seizième siècle, Vincentius Madius (ou Maggi) et Antoine Riccobon. Dans son livre De lidiculis, paru en 1550, Madius rejoint Aristote autant que possible. En ce qui concerne la comédie il soulève deux points: celui de la matière et celui du ridicule: "primum, quomodo fabula recte connectere, ac solvere oporteat; secundum ridicula ipsa, quibus comoedia debet aspergi, voluptatem ut conciliet."^^ Madius appelle donc le ridicule une source de volupté tout comme Van Diephout l'appelle la cause de la joie. Quant à la question du nœud et du dénouement, dit encore Madius, la discussion Pour

finir je

italiens

d' Aristote

au sujet de

peut servir de

conducteur. chez Cicéron, Quintilien et et d'autres qu'on trouve plus de détails à son sujet. Les discussions de ceux-ci montrent encore des lacunes sur quelques points. Dans la suite de sa discussion Madius donne la description d'un défaut sans douleur, une turpitudo sine dolore, comme source du ridicule. Madius s'en prend à Cicéron, ne parlant que d'une turpitudo tout court, pour avoir omis le sine dolore aristotélicien. Comme nous avons constaté Van Diephout se range également sur ce point-ci du côté d'Aristote. Ensuite Madius fait la distinction entre trois sortes de turpitudines (défauts), qui peuvent provoquer le rire: le corps, l'âme et les circonstances.^'^ Il y a peutêtre un rapport entre le défaut dans les mœurs de Van Diephout et la turpitudo animi de Madius. Cependant il est plus probable qu'il faut entrevoir ici l'influence générale exercée par l'objectif émotionnel et éthique vers lequel tendait la doctrine classique se reflétant dans la littérature; Van Diephout n'aurait alors que profité de l'occasion pour discuter les mœurs dans le con-

texte

la tragédie

mentionne (au temps de Madius) Pontanus

n'est qu'en passant qu'Aristote

Ceci

fil

le ridicule; c'est

ridicule.

faut constater toutefois une ressemblance frappante autant entre dont Madius et Van Diephout traitent du ridicule qu'entre les exemples qu'ils donnent. Van Diephout appelle l'erreur dans la raison l'imdit

les façons

HARMSEN

497

il distingue en deux catégories, à savoir: avec prescience insciemment. Comme exemple de la première catégorie il donne des 'rodomontades' (des vantardises). Madius lui-aussi fait une distinction pareille: il distingue Ì' ignoratio, exemple de la animi turpitudo, en deux catégories: "Nam aut de rebus est abditis in natura: et huius ignorationis causa nullum ridiculum suscitatur, nisi apud eos fortasse, qui haec se scire profitentur: aut de iis, quae communiter ab aliis sciimtur, et quae natura sua sunt evidentes."^^ La même chose vaut pour l'Ars comica in Aristotele de Riccobon, un livre paru in 1587 en même temps que la traduction faite par le même auteur de la Poétique et qui contient quelques éléments et exemples qui sont comparables à ceux de Van Diephout.^^

possibilité, laquelle et

La conception selon laquelle

le classicisme

Néerlandais présente une copie

en France paraît donc être inexacte au moins en ce qui concerne le point que nous venons de discuter. Dans le Naauwkeurig onderwys la société d'art 'Nil Volentibus Arduum,' pour ce qui est des passions provoquées dans la comédie, se prononce dans im sens positif sur le point du ridicule; ce point de vue diffère donc de celui d'Heinsius et aussi de celui

fidèle de la doctrine classique

la doctrine classique française. Reinier Van Diephout, l'auteur du chapitre mentioimé, se base surtout sur Aristote et sur la doctrine des émotions de la rhétorique classique pour sa discussion du ridicule. Ses conceptions ressemblent en grande partie à celles

de Madius et de Riccobon, deux humanistes italiens, qui, voulant compléter au seizième siècle la théorie littéraire d'Aristote, ont rédigé à ce propos une théorie de la comédie ayant pour base la théorie aristotélicienne de la tragédie ainsi que la doctrine rhétorique du ridicule. Il n'est pas facile de déterminer si Van Diephout dépend directement de Madius et de Riccobon. En revanche il est très probable que cela fût le fait autant par la façon dont il traite le ridicule que par les exemples qu'il donne. Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden

Notes 1. Sur 'Nil Volentibus Arduum': A. J. Kronenberg, Het kunstgenootschap Nil Volentibus Aiduum (Deventer, 1875); M. A. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, A. Pels, Q. Hoiatius Flaccus Dichtkunst (Assen, 1973); Idem, A. Pels, Gebruik en misbruik des tooneels (Culemborg, 1978). Nil Volentibus Arduum. Documenten en brennen. Een uitgave van Balthazar Huydecopers aantekeningen uit de originele notulen van het genootschap, voorzien van een inleiding, commentaar en lijst van N. V. A.-drukken door B. P. M.

Dongelmans

(Utrecht).

LA THEORIE

498

RIDICULE

L'influence de Sénèque sur le théâtre néerlandais a été discuté par J. A. Worp, Seneca's tieurspelen op ons tooneel (Amsterdam, 1892); W. A. P. Smit, Van Pascha tot Noah. Culemborg, 1956-1962); W. J. C.Buitendijk, fan Vos, 2.

De invloed van

Toneelwezken (Assen/Amsterdam, 1975). 3. "De Algemeenen zyn, welken in aile Tooneelspelen verwekt worden, gelyk als zyn Verwondering, Nieuwsgierigheid, Verlangen en Vergenoeging." Naauwkeuhg ondeiwys, p. 300. 4. "Verheuging is een blyde Hartstocht, veroorzaakt door iets Belachchelyks." Naauwkeung ondeiwys, p. 300 5. Aristotle, The "ait" of ihetoiic. Ed. J. H. Freese (Cambridge, Mass. /London 1975: The Loeb Classical Library), 1, 11, 29 (1372a); 3, 18, 7 (1419b). 6. V. Madius Brixianus, "De ridiculis." Dans: V. Madius Brixianus et B. Lombardus Veronensis, 2n Aiistotehs hbiuin de poetica communes explicationes: Madii vero in eimdem librum propriae annotationes. Eiusdem de ridiculis: et in Horatii librum de arte poetica interpretatio (Venise, 1550). A. S. Mintumo, Aïs Poetica (Venise, 1559). A.

Mintumo,

L'aite poetica (Venise, 1564).

Antonio Riccoboni, "Ex Aristotele ars comica." Dans: Poetica Aiistotelis ab Antonio Riccobono Latine conversa: eiusdem Riccoboni paraphrasis in poeticam Aristotelis: eiusdem ars comica ex Aristotele (Padua 1587), 139-171. F. Robortellus Utinensis, Paiaphiasis in libium Hoiatii, qui vulgo De aite poetica ad Pisones insciibitui. Eiusdem explicationes de satyra, de epigrammate, de comoedia, de salibus, de elegia (Florence, 1584). 7. "Het Belachchelyke is een onpynlyke en onschadelyke Dwaaling, of een Misstal, en deeze Dwaaling of Misstal wederom in den Persoon, of in de Rede of in de Zeden of in de Daad." Naauwkeung ondeiwys, p. 301 8. "(...) aangezien dat ze zeer weinig in een goed en welgeschikt Blyspel te pas koomen (...)" Naauwkeung ondeiv^s, p. 304. note 6), p. 164; Aristotle, Poetica 5, 2. D. Heinsius, De tiagoediae constitutione libei (Leyden, 1611). D. Heinsius, In Q. Hoiatii Flacci opeia, animadveisiones et notae (Leyden, 1629). G.J. Vossius, Poëticaium libii ties (Amsterdam, 1647). 11. O.C. (voir note 10) 2,24,14. 9. O.C. (voir

10.

12. P. Corneille,

Théâtie complet. Ed. P. Lièvre

1966), p. 88. 13. R. Lebègue, Le théâtie

/ R. Gallois,

Tome

comique en Fiance de Pathehn a Méhte

(Paris,

(Paris, 1972),

p. 101.

14. Voir: E. G. Kern, The influence of Heinsius and Vossius upon Fiench dramatic theoiy (Baltimore 1949); J. H. Meter, De Uteiaiie theoiieën van Daniel Heinsius

(Apeldoom,

etc., 1975).

15.

18.

Animadveisiones et notae, p. 154. J. A. Worp, "Plautus op ons tooneel." In Tijdschiift vooi Nedeiland-

Tiagoediae consitutione, 16. Ibid. p. 27-28. 17. Ibid. p. 28

p. 27.

19. Voir:

sche taal-en letteikunde 8 (1888), p. 81-154. 20. The "ait" of ihetoiic 1, 11, 29 (1372a). 21. Institutio oiatoiia 6, 3,

22. Ibid. 6, 3, 32.

HARMSEN

499

libii sex. Ed. S. Lupi et A. Risicato (Lucca, 1954), J. J. Pontanus, De sermone 88-90. 24. G Della Casa, Galatéus of Welgemanieidheid; Traduit par 'Nil Volentibus

23. p.

Arduum' (Amsterdam, 25. V.

Madius, O.e.

26. Ibid., p. 301-9. 27. Ibid., p. 304. 28. Voir note 6.

1715). (voir

note

6), p.

301.

Two Leiden Neo-Latin Menippean Satires Justus Lipsius'

Somnium

(1581)

and

Petrus Cunaeus' Sardi Venales (1612)* e. L. Heesakkeis

1720 the Leipzig printer Georg Christoph Wintzer published a booklet containing three Latin works, one from Roman antiquity and two from the literature of humanism, more exactly northern humanism as developed in the late sixteenth-century Dutch humanism of the first Dutch university at Leiden. Although belonging to such different times and cultures, each work is published and annotated in a similar way. Apparently, the pub-

i.e. Seneca's i4pocoiocyntosis, Justus Lipsius' SomSaidi vénales, as the pre-eminent specimens of the Latin literary genre of the Menippean Satire: Ties Satyrae Menippeae is the title of the book. Wintzer's publication is the last example of such a combination of Satires,

lisher considered the works,

nium and Petrus Cunaeus'

and the very

last edition of Lipsius'

containing a varying

number

Somnium.

Several other combinations,

of Satires, but always including Lipsius'

Som-

nium and Cunaeus' Saidi vénales, had preceeded it. The most ample collection "of the most elegant Satires," Elegantioies Piaestantium Viiorum Satyrae,^ had appeared at Leiden in 1655, in two volumes, the first of which contained the following works in a quite peculiar order: 1. Lipsius' Somnium-, 2. Cunaeus' Saidi vénales-, 3. the Emperor Julian's Caesaies in the translation by Cunaeus, first published together with the Saidi vénales in 1612; 4. Julian's Caesaies in Greek, together with the Latin translation by C. Cantoclerus; 5. Julian's Misopogon in Greek, together with the Latin translation by Petrus Martinius; nius'

Somnium and

his

Seneca's Apocolocyntosis; 7. Petrus Nanalteium-, 9. Franciscus Bencius' Som-

Somnium

nium. In our opinion, this order, putting the works of Lipsius and Cunaeus at the head of the collection of Menippean Satires which was intended to be representative for the genre, may be considered illustrative of seventeenth-century appreciation of those two works.

CL.

HEESAKKERS

SOI

By the time the

thirty-three year old Lipsius published his small

Somnium

had already earned a high reputation in the Respublica liteiaiia his time. His list of publications by that time included no less than four

in 1581, he of

collections of miscellaneous philological observations covering the greater part

and showing evidence of the stylistic development Ciceronianism towards a more Plautine, archaic Latin. Lipsius' early Ciceronianism is quite understandable in the light of his Jesuit education in Cologne, where he had stayed from 1559 to 1564. This influence may have been undermined by his acquaintance with Marcus Antonius Muretus, whom he met whilst in Rome, 1568-1570, as well as by the style of the authors whose work he was then studying.^ Plautus and Tacitus were, no doubt, the most influential of those writers. Lipsius dedicated his Antiquae Lectiones, 1575, to the work of the former, after he had published, one year before, his first edition of his favorite author Tacitus. Obviously, a satirical work by a critic of Lipsius' calibre would make no little impression on the sixteenth-century world of learning. Lipsius' satire is presented as a Somnium, a dream, in which he finds himself at the Forum in Rome, near the Palatine mountain. He sees a crowd of pale of classical Latin literature of the author's prose

from

strict

way

to the Temple of Apollo. It would appear that a about to take place. Somewhat to his surprise Lipsius notices his friend Dousa amongst the throng and, presently, Dousa becomes his guide and informant. The meeting is to be presided over by Cicero, that year one of the consuls. Cicero introduces the topics to be discussed, the abusive way in which sixteenth-century philologists are treating the classical authors. Cicero's speech is followed by those of Sallust and Ovid in which they also complain of ill treatment, neglect and contempt. However, Varrò, the fourth to speak, defends the utility of philology in the study of classical literature and succeeds in convincing his fellow senators. The Senatusconsultum, the decision of the meeting, is that the philologists should be allowed to continue their activities, although within certain prescribed boundaries involving age-limits and a fitting attitude to the ancient authors' texts and to

figures

making

their

senatorial meeting

their

own contemporary

colleagues.

senators are literators but the proceedings are those of the Roman The result is a comic medley which, in many points, re-evokes real facts of Roman history, such as the Catiline conspiracy. At other times, however, Lipsius presents purely imaginary and even impossible situations. The session is presided over by the Consul Cicero who addresses the Senate just as he did as consul in the year 63 B.C. during the Catiline conspiracy. Much of his speech has been borrowed, more or less literally, from the Catilinarians. His fellow consul is, however, Plautus, the playwright who died almost a century before Cicero was bom. Plautus is unable to participate in the meeting as he is suffering ill treatment by ... the sixteenth-century philologists. And so on.

The

political Senate.

502

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LEIDEN NEO-LATIN MENIPPEAN SATIRES

This very ill treatment of classical Latin literature by the philologists is the true subject of the satire. The principal victims are the speakers at the Senatorial meeting, Cicero, Sallust and Ovid. There are, certainly, other victims, such as Plautus, Lucretius and the later writers of epic. One category of ancient writers, is, nevertheless, not so displeased with the philological tendencies imder discussion. These belong to the group of grammarians and antiquarians, we might be pardoned for calling them the ancient philologists. Varrò is their spokesman and, as last and deciding speaker, it is he who manoeuvres the meeting towards a rather positive Senatusconsultum. The temptation to try and identify at least some of the philologists Lipsius had in mind is very great, the more so as the first person one would automatically connect with the combination Cicero, Lucretius and Plautus in the decades before the Somnium was published is mentioned by name, viz. Dionysius Lambinus. But apart from some unequivocal hints, for instance, the mentioning of a second editor of Lucretius (which was notwithstanding misinterpreted by the commentator of Wintzer's publication, Gottlieb Cortius) we ought to be very careful before suggesting any names, unless we can corroborate them by external evidence such as found in a letter^ written some months after the appearance of the satire and mentioning some scholars who might, indeed, according to Lipsius, feel themselves to be implicated, viz. the Frisian philologist Suffridus Petri who, as the editor of some of Cicero's philosophical works (1568) and as a former professor at Erfurt, may be identified with "nescio quis e Frisiis et Thuringis" (§ 13); secondly, the Venetian printer and scholar Paulus Manutius who, as the editor of several Ciceronian works, may hide behind "Thusco successit Venetus" (ibid.); and finally Petrus Victorius who, as the editor of Cicero's letters (1571) and native of Florence may be indicated by "Thuscus aliquis in me saeuiit" (ibid.). This same letter, however, also attempts to repudiate certain hastily made identifications. The letter states that Suffridus Petri has no more reason to feel offended than Manutius or Victorius or Lipsius himself! What Lipsius criticises are tendencies inherent in philology as practised in the sixteenth century, tendencies towards an overestimation of one's own knowledge of the Latin language, of one's own brightness in making conjectures and emendations at the cost of an appreciation of the textual tradition of the classical authors. All philologists are exposed to this danger but, as the Senatusconsultum suggests, both the yoimg and the very old are particularly susceptible. Therefore, scholars younger than 25 or older than 60 are forbidden to practise philology. In this connection, one is not only rather aware that Victorius, in 1581, was 82 years old, but also that Lipsius published his first philological work in 1569, three years before he had reached the age of discretion laid down by the senatorial decree. To what extent it is possible for an author to be carried away by an overestimation of his own intellect is demonstrated by a few pronouncements quoted from the works of Lambinus, whose clarity does not, indeed, leave . . .

much

to be desired (§ 12). After all, as we have already seen, Lipsius' conclusions on philology are not really very negative.'* In fact, Varro's deliberate, moderate and, on the whole, positive opinion finally prevails over the sad attitude of Sallust, whilst Ovid's

e. L.

HEESAKKERS

5O3

is made ridiculous by his ultimate desertion of Sallust's party. The SenatuscoDsultum is favorable towards philology as long as it avoids pedantry, presumption and altercation. Lipsius' criticism is, therefore, rather mild, almost too mild as he later admits to Plantin, his editor.^ Nevertheless, his booklet inspired vehement reaction, caused mainly by an almost incidental remark on the German laureate poets. In his dream, Lipsius asked Dousa about some poets with laurel wreath and a ring. Dousa explained that poets were no longer appointed by Apollo, but by the German Emperor, who even raised

indignation

them to the peerage. The German Neo-Latin poets were, not

much annoyed by

surprisingly, very

this explanation. In a letter^ dated 29 June 1581

— the

February— Lipsius informed Dousa of the storm of indignation caused by his publication. Attempts were, apparently, made to denoimce the remark as lese-majesty and to have the book prohibited throughout the German Empire, including the Frankfurter Buchmesse.'' Lipsius expressed complete surprise at these reactions to what was intended as rather innocent, playful criticism. Two days later he wrote to a correspondent in Germany that it had not been his intention to criticise the Emperor but, rather, to mock those who strove for such honours without meriting them. In another letter,^ about a year later, he did, however, affirm that many such talentless poets succeeded in their efforts: "Laurigeri multi, distribution of the

work had

started in

pauci Phoebi." In the Preface to the satire Lipsius wrote that the work was to be the first of a triad and that the sequels, entitled Funus and Tnumphus, were almost ready to be printed. Reaction to the Somnium, however, led him to the regrettable decision of abandoning the publication of the sequels.' Thus the work is, in a sense, incomplete. A second, revised edition did appear four years later, but the revision was not very thorough. The author even forgot to revoke his promise of the sequels Funus and Tnumphus in the preface. On the other hand, he did deem the work important enough to be included in his Opeia omnia quae ad Criticam proprie spectant (1585), which should correct "multa in prioribus illis scriptis meis, quae refelli possunt, imo debent."^°

m. As we have already

Somnium was re-edited not only as part under his own supervision, but also as a specimen, indeed the specimen, the primary example of the Neolatin Menippean Satire. It was imitated by Lipsius' immediate successor in Louvain, Erycius Puteanus, albeit with characteristics more Petronian than Senecan (1608). It has also had its imitations in Leiden, the place where it was written. The first of them was Daniel Heinsius' Hercules tuam fidem (1608), defending Lipsius' Leiden successor Josephus Scaliger against the attacks of Caspar Scioppius. This work differed, however, from Lipsius' Somnium in its vehemence and personal polemic character. It was more an invective and has never formed part of any collection of Menippean Satires. ^^ Four years later, in 1612, another Menippean Satire appeared in Leiden, one seen, Lipsius'

of his philological works, edited

TWO

504

LEIDEN NEO-LATIN MENIPPEAN SATIRES

which has ever since been found side by side with Lipsius' Somnium because it closely resembles it. The work in question is Petrus Cunaeus' Sardi vénales. Although like Lipsius — and no doubt under his influence — imitating Seneca, Cunaeus' work is much longer and has a much more complex structure than the Somnium. Cunaeus is also less purposely using the ancient texts than Lipsius does e.g. in Cicero's speech. The Saidi vénales was certainly not intended to be as much of a specimen of stylistic imitation, even though Cunaeus was occupied with ancient Roman satire at precisely that period. ^^ On the other hand, Cimaeus was certainly much more inspired by personal emotions than Lipsius was. He also seems to have been more daring since he deals not only with international, far-off philology but also with vehement theological discussions on the flour of his own university in his own town and country. The provocative nature of his work is further indicated by his translation of the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate's antichristian satire Caesaies, added to his Saidi vénales.

Once again,

in the Saidi vénales,

we are confronted with a dream. Cunaeus

finds himself in the "Epicuri intermundia," in the space

beyond the

stars, as

informed by the first person he meets, an ugly, dirty, old man who turns out to be the Greek Cynic philosopher Menippus. He is accompanied by the shade of a young man who killed himself after he had been desperately involved in one of the omnipresent theological discussions which presented insoluble, supernatural questions and which took place even in the theatres and

barber's shops.

Meanwhile, in the dream, they see Mercurius passing by with a crowd of shades of those who have died or been killed during that day. Menippus informs Cunaeus that he is on his way to the Republic of the Scholars who would appear to live in the hereafter on one particular island, with their own magistrates. The cultural level of the community is now threatened by the enormous influx of scholars of plebeian, proletarian origin. Various solutions to solve this problem have been proposed but without results and now, finally, a meeting of the Senate is convened. Menippus invites Cunaeus to come and watch this meeting which is to be presided over by Erasmus, the highest authority of the Republic that year. Erasmus introduces the question somewhat timidly and hesitatingly, quite unlike Cicero in Lipsius' Somnium. The rest of the discussion closely parallels that of Lipsius. The first speaker. Angelus Politianus, vehemently proposes exile for the unworthy newcomers. After his speech an unnamed, ridiculous figure starts stammering a defence, but is removed. Hermolaus Barbarus, the second speaker, supports Politianus' proposal, as does Rudolphus Agricola after him, aiming in particular at the philosophers and their vain sophisms as source of all evil. During the ensuing discussion Mercurius introduces more newcomers, three of whom are ministers of the church, the rest philosophers. Just as Varrò did in Lipsius' Somnium, Picus Mirandulanus, the last speaker, defends the adepts of recent scholarship. The result, however, is different. The majority remain in favor of exile. The chairman requests further deliberation, mainly on account of the theologians. Diogenes is sent to call for Sophia's advice. The Cynic philosopher

CL.

5O5

HEESAKKERS

proves successful in finding Sophia who soon arrives with her followers, one of whom is Alethia, Truth, a figure terrifying to the theologians, another Sophrosyne, Prudence. Sophia, in her speech to the Senate, complains of grave ill treatment at the hands of the theologians. Their investigations know no bounds, they do not scruple to submit the unintelligible to examination and they proclaim as certain that which has not been proved. The consequence is rampant sectarianism. Sophia declares that, from this moment on, she will accept as adherents only those who recognise their own limitations and who respectfully leave what is beyond imderstanding alone. Meanwhile, Cunaeus, who has been considering Sophia's words, is personally addressed by her companion Sophrosyne, who advises him to abstain from the wide-spread hunger for knowledge, to be wise by ignorance, even if this entails loneliness and contempt. Cunaeus is pleased with this advice and listens attentively to Erasmus, Cassander and Melanchthon complaining about the modem theologians. A newcomer, a Dutch theologian, whose preaching Cunaeus had often heard, begins to speak and criticises his colleagues for their quarrels and polemics, and for their greed and desire for marriage and children. At this point he is interrupted by a bystander who ironically praises this desire for marriage and children and calls it a necessity, when so many people are dying and being killed because of the religious controversies. The theologians, feeling universally mocked, seem struck dumb. One of them is appointed to plead for their group. He admits that many of the charges against them are valid but, as Sophia has also argued, much of it is due to nature, which forces men to strive after knowledge. Aiming too high is, certainly, a vice, but aiming is, in itself, commendable. It ought not to be forgotten that preachers of virtue have always been the butt of attacks, in particular, attacks launched by those who want to destroy all religion. The theologians pray for a fair judgment. General opinion has become more favourable for the newcomers and Erasmus is just ready to have the vote when a messenger arrives from Tartarus, Hell, and requests to see the chairman. He informs Erasmus that criminals detained in Tartarus for a thousand years have escaped and are set to invade the Island of the Scholars. Erasmus immediately dismisses the Senate. Confusion and timidity reign everywhere except among the Stoics. Menippus proposes to Cunaeus that they leave the stage. They find a cave in a hugh mountain and stumble on a group of tipplers near a wine-fountain. One of them, hearing of the escaped criminals, preaches revolution against the scholars and is about to strike Cunaeus who had made a mocking remark. Cunaeus tries to avoid the blow and awakes, which means the end of the dream and of the satire. . . .

Feelings in Leiden at the start of the seventeenth century were, of course, running high on theological disputes, particularly when man's fate, predestination, was the subject. Although by 1612 one of the protagonists of the polemics. Jacobus Arminius, had died (1609), and the other, Franciscus Gomarus, had left Leiden University (1611), the controversy was still in full swing, especially

506

TWO

LEIDEN NEO-LATIN MENIPPEAN SATIRES

as far as Arminius' successor Conradus Vorstius was concerned. To criticise those discussions meant getting involved and being considered an adherent to the Arminian cause, the more so when one of the first copies we hear about was sent to this same Vorstius. The covering letter to Vorstius, dated 29 December 1612, is quite explicit about the author's intentions: "I recently published the book enclosed, and I am anxious to know your opinion of it. I examined all kinds of scholars and since the Theologians today are the most numerous among the fools, I have often put them upon the stage. I satirised the feelings on predestination which cause real dramas among our poor ministers. I criticised the obsequiousness of some towards certain opinions and their intolerance of those who disagree. I also gave my judgment of the Emperor Julian, not without displeasing many a person. "^^ Cimaeus doubtlessly felt quite sure of Vorstius' opinion. A few days previously he had written to Casaubonus about the general applause of all sane persons on both sides of the controversy.^"^ In his immediate surroundings, however, among his own students, the distribution of the book was to cause a real explosion after the Christmas break. One of his colleagues, the jurist Everardus Bronchorstius, gives the first intimations: "On 11 January, he writes in his diary, when Petrus Cunaeus had published a satire in which he severely censured the heads of theological teaching and the way of life led by the ministers of the Church, as well as the physicians and, covertly, (the philologists) Baudius and Heinsius, he was twice hooted off by the students and for one whole week there were no lessons on account of the ensuing tumult. Two or three of the ringleaders, members of the Theological College, were suspended from the benefits of the college for half a year."^^ Members of the College must have been deeply grieved by the passage about the ministers of poor origin who had studied thanks to the munificence of wealthier people and of the States and who had consequently made good careers (§ 35). The Acts of the University Senate give further information on developments. On 14 January, the Senate decided to proceed with an official reprimand and to inform the civil authorities. On 20 January it decided to publish another edict against the disturbances during lectures, on the 25th it invoked the Curators' aid; and on the 28th it was annoimced that the Rector would deliver a speech to the students on the following day and also that an edict would be published by the Curators. Bronchorstius also gives more details of these

events. ^^

The Senate apparently had no difficulty in choosing Cunaeus' part, since the affair did not harm his academic career, hi this very same year he was made an Ordinarius professor. ^^ But, as could have been predicted, the story had its aftermath at and after the Synod of Dordrecht. According to the Senatorial Acts of 8/10 August 1620 the University Senate was informed "that Cunaeus had promised the (Provincial) Synod in a letter that he would publish a tract to make good the scandals caused by earlier works. "^^ This promise may have been made in response to the wishes of the Provincial Synod held in Leiden in July-August 1619 which implied that Cimaeus had satisfied the Church of Leiden but that a more public revocation was required. The Députées had to exhort him to do so. His first reaction was to request details

CL.

HEESAKKERS

50/

and other works; once he had received he was able and ready to make satisfactory amends. In a Synodical session at Gouda, August 1620, he was requested once again to publish a small work for the Church of Leiden and the Députées at the first opportunity.^^ It is not known whether he did, and, if so, what form his work of the offending passages in his satire this information

took.^o

The numerous editions of the Sardi vénales published during the seventeenth century attest its popularity. Some of these are separate editions, others, as with Lipsius' Somnium, were collections of satires including the Sardi vénales, or collections of Cunaeus' own works. A Dutch translation^^ was published in 1675. One year previously Gerard Brandt had inserted Sophia's speech (in Dutch) in his History of the Reformation.^^

IV. conclude, it may be stated that the works of Lipsius and Cunaeus mean the introduction of the genre of the Menippean Satire into Neo-Latin literature, and I can fully agree with Günther Hess, when he asserts in his Deutschlateinische Narrenzunft, 2^^ that "the re-introduction of the Satyra Menippea by Justus Lipsius and Petrus Cunaeus forms a culminating point of academic

imitatio." Lipsius'

Somnium means the re-introduction, the Neo-Latin revival, Menippean Satire as we know it from the one and only

of the Classical Latin

more or less intact, Seneca's Apocolocyntosis. Lipsius' work proves that the author was right in choosing the until then unexploited genre of the Menippean satire for a critical review of certain abusive tendencies in contemporary philology. Cunaeus' Saidi vénales is no less successful in making the same efforts by the same means in the field of specimen

to survive

successful

both philology and theology. Universiteit van

Amsterdam

Notes *The text of this paper is a part, slightly revised,, of my Introduction to: Two NeoLatin Menippean Satires. J. Lipsius, Somnium. P. Cunaeus, Sardi vénales, edited with Introduction and Notes by C. Matheeussen and C. L. Heesakkers, to be published in 1980 by Brill at Leiden. 1. Elegantioies Piaestantium Virorum Satyiae, Quarum titulos, é) nomina auctoTum, versa pagella exhibebit post praefationem. Distinguuntur in tomos duos. Lugduni Batavorum, Ex Officina loannis Maire. MDCLV. 2. Cf. M. W. Croll's valuable articles, "Juste Lipse et le mouvement anticicéronien à la fin du XVIe et au début du XVIIe siècle," and "Muret and the History of 'Attic Prose'," in: Style, Rhetoric, and Rhythm. Essays by Morris W. CroU, ed. 7-44 and 107-162. J. M. Patrick a.o. (Princeton 1966), pp.

TWO

508

1564-1583, cura A. Gerlo, M. A. Nauwelaerts, 289-90. "De eerste Neolatijnse Menippeische satire," in: Lampas 12 (1979),

3. lusti Lipsi Epistolae.

H. D.

LEIDEN NEO-LATIN MENIPPEAN SATIRES

Pais

L. Vervliet, Brüssel 1978, pp.

4. Cf.

pp. 313-37. 5. Epistolae

(n. 3), p.

324.

Epistolae, p. 287. 7. Epistolae, p. 289.

Epistolae, p. 364.

323-25; see also the summarized letter by Ortelius, p. 356. Burmannus, Sylloge Epistolanim (Leiden, 1727), I, p. 58. 11. Erycius Puteanus, Cornus sive Phagesiposia cimmena: de luxu somnium, (Louvain, 1608), also included in the collection mentioned in n. 1; Daniel Heinsius, Hezcules tuaxn fidem sive Munsterus hypobolimaeus, id est, Satyia Menippea, de vita,... Gaspans Scioppii ... (Leiden, 1608). 12. Cf. his letter to Hugo Grotius, 14 October 1610, in Petri Cunaei ... et? Doctorum Viiomm ad eundem Epistolae, ed. P. Burmannus (Leiden, 1725), p. 94; P. C. Molhuysen, Bionnen tot de geschiedenis dei Leidsche Univeisiteit, U (The Hague, 1916), p. 27; Petii Cunaei IC. Oiationes aigumenti vani (Leipzig, 1693), p. 203 ("Oratio XI. Habita, cum Horatium publice praelectiirus esset"). 13. Cunaei Epistolae (n. 12), p. 118: Nuper scriptum quoddam edidi, quod tibi 9. Epistolae, pp.

10. P.

mitto, &. uti indicium de

ilio

tuum

perscribere nobis velis, etiam te atque etiam

Omnes eruditorum familias atque ordines perambulavi, &. quia Theologi hodie maxima pars sunt ineptientium, sane continere me non potui,

rogo,

maxime

Vorsti.

illos, &. non uno loco, in banc Satyrae nostrae scenam introducerem. Parcarum tabulas, &. anile fatum, quod hodie inter sacrificulos nostros extragoedias. Tum &. multa de eorum vemilitate dixi, qui certis quibusdam

quin saepe Elusi citât

destinatis sententiis quasi addicti &. consecrati,

neminem ferunt a se dissentientem.

Etiam de luliano sententiam meam, non sine multorum indignatione, exposui Epistola ad Ampliss. Zyestium, quae est in limine posterioris libelli. 14. Cunaei Epistolae, p. 121: Mire favent nobis &. applaudunt omnes boni: Etiam ii ipsi,

qui ante studio pietatis in contrarias factiones scindebantur.

Diaiium Eveiaidi Bionchoistii, ed. J. C. van Slee (The Hague, 1898), p. 128-29: 11 Januarii, cum Petrus Cunaeus edidisset Satyram, qua graviter perstrinxerat pleraque capita doctrinae Theologicae, tum vitam Ministrorum Ecclesiae, nee non taxaverat Medicos item tecte D. Baudium et Hensium, fuit bis explosus ab auditoribus et tota septimana propter turbas feriatum a lectionibus, duoque vel très authores turbarum, alumni CoUegii Theologici, pro semestre suspensi a beneficio CoUegii. As far as we can see at this moment, it seems not unlikely, 15.

Bronchorstius' statement is right, the characters in the satire to be idenwith Cunaeus' colleagues Daniel Heinsius and Dominicus Baudius are to be found among the persons mentioned at the end of the satire (§ 123 f.). Baudius, indeed, was known to have a liking for alcoholic drinks; cf. P. L. M. Grootens, Dominicus Baudius. Een levensschets uit bet Leidse humanistenmilieu, 1561-1613 (Nijmegen, 1942). Heinsius, on the other hand, at the beginning of 1614, completed a "Hymnus oft Lof-Sanck van Bacchus," which may well be characterised as praising the "temulentiae bona" (129); cf. L. Ph. Rank, J. D. P. Warners en F. L. Zwaan, Bacchus en Cbiistus. Twee Lofzangen van Daniel Heinsius, Zwolle 1965. 16. Molhuysen (n. 12), p. 40; Diaiium (n. 15), pp. 128-29. 17. Molhuysen, p. 49. that,

tified

e. L.

HEESAKKERS

509

Molhuysen, p. 95. Acta dei Piovinciale en Paiticulieie Synoden, gehouden in de NooTdelijke Nedeilanden gedurende de jaien 1572-1620, ed. J. Reitsma and S. D. van Veen, (Groningen 1894), p. 385 and pp. 422-23. 20. A last remark on these facts is to be found in Adolfus Vorstius' Oiatio funebiis on Cunaeus (added, with its own pagination, to Petri Cunaei IC. Oiationes, above n. 12), p. 17: "Habemus praeterea, quod fere exciderat, elegantissimam eius Satyram Menippeam, in seculi huius homines plerosque inepte eruditos; in qua tamen, maturiore iudicio ac aetate, nonnulla improbavit." Neither here, any official publication seems to be suggested. 21. A. J. van der Aa, Biogiaphisch wooidenboek dei Nedeilanden, IE (Haarlem [1858]), p. 917, mentions a French translation entitled La léfoime dans la lepublique des letties, but we have not succeeded in finding other references to any such 18. 19.

translation. 22. G. Brandt, Histoiie dei Refoimatie, en andie keikelyke gescbiedenissen, in en ontient de Nedeilanden, U (Amsterdam, 1674), p. 203-206. 23. G. Hess, Deutsch-lateinische Nanenzunft (München 1971), p. 389: "Mit der programmatischen Erneuerung der Satyia Menippea durch Justus Lipsius und Petrus Cunaeus scheint mir ein Höhepunkt der akademischen imitatio erreicht zu sein.

Ulrich Knoche schätzt das 'Somnium' des Justus Lipsius, das dieser während der Zeit seiner Leydener Professur (1579-1590) Joseph Scaliger widmete, imd die Satire des Petrus Cunaeus mit dem Titel 'Sardi vénales,' die 1612 zu Leyden erschien, als 'kongeniale Imitationen' der 'Apocolocyntosis' Senecas." It may be remarked that Lipsius' Leiden professorate lasted from April 1578 until March 1591.

The Language of Utopian Negation Book II of More's Utopia Elizabeth

McCutcheon

have become so conscious of the dialogue and drama of Book Thomas More's Utopia, with its multiple ironies, its subtleties of frames within frames, and its rich and equivocal development of characters and themes, and of the dynamic relationships between the two books and the parerga surroimding More's "libellus uere aureus" (cxcv),^ that it may seem almost paradoxical to look simply at Book II, for many modern readers the duller of the two books. ^ Obviously it cannot ultimately stand alone. Yet More did write most of it (with the early part of Book I) first, ^ and Erasmus made distinctions between the two books in words which seem to suggest the greater polish of Book IL.^ I should like to look at it then, and more particularly at a few passages within it, so as to articulate from within the island of Utopia itself, as it were, some aspects of the style involved in the much larger question of the language of Utopian I

of St.

negation.

The form of Book n, like the Utopia as a whole an instance of the new Renaissance development of the mixed genre, ^ has been variously defined: as declamatio, demonstrative oration, prosopopoeia, or the obverse or positive side of a satire.^ With two humanist rhetorics in mind, however— Erasmus' De Utraque Veihonim ac Rerum Copia and Vives' De Ratione Dicendi—WG can begin by seeing what purports to be a traveller's tale as an instance of Evidenzia, more particularly as the "Description of a Thing. "^ Erasmus argues that this should include "descriptions of kinds of people and ways of life: as though one should place before your eyes a picture of the Scyths, the Androphagi, the Indians, the Troglodytes, or similar peoples" (50). Rhetorically this is a type of amplification which is essentially poetic and so developed that "it may seem that we have painted, not narrated, and that the reader has seen, not read" (47). Both fitting figures and the "exposition of details" which "most forcefully bring a thing before one's eyes, and produce an arresting narrative," (49) are crucial, and seem to look ahead in some ways to a Sidney an poetic.^ These comments underscore Raphael Hythlodaeus' fundamental

rhetorical strategy, of course: both at the beginning and

end of Book

of-

ELIZABETH

MCCUTCHEON

SII

Utopia with its well and wisely trained citizens as proof —and would have us see what he has "seen." They also point to the ostensible organization of Book n, by the topics one can find in contemporary travel accounts and the anthropological treatises just beginning to make their appearance.' And they are an indispensable measure of one generic category and of the narrator as the story-teller and poet he ironically denies he is, given all the details and fine brush-strokes with which he creates his speaking picture of Utopia. Indeed one critic of Utopian fiction, Bertrand de Jouvenel, argues that this "causing to see" is the essential feature of the Utopian genre. ^° Equally important, however, is the portrayal and development by contraries, for many critics the essential Utopian criterion. As Darko Suvin puts it, a utopia "is a formal inversion of significant and salient aspects of the author's world which has as its purpose or telos the recognition that the author (and reader) truly live in an axiologically inverted world. "^^ In More's case, this means an inverted mirror image and thus at least a doubling of an ancient topos, the world turned upside down, the mundus inversus.^^ For Raphael is negating a negation, negating the aberrations Book I spells out: that topsy-turvy real world of greed, injustice, inequality, and pride, where self-interest, not the common interest, prevails, so that, as More writes in his letter to Dorp, "Every man is charmed by his point of view, just as each person thinks his own wind smells sweet. "^^ In Book n, then, Raphael builds up, through countless visual details which look two ways (or more) at once, a dynamic mental picture or portrait of an inherently paradoxical possible impossible which teases its readers into making comparisons and contrasts with the impossible possible which is England, its antipodes. What is, then, an extraordinarily concrete, pictorial, and poetic prose is also an extraordinarily intellectual one, because the details at one and the same time mirror two inversely related sets of values and attitudes. It is also highly comic, ironic, antithetical, and complexly paradoxical, reflecting the antithetical cast of its author's consciousness and involving us, as it involved More, in an ongoing attempt to hold different contraries and oppositions in our heads simultaneously and to move from one pole to another and back again. ^"^ We are amused, and tested, and unsettled by the incongruities and probings of moral values and social and political institutions which result, and we are the more imsettled and startled because the narrator does not necessarily maintain a single perspective on that inversion of the inverted world he describes, but shifts his point of view and ours through complicated verbal strategies, reversals, and oscillations. These shifts are so quick and various that no two readers wholly agree as to their understanding of the meaning in some of the details of Book n, despite their powerful and graphic lucidity, much less the intention of some of the sections, the relationship of section to section, or the nature of Utopia itself. But the potential range seems to be suggested by the dense paradoxes of the name Utopia, at once a non-place place (with its inversion, negation, and condensed paradox), a happy or well place, and, if another pun on the name, involving the strange or absurd is accepted, an absurd place. ^^ Interestingly, the play of names in those three other imaginary societies to which we are infers

512

LANGUAGE OF UTOPIAN NEGATION

troduced in Book I— the Polylerites, Achorians, and Macarians— moves us from the people of much nonsense, to the people without a place, to the fortunate ones, spelling out the generative transformations concentrated in the single word Utopia, with its shifting perspectives. Then there is the name of the narrator: is this world traveller the healer of God, the opener of eyes, his first name suggests, or the peddler of nonsense his family name speaks of, or both, so that we must both believe and disbelieve in him and his narration? ^^ Fiction is presented as fact, fact as fiction; we find ourselves asking, "Would I want to live in Utopia?" and are brought up short by verbal, mathematical and topographical contradictions which tell us that Utopia is noplace. Details seem almost photographically real, so that geographers have tried to map Utopia and the way to it,^^ yet, again and again, as in Holbein's picture of "The Ambassadors," a comparable instance of shifting perspectives, they point towards a meaning which is metaphoric or symbolic, not literal. ^^ To consider one example, which signals its importance by negation. There is Raphael's brief sketch of the city of Amaurotom with its paradoxical assertion that the chief concern of its founder was for its gardens. These well-kept gardens with their vines, fruits, herbs, and flowers are described by chains of antitheses and denials: "ut nihil fructuosis usquam uiderim, nihil elegantius" (120/16). The description unfolds until we learn that "you cannot readily find anything in the whole city more productive of profit and pleasure to the citizens. There is nothing which their founder seems to have cared so much for as these gardens" (121/22-25). Usum and uoluptatem (120/20, 21), themselves fruitfully antithetical, are, of course, key words in the Utopian value system. Finally, then, we see the garden as a symbol or emblem for all of Utopia. And since the garden is also a favorite symbol of England, the welltended garden a symbol for the fruitful and well-ordered moral life, now significantly translated to the public sphere, the symbolic implications expand ever outward. ^^ Indeed even the apparently simplest Utopian custom of the sort introduced early in Book n can become an instance of a multiple, teasing humor and irony signalling a subsequent probing of values, explored both concretely and conceptually through paradox and antithesis in the course of the work as a whole, so that the inner structure and finest texture of the book alike are dynamically ordered through contraries. The Utopian incubation system, where chickens follow human beings as if they were their mothers, is one such. The anecdote is offered as a joke, an utter absurdity which calls attention to itself: "mirabili artificio" (114/20). Yet in this case what is presented as fiction is really fact: More could have obtained information on the imprinting of chickens from Pliny or his own observations (cf. 389). Moreover, we have a quasi-reversal of the beast-man relationship while, for more wit, "homines" become mothers. At the same time the narrator is sounding a different, more serious paradox, the question of nurture-nature which is so basic to the conception and argument of the entire second book, where, as Raphael presents it, we see the effects of wise institutions. Or, as Wayne Rebhom has argued, where we see the effects of cultivation/education of the natural world and human nature through a "human art of agriculture."^ There may well even be a pun alert-

ELIZABETH

MCCUTCHEON

513

ing US to this here, for the Utopians "educant" the chicks (114/19), who are hatched or educated, as it were. Images and counter-images like these, which constitute the groundwork of Utopia's description, are the liveliest proof of the way Raphael's language generates energy and tension as it moves from pole to pole. But they do not stand alone; syntax, too, calls attention to the polarities and reversals of thought and perspective, asking us to weigh different values in our heads. It would be wrong, or at least premature, to posit a special syntax for Book n of the Utopia; all the studies I know of move through both books, and the usual distinctions between them are based rather on diction and voice. ^^ But

the syntactical patterns characteristic of the work as a whole— the antitheses, negations, paradoxes, and other ways of encouraging a weighing activity — contribute immensely to the dramatization of moral-social-political concerns. One extreme is the resolved paradox of the sort we find when Raphael

who "Hanc unam uitae artem nouerunt, qua (206/18-19), where the collapsed paradoxes virtually become a sickening inversion of the azs mohendi: the Zapoletes live to die instead of dying into new life. Or there are the dense negations and rhymed endings of the usual royal idea of justice: everything is permissible except what is disagreeable ("nihil non liceat nisi quod non libeat" [198/14]). But normally Book n avoids the resolved paradox for a more asymmetrical, dynamic, suspended, and antithetical syntax, one which reflects the larger antitheses of its organization and the movement of mind behind that, in this way anticipating the Renaissance development of a densely antithetical prose. ^^ The sentences describing the Utopian love of flowers, with their suspension and asymmetry, yet balanced contraries held in fruitful opposition, and positives established through a much repeated process of subtraction and negation, are more characteristic, then: "&. certe non aliud quicquam temere urbe tota reperias, siue ad usum ciuium, siue ad uoluptatem commodius. eoque nullius rei, quam huiusmodi hortonmi, maiorem habuisse curam uidetur is qui condidit" (120/19-23). In the light of Renaissance sensitivity to even the slightest turn in form (witness the De Copia itself, or the many early Renaissance handbooks of Latin usage, by Valla and others) such assertions which define positives by negation are the more striking, accentuated further by the fact that— for example — "non" is the third most frequent word in the Utopia as a whole, and other words of negation are also very common." Or consider just part of the period describing the Utopian constitution: "ut quoad per publicas necessitates licet: quam plurimum temporis ab seruitio corporis ad animi libertatem cultumque ciuibus uniuersis asseratur" (134/18-20). Chiasmus heightened by antithesis (each a constant characteristic of More's syntax generally), calls attention to crucial polarities here — service/freedom, body /mind— which it asks us to weigh. While the sentence describes the beastly Zapoletes,

mors quaeritur

..."

is asymmetrical and moves towards a positive resolution, it sets oppositions and its resolution in the larger sphere spelled out by the earlier "ut quoad": we have to hold on to "publicas necessitates" on the one hand, "ciuibus uniuersis" on the other. Syntax, then, begins to involve us in the much more complicated series of antitheses in the Utopian scheme of work

as a

both

whole its

LANGUAGE OF UTOPIAN NEGATION

514

and leisure, the personal and public, with its radical redistribution of labor and time so that Utopia achieves an economy of worth with a paradoxical interrelationship of material and ethical well-being, each nourishing the other with respect to all the citizens. But then, because of the ongoing comparison and contrast between Utopia and all other countries, even the most straightforward assertion acquires new resonance, as when Raphael follows his description of the Utopian constitution (its goal "ad animi libertatem cultumque ciuibus uniuersis") with "In eo enim sitam uitae felicitatem putant" (134/20). No longer is such a statement a commonplace; distanced by its Utopian perspective it doubles back to us and our values, professed and practiced, in a silent question. While ironically and comically dramatizing the extent to which even the best-intentioned men are involved in business affairs. Bude catches some part of this doubling and weighing action when he writes to Lupset that "I had the book by me in the country as I ran up and down very busily and gave directions to the workmen, for ... I had been expending much energy on the business of my country estate now for the second year. As I learned and weighed the customs and laws of the Utopians, the reading of the book impressed me so much that I almost neglected and even forsook the management of household affairs" (5/26-33) mine]. should like

[italics

now to look more particularly at a passage which embodies the extraordinarily sophisticated style of Utopian description through negation in Book U: the Utopian ways with gold. This brilliant instance of counterimages has its own private counter-counter-image in the letter More sent to Erasmus in 1516, with his dream of self as king of Utopia, reviewing the foreign ambassadors.^"* So we have some external evidence which suggests just how important this scene was to him, and the frustration and estrangement he felt towards a world he was part of. The passage begins, significantly, as a rhetorical paradox; ^5 Raphael's technique here is to affinn as true something he could not himself have believed, "nisi uidissem praesens" (150/7), a paradox which is reiterated and intensified later— "nisi peritis non credibilem" (152/3). hi those golden chamberpots (with their implicit image of defecation) and in the subsequent scene with the Anemolian ambassadors, ambassadors of wind, emptiness, we have, in fact, a complete visualization and dramatization of contrary attitudes and Utopian negation at a rare moment of exact congruence, caught in this case by a resolved paradox which sets up the word treasure to knock it down (150/3-4). The prose is at once enormously comic — farce — and ironic, for no positive image in Book n is as powerful as these negations of gold and all it symbolizes and the deflation of the proud ambassadors.^^ We are barraged with the word gold (twenty-one times repeated) as they parade through the main streets of Utopia in all their silks and cloth of gold, their gold chains, gold rings, gold necklaces, gold earrings, and with a prose which mimics the action, rising to collapse as two value systems meet and Anemolian pride is punctured, bladder-like, with all its conspicuous consumption. Again, then, we have a kind of moral emblem.^'' By a characteristically double-edged irony, moreover, both Utopia's slaves and the Anemolian ambassadors are bound by gold chains, but the latter's are vastly inferior to I

ELIZABETH

MCCUTCHEON

5I5

the Utopians', whether judged by Western standards of value or Utopian standards of use. Even a verbal play— legati/ligati— seems to bind these opposites together, in another kind of paradox. ^^ As dramatization this same scene brilliantly realizes the theatrical metaphor Erasmus uses with respect to Evidentia as something which "draws the hearer or reader outside himself as in the theatre" (47). Indeed, in that little conversation between a Utopian mother and her puzzled little boy, with her reply, "Tace ... est opinor quispiam e morionibus legatorum," (154/28-30), with its play on More's own name, we can see how More draws himself outside of himself, as it were, allowing Raphael to deflate the world of power and pride

and his part in it. But even as this dramatizes More's own consciousness of one role he plays, it vivifies the struggle for perception on the part of the Utopians, who try so hard to understand such curious customs, and in that play of shifting perspectives, we viewing the Utopians as they view the Anemolians, really us, we catch the subtlety and verve of More's graphic dramatic art. Narratively, moreover, this same scene is an especially effective way of moving us into the heart of Utopia; with the procession of the Anemolian ambassadors we have a kind of cinematic closeup and hear and see the otherwise faceless and speechless Utopians. This scene, then, is a pivot point; having moved us as far as he can from the real world into Utopia, Raphael is now able to bend back the urgent moral, social, political, and religious paradoxes which he explores in the later sections of the book. Thus he can turn the commonplaces of Western ethical thought, for example, thereby giving them a new and startling effect, ^^ while, typically, structuring them paradoxically, so that we have paradoxes within paradoxes. Hence the relationship between pleasure and virtue in Utopia; pleasures are virtuous, and virtues pleasures, the irony again cutting in both directions with respect to the West. Or there is the section on war, a problematic example of paradoxical shifts and shifting paradoxes. I do not want to explain away the reversals and contradictions, which are, I think, deliberate, like the clotted syntax, which holds together things which do not logically follow, and reverses and re-reverses itself, symptomatic of the radical questions raised by the idea of war.-^ The narrator signals some of these in his opening sentence, observing that the Utopians regard war as "an activity fit only for beasts and yet practiced by no kind of beast so constantly as by man," with utter loathing (199/37-38). In addition to the familiar play of words connecting war with beast, I think we must recognize a terrifying use of paradox and antitheses. The thought patterns behind the Utopia are so antithetical, the values assigned to the Utopians (in general) so positive, rhetorically, that we are led to expect a complete reversal: that they are devoted to the arts of peace. But they do fight wars, both defensive and offensive, and the actual antithesis the narrator develops is that they fight as animals who use their "strength of intellect" (203/23-24). We are, then, left with a shrunken and unstable paradox, symptomatic of an inexhaustibly ironic and ambivalent situation which ultimately comments both on the limits of Utopia and the condition of mankind. More immediately, the proposition is at once positive and negative, further complicated by the fact that many of the reasons advanced for war finally underscore Western values.

