History of Scholarship: A Selection of Papers from the Seminar on the History of Scholarship held annually at the Warburg Institute (Oxford-Warburg Studies)

OXFORD–WARBURG STUDIES General Editors charles hope and ian maclean Oxford–Warburg Studies comprise works of original...

Author: Christopher Ligota | Jean-Louis Quantin

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OXFORD–WARBURG STUDIES General Editors

charles hope and ian maclean

Oxford–Warburg Studies comprise works of original research on the intellectual and cultural history of Europe. They aim to bring an interdisciplinary approach to the study of medieval, renaissance, and early modern Europe, and in particular to explore both visual and literary aspects of the classical tradition.

O X F O R D –W A R BU R G ST U D I E S Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy SYDNEY ANGLO (Second edition) Giotto and the Orators Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition 1350–1450 MICHAEL BAXANDALL (Paperback) Joseph Scaliger A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship I. Textual Criticism II. Historical Chronology ANTHONY GRAFTON The Palazzo Vecchio 1298–1532 Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic Palace of the Florentine Republic NICOLAI RUBINSTEIN The Government of Florence under the Medici 1434–1494 NICOLAI RUBINSTEIN (Second edition) The Apocryphal Apocalypse The Reception of the Second Book of Esdras (4 Ezra) from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment ALASTAIR HAMILTON Children of the Promise The Confraternity of the Purification and the Socialization of Youths in Florence 1427–1785 LORENZO POLIZZOTTO Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century A. D. MOMIGLIANO (Re-issued ) Machiavelli—The First Century Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance SYDNEY ANGLO

History of Scholarship A Selection of Papers from the Seminar on the History of Scholarship Held Annually at the Warburg Institute Edited by

C. R. LIGO TA and

J.-L. QUANTIN

AC

AC

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York #

Oxford University Press 2006

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–928431–8 978–0–19–928431–3 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Constance Blackwell

Acknowledgements The Editors wish to record their gratitude to the former Director of the Warburg Institute, Nicholas Mann, who initiated the project of the volume and presided over its early stages; to the present Director, Charles Hope, for his support in its final stages; to the Staff and Fellows of the Institute—especially Anna Akasoy, Jenny Boyle, Rembrandt Duits, Elizabeth MacGrath, François Quiviger, Jonathan Rolls, and Paul Taylor—for their unstinting, patient, and good-humoured help. A special word of thanks is due to Anne Ashby, of the Oxford University Press, for her kindness and patience in steering the volume towards the desired goal. The volume is dedicated to Constance Blackwell, whose support, intellectual and material, has sustained the Seminar on the history of scholarship from its inception. C. R. L. J.-L. Q.

Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

Introduction Christopher Ligota and Jean-Louis Quantin The Colossus of Rhodes: Ancient Texts and Modern Representations Godefroid de Callatay¨ Renaissance Philology: Johannes Livineius (1546–1599) and the Birth of the Apparatus Criticus Luigi Battezzato The Measure of Rome: Andre´ Schott, Justus Lipsius and the Early Reception of the Res gestae divi Augusti Paul Nelles Critice in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and the Rise of the Notion of Historical Criticism Benedetto Bravo Early Christianity in Michael Neander’s Greek–Latin Edition of Luther’s Catechism Irena Backus A Sixteenth-Century Hebraic Approach to the New Testament Joanna Weinberg Robert Bellarmine, Christian Hebraist and Censor Piet van Boxel Spencer, Maimonides, and the History of Religion Fausto Parente Anglican Scholarship Gone Mad? Henry Dodwell (1641–1711) and Christian Antiquity Jean-Louis Quantin

ix xi 1

39

75

113

135

197

231 251 277

305

viii

Contents

10. A German Spinozistic Reader of Cudworth, Bull, and Spencer: Johann Georg Wachter and his Theologia Martyrum (1712) Martin Mulsow 11. Pierre Des Maizeaux: History, Toleration, and Scholarship Scott Mandelbrote 12. The Pre-adamites: An Abortive Attempt to Invent Pre-history in the Seventeenth Century? Alain Schnapp 13. Hamann and the History of Philosophy Denis Thouard 14. Theory and Methodology of History from Chladenius to Droysen: A Historiographical Essay Alexandre Escudier Index

357

385

399 413

437 487

List of Illustrations 1.1

1.2

1.3 1.4 1.5

1.6 1.7 1.8

1.9

1.10

1.11

The windrose of Timosthenes on Eratosthenes’ world map, reproduced from G. de Callatay¨, ‘Ofikoumnh ˛pourniov: Re´flexions sur l’origine et le sens de la geógraphie astrologique’, Geographia Antiqua, 8–9 (1999–2000), 68 The windrose and the zodiac in Ptolemy’s Geography: Claudius Ptolemaeus, Geographia (Strasburg: Ioannes Grieninger, 1522), sig. R3v (Bibliothe`que Nationale de Luxembourg, Re´serve prećieuse, L.P. 7023; courtesy of BNL) Map of Rhodes: C. T. Newton, Travels and Discoveries in the Levant, i (London, 1865), frontispiece Maryon’s fallen Colossus: H. Maryon, ‘The Colossus of Rhodes’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 76 (1956), 76 Tempesta’s fallen Colossus, 1608: A. Tempesta, Septem orbis admiranda . . . ex antiquis monumentis collecta et . . . in aereas tabulas ab Antonio Tempesta relata, a Iusto Rychio versibus celebrata (Rome, 1608), pl. 2 Map of the city of Rhodes: Maryon, ‘Colossus’ (as for Fig. 1.4), 80 Engraving of the Colossus by Jean Cousin: A. Thevet, Cosmographie de Levant (Lyon, 1554), 104 Engraving of the Colossus and the Island of Rhodes by Jean Cousin: A. Thevet, Cosmographie universelle, ii (Paris, 1575), fo. 205v Engraving of the Colosseum by van Heemskerck, 1570: Maarten van Heemskerck, Amphitheatrum, Museé du Louvre (G. Brett, ‘The Seven Wonders of the World in the Renaissance’, Art Quarterly, 12 (1949), 342, fig. 4) Nero’s Colossus and the Colosseum: Coin of Gordian III (Bullettino della Commissione archeologica comunale di Roma, 1889–90, 357, fig.1) Engraving of the Colossus of Rhodes by Maarten van Heemskerck, 1570: Witt Collection, Courtauld Institute 1948, no. 168

56

57 58 59

59 60 61

62

63

63

64

x

List of Illustrations

1.12 The Colossus of Rhodes by Fischer von Erlach, 1725: J. B. Fischer von Erlach, Entwurff einer historischen Architektur (Vienna, 1725), pl. viii 65 1.13 A Rhodian coin with the head of Helios: A. Mu¨ller, The Seven Wonders of the World (London, 1969), 280 [copyright holder could not be contacted] 66 1.14 Rhodian didrachm with head of Helios in a rayed taenia: R. Ashton, ‘Rhodian Coinage and the Colossus’, Revue numismatique, 6th ser., 30 (1988), pl. 15, no. 19; courtesy of the Socie´te´ française de numismatique 67 1.15 A. Gabriel’s reconstruction of the Colossus: A. Gabriel, ‘La Construction, l’attitude et l’emplacement du Colosse de Rhodes’, Bulletin de correspondance helleńique, 56 (1932), 337 68 1.16 The Statue of Liberty: drawing by Luis Marıá Lorente (courtesy of the artist) 69 1.17 Marble relief found in Rhodes: G. Jacopi, Monumenti di scultura del Museo Archeologico di Rodi, ii (Rhodes, 1932), no. 35 70 1.18 H. Maryon’s reconstruction of the standing Colossus: Maryon, ‘Colossus’ (as for Fig. 1.4), 72 71 1.19 Colossus of Rhodes, after a painting by Salvador Dalı´ at the Kunstmuseum, Bern: Drawing by Luis Marıá Lorente (courtesy of the artist) 72 1.20 Gem with sun and zodiac: Geneva, Museé d’Art et d’Histoire, Inv. 20506; M.-L. Vollenweider, Museé d’art et d’histoire de Gene`ve: Catalogue raisonne´ des sceaux, cylindres, intailles et cameés, iii (Mainz, 1983), no. 228 [copyright holder could not be contacted] 73 13.1 François Girardon, Tomb of Cardinal Richelieu, Church of the Sorbonne, Paris (courtesy of Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art) 426

List of Contributors Irena Backus is Titular Professor of the History of the Reformation, Institut d’Histoire de la Re´formation, Universite´ de Gene`ve Luigi Battezzato is Professor of Greek Literature, Universita` del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli Benedetto Bravo is Professor Emeritus, Institute of History, University of Warsaw Godefroid de Callatay¨ is Professor of Islamic Studies, Institut Orientaliste, Universite´ catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve Alexandre Escudier docteur e`s letters, is charge´ de recherche at the Centre de Recherches Politiques (CEVIPOF) of the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris Christopher Ligota is Honorary Fellow of the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London Scott Mandelbrote is Official Fellow and Director of Studies in History, Peterhouse, Cambridge and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford Martin Mulsow is Professor of History, Rutgers University, New Jersey Paul Nelles is Associate Professor of History, Carleton University, Ottawa Fausto Parente is Professor Emeritus, Department of the History of Christianity, Seconda Universita` di Roma (Tor Vergata) Jean-Louis Quantin is Professor of the History of Early Modern Scholarship, Ećole Pratique des Hautes E´tudes (Sorbonne), Paris Alain Schnapp is Professor of Classical Archaeology, Universite´ de Paris I— Sorbonne Denis Thouard is Chercheur at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Lille)/Sonderforschungsbereich ‘Fru¨he Neuzeit’ (Munich) Piet van Boxel is at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies Joanna Weinberg is at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies

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Introduction The history of scholarship as a distinct pursuit, larger in scope than ‘reviews of scholarship’ ad hoc, and more specific in content than what ‘scholarship’ taken as a nomen actionis suggests, has had a somewhat marginal and ill-defined existence. There are grounds for thinking that, as a constituted branch of knowledge, an episteme, it has, until quite recently, hardly existed at all. This has begun to change, and Part I of the Introduction offers a brief survey of the new developments. The present volume may be seen as a contribution to them. What might be termed a negative history of scholarship—up to the nineteenth century, i.e. the chronological limit of the volume—is sketched out in Part II.

I The history of scholarship is both old and new. It is old as an epiphenomenon of scholarship itself, in the sense that early modern scholars were deeply concerned to preserve the memory of their mentors, friends, and associates in the Republic of Letters. Treasuring and trading papers and memorials, compiling literary biographies, editing scholarly correspondence were essential activities. The result was an impressive range of publications, some of which are still used today as reference works.1 The collections of letters that were printed in the last decades of The Editors planned the Introduction together but their contributions are distinct: JeanLouis Quantin is responsible for Part I and the section on France in Part II; Christopher Ligota for the rest of Part II, from Bacon to German historicism. 1 An obvious instance is Christian Gottlieb Jo ¨ cher, Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon (Leipzig, 1750–11, repr. Hildesheim, 1961), continued and supplemented by Johann Christoph Adelung (Leipzig, 1784–1819, repr. Hildesheim, 1997–8). See also Melchior Adam, Dignorum laude virorum, quos Musa vetat mori, immortalitas, seu vitae theologorum, jure-consultorum & politicorum, medicorum atque philosophorum [this includes philologists, poets, mathematicians, and physicists] . . . , 3rd edn. (Frankfurt am Main, 1705),

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Christopher Ligota and Jean-Louis Quantin

the seventeenth century and the first decades of the eighteenth, and which were meant to serve as major sources for historia literaria, are very useful to present-day historians of scholarship.2 Corporate or ‘patriotic’ pride made it a duty to immortalize authors of one’s city, one’s country, or one’s religious order.3 In the last-mentioned case this was quite often a task imposed upon the religious by their superiors: the Theatine Antonio Francesco Vezzosi studied physics and mathematics until he was ordered to edit the complete works of a Theatine star, the liturgical scholar Giuseppe Maria Tommasi. For that purpose he explored ‘libraries, Roman archives, the hiding-places of old parchments’. He subsequently compiled what is still the standard bibliography of his order.4 More generally, to evoke past scholarship was tantamount to celebrating scholarship and scholars in general. This is especially true of studies about ancient scholarship from the Alexandrians onwards— also a major topic with early modern scholars. Johannes Wower’s (Wowerius) research on the notion of grammatice in antiquity was meant as a reply to those who had dismissed him as a mere grammarian.5 combining five distinct parts of the original publication, which appeared in 1615–20. Robert Seidel (University of Heidelberg) gave a paper on Adam in the Seminar on the history of scholarship in 1997 (not included in this volume). 2 See e.g. Gerardi Joann. Vossii et Clarorum Virorum ad eum epistolae. Collectore Paulo Colomesio (London, 1690); Isaaci Casauboni Epistolae, insertis ad easdem responsionibus, quotquot hactenus reperiri potuerunt, secundum seriem temporis accurate digestae (Rotterdam, 1709), and especially Sylloges Epistolarum a viris illustribus scriptarum tomi quinque, collecti et digesti per Petrum Burmannum (Leiden, 1727): Burman complains in his preface that publishers are reluctant to print scholarly correspondence as not very saleable. On the preparation of such editions, see P. Dibon, ‘Les Avatars d’une e´dition de correspondance: Les Epistolae I. Casauboni de 1638’ (1981), repr. in id., Regards sur la Hollande du Sie`cle d’Or (Naples, 1990), 221–66. 3 See e.g. Thomas Smith, Vitae quorundam eruditissimorum et illustrium virorum (London, 1707); Johannes Moller, Cimbria Literata (Copenhagen, 1744); Dom Rene´ Prosper Tassin, O.S.B., Histoire litte´raire de la Congre´gation de Saint-Maur (Paris, 1770); Seraphinus Maria Cerva (Crijevic´), Bibliotheca ragusina: In qua ragusini scriptores eorumque gesta et scripta recensentur, ed. S. Krasic´, 3 vols. (Zagreb, 1975–80) (the work was compiled from 1726 to 1743). 4 See Vezzosi’s account of his ‘conversion’ in the notice he wrote about himself in I scrittori de’ cherici regolari detti teatini, ii (Rome, 1780, repr. Farnborough, 1966), 473–4. 5 Johannes Wower, De Polymathia tractatio. Integri Operis de studiis Veterum pospasmtion (Basle, 1603). See Jacob Thomasius’ preface to the edition of Leipzig, 1665. On Wower, see L. Deitz, ‘Johannes Wower of Hamburg, Philologist and Polymath: A Preliminary Sketch of his Life and Works’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 58 (1995), 132–51, and B. Bravo’s remarks in his contribution to this volume, pp. 171–6 below. In the preface to his Variarum Lectionum liber. In quo varia utriusque Linguae Auctorum loca emendantur, explicantur atque illustrantur, ritus prisci eruuntur, et multa non ubique obvia docentur (Amsterdam, 1676), the Dutch 17th-c. scholar Anthonij Borremans justifies his interests by invoking both ancient and Renaissance philologists.

Introduction

3

Even in our time it has been rightly observed that ‘scholars writing about scholarship are always tempted to exaggerate its importance’.6 Awareness of its loss of status in our contemporary Western divisions of knowledge must have played a part (along with more theoretical reasons: the reaction against positivism, the postmodernist deconstruction of traditional forms of historiography and their literary conventions) in the upsurge of interest in the history of scholarship in the last decades. It is, surely, more than coincidence that the concern of classicists with the historical reception and uses of Greek and Latin has developed at a time when the social relevance of classical studies can no longer be taken for granted.7 The desire to save past scholars and their work from oblivion may have even deeper roots, if one accepts that Western scholarship since the Renaissance, if not much earlier,8 has largely been an attempt to overcome time and, ultimately, mortality itself.9 Scholarship is by definition endless and the inability to finish one’s work before one is overtaken by illness and death has been, and will be, many a scholar’s fate. This is a central theme in Mark Pattison’s highly personal book on Isaac Casaubon. He has Casaubon die a martyr of scholarship, exhausted by his ‘Exercitations on Baronius’: ‘Thus it has been the fate of many men of learning to be crushed under the burden of their own accumulation’10—and Pattison himself, to use his own words, ‘only executed fragments’ of his over-ambitious project ‘to write the history of learning 6 As P. E. Easterling has observed a propos of Alexandrian scholarship, in ead. and B. M. W. Knox (eds.), Cambridge History of Classical Literature, i: Greek Literature (Cambridge, 1985), 29. 7 The connection is made by H. Lloyd-Jones in his introduction to U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, History of Classical Scholarship, trans. A. Harris (London, 1982), pp. xxix–xxxii. For a perceptive analysis, see A. Henrichs, ‘Philologie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte: Zur Krise eines Selbstverta¨ndnisses’, in H. Flashar (ed.), Altertumswissenschaft in den 20er Jahren: Neue Fragen und Impulse (Stuttgart, 1995), 423–57. 8 For an interesting psychoanalysis of Varro as a deeply anguished man, who took refuge in antiquarianism in order to escape the present, see Satires Menippeés, ed. J.-P. Ce`be, i (Rome, 1972), 4–6; ii (1974), 277–83; xii (1998), 1905–6. 9 For antiquarianism ‘as a contest against time’, see the recent analysis by P. N. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, 2000), 130– 54; also G. Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1995). For conceptions of time among ecclesiastical scholars, see B. Neveu, ‘L’E´rudition eccle´siastique du xviie sie`cle et la nostalgie de l’antiquite´ chre´tienne’ (1981), repr. in id., E´rudition et religion aux XVII e et XVIII e sie`cles (Paris, 1994), 333–63; M. Fumaroli, ‘Temps de croissance et temps de corruption: Les deux Antiquite´s dans l’e´rudition je´suite française du xviie sie`cle’, XVII e sie`cle, no. 131 (1981), 149–68. 10 Mark Pattison, Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614), 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1892), 421–4 and 435–40. The first edition appeared in 1875.


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from the Renaissance downwards’.11 George Eliot’s Casaubon is the fictional incarnation of this failure.12 At a more utilitarian level, modern scholars in many fields are obliged to acquaint themselves with the work of their early modern forebears. Many manuscripts of ancient Greek and Latin authors still extant in the Renaissance have since been lost, and can only be reconstructed from early modern editions, collations, or transcriptions.13 In some cases (the epistle to Diognetus or Velleius Paterculus’ Roman History) no source prior to the sixteenth century has survived. In order to use such secondary materials it is essential to know as precisely as possible the working methods and also the vocabulary of Renaissance editors—a modern philologist unaware that codex in sixteenth-century parlance can often refer to a printed book would be liable to serious mistakes.14 The same is true of epigraphy, where many inscriptions from lost monuments are only known because they were copied more or less faithfully— or forged—by early modern archaeologists and travellers.15 Palaeography involves the study of copyists, patrons, and collections and, in the Mark Pattison, Memoirs (London, 1885), 318–23. In Middlemarch (1872), Casaubon’s scholarly impotence encapsulates the failure, if not of scholarship in general, at least of a whole style and ideal of scholarship: gentlemanly, clerical scholarship in the 17th-c. tradition, which, it is implied, has been made hopelessly obsolete by the new, systematic Geschichtswissenschaft developed in German universities. As another character puts it: ‘If Mr Casaubon read German he would save himself a great deal of trouble. . . . the Germans have taken the lead in historical inquiries, and they laugh at results which are got by groping about in the woods with a pocketcompass while they have made good roads.’ 13 See e.g. M. Reeve, ‘Beatus Rhenanus and the Lost Vormaciensis of Livy’, Revue d’histoire des textes, 25 (1995), 217–54; P. Petitmengin and J. P. Carley, ‘Malmesbury– Se´lestat–Malines: Les tribulations d’un manuscrit de Tertullien au milieu du xvie sie`cle’, Annuaire des amis de la bibliothe`que humaniste de Se´lestat (2003), 63–74. 14 This is how S. Rizzo justified her study (which is of interest also for an intellectual historian), Il lessico filologico degli umanisti (Rome, 1973), p. ix: ‘Nella storia della trasmissione dei classici l’opera degli umanisti ha importanza fondamentale: pochi sono gli editori di testi greci e latini che non debbano fare i conti con documenti umanistici riguardanti la storia di codici tuttora conservati o perduti o non ancora identificati. Per una utilizzazione proficua di tali documenti si richiede una conoscenza quanto possibile esatta delle espressioni che gli umanisti usavano nel descrivere codici e per indicare le varie operazioni della loro attivita` filologica.’ 15 The most famous instance is Pirro Ligorio, recently studied by G. Vagenheim: see e.g. ‘La Falsification chez Pirro Ligorio: A la lumie`re des Fasti Capitolini et des inscriptions de Preńeste’, Eutopia, 3/1–2 (1994) (¼ Atti del convegno internazionale ‘Vox Lapidum’: Dalla riscoperta delle iscrizioni antiche all’invenzione di un nuovo stile scrittorio), 67–113. See also The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonne´, A/vii, ed. W. Stenhouse (London, 2002). For an interesting 18th-c. example, see A. J. S. Spawforth, ‘Fourmontiana. IG V1 515: Another Forgery ‘‘from Amyklai’’ ’, Annual of the British School at Athens, 71 (1976), 139–45. 11 12

Introduction

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last decades, important contributions to the history of Renaissance scholarship have come from that quarter—especially from Greek palaeography, which has now emerged as an autonomous discipline, dedicated to the study of handwriting as a cultural phenomenon.16 Lastly, for scholarly keepers of historic libraries, the history of their holdings has often been a natural extension of their interests.17 It is no surprise, therefore, that some degree of at least passive interest in the history of scholarship would seem to be a constant characteristic of scholars since the Renaissance. It has even been claimed that, since the nineteenth century, ‘there is almost no philologist of distinction who has not practised the history of scholarship in some form’.18 In the twentieth century, however, the history of scholarship was slow to become ‘professional’, that is to achieve recognition as a full academic subject and not merely a sideline for scholars with an interest in the history of their own discipline. Wilamowitz’s influential sketch of the history of philology was intended as a story of the progress of unsere Wissenschaft,19 and it was originally published as the introduction to a handbook of classical studies. Rudolf Pfeiffer—who thought that ‘only one who has practised scholarship all his life should dare to write about its history’—had no interest in ‘what is obsolete and past for ever’ but only in ‘the continuity of knowledge, the philologia perennis’.20 Arnaldo Momigliano’s life-long exploration of ‘the classical foundations of 16 A pioneering work was that by C. Graux, Essai sur les origines du fonds grec de l’Escurial: E´pisode de l’histoire de la Renaissance des lettres en Espagne (Paris, 1880; Spanish trans., Madrid, 1982). For more recent studies, see e.g. P. Canart, ‘Les Manuscrits copie´s par Emmanuel Provataris (1546–1570 environ): Essai d’e´tude codicologique’, Me´langes Euge`ne Tisserant, vi (Vatican City, 1964), 173–287; B. Mondrain, ‘Copistes et collectionneurs de manuscrits grecs au milieu du xvie sie`cle: Le cas de Johann Jakob Fugger d’Augsbourg’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 84–5 (1991–2), 354–90; the section ‘Copisti e comittenti di codici greci in Italia tra i secoli XV e XVI’, in G. Prato (ed.), I manoscritti greci tra riflessione e dibatito. Atti del V Colloquio internazionale di paleografia greca (Cremona, 4–10 ottobre 1998) (Florence, 2000) i, 333–441 (contributions by A. Cataldi Palau, M. Cortesi, B. Mondrain, E. Velkovska, R. Mouren). 17 See R. Devreesse in the foreword to his Le Fonds grec de la bibliothe `que Vaticane des origines a` Paul V (Vatican City, 1965), p. vii : ‘On n’a pas veću pendant trente anneés dans une Bibliothe`que tre`s riche de manuscrits grecs, ni examine´ feuillet par feuillet quelques centaines de ces volumes, sans avoir eu l’attention provoqueé par diverses notules et cotes latines inscrites a` leur de´but entre le milieu du xve et le tournant du xviie au xviiie sie`cle.’ 18 A. Henrichs, ‘Nachwort’ to U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Geschichte der Philologie, 3rd edn. (Stuttgart, 1998), 83. 19 Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Geschichte der Philologie, 1. 20 R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginning to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford, 1968), pp. vii–x.

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modern historiography’ did much to alert ancient historians to the relevance of the tradition of their studies. One of his most enduring contributions was to analyse the specificity of the antiquarian’s, as opposed to the historian’s, approach to the past, and to show how the Varronian idea of antiquitates was rediscovered in the Renaissance.21 Momigliano’s work has had a somewhat belated impact among specialists of early modern history, partly because of the unsystematic publication in the series of the Contributi.22 Only fairly recently have some academics made topics in the history of scholarship the centre of their work and career.23 The pace has quickened in the last decade or so. The succession of seminars, conferences, publications, and academic appointments attests that the theme is now in the air.24 Institutionalization has been accompanied by a fundamental change of perspective, which some have characterized as nothing less than a ‘Copernican revolution’: the work of early modern scholars is now ‘to be less scrutinized for what it may tell us about its object’—ancient inscriptions or the text of the classics—than ‘for what it tells us about the way they looked at the object’.25 In some cases, the shift can be precisely 21 A. Momigliano, ‘Ancient History and the Antiquarian’ (1950), repr. in id., Contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Rome, 1955), 67–106. See M. H. Crawford and C. R. Ligota (eds.), Ancient History and the Antiquarian: Essays in Memory of Arnaldo Momigliano (London, 1995). The subject has been further explored, e.g. by J.-L. Ferrary, Onofrio Panvinio et les antiquite´s romaines (Rome, 1996). 22 The first Contributo alla storia degli studi classici appeared in 1955, the posthumous Nono contributo in 1992. A tenth and final one, with a full bibliography, is yet to appear. Momigliano’s thought has become much more accessible with the publication of his Sather Classical Lectures (delivered in 1961–2), The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Berkeley, 1990). 23 The most influential figure in the English-speaking world being probably Anthony Grafton (on whom see his autobiographical sketch, ‘An Innnocent Abroad’, in id., Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 5–12, and the assessment by L. Deitz, ‘To Corinth and Back’, Arion, 9/3 (2002), 120–44). Cf. Grafton’s comments on the challenges facing the historian of scholarship, in Bring Out your Dead: The Past as Revelation (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 278–9. One should also name Joseph Levine (on whose work see his selfpresentation, ‘Ancients and Moderns and the Origins of Modern Critical Historiography’, Intellectual News, no. 8 (Summer 2000), 83–91) and, for France, the late Bruno Neveu (see his collection of articles, E´rudition et religion (as in n. 9), with an important preface by M. Fumaroli). 24 The yearly seminar on the ‘History of scholarship’ at the Warburg Institute began in 1993. The Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes in Paris devoted its seminar for 2002–3 to the history of scholarship. The first chair in France devoted to the history of scholarship was created at the Ećole pratique des Hautes E´tudes (Sorbonne) in 2002. 25 Editors’ ‘Premessa’ to Atti del convegno ‘Vox Lapidum’ (as in n. 15), 3–4. They instance Giuseppe Billanovich’s work on humanist philology. For an introduction to his thought, see G. Billanovich, Dal medioevo all’umanesimo: La riscoperta degli classici, ed.

Introduction

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dated.26 Research on the history of scholarship has become much more diverse than it used to be. Important and much-needed work has continued on scholarly correspondence, resulting in editions27 or at least calendars.28 ‘Traditional’ biographies are still being written.29 Conferences have been organized to commemorate the achievements of individual scholars.30 There have been doctoral dissertations in Classics on one great humanist’s work on one great classical text.31 Useful reference works have been published or are in course of publication.32 But new questions have emerged.33 Social values and practices of scholars have been examined. Controversies and quarrels have been studied, not only for their objects but also P. Pellegrini (Milan, 2001). Cf. Vestigia: Studi in onore di Giuseppe Billanovich, 2 vols. (Rome, 1984), with bibliography. 26 In Gibbon’s case it took place demonstrably between the two international conferences of 1976 and 1994: see D. Womersley’s preface to Edward Gibbon: Bicentenary Essays (Oxford, 1997), pp. vii–viii. 27 See e.g. Correspondance inte ´grale d’Andre´ Rivet et de Claude Sarrau, ed. H. Bots and P. Leroy, 3 vols. (Amsterdam, 1978–82); Claude Saumaise and Andre´ Rivet, Correspondance échangeé entre 1632 et 1648, ed. P. Leroy and H. Bots (Amsterdam, 1987). A major project, directed by a group of scholars at La Sapienza University in Rome, is the series ‘Le corrispondenze letterarie, scientifiche ed erudite dal Rinascimento all’eta` moderna’, published by Olschki in Florence, which opened with Jean Le Clerc, Epistolario, ed. M. G. and M. Sina, 4 vols. (Florence, 1987–97); see the presentation in Nouvelles de la Re´publique des Lettres (2000, no. 1), 129–48. 28 See e.g. G. A. C. Van der Lem and C. S. M. Rademaker, Inventory of the Correspondence of Gerardus Joannes Vossius (Assen, 1993). 29 See e.g. F. F. Blok, Isaac Vossius en zijn kring: Zijn leven tot zijn afscheid van koningin Christina van Zweden, 1618–1655 (Groningen, 1999: English trans. 2000: Isaac Vossius and his Circle: His Life until his Farewell to Queen Christina of Sweden 1618–1655): a useful and reliable study mainly based on Isaac’s unpublished correspondence. 30 See e.g. Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547), lecteur et ´ editeur de textes anciens: Actes du Colloque International tenu a` Strasbourg et a` Se´lestat du 13 au 15 novembre 1998, ed. J. Hirstein (Turnhout, 2000). 31 See e.g. J. Hirstein, Tacitus’ Germania and Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547) (Frankfurt am Main, 1995). 32 For the reception of ancient Greek and Latin authors, the prime work of reference is the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries. Annotated Lists and Guides (Washington, DC, begun in 1960, eight vols. so far, vol. 9 in press), which its first director, Paul Oskar Kristeller, ‘planned as a contribution to the history of classical scholarship’ (vol. i, p. ix). See also e.g. L’Europe des humanistes (XIV e–XVII e sie`cles), ed. J.-F. Maillard, J. Kecskeme´ti, and M. Portalier (Turnhout, 1995). The same team has now moved on to a further stage, the compilation of a corpus of humanist editorial prefaces: see La France des humanistes, i: Helleńistes (Turnhout, 1999); La France des humanistes: Henri II Estienne éditeur et écrivain (Turnhout, 2003). 33 See e.g. the variety of themes in S. Neumeister and C. Wiedemann (eds.), Res Publica Litteraria: Die Institutionen der Gelehrsamkeit in der fru¨hen Neuzeit, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1987).

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for the socially ritualized forms in which they were conducted.34 A great deal of attention has been paid to the ideals and realities of the ‘Republic of Letters’—the transnational and transconfessional community of scholars35—and also, symmetrically as it were, to international power structures (dominance and resistance).36 The disciplines of ecclesiastical history and patristics—which had been comparatively neglected while the history of scholarship was primarily understood as the history of classical studies—have lately come to the fore.37 The crucial role they played in the elaboration of critical procedures and the epistemology of history has been recognized.38 But recent research has also shown how scholarship was remodelled and redirected after the Glaubensspaltung to suit confessional interests and priorities. Archbishop Parker would not have been so keen to inventory, collect, and edit medieval English texts if he had not believed that they provided evidence for the original freedom and doctrinal purity of the Church of England.39 The impact of censorship and what it tells us of the contemporary implications of scholarship have attracted notice. The recent opening of the archives of the Roman congregations of the Holy Office and the Index is likely to 34 See e.g. A. Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters 1680–1750 (New Haven and London, 1995). 35 Marc Fumaroli devoted a series of lectures over several years to the Re ´publique des lettres: see Annuaire du Colle`ge de France, 88–93 (1987–8 to 1992–3). For a convenient handbook (with international bibliography), see H. Bots and F. Waquet, La Re´publique des lettres (Paris, 1997). One of the first scholars to draw attention to this topic was P. Dibon: see his collection of articles, Regards sur la Hollande du Sie`cle d’Or (as in n. 2), and the proceedings of the conference dedicated to him: Il Vocabolario della Re´publique des Lettres. Terminologia filosofica e storia della filosofia. Problemi di metodo. Atti del Convegno internazionale in memoriam di Paul Dibon, Napoli, 1996, ed. M. Fattori (Florence, 1997). 36 F. Waquet, Le Mode `le français et l’Italie savante: Conscience de soi et perception de l’autre dans la Re´publique des lettres (1660–1750) (Rome, 1989). 37 Important recent work includes M. Mulsow and others (eds.), Johann Lorenz Mosheim (1693–1755): Theologie im Spannungsfeld von Philosophie, Philologie und Geschichte (Wiesbaden, 1997); I Padri sotto il torchio: Le edizioni dell’antichita` cristiana nei secoli XV–XVI. Atti del Convegno di Studi, 25–26 giugno 1999, ed. M. Cortesi (Florence, 2002); this was followed in Oct. 2003 by a conference on ‘Editiones principes delle opere dei Padri greci e latini’, forthcoming; I. Backus, Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation (1378–1615) (Leiden, 2003). 38 See e.g. F. Dolbeau, ‘Critique d’attribution, critique d’authenticite ´: Re´flexions pre´liminaires’, Filologia mediolatina, 6–7 (1999–2000), 33–61; J.-L. Quantin, ‘Document, histoire, critique dans l’e´rudition eccle´siastique des temps modernes’, Recherches de science religieuse, 92 (2004), 597–635. 39 T. Graham and A. G. Watson, The Recovery of the Past in Early Elizabethan England: Documents by John Bale and John Joscelyn from the Circle of Matthew Parker (Cambridge, 1998).

