Medievalia et Humanistica, No. 38: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Culture: New Series (Volume 38) (Medievalia et Humanistica Series, 38) [Illustrated] 9781442220522, 9781442220539, 144222052X

Table of contents :
Contents
Editorial Note
Articles for Future Volumes
Preface
Ch01. Li Miracles del capiel de roses
Ch02. Religious Dialogues and Trialogues in the Middle Ages
Ch03. The Rhetoric of Logic in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis Book 7
Ch04. From Venetia to Europe, in the Age of Reform
Ch05. History “Without Scruple”
Review Article
Review Notices

Citation preview

MEDIEVALIA ET HUMANISTICA

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M ED I E VA L IA E T H U MA N ISTICA Editor Reinhold F. Glei (articles) and Wolfgang Polleichtner (reviews) with the editorial assistance of Nina Tomaszewski Ruhr-Universität Bochum

E DITORIA L BOA RD David Bevington University of Chicago

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski University of Pittsburgh

Robert Boenig Texas A&M University

Daniel Bornstein Washington University, St. Louis

Christopher S. Celenza American Academy in Rome

Albrecht Classen University of Arizona

Jacques Dalarun Institute de recherche et d’histoire des textes, Paris

Peter Dembowski University of Chicago

Yasmin Haskell University of Western Australia, Perth Richard Marsden University of Nottingham Francesco Stella Università di Siena

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David Lines University of Warwick Adriano Prosperi Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa Jan M. Ziolkowski Harvard University

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M E D I E VA L I A E T HUMANISTICA S T U D I E S I N M E D I E VA L A N D R E N A I S S A N C E C U LT U R E NEW SERIES: NUMBER 38

EDITED BY R E I N H O L D F. G L E I ( articles) and W O L F G A N G P O L L E I C H T N E R ( reviews)

W ith th e ed it orial assist anc e of NINA TOMASZEWSKI

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

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Published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2013 by The Medieval and Renaissance Society, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Medievalia et humanistica, fasc. 1–jan. 1943–; New ser. No 1– 1970– Totowa, N.J. [etc.] Rowman & Littlefield [etc.] no. 29 cm Annual, 1943– “Studies in medieval and renaissance culture.” Vols. for 1970–1972 issued by the Medieval and neo-Latin society; 1973– by the Medieval and Renaissance Society. Key title: Medievalia et humanistica, ISSN 0076-6127. ISBN: 978-1-4422-2052-2 eISBN: 978-1-4422-2053-9 Library of Congress (8108)

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Editorial Note

vii

Manuscript Submission Guidelines

viii

Articles for Future Volumes

ix

Preface

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Li Miracles del capiel de roses: A Heretofore Unpublished Marian Miracle, ca. 1250 Nancy Vine Durling

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Religious Dialogues and Trialogues in the Middle Ages: A Preliminary Essay Reinhold F. Glei The Rhetoric of Logic in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis Book 7 Jonathan M. Newman

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From Venetia to Europe, in the Age of Reform: The Oratiunculae de communione corporis Christi, Translated by Francesco Rolandello Paola Tomè

59

History “Without Scruple”: The Enlightenment Confronts the Middle Ages in Renaissance Ferrara Richard M. Tristano

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review article Pere Tomàs, Tractatus brevis de modis distinctionum: Latin text with Catalan and English Translations, ed. Celia López Alcalde and Josep Batalla, introd. Claus A. Andersen Stanislav, Sousedík, “Nicolai de Orbellis Tractatus de distinctionibus,” Studia Neoaristotelica: A Journal of Analytical Scholasticism (Sven K. Knebel)

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Contents

review notices

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Beecher, Donald, and Grant Williams, eds., Ars Reminiscendi. Mind and Memory in Renaissance Culture (Wolfgang Polleichtner)

131

Collins, David J., Reforming Saints: Saints’ Lives and Their Authors in Germany, 1470–1530 (Jodi Bilinkoff)

136

C´urcˇic´, Slobodan, Architecture in the Balkans: From Diocletian to Süleyman the Magnificent (Michael Altripp)

138

King, David A., Astrolabes from Medieval Europe (Günther Oestmann)

147

Licence, Tom, Hermits and Recluses in English Society, 950–1200 (Eva von Contzen)

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Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, The True Medicine, ed. and trans. Gianna Pomata (Michael Schulze Roberg)

151

Rigby, Stephen H., Wisdom and Chivalry: Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale” and Medieval Political Theory (Maik Goth)

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Editorial Note

Since 1970, this new series has sought to promote significant scholarship, criticism, and reviews within the fields of medieval and Renaissance studies. It has published articles from a variety of disciplines, and it has given attention to new directions in humanistic scholarship and to significant topics of general interest. This series has been particularly concerned with the exchange between specializations, and scholars of diverse approaches have complemented each other’s efforts on questions of common interest. Medievalia et Humanistica is sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America. Publication in the series is open to contributions from all sources, and the editorial board welcomes scholarly, critical, or interdisciplinary articles of significant interest on relevant material. Contributors are urged to communicate in a clear and concise style the larger implications and the material of their research, with documentation held to a minimum. Text, maps, illustrations, diagrams, and musical examples are published when they are essential to the argument of the article. In preparing and submitting manuscripts for consideration, potential contributors are advised to follow carefully the instructions given on pages viii–ix. Articles in English may be submitted to any of the editors. Books for review and inquiries concerning Fasciculi I–XVII in the original series should be addressed to Medivalia et Humanistica, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Seminar für Klassische Philologie, Gebäude GB 2 / 162, Universitätsstraße 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany. Inquiries concerning subscriptions should be addressed to the publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4501 Forbes Blvd, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706

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Manuscript Submission Guidelines Preparing Your Word File • Double-space your file, except for extracts (lengthy quotes), which should be single-spaced with a line space above and below. • Use only one space between sentences. Use tabs, not letter-spaces, to indent text. • Type note callouts as superior numbers, then type out the notes themselves at the end of your document. Avoid the Notes feature of Word. Style Matters • Spell out numbers up to one hundred—both cardinals and ordinals (e.g., twentieth century). • Use American punctuation and spelling: commas and periods go inside closing quotation marks. • Lowercase biblical, medieval. Capitalize Bible, Middle Ages, West, Western. • Style for literary works includes Book of Acts, Genesis (book of the Bible), Genesis A (poem), Gospel of Matthew. • Short quotations: Put small quotations with translations in running text into parentheses: “Ipsa autem nocte vidit mulier . . .” (“That very night his wife saw . . .”). • Long quotations: For longer quotations with translations, set them off as extracts with the translation in brackets below. If the original text is poetry with half-lines, use only one tab between each half-line. Although the text will look uneven in your Word file, the tab will make the lines align exactly when typeset: Cynewulf describes her as she sits on a throne while the Jews crowd around her: þrungon þa on þreate in cynestole geatolic guðcwen

þær on þrymme bád casere mæg, golde gehyrsted.

[They crowded where the Caesar’s kinswoman was waiting / in majesty upon a throne, / a magnificent battle-queenclad in gold] (329–331) Sample Notes Journal Article: 1. Melinda Shepard, “The Church in Eleventh-Century Europe,” Medieval Studies 15, no. 1 (1993), 211–226. Book: 2. Shepard, p. 223. Shepard notes other similarities as well. See also R. A. Potter, Church and Medieval State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 301.

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Articles for Future Volumes

Articles may be submitted to the editor Reinhold F. Glei (mail to: reinhold [email protected]) or to any member of the editorial board: Bevington, David: [email protected] Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate: [email protected] Boenig, Robert: [email protected] Bornstein, Daniel: [email protected] Celenza, Christopher: [email protected] Classen, Albrecht: [email protected] Dalarun, Jacques: [email protected] Dembowski, Peter: [email protected] Haskell, Yasmin: [email protected] Lines, David: [email protected] Marsden, Richard: [email protected] Prosperi, Adriano: [email protected] Stella, Francesco: [email protected] Ziolkowski, Jan: [email protected] For enquiries concerning review articles and review notices please contact Wolfgang Polleichtner (mail to: [email protected]). A prospective author is encouraged to contact his or her editor at the earliest opportunity to receive any necessary advice. The length of the article depends on the material, but brief articles or notes normally are not considered. The entire manuscript should be typed, double-spaced, with ample margins; documentation should be held to a minimum. The articles need to be submitted via e-mail in Microsoft Word and PDF format. Notes, prepared according to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition (University of Chicago Press), should be double-spaced and numbered consecutively, and they should appear at the end of the article avoiding the Notes feature of Word. All quotations and references should be in finished form.

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Preface

With the publication of volume 37 (2011) of Medievalia et Humanistica, Paul M. Clogan has retired from editorship. It was his extraordinary learnedness and effort that made the journal internationally successful and highly reputed. For this, the scientific community is deeply indebted to him. Now we are honored to succeed him and assume his duties. We would like to continue the well-proven approach of M&H and publish articles from all areas of medieval and Renaissance studies. In particular, we would be delighted to receive contributions of a transdisciplinary and transepochal nature but will also welcome detailed studies whose focus is on a single text or author. It is also our intention to continue M&H as a well-established review journal. Since the task of editing this journal requires a considerable amount of time, we have decided to share the work: Reinhold F. Glei will be responsible for articles and Wolfgang Polleichtner for reviews. We are delighted that most members of the editorial board have joined us for further cooperation. In the future, there will be only one board for both articles and reviews, which will hopefully bring about a higher degree of flexibility. The present volume contains five articles from different fields of medieval and humanistic scholarship including both interdisciplinary and disciplinary studies, especially on French, English, Italian, and Latin subjects. We hope that the readers will appreciate the wide range of disciplines and issues presented here. This interdisciplinary scope is also reflected in the review section, which comprises one review article and seven review notices. We are grateful to the staff of Rowman & Littlefield for their production of the annual volume and for their patience with the new editors. R. F. G./W. P. Ruhr-University Bochum, June 2012

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Li Miracles del capiel de roses A Heretofore Unpublished Marian Miracle, ca. 1250 NANCY VINE DURLING

Abstract Transcribed in Eastern France in the mid-thirteenth century, Li Miracles del capiel de roses tells the story of a devout monk who expresses his devotion to the Virgin through frequent recitation of aves. As the steward of his house, the monk oversees its finances; one day, returning to the monastery with a large sum of money, he is followed by thieves who plan to rob and kill him. Unaware of the danger, he recites his prayers, which are transformed into roses that the Virgin herself collects and weaves into a garland. The thieves, who witness the miracle, throw themselves on the mercy of the monk. The tale is followed by an innovative verse gloss attributing detailed allegorical significance to the garland. Our edition of this previously unpublished Marian tale is based on the sole surviving manuscript copy (BFN fr. 2162).

Bibliothèque nationale de France manuscript fr. 2162 is a collection of devotional works transcribed in Eastern France in the middle of the thirteenth century. The codex, which contains 137 folios measuring 315 x 150 mm, is a humble book made from notably inferior parchment: the surface of the skin is marked by numerous sewn tears and small holes, and the edges of many folios are uneven, due to naturally occurring abnormalities. Apart from the rubrication of some large initials and titles and (in some texts) the ticking in red of the first letters of lines, there is no decoration or embellishment.1 All of the texts are in verse and transcribed in either one or two columns, almost always of forty lines; with one exception, each is preceded by a rubricated title, as follows: fols. 1–77, Li livres de le Bible (Herman de Valenciennes)2 fols. 77v–80v, D’un priestre, d’un userier, et d’une viellete

Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, Number 38 (Reinhold F. Glei and Wolfgang Polleichtner, eds.), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012.

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fols. 81–94, De St. Jehan Paulus fols. 94–96, De le nonain ki Deu desiroit a vir fols. 96–97, D’une none ki fu trop biele fols. 97–99v, Li Miracles del capiel de roses fols. 99v–102, D’un clerc cui Nostre Dame delivra de se feme fols. 102–103v, D’une nonain ki issi de son abbeïe fols. 103–104v, D’un moine ki fu noiés fols. 105–107, De licorne et del serpent (non-rubricated) fols. 107–115, De sainte Taïs fols. 115–119, De sainte Margerite fols. 119–125v, Li Paternoster fols. 125v–133v, De saint Alexit fols. 133v–136v, Li vier de Couloigne (incomplete) Of the fifteen texts, only one, the Paternoster, names a dedicatee; composed by an otherwise unidentified “Sylviestre,” it concludes with a reference to Ida of Boulogne (1160–1216), a daughter of “Mahui le gentil contel” of Alsace and Marie of Boulogne; Ida was abducted by Renaud of Dammartin and forcibly married to him in 1190.3 This dedication, reinforced by a reference to a specifically female audience in the life of Thaïs (fols. 107–115), and by the general thematic orientation of the seven miracle tales, four of which strongly feature moral dilemmas confronted by attractive young women, suggests that the patron (or intended recipient) of the manuscript was likely to have been female. All but four of the works included in the manuscript have been edited previously; the as yet unpublished texts include the Paternoster and three of the miracle tales: De le nonain ki Deu desiroit a vir, D’une none ki fu trop biele, and Li Miracles del capiel de roses. This last text, for which we offer an edition here, is a version of a story widely known in the Middle Ages: Latin, French, Galician-Portuguese, and German versions, dating from 1200 to 1600, are extant.4 The different versions of the tale, which vary in their details, all follow a similar scenario: a young man demonstrates uncommon devotion to the Virgin, praying to her constantly and daily bedecking a statue of her with flowers. He becomes a monk and is obliged to substitute for these literal flowers metaphorical garlands of prayer. The monk, renowned for his piety, eventually becomes the steward of his house; one day, when returning to the monastery with a large sum of money, he is followed by thieves who plan to rob and kill him. Unaware of the danger, he recites his usual salus; as he does so, a beautiful creature—usually the Virgin herself, but sometimes an angel or a dove, or even a beautiful boy—appears, plucks flowers from his mouth

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as he prays, and then vanishes. The thieves realize they have witnessed a miracle, demand pardon of the monk, and renounce their wicked ways.5 The tale as it appears in fr. 2162 was almost certainly based on a Latin source that has survived in a unique copy preserved in BNF, lat. 18134 (fols. 145v–147v), an anthology of devotional works produced in France in the thirteenth century.6 The Latin source presents a particularly developed version of the story, relying more heavily than others on specifically hagiographic motifs (e.g., the early piety of the young boy, his status as the only son of a wealthy woman who must rely on him to uphold the duties of lineage and social rank, his imperviousness to wealth, and the intensely private nature of his devotional activity). The writer of the French version embroiders on these innovations, adding affecting dialogue between the boy and his relatives, offering a vivid depiction of their greed, and developing more fully the boy’s aversion to material wealth. Another, more significant change to the Latin original concerns the depiction of the Virgin as she gathers the roses and weaves them into a garland, actions clearly intended to show that words and deeds become “treasures” in heaven. Although the theme of spiritual accountability was a popular one in thirteenth century devotional texts, the French translator focuses on the theme in an innovative way, adding a verse gloss in which detailed allegorical significance is attributed to the garland.7 This gloss, to my knowledge unique in the prayer-flower tale tradition, is significant in that it depicts the garland as a counter for keeping track of the monk’s repeated aves. Because descriptions of prayer counters, as well as iconographical depictions of them, are rare in the thirteenth century, the gloss may be viewed as an important witness to the practice of the rosary in France during the mid-1200s.8

Edition As the foregoing list of the contents of BNF, fr. 2162 shows, Li Miracles del capiel de roses is one of eight stories that together form a kind of minicollection in the manuscript.9 Although critics initially thought that at least seven of these tales, all written in assonanced octosyllabic couplets, were the work of Gautier de Coinci, it was soon realized that only two could be attributed to him with any certainty. Of the seven tales, four consecutive ones (fols. 97a–104vb), beginning with the Capiel, were written by a single scribe whose hand has been identified by Pamela Gehrke as the sixth of eight in the manuscript as a whole.10

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Like the other works in the manuscript, the language of the Capiel contains a mixture of northeastern dialectal features, reflecting the often overlapping linguistic habits of the Picard, Walloon, and Lorraine regions. Principal dialectal features of the text are listed below; traits specific to a particular region are indicated between brackets, as are additional comments.11

Phonology Vowels: 1. ai for a: compaingnons (177), saige (304); also note pairing of grainne (79) with soveranne (80) 2. a for au or al: atel (35), pames (43), ara (91, 99, 102), sara (92, 97), vara (115), cavra (116), communament (167), mavaise (175), magret (230), atrement (376) 3. Palatalization of diphthongized ei: vellier (179), travelle (183 [note rhyme with vaille 184]), vermelle (272), mervelle (272), consel (333), ourguel (401) 4. an for en: ensanble (113, 124, 197), sanble (123, 198, 274), sanbloit (210, 274), remanant (147), manant (148) 5. ei + nasal → ain-e: plain(e) (265, 309, 310; 397, 410) [Picard] 6. e in hiatus → i (yod): coutiaus (258) 7. Diphthongized ie for ˇe : tieres (10) [cf. tere (116)], pierdu (95), iestre (119), siniestre, diestre (295-296), capiel / capielle (14, 84, 152, 157, 158, 162, 207, 370), desiervi (335), etc. 8. i for ei in countertonic or pretonic position: signour (11, 114, 328), l’abie (147) [cf. abeie (149)] [Lorraine] 9. u for ui: cudoit (23) [Lorraine] 10. Unstable countertonic vowel: caupiaul (429) / capiaul (65, 73, 295, 308, 395, 404, 414, 427) [Lorraine] 11. The diphthong eu (o. tonic free), when followed by r, becomes ou: signour (11), flouretes (67), flour/s (72, 74, 77, 271), onnoureement (93), restour (158), mourdredur (223; also mourdreour [225], mourdreurs [248]) [Lorraine] 12. The diphthong ie reduced to i: entir (63) [Picard] 13. Open o, followed by a nasal → oi: boine (133, 302, 384), boin (254, 412), deboinaire (369)

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Consonants: 1. Confusion of s and c; s alternating with c/ss/sc (often in rhyme position): sest (101), grase (171), ancui (227), parcuit (223), doucs (276), douc (410); asisse/devise (35-36), asés (47, 387), misse (58), ausi (79), asenés (91), faissoit/desplasoit (84-85), plaisoit/faissoit (165-166), pasés (177), lasés (178), asëure (190), paser/entasser (243-244), faissant/plaisant (287-288) [Lorraine] 2. r dropped before a consonant: atouner (118) [Lorraine] 3. t in final position, especially in the following circumstances, all typical of Lorraine dialect: • uninflected past part.: oret (47), morut (110), bailliet (202), parcuit (223; word seü, 224), maintenut (241), venut (242), demoret (48, 257), veüt (314, 340), remeüt (315), apierceüt (316), reconneüt (339), entendut (343), depondut (344) [cf. the adj. forms: marit (4), ameuret (258), alumet (398); by analogy: magret (230), jolit (404)] • after e in 3rd p. s. pres. ind.: demoret (48) • noun endings deriving from Latin forms showing intervocalic d/t: volentet (7, 8, 62, 414), plentet (54, 413), abet (139), oublit (214), biautet (282), miercit (318, 323, 327, 329, 354), bontet (354), piciet (401) 4. Before e/i, c is a fricative, and may be written as ch: douchement (346), cheste (85), niches (88 [cf. nice (101)]) [Picard; cf., however, ciere (25, 38, 81), cief (51, 52), cierte (90), rice (148); blance (273, 291), sace (282), brance (291), escinon (297, 409), bouce (367)] 5. c = ch before a/o: cose (98, 166, 371, 375, 415), marcant (188), capiel (14, etc.), cascun (62, 153, 157, 163, 394)

Morphology and Syntax 1. gi (136) as 1st person sing. pron. [Lorraine; cf. je (358, 377), Picard] 2. Considerable confusion of gender markers: • li = la as f. s. art., CS: li raison (76), li mere (109), li mors (190), li dame (365); li cose (371) • li as 3rd p. s. f. pron. (CR): devant li (42); de li vëoir (272) • il for elle as 3rd p. s. f. pron. (CS): Q’il (i.e., “la mere Dieu”) l’en sovenra (264)

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• li for la in superlatives: elle ert des flours li plus amée (77); li plus deboinaire (369) • Some inconsistency in f/m agreement: Ne fu parliers ne buebencieres (26) 3. Verbs: • In future, weak e occasionally inserted between v/t and following r (epenthesis): averés (402), meterés (405) • 1st p. pres ind. ending in –c (1st conj., by analogy): cuic (32) [Picard Graphies: 1. c, k for qu: ki (190, 206, 246, etc.); k’il (155, 170, 184); k’atrement (376); estoke (193), boscet (242), k’aveuc (380) 2. g + i may = g: agillon (192), gise (309, 395) 3. qu = ch: quemin (246) [Picard] 4. w = gu: esconwoit (53), wauignier (260) To sum up: The text contains a large number of northeastern dialectal traits, but is difficult to localize specifically. A number of standard Picard traits are absent, most noticeably metathesized r. The absence of such an important feature suggests that the text may have been of Picard origin but transcribed to the east, perhaps in Lorraine.

Features of the Present Edition: 1. Resolution of scribal abbreviations: a¯ = an 9 = com / con / c’on / cou (according to context) diex = Dieus crossed Z = et gns topped by ã = grans, grant m’= mier ml’t = moult [never fully written out in text] mt with overbar = ment pl9 = plus p topped by tilde = pour p with crossed stem = par/por q with overbar = que q’= que or qui, according to context qnt topped by ã = quant

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v topped by ’ = vier(s) v9= vous 2. The usual correction of initial i to j (ie = je, iadis = jadis, etc.). 3. Parentheses are used to indicate that a letter should be suppressed, brackets that a letter was omitted and has been supplied. Additional emendations are indicated in notes.

Li Miracles del capiel de roses Jadis, si com jou ai apris, Fu une dame de grant pris. Veve ert remese sens mari Dont elle ot moult le cuer marit. Mais rice estoit, de grant avoir; De tous les biens c’on pot avoir Ot la dame a moult grant plentet, Qu’elle avoit a sa volentet Rentes et bos et praeries, Vingnes, tieres, et pesteries,12 Et d’autres biens a grant fuison; Moult avoit boine garison. S’ot maison avenant et belle, A sun cief estoit sa capielle U elle un capelain faissoit Dire messe quant li plaisoit. Ne sai que je plus vous on die. Un fil ot qui mist a clergie Pour letres savoir et anprendre Pour che que miés seuïst entendre; N’ot plus d’enfans, che sai de voir. L’enfés aprist, si fist savoir, Car moult en cudoit miés valoir; Le siecle mist en noncaloir. Moult avoit l’enfés sinple ciere, Ne fu parliers ne buebencieres. Tout adosa le sens del monde,13 Nete vïe mena et monde; Moult sinplement se maintenoit. Son usage que il tenoit Vous conterai de cief en cief, Car bien cuïc venir a cief. Toutes les eures qu’il pooit, En sa capelle s’enclooit. Desour l’atel avoit asisse

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Une image belle a devise De madame Sainte Marie. Li enfés a ciere Marie, Ausi com par devosion Et de moult boine entension. Tantost qu’il estoit la dedens, Devant li se couroit endens Et pr[e]miers li joindoit ses pames Et puis si li disoit14 ses saumes Et orisons que il savoit, Qu’ (a) l’escole aprises avoit. Quant il avoit asés oret, Lors manoit, plus demoret. A l’image ki moult iert sinple Venoit, si li ostoit sa ginple, S’eslav(i)oit et son cuvrecief,15 Puis le remetoit sour son cief, Et a le fïe l’esconwoit. De nule riens n’iert en convoit Tant com de la dame siervir, Qui tant le set bien desievir N’i laissoit poure ne ordure. Sour tout chou ot misse sa cure, A un sierviche qu’il faisoit, Qui sour tous autres li plaisoit, Car cert sa volentet demaine, Que cascun jour de la sesmaine Par le cours de l’an tout entir Faisoit l’image, sans mentir, Un capiaul vert et de flouretes, De goudes16 u de violetes U d’autres flouretes nouveles. Mais adiés queroit les plus beles, Che ne laissaist pour nul avoir. Mais quant roses pooit avoir, Tant com la saison enduroit De nule autre flour ne queroit, Ne ja en capiaul k’el fesist Autre flour nule ne mesist Tant com enduroit la saison, Et tes en estoit li raison: Qu’elle ert des flours li plus amee, La plus belle et la plus loee, Ausi com l’escarlate en grainne17 Est de tous dras la soveranne Et sour tous autres cier tenue, Si est la rose miés venue

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Li Miracles del capiel de roses Et plus amee entre la gent Et plus en est li capiel gens; Por cheste raison le faissoit. A ses parens moult desplasoit. Entr’iaus grant plait en demeno[i]ent, A niche et a sot le tenoient. L’uns disoit qu’il ert mal senés: “Ciertes moult ert mal asenés Li grans avoirs que il ara, Car ja garder ne le sara, Ne despendre onnoureement. Et sa tere noumeement Enfin sera toute pierdue Quant en sa main sera venue, Qu’il ne le sara maintenir, Ne ses coses a droit tenir. C’iert damages quant il l’ara Car ja point de bien ne sera; Et sest nices et bestiaus S’ara tost fait ses enviaus.”18 Ensi disoient si parent Et cil voisin de la parent; Moult en parloient pres et loin. Mais li enfés n’en avoit soin, Ains faisoit adiés son pourpos, Ja autrement n’euïst repos. Li mere a l’enfant a son jour Morut. Si parent sans soujour L’enfouïrent la matinee Et quant elle fu entieree A consel parlerent ensanble. “Signour, che dist li uns, a moi sanble Que cis enfés riens ne vara; De sa tere ne li caura, Pierdue est, que ja n’en gora.19 Mais ki atou[r]ner le pora Qu’il veule iestre moines rendus Ains que li siens soit despendus Et si parent aient l’avoir, Qui par droit le devront avoir, C’est bien a faire, che me sanble.” Lors repondirent tout ensanble: “Cil consiaus n’est pas de garçon! S’il veut prendre ceste parçon Bien nous i devons acorder.” Ains nus ne s’en vot descorder. Or ont l’enfant a raison mis;

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Si li ont dit: “Biaus dous amis, Une abeïe a, la defors, Dont li ordene est griés et fors. De Cistiaus si a boine gent. Or nous dites, s’il vous est gent, Volés uns moines devenir?” “Haï! Se gi pooie venir, Plus le desir que nul avoir, Amis, et nous irons savoir.” Et a l’abet et a couvent Vont il, si ont fait lor couvent. L’enfant recirent li confrere; Quant il l’orent fait tond(e)re et rere Sel vestirent selonc l’usage. Li plus proçain de son linage Ont sa garison departie; S’en donerent une partie A l’abie et del remanant Furent tousjours rice et manant. Li moines en cele abeïe Demora puis toute sa vie, Mais ce li tournoit a contraire Que son capiel ne pooit faire Cascun jour si com il soloit. S’en estoit moult en grant soloit, Tant k’il se pensa en la fin Que de vrai cuer et de fin Diroit cascun jour sans capiel, Pour le restour de son capiel, Une grant some de salus. Tant com vesqi mai[n]tint cel us; Ja pour some ne demorart Que son capiel ne restorart Cascun jour si k’il ot enpris. Moult fu cis moines de grant pris En l’abeïe, et moult plaisoit A toutes coses qu’il faissoit. Tout l’amoient communament, L’abés et li moine ensement. De viertu en viertu monta Tout adiés, tant k’il sourmonta De grase tout ciaus de couvent. Moult s’esmiervilloient sovent De çou que faire li veoient. Maintes fois entr’iaus en parloient, En bien et sans mavaise envie. “Moult est cis hons de boine vie!

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Li Miracles del capiel de roses Tous a nous compaingnons pasés.” Jamais jour ne seroit lasés De juner, d’orer, de vellier. Bien s’en doit on esmiervillier Comment il le puet endurer. Il ne pora loinges durer, Car trop se destruit et travelle. “Or li otroit Dieus k’il li vaille,” Çou meïmes l’abés disoit, Qui en son cuer moult le prisoit. Li prouvos, moines de lo ciele,20 C’on en l’ordene marcant apielle, Ert malades a demesure. Li mors, ki nului n’aseüre, Qui bien i set venir a point, L’eut tost de son agillon point Qui plus estoke que tarente; Lors li convint paiier sa rente. Quant mors fu, si l’ont mis en biere. Si tost com l’orent mis en tiere, Mist l’abés son couvent ensanble. Del moine fisent, che me sanble, Prouvost. Mis l’ont en haut degré, Mais ce fu encontre son gré. Moult li pesa, moult li fu grief Quant bailliet li furent li brief Des rentes et des garisons. Lors cremi que ses orisons A laissier; ne li convenist. Par grant soingne ki li venist, Encor cremi plus del capiel, Et moult plus enhaoït l’apiel A coi il estoit apelés. Durs21 li sanbloit et enfielés, Mais onques n’ot si grant besoin U que il fust, u priés u loin, Que son siervice ne fesist; Ja en oublit nel le mesist. Un jour a une court ala, Deniers recit qu’il enmala Pour raporter en l’abeïe. Moult en i ot, mais ne sai mie Combien; mais toute sa monoie Fist bouter en une coroie, Puis si le fist metre en sa male. Celle oeuvre li dut iestre male Car doi mourdreour l’ont parcuit;

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Ne sai comment l’orent seü. Entr’iaus en ont lor plait tenu, Dïent bien lor est avenu Car ancui aront ces deniers. “Ja dans Simons, ne dans Reniers N’ierent eu paine de conter!22 Magret sien ferons desmonter Ja mou[lt] tost celui ki les porte. La male pensions, la torte, Fiere celui ki l’ataindra Qui del ocire se faindra; Qu’il out trop et nous poi avons. Mais se nous de mestier savons, Il ara ja son cor in poivre,23 Car mort li convenra reçoivre. Puis enporterons la boursee Qu’il a deriere lui toursee.” Ensi ont cel plait maintenut Tant k’en un boscet sont venut U li moines devoit paser. En un hot s’en vont entasser; Le moine agaitent ki tenoit Son quemin, et moult tost venoit. Li repairiers moult li targoit; Des ii mourdreurs ne se gardoit Qu’il li convenra encontrer. Cil ki dut el boscet entrer De son siervice li sovient;24 Pense que faire li convient. Si gete autre besoingne puer Puis le comence de boin cuer. Li doi mourdreur ki le gaitoient Isent de hot quant il le voient; Plus n’ont en l’agait demoret. Lors coutiaus, ki sont ameuret, Traisent par desous lor sourcos— Bien cuident wauignier lor escos— Viers le moine a pro[s]mie ki vient. Se la Mere Dieu ne souvient, Son moine morir convenra. Mais je croi q’il l’en sovenra, Car plaine est de misericorde, N’a nul mal faire ne s’acorde; De lor mains le puet bien garder. Lors prendent cil a regarder.25 Dejouste le moine venant Virent une dame avenant,

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Li Miracles del capiel de roses Plus blance que n’est flours de lis; De li vëoir iert grans delis. Tant par estoit blance et viermelle Que ce sanbloit une miervelle, Qu’ele estoit trop bele a devis: Doucs de bouche, de nes, de vis, De front, de menton, et de face. Ne sai quatre parolle en face, Mais tant vous di: onques nature Ne fist si bele criature. Sa biautet ne puet nus descrire, Nus clers tant sace bien escrire Ne le escriroit en parchemin. Cil ki gaïtoient le chemin Virent la dame ki venoit Dejouste le moine et tenoit Un caupiel qu’ele aloit faissant De roses moult biel et plaisant. Elle chevaçoit une mule, Plus bele ne vit ains hons nulle. Entr’elle estoit coute plus blance Que ne soit la noif sour la brance, Et blance estoit a demesure; Cel le moine aloit l’anbleüre. Son capiaul en la main seniestre Tint et une rose en la diestre Qu’ele loia sour l’escinon Une faloit se petit non, Priesque tout parfait ne l’avoit. Li moines, ki mot ne savoit Encor de celle vision, Faisoit par boine entension Son siervice et movoit la bouce. La biele, la saige, la douce, Sovent sa main i estendoit Et une rose i decendoit Qu’elle sour l’escinon loioit Et son capiaul mouteplioit; En tel gise le parfist plain. Che virent li mourdreur a plain. Quant l’ot fait, sour son cief l’asist Et moult avenantment le mist, Dont s’esvanuï sans plus faire. Cil ki orent veüt l’afaire Sont de lor pourpos remeüt, Dont primes sont apierceüt Qu’enemis les veut decevoir.

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Tantost, pour miercit recevoir, Sont devant le moine estendu Et viers lui ont lor mains tendu. Lors crïerent a haute vois Que tous en retenti li bois, “Miercit, miercit, miercit, biaus sire!” Li moines l’ot, ne set que dire; Moult li tourna a grant contraire. Cil recommencïerent a braire: “Sire, miercit crions a toi!” “Ai, biaus signour, et jou de coi Vous poroie faire miercit? De riens n’aroïe pooir ci. Mais dites moi que vous defaut Et se je puis, se Dieus me saut, Consel i metrai volentiers.” “A sire, sains hons et entiers, Mais pardonés nous le mefait Que nous avons enviers vous fait! De tel pooir que vous avés, Ne savons se vous le savés.” Lors li ont cil reconneüt Tout çou que il orent veüt De l’avison, tirë a tire, Et com il le dur(er)ent ocire. Quant li moines ot entendut Çou, que il li orent depondut, Si lor pardona biellement Et cil li prïent douchement, Se il lui plaist que il lor die, Et que pas ne lor escondie, De coi a celle dame si ert Qui si richement le desiert. Li moines tantost lor repont, Qui son pe[n]ser cuevre et repont. Si lor a dit, “Ne creés mie Qu’aïe tel bontet desiervie! Onques voir ne le desiervi, Ne ains la dame ne siervi. Pourcoi duïst faire pour moi Çou que je ci dire vous oi? Onques nel le fis, (ne) ne vos faire, Ne riens ne vi de celle afaire Que vous m’avés ci recordé. Mais pour ce hastieus,26 descordé De Dieu par male volenté, Pour vous oster de dolenté

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Li Miracles del capiel de roses Se demoustra li dame a vous.” “Haï, biaus sires, que dites vous? Ja caïoient de vostre bouce Les roses que la dame douce, De toutes li plus deboinaire, Recevoit pour son capiel faire. Pour çou est bien li cose apierte Que ce fu par vostre desierte. Si vous en conuisiés le voir, Sans faille li volons savoir. Grans cose d’en faire l’estuet Puis k’atrement estre ne puet.” “Je le vous dirai (lors).” Lors a conté, Si com oït avés (elle) conté. Lors les blandi et siemona Tant, k’aveuc lui les emena En l’abeïe et se rendirent. Comme preudome puis vesqu[i]rent Toute lor vie et lor eäge.27 Et li moines, a loi de sage, Qui boine vie avoit menee, Quant le miracle ot esgardee Vesqui asés plus saintement Qu’il n’ot fait premïerement Et s’amenda ju[s]que la fin. Ici prent cis miracles fin Del moine ki bien se prouva. Cil ki le fist, plus n’en trouva, Mais il vous prie a tous et rueve Que cascuns s’esforce et esprueve De faire capiaul en tel gise Que cis contes dist et devise, De cuer plain de devosion, Alumet de contrision. Dites pour la rose un salut, Que celle vous get de paulu, De piciet, d’ourguel, et d’envie Cui vous en averés siervie. A dame de si haut afaire Doit on bien jolit capiaul faire, Que plus roses i meterés C’est que plus salus li dirés. Tant iert plus rices li caupiaus Et plus li iert plaisans et biaus. Mais l’escinon veut, par coustume, D’un douc fust plain de souätume. D’amer Dieu, le fil pourlenier;

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Querés Dieu, s’arés boin lenier. Puis metés roses a plentet, S’arés capiaul a volentet. Ches coses vous veul esposer, Puis si me vorai reposer. Li dous fis est devosions, L’esclice amer contrisions, Et les roses ce sont salu, Qu’an la(n) pucele sans palu Dieus par Gabrïel envoia, Dont onques ne se desvoia. De devosion enmieslee, De contrision enfielee, De solas, d’ardant desirier, Et de net cuer sans enpirier Veut la dame capiaul avoir Qui nului ne set decevoir. Se vous li faites tel caupiaul, El renne son fil sans rapiaul28 Vous fera de son fil siervir Et Dieus le nous doinst de siervir.

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Notes I thank Samuel Rosenberg for his meticulous reading of the edition and for his valuable comments. I also thank David Hult, who examined the manuscript with me and who made a number of helpful observations about the dialectal features of the text. 1. It is perhaps more accurate to say that there is no “traditional” decoration or embellishment. As I show in a forthcoming study, the scribe appears to have manipulated a dramatic sewn tear in the parchment in order to illustrate a key passage of the text. See below, n. 20, and Nancy Vine Durling, “Manifestations matérielles du salut: l’exemple du Miracles del capiel de roses,” in Mélanges Danielle Bohler, Danièle James-Raoul and Florence Bouchet, eds. (forthcoming 2013). 2. Now better known as Li Romanz de Dieu et de sa mere, Ina Spiele, ed. (Leyde: Presse Universitaire de Leyde, 1975). 3. I have identified four other manuscript versions of the Paternoster, none of which includes the reference to Ida of Boulogne: BNF, fr. 763 (fourteenth century), BNF, fr. 12555 (a fifteenth-century copy of fr. 763, transcribed on paper), BNF, fr. 12467, and Arsenal 3142. These last two manuscripts were produced in Paris in the late thirteenth century and are considered “sister” manuscripts, parts of which are copied by the same scribe. 4. Evelyn Faye Wilson lists versions of the tale from various linguistic traditions (including Ethiopian) in The Stella Maris of John of Garland (Edited, Together with a Study of Certain Collections of Mary Legends made in Northern France in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries) (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of

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America Publications, XLV, 1946), 179. Joseph Morawski cites related Latin versions found in British Library MSS Egerton 1117 (late thirteenth century) and Additional 33956 (early fourteenth century) (“Mélanges de littérature pieuse: les Miracles de Notre-Dame en vers français,” Romania 61 [1935]: 145–209); Joseph Dobner (“Die mittelhochdeutsche Versnovelle Marien Rosenkranz,” Inaugural-Dissertation, Philosophische Fakultät zu München [Borna-Leipzig, 1928], 60–68) provides transcriptions of these, along with several other thirteenth- and fourteenth-century versions. Anonymous German versions were published by F. H. von der Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer: Hundert altdeutsche Erzählungen, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1850), vol. 3, no. 89, and Franz Pfeiffer, Marienlegenden (Stuttgart: A. Krabbe, 1846), no. 21. There is also a fifteenth-century Latin version by Johannes Herolt, Promptuarium Discipuli de Miraculis Beate Mariae Virginis, ex. 70 (translated into English by C. C. Swinton Bland, Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary [London: Routledge, 1928]). The Galician-Portuguese version is attributed to Alphonse the Wise; on this version see Charles Joret, who also discusses various medieval German versions (La Rose dans l’antiquité et au Moyen Âge: Histoire, légendes et symbolisme [Geneva: Slatkine Rpts., 1993], 275–77). 5. In the Latin version included in British Library Egerton 1117, the monk (here specifically identified as a Cistercian) recites aves that, as they turn into roses, are taken from his mouth by white doves; in Additional 33956, the prayer-flowers are gathered by an angel (see the transcriptions by Dobner, “mittelhochdeutsche Versnovelle,” 66–67). In the version by Herolt, a puer pulcherimus gathers the flowers (Bland, Miracles, 98). As Morawski observes, later French versions in prose sometimes follow these alternate scenarios (Morawski, “Mélanges de littérature pieuse,” 171–73). A late fourteenthcentury version by Jean le Conte (BNF, fr. 1805, fol. 46v), for example, follows the Latin version found in Egerton 1117, as does Jean Mielot’s mid-fifteenth century version (Les Miracles de Nostre Dame, compilés par Jehan Miélot, Alexandre Laborde, ed. [Paris: Société française de reproduction de manuscrits à peintures, 1929], 83–84). 6. This extraordinarily beautiful illuminated manuscript, whose contents are summarized by Adolfo Mussafia, has not to my knowledge been the subject of in-depth study (Studien zu den mittelalterlichen Marienlegenden 1 [Vienna, 1886]: 917–94, at 982–89 [Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Classe der kaiserlichen Adademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 113]). The relevance of the Latin version of the miracle to the vernacular one found in BNF, fr. 2162 was first noted by Morawski, “Mélanges de littérature pieuse,” 171; for a transcription, see Dobner, “Mittelhochdeutsche Versnovelle,” 60–62. The two versions are, indeed, closely similar. 7. There are two categories of miracle tale in which spoken prayers acquire visible form. On the one hand, prayers are often said to be miraculously transcribed within a heavenly register, either by a recording angel or some other mysterious presence. Prayers, in taking on visible form, thus acquired “substance” capable of being measured or counted. Wicked deeds and words, on the other hand, were inscribed by recording devils in otherworldly registers; see Margaret Jennings, Tutivillus: The Literary Career of the Recording Demon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1977), Studies in Philology 74, no. 5: 1–84, at 41–46; along with Michael Camille, “The Devil’s Writing: Diabolic Literacy in Medieval Art,” in World Art: Themes of Unity in Diversity, 3 vols.; Irving Lavin, ed. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), vol. 2, 355–60 (with illustrations). The metaphor of the otherworldly

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Book of Life in which bad and good deeds are inscribed is ancient, and occurs in pagan, Jewish, and Christian texts. Leo Koep provides an overview of the various traditions in Das himmlische Buch in Antike und Christentum (Bonn: Hanstein, 1952). An especially vivid medieval description of the Book of Life is found in Raoul de Houdenc’s Songe d’Enfer (ca. 1225), where the king of Hell asks the pilgrim to read aloud from the book a passage recording the words and deeds of minstrels (The Songe d’Enfer of Raoul de Houdenc: An Edition Based on All the Extant Manuscripts, Madelyn Timmel Mihm, ed. [Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1984], ll. 604–58). The Book of Life was also conceptualized as the “Book of the Heart”; on this topic, see Eric Jager, who notes that Origen’s gloss on Romans 2.14, “evokes the heart as a book to be opened at the Last Judgment” (The Book of the Heart [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000], 48). The theme of spiritual accountability is, of course, closely tied to the development of the rosary as a set of counted prayers. It is impossible to pinpoint the precise moment when the practice of repeating aves became codified; the process was gradual and arose in response to other compelling social factors (see n. 8, below). 8. The development of the rosary is only partially understood. For an overview, see the classic studies by Mathieu-M. Gorce, Le Rosaire et ses antécédents historiques, d’après le manuscrit 12483, fonds français de la Bibliothèque nationale (Paris: Picard, 1931), along with his entry “Rosaire,” in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 13b (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1937), 2902–11; Louis Gougaud, “Chapelet,” in the Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique: Doctrine et histoire, vol. 2 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1953), 449; Emilio Campana, “Maria nel culto cattolico,” vol. 1 (Torino-Roma: Mariette, 1933), and Jean Laurenceau, “Comment est née la prière du rosaire,” in Le Rosaire dans la pastorale: Les origines du rosaire (Trimestriel, no. 32, Oct. 1972), 49–71. Contemporary literary representations offer important insights as well; for the Old French tradition, see Mary Vincentine Gripkey, The Blessed Virgin Mary as Mediatrix in the Latin and Old French Legend prior to the Fourteenth Century (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 1938). Anne Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), focuses on the German tradition, as does Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, “Rosen-Metamorphosen: Von unfesten Zeichen in spätmittelalterlichen Texten: Heinrich Seuses ‘Exemplar’ und das Mirakel ‘Marien Rosenkranz,’” in Der Rosenkranz. Andacht, Geschichte, Kunst, eds. Urs-Beat Frei and Fredy Bühler (Bern: Benteli, 2003), 49–67. Eithne Wilkins’s The Rose Garden Game: The Symbolic Background to the European Prayerbeads (London: Gollancz, 1969), provides useful background information, but offers little information about the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 9. Pamela Gehrke includes the Vie de Saint Jehan Paulus in this grouping, although the text as it appears here “has no Marian emphasis” (Saints and Scribes: Medieval Hagiography in Its Manuscript Context [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993], 15–17). Gehrke provides a detailed codicological description of the entire manuscript indicating, when possible, editions of the various texts (30–43). 10. On the attribution of the tales to Gautier de Coinci, see Morawski, “Mélanges de littérature pieuse,” 168, Arlette P. Ducrot-Granderye, Etudes sur les Miracles Nostre Dame de Gautier de Coinci (Helsinki: Annales Acad. Scient. Fennicae, Series B. vol. 25.2, 1932), and Gehrke, Saints and Scribes, 21.

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11. Both Mildred K. Pope (From Latin to Modern French [Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1934]) and Maurice Delbouille, ed. (Jacques Bretel, Le tournoi de Chauvency [Paris: E. Droz, 1932]), stress the frequent convergence of Eastern dialectal traits. The following discussion of the Lorraine dialectal traits found in the Capiel draws upon the guidelines established by these two authors, as well as those elaborated by Friedrich Apfelstedt, ed., Lothringischer Psalter (Bibl. Mazarine no. 798) (Heilbronn: Henninger, 1881); JeanCharles Herbin, ed., Hervis de Mes, chanson de geste anonyme (début XIIIe siècle) (Geneva: Droz, 1992), xxxix–lviii; Eglal Doss-Quinby and Samuel N. Rosenberg, The Old French Ballette: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308 (Paris: Champion, 2006), lxii–lxviii; and Eglal Doss-Quinby, Marie-Geneviève Grossel, and Samuel N. Rosenberg, eds., “Sottes chansons contre Amours”: Parodie et burlesque au Moyen Âge (Paris: Champion, 2010), 94–97. On Picard/Walloon dialects, see Pope, along with the classic study by Charles T. Gossen, Petite grammaire de l’ancien picard (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1951). 12. The term pesterie refers to the right to use (or lease) pasture land; see Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancien français, vol. 5 (Paris: Champion, 1888), q.v., paisterie. 13. In the right margin next to this line appears the abbreviation v. topped by ’. 14. Ms. disois. 15. Ms. cuvreciet. 16. Goudes is an Anglo-Norman word meaning “marigold” (first attested, ca. 1000 [v. OED]). 17. In Le Roman de Troie, Benoît de Sainte-Maure makes a similar comparison when describing Helen’s extraordinary beauty: Ensi come colors de graine Est plus bele que autre chose E tote ausi come la rose Sormonte colors de biautiez, Trestot ausi e plus assez Sormonta la biautez Heleine Tote rien qui nasqui humeine . . . (5124–30) (Emmanuèle Baumgartner and Françoise Vielliard, ed., Le Roman de Troie [Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1998])

The comparison of textual ornamentation to scarlet dye is evoked by Jean Renart in the prologue to Guillaume de Dole, where he compares the insertion of songs into the narrative to the dying of cloth with expensive red graine: Car aussi com l’en met la graine Es dras por avoir los et pris, Einsi a il chans et sons mis En cestui Romans de la rose (v. 8–11) (Félix Lecoy, ed., Jean Renart, Le Roman de la rose ou de Guillaume de Dole [Paris: Champion, 1979])

The title of the work, in juxtaposition with the reference to graine as textual ornamentation, alludes to the rose-shaped (and colored) birthmark on the heroine’s thigh. See Michel Zink, Roman rose et rose rouge: Le Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole de Jean Renart (Paris: Nizet, 1979). 18. I.e., son envie: he will do as he pleases.