5l6

LANGUAGE OF UTOPIAN NEGATION

Moreover, some Utopian techniques are extensions of Western practices while others— like their use of gold to hire mercenaries to win battles for their allies, for whom money matters — are strange inversions of Western practice which, by indirection, reveal the complex profit-loss and power mentality sustaining Renaissance expansionism and warfare. There is no time to identify and explore all the reversals, inversions, puns, and paradoxes, both verbal and conceptual, in this scene or elsewhere. But I should argue that we must not let them self-destruct or self-consume, as we might do were this a modem absurdist work. Rather, such muscular shifts in language, meaning, and perspective, and the polar reversals and absurdities, simultaneously generate comic and satiric incongruity, test values, and suggest alternative visions in our own minds. In all this there is much of the lawyer, as well as of the comic story-teller, the satirist, the visionary, the explorer of conscience and consciousness, and the humanist maintaining a "precarious balance. "^^ But I want to return to Erasmus, who in his Ciceionianus singled out three aspects of More's style: its Isocratic rhythms, its logical subtlety, and its poetry. "You recognize a poet even in his prose," he said,^^ and in Book U of the Utopia we surely see the poet behind the consummate creation and description of Utopia, a speaking mental picture built by contraries.

University of Hawaii,

Manoa

Notes All citations from the Utopia aie from The Complete Works of St. Thomas eds. Edward Surtz and J. H. Hexter, IV (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1965). 2. Surtz covers many of these issues in his introduction to the Yale Utopia, 1.

Moie,

"Utopia as a Work of Literary Art," pp. cxxv-cliii; other studies include Robbin S. Johnson, More's "Utopia": Ideal and Illusion (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1969); William J. Kennedy, Rbetoiical Norms in Renaissance Liteiatuie (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 94-105; Arthur F. Kinney, "Rhetoric as Poetic: Hiunanist Fiction in the Renaissance," ELH 43 (1976), 413-43; Joel B. Altman, The Tudoi Play of Mind: Rhetoiical Inquiiy and the Development of Elizabethan Drama (Berkeley and Los Angeles and London: Univ. of Calif omia Press, 1978), pp. 79-87; Peter R. Allen, "Utopia and European Humanism: The Function of the Prefatory Letters and Verses," SR 10 (1963), 91-107; Warren W. Wooden, "A Reconsideration of the Parerga of Thomas More's Utopia," in Quincentennial Essays on St. Thomas More: Selected Papers from the Thomas More College Conference, ed. Michael J. Moore (Boone, North Carolina: Albion, 1978), pp. 151-60. 3. Op. Epist. IV, 21/259-60 (Letter to Ukich Hütten, 1519); J. H. Hexter, More's "Utopia": The Biography of an Idea (1952; rpt. New York: Harper & Row, 1965), and Hexter, "The Composition of Utopia," in the Yale Utopia, pp. xv-xxiii and 573-76. For a reexamination of this issue see André Prévost, ed., L'Utopie de Thomas More (Paris: Marne, 1978), pp. 68-73. I would agree that, regardless of

ELIZABETH

when More years;

cf.

MCCUTCHEON

517

finally wrote the Utopia, the idea behind it was in process for many H. Lupton, ed., The Utopia of Sir Thomas Moie (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1895), pp. xxix-xli. 4. Op. Epist., rv, 21/261; the distinction

qualitas" as "inequality," as Francis

remains whether we translate "inaedid, or as "unevenness," or, more

M. Nichols

neutrally, as "unlikeness." 5. On Renaissance discoveries and developments of genre see Rosalie L. Colie, The Resouices of Kind: Genie-Theory in the Renaissance, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski

(Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1973), especially chapter HI. 6. Instances of a rhetorical and oratorical approach include Andrew D. Weiner, "Raphael's Eutopia and More's Utopia: Christian Humanism and the Limits of

Reason," HLQ 39 (1975), 1-27; Arthur F. Kinney, "Rhetoric as Poetic;" Arthur F. Kirmey, "Rhetoric and Poetic in Utopia," paper delivered at the Sir Thomas More Symposium, UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Los Angeles, California, March 25, 1978, publication as monograph forthcoming; Richard J. Schoeck, "The Ironic and the Prophetic: Towards Reading More's Utopia as a Multidisciplinary Work," in Quincentennial Essays, pp. 124-34. Studies stressing relationships with satire include: A. R. Heiserman, "Satire in the Utopia," PMLA 78 1963), 163-74; Robert Elliott, The Shape of Utopia: Studies in a Liteiaiy Genie (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 25-49; Warren W. Wooden, "Thomas More and Lucian: A Study in Satiric Influence and Technique," Studies in English, the University of Mississippi Department of English 13 (1972), 43-57. 7. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, On Copia of Woids and Ideas, trans. Donald B. King and H. David Rix (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette Univ. Press, 1963), p. 47. Subsequent citations from this translation will be included in the text. I have also consulted the Latin edition in Opeia Omnia I (1703; rpt. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1961). Description occupies an especially important place in foannis Lodovici Vivis Valentini De Ratione Dicendi Libii Ties (Louvain, 1533), sig. Rv v-Siv v, and I hope to expand the implications of his treatment later, with respect to the fictional techniques of Utopia. Cf. Quintilian's treatment of vivid illustration or oracular demonstration in The Institutio Oiatoiia of Quintilian, trans. H. E. Butler, 3 (London and N.Y.: Loeb, 1921), 245 (Book 8,3,61); 397 (Book 9,2,40). Finally, description is one of fourteen forms covered in Aphthonii Piogymnasmata cum Scholijs R. Loiichi] (London, 1596), pp. 382-414. 8. A question raised in a general way by Richard Sylvester at the Sir Thomas More symposium, Los Angeles, March 24, 1978. 9. See, for example, the first Renaissance collection by Johann Boemus (1520); cf. Margaret T. Hodgen, Eaily Anthiopology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuiies (Philadelphia: Univ. of Peimsylvania Press, 1964), pp. 138, 167-78. 10. From his "Utopia for Practical Purposes," in Utopias and Utopian Thought, ed. Frank E. Manuel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 220. 1 1 Metamoiphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and Histoiy of a Liteiaiy Genie (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1979), p. 54. Cf. Rosalie L. Colie, Paiadoxia Epidemica: The Renaissance Tiadition of Paiadox (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 14, 52; Martin G. Plattel, Utopian and Ciitical Thinking, trans. Henry J. Koren (Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ. Press, 1972), pp. 45-50 and 91; Fred. L. Polak, The bnage of the Futuie, trans. Elise Boulding, I (Leyden: A. W. Sythoff, 1961), 224, 445. (

LANGUAGE OF UTOPIAN NEGATION

5l8

Pamdoxia Epidemica, pp. 13-14; on the history of the complicated forms) see Curtius, Euzopean Lit., pp. 94-98. 13. St. Thomas More, Selected Letters, ed. Elizabeth Frances Rogers (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1961), pp. 56-57. 14. For some of the many different views of this see, in addition to the works cited above (footnote 11), Altman, pp. 31-63; David Bevington, "The Dialogue in Utopia: Two Sides to the Question," SP 58 (1961), 496-509; R. S. Sylvester, " 'Si Hythlodaeo credimus': Vision and Revision in Thomas More's Utopia," Soundings 51 (1968), 272-89; Alan F. Nagel, "Lies and the Limitable Inane: Contradiction in More's Utopia," RQ 26 (1973), 173-80; N. Raitiere, "More's Utopia and The City of God," SR 20 (1973), 144-68; Timothy Reiss, "Utopia and Process: Text and AntiText," Sub-stance 8 (1974), 101-25; Fredric Jameson, "Of Islands and Trenches: Naturalization and the Production of Utopian Discourse," Diacritics 7 (1977), 2-21; Prévost, pp. 46 and 145-62. 15. Yale Utopia, pp. 274 (notes to 10/1-2) and 385-86 (notes to 112/1-2); Paul Akio Sawada, "Toward the Definition of Utopia," Moicana, No. 31-32 (November, 1971), pp. 139-40. 16. See Sylvester, " 'Si Hythlodaeo credimus' "; the Yale Utopia, pp. 301-2 (notes to 48/31-32); Elizabeth McCutcheon, "Thomas More, Raphael Hythlodaeus, and the Angel Raphael," SEL 9 (1969), 21-38; Hans Uhich Seeber, "Hythloday as Preacher and a Possible Debt to Macrobius," Moicana, No. 31-32 (November, 1971), pp. 71-78. 17. Instances include Brian R. Goodey, "Mapping 'Utopia': A Comment on the Geography of Sir Thomas More," The Geogiapbic Review 60 (1970), 15-30; George B. Parks, "More's Utopia and Geography," fEGP 37 (1938), 224-36 and Seeber's comments with respect to More and Macrobius. 18. Jurgis Baltrusaitis, Anamoiphic Ait, trans. W. J. Strachan (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healy Ltd., 1977), pp. 91-114 (on "The Ambassadors"); Jean-Claude Margolin, "Aspects du surréalisme au XVIe siècle: Fonction allégorique et vision anamorphotique," BHR 39 (1977), 503-30; oral addition by Stephen J. Greenblatt to his paper, "More, Role-Playing, and Utopia," Sir Thomas More Symposivmi, Los Angeles, March 25, 1978. Cf. Paul Werth, "The Linguistics of Double- Vision, "/IS 12. Suvin, p. 54; Colie,

topos

(in its less

6 (1977), 3-28. 19. Biblical, patristic,

and medieval similes are discussed together with

much

elaborate gardens of virtue in Ellen Kosmer, "Gardens of Virtue in the Mid-

/WC/41 (1978), 302-7. Wayne A. Rebhorn, "Thomas More's Enclosed Garden: Utopia and Renaissance Humanism," ELR 6 (1976), 140-55. 21. See, e.g., Marie Delcourt, ed., Thomas More, L'Utopie (Paris: Librairie E. dle Ages," 20.

Droz, 1936), pp. 28-29 and fine notes; Edward Surtz, "Vocabulary and Diction in Utopia," Yale Utopia, pp. 577-82; Edward Surtz, "Aspects of More's Latin Style in Utopia," SR 14 (1967), 93-109; R. Monsuez, "Le Latin de Thomas More dans 'Utopia,'" Annales pubhées pai la Faculté de Letties et Sciences Humaines de Toulouse, n.s. E, Fase. I (1966), Caliban 3, 35-78; Elizabeth McCutcheon, "Denying the Contrary: More's Use of Litotes in the Utopia," Moicana, No. 31-32 (November, 1971), pp. 107-21; Clarence Miller, ed., St. Thomas More, De Tiistitia Chiisti, Vol. 14 Part n of The Complete Woiks of St. Thomas Moie (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1976), 754-76; Prévost, "La langue latine de l'Utopie," pp. 241-52 in his edition, together with pp. 141-44.

ELIZABETH

MCCUTCHEON

519

Both English Euphuistic and Senecan prose, for instance, are characteristically George Williamson, The Senecan Amble: A Study in Prose Form from Bacon to Colliei (1951; rpt. Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966). The same fundamental structures affect the development of a poetic line in the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries; cf. More's at22.

antithetical in their syntactical structures; see

traction to the antithetical structure of the Greek epigram. 23. Ladislaus J. Bolchazy with Gregory Gichan and Frederick Theobald, A Concordance to the "Utopia" of St. Thomas More and A Frequency Word List

New

York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1978), Part H. cf. Op. Epist., n, 414 (No. 499) and The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 446 to 593: 1516 to 151 7, trans. R. A. B. Mynors and D. F. S. Thomson, annotated by James K. McConica (Toronto and Buffalo: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1977), pp. 163-64. On the larger question of More's double consciousness see the Greenblatt paper. 25. Classical and Renaissance instances of definition and illustration are listed by Lee A. Sonnino in A Handbook to Sixteenth-Century Rhetoric (London: Rout-

(Hildesheim and

24. Selected Letters, p. 85;

ledge Si Kegan Paul, 1968), p. 113. 26. Sources for these scenes have been much studied; see the Yale Utopia, pp. 428-31; Charles Clay Doyle, "Utopia and the Proper Place of Gold," Moreana, No.

31-32

Clay Doyle, "Poggio and the Anemolian AmMoreana 15 (1978), 61-63, but compare the letter cited in note 24. The new Museum of London provides a superb instance of the image in the (1971), pp. 47-49; Charles

bassadors,"

Renaissance jewels

displays.

Compare Spenser's treatment of Orgoglio in the Faerie Queene and the Alciati emblem on avarice and experience at court: a man is in a stock, the motto, "In 27.

aulicos,"

from his Emblemata-, I owe the latter reference to Virginia Callahan. Clay Doyle, "Ambassadors in Chains: A Pim in Utopial," Moreana

28. Charles

15 (1978), 59-60. 29. As Cicero did before Epidemica, pp. 11-12.

him

in his Paradoxa Stoicorum-, see Colie, Paradoxia

30. Various responses include H. W. Donner, Introduction to Utopia (London: Sidgwick &. Jackson, 1945); Robert P. Adams, The Better Part of Valor: More, Erasmus, Colet, and Vives, on Humanism, War, and Peace, 1496-1535 (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1962); Edward L. Surtz, S.J., The Praise of Wisdom: A Commentary on the Rehgious and Moral Problems and Backgrounds of St. Thomas More's "Utopia" (Chicago: Loyola Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 270-307; Martin Fleisher, Radical

Reform and PoUtical Persuasion in the

Life

and Writings of

Thomas More (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1973), pp. 8-20; Raitiere, "More's Utopia and The City of God"; Shlomo Avineri, "War and. Slavery in More's Utopia," International Review of Social History 7 (1962), 260-90. 31. H. A. Mason, Humanism and Poetry in the Early Tudor Period: An Essay (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959), p. 139. 32. Desiderius Erasmus, Ciceronianus: or a Dialogue on the Best Style of Speaking (1528), trans. Izora Scott (1908; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1972), p. 104. Cf. Williamson, p. 19, for a discussion of "Isocratic" as "antithetic."

Mutations du concept de "littérature" à l'époque de la Renaissance Adiian Marino

Parmi

les

celles

mutations

du concept de

littéraires

taille

que compte

Renaissance,

"littérature" sont des plus notables, puisqu'elles

entraînent des modifications significatives de l'ensemble de la conscience littéraire et esthétique de l'époque. Cette mutation produit des dissociations et des déplacements des plus sensibles des concepts, aboutissant à un véritable éclatement des idées littéraires traditionnelles et des vieux schémas.

Des nuances nouvelles

surgissent toujours plus liées à l'idée spécifique de "poésie" et de "littérature." On dirait que ce processus se déroule dans le sens

d'une prise de conscience de la "littérarité" croissante. Il s'agit, bien sûr, d'un effet d'optique moderne projeté rétroactivement sur une matière en pleine évolution et qui se caractérise par un vacillement progressif des concepts de base. Mais l'évolution du concept de "littérature" montre qu'il se déplace effectivement vers des connotations toujours plus spécifiquement esthétiques et formelles. Des idées très minoritaires à l'époque de la Renaissance deviennent largement majoritaires au XIXème et surtout au XXème siècle. Ce tournant décisif de l'idée de "littérature," amorcé déjà au XVIème siècle, mérite qu'il soit examiné de plus près. Il implique— pour l'essentiel— deux grandes dissociations: 1. Le concept de "littérature" tend à se séparer de plus en plus radicalement de l'emprise dogmatique et institutionnelle de la religion et de l'église. EXi domaine du sacré, il évolue résolument le profane. Bref, il se laïcise, devient un des aspects toujours plus saillants de la culture profane et de sa théorie littéraire,- 2. Dans le domaine de la culture profane, la "littérature" tend à son tour à se dégager de ses acceptions traditionnelles, fondamentalement culturelles, pour s'assurer des finalités et des définitions de plus en plus spécifiques. Ce qui veut dire que les vieilles acceptions de la "littérature" léguées par l'Antiquité: "grammaire," "connaissance de l'écriture et de la lecture," "érudition," "culture littéraire," "totalité des oeuvres écrites," dans n'importe quel genre, sont écartées ou sensiblement modifiées. Elles souffrent un travail de sape et de reformulation qui aboutit à des nuances ou à des définitions fondamentalement nouvelles. Leur trait caractéristique est l'abandon toujours plus marqué du

ADRIAN MARINO

521

contenu culturel exclusif ou prédominant de tion, culture

dans

la "littérature": écriture, érudi-

sens éducationnel du terme.

La dissociation— polémique— entre la littérature sacrée,

l'Ecriture chrétienne scriptum et litteiatuia (établie par TertuUien, Cassius, etc.), transmise à travers le Moyen Age à la Renaissance, constitue le cadre conceptuel de base. La Sacia Scrìptma est et reste le concept dominant. Il a la tendance d'assimiler, d'incorporer ou de justifier la totalité des activités intellectuelles et littéraires: c'est la théorie de la Reductio Anium ad Saciam Schptuiam et qui est non seulement prédominante, mais aussi intolérante.^ Les lettres profanes sont sous-estimées, tenues à l'écart. Leur validation est difficile, assez souvent niée. Il est évident que le concept de "littérature" a besoin pour se constituer d'arguments en faveur de sa légitimité et de sa justification. Et pour ce faire, la littérature devait, avant tout, s'affranchir de la tutelle de l'Eglise et de l'Ecriture. Elle veut s'humaniser, se faire reconnaître en tant qu'activité profane légitime et passer de la sorte sous la compétence des esprits laïcs. Le concept de "littérature" devait ainsi accéder à son propre espace spirituel, à sa finalité autonome. Le champ de la dispute est, avant tout, pédagogique. Il s'agit, d'abord, d'assurer une égalité de traitement, faire accepter aussi l'étude de la philosophie et des lettres profanes. C'est plus qu'un accord ou un geste de tolérance; c'est le commencement d'une dissociation essentielle et qui fera long feu. Pic de la Mirandole écrit De studio Divine et Humanae Philosophiae avec un intérêt égal pour les deux domaines,^ Leonardo Bruni conseille dans son petit traité De studiis et litteris que soit étudiée aussi la philosophie profane.^ Bacon conçoit, à son tour, The Advancement of Learning à la fois comme Divine and Human (1605). C'est un accord, ou si l'on veut, un compromis, amorcé déjà par Pétrarque. Cette synthèse forme d'ailleurs la substance même de l'humanisme: virtus et claritas, le jumelage des "vertus" païennes et chrétiennes. Erasme, G. Bude et d'autres professent avec insistance cette conciliaet la littérature païeime, entre

tion essentielle. C'est par cette voie que la dissociation lettres divines /lettres profanes devient non seulement possible, mais pleinement reconnue et pratiquée. Rappelons le cas de l'humaniste Ermolao Barbaro qui vénérait les deux divinités à la fois: le Christ et les lettres: Duos agnesco dominos, Christum et htteras.* Les deux domaines sont nettement distincts et la tendance humaniste est de ne plus mêler les critères et les perspectives. Chaque fois que cette dissociation transparaît, d'une manière ou d'une autre, on peut être sûr que le concept des "lettres prof ânes" — reconnues à part entière et sur un pied d'égalité — a fait un nouveau progrès. Dans l'esprit d'Erasme, par exemple, le concept de profanae Utterae est assez arrêté pour que les boimae htterae soient clairement séparées de la "vraie religion," malgré son voeu de les voir fleurir ensemble.^ Erasme a, d'ailleurs, vme idée très nette de la spécificité des "lettres profanes." Nous sommes à un tournant où les deux catégories de lettres vont de pair

522

MUTATIONS DU CONCEPT DE "LITTERATURE"

de bon droit. La tendance, encore insidieuse, est même de renverser la hiérarchie traditionnelle et de mettre les lettres humaines en première position. Quand l'imprimerie est introduite à Rome sous le pontificat de Paul H on lui rend hommage dans un esprit où la laïcité littéraire semble avoir déjà pris le dessus: "Que d'actions de grâces ne vous rendra pas le monde littéraire et chrétien...."^ C'est une distinction qui se généralise. Josse Bade parle dans le même esprit de castis eloquiis et sanctìs litterìsJ Faut-il rappeler aussi la doctrine des "deux vérités" dont les racines plongent dans le bas Moyen Age? Pour rester dans le domaine littéraire citons seulement l'attitude de Montaigne qui tranche par une dissociation identique: "Ce que je discours selon moy, non ce que je crois selon Dieu" (I, 56). Il va sans dire que la part du "moy" (qui revendique ses droits vis-à-vis de la croyance) est le domaine non seulement de la subjectivité, de l'imagination personelle, mais aussi celui de toute culture individuelle. Elle se veut autonome, donc "profane." Et cela par le simple fait de sa nature et de sa prise de conscience. Le progrès de la laïcité en matière de lettres, une fois leurs droits reconnus, étaye sa justification de quelques arguments clés. Notons-les brièvement: 1. Les lettres séculières sont à même de servir efficacement les lettres sacrées. Il est nécessaire, pour mieux comprendre ces dernières, d'avoir un savoir philologique et herméneutique étendu. C'est le point de vue d'Erasme, de G. Bude (De tiansitei hellenismi ad Christianismiun) .^ La culture fait mieux ressortir la qualité de la piété (Boccace, De genealogia Deomm, XIQ-XIV). Les humanistes, en leur qualité de secrétaires apostoliques, peuvent contribuer d'une manière décisive à la gloire de la Curie et ils en ont pleinement conscience;^ 2. Les lettres profanes savent — et elles l'ont su depuis toujours— rendre la théologie plus accessible, donc plus convaincante. C'est la vieille théorie de l'allégorie, ensuite de "la gaie science," reprise au compte du christianisme. Les vérités de la religion "passent," pour ainsi dire, plus facilement sous une "belle forme" (Boccace, Trattatello in laude di Dante, XXn). La "théologie" et la "poésie" sont presque la même chose. Le sens "voilé" transperce— en le laïcisant— le verbe divin (Boccace, De genealogia deomm, XTV, 7); 3. Les lettres profanes peuvent être assimilées à une oeuvre divine. Pétrarque avait déjà soutenu que la théologie n'est rien d'autre que la poésie de Dieu: Theologiam poeticam esse de Deo {Epist. fam., X, 4). Boccace renet

"Non seulement la 'poésie'

est 'théologie,' mais aussi la 'théoloXXn). Selon Colludo Saluteti les Saintes Ecritures ne sont, également, que poésie, doctrine largement partagée par l'humanisme. ^° La conséquence en est que le poète devient un "créateur semblable à Dieu," un démiurge (Scaliger), un "créateur égal à Dieu" (Puttenham).^^ La théorie prolonge et renforce l'ancien concept du poète prophète, législateur, sacerdote, etc. Le peintre est considéré, lui aussi, "un autre dieu"

chérit là-dessus:

gie' est 'poésie'" {Trattatello

...

(L. B. Alberti), ^^ "signore e creatore" (Léonard de Vinci: "Come il pittore è signore d'ogni sorte di gente e di tutte le cose," in Trattato della pittura, 9). La transcendance divine descend sur terre; 4. Les humanistes, les spécialistes es lettres profanes, deviennent ainsi de vrais sacerdotes laïques. Pétrarque se retire dans le silence de son cabinet avec des allures de cénobite. Luther— en entrant dans les ordres— prend avec lui, dans sa cellule, im Platon et un Vir-

ADRIAN MARINO

Ce demier

523

complètement assimilé par

le christianisme et invocations: "Saint Virgile priez pour nous/'^^ ora pro nobis. Mais cette récupération, très ambiguë, est également humaniste, donc laïque. Dans les Epistolae Obscuionim Viioium, entre autres, Virgile gilè.

"récupéré."

est d'ailleurs

On lui adresse des

parmi les poetis saeculaiibus.^'^ La laïcisation de l'inspiration poétique, l'affaiblissem*nt du sentiment

est cité

religieux, sa vêture "esthétisante" à l'époque de la Renaissance sont des don-

nées trop connues pour que l'on s'y attarde. C'est un fait que les humanistes ne faissaient grand cas ni des mystiques, ni de la poésie religieuse et que Boccace, par exemple, donnait la première place aux fictiones poeticae. Son avis potius phisiologia aut ethnologia, quam theologia {De genealogia deorum L'éloge de l'inspiration profane et le rejet de la "fureur divine," platonicienne, sont encore plus significatifs. L'inspiration poétique devient un fait psychologique, complètement humanisé. Il est le produit d'une faculté non moins naturelle et normale: la fantaisie, l'imagination, qui exclut le deus ex machina.^^ Mais la preuve décisive de la laïcisation intégrale du concept d'imagination poétique— orientation qui donne à la poésie sa conscience, des titres et des libertés intégralement humaines — est la polémique ouverte contre la théorie de l'inspiration divine mise en circulation surtout par le dialogue Ion de Platon. Dans Naugehus sive de Poetica Dialogus (1555) Girolamo Fracastoro s'élève justement contre cette "divinisation": Non est autem Deus uUus causa fuioiis huius, sed ipsa musica ingentis cuiusdam atque exultantis admirationis plena}^ Castelvetro nie également l'inspiration divine. On n'écrit pas sous l'influence du fuioi poeticus}^ Quant à Bemi, il n'a qu'ironies et sarcasmes pour "il furor divino." Il traite ces poètes de "pazzi. "^^ Le poète qui simule le ravissem*nt de l'inspiration divine n'est qu'un topos, une convention littéraire. Elle est dénoncée comme telle par Torquato Tasso, ^^ etc. L'humanisme, délivré de ses complexes religieux, répond tour à tour à toutes les attaques cléricales et dogmatiques contre les poètes et la poésie. La polémique entre letterati et teologi traduit justement cette émancipation spirituelle, qui assure aux lettres une autonomie et une dignité grandissantes. Les pamphlets se succèdent: celui de Francesco da Piano [Contia hdiculos oblocutoies et fellitos detiactoies poetarum, 1404), de Lorenzo Valla contre les moines et leurs moeurs (De Professione religiosorum] de Leon-Battista Alberti, etc.^° L'esprit de la Réforme accentue et précipite ce processus, en mettant les points sur les i. Uhich von Hütten se plaint qu'à Rome les poètes sont hostiles à tous les théologiens, fussent-ils sympathisants de la Réforme ou non: Sic parvi pendunt Theologos et sunt contra nos.^^ La réaction cléricale et théologique est décidément contre toutes les lettres et Erasme dénonce ce péril: la "rabbia theologica" avait ruiné partout et indifférement était:

XV,

8).

"boimes lettres." Melanchthon fait la même observation: "Aujourd'hui, sous faux prétexte de religion, toutes les bonnes lettres et toute culture humaine sont attaquées. "^^ Pourtant, leur vitalité est plus grande que jamais. Les lettres prennent conscience toujours davantage de leur structure spécifique, de leurs valeur et signification. Le catalogue ironique et parodique de la fameuse librairie de l'abbaye Saint-Victor, où les livres théologiques et scolastiques abondent (Rabelais, les le

MUTATIONS DU CONCEPT DE "LITTERATURE"

524 Pant., U, téraire.

donne, entre autres, la mesure de cette laïcisation de être tenu pour symbolique.

l'esprit lit-

Cet exemple peut

n. Les mutations d'ordre "esthétique" des "lettres" deviennent saillantes par des définitions et connotations qui relèvent du même processus de laïcisation. Elles traduisent, comme on le sait, une acception ou une autre de la culture ou/ et de l'éducation civile et profane. Le concept de "lettres," pris dans le sens d' "érudition," de "culture littéraire," bien distinctes de la "doctrine" (chrétienne) reste essentiel pour l'époque de la Renaissance. Il ne semble pas avoir "disparu" (comme on l'a prétendu). ^^ Il y joue, tout au contraire, un rôle déterminant et central pour notre propos aussi: c'est seulement grâce à l'éducation et à la culture des "lettres," de plus en plus achevées, que la sensibilité poétique et littéraire s'affine et la réceptivité esthétique se développe. Quand Lodovico Castelvetro parle, par exemple, des "persone assottigliate nelle lettere, "^"^ la "subtilité" ainsi acquise vise aussi, sans doute, l'éducation du goût poétique et artistique. Mais cette dynamique intérieure de ces idées ressortira encore plus clairement de l'analyse des concepts clés par lesquels la Renaissance définit les "lettres."

Prenons

le cas,

parmi

les plus éclairants,

bumanae

littezae et

de ses

synonymes {litteiae humanioies, studia humanitatis, humanores litteias, studia bumanissima, aites humanitatis, cultus humanitatis, etc.) et qui traduisent autant de variantes de la "culture littéraire" définie dans le sens classique du terme = culture latine et grecque, textes et langues). C'est un concept fondamentalement culturel et pédagogique. Dans ses attestations les plus courantes et les plus nombreuses, il ne fait apparemment aucune part aux spécifications poétiques ou aux dissociations autonomistes. Et, pourtant, il implique un grand respect pour la parole humaine et pour les langues, ainsi que pour la lettre du texte. C'est-à-dire pour l'instrument, le véhicule même, de la littérature. Humanae litteiae s'avère être, en fait, un concept central, privilégié, n pose d'emblée tous les problèmes essentiels et ouvre la voie à l'idée de la contemplativité et de la gratuité, du "plaisir" et de "l'émotion" spécifiquement littéraires. Humanae litteiae suppose à vrai dire, in nuce, toutes ces nuances dont la teinte esthétique est plus en plus accusée. Quand Erasme parle de blanda humanitatis studia,^^ les "lettres d'humanité" impliquent, elles aussi, sans doute, un certain contenu "esthétique." Faut-il voir dans une expression comme "delizie delle lettere umane"^^ seulement la nuance hédoniste, épicurienne, d'ailleurs proche de l'esprit de la Renaissance?^^ Le but exclusivement pédagogique, fonctionnel et utilitaire est écarté dans cette hypothèse. Studia humanitatis impliquent d'ailleurs également une conception éducative placée sous le signe du "beau" à la manière antique: harmonie, grâce, proportion, concinitas?^ D'autres implications de humanae litteiae mettent encore plus directement en cause la poésie et ses qualités spécifiques. Même la dissociation très nette, dans des enumerations comme: "studia humanitatis," "id est poetarum, ora(

ADRIAN MARINO

525

libros,"^^ etc. reconnaît au domaine poétique sa Le poesia figure dans studia humanitatis en bonne place. La tendance de dissocier ces deux notions renforce davantage le statut de cette dernière: un personnage de Leon-Battista Alberti "si dilettò in studi d'umanità e ne' poeti. "^ Ce qui veut dire que la lecture des poètes lui donne un "plaisir" particulier. Les humanae litteiae stimulent, en effet, ce genre de lecture, dont les connotations esthétiques ne manquent pas. On parlait d'ailleurs, en directe liaison avec les "artibus humanitatis," des "certas lec-

torum ac historiographorum

réalité et sa spécialisation.

turas graciossissime,"^^ de "l'élégance" de la "lecture humaine" ("La elegancia y eloquencia de las retóricos y sabios en la lectura humana,")-^^ etc. Les définitions des "arts libéraux" [libeialia studias] autorisent des observa-

même genre. Ces arts sont à l'antipode du travail mécanique, serpar des esclaves. La Renaissance emprunte ce concept à l'Antiquité, en perpétuant, en l'accentuant même, le préjugé défavorable au travail manuel. Les arts "libéraux" sont l'apanage exclusif des "hommes libres" de l'obligation de travailler, comme le dit expressément P. Paolo Vergerlo dans De ingenuis rnohbus et libeTolibus studiis adulescentiae.^^ Ces arts— parmi lesquels la tions

vile, fait

poésie — ont le

un caractère "libéral," c'est-à-dire non lucratif, bref "inutile." C'est commencement de l'idée du superflu et du gratuit et elle remonte au moins

Dante {Convivio, I, 9), et à Bocacce qui sépare nettement les "liberali arti" des "lucrativi arti."^'* Le "savoir" libéral et honneste" (Rabelais, Pant., H, 8) est par excellence celui des studia bumanitûtis. l'étude des "lettres" est le commencement de la coimaissance et la source de tous les arts libéraux dont l'éloge ne tarit pas pendant tout le Quattrocento et après. L'ambiance morale et psychologique très détendue qui les entoure, leur contenu délectable, contemplatif, voire "oisif," fournissent aux arts libéraux leurs meilleures justifications et leur confèrent des titres de noblesse. "Liberté," "gratuité," "contemplativité," "émotion esthétique désintéressée" deviennent ainsi des notions impliquées, plus ou moins synonymes, en tout cas circulaires. Tous les textes qui traitent des arts libéraux les associent à Votium, à "la paix de l'âme," au doux et discret épicuréisme des lettres. Les confessions de Pétrarque (Rerum memoiandanun, La vita solitaria) ou d'Erasme sont célèbres à ce titre. Vivre "libéralement" signifiait pour le dernier vivre loin à

des soucis et des obligations, des affaires de ce monde: justice, commerce, S'il s'agit des relations sociales, celles-ci ne peuvent être qu'un libeialis commertium (Colludo Salutati). -^^ Vivre une vie contemplative, abstraitement, dans un perpétuel enchantement spirituel, voici le "style" de cette attitude morale. C'est l'attitude "poétique" formulée dans des termes classiques fondée essentiellement sur la "délectation." La notion est d'ailleurs fréquemment invoquée, à ce propos, dans l'humanisme.^^ Le sens purement esthétique, formel, fait enfin — lui aussi — son apparition. Le Pogge parle de la "forma liberalis," dans une acception purement visuelle — contemplative, avec une allure dirait-on "esthète" avant la lettre. ^^ Le concept conjoint de bonae litteiae (bonnes lettres, buenas lettias, etc.) entretient une ambiguïté culturelle-esthétique identique. Il assume les mêmes significations qui définissent studia humanitatis et libeialis studia, en perpétuant un sens global dont la nuance "littéraire" est, dans la plupart des cas. politique. -^^

MUTATIONS DU CONCEPT DE "LITTERATURE"

526

seulement incluse. Bonae litteme, à vrai dire, un sens métaphorique presque intraductible. L'expression embrasse la totalité de la culture, de la littérature et de la science classiques en tant que suprême idéal spirituel, éthique et culturel de l'humanité. Il en va de même pour les lettres sacres et saeculitterae présente néanmoins la particularité de contribuer dafortune terminoloqigue de la littéiatuie prise expiesis verbis. En effet, la traduction française de bonae litterae devient, comme chez Rabelais, la "boime littérature" [Garg., n, 8). On enregistre également en latin humaniste: Literatura bonis animi,'^ literaria (Fontano) et res literariae, associés directement à bonas literas (Lefèvre d'Etaples)."^^ Qui plus est, les bonae literae tendent à se dissocier de la tradition exclusivement culturelle des "lettres." C'est un fait, par exemple, que Du Bellay ne confond plus ces deux notions. Il parle de "toutes bonnes lettres et érudition. '"^^ Chez Erasme bonae litterae présuppose, sans l'étouffer, la persoimalité et l'iadividualité de literalia studia. De même que chez Leon-Battista Alberti, qui pratique une synthèse pareille et en même temps un distinguo terminologique entre "buone lettere" et "tutte l'arti liberali.'"*^ La "libéralité" des arts et de la littérature est la prémisse renascentiste et humaniste de la "littérature" définie dans le sens modems

laies.^^

Bonae

vantage à

(esthétique).

Retenons également qu'à l'intérieur des bonae literae, la poésie et en général = la totalité des genres littéraires), commencent à faire

l'écriture littéraire

(

En tout cas, une certaine prise de conscience laisse présager cette évolution. Dès que les "poètes" et la "poésie" sont inclus dans une enumeration et de ce fait même dissociés des "bonnes lettres" (qui reste la catégorie la plus générale, le genre prochain des lettres, à l'intérieur duquel plusieurs "différences spécifiques" commencent à percer), on peut être sûr que le processus de l'autonomisation de ces notions a d'ores et déjà commencé. C'est le cas, par exemple, des "buone lettere" chez Bandello (qui englobent valoir leur individualité.

"creatori," "oratori," "poeti," "filosofi" et "altri scrittori"),'^ ultérieurement

chez Pasquier,'*^ etc. La nuance "esthétique" est d'ailleurs déjà assez forte chez Erasme. Parmi les bonae literae figurent également les "muses." Leur création est l'ornement, le "condiment des disciplines plus importantes,"*^ l'embellissem*nt de la culture. La voie des "belles lettres" est ainsi tracée. L'apparition et la propagation— à la même époque et dans le même contexte culturel et littéraire — de la notion de belles lettres, prouve que le contenu "esthétique," le "beau" des lettres est devenu une réalité plus ou moins évidente. La "beauté littéraire" est perçue, définie et élogiée à part entière, telle quelle, quoique dans des acceptions encore très générales et forcément limitées. Le sens esthétique est néanmoins très clair dans des expressions comme politiores litterae, optima littera (Erasme), '^^ litterae politoresque disciplinae, ornata litteratum, eruditione ingenua (L. Bruni). '*^ Même acception chez A. Decembrio: Politia litterarum (1462). Dans les langues "vernaculaires," les

synonymes

les plus usuels [belles lettres, belle lettere, refined let-

même

mutation sémantique. nettement— la séparation du contenu "culturel," ters] attestent la

Elle implique

— encore

plus

"érudit," des "lettres" et l'ac-

centuation de leur caractère "libéral": liberalibus bonarum artium studiis, "les études libérales des belles-lettres" (L. Bruni ).*^ On voit dans une expression

ADRIAN MARINO

52/

comme politions liteiatuiae de Pie de la Mirandole^° que le concept de "littérature" (pris globalement) tend à devenir lui aussi la part élective du "joli" du "beau." On étudie aussi les belles lettres pour elles-même (T. Tasso: "lo studio delle belle lettere"). ^^ Rien de plus normal, donc, que de constater l'apet

parition des "beaux écrits" définis dans le sens actuel, dissociés complètement de leur héritage culturel et doctrinaire: "Les beaux écrits et grande doctrine

des Peuples. "^^ L'idée de "bien écrire," qui se rattache à la grande tradition rhétorique (un seul exemple: "Bien élégantement parler et écrire," P. Fabri)^^ suppose et renforce la même acception. Elle est également présente dans des formules comme: la "concinità, e eleganzia di un verso di Omero" (L. B. Alberti), 5'^ odor liteiaturae mêlions (Erasme), ^^ "soavità e bellezza" (Castelvetro ),5^ etc. En général, chaque fois que le notion de beau et ses dérivés est associée pendant la Renaissance à celle de "style," "composition," "écrit" littéraire, nous tenons la preuve que les "lettres" ont viré du champ de la "culture" vers celui des "arts."

m. Ce tournant décisif entraîne de nouvelles mutations du concept de "littérature." Le schéma général est à peu près le suivant: 1) Le domaine de la "culture" des "lettres" (studia humanitatis, honae liteiae, etc.) est progressivement

délaissé et dépassé; 2) Les "lettres" tendent à s'instituer, avec des hésitations et des infléchissem*nts inévitables, en un domaine particuUer, spécifique, plus

ou moins "autonome." 3) Ce domaine "beau" une de ses qualités maîtresses

a la tendance de reconnaître dans le

Les "lettres" ainsi dégagées de l'emprise théorique et terminologique de la "culture," ont la tendance de s'identifier de plus en plus avec des facultés, des activités et des genres spécifiques. Ceux-ci se séparent toujours plus radicalement de studia humanitatis. Ils assument des fonctions que nous qualifions aujourd'hui d' "esthétiques" et commencent à entretenir avec l'idée de "beau" des relations qui présagent ou affirment le choix de leur domaine d'élection. Le rapport fondamental de la "littérature" et de la poésie avec les arts à l'époque de la Renaissance est celui d'assimilation, du subordination et finalement de timide émancipation. Qu'on se rappelle les formules dominantes, universellement acceptées à l'époque, ut pictura poesis ou mimesis. Nous y constatons, on ne peut plus clairement, que le terme fondamental de référence englobe et domine de très haut le poésie et la "littérature." Voilà pourquoi il faut saisir et mettre en valeur tous les clivages, même les plus faibles, qui se laissent surprendre dans le système traditionnel des arts, où la "littérature" commence à se frayer, non sans peine, son propre chemin. Le point décisif est la prise de conscience, on dirait avant tout intuitive, du fait que ni les "beaux arts," ni les "études libérales," ni même les "belles lettres," ne couvrent plus — pour l'exactitude autant que pour l'extension — le domaine particulier, le quid de la "littérature" et de la poésie sub speciae artis. Pour ne plus parler de la "culture" et de 1' "érudition" qui n'ont rien à voir avec le génie ou le talent [belles lettres] ; 4)

MUTATIONS DU CONŒPT DE "LITTERATURE"

528

poétique et qui, par surcroît, se trouvent avec ces derniers concepts dans

rapport d'opposition directe. Cette mutation devait se produire à une époque sursaturée d'érudition, de "lettres," qui étouffaient les intuitions et les émotions spontanées, le "lyrisme" naturel, rebelle aux schémas "culturels." Quand Léonard de Vinci se déclarait "omo senza lettere"^'' il proclamait justement l'émancipation du génie créateur du dur carcan des "lettres." Cette réaction— assez répandue à l'époque de la Renaissance— marque un des tournants les plus décisifs en matière d'autonomie littéraire: les "lettres" commencent à s'opposer, à freiner en tous cas, la force du génie" (Fr. Bocchi), ^^ car on commence à le retenir déjà, le poète crée "sans art, sans sçavoir."^^ Ce qui ne veut pas dire que l'étude est totalement exclue. Mais son rôle reste celui d'im "aliment," d'un butin d' "abeille." La position la plus radicale, celle de G. Bruno, dissocie pourtant complètement la création poétique des règles transmises par le tradition culturelle et artistique: "La poésie ne naît pas des règles, sinon par très léger accident" {De gli eroici fuTori, i).^

somme toute, des facultés créatrices et emd'expression délivrées de l'emprise du "savoir." Bacon le dit expressément à propos de l'imagination (The Advancement of Learning, ü, IV, 1). A l'instar de Montaigne, qui, lui, démarque "la poésie parfaite, selon art" et "la poésie populaire," "purement naturelle" qui a des "naifvetez et graces" (I, 54). Ils sont précédés — et de loin— par Boccacce qui faisant déjà observer que Studium fuit aima poesis.^^ La "poésie" est grevée, pendant la Renaissance et longtemps après, de son lourd héritage sémantique: elle est à la fois une forme de poeïn, de "composition," et une forme verbale de mimesis, "poésie de parole," comme le dit expressément Castelvero.^^ Et il faut suivre de près — ce que nous ne pouvons pas faire dans ce cadre— l'assimilation et la considération renascentiste proprement "poétique" de la parole, y compris le plaisir euphonique, la musicalité, le rythme, les images, etc. A la suite de Denys d'Halicarnasse, De compositione veiborum, de Démétrius de Phalèse, De elocutione et d'autres textes rhétoriques que l'époque valorise, la poétique s'ouvre aussi aux préoccupations qualifiées aujourd'hui de "formelles" plutôt que de "rhétoriques." Les cas de P. Bembo, de L. Castelvetro sont à cet égard particulièrement significatifs.^^ Cette circonstance est d'importance puisqu'elle introduit finalement une dissociation essentielle: la littéiatuie, avec la totalité de ses connotations lexicales, est refoulée de plus en plus vers son domaine originaire, qui est et reste celui de "la culture," de "l'érudition," de studis; tandis que ses fonctions "esthéthiques" incipientes — qui commencent à surgir à travers les helles lettres — sont assumées de plus en plus clairement par le poésie. Celle-ci tend à devenir une notion toujours plus autonome, "esthétique," délivrée de ses attaches culturelles. Les vrais problèmes littéraires sont donc pris en charge, à partir de la Renaissance, par la poésie. La théorie de la littérature, qui débouchera quelques siècles plus tard sur la théorie de la "littérarité," devient par conséquent la Poétique, tandis que la littérature est assimilée, de plus en plus, aux simples acquis culturels, générateurs de topoi", de lieux communs, La

spécificité poétique dérive,

ploie des

moyens

de poncifs. Bref, de non-littérature.

