The Art of Discovery: Digging into the Past in Renaissance Europe 9780691237152

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 The Antiquarian: A Field Guide
Chapter 2 Livy’s Bones
Chapter 3 The Girl on the Appian Way
Chapter 4 The Titulus of the True Cross
Chapter 5 Disentangling Ancient Sources
Chapter 6 Looking for Monsters in the Grottoes
Chapter 7 Digging for Dunstan
Chapter 8 Reading the Robe
Chapter 9 Antiquarianism and Its Discontents
Index
A note on the type

Citation preview

t he a rt of discov ery

The Art of Discovery dig gi ng i n to t he pa st i n r e­na is­s a nce eu­rope

Maren Elisabeth Schwab and Anthony Grafton

pr i nce­t on u n i v e r si t y pr e ss pr i nce­t on & ox for d

Copyright © 2022 by Prince­ton University Press Prince­ton University Press is committed to the protection of copyright and the intellectual property our authors entrust to us. Copyright promotes the pro­gress and integrity of knowledge. Thank you for supporting ­free speech and the global exchange of ideas by purchasing an authorized edition of this book. If you wish to reproduce or distribute any part of it in any form, please obtain permission. Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to permissions@press​.­princeton​.­edu Published by Prince­ton University Press 41 William Street, Prince­ton, New Jersey 08540 99 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6JX press​.­princeton​.­edu All Rights Reserved ISBN 978-0-691-23714-5 ISBN (e-­book) 978-0-691-23715-2 British Library Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data is available Editorial: Eric Crahan and Barbara Shi Production Editorial: Jill Harris Jacket Design: Heather Hansen Production: Danielle Amatucci Publicity: Alyssa Sanford and Charlotte Coyne Jacket image: Le Pittvre Antiche Del Sepolcro De Nasonii Nella Via Flaminia by Pietro Santo Bartoli and Giovanni Pietro Bellori. 1680. Courtesy of Heidelberg University Library. This book has been composed in Miller Printed on acid-­free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca 10 ​9 ​8 ​7 ​6 ​5 ​4 ​3 ​2 ​1

con t e n ts

List of Illustrations ​· ​vii Acknowl­edgments ​· ​xi chapter 1 The Antiquarian: A Field Guide

1

chapter 2 Livy’s Bones

41

chapter 3 The Girl on the Appian Way

72

chapter 4 The Titulus of the True Cross

109

chapter 5 Disentangling Ancient Sources

162

chapter 6 Looking for Monsters in the Grottoes

190

chapter 7 Digging for Dunstan

226

chapter 8 Reading the Robe

247

chapter 9 Antiquarianism and Its Discontents

280

Index · 299

[ v ]

il lust r at ions

1.1a. The shrine of Mary that Athanasius Kircher discovered at Mentorella

3

1.1b. The shrine of Mary, showing the church’s location and detailed ground plan

4

1.2. The oak relief from the church Kircher discovered

7

1.3. Kircher’s reproduction of the oak relief

8

1.4. Blood sacrifice before a priapic statue, from Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili 16 1.5. Two ­women kneel as they dedicate candles to an image of the Virgin and child (drawing by Hans Holbein) 28 1.6. Road workers discover a Roman tomb with wall paintings in 1674

1.7. John Dee annotates Cicero’s account of discovering the tomb of Archimedes at Syracuse

31 34

2.1. Sicco Polenton describes the discovery of Livy’s bones to Niccolò Niccoli

46

2.2. Giovanni Gioviano Pontano’s chapel in Naples, where Livy’s arm was buried

55

2.3. A copy of the lost Latin inscription for Livy’s arm

55

2.4a. The mid-­fifteenth-­century relief sculpture of Livy on the wall of the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua

60

2.4b. Livy’s monument inside the Palazzo della Ragione, as it was from 1547 on

61

3.1. A drawing of the body of a Roman ­woman found on the Appian Way in 1485

83

3.2. Hartmann Schedel rec­ords the purported monument of a Roman ­woman, Julia Prisca Clodia

93

[ vii ]

[ viii ] List of Illustr ations

4.1. The Veronica: the cloth imprinted with an image of the face of Jesus, which was displayed at Saint Peter’s Basilica

119

4.2. Pope Innocent VIII carries the Holy Lance to the Basilica of Saint Peter in 1492

120

4.3. The tip of the Holy Lance

121

4.4. The relics, vestments, and insignia of the Holy Roman Empire, preserved at Nuremberg, with the Holy Lance in the center

122

4.5. The annual display of Nuremberg’s most precious relics, on a heavi­ly guarded temporary platform

128

4.6. A very rough diagram of the Titulus of the True Cross 130 4.7. A woodcut offering what it describes as a facsimile of the Titulus of the True Cross

147

4.8. Another woodcut facsimile of the Titulus 148 4.9. A third woodcut of the Titulus, in which the Greek and Hebrew texts have been corrected

150

4.10. A woodcut of the Titulus with a guide to pronunciation of the Greek and Hebrew and instructions for devotional use of the image

151

4.11. Michelangelo’s version of the Titulus, from the Sacristy at Santo Spirito

153

4.12. The Titulus, as reproduced in a print facsimile commissioned by Markus Welser

160

5.1. The Borgo, as represented by Filarete on the bronze door he crafted for Old Saint Peter’s Basilica 165 5.2. The pedestal of a lost statue by Lysippos, with its Greek inscription translated into Latin

170

5.3. The Laocoon, as it looks now

175

5.4. An image of the Laocoon published by Bartolomeo Marliani in 1544

184

List of Illustr ations [ ix ]

6.1. Men enter grottoes, torches in hand, to study the paintings on their roofs and vaults

194

6.2. A painted vault from Nero’s Golden House

196

6.3. The arch in Pinturicchio’s Adoration of the Child with St. Jerome, decorated with imagery from the Golden House

197

6.4. A sculpted monster from a Paduan workshop

203

6.5. Samples of Roman decoration, reproduced and defended by Sebastiano Serlio

211

6.6. The title page of a collection of ornament prints, with images from the Golden House

213

6.7. An anonymous antiquarian laments his inability to draw ancient busts with sufficient artistry

218

6.8. An antiquarian gives a parodic location for an inscription: on Mount Olympus

221

6.9. A design from the Yellow Vault of the Golden House, as reproduced in the Codex Escurialensis 223 6.10. Pinturicchio sketches abstract designs and a face, drawing on his exploration of the Golden House

224

7.1. The very ­grand tomb of William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury

230

8.1. The emperor Maximilian I, depicted by Hans Burgmair the Elder as he reveres the Seamless Robe of Jesus at Trier

249

8.2. The Igel Column near Trier: one of the many Roman antiquities in the region

255

8.3a. An image of the Seamless Robe of Jesus, from Johann Adelphus Muling’s account of its rediscovery 268 8.3b. Detail showing the characters that Adelphus saw on the Seamless Robe, resembling the Hebrew letter shin

269

[ x ] List of Illustr ations

8.4. The Seamless Robe of Jesus from Johannes Enen’s Medulla (1514)

270

9.1a. Athanasius Kircher depicts Lake Nemi as it was in Roman times

286

9.1b. Another depiction of Lake Nemi, with the machinery used by Leon Battista Alberti in his failed attempt to raise Roman ships from the bottom of the lake

287

9.2a. An inscription at Glastonbury, from which this image was directly printed

294

9.2b. An offset image of the Glastonbury inscription, in which the text goes from left to right

295

9.3. A reconstruction of the oldest Christian church, built by Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury

296

ack now l ­e dgm e n ts

This book h a d its origins during a c­ ouple of sunny days in Halle in the summer of 2017. Conversations in the stacks of the Marienkirche and a year ­later in the shade of the Schlossberg in Gotha inspired us to plan a collaborative article: a study of the discovery of the Titulus of the True Cross in Rome in 1492. Research began, documents ­were collected, and emails w ­ ere exchanged. A day’s conversation in Toronto in March 2019 convinced us that the proj­ect had potential. In 2020, when the first outbreaks of Covid closed our universities, we began work in earnest. Over time the original case study grew, forward and backward, week by week, into this book. Even as lockdowns confined us to Bonn and Prince­ton, email and Zoom enabled us to stay in communication, and curious, even fantastic stories of excavation in Re­nais­sance Padua and Rome, Canterbury, and Trier lit the darkness around us. In this study we try to bring some lively cultures of conversation back to life. The long-­distance cultures of conversation that have flourished, against all odds, in 2020 and 2021 sustained us in hard times and helped shape our work. The members of a weekly Early Modern coffee hour convened by Tony Grafton and Jennifer Rampling in the summer of 2020 provided helpful and encouraging comments on our first draft; heartfelt thanks to Jan Machielsen and Carolina Mangone for their suggestions and criticism. Eric Crahan at Prince­ton University Press gave us guidance as specific as it was helpful. Many other friends provided advice and criticism: we thank Martin Raspe for his critical reading of our introduction; the two anonymous readers for Prince­ton University Press, whose reports have guided our revision of our original manuscript; and Ann Blair for her precise,

[ xi ]

[ xii ] Ack now ledgmen ts

constructive comments on the final draft. Alice Falk and Jenn Backer scrutinized the text for inconsistencies and slips and put it into shape for the press. We are more indebted than we can say to the libraries that have supported our work. The Prince­ton University Library, the Universitäts-­und Landesbibliothek Bonn, and the Bibliothek des Kunsthistorischen Instituts der Universität Bonn have provided us with im­mense amounts of primary and secondary lit­ er­a­ture, scanning many works when they ­were closed to visitors. Prince­ton and the Hathi Trust collaborated to give emergency access to books that normally cannot be consulted online. So did Michael Embach, director of Trier’s city library, and Florian Zenner of the episcopal seminary library in Trier. Research done during the Before Times—­sometimes many years ago—in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Biblioteca Riccardiana, the British Library, and the Warburg Institute has contributed to this new enterprise. Digital repositories of e­ very kind have enabled us to continue primary research while confined to our homes. We could not have completed this book without continual access to Prince­ton’s digital collections, to DigiVatLib and the Munich Digitization Center, t­ hose inexhaustible sources of manuscripts and early printed books, and to Google Books and Archive​.o ­ rg, whose riches are so im­mense that they make users forgive, if not forget, their occasional frustrations. Generous friends and colleagues provided us with information and images. Massimiliano Bassetti, Sible de Blaauw, Lilian Datchev, Andras Nemeth, Jennifer Rampling, and Helmut Reimitz took time from their own work to help us gain access to unpublished sources; Mateusz Falkowski gave us materials by and about Antonio Agustín; Ulrich Lehner, Sara Poor, and Rick Wright offered vital assistance with the explication of a broadside; Michael Koortbojian guided us through the labyrinth of Re­nais­ sance collections of inscriptions; and David Quint helped us interpret a famous, often misquoted letter by Agustín.

Ack now ledgmen ts [ xiii ]

Two Graduiertenkollegs, “Expertenkulturen des 12. bis 18. Jahrhunderts” at the University of Göttingen and “Dynamiken der Konventionalität (400–1550)” at the University of Cologne, both funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, supported our travels to meet in Halle, Gotha, and Toronto in the early stages of our work—­time that we spent together that in retrospect seems even more precious than ever. Fi­nally, the transdisciplinary research area “Past worlds and modern questions” at the Rheinische Friedrich-­Wilhelms Universität Bonn, funded by the German Excellence Initiative, supported our proj­ect. We are im­mensely grateful to Jill Mylonas, who expertly assembled the illustrations and permissions for their use. Andreas Schwab provided excellent food and ingenious leisure-­time activities for Lisa, and unlimited support and good cheer for both of us. Each of us would like to thank the other, fi­nally, for enthusiasm, energy, and patience that never flagged, even in the many dark times we have seen in 2020 and 2021. As in the early modern period, so now, it is a joy to combine scholarship with friendship.

t he a rt of discov ery

ch a p t er  on e

The Antiquarian: A Field Guide

Athanasius Kircher at Work: Evidence and Its Uses in Early Modern Antiquarianism In 1661 Athanasius Kircher discovered a forgotten ancient site. Though born in Fulda in ­today’s Germany, Kircher was one of the most prominent members of the Society of Jesus in baroque Rome. He had won a Eu­ro­pean reputation with a series of massive, splendidly printed books on natu­ral and ­human history.1 His special interests included the language and philosophy of ancient Egypt, and his famed apartment in the Jesuits’ Collegio Romano, where he welcomed visitors from e­ very province of the Republic of Letters, was decorated with model obelisks as well as ­actual antiquities. Kircher believed that God had given him a vocation to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs—­especially ­those that appeared on some of the obelisks that Augustus and l­ater

1. See, in general, Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Every­ thing, ed. Paula Findlen (London, 2003); Giunia Totaro, L’autobiographie d’Athanasius Kircher (Bern, 2009).

[ 1 ]

[ 2 ] Ch a pter 1

emperors had floated across the Mediterranean to Rome.2 He seems to have advised Gian Lorenzo Bernini on his Fountain of the Four Rivers at the Piazza Navona.3 This spectacular sculptural complex, which dominated one of the most prominent public places in Rome, centered on an obelisk whose inscriptions Kircher explicated in his Oedipus Pamphilius.4 He was also fascinated by the early history of Italy, and in the l­ ater 1650s he began work on a massive survey of the topography and ruins of Lazio, the region around Rome.5 Walking in the Prenestini Mountains east of Tivoli, with its villas and baths, a “horrifying” area dominated by towering peaks and vertiginous cliffs, Kircher came across a ruined church on a mountain at Mentorella (see figures 1.1a and 1.1b).6 Multiple forms of evidence identified it. As he recalled in his autobiography, an inscription recorded that this was the holy place where St. Eustachius underwent conversion to Chris­tian­ ity in the fourth c­ entury CE, and the first Roman emperor to 2. Erik Iversen, The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs (Copenhagen, 1961), 89–98; Madeleine V.-­David, Le débat sur les écritures et l’hiéroglyphe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1965), 43–56; Daniel Stolzenberg, Egyptian Oedipus: Athanasius Kircher and the Secrets of Antiquity (Chicago, 2013). 3. See Erik Iversen, Obelisks in Exile, vol. 1, The Obelisks of Rome (Copenhagen, 1968), 84–87, and Ingrid Rowland, “ ‘Th’ United Sense of th’ Universe’: Athanasius Kircher in Piazza Navona,” Memoirs of the American Acad­emy in Rome 46 (2001), 153–81. 4. Iversen, Obelisks in Exile, 1:76–92; Giovanni Cipriani, Gli obelischi egizi: Politica e cultura nella Roma barocca (Florence, 1993); Brian Curran, Anthony Grafton, Pamela O. Long, and Benjamin Weiss, Obelisk: A History (Cambridge, Mass., 2009). 5. Harold Evans, Exploring the Kingdom of Saturn: Kircher’s Latium and Its Legacy (Ann Arbor, 2012). 6. Athanasius Kircher, Historia Eustachio-­Mariana (Rome, 1665), 2: “Inter horridam hanc rerum faciem paulo ulterius progressus nescio cuius vestigia tecti inter arbores & rupes obscure se manifestantis intueor, cui propior factus, Ecclesiam vetustate paene collapsam, obviam apertamque reperi.” The Tivoli baths ­were restored in the sixteenth ­century. See Richard Palmer, “ ‘In This Our Lightye and Learned Tyme’: Italian Baths in the Era of the Re­nais­sance,” Medi­ cal History, Supplement 10 (1990), 14–22.

The A n tiqua r i a n: A Field Guide [ 3 ]

figure 1.1a. The shrine of Mary that Athanasius Kircher discovered at Mentorella, in the mountains east of Rome. Kircher, Historia Eustachio-­ Mariana (Rome, 1665), leaf between pp. 84 and 85. Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: 39.10 Hist.

embrace Chris­tian­ity had built a church: “In memory of this the Emperor Constantine the ­Great founded this church, which the sainted Pope Sylvester the First consecrated with a solemn ritual in honor of the M ­ other of God and Saint Eustachius.”7 Local traditions, preserved by priests in nearby hamlets—­especially the parish priest of Guadagnolo—­confirmed that the church had been dedicated to St. Eustachius. According to the local stories 7. Athanasius Kircher, Vita, in Totaro, Autobiographie, 208: “Circumibam tandem omnes Ecclesiae angulos, ut aliquam inscriptionem invenirem, quam Deo ducente reperi, marmoreae tabulae inscriptam, hoc verborum tenore: Iste est locus conversionis S.[ancti] Eustachii Sacer, in quo Christus crucifixus inter cornua cervi S.[ancto] Eustachio apparuit, in cujus memoriam Constantinus Magnus Imperator Ecclesiam hanc condidit, quam S.[anctus] Sylvester Papa I in honorem Deiparae et S.[ancti] Eustachii solemni ritu consecravit.”

figure 1.1b. Another image of the shrine of Mary that shows the location of the church on the top of the cliffs and unfolds a detailed ground plan. Kircher, Historia Eustachio-­Mariana (Rome, 1665), leaf between pp. 118 and 119. Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: 39.10 Hist.

The A n tiqua r i a n: A Field Guide [ 5 ]

that the priest, an “excellent gentleman,” told Kircher, Eustachius had originally been a Roman general named Placidus. While hunting he saw a stag that had a crucifix between its antlers.8 He converted, and eventually became a martyr. A candelabrum and two crosses, which resembled ­those still vis­i­ble at the Lateran Basilica in form and workmanship alike, revealed that Constantine had built this church as well.9 The ruins ­were not inhabited. But they ­were glorious remains of a crucial time of transition, when Constantine made Chris­tian­ity the faith of the Roman Empire and consecrated precious monuments to the still older and purer Chris­tian­ity of Placidus and his fellow martyrs. More exciting still w ­ ere two antiquities that Kircher discovered inside the building. A wooden statue of the Virgin, striking for its g ­ reat age though clothed in poor garments, seemed to address him: “Behold how deserted I am by all in this wilderness.”10 Deeply moved, Kircher promised that even 8. Ibid.: “Non quievi hic, sed apud vicinos oppidorum parochos, potissimum Quadagnolii, de hujus conditione loci me quam diligentissime informavi, qui ea quae in Ecclesia repereram vera esse confirmarunt”; Kircher, Historia, 3: “Rem tamen exactius examinandam ratus, in proximum montis iugo impositum pagum, quem vulgo Guadagnolium vocant, me contuli, ubi a loci parocho Francisco Capitosto vir optimo, de omnibus & singulis quam minutissime instructus, quod suspicabar, verum esse cognovi.” 9. Kircher, Historia, 110, 132–35. 10. Kircher, Vita, 208: “Accessi deinde ad altare, ubi statuam B.[eatae] V.[irginis] antiquitate insignem deprehendi, cumque adeo neglectam, et vili panno circumdatam aspicerem, ecce Illa, mirabili quodam interioris animi instinctu, me videbatur quasi alloqui, ‘Ecce quam in hoc horrido deserto, ab omnibus deserta, commoror. Nec ullus est qui et mei, et Ecclesiae meae, nec non hujus Sancti loci curam habeat, quae olim tanta hominum devotione hic florebam.’ ” Cf. his account in the Historia, 2–3, which is slightly more prosaic: “In medio Ecclesiae altare clathris ferreis circumdatum spectabatur; in quo ligneum Magnae Deiparae Filiolum brachio stringentis simulachrum, tametsi vetustate erosum, nec non pulveribus telisque araneorum obsitum, spectantes tamen ad devotionem mirum in modum sollicitabat. Certe dixisses, pauperem Dei Matrem de sui in hac solitudinis vastitate, neglectu, incuria, & necessitate quodammodo conqueri, imo nonnullum ad tantae paupertati subveniendum subsidium ab advenis, oculis manibusque efflagitare credidisses.”

[ 6 ] Ch a pter 1

though he was a penniless priest, he would restore the church, and he laid down all the money he carried as an offering.11 An oak tablet, which the duke of Poli eventually removed from the church and preserved in his library, bore a carved relief (see figure 1.2).12 This Kircher analyzed and reproduced (see figure 1.3). The decorative border of ivy at the top, he argued, resembled Christian art of the same period: “I recall,” wrote Kircher, “that I have seen similar ornaments in many very old churches h ­ ere in Rome, done in mosaic.”13 The relief itself represented both Christ, shown exactly as he appeared at “the Lateran Church that Constantine built for the ­people of Rome,” and Sylvester, dressed as the pope and attended by servants with holy vessels. Though the sculptor had rendered both vestments and vessels with ­great precision, he had unfortunately failed to enter the year when all this happened. But the carvings ­were clearly the work of “an untrained hand, as the character of the crude images clearly shows, worked up as the condition of the times allowed.”14 And their quality established their date: “For, as we have shown, in the time of Constantine and Sylvester, 11. Kircher, Vita, 208–9. 12. Kircher, Historia, 120–21: “In Sacello S. Eustachij, quod ad laevam Christi e regione rupis constructum cernitur, olim parieti affixa videbatur vetustissima tabula ex querno ligno compacta, in qua rudi, propria istorum temporum, arte insculpta prima huius Ecclesiae dedicatio, a S. Sylvestro facta exprimitur, quam postea Dux Polanus, ne tantae antiquitatis monumentum situ & squalore loci periret, in Polanae Arcis Bibliothecam intulit, ubi & in hunc usque diem, antiquarum rerum studiosis spectanda exponitur: quam, & nos ad attestandam historiae nostrae veritatem, summo studio & diligentia designatam, ea prorsus fide, quam exemplar praefert, depictam, hic Lectori curioso exponendam censuimus.” On the Conti and their role in the restoration of the church, see Totaro, Autobiographie, 137, 149–50. 13. Kircher, Historia, 123: “Ego certe similia ornamenta me in multis pervetustis Ecclesijs hic Romae, musivo opere elaborata spectasse memini.” 14. Ibid., 120–32, at 121: “Tabulae latera . . . ​ex ligno quercino seu ilicino elaborata, quam materiam sculptor tanquam contra temporum iniurias duratione constantiorem data opera selegisse videtur, exititij quidem operis arte, quam Itali baßo rilievo vocant exsculpta, rudi tamen ma­nu (uti inconditarum imaginum habitus luculenter demonstrat) pro temporum conditione elaborata.”

The A n tiqua r i a n: A Field Guide [ 7 ]

figure 1.2. The oak relief from the church Kircher discovered. Attilio Rossi, Santa Maria in Vulturella (Tivoli): Ricerche di Storia e d’Arte (Rome, 1905), plate VII. Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome.

architects and sculptors w ­ ere so rare that they had to be brought from Africa and other regions to the churches that he planned to build, as the Triumphal Arch of Constantine, the best preserved of all the arches in Rome, makes completely clear.”15 ­Every time Kircher walked through the arch, he noted, he was 15. Ibid., 121–22: “Nam, ut in praecedentibus ostendimus, erant Constantini & Sylvestri temporibus Architecti & Sculptores adeo rari, ut eos ex Africa alijsque partibus ad Ecclesias, quas animo conceperat extruendas, acciri oportuerit, & Arcus Triumphalis Constantini, omnium eorum, qui hic Romae spectentur, adhuc integerrimus, sat superque ostendit.”

[ 8 ] Ch a pter 1

figure 1.3. Kircher’s reproduction of the oak relief: note the many divergences from the original, including the added name of Pope Sylvester. Kircher, Historia Eustachio-­Mariana (Rome, 1665), leaf between pp. 120 and 121. Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: 39.10 Hist.

struck (as the ecclesiastical historian Cesare Baronio had been before him) by the wildly varying origins and styles of its sculptures. The poor proportions of the carvings on the oak tablet showed beyond doubt that it had been fashioned in the same uncultivated period.16 So did their iconography. The multiple correlations between the tablet and other datable objects made Kircher’s historical assurance doubly sure. 16. Ibid., 122. ­After quoting Baronio, Kircher writes: “Haec Baronius, quam dissimilitudinem sculpturarum & ego, quoties per dictum arcum transitus datur, sat admirari non possum. Eodem igitur hoc rudi seculo, hanc Tabulam a magistro rudi admodum & enclypticae artis prorsus inexperto, exsculptam fuisse, improportionata imaginum symmetria clare ostendit.”

The A n tiqua r i a n: A Field Guide [ 9 ]

Miraculously, on Kircher’s return to Rome he found a letter of exchange from one of his patrons from northern Eu­rope, August of Braunschweig-­Lüneburg. With this money and further gifts from the good and the ­great, he rebuilt the church, which he provided with a shrine and a residence for pilgrims. The Virgin received a new dress, and the church new frescoes. Soon Kircher and his fellow Jesuits ­were holding apostolic missions ­there on Michaelmas (29 September). Thousands came to hear sermons, sing hymns, and take communion. Kircher commemorated his discoveries in a detailed l­ittle book, which he published in 1665. In fact, as Giunia Totaro has shown, Kircher rearranged and dramatized his account to emphasize how Providence had guided him at ­every step. The Historia was ­really a fund-­raising brochure, and an effective one.17 But it was also an exercise in scholarship: a detailed analy­sis, vividly illustrated, of a historical site. Kircher was wrong on almost e­ very point of fact, and many of his ­mistakes ­were not innocent. The inscription that identified Constantine and Sylvester as the found­ers of the church dis­appeared without a trace. Though Kircher transcribed it in his autobiography, which he did not publish, in the Historia he contented himself with a much more general statement: Turning to the walls I saw a range of inscriptions and images, from which at length I clearly realized that this is the very place in which the marvelous conversion of Saint Eustachius, which I w ­ ill soon describe, had occurred, and that alone had provided the reason for founding a church consecrated to the worship of the M ­ other of God and Saint Eustachius in this place.18 17. Totaro, Autobiographie, 144–53. 18. Kircher, Historia, 3: “Hinc ad parietes conversus varia inscriptionum picturarumque schemata deprehendi; ex quibus tandem luculentur cognovi, hunc eundem locum esse, in quo admiranda (quam paulo post descripturus sum) Sancti Eustachij ad Deum conversio accidisset, quae et una fundandae

[ 10 ] Ch a pter 1

The inscription that Kircher did not cite in print may never have existed, and no other physical evidence connects the church to Constantine. The first written references to it—­which describe it as part of a Benedictine monastery—­appear in documents from the tenth ­century. Though the date of the current structure is uncertain, it was prob­ably raised around three hundred years ­after that. The fine, stiffly hieratic wooden statue of the Virgin resembles other sculptures made in Lazio in the same period.19 Unlike the inscription, as we have seen, the oak relief—an altar frontal—­survived.20 It too is medieval, and the name of Sylvester does not appear on it, though it does appear on the reproduction that Kircher published. The relief that Kircher treated as a con­temporary rec­ord of a historical event was in fact created hundreds of years ­later to perpetuate and support the local traditions about the origins of the church, and his reproduction of it departed in crucial ways from the original.

From Candlesticks and Ancient Drawings to Knowledge Making Kircher’s discovery of the shrine of Eustachius is a late episode in the long epic of early modern antiquarianism, a new form of research that first took shape in Re­nais­sance Italy. This book concentrates on his e­ arlier pre­de­ces­sors: scholars and artists who laid down the pre­ce­dents that he followed. Many features of Kircher’s tale and the way he told it ­were traditional: he used long-­established technical and narrative practices. From the early fifteenth ­century onward, when toilets ­were dug or trees ­were planted, antiquarians found their way into graves and

hoc in loco Ecclesiae in Deiparae & Divi Eustachij cultum consecratae occasionem praebuisset.” 19. The fullest account remains Attilio Rossi, Santa Maria in Vulturella (Tivoli): Ricerche di Storia e d’Arte (Rome, 1905). 20. Ibid., plate VII.

The A n tiqua r i a n: A Field Guide [ 11 ]

caves and opened up blocked niches in church walls. They discovered ancient objects of e­ very kind. Their ranks w ­ ere varied, even motley. Early antiquarianism was not a profession but a pursuit, and it appealed to amateurs of e­ very kind as well as to historians, monks, architects, and artists who had a professional concern with aspects of antiquity. Scholars and artisans, priests and patrons, alchemists and artists or­ga­nized and took part in excavations—­sometimes all of them at once. The work they did was also highly varied in its sources and methods. Digging out a site and understanding its contexts often required the creative interweaving of forms of knowledge and practices of analy­sis drawn from very dif­fer­ent realms. This book examines a series of enterprises, all of which began with exploration of sites, involved excavation, and yielded discoveries: case studies in secular and sacred antiquarianism, mostly as practiced in the de­cades just before and ­after 1500. Our special interest lies in excavations, and the subsequent attempts to analyze and authenticate the objects that emerged from under­ground. We begin our story in a ­great monastery in Padua, early in the fifteenth ­century, where antiquarians discovered and disinterred the bones of the Roman historian Livy. This episode established a number of durable patterns. Then we move to Rome near the end of the ­century, a place and a period when antiquarians discovered and evaluated spectacular new objects of e­ very kind. We begin with the excavation of the body of a Roman ­woman, found in miraculously good condition in a sepulcher on the Appian Way. From that we pass to the almost simultaneous rediscovery, as it was then understood, of a major Christian relic: the Titulus, or wooden INRI-­placard, that had been nailed to the True Cross. From t­ hese studies, which reveal some of the commonalities between the hunt for sacred relics and the search for pagan antiquities, we pass to two of the most famous episodes of High Re­nais­sance antiquarianism: the unearthing of the Laocoon and the exploration of Nero’s buried Golden House. Fi­nally, we leave Italy to study two con­temporary

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efforts in northern Eu­rope to find and authenticate holy relics: the emperor Maximilian’s uncovering of the Seamless Robe of Jesus in Trier and two formidable En­glish clerics’ rediscovery of the bones of Saint Dunstan, in both Canterbury and Glastonbury. Even in t­ hese very dif­fer­ent cultures, we w ­ ill see, the search for material remains of the Christian past shared features with Italian antiquarianism. The chief discoveries on which we focus took place within a short span of time, between 1480 and 1518. Some of them involved the same scholars and artists. Michelangelo, for example, plays a part in three of our stories. By treating them together, we hope to illuminate, primarily, the techniques and practices of the antiquarians: the formal, explicit methods and the informal, tacit skills that they brought to bear as they did their best to authenticate and interpret what they had found. Kircher, who came a­ fter our main protagonists and learned from them, gives us an idea of what to look for in the more fragmentary rec­ords that his pre­de­ces­sors have left. For he read widely in the texts that e­ arlier antiquarians had written and engaged critically with their methods and conclusions.21 Though the results of Kircher’s investigations ­were largely incorrect, the approach that he took—­whether he actually carried it out, or claimed in retrospect to have done so—­was systematic and coherent, and its coming into being is the subject of this book. When Kircher examined the church, he brought to bear a par­tic­u­lar set of skills and practices.22 He mea­sured and drew the structures that he found in Mentorella, read their inscriptions, and examined other objects, above all the oak tablet. In par­tic­u­lar, he scrutinized both the texts inscribed on the tablet and the object itself, assessing the quality of its craftsmanship and using that to give it a date. He had learned at Rome, examining 21. See Evans, Exploring the Kingdom of Saturn. 22. Victor Plahte Tschudi, Baroque Antiquity: Archaeological Imagination in Early Modern Eu­rope (Cambridge, 2017).

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the Arch of Constantine and other antiquities, to compare ancient objects in order to set them into their chronological contexts. Precise examination and systematic comparison seemingly made it pos­si­ble to fix undated objects in time. In 1686 Jean Mabillon, the creator of paleography; Emanuel Schelstrate, the Vatican librarian; and Giovanni Pietro Bellori, a painter with expert knowledge of ancient wall paintings, examined the Vatican Virgil (Vat. lat. 3225), a splendidly illustrated manuscript. They discussed every­thing from the shape and components of its letters, which they scrutinized line by line and curve by curve, to its vivid diagrams of pagan rituals. And they de­cided, ­after much thought, that the manuscript must have been created before Constantine made Chris­tian­ity the religion of the Roman Empire.23 They w ­ ere prob­ably wrong, though their errors w ­ ere much less serious than Kircher’s. Most modern scholars hold that the manuscript was written and illustrated in the early fifth ­century CE: all agree that it came into being, images of pagan rituals and all, well a­ fter the time of Constantine. For our purposes, though, the similarity of their methods, and their sophistication, ­matters more. All ­these men agreed that objects could 23. The discussion of 1686 is summarized in the first facsimile edition of the manuscript by Giovanni Bottari and Pietro Bartoli, Antiquissimi Virgiliani codicis fragmenta et picturae ex Bibliotheca Vaticana ad priscas imaginum for­ mas a Petro Sancte Bartholi incisae (Rome, 1741), iv–­vi; on the dating by Mabillon see v–­vi: “Hoc praeclarum antiquitatis monumentum non sine admiratione vidit celeberrimus Mabillonius, & de eo sic ait in suo Itinere Italico p. 63 Tom. I. Ex Latinis Virgilius, quanti vis pretii cum figuris, antiqua sacrificia, & alia id genus reconditae Gentilium eruditionis tam perite, & eleganter exprimentibus, ut Constantini M. tempus superare videantur.” On this episode, see Ingo Herklotz, “Late Antique Manuscripts in Early Modern Study: Critics, Antiquaries and the History of Art,” in Amanda Claridge and Ingo Herklotz, Classical Manuscript Illustrations, The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo. Series A—­Antiquities and Architecture, pt. 6 (London, 2012), 60. For the date of the manuscript, see Johannes de Wit, Die Miniaturen des Vergilius Vaticanus (Amsterdam, 1959), 151–57; David H. Wright, The Vatican Vergil: A Masterpiece of Late Antique Art (Berkeley, 1993), 115–20; Michele R. Salzman, “Vatican Vergil (Vergilius Vaticanus),” in Nancy Thomson de Grummond, Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology (London, 1996), 1151–52.

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reveal lost histories. Minute visual clues, easily missed despite being intently sought in reproductions and early attempts at meticulously precise facsimiles, could be the keys that unlocked the dates and meanings of the objects. To their practiced eyes, the style and execution of a relief or a candelabrum, a line of script, or an illustration of a scene in Virgil could reveal as much as any text. ­Whether antiquarians w ­ ere comparing candlesticks or scripts, they ­were taking part in a common enterprise. Serious study of their work, sparked by a classic article that Arnaldo Momigliano published in 1950, has transformed con­temporary understanding of the history of scholarly practices and much more.24 Our study engages with this tradition of scholarship both by focusing as intently as our protagonists on minute but revealing clues and by tracing the connections between ways of gathering and assessing information—­such as the examination of the ancient manuscript of Virgil and that of the Church of St. Eustachius—­ that have traditionally been treated in isolation from one another. In par­tic­u­lar, we hope to show how the study of secular antiquities was connected, in impor­tant ways, with that of sacred relics.

Antiquarianism Sacred and Secular At Mentorella Kircher applied the techniques of the antiquarians to early Christian rather than to pagan objects and inscriptions. And thereby hangs a tale. Since the late f­ourteenth ­century, antiquarians in Italy had been examining ancient sites and buildings; collecting ancient coins, inscriptions, and works of art; and reconstructing ancient ways of life and forms of worship.25 Modern historians of antiquarianism have often treated 24. A. D. Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13, 3–4 (1950), 285–315; see Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences, ed. P. N. Miller (Toronto, 2007). 25. For surveys, see Roberto Weiss, The Re­nais­sance Discovery of Classi­ cal Antiquity (1969; Oxford, 1988); Pirro Ligorio’s Roman Antiquities; The

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their work as a fundamentally secular enterprise. They saw it as part, in its origins, of the larger revival of classical antiquity that began in fourteenth-­century northern Italy and that included in its objects such notably pagan topics as the dancing of maenads, the worship of Priapus, and the customs of Roman brothels.26 A power­ful image from an illustrated fiction, the Hypnerotoma­ chia Poliphili (Venice, 1499), one of the most imaginative products of the fifteenth-­century world of antiquarian studies, suggests why this brand of scholarship might seem hard to connect with the study of Christian antiquity (see figure 1.4). This is not the only case that supports drawing a distinction between pagan and sacred antiquarianism. In 1468, a generation before the Hypnerotomachia appeared, twenty associates of the Roman humanist Pomponio Leto w ­ ere arrested during Carnival on suspicion of plotting to murder Pope Paul II. Pomponio was in Venice, but he too was arrested and tortured. A charismatic teacher, Pomponio had won fame for his expert knowledge of the topography of ancient Rome and the customs of the ancient Romans. He and his friends had created an acad­emy whose members took classical names, conversed in classical Latin, and crept into the catacombs outside the city.27 In t­ hose torchlit tunnels they performed elaborate rituals. They also cultivated affection for younger men, celebrating ­these relationships in their verse.28 Drawings in MS XIII. B 7 in the National Library of Naples, ed. Erna Mandowsky and Charles Mitchell (London, 1963); Patricia Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven, 1996); Maren Elisabeth Schwab, Antike begreifen: Antiquarische Texte und Praktiken in Rom von Fran­ cesco Petrarca bis Bartolomeo Marliano (Stuttgart, 2019), 261–66. 26. Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Re­nais­sance Culture (Prince­ton, 1999); Martin Mulsow, Die unanständige Gelehrtenrepublik: Wis­ sen, Libertinage und Kommunikation in der Frühen Neuzeit (Stuttgart, 2007). 27. For the investigation and use of the catacombs before the late sixteenth ­century, see Irina Oryshkevich, “The History of the Roman Catacombs from the Age of Constantine to the Re­nais­sance” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2003). 28. See Anthony D’Elia’s expert account, A Sudden Terror (Cambridge, Mass., 2009).

figure 1.4. Blood sacrifice before a priapic statue: ancient ritual, religion, and eroticism all called back to life in a highly imaginative as well as erudite fiction. Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice, 1499), sig. [mvir]. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Rar. 515, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb00039006-4.

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It was far too easy for a suspicious pope and his Curia to see the games of the Pomponiani as a serious effort to revive paganism and sodomy. The papal master of ceremonies, Agostino Patrizi, wrote to a friend: “Some who had reputations as real l­ittle dandies, so to speak, and wanted to seem very learned and in love with antiquity, made a habit of drawing not only their literary culture but also their opinions on the ends of goods and evils and their views on God himself not from our phi­los­op ­ hers, as was right, but from ­those ancient pagans.”29 ­Under more tolerant pontiffs, Pomponio’s brand of antiquarian scholarship returned to ­favor. Scholars recorded the tours he conducted through the ruins of the ancient city, which revolved around efforts to work out the locations of Roman po­liti­cal and religious centers. Alessandro d’Alessandro recalled how he and Pomponio Leto had discussed the location of the Curia Hostilia, one of the ancient meeting places of the Senate, as they walked through the Forum. His other guests seem to have included visitors from northern Eu­rope.30 Tours of ancient sites and visits to collections of statues and antiquities remained central to the experience of Rome. Pierio Valeriano, who expended a vast amount of energy on detecting what he thought to be Christian meanings of Egyptian hieroglyphs, described how he and the distinguished cleric Giovanni Grimani had visited the latter’s garden near the Alta Semita, a road that ran down the spine of the Quirinal Hill. Grimani had excavated the buried ruins of an ancient ­temple, attracting what Valeriano described, with evident approval, as “a ­great crowd of gentlemen.”31 29. Agostino Patrizi to Antonio (?) Monelli, in Gaspare da Verona and Michele Canensi, Le vite di Paolo II, ed. Giuseppe Zippel (Città di Castello, 1904), 181–82: “Meminisse debes, mi A., quosdam qui elegantioli, ut ita dicam, habebantur, ut viderentur doctiores amantioresque vetustatis, non solum linguam ac litteras, sed etiam de finibus bonorum ac malorum opiniones et de ipso summo deo sententias non a nostris filosophis, ut par erat, sed a gentilibus illis priscis sumere consuevisse.” 30. Schwab, Antike begreifen, 261–66. 31. Ibid., 257–58 (“magna ingenuorum multitudo”).

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When the cold wind of the Catholic reform changed Rome’s cultural climate, however, reservations about the study of Roman antiquities revived. Although t­ hese concerns did not bring secular antiquarian pursuits to a close or anything like it, a divide between the two endeavors became apparent, one that made the study of classical antiquity and the (scholarly) efforts to help reform the church seem distinct. The Spanish bishop, jurist, and antiquarian Antonio Agustín played a central role in the Roman antiquarian world of the 1550s and 1560s. He regularly worked with and regularly criticized the hyperactive Pirro Ligorio, who dedicated much of his life to re-­creating Roman rituals and beliefs. ­After spending three years at the Council of Trent, Agustín returned to Spain, where he served as a reforming bishop of Tarragona. Writing to a close friend and fellow antiquarian in Rome, Fulvio Orsini, he made clear that the antiquarian scholarship and statue gardens that had flourished in his days in Rome, and still went on—in par­tic­u­lar, the uninhibited inquiries practiced by Ligorio—­now seemed out of place, at least to tourists from the Protestant north, though he recommended (with much irony) against concealing nude sculptures: I won­der if all ­those naked statues need to be buried, lest some reformation [scandal for the Reformers] arise from them. And certainly, ­those masculine herms in the Cesi and Carpi gardens, that hermaphrodite with the satyr in the chapel, looked bad . . . ​and the garden of Pope Julius III, with all ­those Venuses and other wantonnesses. True, they are of use to scholars and artisans, but the northerners are terrifically shocked and “Rumor, the evil, becomes stronger as it moves” [Virgil].32 32. Antonio Agustín, Opera Omnia, vol. 7 (Lucca, 1772), 248: “Io dubito che bisogni sotterrare tutte le Statue ignude, perche non venga fuori qualche riformazione di esse: & certo parevano male quelli termini maschij della vigna di Cesis & di Curpi, & quel Hermaphrodito col Satiro nella Capella. . . . ​Et la vigna di Papa Giulio Terzo con tante Veneri & altre lascivie. Che se bene alli studiosi giovano, & alli artefici, li Oltramontani si scandalizzano bestialmente,

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Agustín himself received sharp criticism, ten years l­ater, from his friend Latino Latini, to whom he had sent a nostalgic poem about his time as an antiquarian in Rome, reading the newly discovered Fasti Capitolini and examining ancient buildings.33 Latini insisted that the time had come for scholars to concentrate, as he and his associates now did, on defending ancient rituals and mystical observances against the heretics.34 Informed observers, both con­temporary and modern, have seen ­little reason to draw connections between the antiquarians and Christian beliefs—­much less between their pursuits and the excavation and study of sacred relics. Yet Kircher showed no sense of strain or conflict when he applied the most up-­to-­date methods of antiquarian research to Christian materials. In fact, he made clear that he found his Constantinian church in the course of his systematic investigation of the antiquities of Roman Lazio.35 “While hunting for profane monuments,” he remarked with plea­sure, “I found this holy trea­sure hidden among the inaccessible mountain cliffs.”36 As Momigliano pointed out in his Classical Foundations of Mod­ ern Historiography, antiquarian interests and research had been part of the tradition of Christian learning for centuries.37 Many & fama malum vires acquirit eundo [Virgil, Aeneid 4.174–75, abbreviated].” For the context, see William Sten­house, “Visitors, Display and Reception in the Antiquity Collections of Late-­Renaissance Rome,” Re­nais­sance Quarterly 58, 2 (2005), 397–434. Our thanks to David Quint for his advice on the interpretation of this text. 33. Agustín, Opera Omnia, 7:193–94. See Joan Carbonell Manils, “Latini Latinii epistulae ad Antonium Augustinum missae cum quibusdam com[m]entariis auctae nunc primum editae,” Faventia 19, 2 (1997), 149–74, at 162n35. Our thanks to Mateusz Falkowski for ­these references. 34. Latini’s description of the activities of Petrus Canisius: “Et veteres ritus, & mystica sacra tuetur / Adversus haereses novas.” Agustín, Opera Omnia, 7:194. 35. In Exploring the Kingdom of Saturn, Evans follows Kircher step by step. 36. Kircher, Historia, 3: “Profana itaque monumenta sectatus, sacrum hunc inter inaccessas montium rupes latentem thesaurum inveni.” 37. Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiogra­ phy (Berkeley, 1990), chap. 6.

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a medieval cathedral chapter included a fierce defender of tradition, steeped in knowledge of e­ very corner of the building and ­every narrative of a local tradition, and ready to fight as soon as a reforming bishop suggested that he might change a bell tower or a ritual. One of the learned papal secretaries of the mid-­fifteenth ­century, Maffeo Vegio, drew up a massively detailed survey of Old Saint Peter’s Basilica, toggling back and forth between what he had learned by clambering into disused chapels and copying inscriptions and what he had read in the works of his medieval pre­de­ces­sors.38 It was all part of the same strug­gle against the destructive power of time. ­Others used the same techniques to dif­fer­ent, corrosive effect. In Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls (S. Paolo fuori le mura), a massive basilica on the site of the saint’s burial place, pilgrims ­were shown by candlelight a sumptuous illuminated manuscript of the Vulgate, written in Reims in the late ninth ­century.39 Perhaps ­because its illuminations included scenes from Jerome’s life, hush-­voiced vergers explained that he himself had written it. Not every­one was completely convinced. Giovanni Rucellai, the patron of the architect and antiquarian Leon Battista Alberti, may have echoed a critical remark from his friend when he recorded his visit: “We saw in the sacristy of this church a very old Bible, written by Saint Jerome with his own hand, and 38. Fabio della Schiava, “ ‘Sicut traditum est a maioribus’: Maffeo Vegio antiquario tra fonti classiche e medievali,” Aevum 84, 3 (2010), 617–39; Christine Smith and Joseph O’Connor, Eyewitness to Old St. Peter’s: Maffeo Vegio’s “Remembering the Ancient History of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome” (Cambridge, 2019). 39. Lorenzo Valla, Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Con­ stantine, ed. and trans. Christopher B. Coleman (New Haven, 1922), 140–41: “Quia Hieronymum attigi, non patiar hanc contumeliam ipsius tacito praeteriri. Romae ex auctoritate papae ostenditur codex Bibliae. tamquam reliquiae sanctorum luminibus semper accensis, quod dicunt scriptum chirographo Hieronymi.” On this manuscript, see Viviana Jemolo and Mirella Morelli, La Bibbia di S. Paolo fuori le mura: Abbazia di S. Paolo fuori le mura, Roma, 29 giugno–30 settembre 1981 (Rome, 1981).

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t­ hose monks take it for a relic.”40 A de­cade ­earlier, Vegio’s irascible colleague Lorenzo Valla had dismissed the attribution to Jerome as an insult to that ascetic, erudite churchman: “Do you seek proof? Why, t­ here is ‘much embroidered cloth and gold,’ as Virgil says, a ­thing which indicates rather that it was not written by the hand of Jerome. When I inspected it more carefully, I found that it was written by order of a king, Robert, I think, and in the handwriting of an inexperienced man.”41 Two hundred years before Kircher and Mabillon, Valla used the script and illuminations of a codex to show that it could not come from the context to which tradition assigned it. In one case, the practices apply to the dating of a Bible; in the other, to the dating of a codex with the pagan works of Virgil. Valla was not the only antiquarian steeped in classical learning to turn his attention to Christian antiquities. Alberti devoted a long section of his De re aedificatoria to reconstructing what the old basilica of Saint Peter had looked like in the de­cades just ­after its creation. He portrayed it as a s­ imple, austere, and dramatic building, dominated by a single altar, where the bishop performed the mass and preached the sermons—­a vision of the early Christian basilica that he drew from Augustine’s account of Ambrose’s practices in Milan.42 Biondo, as he explained to Eugenius IV in the dedication of his Roma instaurata, devoted a good deal of his survey of the city to the basilicas, churches, and other holy places that popes and other Christians had built or 40. Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo Zibaldone, vol. 1, “Il Zibaldone Quaresimale,” ed. Alessandro Perosa (London, 1960), 69: “Item, vedemo nella sacrestia di detta chiesa una Bibia molto anthicha, scripta di mano propria di Sancto Girolamo, et tengolla quelli monaci per relliquia.” 41. Valla, Discourse, 140–41: “Quaeris argumentum? Quia multum, ut inquit Virgilius, est pictai vestis et auri: res quae magis Hieronymi ma­nu indicat scriptum non esse. Illum ego diligentius inspectum comperi scriptum esse iussu regis, ut opinor, Roberti chirographo hominis imperiti.” 42. Anthony Grafton, “The Winged Eye at Work: Leon Battista Alberti Surveys Old St. Peter’s,” Re­nais­sance Quarterly 73, 4 (2019 [published 2020]), 1137–78.

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restored.43 Indeed, he held that Christian churches and pagan ­temples could not be described separately. Following the tradition of the Mirabilia, the popu­lar twelfth-­century guide to Rome, he explained that many ancient ­temples had become Christian churches, emphasizing the continuity between antiquity and the pre­sent as well as the replacement of paganism by Chris­tian­ity. When he praised the glorious marbles and mosaics of the fifth-­century church of S. Stefano Rotondo, he made clear that “it was built on the t­ emple of Faunus. Pope Simplicius ­either created the original building—or, as I think more likely, adorned it.”44 In describing Rome’s buildings, Pomponio Leto was much less consistent about tracing the way that ancient ­temples had been ­later transformed into churches: he even held that many churches had been founded on secular ancient sites.45 But as Irina Oryshkevich has argued, it seems likely that in the l­ater years of the Roman Acad­emy, when members used burnt sticks or charcoal to inscribe his and their names on frescoes of Christian love-­feasts, they ­were imagining themselves in the place of the early Christians, celebrating modest banquets while in hiding from t­ hose who had persecuted them.46 What was the relation, if any, between what look like two traditions of the scholarship of ­things, one that emphasized classical, secular objects and one that emphasized Christian ones? ­These traditions ­were certainly not identical. In some of the antiquarian disciplines—­among them epigraphy, the systematic study of inscriptions—­many prac­ti­tion­ers excluded Christian 43. Flavio Biondo, Rome Restaurée/Roma instaurata, ed. and trans. Anne Raffarin-­Dupuis, vol. 1 (Paris, 2005), ep. ded. 44. Ibid., 1:81: “quam tecto nunc carentem, marmoreis columnis et crustatis varij coloris marmore parietibus musiuoque opere, inter primas urbis ecclesias ornatissimam fuisse iudicamus. Eam, quae in Fauni aede prius fundata fuit. Simplicius primus papa aut extruxit aut, quod magis credimus, exornavit.” On the relations between t­ emples and churches in the Mirabilia, see Schwab, Antike begreifen, 265. 45. Schwab, Antike begreifen, 265–66. 46. Oryshkevich, “The History of the Roman Catacombs,” 265–76.

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materials from their collections. Early in the sixteenth c­ entury, when Pietro Sabino compiled a sylloge—­the period’s term for a collection of inscriptions—­that included Christian texts, he noted in a letter to his friend Marco Antonio Sabellico that ­doing so was unusual, and he insisted, rather defensively, on their value. A ­ fter collecting a vast corpus of classical inscriptions, relying on the work of e­ arlier collectors like Cyriac of Ancona, he explained, “I added to the pagan ones around two hundred from the period of Chris­tian­ity, which are not, by Hercules, to be treated with contempt.”47 Sabino also made clear that other antiquarians’ lack of interest in Christian inscriptions was somewhat paradoxical. He himself had drawn his materials “from marbles and the heavi­ly outlined mosaics in sacred apses as well as from the ancient manuscripts in sacred libraries.”48 Though he did not make the point, Sabino certainly knew that his fellow antiquarians had turned up many, perhaps most, of their classical inscriptions in Christian churches. It was all the more striking, then, that they did not copy Christian epitaphs and dedications. Some observers drew a contrast between the reverence with which prominent Italians viewed classical antiquities and the disrespect that they showed when relics ­were displayed. In 1529 the prominent Dutch humanist Gerard Geldenhouwer wrote a biography of his former patron, Philip of Burgundy, bishop of Utrecht, who had died in 1524. From fall 1508 through spring 1509, he recalled, Philip headed an embassy to Rome, where he arrived in January 1509. T ­ here he commissioned the artist 47. Sabino to Sabellico, in Daniela Gionta, Epigrafia umanistica a Roma (Messina, 2005), 144: “addiderimque ethnicis ipsis etiam circiter ducenta temporum christianorum, non, hercule, habenda contemptui.” On Cyriac, see Andreas Grüner, “Archäologie als Kapital, die medialen Strategien des Cyriacus von Ancona (1390–1452),” Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst 63 (2012), 7–35. 48. Sabino to Sabellico, in Gionta, Epigrafia umanistica, 144: “et tum in Urbe, tum vero extra Urbem pertinaci acrique studio perscrutatis ac discussis quibuscumque angulis rimati sumus ex marmoribus et vermiculatis apsidum sacrarum operibus, necnon ex vetustissimis sacrarum bibliothecarum codicibus.”

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Jan Gossaert, who was traveling with him, to draw “the sacred monuments of antiquity.”49 His mastery of the arts delighted Pope Julius II: He took plea­sure in paintings, and considered Philip at once a connoisseur and a craftsman in this art, since he had studied painting and goldsmith work in his youth. When the conversation turned to architecture, he knew the mea­sure­ments, proportions, and symmetries of that art. He discoursed so precisely about bases, columns, epistyles, capitals, and other ­things of that sort that you would have thought he was reading each passage aloud from Vitruvius. If they discussed fountains, aqueducts, and baths, it became clear that nothing in ­these ­matters was unknown to him.50

Deeply impressed, Julius offered Philip many gifts, though Philip accepted only two marble statues. But when “sacred relics ­were shown to the p ­ eople, and especially to our fellow Germans, for their veneration, certain very prominent cardinals, sticking out their tongues and making obscene gestures with their fin­gers, mocked the simplicity of our countrymen.”51 The 49. Gerard Geldenhouwer, “Vita clarissimi principis Philippi a Burgundia,” in his Collectanea, ed. J. Prinsen (Amsterdam, 1901), 233: “Nihil magis eum Romae delectabat, quam sacra illa vetustatis monumenta, quae per clarissimum pictorem Joannem Gossardum Malbodium depingenda sibi curavit.” See Marisa Bass, “Jan Gossaert’s ‘Neptune and Amphitrite’ Reconsidered,” Simiolus 35 (2011), 61–83, at 63. 50. Geldenhouwer, Collectanea, 232: “Delectabatur ille picturis, habebat hunc eius artis iudicem simul et artificem, pictoriam enim et auri fabrilem adolescens didicerat. De architectura erat sermo, noverat hic eius artis dimensiones, proportiones, symmetrias. De basibus, columnis, epistiliis, coronamentis atque id genus reliquis adeo exacte disserebat, ut ex ipso Vitruvio eum singula legere putares. Si de fontibus, aquaeductibus, termis sermo incidisset, nihil harum rerum hunc latere adparebat.” 51. Ibid., 233: “Addebat, se vidente, cardinales quosdam primi nominis, dum sacrae reliquiae populo et praecipue Germanis nostris venerande ostenderentur, exertis linguis ac digitis in turpem modum compositis, nostrorum simplicitati insultasse.”

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biography of Philip, as Marisa Bass has pointed out, is not “a straightforward historical document.”52 Geldenhouwer, by the time he wrote it, had left the Augustinian order, had married, and would soon become a professor at Lutheran Marburg. Still, it suggests that some learned Romans used an expert, respectful technical language when they discussed antiques, in contrast to the boyish, snarky gestural language that they used when they encountered relics. In the 1560s and ­after, the church transformed itself in response to the Protestant threat. Its leaders devised a firm new cultural program that prioritized the defense of the church against revolting Protestants. The ear trumpets of clerical patrons began to gesture invitingly ­toward ­those who could inform them about the early history of Christian customs and beliefs, and many antiquarians’ interests slowly changed. Antiques continued to be collected, discussed, and displayed in splendid garden settings.53 More and more, though, leading antiquarians began to concentrate on such confessionally dictated questions as the nature of crucifixion and the other torments inflicted on Christian martyrs by the Roman state. More systematically than their fifteenth-­century pre­de­ces­sors, antiquarians began to explore the evidence for the early history of Rome’s basilicas and to map the catacombs where, some of them thought, early Christians had performed clandestine masses. Like the patristic revival of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (a mass of editions, commentaries, and treatises far larger than the strictly classical scholarship of the same period), much of this scholarship was inspired by religious—­and, ­after the outbreak of the Reformation—­confessional passions and interests.54 Yet, as we have seen, scholars ­were already pursu52. Bass, “Gossaert’s ‘Neptune and Amphitrite,’ ” 64. 53. Sten­house, “Visitors, Display, and Reception.” 54. See the studies collected in Ingo Herklotz, La Roma degli antiquari: Cul­ tura e erudizione tra Cinquecento e Settecento (Rome, 2012), and Apes urbanae: Eruditi, mecenati e artisti nella Roma del Seicento (Città del Castello, 2017).

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ing serious inquiries into the history of the church in the fifteenth ­century. Some of them—­Biondo, Valla, Alberti—­had a deep interest in both secular and sacred antiquarianism. Even ­those who specialized in one side or the other, as we ­will see, took much the same approaches as did their counter­parts.55 Our stories, in other words, shed new light on the relations between secular and Christian scholarship in a world whose religious climate was undergoing rapid change.

Antiquarian Practices and Emotions Each of the following episodes has been the object of multiple studies, many of them erudite and insightful. They are the foundations on which our work rests. Our investigation has a dif­fer­ ent emphasis, however. Taking advantage of the rich narratives provided by our sources, we seek to illuminate not the objects and images that fascinated our antiquarians but the methods and practices they applied in pursuing them: to concentrate not on the products of their research but on their pro­cesses. The models for our work include some of the most original recent studies of the history of science, of scholarship, and of knowledge making in early modern Europe—­histories that, as our study confirms, w ­ ere closely connected and reward t­ hose who study them together.56 Our aim is to show not that the pursuit 55. See the rich case study by Carmelo Occhipinti, Pirro Ligorio e la storia cristiana di Roma: Da Costantino all’umanesimo (Pisa, 2007). 56. The methodological inspirations for this enterprise include Ann Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven, 2010); Martin Mulsow, Prekäres Wissen: Eine andere Ideenge­ schichte der Frühen Neuzeit (Frankfurt, 2012); Angus Vine, Miscellaneous Order: Manuscript Culture and the Early Modern Organ­ization of Knowledge (Oxford, 2019); Anthony Grafton, Inky Fin­gers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Eu­rope (Cambridge, Mass.,2020). A tightly focused study of similar themes, closely connected to our enterprise, is Pamela O. Long, Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-­Century Rome (Chicago, 2018). On the connections between the

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of relics and that of antiquities ­were identical but that they ­were intimately related in multiple ways. In some re­spects they resembled one another closely. We take our cue from their shared focus on tangible objects. By some standards, sacred antiquarianism was the more sophisticated of the two fields. Nothing mattered more to ecclesiastical scholars than relics—­bones, flesh, hair, and the like from the bodies of Jesus, the members of his f­ amily, and l­ater martyrs and saints, or clothing and other objects that had touched their bodies and been imbued with their holiness.57 Relics emitted a kind of holy radiation: to see them, and even more to touch them, could fill pious Christians with power­ful emotions (see figure 1.5). In 1495 the Nuremberg medical man and print professional Hieronymus Münzer examined the skull of Mary Magdalene in Saint-­Maximin-­la-­Sainte-­Baume, a well-­known pilgrimage site east of Aix-­en-­Provence. He mobilized the full resources of a rich vocabulary of words for emotions to make clear how deeply the experience impressed him: It is fearful to look on this face. On the front of the skull, on the left side, both flesh and skin stick to the bones. That is, at the place where Christ, a­ fter the resurrection, his body having been glorified, said, as he touched her, Noli me tangere histories of science and scholarship, see Lorraine Daston and Glenn Most, “History of Science and History of Philology,” Isis 106, 2 (2015), 378–90. 57. See, e.g., Patrick Geary, Furta sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central M ­ iddle Ages, rev. ed. (Prince­ton, 1990); Barbara Abou-­El-­Haj, The Medieval Cult of Saints: Formations and Transformations (Cambridge, 1994); Arnold Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien: die Geschichte ihres Kultes vom frühen Christentum bis zur Gegenwart, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1997); Henk van Os, The Way to Heaven: Relic Veneration in the ­Middle Ages (Baarn, 2000); Trea­sures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Eu­rope, ed. Martina Bagnoli, Holger Klein, C. Griffith Mann, and James Robinson (New Haven, 2010); Cynthia Hahn, The Reliquary Effect (London, 2017); and, for the period around 1500, Livia Cárdenas, Friedrich der Weise und das Wittenberger Heiltumsbuch: Mediale Repräsentation zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Berlin, 2002), and Cárdenas, Die Textur des Bildes: Das Heiltumsbuch im Kontext religiöser Mentalität des Spätmittelalters (Berlin, 2013).

figure 1.5. Two w ­ omen kneel as they dedicate candles to an image of the Virgin and child: one of the many traditional forms of veneration that ­were also rendered, in the same period, to sacred relics. Marginal drawing by Hans Holbein in a copy of The Praise of Folly by Erasmus of Rotterdam. Kunstmuseum Basel. Wikimedia, Creative Commons License.

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[­Don’t touch me!]. T ­ here is also a lower jaw: what a frightening and remarkable spectacle. I believe that in the w ­ hole world t­ here is no comparable divine presence of the Catholic religion. The more intensely one looks at it, the more one is inflamed with a fearful spirit.58

When secular antiquarians began to describe ancient works of art as charged with an electricity of their own, an aura of inimitable beauty and power, they used a language that the relic collectors had helped create.59 In the years around 1500, scholars of the sacred did more than examine individual bones and scraps. They published cata­logues of the relic collections in Vienna (1502), Wittenberg (1509), and Halle (1520): Heiltumsbücher, illustrated with vivid images of the richly worked reliquaries that contained the origins.60 The first comparable cata­logue of pagan art, the images 58. Hieronymus Münzer, Itinerarium, ed. Klaus Herbers et al. (Wiesbaden, 2020), 21–22: “Terribile est videre hanc faciem: in anteriore parte cranei ad latus sinistrum adheret ossibus et caro et pellis. In ea scilicet parte, in qua Christus post resurrectionem clarificato corpore eam tangens dicit: Noli me tangere. Adest etiam inferior maxilla. O quam stupendum et admirabile insigne. Credo in toto orbe simile religionis catholice numen non esse. Quanto vehemencius quis intuetur, tanto magis terribili quodam spiritu inflammatur.” 59. On the connections between the search for relics and that for antiquities, see the pioneering work of Hester Schadee, “Ancient Texts and Holy Bodies: Humanist Hermeneutics and the Language of Relics,” in For the Sake of Learn­ ing: Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton, ed. Ann Blair and Anja Goeing, 2 vols. (Leiden, 2016), 2:675–91. 60. On the genre of the printed Heiltumsbuch, see Cárdenas, Friedrich der Weise und das Wittenberger Heiltumsbuch and Die Textur des Bildes, and Christopher Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Re­nais­sance Art (Chicago, 2008). Facsimiles include Lukas Cranach, Wittenberger Heiltums­ buch [1509] (Unterschneidheim, 1969), and Das Hallesche Heiltumbuch von 1520: Nachdruck zum 450. Gründungsjubiläum der Marienbibliothek zu Halle, ed. Heinrich Nickel (Halle, 2001). The contents of relic collections ­were as varied as ­those of ­later Kunst-­und Wunderkammern. For the unicorn horns in the Utrecht collection, see Casper Staal: “Das Bistum Utrecht: Reliquien und Reliquiare,” in Der Weg zum Himmel: Reliquienverehrung im Mittelalter, ed. Henk van Os (Regensburg, 2001), 163–98, at 177.

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of statues from the Fugger collection and elsewhere included in the Inscriptiones sacrosanctae vetustatis of Petrus Apianus and Bartholomaeus Amantius, did not appear ­until 1534. This was not the only case in which the scholars and artists who pursued and excavated antiquities sometimes enacted scripts that had been created before them by ­those who searched for relics.

Discovery Scripts Stories of archaeological discovery are often told as narratives of surprise. Revelations are contingent, their ­causes banal—­ even when their consequences seem revolutionary. In 1674, for example, workmen ­were repairing a stretch of the Via Flaminia, some miles from Rome, in preparation for the pilgrims who would arrive in the impending Holy Year. As they quarried material from the roadside rocks, they suddenly (“d’improviso”) heard an echo and realized that they had broken into a large, barrel-­vaulted chamber, full of lead boxes of bones—­and with walls lined with brilliant paintings. In astonishment they looked at this fantastic spectacle, in a place where no one would have expected it (see figure 1.6).61 An inscription identified this structure as the ­family vault of the Nasonii. It was the work of a moment for the massed antiquaries of Rome to leap to a conclusion: this must be the tomb of the poet Ovid, whose cognomen was Naso.62 Giovanni Pietro Bellori even managed to interpret 61. Pietro Santi Bartoli and Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le pitture antiche del sepolcro de Nasonii nella via Flaminia disegnate ed intagliate alla similitudine degli Antichi Originali (Rome, 1680), 8: “gli Operari, non molto lungi, tagliando il fianco di detta rupe, per cavarne sassi, e materiali commode a massicciare, & fortificare la strada, d’improuiso sentirono il rimbombo, & aprirono vna buca sù la volta di una Camera, nella quale tosto penetrati, riconobbero l’edificio sotterraneo riccamente adornato di stucchi, e di pitture, restando attoniti in vedere quel novello spettacolo là doue meno haverebbono creduto.” 62. To borrow Ovid’s words, they had found the place where “Naso’s bones may rest softly”—­“Nasonis molliter ossa cubent,” Ovid, Tristia 3.3.76. It is striking that Bellori did not quote this line.

figure 1.6. Men at work, repairing a road, discover the tomb of the Nasonii in 1674. A rare, if highly aestheticized, image of a discovery taking place, showing simultaneous scenes of roadwork, breaking into the tomb, and looting. Pietro Santi Bartoli and Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le pitture antiche del sepolcro de Nasonii nella via Flaminia disegnate ed intagliate alla similitudine degli Antichi Originali (Rome, 1680), Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-­diglit-31760., frontispiece.

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one of the images on the walls as a portrait of Ovid and his muse.63 Stories like this represent antiquarianism—or what we would now call archaeology—as a pursuit full of surprises. Splendid statues, informative inscriptions, and the massive foundations of once-­great buildings lurk beneath the surface of the earth. They come back to life by accident—­because an animal has ducked into a hole, a peasant has dug a ditch, or a workman has found a quarry. ­Those who discovered them performed an act as consequential as it was accidental: they transformed their contemporaries’ knowledge of ancient art and history without engaging in ­mental activity. One reason that stories like this became popu­lar is that antiquarians had only a few ancient models to fall back on when they told the story of an excavation. Some of ­these provided a dif­fer­ent, more purpose-­driven version of the antiquarian quest. Cicero, for example, described how he had discovered the tomb of Archimedes, which the Syracusans had allowed to become overgrown with “brambles and thickets” (vepribus et dumetis), during his time as a governor (quaestor) on Sicily.64 An epitaph that he recalled stated that a sphere and a cylinder had been placed on top of Archimedes’s tomb. In an area crowded with tombs, he noticed a small column that bore the figure of a sphere and a cylinder, protruding above the bushes. “Many men ­were sent in who cleared the ground with sickles,” and he found the tomb.65 Poggio Bracciolini may have had this passage in mind when he complained that Petrarch, who had followed tradition when he identified the Pyramide of Cestius as the tomb of Remus, had not considered it worthwhile to read the inscription that identified Cestius, which was “overgrown with bushes” ( fructicetis 63. J. B. Trapp, “Ovid’s Tomb: The Growth of a Legend from Eusebius to Lawrence Sterne, Chateaubriand and George Richmond,” Journal of the War­ burg and Courtauld Institutes 36 (1973), 35–76. 64. Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes 5.23.64. 65. Ibid., 5.23.64–66.

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contectum).66 When Girolamo Bologni wanted to show that ­great men had made antiquarian discoveries and closely scrutinized their finds, he cited this same passage from the Tusculans.67 The En­glish antiquarian John Dee not only wrote “the grave of Archimedes” at this point in the margin of his copy of Cicero’s works but also drew a ­little picture of it (see figure 1.7).68 Evidently Varro was not the only Roman scholar whom Re­nais­sance antiquarians claimed as an intellectual ancestor.69 66. Poggio Bracciolini, De varietate fortunae, ed. Outi Merisalo (Helsinki, 1993), 93: “Quo magis mirror, integro adhuc epigrammate, doctissimum virum Franciscum Petrarcham in quadam sua epistola scribere, id esse sepulcrum Remi, credo secutum vulgi opinionem non magnifecisse epigramma perquirere, fructicetis contectum, in quo legendo, qui postmodum secuti sunt minore cum doctrina maiorem diligentiam praebuerunt.” Cf. Cesare D’Onofrio, Visitiamo Roma nel Quattrocento: La città degli umanisti (Rome, 1989), 69. See most recently M. E. Schwab, “Erinnern und Vergessen in Poggio Bracciolinis Descrip­ tio Urbis Romae,” in Prata Florida: Neue Studien anlässlich des dreißigjährigen Bestehens der Heidelberger Sodalitas Neolatina, ed. Wilhelm Kühlmann (Heidelberg, 2020), 43–70, on this passage and the critique of Petrarch, esp. 55n40. 67. Girolamo Bologni, Antiquarii libri duo, ed. Fabio D’Alessi, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Memorie, Classe di Scienze Morali, Lettere ed Arti, 54 (Venice, 1995), 6: “Et siquando praeter opinionem ac ex improviso aliquod bonae antiquitatis monumentum repperi, prae omnibus thesauris observantissime custodivi. Quod non tantum mihi humili homunculo, sed et gravissimis viris est accidisse compertum, quemadmodum eloquentiae patri Ciceroni nostro libro Tusculanarum quaestionum quinto mirum in modum glorianti dum quaesturam gereret in Sicilia ignoratum ab Syracusanis, cum esse omnino negarent, septum undique ac vestitum vepribus indagasse Archimedis geometrae sepulcrum: qua ex inventione qua sit affectus voluptate quisquis eum locum legerit haud difficulter intelleget.” 68. Dee entered this note in his copy of the Paris 1539 edition of Cicero’s Opera, now in the Royal College of Physicians Library, London, shelf mark 10549–50 D1/16-­b-6, vol. 2, 176: “Archimedis sepulchrum.” Like several other annotated books from Dee’s library, this one has been digitized and its annotations transcribed and translated (see Archaeology of Reading, https://­ archaeologyofreading​.­org​/­). 69. On the question of ­whether Cicero can properly be described as an antiquarian, see, e.g., Elizabeth Rawson, “Cicero the Historian and Cicero the Antiquarian,” Journal of Roman Studies 62 (1972), 33–45; Duncan Macrae, “ ‘Diligentissumus investigator antiquitatis?’ ‘Antiquarianism’ and Historical

figure 1.7. John Dee, the En­glish antiquarian and magus, reads Cicero’s account of his rediscovery of the tomb of Archimedes in Syracuse. He decorates it with marginal keywords and a sharp ­little imaginary image of the tomb. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes, Opera, vol. 2 (Paris, 1539), p. 176. London, Library of the Royal College of Physicians shelfmark D1/16-­b-6.

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Cicero’s Sicilian expedition had one point in common with the efforts of early modern antiquarians: he explored a partly ruined grave in order to verify what he had learned from tradition. But his narrative was nowhere near so detailed as Kircher’s description of his rediscovery of his church—or as the Re­nais­sance discovery tales that we ­will explore. Several of the stories we investigate become clearer when we bear in mind that their protagonists followed what seem to have been established scripts or scenarios, if not as events unfolded, then at least as they ­were narrated. ­These ­were not classical, even when the discovery of classical objects was involved. The rediscovery both of Livy’s bones and of the Roman ­woman in the Appian Way follows a pattern that had been established more than a thousand years before—­a Christian one, which mapped out the best way to make use of a discovery of sacred relics. According to Gelasius, the bishop of Caesarea, when Helen, the ­mother of the Christian emperor Constantine, went to Jerusalem, she asked the locals where to look for the Holy Cross.70 Inquiring into local traditions, as we w ­ ill see, remained a popu­ lar method. So did relying on divine help. Inspiration, not information, induced her to dig through the “profane and polluted rubble” of a ­temple of Venus that the persecutors had built, which had confused the locals, to find three crosses. Authentication had to follow. Helen was uncertain which of the crosses was the True Evidence between Republican Rome and the Early Modern Republic of Letters,” in Omnium Annalium Monumenta: Historical Writing and Historical Evidence in Republican Rome, ed. Kaj Sandberg and Christopher Smith (Leiden, 2017), 137–56. 70. Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica, 10.7–8, ed. Th. Mommsen in Eusebius, Werke, ed. E. Schwartz, 11.2 (Leipzig, 1908), 969–67; see H. A. Drake, “Eusebius on the True Cross,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, 1 (1985), 1–22; M. E. Schwab, “Römischer Antiquarianismus im 15. Jahrhundert, Reichweiten und Grenzen,“ in Reichweiten: Dynamiken und Grenzen kultureller Transferprozesse in Europa, 1400–1520, vol. 2, Grenzüberschreitungen und Partikularisierung, ed. Frank Rexroth, Berndt Hamm, and Christine Wulf, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, new series, 49, 2 (Berlin, 2021), 270–89.