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19. Gora is a somewhat unusual graphie for joira/jorra (joïr). Cf. Pope (§699): “Occasionally . . . g [was employed] before o and u, e.g., . . . dongon, manguce.” 20. A long sewn tear measuring 22 cm begins at v. 187, continuing to the bottom edge of the folio. On the relation of the imperfection to the text written around it, see Durling, “Manifestations matérielles du salut” (forthcoming 2013). 21. Ms. surs. 22. Perhaps a reference to a popular story, now lost. 23. The expression avoir son cor en poivre carries the figurative meaning “to get his just deserts” or “to pay with his hide.” 24. Ms. soveint. 25. The long sewn tear begins at v. 268 on the verso. 26. The term hastieus is here used to mean “violent.” The monk explains to the thief that the Virgin has chosen to show the miracle to him and his companion, violent and wicked men, in order to save them from their evil ways. 27. A space between the initial e of eage and the remainder of the word shows signs of erasure. 28. Sans rapiaul = irrevocably.

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Religious Dialogues and Trialogues in the Middle Ages A Preliminary Essay R E I N H O L D F. G L E I

Abstract In this essay, some preliminary remarks are made in order to initiate a discussion on the typology of religious dialogues. First, a working definition of “dialogue” and especially “religious dialogue” is given. It is pleaded for distinguishing between “teaching” dialogues that are, in a way, actually treatises in dialogic form, and “equal partner” dialogues. The latter, as is stated, can be further divided into two and three (or more) partner dialogues. This is not only a question of numbers, but includes a fundamental difference: Two-partner dialogues have, as a rule, a clear winner and loser, respectively, while three- (or more) partner dialogues (also called “trialogues”) are mostly open ended. Therefore, religious tolerance seems to be easier to achieve with three or more partners than in bilateral discussions. This typology is exemplified with many instances from various cultures and times.

Darius, after he had got the kingdom, called into his presence certain Greeks who were at hand, and asked—“What he should pay them to eat the bodies of their fathers when they died?” To which they answered, that there was no sum that would tempt them to do such a thing. He then sent for certain Indians, of the race called Callatians, men who eat their fathers, and asked them, while the Greeks stood by, and knew by the help of an interpreter all that was said—“What he should give them to burn the bodies of their fathers at their decease?” The Indians exclaimed aloud, and bade him forbear such language.1

Herodotus, “father of historiography,” tells this anecdote in his account of the Persian king Dareios’s (522–486 BCE) reign to illustrate the fundamental relativity of religious beliefs and customs held by various tribes. Herodotus wants to emphasize the progressive and even pedagogical tolerance of Dareios, who, in comparison with his predecessor Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, Number 38 (Reinhold F. Glei and Wolfgang Polleichtner, eds.), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012.

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Cambyses, was an “enlightened absolutistic king.”2 A religious dialogue, however, in the full sense of the word did not take place, since the Greeks and Indians did not talk to each other. Dareios only asked them questions about their funeral customs, but the king’s initiative to start a religious dialogue by using an interpreter so that the Greeks could understand what the Indians said failed because these people cried out and refused any discussion. The Greek and Indian parties did not communicate with each other at all. When endeavouring to figure out what religious dialogues are, defining the term is already problematic. Obviously, and somewhat trivially, the first criterion necessary to speak of a religious dialogue is that there is a dialogue at all. Of course, a dialogue is not only an oral face-to-face interaction between two partners that meet at the same place and at the same time, but according to ancient rhetoric theory it can also be a written conversation that bridges time and space between the parties engaged in the dialogue; therefore, an epistolary correspondence (even if a letter remains without a response) will also be included here as a special form of dialogue. Not every dialogue on religion, however, is a religious dialogue. This becomes obvious if we consider the Platonic dialogues, which often deal with religion (the Euthyphro, for example), but are not religious dialogues by any means.3 Rather, in Plato religion is an interchangeable object for Socrates’s elenctic artistry. In a similar way, no one would go so far as to call the conversation between Ulysses and Polyphemus in Homer’s Odyssey a religious dialogue, although they are talking about the holy fear toward the guest and about Zeus Xeinios, the guardian of hospitality.4 It makes no sense to stretch the concept of religious dialogue to such an extent. Therefore, our second criterion should be that in a religious dialogue the partners of a conversation must have—almost in principle—equal rights. This is not the case with Socrates and his victims or with the Cyclops and Ulysses. In my introductory example the second criterion is fulfilled, because the Greeks and Indians have been vested with equal rights by Dareios (or rather by Herodotus, as it seems), but we recall that there was no discussion, that is, no dialogue at all. On the other hand, we must be aware that the second criterion excludes some important religious texts that are not dialogues between equal partners. To take an example from the Indian context, the Bhagavad Gita5 is a conversation between Krishna and Arjuna, who hesitates to go into combat with his relatives around Duryodhana. Krishna then reveals the philosophical and theological system of Indian religion to

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Arjuna. The Bhagavad Gita, however, is not a religious dialogue according to the earlier definition, because Krishna and Arjuna are not equal partners, but teacher and pupil. If we take another example from the Greek-Indian relationship, we finally find a real religious dialogue in the correspondence between Alexander the Great and a Brahman called Dandamis, which has come down to us from late antiquity in a Latin version, the so-called Collatio Alexandri et Dindimi.6 The main theme of that dialogue is the question of asceticism, which is controversially discussed by the partners of the dialogue. There is a philological controversy as well concerning the tendency of the dialogue: Does the Greek’s anti-ascetic position or the Brahman’s pro-ascetic position prevail in the end? The openness of this question shows that the second criterion is completely fulfilled. The vast majority of religious dialogues, however, is not aporetic, and the dialogues have a clear winner. In many cases it is obvious from the beginning who will be the winner. In the end, the defeated partner must confess the failure of his religion. This failure can, by variation, also be stated by an arbiter or the audience. Having defined the term “dialogue” as “dialogue between partners with principally equal rights,” the question remains what the term “religion” means in this context. The reader may understand that it is not possible to give a full discussion on the nature of religion here: I use the term “religion” in a very general way that contains not only what is traditionally called religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc.) but also, in a narrower sense, confessional denominations (Catholicism, Protestantism, and the like) and, in a wider sense, anti- or irreligious philosophies as well (atheism, agnosticism, and so on). In any case, we should keep hold of the condition that all dialogue partners speak as authorities for their respective religions, so that their views can be understood as representative (as we have seen, for instance, in Alexander’s and the Brahman Dandamis’s case). Our third criterion, therefore, is the fact that the views expressed are meant to be representative of the respective religion. To put it differently, the term “religious dialogue” does not only mean “dialogue on religion” (religion taken as an objective genitive), but also “dialogue of religion[s]” (a subjective genitive). To sum up these provisional thoughts on religious dialogue, we can define that a religious dialogue is a discussion between representative or authorized persons who are principally equal, as far as the dialogue is concerned, on religious themes in the widest sense. In an actual controversy, the content of a religious dialogue is expected to deal with themes that are important and often crucial to the religions dis-

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cussed. The intention of a religious dialogue is mostly directed toward domination of only one “true” religion, but there is also the possibility of aporetic endings, as we will see. A complete typology of religious dialogues does not yet exist. Of course, this is not surprising, because nobody has an expert knowledge of all religions and all the possible combinations of religious dialogues. Therefore, I can only roughly and provisionally describe differences between the various types of religious dialogues, which I will explain with the help of some select examples. My selection is, of course, subjective and based on an incomplete and somewhat contingent knowledge. The material can be divided, in my view, into two main groups: There are religious dialogues between two partners and religious dialogues between three or more partners. When analyzing some examples, we will see that this difference is not merely a numerical difference, but a fundamental and characteristic one as well. First, we consider the group of two-partner dialogues. My introductory example of the Greeks and Indians (if it had come to a conversation at all) belongs to this group, as well as the dialogue between Alexander and the Brahman Dandamis. If we want to name an example from the occidental Latin tradition, we can think of the conversation between the pagan Caecilius and the Christian Octavius, which is reported by Minucius Felix in his Ciceronian dialogue named after the victorious Christian Octavius.7 These examples from antiquity are, however, not only religious but also cultural dialogues that reflect theological questions to a lesser degree than social or political problems (which is nowadays called the clash of cultures), of which religion is only a part. The medieval and early modern religious dialogues, however, mostly consist of theological disputes in a narrower sense, which is especially clear in the dialogues between the three Abrahamitic religions, that is, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Before analyzing a concrete example, we must at least touch on the question of historical authenticity. In their commendable volume, entitled Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, the editors Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner come to the following sobering conclusion: When we talked in Wolfenbüttel in 1987 about a symposium that should pick up as a central theme the endeavours of understanding between the three religions based on revelation, we precisely planned a symposium on something that—as we had to recognize later—never existed: medieval religious dialogues.8

Of course, this is an exaggerated statement, but it clearly shows that we cannot take for granted that any religious dialogue has taken place in reality—at least in the literary form that came down to us. On the other

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hand, this does not mean that all religious dialogues are fictitious or that there is absolutely no historical truth at their core. We may, however, well assume that the traditional controversies between the representatives of two religions, as they are widespread in the Middle Ages and early modern times, are based on real conversations between people who had to live together and who did, of course, discuss their religious beliefs with each other. The literary tradition, however, may have distorted the truth in favor of a certain theological or even political tendency. If we now consider the religious dialogues between Abraham’s three heirs, the calculus shows six possible two-partner combinations: JewishChristian, Christian-Jewish, Jewish-Islamic, Islamic-Jewish, ChristianIslamic, and Islamic-Christian dialogues. I definitely want to make a distinction between the A-B and the B-A relationships, thus indicating a dialogue leadership and a victory of the former over the latter partner. The sources handed down to us are unequally distributed over these six groups (for reasons of selection and transmission, I suppose): We have, for instance, hundreds of Christian-Jewish dialogues9 but only very few Islamic-Jewish ones. To name at least one example in this rare category, we should consider the Masa¯’il ‘Abdalla¯h ibn-Sala¯m (“Questions of Abdallah ibn-Salam”—the name means “slave of Allah, son of Peace”) which was translated into Latin and received the title Doctrina Mahumet. It became part of the so-called Collectio Toletana.10 In the Doctrina, four learned Jews led by Abdallah come to Muhammad and ask him some hundred questions about problems of their own religion that they have not understood completely. Muhammad answers them all, and Abdallah converts to Islam. I cannot address all six categories here, because I do not know all of them equally well. I will restrict myself to one category, namely the Christian-Islamic dialogues. The reason simply is that this is a field with which I am most acquainted, and therefore I will choose my examples from that category. Lewis’s and Niewöhner’s remarks on ChristianIslamic relationship are, in a way, misleading: Their statement that “conversations between Christians and Muslims can hardly be taken as dialogues”11 is not true, at least in the sense of our definition of religious dialogues. Of course, many documents of the Christian-Islamic controversy are not dialogues, but mere polemical tractates (cf., e.g., Ricoldus de Monte Crucis’s Improbatio or Confutatio Alkorani12 or, as an outstanding example even in hard-boiled polemical literature, Juan de Torquemada’s Tractatus contra principales errores perfidi Machometi13). Other tractates, however, are much more peaceful and plead for a “pious interpretation”

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of the Koran, like Nicholas of Cusa’s Cribratio Alkorani,14 or even seem to aim at a real religious dialogue by addressing the Muslims in a friendly manner like Petrus Venerabilis in his Contra sectam Sarracenorum.15 Perhaps the most authentic example of an (intended) religious dialogue between high representatives of both religions is the letter of Pope Pius II (Enea Silvio de’Piccolomini) to Mehmet II, the conqueror of Constantinople.16 In this letter the pope tries to convert the Ottoman sultan to Christianity promising him not only salvation of his soul in Christ but also secular power, as he would then be recognized as the emperor of Eastern Rome by Latin Christendom. Since Mehmet was a learned man and not without some knowledge of and sympathy for Christianity, the pope was not completely on the wrong track in assuming that Mehmet might have an open ear to his plea. But, unfortunately, we do not know if the sultan responded or if the letter reached him at all. There are religious dialogues in the Christian Arabic tradition, too.17 For example, we have the famous but probably fictitious correspondence called Risa¯lat ‘Abdalla¯h ibn-Isma¯‘ı¯l al-Ha¯shimı¯ ’ila¯ ‘Abd al-Ması¯h ibn-Isha¯q al-Kindı¯ wa-risa¯lat al-Kindı¯ ’ila¯ al-Ha¯shimı¯ (“Letter of al-Hashimi, slave of Allah, son of Ismael, to al-Kindi, slave of the Messiah, son of Isaak, and letter of al-Kindi to al-Hashimi”), which was translated into Latin under the title Epistola Sarraceni et Rescriptum Christiani and found its way into the Toledan Collection.18 The rules of ancient rhetoric suggest that the Christian prevails in the end, his letter being the second one and much longer than the Muslim’s. In the Greek tradition of the Middle East we find a very early example of Christian-Muslim dialogue. Theodore Abu¯ Qurra (ca. 780–825 CE) was bishop of Harra¯n in Syria and is said to have had a lot of controversies with the local Muslim theologians. It is probable that they talked in Arabic, but there is no written version of the original dialogues. However, a pupil of Abu¯ Qurra named John the Deacon provided us with a translation written in the koiné, the “common language” of those days, that is, Greek.19 One of the main points in the Christian-Muslim controversy was Trinity, which was understood by Muslims as polytheism (or at least tritheism).20 In many passages, the Koran21 polemicizes vehemently against polytheism and in some places also explicitly against Christians. See, for instance, Surah 4,171: O People of the Book,22 do not go beyond bounds in your religion, and do not say about Allah anything but the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, is only the messenger of Allah,23 and His Word24 which He cast upon Mary, and a spirit from Him25; so believe in Allah and His messengers, and do not say: “Three.” Refrain, (it will be) better for you; Allah is only One God; glory be to Him (far from) His having a son!26

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Theodore Abu¯ Qurra deals with this point in several of his dialogues. The most interesting one seems to be his Opusculum 8: Question of the Arabs to the Christian.27 “Tell me, Christ is your God?” Answer: “Yes.” Question: “Well, do you have another God but him?” Answer: “No.” Question: “So the Father and the Ghost have slipped your mind?” Answer: “Well, you may hear from me (the following argument): Let’s take it—as a hypothesis—for granted that your scripture that has come down from heaven, as you say, really does exist. Then I ask you: Do you have another scripture apart from that one?” The Arab: “Well, I will of course answer to you that I do not have another one.” The Christian: “You therefore deny any other scripture?” The Arab: “Yes.” The Christian: “Well, if there was another book containing the same scripture, do you deny that scripture?” The Arab: “It is not a different scripture each time, but the same, even if it is found in another book.” The Christian: “In the same way I confess that the Father and the Ghost are not a different God each time besides from the Son, even if he is found in another hypostasis each time.”

The Trinitarian question is solved in a very remarkable way: When reproached with tritheism, Abu¯ Qurra does not answer using the common Trinitarian phrases, but an analogy taken from Muslim ideas, which may convince them very well: Abu¯ Qurra introduces—in quite a shifty way—the Islamic concept of a heavenly archetype of the Koran, the socalled mother of the book.28 Abu¯ Qurra’s argument runs as follows: The real books that contain the text of the Koran are indeed copies of the one and only heavenly archetype of the Koran. In the same way, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are various hypostáseis of the one and only God. It is obvious that Abu¯ Qurra’s argument is based not primarily on Christian Trinitarian speculation, but on Islamic theology of revelation. This conversation as such may well be authentic, as well as the atmosphere of the discussion. There are no traces of literary ambition in that sober report of John the Deacon. Therefore, one will not be mistaken in assuming that Abu¯ Qurra’s conversations were nearly, if not completely, true stories. They seem to be (maybe even word by word) records of authentic religious dialogues that took place between the bishop of Harra¯n and local Muslim theologians. The lingua franca of that time (eighth to ninth centuries), as has been said, was Greek, but in the fifteenth century, to which we proceed

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now, it was Latin. As already mentioned, in 1461 Pope Pius II wrote a letter to the conqueror of Constantinople in order to convert him to Christianity.29 The pope did not know much about Islam and therefore engaged two cardinals of the Roman Church to write a manual that he could use when addressing his Muslim pen friend. One of them, the German cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, wrote a well-founded, very detailed, sometimes digressive and always high-level treatise on the “sieving” of the Koran (Cribratio Alkorani). With his concept of pia interpretatio, that is, benevolent interpretation, Cusanus hoped to demonstrate that the Koran did not entirely contradict the Bible.30 Being a masterpiece of Islamic studies in the fifteenth century, unfortunately, it was too late, because it was not finished before early 1461, by which time the pope had already written down a considerable part of his letter. Consequently, the source which he mainly followed was the tractate of another cardinal, the Spaniard Juan de Torquemada, which was finished as early as 1458–1459. The cardinal was an agitator, and Pius must have worked very hard to tone down Torquemada’s polemics.31 Pius simply omitted most of the heavy attacks against the prophet Muhammad, but he could not refrain from reporting some silly stories from the Koran that Cusanus never thought worth mentioning. Pius’s account reads as follows:32 Explaining the chapter of the Koran that is called “Sons of Israel,” Muhammad speaks as follows: “Glory to Him who transferred His servant by night from the oratory that is Helcarara”—the very house of Mekka—“to the oratory of the Holy House of Jerusalem around which We have bestowed blessing. O ye, men, listen and understand! When I left you, Gabriel came to me, late after the last evening prayers, and said: ‘O Muhammad, God orders you to come to Him.’ I answered him: ‘And where shall I see Him?’ Gabriel said: ‘Where He Himself is.’ And he at once brought an animal used for riding, in size between an ass and a mule. They call it Elberahil, which means ‘gifted with human voice.’ And in no more than one hour I completed a journey of fifty thousand years. And Gabriel said: ‘Climb onto the animal and go to the Holy Place!’ The animal fled as I tried to climb on it. When it was ordered to stand because Muhammad was about to mount, it said: ‘Has he been summoned?’ And when Gabriel said ‘yes,’ it added: ‘I will not allow him if he does not agree to pray to God for me.’ I prayed to my God for the animal which advanced at a gentle gait as I sat upon it. It put the hoof of its front leg on the horizon of its view and, in less than the wink of an eye, I arrived at the Holy Place. My companion was Gabriel who led me to the Holy Place in Jerusalem and its nearby rock, and said: ‘Get down, for from this rock you will rise to heaven.’” [The account of Muhammad’s ascension follows.]

This story about Muhammad’s night journey and his subsequent ascension is very famous in anti-Islamic polemical literature. The starting point of the whole story is Koran 17:1, where we read: “Glory be to Him who journeyed by night with His servant from the Sacred Mosque to the Furthest Mosque around which We have bestowed blessing,

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that We might show him some of Our signs.” The “Sacred Mosque” (al-masjid al-hara¯m) of course means Mekka; the epithet al-hara¯m was falsely transliterated with Helcarara in Latin. The “Furthest Mosque” (al-masjid al-aqsa¯) is the “Holy Place” in Jerusalem, where nowadays the famous Al-Aqsa Mosque is situated.33 An ascension is never told in the Koran, nor is the curious animal named Elberahil (falsely derived from al-bura¯q), both being an addition of the later tradition that tried to attribute various miracles to Muhammad. The reason was probably to avoid the reproach made by Jews and Christians that Muhammad, unlike the prophets of the Old and New Testaments, and especially Jesus, had not proved his mission through miracles. Muhammad’s ascension is told in the so-called Book of the Ladder (kita¯b al-mi‘ra¯j) that circulated in many different versions and was translated into Latin (as well as into some vernacular languages) in the thirteenth century under the title Liber Scale Machometi.34 From that time onward the story was quite common in antiIslamic polemical literature of Western as well as Eastern provenance. Pius’s source was of course Torquemada, and Torquemada’s source was probably Ricoldus, whose Improbatio Alkorani35 was translated into Greek by Demetrios Kydones. This way, the legend found its way also into the Greek literature on Islam, for example, the Disputations against Muhammad by Johannes Kantakuzenos36 and the Dialogues with a Persian by Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos.37 Obviously, neither Pius nor Torquemada had read the Koran, although it was easily available in the Latin translation initiated by Petrus Venerabilis that was finished in 1143 and constituted the core of the Toledan Collection.38 In their polemic report, authentic passages of the Koran and later legendary tradition have been mixed without any distinction. To conclude the section on two-partner dialogues, we can state that especially the early documents of Christian-Islamic debate show a good measure of authenticity, while later writings are too heavily influenced by the literary tradition. Therefore, they cannot be seen as authentic reports of religious dialogues that really took place. All religious dialogues of that type, however, have in common that one of the partners is superior to the other due to his rhetoric and art of argumentation and that in the end there is a clear winner. Even Mehmet’s silence—he did not answer the pope’s letter—is telling in this respect. We now move on to the second type: three- (or more) partner dialogues—or, as Cusanus puts it, trialogues.39 The historical probability of such dialogues is obviously poor. For that reason one expects a priori a higher level of literarization: In most of such three-partner dialogues we

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do not find controversies on specific theological problems, as they occur in the daily contact between religions, but rather discussions of much more general questions. We will not be mistaken if we state that in twopartner dialogues the aim is to convince the adversary, while in threepartner dialogues the aim is to find nothing but the truth. The extant examples of three-partner dialogues show that most of them are literary fictions of theological or philosophical discussions on a high level. Often the outcome of these dialogues is not the victory or superiority of one religion, but an aporetic situation or even a compromise. There are some famous examples in Latin that should be mentioned. The archetype of the three-partner dialogue dates from antiquity. While most of the Platonic dialogues are either elenctic or doctrinal (containing a philosophical lecture of Socrates) and therefore are not dialogues between equal partners, Aristotle went a different way and established another kind of dialogue, where various partners who are principally equal give lectures and communicate their opinion on the relevant subject. Unfortunately, these Aristotelian dialogues, the socalled exoteric works, are lost. The tradition of that kind of dialogue, however, is available in the Ciceronian dialogues that combine Platonic and Aristotelian elements. In the religious context, we should especially pay attention to the dialogue De natura deorum, which was written in the second half of 45 BCE. In this dialogue, Cicero makes representatives of three important philosophical schools—Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Academic Scepticism—discuss the nature of the gods.40 Of course the dialogue is fictitious, even though Cicero makes an effort to give it a historical touch. First, the Epicurean Velleius explains the theology of his master-god Epicurus and is heavily criticized by the Scepticist Cotta. Next is the turn of the Stoic Balbus, whose doctrine is torn to pieces by Cotta, too. The end of the dialogue is aporetic as no one seems to know anything certain about the gods. The Scepticist Cotta—obviously a persona Ciceronis—proves to be a true follower of his school in the end when he practises epoché. I would like to add that in the beginning of the nineteenth century a funny forger had the curious idea to continue the work. He supplemented a fourth book to the De natura deorum in which “Cicero” tells us his own opinion on the nature of the gods.41 In fact, the whole fake is a refutation of Kant’s and Fichte’s critique of religion (a modern taha¯fut al-taha¯fut, so to speak42). If we consider three-partner dialogues in the Middle Ages, the famous Dialogus inter Philosophum, Iudaeum et Christianum written in 1141–1142 by Peter Abelard on his deathbed comes to mind first.43 The very scenery— the whole dialogue turns out to be a dream of a certain Magister Petrus

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who also is the arbiter between the three speakers—shows that we are dealing with a literary fiction that is fundamentally different from twopartner dialogues (even the fictitious ones). The conversation is not only fictitious in the simple sense of imitating and imagining a real conversation, but in the much broader, utopian sense of propagating an idea: the idea of a unity of religions. In the course of the dialogue, all three partners—the pagan philosopher defends natural religion, the Jew and the Christian defend their revelations—must make concessions to each other and confess their ignorance of what is absolute truth. Perhaps it is not by chance that the end of the dialogue, which contained the arbitral award of Master Peter, has not come down to us. However, it is very probable that there was no victory or superiority of the Christian in the end, but rather a higher unity of the Torah, the Gospel, and the Book of Nature. Perhaps the time was not yet ripe to say such things explicitly. A similar tendency is found in further examples of this type. I only touch on the famous Job allegory in the Guide of the Perplexed,44 where Moses Maimonides interprets the conversation between Job and his three friends as an allegory of a religious dialogue between pagan (Aristotelian) philosophy, Judaism, and Islam. I also cannot deal further with the no less famous Libre del gentil e los tres savis written by Ramón Llull.45 In this work, a pagan seeking God cross-examines representatives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but in the end it remains completely open to which of these religions the pagan will turn. One may even suspect the long-term goal of the dialogue to be the confession that a universal religion stands above men’s narrow-mindedness. This idea of a universal religion of mankind has found its most famous expression in the slogan religio una in rituum varietate (“one religion in variety of cults”) that Nicholas of Cusa coined in his work De pace fidei.46 It was written in 1453, in the shocked aftermath of the Turks’ conquest of Constantinople, and is a remarkable document of Cusanus’s farsightedness and tolerance. In the introduction of his work, Cusanus describes a vision: God, Christ, and the Angels in heaven decide to call together an assembly of representatives of all earthly religions in Jerusalem; the aim is “to lead all diversity of religion to the one and true belief.”47 No fewer than seventeen representatives of various religions come together, making this conversation the biggest and most crowded religious dialogue in history, as far as I know. The common language in that Babelian congress is of course Latin. God’s Word itself discusses the possibility of universal religious peace with all of them, refuting several objections put forth by the participants. The Arab, for instance, criticizes—as we expected already—polytheism as the most important obstacle on the way

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to religious peace, but he is persuaded by God’s Word that the various gods people adore are only different manifestations of the one divinity that is, in itself, unrecognizable. Discussing with the Indian, God’s Word tells him the right way to honor images and to avoid iconoclasm. The Chaldean and the Jew are taught how to understand Trinity. In the end, they all decide to establish a concordia religionum (“concordance of religions”): The representatives of the various religions shall go to their people and lead them ad unitatem veri cultus (“to the unity of the true cult”); later on, they will convene again in Jerusalem to celebrate solemnly the eternal peace of religions. Unfortunately, the vision has not yet been fulfilled. Let us try to take stock of these considerations. As we have seen, the religious dialogues can be divided into two groups. Conversations between two partners seem to go back to historical constellations and reflect—at least in early times—actual conflicts and controversies between different religions. Later on, they may become more independent from history, but maintain some kind of historical and psychological credibility. Conversations between three or more partners do not aim at any historical credibility at all, but are a visionary, allegorical, and mostly utopian genre from the start. There is no documentation of a real religious dialogue that has a winner and a loser in the end, but rather an outline of a religious consensus or even a universal religion transcending the single cults, rites, and beliefs. It is, therefore, just a little step from Cusanus to the famous ring parable declaring that no single religion possesses the truth exclusively, not to speak of the notorious Liber de tribus impostoribus, the book on the three impostors Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, that wanders like a ghost through the Middle Ages.48 But that is another story.49

Notes 1. Herodotus, 3.38. The English translation is taken from George Rawlinson, History of Herodotus, 4 vols., 4th ed. (London, 1880), 2:440. 2. One may forgive the anachronism. On Herodotus’s intention in this story, see Rawlinson’s commentary ad loc. 3. The Euthyphro is edited in Platonis Opera. Rec. E. A. Duke et al., Tomus I (Oxonii: E Typographeo Clarendoniano, 1995); for an English translation see H. N. Fowler, Plato in Twelve Volumes, Volume I: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus (London and Cambridge, MA: W. Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1914). 4. Homer, Odyssey, 9.269–278. On the holy right of hospitality in antiquity and the Cyclops’s rejection of shame culture see Alfred Heubeck (and Arie Hoekstra), A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, Vol. II: Books IX–XVI (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), ad loc.

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5. W. J. Johnson, trans., The Bhagavad Gita (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 6. See Marc Steinmann, Alexander der Große und die “nackten Weisen” Indiens. Der fiktive Briefwechsel zwischen Alexander und dem Brahmanenkönig Dindimus. Einleitung, lateinischer Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Berlin: Frank & Timme. Verlag für wissenschaftliche Literatur, 2012). 7. Bernhard Kytzler, ed., M. Minuci Felicis Octavius (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1992). 8. Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner, eds., preface to Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1992), 7 (my translation). The topic of religious dialogues has not yet been treated exhaustively; a good example of appropriate research is, besides Lewis and Niewöhner, also Yossef Schwartz and Volkhard Krech, eds., Religious Apologetics—Philosophical Argumentation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). 9. See the voluminous investigations of Heinz Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (1.–11. Jh.). 4th, revised and complemented edition (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1999); Heinz Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos Texte (11.–13. Jh.). Mit einer Ikonographie des Judenthemas bis zum vierten Laterankonzil. 3rd, complemented edition (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1997); Heinz Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (13.–20. Jh.) (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1994). A somewhat atypical example that goes back to a historical conversation is the friendly Disputatio Iudaei et Christiani by Gilbert Crispin (ca. 1045–1117) which has been edited recently: Gilbert Crispin, Religionsgespräche mit einem Juden und einem Heiden: Lateinisch-Deutsch, trans. and ed. Karl Werner Wilhelm and Gerhard Wilhelmi (Freiburg: Herder, 2005). 10. This is the famous collection that goes back to the initiative of Peter the Venerable (1092–1156), abbot of Cluny. On the content and the characteristics of the Toledan Collection, see Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, “Deux traductions latines du Coran au moyen-âge,” Archives d’Histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen-Âge 22/23 (1947/48): 69–131; James Kritzeck, Peter the Venerable and Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964), 73ff. The Toledan Collection was not printed until 1543, when Theodor Buchmann (known by the Greek humanistic name Bibliander) published it in Basle at Luther’s instigation. The whole, complex history of that edition is ingeniously described by Hartmut Bobzin, Der Koran im Zeitalter der Reformation: Studien zur Frühgeschichte der Arabistik und Islamkunde in Europa (Beirut: Steiner, 1995), 159–275. 11. Lewis and Niewöhner, Religionsgespräche, 9 (my translation). 12. Commented edition of Ricoldus’s tractate and Luther’s translation: Johannes Ehmann, Ricoldus de Montecrucis, Confutatio Alkorani (1300): Martin Luther, Verlegung des Alcoran (1542) (Würzburg, Altenberge: Echter, 1999). 13. Finished about 1458–1459. A critical edition of this important text is in preparation. See also my article “Mit zweierlei Maß: Methodische Grundzüge der Islampolemik bei Juan de Torquemada OP (1388–1468),” in Gottes Werk und Adams Beitrag, eds. Thomas Honegger, Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich, and Volker Leppin (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), forthcoming. 14. Edition with critical apparatus by Ludwig Hagemann, Nicolai de Cusa opera omnia, vol. VIII: Cribratio Alkorani (Hamburgi: F. Meiner, 1986). An English translation and analysis can be found in Jasper Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s De pace fidei and Cribratio Alkorani (Minneapolis, MN: Banning, 1990).

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15. Edition with critical apparatus and German translation: Reinhold F. Glei, Petrus Venerabilis, Schriften zum Islam (Altenberge: CIS-Verlag, 1985). 16. Edition with critical apparatus and translation: Reinhold F. Glei and Markus Köhler, Pius II. Papa, Epistola ad Mahumetem (Trier: Wiss. Verl. Trier, 2001). The English translation (edition with notes) by Albert R. Baca, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Epistola ad Mahomatem II (Epistle to Mohammed II) (New York: Lang, 1989), is based on a faulty and unreliable text and should be used only with great caution. 17. See Moritz Steinschneider, Polemische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprache zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden, nebst Anhängen verwandten Inhalts (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1877, reprinted Hildesheim: Olms, 1966). 18. See above, note 10. The Arabic text of the two letters was edited by A. Tien (London, 1880, reprinted 1885 and 1912), the Latin text by J. Muñoz Sendino, “Al-Kindı¯—Apologia del Cristianismo,” Miscelánea Comillas 11/12 (1949): 375–460, and recently by F. González Muñoz, Exposición y refutación del Islam. La version Latina de las epistolas de al-Ha¯šimı¯ y al-Kindı¯ (A Coruña: Univ. da Coruña, Servizo de Publ., 2005). 19. Edition (Greek-German) with critical apparatus: Reinhold F. Glei and Adel Theodor Khoury, Johannes Damaskenos und Theodor Abu¯ Qurra, Schriften zum Islam (Würzburg and Altenberge: Echter and Oros-Verl., 1995). An English translation has been published by John C. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abu¯ Qurrah (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005). 20. For a more detailed investigation on that subject, see Michael Ipgrave, Trinity and Inter-Faith Dialogue: Plenitude and Plurality (Oxford Lang, 2003), 181ff. (“Chapter Three: The Trinitarian Dialogue between Islamic Monotheism and Medieval Christianity”). 21. The Koran is cited from the English translation by Richard Bell, The Qur’a¯n. Translated, with a Critical Re-arrangement of the Surahs, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1937, reprinted 1960). In the days of Abu¯ Qurra, the Koran had not yet been translated into Greek: The first (and only) Byzantine translation of the Koran dates probably from around 850. See Erich Trapp, “Gab es eine byzantinische Koranübersetzung?” Diptycha 2 (1981/82): 7–17. The fragments of this translation are collected by Karl Förstel, Schriften zum Islam von Arethas und Euthymios Zigabenos und Fragmente der griechischen Koranübersetzung (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), and by Christian Høgel, “An Early Anonymous Greek Translation of the Qur’a¯n: The Fragments from Niketas Byzantios’ Refutatio and the Anonymous Abjuratio,” Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 7 (2010): 65–119. 22. ahl al-kita¯b in Arabic. This means people who possess a revealed Holy Scripture, that is, Jews, Christians, and sometimes Muslims, too. In this passage quoted in the main text, obviously only Christians are meant. See Rudi Paret, Der Koran. Kommentar und Konkordanz, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1977), ad loc. 23. rasu¯l alla¯hi in Arabic. The term also denotes the prophet Muhammad. 24. kalimat alla¯hi in Arabic. The Koran means the word God spoke to Mary, but in Christian exegesis, it was, as one can easily imagine, misunderstood as the verbum or logos of John’s Gospel. 25. ruh alla¯hi in Arabic. Christians (mis)understood of course: “the Holy Ghost.” 26. Cf. also the Muslim credo, the so-called shaha¯da: “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His prophet.” 27. Greek text with German translation in Glei and Khoury, Johannes Damaskenos und Theodor Abu¯ Qurra, 146f. The English translation is my own.

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28. umm al-kita¯b in Arabic. See Surahs 3,7; 13,39; 43,4. The genuine meaning of that concept is explained by Adel Theodor Khoury, Der Koran. ArabischDeutsch. Übersetzung und wissenschaftlicher Kommentar, vol. 4 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus G. Mohn, 1993), 36f. Hereafter, the “mother of the book” is not an archetype but the “quintessential” meaning of the Koran that cannot be disputed. 29. See above, together with note 16. 30. A complete analysis of that work is given by Ludwig Hagemann, Der Kur’a¯n in Verständnis und Kritik bei Nikolaus von Kues. Ein Beitrag zur Erhellung isla¯misch-christlicher Geschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Knecht, 1976). 31. On Pius’s use of his source, see the introduction by Markus Köhler in Glei and Köhler, Pius II. Papa, 60–86. 32. Latin text and German translation in Glei and Köhler, Pius II. Papa, 302–5 (chapter 135). My English translation follows in part, but not entirely, Baca (see note 16). 33. See the commentary by Adel Theodor Khoury, Der Koran. Arabisch-Deutsch. Übersetzung und wissenschaftlicher Kommentar, vol. 9 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus G. Mohn, 1998), 129f., with secondary literature on Muhammad’s night journey and ascension. 34. See Edeltraut Werner, ed., Liber Scale Machometi. Die lateinische Fassung des Kita¯b al micra¯dj (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1986). 35. See above, note 12. 36. In the beginning of the fourth disputation; see Karl Förstel, Johannes Kantakuzenos, Christentum und Islam. Apologetische und polemische Schriften. Griechisch-deutsche Textausgabe (Altenberge: Oros-Verlag, 2005), 348ff. 37. An abbreviated version can be found in the fifth dialogue, chapter 2.4. See Karl Förstel, Manuel II. Palaiologos, Dialoge mit einem Muslim: Kommentierte griechisch-deutsche Textausgabe (3 vols.), vol. 1 (Würzburg, Altenberge: Echter, 1993), 156f. On the Greek tradition in general, see Adel-Théodore Khoury, Les Théologiens Byzantines et l’Islam. Textes et Auteurs (VIIIe–XIIIe s.), 2nd ed. (Louvain and Paris: Nauwelaerts, 1969); id., Polémique Byzantine contre l’Islam (VIIIe–XIIIe s.), 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1972). 38. See above, note 10. 39. Cusanus wrote a Trialogus de possest. In medieval etymology, the word dialogus was wrongly understood as dyalogus, that is, “conversation of two persons,” and consequently, the word trialogus was formed in analogy. The first one to use it as a title of a philosophical dialogue was probably John Wycliffe (ca. 1328–1384). 40. Arthur Stanley Pease, ed., M. Tulli Ciceronis De natura deorum libri III, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955 and 1958). English translation with introduction and explanatory notes: P. G. Walsh, Cicero, The Nature of the Gods (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). Andrew R. Dyck is writing a new commentary; the first book has already been published (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 41. M. Tulli Ciceronis De natura deorum liber quartus: E pervetusto codice ms. membranaceo nunc primum edidit P. Seraphinus, Ord. Fr. Min. (Bononiae, 1811; reprinted Oxford, 1813). The author was in fact Hermann Heimart Cludius (1754–1835), superintendent in Hildesheim, Germany, and the book was printed in Berlin, not in Bologna. See my edition: Reinhold F. Glei, Das vierte Buch De natura deorum. Einleitung, Edition, Übersetzung mit Erläuterungen (Trier: Wiss. Verlag Trier, 2008).

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42. Al-Ghaza¯li (Algazel, ca. 1058–1111) wrote a critique of the philosophers (taha¯fut al-fala¯sifa), translated into Latin as Destructio philosophorum. Ibn Rushd (Averroes, ca. 1126–1198) wrote a critique of the critique (taha¯fut al-taha¯fut), in Latin Destructio destructionis. It was first printed in Venice, 1497. 43. Critical edition by Rudolf Thomas, Petrus Abaelardus, Dialogus inter Philosophum, Iudaeum et Christianum (Stuttgart, Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1970). 44. Moreh nevukhim in Hebrew; the original is indeed Arabic: Dala¯lat al-ha’irı¯n, written in 1190. English versions: Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, introd. and comm. Julius Guttmann, trans. Chaim Rabin (London: East and West Library, 1952); Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans., introd., notes Shlomo Pines; introd. essay Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963). 45. The lost original was Arabic; what we have is the Catalan translation by Llull himself, written ca. 1276. For a modern edition, see Herbert Reynolds Stone, A critical edition of the Libro del gentil e de los tres sabios (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1965). Other works by Llull relevant to the Christian-Muslim relationship are listed by Ludwig Hagemann, “Bibliographie du dialogue islamo-chrétien: Auteurs chrétiens du monde latin des XIIIe et XIVe siècles,” Islamochristiana 6 (1980): 260–78 (nr. 34.26). For further reading see Roger Friedlein, Der Dialog bei Ramon Llull: Literarische Gestaltung als apologetische Strategie (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004). 46. Critical edition: Nicolai de Cusa opera omnia, vol. VII: De pace fidei, cum epistula ad Ioannem de Segobia ediderunt commentariisque illustraverunt Raymundus Klibansky et Hildebrandus Bascour. Editio altera (Hamburgi: Meiner, 1970); the citation is from p. 7, ll. 10–11. An English translation is found in Jasper Hopkins: see above, note 14. 47. De pace fidei p. 10, ll. 5–6: perducetur omnis religionum diversitas in unam fidem orthodoxam. 48. In fact, it was written not before the late seventeenth century. See Winfried Schröder, introduction to Anonymus, Traktat über die drei Betrüger. Traité des trois imposteurs (L’esprit de Mr. Benoit de Spinosa). Kritisch herausgegeben, übersetzt, kommentiert und mit einer Einleitung versehen von W.S. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1992), XIIff. See also: Abraham Anderson, The Treatise of the Three Impostors and the Problem of Enlightenment: A New Translation of the Traité des trois imposteurs (1777 edition) with Three Essays in Commentary (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997). 49. An earlier draft of this essay was presented at the Käte Hamburger-Kolleg “Dynamics in the History of Religions.” Many thanks go to my Bochum colleagues for useful suggestions. I am especially indebted to Nina Tomaszewski for correcting my English.

[email protected]

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The Rhetoric of Logic in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis Book 7 J O N AT H A N M . N E W M A N

Abstract Gower’s exposition of logic in Confessio Amantis 7 reflects his views on language and political ethics. He frames logic as a species of rhetoric since its expression in natural language makes stable meaning unavailable. In practice, logic is persuasion that appeals to cognitive rather than affective faculties. Gower’s own use of logical discourse reveals its unavoidable ambiguity and the potentially corrupting role in political life that it shares with rhetoric. I argue that Gower’s recasting of logic as rhetoric critiques the partisan clerical use of verbal arts as contributing to social and political strife, including the Western Schism.

Book 7 of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis offers its reader a relatively brief but comprehensive arrangement of knowledge that a prince might find useful, including an exposition of the verbal arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. With its little encyclopedia, book 7 would seem to disrupt the larger pattern of the Confessio Amantis; the other books each treat one of the seven deadly sins with a series of exemplary narratives framed by a confessional exchange between “Amans” (Gower’s poetic persona) and the allegorical figure Genius. In book 7, Genius yields to Amans’s request to share in the instruction of “the Scole . . . Of Aristotle” (7.3–4)—supposedly everything Aristotle taught Alexander.1 In fact, book 7 compiles, translates, and redacts three main sources: the pseudoAristotelian Secretum secretorum, Giles of Rome’s De regimine principium, and above all, Brunetto Latini’s Li Livres dou Trésor.2 But Gower makes a notable alteration to Brunetto’s tripartite division of human knowledge into theory, practice, and logic; in Gower’s scheme, rhetoric takes logic’s place as one of the three paramount categories, and logic assumes a position subordinate to rhetoric.

Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, Number 38 (Reinhold F. Glei and Wolfgang Polleichtner, eds.), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012.

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This alteration, like Gower’s treatment of logic altogether, has been passed over by most studies of the Confessio Amantis and treated only glancingly in a small handful. Gower’s attitude toward logic merits greater consideration for two reasons. First, logic enjoys a brief but prominent place in book 7’s attempted synthesis of learning in Gower’s age, and second, logic was one of that age’s master disciplines. Chaucer dedicates his Troilus and Criseyde to “Moral Gower” and “Philosophical Strode,” the latter of whom, Ralph Strode, was then prominent as an author of works on logic and a theological opponent of John Wycliffe at Oxford University.3 “Moral” rather than “philosophical,” Gower’s major works represent a concerted effort to view the fluctuations of the world, its nations, and its individual persons under the aspect of morality; this effort touches on logic by examining the moral implications of the practice of logic (as a particular kind of language use) in situ. Gower shows no interest in how dialectical reasoning can corrupt doctrine after the manner of critics of dialectic from prior centuries; instead, he suggests the ways in which logic is abused in verbal conflict. Gower also hints that logic does not even achieve what its proponents advertise; even in its own formally circumscribed terms, logic is incapable of reliably distinguishing true from false utterances. This view thus rejects the basis on which thinkers and writers had subordinated rhetoric to logic since the patristic age. I will argue that Gower’s account of logic in Confessio Amantis 7.1532– 41 subordinates logic to rhetoric because he wishes to acknowledge that logic has the same situatedness in human relations, and thus makes the same ethical claims on practitioners traditionally ascribed to rhetoric. Furthermore, by encompassing logic within the domain of rhetoric, logic comes under the discourse of ethical and political responsibility already encompassed by rhetoric. These lines demonstrate logic’s failure as a self-authorizing discourse and thus its subordination to rhetoric by showing how logic’s formal operations are inevitably corrupted by the medium of language, in which meaning is always subject to alteration by discursive contexts, historical residues, intentional and unintentional ambiguities, and so forth. The wider context of the Confessio Amantis demonstrates how this failure has serious and concrete implications because of the authority granted to logic by lawyers, theologians, and statesman, all of whose words have wide-ranging consequences. By offering such people the means to make statements that are seemingly selfcoherent, logic does not consequently constrain them to tell the truth. Logic uses the same techniques to unravel propositions that it uses to formulate them, so what it offers is in fact a conflictual discourse, not

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just a technique but a medium for disputation and outright verbal warfare, which Gower saw as contributing to the division and strife ruining his society and culminating in the Western Schism that began in 1378. Book 7 of the Confessio Amantis is part of the poem’s larger program to heal the world’s divisions through the reformation and recreation of the self.4 To this end, truthfulness in the use of language entails an honest and responsible engagement with one’s self and with others. Truthfulness is more than a matter of accuracy; it is an ethical disposition informing (or failing to inform) lived relationships and concrete practices, and language is its medium and instrument.5 J. A. Mitchell has done a considerable amount to illuminate this sensibility in Gower’s poetry, but leaves Gower’s treatment of logic out of this larger picture, taking on face value Gower’s claim that logic is a method for distinguishing truth from falsehood in order to achieve “verbal ‘integrity.’”6 In the strictly technical sense gleaned from Gower by Mitchell, logic is subsidiary to rhetoric as a specialized method in rhetoric’s toolkit. Edwin Craun gives a more fully developed account of Gower’s take on logic viewed in this technical sense: Logic enables the speaker to distinguish between truth and falsity, to judge in every case what is accurate (MED, “rihte” 8)—the task of logic in medieval semantics of proposition as it was derived from Aristotle’s De interpretatione. For Genius, as for the medieval semanticists, truth consists of the matching (adaequatio or aequatio or similitudo) the mind to the thing perceived; the speaking of truth, of matching mental language (for thought was conceived of, as in Augustine, as mental language) to the sign.7

As an intellectual method of “cognitive verification” that gives words a pleasing integrity, logic is ancillary to rhetoric.8 Gower, as I will argue, further subordinates logic to rhetoric by demonstrating how logic’s integrity is an effect that can be manipulated within specific contexts to serve rhetorical ends. Logic, in this view, can never achieve even the formal self-consistency to which it aspires.