ADRIAN MARINO

529

Un rapide échantillonnage des transformations que subit la notion d' "écrimêmes conclusions. Elles évoluent vers le professionnalisme, d'abord du type "écrivant," ensuite exclusivement "poète." Humanista est à l'origine le professeur des lettres {conducto ad litvain," de umanista ä poeta, confirme les

teias humanitatis] le maître d'école féru d'humanités.^ Le "poète" jouit, à son tour, d'un statut spécial et les deux "professions" font de leur mieux pour ne pas se confondre. On est "umanista e poeta," "perfetto umanista" et "singolar poeta. "^^ On peut laisser à la fois un "nome di buon letterato e di valor poeta. "^^ La division du travail "littéraire" = de l'écriture) introduit lui aussi d'autres spécialisations: le meilleur expert es studia humanitatis est appelé ,

(

literarum prìnceps; le pamphlétaire, voire le folliculaire (celui qui fait une carrière purement professionnelle, le cas de Pogge qui se déclare ego litteraisquor]^^ est assimilable à la notion moderne de "publiciste"; le créateur, enfin, est — lui seul — le "poète." C'est un nom "qui signifie (un auteur) de style excellent et admirable en vers" (L. Bruni). "^^ Le savant est dissocié du créateur, tandis que ce dernier prend de plus en plus ses distances vis-à-vis du "professionel" des vers: "le rimeur," le "versificateur," le "rimatore di rima," etc. Ce voisinnage est devenu compromettant et les mises en garde contre toute "contrefaçon" sont nombreuses à l'époque de la Renaissance.^^ Il faut voir dans cette résistance à toute assimilation abusive, et au-delà de toute orgueilleuse "appellation contrôlée," la prise de conscience du vrai poète, de sa vocation, de sa personnalité créatrice. La structure "autonome" de la poésie est l'oeuvre d'un esprit non moins original, fier de ses facultés spécifiques, imbu de son prestige. Chez Ronsard,^^ Mathurin Régnier, D'Aubigné, etc., cette dissociation est devenue presque obsessionnelle, un article de foi poétique. Elle va jusqu'à faire rompre complètement à la poésie les amarres avec sa forme versifiée, comme l'affirme d'ailleurs Girolamo Fracastoro: "J'appelle poète non seulement celui qui écrit et qui fait des vers, mais aussi celui qui est poète de pas sa nature même s'il n'écrit rien."^^ Cette remarquable intuition anticipe — et de loin — les thèses dadaïates et surréalistes modernes selon lesquelles la poésie est un état d'esprit, "une manière de vivre," qui dépase largement le domaine de l'écriture: "La poésie écrite — selon André Breton— perd de jour en jour sa raison d'être" et il semble certain "que le lyrisme nouveau trouvera le moyen de se traduire sans le secours du livre. "^^ Cette mutation— la plus radicale des toutes— veut ainsi restituer la poésie, dès l'époque de la Renaissance, à sa plus pure essence.

Romania

Notes 1. Franco Simone, "La 'Reductio Artium ad Sacram Scripturam'. Quale espressione dell'Umanesimo medievale fino al secolo Xn," Convivium, 1949, 887-927.

MUTATIONS DU CONCEPT DE "LITTERATURE"

530 2.

Joannis Pici Mirandulae, Opera quae extant

omnia

(Basileae, 1601), U, p. 1 sq.

3. Basilea,

1533, p. 77. 4. E. Barbaro, Epistolae, Oiatìones et Carmina, a cura di V. Branca (Firenze, 1942),

p. 96.

5. Cf.

John William Alridge, The Henneneutics of Erasmus (Winterthur, 1966),

p. 24.

Albert Cina, Le livre (Paris, 1905),

6. Cf. 7.

p. 111.

Franco Simone, "La coscienza della Rinascita negli imianisti francesi," Rivista

moderne, I (1946), p. 273. Bulletin de théologie ancierme et medievale, VE (1956), p. 517. 9. Jacob Burckhardt, Kultur und Kunst der Renaissance in Italien (Berlin, 1936), p. 140. 10. Philippe Monnier, Le Quattrocento (Paris, 1912), I, pp. 126-127; Dario Cecdi Letterature 8. Cf.

chetti, "L'elogio delle arti liberali nel

(1956), p. 2. 11. J. E. Spingam,

Fusco

primo Umanesimo francese," Studii francesi,

critica letteraria nel

Rinascimento,

tr. it.

del dr. Antonio

(Bari, 1905), p. 154, 263.

12. L. B. Alberti, Il Trattato della Pittura e

zione di G. Papini (Lanciano, 1934), 13. Phillippe

Monnier, op.

cinque ordini architettonici, con prefa-

p. 45.

cit., I, p.

195.

Karl-Heinz Gerschmann, 'Antiqui-novi-modemi' in den "Epistolae Obscurorum Vhoruxa," Archiv für Begriffa*geschichte, XI, (1967), p. 25. 15. Murray W. Bundy, " 'Invention' and 'Imagination' in the Renaissance," The Journal of Enghsh and Germanic Philology, XXIV (1930), pp. 535-548. 16. Cf. Benedetto Croce, Storia dell'estetica per saggi (Bari, 1942), p. 38. 17. Lodovico Castelvetro, Poetica d'Aristotele vulgarizzata et sposta (Basel, 1576), p. 65, 180, 372, 374. 18. Francesco Bemi, Dialogo contro i poeti (1526), in Poesie e prose, ed. Ezio Chiorboli (Genéve-Ffrenze, 1934), p. 268. 19. Allan H. Gilbert, Literary Criticism. Plato to Dryden (Detroit, 1962), p. 502. 20. Dario Cechetti, op. cit., p. 2; Philippe Monnier, op. cit., I, p. 97, 100, 130, 276. 21. Karl-Heinz Gerschmann, op. cit., p. 31. 22. Cf. Wallace K. Fergusson, La Renaissance, tr. fr. (Paris, 1950), p. 62; Eugenio Garin, L'Educazione in Europa, 1400-1600 (Bari, 1957), p. 203. 23. René Wellek, Literature and its Cognates, in Dictionary of the History of Ideas (New York, 1973), m, p. 81. 14. Cf.

Lodovico Castelvetro, op. cit., p. 30. König " 'Studia humanitatis' und verwandte Ausdrucke bei den deutschen Frühhumanisten," in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Renaissance und Refor24.

25. Erich

mation

(Freissig, 1917), p. 207.

M. Brown, "A significant

sixteenth-century use of the word 'Umanista'," Language Review, 64 (1969), p. 572. 27. Giuseppe Saitta, La rivendicazione d'Epicuro nell'Umanesimo, in Filosofia 26. Peter

The

Modem

umanesimo (Venezia, 1928), pp. 55-82. 28. Eugenio Garin, Gli "Studia Umanitatis" e la pedagogia italiana del Rinascimento, in Saggi di filologia e filosofia (Bucuresti, 1946), p. 94. 29. Horst Rüdiger, Die Wiederentdeckung der Antiken Literatur im Zeitalter der

italiana e

Renaissance, in Geschichte der Textüberheferung (Zürich, 1961),

p. 525.

ADRIAN MARINO

531

30. L. B. Alberti, Della famiglia,

con prefazione

di Carlo

Capasso (Milano, Son-

zogno), p. 92. 31. Erich König, op. cit., p. 206. 32. Cristobal de Villalon, Ingeniosa compaiación entre lo antiguo (Madrid, La Sociedad de bibliofilos espanoles, 1898), p. 164.

y lo presente

33. Cf. Eugenio Garin, op. cit., p. 92. 34. Giovanni Boccaccio, Tiattatello in laude di Dante, a cura di Pier Giorgio

Ricci (Milano-Napoli, 1965), p. 574. 35. Johan Huizinga, Erasmo, tr. it. (Milano, 1958), p. 128. 36. Eugenio Garin, op. cit., I, p. 85. 37. Dario Cecchetti, op. 38. Cf. Philippe

cit., p. 6.

Mounier,

op. cit.,

p. 185.

127; John William Abridge, op. cit., pp. 20-22. 40. Lilii Greg. Gyraldi, Ferrariensis, Operum quae extant omnium (Basileae,

39. Huizinga, op.

cit., p.

1580), n, p. 427. 41. Cf. Philippe Mounier, op. cit., I, p. 202; Franco Simone, "La coscienza della Rinascita negli umanisti francesi," p. 265-266. 42. Joachim Du Bellay, La Défense et Illustration de la Langue Francoyse, ed.

Henri Chamard (Paris, 1948), 43. John Willim Abridge, op.

14.

cit., p.

21; L. B. Alberti,

Trattato della Pittura

...,

p. 84.

44. I,

Matteo Bandello, Le Novelle, a cura

Gioachino Brognoligo

(Bari, 1910),

p. 113.

45. Estienne Pasquier, Les Recherches de la France (Paris, 1617), p. 796. 46. Desiderio Erasmo de Rotterdam, Il ciceroniano o dello stile migliore, tr.

it.

(Brescia, 1965); p. XXVII, Huizinga, op. cit., p. 167.

47. John William Abridge, op. cit., p. 23; Il pensiero della Rinascenza e delle Reforme, in: Grande Antologia Filosofica (Milano, 1964), VI, p. 115. 48. Hans Baron, The Crisis of the early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, 1965), I,

362; n, 620. 49. Philippe Mounier, op. 50.

cit.,

219.

August Buck, Italienische Dictungslehre von Mittelalter

bis

zum Ausgang

der Renaissance (Tübingen, 1952), p. 66. 51. Torquato Tasso, Prose (Milano-Napoli, 1959), p. 309. 52. La Popelinière, Histoire des histoires avec l'Idée de l'Histoire accomplie (Paris, 1599), p. 269.

53. Cf. E. Egger, L'Hellénisme en France (Paris, 1869),

325.

54. L. B. Alberti, Della famiglia, p. 92.

Erasmo de Rotterdam, op. cit., p. 238. Michel Nasta, Le fonctionnement des concepts dans un texte inédit de

55. Desiderio 56.

Castelvetro (Padova, 1977), p. 52. 57. Guiseppina Fumagalli, Leonardo, "uomo senza lettere" (Firenze, 1952), p. 38, note. 58. Baxter Hathaway, The Age of Criticism. The Late Renaissance in Italy (Ithaca, 1962), p. 454. 59. 60.

E. Spingam, op. cit., p. 193. Giordano Bruno, Opere (Milano-Napoli, 1956),

61. Cf. Giorgio Woigt, p. 188.

573.

n risorgimento dell'antiquità classica,

tr. it.

(Firenze, 1888),

MUTATIONS DU CONCEPT DE LITTERATURE"

532 62.

Lodovico Castelvetro,

63. G. Pettenati, "Il

op. cit., p. 13.

Bembo

Studi di Filologia italiana, 60-62.

sul valore delle lettele e Dionisio d'Alicamasso,"

XVHl

(1955), pp. 69-77;

Michel Nasta,

op. cit., pp.

64. Augusto Campana, "The Origin of the word Humanist, "Journal of the Warbuzg and Couitauld Institutes, IX (1946), p. 61. 65. Idem, op. cit., p. 62, 64; Peter M. Brown, "A Significant sixteenth century use of the word "Umanista," The Modem Language Review, 64 (1969), p. 566. 66. Adriano Mauriello, "Cultura e Società nella Siena del Cinquecento," Filologia

e letteiatuia,

XVn

(1971), p. 29.

Monnier, op. cit., I, p. 163, 332. 68. August Buck, op. cit., p. 89. 69. Allan H. Gilbert, op. cit., p. 237, 270, 287, 437, etc. 70. Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1858), IE, p. 19. 71. Girolamo Fracastoro, U Naugerio, tr. it., a cura di Giiilio Pretti (Milano, 1967), 67. Philippe

p. 66.

72.

André Breton, Les Pas perdus

(Paris, 1970), p. 115, 174.

Erasmus' English Pléiade Claie

M. Murphy

Sometime during the late summer of 1519, Thomas More wrote his sec-

ond longest extant letter, addressed, it is now known, to the Carthusian John Batmanson, but called simply "Letter to a Monk." In the original letter— now lost — Batmanson had apparently claimed that all Erasmus wanted, was to express himself in private. In answer to that charge More asks rhetorically: "At quamdiu vixit apud Coletum, quamdiu apud Reuerendum Patrem Roffensen Episcopum, quamdiu apud Reuerendissimum Cantuariensis Ecclesiae Pontificem, vt omittam interim Monioium, Tunstallum, Pacaeum, Grocinum, quibuscum saepe diuque versatus est, de quorum virorum laudibus si quid conarer exponere, merito viderer ineptus, quum horum nemo sit quem non omnes intelligant, a nemine satis laudari posse?"^ In his study of this letter, Henri Gibaud refers to this group named by More as "cette merveilleuse Pléiade d'énidits anglais dont la seule évocation en faveur d'Érasme aurait dû faire taire toutes critiques."^ Thus, Erasmus' English Pléiade: John Colet, John Fisher, William Grocyn, William Blount Lord Moimtjoy, Richard Pace, Cuthbert Tunstall, and William Warham. To Lord Mountjoy, who had been Erasmus' pupil in Paris, and to whom England apparently owed the earliest visit of Erasmus, to Mountjoy Erasmus dedicated the first edition of his Adages in 1500, with a prefatory letter to his former pupil, always his patron and his friend.^ In 1504 Erasmus wrote to Colet that he had recently sent to England one hundred copies of his Adages and that Grocyn had promised to oversee their distribution: "And I doubt not that he performed his promise, for he is the most upright and the best of all Britons.'"* After two somewhat enlarged reprintings of the 1500 edition, a much more elaborate Adages appeared from the press of Aldus Manutius in 1508, with a new preface to Mountjoy (CWE E, 139). In this 1508 dedicatory letter, Erasmus promises that in future editions he will add scriptural allegories found in early theologians. He needs more Greek books for this work, however, for theologians had neglected the study of Greek and spent their time "on subtle questions." But fortunately, continues Erasmus to Mountjoy, he has found someone who can also treat the subject of scriptural allegory and who has

534

ERASMUS' ENGLISH PLEIADE

volunteered to do so: "Richard Pace, a young man so well versed in knowledge of Greek and Latin letters that his intellect would enable him imaided to bring fame to the whole of England; and who is of such high character, and so modest withal, that he wholly deserves the favour of yourself and those who resemble you. And so, now that I have a successor as satisfactory as he, the result will be first, that I have not only occasioned no loss to scholars by avoiding the remaining part of this task, but have even done them a good turn,- and second, that this entire work will now be indebted to your country, England, for its author" [CWE n, 141-42). The 1500 edition of the Adages had been a whole book addressed in answer to a letter from Mountjoy [CWE I, 255); in his 1508 dedication, Erasmus says that he has noticed that Mountjoy "took especial pleasure in this kind of thing" [CWE n, 140). By the time of this 1508 edition, Mountjoy was in charge of the studies of the future Henry Vin.^ The continuation promised to and by Pace never materialized, and the 1528 edition of the Adages added the name of Mount joy's son Charles to its dedication, and for the 1533 edition, Erasmus wrote a new dedicatory letter to Charles.^ For more than thirty years of his life, Erasmus never let go the connection in his mind of the book he himself would have liked as a schoolboy and the Mountjoy family.^ During his 1505 visit to England, Grocyn introduced Erasmus to William Warham, to whom Erasmus dedicated his translation of the Hecuba of Euripides. When Erasmus could not understand why Warham offered him such a meager reward, Grocyn explained that Warham assumed all such visitors offered their work to many patrons.^ In Paris the next year Erasmus added his translation of Iphigenia in Aulis to that of Hecuba. But this Paris edition was full of errors and unsatisfactory to Erasmus. He therefore appealed to Aldus Manutius for an accurate printing, and wrote to him from Bologna on October 28, 1507: "I am sending you my translations of two tragedies. It was audacious to attempt them, of course, but it is for you to decide for yourself whether I have translated them properly. Thomas Linacre, William Grocyn, William Latimer, and Cuthbert Tunstall, who are your friends as well as mine, had a very high opinion of them" (CWE H, 129-31). Erasmus had already written to Tunstall to secure his approval of the translations of the Greek tragedies into Latin. ^ For the Aldine edition of the two plays, which appeared in December 1507, Erasmus wrote an expanded preface to Warham. Warham did, of course, realize the sincerity of Erasmus' dedication and became one of his most dependable patrons. The dedicatory letters of the Paris and Aldine editions show the growth in intimacy between the two men. In the first dedicatory letter, Erasmus writes formal phrases of flattery, while in the second he assumes Warham's great learning, and discusses with him the problems of translation caused by the differences in style between these two plays. {CWE n, 107-10, and CWE n, 133-35). That Erasmus took this task of translation very seriously shows still seventeen years later, when in 1524 he wrote to Haio Hermann -who had apparently doubted that Erasmus had translated the plays — that certainly they were his. Did Hermann think Erasmus incapable of them? If so, let him ask Thomas More, let him ask Mountjoy, who had been witnesses of his work.^°

CLARE M. MURPHY

535

At about the same time as the "Trojans," the Oxford University group opposed to the study of Greek, received royal letters commending the study of Greek, a cleric preached at court against Greek learning and a new interpretation of scripture. With the King was Richard Pace, who noted the King's contempt for the preacher. Henry decided upon a debate between Thomas More and the cleric. More gave such an eloquent defense of the language that the preacher simply fell on his knees and begged pardon for any offense he had given from the pulpit. On hearing that the cleric had never read any writings of Erasmus, the King told him that he was very foolish to censure what he had not read. The preacher then protested that he had read "something they call Moria." Now Pace spoke up: "Yes, may it please your Highness, such a Subject is fit for such a Reader. "^^ In his colloquy Pietas Puerìlis, first published as Confabulatio pia, Erasmus produced what Jean-Claude Margolin describes as "le meilleur commentaire érasmien de cette pédagogie tirée de l'enseignement de saint Paul."^^ Young Gaspar of the colloquy, in imitation and emulation of Colet, tells his listener, who happens to be named Erasmius, of his prayers that God will "illuminate" his "understanding for the learning of good letters," which Gaspar might use to God's glory. When Erasmius asks Gaspar "Who are your patron saints?" Gaspar replies: "Of apostles, Paul; of martyrs, Cyprian; of doctors, Jerome; of virgins, Agnes." When Erasmius marvels at the instruction Gaspar has received, the boy explains: "... I was a member of the household of that worthiest of men, John Colet. Do you know the man?" And Erasmius answers: "...

as well as

know

you."^^

was no doubt during the summer of 1499 at Oxford with Colet that the mind of Erasmus formed itself into that which eventually produced his Greek New Testament with its Latin translation and notes. Erasmus formed his It

^'*

thinking in following Colet, but also in debate with him, and the differences which flowed from these non-acrimonious exchanges of ideas are powerfully illustrated in their disagreement over Christ's words during the agony in the garden: "Pater mi, si possible est, transeat a me calix iste, verumtamen non sicut ego volo, sed sicut tu" (Matthew 26: 13). Colet could not accept the traditional reading of these words as Christ's humanity reacting with the normal fear of painful death, and insisted— by appealing to the only Church father who held this view, St. Jerome — that Christ was speaking from His divine nature, and that His words meant "Let not my death be a cause of suffering to the Jews" {CWE n, 214). Twenty-five years later in Erasmus' colloquy Inquisitio de Fide, Barbatius insists again upon Christ's humanity in this plea to His Father as a source of confidence to mankind and His acceptance of His sufferings as willing, "but according to the will of His Father. "^^ Craig Thompson remarks on the similarity of this section of the colloquy to Erasmus' much earlier debate with Colet. As Thompson says, Erasmus disagreed "for once with his beloved Jerome. "^^ This debate between Colet and Erasmus is preserved in their letters, and was substantially put into writing by Erasmus a few years later as Disputatìuncula de Tedio, Favore, Tristitia Jesu.... ^'' What is even more noticeable than Erasmus' difference of opinion with St. Jerome, or his somewhat analagous

ERASMUS' ENGLISH PLEIADE

536

discussion in Inquisitio de Fide, is the elaboration of the subject by Thomas thirty-five years later in the Tower of London, writing his final major work. More's De Tnstitia Christi uses even the same three words of Erasmus' earlier writing: tnstitia, tedio, pavore. When Aldus Manutius printed Linacre's Sphere ofPioclus, he inserted after the preface a letter he had received from Grocyn, a letter written probably in 1499. Grocyn wrote that Linacre had told him that Manutius was contemplating printing the Old Testament in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and the New Testament in Greek and Latin. Grocyn complimented Manutius on the proposed imdertaking, calling it divine, "arduous," and "most worthy of a Christian man." Grocyn's blessing on this proposal— never completed by Manutius— may be taken by inference as a blessing on the Greek and Latin New Testament of Erasmus.^® Shortly after the appearance of his New Testament, Erasmus wrote to Fisher that "this work was feared before it appeared, but now that it is published, it is marvellous how it is prized by all theologians who are either learned, or just honest and candid. "^^ The unlearned, the dishonest, and the dissembling, however, soon began to speak out against Erasmus' labor. "More recently," Richard Pace writes in De Fructu Qui Ex Doc-

tiina Peicipitur.

there have been some people— I don't know who— who have tried condemn the New Testament which our Erasmus edited with a great amount of work and industry and which all truly learned men highly approved of. What those people were doing in fact was tearing to pieces ...

and the Apostles, who were speaking to us and in a more genuine voice than before. I think, therefore,

Christ, all the Evangelists,

clearly

they ought to be called sons of iniquity instead of theologians. ^°

And in the same year, Fisher writes to Erasmus: "The New Testament, translated by you for the common benefit of all, carmot give offence to any sensible person, since you have not only clarified innumerable passages through your erudition, but have also provided ample well-founded comments on the whole work; so that it can now be read and understood by everyone with much more gratification and pleasure than it could before" [Conespondence p. 53). In the meantime, Warham was so delighted by some notes in this New Testament praising him, that he promised Erasmus a higher patronage if he would return to England [Conespondence, p. 51). But Erasmus stayed in the Netherlands, where Tunstall — on a diplomatic mission — was helping with the second edition. ^^ During the preparation of this revised and enlarged edition of the New Testament, Erasmus writes from Louvain to Fisher: "I derive no pleasure from this constant sword-play with so many wranglers. I wanted to help learning, small though my contribution be, and should not grudge my pains if my wish succeeds." In this same letter of March 1518, Erasmus mentions the terminal illness of the already paralyzed Grocyn: "I wish great minds like his could elude the grasp of death or old age...." [Conespondence, p. 59). But Erasmus was not through with wrangling, and Grocyn's great mind could still support him, even though his body had not eluded death. When Dean John Colet of St. Paul's Church had invited William Grocyn to give divinity ,

CLARE M. MURPHY

537

lectures there early in the sixteenth century, Grocyn lectured on the Hieiaicbia Ecclesiastica of Dionysius the Areopagite, so long considered the same Dionysius converted by Saint Paul himself. In his studies for preparing these lectures, Grocyn concluded, as Lorenzo Valla aheady had, that the man called by this name was not at all Saint Paul's convert. In 1528, almost ten years after Grocyn's death, the Sorbonne "censures" against Erasmus were released. One of them attacked Erasmus as ignorant and rash for denying that the Areopagite had written the Dionysian works. Erasmus answered that Lorenzo Valla had made the same claim. Would Valla be thus attacked? But further, said Erasmus, he would not even speak for himself, he would appeal to William Grocyn, "to whom neither want of knowledge nor of prudence can be objected who when alive was a man of the most severe and chaste life, exceedingly observant of ecclesiastical rules and to the highest degree learned in scholastic theology; while at the same time a man gifted by nature with the most acute judgement, and exactly versed in every description of educa.

. .

. . .

tional knowledge. "^^

The relationship between Erasmus and his English Pléiade— and here is not even included his immeasurably fruitful friendship with Thomas More — suggests that in spite of all the time he spent lecturing in English universities, and gracing English homes, Erasmus undoubtedly received more from England than he gave to it. The interaction between this great humanist and the island he once referred to as "perhaps the least tainted part of Christendom" (Corlespondence, p. 61) might most fittingly be summarized by the epigram in praise of England, written by Richard Pace's friend Paolo Bombace of Bologna: Sceuo Marte potens &. mercibus Anglia diues Quid tibi cum Musis improba? Momus ait.

Paceum pluresque ostentans Anglia

doctos,

Immo inquit mecum quid (rogo) Mome tibi? Si me auro uincentem omnes, belloque superbam, Eloquio haud super at Graecia nee Latium.^^ University of Rhode Island

Notes 1. Elizabeth Frances Rogers, ed., The Correspondence of Sii Thomas (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947), No. 83, p. 169.

Moie

Henri Gibaud, "Thomas More: Réponse à im moine anti-érasmien," M. A. Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université de Tours, 1967,

thesis.

p. xix. 3. R. A. B. Mynors, D. F. S. Thomson and Wallace K. Ferguson, Collected Woiks of Eiasmus (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, volume I, 1974; volume n, 1975), I, 255. Ail further references to these works will be given in parentheses in the body of the text as CWE.

ERASMUS' ENGLISH PLEIADE

538

4. "Memoir of William Grocyn," pp. 332-80 in Montagu Burrows, Collectanea, Second Series (Oxford Historical Society at the Clarendon Press, 1890), p. 358. 5. Margaret Mann Phillips, The "Adages" of Erasmus: A Study with Translations (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1964), p. 75. 6. Mann Phillips, pp. 75 and 152. 7. Mrs. Mann Phillips suggests (p. 74) that the correspondence between Erasmus and Mountjoy confirms the conclusion that in writing the Adages, Erasmus produced the book he probably would have liked to study as a schoolboy. She also indicates (p. 152) that the dedication of every edition of the Adages to one of the Mountjoy family symbolizes the close connection always in Erasmus' mind between the Adages and England. 8. J. D. Mackie, The Earlier Tudors 1485-1558 (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press,

CWE

n, 107. 1957), p. 251. See also 9. Charles Sturge, Cuthbert Tunstall:

ministrator (London, 10.

Churchman,

New York, Toronto: Longman's,

Scholar, Statesman, Ad-

Green and Co.,

Germain Marc'hadour, LUnivers de Thomas More

(Paris:

1938), p. 119. Vrin, 1963), p.

353. 11. Samuel Knight, The Life of Dr. John Colet (London: J. Downing, 1724), pp. 58-59. 12. Jean-Claude Margolin, ed. and trans., Erasme: Declamatio de Pueris Statim ac Liberahter Instituendis (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1966), p. 95. 13. Margolin, p. 95; and Craig R. Thompson, trans.. The Colloquies of Erasmus (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 34 and 41. See also Thompson's discussion (p. 31) of whether Caspar is meant to represent Colet or Colet's pupil Thomas Lupset. See also Mackie, pp. 243-44. 14. See for example, Margolin, pp. 94-95; and Jean Rouschausse, La Vie et L'Oeuvre de John Fisher (Angers: Editions Moreana, 1972), p. 34. 15. Craig R. Thompson, ed. and trans., Inquisitio de Fide: A Colloquy by Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus 1524 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950) p. 63.

16.

Thompson,

Inquisitio..., p. 88.

exchange of letters between Colet and Erasmus, see CWE I, 202-19. 18. "Memoir of William Grocyn," pp. 352-53. 19. Jean Rouschausse, ed. and trans., Erasmus and Fisher: Their Correspondence 1511-1524 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1968), p. 47. All further references to this work will be given in the body of the text as Correspondence. 20. Richard Pace, De Fructu Qui ExDoctrina Percipitur (The Benefit of a Liberal Education), eds. and trans., Frank Manley and Richard S. Sylvester (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. for the Renaissance Society of America, 1967), p. 61. 17. For this

21. Sturge, p. 119. 22. "Memoir of William 23. Pace, p. 8.

Grocyn," pp. 355-57.

Beyond Macaronic: Embedded Latin in Dante and Langland E.

Pelei Nolan

charming book on multilingualism and the poet, Leonard Forster, shows that although the presence of alternative languages in the same text can carry a host of minor functions, it very often does

his

in a quick scan,

not matter which particular language does what.^ I would like to suggest, however, that on significant occasions it does matter: Latin embedded in medieval vernacular poetry can go far beyond providing decor, local color, elevated tone, a general sense of authority, even an indication of ethical differentiation: Latin is often foimd in the direct and active service of the central literary and doctrinal imperatives governing the work. Piers Plowman contains more Latin than any other vernacular work of comparable dimension and design: there are 619 Latin passages (514 of which are quotations from the Bible). They occur throughout the text; they range from a tag or phrase to entire sentences and clusters of sentences (sometimes glossed or translated, often not). Piers is a poem in which Meaning itself is the explicit quest of the hero; it is a poem that replicates a world in which language is the sole, evasive, irascible, almost intransigent mediator of salvation. In such cases, surely the pervasive presence of a language other than that driving the text merits the closest attention. Sister Carmeline Sullivan published a dissertation in 1932 which catalogued the sources of all Latin quotations in Skeats' A, B and C texts, yet there is not to my knowledge a full study of the higher and governing functions of this second language.^ Although the constraints of this occasion forbid such full study here, I do offer a prolegomenon. We need a model which displays schematically iconic values of each language in the medieval set of expectations. We should not be surprised if language, like any over-arching social structure, generates ambivalence in the society it serves, and we should not be surprised if we find much of what we need, directly and indirectly, in Dante. We have, first, Dante's explicit yet by no means consonant remarks on Latin and the vernacular in the Convivio and the De volgari eloquentia. Calling the subject of Dante and language a punctum dolens, Cecil Grayson's contribu-

EMBEDDED LATIN IN DANTE AND LANGLAND

540 tion to the Oxford

When

all

Dante

Centenary Essays has proved most useful.-^ away is explained away, one difficulty still in two different places, that each language is

Society's

that can be explained

remains: Dante insists, albeit

Dante says that Latin is nobler because inmutable (and not corruptible like the vernacular); in the De V. E. he says the vernacular is nobler because it is natural (and not artificial like Latin). Herewith the key passages from the respective texts:

nobilioi than the other, ha the Convivio it is

[latino] ... non era subietto ma sovrano, e per nobilita e per vertu e per bellezza. Per nobilita, perchè lo latino è perpetuo e non corruttibile, e lo volgare è non stabile e corruttibile. {Convivio I.V. 7)

Harum quoque duarum nobilior est vulgaris: tum quia prima fuit humano generi usitata; tum quia totus orbis ipsa perfruitur, licet in diversas prolationes et

tum

quia naturalis est nobis,

cum

ilia

vocabula

sit divisa,-

potius artificialis

existât.

(De

V. E. I.i.4)*

Present scope forbids attention to the intricate discussions of critics and on Dante's apparent contradictions here; let me proceed, in a short-

scholars

hand manner,

to a first draft of a

working schema:

Positive: perpetual, incorruptible Latin:

Negative:

artificial

Positive: natural, useful

Vernacular:

Negative: unstable, mutable, corruptible indirect assistance in both the Vita Nuova and the CornOne recalls the impressive dream of Amor in chapter 12 of the V. N. in which the God appears as a young man in white, reminiscent of the figure in white at Christ's tomb. Amor sighs and speaks in language that resonates

Dante provides

media.

with St. Paul's meditations on childhood and childish things, "Fili mi, tempus est ut pieteimictantui simulacia nostra."^ This sentence makes no appreciable dent on the dreaming boy and Amor falls to weeping. The boy asks, in the vernacular, why the man weeps and Amor answers, "Ego tantum centrum ciiculi, cui simili modo se habent ciicumfeientie paites; tu autem non sic." The boy fails to understand this reply, at any level of engagement, as an answer and asks why the man speaks "con tanta oscuritade." At this point Amor shifts languages and says, "Non dimandare più che utile ti sia." Later on in chapter 25, during the notorious excursus on rhetoric, the narrator of the V. N. admits the image of Amor as a person is a lie, but justifies the fiction on the grounds that litterati poete are permitted rhetorical figures and colors. Curtius sees some significant sliding here and says, after acknowledging the "circle-center-periphery" figure as a standard theological formula for divinity:

PETER

NOLAN

54I

That in the Vita Nuova he applies this theological formula to Love, and yet in another passage ... again sophistically states that Love is not a substance but pure accident, is a flaw of youthful woTk.^

Dante he is surely wrong; the narrator of the V. N. is no unmediated Dante Alighieri but an invention of memory. The failure of an over-arching consequential procedure, and, more specifically, the failure of Amor's Latin rests not on Dante the poet nor with the Latin nor with Amor but with the boy who is not at the center. It is a failure of heart, nerve and imagination. As Amor, weeping, shifts from Insofar as Curtius attributes this flaw to the biographical

Latin to the vernacular, that shift declares itself as a figure of a further step in the descensus ad humanitatem of Divine Grace. Latin is the higher mode of mediation between God and man: the vehicle of revelation, of first and last things. The invented narrator is simply all unready, too fraught with middle; thus Amor stoops to conquer. As Beatrice will later say about the accommodations of Divinity to human limitation:

Qui

mostraro, non perchè sortita questa spera lor, ma per far segno

sia

de la celestial c'ha men salita. Così parlar conviensi al vostro ingegno, però che solo da sensato apprende ciò che fa poscia d'intelletto degno. Per questo la Scrittura condescende a vostra facultate, e piedi e mano attribuisce a Dio e altro intende {Paiadiso, IV, 37-45)7 is a semiotician. Now, worshipping the signifier over Augustine warns, the most degrading slavery. Yet that is precisely what the boy-narrator does and that is why the V. N. as the central lack of adequate telos is discovered, merely stops. The entire Commedia is

Per far segno

...

the signified

is,

Beatrice as

at the rectification of that error, so that Dante the Pilgrim may finally love Beatrice not for what she is, but for what she signifies. In the V. N., the two languages are in significant tension: opposing value systems are in opposition and this is a reflection of the primal disjunction between the eternal and the merely living. In the Puigatono and Paradiso, Latin generally comes, with a notable exception of an entire Latin tercet of Cacciaguida's, in single lines which rhyme

aimed

(more than phonetically) with the Italian in which they are embedded and it

usually functions apodictically.

mens toward

truth,

It is

in the great

momentary

sudden proximity to deity reveals

soarings

itself

quasi-

mimetically in the hieratic Latin of biblical or liturgical quotation. The corporate wisdom of the ages flashes through the narrative of a unique present moment in an imagined personal life. This iconic presence of the timeless in the schemes of time is a working figiure of the figurai relation itself as well as a demonstration of its validity and power. Embedded Latin functions here as a radical apex of discourse, a figure of Logos itself.

EMBEDDED LATIN IN DANTE AND LANGLAND

$42

find evidence for the negative aspects of Latin within the medieval set Chaucer or Langland himself. The

of expectations, one has only to turn to

movements ways

and anti-clericalism are constantly pointing to the

of lay piety

which Latin is used as a confidence trick in the attempts of fraudulent to milk the unlettered multitude.^

clerics

We can now add a second set of preliminary functions to the values already present in the working schema: Positive: perpetual, incorruptible, vehicle of revelation

Latin:

Negative:

vehicle of clerical fraud

artificial,

Positive: natural, useful, language of the pilgrimage

Vernacular:

Negative: unstable, corruptible, vehicle of error

My hope is that such a schema of potential iconic values will help gain a clearer sense of the relationships obtaining between Latin and English in Piers Plowman. Like the Commedia, Piers begins in disorder and middle sorrow; radically unlike the Commedia, Piers ends in disorder and final sorrow. The poem has the curves of Phaeton's flight: joy and insight, reconciliation and consolation are always fleeting and always penultimate. Dialectic does not run counter to entropy, it furthers it and, as with Dante's Vecchio di Creta, tears of recognition serve only to feed the rivers of hell. The poem opens with the famous display of the fair field of folk bounded by a high tower above and a dark dungeon below. Any child would read such limits as heaven and hell but the folk itself seems unaware of any such organizing axis: it merely mills about. Suddenly the People (in English) and a descending Angel (in Latin) urge the King to act with mercy as well as justice. As matters seem to be moving toward some sort of social contract, a "glutton of words" speaks out in apparent

warning:

Thanne greued hym

a goliardeys

•

a glotoun of wordes,

And to the angel an hei3 answered after, 'Dum rex a regere dicatur nomen habere, •

•

Nomen

habet sine re nisi studet iura tenere.' And thanne gan alle the commune crye in vers of Latin, To the kynges conseille construe ho-so wolde — 'Precepta Regis sunt nobis vincula legis. •

•

With that ran there

a route

And smale mys myd hem

•

of ratones at ones.

then a thousande (B Prologue, 139-147)9

According to J. A. W. Bennet, the angel's speech follows a sermon preached by Henry Harcley in 1315 while he was Chancellor of Oxford. ^^ G. R. Owst argues that the angel is really Thomas Brunton, Bishop of Rochester and that

PETER

NOLAN

543

the goliardeys — the word-glutton— is Sir Peter de la Mare and that the peosuddenly and unaccountably shouting in Latin, are backing his position. ^^ First, I fail to see how the line of Latin the people shout backs up the goliard. He insists that the king is king only as long as he maintains the law whereas the people seem of a more pragmatic bent and answer that the king's decrees are as good as law. Second, and this is more to our point, the learned researches of Bennet and Owst, indispensable as they may be in a contextual sense, do nothing to shed any light on the hodge-podge of the literal level of the poem at this point. Both scholars have been pushed by Langland immediately past the narrative itself toward English history as a backdrop for allegory. Who is to blame them? For all the energy and brilliant color, the images in the prologue lack the order of an informing scale: they are oddly anticipatory of the more pell-mell scenes of Breughel. Latin here is little more than noise. The folk in the field, despite tower and dungeon, is without order, without significant form, without meaning beyond its own image. The huggermugger, the mish-mash of Latin and English in cacophony (only the minus values of our schema are operating here) help us to see and feel just how close to an infernal nuUus ordo we are. Only at the beginning (and only at the very end) are things this bleak. In early and central portions of the poem, Langland has a variety of uses for Latin which space forbids going into: scourges, brickbats, comebacks, traps, jokes. One device, closer to the present subject, is the strategy of reciprocal glossing. It is quite common for a character to pontificate with a Latin tag and then proceed to translate it into English. Reciprocal glossing is of another order, I believe. In B Passus XV, Will confronts the figure of Anima. Up to this point. Will has shown a nearly deranged adamic bias: to know the name of a thing is to know the thing. Anima has neither tongue nor teeth. This doesn't stop Will who demands to know what her name is. With the help of Isadore of Seville, Anima replies with a series of reciprocal glosses: not only does English gloss Latin, but Latin also glosses English: ple,

'What

ar 3e called,' quod I, 'in that courte amonges Crystes peple?' 'The whiles I quykke the corps,' quod he 'called am And whan I wilne and wolde Animus ich hatte; •

•

Anima;

•

And for that I can and knowe called am I Mens-, And whan I make mone to god Memoria is my name; And whan I deme domes and do as treuthe techethe, •

•

Thanne

Racio

rit

name. Resoun an Englisshe;

And whan I fele that folke telleth my firste name is Sensus, And that is wytte and wisdome the welle of alle craftes; And whan I chalange or chalange nou3te chepe or refuse, •

•

Thanne am

And whan

loue lelly

Thanne

Conscience yealde

is lele

And whan

Thanne am

Loue

•

spirit

goddis clerke and his notarié;

owre lorde an

my name

flye fro the flesshe I

•

specheles

•

alle other,

and in Latyn Amor-, and forsake the caroigne, and Spiritus thanne ich hatte.

•

EMBEDDED LATIN IN DANTE AND LANGLAND

544

ayther of hem bothe thus to name; now thow my3te chese,

Austyn and Ysodorus

Nempned me

How thow

•

coueitest to calle

•

now thow knowest

alle

names. (B Passus

In the narrative proper, this to function: a ploy that

a pedagogic ploy to help Will

There

fails.

XV, 22-39)

move from name

a hidden assumption that

relevant

however: each tongue has "real" explanatory power for the other,- both Latin and the vernacular are necessary elements of a larger and, perhaps, more coherent order. The next passage for consideration brings us to a notorious crux of the poem and to a central problem of hermeneutic. The Tower of Truth sends Piers a

for us,

pardon; the credentials are impeccable. A priest offers his assistance to gloss and construe the Latin into an English that Piers can understand:

quod a prest tho 'thi pardoun most I rede wil construe eche clause and kerme it the on Engliche.' And Pieres at his preyere the pardoun vnfoldeth. And I bihynde hem bothe bihelde al the bulle. Al in two lynes it lay and nou3t a leef more. And was writen rifit thus in witnesse of treuthe: Et qui bona egeiunt, ibunt in vitam etemam; Qui vero mala, in ignem etemum. 'Peter!' quod the prest tho 'I can no pardoun fynde, But "Dowel, and haue wel and god shal haue thi sowie. And do yuel, and haue yuel hope thow non other But after thi ded-day the deuel shal haue thi sowie!' " And Pieres for pure tene pulled it atweyne. And sayde, 'si ambulauew in medio vmbre mortis, nan timebo mala; quoniam tu mecum es. I shal cessen of my sowyng, quod Pieres 'and swynk noufit so harde, Ne about my bely-ioye so bisi be namore! Of preyers and of penaunce my plow shal ben hereafter (B Passus Vn, 106-119) 'Pieres,'

For

•

The priest and Piers begin to argue and the noise awakens Readers typically find

the dreaming Will.

difficult to accept the tearing of the Pardon, sent

from God, as a good thing. Such readers make the same mistake as the Priest. The Priest expects a certain form, i.e. the literary convention of a papal pardon; instead he stumbles on an article of the Athanasian Creed. The Priest mistakes the signifier for the signified. Augustine, as indicated earlier, has the penetrating thing to say about the Priest, who is a slave, and directly

Piers,

who

not:

Sub signo enim seruit, qui operatili aut ueneratur aliquam rem significantem, nesciens, quid significet: qui uero aut operatur aut ueneratur utile Signum diuinitus institutum, cuius uim significationemque

PETER

NOLAN

545

non hoc ueneratur, quod uidetur et transit, sed illud potius, cuncta referenda sunt. Talis autem hom*o spiritalis et liber est etiam tempore seruitutis, quo carnalibus animis nondum oportet signa intellegit,

quo

talia

ilia reuelari,

quorum iugo edomandi

sunt.

{De Doct. Christ. m.ix.l3)i^

There

also an obvious analogue

from Exodus

(32.19) that proves helpful:

And

it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.

and his

error, not at any specious duplihe moves, like Moses, via action to the signified. He prays the prayer of the pilgrim (in Latin, a language he does not know) and then renders actual the figurai meaning of his earlier vocation. He abandons the actual plow for the prayer and penance it signifies. He has, in deed, followed the explicit commandment of the pardon: he "does well." Will the Dreamer, in turn, understands at least something of this for he begins to use Piers as a speculum: a glass in which he sees, however darkly, his own possibility. Both the text of the Pardon and the Prayer of Piers are in Latin. This itself forces us to see that the problem is not language, nor in language,

Piers' anger is directed at the Priest

city in the Pardon.

As he

tears the signifier

but in lecte legendi — the proper reading of language. The final third of Pieis has as its organizing scheme the creation, celebration and ultimate undoing of a figurai linking of the biography of the hero. Will the Dreamer, and universal history. Langland's simultaneous linking oif Latin and English resonates with and contributes to the development of this master-figure of the Incarnation. In B Passus XV, Anima first introduces the figurai mode by informing Will that his model is "Piers, Petrus, id est Christus." Piers, our disbelief suspended, is real, historical, but like every man he also figures forth and, in a redeemed cosmos is fulfilled and corrected not only by Christ's Vicar, but also by Christ Himself in the final Coming. The trinity of names in English and Latin is then a linguistic figure of the hypostatic union. The double-nature of Christ (and the guarantee that follows of the double nature of man) is beautifully figured in C Passus XXI in the language itself in which Jesus jousts with death while "armed" in the flesh of Piers. The "gift half guessed" {verbum caro factum est) is

figured in the

manner in which Latin (immutability)

embedded in English

(corruptibility):

Thenne

ich fraynede at Faith 'what al that fare by-mente. sholde lusten in lerusalem?' 'lesus,' he seide, 'And fecche that the feond cleymeth Peers frut the Plouhman,' 'Ys Peers in this place?' quath ich and he preynkte vpon me, •

And ho

•

'Liberum-dei-arbitrium,' quath he 'for loue hath vndertake That this lesus of bus gentrise shal louste in Peers armes, In bus helme and in bus haberion humana natura-, That Crist be nat knowe for consummatus deus. •

•

In Peeres plates the

Plouhman

•

this prykiere shal ryde;

EMBEDDED LATIN IN DANTE AND LANGLAND

54^

For no dint shal hym dere as in deitate patris.' 'Ho shal louste with lesus/ quath ich 'lewes, other scrybes?' 'Nay/ quath Faith, 'bote the feond and Fals-dom-to-deye.' (16-27) •

•

The

figure of Incarnation, reinforced by the linked positive values and functions of Latin and the vernacular, continues to develop as Christ knocks at

the Gates of Hell: Efte the liste bad vnlouke and Lucifer answered, 'What lorde artow?' quod Lucifer 'quis est isteV 'Rex glohe' the liste sone seide, 'And lorde of myste and of mayne and al manere vertues; •

•

dominus viitutum; Dukes of this dym place That Cry St may come in

And with

anon vndo

•

this sates.

the kynges sone of heuene.'