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Cross. Even the Titulus—­the label inscribed by Pilate for Jesus’s cross—­which she also found, did not ease her mind. At the suggestion of Macarius, the local bishop, the crosses ­were brought to a distinguished ­woman who was very ill. She touched all of them. The third one, which healed her, was revealed to be that of Jesus, the other two t­ hose of the thieves who died beside him. Once the relics ­were authenticated, Helen brought them with her to Rome. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, followed a similar script when he presided over the discovery of relics. In 386 CE a vision revealed to him where the incorrupt bodies of two martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius, w ­ ere buried. According to Augustine, who witnessed the events, “when they ­were uncovered and dug up and moved, with all due ceremony, to the Ambrosian basilica, ­those who ­were tormented by unclean spirits w ­ ere cleansed, as ­those very demons confessed.” A man who had long been blind had his sight restored ­after touching the bier of the saints with his sweat cloth.71 The howling of the possessed marked the movement of the saints through the city. When they came to rest in the crypt of the basilica, they retained their powers. Movement activated relics. To make them cause miracles, one had to make them change places. From the fourth ­century onward it became normal, in the Catholic Church, to authenticate relics and then to translate them: to move them, as Helen and Ambrose had, from the place where they ­were discovered to the shrine, crypt, or altar where they would be displayed. Translation was a solemn, religious act, whose date sometimes became a feast day in its own right. In our first two stories, the ­human remains discovered ­were pagan, not Christian. Still, in many ways, they w ­ ere dealt with as if they had been holy relics. The discovery of the bones of Livy and that of the Titulus of the True Cross—as well as ­those, treated l­ater in the book, of the Seamless Cloak of Jesus and the bones of Dunstan—­shared 71. Augustine, Confessions 9.7.16.

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a script (Livy’s ingenious rediscoverers, clever citizens of the university town of Padua, performed two scripts at once). The presence of relics could be revealed by divine intervention, as it was to Ambrose. But once discovered, relics, even precious ones, sometimes dis­appeared again. In such cases it was often widely suspected, and even widely announced, that a relic o ­ ught to be in a par­tic­u­lar church, and even in a par­tic­u­lar space within it. Livy’s bones and the Titulus ­were both rediscovered in this way. Nods and winks—­and some explicit statements—­indicate that every­one involved already knew what the multiple clues revealed. In t­ hese cases, the real point of the story was not the overdetermined discovery of the relic but the techniques used to authenticate bone, wood, and cloth once they ­were uncovered. This pro­cess, as we w ­ ill see, often pushed the technologies of the time to and beyond their limits. The newly discovered Laocoon, which caused a sensation, was also moved, a­ fter a bidding war. But the destination of its translation was a place for a new kind of worship: the statue court in the Vatican Belvedere, which lured artistic rather than religious pilgrims. ­Here, a third learned script makes its appearance. The Laocoon seems to have been rediscovered, as the most exciting antiquities often ­were, by chance. Immediately, however, a pair or a group of authoritative interpreters set out to examine it. As they did so, they conversed, and almost at once they found their place to stand, by anchoring the newly discovered object to a text that mentioned it. As we ­will see, they too followed a script—­one laid out by Roman antiquarians who busily correlated ancient structures with ancient texts through the fifteenth c­ entury. For generations to come, antiquarians inspected and discussed works of art in groups, and whenever pos­si­ble connected newly discovered works of art to ancient texts. They often did not know it, but even some of the artists ­were performing parts that scholars had devised. Yet this script was not followed when artists descended into the Golden House of Nero. Long before scholars began to

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describe the cavernous rooms of Nero’s ruined palace, images from its walls and vaults ­were exploding spectacularly across the walls of churches and palaces in Rome and elsewhere. In this case, perhaps, the lack of a model made it difficult to tell the story of the discovery—as opposed to appreciating its results, as scholars and patrons evidently did.

Into the Ground This book digs into the history of a series of excavations, all of which took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some of the ­things the diggers sought ­were secular, some sacred. They include objects that have remained famous since they w ­ ere discovered (the Laocoon, the Titulus of the True Cross, the Seamless Robe of Jesus) and ­others that have vanished utterly (the dead girl whose body reappeared on the Appian Way and the dead saint Dunstan whose bones reappeared si­mul­ta­neously in Glastonbury and Canterbury). Some of ­these findings ­were actively searched for, o ­ thers popped up by chance. T ­ hese scenes look disparate now, but as we ­will see, the actors who carried out some of ­these investigations saw them as related. By following and listening to intrepid humanists, clerics, and workmen as they broke open churches, graves, and ­houses; pulled their contents into the light; and debated them, we can make vis­i­ble the complex tracery of relations that connected antiquarians whose interests seem quite separate. Both secular and sacred antiquaries did their best—­often, by their own confession, without success—to come to rigorous, verifiable conclusions about their finds. In par­tic­u­lar, they loved to make a definitive attribution: to identify the subject of a work of art or the original possessor of a bone. Especially from the nineteenth ­century onward, modern scholars have often criticized Re­nais­sance antiquarians for being too bookish. Rather than concentrating on the objects they turned up and finding ways to make them reveal their secrets, they ransacked their

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memories and libraries for texts, from books to inscriptions, that could provide each ancient find with an identity and a context. Some of our protagonists did just that. They found it hard to see the objects in front of them, ­because remembered scraps of text hung before their eyes. ­Others, however, found the authoritative sources that they sought in local, oral traditions. And still o ­ thers ridiculed all of ­these efforts as harshly—­and wittily—as such modern art historians as Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny have done.72 Re­nais­s ance discovery narratives often failed to rec­o rd central details that we would very much like to know. When more than one witness made a rec­ord, they often disagreed. But a surprising number of writers provide us with detailed information—­most of it not used by e­ arlier scholars—­about period practices of discovery and invention, down to the tools that w ­ ere used, and by whom. More surprising, they often let us know what the atmosphere of the discovery was like, evoking the humor and emotions that w ­ ere involved in t­ hese scholarly exploits. The antiquarians who seem credulous in retrospect sometimes presented their work with a hint of irony or doubt that can now be difficult to detect. Our sources also reveal that t­ hese investigations ­were rarely the work of solitary individuals. Some ­were staged; ­others ­were spontaneous, the result of a chance find. But most of them involved ­people working in groups. Scholars and patrons examined and debated objects. Learned men and craft prac­ti­tion­ers worked together to unravel the mysteries of ancient artifacts. A few learned men—­Leon Battista Alberti, for example—­could examine the components of ancient structures with precision 72. Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900 (New Haven, 1981), chap. 7; see also Francis Haskell, History and Its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (New Haven, 1993), chaps. 1–6, and, for ecclesiastical antiquarianism, Simon Ditchfield, “Text before Trowel: Antonio Bosio’s Roma Sotterranea Revisited,” Studies in Church History, 33: The Church Retrospective (1997), 343–60.

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and insight.73 Most needed the help of artisans. Sacred and secular “archaeology” became two of the “trading zones” discussed by Pamela O. Long: intellectual realms where men of radically dif­fer­ent social positions and professional training collaborated, exchanging knowledge as they did so.74 Though the credulity of some of the protagonists of ­these stories is depressing, more striking, in most cases, are the imagination and energy with which antiquarians found their way into the most strongly defended trea­sure rooms and devised methods of analy­sis and authentication to apply to what they found t­ here. T ­ hese case studies are designed not to ridicule the efforts that went to waste, from a twenty-­first-­century standpoint, but to reveal the flavor and texture of antiquarian work in the period when it first became a widespread pursuit for engaged scholars and artists. 73. See Grafton, “The Winged Eye at Work.” 74. Pamela O. Long, Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sci­ ences, 1400–1600 (Corvallis, Ore., 2011); Long, “Trading Zones in Early Modern Eu­rope,” Isis 106, 4 (2015), 840–47.

ch a p t er  t wo

Livy’s Bones

The feel of a place mattered to Petrarch. He found special inspiration in the atmosphere of ancient ruins. In 1342 he walked across Rome with his friend Giovanni Colonna.1 They came across antiquities to contemplate without having to dig their way into the ground. Together they climbed to the roof of the baths of Diocletian, where they took a break, enjoying an impressive view of fallen ancient monuments. They talked about the history of the city, about ethics and the liberal arts. But when Giovanni ­later asked Petrarch to write down what he had said in this conversation with the ruins before their eyes, his friend deflected him: “I confess I said a lot which I could not repeat in the same words, even if I wanted. Give me back that place, that leisure, that day, that attentiveness of yours, that flow of my own intellect: I ­shall be as able as I ever was. But every­thing is changed.”2 Petrarch always reacted sensitively to a 1. The year is not certain; another strong possibility is 1337. See Francesco Petrarca, Familiaria, Bücher der Vetraulichkeiten, vol. 1, ed. Berthe Widmer (Berlin, 2005), 309n84. 2. Petrarch, Le familiari, ed. Vittorio Rossi, 4 vols. (Florence, 1933–42), vol. 1, 6.2.18: “Multa, fateor, dixi, que si non mutatis verbis dicere cupiam, non possim. Redde michi illum locum, illud otium, illam diem, illam attentionem tuam, illam ingenii mei venam: potero quod unquam potui. Sed mutata sunt omnia”;

[ 41 ]

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change of scene.3 The special radiation emanating from antiquities and ancient places made him feel close to the subject of his research. He knew about this emotional connection and used it deliberately. His readers are invited to follow his evocations of places, real or fictive. Perhaps his most intimate approach to the ancients can be found in the last book of his Letters on Familiar ­Matters (Rerum familiarium libri XXIV), in which he collected the letters that he had written to famous ancient writers. In February 1351, Petrarch set out to write a personal letter to the Roman historian Titus Livius. It was not enough that he owned a codex containing almost all of the remaining books of Livy’s massive History of Rome (Ab urbe condita), which he used to read, annotate, and emend.4 To get himself into the right mood, he had to seek out a special place in Padua—­a small town in northern Italy, near Venice. In his day, Padua owed its fame to its university. Officially founded in 1222 as the third on the peninsula a­ fter Bologna and Modena, Padua’s studium attracted well-­known scholars and students from Italian cities and, over the course of the ­fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, eventually much of Eu­rope.5 Young men such as Peter Luder, Hermann Schedel, and Hermann’s famous cousin Hartmann Schedel pursued their interests in the studia humanitatis across the Alps.

Petrarch, Selected Letters, trans. Elaine Fantham (Cambridge, Mass., 2017), vol. 1, pt. 2, 72–73. 3. Cf. Petrarch’s letter on the ascent of Mount Ventoux, Familiares 4.1.35. On the fictional character of this well-­composed letter that only claims to have been written extempore, see Rodney John Lokaj, Petrarch’s Ascent of Mount Ventoux: The Familiaris IV, 1 (Rome, 2006), 33–36, 180–81. 4. Giuseppe Billanovich, “Petrarch and the Textual Tradition of Livy,” Jour­ nal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14, 3/4 (1951), 137–208; Giuseppe Billanovich, La Tradizione del Testo di Livio e le Origini dell’Umanesimo, vol. 1, Tradizione e fortuna di Livio tra Medioevo e Umanesimo (Padua, 1981), 107–22. 5. Paul F. Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Re­nais­sance (Baltimore, 2002), 21–31; Jonathan Woolfson, Padua and the Tudors: En­glish Students in Italy, 1485–1603 (Toronto, 1998), 3–4; Agostino Sottili, Studenti tedeschi e umanesimo ital­ iano nell’università di Padova durante il quattrocento (Padova, 1971), 1–14.

Li v y’s Bones [ 43 ]

They completed a three-­year curriculum at Padua that combined medical classes with lectures in the liberal arts (artes liberales).6 According to legend, however, Padua could also claim prestige as an ancient city, founded by the Trojan hero Antenor. Her most famous ancient son was Livy, who had been both born and buried ­there. Petrarch had been appointed a canon of Padua Cathedral by Jacopo II Carrara in 1349, two years prior to his letter to Livy. Living among clerics in Padua—­his residence was in the cathedral precinct—­Petrarch knew the perfect spot at which to write his letter to his highly admired idol: at Livy’s grave, where he could mourn the g ­ reat historian and bitterly deplore his own fate, as one condemned by history to live in a l­ater, inferior age. An inscription in the wall of the abbey of Santa Giustina marked the spot.7 Discovered at some point between 1318 and 1324, it clearly mentioned a certain “T. Livius.” As every­one unfortunately failed to note, the inscription also identified this man as a freedman with the cognomen Halys.8 It therefore definitely referred to some other, unknown Livy. But even Petrarch refused to worry about the suspicious cognomen. In fact, he may well have supervised the restoration and mounting of the inscription.9 He concluded his letter to Livy by claiming that he had written it before the historian’s tomb: From the world above, in the part of Italy and the city in which you w ­ ere born and buried, in the vestibule of the Virgin 6. Juliane Trede, “Hartmann Schedel als Student in Padua (1463–1466),” in Welten des Wissens: Die Bibliothek und die Weltchronik des Nürnberger Arztes Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514), ed. Bettina Wagner (Munich, 2014), 46–50, at 46. 7. See Berthold L. Ullman, “The Post-­Mortem Adventures of Livy,” in his Studies in the Italian Re­nais­sance (Rome, 1973), 53–78, at 53–54. 8. Sicco Polenton, La Catinia, le orazioni e le epistole, ed. Arnaldo Segarizzi (Bergamo, 1899), 83: “V. F. | T. LIVIUS | LIVIAE T. F. | QUARTAE L. | HALYS | CONCORDIALIS | PATAVI | SIBI. ET SUIS | OMNIBUS. at vero, quod fuerit sepultus eodem ipso loco, quo haec ista ossa reperta sunt, fama auget fidem.” The inscription is CIL V.1, no. 2865. 9. Sarah Blake McHam, “Re­nais­sance Monuments to Favourite Sons,” Re­nais­sance Studies 19, 4 (2005), 458–86, at 465–66.

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Justina and before the a­ ctual monument of your tomb, on 22nd February in the year 1351 since the birth of the One Whom you would have to have lived a l­ittle longer to know or hear of.10

Now bolstered not only by epigraphical evidence but also by Petrarch’s authority, a myth about Livy’s grave in Padua was born, ready to be explored, retold, and amplified for generations to come. Still, it took some sixty years for passionate curiosity to replace ­silent reverence, and put an end to Livy’s days of peace.11 The abbey of Santa Giustina was well known for its wealth and for its numerous “holy bodies”—­including that of Saint Prosdocimus, the missionary who, on behalf of the Apostle Peter himself, had brought the Christian faith to Padua. The cell of the abbot’s ­brother filled the narrow space between the oratory of Prosdocimus and some walls that w ­ ere said to be the remains of the pagan t­ emple of Concordia. In fall 1413 he ordered that a ditch be dug to provide him with a toilet. Something that looked like a foundation came to light. It was made of very large bricks and secured with lime on all sides. Once it was broken open, a lead casket appeared, six feet long and more than one foot in height and width. ­People shouted “Livy’s coffin!,” triply assured by the tradition passed on by the f­ athers or ­brothers (patrum/fratrum) of the convent, the evidence offered by the inscription that seemingly marked the right place, and the authority of Petrarch. Confronted with the skeleton, a patriotic and learned Benedictine named Roland sent a letter to the notary Sicco Polenton, informing him that Livy had been found. On 28 October Polenton, in turn, wrote a “serious” letter about the m ­ atter to one of 10. Petrarch, Le familiari, ed. Rossi, 24.8.6: “Apud superos, in ea parte Italie et in ea urbe in qua natus et sepultus es, in vestibulo Iustine virginis et ante ipsum sepulcri tui lapidem, VIII Kalendas Martias, anno ab Illius ortu quem paulo amplius tibi vivendum erat ut cerneres vel audires natum, MCCCLI”; Selected Letters, trans. Fantham, vol. 2, pt. 8, 472–73. 11. On the discovery of Livy’s bones, see Ullman, “The Post-­Mortem Adventures of Livy.”

Li v y’s Bones [ 45 ]

the most expert antiquarians of the period, Niccolò Niccoli in Florence (see figure 2.1):12 I immediately went ­there. They had already dismantled the walls of the enclosure. I descended into the under­ground space. When the lid was removed I saw the bones lying ­there, each in fine proportion. Then we pulled up the heavy casket with a rope. I entrusted it to them and asked them to keep it safe. I went back to the Palace. It was already eve­ning, so it was full of litigants. I approached the more knowledgeable nobles, I told them what I saw. Imagine what happened then! Every­body assumed it was a good omen, every­body rejoiced, as more ­people flocked in it all had to be retold over and over again. Think about this amazing news! No amount of explanation could satisfy them. Unanimously they said that a decent mausoleum should be built; every­body promised to contribute to it; they both ordered and asked me to take care of it.13

Although the ­whole crowd—­including butchers and shoe­makers—­ rushed to the site, they ­were late, and damage had already been done. While the guards ­were not paying attention, “some foreign students, in memory and reverence, stole ­every single tooth.”14 12. Polenton, La Catinia, 77: he remarks that a friend of Niccoli’s “precatus est [ut] repertionem T. Livii seriose narrarem.” The letter has survived in three copies: Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, Vind. lat. 57, fol. 176r–179v; Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, Cod. Marc. Lat. cl. IX, 182, d. 85r; Padua, Università di Padova, miscell. 2245 (seventeenth ­century), section 2245,21, fols. 253 r–256v. 13. Polenton, La Catinia, 78: “postpositis quibusque illicet eo. dissolverant iam id murale claustrum. in caveam descendo, ostio sublato proportionate iacentia ossa queque video. ponderosam denique capsam fune contrahimus. commendo illis, exoro quod interim salva sint. ad Palatium redeo. litigatore, quod iam vesperasceret, plenum erat. peritiores optimates adeo, visa narro. quid denique? omen bonum suspicari omnes, congaudere omnes, confluentibus replicatum sepius. rem inauditam puta. non satis poterat audientibus explicari. mausoleum decens fabricandum univoce dicunt; contribuere policetur quisque; curem ista demum omnes et iubent et rogant.” 14. Ibid., 79: “nonnulli studiosi alienigene, tum memoria tum reverentia, dentes unatim furantur.”

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figure 2.1. Sicco Polenton writes to the Florentine scholar Niccolò Niccoli to inform him that the bones of the ancient Roman historian Livy have been discovered. The letter includes a copy of the inscription, which, Polenton thought, authenticated Livy’s relics. Biblioteca Nazionale, Naples, MS Vind. lat. 57, fol. 178v.

Padua was the home of a large community of students from abroad, thanks to the strong support of its university—­ not least by Padua’s Venetian overlords, who had ruled the city since its incorporation into the Venetian state in 1405. In this very year, 1413, the senate had acted to improve the law faculty, hiring famous professors who would attract more students

Li v y’s Bones [ 47 ]

internationally. A surviving list from 1422–23 shows that Padua boasted sixteen professors of arts and medicine, eleven for law, and two teaching student rectors.15 They prob­ably taught a student body of about 800.16 The claim that foreign students, prob­ably some of the best students of medicine of their time in Eu­rope, stole Livy’s teeth “in memory and reverence” is suggestive: saints’ teeth regularly became prized relics. But in this context, the theft of Livy’s teeth might also add a flavor of parody to the scene. We are left to won­der if the students kept them like the relics of a saint or used them for anatomical studies, or as playthings. That they ­were blamed is not surprising. It was quite common to make jokes at the expense of students from beyond the Alps, as becomes clear in a letter from Hermann to Hartmann Schedel in which he warned his cousin not to take part in staging a play, since ­doing so would only give Italian locals a good excuse to laugh at the German students.17 In l­ater years, their disorderly conduct in the anatomy theater, where corpses and skele­tons ­were displayed in the winter, annoyed the university authorities, who imposed a strict code of discipline.18 Polenton’s “serious” account does not end ­here, nor do the allusions to Livy’s sacred status. As a consequence of the lost teeth, the skeleton was secured with a lock, but further threats occurred. The abbot was away, and his substitute was terrified by the masses of p ­ eople who gathered around the bones. A ­ fter all, legend had it that Pope Gregory I had insisted on having Livy’s

15. Grendler, Universities of the Italian Re­nais­sance, 23. 16. A crisis occurred in 1457, when student numbers temporarily dropped from 800 to 300, but they verifiably recovered by 1479, when the Venetian governors reported 300 ultramontane students in attendance. Grendler estimates that enrollment may have reached 900 or 1,000 students in total (ibid., 31). 17. Trede, “Hartmann Schedel als Student in Padua,” 449. 18. Cynthia Klestinec, “Civility, Comportment and the Anatomy Theater: Girolamo Fabrici and His Medical Students in Re­nais­sance Padua,” Re­nais­sance Quarterly 60, 2 (2007), 434–63, at 447–48.

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books destroyed.19 The abbot’s surrogate worried that the Paduans would return to paganism. In his view, they ­were worshipping Livy as if he w ­ ere a god.20 He de­cided to burn the bones and scatter the ashes to the winds. Polenton was enraged: “Thus, that man crushed the skull, which had been safe in the bowels of the earth for so many centuries.”21 Fortunately, he exaggerated. As the Paduan historian Giacomo Cavacci, also a Benedictine of Santa Giustina, pointed out in his history of the abbey, the surrogate was actually about to crush the skull when more serious duties suddenly forced him to leave the monastery.22 The city’s noblemen held an assembly during which the surrogate’s resolve weakened, and he fi­nally agreed that they could take Livy’s bones wherever they wanted. Polenton immediately went into action, working with men whom he described as his fellow noble Paduans—­above all his friend Zaccaria Trevisan, a Venetian l­awyer and humanist who held the office of capitano del popolo at Padua in 1413.23 First, they transferred the bones into a wooden casket, “for con­ve­nience, ­because it could not be handled due to the weight of the lead,” as Polenton apologetically explained.24 Polenton took this by one end; Fantino Dan19. On this legend, see A. C. Clark, “The Reappearance of the Texts of the Classics,” The Library, ser. 4, 2 (1921), 13–42, at 13; more generally, see Tilmann Buddensieg, “Gregory the ­Great, the Destroyer of Pagan Idols: The History of a Medieval Legend Concerning the Decline of Ancient Art and Lit­er­a­ture,” Jour­ nal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28 (1965), 44–65 (on the case of Livy’s skull, see 52). 20. Polenton, La Catinia, 79: “puro homini videbatur hunc quasi deum coli.” 21. Ibid.: “craneum itaque id, quod fuerat tot seculis terre visceribus conservatum, is homo trivit.” 22. Giacomo Cavacci, Historiarum coenobii Justinae Patavinae libri sex (Padua, 1696), 219: “Coeperat jam malleo cranium diffringere, cùm negotiis quibusquam gravioribus è Coenobio evocatur.” 23. See s.v. “Trevisan, Zaccaria se­nior,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, by Antonio Ferracin, 96 (2019); Andrea Gloria, “Dei podestà e capitani di Padovà dal 1405 al 1509: Serie cronologica,” in Nelle avventurose nozze Rizzardo Co. San Bonifacio-­Catterina Co. Zacco (Padua, 1860; repr. Bologna, 1977), 16. 24. Polenton, La Catinia, 79: “iam pro commoditate premissam, quod pondere plumbea tractari non posset.”

Li v y’s Bones [ 49 ]

dolo, a Venetian patrician who held the office of podestà—­and whose ­father had been one of the four snarky younger friends who inspired Petrarch’s De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia—­ held the other.25 More distinguished citizens came to help; ­there ­were decorated soldiers, Peragio de Peraga and Palamino de’ Vitaliani,26 and learned jurists, the elite of the university: Alessandro de’ Dottori, Giovan Francesco Capodilista, and Niccolò Porcellini.27 “They adorned their foreheads with laurel twigs”28 and carried the brand-­new wooden coffin from the convent to the assembly hall. This pro­cession was followed by Trevisan, leading an enormous crowd. “Zaccaria wanted to place the bones in a very deep place, to restrain the growing crowds and prevent thefts. This was the reason for the digging.”29 It was obvious, especially to the assistant abbot, that this elaborately theatrical display of Livy’s bones, which included not only the theft of his precious teeth but also a move to a 25. Polenton calls him Dandolo Andreas, but he is identified as Fantino in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, s.v. “Dandolo, Fantino,” by Giuseppe Gulino, 32 (1986). He was chosen as podestà in 1412 and served along with Trevisan in 1413; Gloria, “Dei podestà,” 15–16. However, Franco Benucci explains that an Andrea Dandolo may have been representing Fantino, who at that time was about to leave the office of podestà (Benucci, “La memoria di Tito Livio sul fianco del Salone (1426– 1451): Tra Leonardo Giustinian, Gulglielmo Ongarello e Nostradamus,” in Attualità di Tito Livio, ed. Antonio Daniele [Padua, 2019], 141–97, at 176n56). 26. Both w ­ ere made procuratori del comune by the Paduan consiglio generale in 1405 or 1406: I libri commemoriali della Repubblica di Venezia, vol. 3 (Venice, 1883), 312. 27. For Alessandro’s c­ areer as a jurist, see Natale Busetto, Carlo de’ Dot­ tori: Letterato Padovano del secolo decimosettimo (Città di Castello, 1902), 2n3. On Capodilista, see Kristina Odenweller, Diplomatie und Pergament: Karriere und Selbstbild des gelehrten Juristen Giovan Francesco Capodilista (Tübingen, 2019); she discusses his friendship with Polenton (see esp. 26–27), but not his participation in the rediscovery of Livy’s bones. Porcellini married Capodilista’s ­sister Saea (ibid., 303n499). 28. Polenton, La Catinia, 79: “ramulisculis lauri superfixis per fora ad aulam usque contulimus.” 29. Ibid., 79–80: “ut vero confluentium multitudinem refrenaret furibusque occasionem obstrueret, voluit Zacharias proprio in penetrali poni. hec fodiendi causa.”

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new home and a triumphant pro­cession, closely resembled the translation of a saint—or a parody of one, carried out by Paduans wearing the bay wreaths that w ­ ere usually reserved for the coronation of Roman emperors and the exaltation of eminent poets like Albertino Mussato and Petrarch.30 Looking back at the event from the seventeenth ­century, Cavacci observed that the pro­cession “was carried out impiously, as if in imitation of the relics of God’s saints”—­a defiantly disorderly translation.31 And the parallels go even further. Livy’s bones needed a new resting place. The Paduan citizens enthusiastically came together in the senate and unanimously de­cided to build a fitting mausoleum.32 “­There was not even a single illiterate person in this big assembly,” Polenton remarked, “who would have dissented from the decision out of common ignorance.”33 Six men from dif­fer­ent professions ­were elected to form a representative committee: a military man, a ­lawyer, an “honorable,” and three craftsmen—­ Frank the butcher, Frank the perfume maker, and Godfrey the goldsmith.34 They de­cided to put up a sumptuous structure on 30. J. B. Trapp, “The Owl’s Ivy and the Poet’s Bays: An Enquiry into Poetic Garlands,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21, 3/4 (July–­ December 1958), 227–55, at 236–41. However, the laurel and fo­liages such as myrtle and ivy seem to have played an early impor­tant role in the design and staging of antiquarian adventures; see, e.g., Felice Feliciano, Iubilatio, ed. Eleonora Caccia, “La Iubilatio di Felice Feliciano,” Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 55 (2014), 167–223, at 207–14. 31. Cavacci, Historiarum libri sex, 219: “Id quasi ad aemulationem reliquiarum Sanctorum Dei impie factum.” 32. Polenton, La Catinia, 80: “mausoleum denique et urbe et viro dignum faciendum consulitur.” 33. Ibid.: “nec fuit tanta in concione quisquam vel illiteratorum hominum, cuius imperitia comuni a sententia discreparet.” For a concise treatment of all the monuments that ­were created in Padua in honor of Livy, see Wolfgang Wolters, La scoltura veneziana gotica (1300–1460), vol. 1 (Venice, 1976), 169–70. 34. Polenton, La Catinia, 80: “sex viratum placuit. delecti itaque sunt ex militibus Paulus de Leone, ex togatis Prosdocimus Comes i. u. c., ex honestis Iohannes Zabarella, ex opificibus Franciscus lanius, Franciscus aromatista, Gutifredus aurifex.” Cf. Ullman, “The Post-­Mortem Adventures of Livy,” 56. On the funeral oration for Giovanni Zabarella by Pietro del Monte in 1433, see Sottili, Studenti tedeschi, 46.

Li v y’s Bones [ 51 ]

the newly paved central square near the Church of Saint Clement, where both citizens and foreigners would see it. In the fifteenth ­century, a number of Italian cities set up monuments to famous ancient writers, such as the statue of Ovid in Sulmona of 1474, the memorial of Virgil planned for Mantua by Pontano for Isabella d’ Este, and the statues of Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger that ­were mounted prominently on the façade of the Como cathedral in the 1480s.35 The plan for Livy’s monument called for an urn of white marble on four ­little columns, with an inscription: “T. Livius, citizen of Padua, famous Roman historian.”36 On top would have been an imago of Livy himself, sitting on a cathedra; it was to be made of Veronese red stone, except for the face, hands, feet, and his book, for which they would have used white marble from Histria on the Black Sea.37 This elegant design was never executed. If it had been, it would have been the first Re­nais­sance monument that matched an antique format with an antique subject, as Sarah McHam has shown.38 Livy’s bones w ­ ere laid to rest in the new façade of the Palazzo della Ragione, the city’s massive town hall and market. But even reburial did not put an end to what Berthold L. Ullman, in a wonderful article, called Livy’s “Post-­Mortem Adventures,” at least in Padua. The story takes up again in 1451, when Alfonso d’Aragona, king of Naples and a fan of Livy’s who took his Histories everywhere,39 sent the humanist and erotic poet 35. McHam, “Re­nais­sance Monuments to Favourite Sons,” 458–86. 36. Polenton, La Catinia, 81: “T. Livius patavus rerum romanarum historicus illustris.” 37. For a reconstruction of the Livy memorial, see Dagobert Frey, “Apokryphe Liviusbildnisse der Re­nais­sance,” Wallraf-­Richartz-­Jahrbuch 17 (1955), 132–64, at 151. 38. McHam, “Re­nais­sance Monuments to Favourite Sons,” 466–69. 39. François Baudouin, De institutione historiae universae et eius cum iuris­ prudentia coniunctione προλεγομένων libri ii (Paris, 1561), 159 (­after describing Alexander the G ­ reat’s desire to have Homer’s Iliad ever with him): “Non dissimili exemplo Alphonsus historiam Livianam semper habebat comitem: cuius quidem tanti fecit auctorem, ut cum audiret Patavij inventam esse urnam

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Antonio Panormita as an ambassador to Padua.40 They asked for a special souvenir: one of Livy’s bones. The notary Vincenzo Bonarigo, who documented the event, thought this a good idea. Evidently he had read his Jacob Burckhardt, since he argued that it was appropriate to trea­sure the relics of ­great men who had led an active po­liti­cal life as rev­er­ent­ly as if they had dedicated themselves to the pursuit of piety, “­because veneration, fame, praise, and honor of the most eloquent men often grow and increase through seeing their relics. Therefore, it should not be incon­ve­nient, but on the contrary decent and pious, to share the relics of such g ­ reat men with many places: For this ­will enhance the affection of the many ­people who would not understand their highly profound eloquence.”41 Ironically, Panormita himself had been thrashed by Lorenzo Valla for his poor understanding of Livy, yet he came to Padua “most importantly, ­because he wanted to see his body and the relics.”42 When the coffin had been pulled out of the broken wall, Antonio would have liked to “see and touch them with the most intense joy, avidity and reverence.”43 Matteo Vitturi,

cinerum atque ossium Livianorum, statim legatos eo miserit, qui vel prece vel precio tales reliquias redimerent. Cum Patavini exuvias optimi sui civis abalienare nollent, saltem impetravit unum aliquod os brachij, quod magni muneris loco illi donarunt tanquam studiorum fautori, ut lapidea tabula etiamnum testatur. Quid non ille fecisset, ut integrum corpus Livianae historiae redimeret?” 40. Giacomo Zabarella, Tito Livio Padovano ovvero historia della gente Livia Romana e Padouana (Venice, 1669), 20–21; Fulvio Lenzo, “Antikenstudium,” in Neapel: Sechs Jahrhunderte Kulturgeschichte, ed. Salvatore Pisani and Katharina Siebenmorgen (Berlin, 2009), 68–71. 41. Vincenzo Bonarigo, ed. Paolo Sambin, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 1 (1958), 276–81, at 279: “Cum venerationes, fama, laudes et gloria eloquentissimorum virorum ex visione reliquiarum sepe numero crescunt et augentur, nec inconveniens sit, imo decens et pium, ut reliquie tantorum virorum locis plurimis dividantur: ex hoc enim augetur affectio plurimorum, qui eorum profundissimam eloquentiam ignorarent.” 42. Ibid.: “potissime visendi causa corpus et reliquias.” 43. Ibid., 280: “summa cum lectitia, aviditate et reverentia vidisset tetigissetque pro sue libito voluntatis.”

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the podestà (highest civil officer) of the city of Padua,44 and the jurist and university professor Michele Riprandi di Marostica,45 who spoke for the entire city council of Padua, gathered with more than twenty other noblemen, doctors, notaries, and military men. They unanimously de­cided to give Panormita a l­ittle piece “from the bones” (ex ossibus),46 using the very term that is usually applied to saints’ relics of the highest class. More specifically, they agreed to donate a bone from the lower right arm. The diligent notary Vincenzo Bonarigo duly put down all their names as witnesses of the memorable event. Among them, he listed descendants of the first-­generation discoverers of the bones recorded by Polenton: “the most famous jurist Sir Francesco of the Porcellini ­family was pre­sent, son of the late Sir Niccolò [Porcellini].”47 Thus he created a genealogy of witnesses to Livy’s bones: two generations of g ­ reat ­lawyers, happily engaged in moving the historian’s bones from one place to another. Fi­nally, the Paduans of the second generation marked their generosity with a solemn inscription, which is still vis­i­ble in the Palazzo della Ragione: The citizens of Padua granted an arm from the bones of Titus Livius, f­ ather of history, which w ­ ere buried in this grave, to the famous Alfonso, king of the Aragonese, promoter of learning, ally of the Republic of Venice, on the request of his ambassador, the poet Antonio Panormita, and thanks to the intervention of Matteo Vitturi, the very steadfast podestà of this city, 19 Aug. 1451.48 44. Vitturi served as podestà in 1451–52; Gloria, “Dei podestà,” 25. 45. Annalisa Belloni, Professori giuristi a Padova nel secolo XV (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), 279–80. 46. Bonarigo, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, ed. Sambin, 280. 47. Ibid.: “praesentibus . . . ​clarissimo utriusque doctore domino Francisco de Porcelinis quondam domini Nicolai.” 48. Zabarella, Tito Livio Padovano, 25: “Inclito Alphonso / Aragonum Regi, Studiorum Fautori, Reipublicae / Venetae Foederato. Antonio Panormita / Poeta Legato suo Orante; & Mattheo Victurio / Huius Urbis Praetore Constantissimo

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“Famous Alfonso, king of the Aragonese” saw the bone but died shortly thereafter, before he could build a mausoleum for it. It remained with Panormita, who passed it on to his most brilliant student, Giovanni Gioviano Pontano. When Pontano’s wife, Adriana Sassone, died in 1491, he created a funerary chapel for her, a tempietto in a style redolent of antiquity (see figure 2.2). The walls ­were lavishly decorated with inscriptions, both classical and modern ones of Pontano’s own composition. As several authors note, Livy’s arm may have taken pride of place as a sort of relic inside the altar of the chapel, “a monument to his love and passion for Titus Livy.”49 Occupying the standard place for relics in the chapel, it was commemorated by an inscription (now lost) that the Austrian Augustinus Tyfernus recorded in his epigraphic collection when he visited Naples in 1506/7: “The arm of Titus Livius, which once upon a time was acquired by Antonio Panormita from the Paduans. Many years l­ater Giovanni Gioviano Pontano buried it”50 (see figure 2.3). As late as 1645, the En­glish traveler John Evelyn claimed that he had Intercedente / Ex Historiarum Parentis TITI LIVII Ossibus / Quae hoc tumulo conduntur, Brachium Patavini / Cives in munus concessere Anno Christi / MCCCCLI. XIIII. Kal. Septempbris.” 49. Lorenz Schrader, Monumentorum Italiae quae nostro saeculo & à Chris­ tianis posita sunt, libri quatuor (Halberstadt, 1592), 231, and Johann Heinrich von Pflaumern, Mercurius Italicus (Ulm, 1650), 54: “Idem hoc eodem in sacello sui in T. Livium amoris studiiq[ue]; monimentum voluit exstare: quod cuiusmodi sit, ex titulo, quem altari inscripsit, possis cognoscere. Forma talis est: Titi Liui brachium, quod Anton: Panormita; à Patavinis impetravit, Ioan: Iouianus Pontanus multos post annos hoc in loco ponendum curavit”; J. B. Trapp, “The Image of Livy in the M ­ iddle Ages and the Re­nais­sance,” Lecturas de Historia del Arte 3 (1992), 211–39. 50. Augustinus Tyfernus, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 3528, fol. 28r: “T. Livij Brachium quod antea panhormita a Patavinis impetravit: Ioannes Iovianus Pontanus mult. post ann. hoc in loco ponend. curavit.” See Marjeta Šašel Kos, “Augustinus Tyfernus and His Epigraphic Manuscripts,” in Acta XII congressus internationalis epigraphiae Graecae et Latinae (Barcelona, 2007), 1309–16; Bianca de Divitiis, “Pontanus Fecit: Inscriptions and Artistic Authorship in the Pontano Chapel,” California Italian Studies 3, 1 (2012), https://­ escholarship​.­org​/­uc​/­item​/­0gm779cm.

figure 2.2. Giovanni Gioviano Pontano’s chapel, built for his wife, Adriana Sassone. Supposedly Pontano buried Livy’s arm ­here. Capella Pontaniana, Naples, Via Tribunali. Wikimedia, Creative Commons License.

figure 2.3. This page from the sylloge of inscriptions compiled by Augustinus Tyfernus includes a copy of the lost Latin inscription for Livy’s arm. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 3528, fol. 28r (detail).

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seen the bone and its epitaph in the chapel.51 But according to the skeptical Paduan antiquarian Lorenzo Pignoria, “that stone [i.e., with the inscription] had not been seen for many years. Maybe ­because certain friars have constructed a chapel on top of it.”52 Thus, we are left to won­der about the precise whereabouts of the arm that wrote Livy’s Histories. But we are not alone. As Pierre Gassendi noted in his life of Nicolas-­Claude Fabri de Peiresc, the French antiquarian wanted so badly to know about the afterlife of the arm that he sent ­little gifts to his friend Gian Vincenzo della Porta—­the older b ­ rother of Giambattista della Porta, the cryptographer and practitioner of natu­ral magic, who had sent him a cast of a relief—­and pressed him for information.53 His efforts succeeded. Della Porta produced an account that Peiresc forwarded to a Paduan antiquarian, Lorenzo Pignoria, best known for his skepticism about efforts to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.54 As we ­will see, he was more credulous about the Roman bones. Exhumation, translation, pre­sen­ta­tion, and fi­nally even donation of certain parts of the skeleton—­all ­these ­were common medieval practices when dealing with the miraculous bodies of saints. But in this case, it all happened even though Livy’s bones never brought about a miracle, and even though most of his superb history, Ab urbe condita, had dis­appeared before the Re­nais­sance and has not reappeared since. The Neapolitan ambassadors ­were not the only foreigners who showed reverence to Livy’s relics, but not all of them ­were so uncritical of 51. The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. Austin Dobson, vol. 1 (London, 1906; repr., Cambridge, 2015), 224. 52. Lorenzo Pignoria, Le origini di Padova (Padua, 1625), 132: “ma sono molti anni che questa pietra non si vede, forse perche certi Confrati vi fabricarono sopra una Cappella”; see also Oreste Albanesi, Epigrafia Napoletana (Naples, 2015), 206 (on the same opinion in Carlo de Lellis). 53. Pierre Gassendi, Viri illustris Nicolai Claudii Fabricii de Peiresc, Senato­ ris Aquisextiensis, Vita, 3rd ed. (The Hague, 1655), 30–31. 54. For Pignoria’s treatment of the Mensa Isiaca, see Brian A. Curran, Anthony Grafton, Pamela O. Long, and Benjamin Weiss, Obelisk: A History (Cambridge, Mass., 2009), 162.

Li v y’s Bones [ 57 ]

the local tradition. Biondo Flavio visited the city while carry­ing out the antiquarian survey of Italian sites and cities that underpinned his Italia illustrata. He agreed that Santa Giustina had originally been an ancient t­ emple, ­because workmen had found “very beautiful mosaic floors” when digging out the site. He also noted that Livy’s tomb had been discovered t­ here “in our time.” He reasoned, however, that the abbey must originally have been the t­ emple of Jupiter, not of Concord, since Livy had told the story of how the spoils of the Spartan pirate Cleonymus ­were deposited ­there.55 He also argued that both of the inscriptions that mentioned Livy and decorated the memorial, one in much more elegant letters than the other, commemorated the historian.56 Neither of ­these claims could hold up to much scrutiny: a ­later antiquarian noted that Biondo had discussed the inscriptions “with l­ittle judgment.”57 But he was certainly right to say that the Palazzo della Ragione, rebuilt ­after the fire of 1420, was extremely beautiful. And he pointed out that “its very striking façade” h ­ oused the bones of Livy.58 In the ­middle years of the fifteenth ­century, Giovanni Marcanova included some Paduan inscriptions in his massive sylloge. On one page he reproduced the ancient inscription of Livius Halys and the modern one from the Palazzo.59 An explanatory text between the two inscriptions gave the dates of Livy’s death and his reburial in the Palazzo and told the story of the pre­sen­ta­tion of his arm to Alfonso. It also recorded a fact that seems to have interested other antiquarians less at the time: “his 55. He cites Livy, Ab urbe condita 10.2, which actually mentions the t­ emple of Juno: “Rostra navium spoliaque Laconum, in aede Iunonis veteri fixa, multi supersunt qui viderunt Patavi.” 56. Flavio Biondo, Italia illustrata, ed. and trans. Catherine Castner, vol. 1, Northern Italy (Binghamton, N.Y., 2005), 196–99 (9.33–34). Cf. Hartmann Schedel, Sylloge, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 716, 183 r. 57. Pignoria, Le origini di Padova, 133. 58. Biondo, Italia illustrata, 196: “ossaque T. Livii conspicuo in eius fastigio collocarunt.” 59. Prince­ton University Library Garrett MS 158, fol. 137r.

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jaw is in a golden ball in the Chancery in Padua.”60 The teeth ­were gone, but apparently the bones that had held them ­were not only saved but honored. Peace did not last for long. In 1458 the bones w ­ ere moved, together with Livy’s monument and a bust supposed to represent him, into the interior of the noble Palazzo. The pious pilgrim Bernhard von Breydenbach did not say a word about Livy. He kept busy in Padua paying visits to the relics of Saint Luke, the holy virgin Giustina, Saints Prosdocimus and Felicitas, and ­others.61 But antiquarians made pilgrimages to the town hall and continued to salute Livy’s bones t­ here. They climbed the stone steps, passed through four doors into an entry hall that had “a fine honorable effigy with inscriptions” in each niche, and then stood before Livy’s bones, as Hartmann Schedel remembered from his time in Padua.62 “Through a broad win­dow,” he noted, “one can see the position of the bones of Titus Livius, which is exposed to the air.”63 Schedel both collected the information from Biondo’s Italia illustrata and enthusiastically copied the inscription on the monument that he had seen himself. He also reused his student notes on Livy’s bones in a paragraph on Padua in his 1493 world chronicle, in which he described the beautiful new town hall a­ fter its restoration by the Venetians: “And they placed ­there the bones of Titus Livy in a very vis­i­ble place.”64 60. Ibid.: “Maxilla eius in spera aurea in Cancellaria Patavina.” On the l­ater history of the jawbone and the ball, see Ullman, “The Post-­Mortem Adventures of Livy,” 58–59. 61. Bernhard von Breydenbach, Peregrinatio in terram sanctam (Mainz, 1486), fol. 10v. 62. Bettina Wagner, “Professoren und Vorlesungen in Padua,” in Welten des Wissens, ed. Wagner, 68–71. 63. Schedel, Sylloge, BSB Clm 716, 179v: “Cum ad hoc nobile pallaciu[m] ascendit[ur] per gradus lapideos et per quatuor ianuas introitus pateat. In si[n]gulis effigies egregia cu[m] epigramatibus sculpta extat. Et per latam fenestram ad aere[m] exposita cernitur locacio ossium Titi Livii.” 64. Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg, 1493), fol. 44v.

Li v y’s Bones [ 59 ]

In 1547 the bones “­were transferred to a more proper place” (the Salone of the Palazzo della Ragione), with a marble bust of Livy; bronze statuettes of Eternity, Minerva, and the she-­wolf that nourished Romulus and Remus; and verses by Lazzaro Bonamico (see figures 2.4a and 2.4b).65 Only a year ­later, in 1548, the eighteen-­year-­old Cambridge student Thomas Hoby gazed at the brand-­new “monument of T. Livius within the wall. . . . ​ In the uppermost place t­ here standeth his heade as livelie as it can bee made in stone.” Under­neath he saw not only the inscription from Santa Giustina but also Bonamico’s verses, which he copied: “Greatest Livy, all of your fellow citizens eagerly brought your bones and head together for you at this place.”66 The Basel scholar Theodor Zwinger, renowned for his expertise on learned travel, included detailed instructions on what to see in Padua, “the Athens of Italy,” in his Methodus apodemica of 1577. He mentioned Livy’s tomb and described the rediscovery of the historian’s bones in some detail.67 When Stephanus Winandus Pighius brought Karl-­Friedrich, heir to the duchy of Jülich-­ Cleves-­Berg, to Padua in 1575, they inspected the image of Livy, “whose bones,” they assert, “are preserved ­there in a most honorable way, in a marble sepulcher.”68

65. Pignoria, Le origini di Padova, 132: “queste Ossa furono trasferite in un luogo più decente.” On the inscriptions of both monuments and their reception, see Benucci, “La memoria di Tito Livio,” 141–97. 66. Sir Thomas Hoby, “A Book of the Travaile and Life of Me Thomas Hoby,” Camden Society 10 (London, 1902), 9–10, at 10: “Ossa tuumque caput cives tibi maxime Livi / Prompto animo hic omnes composuere tui.” The inscription continues: “Tu famam aeternam Romae patriaeque dedisti. / Huic oriens, illi fortia facta canens. / At tibi dat patria haec et si maiora liceret, / Hoc totus stares aureus ipse loco. / T. Liuius Quarto imperij Tib. / Caesaris anno vita excessit / Aetatis vero suae lxxvi.” 67. Theodor Zwinger, Methodus apodemica (Strasbourg, 1594), 265, 273– 74. On Zwinger, see Justin Stagl, A History of Curiosity: The Theory of Travel, 1550–1800 (Chur, 1995). 68. Stephanus Winandus Pighius, Hercules Prodicius (Cologne, 1609), 198: “Et ne longus sim in enumerandis singulis, quorum [ed. quarum] imagines

figure 2.4a. An edition of Livy’s Histories printed at Venice in 1520 bore on its title page this engraving by Zoan Andrea. It represents the mid-­fifteenth-­ century relief of Livy in the outside wall of the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua. The artist shows the historian in a Roman pose, as an author holding his book, but in con­temporary costume and with his head slightly turned. In the original relief, he looks directly at the viewer. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, BE.12.K.13, frontispiece.

figure 2.4b. This engraving represents the monument of Livy inside the Palazzo della Ragione, as it was in 1547 and ­after. Tobias Fendt, Monumenta sepulcrorum (Scharffenberg, 1574), Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Res/2 Arch. 109, p. 2, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb00085326-7.

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It is not clear w ­ hether Pighius intended to express doubt when he cited unnamed local in­for­mants as his source for the placement of Livy’s bones. But Pignoria still believed in their genuineness. True, he dismissed the inscription, since its orthography lacked the “Patavine” traits he thought characteristic of the historian’s style: “though I consider it ancient, still I do not believe that it belongs to our Livy.”69 He also noted that the majority of p ­ eople “with some knowledge of antiquity” held that the bust represented not Livy but Lentulus Marcellinus, while o ­ thers connected it to “the g ­ reat [Marcus] Claudius Marcellus,” drawing on evidence published by Fulvio Orsini.70 As we have already mentioned, he did not pretend to know the exact whereabouts of Livy’s right arm. But he showed no doubt at all about the bones—or about the story that one of Livy’s arms had been given to Alfonso of Aragon, “who was passionately interested in Livy.” He knew this story, as we have seen, from the account that Gian Vincenzo della Porta had sent to Peiresc, “a most learned gentleman, and my very close friend,” and which Peiresc had communicated to Pignoria.71 The Republic of Letters did its best to keep the story of Livy’s bones in circulation. Pignoria, fi­nally, took one step that his pre­de­ces­sors had not. Instead of summarizing secondary accounts, he acted as a principled antiquarian should, and printed the entire text of

Principi tum ostendebantur, ut T. Livii Romanae historiae principis, cujus etiam ossa perhonorifice ibidem marmoreo in sepulchro condita esse affirmant.” 69. Pignoria, Le origini di Padova, 133–34. 70. Ibid., 133. 71. Ibid., 132: “gentil’ homo dottissimo, & mio amicissimo.” Further information about early seventeenth-­c entury antiquarians in Padua and their interest in Polenton’s story can be drawn from the colophon to the copy of Polenton’s letter to Niccoli in Padua, Biblioteca Universitaria MS 2245, section 2245.21, fol. 256v. It was kindly transcribed for us by Dr. Ilario Ruocco of the library: “Descripsi ego L.P. die 10 majj 1608. commendavit vir optimus, verum Patavinus studiosissimus, et amantissimus Franciscus Vidua, qui me lacremante ingressus est viam universae carnis die, qui hunc diem pro­cessit. Hora 23. Homo vitae commodatus, non donatus est; Vita mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu.”

Li v y’s Bones [ 63 ]

Polenton’s letter to Niccoli, “since it is a precise t­ hing, and b ­ ecause of the loss that is pos­si­ble, since t­ hese ­things generally turn up in the hands of ­people who like to conceal them.”72 ­Going back to this firsthand treatment of the ­matter we see that, in fact, Polenton had already strug­gled at length with the objections of his skeptical fellow Paduans. Much to his disappointment, not every­body was willing to believe that the skeleton ­really belonged to the famous historian. The strongest evidence for this hypothesis was the very epitaph that had been found in Padua sometime between 1318 and 1324 and that Pignoria dismissed as unconnected to the historian. But the excavation in Santa Giustina did not confirm the legend to every­one’s satisfaction. Indeed, the skeleton itself, once exposed, gave rise to debate: “­There ­were still ­people who strove very hard to deny it and planted the opinion that ­those bones belonged to aw ­ oman rather than a man.”73 As Polenton pointed out, experts ­were called in, and they produced firm technical evidence to refute t­hese calumniators: “Further, the physicians showed ­those who objected that it was a man, not a w ­ oman, through an examination of the sutures in the very well-­preserved skull. They could use ­these to determine the sex with an extremely clear argument.”74 This anatomical examination was carried out by the eminent doctor and university professor Giacomo Della Torre, who had taught at Bologna and Padua since 1400. He 72. Pignoria, Le origini di Padova, 123: “io la fò qui stampare per essere cosa esatta, & per la perdita, che se ne può fare, per ritrouarsi queste cose per ordinario in mano di persone, che amano nasconderle.” The letter occupies 124–31. 73. Polenton, La Catinia, 81: “non enim defuerunt qui inficiari magnopere niterentur, quique etiam non maris illa ossa fore, sed femine seminarent.” 74. Ibid.: “porro maris esse non femine adversantibus physici demonstrarunt ex scissuris integerrimi cranei, quibus sexum liquida ratione discriminant.” The belief that the skulls of men and ­women could be differentiated by the number of cranial sutures and teeth had the authority of Aristotle, but it was rebutted in the sixteenth c­ entury by Vesalius in his Fabrica (Nancy Siraisi, “Vesalius and ­Human Diversity in De humani corporis fabrica,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 57 [1994], 60–88, at 76).

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revolutionized the study of medicine through his interpretation of Galen.75 Still, even this expert argument did not appease the critics. They demanded eyewitness accounts of Livy’s death and funeral. “ ‘­There is not a single manuscript in an au­then­tic hand,’ they complained.”76 Polenton had his answer ready. Time had destroyed t­ hose pieces of evidence. But authorities of eternal reliability testified that Livy had died in Padua—­not just fama but Quintilian, Eusebius, Jerome, and above all the holy ­fathers, who informed the monks of Santa Giustina that Livy had been buried ­there. Fi­nally, Polenton used material evidence to strengthen his point. First, it must have been expensive to make a lead coffin. Clearly this was a sign that it was commissioned for a famous man.77 Then he recalled the epitaph with Livy’s name and claimed that the kind of lime found ­there resembled the vestiges of lime where the coffin had been dug up. Polenton identified this as the reason why the p ­ eople who had discovered the inscription eighty years before did not dig any further. T ­ here was no need, ­because nobody doubted that Livy’s body was exactly where the inscription had been found.78 The doubts did not end ­here, as two further letters of Polenton’s reveal. The first was addressed to the prominent Florentine scholar Leonardo Bruni, who held the position of apostolic secretary in the papal Curia; the second went to the Augustinian Andrea Biglia, his friend. Both of them had apparently asked Polenton about Livy’s body size. When his first letter to Niccolò 75. See Dizionario biografico degli italiani, s.v. “Giacomo della Torre,” by Augusto de Ferrari, 37 (1989). For the role of medical doctors in the examination of bodies who qualified for saintly devotion in the ­later Re­nais­sance (1550–1700), see Bradford Bouley, Pious Postmortems: Anatomy, Sanctity, and the Catholic Church in Early Modern Eu­rope (Philadelphia, 2017), esp. chap. 2. 76. Polenton, La Catinia, 82: “non adest chirographum ma­nu autentica, ut iidem querunt.” 77. Ibid., 82–83: “non parvi faciendum capsam plumbi fore; sane clari viri iudicium [read indicium] habet.” 78. Ibid., 83.

Li v y’s Bones [ 65 ]

was read aloud in the presence of Pope Martin V, doubts had been voiced: How could such a big coffin be appropriate for the body of Livy, who, according to a commentary by a certain Apollonius, had been a small man?79 Bruni kindly asked Polenton to send him a description of the skeleton’s shinbone so that Livy’s overall height could be deduced from it. At this point Polenton forgot his veneration of the learned Leonardo and simply lost his temper: “Good God! Maybe I ­will talk to you more intimately than I should; slanderers always find grounds for attack!”80 Then he listed the arguments of the mean and doubtful: The skeleton had been that of a w ­ oman, Livy had not died in Padua, and he had copied his history from the annals. And now this: the bones w ­ ere too big to be Livy’s remains. Polenton effortlessly dismissed this new assault, citing his own observations and insisting that no one e­ lse had subjected the casket and its contents to such expert scrutiny: I myself saw the bones lying in order. I investigated all of them. It was I who said that, even though the casket was of ­great length, it did not touch ­either side [i.e., of the body]: ­there was quite a large space on ­either end. ­T here was nobody who would notice ­these t­ hings, except for me. ­There ­were the peasants who did the digging and ­there was one of the monks who supervised the digging: certainly he did not think about it, ­because even though he was learned in his own sort of letters, he did not know about that kind of study.81 79. Our efforts to identify Apollonius have failed: our thanks to Robert Kaster for his expert advice on this ­matter. We suspect that the unnamed person who ascribed information about Livy to him was indulging in a form of academic lifemanship that is, unfortunately, still practiced. 80. Polenton, La Catinia, 94: “deus bone!; familiarius fortasse, quam deceat, Leonarde, loquar; accusationes calumniosis nunquam desunt.” 81. Ibid., 95: “ego ipse iacentia ossa ipsa ex ordine suo vidi. ego omnia hec tractavi. ego illud dixerim, quod, etsi capsa plumbea longitudine magna esset, neutrum tamen caput attingebant: spatium ex utroque capite non parum

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Clearly, Polenton was the only person qualified to judge the size of the skeleton. He admitted that a­ fter it had been pulled out of the earth, many ­people had seen it. But in the pro­cess the bones had all fallen apart, collapsing in a heap. ­After that “­there was no way to mea­sure the body.”82 Then Polenton’s argumentation took on a more aggressive tone, as he attacked the basic methods of his enemies. First, it was not even clear if their authority, the ominous Apollonius, had seen Livy’s bones with his own eyes (as Polenton did). Second, they themselves had no direct knowledge, but still insisted on advancing an opinion based on a weak form of inference, analogy: using part of a body to guess its full size. “What could be more childish? . . . ​They wanted to find out the height of a man through his shinbone. I ­don’t know ­whether I should call them stupid or vicious. But I’ll use the more honorable word.”83 Then he moved from insisting on the strength of his empirical evidence to analyzing what the remains revealed. Polenton explained that artists pay attention to proportions and follow rules in designing their figures to ensure that all limbs suit the body they belong to. But nature works differently. In the letter to his friend Andrea Biglia, Polenton made the distinction clear: But nature, even though she is the teacher of every­thing, does not make use of certain mea­sures, but often varies quantities and qualities. I am not talking about hunchbacks and the lame. We see p ­ eople who are tall, but still have short shanks and a long body; we see o ­ thers who are small, who ­were given longer shanks by nature. This and many other intererat. nemo, qui hec notaret, preter me, tunc interfuit. aderant fossores agricole homines, aderat monacorum unus, qui fodientes solicitaret: hic certe, etsi litteris suis eruditus esset, huiusmodi tamen ignarus, non contemplatus est.” 82. Ibid.: “ut corpus metiri quisquam nulla ratione posset.” 83. Ibid., 95–96: “quid enim est puerilius, quam ea de re sententiam dicere, que a se neque oculis visa neque cognita sibi ratione ulla sit? staturam hominis ex tibia decerni volunt. quo nomine rudes an malos ipsos vocem, michi incertum est. vocabulo honestiore utar.”

Li v y’s Bones [ 67 ]

t­ hings are before our eyes and can be seen and exist, so that clearly the size of a shinbone cannot give you any certainty.84

Very likely Polenton had consulted Della Torre or another expert on anatomy about the value of the plan for using Livy’s shinbone as evidence. He was obviously convinced that it was of no use whatsoever. Even so, he obediently granted Leonardo Bruni’s wish and sent him a description of the shinbone. What was more, he thought it better to send a “depiction rather than a description,” so that Leonardo could be sure of the mea­sure­ ment.85 Sadly, the copy of the letter in the National Library at Naples has come down to us without its attachment.86 We can only guess if the now lost depiction of the shinbone clearly indicated that it was Livy’s bone and fi­nally silenced the critics. Maybe Polenton’s “more honorable word” persuaded them. What we can observe is that doubts about Livy’s bones gradually dis­appeared. In his 1606 history of the Abbey of Santa Giustina, Cavacci noted that the original cele­bration of Livy’s recovery had had certain irreligious features. “The nobles had embraced Livy as if he w ­ ere still alive.”87 Showing insight as well as piety, he described the translation of Livy’s bones on the shoulders of eminent Paduans as a disorderly ritual.88 But he did not call in doubt the unchanging tradition (constans 84. Ibid., 99: “natura vero, etsi omnium magistra sit, mensuris tamen certis non utitur, sed quantitatem simul et qualitatem multifarie variat. gibbos et claudos omittamus: videmus aliquos proceres, qui tamen crure breves, corpore autem longi sunt; videmus aliquos statura parvos, quibus crura longiora natura dedit. hec atque alia et multa sub oculis et videntur et sunt, ut plane tibie quantitas certiorem nullum reddat.” 85. Ibid., 98: “mensuram itaque non descriptam sed depictam, quo certior esset, dedi.” 86. Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, Vind. lat. 57, fols. 179–81. For a description, see Tabulae codicum ma­nu scriptorum praeter graecos et orientales in Biblio­ theca Palatina Vindobonensi asservatorum, ed. Academia Caesarea Vindobonensis, 10 vols. (Vienna, 1864–99), 2:217–20. 87. Cavacci, Historiarum libri sex, 219: “Proceres ac si viventem Livium amplecterentur.” 88. Ibid.

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traditio) that identified ­these bones as Livy’s.89 Nor did the erudite bishop Giacomo Filippo Tomasini, who compiled a detailed account of Livy’s afterlife in his elaborate, richly illustrated study of the historian, first published in 1630.90 It was left to northern Eu­ro­pean scholars to prick this northern Italian ­bubble. But they took their time. Joseph Scaliger and Janus Gruter included the memorial of the freedman “Titus Livius Liviae Quartae l. Halys” (CIL V.2865) without comment in their ­great corpus of Greek and Latin inscriptions.91 Marquard Gude pointed out, as Pignoria had, that it did not refer to the historian, and ­others disputed its relevance as well. Late in the seventeenth ­century, Daniel Georg Morhof, the theorist of polymathy and professor of eloquence and poetry at Kiel, swept the ­whole story away with contemptuous brevity (and some confusion about the facts of the case): “Giacomo Filippo Tomasini narrated the life of Livy in a remarkable book, in which the myth of the discovery of Livy’s arm, and its reburial with no l­ittle ceremony at Padua, where a monument was also built at the same time, is recounted with elaborate documentation.”92 Morhof, in his eagerness to make his opinion clear, mangled the story. But he made one point very explicit: in the late seventeenth-­century world of critical scholarship, the world of the Acta Sanctorum and Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary, the story of Livy’s bones could no longer stand the light of day, however many texts Tomasini cited.93 89. Ibid. 90. Giacomo Filippo Tomasini, Titus Livius Patavinus, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam, 1670), 63–70. 91. Inscriptionum antiquarum corpus absolutissimum, ed. Janus Gruter and Joseph Scaliger (Heidelberg, 1616), DCCCLXXXVII, inscription 9. 92. Daniel Georg Morhof, Polyhistor literarius, philosophicus et practicus, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Lübeck, 1732), 1:858: “Vitam Livii singulari etiam libro descripsit Jac. Fil. Thomasinus, in quo magno cum apparatu recensetur fa­bula de brachio Livii reperto, & Patavii denuo non sine magna pompa sepulto, exstructo etiam una monumento.” 93. Which is not to say that the age of relic discoveries was over. See the wonderful case study by Harold Samuel Stone, Augustine’s Bones: A

Li v y’s Bones [ 69 ]

The story of Livy’s bones is in part the story of an early antiquarian effort, a joint enterprise of amateurs and professionals. This new form of historical research was driven by strong emotions, which spurred enthusiastic Paduan citizens from all sorts of professions to make sense of a skeleton. They used their medical, humanistic, po­liti­cal, historical, and religious knowledge to discover information about their ancient ancestor, creating practices that would be used for centuries. The other part of the story informs us about the fusion of sacred and secular antiquarianism. We are witnesses of the discovery of a pagan body whose bones played the main part in familiar scripts that normally belonged to the sphere of the holy: translation and authentication. Ancient bodies played prominent roles in medieval culture. Some ­were sacred, as in the case of late antique Christian martyrs, but not all. The rage for famous pagan ancient bodies neither began nor ended with Livy’s bones. The remains of a number of other famous male heroes stirred the blood of their medieval discoverers. As early as the twelfth ­century, William of Malmesbury reported the discovery of the young Virgilian warrior Pallas, son of the king of Latium, Evander. Apart from having one of the legendary ever-­burning lamps of the ancients at his feet, his embalmed and undecayed body still bore a wound that was four feet long—­clearly the wound that Turnus, the king of the Rutuli, had inflicted on him. Moreover, an epitaph was found that identified the body with “Pallas, the son of Evander.”94 No room for doubt remained. Unfortunately, despite its enormous size the body eventually liquefied and dissolved, never to be seen again.

Microhistory (Amherst, Mass., 2002), and Noria Litaker, “Lost in Translation? Constructing Ancient Roman Martyrs in Baroque Bavaria,” Church History 89 (2020), 801–28. 94. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, §206: “Filius Evandri Pallas.”

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A ­century l­ater, in 1274, another allegedly pagan ancient body came to light—­again in Padua—­when the foundations of the Ca’ di Dio, a foundling hospital, w ­ ere ­under construction.95 A lead casket was found, together with two vases filled with coins, and in it another casket of cypress wood with the skeleton of a soldier holding a sword. Capra, the master bricklayer, realized that he had come upon something special. The notary and lover of ancient culture Lovato Lovati was called to the site.96 He established that the skeleton was that of the legendary founding ­father of Padua, Antenor, who, like Turnus, had won eternal fame through his role in Virgil’s Aeneid. Obviously, the old prophecy of the medieval sage Merlin had fi­nally come true: “When the goat (Capra) w ­ ill speak and the wolf (Lovo) w ­ ill answer, Antenor ­will rise.”97 Two cele­brations ­were or­ga­nized in honor of the bones of the city’s founder. His remains ­were enclosed in a separate monument, on which Lovato eternalized his attribution of the skeleton with an inscription in Gothic majuscules: “Glorious Antenor, who strained his voice to pacify his homeland, transferred the fugitive Heneti and Trojans to this place, expelled the Euganei, and founded the city of Padua. ­Here ah ­ ouse cut out of ­humble marble holds him.”98 Almost 150 years l­ ater, Antenor was joined by Livy, the most famous son of the city that he had founded. Livy’s body held ­great appeal for his fellow Paduans, and their dealings with him w ­ ere recorded with a fine sense of humor. As we have seen, the discovery of his bones did not come as a surprise. 95. Lisa Cordes, “Le iscrizioni sulle tombe di Antenore e di Lovato Lovati: Una testimonianza del preumanesimo Padovano,” Dipartimento di Discipline linguistiche, comunicative e dello spettacolo, Università degli Studi di Padova (2008), 1–13, at 1–2 (http://­cem​.­dissgea​.­unipd​.­it​/­Antenore​-­Lovato​.­pdf ). 96. McHam, “Re­nais­sance Monuments to Favourite Sons,” 463–65. 97. Cordes, “Le iscrizioni sulle tombe di Antenore,” 1: “Quando la Capra parlerà e ’l Lovo ghe responderà, Antenore se leverà.” 98. Ibid., 2: “Inclitus Ant[h]enor patriam vox nisa quietem / Transtulit huc Enetum Dardanidumque fugas, / Expulit Euganeos, Patavinam condidit urbem, / Quem tenet hic umili ma[r]more cesa domus.”

Li v y’s Bones [ 71 ]

Both inscriptions and local traditions indicated the location of the special body. Some aspects had to be left out. The notaries Polenton and Bonarigo glossed over such irritating details as the missing miracle. But they described the staging of the rituals and the diverse crowd of witnesses in vivid detail. Antiquarian wit and interdisciplinary approaches to authentication w ­ ere introduced in what looks, in retrospect, like a Christian disguise. And the results w ­ ere sensational—­clear evidence that the Italian soil might conceal many ancient marvels. Thus, by the second half of the fifteenth ­century, the way was well paved for the first notorious ancient relic—­that of a female body—to make its appearance, not in northern Italy but in Rome itself.

ch a p t er  t hr ee

The Girl on the Appian Way

In March 1485 the preserved body of what seemed to be a Roman girl came to light. Her reappearance caused a sensation.1 The body was discovered by artisans six miles south of Rome’s city center on the Appian Way, the ancient road that from the third c­ entury BCE had connected the capital with Brindisi, a harbor on Italy’s southeastern coast. The area in the Roman countryside between the Appian Way and the even more ancient Via Latina was covered with scattered and overgrown ancient remains, especially mausoleums and tombs. It became a dreamland for antiquarian fantasies, as was most famously attested by Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s imaginative eighteenth-­ century prints. He portrayed the Appian Way as flanked by crowded masses of fancifully decorated ancient constructions. 1. Accounts of this event are legion. Con­temporary reports are quoted and analyzed in Christian Hülsen, “Die Auffindung der römischen Leiche vom Jahre 1492,” Mittheilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 4 (1883), 433–49; Rodolfo Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome (New York, 1893), 295–301; Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Re­nais­sance Culture (New Haven, 1999), 57–63; and Maren Elisabeth Schwab, Antike begreifen: Antiquarische Texte und Praktiken in Rom von Francesco Petrarca bis Bartolomeo Marliano (Stuttgart, 2019), 109–65.

[ 72 ]

The Gir l on the A ppi a n Way [ 73 ]

But as early as November 1444 the versatile antiquarian Biondo Flavio wrote an enthusiastic letter to Leonello d’Este about a fox-­hunting trip he had taken in the southern outskirts of Rome with Leonello’s ­brother Borso, Cardinal Prospero Colonna, and a cry of hounds. He found an inspection of the surroundings much more fascinating than the hunt: ­ here [between the Via Latina and the Via Appia] are strucT tures or aqueducts, a ­really insane work and unbelievable for ­those who have not seen it. Moreover, ­there are monuments of ancient men of divine virtue, t­here are villas and buildings constructed for vari­ous uses, made of square blocks of an im­mense weight and covered with or built of so many kinds of marble that it seems beyond h ­ uman capacity to have built such t­ hings. This, of course, makes the erroneous view of ­those who assert that t­ hose roads w ­ ere fabricated by Virgil with magic incantations seem less ridicu­lous. Therefore, when I set out to examine t­ hese t­ hings, I was so engaged and almost crazy that the ­horse on which I rode, which the rest of the time was agile and quick, seemed to me slow and languid.2

The girl’s body was not found by the antiquarian on ­horse­back. The happy discoverers ­were certain Lombard masons who ­were digging in the sun-­dried soil a few de­cades ­later while undertaking construction work.3 The very special ancient relic that 2. Biondo Flavio, Scritti inediti e rari, ed. Bartolomeo Nogara (Rome, 1927), 155: “per quae loca [id est inter Latinam et Appiam] formae sunt sive aquae ductus, certe insanum opus et illis, qui non aspexerunt, incredibile; sunt etiam priscorum divinae virtutis virorum monumenta, sunt villae, sunt aedificia varios fabricata in usus, saxo quadrato molis immensae et tantis vel crustata vel compacta marmoribus, ut supra humanam potentiam fuisse videatur talia extruxisse, quod quidem minus ridiculum facit errorem asserentium eas vias a Virgilio magicarum artium incantationibus fabricatas. Ea itaque contemplaturus diligens ac prope furens fui, ut equus, quo vectabar, alioquin agilis atque velox, torpens mihi languidusque videretur.” 3. That is, if we believe what Francesco Matarazzo tells us; the other accounts just mention workers in general (Cronaca della Città di Perugia dall’anno 1492 al 1503, ed. A. Fabretti in Archivio storico italiano 16, 2 [Florence, 1851], 180–81).

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they turned up had a short and unexpected afterlife. From what turned out to be only her provisional final resting place, the girl’s body was translated to the Capitoline and put on display for the crowds a day ­later. As Arnold Angenendt has pointed out, an undecayed dead body, a so-­called corpus incorruptum or integrum, was central to the medieval idea and practice of relic veneration.4 When the grave of a saint was opened, his or her body—­ideally including its vestments—­should be ­whole. Super­natural signs such as a floral fragrance or strange light could confirm that the opening was a special event, and the dead person a figure of holiness and power. This is exactly what happened when the supremely charitable visionary Francesca Romana, ­later to be sainted,5 was exhumed a few months ­after her death on 27 July 1440: The lid of the casket was opened . . . ​and they all saw, touched, and stroked her body and the members of her body, which had not suffered from any decay and putrefaction, but emitted an odor for t­ hose who stood next to her as if ­there had been lilies and other fragrant flowers (which w ­ ere not ­there). And her hands and feet ­were as solid to the touch as if they ­were of wax.6 4. Arnold Angenendt, “Corpus incorruptum: Eine Leitidee der mittelalterlichen Reliquienverehrung,” Saeculum 42 (1991), 317–48, at 327–28; repr. in Angenendt, Die Gegenwart von Heiligen und Reliquien, ed. Hubertus Lutterbach (Münster, 2010), 109–43, at 115–16; see also Romedio Schmitz-­Esser, Der Leichnam im Mittelalter: Einbalsamierung, Verbrennung und die Konstruktion des toten Körpers (Ostfildern, 2014), 137–65. 5. Arnold Esch, Rom: Vom Mittelalter zur Re­nais­sance 1378–1484 (Munich, 2016), 94–105. 6. I pro­cessi inediti per Francesca Bussa dei Ponziani (Santa Francesca Romana) 1440–1453, ed. P. T. Lugano (Vatican City, 1945), 143–44: “quod ipsi discopuerunt copertorium dicte casse, in qua manebat dictum corpus dictae domine Francisce; et omnes ipsi viderunt, tetigerunt et palpaverunt corpus predictum et membra dicti corporis, quod nullam labefactionem nec putrefactionem passum fuerat, sed odorem reddebat eis ibidem astantibus ac si fuissent ibi lilia et alii flores odorifici, qui non erant; et ma­nus et pedes eius erant adeo palpabiles ac si fuissent de cera.”