Politics, the Verbal Arts, and the Divisio Scientiae Gower finds rhetoric important because its pragmatic context has inherent moral demands and implications—a speaker addressing an audience in a deliberative situation must be truthful and seek the common good. These demands are what interest Gower rather than the forms and varieties of the rhetorical art itself. James Murphy credits book 7 as “the first English vernacular discussion of rhetoric” but concludes that “Gower does not seem to be familiar with his subject,” since the poet’s theory

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and practice of rhetoric are not unmistakably dependent on the central works of rhetorical education in the Middles Ages such as De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium.9 Despite Gower’s paucity of scholastic sources, more than one scholar has shown that his engagement with the intellectual and ethical parameters of rhetoric is both substantial and complex and that his disengagement from the academic rhetorical tradition is correspondingly deliberate. Among these, Götz Schmitz attributes to Gower an “ethical concept of rhetoric” that elevates truth over ornament: “res and verba have to agree, and this is why Gower does not even mention those parts of the art of rhetoric that deal with colores or any other means of giving an argument a more favorable appearance.”10 Kurt Olsson likewise connects Gower’s disinterest in rhetoric’s formal taxonomies to the preoccupation with truthfulness and ethical particularism that informs Gower’s master trope—the illustrative narrative or exemplum which he “elaborates toward the verisimilar” in order to concoct a plausible experiential environment for the exemplum’s narrative action.11 Through this mimetic activity, the exemplum “proves a moral rule to be both experientially true and practicable.”12 Gower’s use of exempla consistently draws the reader’s attention to the particular and situates moral abstractions in the narrative flux of life; particular occasions for the exercise of oral judgment are what interest him rather than the formal rules of logic or the ornamental prescriptions of schoolroom rhetoric. Gower’s approach to logic and rhetoric reflects his pragmatic concern with ethical action and just political behavior. He examines logic and rhetoric not in terms of their internal intellectual order and methodological coherence, but in the social and moral terms of their ability to be deployed by disputants in learned, legal, and political arenas. James Simpson writes that, for Gower, “moral philosophy does not admit of certainty or demonstration, but instead treats individual actions.”13 The culmination of moral philosophy is therefore politics, which should prescribe human interaction on the largest scale.14 For this reason, as a durable strain of Gower scholarship has argued, the Confessio Amantis turns from its private, ethical, and amatory subject matter to the public and political subject matter of book 7, a mirror for princes.15 Rita Copeland describes book 7 of the Confessio Amantis as standing at the center of a “structure that integrates the various concerns of the poem under an ultimate concern of public and political morality.”16 It is unsurprising, then, that a discussion of rhetoric should find a place in book 7 as a relatively brief but prominent point of transition between the exposition of theoretical and practical philosophy (7.1507–

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1640). Rhetoric’s practical applicability and its discursive context in political institutions make it a central concern for Brunetto Latini, whose thirteenth-century Trésor is one of book 7’s principal sources. In Brunetto’s century, book 4 of Boethius’s De differentiis topiciis circulated widely as a textbook among teachers and students studying rhetoric as a storehouse of techniques, more or less indifferent to the classical and humanist idea of rhetoric as an art of governing and participating in public affairs.17 The humanistic esteem for rhetoric gained traction in the century following Gower’s death in 1408. Brunetto himself was a humanist in his sustained attention to public affairs and to the attendant role of eloquence; though he divided all of knowledge into the theoretical, the practical, and the logical, his treatment of logic in fact “provides a complete exposition of Ciceronian rhetoric, having virtually ignored the subject of logic.”18 Copeland describes Brunetto’s treatment thus: The divisio textus of the Trésor elevates rhetoric, along with politics, virtually to the status of an epistemological category, making rhetoric and politics together almost a division of knowledge, rather than subordinate elements of one of those divisions. In other words, the scheme of knowledge or scheme of the sciences that emerges from Brunetto’s divisio textus is this: theoretica, practica, rhetorica-politica.19

Gower’s reformulation of Brunetto’s scheme matches labels to their containers, thus clarifying Brunetto’s emergent divisio scientiae. Organizational changes of these kinds were not a trivial matter in the Middle Ages: “scholastic principles of the order and division of texts and knowledge were such powerful directories for late medieval epistemology that the very classificatory structure itself could be regarded as the primary vehicle of meaning.”20 According to James Simpson, Gower’s poems show these curricular divisions as structuring “the formation of an individual soul.”21 Gower correspondingly follows Brunetto in treating rhetoric not simply as a branch of the language arts, but as a primary mode of knowing the world and acting in it.22 Given Gower’s concern with practical ethics, public morality, and the virtue of truth in speech, it is unsurprising that rhetoric should be treated at greater length than logic in book 7’s vernacular exposition of useful secular learning: “rhetoric is a fundamental knowledge about speech which determines why and how it is used in communal life.”23 As such, the value of rhetoric is a site of moral contest. One can take an instrumental view of rhetoric and focus simply on the “how” rather than the “why”; it is uncertain whether Brunetto valorizes rhetoric as an instrument for peaceful civic formation and cooperative deliberation or values it simply as a way to make the worse argument seem better and thus exercise power. Edwin Craun ascribed this view, derived ultimately

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from Cicero, to Brunetto, for whom the goal of rhetoric “is to induce listeners to believe what one wishes them to believe . . . and its function is to employ speech artful enough to compel belief.”24 Brunetto tells a story in his Trésor about the opposed speeches of Cicero and Caesar on the Catiline conspiracy in order to illustrate the power rhetoric holds over public life. The largest part of the section on rhetoric in book 7 of the Confessio Amantis has Genius retelling this tale (7.1588–1640). Unlike Brunetto, Genius explicitly endorses the rhetoric of Cicero for being prudential rather than instrumental; that is, Cicero’s rhetoric is directed toward telling the truth in the way most favorable to advancing the general welfare, while Caesar’s is flashier but deceptively selfserving.25 Diane Watt argues that since Caesar’s colorful deception prevails in the Senate, Gower (following such authorities as Quintilian, Alain de Lille, and Guillaume de Lorris) is in fact showing rhetoric to be unavoidably false and treacherously feminine.26 I follow Schmitz, Mitchell, and Craun in seeing Gower’s view of rhetoric as more nuanced—just because Caesar wins that particular quarrel does not mean that Cicero goes about his business wrongly. As a “pragmatic activity and attitude,” rhetoric is not simply instrumental and morally neutral; it is a “disposition towards words” that is “improving, humanizing, civilizing”; it is a branch of knowledge that bridges the gap between theoretical learning and practical application, and thus offers a foundation for achieving a morally responsible life and politics.27 This view of rhetoric accommodates James Simpson’s bold claim that Gower was a “liberal humanist” who championed the “necessity for mediation between the king and the rest of the body-politic.”28 If it is too bold to characterize Gower’s divergence from royal absolutism as liberal humanism, we might still find Gower’s moral view of rhetoric’s purpose, “to valorize true statements in public discourse, artfully using words and arguments,” to be consistent with Elliott Kendall’s more cautious characterization of Gower’s political ideal as civil order mediated by old-fashioned aristocratic reciprocity.29 Schmitz, Simpson, Craun, and Copeland share in various ways a common perspective: for Gower, rhetoric has a positive but potentially corruptible role in public affairs. Proceeding from this common understanding, we can better understand the role logic plays for Gower as one of rhetoric’s ancillary techniques. As a part of rhetoric, logic belongs to the moral contest signified by rhetoric. It remains to be asked whether logic contributes to rhetoric’s capacity to shape private and public moral formation. Schmitz argues rightly that “Gower’s main concern is with sincerity”; Brunetto’s treatment of logic would therefore have presented the English poet with difficulties.30 To be sure, Brunetto seems to condemn the type of logic usually called sophistry:

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The third discipline of logic is sophistic, which teaches us to prove that words we have said are true, but this we prove through bad tricks and false reasons and by sophisms, that is, by arguments which have the appearance and outward cover of truth but contain only falsehood.31

On the other hand, Brunetto defines logic as being directed toward pragmatic manipulation: “dialectic . . . teaches us to prove our statements and our words by reason and by arguments which lend credence to the words we have said, so that they appear true and probable.”32 This emphasis on appearance and effect elides the distinction previously drawn by Brunetto between logic and sophistry; logic’s overriding purpose, in this account, is plainly given to persuasion rather than verification. In this description, logical arguments demand the appearance, but not necessarily the substance, of coherence, consistency, and veracity. Seen in this light, logic is a form of rhetoric with a restricted aim and corollary set of methods—it seeks to manipulate cognitive rather than affective faculties. Brunetto, moreover, not only declines to condemn a logic indistinguishable from sophistry, but seems in fact to endorse its use as part of the political art of rhetoric. Gower takes a different view of the role and purpose of the verbal arts in political life. Schmitz finds a “moral distinction . . . between a political concept of the art of speech in Cicero and Latini, . . . and a personal one in Gower, who demands that man’s speech disclose his innermost motives.”33 He further points out how Gower makes plain his more stringent ideals for political speech when recounting the teaching of Aristotle to Alexander on the matter of truthfulness:34 Tawhte Aristotle, as he wel couthe, To Alisandre, hou in his youthe He scholde of Trouthe thilke grace With al his hole herte embrace, So that his word be trewe and plein, Toward the world and so certain That in him be no double speche. (7.1726–36)

Gower consistently appeals to the value and necessity of words that are “trewe and plein” and appeals to logic’s special role in mediating “pleine wordes”: “Logique hath eke in his degree / Betwen the trouthe and the falshode / The pleine wordes for to schode.” (7.1532–34) An appeal to such uncontroversial values as truth and clarity might well pass unremarked; “pleine” has been consistently read as meaning clear, unambiguous, and to the point, definitions that the Middle English Dictionary puts under the headword of “plain.” A subtle irony lurks here in this ostensibly simple definition—the very word that touts simplicity is itself ambiguous. The MED points out the difficulty of distinguishing the adjectives “plain” and “plein.”35 The latter

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form it associates more closely to the French root plein—whole, complete, or full. In Middle English, this loanword operates in a number of political, legal, and religious contexts. In Confessio Amantis 1.282–84, Genius tells Amans, “Touchende of schrifte, it mot be plein, / It nedeth noght to make it queinte, / For trowthe hise wordes wol noght peinte.” Although the antithesis with “queinte” might suggest that the “plein” of 282 means unadorned, lacking the “peinte” of rhetorical colors, in the context of confession, it evokes a legal French meaning of whole or complete.36 The adjective plein confers qualities of clarity and transparency, but it can also imply a plenitude of meaning that depends for its clarity on the analytical discernment of an interpreter, a confessor, a logician. As these roles suggest, such analysis is always performed on someone’s behalf or for someone’s instruction. Logic, by Gower’s functional definition, is never simply an abstract intellectual activity or formal operation that produces stable meanings which exist independent of the discursive community in which it is practiced. Meaning is only ever plain within an interpretive community, and it can only ever be made “plein”—full, whole, or complete, by the activity of an interpreter. As Brunetto’s cynical definition of logic suggests, its seemingly disinterested operations are in practice always directed by a preexisting agenda to influence the beliefs of another. Logic is thus a mode of rhetoric, inherently social and political and subject to ethical and political moral demands. However, logic presents certain dangers because its rhetorical context is unacknowledged.

The Moral Perils of Logic Chopping Gower’s presentation of logic suggests that it produces meanings that are contextually determined, a fact that undermines even its claim to distinguish true from false on its own formal terms. This failure has practical and concrete implications, given the authority granted logic by lawyers, theologians, and statesmen. James Simpson writes of the Confessio Amantis that “the real meaning of the poem is to be located not so much in its represented action as in the experience it provokes in the reader.”37 Mitchell’s work expands on this idea, anatomizing Gower’s methods for making the reader take account of ethics when puzzling through verbal ambiguities.38 In the same vein, the meaning of Gower’s account of logic lay not only in its propositional content, but in the way the reader must reassess the relative ethical value of logic and rhetoric in the process of puzzling through lexical and syntactic ambiguities. Af-

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ter treating “theoretic” knowledge (mostly natural philosophy), Gower moves on to rhetoric, the supreme verbal art, beginning with its two servants, grammar and logic—“It hath Gramaire, it hath Logiqe, / That serven both unto the speche.” (7.1528–29) Grammar gets two lines, and logic gets nine: Logique hath eke in his degree Betwen the trouthe and the falshode The pleine wordes forto schode, So that nothing schal go beside, That he the riht ne schal decide. Wherof full many a gret debat Reformed is to good astat, And pes sustiened up alofte With esy wordes and with softe, Wher strengthe scholde lete it falle. (7.1532–41)

These lines programmatically undermine the cultural and intellectual authority of logic; in this section, I will show how they do so, and in the next section, I will discuss Gower’s reasons for attacking logic in the context of contemporary political and religious crises. This passage is not a simple definition dispatched for the sake of encyclopedic comprehensiveness; these nine lines contain a number of lexical and syntactic ambiguities that disrupt the speed and simplicity of the reader’s understanding of the definition. In light of Gower’s idiosyncratic schematization of knowledge, these ambiguities point to an unusual, even innovative opinion: Gower subordinates the abstract and theoretical discipline of logic to the concrete and applied discipline of rhetoric because he regards logic not simply as “the formulation of very general patterns of valid inference” in the service of rhetoric, but in fact as a specialized variety of rhetoric.39 This is a conspicuous reversal of the customary hierarchies of human knowledge inherited from authorities such as Augustine, Boethius, and Isidore of Seville by Gower’s sources, Giles of Rome and Brunetto Latini; to the traditional authorities, logic was more important and more valuable than rhetoric because it was believed to seek truth rather than to convince.40 John Gower’s reversal of this order is neither arbitrary nor accidental. Logic to Gower is not simply a mode of ratiocination, but an intellectual practice embedded like rhetoric in situations of disagreement, disputation, and outright conflict. For this reason, logic’s patterns of valid inference are fundamentally rhetorical in their own right, endowed with the same instrumentality that makes rhetoric susceptible to abuse, according to its detractors.41 Gower makes a surprising and intellectually original suggestion in his treatment of logic and its relation to rhetoric: logic is susceptible to the abuses usually associated with rhetoric because

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it is a limited subset or species of rhetoric, subordinate and ancillary to the more general category of rhetoric but not distinct in its methods or goals. Gower’s characterization of logic as “esy” and “softe” already suggests this, associating the masculine clarity and plainness of logic with the feminine craftiness of rhetoric.42 The passage’s ambiguities also charge the operations of logic with an inescapable duplicity arising from the divergence between logic’s formal purity and its expression (at that time) in the untidy medium of natural language. Logic, for Gower, is finally even more susceptible to abuse than rhetoric, for while the dangers and limitations of rhetoric are widely acknowledged, logic is falsely regarded as being a sound basis for making verifiable claims on account of its freedom from contingency and partisan interest. It is more dangerous than rhetoric precisely because its authority outstrips its capacity. The plenitude of significance in words makes “double speche” (7.1736)—language with double meanings—difficult to avoid. The art of logic manifests a desire to achieve an arrangement or understanding of language that is self-validating, transparent, and full in the sense of fully available to the interpreter. Yet the analytical techniques offered by logic to achieve this full transparency consist of reductions, simplifications, and distinctions that disrupt fullness. “Plein” words need to be “schode.” This word, schode, has its own significant ambiguities. J. A. Mitchell follows Russell Peck in glossing this word as “declared,” but the form and context of the word strongly suggest a variant of a root (cognate with “schism”) meaning to separate, split, or distinguish. This chopping activity provides a recurring metaphor for logical reasoning going back to the Greek term “analysis,” meaning “splitting apart,” a word familiar even in the Latin Middle Ages in the titles of Aristotle’s Analytica priora et posterioria. G. F. Macaulay glossed “schode” in this passage as “divide,” and Peck glosses the same word thus at 1.1750.43 In fact, “pleine words” are not simply declared. They are the product of logical analysis, but this practice does not always achieve the selfvalidating transparency to which its practitioners aspire. As a verbal art, medieval logic belongs to natural language; it interprets meaning, produces meaning, and can consequently falsify meaning.44 Truly plain words ought not to require splitting or explication; to split them by means of dialectic allows for alteration or corruption that is no less a “coloration” than rhetorical ornament, and likewise seeks to pacify and persuade. The ambiguities of “pleine” and “schode” present the hope for transparent meaning but frustrate that hope by suggesting a plenitude of obscure meanings that require analysis. Centuries before the development of symbolic logic, logic’s fundamental element was the word;

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Gower’s self-contradictory definition hints that any word’s irreducible plurality of meaning compromises logic’s ambition from the outset. Because medieval logic is practiced in natural language, it shapes words into propositions expressed as sentences, and the structural ambiguities of natural syntax contaminate the pure clarity of its propositions. These ambiguities produce divergent meanings, which are resolved according to the intentions and concerns of speakers and addressees in specific contexts. Gower alerts his reader to this fact by demonstrating how divergent meanings are produced by divergent interpretive codes. For Gower, logic is just one among these codes, and thus cannot provide a transcendent basis for discerning true from false; even as lexical ambiguities trouble the claim of words to be “plein,” syntactic ambiguities challenge the capability of language to distinguish truth and falsehood. As a poet, Gower draws attention to the malleability and instability of both syntax and lexis in order to imply that logic cannot insulate itself from the vagaries inherent to language; it does not—cannot—issue in straightforward and self-evident propositions, especially when those propositions serve in disputes with political, legal, economic, or moral consequences. The vagaries of language make it exploitable by the unscrupulous rhetorician and make logic available as another instrument to effect this exploitation. Gower characteristically deploys evaluative terms in a way that brings diverse modes of evaluation into an ironic juxtaposition that urges the reader to moral decision. The syntactic ambiguity of this passage results not necessarily from a lack of clarity in the phrasing of the sentence itself, but from the variable situations and expectations that an interpreter might bring to the sentence; it simultaneously enacts the divergent registers and interpretive contexts to produce irreconcilable significations. The clause “So that nothing schal go beside / That he the riht ne schal decide” (7.1535–36) produces different meanings depending on how one reads it; it has no determinate literal meaning. If one reads the negative terms “ne” and “nothing” as canceling one another—as an instance of clausal negation—the sentence affirms that “he” (logic) will decide the right in everything. Gower is exploiting an ambiguity made possible by the transitional state of Middle English syntax at the time when he wrote Confessio Amantis.45 In Old English, ne was the primary negative adverb, but often worked in construction with a negative object like “nawiht” (nobody).46 Constructions like “I ne seye noght” (meaning “I don’t say anything”) still occur frequently at the end of the Middle English period and well into the Early Modern period.47 This type of multiple negation is called negative concord.48

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If we take the double negative in 7.1535–36 as negative concord, the lines suggest that logic will decide the right in nothing at all. A reader who views 1535–36 as an instance of clausal negation must affirm the power of logic. The crux issues from divergent expectations. The syntactic constraints imposed on Gower’s English by its learned Latin superstratum would require the sentence to be parsed as clausal negation. Negative concord, however, was still the prevailing vernacular construction, and if we read the lines through this syntactic constraint, then they deny logic’s value for determining truth.49 The ambiguity of this double negative is plausible because both negative concord and clausal negation appear in Gower’s English verse. For simple negation, he favors the single negative; book 7 has scores of the adverb “noht” unaccompanied by “ne” (262, 301, 400, 654, 734, to name a few). And there are some clear instances of negative concord, as in this exposition of heavenly bodies: The mones cercle so lowe is, Wherof the sonne out of his stage Ne seth him noght with full visage, (7.740–42)

Gower’s use of negative concord, however, remains the exception rather than the rule. Even some apparent instances of double negation prove, upon closer analysis, to be otherwise—early in the same passage, he writes: Alle othre sterres, as men finde, Be schynende of here oghne kinde Outake only the monelyht, Which is noght of himselve bright, Bot as he takth it of the sonne. And yit he hath noght al fulwonne His lyht, that he nys somdiel derk; (7.731–36)

Here, a single negation (“noght of himselve bright”) is followed closely by an apparent double negation; simplified, this clause reads as follows: the moon has not gained enough light to not be somewhat dark. This is an instance neither of negative concord nor of clausal negation. Rather, it is two distinct clauses, one subordinated to the other in a syntactic calque of the Latin negative result clause.50 This calque demonstrates Gower’s deliberate precision about how his English sentences parse, a precision undoubtedly trained by his formal education in Latin and by the experience of writing two very long poems in French and Latin. Sometimes, however—perhaps also as a consequence of his multilingual competence—he reveals a deliberate imprecision. Clausal negation, the standard construction in Latin (perhaps under the influence of dialectic on formal education since antiquity),

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does not entirely displace the more frequent Middle English pattern of negative concord in Gower’s English. While negative concord is not nearly as pervasive in Confessio Amantis as in the works of Chaucer and other Middle English writers, it is not altogether absent. Speaking in the prologue about intellectual pursuits proper to the clergy, Gower writes Unto the God ferst thei besoughten As to the substaunce of her scole, That thei ne scholden noght befole Her wit upon none erthly werkes, (Prol.198–201; emphasis added)

This unambiguous instance of negative concord—a triple negative, in fact—is the construction’s only occurrence in the prologue, and its conspicuous oral vernacularity contributes to the fervid sermonizing tone of the prologue’s estates satire. Venus assumes the same kind of preacherly tone when she instructs Amans to confess fully in book 1: “Tell thi maladie: What is thi sor of which thou pleignest? Ne hyd it noght, for if thou feignest, I can do thee no medicine.” (1.164–167)

Among the scores of negative clauses in book 1, there are only five instances of unambiguous negative concord, and three of these five occur in the imperative mood.51 Reading 7.1535–36 as negative concord is a marked possibility—marked in the technical linguistic sense of grammatically permissible, but unusual enough to be conspicuous. Native speakers of modern English are more likely to read the couplet as an affirmation of logic’s authority because modern English grammar has been prescriptively shaped by the rules of formal logic and Classical Latin to adopt clausal negation: the negation of a negation is an affirmation. But the “ne” and “nothing” of these lines are available in Gower’s period to be read as negative concord. Gower’s own preference for the single negative was a bit unusual, suggesting a conscious attention on his own part to the correspondence between ordinary language and rational argumentation that would make syntactic ambiguities more significant. Indeed, just as Mitchell draws our attention to the moral dilemmas of narrative ambiguity, Watts finds that at the level of the sentence itself, “disrupted syntax can cause as well as signal . . . moral confusion.”52 The lines 7.1532–43 provide a vivid illustration of Russell Peck’s global observations about Gower’s language in the preface to his TEAMS edition of Confessio Amantis: Despite the surface simplicity of the Confessio, the smoothness of its verse, and the apparent normality of its vocabulary, the poem is not easy to read. Gower’s syntax is sometimes convoluted, using word order that is unfamiliar to modern

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readers. . . . He is a writer keenly aware of how to make language work for him, however, and shapes syntax pointedly toward his purpose.53

Gower’s deliberately convoluted syntax works with his use of vocabulary, in which “distinctions of connotation . . . shift subtly from one context to another as shades of meaning change.”54 The purpose to which he shapes his language is tied closely to the shifting contexts his words negotiate; in the next and final section, I will look at Gower’s purpose for undermining logic’s authority in terms of the shift in context from the abstract framework of book 7’s mirror for princes to the Confessio Amantis’s engagement with contemporary political and religious crises.

Strength and Speech Just why is logic so problematic for Gower? Why does it fail to clarify our speech and distinguish the true from the false? I already suggested above that even the meaning of a logical proposition is determined by a context of reception that entails more than a passage’s immediate verbal environment.55 Context is the dialogical situation that delimits the possible range of meanings an utterance can have. For logic as for rhetoric, the context for practice is frequently disputation, a kind of conflictual interaction governed by rules and procedures for turn-taking, fair argument, and civil discourse; formal disputations were a major part of higher education in Europe between 1150 and 1400.56 In formally rule-governed interactions, parties are ratified as participants insofar as they adhere to the rules. But even in a formalized verbal conflict, communication is a goal secondary to winning, and to win is to persuade an audience. Given this context, logic’s instrumentality undermines its claim as a self-validating discourse, for its patterns of general inference are shaped according to individual purpose in contradictory ways. We have yet to look closely at the second part of the passage on logic in 7.1532–43 in which Gower moves from logic’s supposed capacity to distinguish true and false to the wider good this capacity might serve in social and political terms: Wherof full many a gret debat Reformed is to good astat, And pes sustiened up alofte With esy wordes and with softe, Wher strengthe scholde lete it falle. (7.1537–41)

There is a final ambiguity in this passage as to whether “Wher” (1541) is disjunctive or conjunctive. If we read it as disjunctive and view “wher” as the equivalent of “otherwise” or “whereas,” the passage contrasts easy

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soft words with strength; the former sustains peace and the latter lets it fall. If, on the other hand, we take “wher” as conjunctive rather than disjunctive, the passage holds that “esy and softe” words sustain peace precisely where strength—political or military power—back them up. This cynical reading requires us to understand “fall” as meaning to happen, rather than to collapse, a usage attested elsewhere in the Confessio Amantis.57 Such a reading is cynical because it subordinates—grammatically and conceptually—the sustaining of peace through words to the disposition of material force. The political effect of easy and soft words is not to persuade and reconcile, but to sugar acts of domination. These nine lines cast considerable doubt on the idea that logic might offer any more moral guidance than rhetoric; furthermore, logic’s affective qualities of “esy” and “softe” in any case associate it with rhetoric as an object of moral suspicion. For Gower, the value of logic, as of so many human practices, depends on the intention of its user. As a material medium, language is corrupted by the fall of mankind and more particularly by the dispersion of languages at Babel.58 But abstract cognition, whose medium is language, is as corruptible as emotion; as emotion is corruptible by rhetoric, reason is corruptible by logic. To subject language to logic chopping, as the word “schode” implies, evokes the danger of the sophistic cunning esteemed by the pragmatic Brunetto for its political usefulness: “without doubt we need it every day, and many thing we can achieve merely by saying well the proper words, things we could not do through force of arms or any other means.”59 This idea did not originate with Brunetto. John of Salisbury wrote in the Metalogicon, “Since dialectic is carried on between two persons, the book [Aristotle’s “New Logic”] teaches the matched contestants whom it trains and provides with reason and topics, to handle their proper weapons and engage in verbal, rather than physical conflict.”60 These references to force of arms recall for us, and perhaps are the source of, the “strength” to which Gower refers in 7.1542. The virtue—that is to say, the efficacy—that Brunetto ascribed to rhetoric in general, Gower here (like John of Salisbury) attributes in particular to logic. Logic allows disputes to be determined by “softe” words in place of “strengthe” and could potentially provide a basis for a communicative reason that replaces force in resolving disputes. Implicit in the comparison between verbal persuasion and force of arms is the idea that they are functional equivalents. In this view, language can be purely instrumental. J. Allen Mitchell writes that “as a verbal skill rhetoric is morally neutral,” but the exercise of power is never morally neutral, particularly for those called to serve the kingdom of

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heaven.61 Gower casts doubt on the moral efficacy of the language arts and their appropriateness to clerical use in the prologue to the Confessio Amantis. This prologue features an estates satire which in large part attacks the worldliness and ambition of the clerical estate. He describes this worldliness as manifesting itself in quarreling, which he contrasts with the more perfect condition of the clerical estate in bygone days: The cherche keye in aventure Of armes and of brygantaille Stod nothing thanne upon bataille; To fyhte or for to make cheste It thoghte hem thanne noght honeste. Bot of simplesce and pacience Thei maden thanne no defence. (Prol.212–18)

The debased modern clergy take part in conflict for material gain, thus compromising their simplicity, patience, and humility. This parallel between the context suggested by 7.1532–41 and named outright in the prologue suggests that despite the brevity of the passage on logic, its message is richly consonant with the moral design of the Confessio Amantis. Gower’s treatment of logic likewise encapsulates the poem’s intellectual design; the dependence of its ambiguities on the divergence between two interpretive codes—one Latinate and logical, the other vernacular and discursive—reflects the poem’s larger concern with the efficacy of language at overcoming the world’s many divisions: The book is a product, in a sense, of two linguistic divisions: the sinful division that originally fragmented all languages; and a latter-day, secondary division, the differences between Latin, whose ideological project is to contain disorder as far as possible within a fallen world, and vernacular speech, which is the living witness to the breakdown of cultural unity since the fall of the Roman imperium.62

For Gower, there is a more pressing and immediate division afflicting the community of Christendom: the schism in the church that began in 1378 with the election of rival popes based in Avignon and Rome. Gower traces one cause of this schism specifically to the hypertrophied verbal cunning of churchmen: Bot yet their argumenten faste Upon the Pope and his astat, Wherof thei falle in gret debat; The clerk seith yee, that other nay, And thus thei dryve forth the day, (1.370–74)

There are echoes between this passage and the passage on logic in book 7: the rhyme between “astat” and “debat” and the associated “falle.” Beyond university walls, outside the “Scole of Aristotle” (7.3–4), in the high-stakes arenas of church councils and papal palaces, “argument” precipitates rather than resolves division. And while Genius—for it is

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Genius who speaks in book 7—suggests that logic can discern true from false, Gower speaking in propria persona in the prologue reserves that ability to God: “God grante it mote wel befalle / Towardes him whiche hath the trowthe.” (Prol.340–41) Genius’s exposition of logica demonstrates that one of the master disciplines of Latinate clerical learning, that “ideological project . . . to contain disorder,” is at its heart a method of analysis, and thus division. As Babel teaches, where there is division, there is confusion. As Copeland put it, the vernacular in which Gower writes the Confessio Amantis is the result of this division, and this vernacularity is a mark of intellectual humility: “the vernacular is an insistent reminder of the limits of the power of Latinity to contain difference through an idealized linguistic order transcending time and space.”63 With the exception of theology, perhaps no product or practice of Latin intellectual culture in the Middle Ages more fully aspires to the condition of an “idealized linguistic order transcending time and space” than logic. After all, in De differentiis topiciis Boethius himself views logic as concerning itself with the transcendent—the thesis of the logical topic does not admit circumstantiae, the situating particularities of who, what, where, how, etc., that are for Boethius the necessary features of a rhetorical claim or hypothesis.64 But if ethics deals precisely with responding morally to particular situations, its moral implications must be understood through the same framework of judgment by which rhetoric is evaluated. Consequently, logic is subordinate to rhetoric in Gower’s system of knowledge, as knowledge itself is subordinate to morality. According to Rita Copeland, it is “the vernacular that puts academic discourse into social practice as a vehicle of moral and political rehabilitation.”65 On the basis of the foregoing, I propose that the relation between rhetoric and logic is analogous to the relation between the vernacular and Latin proposed by Copeland. In emphasizing the particular and experiential, Gower makes logic a branch of rhetoric precisely because logic is situated in rhetorical practice. Rhetoric is therefore, in fact, the foundation of logic, but this fact does not corrupt logic’s ability to discern truth from falsehood or to settle disputes by right reason rather than the exercise of power; it makes these abilities possible in the first place by making explicit logic’s foundation in a world of lived relationships and consequential practices. Precisely because logic is rhetorical, it can be integrated in an idealized political practice glimpsed through the multiple negation in Gower’s prayer for peace near the end of the Confessio Amantis: That he this lond in siker weie Wol sette uppon good governance For if men takyn remembrance

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What is to live in unite, Ther ys no staat in his degree That noughte to desire pes, With outen which, it is no les, To seche, and loke in to the laste, Ther may no worldes joye laste. (8.2986–94)

Here, there is no doubt that that double negation affirms; logical, Latinate language is integrated into a comprehensive vision of harmonious accord.

Notes 1. Citations of Confessio Amantis from John Gower, The Complete Works of John Gower (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899). The author gratefully acknowledges the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its generous support and thanks Annika Farber, Kathleen E. Kennedy, and this periodical’s external reviewers for their scrupulous and intelligent feedback. 2. G. C. Macaulay, The Complete Works of John Gower, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899), 521–22. 3. “O moral Gower, this book I directe / To the and to the, philosophical Strode . . . ” Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, in The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed., ed. Larry D. Benson et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 5.1855–56. 4. Alastair Minnis, “John Gower, Sapiens in Ethics and Politics,” Medium Aevum 49 (1980): 207–29. Reprinted in Gower’s “Confessio Amantis”: A Critical Anthology, ed. Peter Nicholson (Cambridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 1991), 158–80; Elizabeth Porter, “Gower’s Ethical Microcosm and Political Macrocosm,” in Gower’s “Confessio Amantis”: Responses and Reassessments, ed. Alastair Minnis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 135–62; James Simpson, Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille’s “Anticlaudianus” and John Gower’s “Confessio Amantis” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 5. Richard Green, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 1–41. 6. J. Allan Mitchell, “John Gower and John Lydgate: Forms and Norms of Rhetorical Culture,” in A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c. 1350–c. 1500, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 569–85, 572–73. 7. Edwin D. Craun, Lies, Slander and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 31, 122. 8. Ibid. 9. James J. Murphy, “John Gower’s Confessio Amantis and the First Discussion of Rhetoric in the English Language,” Philological Quarterly 41, no. 2 (1962): 401–11, 405–8. 10. Götz Schmitz, “Rhetoric and Fiction: Gower’s Comments on Eloquence and Courtly Poetry,” in Gower’s Confessio Amantis: A Critical Anthology, 117–43, 128. 11. Kurt Olsson, “Rhetoric, John Gower, and the Late Medieval Exemplum,” Medievalia et Humanistica 8, no. 2 (1977): 185–200.

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The Rhetoric of Logic in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

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Ibid. Simpson, Sciences and the Self, 269 n. 42. Ibid., 229. See note 4. Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 211. James Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 66; Michael C. Leff, “Boethius’s De differentiis topicis, Book IV,” in Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric, ed. James Murphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 3–24. Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation, 208; Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, 113. Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation, 209. Ibid., 206. Simpson, Sciences and the Self, 12. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, 99–100. Craun, Lies, Slander, and Obscenity, 119. Ibid. Craun, Lies, Slander, and Obscenity, 123. Diane Watt, Amoral Gower: Language, Sex, and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 28–41. Mitchell, “Forms and Norms of Rhetorical Culture,” 569–70. Simpson, Sciences and the Self, 19 Craun, Lies, Slander, and Obscenity, 123; for other studies relating Gower’s politics to current events, see Frank Grady, “Gower’s Boat, Richard’s Barge, and the True Story of the Confessio Amantis: Text and Gloss,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 44, no. 1 (2002): 1–15; Elliot Richard Kendall, Lordship and Literature: John Gower and the Politics of the Great Household (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008); Candace Barrington, “John Gower’s Legal Advocacy and ‘In Praise of Peace,’” in John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition, ed. Elizabeth Dutton (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2010), 112–25. Schmitz, “Rhetoric and Fiction,” 129. “La tierce science de logyque est sofistique, qui enseigne prover que les paroles que l’en dit soient veraies; mais ce prove il par mal engin et par fauses raisons et per sophismes, c’est par argumenz qui ont samblance et coverte de verité, mes il n’i a chose se fause non.” (Trésor I.5.4) Citation of the French edition from Brunetto Latini, Trésor, ed. Pietro G. Beltrami et al. (Torino: G. Einaudi, 2007). Translations of the Trésor cited in this work are from Brunetto Latini, The Book of the Treasure (Li livres dou tresor), trans. Paul Barette and Spurgeon Baldwin (New York: Garland Pub., 1993), vol. 90 Garland Library of Medieval Literature, series B. “Dialetique . . . nos enseigne prover nos diz et nos paroles [par raison], et par tel argumenz qui donent foi as paroles que nos avons dites, si que eles semblent voires et provables a estre voires.” (Trésor I.4.8) Schmitz, “Rhetoric and Fiction,” 128. Ibid., 131. Middle English Dictionary, s.v. “pleine(e).” See Stonor letters 1.105; 1. Charles Kingsford, Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers 1290–1483 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Candace

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37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

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Medievalia et Humanistica Barrington has explored the extensive use of legal diction in Gower’s poetry. Barrington, “John Gower’s Legal Advocacy,” 112–25. Simpson, Sciences and the Self, 203. J. Allan Mitchell, Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2004), Chaucer Studies 33. H. P. Grice, “Logic and Conversation,” in Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3, ed. P. Cole and J. Morgan (New York: Academic Press, 1975), 113–28. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, 74, 101–4, 192–93; Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter, “General Introduction,” in Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory AD 300–1475 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 4–12. Critics of rhetoric since Plato have discussed this danger. For its exposition in Gower, see Watt, Amoral Gower, 41–42. Watt, Amoral Gower, 42–54. “Thei myhte hire hore lockes schode” = “hoary locks comb through (divide).” I am appealing here to the well-known distinction in linguistics between a natural language—a language, living or dead, generated in the natural course of human intercourse that allows for a full range of communication (and falsification)—and an artificial language, such as mathematics, symbolic language, or a computer language, which allows a limited set of operations, propositions, or instructions. Olga Fischer, “Syntax,” in The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. II: 1066–1476, ed. Norman Blake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 207–408 (280). Tauno F. Mustanoja, A Middle English Syntax Part I: Parts of Speech, Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 23 (Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 1960), 340. Mustanoja, Middle English Syntax, 339. Fischer, “Syntax,” 280; Chaucer sometimes takes the construction to emphatic extremes, as in his description of the Knight: “He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde / In all his lyf unto no maner wight.” One might object that negative concord is inoperative in this sentence for the following reason: “nothing schal go beside” subordinates the clause “that he the riht ne schal decide” in such a way that “beside that” represents a clause boundary that prevents the verb “decide” from taking anything as its object except for “the right.” Thus we do not have double negation, but two instances of single negation. This argument is unsustainable; in Middle English as in Modern English, the conjunction “tha” has an ambiguous function—it can act purely as a subordinating conjunction (“I know that you like cheese) or as relativizer—a subordinating conjunction that dominates a relative clause (“This is the cheese that you like”). If the word “that” functions in this sentence as a relativizer, then we can take “nothing” as the object of “decide” and “the right” as an adverbial object phrase (e.g., “I like it a lot”) and read the sentence thus: logic decides nothing for the right. We can reverse the functions “nothing” and the “right” to produce a similar meaning: logic decides the right in no wise. This seems more plausible since adverbial substantives frequently indicate extent (e.g., “a lot,” “a bit”), and thus lend themselves to negation. Either way, the same ambiguity applies. In fact, the multiple structural ambiguities further demonstrate the difficulty of formulating straightforward and transparent propositions.

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50. While Olga Fischer demonstrates how “the presence of unsupported ne [in 7.736 assimilated as ‘nys’] can be explained as a case of negative concord when ne is induced by the (implicit) negative already present,” the expressed qualifier “somdiel” takes the place of any implied negative; while Middle English negative concord is emphatic (rather than grammaticalized, as in Modern French’s ne . . . pas), the adjective “somdiel” attenuates rather than emphasizes. Ibid. 51. 1214, 1750, 1934, 3045, 3119, 3162. 52. Watt, Amoral Gower, 32. 53. Russell Peck, “Preface,” in John Gower, Confessio Amantis, ed. Russell Peck (Kalamazoo, MI: TEAMS, Western Michigan University, 2000), ix. 54. Ibid. 55. Jacob Mey distinguishes one sense of context—the words coming before and after a passage or utterance in question—with the term cotext, from a more comprehensive, Bakhtinian sense of context as the “cultural, political, and economic conditions” framing a text or utterance. Jacob Mey, When Voices Clash: A Study in Literary Pragmatics (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1998), 34–40. 56. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, 102. 57. “Falle it to beste or to the werste.” 5.7363. 58. Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation, 215–17. 59. “[E]t maintes choses granz et petites povons nos fere par soulement bien dire ce que covient, que ne le porons fere par force d’armes ne par autre engin” (Trésor I.4.10). 60. John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon: A Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium, trans. Daniel D. McGarry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955), III. 10. O. 190. 61. Mitchell, “Forms and Norms of Rhetorical Culture,” 573. 62. Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation, 216. 63. Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation, 217. 64. Leff, “Boethius’s De differentiis topicis, Book IV,” 15. 65. Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation, 219.

[email protected]

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From Venetia to Europe, in the Age of Reform The Oratiunculae de communione corporis Christi, Translated by Francesco Rolandello PA O L A T O M È

Abstract The short collection of eucharistical prayers that we are dealing with was translated by the erudite Francesco Rolandello from Treviso (1427–1490) between 1468 and 1476. After its first edition in Treviso (1476) the text was not reprinted in Italy. Forty more years passed before the printing of a second edition (Vienna, 1513), when, in Maximilian of Habsburg’s prereformist entourage, Rolandello’s small eucharistical anthology received new attention. After the beginning of religious conflicts, Sigismund I and Bona Sforza’s Poland became the adopted country for many German humanists and intellectuals, and here the Oratiunculae were printed seven times, between 1522 and 1555. That implies an ideological crux: in transalpine Europe the Catholic orthodoxy wanted to defend itself from the attacks of the new reformist theories, not only against the ecclesiastical hierarchy but also against the whole dogmatic complex built around the sacraments of the Holy Communion and of the reconciliation.

The short collection of eucharistical prayers that we are dealing with was translated by the erudite Francesco Rolandello from Treviso1 (1427–1490) between 1468 and 1476, when it was printed for the first time in the city on the banks of the Sile River by the master poet and Flemish origin printer Gerardo da Lisa.2 The most fruitful period of da Lisa’s activity in Treviso (1471–1476) saw the birth of a close collaboration with Rolandello in the editing of various works, a collaboration that ceased—as far as we know—in 1476. This was the last year in which Rolandello and da Lisa worked together in the city:3 the partnership Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, Number 38 (Reinhold F. Glei and Wolfgang Polleichtner, eds.), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012.

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may have lasted longer, for a brief Venetian interval, between 1477 and 1478, when da Lisa seems to have been active in the lagoon and his friend Rolandello, well-known Hellenist, was called there by the doge himself to work as a tutor of some noble Venetian children; yet there is no information about any editorial collaboration between them during that brief Venetian period.4 In 1476, which was surely the last year of their joint activity in Treviso, da Lisa printed Perotti’s Rudimenta grammatices, in whose colophon we read: “Franciscus Rholandellus poeta emendavit et Gerardus de Flandria impressit, diligentissime uterque.” It is very likely that the simultaneous release of the Oratiunculae (July 1476) and Rudimenta (1476, sine data), which was soon followed by the temporary migration of the two protagonists to Venice, suggests an ongoing publishing partnership: in July 1476, when the Oratiunculae were being printed in Treviso, Gerardo is believed to have been active as a printer in Venice, and the documents that witness the doge’s license for Rolandello’s Venetian teaching date back to November of the same year.5 It is very likely that the Venetian commission was part of this plan and that it funded not only the master’s salary, but also the schoolbooks necessary for his activity; during the months previous to their combined departure for Venice, Rolandello and da Lisa set to work by procuring all of the necessary materials, including the punches needed for the Greek type, as is shown in the extreme care with which the Rudimenta edition was made, and the first printed edition of the translation of the Oratiunculae from the same period.6 If we have to rely on the words of Rolandello written in the dedication in the version for the emperor, the short devotion collection—dedicated to Frederick III, who in 1468, on the road to Rome, crowned him poet in the Cathedral of Treviso7—was probably not translated until shortly after the auspicious happening: Ex quo sacrosancta maiestas tua, Caesar maxime, sua clementia me lauro donavit et poetam fecit, dies ac noctes animo meditatus sum quonam munere declarare possem me non immemorem esse tantae liberalitatis. Sed diu et multum mihi cogitanti venit in mentem poetae carmina elargiri convenire. Qua ex re collegi nonnulla quae amplitudini tuae dicavi. Caeterum cum considerarem eam cultui divino et religioni fidei christianae deditissimam esse, oratiunculas XV quas nuper e Graecis Latinas feci, interpretatus ex Magno Basilio et Ioanne Chrysosthomo apud Graecos ecclesiastici dogmatis principibus, tuo nomine dicare decrevi.8

At that time our humanist decided to express his gratitude to the sovereign with the most appropriate gift (according to him), that is, the dedication of some Latin lyric poems;9 however, he then added a short religious collection, which he declares that he had only recently (nuper)

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translated from Greek. Therefore, we can state that the version was completed contemporaneously, or at least shortly before the decision of the author to print it in 1476, when the dedication in the edition was probably composed as well. If so, we have to imagine that the choice of the texts to be translated and dedicated to the sovereign—notoriously a deeply religious person and particularly committed to the worship of relics—was not accidental. Since 1469—shortly after Rolandello’s coronation—the first part of Cardinal Bessarione’s legacy arrived in Venice together with the antiPalamite and unionist ideas that shaped the theological thought of the erudite prelate. These ideas were already winding through Italy at the time of the council and then spread after the fall of Constantinople (1453) and after the diet of Mantua (1459); in these ideas a prominent role was given to the meditation on the Holy Communion because it was considered the core of a unitary convergence for the theological dictates of the two churches, which were split only on the interpretation of the famous passage of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed centered on the filioque.10 Rolandello’s choice and the arranging of the texts included in the small eucharistical anthology confirm the selection of a shortlist of brief orations designed for silent meditation in accordance with the Roman ritual, and not with the Orthodox one; in Basil’s section a significant weight is dedicated to the compunctio cordis and to the repentant acknowledgement of one’s sins, which necessarily precedes the follower’s participation in the eucharistical mass.11 After the first edition of the translation—which probably coincided with the imminent departure for Venice of the author, who had to work as a bilingual teacher—the text was not reprinted in Italy. Forty more years passed before the printing of a second edition: in Maximilian of Habsburg’s pre-reformist Vienna, Rolandello’s small eucharistical anthology received new attention, almost surely because of the actions of Philip Gundel, who went on to promote the Oratiunculae’s recovery in Kraków.12 Yet how had it got here? And why had it attracted so much attention beyond the Alps? It is not possible to answer without certain information; clear and unambiguous traces of this transit are limited because of the long lapse of time between the first (and only) Trevisan printing in Italy and the later Viennese edition. The Oratiunculae text translated by Rolandello could have reached Vienna either via one of the several German students who, at that time, carried out their academic education between Padua13 and Bologna or—even more likely— due to the interest of one of the many religious or laymen who lived in Treviso (in the local monasteries or because they were working there)14

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or else through the commercial ways that linked the Venetian printing houses to the markets beyond the Alps15—or even in the bags of some German soldier hired at the time of the war of the League of Cambrai.16 Angelo Cospi, the Italian humanist who worked in the court of Maximilian I as translator of Diodorus Siculus, who was personally and intellectually linked to young Philip Gundel and, like the latter, was part of the intellectual club that included Johannes Cuspinianus, Joachim von Watt, and other humanists, was Bolognese.17 However, as we will soon see, the cause may be a larger doctrinaire reaction movement against Lutheran thought, which garnered the interest of the German Catholic intellectuals in this text.18 The comparison between the data collected in the Repertorio CortesiFiaschi and the information that can be obtained from other sources highlighted two important points: the Kraków editions of the Oratiunculae (therein called Orationes) of 1539 and 1540 were both preceded by the publication—still in Kraków—of collections of eucharistical prayers, one edited by Philip Gundel himself and the other by Jan Tucholczyk.19 In the former (1522) the orations of Basil and Chrysostom took turns with others of Symeon Metaphrastes and Paolus Monacus, all focused on the same subject (Holy Communion) that the curator gave “per Philippum Gundelium e Graeco iam primum integre translatae”;20 in the latter (1537) the prayers were added later to a sacramental-type piece of writing for catechism edited by Jan Tucholczyk.21 It seems that the two collections from 1522 and 1537 were printed by two different printers (Vietor and Ungler), the same ones who later sponsored the separate productions of the orations in contiguous years, that is, 1539 (Vietor) and 1540 (Ungler). Perhaps the 1539 edition was edited by Gundel, who was already on good terms with Vietor at the time of his stay in Vienna; in fact, in the subtitle, there is an “ad lectorem libellus per Philippum Gundelium Boium” too, followed by eight lines in Latin; by contrast, it is uncertain whether the 1540 printing was done by Jan Tucholczyk or not: in fact, the subtitle is the same as that of the 1539 edition, whereas on the title page a crucified Christ with the inscription “vivificae passionis a. 1538” is illustrated,22 an element that would place the text in a much wider editorial plan. The separate printing of the Oratiunculae in 1539 and 1540 by the same printing houses that had previously produced the collections of 1522 and 1537 implies, in any case, that the autonomous edition of the prayers was preceded in both cases by collective works in which they were included together with other texts in order to be separated later.