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provide many revealing instances in the coming years.40 Much has been written on the political uses of antiquarianism and the role of historiographical constructions in the legitimation of princely power and state-building.41 The mechanisms of patronage have been scrutinized.42 Gender issues in scholarship have become a topic.43 It has been better understood that, in early modern times, ‘practices of scholarship’ were in no way confined to the disciplines and subjects we would today describe as scholarship.44 Undertaking ‘literary journeys’, engaging in learned correspondence, searching for manuscripts, compiling catalogues, building up collections, editing, commenting on, and excerpting ancient texts were activities of major relevance for jurisprudence, theology, or medicine as well as antiquarianism. The so-called ‘learned languages’ appeared as the key to all sorts of knowledge.45 ‘Humanism’, as Eugenio Garin and others have stressed, was not merely 40 For a presentation of these newly available sources, see L’apertura degli Archivi del Sant’Uffizio Romano (Rome, 1998); F. Beretta, ‘L’archivio della congregazione del Sant’Ufficio: Bilancio provvisorio della storia e natura dei fondi d’antico regime’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 37 (2001), 29–58. They have mainly been used so far for the history of theology and philosophy, rather than of scholarship, but see the important study by P. Vismara, ‘Muratori ‘‘immoderato’’: Le censure romane al De ingeniorum moderatione in religionis negotio’ (1999), repr. in ead., Cattolicesimi: Itinerari seisettecenteschi (Milan, 2002), 29–61. See also G. Fragnito (ed.), Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy, trans. A. Belton (Cambridge, 2001), and the forthcoming Dizionario dell’Inquisizione, directed by A. Prosperi and J. Tedeschi (to be published by Laterza). 41 See e.g. Les Princes et l’histoire du XIV e au XVIII e sie `cle: Actes du colloque organise´ par l’Universite´ de Versailles-Saint-Quentin et l’Institut Historique Allemand, Paris/Versailles, 13–16 mars 1996, ed. C. Grell, W. Paravicini, and J. Voss (Bonn, 1998); Fonder les savoirs, fonder les pouvoirs, XVe–XVIIe sie`cle: Actes de la journeé d’e´tude organiseé par l’Ećole nationale des chartes, Paris, 8 avril 1999, ed. D. de Courcelles (Paris, 2000). 42 See e.g. D. R. Carlson, English Humanist Books: Writers and Patrons, Manuscripts and Print, 1475–1525 (Toronto, 1993). 43 See the section ‘Die gelehrte Frau im 17. Jahrhundert’ in Res Publica Litteraria (as in n. 33), ii. 549–640; more recently Femmes savantes, savoirs des femmes: Du cre´puscule de la Renaissance a` l’aube des Lumie`res. Actes du colloque de Chantilly, 22–24 septembre 1995, ed. C. Nativel (Geneva, 1999); P. Totaro (ed.), Donne, filosofia e cultura nel Seicento (Rome, 1999); Anne Marie de Schurman: Femme savante (1607–1678). Correspondance, ed. C. Venesoen (Paris, 2004). On male–male relationships, see A. Stewart, Close Readers: Humanism and Sodomy in Early Modern England (Princeton, 1997). 44 See H. Zedelmaier and M. Mulsow (eds.), Die Praktiken der Gelehrsamkeit in der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Tu¨bingen, 2001), as well as the parallel volume which originated from the same group of German scholars, R. Ha¨fner (ed.), Philologie und Erkenntnis: Beitra¨ge zu Begriff und Problem fru¨hneuzeitlicher ‘Philologie’ (Tu¨bingen, 2001). 45 For the notion of ‘learned language’, see [Thomas Baker], Reflections upon Learning, 2nd edn. (London, 1700), 9–16, who instances Arabic and Greek, and comments ironically on ‘the French Tongue (which as yet is no Learned Language, tho’ it bids pretty fair for it)’.

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a ‘literary’ movement. The aspiration was to recover the whole of ancient learning. Mathematics owed its renaissance to the work of Italian humanists on Greek mathematical texts.46 Even in Pascal’s day, ‘mathematical erudition’ was still a requisite for a mathematician.47 The rediscovery of Epicurus and Democritus was fundamental for the development of modern atomism. Pierre Gassendi’s own philosophical work emerged from his learned exploration of Epicurus’ biography and its sources.48 He regarded the writing of history as an integral part of the practice of science, although this connection was already challenged in his lifetime.49 Erudition could also have an ideological dimension. Gassendi was close to the libertins, for whom, in France and Italy, the recovery of past learning provided a code for non-conformity.50 In England, in the early eighteenth century, freethinkers like John Toland mounted their attack on religious orthodoxy in terms of biblical and patristic scholarship.51 As a result two different perspectives have now emerged in the history of scholarship. They overlap with the persistent coexistence of ‘amateurs’ and ‘professionals’ (or full-time and part-time workers) in the field but also mirror the well-known duality of the internalist and externalist approach in the history of science. This distinction opposes ‘those concerned with the intellectual contents of science, with concepts, theories and ideas . . . [to] . . . those concerned with the non-cognitive, social, economic and institutional conditions, causes, constraints and (possibly) determinants of scientific theory and practice’.52 In the case of 46 See e.g. E. Garin, Il ritorno dei filosofi antichi (Naples, 1983); P. L. Rose, The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics: Studies on Humanists and Mathematicians from Petrarch to Galileo (Geneva, 1975); D. J. Geanakoplos, Constantinople and the West: Essays on the Late Byzantine (Palaeologan) and Italian Renaissances and the Byzantine and Roman Churches (Madison, Wis., 1989). 47 See D. Descotes, Blaise Pascal: Litte ´rature et geóme´trie (Clermont-Ferrand, 2001), 311–17. 48 See B. Rochot, Les Travaux de Gassendi sur Epicure et sur l’atomisme, 1619–1658 (Paris, 1944). 49 L. Sumida Joy, Gassendi the Atomist: Advocate of History in an Age of Science (Cambridge, 1987). 50 As was first shown by R. Pintard in his seminal dissertation, Le Libertinage ´ erudit dans la premie`re moitie´ du XVII e sie`cle (Paris, 1943, repr. with a new foreword, Geneva, 1983). 51 As has recently been stressed by J. Champion in his introduction to John Toland, Nazarenus (Oxford, 1999), esp. 49–67. 52 J. A. Schuster, ‘The Scientific Revolution’, in R. C. Olby and others (eds.), Companion to the History of Modern Science (London, 1990), 217–42 at 218–19. See also K. Olesko, ‘Historiography of Science’, in J. L. Heilbron (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science (Oxford, 2003), 366–70.

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the history of scholarship some authors (typically with an initial training in Classics rather than in early modern history) have observed philologists and antiquaries at work, scrutinizing manuscripts, coins, or inscriptions. Exponents of this approach have called for the history of scholarship to be ‘understood as a series of strategies which have been developed to deal with what have been perceived as problems demanding solution’.53 They have thus been inclined to insist on the continuity of the ‘classical’ or the ‘antiquarian tradition’ from the Italian Renaissance onwards. They have even pointed to Alexandrian critics (or, in the case of the transmission of patristic literature, to medieval monastic librarians) as the first link in the chain.54 They have often been driven by a sense of justice: to give every scholar his due and to make up for unfair neglect.55 At its best, this perspective has resulted in admirably rigorous and lucid studies, written by people who know what manuscripts and collations are and can thus understand what sixteenth- or seventeenth-century scholars had actually been doing.56 There is a risk, however, of ignoring the broader historical context. And ignorance of the specificity of the past encourages pointless value judgements. The crudest varieties of anachronism can occur, especially among those specialists in ancient history who chance a hand in the history of scholarship for the sake of a conference. Some still treat early modern scholars like minors whose work they are happy to grade according to merit.57 53 G. W. Most’s preface to the first volume of the series Aporemata: Kritische Studien zur Philologiegeschichte (Go¨ttingen, 1997). Cf. Momigliano’s definition of the object of his studies in the preface to the first Contributo alla storia degli studi classici (as in n. 21): ‘chiarire a me stesso e ai miei allievi come si siano originati certi problemi della disciplina che io professo’. 54 See e.g. the standard handbook by L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, 3rd edn. (Oxford, 1991). 55 See e.g. E. Heck, ‘ ‘‘Du sollst nicht zitieren aus zweiter Hand’’: Entdeckung und fru¨he Benutzung des Turiner Codex der lactanzischen Epitome divinarum institutionum’, Philologus, 137 (1993), 110–21; F. Heim’s introduction to Beatus Rhenanus, lecteur et éditeur de textes anciens (as in n. 30); and M. Reeve’s pungent reflections on classicists’ attitudes to the history of scholarship in S. J. Harrison (ed.), Texts, Ideas, and the Classics: Scholarship, Theory and Classical Literature (Oxford, 2001), 245–51. 56 For exemplary studies by modern philologists, see F. Dolbeau, ‘Les Travaux sur les manuscrits augustiniens de Saint-Remi de Reims’, in Troisie`me centenaire de l’e´dition mauriste de saint Augustin: Communications pre´senteés au colloque des 19 et 20 avril 1990 (Paris, 1990), 123–55; P. Petitmengin, ‘Montfaucon, dom Le Maıˆtre et la Bibliotheca Bibliothecarum’, in D. Nebbiai-Dalla Guarda and J.-F. Genest (eds.), Du copiste au collectionneur: Me´langes d’histoire des textes et des bibliothe`ques en l’honneur d’Andre´ Vernet (Turnhout, 1998), 537–84. 57 For an especially naive example, see J.-M. Pailler, ‘L’Arche ólogue par dela` les frontie`res, l’Antiquite´ expliqueé’, in Dom Bernard de Montfaucon: Actes du colloque de

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The externalist, or ‘contextualist’, approach, which is favoured by specialists in early modern history, is free from such defects. Its best exponents have been able to document the centrality of scholarship in the intellectual culture of early modern Europe and to analyse its significance. Rather than the continuity of the antiquarian tradition, they have typically stressed the singularity of a seventeenth-century antiquarian culture, the concerns and practices of which belong to a lost world and call for an imaginative effort of reconstruction.58 They were part of what Krzysztof Pomian has called ‘the culture of curiosity’, which ‘ruled ad interim between the age of theology and the age of science’.59 Putting scholarship in context has been a major achievement and it has resulted in the most promising developments in recent years. The danger here is neglect of the actual contents and modes of production of scholarly works. Scholarship had its own rhythms and codes, which channelled in a specific manner the constraints of ideology. Scholars wrote and published with a constituency in mind, not merely their patrons, ecclesiastical superiors, and censors, but their peers in the Republic of Letters. Some scholars were respected, admired, and feared, others despised. The criteria involved went beyond ideological or partisan affinities. That an edition of Augustine’s complete works in the seventeenth century could not be without theological implications does not mean that it should be considered in the same light as the odd antiJesuit pamphlet in the vernacular.60 It has also to be said that a number of those who have studied early modern scholarship from the point of view of, and with a training in, the history of ideas have not had the requisite grounding in classical languages. It is a melancholy fact that, ‘as countless examples show, scholars who are unfamiliar with the system of medieval abbreviations and MS ligatures often fail, at a very elementary level, to decipher what they see’ when they read a sixteenth-century Carcassonne, octobre 1996, ed. D.-O. Hurel and R. Roge´ (Saint-Wandrille, 1998), i, 225–41. Many contributions in Lenain de Tillemont et l’historiographie de l’antiquite´ romaine: Actes du colloque, 19–21 novembre 1998, ed. S.-M. Pellistrandi (Paris, 2002) tend likewise to assess Tillemont’s merits and weaknesses from the point of view of a modern specialist of the Roman Empire. 58 See Miller, Peiresc’s Europe (as in n. 9), and Zedelmeier and Mulsow’s foreword to Die Praktiken der Gelehrsamkeit (as in n. 44), 7. 59 K. Pomian, Collectionneurs, amateurs et curieux. Paris–Venise: XVI e–XVIII e sie `cle (Paris, 1987), esp. 61–80. Eng. trans. Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500– 1800 (Cambridge, 1990). 60 As B. Kriegel, ‘Le Complot janse ńiste dans la Congre´gation de Saint-Maur’, in Y.-M. Berce´ and E. Fasano Guarini (eds.), Complots et conjurations dans l’Europe moderne (Rome, 1996), 181, seems to imply.

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printed text.61 Of the many factual errors that spoil the philosopher Blandine Barret-Kriegel’s four-volume opus on seventeenth-century scholarship (perhaps the most widely read book on the topic in Frenchspeaking countries), several are simply due to inadequate Latin.62 Even fully-fledged translators of neo-Latin scholarly texts cannot always be trusted—especially when, as is often the case, the Latin is interspersed with Greek quotations.63 Relations between historians of science are occasionally tense.64 The nightmare scenario in the history of scholarship would be a dialogue of the deaf between classicists impervious to the historicity of their own procedures and intellectual historians with little notion of what they are talking about. Fortunately, there are historically aware philologists as well as historians who recognize that one cannot understand early modern scholarship without some degree of familiarity with the texts it undertook to retrieve.

II The explanation that suggests itself, obviously and faute de mieux, for the shadowy nature of the history of scholarship until recently is that scholarship itself failed to acquire a distinct epistemological profile. Such prospects as there may have been for one were undercut by the emergence of the view, in the early seventeenth century, that the retrieval of the monuments of the past as an end in itself was intellectually secondrate, that, precisely, it did not make the grade as an episteme. This did not kill off erudition, but repressed it as a Denkform.65 It flourished as a set of procedures—as often as not very sophisticated ones—deriving its raison 61 L. Deitz, ‘Editing Sixteenth-Century Latin Prose Texts: A Case Study and a Few General Observations’, in G. W. Most (ed.), Editing Texts: Texte edieren (Aporemata: Kritische studien zur Philologiegeschichte, 2; Go¨ttingen, 1998), 145. 62 To give only one example, Melanchthon’s Apologia confessionis Augustanae becomes ‘l’Apologie des Confessions de saint Augustin’ (B. Barret-Kriegel, Les Historiens et la monarchie (Paris, 1988), ii. 61). For a thorough discussion, see P.-F. Burger, ‘La Dispute entre Mabillon et Rance´’, Nouvelles de la Re´publique des Lettres (1999, no. 1), 109–42. 63 See O. Bloch’s devastating review of S. Taussig’s French translation of Gassendi, De vita et moribus Epicuri (Paris, 2001), XVII e sie`cle, no. 221 (Oct. 2003), 758–64. 64 As was shown by some reactions to M. Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago, 1993). See the debate between the author and M. Shank in Early Science and Medicine, 1 (1996), 70–150. 65 Cf. E. R. Curtius, Europa ¨ ische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, 4th edn. (Bern, 1963), 486–90, ‘Etymologie als Denkform’; Deitz, ‘Wower’ (as in n. 5), 150–1.

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d’eˆtre from the cultural significance, taken as read, of its various fields of application. The two major names in this disqualification were Bacon and Descartes. Descartes’s rejection is the more uncompromising and thoroughgoing one. Reflecting on ‘the history of his mind’ in the opening pages of the Discours de la me´thode, he recalls that he was brought up according to humanist conceptions: he was told that erudition was the means of acquiring clear, certain, and useful knowledge. But, as soon as he finished his course of study, he realized that traditional, accumulative learning was failing to fulfil its promises.66 ‘The starting point of Cartesianism was the bankruptcy of a culture.’67 Descartes subsequently formalized the fundamental opposition of science, as he redefined it, and scholarship.68 History in general was denied the status of a science, whence its worthlessness as an object of philosophical reflection. The faculty it engages is memory, not reason, the material it offers is not susceptible of direct inspection or proof, is not reducible to clarity or distinctness, and above all, is incapable of certainty.69 A text which was found in Descartes’s papers after his death, La Recherche de la ve´rite´ par la lumie`re naturelle, is a dialogue between a character aptly named Epistemon, who has read all the books, and Eudoxe the philosopher. The latter insists on ‘the difference between sciences and simple attainments which do not require any use of reason, such as languages, history, geography, and generally everything that depends on experience alone’. In a provocative repudiation of the most basic conviction of Renaissance humanism, Eudoxe declares that ‘a gentleman is no more obliged to know Latin and Greek’ than any rustic dialect of modern Europe.70 At 66 Discours de la Methode [1637], I, in Œuvres de Descartes, ed. Adam-Tannery, 2nd edn., vi (Paris, 1965), 4–9. See the classic commentary by E. Gilson in Descartes, Discours de la me´thode, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1930), 100–42. 67 H. Gouhier, ‘Comment Descartes est devenu carte ´sien’, in id., Descartes: Essais sur le ‘Discours de la me´thode’, la me´taphysique et la morale, 3rd edn. (Paris, 1973), 14–22. 68 See Gilson’s commentary (as in n. 66), 123; H. Gouhier, Les Premie `res Penseés de Descartes: Contribution a` l’histoire de l’Anti-Renaissance (Paris, 1958), esp. 142–9. 69 See C. Borghero, La certezza e la storia: Cartesianesimo, pirronismo e conoscenza storica (Milan, 1983), 24–35. 70 La Recherche de la ve ´rite´ par la lumie`re naturelle, in Œuvres de Descartes (as in n. 66), x (1966), 502–3: ‘Je desire que vous remarquie´s la difference qu’il y a entre les sciences et les simples connoissances qui s’acquierent sans aucun discours de raison, comme sont les langues, l’histoire, la geographie, et generalement tout ce qui ne depend que de l’experience seule. Car je suis bien d’accord que la vie d’un homme ne suffiroit pas, pour acquerir l’experience de toutes les choses qui sont au monde; mais aussy je me persuade que ce seroit folie de le desirer, et qu’un honeste homme n’est pas plus oblige´ de sçavoir le grec ou le latin, que le suisse ou le bas breton, ni l’histoire de l’Empire, que celle du

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the end of his life, when he was staying at the court of Sweden, Descartes deplored Queen Christina’s appetite for Greek, and ‘ancient books’ as diversions from philosophy. ‘Philosophy’ and ‘philology’ appeared to him and to his admirers as antithetical.71 It is interesting to note that érudition was still for him a positive term, without any of the negative connotations that later attached to it. He intended at one point to write a Traite´ de l’e´rudition72 and, in his 1643 letter to Voetius, he contrasted eruditio, the fruit of ‘the true use of reason’, to doctrina, undigested knowledge accumulated from books.73 Since the truly erudite ‘understand that true erudition does not depend solely on books, they strive to acquire it also by private meditation, or the various practices of business, and intercourse with eminent persons, and they do not spend all their time with books’.74 By the end of the seventeenth century, however, in a highly revealing semantic inversion, what Descartes called eruditio had become science in French, and what he denigrated as doctrina attracted the label érudition.75 The subsequent discrediting of érudition (in its double meaning of erudition and scholarship) in many circles, especially in France, is well known but its specific configuration less so. Contemporaries already commented on this change in cultural values. Gibbon dated its moindre estat qui soit en l’Europe; et qu’il doit seulement prendre garde a` employer son loisir en choses honnestes et utiles, et a` ne charger sa memoire que des plus necessaires.’ The date of the text is still in dispute (suggestions range from the early 1630s to Descartes’s last years: see the special issue of Nouvelles de la Re´publique des Lettres (1999, no. 1) on the question). S. Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford, 1995), 362–4, assigns it tentatively to the early 1640s. 71 See letters exchanged by Princess Elizabeth and Descartes in Oct.–Dec. 1649, Œuvres (as in n. 66), v ( 1974), 430 and 452. It would be interesting, in this connection, to trace the fortuna of the Senecan tag ‘quae philosophia fuit, facta philologia est’ (Epp. ad Lucilium cviii. 23). For Lipsius’ use of it, cf. M. Morford, Stoics and Neostoics: Rubens and the Circle of Lipsius (Princeton, 1991), 136–7. We owe this reference to Jill Kraye. 72 See Princess Elizabeth to Descartes, 5 Dec. 1647, and Descartes’s answer, 31 Jan. 1648, Œuvres, v (as in n. 71), 97 and 111–12. Commentators have assumed that this Traite´ de l’e´rudition would have been a treatise against erudition. This is true according to the present use of the word érudition, not Descartes’s. 73 Descartes, Epistola ad Voetium, in Œuvres (as in n. 66), viii/2 (1965), 42–6. 74 Ibid. 44: ‘hi quidem [vere eruditi] cum intelligant veram eruditionem non a solis libris pendere, illam etiam privata meditatione, vel vario negotiorum usu, et virorum praestantium familiaritate, sibi comparare satagunt, nec inter libros semper versantur’. 75 See [Adrien Baillet], La Vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (Paris, 1691), ii. 469–70. This substitution of science vs érudition for Descartes’s eruditio vs doctrina has been followed by all French translators of the Epistola ad Voetium (see most recently Descartes and Schoock, La Querelle d’Utrecht, trans. T. Verbeek (Paris, 1988), 351). A comparative study of the semantics of doctrina, eruditio, Gelehrsamkeit, learning, antiquarianism, etc. remains a desideratum.

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beginning to Descartes but thought that ‘the mortal blow’ had been the French dispute of Ancients and Moderns.76 The study of classical literature lost henceforth its traditional name of Belles-Lettres and found itself designated by the new and derogatory word érudition.77 But the Cartesian contempt for the past had a paradoxical effect: it inspired the production of numerous histories ‘of the progress of the human mind’ that are so characteristic of the French Enlightenment, from Fontenelle to Condorcet.78 The hierarchy of knowledge was conceived in terms of its genealogy. Erudition had a place in it, as a necessary, though now superseded, stage, which humankind had to pass through in its ascent towards philosophy. The age of erudition had been the Renaissance.79 In the Encylope´die entry on ‘Erudition’, d’Alembert, while careful to give it its due, found that the preference for the exact sciences on the one hand, and matie`res de bel esprit (belles-lettres) on the other, had an objective reason: philological scholarship had achieved what it could (mainly in recovering monuments of classical Antiquity), and had run out of subjects—though he hastened to add that the large collection of Oriental manuscripts in the Royal Library still awaited expert linguists to read them.80 The activities of the Acade´mie Royale des Inscriptions et BellesLettres belied somewhat d’Alembert’s picture. Its members were far from impervious to Enlightenment values.81 They explored the classical world in a new spirit82 and also moved on to new territories: the Middle 76 Edward Gibbon, Essai sur l’e ´tude de la litte´rature (London, 1761), 10; An Essay on the Study of Literature. Now first translated into English (London, 1764), 11. See J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, i: The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737– 1764 (Cambridge, 1999). The dossier of the dispute has been put together by A.-M. Lecoq, La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, XVII e–XVIII e sie`cles (Paris, 2001), with an introductory essay by M. Fumaroli. 77 Gibbon, Essai (as in previous note), 12 n. Interestingly, this note was omitted in the 1764 English translation, which would seem to indicate that this use of érudition was specifically French. Later in the text, ‘sans crainte du nom fle´trissant d’e´rudit’ (p. 105) was rendered ‘without fear of incurring the contemptible name of a mere scholar’ (p. 110): an epithet was felt necessary to make the meaning clear to an English reader. Lord Chesterfield, Letters (Oxford, 1998), 94, wrote ironically in 1748 of ‘the erudite Germans’ but he was a very Frenchified English aristocrat. 78 See Y. Belaval, Leibniz critique de Descartes (Paris, 1960), 126–8. 79 See especially d’Alembert’s ‘Discours pre ´liminaire’ to the Encyclope´die, i (Paris, 1751), part II, pp. xix–xxi. ´ rudition’, in Encyclope´die, v (Paris, 1755), 915–17. 80 D’Alembert, ‘E 81 See e.g. Nicolas Fre ´ret, le´gende et ve´rite´: Colloque des 18 et 19 octobre 1991, ClermontFerrand, ed. C. Grell and C. Volpilhac-Auger (Oxford, 1994). 82 See C. Nicolet, ‘Des Belles-Lettres a ` l’e´rudition: L’antiquite´ grećo-romaine a` l’Acade´mie au xviiie sie`cle’, Comptes rendus de l’Acade´mie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (2001), 1627–37, with bibliography. An interesting figure is Jean-Philippe de La

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Ages83 and non-European cultures.84 Its Me´moires had a European audience. But the young Gibbon, who bought the first twenty volumes in 1759, observed with dismay that ‘the Academy of Inscriptions was degraded to the lowest rank among the three Royal societies of Paris’.85 The case of Bacon, no less important a figure for the history of scholarship than Descartes—indeed more so—is rather different. Himself the author of at least one fully rounded historical work,86 he was not nearly as peremptory in his critique of what tradition had to offer. He rejected the idea of history as a repository of authoritative knowledge, but not as a source of worthwhile knowledge, subject to the judgement of reason. And even if the history of science and philosophy was for him, by and large, a history of error, the historical process, which Bacon objectifies under the figure of the births (and abortions) of Time,87 claimed attention, if only as a corrective of authorial hubris (morally reprehensible and, above all, intellectually damaging). Such truth as might occur was the daughter of Time, not of authority, Time being the author of authors, and so of all authority.88 Bacon had a keen Bletterie, whose dissertations on the nature of Roman imperial authority are referred to by Gibbon, Essai (as in n. 76), 29 and 154; see B. Neveu, ‘Un acade´micien du xviiie sie`cle, traducteur et biographe de l’empereur Julien: L’abbe´ de La Bletterie’, in Comptes rendus de l’Acade´mie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (2000), 93–111; J.-L. Ferrary, ‘La Ble´terie, Gravina et les pouvoirs de l’empereur’, in J.-L. Quantin and J.-C. Waquet (eds.), Papes, princes, et savants dans l’Europe moderne: Me´langes a` la me´moire de Bruno Neveu (Geneva, 2006). 83 L. Gossman, Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment: The World and Work of La Curne de Sainte-Palaye (Baltimore, Md., 1968). 84 See e.g. Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil Duperron, Voyage en Inde 1754–1762: Relation de voyage en pre´liminaire a` la traduction du Zend-Avesta, ed. J. Deloche, M. Filliozat, and P. S. Filliozat (Paris, 1997). Anquetil Duperron, ‘the founder of Indianism’, became a member of the Acade´mie des Inscriptions in 1763. 85 Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of my Life, ed. G. A. Bonnard (London, 1966), 97–9. 86 Cf. J. F. Tinkler, ‘Bacon and History’, in M. Peltonen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Bacon (Cambridge, 1996), 232–59. 87 Cf. F. Bacon, Redargutio philosophiarum, in Works, ed. J. Spedding and others (London, 1857), iii. 568; Instauratio magna, Praefatio, in The Oxford Francis Bacon [hereafter OFB], xi, ed. G. Rees (Oxford, 2004), 14, ll. 6–7. Another figure is ‘saeculorum circuitus et ambages’ (Novum Organum i, aphorism cix, ibid. 168, l. 3). History is not so much dead wood to Bacon: it can be productive (new discoveries), but it takes time and is unpredictable. Bacon wants to eliminate time and randomness by proposing a ‘way’ that will secure and/or anticipate results ‘quickly, suddenly and at once’ (ibid.). 88 Novum Organum i, aphorism lxxxiv, OFB xi. 132, ll. 30–1; cf. Cogitata et visa, in Works, iii. 612. Commentators have noted Bacon’s recourse to the commonplace without seeing that he in fact subverts it. Truth may be a product of time rather than of individual minds, but it is a matter of survival against the odds, not of purposeful protection. Bacon compares time to a river transporting ‘things which are light and blown up’ and drowning ‘that which is sad and weighty’; Of the interpretation of nature, in

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sense of the pervasive contingencies of time. In the dedication of the Novum Organum to the King he presents his own work as a ‘partus temporis magis quam ingenii’—time not as a significant process coming to a head, or as significant moment (kairos), but as a congeries of accidents, here the unlikely accident of the entrenched falsehoods of science and philosophy coming under suspicion in someone’s mind, the someone happening to be himself, the king’s servant, stealing unredeemably his master’s time to write his work which, however, if it is worth anything, owes its coming about (it pleases him to think) to divine mercy and goodness, and to the felicity of the times, the reign of a most wise and most learned monarch, which the newly lit torch of philosophy will perhaps add lustre to in the time to come.89 Bacon declared programmatically that ‘knowledge should be sought from the light of nature, not retrieved from the obscurity of antiquity’.90 He repudiated ‘antiquities and citations, and authors’ testimonies; also, disputes and controversies and divergent opinions; in short, all matters philological’.91 But the past, especially the learning of the past, whatever its inadequacies, was not to be ignored. On the contrary, it was to be retrieved and carefully catalogued.92 Bacon demonstrated this both in theory and in practice. Laying it down that all philosophy—and it is mostly bad philosophy—comes from the Greeks, the Romans and the Arabs not having contributed anything of importance,93 he reconstructs the history of Greek philosophy according to a non-traditional scheme (i.e. not by Works, iii. 227; cf. Cogitata et visa, ibid. 599; Instauratio magna, Praefatio, OFB xi. 14, ll. 17–18. Mostly, truth perishes at the hands of time, or at least time overlays it with falsehood; cf. C. Zittel, ‘ ‘‘Truth is the daughter of time’’: Zum Verha¨ltnis von Theorie der Wissenskultur, Wisssensideal, Methode und Wissensordnung bei Bacon’, in W. Detel and C. Zittel, Wissensideale und Wissenskulturen in der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Berlin, 2002), 213–38, esp. 221–3. 89 OFB xi. 6–8. Admittedly, this can be seen as no more than a well-turned compliment, but it is Bacon’s temporal sensibility that shapes it. Tinkler, ‘Bacon’ (as in n. 86), 250–8, shows that in his History of Henry VII, Bacon, untypically for the humanist mode within which he remains, stresses fortuna as against virtus. 90 Temporis partus masculus, in Works, iii. 535; Redargutio philosophiarum, ibid. 574. 91 Parasceve ad historiam naturalem et experimentalem, aphorism iii, in OFB xi. 456, ll. 16–18. The context of this should be borne in mind: Bacon is sketching out a method for compiling a historia naturalis et experimentalis, and he is pointing out the irrelevancies to be avoided. Philological learning as such is not repudiated—see text below. 92 For both the rejection and the preservation of the learning of the past in Bacon, cf. P. Rossi, Francesco Bacone: Dalla magia alla scienza (Turin, 1974), 66–220. 93 Cf. Redargutio philosophiarum, in Works, iii. 561; Novum Organum i, aphorism lxxi, in OFB xi. 112, ll. 21–4.

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schools), the articulations of which are sufficiently formalized to be both adversarial and descriptive, allowing it to function as historiographical method and not merely as an instrument for demonstrating falsehood.94 Bacon approaches his subject indirectly, through what he calls signa quaedam externa, roughly, conditioning features and general characteristics:95 type of mentality, stage of historical development, modes of procedure, degree of productivity.96 This enables him to expose the radical flaws of Greek philosophy, but also to offer a structural account of it which, disregarding sect and doctrine, differentiates by style of philosophizing, focus of interest, and literary form. If there is anything in Greek philosophy that finds favour with Bacon, it is the Presocratics, whom he is the first, it seems, to identify as a distinct constellation,97 though, of course, he does not use the term.98 As against Plato and 94 Bacon distinguishes redargutio against confutatio. The former offers a typology of philosophical failure, whereas the latter engages in piecemeal argument, which presupposes some kind of common ground, a presupposition Bacon finds inapplicable for his argument—cf. Novum Organum i, aphorisms cxv and xxxv, in OFB xi. 172, ll. 20–3; 76, ll. 22–3; Redargutio, in Works, iii. 557. 95 Cf. Redargutio, in Works, iii. 558, 566, 576; Novum Organum i, aphorisms lxx–xci, in OFB xi. 112, ll. 16–148, ll. 4; cf. Editor’s Introduction, ibid., pp. lvii–lxi; Rossi, Bacone (as in n. 92), 82–6; J. C. Morrison, ‘Philosophy and History in Bacon’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 38 (1977), 585–606 at 598; M. Fattori, ‘Parole e storia della filosofia: Alcuni esempi del vocabolario filosofico del ’600’, in La filosofia e le sue storie: Atti del seminario . . . Lecce . . . 1995 (Lecce, 1998), 145–91 at 160–7 [the title in the table of contents and the running title are those of an earlier paper cited in n. 1]; ead., ‘Signum in Francis Bacon: Dal mondo del sacro al mondo degli uomini’, in Signum: IX colloquio internazionale, Roma . . . 1998 (Florence, 1999), 235–61. 96 Cf. Redargutio, in Works, iii. 562–3, 563, 581, 576; Novum Organum i, aphorisms lxxi–lxxv, in OFB xi. 112, ll. 20–120, l. 10. 97 Bacon’s vindication of the Presocratics against the murderous and appropriative tyranny of Aristotle—cf., e.g., De augmentis iii. 4, in Works, i. 548—is in the tradition of Renaissance Platonizing anti-Aristotelianism—cf. Rossi, Bacone (as in n. 92), 120 n. 46. His immediate source was probably Patrizi’s Discussiones Peripateticae . . . quibus Aristotelicae philosophiae universa historia atque dogmata cum veterum placitis collata . . . declarantur (Basle, 1581). What is new is the shedding of the context of prisca theologia. Bacon endows the Presocratics with an almost Heideggerian Uranfa¨nglichkeit, though he grants Democritus (his favourite philosopher) a proxime accedit to prisca sapientia—cf. De principiis atque originibus secundum fabulas Cupidinis et Coeli, in Works, iii. 110. However, prisca sapientia or sapientia veterum, in Bacon’s conception of it, differs substantially from prisca theologia: it has no biblical filiation and is more in the nature of a mythological repertory than a tradition of authors; cf. Rossi, Bacone, 130–220. For Bacon and Patrizi, cf. V. K. Whitaker, ‘Francesco Patrizi and Francis Bacon’, in W. A. Sessions (ed.), Francis Bacon’s Legacy of Texts (New York, 1990), 89–104. I owe this reference to Phillips Salman. Cf. n. 104 below. 98 Cf. Historisches Wo ¨rterbuch der Philosophie, xi. 2001, s.v. ‘Vorsokratisch’, ‘Vorsokratiker’: earliest occurrence in J. A. Eberhard’s Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie (Halle, 1788); taken up by Schleiermacher and Hegel, and finally established as a historiographical category by E. Zeller in his Philosophie der Griechen, 1st edn.