The Gir l on the A ppi a n Way [ 75 ]

A de­cade ­earlier, Augustinians from Rome had forced open a vault ­under the altar of the church of Sant’Aurea in Ostia. It revealed the remains of a much more famous ancient—or late antique—­woman: Saint Monica, ­mother of the church f­ ather Augustine. T ­ here too, a sweet fragrance filled the air. A tomb next to Monica’s was found filled with clear liquid. Miracles occurred. On the feast day of Palm Sunday, Monica’s remains ­were translated to Rome by a magnificent pro­cession.7 As we ­will see, the accounts of the young w ­ oman found in a tomb on the Appian Way appear to follow a script very similar to t­ hese reports. Surprisingly, no one seems to have suggested that she was a Christian saint, perhaps ­because no text mentioned one where she was found. Saint Francesca’s body can still be seen in the crypt of the basilica in Rome that was named a­ fter her, and Monica’s body is still venerated in the church of Sant’Agostino, on the Campo Marzio, in her now rather baroquified chapel, while the ancient Roman’s body was unceremoniously buried in an unknown place at the behest of Pope Innocent VIII.8 What happened? Numerous accounts appear in the Roman diaries—­detailed rec­ords of events kept by a very diverse group of observers, including Sigismondo dei Conti, Gaspare Pontani, and Antonio de Vasco—­and even a diary of the city of Perugia by Francesco Matarazzo, as well as in several con­temporary letters.9 Curiously, Johannes Burckard, the papal master of cere7. Maffeo Vegio described t­ hese events in Vat. Urb. Lat. 59, fol. 314r. The text is printed in Émile Bougaud, Histoire de Sainte Monique, 6th ed. (Paris: Librairie Poussielgue Frères, 1873), 588. See also Ian Holgate, “The Cult of Saint Monica in Quattrocento Italy: Her Place in Augustinian Iconography, Devotion and Legend,” Papers of the British School at Rome 71 (2003), 181–206, and Meredith Gill, “ ‘Remember Me at the Altar of the Lord’: Saint Monica’s Gift to Rome,” in Augustine in Iconography, History and Legend, ed. J. C. Schnaubelt OSA and F. Van Fleteren (New York, 1999), 550–76. 8. Stefano Infessura, Diario della Città di Roma, ed. Oreste Tommasini (Rome, 1890), 180. 9. T ­ hese rich and complex texts await a comprehensive modern study and, in some cases, full modern editions: see Anna Modigliani, “La lettura ‘storica’ delle fonti in volgare: Il caso di Roma. Memorie cittadine e familiari,” in Storia

[ 76 ] Ch a pter 3

monies, said nothing about it, while his counterpart in the city government, the long-­serving secretary of the Roman Senate Stefano Infessura, offered one of the longest and most elaborate accounts.10 This suggests that the excitement caused by the public display of an incorrupt pagan body worried the Curia, or at least left the prelates speechless. A comparison of the discovery tales in the diaries reveals that they all cover the same main points but differ considerably when it comes to the details. The standard plot includes the ­actual discovery and the opening of the casket, a description of the body (including a discussion of its odor and identity), the crowds that examined her when she was put on display at the Palace of the Conservators, and fi­nally an optional mention of the disposal of the body. Depending on their personal interests, the authors dwelled on dif­fer­ent points, including a number of unsolved questions connected to the girl’s identity as well as to the state of her body. They created a deeply ambiguous story that seemingly follows a Christian script and blends relic hunting with antiquarian scholarship but that also raises as many questions as it answers—­questions already welling up, by all appearances, in 1485. Some accounts are brief. The Roman notary Gaspare Pontani says simply, “On the 18th [Monday]: in a homestead of Santa Maria nova, past Capo de Bove, an entire body was found in a marble casket.”11 Another writer, Antonio de Vasco, keeps his della lingua e storia, Atti del II Convegno ASLI, Associazione per la Storia della Lingua Italiana (Catania, 26–28 ottobre 1999), ed. G. Alfieri (Florence, 2003), 233–53; Jennifer Maria DeSilva, “Senators or Courtiers: Negotiating Models for the College of Cardinals u ­ nder Julius II and Leo X,” Re­nais­sance Studies 22, 2 (2008), 154–73. 10. On Infessura, see Dizionario biografico degli italiani, s.v. “Infessura, Stefano,” by Arnold Esch, 62 (2004), and Stefano Infessuras Römisches Tagebuch, trans. Hermann Hefele (Düsseldorf, 1979), xix–­xxiv. 11. Il Diario Romano di Gaspare Pontani già riferito al “Notaio del Nanti­ porto” [30 gennaio 1481–25. luglio 1492], ed. Diomede Toni, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Raccolta degli Storici Italiani, vol. 3, pt. 2 (Città di Castello, 1908), 47: “Alli 18 [lunedì]. fu trovato in un casale de Santa Maria nova, sopra Capo de

The Gir l on the A ppi a n Way [ 77 ]

account equally short: “I remember that on this day, 19 April, the news arrived in Rome that in a homestead of Santa Maria-­ Nova in Latium, or rather close to the Casale Rotondo, a body had been found that had been buried for more than a thousand years.”12 They both mention the place of the discovery and add complementary information: first, that the body was “­whole”; second, that it had been buried for more than a thousand years (i.e., it was ancient). More details are given in Infessura’s longer report: On the same day the b ­ rothers and the convent of Santa Maria Nova had some digging done in a h ­ ouse of theirs located outside the Porta Appia on the Appian Way, five or six miles from the city. When they had demolished a sepulcher near or in the road down to its foundations, at the very bottom of the foundation they found a marble chest covered with a piece of marble sheathed with lead. When they had opened this, they found the intact body of a ­woman.13

The location far outside the city on the Appian Way interested Infessura, and so did the particulars of the scene: the artisans who had been commissioned by certain friars, a point that underlines that the property belonged to their convent; the Bove, un corpo intiero in un pilo di marmo.” On Pontani, see Dizionario bio­ grafico degli italiani, s.v. “Pontani, Gaspare,” by Anna Modigliani, 84 (2015). 12. Il Diario della Città di Roma dall’anno 1480 all’anno 1492 di Antonio de Vasco, ed. Giuseppe Chiesa, in Raccolta degli storici italiani dal cinquecento al millecinquecento, vol. 23, pt. 3 (Città di Castello, 1904), 447–546, at 522: “Ricordo in questo dì 19 di aprile come in Roma venne nova che in uno casale di Santa Maria-­Nova posto nello Latio, presso overo di qua de Casale Rotondo, era trovato uno corpo sepolto di più di mille anni.” 13. Infessura, Diario, 178–79: “Eodem die fratres et conventus Sanctae Mariae Novae fodi faciebant in quodam eorum casali posito extra portam Appiam in via Appia, distans ab Urbe per quinque vel circa milliaria; et cum prope viam vel in ipsa via a fundamentis quoddam sepulcrum destruxissent, in ultimo loco fundamenti praedicti quandam capsam marmoream coopertam marmoreo lapide implumbatam invenerunt; quam cum aperuissent, unum corpus cuiusdam mulieris integrum invenerunt. . . .”

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destruction of a sepulcher, which could hint at a critical antiquarian attitude ­toward the damage caused by new building proj­ects; and fi­nally, the casket itself, uncovered deep in the basement of the destroyed monument—­a marble coffin soldered shut with lead. Infessura showed his antiquarian habit of mind by emphasizing t­ hese details. ­Others w ­ ere more interested in the drama, as he notes, and their gossip followed another traditional script—­the one that had led Romans to think, de­cades before, that Brunelleschi and Donatello w ­ ere looking for trea­sure when they examined Roman ruins: “And many believed that a vast quantity of gold or silver and precious gems was found with her. This was believed b ­ ecause ­those who did the digging and their superiors ­were never found again.”14 A similar cock-­and-­bull story about trea­sure was told in a letter that Hartmann Schedel copied into his collection of antiquarian texts and news: “[The hair of the girl’s body] was covered with a cap of woven gold, and tied with golden strings. But the cap and strings w ­ ere stolen at the moment of the discovery, together with a ring which she wore on the second fin­ger of the left hand, as a mark indicated.”15 It was also a main point of the discovery tale told by the Perugian scholar and teacher of rhe­toric Francesco Matarazzo or Maturanzio: “and on her head was a tiara set with many jewels of ­great value, and her golden hair was bound with a fillet of green 14. Ibid., 180: “et multi extimaverunt cum ea repertam fuisse maximam quantitatem auri vel argenti et lapidum praetiosorum; quod extimatum fuit ex eo quod fodientes et qui super eos erant numquam fuerunt reperti ulterius.” For the story about Brunelleschi and Donatello, see Antonio Manetti, The Life of Brunelleschi, ed. Howard Saalman, trans. Catherine Enggass (University Park, Pa., 1970), lines 388–89; Schwab, Antike begreifen, 253. 15. Hartmann Schedel, Sylloge, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 716, fol. 285r, edited by Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 437–38: “. . . ​habens caput: crines in nodum tortos et in nexum collectos in occiput (quemadmodum hodie Ungari) infulaque aurea tectum erat, cum aureo funiculo caput cingente. Sed infula funiculumque raptum fuere una cum annulo quem in sinistra ma­nu gerebat annulari digito, ut vestigium indicat” (trans. Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, 297, but “ut vestigium indicat” is missing from the translation).

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silk, and when they opened the tomb ­those masons carried off the tiara and much other jewellery.”16 He also provided firm information about the “Lombard artisans.” A pioneering modern student of the Re­nais­sance antiquarians, Christian Hülsen, was perhaps too hasty in his seminal article on the discovery when he rejected that point along with the rest of Matarazzo’s version as unhistorical.17 The preserved body of an ancient young ­woman was unique, a materialized daydream that caused the (male) antiquarians to rave about her beauty for centuries to come. As Jacob Burckhardt put it in his memorable passage on the episode: “What makes this affair touching is not the facts but the firm prejudice that the ancient body, which seemed at last to have become directly vis­ib ­ le in the real world, must necessarily be far more splendid than any living being.”18 The reasons why our authors thought the discovery worthy of mention are telling and reveal their idealizing vision of the ancient past. Hülsen’s groundbreaking essay on the discovery set out to pulverize the arguments of his colleague Henry Thode, who had published an article that offered romantic reconstructions of what the girl had ­really looked like in the very same volume of the same journal.19 Hülsen succeeded, but Thode may have understood the feelings of the antiquarians better than his critic did. In the fifteenth 16. Matarazzo, Cronaca, 180–81: “e era adornata sua trezza bionda de molte e ricchissime pietre preziose in una corona in testa, e erano suoi chiome d’oro ligate cum una bendella de seta verde: la quale corona e altre gioie infinite furno tolti per quelli muratore, subbito che l’ebbono trovata fecerunt ad te levavi” (trans. Edward Strachan Morgan as Chronicles of the City of Perugia, 1492–1503 [London, 1905], 199). On this author, see Dizionario biografico degli italiani, s.v. “Maturanzio, Francesco,” by Paolo Falcone, 72 (2008). Falcone notes that the ascription of the Cronaca to him has not found universal ac­cep­tance. 17. Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 443. 18. Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Re­nais­sance in Italien, ed. Horst Günther, Bibliothek der Geschichte und Politik 8 (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), 188. 19. Henry Thode, “Die römische Leiche vom Jahre 1485: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Re­nais­sance,” Mittheilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 4 (1883), 76–91.

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c­ entury, Sigismondo dei Conti, a curial official, poet, and patron of Raphael, introduced the discovery by saying, “What I want to add beneath could seem to be trivial, but I still thought I should not skip it, ­because the m ­ atter is so novel.”20 The author of the letter in Schedel’s collection, prob­ably the humanist and canon ­lawyer Lorenz Behaim, calls his remarks “trifles,” but this is clearly a captatio benevolentiae, as he also characterizes the event as a “portent” and introduces it as one of a set of “marvels”: “Knowing your eagerness for novelties, I found it appropriate to send you the news of the marvelous t­ hings that recently happened.”21 Daniel de San Sebastiano, writing to a friend in Verona, is more explicit. His language strangely adumbrated the idealistic language of Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s influential writings on art, two centuries ­later: I hasten to inform you of this event, b ­ ecause I want you to understand how the ancients took care to prepare not only their souls for immortality but also their bodies, on which nature had used all her wit to make them beautiful. I am sure that if you had had the privilege of beholding that lovely young face, you would have fallen in love and been astonished in equal mea­sure.22

This body and its parts w ­ ere stunningly well-­preserved—­the skin still white and rosy, flexible and soft; the hair coiffured; and 20. Sigismondo dei Conti da Foligno, Le storie de’suoi tempi dal 1475–1510, 2 vols. (Rome, 1883), 2:44: “Leve admodum quod subdam videri poterit, praetereundum tamen non duxi rei novitate.” 21. Schedel, Sylloge, BSB Clm 716, fol. 285r, edited by Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 437: “Quum te rerum novarum cupidissimum esse sciam, non alienum ab animo meo duxi ea ad te perscribere, quae nuper accidissent mirabilia.” 22. Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 436: “de che mi he parsso darve notizia azio intendiate quanto li antiqui nostri studiavano li animi gentili farli inmortali, ma ancora li corpi neli quali la natura per farli belli havea posto ogni suo inzegno, che in vero se havesti veduto questo viso saresti non meno innamorato che maravegliato” (trans. Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, 296–97, considerably altered).

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the limbs and even the tongue w ­ hole and movable, as Infessura indicates: “And you could grip her tongue and pull it out of the mouth and it immediately returned to its own place. The teeth ­were white and firm, the nails of the hands and feet very firm; and one could lift the arms and they would return to their place, as if she had just died.”23 The aesthetic thrill inspired by seeing this body evidently corresponded in some way to the religious thrill inspired by seeing a relic, and ­those who handled it treated it just as roughly as pious visitors often treated relics. Yet some vital details differ so strikingly from description to description that one won­ders what the antiquarians actually saw. Did they all go up to the Palace of the Conservators where they observed and touched her in person, or did they rely on oral information and rumors? The age attributed to her ranges from twelve to twenty-­four. Her hair is sometimes blond and sometimes black. Most remarkably, Pontani claims that it was unclear ­whether she was a girl or a boy.24 De Vasco admits that “it was hardly discernible if it was a man or a w ­ oman, but it was a ­woman.”25 ­These observations ­were not consistent with the gushing praise of the girl’s beauty that prompted artists to come to Rome and make drawings of her. Supposedly many ­were disappointed b ­ ecause they arrived a­ fter the body had dis­ appeared.26 The only material trace of their efforts survives in a letter from the Florentine humanist Bartolomeo Fonzio to the 23. Infessura, Diario, 179: “et lingua capiebatur et extraebatur ex ore, et redibat incontinenti ad locum suum. dentes albi et firmi, ungulae manuum et pedum firmissimae et albae; et brachia levabantur et redibant ad locum suum, ac si nunc mortua fuisset.” 24. Pontani, Diario Romano, 47: “non se sa certo se era maschio o femina.” Cf. Barkan, Unearthing the Past, 58. 25. Antonio de Vasco, Diario, 522–23: “appena si conoscevano, e se era huomo overo donna; ma era donna.” 26. Infessura, Diario, 180: “et multi de longinquis partibus venerunt causa videndi eam et depingendi eius pulchritudinem, et non potuerunt eam videre, quia fuerat ita ut supra secreto in loco proiecta; et ita male contenti recesserunt, . . .”

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scholarly banker Francesco Sassetti, two versions of which exist: one in which he limits himself to saying “in short, the girl who had lived when Rome was in its prime seemed as shapely as she was noble,”27 and an e­ arlier version, which includes a drawing that clearly shows a naked girl lying in front of a casket (see figure 3.1).28 This is clearly not what she looked like when she was found. Was she ­really put on display like this on the Capitoline? Was this the way to prove that she was a pagan girl, not a Christian saint? One won­ders. E ­ arlier excited readers of the manuscript left their marks: her hair was clearly damaged over the course of the centuries by their sticky fin­gers, and someone highlighted her lips with red pigment. The most astonishing aspect of the body was its state of preservation: it was a true corpus integrum or incorruptum, as all of our witnesses emphasize. And all hasten to tell us how she had been kept w ­ hole: “She had a mixture that had conserved her, as was said,”29 explains Pontani, who gives the most sober account. De Vasco paints a more vivid picture: “The body was covered with a glutinous substance, and many said the glue was of myrrh and other precious ointments, which greatly attract swarms of bees.”30 According to Infessura, the substance not only attracted insects but also pleased ­human noses: “the 27. Bartolomeo Fonzio to Francesco Sassetti, in Fonzio, Letters to Friends, ed. Alessandro Daneloni, trans. Martin Davies (Cambridge, Mass., 2011), 95 (original on 94): “Ad summam et formosissima simul et generosissima haec puella florente adhuc Roma urbe apparet.” 28. The letter and sketch are transmitted in two manuscripts: Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Ashburnham 1174, fol. 134 (reproduced in Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, 298), and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. misc. d. 85, fol. 161v. Fonzio revised the older, longer form of the letter, with the sketch, for the collection of his letters: this form is edited and translated in Letters to Friends. For the text of the older form, with the sketch, see Fonzio, Let­ ters to Friends, ed. Daneloni, 153; Barkan, Unearthing the Past, 59. 29. Pontani, Diario Romano, 47: “haveva una mistura la quale si diceva l’haveva conservato.” 30. Antonio de Vasco, Diario, 523: “il quale corpo era coperto tutto di una colla e molti dicevano che detta colla fusse mirra, e certi altri licori che le api con

figure 3.1. The only surviving image of the Roman ­woman found in the Appian Way in 1485, this drawing accompanied the first version of Bartolomeo Fonzio’s letter to Francesco Sassetti describing the discovery. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lat. misc. d. 85, fol. 161v.

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undamaged body of a ­woman was found, cocooned in a certain fragrant mixture.”31 L ­ ater he mentions that a discussion arose about this mixture. Some held that it was compounded of myrrh and olive oil and had a pleasant smell, ­others that it consisted of turpentine oil and consequently had a pungent and stupefying odor.32 Mistura, colla, mixtura—or even liquor (liquid):33 obviously it was not easy to find the exact term for the wonder-­working substance that had caused the miracle. One way to deal with the uncertainty was to take mea­sure­ments, as the antiquarian sensibility preferred. Fonzio, for example, claimed that the body was “covered by a layer of fragrant bark two inches thick.”34 The letter in Schedel’s collection adds even more details on the “coating of ointment two inches thick, composed of myrrh, oil of balsam, oil of cedar, and many other most redolent liquids. . . . ​The skin was white, and the ­whole body soft and perfumed.”35 The substance was thick, it had a pleasant smell, and it was, above all, a mixture, which consisted of myrrh, cedar oil, and many more aromatic substances. But how are we to picture the investigation grande volontà ve andavano” (trans. Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, 295, considerably altered). 31. Infessura, Diario, 179: “unum corpus cuiusdam mulieris integrum invenerunt involutum quadam odorifera mixtura.” 32. Ibid., 179–80: “et mixturam odoriferam, cum qua involuta erat, ferebatur confectam esse ex mirrha et olibano; alii ferunt aloe terebentina, quae acutissimum et quodam modo stupefactivum odorem habebat.” 33. Matarazzo, Cronaca, 181: “Et era questo corpo morto posto in una grandissima copia de liquore, dal quale liquore era conservata sua carne immaculata” (this body had been placed in a large quantity of liquid which had preserved the flesh ­free from decay; trans. Morgan, Chronicles, 199). 34. Fonzio (2nd version), Letters to Friends, 93 (original on 92): “odoro oblatum cortice, repertum est, digitorum duorum ad crassitudinem.” 35. Schedel, Sylloge, BSB Clm 716, fol. 285v, ed. Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 437– 38, at 438: “Mirra et balsamo oleo oleo Cedrino multisque ex aliis liquoribus fragrantissimis corpus munitum est duorum digitorum spissitudine, . . . ​Cutis alba erat et omnia mollia, optime olebat” (trans. Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, 297–98, considerably altered).

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that identified t­ hese ingredients? Deeper research than examination by eye must have been necessary. A first hint can be found in the letter by Daniel de San Sebastiano. He mentions that the thick aromatic paste that covered the young girl from head to feet was removed in order to reveal her beautiful face.36 But the most detailed description of this procedure was given by Paolo Pompilio, a teacher of grammar and ancient lit­er­a­ture, who wrote Notationes, memoirs from the ­later years of his life.37 The finding of the girl on the Appian Way figures ­there as the culmination of a series of miraculous signs that appeared in the month of April 1485.38 Paying close attention to the antiquarian discourse that evolved around the ancient body, Pompilio gives a precise explanation of what happened to the substance once it had been scraped off the girl’s body. It was prob­ably b ­ ecause of this information that he became the main source for Sigismondo dei Conti, who cited parts of this passage at the end of book 9 of his Storie de’suoi tempi.39 Pompilio draws a lively picture of the scene:

36. Ed. Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 435–37, at 436: “In uno di questi è ritrovata una gioveneta integra con tutte le suo membra aromatizata cum una scorza de pasta grossa un deto dal capo in fino ali piedi che havendo levata questa scorza che se existima fosse myrrha incenso et aloe et altra compositione digna, si scoperse uno viso cossì grato accepto et venusto” (One of them contained a young girl, intact in all her members, covered from head to foot with a coating of aromatic paste, one inch thick. On the removal of this coating, which we believe to be composed of myrrh, frankincense, aloe, and other priceless drugs, a face appeared, so lovely, so pleasing, so attractive; trans. Lanciani, Pagan and Chris­ tian Rome, 296). 37. Giovanni Mercati, “Paolo Pompilio e la scoperta del cadavere intatto sull’Appia nel 1485,” in Mercati, Opere minori, 6 vols. (Vatican City, 1937–84), 4:268–86. 38. Leonard Barkan, “The Classical Undead: Re­nais­sance and Antiquity Face to Face,” Review of En­glish Studies 34 (1998), 9–19, at 10–12; Barkan, Unearthing the Past, 59–63. 39. For a close comparison of the two texts, see Mercati, “Paolo Pompilio,” esp. 281–82.

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a dead body was found that was w ­ hole in ­every part, excluding the intestines that had been taken out: ­those who have expert knowledge of h ­ uman proportions guessed that it was the body of a ­woman. . . . ​­There was a crowd of all the ­people in town: no citizen, no professor of the fine arts, no magistrate, none of the impor­tant ­people in town restrained themselves from ­going quickly to the place of the sepulcher itself, even though they would see nothing but the vile body of someone pagan. It was miraculous that it had not putrefied ­after so many centuries.40

­ ere he suggested the radical prob­lem that the girl’s body posed. H It was incorrupt: a miraculous condition that normally identified the body of a saint. In this connection Pompilio added the information that the body had been eviscerated, a practice that was prob­ably well known to him, since it had become customary in Italy during the thirteenth ­century to embalm local men and ­women who had been venerated during their lifetime and had to be preserved as new saints.41 But the central question remained: how had the body of a pagan achieved the incorrupt condition of a Christian saint? Pompilio recorded what the literati said when viewing the girl’s body and then concentrated on the substance that had preserved it. As he made clear, specialized con­sul­tants ­were needed to identify the ancient technology that had produced its condition and odor of sanctity. The practice of alchemy had been 40. Ibid., 278: “inventum cadaver eadem hora qua mense superiore quintodecimo kalendas aprilis eclipsis fuerat, inventum autem est undique integrum, nisi quod exenteratum est: mulieris fuisse coniiciu­t qui proportionum symmetriam tenent. Reppererunt autem in via Appia supra quintum lapidem ab Urbe non longe a suburbano, quod capita bubula dixerunt. Tum omnis civitatis discursus: non cives, non artium professores, non magistratus, non principes se continuerunt quin ad ipsum sepulchri locum propere se contulerint et tamen nonnisi gentilium alicuius vile cadaver visuri: miraculo fuit post tot secula non putruisse.” 41. Katharine Park, Secrets of ­Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of ­Human Dissection (New York, 2006), 42.

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established, both in the papal Curia and in the city of Rome, since well before the Black Death. The plague intensified interest in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal remedies.42 Experts on the analy­sis and making of compounds ­were thus available, and they dissolved the preservative material, apparently by heating it, and identified its components. “The condiments by which the body was covered ­were liquefied in a ­little stove of glass by ­people who ­were well-­ versed in the study of nature, and they affirmed that it was composed of balsam, cedarwood oil, and terebinth and that what­ever it was, it had not lost any of its color u ­ ntil now.”43 Sigismondo savored the mention of the ­little glass stove and added that this was not a Roman custom but had been carried out “according to the tradition of the foreign kings”—­presumably Egyptians, since their distinctive ancient burial practices had occasioned comment from Herodotus on, though no one developed this line of investigation. Whole preserved bodies from Egypt w ­ ere in relatively short supply, since they served as a source for the pieces of ­mummy that w ­ ere imported to Eu­rope in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and prescribed for a multitude of ailments.44 By the l­ater sixteenth c­ entury some of them entered Eu­ro­pean collections, but too late to serve as parallels to the embalmed body from the Appian Way.45 Yet as we ­will see, scholars’ lack of

42. Chiara Crisciani, Il papa e l’alchimia: Felice V, Guglielmo Fabri e l’elixir (Rome, 2002). 43. Mercati, “Paolo Pompilio,” 279: “Condimentum quo cadaver oblitum fuit resolutum est hyalinis in fornicula per naturalium peritos, et hi affirmarunt compositum fuisse balsamo oleo cedrino et terebinthina ea quaecumque fuit, nec omnem adhuc coloris nitorem amiserat.” Mercati uses the parallel account in dei Conti to emend hyalinis to hyalina (ibid., n. 36). Jennifer Rampling advises us that they may have been using the techniques of pseudo-­Lullian alchemy. 44. Dei Conti, Storie, 2:44: “non abolitum ut Romanis mos erat, sed regum exterorum consuetudine odoribus differtum.” On Egypt and the ­mummy in Re­nais­sance culture, see Karl H. Dannenfeldt, “Egypt and Egyptian Antiquities in the Re­nais­sance,” Studies in the Re­nais­sance 6 (1959), 7–27, at 16–22. 45. Brian A. Curran, The Egyptian Re­nais­sance: The Afterlife of Ancient Egypt in Early Modern Italy (Chicago, 2007), 284.

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knowledge did not stop them from speculating on the meaning of its condition. The curiosity of the fifteenth-­century experts, the natura­ lium periti, had a hideous side effect. Deprived of its protective layer, the body was exposed to the air and heavy rainfall. In only a few days t­ hese caused devastating damage, turning the skin black. The crowd may have found this upsetting. An epigram by a poet who called himself Tamyras gives the girl her own voice to curse the p ­ eople who had disturbed her peace: Why does it make you happy, now that you have spoiled my cocoon, to pollute my body parts and to disturb my sleep? Why does it make you happy? ­These are my vestments; if you tear them away, I pray that someone ­else w ­ ill come to your ashes who is even more cruel than you. Was it not enough to defile the grave that my parents prepared for me in deep mourning? What shame! On e­ very side t­ here are a thousand ruins. You could have spared my monument, cruel hand.46

The poet’s empathy with the unknown beauty of the ancient past lets us glimpse the emotional side of scholars’ approaches to the new discovery. But it also tells us something about the discussions it prompted. As happened a­ fter e­ arlier spectacular finds of antiquities, such as the shipwrecks in Lake Nemi, a highly interdisciplinary investigation took shape.47 Not only ­were artists, poets, and alchemists attracted to the Palace of the

46. Daniel de San Sebastiano, ed. Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 436, and Fonzio, ed. Daneloni [1st version], 152: “Quid iuvat haec igitur spoliato cortice membra / Inficere et somnos laedere quidve iuvat? / Ne [Fonzio: Hae] mihi sunt vestes; has si mihi surripis, alter / sic veniat cineri crudior, ore [Fonzio: oro], tuo. / Nonne satis fuerat violasse sepulcra, parentes [Fonzio: parentum] / quae mihi cum luctu composuere gravi? / Proh pudor! hinc illinc iaceant cum mille ruinae / huic poteras saxo parcere, saeva ma­nus.” 47. Schwab, Antike begreifen, 167–216; John M. McManamon, Caligula’s Barges and the Re­nais­sance Origins of Nautical Archaeology ­under ­Water (College Station, Tex., 2016); and see chapter 9 of this book.

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Conservators, where the girl had been put on display, but also litterati, experts on classical Latin lit­er­a­ture. Some ­people doubted the age of the girl’s body. The letter in Schedel’s collection mentions that the ­people who found it “made public that she had died 1,500 years ago. However, the crowd was thoroughly divided on this ­matter, though it was generally thought that she was close to a thousand years old.”48 Sigismondo dei Conti recalls that “many ­people held that she was the ­daughter of a Christian king, who was not so far removed from recent memory.”49 But the prevailing opinion of the majority was that the body was indeed ancient, e­ ither 1,300 (the opinion of Raffaele Maffei, a clerical humanist from Volterra), 1,500, or even 1,700 years old, and thus belonged to the humanists’ area of interest.50 Unfortunately, ­there was no authoritative account that could provide the experts a perfectly fitting background story. Even worse, the body had been discovered without a tombstone, let alone an inscription or even the tiniest sign that could have been used to determine its identity. Since ­there was no clear written evidence, a pressing question remained: who was this girl? The first approach was to look for inscriptions on stones in the vicinity of the finding place. De Vasco recalls that a careful search was carried out b ­ ecause every­body inferred from the precious ointment that she had been a wealthy and noble person.51 48. Schedel, Sylloge, BSB Clm 716, fol. 285r: Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 438: “Cadaveris quippe inventores . . . ​publicaverunt esse 1500 annos quibus illa mortua est. Sed de hoc in diversa et in contraria scinduntur vulgus, prorsus tamen existimatur esse prope millesimum annum.” 49. Dei Conti, Storie, 2:45: “Aliqui permulti regis christiani, non longe a memoria eius aetatis remoti, filiae opinabantur.” 50. For Maffei’s views, see his Commentariorum urbanorum . . . ​octo et triginta libri (Basel, 1559), 742. 51. Antonio de Vasco, Diario, 523: “con grande sollecitudine si cercava il luogo dove fu trovata per potere trovare qualche epitafio o scrittura per poter sapere chi si fusse, benché per stima di ogni persona si presumea di grande dignità perché la spesa di tale liquore haveva in corpo e di detta colla e del munimento, cioè pilo, dove stava tutto incollato da detta colla, si stimava di grande valuta.” (Much care was taken in searching for the tomb in which the corpse

[ 90 ] Ch a pter 3

This method of connecting to the past by examining the words that the ancients had carved into their monuments was a favorite antiquarian activity. The primary goal of Felice Feliciano and his friends on the joyous day when they dressed as distinguished consuls with their heads adorned with ivy, played the kithara, and undertook a boat tour at Lake Garda was to rec­ ord the ancient inscriptions on its shores. The antiquarian Poggio Bracciolini, well known for his adventures as a book hunter in the monasteries of southern Germany, gave a more detailed account of how he had overcome the hardships that came with collecting and deciphering inscriptions. In September 1428 he wrote to his friend Niccolò Niccoli, to whom he sent an inscription that he had just found in Ferentino, a small town in Lazio, explaining the circumstances of this new trophy: Outside the city near the wall on a steep slope of the mountain ­there is a carved stone in this shape52 next to the road, to which it is very difficult to climb. . . . ​On the inner side is an inscription which I am sending to you b ­ ecause I think it ­will please even your sick stomach. But see that you understand the abbreviations correctly, for ­there are many of them, and let me know what you make of it. It was a most difficult task for me to read t­ hose letters, first the ones that are on the tower of the fort for they are far from the eye and largely eaten away by age, and then t­ hose which are on that rock. I sweated for several hours, and sweat indeed I did in the midday sun, but “hard work conquers all.” I was not able to explore the surroundings any farther, although I wanted to, ­because my companions w ­ ere in a hurry.53

was found, in the hope of discovering the epitaph, with her name; it must be an illustrious one, ­because no one but a noble and wealthy person could afford to be buried in such a costly sarcophagus thus filled with precious ointments.) 52. ­There was prob­ably a ­little drawing in the letter that indicated the shape of the stone. 53. Poggio Bracciolini to Niccolò Niccoli, Lettere, vol. 1, Lettere a Niccolò Nic­ coli, ed. Helene Harth (Florence, 1984), letter 69, 180: “Extra urbem prope muros

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The same arduous hunt for inscriptions was also carried out along the Appian Way. And it proved successful. The Franciscan Fra Giovanni Giocondo, an architect and editor of Vitruvius and of Julius Caesar’s Commentaries, was among the first to assem­ ble a substantial collection of inscriptions, which he dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence. In it, he devoted a ­whole folio page to the inscriptions “in the via Appia, recently found, at the sixth milestone from the city.”54 He recorded two inscriptions that belonged to standing figures—­one in military attire, the other in a toga—­both of which commemorated power­ful members of the Herennii ­family.55 Even more exciting, as we ­will see, ­were the three inscriptions that followed. They apparently referred to members of the immediate f­ amily of Marcus Tullius Cicero, the greatest orator of the Roman Republic: his wife Terentia, and his beloved d ­ aughter, Tullia.56 However, ­these inscriptions ­were found only in the general vicinity of the girl’s body, as Fra Giocondo carefully noted, leaving it to the reader to make further conjectures. O ­ thers w ­ ere

in parte prerupta montis excisus est saxus, secus viam, ad quem ascenditur cum difficultate in hanc formam . . . ​Intus est epitaphium, quod ad te transmitto quod, ut opinor, placebit etiam stomacho nauseanti. Sed vide, ut recte intelligas eas abbreviationes; sunt enim multe, et quid tibi de eo videatur responde. Fuit mihi summus ­labor legere has litteras, primum illas, que sunt in turri arcis, cum sint a visu remote et magna ex parte consumpte vetustate, deinde eas, que sunt in saxo illo. Pluribus enim horis insudavi, et sudavi quidem in meridie ad solem; sed tamen ­labor omnia vincit [Virgil, Georgics 1.145]. Nequivi amplius investigare loca circumvicina, licet cupiens, quia socii properabant.” En­glish translation from Phyllis W. G. Gordan, Two Re­nais­sance Bookhunters (New York, 1991), 128–29. 54. Fra Giocondo, Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare MS 270, fols. 100r–­v, previously cited by Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 440: “In via Appia nuper inventa miliario VI ab urbe.” Two inscriptions of Herennius Potens bear the addition: “sed modo translata in S. Anastasio ad tres fontes.” 55. CIL vi n. 1427: “Q. HERENNIO / POTENTI / praef[ecto] praet[orio]”; “Q. HERENNIO / POTENTI / V[iro] C[larissimo]”; Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare MS 270, fol. 100v. 56. CIL vi n. 27261: “TERENTIA T / M TERENTIO / TVLLIAE / TERENTIAE / M TERENTIO”; “M TERENTIO M F CL”; “M TVLLIO CICER / TVLLIAE T V / TVLLIAE ᴐ. L. P / TVLLIAE M. L. P”; see also CIL v n. 127*.

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more inclined to give bold answers to the question of her identity. Daniel de San Sebastiano recorded an epitaph that he connected to the girl, but he scribbled it on the verso of his letter, as if he ­were not quite sure about it: “Diana, the wife of Curtius Quintus, was enclosed in this sarcophagus, three hundred years ­after the founding of the City. It is not permitted to open it.”57 Among the diarists, Matarazzo bluntly called the girl “Julia” and backed up this stunning identification by partly quoting an epitaph, IULIA FILIA CLAUDI (Julia, d ­ aughter of Claudius), which he presumably thought had been found with her.58 The letter in the Schedel collection even included a drawing of the monument that supposedly belonged to the girl, although the text of the letter emphasized that the girl’s “monument has not yet been excavated. But ­people report that a certain epitaph was found that said that she was Julia Prisca Secunda, ­daughter of Quintus Clodius. And below: She never made a m ­ istake, save that she died, and below: in Rome in the ­house of Scipio.”59 The monument reproduced in figure 3.2 was clearly the one that Matarazzo also had in mind. Neither of ­these inscriptions seemed wholly credible. Bartolomeo Fonzio anticipated the final judgment of nineteenth-­ century epigraphers in the conclusion of his letter: “But since the fine monument which stood on the surface had been destroyed many centuries before our time, without any vis­i­ble inscription, the name, the f­ amily, and the age of this remarkable and

57. “Diana Curcii Quinti tercentis annis ab urbe condita huic sarcophago clauditur. N[on] L[icet] AP[erire].” (Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 437; on this suggestion for the abbreviation, see ibid., 437n1.) 58. Matarazzo, Cronaca, 181: “chiamata Iulia, commo per epitaffio se leggieva . . . ​e parte de quello epitaffio diceva così: IULIA FILIA CLAUDI.” 59. Schedel, Sylloge, BSB Clm 716, fol. 285v, ed. Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 438: “Monumentum illius ex terra non est adhuc evulsum, ferunt tamen epitaphium quoddam inventum quod dicit illam fuisse Juliam Priscam Secundam, Quinti Clodii filiam. Et inferius: nihil unquam peccavit, nisi quod mortua est, subtusque: Romae in domo Scipionis.”

figure 3.2. Hartmann Schedel recorded in his collection of inscriptions the purported monument of Julia Prisca Secunda, a historical figure identified by some scholars with the ­woman in the Appian Way. Hartmann Schedel, Liber antiquitatum cum epigrammatibus. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 716, fol.284v. #Mikroform, p. 0599, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb00007356-3.

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wonderful corpse remain unknown.”60 But Fonzio’s intellectual austerity, his willingness to deny himself the plea­sure of conjecture, was as unsatisfactory as it was justified. A second method that was used to give more context to the girl’s identity was to ransack classical Latin lit­er­a­ture, on the assumption that so wealthy a ­woman would have left some mark ­there, and search for other monuments, ideally from the same general area, that might be connected with her and her name. Several female Romans drew interest. The best known and most favored was Tullia, Cicero’s d ­ aughter, whose death and the grief it inspired in him had left a rich textual rec­ord.61 This hypothesis was spurred by the inscriptions for several members of his h ­ ouse­hold recorded by Fra Giocondo. Even though nobody r­ eally seems to have believed in this theory, it prob­ably felt emotionally like the best solution. ­Great efforts ­were made to establish a connection between the ­woman and the orator. Daniel de San Sebastiano, for instance, reported that not just one but three relevant marble monuments had been discovered. The one in which the girl’s body was found had no inscription. Nor did another. But one of the two empty tombs belonged to Cicero’s wife Terentia and his ­daughter, Tullia.62 The author of the letter in the Schedel collection also mentioned an inscription: “Many identify her with Tulliola, ­daughter of Cicero. Certainly, a monument to her f­ ather, the inscription on which I have seen and read, is very close by; and Cicero is known to have owned lands in the neighborhood where she was buried. Never mind whose ­daughter or wife she was; she was certainly 60. Fonzio, Letters to Friends, 95 (original on 94): “Sed cum insigne monumentum, quod supra terram extabat, multis ante nos saeculis eversum fuerit, nullo titulo apparente et nomen et genus et aetas latet huius tam insignis et admirandi cadaveris.” 61. Han Baltussen, “A Grief Observed: Cicero on Remembering Tullia,” Mor­ tality 14, 4 (2009), 355–69. 62. Daniel de San Sebastiano, ed. Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 435–36: “forno trovati tre sepulcri marmorei, l’uno erra Ciceronis Terentiae et Tulliolae, li altri sine titulis propter vetustatem. In uno di questi è ritrovata una gioveneta integra.”

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noble and rich by birth.”63 Thus, he corroborated the argument by claiming autopsy, or direct observation, only to withdraw his support for it in the next moment. The search for relevant texts and inscriptions clearly did not lead to certainty. Pompilio stood out from the rest b ­ ecause he found this attribution game completely absurd. He composed a vivid account of the debate among the learned men—­not quite litterati, but rather litteratores, as he called them scornfully—in which he laid out the many options that ­were on the ­table and denounced them all for being purely fantastic, unconnected to the evidence: “some of the dabblers in scholarship pre­sent guessed that she was of the ­family of the Scipiones, ­others that she was Caesar’s ­daughter, the wife of Pompey: both ­were absolutely stupid conjectures. Many asserted the w ­ hole time that she was from Cicero’s ­family, ­because not long ago and not far from her the caskets of many members of that ­family had been excavated.”64 Then Jeroni Pau (Hieronymus Paulus Barcionensis), librarian of the Vatican Library, whom Pompilio characterized as a man of unequaled diligence and learnedness, entered the scene. ­ fter he had heard what many p A ­ eople had to say, he himself added something from the stock of his memory: “Who dares,” he said, “to affirm whose body this was? Apart from conjectures that are all confused, no indication was found, no tag, ­unless you want to take the fact that no epitaph can 63. Schedel, Sylloge, BSB Clm 716, fols. 285r–­v, ed. Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 438: “Plerique Ciceronis filiam voluere Tulliolam. Namque monumentum illius, cuius epigramma vidi et legi eo loco, patris illic est in proximo loco: tum quod eo in loco, ubi humata illa erat, agros habuerit Cicero. Verum cuiuscunque vel filia vel uxor fuerit, illustres profecto parentes habuit, cum tanta adhibita sit ad illius nobilissimi corporis conversacionem et industria et cura” (trans. Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, 297). 64. Mercati, “Paolo Pompilio,” 278: “Nam aderant aliquot litteratorum, alii de gente Scipionum fuisse ariolabantur, alii Caesaris filiam Iuliam Pompei uxorem: utrunque stultissimae fuit coniecturae. Multi de familia Ciceronis fuisse contendebant, quod non procul conditoria cinerum multorum ex ea gente paulo ante eruta fuerant.”

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be read ­there as a clue. From this it is legitimate to conjecture that she was that most sinister w ­ oman named Poppaea Sabina, wife of Nero. For I remember reading in Cornelius Tacitus that she died by chance, by a violent fit of her husband, who kicked her with his feet.”65

­ fter this mock attribution, which satirized the other experts’ A misplaced search for concord, the librarian put forward a bold explanation why the body had been embalmed: “Consequently, the body was not cremated, as was the tradition with the Romans, but was filled and embalmed with herbs according to the foreign custom of the kings and brought into the tomb of the Iulii. This is what Tacitus says. It could be that out of hatred against Nero and Poppaea herself the casket was transferred into the field. But this is my own conjecture,” he added, “put forward by me in such a way that the truth does not seem to shine through yet.”66

Unfortunately, we do not know how the “dabblers” responded to Pau’s cutting irony. But even Pompilio himself, who reported the story, did not want to give up on solving the puzzle. He 65. Ibid.: “Aderat tum Hieronymus Paulus Barcinonensis, vir certe paucorum similis pudore et eruditione. Is ubi multos audierat, et ipse de promptario memoriae suae aliquid adiecit. ‘Cuius, inquit, hoc fuerit cadaver quis affirmare audeat? Praeterea coniecturae omnes caecae: non index repertus est, non alia singularia, nisi id indicem esse velitis, quod nullum epigramma legitur. Per hoc enim quasi coniici potest, fuisse illam funestissimam foeminam Poppeam Sabinam Neronis uxorem. Nam memini aput [sic] Cornelium Tacitum legere, hanc mortem obiisse fortuitu mariti iracundia, a quo calcis ictu afflicta est.’ ” (Cf. Tacitus, Annales 16.6.) In fact, Poppaea was given a ­grand funeral and buried in a fine tomb, as yet undiscovered. See Derek B. Counts, “Regum Externorum Con­ suetudine: The Nature and Function of Embalming in Rome,” Classical Antiq­ uity 15, 2 (1996), 189–202. 66. Mercati, “Paolo Pompilio,” 278–79: “Corpus non igitur adolitum est, Romanis mos, sed regum externae consuetudinis differctum odoribusque conditum tumuloque Iuliorum illatum. Haec Tacitus. Fieri potest ut Neronis eiusdemque Poppea odio arca translata sit in agrum. Verum hec talis coniectura a me, inquit, ita illata sit ut omnino veritas adhuc lucere non videatur.”

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concluded with yet another attribution, recalling the verses by Statius about Abascantius, a minister of Domitian, who could not bear to cremate his wife Priscilla and buried her outside Rome: ­ here is a place before the City where g T ­ reat Appia begins and Cybele lays aside her grief in Italian Almo, no more remembering Ida’s rivers. ­Here your matchless consort softly laid you, Priscilla, covered by Sidonian purple in a wealthy dome; for he could not abide the smoke of burning and noise of the pyre. Length of time w ­ ill have no power to wither nor l­ abors of years to harm; such care is taken for your body, so much wealth the venerable marble breathes out.67

Sigismondo dei Conti accepted Pompilio’s final guess and even called Statius’s poem a “most true proof.” But then, though he began to quote the same verses as Pompilio, he broke off ­after “Length of time w ­ ill have no power to wither nor l­abors of years to harm” and commented: “This I would think refers not so much to the balsam lotion but to the eternal life of a poem of such a ­great poet”68—­a remark that shows some literary insight, as well as a laudable consciousness of the limitations of historical inquiry. Humanists regularly worried about the limits of legitimate inference in textual and historical criticism. Conjectural emendations, for example, had an ambiguous status. Brilliant corrections, which conjured lost words out of mangled fragments or apparently random letters, could attract intense admiration from learned readers. “Fœlix divinatio,” the sixteenth-­century philologist Isaac Casaubon wrote at one point in his copy of Joseph Scaliger’s edition of the ancient Latin lexicon of Festus, 67. Statius, Silvae 5.222–31; ed. and trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, rev. Christopher Parrott (Cambridge, Mass., 2015), 312–13. 68. Dei Conti, Storie, 2:45: “Quod non tam ad odorum condimenta, quam ad aeternitatem carminis tanti poetae referendum putarim.”

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“et plane divina”—­“a brilliant divination, and clearly divine.”69 But from the ­fourteenth ­century on, most humanists normally used the term “divino” to refer to corrections for which they could not provide support from manuscript evidence or textual parallels.70 True, Alessandro d’Alessandro noted that one skillful philologist, the Neapolitan lexicographer Junianus Maius, was “so accurate an interpreter of dreams of all sorts that his replies ­were considered almost divine admonitions.”71 But d’Alessandro did not connect his fellow countryman’s two sets of interpretive skills. He praised the erudition and energy that underpinned his colleague’s scholarship on the meanings of terms and phrases, treating it as wholly h ­ uman, but made clear that his dream divination was supernaturally inspired. The most prominent textual critic in the l­ater fifteenth c­ entury, Angelo Poliziano, regularly denounced the “semidocta sedulitas,” the “half-­learned bustle,” of colleagues who emended texts by divinatory conjecture without having examined the manuscript evidence systematically.72

69. Casaubon, note in Verrius Flaccus, Quae extant (Geneva, 1575), Eton College Library Be.8.17, clxii. 70. Silvia Rizzo, Il lessico filologico degli umanisti (Rome, 1973); Anthony Grafton, “Divination: T ­ owards the History of a Philological Term,” in The Mar­ riage of Philology and Scepticism: Uncertainty and Conjecture in Early Modern Scholarship and Thought, ed. Gian Mario Cao, Anthony Grafton, and Jill Kraye (London, 2019), 47–69; Denis J.-­J. Robichaud, “Working with Plotinus: A Study of Marsilio Ficino’s Textual and Divinatory Philology,” in Teachers, Students and Schools of Greek in the Re­nais­sance, ed. Federica Ciccolella and Luigi Silvano (Leiden, 2017), 120–54. See also Jan Machielsen, Martin Delrio: Demonology and Scholarship in the Counter-­Reformation (Oxford, 2015), chap. 7. 71. Alessandro d’Alessandro, Genialium dierum libri sex (Frankfurt, 1591), book 1, chap. 11, fol. 16v: “Iunianus Maius conterraneus meus, vir bene literatus, in exquirendis adnotandisque verborum & sententiarum viribus multi studij fuit: & praeterquam quod in erudiendis iuvenculorum animis, imbuendisque doctrina pueris castigatissimæ disciplinæ, somniorum quoque omnis generis ita verus coniector fuit, ut ipsius responsa divina fere monita haberentur.” 72. See, e.g., L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Lit­er­a­ture, 4th ed. (Oxford, 2013), 144– 47, 279–80.

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To look back on the discussions that we have followed with this discourse in mind is enlightening. Fixing the identity of the girl from the Appian Way clearly confronted humanists and antiquarians with a methodological as well as a factual prob­ lem. Some, as we have seen, readily leaped from the fact that her sepulcher was near tombs and land belonging to the f­ amily of Cicero to the conclusion that she too belonged to it. But Paolo Pompilio mocked t­ hose who identified her as a member of that ­family or as the ­daughter of Caesar as litteratores, a disparaging term, and rejected their conjectures as “absolutely stupid.” By his account, Jeroni Pau rejected the same conjectures as caecae (i.e., “without sight,” “confused”), since no inscription or anything ­else identified the body—­which was distinctive only in being the corpse of a wealthy young lady, buried without identification. From that, in what seems a classic argumentum e silen­ tio, he claimed “it can be conjectured” that the body was that of the unfortunate Poppaea Sabina. In fact, Pau also had another piece of evidence to go on. Though he did not bother to point it out, the girl had been disemboweled and embalmed. Tacitus, he noted, recorded that Poppaea Sabina had been embalmed by “foreign” methods:73 he thus found a connection between a text and the corpus delicti. But then assurance faded, if it had even been pre­sent, and he admitted that he proposed this conjecture ­because it seemed impossible to arrive at the truth. Dei Conti, who had read Pompilio’s account, also seems to have accepted its conclusion. Though he cited Statius as solid evidence for his own theory about the girl, he too then made a radical and clever qualification, admitting that the passage in question seemed less a literal description than a literary cele­ bration. D’Alessandro ascribed the identification of the girl as Tulliola or Statius’s Priscilla to Pomponio Leto, who was a well-­known authority on antiquarian studies. According to his

73. Tacitus, Annales 16.6.

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student Michele Ferno, who wrote a eulogy of the charismatic teacher in 1498, Leto usually wore a tunic in town, often of a blue and sometimes of a red color. His hair was combed back and gray above the ears. His cap, of the kind worn by ­people from Insubria [the region north of the river Po, around Milan], was a l­ittle crumpled on the brim. At home he had his head wrapped in a very long linen bandeau almost like the Nu­mid­i­ans [i.e., like a turban] for most of the year to keep healthy, which used to excite incredible admiration in foreigners and observers. He often wandered about through the monuments of the ancients by himself, the most diligent investigator of antiquity. Nothing in the city was so arcane or well concealed that he did not penetrate it: he knew and understood the location, the regions, . . . ​and all the holy and profane t­ hings as well as his own fin­gers.74

D’Alessandro was prob­ably himself a member of Leto’s Acad­ emy, a network of “unan­i­mous lovers of antiquity.”75 But while 74. Michele Ferno, “Elogium Historicum Julii Pomponii Leti,” in Bibliotheca Latina mediae et infimae aetatis, ed. J. A. Fabricius, C. Schöttgen, and G. D. Mansi (Florence, 1895), 629–32, at 630–31: “Per urbem tunica celia saepe, aliquando ostrina. Capillus rejectus et canus supra aurem. Apex, qualem gestant Insubres, paulum in ambitum complicatus. Domi invinctum longissima linea vitta caput pene in Numidicum modum ad meliorem valitudinem plurima anni parte habebat, quod advenas et spectatores in incredibilem admirationem excitabat. Errabat crebro solus per veterum monumenta, vetustatis diligentissimus rimator. Nihil in urbe tam abstrusum tamque abditum, ad quod ille non penetrarit. Situm, regiones . . . ​sacra, prophana omnia, tam perite quam proprios digitos percalluit discriminavitque.” 75. This is how the Pomponiani characterized themselves in graffiti in the catacombs of St. Calixtus: “unanimes amatores antiquitatis.” See Concetta Bianca, “Le Accademie a Roma nel Quattrocento,” in On Re­nais­sance Acade­ mies: Proceedings of the International Conference “From the Roman Acad­emy to the Danish Acad­emy in Rome, Dall’Accademia Romana all’Accademia di Dani­ marca a Roma,” 11.–13. October 2006, ed. Marianne Pade (Rome, 2011), 47–59. On Leto’s Acad­emy, see Susanna De Beer, “The Roman ‘Acad­emy’ of Pomponio Leto: From an Informal Network to the Institution of a Literary Society,” in Reach of

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Leto’s expertise was often called on in ­matters of this kind, d’Alessandro was prob­ably wrong about this par­tic­u­lar case. Even Pompilio, a close friend of Leto’s, did not mention him in his account of the debate. In this context, though, what m ­ atters is the way in which d’Alessandro dealt with the conclusion that Leto had “divined”: “on what reasons he based this argument, since ­there ­were no traces of an inscription, I have no idea.”76 It was impossible to set the corpse, however beautiful it was, into a par­tic­u­lar Roman context. In the absence of a clearly relevant inscription, no convincing conjecture could link the disparate fragments of evidence. The girl on the Appian Way was no saint, even if she was well-­preserved. But she shared a vital characteristic with some of the rediscovered sacred relics of that time: like them, she challenged the abilities of con­temporary scholars to set standards for the valid assessment and use of evidence. T ­ hose who examined the evidence most closely came away—so it seems—­ feeling ­great ambivalence about what had at first appeared to be a dramatic, even spectacular discovery. Accordingly, the debate about whose body it was continued, and hypotheses that had been thoroughly refuted popped up again. Infessura’s diary entry was originally s­ ilent about the identity of the girl. But at some point a sentence was interpolated: “And it was thought that it was the body of Julia, Cicero’s ­daughter.”77 At the beginning of the sixteenth ­century, Raffaele Maffei asserted in his Com­ mentarii Urbani (1506) that “some ­people dared to say that her name was Tulliola, ­because numerous monuments of the Tullii, and the Herennii, and of Tulliola ­were found near that same

the Republic of Letters: Learned and Literary Socie­ties in Early Modern Eu­rope, ed. Arjan van Dixhoorn and Susie Speakman Sutch (Leiden, 2008), 181–218. 76. D’Alessandro, Geniales dies, book 3, chap. 2, fol. 116v: “In quib. argumentis asseveraret, cum nulla inscriptionis vestigia extarent, prorsus nescimus.” 77. Infessura, Diario, 179 n.m, and Hülsen, “Auffindung,” 434: “Et creditur fuisse corpus Iuliae Ciceronis filiae.”

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place.”78 Ludovico Ricchieri of Venice (Caelius Rhodiginus), a highly respected professor of Latin and Greek, boldly affirmed in his Antiquarum lectionum commentarii (1516) that the ancient body of Tullia had been found, as an inscription showed.79 The afterlife of the ­woman from the Appian Way did not end t­ here, amid a Babel of competing historical hypotheses. In fact, it underwent a further, highly surprising twist. The body met all of the requirements, or almost all, for sanctity, even if ­human ingenuity had preserved it: it was w ­ hole, it was fragrant, and it seemed to have belonged to a virtuous young w ­ oman, or at least to a descendant of a noble ­family. But one indication was missing: the appearance of a super­natural light. According to the antiquarians of succeeding generations, the ancients had taken care of this, as well. It is not easy to work out exactly when that report entered the learned conversation. But in his massive Description of All of Italy (1550), Leandro Alberti had quite a lot to say about it.80 Drawing both on his reading and on learned conversation, he described the ­woman’s body in the conventional terms of eulogy, but also inserted a new device into her tomb: In one of ­those funerary monuments, at the time when Alexander VI was the Roman Pontifex—­according to what Raffaele Volaterrano narrates and also according to what I remember hearing from the learned Giovanni Garzoni Bolognese, my venerated teacher—­a ­whole body was found of a very delicate young girl anointed with a marvelous liquid, who lay on a marble slab and was of inestimable beauty, 78. Volaterranus [Maffei], Commentariorum urbanorum . . . ​octo et triginta libri, 742: “Quidam ausi Tulliolam dicere, quod eodem prope loco multa Tulliorum memoria, & Herenniorum, & Tulliolae reperta fuerint.” 79. Caelius Rhodiginus, Antiquarum lectionum commentarii (Venice, 1516), 2.23, 69. 80. On Alberti, see Giancarlo Petrella, L’officina del geografo: La “Descrit­ tione di tutta Italia” di Leandro Alberti e gli studi geografico-­antiquari tra Quat­ tro e Cinquecento (Milan, 2004).

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with long blond hair, fastened to the back of her head with a nice golden headband. She had a burning lamp at her feet that went out in the very moment that the tomb was opened.81

The rest of Alberti’s entry followed conventional lines: the body had been preserved by the liquid for 1,300 years, as was indicated by an inscription, and it was conjectured that she had been Tulliola, Cicero’s ­daughter.82 The sensational new detail ­here was the lamp: a miracle made, like the ointment, not by divine intervention but by the skill of ancient artisans. This discovery was eagerly picked up by Guido Panciroli in his book on notable lost ancient inventions and brilliant modern ones (1599). In the sixteenth c­ entury, many scholars, artisans, and artists celebrated the lost inventions of the ancients and the new ones of the moderns with equal enthusiasm.83 Pan81. Leandro Alberti, Descrittione di tutta Italia (Venice, 1551), 117r: “In uno delli quali [sepolchri], ne tempi di Alessandro sesto Pontefice Romano (secondo che narra il Volaterrano, et altresì mi ricordo haverlo udito narrare a Giovanni Garzoni Bolognese huomo litterato, già mio honorando precettore) fu ritrovato un corpo tutto intiero di una molto dilicata giovane unto di maraveglioso licquore, isteso sopra una tavola di marmo, di bellezza inestimabile, colli capelli biondi & longhi, costretti nel capo con un bello cerchio d’oro, havendo alli piedi un’ardente lucerna, laquale cosi presto come fu aperto il sepolchro, tanto presto fu spento il splendore.” 82. Ibid.: “Nuotava detto corpo cosi bello e senza lesione alcuna per maggior parte in detto licquore. Et come si poteva conoscere dalle lettere quivi intagliate, erano passati anni mille è trecento, ch’era stato posto in questo luogo. La onde molti, per alcune congietture, dissero esser il corpo di Tulliola figliuola di Cicerone, da lui tanto dolcemente amata.” 83. Paolo Rossi, Philosophy, Technology and the Arts in the Early Modern Era, trans. Salvatore Attanasio, ed. Benjamin Nelson (New York, 1970); Brian P. Copenhaver, “The Historiography of Discovery in the Re­nais­sance: The Sources and Composition of Polydore Vergil’s De rerum inventoribus, I–­III,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 41 (1978), 192–214; Polydore Vergil, On Discovery, ed. and trans. Brian P. Copenhaver (Cambridge, Mass., 2002); Catherine Atkinson, Inventing Inventors in Re­nais­sance Eu­rope: Polydore Vergil’s De inventoribus rerum (Tübingen, 2007); Horst Bredekamp, Antikensehnsucht und Maschinenglauben: Die Geschichte der Kunstkammer und die Zukunft der

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ciroli was prob­ably the most enthusiastic of them all, and his compendium of inventions, many of them poorly documented, spurred research, as Vera Keller has shown, in many fields.84 He took the lamp as proving the existence, in antiquity, of a special ever-­burning oil, an ancient invention that had been lost to the modern world: “The ancients knew how to fabricate an oil that never consumed itself. This was even seen in our time, when Paul III was pope, that is, when the tomb of Cicero’s d ­ aughter Tullia was found. In it, ­there was a lamp that was still burning; but when the air came in, it went out. But it had been burning for about 1,550 years.”85 The ever-­burning oil that never needed a refill was so impressive that it was placed among the three most astonishing h ­ uman inventions, next to the printing press and gunpowder, on the frontispiece designed by Sebastian Furck for Panciroli’s opus in 1629.86 It found another admirer in the physician and philologist Fortunio Liceti, who wrote a massive treatise, On the Secret Lamps of the Ancients (1625), in which he introduced Tullia’s Kunstgeschichte (Berlin, 1993), revised and translated as The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology, trans. Allison Brown (Prince­ton, 1995); Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Re­nais­sance (Prince­ton, 1993); Nicholas Popper, “The En­glish Polydaedali: How Gabriel Harvey Read Late Tudor London,” Journal of the History of Ideas 66, 3 (2005), 351–81; Re­nais­sance Invention: Stradanus’s Nova Reperta, ed. Lia Markey (Evanston, Ill., 2020). 84. Vera Keller, “Accounting for Invention: Guido Pancirolli’s Lost and Found ­Things and the Development of Desiderata,” Journal of the History of Ideas 73, 2 (2012), 223–45; Keller, Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725 (Cambridge, 2015). 85. Guido Panciroli, Rerum memorabilium iam olim deperditarum, & con­ tra recens atque ingeniose inventarum libri duo, trans. and ed. Heinrich Salmuth (Amberg, 1599), 236: “De oleo incombustibili. Praeparabant etiam veteres oleum incombustibile, quod nunquam consumebatur. Id nostra quoque aetate, sedente Paulo III. visum fuit, inventa scilicet sepultura Tulliae filiae Ciceronis: in qua lucerna fuit etiam tum ardens; sed amisso aere, exstincta. Arserat autem annos plus minus 1550.” 86. Keller, Knowledge and the Public Interest, 53–55.

The Gir l on the A ppi a n Way [ 105 ]

lamp as the best-­known ancient grave lantern.87 He quoted the passage by Panciroli and added a letter from Jacopo Mancini that he had received a few years previously, which he called “an absolutely splendid proof about this ­matter, which is, as it ­were, entirely clear and certain.”88 In this letter Jacopo had informed him about the ever-­burning lamp found with the body of Pallas, the ancient hero who was slain by Turnus and discovered in the twelfth c­ entury, at the time of the En­glish historian William of Malmesbury.89 Apart from the “most famous” lamp in Tulliola’s sepulcher, Jacopo also remembered seeing a lamp that had just been unearthed at Montecavallo: “Its discoverers declared that it had been burning when they found it, with some fuel inside.”90 But Fortunio did not stop t­ here. A true antiquarian, he dug up and collected all the dif­fer­ent accounts in existence on the now famous Roman girl. G ­ oing through his material, he noticed that the reports varied strikingly, especially when it came to the crucial information about the burning lamp. In an effort to 87. See Elena Vaiani, “Alle origini della ricerca sulle lucerne antiche: Il Seicento (1621–1691),” in Lumina: Convegno internazionale di studi, Urbino, 5–7 giugno 2013, ed. Maria Elisa Micheli and Anna Santucci (Pisa, 2015), 11–32, at 15–16, 21–23. 88. Fortunio Liceti, De reconditis Antiquorum Lucernis (Udine, 1653), book 1, col. 8: “Inter quamplures veterum sepulchrorum tum aeneas, tum fictiles, tum alia quavis ex materia constructas lucernas, notissima fuit illa, quae patrum nostrorum aetate Romae in via Appia . . . ​ardens extincta est. . . . ​De lucerna vero Tulliolae proposita luculentissimum etiam testimonium, tamquam de re clarissima, & indubitata, superioribus annis per epistolam mihi perhibuit Iacobus Mancinus vir spectatae fidei, & eruditionis.” 89. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, §206. On the ­earlier background to this story, see Elly R. Truitt, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature and Art (Philadelphia, 2015), 96–115. 90. Liceti, De Lucernis, book 1, col. 25, letter by Iacobus Mancinus: “Quod a me petis de luminibus antiquorum perpetuis; praeter id, quod agnovit Boccacius in sepultura Pallantis, & id, quod clarissimum est in sepulchro Tulliolae nostra aetate retecto (credo temporibus Paulli Tertij Pontificis) nempe lumen adhuc accensum viso aere statim extinctum; Memini me Romae vidisse lucernam quandam erutam iuxta Montem Penam (vulgo a nostris Italis Montecavallo) ex quibusdam vetustis fundamentis, quam eiusdem repertores confessi sunt a se inventam fuisse ardentem, cum quodam bitumine intus.”

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explain why Caelius Rhodiginus, Alessandro d’Alessandro, and Raphael Volaterranus all silently passed over the device, he suggested that they did not find it impor­tant—­only to conclude with a surprising, harmonizing solution: The variations of the writers about this ­matter stem from the fact that on the same spot at about the same time three female bodies w ­ ere found: Tulliola’s, with a burning lamp and an inscription of her name; another one of Iulia Prisca Secunda, with an inscription, but without a lamp; and a third one without a lamp and without an inscription, for a still unknown ­woman. Caelius, Alexander, and Volterranus described one in place of the other for us. But I, like Panciroli and ­others, observed long ago that the body of Tulliola had an inscription on its monument and a lamp that ­until then had been burning.91

Antiquarian wit and perseverance—­and a capacity for inventive reading of the evidence—­had at last solved all the prob­lems. Deep into the seventeenth c­ entury, Athanasius Kircher relied on Leandro Alberti when he retold the story in his Latium (1669), a massive study of the terrain and antiquities of Lazio. The girl on the Appian Way “had a burning lamp at her feet, which went out the moment her monument was opened. From the day of her burial to the time when her body was rediscovered, they computed 1,300 years, based on her epitaph. ­Because of this, many thought that she was Tulliola, Cicero’s d ­ aughter.”92 91. Ibid., book 4, cols. 267–71, at 271: “Hinc de proposito scriptorum varietas, quod tria quum eodem in loco, eodemque fere tempore mulierum cadavera detecta sint; Tulliolae unum cum ardente lucerna, & nominis inscriptione; Iuliae Priscae Secundae alterum cum inscriptione, sine lucerna; & tertium sine lucerna, & absque inscriptione mulieris adhuc ignotae: unum pro altero nobis descripserunt Caelius, Alexander, & Volaterranus. Nos ergo cum Pancirolo, & alijs dudum observavimus Tulliolae cadaver in suo monumento habuisse inscriptionem, & ardentem etiam tum lucernam.” 92. Athanasius Kircher, Latium (Amsterdam, 1671), 44, chap. 4.3.1: “lucerna pedibus imposita adhuc ardente, quae tamen mox ac apertum fuit

The Gir l on the A ppi a n Way [ 107 ]

Yet this was not quite the end of the story, according to Kircher. ­After he summarized her story, he found himself, like Pompilio long before, concluding his account in the key of radical skepticism: Then the corpse was brought to the Consuls of the Roman ­people, whom they call Conservators, and was presented as if it ­were something rare and unusual. But to prevent the curious minds of the Romans from being infected with a superstitious cult by spurious relics like this, it was cast into the Tiber at the behest of Pope Alexander VI. In fact, I could not find anything reliable on the m ­ atter, so let its author bear the responsibility for it.93

All we know for certain is that—­unlike the bodies of Monica and Francesca, who became saints—­the girl’s body dis­appeared. By contrast, generations of narrators retold the story of its discovery—­perhaps ­because endless philological and antiquarian inquiry had left the lost body in a scholarly limbo. In its early form, antiquarianism, far from providing a solution to skeptical critiques of historical knowledge, gave them considerable support.94 The true value of the story seems to have been no clearer monumentum, exstincta reperiebatur; a primo vero sepulturae die usque ad reperti corporis tempus, 1300 annos, ex tumbae epigrapha collegerunt. Unde multi Tulliolae Ciceronis filiae corpus fuisse crediderunt.” 93. Ibid.: “Sublatum deinde cadaver populi Romani Consulibus, quos Conservatores vocant, tanquam rarum quidpiam & insolitum oblatum fuit; verum ne curiosa Romanorum ingenia superstitioso cultu spuriis hujusmodi reliquiis inficerentur, Alexandri VI. Summi Pontificis jussu in Tiberim projectum fuit; mihi sane uti de hujus rei veritate nil certi comperire licuit, ita quoque fides sit penes Authorem.” On this work, see Harry B. Evans, Exploring the Kingdom of Saturn: Kircher’s Latium and Its Legacy (Ann Arbor, 2012). 94. Cf. the classic account by A. D. Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13, 3–4 (1950), 285–315, in which he argued that “the antiquary rescued history from the sceptics” (313), concentrating on the ­later seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries. His arguments have been criticized by Markus Völkel, “Pyrrhonismus historicus” und “fides historica”: Die Entwicklung der deutschen historischen Methodologie

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than that of our next one, that of the Titulus of the True Cross. But in that case the story of the relic appears to have rested on a clear identifying script: the Gospel accounts of the execution of Jesus. unter dem Gesichtspunkt der historischen Skepsis (Frankfurt, 1987) and “Historischer Pyrrhonismus und Antiquarismus-­Konzeption bei Arnaldo Momigliano,” Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert 31, 2 (Sonderheft “Historischer Pyrrhonis­ mus”) (2007), 179–90, and cogently defended and extended backward into the sixteenth ­century by Carlo Ginzburg, “Description and Citation,” in Threads and Traces: True False Fictive, trans. Anne Tedeschi and John Tedeschi (Berkeley, 2012), 7–24. See also the classic work of Joseph M. Levine, Dr. Woodward’s Shield: History, Science and Satire in Augustan ­England (Berkeley, 1977; 2nd ed., Ithaca, 1991).

ch a p t er fou r

The Titulus of the True Cross

Historians from Burckhardt onward have treated the dig on the Appian Way and its consequences as clear evidence of a new passion for the ancient world.1 In fact, in seeing an imperfect and decayed body as perfect, the Roman humanists followed a script created by relic hunters. Some con­temporary observers noted connections between this episode and o ­ thers freighted with religious meaning. The diarist Infessura, for example, described the Roman w ­ oman’s reappearance in granular detail. He also described the finding of a sacred object, the Titulus of the True Cross, and he integrated that episode into a series of startling discoveries—­five in all, not all of them involving antiquities: a number of relics in Santa Maria in Via Lata, the murdered bodies of a c­ ouple caught in flagrante, then the Titulus of the True Cross, ­after that a body hacked to death in a toilet, and fi­nally a mysterious book unearthed in Brindisi, Apulia, whose finder was thrown in jail as a result of his discovery. Clearly, Infessura carefully composed and meticulously revised 1. Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Re­nais­sance in Italien, ed. Horst Günther, Bibliothek der Geschichte und Politik 8 (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), 188.

[ 109 ]

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this section of his diary. He marked each of ­these discoveries with a triumphant inventa or reperta.2 As Margaret Meserve has suggested, he was particularly interested in the Titulus. It showed that even Jesus’s persecutors proclaimed, however mockingly, the reasons for his punishment. This was a level of transparency that (to Infessura’s dismay) papal punishments of his time lacked.3 Sigismondo dei Conti narrated both episodes as well, and suggested that he saw a connection between them. The excavation of the Titulus provided a dramatic ending for book 8 of his history; that of the Roman ­woman, for book 9.4 On the surface, ­these two episodes look very dif­fer­ent. But ­these preliminary observations suggest that they ­were seen as related. The Titulus—­the wooden panel, originally affixed to the cross on which Jesus died, that identified him as king of the Jews—­ came to light, broken but recognizable, at Rome in the winter of 1492.5 Supposedly, it was one of the relics connected to the True Cross; o ­ thers included the nails and the seamless tunic that Helen, the ­mother of the emperor Constantine, had brought back to Rome when she returned from Jerusalem (the tunic, as we ­will see, wound up elsewhere). According to the legend, they originally adorned a subterranean chapel that Helen built in her 2. Stefano Infessura, Diario della Città di Roma, ed. Oreste Tommasini (Rome, 1890), 268–73. On Infessura’s writing pro­cess, see Stefano Infessuras Römisches Tagebuch, trans. Hermann Hefele (Düsseldorf, 1979), xxv–­xxx. 3. Margaret Meserve, Papal Bull: Print, Politics, and Propaganda in Re­nais­ sance Rome (Baltimore, 2021), 48–49. 4. Sigismondo dei Conti da Foligno, Le storie de’suoi tempi dal 1475–1510, 2 vols. (Rome, 1883), 1:375, 2:44–45. 5. The main accounts include Anna Pontani, “Note sull’esegesi e l’iconografia del Titulus Crucis,” Aevum 77 (2003), 137–86; Alan F. Nagel and Christopher Wood, Anachronic Re­nais­sance (New York, 2010), 219–39, 421–25; Johannes Röll, “Bemerkungen zum Titulus Crucis in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rom,” in Die Virtus in Kunst und Kunsttheorie der Italienischen Re­nais­sance: Festschrift für Joachim Poeschke zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Thomas Weigel, Britta Kusch-­Arnhold, and Candida Syndikus (Münster, 2014), 93–110; and Maren Elisabeth Schwab, Antike begreifen: Antiquarische Texte und Praktiken in Rom von Francesco Petrarca bis Bartolomeo Marliano (Stuttgart, 2019), 81–88.