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Circulation of the Text and European Sociohistorical Panorama: Some Remarks The cultural atmosphere in which the new interest in Rolandello’s eucharistic anthology sprouted—translated in the wake of the antiPalamite and unionist suggestions promoted in Italy and in Veneto by Bessarione—occurred a few years before Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517; reprinted for the second time in Vienna in 1513, after this date the Oratiunculae continued to be printed in Eastern Europe (between Austria and Poland), alone or within collections, until the beginning of the second half of the sixteenth century (1555). The recovery—close in time if not in space (Vienna/Strasbourg)—of a group of eucharistic prayers translated under the aegis of Bessarione and of one of his texts, never printed before and focused on the same subject,23 implies an ideological crux: in transalpine Europe the Catholic orthodoxy wanted to defend itself from the attacks of the new reformist theories, not only against the ecclesiastical hierarchy but also against the whole dogmatic complex built around the sacraments of the Holy Communion and of the reconciliation. These were the years in which, beyond the Alps, the action of German humanists such as Johann Fabri (or Faber) and Friedrich Nausea (both bishops in Vienna after 1530) began, although they were already playing an active role in aid of orthodoxy during the previous years; in particular, Johann Fabri was extremely careful in the recovery of Greek ecclesiastical texts that he himself had copied out in a Vatican codex. Moreover, both the Venetian intervention during the war of the league of Cambrai by the “preachers” for the emperor’s court and the Protestant explosion are not to be excluded. Gaspare Contarini, elected in 1520 (i.e., just a month after the issuing of the papal brief containing Luther’s censure), was quickly raised—from being a simple layman—to the role of cardinal only because of his antireformist engagement.24 It must have been hard, for the Catholic intellectuals, to handle the popular revolt that spread like wildfire in Germany in conjunction with the “Luther affair”; they had no means of combat, because treatises and theological discussions were ineffective in the debate that had already moved from university rooms to public squares; on the contrary, they needed booklets, brief essays, proclamations, and even the simple and persuasive authority that arose from Basil and Chrysostom thought.25 The name of Philip Gundel is associated with a text of this kind, which was delivered in Vienna on Christmas Day in 1518. Sponsor, in 1522, of

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the Kraków collection printed by Vietor and of the 1539 Oratiunculae for the same printer, Philip Gundel26 successfully taught in Vienna, where he was in touch with Bolognese Angelo Bartolomeo Cospi and perhaps with other humanists and scholars whose education had taken place in northern Italy’s universities; this can be deduced from the preface to the Oratio de sacratissima divinitatis incarnatione, uttered on Christmas Day in 1518 in Vienna and printed by Johannes Singrenius at his own expense.27 The prayer is dedicated to a Bavarian clergyman, a countryman of Gundel’s, “Reverendo in Christo patri et domino Bolfgango de Tannberg iuris doctori Decanoque et Canonico ecclesiae Pataviensis28 dignissimo Patrono et Moecenati suo unico.” In the dedication letter, Gundel mentions the intellectual fellowship that he had made with various intellectuals like Johannes Cuspinianus, Conrad Celtis, Angelo Cospi, and Joachim von Watt, and he implies the existence of a strong community of spirit and shared interests that included engagement in the defense of orthodoxy, apart from the choices then made by some.29 I am inclined to believe that Gundel himself was the intermediary of the circulation, once in Vienna and then in Kraków, of Rolandello’s translations; evidence to this statement is given by the 1513 Viennese edition of the anthology, which, although not signed by Gundel, clearly emerges from the same context as the Oratio de sacratissima divinitatis incarnatione; the names of Hieronymus Vietor and Johannes Singrenius—both printers related to Gundel—are in fact linked; the former was the first printer in Kraków, in 1522 and in 1539, of our brief eucharistic collection. The latter was editor, at his expense, of the Christmas prayer which had already been uttered by the erudite on Christmas Day in 1518. After the death of Maximilian I in 1519 and after the beginning of the season of religious conflicts with the excommunication of Luther (1520), Sigismund I and Bona Sforza’s30 Poland became the adopted country for many German humanists and intellectuals, among whom was Gundel, who, in 1522, printed again the Oratiunculae in a collection still dedicated to the Holy Communion. In 1537, the jurist Joannes Cervus de Tuchola (Jan Jelonek Tucholczyk 1550–ca. 1557),31 professor at Kraków Academy, published in turn the saint Fathers Basil and Chrysostom’s Methodus sacramentorum sanctae ecclesiae catholicae—plus quaedam orationes de communione eucharistiae—and Andreas de Escobar’s De modus confitendi at the Unglerian press. The informative purpose of the collection seems obvious; it wanted to set out the dogmatic principles that established the two sacraments that had been brought into question by the Protestant wave, that is, the sacraments of the Holy Communion and of the reconciliation, both active for the sacerdotal intermediary.

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According to the author, at least two other relevant works—written at that time in Europe and whose massive circulation could be correlated (because of either its subject or contents) to that of the Oratiunculae— must be taken into account. It must be remembered that these texts are mostly connected to Chrysostom and Basil’s liturgy. Even the two works that we will soon touch on confirm, among the others, the interest around Basil and Chrysostom’s eucharistical meditation at the turn of the sixteenth century, with outcomes partially far from the aim that was originally designed by the two Eastern church fathers). The first is the collection that contains Nicolai Cabasilae, De diuino altaris sacrificio: Maximi, de mystagogia, hoc est, de introductione ad Sacra Ecclesiae mysteria, seu sacramenta: Diui Chrysostomi et diui Basilij sacrificij, seu missae ritus, ex sacerdotali Graeco, translated by Gentian Hervet32 and printed in Venice in 1548 with the decennial, combined privileges both of the supreme pontiff and of the Venetian Senate. The work, which made the text of Chrysostom and Basil’s Admonitio ad lectorem available for the first time together with its Latin translation, had a great success in Europe and was printed up to the seventeenth century, by which time other more recent editions of these texts were circulating.33 In the conclusion of the Admonitio ad lectorem, premise of the collection, Hervet clearly states which doctrinal preoccupation is implied in its translation effort: Haec visum est admonere, ne quis existimaret Graecorum sensum, quod ad corporis et sanguinis Domini confectionem attinet, a Latinorum sententia, hoc est ab Ecclesiae veritate, dissidere. Caetera autem quae sunt in hoc libello, sunt eiusmodi, ut nihil magis pium, nec magis christianum dici aut fingi possit. Ea itaque studiose lector fac legas, et aequi boni (sic) consulas, et si quid spiritalis commodi ex eis percipias, Deo omnis boni authori et datori age gratias. Vale et fruere.

We have to imagine that this was the spirit that gave life to the various editorial recoveries of Chrysostom and Basil’s anthology edited by Rolandello, which, until 1546–1548, was one of the most popular available translations beyond the Alps of pieces of the Greek Orthodox divine liturgy focused on the sacramental subject of the eucharistic mystery. The second text, which will be briefly mentioned in the post note, is Malleus Calvinistarum, a short work composed along the lines of Chrysostom’s speculation in order to confute the Calvinist heresy on the eucharistic theme;34 it could be objected that it has no connection with the Oratiunculae and that it dates from many years later, in a geographical area far away from the Venetian hinterland, and finally that the antireformist literature produced many other mallei. This could be true, yet the reception of Rolandello’s translation was heavily influenced by a precise cultural background, both in Vienna and Kraków, imbued

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with a unique budding doctrinal concern. In 1590, when Malleus Calvinistarum got back the theological contents of Chrysostom’s meditation on the Holy Communion in an anti-Calvinist function, the season of the religious conflicts had already come to an end, and a quick glance reveals the fate of our brief collection—focused on the same subject, although in a different form. Various and painful experiences had affected Latin Europe, so that Francesco Rolandello, following in Bessarione’s footsteps, tried to appeal for a possible spiritual communion between the two worlds (Orthodox Greek–Catholic Latin) so distant, yet close, through the centrality of the eucharistic experience. Rolandello’s anthology—a felicitous expression of a time still hopeful for a resolution of the first quarrel that had halved Christianity—crossed the stormy sea of the Reformation delivering its message of undamaged brotherhood and peace, but was destined to drown miserably during the next quarrel between the opposing reformist and antireformist doctrines. The long-standing desire for a spiritual and cultural unity, intended to be embodied in the circulation of the eucharistic thought of Basil and Chrysostom, turned out to be inexorably transformed—in less than a century—into a resounding charge against the cruelty and the ignorance of a new and growing heresy.

Appendix The stages of the circulation of the Oratiunculae are summed up in the following specimen; I remark only the independent editions, each correlated with the specific observations:35 The translation was edited by Rolandello himself, and there are only two existing copies of this edition (edition 1), kept in the Museo Correr’s Library (Inc. L25)36 and in the Washington, D.C., Folger Shake-

Table 1. Edition 1

Book 1.indb 66

Title

Printed in

Date

Printer

Oratiunculae de communione corporis domini Jesu Christi e magno Basilio et Joanne Chrysostomo traductae a Francisco Rholandello Tarvisiensi poeta ad Fridericum Tertium Imperatorem pientissimum et invictissimum foeliciter incipiunt.

Treviso

27th July 1476

Gerardo da Lisa

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67

From Venetia to Europe, in the Age of Reform Table 2. Edition 2 Title

Printed in

Date

Printer

Orationes quaedam devotissime Basilii Magni et Ioannis Chrysostomi de communione eucharistiae a Francisco Rholandello Tarvisiensi e Graeco translatae In Cortesi-Fiaschi the edition dates back to no. 1.

Vienna

18th May 1513

Hieronymus Vietor and Johannes Singrenium

speare Library. The Museo Correr’s copy comes from the Cicogna Fund, as attested by the typical scroll and by the handwritten notes of Emanuele Cicogna.37 Free from a title page and then subject to a new trim of the margins, the copy begins straight out with the incipit of the dedication letter of the translation for Frederick III.38 Fedwick (on p. 1287) considers edition 2 as being the first printed edition of the small anthology, registered even in the Index Aureliensis (IA 114.423); the scholar supposes that the following printings come from it (1539, 1540, 1555), whereas Cortesi and Fiaschi (p. 373 no. 2) link them all (this one too) to the Trevisian princeps; the authors studied the Viennese editions as well, unmistakably confirming its dependence on Trevigian princeps. In terms of the contents, according to Fedwick the type of Basil’s prayers there included is not clear, whereas—as far as I know—there has never been any spotting of Chrysostom’s section. My study of the collection is now in progress; according to the results, I can just tell in advance that at least one of Basil’s orations comes from the divine liturgy of Basil the Great; on the contrary, most of Chrysostom’s section is confirmed in the divine liturgy of John Chrysostom.39 The existing copies so far indicated by the Index Aureliensis are four (Harvard University Library, Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in Munich, Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, and National Library in Vienna).40 Fedwick indicates that edition 3 is the reprint of the Viennese edition of 1513, distributed for the types of Victor himself and of Singrenius.

Table 3. Edition 3

Book 1.indb 67

Title

Printed in

Date

Printer

Same title as no. 2. In Cortesi and Fiaschi the edition dates back to no. 1.

Kraków

1539

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Table 4. Edition 4 Title

Printed in

Date

Printer

Same title as no. 2. In Cortesi and Fiaschi the edition dates back to no. 1.

Kraków

1540

Typ. Ungleriana

However, in this case there is an adjunct to the subtitle, which says “ad lectorem libellus per Philippum Gundelium Boium,” whose reference to the scholar is rather toward the collection of eucharistical prayers edited by Gundel himself in Kraków in 1522 (whereas the date indicated in the catalogs is 1528, see below). Information about this printed edition can be also found in IA 114.483 and in Estreiker, Bibliografia Polska, vol. 12, 401. The only copy mentioned by Index Aureliensis is kept at Ksia˛z·a˛t Czartoryskich Library in Kraków.41 In the subtitle edition 4 includes the same pamphlet of the previous one. Fedwick’s information follows that of IA 114.487 and of Estreiker, vol. 12, 401, especially with regard to the printing—in the back of the title page—of a crucified Christ with the inscription “Vivificae passionis a. 1538” that we will return to soon. The printed edition is also mentioned in the Catalogus librorum polonicorum, vol. 1, 76–77, no. 148, whereas in IA only the Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolin´skich’s copy in Wrocław Library is indicated. Fedwick regards edition 5 as a reprint of the 1513 edition differing from the one that we have numbered as the sixth, whereas Cortesi and Fiaschi consider it as a single printing, with a total record of five autonomous emissions of the work. The edition is distinctly reported in Index Aureliensis (IA 114.518) as well, which mentions only two existing copies, one of which is now under digitization at the Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in Munich. Edition 6 is not included in Cortesi and Fiaschi’s Repertorio and it is sub iudice whether it actually differs from the one that we here numbered as no. 5. According to Fedwick, both the title and, theoretically, the number of pages would change: here it is sixty-two, whereas in the previous edition it is sixty-four. As we have already said, even Index AuTable 5. Edition 5

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Title

Printed in

Date

Printer

Same title as no. 2. In Cortesi and Fiaschi the edition dates back to no. 1.

Kraków

1555

Hieronymus Scharfemberger

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69

From Venetia to Europe, in the Age of Reform Table 6. Edition 6 Title

Printed in

Date

Printer

Oratiunculae XV ex Magno Basilio et Ioanne Crisostomo in Latinum ex Graeco versae a Francisco Rholandello Tarvisiensi poeta atque Friderico Tertio imperatori adscriptae.

Kraków

1555

Hieronymus Scharfemberger

reliensis records two different emissions for this edition (IA 114.518 and IA 114.519), with different titles and numbers of pages. On the contrary, Estreiker, Bibliografia Polska, vol. 12, 401, only reports the version corresponding to IA 114.519 (here with no. 6), clarifying that the title in the catalog edited by Jocher is different.42 The only existing copy of this further printing mentioned by Index Aureliensis is conserved at the Zakład Narodowy im. Ossoliη´skich-Wroclaw Library, whereas another one—which in the past belonged to Krasinski Library in Kraków—was detroyed during the Second World War. The cataloging exam and the investigation of the copy kept at Ossolin´skich Library allowed confirmation that it had no title page, justifying the variation of the incipit, which straight reports the opening of the dedication letter of the edition for Frederick III; on the other hand, the foliation would correspond to that of the copy that we refer to here as no. 5.43 The collected data prompt us to agree again with the choice made by Cortesi and Fiaschi’s Repertorio: the total independent printings of the Oratiunculae have probably been five—if not six—as reported in Index Aureliensis and consequently by Fedwick. My guess is that the adjunct was justified by the fact that Estreiker—although mentioning in 1891 the existence of two copies of a printed edition of the work that dated back to 1555—studied only the one conserved at Ossoliη´skich Library, indicating the mismatch with the title registered by Joker. The difference in the number of papers is again justified by Estreiker’s information: thirty-one papers, instead of thirty-two (therefore sixty-two pages instead of sixty-four, as it had been then reported in IA 114.519).

Notes 1. This consists of about fifteen orations attributable to John Chrysostom and partly to Basil the Great. Information about Rolandello can be mainly found in S. Mazzoni, “Francesco Rolandello imitatore di Dante,” in Studi offerti da Gianfranco Contini dagli allievi Pisani (Florence: Le lettere, 1984), 161–70, and in its review by A. Contò, Studi Trevisani 2 (1985): 158–59; several notes about him are found in A. Serena, La cultura umanistica a Treviso nel secolo XV (Venice: Deputazione di Storia Patria, 1912), 82–126: on pp. 82–83 Bartolomeo

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Spiera and Ognibene Leoniceno are considered his masters of Latin and Greek, while on p. 84, Rolandello’s family tree is given. Rich in documents is D. M. Federici, Memorie Trivigiane sulla tipografia del XV secolo (Venice: Francesco Andreola, 1805), 106–16. Rolandello was probably born in Treviso in 1427 and spent his whole life there working as a grammarian (Serena, La cultura umanistica, 109, includes among his students five nephews of Bologni— among whom is Gerolamo—and Lodovico Pontico, Giovanni Bomben, Lodovico Strazzaroli, Marcello Filoxeno, Urbano Bolzanio and Francesco Colonna), as a poet and, in conjunction with Gerardo da Lisa, as an editor. According to the podestà (and then doge) Giovanni Mocenigo, Rolandello was crowned poet by Frederick III in 1468 in Treviso. Rolandello dedicated to the same emperor various Latin poems and his translation from Greek of the Orationes in corpore Christi taken from Basil and Chrysostom. He was offered several jobs but accepted only a few: in 1481 the City of Padua offered him the city chancellorship, and in 1483 Doge Giovanni Mocenigo offered him the chancellorship of Brescia, alongside Captain Leonardo Loredan; Rolandello accepted the former office for a short period of time (1481–1482), but he politely declined the latter. He in fact dedicated all of his intellectual and moral energies to his city, shown by his efforts as chancellor of Treviso during a dire pestilence in 1475. He died in 1490, at the age of sixty-three. Some hypotheses about the dating of the translation of the Oratiunculae can be found below; for more detailed information see Tomè, “Le latinizzazioni dal greco a Treviso sullo scorcio del secolo decimoquinto: Tra memoria manoscritta e novità della stampa,” in Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti—Classe di scienze morali, lettere ed arti 169 (2010–2011): 143–249, esp. 207–9 and 241–42. 2. Thirty-one Trevisan editions have been ascribed to Gerardo da Lisa. These were printed between 1471 and 1494, the period of time in which the printer worked also in Venice and Friuli. The years of da Lisa’s greatest productivity in Treviso were between 1471 and 1476, whereas the Venetian interval of his production seems to have taken place between 1477 and 1478: for a bibliography about him up to the 1480s see D. E. Rhodes, La stampa a Treviso nel secolo XV (Treviso: Biblioteca Comunale di Treviso, 1983), 7 and 25–34, with a list of the editions ascribed to him. I point to one of the most recent contributions (among the various) made by Agostino Contò on the origins of the printing press in Treviso: A. Contò, “La nascita dell’attività tipografica a Treviso,” in Greci e Veneti: Sulle tracce di una vicenda comune. Convegno Internazionale—Treviso 6 ottobre 2006, eds. C. De Vecchi and A. Furlanetto (Treviso: Fondazione Cassamarca, 2008), 81–95, esp. 82–86 for da Lisa and 91–95 for the list of the incunabula printed in Treviso, with detailed observations and bibliography. 3. In the same year (1476) two other printings are ascribed to da Lisa, one certain (Perotti’s Rudimenta grammatices: GW M31249 and ISTC ip00307000; Rhodes, La stampa a Treviso, 22) and one thought to belong to the next, Venetian period of his activity. The latter is Concilium Basileiense, Rubricae pro officio divino celebrando 16 Januarii 1435 publicatae, the oeuvre probably edited in Venice before 6 May 1478; it is registered in ISTC ic00799550 and in GW 7286. The twenty-first section of the council has in fact been dedicated to the De officio divino celebrando, yet according to the reading of the council’s text—now at disposal online in the text established by the Papal Magister (cf. www.totustuustools.net/concili/)—it dates back to 9 June 1435. The Venetian printed edition contains a preliminary note by Johannes Siculus and a letter to the printer. The texts printed by Gerardo da Lisa in Venice during the period of time in which he worked there are probably no more than three. Apart from the already mentioned Rubricae concerning the council meeting

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pro officio divino celebrando we can include: Andrea da Barberino, Guerino il Meschino, 22 November 1477 (ISTC ia00575200; GW 1645); Anonymous (ascribed to Bartolo from Sassoferrato), Processus Satanae contra genus humanum sive tractatus procuratoris editus sub nomine diaboli, 14 February 1478 (ISTC ip01003000; GW M35563). 4. Rolandello was called to Venice by Doge Andrea Vendramin to work as tutor to Leonardo Loredan and other Venetian noble children; the permission to teach in Venice can be found in a letter written by the doge which dates back to 14 November 1476 (cf. Serena, La cultura umanistica, 339). Once he (unwillingly) accepted the job, Rolandello—who was hired as a teacher at the city’s expense for the public school in 1456—stayed in Venice for only one year, between 1477 and 1478. The relationship with the Loredan family certainly began in 1475 for another reason: during that year, when he was chancellor of Treviso and acting as regent, he replaced the podestà Lorenzo Loredan, who had fled toward Spineda together with all his aldermen because of the plague (cf. Federici, Memorie Trivigiane, 114, and Contò, “La nascita dell’attività tipografica,” 83). Yet his fame as a poet had already spread in Venice after the coronation in 1468, whereas his expertise in the Greek language is attested to in various coeval documents: the letter written by the podestà of Treviso to the doge of Venice on 19 August 1471 (Biblioteca Comunale di Treviso, ms. 957, vol. 10, 344) where he is described as “eloquentissimum virum graece et latine doctissimum, poetam laureatum”; the hexastich written by his nephew Gerolamo when he died and inscribed on the grave in San Francesco (Treviso): “Vera loquor, quamvis frater genitricis et aevo / grammatica a viridi struxerit arte rudem. / Munera Romanae praeter rarissima linguae / graeca viro nota est, ut sua cuique domo”; moreover, ms. 58 of Treviso City Library, vol. 1, c. 28, which reports the following note: “quia tunc Rhetoricam et Graecam linguam Venetiis pulchre profitebatur Franciscus Rholandellus.” Rolandello’s Greek writing is found in at least two well-known codices: Par. gr. 1993, fully copied by the humanist, and codex 3 of the Episcopal seminary library in Padua: it is noted by S. Bernardinello, Autografi greci e greco-latini in Occidente (Padova: Cedam, 1979), 1 n. 3, 20, 59 (plate 3), and also by P. Eleuteri and P. Canart, Scrittura greca nell’Umanesimo Italiano (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1991), 19, 166, 171, and plate lxx. The Par. gr. 1993 had belonged to De Mesmes library, as recently noticed by D. F. Jackson, “Greek Manuscripts of the De Mesmes Family,” Scriptorium 63 (2009): 89–121. With regard to codex 3 of the Episcopal seminary library in Padua see A. Donello et al., eds., I Manoscritti della Biblioteca del Seminario Vescovile di Padova (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1998 [Biblioteche e Archivi 2, Manoscritti medievali del Veneto 1]), 4 and plate iii. The manuscript, which is supposed to have been written by Francesco Rolandello, contains the Liber de temporibus by Matteo Palmieri; on paper 55v. there is the inscription “XVI° kalendis september anno salutis MCCCCLXVII Tarvisii ø. P. manu sua escripsit,” whereas on paper 1r. there is the monogram with the same twisted Greek letters and on paper 1v. the note “V° idus martias. Anno Salutis MCCCCLXVIII.” Written in 1467 in Treviso, it belonged to the (at that time) podestà, Giovanni Mocenigo, and Rolandello had probably copied it as his ghostwriter; after becoming doge (1478–1485), Mocenigo confirmed his high regard for the humanist by offering him the chancellorship of Brescia in 1483, a position that Rolandello refused (see above). Especially Par. gr. 1993 traces back to quite specific interests: the text copied by the humanist is Geoponica, a collection of texts about farming that has become scholarly material

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5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

Book 1.indb 72

Medievalia et Humanistica in the Byzantine scholastic practice, but which in Italy has had a respectable circulation, especially from the early decades of sixteenth century and, as far as we know, not in scholarly circles. For further information see the now dated contributions by W. Gemoll, Untersuchungen über die Quellen, der Verfasser und die Abfassungszeit der Geoponica (Berlin: S. Calvary & Com, 1883); E. Oder, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Landwirthschaft bei den Griechen, I,” Rheinisches Museum 45 (1890): 58–98, 202–22; E. Oder, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Landwirthschaft bei den Griechen, III, ” Rheinisches Museum 48 (1893): 1–40; and by E. Fehrle, Richtlinien zur Textgestaltung der griechischen Geoponica (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1920). More recent are J. L. Teall, “The Byzantine agricultural tradition,” Dumbarton Oaks papers 25 (1971): 35–59; John A. C. Greppin, “The Armenian and the Greek Geoponica,” Byzantion 57 (1987): 46–55; and the contribution of E. Amato, “Costantino Porfirogenito ha realmente contribuito alla redazione dei Geoponica?” Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft 9 (2006): 1–6. Concerning this, see Contò, “La nascita dell’attività tipografica,” 84. In a document of 17 July 1477 Gerardo da Lisa “stampator librorum” is called “alias habitator in Tarvisio et adpresens in Venetiis.” See also Tomè, “Le latinizzazioni dal greco,” 145–56 and 228. The visit of the emperor was recorded with great care by local chroniclers because of the details and the pomposity of the ceremony: G. Bonifaccio, Istoria di Trivigi (Venice: G. B. Albrizzi, 1744, [repr. Bologna, A. Forni, 1973]), 476; Serena, La cultura umanistica, 83, with some errors: the emperor did not go there to meet his bride-to-be, Eleanor, whom he had already married in 1452. See also J. L. Flood, Poets Laureate in the Holy Roman Empire: A Biobibliographical Handbook, vol. 1 (New York: W. de Gruyter, 2006), lxxvi. The whole transcription of the dedication is in Tomè, “Le latinizzazioni dal Greco,” 241–42. The event of the coronation is repeatedly celebrated by the humanist in his Latin poems, kept in various mss. of the Treviso City Library and edited in A. Marchesan, Notizie e versi scelti di Francesco Rolandello poeta trevigiano del sec. XV (Treviso: Premiato stabilimento tipografico Turazza, 1894). The electronic format of the text is available in Poeti d’Italia in Lingua latina (http://mqdq .cab.unipd.it/mqdq/poetiditalia/) in the version established by F. Cola from which we find that they are poems no. 1 (Ad Federicum tertium imperatorem, cum ab eo laurea donaretur, intra horam composuit) and no. 3 (Ad Federicum tertium imperatorem cum rediit). One of the earliest (if not the first) editions of Bessarione’s writing focused on the same subject—the Oratio de sacramento eucharistiae, for which cf. below note 12 and appendix—appeared the same year in which the new edition of the Oratiunculae reappeared in Vienna (1513). See also the edition Divi Ioannis Chrysostomi in omnes epistolas Pauli, Veronae, per Stephanum et fratres a Sabio, 1529, EDIT 16 CNCE 32946 (http://edit16.iccu.sbn.it/scripts/ iccu_ext.dll?fn=10&i=32946 accessed 13 May 2012) which was put together on Bessarione’s manuscripts and prompted Erasmus’s attention. This was one of the editions patronized by Bishop John Mattew Giberti of Verona in the age of reform; the printer, Stephan from Sabio, formerly worked in Venice: see E. Follieri, “Il libro greco per i Greci nelle imprese editoriali romane e veneziane della prima metà del Cinquecento,” in Venezia centro di mediazione tra Oriente e Occidente (secoli XV–XVI). Aspetti e problemi, vol. 2, ed. H. G. Beck, M. Manoussacas, and A. Pertusi (Florence: Olschki, 1977), 483–508, 503–6. The presence of Greek intellectuals in Venice at that time

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11.

12.

13.

14.

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is well summarized in G. Cantoni, “Eredità degli antichi e traduzione dei moderni. Intellettuali greci nell’età dei lumi tra Ellade e Occidente,” in La nascita del concetto moderno di traduzione: Le nazioni europee fra enciclopedismo e epoca romantica, ed. G. Catalano and F. Scotto (Milan: Armando, 2001), 200–213, esp. 200–203 (with bibliography). The topic was in fact retrieved and developed in one of the collections in which the Oratiunculae will be again edited in Kraków in 1537 by Cervus Tucholiensis, for which cf. again below, note 12 and the appendix. The insistence on both the contrition and the charge of sin that have to precede the participation to the Holy Communion is the prerogative to many of the Oratiunculae included in Basil’s section: they look like prayers of katanyxis. After 1476, chronologically close to Bessarione’s death, the Oratiunculae reappear in a printed edition forty years later, first in Vienna (1513) and then in Kraków with either three or four close printings (1539, 1540, 1555, the latter—it has been supposed—with two different printings). The circulation in Europe of this text followed the stages that we will sum up in the appendix to help with the reading of the text. The files in M. Cortesi and S. Fiaschi, Repertorio delle traduzioni umanistiche a stampa (secoli XV–XVI), vol. 2 (Florence: SISMEL edizioni del Galluzzo, 2008), 372–73 and 764–65 have focused on the editio princeps of the small anthology in Treviso, philologically reconstructing the physiognomy and collocation of the few existing copies of this very rare text; in addition to the examples mentioned there (registered until 2007). I note a copy of the Kraków edition of the Oratiunculae that dates back to 1555 is now kept at Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in Munich and its digitization is now in progress (Orationes Quaedam Devotissime Basilii Magni et Chrisostomi de communione Eucharistiae, Cracoviae 1555, signature Asc. 3565d). Other cataloging instruments for the reconstruction of the printed tradition of the oeuvre that are mentioned in this study are J. Fedwick, Bibliotheca Basiliana Universalis, vol. 4/3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 1287–93; Index Aureliensis: Catalogus librorum sedecimo saeculo impressorum, vol. 1/3 (Aureliae Aquensis [Baden-Baden]: V. Koerner, 1968) (hereafter IA); K. Estreiker, Bibliografia Polska, vols. 12 and 14 (Kraków: Druk. Uniw. Jagiellonskiego, 1891 and 1896); M. Malicki and E. Zwinogrodzka, eds., Catalogus librorum polonicorum saeculi XVI qui in Bibliotheca Iagellonica asservantur, vols. 1–3 (Warsaw-Kraków: Druk. Uniw. Jagiellonskiego, 1992–1995). The information given in the cataloging instruments that have been mentioned are sometimes dissimilar and contradictory, which we will try to clarify using Cortesi and Fiaschi’s Repertorio. See E. Martellozzo Forin, ed., Acta graduum academicorum Gymnasii Patavini, ab anno 1501 ad annum 1550: Index nominum cum aliis actibus praemissis (Padua: Antenore, 1982), s.v. Alamannus; also Martellozzo Forin, ed., Acta graduum academicorum Gymnasii Patavini: ab anno 1471 ad annum 1500, vols. 3–6 (Rome: Antenore, 2001), whose indices I refer to and have been recently reedited. There are many names of graduates at the University of Padua of German origin between 1471 and 1550, and many of them— thanks to the geographical closeness—are of Bavarian origin. Cf. L. Pesce, La chiesa di Treviso nel primo Quattrocento, vol. 1 (Rome: Herder 1987), 467 and 489, and L. Pesce, Ludovico Barbo vescovo di Treviso, vol. 1 (Padia: Antenore 1969), 317 and 319–21. The German community in Treviso was very large and some “scholae teutonicae” directed by the religious countrymen who dwelt at St. Francesco and St. Nicolò communities were active. In the fifteenth century German, Schiavone, and even Polish brothers lived in the communities of the Lateran Canonics at sanctuaries of Quaranta

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15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

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Medievalia et Humanistica Martiri, of the Hermits at Santa Maddalena, and of the Served at Santa Caterina. Mss. 5-A-30/1 and 5-A-30/2 are now kept at the Episcopal seminary library in Treviso: it consists of an Anabaptist catechism that dates back to 1557 and whose title says “In questo libro si è traduto la oration dei puti de Todescho in Taliano” and of a second Anabaptist catechism titled “Timor de iddio.” About the editorial exchanges between Veneto and Germany of that time see M. Cortesi, “Incunaboli veneziani in Germania nel 1471,” in Vestigia: Studi in onore di Giuseppe Billanovich, ed. R. Avesani et al. (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1984), 197–219. As an example, the names of some of the German printers who worked in Treviso at the end of the fifteenth century are: Johannes de Hassia, Hermann Liechtenstein, Bernardo from Colonia, about which cf. Rhodes, La stampa a Treviso, passim. With regard to the presence of various German copyists and printers in loco cf. A. Contò, “La nascita dell’attività tipografica,” 81–95: 82–85 for da Lisa and 85–86 for other characters whose actions are attested to in several documents. For information about the devastating effects of the War of the League of Cambrai in the Trevisan area, cf. A. A. Michieli, Storia di Treviso, 3rd ed. (Treviso: S.I.T., 1988), 183–84; E. Brunetta, “Treviso in età moderna: I percorsi di una crisi,” in Storia di Treviso: L’età moderna, vol. 3 (Venice: Marsilio 1992), 45–57. A significant cross-section of the texture of relations during the years of this cultural club appears in the letter and in the various prefacer poems in the edition of Johannes Cuspinianus, Panegyrici variorum auctorum et declamationes nonnullae perquam eruditae, hactenus non impressae, Vienna Pannoniae 1513 (VD 16 C 6491), released in Vienna on the ides of March in 1513 at Metzgker, edited by Johannes and George Cuspinianus, and in that of Philippi Gundeli, Oratio de sacratissima Divinitatis incarnatione, published in Vienna on 25 December 1518. In the several prefacer documents to the Panegyrici’s edition the name of Gundel recurs many times, both in the dedication letter written by George Cuspinianus and as author of two attached poems (the first, in elegiac couplets, is put in the subtitle to present the whole volume). For the preface to Oratio de sacratissima Divinitatis incarnatione cf. above. See here the section entitled “Circulation of the Text and European Sociohistorical Panorama: Some Remarks.” These editions are not included in the Cortesi and Fiaschi Repertorio because the Oratiunculae are here comprised in miscellaneous collections not specifically dedicated to the edition with Latinizations from Greek: cf. editorial criteria displayed in Cortesi and Fiaschi, vol. 1, xxxi. Fedwick, Bibliotheca Basiliana, vol. 4/3, 1288, mentions a collection of prayers “in divini corporis communione” edited in Kraków in 1522 and he comments: “Unspecified prayers by Basil tipe **Prayers i. See Rholandellus 1539.” However, the same collection turns out to be edited in 1528 both in IA 114.452 and in Estreiker, Bibliografia Polska, vol. 12, 400. The only model indicated by Index Aureliensis is kept at Biblioteka Ksia˛z· a˛t Czartoryskich in Kraków, whose online catalog dates back to 1522 (http://bazy.wbkrakow.pl /cgi-bin/makwww3/makwww.exe). I thank Elz·bieta Zaja˛c for kindly making the investigation on my behalf. Fedwick, Bibliotheca Basiliana, vol. 4/3, 1289 calls to mind an edition by Jan Tucholczyk (Ioannes Cervus Tucholiensis 1500 ca 1557) called “Methodus sacramentorum sanctae ecclesiae catholicae: Adiectae sunt quaedam orationes ss. patrum Basilii Magni et Ioannis Chrisostomi [sic] de communione

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22.

23.

24.

25. 26.

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eucharistiae,” printed “ex officina Ungleriana.” According to Fedwick these are Basil’s prayers of the type translated by Rolandello as well; the text is dedicated to “Paulo Thario de Szczekarzowicze, iudici.” Therefore, the Methodus would be a kind of catechetical text at whose end the Oratiunculae are—all or partially—attached. This rare edition was instead supposed to contain—apart from the text of the Methodus and the Oratiunculae translated by Rolandello—the Modus confitendi of the Spanish Andreas de Escobar and chapter 9 of the book of Proverbi (or part of it) too, as shown in Estreiker, Bibliografia Polska, vol. 14, 130. In 1537 a text ascribed to Jan Leopolita (i.e., that John from Lamberg who was then author of the first Polish vernacular edition of Vulgata di St. Gerolamo) came out from the same Ungler’s printing house whose name is in fact Vivificae passionis Christi historica explanatio; two contiguous prints of the same text came out one after the other from the same editor, in 1537 and 1538, cf. J. G. T. Graesse, Trésor de livres rares et précieux, vol. 4 (Dresden: Kuntz, 1863 [repr. Milan: Libreria Malavasi, 1993]), 168. Perhaps the concomitant reprints at the same typography of both the Vivificae passionis Christi historica explanatio and of Basil and Chrysostom’s Orationes de communione eucharistiae translated by Rolandello were part of the same editorial plan toward the promotion of the Catholic orthodoxy in a period that, in relation to the doctrinal point of view, was very tricky; this could justify the printing of the above-mentioned and homographic logo. It is Bessarionis Cardinali Nicenis et Patriarchae Costantinopolitani, Oratio de sacramento eucharistiae, et quibus Verbis Christi Corpus conficiatur, Argentorati, Mattia Schürer, 13 December 1513 (VD16 B 2256), also called De Sancto Eucharistiae Mysterio, et quod per Verba Domini maxime fiat Consecratio, contra Marcum Ephesium. Printed in Strasburg in 1513, and resumed in 1527 in Nuremberg by Johann Petreio (VD 16 ZV 1382). I would point out that Bessarione’s oration is included in ms. Vat. Lat. 4037 ai ff. 52v.–69r too. With regard to this, see the summary included in E. Iserloh, J. Glazik, and H. Jedin, “Riforma e Controriforma: Crisi, consolidamento, diffusione missionaria XVI–XVIII secolo,” in Storia della Chiesa, vol. 6 (Milan: Jaca Book, 2001), 229–50 (Italian translation of E. Iserloh, J. Glazik, and H. Jedin, “Reformation Katolische Reform und Gegenreformation,” in Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte, vol. 4, ed. Hubert Jedin [Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder 1972]). See also B. Mondin, Storia della teologia: Epoca moderna, vol. 3 (Bologna: ESD, 1996), 223–39; concerning in particular Johann Fabri and Gaspare Contarini, 229 and 234–35; in addition, G. Mercati, “Scritti ecclesiatici greci copiati da Giovanni Fabri nella Vaticana,” in B. Mondin, Opere Minori, vol. 4 (1917–1936) (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1937 [vol. 79 Studi e Testi]), 110–130. Venetian orators at the court of Maximilian I at the time of the conflict with Venice were, for instance, Francesco Foscari and Vincenzo Querini; Gaspare Contarini was elected in September 1520, a month after having read, at the college, the brief that the pope used to condemn Luther’s works; on 21 May 1535 Pope Paul III would ordain him cardinal. This means that during these years there were contacts between Germany and Venetian circles for reasons of war and state, in addition to those of culture and religion. Mondin, Storia della teologia, 224. About Philip Gundel from Passau (1493–1567) cf. J. Aschbach, Geschichte der Wiener Universität, Die Wiener Universität und ihre Humanisten: Im Zeitalter Kaiser Maximilians I, vol. 2 (Vienna: Verlag der K.K. Universität, 1877),

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319–26; in particular, with regard to the Kraków’s humanistic club which included German Philip Gundel and Jan Cusanus, cf. I. Kaniewska, “L’Università di Cracovia,” in Le università dell’Europa. Dal Rinascimento alla Riforma religiosa, vol. 2, ed. G. Brizzi, J. Vèrger, and M. L. Accorsi (Milan: RAS, 1991), 57–73, esp. 62. 27. The correct title written on the title page is: “De sacratissima divinitatis incarnatione Philippi Gundelii Patavien[sis] humaniores literas in Gymnasio Viennen[sis] ex Caesarea munifice[n]tia publice p[ro]fitentis Oratio, i[n] celebri cleri ac eruditoru[m] frequentia ipso die Christiani Natalis initio Anni M.D.XIX. habita Viennae” (VD16 G 4118). On the contrary, on the imprint of the edition the writing says: “Excudit Viennae Ioannes Syngrenius impensis suis, nono calendas Ianuarias, in fine anni 1518.” It seems that the edition was actually published on 25 December 1518, the same day on which Gundel uttered his oration. Further information on Gundel’s role in the coeval Viennese cultural club is above in this study. 28. Therefore, Tannberg was dean and canon at the Church of Passau, a Bavarian city from which Philip Gundel came too. 29. With regard to both all these names and the Viennese panorama coeval to Maximilian I (d. 1519) era, cf. Aschbach, Geschichte der Wiener Universität, 278–83 (Cospi); 284–309 (Cuspinianus); 319–26 (Gundel); 391–409 (Joachim von Watt); in addition, C. Bonorand, “Die Bedeutung der Universität Wien für Humanismus: Reformation, insbesondere in der Ostschweiz,” Zwingliana 12 (1964–1968): 162–80, esp. 168 et seq. An overview of the cultural context, in the Italian language, is in L. Bohem, “Le Università tedesche nell’Età della Riforma Umanistica, della Riforma Protestante e del Confessionalismo,” in Brizzi, Vèrger, and Accorsi, Le università dell’Europa, 171–95, esp. 173–80. Johannes Cuspinianus was the historian and orator at the court of Maximilian I and Corrado Celtis was the first poet crowned in Germany in 1487, then followed by many others. Angelo Cospi, Bolognese, was legate for Julius II in Vienna, senator under Leone X, and translator of Diodorus Siculus; he became personal secretary of Maximilian I and was even professor at the Viennese Academy until his death, in 1516. About him, cf. G. Fantuzzi, Notizie di scrittori Bolognesi, vol. 3 (Bologna: Stamperia di S. Tommaso d’Aquino: 1783–1784 [repr. Bologna: A. Forni, 1965]), 207, and T. Nappo, ed., Indice biografico Italiano, vol. 3, 4th ed. (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2007), s.v. Cospi, Angelo Bartolomeo. Joachim von Watt, trained up at Erasmus’s school, then turned toward reformist positions and, after becoming a Protestant, became an emissary of Zwinglian reform in Switzerland, in the Canton of St. Gallen: cf. E. Iserloh, J. Glazi, and H. Jedin, “Riforma e Controriforma,” 199–200. For a general view on the cultural exchanges between European countries of the time, see the several and various contributions collected in L. Rotondi Secchi Tarugi, ed., Rapporti e scambi tra Umanesimo italiano e Umanesimo europeo: Atti dell’XI Convegno Internazionale di ChiancianoPienza 19–22 luglio 1999 (Milan: Nuovi Orizzonti, 2001). In particular, about the relationship between the Veneto, Germany, and Eastern Europe at that time, cf. A. Sottili, Studenti Tedeschi e Umanesimo Italiano nell’Università di Padova durante il Quattrocento (Padua: Antenore, 1971), 1–14; E. Martellozzo Forin and E. Veronese, “Studenti e dottori tedeschi a Padova nei secoli XV e XVI,” Quaderni per la Storia dell’Università di Padova 4 (1971): 49–102; T. Klaniczay, “Contributi alle relazioni padovane degli Umanisti d’Ungheria: Nicasio Ellebodio e la sua attività filologica,” in Venezia e Ungheria nel Rinas-

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From Venetia to Europe, in the Age of Reform

30. 31. 32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

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cimento, ed. V. Branca (Florence: Olschki, 1973), 317–33 and V. Branca, “Mercanti e librai fra Italia e Ungheria,” ibid., 335–52. Daughter to Isabella of Aragon, Bona Sforza had been tutored in Naples by humanist Cristoforo Colonna, member of the Accademia Pontaniana, who followed her to Poland: cf. I. Kaniewska, “L’Università di Cracovia,” 62. In printed editions he is also called “Johannes Polentanus Tucholiensis.” Gentian Hervet (1499–1584) was humanist and theologian; born in Olivet in 1499 and died in Reims in 1584, he actively took part in the Council of Trent. Information about him in J. Kraye, M. William, and F. Stone, Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy (London, New York: Routledge, 2000), 35–36. The information is inferred from Fedwick, Bibliotheca Basiliana, vol. 4/3, 1288–90. It must be pointed out that, according to the catalogs, the Latin translations of the two liturgies (of Basil and Chrysostom) have had a different printed tradition until this date. According to Fedwick, Bibliotheca Basiliana, vol. 4/3, 1290, it seems that Basil’s liturgy was first edited in Latin by George Witzel, in Mainz, in 1546. About Chrysostom’s liturgy, see Cortesi and Fiaschi, Repertorio, vol. 1, 781–84. We can infer that the translation of Chrysostom’s divine liturgy edited by Erasmus of Rotterdam began to circulate in Europe after 1536, in Paris, and was then produced in Basel and Venice in various editions and reprints, most of the cases in the “corpus” of Chrysostom’s own works. The translation of Chrysostom’s liturgy made by Gentian Hervet, included in an anthology that contains several different works, could not be included in Cortesi and Fiaschi’s catalog because of the necessary inquiry restrictions documented by the authors: see Cortesi and Fiaschi, Repertorio, vol. 1, xxxi–xxxii. Known throughout Europe and remarkable because of its doctrinal implications is C. Cornelis and C. Vranx, Malleus Calvinistarum (Antwerpen: Bellerus, 1590; two copies digitized by Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in Munich: BV001449352 and BV001737021); it was written with reference to St. John Chrysostom’s exegetical-doctrinal writings as a confutation, and at the same time as a tireless defense of the sacrament of the Holy Communion from Calvinist attacks. On the title page, the subtitle says: “Hoc est: Divus Joannes solus sufficienter scriptis suis retundens universos errores quos Joannes Calvinus, eiusque praecessores aut asseclae de ter venerabili Eucharistiae sacramento commenti vel secuti sunt.” On the back of the title page, a prefacer poem—made up of five elegiac couplets—proudly states: “Malleus hic vitulos male lascivire solentes / Mactat, et in tauros non sinit ire feros. / Haec malesana cohors, Calvini nomini dicta / Non Christi, infectae pharmaca mentis habe / Calvinista ferox etiam mitescere possit / Si modo culturae commodet ingenium. / Erudiare igitur ne te Deus oderit, atque / Linquat, in igniuomum praeciperetque lacum. / Errantem sine te vincat foeliciter iste / Malleus, erroris tu quoque victor eris.” M. Cortesi and S. Fiaschi have studied particularly the princeps—thus far unknown among Basil’s printed works indicated by Fedwick—and the Viennese edition of 1513, to give primacy to the Trevisan edition of 1476 over the others: see table and notes below. I do not remark in this specimen on the two miscellaneous editions where the Oratiunculae were included in Kraków in 1522 and 1537. See Cortesi and Fiaschi, Repertorio, vol. 1, 373, no. 1. The incunabulum is registered at ISTC io00070000 and GW M2793110; cf. in addition Rhodes, La stampa a Treviso, no. 23.