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Aristotle, Zeno and Epicurus, the Presocratics did not teach or found schools,99 and were therefore innocent of ‘professorial pomp’ (one of Bacon’s signa) and its deleterious consequences. They conducted their investigations in private and recorded the results in writing, adopting the form not of the elaborately argued treatise with its tendency to foreclose further enquiry by confining debate within its own terms of reference— but of short, disconnected aphorisms, intended to convey the provisional and lacunary nature of their findings, and so inviting further enquiry.100 Bacon cast some of his own work in the form of aphorisms, and reflected on this.101 The half-title of the Novum Organum describes the subject of the work as ‘not embodied in a proper treatise but only summarily digested, in aphorisms’.102 The disjunction ‘proper treatise’/ ‘aphorisms’ echoes Bacon’s typology of the Presocratics. It reappears within the work as a methodological recommendation, the ‘earliest and most ancient investigators of the truth’, obviously the Presocratics, being offered as an example.103 In fact, Bacon’s evident intellectual sympathy with the Presocratics (especially Democritus) and their aphoristic ways lands him, if not in a contradiction, at least in an ambiguity. He does not seem to reflect on a possible overlap between fragment as literary form (aphorism) and fragment as accident of survival. He praises the former but deplores, and (Tu¨bingen, 1844). The OED s.v. ‘Pre-’ B. I, 1d, cites (as earliest occurrence?) A. C. Fraser’s Life of Berkeley, vii. 293 (1871); cf. also W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, ii (Cambridge, 1965), 345. The emergence of the term seems to have occasioned no special comment. The tendency has been, presumably, to take it as an ‘obvious’ by-product of the perception, present already in Antiquity, of Socrates’ shift of focus from nature to man as marking an epoch. Bacon refers to this; cf. Novum Organum aph. lxxix, in OFB xi. 124, ll. 30–6, but Socrates does not figure in his outline of the history of Greek philosophy. For a modern typology of the Presocratics as a stage in the history of philosophy, cf. A. Laks, ‘ ‘‘Philosophes pre´socratiques’’: Remarques sur la construction d’une cate´gorie de l’historiographie philosophique’ (2001), in A. Laks and C. Longuet (eds.), Qu’est-ce que la philosophie pre´socratique? (Cahiers de philologie, 20, se´rie Apparat critique; Lille 2002), 17–38. We owe this reference to Denis Thouard; we are also grateful to him for a number of other useful remarks. 99 On Bacon’s apparent ignorance of Democritus’ school at Abdera, and Parmenides’ at Elea, cf. B. Farrington, The Philosophy of Francis Bacon: An Essay on its Development from 1603 to 1609 (Chicago, 1966), 111 n. 1. In the reprise of the typology of Greek philosophy in Novum Organum (i, aphorism lxxi, in OFB xi. 112, ll. 20–114, l. 24), Bacon qualifies the statement that the Presocratics did not open schools with ‘quod novimus’. 100 Redargutio, in Works, iii. 565–6; 569–70; Cogitata et visa, ibid., iii. 593–4. 101 Cf. B. Vickers, Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose (Cambridge, 1968), 60–95. 102 OFB xi. 48. 103 Novum Organum i, aphorism lxxxvi, in OFB xi. 138, ll. 13–17, a reprise, with slight variations, of Cogitata et visa (as in n. 100).

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wishes to remedy, the latter. The Presocratics cannot be read in their own writings, which have perished. Their views are accessible, if at all, ‘per internuntios quosdam [i.e. later authors] minime fidos, famas et fragmenta’.104 This calls for extra care in examining them, and extra fairness in judging them to compensate, as it were, for the ‘iniquity of fate’. Read at source, the views of these philosophers would have had greater solidity, for the ‘force of theories consists in an apt harmony of their parts sustained by the mutual relationships of these, and a kind of demonstration in the round (in orbem)’; ‘transmitted as [disjointed] parts, they are weak’.105 In Bacon’s ideal vision of the ‘Presocratics restored’, the disconnected aphorism, advancing knowledge as much by what it conveys as by what it leaves space for, seems to disappear in the shadow of the randomly and unreliably transmitted fragment, diminished in its import by lack of context. There is no need to press this. What is of interest is Bacon’s philological engagement with texts of the past. Moreover, his preoccupation with the Presocratics provides a transition from what he did himself to what he postulated as desiderata. He had, as he reports in Cogitata et visa and in Redargutio philosophiarum,106 hunted in the ancient authors— ‘Aristotle’s confutations and Cicero’s quotations’—for the slightest trace or echo of Presocratic opinions and he had examined his findings for insights into nature in which the Presocratics, especially Democritus, had advanced much further than Aristotle had ever done.107 But in the De augmentis Bacon calls for a similar operation to be undertaken, no doubt more systematically. A book, De antiquis philosophiis, is to come out of this—none like it exists. The material should not to be bundled under arbitrary heads as Plutarch did, but used to reconstruct each philosophy distinctly by itself. ‘For any philosophy that is entire supports itself, and its doctrines lend light and strength to each other; taken separately, they sound harsh and strange.’108 Various Presocratic 104 This quotation conflates Cogitata et visa, in Works, iii. 602 with Redargutio, ibid. 570. The principal ‘internuntius minime fidus’ is Aristotle, whose treatment of the Presocratics (mainly in Metaphysics 1) is castigated at length by Patrizi in his Discussiones peripateticae—cf. M. Muccillo, ‘La storia della filosofia presocratica nelle ‘‘Discussiones peripateticae’’ di Francesco Patrizi da Cherso’, La cultura, 13 (1975), 48–105; ead., Platonismo, Ermetismo e ‘prisca theologia’: Ricerche di storiografia filosofica rinascimentale (Quaderni di Rinascimento; Florence, 1996), 108–33. 105 Redargutio, in Works, iii. 570. 106 Works, iii. 602; 569–70. 107 Redargutio, ibid. 570. 108 De augmentis scientiarum iii. 4, in Works, i. 563–4; Bacon’s proposal for the retrieval of the Presocratics is quoted by Thomas Stanley as an epigraph to his chapter on Pythagoras in the first edition of his History of Philosophy, iii (London, 1660); cf. Models of the History of

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philosophies offer many glosses on nature (Naturae glossas), which in their strengths and weaknesses to some extent complement each other, and which it is worth knowing.109 Bacon’s interest in the learning of the past was not confined to the Presocratics. In his well-known discussion, in De augmentis, of types of history, he posits, as a subgenre of historia civilis, historia literarum et artium, non-existent so far, the famous eye of Polyphemus, a statue of the giant can hardly do without. This new branch of history is to consist of elaborate accounts of the vicissitudes of the arts, sciences, and doctrines—of the circumstances of their origin, decay, and revival, of the manner of their transmission, of their migrations, of the controversies they gave rise to, of their institutional embodiment, etc., etc. Bacon goes on to indicate the scope of source material for such a history: not only histories and the writings of critics, but also the principal books written in each century,110 so that the genius of each age can be conjured up from the dead as if by incantation.111 The specifications of this project are given a trial run in book i of De augmentis, which Bacon sums up as a dissertatio de literarum excellentia.112 Elsewhere, he calls for the provision of good libraries, and critical, annotated editions of texts.113 Is Bacon, then, contrary to received opinion, not only not hostile to traditional knowledge, whether superseded or not, but the forgotten founder of the history of its elaboration, in a word of the history of scholarship ? He is not. Though his call for a historia literarum et artium did have a sequel in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Philosophy, i, ed. G. Santinello and others, English edn. by C. W. T. Blackwell (Dordrecht, 1993), 166. It is coupled with a quotation from Montaigne (Essais ii. 12) expressing a similar wish but in quite different, entirely conventional terms. 109 De augmentis ibid. 110 ‘ut materia et copia eius [sc. huiusmodi historiae] non tantum ab historiis et criticis petatur, verum etiam ut per singulas annorum centurias . . . seriatim . . . libri praecipui qui per ea temporis spatia conscripti sunt in consilium adhibeantur’ (Works, i. 503–4); the standard translation of criticis as ‘commentaries’ seems bizarre (Works, iv. 301); I take criticis as a masculine noun, i.e. ‘critics’, used metonymously for their writings. In the paragraph immediately preceding, a propos of causal explanation in civil history, Bacon recommends a plain historical narrative, sparing in judgement, as against what critics do, who spend their time bestowing praise and censure (‘criticorum more in laude et censura tempus teratur’). In the passage under consideration, the two divergent historiographical modes are jointly opposed to non-historiographical evidence—all this under correction. I am most grateful to Graham Rees for his generous help; the interpretation offered is my own. 111 De augmentis scientiarum ii. 4, in Works, i. 502–4; cf. Aduancement of learning [1605], sigs. 2B3v–2B4 þ [r], ed. M. Kiernan (Oxford, 2000), 62. 112 Works, i. 483. 113 Aduancement (as in n. 111), sig. 2A2 þ [v], ‘To the King’ 57; De augmentis ii, ‘Ad Regem suum’, in Works, i. 487.

Introduction

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historia literaria in Germany, neither this enterprise (of which more anon) nor Bacon’s own project was sufficient to establish the history of past knowledge as an autonomous pursuit. The object of Bacon’s Instauratio magna is the knowledge of nature, not the knowledge of history. He sets out to overhaul the former; the latter he is, by and large, content to leave as he finds it. Not that—quite apart from being a practising historian—he was not passionately interested in history, or that he did not have very sophisticated things to say about it, both in respect of the genre and on specific topics.114 But he did not break the established, humanist mould. If anything, he reinforced it. This cannot be gone into in detail here. Let it suffice to point to his refinement of the theme of history as a treasury of examples: of greater profit when studied direct rather than through the systematization of a philosopher, as in the case of Roman history versus the constitutions collected by Aristotle;115 or when precepts of political and psychological prudence are derived from historians’ (and poets’) accounts of the conduct of eminent historical figures rather than such accounts used to illustrate conventional notions of virtue and vice.116 Moreover, for Bacon there is no structural difference between historical knowledge and the knowledge of nature.117 The findings of historical enquiry, just as those of an enquiry into natural phenomena, are of interest in so far as they yield worthwhile information, not for what they reveal of the facticity of the past, its having been so and not otherwise. The latter, in Bacon’s time (and for another century and a half), is inseparable from providential history, which Bacon recognizes but does not reflect on (as Vico will do) beyond placing it in his schema of historical genera and species.118 114 Cf. L. F. Dean, ‘Sir Francis Bacon’s Theory of Civil History-Writing’ (1941), in B. Vickers (ed.), Essential Articles for the Study of Francis Bacon (London, 1968), 211–35; Morrison, ‘Philosophy’ (as in n. 95); D. R. Woolf, The Idea of History in Early Stuart England (Toronto 1990), 145–58; Tinkler, ‘Bacon’ (as in n. 86). 115 Redargutio, in Works, iii. 568–9. 116 Aduancement (as in n. 111), sig. 2Y1r; De augmentis vii. 3, in Works, i. 733–4; cf. Dean, ‘Bacon’s Theory’ (as in n. 114), 219 ff. 117 This is implicit in his Aristotelian understanding of historia as a data-gathering enquiry preliminary to the constitution of a science, the enquiry not being a priori specific to any particular domain; cf. P. Louis, ‘Le Mot flstor‹a chez Aristote’, Revue de philologie, 29 (1955), 39–44. Bacon postulates the elaboration of an all-embracing ‘Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis ad condendam philosophiam’—Novum Organum, Address to the King, in OFB, xi. 8, ll. 2–9. For historia in Bacon, cf. A. Seifert, Cognitio historica: Die Geschichte als Namengeberin der fru¨hneuzeitlichen Empirie (Berlin, 1976), 116–38. 118 Cf. De augmentis ii. 11, in Works, i. 515–16. There is a hint, perhaps—within a firmly theological framework—of the interest in history for what it is rather than for what

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It is the paradox (from a modern, or postmodern, point of view) of Bacon’s scholarly project that what appears as a highly developed sense of history—of the specificity of historical periods, of historical conditioning, historical change, the moment in time—is intended as the instrument of a thoroughly ahistorical procedure: scouring the records of the past for nuggets of useful information, useful in terms of a normative enterprise, such as Bacon’s Instauratio. Once what is useful has been extracted, the historical dimension falls away. It can have no intrinsic interest: the nuggets of truth were embedded in a mass of error.119 Bacon’s project of a universal history of learning was taken up, with emphatic acknowledgement, and put into effect both as a genre and as a teaching programme in Germany in the second half of the seventeenth century, under the name of historia literaria.120 The (unacknowledged) departure from Bacon consisted in the fact that, to the adepts of historia literaria, history was a storehouse of valid learning and wisdom, and not, as with Bacon, largely a story of error. The following summary remarks are merely intended to suggest that, whatever the claims and

it offers in the remark (Descriptio globi intellectualis ii, in Works, iii. 728–9) that manifestations of the divine occur both in nature and in history, but more in the latter, to the extent of constituting a separate species of history ‘which we call Sacred or Ecclesiastical’, and which Bacon classifies as a subdivision of civil history. 119 Cf. Bacon’s comparison of the various theories of Greek philosophy—including Presocratic ones, more likely than all the others to have some truth in them though these might be—to plots of theatre plays, some resembling reality more successfully than others, but all of them fables. All Greek philosophy sails as one ship whose errings are many, but the causes of them the same; Redargutio, in Works, iii. 570–1; Cogitata et visa, ibid. 602–3. Moreover, Bacon warns that the historia literarum should not be taken as an end in itself. Its purpose is not to satisfy the curiosity of the learned, but to ‘make [them] wise in the use and administration of learning’; Aduancement (as in n. 111), sigs. 2B3v– 2B4r, p. 62; fuller in De augmentis ii. 4, in Works, i. 504. Thus history as a treasury of serviceable items twice over. 120 In modern scholarship the phenomenon is of recent interest, and it is still imperfectly understood. The scholar who has done most to advance our understanding of ¨ ber den epistehistoria literaria is Helmut Zedelmaier—cf. his ‘ ‘‘Historia literaria’’: U mologischen Ort des gelehrten Wissens in der ersten Ha¨lfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’ (with references to his earlier contributions), Das 18. Jahrhundert, 20 (1998), 11–21; ‘Aporien fru¨haufgekla¨rter Gelehrsamkeit: Jakob Friedrich Reimmann und das Problem des Ursprungs der Wissenschaften’, in M. Mulsow and H. Zeldermaier (eds.), Skepsis, Providenz, Polyhistorie: Jakob Friedrich Reimmann (1668–1743) (Tu¨bingen, 1998), 97–129; further bibliography in P. Nelles, ‘Historia litteraria and Morhof: Private Teaching and Professorial Libraries at the University of Kiel’, in F. Waquet (ed.), Mapping the World of Learning: The ‘Polyhistor’ of Daniel Georg Morhof (Wolfenbu¨tteler Forschungen, 91; Wiesbaden, 2000), 33 n. 5.

Introduction

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achievements of historia literaria, its practice did not raise the status of erudition or produce a history of its methods. The inception of historia literaria can be dated with some precision: the late 1650s. In 1659 the Hamburg scholar Peter Lambeck, subsequently imperial librarian in Vienna, published his Prodromus historiae literariae, the earliest known work on the subject, and the baptism, as it were, of the term.121 In the Introduction, having quoted the programmatic chapter from Bacon’s De augmentis, Lambeck goes on to tell how, not finding any work sufficiently comprehensive to suit his requirements for teaching historia literaria at the Akademisches Gymnasium in Hamburg, he settled for Johann Jakob Frisius’ Bibliotheca philosophorum, classicorum authorum, chronologica, published in Zu¨rich in 1592, full of chronological errors, confusions, and misattributions though it was. Altering somewhat its arrangement,122 he had it reprinted in a hundred copies for his own and his students’ use. He then gave two courses of lectures on historia literaria with Frisius as the base text, correcting and supplementing as he went along.123 Lambeck’s Prodromus remained a torso: a general history of learning from the Creation to the present was not easily encompassed by one man—but the outline he had worked out (Skiagraphia) inspired his subsequent librarianship in Vienna. Lambeck’s career exemplifies the complex, and, for us, not easily definable nature of historia literaria. 121 Paul Nelles, whose contribution on a different subject appears in this volume, gave a paper on Lambeck and historia literaria to the Seminar on the history of scholarship in 1993; cf. his ‘Historia litteraria at Helmstedt: Books, Professors and Students in the Early Enlightenment University’, in Praktiken der Gelehrsamkeit (as in n. 44), 147–76. 122 He divided the continuous chronological sequence into two parts, BC/AD, and inserted ecclesiastical authors, listed separately by Frisius, into the sequence of pagan/ secular ones; cf. P. Lambeck, Liber primus Prodromi historiae literariae . . . (Hamburg, 1659), sig. )()()([1v]. 123 Cf. Lambeck, ibid. The British Library holds a copy of the rejigged Frisius, shelfmark 11905.f.7. The title page is missing but the half-title has ‘iuxta exemplar impressum Tiguri anno 1592’, which helps to identify it. The catalogue dates it conjecturally to 1620, obviously in ignorance of the fact that the reissue was due to Lambeck. The copy has underscoring and MS marginal notes, and is interleaved with pages of MS notes. These are entitled ‘Excerpta ex Petri Lambecij dissertationibus privatis, quibus Joannis Frisii bibliothecam . . . partim supplevit partim correxit partim illustravit’ (roughly similar title for Part II). P. Nelles, ‘Historia litteraria’ (as in n. 121), 41, seems to conflate the reissue of Frisius with Lambeck’s own published scheme for a Philosophica et Historica Bibliotheca, praised as meeting Bacon’s postulates by D. G. Morhof in the chapter on historia literaria of his Polyhistor sive de notitia auctorum et rerum commentarii (Lu¨beck, 1688–92), 11–14, where he reproduces it on account of its rarity (and speaks of it separately from the Prodromus). It appears not to have survived. The matter requires further investigation.

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The genre grew and ramified. In his Polyhistor, first published in 1688, Daniel Georg Morhof devoted a chapter to its history.124 Morhof’s Polyhistor was itself seen by many as a historia literaria.125 In his preface to the 1732 edition of the Polyhistor, Johann Albert Fabricius distinguished four previous types of historia literaria—‘chronological’, ‘lexical’ (i.e. alphabetical), ‘realis’ (enumerating classes of things by genre), and ‘geographical’ (by language and nation). Morhof was the first to have elaborated a fifth type, ‘critical’, an advance on the others. It offered a critical survey of authors ‘arranged by headings of things and classes of disciplines’, thus ‘introducing students to a universal knowledge of them’.126 The Polyhistor was enthusiastically greeted as a historia literaria by Christian Thomasius, who saw in it an antidote to the pedantry and ignorance (narrowness of the canon) of current university teaching, and a vindication of the idea that the history of any discipline is an essential component of it.127 This became received wisdom.128 But Morhof ’s idea of the history of a discipline as indispensable to its successful pursuit, for all its Momiglianesque echoes, is remote from any modern conception. The difference lies in the way the past is envisaged. For the modern practitioner of a discipline its history is a document to be read both in specialist and wider cultural terms, in order to make him/her aware of accumulated layers of interpretation and the consequent nonimmediacy of his/her own approach. Morhof, by contrast, saw the 124 Cf. Morhof, Polyhistor, Liber I, Bibliothecarius, cap. ii, 9–21. There were five subsequent editions, enlarged, all posthumous: 1695, 1708, 1714, 1732, 1747; from that of 1708 onwards, the title is Polyhistor, literarius, philosophicus et practicus. 125 Cf. Johann Andreas Fabricius, Abriss einer allgemeinen Historie der Gelehrsamkeit, i (Leipzig, 1752), 686. Morhof taught historia literaria at the University of Kiel; cf. Nelles, ‘Historia litteraria’ (as in n. 121). 126 Cf. Morhof, Polyhistor, i (Lu ¨ beck, 1732), sig. (a)v–(a)2r. 127 Cf. C. Thomasius, Freimu ¨ tige . . . Gedanken oder Monatsgespra¨che u¨ber allerhand, fu¨rnehmlich aber u¨ber neue Bu¨cher, ii (Halle, 1688, repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1972), 287; 661. Thomasius singles out for particular praise Morhof’s deduction from the general usefulness of history, of the constitutive role of history in any discipline: ‘Historiae tanta ad omnem doctrinam utilitas est, ut sine illa nihil plane effici possit. Eius plenior cognitio habenda est, non tantum illius, quae Politicae fundamenta substernit, sed et illius, quae ad Theologiam, et ad omnes scientias manuducit. Historiae omnia pene debemus, quae sciri possunt: nam qui flstoro¸mena cujuscunque doctrinae accurate novit, plus omnibus in illa magistris sapit’; Morhof, Polyhistor (as in n. 124), Liber II, Methodicus, cap. xi, 457. 128 J. H. Zedler, Grosses . . . Universallexicon, x (Halle, 1735), s.v. Gelehrten-Historie, 729: ‘es kommt in allen Wissenschaften hauptsa¨chlich auf derselben Historie an, und es ist eben so unmo¨glich, eine Wissenschaft ohne derselben Historie zu erkennen, als unmo¨glich es ist, einen Menschen recht zu erkennen, von dessen Lebens-Lauffe man nie etwas geho¨ret’.

Introduction

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learning of the past, once it had been appropriately classified, and individual authors critically assessed, as a directly accessible resource, in respect of truth and value on a par with, if not superior to, the learning of the present.129 The result was that, in practice, historia literaria easily became no more than a glorified bibliography, though its claim to be a history, and to be critical was not entirely without effect. As regards the former, the chronological framework and the doxographical notices constituted at least a formal historicization as against the humanist method of loci communes for the retrieval of knowledge,130 and can be seen as a transitional stage towards the later evolutionary histories of individual disciplines. As for its being critical, historia literaria could, on occasion, undermine traditional accounts, for example that of the learning of Adam and the patriarchs: in his Versuch einer Einleitung in die Historiam literariam antediluvianam (Halle, 1709), Jakob Friedrich Reimmann, while not rejecting the idea out of hand, and making theological discriminations, showed that there were no sources (i.e. antediluvian writings) for it. Anything claiming to be such was fiction.131 One of the chief exponents of historia literaria, Christoph August Heumann, who taught the subject at the newly founded University of Go¨ttingen, pointed out that historia eruditionis is not the same as eruditio ipsa, and that someone who practises only the former can hardly be reckoned a scholar.132 This remark is interesting both as a distinction and as a value judgement. It suggests that the history of learning could be a discourse in its own right (and so itself an object of study), but also shows, with historia literaria in the part, its subordinate status. Historia literaria was, or became, an aid to scholarship. It may have prepared the ground conceptually for the conversion of antiquarian pursuits— numismatics, palaeography, genealogy, etc.—into auxiliary sciences of history which took place later in the eighteenth century. What it did not do was to provide an epistemological profile of erudition or a history of its methods. If the status of erudition continued to be depressed, it was not historia literaria that was going to raise it. 129 Cf. Morhof, Polyhistor (as in n. 124), Lib. I, Bibliothecarius, cap. ii, 19: ‘Sua est singulis aetatibus ingeniorum foetura, sunt artium temporarii proventus, quarum messem Historia velut in horreo quodam congerit, ne spicilegium quidem illarum rerum omissura.’ 130 Lambeck rejects the method of loci communes; Prodromus, Prolegomena ad . . . lectorem, fo. 2r. 131 Cf. Zedelmaier, ‘Aporien’ (as in n. 120), esp. 106–7. Lambeck had reached a similar conclusion in his Prodromus; cf. Zedelmaier, ibid. 120 n. 106. 132 Cf. C. A. Heumann, Conspectus Reipublicae Literariae, sive via ad historiam literariam iuventuti studiosae aperta . . . (Hannover, 1718), 3.

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It was philology that achieved an epistemological breakthrough with Hamann’s challenge to Kant. It occurred in a theologico-philosophical, rather than a philological context, and had no direct bearing on scholarship. Hamann was learned and widely read, but his attitude towards philological scholarship was ambivalent: on the one hand he went along with it in so far as it historicized reason,133 but on the other, his fideistic enthusiasm made him impatient of contemporary biblical philology (Michaelis, Semler) which, subjecting the Word of God to a learned reading, entailed the hubristic assumption that man is capable of an authoritative interpretation of it, while also discrediting the personal experience of it as typologically relevant to any and every situation.134 Nevertheless, Hamann’s excursions against the sovereignty of reason proclaimed by Kant, even though conducted within a fideistic framework, stake out the ground for the autonomy of philological scholarship, and hence for any history of it. A brief outline may be in order. In the first two Critiques, Kant promulgates the absolute supremacy of reason, far more compelling and rigorous than anything Descartes or Bacon had ever thought of. It is a supremacy tinged by law: reason is the highest tribunal, its verdicts necessarily infallible, before which ‘all rights and claims of our speculation’ have to answer.135 This includes religion. 133 In his contribution to this volume Denis Thouard calls Hamann ‘a kind of enfant terrible of historia literaria’. Hamann’s conception of historia literaria, rather different in its emphases from that of its practitioners, shows reason as a product of learning but, typically, in terms of the Bible and of direct experience: ‘Was fu¨r ein Magazin macht die Geschichte der Gelehrsamkeit aus! Und worauf gru¨ndet sich alle? Auf 5 Gerstenbrodte, auf 5 Sinne, die wir mit den unvernu¨nftigen Thieren gemeinschaftlich besitzen. Nicht nur das ganze Waarhaus der Vernunft sondern selbst die Schatzkammer des Glaubens beruhen auf diesem Stock’; Brocken, in J. G. Hamann, Sa¨mtliche Werke, i, ed. J. Nadel (Vienna, 1949), 298. 134 Cf. Hamann, Briefwechsel, iii, ed. W. Ziesemer and A. Henkel (Frankfurt am Main 1957), 89 (discussing with Kant Herder’s A¨lteste Urkunde der Menschheit): ‘Unter allen Secten . . . wa¨ren wir die elendste unter allen Menschen, wenn die Grundveste unsres Glaubens in einem Triebsande kritischer ModeGelehrsamkeit bestu¨nde. Nein, die Theorie der wahren Religion bleibt nicht nur jedem Menschenkinde angemessen und ist in seine Seele gewebt . . . , sondern bleibt auch eben so unersteiglich den ku¨hnsten Riesen und Himmelsstu¨rmern als unergru¨ndlich den tiefsinnigsten Gru¨blern und Bergleuten.’ Cf. S. A. Jørgensen, ‘Hamanns hermeneutische Grundsa¨tze’, in R. Roellner (ed.), Aufkla¨rung und Humanismus (Wolfenbu¨tteler Studien zur Aufkla¨rung, 6; Heidelberg, 1980), 219–29. 135 I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B697/A669, ed. I. Heidemann (Stuttgart, 1968), 696. The exaltation of reason as law, or as the lawgiver, is even more solemn in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (the famous conclusion: ‘Zwei Dinge erfu¨llen das Gemu¨t mit immer neuer und zunehmender Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht . . . : Der bestirnte Himmel u¨ber mir, und das moralische Gesetz in mir’; KpV 288, ed. J. Kopper (Stuttgart, 1966), 253); cf. O. Bayer, ‘Vernunftautorita¨t und Bibelkritik in der Kontroverse

Introduction

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God is the only true exegete of the Bible. He conducts his exegesis outside history, since he speaks to us not as the Bible (unreliably) reports him, but ‘through our own (moral-practical) reason’, which enables us to extract a rational meaning from his Scripture, religion being wholly a matter of reason (‘reine Vernunftsache’).136 In his Metakritik u¨ber den Purismum der Vernunft,137 Hamann showed that Kant’s absolute reason, for all its claim to be critical, rested on the uncritical assumption—hence ‘Metakritik’, a neologism of Hamann’s—that it was free of all contingency, untainted by tradition,138 experience, or language.139 For Hamann, the three were interconnected and came together in the third. Regarding tradition, Kant himself admitted that his philosophy did not come from nowhere, that it had a pre-history, though he professed to survey it from a ‘transcendental point of view’, which opened on a landscape of ruins.140 It did not occur to him that his own philosophy too might be part of this landscape. Hamann seized on this: no Hume without Berkeley, and no Kant without Hume. ‘Everything in the end comes down to tradition ¨ berlieferung), as all abstraction to sense impressions.’141 (U zwischen Johann Georg Hamann und Immanuel Kant’, in H. Graf Reventlow and others (eds.), Historische Kritik und biblischer Kanon in der deutschen Aufkla¨rung (Wolfenbu¨tteler Forschungen, 41; Wiesbaden, 1988), 33. 136 Cf. Kant, Der Streit der Fakulta ¨ ten, in Werke (Akademie-Ausgabe, 7; Berlin, 1917), 67. Kant’s interpretation of the sacrifice of Isaac (ibid. 63) is a telling example: (i) God’s voice as a sensory experience is a contradiction in terms: sense experience and the infinite are incommensurate, so how is one to tell God’s voice from any other? (ii) God could not possibly command anything contrary to the moral law. The moral law told Abraham that he must not kill his son: he could be certain of that; he had no means of being certain that ‘when God did tempt Abraham’, it was in fact God. The story as told in Genesis 22 is a myth; and Abraham must conclude that he was being deceived. 137 Cf. Hamann, Werke (as in n. 133) iii (1951), 281–9; Hamann, Briefwechsel, v, ed. A. Henkel (Frankfurt am Main, 1965), 210–16; cf. G. Wohlfart, ‘Hamanns Kantkritik’, Kant-Studien, 75 (1984), 398–419. 138 For the first of the three ‘Purismen’—what Kantian reason claims to be pure of— ¨ berlieferung, Tradition und Glaube’; we use the English Hamann has the triad ‘U ‘tradition’, as an alternative to ‘transmission’ and arguably including belief, as a shorthand rendering of the three. 139 Cf. Hamann’s earlier attack on reason as an ‘anointed idol’: ‘Denn was ist die ¨ berschwenglichkeit, hochgelobte Vernunft mit ihrer Allgemeinheit, Unfehlbarkeit, U ¨ lgo¨tze, dem ein schreyender Aberglaube Gewissheit und Evidenz? Ein ens rationis, ein O der Unvernunft go¨ttliche Attribute andichtet’; Konxompax, in Werke (as in n. 133), iii. 225. 140 Cf. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (as in n. 135), B880/A852–B884/A856, 856–60. 141 Hamann, Briefwechsel (as in n. 137), iv (1959), 376; Metakritik, in Werke (as in n. 137), 283; 211; cf. O. Bayer’s striking formula: ‘Die Geschichten der Vernunft sind die

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But it was at the level of language, integrating tradition and experience, that Hamann delivered the most telling blows. How could reason discard language, ‘its only first and last organon and criterion, with ¨ berlieferung) and usage’?142 no other credentials than tradition (U Hamann’s conception of language was, of course, theological: God had created the world through his Word, and, at the Creation, everything man heard, saw, and touched was a living word, for ‘God was the Word’.143 God had humbled himself in his Word in order to communicate with man in all his abjectness—Scripture, just as much as the Creation and the coming of Christ, was an effect of divine condescension.144 God spoke to man not through reason but through Scripture. In the Metakritik Hamann’s theological passion for the Word is kept at bay, and the assertion of the priority of language over reason is justified by an analysis of the principal features of reason as specified by Kant. Hamann shows them to be reducible to elements of language. ‘Language is at the middle point of reason’s misunderstanding with itself.’145 Thus, it is sounds and letters that are the true pure forms a priori—nothing that belongs to the perception or the concept of an object is to be found in them. As for time and space, a priori intuitions for Kant, they derive from the earliest manifestations of spoken and Kritik ihrer Reinheit’ (title of a contribution on the Metakritik to Hamann; Kant- Herder: Acta des 4. Internat. Hamann-Kolloquiums zu Marburg/L, 1985, ed. B. Gajek (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 9–87). 142 Cf. Hamann, Briefwechsel (as in n. 137), v. 177: ‘Vernunft ist Sprache Lgov; an diesem Markknochen nag’ich und werde mich zu Tod dru¨ber nagen.’ Ibid. vi. 296: ‘Vernunft und Schrift sind im Grunde Einerley ¼ Sprache Gottes.’ 143 Hamann, Des Ritters von Rosenkreuz letzte Willensmeynung u ¨ ber den go¨ttlichen und menschlichen Ursprung der Sprache, in Werke (as in n. 133), iii. 32; German has the advantage (or disadvantage) of not having to decide whether ‘word’ in ‘living word’ should here be capitalized or not. For Hamann’s conception of the origin of language, ¨ ber den go¨ttlichen und both divine and human, i.e. christological, cf. E. Bu¨chsel, ‘U menschlichen Ursprung der Sprache’, Insel Almanach auf das Jahr 1988: Hamann, ed. O. Bayer and others (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 61–75. 144 Cf. Hamann, ‘U ¨ ber die Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift’, Werke (as in n. 133), i. 5: ‘Gott ein Schriftsteller! Die Eingebung dieses Buchs ist eben so grosse Erniedrigung und Herunterlassung Gottes als Scho¨pfung des Vaters und Menschwerdung des Sohnes.’; id., Kleeblatt Hellenistischer Briefe, in Werke, ii. 171: ‘Es geho¨rt zur Einheit der go¨ttlichen Offenbarung, dass der Geist Gottes sich durch den Menschengriffel der heiligen Ma¨nner, die von ihm getrieben worden, sich eben so erniedrigt und seiner Majesta¨t entaüssert, als der Sohn Gottes durch die Knechtsgestalt und wie die ganze Scho¨pfung ein Werk der ho¨chsten Demuth ist.’ Cf. Bayer, ‘Vernunftautorita¨t’ (as in n. 135), 41. For Hamann God is not, as he is for Kant, the supreme judge-exegete of the Bible, eliciting its only admissible meaning through the agency of human reason, but its author, composing it through the physical agency of human scribes. Kant’s God is dogmatic, Hamann’s 145 Metakritik, in Werke (as in n. 137), 286/213. hermeneutical.