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 111 ]

residence, the Sessorian Palace, not far from the Lateran Basilica. Once the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme arose on part of the palace site, they became its chief trea­sures, ­whether they ­were genuine or not. In 1452, when the pilgrim Nicholas Muffel visited the church, he saw “a win­dow above the high altar.” It displayed, among other relics, “the title of the holy cross. On it stands: Ihesus nazarenus rex iudeorum [Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews].”6 As Anna Pontani has shown, a German edition of the Mirabilia Urbis Romae printed as late as 1489 also mentioned the presence of the “titel,” which was located “above the arch.”7 In this case, as in the case of Livy’s bones, the presence of the object that was supposedly discovered had been common knowledge not long before it reappeared. Nonetheless, in 1492 contemporaries claimed to be surprised when workers renovating the church broke through a wall at the top of the triumphal arch and discovered the Titulus, preserved in a chest. Two Roman diarists—­the papal master of ceremonies, Burckard, and the humanist secretary of the Roman Senate, Infessura—­described the discovery.8 Like the accounts of the discovery of the Roman ­woman, their accounts of the Titulus vary considerably in detail.9 So did ­others, which we ­will examine in due course. Only close comparison and scrutiny of the details of each narrative ­will enable us to work out exactly how

6. Staatsbibliothek, Munich, cgm 1279: “und ob demselben altar in einem fenster, do ist ein stuck von dem creutz des bekerten schachers, der do hing zu der rechten seitten Christi und ist auch die überschrifft des heiligen creutz, daran stet: Jhesus nazarenus rex iudeorum” (Nicholas Muffel, Beschreibung der Stadt Rom, ed. Wilhelm Vogt [Tübingen, 1876], 35). 7. Pontani, “Note,” 151–52. 8. On Burckard, see Dizionario biografico degli italiani, s.v. “Burckard, Johannes,” by Ingeborg Walter, 15 (1972); on Infessura see ibid., s.v. “Infessura, Stefano,” by Arnold Esch, 62 (2004). 9. The most detailed study of ­these accounts is Maria-­Luisa Rigato, Il Titolo della Croce di Gesù: Confronto tra I Vangeli e la Tavoletta-­reliquia della Basilica Eleniana a Roma (Rome, 2005), 229–40.

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the Titulus was welcomed back to public life in Rome.10 The newly found relic was not brought to the Vatican: the pope came to see it in its church. The day went well for the master of ceremonies, since Innocent VIII was in good form (which was not always the case: he died ­later that year) and, as Burckard told the story, every­thing happened according to plan. The pope held a mass at the monastery of St. Gregory, since it was Gregory’s feast day, 12 March. ­ fter he chanted the benediction, he passed through the A Church of Saints John and Paul and the Lateran Basilica and came to the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. In the days leading up to this, while this church was being restored and very beautifully embellished thanks to the most venerable lord from Toledo, the cardinal of the same titular [church], a certain lead box covered by a brick was found ­there at the highest point of the arch of it above the choir.11

Infessura introduced the story of the discovery in a similar way, but he gave more details about its physical surroundings: On the same day [1 February] a miracle happened in the city: for the cardinal of Santa Croce, who is Mendoza, as they say, had this church plastered and whitewashed at his expense. The workers, when they touched the highest point 10. Cf. The Poison ­Trials: Won­der Drugs, Experiment and the ­Battle for Authority in Re­nais­sance Science (Chicago, 2020), in which the historian of science Alisha Rankin makes astute use of Re­nais­sance narratives of tests of poisons and their remedies on h ­ uman subjects to tease out both the procedures used and the assumptions that underpinned them. 11. Johannes Burckard, Liber notarum ab anno MCCCCLXXXIII ad annum MDVI, ed. Enrico Celani, vol. 1 (Città di Castello, 1906), 340: “Finita missa predicta et benedictione per pontificem in cantu data, per ecclesiam sanctorum Joannis et Pauli et basilicam Lateranensem venit pontifex ad ecclesiam Sancte Crucis in Hierusalem, in qua, superioribus diebus, quum ecclesia ipsa restauraretur per r. d. Toletanum ejusdem tituli cardinalem et perpulchre ornaretur, reperta est in summitate ejusdem arcus supra chorum quedam capsa plumbea latere cooperta.”

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 113 ]

of the arch that sits in the m ­ iddle of the church, where ­there are still two ­little columns, felt that ­there was a certain hollow, close to the roof. And when they had opened it, they found a l­ittle win­dow. In it was a small lead box of the size of two palmi that was well-­sealed. And placed above it, ­there was a certain square-­shaped marble stone, where the following letters ­were inscribed, that is: ­HERE IS THE TITULUS OF THE TRUE CROSS.12

The two reports coincide on many points. Both state that a lead box contained the relic, which means that it would not have been vis­i­ble even if the win­dow described by Muffel, presumably a niche, had still been open. Both describe the rediscovery as accidental, which suggests that the niche’s location—­known to pilgrims only a few years before—­had somehow been forgotten. Both note that the patron of the church and sponsor of the renovations was the titular cardinal of the church, Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza, primate of Spain. Infessura points out that the discovery of the Titulus took place on 1 February—­ when, by his account, the news of the fall of Granada to the Catholic Kings reached Rome. Sigismondo dei Conti, who also described the discovery, set it on the day ­after the news arrived. He also recalled that at the beginning of the war in Granada, the sign of the cross had been found in a quarry at the diocese of Piacenza, thereby crafting a frame of miraculous portents for the Christian victory.13 Most modern scholars agree that the supposed find was a per­for­mance, stage-­managed by Mendoza 12. Infessura, Diario, 270: “Eodem die miraculum in Urbe fuit: nam cum cardinalis Sanctae Crucis qui est Mendoza, ut dicitur, sua impensa faceret incrostari et dealbari ecclesiam praedictam, quando operarii tetigerunt summitatem arcus existentis in medio ecclesiae iuxta tectum, ubi adhuc sunt duae parvae columnae, sentierunt ibi certum vacuum. cumque aperuissent, invenerunt unam parvam fenestram, in qua erat capsula plumbea duorum palmorum bene clausa et super eam erat lapis quidam quadrangularis marmoreus, ubi erant sculptae istae litterae, videlicet: HIC EST TITULUS VERAE CRUCIS.” 13. Infessura, Diario, 269–70; Dei Conti, Storie, 1:375.

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to enliven the Roman cele­brations of the end of the Reconquista and to heighten the faded appeal of his titular church. In this case, the joint silence of the two con­temporary accounts, so far as the larger context was concerned, speaks volumes. Evidently neither author wanted to connect this marvelous Roman discovery to events that had taken place in Iberia or to treat it as the result of a deliberate plan on the cardinal’s part. Yet their reports w ­ ere by no means identical. Burckard continued as follows: It [the lead box] was covered by a brick, bound by a cord, and sealed with three seals, but [all] of the same impress. On t­ hese seals the following words ­were written: “Gerardus cardinal of the Holy Cross,” and in the m ­ iddle ­there was a certain image of a medium-­sized figure with a hat of a round shape, of a slightly bigger size than the coins of Pope Paul II of happy memory. But on the brick, which had covered the box that I mentioned, the following words ­were carved into the side that had been placed t­ owards the inside [of the wall]: titulus Crucis.14

Unlike Infessura, who described a “square-­shaped marble stone” with an inscription that began with “­here is . . . ,” Burckard saw a brick, and described how it had been set into the ceiling with its inscription pointing t­ oward the inside of the wall. Moreover, he mentioned that the name of Cardinal Gerardo Caccianemici de l’Orso, l­ater Pope Lucius II (9 March 1144–14 February 1145)—­ the prelate who prob­ably had the Titulus created in the first place—­appeared on the lead box. Infessura did not. 14. Burckard, Liber notarum, ed. Celani, 340–41: “quedam capsa plumbea latere cooperta, cordula circumligata et tribus sigillis, ejusdem tamen impressionis, sigillata, in quibus quidem sigillis scripta erant verba: Gerardus cardinalis Sancte Crucis, et in medio imago quedam medie figure cum capello, in forma rotunda, magnitudinis aliquantulum majoris carlinorum fel. rec. Pauli pape secundi. In latere vero dictam capsam cooperiente, a parte que ab intus posita fuerat, sculpta erant haec verba: titulus Crucis.”

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 115 ]

The differences became sharpest when the two diarists discussed the inscription on the wooden panel. Burckard wrote: But in this box a certain tablet was preserved. It was very ancient, half-­rotten, made of wood, one or more palmi in length, more than two-­thirds of a palmo wide and more than two fin­gers thick. On this tablet, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin letters ­were carved in reverse order, according to the custom of the Jews: IS. NAZARENUS RE. The rest of the title, that is, x Ju’deorum, was missing. And the tablet itself showed the inscription beginning from one side in the way it had been when it was not divided. Hence it was thought that on the other side of the same tablet—­which was missing—­the rest of the letters had been inscribed in this manner.15

Infessura gave a similar account of the tablet, but he claimed that more of the inscription’s wording remained than Burckard had recorded: In this box a certain small tablet was found. It was one and a half palmi long and one palmo wide. From one side it had been eaten and gnawed away by its old age. And ­there ­were ­these letters, or better words, [see below] that had been carved and then colored with red: HYESUS NAZA|RENUS REX IUDEORUM [Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews]; but the word IUDEORUM was mutilated, ­because the RUM was missing up to the R, inclusively. The UM had fallen off, as I have said, ­because it had corroded on that part and been lost due to its age. And the first verse was like this, written in Latin 15. Ibid., 341: “In capsa vero predicta reposita erat quedam tabula antiquissima, semiconsumpta, lignea, longitudinis unius palmi vel ultra, larga plusquam duarum tertiarum unius palmi, et grossa plusquam duorum digitorum: in qua tabula sculpte erant ordine retrogrado, Yudeorum more, littere hebraice, grece et latine: IS. NAZARENUS RE, residuum tituli, videlicet x Ju’deorum, deficiebat, et tabula ipsa ab uno capite ostendebat scripturam ac si indivisa fuisset; existimabatur propterea in alia parte ejusdem tabule deficiente, residuum litterarum hujusmodi sculptum fuisse.”

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letters; the second verse in Greek letters; and the third in Hebrew letters.16

Both Burckard and Infessura portrayed the Titulus as a ­simple piece of wood, old and decayed. Part of it was missing, along with the words that Pilate had used to mock Jesus. The remaining words—­Latin and Greek as well as Hebrew—­were written in the manner normal for Hebrew alone, from right to left. But when it came to the wording of the inscription, they flatly disagreed. Burckard transcribed the Latin part, noting its incompleteness; Infessura offered a fuller version but claimed that one word, “IUDEORUM,” was mutilated, showing the effects of corrosion. Even a quick examination of the ­actual object, still preserved in Santa Croce, reveals that Burckard’s description of the Latin was more accurate. It seems natu­ral to connect the differences between the two men’s accounts to their positions in Rome. The jurist Infessura represented the opinions and interests of the Roman patriciate. In his diary he drew a polemical picture of the po­liti­cal affairs of the City of Rome, dwelling with plea­sure on the juicy scandals for which the papal Curia was notorious. This antipapal account contrasts sharply with Burckard’s Liber notarum. A proud member of the pontifical entourage, Burckard always stayed as close as he could to the Holy ­Father, fully absorbed by the aesthetic demands and practical difficulties of the liturgical instructions that w ­ ere his principal concern. To him, the girl on the Appian Way did not deserve a mention. Instead, he meticulously described the procedures of ceremonies and masses. On 16. Infessura, Diario, 270: “in qua capsula reperta fuit quaedam parva tabula longitudinis unius palmi cum dimidio et latitudinis unius palmi, quae ab uno latere erat comesa et vetustate corrosa, ibique erant cavatae et deinde colore rubeo tintae infrascriptae litterae sive verba: HYESUS NAZA|RENUS REX IUDEORUM; sed illud IUDEORUM non erat perfectum, quia illud RUM non erat nisi usque ad R inclusive. illud UM ceciderat, ut dixi, quia erat ab ea parte corrosa et vetustate defecit; et primus versus erat hoc, scriptus litteris latinis; secundus versus litteris graecis; et tertius litteris hebraeis.”

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Palm Sunday 1492, for instance, he noted who was carry­ing the candles and the order in which the palm branches ­were distributed. He became upset when the cardinal of Aleria, Ardicino della Porta the Younger, marched ­behind the other cardinals in a chasuble rather than a cope, and he blamed his own carelessness.17 Vestments, vessels, and spoken ele­ments of ser­vices, such as songs, sermons, and blessings, ­were his main concern and responsibility. They all had to be coordinated if the public rituals of the papacy ­were to run smoothly. ­These prob­lems w ­ ere not trivial. In the opening of his liturgical handbook, the Rationale divinorum officiorum—­the fifth book to be printed in Eu­rope by the Gutenberg press in 1459, it was reprinted forty-­four times before 1502—­the thirteenth-­ century bishop and canonist Guillaume Durand explained that “what­ever belongs to the liturgical offices, objects, and furnishings of the Church is full of signs of the divine and the sacred mysteries, and each of them overflows with a celestial sweetness when it is encountered by a diligent observer who can ‘extract honey from a rock and oil from the stoniest ground’ [Deut. 32:13].”18 Burckard clearly felt the weight of his office, and he made clear that his job was not easy. When the Easter cele­brations of 1492 reached their climax on Sunday, Pope Innocent VIII washed his hands and Burckard had to admit that he had forgotten to call another cardinal to assist.19 Then, during 17. Burckard, Liber notarum, ed. Celani, 350–51. 18. Lee Palmer Wandel, “Vestments in the Mass,” in Quid est sacramentum? Visual Repre­sen­ta­tion of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Eu­rope, 1400–1700, ed. Walter Melion, Elizabeth Carson Pastan, and Lee Palmer Wandel (Leiden, 2020), 82–104, at 85; Wandel translates Guillaume Durand, Rationale divino­ rum officiorum (Antwerp, 1570), 1: “Quaecunque in ecclesiasticis officiis, rebus ac ornamentis consistunt, divinis plena sunt signis atque mysteriis, ac singula sunt coelesti dulcedine redundantia: si tamen diligentem habeant inspectorem, qui norit mel de petra sugere, oleumque de durissimo saxo.” 19. Burckard, Liber notarum, ed. Celani, 353: “Tum sedit, accepta mi­tra, et lavit ma­nus ordine solito, capitaneo Ecclesie aquam ministrante; ad quam lotionem non vocavi episcopum cardinalem per oblivionem.”

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communion, he revealed that “the cardinals and priests genuflected almost to the point of lying down, but not out of devotion, but ­because they felt more comfortable that way: they would rather lay themselves down than stand up.”20 When communion was given to the general public, Burckard barely managed to keep the impatient subdeacons from offering the sacrament prematurely. Most impor­tant, in this special Easter mass a precious relic was presented to the public and to the pope: the sudarium, the cloth with the true portrayal of Jesus that Saint Veronica supposedly had pressed on his sweaty face when he carried the cross to Golgotha (see figure 4.1).21 Relics played an impor­tant role in Burckard’s world. They ­were part of the liturgy during mass and they ­were carried through the city during pro­cessions (see figure 4.2).22 In May 1492, Sultan Bayezid II donated the Holy Lance to Innocent VIII. It was allegedly the very lance that Longinus used to prove that Jesus had died on the cross (see figure 4.3). Doubts about its genuineness arose immediately, since the F ­ ree Imperial City of Nuremberg claimed to possess the point of the lance (see figure 4.4), and it was not alone. In the fierce discussion, Burckard sided with the majority of the cardinals who wanted to accept the sultan’s gift, but also to check its genuineness before it could be venerated as the True Lance.23 Nonetheless, Burckard already showed a heightened concern for the proper ­handling of 20. Ibid.: “Alii autem cardinales episcopi et presbyteri genuflexerunt quasi jacentes non ex devotione sed ex commoditate: potius enim sic voluerunt jacere quam stare.” 21. Ibid., 353–54. 22. For a rich analy­sis of the liturgical and visual context for the display of an impor­tant relic, see Volker Schier and Corine Schleif, “Seeing and Singing, Touching and Tasting the Holy Lance: The Power and Politics of Embodied Religious Experiences in Nuremberg, 1424–1524,” in Signs of Change: Transforma­ tions of Christian Traditions and Their Repre­sen­ta­tions in the Arts, 1000–2000, ed. Nils Holger Petersen, Claus Clüver, and Nicolas Bell (Amsterdam, 2004), 401–26. 23. Burckard, Liber notarum, ed. Celani, 356–58, 365.

figure 4.1. A vivid image of the Veronica—­the cloth imprinted with an image of the face of Jesus, which was ceremoniously displayed at Saint Peter’s Basilica. From the Chronicle of Matthew Paris. Parker Library, Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 16II, fol. 53v.

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figure 4.2. The celebratory pro­cession of Pope Innocent VIII as he carries the Holy Lance to the Basilica of Saint Peter, 1492. Fresco, ca. 1630, Grotte, Cappella di S. Andrea. © Fabbrica di San Pietro in Vaticano.

the special object. He pointed out that the ­people who took it for genuine thought “it should be received with the same (or if pos­ si­ble even with greater) solemnity and veneration and with the same order as the head of Saint Andrew the Apostle had been accepted by Pope Pius II.”24 Objects that some believed to be relics deserved reverent treatment, even if the evidence raised questions about their historicity. When Burckard described the Titulus, however, he cast his account in a dif­fer­ent key. He made clear that he had examined it as a skilled antiquarian would study any ancient object. He explic­itly stated that he had seen the tablet and inscription for himself, while examining it in high ecclesiastical com­pany. He described the carved letters in some detail and drew their shapes ( forme). 24. Ibid., 356–57: “Nam quibusdam sentientibus cum omni solemnitate et veneratione ac eo ordine, quo caput sancti Andree apostoli a fel. rec. Pio papa II receptum fuerat, et majore si fieri posset.” On Pius’s entry into Rome with the head of St. Andrew, see Ma­ya Maskarinec, “Mobilizing Sanctity: Pius II and the Head of Saint Andrew in Rome,” in Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Eu­rope: Essays in Honor of Teofilo Ruiz, ed. Yuen-­Gen Liang and Jarbel Rodriguez (New York, 2017), 186–202.

figure 4.3. A version of the Holy Lance, which Longinus used to test ­whether Jesus had died on the cross. Long preserved at Constantinople, it was presented to Pope Innocent VIII in 1492 by Sultan Bayezid II, and it became the object of widespread discussion—­since it was not the only known candidate to be the Holy Lance—as well as formal cele­bration. Drawing by Giacomo Grimaldi. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Barb. Lat. 2733, pt. 1, fol. 97r.

figure 4.4. The relics, vestments, and insignia of the Holy Roman Empire, preserved in the ­Free Imperial City of Nuremberg. In the center is the point of the Holy Lance, kept in the Heilig-­Geist Kirche in Nuremberg, flanked by other relics, all of them identified by inscriptions. Woodcut colored by hand. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

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The carving of the letters had been done in considerable depth and with rather legible letters; I made an illustration imitating t­ hese letters. Our Most Holy Lord held this tablet in his hands and viewed it from all sides, while I also saw and touched it and the cardinals who stood around us saw it the same way. Then the pope returned to the palace of St. Peter, passing through the Lateran, the Colosseum, the Marforio, St. Mark, the Palazzo Massimi [which was at the Campo de’ Fiori], and the Campo de’ Fiori. When he had passed the bridge of Castel St. Angelo he gave the cardinals permission to leave. But the shapes of the letters described above are the following . . . ​25

The image that Burckard h ­ ere refers to does not survive, but it seems clear that he reported what he had seen, and that he had examined the tablet closely. It is not surprising, then, that his description was more precise than Infessura’s. Infessura, a­ fter all, did not claim to have inspected the inscription himself. Though he mentioned that the pope had visited the Titulus, he did not assert that he had been pre­ sent. It seems likely that his report was written l­ater and that he went wrong ­because he relied on ­others’ accounts, ­whether oral or written. Yet he gave no sign of incredulity. He began his account by describing the discovery as a miracle and concluded it by stating that the relic had attracted many viewers and found universal acceptance—­a statement that might reflect his own experience: 25. Burckard, Liber notarum, ed. Celani, 341: “Sculptura literarum hujusmodi fuit satis concava et satis bonis caracteribus facta, ad quorum caracterum instar feci infrascripta; quam tabulam SS. D. N. ad ma­nus recipiens undique circumspexit, me etiam vidente et tangente, cardinalibus circumstantibus et similiter videntibus. Deinde per Lateranum, Coliseum, Marphorium, Sanctum Marcum, de Maximis, campum Flore ad palatium sancti Petri rediit et, transito ponte Castri sancti Angeli, cardinalibus licentiam dedit. Forme vero literarum superius designatarum sunt hec . . .” (the illustration is prob­ably lost).

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Almost every­one in town had come to this place and ­after the triduum, Pope Innocent also saw it and ordered that it should stay in the box that I mentioned and be placed on the altar with a certain glass pane on the feast days of that church. And every­one believes this is the tablet that Pilate attached to the cross above the head of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was placed ­there by Saint Helen, ­mother of Constantine, at the time when that church was built.26

What­ever Infessura’s doubts about the virtue of the pope and his Curia, he did not suggest that they acted in an untoward way on this occasion. His description differed from Burckard’s not for ideological or po­liti­cal reasons but ­because he had not mastered—or had no chance to apply—­the antiquarian’s tools, instead depending for his information on the kindness of strangers. A letter recently discovered in Padua adds further details. Its anonymous author, writing on 2 February in a mixture of Italian and Latin, informed an equally anonymous prelate about the capture of Granada and the discovery of the Titulus. He emphasized that he was transmitting the most recent news: “per esser de qui novamente nove fresche.” Someone—­perhaps the recipient—­confirmed the writer’s judgment that the story was impor­tant by copying it in an up-­to-­date edition of the Chronicon of Antoninus of Florence, printed by Koberger in Nuremberg in 1491, as if to suggest that the next edition should include this story as well.27 The writer remarked that Romans 26. Infessura, Diario, 270–71: “ad quem locum quasi tota Urbis accessit et papa Innocentius etiam post triduum vidit eam iussitque eam permanere in dicta capsula cum quadam lamina vitrea super altare in festivitatibus dictae ecclesiae; et est omnium extimatione illa tabula quam Pilatus posuit in cruce super caput Domini nostri Iesu Christi, posita ibi per sanctam Helenam matrem Constantini, tempore quo fuit dicta ecclesia aedificata.” 27. The new letter was published by Maria-­Luisa Rigato, “Il Titulus Crucis,” in Gerusalemme a Roma: La Basilica di Santa Croce e le reliquie della Passione, ed. Roberto Cassanelli and Emilia Stolfi (Milan, 2012), 165–75, at 169–70. The

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had flocked to see the Titulus, and that the pope and the college of cardinals w ­ ere expected to visit it.28 Burckard and Infessura wrote ­after the pope’s trip to the church, which Infessura dated to 4 February. This account is thus certainly ­earlier than theirs. It includes physical details about the relic that the other accounts lack. The win­dow where the relic was concealed was marked by “a cross in mosaic,” and the lead casket that contained the relic “was of the length of half an arm.” According to Burckard, as we saw, the three seals on the brick that covered it bore the name of Gerardus Caccianemici de l’Orso. The letter stated that they belonged to Silvester, Helen, and Constantine, “­those who built that holy church.” Silk ribbons connected ­these to the brick and casket, but “once they ­were exposed to the air, they immediately disintegrated into powder.”29 When it came to the seals, the writer seems to have been reporting fanciful hearsay, and the speculations did not end t­ here. Like the o ­ thers, he noted that the Titulus was only half preserved. He suggested that Helen had taken the other half to Constantinople, from where it had reached France: possibly he thought that the Fourth Crusade had brought it home. Like Burckard, though, he had an eye for material details, and he called attention to what he took to be “the hole for the nail by which it was attached to the cross.”30 copy of Antoninus’s Chronicon (Nuremberg, 1491) is Padova, Biblioteca Antoniana, HB X 4/3. See Maria Cristina Zanardi, Cata­logo degli incunaboli della Biblioteca Antoniana di Padova (Florence, 2012), 9–10. 28. Rigato, “Il Titulus Crucis,” 170: “Ad exaltationem fidei Christianae tuta Roma de heri in qua concure a vedere questa sancta cosa e se stima ch’el papa vi andarà a visitarlo cum tuto il collegio.” 29. Ibid.: “El coperto dela capseta era uno matono largo di terra cocta, ligato cum tri sigilli alla dicta capseta: l’uno di san Silvestro, l’altro di sancta Helena, l’altro de Costantino, quali fabricorno quella sancta basilica. E li ligami dei sigilli, ch’erano de certa corda de setta, mostrati a l’aere subito andorono in polvere.” 30. Ibid.: “Vidi e legiti le littere vi sono impresse in tre linee, l’una lattina, l’altra greca, l’altra hebraica, de queste medeme parolle: Iesus Nazarenus Re. Più non si extendi le littere per esser (ut videtur) riseccata quella tabella per mezzo al traverso ne la forma, e de qui da basso, e in quella vi è il bucho del chiodo come era atachata alla croce. L’altra mità se dice che si trova in Franza,

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Like Burckard and Infessura, this writer emphasized the enthusiasm that the Titulus inspired. Unlike the ­others, he also described his own and ­others’ response to the object, in vivid, dramatic language: “this Titulus of the cross was hidden for more than twelve hundred years and it is a most marvelous t­ hing to see it, and it inspires miraculous devotion in every­one who sees it.”31 Sight, moreover, was not the only sense that it affected: “yesterday morning before eating I saw it and kissed it, though undeservingly, and it gave off such a fragrance, of indescribable scent and sweetness, that no more power­ful one could be experienced in this world.”32 The Titulus, in other words, was a true relic. Spiritual electricity coursed through it and ­those who came into contact with it. Like more established relics, such as the other Holy Lance that belonged to Nuremberg and was exhibited e­ very year, along with other holy objects, to a large and enthusiastic public (see figure 4.5), it powerfully stirred this viewer’s senses.33 Like the ­others, this writer examined the inscription. The conclusion he drew from it was distinctive, a curious tribute to Roman ingenuity: But ­those letters are written in a dif­fer­ent way: in fact, it seems more likely that they w ­ ere imprinted in the wood, as if they had been imprinted with a hot iron, and they go correctly this way [a reference to the end of the letter, where he adds what could be seen as an extremely rough facsimile: IESAS NAZARAENAS RE from left to right, along with the perché sancta Helena lassò la mittà dela croce a Roma, l’altra mittà pigliò per si e portala in Costantinopoli, et appare bene come fu reseccata per traverso al mezzo, ubi erat Rex.” 31. Ibid.: “A quello si vede, è stato occulto questo tittulo dela croce più de milli e ducenti anni et è cosa mirabilissima vederlo e induce mirabile devocione a qualunche lo vedi, et è vero testimonio dela passione de Christo et cetera.” 32. Ibid.: “Poi dentro la capseta era quel sanctissimo ligno, quale heri matini avanti disnar io vidi e basai, licet indignus, de che sentevasi tanta refragantia de inextimabile odore e soavità, che maiore non poteria al mondo sentirse.” 33. On the Holy Lance in Nuremberg, see Schier and Schleif, “Seeing and Singing, Touching and Tasting the Holy Lance.”

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words Grece (in Greek) and Hebraice (in Hebrew) (see figure 4.6)]. For, as can be understood, they w ­ ere written backward following the Hebrew style, or ­because in the iron used for imprinting they w ­ ere in the right order, but in the course of imprinting they ­were afterward reversed.34

Evidently he had examined type or a wood block in a printing ­house, and i­magined that the Roman governor of Judaea had used a forgotten early form of the preeminent new technology of his own time to create the Titulus. The writing on the tablet, he inferred, went from right to left ­because the ancient printing pro­cess had reversed the text. Accordingly, he did not ascribe any meaning to the direction of the writing, even though he recognized that it was normal for Hebrew: rather, he saw it as an artifact of the pro­cess that had brought the Titulus into being. Like some of ­those who reported the presence of ever-­burning lamps in the tomb of the Roman ­woman, he was inspired by a newly discovered ancient object to speculate about lost ancient forms of technology. Burckard found the lettering legible—he wrote of its satis bonis caracteribus—­and copied it without difficulty. But a fourth witness described the inscription and its decipherment in richer detail than did any of the rest, and he disagreed. This observer, the humanist Leonardo da Sarzana, described the lettering as very difficult indeed. He recorded his efforts to read and transcribe it in an exhaustive letter to Giacomo Gherardi, the papal nuncio in Florence and a member of the circle that included Lorenzo de’ Medici and such cutting-­edge scholars as Angelo Poliziano and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. T ­ hese men 34. Rigato, “Il Titulus Crucis,” 170: “Sed istae litterae sunt aliter scriptae, imo verius (ut videtur) impressae in ligno sic si fuissent impressae cum ferro calido, et proprie stant hoc modo, quia, ut comprehenditur, iuxta stillum Hebreorum retrose scriptae fuerunt, vel quia in ferro impressionis erant rectae, sed imprimendo postea retrose sunt et cetera. “IESAS NAZARENAS RE “Grece ­etc. “Hebraice ­etc.”

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­ ere deeply interested in scripts of many kinds. Poliziano, in w par­tic­u­lar, tirelessly explored the manuscripts that Lorenzo de’ Medici and other ­great collectors, as well as the Vatican Library, made available to him.35 As we ­will see, he had experience with inscriptions as well. He was famous—or notorious—­for his insistence that scholars study all transmitted evidence with g­ reat care, and reproduce even the m ­ istakes of scribes and stonecutters, since they too provided impor­tant evidence.36 Gherardi was a perfect intermediary for scholarly news, ideally situated to transmit Leonardo’s discoveries to the circle of scholars and artists around Lorenzo. But Gherardi was much more than an information broker. The scholars who dominated high intellectual life in Florence thought the world of him, and they had reason to do so. He took a serious interest in philological questions of the sort that Poliziano loved to discuss, stabbing opponents in ­every direction with his bent nib.37 The first hundred chapters of Poliziano’s 35. Silvia Rizzo, Il lessico filologico degli umanisti (Rome, 1973); Alan Cottrell, “Re­nais­sance Codicology: Poliziano’s Practice of a Modern Discipline,” Manuscripta 41 (1997), 110–26; L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Lit­er­at­ ure, 4th ed. (Oxford, 2013), 145–47, 279–80. 36. For a rich introduction to this circle, see Pico, Poliziano e l’Umanesimo di fine Quattrocento: Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 4 novembre–31 dicembre 1994, ed. Paolo Viti (Florence, 1994). 37. See the undated letter from “Lepidus” to Gherardi in Giacomo Gherardi, Il diario Romano, ed. Enrico Carusi (Città di Castello, 1904), lxxxvi.

figure 4.5. ­Every year the most precious relics that belonged to the city of Nuremberg, including the Holy Lance, ­were displayed on a temporary platform in the city’s central square. Notice that soldiers w ­ ere deployed to guard the relics from the crowds below. This image was part of the Nuremberg Heiltumsbuch (relic book), a new genre of illustrated booklets on a given city’s relics. The Nuremberg relic book was the first to be printed. Prepared by the sculptor Peter Vischer, it served both as an advertisement for the city’s trea­sury of relics and as an aid to devotion for pilgrims who glimpsed them at a distance. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

figure 4.6. The anonymous scholar who wrote the first full account of the rediscovered Titulus of the True Cross appended to it a very rough diagram of the inscriptions, with a facsimile of the partially preserved Latin line. Antoninus of Florence, Chronicon (Nuremberg, 1491). Padua, Biblioteca Antoniana, HB X 4/3.

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philological masterwork, the Miscellanea, appeared in 1489. Ferociously polemical, they received sharp criticism from his many enemies and provoked efforts at correction from some of his friends. Poliziano had produced a long list of errata, as well as a defense of his work, and trusted Gherardi—­a secretary by training, he wrote a neat hand—to supervise the correction of the unsold copies of his book. “With my own hand and at your ­orders,” Gherardi wrote to Poliziano, “I have corrected around seventy copies of your Miscellanea.”38 This turned into a sociable activity that involved professional scribes as well as other colleagues, Iacopo Antiquario and Giorgio Merula.39 In 1491 a learned ambassador from Lucca, Domenico Bertini, came to Milan. A graceful, articulate man, he pleased his hosts, who invited him to visit the ducal trea­sury, a special mark of ­favor. The Milanese historian Tristano Calco, a friend of Gherardi’s, was allowed to come along—an opportunity, as he remarked, that would ordinarily not have come the way of a mere citizen of Milan.40 The two men, he reported to Gherardi, saw “marvelous works of nature in gems and pearls,” which it would have taken a full treatise to describe.41 One in par­tic­u­lar struck Calco: 38. Vat. lat. 3912, fol. 15r, printed ibid., lxxxiii: “Emendavi ma­nu mea et mandato tuo Miscellaneorum tuorum codices circiter septuaginta. Scribae ducales emendarunt quos sibi paraverant, legatus item venetus, me presente, et Antiquarius, et Merula, omnes tui nominis studiosissimi.” 39. Joseph Dane, “ ‘Si vis archetypas habere nugas’: Authorial Subscriptions in the Houghton Library and Huntington Library Copies of Politian, Miscella­ nea (Florence: Miscomini 1489),” Harvard Library Bulletin 10, 1 (1999 [2000]), 12–22; Anthony Grafton, The Culture of Correction in Re­nais­sance Eu­rope (London, 2012). 40. Vat. lat. 3912, fol. 36v: “Proximo mense ad nos venit Dominicus Bertinus Lucensis orator, vir certe rarus, ac literatura rerumque usu insigni. . . . ​Inter multa quae in Vrbe spectavit: copia quoque facta est visendi thesauri nostri: quem in locum quum nunquam antea penetraram subsequi statui. Interfui igitur opibus nostris spectandis occasione externi ductus: quod et civi, et in urbe assidue educato nunquam alias contingerat.” 41. Ibid.: “Mira vidimus nature opera gemmis margaritisque, immensoque volumine opus foret, si singula explicare vellem.”

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a ring carved from a single beryl, which “we admired, picking it up and ­handling it.” He seems to have added a drawing to his letter, though it does not survive.42 On inquiry, the ring, which seemed unique to Calco, turned out to be “the betrothal ring of our Dukes.”43 In 1487 Calco had written a description in Latin of Gian Galeazzo Sforza’s wedding to Isabella of Aragon. Seeing the ring at first hand, he de­cided to insert a description of it into his text. He therefore sent the trustworthy Gherardi not only his observations on the ring but detailed instructions on how to revise his own copy and any further copies of Calco’s text, “lest it diverge from my original (archetypo) and produce an uncertain progeny.”44 Archetypus was a technical term among humanists and printers for an author’s official copy, and Gherardi used it properly and effectively.45 Gherardi, in other words, was much more than a prominent friend or acquaintance of Leonardo’s: he was an expert editor and antiquarian who knew the ways of collectors as well as t­ hose of philologists. Leonardo, accordingly, wrote him a very detailed letter. It began in much the same way as the reports in the Roman diaries, but from the start, Leonardo recorded specifics that Burckard and the o ­ thers had omitted: For in the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, the titular church of the Spanish cardinal, artisans ­were working on a construction proj­ect, begun long before, on the arch of the part that rises above the ­Great Altar, and they found a certain brick of normal size. On its far side, which was, of 42. Ibid., fols. 36v–37r: “Inter gemmas anulum animadvertimus, nullo auro lucentem, sed unico lapide rubentem. Hunc admirati tollimus ac tractamus. Gemma nobis integra videbatur, sicque erat . . . ​berillus autem solidus est, sive, ut crassiori verbo vulgus ait barassus: qui hunc in modum cavatus est.” 43. Ibid., fols. 36v–37r: “Sponsalicium esse Ducum nostrorum aiunt.” 44. Ibid., fol. 37r: “ne quid scilicet ab archetypo nostro discrepet ambiguamque posteritatem faciat.” 45. Brian Richardson, Printing, Writers, and Readers in Re­nais­sance Italy (Cambridge, 1999), 49–50 and fig. 11.

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course, hidden in the wall, the following words had been carved in very beautiful ancient and oblong letters: Titu­ lus Crucis, in two lines, and each word was completed in its own line. B ­ ehind this brick t­ here rested in the m ­ iddle of the higher part a certain small lead casket, surrounded by an empty space of its own, sealed with three firm seals. On its near side that faced ­toward the aforesaid brick ­there had been imprinted the following letters, medium sized and retaining an ancient form: Ecce Lignum Crucis [Behold, the wood of the Holy Cross].46

Unlike the o ­ thers who described the discovery, Leonardo recorded that two inscriptions ­were carved into the relic’s packaging. Both w ­ ere invisible from the outside. They both identified the wooden relic with the famous inscription, which indeed was arguably the first Christian inscription ever. Leonardo not only gave their wording but described their script, in more detail than Burckard. When he used the term “oblong” to evoke the shape of the letters, he prob­ably had in mind the large rustic capitals of the Vergilius Vaticanus and other late antique codices, whose size and shapes ­were clear evidence of their antiquity. When he moved on to the Titulus itself, he continued to show serious interest in scripts and lettering. Like the anonymous eyewitness, he speculated about the instrument that had been used to incise words in the tablet:

46. Vat. lat. 3912, fols. 43 r–­v (4 February), printed in Prospero Lambertini, De servorum dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione, vol. 4 (Prati, 1841), 729: “In ecclesia nanque sanctae Crucis in Jherusalem, tituli Cardinalis Hispani construentibus (ut diu ceptum est) fabris in Arcu eminentioris partis desuper Altare maius; compererunt laterem quendam magnitudinis solitae: in cuius altera parte: quae videlicet in pariete latebat, haec verba, pulcherrimis literis Antiquis, et oblongis excavata erant, Titulus Crucis, duplici serie: quodque verbum sua serie terminabatur. Post quem laterem Arcula quaedam plumbea, suo spacio vacuo circumfusa, tribus sigillis certis obsignata, in medio superioris partis iacebat: in cuius primo latere versus laterem antedictum hae literae mediocri longitudine, et antiquam formam tenentes impressae erant. Ecce Lignum Crucis.”

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Inside the casket itself was a certain piece of wood, extremely moldy and old, all of it fragile, but bespeaking what the ­whole [had looked like], about two fin­gers thick, one and a half palmi in length, and one palmo in width. On this piece of wood, on the exposed upper part, the following titles w ­ ere imprinted in three lines, in the following characters, in three languages: Hebrew, Greek, Latin. And as can be conjectured, they ­were carved and formed with an iron stylus. And in the first line [the title] is in Hebrew, in the second in Greek, in the third in Latin.47

Leonardo also did his best to decipher and copy the words themselves—­not only the ones in Latin but also the part in Hebrew and Greek: The Hebrew is curtailed and looks like this: ‫[ ישו נצר מלך‬yeshu notzr[i] melekh], meaning Ihesus Nazarenus Rex. The Greek one is like this: ις Ναζaραιρος β meaning Ihesus Nazarenus, but the term βασιλείς, meaning king, is missing except for the first letter, which is Vita [Beta]. But the Latin is thus up to Ihesus Nazarenus re. The term rex is incomplete, ­because the letter X is missing.48

He went on to state that he was absolutely convinced of the genuineness of the relic, precisely ­because even expert philologists found it ­really hard to read Greek and Latin written from right to left. 47. Ibid., fol. 43v; 729: “Intra Arculam ipsam pars quaedam ligni, situ et vetustate extrema, undique minus solida, et integra prae se ferens, grossitie fere duorum digitorum, Longitudinis unius palmi, et dimidij, latitudinis unius, posita est. In quo ligno, parte patente superiori, hi tituli triplici ordine, et his caracteribus, et triplici lingua Hebraica, Graeca, et latina sunt impressi, et ut conijci potest, stilo ferreo signati ac figurati: Et in primo ordine est hebraicus, in secundo Graecus, Tertio latinus.” 48. Ibid.: “Hebraicus brevisque, et sic se habet: ‫ ישו נצר מלך‬idest Ihesus Naz­ arenus Rex. Graecus sic. ις Ναζaραιρος β idest Ihesus Nazarenus, sed dictio βασιλείς, idest rex, non habet nisi primam literam, idest Vita. Latinus vero sic, et huc usque Ihesus Nazarenus re. rex dictio non est completa quia X litera deest.”

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 135 ]

­ here is absolutely no reason to doubt, reverend f­ather, that T this piece of wood is part of the most holy wood, on which our Savior hung, pierced with nails, and that t­ hese are r­ eally the headings of his gibbet, about which the evangelists testify, even if they [the titles] are discovered in this diminished condition, and on a damaged piece of the wood. What could we Christian believers hear or see or inspect that would be greater than this joy, [greater than] ­these most venerable relics? The title in Greek and the one in Latin could not be read easily—­even by ­people who are very well-­versed in ­these languages. That is to say, they ­were formed in the same reverse order of writing in which Hebrew letters are also written. For this reason, it seems right to extend greater credence as well as reverence to this object. For they preferred not to go against the first line with the Hebrew manner of inscribing letters.49

In the best antiquarian fashion, Leonardo used the material evidence—­the unusual direction of the writing on the Titulus— to argue for its authenticity. Presumably, he meant to suggest that it would have been difficult to find a forger who could have inscribed the texts in this distinctive form. Most remarkable of all, Leonardo explained—as none of the other witnesses did—­exactly how he had managed to decipher the inscriptions: I was summoned by the Magnificent Spanish Ambassadors, crammed in a crowd of dif­fer­ent kinds of p ­ eople, who w ­ ere 49. Ibid., fols. 43v–44r; 729: “Non est sane dubitandum, Reverende Pater, quin hoc lignum pars Illius sacratissimi ligni, in quo Salvator noster clavis fixus pependit. Et hoc vere esse illos titulos sui patibuli. De quibus Evangelistae testantur, licet sic diminuti, et sic in parte ligni diminuta reperiantur. Quo gaudio, quibus venerandissimis reliquiis, quid aliud maius a nobis Christi fidelibus, vel audiri, vel cerni, vel considerari potest? Titulus graecus, et latinus, haud facile etiam a peritissimis earum linguarum legi poterat. Sunt enim figurati eo ordine scribendi retrogradu, quo et literae Hebraicae conscribantur. Ex quo et maior fides et religio huic rei adhibenda videtur. Primo namque ordini literarum Hebraicarum inscribendi modo contraire noluerunt.”

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in such joy at the conquest of Granada; I read the aforesaid titles and I explained them and fashioned them (effinxi) with their characters and drew them out (extraxi). ­These [titles] have now been completed and made vis­ib ­ le in this way, but I do not send them to you in this form, your Reverence, even though I promised it before, ­because time is too short.50

Instead of using standard verbs for writing or copying, Leonardo chose much less common terms (effinxi [I fashioned], extraxi [I drew out]) to convey what he had done. They suggest that he did more than simply copy the text of the inscription. What did he do? Pierre Gassendi’s life of Peiresc shows that antiquarians sometimes asked friends for plaster casts of inscriptions of special interest. Peiresc, for instance, had the inscription of Duillius (Dessau ILS 65), a victory monument from the First Punic War, reproduced: “But it seems to have been thanks to the goodwill of a certain divinity that at the very moment when he was most anxious about it he received not only a transcript, done with the highest reliability and exquisite imitation, but also a plaster cast (gypseum ectypum). That enabled him to examine every­thing for himself and to go over the opinions and the supplements proposed by Chacon, Lipsius, and the o ­ thers, who had devoted their efforts to it.”51 In addition, Peiresc sought casts of the inscriptions of Scipio 50. Ibid., fol. 44r; 729–30: “Ego in confertissima multitudine varij generis accersitus [a variant form of arcessitus: Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2012), s.v. “accersitus”] a Magnificis Oratoribus Hispanis in tanto eorum gaudio conquisitae Granatae, praedictos titulos legi, et exposui, ac suis caracteribus effinxi, et extraxi: quos nunc sic effectos, et extractos ad tuam Reverentiam non mitto, licet ut supra sim pollicitus, prae temporis brevitate.” 51. Pierre Gassendi, Viri illustris Nicolai Claudii Fabricii de Peiresc, Senatoris Aquisextiensis, Vita, 3rd ed. (The Hague, 1655), 184: “Et tamen id videtur factum, non sine quodam numine; cùm eodem tempore agitaret curam obtinendi ejus Inscriptionis non modò apographum, summa fide, & exquisita imitatione confectum; sed etiam gypseum ectypum, ut consideraret ipse omnia, exploraretque iudicia, atque supplementa Ciaconii, Lipsii, & aliorum, qui in eam incubuerant curam.”

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 137 ]

Barbatus and of Herodes Atticus, from which he could ascertain the ancient forms of the Roman and Greek letters. Thus, the casts served him as an aid for the reconstruction of ancient scripts. In the mid-­sixteenth ­century, as William Sten­house has discovered, antiquarians and artists in Rome found yet another way to make mechanical reproductions of hard-­to-­read inscriptions. ­These ­were counter­parts to the squeezes, or paper impressions, that epigraphers have crafted since the late seventeenth ­century to help in reading inscriptions.52 As Jean Matal watched, the scholarly printer Antoine Lafréry filled the letters of an illegible inscription with ink, laid paper on top of it, covered that with sand, and pressed down ­until the letters ­were reproduced. Very similar are the instructions that an expert on inscriptions of all sorts, the eminent antiquarian Antonio Agustín, gave on how to print copies of inscriptions from metal or stone plates: Put the ink on top so that you bathe the ­whole surface with it. And right before it dries out put on it a sheet of white paper or two: and the letters ­will appear on the back in white. If you want to make them come out clearly, quickly place a second white sheet on this one. If the ink is not yet completely dry, it ­will come out the right way. If you ­can’t do that, to make the lettering that was written or printed backwards legible, you have to look at it from the other side and it w ­ ill be legible. Or rather, wash it with nut or linseed oil and it ­will appear on both sides. . . . ​All of ­these t­ hings are real and tried.53 52. William Sten­house, Reading Inscriptions and Writing Ancient History: Historical Scholarship in the Late Re­nais­sance, BICS Supplement 86 (London, 2005), 50, 53, 175. On the ­later use of squeezes, see Patrick Kragelund, “Rostgaard, Fabretti and Some Paper Impressions of Greek and Roman Inscriptions in the Danish Royal Library,” Analecta romana instituti Danici 29 (2003), 155– 73; Torsten Kahlert, “Unternehmungen großen Stils”: Wissenschaftsorganisa­ tion, Objektivität und Historismus im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2017), 147–51. 53. Antonio Agustín, Alveolus (Manuscrito Escurialense S-­II-18), ed. Cándido Flores Selles (Madrid, 1982), 91–92: “mette linchiostro sopra di modo che lavi bene la superficie con esso. et prima che si sechi mette sopra un foglio di carta

[ 138 ] Ch a pter 4

In the margin he added a further variant on the original instructions: Or smear the ink on the surface in such a way that the ink only stays in the cavity of the letters. That way the letters ­will come out black, not white. Three kinds of ink can be used: the common one, that for letter printing, and thirdly that for copper plates.54

When Leonardo, as he said, “drew the letters out,” he seems to have been carry­ing out a very similar pro­cess. Two further bits of evidence strengthen this hypothesis. Infessura remarked that the letters ­were “colored with red”—­very likely the result of an infusion of ink. In a second letter, part of which appears below, Leonardo informed Gherardi that he had sent Lorenzo himself his version of the text, as “represented in a palimpsest (in palincesto)”—­the technical term for a manuscript that has been overwritten.55 When Lafréry made his squeeze, he used a pen to fill in spaces where the ink in the letters had not taken on the paper. Leonardo’s curious choice of terminology suggests that he was referring to a similar practical expedient. Though he did not send a copy of his facsimile to Gherardi, its nature seems clear. Leonardo ended his letter by recalling his visit to Gherardi’s collection and their shared enthusiasm for a special piece—­a jewel on which two Hebrew words ­were inscribed, seemingly by

bianca o due: et veniranno le lettere alla roversa bianche. Se vorrai far che vengano bene: subito sopra la istessa charta mette un altra bianca: se’l inchiostro non sara sutto o seco, venira al dritto. Se non potrai, per far che la scrittura scritta o stampata al roverso, si lega: guardala di laltra parte, et se legera. Overo lavala con olio di noce o di lino et apparira di tutti doi lati. . . . ​Tutte queste cose son vere, et provate.” 54. Ibid., 180.7: “overo netti la superficie cosi imbrattata d’inchiostro, di maniera che l’inchiostro resti solamente nel cavo delle lettere. et cosi ven / . . . ​/ no le lettere negre et non bianche. Tre sorti d’inchiostro si possono adoperare: il commune, di stampa de lettere, et il terzo quel de dissegni di rame.” 55. Vat. lat. 3912, fol. 46r–­v; the text is provided in n. 66 below.

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 139 ]

natu­ral ­causes. This compliment looks, at least at first glance, suspiciously like a flattering distraction from the missing facsimile of the Titulus: My recollection of that famous l­ ittle stone of yours on which nature has formed the following words: ‫אני אומר‬, namely Ani homer [I say], also strongly prompted me to share with you this ­matter that is so venerable and gracious. This eve­ning the ­whole town shows signs of joy, ­because Granada has been conquered. The sky is burning with fireworks. The earth resonates with cannon. Tomorrow, on Sunday, our most Holy Lord ­will gather in San Giacomo degli Spagnoli with the ­whole Curia and say mass. Fare thee well, your Reverence, and may you always love me, as usual, and think me worthy of commendation to our most reverend lord cardinal and to the most famous man, his ­father, who are my only lords.56 Given at Rome, in the ­house of the most reverend Lord of Parma, on 4 February 1492. Leonardo of Sarzana to Jacopo of Volterra57

But ­there may be more to Leonardo’s “recollection of that famous ­little stone” than appears at first glance, more than just a diversion from the missing Titulus. Alan Nagel and Christopher Wood have pointed out that the “Titulus Crucis occupied a position at the intersection” of two enterprises: “the cult of relics 56. I.e., Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, cardinal since 1489, and his ­father, Lorenzo. 57. Vat. lat. 3912, fol. 44r-­v: “Recordatio Lapilli illius tui in quo hec verba natura finxit: ‫ אני אומר‬idest Ani homer, etiam multum me movit, ut te participem huiuscemodi venerandae et salutaris rei facerem. Hoc vesperi tota civitas ob adeptam Granatam signa laetitiae facit. Coelum ardet luminaribus. Terra tormentis reboat. Cras, qui est Dies Dominicus, in Sancto Jacobo Hispanorum Sanctissimus Dominus noster cum tota Curia supplicia peraget. Bene valeat Reverentia vestra, et me amet semper, ut solita est, et Reverendissimo Domino Cardinali nostro, et clarissimo viro Genitori suo, Dominis meis unicis aliquando dignemini me commendare. Datum Romae: in aedibus Reverendissimi Domini Parmensis die quarto Februarii MCCCCXCII.”

[ 140 ] Ch a pter 4

and the historical study of inscriptions.”58 Leonardo’s correspondence confirms and amplifies this connection: it shows that he, even more systematically than Burckard, brought the full complement of antiquarian techniques to bear on a Christian relic. Like many epigraphers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he wrote a letter to report in detail on the discovery and first interpretation of an inscription. Like them, he went into detail about his practices as well as about his results. And like them, he wielded ­every tool he could find to pursue his inquiry, from precise mea­sure­ment to mechanical reproduction.59 The fusion between relic hunting and antiquarianism seems complete. Leonardo’s passing remark at the end of the letter confirms this impression but also expands on it. Gherardi clearly owned inscribed gems—­just the sort of marvelous natu­ral object that often flanked relics in cathedral trea­suries and antiquities in Re­nais­sance collections.60 Long ago, John Spencer told the tale of how the humanist Antonio Ivani da Sarzana explored an Etruscan tomb outside Volterra in 1466. He found it surprising that Ivani wrote at even greater length about the Volterran cliff studded with fossil shells and sea urchin spikes, now known to geologists as the city’s Big Miocene Wall.61 But in fact, as Leonardo’s letter suggests, such interests w ­ ere normal for 58. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Re­nais­sance, 221. 59. See William Sten­house, “Monumental Letters in the Late Re­nais­sance,” in Communicating Observations in Early Modern Letters (1500–1675): Epis­ tolography and Epistemology in the Age of the Scientific Revolution, ed. Dirk van Miert (London, 2013), 73–88; Dirk van Miert, “Philology and Empiricism: Observation and Description in the Correspondence of Joseph Scaliger (1540– 1609),” ibid., 89–113. 60. See Katharine Park, “Impressed Images: Reproducing Won­ders,” in Pic­ turing Science, Producing Art, ed. Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison (New York, 1998), 254–71, and more generally Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Muse­ ums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994). 61. John Spencer, “Volterra, 1466,” Art Bulletin 48, 1 (1966), 95–96, at 96. On the Big Miocene Wall, see Karsten Eig, “Volterra: Ancient Sea in Beautiful Tuscany,” Adventures in Geology—­Karsten Eig, 21 October 2016, https://­karsteneig​ .­no​/­2016​/­10​/­volterra​-­ancient​-­sea​-­in​-­beautiful​-­tuscany​/­.

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 141 ]

antiquarians—­especially ­because, in this case, Ivani could connect them with a text. He knew from Suetonius that Caligula, when his planned invasion of Britain sputtered out, ordered his soldiers to collect conchas (seashells)—­a punishment for their failure whose interpretation still sends philologists into b ­ attle with one another.62 Perhaps, he conjectured, they had abandoned their humiliating load of shells at Volterra, on their way back to Rome.63 Antiquarians and relic hunters, in other words, ­were equally catholic in their interest in objects: both gathered 62. Suetonius, Gaius 46. See David Woods, “Caligula’s Seashells,” Greece & Rome 47, 1 (2000), 80–87; Woods reviews the varied interpretations of the passage and himself takes the conchas to be small boats. 63. Antonio Ivani to Nicodemo Tranchedini, 18 November 1466, Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 834, fol. 212r. ­Here Ivani copies for Tranchedini a letter to someone named Ludovico, in which he describes the cliff and attempts to provide a historical explanation for the appearance of shells at a distance from the ocean: Aliam hic ego rem haud minori dignam admiratione comperio. Nam extra suburbium per quod itur versus pisas est collis quidam ad instar excelsi scopuli vie finitimus trecentum forte cubitorum in longitudine spacium complectens minime lapidosus, ymo terra formatus, adeo arida solidaque quod preter inanes conchas nihil gignit. Altitudo eius esse videtur cubitorum sexaginta, et apparet in eo tantus concharum numerus ut longa hominum opera in facie ipsius collis fixe videantur, disiuncte enim sunt, et cum evellimus facilime franguntur ob earum vetustatem gracilitatemque. Varia est hic hominis opinio, cum enim distet a mare hec civitas millia duodecim passuum, et res ipse preter naturam in huiusmodi locis esse videantur, nullam audio dici rationem, que animo insedeat meo. Nisi forte C. galicola iussu cuius romani milites in littore [MS littor with u written over it] oceani conchas colligerunt, ut eas romam afferent tanquam tributum ab oceano senatui missum: sepelliri iussisset hic eas commonefactus ab amicis: aut ipse denique suam levitatem natureque perversitatem animadvertens. Nec mirum. Supplex enim veniam scelerum suorum petens ab obvio senatu ad urbem rediit, haud multo post interfectus. Suetonius testatur iussisse illum militibus conchas colligere cum pugnandi adversus britanos occasio esset adempta, ubi postea eas collocaret. Et unde he quidem innumerose huc advecte sint iudicium sit domini Augustini vestri et preceptorum eius.

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natu­ral marvels as well as products of h ­ uman artistry. Some relic hunters commissioned artists to fashion reliquaries from ostrich eggs and animal horns, in forms that challenged the onlooker to find the point where nature ended and art began.64 In this period, moreover, gems and precious stones engraved in a convincingly antique style became fash­ion­able in Florence, prob­ ably inspired by the true image of Christ engraved in a smeraldo that was said to have been among the gifts of Sultan Bayezid II to Pope Innocent.65 For Leonardo—if not for Burckard—­the Titulus was a trendy as well as an ancient object, a remarkable survival in its substance as well as in the difficult, mysterious inscription that demanded his best skills. Even a­ fter the marriage of antiquarianism and relic hunting (which now seem quite dif­fer­ent disciplines) was consummated, prob­lems remained—­especially when it came to reproducing the exact form and wording of the texts on the Titulus for readers outside Rome, and to authenticating the object itself. If the transcriptions in the Vatican manuscript of Leonardo’s letter reproduce his palimpsest, it was inaccurate. He gave the Greek word for “Nazarene” as Ναζaραιρος, in the nominative singular. This is the case one would expect in an adjective modifying the name Jesus. In fact, though, the Titulus reads Ναζαρενους, a misspelled accusative plural (John 19:20 reads Ναζωραῖος). On the other hand, when Leonardo filled out the word beginning with a 64. See, e.g., Livia Cárdenas, Friedrich der Weise und das Wittenberger Heil­ tumbuch: Mediale Repräsentation zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Berlin, 2002); Das Hallesche Heiltumbuch von 1520: Nachdruck zum 450. Gründungs­ jubiläum der Marienbibliothek zu Halle, ed. Heinrich Nickel (Halle, 2001), fols. [3r, 37v, 72v, 103v] and 291. 65. See Philine Helas, “Il ‘Redentore’ di Tiziano e l’invenzione di un ritratto storico del Salvatore,” in L’immagine di Cristo. Dall’acheropita alla mano d’artista. Dal tardo medioevo all’età barocca, ed. Christoph Frommel and Gerhard Wolf (Vatican City, 2006), 341–73, at 346–47; Lore Börner, Die italienischen Medaillen der Re­nais­sance und des Barock (1450 bis 1750) (Berlin, 1997), 92–93, no. 348; on Lorenzo de’ Medici’s collection, see Sarah Blake McHam, Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Re­nais­sance: The Legacy of the Natu­ral History (New Haven, 2013), 207–8.

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 143 ]

Greek beta, he wrote “βασιλείς, idest rex”—­though βασιλεῖς is the nominative plural of the Greek word for king, βασιλεύς. ­These variants may have resulted from scribal error in the transmission of Leonardo’s letters. More serious is the question of Leonardo’s attitude. In a second letter to Gherardi, he explained that he had sent his reproduction of the Titulus not to his friend but to Lorenzo himself: I sent the title of the Holy Cross, in a palimpsest marked with the same characters, with the letters equally long and with the writing in a backward direction, in the manner of the Hebrews, just as is found on the most venerable piece of wood, to Lorenzo de’ Medici il Magnifico, the safe refuge of knowledgeable men, only a few days a­ fter I had written to you, F ­ ather. I did this, although I thought that the most reverend prelate himself and you, ­Father, would not be in Florence at that time, as was said. But I am sure that His Magnificence has received every­thing that I had sent at that time, and that you, F ­ ather, have already examined and already read through all of it.66

He also thanked Gherardi for reading his letter to the Florentine humanists. And the terms in which he expressed his gratitude are striking. It was entirely normal for a humanist to insist on his own modesty and that of his accomplishments. But Leo­ nardo went well beyond the norms of captatio benevolentiae, demeaning his careful decipherment in a passage studded with classical allusions: 66. Leonardo, fols. 46r–­v: “Titulum ipsum sanctae Crucis in Palincesto figuratum eisdem characteribus, ea litterarum longitudine, et scriptionis retrogrado ordine, ut hebrei solent, et quantum in ipso venerandissimo ligno reperitur, paucis post diebus quam ad ipsam Paternitatem tuam scripseram, ad Magnificum Laurentium medices, certum peritorum virorum confugium, misi. Cum putarem Reverendissimum ipsum Praesulem, tuamque Paternitatem Florentiae, ut ferebatur, tunc non esse. Haud ambigo suam Magnificenciam ea omnia tunc a me missa accepisse: Tuamque Paternitatem ea omnia jam oculis perlustrasse, iamque perlegisse.”

[ 144 ] Ch a pter 4

But you, ­Father, if I understand correctly, are striving to gain far greater fame for me, since you ventured to pass on my trifles and follies, even though they are quite pointless, by rereading them to such knowledgeable men. For you write and report that Poliziano, Acciaiuoli, Pico della Mirandola, the bishop of Arezzo [Cosimo de’ Pazzi], and fi­nally our most venerable prelate [Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, l­ ater Leo X]—­wise men (sophoi) of the kind that cannot be found in the entire world—­have reread it [my letter] and “have been hugely amused by the reading,” to use your own words and description. W ­ hether you w ­ ere pleased that praising and extolling me worked so well, I am not sure. For ears of this kind have not made a habit of listening to and putting up with anything that is common, that has been displayed in public, that has not been suppressed ­until the tenth year,67 that does not taste of bitten fingernails,68 and that has not been many times slaughtered in advance by the asterisk and obelisk [i.e., edited] and annotated. But I still owe you, F ­ ather, huge thanks for your good w ­ ill, especially ­because you made me welcome and commended me with your oration to our most reverend prelate himself, and ­because you promised you would do the same ­toward his magnificent f­ ather [i.e., Lorenzo de’ Medici], as soon as his health would allow.69 67. Horace, Ars Poetica 388: “nonumque prematur in annum.” 68. Persius, Satirae 1.106. 69. Leonardo, fol. 46r: “Sed longe maius mihi nomen celebritatis ipsa Paternitas tua, si recte intueamur, hinc parere nititur, cum meas hujuscemodi ineptias, ac liberas naenias, [nullo] licet argumento polleant, eas relegendas adeo peritissimis viris tradere praesumpserit. Politianum nanque, Acciaiolum, Picum Mirandulum, Antistitem Aretinum, demum Reverendissimum Praesulem nostrum, quales toto Orbe Sophoi non habentur, relegisse eas, ac earum lectione mirifice oblectatos, ut suo utar vocabulo, scribit illa et refert, quod an voluptati suae, sic mei celebrandi, extollendique, bene successerit, haud profecto scio. Neque enim hujuscemodi aures quicquam commune, cui sit publica scena, quod decies pressum in annum non fuerit, quod demorsos non sapiat ungues, quodque asterisco ac obelisco saepius praejugulatum ac annotatum non extiterit audire, et pati consueverunt.

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 145 ]

Leonardo confessed that his letter had not met the standards for publication set by Horace and Persius, and even described it as a set of pointless trifles and follies, which had rightly amused its erudite hearers. The Florentine humanists in Lorenzo’s circle ­were not known for showing pious reverence to sacred objects. Leonardo seems to have wanted to give the impression that he expected them to view the Titulus skeptically and that he shared their attitude. Did he r­ eally believe that the Titulus was genuine? How much did providing a scrupulously accurate description of it r­ eally m ­ atter to him? ­These same questions would be posed even more directly by the multiple versions of the Titulus created in the years to come. On the one hand, witnesses agreed that it was the very piece of wood that bore the inscription that had been used to mock the Savior. As Infessura put it, “Every­one believes this is the tablet that Pilate attached to the cross above the head of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Dei Conti saw the damage that the board had under­gone as further evidence of its genuineness: “­Those first words, Iesus Nazarenus rex, remained, with the wood, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. The rest of it seemed to have been mutilated, ­either by the spiteful Jews, who resented, even as the event was taking place, that our Redeemer was also titled the King of the Jews, or by some other accident.”70 Even though the first sketches and squeezes of the Titulus are mostly lost, save the one in the anonymous letter, more elaborate efforts at reproduction have survived. Artists, including Luca Signorelli and Michelangelo in Florence and ­others in Spain and the Holy Paternitatis tamen tuae bonae menti ingentes ago et habeo gratias, vel ex eo quoque, quod me Reverendissimo ipsi Praesuli nostro, oratione sua gratum commendatumque reddidit, quodque idem se facturum polliceatur erga magnificum ejus Genitorem, cum primum per valetudinem licuerit.” 70. Dei Conti, Storie, 1:375: “Prima illa verba: Iesus Nazarenus rex, hebraice, graece et latine cum ligno extabant; reliqua pars detruncata videbatur sive iudeorum invidia, qui etiam dum gesta res est, moleste tulerunt ipsum Redemptorem Nostrum et Regem Iudaeorum inscribi, sive alio aliquo casu.”

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Roman Empire, rapidly began to replace the traditional board with the four letters INRI in their depictions of the Crucifixion with versions of the Titulus. On the other hand, even as the Titulus was reproduced again and again, the details of its appearance became more and more obscure. Hartmann Schedel bought and preserved three broadsides that offered readers in the Holy Roman Empire versions of the inscription. All claimed to be accurate. One assured readers: “This is the Title of the Holy Cross, which stood above it, and has now, in December 1492, been found ­here at Rome in the Church of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, walled in above an arch, the same one before which a large piece of the Cross of the Good Thief has always hung.”71 Yet each of ­these versions gave the inscription in a dif­fer­ent form. Two tried to reproduce its lettering. In one, the writing went, as in the original, from right to left (see figure 4.7). According to its caption, written in German, it was an exact facsimile: “This rediscovered piece of the Title had the length and width and the number and form of the words and letters that is drawn and shown in the figure set above this.”72 In the other, the lettering—­even in Hebrew—­went from left to right (see figure 4.8). In this version, the word for Nazarene appears as Ναζαρςνους (“Nazarsnous”), and it reads βα rather than simply β where the Greek lettering breaks off. 71. Titulus crucis woodcut (Nuremberg, ­after 1492), Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rara 287, fol. 334v: “Das ist der titel des hailigen Creutz der oben gestanden ist und ist ytzunt in dem December 1492 hye in Rom gefunden in der kirchen zum heiligen Creutz In Jherusalem ober einem schwipogen vermawert und gleich der selbig davor allweg gehangen ist ein groß langs stuck von dem Creutz do der behalten schacher an gehangen ist.” 72. Ibid., fol. 334r: “Welches gefundens stucke des titels die grosse lenge und praite Und auch die zal und gestalt der wort und puchstaben gehabt hat. Wie die ob[en] gesatzt figur verzaichent und gestalt ist.” On the terminology of this caption, see Peter Schmitt, “Heilsvermittlung und Reproduktion: die Mediengeschichte der Gnadenbildkopie im Ausgehenden Mittelalter,” in Original—­ Kopie—­Zitat: Kunstwerke des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit: Wegen der Aneignung, Formen der Überlieferung, ed. Wolfgang Augustyn and Ulrich Söding (Passau, 2010), 389–93.

figure 4.7. A woodcut with what purports to be a facsimile of the three inscriptions on the Titulus of the True Cross. Hartmann Schedel preserved this and other woodcuts that brought the Titulus inscription to a large public by pasting them into his own working copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), which he designed and edited. Latin, Greek, and Hebrew run from right to left, as Hebrew normally does, and are given in rough facsimile. ­After 1492. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rara 287#Beibd. 6, p. 0001, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb00102722-7.

figure 4.8. A second Titulus crucis woodcut, with all three languages ­running from left to right. Nuremberg, ­after 1492. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rara 287#Beibd. 6, p. 0002, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb00102722-7.

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 149 ]

Clearly, it neither gave the correct Greek forms nor reproduced the flawed inscription on the discovered tablet. Yet its caption, also in German, claimed that it reproduced the original exactly, from autopsy: “this is the width, length, and size of the tablet, and exactly all the letters and forms that ­were engraved in the board, as I saw with my own eyes.”73 A third version, printed in Vienna in 1501, provided a text that had been corrected and filled out in standard Hebrew and Greek (see figure 4.9). This time, the caption—in Latin rather than German, and disfigured by an apparent misspelling—­described the reproduction as “approved by men of high standing who have an excellent mastery of Hebrew and Greek as well as Latin”: corrected, in other words, to regularize spelling and grammar (not to mention the direction of the Latin and Greek, which in this version went from left to right, in the normal way).74 Evidently humanists already took the position l­ ater ­adopted by Gymnasium (secondary school) teachers in Germany: ­every Greek text had to be squeezed into the standard Attic dialect by diligent philology students. An additional poem ad lectorem, composed in Latin elegiac couplets and placed beneath the philologically emended repre­sen­ta­tion of the Titulus, admonished the reader that “we should therefore venerate the ­little marks for the sake of the threefold God, so that the grim trident of Zeus does not harm us.”75 A final broadside, printed in Memmingen in 1493, offered yet another version, which made no effort to reproduce the special features of the original (see figure 4.10). The (very flawed) 73. Titulus crucis woodcut (Nuremberg, ­after 1492), Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rara 287, fol. 334v: “und ist dies die breyt lenng und grosse von der tafel und gleich alle buchstaben unn form als dann in dem pret gegraben sint als ich dann mit meinen augen hab gesehn.” 74. Titulus crucis woodcut (Vienna, 1501), Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rara 287, fol. 333v: “Hic titulus Ihesu Christi : a viris clarissimis : qui & hebraeam & graecam linguam cum latina perclare [praeclare?] callent approbatus est.” 75. Ibid.: “Has igitur notulas ob numina trina colamus / Ne nobis noceant saeva trisulca Iovis.”

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figure 4.9. A third Titulus crucis woodcut, in which the Hebrew and Greek have been corrected in accordance with strict linguistic standards, and no effort has been made to provide facsimiles. Vienna, 1501. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rara 287#Beibd 5, Bl. 333v, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb00102841-7.

Greek line comes first, ­running from left to right, followed by its Hebrew counterpart, r­ unning from right to left, and fi­nally the Latin version of the inscription in the third line, which again follows the normal direction from left to right. What makes this print in­ter­est­ing is an interlinear commentary that serves as a linguistic aid. The Greek and Hebrew characters did not need to be correct, b ­ ecause transcriptions from the foreign scripts into the Latin alphabet appeared beneath them. For the line in Latin, where no transcription was necessary, the commentary provides a translation into German: “Jhesus von Nazareth ain Kúnig der iúden” (Jesus of Nazareth, a King of the Jews). The caption of this version is also of considerable interest, since it makes clear how the text of the Titulus could be used in prayer: This is the most victorious Title or heading (Greek, Hebrew, and Latin) of the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Whoever utters this title in three languages ­w ill be granted a thousand and a hundred and eight years of indulgence for their deadly sins by Pope Innocent VIII. It was found in the Church of the Holy Cross in Rome in 1493. And

figure 4.10. This woodcut of the Titulus crucis adds phonetic guides to the pronunciation of the Greek and Hebrew. ­These are designed to help German-­ speaking readers to make the devotions that, as the text of the woodcut promises, ­will yield g ­ reat spiritual benefits. Memmingen, 1493. Augsburg, Staats-­und Stadtbibliothek, broadsides before 1500, no. 41.