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37. A resumptive catalog of the incunabula of Museo Correr’s Library is in F. Daneo, “Indice degli incunaboli (Museo Correr),” Bollettino dei civici musei veneziani d’arte e di storia 34 (1990): 5–40; our exemplar is cited in 18 with the number 105. For everything concerning the Cicogna Fund I refer to the old catalog, which can be consulted in loco: Descrizione di alquanti codici e libri già posseduti da E. A. Cicogna ed ora passati in proprietà del Museo Civico, Venice 1868. Further information on Emanuele Cicogna and the homonymous Fund now kept at Museo Correr’s Library are at www.nuovabibliotecamanoscritta.it/BMCVe.html (accessed 13 May 2012) and in A. Caracciolo, “Emmanuele A. Cicogna, la sua biblioteca e la vita” in A. Caracciolo, Le schede dei manoscritti medievali e umanistici del Fondo E. A. Cicogna, vol. 1 (Venezia: Centro di Studi Med. e Rinasc. “E. A. Cicogna,” 2008), vii–xxxv. 38. The transcription of the letter and other information about the text—whose edition is now in progress by me—are included in Tomè, “Le latinizzazioni dal Greco,” 241–42. 39. For the bibliography and other comment notes I refer back again to Tomè, “Le latinizzazioni dal Greco,” 172 and 207–9. 40. In relation to this edition there are some incongruities concerning the number of pages: Opac VD16 (B 719) says it has sixteen papers (thirty-two pages), whereas the copy preserved at Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel is cataloged with twelve papers (according to the local Opac, twenty-four pages: this datum corresponds to the indications of IA 114.423 and of Fedwick, Bibliotheca Basiliana, vol. 4/3, 1287). 41. Biblioteka Ksia˛z·a˛t Czartoryskich Library’s Opac mentions the dedication of the small oeuvre to Frederick III but not the presence of Gundel’s “libellus,” http://bazy.wbkrakow.pl/cgi-bin/makwww3/makwww.exe (accessed 13 May 2012). This confirms Cortesi and Fiaschi’s indication: this edition would date back to the Trevisan princeps too. 42. G. C. Jocher, Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Gleditschens Buchhandlung, 1750 [repr. Hildesheim 1960]), col. 2537b. 43. The copy counts thirty-two papers (A-H4; E1 instead of F1, H3 instead of G3) and the imprint says: “Cracoviae. Sub prelo Hieronymi Scharffenbergii Anno Christi a nativitate 1555.” I owe all the information to the kindness of Patryk Krzyz´anowski and Hanna Wolska who checked the catalogs and examined the existing copy for me.

[email protected]

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History “Without Scruple” The Enlightenment Confronts the Middle Ages in Renaissance Ferrara1 R I C H A R D M . T R I S TA N O

Abstract Ferrarese Renaissance historiography has long been ignored and undervalued as inept, pedantic, or sycophantic. In this essay I argue for its coherence and importance to Renaissance history writing. The principal characteristics of Renaissance Ferrarese historiography were tendencies to embed itself in medieval universals such as the empire and papacy, to construct a genealogical and dynastic narrative, and to emphasize historical continuity. It was deeply affected by a literary courtly culture that produced a series of poet-historians who were inspired by the ancients to use myth to explore a dark and distant medieval past, to create a coherent narrative, and to provide a historical identity for the Ferrarese state. The story of Rainaldo di Bertoldo d’Este encapsulates these characteristics and became a touchstone of the Ferrarese historiographical tradition until dismantled by Ludovico Antonio Muratori.

Renaissance Ferrarese historiography has been little respected and even less examined. Eduard Fueter’s classic study of modern historiography contains but two references to Renaissance Ferrarese historians—to Lelio Gregorio Giraldi and to Giovan Battista Pigna. He describes the work of the first as “an arid accumulation of extracts of sources” and mentions the second only as a biographer of Ariosto. Fueter blames the court for the decline of humanist historiography, as it “ceased to be free and became courtly.”2 Similarly, Luciano Chiappini refers to the sixteenthcentury Ferrarese historians as “courtly historians,” to “the inexactness and falseness” of Pigna’s work, and, referring to Muratori, to his rejection of their “convenient and ridiculous system of research.”3 Thus Ferrarese historians have been cast as either hopelessly inept, pedantic, or sycophantic.4 On the other hand, Werner Gundersheimer sees them as elaborate myth makers who are part of a developing process of historical Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, Number 38 (Reinhold F. Glei and Wolfgang Polleichtner, eds.), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012.

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consciousness with a distinct political strategy.5 He points out that these myths were taken seriously at the time and became essential attributes of Italian medieval and Renaissance historical consciousness. The purpose of this study is to take up Gundersheimer’s insight and to connect it to what William H. McNeill calls “mythistory,” which he defines in terms of “[s]hared truths that provide a sanction for common effort [that] have obvious survival value. Without such social cement no group can long preserve itself. Yet to outsiders, truths of this kind are likely to seem myths.”6 So, rather than dismiss Ferrarese historiography as intrinsically false and ridiculous because it was courtly, my criterion of evaluation is using history as a credible and coherent political strategy that provided social cohesion through identity construction within the courtly culture. I will trace the evolution of Renaissance Ferrarese historiography from the inside, identifying its principal characteristics, and explaining those characteristics through Ferrarese courtly culture.7 My goal is to construct an overarching model of Ferrarese historiography as a coherent tradition of history writing developed over four centuries and one that provides an alternative paradigm to the better-known Florentine and humanist approaches. I also argue against Feuter’s and Chiappini’s assumptions that Ferrarese Renaissance historiography was a degradation of humanist historiography and “false” qua courtly. I use historiography first in the broad sense of history writing because at Ferrara, as we shall see, that writing underwent considerable development over time. But I also use it in a particular contextual way, that historiography is the product of a particular place and time. It was the greatest of Ferrarese historians, Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750), who first identified the peculiar history of Rainaldo d’Este as he created a new kind of history. For example, he wrote: I will finish the present chapter by saying that Ricobaldo, Ferrarese historian from around 1290, in his Latin history of the emperors, translated by the famous Count Matteo Maria Boiardo, whose fragments I possess, relating the life of Henry IV narrates . . . [Here follows a long quotation about Bertoldo d’Este and his revolt against Henry IV]. Here are anachronisms and unsubstantiated information. One finds no trace of this Marchese Bertoldo d’Este anywhere. I believe that Ricobaldo took Bertoldo, Duke of Zaringia, for an Estensi prince, with manifest error. The same author then writes in the life of Frederick I that the Milanese hired as their leader Rainaldo, Marchese d’Este, who succeeded Bertoldo. And then he narrates at length the many and various deeds of prowess performed by this prince against the above named emperor in Milan, in Brescia and in other places. . . . The other Ferrarese historians, following Ricobaldo, have without any scruple inserted these persons in the history and genealogy of the Estensi. I for one do not know them. It is possible to believe that when he wrote of this Rainaldo he meant instead Marchese Obizo who lived around this time. But we proceed to show how much one can find that is certain about the Estensi in authenticated documents and in the histories of contemporary writers.

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Finirò il presente Capitolo con dire, che Ricobaldo Storico Ferrarese del 1290 nella sua storia Latina de gl’Imperadori, tradotta poi dal famoso Conte Matteo Maria Boiardi, i cui fragmenti sono presso di me, in esponendo la Vita di Arrigi IV narra, che . . . Qui son de gli Anacronismi, e delle notizie insussistenti; nè di questo Bertoldo Marchese d’Este si truova vestigio altrove; anzi vo io credendo, che Ricobaldo prendesse Bertoldo Duca di Zaringia per un Principe di Casa d’Este con error manifesto. Scrive poscia il medesimo Autore nella vita di Federigo I che i Milanesi condussero al soldo suo per moneta Rainaldo Marchese d’Este, il quale a Bertholdo era successo. E quindi si fa a narrar diffusamente molte e varie prodezze, fatte da questo Principe contra del suddetto Imperadore in Milano, in Brescia, e in altre parti . . . Gli altri Storici Ferraresi, tenendo dietro a Ricobaldo, hanno senza scrupolo alcuno inseriti questi Personaggi nella Storia e Genealogia de gli Estensi. Io per me non li conosco. Forse ciò, ch’egli espone d’un Rainaldo, potrebbe credersi accaduto in parte al Marchese Obizo, che fiorì in que’tempi. Ma seguitiamo noi ad esporre quanto si truova di certo intorno a gli Estensi ne i sicuri Documenti, e nelle Storie de’contemporanei Scrittori.8

This historical and epistemological manifesto is anchored in the concept of “scrupolo” (scruple) a term that connotes meticulous care and precision. Certainly Muratori possessed all of these positive qualities, but in his battle with the excesses of Renaissance historiography, Muratori was also sometimes guilty of pedantry and an excessively narrow historiographical vision. But the term also suggests a state of doubt and uncertainty that renders a sure interpretation impossible. Often, Muratori himself lacks this sort of scruple. For him history is truth and that truth is achieved through documentation that underwent rigorous analysis to determine its authenticity. One could suggest that Muratori objectified history with all the benefits of making it more scientific and with all the disadvantages of disconnecting it from its political and social contexts, the social cement and insider-cohesion to which McNeill refers. Another consequence of this scrupulous approach was the rejection of Renaissance Ferrarese historiography and its ultimate neglect. I shall use the story of Rainaldo d’Este, debunked by Muratori, as a device to trace the developments of Ferrarese historiography from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, so that we can identify the particular contributions of Ferrarese history writing to Renaissance historiography. In his review of Gary Ianziti’s study of fifteenth-century Milanese historiography, Charles Stinger summarizes its historiographical characteristics as a focus on an individual agent rather than a succession of leaders; reliance on Julius Caesar’s Commentaries as a model of organization; an emphasis on contemporary events rather than tracing historical foundations; and an assertion of an explicitly partisan position rather than claims of impartiality.9 With the exception of partisanship, Ferrarese historiography had almost the exact opposite tendencies: (1) universality, a tendency to connect the history of Ferrara and its dynasty

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to entities with worldwide and metaphysical claims, such as the empire and the papacy; (2) an emphasis on genealogy and family rather than the virtù of an individual and the increasingly clear association of the city with the dynasty, with the former eventually subsumed by the latter;10 (3) the influence of literary theory and mythification by a long line of poet-historians to enhance narrative coherence and to emulate classical models, though that model was not Caesar but Diodorus Siculus; (4) antiquity and continuity, of both Ferrarese and especially Estense history, and the importance of historical precedence. Folin notes that while most Renaissance Italian history focused on contemporary events (one thinks of Guicciardini), that of Ferrara uniquely concentrated on the past and a medieval one at that.11 The Ferrarese historians had remarkable familiarity with medieval sources. The explanation for these differences is not difficult to identify: if the Milanese propagandists emphasized the personal merit of Francesco Sforza in the absence of dynastic claim, the Estensi were among the most ancient of the Italian nobility. If the Florentine historians wrote a civic history and noted the mutability of time, their Ferrarese counterparts wrote dynastic history and witnessed the durability of time. The Milanese and Florentine models were just that: particular models of history writing that were determined by particular political strategies and social structures. With a courtly culture that was so preoccupied with lineage, it is entirely appropriate to begin unfolding the pedigree of Ferrarese historiography.

Riccobaldo, Founder of Ferrarese Historiography Riccobaldo of Ferrara (ca.1245–ca.1318) is a most unlikely founder of Ferrarese historiography, first of all because he hardly intended to be. Indeed, he seems to embody almost everything Renaissance Ferrarese history is not. He wrote in Latin, while Ferrarese courtly culture was strongly vernacular; he was a proto-humanist while the court was robustly chivalric; and he was a strong supporter of communal liberty and deeply antagonistic to the Estensi, while praise of the ruling dynasty was a veritable leitmotif. Riccobaldo’s corpus is itself confusing. He wrote a municipal history, the Chronica parva Ferrariensis, and two geographical works, but most of his activity was in the mode of the universal history. He wrote several of these, constantly reworking them, so that tracing references to them is often quite complicated.12 Then there is the knotty and fundamental question of the relationship between Riccobaldo and Matteo Maria

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Boiardo, who referred to his Istoria imperiale as a “translation” of Riccobaldo.13 This explains that when the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century historians cite “Riccobaldo” they are always referring to Boiardo’s “translation.” Finally, evaluating Riccobaldo’s work has been complicated by the various interpretations of contemporary scholars.14 A. Teresa Hankey notes that Riccobaldo’s most popular work is his Pomerium, a typical medieval universal history from the Creation. Most of the many surviving copies originated in Emilia-Romagna, and Boiardo made use of the ψ or π codex in the early part of his work, but she observes that its latter part was virtually independent of Riccobaldo. She also suggests that a codex must exist upon which later writers depended, that it was a much shortened version of the Pomerium together with interpolations from his minor chronicles.15 This raises the possibility that Boiardo did not translate directly from the Pomerium as Muratori suggested. This idea is picked up by Gabriele Zanella, who postulated that Boiardo used Riccobaldan material that had been “mediated” over time.16 This hypothesis does not necessarily conflict with that of Giovanni Ponte, who suggests that Boiardo used the Pomerium plus a number of other sources.17 Several of these sources are cited by Boiardo himself and include Sigibert of Gembloux, Bernard the Treasurer, and William of Tyre. Andrea Rizzi’s thesis is that the Istoria imperiale is a vernacular translation of a lost Latin text by Riccobaldo of Ferrara composed between 1471 and 1473 (though he had previously established the dates as 1473–1475). This is based on an analysis of Pellegrino Prisciani’s Latin history, the Annales Ferrarienses, where he cites the Istoria imperiale in Latin. The assumption that these references prove the existence of a lost Riccobaldan text is speculative. A simpler answer is more likely, that Prisciani translated into Latin Boiardo’s translation, identifying it not as Boiardo but Riccobaldo.18 This argument against the existence of some lost Latin Riccobaldan manuscript is supported by three pieces of evidence. The first is that, as Rizzi notes, all of Prisciani’s interpolated references from “Riccobaldo” refer to the deeds and honors of the Estensi.19 Since Riccobaldo had almost nothing good to say about the ruling family, and since both Boiardo and Prisciani had nothing but good to say, it is far more likely that Prisciani was accessing Boiardo than Riccobaldo.20 The second is Sesto Prete’s publication of a Vatican manuscript containing a miscellaneous collection of Renaissance poems copied by Ludovico Sandeo, a native of Ferrara. Among a list of historians is Riccobaldo who is described as writing the lives of the emperors from Augustus to his own time, translated by Boiardo.21 His reference to “wars which they [Roman

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emperors] waged” almost certainly refers not to a Riccobaldan text but to the much more martial and chivalric Istoria imperiale, which dedicates long sections to the crusades and to the Guelf-Ghibelline conflict. Finally, Rizzi himself proves that the first two books of the Istoria imperiale are essentially Riccobaldan with minor interpolations by Boiardo, but that the third and especially the fourth are substantially based on other sources, and thoroughly rewritten with a sense of narrative cohesion and vividness that are more characteristic of Boiardo than Riccobaldo.22 So, the Istoria imperiale is a Riccobaldan text that gradually becomes more and more a Boiardan one, such that it is difficult to distinguish between translation and invention in the text. It is so much a joint creation that we shall never be able to distinguish the exact percentages of each contributor. Nevertheless, book four, which interests us here, is the most Boiardan part of the text. All seem to agree on this point. We are left with two questions: Why did Boiardo use Riccobaldo’s historical writing, and how did he use it? The answer to the second question shall probably always remain speculative. Hankey, Zanella, and perhaps Rizzi all agree that Boiardo used the Pomerium, a copy of which was in the ducal library.23 At least Hankey and Zanella agree that Boiardo probably also accessed another text, a “Cronica grande.” This may have been a compilation of Riccobaldan texts, a conglomeration of Riccobaldan and other texts, or even a collection of texts that contained no authentic Riccobaldo but which purported to. Finally, all agree that Boiardo also consulted with a variety of other texts that may also have been in the ducal collection, though Rizzi argues that Boiardo accessed them largely through Riccobaldo. Out of all this material Boiardo created his history, one in which he gradually transitions from translator to author, blurring the distinctions between the two all of the time.24 The motivations of Boiardo are even more difficult to explain. He probably used Riccobaldo because it was available in the ducal library and because, as Hankey notes, it was a very well-known text in Emilia. But R. Howard Bloch suggests some even deeper motivations that have great significance for Ferrarese historiography. According to Bloch, the Eusebius-Jerome Chronographia established the dominant historical model of the Middle Ages: the universal history. Its defining mode was genealogy, so much so that it created a medieval epistemology of origins, “by which truth and value are fixed—grounded—at their source, and in the very idea of source.”25 This genealogical thinking authenticates and authorizes never more than in the most absolute of origins—God’s creation. This “medieval mental structure” manifests itself in the idea that the oldest is best. The oldest custom is the most valid, the most ancient

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source is best, and the longer a family’s genealogy the higher its social status. So, Boiardo may have called his history a translation, not because it faithfully adhered to Riccobaldo but because doing so authenticated his account in two ways. It connected itself to a classic and well-known chronicle by a native-son and it provided a model—the universal history—within which the genealogy of the empire and the Church, and the genealogy and deeds of the Estensi, could be anchored and intertwined. This epistemology of origins extends to language and hence to the importance of etymology, the genealogy of words and names, a device found often in Renaissance Ferrarese historiography.26 Finally, genealogy was literally connected to lineage, great deeds, ancient heroes, a mythic past, the importance of family name, heraldic devices, land and castle—the very stuff of Ferrarese historiography, as we shall presently see. Riccobaldo was the founder of Renaissance Ferrarese historiography because he provided a universalist imperial-papal template, to which Boiardo added a genealogical and mythical exploration of the antiquity and great deeds of the dynasty in the grand chronique tradition.27 These are the basic building blocks of the Ferrarese historiographical tradition, which provide a mythistory, a shared, coherent historical identity, for Ferrara.

Nicolò da Ferrara’s Polystorio: From Universal to Dynastic History The Polystorio of Nicolò da Ferrara is a voluminous work and an important link between the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Ferrarese historiography. The work is divided into four books and by Nicolò’s account 910 chapters. It approaches five hundred manuscript pages.28 Nicolò was a Benedictine monk, abbot of the monastery of Santa Maria da Gavello, the oldest Benedictine monastery in the diocese of Adria and the Polesine of Rovigo.29 A master of sacred theology, he wrote in Ferrarese dialect probably because he wanted his dedicatee, Niccolò II d’Este, to read it. The monk seems to have been connected to the court, as he relates being sent on a mission to Venice to deliver gifts to the visiting King of Cyprus.30 The Polystorio takes the form of a universal history in four books, organized around the history of Rome intertwined with biblical history. It begins with the Creation and purports to go up to the year 1383 but in reality ends in 1367 in the midst of Niccolò II’s reign (1361–1388).

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The text plays a crucial role in Ferrarese historiography. Nicolò cites Riccobaldo constantly and may have provided a link between him and Boiardo. While placing considerably less emphasis on the chivalric aspects of the Crusades, Nicolò established a pattern of history writing that anticipated Boiardo’s Istoria imperiale, though without the latter’s narrative panache. This pattern includes the interlacing of multiple narratives and the development of a “dynastic history,” a telling of Ferrarese history through the prism of the ruling dynasty, all within the context of the Roman Empire. This took the form of tracing the origins and chronicling the deeds of the Marchesi d’Este, together with the composition of elaborate prologue/dedications to the prince that injected a tone of conscious rumination about the importance of history to the prince and his subjects. Nicolò began his history in this way: And wanting to obey your command I completed this book whose name is polystorio, a Greek name that becomes in Latin plurality of history in which briefly is translated into the vulgar tongue nearly all of the things done and said by past and worthy princes by many others deserving of remembrance. Et vogliendo obedire el vostro commandamento a compilando questo libro nome polystorio. Il quale nome e nome Greco et a adire in latino pluralitade de ystorie nel quale brevemente a reducto in vulgare quasi de tucte le cose facte et ditte dalli principi passati et degni da molti altri degni demoria.31

Nicolò was still sufficiently in touch with the communal-history tradition to include a section on the origins of Ferrara, which he says is derived from ancient chronicles.32 But while Riccobaldo in his Chronica parva ferrariensis offers an economic origin of the city as a commercial depot, a much later development, Nicolò’s explanation of a population fleeing the Lombards in the midst of fading Byzantine power seems more historically accurate.33 Jurisdiction (libera potestate) was transferred to the commune, which asserted it over the nobility and clergy, especially regulating the building of castles and towers.34 Nicolò also records the origins of the Este family, one of the first to do so. He suggests that when Charles the Fat acquired the Kingdom of Italy, he found the Estensi there and granted them many possessions and castles including one at Este from whence they derived their name.35 Alternatively, he writes that some suggest that the family was related to the kings of France and came to Italy with Charles and that still others claim that the Estense were related to the house of Maganza (Magancia). Thus Nicolò establishes the basic parameters of Estense origins: medieval, connected to the town of Este, possibly French, and generally uncertain. The most original part of Nicolò’s history is its prologue, nearly three folio pages long: he is the first to connect the discipline of history to the rule of the dynasty. He begins with the proposition that the greater the

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prince’s wisdom and prudence, the greater his rule.36 He demonstrates this through the ultimate paragon of virtue, King David, who personified six conditions: steadiness (stabilitade), tranquility (tranquilitade), loftiness (sublimitade), wisdom and keenness (sapientia e sagacitade), perseverance (perseverancia), and good company of counselors (buona compagnia de consiglieri). Nicolò makes considerable reference to the “cathedra” (chatreda) of King David, for example, in the section on loftiness he writes: In the present one finds many princes who do not sit on the throne of justice. On the contrary, they sit on the throne of iniquity. They don’t sit on the throne of honor; instead they sit on the throne of rage. They don’t sit on the throne of fairness. On the contrary, they sit on the throne of rapacity. Of these princes the prophet Ezekiel says that his princes stand in the middle of their gold as wolves steal their prey. al presente se truovano molti principi li quali non sedeno in la chatreda della justicia. Anzi sedeno in la chatreda della nequitia. Non sedeno nella chatreda de honore anci sedeno in la chatreda del furore. Non sedeno in la chatreda de equitade. Aci sedeno in la chatreda de rapacitade. Di quali parla Ezachiel propheta dicendo li suoi principi stanno in mezzo delloro si come lupi rapiendo la preda.37

Nicolò uses a term, “cathedra,” which has several connotations: a teacher’s desk, a university chair, the bishop’s throne, a pulpit, a rostrum, all of which suggest instruction in one sense or another. This notion of instruction is connected to the importance of taking good counsel, of sitting among one’s wise and faithful counselors. And this brings Nicolò to the importance of history. How does one acquire these virtues beyond divine grace? It is the discovery of the principles and foundation of acting well and better, by reading the good and upright things said and done by past princes. [In this way t]he mind of the reader is moved to the virtues and is inspired to act virtuously. Ma adaquistare queste virtudi oltre la divina gracia. La quale e principio e fondamento de bene operarono e meglio che leggere le cose che e dicto et facte bone et rei di principi passati. Lanimo del lectore se move alle vertude et ispara de operare virtuosamente.38

Finally, Nicolò connects this acquisition of virtue to Niccolò II’s consolidation of his domain which allows him “to show his very firm faith, firm hope and perfect charity, not to mention his highest degree of prudence, justice, constancy, and true temperance.” (“Lasciando di dire della sua fermissma Fede, ferma Speranza e Carità perfetta, lascerò da parte la somma sua prudenza, giustizia, costanza, e vera temperanza.”)39 At first glance Nicolò da Ferrara’s Polystorio seems quite conventional: a universal history, preceded by a mirror-of-the-prince prologue, somewhat connected to the communal tradition, and written by a cleric. Yet,

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viewed from the perspective of Ferrarese historiography, the text was both innovative and normative. As far as I can determine, the Polystorio was the first vernacular monumental history written in Ferrara, perhaps the first work worthy of the term history and a notable successor to the medieval chronicles and the troubadours’ poems that related Estensi deeds and virtues. It was the first historical work dedicated to an Estense prince and the first extant historical work to explore the origins of the dynasty. Most important, it was the first to address the theoretical issues of history. It did so philosophically, through the idea of the perfect prince. But by applying the didactic purpose of history to the prince and his subjects, the text treated an Estense as a signore rather than a feudatory for the first time in a historical genre. Despite the scriptural and philosophical nature of the dedication, the text, or at least the last part of it, was quite secular as it veered toward a history of the deeds of the dynasty. The Polystorio further established the basic characteristics of Ferrarese historiography: a universalist structure requiring considerable narrative interlacing, within which the ancient origins and virtues of the dynasty were implanted.40 These characteristics reach a new level of narrative sophistication in the hands of Matteo Maria Boiardo (1440–1494).

Matteo Maria Boiardo: Mediator of Ferrarese History41 The Istoria imperiale is organized around the reigns of emperors, from Augustus to Otto IV, and while less a conventional medieval universal history, it still reflects universalizing tendencies in the guise of a genealogy of the empire. Of the medieval sections the longest by far is that of Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190) and within it is found the longest digression: the story of Rainaldo, Marchese d’Este, what we might call the “Rainaldo Interlace.” These excursions into Estensi genealogy are part of the larger “Estensi Interlace,” a series of digressions about the Estensi, their origins and great deeds, that dot Boiardo’s history and greatly expand Nicolò’s treatment of the dynasty. Modern scholars, influenced by Muratori, have assumed that the episodes of Bertoldo d’Este and his son Rainaldo are fictions invented out of Boiardo’s imagination and they have used the episodes to undermine his competence as a historian.42 If it can be demonstrated that the episodes were not imaginative but the product of historical research, then Boiardo’s accomplishments as a historian can be sustained. Boiardo introduces “Velpho” along with Bertoldo d’Este and Rodolpho, Count of “Goricia,” as among the most prestigious members of the

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imperial court. They join with Mathilda of Canossa in rebellion against Henry IV and in support of the church. After peace is restored both Velpho and Rodolpho are accused of lèse-majesté and deprived of their lands. Only Bertoldo is unharmed, indeed, he is rewarded in the peace of Canossa: Nor are the imperial concessions abandoned, that entitled the Marquisate of Este, but the emblem conceded to him and his descendents by Otto were transferred from a unicorn of gold in a field of blue to one of silver in a field of red. Solo Bertoldo rimase da la furiosa tra de lo imperatore illeso. Il quale ne li patti de la pace in canosa fermata rimase cum il stato suo a sancta chiesa subjiecto. Ne solamente habandono li imperiali decreti che de il marchesato estense lo intitulavano, ma tramuto linsegne honoratamente alui et a suo progenie di Otto concedute. Ritornando di argento il leocorno de oro e nel campo sanguigno dove primeramente nel celeste se dimostrava.43

What seems at first a fantastic fabrication has several credible elements. First, is the connection between the da Canossa and the Estense, the grandson of Alberto Azzo d’Este (Guelfo V) eventually marrying Mathilda da Canossa, which would perhaps explain the mercy accorded Bertoldo. The Estensi, like Mathilda, were staunch supporters of the church. Boiardo specifically attributes this episode to “Sigibert, very accurate writer of this time [who] establishes this.” (“Sigiberto acuratissimo scriptore di quell tempo ne dimostra.”)44 Presumably this refers to the chronicle of Sigibert of Gembloux, and while I have not found this reference there, I have in other chronicle sources. For example, Arnolfo of Milan writes: At that time the barbarian people of Germany, above all the dukes Bertaldus, Rodolfus, and Velfe, with counts and bishops, came to know of the excommunication of Rome, and they disassociated themselves completely from the king, cutting off all relationships. Further, they accused him of many crimes and noted his disrepute. Eodem tempore gens Teutonum illa barbarica, precipue duces Bertaldus, Rodulfus, et Vuelfe cum comitibus et episcopis, cognita excomunicatione Romana, a regio prorsus se subtraxere consortio, in nullo communicantes. Insuper in multis accusantes eum criminibus infamia denotabant.45

Arnolfo goes on to connect the three princes to Gregory VII and Matilda and the famous contrition of Henry at Canossa. So, the rebellion of the three magnates against Henry is confirmed. Furthermore, the Annals of Lambert of Hersfeld contain a reference to “Azzonem marchionem,” or Alberto Azzo II and his support of Matilda at Canossa against Henry.46 So, Muratori’s speculation that Bertoldo d’Este was a product of confusion is plausible; nonetheless, the existence of a “Bertoldo” is confimed, as is Estense support of Mathilda against the

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emperor. Bertoldo d’Este may or may not have existed, but the evidence suggests that he was not the product of Boiardo’s imagination but a figure perhaps recorded in that “Cronica grande.” Can we make a similar judgment about Rainaldo d’Este and Boiardo’s account of his exploits at Carcano? The battle of Carcano (9 August 1160) was the most significant battle in Barbarossa’s quest to force the Italian communes to submit to his authority between the destruction of Crema (January 1160) and that of Milan (May 1161 to May 1162). All of the relevant sources pay it a good deal of attention. I will follow, unless noted otherwise, the more Italiancentered sources, especially the chronicle of Otto Morena, whose work is recognized as one of the most reliable. In addition, the Gesta Federici I imperatoris in Lombardia, especially in its version by Iohannis Codagnelli, Libellus tristitiate et doloris, is a chronicle that also resembles a romance. It contains a good deal more derring-do than Morena’s.47 The Carmen de gestis Frederici I imperatoris in Lombardia is a Latin poem. These sources indicate that the struggle between emperor and Italian communes was essential to Italian historical consciousness, which was expressed in ways that did not strictly distinguish between history and poetry. The basic storyline of the battle is as follows. The castle of Carcano was occupied by imperial troops. The Milanese, supported by Brescian troops, besieged it in late July, building a great castle of wood and several mangonels. Barbarossa rode to their rescue, successfully surrounded the besiegers, and cut them off from both retreat to Milan and food supplies, turning them into the besieged. This forced the Milanese to launch an attack on 9 August. On one side, the Milanese and Brescian cavalry routed the emperor’s Italian allies, taking many prisoners and plundering the imperial camp. Meanwhile, the Germans headed straight for the Milanese carroccio, defeated the infantry protecting it, killing the oxen, seizing the golden cross mounted on a pole, together with its banner, and capturing many prisoners and tents.48 At this point the battle was interrupted by a fierce rain that forced the Germans to retreat. In the meantime, the Milanese and Brescian cavalry returned from its plundering and threatened the entire imperial army. The emperor withdrew his forces to Como; on 19 August the Milanese withdrew from Carcano, abandoning the siege of the castle. Ultimately, both sides claimed victory. If Morena’s account is remarkably matter-of-fact, the Gesta federici is a good deal more animated. It has Oberto, Archbishop of Milan, and the clergy performing an elaborate ceremony on the Carroccio before battle, where they bless the troops and urge them on to victory. Bar-

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barossa not only seizes the carroccio, he tosses it, oxen and all, into a ditch.49 The Carmen de Frederici is even more expressive. Oberto delivers a rousing speech that includes: “O citizens whose brilliant feats resound / Throughout the world, recall the grace and virtue / Of your fathers. Show your strength, I pray, / And when the time is right, demand a battle.”50 So, there existed an old tradition, variously historical and imaginative, for Boiardo to access. This tradition persisted into the fifteenth century. Andrea Rizzi has discovered a passage in an anonymous fifteenth-century chronicle that relates the basic facts about Bertoldo, Rainaldo, and the combat with Barbarossa. The text indicates that the information had been “taken by various Ferrarese from genealogies of great antiquity from 397 to 1471, that is, before Boiardo composed his history.”51 This confirms the existence of genealogical material, which Boiardo probably accessed. In conclusion, Boiardo did not invent the Rainaldo Interlace any more than he invented Bertoldo d’Este; in both cases he accessed the historical record. Most important, Boiardo established the standard version of Rainaldo d’Este’s deeds and identity handed down intact to the time of Muratori. Boiardo introduces Rainaldo d’Este in the context of a previous defeat of the Milanese. As a result, they decide to hire Rainaldo to lead their forces. He is identified as young, robust, and first captain of the Paduans.52 Later, he adopts as his banner a white eagle to symbolize his contempt for the emperor, whose armorial device is a black one.53 He is the head of the Guelfs in Lombardy. He then travels to Dalmatia to raise troops, returns, is defeated by the emperor, and flees to Este.54 Thus, Rainaldo is introduced as a condottiero, leader of the Paduans, a steady opponent of the emperor, and leader of the Lombard Guelfs. Which of these things are historically accurate? Boiardo’s account of the battle is elaborately narrated but adheres quite closely to the other accounts: the capture of the carroccio, the initial victory of the Milanese on the flank, the counterattack by the emperor and capture of the carroccio, the eventual retreat of the imperial forces. Rainaldo is the leader of the Milanese forces, which he divides into four parts. The first is commanded by his military vicar, Turisedo, confirmed in the historical record, and his young son, Azzo, who are also identified as condottieri.55 The Milanese carroccio is described as drawn by twelve very large horses, with a golden cross upon a large ball atop a very high antenna, with two very large white pendants, all covered in white cloth.56 At the point where the carroccio is overturned, the antenna is broken, and the golden cross captured, the imminent imperial victory is not interrupted by a violent storm but by Rainaldo, who is

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hiding behind some brambles with his men and dressed as a low-born sergeant.57 He routes the imperial forces. While generally accurate, if exuberant, and remarkably detailed, Boiardo’s account is, as Muratori suggests, filled with anachronisms. Armorial devices were just beginning to be adopted by the great nobility in the twelfth century; indeed the Estensi’s German, Guelf cousin, Henry, adopted the device of a lion very precociously in 1144.58 Although mercenary soldiers could be found in the twelfth century, condottieri, especially use of the term, are at best of the thirteenth century.59 Contemporary chroniclers of the Trevisan March rarely used the terms Guelf and Ghibelline, even during the first half of the thirteenth century.60 The reference to Rainaldo recruiting mercenaries in Dalmatia is likely a reference to the Stradioti light cavalry, who did not enter into Italian consciousness until the fourteenth century and into Italian warfare until the fifteenth century.61 All these elements, therefore, strongly suggest source material of the later thirteenth, perhaps even the early fourteenth centuries. But these anachronisms are not, as Muratori suggests, “without scruple,” for they are not arbitrary. For generations the Estensi were condottieri, their armorial devices were increasingly elaborate, and their identity as loyal defenders of the church was real and widely recognized.62 While Boiardo’s account very carefully constructs an elaborate narrative of self-identity for the dynasty, it was not without foundation. The account of the battle of Carcano is a palimpsest, a near contemporary account of the battle of Carcano over which has been placed an Estense narrative of later origin. If we accept this as a hypothesis how does it help us to understand the nature of this peculiar Ferrarese mythistory? Where did the story of Rainaldo d’Este come from? We shall never have a definitive answer to this question, but it is likely that it came out of an oral tradition formed in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. That tradition may have been written down in those “ancient chronicles of the house of Este,” seen by Boiardo himself, and which may have included that “Cronica grande” identified with Riccobaldo and genealogical material found in the ducal library, which Boiardo claimed to have accessed.63 The historical basis for Estense Guelf leadership is traced from 1240, when Azzo d’Este finally expelled the Ghibellines from Ferrara establishing his signoria, to 1329 when the family became papal vicars.64 More broadly, Boiardo could access extensive chronicling of the conflict with Ezzelino da Romano, a struggle with universal papal-imperial implications and that provided the genesis of an essential Estense Guelf identity.

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The Chronicon Marchiae Tarvisinae et Lombardiae narrates this cosmic conflict between good and evil: Azzo VII d’Este, his son Rainaldo, and grandson Obizzo II, opposed to a diabolical Ezzelino da Romano. The chronicle, written around 1290, became incorporated into what Muratori called the Chronicon Estense, a chronicle of the Estense family. Thus the conflict between Ezzelino and the Estensi is appropriated into a dynastic chronicle. Azzo is described as an “Illustrious man devoted to the Roman Church,” “steady and faithful helper of the Church,” and “firm column, tower of fortitude against the oppression of enemies.” The chronicle extends this devotion to the entire family. On the other hand, Ezzelino, heretic, is seized in death by demons and flung into the deep recesses of hell where there is no redemption and heaps of torments.65 We have here all the basic elements of the Rainaldo interlace: individual prowess and deep dynastic loyalty in service to church and pope, in a millenarian battle with the cruelty and oppression of Ezzelino, linked to imperial authority. Boiardo takes this heroic-Guelf narrative and interlaces it with a broader Riccobaldan and Nicolean universal-like history and a narrower dynastic one into a mythistory that projects a more robust Estense identity. The episode of Rainaldo at Carcano is mythical because it universalizes an essential story: the prowess of the Estensi in service to the church during its conflict with the empire. Rainaldo’s adoption of the white eagle in opposition to the imperial black eagle is all about family identity. Of all the many heraldic devices adopted by the Estensi over the centuries, it was the most important. By claiming the symbol for the family, Rainaldo becomes a founder of the dynasty; and through it he acquires symbolic value. Like the battle of Carcano, the eagle is mythistorical; it has a historical basis that is mythologized as it explains the presence of an important family heraldic symbol. In the 1260s Pope Clement IV conceded the white eagle as a Guelf emblem, designating it to have lowered wings, head turned in the opposite direction, and grasping a green dragon, all obvious inversions of the imperial insignia.66 The Estensi appropriated this Guelf symbol just as Boiardo had appropriated the battle of Carcano into his dynastic narrative. Boiardo also focuses on the family name, onomastics, and attachment to land and castle, part of what Bloch calls the medieval mental structure of genealogy.67 When Rainaldo is defeated by the emperor he retreats to the safe haven of Este, the ancestral home, and quite literally the basis of family identity. In addition, directly after the battle of Carcano sequence, Boiardo tells the story of the origins of Rovigo. The bishop of Adria, a schismatic who supported the anti-pope, was chased

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from his see by the destruction of the city, settled on an island in the middle of the Po, and built a castle. Rainaldo, Marchese, from the fortress of Este, saw with his own eyes the new city with its towers rising and its walls growing and with a sudden attack occupied it and he forced the bishop back to his first see in Adria. And forwarding immediately what had been done, Pope Alexander in France, through apostolic indulgence confirmed it. Rainaldo Marchese che sotto li ochii havea la nova posta emperoche da la rocha di este le incomenciate torre e le crescente mura se vedeano cum repentino assalimento in quella occupo facendo ritornare il vescovo ne la sua prima sede Adriana. E mandato subito in francia ad Alexandro il papa, hebe confirmatione per appostolicha indulgentia di quello che fatto havea.68

Here, Boiardo constructs yet another foundation myth: the Estense possession of the County of Rovigo, wrapped inside an even larger Guelf one.69 If Boiardo associates the dynasty with land and castle, from which the cognomen is derived, he also contributed to Estense onomastics. Rainaldo became a significant name in Estense history especially through the crucial conflict with Ezzelino. The Chronicon Marchiae Tarvisinae et Lombardiae spends considerable time on another Rainaldo d’Este, the son of Azzo VII and the father of Obizzo II. He is taken as a hostage by Frederick II to Apulia where he sires a son, Obizzo, with an unnamed noblewoman. He dies in captivity, a martyr to the Guelf cause. Obizzo resembles his father in appearance and disposition and is legitimized by Pope Innocent IV.70 Rainaldo is the link between two of the most important members of the dynasty: Azzo, who established de facto control over Ferrara in 1240, and Obizzo, who is elected (de jure) Ferrara’s first signore in 1264. Boiardo was the mediator between a more oral culture, where history and myth tend to merge, and a more literate culture that was becoming more historically aware. As mediator Boiardo occupies a middle ground, a sort of to-and-fro between these two cultures. Through the Rainaldo interlace he offers the particularities typical of oral cultures, while as a author of the word he constructs a historical process that distinguishes more clearly past from present, characteristic of literate culture.71 In somewhat different terms, Boiardo is engaged in creating a collective memory, the basis of social cohesion, which constructs a remembrance “based on selection and exclusion, neatly separating useful from not useful, and relevant from irrelevant memories.”72 One of the accomplishments, therefore, of the Istoria imperiale was to produce the historical basis for a coherent narrative out of the inchoate material stockpiled in the archives.

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For more than two hundred years Boiardo’s account of Rainaldo d’Este was an iconic touchstone of Ferrarese historiography; the persistence of the Rainaldo interlace proof of its collective power. Then Muratori published his Antichità Estensi and his Rerum Italicarum Scriptores. In the first, as we have seen, he challenged the existence of Rainaldo and Bertoldo; in the second he agonized about the publication of the Istoria imperiale. In Muratori’s correspondence with his contacts in Ravenna, who were copying Boiardo’s text, he referred to what he called “too many tales, anachronisms, and erroneous histories” (“troppe favole, anacronismi, e sbagli storici”) in the text. In his preface in the Rerum, he shifted between suspicion that Boiardo had authored a forgery, or Boiardo had translated a forgery or an unconstrained cento, or that it was a Boiardan patchwork, or a pseudo-Riccobaldo. Ultimately, Muratori decided to publish the text because among the stories and anachronisms he detected glimmers of truth.73 Those glimmers, if anything, became all the brighter in the sixteenth century.

The Mythologization of History in Cinquecento Ferrara: Giraldi and Pigna The link between the Quattrocento and Cinquecento writers was Mario Equicola (ca.1470–1525). Secretary to Isabella d’Este, he spent most of his career in Mantua but had important links to Ferrara as well. The Biblioteca Estense possesses copies of a text entitled Genealogy of the Estensi Lords, Princes of Ferrara with a Brief Treatise of Their Illustrious Deeds, Composed by Mario Equicola de Alveto in the Year 1516.74 The title suggests something new to the Cinquecento and Renaissance: a shift to a more formal genealogical history. Yet there was considerable continuity as well. Equicola specifically cites “Ricobaldo” and “Polistorio” among his sources, and though I have not been able to find his references to Nicolò’s text, he clearly had the Istoria imperiale before him.75 He recounts the story of Bertoldo d’Este’s support for Matilda of Tuscany against the emperor, who subsequently forgives him and confirms his privileges. In recognition of Bertoldo’s distinction the emperor changes his emblem, previously granted by Otto I, from a golden to a silver unicorn and from a sky blue field to a blood red one.76 Similarly, Equicola narrates the battle of Carcano and Rainaldo di Bertoldo’s creation of a white eagle as his emblem, “which Rainaldo always bore and which his descendents bear [my emphasis] through his courtesy” (“impresa sempre Rinaldo et suoi posteri per gentilitio portarono et portano”).77 Here

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Riccobaldo-Boiardo’s universal history with its interlaced narrative is reduced to a narrative of the Estensi, fixated on family, familial emblems, the accumulation of privileges, courteous behavior, the virtue of illustrious ancestors, “which his descendants bear” because they are extended, biologically, through an innate nobiltà. The narrative is “genealogized”; it is continuous. Something new, or newly preserved, is the story of Rainaldo imitating Barbarossa and establishing in Italy the custom of training hunting falcons, goshawks, and sparrow hawks which he copied from Barbarossa.78 This seems to be a mutation of the reference in the Istoria that depicts the emperor as a “great hunter and the first to bring into Italy the practice of domesticating birds [for hunting].” (“Fu grandissimo cacciatore e primeramente forno da lui portati in italia li ocelli che mansueti in quello exerctio se adoperano.”)79 It has the effect of softening Rainaldo’s Guelf hostility to Barbarossa in Boiardo’s narrative, while there is something more intensely princely about Equicola’s Rainaldo. It is this emphasis on the genealogical, on the distinguishing noble characteristics of the Este family with all the accoutrements of heraldry, emblems, and innate virtue that characterize Ferrarese Cinquecento historiography. Only a more purposeful incorporation of myth, inspired by the ancients, was as important. According to Rosalind Thomas, societies that are dependent on memory and oral tradition are particularly associated with the “floating gap” and “hourglass effect.” This is the tendency to cluster memories around the very distant past and the very recent.80 This is clearly demonstrated by Nicolò da Ferrara’s Polystorio when it focuses on the founding of Ferrara, on the one hand, and the accomplishments of the contemporary Niccolò II, on the other. But there is a gap between these two points, which Nicolò filled rather clumsily. The connection of the historical present with the mythic past, what L. Bertelli calls “mythic space,” transforms private genealogical memory into a collective public one. This process actually increases the value of myth while providing a rational way to view the past, a sort of “myth-rationalization.”81 After Equicola and through the sixteenth century, the manuscript history strengthened still further its genealogical focus while making the story of Rainaldo both iconic and canonical. Both of these devices closed the “floating gap.” The Annali di Ferrara of Filippo Rodi (d. after 1604) established an even clearer identity for Rainaldo d’Este by depicting his image and introducing Ottone d’Este, who receives privileges from Louis, presumably the Pious, in 840.82 This closed the gap; the privileged status of the Estensi is pushed back to Carolingian times. Alessandro Sardi (1520–1588) repeats the Rainaldo material found in

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the Istoria: Bertoldo’s changing of his emblem’s colors, the battle of “Carchino,” and the peculiar story of Rainaldo’s introduction of birds of prey into Italy.83 This is the story of aristocratic noblesse. The Archivio di Stato di Modena contains an entire box file entitled “Extracts of Chronicle Manuscripts Referring to the House of d’Este, Drawn Above All from the Works of Riccobaldo” (“Estratti mss. di cronache referentesi alla Casa d’Este, ricavato sopratutto dalle opera di Riccobaldo”).84 There is no particularly new material here, and that is precisely the point, for the story of Rainaldo is the story of a collective identity that is endlessly repeated. Each of the manuscripts contained in the file refer to “Estensi mss. antichi” (ancient Estensi manuscripts) or “Istorie antiche dal Libro de Riccobaldo” (“Ancient Histories from the Book of Riccobaldo”).85 Over the course of less than fifty years “Riccobaldo” was transformed from something living in Boiardo’s hand to something “ancient.” It had become tradition. This process of myth-rationalization was completed by two Ferrarese poet-historians. The first was Giovambattista Giraldi Cinzio (1504–1573), one of the foremost Ferrarese cultural figures active between Ariosto and Tasso. Giraldi’s history is entitled a “Commentary of the Matters of Ferrara and of the Princes from Este . . . Drawn from the Epitome of Gregorio Giraldi . . . (Commentario delle cose di Ferrara et de principi da Este.)” It was originally written in Latin and may have been composed in 1544; it was certainly published in Italian translation in 1556. It is aligned with contemporary literary theory which was being debated in Cinquecento Italy and in which Giraldi played a very prominent part. That literary debate was immersed in exploring the meaning of ancient texts and in particular the relationship between poetry and history, a subject traceable to the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Poetics. Giraldi was also influenced by Diodorus Siculus whom he accessed in his research for his poem Dell’Hercole. Through Diodorus he came into contact with the problem of constructing a coherent historical narrative out of multiple mythic accounts.86 As a result, when Giraldi comes to the all-important question of the origins of the Estensi, he is unable to determine which text may be more credible than others. He recites a series of formulae such as “some take up” (pigliano alcuni); “others hold” (altri tengono); “others affirm” (altri affermano) that force him to conclude that “his variety of authors and of opinions truly holds me in such suspense that I don’t dare to affirm which of them is to be believed.” (“La qual varietà d’auttori, & d’openioni veramente mi tien tanto sospeso, ch’io non ardisco affermare, quel ch s’habbia da credere.”)87

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Giraldi’s solution to the problem of conflicting sources is essentially rhetorical. But coming to these things from the ancient histories and so being little certain and almost forgotten and misplaced, we will leave them provisionally and turn to a writing style [my emphasis] concentrating on the things that are more certain and clear. Ma venendo queste cose dall’Historie antiche, et perciò essendo poco certe, et quasi scordate et dismisse, le lascieremo in pruova, et volgeremo lo stile a scrivere alcuna cosa d’essa et piu certa, et piu chiara.88

Quintillian himself stated that the license to choose between conflicting accounts applies to history as well as poetry.89 Giraldi seizes on this license to bring Ferrarese mythistory to a whole new level. Since the Estensi possess more virtue, nobility, greatness of heart, and glorious valor in war and peace than any other family in Italy, they merit “being compared to those ancient heroes and demigods that were celebrated with such praise in that ancient age” (“che siano da esser paragonati a quegli antichi Heroi, & Semidei, che furono gia con tante lodi celebrati da quella antica etade”). So he concludes, that “I have come to think and believe that the family da Este may be descended from the ancient hero Hercules, as I wrote quite clearly in my poem Dell’Hercole” (“io vengo talhora pensando et credo, che la famiglia da Este sia discesa dall’antico Hercole, si come piu chiaramente ho scritto nel mio poema d’Hercole”).90 This mythification may seem absurd at first to the modern reader, but it was highly popular in the sixteenth century and is based on two methods of argumentation.91 The first is political. Giraldi relates the story of Hercules traveling to France, marrying the daughter of the king, who bore him many children including one named Gala from whom the people took the name Galli, and from whom the royal family of France is descended. This leads to the ineluctable conclusion, reminiscent of Nicolò’s Polystorio “that this very excellent house [of Este] had its origins from the very renowned nobility of France” (“che questa eccellentissima casa habbia havuto origine dalla chiarissima nobiltà di Francia”).92 It also had the added benefit of reminding everyone that Ercole II (1534– 1559) was married to Renata, daughter of King Louis XII of France. The second argument is literary and returns once again to the ancients. And if these things of which I speak seem to some to assume too much from afar, I pray that on account of the obscurities that they may wish to allow me to take this license [a term reminiscent of Quintilian] in making Hercules the founder of this very noble house, just as the ancient Romans consented to allow Livy to make Mars the father of Romulus, founder of the Roman Empire.