•

that breth helle brake

•

with Beliales barres

(B Passus

Finally, in the song of the

XVm,

Four Daughters of God, there

313-320)

an easy interchange

two languages that is more than glossing: there is a concord of opposites not only in the referents of the words but in the relation of their linguistic of the

forms:

Many hundreth

of angeles harpeden and songen, Culpat caw, purgat caro; legnat deus dei caio. Thanne piped pees of poysye a note, 'Claiioi est solito post maxinia nebula pbebus, Post ihimicitias clarior est et amor. After sharpe shoures,' quod Pees 'moste shene is the sonne,Is no weder warmer than after watery cloudes. •

•

Ne no

loue leuere

•

ne leuer frendes,

werre and wo whan Loue and Pees be maistres. Was neuere werre in this worlde ne wykkednesse so kene, That ne Loue, and hym luste to laughynge ne brouste. And Pees thorw pacience alle perilles stopped.' (B Passus XVm, 405-415)

Than

after

•

Glossing, tianslatio, and reconciliation: the imagined music of polyphonic, is itself both a pre-figuration and a celebration of the hypostatic union in the ecstasy and triumph of redemption. Here, in this glorious penultimate moment in the poem, languages intertwine and the words, so linked, reflect, embody and figure forth the Word. These are the sentences that are "right" in Eliot's Little Gidding: polyglottal praise

where every word is at home, place to support the others. The word neither diffident nor ostentatious In easy commerce of the old and the new. The common word exact without vulgarity, ...

Taking

its

PETER

NOLAN

54/

The formal word precise but not pedantic, The complete consort dancing together. ^^

Then closure. After the establishment of Unitas (the Church), Piers moves mercilessly from dissolution to apocalyptic nightmare. Conscience attempts to withstand the siege of the sins of the world. The battle is a losing one. A crucial aspect of that battle is Conscience's failing attempts to maintain the integrity of language. There is willful mis-glossing of the cardinal virtues: always called by their Latin names, always mis-glossed in English: The But

conseille of Conscience if

•

or cardinale vertues,

by syste somwhat to wynnynge; gabbynge gyue their neuere tale.

thei sei3e as

•

Of gyle ne of For spiiitus prudencie among the peple, is gyle, And alle tho faire vertues as vyces thei semeth; Eche man sotileth a sleight synne forto hyde. And coloureth it for a kunnynge and a clene lyuynge. (B Passus XIX, 448-455) •

•

As sad as Langland's final images of breakdown may be, the rules

of the poem millenarian, true to Langland's own time and its sense of scriptural revelation. Fourteenth-century England, if not the promised end, was certainly an image of that horror. Dante dealt with universal breakdown too, of course, but staged it in a set-piece allegory, the transformation of the cart of the Church at the close of the Purgatorio. Dante the poet staged his proleptic visio for Dante the Pilgrim somewhat like Prospero staged his masque for Ferdinand and Miranda. We can be "cheerful" because the stage itself is safe: a post-lapsarian Eden, an island-garden where nobody really lives. The sense of hopelessness and helplessness we have at the closure of Piers is that we witness the disintegration of Unitas through Will's dying eyes: we are dramatically trapped in his vision and cannot escape his point of view. He frees us only in the last three words of his life when, hearing Conscience calling loudly on Grace, "I gan awake." Dante's formal strategies reveal a profound intuition of a totally governing telos. The middle always makes sense because it is not only structured, but is enclosed in the providential constraints of beginning and ending. Langland is overwhelmed by flux; he does, after all, deal with the world of the living where choice and error are not only possible but inevitable. For him that is an essentially English world: glimmers of perfectibility are figured in Latin. The stunning clarity of Dante is possible only in the world of the dead where choice is over, freedom given or taken, justice triumphant. English drives Piers, yet Latin provides a speculum in which the reader can see language qua language, can gain a purchase on its functions, its promises and its fate. The reader sees there will be triumph, but he also sees, in this functional disorder, that the triumph occurs on the other side of death. call for

them. The

poem

University of Colorado, Boulder

EMBEDDED LATIN IN DANTE AND LANGLAND

54^

Notes Dichten in fremden Sprachen (Munich, 1974), Kap. H, passim. The Latin Insertions and the Macaronic Verse in Piers Plowman (The Catholic

University of America, 1932). 3. Centenary Essays on Dante (Oxford, 1965), pp. 54-76. 4. II Convivio, G. Busnelli and G. Vandelli, eds., 2nd ed. (Florence, 1964). De vulgari eloquentia, A. Marigo, ed., 3rd ed. (Florence, 1957). 5. Vita nuova-Rime, F. Chiappelli, ed., 5th ed. (Milan, 1978). 6. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, W. Trask, trans. (N.Y., 1953), p. 353.

The Divine Comedy (Princeton, 1977). complex yet obvious case in point is the Pardoner's Prologue. The Vision of Wilham Concerning Piers the Plowman, W. W. Skeat, ed. (Lon-

Paradiso, G. Petrocchi, in C. Singleton's

don, 1969 [1886]). 10. "Date of the B-Text of Piers Plowman," Medium Aevum XH (1943), 57-59. 11. Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Oxford, 1966), pp. 584-5. 12.

IV,

13.

Corpus Christianorum, series Latina, XXXn, Aurehi Augustini Opera, Pars (Tumholt, 1962).

The Complete Poems and

Plays,

1909-1950 (N.Y., 1960),

p. 144.

The Role

Drama

in Erasmus'

Literary

Thought

Howard

Norland

so as we know, never wrote a play or never Although Erasmus, contemporary productions, drama held spefar

commented on

stage

from his childhood to his old age. Beatus Rhenanus, Erasmus' devoted assistant and first biographer, reports that "as a child" Erasmus "memorized all of Terence"; and Erasmus himself says that at school he "used secretly to go through a whole comedy of Terence with [a friend] sometimes in a single night. "^ In 1489 Erasmus sent a copy of Terence's plays, which he had "written out with [his] own hand," to a friend with this message: "Please bestow on this my little gift,... the same affection as you have shown me. I shall finally be sure you have given it such affection when you show that you have studied it diligently and when I hear that it is always on your person and in your hands and on your lap...."^ Erasmus goes on to express why he prizes Terence so highly: cial place in his life

The

wonderfully pure, choice, and elegant, There is also a polished an witty charm; ... you will be able to learn from him, if from anyone, how those ancient writers of Latin actually spoke, you ought not merely to read him again and again, but even learn him by heart.'* style of his

with very

little

comedies

roughness,

. . .

Erasmus' admiration of Terence's style for its purity, elegance, and "polished and witty charm" reflects the typical justification for Terence's place in the school curricula of the period, but Erasmus' enthusiasm goes far beyond the educationist's cliché. In answer to those who claim that Terence's plays "contain nothing but lechery and immoral love-affairs between young people,"

Erasmus

delares:

these fools, these goats, who grasp only at wickedness since wickedness alone is native to them, for they are at once ignorant and malicious, fail to perceive how much moral goodness exists in Terence's plays, how much implicit exhortation to shape one's life, nor do they understand that this kind of literature is entirely suitable— nay, was . . .

DRAMA

550

IN ERASMUS' LITERARY

invented— for the purpose of showing up men's

vices. For

what

THOUGHT are

com-

edies but the artful slave, the love-crazed youth, the suave and wanton harlot, the cross-grained, peevish, avaricious old man? These characters are depicted for us in plays, just as in a painting, so that we may first see what is seemly or unseemly in affection or rebuke accordingly.^

human behaviour and then distribute

Erasmus takes the opportunity not only to defend Terence from immorality but also to express the salutary effects of literature in general and comedy in particular.

Erasmus concludes by pointing

to both classical

who learned from Terence and who loved him: choose Terence,

"he

and Christian authorities

who wishes to speak must

whom Cicero and Quintilian and Jerome and Augustine and

in youth and frequented in old age; whom, lastly, no one but a barbarian has ever failed to love."^ This enthusiasm for Terence may betray Erasmus' youth; yet in his preface to his edition of Terence published more than forty years later in 1532, though his tone is more restrained, his conception of Terence's special qualities seems little changed. The aging Erasmus declares, "no other author can teach one better the purity of Roman speech, nor is any pleasanter to read or more suited to young minds. "^ Erasmus recognizes Terence's special appeal to youth, perhaps remembering his own experience; but as we shall see, Terence remained one of Erasmus' favorite authors throughout his life. Though he regarded Plautus as less a literary craftsman than Terence, in a letter addressed to William Blount prefacing the first edition of the Adagia (1500) Erasmus praises Plautus for overflowing with adages: "It is this faculty above all that has given him title to be compared with the Muses themselves for eloquence."^ In Erasmus' final edition of the Adagia in 1533, references to Plautus are equal in number to Horace and exceeded only by Cicero among Roman writers.^ Erasmus' interest in Plautus is further indicated by his edition of Plautus' twenty comedies with notes in 1530. Classical writers of comedy appear to have provided especially fertile ground for Erasmus in collecting adages; Aristophanes runs a close second to Homer as a source among the Greek writers included in the 1533 edition oi Adagia. ^^ Erasmus' easy familiarity with classical comedy is also evident in the many allusions to Terence, Plautus, and Aristophanes in his correspondence as well as in his other works. Erasmus' interest in classical tragedy may not be as pervasive as his interest in comedy, though on both Seneca and Euripides he expended much scholarly effort. He apparently proposed an edition of Seneca's tragedies in 1512, but this was rejected by Josse Bade.^^ However, Bade did publish an edition of the tragedies which included Erasmus' notes in 1514. During this period, Erasmus was more concerned with the errors and false attributions in the Senecan canon than with the tragedies as drama. Questioning whether the tragedies were written by the same man who wrote the philosophical and rhetorical works, Erasmus suggests that the tragedies may have been written by a son or brother of the rhetorician.^^ Later Erasmus expresses some bitterness about his scholarship on Seneca. In describing how his own works might be divided in a col-

Ambrose learned

HOWARD

NORLAND

lected edition,

55I

Erasmus writes, "in Seneca I can claim nothing for myself, exI lost much labour by trusting to the promises of my

cept that in that field friends."i3

His work on Euripides was more rewarding as well as more influential. When Erasmus determined to learn Greek he chose Euripides as his text, and in 1506 his translations of Hecuba and Ipbigenia at Aulis were published by Bade. Erasmus' translations went through twenty-two printings between 1506 and 1567,^'* and his text of Hecuba was acted on at least one occasion. ^^ The two tragedies that Erasmus translated are among the best known of Euripides' works in the sixteenth century and may have inspired other translations of Greek tragedy at the beginning of the Elizabethan period. ^^ How famous Erasmus' translations of Euripides were is indicated by Thomas Lodge in his defense of poetry in 1579. Lodge writes: "What made Erasmus labor in Euripides tragedies? Did he endeuour by painting them out of Greeke into Latine to manifest siime vnto vs? or to confirme vs in goodness?"^^ Lodge's interpretation of Erasmus' motivation appears to have been prompted by Lodge's desire to strengthen his defense of drama, but it is in keeping with Erasmus' view of the moral instruction of literature in general and drama in particular. Erasmus expanded his defense of classical literature in his Antibaibaii, begun probably in the 90's, though not published until 1520.^^ Finding ignorance, arrogance, and misplaced religiosity to be the chief enemies of humanist learning, Erasmus takes issue with those who object to instruction in "heathen" literature, especially comedy. Parents are said to complain: "Are we sending our children to school ... or to the brothel? For those three letters which the old man in Plautus was so proud of knowing [A-M-O: I love you], we can easily learn at home."^^ When Batt, Erasmus' spokesman, is finally prompted to respond, he launches into a lengthy declamation ridiculing such obtuse opinions and declaring the benefits gained from a study of literature. Most importantly literature is said to "mould our character, quiet our passions, check our uncontrolled impulses, give mildness to our minds in place of savagery. "^° Erasmus is not so positive about pagan literature in his handbook on the Christian life, EnchiridioD (1503), where he warns the reader to choose his works carefully and read rapidly "like someone just traveling through rather than taking up residence there," though Erasmus also explains that this literature "shapes and invigorates the youthful character and prepares one marvelously well for understanding Holy Scripture. "^^ What he especially emphasizes is the allegorical reading of classical myths and of the epics of Homer and Virgil, but he also alludes to the moral instruction in Euripides and points out the power of drama to move an audience to action. ^^ In his De ratione studii, first published in 1511 though probably drafted several years earlier, Erasmus outlines a program of study that places drama at the forefront of imaginative literature. He gives priority to playwrights in his selection of both Greek and Roman authors; he explains his choice as follows: "... a true ability to speak correctly is best fostered both by conversing and consorting with those who speak correctly and by the habitual reading of the best stylists. Among the latter the first to be imbibed should be those whose diction, apart from its refinement, will also entice learners by a cer-

DRAMA

552

IN ERASMUS' LITERARY

THOUGHT

tain charm of subject-matter." After naming Lucian, Demosthenes, and Herodotus, he declares that among the Greek poets he assigns "first place to Aristophanes, second to Homer, third to Euripides." Erasmus says Menander would have been given first place, apparently by Quintilian's precedent, if his

comedies were extant. Erasmus continues: ... among Latin writers who is more valuable as a standard of language than Terence? He is pure, concise, and closest to everyday speech and then by the very nature of his subject-matter, is also congenial to the young. Should someone think that a few, selected comedies of Plautus, free from impropriety, should be added to the above, I would personally not demur. Second place will go to Virgil, third to Horace, fourth to Cicero and fifth to Caesar. ^^

Sallust might also be added. Though Erasmus does not ignore the great epical poets and orators, he places his favorite authors first — Lucian, Aristophanes, and Terence, and he also includes Euripides and Plautus. These are, except for Aristophanes, the same writers that he chose to translate and edit, as we have already noted, and they are also among those that are most often quoted in the Adagia?-'^ Erasmus expresses his fondness for classical

Erasmus says

drama in his

selection of authors, and he illustrates his

recommended method

with a dramatic text. Using his beloved Terence as a model, Erasmus suggests that the schoolmaster begin with a "brief appreciation of the writer"; comment on his "circ*mstances, his talent, the elegance of his language"; distinguish the nature of the comic genre— "its origins, the number of types of comedy and its laws," of instruction

explain "the gist of the plot"; identify the meter; consider various aspects of style, including archaisms, neologisms, and figures of speech; compare parallel passages with their Greek sources; and finally "bring out the moral implication."^^ Erasmus' advice follows the general pattern of the fourthcentury commentary on Terence by Donatus which includes a "life" of Terence, an essay on comedy, short summaries or "arguments" of each part of the plays, as well as notes identifying figures of speech, glossing difficult passages and comparing Terence's lines with those of other writers. Erasmus' later edition of Terence, like many other contemporary editions, includes the Donatian commentary and prefatory material, and adds Melanchthon's aigumenta as well. Though following an established procedure, Erasmus significantly emphasizes genre. He explains later in this essay that "in approaching each work the teacher should indicate the nature of the argument in the particular genre, and what should be most closely observed in it."^^ He then distinguishes comedy and tragedy in terms of the emotions aroused and the decorum to be followed. Erasmus' reference to the "varieties of Comedy" reflects Donatus' discussion of the kinds of comedy that flourished in the ancient Vf Olid— palliata, togata, and Atellana^^ —hut Erasmus also seeks to differentiate individual qualities of each play. He recommends that the schoolmaster "deal with the arguments of the speakers as if they were set pieces of rhetoric. "^^ The consideration of dramatic dialogue in rhetorical terms is, of course, common in the Renaissance, but Erasmus in suggesting an analysis

HOWARD

NORLAND

553

of the arguments of individual speeches emphasizes issues as well as form. This concern with meaning leads naturally to the moral implications. Moral aspects of an action, occasionally noted by Donatus, are often elaborated by Renaissance commentators, and Erasmus endorses this practice. However, it is curious that after using Terence to illustrate the method of teaching an author, Erasmus cites as moral examples Orestes, Pylades, and Tantalus, which come not from the comedies of Terence but from the tragedies of Euripides and Seneca. The didactic element is here not simply a justification of literature; it is regarded as complementing the rhetorical instruction. Not only does Erasmus make ancient Greek and Roman playwrights the cornerstone of his program of study which he sent to Colet for his newly established St. Paul's School and which became a model for grammar school education in sixteenth-century England, ^^ but also drama heavily influenced his most famous work Moriae encomium, published in the same year as De latione studii. In a letter to Sir Thomas More prefacing the printed edition, Erasmus, attempting to forestall his critics, writes: "They will loudly accuse me of imitating the Old Comedy or some kind of Lucianic satire, and of attacking the whole world with my teeth. "^^ The relationship of this work to

rather

Lucian has been given much critical attention as well as the appropriateness of its dedication to More, who joined Erasmus in the translation of some of Lucian's dialogues. More's appreciation of the satire might be expected not simply because of its Lucianic quality but because of More's special interest in drama, of which Erasmus was well aware. Though Erasmus' mock encomium may convey the flavor of an academic lecture hall, the concept is dramatic. Folly's co*ck-eyed but meaningful perspective on the world recalls an Aristophanic agon, and the irony operates in a truly dramatic way. Leonard

Dean

explains:

produces a meaning comparable to that derived from Erasmian irony, a play or from any piece of literature conceived as drama. The irony is composed of the simultaneous expression of several points of view, just as a play is composed of speeches by many different characters; and the meaning of the irony and of the play is not that of any one point of view or of any one character, but of all of them interacting upon each other. The result is not paralysis or abject relativism, but a larger truth than that presented by any one of the elements alone. '^ . . .

Folly may be confined to monologue, but her changes in tone and point of view as she catalogs the variety of folly in the world create a dramatic effect. When Erasmus adopts the dialogue form he moves even closer to drama. From the dialogues of Plato, Cicero, and Jerome as well as Lucian and more contemporary examples, Erasmus had many models to imitate, and it appears, as Phillips notes, that the dialogue particularly "satisfied his taste for acute observation and the analysis of real experience. It was a form which allowed for epigrammatic conciseness, a special excellence of his own style. "^^ His use of dialogue in his early Antibaihaii does not exploit the dramatic potential of the form; rather the opinions of the ignorant establish a context for a declamation attacking their prejudices and defending the classical heritage.

554

DRAMA

IN ERASMUS' LITERARY

THOUGHT

Also a number of the dialogues included in the first edition of Colloquia in 1518 are rather wooden, and some are essentially narratives with one character describing an action or situation to another. However, many of the colloquies added in 1522 and later are much more fully developed in terms of plot and characterization. Craig Thompson calls them "incipient dramas or novels."^ A number of names and idioms in the colloquies are drawn from Terence, but are the dramatic elements Erasmus created. A few memorable characters emerge, such as the bluff, hard-living soldier Polyphemus and the shrewish servant Margaret, modeled on Erasmus' own housekeeper; and some dialogues give a vivid sense of place and interaction, though they may at times become overburdened with ideas or erudition. However, some are remarkable for their natural ease, wit, and exchange of ideas. One such example is the colloquy that goes by the title "Proci et puellae" (1523), which represents an insistent young man seeking to win the favors of a witty and wise maiden. The characters of the young lovers are subtly revealed by their dialogue and their words so aptly convey their emotions that all that's lacking is a stage. It is no wonder that some of the colloquies were in fact acted out by students.^ When the Sorbonne in 1526 censured Colloquia, citing sixty-nine passages as erroneous or as tending to corrupt the morals of youth, Erasmus in the next edition responded that the book is not corruptive but instructive; and he claims that it will lead students "to many more useful studies: to poetry, rhetoric, physics, ethics, and finally to matters of Christian piety. "^^ Erasmus may have been right; he may indeed have inspired students to take up poetry and perhaps drama as well. In any case the work became "the uncontested publishing success of the sixtenth century"; it went through about 120 printings before 1600.^^

more important

Erasmus recommends that classical drama be given a prominent place in the school curriculum; he proposes the way it should be taught; and he even provides some instructive examples of dramatic dialogue. In addition, he makes a number of comments on literature and on the creative process that are especially relevant to drama. Like most rhetoricians and educational theorists of his time, Erasmus advocates the imitation of carefully selected models as the basis for composition. A primary principle in his pedagogical theory, imitation is the method underlying De copia and the other manuals he provided the young scholars of his time. However, he was very much aware that the process could stifle the imagination and reduce creativity. In his Ciceronianus (1528), a dialogue which is said to reveal the gifts of a "budding playwright,"^'' Erasmus repudiates the imitators of Cicero who follow their model so slavishly that they disallow any word in their discourse not found in Cicero. Bulephorus, speaking for Erasmus in the dialogue, approves of imitation "that aids rather than hinders nature; that corrects rather than destroys nature's gifts." He declares that successful imitation "culls from all authors, and especially the most famous, what in each excels and accords with your own genius,... digesting them and making them your own."-^^ Erasmus argues that not only must the models be chosen carefully, but also they must be used discriminatingly. Further, one must be eclectic as well as selective in order to create something worthy of attention. Erasmus is in his Ciceronianus speaking particularly about style, but this perspective can apply more generally to artistic

HOWARD

NORLAND

555

creation. Erasmus practiced what he preached most notably in the Colloquia and Moriae encomium, which, though inspired by Lucian and classical drama, adapt characteristics of their models so skillfully as to make the results appear new. Erasmus did not, so far as we know, write plays or directly advise others in dramatic composition, but if he had done either, he would undoubtedly have looked to Terence and perhaps Aristophanes as models for comedy and to Euripides and perhaps Seneca for tragedy. ^^ A second principle underlying Erasmus' critical theory is the concept of decorum most fully elaborated in classical criticism by Horace and conventionally adopted by Renaissance rhetoricians. Erasmus discusses decorum briefly in De latione studii and implies its relevance to both literary form and to the creations of character. Significantly, his examples are drawn from Terence. He links decorum in comedy with "the portrayal of our common life" and with milder emotions than those of tragedy.'^ After expressing the importance of decorum to genre, Erasmus applies decorum more specifically to the characters of comedy: "youths should fall in love ... pimps should perjure themselves

the prostitute should allure, the old man scold, the slave deceive, the solThis is the general decorum of character that is to be observed in the "portrayal of uur common life," but Erasmus points out that the poet must by his own judgement distinguish characters from one another. To illustrate, Erasmus describes Terence's individualization of characters of the same type, such as pairs of old men — the violent and morose Simo in contrast to the civil and calm Chrêmes in Andria or the chiding and merry Micio in contrast to the spiteful Demea in Adelphi. Erasmus notes that the pairs of young men and the pairs of slaves in the two plays are also well differentiated. Marvin Herrick calls this individualization within a class "artistic decorum,'"*^ though it is not so identified by Erasmus. Erasmus may be implying that there is room for art within the concept of decorum, but more importantly, he is emphasizing the necessity of individualization and its compatibility with decorum. In De copia Erasmus discusses the weight of precedent in portraying mythical and historical figures; and following the line of Cicero and later rhetoricians, he explains that in creating character one must consider nationality or country, sex, age, fortune, disposition, and common affections as well as peculiar differences. Again, Erasmus emphasizes distinguishing the individual within the class, and again he uses Terence as a model of this practice, and he alludes to Plautus as well.'*'^ Erasmus' deep interest in drama is reflected in the theory, the models, and the tools that he provided and that shaped the educational program in England and elsewhere.'^'* A boy growing up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would probably have been introduced to formal drama in the way that Erasmus advised, just as he would have learned to write from textbooks that Erasmus provided. Erasmus' influence on the development of drama in the Renaissance extends beyond his perspective on classical dramatists and on the proper method for teaching Terence to the creative process itself. It may well be, as has been said, that without Erasmus, we would not have had Shakespeare.*^ . . .

dier boast. '"'^

University of Nebraska

DRAMA

556

IN ERASMUS' LITERARY

THOUGHT

Notes 1 "The Life of Erasmus" in Christian Humanism and the Reformation, Selected Writings of Erasmus, ed. John C. Olin (New York: Fordham University Press, 1975),

p. 53.

447, The Correspondence of Erasmus, trans. Thomson, CWE, 4:18. This letter addressed to a

2. Ltr. S.

Erasmus'

own partial account CWE, 1:58.

of his early

Mynors and

R. A. B.

fictitious

P. F.

person provides

life.

3. Ltr. 31, 4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., 1:59.

1:60.

6. Ibid., 7.

"Non ex alio

scriptore melius discitur

lectu iucundior, aut

puerorum

Romani sermonis puritas, nec est alius Opus Epist.

ingeniis accommodatior." Ltr. 2584,

IX, 402. 8. Ltr.

CWE,

126,

9. Phillips,

1:258.

Adages, Appendix

pp. 393-404.

10. Ibid. 11. Ltr. 263,

CWE,

2:231.

12. See his preface to the

Epistolae,

Vm,

second edition published in 1529

(Ltr.

2091, Erasmi

37).

See Erasmus' "1523-24 Catalogue of His Works" in Collected Works, 24:697. Vander Haeghen, Bibliotheca Erasmiana, Repertoire des Oeuvres D'Erasme (Nieuwkoop: B. De Graaf, 1961), 2e Série, p. 25-26. 15. Ltr. 492, CWE, 4:134. 16. See Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 96-97, 117-18. 17. Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959 [1904]), I, 68. 18. See Margaret Maim Phillips' "Introductory Note" to her translation of Antibarbari, CWE, 23:2-6. 13.

14. Ferd.

19.

CWE,

23:38.

20. Ibid., 23:64. 21. The Enchiridion, trans, and ed. University Press, 1963), p. 51. 22. Ibid., pp. 134-35. 23.

Raymond Himelick

ratione studii, trans. Brian McGregor,

CWE,

(Bloomington: Indiana

24:669.

24. Phillips, Adages, pp. 393-404. 25. CWE, 24:682-83. 26. Ibid., 24:687. 27. See

28. 29.

Commentum

Terenti, ed. Paul

Wessner

(Leipzig, 1902-05),

22-31.

CWE, 24:687. See T.W. Baldwin, William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke

bana: University of Illinois Press, 1944), 30. Ltr. 222, CWE 2:163.

(Ur-

123-30.

31. "The Praise of Folly, and Its Background," Twentieth Century Interpretations of 'The Praise of Folly,' ed. Kathleen Williams (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969), pp. 53-54.

HOWARD

NORLAND

557

32. Margaret Mann Phillips, "Erasmus and the Classics" in Eiasmus, ed. T. A. Dorey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1970), p. 27. 33. "Introduction," The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. Craig R. Thompson (Chi-

cago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. xxvi. 34. See Eiasmi Epistolae, VII, 508, 4n. 35. Colloquies, Appendix I, p. 633. 36. George Faludy, Eiasmus (New York: Stein and Day, 1970), p. 212. Faludy claims the work went through 102 printings before Erasmus' death in 1536, but Vander Haeghen lists 73 through 1536 and 119 for the century {Bibliotheca Eiasmiana. Ire Série, pp. 35-37). 37. Emil V. Telle, "Erasmus's Ciceionianus: A Comical Colloquy" in Essays on the Works of Eiasmus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), p. 211. 38. Ciceionianus, trans. Izora Scott (New York: Teachers College, Columbia

University, 1908), p. 123. 39. Vives, Erasmus' friend and protege, identifies Euripides and Seneca as models of tragedy and Aristophanes and Terence as models for comedy in De tiadendis disciplinis, trans. Foster Watson and included in his Vives: On Education (Totowa, N.J.:

40.

Rowman & CWE,

Littlefield,

1977 [1913]),

p. 193.

24:687.

41. Ibid. 42.

Comic Theoiyin

the Sixteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

1964), pp. 140-41. 43. De copia, trans. Betty

Knott,

CWE,

24:582-87.

"The whole framework of the English grammar school was based upon the ideas and texts of Erasmus" Shakspeie's Small 44. T.

Latine,

W. Baldwin contends

that

100).

45. See Baldwin, Shakspeie's Small Latine,

speaie, p. 13.

116;

and Jones, Oiigins ofShake-

The Simile

in Vida's Chiistiad

William

O'Neal

Marco

Girolamo Vida (1490-1566) wrote the Chiistiad, an epic of 6,012 lines, with Christ as the hero. It begins, like Vergil's Aeneid, in media les, at the point shortly before the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and follows the New Testament story closely up to His appearance before Pilate. Joseph and John, in Books EI and IV, are called upon to describe the birth, childhood, and ministry of Christ. Books V and VI complete the Trial, Crucifixion and Ascension of the hero. Vida has been criticized for his Vergilianism and the influence of this Classical epicist is evident. But, as W. Leonard Grant points out in Neo-Latin Liteiatuie and the Pastoral, "Not one single line of the 6,012 hexameters of the Christiad is lifted in toto from the Aeneid."^ Vida was certainly influenced by many

poem

epicists,

not only Vergil. Vida's epic similes are certainly Vergilian in tone

and flavor and manner,- yet not a single one is derived directly from any of Vergil's poems, either in manner or diction or in the application of the figure. Even the form is a continuation of the evolution carried throughout the epicists, beginning with Homer. It is the purpose of this paper to review briefly the use of form of the simile in other epicists and show the evolution of the form; and secondly to suggest that the form of Vida's simile plays an important part in his narrative technique as a whole. purpose, a certain number of statistics will have to be used. unhappily, statistics run the risk of being not only distasteful but also disputable, since critics tend to disagree on exactly what constitutes a simile and what differentiates it from a comparison. What, then, is an adequate and workable definition of a simile?

For the

first

On the subject of similes,

A simile

(says Johnson in his "Life of Pope") to be perfect must both and ennoble its subject, must show it to the understanding in a clearer view, and display it to the fancy with greater dignity; but either of these qualities may be sufficient to recommend it.^ illustrate

Samual Johnson's description

of a simile gives a

key to

its definition.

His

WILLIAM

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description suggests that a simile is more than a comparison of two objects but does not demand that the objects be of different classes. In consequence, simile may be defined as a rhetorical symbol which asserts a figurative comparison between two objects which are essentially or accidentally different. In Book I of Vida's epic, the afflicted throng waiting at poolside for the angel to stir the waters is compared to youths awaiting the start of a race. This is a simile; the people compared in it are different by identity and circ*mstances. On the other hand, in Aeneid 6.491-92, the flight of the Greek shades before Aeneas is compared to their flight to the ships during the Trojan war. Here is a simple comparison, the basis of which is factual rather than figurative or hyperbolic. Consequently it is not a simile. It will also be useful to make a distinction between the simile phrase — a relatively short simile — and the more detailed and developed simile, containing a verb, which is a characteristic of epic. James Whaler, in "Grammatical Nexus of the Miltonic Simile," refers to shorter and longer similes in the Chhstiad.^ These terms are so imprecise as to allow divisions ad infinitum if one would choose to count lines, words, feet and so on. A more objective system of classification is that which is based on the grammatical structure of the simile. The simile phrase is quite common in every type of literature as well as in everyday speech. This tiny cameo is an almost unconscious attempt on the part of the writer or speaker to underline or emphasize a statement. Vida used the simile phrase in the Chiistiad far less frequently than the fully developed or epic simile but quite effectively to add emphasis without unduly delaying the progress of the narrative. The main body of this paper will be concerned with clause-similes but there are some interesting observations about the phrase simile. Apollonius Rhodius in Aigonautica employed the phrase simile in 43% of the similes of his poem. On the other hand, Vergil, in the Aeneid, used only 22% of his similes in phrase form. In Valerius Flaccus, 15% of his similes are only phrases. Vida uses 100 similes in the Cbhstiad and only 17% of these are phrases. The explanation for this similarity of Vergil, Flaccus, and Vida, and the difference between them and Apollonius, is to be found in the associations of the two types of simile. The developed simile belongs specifically to high poetry, whereas the shorter simile is at home in almost any context. Thus Quintilian, in his discussion of short similes, remarks that similar examples can be recalled from everyday conversation: quibus siznilia possunt cuicumque etiam ex cotidiano sermone suocere (Inst. 8.3.81). So it is natural that Vergil, who is concerned to maintain the altum genus dicendi, should use a high proportion of developed similes. It is equally natural that Apollonius, whose tone is so much lighter, should use many more phrase similes, just as Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, another relatively light work, has a high proportion of phrase similes — 38% Valerius followed the high epic tradition of Vergil, and Vida wrote in this same tradition and on a lofty subject. According to Quintilian: In omni autem parabole aut praecedit simihtudio, res sequitur, aut praecedit res et similitudo sequitur [Inst. viii. 3. 77). In respect to form then, similes are of two major types. The simile either precedes the tenor (subject) or it follows the tenor. If S represents the simile and A the part

SIMILE IN VIDA'S CHRISTIAD

560

which contains the tenor, passages in which the similes follow the tenor can be designated by the letters AS. In this form the subject or tenor appears, then Uke or as, and then the comparative part or vehicle. For example; in Book n of the Chnstiad: of the text

Ergo infracti animis omnes, terrore subacti,

manebant. Quales quae solitae florentia rura uolantes Capere apes, ubi saeuit hyems, coelumque profusos Soluitur in nimbos, et aquosus regnat Orion, Ocia lenta terunt, clausisque aluearibus aegrae Cunctantur, circumque fores, as limine mussant

Tectis, quisque suo, septi, clausique

And so, with their courage broken they all cowered with dread. Each barricaded himself in his house and stayed shut within, like bees that are used to flying to cull the flowering meadows. But they pass the time in idleness when winter rages and the heavens are loosed in a downpour of rain, and the storms of Orion rule. Their hives shut, they become languid and slow, buzzing round the alighting board at the entrance. (H. 15-21) The

tenor of the passage is they, the priests. The tenor is followed by like or as, in this case the Latin quales and the bees represent the vehicle of

comparison. The second type of simile takes the form SA for in it the simile is in the first position and the tenor follows. Not one but two connective particles are needed: just as ... so also ... In Book IV, Vida writes: Qualis ubi longis pugnator taurus ad aras Funibus arripitur, saeuo frémit ore per urbem. Et spumas agit, et cornu ferit aera adunco. Instant bine famuli, atque illinc, et nerberà crebri Ingeminant, quassantque sudes, per terga, per armos. Diffugiunt uulgus trepidum, in tutumque recepti Porticibus gaudent longe spectare periclum. Talis erat iuuenis species immane furentis. Quem tandem ante Deum fessi statuere rogantes Ferret opem, saltem furijs tam triatibus ilium Solueret, excuteretque animo crudelia monstra. Just as when a pugnacious bull, lassoed for sacrifice, that bellows with rage through the city, and flings foam, and beats the air with its curving horns Such was the appearance of the young man in his terrible . . .

frenzy....

(IV.

481-492)

Vida, introducing the simile with Qualis ubi, verbally draws the picture of a bull readied for sacrifice. Once the vehicle is stated, Vida compares this vehicle to the young man — Tûiis. young man.

Just as the bull rages so also raged the possessed

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The SA form was the most common in the works of Homer. D. J. N. Lee compares and lists the similes of the Iliad and the Odyssey and in these works he found 231 full similes."^ Of these 231 full similes, 216, or more than 93% are of the SA form. The songs of Homer are in essence oral poetry, the end product of a long tradition of songs improvised by probably illiterate but highly skilled singers. Oral poetry lacks a reader but requires a hearer, an audience in the true sense of the word. The hearer could not, like a reader, glance up a few lines to remind himself of the tenor of the simile. The poem had to be constructed so that after a digression, the hearer was reminded of the exact place where the story was interrupted. The Iliad and the Odyssey, containing predominately the SA form of the simile did just that. The simile digressed from the story but the listener was always brought back to the exact place in the story by the direct application of the simile to the tenor. The SA form fulfilled a three-fold role. It permitted a digression of almost any length; it permitted the poet to state exactly how a simile applied to the tenor; and it emphasized the story rather than the imagery. The SA

pattern,

which Quintilian considered the

better, appears a little

Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius. About three-fourths of the full similes in this work are in the SA pattern. In the Aeneid, Vergil departed from the pattern established by Homer and constructed his similes so that more than half were in the AS form. Lucan, in the Phaisalia, increased the percent of the AS form to 71 and Statins, in the Thebeid, used 73% AS form. Vida, over a millenium later, continued this shift from the SA to the AS form and, in the Chiistiad, 76% of the passages which contain full similes are in the AS form. One reason for the increased use of the AS form is, undoubtedly, linked to the difference between the oral and written traditions. In the oral tradition, the reciter returned the listener to the exact place in the story from which he digressed. In a literary tradition, the writer realizes that the reader can, if he somehow loses his train of thought, reread the passage. But are there other reasons why the later Latin epicists, particularly Vida, departed so drastically from the external form of the simile used by Homer and Apollonius? In the SA form of the similes, the poet applied the simile to the tenor and makes the comparison through the apodosis which normally contains the teztium compaiationis or point of comparison. In the AS similes, the poet does not apply the simile to the tenor in the same way as in the reverse form. He may, through his choice of words, indicate the point of comparison but he may also permit the reader to make the application in any number of ways. In the first book of the Chhstiad, Vida compares the priest, who had charged Susanna with adultery and asked Christ for his judgement, with a farmer: less frequently in the

Haec agitans iam uictorem se mente ferebat Pectora laetitia multum tumefactus inani. Ac ueluti in somnis olim sibi uisus arator. Dum terrae attrito suspendit uomere terga, Auri ingens pondus campo effodisse subacto, Gaudia nana fouet, cemet sommo ille relictus

SIMILE IN VIDA'S CHRISTIAD

562

Pauperiem, duros et adjuc sibi adesse labores, Somnia, fortunamque animo execratus inanem.

Thinking about these alternatives, the priest deemed himself already the victor, and his heart filled up with foolish glee. Just as when a plowman in his dreams furrows the land with a well- worn plow and suddenly seems to have uncovered a great limip of gold in the unturned field, he nurses idle joy. When sleep has left him, he sees that poverty and hard toil are still his lot, and he curses in his heart his insubstantial dream of good fortime. (I. 753-760) Vida compares the mental attitude of the priest with the joy of a farmer who has found gold. Vida, however, has permitted the reader much more latitude in the interpretation of the simile. He, in a very real sense, informs the reader of what is to happen to the priest when Christ makes his judgment. Though no further mention is made of this priest in the poem, the reader knows from the simile what Christ's judgment will be as well as the bitterness and frustration of the priest because of his failure. In this simile, the poet has left the reader free to apply the simile and foresee the outcome of the confrontation as well as its effects on the priest, though he, the poet, never states them. In Book VI, the multitude of souls awaiting Christ, at the thought of his coming make the depths resound with great joy and happy cries: Sicut ubi ciues longs obsidione tenentur intra, et uallum, portarumque obijce tuti, circum sonat, atque in muros arietat hostis.

Vrbem

Dum Tum si

forte acies procul auxiliaribus armis Aduentare uident socias e turribus altis Consurgant, animosque alacres spe ad sidera toUant.

when people are held by long siege within a city and its ramand are protected by the barrier of its gates while the encircling enemy shouts and batters against the walls; then if they chance to espy from their turrets a band of allies in the distance approaching with arms to aid them, they rally, and high hope quickly raises their morale. So

it is

parts,

The souls awaiting Christ to open the gates of heaven are certainly like the people trapped in a besieged city. At first the tertium comparationis seems to be the shouts of joy but it is even more than that. The reader is free to compare all of the emotions — joy, fear, hope, renewed strength — of the besieged with the souls in their awaiting place. The simile certainly does not however apply —facet by facet — to the subject. Vida instead has chosen to illustrate by opposites — the souls simply wait unlike the citizens who are threatened. The souls await in the depths while the citizens are watching from the heights. And, Christ is a singular unarmed Savior, not a host of armed allies. Cleverly, Vida has inserted in his simile these opposites which, through their contrasts, enhance and make even more emphatic the simile. Yet another use of the AS simile is to cap and culminate a natural subdivision of the poem. In Book V, 178-182, Vida describes how the wrath of the

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Jews grew like the Po when it is ready to flood. The scene then shifts to the palace of Herod. In this passage Vida describes the anger of the Jews and ends the section with a simile. What follows the simile is a different scene. About one-third of the full similes in the Chhstiad are end similes. It might be noted, too, that Homeric and Vergilian similes are rather lengthy, an average of almost four lines. These lengthy similes have a relatively leisurely quality. In fact, the longer the simile, the more the narrative is impeded and this leisurely quality results. In the Christiad, the average simile is more than four lines, and the resulting narrative quality is unhurried. Vida employed the AS simile more than any of his predecessors. Homer had favored the SA form. Apollonius used the same form in 70% of his similes. Vergil use the SA form in only 40% of the passages containing similes while he employed the AS form in 60% of the passages. In subsequent Latin epicists the trend to the AS form continued until Vida who used the AS form in 76% of the passages containing similes. He did so to end subdivisions in the poem and because of the literary nature of his work. Primarily, though, he used the AS form to permit the reader to be more than a passive entity— to permit him to see in the imagery things other than what the poet might or could expressly and explicitly point out.

The University

Toledo

Notes 1.

W. Leonard Grant, Neo-Latin Liteiatuie and the Pastoia! (Chapel Hill: UniverNorth Carolina Press, 1965), p. 48. Samual Johnson, The Life of Pope, Volume

sity of 2.

(16 vols,; Troy, N.Y. Patraets

X of The Works ofSamual Johnson

Book Company,

1903), p. 313.

James Whaler, "Grammatical 'Nexus' of the Miltonic Simile," JEPG, XXX (July, 1931), pp. 327-334. 4. D. J. N. Lee, The Similes of the Ihad and the Odyssey Compared (Sydney: 3.

Melbourne University

Press, 1964), p. 3.