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as often as a person recites it while they are ringing or reading nones or the Schidung [i.e., the ringing of bells on Friday at 3 p.m. in memory of Jesus’s hour of death].76

It seems more than likely that such customs spread as artists reproduced the wording of the Titulus, what­ever form they gave it. The aims of ­these publications w ­ ere manifold, ranging from teaching the correct pronunciation of Jesus’s titles, spurred by the expectation of gaining indulgences, to providing a painstaking reproduction of the letter forms, motivated by the ambition to impress the humanist circle in Florence. It is striking to note that even though Schedel compiled an epigraphic sylloge and knew Italy at first hand, neither he nor any other reader, however expert, could have found out for certain from outside Rome what the Titulus actually read, or what its scripts looked like.77 Though the reappearance of the Titulus inspired artists to change their portrayals of the Crucifixion, they did not reproduce it in facsimile. The young Michelangelo, for example, placed a restored version at the top of the wooden crucifix that he made for Santo Spirito in Florence in 1492 or just ­after (see figure 4.11). The fine Italian hand of Poliziano may be vis­i­ble in the Greek, which has been corrected, like that of the ­later Vienna broadside, to match the wording in John’s Gospel, and the Hebrew, which has been regularized.78 76. Titulus crucis woodcut (Memmingen, 1493), Augsburg, Staats-­und Stadtbibliothek, single broadside before 1500, no. 41: “Das ist der aller Sighafftigiste Tittel oder Übergeschrifft (Griechisch, Hebraisch und Latinisch) des Creutzes unsers herren Jesu Christi. Wer disen Tittel in den drey sprachen spricht, der erlangt cviij.M. iar ablas tödtlicher súnd. Von bapst Innocentij d. 8. des namens. Auch zú der zeit ist er gefunden worden zum h. Creutz zú Rom. 1493. Und als offt in ain mensch spucht so man die Non oder Schidung ist leúten od[er] lesen.” 77. Christopher Wood, “Early Archaeology and the Book Trade: The Case of Peutinger’s Romanae vetustatis fragmenta (1505),” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28, 1 (1998), 83–118. 78. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Re­nais­sance, 236, note that in place of ‫( היהודים‬the Jews), the Hebrew reads ‫ ;מיהודים‬they suggest that it could be a

figure 4.11. Leonardo da Sarzana’s letter about the Titulus crucis woodcut was directed, through his correspondent in Florence, to Angelo Poliziano and other scholars. It seems likely that one or more of them helped Michelangelo produce the elegant, corrected version of the Titulus that appears on his Crucifix for Santo Spirito, Florence, which he crafted in or just a­ fter 1492. The three texts have been corrected. Though their wording is incomplete, as it should be, Michelangelo represented them as complete. Florence, Sacristy of Santo Spirito. Wikimedia, Creative Commons License.

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By 1493 artists in the Holy Roman Empire, perhaps inspired by the prints, incorporated versions of the rediscovered Titulus in sculptures and paintings. But they too showed ­little concern for exactitude. The Master of the Bartholomew Altarpiece, a Netherlandish painter active in Cologne in the de­cades around 1500, depicted the Titulus in a number of paintings. The crucifixion panel in his Altarpiece of the Holy Cross, in the Wallraf-­ Richartz Museum, shows it with the Hebrew concealed, and the Greek and Latin, both clearly incomplete, lettered from left to right. In a Descent from the Cross in the Louvre, the Hebrew, which is random, moves from right to left; the Greek, which is equally random, from left to right. So does the Latin, which is shown as complete, though partly concealed. In another Descent from the Cross, in the National Gallery in London, only the Hebrew, again random, is vis­i­ble. But in a third version, now in Philadelphia, while the Hebrew is not vis­i­ble, the Greek and Latin lines are worded as in the relic and lettered from right to left. Even h ­ ere, however, the painter illogically depicted the board as intact, though the inscription on it was fragmentary.79 Nagel and Wood, impressed as ­others have been by the rapid diffusion of the discovery in print and other media, interpret t­ hese discrepancies as evidence of widespread doubt about ­whether the Roman Titulus was genuine: it was, they argue, “revered as a relic but disrespected as evidence.”80 Marianne Ritsema van Eck notes, as do Nagel and Wood, that the rediscovery itself was staged and that multiple existing stories made it seem implausible that the relic could be real. She treats the story as an early case of something that has recently become all too familiar: fake news.81 T ­ hese suggestions deserve further exploration. deliberate variation, so that the inscription meant “from the Jews” rather than of them, though they rightly incline to treat it as an error. 79. Ibid., 225. 80. Ibid., 239. 81. Marianne Ritsema van Eck, “Fake News in Fifteenth-­Century Rome: The Miraculous Rediscovery of the Titulus Crucis Relic,” Leiden Medievalists Blog,

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 155 ]

True, the Titulus never became one of Rome’s most attractive relics. The large fragment of the Holy Cross left to Santa Croce in Gerusalemme by Helen, now in Saint Peter’s Basilica, impressed visitors more than the small, illegible Titulus in its reliquary. The Catholic biblical scholar Gregory Martin, who visited Rome in the jubilee year of 1575, gave a long account of “that peece of the very holie Crosse it self which the aforsayd Helena the Empress sent to her sonne Constantine a­ fter she had found it.” The Titulus earned only a brief mention, as “Parte of the title of the Crosse with the latin, Greeke and Hebrew letters.”82 The recusant Henry Piers, who also described the church, did not even mention the Titulus.83 Nor did a hostile witness, the Protestant polemicist Anthony Munday, though he found room to remark on the “big piece of wood, which they likewise say to be a piece of the cross whereon Christ was crucified.”84 The most notorious iconophobe of the sixteenth ­century, Calvin, mocked the Titulus mercilessly. He claimed that it was far too neat to be genuine, and pointed out that parts of it had turned up in other places besides Rome: Someone w ­ ill say to me that the church historian Socrates [Scholasticus (ca. 380–ca. 439 CE)] rec­ords it.85 I confess it. But he says nothing at all of what became of it. So this testimony is not of g ­ reat value. Furthermore, this was something written in haste and the work of a moment, a­ fter Jesus Christ was crucified. Therefore, to display an elaborately made tablet, as though to put it on display, is beside the point. Thus, 11 May 2018, https://­leidenmedievalistsblog​.­nl​/­articles​/­fake​-­news​-­in​-­fifteenth​ -­century​-­rome​-­the​-­miraculous​-­discovery​-­of​-­the​-­titulus. 82. Gregory Martin, Roma sancta, ed. George B. Parks (Rome: Storia e letteratura, 1956), 36–37. 83. Henry Piers’s Continental Travels, 1595–1598, ed. Brian Mac Cuarta SJ, Camden Fifth Series, 54 (London, 2018), 92–93. 84. Anthony Munday, The En­glish Roman Life, ed. Philip Ayres (Oxford, 1980), 56. 85. Socrates Scholasticus, Historia ecclesiastica 1.17.

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even ­were ­there only one, we could regard it as a fake and a fiction. But when the city of Toulouse boasts of having it, and ­those of Rome contradict them, displaying it in the Church of Santa Croce, each refutes the other. Let them b ­ attle it out as much as they like. In the end, both parties w ­ ill be convicted of falsehoods as soon as the ­thing itself is examined.86

In this case, Calvin may have fired his shells at a target that his enemies did not value quite as much as he thought they did. But opinions w ­ ere not uniform. Scholars with an interest in ancient languages found the Titulus engrossing, and on the ­whole considered it genuine. The Dominican Hebraist Sante Pagnini, for example, cited it as his authority for the correct spellings of the Hebrew name of Jesus and the adjective notzri (Nazarene): “And that is how it is in the Titulus of the salvific cross, which is in the Church of Santa Croce in Rome, which I have both seen and read many times.”87 The Jewish scholar Aza86. Jean Calvin, Advertissement tres utile du ­grand proffit qui reviendroit à la chrestienté s’il se faisoit inventoire de tous les corps saincts et reliques qui sont tant en Italie, qu’en France, Allemaigne, Hespaigne, & autres Royaumes & pays (Geneva, 1543), 31–32: “Quelcun me dira, que Socratés historien de l’eglise en faict memoire. Ie le confesse. Mais il ne dit point qu’il est deuenu. Ainsi ce tesmoignage n’est pas de ­grand valeur. D’auantage, ce fut vne escriture faicte à la haste, & sur le champ, apres que IESVS Christ fut crucifié. Pourtant, de monstrer vn tableau curieusement faict, comme pour tenir en monstre, il n’y a nul propos. Ainsi, quand il n’y en auroit qu’vn seul, on le pourroit tenir pour vne faulseté & fiction. Mais quand la ville de Thoulouse se vante de l’auoir, & ceux de Rome y contredisent, le monstrant en l’eglise de sainte croix: Ilz dementent l’un l’autre. Qu’ilz se combatent donc tant qu’ilz voudront. En la fin toutes les deux parties seront conuaincues de mensonge, quand on voudra examiner ce qui en est.” For Calvin’s critique of relics, see Spencer Weinreich, “An Infinity of Relics: Erasmus and the Copious Rhe­toric of John Calvin’s Traité des reliques,” Re­nais­sance Quarterly 74, 1 (2021), 137–80, whose translation we borrow. 87. Sante Pagnini, “Liber interpretationum Hebraicorum Graecorumque nominum,” in Biblia (Lyon, 1528), sig. g iiir: “Nazarenus a nazareth dictum plerique putant cum Z. Sed scribendum est cum s, quia Hebraice scribitur cum sadi. Et sic est in titulo salutiferae crucis, qui est Rhomae in templo sanctae crucis, quem pluries & vidi, & legi, sic habente Iesuah nosraeus rex Iehudaeorum”; sig. gr: “Iesua, alias Iesu, alias Iesue, scribe Iesuah. I.Paral.xxiiij.b.Hez.ij.a.Nech.

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 157 ]

riah de’ Rossi, who examined images of the Crucifixion in Italian churches, found them fascinating, even if he argued that Pontius Pilate would actually have used Aramaic rather than Hebrew.88 Most striking is the testimony of an expert on inscriptions of all sorts, Antonio Agustín.89 Never uncritical in his approach to texts and antiquities, he made clear, in a work posthumously published in 1587 (at the height of Catholic efforts to defeat the Protestants and reform the church), that not every­thing displayed in a church as a relic deserved reverence. In Agustín’s dialogues on coins and inscriptions, a character designated A, who stood for him, admitted that Santa Croce in Gerusalemme displayed a coin that was supposedly one of the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas. But he doubted that it was genuine.90 Why then, asked his interlocutor B, did the church keep it as a relic?91 “For the same reason,” A answered, that in the Monastery of Poblet they keep a die as large as four of the ones used nowadays, and it is made of red jasper,

xi.d.i.salus.Psal. 3. Domini est Iesuah, & hoc nomen Iesuah est nomen salvatoris, & sic est in titulo crucis, qui est Romae in templo sanctae crucis.” On Pagnini, see Dizionario biografico degli italiani, s.v. “Pagnini, Antonio Baldino (Sante),” by Saverio Campanini, 80 (2015); for his interest in the Titulus, see Rigato, Il Titolo della Croce, 237. 88. Joanna Weinberg, “The Beautiful Soul: Azariah de’ Rossi’s Search for Truth,” in Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy, ed. David Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (Philadelphia, 2004), 109–26, at 122– 23; Weinberg, Azariah de’ Rossi’s Observations on the Syriac New Testament: A Critique of the Vulgate by a Sixteenth-­Century Jew (London, 2005), 52–55. 89. Schwab, Antike begreifen, 81–85. 90. Antonio Agustín, Dialogos de medallas inscriciones y otras antiguedades (Tarragona, 1587), 27–28: “B . . . ​querria saber, si es verdad q[ue] en Roma se muestra uno de los treynta dineros en que vendio Iudas a nuestro Señor. . . . ​A. Verdad es q[ue] en santa Cruz de Hierusalem . . . ​se conserva una medalla. . . . ​ A. Pos­si­ble es, pero mas es de creer q[ue] le pagaron en siclos, o en otra moneda de aquella tierra, especialmente pues le pagaron de dinero publico.” 91. Ibid., 28: “B. Pues porque la tienen por reliquia en Roma con el titulo de la cruz?”

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and they say that is one of ­those that the servants of Pilate used to ­gamble or draw lots for the garments of Christ. ­Things like this are uncertain, and they do not deserve the good name of relics, since they w ­ ere the instrument of sins. Properly, holy relics are what remains to us of the bodies of the Saints and of their clothing.92

This sharply phrased critical passage seems to have struck readers forcibly when the text first appeared. One of the two Italian translations of Agustín’s book that appeared in 1592 omitted it; the other abridged it.93 Yet A insisted, just as pointedly, that the Titulus was “the best antiquity in the world.”94 In a notebook prob­ably written long before and now kept in the Library of the Escorial, Agustín mused in still more detail about the relic: “The title still exists in the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome, made of a piece of wood in which three l­ittle verses have been carved in three languages, which have been consumed by putrefaction. Further it seems that the part written in Latin and Greek was written by a Jew. For the letters march to the left, as the Jewish ones do.”95 Like 92. Ibid.: “A. Por la razon que tienen en el monesterio de Poblete un dado grande como quatro de los que agora se usan y es de jaspe colorado, y dizen que es uno del los q[ue] se sirvieron los ministros de Pilato en jugar o sortear las vestiduras de Christo. y semejantes cosas son inciertas, y no merecen tan buen nombre como de reliquias, pues fueron ministerio de pecados. Propriamente reliquias santas son lo que nos queda de los cuerpos de los Santos, y de sus vestiduras.” The Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Poblet was and is an ancient and magnificent Cistercian abbey. 93. Antonio Agustín, Dialoghi, trans. Dionisio Ottaviano Sada (Rome, 1592), 21–22; Discorsi (anonymous translation) (Rome, 1592), 14. On ­these two versions, see Federica Missere Fontana, Testimoni parlanti: Le monete antiche a Roma tra Cinquecento e Seicento (Rome, 2009), 37–54. 94. Agustín, Dialogos, 27: “A. Verdad es q[ue] en santa Cruz de Hierusalem, donde esta la mejor antigualla del mundo, que es el titulo de la cruz por la qual fuimos redemidos.” He describes the Fasti Capitolini as “la mejor antigualla que hai en Roma” (ibid., 384). 95. Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, MS S-­II18, fols. 20v–21r, edited in Antonio Agustín, Alveolus (Manuscrito Escurialense

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 159 ]

Leonardo da Sarzana, Agustín took the unusual direction of the Greek and Latin words as evidence that the Titulus was genuine. He found the Titulus satisfactory in ­every re­spect: plausible as an antiquity precisely ­because its inscription was so strange. Over time, both attacks on and defenses of the Titulus became more complex and sophisticated. The Protestant statesman and polemicist Philippe de Mornay focused his criticism on linguistic details. Catholics, he pointed out in his caustic treatise Mystery of Iniquity, or: History of the Papacy, claimed that a trilingual fragment of the True Cross had turned up in 1492, walled up in the Church of the Holy Cross. “The very letters deny this,” he wrote, “since instead of Ναζωραῖος it barbarously reads Ναζάρενους, with an e and in the accusative plural. Surely all t­ hose outstanding Roman antiquarians ­were not then blind?”96 Catholic scholars w ­ ere e­ ager to reply. The Augsburg historian Markus Welser, known as the creator of a print facsimile of the Peutinger Map, also had an engraved facsimile of the Titulus made (see figure 4.12). He noted that its letters, originally crude—­presumably a sign of their genuineness—­had been harmed by age, but he also pointed out that Alexander VI had vouched for “the truth and discovery” of the Titulus in his bull of 1496.97 The prolific German Jesuit Jacob Gretser, who knew the facsimile if not the original, found it easy to refute S-­II-18), ed. Candido Flores Selles (Madrid, 1982), 20–21, at 21: “titulum vero addi potuisse cruci in trabe superiore. Extat is titulus in aede Sanctae Crucis in Hierusalem Romae e ligno in quo tres versiculi trium linguarum exarati sunt carie consumpti. Videntur autem quae Latine et Graece scripta sunt, a Judaeo scripta esse. Nam in sinistram litterae progrediuntur, vt Judaicae.” 96. Philippe de Mornay, Mysterium iniquitatis seu historia papatus (Saumur, 1612), 1314: “Hanc sola ipsa elementa eiurant, cum pro Ναζωραῖος barbare scribitur Ναζάρενους, per e & in accusandi quidem casu plurali: insignes illi antiquarii Romani num omnes tum caeci?” 97. Titulus crucis engraving, Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Inv. Kr Z 409: “Imago Triumphalis Tituli vivificae Crucis D.N. Iesu Christi qualis hodie Romae apud Cistercien. intra Basilicam S. Crucis in Ierusalem seu intra Capellam S.um Reliquiarum conspicitur: cujus Tituli veritatem atque Inventionem

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figure 4.12. Markus Welser, an antiquarian who developed ­great expertise in epigraphy and paleography, defended the authenticity of the Titulus crucis against Protestant critics. He supervised the production of this engraving, which was meant to make the exact form and wording of the Titulus available to the learned public. Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Inv.-­Nr. Kr Z 409, Foto Nr. D158864, © Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München, Foto: Haberland, Walter.

Mornay—­and Calvin, in the bargain. Mornay’s “nitpicking” about the spelling of the Greek carried no weight. G ­ reat works of scholarship by Reformed critics—­Joseph Scaliger’s commentary on the Chronicle of Eusebius in his Thesaurus temporum of 1606 and Janus Gruter’s corpus of Greek and Roman inscriptions of 1602–3—­offered numerous parallels to the misspellings

Bulla Alex.VI. dat. Romae die 29. Iulii 1496. plene testatur: Characteres autem infabre tunc temporis sculptos ut vides vetustas paulatim læsit sed Hæbraicos magis.”

The Titulus of the True Cross [ 161 ]

in the Titulus.98 Calvin, for his part, had called the script of the Titulus elegant ­because he “transferred the elegance of the titles that sometimes appear in images of the crucified Christ into that first title.” But Welser’s facsimile revealed that the letters inscribed on the Titulus ­were anything but elegant.99 It does not seem that the relic’s credibility ever came seriously into question in Catholic circles. Still, reports about the Titulus varied in tone. Leonardo da Sarzana, whose account rested on sophisticated antiquarian techniques and who described the object and its inscription with painstaking precision, also showed a striking willingness to dismiss his own findings as a farrago of unreliable statements. How far w ­ ere his uncertainties connected to the relic in question? How far ­were they characteristic of relic hunting and antiquarian scholarship more generally? As we ­will see, pagan works of art w ­ ere also connected with ancient written sources and w ­ ere endlessly reproduced in drawings and prints. Still, they rarely if ever reached the public in an accurate, much less a verifiable, form. Did ­these apparently distinct pursuits ­really rely on dif­ fer­ent assumptions and methods?100 Further episodes, both profane and sacred, ­will show how hard it is to answer ­these questions. 98. Jacob Gretser, Opera omnia de sancta cruce (Ingolstadt, 1616), col. 96. 99. Ibid., col. 308. 100. For all their emphasis on material evidence, antiquarians regularly encountered difficulties when trying to provide accurate images of antiquities, to say nothing of interpretations that actually corresponded to the objects in question. See Francis Haskell, History and Its Images: Art and the Interpreta­ tion of the Past (New Haven, 1993), 13–111; Helen White­house, “­Towards a Kind of Egyptology: The Graphic Documentation of Ancient Egypt, 1587–1666,” in Documentary Culture: Florence and Rome from Grand-­Duke Ferdinand I to Pope Alexander VII, ed. Elizabeth Cropper, Giovanna Perini, and Francesco Soinas (Bologna, 1992), 63–79. On the slow pro­cess by which new visual and analytical tools ­were developed by the antiquarians of the seventeenth and eigh­ teenth centuries, see Gabriele Bickendorf, Die Historisierung der italienischen Kunstbetrachtung im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1998).

ch a p t er   f i v e

Disentangling Ancient Sources

The Laocoon came to light in January 1506, in a vault u ­ nder a vineyard near the ruined Golden House of the Roman emperor Nero—­a place to which we ­will return in the next chapter. A Roman gentleman, Felice de Fredis, found it while digging in his garden. The statue had been hidden ­there throughout the centuries—to save it, some of the early witnesses thought, from the barbarian invasions. Felice’s ­house still exists, as Rita Volpe and Antonella Parisi have shown, on what is now the property of the ­Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny. A millennium and a half before, this land had formed part of the gardens of Maecenas, the patron of the poet Horace. ­Later the emperor Titus built his massive public baths t­ here.1 The statue group of the Laocoon had been walled up “in a very ancient subterranean chamber 1. Rita Volpe and Antonella Parisi, Digital Sculpture Proj­ect: Laocoon, Lao­ coon: The Last Enigma, trans. Bernard Frischer, http://­www​.­digitalsculpture​.­org​ /­laocoon​/­volpe​_­parisi​/­index​.­html; Volpe and Parisi, “Alla ricerca di una scoperta: Felice de Fredis e il luogo di ritrovamento del Laocoonte,” Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 110 (2009), 81–110. For a more skeptical account of the place of discovery, see Agnes Henning, “Die Wiederentdeckung: Zur richtigen Zeit am richtigen Ort,” in Laokoon: Auf der Suche nach einem Meisterwerk, ed. Susanne Muth (Rahden, 2017), 57–66.

[ 162 ]

Disen ta ngling A ncien t Sources [ 163 ]

with a very beautiful pavement and wonderful wall decoration, and with a bricked-up entrance,” as the Bolognese secretary and writer Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti informed Isabella d’ Este by letter on 31 January 1506.2 But Sabadino was not an eyewitness. He copied the report of a friend to the cardinal of San Giorgio. Three other men had immediately rushed to the site at the pope’s command: Michelangelo Buonarroti, Giuliano da Sangallo, and Giuliano’s eleven-­year-­old son, Francesco, who was making his very first visit to the city of Rome. Francesco has provided us with what remains the only eyewitness account of the scrutiny of the sculpture, in a letter that he wrote to the Florentine scholar Vincenzio Borghini sixty-­one years l­ater. In it he recalled that his ­father “immediately said: this is Laocoon, which is mentioned by Pliny.”3 The two artists and the boy continued to dig, eagerly enlarging the hole so that the statue group could be hauled out of its hiding place. From that very first moment ­until ­today, the statue group has been associated with a specific passage in Pliny’s Natu­ral His­ tory (36.36–37). It describes the Laocoon as the most beautiful of all statues and paintings, carved in its entirety—­even Laocoon’s sons and the sinuous serpents that ­were killing them—­ out of a single marble block by three Greek artists (Hagesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus of Rhodes) and h ­ oused in the palace of the emperor Titus. The fact that the statue was still in its original place, ­under an earthen roof, when this connection was first made suggests just how natu­ral it seemed to move from an object to a text that appeared to correlate with it. Artists as 2. Sabadino degli Arienti: “una camera antiquissima subterranea bellissima pavimentata et incrustata mirifice et havava murato lo usso” (quoted in Sonia Maffei, “La fama di Laocoonte nei testi del Cinquecento,” in Salvatore Settis and Maffei, Laocoonte, Fama e stile [Rome, 2003], 85–230, at 104). 3. Francesco da Sangallo: “subito mio padre disse: ‘questo è Hilaoconte, che fa mentione Plinio.’ ” For the letter, see Carlo Fea, Miscellanea Filologica, cri­ tica e antiquaria, vol. 1 (Rome, 1790), 329–31; Maffei, “La fama,” 110–11; and Hans Henrik Brummer, The Statue Court in the Vatican Belvedere (Stockholm, 1970), 75.

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well as scholars knew their Pliny well enough to quote the Natu­ ral History even when they w ­ ere examining a broken sculpture more or less under­ground. What is more, they preferred to praise the beauty of the place where the sculpture was discovered and dwell on texts by ancient authors with a dubious connection to the discovered object than to describe the statue group itself, let alone its fragmentary condition. The identification of the Laocoon has been hailed as the beginning of classical archaeology—­the first use of a text to ascribe an ancient work of art to its maker. Luca Giuliani has described it as “nothing less than sensational.”4 In fact, when antiquarians used a text to identify or comment on an ancient work of art, they followed a conventional script—­a new one created in the fifteenth ­century. The ingenious and prolific forger Annius of Viterbo, for example, served in the Curia as “Magister sacri palatii,” the papal theologian. At some point he examined the bronze door sculpted by Filarete for Old Saint Peter’s Basilica, half a c­ entury before (see figure 5.1). Annius noticed that the artist had placed a tree between the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Meta Romuli (a pyramid in the Borgo, demolished in the sixteenth c­ entury). Pliny the Elder, he recalled, had described a particularly ancient tree in this region: “Even older than the city is the holm oak on the Vatican hill. On it an inscription in Etruscan characters made of bronze indicates that the tree was then the object of religious veneration.”5 Filarete’s sculpture, Annius argued, located Pliny’s tree: “An ancient tradition rec­ ords that this Vatican holm oak was between Saint Peter’s and the Castel Sant’Angelo. Pope Eugenius sculpted it in the doors of 4. Paolo Liverani, “Antikensammlung und Antikenergänzung,” in Hochre­ nais­sance im Vatikan: Kunst und Kultur im Rom der Päpste, vol. 1, 1503–1534, ed. Petra Kruse (Ostfildern-­Ruit, 1999), 227–35, at 227; Luca Giuliani, “Laokoons Ruhm und dessen kontingente Gründe im frühen 16. Jahrhundert,” in Laokoon, ed. Muth, 83–86, at 85. 5. Pliny the Elder, Natu­ral History 16.87.237: “Vetustior urbe in Vaticano est ilex: in qua titulus litteris aereis Etruscis religione arborem tum dignam fuisse signat,” as quoted by Annius of Viterbo, Quarta institutio, in Antiquitatum variarum volumina xvii (Paris, 1512), fol. xvr.

Disen ta ngling A ncien t Sources [ 165 ]

figure 5.1. Antonio Averlino, known as Filarete, took many years to create new bronze doors for Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in the mid-­fifteenth ­century. This panel shows the Borgo, with a terebinth tree between the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Meta Romuli, a pyramidal structure that was soon destroyed (lower right corner). Annius of Viterbo identified the tree, wrongly but cleverly, with an ancient holm oak described by Pliny the Elder in his Natu­ral History—­one of many efforts made at this time to correlate ancient works of art or buildings with passages in ancient texts. Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana.

the Church of Saint Peter, as anyone who examines the bronze doors can see.”6 Though modern, the relief embodied knowledge of a very ancient religious object, presumably preserved within 6. Ibid.: “Hanc ilicem vaticani inter sanctum Petrum & castrum sancti Angeli fuisse memoria antiqua servat: quam Eugenius pontifex Maximus in valvis ecclesiae sancti Petri aereis exculpsit: ut patet aspicienti valvas aeneas.”

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the oral archive that was the papal Curia. But Annius was wrong about the holm oak. Filarete actually portrayed a terebinth or turpentine tree, long associated in Roman tradition with the scene of the crucifixion of Saint Peter; one local version of the story held that Peter was buried at the foot of this tree. Its sacred character was entirely Christian.7 But the scene Annius implicitly evoked—­one of scholars eagerly searching ­every corner of Rome for forgotten antiquities and interpreting them in the light of ancient texts—­took place in real life, again and again. Unfortunately, extending learned inquiry to material objects and collating them with texts did not always lead to results that scholars could embrace with confidence. Comparison, as is well known, was one of the central practices of antiquarians. Collating a newly discovered object with an existing tradition—or, even better, an existing text—­was the most common method used to authenticate new finds: it was the method that Kircher applied to date his ruined church. As we have seen, in the case of the girl on the Appian Way this method led to endless discussion that failed to achieve a resolution, ­because experts could not agree on which tradition to invoke. Drawing comparisons between texts and objects required multiple skills. Scholars often disagreed about which texts shed light on which objects. Lilio Gregorio Tifernate, a Hellenist from Città di Castello, worked as a translator of Greek texts in the Curia of Sixtus IV. The pope had “the architect Titus Vespesianus”—­that is how the rec­ord referred to the arch of Titus and Vespasian—­ repaired in 1466.8 Once the arch was no longer blocked, Tifernate 7. J. M. Huskinson, “The Crucifixion of St. Peter: A Fifteenth-­Century Topographical Prob­lem,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 32 (1969), 135–61. 8. Eugène Müntz, “Les monuments antiques de Rome au XVe siècle: Documents inédits sur les travaux qui y ont été exécutés sous les Papes Nicolas V, Pie II, Paul II, Sixte IV et Alexandre VI,” Revue archéologique, new ser., 32 (1876), 158–75, at 165; William Sten­house, “Early Modern Visitors to the Arch of Titus,” in The Arch of Titus: From Jerusalem to Rome—­and Back, ed. Steven Fine (Leiden, 2021), 75–93, at 92n5.

Disen ta ngling A ncien t Sources [ 167 ]

claimed that he was the first in more than a thousand years to see the relief representing the candelabrum that the Romans had brought back from Jerusalem to celebrate their victory in the Jewish War.9 Having translated Philo’s life of Moses for the pope, Tifernate drew on that text to argue that the Romans, like Philo, saw the candelabrum as a cosmological symbol, whose possession ennobled their city.10 Yet the Hellenist and lexicographer Giovanni Tortelli had also seen the relief, and he described it in the article on Rome in his De orthographia, thirty years before. He connected the sculpted candelabrum, more prosaically, to descriptions of the Roman triumph over the Jews given by Josephus and Jerome.11 The Florentine cleric and connoisseur Francesco Albertini, who described the arch in his 1510 Opusculum on the sights of ancient and modern Rome, ignored Tifernate and referred to Josephus and the crushing defeat of the Jews.12 The fifty pairs of Roman citizens dressed “alanticha” and mounted on fine h ­ orses, who reenacted the triumph of Titus and Vespasian in 1499, prob­ably also had the literal defeat of the Jews in mind.13 Identifying the right text to give an object a name or an interpretation, in short, could be fraught with uncertainty. Often this delicate task required collaboration between 9. Tifernate, Prologus to Philo, III, to Sixtus IV, August 1480, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 182, fol. 5v; see Charles Stinger, The Re­nais­ sance in Rome (Bloomington, 1975, 1998), 224–26. 10. Vat. lat. 182, fols. 2v–3 r. See also Gregorio Tifernate’s Oratio de astrolo­ gia, in Roberto Cardini, “Le prolusioni di Gregorio Tifernate: Edizione critica dell’ ‘Oratio de astrologia’ con un appendice di autografi,” in Gregorio e Lilio: due Tifernati protagonisti dell’Umanesimo italiano, ed. John Butcher, Andrea Czortek, and Mario Martelli (Sansepolcro, 2017), 279–335, at 298. 11. Giovanni Tortelli, Roma antica, ed. Luisa Capoduro (Rome, 1999), 70–71, citing Josephus, Jewish War 7.148–51, 158–62; Jerome, commentary on Joel 3:4–6. 12. Francesco Albertini, Opusculum de mirabilibus novae & veteris Urbis Romae (Rome, 1510), sigs. Piir–­v. 13. Feltrino de’ Manfredi, an ambassador of the Este, described this event. See Alessandro Ademollo, Alessandro VI, Giulio II e Leone X nel Carnevale di Roma (Florence, 1886), 25.

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“men of letters” and the men whom we call High Re­nais­sance artists: artisans who used their extraordinary skills to escape their demeaning professional status.14 Such joint efforts did not always go well. In one extremely prominent instance, however, two humanists brilliantly connected newly discovered antiquities with well-­known classical texts. Well before the Laocoon turned up, the Florentine polymath Angelo Poliziano showed the world of scholarship how this sort of argument should be made. In his Miscellanea of 1489, he told the story of how he and a Venetian friend, Giovanni Lorenzi, had examined a marble base during his visit to Rome in 1488. They found this, shorn of its sculpture, in the cryptoporticus of the Tor Millina, a palace complex and tower near the Piazza Navona that h ­ oused a collection of antiquities.15 Its ­owners, the Mellini, w ­ ere sociable creatures who liked to entertain visiting connoisseurs. A ­later dialogue by Pierio Valeriano describes one of them ordering chairs to be brought as friends arrive in their palace and conversation begins.16 Poliziano’s text rec­ords an a­ ctual discussion. The base bore a striking inscription—Σέλευκος Βασιλεὺς Λύσιππος ἐποίει­ 14. Pamela O. Long, Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sci­ ences, 1400–1600 (Corvallis, Ore., 2011); Long, “Trading Zones in Early Modern Eu­rope,” Isis 106, 4 (2015), 840–47. On “men of letters” (uomini litterati), see, e.g., the letter by Filippo Casavecchia to Francesco di Piero Vettori, Rome, January 1506 (Maffei, “La fama,” 102). 15. See Kathryn Wren Christian, Empire without End: Antiquities Collec­ tors in Re­nais­sance Rome, c. 1350–1527 (New Haven, 2010), 345–47, and Sandro Santolini, “Pietro e Mario Millini fondatori di una dinastia di collezionisti antiquari,” in Collezioni di antichità a Roma tra ’400 e ’500, ed. Anna Cavallaro (Rome, 2007), 39–62. The collection in question is inventoried by Ulisse Aldrovandi in Tutte le statue antiche, che in Roma in diversi luoghi, e case par­ ticolari si veggono, raccolte e descritte per Ulisse Aldroandi, in Lucio Mauro, Le antichità della città di Roma, brevissimamente raccolte da chiunque hà scritto, ò antico, ò moderno (Venice, 1562), 178–79, in the online edition by Margaret Daly Davis, Fontes 29 (Heidelberg, 2009), http://­archiv​.­ub​.­uni​-­heidelberg​.­de​/­artdok​ /­volltexte​/­2009​/­704​/­. 16. Julia Haig Gaisser, Pierio Valeriano on the Ill Fortune of Learned Men: A Re­nais­sance Humanist and His World (Ann Arbor, 1999), 84–85.

Disen ta ngling A ncien t Sources [ 169 ]

(King Seleucus. Lysippus was making it)—­which the antiquarian Fra Giovanni Giocondo included in his collection of inscriptions (see figure 5.2). Lorenzi noted a salient detail that Politian had not immediately pointed out: “that ἐποίει [he was making it] was not t­ here by chance rather than ἐποίησεν [he made], that is, faciebat [he was making] rather than fecit [he made].” As Pliny had pointed out, artists won f­ avor with their clients and audiences by putting their signatures in the imperfect: even when the work was complete, ­those supreme artists inscribed it with a provisional label, such as “Apelles was making it” or “Polyclitus was making it,” as if the work of art was always begun but unfinished.17 Thus the artist had a path to ­pardon in the face of adverse judgments, as if he was about to correct what­ever was found wanting, if he had not been interrupted.18

Poliziano immediately agreed with his friend. He then went on to show how one could use a statue of Pallas, with her aegis, to make a passage in Virgil suddenly become vivid. His chapter is​ a tour de force, a neat demonstration of the ways in which a text can illuminate a monument and then, in its second half, of the ways in which a monument can illuminate a text.19 Historians of art have noted more than once that Michelangelo may well have been adapting Poliziano’s teaching when he signed his Pietà “MICHAEL A[N]GELVS BONAROTVS FLOREN. FACIEBA[T],”

17. Pliny the Elder, Natu­ral History praefatio 26–27. 18. Politian, Miscellanea 1.47, in Poliziano, Miscellanies, 2 vols., ed. and trans. Andrew Dyck and Alan Cottrell (Cambridge, Mass., 2020), 1:258 (Latin 259), (with small changes). Heartfelt thanks to Michael Koortbojian, who pointed out to us that Pietro Sabino’s sylloge (figure 5.2) contained a Latin translation of the inscription. 19. Michael Koortbojian, “Poliziano’s Role in the History of Antiquarianism and the Rise of Archaeological Methods,” in Poliziano nel suo tempo: Atti del VI Convegno internazionale (Chiancino-­Montepulciano 18–21 luglio 1994), ed. Luisa Secchi Tarugi (Florence, 1996), 265–73.

figure 5.2. In signing the base of a statue of Seleucos, the Greek sculptor Lysippos used the imperfect tense—­a feature that drew the attention not only of Poliziano but also of the antiquarian Pietro Sabino, who included it in his sylloge of inscriptions compiled in the 1490s. A reader of this sylloge both examined his copy of the Lysippos inscription, which came from Giocondo’s collection, and rendered it into Latin between the lines, correctly translating the Greek verb epoiei, in the imperfect tense, into its Latin equivalent, faciebat. Poliziano may have de­cided to publish his discussion of this statue base and inscription in 1489 ­because epigraphers ­were already looking at them curiously. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Ott. Lat. 2015, fol. 21v.

Disen ta ngling A ncien t Sources [ 171 ]

deliberately leaving the verb faciebat unfinished.20 But this story may have made its greatest impact elsewhere—as a model of the way in which experts should comport themselves when confronting a new antiquity. When a statue of a man and two boys struggling with snakes was first uncovered, the pope ordered three men to inspect it immediately. Michelangelo, Giuliano da Sangallo, and Giuliano’s young son Francesco not only examined and discussed it but also connected it to Pliny’s Natu­ral History, using the connection to give the g ­ reat find a specific name: Laocoon. Antiquities popped from the soil of sixteenth-­century Rome like mushrooms from a forest floor ­after rain. As cardinals and ambassadors dug foundations for their palaces and established gardens on the slopes of Rome’s hills, structures and sculptures constantly came to light.21 Not all of them immediately attracted expert scrutiny or stimulated references to classical texts. For the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini, who worked in Rome in 1519–20 and 1523–27, many of Rome’s antiquities had no context other than that provided by other objects. His interest in them was motivated by their artistic appeal but was enhanced by the prospect of profit and networking. A piece of art from ancient times could yield a savvy buyer like Cellini rich gains, especially if it included a precious stone or was “fashioned to perfection.” As he recalled in his vivid, sometimes hyperbolic, autobiography, I made the acquaintance of some collectors, who followed in the steps of ­those Lombard peasants who used to come and 20. See Kathleen Weil-­Garris Brandt, “Michelangelo’s Pietà for the Cappella del Re di Francia,” in “Il se rendit en Italie”: Etudes offertes à André Chastel (Paris, 1987), 77–120; Lisa Pon, “Michelangelo’s First Signature,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 15, 4 (1996), 16–21; Rona Goffen, “Signatures: Inscribing Identity in Italian Re­nais­sance Art,” Viator 32 (2001), 303–70; and Goffen, “Raphael’s Designer Labels: From the Virgin Mary to La Fornarina,” Artibus et Historiae 24, 48 (2003), 123–42. The first study of this point, still valuable, is Vladimir Juren, “Fecit Faciebat,” Revue de l’Art 26 (1974), 27–30. 21. Christian, Empire without End.

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dig the vineyards in due season. In turning up the soil they would find antique medals, agates, chrysoprases, cornelians, cameos, and even precious stones like emeralds, sapphires, diamonds, and rubies. The collectors sometimes got such ­things from the peasants for trifling sums; and so now and then—­indeed frequently—­I bought them from the curiosity-­ hunters for as many golden crowns as they had given giulios. Apart from the considerable gain I drew from the business, tenfold and more, my collection made me welcome amongst not a few of the Roman cardinals.22

Barbara Furlotti has confirmed this account with rich details from the archives. Peasants brought their coins and fragmentary sculptures to the Campo de’ Fiori and other markets. “Rummagers” (  frugatori) took ­these wares off their hands for modest prices and resold them—­sometimes at stands flanked by ­those of asparagus sellers and rag merchants, sometimes to specialized syndicates— at much higher prices.23 An expert rummager, Cellini drew information about some of the antiquities he bought and sold from “men of letters.” When he came across “iron rings worked in gold by the ancients, in each of which was set a l­ittle shell,” he asked scholars about them and learned that t­ hose who wore them could “remain with minds unmoved in the midst of any extraordinary occurrence.”24 Far from inspiring awe, knowledge of the properties of ­these rings drove his attempts to rival, and surpass, their makers. He fabricated more of them from tempered steel, chased with gold. When it came to the ways in which works of art, ancient or modern, ­were made, Cellini clearly believed that he had ­little or nothing to learn from the erudite. He boasted that he had designed certain silver vessels on a whim for a medical man, 22. Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography 1.27; trans. Anne Macdonnell as Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini: A Florentine Artist (London, 1906; repr., New York, 2010), 47–48; Vita, ed. Ettore Camesasca, 7th ed. (Milan, 2007), 140–41. 23. Barbara Furlotti, Antiquities in Motion: From Excavation Sites to Re­nais­sance Collections (Los Angeles, 2019), 47–82. 24. Cellini, Autobiography 1.27; Memoirs, 47; Vita, 140.

Disen ta ngling A ncien t Sources [ 173 ]

Master Iacomo da Carpi, who claimed that he could cure syphilis but was in fact a charlatan. Iacomo in turn showed the vessels to other connoisseurs and told the duke of Ferrara that they ­were of ancient origin. Alberto Bendedio, a Ferrarese nobleman who worked for Ippolito d’Este, proudly presented some clay copies of ­these vessels to Cellini, who laughed out loud but did not reveal that he had recognized his own creation. Filled with indignation, Bendedio said: “You laugh, eh? But I tell you that for a thousand years back not a man has come into the world who could do as much as copy them.”25 Cellini, as he tells us, kept ­silent and admired the vessels. But when he found himself in the same situation in Rome with some of his friends, he told them the truth. When they refused to believe him, he made new drawings to prove his skills. Concluding this smug excursus on his abilities to forge in the ancient style, he mentioned that he had earned quite a lot with ­these small pieces of work.26 Cellini was not alone: some of the so-­called ancient coins sold in Roman street markets w ­ ere still scorching hot from the forge.27 Not ­every antique, in other words—­whether genuine or fake—­ could be fitted into a literary context, and not every­one who traded in antiquities made such contextualization a priority. But the most sensational find of all, that of the Laocoon group, involved—­even required—­from the start the collation of an object with more than one text. Like the Titulus, the Laocoon seemed a spectacular as well as a venerable object. Its discoverer, Felice de Fredis, earned himself immortality “through his own virtues and his divine discovery of the image of Laocoon, which you can see as if it w ­ ere breathing in the Vatican,” as his tombstone in Santa Maria in Aracoeli proclaimed.28 The city’s 25. Ibid., 1.28; 50; 143–44. 26. Ibid., 1.28; 50; 144. 27. Furlotti, Antiquities in Motion, 56. 28. “FELICI DE FREDIS QVI OB PROPRIAS | VIRTVTES ET REPERTVM | LACOOHONTIS DIVINVM QVOD IN | VATICANO CERNIS FERE | RESPIRAN[S] SIMVLACR[VM] IM[MO]RTALITATEM | MERVIT” (Maffei, “La fama,” 114).

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officials would have liked to see the statue find a home on the Capitoline Hill, and the cardinal of S. Peter in Vincoli, Galeotto Franciotti Della Rovere, offered a formidable sum for it, but Pope Julius II won the competition.29 He bought the Laocoon group, granting lifelong payments to Felice and his son,30 and placed the complex figure in his Vatican statue court (see figure 5.3). A few other ancient statues, such as the Belvedere Torso and the Apollo Belvedere, flanked it. Moreover, as soon as it reappeared, the Laocoon was wrapped in serpentine textual traditions, which could distract viewers from its material and workmanship.31 Its subject was a very ambiguous figure, who seemed to oscillate between pagan and Christian worlds. He was a pagan man of sorrows, a priest of Apollo. According to Virgil’s Aeneid, he saw through the Greeks’ ruse but failed in his efforts to dissuade his p ­ eople from accepting the Trojan ­horse and was consequently killed by ­water snakes. The story of this virtuous, suffering man who innocently tried to save the Trojans, the legendary ancestors of the Romans, and who died for his failure provided easy parallels to the Christian salvation narrative. Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano, canon of San Venzano, suggested in an influential passage of his Due dialogi (1564) that the Laocoon could serve as a model for artistic depictions of Christian martyrs and even of Christ himself: For Laocoon, so knotted up by the serpents, shows, along with his sons, the anguish, the pain, and torment that he felt in that [mortal] act. Certainly it would be a new ­thing, and 29. See the letters by Bonsignore Bonsignori and Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, ibid., 101, 105. 30. See the document by Cardinal Riario on the sale of the statue group, dated 23 March 506, ibid., 112–13. 31. For a survey of the reception of the Laocoon, see—in addition to Maffei, “La fama”—­Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900 (New Haven, 1981), 243–47, and Laokoon, ed. Muth.

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figure 5.3. The Laocoon, in its current form. Wikimedia, Creative Commons.

a beautiful one, to see a Christ on the cross so transformed by wounds, spittle, taunts, and blood; or Saint Blaise with his flesh torn off by iron combs; or Saint Sebastian so full of arrows that he looked like a porcupine; or Saint Lawrence on the grill—­burned, seared, splitting apart, torn and disfigured.32 32. Quoted in Maffei, “La fama,” 192–93: “[Il Laocoonte di Belvedere] par che con suoi figliuoli dimostri, così annodato dai serpenti, l’angustia, il dolore et il tormento che sentiva in quel atto. Certo sarebbe cosa nova e bella vedere un Cristo in Croce per le piaghe, per i sputi, per i scherni e per il sangue trasformato,

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Gilio’s view, so characteristic of the Counter-­Reformation, was first suggested long before the Council of Trent. The niche provided for the Laocoon in the statue court looked “like a chapel.”33 The statue’s base was repeatedly referred to as “a small altar.”34 This frame highlighted the “sacrificial character of the scene” and thus supported a Christian interpretation of it.35 Albertini described the Laocoon as “superior to all other works of painting and sculpture.” He also remarked explic­itly that Pope Julius II had “translated” two other sculptures, a Hercules and the Apollo Belvedere, to the statue court.36 In this case as in o ­ thers, as Hester Schadee has argued, the language of relic translation was formally applied to ancient works of art.37 The historian of the statue court, Hans Henrik Brummer, held that the Laocoon’s “unearthing and mounting must have assumed the significance of a ritual.”38 Ulisse Aldrovandi, the Bolognese natu­ral historian San Biagio dai pettini lacero e scarnato, Sebastiano pieno di frezze rassimigliare un estrice, Lorenzo ne la graticola arso, incotto, crepato, lacero e difformato”; trans. Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski, “Laocoon: The Group as a Work of Art,” in Group Identity in the Re­nais­sance World (Cambridge, 2011), 36–75, at 66–67. 33. Cesare Trivulzio, in a letter to his b ­ rother Pomponeo: “come una capella” (Maffei, “La fama,” 108). 34. See Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, nephew of the famous Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and the description by the Venetian ambassadors (ibid., 174–77). 35. Brummer, Statue Court, 114. 36. Albertini, quoted and interpreted in Georg Daltrop, “Zum Verständnis der antiken Statuen in dem Opusculum von Francesco Albertini,” in Il Cortile delle Statue—­Der Statuenhof des Belvedere im Vatikan: Akten des internatio­ nalen Kongresses zu Ehren von Richard Krautheimer (Mainz, 1998), 77–81, at 79. 37. Hester Schadee, “Ancient Texts and Holy Bodies: Humanist Hermeneutics and the Language of Relics,” in For the Sake of Learning: Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton, ed. Ann Blair and Anja Goeing, 2 vols. (Leiden, 2016), 2:675–91. 38. Brummer, Statue Court, 119. On the Christianization of the theme, see Maria L. Berbara, Christ as Laocoon: An Iconographic Parallel between Chris­ tian and Pagan Sacrificial Repre­sen­ta­tions in the Italian Re­nais­sance (Hamburg, 1999).

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and antiquarian who composed the first guide to the statue collections of Rome, apparently experienced the same emotional reaction. He introduced his description by saying that “in a ­little chapel one can see the celebrated Laocoon.”39 The Roman soil had given birth to another ancient masterpiece. They ­were surprisingly plentiful. In a memoir written in 1594, the sculptor Flaminio Vacca recorded the explosion of antiquities that reappeared in Rome in the course of the sixteenth ­century: the ancient marble map of Rome, statues, a big cloaca, obelisks, precious coins, epitaphs—­among them that of Pontius Pilate—­and fragments of marvelous figures. Still, the Laocoon set a standard, one that only ancient works, not modern ones, could reach: “I found certain knees, and elbows of Greek design,” noted Vacca; “they seemed of the same style as the Laocoon of the Belvedere; and they could still be seen. The efforts of the poor sculptors are all in vain!”40 From the standpoint of identification as well, the Laocoon was a special case. Not only did it illustrate an ancient figure who played an impor­tant part in the Romans’ national epic, Virgil’s Aeneid (see 2.40–231), but it was also supposed to be the very same statue that Pliny had seen with his own eyes and described in his Natu­ral History. Was this credible?41 Questions arose from the very beginning. While John’s Gospel more or less described the Titulus, Pliny’s description did not precisely match the statue group. Direct inspection did not verify 39. Ulisse Aldrovandi, “Memorie cavate dalla raccolta delle statue di Roma,” in Fea, Miscellanea Filologica, 1:206–21, at 208: “in una cappelletta si vede quel tanto celebrato Laocoonte.” 40. Flaminio Vacca, “Memorie di varie antichità trovate in diversi luoghi della città di Roma,” in Fea, Miscellanea Filologica, 1:51–196, at 60: “Vi trovai certi ginocchi, e gomiti di maniera greca: parea tutta la maniera del Laocoonte di Belvedere; e ancora si potrebbero vedere. Dove vanno tante fatiche dei poveri scultori!” 41. Michael Koortboojian, “Pliny’s Laocoön?” in Antiquity and Its Inter­ preters, ed. Alicia Payne, Ann Kuttner, and Rebekah Smick (Cambridge, 2000), 199–216.

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the ancient author’s testimony. In fact, Michelangelo’s examination contradicted what Sangallo remembered. Cesare Trivulzio, a member of a g ­ rand clerical f­ amily, quoted the Natu­ral His­ tory at length for his b ­ rother Pomponio and commented: “This quotation from Pliny is a g ­ reat testimony, g ­ reat indeed.”42 But then he laid out the issues that troubled him: “Giovannangelo romano and Michel Christophano fiorentino [i.e., Giovanni Cristoforo Romano and Michelangelo],43 who are the first sculptors in Rome, deny that the statue was made of one marble block only. They show about four joints, but assembled in such a well-­ concealed way, so well filled in and hidden, that only ­people who are truly versed in this art can make them out.”44 According to Trivulzio the two skeptical artists went further still. Pliny, they argued, had ­either deceived himself or set out to deceive o ­ thers, in order to make the work seem more extraordinary than it was. For “it would not have been pos­si­ble to create three firm statues of full height, connected to a single block of marble, with so many marvelous serpents, with instruments of any kind.”45 Thus, forms of validation collided—or, as Trivulzio put it: “Pliny is a ­great authority, but our craftsmen have their reasons.”46 A 42. Cesare Trivulzio: “Questa di Plinio è una gran testimonianza, grande in vero” (Maffei, “La fama,” 108). See also the anonymous letter mentioned above, which was cited by Sabadini degli Arienti and which also quoted the passage from Pliny. 43. Maffei, “La fama,” 108n34. 44. Cesare Trivulzio: “Giovannangelo romano e Michel Christophano fiorentino [sic], che sono i primi scultori di Roma, negano ch’ella sia d’un sol marmo, e mostrano circa a quattro commettiture, ma congiunte in luogo tanto nascoso, e tanto bene saldate e ristuccate, che non si possono conoscere facilmente se non da persone peritissime di quest’arte” (ibid., 108). 45. Ibid.: “Però dicono che Plinio s’ingannò, o volle ingannare altri, per render l’opera più ammirabile. Poiché non si potevano tener salde tre statue di statura giusta, collegata in un sol marmo, con tanti e tanto mirabili gruppi di serpenti, cun nessuna sorta di strumenti.” 46. Ibid.: “L’autorità di Plinio è grande, ma i nostri artefici hanno le sue ragioni.” For an opposing view, see Sarah Blake McHam, Pliny and the Artis­ tic Culture of the Italian Re­nais­sance: The Legacy of the Natu­ral History (New Haven, 2013), 216.

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saying that he described as ancient and quoted in Latin seemed to support the artefici: “The arts would be happy if only artisans judged them.”47 Like Cellini, Michelangelo and Cristoforo claimed to possess skills superior to text-­based knowledge. Though Trivulzio agreed that modern technical opinions should be respected, in the end he could not resolve the contradiction, and he concluded with an admission of perplexity: “I ­can’t tell you which view I take as mine.”48 Trivulzio’s grounds for believing the expert testimony of the artists w ­ ere more than a l­ittle paradoxical. Near the end of his manual of rhe­toric, the Institutio oratoria, the erudite Roman theorist of oratory Quintilian had remarked that ­actual pleading in court needed to be energetic rather than polished, since it had to move an uneducated audience. Once written and published, however, a speech must be “polished, filed and composed rhythmically in accordance with rules and standards, ­because it comes into the hands of scholars and is judged by fellow prac­ti­tion­ers of the art.”49 Centuries l­ater, Jerome cited Quintilian’s remark twice, in a letter and in his commentary on Isaiah. It was Jerome who gave Quintilian’s specific point a general twist: “The arts would be happy, if only artisans judged them.”50 This was what Trivulzio quoted: Quintilian’s saying, recast into a general 47. Maffei, “La fama,” 108: “né si dee disprezzare quell’antico detto: Foelices fore artes si de iis soli artifices iudicarent.” 48. Ibid.: “onde non so dire a qual parere io mi appigli.” 49. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 12.10.50: “at quod libris dedicatum in exemplum edatur, id tersum ac limatum et ad legem ac regulam compositum esse oportere, quia veniat in ma­nus doctorum et iudices artis habeat artifices”; The Orator’s Education, ed. and trans. Donald A. Russell, vol. 5 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), 308–9. 50. Jerome, Commentarius in Isaiam Prophetam, praefatio 16; see also Ep. 66.9: “Felices, inquit Fabius, essent artes, si de illis soli artifices iudicarent.” ­These passages are collected and their relations explained in Trémir: Edition et indexation de Traités Musicaux Romains de la Re­nais­sance, in the context of explicating the adage—­attributed to Quintilian—at its appearance at the start of a treatise by the ­music theorist Pietro Cerone of Bergamo (http://­www​.­ums3323​ .­paris​-­sorbonne​.­fr​/­TREMIR​/­TReMiR​_­Cerone​/­01​_­exempla​.­htm).

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proverb. A few years l­ ater Jerome’s version passed into the greatest of all Re­nais­sance collections of ancient aphorisms, Erasmus’s Adagia. Not mentioning Jerome, he noted that Quintilian ascribed this wishful statement to the historian Fabius Pictor and cited it to illustrate the proverb, so often quoted in works on painting and the arts, “Let the cobbler stick to his last.”51 This second statement, as Erasmus made clear, had been coined in antiquity to put an artisan in his place. According to Pliny, Apelles would hide b ­ ehind his pictures to listen while p ­ eople found fault with them. A cobbler criticized Apelles for omitting one loop from a pair of sandals. “Next day, full of pride that his original criticism had led to an emendation, the man criticized a leg, and Apelles looked out indignantly and told him when passing judgment to stick to his last.”52 Humanists endlessly quoted, alluded to, and played with this story.53 When Trivulzio defended the autonomy of specialists in the realm of art and craft, he did so in terms originally formulated to defend the autonomy of specialists in the realm of the word. Once authorities clashed, anything could happen. In this case, Trivulzio apparently granted artists an intellectual authority in­de­pen­dent 51. Erasmus, Adagia 1.vi.16 (Ne sutor ultra crepidam); Adagiorum chiliades (Basel, 1536), 201: “Ad eandem sententiam referendum, quod ait Fabius Pictor apud Quintilianum, felices futuras artes, si soli artifices de iis iudicarent.” On this work, see most recently Andrew Hui, A Theory of the Aphorism: From Con­ fucius to Twitter (Prince­ton, 2019), chap. 4. In his 1516 commentary on Jerome’s letters, Erasmus identified both Jerome’s and Quintilian’s sources: Opus epis­ tolarum divi Hieronymi Stridonensis, 3 vols. (Paris, 1546), I, fol. 57v: “Felices inquit. Quintilianus hoc dictum citat, nomine Fabij Pictoris.” 52. Pliny the Elder, Natu­ral History 10.36.85, quoted by Erasmus, Adagia I.vi.16, 201. 53. Livio Pestilli, “Pliny’s ‘Ne supra crepidam sutor’: Representing Shoe­ makers in Italian Art and Society,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 26, 3 (2007), 10–22; Christiane J. Hessler, “ ‘Ne supra crepidam sutor! [Schuster, bleib bei deinem Leisten!]’ Das Diktum des Apelles seit Petrarca bis zum Ende des Quattrocento,” Fifteenth-­Century Studies 33 (2008), 133–50; and on the ancient background cf. David Cast, “Simon the Shoemaker and the Cobbler of Apelles,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 28, 1 (2008), 1–4.

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of that of scholars, and superior to theirs where objects ­were concerned. But could such superiority be maintained against an authority as power­ful and pervasive in his influence as Pliny? One way to solve the prob­lem was to deny the accuracy of Pliny’s account, as some late fifteenth-­century botanists had questioned his accounts of plants.54 Many ­people, Trivulzio reported, argued that Pliny had purposely overlooked the joints and pretended that the sculpture consisted of a single block to make it appear even more beautiful and admirable.55 A similar debate, one that was de­cided in f­ avor of the ancient author, attracted the attention of the antiquary and translator Lucio Fauno. He discussed it in his book on Roman history and antiquities.56 Some scholars, he explained, argued that since the statue was found near the so-­called Sette Sale (“seven cisterns”) on the Oppian Hill, it must have been in Titus’s baths. ­Others cited Pliny, using his testimony to identify the Sette Sale as the emperor’s palace, not his baths. Fauno took their side. Pliny’s authority was weighty. Indeed, none of the sixteenth-­ century guidebooks and topographies of Rome revealed even a faint doubt about the genuineness of Pliny’s Laocoon. On the contrary, in Jean Jacques Boissard’s Romanae Urbis Topo­ graphia (1597) Michelangelo’s authority was used not to contradict but to prove Pliny’s identification of the statue and his estimate of its quality: “Michelangelo says that this statue is a unique won­der of the arts, in which we should rather admire the divine talent of the artists than set ourselves to imitate it.”57 54. Anthony Grafton, Bring Out Your Dead: The Past as Revelation (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 3–5; Brian Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natu­ral His­ tory in Re­nais­sance Eu­rope (Chicago, 2006), 121–31. 55. Maffei, “La fama,” 108. 56. Lucio Fauno, Delle antichità di Roma, 4.1, quoted by Maffei, “La fama,” 164: “Perché dunque questo Laocoonte s’è nella età nostra qui presso le Sette Sale ritrovato, vogliono che qui in questo luogo fusse il palagio, e non le Terme di Tito.” 57. Jean Jacques Boissard, I. Pars Romanae Urbis topographiae (Frankfurt, 1597), 13–14, quoted by Maffei, “La fama,” 168: “Hanc Michael Angelus dicit esse

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But Trivulzio was not the only antiquarian who worried about the obvious gap between the visual and the textual evidence. In a letter (1546) to Nicolò d’Arco, his fellow neo-­Latin poet Fortunato Martinengo recorded some ­table talk on ancient statues from the ­house of Cardinal Francesco Cornaro. In this discussion Maestro Francesco da Norsa, papal physician and himself the proud owner of a famous ancient statue—­the Meleager that was then said to be a statue of Adonis—­stated that the Laocoon could “not be the one that Pliny had celebrated so much, following the argument that one of the boys did not show the proportions that it should, b ­ ecause one of its legs was longer than the other.” As we have already learned from the discourse on Livy’s shinbone, critics allowed only nature, not ingenious h ­ uman artists, to deviate in this way from the ideals of symmetry and proportion. Maestro Francesco bolstered his opinion by saying that he “had heard this from men with good judgment, and since in ­those [ancient] days the perfection of sculpture and all the other arts was at its peak, it followed that the Laocoon [in the Belvedere] was not that one [mentioned by Pliny].”58 Fortunato rebutted him. Some had defended the Laocoon group, insisting that the material from which the statue group had been made had caused the fault. Fortunato admitted that this was a power­ful objection, but also noted that “the defect is not vis­ib ­ le.” He claimed that to detect the weakness one would have to know in advance that it was pre­ sent, and even so he was not sure if an observer would notice it.

miraculum artis singulare, in quo divinum artificum debeamus suspicere ingenium, potius quam ad imitationem nos accingere.” 58. Fortunato Martinengo, quoted by Maffei, “La fama,” 184–85, at 185: “cadde il ragionamento sopra il Laocoonte, del quale fu fatto giudizio che esso non fosse quello così celebrato da Plinio: con tal argomento che conciofossecosache l’uno de’ fanciulli non avesse quella proporzione che gli si converrebbe per avere una gamba più lunga dell’altra, siccome Sua Signoria disse aver udito da uomini di giudizio, ed essendo che in quei tempi fosse in colmo la perfezione così della scoltura come di ciascuna altra arte, ne seguiva che esso non fosse quello.”

Disen ta ngling A ncien t Sources [ 183 ]

“Such a person would need a perfect discernment or even take the mea­sure­ments of the statue, which is prob­ably what ­those ­people did.”59 Fortunato concluded that even if the Laocoon had this one defect, a thousand other parts called for praise. “This did not apply to Maestro Francesco’s Adonis statue [that is, the Meleager], which t­ hose sculptors and antiquaries esteemed far less.”60 And with this, Fortunato prob­ably touched on the most impor­tant point in the ­whole discussion: the pride and envy of distinguished collectors of antiquities. Bartolomeo Marliani, perhaps the most famous topographer of the time, avoided the w ­ hole topic in his discussion of the statue group. Instead, he illustrated his treatment of the Laocoon group with a woodcut that shows the statue group in its new place at the Vatican Belvedere (see figure 5.4).61 It also shows Laocoon himself with his left arm squeezing the snake’s body and stretched upward so that it crosses the edge of the overarching niche. This brings us to a much more obvious mystery, one that spurred antiquarian and artists’ fantasies. Far from being a miraculous corpus incorruptum that seemed to have escaped the rules of time and decay, the Laocoon was found with several fractures: the f­ ather’s right arm was missing, as ­were the right arm of one son, the right hand of the other son, and one of the snakes’ head. And this was not the w ­ hole story of the ancient marble bodies. In fact, artisans had to carry out an arduous job of puzzle solving to establish which parts 59. Ibid.: “Parmi che io gli dicessi che alcuni che voleano difendere che il fosse d’esso, in difesa dello statuario dicessero che quello diffetto potea provenire dalla materia. . . . ​Questo si oppone a così famosa e nomata statua, nondimeno questo diffetto non è sensibile sì che quella sproporzione sia conosciuta da chi già prima per avventura di ciò non fosse stato accorto, come che io non sappi se ne anche così potesse scorgere questa imperfezione, se già quel tale non avesse un perfetto giudizio o non ne togliesse le misure, il che forse debbono aver fatto costoro.” 60. Ibid.: “il che non avviene di quella di M. Francesco da Norsa per esser dello statuario meno pregiato di gran lunga da questi scultori e antiquari.” 61. Bartolomeo Marliani, Topographia Urbis Romae (Rome, 1544), 80.

figure 5.4. This image of the Laocoon, which shows the sculpture with missing parts supplied and suggests the form of the niche it occupied in the Vatican Statue Court, appeared in one of the first and most influential guides to the sights and ruins of Rome. Bartolomeo Marliani, Topographia Urbis Romae (Rome, 1544), p. 80. Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana (http://­dlib​.­biblhertz​.­it​ /­Gh​-­SER4225​-­1370​.­html).

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of the sculpture had survived. The statue as it is known ­today took shape only ­after they assembled six large pieces and numerous smaller, fragmentary ones—­a difficult pro­cess that neither texts nor drawings of that time rec­ord, and that came to light only in the course of recent investigations of the statue itself.62 A pen-­and-­ink drawing by an anonymous artist, which is usually cited as the earliest sketch of the Laocoon, supposedly depicts the statue group before it was transferred to the Vatican Belvedere.63 Yet even this image does not account for the dif­fer­ ent components of the statues. As Luca Giuliani and Susanne Muth point out, the drawing is an imaginative reconstruction, not an accurate report. Consequently, they propose to interpret it as a draft or a plan for the mounting that was created when the statue was still broken in fragments.64 The same might be true of ele­ments in most of the remaining early drawings and prints of the Laocoon, such as the tag reading “Laocoon” that dangles from an imaginary wall ­behind the statue in the 1506 print by Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, the overgrown ruins in the background of Marco Dente’s engraving (1520–23), or the bent right arm of the Laocoon in a drawing by Amico Aspertini.65 Rather than serving as documentation for the stages of the discovery and reconstruction, they provide evidence of the creativity of their artists.66 Marliani’s print was no exception. Published in 1544 in the second edition of his Topographia Urbis 62. Luca Giuliani and Susanne Muth, “Der (re)konstruierte Laokoon im 16. Jahrhundert: Die Dynamik des Transformationsprozesses,” in Laokoon, ed. Muth, 129–60, at 138–42. 63. ­Today the drawing is in Düsseldorf, Museum Kunstpalast, Graphische Sammlung der Kunstakademie, Inv.-­Nr. KA (FP) 7032. 64. Giuliani and Muth, “Der (re)konstruierte Laokoon,” 136–37. 65. Respectively Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Inv. RP-­P-­OB-35. 956; British Museum, Inv. 1845,0825.707; sketch book I, fol. 16v–17r, 1532–35, London, British Museum, Departments of prints and drawings, Inv.-­Nr. 1898, 1123.3.17. 66. Giuliani and Muth, “Der (re)konstruierte Laokoon,” 134–38; Saskia Schäfer-­Arnold, “Laokoon (re-)produziert: Die Lancierung im Medium der Graphik,” in Laokoon, ed. Muth, 219–30.

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Romae, it did not even suggest the fragmentary condition of the statue group at the time of the discovery. Marliani did not try to provide his readers with anything like a two-­dimensional facsimile of the object, as some of the Titulus broadsheets claimed to do with the wooden tablet, eaten away by old age. Instead, the Topographia disseminated the image of the reconstructed Laocoon, as it looked thirty years ­after the discovery. The engraving by an anonymous artist was preceded by numerous attempts at reproduction, in sculpture as well as on paper.67 Artists modeled a w ­ hole series of smaller copies that have not survived for a contest that Jacopo Sansovino won. His statuette was cast in bronze for Cardinal Grimani. In the years 1520 to 1525, Baccio Bandinelli created a marble copy of the same size as the original for the French king, Francis I. In the pro­cess, he made a smaller wax copy and a full-­size cartoon. When the marble copy was completed, the Medici pope Clement VII liked it so much that he kept it and had it transported to the Medici palace in Florence. Baccio’s aim was not to provide a facsimile but to rival the ancient original. His version was equipped with Laocoon’s right arm, stretched out in the air and squeezing the snake. It too might have been a model for the reconstruction of the original ancient statue. On the recommendation of Michelangelo, the young sculptor Fra Giovanni Agnolo Montorsoli was commissioned to fit the Laocoon with a right arm. As Giorgio Vasari reported in his Vita, Montorsoli also added the left arm to the Apollo statue and restored a statue of Hercules. ­Whether he also restored the arms of Laocoon’s sons and the snake’s head remains unclear. But it seems that the design of the ancient Laocoon now followed the aesthetics of the most convincing early copy. This was not what Francis I wanted. Still waiting for a Laocoon in his collection, he sent Francesco Primaticcio to Rome. He and a group of artisans made copies of 67. The following discussion relies on Giuliani and Muth, “Der (re)konstruierte Laokoon,” 131–34.

Disen ta ngling A ncien t Sources [ 187 ]

several statues in the Belvedere, which w ­ ere cast in bronze at Fontainebleau. Fi­nally, and quite surprisingly, the French king obtained a copy that, though not of the same material and color as the original, at least presented the Laocoon group with its missing limbs. But if the original had shown any fissures, the bronze version melted them into a fluently unified piece of sculpture. We can only won­der w ­ hether writers and artists suppressed the fragmentary state of the statue in order to make the Pliny passage seem relevant, much as some had in­ven­ted a funerary inscription for the girl on the Appian Way in order to support the romantic story about the rediscovery of Cicero’s famous ­daughter Tullia. In the accompanying text of the Topographia, Marliani actually quoted Pliny. He added that the three sculptors, Hagesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus of Rhodes, designed their creation in accordance with Virgil’s account. But they did not follow it too closely, b ­ ecause they understood that “many ­things that please the ears do not in the same way please the eyes.”68 The Greek scholar and antiquarian Benedetto Egio, a man of strong opinions, inscribed many of them in the margins of his copy of Marliani’s book on the topography of Rome.69 He brought native shrewdness and new evidence to bear on the debate. If it is true, as Pliny says, that ­these sculptures ­were “of the ­house of Titus and made of one stone,” then they are not 68. Marliani, Topographia Urbis Romae, 79 (Maffei, “La fama,” 162): “Et quanquam hi ex Virgilij descriptione statuam hanc formavisse videntur, non tamen illam in omnibus sunt imitati: quod viderent multa auribus, non item oculis convenire, & placere.” 69. For the attribution of the marginal notes to Benedetto Egio, see Marc Laureys and Anna Schreurs, “Egio, Marliano, Ligorio, and the Forum Romanum in the 16th ­Century,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 45 (1996), 385–405. On Egio’s “damning evidence for the ‘Plinian’ identification of the Vatican Laocoon,” see Koortboojian, “Pliny’s Laocoön?” 203–5.

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the ones that ­were in the ­house of Titus, ­because they ­were made out of two blocks, as can easily be seen by a well-­versed sculptor and even by ­others [i.e., ordinary ­people]. Moreover, the antiquary Antoniolus has some fragments of the Laocoon snakes in his h ­ ouse that w ­ ere found in a dif­fer­ent place on that hill, where the baths of Titus w ­ ere more likely situated. Therefore, it must be assumed that the Laocoon that is now in the gardens of the Vatican is dif­fer­ent from the one that Pliny mentions as in Titus’s palace.70

As in the case of the Roman girl, the solution was at hand: multiplication was the key. Further pieces of a second Laocoon came to light, and they enabled Roman experts to reconcile the apparently divergent textual and visual evidence.71 Pirro Ligorio may have seen the same fragments in Antonio Conteschini’s collection. He concluded that the Romans had liked the story of Laocoon so much that they commissioned and possessed several statues of him. In his alphabetical encyclopedia he noted: And one of ­those [statues] can now be seen in Rome, in the Vatican. It is made of Parian marble, and was found in the baths of the emperor Philip. And of the other ones, which Pliny writes w ­ ere much bigger than the one mentioned before, that ­were all made of just one piece of a single stone and ­were in the baths of Titus Augustus, of ­those we have 70. Bartolomeo Egio, quoted in Laureys and Schreurs, “Egio, Marliano, Ligorio,” 389: “Haec simulachra, si vera Plinius narrat ‘e domo Titi et uno e lapide facta,’ non ea quae erant in Titi domo, quoniam sunt e duobus saxis, ut facile a perito artifice, quin etiam et ab aliis facile dignosci possit. Ad haec Antoniolus antiquarius fragmenta quaedam domi habet draconum Laocontiorum reperta alibi in eo monte, ubi verior est thermarum Titi locus. Inde coniiciendum Laocontem, qui nunc est in Vaticani hortis, alium esse ab eo quem in Titianis aedibus fuisse Plinius meminit.” 71. For a cogent solution to the aporia posed by Pliny’s description, see Koortboojian, “Pliny’s Laocoön?,” 202. He suggests that “uno lapide” was a topos, a superlative not meant to be taken literally.

Disen ta ngling A ncien t Sources [ 189 ]

only seen the feet and the dragon snakes, with some fragments. They turned out to be of much better artistry and they are not the same as the one in the Vatican that was made of two pieces.72

It should be clear by now that the antiquarians, for all the supposed novelty of their pursuits, had much in common with relic hunters. Like them, they wanted all their evidence to match up. More particularly, they wanted textual evidence—­whether from visions or from texts—to provide not only a historical context but a firm identity for the objects that they worked on. And they wanted their finds to be perfect. Yet they themselves recognized that the artists who actually knew how to fashion stone into sculpture could judge points that they could not. And neither the scholars nor the artists both­ered to rec­ord the pro­cess by which the fragments of the sculpture ­were transformed into something rich and strange, rather like a character in a lost segment of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. If it was doubtful that Pliny’s praise r­ eally applied to the Laocoon before the antiquarians’ eyes, the situation became much more difficult, as we w ­ ill see in the following case, when exciting discoveries did not match up with equally enthusiastic opinions in the collated textual sources. The ancients sometimes turned out to be their own most severe critics. 72. Pirro Ligorio, quoted in Laureys and Schreurs, “Egio, Marliano, Ligorio,” 389–90: “et una di queste si vede hoggidi in Roma nel Vaticano, del marmo pario, che fu trovata nelle Therme di Philippo Imperatore; et dell’altra che scrive Plinio assai maggiore delle dette, ch’erano tutte d’uno pezzo de una sola pietra, che furono nelle Therme di Tito Augusto, ne havemo veduto i piedi et li draghi con alcuni pezzi, che mostravano molto megliore artificio, che non è questo, che è conservato in Vaticano de duoi pezzi” (Turin, Archivio di Stato, MS a.III.12, vol. 10, fol. 63v).

ch a p t er  si x

Looking for Monsters in the Grottoes

In 1510 Fr a ncesco Albertini, whom we have already met, published a detailed guide to the won­ders of old and new Rome.1 He had studied painting with Ghirlandaio, and a­ fter moving to Rome he collected information about e­ very feature of the city, from its long-­destroyed ancient walls to the new Vatican Library. Albertini dedicated a chapter to statues and paintings, and though he discussed sculpture in much more detail, he also made clear that fragments of Roman painting had turned up in many areas of the city:

1. On Albertini, see August Schmarsow’s edition of Albertini, Opusculum de mirabilibus novae Urbis Romae (Heilbronn, 1886); Dizionario biografico degli italiani, s.v. “Albertini, Francesco,” by José Ruysschaert, 1 (1960); Roberto Weiss, The Re­nais­sance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (1969; Oxford, 1988), 84–87; Memorial of Many Statues and Paintings in the Illustrious City of Flor­ ence, ed. Waldemar H. de Boer (Florence, 2010), 14–17; Lorenzo Amato, “Francesco Albertini e l’Opusculum de mirabilibus Urbis Romae: Modelli e fonti,” in Acta Conventus Neo-­Latini Upsaliensis, 2 vols. (Leiden, 2012), 1:167–76; Victor Plahte Tschudi, “Two Sixteenth-­Century Guidebooks and the Bibliotopography of Rome,” in Rome and the Guidebook Tradition from the M ­ iddle Ages to the 20th ­Century, ed. Anna Biennow and Stefano Fogelberg (Berlin, 2019), 89–114.