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Et se pur forse queste cose, ch’io dico, paressero ad alcuno prese troppo di lontano, prego che di gratia m’habbiano per iscurato, et vogliano comportare, ch’io mi pigli questa licentia, ch’io faccia Hercole auttore di questa nobililissima casa, si come gli antichi Romani consentirono a Livio, ch’egli facesse Marte progenitor di Romulo, fondatore dello imperio di Roma.93

Giraldi asks, if Livy, the greatest of all Roman historians, could resolve uncertainty with recourse to the gods, as Quintilian himself attested, why can’t we? The Commentario was a milestone in Ferrarese historiography. While it reproduced the tradition of the Rainaldo interlace—Bertoldo’s support for the Countess Mathilda and the exploits of Rainaldo—it added an array of narrative strategies to Ferrarese historiography.94 Most of these were derived from a deeper familiarity with antiquity. This allowed Giraldi to construct a more sophisticated historical narrative that integrated the classical rhetorical, historical, and mythological traditions into Ferrarese history. The result was a newly classicized mythistory that considerably raised both the rhetorical and political stakes. In the 1540s and again in the 1560s the Estensi were engaged in a political and peculiarly historical battle with the Medici known as the “Precedence Controversy.” Giraldi’s Commentario was one product of this dispute. In 1562 an anonymous pamphlet entitled Ragioni di Precedenza was printed praising the Medici while attacking the Estensi. At this point Duke Alfonso II (1559–1597) took personal offense and gave “the keys to his archive” to his secretary, Giovan Battista Pigna, so that he might make a serious response to these calumnies.95 If Giraldi brought a new rhetorical sophistication to Renaissance Ferrarese historiography, Pigna developed a new emphasis that was uniquely archival. Pigna was born in 1530 to Niccolò Nicoluccio, an apothecary, and took his literary name from his father’s shop. Precocious, he graduated from the university at twenty, secured a chair in Latin and Greek, engaged his former teacher, Giraldi Cinzio, in mutual accusations of plagiarism, and participated in the great literary theory debate of the time. In 1560 he became ducal secretary and published his Historia dei Principi di Este in 1570. It was the apex of Ferrarese Renaissance historiography. What distinguishes Pigna’s history from all others is its size and scholarly apparatus. A folio of more than six hundred pages, with more than a one-hundred-page index and genealogical tables, it was clearly meant as the ultimate repository of Estense history. But its most radical innovation was its “Table of Authorities” (Tavola delle Auttorità). This consists of nearly three hundred references to sources consulted and includes five “annali,” seven “croniche,” sixty-nine “instrumenti,” thirty-four “lettere,”

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nine “marmi,” five “epitafi,” six “inscrittioni,” thirty-five “privilegii,” and five “testimenti.” This was an unprecedented and remarkable expansion of source material. Most surprising, perhaps, is its reference to medieval matter including Einhard, William of Tyre, Lambert of Aschaffenburg, Liutprand of Cremona, Saxo Grammaticus, Sigebert of Gembloux, Otto of Freising, and Sigismund of Herberstain. The text connects an archival rhetoric that associates historical truth with documentary evidence, to a classical style that features long sentences and displaced verbs and adjectives. Finally, the Historia is a history not of Ferrara but of the Estensi, explicit in its title and its genealogical and armorial title page. This is a dynastic history, pure and simple, in which the standard origins of Ferrara, harkening back to Riccobaldo and Nicolò of Ferrara, do not appear until the third book and page 157. If Riccobaldo’s Chronica parva is a celebration of the commune with the Estensi as the greatest threat to its freedom, the Historia is the logical conclusion of a process of replacing city with dynasty begun by Nicolò and Boiardo and extended by Equicola and Giraldi. But the universalizing found in Riccobaldo’s, Nicolò’s, and Boiardo’s texts has been turned upside down as the book is subtitled “in which is contained conjointly the principal matters from the overthrow of the Roman Empire up to 1476.” The Roman Empire has now been subsumed into the universalizing excellence of the Estense dynasty.96 The prologue takes the form of fulfilling a charge from Alfonso to rectify the total omission or shamefully placed information on the deeds of the duke’s ancestors. This is remedied by going to the archives where there are thousands of documents, not ordinary ones but exquisite parchments that reveal the dealings of the past.97 This process is closely linked to satisfying the truth, repairing the imperfections of previous studies, and reviving and reclaiming those neglected times. Like Giraldi, Pigna devotes considerable space evaluating the source materials he has to work with. He complains about their dry and sterile nature, on the one hand, and their abundant verbosity on the other. What to do, how to compose a uniform text out of this material? The answer is found in the work of the ancients. But just like the ancients, who possessed good craftsmanship, and were able in their own way to build entire palaces with all the adornments that they knew to imagine, so now in the decoration of a single room in the style of the ancients, it is necessary to have recourse to those relics, the great work of many years, and to gather them together from diverse parts. And because the statues may have been made by different hands and are not always excellent, it is left to the purpose of the judicious antiquarian which group is the most illustrious and worthy to shape and complete, such as the Roman emperors, and which are indecent and better left alone.

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Ma si come gli antichi, che haveano buoni artefici, poteano à modo loro fabricare un intiero palagio con tutti quegli ornamenti, che sapeano imaginarsi: et hora nell’ornare una sola stanza delle opera antiche bisogna ricorrere a quelle reliquie, che à gran fatica in molti anni: et da diverse parti si ragunano insieme; ne perche le statue siano di mano differentia et non sempre eccellente, lascia però il giudicioso antiquario intento à qualche serie piu illustre, come de Romani Imperatori, di continuarla con figure et compiute et sconcie al meglio che può.98

This is accomplished by “uncovering the essential particulars, which give light to obscure things and bearing truth against falsehood and opening to the world the writings of unknown and important dealings that have been locked up in the archive of these princes” (“Si scopriranno particolari essentiali, con darsi lume à cose oscure: recarsi la verità contra il falso et aprirsi al mondo scritture assai di negocii ignoti et importanti, le quali sono rinchiuse dall’Archivio di questi Principi”).99 Pigna lays out his method and goal: He will take his uneven and often inadequate source material and he will imitate the ancients, who often faced the same challenge. Acting as “judicious antiquarian” he will pick and choose the best material in order to create a uniform narrative. This is an even more conscious building of collective memory and is best done through archival research to create continuity, to fill that floating gap, and to demonstrate the continuity of the Estense dynasty. Before beginning to enter into the subject that has been laid down for me, I want to excuse myself if in the space of one thousand and two hundred years, in which the continuous series of these princes, without the line ever being interrupted, it will be necessary to operate within a time so varied and uneven that this work will be forced to share in it. io prima che cominci à entrare nel soggetto impostomi, voglio escusarmi se nello spatio di circa mille et ducento anni: che tanto continua la serie di questi Principi, senza che la linea sia giamai interotta, occorreranno qualità di tempi cosi varie et tra se sproportionate, che anche l’opera sforzatamente verrà à participarne.100

The guide to archival research comes in two forms: memory and authority. The Estense were an ancient family, so ancient that they seem to have no clear origins; they were always present and had been major players in northeastern Italy for centuries. This opens up Pigna to a creative use of sources, recognizing the difficulty of writing about the distant past. One must conjecture but judiciously. You take tradition and memory and you seek documentation in what Bizzocchi calls a “referential validity,” one that supports a presupposition.101 The documentation does not create historical truth; it supports and confirms what is already known. It was well known that the Estensi were of ancient origins, and were powerful warriors who fought for the Church memorialized in

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the exploits of Rainaldo d’Este. Its account in the ancient text of “Riccobaldo” had become authority. Pigna cites Riccobaldo’s “Life of the Emperors” as a valid authority where this war is amply written by someone not far removed from his own time.102 Time is compressed on the basis of authority and in the name of inner coherence. In a letter written to Alfonso II, Pigna set out his plan for the Historia and the sources he needs to go over “and in particular I have laid out the siege of Milan, where Rinaldo was, treated by diverse annals and most of all by Ricobaldo famous historian [whose work] is not printed” (“et in particolare ho disteso l’assedio di Milano, ove fu Rinaldo, tratto da diversi annali et massime dal Ricobaldo famoso historico non stampato”).103 Pigna follows Riccobaldo-Boiardo in great detail, down to the lodgings of the emperor and his commanders in the city of Milan and his introduction of those birds of prey. But there are some significant differences. There is no reference to Rainaldo as a condottiero hiring troops; instead he is identified first as “captain” and then as “General of the Lombard League.” The battle of Carcano is faithfully depicted, though without mention of Rainaldo being dressed as a low-born sergeant. Rainaldo is not merely the protector of the Church but of Italy. “He raised the reputation of the Italian name not a little, as almost all of Italy from the Apennines to the confines of the Alps had attended him in this victory” (“inalzò non poco riputatione del nome Italiano: atteso che quasi tutta l’Italia dall’Apennino alle confine de gli Oltrmontani era stata seco in quella vittoria”).104 There is no mention here of Rainaldo adopting the emblem of the white eagle. Instead Pigna fills more than two pages, at the end of the book, with a recitation of all the various coats of arms of the Estense from the fifth century. Here time is extended. So, three things are certain: the rank of Rainaldo is enhanced by Pigna, any trace of venality or lowering of his status is expunged, and Rainaldo’s role takes on peninsular importance. Giovan Battista Pigna’s Historia dei Principi di Este was the culmination of more than two hundred years of Ferrarese historiography. It was a monumental genealogical history; one of the most impressive the sixteenth century produced. It charted new territory in creating an imposing scholarly apparatus that greatly increased the scope of historical evidence, incorporating large amounts of archival and archeological records. It made significant use of medieval sources, indeed the Historia is really a Renaissance history of the Middle Ages. The motivation for this was not a Biondian examination of the translation of the empire so much as an effort to trace the ruling family’s lineage across the ages. And the effect was quite different because Pigna’s goal was not to trace

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the break with antiquity but rather to emphasize the unbroken and gap-free continuity of the dynasty’s genealogy and glory. As a result, the Ferrarese Renaissance historical view was one that emphasized continuity with the Middle Ages. This was a retreat from Boiardo’s prologue to the Istoria imperiale where, perhaps influenced by Biondo, he had noted the changes wrought by the fall of Rome. In its own peculiar way the Historia was a great achievement. It was one of the finest examples of archival research in the service of genealogical history. It is hardly surprising that Muratori respected it. For more than one hundred and fifty years Pigna’s history stood at the pinnacle of Ferrarese historiography until Muratori, reluctantly and gradually, dismantled it with the tools of Enlightenment erudition.105

Ludovico Antonio Muratori: The Enlightenment Confronts Myth On 24 May 1708 imperial troops occupied the tiny fishing village of Comacchio and besieged Ferrara. This little known action of the War of the Spanish Succession touched off a revolution in Ferrarese historiography perpetrated by an unlikely insurgent: the great Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750). Before examining this episode and its consequences, it is necessary to trace some of the developments that led to this paradigmatic shift. The seventeenth century was not a happy time for Italy. After more than sixty years of war between Spain and France, the former emerged victorious. The Spanish hegemony brought peace and with it a historiographical crisis, since emulating the ancients confined history largely to political and military affairs.106 The fate of the Estensi was particularly harsh. It is ironic that all of the bluster, scholarship, and maneuvering by Alfonso II to establish his precedence over the Medici was followed by the devolution of Ferrara to the Holy See. This was thanks to the bull of Pius V that barred the succession of papal fiefs to illegitimate sons and the failure of Alfonso, despite his three marriages, to produce an heir. His successor and cousin, Cesare d’Este, was forced to move his capital to Modena, and the papal legates who governed Ferrara initiated a policy of neglect whose unfortunate results are still seen in Ferrara today. It was not only buildings that deteriorated; the devolution was also a disaster for Ferrarese historiography, for it lost its reason for being. Ferrarese historiography declined into either an antiquarian history of churches or shifted to a history of the new ducal capital in Modena.107

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The source of historiographical revival was not Italy but France in the movement of the Maurists, in the person of Jean Mabillon (1632–1707), and in the newly defined field of diplomatics demonstrated in his De re Diplomatica (1681). The Estensi had never given up the dream of reacquiring Ferrara and with the accession of Rinaldo d’Este in 1694 it seemed their chance had finally come. He had married Carlotta Felicita of Brunswick-Lüneburg and reunified the two branches of the Este-Guelf family, which had been divided since the eleventh century. Rinaldo’s wife was the sister of Emperor Joseph I’s wife and in these ways Rinaldo accumulated significant influence in Germany and at the imperial court. With the occupation of Comacchio, imperial and Estense goals converged to a remarkable degree. On 15 January 1709 representatives of the pope and emperor signed a document that required the imperial troops to evacuate the Papal States except for Comacchio, and for the Estense claim to Ferrara to be negotiated.108 In 1700 Rinaldo had recalled Muratori, a native of Modena and a subject of the duke, from the Ambrosian Library in Milan and appointed him head of the archives and Estense Library. When Pope Clement XI (1700–1721) asked Monsignor Giusto Fontanini to refute Estense claims to Comacchio, Muratori took up the ducal cause. Rather than secret negotiations between a congregation of cardinals and imperial plenipotentiaries, all of Europe was treated to a public battle of eruditi, and a historiographical one at that. Fontanini published his first treatise in 1708, only months after the occupation of Comacchio by imperial troops. It is entitled Il dominio temporale della sede apostolica soprà la città di Comacchio per lo spazio continuato di dieci secoli (The Temporal Governance of the Apostolic See over the City of Comacchio for the Continuous Period of Ten Centuries) and divided into fortysix short chapters. His argument is divided into two sections: the true origins of papal rule in Ravenna and an attack on Estense pretensions to jurisdiction over the city. Fontanini’s polemics against the Estensi were brilliant. He first attacked them as private citizens who were not legitimate rulers of a state.109 Then he turned to an extended demolition of Ferrarese historiography, especially Pigna’s work. Pigna was an excellent humanist of his time, with the requirement one brought as secretary of his princes, and living in times in which one believed that the materials of history were all true that were written and published, made it easy for him to spread that which he considered opportune to praise his lords with ancient titles Il Pigna era un’eccellente Umanista del tempo suo, il qual requisito lo portò ad esser Segretario de’suoi Principi, e vivendo in tempi, ne’quali in materia di

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storie si credea per vero tutto quello, che era scritto e stampato, gli fu facile di spacciare quello, che stimò opportuno per adulare i suoi Signori con titoli antichissimi.110

One such “ancient title” was the investiture of Ottone d’Este (cited above by Rodi) which Fontanini deconstructed. Fontanini notes discrepancies in Pigna’s chronology and remarks, “How many muddled facts are grouped together!” Then comes the final blow: Here is the ruined noisy machine of nine hundred years which support the rumors spread about the alleged investiture of Comacchio, given to the Estensi in the remote space of time beginning with the invented Ottone d’Este, that is to say three hundred years before one finds authentic and secure evidence where the house of Este is named. From these two facts everyone can gather how much faith Pigna merits in his history. Ecco ruinita la strepitosa macchina de’novecento anni, alla quale stanno appoggiati i romori, che si spargono, intorno alla pretesa investitura di Comacchio, data agli Estensi sino da sì remoto spazio di tempo, cominciando dal finto Ottone da Este; cioè a dire da trecento anni innanzi, che si trovi memoria autentica e sicura, ove sia nominata la Casa d’Este. Da questi due fatti ognuno può raccogliere quanta fede meriti il Pigna nella sua Storia.111

Fontanini finished his attack with an invocation of the Enlightenment, it being time to put an end to these inventions “in a century in which we can discern between white and black” (“in un secolo, in cui si discerne il bianco dal nero”). He concludes with a historiographical manifesto that history depends on the analysis of archival instruments, the identification of anachronisms, and the protection of history from the influence of the court.112 Fontanini’s attack was devastating because it was aligned with the progressive historiography of the day, which Muratori himself shared. Countering it would require a gigantic effort. Muratori’s first reply (aided by others at the ducal court) was the Osservazioni sopra una lettera published at the end of 1708. He was the front man of an essentially legal argument coordinated by Count Carlo Antonio Giannini, the duke’s ambassador to the imperial court.113 At more than 160 pages and 106 chapters the Osservazioni was more than three times the length of Fontanini’s Il dominio and considerably raised the intellectual stakes. It is not until nearly half way through the tract that Muratori shifts away from legalistic diplomatics and develops some truly historical arguments. They are for the most part entirely within the Ferrarese historiographical tradition and arranged in five arguments: (1) on the antiquity of the Estensi; (2) that they were not subject to the jurisdiction of the commune of Padua; (3) that they were not tyrants; (4) that they were ardent defenders of the church; and (5) that they received Ferrara as an allod from the pope. Of these, the last is the most legalistic in that it argues that Ferrara had been conceded to Ercole I by

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Sixtus IV “ad omnes praefati Herculis descendentes in perpetuum” (emphasis Muratori), that is to be handed down to all descendents regardless of legitimacy and that Alexander VI had granted Ferrara as an allod, that is, not feudal (jure feudi) but full.114 The other four arguments plumb the medieval chronicles, just as Pigna did, to show the greatness of the house of Este in the twelfth century, the vastness of their possessions, and their relationship with their Guelf cousins.115 But at the heart of these arguments is the most venerable: that the Estensi were always vigorous leaders of the Guelf cause and loyal defenders of the church. Here Muratori cites the Chronicon Marchiae Tarvisinae et Lombardiae and Rolandino’s chronicle that were the bases of the great Estensi Guelf tradition against Ezzelino. He even includes the story of Rainaldo di Azzo as hostage of Frederick II.116 He concludes: Nothing was easier than to know that the Estensi had always had through their glory of being the most respectful sons and the most dedicated of all the princes to the Holy See, and who still at all times that one may examine, have served according to their capacity. The histories are full of this truth, and I could weave a very long catalog, wending its way through the centuries, and adding the alliances made by the Estensi in favor of the church, of which they were also the standard-bearers. Niente era più facile, quanto il sapere, che gli Estensi hanno sempre avuto per gloria loro l’essere de’ più rispettosi figliuoli, e de’ Principi più ben’ affetti alla S. Sede, alla quale ancora in ogni tempo si sono studiati di prestar servigio secondo la loro possanza. Le Storie son piene di questa verità, ed io potrei qui tesserne un lunghissimo catalogo, scorrendo per una gran fila di Secoli, e additando le leghe fatte da gli Estensi in favor della Chiesa, di cui anche furono Gonfalonieri.117

Ultimately, Muratori came to the defense of Pigna, first by describing him as much more than a humanist, as a man of letters, philosopher, legal scholar, and secretary. In the end Muratori had to also defend the existence of Ottone d’Este, but he does so rather weakly and indirectly, one suspects because of his own doubts about his existence.118 Yet in the midst of this most traditional Ferrarese genealogical and Guelf history Muratori slips in a revolutionary idea: that it is not from the dark ages but from the more recent centuries that we can derive evidence about the legitimate rule of temporal states.119 This is something modern and of the Enlightenment in its rejection of the time-honored idea, traceable to Eusebius and Jerome, that the most ancient is the most authentic. This was Muratori’s first blow against tradition. The bellum diplomaticum continued. In 1709 Fontanini reissued Il dominio with added material, followed by the Difesa seconda in 1711. Muratori responded with his coup de grace in the Piena esposizione 1712, the key to Muratori’s development as a historian and to the future of

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Ferrarese historiography.120 At 420 pages and forty-five long chapters, the Piena esposizione is a tour de force of Pignan dimensions. It includes a “Tavola Cronologica” where Muratori lists in three columns the date, Fontanini’s assertions with reference, and his response, also fully referenced. This is followed by an index to all of the documents transcribed and published from the Estense archive. But he has also made two major concessions. The first is his abandonment of Ottone d’Este, but the greater shift was in his backing away from the work of Pigna and the Ferrarese historiographical tradition. He describes Pigna in much more modest terms than he had in the Osservazione: Indeed, I said that Pigna was a worthy man and a prominent literary figure; nor should one mistreat him, nor should he be little esteemed, as does the Roman Opponent, but I repeat again, that Pigna in this matter has never been held, nor is he held as an exceptionally great historian. Dissi io bensì, che il Pigna fu un valentuomo, e un Letterato cospicuo; ne si doveva egli maltrattare, nè si dee stimar sì poco, come fa l’Oppositore Romano; ma ripeto ancora, che il Pigna per questo non è mai stato tenuto; nè s’ha da tenere per uno Storico maggiore d’ogni eccezione.121

By defining Pigna as a literary figure Muratori begins to dismantle the close ties between history and myth so essential to the Renaissance Ferrarese historiographical tradition. Ultimately, Muratori is forced to repudiate the very figures who constructed Ferrarese historiography, but he attributes these errors to the most benign of reasons. In so much then that Prisciano, the two Sardi, Faleti, and Pigna himself, imagine that the diploma of Henry VI had increased the territory of Ferrara by including Comacchio: one must pardon their opinion on account of their love for their country, Ferrara, that made them see really late in that document a reference that was not there nor will ever be there. In quanto poscia al Prisciano, a i due Sardi, al Faleti, e al Pigna medesimo, i quali s’immaginarono, che nel Diploma d’Arrigo VI. Fosse ampliato il Territorio Ferrarese con inchiudervi Comacchio: si dee perdonare questa loro opinione all’ amore della lor patria Ferrara, che fece lor vedere ben tardi in quel documento una notizia, che non vi era, nè vi sará giammai.122

If the dispute over Comacchio forced Muratori to confront his own assumptions, the publication of the first volume of Delle antichità Estensi in 1717 caused him to make the final break with the Ferrarese historiographical tradition. The result is a new “scrupulous” history: But the world today has become more fastidious, that is, circumspect. Many cannot, others want not, and still others do not pursue a truthful history. It ought to be the primary end of those who take up its writing to expose the truth, the great object of the human mind. But not everyone possesses the means and the key to discover it, and very many have a grave obstacle to finding and explaining it; because the principal aim of their histories, and no other, is the glorification and reputation of some person, city, or family.

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Ma il mondo d’oggidì è divenuto più delicato, cioè più guardingo. Non possono molti, altri non vogliono, ed altri ancora non fanno formare una veridica Storia. Dovrebbe il fine primario di chi prende a scriverla, essere quello di esporre la Verità, grande oggetto della Mente umana. Ma non tutti posseggono i mezzi e la chiave per rinvenirla; e moltissimi poi hanno anche un’ostacolo grave a trovarla ed esporla; perciochè la mira principale delle loro Storie, altro non è, che la Gloria e il credito di qualche Persona, Città, o Famiglia.123

This is a direct rejection of the defense he himself made in the Piena esposizione, that Pigna and the other Estensi historians merely loved their country too much. In more positive terms Muratori lays out his goal: My design and intention is to illustrate, in so far as it may be possible, the origins and antiquity of the Estensi, but with the truth at hand. Thanks to God the House of Este does not need fables, which add little value, in order to demonstrate its great nobility; and this fact will be pointed out and demonstrated with authentic proofs. il mio disegno ed intento si è quello d’illustrare, per quanto sia possibile, l’Origine ed Antichità de gli Estensi, ma col Vero alla mano. È, la Dio mercè, che la Casa d’Este di quelle, che non han bisogno di Favole per comparir Nobilissima; ed essa appunto si scorgerà, e si scorgerà con autentiche Pruove.124

Ultimately, this requires the invention of a new kind of history: “the readers may know that I am not creating a strict history, but instead a kind of erudite dissertation” (“sappiano i Lettori, aver’io qui preso a formare una precisa Storia, ma sì bene una spezie di Dissertazioni Erudite”). This will require an “amicable battle” (amichevol battaglia) between the author and reader in which the latter will not believe the writer unless provided with the proof of evidence.125 This is the Muratori of the Enlightenment, who develops a rational method of historical inquiry, based on clear evidence, and for an audience imbued with a critical spirit. But it also reflects an Enlightenment tendency to battle dogma by being dogmatic. Muratori makes much of truth, which can be attained only through ancient documents found in the archives and from the ancient histories.126 The first Muratori mastered as no other, before or since, but the second he virtually eliminates. In the indexes to both volumes of the Antichità there is not a single reference to Pigna or to Nicolò da Ferrara and the few references to Boiardo he erroneously assumes are literal translations of Riccobaldo. There is one reference to Giraldi and another to Alessandro Sardi, but they both refer only to the marriage of Alfonso I to Laura Dianti. In several places Muratori repudiates his predecessors by name, including Prisciano, Equicola, Lilio and Giraldi Cinzio, Gasparo and Alessandro Sardi, Girolamo Faleti, and Pigna, citing Riccobaldo (that is, the Istoria imperiale) as the source of the errors continuously repeated over

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the centuries.127 His erasure of Ferrarese Renaissance historiography was complete.

Conclusion: The Legacy of Ferrarese Renaissance Historiography Ubi Muratori ibi veritas: such was the prestige and authority he had accumulated by his incredibly productive life. Few dared to tread the same ground as Muratori, and when Isidoro Alessi did, in a very Muratorian entitled study, Rainaldo di Bertoldo was expunged from history.128 Only Giovanni Andrea Barotti (1702–1772), and perhaps Pio Rajna, had the courage to challenge Muratori. Barotti criticizes Muratori for his bad reasoning, precipitous judgment, and weak argument.129 He questions Muratori’s contradistinction of poetry and history, his assumption that history instructs while poetry merely entertains, and he cites a list of good poets who were also good historians.130 In this Barotti was much more attuned than Muratori to the close connection between poetry and history in the Ferrarese Renaissance historiographical tradition. He defends the Istoria imperiale: Still, the translation of the Cronaca [Istoria] Imperiale deserves, in my opinion, to be read, not only for its merits, of which Muratori himself is not silent, . . . but also for its fluent, narrow but clear and gracious manner of writing, that in the time of Boiardo was quite rare. I dare to propose it as a very well written history, if a few words and phrases of that time could be improved; they are still not without being example of good authorship. Per altro la traduzione del Bojardo della Cronaca Imperiale merita per mio avviso d’esser letta, non solamente per que’ pregi, che lo stesso Muratori non tace, . . . Ma ancora, per la spedita, ristretta, ma chiara, e graziosa maniera di scrivere, che ne’ tempi del Bojardo era assai rara. Io ardirei di proporla per una Istoria assai bene scritta, se poche voci, e frasi di que’ tempi si migliorassero, le quali non sono ancora senza esempio di Autori buoni.131

The dispute over Comacchio had a profound and not altogether positive effect on Muratori. Fontanini’s attack on the poetic nature of Ferrarese Renaissance courtly culture forced Muratori to jettison its historiography. Ironically, the greatest preserver and publisher of medieval Italian historical matter quashed the study of the history of his own homeland by sheer force of his erudition. Did Rainaldo di Bertoldo d’Este really exist? Certainly there is no proof that he didn’t. Did he exert a strong impact on the writing of Ferrarese history? Of this there can be no doubt. Does his presence in the historiography tell us something important about history writing in Ferrara and in Renaissance Italy in general?

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In their politicized and rationalized debate Fontanini and Muratori never directly asked the question: did the Ferrarese believe their myths? There are two answers to this question. The first is Muratori’s insinuation that they did believe in their myths and it created an unscrupulous and false historiography. The second depends on points made by Gabrielle Spiegel, who suggests reasons for taking that belief more seriously. She proposes that we should read (medieval) historical texts as cultural phenomena, by returning them to their social context.132 Was Ferrarese historiography a coherent reflection of Ferrarese courtly culture from which it drew both form and meaning? Should (medieval) historical texts be read for their facts or as evidence of an intellectual tradition and underlying beliefs? And how are those traditions and beliefs expressions of fundamental ideas concerning the nature of political reality?133 It is ironic that from the time of Fontanini, Ferrarese historiography has been accused of being detached from reality. In fact the opposite is the case: it was shaped by what Spiegel calls “perceptual grids,” structures residing in social reality as perceived and narrated by the historian.134 One modern historian has defined the Renaissance sense of the past in terms of an awareness of anachronism while another has connected it to a view of history as cyclical and repetitive with nostalgia for a golden age.135 Neither of these were particularly influential in Ferrarese Renaissance historiography. The history of Ferrara was increasingly seen as the history of the Estensi dynasty and that history was linear and continuous. If there had been a golden age it was a medieval one: the heroic time of Rainaldo d’Este and the conflict with Ezzelino. In Ferrara there was no separation between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance because of its remarkable historical continuity: the regime established in the early thirteenth century was still present three hundred fifty years later. Ferrarese historical writing was also self-referential and provincial; it was, as McNeill points out, for insiders, and its stories such as the exploits of Rainaldo d’Este were repeated over and over again, creating a coherent narrative of a perceived reality. The Ferrarese historians were more aware of the epistemological problem of evidence and more interested in causation because they sought to write a more comprehensive narrative out of inchoate medieval sources. By the sixteenth century antiquing forces came into further play and the histories were less concerned with anachronism because they were more preoccupied to imitate the ancients’ integration of myth with history. The Ferrarese historians did believe their myths because they understood that the ancients had, and that they had used those myths to fill the narrative gaps, to create nar-

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rative continuity. The story of Rainaldo di Bertoldo d’Este is its prime example. Ultimately, though, political events affected history writing just as the accession of Francesco Sforza in Milan and the vagaries of Florentine politics affected those historical traditions respectively. As the ambitions of the Estensi increased so did the status claims for Rainaldo di Bertoldo d’Este rise. In this sense Ferrarese historiography closely reflected the broader political developments of early modernity, with its state-building, centralizing, and increasingly genealogically conscious tendencies. The competition this engendered, such as the Precedence Controversy, was in turn a great stimulus to the study of history and archival research.136 Ferrarese historiography has been much maligned and even less studied as seemingly outside the mainstream of Renaissance historiography. But Momigliano considered both Biondo and Sigonio antiquarians, that is, systematic collectors of ancient traditions and remains. If Biondo invented the Middle Ages in the quest for a systematic periodization of history, the Ferrarese historians worked the medieval sources to explain the antiquity of the Estensi, their dedication to the church, and their role in the universalizing ideals of the empire and papacy. In Momigliano’s terms they were historians, explainers, rather than antiquarians.137 In terms of Spiegel’s arguments, they were constructors of an explained social reality, for historical meaning is not stable but relational, it emerges out of a local social and political environment.138 I return to William H. McNeill’s definition of history as putting facts together to create a pattern, so that they become understandable and credible, with the result of being useful.139 By these criteria Ferrarese historiography was successful, though not completely so. Most successful was the ability of historians from Boiardo to Pigna to discern patterns in Ferrarese history and to present them in ways that were coherent and credible to their courtly audiences. The exploits of Rainaldo d’Este are the most obvious example. Here myth played a crucial role, both creating and reflecting the shared values and social cement of Ferrarese courtly society, and projecting them in a compelling way. The usefulness of the historiography is more problematic. While the historiography provided inner coherence, social identity, and grist for political disputations, it ultimately could not withstand the collapse of the dynasty, the intervention of Spain and France, and the political power of the papacy. Indeed, the increasingly exuberant historical and dynastic claims of Alfonso II seemed more and more detached from the new political reality. This is the danger of myth becoming self-validating and delusional. McNeill also warns against the danger of reducing historiography to the

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documents and only the documents, thus moving closer and closer to incoherence, chaos, and meaninglessness, the absence of pattern recognition.140 This is the danger that Muratori poses in his most positivistic and antiquarian guise. In sum, Ferrarese historiography was scrupulous; it was true to itself. At the same time, it demonstrated a healthy ability to adapt itself to medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment ideals. It did what historiography is supposed to do: it balanced pattern recognition and narrative with an ability to change with the times.

Notes 1. Research for this article was supported by a Newberry Library Short-Term Fellowship. I thank Werner Gundersheimer for commenting on an early draft of this essay. 2. Eduard Fueter, Storia della storiografia moderna, Ital. trans. A. Spinelli (Naples: R. Ricciardi, 1943), I: 155, “La biografia umanistica soffrì ancor più dell’ annalistica per il fatto che la storiografia aveva cessato di essere libera ed era divenuta cortigiana;” 162, “un arido cumolo di estratti di fonti.” 3. Luciano Chiappini, Gli Estensi, rev. ed. (Ferrara: Corbo, 2001), 1–10: “storici cortigiani,” “le inesattezze e le falsità,” “il comodo e ridicolo sistema di ricercare.” 4. The most significant exception is Gabriele Zanella, “Gli estensi nella storiografia coeva (secoli XIII–XIV),” Terra d’Este 2 (1992): 59–74, who does not, however, deal with the Renaissance period. 5. Werner Gundersheimer, Ferrara, the Style of a Renaissance Despotism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 19–20. 6. William H. McNeill, “Mythistory, or Truth, Myth, History, and Historians,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 3. 7. In light of Marco Folin’s research, which constructs a sophisticated analytical model of history writing in the entire Estense territorial state, I must emphasize that my focus is on the formal histories written, as Folin puts it, “in the shadow of the court.” Marco Folin, Rinascimento estense, 2nd ed. (Rome: Laterza, 2004). 8. Lodovico Antonio Muratori, Delle antichità estensi ed italiane (Modena: Stamperia Ducale, 1717), I, 359. 9. Charles Stinger, review of Humanist Historiography under the Sforza: Politics and Propaganda in Fifteenth-Century Milan by Gary Ianziti, Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990): 173. 10. Although written from an altogether different perspective, the work of Jane Fair Bestor on Estensi genealogy is essential. See, for example, “Marriage and Succession in the House of Este: A Literary Perspective,” in Phaethon’s Children, The Este Court and Its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara, eds. Dennis Looney and Deanna Shemek (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), 49–83. 11. Folin, Rinascimento estense, 38–43, especially 38. 12. Marino Zabbia, I notai e la cronachista cittadina italiana nel Trecento (Rome: Nella sede dell’Istituto Palazzo Borromini, 1999), 17–18. My thanks to Jane Fair Bestor for kindly giving me this reference.

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13. The title page of the manuscript reads, “la traductione de Ricobaldo per Matheo Maria Boiardo.” See Richard Tristano, “The Istoria imperiale of Matteo Maria Boiardo and Fifteenth-Century Ferrarese Courtly Culture,” in Looney and Shemek, eds., Phaethon’s Children, 129–168. 14. Zabbia, I notai, 17. 15. A. Teresa Hankey, Riccobaldo of Ferrara: His Life, Works and Influence (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1996), 165, 39, 166. 16. Gabriele Zanella, Riccobaldo e dintorni, studi di storiografia medievale ferrarese (Ferrara: I. Bovolenta, 1980), 11. 17. Giovanni Ponte, La personalità e l’opera del Boiardo (Genoa: Tilgher, 1972), 71 and Ponte, “Matteo Maria Boiardo dalla traduzione storiografica al romanzesco nella Vita di Federico Barbarossa” in Giuseppe Anceschi and Tina Matarrese, Il Boiardo e il mondo estense nel Quattrocento (Padua: Antenore, 1998), I, 448–49. 18. The nature of the alleged lost text is problematic. Rizzi variously describes it as the Historie, which survives only in two fragments, as a “conflated version,” a “different redaction,” or an “interpolated version” of that text, or some other Riccobaldan text. See Andrea Rizzi, ed., The “Historia Imperiale” by Riccobaldo Ferrarese Translated by Matteo Maria Boiardo (1471–1473) (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2008), vol. 7, Fonti per la storia dell’Italia medievale (Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 3rd series), xvii, xlviii, lxiv. 19. Andrea Rizzi, “Riccobaldo da Ferrara e Matteo Maria Boiardo: note preliminari,” in Gli “Amorum Libri” e la lirica del Quattrocento, ed. Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti (Novara: Interlinea edizioni, 2003), 144. 20. Rizzi acknowledges this possibility: Andrea Rizzi, The “Historia Imperiale,” Translated by Matteo Maria Boiardo (1471–1473), xxiv. 21. Sesto Prete, Two Humanistic Anthologies (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1964), 59. “And Ricobaldus, Ferrarese author [?], a man of very acute ability, composed the life of each emperor, from Octavianus Augustus up to his own time, including their honors, physical qualities, the wars which they waged, in a word, everything. The magnificent Count Mattheus Maria Boiardus recently translated this work very clearly from the mother tongue and dedicated it to our invincible Duke.” “Et Ricobaldus auctor [?] ferrariensis vir perspicacissimi ingenii ab Octaviano Augusto ad aetatis suae tempora singulorum Imperatorum vitam honores corporis habitum bella gesta denique omnia conscripsit; quod opus Mattheius Maria Boiardus comes magnificus materna lingua perquam dilucide nuper traductum invictissimo Herculi Duci nostro dicavit.” 22. Rizzi, The “Historia Imperiale,” lxx–lxxi. 23. It is sometimes difficult to determine exactly where Rizzi stands on Boiardo’s use of the Pomerium. While he consistently argues for the existence of a lost Latin Riccobaldan manuscript, in his introduction to his edition of the Historia imperiale he states on p. xlviii that, “the source used by Boiardo is a now lost and lengthier version of the Pomerium” and “The narrative of the missing Latin work appears to oscillate between the first and third stesure of the Pomerium and the Historie.” The key to this confusion seems to be the multiple manuscripts produced by Riccobaldo that overlap each other, so that they all share common material. 24. On the technicalities of Boiardo as translator see Dennis Looney, “Fragil arte: Tradurre e governare nei volgarizzamenti boiardeschi ad Ercole I d’Este,” in Il Principe e la storia, ed. S. Matarrese and C. Montagnani (Novara: Interlinea Ed, 2005), 123–36, the more comprehensive Maria Antonietta,

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25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34.

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Medievalia et Humanistica “Alcune considerazioni su Boiardo traduttore,” Schifanoia 11 (1991): 63–79, and the more theoretical Rizzi, “When a Text Is Both a Pseudotranslation and a Translation, the Enlightening case of Matteo Maria Boiardo (1441–1494),” in Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies, ed. Anthony Pym et al. (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2008). R. Howard Bloch, “Genealogy as a Medieval Mental Structure and Textual Form,” in Gundriss der Romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbricht (Heidelberg: C. Winter Universitätsverlag, 1986), 136. Ibid., 142. Denys Hay, Annalists and Historians, Western Historiography from the VIIth to the XVIIIth Century (London: Methuen, 1977), 66–72. I use two manuscripts in the Biblioteca Ariostea, Ferrara: MS. Classe I 490 (hereafter MS. 490), which contains the first two books, and the MS. Collezione Antonelli 596 (hereafter MS. 596), which contains the fourth book. The first consists of 139 folio pages; the second of 189 folios. The Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana’s (Venice) catalog lists MS. It., Z.37 which contains books three and four: It totals 322 folios. I have simply halved that number to offer my estimate of book three and of the full length of the entire manuscript. See Carlo Frati and A. Segarizzi, Catalogo dei codici marciani italiani (Modena: G. Ferraguti, 1909), I, 33–34. Muratori published a part of the fourth book, from 1287 to the end, in the Rerum italicarum scriptores ab anno aerae christianae quingentesimo ad millesimum quingentesimum quorum potissima pars nunc primum in lucem prodit ex Ambrosianæ, Estensis, aliarumque insignium bibliothecarum codicibus, hereafter RIS (Milan: ex typographia Societatis Palatinae, 1723–51), 24, cols. 699–848. www.comune.gavello.ro.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article &id=7: benedettini&catid=3:storia&Itemid=15 (accessed 13 June 2010). Polystorio, “six very beautiful horses covered in scarlet and a host of boars, calves, peacocks, partridges, and capons. . . . Who received these gifts with great festivity and very graciously. And I the writer was there present, when all of the above were presented to him.” “Allora il Marchese mandò a presentargli sei bellissimi cavalli coperti di scarlatto. . . . Il qual presente fu ricevuto dal detto Re con grandissima festa, e molto graziosamente. E io Scrittore era ivi presente quando tutte le predette cose furongli presentate.” RIS, 24, col. 843. I use Muratori’s edition, when available, and the manuscripts when not. Polystorio, MS. 490, fol. 2v–3r. Polystorio,“secundo io trovo in croniche antichi.” The account of Ferrara’s origins is found in MS. 596, fol. 104r. Polystorio, MS. 596, fol. 104r, “El luocho dove al punto de Ferrara era chiamata la massa di Babilonia”; “Et per che a questa massa con curreveno molte gente de Italia le quali fugendo dal guerre se edurriano a questa massa si come a locho pacifico e securo per la grande forteccia delle acque.” Compare with Riccobaldo, Chronica parva Ferrariensis, ed. Gabriele Zanella, Deputazione provinciale Ferrarese di storia patria. Monumenti 9 (1983), 140–41. See also Francesca Bocchi, Istituzioni e società a Ferrara in età precommunale, Deputazione Provinciale Ferrarese di Storia Patria, Atti e Memorie, serie terza 26 (1979), 10–11. Polystorio, MS. 596, fol. 104r, “Et alcuno dux o marchese o conte o vescovo o arcivescovo o vesconte edificare alcuna torre senza licentia della citade de Ferrara . . . quella torre e quello castello sia subiecto ala citade de ferrara di desfare e de gettare a terra quello castello o torre facte contra questo ordine.”

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35. Polystorio, MS. 596, fol. 116r, “Et nota che questo Karlo Imperdore venenedo in Italia trouve li Magnifici et illustri Marchesi da Este li quali dal dicto Karlo diede molte possessione et castelle in lo contade di Padova cum privilegii imperiali de grandissime e nobilissimi dignitade. Et tra le altre castelle fu el Castello de Este dal quale la casa di questi illustri marchesi e chiamata la casa de Este.” 36. Polystorio, MS. 490, this section of the manuscript, the prologue, is not paginated. “E quanto el principe amagiore signoria tanto a luy se convene de avere magiore sapere e prudentia.” 37. Polystorio, MS. 490, prologue, not paginated. 38. Polystorio, MS. 490, prologue, not paginated. 39. Polystorio, RIS, col. 848. 40. Folin, Rinascimento estense, 8, offers a somewhat simpler structure, the annalistic-municipal and the dynastic-genealogical, separate yet often interconnected. 41. The idea of Boiardo as mediator, translator, and adaptor of history for Ercole and the court is derived from Looney, “Fragil arte,” especially 123, which he generously shared with me. 42. For example, Ponte, “Matteo Maria Boiardo dalla traduzione storiografica al romanzesco,” 454. 43. Ist. imp., fol. 156v, col. 349. Istoria imperiale = Ist. imp. All quotations are from the manuscript copy, Ms. 424, in the Biblioteca Classense (hereafter ms. Class.), Ravenna, followed by the citation of Muratori’s edition in the Rerum italicarum scriptores, vol. 9. This paper was written before the appearance of volume two of Rizzi’s edition of the Historia. 44. Ibid. 45. Arnolfo di Milano, Liber gestorum recentium (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1996), 164. 46. “Interea rex Henricus Mathildam comitissam ad colloquium evocavit. . . . Azzonem etiam marchionem et abbatem Cloniacesem et alios nonnullos ex primis Italiae princibus.” Lamperti Annales (Hannover: impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1894), 290. 47. Gesta Federici I imperatoris in Lombardia auct. cive mediolanensi (Annales mediolanenses maiores), ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (Hannover: impensis bibliopolii Hahniani, 1892), 41–49. 48. Otto Morena, et al., Das geschichtswerk des Otto Morena und seiner fortsetzer über die taten Friedrichs I, in der Lombardei (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1930), new series vol. 7, Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, 120, “castellum magnum ligneum atque manganos construxerant . . . interfecit ac boves ipsius carozeli occidit et ipsum carozolum incident crucemque deauratam, que supra perticam carozoli fuerat, atque vexillum ibi positum abstulit ac multos ex ipsis tam equites quam pedites ad tentoria duxit.” 49. Gesta Federici, 42, “et multi alii clerici, qui in exercitu aderant, preceperunt populo ex parte Dei omnipotentis et beati Ambroxii in publica concione et militibus omnibus, ut confidenter ad bellum precederent,” and “Carrocerum quoque in fossatum poiecit et boves eius habuit.” 50. Barbarossa in Italy (Carmen de gestis Frederici I imperatoris in Lombardia), ed. and trans. Thomas Carson (New York: Italica Press, 1994), 116. 51. Rizzi, The “Historia Imperiale,” lxii. The manuscript is Biblioteca Estense, Modena (hereafter BEM) Ital. 737, α.G.8.29. “Rainaldo figliuolo di Bertoldo signor da Este combattè contra Fedrico Barba Rossa imperatore defendendo valorosamente la parte del papa 1154. Costui agiunse a la sua

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52.