La Redécouverte des discours de Ciceron en Italie et en France à la fin du XIV^ et au debut du XV^ siècle Ezio Ornato

production de copies des discours de Cicéron n'a jamais atteint un niveau important au cours du haut Moyen Age. Cela apparaît non seulement par comparaison avec les textes patristiques — évidemment les plus répandus — mais aussi par rapport à d'autres textes classiques, et même à certains ouvrages cicéroniens portant sur la rhétorique ou la philosophie morale. Faible jusqu'au XU^ siècle, la production est quasiment nulle aux Xin^ et XIV^ siècles. Pourtant, j'ai pu recenser, jusqu'à présent, plus de 250 recueils manuscrits contenant au moins quatre discours.^ A la source de cette véritable "explosion" se trouve,

humaniste au début du XV^

s'en doute, l'essor

du mouvement

processus de redécouverte et d'édition des discours peut être considéré comme un témoignage-clé de la naissance et du développement de l'Humanisme en Europe, tout au moins en ce qui concerne l'un de ses aspects les plus concrets et spectaculaires. Malgré ses limites— car elle fait abstraction du contenu et du style des discours, et donc de leur influence sur l'activité culturelle— la reconstitution de ce processus, à laquelle je me suis attaché,^ peut fournir des données de première importance aux spécialistes de l'histoire intellectuelle du XV^ siècle. Bien entendu, ce vaste sujet ne saurait être traité de manière approfondie dans le cadre d'une brève communication; on me pardonnera donc, je l'espère, de ne pas entrer dans le détail des résultats obtenus ni des problèmes— très nombreux—qui demeurent en suspens. Pétrarque est le premier artisan de la redécouverte des discours. Son rôle a été mis en lumière, ü y a trente ans, par Giuseppe Billanovich qui, dans une étude demeurée fondamentale, a montré que toutes les copies européennes de certains discours dérivent en fait du matériel rassemblé dans sa bibliothèque. 3 Outre les "Césariens" et les post reditum, connus par ailleurs, Pétrarque possédait indubitablement six discours, et probablement huit. Il avait lui-même découvert ItpioArcbia à Liège en 1333. En 1351, il avait emprunté à son ami Lapo da Castiglionchio quatre discours: De imp. Pomp., pro Milone, pro Plancio, pro Sulla.'^ Enfin, il avait reçu en 1355 de Boccace une copie du pro Cluentio, jointe au De lingua latina de Varron, tirée d'un manuscrit du siècle. Aussi, le

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ami avait emporté de Montecassino.^ Vers la fin du XIV^ siècle apparaissent, aussi bien en Italie qu'en France, des recueils où les mêmes treize discours se succèdent dans le même ordre: d'abord les quatres discours de Lapo, puis le pio Aichia, les "Césariens," le pro Cluentio, le pio Quinctio et le pio Fiacco, enfin les deux post leditum. L'examen des maiginalia communs à tous les recueils nous ramène directement à la biblithèque de Pétrarque à qui, jusqu'à plus ample informé, il faudra attribuer la redécouverte du pio Quinctio et du pio Fiacco.^ Deux questions se posent alors: qui a présidé à l'élaboration du recueil-source? Comment les discours de Cicéron ont franchi les Alpes? ces points sont très importants et méritent d'être approfondis. D'après M. Billanovich, ce serait Pétrarque lui-même qui aurait mis son recueil de discours à la disposition d'un ami français, ce qui présuppose implicitement que sa formation date du vivant même du poète/ On sait qu'après sa mort, la bibliothèque de Pétrarque fut partagée en deux parties inégales: la plus importante fut léguée aux Carrare, seigneurs de Padoue et, en 1388, après la confiscation de leurs biens, elle fut incorporée à la bibliothèque des Visconti au château de Pavie. La deuxième partie échut au gendre du poète, Francescuolo da Brossano, et demeura avec lui à Padoue.^ Or, tout porte à croire que ce partage avait affecté également les volumes qui contenaient les discours. En effet, en 1379, Coluccio Salutati avait reçu de Padoue une liste, établie par Lombardo della Seta, des ouvrages de Cicéron possédés par Pétrarque et ne pouvait croire à une telle pauvreté; parmi les discours, qui l'intéressaient au premier chef, il citait ceux que Pétrarque avait reçus de Lapo, au nombre de quatre, ainsi que le pio Aichia.^ En fait. Salutati était victime d'une méprise: la liste ne concernait que les manuscrits dont était dépositaire Francescuolo. ^° Ce n'est pas un hasard si les discours mentionnés par Salutati — et eux seuls — apparaissent ensemble dans un manuscrit exécuté précisément à Padoue en 1394 — aujourd'hui le Vat. Pal. lat. 1820 (VP20)^^ — qui contient également plusieurs oeuvres morales de Cicéron. ^^ Les discours sont suivis d'ime souscription qui témoigne de leur hom*ogénéité dans l'original: Expliciunt quinque oiationes Ciceionis pieclaiissime. Ainsi, selon toute vraisemblance, la copie du petit recueil emprunté à Lapo, accompagnée de celle du pio Aichia, avait été léguée à Francescuolo.^^ On remarquera que le pio Cluentio est absent de VP20; c'est que le texte de ce discours ne se trouvait pas à Padoue en 1394. Cela nous est confirmé indirectement par Salutati qui en 1392 écrivait à Milan pour se procurer une copie du De lingua latina de Varron à partir d'un exemplaire conservé à Pavie. ^'^ Or cet exemplaire n'était autre que l'autographe de Boccace qui, comme nous l'avons vu, contenait également le pio Cluentio. On peut donc exclure que Pétrarque ait formé un recueil en reliant en un seul volume les manuscrits des discours qui faisaient partie de sa bibliothèque. Cependant, rien n'interdit de supposer qu'il avait procédé à une retranscription intégrale de tout le matériel dont il disposait. Cette hypothèse présente un point faible: Pétrarque aurait retranscrit non seulement le texte des discours et ses interventions critiques, mais jusqu'à la dernière de ses notes de lecture. En effet, VP20 atteste que ces notes se trouvaient déjà dans les marges XI^ siècle que son

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la copie tirée du petit recueil reçu de Lapo. Toutefois, d'autres éléments militent en faveur d'une retranscription: puisque les livres mis à la disposition de Francescuolo da Brossano étaient soit des oeuvres du poète, soit des doublons, on peut supposer que Pétrarque possédait deux exemplaires des Archia. D'autre part, il quatres discours envoyés par Lapo, ainsi que du se peut que Pétrarque ait enrichi de notes au fil des années les marges de son nouveau recueil; dans ce cas, VP20 devrait comporter moins de notes que les copies les plus anciennes de ce dernier. Or, il en est bien ainsi. ^^ Aucun de ces trois arguments ne revêt un caractère décisif: d'un côté, on ne peut exclure que Pétrarque ait retranscrit intégralement ses propres notes; de l'autre, on ne peut écarter l'éventualité que la copie du petit recueil de Lapo ait été laissée à Francescuolo parce qu'elle était reliée avec des doublons, ni que l'absence de certaines notes marginales dans VP20 soit due uniquement au fait que son copiste n'avait pas jugé bon de les transcrire dans leur totalité. De toute manière, si un recueil de treize discours cicéroniens constitué par Pétrarque a réellement existé, il a dû d'abord être incorporé à la bibliothèque des seigneurs de Padoue, puis à celle des Visconti. La présence à Pavie de l'original du recueil — que j'appellerai désormais "recueil-Pétrarque" — doit être mise en rapport avec la composition par le chancelier milanais Antonio Loschi de VInquistio artis in oTationibus Cicewnis, où les discours sont commentés dans l'ordre même du recueil. ^^ L'utilisation de ce commentaire rhétorique impliquait que le lecteur dispose d'un exemplaire des discours. Or, aucune copie connue du "recueil-Pétrarque" n'est antérieure à la mort du poète, ni même à la dernière décade du XIV^ siècle. ^^ Nous en déduisons que la diffusion des discours ne fut pas assurée, sauf exception, par celui qui les avait redécouverts et rassemblés mais, bien plus tard, par le cercle des humanistes milanais. Les conclusions sont les mêmes si l'on n'admet pas l'existence d'un recueil constitué par Pétrarque: des membres de la chancellerie milanaise, tels que Loschi ou Pasquino dei Capelli, étant en relation avec Francescuolo da Brossano, ^^ auraient pu constituer eux-mêmes le "recueil-Pétrarque" à partir du matériel dispersé entre Padoue et Pavie, et en assurer ensuite la diffusion. A la Lumière de ces considérations, il est pratiquement impossible d'accepter l'hypothèse suivant laquelle la branche française de la tradition dériverait d'ime copie du "recueil-Pétrarque" établie du vivant du poète par l'un de ses amis. Même en faisant abstraction du fait que les plus anciennes copies françaises datent elles aussi de l'extrême fin du XTV^ siècle ou du début du siècle suivant, des éléments d'ordre philologique nous amènent à écarter cette éventualité. A l'origine de la branche française se trouve en fait une copie 2 d'une copie 1 du "recueU-Pétr arque." La copie 1 est elle-même à l'origine de la plupart des lecentioies et se caractérise par l'insertion arbitraire dans le texte d'une note marginale de Pétrarque à Plane, 88.^^ Le caractère de cette erreur, ainsi que son absence dans certaines copies du recueil— qui reflètent de ce fait un état antérieur^— interdisent d'identifier 1 comme l'original du "recueilPétrarque." Par ailleurs, la présence de l'insertion dans une très nombreuse descendance fait de 1 ime copie-clé dans la diffusion des discours. Compte tenu du rôle joué par Loschi à ce sujet, il n'est pas interdit de situer 1 très près du cercle des humanistes milanais. Quant à 2, il comportait une deuxième in-

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sertion arbitraire d'une note de Pétrarque, cette fois à Plane, 94; j'ai pu vérique cette insertion ne se retrouve dans aucune copie italienne. Un seul exemplaire du recueil a donc franchi les Alpes, mais à une époque bien plus

fier

tardive qu'on ne l'avait supposé. Les copie françaises nous offrent

un état de la tradition plus ancien que la plupart des copies italiennes où les marginalia de Pétrarque ont fait place le plus souvent à des notes rhétoriques et où les quelques mots laissés en blanc par le poète ont été remplacés par des conjectures plus ou moins heureuses. ^^ n est donc vraisemblable que la copie destinée à la France fut apprêtée de bonne heure et envoyée, sinon de Milan, tout au moins de la Lombardie. Dans la mesure où le "recueil-Pétrarque" a été diffusé à partir des milieux de la chancellerie des Visconti, le destinataire de la copie envoyée en France doit être cherché de préférence dans le cadre des chancelleries parisiennes. Puisque la France jouait un rôle politique actif en Italie du Nord et que Louis d'Orléans avait épousé une Visconti, les contacts entre Paris et Milan devaient être fréquents. Ces relations de type professionnel entre des personnes qui avaient nécessairement des intérêts culturels communs pouvaient facilement déboucher sur des liens d'amitié durables. Dans notre cas particulier, l'entrée vers 1395 dans la chancellerie de Louis d'Orléans du milanais Ambrogio Migli— qui devint ainsi l'ami des humanistes Jean de Montreuil et Gontier Col — contribua sans doute à renforcer les liens existants et à en créer de nouveaux. Toujours est-il que dans les dernières années du XIV^ siècle Montreuil qui était déjà en rapport avec un autre personnage de la chancellerie milanaise (Andreolo Arese) n'hésita pas à se faire connaître de Loschi. ^^ Un fil direct existait dès lors entre le groupe des humanistes parisiens et l'auteur du premier commentaire des discours. Au début de 1395, Montreuil, de retour d'une série de missions en Ecosse, Angleterre et Italie, déplorait la pauvreté de sa bibliothèque et cherchait à se procurer quelques ouvrages classiques dont, en premier lieu, les discours de Cicéron.^^ Quelques mois plus tard, il recevait de Florence une copie du Ligaho et regrettait de n'avoir pu se procurer d'autres discours par la même occasion.^'* Les discours "césariens" étant connus depuis longtemps à Florence, le résultat assez modeste des efforts de Montreuil montre indirectement qu'à ce moment le "recueil-Pétrarque" n'était pas encore parvenu en Toscane. Enfin, dans une lettre à Nicolas de Clamanges dont la date doit se situer entre l'automne 1397 et le printemps 1398, Montreuil cite largement le Aichia.^^ Ce discours était déjà connu, lui aussi, a Florence,-^^ on pourrait donc supposer que Montreuil l'avait reçu de ses amis florentins au même titre que le pro Ligaiio. Cependant, entre la réception du pro Ligario et la citation du pro Aichia se place un événement important: la lettre adressée à Loschi, qui était aussi une première prise de contact. ^^ Cette lettre est postérieure au mois d'août 1396, car Montreuil se félicite d'avoir reçu de Coluccio Salutati un large échantillon de sa correspondance publique et privée. ^^ Bien qui'il ne soit pas question d'un recueil de discours dans la lettre, cette circonstance vient renforcer l'hypothèse selon laquelle les citations du pio Archia viendraient d'une copie du "recueil-Pétrarque."^^ Une confirmation ultérieure nous est fournie par la structure générale des

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manuscrits des discours d'origine française: certains d'entre eux ne comportent que les discours du "recueil-Pétrarque"; ^° d'autres présentent une juxtaposition ou un mélange de ces discours avec une nouvelle série dont il va être incessamment question et, dans ce cas, les discours du "recueil-Pétrarque"

n'occupent pas nécessairement les premières places. "^^ La nouvelle série, quant à elle, n'apparaît donc jamais seule. Ces constats laissent entrevoir que l'apparition en France du "recueil-Pétrarque" est antérieure, mais de peu, à celle des discours de la nouvelle série. Or, comme nous allons le voir, celle-ci était connue en France avant le printemps 1398. Comme on ne peut guère situer la diffusion du "recueil-Pétrarque" en Italie avant 1394-95,^^ il n'aura donc fallu que trois ans au plus — sans doute moins —pour que celui-ci parvînt en France. Si, grâce à l'héritage culturel de Pétrarque, les Italiens ont précédé, bien que de peu, les Français dans cette première phase, les humanistes parisiens vont bientôt prendre l'avantage. Je viens de faire allusion au fait qu'im certain nombre de manuscrits, non datés, mais datables au plus tard du premier quart du XV^ siècle, contiennent des discours étrangers au "recueil-Pétrarque": il s'agit des discours pro domo, pio Sestio, in Vatinium, de lesponsis hanispicum, de piovinciis consulaiibus, pio Balbo, pio Coelio. Les éditeurs ont montré depuis longtemps que la tradition des lecentioies pour ces discours se rattache principalement à deux ancêtres différents qui par bonheur nous ont été conservés: le Bern, Bürgerbibliothek 136 [Beil] et le London, Br. Libr., Harl. 4927 [Peti]. Beil a été écrit au Xn^ siècle au monastère de Fleury et fournit un texte excellent. Peti, datable lui aussi du Xn^ siècle, est peut-être originaire de la France méridionale mais il est loin d'être aussi fiable: en particulier, les discours pro Sestio, in Vatinium et Pio Coelio y apparaissent dans une version considérablement abrégée. Il est évident que ces deux manuscrits sont demeurés longtemps dans un oubli presque total et qu'ils ont été tout à coup exhumés par les humanistes entre la fin du XTV^ et le début du XV^e siècle; -^-^

•^'^

mais quand au

Dans

juste et par qui?

où Montreuil cite longuement le pio Aicbia, se retrouve également une citation du pio Sestio.^^ La lettre étant antérieure au printemps 1398, nous avons ainsi la preuve que les humanistes parisiens connaissaient de très bonne heure cette nouvelle série de discours. La citation du pio Sestio chez Montreuil est doublement précieuse, car elle permet également de reconnaître à quelle tradition se rattachait son exemplaire. Le passsage cité correspond précisément à ime lacvme de Peti: c'est donc Beil, alors à Fleury, qui avait été "découvert" par les humanistes parisiens. Un autre indice vient confirmer que la citation du pro Sestio nous ramène directement au monastère de Fleury. Toujours dans la même lettre— l'épître 129 — Montreuil, qui le plaît à mettre en valeur les ouvrages qui viennent cette lettre

enrichir sa bibliothèque, cite l'intérieur de Beil, ce texte,

un passage des

dans

la tradition

lettres de Pline-le- Jeune. Or, à mutilée dite "des cent lettres,"

précède la série de discours de Cicéron. Les lettres de Pline représentaient alors une nouveauté importante; et ce fait nous aide indirectement à identifier, sinon l'auteur de la découverte, tout au moins le principal animateur de l'opération: Gontier Col, grand ami de Jean

EZIO

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569

de Montreuil et, comme lui, secrétaire du roi. En effet, ayant appris vers 1404 qu'un manuscrit des lettres de Pline existait à Paris, le responsable de la bibliothèque pontificale avignonnaise fit savoir à Nicolas de Clamanges le désir du pape de se procurer une copie de ce manuscrit, et c'est à Gontier Col que Clamanges transmit cette demande. ^^ Il avait d'ailleurs déjà fait appel à lui quelques années plus tôt, alors qu'il vivait retiré à Langres pendant la première soustraction d'obédience: vers 1400, il lui avait écrit pour réclamer une copie des discours de Cicéron que son ami— disait-il— possédait en grand nombre. ^^ Parmi les copies d'origine italienne, aucune ne se rattache, directement ou indirectement, au manuscrit de Fleury exhumé par les Français. Elles dérivent presque toutes de Peti; ainsi, pendant longtemps, beaucoup de recueils italiens seront porteurs d'un texte très lacunaire. Par ailleurs, l'apparition et la circulation de la nouvelle série de discours semblent avoir été moins précoces en Italie qu'en France: si le pw Coelio était connu à Florence dès 1405 — puisqu'on en retrouve des citations dans la Lucula noctis de Giovanni Dominici^^ — la série était encore fort rare en Toscane en 1408,^' et il faudra attendre 1413 pour que l'humaniste padouan Sicco Polenton rédige un commentaire des discours qui étaient inconnus à l'époque de la composition de Vlnquisitio."^

Les Français ont eux aussi utilisé Peti,^^ on doit alors se demander si le mérite d'avoir exhumé ce manuscrit du Xlle siècle revient aux Italiens ou aux Français, sans écarter l'éventualité de deux initiatives indépendantes. Plusieurs éléments convergents — que je ne puis malheureusem*nt détailler ici— portent à exclure l'hypothèse d'une transmission du texte dans le sens Italie-France. Il paraît fort probable, en tout cas, que l'histoire de Petr- assez compliquée au demeurant — est essentiellement française, même si l'on retrouve dans ses marges la main du jeune Pétrarque.*^ Quoi qu'il en soit, il est certain que dès le début de 1398 au plus tard, les humanistes du groupe parisien possédaient, seuls en Europe, non moins de 20 discours authentiques, autres que les Catilinaires, les Venines et les Philippiques. Ce n'est pas un mince résultat, surtout si l'on considère que l'intérêt des Français pour les auteurs classiques était somme toute très récent. Aucun discours nouveau n'a été découvert jusqu'en 1415. A cette date, un manuscrit d'âge vénérable, mais malheureusem*nt presqu'illisible, sorti on ne sait comment de la bibliothèque du monastère de Cluny, fait tout à coup son apparition à Constance chez l'humaniste italien Poggio Bracciolini.'*-^ Bientôt, le Vêtus Cluniacensis est envoyé à Florence où, pendant l'été de la même année, il est examiné par Francesco Barbaro.** Emprunté pendant longtemps par Niccolò Niccoli, le manuscrit réintégrera ensuite la bibliothèque de Poggio, d'où il disparaîtra après la mort de l'humaniste.*^ Le Vêtus Cluniacensis apportait deux discours nouveaux — le pro S. Roselo et le pro Murena — ainsi que la fin du pio Cluentio qui manquait dans l'exemplaire que Boccaccio avait emporté de Montecassino et, à plus forte raison, dans la copie qu'il en avait tirée pour Pétrarque. L'histoire de la découverte de ce manuscrit, en apparence entièrement italienne, se complique dans la mesure où sa copie la plus ancienne et la plus fidèle -Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 14749 (BNCl), bien coimu des

570

DISCOURS DE CICERON

éditeurs — est d'origine française. Pour cette raison déjà, Remigio Sabbadini avait supposé que les Français n'avaient pas été sans participer à l'opération et suggérait qu'un paléographe averti serait peut-être à même de reconnaître dans les maiginalia du manuscrit parisien la main de Jean de Montreuil ou de l'un de ses amis.'*^ Cette intuition allait se révéler très juste: il y a quelques années, en effet, Gilbert Ouy découvrait que tout le manuscrit— texte et marginalia — avait été écrit, non pas il est vrai par Jean de Montreuil luimême, mais par son ami Nicolas de Clamanges.'^'' Cette importante identification apporte indirectement des lumières supplémentaires sur l'histoire du Vêtus Cluniacensis: elle permet d'écarter l'hypoyhèse suivant laquelle les Français auraient utilisé le manuscrit à Constance grâce à la bienveillance de Poggio. En effet, Clamanges ne se rendit à Constance qu'après l'élection de Martin V, à une époque donc où le Vêtus Cltmiacensis se trouvait déjà à Florence depuis longtemps.'*^ Le travail de Clamanges doit par conséquent être situé à Langres ou à Paris, avant que le manuscrit ne parvienne entre les mains de Poggio. Certaines caractéristiques de la transcription du pio S. Roscio et du pio Muiena dans BNCl semblent par ailleurs confirmer une autre supposition de Sabbadini: Clamanges et Montreuil auraient travaillé ensemble sur le Cluniacensis.^'^ Quant aux modalités de transfert de ce manuscrit de la France à Constance, elles paraissent évidentes lorsqu'on apprend que la délégation française au Concile comptait parmi ses membres Jean de Montreuil. ^^ La délégation parvint à Constance le 5 mars 1415. Cette chronologie coincide en tous points avec ce que nous savons des vicissitudes du manuscrit; on peut se demander si celuici ne quitta pas Constance avec Leonardo Bruni qui rentra à Florence, semblet-il, après la fuite et la déposition de Jean XXin (mai 1415).^^ Il est donc clair que dans cet épisode encore, le travail des humanistes français ne doit pas être considéré comme un simple reflet de l'activité des Italiens autour du concile de Constance, mais plutôt comme le fruit d'une opération dans laquelle les Français jouèrent un rôle actif, sinon essentiel. L'année 1415 marque malheureusem*nt la fin de la participation française à ces recherches d'avant-garde. Au cours des deux années suivantes. Poggio, en poursuivant sa quête dans les bibliothèques européennes, rapportera de ses voyages encore huit discours inconnus. ^^ On ne peut certes écarter l'éventualité que les silvae Lingonum, où Poggio affirme avoir retrouvé le pio Caecina, constituent en fait une amplification rhétorique décrivant la maison de Clamanges à Langres. ^^ Cependant, même si cette hypothèse pouvait un jour être vérifiée, cet élément isolé ne suffirait quand même pas à rendre positif le tableau d'ensemble pour les Français. Leur brusque abandon n'avait, on s'en doute, rien de délibéré. La France, ravagée par la famine, les épidémies et les massacres— qui coûtèrent entre autre la vie à Jean de Montreuil et Gontier Col — allait plonger dans l'une des plus graves crises de son histoire. Dans ces conditions, il n'est pas étonnant qu'un seul manuscrit français des discours soit datable de la période 1416-1450.^* Même plus tard, cependant, alors que la relève du pays entraîne une augmentation générale de la production de manuscrits, la diffusion des discours demeurera restreinte: six ou sept manuscrits conservés, à côté des dizaines de

EZIO

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5/1

copies de la même période originaires d'Italie. La crise économique et politique n'est donc pas le seul facteur qui ait creusé l'écart entre les deux pays: d'autres éléments d'explication doivent être cherchés dans la structure et les

modalités de l'enseignement universitaire qui, en France, n'a jamais accordé de place aux discours cicéroniens. Alors que, dès le début de leur découverte, les humanistes italiens se préoccupaient de faire des discours un pan essentiel de l'enseignement de la rhétorique, les Français, qui les avaient bien des fois devancés dans la recherche des textes et le travail philologique, n'ont pu mettre au service de la pratique quotidienne les fruits d'une activité très feconde mais somme toute élitaire. Elucider les raisons profondes de ce relatif échec, voilà un problème central pour les historiens du mouvement humaniste en France.

C. N. R.

S.,

Paris

Notes 1. Ce recensem*nt ne tient donc pas compte des discours isolés ni, d'ailleurs, des "Césariens," post ledituxn, Catilinaiies, Verrines et Philippiques. Il a été établi à l'aide des catalogues imprimés, des fichiers de l'Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, des catalogues de vente et des renseignements aimablement fournis par les Conservateurs de bibliothèques dépourvues de catalogue imprimé. Je compte publier la liste des manuscrits accompagnée de quelques précisions très sommaires d'ordre codicologique et textuel. Cette liste qui sera, je le crois, très utile à d'éventuels éditeurs de Cicéron, est dès maintenant disponible sur demande. Silvia Rizzo qui prépare l'édition du Pio Cluentio, a inséré dans son tout récent ouvrage La

manoscntta della "Pio Cluentio" di Ciceione, Genova, 1979, p. 133-140, des manuscrits contenant ce discours. Rizzo prépare également un catalogue qui en donnera une description approfondie. (Ce cataloque vient de paraître: Catalogo dei codici della pio Cluentio ciceioniane, Genova, 1983.) 2. Mon travail concerne surtout, pour l'instant, la période antérieure à 1415. L'ouvrage déjà cité de Silvia Rizzo constitue une contribution de première importance à ce travail de reconstitution, aussi bien par la masse de matériel traité que par les nombreux faits nouveaux qui ont été mis en lumière. Je signale, d'autre part, que Richard Rouse prépare un travail sur les manuscrits les plus anciens de tradizione

une

liste

Mme

la tradition. 3. "Petrarca e Cicerone," in Miscellanea Giovanni Meicati, Città del Vaticano, 1946, t. IV, p. 88-106. Comme le remarque S. Rizzo ("Apparati ciceroniani e congetture del Petrarca," Rivista di filologia e di istiuzione classica, CHI, 1975, p. 5),

les apports de ce travail ont été ignorés pendant trente ans par les éditeurs des discours cicéroniens. 4. Pour ces renseignements, cf. P. de Nolhac, Pétiaïque et l'Humanisme, nouv. éd., Paris, 1965, t. H, p. 221 sq.; R. Sabbadini, Le scopette dei codici latini e gieci ne' secoli XIV e XV, Firenze, 1905 (rééd. 1967), p. 27 et t. H, p. 168; Maici Tulli Ciceionis oiationes: pio Tullio, pio Fonteio, pio Sulla, pio Aichia, pio Piando,

DISCOURS DE CICERON

SJl

pro Scanio, edidit A. C. Clark, Oxonii, 1911, p. iv sq.; G. Billanovich, "Petrarca e Cicerone," p. 90 et 97 sq.; S. Rizzo, "Apparati ciceroniani," p. 5-6. Pétrarque avait en fait découvert deux discours à Liège: Clark [Maici Tulli Ciceionis oiationes: pio Tullio. ... p. vi- vii) a supposé que le deuxième discours était l'apocriphe piidie quam in exsilium iiet. 5. C'est G. Billanovich qui, le premier, a tiré au clair cet épisode de l'amitié entre Pétrarque et Boccace ("Petrarca e Cicerone," p. 101 sq.). Le manuscrit de Montecassino est aujourd'hui le Firenze, Bibl. Laurenziana, LI, 10. La copie de Boccace n'a pas été retrouvée. 6. Cette hypothèse est due, elle aussi, à Billanovich ("Petrarca e Cicerone/' p. 102 et 110). S. Rizzo vient de démontrer que les maiginalia du pro Cluentio, tout comme ceux des quatre discours empruntés à Lapo, viennent de Pétrarque {La tiadizione manosciitta della "pio Cluentio, "p. 34 sq.). Or, des notes analogues se retrouvent dans le pio Quinctio et pio Fiacco, et apparaissent aussi bien dans les manuscrits italiens que dans ceux d'origine française. Il semble donc bien que l'hypothèse de M. Billanovich doive être acceptée, bien que l'argument apporté en sa faveur ne soit pas très convaincant: en effet, la mention du pio Fiacco dans une note marginale à Catil. ni, 5 n'est pas une citation et ne prouve pas que Pétrarque possédait réellement le texte de ce discours. 7. "Petrarca e Cicerone," p. 97. 8. Cf. G. Billanovich, Petiaica letteiato: I. Lo sciittoio del Petiaica, Roma, 1947, p. 298; "Nella biblioteca del Petrarca," Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, (1960), p. 58; P. Sambin, "Libri del Petrarca presso suoi discendenti," Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, XI (1968), p. 359-369. 9. Epist., IV, 19, 10 sq. (éd. F. Novati, t. I Roma, 1891, p. 331 sq.). 10. Salutati s'étonne que la liste de Lombardo ne contienne pas le De ßnibus. Or, Pétrarque en possédait au moins un exemplaire (cf. G. Billanovich, "Petrarca e Cicerone," p. 96, n. 34; "Nella biblioteca del Petrarca," p. 38 et 39, n. 1). 11. Un code de quatre caractères alphanumériques désignera désormais chacun des manuscrits mentionnés dans mes travaux sur la tradition manuscrite des ,

discours. 12. C'est A. C. Clark qui, le premier, a attiré l'attention sur ce manuscrit (Inventa Italoium, Oxford, 1909, p. 7 sq.; Maici Tulli Ciceionis oiationes: pio Tullio..., p. x); n'ayant pas vu l'origine des maiginalia, il avait postulé l'existence d'ime familia gallica dont dérivaient également les manuscrits italiens. Sabbadini [Le scoperte, t. n, p. 168 sq.) a attribué les maiginalia à Lapo da Castiglionchio et a suivi Clark en ce qui concerne la familia gallica. C'est G. Billanovich qui a inversé ce point de vue, en montrant que la familia gallica était en réalité tme familia italica remontant à Pétrarque. 13. Celui-ci l'aurait ensuite prêtée à Giorgio Ludovico Lambertazzi en vue de l'exécution de VP20 (cf. G. Billanovich, "Petrarca e Cicerone," p. 88). Notons que la même souscription se retrouve dans le manuscrit Trento, Bibl. Comun. 39 [TieW], dont le scribe, toutefois, n'a pas reproduit les maiginalia de Pétrarque. 14. Epist., Vin, 7. Salutati avait appris de Francescuolo da Brossano l'existence de ce volume et sa localisation. La lettre en question est adressée à Pasquino dei Capelli, mais c'était Antonio Loschi qui avait appris au chancelier florentin qu'il ne s'agissait pas du Du mensuiis oibis, comme il le croyait, mais du De lingua

latina. 15.

Ces notes supplémentaires qui ne

diffèrent des autres ni dans la forme, ni

EZIO dans

ORNATO le

573

communes aux deux branches de la tradition, l'italienne et peuvent donc difficilement être le fruit du travail d'un lettré qui

contenu, sont

la française: elles

aurait singé les habitudes de Pétrarque. 16. Selon Sabbadini {Le scoperte, t. E, p. 123), l'ouvrage aurait été composé vers 1395; en tout cas, entre 1391 — date de l'entrée de Loschi à la chancellerie milanaise — et 1402, date de la mort de Jean-Galéas Visconti. 17. L'une des plus anciennes, le Vat. lat. 9305 {VL05) est datée de la fin du XIV* siècle par S. Rizzo ("Apparati ciceroniani," p. 7). 18.

a déjà été question de la lettre adressée par Salutati à Pasquino dei Capelli

du De Lingua latina de Varron, où le chancelier florentin mentionne égaleFrancescuolo. Ajoutons que le manuscrit K 37 (1232) de la bibliothèque capitulaire de Prague contient une lettre de Pasquino à Francescuolo au sujet de l'édition de l'Afhca, datée de 1396. Enfin, Loschi était ami, correspondant et sans doute parent de Adoardo da Thiene. Celui-ci avait épousé en 1386 la soeur de ce même Lambertazzi qui avait fait exécuter VP20 (G. Billanovich, Petiaica letterato, au

sujet

ment

p. 380).

19. Sur cette insertion qui se retrouve encore dans l'édition de Clark, cf. Rizzo, "Apparati ciceroniani," p. 11 sq. J'ai pu vérifier qu'elle apparaît dans la plupart des

manuscrits du XV*

siècle.

en particulier, des manuscrits les plus anciens: Paris, B.N. 7778 {BN78); Vat. Barb. lat. 142 [VBar], VL05 et VP20 (S. Rizzo, loc. cit.). A ces manuscrits, il faut ajouter un groupe qui comprend, entre autres. Cesena, Bibl. Malatestiana, sin. XIX, 2 {Cese); Madrid, Bibl. Nacional 10119 (Mad3); Palermo, Bibl. Nazionale rV.G.7 [Pale], ainsi que deux éditions: celle de Venise en 1471 [Car] et celle qui a été imprimée à Bologne vers 1475 {Gua). Les deux copies hypothétiques Fj et r^ ont disparu, semble-t-il. 21. Ainsi à Milo, 1 dans la phrase: ... oculos qui, quocumque inciderunt, veterem consuetudinem fori et pristinum morem judiciorum requirunt, Pétrarque avait laissé en blanc le mot requirunt. Le blanc a été conservé dans la branche française de la tradition, mais a été remplacé de botme heure en Italie par la conjecture 20. Elle est absente,

lat.

minime

vident.

11. Epist., 93 (Jean de Montreuil, Opera,

I, Epistolario, éd. E. Ornato, Torino, 1963, p. 131 sq.). L'allusion à Arese apparaît sous la forme d'un jeu de mots: His vero dubietatibus ...te noster venerandus Andreas liberabit, cui spero fidem atque

credentiam, ut nomen expostulat ac ipsius exigit autoritas, apostolicam prope dabis (lignes 18-20). Andreolo Arese se déplaçait souvent de Milan à Paris. Il avait été chargé, en 1389, de payer la dot de Valentina Visconti (Salutati, Epistolario, ed. F. Novati, t. Il, p. 138-140, n. 1). Il était à Paris depuis longtemps, semble-til, en juillet 1396, au moment où circulait la rumetu: qu'il possédait une copie non mutilée des Institutiones oratoriae de Qùintilien (Salutati, Epistolario, t. ni, p. 146). Par ailleurs, il avait offert à la Sorbonne un manuscrit des Verrines, comme le prouve la souscription du manuscrit Paris, B.N. lat. 16674: Hune librum Verrinarum Tullii dédit facundus vir Andreas de Arisiis, natione lombardus, ambassiator et secretarius domini ducis mediolanensis, collegio de Sorbona ut poneretur in magna libraria (L. Delisle, Le cabinet des manuscrits, t. Il, Paris, 1874, p. 143). Tous ces renseignements ont été résumés par Sabbadini [Le scoperte, t. n, p. 59-61). Cet érudit estimait qu'Arese avait pu obtenir des humanistes parisiens auusi bien le Qùintilien que les Verrines. J'ai pu vérifier que l'écriture et la décoration du manuscrit des Verrines présentent des caractéristiques tout à

DISCOURS DE CICERON

574 fait parisiennes.

Cette question mériterait d'être approfondie.

23. Epist., 150 (éd. Ornato, p. 216-217). Le destinataire de la lettre est un français et non un italien comme pensait Sabbadini {Le scoperte, t. H, p. 69). Il est

naturel que Montreuil ait commencé, pour mener ses recherches, par les bibliothèques de ses compatriotes. 24. Epist., 108 (éd. Ornato, p. 162). Selon Novati, la lettre serait adressée à Filippo Corsini (Salutati, Epistolario, t. HI, p. 75, n. 1). Dans ce cas elle serait antérieure

au 2 juillet 1395, date à laquelle Salutati écrivait à Montreuil en faisant état des démarches entreprises par ce dernier auprès de Corsini {Ibid., p. 71-76). A cette époque, Montreuil ne possédait effectivement presqu'aucun ouvrage de Ciceron, comme le montre indirectement la rareté des citations cicèroniermes dans les quelques lettres de son recueil antérieures à l'épître 108. Notons qu'une citation du pro Ligario (§38) apparaît dans l'épître 162, datable de l'été-automne 1394. Il s'agit, cependant, d'un passage très connu que Montreuil pouvait avoir emprunté à Vincent de Beauvais {Spec, doctr., TV, 67). En revanche, la citation des Epistolae ad Atticum à la fin de l'épître 150 est surprenante, car, dans l'épître 108, Montreuil demande précisément "à n'importe quel prix," outre les discours, une copie de la correspondance de Cicéron. Peut-être désirait-il en fait les Ad familiäres. 25. Epist., 129 (éd. Ornato, p. 187-190), lignes 48-49 {Arch., 18) et 49-52 {Arch., 1). La lettre a été écrite alors que Clamanges se trouvait en Avignon en tant que secrétaire pontifical.

Le pro Archia n'est pas mentionné parmi les discours que Salutati voulait de Padoue en 1379. En fait, le chancelier florentin l'avait déjà dans sa bibliothèque en 1370, car c'est le 20 octobre de la même année qu'il en envoyait une copie écrite de sa main à son correspondant Tancredo Vergiolesi {Epist., El, 26.

faire venir

Novati,

3, éd.

t. I,

p. 134).

que l'on peut déduire des lignes 9 à 11 de cette lettre: Sed te audio iam dicentem: "Quis es tu, amice mil ... Que nostra mutua preeunt colloquial Que scriptiones, que affinitates queve principia inter nos sunti". Cf. aussi les lignes 27. C'est ce

22-25. 28.

où Salutati annonce à Montreuil l'envoi d'un volume de ses lettres du 14 juillet 1396 {Epist., EX, 20, éd. Novati, t. m, p. 143). Bonaccorso chargé de remettre le volume à Montreuil, parvint à Paris aux environs du La

lettre

est datable Pitti,

20 août {loc. cit.). 29. La lettre s'ouvre, cependant, par une citation cicéronienne (lignes 1-6) tirée des Tusculanes. Il faut souligner, d'autre part, que Montreuil demande explicitement à Loschi de lui envoyer quelques uns de ses propres ouvrages (lignes 8-9 et 38-39). L'intérêt suscité par l'oeuvre du chancelier milanais pourrait être expliqué par l'épître en vers que celui-ci avait envoyée en 1394-95 à Laurent de Premierfait (éditée par F. Picco, "Une épître inèdite d'Antonio Loschi à Laurent de Premierfait," Etudes italiermes, HI, 193, p. 241-253; sur la date de ce document, cf. C. Bozzolo, Manuscrits des traductions françaises d'oeuvres de Boccace, Padova, 1973, p. 12). On pourrait également en trouver une explication dans la parution de Vlnquisitio.

lat. 7780 {BN80]; lat. 7784 {BN84); lat. 16226 {BNSl) qui conpro Balbo-, lat. 16228 {BNS2). 31. Les discours du "recueil-Pétrarque" apparaissent en premier dans le manuscrit Bern, Bùrgerbibliothek 254 {Ber2) Ils suivent, au contraire, ceux de la nouvelle série dans le Carpentras, Bibl. Mun. 358 {Carp) et dans le Paris, B. N. lat. 6369

30. Paris, B.

tient

en plus

EZIO

ORNATO

575

{BN69]. Dans le Paris, B. N. lat. 14749 (BNCl), la nouvelle série est intercalée entre le pio Milone et le pro Plancio. 32. En 1394, Lambertazzi — qui avait rassemblé dans VP20 un grand nombre d'ouvrages ciéroniens — devait encore se contenter des discours disponibles chez Francescuolo. Nous avons vu, d'autre part, qu'en 1395 le "recueil-Pétrarque" n'était probablement pas parvenu à Florence. Enfin, c'est vers 1395 que l'on peut situer avec le plus de vraisemblance la composition de Vlnquisitio. 33. Il a lui-même été copié sur le Paris, B. N. lat. 7794 {BN94] du DC^ siècle (cf. A. C. Clark, "The Vêtus Cluniacensisoi Foggio," Anecdota Oxoniensia, class, ser., X (1905); W. Peterson, "Cicero's post leditum and Other Speeches," Classical Quaneily, IV (1910), p. 167-177; A. C. Clark, The Descent of Manuscripts, Oxford, 1918, p. 266-280). Beri est l'une des sources d'un florilège assez répandu au Moyen Age, le Florilegium Angelicum (cf. R. H. Rouse et M. A. Rouse, "The Florilegium Angelicum: its Origin, Content and Influence," in Medieval Learning and Literature, Oxford, 1976, p. 66-114). 34. Sur ce manuscrit, cf. Cicéron, Discours, t. XIV: PourSestius, contre Vatinius, texte établi et traduit par J. Cousin, Paris, 1965, p. 97; t. XV: pour Caelius, sur les provinces consulaires, pourBalbus, texte établi et traduit par J. Cousin, Paris, 1962, p. 67 sq. 35. Epist., 129, lignes 41-42 (éd. Ornato, p. 188): Neque poète, quorum ingenia

semper

tempore

meo

defuerunt (Sest., 123). Lydius, Lugduni Batavorum, 1613, t. n, p. 121-122). 37. Epître Retulit michi (publiée par A. Coville, Recherches sur quelques écrivains du XTV^ et du XV^ siècle, Paris, 1935, p. 309-310): Suspicatus illico sum quod tullianas orationes ad me transmisisses quas permultas habes, pro quitus a te pauco tempore impetrandis precatorias antea litteras ad te direxeram. Sur cet épisode, cf. E. Ornato, fean Muret et ses amis Jean de Montreuil et Nicolas de Clamanges, Paris-Genève, 1969, p. 76. dilexi,

36. Epist.,

XXXVm

(éd.

Giovanni Dominici, Lucula noctis, éd. R. Coulon, Paris, 1908, p. 131 402 [Cael., 12-13). Sur ces citations, l'accent a été mis par Sabbadini [Le scoperte, t. H, p. 179, n. 55). M. Reeve me communique aimablement que ces citations proviennent en part de Vincent de Beauvais cela va dans le sens 38. Cf.

[Cael., 63) et p.

mon

argumentation. Leonardo Bruni signalait en 1408 à ses amis l'existence à Lucca d'un manuscrit contenant ces discours, qu'il avait cependant déjà vus à Florence (R. Sabbadini, Le scoperte, t. I, p. 75). Cette donnée prouve que la diffusion de la série n'était alors qu'à ses débuts, tout au moins en Toscane. 40. L'original du commentaire, ainsi que les discours concernés, se trouvent dans le Vat. Pal. lat. 1478 [VP78). 41. Les copies françaises de Petr actuellement connues sont les suivantes: Leiden, Voss. lat. Q 128 [LeCl); Paris, B. N. n.a.l. 3132 [BNN3); Louvain, Bibl. Univ. 107, de

39.

détruit

en 1940.

"Un manuscrit de Cicéron annoté par PéScriptorium, HI (1954), p. 115-117. surtout A. C. Clark, "The Vêtus Cluniacensis of Poggio."

42. Cf. E. Pellegrin et G. Billanovich,

trarque au British

Museum,"

43. Sur ce manuscrit,

cf.

44. Cf. Sabbadini, Storia e critica di testi latini, p. 25 sq. 45. Le Vetus Cluniacensis est mentionné dans l'inventaire de la bibliothèque

de Poggio dressé en 1460 comme Orationes Tullii V antique in pergameno (cf. E. Walser, Poggius Florentinus, Leben and Werke, Leipzig-Berlin, 1914, p. 422).

DISCOURS DE CICERON

5/6 46. Le scoperte,

H, p. 74.

47. Cette identification a été facilitée par la présence de corrections dues à la

plume de Clamanges dans LeCl,

à la fin duquel le bibliothécaire du collège de note suivante: Has omtiones dédit libiane theologorum legalis collega Navone magisteT Nicolaus de Clemengis, bayocensis archidiaconus, in arte oratoria eximius, quas manu propria correxit. (Cf. G. Ouy, "La dialectique des rapports intellectuels franco-italiens et l'Humanisme en France aux XIV^ et XV* siècles," in Rapporti culturali ed economici fra Itali e Francia nei secoli dal XIV al XVI, Atti del colloquio italo-francese [Roma, 18-20 febbraio 1978], Roma, 1979,

Navarre avait

écrit la

p. 149).

48. Cf. P. Glorieux, "Notations biographiques sur Nicolas de Clamanges," in Mélanges offerts à M. D. Chenu, maître en théologie, Paris, 1967, p. 299. 49. Le scoperte, t. H, p. 78. Dans BnCl, la transcription du pro Murena et du pro S. Roselo suit immédiatement celle du pro Archia sans que l'on observe une quelconque variation de l'écriture ou de l'encre. Le texte du pro Archia étant une simple copie du "recueil-Pétrarque," il semble évident que Clamanges n'a fait que transcrire im modèle où les trois discours apparaissaient déjà dans cet ordre. Cependant, ce modèle présentait des blancs là où la lecture du Cluniacensis s'était révélée particulièrement difficile, et ces blancs ont été comblés par la suite, avec plus ou moins de bonheur, par Clamanges lui-même. Un telle opération— qui est postérieure à la transcription du texte, car les suppléments ne coincident pas toujours avec les espaces laissés en blanc— n'a pu être menée à bien sans im examen direct du Cluniacensis. Clamanges a été donc en liaison avec le personnage qui avait ce manuscrit entre les mains et qui en avait tiré une première copie. Il n'est pas possible de prouver que ce personnage n'était autre que Montreuil. Notons, cependant, que dans une lettre de 1417, antérieiire à l'élection de Martin V, Montreuil mentionne

un certain nombre de discours "truffés de turpitudes": pro S. Roselo, pro Cluentio, pro Milone, pro Caeho (Caecilio), pro domo (in Claudium) (Epist., 214, lignes 428-430, éd. Ornato, p. 333). On remarquera qu'à cette époque le prévôt de Lille connaissait l'existence du pro S. Roselo, et que quatre des discours cités étaient présents dans le Cluniacensis. 50. Cf. Th. Straub, Herzog Ludwig der Bärtige von Bayern; Ingolstadt und seine Beziehungen zu Frankreich in der Zeit von 1391 bis 1415, Kallmünz über Regensburg, 1965, p. 179. 51. Sur le retour de Bruni à Florence, cf. Sabbadini, Storia e critica di testi latini, p. 26.

52. Pro Caecina, pro Rabirio Postumo, pro Rabirio perduellionis reo, pro Roscio comoedo, in Pisonem et les trois De lege agraria. Augusto Campana a identifié dans le Vat. lat. 11458 [Pogg] la copie de ces discours écrite de la main même de

Poggio (cf. "La copia autografa delle otto orazioni ciceroniane scoperte da Poggio nel 1417," Ciceroniana, nuova serie, I (1973), p. 65-68). 53. Cf. G. Ouy, "La dialectique des rapports culturels franco-italiens," p. 149-150. Cette hypothèse a soulevé quelques objections de la part de M. Campana [Ibid., p. 207-208). 54.

Paris, B.

lat.

6369 {BN69]. Sur ce manuscrit — qui n'est pas, à mon

avis,

une simple copie de BNCl comme le supposait Clark ("The Vêtus Cluniacensis of Poggio," p. XV sq.) — cf. S. Rizzo, La tradizione manoscritta della "pro Cluentio," p. 54.

The Organization

Mantuan's

Adulescentia and Spenser's Shepheardes Calendar: A Comparison Lee Piepho Virgil's ten eclogues, the Adulescentia of Baptista Mantuanus was the best-known and most influential collection of Latin eclogues in Renaissance England. The principal reason for their familiarity is of course their widespread use as a text in the grammar schools, use so extensive that when the schoolmaster Holofemes misquotes a line from the first eclogue in Love's Labor's Lost, Shakespeare can rely on his audience to catch the mistake and judge Holofemes accordingly. Among the major works of the English Renaissance the presence of the Adulescentia is most extensively felt in Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calendar. Two of Spenser's eclogues, "September" and "October," are based on eclogues in Mantuan's collection, and the Variorum editors have recorded numerous instances where Spenser drew on the Adulescentia for everything from long passages to small details and turns of phrase. Little attention has been paid to the organization of the two sequences of eclogues, ^ however, and it is to this question that I should like to address my attentions today. Let me begin by turning for a moment to an extensive note with which Jodicus Badius, Mantuan's distinguished Renaissance commentator, introduces the seventh eclogue. It is appropriate, Badius writes, that Mantuan should deal with the religious conversion of the young man Pollux in his seventh eclogue, since every seven years all men must pass on to the next stage in their lives. The first six eclogues, so Badius argues, have dealt with subjects appropriate to the third seven-year period in Mantuan's life, the time when he was adulescens. "Eclogue VII" presents the turning point in this period of his life. The last two eclogues, which Mantuan tells us in his introductory letter to the collection that he wrote after having entered religious orders, deal with issues — corruption in the Curia at Rome, reform within the Carmelite order— that were to confront him in his early years of adulthood.^ Moreover the situation presented in the seventh eclogue is, as Badius points out in a later note, couched in terms of the choice of Hercules, a tale applied since antiquity to the rite de passage by which a boy becomes a man. Quoting Cicero's version of the story in De Officiis, Badius goes on to indicate more specifi-

Excepting

MANTUAN AND

5/8 cally the significance that

would have had

for

SPENSER

Mantuan's contemporaries:

Aiunt autem inter dubitandum duas accessisse matronas, Virtutem et Voluptatem, quarum Voluptas prius ingressa, accutatissimè erat ornata, et omneis delitias post se trahebat respectans ahquando, cum fastuque omnia ostentans, et multa etiam plura pollicens, secum trahere Herculem tentavit. At Virtus aspera, et dura severeque intuens contra. "Non poUiceor," inquit, "aliquam voluptatem, aut quietem, sed laborem, pericula, sudores infinitos terra marique tolerandos, sed horum praemium erit te deum fieri." Quod audiens, Hercules, gravibus verbis, Voluptatem repellens, Virtutem secutus est.^

We have long since been aware that Spenser knew and used Badius' commenmaking his adaptations from the Adulescentia.^ It is therefore temptcompare— as sixteenth-century English readers familiar with Mantuan's eclogues and Badius' commentary would imdoubtedly have done — the process

tary in

ing to

of maturation Badius describes in the Adidescentia

with the progress of CoClout in The Shepheardes Calendar. Before doing so, however, we must first ask more specifically in what ways Badius' analysis is true of Mantuan's lin

collection of eclogues.