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I ­shall give paintings a brief treatment. Some paintings are still to be seen in the baths and in the Gardens of Sallust and Maecenas. At a number of places on the Quirinal many traces of ancient narrative paintings can be seen on the ruins themselves. I pass over the wrecked places by the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli.

Switching from material to literary evidence, Albertini used Pliny the Elder to identify two ancient wall paint­ers, Fabius Pictor and Pacuvius.2 He then continued to describe the physical traces of Roman painting: On the Palatine in the vigna [vineyard or garden] of [Tommaso] Fedra of Volterra, a man of g ­ reat learning and rhetorical skill, I saw some ancient walls that w ­ ere painted and adorned with vari­ous colors. Outside the city on the Via Salaria, near the gate, ­there is a certain tomb in a vigna built to resemble a t­ emple. In it one can see paintings of Ceres and Bacchus with vines and w ­ ater jars, done with marvelous skill. Pietro Paolo de Symeoni, a Roman, showed me all of ­these ­things in his vigna, which is not far from the Porta Salaria. I pass over the ­Temple of Bacchus at the Church of Sant’Agnese, decorated with mosaics of vines and fish.3 2. See Pliny the Elder, Natu­ral History 35.19. 3. Francesco Albertini, Opusculum de mirabilibus novae & veteris urbis Romae (Rome, 1510), sigs. Q iiir–­v: “De picturis pauca scribam: nonnullae adhuc apparent picturae in thermis & hortis salustianis & Mecen. & [ed.: &&] in monte Quirinali pluribus in locis multa visuntur vestigia historiarum depicta in ipsis ruinis. Omitto loca diruta apud ecclesiam Petri ad vincula variis picturis exornata. . . . ​In monte palatino in vinea Phedrae volaterr. viri doctiss. oratoriae & artis peritiss. nonnullos vidi parietes antiquos depictos variisque coloribus adornatos. Extra Vrbem vero via salaria prope portam est sepulchrum quoddam in vinea ad similitudinem templi constructum in quo caereris & Bacchi picturae cum vitibus & vasibus hydriarum depictae visuntur miro artificio, quae omnia Petrus Paulus de Symeonibus ro. mihi o[ste]ndit apud vineam suam non longe a porta Salaria. Omitto Templum Bacchi apud ecclesiam sanctae Agnetis depictum opere musivo cum vitibus & piscibus.” Claudia La Malfa brought this passage to the attention of scholars, translated it, and provided a detailed

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Claudia La Malfa has shown that Albertini’s brief treatment was as accurate as it was packed with detail. He explained that he discussed Roman paintings with two antiquarians: Tommaso Inghirami, nicknamed Fedra for his brilliant per­for­mance in the role of Phaedra in a production of Seneca’s play, and Pietro Paolo de Symeoni. In their com­pany and that of ­others, he saw, among other remains of Roman painting, fragmentary narratives from the ruins of the palace of Augustus on the Palatine, paintings in the remains of g ­ reat estates from the early period of the Roman Empire, and the mosaic decorations, still extant, of the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza, near the Basilica of Sant’ Agnese. Albertini also took a special interest in mosaics and opus sectile decorations in Roman churches, which resembled paintings, and he argued that they ­were of ancient origin: Further, I omit the marbles and porphyretic stones of vari­ ous colors, and walls fashioned (in the manner of paint­ers) into statues, as appear in the portico of Saint Peter’s and Santa Maria in Trastevere and in the Church of Sant’Andrea [Catabarbara] encrusted with wondrous artifice (as I said in the Stationes Urbis [a work on Rome’s churches]) and in the Church of Santa Lucia in Selci, in which churches pictures of animals and birds can be seen, depicted as if they w ­ ere made of mosaic and painting, the spoils of Roman t­ emples and baths.4

commentary on it in Pintoricchio a Roma: La seduzione dell’antico (Milan, 2009), 100–103. 4. Albertini, Opusculum, fols. Qv–­Qiir: “Omitto praeterea marmora & lapides porphiretic. diversorum colorum septaque in statuis pictorum more reducta ut apparet in porticu sancti Petri & s. Mariae transtyberinae & in ecclesia. s. Andreae miro artificio incrustata ut dixi in stationibus Vrbis, & in ecclesia sanctae Luciae in silice, in quibus ecclesiis picturae animalium aviumque ac si e musivo & pictura essent depictae visuntur. Spolia templorum & thermarum Ro.” The translation in the text is from Fabio Barry, “The Late Antique ‘Domus’ on the Clivus Suburanus, the Early History of Santa Lucia in Selci, and the Cerroni Altarpiece in Grenoble,” Papers of the British School at Rome 71 (2003), 111–39, at 126n20, slightly altered.

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­ ater antiquarians—­Bartolomeo Marliani and Pirro Ligorio—­ L confirm Albertini’s accounts of ruins that no longer exist. As La Malfa points out, one short and apparently content-­free sentence is especially revealing. When Albertini declined to comment on the ruins that he described as near the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, he was referring, in shorthand, to one of the most dramatic archaeological discoveries of the High Re­nais­ sance: an enormous site that, unlike the ­others he listed, had to be explored under­ground. A vast set of buried rooms preserved a trea­sury of wall and ceiling decorations ready to be rediscovered (see figure 6.1). They transformed artists’ vision of Roman art, as well as their practices and tastes. Strange animals and floral designs became as omnipresent as images and discussions of the Laocoon. In this case, though, the diffusion of the newly discovered antiquities was more visual than verbal: a revival carried out by paint­ ers, many of whom did not rely on texts to master and use what they found. Though scholars ­were clearly discussing ancient paintings early in the sixteenth c­ entury, for some years Albertini was the only one to mention them in print, and even he showed far less enthusiasm for them than he did for the statues newly lodged in the Belvedere sculpture court.5 For Re­nais­sance Rome, where disciplinary and occupational bound­aries existed to be taken by storm, this was an unusual episode, a case of a collective failure to connect. As early as the 1470s, intrepid artists descended into the ground and began to explore the remaining rooms of the emperor Nero’s palace—an im­mense and spectacular structure, constructed between 64 and 68 CE, that had stretched from the Palatine Hill to the Esquiline. A monument to its builder’s grandiosity and extravagance, the Domus Aurea (Golden House) 5. See Georg Daltrop, “Zum Verständnis der antiken Statuen in dem Opusculum von Francesco Albertini,” in Il Cortile delle Statue—­Der Statuenhof des Belvedere im Vatikan: Akten des internationalen Kongresses zu Ehren von Richard Krautheimer (Mainz, 1998), 77–81.

figure 6.1. The Dutch painter Herman Posthumus portrayed the rediscovery of Rome’s ruins—­including the subterranean one—in 1536 in a brilliant, evocative work titled Tempus edax rerum (Time Consumes All). This detail from the lower right side shows ­people entering grottoes, torches in hand, to study their painted walls and vaults. Vienna, Liechtenstein Museum Inv.-­No. GE740; courtesy of the Scala Archive.

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included a mile-­long portico, a colossal statue of its builder, and an im­mense park. Nero’s architects made brilliant experimental use of concrete in its domed Octagon Room and elsewhere. But ­later emperors built over the ­whole complex, covering the space that its buildings and parks had occupied with the Baths of Titus and Trajan and the T ­ emple of Venus and Rome. Buried and filled with earth, the rooms of the Golden House resembled caves, not rooms, in the late fifteenth ­century. What did remain vis­i­ble, lit by the flickering lights of torches and candles, ­were their painted ceilings (see figure 6.2). The frescoes painted on them by the artist Famulus populated the Golden House with centaurs and sea creatures, abstract patterns and wild vegetation—­all of them, as Vasari remarked in his life of Giovanni da Udine (one of Raphael’s assistants), still vibrantly colorful, “for they had not been open or exposed to the air, which is wont in time, through the changes of the seasons, to consume all ­things.”6 ­These novel works of ancient art, found in what looked like grottoes, soon came to be called “grotesques.” In the late 1470s, as La Malfa has made clear, Pinturicchio adapted designs from the Golden House to decorate the crisp painted pilasters with which he framed his frescoes in the Della Rovere Chapel, in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo. Fifteenth-­century paintings of the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi often set the Holy ­Family among classical ruins, dramatically marking the break between antiquity and the new world of Chris­tian­ity.7 Pinturicchio depicted Jerome with the 6. The classic account of the Golden House, its rediscovery, and its impact is Nicole Dacos, La découverte de la Domus aurea et la formation des grotesques à la Re­nais­sance (London, 1969). Maria Fabricius Hansen offers a detailed survey, magnificently illustrated, in The Art of Transformation: Grotesques in Sixteenth-­ Century Italy (Rome, 2018), chap. 3. Claudia La Malfa summarizes her innovative research, which has transformed our knowledge of the earliest efforts to study the paintings in the Golden House, in Raphael and the Antique (London, 2020), 26–43: she quotes Vasari at 41. 7. Andrew Hui, “The Birth of Ruins in Quattrocento Adoration Paintings,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Re­nais­sance 18, 2 (2015), 319–48.

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figure 6.2. One of the painted vaults that gave the explorers of the Golden House of Nero their first rich experience of Roman wall painting. Wikimedia, Creative Commons.

Holy F ­ amily, with intact classical buildings in the background and decorative motifs from the Golden House around them (see figure 6.3). He would dedicate much of his ­career—as would Raphael—to developing a new style, in which the fascinating images he saw and drew under­ground inspired imaginative reworkings of many kinds.8 It never seems to have both­ered him 8. See, by Claudia La Malfa, “The Chapel of San Girolamo in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome: New Evidence for the Discovery of the Domus Aurea,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 63 (2000), 259–70; “Dating Pinturicchio’s Roman Frescoes and the Creation of a New All’Antica Style,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 70 (2007), 119–41; Pintoricchio a Roma; and Raphael and the Antique. The pioneer study by Juergen Schulz, “Pinturicchio and the Revival of Antiquity,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 25, 1–2 (1962), 35–55, remains of ­great value.

figure 6.3. The pilasters, topped by an arch, that frame Pinturicchio’s Adoration of the Child with St. Jerome show him working from the imagery of the Golden House, which he studied intensively and adapted creatively. He soon became known as a specialist in what ­were already called “grotesques.” Rome, Della Rovere Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo. Wikimedia, Creative Commons.

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or any of his colleagues that he was adapting decorations paid for by a merciless persecutor of the first Roman Christians. Pinturicchio and his fellows must have known that Nero built and owned ­these lavishly decorated rooms. The antiquarians’ favorite Roman writers had something to say about both the Golden House and the forms of decoration that had become fash­ion­able in Rome in the first ­century CE. Pliny, for example, briefly described the lifework of Nero’s quirky paint­er: Another recent painter was Famulus, a dignified and severe but also very florid artist: to him belonged a Minerva who faced the spectator at what­ever ­angle she was looked at. Famulus used to spend only a few hours a day in painting, and also took his work very seriously, as he always wore a toga, even when in the midst of his easels. The Golden House was the prison that contained his productions, and this is why other examples of his work are not extant to any considerable extent.9

Though Pliny used sober adjectives and adverbs in this passage, he also made clear that the emperors of the mid-­first c­ entury CE had turned the walls of their palaces into wild displays of rich materials and brilliant colors. For a time, he explained, painting had been “entirely ousted by marbles, and indeed fi­nally also by gold, and not only to the point that w ­ hole party-­walls are covered—we have also marble engraved with designs and embossed marble slabs carved in wriggling lines to represent objects and animals.”10 ­Under Claudius and Nero, painting had paradoxically staged a comeback, as artists began to draw oval lines on Nu­mid­i­an stone and decorate white Synnadic marble with purple.11 9. Pliny the Elder, Natu­ral History 35.37.120; ed. and trans. H. Rackham, vol. 9 (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), 348–49. 10. Ibid. 35.1.2–3; ed. and trans. Rackham, 9:260–61. 11. Ibid. 35.1.3; ed. and trans. Rackham, 9:262–63. Synnadic or Pavonazzetto marble was mined at Docimium (modern İscehisar) in Asia Minor.

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Even before the Golden House was reopened, humanists found their way into a few spaces where ancient wall paintings survived. In 1466, as we have seen, Antonio Ivani da Sarzana explored an Etruscan tomb outside Volterra. He described what he saw in a letter to a distinguished Milanese friend, Nicodemo Tranchedini da Pontremoli: “On the cover of the marble tomb . . . ​was carved the figure of a venerable matron wearing a bracelet and arm bands painted in light gold. On the front of another tomb a h ­ orse­man was painted in a red color in the old style (more prisco). Two foot soldiers ­were seen accompanying him.”12 Leon Battista Alberti, who shared Ivani’s interest in Etruscan art, analyzed the ways in which the ancient Romans had applied paint to objects ranging from the Nemi ships to the walls of buildings. He appreciated the brilliance of the pigments used in wall paintings, which he examined in the hope of identifying the ingredients that had made them so durable: I notice . . . ​that ancient paint­ers used a paste of liquid wax for a ­binder when painting the prows of ships. We have also seen the colors of gems applied to the walls of ancient buildings with wax or perhaps white bitumen, if I judge correctly. This has hardened so much with time that neither fire nor 12. Antonio Ivani to Nicodemo Tranchedini, 18 November 1466, Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 834, fols. 212r–­v: “Ceterum haud procul ab eodem colle reperta sunt in quodam antro aliquot sepulcra, ex quibus unum marmoreum extat, quorum sculpta tegmina iacentium varias effigies et vetustos corporum habitus repraesentant. At brevia sunt admodum, et angusta [MS augusta], ex quo facile iudicamus ea tanquam urnas cineres praeservasse, non corpora. Plura etiam vasa fictilia sed semifracta in eodem antro extabant, quorum quidem varie species me satis oblectarunt. In sepulcri autem marmorei tegmine sculpta est ymago venerabilis matrone torquem et armillas auro levi pictas habens. In facie vero alius sepulcri rubro colore pictus est eques more prisco quem pedites duo comitare videntur. Vnus praecedit balistam humeris, alter sequitur scutum ferens. Hec ego sepulchra unius tantum familie fuisse arbitror que nunc Abbatis sancti Justi diligentia preservantur.” Previously published in part and translated by John Spencer, “Volterra, 1466,” Art Bulletin 48, 1 (1966), 95–96, at 96. It is not clear ­whether Ivani saw this tomb and its decorations as Etruscan or simply as Roman.

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­ ater can dissolve it. You might describe it as glass poured w on [the walls].13

Alberti disapproved of Nero’s extravagant use of costly materials, which he knew from Suetonius’s description of the Golden House.14 But he did not disapprove of ancient wall paintings altogether. In this re­spect, as in many ­others, Alberti differed from Vitruvius, the classical authority on architecture whose treatise he both pillaged and pilloried.15 Vitruvius held that wall painting “is an image of that which exists or can exist, like ­those of ­people, buildings, ships, and other t­hings with definite and certain bodies.”16 In a bravura passage, full of vivid detail, he denounced what he saw as the degeneration of the art in his own time into a wrong-­headed pursuit of fancies and illusions: But ­these paintings, which had taken their models from real ­things, now fall foul of depraved taste. For monsters are now painted in frescoes rather than reliable images of definite 13. Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria 6.9; L’architettura, ed. Giovanni Orlandi, trans. Paolo Portoghesi, 2 vols. (Milan, 1966), 2:505: “tametsi comperio pictores antiquos pingendis puppibus navium usos liquente caera pro glutino. Tum et vidimus in veterum operibus inductos parieti colores gemmarum, si satis rem teneo, cera aut fortassis albo bitumine, ad tantam duritiem redactos vetustate, ut ne igne quidem ne item aqua dissolvi possint: esse id vitrum affusum dicas”; On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 177 (revised). See Dacos, Domus aurea, 4. 14. Alberti, De re aedificatoria 9.8; L’architettura, ed. Orlandi, trans. Portoghesi, 2:847; On the Art of Building, trans. Rykwert, Leach, and Tavernor, 313: “Quae aedificabat Nero, cuncta erant auro tecta, distincta gemmis.” H ­ ere Alberti generalizes Suetonius’s description of the Golden House in Nero 31.2: “In ceteris partibus cuncta auro lita, distincta gemmis u ­ nionumque conchis erant.” Cf. Stephen D. Kolsky, “An Unnoticed Description of Isabella d’Este’s Grotta,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 52 (1989), 232–35, at 235. 15. Hartmut Wulfram, Literarische Vitruv-­Rezeption in Leon Battista Alber­ tis De re aedificatoria (Munich, 2001). 16. Vitruvius, De architectura 7.5.1; Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Ingrid Rowland, comm. and ill. Thomas Noble (Cambridge, 1999), 91.

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t­ hings. Reeds are set up in place of columns, as pediments, ­little scrolls, striped with curly leaves and volutes; candelabra hold up the figures of aediculae, and above the pediments of ­these, several tender shoots, sprouting in coils from roots, have ­little statues nestled in them for no reason, or shoots split in half, some holding ­little statues with ­human heads, some with the heads of beasts. Now ­these ­things do not exist nor can they exist nor have they ever existed, and thus this new fashion has brought t­ hings to such a pass that judges have condemned the right practice of the arts as a lack of skill.17

The revival of interest in Vitruvius took place in the same de­cades as the rediscovery of ancient paintings that seemed to match his description. The stage was set for a tragic confrontation between ancient authority and ancient practice. Conflicts did develop. The few scholars who wrote about the visual arts treated the chief goal of painting as illusionistic repre­sen­ta­tion of three-­dimensional objects and beings on two-­ dimensional surfaces. Artists cheerfully disobeyed them. From Donatello to Filarete and Mantegna, sculptors, paint­ers, and architects studied and used such ele­ments of Roman decorative art as scrolls, acanthus leaves, and candelabra, often making no effort to represent real objects.18 Not surprisingly, the first humanist who responded in public to the new Italian fashion for the monstrous and fantastic showed no sympathy for it. In 1501 the southern Italian scholar Pomponius Gauricus, ­brother 17. Vitruvius, De architectura 7.5.3–4; Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Rowland, comm. and ill. Noble, 91. He was actually describing a form of Roman wall painting ­earlier than that vis­ib ­ le in the Golden House, but no fifteenth-­century scholar or artist could have known that: Alessandra Zamperini, “Grotesques and the Antique: Raphael’s Discovery of the Fourth Style,” in Paradigms of Re­nais­ sance Grotesques, ed. Damiano Acciarino (Toronto, 2019), 57–79, at 60. 18. See Dacos, Domus aurea, 4; Alessandra Zamperini, Ornament and the Grotesque: Fantastical Decoration from Antiquity to Art Nouveau (London, 2008), 91–93.

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of the well-­known astrologer Lucas Gauricus, matriculated at the University of Padua, prob­ably in the Faculty of Arts.19 For the next few years he studied the humanities, but he also set up a studio where he learned the special Paduan art of bronze sculpture.20 Soon he composed a set of dialogues on sculpture, which appeared in Florence in late December 1504. The Paduan sculptors whom he knew and admired w ­ ere bent, in the de­cades just ­after 1500, on filling the studies, museums, and palaces of patrons across Italy with a motley but dazzling crew of sea monsters, satyrs, and other strange creatures (see figure 6.4). Gauricus criticized this movement as severely as Vitruvius had denounced Roman wall paintings: “The sculptor must grasp the forms of all t­ hings so that he can represent man, to whom, as his basic subject, he must direct his mind and his hand. Yet sculptors are so obsessed by making up satyrs, hydras, chimeras, and monsters that they have never seen anywhere that it seems to be their w ­ hole task.”21 His blast concluded with a nicely Ciceronian concluding phrase, “esse videatur.” This alone would have made clear to any learned reader that classical aesthetics had no room for the playful Paduans’ troupes of imaginary beings. Yet his work had l­ ittle impact on the practices of sculptors. The vast majority of ­those who first inspected the Golden House ­were artists, not scholars. Entry was not easy. Visitors had to find their way through passages or be lowered by ropes through rounded holes, some still vis­i­ble, in the ceilings of the ­house. Once inside, they tunneled their way from room to room 19. On his life, see Dizionario Biografico degli italiani, s.v. “Gaurico, Pomponio,” by Franco Bacchelli, 52 (1999). 20. On Gauricus’s combination of practical experience as an artist and humanistic scholarship, see Robert Klein, “Pomponius Gauricus on Perspective,” Art Bulletin 43, 3 (1961), 211–30. 21. Pomponius Gauricus, De sculptura, ed. André Chastel and Robert Klein (Geneva, 1969), 61: “Ita Sculptori rerum omnium species comprehendendae, ut hominem ponat, quo tanquam propositum tota eius et mens et ma­nus dirigenda, quamquam Satyriscis, hydris, chimaeris, monstris denique quae nusquam unquam viderint, fingendis ita praeoccupantur, ut nihil praeterea reliquum esse videatur.”

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figure 6.4. Artists ­were interested in monsters of many kinds, some of which provided a context for their explorations of Roman painted grotesques—­ and proved equally irritating to ­those who rejected them as unrealistic and pointless. Pomponio Gaurico, the first critic to launch a written attack against the vogue for monstrous forms, was educated in Padua. ­There the workshops of Severo of Ravenna and his colleagues produced small, fantastic sculptures like this one, A Sea Monster. Washington, D.C., Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art. Accession Number 1957.14.75, Kress Number 1379, Dreyfus Number 69C, Legacy NGA Number A-228.

and inspected the ceilings, which w ­ ere not buried, by the dramatic flickering light of torches. Bursting with enthusiasm and energized by rivalry, they carved their own and o ­ thers’ names into the walls. In the Volta gialla (Yellow Vault), a graffito that Nicole Dacos describes as “a kind of Pasquinade” still informs visitors that “Pinturicchio the sodomite ravages all young foals.”22 Gradually they transformed t­ hese dark under­ground rooms into a bohemian gymnasium where they could combine exercise and picnics with a new form of aesthetic education. As a Milanese artist wrote shortly before 1500 in a comic poem in Italian, “­Here summer seems cooler than winter. . . . ​We crawl 22. Dacos, Domus aurea, 140, 146; this interpretation is owed to Hansen, Art of Transformation, 88.

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along the ground on our stomachs, armed with bread, ham, fruits and wine, looking more bizarre than the grotesques. . . . ​ Each person resembles a chimney-­sweep, and our guide . . . ​ shows us toads, frogs, barn-­owls, civet-­cats and bats, while we break our backbones on our knees.” The author made clear that the ­house and its paintings ­were the artists’ territory to cultivate: “In ­every season the rooms are full of paint­ers.”23 Throughout the sixteenth ­century, artists and architects continued to explore the hidden places where wall paintings survived. By 1580, when Pirro Ligorio tried to show that the grotesques ­were ­really hieroglyphs that encoded profound mysteries, he assembled a mass of evidence to prove that the Romans had used such paintings “in all parts of the ­house”: In the large halls, antechambers, fainting rooms, bedrooms, formal dining rooms, resting places, cryptaporticos and loggias, and fi­nally, with other subjects, in the sepulchers, the small, f­amily t­ emples . . . ​whoever curiously searched in the ruins of sepulchral places for such grotesque painting, w ­ ill find ­these inside with subjects of moral meaning, sepulchral, consoling, funereal and under­ground. They appear in parts of Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, in the cryptaporticus and in the rooms above ground, in the baths. They are seen in Rome in the ruins of the House of the Vespasians, ­behind the ruined ­Temple of Peace, above the modern ­house of Monsignor Aurialo.24 23. Anonymous, Antiquarie Prospettiche Romane, quoted in translation by Michael Squire, “ ‘Fantasies so Varied and Bizarre’: The Domus Aurea, the Re­nais­sance and the ‘Grotesque,’ ” in A Companion to the Neronian Age, ed. Emma Buckley and Martin Dinter (Hoboken, N.J., 2013), 444–64, at 448. For the original text, see Gilberto Govi, “Intorno a un opuscolo rarissimo della fine del secolo xv, intitolato Antiquarie prospettiche romane composte per Prospettivo Milanese Dipintore,” Atti della R. Accademia dei Lincei 273, ser. 2, 3 (1875–76), 39–66; for discussion, see Ingrid Rowland, The Culture of the High Re­nais­sance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth-­Century Rome (Cambridge, 1998). 24. Pirro Ligorio, “Three Letters on Grotesques,” trans. John Garton in Para­ digms, ed. Acciarino, 545 (slightly altered); for the original, see Damiano Acciarino, Lettere sulle grottesche (1580–1581) (Canterano, 2018), 116.

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Above all, though, Ligorio pointed out, they could be found in the Golden House: “We have seen them, as they can still be seen, ­under the hypogeum of the Baths of Trajan, where the vineyard of Monsignor Giovan Gadi was. As still in other parts of Rome [they can be seen].”25 Some scholars w ­ ere aware of the connection between the crowds of artists who descended into Nero’s lost palace and the brilliant colors and fantastic figures of imperial art that burst like fireworks across Italian walls. In 1504–5 the Nuremberg physician, humanist, and antiquarian Hartmann Schedel wrote out a massive fair copy of his own and o ­ thers’ compendia of antiquarian lore.26 Along with the sylloge of Cyriac of Ancona and the forged inscriptions of Annius of Viterbo, Schedel copied the Milanese artist’s poem in its entirety. Underlinings and marginal notes and marks show that he attended to its content.27 The new term that the artist used for the images on the walls of the Golden House, “grotesques,” soon came into use by patrons—­and, presumably, their learned advisors. In 1502 Pinturicchio and the erudite Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini Todeschini cosigned a contract for the decoration of the Piccolomini Library in Siena Cathedral. It called for ceilings adorned with “­those fantasies, colors and decorations . . . ​in the style and design now called ‘grotesques.’ ”28 When Raphael and Baldesar Castiglione collaborated on their famous letter to Leo X about the antiquities of Rome, they not only cited the Golden House as an example of a building that the ancients themselves had replaced but also described Roman painting “of the times of 25. Ibid. 26. See Christopher Wood, “Early Archaeology and the Book Trade: The Case of Peutinger’s Romanae vetustatis fragmenta (1505),” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28, 1 (1998), 83–118, at 90. 27. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 716, fol. 73v. 28. La Malfa, Raphael and the Antique, 42; for the original, see Claudia La Malfa, Pintoricchio: La Libreria Piccolomini e l’itinerario senese (Rome, 2009), 15.

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Trajan and of Titus” as far better than that of the time of Diocletian and Constantine.29 To judge by the names that appear as graffiti in the Golden House, however, very few scholars joined the artists in being lowered by ropes into the newly accessible trea­sury of Roman painting. The name of Agustín, the Spanish expert on coins and inscriptions who worked in Rome from 1544 to 1554, appears ­there, and that of an other­wise unidentified “Fabio antiquario 1560,” but not the names of the usual suspects—­Onofrio Panvinio, Marc-­Antoine Muret, or Fulvio Orsini—or of visitors from the Low Countries like Justus Lipsius.30 None of them dedicated a special treatise to ­these finds. Even ­after artists began to read Vitruvius, his critique took some time to attract direct interest. Something of a gap opened between theoretical discussion and practical execution. In the 1520s and a­ fter, Giovanni Battista da Sangallo, a Tuscan architect, filled his copy of Giovanni Sulpizio’s 1486 edition of Vitruvius with annotations. He used the book to help him visualize the ancient city, in Ingrid Rowland’s words, “alive with ­people, from the fat l­ittle actor gesticulating from the front edge of a long projecting stage . . . ​to the energetic bathers who splash themselves from basins, wrestle in the palestra, or sit in the tub, discussing with extravagant motions of their arms and hands.”31 Though he responded to his Roman authority with the insight and sympathy of one builder for another, he did not hesitate to remark on apparent contradictions between what he read about ancient architecture in the treatise and what he saw of its remaining structures in streets and piazzas. “This is bad, r­ eally 29. Raphael and Castiglione, letter to Leo X, in Palladio’s Rome, ed. and trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, 2006), 177–92, at 183; for the original, see John Shearman, Raphael in Early Modern Sources (1483–1602), 2 vols. (New Haven, 2003), 1:520–21. 30. Dacos, Domus aurea, 141, 155, 168. 31. Ingrid Rowland, introduction to Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture: The Corsini Incunabulum with the Annotations and Autograph Drawings of Giovanni Battista da Sangallo, ed. Rowland (Rome, 2003), 26.

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bad, according to Vitruvius,” he wrote on one of his drawings of Ionic capitals, “but it’s like this in the Theater of Marcellus, exactly.”32 But he did not annotate Vitruvius’s blast against—as it seemed—­the paint­ers of his age, far less contradict it. Still, conversations did take place, and a few echoes of them can still be heard. Cellini, who first visited Rome in 1519, when the vogue for grotesques was at its height, thought that “scholars” (studiosi) had discovered them “in certain under­ground caves in Rome,” which had originally been “chambers, bath-­houses, studies and such like.” Over time, as the ground r­ ose around them, they turned into artificial caves: “hence has sprung the term ‘grotesques.’ ”33 A more appropriate name, he suggested, would be “monsters,” which accurately described both the ancient paintings and modern adaptations of them: “The ancients delighted in drawing creatures, for the dif­fer­ent parts of which they took hints from goats and cows and ­horses, and they called ­these curious mixtures by the name of monsters: so do our craftsmen compose from their medley of leaves another sort of monster. Therefore monsters, not grotesques, is their real name.”34 A par­tic­u­lar, long-­running debate between paint­ers and scholars was prob­ably echoing in Cellini’s memory. In 1521 the engineer and architect Cesare Cesariano published an Italian translation of Vitruvius, with a commentary. In his notes on Vitruvius’s diatribe about painting he strongly stated his agreement: “the paint­ers who must practice their art in a serious way must not do their work as in the grotesque ­things that are depicted in Rome in ­those very old caves.”35 Vitruvius had been right to condemn the 32. Sangallo, comment 82, on 3.5.3–8; transcribed by Rowland, ibid., 24; see also the notes on 41. 33. Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography 1.31; trans. Anne Macdonnell as Mem­ oirs of Benvenuto Cellini: A Florentine Artist (London, 1906; repr., New York, 2010), 57–58; Vita, ed. Ettore Camesaca (Milan, 1985; 7th ed., 2007), 154. 34. Ibid., 1.31; 58; 154–55. 35. Di Lucio Vitruvio Pollione de Architectura Libri Dice, trans. Cesare Cesariano (Como, 1521), fol. CXVIIv: “Et perho li pictori quali con gravita deno

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“monstrous ­things” (cose monstruose) painted on Roman walls.36 Cesariano thought strange creatures acceptable only if a par­tic­u­ lar story required their presence, and he quoted his author’s absolute condemnation of ­those who “pretend that a reed appears able to support the weight for which a column is needed.”37 Cellini, in his characteristic way, appropriated the term that Cesariano applied to the grotesques and gave it a positive sense. But the discussion of Vitruvius’s passage did not end with the first Italian commentary. The French antiquarian Guillaume Philandrier, who spent the period from 1540 to 1545 in Rome preparing his own analy­sis of Vitruvius, made clear in his notes on the passage on painting why it was natu­ral for both Cesariano and Cellini to think of the term “monster” in connection with the grotesques. As he explained, with the tight-­lipped precision of a humanist schooled in classical lit­er­a­ture, “every­one likes to throw around that tag from Horace’s Letter to the Pisos, which is wrongly titled On the Art of Poetry, ‘Paint­ers and poets have always had an equal right to dare anything.’ ”38 But daring, as Horace noted, could bring forth monsters. He proclaimed at the outset of his verse epistle that a painter who connected a ­horse’s neck to a ­human head would be laughed at. The ancient poet had understood that only t­ hings that did not differ from nature ­were proper subjects for painting.39 “And do not,” Philandrier continued, usare la sua Scientia non deno operare come sono in le cose Grotesche che sono etiam depincte in Roma in epse vetustissimi caverne.” 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid.: “Et perho anchora pare uno rediculo a fingere che uno calamo si veda possa substenere il pexo che debe una columna.” 38. Guillaume Philandrier, in Vitruvius, De architectura libri decem, ed. Philandrier (Lyon, 1552), 280: “Vulgo iactari solet Horatianum illud ex Epistola ad Pisones, quae falso liber de arte poetica inscribitur: Pictoribus atque poetis Quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas.” 39. Ibid.: “At non sine risu spectari posse initio eius libelli ait pictorem, qui humano capiti velit iungere equinam cervicem, & varias inducere formas. Ea demum pingenda existimabat, quae a natura non abhorrerent.”

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offer me as an objection the works of the ancients in that vein that are displayed even nowadays at Rome and Pozzuoli, a genre of painting that Horace goes on to criticize. T ­ hese are called “grotesques” in Italian, I think b ­ ecause they first discovered them in the buried vaults of ancient buildings, which are called “grottoes,” as it w ­ ere crypts. Pictures that are foreign to the truth cannot be called true pictures, even if they are the work of brilliant creators.40

Horace was the greatest Roman authority on poetry and painting, and his work was endlessly cited and rehashed in the burgeoning Italian lit­er­a­ture on aesthetics.41 Evidently he had sided with Vitruvius. When Cellini praised monsters and went on to discuss how he himself made them, he thumbed his nose at the scholarly would-be critics who denounced them and the authorities on which they relied. And he was not the only one. Philandrier learned much while in Italy from the architect and antiquarian Sebastiano Serlio. In the l­ater 1530s, Serlio wound up his first treatise on architecture with a brief account of the best paint­ers and the ways in which they had decorated walls. Always a lover of stagecraft, he praised Baldassare Petrucci for conjuring up “fake pieces of marble, with sacrifices, b ­ attles, narratives, and 40. Ibid.: “Nec mihi obiicias antiquorum eiusmodi opera etiam nunc Romae & Puteolis ostendi, & quod picturae genus mox reprehendit, Italis dictas grottescas, credo quod in terra obrutis veterum aedificiorum fornicibus, quas grottas quasi cryptas vocant, primum invenerint. Non possunt verae dici picturae, quae sunt a veritate alienae, etiam si autores nactae sint egregios.” 41. See the classic treatments by Rensselaer Lee, “Ut pictura poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting,” Art Bulletin 22, 4 (1940), 197–269, and Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Re­nais­sance, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1961), as well as the more recent work of Rainer Stillers, Humanistische Deutung: Studien zu Kommentar und Literaturtheorie in der italienischen Re­nais­sance (Düsseldorf, 1988), and Ann Moss, “Horace in the Sixteenth C ­ entury: Commentators into Critics,” in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 3, The Re­nais­sance, ed. Glyn Norton (Cambridge, 1999), 66–76.

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buildings” to give façades more “presenzia.”42 For interior walls he recommended images of win­dows, giving onto landscapes peopled by “figures, animals, and what­ever is desired.”43 When it came to ceilings, Serlio’s tone became polemical. He recommended exactly the sort of decorations that his beloved Vitruvius had attacked: one should follow the traces of the ancient Romans, whose custom it was to make dif­fer­ent compartments, in accordance with the subject ­matter and also the form of the vaults, and in ­those they made all sorts of strange ­things, which are called grotesques. ­These turn out very well and appropriately, thanks to the freedom that allows one to make what­ ever one wants, as if ­there would be leaves, fronds, flowers, animals, birds, figures of ­every kind, but mingled with animals and leaves, sometimes separated in vari­ous postures.44

­ hese and other inventions, Serlio insisted, “­will be immune to T criticism, b ­ ecause this was the custom of the good ancients. This is confirmed by the antiquities of, among other places, Rome, Pozzuoli, and Baiae, where some traces can still be seen t­ oday. And more would be vis­i­ble if some ­people of malevolent and evil nature had not ruined and destroyed them.”45 It seems clear that Serlio was the defender of grotesques whom Philandrier rebuked. He treated them as an integral component of Roman art and architecture at their best, what­ever the Roman expert Vitruvius might have said against them. The authority of ­these vivid images licensed the modern painter to adapt the ancient forms, combining and altering them in as many new ways as pos­si­ble. Serlio even provided patterns for imitation (see figure 6.5). In this case, as in that of the Laocoon, it was not only 42. Sebastiano Serlio, Regole generali di architettura (Venice, 1537), in Scritti d’arte del Cinquecento, ed. Paola Barocchi, 6 vols. (Milan and Naples, 1971–77), 3:2622. 43. Ibid., 3:2623. 44. Ibid., 3:2624–25. 45. Ibid., 3:2625.

figure 6.5. Sebastiano Serlio, who defended Roman forms of wall painting as classical and beautiful, published this specimen to show how he thought they should be adapted for modern walls and ceilings. Serlio, Regole generali di architettura (Venice, 1537), fol. LXXIIr. Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana, http://­ dlib​.­biblhertz​.­it​/­Gh​-­SER4225​-­1370​.­html.

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experts but expertises that contradicted one another. ­Those who drew their criteria for determining what sort of painting could reach classical standards from texts found themselves sharply contradicted by Serlio, who, like Pinturicchio and Raphael, drew his vision of classicism from what he had seen.46 Cellini continued this debate by other means. One other echo of fairly early scholarly discourse survives, in a less polemical context. Not long a­ fter Serlio published his defense of grotesques, a series of ornament prints appeared, engraved by Enea Vico and Tomaso Barlacchi. ­These illustrated a wide range of decorative motifs from Roman painting: mythical animals and improbable candelabra, swags of cloth and pots of vegetation. They proved im­mensely popu­lar, offering a modernized and useful form of grotesque ornament to the artists and architects of northern Eu­rope, who happily ransacked them for forms to imitate. Accordingly they w ­ ere reprinted a number of times. The order and authorship of the versions of this set remain controversial. But one edition included a decorative title page (see figure 6.6).47 ­Under a whimsical structure that exemplified the sins of the grotesque against any form of structural stability, a text in capitals announced: “The less serious and (so it seems) occasional paintings that are commonly called grotesques. The ancient Romans used them to decorate their dining rooms and other more private parts of their ­houses. Drawn variously from many ancient vaults and walls and brought together

46. See Dacos, Domus aurea, 126, and Scritti d’arte, ed. Barocchi, 3:2625n1. 47. See, e.g., Elizabeth Miller, 16th-­Century Italian Ornament Prints in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1999), 98–102; Nicole Dacos, “ ‘Leviores et extemporaneae picturae . . . ​quas grotteschas vulgo vocant’: Du profane chez Domenico Fiorentino,” in Heilige und profane Bilder: Kunsthistorische Beiträge aus Anlass des 65. Geburtstags von Herwarth Röttgen, ed. Sabine Poeschel, Reinhard Steiner, and Reinhard Wegner (Weimar, 2001), 79–96; Michael Bath, “Andrew Bairhum, Giovanni Ferrerio and the ‘Lighter Style of Painting,’ ” Jour­ nal of the Northern Re­nais­sance 2, 1 (2010), http://­www​.­northernrenaissance​.­org​ /­andrew​-­bairhum​-­giovanni​-­ferrerio​-­and​-­the​-­lighter​-­style​-­of​-­painting​/­.

figure 6.6. The title page for a collection of ornament prints engraved by Enea Vico and Tomaso Barlacchi. London, British Museum Print 1874,0808.291.

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with the greatest accuracy and care.”48 The authorship of this description is uncertain. Antonio Lafréry, who settled in Rome around 1540 and devoted his life to creating magnificent print images of the city’s antiquities, printed the version of ­these prints that this title page introduced. A devoted antiquarian, he took a serious interest in the most up-­to-­date antiquarian methods. It was he who made the squeeze of an inscription that Jean Matal described, and he equipped many of his prints with elaborate captions.49 ­These words may be his. Whoever formulated this short text, its praise of the “care and accuracy” with which the images had been collected was hyperbolic. Though Vico’s collection was a ser­viceable pattern book for artists and builders, it did not provide a survey, or even a careful sampling, of Rome’s grotesques. Nonetheless, the text is revealing. It shows that as early as the 1530s, and possibly much ­earlier, antiquarians ­were trying to identify the places in which the Romans had actually painted grotesques, and to understand how seriously they had taken them—­perhaps in an effort to find a compromise position between that of Serlio on the one hand and that of Cesariano and Philandrier on the other. Forty years ­later, antiquarians ­were still discussing the origins and meaning of the grotesques. When Gabriele Paleotti, the scholarly archbishop of Bologna, was working up the final version, never finished, of his treatise on sacred art, he asked a number of scholars for their opinions. One of them—­perhaps the well-­known antiquarian Alfonso Chacón—­informed Paleotti that even the greatest experts 48. British Museum Print 1874, 0808.291: “Leviores et (ut videtur) extemporaneae picturae quas Grotteschas vulgo vocant, quibus Romani illi antiqui ad triclinia aliaque secretiora aedium loca exornanda utebantur, e plurib. concamerationibus parietibusque antiquis varie desumptae ac summa fide diligentiaque in unum redactae.” This is reproduced as 33c pl. 1 in Miller, Ornament Prints, 102. 49. See Rebecca Zorach, with Nina Dubin, David Karmon, Birte Rubach, and Rose Marie San Juan, The Virtual Tourist in Re­nais­sance Rome: Printing and Collecting the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae (Chicago, 2008), and Pamela O. Long, Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-­Century Rome (Chicago, 2018), chap. 6.

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on Roman antiquity, Muret and Orsini, could not explain “the origin of this type of fantastical painting.” He himself had learned more about grotesques from the painter Jacopo da Bassano, “a man very learned in t­ hese ­things, more for having seen and experienced so many [ancient ­things] than for having studied [them in books].”50 Evidently discussions between scholars and artists had not led to firm results, and the artists still had much more to say. Lafréry—if it was he—­suggests that t­ hese efforts had begun long before the debate of the 1580s about grotesques, perhaps as early as the debates about their aesthetic value. This text is informative in another way as well. The language its author used was that of philology and antiquarianism—­the language of scholars who ­really did work as precisely as they could when they gathered textual fragments or inscriptions from scattered sources and turned them into coherent textual corpora. Scholars who did that kind of work used one sorting device in par­tic­u­lar: the notebook, or­ga­nized by headings. Notebook making began, for many of them, in school, with the commonplace books in which they gathered the classical tags and anecdotes that would adorn their own Latin writing. Scholars also used notebooks in more discriminating ways: as paper machines for making knowledge, in which they stored, sorted, authenticated, corrected, and transformed the remaining bits of once-­complete texts and monuments.51 Some commonplace 50. Alfonso Chacón (?), letter to Gabriele Paleotti, trans. Sylvia Gaspari, in Paradigms, ed. Acciarino, 573–74; for the original text, see Acciarino, Lettere, 137. On the authorship of this text, see ibid., 66–68. 51. See, e.g., Earle Havens, Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth ­Century (New Haven, 2001); William Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Re­nais­sance ­England (Philadelphia, 2008), chap. 7; Ann Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Schol­ arly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven, 2010); Martin Mulsow, Prekäres Wissen: Eine andere Ideengeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit (Frankfurt, 2012); Helmut Zedelmaier, Werkstätten des Wissens zwischen Re­nais­sance und Aufklärung (Tübingen, 2016); Angus Vine, Miscellaneous Order: Manuscript Culture and the Early Modern Organ­ization of Knowledge (Oxford, 2019);

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books included suggestions for creative use of the materials assembled in them in new compositions.52 In the late f­ ourteenth and fifteenth centuries, antiquarians began to collect materials as well as texts. Many of their collections took one of two forms: e­ ither syllogai—­assemblies of inscriptions on the medieval model of the Einsiedeln itinerary— or descriptions of lands and cities, often with illustrations. Niccolò Signorili and Poggio Bracciolini amassed notebooks of the first type, and Cristoforo Buondelmonti created travel texts of the second, while Cyriac of Ancona, Giovanni Marcanova, and ­others fashioned hybrids. Many tried, with more and less skilled hands, to preserve structures, monuments, and sculptures as well as inscriptions. In the ­middle of the fifteenth ­century, an anonymous antiquarian visited Pesaro.53 He collected inscriptions. But he also saw some splendid works of ancient art: the sarcophagus of the well-­born child Aufidius Fronto, for example, with its vivid reliefs. He recorded what he saw, giving precise indications of the location of the sarcophagus and the placement of the reliefs.54 Giovanni Marcanova incorporated his drawings and transcriptions in his own distinctive sylloge.55 Anthony Grafton, Inky Fin­gers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Eu­rope (Cambridge, Mass., 2020). For the use of commonplace books in fifteenth-­ century Italy, see, e.g., Peter Fane Saunders, Pliny the Elder and the Emergence of Re­nais­sance Architecture (Cambridge, 2016), and Rocco Di Dio, “ ‘Selecta col­ ligere’: Marsilio Ficino and Re­nais­sance Reading Practices,” in Reading Publics in Re­nais­sance Eu­rope, ed. Sara Miglietti and Sarah Parker, History of Eu­ro­pean Ideas 42, 5 (2016), 595–606. 52. For a case in point, see Anthony Grafton, Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Texts and Re­nais­sance Readers (Ann Arbor, 1997), 169–71. 53. Erich Ziebarth, “De antiquissimis inscriptionum syllogis,” Ephemeris epi­ graphica 9, 2 (1905), 187–352, at 231n3. 54. Prince­ton University Library Garrett MS 158, fol. 146 r. For images of the sarcophagus, see https://­arachne​.­dainst​.­org​/­entity​/­1084618​?­fl​=2 ­ 0&q​ =­aufidius%20fronto&resultIndex​=1­ . 55. On Marcanova’s sylloge, see Maren Elisabeth Schwab, Antike begreifen: Antiquarische Texte und Praktiken in Rom von Francesco Petrarca bis Bartolo­ meo Marliano (Stuttgart, 2019), 314–18.

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This antiquarian’s renderings ­were lively and conveyed something of the monument’s spirit. But costumes and conventions drawn from his own world obscured the a­ ctual ancient forms. As his visit to Pesaro wore on, his weaknesses as a draftsman ­were borne in upon him. At the h ­ ouse of the collector Pandolfo Colenuccio, he felt that he had to confess his lack of talent even as he recorded the handsome sculptures his host had assembled (see figure 6.7): In his h ­ ouse t­ here are also many antiquities and fragments of very old buildings, including two ­human heads made from marble stones, of marvelous beauty, created with marvelous skill by the hands of the most serious sculptors. I do not dare to describe or paint their likenesses h ­ ere with my pen. Nonetheless, at the ­orders of the one who can rule me as he ­wills and whose precepts I am always ready to obey, so that my feeble talent may deal with t­ hese m ­ atters, h ­ ere, with my hand shaking, I ­shall draw them with my pen as one unworthy of so g ­ reat a task.56

No won­der that many humanists, untrained in drawing, held back from trying to depict antiquities with anything more than words. Even scholars with more practiced hands de­c ided that they could not include illustrations of diverse sites, buildings, and works of art in a sylloge without destroying the relatively neat and uniform appearance of a collection of inscriptions. Fra Giovanni Giocondo, an architect and editor of Vitruvius, 56. Prince­ton University Library Garrett MS 158, fols. 147v–148r: “Sunt etiam in domo eadem multae uetustates & fragmenta uetustissimorum hedificiorum, inter quae duo extant capita humana marmoreis lapidibus fabricata & mirae pulchritudinis & manibus solemnissimorum scultorum miro artificio constructa que ego ad instar illorum calamo hic describere aut pingere non audeo, tamen precepto & iussu illius qui mihi ad sui beneplacitum imperare potest & cuius preceptis semper paratus existo, ut ingenium debile meum attingere de his poterit, hic tremula ma­nu ueluti indignus tanti operis calamo designabo.”

figure 6.7. An antiquarian rec­ords—­and laments—­his inability to draw accurately and attractively the handsome ancient busts that belonged to a friend in Pesaro. Giovanni Marcanova, Collectio antiquitatum, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Prince­ton University Library Garrett MS 158, fol. 168r.

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equipped the octavo edition of Julius Caesar’s Commentar­ ies that he prepared for Aldus Manutius with precise and vivid illustrations. Yet he insisted that he could not possibly intersperse drawings among the inscriptions he transcribed in his innovative sylloge, in which he explic­itly distinguished between inscriptions he had seen at first hand and ­those he had drawn from ­others: For if we had both­ered to depict t­ hese t­ hings, as some would have wished it, it would have been necessary to adapt the shapes of the sheets in e­ very direction to the diversity of the marbles, of the tablets, or of the writings. This is evidently suited not to the order and evenness of books but to the disorder of loose sheets, since some of ­these ­things are so large that they would exceed any shape of page, and o ­ thers so small that they would hardly occupy a line. And if I wished to compress several of ­these ­things onto a single page, they would introduce ­there such ugliness that they would completely confound the order and beauty of the book.57

Giocondo did not exaggerate the difficulties that he refused to confront. A generation before him, Leon Battista Alberti had found no way to collect and preserve his drawings of the ground plans, elevations, and decorative details of dozens of ancient 57. Fra Giovanni Giocondo, second prefatory letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici, translated in Michael Koortbojian, “A Collection of Inscriptions for Lorenzo De’ Medici. Two Dedicatory Letters from Fra Giovanni Giocondo: Introduction, Texts and Translation,” Papers of the British School at Rome 70 (2002), 297–317, at 316; original text at 312. Koortbojian provides a vivid account of Giocondo’s working methods. Girolamo Bologni made similar claims to precision in reproducing inscriptions (Bologni, Antiquarii libri duo, ed. Fabio D’Alessi, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Memorie, Classe di Scienze Morali, Lettere ed Arti 54 [Venice, 1995], 9–10): “Nihil tamen accipere volui quod non archetypum oculis meis viderim, ita ut hoc unum peculiare munus legenti spondere possim, fidem scilicet, sine qua omnis in hoc studio perit voluptas et gratia: adeo qui ex aliis exemplaribus transcripsere variis sunt erroribus involuti, cum multa sint integra quae vitiata videntur, multa vitiata quae videntur integra. . . . ​Fidelis igitur futurus est libellus noster usque ad superstitionem.”

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buildings. All of them—­except a plan for a bath—­vanished a­ fter his death.58 Yet collections of images, drawn or printed on single sheets or collected in notebooks, played a special role in Roman artistic life around 1500. The artists who descended into the Golden House needed a way to or­ga­nize their rec­ords of and responses to what they saw. In a number of cases, their notebooks survive. And ­these show that even as the artists relied on talents that their learned colleagues lacked, they also applied some of the humanists’ methods for sorting and identifying materials. All careful antiquarians or­ga­nized their copies of inscriptions by the cities or regions where they had been found, and labeled each one with the name of the building—­often a church—­where it was preserved. When Marcanova included in his sylloge a monument found on the very top, the “greatest altitude,” of Mount Olympus (see figure 6.8), he was showing his mastery of good method by mocking it.59 By 1500 or shortly ­after, some of the artists who explored the Golden House most systematically—­Amico Aspertini, Giuliano da Sangallo, and the compiler of the Codex Escurialensis—­ had developed a notebook format that enabled them to rec­ord images of ­every size, using a two-­page spread when necessary.60 58. On Alberti’s suspicion of the copying pro­cess that resulted in mostly avoiding drawings in his writings, see Mario Carpo, “Ecphrasis géographique et culture visuelle à l’aube de la révolution typographique,” in Descriptio Urbis Romae: Edition critique, traduction et commentaire, ed. Carpo and Martine Furno (Geneva, 2000), 65–96; Architecture and the Age of Printing: Oral­ ity, Writing, Typography, and Printed Images in the History of Architectural Theory, trans. Sarah Benson (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 119–24; and “Aspetti metodologici ed interpretativi,” in Leon Battista Alberti’s Delineation of the City of Rome (Descriptio vrbis Romæ), ed. John-­Yves Boriaud and Francesco Furlan (Florence, 2005), 9–23. 59. Prince­ton University Library Garrett MS 158, fol. 166r. 60. Arnold Nesselrath surveys artists’ notebooks of antiquities in “I libri di disegni dell’antichità: Tentativo di una tipologia,” in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte Italiana, vol. 3, Dalla tradizione all’archeologia, ed. Salvatore Settis (Turin, 1986), 89–147. On Aspertini, see Phyllis Pray Bober, Drawings ­after

figure 6.8. An antiquarian claims to have found and recorded an elaborate inscription on the top of Mount Olympus. His apparently precise location for what he claims to have seen deliberately mocks the standard scholarly practices of his time. Giovanni Marcanova, Collectio antiquitatum, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Prince­ton University Library Garrett MS 158, fol. 166r.

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Their curiosity was omnivorous: they drew every­thing from cityscapes to fragments of reliefs and sculptures. Aspertini, in par­tic­u­lar, experimented endlessly—­for example, in the margins of the miniature of the Annunciation that he painted and signed in the Book of Hours of Bonaparte Gualenghi. In his imaginative frame, creatures and structures from the Golden House replaced the monsters of a dif­fer­ent kind who might have occupied the same space in a miniature by a northern artist.61 He was only one of many who paid special attention to the colors and contours of the Golden House, recording decorative details with spirit, if not with exactitude (see figure 6.9). The artists’ practice mirrored that of the humanists in one crucial re­spect. Like the learned antiquarians who gathered inscriptions, they usually took care to indicate the provenance of the objects and images they copied. Their collections of antiquities became syllogai in their own right.62 Although the artists may have constructed their notebooks on the model of antiquarian syllogai, they used them as if they w ­ ere commonplace books: as both the site and the basis for creative reuse. The ele­ ments of Roman decoration, often already transformed by the artists who recorded them, ­were pulled from the notebooks.63 the Antique by Amico Aspertini: Sketchbooks in the British Museum (London, 1957); Gunter Schweikhart, Der Codex Wolfegg: Zeichnungen nach der Antike von Amico Aspertini (London, 1986); Marzia Faietti, Arnold Nesselrath, and Nadine Blamoutier, “ ‘Bizar più che reverso di medaglia’: Un codex avec grotesques, monstres et ornements du jeune Amico Aspertini,” Revue de l’Art 107 (1995), 44–88; Sandro De Maria, “Amico Aspertini e l’arte classica: Selezioni e trasformazioni,” in Amico Aspertini, 1474–1552: Artista bizzarro nell’età di Dürer e Raffaello, ed. Andrea Emiliani and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian (Bologna, 2008), 337–48. 61. British Library Yates Thompson MS 29, fol. 15v; see Federica Toniolo, “Creature fantastiche, naturalismo e ascendenze classiche nella miniatura del Rinascimento italiano,” Matèria 10–11 (2016), 37–54, at 47–48. 62. Schweikhart, Codex Wolfegg, 15. 63. On the mixture of antiquarian and imaginative approaches used by Filippino Lippi, another artist fascinated by the stylistic possibilities of grotesques, see Innis H. Shoemaker, “Drawings ­after the Antique by Filippino Lippi,” Master

figure 6.9. This image of a design from the Yellow Vault, in Nero’s Golden House, appears in the Codex Escurialensis, one of several sketchbooks that soon were carry­ing images of grotesques across Eu­rope. Hermann Egger, Codex Escurialensis: Ein Skizzenbuch aus der Werkstatt des Domenico Ghirlandaio (Vienna, 1906), fol. 12v.

figure 6.10. Pinturicchio devoted much of his ­career to recording, adapting, and using grotesque designs. This sheet of drawings depicts both fanciful objects and faces. Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, KdZ 5192, © bpk-­Bildagentur.

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Some assembled crowds of ornaments on single sheets, drawn or printed, perhaps to display them to potential patrons.64 Hundreds of strange creatures and physically implausible structures, reproduced from the walls of the Golden House or imaginatively enhanced, mingled with grotesque images of other kinds in the artists’ compendia (see figure 6.10). Far more impor­tant, they ­were arranged into magnificent decorative ensembles by Pinturicchio and Aspertini, Signorelli and Raphael, from the Piccolomini Library and Orvieto Cathedral to the Vatican Appartamento Borgia and Stufetta. Not ­until Pompeii and Herculaneum began to reappear in the eigh­teenth ­century would rediscovered ancient monuments again reshape modern art so profoundly. Collaboration across disciplinary bound­aries and the fusion of originally separate techniques ­were vital to this outcome, as they ­were to the rediscovery of the Laocoon. The paths by which artists, scholars, and patrons arrived at their agreement to accept and propagate this style, and the ways in which artists adapted scholars’ methods, remain largely obscure: they are buried ­under the soil of history, at least u ­ ntil new documents come to light. But the outcome of their sometimes difficult negotiations is clear. Since the artists could not move paintings from the wall and ceiling of the Golden House, they used their notebooks to carry out what Albertini might have called a vital, but virtual, translatio of Roman antiquities.65 Like relics, the images took on both new forms and new roles in their new places.

Drawings 16, 1 (1978), 35–43, 97–104; Shoemaker, “Filippino and His Antique Sources,” in The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, ed. George R. Goldner and Carmen C. Bambach (New York, 1997), 29–36; and Maria Vitiello, Le architetture dipinte di Filippino Lippi: La cappella Carafa a S. Maria sopra Minerva in Roma (Rome, 2003). 64. Deanna Petherbridge, “Graphic Intersections: Erga, Parerga and Pro-­ Erga,” in When Art History Meets Design History, special issue of RIHA Journal 0085 (March 2014), www​.­riha​-­journal​.­org​/­articles​/­2014​/­2014​-­jan​-­mar​/­special​ -­issue​-­art​-­design​-­history​/­petherbridge​-­graphic​-­intersections. 65. See Daltrop, “Zum Verständis der antiken Statuen,” 79.

ch a p t er   se v e n

Digging for Dunstan

In the spring of 1508, William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, received some worrying news. The Abbey of Glastonbury had put on display a prestigious set of relics, the bones of Saint Dunstan (d. 988). True, Dunstan had served as abbot of Glastonbury, and the monks had stories to tell about his c­ areer as well as some of his bones to exhibit.1 But now they had gone too far. They had constructed a splendid new feretory (ceremonial bier) for Dunstan’s bones and then invited magnates and nobles and “an innumerable mass of promiscuous sex” to join in the cele­bration. Worse still, “with all of them watching they had the aforesaid shrine set up, not in their vestiary, a rather inconspicuous place, where their f­ athers used to place another, older shrine, which, as it pleased them to do so, they called the shrine of Saint Dunstan, but in a very prominent place, which was clearly vis­i­ble to all who flocked ­there.”2 Glastonbury had laid public claim to the saint. Dunstan, however, had left the 1. James Carley, Glastonbury Abbey: The Holy House at the Head of the Moors Adventurous (Glastonbury, 1996), 115. 2. William Warham and Thomas Goldston, “Scrutinium factum circa feretrum beatissimi patris Dunstani Archiepiscopi,” 22 April 1508, in Memorials of Saint Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. William Stubbs (London, 1874; repr., Cambridge, 2012), 426.

[ 226 ]

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abbey and spent the years from 959 to 988 as archbishop of Canterbury, where he died. The cathedral displayed his relics, in a shrine near the high altar. Richard Beere, abbot of Glastonbury, had shown gross impertinence to the archbishop.3 Warham had become archbishop of Canterbury not long before, in 1503. He had been a scholar of Winchester College and then a scholar and fellow of New College, Oxford, and took a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate in canon law in the 1480s. A learned man, he left his massive collection of law books to his Oxford college, his theological books to All Souls, and his liturgical books to his old school. Like his colleague Wolsey, the glamorous and power­ful archbishop of York, he enjoyed offering patronage to scholars. He and the most prominent northern humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam, liked one another very much. Warham helped support Erasmus’s research with a benefice, ­later converted into a pension. Erasmus—­who wrote, ­after Warham’s death, that the archbishop had preferred reading good books or conversation with a learned man to hunting, hawking, gambling, and all other common amusements—­dedicated his massive edition of the works of Jerome to Warham.4 But the Christian humanist and the bishop ­were not exactly allies. In this edition as in his New Testament and textbooks, Erasmus argued that the church needed to transform itself, to become less committed to its wealth and privileges, less obsessed with 3. On this controversy, see Carley, Glastonbury Abbey, 126–27; Nigel Ramsay and Margaret Sparks, “The Cult of St Dunstan at Christ Church, Canterbury,” in St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed. Nigel Ramsay, Margaret Sparks, and Tim Tatton-­Brown (Woodbridge, 1992), 311–23, at 322–23; Helen Parish, Monks, Miracles and Magic: Reformation Repre­sen­ta­t ions of the Medieval Church (London, 2005), 107; Edward Watson, “The Theft of St. Dunstan’s Relics,” Clas Merdin: Legendary History, Celtic My­thol­ogy & ­Matters Arthurian, 31 March 2014, https://­clasmerdin​.­blogspot​.­com​/­2014​/­03​/­the​-­theft​-­of​-­st​-­dunstans​ -­relics​.­html. 4. Opus epistolarum D. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen, H. M. Allen, and H. W. Garrod, 12 vols. (Oxford, 1906–58), 10:146: “At illi pro venatu, pro aucupio, pro alea, pro chartis, pro morionibus proque ceteris auocamentis vulgaribus erat aut frugifera lectio aut cum erudito viro colloquium.”

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material objects and liturgical forms, and more concerned with the souls of individual Christians. He held up the early church, from Jesus to Jerome and the other F ­ athers, as the model to follow. Warham could be an ­adept spiritual counselor when the need arose: he helped his niece, Lady Greville, find ways to live with her grief a­ fter the death of her husband, Sir Giles Greville. But he was a l­awyer by training, like many En­glish clerics, and he climbed the greasy pole to become Lord Chancellor—­the last bishop to hold the post.5 In keeping with his formation in the late medieval En­glish church, he was a staunch defender of the prerogatives of his archdiocese. When Richard Fox, bishop of Winchester, protested “against alleged archiepiscopal encroachments on the rights of diocesan bishops,” Warham threatened him with an interdict. ­After an appeal to the Roman rota, which Pope Julius II referred back to Henry VIII, the king worked out a compromise.6 ­England’s dioceses ­were fewer in number, larger in scale, and richer than most of their counter­parts on the Continent. The wealth that made pos­si­ble the spectacular decor and stately ser­ vices at Canterbury Cathedral and other ­great edifices had to be preserved. Warham joked with Erasmus about his own edifice complex. When the humanist suffered from kidney stones, Warham sent money and a witty letter: What is the point of stones in your frail physique? What could one build upon this rock? You are not, I imagine, building fine ­houses, or anything like that. Wherefore, since stones are not your line of business, be sure to get rid of your superfluous burden as soon as you can; spend money to

5. C. S. Knighton, “Warham, William,” in Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Bio­ graphical Register of the Re­nais­sance and Reformation, ed. Peter Bietenholz and Thomas Deutscher, 3 vols. (Toronto, 1987), 3:427–31. 6. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Fox, Richard,” by C. S. L. Davies (2004).

Digging for Du nsta n [ 229 ]

have t­ hese stones taken away; unlike me, who am spending money ­every day to have stones brought to my buildings.7

Warham, “a firm believer in the value of magnificence as a means of asserting the greatness of his office,” built, among much e­ lse, a splendid tomb for himself, the largest medieval monument in Canterbury Cathedral (see figure 7.1).8 According to Erasmus, he rejoiced on learning that he would die almost penniless: “That’s good. I always prayed that I would die this way.”9 Accordingly, during his lifetime he spent lavishly. To support his tastes he strenuously defended ­every source of Canterbury’s revenues, and d ­ oing so could involve a good deal of argument and litigation with other clerics.10 Most serious of all, perhaps, was a fact that is easy now to forget. Canterbury itself was as much a monastic institution as Glastonbury. The Benedictine monks of the Cathedral Priory of Christ Church sang the principal ser­vices in the cathedral.11 Both Glastonbury and Canterbury w ­ ere rich and ancient. Glastonbury traced its origins to Joseph of Arimathea, who had established a church ­there in the first ­century—­according to some versions of the story, the first church ever built. Canterbury had been the capital of King Aethelberht of Kent. The first archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine, began preaching ­there, with the king’s permission, in 597 CE. He founded a monastery outside the city walls, and the cathedral evolved into a monastic church in the late tenth and the eleventh centuries. 7. The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 142 to 297, 1501 to 1514, trans. R. A. B. Mynors and D. F. S. Thomson, ann. Wallace K. Ferguson (Toronto, 1975), 276–77; for the original, see Opus epistolarum Erasmi, 1:549. 8. Christopher Wilson, “The Medieval Monuments,” in A History of Can­ terbury Cathedral, ed. Patrick Collinson, Nigel Ramsay, and Margaret Sparks (Oxford, 1995), 451–510, at 488. 9. Opus epistolarum Erasmi, 10:146: “Bene habet. Sic mori semper fuit in votis. Sat est viatici mox hinc emigraturo.” 10. George W. Bernard, The Late Medieval En­glish Church: Vitality and Vul­ nerability before the Break with Rome (New Haven, 2012), chap. 3. 11. Kerry McCarthy, Tallis (Oxford, 2020), 31.

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figure 7.1. The ­grand tomb that William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury and defender of the prerogatives of his cathedral, built for himself ­there. Wikimedia, Creative Commons.

Relics mattered to monasteries. They played vital roles in local communities. “Working relics,” in the words of Eamon Duffy, helped w ­ omen in ­labor, eliminated weeds from fields of grain, brought rain, and found lost ­cattle.12 More famous ones attracted attention, and money, from a wider range of visitors. The bloody bones of Thomas Becket, grandly preserved in a magnificent shrine, and the scenes of his life and martyrdom ­were the chief trea­sures of Canterbury. They w ­ ere especially prominent on 7 July, the feast of the translation of the saint to this new shrine in the Trinity Chapel, which was the most popu­lar feast in the En­glish calendar. The shrine of Dunstan, 12. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in ­ ngland, c. 1400–­c. 1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven, 2005), 384–85. For fuller discusE sion, see Robert Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popu­lar Beliefs in Medieval ­England, 2nd ed. (New York, 1995), and, for the wider context, Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such ­Great ­Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Prince­ton, 2013).

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which ­housed his relics, was also a trea­sure. Glastonbury, for its part, showed off a mass of second-­order relics of Dunstan: “manuscripts written in his hand as well as altar cloths, crosses, thuribles, phials, chasubles and vestments reportedly of his workmanship.”13 When Beere put the saint’s bones on display as well, he was challenging the rival community. The challenge, moreover, had practical consequences. Pilgrimage remained popu­lar in early sixteenth-­century E ­ ngland, and relics attracted pilgrims. During the inspections that led up to the dissolution of the monasteries and the destruction of traditional shrines in the 1530s, the official revenues of Becket’s shrine w ­ ere found to be modest: just over 36 pounds a year, down from almost ten times as much a c­ entury before. Historians disagree about how to assess ­these figures. Some hold that interest in pilgrimages had collapsed, o ­ thers that pilgrimage sites had learned to conceal much of their income.14 As an administrator, Warham cared about gate receipts and diocesan prerogatives—­especially when a monastic establishment outside his direct control threatened to usurp them. As a cleric, he cherished the cult of the saints—­especially, but not only, that of Becket.15 He accepted the challenge from Glastonbury, and de­cided to confront his adversaries in the most direct pos­si­ble way: by unearthing the evidence that would prove Canterbury’s claim to Dunstan. Excavation was necessary. But it must take place, he insisted, without interfering with the continuing visits of pilgrims and the liturgical life of the church, an instruction that required careful timing to follow. When the cathedral burned in 1074, and Archbishop Lanfranc had Dunstan’s relics 13. Carley, Glastonbury Abbey, 115. 14. Bernard, Late Medieval En­glish Church, chap. 6, pt. 2. For a dif­fer­ent view, see Barrie Dobson, “The Monks of Canterbury in the ­Later ­Middle Ages, 1220–1540,” in A History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. Collinson, Ramsay, and Sparks, 69–153, at 135–50; Ramsay and Sparks, “The Cult of St Dunstan.” 15. Peter Marshall, “Thomas Becket, William Warham and the Crisis of the Early Tudor Church,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 71, 2 (2020), 293–315.

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translated to a new tomb near the high altar, the entire Canterbury community had fasted and celebrated. Opening his tomb necessitated discretion. Warham and Thomas Goldston, the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, attacked this proj­ect with characteristic efficiency and somewhat less characteristic panache. They picked out three or four local monks who stood out for both piety and strength, and put them to work, at a time when their efforts would not attract the attention of ordinary folk: In the eve­ning, a­ fter the gates of the church w ­ ere shut to prevent lay p ­ eople from being pre­sent at this m ­ atter, they made an examination of the feretory of Saint Dunstan. They w ­ ere to work out how his sacred relics could more easily be seen, in such a way that once all ambiguity and doubt had been set aside, the truth of the ­matter could be established with the trustworthiness of sight (oculata fide).16

As in the case of the Titulus, so ­here too terminology mattered: it revealed the formation of an interdisciplinary inquiry, the application of distinct forms of technical expertise to the same prob­lem about the past. When Warham and Goldston set out to achieve “the trustworthiness of sight,” they appealed to a standard of proof well established in the learned world. Ancient and medieval historians appealed to “oculata fides” when they cited the testimony of eyewitnesses as authoritative.17 The “lynx-­eyed” clerks in the British Exchequer made the same appeal to highlight the care with which they checked the enrollment of transactions in their rec­ords.18 The dig for Dunstan’s remains would be carried out in a manner so precise and rigorous, and so public, as to eliminate any objections. 16. Memorials of Saint Dunstan, ed. Stubbs, 427. 17. Matthew Kempshall, Rhe­toric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester, 2011), 184–87. 18. Henry Bainton, History and the Written Word: Documents, Literacy, and Language in the Age of the Angevins (Philadelphia, 2020), 85–89.

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Like Polenton and ­others in Italy, Warham and Goldston offered a detailed description of the work done by the strong-­ backed b ­ rothers they had recruited. T ­ hese men toiled so hard and carefully that by dawn, with some difficulty, they managed to break into the feretory. Inside the stone shrine they found a lead chest.19 This in turn was so stoutly made that it was almost impossible to open. Trusting in the help of God and Dunstan, the archbishop and prior came back the next eve­ning, this time accompanied by six ­brothers, who in turn recruited ­others. With “a vast amount of sweat” they managed to lift the chest and break it open. Inside they saw another box, “which chest was not made of unadorned lead, but was folded very prettily by a certain art.”20 The first t­ hing they found inside it was a thin sheet of lead, which lay on the chest of the body and bore the words “Hic requiescit Sanctus Dunstanus archiepiscopus” (­Here lies Saint Dunstan, the archbishop). ­These words, they observed, ­were written “in Roman letters.” U ­ nder the lead was a clean, intact dyed cloth. And u ­ nder that, at last, was the body of the saint, in pontificals that had mostly rotted away.21 It was a moment rich in emotion. Though Warham started digging as an advocate, he finished the job as a fervent believer. When a piece of the skull appeared, “it was both touched and kissed by the archbishop, who had risen very early on the following day, that is, the eve of Easter, and by the prior and many ­others from the monastery.” Then the archbishop gave it to the prior, “so that it could be properly adorned and set in place to be

19. Memorials of Saint Dunstan, ed. Stubbs, 427. 20. Ibid., 427–28. 21. Ibid., 428: “Infra has duas cistas plumbeas, cum aperirentur, primo reperta est quaedam parva lamina plumbi jacens supra pectus corporis. In qua quidem lamina continebatur haec scriptura, ‘Hic requiescit Sanctus Dunstanus archiepiscopus.’ Et scribitur hic titulus Romanis literis. Deinde repertus est pannus quidam tinctus, nitidus valde atque integer, superpositus corpori Sancti Dunstani. Quo sublevato, apparuit illud sanctissimum organum Spiritus Sancti, indutum pontificalibus, tum pro magna parte consumptis.”