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written language. Speech began as music: together with the perceptible rhythm of the pulse and of breathing, it was the embodied model of all time measurement and its numerical relationships. Writing began as painting and drawing, and so was concerned with the economy of space, its limitation, and definition through figures. The concepts of time and space established themselves in the understanding through the persistent influence of the senses of sight and hearing, and became so general and necessary, that space and time came to appear, if not as innate ideas, at least as matrices of all perceptual knowledge.146 Thus can the ‘magic castle’ of Kant’s critique, constructed unbeknownst to itself from language, be dissolved by language. Hamann’s achievement was a virtual one, and as such it belongs to our story of the non-coming-to-be of the history of scholarship. But it negotiated a major obstacle, and deserves notice also on that account. To conclude this highly selective overview of the negative fortuna of the history of scholarship, a brief comment on what one might call the silence of scholarship in the age of historicism is in order. This is a paradox only at first sight. Historicism may have dismissed Reason as a transhistorical supreme judge, done away with the idea of an unchanging human nature, and proclaimed the inalienable individuality of each and every historical epoch (Ranke’s ‘immediate to God’); the one element it showed little inclination to contemplate historically was its own technique. And, as history became a fully-fledged discipline with a complex internal articulation, it was at the level of technique that scholarship was accommodated. Though of basic importance (source criticism), it was hierarchically a humble level, ‘below stairs’, where good service was expected and little interest shown for the genealogy of the servants. Somewhat methodologically simple-minded in its Rankean stage, historicism became highly sophisticated in this respect with Droysen.147 But the elaborate articulation of historiographical procedures, the reflection on the ideological context of historical investigation, on the historian himself as a creature of history, is all at the level of what the historian does with the results of scholarship, not of scholarship itself. Even remoter from any concern with scholarship is the Neo-Kantian reflection on the epistemological status of history, conducted in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Windelband, Rickert), or Dilthey’s meditation on the specificity of 146 Metakritik, 286/213–214. G. Wohlfart, ‘Hamanns Kantkritik’ (as in n. 137), 417, has a felicitous formula: ‘Als sprachliche Wesen raümen wir uns die Zeit ein.’ 147 See Alexandre Escudier’s contribution to this volume.

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historical knowledge. It is only with the crisis of historicism, which showed up the positivist underpinnings of its methods, that scholarship began to emerge from a smothering embrace and attract attention as an object of study.

III The papers selected for this volume—perforce arbitrarily—illustrate a certain type of investigation. The collection is aphoristic in Bacon’s sense: discrete contributions by scholars from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines bringing to bear their expertise on topics of their own choosing, exploring them, and so raising new questions. If there is a common theme that runs through many, though not all, contributions, it is the interaction between religious belief and scholarly endeavour. No attempt was made to include recent trends and fields. Though the history of twentieth-century scholarship has been a major area of research in recent years,148 it is not represented here; the volume focuses on the period from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Of the two main strands of scholarship since the Renaissance, philology is more abundantly treated than antiquarianism, although the contributions by Godefroid de Callatay¨, Paul Nelles, and Alain Schnapp provide substantial excursions into iconography, epigraphy, and archaeology. Finally, sacred philology—biblical studies and patristics—has been privileged over classical studies. The volume opens with the Colossus of Rhodes, a remarkable instance of the working of the antiquarian imagination. It was built about 300 bc and ranked in antiquity as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. No ancient representation has been preserved and the only evidence available is a series of written statements which leave considerable room for speculation. Godefroid de Callatay¨ considers the succession of reconstructions that were based on that textual dossier, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Renaissance iconography was based on a medieval fable, according to which the statue bestrode the entrance of the main harbour—a technical impossibility. The idea was 148 See W. M. Calder III and Daniel J. Kramer, An Introductory Bibliography to the History of Classical Scholarship Chiefly in the XIXth and XXth Centuries (Hildesheim, 1992); W. M. Calder III and R. Scott Smith, A Supplementary Bibliography to the History of Classical Scholarship: Chiefly in the XIXth and XXth Centuries (Bari, 2000). German classical scholarship has been a major interest, with attention focusing on the towering figure of Wilamowitz, on the one hand, and the impact of Nazism on the other.

Introduction

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abandoned in the nineteenth century but scholars still made bold attempts at visual reconstruction. This obstinacy testifies to the fascination exercised by the most famous statue of the ancient world. A major Renaissance interest was epigraphy. The inscription of the Res gestae divi Augusti was discovered and transcribed in Turkey in 1555 by Habsburg diplomats. It was published for the first time by Andre´ Schott in 1579. Paul Nelles traces the way this new source was identified, interpreted, and connected with literary texts, thereby shedding light on the modes of production and dissemination of antiquarian knowledge in early modern Europe. In Justus Lipsius’ hands, the Res gestae became a major piece of evidence for the reconstruction of the Roman empire as a functioning organism. Nelles’s contribution establishes a sharp focus for the further study of Lipsius as an antiquary and a historian. The intellectual milieu of Schott and Lipsius was also that of Laevinus Torrentius, bishop of Lie`ge, and of his nephew and prote´ge´, Johannes Livineius. Livineius worked on the text of several Greek and Latin authors, both secular and patristic, using manuscripts he had been able to study (especially in Rome, where he stayed from 1581 to 1584) as well as collations inherited from other scholars. As he published very little in his lifetime, his activities can only be assessed through the study of his Nachlaß. One of the striking features of his collations of variant readings is his use of sigla to key them to their sources, a method which, as Luigi Battezzato explains, was very slow to make its way into printed editions. Livineius’ notes on Arnobius of Sicca thus give us precious insights into new departures in the working methods of Renaissance philologists. They also show how incomplete the history of scholarship would be if it concentrated exclusively on achievements of polygraphic giants like Scaliger.149 Benedetto Bravo follows the vicissitudes of criticism from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. The word critice was barely used in antiquity and only gained currency after the Scaligers, father and son, had, between them, arbitrarily conflated several passages of Sextus Empiricus to manufacture the notion of an art concerned with ‘the nobler part of grammar’, i.e. the authentification of (ancient) authors—a nice irony, as Bravo suggests: a garbling of ancient texts designed to give a firm basis to scholarship on them, indeed to philological scholarship in general. In the seventeenth century, critice came to denote no longer a 149 See also Luigi Battezzato’s complementary study, ‘Livineius’ Unpublished Euripidean Marginalia’, Revue d’histoire des textes, 30 (2000), 323–48.

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specific discipline but a discriminating approach to traditions and facts, from which the Bible itself could not stay immune. Eventually a ‘critical spirit’ acquired philosophical associations and the philological roots of the notion were more or less forgotten. Ancient texts were made to serve a wide range of purposes. Irena Backus examines the Lutheran schoolmaster Michael Neander’s edition of a corpus of ‘apocryphal’ texts as an appendix to his Greek–Latin edition of Luther’s Shorter Catechism (published for the first time in 1558 and in an expanded version in 1564). By ‘apocrypha’ Neander meant non-biblical accounts of the life of Christ derived from reputable Greek authors. His initial motivation was to provide suitable teaching materials for Christian pupils but he also selected and arranged texts (particularly extracts from the Sibylline oracles), which had a historical interest for the origins of Christianity and its relations with both Judaism and the pagan world. The Bible was a pre-eminent field for Renaissance scholarship. Joanna Weinberg dissects the efforts of sixteenth-century Christian Hebraists to make sense of non-Greek expressions of the New Testament. They recognized that these were not Hebrew but Aramaic, and they therefore tried to clarify the relation between the two languages. The Italian Hebraist Angelo Canini, who published an important Aramaic grammar in 1554, went further in his quest for the Jewish context of the Gospels. He explored rabbinic literature in order to find parallels for difficult expressions and parables, even in cases where Aramaic was subliminal rather than in the text. After the Council of Trent had decreed in 1546 that the Latin Vulgate should be considered ‘authentic’, its status in relation to the Hebrew original of the Old Testament was much debated within the Roman Catholic Church. In contrast to some extreme interpretations (which generated opposition to scholarly undertakings like the Antwerp Polyglot), Bellarmine was prepared to go back to the Hebrew against the Vulgate, at least when no dogmatic point was at stake. As Piet van Boxel demonstrates on the basis of Bellarmine’s manuscript notes on Genesis, this attitude originated in his formative years at Leuven, where theologians had come to accept humanistic methods. Bellarmine also made some use of Jewish exegesis, though not of the Talmud, which (as is made clear by his notes on Rashi) he condemned outright.150 150 It would be interesting to compare Bellarmine’s attitude with that of a fellow cardinal, Federico Borromeo: see P. F. Fumagalli, ‘Federico umanista e pastore alla ricerca della ‘‘hebraica veritas’’ dopo Trento’, Studia Borromaica, 16 (2002), 69–99.

Introduction

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In 1685, John Spencer, the Cambridge Hebraist, published De legibus Hebraeorun ritualibus, a massively learned work in which he attempted to show that ancient Hebrew worship had Egyptian antecedents. This has tempted scholars to see in Spencer an early comparatist undermining the absolute historical primacy of the Bible. Fausto Parente contests this: Spencer’s agenda was theological, not historical, and the reflection of Egyptian rites in Hebrew ones, the function of which was to wean the Jews, homeopathically, as it were, from idolatrous practices, was for him an effect of divine condescension, not of human wisdom, with the human agent, Moses, acting solely as God’s instrument. On this view, the question of historical derivation has no meaning. Parente also suggests that the way Spencer plays down what he terms the ‘secondary purpose’ of Mosaic ritual, the typological adumbration of the New Testament, points to Socinian sympathies. Henry Dodwell was a formidable scholar with a theological agenda. He studied Christian antiquity in order to buttress the claims of the Church of England in so far as it laid claim to an episcopalian descent. Several of his theories were used by Toland and other freethinkers. Was it an instance of orthodoxy becoming the source of disbelief? JeanLouis Quantin’s re-examination of Dodwell’s career and work shows that—although Dodwell’s scholarly interests were in many respects typical of Restoration Oxford, and he was for years a prominent member of that milieu—his beliefs departed on several key issues from official Anglican formularies. His case suggests that relations between orthodoxy and scholarship in the seventeenth century should not be reduced to one-way dependence—as if the latter had simply been in the service of the former. What was at stake in Dodwell’s learned exploration of the first centuries was the very definition, or redefinition, of orthodoxy. The doctrine of the Trinity was the core of orthodoxy, as defined by the major confessions. The appeal to historical evidence, especially as to the doctrine of the primitive Church, played a key role in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century controversies on the Trinity. Martin Mulsow reconstructs the idiosyncratic position of Johann Georg Wachter, who claimed to have recovered a secret, Spinozistic, religious tradition which allegedly ran from ancient Egypt to the ante-Nicene Fathers via the cabbala. Wachter used scholarly works, in most cases by English authors (Cudworth, Bull, Spencer), which he interpreted so as to make them serve his own system. Mulsow documents an instructive example of the intersection of scholarship and ideology.

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Wachter’s use of English scholarship highlights the importance of intellectual transfers between England and the Continent at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Pierre Des Maizeaux, a French Huguenot living in England, may not have been a scholar in the usual sense of the word, but, as Scott Mandelbrote shows, his career was highly significant in view of the need for intermediaries occasioned by the enlargement of the Republic of Letters. Des Maizeaux transmitted English culture and ideas to this new, wider audience through his numerous contributions to Continental periodical publications. Taking Bayle as his model, he began to work at an English critical dictionary, which would have used the biographical form to promote his own, rather ambiguous, version of religious latitudinarianism. Popularizers like Des Maizeaux made use of what Mandelbrote calls ‘the rhetoric of erudition’—an essential notion, which calls for further investigation.151 Isaac Lapeyre`re is best known for his theory of the pre-adamites, the existence of human beings long before Adam. This a theological proposition, based on the exegesis of Romans 5: 12–14. Alain Schnapp investigates its geographical, ethnographic, and archaeological repercussions in Lapeyre`re’s oeuvre, which could have resulted, but did not, in the emergence of the idea of pre-history. Lapeyre`re investigated separate ethnic descent on geographical grounds and was keen on the view that protohistorical vases, shaped flints, and megaliths might be human artefacts rather than products of nature. What he did not achieve was some kind of unifying chronology for which fieldwork, not yet an option, would have been necessary. Schnapp offers us a fascinating view of the premature birth pangs of a new paradigm. Scholarship and religious belief are intertwined with particular intricacy in the work of Johann Georg Hamann, not least because the conditioning of the former by the latter is deliberately played on by the protagonist. Denis Thouard analyses Hamann’s attempt at a history of philosophy in his Socratic Memorabilia. Hamann was widely read, in the tradition of historia literaria, and fully conversant with the latest developments in the new discipline of the history of philosophy. He was critical of the Enlightenment assumption of reason as capable of 151 Historians of science have begun to attend to the rhetorical aspects of their subject; see e.g. P. Dear, The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument: Historical Studies (Philadelphia, 1991); F. Hallyn, Les Structures rhe´toriques de la science: De Kepler a` Maxwell (Paris, 2004).

Introduction

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producing easy comprehension with a wide appeal, whether through erudition (Heumann, Brucker) or an elegant synthesis (BoureauDeslandes). His own approach was biographical—hence Xenophon, rather than Plato, as his base text—but poles apart from any ‘common sense’ biographism. His Socrates is a dark, Heraclitean Socrates, interpreting and in need of interpretation, an indirection of God’s discourse to man. Hamann offers an original variation on the commonplace parallel between Socrates and Christ.152 It was long assumed that scientific (as opposed to merely rhetorical) history was a creation of nineteenth-century Germany. Only recently have Enlightement theories of history been rediscovered and scrutinized. Alexandre Escudier stresses the importance which Aufkla¨rung historians attached to source criticism as a preliminary to the writing of history. At the same time they rejected mere juxtaposition of events and aimed at organizing them in a systematic way, that is, ultimately to produce a universal history. That goal was afterwards rejected as unattainable by ‘historicist’ historians, from Ranke onwards. Historismus, however, was no homogeneous movement. Droysen’s methodology is markedly different from Ranke’s, particularly because of its insistence on ‘questioning’ as the starting point of all historical research. The papers in this volume originate from the seminar on the ‘History of scholarship’ held annually since 1993. Its venue has been the Warburg Institute, not inappropriately so. The Institute began as the library of one scholar with very specific (though exceptionally wide-angled) interests. In the hundred years of its existence it has outgrown these interests (though the original imprint remains), partly through its own momentum, partly through other eminent scholars having been associated with it. Soi-meˆme comme un autre: it is the capability of his books for what Bacon, speaking of books, calls iugis renovatio, constant renewal, that is perhaps Warburg’s most enduring monument.153 Let us conclude, therefore, on an Augustinian note (with a side glance at Hamann). Augustine says that, for the face of God which cannot be seen, one can substitute, for the time being, the writing of 152 For interesting comparisons see E. Lojacono (ed.), Socrate in Occidente (Florence, 2004), specially L. Jaffro’s contribution, ‘Le Socrate de Shaftesbury: Comment raconter aux modernes l’histoire de Socrate’, 66–90. 153 See M. Diers, ‘Portra ¨t aus Bu¨chern: Stichworte zur Einfu¨hrung’, in Portra¨t aus Bu¨chern: Bibliothek Warburg und Warburg Institute, Hamburg 1933 London (Hamburg 1993), 9–27.

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God, Scripture. It is not easy reading. The account of the Creation, for instance, has been interpreted in a variety of ways, each claiming to correspond to what Moses intended. But none does: what Moses intended, though, no doubt, the truth, is still beyond comprehension.154 One could derive from this a formula for a secular religion of scholarship: the transcendence of the text, inviting investigation but irreducible. 154

Sermo xxii. 7 and Confessions xii. 30. 41–2.

1 The Colossus of Rhodes: Ancient Texts and Modern Representations Godefroid de Callatay¨

My interest in the Colossus of Rhodes began, rather accidentally, a few years ago, when I was investigating what is usually referred to as astrological geography in Antiquity, that is, the division of the oikoumene into a certain number of regions and the relationships imagined by the ancients between these regions and heavenly realities such as zodiacal signs or planets.1 The lists we have diverge widely among themselves, so that one is tempted at first to disregard the whole topic as pure fantasy. Yet a closer look at some of these lists—especially Manilius, Dorotheos of Sidon, and the catalogue of nations in the Acts of the Apostles—revealed some resemblances. This suggested the existence of an earlier arrangement which had nothing to do with astrological speculation, but was nevertheless coherent and, indeed, very simple. In my view, only an artificial projection of the zodiacal circle on a world map This paper was read on 12 Jan. 2001 in the Seminar on the History of Scholarship organized by Dr Christopher Ligota at the Warburg Institute. I should like to express my gratitude to him for inviting me to give the paper, and for valuable comments. 1 My research on ancient astrological geography was conducted in 1997–8 at the Institut fu¨r Altertumskunde of the University of Mu¨nster, under the expert supervision of Professor Wolfgang Hu¨bner and thanks to a generous one-year fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. It has resulted in four articles: ‘Ofikoumnh ˛pourniov: Re´flexions sur l’origine et le sens de la geógraphie astrologique’, Geographia Antiqua, 8–9 (1999–2000), 25–69; ‘La Geógraphie zodiacale de Manilius (Astr., 4, 744– 817), avec une note sur l’Eńeíde virgilienne’, Latomus, 60 (2001), 35–66; ‘Geógraphies astrologiques et roses des vents’, in Tempus edax rerum: Le bicentenaire de la Bibliothe`que Nationale de Luxembourg (Luxemburg, 2001), 131–41; ‘Die astrologische Geographie in der Antike’, in J. Hahn (ed.), Religio¨se Landschaften (Vero¨ffentlichungen des Arbeitskreises zur Erforschung der Religions- und Kulturgeschichte des Antiken Vorderen Orients, 3; Alter Orient und Altes Testament, 301; Mu¨nster, 2002), 85–104.

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Godefroid de Callatay¨

centred on the Isle of Rhodes could account for the kind of associations between earthly and heavenly regions that we find in our lists. The supposition seems to make sense in the general context of ancient geography. First, Rhodes was the centre-point of world maps at least from the beginning of the third century bc onwards and it remained so in Eratosthenes’ famous world map. Secondly, ancient sources attribute the invention of the first regular windrose with twelve winds to the admiral and geographer Timosthenes, who, a Rhodian himself, naturally centred the projection of his windrose on his native island. This can be inferred unambiguously from a passage of Timosthenes’ own work On Harbours, preserved by Agathemeros,2 in which the twelve winds are said to correspond to twelve regions of the oikoumene (see Fig. 1.1)—something that looks very much like the artificial projection of our zodiac. I found some confirmation of my hypothesis in a relatively late yet important source: a short paragraph of Ampelius’ Liber memorialis is devoted to the question ‘Quibus partibus sedeant XII signa duodecim ventorum?’3 There follow the twenty-four expected names, i.e. the twelve zodiacal signs and the twelve winds of Timosthenes’ rose in agreement with the artificial projection of our zodiac on Eratosthenes’ map. This I took as an indication that the two systems—the zodiac and the windrose—were once felt to be equivalent ways of keeping one’s bearings, at least for someone stationed in Rhodes. A woodcut in a sixteenth-century edition of Ptolemy’s Geography illustrates a rather peculiar combination of the two systems (Fig. 1.2). It has been said that, of the Seven Wonders of the World known in Antiquity, the Colossus of Rhodes is probably the one for which our documentation is the scantiest.4 In fact, not a single representation of the Colossus has come down to us from Antiquity, be it relief, coin, gem, or any other iconographical form in two or three dimensions. The only evidence we have is textual.5 Most of it is relatively late, summary, or 2 Agathemeros, Gewgraf‹av ˛pot¸pwsiv, Proem. 5 [ ¼ Dicaearchus, fr. 110 ed. 3 Ampelius, Liber memorialis, 4, ed. M.-P. Arnaud-Lindet (Paris, 1993). Wehrli]. 4 The general theme of the Seven Wonders will not be considered here. From a vast literature suffice it to mention the recent exhibition catalogue edited by M. Kunze, Die Sieben Weltwunder der Antike: Wege der Wiedergewinnung aus sechs Jahrhunderten. Winckelmann-Museum, Stendal (Mainz, 2003). Less explored has been the topic of the Seven Wonders in Arabic sources; see U. Marzolph, ‘Mirabilia, Weltwunder und Gottes Kreatur: Zur Weltsicht popula¨rer Enzyklopa¨dien des arabisch-islamischen Mittelalters’, in I. Tomkowiak (ed.), Popula¨re Enzyklopa¨dien: Von der Auswahl, Ordnung und Vermittlung des Wissens (Zurich, 2002), 85–101. 5 See J. Overbeck, Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Ku ¨ nste bei den Griechen (Leipzig, 1868), 291–4, now largely superseded by B. D. Hebert,

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redundant: the number of useful sources comes down to a mere dozen. The most interesting piece of evidence regarding the technical problems involved in the construction of the Colossus is offered by a late ancient or early Byzantine writer, Philo of Byzantium, in his De septem orbis spectaculis. He is still often confused with the famous secondcentury bc mechanicus, one of Ctesibius’ pupils, and the text is sometimes believed to be the latter’s.6 But it seems more reasonable to date it five or six centuries later.7 An English translation of the main parts of Philo’s statement was provided by Reynold Higgins in a popular book on the Seven Wonders.8 Given the importance of this text it seems worth quoting it at some length: (1) At Rhodes was set up a Colossus seventy cubits high, representing the Sun; for the appearance of the god was made recognisable from his own attributes. The artist expended as much bronze on it as seemed likely to create a dearth in the mines; for the casting of this statue was an operation in which the bronze industry of the world was concerned . . . (2) The artist fortified the bronze from within by means of an iron framework and squared blocks of stone, whose tie-bars bear witness to hammering of Cyclopean force. Indeed, the hidden part of the labour is greater than the visible . . .

Schriftquellen zur hellenistischen Kunst: Plastik, Malerei und Kunsthandwerk der Griechen vom vierten bis zum zweiten Jahrhundert (Horn, 1989), 16–45. 6 See H. Maryon, ‘The Colossus of Rhodes’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 76 (1956), 68–86 at 68: ‘Philo Byzantinos, a celebrated mechanicus, who flourished about the year 146 B.C.’; K. Brodersen, Reisefu¨hrer zu den Sieben Weltwundern: Philon von Byzanz und andere antike Texte (Frankfurt am Main, 1992), 14–15: ‘Der griechische Ingenieur Philon von Byzanz schrieb um 200 v. Chr. ein großes Werk u¨ber Mechanik, das freilich weitgehend verloren ist . . . . Unter dem Namen dieses Philon ist auch die Rede u¨ber die Sieben Weltwunder erhalten . . . . War der hellenistische Ingenieur Philon wirklich deren Autor? Die detaillierten Angaben etwa u¨ber den Koloß von Rhodos ko¨nnten sein technisches Interesse spiegeln, die Tatsache, dass man vom Standpunkt des Verfassers aus zu allen Sieben Weltwundern reisen muß, wu¨rde zu seiner Herkunft aus Byzanz passen, und die Sprachform, die — dem genre einer Rede angemessen — natu¨rlich nicht so trocken wie ein Fachbuch, sondern eher prunkvoll wirkt, ist zumindest in der Vermeidung des Hiats des Mechanikers nicht una¨hnlich.’ 7 See e.g. W. Ekschmitt, Die Sieben Weltwunder: Ihre Erbauung, Zersto ¨rung und Wiederentdeckung (Mainz, 1984), 170: ‘Ein einziger Bericht u¨ber die technische Errichtung des Kolosses ist erhalten, der aber erst aus fru¨hbyzantinischer Zeit stammt und von der Epoche des Bauwerks selbst um 700–800 Jahre getrennt ist.’ Similarly, W. Kroll, ‘Philon von Byzanz’, in Real-Encyclopa¨die der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, xxA (1941), 54–5. 8 P. A. Clayton and M. J. Price (eds.), The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (London, 1988). R. Higgins is the author of ch. 6 (‘The Colossus of Rhodes’, 124–37).

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(3) Having built a base of white marble, (the artist) first fixed upon it the feet of the Colossus up to the height of the ankle-joints, having worked out the proportions suitable to a divine image destined to stand to a height of seventy cubits; for the sole of the foot already exceeded (in length the height of) other statues. For this reason it was impossible to hoist up the rest (of the statue) and place it upon (the feet), but the ankles had to be cast upon the feet, and, as when a house is being built, the whole work had to rise upon itself. (4) And for this reason, while other statues are first modelled, then dismembered for casting in parts, and finally recomposed and erected, in this case, after the first part had been cast, the second was modelled upon it, and when this had been cast, the third was built upon it, and for the following part again the same method of working was adopted. For the individual metal sections could not be moved. (5) After the casting of the new course upon that part of the work already completed, the spacing of the horizontal tie-bars and the joints of the framework were looked to, and the stability of the stone blocks placed within the figure was ensured. In order to prosecute the plan of operations on a firm basis throughout, the artist heaped up a huge mound of earth round each section as soon as it was completed, thus burying the finished work under the accumulated earth, and carrying out the casting of the next part on the level. (6) So, going up bit by bit, he reached the goal of his endeavour, and at the expense of 500 talents of bronze and 300 of iron, he created, with incredible boldness, a god similar to the real God; for he gave a second Sun to the world.9

It is chiefly to Diodorus of Sicily that we owe a detailed account of the circumstances in which the Colossus was erected by the citizens of Rhodes.10 The events are well known and need no rehearsal. Suffice it to recall that in the year 305 bc a formidable siege was laid to the city by Demetrius Poliorcetes, son of Antigonus, and later king of Macedon. The Rhodians withstood it so bravely that in the end Demetrius and the Macedonian fleet were forced to withdraw, leaving their whole siegetrain behind them, including the giant device called Helepolis, ‘Taker of Cities’. Both to celebrate their victory and to manifest their indomitable spirit of independence, the Rhodians decided, most probably in the 9 Philo of Byzantium, De septem orbis spectaculis, 4. 1–6. I took the liberty to emend one phrase in the first paragraph, since Higgins’s ‘for the appearance of the God was known only to his descendants’, which makes no sense, is based on an old and very defective edition of the text. Higgins’s translation is in fact a conflation of two previous translations, that of H. Maryon, ‘Colossus’ (as in n. 6), 69, and that of D. E. L. Haynes, ‘Philo of Byzantium and the Colossus of Rhodes’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 77 (1957), 311–12. For the edition of Philo’s text, see now Brodersen, Reisefu¨hrer (as in n. 6), 30–5, where a good German translation is also given. 10 Diodorus of Sicily, 20. 81–8 and 91–100.


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immediate aftermath,11 to erect a gigantic bronze statue of Helios, the patron deity of both the isle and the city of Rhodes (Fig. 1.3).12 Another important statement about the city and the Colossus of Rhodes may be found in Strabo’s Geography, written in the first decades of the first century ad. The passage reads: The city of the Rhodians lies on the eastern promontory of Rhodes; and it is so far superior to all others in harbours and roads and walls and improvements in general that I am unable to speak of any other city as equal to it, or even as almost equal to it, much less superior to it. It is remarkable also for its good order, and for its careful attention to the administration of affairs of state in general; and in particular to that of naval affairs, whereby it held the mastery of the sea for a long time and overthrew the business of piracy, and became a friend to the Romans and to all kings who favoured both the Romans and the Greeks. Consequently it not only has remained autonomous, but also has been adorned with many votive offerings, which for the most part are to be found in the Dionysium and the gymnasium, but partly in other places. The best of these are, first, the Colossus of Helius, of which the author of the iambic verses says, ‘seven times ten cubits in height, the work of Chares the Lindian’; but it now lies on the ground, having been thrown down by an earthquake and broken at the knees. In accordance with a certain oracle, the people did not raise it again. This, then, is the most excellent of the votive offerings (at any rate, it is by common agreement one of the Seven Wonders).13

We have no other information about the oracle alluded to here, but Strabo’s statement seems to agree with a warning against the reconstruction of the Colossus that we find in a scholion to Plato’s Philebus.14 After Strabo comes Pliny the Elder, who in Book 34 of his Natural History refers to a certain number of famous statues, concluding with that of Rhodes: But that which is by far the most worthy of our admiration, is the colossal statue of the Sun, which stood formerly at Rhodes, and was the work of Chares the Lindian, a pupil of the above-named Lysippus, no less than 70 cubits in height. This statue, fifty-six years after it was erected, was thrown down by an 11 See P. Moreno, ‘Cronologia del Colosso di Rodi’, Archeologia classica, 25–6 (1973–4), 453–63. 12 Among countless ancient references on the link between the Sun and the island of Rhodes, see in particular Pindar, Olympian, 7. 100–40; Diodorus of Sicily, 5. 56; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 7. 365; Hyginus, Fabulae, 223; Pliny, Nat. hist. 34. 63; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1. 17, 35. See also C. Letta, ‘Helios/Sol’, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, iv/1–2 (1988), 592–625, pl. 366–84. 13 Strabo, Geography, 14. 2. 5 (trans. H. L. Jones). 14 Schol. Plat. Phileb. 140 c ( ¼ Hebert, Schriftquellen (as in n. 5), Q. 49, 26).

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earthquake; but even as it lies, it excites our wonder and admiration. Few men can clasp the thumb in their arms, and its fingers are larger than most statues. Where the limbs are broken asunder, vast caverns are seen yawning in the interior. Within it, too, are to be seen large masses of rock, by the weight of which the artist steadied it while erecting it. It is said that it was twelve years before the statue was completed, and that 300 talents were expended upon it; a sum raised from the engines of warfare which had been abandoned by King Demetrius, when tired of the long-protracted siege of Rhodes.15

These sources make it possible to reconstruct, at least approximately, the following chronology. The siege of Rhodes by Demetrius is dated around 305 bc. The erection of the Colossus must have taken place at the latest between 292 and 280 bc, but it seems more likely, as has already been noted, that work on the statue began immediately after Demetrius’ siege. If this was so, that is, if we accept 304 to 292 bc as the period of construction, Pliny’s statement that the Colossus stood on its feet for fifty-six years needs to be slightly corrected. For we know that the earthquake by which both the Colossus and the city of Rhodes were ruined occurred in 226 bc, which would give not fifty-six but sixty-six years between the completion of the work and its collapse.16 The date of 226 bc can be inferred with certainty from Polybius, who mentions the enormous gifts that were offered to the Rhodians by several of their allies to reconstruct the statue after the earthquake.17 That the Colossus was never rebuilt is in harmony with Strabo’s assertion that an oracle prevented the Rhodians from doing so. What happened to the Colossus once it had fallen is known primarily from much later statements, dating from the Byzantine period. Theophanes (d. 818 ad) speaks of the conquest of Rhodes by the Arabs under ‘Uthmaˆn ibn ‘Affaˆn, the third caliph of Islam (r. 644–56 ad): ‘In this year Mavius came to Rhodes and destroyed the Colossus of Rhodes 1360 years after it had been erected. A Jewish merchant of Edessa bought it and loaded 900 camels with the bronze of it.’18 Although the computation is clearly wrong, there is no doubt that the year referred to here is 652/3 and that Mavius (or Mavias) is Mu‘aˆwiya ibn Abıˆ Sufyaˆn, who in 661 would become the founder of the Umayyad caliphate in Damascus. Theophanes’ report was taken up with slight alterations by Pliny, Nat. hist. 34. 18 (trans. J. Bostock and H. T. Riley). For a discussion of this point, see R. Ashton, ‘Rhodian Coinage and the Colossus’, 17 See Polybius, 5. 88–9. Revue numismatique, 6th ser., 30 (1988), 75–90 at 87. 18 Theophanes, Chronographia, I, ed. C. de Boor (Leipzig, 1883; repr. Hildesheim, 1963), 345. 15 16


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the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (913–59), who wrote in his De administrando imperio: When he [Mavius] came to Rhodes he pulled down the Colossus that stood in it. It was a brazen statue of the Sun, gilded from head to foot, 80 cubits in height and broad in proportion, as witness the inscription written on the base of its feet, running like this: ‘The Rhodian Colossus, eight times ten/Cubits in height, Laches of Lindos made.’ He took the bronze of it and carried it over to Syria, and put it up for sale to any who wanted it; and a Hebrew of Edessa bought it and brought it up from the sea laden on 980 camels.19

Constantine seems to speak of the Colossus as if it were still standing when the Arabs took Rhodes. This is also suggested by the twelfthcentury chronicler Michael the Syrian (or Michael I Qıˆndasıˆ), who as Patriarch of Antioch wrote of the Saracens: They went to Rhodes and devastated it. The bronze Colossus—a fine monument and a work considered one of the great wonders of the world— they set out to demolish in order to take the bronze. It was made of Corinthian bronze and was erected as a standing man. When they set fire [to it] from below, they saw that it was fastened with huge bolts of iron to stones set in the ground. Many men pulled on it with thick cables, and all of a sudden it tipped over and fell to the ground. Its height, they say, was 107 feet: it came to 3000 loads of bronze, and this bronze was purchased by a Jew from the town of Emesa.20

These statements should not be regarded as irreconcilable with those of Strabo and Pliny. A possible explanation was suggested by Herbert Maryon, himself a sculptor and the author of an influential article on the Colossus to which I shall return in more detail: The stone and iron columns buckled at the knees. The upper part of the statue fell right over, and the head and shoulders reached the ground. But the marble base and the legs up to the knees still stood firmly, with the body and head half hanging from them, half lying on the ground. The iron supports had bent but had not broken, though the stone columns and the bronze sheathing had. The broken figure, supported at the knees, would be 50 or 60 feet high, as tall as a six-storey house. Mavias and his men had to pull it down before they could break it up.21 19 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, 21, ed. G. Moravcsik, trans. R. J. H. Jenkins, rev. edn. (Corpus fontium historiae Byzantinae, 1; Dumbarton Oaks Texts, 1; Washington, DC, 1967), 89. In the previous chapter, Constantine tells more or less the same story, but speaks of 900 camels. 20 Chronique de Michel le Syrien, Patriarche d’Antioche (1166–99), ed. J.-B. Chabot, 4 vols. (Paris, 1910; repr. Brussels, 1963), iv. 430a. English translation quoted from 21 Maryon, ‘Colossus’ (as in n. 6), 71. Conrad, ‘Arabs’ (as in n. 23), 167.