The subject matter of the last four eclogues shows a strong corrolation with events in two succeeding stages of Mantuan's life. The subtitles alone point to this correlation: "Eclogue Vu" (the eighth is its sequel) being written "cum iam auctor ad religionem aspiraret," the ninth and tenth eclogues being composed "post religionem ingressum." Like Candidus in the ninth eclogue Mantuan became after joining the Carmelites an outspoken critic of corruption within the Curia; and like Batrachus lq "Eclogue X" he was a vigorous defender of reform within the Carmelite order. Indeed, details of "Eclogue Vu" correspond to Mantuan's life to an extent Badius could scarcely have known. He might have been aware that Mantuan attributed his conversion, like Pollux's, to the intervention of the Virgin;^ but he could not have known a passage in a letter to his father in which Mantuan, describing his recent decision to join the Carmelite order, remarks, "Haec mea vita est in qua pedem firmiter fixi. In hac omnis mea cura. In hac omne meum solatium. Tamdiu in bivio steti, jam vero dexterum cornu pythagoricae litterae stando...."^ For some reason Mantuan never finished the sentence. Enough remains, however, to discern his allusion to the Pythagorean letter Y which, as a symbol of the choice all young men must make between a life of virtue or vice, was frequently connected with the tale, invoked in Mantuan's seventh eclogue, of Hercules at the crossroads.^ Mantuan is far less closely linked with the characters and situations of his first six eclogues. Rather, in his treatment of traditional themes — in the fifth eclogue the evils of patronage, the comparative worth of the townsman and the coimtry fellow in "Eclogue VI"— he is the adulescens, the schoolboy testing his fledgling poetic powers. Similarly, the first four eclogues show him trying out various possibilities in the young world of erotic love, a subject that, as Faustus remarks in "Eclogue EI," is "Studium commune iuventae" (42).^ Taken as a whole then the Adulescentìa does indeed show the development

LEE PIEPHO

Radius saw in

579 it,

but a

movement in which the relationship between poet and becomes more direct as

subject matter, tangential in the first six eclogues,

Mantuan projects experiences and concerns first

into the story of Pollux's conversion and then into the characters of Candidus and Batrachus. More than this, however, "Eclogue VII" initiates a development of viewpoint carried through in the succeeding eclogues by no single character but rather by Mantuan as the implied author of the Adulescentia. Pollux in the seventh and eighth eclogues embodies the first stage in this development. With his conversion he reorients himself from an exclusive concern with this world to a discovery of the life of the soul and a revaluation of the things of this world in terms of that life. From this movement inward Candidus and especially Batrachus in the last two eclogues initiate a movement outwards, attempting to find a life on earth consonant with the soul's demands. The vision of a heavenly Mount Carmel presented by the Virgin in "Eclogue Vu" holds the key to this integration, as first Candidus adapts it in "Eclogue IX" to the allegorical landscape he compares with the scorched earth of a degenerate Rome and then as Batrachus transmits it in the tenth eclogue into the primitive eremetic ideal which the Carmelites must seek to recapture. Viewed together, the seventh and tenth eclogues in particular thus delineate the development of Mantuan as a reformer and point to the spiritual wellsprings for his zeal. Can we speak of a development within Colin Clout, who grows to maturity and then decays in the course of Spenser's collection of eclogues? And how might we describe the relationship of the implied author to this, the central character in The Shepheaides Calendaii The "November" eclogue would seem to hold the key to any answer about Colin's development. The main body of the eclogue is composed of an elegy sung by him on the death of Dido, by E. K.'s account "some mayden of great bloud."^ Opening with an invocation to Melpomene, Colin reveals as a public consolation the vision of a heavenly Elysium to compensate for what he now sees as the "trustlesse state of earthly things" (153). In the "June" eclogue he had scorned the Muses' power, choosing rather to play in order to please only himself. Thus the "November" elegy would seem to mark the moment when he finally breaks out of the isolating, self-involved passion that has characterized him throughout The Shepheaides Calendai.^^ Juxtaposed with the elegy in "November," however, is Colin's love plaint to Rosalind in the "December" eclogue, a plaint that returns him in this, our last view of Colin, to his self-involved world of love. Perhaps like all human beings Colin simply contradicts himself in the "December" eclogue. If this is so, beneath his contradiction lies nonetheless the fact that to the end romantic love remains the essential force governing Colin's life and character. Despite his desire expressed in "November" to die daily in order to taste the joys of heaven, he remains fixed— and indeed defines his Elysium — in terms of this world of dying generations. But if, unlike Pollux, Colin doesn't reorient his life in accordance with his vision of heaven, Spenser does contrive to deepen and clarify his love in the course of The Shepheaides Calendai. When in the "June" eclogue Colin is betrayed by Rosalind, readers of Virgil's eclogues would scarcely forget that the effects of a similar situation forever severed Callus from the otium of Ar-

MANTUAN AND

580

SPENSER

cadia. No such absolute severance takes place in Colin's case; rather, from the "June" eclogue onward, he seeks out only those elements within the landscape that will reflect his own tormented emotions. Thus, where he had once tuned his song to the water's fall ("April" 35-36), he now seeks only "wasteful woods" and "banefuU byrds, whose shrieking sound / Ys signe of dreery death, my deadly cryes / Most ruthfuUy to tune." ("August" 173-75). In the "August" eclogue— the last time we hear Colin's words before his elegy in "November" and the love plaint of "December" — Spenser strikingly clarifies the depth and quality of Colin's emotion by contrasting it with Willy's view of life and love. The eclogue begins with Spenser's version of the pastoral singing contest in which Willy, to cure Perigot's lovesickness, throws his expressions of emotion off balance by extending or undercutting them:

sheepe did leave theyr wonted foode, hey ho seely sheepe, Per. And gazd on her, as they were wood, Per.

Wil.

woode

as he, that did

them

keepe. (72-75)

The jaimty rhythm,

the parry and thrust of Willy's repHes here and throughout the song support a fundamentally comic view of life that sees love as a force of social disorder. Against this view is then set Cuddle's report of Colin's song, a sestina whose imagery and rhythms invoke a cosmic emotion that sweeps everything before it:

wastefull

Wherein

woodes beare witness

woe.

plaints did oftentimes resound:

Ye carelesse byrdes are privie to my cryes, Which in your songs were wont to make a part; Thou pleasaunt spring hast luld me oft a sleepe. Whose streames my tricklinge teares did ofte augment. (151-57)

The

contrast between these two views of love is reenforced by the fact that from similar beginnings Colin and Willy have taken quite different paths in life. When we first met Willy in the "March" eclogue, he was the enthusiastic young man eager, as Colin once had been, to go out to experience springtime and love. Thus, Willy and Colin's views have an authority of age in the

"August" eclogue that makes their implied disagreement all the more irreconand the thoughtful reader is no doubt justified in seeing that both men are as wrong in their attitudes towards love as they are right. In the "August" eclogue Spenser as the implied author stands above the views of Colin and Willy, inviting the reader to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of both viewpoints. So too, when Colin sings his final lament in the "December" eclogue, his view is not exclusively that of the implied author of The Shepheaides Calendar, whose viewpoint also encompasses those of Willy and the other characters in his collection. In this respect Spenser's collection of eclogues radically differs from Mantuan's Adulescentia which moves towards a fixed goal and works from a generally settled moral point of view. This point cilable;

LEE PIEPHO

581

by Mantuan dealing with erothe second and third eclogues he can entertain Amyntas' extravagances—his view, for instance, that in an ideal world all men should share the use of their wives — because he filters them through Fortunatus who as the narrator of Amyntas' tale checks its excesses with his disapproving comments. Even Faustus' bonestus amor of "Eclogue I" must give way before the religious devotion presented in the later eclogues. Compared with the exalted tone that characterizes Pollux's encounter with the Virgin Mary, the amused, slightly detached tone in which Faustus' affair is presented conveys a different qualitative evaluation on the two kinds of love. Moreover, the time frame that Mantuan includes in the first eclogue points to the qualitatively divergent outcomes of Faustus and Pollux's loves. Faustus, in speaking of the years that have passed since his love began, remarks that "... dies rapidis, si qua est bona, praeterithoris. / si qua placent, abeunt; inimica tenacius haerent" (1.173-74). Institutionalized in marriage, Faustus' love has ultimately lapsed into a daily round of hardships for which it only occasionally compensates and to which it doubtless contributes. Pollux, in contrast, will find security and peace of mind in his devotion to Mary, a figure who has the power to protect men from earthly hardships and to raise them above the turmoil of erotic desire. In contrast to Mantuan, Spenser in his "March" eclogue allows the views of youthful, erotic love to stand unqualified for the moment by the wisdom and disillusionment of old age. Gone are the adult voices of Mantuan's first four eclogues. Indeed, almost as a challenge Willy associates himself with the hawthome, the same brier ^^ that had been used as an image of impertinent youth in the preceding eclogue: of

view

particularly evident in the eclogues

tic love. In

Seest not thilke

same Hawthorne studde.

How

bragly it beginnes to budde. And utter his tender head? Flora now calleth forth eche flower.

And

bids

make

That ne we

ready Maias bowre, upryst from bedde. sporten in delight.

Tho shall we And leame with

Lettice to

wexe

light.

That scomefuUy looks askaunce, Tho will we little love awake. That nowe sleepeth in Lethe lake,

And

pray

him

leaden our daunce. (13-24)

In conclusion, then, we might say that Mantuan's collection is organized so as to conclude with refractions of the views of the implied author and with a linear movement in which qualitatively life in this world must give way to life in the next so that Heaven can be wedded with Earth. Colin Clout's lament in the "December" eclogue represents, on the other hand, a compelling but only a single aspect of the Edmund Spenser who writes The Shepheardes Calendar. Spenser's collection is, in comparison with the Adulescentia, like a wheel with no fixed point of view towards which it moves. Rather, Spenser

MANTUAN AND

582

SPENSER

allows the interplay of various viewpoints and the unfolding of various emotional states, setting them within aesthetic design that ultimately we take in by rising above his collection of eclogues to stand at the still point of its turning wheel.

Sweet Briar College, Va.

Notes 1. F. Kluge long ago noted that in mixing moral with erotic and elegaic eclogues, Spenser combined Mantuan with Virgil and Theocritus: The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, eds. Edwin Greenlaw, et al. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1932-49), vol. Vn, pt. 1, p. 589 (Hereafter cited as Var.]. I. "Si frivolum non sit, dicam non sine ratione in hac septima ecologa agi de conversione iuvenum.... Dic*nt ... septimo ... anno immutari nobis aetatem, ut primis Septem annis simus infantes, proximis pueri, tertiis adolescentes, quartis iuvenes: qua aetate constituendum est nobis genus vitae, quos et quales nos esse velimus, et in quo genere vitae. Bene ero ... in hac septima ecloga agitur de iuvenum ad religionem conversione, unde hactenus adolescentiam suam poeta cecinisse putatur, deinceps canturus iuveniam, et virilem aetatem, in doubus videlicet ultimis carminibus, quae in religione composuit." Adolescentia, seu Bucolica, brevibus Jodoci Badii commentariis illustrata (London: Thomas Marsh, 1577), fol. .

59r. 3. Ibid.

63v.

Renwick's note to "October"

See

José Vicente de la Eucaristia,

tistae

11.

31-32, in Var. VH. 1.382.

Libamentum aesthetico-marianum ex

Mantuani operibus, in Analecta

B. Bap-

ordinis carmelitarum discalceatorum, 20

(1948), pp. 208-10. 6.

Monumenta Historica

Carmelitana, ed. P. R. Benedictus

Zimmerman

(Lirenae:

Ex Typis Abbatiae, 1905-7), p. 489. 7. S. K. Heninger, Touches of Sweet Harmony (San Marino: Huntington,

1974),

pp. 269-72. 8. All quotations tista 9.

from the Adulescentia are taken from The Eclogues of BapManutanus, ed. W. P. Mustard (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1911). Var. vn. 1.104. All quotations from The Shepeardes Calendar axe taken from

this edition. 10. For a discussion of this self-involved quality of Colin's love, see

Andrew Et-

"Duality and Direction in The Shepeardes Calendar" Spenser at Kalamazoo, David A. Richardson, ed. (Cleveland: Cleveland State, 1979). II. In a note on "February" 1. 166 {Var. Vn. 1.264), C. H. Herford notes that the brier is probably a hawthorne. tin's

Neo-Latin Commentaries on Pindar Stella P.

when From 1513 1620 when

Revaid

the first printed edition of Pindar appeared in Venice Benedictus' full text with metaphrase, paraphrase, introductions, and commentary appeared, a revolution had occurred in Pindar studies that changed the status of Pindar from that of a minor, littleread poet to one of the most important poetic influences of the Renaissance. By the early seventeenth century Pindar had become a leading influence on poets and other writers, who sought to imitate his style in their epideictic verse or who reflected on the moral philosophy which lay behind it. This widespread appreciation of Pindar would not have been possible, however, had it not been for the translation of his work, the scholarly editions with extensive notes, and the full-scale commentaries. But these editions and commentaries of Pindar not only made this Greek poet accessible to a more widespread reading public than he had known since antiquity; they also shaped the attitude of that reading public. In many ways, the Pindar who was known and read in the sixteenth and seventeenth century is a product of that Renaissance scholarship which made him available. Pindar had always (and quite justly so) been considered one of the most difficult of classical poets. Possessed of a grammatically complex and highly allusive style, Pindar had come down to the Renaissance as almost the sole representative of the epinician mode. Although the ode form itself was familiar to the Renaissance through Horace, the epinician or victory odes which Pindar wrote to celebrate the victories in athletic contests were necessarily quite different. The Renaissance was unfamiliar both with the style of these odes and the occasions for which they were written, the ancient games held at Olympia, at Delphi, or in the Péloponnèse. Moreover, the odes contained many topical allusions, to the athletes, their families, or the rulers such as Hieron or Theron of Sicily who supported them. Even some of the myths which Pindar used in his poetry would be unfamiliar, chosen as they were to compliment specific families of antiquity. Therefore, Pindar presented to a Renaissance reader more difficulties than say Homer, the only poet whom antiquity held superior to him. For though the first printed editions of Homer in Greek until

COMMENTARIES ON PINDAR

S84 were appearing

at the same time as those of Pindar, Homer's style is admitsimpler and his myths are familiar. The first editions of Pindar, printed in Venice in 1513 and in Rome in 1515, offered little help with Pindar's text, though in other ways they did provide an LQtroduction to Pindar. These editions printed the Greek text alone, without emendations, without an accompanying Latin translation, and without commentary, though the Callierges text (Rome, 1515) did print the Greek scholia with the odes. The first Latin translation was to appear in the next decade (in 1528 in Basel), an edition to which commentary was added by Lonicer in 1535. By mid-century it became pro forma to include side-by-side or facing Latin translation with the Greek text; by the end of the century the two extensive commentaries of Portus and Aretius were available — and by the end of the second decade of the seventeenth century the definitive editions of Benedictus and Schmid, with emendations, translations, introductions, notes,

tedly

much

and commentary.^ Although the early editions do not contain the magnificent scholarly apparatus of the later ones, they are not without importance, for they have obviously been designed to introduce Pindar to an audience unfamiliar with him.

The kind of information they choose to provide,

therefore, is significant.

The

1513 Venice edition includes a prefatory letter, as does the 1526 Basel edition. Both the editions of 1513 and 1515, of Venice and Rome respectively, include the Greek lives of Pindar and the epigrams from antiquity on the poet, and the Venice edition includes Horace's famous ode on Pindar, which cites the perils of imitating this powerful poet. The emphasis of much of this material is biographical; it is not just Pindar as a literary artist that interested Renaissance men, but Pindar, the prince of lyric poets (an ancient designation which the Renaissance adopts), Pindar, the vates of Apollo. The biographies which adorn so many of the editions throughout the century, first in the original Greek, then translated into Latin or

summarized by

editors, give a picture of a poet

voted as

much

phies, as

Mary Lefkowitz has shown, the

to religion as to poetry. Like so

many

who was

de-

of the ancient biogra-

biographies of Pindar stress certain

At his birth, Pan leapt for joy and the Nymphs danced; bees placed their honey upon his lips to instill sweetness into his songs — hence he was ordained from the beginning by the gods as a poet. Later the gods continued to confer honor on him. Apollo permitted him to sit in his chair in the temple while chanting his verses and to share in the offerings to the god. Proserpina visited him to predict his death and to bid him sing a song in her honor in her domains. The biographies also tell of the unusual honors conferred upon Pindar for his poetry. During his lifetime, the great city Athens, in recompense for Pindar's celebration of her as the "bulwark of Greece," paid the fine which Pindar's own city Thebes levied on him for praising a rival. After his death, the conqueror Alexander, to honor Pindar's memory, although he sacked the city of Thebes, "bid spare / The house of Pindarus, when Temple and Towre / Went to the ground." The Renaissance apparently took many of these stories from the biographies literally. Both Spenser's Sbepheardes Calendar (in E. K.'s notes) and Milton's sonnet (just traditional details.^

STELLA

REVARD

585

quoted) repeat the story of Alexander's veneration of Pindar's memory.^ From these biographies, the Renaissance editors glean a picture of Pindar as the authentic poet-priest, the vates, revered alike by gods and men. This is the thrust both of the early prefaces to the 1513 Venice edition and the 1526 Basel text. Manutius in 1513 calls before us Pindar's high reputation among the ancients and implies that a poet who was a glory to an ancient republic like Athens might prove of use, of ornament, or glory to the modern republic, Venice. Pindar's religious spirit particularly makes him among ancient poets suitable for a Christian audience. Zwingli in 1526 takes even more forcefully the position of a Christian apologist. Though a pagan poet, says Zwingli, Pindar is more than erudite and skillful; he is holy and sublime. There is never anything vulgar or low in his work. In fact, everything in his work is "doctum, amoenum, sanctimi, dextrum, antiquum, prudens, grave, iucundum, cir-

c*mspectum et imdique absolutum"

(learned, pleasing, sacred, true, venerable,

prudent, serious, lively, circ*mspect, and in every way absolute.)'* The manner, moreover, in which he approaches the deity —though, admittedly, a pagan deity— is so magnificent that it is worthy Christian admiration and may be compared with the sublime manner of Job or the psalms of David. Lonicer's approach both in his 1528 Latin edition and in the expanded text of 1535 is similar. Pindar and his works are valuable to a Christian audience because of Pindar's piety: the most ample majesty of the divine vates, says Lonicer, is present in his work. He sings always of gods, of princes, of heroes with grave words and most venerable seriousness — so that he has become not only the model of grandiloquence, but a model of moral behavior. His virtues, particularly his piety and temperance, make him acceptable to an audience which worships a Christian God. The same kind of praise for Pindar as a religious and moral poet continues throughout the century. Portus in his 1583 commentary lauds the piety of Pindar's life and works, the serenity and wisdom of this vates notable both for the eloquence and the sanctity of speech. Although later commentators are to be more interested in the literary artistry of the prince of lyric poets, these early commentators have considerable influence on the way readers of the Renaissance approach Pindar. Writers such as Sidney and Spenser and Milton look on Pindar basically as a religious writer who composed "hymns," a Greek psalmist, whose writings should be set beside David's. Though they decline to place Pindar's work higher than the psalmist's, they regard his odes as belonging to the same category of writing. Puttenham in his Art of Poetry calls them "the first forme of Poesie and the highest and the stateliest, and they were simg by the poets as Priests, and by the people or whole congregation as we sing in our churches the Psalmes of David. "^ The Renaissance did not fully understand the occasion for Pindar's poetry (commentators from Lonicer on often tried to explain the nature of the games) — and a poet like Sidney regrets that the ancients "set these toys at so high a price. "^ But Renaissance poets respected the odes produced on these occasions. Milton lists these magnifie odes and hymns as among the poetry most worthy of emulation.^ Much of the occasional poetry of the seventeenth-century that is commemorative or religious in tone has as its inspiration the pindaric ode, poems such as Milton's Nativity Ode or Jonson's ode

COMMENTARIES ON PINDAR

586

and Morrison or Dryden's ode to the pious memory of Anne Killithat the promotion of Pindar as a reUgious poet by early editors or commentators had something to do with this acceptance by poets of a pindaric model. As knowledge of Pindar's works grew throughout the century, he came to be more than the Greek David. The early editors — awed perhaps by Pindar's reputaton in antiquity and by the comparative difficulty of his Greek— present him as the aloof and almost godlike figure, who had been described by Plato as most wise, by Athenaeus as grandiloquent, by Pliny as sublime, and by Horace as a torrential flood of eloquence, inimitable. Though these legends are perpetuated by later critics and though Pindar continues to be thought of as a difficult and obscure poet, known for his striking figures and his abrupt digressions, the model of irregular rather than regular genius, commentators and editors in the latter half of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century attempt in their editions and commentaries to tame this difficult poet — to make him not only known to a larger public and to make him imitable by other poets. Certainly the effort in the early part of the century to translate Pindar into Latin (by John Lonicer and Nicholas Sudor) had been an effort to overcome Pindaric difficulties and to regularize him. But, of course, as Henricus Stephanus complained in his edition (1560), to read to Gary

grew.

One cannot doubt

Pindar in Latin was not truly to read Pindar. Hence later editors or commentators attempted to tame Pindaric difficulties by meticulous and thorough editions and commentaries, which used not only the ancient scholia, but also modern scholarship to purge Pindar of errors. As the commentaries of first Portus, then Aretius appear, as the editions of Schmid and Benedictus are added, each claims to have made Pindar more available to the public. Schmid urges that he has purged the text of error, offered exegesis both of major and minor details, rendered a metrical analysis, and so removed impediments to understanding Pindar (providing both Latin paraphrase and metaphrase) so that it is possible now not only to read and understand Pindar, but also, notwithstanding Horace's warning, to imitate him. Indeed, the contemporary epigrams and poems which Schmid brings to his text also make this point. The work of Schmid bas made Pindar imitable. Benedictus' edition of 1520 makes similar claims; nothing in Pindar's text has been left inextricated. Looking closely at these commentaries, a modem reader finds many of these claims well-founded. The Renaissance was served well by its editors and commentators,- each in general seems to improve upon the earlier. Aretius' commentary, although it follows Portus' only four years later, is much fuller, not only in the actual glosses and commentary on the individual odes, but in the wealth of detail in the preface. (Portus includes only a commendatory letter, much in the style of the earlier ones we have looked at, and a Latin life.) Aretius' introduction is more extensive; he recounts not only details from the various lives, but offers a kind of scholarly analysis of what has come down to us from antiquity as biographical "truth." He sifts too the various commendations from ancient writers and critics, presents what is known to be the canon of Pindar's work. He is particularly useful in his attempts to place Pindar's poetry among the other types of verse. He also explains the terms: ode,

STELLA

RE YARD

587

Strophe, antistrophe, epode, and colon. Schmid and Benedictus do ali this and more. They include not only explanation of Pindar's poetry, but also an explanation of the ancient games; both Schmid and Benedictus have a chart of the victors in the games. Schmid is also the first to deal decisively with the problem of metrics. Up until Schmid's edition, Pindar's odes were printed with incorrect line designations, so that it appears that Pindar wrote in short lines, almost like anacreontics or octosyllabics.^ Many of the Pindaric imitations use accordingly the short, four-stress line. Schmid worked out a metrical system and prints the Pindaric line as modem editors print it, in most, if not all, of the odes (Olympia 1 is, for example, printed with short lines.) Accompanying each ode is an analysis of its metrical system. There are other indications in the commentaries and editions that the Renaissance had begun to accept Pindar as a literary artist upon whom they could model their poetry rather than the obscure and distant vates. The odes are accompanied in the editions with elaborate commentary which not only analyzes their meter but also their structure. Aretius' commentary lists the odes according to genus, names the piopositio, and discusses the partes and gives a synopsis of the argument. Schmid offers first an introduction with pertinent data about the ode's date and circ*mstance (who the victor is, in what event, and by whom he is sponsored). He follows this with a chart which divides the ode into parts and lists the points made in each part. The commentators agree that the odes possess a kind of oratorical structure with exoidium, piopositio, confiimatio, and digiessio. Schmid follows the analysis of structure with a metrical analysis. Benedictus is not quite so detailed in his analysis. He does offer at the beginning of each ode information on victor, sponsor, event, and date. Rather than the detailed chart of the parts of the ode, however, he confines himself to offering a brief summary of the argument. In every case this prefatory material is designed to clarify for the reader the circ*mstances and the intentions of the ode. The commentator makes sure that the reader knows (before he begins the ode) as much as possible about the background. For example, in Olympia 1 and 1, we are introduced to Hieron and Theron, tyrants of Sicily, and are told who they were, what their relationship was to each other and to Pindar, and what we know about

Olympian contests. The odes then appear as specifically commissioned poetry for specific events, not as merely as religiously oritheir sponsorship of

ented encomia.

The commentary on the odes which Portus, Aretius, Schmid, and Benedictus offer also supports this view of Pindar as the accomplished professional poet. Taking, for example, the commentary on Olympia 2, written for Theron and imitated by Horace in Ode 1.12, attempt to unlock the literary design of the ode for the reader. The commentators approach the ode as basically a laudatory poem to Theron (praised in triad with Jove and Hercules) which also offers consolatory words about the inconstancy of fortune. The commentators are interested in showing how the different parts of the ode fit together to support this design and how Pindar has sensitively used language to compliment or to caution Theron. All commentators remark upon the striking invocaof Acragas to celebrate a chariot victory

see

how commentators

COMMENTARIES ON PINDAR

588 tion, "lordly-lyred

hymns, what god, that hero, what man

shall

we praise" —

remarking not only on the unusual compound word which begins the ode, avaCicopiyyec, lordly-lyred, but on the order of the triad named— god, man, hero. As Aretius observes, Pindar descends from on high to the depths, but Horace, when he imitated the opening, from the depths to the heights, reversing the order to man, hero, god. The commentators are particularly good in observing Pindar's astute sense of language. In raising Theron as an "epeiafxa (bulwark or support), Portus observes that Pindar is complimenting the fortitude of the king. A little later, as Aretius observes, in using the image of the eye to describe the progenitors of the Sicilian state, Pindar is remarking upon their foresight and caution in the administration of things. The commentators are also instructive in showing how the digression on Semele, Ino, and the misfortunes of the house of Cadmus (these were Theron's reputed ancestral family) fits in with the main theme of praising Theron in his victory. First of all, like good commentators, they review the history of the house of

Cadmus; Aretius

also cites the relevant treatments of this history in Euripi-

and Ovid's 3 Metamorphoses, and SophoOedipus, establishing, as it were, a literary context from which to view Pindar's treatment of the same story. Portus connects the digression with one of the main themes of the ode: Theron, whose race has come from Oedipus' family, must learn to experience both the happy and the sad, if his success is to have value. Aretius remarks that there is sweet compensation for the evils of life if we admit the friendship of the divine. He observes that in the Greek Scholia, Pallas appears as a tutelary goddess who guides mankind, and Bacchus as a symbol of eternal glory and immortality, which survives des' Bacchai, Theocritus' Idyll 27, cles'

despite adversity.

The presence

of literary analysis

and comparison in the commentaries

a background of better

known

known poetry)

discussed against ancient poetry. For example, Portus, after hav-

particularly useful, for Pindar (and his litle

ing retold the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha in his commentary to Olympia 9, traces the use of the story by Ovid in the Metamorphoses and by Virgil in the Geoigics. Or Pindar's praise of old wine as compared with new poetry is compared to Homer's more ancient prescription of the same. Pindar's its sources; his use of the doctrine of migratraced to the Pythagorean original and then is compared with Ovid's use in the Metamorphoses. The effect of this kind of commentary is to place the unknown in the realm of the known. Comparing Pindar's poetical devices to those of Homer or Virgil or Ovid, widely imitated and translated poets in the Renaissance, places Pindar in the company of those who may be approached by poetical imitation. All of this has its impact on the seventeenth century when the Pindaric ode becomes widely imitated. It is vital when imitating a poet to have some broadly drawn guidelines on what to imitate. Some of these remain the guidelines of Pindaric style handed down from antiquity: the emphasis (as Blount is to epitomize it in his De Re Poetica (1694)) on elevation and transport, majesty, daring fancy, and boldness of figure. But while following these precepts, poets follow also some of the more sober analyses of the commentaries on how to attain them. Much of the Pindaric poetry produced in the 17th century is occasional

philosophy

tion of souls

similarly traced to

STELLA

RE YARD

589

poetry; would-be Pindaric poets praise their monarchs, princes, lords as Pindar praised Hieron and Theron. (Cowley writes a Pindaric ode on Charles I's

return out of Scotland, though Cowley also adopts the Pindaric ode for a host of other subjects from his ode "Of Wit" to the pindaric ode with which he dispatched (like Milton) a copy of his book to the Bodleian Library.) Pindarics were particularly favored for state occasions from the celebration of the marriage of Charles I and Henrietta Maria early in the century of the celebration of the military victories of William HI at the end. In these political odes we can see particularly the influence of commentaries' rhetorical analysis. The odes are divided into rhetorical sections, which resemble those which the commentators discerned in Pindar. It is no accident that Olympia 2 (with its celebration of the Sicilian tyrant, Theron) is one of the most widely translated and imitated Pindaric odes in the seventeenth century with versions by Cowley and others. Cowley's version, which first appears in his Pindaiiques, is complete with notes and reveals both in text and notes how much he owes to the editors and commentators of Pindar— for his notes emphasize many of the same points the editors have made and cite many of the same parallels to Pindar's text.

While the commentators provide many of the broad outlines to follow in the imitations of Pindar's odes, they are also instructive in providing specific guidelines on the use of such a feature as the Pindaric digression. For the value of Aretius' or Schmid's commentary was not just in clarifying the background of Pindar's odes but in providing literary criticism on some of its essential features. These commentators saw how Pindar's bold figures or apparently abrupt digressions related to the central themes he was pursuing. Hence they prove useful to poets like Jonson or Cowley or Milton in their use of bold figures or abrupt digressions. One has only to think of the opening figure of Jonson's pindaric ode to Cary and Morison— the infant of Saguntum who chooses to return to the womb rather than face the wrath of Hannibal's sword— or his graceful digression, "It is not growing like a tree," or the interpolation at the conclusion of the myth of the Dioscuri as a compliment to the parted friends, Cary and Morison.' Similarly, Cowley's use of the account of Moses leading the Israelites out of the wilderness as the leading "myth" of his Ode "To the Royal Society" illustrates the Pindaric "digressive" myth at its most sure. Also effective is his use of the pursuit of Daphne by Apollo as the figure for Harvey's unveiling of the mysteries of Nature. ^° Even Milton's so-called digressions in Lycidas may have as a model the Pindaric digression. It is difficult to prove, of course, exactly how poetic practice is related to the strictures and the observations of Pindaric commentators. But we may be sure, I think, that the kind of confident imitation of Pindar that occurs among poets of the seventeenth century would hardly be possible without the erudition of Renaissance commentators like Portus and Aretius, Schmid and Benedictus. And we may also confidently say that these commentators succeeded in their double design: both to make Pindar available to a large audience and to spur poetical imitation of this ancient poet among their contemporaries and among poets-to-come. Southern

Illinois University,

Edwardsville

COMMENTARIES ON PINDAR

590

Notes 1.

The following

editions and commentaries

on Pindar have been used:

1. IlivSàpou 0Xü[X7cta, IIóGta, Néixea, "lanritiia, including also Callimachus, Dionysus, and Licophones (Venice, 1513), Manutius. Greek only. 2. IlivSàpou 0Xó[X7tia, IluGia, Néfjiea, "larrijjiia, cima Scholiis Graecis Rome, 1515, Zacharias Callierges. Greek only. 3. IlivSàpou 0Xu[X7tta, IlóGia, Néfxea, "lavr^ioL, Pindarì, Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia. Introduction by Zwingli (Basel, 1526), J. Ceporinus. Greek only. 4. Pindarì, Poetae Vetustissimi Lyrìcoiomque omminum prìncipis, Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia (Basel, 1528), Lonicerus. Latin translation only, no Greek text. Basel, 1535, second edition, revised; Tiguri, 1560, reissued. 5. ritvBàpou OXufjiTtia xai Iluôta, Pindaios, Olympia et Pythia (Paris, 1535),

Greek only. IlivSàpou OXufiTcia,

Callierges' text,

Rome,

Né[xea,

IIuGia,

1515.

"laGfiia

7. IlivSàpou 0Xu[X7cia, ITuGux, Né|jiea, "lorrifjiia,

Isthmia 8.

(Paris, 1558, 1623),

(Frankfurt,

1542), based

Greek only. Pindarì, Olympia, Pythia,

Nemea,

Morel. Greek only.

Nemea, Isthmia, with eight other lyric poets Antwerp, 1567), Henricus Stephanus. Greek with facing

Pindarì Olympia, Pythia,

(Paris, 1560; also

Latin translation. 9. Pindarì Opera Omnia, trans. Nicolaus Sodor (Paris, 1582). Latin only. 10. Franciscus Portus, Commentarìi in Pindarì Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia, 1583. No text, commentary only. 11. Aretius, Commentarius Absolutissimus in Pindarì, 1587. Commentary only,

text.

12. IIivBàpou 0Xó|X7cia, IluGia, Né[xea, "loniixta (Leyden, 1590)

Raphelengius.

Greek only. 13.

IlivBàpou 0Xó{i7iia,

(Heidelberg, 1598),

IlóGia,

Nifjiea,

Greek with Latin

"Icmrifiia

with Portus' Latin notes.

translation.

14. IlivSdcpou OXufiTiia, IIuGia, Nijiea, "lorrìfiia,

with Greek Scholia (Geneva,

1599), Paulus Stephanus. Greek with facing Latin translation. 15. IlivSàpou IlepCoSoç (Wittenberg, 1616), Erasmus Schmid. Greek with Latin

translation and

commentary.

Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia (Saumur, Benedictus. Greek with Latin paraphrase and metaphrase and

16. riivSàpoo riepioSoç, Pindarì

1620),

commentary. 2. Mary R. Lefkowtiz, Pindai's Lives in Classica et Iberìca (Worcester, Mass., 1975), pp. 71-93. Cf. also "The Poet as Hero." CQ. 28 (1978), 459-69. 3. See "Glosse" to "October," The Shepheaides Calender in The Complete Works

("Captain of Spenser (Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1908), p. 47; Sonnet or Colonel, or Knight in Arms," The Poetical Works of John Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 150. 4. Zwingli, "Introduction" to Pindar, Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia (Basel, 1526), p. 3. 5. 6.

[Puttenham], The Arte of English Poesie (London, 1589), pp. 23-24. "A Defense of Poetry," Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Phihp Sidney,

Philip Sidney,

STELLA

RE YARD

59I

Duncan-Jones and Jan Van Dorsten (Oxford, 1973), p. 97. John Milton, "The Reason of Church Government," in The Works of John Milton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931-38). 8. Carol Maddison in Apollo and the Nine (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960) explains the use of the short line in Renaissance editions of Pindar and the subsequent imitation of Pindar by translators in heptasyllables or octosyllables. "The author of the Byzantine text of Pindar believed that Pindar's strophes were made up of verses for the most part short. Therefore, in all the Renaissance editions, Pindar's strophes appear long and, for the most part, thin, although there are, occasionally, extraordinarily long verses. It is notable that Pindar's early imitators, Lampridio, Alamanni, and Ronsard, used only short verses in their Pined. Katherine 7.

Alamanni and heptasyllables or octosyllables in the case of Ronsard. Lampridio used a variety of short Latin lines. Since neither of the vernacular poets varied the length of line with the strophe, as Pindar did, the effect in the modem languages of the imitation of Pindar is, at times, monotonous. None of Pindar's imitators in the modem languages sought to imitate his verse exactly, quantitatively, as they did Horace's" (p. 12). 9. Ben Johson, "To the immortali memorie, and friendship of that nobel paire. Sir Lucius Cary, and Sir H. Morison," in The Under-wood, The Poems, The Prose Works, ed. C. H. Herford, Percy and Evelyn Simpson (Oxford, 1947), vol. 8, pp. darics, settemaii in the case of

242-47. 10. A.

Cowley, Poems:

Pindarique Odes.

London, 1656.

And TV.

I. Miscellanies. U. The Mistress, or. Love Verses, m. Davideis, or, a Sacred Poem of the Troubles of David.

Conrad

Ode

Caimen Saeculare: New German Age

Celtis' for a

Lawrence

Ryan

June of the year 1500, the German humanist-poet Conrad Celtis published a slim volume containing twenty antithetical philosophical Pro-

positiones ...de li non aliud of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. With these propositions, on which he had recently lectured in the University of Vienna, Celtis included a Sapphic ode of his

famous work

own

entitled, after the

example

of Hor-

The Horatian poem had been written as a climax to the liturgy connected with the secular games proclaimed in that year by Augustus Caesar. This festival of the ancient Romans was supposed to be held so infrequently that no person would be able to witness the ritual more than once in a lifetime; usually the games occurred at intervals of 110 years. Although they were not meant traditionally to herald ace's

of 17 B.C.,

Carmen

saeculare.^

the beginning of a new century or era, Horace in his ode tactfully hints that rites of 17 B.C. an age of peace and prosperity under Augustus, a new cycle of Roman greatness, may be dawning: "Now fidelity and peace and honor and modesty and long-neglected virtue dare to return, and blessed plenty appears with well-stocked hom."^ In his own Carmen saeculaie, Celtis takes up the hint and prays for all the possible blessings of a new cycle of years for the German world as the sixteenth century is about to be ushered in. The impending turn of the century and the publication of a few propositions by the greatest German philosopher of the immediate past, rather than any special feast or other notable occasion, probably called for this poetic effort. Celtis' hopes for the coming era, his personal optimism and patriotism, seem justified by his own promising career up to this time and by the imminent prospects for a true and substantially indigenous Renaissance in the Germanies. He had been bom in the village of Wipfeld near Würzburg, and had run away from his peasant father's vineyards to be educated, first at Cologne in the traditional Scholastic curriculum and later, though modestly, in the new humanistic studies of Greek and Hebrew under Rudolf Agricola at Heidelberg. There followed several years as a wandering scholar-teacher in various German centers of learning for the future humanist editor, versifier, dramatist, and dilettante philosopher. In 1487, at

with the

LAWRENCE

RYAN

593

the age of twenty-eight and with but a single book of verse published, he was crowned poet laureate by the Emperor Frederick EI, the first non-Italian to receive this distinction since the practice had been revived for Petrarch a century and a half earlier. Then came ten peripatetic years commencing with a sojourn of some twenty months in Italy, where he concentrated on literary and rhetorical studies with such teachers as Battista Guarino at Ferrara, but where he also met Marsilio Ficino and absorbed something of the Platonic and Pythagorean thought of the Florentine philosophical circle. In 1489 scientific interests led him to Cracow where he stayed until 1491, studying mathematics and astronomy under Copernicus' mentor, Albert Brudzewski. Thereafter for half a dozen years he divided his time among the cities of Ingolstadt, Nürnberg, Regensburg, and Heidelberg, lecturing, editing, writing, propagandizing for humanistic reform of university education. Then, in 1497, the Emperor Maximilian I called him to the first professorship of poetry and rhetoric in the University of Vienna, where he remained until his death in 1508.

which informs almost every strophe of his Carmen abundantly attested to by his other works. As the German "archhumanist," Leonard Forster remarks, Celtis is especially to be remembered because of his "resurrection of the national past."^ The "first humanist to lecture on Tacitus in a German university," he edited the Germania in 1500, accompanied it with a poem addressed to Maximilian entitled Germania generalis, and projected a never-to-be-completed masterwork on the patria to be known as Germania illustrata.^ In the manner of Leonardo Bruni's Laudatio Florentinae urbis he wrote a description of the city of Nürnberg. ^ Though a despiser of most scholastic learning, he was no scomer, but rather a staunch admirer, of the Teutonic medieval past and in 1501 proudly published the editio princeps of the plays of the tenth-century nun Hrotswitha, as well as in 1507 Günther the Cistercian's Ligurinus, a twelfth-century epic on Frederick Barbarossa.^ In 1502 he brought out his Quattuor libri amorum secundum quattuor latera Germaniae ("four books of Amores corresponding to the four extreme regions of Germany" — Poland, Bavaria, the Rhineland, and "Cimbria," that is, the frozen Baltic north). This collection of verse in a sense epitomized his romantic and strongly held view of a homeland splendid in its traditions and destined — as he expressed the hope in his Carmen saeculare—ioT an even greater and more prosperous future in the century that was about to dawn. Although Celtis was a genuinely gifted poet as well as an assiduous yet independently creative imitator of Horace, by no means does his ode compare in literary quality with its ancient counterpart. Still, he hoped through his own poetic compositions to achieve a lasting fame like that of his Roman predecessor. "I pray," he concludes his twelfth epode, "that my poems may endure among the Germans as Horace has in the Italian regions. "'' His example, moreover, as Eckart Schäfer has pointed out in a recent study, regenerated Horatian lyric and inspired widespread imitation of it in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Germany.^ One indication of Celtis' keen Horatianism, for example, is that after his death there appeared at Strasbourg in 1513 a colCeltis' patriotism,

saeculaie,

CONRAD

594

CELTIS,

CARMEN SAECULARE

lection of his verse entitled Libri Odaium quattuoi cum Epodo et Saeculaii Cannine (matching almost exactly in quantity the lyric output of his

model). ^ Yet,

if it is

laie is interesting all, it is

not a work of great poetic brilliance, the Carmen saecu-

and merits attention on several counts. Perhaps most of

a notable instance of the Renaissance doctrine of imitatio, not only

in the neoclassical sense of following the worthiest literary examples, but also because it manifests the characteristic Renaissance view of the literary

work

as a microcosmic imitation of the creation itself. In some way, the mimetic construction of the little universe of the poem invokes a whole cycle of time as well as an all-inclusive cosmic benediction on that Germanic world to which Celtis was so passionately devoted. With regard to imitation in the former sense— following the worthiest masters— Celtis' ode illustrates that he clearly understood the doctrine according to the best humanistic ideals; that is, rewriting the classics to meet the needs of one's own times. True imitatio did not mean simple aping of one's chosen model. It meant instead, as the English humanist Roger Ascham was later to put it, "dissimilis mateiei similis tiactatio [similar treatment of imlike matter] and also similis mateiei dissimilis tmctatio [dissimilar treatment of like matter], as Virgil followed Homer, but the argument to the one was Ulysses, to the other Aeneas. "^° Or conversely, one might add, as Celtis treated dissimilarly the theme he was adopting from Horace. The Roman Carmen saeculaie is in nineteen Sapphic strophes, with a complex structure the character of which has been much debated by classical scholars. Eduard Fraenkel argues that it consists of two symmetrically paired series of verses, each containing nine strophes divided into three triads, followed by a four-line epilogue. ^^ Jacques Perret, however, perceives a more intricate arrangement in which, the four-line epilogue to all the gods apart, invocations to Apollo and Diana neatly frame and separate addresses to the nocturnal and to the Capitoline divinities as Horace's youths and maidens invoke blessings of peace, prosperity, virtuous living, and abundant progeny upon imperial Rome.^^ Critics agree, however, that whatever the mysteries of its unusual lyric structure, the most significant fact historically about the ode is that it reflects innovations in the secular games of 17 B.C., innovations which changed the emphasis on prayer to the gods of the nether world, replacing it with invocations to the Moerae (Fates), the Earth Mother, the divine protrectresses of childbirth and, above all, the Olympian gods, especially Diana and Apollo. ^-^ In his own Carmen saeculare, Celtis too sees human destiny as governed by the forces, especially the celestial influences, that rule the universe, but he develops a poetic structure and a cosmologica! framework that differ completely from Horace's and make his ode a characteristically contemporary work rather than a mere copy of a classical poem. Except in a couple of places, in fact, there are no direct verbal echoes of the Horatian ode. Celtis' urging the "pueri et puellae, / Dicite carmen!" (11. 3-4) does reflect Horace's "Virgines lectas puerosque castos ... Dicere carmen" (11. 6, 8). And where the earlier poem has "Spicea donet Cererem corona" (1. 30), one finds Celtis writing "Quaequae splendens spicifera corona" (1. 57).^'^ In his second and third

LAWRENCE

RYAN

595

and the moon, he also apparently has in abundant food (11. 29-32) and to Diana to bestow upon the suppliants numerous and thriving offspring (11. 17-20). But except for these echoes and the use of the Sapphic strophe, he seems to be taking his model only as a point of departure in creating an original song Strophes, addressed to the earth

mind Horace's pleas

for a

new German

to Tellus to provide

age.