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venerated among the other relics of the church.”22 Other bones also appeared, from Dunstan’s arms and rib cage, and some of his flesh as well, all of it incorrupt: “in truth all of ­these ­things gave off a very sweet fragrance.”23 ­Here—­and only ­here—­the archbishop and the prior claimed that their relics had a perceptibly miraculous quality.24 But emotion and piety did not trump the need for scholarly rigor. Warham invited witnesses to view the relics: six novices and his h ­ ouse­hold chaplains, all of whom ­were named in the scrutinium (official rec­ord). Last but not least came three notaries whom the archbishop had summoned, John Barrett, John Colman, and William Potkyn. He ordered them, “­after they had carefully inspected and examined all ­those ­things that have been recorded above, with regard to the examination of the relics of Saint Dunstan, to make a public instrument about them. And they promised to carry that out on the basis of the aforesaid witnesses.”25 Then the lead chest was sealed up again. Only ­after the monks had returned it to its place ­were the doors of the church opened.26 Full of confidence a­ fter “carry­ing out this trial (experimento facto) with regard to the relics of Saint Dunstan,” Warham and Goldston told the monks of Glastonbury that they w ­ ere both wrong and mad, and ordered them to cease claiming that the body of Dunstan belonged to them.27 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid.: “Quae revera omnia odore redolebant suavissimo.” 24. On early modern efforts to determine ­whether bodies had saintly qualities, see, e.g., Katharine Park, Secrets of ­Women: Gender, Generation and the Origins of ­Human Dissection (New York, 2006); Gianna Pomata, “Malpighi and the Holy Body: Medical Experts and Miraculous Evidence in Seventeenth-­ Century Italy,” Re­nais­sance Studies 21 (2007), 568–86; Bradford Bouley, Pious Postmortems: Anatomy, Sanctity, and the Catholic Church in Early Modern Eu­rope (Philadelphia, 2017). 25. Memorials of Saint Dunstan, ed. Stubbs, 429. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid.: “Ejusmodi experimento facto circa reliquias Sancti Dunstani, modo luce clarius constat quanto errore atque dementia laborant dilecti fratres

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It would have been hard for the two men to stake a more elaborate set of claims to epistemic certainty for their excavation. Not humanists themselves—­they still cast their Latin letters in the unclassical plural, as medieval letter-­writers had, even when writing to a single individual—­they knew the innovative forms of scholarship that w ­ ere developing in E ­ ngland as well as on the Continent. Fifteenth-­century En­glish scholars like the Warwick cleric John Rous appreciated the value of material evidence. Rous learned to draw, and he recorded in two rolls the dif­fer­ent forms of armor and dress worn by members of the Beauchamp ­family in dif­fer­ent periods.28 He applauded the works on travel to the Holy Land that w ­ ere being printed on the Continent in the 1480s, such as Bernhard von Breydenbach’s vividly illustrated Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1486) and Sir John Mandev­ille’s fourteenth-­century Travels (he argued that the latter work was factual, not fictional). Like him, their authors could see the history in objects. They had both described the im­mense rib of an ancient g ­ iant that they saw at Jaffa, as well as the huge chains once used to confine him. From this, Rous noted, “we can conjecture the size of g ­ iants before the Flood.” He even claimed that he had urged John Tiptoft to take an artist with him when he made his pilgrimage to Jerusalem.29 When Warham and Goldston described the artful construction of the inner lead casket and identified the lettering on the lead sheet inside it as Roman, they showed that they ­were familiar with Glastonienses, qui somniant apud se habere corpus beati Dunstani, idque publice praedicare non erubescant.” 28. T. D. Kendrick, British Antiquity (1950; repr., London, 1970), 26–33; Antonia Gransden, “Antiquarian Studies in Fifteenth-­Century E ­ ngland,” Anti­ quaries Journal 60, 1 (1980), 75–97. 29. John Rous, Historia regum Angliae, ed. Thomas Hearne, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1745), 3–5. Bernhard von Breydenbach describes the chain and the rib in Peregrinatio in terram sanctam (Mainz, 1486), fol. 25v, in his entry for 8 July 1483; the rib also appears in chapter 5 of Mandev­ille’s travels (Mandev­ille’s Travels: Texts and Translations, ed. Malcolm Letts, 2 vols. [London, 1953], 1:22, 2:244). The rib is depicted in British Library Add MS 24189, fol. 8r.

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the discriminating way in which antiquarians ­were beginning to describe material objects. But they also drew on forms of verification deriving from the traditions of scribal and notarial work. When they summoned multiple witnesses to confirm the “truthfulness of the eye” with which they described what they had found, and ordered three notaries public to give the witnesses’ accounts official form (ratified by their official seals), they w ­ ere combining notarial with antiquarian forms of proof.30 They added an appeal to the holiness of the relics when they described their odor of sanctity. At the same time, they resembled the Italian antiquarians from Polenton onward in drawing a connection between sacred archaeology and the world of natu­ral philosophy. When they described their investigation of Dunstan’s tomb as a formal trial, an “experimentum,” they implicitly compared their dig to the procedures used by alchemists, botanists, and ­recipe collectors, female as well as male, to verify their t­ heses by empirical tests.31 Warham prob­ably felt confident, then, when he reconfigured the official rec­ord of the excavation into a letter to Beere, dated 30. See Randolph Head, “Documents, Archives and Proof around 1700,” His­ torical Journal 54 (2013), 9–30. 31. On the rise of empirical t­ rials comparable to this one in early modern natu­ral philosophy, see Gianna Pomata, “Praxis historialis: The Uses of Historia in Early Modern Medicine,” in Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Eu­rope, ed. Gianna Pomata and Nancy Siraisi (Cambridge, Mass., 2005), 105–46; Michael Stolberg, “Empiricism in Sixteenth-­Century Medical Practice: The Notebooks of Georg Handsch,” Early Science and Medicine 18, 6 (2013), 487–516; Evan R. Ragland, “ ‘Making T ­ rials’ in Sixteenth-­and Early Seventeenth-­Century Eu­ro­pean Academic Medicine,” Isis 108, 3 (2017), 503–26; and Alisha Rankin, The Poison T ­ rials: Won­der Drugs, Experiment and the B ­ attle for Authority in Re­nais­sance Science (Chicago, 2020). For ­England, see Wendy Wall, ­Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern En­glish Kitchen (Philadelphia, 2017); Elaine Leong, ­Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science and the House­hold in Early Modern ­England (Chicago, 2018), esp. chaps. 3–4; and, for the ­earlier period in which Warham and Goldston ­were formed, Melissa Reynolds, “ ‘­Here is a good boke to lerne’: Practical Books, the Coming of the Press, and the Search for Knowledge, ca. 1400–1560,” Journal of British Studies 58, 2 (2019), 259–88.

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4 June 1508. As always, the two reports ­were not identical. The official rec­ord described the lead plate as “small.” The letter, by contrast, noted that the small plate was “of the length of a ­human foot,” and that it was written in “letters of this kind”—­ presumably an indication that Warham’s scribe provided a facsimile of the script, as Burckard had done for the Titulus.32 The letter’s description of the a­ ctual relics also deviated in small details from the first account: “Then within the same chest w ­ ere found some brilliantly white cloths, smelling as it w ­ ere of the sweetest balsam. Once ­these w ­ ere unrolled we also found in it the skull of the head of the aforementioned saint, complete, and vari­ous bones from his body, with many of his other relics.” Still, from Canterbury’s point of view no room remained for doubt: “By many other probable testimonies,” as Warham summed up, it was clear that Dunstan’s body was at rest in the cathedral.33 Once again he was using technical terminology. Bones, however holy, could never serve as more than an “inartistic proof,” a preexisting piece of evidence that something had happened, and they had only probable weight. But the weight of all of the forms of evidence that Warham had assembled enabled him to conclude that right was on his side. ­After all, logic as well as mere fact showed that “an error must be involved, when the body of one saint is believed to be in vari­ous places, or one body is taken for or thought to be another.”34 The g ­ reat ­lawyer saw his case as unanswerable. Warham summoned the abbot of Glastonbury to appear before him, with all the “writings and documents” that supported his claim, ­toward the next feast of the translation of St. Thomas the Martyr, or to send his councillors in his place. In the meantime, he urged prudence on his erring colleague: the Glastonbury relics should be shut away, to avoid deceiving the public.35 32. Memorials of Saint Dunstan, ed. Stubbs, 431. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., 431–32.

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Almost a month ­later, Beere replied. An antiquarian by temperament, dedicated to preserving Glastonbury’s traditions, he was also an experienced diplomat, well versed in the best ways to defend the privileges of his abbey. A long stay in Italy had enhanced both his scholarly and his po­liti­cal skills.36 He assured Warham that he had not built a new feretory for the relics. Instead, he had placed the old one, “beautifully crafted with gold and silver” more than two hundred years ago, in a higher place, so that visitors would no longer be able to peel bits of silver and gold from it.37 He also made clear that he did not claim that the body of Dunstan had been buried in Glastonbury. Rather, his “holy bones” had been brought t­ here ­after the Danes sacked Canterbury in 1011.38 More annoyingly still, Beere pointed out that the bulk of the physical evidence supported Glastonbury’s case. It seemed clear, he argued, that Canterbury had only a few fragments, preserved t­ here when the rest w ­ ere brought to Glastonbury, or perhaps restored to the cathedral a­ fter colleagues in Kent pleaded for them. Like John Rous in his reconstruction of the ­giants’ size before their extinction in the g ­ reat deluge, he based what he called a “conjecture”—­that Glastonbury had the bulk of Dunstan’s relics—on the physical evidence before him: “I can make this conjecture all the more easily, since we have his larger and more solid bones. Our beloved ­brothers in Canterbury, however, so far as can be gathered from your letter or their public documents, have only some scraps. We have his occiput and the dome of his head, they have the skull or the front of the cranium.”39 In any event, Beere saw no necessary source of scandal or disturbance in 36. Carley, Glastonbury Abbey, 65–73, 126–27, 181. 37. Beere to Warham, 28 June 1508, Memorials of Saint Dunstan, ed. Stubbs, 432–33. The ­actual history of the feretory is complicated and obscure. See the excellent treatment by Julian M. Luxford, “Auro et argento pulcherrime fabricatum: New Visual Evidence for the Feretory of St Dunstan at Glastonbury and Its Relation to the Controversy over the Relics,” Antiquaries Journal 82 (2002), 105–24. 38. Memorials of Saint Dunstan, ed. Stubbs, 433. 39. Ibid.

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the possibility that the relics of one saint might be in more than one place—­a traditional view that Calvin would denounce, but not refute, in his 1543 Treaty on Relics.40 What did disturb the abbot profoundly was the order to relegate Glastonbury’s relics of Dunstan to storage. In fact, it made him ­tremble. For two sources that Warham had not invoked, “ancient chronicles and common report,” confirmed that Glastonbury had the true relics, and that they could work won­ ders.41 ­Every year, Beere explained, on the feast of Saint Dunstan (19 May), villa­gers from all around Glastonbury, “both men and w ­ omen, both heads of h ­ ouse­holds and their hired hands or stewards, assem­ble with the deepest veneration in an ancient ritual.”42 When public notaries asked them, on apostolic authority, why they did so, they replied in detail: They had learned from the old ones that their parents’ ­fathers had followed the bones of Saint Dunstan while they ­were carried through their bounds from Canterbury to Glastonbury, all the way to our church in Glastonbury, with devotion. Accordingly, ­these parishioners, in memory of that event, made a custom not only of taking a holiday but also of coming to our church in Glastonbury out of devotion. If any of them refused to do so, or out of concern for his property did not cease from his ­labors on that day, he would not prosper during that year, but would suffer a serious loss ­either of livestock or of property. This happened very often in the days of ­those who w ­ ere still alive.43

In the face of this living tradition, attested—­like the findings of the excavations at Canterbury—by the authority of notaries 40. Ibid., 433–34; see Spencer Weinreich, “An Infinity of Relics: Erasmus and the Copious Rhe­toric of John Calvin’s Traité des reliques,” Re­nais­sance Quarterly 74, 1 (2021), 137–80, at 151–52. 41. Memorials of Saint Dunstan, ed. Stubbs, 434. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., 434–35.

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and the punishment of ­those who would not cooperate, Beere suggested that the best way to avoid scandal would be for his beloved b ­ rothers at Canterbury to put away their relics of Dunstan. Finishing up as crisply as he had begun, he expressed his regret that ill health would prevent him from obeying the archbishop’s summons to Canterbury.44 At the same time, as Julian Luxford has shown, Beere was also preparing other exhibits for a potential defense of Glastonbury’s relics. A copy of John of Glastonbury’s chronicle, which offers a number of details about relics of Dunstan, was fitted out soon a­ fter 1500 with small illustrations depicting the feretory: material evidence of the sort loved by antiquarians, to complement the verbal evidence of popu­lar tradition.45 Several manuscripts of varied kinds—­every­thing from a homily on the discovery of the cross to Latin and Old Welsh on Ovid’s Art of Love—­were assembled at Glastonbury in a single codex. A drawing of Jesus with a kneeling monk at his feet, identified as “Dunstanus” in verses on the sheet, had long served as the frontispiece to one of them, the Ars de verbo (Art of the Verb) of a sixth-­century Greek scholar, Eutyches.46 It became the frontispiece for the w ­ hole codex. Sometime around 1500, a scribe added a statement of authentication to the page, identifying the image of the monk as a self-­portrait: “The painting and writing seen below on this page are by Dunstan’s own hand.”47 44. Ibid, 435. 45. See Luxford, “New Visual Evidence,” passim, for a full discussion of the manuscript in question, Trinity College Cambridge MS R 5 16. 46. Bodleian Library MS Auct. F. 4. 32, part I, fol. 1r. 47. Ibid.: “Pictura et scriptura huius pagine subtus visa est de propria ma­nu s[an]c[t]i dunstani.” R. W. Hunt, Saint Dunstan’s Classbook from Glastonbury (Amsterdam, 1961), provides a facsimile of the manuscript. For the date of this note, see Hunt’s introduction, xv (“prob­ably of the early 16th ­century”). On the frontispiece and its creators, see Mildred Budny, “St. Dunstan’s Classbook and Its Frontispiece: Dunstan’s Portrait and Autograph,” in St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed. Ramsay, Sparks, and Tatton-­Brown, 103–42.

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Warham rebutted Beere’s claims one ­after another. His conclusion was especially revealing. Hurling all of his meta­phors into one basket, he argued that the case must be weighed in a fair scale and have a just ending, removing all ambiguities, doubts, and occasions for scandal. To that end he summoned Beere to bring him all “writings, evidences, documents, and every­thing ­else that seems to support your title in this area.”48 Apparently, Warham had lost patience with his adversary and his diabolically deft way of finding new sources and arguments in ­every corner. We do not know w ­ hether Beere ever abandoned his brilliant application of the bureaucratic delaying tactics that Keynes named “the method of slow talk.”49 But we do know that Glastonbury continued to display the bones of Dunstan for the thirty years that remained before Henry VIII and Thomas ­Cromwell sacked both of his shrines. It is pos­si­ble that this episode helped inspire Warham to undertake a visitation of Kentish monasteries in 1511. Warham and his colleagues began by inspecting Christ Church, the monastery whose inmates performed the cathedral ser­vices. They harshly criticized the monks for every­thing from chattering in the choir to ignorance of the meaning of the Latin texts they sang—­not to mention the inedible salt fish dished up by what the report described as “a ­great multitude of useless cooks.”50 Perhaps Warham was taking a vicarious revenge on Beere. The history of this contest for possession of Dunstan is curious, but it is more than that. It challenges standard narratives about relics, antiquities, and the search for both. The culture of the ­great En­glish monastic h ­ ouses in their last de­cades of

48. Warham to Beere, 10 July 1508, in Memorials of Saint Dunstan, ed. Stubbs, 438–39. 49. For the attribution of this phrase to Keynes, see C. P. Snow, Corridors of Power (New York, 1964), 219. 50. Kentish Visitations of Archbishop William Warham and His Deputies, 1511–1512, ed. Kathleen L. Wood-­Legh (Maidstone, Kent, 1984), 293–97.

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existence varied from place to place.51 But they w ­ ere not the petri dishes of sodomy and falsification that Thomas ­Cromwell’s agents and helpers portrayed in the reports that justified the Dissolution. Through the ­Middle Ages, as Arnaldo Momigliano taught long ago, religious communities harbored antiquarians who studied their buildings and their ornaments in painstaking detail.52 When Maffeo Vegio surveyed the old basilica of Saint Peter’s, he followed in the footsteps of a twelfth-­century Vatican canon, Petrus Mallius.53 Some En­glish clerics shared such tastes. The Canterbury schoolmaster John Twyne, for example, depicted the last abbot of Saint Augustine’s, Canterbury, discussing the early history of ­England with two younger friends at his summer lodgings at Sturry.54 The debate about Dunstan’s bones—­like the debates about alchemy that also, in some cases, began in the monasteries—­reveals how rich their intellectual life could be.55 Though Warham and Beere lived and worked far from Rome, they knew something about the methods of humanists and antiquarians that had been honed to a high polish t­ here. And they combined ­these, as ­others did ­after them, with methods drawn from very dif­fer­ent realms, from the working documentary practices of notaries to the inquiries into popu­lar religious practices that normally formed part of episcopal visitations. Like the Roman observers of the Titulus and the body from the 51. David Knowles, The Religious O ­ rders in E ­ ngland, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1950–59), vols. 2 and 3; Bernard, Late Medieval En­glish Church, chap. 8. 52. Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiogra­ phy (Berkeley, 1990), chap. 6. 53. Fabio della Schiava, “ ‘Sicuti traditum est a maioribus’: Maffeo Vegio antiquario tra fonti classiche e medievali,” Aevum 84, 3 (2010), 617–39. 54. Anthony Grafton, “Brian Twyne: University History and the Traditions of En­glish Antiquarianism,” History of Universities 32, 1–2 (2019), 287–312, at 292–93. 55. For alchemy at the En­glish monasteries, see Jennifer Rampling, The Experimental Fire: Inventing En­glish Alchemy, 1300–1700 (Chicago, 2020), pts. 1 and 2.

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Appian Way, they never achieved consistency. For all of Warham’s emphasis on the need for close observation and precise rec­ord keeping, he told his story differently in dif­fer­ent documents. It is most difficult of all, perhaps, to judge the degree of credence that the two antagonists accorded to the miraculous proofs that they cited. To look back at the stories of the Titulus and the w ­ oman in the Appian Way from this vantage point is to see, above all, that t­ hose other stories, so often and so dramatically told as unique chapters in the Re­nais­sance revival of the past, w ­ ere in some ways more normal, more ordinary, than t­ hose who framed and told them realized or believed. The postmortem adventures of Livy seem less unusual and dramatic when compared with ­those of Dunstan than they do when they appear in accounts of the transmission of his texts.56 Like ­those ­earlier episodes, this one ended ironically. At Canterbury, as at Glastonbury, ecclesiastical antiquarians gathered evidence in case further proofs might be needed.57 A monk of Christ Church named Richard Stone compiled documents in a single manuscript: texts by Adelard of Ghent (fl. 1005–1012), Osbern, precentor of Canterbury (fl. 1090), and Vincent of Beauvais on the life and miracles of Dunstan; two copies of the magnificently scathing letter in which a Canterbury monk, Eadmer (ca. 1060–ca. 1126), had refuted a much e­ arlier claim of the monks of Glastonbury to have Dunstan’s body; and Warham’s correspondence with the abbot of Glastonbury.58 Stone main56. See, e.g., The Classical Tradition, ed. Anthony Grafton, Glenn Most, and Salvatore Settis (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), s.v. “Livy,” by R. T. Ridley, 536–38, at 537. 57. Cf. Hunt, Saint Dunstan’s Classbook, xv: “Both at Glastonbury and at Christ Church Canterbury ­there was a revival of interest in their local saints at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th ­century.” 58. Lambeth Palace Library MS 159. See Ramsay and Sparks, “The Cult of St Dunstan,” 322. Eadmer’s letter is printed in Memorials of Saint Dun­ stan, ed. Stubbs, 412–22, and translated in Richard Sharpe, “Eadmer’s Letter to the Monks of Glastonbury Concerning St Dunstan’s Disputed Remains,” in The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey: Essays in Honour of the

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tained a special reverence for Dunstan. Among the books, vestments, and other articles in his bedroom, listed in his postmortem inventory, was “one blue curtain for the high altar, with the history of St. Dunstan.”59 Stone was not Dunstan’s only Canterbury devotee. Thomas Goldston left the cathedral another power­ful piece of physical evidence to support its claims, as is clear from the rec­ord of his gifts in the Kalendar of Obits: It should not be passed over in silence that to remove any hint of ambiguity about the relics of the most holy ­Father Dunstan, by the authority of the most reverend f­ ather William Warham, who was then archbishop, [Goldston] had an examination made, in the presence of the aforementioned archbishop and some other venerable clerics who honorably helped him to carry out this examination. As proof of this point the aforesaid archbishop passed on to the aforesaid prior with his own hand a small piece of the skull of the venerable head of our patron Dunstan, so that he might cover it rev­er­ent­ly and honorably with a lump of silver. The aforesaid prior had this lump of silver properly and skillfully fashioned into the form of a head, in which he had that small piece of the head placed with honor and reverence. He had it preserved, as was proper, among the church’s relics. Every­one now calls it the head of St. Dunstan.60 Ninetieth Birthday of  C. A. Ralegh Radford, ed. Lesley Abrams and James Carley (Woodbridge, 1991), 205–15, at 208–15. 59. C. Eveleigh Woodruff, ed., “An Inventory of the Contents of the Bed-­ Chamber of ­Brother Richard Stone, Monk of Christ Church, Canterbury,” Archaeologia Cantiana 43 (1931), 103–10, at 108; William A. Pantin, Canterbury College, Oxford, vol. 1, Oxford Historical Society, n.s., 6 (Oxford, 1947), 88–90, at 89; Ramsay and Sparks, “The Cult of St Dunstan,” 320: “una cortina blodei coloris pro summo altari cum historia sancti Dunstani.” 60. Inventories of Christchurch Canterbury, ed. J. Wickham Legg and W. H. St. John Hope (Westminster, 1902), 123: “Nec illud silendum est, quod ad omnem ambiguitatis scrupulum circa sanctissimi ac divi patris nostri Dunstani reliquias penitus tollendum. auctoritate reverendissimi patris domini Willelmi

Digging for Du nsta n [ 245 ]

In 1507–8, the pious began to make offerings “ad” or “apud caput s[an]cti Dunstani”—­“at the head of St. Dunstan.” This, as C. Eveleigh Woodruff pointed out, must have been the silver head relic described in the Kalendar.61 Within a few years, however, this prominent relic seems to have lost its original identity. In his “A Pilgrimage for Religion’s Sake,” a Latin colloquy written in the 1520s, Erasmus described visits to En­glish shrines at Walsingham and Canterbury. He had visited Canterbury with John Colet between 1512 and the early summer of 1514. His lively and polemical account of what he saw ­there included a reference to a skull, kept and displayed in the crypt as Becket’s: “the top of the cranium is bared for kissing; the rest covered with silver.”62 In fact, Becket’s head reposed in a gold reliquary. This silver one was almost certainly the work of Goldston’s smith, fabricated for Dunstan’s head and perforated so that ­others could kiss the relic itself just as Goldston and Warham had. It was misidentified ­after only five or six years, ­either by Erasmus or by one of the local “mystagogues” who awaited

Warham tunc archiepiscopi sollempne scrutinium fieri fecit. presente dicto domino archiepiscopo cum nonnullis alijs venerabilibus viris ecclesiasticis sibi in eodem scrutineo [sic] honorabiliter coassistentibus. In cujus rei argumentum porciunculam quandam calve venerandi capitis sanctissimi patronis nostri Dunstani. dominus archiepiscopus dicto priori ma­nu propria contradidit. ut eam reverenter in quadam massa argentea ac honorifice reconderet. Quam quidem massam argenteam in formam capitis dictus prior decenter ac satis artificiose fabricari fecit. in quo eandem porciunculam capitis honorifice ac reverenter fecit collocari. ipsumque inter reliquias ecclesie ut decuit fecit conservari. Quod quidem ab omnibus caput sancti Dunstani vulgariter nuncupatur.” The Kalendar is now Lambeth Palace Library MS 20. 61. C. Eveleigh Woodruff, “The Sacrist’s Rolls of Christ Church, Canterbury,” Archaeologia Cantiana 48 (1936), 38–80, at 41–42, 68; see also Ramsay and Sparks, “The Cult of St Dunstan,” 323n77. 62. Erasmus, “A Pilgrimage for Religion’s Sake,” in his Colloquies, trans. C. R. Thompson, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 40 (Toronto, 1997), 642; Erasmus, Familiaria colloquia et Encomium Moriae, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1882), 1:361: “illic primum exhibetur calvaria martyria perforata: reliqua tecta sunt argento, summa cranii pars nuda patet osculo.”

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visitors in the crypt.63 A dramatic rediscovery did not guarantee that the object in question would remain prominent, or survive for any given period, let alone benefit from an accurate visual rec­ord—­any more than it guaranteed that the discoverers would agree about its age or identity. And as we ­will see, even serious and audible questioning of an object’s genuineness could not prevent it from being presented to the public with full pomp and ceremony. 63. Inventories of Christchurch Canterbury, ed. Legg and Hope, 123n3; Erasmus, “Pilgrimage,” ed. Thompson, 666n140.

ch a p t er  eigh t

Reading the Robe

Let us return to the scene of the Crucifixion, as it was reenacted on another stage in northern Eu­rope: Trier, an ancient town in the far west of the German territory on the scenic banks of the Moselle River, surrounded by vine-­covered hills. According to Hartmann Schedel’s Liber chronicarum it was the fifth city in the world to be founded, a­ fter Jerusalem, Nineveh, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Memphis, many centuries before Rome.1 The Romans, however, had made Trier the capital of their province of Belgica and named it Augusta Treverorum. In the ­later ­Middle Ages, while the economy was dwindling, the city was still chock-­full of convents. It also boasted a multitude of ancient ruins—­the remains of an amphitheater, city gates and walls, baths, a bridge over the river, and above all the impressive basilica of the emperor Constantine, who used it as his audience hall. All of this suggested a city that aspired to higher status and offered a perfect setting for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I to hold a diet, a meeting of the imperial estates, in 1512.2 1. Hartmann Schedel, Weltchronik. Kolorierte Gesamtausgabe von 1493, ed. Stephan Füssel (Cologne, 2001), fol. XXIIIr. 2. Hansgeorg Molitor, “Kurtrier,” in Die Territorien des Reichs im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung. Land und Konfession, 1500–1650, ed.

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In fact, Maximilian was not merely interested in staging a po­liti­cal event at Trier. He loved the fine arts and antiquarian studies. His ambitions as an emperor went hand in hand with the literary and artistic works that he commissioned, which included two biographies of him, Theuerdank and Der Weißkunig; a monumental triumphal arch composed of multiple woodcuts;3 and his huge funerary monument in the court church in Innsbruck (see figure 8.1). All t­ hese proj­ects show that an antiquarian interpretation of the past was central to Maximilian’s self-­presentation as the ruler of the Roman Empire. This attitude also explains his unusual decision to hold a diet in Trier rather than in a city like Augsburg or Nuremberg, whose infrastructure could have supported such an event more lavishly.4 In 1512 the highest authorities not only or­ga­nized an Imperial Diet, they also set out to rediscover the Seamless Robe, Jesus’s tunic—­ the tunic on which the soldiers cast lots a­ fter nailing him to the cross, according to the Gospel of John. To accomplish that goal, they had to set the meeting in Trier. The rediscovery of the Seamless Robe was not miraculous or unexpected, since every­body knew where to look for it.5 Johannes Trithemius—­who was born in Trittenheim, not far from Trier—­cited local traditions to establish that the location Anton Schindling and Walter Ziegler, vol. 5, Der Südwesten (Münster, 1993), 50–71. 3. On the emblematic meaning of Maximilian’s Arch, see Karl Giehlow, “Die Hieroglyphenkunde des Humanismus in der Allegorie der Re­nais­sance, besonders der Ehrenpforte Kaiser Maximilian I,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthisto­ rischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 32 (1915), 1–232 = The Humanist Interpretation of Hieroglyphs in the Allegorical Studies of the Re­nais­ sance: With a Focus on the Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I, trans. Robin Raybould (Leiden, 2015). 4. Reinhard Seyboth, “Der Trierer Reichstag 1512 als europäisches Ereignis,” in Der Trierer Reichstag von 1512 in seinem historischen Kontext, ed. Michael Embach and Elisabeth Dühr (Trier, 2012), 11–39, at 15, 27. 5. Michael Embach, “Die Rolle Maximilians I. (1459–1519) im Rahmen der Trierer Heilig-­Rock-­Ausstellung von 1512,” Jahrbuch für westdeutsche Landesge­ schichte 21 (1995), 409–38, at 424–27.

figure 8.1. The emperor Maximilian had himself depicted by Hans Burgmair the Elder revering the Seamless Robe of Jesus at Trier in one of his illustrated autobiographical works, the Weißkunig. Published by Alwin Schultz, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 6 (1888), 390.

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of the robe and other relics in the high altar of the cathedral was widely discussed long before the discovery: The placement of the Lord’s garment was not secret, though many doubted it in our day: it was recorded in writing and in the widely shared beliefs of the inhabitants of Trier and the Mosel region. I know this particularly well, ­because I too hail from the Mosel region and from my boyhood always heard this story. To gain more certainty I often read it in written form in the annals of the church of Trier.6

Apparently, one could even check this reference in the cathedral itself. Johann Adelphus Muling, a versatile young doctor and translator from Strasburg, visited Trier in 1507, 1508, and—­most impor­tant for us—­also in December 1512.7 He wrote three treatises on the exciting relic in Trier.8 In the second one, called the True Story (Warhaftig sag oder red von dem Rock [Strasbourg, 6. Johannes Trithemius, Annalium Hirsaugiensium opus, 2 vols. (St. Gallen, 1690), 2:676: “Nec fuit ista repositio Dominicae vestis occulta, quamvis etiam postea nostris temporibus multi dubitarent, sed & litteris commendata fuit, & in opinione Trevirensium & Mosellanorum vulgatissima, quod eo melius novi, quoniam & ego Mosellanus patria hanc famam a puero semper audivi, & pro majori certitudine in annalibus Trevirensium Ecclesiae scriptam saepius legi.” See Embach, “Die Rolle Maximilians I.,” 423–25. On Trithemius’s role in the humanist community in Trier, see Michael Embach, “Der Humanismus im Raum Trier-­Luxemburg: Ein Überblick,” in Der Trierer Reichstag von 1512, ed. Embach and Dühr, 147–99, at 155–62. 7. See s.v. “Muling, Johann Adelphus,” by Franz Josef Worstbrock, in Deutscher Humanismus 1480–1520, Verfasserlexikon, vol. 2, cols. 255–77. 8. Adelphus’s works are titled Warhafftig abschrifft von erfin|dung des hailthums und dem Rock unsers hernn | Jhesus christi zu Trier geschehen (Strasbourg, 1512); Warhaftig sag | oder red von dem Rock | Jhesu cristi. Neulich in | der heyligen stat Trier erfunden (Strasbourg, 1512); Declaration unnd ercle|rung der warheit des Rocks Jesu christi, newlich zu | Trier erfunden, das es der recht und wor sye (Strasbourg, 1513). For a full discussion of ­these and the other texts that described the relics of Trier, see Wolfgang Schmid, “Die Wallfahrtslandschaft Rheinland am Vorabend der Reformation: Studien zu Trierer und Kölner Heiltumsdrucken,” in Wallfahrt und Kommunikation: Kommunikation über Wallfahrt, ed. Bernhard Schneider (Mainz, 2004), 17–195, at 28–76.

R e a ding the Robe [ 251 ]

1512]), he mentioned that he had read about the translation of the robe from the west to the east choir of the cathedral ordered by Bishop Johann I in 1196 in the Gesta Treverorum, a book that was kept on a chain in the same choir.9 Not only was the location of the relic well known, but every­one also realized that the credit for actually finding it belonged to Bishop Johann in the twelfth ­century. Such an attribution was not surprising. Around 1500, in the words of Christopher Wood, relic hunters in the empire “looked back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and sometimes ­earlier, as the heroic epoch of relic archaeology.”10 What made it difficult to unearth the relic about three hundred years ­later was not ignorance but fear. According to an old legend, the relic had performed the opposite of a miraculous act of healing: it struck a monk blind when he tried to dig it up on behalf of an archbishop of Trier whose name has not been passed down, thereby making clear that it refused to be discovered.11 Apparently it was waiting for a more pious finder to reveal it to the public. Maximilian I firmly believed that he was worthy to play the role. He had prob­ably heard about the relic when he visited Trier as a fourteen-­year-­old.12 Back then, his 9. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sig. Br: “Solich obbestympt ersterfunden heyltumb ist im Thumstyfft zu Trier Achthundert unnd etlich jar gelegen im hindern Chor Sant Niclaus genandt unnd darynen funden durch Bischoff Johann den ersten des namens und von im in den hohen fron Altar geleget auff sant Philipp unnd Jacobstag in den fodern Chor des man glaupliche geschrifften unnd Buecher findet von alten jarn her geschriben unn ich Adelphus obgenandt selb gelesen und funden hab nemlich in gestis Treverorum eim buech von der Trierischen hendel im selben Chor an einer ketten gelegen.” 10. Christopher Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Re­nais­sance Art (Chicago, 2008), 55. 11. Embach, “Die Rolle Maximilians I.,” 413–14; Thomas Schauerte, “Die Erhebung des Trierer Rockes durch Kaiser Maximilian I. als ‘symbolische Argumentation,’ ” in Der Trierer Reichstag von 1512, ed. Embach and Dühr, 55–68, at 57–58. 12. Schauerte, “Die Erhebung,” 57; Sonja Dünnebeil, “Die Rolle Burgunds: Karl der Kühne–­Friedrich III.,” in Der Trierer Reichstag von 1512, ed. Embach and Dühr, 69–87, at 73–77. Maximilian also took part in the 1492 translatio of Simpertus at Augsburg, which involved elaborate excavations and interpretation of the finds. See Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction, 128–35.

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f­ ather, Frederic III, and Charles the Bold had discussed ­whether their ­children, Maximilian and Maria of Burgundy, should marry. Though ­those par­tic­u­lar negotiations failed, Maximilian would wed Maria a few years ­later, in 1477. By 1512, however, Maximilian had outlived not only Maria but also his second wife, Bianca Maria Sforza, who died on 31 December 1510. And he had developed a deep personal devotion to the True Cross, as is suggested by one panel from the altar of the Holy Cross by Bernhard Strigel that Maximilian commissioned as a gift for Julius II. The pope installed it in the Basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mura in Rome.13 It shows Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, carry­ing the cross as a second Simon of Cyrene and accompanied by his ambitious successor, Maximilian himself.14 ­Whether Maximilian was in Trier for the Imperial Diet or the Diet was in Trier for the robe, Maximilian gave the order for the rediscovery of the relic, and Archbishop Richard von Greif­ fenklau grudgingly arranged its execution.15 On 14 April, the altar in the cathedral was opened. An eyewitness description of this event survives in Johannes Enen’s extensive account, the Medulla Gestorum Treverensium (Trier, 1514).16 Enen served as the cathedral preacher and rector of the 13. The four surviving panels of this altar have been in the National Gallery Prague since 1972. See Hans Pohlsander, “Four Altar Panels by Bernhard Strigel: Some Historical and Philological Perspectives,” Quidditas 19, 4 (1998), 29–96. 14. Schauerte, “Die Erhebung,” 58–59. Simon of Cyrene was the man whom the Romans forced to carry the cross of Jesus to his crucifixion, according to the Synoptic Gospels. 15. On the po­liti­cal purpose of this diet and Maximilian’s journey in 1512, see Embach, “Die Rolle Maximilians I.,” 418–20. For Maximilian’s interest in material remains of the past, see Christopher Wood, “Maximilian I as Archeologist,” Re­nais­sance Quarterly 58, 4 (2005), 1128–74, esp. 1139–40 (on the robe). In his massive article on the circumstances of the robe’s discovery, “Die Trierer Heiltumsfahrt im Spätmittelalter,” Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte 47 (1995), 45–125, Wolfgang Seibrich doubts that fear was the reason for Richard’s reluctance and lays out po­liti­cal reasons (see esp. 73–85). 16. Die Medulla Gestorum Treverensium des Johannes Enen, ein Trierer Heil­ tumsdruck von 1514, ed. Wolfgang Schmid and Michael Embach (Trier, 2004).

R e a ding the Robe [ 253 ]

university of Trier and ­later, in 1517, became an auxiliary bishop.17 He described the event in detail. ­After a prayer for the help of the almighty God, my lord archbishop himself in person and several of the men of the chapter had the high altar forced open in the year 1512 on Wednesday during the Easter feast, which was 14 April, where the writings had testified that the robe would be, and let His Princely Grace the chaplain slip in first. But the altar was quite big and entirely hollow on the inside; and in it three caskets ­were found. In the first casket. On the right side of the altar, which was made of wood and pretty ivory and was sealed with a big seal and was well-­ packed, t­ here was found the holy unstitched Robe of our Lord Jesus, and with it a big loaded die [presumably one of ­those used by the Roman soldiers who gambled for Jesus’s clothing (Mt 27:37)] with an old and rusty knife with some old illegible writings.18

17. Embach, “Der Humanismus im Raum Trier-­Luxemburg,” 187–89. 18. Johannes Enen, Medulla Gestorum Treverensium (Trier, 1514), fol. 35v: “unnd nach so vile ynnicher geistlichen menschen gebet in zuoversicht steure und hilff des almechtigen gottes hat er dickgemelt mein gnediger herre Erzbischoff in eygener persone mit etlichen meinen gnedigen herren vom capitell inn obgemelten iaren .M.CCCCC. und .xii. uff mitwochen in den Ostern fyertagen der do was des .xiiii tags des monats Aprilis laessen den hohen altaer (da in die schrifften den heyligen Rock zuo sein betzugten) uffbrechen und seiner furstlichen gnaden Cappellan tzum ersten hyn inn schlieffen, und ist der altaer vast groß und gantz hole jnwendig gewesen, unud seindt dar innen fonden drey kysten. In der ersten kysten. Uff der rechten seytten des altares, welche von holtze und hubschen helffenbeyn gemacht, was mit einem grossem sygell besyglet und wol versorgt. Ist fonden der heylig ungeneet Rock unsers herren Jesu unnd bey demselben ein grossen falschen wurffell mit sampt einem altten verrosthen messer, mitt ettlichen allten unleßlichen geschrifften.”

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The other two caskets also proved to be brimful of acceptable relics, perfectly suited to Maximilian’s needs. Maximilian held many diets to raise money for his wars, especially a­ fter he began to fight against the Venetians, who had infuriated him when they blocked his plans for a coronation by the pope in Rome in 1508. He always created a very special atmosphere, offering his guests an entertaining program of activities that included jousts, banquets, dance events, and shooting competitions, which he often personally attended. In Trier he arrived five weeks early and thus had plenty of time to go hunting in the surrounding areas.19 But religious cele­brations and pious feeling gave this diet its special character. The days a­ fter the Easter holidays w ­ ere considered the best time for the pre­sen­ta­tion of the relics, since by then most of the distinguished participants had arrived in town. It was a moment of high po­liti­cal importance, which required a complex symbolic staging that left no room for doubts.20 The date in question, 3 May 1512, was carefully chosen, as it was the feast day of Helen’s excavation of the cross in Jerusalem, the day of the original inventio crucis. Moreover, Maximilian took care to stage an imposing event, designed to commemorate his wife Bianca Maria Sforza and certain other dignitaries who had recently died. He had proven his deep devotion to the cross as a second Constantine, an alter Constantinus, on Good Friday, when he joined the pro­cession in a woolen robe with bare feet.21 He even found time to pay a visit to an ancient column, six miles south of Trier in a small village called Igel. This was the burial monument of a f­ amily of Roman cloth merchants of the second ­century CE, crowned by an ea­gle (see figure 8.2). In medieval times a local legend had it that this ancient monument commemorated the place where the parents of the emperor Constantine, Helen and Constantius, 19. Seyboth, “Der Trierer Reichstag 1512,” 21–25. 20. Barbara Stollberg-­Rilinger, Des Kaisers alte Kleider: Verfassungsge­ schichte und Symbolsprache des Alten Reiches (Munich, 2008), 7–22, 299–314. 21. Schauerte, “Die Erhebung,” 58–59.

figure 8.2. The Igel Column near Trier bore a relief that, according to medieval legend, depicted the marriage between Helen and Constantius. It was one of many antiquities that gave the city and region of Trier their special quality, attesting to the piety of Constantine and his f­ amily and giving the city potential as a pilgrimage site, a northern Eu­ro­pean counterpart to Rome itself. Wikimedia, Creative Commons.

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had married. ­Later, in the fall of 1512, Maximilian asked the brilliant humanist Willibald Pirckheimer to explain the inscriptions and reliefs on the column. Prob­ably very much to Maximilian’s disappointment, the erudite humanist and counsellor dismissed the legend as a fabella: “On the front the images of three ­people holding hands can be seen. From this the locals made up the tale that Constantius and Helen married ­there. But the inscriptions that still remain t­ here in part clearly show that it is a monument [i.e., a funeral monument].”22 Pirckheimer had more t­ hings to say about the ea­gle on top of the column. Looking at its spread wings and decayed head he remembered the Gauls who had inhabited the village: “We may conjecture that this is the source of the village’s name. For the Gauls used to call the aquila [ea­ gle] ‘Egla.’ ”23 Hartmann Schedel had reported another legend, according to which Trier was protected by unbreakable brick walls, built in a Babylonian style (he must have meant the imperial baths in the southeast corner of the city’s walls). In this case Maximilian proved that the tradition was right by carry­ing out what Archbishop Warham might have called an experimentum. He or­ga­nized an artillery demonstration, during which he fired a heavy cannon (“hauptstück”) at what he took to be the wall in question. Johannes Enen, who mentioned the event in his Medulla, reported that even though several shots (“ettliche schüs”) hit the brick tower, they caused only “a small shudder” (“welchs dem thurn gar ein clein erschreckung gab”).24 Chris22. Willibald Pirckheimer, Opera Politica, Historica, Philologica et Epis­ tolica (Frankfurt, 1610), 93–94: “In fronte tres conspiciuntur Imagines iunctis astare manibus. Ex qua re accolae fabulam finxere, Constantinum & Helenam illic desponsatos fuisse. Sed ex litteris, quae adhuc ex parte videntur, clare de­ prehendi potest, illud monumentum esse.” 23. Ibid., 94: “Villam vero ex illa aquila nomen sortitam esse, coniecturare licet. Galli enim Aquilam Eglam nominare consueverunt.” See also Jacques Mersch, La Colonne d’Igel: Essai historique et iconographique / Das Denkmal von Igel: Historisch-­ikonographische Studie (Luxemburg, 1985), 21–22. 24. Enen, Medulla, fols. 5r–­v.

R e a ding the Robe [ 257 ]

topher Wood commented that “such a cavalier attitude ­towards the most impressive Roman ruins in northern Eu­rope strikes us ­today as incredible. Evidently, artifacts from the distant past did not interest Maximilian u ­ nless he could absorb them into his own monumental proj­ects.”25 But as Thomas Schauerte has shown, the failure of the assault was deliberate. Maximilian’s barrage included real cannon balls, but it was essentially a symbolic act. He wanted to display an example of the steadfastness of the Christian West on the occasion of the diet, which had been overshadowed by the news of the accession of a new militant sultan, Selim I.26 A brand-­new wooden altar was erected for the display of the newly found relics, as Trithemius emphasized.27 The emperor, electors, princes, and ambassadors all came in strict order of precedence—­carefully recorded by the anonymous observer who composed the earliest broadsheet account of the event, as well as by Johannes Enen and Adelphus—to see and venerate the relics. They ­were displayed in an equally elaborate order, which was recorded with equal vigilance.28 Just as the relics ­were assigned to the caskets in which they had been found, and carefully listed, beginning with the most impor­tant, so, too, 25. Wood, “Maximilian I as Archeologist,” 1128–29 (quote at 1129; German translation in Maximilians Ruhmeswerk: Künste und Wissenschaften im Umkreis Kaiser Maximilians I., ed. Jan-­Dirk Müller and Hans-­Joachim Ziegeler [Berlin, 2015], 131–84, at 131–32); he makes the same argument in his Forgery, Replica, Fiction, 61. 26. Schauerte, “Die Erhebung,” 56–57, 63–66. 27. Trithemius, Annalium Hirsaugiensium opus, 2:676: “Reliquiae . . . ​ noviter inventae”; “super novum altare ligneum ad hoc in Choro praeparatum collocatae sunt.” 28. For the broadsheet published by Wolfgang Stöckel in Leipzig in 1512, see Hermann Heineck, “Ein noch unbekanntes Flugblatt aus der Zeit der ersten Ausstellung des ‘Heiligen Rockes’ zu Trier vom Jahre 1512,” Centralblatt für Bib­ liothekswesen 9 (1892), 417–19, and Christoph Willems, “Ein Flugblatt über die Ausstellung des heiligen Rockes vom Jahre 1512,” Pastor Bonus, Zeitschrift für kirchliche Wissenschaft und Praxis 4 (1892), 228–37; see also Enen, Medulla, fols. 36v–37r; Adelphus, Warhafftig abschrifft, sig. [av–­aiiv].

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the dignitaries w ­ ere arranged in accordance with their titles in descending order from archbishops, bishops, dukes, and margraves to ambassadors.29 Thus, as Barbara Stollberg-­Rilinger has shown for the Diet of Worms in 1495, t­ hese ceremonies or at least the accounts of them w ­ ere governed by a harmonious, even symmetrical aesthetic. The authors who described them presented a lucid, orderly image of the setting, the participants, and the events.30 But while the robe could dispel po­liti­cal uncertainties, it could also prompt historical doubts, from the very moment it was brought back to light. Adelphus’s three treatises clearly suggest that its authenticity needed to be defended. In the first, Adelphus concentrated on the erfindung, the finding of the relics, and how they w ­ ere displayed on the new altar and presented by a “renowned doctor.”31 He registered them with as much precise information as pos­si­ble. His account relied on e­ arlier rec­ords, which do not survive, as well as some early broadsheets on the ­matter.32 In the case of the relics of Saint Maternus it was easy to provide further information, for a coin that read “Maternus” was found on his body.33 The paper slips that w ­ ere found with the relics in the chest of the Holy Tunic, however, proved “illegible and faded.”34 A silver casket also appeared, with even more “delicious 29. Adelphus, Warhafftig abschrifft, sigs. aiiir–[a ivr]; Enen, Medulla, fols. 34 –37r. 30. Stollberg-­Rilinger, Des Kaisers alte Kleider, 32–46. 31. Adelphus, Warhafftig abschrifft, sig. a iiir: “durch einen namhafftigen doctoren geoffenbort und verkünd worden.” Cf. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sig. Aiiiiv: “Dis heyltumb ist zu Trier oeffentlich verkuendet unnd gezeygt worden durch ein namhafftiden Doctorn gar andechtiglichen auß befelh Keyserlicher Maiestat und aller andern Fuersten und Herrn die im zu Eren erschinen. Am Sontag nechst nach Philippi und Jacobi.” 32. See n. 28 above. 33. Adelphus, Warhafftig abschrifft, sig. [av]: “in einer kisten ist gefunden worden der Coerper mit dem haupt von sanct Matern dem heyligenn Bischoff uff synem lychnam ist gefunden worden ein pfening daruff gemüntzt stund Maternüs.” 34. Ibid., sigs. [av–­a iir]: “zedel die unleßlichen verblichen warend.” Like Enen in his Medulla, Adelphus mentions the die, but does not call it loaded. v

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relics” that bore no labels at all; or perhaps it was so full that its contents ­were not fully listed.35 As in Italy, accounts varied. Only Trithemius claimed that the tunic was found with a label (cum inscriptione): “In the first casket the seamless tunic of our Savior was discovered, with this label: ‘This is the seamless tunic of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.’ ”36 Adelphus did not know of this tag, and even if he had he would prob­ably have wanted to search more deeply. In fact, his second treatise, the True Story, which dates from the same year, shows in detail that the robe became an object of antiquarian as well as religious interest. According to this text, the body of Maternus was found in a wooden casket in the m ­ iddle of the altar, bound with three iron straps. On it lay a large, ancient silver coin with the inscription “Bishop Maternus” (Maternus Episcopus). His body (including the head) was indeed in the casket.37 The robe was found to the right of the altar, in a casket made of wood and ivory with a large seal.38 ­These materials apparently provided impor­tant evidence of the tunic’s genuineness. Trithemius noted that some doubted the presence of such awesome relics in Trier.39 More skeptical or “meddlesome” 35. Ibid. sigs. [a iir–­v]: “Item in der silbern grossen kisten die in dem hohen altar stad hat man vil und allerley koestlich hailtumb funden dar by hie nit geschrieben stet.” 36. Trithemius, Annalium Hirsaugiensium opus, 2:676: “In prima capsula reperta fuit ipsa Salvatoris nostri tunica inconsutilis cum inscriptione tali: Haec est inconsutilis Domini & Salvatoris nostri JESU Christi.” 37. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sig. [Aiiiir]: “Item In Mitten des Altars ist funden wordenn ein ander Kysten von holtz mit Dreyen grossen eysen banden gepunden und umbgeben auff der funden wart ligend ein silbrer grosser pfennig alter muentz daran geschriben stund Maternus Episcopus. Dan do man die Kysten auffthet da was darynen der Corper sancti Materni und sein heyliges haubt dar bey.” 38. Ibid., sig. Aiiiv: “An der Rechten seyten des Altars ist gefunden worden ein kyst von holtz unnd schoenem helffenbein gemacht gar kuenstlichen und mit eynem grossem Sigill verwart.” 39. Trithemius was well aware that not all of the holy relics and wonder-­ working images that proliferated across the sacred landscape of the empire in his time w ­ ere genuine. See the impressive list of fakes in his “De miraculis

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contemporaries, as Adelphus described them, posed questions. They asked how the tunic had come to Trier and if it was the real one.40 Such doubts ­were not unusual when relics created in Palestine ­were displayed in western Eu­ro­pean churches. Some ­were raised by Hans von Waltheym, a patrician from Halle who visited the pilgrimage sites of Provence in 1474.41 Hearing that the Magdalene had spent thirty-­two years in her cave ­there without eating or drinking, he inquired where she had found her clothing.42 Learning that Saint Anne was buried in Provence, he wondered how that was pos­si­ble and asked a local authority for more information: “My dear sir, I ask you please to clear up a prob­lem that I have, and this is my prob­lem: one finds it written everywhere that Saint Anna died and was buried in the Holy Land. So I won­der how her old body came into this land and this city of Apt.”43 Waltheym reported the answers he received for each question with e­ very evidence of satisfaction: the Magdalene’s hair had miraculously grown long enough to cover her, and long narratives, rich with miracles, explained how the bones of Saint Anne and Saint Anthony had reached southern France.44 He happily emptied his purse at the shrines of Anthony and Mary Magdalene.45 At Trier, too, ­there was a traditional explanation: Helen, the ­mother of the first Christian Beatiss. Mariae semper Virginis in Ecclesia nova prope Dittelbach in arena nuper in eius honorem constructa factis,” book 1, chap. 6, in his Opera pia et spiritualia (Mainz, 1605), 1083–84. 40. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sig. Br: “Mocht aber ein fuerwitziger fragen wie doch der Rock gen Trier kummen sey und ob es der recht ist. Dem gib ich Adelphus ein soelich antwurt und hab das funden in Supplemento Cronicarum und in der Nuerenbergischen grossen Croniken mit den figuren.” 41. Hans von Waltheym, Die Pilgerfahrt des Hans von Waltheym im Jahre 1474, ed. F. E. Welti (Bern, 1925), translated with another account in Deux voya­ geurs allemands en Provence et en Dauphiné à la fin du XVe siècle, ed. Noël Coulet, Provence Historique 41, 166 (1991), 429–602. 42. Waltheym, Pilgerfahrt, 34. 43. Ibid., 50. 44. Ibid., 34, 50–51, 21–22. 45. Ibid., 20, 34–35.

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emperor Constantine, had discovered the tunic, together with several other relics, such as the Holy Cross and the Titulus, and had donated the tunic to Trier, where she had lived together with her son ­after he had become caesar.46 Apparently, this just-so story did not satisfy the doubters on this dramatic occasion. Adelphus looked for help not in local tales or chronicles, as guardians of tradition normally did, but in reference books: the massive, copiously illustrated volumes in which fifteenth-­ century scholars summed up the history of the world. The books at his disposal included “the big Nuremberg Chronicle with the illustrations” and two of its principal sources and models, the Supplementum Chronicarum of the Augustinian Jacopo Foresti da Bergamo and the Fasciculus temporum of the Carthusian Werner Rolevinck. All three works described the tunic as “seamless” (inconsutilis). Foresti followed its wanderings in some detail, and both he and Schedel recorded that it was preserved “in an ivory coffer” (in eburnea archa).47 From ­these histories Adelphus wove a more or less consistent story, which ended by highlighting the fact that the container of the tunic, in Trier as in Jerusalem, was made of ivory: that the Seamless Robe was made for Jesus Christ by the holy virgin Maria and given to one of Pilate’s knights and servants in the course of gambling is clearly testified by the Gospel. About 620 years a­ fter Christ’s birth it was found u ­ nder Pope Boniface, all undamaged, or, according to the Carthusian in his Fasciculus temporum, in the year 580 u ­ nder Pope Pelagius, not far from Jerusalem in the city of Saphat in a marble casket [the robe] was raised by Gregorius, bishop of Antiochia; Thomas, bishop of Jerusalem; and John, bishop 46. Hans A. Pohlsander, “Der Trierer Heilige Rock und die Helena-­ Tradition,” in Der Heilige Rock zu Trier, Studien zur Geschichte und Verehrung der Tunika Christi (Trier, 1995), 119–30. 47. Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg, 1493), fol. 149v; Jacopo Foresti, Supplementa chronicarum (Venice, 1513), fol. 179v; Werner Rolevinck, Fasciculus temporum (Venice, 1479), fol. 40v.

[ 262 ] Ch a pter 8

of Constantinople. And a­ fter its discovery it was held in g ­ reat honor and glory. From t­ here it was brought to Jerusalem and laid into an ivory casket, just like the one in which it was now found.48

The prob­lem with this story and the argument from the material of the casket is that the robe’s journey did not end in Trier. It was allegedly brought to Constantinople when the caliph Umar conquered Jerusalem in 644 and remained ­there continuously, down to the time of the fictional John Mandev­ille, who mentioned in his Travels that he had seen the seamless tunic (tunica inconsutilis).49 Consequently, Adelphus repudiated this ­whole version of the story as implausible. He answered the questioners with a rhetorical question of his own: “Why would Emperor Constantine and his dear m ­ other Helena leave b ­ ehind them so ­great a relic,” especially when they had moved even the stones of the t­ emple in Jerusalem to Rome?50 Nobody, he insisted, should 48. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sigs. Br–­v: “Das der ungeneet Rock unßer herren Jesu Christi jm von der heyligen junckfrawen Maria gemacht der eynem auß den Rittern und dienern Pilati zu theyl wardt im spiel wie dan soelchs das Ewangelium klerlich auß weyset in der zeyt nach Christi geburt Sechshundert unnd ungeuerlich bey zwentzig jaren darnach ­under dem Babst Bonifacio gefunden ganz unverseret. Oder als der Cartheuser w ­ ill in seynnem Fasciculo funffhundert unn Achig iar ­under Babst Pelagio nit fer von Jerusalem in der statt Saphat in einer Marmorsteynen Archen von Gregorio dem Bischoff zu Antiochia Thoman dem Bischoff zu Jerusalem unnd Johanne Bischoff zu Constantinopel erhaben und nach seiner erfindung in grossen wyrden und eren gehalten und von dannen gen Jerusalem gefiert und in ein helffenbynen Archen gelegt worden wie er dan yetzo funden ist.” 49. Ibid., sig. Bv: “Darnach als die statt Jherusalem wider verloren wardt im jar nach der geburt Christi Sechßhundert unn xliiii. Unn von den Machometischen gewunnen kam er als glaublichen ist mit sampt anderm heyltumb gen Constantinopel unn in die Tuerckengewalt. Und ist do die gantz sag gewesen auch noch zu den zeytten Johannis de Montevilla das er da sey.” Cf. chapter 2 of Mandev­ille’s Travels: Texts and Translations, ed. Malcolm Letts, 2 vols. (London, 1953), 1:6n3, 2:233. As Letts points out, not all versions of Mandev­ille contain this information. 50. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sig. Bv: “Aber sy handt sich selber betrogen funden. Dan wie wolt der heylig Keyser Constantinus und sein liebe Muter Helena

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frivolously reject the accepted local story and refuse to venerate the robe, since they would disgrace themselves and earn God’s punishment by ­doing so.51 But in his third treatise, the Declaration, published in 1513, Adelphus himself corrected this view. He now argued that the involvement of Helen in the story was only optional, not necessary, in order to explain how the robe had found its final destination in Trier’s cathedral. In a summary of his lengthy report on the robe’s many journeys, he stated that Christ’s seamless robe first came from Jerusalem to Rome, then from Rome to Constantinople, from Constantinople to Saphat, from Saphat back again to Jerusalem, where it was kept, but then from Jerusalem again to Constantinople. Fi­nally it was without doubt brought to Trier by a bishop, as I said. And it was kept ­there together with other relics that Helen had brought ­there.52

Once Adelphus had scrupulously traced the robe’s tour of the Mediterranean world, he firmly rebutted the colorful twelfth-­ century legend that was reprinted in Augsburg on the occasion of its discovery. In this version of the story it was not Helen but soellich groß heyltumb hynder ynen lassen Das sy so sawer und schwerlich ueberkamen Als das heylig Creutz die Kron das Sper unnd Nagel des Herren unn anders das sy in diese landt pracht unn außgeteylt haben do sy zum heyligen Grab waren So sy doch die Steyn des tempels Jherusalem liessen von dannen fueeren gen Rom do vil minder an lage weder an disem wirdigen heyltumb.” See the same argument in Enen, Medulla, fol. 40r–­v. 51. Ibid.: “Darumb nyemadt das leychtlich sol widersprechen das / er nit vall in ungenadt und straff Gottes der alle ding zu bequemlichen zeytten last fuerkommen nach seynem goetlichen willen.” 52. Adelphus, Declaration, sigs. Biiv–­Biiir: “. . . ​das der rock inconsutilis Christi von Jherusalem gen Rom zuo erst. darnach von Rom gen Constantinopel: von Constantinopel gen Saphatt von Saphatt wider gen Jherusalem mit gwarsamy da dannen von Jherusalem gen Constantinopel widerbracht: und also durch einen bischoff zuo Trier uß ursach unzwifellich wie obberürt: dahynn bracht unnd behalten sy sampt anderm heiltumb von Constantinopel das Helena dahyn bracht hat.”

[ 264 ] Ch a pter 8

Orendel, a legendary king of Trier, who brought the robe to town.53 Apparently, t­ hese doubts did not lessen popu­lar devotion. Adelphus recorded that when the robe was shown to the public on Pentecost, on the occasion of the consecration of Bishop Richard von Greiffenklau, forty thousand p ­ eople came to listen to his sermon, which lasted five hours, and to look at the relics.54 Johannes Enen provided a highly emotional account: the relics, he claimed, ­were shown to the public for twenty-­three days and attracted more than a hundred thousand viewers. Archbishop von Greiffenklau was not prepared for the flood of ­people and had put the robe on display just “as it had been found folded up in the casket, at first for public viewing. But this left the ­people unsatisfied.”55 They pressed him to unfold it. Seeing the w ­ hole relic, the pious burst into tears, “since this robe is very moving and it must be a hard person in whose heart it does not arouse a special feeling.”56 What did they see? And how did they see it? Of the many relics that w ­ ere discovered in the three caskets, only the most impressive pieces w ­ ere shown to the public. T ­ hose w ­ ere the upper body of Saint Maternus, the head of Saint Cornelius, a veil of Saint Mary, Christ’s diaper, and his robe, along with a die.57 53. Eine hübsche Histori zu lesen von unsers Herren Rock, wie der wunder­ barlich einem Künig (Orendel genannt) worden ist, der ihn gen Trier bracht hat, und daselbst in ein Sarg verschlossen, der jetzt bey Kayser Maximilians zeit erfunden ist (Augsburg, 1512). 54. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sig. Biir: “Dan als der hochwirdig Herr e­ tc. Bischoff zu Trier am pfingstag geweyhet und consecrirt worden ist durch die hoechdigen bischoffen von Mentz Straßburg und Wurmbs. Und am andern tag darnach vor dem thum am morgen zu funff stunden ein predig gethon des volck des ob viertzig tausent gewesen. Und darnach das genandt heylthumb gezeygt sunderlich dye groessern hauptstueck.” 55. Enen, Medulla, fol. 37r. 56. Ibid., fol. 37v: “wan diser Rock gar beweglich ist anzuesehen, und mueß ein herter menche sein, dem et nit ein besunder bewegnus in seynem hertzen erweckt.” 57. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sig. Biir.

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Clearly, the robe was the most impor­tant and spectacular relic. Garments played vital roles in Christian worship. As Lee Palmer Wandel has shown, “[Liturgical] vestments ­were not surface. . . . ​ They, too, for Durand, w ­ ere ‘full of the signs of the divine and the sacred mysteries.’ ”58 As Durand made clear, each piece of clothing during mass “had direct scriptural references.”59 The alb—­the roomy garment worn over the priest’s sleeveless chasuble—­had to be of cotton or linen and a brilliant white in color. The most impor­tant ele­ments of the design of the chasuble w ­ ere not so much the kind of cloth from which it was made (silk brocade and velvet) but its colorfully embroidered surfaces, which became a rich and complex form of medieval art, created mostly by w ­ omen.60 Their skill allowed the light to play on the priest’s vestments in dif­fer­ent ways as he moved through the church, flickeringly lit by candles and oil lamps. Often, chasubles w ­ ere “reliquary vestments” that had parts of older garments worked into their fabric.61 In fact, “the garments w ­ ere not merely to ‘signify’ the virtues of the priest—­truthfulness, obedience, penance, purity, charity—­the vestments ­were to manifest them, to show that which was beneath them in the person of the celebrant.”62 One who scrutinized the Seamless Robe with ­these assumptions in mind would expect to find it rich in colors and meanings: a speaking garment that could prob­ably reveal a ­great deal about its divine owner. In his True Story Adelphus gave a close description of how the robe was made (“Wie der Rock gestaltet sey”). First, he verified that it was “seamless” and thus did not contradict what was 58. Lee Palmer Wandel, “Vestments in the Mass,” in Quid est sacramentum? Visual Repre­sen­ta­tion of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Eu­rope, 1400–1700, ed. Walter Melion, Elizabeth Carson Pastan, and Lee Palmer Wandel (Leiden, 2020), 82–104, at 86. 59. Ibid., 90. 60. Maureen Miller, Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Eu­rope, c. 800–1200 (Ithaca, N.Y., 2014). 61. The phrase is Miller’s, cited by Wandel, “Vestments in the Mass,” 102. 62. Wandel, “Vestments in the Mass,” 95.

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said about it in the Scripture (John 18:23). As we have seen, this correlation with the most authoritative of all texts was vital to proving its genuineness: “The robe is inconsutilis, that is ‘unstitched’ or ‘without a seam,’ as I have read from some ­really trustworthy men who actually saw it three times.”63 Though Adelphus characterized his account of the robe as at least partly second­hand, he described its making and design in granular detail. He revealed that inquiries into its material and form evolved around it as they had around the Titulus and the bones of St. Dunstan. Trithemius noted that “the tunic had no sleeves and was of a marvelous composition and foreign colors.”64 Adelphus offered a much more precise account: It is of a darkish color, inclining more ­toward brown or a dark red, roughly. It is very delicate and fine, as if it w ­ ere of silk. The weft and warp are of the same small and subtle thread. It does not seem to be woven or knitted or braided by hand, b ­ ecause the threads lie firmly on top of each other, all lush like damask, not so loose. It is lavishly decorated with flowers, like a damask. Beneath ­there are several characters in a pale yellow that have a form like a ­horse­shoe or a Hebrew S, that they call “shin” [‫]ש‬. The form of the characters and the floral design was very dark so that it was not clearly vis­i­ble, even if one goes close.65 63. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sig. Biiv: “Der Rock ist inconsutilis das ist ungeneet oder onnadt als ich deß von warhafftigen herren glauplichen schein gelesen hab die in zum drittenmal hant eygentlich gesehen.” 64. Trithemius, Annalium Hirsaugiensium opus, 2:676: “Est autem tunica ipsa sine manicis mirandae compositionis, & peregrini coloris.” 65. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sig. Biiv: “Er ist rouchfarb und zeucht sich mer auff braun oder dunckel rott dan grob. Er ist vast zart und lind als ob er seyden ­were. Der eintrag unnd zettel ist gleych von einem kleinen subtylen faden und scheyndt nit als ob er geweben sey so scheynet er auch nit glißmet oder mit der handt gewuercket dan die fedem hert auffeinander ligen gantz satt als ein Dammast nit so lueck. Er ist etlicher maß gepluembt gleych als ein Dammast darunder sind etlich Carachteres die sindt bleych geel und etlich diser gestalt schier wie ein Roß eysen oder hebreysch S. das sie schyn heyssent. Und die figur

R e a ding the Robe [ 267 ]

This description is strikingly precise, concentrating less on the form of the garment than on the cloth from which it was made. Adelphus and the ­others whose information he drew on must have subjected the tunic to a detailed and exacting inspection. It seems pos­si­ble that some of them made sketches of the robe, though they evidently did not try to create a facsimile, as Leonardo da Sarzana did for the Titulus. Most early illustrations of the robe depict it rather schematically, in the form of a T with some straight lines to suggest draping. But the artistic realization that appears on the frontispiece of Adelphus’s True Story seems to follow at least some of the observations made during the close investigation of the robe (see figure 8.3a). This image even shows what Adelphus described as characters that resemble a Hebrew shin (‫( )ש‬see figure 8.3b). The robe also appears, colored with brown ink, on the title page of Enen’s account (see figure 8.4). By describing its color as elusive, oscillating between gray, brown, and a reddish tawny, he made it appear special, something that “cannot be reproduced by any painter” and “cannot be found in any country ­today,” and thus deserving to be venerated.66 The robe’s color also mattered to the humanist poet Richard Sbrulius, whom Maximilian had honored with the title of poeta laureatus and commissioned to translate his Theuerdank into Latin. In 1516 Sbrulius, then at the University of Cologne, published a pious poem on the robe, in which he compared the robe’s vivid, glowing color to that der buchstaben und das depluembt vast dunckel das mans nit woll sehen mag man sey dann nachendt darbey.” 66. Enen, Medulla, fol. 37v: “Sein farbe ist seltzam, sye ist nit graw, so ist sie auch nitt gantz brune, und meins bedunckes zeugt sich das merer theyll uff thennet, aber doetlich, doch ist es nit dy farb gantz, unn verwandert sych nach der lufft. Also das kein maler die varb rechtt treffen mag. Es wurt auch sulche farb ytzunt in keinem landt gebraucht da von man zuo sagen weis.” The word “dötlich” (lethal) has to be emended by conjecture to “rötlich” (reddish); see the discussion by Peter J. A. Schmitz in Johannes Enen, Kurzer Inbegriff der Geschichte von Trier und Beschreibung der dortigen Kirchen und Heilthümer, ed. and trans. Schmitz (Regensburg, 1845), 121–22n101.

figure 8.3a. Johann Adelphus Muling used the results of the close examination of the Seamless Robe of Jesus that scholars and artisans carried out in Trier in this image on the title page of his True Story. The robe appears along with the other most prominent Trier relics: Bishop Maternus, the knife, the dice, and a nail from the holy cross. Note the floral decoration of the fabric and the band around the collar, embroidered with what Adelphus identified as Hebrew letters. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rar. 4078, p. 0002, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb00005401-6.

R e a ding the Robe [ 269 ]

figure 8.3b. Detail of the frontispiece, Adelphus, True Story, with the ornaments around the collar that resemble the Hebrew letter shin. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Rar. 4078, p. 0002, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb00005401-6.

of a liver.67 ­These remarks should not be dismissed as a commonplace. The witnesses’ accounts rested on close inspection and a practical trial, an experimentum designed to discover the true composition of the tunic’s color. The results ­were proudly presented by Johannes Scheckmann, a Benedictine monk at St. Maximin in Trier, whom Enen asked to translate his Medulla into Latin. Scheckmann published his Epitome alias Medulla Gestorum Trevirorum in 1517. But instead of providing a faithful translation, he augmented Enen’s original text with numerous learned additions and quotations.68 When he described the newly discovered robe he could not resist inserting an excursus. Following Enen’s account, he began: “The color is strange. It is 67. Richard Sbrulius, Chrysocharis Treberica (Cologne, 1516), sig. Biiiv: Vestis ave Christi. miseris succurrere disce / Utque iecur grato fulgens imitare colore. / Sic humana tuis niteant precordia flammis (Hail, robe of Christ, teach us to help the poor / and gleaming like liver imitate it with a graceful color. / In the same way should ­human hearts glow by your flames). 68. Embach, “Der Humanismus im Raum Trier-­Luxemburg,” 188. T ­ here exists a further treatise, titled Ein wahrhafftiger Tractat (Strasbourg 1513), that is attributed to Johannes Scheckmann, ed. and trans. into High German by Charlotte Houben and Michael Embach, Johannes Scheckmann, Der Heilige Rock von Trier (Briedel, 1996).

figure 8.4. Another image of the Seamless Robe, this one from the title page of Johannes Enen’s Medulla. The robe appears stretched out on a stick, as it was displayed to the public. Its floral design spreads out to cover the background, together with the other relics, the die and the knife. In this copy the woodcut of the robe is colored with brown and yellow ink. Enen, Medulla Gestorum Treverensium (Trier, 1514). Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 4 H.eccl. 260 m, p. 0005, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb00004181-7.

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not gray and not entirely blood red, b ­ ecause a smoky color was mixed with it.”69 Then Scheckmann described the practical efforts to analyze the color of the relic to which Enen had alluded. He emphasized that it was a compound, thus managing to harmonize the brownish tunic that had been found in Trier with the fourth-­ century writer Lactantius’s description of it as being “a garment of purple color” (coloris punicei ueste). Apparently Scheckmann wanted not only to show that the robe in Trier did not contradict Scripture but also to prove that it was consistent with the teachings of a highly esteemed early Christian writer and historian. Lactantius, a­ fter all, was a local hero. As a tutor to Constantine’s son Crispus he had evidently spent the last years of his life in Trier:70 But when a practical attempt was made to represent it [i.e., the robe] with paint, it seemed to tend more t­oward the color that comes out of mixing gold and purple and makes a unique effect: Lactantius Firmianus noted . . . ​that this very tunic was of a purple color. Furthermore, they say that the purple color was mixed with blueish-­green, but such that it still has more of the red tone and also appears tawny. If you add a ­little bit of gold to that tawny shade you ­will note that for the most part the color of Christ’s seamless robe was gold.71 69. Johannes Scheckmann, Epitome alias Medulla Gestorum Trevirorum (Metz, 1517), fol. XLVIv: “Color admirabilis. non grisea, non ex toto sanguinea admixto fumigero colore.” 70. M. von Albrecht, Geschichte der Römischen Literatur, von Andronicus bis Boethius, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Darmstadt, 1994), 2:1263–76. 71. Scheckmann, Epitome, fol. XLVIv: “ut vsu tentum est depingere eam, sed magis videtur tendere ad eum colorem, qui croceo et puniceo commixtus singularem pre se ferat apparentiam: Lactantius firmianus eandem tunicam punicej coloris notat fuisse, quarto de vera sapientia libro [Lactantius, Divinae institu­ tiones 4.18.7]. Porro puniceum colorem dicunt glaucedine [glaucitate?] permixtum, ut tamen de rubedine plus habeat. et iam iecorius appareat. Si iecorio illi parum croccitatis [croceitatis?] adhibueris pro maiori sui parte christiane tunice

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None of ­these efforts quite succeeded in matching the color of the original. As Scheckmann explained, the tunic’s long stay inside a chest had dulled its hue: “But it is a dead, not a vivid [gold], which doubtless happened to it b ­ ecause of its long enclosure below the earth.”72 Even the most skillful painter could not duplicate the aging effects of time. As a final fillip, Scheckmann provided a ­recipe that would enable his readers to match the color of the tunic by themselves: But so that you could easily conjecture and clearly know and understand the color through your senses, mix and grind the following colors at the same time: red, grayish-­tawny, gold. If we can trust good artists and paint­ers, nothing could be provided that would come closer or be more compatible to that color. I myself tried it, by direct action and trial: I mixed the colors and brought them together. I found a color that was most similar to that of Christ’s tunic.73

Though Scheckmann motivated readers to replicate his experi­ mentum by enthusiastically pointing to his own successful attempts, he also took care to admit that he had produced only a very similar, not an identical, color. It would, of course, never be pos­si­ble to fathom, much less to match, the constantly changing color that Mary had created for her son’s tunic: “For it is not of a inconsutilis colorem notabis aureum esse.” See also the account in a broadside published by Willems, “Ein Flugblatt über die Ausstellung des heiligen Rockes vom Jahre 1512,” 229: “Vnd der Rock ist mit grawen vnd sangwyn gar Wunderlich durchwirkt und im wider schein grawechtig.” Willems discusses the dif­ fer­ent accounts of the color and material of the tunic (ibid., 235–36n6). 72. Scheckmann, Epitome, fols. XLVIv–­XLVIIr: “attamen submortuum non viuidum, quod illi accidisse ex diutina subterranea reclusione non dubitauerim.” 73. Ibid., fol. XLVIIr: “Ut autem facile augurari, et liquido colorem sapere posses et intelligere. misceto et conterito insimul. hos colores subscriptos puniceum: fuligineum, croceum, et si bonis artificibus pictoribusque adhibenda est fides. nihil accomodatius, nihil coniunctius illi colori reddi poterit. Probavi ipso facto et experientia egoipse: miscui et conposui colores. comperi christiane tunice consimilem prope colorem.”