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He illustrates his explanation with a figure which, I think, makes this quite clear (Fig. 1.4). Several centuries before him, Antonio Tempesta had also represented this fallen colossus (Fig. 1.5). Only the feet of the giant still stand on the marble base; the other parts lie scattered on the ground. The Arabs are demolishing them and loading the bronze on their 900 camels. The whole scene is clearly inspired by Strabo, Pliny, and Constantine Porphyrogenitus. It is interesting to note that Tempesta portrays another Colossus in the background of his drawings, showing the giant still standing. Other artists, as we shall see, chose to represent the whole scene the other way round, that is, with the standing Helios at the centre and the fallen one on the side. The conquest and plunder of Rhodes by the Arabs dates from 653, which means that the remains of the Colossus would have been lying on the ground for a little less than a millennium, as was pointed out by Scaliger in his Thesaurus temporum.22 There are important reasons, however, to believe that the last trace of the Colossus had disappeared long before the Muslim conquest of the island. In a recent article on ‘The Arabs and the Colossus’, Lawrence Conrad makes it clear, through a detailed investigation of the extant sources for the destruction, that all of them, whether Greek, Latin, or Syriac, can be traced back to Theophanes.23 Regarding its attribution to the Arabs, Conrad observes: This would not have been the only time that such a stereotyped role as wanton destroyer was assigned to the Arabs; the famous legend of the Arab destruction of the library of Alexandria was another fairly typical case. But the destruction of the Colossus was in fact a powerful metaphor in a sense that has hitherto passed unnoticed. As practically any monk in the seventh-century Near East would have known, the immediate background for Daniel’s prophecy was Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the utter destruction of a great and awesome statue. Viewed against this background, the story of the Arabs and the Colossus in all probability originated as an apocalyptic metaphor: recalling the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, the Arab reduction of the great monument to scrap for sale to a Jew illustrated, in the first instance, how utterly the vanities of man are cast down, but more importantly, served as evidence that the final course of years that would end with the destruction of the tormenters of God’s people was indeed under way.24

So much for the story of Chares of Lindos’ masterpiece. It is not worth quoting the other ancient sources about the Rhodian Colossus, for they do not provide us with anything important or new about it. Yet one J. J. Scaliger, Thesaurus temporum (Amsterdam, 1658), 137–8. L. I. Conrad, ‘The Arabs and the Colossus’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd 24 Ibid. 183. ser., 6/2 (July 1996), 165–87. 22 23


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exception should be made for eight lines of poetry that we are lucky to possess and which some scholars have regarded as forming the genuine dedication of the Colossus itself.25 This text deserves to be quoted, especially on account of its influence on later representations of the statue: To you, o Sun, the people of Dorian Rhodes set up this bronze statue reaching to Olympus, when they had pacified the waves of war and crowned their city with the spoils taken from the enemy. Not only over the seas but also on land did they kindle the lovely torch of freedom and independence. For to the descendants of Herakles belongs dominion over sea and land.26

This, together with the previous texts, is, more or less, all that was available to the erudite man of the Renaissance as evidence regarding the Colossus of Rhodes. It may be useful at this point to enumerate the main elements that could serve for an imagined reconstruction. The sources generally agree that the Colossus was seventy cubits high, i.e. something like 100 feet or thirty-three metres, thus no doubt one of the tallest statues ever erected, in Antiquity or later.27 Only Nero’s colossus, which gave its name to the Colosseum in Rome, may have been slightly taller than the Rhodian one, as the poet Martial would have us believe.28 Nearly all sources say that Chares’ statue represented Helios, patron deity of the Rhodians, although they do not indicate very explicitly how the god was made recognizable. Many of them attest that the statue was of bronze, with an inner structure made of iron tie-bars and filled up with blocks of stone. They generally tend to insist on the beauty of the work and on the extraordinary skills that were needed to achieve it. On the other hand, they leave considerable room for speculation regarding such important matters as the exact location of the Colossus, its posture, and, in spite of Philo’s technical report, the way it was actually built.29 25 See e.g. Ekschmitt, Weltwunder (as in n. 7), 177: ‘Durch einen besonderen Glu¨cksfall ist der Text der Weihinschrift erhalten, die sich auf dem Marmorsockel eingemeißelt fand’; Higgins, ‘Colossus of Rhodes’ (as in. 8), 134: ‘a poem preserved in the Greek Anthology which was, in all probability, the dedicatory inscription of the Colossus’. 26 Cf. Anthologia Graeca, 4. 171, ed. H. Beckby (Munich, 1957) (trans. R. Higgins). 27 See Higgins, ‘Colossus of Rhodes’ (as in n. 8), 130: ‘Statues of up to 10 metres (30 ft) were not unknown in ancient Greece, but nothing so large as the Colossus is recorded in antiquity before or after its creation.’ 28 Martial, Epigr., 1. 70. 7. On Nero’s Colossus, see M. Bergmann, Der Koloß Neros, die Domus Aurea und der Mentalita¨tswandel im Rom der fru¨hen Kaiserzeit (Mainz, 1994). 29 These matters will not be treated here. For different suggestions see above all A. Gabriel, ‘La Construction, l’attitude et l’emplacement du Colosse de Rhodes’, Bulletin

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No wonder, then, if in the course of time human imagination came to supply what the sources could not provide. At the end of the fourteenth century, Nicola Martoni, an Italian pilgrim who visited the isle of Rhodes on his way to the Holy Land, relates a popular tradition according to which the statue bestrode the entrance of the main harbour of the city: At the end of the pier is a church called Saint Nicholas. A great wonder was related to me and certified as true. In ancient times there was some figure, fashioned in such a wonderful way that it held one foot on the end of the pier mentioned above (where the church of Saint Nicholas is), and the other foot on the end of the other pier where the windmills are.30

Let us look at a map of the place (Fig. 1.6). The span between the two piers is more than 400 metres, which obviously poses a certain number of technical problems, but this did not prevent the medieval fable from gaining ever more credence during the Renaissance. Countless engravings from the sixteenth century onwards portray the Colossus as a tall young man bestriding the harbour of Rhodes. In the Lyon edition of Andre´ Thevet’s Cosmographie de Levant, dated 1554, we find a series of engravings ascribed to Jean Cousin. One of them represents our Colossus in the rather uncanny guise of a standing warrior holding a spear and a sword (Fig. 1.7). The drawing closely follows the text: ‘Il tenoit en la main dextre une espee, & en la senestre une pique, & avoit devant la poitrine un miroe¨r ardant, come pourrez voir par la figure precedente.’31 Of course, the entrance to the harbour is no longer thought to be more than 400 metres wide; yet, characteristically, a large—and very modern—galleon passing under the legs of the giant is designed to de correspondance helleńique, 56 (1932), 331–59; E. Zervoudaki, ‘Helios kai Heleia’, Archaiologikon Deltion, 30 (1975), A1–20; Ekschmitt, Weltwunder (as in. 7), 170–81; J. and E. Romer, The Seven Wonders of the World: A History of the Modern Imagination (London, 1995), 25–47; K. Brodersen, Die Sieben Weltwunder: Legenda¨re Kunst- und Bauwerke der Antike (Munich, 1996), 84–91; W. Hoepfner, ‘Der Koloss von Rhodos’, Archaölogischer Anzeiger (2000), 129–53; U. Vedder, ‘Der Koloss von Rhodos als Wa¨chter u¨ber dem Hafeneingang’, in Kunze (ed.), Die Sieben Weltwunder (as in n. 4), 131–40. 30 Translated from the Latin text in ‘Pe `lerinage a` Je´rusalem de N. de Martoni’, Revue de l’Orient latin, 3 (1895), 585 ( ¼ Hebert, Schriftquellen (as in n. 5), Q. 102, 43). For other medieval statements on the Colossus of Rhodes, see H. Omont, ‘Les Sept Merveilles du monde au moyen aˆge’, Bibliothe`que de l’Ećole des Chartes, 48 (1882), 40–60. These Greek and Latin texts offer nothing new on the Colossus of Rhodes. 31 A. Thevet, Cosmographie de Levant, ed. F. Lestringant (Geneva, 1985), 106.


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underline his almost incredible tallness. Another engraving by Cousin, illustrating Thevet’s Cosmographie universelle (Paris, 1575), provides an even more spectacular view: the Colossus, seen in the distance, bestrides the harbour with the island, suitably Lilliputian, spreading out beside it (Fig. 1.8). Maarten van Heemskerck’s illustrations of the Wonders of the World are well known.32 He made a drawing of the Colosseum in Rome, which by his time had made its glorious entry into the series of Wonders (Fig. 1.9). The tall statue to the right clearly portrays Jupiter, not the original Phoebus Apollo mentioned by several Latin sources.33 This no doubt echoes the transformation of the statue ordained by Nero’s successors. Yet it has been argued that the location of the giant, right at the centre of the amphitheatrum—and not, as it should be, outside the building (Fig. 1.10)—could be regarded as a remnant of a very persistent confusion between the Rhodian Colossus and the Roman Colosseum. The successive versions of the Mirabilia urbis Romae document the process of fusion. The point, stressed by G. Brett in his article on the Seven Wonders of the World in the Renaissance,34 will not be pursued here. Let us now turn to van Heemskerck’s Rhodian Colossus (Fig. 1.11). It is a gigantic and rather pathetic Apollo carrying a bow, a quiver with arrows, together with a kind of sceptre. Here again, a large vessel entering the harbour is intended to make us realize how big the sculpture was. A similar hint is conveyed by the big head that lies in front—a reference to the plundering by the Arabs. Note, however, that the head is out of proportion: it is much too small. Perhaps the most interesting part of this composition is the big torch that the god raises in his left hand. It does not fit with the traditional representation of Apollo, not even if one admits, as seems natural here, that this Apollo and the god Helios are one and the same deity.35 But it makes a lot of sense if one is willing to attach to the Colossus of Rhodes the function of a lighthouse, at least metaphorically. The so-called dedication of the statue strongly supports this assumption by alluding, as we have seen, to ‘the lovely torch of freedom and independence’, and the 32 See e.g. L. Duclaux, ‘Dessins de Martin van Heemskerck’, La Revue du Louvre et des Museés de France (1981), 5/6, 375–80. 33 On these sources, see Bergmann, Koloß (as in n. 28), 7–8. 34 G. Brett, ‘The Seven Wonders of the World in the Renaissance’, Art Quarterly, 12 (1949), 349–51. 35 See e.g. Nicetas, T pt qa¸mata ( ¼ Hebert, Schriftquellen (as in n. 5), Q. 59, 30): ` n ‘Rd} kolossv, edwlon Apllwnov. ’

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statue may have served as a lighthouse, but we should not forget that no other ancient source confirms this. In fact, the very idea of representing the Colossus with one foot on each side of the harbour might well be the result of a misinterpretation of the same single source, as has been pointed out by several modern scholars. For twice in the dedicatory inscription there appears the proud assertion that the statue symbolizes the dominion of the Rhodians on both sea and land. This repeated assertion, which reminds us of the Latin slogan Terra marique,36 suggests how the notion could arise that the Colossus should have had at least one foot ‘in the sea’.37 Let us note in passing that Shakespeare must have had in mind something very similar to van Heemskerck’s engraving when he made Cassius say of Julius Caesar: Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus; and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about38

Van Heemskerck’s example had a long sequel. We have ‘The Marvellous Colossus of Rhodes’ by Fischer von Erlach (Fig. 1.12) with a proud caption stating ‘that it was made by Chares the Lindian under the government of Theagones, Prince of Caria, in the year 3600 of the world’. This appears to be a confusion, together with a misreading, of several elements taken from Constantine Porphyrogenitus, referred to above.39 Of particular interest is the representation, in the upper left corner, of a typical Rhodian coin. Most Rhodian coins (Fig. 1.13) feature this kind of head surmounted by the Sun’s rays—an obvious reference to the specific connection of Helios with the island—and it has often been assumed, also by most modern scholars, that Chares the Lindian sculpted the head of his Colossus in this way. This idea, which has led to many unproven identifications in modern numismatics,40 was 36 See A. Momigliano, ‘Terra marique’ (1942), in Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Rome, 1960), 431–46. 37 See e.g. T. Dombart, Die Sieben Weltwunder des Altertums (Munich, 1967), 71: ‘Freilich hat gerade dieser Schlußwortlaut mit Anlaß gegeben zu der Vorstellung, der Koloß mu¨sse spreizbeinig u¨ber der Hafeneinfahrt, von Festlandufer zu Festlandufer, von Mole zu Mole auch die Meereswogen u¨berspannt haben.’ 38 Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, i. ii. 134–7. 39 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio (as in n. 19), 20; see also ch. 21, entitled ‘From the Chronicle of Theophanes: the year of the creation of the world 6171’. 40 Suffice it to mention the recent, and very unconvincing, attempt by G. M. Staffieri, ‘Il ‘‘Colosso di Rodi’’: Un nuovo riscontro numismatico’, Annotazioni numismatiche, 27 (Sept. 1997), 612–20.


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obviously shared by the author of this engraving, as the caption under the coin reads: Caput Colossi Rhodis. Note that the type of coins used by von Erlach for his drawing, with the head of Helios in right profile in a rayed taenia, corresponds to the series of didrachms which, according to Richard Ashton’s chronology of Rhodian coins,41 are the most likely to portray the Colossus (Fig. 1.14). It seems that the van Heemskerck tradition continued to inspire artists. In many other engravings and, even more, in many tapestries one finds the giant depicted in the same position, without significant change in the god’s attitude or attributes. Innovations, if they are such, appear in the rest of the composition. Much more original is the description of the Colossus in John Lemprie`re’s Classical Dictionary, first published in 1788 and still in use. The entry reads: Its feet were on two moles which formed the entrance to the harbour, and ships passed full sail between its legs . . . . A winding staircase ran to the top from which could easily be discerned the shores of Syria, and the ships that sailed on the coast of Egypt, by the help of glasses, which were hung on the neck of the Statue.42

Very special glasses they must have been, for the distance between Rhodes and Egypt is clearly greater than a stone’s throw. But the eighteenth–nineteenth century is also a period in which many people tried to reconstruct the image of the Colossus on more scientific lines. Following a suggestion made in 1759 by the Comte de Caylus,43 scholars such as Rottiers, Hamilton, Newton, Lu¨ders, and Gue´rin all stressed the insurmountable difficulties that Chares the Lindian would have had to face in raising such a big statue with feet and arms widely outstretched.44 It became increasingly obvious that Chares, even though a pupil of the great Lysippus, could not have achieved anything more sophisticated than a rather stiff portrait of a standing Helios. 41 Ashton, ‘Coinage’ (as in n. 16), 75–90, pl. 15–18; see also his ‘Rhodian Bronze Coinage and the Earthquake of 229–226 bc’, Numismatic Chronicle, 146 (1986), 1–18 and pl. 1–4. 42 J. Lemprie `re, Lemprie`re’s Classical Dictionary of Proper Names Mentioned in Ancient Authors Writ Large, rev. and rewritten 1949, 3rd edn. (London, 1984), s.v. ‘Colossus’. 43 Comte de Caylus, in Me ´moires de l’Acade´mie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 25 (London, 1759), 360–7. 44 B. E. A. Rottiers, Descriptions des monuments de Rhodes (Brussels, 1830), 81–97; W. J. Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus and Armenia, ii (London, 1842), 65–6; C. T. Newton, Travels and Discoveries in the Levant, i (London, 1865), 176–7; F. Lu¨ders, Der Koloß von Rhodos (Hamburg, 1865); V. Gue´rin, Île de Rhodes (Paris, 1880), 111–23.

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Consequently, these scholars all abandoned the idea of a statue bestriding the harbour. Of course, they were far from agreeing as to the right way of representing the Colossus, but the general trend was to give it a more austere pose and, so to speak, a greater immobility: expansive gestures and attributes were banned. It was also felt that Philo’s technical treatise should be the starting point for any serious study of the question. The hypothesis of a lighthouse-statue, which is nowhere alluded to in Philo’s account, but which seems a reasonable inference from the so-called dedication, was still predominant. But how could the technical and the symbolic requirements have been met at the same time? Quite naturally, some people thought, for example Albert Gabriel in 1932: the Colossus stood legs together, the left arm flush with the body and the right, the one holding the torch, extended vertically upwards (Fig. 1.15). The gesture was elegant, and the allegorical function of the statue was preserved, at least in the mind of people like Gustave Eiffel and Fre´de´ric-Auguste Bartholdi. For it is well known that the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour (Fig. 1.16), dedicated in 1886 to commemorate the French and American Revolutions, was modelled on Chares’ masterpiece. The twentieth century has had its share of new theories and hypotheses. In a series of challenging but somewhat adventurous articles, François Prećhac tried to demonstrate that the Colossus was not alone on its marble base. The giant, he contended, must have been driving a four-horse chariot.45 This fantastic idea turns out to depend entirely on a single ancient statement preserved in a very corrupt form. Ampelius’ Liber memorialis, a crucial source for us, lists a wide range of miracula mundi. On Rhodes, the text as we have it reads: ‘The Colossus of Rhodes, a bronze statue of the Sun; moreover (super), [there is] a marble column, with a copper quadriga; the column is 100 cubits high.’46 In other words, the Colossus and the column with the four horses had nothing whatever to do with one another. Still we may regret that Prećhac did not add a drawing to his article: it would no doubt have been yet another intriguing specimen in our collection of modern illustrations of the Colossus. 45 F. Pre ćhac, ‘Le Colosse de Rhodes’, Revue archeólogique, 9 (1919), 66–76; id., ‘Ampeliana’, Revue archeólogique, 10 (1920), 236–70. 46 Ampelius, Liber memorialis, 8. 19 (as in n. 3), 8. 19: ‘Rhodi colossus: signum solis aeneum; super columna marmorea cum quadriga cupro; columna vero habet cubitus centum.’ The text is conjectural.


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At the other extreme we find the study of Georges Roux, whose purpose was to draw attention, following Wilamowitz,47 to the fact that kolossos is a pre-Greek word, which originally did not convey the meaning of ‘large’ or ‘gigantic’, but rather that of anything raised or lifted vertically.48 Kolossos, which Roux regards as the exact equivalent of the Latin statua, may have applied, irrespective of size, to countless sculpted figures, including the small idols from the Greek archaic period. The term was applied to the Rhodian Helios in this wider sense but became specific to outsize statues in consequence of its association with Chares’ masterpiece. So far, so good. But the author goes on to maintain that the Colossus of Rhodes was actually an enlargement of an archaic idol, the body like a pillar or a column, with arms and feet ‘paralysed in some sort of sheath’.49 Let us now turn to a story which, to the best of my knowledge, has not been told so far. In the early 1930s Italian archaeologists working in Rhodes discovered a marble relief, dated to the second century bc, showing the upper part of a human body (Fig. 1.17). Since, apart from a small piece of drapery on the right side, the body is naked and since the figure appears to be raising its right arm above its head—as in the Renaissance engravings—some people thought that the first authentic, though incomplete, representation of the Colossus had been found at last. The identification was endorsed by the finders themselves and the relief was published under this designation.50 Herbert Maryon, the sculptor mentioned at the beginning of this paper, called this ‘a fortunate discovery, such as at times brings joy to the 47 U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, ‘Heilige Gesetze: Eine Urkunde aus Kyrene’, Sitzungsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Kl. (1927), 155–76 at 169. 48 G. Roux, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un ‘‘kolossv’’ ’, Revue des ´ etudes anciennes, 62 (1960), 5–18; see also M. W. Dickie, ‘What is a Kolossos and How Were Kolossoi Made in the Hellenistic Period?’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 37 (1996), 237–57. 49 Roux, ‘Kolossv’, 18. The idea of a column originates in a late statement about the Colossus preserved in Nicetas, qa¸mata (as in n. 35): tin v d asi, k‹ona e nai to ton calko n. This statement contradicts all other ancient sources, but Roux justifies it as a lectio difficilior (p. 14): ‘Ainsi, a` l’e´poque de Nice´tas, une tradition survivait qui faisait du colosse un k‹wn, une colonne ou un pilier d’airain. Dira-t-on que cette tradition doit eˆtre rejeteé en raison de la date tardive a` laquelle elle nous est rapporteé? Dans ce cas particulier, cependant, c’est justement parce que ce renseignement est tardif qu’il me paraıˆt digne de confiance. L’auteur l’a consigne´ a` une e´poque ou` il euˆt e´te´ naturel, normal, de se repre´senter le colosse, a` la façon des graveurs du xviie et du xviiie sie`cle, sous les traits d’un simple ndr‹av athle´tique. Ce qu’il nous dit du colosse a donc pour nous la valeur d’une lectio difficilior qui se serait maintenue dans un manuscrit rećent.’ 50 See G. Jacopi, Monumenti di scultura del Museo Archeologico di Rodi, ii (Clara Rhodos, 5; Rhodes, 1932), no. 35.

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heart of a hard-working antiquary’.51 Indeed he found the discovery so fortunate that in a very stimulating study he set about reconsidering the whole problem on the strength of it. What he suggested as a posture for the Colossus was simply something in which suitable legs could be attached to the upper part of the body as it appeared in the relief (Fig. 1.18). As for the piece of drapery, the explanation seemed obvious: ‘We realise at once’, he writes, ‘that, besides the legs, the sculptor would wish to provide the figure with a third point of support to ensure its stability.’52 Maryon’s other great idea, which was mainly based on the allegedly small figure of 500 talents of bronze as reported by Philo, was to argue that the Colossus had not been cast, as is usually assumed, but made of thin hammered bronze plates.53 Neither of Maryon’s suppositions proved to be truly convincing. In the following year, Denys Haynes demolished the hammered-plate theory by showing that it was incompatible in many respects with Philo’s report.54 And it was not long before the identification of the Colossus with the figure on the marble relief was also discarded. According to a recent statement, the figure ‘quite clearly portrays an athlete crowning himself and has nothing to do with Helios’.55 Maryon’s paper came out in the Journal of Hellenic Studies in 1956, but it was based on an account read to the Society of Antiquaries of London in December 1953. Dates are important here for it was in 1954 that Salvador Dalı´ painted his version of the Colossus (Fig. 1.19), a version which, all things considered, does not look extremely original. Not only the pose, but even the hammered plates of Maryon’s theory find here a clear and very powerful expression. Clearly Maryon’s contribution had made some impact. The Colossus of Rhodes is controversial, susceptible of an infinite number of interpretations. I have attempted to trace some of them.56 So many fragile hypotheses have been—and continue to be—put forward57 51

52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 74–5. Maryon, ‘Colossus’ (as in. 6), 72. Haynes, ‘Philo of Byzantium’ (as in n. 9), 311–12. 55 Higgins, ‘Colossus of Rhodes’ (as in n. 8), 134. 56 Many others, such as the great variety of representations found in films and cartoons, have had to be omitted from the present enquiry. A glimpse of this impressive gallery may be easily obtained by consulting the Web. 57 The recently published study by W. Hoepfner, Der Koloß von Rhodos und die Bauten des Helios: Neue Forschungen zu einem der Sieben Weltwunder (Mainz, 2003), is worthless, except for the illustrations. Factual errors abound, and there is no serious atttempt to examine the sources. Hoepfner would have the reader believe that the Colossus was the replica of a small and rather misshapen bronze statuette found in Montdidier in the 54


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that one more may perhaps be allowed. I began with the artificial projection of the zodiac on Eratosthenes’ world map, so remarkably centred on the isle of Rhodes. A people having the Sun as its patron deity shows itself to be indomitable and places itself at the centre of an immense windrose: was it not natural to draw a parallel with the place of the Sun at the centre of the zodiac, as it appears on several ancient artefacts, such as the second/first-century bc gem illustrated in Fig. 1.20?58 It would surely be a long shot to prove that the Colossus was part—in the flesh, so to speak—of that great project (or projection), and a longer shot still to demonstrate that Timosthenes of Rhodes, who lived at the time the Colossus was built, was the organizer of all this. But one may always dream, with Philo’s words in mind: So, going up bit by bit, he [Chares] reached the goal of his endeavour, and at the expense of 500 talents of bronze and 300 of iron, he created, with incredible boldness, a god similar to the real God; for he gave a second Sun to the world. Somme, and now at the Louvre. According to him, it is the laws of perspective that are responsible for the apparent deformity of the Colossus. The reconstruction he offers (p. 80)—a nude colossus with blond hair, dubious red lips, and a short rosy red chlamys—may amuse some. 58 On this gem see M.-L. Vollenweider, Muse é d’art et d’histoire de Gene`ve: Catalogue raisonne´ des sceaux, cylindres, intailles et cameés, iii (Mainz, 1983), 178–80; H. G. Gundel, Zodiakos: Tierkreisbilder im Altertum (Mainz, 1992), 249 n. 152.1. Note on the illustrations: for full references see List of Illustrations, pp. ix–x above.

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Fig. 1.1. The windrose of Timosthenes on Eratosthenes’ world map


Fig. 1.2. The windrose and the zodiac in Ptolemy’s Geography, 1522

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58

Fig. 1.3. Map of Rhodes



Fig. 1.4. Maryon’s fallen Colossus

Fig. 1.5. Tempesta’s fallen Colossus, 1608

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Fig. 1.6. Map of the city of Rhodes c.1500


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Fig. 1.7. Engraving of the Colossus by Jean Cousin, in Thevet, Cosmographie de Levant (1554)

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Fig. 1.8. Engraving of the Colossus and the Island of Rhodes by Jean Cousin, in Thevet, Cosmographie universelle (1575)


Fig. 1.9. Engraving of the Colosseum by van Heemskerck, 1570

Fig. 1.10. Coin with Nero’s Colossus and the Colosseum

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Fig. 1.11. Engraving of the Colossus of Rhodes by Maarten van Heemskerck, 1570

Fig. 1.12. The Colossus of Rhodes by Fischer von Erlach, 1725

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Fig. 1.13. A Rhodian coin with the head of Helios, 380–340 bc


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Fig. 1.14. Rhodian didrachm with head of Helios in a rayed taenia, early third century bc

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Fig. 1.15. A. Gabriel’s reconstruction of the Colossus


Fig. 1.16. The Statue of Liberty

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Fig. 1.17. Marble relief found in Rhodes, second century bc


Fig. 1.18. H. Maryon’s reconstruction of the standing Colossus

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Fig. 1.19. Colossus of Rhodes, after Salvador Dalı´


Fig. 1.20. Gem with sun and zodiac, late second/early first century bc

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2 Renaissance Philology: Johannes Livineius (1546–1599) and the Birth of the Apparatus Criticus Luigi Battezzato

1. INTRODUCTION Some inventions look deceptively simple once they are made. Classical scholars are used to the concept of apparatus criticus, and are most annoyed when faced with the fact that Renaissance and seventeenthcentury scholars did not know of such a thing. Beatus Rhenanus, ‘in spite of his professions, . . . did not make clear to users of his edition [of Tacitus] the sources of his own innovations in the text’.1 Adrien de Tournebu (Turne`be), in his edition of Aeschylus (1552), emended the text using variant readings found in the scholia, and his own conjectures, but ‘he did not indicate the changes he had introduced; hence the reader could not know for certain the source of any given reading’.2 With Justus Lipsius’ editorial procedure for Tacitus, Brink complains, ‘a distinction between transmitted text, variants from manuscripts, and conjectures is hardly possible’.3 In Joseph Scaliger’s edition of Catullus ‘the procedure I thank B. Amata, H.-J. van Dam, R. Ferri, C. Ligota, and E. Stagni for their useful comments, corrections, and suggestions. S. Gysens offered detailed criticism of the paper and kindly sent me copies of his papers and of other relevant material. 1 E. J. Kenney, The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book (Berkeley, 1974), 52. 2 A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger, i (Oxford, 1983), 85. See now A. Galistu, ‘Le congetture eschilee di Adrien Turne`be, parte prima: L’Orestea’, Lexis, 17 (1999), 155–94; V. Citti and R. Dawe, ‘Congetture ad Eschilo dalle edizioni cinquecentine’, Lexis, 22 (2004), 249–60. 3 C. O. Brink, ‘Justus Lipsius and the Text of Tacitus’, Journal of Roman Studies, 41 (1951), 32–51 at 34.

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is still correction of the current text codicum et ingenii ope: and the essential principle of scientific editing, enunciated and re-enunciated by Ernesti and Wolf and Sauppe, that the appeal to the MSS must be continuous, is, whether understood or not, neglected in practice’.4 Ernesti, Wolf, and Sauppe were all born long after Scaliger’s death, and Kenney seems at times to be judging Renaissance scholars by their ability to anticipate the standards of accuracy and the stemmatic method developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: a method that Kenney considers of perennial value.5 Kenney himself later concedes, following Schwartz and Pasquali, that the stemmatic method, distilled by Paul Maas into his famous Textkritik, only applies to a small minority of classical texts,6 and that ‘a critic such as Cobet . . . will usually end by presenting a better text of his author, however slapdash his methodology [in selecting manuscripts], than the most painstaking but untalented drudge’.7 4 Kenney (as in n. 1), 56–7. Timpanaro’s judgement on Scaliger’s edition of Catullus is much more favourable: S. Timpanaro, La genesi del metodo del Lachmann (3rd edn., Padua, 1985), 10 and 151; see also J. H. Gaisser, ‘Catullus, Gaius Valerius’, in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, vii (Washington, DC, 1992), 197–292 at 267–71. See Timpanaro, Genesi, 30–4 and 58–60 on Ernesti, Wolf, and Sauppe. For a reassessment and a discussion of the different editions of Timpanaro’s work, see V. Di Benedetto, ‘La filologia di Sebastiano Timpanaro’ in R. Di Donato (ed.), Il filologo materialista: Studi per Sebastiano Timpanaro (Pisa, 2003), 1–89. 5 See A. Grafton’s review of Kenney’s book, in Journal of Roman Studies, 67 (1977), 171–6, esp. 171. Kenney restated his point of view in ‘A Rejoinder’, Giornale italiano di filologia, 32 (1980), 320–2. 6 Kenney (as in n. 1), 141. Timpanaro (as in n. 4), 84–103, 152 gives a more nuanced assessment of the application of Lachmann’s method in the 19th and 20th cc. See also G. Luck, ‘Textual Criticism Today’, American Journal of Philology, 102 (1981), 164–94, esp. 184–6; M. Reeve, ‘Cuius in usum? Recent and Future Editing’, Journal of Roman Studies, 90 (2000), 196–206, at 198; and especially G. Fiesoli, La genesi del lachmannismo (Florence, 2000), 360–461. 7 Kenney (as in n. 1), 119. For a masterly survey of Renaissance editorial techniques and the use of manuscripts see G. Pasquali, Storia della tradizione e critica del testo (Florence, 1952), 43–108. More recent case studies include J. F. D’Amico, Theory and Practice in Renaissance Textual Criticism: Beatus Rhenanus between Conjecture and History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988); J. H. Gaisser, Catullus and his Renaissance Readers (Oxford, 1993); T. W. Richardson, Reading and Variant in Petronius: Studies in the French Humanists and their Manuscript Sources (Toronto, 1993); E. Stagni, ‘Ricerche sulla tradizione manoscritta di Petronio: L’editio princeps dei ‘‘longa’’ e i codici di Tornesio’, Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici, 30 (1993), 205–30; many papers by M. D. Reeve, esp. ‘The Rediscovery of Classical Texts in the Renaissance’ in O. Pecere (ed.), Itinerari di testi antichi (Rome, 1991), 115–57 (with a very useful introductory bibliography on pp. 115–23) and ‘Beatus Rhenanus and the lost Vormacensis of Livy’, Revue d’histoire des textes, 25 (1995), 217–54; L. Canfora, Il Fozio ritrovato: Juan de Mariana e Andre´ Schott (Bari, 2001). See also below, n. 50, on Carrion.

Renaissance Philology: Livineius

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In fact many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philologists prepared editions the same way they would have prepared manuscript books. They would copy the text from one source (occasionally changing model for some particular sections), inserting conjectures and variant readings from other witnesses; they would also add variant readings in the margins. Scaliger’s copy of Petronius is a good example of how humanists prepared their texts: he copied the Cuiacianus manuscript, which had large new sections of texts, but used the (vastly inferior) 1565 printed edition of Sambucus for the sections that were already known, recording variant readings from the Cuiacianus in the text or in the margins.8 Renaissance scholars often appear to be improving a classical text the same way they would improve a map or a catalogue.9 I want to argue that we should take into account some factors that explain why sixteenth-century editors seem so inconsistent: (i) finding and selecting manuscripts was extremely difficult, and it was not possible to form an idea of the whole manuscript tradition; (ii) scholars could not check the antiquity or value of the manuscript sources of the editio princeps, which was frequently regarded as deriving from a very authoritative manuscript;10 (iii) many editors were not aiming at producing a critical text, but a readable one, and their work should not be judged by the standards we use for a modern critical edition; (iv) modern apparatus critici use a concise system of sigla and abbreviations which did not exist, and would have been difficult to print. We shall see that this style of presentation made its first appearance in Renaissance collations, and we will examine some of the reasons why it took some time before it became standard in editions. These four points will be made clear also by examining the career and the works of a relatively little-known scholar who came very close to creating a veritable apparatus criticus. Johannes Livineius (Jan Lievens) was born in Dendermonde, near Ghent, in 1546–7 and died in Lie`ge in 1599. He published two short treatises by Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom and an edition of the Panegyrici Latini. Friends managed to publish posthumously his notes on the Latin elegists, and a couple of translations of Byzantine 8 Scaliger also included a number of old and new conjectures in the text, as well as new mistakes: Petronius, Satyrica: Schelmenszenen, ed. K. Mu¨ller, trans. W. Ehlers (Munich, 1983), 393–5 (MS Leidensis Scaligeranus 61). On Sambucus see below, n. 173. 9 On ‘improved’ editions see E. L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1979), i. 107–26; see also i. 80–1 on the process of standardization. 10 It is characteristic that Scaliger, who collated the Paris manuscript of Arnobius, failed to identify it with the manuscript used for the editio princeps: see below, n. 89.