Explanatory words prefixed to his ode immediately alert one to his different stance and intentions. The superscript reads: "Here begins the Carmen saeculare the verses of which comprise the number of hours of the daily revolution of heaven and all the celestial spheres. "^^ The number of strophes indeed turns out to be twenty-four rather than the nineteen of Horace. Further, there is no mystery about the organization of this poem. It is a straightforward representation of the "three-layered structure" of existence as imagined by medieval and Renaissance philosophers and cosmographers; namely, "the suprasensible conceptual realm at the top, the quintessential but visible realm of the heavenly bodies in the middle, and the fully sensible realm of the four elements at the bottom.... "^^ After an opening invocation to the "boys and maidens" to "sing the ode" honoring the passage into a new cycle of time, the poem moves systematically upward in the scale of being from the sublunary world to the godhead as it invokes the various powers that govern the destiny of humankind. The second strophe petitions the four terrestrial elements to combine in such concord that they may "bring forth food for us abundantly." The next seven strophes are addressed to the planetary spheres, followed by twelve to the signs of the Ziodiac, and one to the fixed stars, twenty strophes in all dealing with the celestial regions. For what lies beyond the visible heavens, two final strophes remain, the first directed to God with an apparent suggestion that he is immanent in creation; the last one to the abscondite Deity. Each of the celestial bodies is asked to provide an appropriate benefaction for the German homelands. Thus, the poet beseeches the moon, goddess over childbirth, to "increase our beautiful progeny"; Mercury, to "teach languages and the arts and bring poetry to our borders on your sweet-sounding lyre"; Mars, to "protect the German lands with your sword"; and Jupiter, to "preserve Maximilian who rules over your lands as you in your divine majesty hold sway over the heavens." Similarly, he prays that each of the constellations in the cycle of the months will bestow its appropriate gifts or protection upon his compatriots. Beginning with Aries, the Ram who ushers in the new year, he begs for the increase and thriving of lambs; from Taurus he looks for gifts of milk and "luxurious butter"; from the Gemini, tamers of horses, increase of colts; from Libra, a bounteous vintage in the early autumn (perhaps with hopes for an unusually large spätlese?); from Aquarius, plentiful water to irrigate the fields and swell the rivers which he hopes Pisces wül then cause to teem with "abundant fish." With other zodiacal signs he pleads for protection against various evils: with Leo, to keep away scorching heat in the dog days; with Scorpio, to "remove pestilent diseases"; with Sagittarius, to "take away from our borders arms and cruel wars." From the "radiant throng" of the fixed stars he seeks "friendly

CONRAD

59^

CELTIS,

CARMEN SAECULARE

The twenty-third strophe supplicates the immanent deity as prime mover and governor of the motions of the spheres and all that exists in the world below to "lend favorable hearing to our prayers/' while the twenty-fourth, with which the poem concludes, destinies" through the influence of their shining rays.

asks the hidden God, whose "name and power escape us," to "take gracious care of German affairs." From this bald description of its content, Celtis' ode may appear simplistic in its poetic structure, a woeful falling-off from the subtler pattern of its Hora-

More thorough reflection upon it, however, reminds one that it number of characteristics which are associated with important conits author's contemporaries, and that it may indeed exemplify what

tian model. displays a

cerns of the Renaissance considered to be a legitimate and cogent poetic structure, even if it strays from a strictly classical pattern of organization. Its own self-consciously pronounced design, in fact, along with the shift from invocation of the pagan gods to the celestial spheres, stamps Celtis' poem with a distinctly Renaissance character. Herein are the obsession with astrology and the fascination with numerology which, reanimated by contemporary Platonic Pythagoreans— or Pythagorean Platonists— left their mark on so much of the thought and writing of the era. Celtis, of course, may have picked up some of his numerological fancies from traditional sources familiar to the Middle Ages, such as Martianus Capella's De nuptiis Philologiae et Meicuiii}^ His belief in astrological influence was, partly at least, inspired by the Somnium Scipionis of Macrobius, about whom he wrote an epigram entitled "De fati ordine ex Septem stellis, ex sententia Macrobii," in which he ascribes to the heavenly spheres successively power over life and death in each of the seven ages of man.^^ But he was affected too by his brief exposure in Italy to the thought of Ficino and his Platonic circle, as well as by his association with Johannes Reuchlin, Johannes von Dalberg, the Abbot Johannes Trithemius, and others of the Rhenish Sodality of humanists at Heidelberg who promoted the Ficinian doctrines in Germany. Among these were the Florentine occultist and numerological interests, ^^ and especially Ficino's effort to place philosophy on a level with theology as a means of understanding the creation and guiding human beings to their amplitudo esse. From the Florentines Celtis probably also derived his notion of a divine being who is immanent in the nature he created, the kind of deity suggested, as has been noted above, in the next-to-last strophe of the Carmen even as Cusanus' writings most likely inspired his conception of the abscondite God with which the ode concludes. In his inaugural address at the University of Ingolstadt in August of 1492, Celtis, reiterating his scorn of the current philosophy, though he did admire the scientific thought of Aristotle, Albertus Magnus, and Aquinas, argued that "We are powerless to attain anything magnificent, lofty and excellent as long as we pursue only minor aims, as if certain basic principles of our religion were not to be found in Plato and Pythagoras and other leading philosophers, who combine in the most admiralîle way the light of nature with that of grace. "^ Hence, in the prefatory letter to his 1497 edition of Lucius Apuleius' cosmographical treatise De mundo, Celtis speaks of the zeal with which he has pursued his studies "through long and most arduous joumeyings after the

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manner of Plato and Pythagoras in the honorable arts of eloquence and philosophy. "^^ Further, as Lewis W. Spitz has observed, "Apuleius clearly belonged to those men whom Celtis had praised in his Inaugural Address as those 'who reveal the work of nature and the wisdom of its Governor by mathematical truth and who go a little further into things than the common crowd. '"^^ The implication is that Celtis' own mathematical and astronomical studies enabled him also to penetrate more deeply into the nature of the universe and the symbolical meanings of its mathematical structure. Throughout the corpus of his poetry one comes upon evidence of the astrological, numerological, and philosophical-religious concerns that inform the Cannen saeculare. With him the symbolism of the numbers three, four, and seven in particular is apparent. Seven, for example, not only links the heavenly spheres with the ages of man. In one of his epigrams, "De Septem planetis ad Septem electores," he draws a cosmic analogy between these celestial bodies with the sun in their midst and Maximilian similarly encompassed by the seven imperial elector s.^^ Even more emphatically does he stress the symbolism of the number four. In a brief vita accompanying the posthumous 1513 edition of his odes and epodes, it is remarked that he wrote "four books of Amores, corresponding to the four cycles of life, as the Pythagoreans teach, and according to the four dispositions of man's ages and to the four extreme regions of Germany.... "^ These Amoies do tend to treat everything in terms of the number four: the four regions— Poland, Bavaria, the Rhineland, the Baltic north— watered, respectively, by the Vistula, the Danube, the Rhine, and the Baltic sea. Their chief cities — Cracow, Regensburg, Mainz, and Lübeck— are not merely the homes of the four mistresses — Hasilina, Elsula, Ursula, and Barbara— whose love affairs with Celtis are celebrated in these elegies. They are also the reference points of an Empedoclean, of a Pythagorean, tetrad of the elements out of which all sublunary nature is composed. Thus Cracow, to the east in Poland, under the wind Eurus and the sign of Aries, stands for air, the sanguine humor, youth, dawn, springtime, the bursting forth of blossoms and leaves; Regensburg, southward in Bavaria, under the wind Auster and the sign of Cancer, for fire, the choleric humor, early manhood, high noon, summer, the ripening of grain; Mainz, to the west near the Rhine, under Zephyrus and Libra, for phlegm and mature, or late, adulthood, evening, autumn, and the vintage; Lübeck, in the chill north under Boreas and Capricorn, for earth, the melancholic humor of extreme old age, night, winter, the sustaining of life on a few acorns. ^^ What Celtis managed in the Amoies was to employ the tetrad, with almost every conceivable Pythagorean combination of the number four, to constitute in his verses a complete microcosmic image of the Germanic world as he dwells within it and explores its regions at all points of the compass and in all seasons of the cycle of time. The number symbolism and the astrological beliefs of the Cannen saeculaie create a similar effect in miniature. By his use of the four terrestrial elements, the seven planetary and the stellar bodies, the twelve signs of the Zodiac — among them comprising all observable space and, as the superscription to the poem implies, the complete round of diurnal and annual time, Celtis ar-

CONRAD

59^

CELTIS;

CARMEN SAECULARE

cosmos in words as an imitation of the Creator's activity, and as empowering himself to foretell the future of the homeland. In an ode addressed to Brudzewski, his mentor at Cracow, he asserts that since the ticulates a

means

celestial spheres control the destinies of all terrestrial creatures, the vates, is, the poet-philosopher, is enabled by his astrological knowledge to predict events to come.^^ More than that, by his imitative art he can emulate the works of the divine artisan. The ground for this idea probably lies in Plato's Timaeus, where God is spoken of as poietes and hence, the poet too, by having the same term applied to him, becomes a "maker. "^'^ This concept of poetic imitation was not expressed by the Italian critics, nor by Celtis himself; nor was it fully developed until Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Poesy toward the close of the sixteenth century. Yet, as S. K. Heninger, Jr., has pointed out, medieval and Renaissance commentators on the Iliad asserted that, through the iconography of the shield created for Achilles by Hephaistos, "Homer intended to depict in small the amplitude of the great world in its timeless aspect, with its harmonies expressed as mathematical proportions between whole numbers. "^^ In the fine section on Renaissance poetics in his Touches of Sweet Harmony, entitled "Metaphor as Cosmic Correspondence," Heninger discusses the widely-held belief that God reveals himself through the "metaphor" of his creation, as well as the Renaissance critical doctrine that the poet's function is to imitate him in this practice. His summary is worth quoting at length:

that

. . .

The poet, though,

enjoined to reproduce not only the subject matter

of God's metaphor, but also its technique. Just as metaphor from one level of creation to another until

God extended

his

reached through all the orders of being, so the poet should devise an assemblage of analogies with the hope of providing a continuum of meaning from the highest to the lowest. His poem should be a network of correspondences, so that much of its meaning is conveyed in the arrangement of its parts, in its structure. Metaphor in such a poetics becomes the major mode of discourse, and structure is itself a metaphor, revealing the divine plan in action. The poet reproduces the subject matter of God's metaphor, which is natura naturata, but by reproducing the technique of God's metaphor-making process, the poet simultaneously reveals natura it

naturans.^^

Among

examples of Renaissance poems composed according to such a Heninger cites Maurice Scève's Microcosme (1562), The Shepheardes Calender (1579) of Edmund Spenser, and the much earlier Quattuor libri amorum of Celtis. To these one may rightly add Celtis' Carmen saeculare, which constitutes in words a tripartite universe — terrestrial, celestial, and supra-celestial. Through this construction, man can begin to perceive the triune God who, though hidden, is yet revealed in the macrocosmic "metaphor" which he has created and which he informs and governs at every level with his presence. The author of the Carmen saeculare, consequently, by verbally fabricating his own imitation of this metaphor, finds his way to the imknown supreme being who directs temporal human affairs by means of his created poetics,

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599

subaltem agents. The prayers for the various blessings on the German regions— successively to the elements, the planetary spheres, and the stars — lead up to a final petition borne upward on the smoke of countless sacrifices being offered to the unknown one in whose care the future destiny of the

homeland lies. Through the influential collections of his verse, of creative Horatian imitation in the

German

Celtis stands as the inspirer

literary tradition.

also in-

troduces into German humanist poetry important Renaissance Platonic and Pythagorean notions: significant use of numerology, belief in astrological influence, speculations about a deity at once immanent and abscondite. All of these elements may be found in this ode, in which the author is predicting, accurately he may have hoped, the impending dawn of a glorious new age for his homeland. He also appears to have been attempting to fashion, through his act of imitating the divine artisan of the macrocosmos, a model of it not only in the four books of his Amores, but also, with great precision and compactness, in the microcosmos of his Carmen saecuhie. Stanford University

Notes Pwpositiones domini caidinalis Nicolai Cuse De li non aliud. Coniadi Celtis saeculare (Vienna: Johannes Winterburger, 1500). 2. Jacques Perret, Horace, trans. Bertha Humez (New York: New York University Press, 1964), p. 131. Translation of the Horatian strophe mine. 3. Selections from Conrad Celtis 1459-1508, éd. and trans. Leonard Forster (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1948), p. 11. 4. Lewis W. Spitz, Conrad Celtis The German Arch-Humanist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 67. Celtis' edition of Tacitus was Cornelii Taciti de origine et situ Germanorum liber. Conradi Celtis Germania generalis (Vienna: Johannes Winterburger, 1500). 5. Published first with Celtis' Quattuor libri amorum secundum quattuor latera Germaniae (Nürnberg: Sub privilegio Sodalitatis Celticae, 1502). 6. Opera Roswithae illustris virginis et monialis Germanae, gente Saxonica ortae, nupera Conrado Celte inventa (Nürnberg: Sub privilegio Sodalitatis Celticae, 1501); Ligurini de gestis im. Caesaris Friderici primi Augusti libri decem carmine 1

Carmen

beroico conscripti ...a Chunrado Celte reperti postliminio restituii (Augsburg: Erhard Oeglin, 1507). 7. "Inter Germanos mea sic, rogo, carmina durent, / Ut Italis Horatius sub finibus" {Libri odarum quattuor. Über epoden. Carmen saeculare, ed. Félicitas Pindter [Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1937]), p. 112. 8. Deutscher Horaz. Conrad Celtis. Georg Fabricius. Paul Melissus. Jacob Balde. Die Nachwirkung des Horaz in der neulateinischen Dichtung Deutschlands (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1976), p. 38.

CONRAD

600 9.

CELTIS,

CARMEN SAECULARE

Published at Strasbovirg in 1513 by Leonhard and Lucas Alantsee, successors

to the printer Schûrer. 10.

The Schoolmastei (1570),

University Press, 1967), 11. 12.

ed.

Lawrence V. Ryan

(Ithaca,

New York:

Cornell

p. 117.

Horace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), pp. 370-77. Op. cit., p. 130. Perret diagrams "the very simple and very harmonious struc-

ture" of the

poem

as follows:

3 stanzas (11. 1-12) for Apollo and Diana 5 stanzas (11. 13-32) for the nocturnal deities 1 stanza (11. 33-36) for Apollo and Diana 6 stanzas (11. 37-60) for the Capitoline deities 3 stanzas (11. 61-72) for Apollo and Diana 1 stanza (11. 73-76) epilogue dedicated to all the gods 13. Fraenkel, p. 368. 14. ConTadi Celtis quae Vindohonae pielo svbicienda cvravit opvscvla, ed. Kurt Adel (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1966), p. 86. Although there are no substantive differences between them, I have followed the text of Adel's rather than Pindter's

earlier edition in this essay. 15. Ibid., p. 88. 16. S. K. Heninger, Jr., Touches of Sweet Hannony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics (San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, 1974), p. 341. I am much indebted to Heninger's study for its numerous illustrations of

Pythagorean-Platonic cosmology and its revealing discussion of the corollary theory of Renaissance poetics in its final chapters. 17. In a letter to Celtis, dated October, 24, 1494, Erasmus Australis regrets that he cannot comply with his friend's request for a copy of this work: "vobis transmitterem, sed nondum habeo" {Der Briefwechsel des Konrad Celtis, ed. Hans Rupprich [Munich: C. H. Beck, 1934], p. 137). 18. Konrad Celtes, Fünf Bücher Epigramme, ed. Karl Hartfelder (Hildesheim: Georg Olm, 1963), H. 35, pp. 29-30. Spitz, op. cit., p. 132, n. 2, cites other epigrams and an ode in which Celtis deals with these astrological influences on human life. 19. Spitz, op. cit., p. 51.

and

trans. Forster, p. 61: "nihil magnificimi, altmn et egregium tenuiora tantum sequimur, quasi non apud Platonem et Pythagoram aliosque praecipuos philosophos religionis nostrae quaedam fundamenta inveneantur, quibus pulcherrima luminis naturae et gratiae societas percipiatur,"

20. Selections, ed.

attingere potentes

dum

p. 60.

21.

He writes of "longis meis et difficilimis peregrationibus Platonis et Pythagorae

in honestis artibus eloquentiaeque et philosophiae studio consecutus fuissem"

{Briefwechsel, p. 295). 22. The Religious Renaissance of the Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 91. 23.

German Humanists (Cambridge,

Mass.:

Ceu Septem adverso discurrunt sidera motu, Quos inter médius, splendide Phoebe, micas, Sic Caesar residet septeno numine cinctus, Sancta

ibi

maiestas et Jovis ales adest

24. "Scripsit in poetica: Libros

amorum

(m. 19; Hartfelder, p. 50). secundum quatuor vitae

quattuor,

cir-

LAWRENCE

RYAN

60I

secundum quatuor aetatum affectiones et secunquattuor Germaniae latera" {Briefwechsel, p. 613). Spitz denies that Celtis' interest in Pythagorean number-mysticism is very serious; he considers it "all more a pleasant game than a serious pursuit" {Religious Renaissance, p. 95). 25. Adalbert Schroeter has expounded the details of the Pythagorean tetrad as it figures in the composition of the Amoies {Beiträge zur Geschichte der neulateinischen Poesie Deutschlands und Hollands [Berlin: Mäher &. Müller, 1909], pp. 17, 20-27). Heninger, op. cit., pp. 173, 340, has also commented on this matter briefly, while Erwin Panofsky likewise takes some note of it in discussing the woodcut representing Philosophia that Dürer made for the 1502 edition of the Amores {The Life and Art ofAlbrecht Dürer, fourth edition [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955], p. 157). Dürer's woodcut, incidentally, like various other Renaissance tables or diagrams of the tetrad (see Heninger, figures 28-37) differs somewhat in details from Celtis' own conception. 26. Quis ferunt causis animata terrae Orbitis certis sua fata ferre, Omne venturum quibus ora produnt culos, ut Pythagorici tradunt, et

dum

Candida vatum (I.

17, ed. Pindter, p. 27;

noted also by

Spitz, Religious Renaissance, p. 93).

27. Heninger, op.

cit., p.

291.

28. Ibid., p. 379.

29. Ibid., p. 340.

Incipit Carmen Saeculare cuius versus numerum horarum diumae revolutionis caeli continet et omnes sphaeras caelestes

Orbe centeno modo

solis axis

Currit aetatem renovare pergens Saeculi nostri, pueri et puellae, Dicite carmen! Terra, quae cincta es socio liquore, Aer ac undis inimicus ignis. Pace concordes alimenta nobis

Largiter edas.

Luna, fecundans uteros pudicos, Nutrias fetus, subolem et venustam Auge et humorem vegetesque cuncta Semina rerum.

CONRAD

602

Quique contectus vafer

CELTIS,

CARMEN SAECULARE

es galero,

Aliger, linguas doceas et artes

Et lyram nostras fidibus canoris

Infer ad oras.

Quaeque nos blando stimulas calore, Mater aetemi et genetrix Amoris, Copula laetis maribus maritas Prole perenni.

Tuque, qui vultu es rutilus corusco, Lucis et noctis sator atque rector Phoebe, Germanas radios benignos Sparge per oras.

Marsque, qui longa galeatus hasta es Et comis fulvis volitas per orbem, Ense Germanas tueare terras Pasque piiimque. luppiter, totus

Maximum Qui tuas

duce quo stat orbis. Aemilianum,

serves, rogo

terras regit, ut tuo tu

Numine caelum. Tuque, qui curvam

geris orbe falcem,

Conde morbosas, petimus,

sagittas,

Rustices artes doceas bovesque Sub iuga mittas.

Hinc

gregis princeps, Aries, per arva

Umidos

veris referens tepores.

Prospera fetus ovium et bidentum

Corpora cures.

Quique nos largis dapibus repascis Findis et latos, oculose, campos. Taure, lascivum butyrum datoque Lactea dona.

Vosque, qui iimctis manibus nitetis, Castor et Pollux, equus arte quorum Frena suscepit, date vestro equinam Sidere prolem.

Corticem rubrum tua, Carcinus, qui Terga déformas tropices habenas Cynthii vertens, niteas, precamur,

Lumine

fausto.

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RYAN

603

Tuque, qui

fulvis aperis calentes Rictibus fauces Cane cum gemello, Parce Germanas, petimus, calore ex-

Urere

terras.

Quaeque splendens

spicifera corona,

Virgo, maturas comitata messes,

Frugibus multis spatiosa nobis

Horrea

dites.

quae noctes pariles diesque Lancibus acquis facis et repensas, Profer Autumni caput et Lyaei Pocula fundas. Libra,

Tuque cum cauda truculentus imca Mordicus spargens tetricum venenum, Pestiles

morbos Alemanis

Poscimus,

aufer,

oris.

Quique pennatas, semivir,

sagittas

Tendis et curvo minitaris arcu, Tela de nostris, precor, aufer oris

Et fera bella.

Quique stas barba rigidus nivosa et hibemos glaciosus ortus, Fulgidum Phoebum refer Alemanas Vertis

Prosper ad oras.

Tuque, qui flexa

rutilas in Urna,

salutares, petimus, liquores

Irrigans agros et

Flumina

amoena

scissis

ripis.

Vosque, qui squamis pariter nitetis. Ultima obliqui vaga signa caeli, Poscimus, vestro date copiosos Sidere pisces.

Vosque, qui iuxta, radiosa turba,

Circulum obliquum per utrumque caelum Curritis, vestris radiis arnica in-

Fundite

fata.

Tuque, quo constant vagabunda

caeli

Sidera et quidquid spatiosus orbis

Continet, nostris precibus benignas Des, precor, aures;

CONRAD

604 Nos tuum nomen

CELTIS,

CARMEN SAECULARE

fugit et potestas;

Quisquis es, curas habeas benignas Rebus Almanis! tibi multa fumant

Tempia per

urbes.

Haec ego

in Austriaca cantavi carmina terra, Alpica quae Styria tectaque Camus habet.

Conrad Celtis (1459-1508) Here begins the Carmen Saeculare the verses of which comprise the number of hours of the daily revolution of heaven and all the celestial spheres.

The

chariot of the sim courses in its hundredth circuit continuing to renew the youth of our generation. Boys and maidens, sing

the ode! Earth,

who

air,

are encircled

and

fire

enemy

by your companion the

sea,

to water, concordant

in peace may you bring forth food for us abundantly.

Moon, quickening chaste wombs, may you sustain our offspring, and increase our beautiful progeny and the vital fluid and seeds of all things.

And

you, winged one, covered with your fur cap, may you who are cunning teach languages and the arts and bring poetry to our borders on your sweet-sounding lyre.

And you who

stir us up with alluring passion, mother and begetter of eternal Love,

join wives to joyful husbands with long-living progeny.

And

you, progenitor and also ruler of day and night, Phoebus, who are golden in your shining countenance, spread abroad your mild rays throughout the German regions.

And

you, helmeted Mars, who with your long spear and reddish hair revolve through the heavens,

with your sword defend the German lands and our holy right.

LAWRENCE

RYAN

605

by whom as ruler all the universe is sustained, pray that you may preserve Maximilian, who rules over yoior lands as you in your divine majesty hold sway over the heavens.

Jupiter, I

And

you,

who

in your orbit bear the curved scythe,

we beg, the disease-carrying shafts; teach the rustic arts and tame the oxen to the yoke. withdraw,

may you

Henceforth Aries, first among the flock, bringing back the moist warmths of springtime, make the lambs thrive and may you take care of the bodies of the sheep.

And

you, large-eyed Taurus, who nourish us with bountiful feasts and cleave the broad fields, bestow luxurious butter and other

milky

And

gifts.

who shine with your hands joined, by whose art the horse submits to the reins, under your constellation give equine offspring.

you, Castor and Pollux,

You, Cancer, who withdraw your shell from the tropics while twisting the reins of the sun at their turning point,

with an auspicious

may you

shine,

pray,

light.

And

you,

And

you, Virgo, replendent with your crown of ears of grain, and attended with ripe harvests, may you make ovir capacious granaries teem for us with much produce.

who with tawny jaws expanded lay open your flaming throat, spare the German lands we beseech you, along with your twin Sirius, from being consumed by heat.

You, Libra, who with balanced scales make nights and days alike and equal in weight, raise up the head of Autumn and pour forth the cups of Bacchus.

And

you, ferocious stinger, with the curved tail spreading deadly poison,

remove pestilent diseases, we earnestly from the German regions.

beg,

606

CONRAD

CELTIS,

CARMEN SAECULARE

And

you, Centaur, who shoot feathered arrows and threaten with your curved bow, I pray take away from our borders arms and cruel wars.

And

you, propitious one, who arise frosty and stand with snowy beard stiff from cold, overcome winter, bring back to the German lands shining Phoebus.

And

you, give,

who glitter like gold in your curved we beseech you, salubrious rains,

pitcher,

watering the fields and the pleasant streams with their divided banks.

And you

also, with your flashing scales, the last roving signs of the Zodiac, we entreat you, bestow abundant fishes

under your constellation.

And you

next, radiant throng,

who

describe

an oblique orbit through both the heavens pour forth by means of your rays favorable destinies.

And

you, through whom the wandering stars of heaven and all that the spacious universe contains remain constant in their courses, I pray, lend benign hearing to our supplications;

Your name and power escape us; whoever you are, may you take gracious care of German affairs! Throughout our cities many temples smoke with

sacrificial offerings to you.

These verses I composed in the Austrian land which contains the peaks of the Styrian and Gamie Alps.

Sir

Thomas Chaloner:

laudem Heniici odavi carmen panegyiicum^ Carl C. Schlam

Chaloner Sir Thomas Engish

known

today, in so far as he

known

at all,

Moriae Encomiuin. In his own time, however— he died in 1565 at the age of 45— his esteem was based on his service to the Tudor state and as a Latin poet. While he was scarcely a major figure in either political or literary terms, his career and writing are illustrative of the accomplishments of a well-educated servant in Renaissance as

translator of Erasmus'

England.

Bom in 1520, educated at Cambridge, Chaloner began his public career as an attendant on Thomas Cromwell, chief minister of Henry Vin in the 1530s.^ In 1540 he was part of an embassy to Charles V, and then accompanied the emperor on his abortive African campaign, in the course of which Chaloner suffered shipwreck off the coast of Algeria. In 1547 he was knighted by the Duke of Somerset after taking part in the bloody victory over the Scots at Musselborough. He continued to be of service during the reign of Edward VI, and went on, as a friend of William Cecil, to serve under Mary and Elizabeth.

In addition to the Erasmus, first published in 1549, Chaloner did some of the first English tranlations of Ovid and Ariosto. In 1555 he wrote the tragedy of Richard n for the Minor of Magistrates.^ Chaloner composed much occasional Latin poetry, as well as two major works. The carmen panegyricum, in laudem Henrici octavi was published in a special edition in 1559, a copy of which was presented to Queen Elizabeth as a New Year's gift. In his last years, 1561-65, Chaloner served as Elizabeth's ambassador to Phiip n in Spain. The position seems to have been largely ceremonial; Chaloner had no part in various secret negotiations and he complains of being left uninformed of affairs in England. During the enforced leisure of these years he composed De republica Anglicana,* a didactic epic of over 6,000 lines. His letters, as Clarence Miller observes, attest that "he wrote in Latin rather than English not only because to write passable Latin lines was easier and more impressive, but also because he could show his Latin poems to Spanish acquaintances; the masters and licentiates of arts at the University of Alcala praised his Latin

6o8 poems. They were also read in fashionable

SIR

circles in

THOMAS CHALONER

England and brought him

a considerable literary reputation."^

In 1579, William Malim, headmaster of St. Paul's School, at the behest of Chaloner's heirs and of Cecil, now Lord Burghley, published De zepublica Anglicana in ten books, together with the panegyric of Hemry and a collection of his miscellaneous Latin verse. Such extensive compositions indicate that the author's interest was more than merely casual, and they merit some attention as works of British Neo-Latin. The In laudem shows us how a welllettered public figure chose to both give pleasure and instruct. Chaloner praises the king's policies on important religious, political and social issues of the

day in terms of traditional literary imagery of rule and balance. Verse encomium was never a very well defined literary genre. ^ The examples in Latin hexameter extant from the classical period, which were known and imitated in the sixteenth century, are relatively brief, running up to ca. 250 lines. ^ Claudian, in the fourth century, more fully adapted the epic tradition for consular panegynics. Sidonius, following the examples of a basiUkos logos in Latin hexameter.

model

of Claudian, gave

Poems of praise were a staple of Renaissance humanists. How extensively Chaloner knew or drew upon such works needs further investigation. In any event, the In laudem seems to have been the first work of major scope in this genre to appear in England. Shorter pieces, often in elegiac couplets, were frequently composed for particular occasions. Such was More's poem on the coronation of Henry Vin,® of Buchanan's greeting to Charles V, delivered when the emperor visited Bordeaux in 1539.^ Similar pieces by Chaloner are included in the third part of Malim's edition. The In laudem, however, is not occasional and is conceived on a grander scale. Chaloner uses language and topoi of epic. ^° Echoes of Vergil are frequent, but there are also borrowings from both later and earlier classical authors. Chaloner does not employ the full apparatus of the pagan gods, as did, for example, T. Strozzi in his epic on Borso d'Este.^^ As in De Republica Anglicana Chaloner's aim here is strongly didactic. To teach under the guise of praise was a well-articulated goal in the Renaissance.^^

The content and

organization of In laudem generally follows the precepts handed down in the Ad Heiennium (IQ. 6-8) and by Quintilian (in. 7]}^ The presentation oi piaxeis, which constitutes the central body of the work, aims at the exaltation of character in terms of the traditional virtues. This is preceded by a section devoted to Henry's earliest accomplishments, anatiophe, but chronological narrative is avoided in favor of selected incidents organized topically. The role of the virtues can be seen in the defense of the faults of Henry's youth, which are said to show his temperance, since he was in a position to be so much more excessive than he actually was. Chaloner gives his arguments rhetorical force and artistic ornament, but In laudem is not a work of lofty poetic inspiration, as he himself acknowledges. Some variety of tone is achieved through apostrophes and for speeches of praise

passages of direct address, all by anonymous or allegorical figures. Chaloner provides amphficatio for the incidents and motifs he has selected chiefly through extended similes, descriptions of the effects of Henry's actions

CARL

SCHLAM

609

on the people, and, more abundantly, discussion of political theory. The individual virtues, in terms of which the encomium is organized, are made part of a vision of the commonwealth, expressed in conventional analogues for political order. Kingship in a proper state is like the head in control of the body; the busy, prosperous people are like a colony of ants, admirably industrious, but requiring protection from the rapacious bear (537-85). Henry is presented as following the mean between laxness and tyranny. The overriding theme is balance, in personal character as well as in domestic and foreign policy, the theme often enough overriding what we modems would regard as historical reality. Yet such commonplaces of humanist thought and its ancient sources echo the justification of various policies developed by Cromwell and others in the ruling circle of the time. While these policies partly reflect the real achievements of Tudor statecraft, Chaloner attributes everything to the king, as befits the genre in which he is writing. There is no mention of political leaders, not even his own patrons, nor of parliament, of which he

was sometimes a member. The prooemion (1-52) proclaims the importance of the subject and the author's unworthiness. The times of the hero are described as those of decay, justifying both some of his personal vagaries and the need for strong action. While merely a line is given to Henry's descent and none to his birth, his physical attributes are celebrated at some length (53-108); this passage culminates with the 'outdoing' topos:^^ Si lucta certaret, erat cui viribus impar Invideat Pollux quercinae frondis honorem;

(89-90)

You would call him a Castor at horsemanship; overcome Hector

fighting in armor,

he would

of Troy. At the hunt,

non si Theseia proles Hippolytus Triviae perdoctus voce magistrae Idem ageret, mains posset decus inde referre. (98-100) Praise of Henry's character begins with some 200 lines on his achievements war as in iuvenis (109-282). His courage is, of course, mentioned, but the focus is on his policy of maintaining a balance. There were two great kings of the age, Francis I, who, oft repulsed, arose again ever stronger, like a Hydra, in

and Charles V, who, raised so high by his many realms, Caesareo cunctos instaret subdere sceptro. (125)

Henry interposed himself as a third, alternately friend or enemy to each, preventing either from enjoying a final triumph. Chaloner's examples begin with the Battle of Pavia (1525); he proceeds to the humbling of France twelve years earlier at the Battle of the Spurs (1513), and concludes with a somewhat fanciful account of Henry's rejection of the imperial crown (1519). It is this infoia, which the poet then addresses:

6lO

SIR

Infula, in

humanis quae praestantissima

Insolitam hoc

primum renuente

THOMAS CHALONER

rebus,

es passa repulsam,

This leads to a passage of praise of England, a traditional encomium of place. as arbiter et belli et pads, an honor beyond all ancient triumphs, Chaloner leaves further account of wars to the writers of

Having celebrated Henry history.

As the poet turns

works of peace, he deliberates anew on the making choices from an abundance of praiseworthy

to the

frustrating necessity of

materials, and invokes Henry, stellis admixtus, to inspire his verses.

Among

the virtues, prima gradu prudentia primum / Ipsa locum meruisse potest (290-91). In his wisdom, the king is ever vigilant, so that the people may peacefully sleep off their amusem*nts, expressed in language of Terence:

noctes hivigilans curis,

dum

plebs securior altum

Stertendo satagit tandem edormiscere villum (295-97)

The alert king is like the pilot of a ship, watchful even in the calm of night. This Virgilian passage includes a sudden storm and a speech by the pilot rousing his

men

to action.

What we may

call

the central body of the panegyric follows, divided into

three large sections, each concerned with a major area of policy: Hemy's strict rule of the nation (323-536); his impositions of heavy taxes (546-758); and his break with Rome (759-1001). Such actions cannot be simply praised, but require justification. The punishing of rebels, the exaction of revenues, and

the suppression of the monasteries are presented as essential to the right rule of the nation and hence to be attributed to Henry's virtues. A didactic purpose is made explicit when in each area, Henry's policies are cited as models for his successors (e. g. 337 ff., 581 ff., 683 ff., 1050 ff.). The extensive apologia may be understood in this light. It reflects less a concern with Henry's reputation than a desire to instruct readers, educated and landed gentlemen, who may yet grumble against Tudor policy, or as often in such teaching, to comfort and reinforce those who support it. The first responsibility of a king is to stand firm in his rule:

Primum

igitur regis

munus

constare regendo. (323)

Henry's prudentia enabled him to do this by finding a mean between negligence and oppression. He defended the weak as does a hen her chicks. If as a young man Hemry indulged some wrongdoers, by the time of his maturity he had learned from experience. What some call bloody harshness is, if properly understood, true justice, the maintenance of good for the many through summary pimishment of individual lawbreakers. The result is displayed in an effective description of a joyous throng at a country festival, secure under a just ruler, contrasted with a sullen mob fomenting rebellion (372-431). The imposition of new taxes is, in the second major section, justified by the use Henry made of these resources to protect the realm and to expand its

CARL

SCHLAM

6ll

wealth and power. The people are exhorted to admire these accomplishments and not to grudge giving a little when they gain so much. In the somewhat longer treatment of religious reformation, Chaloner declines to consider the workings of the King's conscience and simply attributes his actions to divine inspiration. Henry's justice and even his piety are emphasized; the corruption of Rome and the degeneracy of the cloisters deserved punishment. Two references to monks as cinaedi are the only cases where Malim, the editor, felt it necessary to alter the content of Chaloner's verse; elsewhere he merely emends the occasional slips in scansion. The traditional charity of the monks, Chaloner argues, was no virtue, for alms merely indulge the poor in their sloth. England herself is made to speak, Dicat nunc Anglia matez (923), and she encourages Henry to remove such dead weight from her soil. The suppression of the monasteries is said to have fostered the renewal of honesty, industry and learning. Of this Chaloner was in a good position to know, since he himself derived estates therefrom. To adorn his point that those who would favor the restoration of the monasteries should at least insist that they leave the things of this world to the world, Chaloner adapts a proverb of the fox from Horace (Epist. 1.7, 73): Vulpecula

Macra cavum

répétât strictum,

Forte iterum celsi conscendet

nam

quem macra

subivit.

culmen Olympi (854-56)

In the epilogue, the traditional place for prayers and appeals, Chaloner first (1002-1107) praises Henry's generosity to his servants and argues for the importance of this virtue in kings. Those cited as particularly deserving of reward are the soldier, the writer and the diplomat, roles which Chaloner himself fulfilled. For this, the king has need of gold, described in a proverb, drawn, again,

from Horace

(C. 3, 16, 9):

Aurum opus Assolet

est;

medios aurum

transire per hostes

(1066-67)

The second part of the conclusion recites the qualities of Henry's children and ends with a plea for Queen Elizabeth to marry, Parvulus ut nobis Henricus lusitet aula. (1159;

cf.

Aen. IV 328)

no more fruit than Dido's to Aeneas. Chaloner abjures the loftier goal of writing a proper epic as something beyond his poetic powers, an honest evaluation of his In the event, his appeal bore

As part

gifts,

of his conclusion,

despite

its traditional

Conscius

Viribus haec

character:

medio ponam mea carbasa cursu; non apta meis. Ego stultior instem

Fumanti solem

terris

ostendere lychno?

Et lusi, et satis est.

(1102-05)

He leaves haec maxinia to the Dia poetanun

suboles,

among whom he right-

6l2

SIR

THOMAS CHALONER

not count himself. His Latin works, extensive as they were, are yet Both the quality of his verse and the content of his thought follow a via media, yet both proceed in ways characteristic of a notable public servant and ly does

ludi.

man

of Latin letters in sixteenth-century England.

Ohio

State University

Notes For the text and an English translation, together with an introduction and Thomas Chalonez's In Laudem Henrìci Odavi (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1979). 1.

notes, see John B. Gabel and Carl C. Schlam, eds., 2.

A fully

documented

life of

Chaloner and a

list

of all his

known

writings

provided by Clarence H. Miller in his introduction to Sir Thomas Chalonei, the Praise of Folia (Early English Text Society, 1965), xxix-xlix. 3. MiTToi f01 Magistrates, ed. Lily B. Cambell (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 110-18; cf. introduction 31-32. 4. See Miller, op. cit., xlvi-xlvii; the work is discussed by Leicester Bradner, Musae Anghcanae (New York, 1940), pp. 23-25. 5.

Miller, op.

cit., xli.

the tradition of Latin verse encomia in antiquity and in the Renaissance see L. K. Bom, "The Perfect Prince according to the Latin Panegyrists," AJP 55 (1934) 25-35; R. W. Condee, "Mansus and the Panegyric tradition." SR 15 (1968) 174-92; and Alan Cameron, Claudian (Oxford, 1970), pp. 253-66. 7. These include Statins, Silvae 4, 4 and 5, 2, the Panegyricus Messallae, preserved on the work of Tibullus, and the Laus Pisonis, generally, considered in the sixteenth century to be a work of Ovid. 8. L. Bradner and C. A. Lynch, eds.. The Latin Epigrams of Thomas More (Chicago, 1953), pp. 16-21. 9. Geroge Buchanan, Silvae 1, Opera Omnia (Edinbiirgh 1715), pp. 47-48. 6.

10. The epic qualities of In laudem are discussed by W. Mann, Lateinische Dichtung in England (Halle, 1939), pp. 124-37. 11. W. Ludwig, Die Borsias des Tito Strozzi (München, 1977). 12. See, for example, Erasmus's commentaries on his panegyric to Philip of Burgundy in 1504, quoted by Bom, op. cit., p. 35. 13.

On the rhetorical tradition see T.

C. Burgess, Epideictic Literature (Chicago,

1902), pp. 113-42. 14.

the "outdoing" topos see Curtius, European

Lit., pp.

162-65.

Euripides latinus:

Buchanan's Use of his Sources Peter Shariatt

The

Latin translations of Euripides since classical times, and the printed editions were all Italian.^ Erasmus was the first to introduce Euripides to France, with his translations of Hecuba and Iphigenia at Aulis, published by Josse Bade in 1506.^ Other subsequent translations show the lively interest in this author at the time the Scotsman George Buchanan turned his hand to imitation and translation. His four plays, of which two are translations, were written most likely between 1540 and 1543, during the years he spent in Bordeaux as a teacher in the Collège de Guyenne or Scbola aquitanica, of which Michel de Montaigne was then a promising, though no doubt recalcitrant, pupil. They were published over a number of years, three of them in Paris, Medea in 1544, Alcestis and fephthes in 1554, and one in London, Baptistes, in 1577. It will be recalled that these same years saw the beginnings of French tragedy, whether we date this from the Abiaham sacrifiant of Théodore de Bèze (1550), on a similar subject to the fephthes, though rather a tragicomedy, or from Jodelle's CUopatie of 1553. Buchanan is often considered to be the founder of Renaissance and classical tragedy in France, and the father of the modem French theatre.^ My purpose today is to look at some of Buchanan's sources principally in the fephthes, in order to discover his real motivation in writing. The subtitle of fephthes is Votum-, the subject is the biblical story of Jephtha, taken from the Book of Judges, where we read that Jephtha, the illegitimate son of Galaad was driven out by his brothers after the death of his father, and later, because of his valour, elected leader in the war against the Ammonites. Before leaving to fight them he made the vow that he would offer to God the first thing first

first

to meet him on his return. It was his daughter who met him and he duly sacrificed her. It is usually assumed that Buchanan intended to write a play with a religious theme, that he chose the story of Jephtha because it provided the opportunity for discussing the problem of vows and sacrifice, and because it enabled him to link biblical story and classical myth, and to revitalize the theatre. All this, of course, is true. What I wish to show now, however, is that he had another purpose which is not quite so evident, and

which came

6i4

Buchanan's use of ms sources

which emerges only

after a close consideration of the text, and an examination of his use of Euripides and other sources. The two plays of Euripides which he imitated most in fepbthes were the two which Erasmus translated, the only two, indeed, which were readily available in a published translation. Not that Buchanan needed the help of

a translation in order to understand the text, but at least he had the example Erasmus in the manipulation of metres, and variety of styles, and it is cer-

Erasmus brought these two plays to his attention, and to the attention of his public. His pupils and colleagues certainly knew of Erasmus's versions: no doubt the early Parisian and Aldine editions were no longer to be tain that

found, but the book had recently been reprinted in Paris and Lyon.'^ As we look at the influence of Euripides on Buchanan, we come to realize that, as he wrote, he had his copy of Euripides, and his copy of Erasmus, open on his desk. Let us look first at Iphigenia since the parallel is clearer than with Hecuba. In Buchanan's play, the heroine, Jephtha's daughter, is given the name of Iphis, though in the Bible she is nameless. Iphis is, in fact, a late Greek form of Iphigenia. She willingly offers herself as a sacrifice to allow her father to fulfill his vow and so ratify the salvation of her country. (She cannot be said strictly to save her country since it had already been saved, yet the victory depended on the vow's fulfillment, and God could forsake a people which did not keep its promises.) In the same way, Iphigenia is at first reluctant and then goes wulingly to the sacrificial altar, at the order of her father Agamemnon, to fulful the wishes of Artemis, and secure a fair wind for the Greeks' journey to Troy and the salvation of her country. Jephtha resembles Agamemnon in many respects, and Storge, the mother of Iphis, has something of Clytemnaestra. The general situation of the play and its characters come from the Bible, and on to this Buchanan imposes the situation and some of the characters of Iphigenia There are two principal scenes of Euripides which he has borrowed, the meeting between father and daughter, and the account of the sacrifice. It is worth pointing out that even before the play begins, in the Diamatis peisonae, Buchanan makes a clear identification of the two warriors, and at the same time acknowledges his debt to Erasmus, by using the rather odd expresson fephthes impemtoi, echoing Erasmus's Agamemnon impeiatoi which translates the bare Greek name Agamemnon. The first textual similarity of any importance occurs in Iphis's dramatic words of welcome, "Prodeo parentis reducis ut laeta, ac lubens / conspicio vultus" which corresponds to Iphigenia 640, ò Ttàxep, èoeiSóv a' àa\iivr\ TioXXtò xpóvw with some other elements from surrounding verses (for example, piodeo translates T^xofxtv of V. 634). Buchanan here owes a deal debt to Erasmus who translated "Te, mi pater, laetaque lubensque conspicor" (v. 851). The following verses of Jephthes, in which Iphis asks her father why he has turned his face away from her ("cur genitor a me torva vertis lumina?") contains an idea common enough in Euripides, and found here in Iphigenia (644) let- I 'ìùc, où ßXeTceic euxrjXov, àatxevoç [x' ì8ó)v. When Jephtha says epigrammatically that his presence will lead to a separation, "Nobis pariet absentiam haec presentia" (521) he copies Euripides's conciseness jxaxpà yap i?i(xîv \ 'moGa' àTîouaia (651),

PETER SHARRATT

615

though the verbal play is from Erasmus ("Etenim hie dies praesens absentiam mihi / tibique pariet, gnata, quam longissimam," 873-74). Another clear borrowing, also through Erasmus, is Jephtha's remark to Iphis, "Quantoque tu

meum / Pectus recludis altiore vulnere" (515-16), which comes from Euripides ouvexà Xéyouaa (xâXXov e{ç obcxov jx' oéyeiç (655), but amplified by Erasmus to "at tu quidem quanto loquere cordatius / tanto gravius exulsapientius loqueris,

animum mihi" (877-78). One further parallel is vital for the

ceres

interpretation of Buchanan's attitude to involves the use of irony. Jephtha say succintly at the end of his exchange with Iphis, "Adesse opertet te sacrificio statim" (549), which makes much more concise the lengthy development in Euripides (673-76), though Buchanan's line is close enough to the core of this passage (Euripides 674-75), translated by Erasmus (917-18) "Spectabis ipsa; nam futurum est, uti sacris / Adstes et adsis tu lavacris proxima"). The irony of the situation was well captured by Racine, it will be remembered, in Iphigénie, 2, ii: Iphigénie. "Me sera-t-il permis de me joindre à vox voeux? Verra-t-on à l'autel votre heureuse famille?" Agamemnon "Hélas!" Iphigénie "Vous vous taisez?" Agamemnon "Vous y serez, ma fille. Adieu" (w. 576-78). The second passage contains the description of the sacrifice itself [Jephthes, 1361-1450) and here Buchanan is thinking both of Iphigenia (1540 ss.) and Hecuba (484 ss.) I shall show in a moment that there is another source for this passage, but there is a clear link to be found at the end of the account of the sacrifice, when at the critical moment when Iphis has finished speaking Agamemnon covers his eyes with his cloak, "oculos amictu ... tegit" (1430), which in Euripides is ôfifiàxcov uiuXov TtpoGeiç (1550) and in Erasmus "ora velis obtegens" (2230). Cicero, it will be recalled, in Orator, 22, 74, mentions the painting of the sacrifice of Iphigenia by Timanthes, in which the artist independently obscures Agamemnon's head out of despair at portraying adequately his emotion. 5 Racine also picks on this detail (5, v, 1708-10): Areas. "Le triste Agamemnon, qui n'ose l'avouer, / Pour détourner ses yeux des meurtres qu'il présage, / ou pour cacher ses pleurs, s'est voilé le visage." The opening words of the Messenger's account of the sacrifice in Buchanan describe Iphis as 'victima / iam destinata virgo' (1372-73) which echoes Erasmus's 'destinatam victimam' (a mistranslation or rather 'circ*mstantial translation' in Waszink's words of a different passage of Euripides).^ In the present passage, Iphis appears not just a destined but a willing victim, who claims that she is dying for her country. Buchanan's beautiful and concise line 'Populum, parentem, meque voto libera (1427)Tecalls Euripides w. 1553-56: his source, since

Toùfxòv hi aoufxa

vf\i; èfxfiç

ÙTïèp Tiàxpaç / xaì

-cric àTïdtcrriç

'EXXdtSoç yctia^ UTrep / ôûaai

8i'8ajfi'

which is even more clearly echoed in Jephthes 1317-18, "itaque tibi animam libens / banc reddo patri, reddo patriae meae." The word ixoûao which Erasmus translates 'volens' (2237) èxoûcja Trpoç ßwfxov Geâç / àyovxaç, ïinzp iaxl Géoçaxov xóSt,

is vital; the idea also recurs in Jephthes (1401) 'parata morti, nee recusans mollit er.'

hope

it will be evident from what I have said that the report of the sacrifice owes much to Euripides, but rather by means of slight reminders or allusions than by lengthy imitation. I

of Iphis

BUCHANAN'S USE OF

6l6

When we

fflS

SOURCES

similar: the shade of Achilles

find much the same thing. The situation is demands the death of one of the daughters of

Priam in order that the Greek

fleet

turn to Hecuba

can return from Troy, and Polyxena will-

ingly submits to the sacrificial knife. There are three places in

which Buchanan

alludes to Euripides: (i) In Polyxena's speech there is the same stress on willing obedience; see Hecuba, v. 548 éxoûaa Ovfjoxco, the same word as in Ipbigenia, and w. 549-50, with her insistence that she is free, (ii) Her appeal to the son

which is recalled in Iphis's plea to her priestexecutioner to perform his task ("At tu sacerdos quid metuis?," 1424), (iii) The priest in fepbthes can scarcely bring himself to kill her, "solvere / animae meatus" (1432-33), which corresponds to Euripides v. 565, and once more appears to come through the intermediary of Erasmus ("Tum misertus virginis / Pyrrhus, volensque et non volens, atque haesitans / Animae meatus ense librato secat," Hecuba, 611-12). Again, in the case of Hecuba, we find Buchanan making a clear allusion to Euripides, without copying him slavishly. He uses only what is essential to his purpose, extracting from each of these complex plays of Euripides one central event, and leaving aside all the other themes. In Euripides the sacrifice of Polyxena corresponds to about half of the Hecuba, and Iphigenia contains a wealth of incidents which Buchanan does not use. There are two other sources which will help to understand both how Buchanan composed, and what his intentions were. The first of these is in Seneca's Troades. Now the influence of Seneca on Buchanan as on any Renaissance playwright, is a vast topic, which I cannot develop here. Both of his plays, and especially Baptistes, contain Senecan debates about subjects like the nature of kingship, and the difference between king and tyrant, topics which recur in almost all of Seneca's plays, (above all Thyestes, 204 ss., and the chorus at 376-403, though the overpowering suspense and the horrific and disgusting end of this play have no counterpart in Buchanan, and the closing lines of the Phoenissae). Buchanan's choruses and dialogue in Baptistes, more than in Jephthes, often have a distinctly Senecan ring about them. Among other Senecan topics in Buchanan are the changes of fortune, the contrast between the simple, secluded life and the anxieties of a ruler. Many of these are classical commonplaces, and could have come from many sources, including Euripides himself, or from collections of sententiae, and floiilegia. Yet the earnest moral tone of these discussions, their very sententiousness, if I may call it so, the tone of rhetorical pleading, are entirely Senecan, and it is Seneca who stays in our mind as the inspiration behind them. From a linguistic point of view there are many words and expressions which come from Seneca: Buchanan shares, for example, his predilection for compound words, particularly those ending in "-fer," and he uses frequently certain favourite Senecan words like "praeceps," often to show headlong passion or impetuous, furious action.^ But the one definite and important source in Seneca is the messenger speech in Tioades (1055-1178), a play with the same subject as Euripides's Hecuba, and indeed partly dependent on it. The speech, together with the interspersed remarks of Hecuba and Andromache, recounts the deaths of Polyxena and Astyanax. The first parallel is to be found in the description of the death of the of Achilles to strike her (563-64),

PETER SHARRATT

6lJ

flet e turba omnium / qui fletur" which is imJephtbes "Interque fientes sola fletibus carens" (1380), with perhaps an indirect source of both in Ovid's Metamorphoses, 12, 31, which reads "flentibus ante aram stetit Iphigenia ministris." Both Seneca and Buchanan make great play of the presence of the crowd, and both register their morbid fascination, "magna pars vulgi levis / odit scelus, spectatque" [Tioades, 1128-29),

young boy (1099-1100), "non itateci in

and "vulgi stupentis" (fepbthes, 1404). The second part of Seneca's messenger speech contains another passage which Buchanan has imitated closely, in the reaction of the crowd, and the different emotions aroused by her presence at the altar. Seneca, amplifying two verses of Euripides's Iphigenia (1561-62), describes the crowd's astonishment and admiration: some are moved by her beauty, some by her youthfulness, some by the change in her fortune, and all are moved by her extreme courage. These two verses of Seneca are developed by Buchanan at some length (1384-95): some are moved by the recent good fortune of her father, and by the liberation of their country, by the loss to such a noble family, by the bitter turn of fate, and the hard-won joy soon to be snatched away, or by her youthfulness and beauty, and her constancy which is above the strength of women. Like Euripides, Seneca stresses the willingness of the victim (945 and 1151-52), and talks of her "tam fortis animus" (1153); Buchanan, too, mentions her "animi virilis" (1333). Seneca, however, moves straight into the sacrifice since his Polyxena has a silent role; Buchanan follows

Euripides in giving the victim a speech at this point {Hecuba, 543-49 and 555-57, and Iphigenia, 1152-60), thus heightening the suspense and our pity for her. All in all, the influence of Seneca's Tioades is great; it enables Buchanan to give the crowd's reactions, and so provides us with a detached, objective opinion on the sacrifice. There is another classical source which sheds much light on Buchanan's manner of composition, and on his intentions. In a chorus of the Jephthes (784-841) we read that Iphis will not die by a disease sent from heaven, but will stain the sacrificial altar with her blood, shed by her father's hand, "patrio

Now this word "mactatu" must be looked at carefully, for it is attested only once in classical the first book of Lucretius (99). The context of the passage in which

sed mactatu / victima diras imbuet aras" (803-4). (slaying)

Latin, in it

appears

is this:

for himself

the poet addresses himself to Venus, asking for inspiration

and peace on

earth. In R. E.