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fixed, but of an iridescent color. A ­ fter all, the color changes and varies.”74 Enen for his part did not share the details of ­these painting experiments, but he did his best to let readers participate vicariously in another inspection of the robe, which was apparently conducted by one or more experts on textile manufacturing: If you could look at it [the robe] closely, you would agree with me that it is the true robe: and if someone wanted to make such a robe t­ oday, it could not be done, b ­ ecause of the making and the cloth and the color. No m ­ atter how closely one approaches it, nobody can say what kind of cloth it is made of. For it has a pretty strong nap somewhere between velvet and camlet [a light and delicate fabric]; not so soft as the velvet, but not so hard as the camlet ­either, and it seems to me that ­there is also some cotton in it. But nobody can tell for sure what it is made of.75

As when the learned examined the girl’s body on the Capitoline, the experts in Trier gathered and inspected the object very closely, but did not come to a firm conclusion. Still, they put much effort into the investigation, comparing the robe to valuable textile products of their time. As Enen pointed out, they also consulted artisans who presumably had expert knowledge of the pro­cesses by which dif­fer­ent sorts of cloth ­were woven and dyed, only to find that they too ­were baffled by the mysterious texture of the cloth: 74. Ibid.: “Non enim determinati coloris est, sed variati denique mutatur et variatur color.” 75. Enen, Medulla, fols. 40v–41r: “. . . ​wan du hyn nahe schauwen moechteste, wurdestu bald mit mir sprechen, das es der recht rock ­were. und so man ytzunt ein sulchen rock machen wolt, so wer es in keinem weg zuothoen, der arbeit der materien und der farben halber. Es kan niemantz sagen wie nahe man dar bey ist auß was materien das er gemacht sey. dann er hat einen tzimlichen griff, zwischen Sammet und chamlott, nitt alls suess alls der sammet, auch nit also gar herte alls der chamlot, und bedunckt mich das etwas von Nesselen dar in sey. doch kan niemant sagen warlich war von er gemacht sy.”

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It is even less clear how it was made, since it is a very strange work. It was not woven, this is obvious, but, as is said in the Scholastica Historia,76 it was knitted, as we knit gloves or birettas.77 But it was made with such delicacy that it cannot be grasped or understood, and humanity ­today does not have the knowledge for such works. But still my gracious lords brought in some subtle craftsmen on such [textile] works and the like of it and let them inspect closely to see if they could come to an understanding. But they could not say anything firm about it. All they did was disagree with each other.78

Like the experts, our two sources disagreed, since Enen held that the tunic was knitted while Adelphus thought it was neither woven nor knitted. Where they could not arrive at precise conclusions they saw the tooth of time at work, in the best antiquarian fashion. Scheckmann held the tunic’s age responsible for its loss of its golden glimmer, and Adelphus blamed the illegibility of its lettering (which Enen did not mention) on the long time span during which it had been concealed in the earth, hidden from the heathens (i.e., the Vikings) who had captured the city.79 76. A study of biblical history written in the twelfth c­ entury by Petrus Comestor. 77. Scheckmann, Epitome, fol. XLIXr, mentions socks (calige) in addition to gloves and birettas. 78. Enen, Medulla, fol. 41r: “Man kan mynder versteen wye er gemachtt sey, dan es ist ein seltzam arbeit nicht geweben das ist claer, aber uff die maß wie in der Scolastica historia darvon geschriben stett, das er Reticulato opere gemacht sey, das ist gestrickt, wie man henschen oder byrreten strickt. Aber das selbig ist mit sulcher subtill gemacht, das man es nit vernemen oder versten kan. Auch sulche arbeit yzunt nit jim kuntschafft der menschen ist. Wie wol mein gnedigen herren haben ettliche subtile kunstiger vonn sulcher oder der gleychen oder arbeyt da zu gefuret, woll lassen beschauwen, Ob sye sich der arbeit oder materien verstaen kuntten sye mochten nichtzs entlichs dar von sagen, dan sye wider und foer raetten mit anderen.” Enen refers to Peter Comestor, Historia scholastica, Libri evangeliorum, 171: De divisione vestium et tunica sortita. 79. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sig. Biiv: “Ist villeicht des schuld das er lang in der erden gelegen ist verborgen und geflehet do Trier durch die Heyden wider erobertt wardt.”

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In Rome, the excavators called on alchemists for help in analyzing their finds. In Canterbury, Padua, and Rome, they hired notaries. The Nuremberg Chronicle flatteringly suggested that Trier, near the border of the Low Countries, was as rich and as cosmopolitan as one of the Flemish cities to the west. The citizens of Trier ­were said to be “quite sophisticated and humane, thanks to their frequent exchanges with the very numerous merchants who visit ­there.”80 True, the city boasted ­great antiquities, which Schedel also described: the Aula Palatina, built like the walls of Babylon, of brick so hard that nothing could break them, and the Porta Nigra, built of incredibly large stones joined with iron fastenings.81 Despite its modest population of around six thousand, it possessed numerous convents, with ancient traditions that dated back to the times of the church ­fathers. Enen’s Medulla was clearly designed to establish Trier as a major destination for pilgrims, if not as a “second Rome” (Roma secunda), the identity that Geyler von Kaysersberg had recently claimed for Strasbourg.82 A tour of the seven main churches with their most impor­tant relics on display offered pilgrims the possibility of obtaining substantial indulgences in Trier while avoiding a more expensive and strenuous journey over the Alps and all the way down to Rome. But the economy of Trier had been in decline since the end of the ­fourteenth ­century, and a considerable part of the city’s territory inside the walls was covered with gardens and fields. 80. Schedel, Liber chronicarum, fol. 23r: “Huius quoque urbis cives nunc moribus & ornatu legibusque ob mercatorum eo adventantium frequentiam et fami­ liaritatem admodum culti & humani referuntur.” On Schedel’s description of Trier, see Ilse Haari-­Oberg, Die Wirkungsgeschichte der Trierer Gründungssage von 10. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert (Bern, 1994), 140–44. For the contrast drawn in the text, see Rita Voltmer, “ ‘Heylige Stadt’ oder ‘Pfaffennest,’ freie Stadt oder Landstadt? Zu den Hintergründen der Trierer Heiltumsweisung des Jahres 1512,” in Die Medulla Gestorum Treverensium des Johann Enen, ed. Schmid and Embach, 125–52. 81. Schedel, Liber chronicarum, fol. 23 r. 82. Anne Conrad, “Reliquienkonsum und moderne Frömmigkeit: Trierer Ordensgemeinschaften zu Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Der Trierer Reichs­ tag von 1512, ed. Embach and Dühr, 119–31, at 120–22.

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Nonetheless, Enen, Scheckmann, and Adelphus could draw on the skills of urban artisans and merchants. Clerics needed vestments, and churches needed decorations. Only a few years before, in 1495, Adelheid von Besselich had donated precious liturgical garments worth the impressive sum of three thousand guilders to the cathedral in Trier. Sebastian Münster noted in his Cosmographia that in the sixteenth ­century, two tapestries with depictions of the founding legends of the city and the relics in the cathedral ­were hung on the north and south sides of its choir. They framed the new altar that had been built for the display of the relics.83 When scholars needed to assess the tunic as a material object, they rallied local in­for­mants with trained eyes and skilled hands, who helped them describe its texture and color in an expert way—­a cast of characters that apparently included not only dyers, weavers, and tailors but also one or more paint­ers who gave instructions on how to match the color of the fabric by mixing pigments. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, both Italian and northern paint­ers devised ways to represent luxurious and fash­ ion­able fabrics, such as silk, velvet, and cloth of gold. Some also designed rich textiles.84 It is thus not surprising that they played a role in the story of the Seamless Robe. Strikingly, though, neither the paint­ers nor the artisans who worked with cloth seem to have compared the color of the robe to the notoriously elusive pavonazzo or paonazzo (a term derived from pavone, Italian for “peacock”), a color originally associated with the Venetians, which “covered a spectrum of shades, ranging from a dusky, mauvey pink to deep purple.”85 Perhaps the artisans of Trier ­were

83. W. Schmid, “16 Domherren, ein Bischof und ein Rock: Der Trierer Dom um 1512,” ibid., 287–311, at 289 and 291. 84. Lisa Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Paint­ers: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Painting, 1300–1550 (New Haven, 2008). 85. Ibid., 314–15, at 315; see also Stella Mary Newton, The Dress of the Vene­ tians, 1495–1525 (Aldershot, 1988), who describes pavonazzo as a “non-­colour.”

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a bit more provincial than their colleagues in larger, more expansive cities.86 But Adelphus pursued another, more historical form of analy­sis as well—­one that resembles antiquarian efforts that we have encountered in other contexts. Systematic antiquarian study of ancient clothing had barely begun in 1512. Cesare Vecellio’s magnificent illustrated surveys of the clothes of the world, which dealt in detail with the forms of Roman dress, did not appear ­until 1590 and 1598.87 Fifteenth-­century artists tried to depict Romans in something like the proper armor and clothing. Tommaso Inghirami provided the actors in his 1513 Rome production of Plautus’s Poenulus with costumes that, though not consistent, used details to suggest that they w ­ ere dressed “in imitation of the ancients.” T ­ hese included flesh-­colored tights to imitate the bare legs of the Romans and a mantle knotted at the shoulder.88 Like the gilt scimitar worn by Hanno the Cartha­ginian in Plautus’s play, and the words of Punic that he spoke, ­these touches could transport an engaged Roman audience into another world.89 At Maximilian’s court, performers in mummeries wore obsolete fifteenth-­century fashions—­long trains for ­women; long, pointed shoes for men—­that w ­ ere carefully designed to set the action in the past. This “combination of 86. On luxurious fashions in the Holy Roman Empire, see, by Ulinka Rublack, Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Re­nais­sance Eu­rope (Oxford, 2010); “The Right to Dress: Sartorial Politics in Germany, c. 1300–1750,” in The Right to Dress: Sumptuary Laws in a Global Perspective, c. 1200–1800, ed. Giorgio Riello and Ulinka Rublack (Cambridge, 2019), 37–73; and “Befeathering the Eu­ro­ pe­an: The M ­ atter of Feathers in the Material Re­nais­sance,” American Historical Review 126, 1 (2021), 19–53. 87. See Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti Antichi e Moderni: The Clothing of the Re­nais­sance World: Europe—­Asia—­Africa—­The Amer­i­cas, ed. and trans. Margaret F. Rosenthal and Ann Rosalind Jones (London, 2008). 88. Fabrizio Cruciani, Teatro nel Rinascimento: Roma 1450–1550 (Rome, 1983), 61–62; Damiano Acciarino, “De re vestiaria: Re­nais­sance Discovery of Ancient Clothing,” in Atelier Antico, ed. Maria Bergamo and Silvia Urbini, La Rivista di Engramma 154 (March 2018), 119–52, at 130–33. 89. Cruciani, Teatro, 65.

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scholarly research with skilled tailoring,” as Stella Mary Newton showed some years ago, implied a new sense of historic change—­ rather like that of the En­glish antiquarians and scholars of the same period.90 Adelphus’s discussion of the robe in the True Story changed into a similar historicist key a­ fter the description of its floral and letter design, as if one of the “meddlesome” had asked ­whether it was likely that Jesus had been wearing such a garment on his crucifixion day. Like a good antiquarian, Adelphus connected the object in question to a text. He turned first to the Scripture, where John not only mentioned that the tunic was inconsutilis but also described it as “Et desuper contexta per totum, which means ‘completely surrounded in the upper part,’ maybe with such written characters and flowers. Or it follows the rule, which is also pronounced by Christ in his teaching, that the Jews put wide bands of writing around their clothes to look more honorable and more devout, especially the upper class.”91 ­Here Adelphus had in mind Jesus’s description of the Pharisees: “omnia vero opera sua faciunt ut videantur ab hominibus dilatant enim phylacteria sua et magnificant fimbrias”—­“But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments” (Mt 23:5). Correlating the New Testament with the tunic itself, Adelphus re-­ created Jewish fashion in the first c­ entury. His inference was not far-­fetched by period standards. Catholic tradition held that the priestly vestments still used in the sixteenth ­century ­were

90. Stella Mary Newton, Re­nais­sance Theatre Costume and the Sense of the Historic Past (London, 1975), 165–92, quote at 188. 91. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sig. Biiv: “Unn das ist villeycht das Joannes der heylig Apostel unn Evangelist spricht / in seynem Ewangelio von diesem Rock das er inconsutilis sey das ist on nadt. Et desuper contexta per totum das ist oben ganz umbgeben villeycht mit soelchen buchstaben gschrifften und bluemen. Oder aber nach dem gesatz als auch Christus das saget in seiner lere wie die Juden breit gschrifften umb yre kleyder machten das sie dester erberer unnd frümmer schynen suenderlich die oebern.”

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derived directly from ­those of the ­temple priests.92 Adelphus made his point clear with another rhetorical question, which led to the conclusion that the robe was the most fitting dress for “Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, who was the Rabbi and master of the w ­ hole world—­why would he not perfectly wear such [a robe], he who was omniscient and did not want to break the law but fulfill it? It is credible that he did not wear a sack or a rough linen cloth!”93 Imagining the situation and the effect that Jesus’s appearance would have had on his contemporaries, Adelphus added: “How other­wise would he as a poor man make his ­great holiness and honesty seem so glorious to willing sinners?”94 He may have been the first Christian scholar—­though he was certainly not the last—to imagine Jesus literally as a rabbi, dressed and attended as befit a Jewish sage.95 92. See Anthony Grafton, Inky Fin­gers: The Making of Books in Early Mod­ ern Eu­rope (Cambridge, Mass., 2020), 120–21. 93. Adelphus, Warhaftig sag, sig. Biiv: “Warumb wolt dann Christus Jesus unßer Herr unn Got der aller welt ein Rabi unn Meister was soellichs nit volkommengklich getragen haben alls ein wissender aller ding der das gesetz nit brechen sunder erfuellen wollte Ist gleuplich das er nit ein sack oder zwilchen kyttel getragen hat.” 94. Ibid.: “. . . ​wie woll er sunst arm was willigklichen sunder seyner grossen heiligkeyt und erberkeyt nach so herlich erscheynen.” 95. Cf. Grafton, Inky Fin­gers, 105–7.

ch a p t er   n i n e

Antiquarianism and Its Discontents

“Archaeology and romance” are the two forms of fifteenth-­ century Italian antiquarianism that Charles Mitchell laid out in a classic essay. The archaeologist Cyriac of Ancona saw the ruins of the shrine of the Delian Apollo “with his own eyes, mea­sured and drew them.” The romantic illustrator of the Hypnerotoma­ chia Polifili, on the contrary, redrew the scene “with all its jutty angular masonry: the ‘first Re­nais­sance picture of ruins,’ romantic, imaginary ruins in the shape of Cyriac’s au­then­tic, sunlit vision of ancient Greece.”1 The contrast is too sharply drawn: Cyriac, as subsequent scholarship has shown, was not so precise and systematic an observer as Mitchell argued, and the Hypne­ rotomachia, for all its idiosyncrasies, offers a perceptive vision of ancient ritual life and much more.2 More impor­tant, it is not 1. Charles Mitchell, “Archaeology and Romance in Re­nais­sance Italy,” in Ital­ ian Re­nais­sance Studies, ed. E. F. Jacob (London, 1960), 455–83, at 482. 2. See, e.g., Patricia Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven, 1996), 81–91; Tamara Griggs, “Promoting the Past: the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili as Antiquarian Enterprise,” Word and Image 14, 1–2 (1998), 17–39; Maren Elisabeth Schwab, Antike begreifen: Antiquarische Texte und Praktiken in Rom von Francesco Petrarca bis Bartolomeo Marliano (Stuttgart, 2019), 90–104 and passim.

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clear that scholars ever became as objective and unemotional as Mitchell thought they should be. For two hundred years, the German philologists of the late eigh­teenth and early nineteenth centuries have served as the preeminent models of the objective, historical approach to the past that supposedly replaced older traditional methods. Yet, as Constanze Güthenke has recently argued, ­these scholars actually articulated their new hermeneutics in “a language and rhe­toric of feeling and of desire,” which ­shaped their work as scholars and teachers.3 The protagonists of our stories also used a language—­ gestural as well as verbal—­“of feeling and of desire.” Where Cyriac joked that he explored tombs in order to speak with the dead, they brought the dead—­and objects associated with them—­into the light. They stared at and touched wood and stone, bone and flesh, dazzled by the experience of contact, direct or indirect, with ancient beings superior in beauty or holiness to anyone living. Not yet imprisoned or stimulated by the straitjackets of confessional scholarship, which ­were worn by so many inquirers in the sixteenth c­ entury and ­after, they pursued the past ­because they ­were inspired by passions.4 “Feeling and desire” inspired them to crowd around a Roman grave site far outside the city, to assem­ble muscular monks on a spring eve­ning in Kent, to devise new ways to decipher cryptic letters and to unpick a mysterious fabric. Indeed, one way to tell their story would be as a transfer of emotions, which vested ancient works of art with the aura once reserved for sacred relics. But their passions also turned them into unreliable narrators and partisan critics. At the beginning of this book, we noted that many Re­nais­sance 3. Constanze Güthenke, Feeling and Classical Philology: Knowing Antiquity in German Scholarship, 1770–1920 (Cambridge, 2020), 2. 4. See Confessionalisation and Erudition in Early Modern Eu­rope: An Epi­ sode in the History of the Humanities, ed. Nicholas Hardy and Dmitri Levitin (Oxford, 2019), as well as Jean-­L ouis Quantin, The Church of E ­ ngland and Christian Antiquity: The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the 17th ­Century (Oxford, 2009), and Nicholas Hardy, Criticism and Confession: The Bible in the Seventeenth-­Century Republic of Letters (Oxford, 2017).

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discoveries followed set scripts. Now that we have examined a series of episodes in detail, we can see that scripts ­were chosen less ­because they fit the facts than b ­ ecause they gratified the discoverers’ desires. Erudition also had its emotional side. It could also prove an obstacle in its own right. Some discoverers spun conjectures and hypotheses that had less to do with the objects in front of them than with fragments of what they had read and seen elsewhere, which hung between their eyes and the objects of their study, and which they continued to trust even when the facts contradicted their first impressions. The antiquarian and his cousin, the hunter of relics, played many social and po­liti­cal roles, but they w ­ ere seldom Doctor Dryasdust in the fifteenth ­century or the nineteenth.5 Their passion was not exclusive. The pursuit of autopsy, the desire to catch a glimpse of the ancient object itself, was impor­ tant. Masses of p ­ eople wanted to approach the ancient relics as closely as pos­si­ble. They ­were drawn ­toward secular and sacred objects alike, as the diarist Giovanni Pontani revealed when he reported on the girl from the Appian Way: “The body had been brought to the Palace of the Curators, and so many ­people went ­there to see it that it gave the impression they ­were offering indulgences.”6 Such an overwhelming public response needed careful staging. In the cases in which the discovery was predictable, when the location of the object was already known, the ­people in power took ­great care to carry it out secretly, with a 5. This is one of the many lessons of Dmitri Levitin, Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science: Histories of Philosophy in ­England, c. 1640–1700 (Cambridge, 2015); Colin Kidd, The World of Mr Casaubon: Britain’s Wars of Mythog­ raphy, 1700–1870 (Cambridge, 2016); and Peter Miller, Peiresc’s Eu­rope: Learn­ ing and Virtue in the Seventeenth C ­ entury (New Haven, 2000) and Peiresc’s Mediterranean World (Chicago, 2015). 6. Il Diario Romano di Gaspare Pontani già riferito al “Notaio del Nanti­ porto” [30 gennaio 1481–25. luglio 1492], ed. Diomede Toni, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Raccolta degli Storici Italiani, vol. 3, pt. 2 (Città di Castello, 1908), 47: “fu portato lo detto corpo in casa delli conservatori, et andava tanta gente a vederlo che pareva ce fusse la perdonanza.”

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small circle of the elect—­even ­under the shelter of night. As soon as ordinary ­people heard of a new discovery they pressed in en masse, persisting ­until they saw the object close-up and clearly. If their movements caught the authorities unprepared, the story could end in disaster, as Poggio Bracciolini made clear with an anecdote:7 The unsuspecting owner of a garden who set out to plant some trees unwillingly attracted the masses when a huge Roman statue of the goddess Minerva unexpectedly came to light. He soon became so annoyed by the numerous uninvited guests that he had the statue removed from sight and buried, never to be seen again. The same t­ hing happened to the girl’s body, even though we can only won­der w ­ hether they disposed of it ­because of its ugly condition or for the more serious reason that its appeal resembled that of a pagan saint. A well-­organized, prudent, and dramatic staging was crucial for the success of any discovery. Reliquaries w ­ ere created, tags attached, niches built, events planned. A suitable date had to be set in advance, one that would support po­liti­cal and economic goals. Even though the objects ­were new, their pre­sen­ta­tion was not, instead often taking the form of familiar rituals. When Pope Innocent held the Titulus in his hands, he was accompanied by his secretary and master of ceremonies Johannes Burckard as well as the cardinals. Only a few hours before, the pope had celebrated a mass, during which a pax, an object used at that time for the Kiss of Peace, had been handed to him. He had taken it into his hands, then passed it to Burckard, who in turn presented it first to the pope for a kiss and then to the cardinals in order.8 In Santa Croce the scene was only slightly dif­fer­ent: the pope and 7. Poggio Bracciolini, De varietate fortunae, ed. Outi Merisalo (Helsinki, 1993), ll. 126–30. 8. Johannes Burckard, Liber notarum ab anno MCCCCLXXXIII ad annum MDVI, ed. Enrico Celani, vol. 1 (Città di Castello, 1906), 340: “Vicecancellarius portavit missalem librum pontifici post evangelium osculandum, similiter pacem, quam ego deinde, de manibus suis recipiens, dedi primo sibi, deinde Rechanatensi, tum Senensi et de Sabellis cardinalibus et patriarche Aquileiensi primo assistenti; deinde eam super altare reposui.”

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Burckard held a wooden tablet, the Titulus, examining it from ­every side. The cardinals stood around them in a circle, also gazing at it. The same was even more true for the discovery of the Seamless Robe, which was designed to fit into the aesthetics of an Imperial Diet. As the respective broadsides show, the recording of the relics in the right order was just as impor­tant as the correct ranking of the authorities pre­sent. Repeated pre­sen­ta­ tions of the relics or pro­cessions that moved them to a new site ­were well-­known rituals. They worked for the new finds as well. Sometimes, even the best-­staged event fizzled out. When Pope Pius II visited Lake Nemi, a volcanic lake southeast of Rome in the hills of Lazio, in 1463, the most fascinating antiquity that he could examine on its shore was not an impressive shrine or beautiful monument but a battered wooden plank. He did his best to provide a detailed antiquarian description of the object in his Commentarii,9 but the fragment was, in fact, the broken result of a failed enterprise. Cardinal Prospero Co­ lonna had invited Leon Battista Alberti, the most versatile antiquarian and engineer of his time, to raise an ancient shipwreck from the bottom of the lake.10 Fishermen, who had found ­little pieces of it in their nets, had informed him about its existence and also about their own unsuccessful attempts to pull it out of the w ­ ater. Alberti built a bridge with wine barrels that enabled him to operate on the surface of the lake. On it he installed machines, prob­ably hoists. Artisans and Genoese divers trained to work underwater fastened hooks to the ancient ship.11 On the shore, Cardinal Colonna watched with the members of the 9. Pius II, Commentarii rerum memorabilium, que temporibus suis con­ tigerunt, ed. A. van Heck, 2 vols. (Vatican City, 1984), book 11, 2:566. 10. Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Re­nais­sance (New York, 2000), chap. 7. 11. For a detailed interpretation of this event as the first excavation of underwater archaeological excavation, see John M. McManamon, Caligula’s Barges and the Re­nais­sance Origins of Nautical Archaeology ­under ­Water (College Station, Tex., 2016). For an interpretation of the plank as a meta­phor of antiquarian writing, see Schwab, Antike begreifen, chap. 4.

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Roman Curia, hoping to witness the reappearance of the luxurious imperial h ­ ouse­boat on the lake’s surface. It was a catastrophe. As Biondo Flavio, who meticulously described the course of events, wrote: “[The ship] broke, ­because it did not follow the hooks as a ­whole, but only a fragment of it followed them.”12 Perhaps the most vivid rendering of this frustrating per­for­ mance can be found in Athanasius Kircher’s Latium.13 He provided a description of the lake with the amenities and ancient structures that flanked it, together with a copperplate that identified the ancient structures that w ­ ere known, such as the Villa of Caesar (which had never been finished), the Tower of Diana, and the tunnel that led to the close-by Lake Aricinus (see figure 9.1a). What was missing, however, w ­ ere the imposing Roman ­house­boats that had once transformed the lake into an aquatic plea­sure dome. Accordingly, Kircher inserted a second copperplate. It showed the lake surrounded by ancient structures, like the first one, but it also anachronistically depicted the structure that Alberti had designed to rescue the boat (see figure 9.1b). The fifteenth-­century onlookers w ­ ere left out of the scene. All we can see is Alberti’s bridge, with a hoist heaving a ship’s bow out of the w ­ ater—­the short moment of hope before the prow broke and the ship slipped back to the bottom of the lake. The ­whole ship remained a dream and thus became useful material to be fantastically amplified in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.14 But if Alberti and Biondo w ­ ere disappointed about the outcome of their underwater excavation, they did every­thing they could to gloss over it. Biondo insisted that the plank thrilled intelligent onlookers: “The ship’s fragment was an attraction to all members of the Curia who ­were of especially noble intellect.” 12. Biondo Flavio, Italy Illuminated (Italia Illustrata), ed. Jeffrey White, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 2005–16), 2:2.48: “cum integra non sequeretur, fracta est, et eius particula trahentes harpagones est secuta.” 13. Athanasius Kircher, Latium (Amsterdam, 1671), 47–51. 14. See Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice, 1499), 276, 290–91.

figure 9.1a. Athanasius Kircher’s depiction of Lake Nemi offers a reconstruction of its state in Roman times, with the ancient structures in its surroundings, ruins of which ­were still vis­i­ble and eagerly explored in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Kircher, Latium (Rome, 1669), between pp. 48 and 49. Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Arch.f.6, S. 0087, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12 bsb11423320-4.

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figure 9.1b. Lake Nemi, again with Kircher’s reconstructions of the surviving ancient structures as well as the machines used by Leon Battista Alberti to raise the Roman ships from the bottom of the lake. The image visualizes the dramatic moment when Alberti had hauled part of one of the Nemi ships out of the ­water, shortly before it sank again. Kircher, Latium (Rome, 1669), between pp. 50 and 51. Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Arch.f.6, S. 49, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb11423320-4.

They recorded e­ very ­little detail, ranging from the kind of wood it was made of to the paint and other materials that covered it.15 What is most impressive is the resourcefulness with which antiquarians examined the ancient remains. Rather than working alone, they sought help from professionals in all sorts of fields, sometimes quite unexpected ones. Peter Miller has shown that Peiresc did his work as a virtuoso in this way, collaborating 15. Biondo, Italy Illuminated (Italia Illustrata), ed. White, 2:48–49, quote at 48: “Quam spectaculo fuit omnibus Romanae curiae nobilioris ingenii viris.”

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with sailors as readily as with scholars.16 In fact, the interdisciplinary and collaborative character of antiquarian work can be traced back even ­earlier. At Lake Nemi artisans, divers, locals, churchmen, and humanists all came together on the lakeshore, forming one of the “trading zones” that, as Pamela O. Long has shown, “­were the focus of interest on the part of elites. They often entailed ongoing efforts to develop par­tic­u­lar technologies or technological pro­cesses that required practical knowledge.”17 The effort to find and authenticate relics, as the cases of Dunstan and the Seamless Robe of Trier clearly show, involved similar discussions and collaborations. Efforts at excavation—­whether carried out for antiquarian or for religious purposes—­fostered fruitful communication between the skilled and the learned, from alchemy to painting and weaving, from saintly anatomy to secular notarial authentication. Antiquarians and relic hunters willingly experimented with a wide range of analytical techniques—­including the one that some of them referred to as experimentum. Genuinely new and fertile techniques emerged from this culture of cooperation and innovation: t­ hese included the squeeze that Leonardo da Sarzana called a palimpsest—­prob­ably ­because the print he produced was imperfect and needed to be overwritten to fill in outlines and hide blank spaces. As we can infer from Leonardo’s letters, the grandest of Florence’s humanist circle—­Lorenzo de’ Medici, Pico della Mirandola, and Angelo Poliziano—­bent over the poor, almost illegible facsimile of the Titulus. The squeeze itself, as we saw, has not survived. But it seems that at some point the Florentine scholars copied and corrected it, producing a clean version with beautiful characters. That in turn inspired artists like Michelangelo to depict the crucifixion scene, including the discovery, in a novel way. Once again, antiquarianism 16. Miller, Peiresc’s Mediterranean World. 17. Pamela O. Long, “Trading Zones in Early Modern Eu­rope,” Isis 106, 4 (2015), 840–47, at 842.

A n tiqua r i a nism a nd Its Discon ten ts [ 289 ]

emerges as a quintessentially collaborative pursuit—an art of conversation as well as investigation, and one linked as tightly to making art as to making knowledge. Still, hindrances abounded. One of the most common and serious of ­these—as the case of the Titulus suggests—­was the sheer difficulty of making and preserving accurate rec­ords of material objects. Gradually, skills began to be shared. From the ­fourteenth ­century on, many humanists sketched every­thing from ancient coins to modern landscapes, often in the margins of their books.18 ­Others, like Cyriac, also had help from artists.19 Men whose early training was artisanal and practical, like Pirro Ligorio and Abraham Ortelius, became expert readers of ancient texts.20 Ortelius and his learned friends did more than work in complementary ways: they created “a bridge between scholarly and artistic communities in the Netherlands, and between the Netherlands and the rest of Eu­rope.”21 Even in the l­ater sixteenth c­ entury, though, Antonio Agustín dismissed an artist whom he himself knew and employed—in this case, the erudite if extravagant Pirro Ligorio— as incompetent to interpret what he drew and described. And he was not alone. Perhaps the scholars’ response was defensive, as William Sten­house has argued, ­because antiquarians trained in the arts w ­ ere beginning to insist that they w ­ ere better qualified than book-­based scholars to study ancient coins.22 In the ­earlier period examined in this book, collaboration seems to have been relatively unconstrained by social prejudices 18. Maurizio Fiorilla, Marginalia figurati nei codici di Petrarca (Florence, 2005); Allan Ellenius, De arte pingendi: Latin Art Lit­er­a­ture in Seventeenth-­ Century Sweden and Its International Background (Uppsala, 1960). 19. Brown, Venice and Antiquity, 85–91. 20. Pirro Ligorio’s Worlds: Antiquarianism, Classical Erudition and Visual Arts in the Late Re­nais­sance, ed. Fernando Loffredo and Ginette Vagenheim (Leiden, 2019); Tine Luk Meganck, Erudite Eyes: Friendship, Art and Erudition in the Networks of Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) (Leiden, 2017). 21. Meganck, Erudite Eyes, 220. 22. William Sten­house, “Antonio Agustín and the Numismatists,” Prince­ton University Library Chronicle 69, 2 (2008), 262–79.

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about the superiority of the liberal to the mechanical arts. Nonetheless, its results w ­ ere often problematic. Copies and sketches ­were never perfectly accurate, even when their makers claimed to have worked directly from the original objects. Drawings made on-­site had a depressing propensity to dis­appear, like the rediscovered medieval manuscripts from which humanists made copies that they put into circulation. ­Later copies, for their part, had an even more depressing tendency to diverge from the original, especially when they passed from one medium to another— as when the Titulus and the robe w ­ ere reproduced in woodcuts. Even facsimiles, produced by special methods—­such as Leonardo’s “palimpsest” of the Titulus and the colored images of the tunic of Jesus—­were finished by hand. Some antiquarians used images indiscriminately, working from inaccurate drawings or prints of objects that they could easily have inspected if they had cared to.23 No one seems to have made much of an effort to create archives of images that reflected the original conditions in which antiquities ­were actually rediscovered. As in other areas where forms of knowledge ­were exchanged, vital details ­were easily lost.24 Original objects, as we have seen, sometimes deteriorated or dis­appeared, making verification impossible. In other cases, such as that of the Laocoon, they ­were dramatically restored—­a pro­cess that eluded visual and even verbal documentation. Artists’ growing interest in ancient objects and texts did not always enhance their accuracy. Sometimes, authoritative texts determined not only how artists identified objects but what they saw when they looked at them. Through the end of the sixteenth ­century and ­after, ­these conditions prevented scholars concerned with material remains from proving even s­ imple assertions about what they had seen. 23. Francis Haskell, History and Its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (New Haven, 1993), esp. pt. 1. 24. Ann Blair, “New Knowledge Makers,” in New Horizons for Early Modern Eu­ro­pean Scholarship, ed. Blair and Nicholas Popper (Baltimore, 2021), 167–82, esp. 172.

A n tiqua r i a nism a nd Its Discon ten ts [ 291 ]

Late in the sixteenth ­century, the En­glish herald Ralph Brooke devoted a treatise to exposing the “Errours” in William Camden’s Britannia, an epoch-­making study of British antiquities, deeply grounded in material evidence about Roman Britain. Camden had argued that the Bigod ­family built Norwich ­Castle.25 Following good antiquarian practice, he cited his evidence, which came from autopsy: “we have seen their Lyons saliant in the same forme engraven in stone, as the Bygots used them in their seales.”26 But Camden lacked formal training in heraldry, the study of coats of arms and other armorial bearings. As York Herald, Brooke was a prominent member of the College of Arms, the body charged with the granting and control of coats of arms. ­After checking Camden’s account, he charged that the antiquarian had misunderstood what he saw: “I, for my better satisfaction therein,” wrote Brooke, “did r­ ide to Norwich to search the truth of your speach.” Admittedly, he found two stones, each of which bore a “Lyon passant cowardie,” but they ­were “in no Shielde or Escucheon,” and did not support Camden’s thesis. The same was true of two more lions that he found above the hall door. Camden had mistaken ornamental carvings for heraldic symbols.27 Or had he? Brooke, Camden replied, waxing ironic and biblical, “could not find the stone ­there ­after twenty-­ three years; cursed be the rejected stone that could not wait for his arrival.”28 In this case, when two disciplines interacted, their ­unions brought forth not consensus but an explosion. Brooke

25. T. D. Kendrick, British Antiquity (1950; repr., London, 1970), 154–55. 26. Quoted by Ralph Brooke, A Discoverie of Certaine Errours Published in Print in the Much Commended Britannia, 1594; . . . ​To Which Are Added, the Learned Mr. Camden’s Answer to This Book; and Mr. Brooke’s Reply (London, 1724), 51. 27. Ibid., 51–52. 28. Camden, “Answer to Ralphe Brooke, Yorke Herault at Armes,” ibid., separately paginated, 16: “Verum saxum illud invenire ipse ibi post vicesimum tertium annum non poterat, male sit saxo illi reiecto quod istius adventum non expectaverit.” Cf. Psalm 118:22.

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was right, but no con­temporary could be sure of that. Such a situation was not unusual. Seventeenth-­century scholars experimented more systematically with forms of mechanical reproduction.29 Henry Spelman prefaced his collection of the documents of British councils with a reconstruction of the church that Joseph of Arimathea and eleven other holy men had founded at Glastonbury, thirty years ­after Christ died on the cross.30 A brass plate from Glastonbury Abbey bore an inscription that not only commemorated this earliest Christian church but also described it in some detail.31 Instead of having the brass plate redrawn and engraved, Spelman turned it into a printing plate, which was inked and reproduced (see figure 9.2a). That pro­cess yielded a backward image, so a second, offset one had to be printed as well to make the text legible (see figure 9.2b).32 Readers could see that Spelman had nothing up his sleeve. Still, even direct reproduction could not guarantee accurate interpretations. Spelman used the information the plate provided to conjure up a vivid “image of the first church in the world” (see figure 9.3).33 He drew the dimensions of this lost building from the inscription. He inferred from the early medieval laws of Hywel Dda and the twelfth-­century chronicle of William of Malmesbury that the “Anglo-­Saxon custom” had been to build ­castles and other structures from interwoven 29. Anthony Grafton, Inky Fin­gers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Eu­rope (Cambridge, Mass., 2020), chap. 3. 30. Henry Spelman, Concilia, decreta, leges, constitutiones in re ecclesiarum Orbis Britannici (London, 1639), 7. 31. This plate had previously been discussed, and its text printed, by Francis Godwin, A Cata­logue of the Bishops of E ­ ngland, Since the First Planting of Christian Religion in This Island (London, 1615), 11. 32. Spelman, Concilia, 8–9. 33. Ibid., 11: “Icon primae Ecclesiae Regio permissu extructae.” Spelman notes: “Formam primae istius Ecclesiae totius orbis vetustissimae (quam ex supradictis authoritatibus & conjecturis assequi possimus probabilibus) hic intuere.”

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laths, and he followed ­these sources in representing the walls of the church. A description of a devastating fire by the Venerable Bede, fi­nally, showed that the Anglo-­Saxons had used thatched roofs, so he set one on top of the laths. As for the door and win­ dows, Spelman admitted, “I put them in by conjecture”34—­still the antiquarian’s friend in need. Spelman’s reconstruction, like the reconstitutions of his pre­ de­ces­sors a ­century and a half before, rested in large part on divination. And the apparently precise data he drew from the brass plate and worked up into his design w ­ ere far from reliable. The inscription was cut in a strange, artificial mixture of scripts, prob­ably a­ fter 1400, and could claim no historical authority for the first ­century.35 But Spelman, like the monks of Glastonbury before him, was captivated by the idea that the oldest church in the world had been in E ­ ngland. His passions determined his conclusions. In any event, sometime a­ fter Spelman reproduced the plate, it too dis­appeared: further evidence, if any was needed, that early modern antiquarians found it almost impossible to secure and stabilize visual information. Often, artists—­and scholars—­studied antiquities not in order to preserve them as they had found them, but in order to use them as ingredients for a new style or as evidence for the antiquity of a nation or the holiness of a shrine—­a pro­cess that always involved adaptation and transformation. Recent studies of antiquarians in the Enlightenment and a­ fter have clarified their ability to fuse what now seem to be irreconcilable approaches to the past and still function effectively. Piranesi’s artistic practices came from the world of theater and involved much imagination—­yet 34. Ibid., 11–12: “e.f. longitudo Ecclesiae 60. pedum, juxta laminam. f.g. lati­ tudo Ecclesiae 26. pedum, juxta laminam. h. Parietes Ecclesiae ex virgis contor­ tis, juxta Malmesburium, fabricati; more scilicet prisco illo, quo et aedes ipsae aliquando regis”; “k.k.k.k. Ostium et fenestras e conjectura posui.” 35. See John A. Goodall, “The Glastonbury Abbey Memorial Plate Reconsidered,” Antiquaries Journal 66 (1986), 364–67, repr. with additions in Glaston­ bury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, ed. James Carley (Cambridge, 2001), 185–92.

figure 9.2a. The seventeenth-­century En­glish antiquarian Henry Spelman printed a facsimile from an inscription found in Glastonbury Abbey, which described what was traditionally thought of as the first Christian church, built ­there by Joseph of Arimathea. Spelman, Concilia, decreta, leges, constitutiones in re ecclesiarum Orbis Britannici (London, 1639), p. 8. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Res/2 Conc.c. 58-1, p. 8, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb10865936-3.

figure 9.2b. Spelman had his printer turn the inscription itself into a printing plate, which produced an accurate image, but also a backward one, and then produce a second image, oriented normally and legible, by offset. Spelman, Concilia, decreta, leges, constitutiones in re ecclesiarum Orbis Britannici (London, 1639), p. 9. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Res/2 Conc.c. 58-1, p. 9, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb10865936-3.

figure 9.3. Spelman used the information provided by the Glastonbury inscription he reproduced and other texts to reconstruct the first Christian church, that of Joseph of Arimathea. He admitted that his design was partly conjectural. Spelman, Concilia, decreta, leges, constitutiones in re ecclesiarum Orbis Britannici (London, 1639), p. 11. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Res/2 Conc.c. 58-1, p. 11, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-­bsb10865936-3.

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they also rested on painstaking, deeply informed examination of sites and endless close reading of antiquarians’ treatises.36 The British antiquarians of the late eigh­teenth and early nineteenth centuries created Gothic pastiches when they designed stage sets for Shakespeare—­not to mention Oxford colleges and parish churches. Their anachronisms leap to the twenty-­first-­century eye, but in their time they helped create a rich new way of looking at the historical past.37 Not surprisingly, ­these ­later antiquarians resemble our protagonists, who ­were their ancestors. When antiquarians are judged as early prac­ti­tion­ers of modern, scientific history—­whatever that may be—­they rightly receive poor marks. But their proj­ects ­were dif­fer­ent from con­temporary ones. Their discoveries inspired public rituals and per­for­mances. Their work involved creative invention as well as empirical investigation. Their proj­ects ­shaped and ­were ­shaped by creative arts as well as by the minute research that now looks modern, and which they also pursued. What claims ­were Roman antiquarians and En­glish and German clerics making, then, when they circulated their reports? In some cases at least—as in that of Leonardo da Sarzana—­their comments suggest that they did not expect their audiences to believe their accounts literally and completely. In other cases, as in that of the girl on the Appian Way, some hy­po­thet­ic­ al identifications ­were clearly proposed with more than a grain of salt. In still o ­ thers—at both Durham and Trier—­the discussions of the objects, while detailed and precise, seem also to have been proxies for a less erudite b ­ attle, waged by parties struggling to attract pilgrims and donations. 36. See the groundbreaking work of Caroline Yerkes and Heather Hyde Minor, Piranesi Unbound (Prince­ton, 2020), and Susan Stewart, The Ruins Les­ son: Meaning and Material in Western Culture (Chicago, 2020). 37. Rosemary Hill, Time’s Witness: History in the Age of Romanticism (London, 2021). For French antiquarianism in the same period, see Lisa Regazzoni, Geschichtsdinge. Gallische Vergangenheit und französische Geschichtsforschung im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2020).

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It is never easy to judge the level of irony in a document written quickly by past actors. Some years ago, Paula Findlen showed that early modern natu­ral philosophy was rife with jokes and games of two kinds.38 Nature herself engaged in endlessly imaginative play, multiplying species and producing strange creatures that resembled works of h ­ uman art. At the same time, natu­ral phi­los­o­phers played games of many kinds, ingeniously mimicking the inventive powers of the goddess who ruled their realm. Kircher has long been celebrated as an antiquarian with a distinctive, complex sense of humor, whose works on history ­were as imaginative as his works on nature. Perhaps he was not a lone eccentric, as scholars have traditionally thought, but a worker in a tradition whose rules and conventions we have not fully grasped. 38. Paula Findlen, “Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Eu­rope,” Re­nais­sance Quarterly 43, 2 (1990), 292–331.

I n de x

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Ab urbe condita (Livy), 56 Acta Sanctorum, 68 Adelard of Ghent, 243 Adelphus Muling, Johann, 250–51, 257–67, 268–­69, 277–79 Adoration of the Child with St. Jerome (Pinturicchio), 197 Aeneid (Virgil), 70 Aethelberht, King of Kent, 229 Agustín, Antonio, 18–19, 137–38, 157–59, 206, 289 Alberti, Leon Battista, 20, 26, 39–40, 102–3, 106, 176, 284, 285; descriptions of Roman paintings, 190–93, 199; disapproval of extravagant use of materials, 200; drawings of, 219–20 Albertini, Francesco, 167 alchemy, 86–89 Aldrovandi, Ulisse, 176–77 Alexander VI, 159 Alfonso d’Aragona, 51 altar of the Holy Cross, 252–53 Altarpiece of the Holy Cross, 154 alter Constantinus, Maximilian as, 254–56 Amantius, Bartholomaeus, 30 Ambrose, Bishop, 36, 37 Andrew the Apostle, Saint, 120 Angenendt, Arnold, 74 Anne, Saint, 260 Annius of Viterbo, 164, 166 Anthony, Saint, 260 antiquarianism, early modern: artists’ expertise in, 179–82, 202–5,

222–25, 289, 293; Athanasius Kircher and, 1–10; authority of Pliny in, 181, 187–88; collaboration in, 288–90; comparison used in, 166–68, 290–92; dependence on textual evidence, 189; discovery scripts in, 30–38, 282; doubts about relics transported from Palestine to western Eu­rope in, 260–61; dramatic staging of, 283–84; excavation digging in, 38–40; feeling and desire in, 281–82; grotesques and, 207–9, 212, 214–15; illustrations used in, 216–25; inconsistencies in, 242–43; inscriptions and, 90–92, 114–16, 126–40, 216; Italian lit­er­a­ ture on aesthetics and, 209–10; knowledge making in, 10–14; limits of, 97–98, 297–98; mechanical reproduction advances in, 292; notebooks used in, 215–16, 220; practices and emotions in, 26–30; pride and envy in collectors of antiquities and, 183; public interest in relics of, 282–83; resourcefulness of scholars in, 287–89; romance of, 280–81; sacred and secular, 14–26; social prejudices and, 289–90; statues in, 163–64, 183–84; study of ancient clothing in, 276–79; syllogai and descriptions collected in, 216–19, 222; unsuccessful events around, 284–85 Antiquario, Iacopo, 131

[ 299 ]

[ 300 ] index Antiquarum lectionum commentarii (Ricchieri), 102 Apianus, Petrus, 30 Appian Way girl, 11, 35, 38, 187–88, 242–43; attempts to identify, 92–96, 99–101; burning lamp at feet of, 103–7; condition of body of, 80–82; disappearance of body of, 107–8; discovery of, 72–73; estimates of age of, 89; gossip about, 78–79; narratives about, 79–80, 85–86, 102–3; put on display, 74; search for inscriptions regarding, 91–92; state of preservation of, 82–88; viewed as super­natural sign, 74 archetypus, 132 Archimedes, 32, 33, 34 architecture, aesthetics of, 209–10 Arch of Constantine, 13 Ars de verbo (Eutyches), 240 Art of Love (Ovid), 240 Aspertini, Amico, 185, 220, 222, 225 Augustine, Saint, 36, 229 August of Braunschweig-­Lüneburg, 9 Averlino, Antonio. See Filarete Bandinelli, Baccio, 186 Barlacchi, Tomaso, 212–14 Barrett, John, 234 Basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mura, 252 Bass, Marisa, 25 Bayezid II, Sultan, 118, 121, 142 Becket, Thomas, 230, 231, 245–46 Beere, Richard, 227, 231; conflict with Warham, 241; familiarity with antiquarian methods, 242–43; other Glastonbury exhibits and, 240; on storage of relics, 239–40; Warham’s letter to, 236–39 Behaim, Lorenz, 80 Bellori, Giovanni Pietro, 13, 30–32 Bendedio, Alberto, 173 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 2

Bertini, Domenico, 131 Biglia, Andrea, 64–66 Big Miocene Wall, 140 Biondo Flavio, 21, 26, 57, 58, 73, 285 Boissard, Jean Jacques, 181 Bologni, Girolamo, 33 Bonarigo, Vincenzo, 52, 53, 71 Borghini, Vincenzio, 163 Bracciolini, Poggio, 32, 90, 216, 283 Britannia (Camden), 291 Brooke, Ralph, 291–92 Brummer, Hans Henrik, 176 Bruni, Leonardo, 64–65, 67 Buonarroti, Michelangelo. See Michelangelo Burckard, Johannes, 237, 283–84; on the Appian Way girl, 75–76, 79; Easter cele­brations of 1492 and, 117–20; on the Titulus of the True Cross, 112, 114–16, 120, 123, 125, 127 Burckhardt, Jacob, 52, 109 Caccianemici de l’Orso, Gerardo, 114, 125 Caesar, Julius, 91, 95, 219 Calco, Tristano, 131–32 Caligula, emperor 141 Calvin, John, 155–56, 160–61, 239 Camden, William, 291 Canterbury Cathedral, 228–29, 230 Capodilista, Giovan Francesco, 49 Carrara, Jacopo II, 43 Casaubon, Isaac, 97 Castiglione, Baldesar, 205 Cavacci, Giacomo, 48, 50, 67 Cellini, Benvenuto, 171–73, 179, 212; on the grotesques, 207–8 Cesariano, Cesare, 207 Charles the Bold, 252 Chris­tian­ity, Constantine’s conversion of Rome to, 2, 13 Chronicon (Antoninus of Florence), 124–25

index [ 301 ] Church of Saint Clement, 51 Church of San Pietro, 193 Church of Santa Croce, 111–12, 132–33, 156–57 Church of St. Eustachius, 2–10, 12, 14 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 33, 34, 35, 91, 94–95, 99, 187 Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Momigliano), 19 Claudius, Emperor, 198 Clement VII, Pope, 186 Codex Escurialensis, 220, 223 coins, ancient, 172–73, 206 Colenuccio, Pandolfo, 217 Colet, John, 245 Collectio antiquitatum (Marcanova), 217, 221 Collegio Romano, 1 Colman, John, 234 Colonna, Giovanni, 41, 284–85 Colonna, Prospero, 73, 284 Commentaries (Julius Caesar), 91, 219 Commentarii (Pius II), 284 Commentarii Urbani (Maffei), 101 comparison used in antiquarianism, 166–68 Constantine, emperor, 2, 5–7, 13, 35, 110–11, 155, 247, 252; alter Con­ stantinus, Maximilian as, 254–56 Cornaro, Francesco, 181 Cornelius, Saint, 264 corpus incorruptum/integrum, 74, 183 Cosmographia (Münster), 276 Council of Trent, 18 Crispus (son of Constantine), 271 Cristophano, Michel, 178–79 ­Cromwell, Thomas, 242 Curia Hostilia, 17 Cyriac of Ancona, 23, 216, 280–81, 289 da Carpi, Iacomo, 173 Dacos, Nicole, 203–4 d’Alessandro, Alessandro, 17, 98, 99–101, 106

Dandolo, Fantino, 48–49 d’Arco, Nicolò, 182 da Sangallo, Giovanni Battista, 206–7, 220 da Sangallo, Giuliano, 163, 171 Declaration (Adelphus), 263 de’ Dottori, Alessandro, 49 Dee, John, 33, 34 de Fredis, Felice, 162, 173 dei Conti, Sigismondo: on the Appian Way girl, 75, 80, 85, 97, 99; on the Titulus of the True Cross, 110, 113, 145 della Porta, Ardicino, 117 della Porta, Giambattista, 56 della Porta, Gian Vincenzo, 56, 62 Della Rovere, Galeotto Franciotti, 174 Della Torre, Giacomo, 63–64. 67 de’ Medici, Lorenzo, 91, 127, 129, 288 de Norsa, Francesco, 182 Dente, Marco, 185 De orthographia (Tortelli), 167 de Peraga, Peragio, 49 De re aedificatoria (Alberti), 21 de’Rossi, Azariah, 156–57 de San Sebastiano, Daniel, 80, 85, 92, 94 Descent from the Cross, 154 Description of All of Italy (Alberti), 102–3 d’Este, Borso, 73 d’Este, Ippolito, 173 d’Este, Isabella, 51, 163 d’Este, Leonello, 73 De sui ipsius et multorum ignoran­ tia (Petrarch), 49 de Symeoni, Pietro Paolo, 192 de Vasco, Antonio, 75, 76–77, 81, 82, 89 de’Vitaliani, Palamino, 49 Diet of Worms, 1495, 258 discovery scripts in antiquarianism, 30–38 Due dialogi (Gilio da Fabriano), 174–75 Duffy, Eamon, 230

[ 302 ] index Dunstan, Saint, 36, 38, 226–27, 230–32, 266, 288; collection of evidence on, 243–44; continued debates over possession of, 241–42; examination of relics of, 234; Kalendar of Obits and, 244–45; official rec­ord of excavation of, 236–39; opening of tomb of, 232–36; storage of relics of, 239–40; verification of tomb of, 236–37 Durand, Guillaume, 117, 265 Egger, Hermann, 223 Egio, Benedetto, 187–88 Enen, Johannes, 252–53, 256–57, 264, 267, 269, 270, 274–76 Epitome alias Medulla Gestorum Trevirorum (Scheckmann), 269 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 28, 227–29, 245–46 Eugenius, Pope, 164–65 Eutyches, 240 Evelyn, John, 54–55 expert testimony of artists, 179–80 Fabri de Peiresc, Nicolas-­Claude, 56, 136–7 Famulus, 198 Fasciculus temporum (Rolevinck), 261 Fasti Capitolini, 19 Feliciano, Felice, 90 Ferno, Michele, 100 Filarete (Antonio Averlino), 164–66 Findlen, Paula, 298 Fonzio, Bartolomeo, 81–82, 84, 92, 94 Foresti da Bergamo, Jacopo, 261 Fountain of the Four Rivers, 2 Fox, Richard, 228 Francesca Romana, Saint, 74 Francis I, King, 186–87 Frederic III, 252 Fronto, Aufidius, 216 Furck, Sebastian, 104 Furlotti, Barbara, 172

Gassendi, Pierre, 56, 136 Gauricus, Lucas, 202 Gauricus, Pomponius, 201–2 Gelasius, bishop, 35 Geldenhouwer, Gerard, 23–25 Gervasius, 36 Gesta Treverorum, 251 Gherardi, Giacomo, 127, 129–32, 138–43 Gilio da Fabriano, Giovanni Andrea, 174–76 Giocondo, Giovanni, 91, 94, 169, 217 Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, 185 Giovanni da Udine, 195 Giuliani, Luca, 164, 185 Giuliano, Francesco, 163, 171 Glastonbury Abbey, 226, 229–31, 237, 292, 294–96; other exhibits at, 240 Golden House of Nero, 11, 37–38, 162, 193–95, 223, 225; early artist inspections of, 202–5; extravagance of, 200; names appearing in, 206; paintings in, 195–98; Pliny on, 198; recorded images of, 220–22; scholarly study of, 205–6 Goldston, Thomas, 232–35, 244 Gossaert, Jan, 24 Gregory, Saint, 112 Gregory I, Pope, 47–48 Gretser, Jacob, 159 Greville, Giles, 228 Greville, Lady, 228 Grimani, Giovanni, 17 grotesques, 207–9, 212, 214–15, 225 grottoes, 195, 207 Gruter, Janus, 68, 160–61 Güthenke, Constanze, 281 Haskell, Francis, 39 Heiltumsbücher, 29 Helen, ­mother of Constantine, 35–36, 110–11, 125, 155; Seamless Robe of Jesus and, 260–63 Henry VIII, King, 228

index [ 303 ] Historia (Kircher), 9 Historical and Critical Dictionary (Bayle), 68 Histories (Livy), 42, 56, 60 Holbein, Hans, 28 Holy Lance, 118, 121–22 Horace, 208–9 Hülsen, Christian, 79 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 15, 280, 285 Infessura, Stefano: on the Appian Way girl, 76–78, 82, 101; as representative of opinions and interests of the Roman patriciate, 116–17; on the Titulus of the True Cross, 109–10, 112–16, 123–24, 125, 145 Inghirami, Tommaso, 277 Innocent VIII, Pope, 112, 117–20, 123–24, 142, 283–84; Holy Lance and, 118, 121 Inscriptiones sacrosanctae vetustatis (Apanius), 30 inscriptions, 216; Appian Way girl and, 91–92; Titulus of the True Cross, 114–16, 126–40; at Tor Millina, 168–69 Institutio oratoria (Quintilian), 179–80 Isabella of Aragon, 132 Italia illustrata (Biondo), 57, 58 Ivani da Sarzana, Antonio, 140–41, 199 Jerome, 179–80, 227–28 Johann I, Bishop, 251 John of Glastonbury, 240 Joseph of Arimathea, 229, 292, 294 Julia (supposed ­daughter of Cicero), 101 Julia Prisca Secunda, 92, 93 Julius II, Pope, 24, 174, 176, 228, 252 Julius III, Pope, 18 Kalendar of Obits, 244–45 Keller, Vera, 104

Kircher, Athanasius, 21, 106–7, 166, 298; Lake Nemi and, 284–85, 286–87; shrine at Mentorella and, 1–10; skills and practices used by, 12–13, 19–20 Lactantius, 271 Lafréry, Antoine, 137, 214 Lake Garda, 90 Lake Nemi, 284–85, 286–87, 288 La Malfa, Claudia, 192, 193, 195 Laocoon statue, 175, 290; classical archaeology origins and, 164–65; discovery of, 162–63; discovery of more pieces of, 188–89; fractures in, 183–86; inspection and naming of, 171; material and workmanship of, 174–75; as model for artistic depictions of Christian martyrs, 174–77; reproductions of, 186–87; standard for ancient works set by, 177; texts collated with, 173–74 Latini, Latino, 19 Latium (Kircher), 106, 284–85, 286–87 Leo X, Pope, 205 Leonardo da Sarzana, 127, 161, 267, 297; attempt to decipher and copy the words on the Titulus, 134, 135–39; attitude of, 143; on discovery of the Titulus, 132–33; on genuineness of the Titulus, 134–35; on the inscription on the Titulus, 133–34; on the instrument used to inscribe the Titulus, 133–34; reproduction of exact form and wording of texts on, 142–43 Leto, Pomponio, 15–17, 22, 100–101 Letters on Familiar ­Matters (Petrarch), 42 Letter to the Pisos (Horace), 208 Liber chronicarum (Schedel), 247 Liber notarum (Burckard), 116 Liceti, Fortunio, 104–6 Ligorio, Pirro, 18, 188, 193, 204–5, 289

[ 304 ] index Lipsius, Justus, 206 Livy, 11, 35–37, 42, 111; accounts of body of, 62–71; arm buried in Giovanni Giovano Pontano’s chapel, 54–56; bones in the Palazzo della Ragione, 57–59, 61; debate over size of body of, 65–67; discovery of bones of, 44–45, 52–53, 56–57; display of bones of, 48–50; monument to, 50–54; in Padua, 42–43; Petrarch’s letter to, 42–44; stolen bones of, 45, 47 Long, Pamela O., 40, 288 Lorenzi, Giovanni, 168–69 Lucius II, Pope, 114 Luder, Peter, 42 Luxford, Julian, 240 Mabillon, Jean, 13, 21 Maffei, Raffaele, 89, 101 Maius, Junianus, 98 Mallius, Petrus, 242 Mancini, Jacopo, 105 Mandev­ille, John, 235, 262 Manutius, Aldus, 219 Marcanova, Giovanni, 57–58, 216–17, 218, 221 Marcellus, Claudius, 62 Maria of Burgundy, 252 Marliani, Bartolomeo, 183, 185–86, 193 Martin, Gregory, 155 Martinengo, Fortunato, 182–83 Martin V, Pope, 65 Mary, Saint, 264 Mary Magdalene, 27, 29, 260 Matal, Jean, 137, 214 Matarazzo, Francesco, 75, 78–79 Maternus, Saint, 258, 264 Maximilian, emperor, 12, 247–48, 249, 251–52, 267; altar of the Holy Cross and, 252–53; as alter Constantinus, 254–56; banquets and cele­brations held by, 254; city walls of Trier and, 256–57

McHam, Sarah, 51 Medulla (Scheckmann), 269, 270 Medulla Gestorum Treverensium (Enen), 252, 256, 270, 275 Mendoza, Pedro González de, 113–14 Merula, Giorgio, 131 Meserve, Margaret, 110 Metamorphoses (Ovid), 189 Michelangelo, 12, 145, 152, 288; Laocoon statue and, 163, 169, 171, 178–79, 181, 186 Miller, Peter, 287–88 Mirabilia Urbis Romae, 111 Miscellanea (Poliziano), 131, 168 Mitchell, Charles, 280 Momigliano, Arnaldo, 14, 19, 242 monasteries, importance of relics for, 230–31 Monica, Saint, 75–76 Montorsoli, Giovanni Agnolo, 186 Morhof, Daniel Georg, 68 Mornay, Philippe de, 159–60 mosaics, 192 Mount Olympus, 220, 221 Muffel, Nicholas, 111, 113 Munday, Anthony, 155 Münster, Sebastian, 276 Münzer, Hieronymus, 27 Muret, Marc-­Antoine, 206 Mussato, Albertino, 50 Muth, Susanne, 185 Mystery of Iniquity, or: History of the Papacy (de Mornay), 159 Nagel, Alan, 139, 154 Natu­ral History (Pliny), 163–64, 171, 178 Nero, emperor. See Golden House of Nero Newton, Stella Mary, 278 Niccoli, Niccolò, 45, 46, 64–65, 90 Notationes (Pompilio), 85 Nuremberg Chronicle, 261, 275

index [ 305 ] Oedipus Pamphilius (Kircher), 2 Old Saint Peter’s Basilica, 20, 242; bronze door of, 164–66 Opusculum (Albertini), 167 Orendel, 264 Orsini, Fulvio, 18, 62, 206 Ortelius, Abraham, 289 Oryshkevich, Irina, 22 Osbern, precentor of Canterbury, 243 Ovid, 30–32, 51, 189, 240 Pacuvius, 191 paganism, 15–17, 48 Pagnini, Sante, 156 paintings: Albertini on, 190–93, 199; artists’ explorations of, 202–5; conflicts of scholars over, 201–2; in Etruscan tomb outside Volterra, 199–200; in the Golden House, 195–98; grotesques in, 207–9, 212, 214–15, 225; Serlio on, 209–12; in under­ground caves, 193–95, 207–8; Vico and Barlacchi on, 212–14; Vitruvius on, 200–201, 206–9 Palazzo della Ragione, Padua, 57–59, 61 Panciroli, Guido, 103–4 Panormita, Antonio, 52 Panvinio, Onofrio, 206 Parisi, Antonella, 162 Patrizi, Agostino, 17 Pau, Jeroni, 95–96, 99 Paul II, Pope, 15 Paul III, Pope, 104 Penny, Nicholas, 39 Peter, Apostle, 44, 166 Petrarch, 32, 41–44, 49, 50 Petrucci, Baldassare, 209–10 Philandrier, Guillaume, 208–10 Philip of Burgundy, 23–25 Philo, 167 Piccolomini Todeschini, Francesco, 205 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 127, 288 Fabius Pictor, 191

Pighius, Stephanus Winandus, 59, 62 Pignoria, Lorenzo, 56, 62 Pilate, Pontius, 116, 145, 157, 177 pilgrimage, 231 “Pilgrimage for Religion’s Sake” (Erasmus of Rotterdam), 245 Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (von Breydenbach), 235 Pinturicchio, 195–98, 203–4, 205, 212, 224, 225 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 72, 293 Pirckheimer, Willibald, 256 Pius II, Pope, 120, 284 Plautus, 277 Pliny the Elder, 51; on the Laocoon statue, 163–64, 171, 178–82, 187–89; on Nero’s painter, 198; Roman painting and, 191 Pliny the Younger, 51 Poenulus (Plautus), 277 Polenton, Sicco, 44–49, 50, 53, 63–67, 71, 233 Poliziano, Angelo, 98, 127, 129, 152, 168–69, 288 Pompilio, Paolo, 85–87, 95–97, 99, 101 Pontani, Anna, 111 Pontani, Gaspare, 75, 76–77, 81 Pontani, Giovanni, 282 Pontano, Giovanni Gioviano, 54–55 Porcellini, Niccolò, 49, 53 Posthumus, Herman, 194 Potkyn, William, 234 Praise of Folly, The (Erasmus of Rotterdam), 28 precious stones, 171–72 Primaticcio, Francesco, 186–87 Prosdocimus, Saint, 44 Protasius, 36 Quintilian, 179–80 Raphael, 205, 212, 225 Rationale divinorum officiorum (Durand), 117

[ 306 ] index Regole generali di architettura (Serlio), 211 Rhodiginus, Caelius (Ludovico Ricchieri), 102, 106 Riprandi di Marostica, Michele, 53 Rolevinck, Werner, 261 Romanae Urbis Topographia (Boissard), 181 Romano, Giovanni Cristoforo, 178 Rous, John, 235, 238 Rowland, Ingrid, 206 Rucellai, Giovanni, 20 Sabadino degli Arienti, Giovanni, 163 Sabellico, Marco Antonio, 23 Sabina, Poppaea, 99 Sabino, Pietro, 23 Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls, 20–21, 252 Saint Peter’s Basilica, 155 Sansovino, Jacopo, 186 Santo Spirito (Florence), 152 Sassetti, Francesco, 82 Sassone, Adriana, 54 Sbrulius, Richard, 267 Scaliger, Joseph, 68, 97–98, 160 Schadee, Hester, 176 Schauerte, Thomas, 257 Scheckmann, Johannes, 269, 271–73 Schedel, Hartmann, 42, 47, 58; on the Appian Way girl, 78, 80, 84, 89, 92–94; on the Golden House, 205; on Trier, 247, 256, 275 Schedel, Hermann, 42 Schelstrate, Emanuel, 13 Seamless Robe of Jesus, 12, 36, 38, 249, 288; Adelphus’s account of, 250–51, 257–67, 268–­69, 277–79; container of, 261–62; debate over authenticity of, 258–60; Enen’s account of, 252–53, 256–57, 264, 267, 269, 270, 274–76; expert examination of, 273–75; fear of, 251–52; Helen, ­mother of

Constantine, and, 260–63; Maxmilian I and, 248, 249, 251–52; Muling on, 250–51; public showings of, 264–65; rediscovery of, 248, 250; Scheckmann’s account of, 269, 271–73; study of ancient clothing and, 276–79 secular vs. sacred antiquarianism, 14–26 Seleucos statue, 169, 170 Seneca, 192 Serlio, Sebastiano, 209–12 Sforza, Bianca Maria, 252, 254 Sforza, Gian Galeazzo, 132 Signorelli, Luca, 145, 225 Signorili, Niccolò, 216 Simon of Cyrene, 252 Simplicius, Pope, 22 Sixtus IV, Pope, 166 Society of Jesus, 1 Spelman, Henry, 292 Spencer, John, 140 statue(s), 183–84; Laocoon (see Laocoon statue); Pallas, 169; Seleucos, 169, 170; at Tor Millina, 167–68 Sten­house, William, 137, 289 Stollberg-­Rilinger, Barbara, 258 Stone, Richard, 243–44 Storie de’suoi tempi (dei Conti), 85 Strigel, Bernhard, 252 Suetonius, 141, 200 Sulpizio, Giovanni, 206 Supplementum Chronicarum (Foresti da Bergamo), 261 syllogai, 216–19, 222 Sylvester, Pope, 3, 6, 10 Tacitus, 99 Tempus edax rerum (Posthumus), 194 Terentia (wife of Cicero), 91, 94 Thesaurus temporum (Scaliger), 160 Theuerdank, 248, 267 Thode, Henry, 79 Tifernate, Lilio Gregorio, 166–67

index [ 307 ] Titulus of the True Cross, 11, 36–37, 38, 108, 237, 242–43, 266, 267, 283–84, 289, 290; artistic portrayals of the Crucifixion changed by, 152–54; complex attacks on and defenses of, 159–61; differing scholarly views on, 156–59; discovery of, 109–14, 124–26, 132–33; final broadside, Memmingen, 1493, 149–50; Florentine scholars’ study of, 129–31, 130, 143–45; inscription and physical appearance of, 114–16, 126–40; Leonardo da Sarzana on (see da Sarzana, Leonardo); lettering on, 126–27; mocked by John Calvin, 155–56; Pope Innocent VIII and, 117–20, 123–24; prayer use of text from, 150–52; public interest in, 155; as relic of crucifixion of Jesus, 110–11, 115–16; reproductions of, 145–49; third version, Vienna, 1501, 149 Titus, Emperor, 163 Titus Livius. See Livy Tomasini, Giacomo Filippo, 68 tomb of the Nasonii, 30–32 Topographia Urbis Romae (Marliani), 185–86, 187 Tor Millina, 168 Tortelli, Giovanni, 167 Totaro, Giunia, 9 Travels (Mandev­ille), 235, 262 Treaty on Relics (Calvin), 239 Trevisan, Zaccaria, 48, 49 Trier, city of, 247–48, 251–52; brick walls of, 256–57. See also Seamless Robe of Jesus Trithemius, Johannes, 248, 257, 259–60, 266 Trivulzio, Cesare, 178–82 True Story (Adelphus), 250–51, 259, 265–66, 267, 268, 268–­69, 278 Tullia (­daughter of Cicero), 91, 94, 103–5, 187

Twyne, John, 242 Tyfernus, Augustinus, 54, 55 Ullman, Berthold L., 51 Umar, caliph, 262 Vacca, Flaminio, 177 Valeriano, Pierio, 17, 168 Valla, Lorenzo, 21, 26, 52 van Eck, Marianne Ritsema, 154 Varro, 33 Vecellio, Cesare, 277 Vegio, Maffeo, 20–21, 242 Veronica, Saint, 118, 119 Vico, Enea, 212–14 Vincent of Beauvais, 243 Virgil, 13–14, 21, 51, 70 Vitruvius, 200–201, 206–9 Vitturi, Matteo, 52–53 Volaterranus, Raphael (Raffaele Maffei), 106 Volpe, Rita, 162 von Besselich, Adelheid, 276 von Breydenbach, Bernhard, 58, 235 von Greiffenklau, Richard, 252, 264 von Kaysersberg, Geyler, 275 von Waltheym, Hans, 260 Wandel, Lee Palmer, 265 Warham, William: as archbishop of Canterbury, 227–28; conflict with Beere, 241; description of Dunstan’s casket, 235–36; display of bones of Saint Dunstan and, 226–27; familiarity with antiquarian methods, 242–43; letter to Beere regarding Dunstan, 236–39; official rec­ord of excavation of Dunstan, 236–39; opening of Dunstan’s tomb and, 232–34; pilgrims attracted to Canterbury and, 231; on preserving magnificence, 228–29; storage of relics and, 239–40; tomb

[ 308 ] index Warham, William (continued) of, 230; verification of Dunstan’s tomb by, 236–37; visit to Christ Church, 241 Weißkunig, Der, 248, 249 Welser, Markus, 159, 161

William of Malmesbury, 105, 292 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 80 Wood, Christopher, 139, 154, 251, 256–57 Woodruff, C. Eveleigh, 245 Zwinger, Theodor, 59

a no t e on t he t y pe

this book has been composed in Miller, a Scotch Roman typeface designed by Matthew Car­ter and first released by Font Bureau in 1997. It resembles Monticello, the typeface developed for The Papers of Thomas Jefferson in the 1940s by C. H. Griffith and P. J. Conkwright and reinterpreted in digital form by Car­ter in 2003. Pleasant Jefferson (“P. J.”) Conkwright (1905–1986) was Typographer at Prince­ton University Press from 1939 to 1970. He was an acclaimed book designer and aiga Medalist. The ornament used throughout this book was designed by Pierre Simon Fournier (1712–1768) and was a favorite of Conkwright’s, used in his design of the Prince­ton University Library Chronicle.