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authors that he had completed during a stay in Rome. His notes on Sophocles, Euripides, Arnobius, Minucius Felix, Silius Italicus, and other authors remained unpublished for centuries. This part of his Nachlass is now better known, and his philological abilities emerge as remarkable. H. Lloyd-Jones and N. G. Wilson have shown that he often anticipated later scholars in his notes on Sophocles, and made some attractive conjectures.11 His notes on Euripides, Arnobius, and Minucius Felix are equally important.12 His collation notes resemble very closely a modern apparatus criticus. I shall use this evidence as a starting point for a discussion of philological methods and editorial techniques in the Renaissance (xx4 and 5).

2. LIFE AND WORKS OF LIVINEIUS Anthony Grafton has shown how sixteenth-century classicists divided along national and methodological lines. Italian scholars emphasized one side of Politian’s legacy: the study of manuscripts and the importance of a careful recording of scribal mistakes for establishing the true reading. This line of study was followed especially by Pier Vettori (1499–1585) and by people associated with him or sympathetic to his methods, such as Gabriele Faerno (1510–61), Fulvio Orsini (1529–1600), and Cardinal Sirleto (1514–85).13 French scholars were less interested in collating 11 Livineius wrote his notes in the margins of Sophoclis Tragoediae septem (Venice: Aldus, 1502), Trinity College Cambridge, Adv. d. 4.1; see H. Lloyd-Jones and N. G. Wilson, Sophoclea: Studies on the Text of Sophocles (Oxford, 1990), 270. 12 See my earlier paper: L. Battezzato, ‘Livineius’ Unpublished Euripidean Marginalia’, Revue d’histoire des textes, 30 (2000), 323–49. Livineius wrote his notes in a copy of Euripidis tragoediae septendecim . . . (Venice: Aldus, 1503), British Library, C.45.b.23–24. R. Alston, Books with Manuscript: A Short Title Catalogue of Books with Manuscript Notes in the British Library (London, 1994), 18 on Livineius’ Arnobius, 208 on his Euripides. I reported some readings from the notes on the first book of Arnobius in my earlier article, p. 328 n. 22; see my forthcoming ‘Congetture cinquecentesche inedite ad Arnobio e Minucio Felice’, Lexis, 24 (2006). 13 Grafton, Scaliger (as in n. 2), 45–70, 95–6. J. F. Maillard, J. Kecskeme ´ti, and M. Portalier (eds.), L’Europe des humanistes (XIVe–XVIIe sie`cles) (2nd edn., Paris, 1998), 422, 178, 329, 391 give concise information and bibliography on these scholars; I generally follow their indications for the non-Latinized forms of personal names of Renaissance scholars. On contacts between Orsini and scholars and printers in Antwerp (including Torrentius and Christophe Plantin) see P. de Nolhac, La Bibliothe`que de Fulvio Orsini: Contributions a` l’histoire des collections d’Italie et a` l’e´tude de la Renaissance (Paris, 1887), 57–9; W. Bracke, ‘Giusto Lipsio e Fulvio Orsini’, in M. Laurens (ed.), ‘The world of Justus Lipsius: A contribution towards his intellectual biography’, Bulletin de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 68 (1998), 81–96, esp. 88.


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manuscripts, but developed a fashion (and a talent) for conjectural emendation,14 an enterprise that Vettori considered risky at best.15 Jean Dorat (1508–88), Adrien Turne`be (1512–65), and Marc-Antoine de Muret (1526–85)16 are among the most significant in this tradition. Their conjectures restored many corrupt passages of classical authors.17 Of course, there were French scholars who worked on manuscripts (e.g. Denis Lambin (1519–72) and Jacques Cujas (1522–90))18 and Italian scholars who made brilliant conjectures (including Vettori himself and Faerno).19 Grafton’s broad characterization, however, is a useful guide in analysing the method of sixteenth-century philologists. Livineius is a generation younger than Vettori or Turne`be. Coming from a Catholic family in the Low Countries, he was influenced by French textual criticism but was also exposed to the Italian tradition. He has many successful emendations to his credit, but his philological work was always spurred by access to new manuscript evidence. Livineius20 studied in Cologne and Leuven, and befriended Andre´ Schott (1552–1629),21 Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), and Willem Canter 14

Cf. Grafton, Scaliger (as in n. 2), 71–100. Cf. ibid. 184. 16 Dates and essential bibliography in Maillard, Kecskeme ´ti, and Portalier (as in n. 13), 157, 412, 315. See also J. Lewis, Adrien Turne`be (1512–1565): A Humanist Observed (Geneva, 1998). 17 For instance Aeschylus: see M. Mund-Dopchie, La Survie d’Eschyle a ` la Renaissance (Louvain, 1984) and Aeschyli Tragoediae cum incerti poetae Prometheo, ed. M. L. West (Stuttgart, 1990), pp. xxii–xxiv. 18 See Maillard, Kecskeme ´ti, and Portalier (as in n. 13), 258 and 139. 19 See G. P. Goold, ‘A New Text of Catullus’, Phoenix, 12 (1958), 93–116 at 99 for their conjectures on Catullus. Paolo Manuzio was on Muret’s side against Vettori: Grafton, Scaliger (as in n. 2), 89. Grafton himself is very careful to nuance his picture of scholarly trends: ibid. 45–100, esp. 69, 87–8, 99. 20 S. Gysens has recently written two excellent studies on the life and works of Livineius: a useful biographical entry ‘Livineius, Johannes (Jan Lievens)’, Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek (Brussels, 1990), xvi. 539–48 [hereafter Gysens, NBW], and a longer article ‘Johannes Livineius (1546/47–1599): Een minder bekend humanist uit Dendermonde’, Gedenkschriften van de Oudheidkundige Kring van het Land van Dendermonde, 4th ser., 21 (2002), 7–54 [hereafter Gysens, Gedenkschriften]. See also below, n. 24. Previous works include L. Roersch, ‘Lievens (Jean) ou Livineius’, in Biographie nationale (Brussels, 1892–3), xii. 124–8; J. N. Paquot, Me´moires pour servir a` l’histoire litte´raire des dix-sept Provinces des Pays Bas . . . (Louvain, 1765) [repr. Westmead, 1970], i. 350–1. For other bibliographical references and evidence on the manuscripts used by Livineius see Battezzato, ‘Livineius’ Unpublished Euripidean Marginalia’ (as in n. 12). 21 Schott was in contact with Livineius and Torrentius; he corresponded with the latter: see L. Torrentius, Correspondance, ed. M. Delcourt et J. Hoyoux (Paris, 1950–4), passim. Schott, after many travels, came back to the Jesuit Collegium in Antwerp in 1596: cf. A. Roersch, ‘Schott (Andre´)’, in Biographie Nationale (Brussels, 1914–20), xxii. 1–14 at 9; G. Tournoy, ‘Schott (Andre´)’, in C. Nativel (ed.), Centuriae Latinae: Cent une figures humanistes de la Renaissance aux Lumie`res offertes a` J. Chomarat (Geneva, 1997), 749–53; 15

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(1542–75).22 Livineius was made canonicus of Saint Peter’s in Lie`ge in 1573,23 and began working on Greek patristic texts. His first publication, the editio princeps of Gregory of Nyssa’s De virginitate (1574),24 includes conjectures by Canter and himself. His uncle, Laevinus Torrentius (Lieven Vander Beke) (1525–95), who was to become bishop of Lie`ge, and a very powerful man, supported his work.25 Livineius took advantage of his uncle’s trip to Rome to obtain readings from a Vatican manuscript of De virginitate against the sole manuscript he was working on.26 Torrentius was a classical scholar in his own right, in contact with both Sirleto and Faerno.27 Livineius’ second publication, the editio princeps of John Chrysostom’s De virginitate,28 presents a much smaller number of variant readings and conjectures than the Gregory. Livineius had shown good potential as an editor and textual critic, but his interest in Greek texts could not really flourish without access to new material. The turning point of his career was Torrentius’ offer of a trip to Italy. Livineius was in Rome in the period 1579–82.29 The stay in Rome was Canfora, Il Fozio ritrovato (as in n.7), passim. On Schott and Livineius see also Gysens, Gedenkschriften (as in n. 20), 46. On Schott and Lipsius see also the contribution by Paul Nelles to this volume. 22 See L. Roersch, ‘Lievens (Jean) ou Livineius’ (as in n. 20), 124. W. Canter moved to Paris, where he studied with Dorat and met J. J. Scaliger (1540–1609). See R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from 1300 to 1850 (Oxford, 1976), 104, 106, 125; Grafton, Scaliger (as in n. 2), 104, 275 n. 21; G. Demerson, Dorat et son temps (ClermontFerrand, 1983), 173; 180–5; Mund-Dopchie, La Survie (as in n. 17), 239–42. 23 Cf. L. Roersch, ‘Lievens (Jean) ou Livineius’ (as in n. 20), 126. 24 Gregorii Nysseni De virginitate liber, Graece et Latine nunc primum editus, interprete Iohanne Livineio Gandensi (Antwerp: Plantin, 1574). On this work, see S. Gysens, ‘ ‘‘Libellus hic aureus est . . . ’’: Sur l’e´dition princeps du ‘‘De virginitate’’ de saint Jean Chrysostome (Anvers, 1575) et son manuscrit de base’, Sacris Erudiri, 41 (2002), 55–79. 25 On Torrentius see the concise biographies by A. Roersch, ‘Torrentius (Laevinus)’, Biographie nationale, xxv. 462–75; M. J. Marinus, ‘Torrentius (Beke) Laevinus’, Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek, xiii. 779–85. The extant correspondence (years 1583–93) has been published (see n. 21). Other bibliography in Battezzato (as in n. 12), 325 n. 8. S. Gysens refers me also to M.-J. Marinus, Laevinus Torrentius als tweede bisschop van Antwerpen (1587–1595) (Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgie¨—Klasse der Letteren, Jaargang 51 (1989), 131; Brussels, 1989) and J. van Damme (ed.), Laevinus Torrentius: Tweede bisschop van Antwerpen (Antwerp, 1995) (exhibition catalogue, with essays). 26 The manuscripts are now Vat. gr. 401 and Montepessulanus 122: Gregorii Nysseni opera ascetica, ed. W. Jaeger et al. (Leiden, 1952), 233–4 and 243–4. 27 Torrentius wrote poems praising Faerno’s philological work, and Sirleto’s learning: Laevini Torrentii Poemata Sacra (Antwerp: Plantin, 1594), 372–6. 28 Ioannis Chrysostomi De virginitate liber, Graece et Latine nunc primum editus, interprete Ioanne Liuineio Gandensi (Antwerp: Plantin, 1575). 29 The exact date of his arrival in Rome is not certain: see Gysens, NBW (as in n. 20), 540, Battezzato (as in n. 12), 326; see also Torrentius, Correspondance (as in n. 21), i. 128 (20 Mar. 1584), and 156 (3 May 1584).


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very productive. He was introduced to Torrentius’ Roman friends and connections, especially the Cardinal Librarian, Guglielmo Sirleto. Sirleto, though very learned, was not too willing to give access to the treasures of the library. Montaigne notes with pleasure that he was allowed to see a manuscript of Seneca that Sirleto had previously refused to show to the French ambassador, Louis Chasteigner. Sirleto had also withheld from M. A. de Muret a manuscript of the historian Zosimus, alleging that it was ‘empio e scellerato’;30 and he burnt part of a Byzantine manuscript that contained anti-Western texts.31 The authors that interested Livineius were considered pious enough by Sirleto, who supplied him with manuscripts, and helped him with a number of philological and historical problems. He joined Antonio Carafa and Fulvio Orsini’s team in the revision of the Septuagint published in 1587.32 The support of Cardinal Sirleto gave Livineius access to a number of manuscripts: a manuscript of Sophocles, four of Euripides, and one of Propertius. Sirleto also provided Livineius with manuscripts of two Byzantine texts, which he translated into Latin: the Dialogus contra Iudaeos attributed to Andronicus Comnenus and the Sermones catechetici by Theodore the Studite (759–826). Livineius had access to new material, he made many conjectures, and gained invaluable experience in manuscript collation. He recorded variant readings and noted the most common types of error. For instance, he observed that lines were occasionally misplaced in manuscripts and suggested transpositions in Euripides.33 Sirleto probably supplied him with too many books, if it is true that, as a contemporary source tells us, Livineius studied far too much, to the detriment of his health.34 Livineius recovered, but did not bloom in the garden of Renaissance philology. The turning point was one in intellectual terms only. None of these Roman works was published in 30 Journal du Voyage du [sic] Michel de Montaigne, en Italie . . . , ed. A. D’Ancona (Citta ` di Castello, 1895), 274 n. 1. 31 Cf. A. Grafton, ‘The Vatican Library’ in A. Grafton (ed.), Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture (Washington, DC, 1993), 3–45 at 43 on Vat. gr. 837; on Zosimus see also Canfora (as in n. 7), 135–6 and n. 2 (with bibliography). 32 Nolhac (as in n. 13), 50 n. 2; Gysens, NBW (as in n. 20), 540; Gysens, Gedenkschriften (as in n. 20), 20. On Carafa (1538–91) see Maillard, Kecskeme´ti, and Portalier (as in n. 13), 99. 33 See Battezzato (as in n. 12), 345, 347–8. Finding manuscript evidence for disturbance in the order of lines confirmed the general plausibility of transpositions. W. Canter had suggested some; Scaliger’s Propertius, published in 1577, was notorious for similar, and bolder, suggestions: Kenney (as in n. 1), 55. 34 Cf. F. Modius, Novantiquae lectiones, tributae in epistolas centum . . . (Frankfurt: apud heredes A. Wecheli, 1584), 461–2.

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Livineius’ lifetime. He wrote to Sirleto from Lie`ge (2 September 1584) telling him that he was trying to get the translation of Theodorus published by the Plantin press.35 He did not succeed. In the Low Countries, Protestants were in rebellion against Spain. The translations of Theodorus and Andronicus had to wait. They were published posthumously in 160236 and 1616,37 thanks to Andre´ Schott. Schott was promoting an important cultural project. He was trying to extend the canon of works that could interest scholars, giving special prominence to late antique and Byzantine texts. For his purpose, Latin translations of Greek authors were essential. In the course of a brilliant career that took him to France, Spain, Italy, and the Low Countries,38 he published the first editions of major late antique and Byzantine texts, such as Aurelius Victor (1579) and Proclus’ Chrestomathy (1587), and translated into Latin extensive works such as Photius’ Bibliotheca (1601).39 Justus Lipsius urged the editor, David Hoeschel, to publish Schott’s translation of Photius: ‘nosti quo ventum sit ignavia aevi: pauci haec [ ¼ Greek texts] legunt aut capiunt, et nisi Latina addantur, paene dicam non dedisse.’40 Latin translations of Sophocles and Euripides already existed, and Livineius concentrated on the textual criticism of these authors—with even worse publishing fortune than for his translations. His notes on Sophocles, preserved in the margins of a copy of the Aldine Sophocles,41 were published only in 1813.42 The material was not very extensive, but See Vat. lat. 6195, fo. 578r. See Theodorus Studita, Sermones catechetici CXXXIV (Antwerp: Erven J. Bellerus, 1602); reprinted in Magna Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum . . . (Cologne: Hierat, 1618), ix. 214–76. Livineius explains (Magna Bibliotheca, 214) that he used a manuscript provided by Sirleto, now Vat. Ottobonianus gr. 251. See E. Follieri, ‘Due codici greci gia` cassinesi oggi alla Biblioteca Vaticana: Gli Ottob. gr. 250 e 251’, Palaeographica, diplomatica et archivistica: Studi in onore di Giulio Battelli . . . (Rome, 1979), i. 159–221 at 207–11, 220–1; Gysens, NBW (as in n. 20), 543; Gysens, Gedenkschriften (as in n. 20), 23. Livineius also consulted Vat. gr. 634: cf. Battezzato (as in n. 12), 327 n. 13 with bibliography. The translation is reprinted in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, 99: 506–687. 37 Cf. Andronicus Constantinopolitanus, Dialogus contra Iudaeos, in Tomus singularis insignium auctorum tum graecorum quam latinorum . . . , nunc primum in lucem prodire . . . iussit Petrus Stevartius . . . (Ingolstadt, 1616), 255–398. It was probably based on Vat. gr. 1204: Battezzato (as in n. 12), 326 n. 12. See also Gysens, NBW (as in n. 20), 543; Gysens, Gedenkschriften (as in n. 20), 23 n. 47. In his preface, Livineius mentions the opinion of Cardinal Sirleto on the chronology of the work. The translation is reprinted in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, 133: 791–924. 38 He assembled an important collection of Greek manuscripts, now in the Bibliothe`que royale de Belgique: A. Roersch (as in n. 21), 13. 39 On the edition of Photius, see now Canfora, Fozio (as in n. 7), 105–33, 163–205. 40 Cf. ibid. 284; see also 176 and 169. 41 See n. 11 above. 42 ‘Ctesiphon’, ‘Collation of Two Mss. of Sophocles’, Classical Journal, 7 (1813), 428–36. 35 36


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included many acute and sensible suggestions on the text.43 The notes on Euripides are much fuller, as Livineius collated four manuscripts, and made a number of original suggestions.44 Livineius became secretary and factotum to his uncle Torrentius. Busy with practical matters and church duties, he had less time to devote to his studies, and no chance to continue working on Greek authors, or to prepare editions of the authors he collated.45 In June 1588, Livineius was rewarded for his hard work: he became canonicus et cantor at Antwerp cathedral.46 His uncle also gave him more intellectually demanding tasks. He prepared a second edition of Torrentius’ commentary on Suetonius, published in 1592 by the Plantin press.47 As Torrentius himself admits, this second edition was ‘Livineius’ work more than mine’.48 It was difficult for Livineius to have access to Greek manuscripts in his homeland. In 1584 he worked on Athenaeus49 but nothing came of this. He wisely decided to focus on Latin authors, a field where he was in a position to exploit important manuscript discoveries by Louis Carrion (1547–c.1595) and François de Maulde (Franciscus Modius, 1556–97).50 43 Cf. Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (as in n. 11), 270–5, dating the work to 1589, but see 44 See Battezzato (as in n. 12). Battezzato (as in n. 12), 325–6 and n. 9. 45 See Gysens, NBW (as in n. 20), 544; Gysens, Gedenkschriften (as in n. 20), 29–40, 51–2. 46 Cf. Torrentius, Correspondance (as in n. 21), ii. 195–6 (8 Apr. 1588); ii. 205–6 (28 Apr.); ii. 219–20 (16 May); ii. 234–6 (2 June). See Gysens, NBW (as in n. 20), 541 and 544; Gysens, Gedenkschriften (as in n. 20), 29–40. Torrentius often helped his relatives to acquire good positions: S. Gysens refers to J. Hoyoux, La Famille de Torrentius, in Hommages a` Marie Delcourt (Collection Latomus, 114; Brussels, 1970), 361–7. 47 Laevini Torrentii in C. Suetonii Tranquilli XII. Caesares commentarii (Antwerp: Plantin, 1578; 2nd edn. 1592). See Gysens, NBW (as in n. 20), 544. 48 ‘Livineii magis opera quam mea’: Torrentius, Correspondance (as in n. 21), iii. 235 (20 Aug. 1591). Torrentius expected his nephew to prepare his edition of Horace for publication, which, however, appeared posthumously: Q. Horatius Flaccus cum erudito Laevini Torrentii commentario (Antwerp: ex officina Plantiniana, 1608). 49 Torrentius, Correspondance (as in n. 21), i. 181 (7 July 1584), in a letter to Lipsius: ‘Nunc totus in Athenaeo est’. The notes on Athenaeus, as well as others on Gregory of Nazianzus and Plutarch, were in Leuven, according to L. Roersch ‘Lievens’ (as in n. 20), 127–8. I have not been able to check whether these notes are still extant. 50 On Modius see P. Lehmann, Franciscus Modius als Handschriftenorscher (Munich, 1908). Pasquali, Storia (as in n. 7), 43–71 discusses the work of Carrion and Modius. W. Ehlers and G. Liberman have recently published a fragment of the important manuscript which Carrion used for his edition of Valerius Flaccus. This discovery confirms the general accuracy of his collations: see Valerius Flaccus, Argonautiques, ed. G. Liberman (Paris, 1997), i, pp. lxxi–xc, with bibliography; C. Valeri Flacci Argonauticon liber VII, ed. A. Perutelli (Florence, 1997), 71–81. On Carrion’s collations see also P. R. Taylor, ‘The Authority of the Codex Carrionis in the Ms-Tradition of Valerius Flaccus’, Classical Quarterly, ns 39 (1989), 451–71. F. Hurka, Textkritische Studien zu Valerius Flaccus

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Modius collated several important manuscripts from the Cologne cathedral library, before they were dispersed or lost.51 His philological programme sounds very much like a continuation of Vettori’s, insisting on the importance of collations and mistrusting conjectural emendation.52 Livineius too, as far as we know, worked only on texts for which he had new manuscript evidence, either directly or through someone else’s collations. In his study of Propertius, he revised the notes he took from a Vatican manuscript of that author,53 made use of manuscript readings published by Modius,54 and collated a manuscript owned by Johannes Post(h)ius (1537–97).55 Livineius’ notes on the Latin elegists appeared only in 1621.56 For his work on Silius Italicus’ Punica, he made use of readings from the Cologne manuscript of Silius (C), now lost, relying on the accounts published by Carrion and Modius. The importance of Livineius’ work on Latin poetry received full recognition only recently.57 By using a siglum for the readings of the manuscript,58 Livineius is more accessible to a modern reader than Modius or Carrion.59 (Stuttgart, 2003), questions the validity of Carrion’s testimony, but see V. Roggen in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 18 March 2005 (http:ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2005-03-18 html) 51 Lehmann, Modius (as in n. 50), 93. 52 Modius, Novantiquae lectiones (as in n. 34), 119 vents his anger against those ‘qui sola ariolandi fiducia nitentes scriptorem aliquem in integrum restituendum suscipiunt’. I. Bisonneirus (quoted in Grafton, Scaliger (as in n. 2), 184) reports that ‘Vettori argued that one should rarely or never depart from authority. Conjectures, like false witnesses . . . should be completely abhorred.’ 53 Livineius calls the manuscript ‘nec antiquus nec probus’. The manuscript has not been identified. 54 Lehmann (as in n. 50), 137; cf. Modius, Novantiquae lectiones (as in n. 34), 80–6. Livineius worked on Propertius from 1582 until at least 1592: see Battezzato (as in n. 12), 327 n. 17; Gysens, Gedenkschriften (as in n. 20), 27–28. 55 The manuscript is now at Groningen, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit 159: J. L. Butrica, The Manuscript Tradition of Propertius (Toronto, 1984), 152–3 and 234–5. 56 See Caii Valerii Catulli, Albii Tibulli, Sexti Aurelii Propertii, quae extant, cum elegantissimis Joannis Livinei notis numquam antehac editis . . . [ed. J. Gebhardus] (Frankfurt: Wechel, 1621), and Gaisser, ‘Catullus’ (as in n. 4), 279–80. 57 See Silius Italicus, Punica, ed. I. Delz (Stuttgart, 1987), pp. lxii–lxiii. 58 Delz (ibid., p. lxii) reports Livineius’ note on Sil. It. 1. 1 from the 1543 edition, Wolfenbu¨ttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Gud. lat. 8: ‘C membranas notat quae Coloniae in aede summa, p. coniecturas, P editionem Parisiensem cum Marsi scholiis [S. Colinaeus, 1531], L Lugdunensem Seb. Gryphii [1547]’. Of C Livineius says: ‘citat Modius sparsim Novantiquis [ ¼ Novantiquae lectiones (as in n. 34)] et Emendat. libris Carrion [ ¼ L. Carrion, Emendationum et observationum liber primus ad V. Cl. Claudium Puteanum and Emendationum et observationum liber secundus ad V. Cl. Nicolaum Fabrum (Paris: apud Ae. Beysium, 1583)]’. Reconstructing the original collation of C is not an easy task: see H. Blass, ‘Die Textesquellen des Silius Italicus’, Jahrbu¨cher fu¨r classische Philologie, 8. Supplementband (1875–6), 159–250, at 187–216; Pasquali, Storia (as in n. 7), 68–70; Delz, Silius (as in n. 57), pp. liv–lxiv. 59 On the vague terminology of Carrion and Modius see Pasquali, Storia (as in n. 7), 70.


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It is not clear whether Livineius meant to publish the Latin elegists and Silius at that stage or whether he was planning to do more work on these authors. The extant material is detailed enough for printing a text with variant readings and short textual notes, but does not offer much in the way of exegesis. We have evidence that he worked on a number of other authors as well.60 The Plantin press had not published his translations of Byzantine authors, and Livineius might have lost the self-confidence that was needed to embark on a large research project. Be that as it may, he wrote a short funerary poem in Latin (22 lines) on the death of Christophe Plantin.61 Staying on good terms with the Plantin firm was a good idea. They published Livineius’ most important work: the Panegyrici veteres. Livineius had new manuscript evidence for this edition. Torrentius owned a manuscript of the work,62 as well as a copy of Beatus Rhenanus’ edition with collation notes made by Carolus Langius.63 Livineius also refers to a collation made by Franciscus Modius of a manuscript now lost.64 The manuscript evidence used by Livineius and his conjectures made this edition a standard text, still indispensable for modern editors. In these years, Livineius also had unexpected access to important sources for the text of Arnobius’ Adversus nationes. Carrion died in the summer of 1595,65 and Livineius inherited a collation of this very rare and very corrupt text. More importantly, Carrion also left him a manuscript of Arnobius. As Scaliger said, Carrion ‘est doctus sed 60 See Battezzato, ‘Marginalia’ (as in n. 12), 329, Gysens, NBW (as in n. 20), 543–4; Gysens, Gedenkschriften (as in n. 20), 44–5. H.-J. van Dam, ‘The Coming of the Silvae to the Netherlands’, in F. Delarue, S. Georgacopolou, P. Laurens, and A.-M. Taisne (eds.), Epicedion: Hommage a` P. Papinius Statius (Poitiers, 1996), 315–25 at 319–20 refers to Livineus’ notes on Statius (Bernaert’s 1595 edition, now Leiden, Leiden UL, Shelfmark 757 F 15) and on Seneca’s tragedies (edition of Fabricius, s.d., but preface dated 1565, Leiden UL, shelfmark 756 G 18). 61 See Ioannis Bochii urbi Antverpiensi a secretis Epigrammata funebria ad Christophori Plantini Architypographi Regii Manes (Antwerp: apud viduam et I. Moretum, 1590). 62 Torrentius, Correspondance (as in n. 21), i. 412–13 (8 Sept. 1585). This manuscript (‘V’ in Livineius’ edition) is now Bruxellensis 10026–32. For the identification, see Battezzato, ‘Marginalia’ (as in n. 12), 329 nn. 26 and 28. On the study of the Panegyrici in the 16th c. see also J. Delatour, Les Livres de Claude Dupuy: Une bibliothe`que humaniste au temps des guerres de religion (Paris, 1998), 75–6. 63 XII Panegyrici Veteres, ad antiquam qua editionem, qua scripturam infinitis locis emendati, aucti, Iohannes Livineius Belga Gandensis recensebat (Antwerp: ex officina Plantiniana apud I. Moretum, 1599), 6. 64 Livineius’ report is our only source: XII Panegyrici Latini, ed. D. Lassandro (Turin, 1992), p. xv and n. 32. 65 Cf. W. Po ¨ kel, Philologisches Schriftsteller-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1882), 42; Lehmann, Modius (as in n. 50), 131 (17 Aug. 1595).

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summus fur librorum . . . Lipsius l’appelle Stellio.’66 Carrion had acquired the Arnobius manuscript from Modius, under the pretence of borrowing it. Modius, however, had obtained it in much the same way.67 Livineius was supposed eventually to return the book to Modius,68 but Modius died in 1597.69 Livineius finished collating the manuscript and wrote extensive notes on the text. His edition, had it been published, would have surpassed all previous ones for accuracy and completeness in reporting manuscript evidence.70

3. LIVINEIUS’ ARNOBIUS: SIGLA, COLLATIONS, AND CONJECTURES We shall now examine Livineius’ editorial practice and compare it with those of his contemporaries, focusing on his work on Arnobius and Minucius Felix. We should remember that the textual tradition of these two authors is identical. The Octavius happened to be copied after the seventh (and last) book of Arnobius, and became book 8 of Arnobius in the manuscripts. Neither Faustus Sabaeus (1543) nor Sigismundus Gelenius (1546) corrected this mistake, which was clarified only in 1560.71 66 J. Scaliger, Scaligerana, ou Bon Mots . . . de J. Scaliger, avec des notes de Mr. Le Fevre et de Mr. de Colomies (Cologne, 1695), 81–2. 67 Modius acquired the manuscript at some point after 1580: Lehmann (as in n. 50), 130. Carrion, Emendationum liber secundus (as in n. 58), 38 and 52 quotes readings 68 Cf. Livineius’ note reported below, n. 79. from it. 69 Cf. Lehmann, Modius (as in n. 50), 28. 70 L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (3rd edn., Oxford, 1991), 145 record a similar, earlier, case: Politian collated both the manuscripts on which the text of Apicius is based. 71 Cf. Arnobii Disputationum aduersus gentes libri octo, nunc primum in lucem editi [ed. F. Sabaeus] (Rome: F. Priscianese; dedication to Francis I dated ‘cal. Septembris MDXLIII’; papal privilege and colophon dated 1542); Arnobii Disputationum aduersus gentes libri VIII. nunc demum sic accurati, ut ab eruditis sine ulla offensatione et cum maiore lectionis operae pretio cognosci possint. Accessit index eorum quae notatu digna sunt [ed. S. Gelenius] (Basle: H. Froben and N. Episcopius, 1546); M. Minucii Felicis, Romani olim causidici, Octavius, . . . restitutus a Fr. Bald[uino] (Heidelberg: L. Lucius, 1560). Balduinus stresses his discovery in the preface. Other scholars had already suspected the truth in 1559: Minucius Felix, Octavius, ed. B. Kytzler (Leipzig, 1982), p. v. On Gelenius (Sigmund Gehlen/Zikmund Hruby´ z Jelenı´: 1498–1554) see Maillard, Kecskeme´ti, and Portalier (as in n. 13), 201, and P. Petitmengin, ‘Un ami de Melanchthon: Sigismundus Gelenius, e´diteur et traducteur des textes classiques et patristiques’, in G. Frank, T. Leinkauf, and M. Wriedt (eds.), Die Patristik in der fru¨hen Neuzeit: Die Relektu¨re der Kirchenva¨ter in den Wissenschaften des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart–Bad Cannstatt, 2005), 65–92.