53.

54. 55.

56.

57.

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Medievalia et Humanistica signoria Ruvigo e Argenta, i quali son dua castelli che sono ugualmente lontani da Ferrara.” Ist. imp.,“Sentita a Milano la trista novella e fatto sopra cio publico consiglio: condussero al soldo loro per moneta Rainaldo Marchese di Este il quale a Bertoldo era successo. Era costui giovane di sua persona molto robusto e ne la Guerra che intra paduani e veronesi era stata fu prima capitano de paduani.” Ms. Class., fol. 167r; col.360. Ist. imp., “De quindi partito lo imperatore cum lo animo contro a Melanesi mal disposto ma piu assai contro a Rainaldo Marchese il quale come se dicea per suo dipregio portava a contrasegna de laquila nera una biancha ne le bandiere e di lui publicamente sparlava nomandolo barbero e crudele.” Ms. Class. fol. 168v; col.361. Ist. imp., “come capo de la setta Guelpha al sua nimica”; “alhora in Dalmacia congregado exercito per danari”; “e fu sconffito e perse oltro ale doe parte di sua gente e fugite insino ad este.” Ms.Class, fol. 169r, col.362. Ist. imp., “Nela prima erano tutti I barberi e forestieri per thesoro al soldo Milanese condutti cum bandiere vintidoe de insegne diverse & erano di queste gente dui condutieri Turisedo il Plano di cui sopra ragionato, & Azo figliolo del dicto Marchese anchora giovanetto.” Ms. Class. fol. 173r., col.367. This Turisedo is a historical figure mentioned in Morena and in Otto of Freising, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa (Gesta Friderici I imperatoris), trans. Charles Nierow (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994, orig. pub. 1953), 226, where “Turisundus” is identified as a leader of Veronese troops. Ist. imp., “Questo era un carro tirato da dodice grandissimi cavali & era fabricato cum rotte oblique informa che riverssar non si potea et in mezzo di questo era confficatta una altissima antenna sopra a la quale era la croce dorata sopra ad una palla rotunda da amplo circuito e da luna e da laltra banda pendeano doi grandissimi pendagli tuti bianchi e cussi di biancho tuto il carro cum li cavalla erano coperti.” Ms. Class., fol. 173r., col.367. There is something liminal about Rainaldo. He is high-born yet dresses as a low-born sergeant. His identity shifts as he changes his banner, which has the very function of identification. In short, he takes on mythic proportions. “The emperor responded that his sword will uncover the deception [Rainaldo and his troops are hiding behind some brambles], and that if the enemies advance from the site of that place, he will meet their advance with even more virtue. The banner of Marquis Rainaldo did not reveal itself perhaps because he changed it by means of his customary nimbleness, or because he changed his mind as well as his standards in the face of every treacherous shift of the wind, and through these and many other ways he reassured his men and set himself to scale the mountain. Rainaldo, dressed as a low-born sergeant, was ever in the battle, returned to his ranks and brought them to the river, turning on the back of the enemy and assailing the rearguard. And he killed many barbarians and seized the imperial banner.” “Lo Imperatore rispose, che el ferro scopriva li inganni, e che se dal sito de il locho lo avanciavono e nimici, che esso molto più di virtute loro avanciava; la bandera de il marchese Rainaldo non esser comparssa, perchè forssi da la soa consueta legerecia era cangiata, perchè la perfida soa pacia ad ogni mutatione di vento l’animo cum le insegne cambiava: e cum queste e molte altre ragione confortando e soi, se pose a salire il monte. Rainaldo, che in veste di vil sergente sempre ne la bataglia era stato, ritornato ala sua schiera la condusse nel fiume, voltegiando alle spalle di nimici; et assalite la

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58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63.

64.

65.

66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71.

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retrovardia, e molti barbari occise, e prese l’Imperial bandiera,” fol. 174r., col. 368. Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 127. Michael Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1974), 13. J. K. Hyde, Padua in the Age of Dante (New York: Manchester University Press, 1966), 201. Nicholas C. J. Pappas, “Stradioti: Balkan mercenaries in Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Italy,” www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Stradioti.html (accessed 13 February 2004). See also Paolo Petta, Soldati albanesi in Italia, sec. XV–XIX (Lecce: Argo, 1996), which I have not seen, but see the review by Francesco Marchianò, who references their mention in the fifteenth-century poem “Il Guerrin Meschino” by Andrea da Barberino, www.arbitalia.it/stampa/ pubblicazioni/2003/stradioti.htm See, for example, Estense service to Venice in Michael Mallett, “Venice and its Condottieri 1404–54,” in J. R. Hale, Renaissance Venice (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973), 122–27. Ist. Imp., fol. 129r., col.314, “In questa parte de la historia nostra ne pare de interponere quello che visto habiamo ne le croniche antiche de La casa da Este advenga che per fermeza di altro testimonio fermato non sia.” The 1495 inventory of the ducal library contains three entries that might refer to these old chronicles: see Giulio Bertoni, La biblioteca estense e la coltura ferrarese ai tempi del duca Ercole I (1471–1505) (Turin: Loescher, 1903), no. 2, “Cronicha vet. In Carta mediocre,” 213; no. 351, “Origine del Ducato de Ferrara,” 247; and especially no. 206, “Genologie de la caxa da Est,” 242. The chronicle of Rolandino identified the Estensi as the first among the great families of the Trevisan March, as they had become the principal executors of papal and Guelf association. Rolandinus Grammaticus, The Chronicles of the Trevisan March, trans. Joseph Berrigan (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1980), 5; Hyde, Padua, 199. Chronicon Marchiae Tarvisinae et Lombardia, ed. L. A. Botteghi (Città di Castello: Tipi della casa editrice S. Lapi, 1916), new ed. vol. 7, part 3 Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, iv; 50–51, “Illustrem virum a devotione romane Ecclesie”; “stabilis et fidelis adiutor Ecclesiae”; 53, “Firma columna, turris fortitudinis contra inimicorum oppressis”; 50, “catholicam domum Estensum”; 3, “Ezelini de Romano qui vitam terminavit in hereticam pravitatem”; 40, “demones absque dubio rapuerunt et eam in profundum inferni, ubi cumulus tormentorum et nulla redemptio proiecerunt.” Angelo Spaggiari and Giuseppe Trenti, Gli stemmi Estensi ed Austro-Estensi (Modena: Aedes muratoriana, 1985), 26 n.17. Bloch, “Genealogy,” 145–46. Ist.imp., 175r., col. 368–69. Again the anonymous chronicle confirms that Boiardo was working from a preexisting association of Rainaldo with Rovigo: “Costui agiunse a la sua signoria Ruvigo e Argenta, i quali son dua castelli che sono ugualmente lontani da Ferrara.” Quoted by Rizzi, The “Historia Imperiale,” lxii. Chron. March. Tarv., 21, especially n.9 and xiv. Jack Goody and Jan Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy” Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (1963): 321, 326. On the changing attitude of the Renaissance toward organizing medieval material see Anthony Grafton, Forgers and Critics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 25.

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72. Aleida Assmann, “Transformations between History and Memory” Social Research 75 (2008): 55. She goes on to write, “Hence a collective memory is necessarily a mediated memory.” This mixture of the oral and the written can also be clearly seen in the Orlando innamorato, which while written employs a narrative device of orality and may well have been recited by Boiardo at court. 73. Alfredo Cottignoli, “Dietro le quinte dei ‘Rerum’: Muratori fra Boiardo e Riccobaldo,” in Per formare un’istoria intiera (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1992), 66, 70, 68. 74. “Genealogia delli Signori Estensi, Prencipi in Ferrara com breve trattato de loro preclari gesti composto da Mario Equicolo de Alveto dall’ anno MDXVI.” There are three copies: α.P.4.19 Ital.482; α.F.3.11 Ital.162; α.G.8.29. Ital.731. See Stephen Kolsky, Mario Equicola, the Real Courtier (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1991), 318–22 for bibliographical details, and 174–75 for comments on the Genealogia and its relationship to the Chronaca di Mantua. 75. See, for example, Ital. fol. 162, 13v. Bertoni, La biblioteca, 250 notes the borrowing of “Riccobaldo” by Equicola on 23 November 1516. “S’è datto il soprascritto libro intitulato Ricobaldo Ferrarese . . . per mandare a mantoa a m. Mario chicolo [sic] secretario del sig. Francesco Marchese di Mantoa.” 76. The investiture by Otto I is found in Ist.Imp., fol. 129v, col.315. The change in colors by Lothair, Ist.Imp., fol. 156v, col.349. 77. Ital. fol. 482. 4v. 78. “Fu molto honorato la virtù di Rinaldo ridutossi in casa in imitatione della Barbarossa cominciò primo in Italia a fare mansueti quelli di rapina. . . . Di falconi adunque astori, sparavieri et di tal sorte spetie animali.” Ital. 162, fols. 13v–14r. 79. Ist.imp., fol. 163v, col. 356. 80. Rosalind Thomas, “Herodotus’ Histories and the Floating Gap,” in Nino Luraghi, ed., The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 198. 81. Lucio Bertelli, “Hecataeus: From Genealogy to Historiography,” in Luraghi, Historian’s Craft, on “spazio mitico,” 78, on rationalization, 80–81, and 93–94 on memory. 82. Portrait of “Rinaldo figlio di Bertoldo,” Biblioteca Ariostea, Ferrara, Cl I 645, fol. 159v. On Ottone, “fu nel anno 840 da Lodovico Re di Francia concessa in Signoria sottotitolo di Contea per particular privilleggio speditori con lettere pattenti sotto il di 30 maggio del medesimo anno . . . Aquisgrani ad Ottone di Este fratello di Berengario.” Ibid., fol. 117v. 83. “Le succession de i principi di Europa dopo la declinatione dello Impero Descritte da Alessandro Sardo al serenissimo principe domino Alfonso II da Este Duca di Ferrara suo Signore” BEM, G.4.20 Ital 426. 84. Archivio Segreto Estense, Casa e Stato, Genealogie, storie e notizie di Casa d’Este. 85. For example, “Cronica dell’ Illustrissima Casa da Este estratto dalle Istorie antiche del Libro di Riccobaldo Ferrarese.” 86. See the introduction to the edition of Giraldi’s Discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi, eds. Laura Benedetti, Giuseppe Monorchio, and Enrico Musacchio (Bologna: Millennium, 1999), 78, n. 91. 87. Giovanbattista Giraldi, Commentario delle cose di Ferrara et de Principe da Este . . . tratto dall’ Epitome di M. Gregorio Giraldi; et tradotto per M. Lodovico Domenichi (Florence: L. Torrentino, 1556), 18–19.

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88. Giraldi, Commentario, 7. See also 24–25 where he used words such as “very dubious and uncertain” (“molto dubbioso et sospeso”). 89. “To narrations is added, not without advantage, the task of refuting and confirming them, which is called anaskeu and kataskeu. This may be done not only with regard to fabulous subjects and such as are related in poetry, but with regard even to records in our own annals . . . . As to the histories of the Greeks, there is generally license in them similar to that of the poets. Questions are often wont to arise, too, concerning the time or place at which a thing is said to have been done, sometimes even about a person, as Livy, for instance, is frequently in doubt, and other historians differ one from another.” Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, II.4.18–19. www2.iastate .edu/~honeyl/quintilian/2/chapter4.html (accessed 6 July 2009). 90. Giraldi, Commentari, 19–20. 91. Robert E. Hallowell, “Ronsard and the Gallic Hercules Myth,” Studies in the Renaissance 9 (1962): 242–55. 92. Giraldi, Commentario, 21. 93. Ibid., 21. 94. On Bertoldo, Commentario, 39–41; on Rainaldo, 42–44. 95. Venceslao Santi, “La precedenza tra gli Estensi e I Medici e ‘L’Historia de’ principi d’Este di G. Battista Pigna.’” Atti e memorie della Deputazione provinciale Ferrarese di Storia Patria 9 (1897), 43. 96. Giovan Battista Pigna, Historia de principi di Este, nel quale si contengono congiuntamente le cose principali dalle rivolutione del Roman Imp. in fino al M.CCCC. LXXVI (Ferrara: Appresso Francesco Rossi stampator ducale, 1570). 97. Pigna, Historia, prologue. The prologue is not paginated: “le migliata delle scritture, non dico ordinarie, ma esquisite et per le conclusion de negocii passate in pergameno.” 98. Pigna, Historia, 2–3, “lor natura secchi et sterile,” “vanamente prolisi,” “una scrittura uniforme.” 99. Pigna, Historia, 3. 100. Pigna, Historia, 2. 101. “Porgono occasione di conietturare.” Roberto Bizzocchi, Genealogie incredibili: Scritti di storia nell’Europa moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995), 214. 102. Pigna, Historia, 114: “che Riccobaldo nelle Vite de gli Imperatori, ove è largo Scrittore della presente Guerra, ch non fu molto discosta da suoi tempi.” 103. Quoted by Santi, “La precedenza tra gli Estensi e I Medici,” 99. 104. Pigna, Historia, 118. 105. This is a point of disagreement between Folin and myself, though one that can easily be overstated. Folin sees an essential continuity between Pigna and Muratori as dynastic historians. I agree. My emphasis, however, is on the methodologies that each employed, which may seem similar but are really quite different. See Folin, Rinascimento estense, 7–8, 46. 106. Eric Cochrane, “The Transition from Renaissance to Baroque: The Case of Italian Historiography,” History and Theory 19 (1980): 28. 107. See, for example, Marc Antonio Guarini, [a canon in the cathedral] Compendio historico dell’origine, accrescimento, e prerogatiue delle chiese, e luoghi pij della città, e diocesi di Ferrara: e delle memorie di que’ personaggi di pregio, che in esse son sepelliti: In cui incidentemente si fà menzione di reliquie, pitture, sculture, ed altri ornamenti al decoro così di esse chiese, come della città apartenenti (Ferrara: Presso gli Heredi di Vittorio Baldini, 1621); Antonio Libanori’s [a Cistercian] Ferrara d’oro imbrunito (Ferrara, 1665–1674, no pub.) and

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108. 109.

110. 111. 112.

113.

114. 115. 116. 117. 118.

119.

120.

121. 122. 123. 124. 125.

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Medievalia et Humanistica Historia dell’antichissima città di Modona by Lodovico Vedriani [a priest in the Company of San Carlo] (Modona: Per Bartolomeo Soliani), 1666. See also Cochrane, “The Transition from Renaissance to Baroque,” especially 31–38. Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes, trans. Ernest Graf (Saint Louis: Herder, 1923–1969), vol. 33, 63–64. Giusto Fontanini, [“Un Ministro d’un Principe”], Il dominio temporale della sede apostolica. soprà la città di Comacchio per lo spazio continuato di dieci secoli ([Rome, presumably], no pub., 1708), 34: “non fu Signora [sic] di Citttà, o di Stati; ma solamente Nobile Padovana . . . la Casa d’Este era tuttavia Cittadina di Padova.” Fontanini, Il dominio, 1708, 36. Fontanini, Il dominio, 1708, 42. Fontanini, Il dominio, 1708, 43: “Egli, che rivoltò tutta l’antichità per decorare i suoi principi;”and 47, “vi si scopriranno per entro tanti anacronismi, e formole improprie . . . sia bisogno di supplicargli a produrre gli originali.” C. Foucard, C. Documenti inediti di Lodovico Antonio Muratori raccolti nell’archivio di stato in Modena (Modena: no pub., 1872), doc. XXI, Giannani to Duke Rinaldo, 3 April 1708: “Fra tanto una delle cose necessarie, necessarissime . . . far segretamente cercare, veder, esaminare, consultare ciò che mai possa addursi in pretesa loro giustificazione da Preti per l’occupazione di esso Comacchio.” Muratori, Osservazioni, 121–22: “con piena e libera Podestà, Autorità, e Grado supremo.” Muratori, Osservazioni, 105–8. Muratori cites the Abbot Urspergense, the Cronica Uveingartense (citing Leibniz); Lambertus Scafnaburgense, and Odericus Vitalis. Muratori, Osservazioni, 115–16. Muratori, Osservazioni, 115. Muratori, Osservazioni, 71–72, where chapter 48 is titled “Concession of Comacchio to Ottone Estense not a fiction nor a dream of Pigna.” He chides Fontanini for basing his judgment on one source alone and for being precipitous. When he writes unequivocally that Pigna wrote the truth (“che il Pigna scrisse senza dubbio la verità”) he does so not in reference to the ninth-century investiture. Ibid., 113–15. Muratori, Osservazioni, 73, “mentre io so, che non da quegli oscuri Secoli, nè da que’ titoli dubbiosi, ma propriamente . . . de gli ultimi Secoli, si ha da prendere la decisione del legittimo, o illegittimo Dominio sopra gli Stati temporali.” Piena esposizione de i diritti imperiali ed estensi sopra la città di Comacchio, in risposta alle due difese del dominio, e alla dissertazione istorica: S’aggiunge una tavola cronologica, con un’appendice d’investiture cesaree, e d’altri documenti spettanti alla controversia di Comacchio (n.p. but probably Modena: no pub., 1712). Muratori, Piena esposizione, 237. The text in italics is a quotation from Fontanini. Muratori, Piena esposizione, 239. Muratori, Delle antichità Estensi ed italiane (Modena: Stamperia Ducale, 1717), XI (A I Lettori). Muratori, Antichità Estensi, XIX. Muratori, Antichità Estensi, XXII.

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126. Muratori, Antichità Estensi, XIV: “da i vecchi Documenti de gli Archivi, o dalle antiche Storie, cioè da i due unici veri mezzi, che s’abbiano per giungere concertezza.” 127. Muratori, Antichità Estensi, I, 79. After naming the historians, he continues: “ed altri hanno qui confuso non poco i tempi, e i personaggi, moltiplicando gli Azzi, gli Ughi, i Folchi, i Guelfi più del dovere, a fine di accordare coll’antica Storia di Ricobaldo Ferrarese.” 128. Isidoro Alessi, Ricerche istorico-critiche delle Antichità di Este (Padua: nella stamperia penada, 1776). 129. Giovanni Andrea Barotti and Lorenzo Barotti, Memorie istoriche di letterati ferraresi (Ferrara: Per gli eredi di Giuseppe Rinaldi, 1792), 96. 130. Ibid., 93: “screditata questa Cronaca, e ripudiata come un Romanzo, e una Poesia, non per istruire ma unicamente per dilettare composta.” This argument turns up in the modern criticism: Ponte, “Matteo Malia Boiardo,” 459, “e il manipolatore [Boiardo] diviene poeta, in quella che al Muratori appariva una fabula romanensis, un romanzo.” See also Anna Soffientini, “Le Vite di Enrico IV ed Enrico V nell’Istoria imperiale di Matteo Maria Boiardo,” in Anceschi and Mattarese, Il Boiardo e il mondo estense nel quattrocento, 461. 131. Barotti and Barotti, Memorie istoriche, 101. It is interesting that Barotti treats Boiardo more as author than translator. 132. Gabrielle Spiegel, “Genealogy Form and Function in Medieval Narrative,” History and Theory 22 (1983): 53. 133. Gabrielle Spiegel, “Political Utility in Medieval Historiography: A Sketch,” History and Theory 14 (1975): 314, 325. 134. Spiegel, “Genealogy Form and Function,” 46–47. 135. Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (London: Edward Arnold, 1969), 1; James H. McGregor, introduction to Luigi Guicciardini, The Sack of Rome (New York: Italica, 1993), xx–xxiii. 136. Santi, “La precedenza,” 120. 137. Arnoldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950): 286, 290. 138. Gabrielle Spiegel, “History, Historicism, and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 65 (1990), 83. 139. McNeill, “Mythhistory,” 2. 140. Ibid., 8.

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Review Article

Pere Tomàs, Tractatus brevis de modis distinctionum: Latin text with Catalan and English Translations, ed. Celia López Alcalde and Josep Batalla, introd. Claus A. Andersen. Santa Coloma de Queralt: Publicacions URV, 2011. Pp. 399, cloth. Stanislav Sousedík, “Nicolai de Orbellis Tractatus de distinctionibus,” Studia Neoaristotelica: A Journal of Analytical Scholasticism 8 (2011): 119–37. In how many ways can it be spelled out that “A is not B”? That was a subject under dispute in scholastic philosophy. A and B are to stand here for any incomplex item whatsoever. The mediaeval schools dealt with this question in the so called Treatises on formalities (tractatus formalitatum), which flourished from about 1320 up to the seventeenth century. What gave rise to this literature were the concerns about Duns Scotus’s distinctio formalis. Does the distinctio formalis range between the distinctio realis and the distinctio rationis? If this is granted, an entity’s identity would not be maintained by solely one type of distinction, viz., by the distinctio rationis. That causes metaphysical trouble for everybody not committed to Realism. If not, it becomes difficult to account for a lot of true statements, for example, “God’s justice is not God’s mercy.” In fact, the treatises that dealt with this matter were breaking fresh ground. They covered a subject matter not covered either by Aristotle/Porphyry or Petrus Hispanus, something on the borderline of logic and metaphysics. Recent scholarship supplies us with editions of another two specimina, which answer the question in the affirmative. Both treatises were composed by Franciscan friars, who were famous Scotists: one by the Catalan Pere Tomàs, better known as Petrus Thomae (d. 1340), and another one by the French Nicolaus de Orbellis (d. ca. 1472). They add to a lot of relevant material we already have in print. As for the literary genre, there is hardly any in medieval philosophy that is more intricate and poses more philological problems. That is due to the modest aim of these treatises, Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, Number 38 (Reinhold F. Glei and Wolfgang Polleichtner, eds.), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012

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viz. to sum up a certain school tradition and to carry it on. Most of them were compilations and understood themselves such to be: papers for the teaching business, which again and again were reworked in various drafts. The manuscript tradition is proliferative. The relative chronology even of the printed material is all but clear. The nuptials of philosophy and philology are celebrated, nowadays, in this area. Thomae’s Tractatus brevis is one of two main versions of his short treatise on the distinctions, the other one having already been edited by Nuciarelli, in 1517,1 and again by Bos, in 2000.2 Andersen dwells a lot on the relationship between these versions. Apparently, the divergences do only affect the introduction to each text, as the body of the treatise itself is “substantially the same” (81).3 What both versions must be distinguished from is an entirely different treatise, Thomae’s De modis distinctionis, still unedited. The task of editing has been carried out by a group of scholars at the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona under the aegis of the European Research Council project “Latin Philosophy into Hebrew: Intercultural Networks in Thirteenth and Fourteenth-Century Europe,” run by Professor Fidora. Hence the Catalan language is not the only prominent one in this volume. The edition is ornamented with snippets that contain quotations from the Tractatus brevis to be found in a fifteenth-century Hebrew tradition. The two translations are all right. Whether they can do any good might be questioned, since the original language is simple enough. If this sort of puffing up of text editions is to become a common practice, the editing business will not be made easier. In any case, the scholia refer to these translations. They elucidate the Aristotelian and Scotistic background. They draw, among others, on Averroes, Radulphus Brito, Duns Scotus, Antonius Andreas, Meyronnes, and Thomae himself. In turn, the edition of Nicolaus de Orbellis’s De distinctionibus is in no way related to any textual tradition already known. It is based on two manuscripts from Prague and Kraków. This treatise confines itself to rehearse the number of types of identity and distinction, whereas Thomae’s additionally discusses how this doctrine applies to the ontological issue of the ten Aristotelian categories. In his introduction, Professor Sousedík gathers from the author’s self-testimony (“Statui . . . pauca dicere secundum sententiam Scoti et Francisci de Maronis”) that the treatise draws on Francis of Meyronnes (d. 1328). This statement needs some qualification. Orbellis cannot have been a tough “Maronista” like some of the fifteenth-century compilators (Nicolaus Lakmann [d. 1479], Henricus de Werla). His treatise is at variance with Meyronnes’s fourfold division of distinctions. It advances a sevenfold division. On the

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one hand, Orbellis skipped the distinctio modalis between quiddities and their intrinsic modes, while on the other hand he embraced three types of distinction unknown to Meyronnes: (a) the distinctio se totis subiective and se totis obiective, and (b) a type of a distinction of reason that was to obtain in “A is A,” and that has been dubbed, in the fifteenth century, distinctio rationis ratiocinantis. Now, that is just the way Thomae put the things. Wolfgang Hübener (1934–2007), a quarter of a century ago, pointed out that Thomae invented the pattern of the sevenfold division of all types of distinction, the opposition between distinctio rationis (i.e., ratiocinantis) and distinctio ex natura rei being the principal division. Again, that it was Thomae who dismissed Meyronnes’s distinctio modalis, and why he did so.4 Finally, that it was Thomae who first distinguished, within the distinctio se totis,5 between subiective and obiective.6 The different approaches to the division of distinctions made Hübener trace a double root of Scotistic Formalism, viz. Meyronnes and Thomae. “Die Hypothek ihres doppelten Ursprungs hat die Geschichte der Unterscheidungsmetaphysik nachhaltig bestimmt.”7 Andersen endorses this statement (201–2). It must be regarded to be the fundamental article of any study of fifteenth-century Formalism. In terms of history of ideas, Thomae’s Tractatus brevis is a critically important text, whereas Orbellis’s treatise is just another token of an eclecticism that obscures Thomae’s ongoing presence. To be sure, both Thomae and Orbellis are still far from having reached that formidable size and that degree of sophistication to be found later on in the Sirectus tradition, particularly in Antonio Trombetta (1436–1517). Instead, both bear witness to the “medieval” background of the very set of ideas that afterward made up ontology. Andersen’s learned introduction is a dissertation in its own right, about 130 pages, 256 often lengthy footnotes. Andersen does not indulge in syntheses, which would reduce the complexity. Rather, the different approaches in the wake of Duns Scotus are carefully distinguished and compared. The systematic impetus of the array of distinctions that evolved in this movement is fairly appreciated. Seeming inconsistencies are frankly addressed and tackled. Thomae’s sevenfold division is rearranged (111–77) into three groups: (1) distinctio rationis, distinctio ex natura rei, (2) distinctio formalis, distinctio realis, (3) distinctio essentialis, distinctio se totis subiective, distinctio se totis obiective. The methodical advantage of this grouping is that the focus thus shifts toward the conceptual features in the way of how Thomae dealt with each of these types. Still, the main thing, the distinctio formalis, might have come off better. Thomae is rightly viewed (201) as

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an adversary of the epistemic turn in the semantics of “formality” that can be observed in Peter Aureoli’s (d. 1322) wake. We are told that A and B are “formally” distinct, if and only if they “are constituted in such a way that, when one is abstracted ultimately from another, the one does not include the other quidditatively” (§ 9). But the superiority of this formula is not brought out clearly, whereas Hübener already credited Thomae with having thus provided Scotistic Formalism with its most lucky formula (“die prägnanteste Formulierung”).8 In particular, Andersen is at a loss as to how to account for Thomae’s distinction between the distinctio formalis and the distinctio realis (141 et seq.). In order to disentangle formalitates and realitates, it would have been helpful to consult Ioannes de Bassolis, who is entirely ignored throughout the volume. Bassolis tells us that there is no difference between formalitas and realitas except for the latter’s including the extensional aspect, from which the former abstracts.9 The morning star (to quote Frege’s stock example) is not realiter distinct from the evening star: not because either of them refers to the same thing—this would also hold true for animality and rationality regarding man—but because the extension of the one squares with the extension of the other. What makes one feel uneasy is “the close link” (171) between the Tractatus brevis and De modis distinctionis. Our still not having got a complete edition of this latter treatise is to be deplored, and so much the more as De modis distinctionis arguably would turn out to be philosophically more rewarding. That can be gathered from some of its questions edited separately,10 from the fact that only here is the distinctio rationis discussed at some length,11 and from the elucidation of the ontological status of the formalitas,12 which is a level of reflection simply lacking in the published texts. Andersen adopts, however, an evolutionary approach and argues (103) that the present text embodies the mature stage, as it abandons the simplistic notion formerly shared that the classification of distinctions is to be derived from a preestablished classification of those very items that are the subject matter of distinction (formalitates, realitates, essentiae, etc.). One-third of Andersen’s introduction is devoted to the Wirkungsgeschichte of Thomae’s doctrine. For we are told right at the outset: “The classification of seven kinds of distinction found in our treatise was widely received in later generations of scholastic authors” (13). It was passed down as an anonymous school tradition (251). Perhaps Andersen is right in presenting its history as one of distortion. Anyway, his selection of relevant texts in order to trace Thomae’s undercover presence is remarkably well chosen. He is well aware that Orbellis is a part of the

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story. In light of what he has to say on that score (217–23), Sousedík’s text turns out to be a fake. Unfortunately, Sousedík failed to take into account that Orbellis’s text actually had been edited long ago: It is part of his Physics, originally published in 1485.13 The case is instructive. Sousedík does not ignore that there is something wrong with his text. Yet his doubts are not driven far enough. Not only is the minor second half an interpolation, but the whole dressing is false. A comparison between both versions easily brings out to what end somebody, in 1488, might have attempted to redress Orbellis. Andersen takes Orbellis to be a representative of fifteenth-century eclecticism, but with a distinct bias in favor of Thomae rather than Meyronnes. To be sure, Orbellis did not mention any of his sources explicitly: “As for the seven distinctions, he simply informs the reader that they are ‘held by some of the subtle doctor’s followers’ (ab aliquibus sequentibus doctorem subtilem ponuntur).” But Orbellis’s readiness to join this party is illustrated in a number of instances, one of these being the paragraph concerning the distinctio rationis. Andersen argues (221) that this paragraph is borrowed almost verbatim from Thomae’s De modis distinctionis. Now, what has happened about the introductory statement concerning that current, one of whose partisans was Orbellis himself, is that it has been deleted. The original introduction was replaced by a totally different one. Pseudo-Orbellis, for his part, starts with the commitment to Meyronnes as quoted above. Orbellis goes on to give a preliminary list of the seven types of identity and distinction in order to start his own treatment with the distinctio rationis. Pseudo-Orbellis goes on to give a similar list, but instead of starting with what he himself had previously announced to be the starting point, viz. the distinctio obiectiva, he actually starts with something quite different, viz. with two lengthy preliminary statements about quiddity, intrinsic mode, and abstraction, which give him the opportunity to allege Meyronnes another two times. After having done so, Pseudo-Orbellis surprisingly leaves the stage to the real Orbellis. As if nothing had been previously said in regard to the systematic priority of the distinctio obiectiva, Sousedík’s version makes a fresh start: “Est autem distinctio rationis primus modus distinctionum. Pro quo notandum etc.” In sum, the first two and a half pages of Sousedík’s version are a mess. There is, however, a read thread through what must be qualified as an utterly inconsistent interpolation: the partisanship for Meyronnes. Sousedík’s edition renders a nice example of the competition enacted between two currents within Scotistic Formalism. Eventually, a Maronista tried hard to efface the other party’s mark in a piece that for some reason or other he held in esteem.

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From this it must not be inferred that Sousedík’s edition is made in vain. Since the falsifier did his work in a perfuntory manner, the core as well as the general tendency of Orbellis’s compilation remained unaffected. Although Sousedík’s version does not generally render the better text, there certainly are a number of places where the early prints now can be emendated. These emendations do even concern points of interest for the Überlieferungsgeschichte of Thomae’s Tractatus brevis.14 As for the splendid edition of the Tractatus brevis that we have got now, one is inclined to say: Congratulations! The subtlety of its having been achieved is reminiscent of its own subject. The Tractatus formalitatum itself is back on stage.

Notes 1. Contenta in volumine per eximium Artium et Medicine Oratorem dominum Hieronymum de Nuciarellis Romanum correcta et emendata . . . , Venetiis, 1517, fols. 30va–32rb. This collection of metaphysical treatises can be downloaded via Google Books. 2. E. P. Bos, “Petrus Thomae’s De distinctione praedicamentorum (with a Working Edition),” in The Winged Chariot: Collected Essays on Plato and Platonism in Honour of L. M. de Rijk, eds. M. Kardaun and J. Spruyt (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2000), 277–312. 3. Sometimes Nuciarellus’s text is still preferable. While the new edition reads on page 302, line 11: “Et ideo negationes et privationes intra se nec ab aliquo alio distinguuntur,” the negation here lacking is supplied by Nuciarellus (fol. 31ra): “Et ideo nec negationes nec privationes intra se nec ab aliquo alio distinguuntur.” 4. Wolfgang Hübener,“Robertus Anglicus OFM und die formalistische Tradition,” in Philosophie im Mittelalter, ed. J. P. Beckmann et al. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1987), 329–53, here 336sq., 339sq. 5. Cf. Antonius Andreas OFM, Quaestiones super XII libros Metaphysicae 1, 1, 3, Venetiis 1514, 3vb: “Deus et creatura sunt se ipsis totis distincta in realitate, sed non in conceptu reali.” 6. Hübener, “Robertus Anglicus,” 338. 7. Ibid., 339. 8. Ibid., 335. 9. Ioannes de Bassolis OFM, I Sent. dist. 22 q. 4, Parisiis 1517, fol. 144ra. 10. Petrus Thomae, Quodlibet, eds. M. R. Hooper and E. M. Buytaert (St. Bonaventure: The Franciscan Institute, 1957), 118–31. 11. Cf. Geoffrey G. Bridges, Identity and Distinction in Petrus Thomae (St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute, 1959), 58–65. 12. Cf. Hübener, “Robertus Anglicus,” 336. 13. Nicolaus de Orbelli, Cursus librorum philosophie naturalis secundum viam doctoris subtilis Scoti, Basileae, 1503, fol. a7rb–b1rb. I refer to this edition rather than to that quoted by Andersen, since it can be downloaded via Google Books.

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14. As for Thomae’s Tractatus brevis § 34, Andersen highlights (163) the reading “conceptus univocus realis.” He adds, however, that this reading does not reappear “in any Scotist sources since Peter Thomae” prior to 1590 (239). Yet this very reading squares with Sousedík’s version: “Septimus modus distinctionum est distinctio se totis obiective. Illa autem sic distinguuntur, quae in nullo conceptu reali quidditativo [ed. Sousedík p. 130, 19: in nullo conceptu univoco reali quiditative] conveniunt: ut sunt duae ultimae differentiae.” (Orbelli, Cursus, fol. a8va).

Sven K. Knebel [email protected]

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Donald Beecher and Grant Williams, eds., Ars Reminiscendi: Mind and Memory in Renaissance Culture. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2009. Pp. 440.

Nowadays studies and research projects on memory abound.1 For a society that is deeply afraid of the fact that the average age of its members is rising every day, memory (and forgetting) naturally is a very important topic, not only in medical contexts but also in practically every aspect of life. It cannot come as a surprise that the question how preceding generations have dealt with questions of memory is of interest, too.2 Beecher and Williams approach their subject in a very practical manner. Rather than building up a vast array of theoretical axioms, the sixteen articles that this book comprises show the material they are dealing with first and then deduce their conclusions. As a whole, the book is a collection of case studies on the role of memory for Renaissance thinkers and writers. Maybe here and there, a comparison of these findings with today’s conceptions of what memory is and how we are looking at certain things today would have been an addition that would have made some insights even more valuable. Also, sometimes the choice of case studies seems to be a bit arbitrary. The editors chose a very broad title for their collection. It does not come as a surprise that the topics of the individual articles lack a cohesive common dominator beyond the fact that they deal with memory and mnemotechnics in the Renaissance in general. Nevertheless, much can be learned from this book. After a helpful introduction by Donald Beecher, Brenda DunnLardeau opens the book on pages 27–43 with an inquiry into the meaning of the “mnemonic architecture” (27) of Jehan Du Pré’s Palais des nobles Dames. Drawing on medieval traditions as well as contemporary trends, Du Pré builds a text whose architecture activates as many

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mnemotechnical tricks as possible to celebrate the deeds of thirteen noble women, as Dunn-Lardeau very learnedly shows. Andrea Torre’s article entitled “Patterns and Functions of the Mnemonics Image in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” (45–67) broadens our view and shows that the use of mnemonics left its traces in the creation of texts in the Renaissance. To be able to visualize texts was seen as enhancement of one’s ability to memorize a text. Thus, especially preachers, for example, availed themselves of these mnemonic “crutches.” On the other hand, the need to create a text that followed the rules of these visualizations influenced the collection of material for the text (inventio). The images, therefore, upon which at least some of these texts were built, retained a meditational life and meaning of their own. Both aspects of one of these texts inform the other. Wolfgang Neuber (“Mnemonic Imagery in the Early Modern Period: Visibility and Collective Memory,” 69–81) advances the argument even further. He claims that the mnemonic patterns underlying the texts themselves form a collective memory of the early modern period in their own right. He points out that the emotional valence of these pictures is crucial for their efficiency in working as a catalyst for creating memories. These pictures and their structural principles, however, shape the collective memory of the age, as Neuber convincingly argues. James Nelson Novoa discusses “A Sephardic Art of Memory” (85– 104): MS. PARM. 2666, fol. 139r–140v. While using Hebrew characters, this text is written in Castilian, a practice that was (and still is) not unusual among Sephardic Jews. This mnemonic treatise can be dated roughly to the third quarter of the fifteenth century. The content of the manuscript shows many traces of classical learning from Aristotle via Cicero to medieval Dominican teachings on the art of memorization. Distinctly Jewish teachings, however, are lacking. Thus, this text is an interesting document on Sephardic daily life. Kenneth Bartlett analyzes Thomas Hoby’s travel journal (105–19), The Travail and Lief of Me, Thomas Hoby. Thomas Hoby writes down in particular his recollection of two journeys that he made to Italy. As the title of the work suggests, Hoby also included autobiographical material. The last entry of this diary was made in 1564. As far as Italy is concerned, Hoby included long passages that were direct translations from Leandro Alberti’s Descrittione di tutta Italia (1550). Bartlett portrays Hoby not as a plagiarist, but as a “mélange of reading and memory” (118). Hoby’s work is a mixture, then, of Hoby’s own memories of what he saw in Italy and of what he read about Italy in Alberti, as well as in the works of other

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authors like Vergil or Livy. Hoby, it seems, distinguished less sharply than we do today between his own experiences and those made by others. Victoria Burke compares the opinions of various people living in England in the seventeenth century on the potential use that one could or should make of commonplace books (121–43). In sum, the process of writing down maxims seems to have been seen as a means to strengthen one’s memory further. The ultimate goal was to use the memory of these sentences to improve one’s ethical behavior. Paul Nelles argues in his article, which is entitled “Reading and Memory in the Universal Library: Conrad Gessner and the Renaissance Book” (147–69), that Gessner wrote his Bibliotheca universalis (1545) and his Pandecta (1548) not so much in order to document knowledge, but to order it and aid the reader toward working with the vast amounts of literature that had appeared in manuscript and in print. Erasmus emphasized the value of memory for becoming a learned person, as John Hunter points out (171–86). Erasmus tried to warn especially young people from reading too much of the ever expanding literature that was coming out in his days. Instead, Erasmus argues that a thorough understanding and also constant repetition of what one has learned is the basis for recalling it in the future. It is imperative for a learned person to have the right knowledge ready at hand when one needs it. At the same time, one does not need to know everything, just the best. Undoubtedly, Erasmus looked at the phenomenon of the mass production of books in his time with mixed feelings. Johann Sturm’s treatise Nobilitas literata (1549) is the subject of MarieAlice Belle’s contribution (187–210) to this book. She demonstrates the position of Johann Sturm on the question of how memory works. Sturm relies on the one hand on traditional teachings on the art of memory as a storehouse of images as well as on the Platonic concept of memory as a recollection of eternal truths. Thus, memory was at the center of Sturm’s humanist learning. Raymond Waddington deals with the meaning of memory in Milton’s Paradise Lost (213–30). He shows that in this work remembering is a must for someone who wants to perfect his life, whereas willful forgetting leads to sin. Andrew Wallace discusses a scene from Shakespeare: Hamlet’s encounter with the travelling players (231–43). Within the context of the scene, the question is asked how memorized texts can mean anything to someone. Read against the contemporary method of rote memorization of texts in schools and for the stage, it is interesting that Hamlet

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apparently finds some consolation in sharing the words of known texts. Shared sympathy is built upon shared texts. This answer can be found to Hamlet’s question: “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to her, / That he should weep for her?” Personally, I think, we could take Wallace’s discussion even one step further: Shakespeare is asking his reader the same question about his own Hamlet that Hamlet is asking about Vergil’s text: why are you reading, listening to, maybe even memorizing these verses? And Shakespeare also asks how he can make the reader understand and sympathize with Hamlet. It seems as if he is asking: what is Hamlet to you?3 Joseph Khoury (“Machiavelli Manufacturing Memory: Terrorizing History, Historicizing Terror,” 247–66) focuses on the role that memory played for Machiavelli’s political thought. In Machiavelli’s opinion, every present leadership of a state has to and will recreate the past with an eye on the political necessities of the present. The narrative of what happened in the past sometimes has to change in order to accommodate present needs. History becomes a tool in which forgetting and remembering form a very interesting kind of symbiosis. Conrad Celtis’s Oratio in gymnasio Ingelstadio publice recitata (1492) is the subject of Danièle Letocha’s article (267–88) in this book. She shows how important a role the duty of not forgetting the Greek and Roman past was for Celtis’s ideas about the reform of his contemporary university. Christopher Ivic’s “Spenser and Interpellative Memory” (289–310) informs us that Spenser in his A View of the Present State of Ireland (1593, published 1633) demanded that the people of Ireland, and especially the descendants of the English immigrants to Ireland, had to forget themselves and to relearn their English heritage. Thus, in a way, Spenser was anticipating our contemporary discussion about how national identities are formed by creating and cultivating collective memories and vice versa. Grant Williams shows that early modern times were considering memory as something transmaterial (313–38). He demonstrates how very important the question of the correlation between memory and the corporeal aspects of memorizing were discussed in the Renaissance. It becomes also very clear how much these thinkers still depended on Aristotle and Galen. Rhodri Lewis’s article deals with the implications on the art of memorizing that a changing concept of the soul had in the seventeenth century (339–63). Lewis focuses on Robert Hooke as a case study.

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Donald Beecher’s contribution concludes this impressive collection of case studies on memory (367–433). It is entitled “Recollection, Cognition, and Culture: An Overview of Renaissance Memory.” And indeed, Beecher fulfills his promise. In a very skillfully crafted and thorough overview, the author portrays the Renaissance as an era in which memory becomes something like a signature hallmark for the entire age. In the Renaissance with its new technique of printing, the need for memory interestingly triggered a cycle that improved the possibilities for the preservation of memory as well as unearthed forgotten knowledge and produced new material that needed preservation. New methods for this preservation were invented or old ones perfected. Beecher in the end outlines the field of memory studies in the Renaissance as one that depends more on demonstrating what is memory and memory related in that era than on defining it artificially from the outside and from a the perspective of a different time. This last advice in particular, I find, should be heeded whenever one is doing memory studies in all fields.

Notes 1. A lot of literature also appears on this topic, needless to say. “Collective memory” today is perhaps the most important catchword in the humanities. Cf. e.g., C. Avery and M. Holmlund, eds., Better Off Forgetting? Essays on Archives, Public Policy, and Collective Memory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010); M. Halbwachs, Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Alcan, 1925); W. Hirst and G. Echterhoff, “Remembering in Conversations: The Social Sharing and Reshaping of Memories,” Annual Review of Psychology 63 (2012): 55–79; C. Meier, Das Gebot zu vergessen und die Unabweisbarkeit des Erinnerns: Vom öffentlichen Umgang mit schlimmer Vergangenheit (München: Siedler, 2010); A. Assmann, Auf dem Weg zu einer europäischen Erinnerungskultus (Wien: Picus-Verl., 2012). A useful overview is A. Erll, Kollektives Gedächtnis und Erinnerungskulturen (Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 2005). 2. The seminal work probably is J. Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, 6th ed. (München: Beck, 2007). 3. Shakespeare uses material from ancient sources not only in his Hamlet. Cf., e.g., Ovid’s tale of Pyramus and Thisbe in Shakespeare’s Midsummern Night’s Dream. Cf. C. and M. Martindale, Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1990, reprinted 1994).

Wolfgang Polleichtner [email protected]

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David J. Collins, Reforming Saints: Saints’ Lives and Their Authors in Germany, 1470– 1530. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xv, 227.

Is humanist hagiography a contradiction in terms? Those who recall Erasmus’s critique of miracle tales as forms of “superstition” or identify humanists as worldly lay Christians might assume that these intellectuals had little interest in the lives of the saints. This pervasive association of humanism with modernity is a mistake, David J. Collins would argue. In this readable and erudite study he shows that early German humanists were, in fact, “among the most prolific composers and editors of hagiographical texts in the decades leading up to the Reformations in Germany” (9). Collins examines forty freestanding Latin saints’ lives produced in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire between 1470 and 1530. His analysis of these texts and their authors sheds much light on humanism, popular devotion, politics, and regional identity in Germany during the transition from the late Middle Ages to the age of Protestant and Catholic Reformations. Humanist authors of saints’ lives were not creating a new literary form, but rather taking this popular medieval genre and adopting it to the tastes and imperatives of their times. This included the use of classicizing Latin, poetry, and allusions to Greco-Roman antiquity, a strong interest in local history and geography, and an effort to establish the earliest and most reliable historical sources. In the four central chapters of his book Collins looks at individual case studies and categories of saints’ lives that illustrate these new concerns. In chapter one he examines the saintly type most commonly chosen by German hagiographers and their patrons, bishop saints. We should not be surprised by this preference, given the preeminent role of prince-bishops in the Holy Roman Empire. These men, powerful political figures as well as the spiritual leaders, frequently commissioned humanists to write the vitae of their dioceses’ patron saints. These were usually traditional figures from the medieval past, such as the eleventhcentury Benno of Meissen. Hagiographers, however, emphasized aspects of their lives and work, for example, their activities as missionaries, that resonated with patrons and readers in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As Collins astutely notes, they “took up the task of making saintly bishops saintly reformers as well” (45).