Latham's translation this reads: "Grant

war by sea and land may everywhere be lulled to For you alone have power to bestow on mortals the blessing of quiet

that this brutal business of rest.

my country's history, I cannot pursue my task goes on to exhort his patron to listen to a plea on behalf of true reason, asking him not to reject what he says about the "ultimate realities of heaven and the gods" before trying to imderstand it. Then follows praise of Epicurus who delivered mankind from superstition (62-79), and an attempt to allay his patron's fears that he may be "embarking on an impious course, setting your feet on the path of sin," and showing that it is superstition which motivates sinful deeds. And the sole example he gives is the foul murder of Iphigenia at Aulis. "Raised by the hands of men, she was led trembling to the altar. Not for her the sacrament of marriage, and the loud

peace.... In this evil

with a mind

hour of

at ease...."

6l8

BUCHANAN'S USE OF

HIS SOURCES

chant of Hymen. It was her fate in the very hour of marriage to fall a sinless victim to a sinful rite, slaughtered to her greater grief by a father's hand ("hostia concideret mactatu maestà parentis"), so that a fleet might sail under happy auspices. Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition!"^ This last phrase is familiar to all, "Tantum relligio potuit suadere malorum." Now Lucretius was very well known to Buchanan and his contemporaries and we can be absolutely sure that the allusion would not have been lost on them. It is true that the name of Lucretius was usually accompanied by some opprobrious epithet such as "insanus," "méchant" or "vil," yet he was avidly read and appreciated.^ Later in the century, Montaigne, on his own admission, used daring classical quotations to hide his real thoughts. I think that Buchanan is here doing exactly the same, and that the use of "mactatu" gives us the clue to a true understanding of his purpose. Buchanan like Montaigne, and like Euripides, is employing irony, standing at a distance from his subject and the more enlightened of his readers would see this immediately. I have tried to trace with you the steps which have led me to a new reading of Buchanan. My starting-point was the perceptive and painstaking work of Raymond Lebègue, and Carl Fries's weighty article on some of Buchanan's sources, ^° but it was not until I turned up the source in Seneca's Tioades that I realized how different his handling of Seneca and Euripides was from that of his other sources. Today I have not had time to exhaust the echoes of classical literature in Buchanan. In the preparation of the new edition of the plays, my co-editor, Peter Walsh, and I have been struck by the extraordinary breadth and depth of Buchanan's reading. But most of these echoes are purely verbal. The choice of Euripides and Seneca as primary models is perhaps obvious. What is not so obvious is his rejection of the mechanical use of Seneca, and his stress on external reactions to the sacrifice, with a strong undertone of criticism. The Euripidean parallels confirm this. Buchanan seems to stress those very aspects of Euripides's text where his irony is most evident. But it was the allusion to Lucretius, in this highly ironic passage of On the Nature of Things, which brought the greatest enlightenment. Once it is admitted that Buchanan is an ironic writer, who followed Euripides precisely because he felt at one with his particular ironic approach, then many problems presented by the two plays are resolved. As I read Philip Vellacott's book on Ironic Drama. A Study of Euripides' Method and Meaning (Cambridge, 1975) it seemed to me that this fresh reading of Euripides was exactly Buchanan's own, and that Buchanan's attitude to religion, to war, to the role of women, was very close to that of Euripides. I must admit that I have never been convinced by the arguments which try to make of Buchanan a partisan in the contemporary debate about vows. However vital the debate at a time when the church was undergoing a crisis of authority, and when priestly and monastic vows were being called into question, it was conducted by theologians. In spite of what he said in the First Defense, there is no evidence that Buchanan was influenced by Latomus.^^ The fephthes cannot be a protestant attack on vows: in the first place the Book of Judges is an integral part of the Bible, and not a Catholic monopoly, and the presentation of a rash and stupid vow does not imply that all vows are absurd, and indeed may imply

PETER SHARRATT

619

the opposite. It reads much more convincingly if we see Buchanan as a detached, uninvolved observer. The same may be said about sacrifice. His contemporaries would instantly have associated the idea of sacrifice with the current debates about the sacrifice of the Mass. This was the central point of the debate about the Eucharist and there is a wealth of polemical and theological literature extant from these years. (A good example of this is the exchange of pamphlets which took place in 1534 between Bucer and Ceneau, bishop of Avranches.) Once again, I do not believe that Buchanan is taking sides, but dispassionately standing at a distance from the argument. Like Euripides, he disapproves of the sacrifice of the young girl, and, like Euripides, is suggesting that she is wrong to let herself be persuaded by others to sacrifice herself for her country. If this reading is correct, then Buchanan emerges as a lucid observer of the human condition, a political and religious moderate, though with subversive, and even aggressive ideas, but certainly not a partisan. Albert Camus comments on this Lucretian passage in L'Homme révolté, and stresses Lucretius's indignation, protest and revolt. In the Baptistes, too, Buchanan may be seen in the same light, rather than as a protestant critic of Catholic corruption (which, in any case, the richness and complexity of the text does not support). In conclusion I should like to say that Buchanan's ironic approach in his plays, which is, I believe, much subtler and more sensitive than the satire and sarcasm of the Fianciscanus and the Fratzes fraterrimi, ensures that plays which were originally intended to be appreciated by schoolboys and their admiring (and bored) parents, can still move, entertain and satisfy more demanding readers today. They contain the same possibilities of multiple interpretation as Euripides's plays offered and still offer. In a true Renaissance manner, let me end with an exemplum of my thought. I remember once seeing an ancient piece of furniture, a credence cupboard of blackened oak. Because of its style and construction it could be dated very easily to about 1530 or 1540, perhaps to the very year in which Buchanan wrote the fepbtbes. It was destined for use in church, and bore the sacred symbol MS, and its carved Italian medallions, in the classical manner, pointed to the union of the new humanism with the old faith. Even more remarkable was the fact that the medallions contained medieval pagan symbols, one of which was Jack of the Green, the primitive spirit of the woods. This seems to me to provide a perfect illustration of what I have been talking about. Buchanan was steeped in the traditional religious beliefs of medieval France and Scotland, and yet had a kind of connatural sympathy with ancient classical culture, and it is not fanciful to suggest that there remained in his make-up something of the old native paganism. The story of Jephtha and his vow, and the story of Herod's promise to his daughter, are both found, in various forms, in European folklore,and human sacrifices, either in reahty or imagination, have long exercised the spirit of man. If Buchanan is still worth reading, and performing, today, as I think he is, it is not only because of his place in the history of the theatre, but because he has the power to move us, and because he has something individual and valuable to say about superstition, aggression and tyranny.

University of Edinburgh

620

Buchanan's use of

his

sources

Notes 1. Cf. Marie Delcourt, Etude sui les tiaductions des tragiques giecs et latins en Fiance depuis la renaissance (Brussels, 1925), and Agostino Pertusi, "La scoperta di Eiiripide nel Primo Umanesimo," Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, IH (1960), 101-52, and "Il ritomo alle fonti del teatro greco classico: Euripide nell'umanesimo e nel rinascimento," Byzantion, XXXm (1963), 391-426. 2. Erasmus's translations may be consulted in the fine edition by Jan Hendrik Waszink, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969. 3. The standard work on Buchanan's plays is Raymond Lebègue's La Tiagédie leligieuse en Fiance. Les débuts (1514-1573) (Paris, Champion, 1929). 4. In Paris in 1537 (F. Gryphius) and in 1540 (G. Morel), and in Lyon in 1540 (S. Gryphius), cf., Waszink, ed. cit., p. 212. 5. Cf. E. B. England's celebrated edition of this play. 6. Cf. Waszink, ed. cit., pp. 351-52. 7. Cf. Léon Hermann, Le Théâtie de Sénèque (Paris, 1924). 8. Lucretius, On the Natuie of the Univeise, trans. R. E. Latham (London, Penguin Books, 1952). 9. Cf. Simone Fraisse, Une conquête du lationalisme: l'influence de Lucièce en Fiance au Seizième siècle (Paris, 1962). 10. Cari Fries, "Quellenstudien zu George Buchanan," Neue fahibücbei fui das

klassische Alteitum (1900). 11. Cf. Lebègue, La Tiagédie, pp. 231-33.

The Popularization

of English

Deism:

Lord Herbert of Cherbury's De Ventate and Sir William Davenant's

The Siege of Rhodes Andrew A. Tadie Davenant's The Siege of Rhodes was entered in the StationSireis'William Register on August 1656: 27,

Entred

under the hand of Master Thrale Warden, a maske called The

Siege of Rhodes made a lepiesentacon by the art of prospective in scenes, and the story sung in recitative musiche by Sr Willm Davenant, acted at

ye back pte of Rutland House, at ye upper end of Aldersgatestreet.^

The play, which was published in quarto a few days later, was not only welcomed by the English reading public who had been deprived of their plays by Parliamentary ban, but it also advertised that in a few days hence, in September of 1656, the play was to be acted. The advertisem*nt promised the public even more than a play; it promised a spectacle of music and machinery, a spectacle with the richness of the royal masque but which now was no longer to be reserved for the court. William Davenant was able to accomplish this rather amazing feat of obtaining from the Puritan rulers permission to produce a public spectacle only because of his shrewd political and theatrical savvy. In some respects The Siege of Rhodes is the most epoch-marking play in the language because no single play has had a greater number of significant

innovations which were subsequently adopted by English drama: it was the opera produced in England; it used elaborate movable scenes and employed a proscenium arch for the first time on the English public stage; it included what is generally considered the first appearance of an actress on the English first

it was the first libretto which derived its plot from modem history instead of from classical history or mythology; and it is the first opera based on the "good sultan" motif. In 1656 when Davenant produced his Siege of Rhodes, he was an accomplished playwright. Over twenty-five years earlier Davenant had written his first dramatic work, The Temple of Love, a masque which was published and produced in 1634. This was Davenant's first important work because it had been acted by the Queen and her court and because Davenant received in-

public stage;

622

LORD HERBERT AND DA VENANT

struction from Inigo Jones, who constructed the scenery for the play and who was, with Davenant, a co-author. Davenant produced this play under the patronage of Charles I, and he remained under royal patronage until civil insurrection curtailed royal entertainments. Thereafter Davenant turned his attention towards another literary form, the epic. He published several books of an unfinished epic which had a definite philosophical purpose, the propaga-

tion of natural religion. This epic poem, Gondibert, was well known in England. Gondibert had an elaborate moral purpose which Thomas Hobbes endorsed. Hobbes was a close friend of Davenant and wrote the preface to the poem. Hobbes was also well

acquainted with Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the founder of English Deism, and Davenant knew Lord Herbert's brother who was the censor for public entertainments. Davenant's purpose in writing Gondibert was to portray a virtuous hero who would serve as a model of conduct for the audience. His epic would violate standard epic conventions and would be devoid of both gods and figurative language, and evil would be treated as some misapplication or excess of virtue. In this way even the portrayal of evil could be a good example to the reader. When Davenant again took up playwriting in 1656 and designed the plot for The Siege of Rhodes, he did not abandon the philosophical and religious perspective of Gondibeit. The structure of The Siege of Rhodes closely follows the tenets of natural religion, especially as outlined by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the acknowledged founder of English Deism. Lord Herbert was a notable poet, prose writer, and social and political figure of the seventeenth century. He served from 1618 to 1624 as England's ambassador to France. As a philosopher he is known for being among the first to insist "... that in order to be valid, faith ... must be justified by complete unhampered reason." Insistence for such justification is understandable given the strained intellectual and religious climate which was attributable to the revival of classical Greek skepticism, as exemplified in the thought of such people as Montaigne. Claims to truth in science, morality, and religion were placed in jeopardy by the skeptical onslaught. Traditional ecclesiastical structures were challenged to provide credentials for their long presumed authority. Cherbury stepped into the breach with his attempt to identify basic religious truths and a proper attitude towards institutionalized religion. Cherbury's De Ventate (1624) is a response to "skeptics and imbeciles" and purports to identify the kinds of truth that exist and the manner in which they can be obtained. What is of interest to our purpose is the class of intellectual, self-evident, and indubitable truths known as the "Common Notions" or "Catholique Articles." These truths are said to be in the possession of all sane and rational persons, and they serve as the criteria for all other truths. Cherbury's basic test as to whether a proposition is a Common Notion is that it has the universal assent of normal persons. There are obvious and immediate difficulties with Herbert's ideas which do not need to be developed here. However, Lord Herbert has the distinction of being the only thinker explicitly named by Locke in his attack on innate ideas. Concerning religion there are five Common Notions. These constitute the

ANDREW

TADIE

623

heart of Cherbury's thought, 1.

Esse aliquod

Numen

which

in fact a philosophy of religion.

Supiemum Numen.

illud coli dehere.

Viitutem

cum

pietate

conjunctam optimam

esse.

lationem Cultus

Divini. 4.

Resipiscendum esse a peccatis.

Dan Piaemium

Quae enim

illuc

vel

non

poenam post hone vitam

vergit suis

Quodnam non hue

tiansactam.^

Ambagibus, Mysteriisque soluta Doc-

Quid tandem nisi Amor, Timoique Dei, Chantas in proximum, Paenitentia, Spesque melioris Vitae, ex Dei misericordia in humanum Genus suadetur?^ trina?

spectat Mysterium?

articles are from Lord Herbert's De Religione Laici (1645), but they were developed in the concluding section of De Ventate. These premises remained constant and insistent in the remainder of Lord Herbert's work, notably in De Religione Gentilium (1663). De Religione Laici is addressed to the wayfarer or layman and gives counsel on how to decide what is the best religion. It encourages a comparative study of doctrines which yields some basic propositions that are evident to the intellect as true, and about which there is general agreement. These are again the five above mentioned Common Notions or Catholique articles: "By these truths alone is the universe governed and disposed to a better state; these, therefore, consider the Catholic truths of the Church.'"* Any additional doctrines in any religion, and any matter of ritual, are only products of "priestcraft" and custom. Since additional doctrines are not known to be true by reason, and since the rituals are accidental to the five Common Notions, they can be supported only by appeals to miracles and authority, and by threats of damnation. Cherbury does not claim that religious doctrines and practices are pernicious pei se, but only that they are not known to be true and are really not necessary. He requires only that they be compatible with the Common Notions. Consequently, the strident claim of religions to some exclusive franchise on salvation is impossible and contrary to reason. Salvation must be universal. The honest and thoughtful wayfarer is not able to "... worship a Divinity which has deliberately and painstakingly created and permeated souls doomed to

These first

perish."^

The

wayfarer, the

than the priest

who

layman or true searcher

after truth, is different

only a preserver of religious mores and cultural practices. The capable wayfarer does not so much examine the validity of the claims of competing religions as devote himself to acts of virtue and piety, for worship consists primarily in acts of virtue and piety, and these serve as the basis for the best part of all religions. is

will be argued that if the people are steadfast only in the Catholic truths something at least will be lost to religion. But nothing, certainly, will be lost to a pious life or to virtue; yet by virtue is God so well worIt

shiped that rule.^

have called that religion best which

best squared to

its

624

LORD HERBERT AND DAVENANT

In his Autobiogiapby Lord Herbert notes that one of the reasons that he inon these Catholic Articles was "that I found nothing that could be added to them which could make a man Really more vertuous and good when the afforesaid five points were rightly explicated.'' Only a religion which is in keeping with the Common Notions can foster virtue and piety. For Cherbury virtue is not a criterion for the true religion but for the best religion. Thus, all doctrines and all forms of worship are accidental to the tenets of the Common Notions; to him doctrines and rituals are matters of indifference, except perhaps for personal, social and cultural reasons. Furthermore, in his Autobiogiapby Lord Herbert makes the following observation which is reflected in The Siege of Rhodes: sisted

... I dare say That a vertuous man [or, in the play, a woman] may not onely goe securely through all the Religions but all the Lawes in the world and whatsoeuer obstructions he meete obtayne both an Jnward peace and outward wellcome among all with whome hee shall negotiate or Converse.^

Virtuous individuals, regardless of their religion, will respect one another and live in harmony with one another because their religion and conduct are grounded in the shared Common Notions. In The Siege of Rhodes Davenant fashioned his plot to promote a Deistic point of view in his audience. The plot of The Siege of Rhodes is divided into two closely woven plots. The first deals with the conquering of the Christian isle of Rhodes by the Turkish conqueror Solyman the Magnificent. This part only provides a dramatic setting for the second part because the play ends before the military conflict is resolved. The central part of the play deals with the relationship of Alphonso, the Christian hero, his wife lanthe, and Solyman himself.

The play opens with the Grand Master of Rhodes and his Marshall debating with Alphonso, the hero. They see no reason why the newly married visitor should remain in Rhodes and fight what will be a losing battle with the Turks. In the meantime, lanthe, Alphonso's wife and true model of virtue in the play, has sailed to Rhodes to assist her husband. She is, however, captured by the Turkish fleet, the captain of which is so empressed with her virtue that he presents her to Solyman himself. Her virtue also overwhelms Solyman, who is no lusty polygamist in this play. He allows her to go to her husband and with a generosity inspired by lanthe's virtue gives her and her new husband free passage from Rhodes back to their home. When the freed lanthe joyfully greets her husband with the good news, Alphonso has doubts about her conduct with what he considers a lecherous, pagan emperor. She tries to convince Alphonso of her virtue but is unsuccessful. In this debate neither is able to convince the other; so both resolve to die at Rhodes, Alphonso because he thinks he is a cuckold and is dishonored, and lanthe because she has lost the love of her husband. Meanwhile, Solyman in preparing his attack on Rhodes debates with his two officers over the fate of the two lovers who have spumed his generosity, and he resolves that neither shall perish when he conquers Rhodes. The climax

ANDREW

TADIE

625

of the play occurs in the heat of battle.

Alphonso must choose whether to save

who has been wounded in

the fight. He finally decides that he has misjudged his wife's virtue, and he saves her. With the lovers reunited, the play ends even before Solyman conquers the island. his former teacher or his wife

The first

act is in Rhodes.

The problem

that

Solyman will soon come and

lay siege to Rhodes. Alphonso, the hero, will stay and fight because the pagan,

barbarian infidels

must be stopped.

sword against proud Solyman I draw His cursed Prophet and his sensual law.^ (I,i)

The chorus ends the scene

echoing:

Our swords against proud Solyman we draw, His cursed Prophet and his sensual law. In the second act there is the same hostile note, but this time in the opposing camp. Solyman says that Christians are ...

oft

misled by mists of Wine,

blinder love the Crime of Peace, Bold in Adult'ries of frequent change;

And

every loud expensive Vice; Ebbing out wealth by ways as strange

flow'd in by avarice. (n,ii)

Immediately after these words lanthe, the model of virtue, is brought before Solyman. He recognizes the virtue of this woman and sees at once her virtuous love as transcending his previous understanding of Christianity. lanthe comes before Solyman veiled, which shows her respect for Islamic customs regarding feminine modesty. Solyman responds to this gesture and to lanthe's willingness to share her husband's fate in a way that is precisely opposed to his earlier beliefs about Christians; he responds to lanthe's virtue in a virtuous way. In vertuous Love, thus to transcend thy Lord? Thou dids't thy utmost vertue show;

Yet somewhat more does rest, Not yet by thee expressed;

Which vertue left for me to do. Thou great example of a Christian Wife, Enjoy thy Lord and give him happy Life.

And

as thy passage to

So both

may

him

shall be free,

safe return to Cicily. (n,ii)

While Solyman recognizes lanthe's inspirational

virtue, in the third act

LORD HERBERT AND DA VENANT

626

Alphonso believes his wife's actions are hardly virtuous at all. It appears at the end of the act that, in spite of lanthe's virtue, all may be lost because of Alphonso's jealousy. Alphonso believes that it was lanthe's physical beauty, not her virtue, that moved Solyman. It

could even Solyman himself withstand; it did so beauteous show

To whom

seemed to civilize a barb'rous Foe. Of this your strange escape, lanthe, say Briefly the motive and the way.

(m,ii)

lanthe explains that she is free because Solyman as civil as the most gracious Christian king. All that of Turks and Tyrants

no barbarian

at all

but

had heard.

feared not Death, I should have fear'd. Voyage, urg'd my Love I, to excuse To your high worth; which did such pitty move

But that

That strait his usage did reclaim my fear; He seem'd in civil France, and Monarch there: For soon my person, Gallies, Fraight, were free

his

command. (m,ii)

Alphonso's reply

is filled

with dramatic irony:

This Christian Turk amazes me,

Dear! (m,ii)

is that no enemy, no barbarian, no leader of the Islamic with a carnal view of heaven could be motivated by anything but lust

Alphonso's assessment religion

and power.

And Solyman In

Women

does think Heav'ns joys to be not so fair as she.

Dismisse so fair an enemy? She was his own by right of War. We are his Dogs, and such as she, his Angels O wondrous Turkish Chastity! 'Tis strange!

Oh Solyman this mistique act Does all my quiet undermine.

are.

of thine, (m,ii)

The climax does occur as expected in the fourth act. The jealous Alphonso him and return to Sicily while he will stay and die

orders his wife to leave at

Rhodes.

vows

Still

not overcome by lanthe's virtue as Solyman was

Drive back the Crescents, and advance the Cross, Or sink all humane Empires in our loss. (IV,iii)

earlier,

ANDREW

TADIE

62/

the audience knows Alphonse to be wrong, that the Turks as the Christians. Davenant has convinced his audience that virtue and morality transcend all particular religions. The fifth act itself is a spectacular battle scene during which Alphonso learns that his wife has stayed to defend Rhodes, and in so doing she has been wounded. Alphonso, realizing his wife's virtue, leaves to save her from being over-run by the Turks. He, wounded in the process, is taken to lanthe.

By the

fifth act

are certainly as

humane

Tear up

wounds!

And rude enough

Who knows

but

had a passion, course.

use may make should not take

I ill

Of pardons which For they

to strengthen Jealousie;

may move me

to desire to Live. (V,iii)

lanthe recognizes that his jealousy "was but over-cautious Love," or as Davenant said in Gondibert, excessive virtue. Alphonso responds:

Draw Let

all

the Curtains and then lead her

in darkness

mourn away

in;

sin. (V,iii)

Thus the play ends with an image

of a confessional wherein the repentent Alphonso asks for reconciliation from his wife, lanthe. Davenant has in this play created a plot that is unlike the conventions of earlier English Renaissance drama. Certainly virtuous heroines and jealous husbands are nothing new, but Solyman is another matter. Turks are not altogether unknown in the earlier drama; atheists (i.e., unredeemable natural man), Mohammedans, and Christians engage in the most serious of military conflicts in the two parts of Marlowe's Tambuilaine. Likewise, the difference between Christian and Islamic religion and custom contribute to the deception and downfall of the converted Othello. Davenant's Solyman differs from the Turks which appear in earlier English dramas because Solyman comes to understand, as do the other major characters of the play, that the virtue and piety of a natural religion is superior to the intolerance and persecution typical of those religions which claim a direct and exclusive relationship with God. In developing this concept dramatically, Davenant may well have been influenced by Herbert's systematic treatment of the five Common Notions which are, he says, the foundation of all natural religion. ^° With these five Common Notions Davenant's plot corresponds. The five tenets, again, are "Amor, Timoique Dei, Chantas in pioximum, Paenitentia, Spesque mêlions vitae.. ." In the play, both the Islamic and Christian religions promote love of God [Amor] and a belief in duty to God {Timor dei], the Islams because of Mohammed, the Christians because of Christ. In the play it is lanthe's virtue that prompts Solyman and Alphonso to broaden their understanding of the other's religion, a broadening which causes a greater sense of toleration and understanding between the two men (Chantas in proximum). Alphonso, after he realizes the error of his jealousy, becomes extremely guilty and penitent [paenitentia]. The

LORD HERBERT AND DAVENANT

628

forgiving lanthe, alone, can give him hope [Spes] for a better life. and piety have transcended the limited and even false beliefs

Her virtue which are

generated by differing cultures and differing religions. At the end Davenant's characters lanthe, Alphonso, and Solyman realize, as perhaps some of Davenant's audience have been led to believe, that natural virtues transcend the opposing doctrines of different religions. In this way Christianity can finally be reconciled with what was once considered barbarism. Davenant's treatment of a deistic tenets in his play is not at first reading obvious, even to those who knew the works of Lord Herbert. Davenant could not afford to be too obvious about the matter because the Puritans were not to be offended at any cost. Davenant manipulated the theatrical conventions of his day when he wrote The Siege of Rhodes. First, he introduced several spectacles simultaneously; there were the novelties of movable scenery, a woman actress, and the singing throughout the action. Secondly, he modified the conventional five-act dramatic form,- the audience could not have been unaware that the main action, the military conquering of Rhodes by the Ottomans, does not come to closure. Thirdly, Davenant presented two heroes, one Christian, the other Islamic; the Islamic hero is unexpectedly more sensitive to virtue and in the end acts more virtuously than the Christian hero. This novel twist is a situation which a puritan audience could not help but notice, but perhaps the other innovations distracted attention somewhat from this fact. Davenant's manipulations of theatrical conventions were successful. After the first performance of The Siege of Rhodes Davenant was allowed to repeat performances of this play and later other plays like it. Davenant's success continued after the monarchy was restored in 1660 as he was awarded one of only two patents to produce plays. Thereafter Davenant became mentor to the greatest playwright and poet of his generation, John Dryden, a man who had

little interest in deistic ideas. ^^

Davenant's success on the English public stage can in many ways be attributed to the changes in the dramatic conventions first made in The Siege of Rhodes. Certainly English drama would be far different had it not taken the direction Davenant took in his timely and innovative manipulations of the then-accepted theatrical conventions. Much of what Davenant introduced very soon afterwards became accepted dramatic fare. Davenant's manipulation of theatrical conventions in The Siege of Rhodes is doubtlessly of the first order.

Seattle University

Notes 1.

Tzanscript of the Register of the Worshipful

1640-1708 A.D., in Three Volumes, Vol. 1950), p. 81.

Company of Stationers: From

U- 1655-1675

(New York:

Peter Smith,

ANDREW

TADIE

629

I must mention here my appreciation to Prof. James Mesa for his assistance with the philosophical aspects of this paper. The opportmiity to do research on this topic was due to the generosity of an Andrew Mellon Foundation Fellowship. Research was done at the Center for Humanistic Studies, Prof. Richard DeGeorge, Direc-

of these institutions I am very grateful. Lord Herbert of Cherbury. De Religione Laici, ed. by Harold Hutcheson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944), p. 101. tor.

To both

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., pp.

89-91.

5. Ibid., p.

119.

6. Ibid., p.

109.

Lord Herbert of Cherbury. The Life of Edward, First Lord Herbert of Cherbury, ed. by J. M. Shuttleworth (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 30. 7.

8. Ibid., p.

24.

This and subsequent quotations from the play are from Arm-Mari Hedback's edition of The Siege of Rhodes (Uppsala: University of Uppsala, 1973). 10. See Harold Hutcheson's analysis of the relationship between Deism and natural religion in his edition of Herbert's De Rehgione Laici, pp. 66-69. 11. Much attention has been given to Dryden's position regarding deistic thought. See Philip Harth's Contents of Dryden's TÌiought (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1969) and Douglas Atkin's "Diryden's ReUgio Laici: A Reappraisal," SP, Vol. LXXV, no. 3 (summer, 1978). Dryden acknowledged the dramatic patrimony of William Davenant most notably in his dedication of The Rival Ladies and in his essay commonly titled "On Heroic 9.

Plays."

Spenser's Neptune, Nereus and Proteus:

Renaissance Mythography

Made

Verse

Blenda Tbaon his Letter to his friend Raleigh, Spenser says that in writing his epic, Faeiie Queene, he has followed "all the antique poets historicall."^

InThe

Since he wrote this in 1589, there has been a steady stream of interest in his actual use of these "antique poets historicall," a stream whose course

has followed unerringly the currents and eddies of almost four centuries of critical scholarship. Source hunters armed with only classical texts made way for those also armed with Boccaccio and Comes, ^ Stephanus, and Cooper.^ Recent critics, however, have been more concerned with the ways in which all these materials serve as parallels rather than sources, furnishing a composite picture of the gods and their significance and providing a gloss, as it were, on what the poet has written.'^ We shall be looking at a composite picture, then, of Neptune, Nereus and Proteus in the first part of this paper. From the whole body of myth as he found it in the various reference manuals— mythographies, dictionaries, commentaries on the classics, and pictorial representations — the Renaissance poet could select the details he needed for his own poem and, if he so desired, reshape the myth or remold the deity in question. This is the method Spenser employs in The Faerie Queene, where the significance of the roles the mythological figures play is at times physical — his sea-gods, for example, play a cosmic role in Book IV — at times euhemeristic — Proteus intervenes in person, as do both Nereus and Neptune, in the narrative — sometimes purely rhetorical — as in some examples of periphrasis— but above all moral or allegorical. In short, the gods help to create what Spenser calls, in the tradition of Boccaccio and Comes, the "covert veil" of the poem. I propose to discuss the manner in which the three sea-gods contribute to the creation of this veil. The reference materials that Spenser most assuredly used in studying his "antique poets historicall" turn out to be relatively hom*ogeneous in the presentation of the three gods. This can be seen for the three main Renaissance mythograpers - Giraldi, Conti and Cartari -from the table on the facing page. 5 The same holds true for the dictionaries and many of the commentaries on the classics. This is in part attributable to the fact that many of the

BRENDA THAON

63I

works contain the same comments — despite

Giraldi's

and Conti's claims to

mark a certain departure from previous methods. They also all quote more or less the same

the contrary, although both do

mythographers in their

sources. The later editions of Conti, Stephanus and Cooper contain amplified comments and supplementary references, the dictionary editors often pilfer-

ing various editions of Conti's Mytbologiae. As for the emblemists, the following references to the sea-gods have been found. Alciati portrays Proteus as a shape-shifting deity rising from the waves, trident in hand, and refers to Nep-

tune as associated with the dolphin, with the Trojan War, and as father of Triton; Libeius-Batillius portrays Neptune and Minerva disputing the sovereignty of Athens; Anulus shows Neptune seducing Coronis; Pictorius gives us a Neptune sovereign of the seas riding the waves; Cartari's illustrations are of Neptune, god of sea and land, and of Neptune and Amphritite.*^ Poseidon, or Neptune as he appears in Latin writings, plays an important commentaries and reference materials. Added to those qualities and attributes mentioned in Giraldi, Conti and Cartari (as seen on the table) are the allegorizations created over the centuries by various writers. For Eustathius in the eleventh-century Commentala ad Homeii Odysseam, he is the passions that the Christ-figure, Odysseus, must subdue as his boat subdues the waves on the journey to Ithaca. For Ridewall, in Fulgentìus metaforalis, he is inteUigencia, for Landino he appears in Allegorica Platonica in XII libros as "higher reason illuminated by grace," as opposed to Aeolus, or "lower reason," or, even worse, the libido of women. Bersuire, in Metamorphosis Ovidiana Moraliter, interprets him as a type of earthly tyrant — of the kind prevalent in France in the XlVth century— and Lavinius, in his commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses, states boldly he is Seth, second of Noah's sons because Neptune is the second of Saturn's sons and also a survivor of the Flood. This anagogical interpretation persists until the XVnth century, where it is found in Raleigh's History of the World and Stillingfleet's De Theologia gentilii. One of the more amusing aspects of Boccaccio's portrait of Neptune in the Genealogie deorum is a Christianizing of the god's role as "earthshaker" by tying him in, most improbably, with the parable of the house built on the sand.'' Conti, wisely, leaves aside this kind of allegorizing for his moral and ethical explanations of the god, focusing on, amongst other things, the story of Hippolytus in which Neptune represents impetuousness and wrath, as indeed he does in Spenser's same story. Nereus is less important in classical literature (except perhaps in Hesiod's Theogony] and the comments in the reference manuals are correspondingly briefer. He seems to have attracted the attention of few allegorizers and, as role in the classics and, consequently, in all the

have been able to discover, no emblemists or iconologists. He is, perhaps, too good to be interesting. Or perhaps their attention was focused too intently on Proteus. In the classics he runs a close second to Neptune as a major sea-deity, being known for his shape-shifting and prophesying powers, as well as for his role as shepherd of Neptune's flocks. The portraits in the major mythographies emphasize all these points and add many more, as the accompanying table shows. In terms of allegorical interpretation, he had attracted commentary from Heraclides on, far as I

RENAISSANCE MYTHOGRAPHY MADE VERSE

632

mostly as a shape-shifter and prophet. His shapes symbolize the elements while his power to assume them symbolizes the power underlying all natural things. For the Neo-Platonists, too, he had taken on great significance as a symbol of man, free to choose his own forms and shape his life, as in Pico della Mirandola's De hominis dignitate, or as a power of love and procreation because of his ability to partake in divine beauty by the reception of forms, as in Leone Ebreo. He had, moreover, by the time Spenser was writing, become symbolic of the poet through his role as vates, or seer. Such is the conception of the poet in Sidney's Apology, for example. He had also become associated with the

man

knowledge [magus], the

"vir sapientissimus" of Conti.

his less endearing qualities, however, are

Some

bom of these very attributes.

Shape-

shifting can symbolize passion, lust, deceit; knowledge can be misused and lead to black, not white magic. The interpretation of Proteus is therefore, like

the god himself, "mutabilissimus." Turning to the three gods as they appear in Spenser's poetry, we find that they have retained many of their qualities and attributes and have gained very few. Spenser's inventiveness — and he refers to the myth-makers as inventors in his poetry, as does E. K. on several occasions in his Commentary on the Shepherd's Calendar, equating them in turn with the poets— lies not so much in giving the gods new attributes and allegorical meanings as in weaving the old into his own legends of holiness, temperance, and so on. It is a process that is extremely complex because myth for Spenser is, as it had been for Servius in the fourth century and for generations of commentators thereafter, "polysemous." In one image of Neptune, or Nereus, or Proteus, we can find one, or two, or even three, allegorical layers of meaning that are significant, quite often not just within the episode in question, but also in the allegory of the whole book, or even the whole of Spenser's poetry. Nereus plays his conventional role as protector of sailors and father of the Nereids and represents truth and the fruitfulness of the sea in a passage that is obviously very close to Book n. Chapter of Conti's Mythologiae.^ In two places, however, he is referred to as "greedie," an epithet I have not found used elsewhere. Whereas in the 1591 Visions of Bellay (H, xiii), the image is simply being used as a synonym for the sea— one recommended by the various dictionaries — in The Faeiie Queene, Nereus, in his role as "greedie gulfe," intervenes in the narrative to agree to give up his riches to Marinell (ni.iv.22). Given the significant roles riches play in the pursuit of vain-glory, allegorized in the Marinell story, Nereus is cast in an unusually negative part. Proteus' role in The Faeiie Queene is far more important.^ (He only appears once elsewhere in Spenser's poetry, as shepherd of the sea in Cohn Clouts Come Home Againe.) Spenser's interpretation of him is physical, or naturalistic, euhemiristic, and allegorical, touching therefore on all the methods of interpretation found in the history of mythography. Proteus is the means by which the physical world of nature (the rivers, the ocean, the land and all their inhabitants) is brought into a state of harmony, generation and fertility for the marriage of the rivers; he plays an actual character in the narrative, one of crucial importance in the story of Marinell and Fiorimeli. But it is in the allegorical meanings of the Protean figure that Spenser is at his most creative and original. Although a symbol of generation and regeneration

BRENDA THAON

when

633

"bound," as Virgil says in his version of the Proteus-Menelaus story

{Geoigics, IV, 387-415), the god can also represent the darker side of the shapeshifter's character, a side that leads to deceit and evil (as his association with Archimago — the wrong kind of mû^s — suggests) and also to seduction, lust and tyranny (as his attempted seduction and eventual imprisonment of Fiorimeli shows). His role of prophet in The Faerie Queene is similarly am-

bivalent. His prophecy is misunderstood (Spenser did not find that in Virgil)

with the outordered by Neptune to give Fiorimeli up to Marinell (IV.xii.32). Further irony is added to the character of Proteus when the god is seen in his role as "shepherd of the seas" and protector of those who sail the ocean. He goes to the rescue of Fiorimeli, who is in the grip of an aged and foul-smelling fisherman, only to debase himself immediately after by trying to seduce her himself. This last point in the portrait of Proteus is found in neither Homer nor Virgil but in the reference materials, many of which emphasize his role as seducer and lecher. Neptune plays an equally active role, and a more varied one, but has enjoyed far less critical attention than Proteus. In purely numerical terms Neptune is second only to Jove and Venus in the number of times he is mentioned in Spenser's poetry (24, 97, and 65 respectively while Proteus is mentioned 23 times). He figures in all the books of The Faerie Queene except Book V (where he is present in spirit in the episode dealing with sovereignty on the seas even if he is not mentioned by name) and Book VI. It is the variety of meanings that he represents that is of interest, however. I shall summarize these meanings before I pass on to one particular episode which will illustrate how, in Spenser's hands. Renaissance mythography does actually become verse. It has been asserted that Spenser does not add any elements to the character of Neptune as he must have found it in the classics and the reference materials. *° This is not true. Indeed, the portrait of the god is drawn largely from the sources, but on the other hand, some elements are rejected and others reemphasized and Spenser does, in fact, use the god in two or three ways that are not suggested by earlier writers. As sovereign of the sea, Neptune appears in all his splendor in the marriage of the rivers, where he symbolizes the need for hierarchy, a favorite Renaissance theme, and also the fruitfulness of the sea and of nature in general (IV.xi.). In the Fiorimeli story he illustrates the need for sovereignty and the consequences of usurping that sovereignty. On several occasions he is invoked by other characters in the narrative. Archimago thanks him as protector of sea-merchants (I.iii.32); Theseus asks his help in punishing Hippolytus because he knows him as cruel and vengeful and impetuous (I.V. 38); Britomart promises him thanks because she associates him with the passionate state in which she finds herself during her quest for Artegall (in.iv.lO). His shape-shifting abilities and guile associate him by implication with Archimago. The accounts of his loves, portrayed in Busirane's tapestries (in. xi. 40-43), together with the account of his seduction of Aeolus' daughter (IV.ix.23), draw him into the allegory of sexual mastery as it unfolds in Books

and he

come

is,

in spite of himself, eventually brought face to face

of his

misunderstood prophecy

when he

m and IV.

Those uses of the god that are unusual are Spenser's portrayal of him as representative of nature as opposed to art (in the story of Phaedria, for exam-

RENAISSANCE MYTHOGRAPHY MADE VERSE

634 where he

have no sway over her boat and lake, both products storm conjured up by Acrasia, which resembles Neptune's storms but is attributable to the presence of monsters (n.xii.22)); he is representative of nature as opposed to mutability (as a supreme symbol of nature which changes yet is ever the same, the sea is to refute mutability's claims). A third use of Neptune if not anagogical— the Seth-Neptune interpretation does not occur in Spenser's poetry— is eschatalogical. The fall of the dragon in Book I terrifies Neptime, for it heralds the god's own fall on the Day of Judgement when the earth will pass away and the sea will be no more (I.xi.54). In all these examples, the significance of Neptune is woven into the allegory, not only of the episode in which he appears but into that of the whole book, or even of several books. In some cases, moreover, the meanings attributed to the god are several, because for Spenser, myth is polysemous, as we have already observed. This can be seen in the following episode. In Book I, Archimago tries to seduce Una from pursuing her search for Redcrosse by appearing to her in the form of the knight. The unwitting heroine is as overjoyed and grateful as a sailor who, long wandered "in the Ocean wide,/ Oft soust in swelling Tethys saltish teare," sights port and "Neieus crownes with cups" (I.iii.31). Archimago, delighted with his success, is like a merchant who has sighted his ship from shore and "hurles out vowes, and Neptune oft doth blesse" (Lui. 32). Although critics have commented on the verbal points that differentiate Una's and Archimago's feigned gratitude, they have dismissed the gods as "mere synonyms" for the sea. But they are more than that. Nereus, Ocean and Tethys in Una's stanza are all benevolent figures both in the classics and in the reference materials. Ocean is, says Conti, "fluviorum et animantium omnium et deorum pater vocatus est ab antiquis," while Tethys is "deorum et animalum omnium mater dicta est." As for Nereus, Conti continues, the ancient authors "veridicimi et vatem esse crediderunt" who because he is a "senex," "consilium et peritia in regendibus navabis." Una, although she has suffered on her quest, which is expressed in the time-honoured metaphor of the sea-voyage throughout the book, has had protection so far and has, she thinks, arrived in port. Similarly, the sailor, although suffering hardships on the sea, has been brought home safely. But another reason makes Una's choice of god significant. Nereus is symbolic of truth and so, too, is Una. Archimago, on the contrary, is deceit itself, and he is a merchant in the simile. He chooses Neptime because this god is the protector of maritime commerce, the first evil, according to Ovid in the Métamorphoses (I. 132-34), bom of man's desire for wealth. He is also drawn to Neptune on account of the god's shape-shifting abilities and guile, both usually deployed in the seduction of young women. This attribute is mentioned everywhere in the commentaries on Ovid and in the mythographies. In Spenser's allegory it assumes an importance that transcends this episode. Archimago is, of course, trying to "seduce" Una from her quest by transforming himself into Redcrosse. Throughout the book the theme of deceptive appearances that "seduce" the would-be Christian from seeking holiness dominates, as does the sexual metaphor of seduction, a favourite of the Reformers. Neptune, then, is the appropriate god for Archimago and the moral allegory that Spenser is expounding in the Legend of Holiness. pie,

said to

of art (n.vi. 10), or in the

BRENDA THAON

635

Spenser's use of medieval and Renaissance mythography as it came down him through the various reference works and pictorial representations is similar to his use of the classics themselves. An older critic called it eclectic

and profusely applied as external ornament. ^^ Eclectic it is and it assumes multiple shapes and, like the god, resists being bound into one form or pattern. But external ornament it is not. The complex web of meanings and truths that Spenser found in his "antique poets historicall" and in the reference manuals, he wove into his own poetry, believing, like Boccaccio and Conti and others before them, that the "sacred noursery / Of Vertue" will be revealed by the "Muses that on Pamasso dwell" and

diffuse,

also diffuse in that, like Proteus,

to those

whose footing they

guide.

Université de Montréal

Notes 1. The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, ed., Edwin Greenlaw, C. G. Osgood, F. M. Padelford et al., 10 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1932-49), I, 167. All subsequent references to The Faerie Queene will be to this edition and will appear parenthetically in the text. 2. H. G. Lotspeich, Classical Myth in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932, repr. New York: Octagon Books, 1965). 3. Dewitt T. Stames and Ernest W. Talbert, Classical Myth and Legend in Renaissance Dictionaries (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955). 4. See, for example, John M. Steadman, Nature into Myth (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1979), pp. 46-63. 5. Editions used are as follows. Lilius Gregorius Giraldus, De deis gentium ... Basel, 1548; Natale Conti, Mythologiae sive exphcationis fabularum hbriX, Venice, 1551; Vincenzo Cartari, Le imagini colla sposozione degli de degh antichi, Venice, 1556. 6. Editions are as follows. Andrea Alciati, Emblemata, Antwerp, 1581; LebeiusBattilius, Emblemata, 1596; Anulus, Pietà Poesis, 1552; Georgius Pictorius, Theologica Mythologica, Antwerp, 1532; Cartari, Imagines Deorum, Venice, 1581. (Bari: G. Laterza 7. Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogie deorum gentihum hbri e figli, 1951), X. 8. Conti, op. cit., Vm. 9. Por interpretations of Proteus I am indebted to A. Bartlett Giamatti's "Proteus Unbound: Some Versions of the Sea God in the Renaissance," in The Disciplines of Criticism, ed. P. Demetz, T. Greene, L. Nelson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 437-75. Proteus' role in The Faerie Queene is explored by A. Bartlett Giamatti in Play of Double Senses: Spenser's 'Faerie Queene' (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1975), pp. 118-33. 10. Lotspeich, op. cit., p. 89. 11. C. G. Osgood, The Classical Mythology of Milton's English Poems (New York: Holt, 1900), p. xx.

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