3.1

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Sigla and Collations

The use of sigla for designating manuscripts or editions dates back to the end of the eighth century72 and was common in the Renaissance.73 It is interesting to note that, in his collations of Euripides, Livineius used a single siglum for a group of manuscripts, as if they were a family. He used the siglum V when he only had one Vatican manuscript, but in the plays where he had two Vatican manuscripts, V indicated their agreement,74 and if a third manuscript was available, Livineius adopted a special symbol for it. In Hecuba, Orestes, and Phoenissae the manuscripts designated by V share many readings,75 whereas the text of the third manuscript (Vat. gr. 909) is markedly different. This system had two drawbacks: the same symbol referred to different manuscripts in different tragedies;76 moreover, Livineius had to use Vy, and Vz to distinguish particular readings of the V manuscripts, and the similarity of the symbols caused some mistakes.77 He later abandoned this system, and resorted to the common practice of designating each manuscript with a single letter. He adhered to it in his notes on Propertius, Silius Italicus, Arnobius, and the Panegyrici.78 On the first page of his copy of Arnobius, Livineius states that he had three sources: manuscripts P and L, and the editio Romana R.79 72 See Pasquali, Storia (as in n. 7), 155 n. 2; M. Gorman, ‘Theodulf of Orle áns and the Exegetical Miscellany in Paris. lat. 15679’, Revue beńe´dictine, 109 (1999), 278–323 at 279–82. On medieval editions see G. C. Alessio, ‘Edizioni medievali’, in G. Cavallo, C. Leonardi, and E. Menesto` (eds.), Lo spazio letterario del medioevo: 1. Il medioevo latino. III. La ricezione del testo (Rome, 1995), 29–58. 73 See S. Rizzo, Il lessico filologico degli umanisti (Rome, 1973), 164, 168, and 177; Kenney, Text (as in n. 1), 8; Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes (as in n. 70), 145; Timpanaro, Genesi (as in n. 4), 24–5 n. 16; Delatour, Livies (as in n. 62), 70; for the 17 c. see e.g. Heinsius in F. Munari, ‘Manoscritti ovidiani di N. Heinsius’, Studi italiani di filologia classica, 29 (1957), 98–114. 74 Cf. Lloyd-Jones and Wilson, Sophoclea (as in n. 11), 274; Battezzato, ‘Marginalia’ (as in n. 12), 330–1. 75 Cf. Battezzato, ibid., 335. Both these manuscripts show affiliations with the x-class. 76 In Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenissae Vy ¼ Vat. gr. 52; Vz ¼ unidentified Vatican MS; V ¼ Vat. gr. 52 þ unidentified Vatican MS; special symbol ¼ Vat. gr. 909. In Medeia, Hippolytus: Vy ¼ Vat. gr. 910; Vz ¼ Vat. gr. 909; V ¼ Vat. gr. 909 and 910. In Alcestis, Andromacha, Rhesus, Troades: V ¼ Vat. gr. 909. 77 The mistakes often involve using V when only one manuscript had the reported reading: Battezzato, ‘Marginalia’ (as in n. 12), 338–9. 78 Cf. Delz, Silius (as in n. 57), p. lxii. 79 He writes in the margins of Gelenius’ edition (see the title in n. 71 above), kept in the British Library (C.61.d.5), on p. 7: ‘Decedens Lud. Carrio testamento mihi legauit / Arnobiu(m) suu(m) edit. Romanae cu(m) P collatu(m). Itaque / a pag. 44 uacabit hoc signu(m). A qua item / deinceps L citabimus fide nostra. na(m) id ipsi / diligenter

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Manuscript P corresponds to Par. lat. 1661, and is given the siglum P in modern editions. Livineius reports P from Carrion’s collation.80 L corresponds to Brux. 10846–10847, and is called B in modern editions. Livineius reports the Bruxellensis in part from Carrion’s notes, and in part from his own collation.81 In 1598 Livineius restored the order of the sheets of the Bruxellensis.82 After his death, the Bruxellensis was bought by the Jesuits of Antwerp, along with Livineius’ book.83 Most scholars assume that the Bruxellensis is a copy of P.84 It is occasionally useful when P’s original readings have been altered; it also offers some easy corrections.85 Le Bonniec, in his edition of book 1 of Arnobius, systematically reports the readings of the Bruxellensis. A collation of the text of the Bruxellensis for the other books has not been published. tractauimus, sub/missu(m) ab executoribus iussu testato/ris, reddendum tamen ubi eo / usi essem(us) Fra(n)c. Modio, qui id / Carrioni procurauerat’. The sentence ‘Itaque / a pag. 44 uacabit hoc signu(m)’ is unclear. Livineius reports numerous readings from P for every book, and Carrion was his only source for them. I take the sentence to refer to Carrion’s collation of manuscript L: Carrion had collated L as far as page 44 of his copy of the ‘Roman edition’. Livineius, further down, adds: ‘R editionem Roma/na(m) p. coniecturas notat, / P Regiae prope Parisios / bibliothecae exe(m)plar / L Luneburgense / tractatu(m) a Carrio/ne cu(m) cura utru(m)que.’ 80 Manuscript P has notes in a 16th-c. hand which takes readings from the editions of Gelenius (as in n. 71) and that of Dirk Canter: Arnobii Disputationum aduersus gentes libri septem, recogniti et aucti. Ex bibliotheca Theodori Canteri, cuius etiam notae adiectae sunt (Antwerp: C. Plantin, 1582). Dirk (Theodorus Canterus, 1545–1617) was the brother of Willem Canter. The author of the notes on manuscript P has not been identified, but it is earlier than Scaliger’s collation of c.1598: Arnobii Adversus nationes libri 7, ed. A. Reifferscheid (CSEL 4; Vienna, 1875), pp. xi–xii; Arnobe, Contre les gentils. Livre I, ed. H. Le Bonniec (Paris, 1982), 98. It is also earlier than Carrion’s collation. At 4. 30. 5 Livineius reports the reading of the 16th-c. correction as coming from P (‘dissita distantiaque P, diis sit adstantia quae L’ ( ¼ Bruxellenis); P originally read diis sit adstantiaquae). Carrion already 81 See n. 79 above. found the correction when he collated the manuscript. 82 He wrote on the manuscript: ‘Iohannes Liuineius, cathedralis Antwerp. Can(oni)cus et Cantor, aliquot pagellis perturbatum codicem in ordinem componebat. M.D.XCVIII.’: cf. Le Bonniec, Arnobe (as in n. 80), 99; Y.-M. Duval, ‘Sur la biographie et les manuscrits d’Arnobe de Sicca’, Latomus, 45 (1986), 69–99 at 86. 83 For the story of the manuscript, cf. Lehmann, Modius (as in n. 50), 130–1 and Le Bonniec, Arnobe (as in n. 80), 100. 84 Reifferscheid, Adversus nationes (as in n. 80), p. viii; Duval, ‘Biographie’ (as in n. 82), 79–80; 85–9. 85 See the cases listed in Minucius Felix, Octavius, ed. J. Beaujeu (Paris, 1964), pp. xcix–cii; Le Bonniec, Arnobe (as in n. 80), 100. Le Bonniec, 99 (with bibliography) dates B to the 11th c., Lehmann, Modius (as in n. 50), 131 to the 12th. P is dated to the 9th c. Sabaeus, Adversus gentes (as in n. 71) sig. a iiv stated ‘iure belli meus est Arnobius, quem e media barbarie non sine dispendio, et discrimine eripuerim’. This means (Reifferscheid, Adversus nationes (as in n. 80), p. vii) that the manuscript came from Switzerland or Germany; B, a copy of P, was in Lu¨neburg, and it is likely that P was in Germany too, when Sabaeus found it (Lehmann, ibid.). B. Bischoff (apud Duval, ‘Biographie’ (as in n. 82), 84) states that P is written in a north Italian hand.


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The ‘editio Romana’ (R) probably corresponds to that published by Ursinus in 1583.86 I consider it certain that Livineius used Ursinus’ edition. He reports a large number of conjectures that are also found in the margins of Ursinus, marking them with the siglum ‘p.’.87 He makes no explicit reference to Ursinus, but it is unlikely that such a large number of identical conjectures could have been proposed independently.88 Sixteenth-century scholars were not aware that P was the manuscript used by Sabaeus for the editio princeps.89 Livineius relied on Carrion’s collation of P, and realized that it was important to record the differences of R against Gelenius, as the text of P was likely to be the same as that of R, if Carrion recorded no variant readings.

3.2

Conjectures

On the first page of his annotated Arnobius, Livineius tells us that ‘p. conjecturas notat’.90 The symbol ‘p.’ also appears in the notes on Sophocles, Euripides, and Silius Italicus. Lloyd-Jones and Wilson assumed that he meant ‘conjecture’ in the modern sense of the word.91 86 Arnobii disputationum adversus gentes libri septem, M. Minucii Felicis Octavius, Romana editio posterior et emendatior [ed. F. Ursinus ] (Rome: D. Basa, 1583). 87 See e.g. 2. 7. 1 primum aeque ipsi, 2. 10. 1 patres sectarum, 2. 10. 1 numeros coire, 2. 11. 2 Vos Plotino, vos Cronio, 2. 11. 7 scitis et praeceptionibus, 2. 12. 1 argutias profertis, 2. 16. 13 corporibus exemptae, 2. 17. 5 excudederent navitate. Et tamen. I would also like to draw attention to Min. Fel. 8. 3 consulte] inconsulte, a conjecture which is ignored by modern editors: the speaker is contrasting Protagoras, who is only ‘ill-advised’, with the atheists Theodorus and Diagoras, who are impious. 88 The main text of Ursinus is very similar to that of Sabaeus’ editio princeps (1543) (as in n. 71), and it is possible, but less likely, that Carrion had used Sabaeus for his collation. Ursinus occasionally prints conjectures in his main text (cf. below, x5.1), but I have not found cases where Livineius reports a reading of R that is compatible only with the text of Sabaeus. In some cases, Livineius reports the conjectural reading of the main text of Ursinus with the siglum ‘p.’, rather than with R (2. 15. 1 deo, rerum principi, 2. 16. 13 animantia dicimur, 6. 13.2 Cratinae meretricis), but he may simply have forgotten to add the siglum R. 89 Scaliger collated P and knew that it had been given to Franc ¸ois I by the Pope, but apparently did not realize that P had been used for the editio princeps. Cf. Scaliger, Scaligeriana (as in n. 66), 33: ‘Arnobii MS Sancti non boni. Unus Regius quem Papa misit, alter Romae, sed Romana editio est optima . . . . Le plus bel exemplaire est celuy que le Pape donna a` François Primier.’ Note that Sabaeus’ 1543 edition (as in n. 71) is dedicated to François I: ‘Arnobius ad te Rex Regum Maxime accedere festinat . . . qualem enim docti viri e manibus meis vix extorsere, sponte, et lubens maiestati tuae . . . dedico et dono’ (sig. aiir–v). The binding proves that Henry II (king from 1547) owned the manuscript (Le Bonniec, Arnobe (as in n. 80), 96; Duval, ‘Biographie’ (as in n. 82), 78– 9), but Scaliger’s testimony would date the gift of the manuscript to the years 1543–6. 90 Similarly in his notes on Silius Italicus: Blass (as in n. 58), 199; Delz (as in n. 57), p. lxii; Battezzato, ‘Marginalia’ (as in n. 12), 340. 91 Lloyd-Jones and Wilson, Sophoclea (as in n. 11), 275.

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However, it can be shown that what Livineius meant by ‘conjecture’ is in fact ‘reading to be adopted as correct’. The symbol ‘p.’ is often used for readings which have manuscript support, according to Livineius’ collations, and in places where it would have been very difficult to suspect a corruption and guess the correct reading.92 The abbreviation ‘p.’ corresponds to ‘puto’ or ‘quod verum puto’. In his notes on Propertius Livineius uses these formulae, along with the simple ‘p.’, to approve either of a manuscript reading or of a conjecture by himself or other critics.93 Politian and other scholars used the abbreviations c’, co, ce ( ¼ corrigo, corrige) in their collations to mark a reading they approved of, irrespective of its origin or manuscript support.94 Livineius rarely records conjecturers’ names but refers to scholars who made conjectures on Arnobius in miscellaneous works, e.g. Lipsius and Gulielmus.95 He leaves nameless a large number of conjectures found in Ursinus’ edition. The same can be observed of his notes on Euripides. This was by no means unusual in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: if an emendation was printed in a previous edition, it was often considered unnecessary to record the name of its author.96 92 For all this see Battezzato, ‘Marginalia’ (as in n. 12), 339–43. Van Dam, ‘Coming’ (as in n. 60), 520, examined the possibility that the notes marked with ‘p.’ were readings taken from a manuscript or an early edition, but suggested as a ‘provisional conclusion’ that ‘ ‘‘p.’’ means puto or praefero, and that the conjectures are his [¼ Livineius’] own’. This is close to the interpretation I consider correct. S. Gysens, in a personal communication, notes that ‘in another book which L. annotated during his stay in Rome, we find the same system: see Claudii Claudiani carmina recensuit T. Birt . . . (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, 10; Berlin, 1892), p. lxxxv (this editor seems to consider the ‘p.’ variant readings as taken from a manuscript). One already finds this kind of sigla in a manuscript where L. marked variant readings shortly after he graduated from Leuven University; see J. van den Gheyn, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothe`que Royale de Belgique (Brussels, 1902), ii, no. 1197’. 93 See the examples collected in Battezzato, ‘Marginalia’ (as in n. 12), 341 n. 79. Cf. the instances of ‘puto legendum’ collected by Rizzo, Lessico (as in n. 73), 157 and 273. In the notes on Propertius, Livineius also occasionally uses ‘placet’ or ‘non placet’: see Battezzato, 94 Rizzo, ibid., 274. ibid., 342 n. 80. 95 On Arnobius 7. 40. 3 Livineius refers to Iani Gulielmi Plautinarum Quaestionum Commentarius . . . (Paris: Ae. Beysius, 1583), 99. Sabaeus, Gelenius, and Ursinus (in the text) read surrepto but Ursinus has the conjecture subrecto in the margin. Livineius writes ‘surrecto p.’. He later added a reference to the Bruxellensis, writing above the line, and using a different ink, and adding ‘Idem Gulielmio visum Plautinis quaest. 99’. surrecto is in fact the reading of P. See ‘Wilhelm, Johann’ (1555–84) in Maillard, Kecskeme´ti, and Portalier (as in n. 13), 429. This example shows that Livineius wrote his notes at different stages. 96 Brink, ‘Lipsius’ (as in n. 3), 35 has a similar observation about Lipsius’ edition of Tacitus, even if he means it sarcastically: ‘a correct or probable emendation in an earlier edition as a rule helped to disqualify, rather than qualify, its author for mention’.


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4. APPARATUS CRITICI , CR I TI CA L T EXT S, AN D EARLY EDITIONS What differentiates Renaissance editions from modern ones? Many modern editions of classical texts are designed for students or the general reader, and do not have the space or the need to inform on the sources of the text. Translators base their work on a critical edition, but occasionally depart from it, and do not always have a list of divergences. In this section, I will point out some of the ways in which modern editions resemble Renaissance ones, in spite of vast progress in methodology, accessibility of sources, and book production. Renaissance editions were in general quite reasonable and useful; what validates present-day non-scholarly editions is the reference to a true critical text—which is, however, a very rare event for many texts. In many cases the ‘critical text’ is a century old, or more.

4.1

Stemma and the Selection of Manuscripts

If we look at recent editions of classical texts, we will find that editors base their choices between readings on style, metre, and sense rather than on the stemmatic position of the witnesses that carry them. In his Texts and Transmission L. D. Reynolds presents a survey of ‘134 separate traditions’ of Latin authors (p. vii): the contributors offer only forty stemmata, plus one very tentative one,97 and some five others, suggested as alternatives.98 Even if we make allowance for traditions that have only one or two witnesses, and cases where a stemma is implied by what is said,99 very often stemmatic rules cannot be used to decide on a reading. G. B. Alberti has argued as much, showing that strict stemmatic rules apply to few manuscript traditions of Greek authors, and even fewer Latin ones.100 Not only that. Chance still plays a role in the selection of manuscripts. R. D. Dawe declares that his choice of manuscripts of Aeschylus to 97 L. D. Reynolds (ed.), Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 98 Ibid. 155, 166, and 295–8. 1983), 29. 99 Timpanaro, Genesi (as in n. 4), 69–73 pointed out that Lachmann’s presentation of the manuscript tradition of Lucretius was partly inconsistent precisely because he omitted to draw the stemma. 100 G. B. Alberti, Problemi di critica testuale (Florence, 1979), esp. 92–4. For a spirited defence of an aspect of the stemmatic method see M. D. Reeve, ‘Eliminatio codicum descriptorum: A Methodological Problem’ in J. N. Grant (ed.), Editing Greek and Latin Texts (New York, 1989), 1–35, and the bibliography in Reeve, ‘Cuius in usum?’ (as in n. 6), 196 nn. 6–7.

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collate was based ‘partly on logic . . . but also partly on no more scientific principles than suspicion, caprice, and the attractiveness of the cities in which they were located’.101 The picture does not change for Sophocles. Out of circa 190 manuscripts only twenty or so have been collated in detail.102 Even if we have some information about the remaining 170,103 the importance of some neglected manuscripts has been recently made apparent,104 and there are at least ten other interesting ones that have never been collated in detail. ‘Here we are, 600 years after the Renaissance, and still so much to be done on a central author.’105 Contemporary editors, when faced with a large textual tradition, have to be pragmatic in their choices. In the Renaissance, chance played a larger part in the selection of manuscript sources, especially as many libraries did not give easy access to readers and almost no catalogues were available.106 What definitely differentiates contemporary ‘eclectic’ editions from Renaissance ones is the method of selecting manuscripts. Exhaustive lists of manuscripts, library catalogues, precise dating of manuscripts by palaeographical and codicological methods, examination of colometry for poetic texts: these are some of the factors that allow editors to choose the ‘best’ sources. Renaissance scholars were at the mercy of chance. If the manuscript used for the vulgate was ‘good’, their work was so much more likely to be of lasting value, and vice versa. Renaissance editors are 101 R. D. Dawe, The Collation and Investigation of Manuscripts of Aeschylus (Cambridge, 1964), 16. See also J. Diggle, The Textual Tradition of Euripides’ Orestes (Oxford, 1991), 66; Reeve, ‘Cuius in usum? ’ (as in n. 6), 201 and 203. 102 See mainly R. D. Dawe, Studies on the Text of Sophocles (Leiden 1973–8). 103 See A. Turyn, Studies in the Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Sophocles (Urbana, Ill., 1952). 104 See Sophoclis Fabulae, ed. H. Lloyd-Jones and N. G. Wilson (Oxford, 1990), p. viii on the manuscript K, and my contribution to F. Ferrari et al., ‘In margine al testo di Sofocle’, Rivista di filologia e istruzione classica, 120 (1992), 388–410, esp. 390–2; M. Papathomopoulos, ‘De quelques manuscrits de Sophocle revisite´s’, in A. Machin and L. Perneé (eds.), Sophocle: Le texte, les personnages (Aix en Provence, 1993), 75–94; L. Battezzato, ‘I codici Laur. C. S. 66 þ C. S. 139, Urb. Gr. 141 þ Ambr. 441 (H 77 sup.) e la tradizione manoscritta di Sofocle’, Prometheus, 22 (1996), 29–34; on related problems in Sophocles see M. Hecquet-Devienne, ‘Une alternative au de´bat entre ‘‘stemmatistes’’ et ‘‘contaminationnistes’’: L’analyse archeólogique des textes dans les manuscrits grecs de re´fe´rence’, Lexis, 19 (2001), 133–40. On Latin authors, see Reeve, ‘Cuius in usum? ’ (as in n. 6), 197 and 203. 105 M. L. West, ‘Tragica II’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 25 (1978), 106–22 at 108, with a list of unexplored manuscripts—mostly still unexplored. 106 Kenney, Text (as in n. 1), 75–6; Canfora, Fozio (as in n. 7), 138. Grafton, ‘The Vatican Library’ (as in n. 31), 38–42 stresses the positive role of the Vatican library. Canfora’s book narrates in detail the difficulties 16th-c. editors had in gaining access to manuscripts: scholars knew that the codices of Photius in the Marciana were the best, but these manuscripts were rarely available, and only through copies.


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at their best when the textual tradition is very narrow. In these cases, progress made in later editions is largely due to conjectural emendations, the field where Renaissance scholars excelled. In the last two centuries, new successful conjectures were due to the ingenuity of exceptional scholars, but they were also made possible by new and better understanding of metre and linguistics.107 For instance, Renaissance scholars made a greater contribution to the text of Euripides’ Helen than to that of Phoenissae. Diggle, in the apparatus to Helen 1–400, mentions 178 conjectures, eighteen of which were made before the eighteenth century (10%);108 in his apparatus to Phoenissae 1–400, the conjectures made before the eighteenth century are three out of 163 (2%).109 The Aldine text of the Helen was based on an apograph of the best (and probably unique) independent manuscript of the play.110 Early editions of Phoenissae were based on faulty manuscripts,111 and scholars had to work very hard to restore what was in fact transmitted by the ‘best’ sources.112 107 On the number of likely or successful conjectural emendations in Aeschylus and their chronological distribution over the centuries see the remarks by V. Di Benedetto, ‘Sul testo dell’Agamennone di Eschilo’, Rivista di filologia e istruzione classica, 120 (1992), 129–53 at 152–3. It is important to note that G. Hermann (1772–1848), one of the most successful conjecturers on tragic texts, did not have a clear concept of recensio, and based his work on the old-fashioned concepts of emendatio ope codicum and ope ingenii: Timpanaro, Genesi (as in n. 4), 35 and 42. On recensio and emendatio in Timpanaro’s work, and on his evaluation of conjectures see the important remarks by Di Benedetto, ‘Filologia’ (as in n. 4), 19–32. 108 See the following readings: Aldina 131, 179, 183, 283, 306; Hervagiana secunda 109; Commeliniana 282; Portus 48, 100; Muret 201; Scaliger 131, 277, 352; Sigonius 378; Stephanus 298, 302, 349, 389. Eleven of these conjectures are accepted by Diggle in his text. G. Hermann is mentioned four times. 109 See Brodaeus 308, W. Canter 226, Hemsterhuys 370. Diggle prints the last two in his text. G. Hermann is mentioned twenty times. 110 Kannicht, Euripides, Helena, ed. R. K. (Heidelberg, 1969) i. 110 argues, with Kirchhoff, that the Aldine text of Helen was based on Par. gr. 2817, a copy of manuscript L. M. Magnani, La tradizione manoscritta degli Eraclidi di Euripide (Bologna, 2000), 207–33 argues that the Aldine was not based directly on Par. gr. 2817, but on a copy of it, now lost. 111 Paris. suppl. gr. 212 and 393, with readings from at least three other manuscripts in Phoenissae, at least two in the Orestes: M. Sicherl, ‘Die Editio Princeps Aldina des Euripides und ihre Vorlagen’, in Rheinisches Museum, 118 (1975), 205–25; Euripides, Phoenissae, ed. D. J. Mastronarde (Leipzig, 1988), pp. xviii–xx, and Diggle, Tradition (as in n. 101), 72–3 with bibliography; at p. 159 Diggle lists the manuscripts that more often preserved the truth. 112 Mastronarde (as in n. 111), pp. xix–xx, lists the names of the scholars who first corrected some peculiar readings of the Aldine. Barnes and King have a large share of merit, primarily because they had access to new manuscript evidence. K. Matthiessen, Studien zur Textu¨berlieferung der Hekabe des Euripides (Heidelberg, 1974), 119 provides a similar, if more selective, list for Hecuba. Conjecturing what is transmitted is likelier when the manuscripts are very numerous, but it happens also in a very narrow manuscript tradition: cf. e.g. Brink, ‘Lipsius’ (as in n. 3), 37 n. 30.

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4.2

The Veneration for the editio princeps

If a Renaissance editor printed a large number of conjectures in the text, his work found less favour with subsequent editors. Arnobius is a case in point. Gelenius’ heavily emended text made sense in many passages where the vulgate did not, but other scholars preferred the editio princeps. Only Rene´ Laurent de la Barre and Dirk Canter used Gelenius as the basis for an edition.113 With hindsight, we can say that sticking to the editio princeps was eminently sensible in this case. From the perspective of sixteenth-century scholars, it was not absurd to do the same in the case of other writers too. It was reasonable to assume that editiones principes, especially Italian editions, were based on good manuscripts. Italy had (and still has) the best or only manuscripts of many important classical works, for instance Aeschylus and Euripides, the Digest, Cicero’s Brutus, De oratore, Ad familiares, and Tacitus.114 In the fifteenth century, scholars from northern Europe were dependent on Italian editions.115 Greek manuscripts arrived from Byzantium in Italy, and were difficult to find elsewhere in Europe.116 Aldus Manutius ‘was responsible for the first printing of nearly all the Greek authors’.117 Note also that for some Greek and Latin authors the editio princeps is still the only witness, as all manuscripts have disappeared.118 In the case of Arnobius, even Reifferscheid, the best modern editor along with Marchesi, gives all the readings of the princeps in the apparatus, because he thought there was some small chance that the princeps was based on a lost manuscript.119 113 See Opera Tertulliani et Arnobii . . . studio . . . Renati Laurenti de la Barre (Paris: G. Iulianus, 1580), 133–232 (second pagination). For D. Canter’s edn. see n. 80 above. 114 See e.g. R. Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne’ secoli XIV e XV (Florence, 1905), 183–213; Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes (as in n. 70), 137–9; Grafton, Scaliger (as in n. 2), 87; Lipsius as reported in Brink, ‘Lipsius’ (as in n. 3), 33 n. 9. Many of these important manuscripts came from libraries outside Italy (see e.g. Sabbadini, 211–13). 115 Cf. R. Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading 1450–1550 (Wiesbaden, 1967), 138– 40 and 144, repr. in A. Petrucci (ed.), Libri, editori e pubblico nell’Europa moderna (Bari, 1977), 25–7 and 34; see also J. M. Dureau, ‘Les premiers ateliers français’, in H.-J. Martin, R. Chartier, and J. P. Vivet (eds.), Histoire de l’e´dition française, i: Le livre conque´rant (Paris, 1982), 163–75 at 174; M. D. Feld, ‘The Early Evolution of the Authoritative Text’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 26 (1978), 81–111 at 89. 116 See in general N. Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance (London, 1992); M. Cortesi, ‘Umanesimo greco’, in Cavallo, Leonardi, and Menesto` (as in n. 72), 457–507 at 484–503. 117 Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes, (as in n. 70), 155. 118 Pasquali (as in n. 7), 98–101. 119 Arnobius, Adversus nationes l. vii, ed. C. Marchesi (2nd edn., Turin, 1953). B. Amata bases his very useful annotated translation on a Latin text he has made available online, revising Marchesi’s edition: see Arnobio, Difesa della vera religione, ed. and trans.


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This was especially the practice of scholars in France, Germany, and the Low Countries, regions which in the sixteenth century rivalled Italy and eventually surpassed it in the number of books published.120 First editions, we now know, were ‘printed from current humanist copies, the text of which represented a chance mixture of traditional readings with conjectural emendations’,121 but most scholars then had no means of acquiring information on the age of the manuscripts used for first editions, and assumed they were old and reliable. Renaissance scholars, not unreasonably, were very cautious in rejecting readings that had found their way into an editio princeps in favour of those in some other manuscript.122 The vulgate method had practical reasons too. When Scaliger prepared his first edition of Manilius (1579), he gave the printer a corrected copy of the edition by Nicolaus Pru¨ckner (published in 1533); for the second edition (1600), he corrected a copy of his own first edition.123 This procedure was common, and was probably meant to avoid the mistakes that would have occurred if the editor himself prepared a new manuscript copy of the text to be printed. Scaliger’s edition was vastly superior to Pruckner’s, but his editorial technique was not original.

4.3

The Critical Text

As Kenney notes, ‘until an appropriate vehicle, with its own style and idiom, could be devised for reporting the readings of the MSS—for B. Amata (Rome, 2000), and http://geocities.com/arnobius/index.html.3. Amata’s translation includes an updated bibliography. I follow his paragraph division. 120 See in general L. Febvre and H.-J. Martin, L’Apparition du livre (2nd edn., Paris, 1971), 258–81; H.-J. Martin, ‘Renouvellements et concurrence’, in Martin, Chartier, and Vivet (as in n. 115), 379–404 at 396; H.-J. Martin, ‘Classements et conjonctures’, 121 So e.g. Kenney, Text (as in n. 1), 4. ibid. 429–57 at 444. 122 A notable case where the princeps was superseded by a subsequent edition is Aeschylus. The 1557 edition by Victorius and Stephanus offered new material (a complete text of the Agamemnon), and a text based on ‘better’ manuscripts: see J. A. Gruys, The Early Printed Editions (1518–1664) of Aeschylus (The Hague, 1981), 77–96 and 229; Mund-Dopchie, Survie (as in n. 17), 124–49 and 425. On a similar process for Vergil, see M. Venier, Per una storia del testo di Virgilio nella prima eta` del libro a stampa (1469–1519) (Udine, 2001), 134–6. 123 See M. Manilii Astronomicon libri quinque, J. Scaliger recensuit ac pristino ordini suo restituit. Ejusdem J. Scaligeri commentarius in eosdem libros et castigationum explicationes (Paris: M. Patisson and R. Stephanus, 1579) and M. D. Reeve, ‘Scaliger and Manilius’, Mnemosyne, 33 (1980), 177–9 at 177. E. Stagni suggests to me that this choice, and the style of presentation of this edition, was determined by the typographer, M. Patisson, who also published Pithou’s editions of Petronius (see below, n. 165), and Scaliger’s Festus.

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communicating systematically the evidence on which the text rested— confusion and obscurity were inevitable.’124 The concept of apparatus criticus, however, involves two things: a set of conventions for presenting data about manuscripts and conjectures (sigla, abbreviations, references to other scholars) and the concept of a critical text. Modern editors aim at ‘ascertaining as exactly as possible what the authors wrote and defining the areas of uncertainty’.125 I am not sure that every Renaissance editor had this aim. They thought in more practical terms, and aimed at offering a readable text, with minimal corrections of ‘obvious’ mistakes, and notes enabling the reader to judge the more controversial cases. Editors knew that the ‘areas of uncertainty’ were very large: many passages were not clear. Oporinus admits that he had to print a number of unintelligible passages in his edition of Euripides: ‘nonnulla etiam in medio relinquere, melioris uidelicet exemplaris ope destitutos oportuit’.126 Feld notes that Aldus felt secure in his command of Latin texts, but expressed doubts about the absolute correctness of his Greek editions.127 Editors constantly complain about the lack of ‘good manuscripts’, and this is not a rhetorical topos: new manuscripts were being found all the time, and a truly definitive edition was not possible with what was available. Even now few scholars aim at printing ‘what the author wrote’, and ‘limiting the areas of uncertainty’. Those who publish classical texts in series other than Teubner, Bude´, or OCT often have aims similar to those of Renaissance scholars. Take, for instance, David Kovacs’s Loeb edition of Euripides. Kovacs is well aware that he is not always printing what Euripides wrote, and that he is not defining all the areas of uncertainty. His aim has been ‘to produce a text that is continuously readable, even in places where we cannot be absolutely certain of the precise wording’. He fills extensive lacunae, knowing that he might at best be conveying the gist of the lost passage; he also avoids obeloi, and tacitly prints a number of conjectures where the change ‘is very slight’. Still, Kovacs’s edition presupposes the existence of a truly critical edition for more exigent readers to fall back on:128 Diggle’s edition functions as some sort of 124

Kenney, Text (as in n. 1), 68. M. L. West, Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique Applicable to Greek and Latin Texts (Stuttgart, 1973), 8. 126 See Euripidis tragoediae octodecim (Basle: apud I. Hervagium, 1544), prefatory letter, fo. 3r. 127 See Feld, ‘Evolution’ (as in n. 115), 92 and 94. Some editors used an asterisk to mark corrupted passages: see W. Canter’s editions of Euripides (1571) and Aeschylus (1580); Kenney, Text (as in n. 1), 155 and n. 2. 128 That is Diggle’s edition: see Euripides, Cyclops, Aclestis, Medea, ed. D. Kovacs (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), 38. 125


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vulgate text. The same criteria are used in Goold’s Loeb edition of Manilius. Goold presupposes Housman’s text, does not print conjecturers’ names, and does not note in the apparatus ‘minute and obviously correct conjectures, made not later than the sixteenth century and universally accepted’.129 The same can be said of other series that publish classical texts with facing translations. ‘Upon opening a book, we can almost immediately classify it as a popular, student, or advanced text, solely on the basis of its typography and layout.’130 This is less obvious for Renaissance editions, but there are some clues. Editors sometimes draw attention to what sort of text they are trying to produce. Gelenius, for instance, has no textual notes, and states on the front page of his Arnobius that the book contains ‘the Case against the Pagans by Arnobius, in eight books, now finally [printed] with such diligent care that scholars can get to know them without offence and with greater profit in the reading’.131 To achieve this goal, Gelenius emended the text very heavily. The editio princeps was very close to the manuscript P, and its text was often unintelligible. Gelenius wanted to provide readers with a text they could make sense of. It was more like a Loeb than an OCT. Scholars who wanted to work on the text of Arnobius consulted the editio princeps (D. Canter, G. Stewech, D. Heraldus), or at least tried to do so (J. Meursius) (see below, x5.1).

4.4

The Invention of the Critical apparatus

Dirk Canter tried to make a scholarly edition using Gelenius’ edition as base-text.132 Here is a sample of his critical notes:133 34 Et in gratiam cum hominibus remissis offensionibus redire opinatis. ] Temere hunc locum corrupit Gelenius, homo alioqui doctissimus, sed in emendando nimium quantum sibi licentiae sumens. Alio enim et longe meliori verborum 129 Manilius, Astronomica, ed. G. P. Goold (Cambridge, Mass. etc., 1977), p. cxii; ‘obviously correct conjectures’ include a number of very clever and non-obvious sug130 Feld, ‘Evolution’ (as in n. 115), 84. gestions made by Scaliger. 131 Arnobii Disputationum aduersus gentes libri VIII. nunc demum sic accurati, ut ab eruditis sine ulla offensatione et cum maiore lectionis operae pretio cognosci possint. Note that Gelenius worked in printing firms correcting proofs: A. Grafton, ‘Correctores corruptores? Notes on the Social History of Editing’, in G. Most (ed.), Editing Texts. Texte edieren (Go¨ttingen, 1998), 54–76 at 61–3. Gelenius’ words can often be paralleled: most editions claim to be ‘more accurate’, ‘more correct’, or ‘fuller’ than earlier ones. Still, other editors are more cautious: see the titles of the editions by Ursinus (as in n. 86) and D. Heraldus: Arnobii disputationum adversus gentes libri septem, M. Minucij Felicis Octavius, editio noua, ad editionem Romanam expressa, quibusdam tamen in locis e ms. Reg. aucta et emendata, Desiderii Heraldi ad Arnobii libros VII animadversiones et castigationes (Paris: M. Orry, 1605). 132 See n. 80 above. 133 D. Canter, Arnobii (as in n. 80), 284–5.

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ordine hic locus exaratus legitur in Romano codice, hoc modo: Et in gratiam cum hominibus remini offensionibus redire sopitis [7. 36. 3] 37 Vti ad consules suaderet praesulem sibi displicuisse. ] Recte Lipsius noster ad consules vaderet [7. 39. 3] 38 Est cur ignoscere debeamus. ] Melius in Romano, est ut ignoscere debeamus [7. 42. 2] 39 Auersabili corpora foeditate deoneratis. ] In Romano codice est, deonerans; quam scripturam sequor [7. 45. 1]

If we look at Livineius’ collations, made against Gelenius’ edition, we find a much more concise presentation of the same evidence. Livineius underlines the letters for which he has a variant reading. We find: text remissis offensionibus redire opinatis suaderet cur deoneratis

margin mini sopi RL egregium nec video cur mutatur. ua, p. P Idem Lipsio uisum Epist. Quaest. iii epist. xv. ut R L rans p. R L

Livineius includes information about manuscripts L ( ¼ Bruxellensis) and P (from Carrion’s collation), and about Ursinus 1583 (R).134 The collation is analytical, extensive, and concisely presented. These conventions appear to have been in use since the time of Politian.135 Had they been printed, these collations would have looked like an apparatus criticus. This style of presentation, however, is extremely uncommon in sixteenth- or seventeenth-century editions. This is so for both cultural and typographical reasons. Many Renaissance scholars perceived sigla and line numbers as inelegant in published books.136 They preferred less concise systems of reference. In most cases, humanistic notes were printed as endnotes, and were not confined to reporting manuscript readings or conjectures. They often constituted a cross-breed of scholarly genres: collations, philological letters, treatises about grammar and 134 The notes are from pp. 272, 275, 277, 281. It is an easy inference that MS P agrees with R when Carrion/Livineius do not report a reading for P. This is the case for the readings of R reported above. Livineius is apparently careful in reporting R, not P, in these cases. The explicit report of P’s reading at 7. 39. 3 is, however, wrong: P reads 135 See x3.1, and Delatour, Livres (as in n. 62), 73. suaderet. 136 Kenney, Text (as in n. 1), 152–7.