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Humanist authors were also drawn to the lives of holy recluses, male and female. Collins devotes chapter 2 to a discussion of this apparent contradiction, asking why humanists frequently wrote about hermits “who at first glance do not seem to represent a model of holiness that would be attractive to civically engaged humanists” (52). Part of the answer lies in the sheer fascination of the stories of figures such as Ida of Toggenburg. According to tradition, this Swabian noblewoman was unjustly accused of infidelity by a jealous husband, who threw her from the highest point of his fortress into a deep ravine. Miraculously saved by God, Ida swore a vow of chastity, found a cave, and lived out her life there in prayerful isolation, supported by the alms of the pious. In addition, the solitary life appealed to humanists because of its protection from worldly distractions and implied critique of a corrupt society. In the case of male hermits, authors also praised the eremitic life because it “facilitated deepest learning” (56). In chapter 3 Collins artfully connects the composition of local saints’ lives with a more general cultural imperative to promote German pride. The late fifteenth century witnessed a renewed interest in ancient and medieval history as many intellectuals joined in a “quest for an illustrious German past” (75). Humanist hagiographers contributed to the project to recall a “Germania Illustrata” by not only chronicling the lives of holy individuals but insisting on situating them within specific geographical locations, an intellectual endeavor Collins describes as “chorography.” He highlights the interesting example of Bruno, the eleventh-century founder of the Carthusians. His fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century biographers forged a close association between the holy man and the city of his birth, Cologne, even though the main activities of his life took place further afield. Using contemporary maps and treatises on geography as well as religious texts, Collins illustrates how “regional loyalties mattered” to German humanists (80). Their intersecting preoccupations with hagiography and chorography reveal once again how “traditional medieval devotional writings could be reworked in light of new cultural interests” (96). The book’s fourth and final chapter is perhaps its most engaging. Here Collins analyzes a single saintly figure who received several biographical treatments by humanist writers. The case of Nicholas of Flue (also known as Brother Claus) is an intriguing one for several reasons. This is the only instance in which German humanists wrote about a “living saint,” demonstrating how the hagiographical enterprise could differ across regions of Europe. In this same period Italian writers were busily recording the lives of the many sante vive, a phenomenon

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emerging then in Iberia as well. Nicholas (1417–1487), a Swiss laborer, soldier, and town official, a married man with ten children, left the world to reside as a hermit in a tiny hut in an alpine valley. He soon gained fame for his holy life and wise counsel, attracting pilgrims from the vicinity and from across Europe. Nicholas was especially revered for his extreme asceticism and fasting. A rare male example of “holy anorexia,” he reportedly stopped eating once he moved into his hermitage. Humanist hagiographers, however, also promoted Nicholas as an exemplar of a uniquely Swiss piety and communal sensibility. Collins convincingly shows how these authors “allowed Nicholas to be shaped by and shape developing Swiss political and cultural identity” (115). The hermit’s status as a “saintly founding father for Switzerland” (122) assured his popularity in the region even after its turn to Protestantism. The last decades of the fifteenth and early decades of the sixteenth century witnessed momentous change in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire. The work of humanist writers of saint’s lives, however, remind us of the continuities as well as the transformations. David Collins’s meticulous archival research, sensitive reading of texts, and apt use of visual imagery, notably the woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer, greatly enhance our understanding of religious and cultural movements in this crucial transitional period. Scholars of humanism, hagiography, and German and Swiss proto-nationalism will welcome this important study. Jodi Bilinkoff [email protected]

Slobodan C´urcˇic´, Architecture in the Balkans: From Diocletian to Süleyman the Magnificent. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Pp. 913.

The book being reviewed here is unusual in several respects. First of all, concerning its size of 30.7 x 25.7 x 6.1 cm, its weight of 4.785 kg, and its considerable number of 913 pages, one can imagine the author’s difficulties finding a publisher for this project (xii).1 With this volume the author—one of the outstanding representatives of Byzantine art history—concluded a lifetime work that had already started in 1990/1991 (x). One feels the knowledge that has been gathered in a long period of research and travelling.2 Let me point out at the very beginning that, as far as the history of architecture in the Balkans is concerned, this book Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, Number 38 (Reinhold F. Glei and Wolfgang Polleichtner, eds.), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012.

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will be a standard work for a very long time to come. And it is the first one on that topic, too. It covers the geographical area from the Sava and the Danube in the north (without Romania and Slovenia, but with the Dobruja) to Crete in the south and includes Kos in the east despite its close connection with Asia Minor (4). The book is divided into nine chapters. The first one deals with “Diocletian and the Tetrarchy (circa 280–312)”; the second with “Constantine I and His Successors (312–circa 400)”; the third with “Christianization (fifth century)”; the fourth with “Restoration of the Empire (sixth century)”; the fifth with “Transformation (seventh and eighth centuries)”; the sixth with “Renewal (ninth to tenth centuries),” which means the separation of the until then common development of the architectural history from the rest of the empire; the seventh, “Between East and West (circa 1000–circa 1250),” deals with the period in which the Romanesque style more and more spread over the Balkans; the eighth with “Period of Turmoil (circa 1250–circa 1450)” and the ninth with “The New Order (circa 1450–1550).” Every chapter is subdivided into smaller sections that, in most cases, are entitled with similar headlines, for example “Eastern—Western Sphere,” “Urban—Architectural Developments” or “Military—Ecclesiastical Architecture.” These titles give an impression of what the book deals with basically. The primary focus of the book has already been mentioned: “The central idea of this study has been to explore historical developments on the territory of the Balkan Peninsula within a given span of time and as reflected through the medium of architecture” (5). The author goes into detail when writing: “Individual buildings, complexes, and sites that comprise this heritage are essentially unknown in the scholarly world at large. . . . One of the aims of this book, then, is to make a large number of monuments and historical phenomena better known and intellectually more readily accessible” (10). As someone who is quite acquainted with late antique and medieval monuments in the Balkans, I can confirm that the author has reached his aim indeed. Nevertheless, it was inevitable for him to leave out many other monuments for which a few stand pars pro toto. My purpose here can only be to focus on a few aspects, especially as the book is not only an opus magnum but an opus maximum. It is also selfevident that the selection must be subjective. Again and again, the author declares further aims but also includes methodological criticisms or points out desiderata. These will be mentioned within the topics singled out.

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The most critical point is the view on the Balkans as a regional entity. Although this is completely justified if one considers the region as part of the Byzantine Empire, it remains problematic with respect to the cultural division into an Eastern and Western sphere.3 At the end of its juridical sovereignty in the eleventh century, Byzantium had already lost its political influence at least in the northwestern part of the Balkans.4 What remained was a cultural impact on that part that more and more intermingled with Western artistic trends. “The most striking revelation . . . is that the architecture in Dalmatia, despite the waning political influence of Byzantium in the area, continued to show striking parallels with contemporary developments within the Byzantine-held territories” (469). The author refers to the Benedictine monastery on the islet of Sv. Marija (St. Mary) in Croatia, which he compares to the Bogorodica in Studenica. He believes that both churches might have been built by the same master builders (466). Other comparisons are not as convincing; this is the case with the churches of Nin (Holy Cross) and Arta (Hg. Basileios tes gephyras). The author, however, seems to be aware of the problematic conclusions (327f.). From the late antique times onward, the Western influences on the Balkans were very strong and constitutive even in the areas populated by the Greeks. This sometimes makes it difficult to do justice to the monuments and their artistical and socio-liturgical roots. Therefore, the author is absolutely correct in stressing the importance of an arthistorical method that observes the boundaries of smaller areas: “‘Subregional’ and local building activities emerge as far more fruitful ways of gauging certain patterns of development.” (505) Two points are most important in this context. The first and most disputed one is “the question of the existence of architectural scaled drawings of models, or of similar tools potentially used in the design process” (8).5 The author states several times that the similarity of monuments is only to be understood if one accepts the usage of such drawings or related models (436). The second point concerns the master builders6 and artisans who, according to the author, were more flexible than many art historians assume (8). The author points out that they were responsible for the similarity of plans and designs. An example is the Bogorodica in Studenica whose marble décor at the outside was probably made by artists from southern Italy. At the same time, the cupola corresponds to Byzantine exemplars like the one on the Pammakaristos in Istanbul (496ff.). According to the sources, marble workers and building masters from Greece and Constantinople who were engaged with the Djurdjevi Stupovi were found as far as Ivangrad in Montenegro (499).

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On the whole, the Adriatic coast remained the most important region for the influx of Western styles into Serbia until at least the thirteenth century (659). All in all, one has to agree with the author that the frequent movement of master builders and artists should be taken into account more often, as it will help to resolve unanswered questions (599ff.). This probably holds true for the interaction between the Western and the Byzantine cultural sphere, too. Focusing on different regions and their interdependencies, the author rejects the term “school” which was applied by Millet to, for example, the area of Raška and Morava. It has an ethnic overtone that does not correspond to the more flexible realities and should therefore be abandoned (505, 657, 671). Similarly, the author dismisses any attempt to write a nationalistic history. This has been done by some scientists, for example, from Bulgaria and Serbia (10, 481ff.). Turning to architecture itself, the author demands an end of the separation of sacral and secular architecture. He regrets that scientists have not taken full advantage of a holistic view on the material (11). As an example, he cites the churches of the cross-in-square type, which are comparable to secular building types (272). Consequently, he rejects any symbolic background of the cross-domed churches. The symbolism might only be a later addition to the sacral architecture (192). The same is said concerning the cross-form, which the author interprets as “by-product of practical factors” (243). In my view, this point should not be given too much importance, since this derivation of the cross-domed churches and the intentional usage of its symbolism do not exclude each other.7 What is more important is the author’s statement “that our thinking about Byzantine church architecture would be helped enormously if we were to be less preoccupied with the notion of ‘centralized planning’ as a relevant criterion” (243f.). However, it is astonishing that the author states in another context the “rising importance of domes as an innovation in church architecture” which “must be viewed not only as a reflection of advances in building technology; but above all as a reflection of symbolic changes in church architecture” (247). We will possibly never know what came first: the symbolism or the dome. But the truth is probably that the evolution of both went hand in hand. So it seems unnecessary to make any decision on that point. What remains of this discussion is the point that despite any symbolism, the Byzantines might not ever have favored decidedly the central or the basilical plan. And it was obviously not that important—contrary to the author’s statement (328f. and 550)—whether or not there were spolia-columns readily available.8 Not all inscribed-cross-churches are located in the vicinity of antique places

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where columns could have been taken from, nor do all of them have columns inside. Moreover, basilicas often were furnished with columns, too. So, the question of availability of columns is not really decisive for the preference of either the inscribed-cross-church or the basilica. However, the author is absolutely correct in pointing out that the importance of the basilica in Byzantine times has not attracted the necessary attention so far (308). The reason might be the overestimation of the central plan, which probably comes from the preoccupation with the supposed symbolic meaning of that church-type. The evidence is clear on that point: There is a long-lasting tradition of the basilica from late-antique times through the Middle Ages even into post-Byzantine times. In addition, no theological need, no liturgical practice, or commentary contradicts the structural conditions of a basilican plan that was chosen for parochial, monastic, or episcopal churches (compare 395ff.). Connected with the basilican plan is the idea that churches of similar structure incorporate three separate and independent units. The author calls this phenomenon “triple-church.” One of his pupils, Amy Papalexandrou, has dealt with this type of church with special reference to the Koimesis at Skripou.9 Therefore, it comes as no surprise that to C´urcˇic´, this church is the prototype of all triple-churches, such as those in Martinici (Bulgaria) (239f.), in Chalke (Naxos) (317), in Vize (318), in Kastoria (Hg. Anargyroi) (381f.)—just to name a few. It is beyond any doubt that ecclesiastical spaces might have had overlapping functions. However, the question of which criteria must be fulfilled to define a basilican building as triple-church definitely derserves further investigations. From this specific case of side-aisles and their separate functions, one is led to similar arrangements of ambulatory churches. The author proposes that these rooms—aisles and ambulatories—“may have been intended to provide easy access to the shrines of saints strategically located for optimum visibility within the main space of the different churches” (200). This, too, should be subject of further research. As it is, it seems to be no more than a hypothesis. The author extends this hypothesis to the liturgical function of sidechambers of inscribed-cross-churches (328ff.). Like Neslihan AsutayEffenberger,10 he believes these rooms to be separate chapels. He feels encouraged by the existence of massive piers that separate these side-chambers (335). The examples he cites are the Hg. Demetrios at Katsoure, the Taxiarches at Kaisariane and the Hg. Nikolaos near Aulis (335). A last architectural element deserves to be addressed because it is linked in some way to the before-mentioned aisles, ambulatories, and

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side-chambers. The author wants the apsidal rooms to the north and to the south of some monastic churches—like the ones on Mount Athos— to be understood as places for the exposition of relics. Only in sources later than the buildings themselves is it confirmed that the choir of the monks found its place in these rooms (303). A further point is worth mentioning here. It concerns the paintings on the outside of churches, a phenomenon that, more or less, has been ignored in the past.11 The author points out that many more churches were decorated outside than has been believed so far (304). As examples, he quotes the Hagioi Anargyroi and the Hg. Nikolaos Kasnitzis, both in Kastoria, and the one in Kurbinovo (381ff.). Discussing these points, which are essential within the frame of the whole book, has led the author to state some desiderata that deserve to be studied more intensively in the future. However, some more desiderata are added here. One concerns the basilica, which according to the author has an uninterrupted tradition from the late antique to the end of the medieval times. This has been recognized by many scholars but has not been studied thoroughly so far (308).12 The same can be said about those basilicas with a trikonchos at their eastern end. The author believes that they were used for funeral purposes (153f.). So far, several works of literature have been written on that problem.13 Probably the most interesting point deals with the connection between churches and water. The author realizes a striking frequency with which, for example, baths occur under or nearby churches (96 and 109) but is probably unaware of a liturgical or theological background of that phenomenon. What can be stated is that also cisterns and even smaller rivers are located under14 or nearby church buildings. Such buildings possibly also had a protecting or sanctifying function.15 The book under review also deals with—as the title announces—the first Ottoman centuries in the Balkans. This is definitely a point that has more or less been ignored in the past. It is surely a consequence of the political situation that many scholars now turn to the influence the Eastern cultures have exerted on Byzantium. But it is also fascinating to study the tradition that developed between Byzantine and the Ottoman architecture. This is even more important since many Byzantine techniques were taken over by the Ottomans so that distinguishing between them is sometimes very difficult. In this field, further studies will bear fruit and reveal new aspects and questions at the same time (707). Somewhat different is the question of the relation between the church of the Apostles and the Fatih Camii in Constantinople, which, according to the author, has to be studied in the future (720).16 A last

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point in this context concerns the bells, which were banned during the Ottoman times. It is often stated that these bells are the result of Western influence. The author, however, points out that bells were not only allowed on Athos, in Wallachia, and in Moldavia during the Ottoman supremacy but had already existed before the arrival of the Romans, too. This point also deserves further investigation (831f.).17 Concerning the chronological classification of some of the monuments mentioned, the author deviates from some established datings, as is the case with the Great Basilica in Pliska. Commonly dated to the ninth century,18 the author believes this building to belong to the sixth century (230). An earlier dating is also applied to the so-called NikonBasilica, whose dating varies between the sixth and tenth century.19 Most commonly, it has been believed to be a building of the Early Byzantine period (i.e., seventh century). Instead, the author dates it to the sixth century but admits a possibility of the seventh century (231). The same uncertainty can be observed with Hg. Titos in Gortyna, whose dating ranges from the sixth to the seventh century.20 The author favors the earlier date (238). This is also true for the Archaggelos Michael in Episkope on Crete, which according to the author dates to the sixth century (244)21 but is believed to be a building of the early or middle Byzantine period by some others.22 An earlier date is also given to the Kountouriotissa in Pieria, which according to the author was built around 800 (318f.). Its architecture differs from the other examples of the ambulatory churches to which it is commonly attributed. Even so, it has so far been dated to the tenth century.23 Some formal aspects should be mentioned, too. Regarding the spelling, it seems inevitable that a book of this size includes mistakes that have been overlooked, e.g. “widows” instead of “windows” (701), “itself” which occurs twice (817), missing diacritic signs with “Sisevo” (639f.). Sometimes, foreign names are not written in the same way: “Euthymios” (279) and “Ethimios” (295) or “St. Nicholas” (397) and “Sv. Nikola” (492) or “Turnovo” (149) and “T’rnovo” (473). But it is not worth citing them all. Another aspect is the size and weight of the book. It is extremely cumbersome and heavy! Even handling it with care, it is nearly unavoidable that the textblock is ripped off the cover. It would probably have been better to print it in two separate volumes. This, however, would raise a question of costs. Another problem concerns the pictures. Some are obviously reproduced from templates of lesser quality (probably slides), whereas others seem to be of digital origin. By the way: figure 467 has been given the number 466 so that this number

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occurs twice. Much attention has been paid to the maps; however, the characters on them are too small to read without a magnifier. What is especially important for such a basic work are references and lists with further titles. It is obvious that a book like this with such a wide-ranging subject has to be restricted to the absolute essential and basic information. But in some cases, more information would have been helpful. It also would have been more user friendly if the index for places and subjects had been separated. With respect to the subjects, some lemmata like “crypt” are missing although this phenomenon does not only occur on the Balkan but is of some importance for the Byzantine architecture in general. One would have expected more remarks concerning baths and bridges or defensive works such as walls or signal stations. All in all, the book offers much stimulation for further research. And even if the reader is probably not convinced of every detail, the work remains an opus maximum that cannot be replaced easily. The question as to whether or not it makes sense to include other architecture, for example, of the Croatian region just for the sake of completeness, every reader has to answer on their own. The same is true for Constantinople, which is an entity on its own like Croatia. To leave them out or to give them less space would have done no harm to the topic as a whole. Nonetheless, as both areas belong to the Balkan Peninsula, it is a question that remains unanswered.

Notes 1. Thanks to Christine Deutscher for proofreading. 2. From the same author: S. C´urcˇic´., Art and Architecture in the Balkans: An Annotated Bibliography (Boston: Hall, 1984). 3. For the history of the Balkans see: J. V. A. Fine’s two volumes, The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), and The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994); Edgar Hösch, Karl Nehring, and Holm Sundhausen, eds., Lexikon zur Geschichte Südosteuropas (Köln: Böhlau 2004); Florin Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages 500–1250 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 4. For the art-historical development in Dalmatia see Janez Höfler, Die Kunst Dalmatiens, Vom Mittelalter bis zur Renaissance (800–1520) (Graz: Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt, 1989). 5. See also Robin Cormack, “Painter’s Guides, Model-Books, Pattern-Books and Craftsmen; or, Memory and the Artist?” in L’artista a Bisanzio e nel mondo cristiano-orientale, ed. Michele Bacci (Pisa: Eidizioni della Normale, 2007), 11ff.

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6. See also Robert Ousterhout, Master Builders of Byzantium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 7. See Konrad Onasch, “Zur Deutung des Kirchengebäudes in den byzantinischen Liturgiekommentaren,” in Byzantinischer Kunstexport, ed. Heinrich L. Nickel (Halle: Martin-Luther-Universität, 1978), 301ff.; Hans-Joachim Schulz, “Kultsymbolik der byzantinischen Kirche,” in Symbolik des Orthodoxen und Orientalischen Christentums, Symbolik der Religionen X, ed. Ernst Hammerschmidt et al. (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1962), 3ff.; Kathleen E. McVey, “The Domed Church as Microcosm: Literary Roots of an Architectural Symbol,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 37 (1983): 91ff.; Earl Baldmin Smith, The Dome: A Study in the History of Ideas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971); Georgios A. Prokopiou, Ο κοσμολογικo´ς συμβολισμo´ς στην αρχιτεκτονικη´ του βυζαντινοu´ ναοu´, 2nd ed. (Athens: Pyrinos Kosmos, 1980). 8. See Helen Saradi, “The Use of Ancient Spolia in Byzantine Monuments: The Archaeological and Literary Evidence,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 3 (1997): 395ff. 9. See Amy C. Papalexandrou, “The Church of the Virgin of Skripou: Architecture, Sculpture and Inscriptions in Ninth-Century Byzantium (Greece)” (Ann Arbor: UMI [Ph.D. diss., Princeton University], 1998). 10. See Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger, Byzantinische Apsisnebenräume: Untersuchung zur Funktion der Apsisnebenräume in den Höhlenkirchen Kappadokiens und in den mittelbyzantinischen Kirchen Konstantinopels (Weimar: VDG, Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 1998). 11. See Lydie Hadermann-Misguich, “Une longue tradition byzantine: La décoration extérieure des églises,” Zograf 7 (1977): 5ff. 12. An in-depth study on that topic will be published by the reviewer soon. 13. See Thomas Lehmann, “Zur Genese der Trikonchosbasiliken,” in Innovation in der Spätantike, ed. Beat Brenz (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1996), 317ff.; Iris Stollmayer, “Spätantike Trikonchoskirchen—ein Baukonzept?” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 42 (1999): 116ff. 14. The best example is probably Hagia Maura in Koilani on Cyprus, which is built over a spring from which the water is running underneath the naos (Gwynneth der Parthog, Byzantine and Medieval Cyprus [New Barnet: Interworld Publications, 1994], 127). 15. See Robert H. W. Wolf, Mysterium Wasser: Eine Religionsgeschichte zum Wasser in Antike und Christentum (Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2004). 16. See Ken R. Dark and Ferudun Özgümüs, “New Evidence for the Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles from Fatih Camii, Istanbul,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 21 (2002): 393ff. 17. See also Christian Hannick, “Die Bedeutung der Glocken in byzantinischen und slavischen Klöstern und Städten,” in Information, Kommunikation und Selbstdarstellung in mittelalterlichen Gemeinden, ed. Alfred Haverkamp (München: Oldenbourg, 1998), 1ff. 18. Asen Tschilingirov, Die Kunst des christlichen Mittelalters in Bulgarien. 4. bis 18. Jahrhundert (München: Beck, 1979), 315. 19. Rebecca Sweetman and Evi Katsara, “The Acropolis Basilica Project, Sparta. A Preliminary Report for the 2000 Season,” Annual of the British School at Athens 97 (2002): 429ff. 20. Anastasios K. Orlandos, “Νεω´τεραι ε´ρευναι εν Αγι´ω Τι´τω της Γορτu´νης,” Επετηρι´ς Εταιρει´ας Βυζαντινω´ν Σπουδω´ν 3 (1926), 301ff.; Ian F. Sanders, Roman Crete (Warminster, UK: Aris and Philips, 1982), 110ff.; Jürgen Christern, “Die Datierung von A. Titos in Gortys (Kreta)” (paper presented

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at the 3rd international Cretan Congress, Πεπραγμε´να του Γε´ Διεθνοu´ς Κρητολογικοu´ Συνεδρι´ου, 1974), 37ff. 21. The same date is assumed by Desponia Kyriaze, “Προκαταρκτικε´ς παρατηρη´σεις στο ναo´ της επισκοη´ς Κισ∝ʹμου,ι´ Μνημεο και περιβ∝ʹλλον 8 (2004): 119ff. (I am indebted to Yannis Varalis for drawing my attention to this article). 22. See Klaus Gallas, Klaus Wessel, and Manolis Borboudakis, Byzantinisches Kreta (München: Hirmer, 1991), 204f. 23. See Euthymios N. Tsigaridas, “Κουντουριo´τισσα Πιερι´ας, Ναo´ς Κοι´μησις του Θεοτo´κου,” Αρχαιολογικo´ Δελτι´ο 28 (1973) B’2, Χρονικ∝ʹ, 489ff., and Kerstin Englert, Der Bautypus der Umgangskirche unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Panagia Olympiotissa in Elasson (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1991), 82ff.

Michael Altripp [email protected]

David A. King, Astrolabes from Medieval Europe. Variorum Collected Studies Series. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Pp. 422.

That instruments, in particular astrolabes, are no longer considered as mysterious artifacts with incomprehensible diagrams is to a considerable extent due to the painstaking researches David King has conducted during the last two decades. The fourth set of studies in the Variorum series (three others by King—now professor emeritus—already being available) deals with medieval European astrolabes. The volume opens with a very useful overview (“Astronomical Instruments between East and West” originally presented at a conference held at the Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit at Krems in Austria. The paper exposes the aims, scope, and current status (i.e., in 1994) of the study of astronomical instruments (astrolabes, quadrants, sundials) and concludes with an overview of all relevant instruments in Austrian collections and of all the instruments known from fifteenth-century Vienna, then the leading school of astronomy in Europe. The remaining studies focus on individual, mainly unsigned, and undated astrolabes from the European Middle Ages and early Renaissance that are of singular historical importance. Among these are three “landmark” astrolabes: (i) the earliest known European astrolabe from Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, Number 38 (Reinhold F. Glei and Wolfgang Polleichtner, eds.), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012.

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tenth-century Catalonia; (ii) an astrolabe from fourteenth-century Picardy; (iii) the astrolabe presented in 1462 by the German astronomer Regiomontanus to his patron Cardinal Bessarion, with its enigmatic angel and Latin dedication. This instrument is presented in the context of other astrolabes of similar design from fifteenth-century Vienna. The so-called Carolingian astrolabe formerly owned by Marcel Destombes has been considered a fake and aroused controversial discussions. King put it in context with the earliest known Islamic astrolabes as well as all the earliest known European astrolabes, and for him the available evidence points to an origin in tenth-century Catalonia. Thus his paper is a convincing “rehabilitation” of this particular instrument and an attempt to reinstate its place in history. The astrolabe from fourteenth-century Picardy bears a later inscription dated 1522 indicating that it was presented by the Benedictine monk Paschasius Berselius of Liège to his teacher of Greek in Louvain, Hadrianus Amerotius. The instrument is of particular importance, because the numbers are engraved in a rather unknown notation which had been introduced in England from Greece in the thirteenth century and was developed by Cistercian monks in what are now the border regions of France and Belgium. In King’s perception the astrolabe presented in 1462 by Regiomontanus to his patron, the Greek Cardinal Basileios Bessarion, is the most important and the most historically interesting instrument of the Renaissance. In his paper (coauthored with Gerard L’E. Turner and originally published in 1994) he has studied the material context of this piece by ten other astrolabes with the same or related rete design from fifteenthcentury Vienna. It may be noted that in 2007 King embarked on quite speculative connections of the instrument with the enigmatic painting “The Flagellation of Christ” by Piero della Francesca. Two papers look at the origins of the simple universal horary quadrant and the universal horary dial (navicula). In 1992 King started the ambitious project of an entire corpus of medieval astronomical instruments to ca. 1500, which should comprise about 550 astrolabes (some 300 Islamic and 250 European), 250 quadrants, sundials, and other instruments. This catalog sadly remains unfinished up to now, but to facilitate comparative studies a hitherto unpublished list of all known medieval European astrolabes, ordered chronologically by provenance, is appended. King has insistently demonstrated in his research work that medieval astronomical instruments are important material sources for the history of science as well as of technology and art. Astrolabes, quadrants, sundi-

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als, and so on have something to tell, and the goal for the historian is to learn the specific language of the object he or she is studying. Not only astrolabe aficionados, but anybody interested in the history of scientific instruments will profit from this collection at hand. Günther Oestmann [email protected]

Tom Licence, Hermits and Recluses in English Society, 950–1200. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. 240.

In the fourteenth century, Margery Kempe, a woman with an infallible instinct for religious movements and their potential for offering esteemed ways to sanctity, paid frequent visits to recluses, among them Julian of Norwich. Recluses, who lived confined in a cell, and hermits, who withdrew into the wilderness, constituted an important part of English society throughout the medieval period. Tom Licence is interested especially in the anchorites’ rise to fame between the mid-ninth and the twelfth centuries and ventures to answer the questions of their origins, the reasons for the power they wielded, and their functions both for themselves and for society. In the first part of his study, Licence traces back the sources, influences and development of the phenomenon before he turns to the details of anchoritic life in the second part. While scholars have explained the increase of anachoresis as a result of the Norman Conquest, which disrupted social structures in England and brought forth hermits and recluses primarily as arbiters, more recent studies of the Anglo-Saxon period suggest that anchorites flourished already well before the conquest and may rather be placed within the context of a growing sense of individualism in spirituality and matters of faith. The subsequent overview of the early “desert fathers” and their vitae is concise and informed, and the close interrelationship between anchorites and the developments of monasticism is paid special attention. Also, Licence unveils the intricacies of the etymological roots and uses of the terms “hermit,” “recluse” and “anchorite” in medieval sources. The sources themselves, hagiographical works, historical accounts, charters, and account rolls,

Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, Number 38 (Reinhold F. Glei and Wolfgang Polleichtner, eds.), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012.

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convey an unstable and blurred impression of the fame and spread of anchorites. The first chapter is devoted to the Anglo-Saxon and European background of anachoresis. As Licence effectively demonstrates, Italian and French spiritual traditions of the eleventh century in particular had an impact on the developments in England. However, anchorites existed long before these continental influences, going back to the tradition of the desert fathers from Late Antiquity. The second chapter is devoted to the rise of the hermit in England. The so-called new hermits emerging in the eleventh century on the continent were different from the model of the desert fathers in that they not only “multiplied as never before” (37) but also wandered around, preached, and founded new monasteries in opposition to the luxurious and sinful lives of many Benedictine monks. Æthelwold, for instance, populated Ely and Peterborough with his followers, and the eremitic ideal came to be included in many of the foundation narratives of these new monasteries. Already in the early period of these developments there is plenty of evidence of the anchorites attracting considerable interest. Saints’ lives were written to remember and celebrate them among monastic audiences. The third chapter focuses upon recluses, who withdrew from the world not by literally seeking isolation in far-away places but by confining themselves to little cells. As with hermits, recluses were a European phenomenon, with its main emphasis on the German Empire, Flanders, and France. Despite terminological difficulties, early examples of English recluses can be dated to the eleventh century. It appears as if all of them were dependent on wealthy patrons, who supported and financed their livelihood. Their cells were attached to estate centers, churches, and later manor houses. Based on the presentation and evaluation of the historical evidence, Licence subsequently discerns the anchorites’ way of living in more detail. Accordingly, chapter four provides insight into the roles of patrons, ranging from kings and members of the nobility to bishops and monasteries. Hermits fulfilled the important function of “cultivators of the wilderness” (98) as they opened up new areas for settlement and agriculture, which often meant years of work and hardships. Recluses, in contrast, were usually supplied with regular meals, and often busied themselves with handicrafts. Though an ascetic, a recluse lived in the middle of society and was at least an observing, listening, and talking participant in social life. A marked feature of anchorites in England, as Licence argues in the following chapter, was their concern with sin, which they sought to erad-

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icate by means of their penance: “in a sin-troubled age, anachoresis was set to become a new gold standard for holiness” (114). The solitary life of the hermit and the recluse was viewed either as a satisfactory method in itself, as a preliminary phase of purgation, or as an expression of imitatio Christi. In addition, recluses were interpreted also allegorically as being dead to the world and hence in a state of purgatory (their cells) on their way to spiritual perfection. Chapter 6, then, scrutinizes the practices against this theoretical background, that is, how anchorites spent their time by praying, renouncing the devil and temptations, fasting, and flagellating. At the same time, hermits and recluses also fulfilled societal functions, or ministries rather (chapter 7). The most important ministry was their intercession for their clients. Often, clients were family members, but nonfamilial visitors sought the anchorites’ help as well, usually in return for gifts. In the final chapter, Licence turns to the question of how anchorites became saints. The inclination to sainthood already inherent in their way of life was often made manifest in hagiographical accounts after their deaths, or resulted from the reaction and perception of the community that relied on the hermit or recluse. Whether anchorites were sometimes regarded as living saints may be answered by the example of Margery of Kempe, who certainly perceived of Julian of Norwich as such. All in all, Licence’s book is a highly recommendable in-depth study of anachoresis in England. It succeeds in shedding new light on a central aspect of medieval spirituality, devotional practices, and their performance. For literary scholars it is particular noteworthy that Licence also reflects upon literary sources, which he admirably integrates into his study and thus broadens the picture to the realm of romances and Old English elegies. Eva von Contzen [email protected]

Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, The True Medicine, ed. and trans. Gianna Pomata. Toronto: Iter Inc. Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010. Pp. 267.

Oliva Sabuco’s Nueva Filosofia de la Naturaleza del hombre, first published in 1587, has received some attention during the last few years. A Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, Number 38 (Reinhold F. Glei and Wolfgang Polleichtner, eds.), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012.

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complete translation of this work into English appeared as recently as 2007,1 as well as two important studies on the Renaissance author in Spanish2 and German3; the latter also contains a German translation of the concluding part of the work, the “Dialogue on True Medicine” (originally titled Vera medicina y vera filosofia), which is also the subject of Pomata’s present volume. A new edition of the Spanish text, however, remains a desideratum, as Pomata as well as the other mentioned scholars offer but translations, the latest modern edition still being Ricardo Fé’s from 1888.4 The protagonists of the “Dialogue” are the shepherd Antonio and an anonymous doctor. The latter represents the traditional Galenic system, while Antonio promotes the “true” medicine, the one that Sabuco wants to transmit. At the end of the dialogue, the doctor asks Antonio to repeat his entire doctrine in brief Latin sayings so that it would be easier for him to memorize them. These sayings are not part of Pomata’s edition in order to avoid repetition. This intention is understandable; nevertheless, due to this omission the dialogue ends somehow “in limbo,” as the very last thing said is the Doctor’s request for a summary. Pomata does explain her reasons in the introduction, so the end is not too abrupt for someone who keeps it in mind, nor does the text lack any important textual information, but still the reader is left with the feeling of “missing” something. In the introduction, after shortly presenting the entire content of the Nueva Filosofia (pp. 1–8), of which this book reproduces only the last part, Pomata extensively discusses the question of Oliva Sabuco’s authorship (pp. 8–30). Although she was considered and accepted as the author of the Nueva Filosofia by her contemporaries without reserve, from the beginning of the twentieth century her father Miguel was considered the more likely person to write such a book, as he alleged in his will. This question has not been decided definitely in favor of either candidate since then, while lately many scholars again seem to prefer Oliva. Pomata examines the evidence of both sides, criticizing the exaggerated anti-women attitude of some twentieth-century researchers as well as the excessively feminist point of view taken by others more recently. She diplomatically concludes that the work may have been a joint project of the two, published only under the daughter’s name, mainly for reasons of publicity, and that the controversy and the claim of sole authorship originates from quarrels about money between the two.5 The following chapter of the introduction (pp. 30–52) deals with Sabuco’s “medical heresy,” her concept of a “nervous juice” (suco nér-

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veo) that is responsible for a person’s well-being or sickness. Thus she opposes the traditional Galenic concept that the blood is the central fluid of the human body, responsible for its nutrition as well as for the generation of semen. Questioning the established system of medicine was not at all unusual in Sabuco’s times, not least because there were still a lot of things about the human body that could not be explained by Galen’s teachings. This resulted in a greater number of books that were published to examine those controversiae, the most important of which for Sabuco is the work of Francisco Valles, Miguel Sabuco’s teacher at the University of Alcalá de Henares. In contrast to the latter, however, she does not rely on philological means to fill Galen’s blank spaces, but bases her work on practical experience. Sabuco draws her theory, as she states herself, from Avicenna, whose doctrine of “four secondary moistures” besides blood, phlegm, and yellow and black bile seems to support her view that there is a “white juice,” or “chyle” (Span. chilo) which is the true humidum radicale, of which the blood is nothing but a by-product. As soon as that “chyle” sinks from the brain to the lower body parts, disease emerges. Pomata also dwells on the influence of the Querelle des Femmes on Renaissance medicine (pp. 53–64). She mentions examples of medical texts that confirm the equality of women to men or even the superiority of the female element. Thus it is shown that the “philogyne” aspect of Sabuco’s doctrine is remarkable but not altogether revolutionary; within the traditional frame of a wet/dry and hot/cold dualism, she gives primacy to moisture, which represents the female. The international reception of Sabuco’s medical theory was broad, as Pomata demonstrates in the following chapter (pp. 64–84). That was fostered considerably by new discoveries in anatomy only a few decades after Sabuco’s publication, raising further doubts about the Galenic model. While especially Spanish authors recognized Sabuco’s merits, English writers such as George Ent who came to similar conclusions as Sabuco did not refer to her theory (nor to other ancient thinkers). Therefore, they were accused of plagiarism by Spanish authors, although all this debate must be seen in the light of nationalism and of political tensions between England and Spain. Pomata shows that some arguments for the denunciation are partly based on rather superficial resemblances; but the diffusion of Sabuco’s thoughts into other European countries is unquestionable, so that an inspiration of English scholars cannot be discarded, but even has to be regarded as likely, given the startling similarity between Sabuco’s doctrine and the theories of the so-called English school in the seventeenth century.

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At the end of the introduction (pp. 85–89), Pomata harshly criticizes the latest translation of Sabuco by Waithe, Colomer Vintró, and Zorita (see n. 1) for translating certain technical terms anachronistically by terms and concepts that pertain to twentieth- or twenty-first-century thinking rather than to the Renaissance. In contrast, she explicitly points out that her translation is meant to “be as faithful as possible to the original, avoiding linguistic and conceptual anachronism” (p. 85); so it is no surprise that she repeatedly emphasizes that her translation was “done independently of [Waithe, Colomer Vintró, and Zorita’s] work, and it was completed before their book was published.” (p. 86).6 Also in the course of the translation Pomata time and again makes use of the opportunity to mention that certain expressions are not correctly rendered in the 2007 translation. Even if one does not agree with her opinion that “[t]his would suffice to make their translation unreliable” (p. 88), the second problem mentioned by Pomata—the wrong reproduction of Latin names—seems graver, especially if the reader does not have the Spanish original at hand to be aware of the mistakes. Pomata’s translation itself thus follows her given principle—that of avoiding anachronism—as far as possible. The fact that Pomata’s goal is almost antagonistic to that of Waithe, Colomer Vintró, and Zorita comprises the advantage that the reader of the “Dialogue on True Medicine” enjoys in being able to choose a more modern terminology, as in the 2007, or something that is historically more accurate, as offered by Pomata. Notes concerning certain terms or other aspects of the translation are found in footnotes, which makes the commentary lucid and easily legible. A major point of criticism may be the fact that Pomata, though she pretends not to indicate all the errors (p. 88), tries to convict the 2007 editors of mistakes whenever possible. However right she may be, she would have done well to rely on her own strength instead of pointing out the flaws of others. Altogether, Pomata’s work provides an interesting insight into a medical text that from today’s perspective conveys a quite bizarre concept of human anatomy, but that has its merits in the emancipation from the ancient concepts of medicine. The book is recommendable not least for the rectification of some substantial errors in the English translation of Sabuco’s work from 2007, at least for the section concerned, so that even for those who already know that edition, Pomata’s work is more than just a complement. It offers a valuable contribution to the illustration and understanding of innovative early modern thinking in medicine, as strange as those ideas may appear to us in the twenty-first century

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Notes 1. Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera, New Philosophy of Human Nature: Neither Known to nor Attained by the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which Will Improve Human Life and Health, trans. and ed. Mary Ellen Waithe, María Colomer Vintró, and C. Angel Zorita (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007). 2. Rosalía Pérez Romero, Oliva Sabuco 1562–1620. Filósofa del Renacimiento español (Toledo, Spain: Almud Centro de Estudios de Castilla-La Mancha, 2008). 3. Marlen Bidwell-Steiner, Große Welt—kleine Welt—verkehrte Welt: die philogyne Naturphilosophie der Renaissance-Denkerin Oliva Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera (Innsbruck, Austria: Studien-Verlag, 2009). 4. Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera, Obras, ed. Ricardo Fé, prologue Octavio Cuartero (Madrid: Establecimiento tipográfico de Ricardo Fé, 1888). This book has now been reprinted, mistakenly naming Cuartero as editor (Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2009). 5. If in this review I refer to Oliva Sabuco as the author of Nueva Filosofia, I do not mean to take a position in the authorship discussion. I rather take into consideration the fact that the present volume goes under Oliva’s name. Pomata herself tries, wherever necessary and possible, to leave the question open apart from the front matter where Oliva appears as author. 6. Pomata uses exactly the same phrase on p. 1, n. 1, where she distances herself from Waithe, Colomer Vintró, and Zorita for the first time.

Michael Schulze Roberg [email protected]

Stephen H. Rigby, Wisdom and Chivalry: Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale” and Medieval Political Theory. Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts 4. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2009. Pp. xvi, 329.

Rigby’s magisterial monograph, Wisdom and Chivalry: Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale” and Medieval Political Theory, uses Giles of Rome’s late thirteenthcentury mirror for princes, De Regimine Principum, to demonstrate that Duke Theseus is portrayed as an ideal ruler in The Knight’s Tale (henceforth: KnT). Such an approach challenges Chaucerian criticism, which considers KnT fundamentally controversial. Rigby distinguishes between three critical positions (4–9): one group interprets Theseus as the epitome of prudence and virtue because he arranges a marriage between Emily and Palamon that results in their personal happiness and in the political alliance between Thebes and Athens (4–6); another sees Theseus as a tyrant who forces Emily into marriage against her will (6–7); a third group posits that the text is “dialogical,” and hence provokes Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, Number 38 (Reinhold F. Glei and Wolfgang Polleichtner, eds.), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012.

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its readers to draw their own moral conclusions (7–8). According to Rigby, such ambivalent views do not represent the original political meaning of the tale, but are merely indicative of the critics’ inability to take into consideration the radically different political ideology of the Middle Ages. In order to arrive at an authoritative interpretation of the tale, Rigby reads the text with a “period eye,” that is, with “the bundle of historically specific, culturally relative and socially determined interpretive and cognitive skills, viewing (or reading) norms and styles of thinking that are required to make sense of some particular work of art” (10–11).1 Rigby argues that KnT, if read with a period eye, emerges as a poem celebrating Theseus’s consummate wisdom and chivalry. To prove his point, Rigby draws largely on one of the major exponents of thirteenth-century Aristotelianism, Giles’s De Regimine Principum, which is the backbone of his study not only thematically but also structurally: like Giles’s work, Wisdom and Chivalry is divided into chapters on ethics, economics, and politics. Part I, “Ethics: The Good Rule of the Self” discusses the Aristotelian virtues as expounded in De Regimine Principum (chapter 1), and contains a description of the passions and the ages of man (chapter 2). Part II, “Economics and Politics: The Good Rule of Others,” focuses on the rule of the household (chapter 3), and the king’s governance of his realm (chapter 4). Part III, “The First Mover and the Good Rule of the Cosmos,” traces cosmographical and philosophical ideas in Theseus’s famous First Mover speech (chapter 5). In all of these discussions, Rigby uses Giles’s explanations as a foil against which he reads Theseus’s conduct and moral views, and shows conclusively that the Duke is depicted as an ideal pagan ruler who acts according to the normative precepts of political theory as represented by Giles: Theseus practices the twelve Aristotelian virtues, keeps his passions under control, leads an active life for the good of his people, exercises justice and mercy, takes council from others, and places the common good over his own profit. He moreover subscribes to accepted medieval views on cosmology and theology, as the Prime Mover speech demonstrates. The monograph is extremely well documented. On a random page, say p. 206, Rigby cites and refers to no less than ten ancient and medieval authorities: Aristotle, Aquinas, Cicero, Seneca, Proverbs, Walter of Milemete, Jacobus de Cessolis, Glanvill, John of Salisbury, Honoré Bonet, and of course Giles himself. Other authors he frequently uses are John Gower, Christine de Pizan, and Thomas Hoccleve. Rigby’s readings are rich in historical detail, particularly from the reign of Richard II, and show an impressive command of source material of all kinds. All these factors lend a gravitas to Rigby’s study that is reminiscent of the Parson’s

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Tale—and make Wisdom and Chivalry not just a book about the Middle Ages but also one that in itself imitates and emulates the aesthetics of medieval treatises. This impression is corroborated by the breadth of the topics Rigby treats, which among others range from the eight different aspects of prudence (34–38) to the proper use of hunting (73–80); from the appropriate relation between parents and their children (145–63) to the ethics of war (210–19); and from questions of cosmography (236–45) to the problem of theodicy (258–69). It is, then, almost inevitable that KnT itself as good as collapses under the combined weight of the auctoritates and discursive contexts Rigby presents. That the vast bulk of the monograph is hence about the major and minor issues of medieval political theory and not so much about KnT, does not lessen the value of this study; on the contrary, it is exactly the reconstruction of such complex historical contexts that makes Rigby’s work so significant. Without a doubt the most stimulating and thought-provoking section of this monograph is the all-too-short conclusion (273–89). Rigby here reflects on the possible dangers and shortcomings of his interpretive approach, pointing out that the recreation of a historical, social, religious, or political context is necessarily a construction, but one that helps to advance our understanding of medieval texts. He also questions the critical commonplace that the work of great authors is considered potentially subversive and anti-ideological, while that of lesser authors supposedly reiterates conservative views. This reviewer feels that such insightful and perhaps controversial meta-discussions would have warranted more space throughout the book, because they address crucial aspects of critical practice not only in medieval studies but in all philologies. A book-length study of this kind would, indeed, be welcome. Chivalry and Wisdom is a handsome tome containing a good index to names and subjects, which makes for easy cross-referencing and orientation. However, the reader is again and again distracted from Rigby’s argumentation by a host of typographical errors and inconsistencies, which bespeak an undue hastiness in the production process of the monograph (see footnote for a list of select mistakes).2 A study as detailed and meticulous as Wisdom and Chivalry would have deserved more careful copyediting. This criticism should, however, not blemish Rigby’s project: Chivalry and Wisdom is an exhaustive compendium of medieval political theory, and a wholesome reminder of the alterity of the Middle Ages. It is recommended for academic readers interested in various aspects of the Middle Ages (literature, philosophy, history, and political theory), with the reservation that some of the material discussed in this book will inevitably be familiar to readers in the various disciplines.

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Notes 1. The term was coined by M. Baxandall in Painting and Experience in FifteenthCentury Italy, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). The title of the monograph is unfortunately reduced to Painting in Fifteenth-Century Italy in Rigby’s bibliography (301). 2. Rigby, Wisdom and Chivalry, 21: “Giles’s work . . . it itself a space”; 44: “on the pat of the ruler”; 76: “justified as [a] form of recreation”; 95: “concupsicble”; 103: “Boccacio”; 111: “Egeus is be associated”; 121: “They . . . should rather [combine] strength with temperance”; 135: “the marriage between Theseus and Hippolyta’s”; 150: “Emily’s actions in making her devotions to Diana at the appropriate astrological [moment?]”; 155: “the marriage pf Emily”; 159: “Prosperina”; 162: a “narrative obstacle which has to be to be overcome”; 171: “events recounted by Chaucer’s”; 172: “Theseus seems to be [a] ‘Renaissance machiavel’”; 173: “i.e, in the City of God”; page 180, note 38 contains the curious reference “Aquinas, On Princely Government (V (p. 25)0”; 187: “these triumphs was achieved”; 193: “by the context in it is delivered”; 206: “even to put them [to] death”; 207: “As Aquinas said, follwing Aristotle”; 220: “the advice of fools and flatters”; 223: “betwen”; 271: “de Peccato Or[i]ginali”; 272: “the Chaucer’s pilgrimage”; 278: “far from than undermining”. There are also missing commas (e.g., 15; 152n84; 167n146), stray commas (103: “lechery, leads us away from”; 166: “in Wace’s, Roman de Brut”), as well as missing quotation marks (e.g., on 103).

Maik Goth [email protected]

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