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mythology. Hostility against an ‘algebraic’ system of reference was very pronounced in genres such as ‘philological letters’, the equivalent of modern articles and reviews.137 The rules of classical letter-writing dictated a certain disdain for minutiae, equated with elegance by Renaissance scholars. Some Plantin editions came very close to reproducing the appearance of collations138 but could not make full use of the margins, for reasons of space and typographical convenience. The mise en page of the editions was different from that of the collations. The ‘algebraic’ system of reference is not very practical unless the notes are printed on the same page as the text, and later editions, especially variorum editions, abandoned it. Endnotes were less practical for information in a compact form, while they gave scope for miscellaneous matter. 5. T HE EAR LY EDIT IO NS OF ARNO BIUS AND THE TYPOLOGY OF EARLY EDITIONS

5.1

Editions of Arnobius

We can see the different phases in the formation of an apparatus criticus if we look at the editions of Arnobius between 1543 and 1651. 1. Faustus Sabaeus publishes the editio princeps in 1543.139 He prints a text based on manuscript P. The editor states that he has corrected some passages with the help of H. Ferrarius and F. Priscianensis. Sabaeus did not include notes, but printed a list of errata. For the following editions, editors had no access to new manuscript evidence: 2. In 1546 Sigismundus Gelenius (Zikmund Hruby´ z Jelenı´) prints a ‘reading’ text, with some rewriting ope ingenii, to make difficult passages intelligible.140 He does not include textual notes of any sort, and inserts his conjectures directly in the text. The edition by La Barre141 is an in-folio reprint of Gelenius’ text, with some exegetical notes at the bottom of the page, but no comment on the text. 3. In 1582 Dirk Canter reprints Gelenius’ text with some modifications, inserting readings from the editio princeps.142 His textual and exegetical notes appear as endnotes. Marginal numbers signal the 137 139 142

138 Feld, ‘Evolution’ (as in n. 115), 104–8. Pasquali, Storia (as in n. 7), 76–7. 140 See n. 71 above. 141 See n. 113 above. See n. 71 above. See n. 80 above.

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presence of a note. Canter claims not to have inserted any conjectures in the text. In his notes he draws attention to passages where his text departs from that of Gelenius. 4. Ursinus (Fulvio Orsini) based his 1583 text on the editio princeps, but used unpublished notes of other scholars, especially Pedro Chacoń (1527–81),143 for conjectural emendations. He explains that he accepted in his text only the emendations ‘quae et multorum judicio probatae et sine ulla controversia verae visae essent’,144 relegating to the margins those that looked ‘non ita certae’. He does not give any indication about the authors of specific conjectures. Ursinus records far more suggestions than Canter. He also prints parallel passages in the margins. 5. In 1603 Elmenhorst (Geverhardus Elmenhorstius) prints the text of the princeps, ‘rarely’ (his word, in the preface) inserting readings from published collations or conjectures. He adds exegetical notes after the text, and then a section of variae lectiones. He gives sources for each reading (e.g. ‘R.C.’ ¼ Romanus Codex ¼ the editio princeps; ‘Gelenius’).145 For the following editions, the editors had access to new manuscript evidence, either directly, or through unpublished collations: 6. Stewech (Godescalchus Stewechius) had access to MS B.146 In the margins of his text he prints variant readings from it (siglum M.S.), and conjectural readings accompanied by scholars’ names (Ste(wech), Ursinus). He justifies his choices in a series of endnotes, reproduced in Salmasius’ edition (see below). 7. In 1605 Desiderius Heraldus makes it clear from the title that he is reproducing the text of the editio princeps, corrected with the help of readings from the Paris manuscript. Heraldus does not seem to have had direct access to the manuscript itself.147 143 Ursinus (as in n. 86). On Chaco ´ n see Maillard, Kecskeme´ti, and Portalier (as in n. 13), 112. v 144 Ursinus (as in n. 86): sig. a4 ; Nolhac, Bibliothe `que (as in n. 13), 48. 145 See Arnobii disputationum adversus gentes libri septem, quibus accedit eiusdem argumenti dialogus M. Minutii Felicis Octavius, G. Elmenhorst recensuit et notis illustravit (Hanau: Wechel, 1603). 146 Arnobii Disputationum aduersus gentes libri septem. Cum Godescalci Stewechii electis (Antwerp: I. Trognaesius, 1604). Stewech finished his edition in 1587, but the book was not published until after his death. 147 See n. 131 above. On Heraldus (Didier He ´rault, 1575-c.1649), see Maillard, Kecskeme´ti, and Portalier (as in n. 13), 232.


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After a period of competing editions, a summa of most of the important material published appeared: 8. Claudius Salmasius published a variorum edition in 1651. It includes a new text, and the notes of all the important commentators.148 Adversaria also appeared: 9. Some collections of textual notes were based on new manuscript evidence, and appeared in a miscellany.149 The first part of Joannes Meursius’ Criticus Arnobianus is a collection of textual notes, but it is not based on new manuscript evidence.150 In his Appendix, Meursius reports an extensive collation of manuscript P, with discussion of the text-critical implications of the new readings. The collation was made by Scaliger.151

5.2

Systems of Reference

We can see that many early editions of classical texts correspond to one or other of the types listed above. If we look at some other examples, we will see how accuracy in reporting variants is influenced by typographical conventions. The main problem was how to make precise reference to a word in the text.152 Prose texts were especially difficult. One possibility was to divide the text into small sections. This system was used for the 148 Arnobii Afri adversus Gentes libri VII. Cum recensione viri celeberrimi [i.e. Claude de Saumaise], & integris omnium commentariis [ed. Antonius Thysius] (Leiden: I. Maire, 1651). On Salmasius (1588–1653) see Maillard, Kecskeme´ti, and Portalier (as in n. 13), 382. 149 See e.g. Carrion, Emendationum liber secundus (as in n. 58), 38 and 52. 150 See Ioannis Meursii Criticus Arnobianus tributus in libros septem, item Hypocriticus Minutianus et excerpta Ms. Regii Parisiensis (Leiden: ex officina L. Elzeviri, 1598); see also the ‘editio altera et melior’ (1599), with the same title. On Joannes Meursius (Jan de Meurs, 1579–1639) see Maillard, Kecskeme´ti, and Portalier (as in n. 13), 304; V. Brown, ‘Cato, Marcus Porcius’, Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, iv (1980), 223–47 at 240; C. Ampolo, Storie greche (Turin, 1997), 21–2. On the scholarly genre adversaria and its vogue after the publication of Turne`be’s 1564 Adversaria see J.-M. Chatelain, ‘Les Recueils d’adversaria aux XVIe et XVIIe sie`cles: Des pratiques de la lecture savante au style de l’e´rudition’, in F. Barbier et al. (eds.), Le livre et l’historien: E´tudes offertes en l’honneur du Professeur Henri-Jean Martin (Geneva, 1997), 169–86. 151 From the 1609 auction catalogue of books owned by Scaliger we know that he annotated a copy of Gelenius’ 1546 edition: cf. R. Smitskamps, The Scaliger Collection . . . Supplement: Joseph Scaliger: A Bibliography 1850–1993, by A. Grafton and H. J. de Jonge (Leiden, 1993), 104. See also The Scaliger Collection, 19: Scaliger owned a copy of Elmenhorst’s edition (as in n. 145). See J. Bernays, Joseph Justus Scaliger (Berlin, 1855), 187 on the quarrel between Elmenhorst and Wower on Arnobius. 152 On reference systems in modern editions see Reeve, ‘Cuius in usum?’ (as in n. 6), 202.

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Bible, and for legal and theological texts in the Middle Ages.153 Aldus Manutius started the habit of leaving ‘white spaces’ in mid-line to mark sections in prose texts, a habit which later developed into paragraph divisions, especially under the influence of the editions published by Plantin.154 Aldus also experimented with a number of systems of reference for indexes and errata in his editions at a time when page numbering was not standard.155 In the sixteenth century, references to page and line number became standard, even for verse.156 This, however, meant that an editor preparing a manuscript for the press had no easy way of cross-referencing: in his 1554 edition of Catullus, Muret did not number the poems, or the lines, and had no way of referring to parallel passages, except by quotation, leaving it to the reader to locate the line.157 In the second half of the sixteenth century, the Plantin printing firm was at the forefront of innovation, introducing newer and more efficient systems of reference. There was an important field where a precise reference system was essential: censorship. The Index, published by Plantin in 1571,158 gives page references for the passages that are to be erased or blackened in printed books. If more than one edition of a book has appeared, the Index gives page numbers for all of them. It also transcribes the passage to be omitted, or, if this is too long, its incipit and explicit. The Plantin press was apparently the first to print continuous line 153 P. Stein, Regulae Iuris (Edinburgh, 1966), 115–16; M. A. and R. H. Rouse, ‘La Naissance des index’, in Martin, Chartier, and Vivet (as in n. 115), 77–85 at 80, and Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame, Ind., 1991), 192–201 and 222–46; A. Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (London, 1997), 30 n. 58; H.-J. Martin, Mise en page et mise en texte du livre français: La naissance du livre moderne (XIVe–XVIIe sie`cles) (Paris, 2000), 104–6. 154 See the important discussion in Martin, Mise en page (as in n. 153), 301–11. 155 Cf. C. Vecce, ‘Aldo e l’invenzione dell’indice’, in D. S. Zeidberg (ed.), Aldus Manutius and Renaissance Culture: Essays in Memory of Franklin D. Murphy (Florence, 1998), 109–41 with bibliography on early indexing techniques; p. 121 for indications of variant readings. 156 e.g. ibid. 123 on the index to Ovid. Scaliger (or his typographer, M. Patisson) uses this system in his edition of Manilius (1579: see n. 123 above). 157 Catullus et in eum commentarius M. Antonii Mureti (Venice: P. Manutius, 1554). Muret prints his notes at the end of each poem; this is rather inconvenient for the longer poems in the collection. See Gaisser, ‘Catullus’ (as in n. 4), 260–5 and Catullus (as in n. 7), 155–68. 158 Index expurgatorius librorum qui hoc seculo prodierunt . . . (Antwerp: Plantin, 1571) reprinted in J. M. De Bujanda (ed.), Index des livres interdits, vii: Index d’Anvers 1569, 1570, 1571 (Sherbrooke, 1988), 711–834. Arias Montano, the editor of Plantin’s polyglot Bible, was the head of the censorship committee (see Bujanda, p. 89). On the Plantin press see C. Clair, Christopher Plantin (London, 1960) and L. Voet and J. VoetGrisolle, The Plantin Press (1555–1589) (Amsterdam, 1980–3).


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numbering in books of poetry: Kenney refers to an Ovid edition of 1575.159 The better the reference system, the easier it is to record variant readings and conjectures,160 or to indicate what is to be censored.

5.3

Types of Editions and Systems of Reference

5.3.1 The Bare Text The earliest type corresponds to what we see in the editio princeps of Arnobius, and in Gelenius’ edition: there are no textual notes indicating divergences from the manuscript(s) used, or from an earlier edition. This type is very common in the first part of the sixteenth century: no edition of Euripides until that of Gasparus Stiblinus (Caspar Stiblin) in 1562 has textual notes, even if there were instances of emendation by conjecture.161 In the preface to his edition of Silius, Franciscus Asulanus162 states that he added eighty-four lines ‘in principio octaui libri’,163 but does not think it useful to indicate which these, or any he may have emended, are. He has no notes of any sort. Examples can easily be multiplied.

5.3.2 Textual Endnotes Dirk Canter printed a relatively small number of critical notes at the end of his edition of Arnobius: little more than one per page (297 notes for 249 pages of text). The same system, with a similarly small number of notes, had been used by his brother Willem Canter.164 The editions of Petronius published by Pierre Pithou (1539–96) in 1577 and 1587 are Kenney, Text (as in n. 1), 153. The standardization of line numbers and paragraphs is a consequence of the cultural status of a given text, as reflected by the number of editions. It was Ovid, a widely read author, who was one of the first to be honoured by ‘continuous’ numbers; the Gospels were divided into verses from as early as 1551: Kenney (as in n. 1), 152; Martin, Mise en page (as in n. 153), 298. A relatively obscure writer like Arnobius does not have a standard division into sub-paragraphs, unlike e.g. Tacitus or Herodotus. 161 See the list in Kannicht, Euripides (as in n. 110), i. 112–14; Euripides poeta . . . in latinum sermonem conuersus, adiecto e regione textu Graeco. cum annotationibus et praefationibus in omnes eius tragoedias, autore Gasparo Stiblino, accedunt . . . Ioannis Brodaei . . . annotationes . . . (Basle: I. Oporinus, 1562). 162 i.e. Giovan Francesco Torresani (c.1480–c.1557): Maillard, Kecskeme ´ti, and Portalier (as in n. 13), 408. 163 Silii Italici De Bello Punico libri septemdecim (Lyon: S. Gryphius, 1547), 3. 164 For instance, in Aeschyli tragoediae vii . . . opera G. Canteri . . . (Antwerp: Plantin, 1580), the reader finds forty-nine textual notes (mostly conjectures) on Agamemnon, only five on Prometheus, eight on Persians, and so on. Canter’s edition of Euripides is similar in this respect. 159 160

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notable for their reasonably systematic use of sigla in reporting variant readings. Pithou uses endnotes, keyed to the page, and includes a lemma. The manuscripts are designated by abbreviations, which get shortened from time to time (e.g. Autissiodurensis can be Autis or Aut.).165 The 1587 edition has an appendix with notes by other scholars, keyed to page and line. Scaliger’s 1579 edition of Manilius is a more elaborate version of this type. He did not look for new manuscript evidence,166 but emended a large number of passages by conjecture. He numbered the lines in each page and keyed his Commentarius (which was provided with its own line numbers as well) to page and line of the text. What is interesting is that in the Commentarius he gave as lemma the vulgate reading (Pru¨ckner’s edition), and then added his emendation.167 This correction of Pru¨ckner’s text was not always thorough, and in some cases the emendation is only found in the commentary,168 but the system is applied with reasonable consistency. This looks like an inversion of the system used in most modern apparatus, where the text printed by the editor comes as lemma, and is followed by the reading of the manuscript. The style of presentation chosen by Scaliger is counterintuitive, and impractical if several manuscript sources are used: which reading should be selected as lemma? Scaliger aimed at maximizing the impact of his innovations by referring to a generic vulgate text. No wonder that very few scholars dared follow his example. In his edition, ‘text and commentary are coupled in two distinct, equal, and concurrent editions, each with its title page and colophon, and each with a congruent system of marginal notation’; ‘the contribution of the critic is presented on terms of equality with the actual text’.169

5.3.3

Textual Notes in the Margin

A more modest, and more concise, style of presentation consists in printing variant readings in the margin. There are drawbacks: little space 165 See Petronii Arbitri Satyrica, ex veteribus libris emendatius . . . [ed. P. Pithou] (Paris: M. Patisson, 1577) and Petronii Arbitri Satyricon . . . . Cum notis doctorum virorum [ed. P. Pithou] (Paris: M. Patisson, 1587). Both editions have a section of varietas lectionum, after the text, and with separate pagination. The readings are keyed to the page, but not to the line. On these editions see Mu¨ller (as in n. 8), 397–8 and Richardson (as in n. 7), 40–62. 166 See Grafton, Scaliger (as in n. 2), 190–2. 167 See e.g. the Commentarius in Scaliger’s Manilius (as in n. 123), p. 140, discussing p. 65 of the text, l. ‘15 Omniaque intrantum) Lege infantum’ (¼ Man. 3. 133). For another example, see Feld, ‘Evolution’ (as in n. 115), pl. VII. 168 For instance the Commentarius in Scaliger’s Manilius (as in n. 123), 19, on Man. 1. 228 (Scaliger’s Manilius, p. 8 of the text, l. 15). 169 Feld, ‘Evolution’ (as in n. 115), 102–3.


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is left for explaining the origin of the readings. Ursinus’ edition of Arnobius is still noteworthy for the conjectures it includes, but we do not know which of the scholars he names in the preface suggested which conjecture. The result, flattering to Ursinus’ fame, is that the conjectures all go by his name in modern apparatus. The marginal notes are keyed to the text by symbols or numbers. The technique used in Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Cornelius Gallus (Lyon: A. Gryphius, 1573) was a little better.170 The editors (V. Giselinus and T. Pulmannus) printed variant readings in the margins, using asterisks to mark the corresponding word in the text. The readings are attributed to scholars, referred to by abbreviations (for instance Stat. ¼ Achilles Statius, Car. ¼ L. Carrion). The notes rarely make it clear whether the readings were found in manuscripts or are conjectural. In the Propertius section the editors give only W. Canter’s notes, without sigla, and do not even differentiate between variant readings and explicative glosses, a confusing presentation.171 Marginal notes do cause confusion, but this system forced editors and printers to unusual conciseness, and to resort to sigla.

5.3.4 Textual Notes in the Margin and at the End In the preface to his 1566 edition of Plautus,172 C. Plantin explains to the reader that marginal readings accompanied by the siglum ‘S.’ indicate ‘Sambuci lectiones’;173 the siglum ‘L.’ means that the manuscript of Langius agrees with ‘S.’. This rudimentary apparatus is supplemented by an appendix which lists all the readings of Langius’ manuscript, and the observations of other scholars. The main text has 170 This edition is little more than a reprint, in a compact format, of the notes of famous scholars. Feld, ‘Evolution’ (as in n. 115) shows that editors with no scholarly pretensions often resort to more effective ways of presenting the evidence. 171 In Latino-Attici Oratores sive Panegyrici diversorum, cum veterum, tum recentiorum scriptorum (Douai: B. Bellerus, 1595), variant readings are printed in the margins accompanied by al., videtur legendum, opinor legendum, melius, forte, without explanation as to their origins. 172 M. Accii Plauti Comoediae viginti, . . . opera . . . Ioannis Sambuci . . . , aliquot eruditae C. Langij, Adr. Turnebi, Hadr. Iunij, et aliorum doctorum virorum, partim margini adscriptae, partim in calcem reiectae, observationes (Antwerp: Plantin, 1566). The line numbers start from 1 on each page. In Petronii Arbitri Massiliensis Satyrici fragmenta, restituta et aucta, e Bibliotheca Iohannis Sambuci (Antwerp: Plantin, 1565), marginal notes report variant readings taken from an edition (Paris 1520: ‘vulg(ata)’) and a manuscript (‘v.c.’, now Vindob. lat. 3198): Mu¨ller, Petronius (as in n. 8), 389. 173 The manuscript used by Sambucus (Ja ńos Zsa´mboki, 1531–84: Maillard, Kecskeme´ti, and Portalier (as in n. 13), 436) is Vindob. lat. 3168: see F. Ritschl, Opuscula philologica (Leipzig, 1868), ii. 27 and 155–6; C. Questa, Parerga plautina: Struttura e tradizione manoscritta delle commedie (Urbino, 1985), 234–6.

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line numbers starting on each page, and the endnotes refer to these numbers. The readings of Langius are printed at the end ‘quod ora libri eas non caperet’ (the book is in 16 ). This is as close as we get to the admission, by a scholarly printer, that an apparatus criticus was typographically impossible. Plantin was doing his best to give all the relevant data to his readers in the most compact format. It also shows that in many cases it was up to the printer to decide how to present textual notes. Some editors did not like having endnotes. In his 1575 edition of Petronius, Tornaesius had to resort to endnotes to report readings because he received an interesting manuscript (the lost Cuiacianus) too late, when pages 1–67 (approximately) had already been composed (prioribus foliis iam formis excusis). For the remaining pages he incorporated some of its readings in the main text, and others in marginal notes, making it difficult to discriminate the Cuiacianus from the other sources, to the frustration of Petronian scholars.174 It is clear that he preferred marginal notes, and used endnotes in an emergency, at the cost of exactness and clarity. The limits of the marginal note system were soon apparent: if the sources were too numerous, there was not enough space for them. Stewech, in the edition of Vegetius that he completed in 1584,175 made use of nine sources (editions, manuscripts, or collations). He prints summary information about variant readings in the margin of his text: e.g. at p. 4 (Veg. 1. 3) in his marginal note to parco victu utantur he writes ‘omnes optimi libri, parvo’. If we look at the commentary on the same passage (p. 8) the picture changes dramatically: ‘parco victu utantur, et rustico] in aliis exemplaribus M(anu). S(criptis). N. H. et Susij, reperi parvo victu.’ A list of abbreviations (sig. y4v) explains what these sigla refer to.176 The marginalia simply draw attention to 174 Petronii arbitri Satyricon (Lyon: I. Tornaesius, 1575): see Mu ¨ ller, Petronius (as in n. 8), 396; Richardson, Reading (as in n. 7), 24–39 and 122–5; Stagni, ‘Ricerche’ (as in n. 7), 207–11 and 218–23. 175 See Flavi Vegeti Renati De re militari libri quatuor . . . ope veterum librorum correcti, a Godescalco Stewechio Heusdano. . . . Accessit seorsum eiusdem G. Stewechi in Fl. Vegetium Commentarius . . . (Leiden: F. Raphelengius, 1592). Cf. J. A. Wisman, ‘Flavius Renatus Vegetius’, Corpus translationum et commentariorum, vi (Washington, DC, 1986), 175–84 at 183. 176 In the list we see the problems an early editor faced: most of the manuscripts were owned by private individuals, including Stewech himself, and it would have been difficult to trace them after a generation. Modern editors have not been able to identify them all; see Flavi Vegeti Renati epitoma rei militaris, ed. C. Lang (2nd edn., Leipzig, 1885), p. xlvi. In the 17th c., Heinsius could refer to catalogue numbers for Vatican manuscripts: see Munari, ‘Manoscritti’ (as in n. 73); Reeve, ‘Cuius in usum?’ (as in n. 6), 201 on problems with shelfmark changes in modern libraries.


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a problem, and make use of sigla, but most of the evidence is to be found in the commentary. Stewech uses a coherent system of sigla, and the text is divided into small chapters, so that it is easy to find the reference.177 The Plantin press did better with Livineius’ edition of the Panegyrici Latini.178 Livineius (p. 6) lists six sources (manuscripts, collations, and editions) for his text and gives them sigla. He then prints the variant readings in the margins, accompanied by sigla, and marks his conjectures by ‘f.’ ( ¼ fortasse). Extensive endnotes supplement the information given in the margins, and explain his reasoning and textual choices. Endnotes are keyed to the text by reference to page and line number. It is characteristic of the age that Livineius does not always print in the text the reading he considers right.179 However, the format of the edition is similar to that of a modern book: critical edition of the text with information on the manuscript evidence, followed by notes which discuss textual problems in detail and offer comments on difficult passages. It is interesting to note that the system of marginal notes with sigla reproduces the format of Livineius’ collations. Marginal notes were used in the seventeenth century too (for instance in Barnes’s edition of Euripides), but they were not the solution and had to be abandoned.

5.3.5 Variorum Editions A variorum edition presupposes the existence of many previous editions. Variorum editions of widely read works such as Ovid’s Heroides appeared as early as 1501. Arnobius had to wait until 1651. These early variorum editions are inconvenient to use. The difficult problem is the synchronization of text and several commentaries. In the 1501 Heroides,180 the text is centred, flush with the internal margin, with commentaries on the remaining three sides.181 The margins are used 177 Stewech combined marginal notes and endnotes in his edition of Arnobius too, but here he only had one manuscript source (‘M.S.’ ¼ the Bruxellensis). 178 See above, nn. 62–3, for references. 179 See e.g. crimen p. 16 ¼ 1. 11. 1. 180 Epistole Heroides Ovidii diligenti castigatio(n)e . . . figuris ornate. Commentantibus Antonio Uolsco Ubertino Crescentinate et Omnibono . . . (Venice: I. Tacuinus de Tridino, 1501). 181 This corresponds to Powitz, type 2: G. Powitz, ‘Textus cum commento’, Codices manuscripti, 5, H. 3 (1979), 80–9. Powitz primarily discussed medieval manuscripts and incunabula. See now L. Holtz, ‘Glosse e commenti’, in Cavallo, Leonardi, and Menesto` (as in n. 72), 59–111. For the transition to the printed book see A. Labarre, ‘Les incunables: La pre´sentation du livre’, in Martin, Chartier, and Vivet (as in n. 115), 195–215 at 200–1; R. Laufer, ‘L’espace visuel du livre ancien’, ibid. 479–97 at 495–6; Martin, Mise en page (as in n. 153), 219, 245 (with illustrations from Lyon editions of Ovid and Sallust of 1519 and 1526), and 292 (R. Stephanus 1545 Latin Bible). See also Kenney, Text (as in n. 1), 63–4.

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for giving the names of the commentators, who mostly deal with mythological questions, and gloss difficult words. The 1554 variorum of Cicero’s letters182 has the text centred with commentaries all round it.183 The text section also includes re´sume´s of each letter, and other introductory material. Variant readings are printed in the margins of this internal section. The external margins of the commentary are used for indicating the author of each section of the commentary. The notes of each commentator on each letter are printed together. Some commentators, for instance Pier Vettori, discuss variant readings. The book includes commentaries by about twenty scholars. Finding what each commentator had to say about a particular passage is not very difficult if the letters are short, but it becomes problematic when the letters are many pages long. The complex typographical presentation chosen by the printer loses its meaning when the commentary is not level with the text. The book looks like a manuscript with scholia written in wide margins, but in manuscripts scholia refer to what is contained in the page. They assemble what commentators have to say on a particular passage, usually without individual attributions, though there may be indications that different sources have been used. In the Cicero variorum the printer rightly decided that it was important to identify such authors. However, he did not reorganize the commentary into small sections, nor could he use page and line numbers to refer to the text. This problem could only be solved by printing the commentary either as endnotes or as footnotes. Printing critical notes at the bottom of the page was difficult. It could be done for texts that were expected to sell very well. Robertus Stephanus’ 1557 edition of the Latin Bible reports the Variae interpretum lectiones cum hebraismorum explicatione at the bottom of the page,184 which looks neat and clear. In the seventeenth century we find footnotes in variorum editions of classical authors: a 1669 edition of Petronius has footnotes keyed to passages in the text by means of numbers.185 Pieter Burman the elder’s Petronius adopts a different solution: the amount of text per page is so small and the notes so extensive that the lemmata are enough to identify the passage. 182 Marci Tullii Ciceronis Epistolarum Familiarium libri XVI, cum commentariis Iodoci Badii Ascensii . . . et aliorum . . . annotationibus . . . (Venice: H. Scotus, 1554). 183 This corresponds to Powitz, type 4 (as in n. 181). 184 See Martin, Mise en page (as in n. 153), 280. 185 Titi Petronii Arbitri . . . Satyricon, cum Fragmento nuper Tragurii reperto . . . omnia commentariis, et notis Doctorum virorum illustrata, concinnante M. Hadrianide (Amsterdam: J. Blaeu, 1669).


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The longer collections of notes printed at the end of the text are only keyed to chapter and lemma, not to page and line.186 Other systems were impractical. Numbering endnotes would be confusing if different sets of notes had to be referred to. Endnotes were easier for poetry, as it was possible (even if by no means standard) to refer to continuous line numbers. This gave rise to a more or less standard system of reference,187 which made it easier to assemble the various notes. In the Stephanus variorum of Euripides, the editor converted Stiblinus’ marginal notes into endnotes by adding line numbers.188 In the 1821 variorum edition of Euripides189 the editors conveniently assembled the observations of the most important scholars, and printed them as footnotes. Why this was not done by Stephanus is apparent as soon as we look at the Greek text in his edition. Stephanus had trouble paginating the main section so as to keep the Greek text, the Latin translation, and the relevant scholia together. He could not fill the pages evenly and had to leave blanks.

6. CON CLU SI O N ¨ bung der Kra¨fte fu¨hrt zwar das Individuum unausbleiblich Einseitigkeit in U zum Irrtum, aber die Gattung zur Wahrheit. (F. Schiller)190 Textual criticism, like most other sciences, is an aristocratic affair, not communicable to all men, nor to most men. (A. E. Housman)191 In the past, historians and philosophers of science have attributed much of the growth of science to the work of the average scientist who, it is suggested, has 186 Titi Petronii Arbitri Satyrico ˆn quae supersunt cum integris doctorum virorum commentariis . . . curante P. Burmanno (Utrecht: G. vande Water, 1709). 187 Not always: in the case of Greek tragedy, lyric passages could be divided by editors into lines in a number of different ways. It is only since the 19th c. that editors adopt standard line numbers regardless of changes in the colometry of lyric passages. 188 Euripidis tragoediae quae extant cum latina G. Canteri interpretatione, Scholia doctorum virorum in septem Euripidis tragoedias, ex antiquis exemplaribus ab Arsenio Monembasiae archiepiscopo collecta. Accedunt . . . I. Brodaei, G. Canteri, G. Stiblini, Ae. Porti in Euripidem annotationes ([Geneva]: P. Stephanus, 1602), taking over Stiblinus (as in n. 161). 189 Euripidis opera omnia, ex editionibus praestantissimis fideliter recusa . . . (Glasgow and London, 1821). 190 U ¨ ber die a¨sthetische Erziehung der Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen (1794), in F. Schiller, Werke in drei Ba¨nden, ed. H. H. Go¨pfert (Munich, 1966), ii. 445–520 at 458 (letter 6). 191 A. E. Housman, ‘The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism’ (1922), in id., Classical Papers (Cambridge, 1972), iii. 1058–69 at 1059.

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paved the way with his ‘small’ discoveries for the men of genius—the great discoverers. (J. R. and S. Cole)192

J. R. and S. Cole argue that the more widely cited scientists form an elite, and that they are more likely to cite other elite scientists; non-elite scientists are largely ‘redundant’ to scientific progress.193 Housman’s point is very similar. It appears to be vindicated when we look at the splendid achievement of Scaliger, whose editions still strike readers by their self-confidence and their ability to make sense, by way of conjectural emendation, of the countless absurd readings printed by his predecessors, which he unmercifully reprints and criticizes. Housman’s aristocratic view is also vindicated if we look at how frequently Scaliger is cited in modern apparatus critici, in comparison with other scholars of his age. However, this is true only for some authors: Euripides, Catullus, Propertius, Festus, Manilius, and a few others—not countless authors. Moreover, Scaliger was not always so patient with manuscripts. In Mynors’s edition of Catullus, the much less famous Achilles Statius194 scores a higher number of successful emendations (17 against 14).195 How did this happen? Statius ‘presented careful collations of large numbers of manuscripts’196 and ‘put his manuscripts to good use’.197 Meursius’ name is not famous, but he restored countless corrupt passages in Arnobius, using only D. Canter’s edition: Scaliger did not make a big contribution to the text of Arnobius, even if he collated the only source for this text. Classical texts are too numerous, and ‘elite’ philologists too few. More modest, but competent scholars can make important contributions198 and ‘lead the species to truth’ thanks to their collective effort and specialized competence. Scaliger praised the least creative and most informative editions of Arnobius: ‘Arnobius Heraldi est bon’; ‘celuy qui a fait sur Arnobe . . . c’est Elmenerst [sic]’.199 Livineius too, ‘cui judicii 192

J. R. Cole and S. Cole, Social Stratification in Science (Chicago, 1973), 216. They call the opposite view the ‘Ortega Hypothesis’, from a passage by Ortega y Gasset. H. L. Hoerman and C. E. Nowicke, ‘Secondary and Tertiary Citing: A Study of Referencing Behavior in the Literature of Citation Analysis Deriving from the Ortega Hypothesis of Cole and Cole’, Library Quarterly, 65 (1995), 415–34 show that (ironically) Cole and Cole misinterpreted and miscited Ortega y Gasset. 194 On Aquiles Estac ¸o (1524–81) see Maillard, Kecskeme´ti, and Portalier (as in n. 13), 173 and Gaisser, ‘Catullus’ (as in n. 4), 265–7 and Catullus (as in n. 7), 168–78. 195 See Goold, ‘Text’ (as in n. 19), 99. 196 Grafton, Scaliger (as in n. 2), 95. 197 Gaisser, Catullus (as in n. 7), 175. 198 Feld, ‘Evolution’ (as in n. 115), 107 and Grafton, ‘Correctores corruptores?’ (as in n. 131), 54 discuss the importance of ‘invisible technicians’, printers, and correctors in 199 Scaliger, Scaligerana (as in n. 66), 33 and 265. the history of scholarship. 193


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plus quam ingenii praesto erat’,200 made a very valuable contribution to the text of Arnobius. His edition of the Panegyrici was another useful piece of work. He simply had his collations reproduced in printed form, giving marginal notes with sigla. This did not become standard for a number of practical reasons that were already apparent in the edition of Stewech (Vegetius) and Sambucus (the 1566 Plantin Plautus), but this system was the closest thing to a true apparatus criticus. The effort of these scholars and printers was important for the progress of classical editions. After these attempts, standards of accuracy improved. Variorum editions became common in the seventeenth century, and they had to match the best standards found in the editions they reprinted and conflated. References to page and line number became standard. Scaliger’s system of reference, giving the vulgate reading as lemma, followed by his correction, could not work in editions that made use of several manuscript witnesses, or that were based on the work of several scholars. It was designed for following a single printed vulgate. It was a clever system, invented by a very clever man, but it was not designed to include other people’s contributions: Scaliger, the would-be aristocrat and exceptional scholar, aimed at the sharpest contrast with all previous editors, but did not manage to impose his referencing system on the republic of colleagues. 200

Sex. Aurelii Propertii Carmina, ed. C. Lachmann (Leipzig, 1816), p. xvii.


3 The Measure of Rome: Andre´ Schott, Justus Lipsius and the Early Reception of the Res gestae divi Augusti Paul Nelles

In 1555 Ferdinand of Hungary sent a delegation to meet with Sulaima¯n I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The delegation was composed of the neophyte Flemish negotiator Augier Busbecq, the seasoned Hungarian diplomat Antonio Veranzio, and the wary Francis Zay, admiral of the Danube fleet. Sent bearing the olive branch of peace, Busbecq and his party returned with a six-months’ truce, the lily, and the tulip. Yet the posy of botanical discoveries was not the only souvenir the mission carried back to Europe. Veranzio and Busbecq were also keen epigraphers. En route to Amasia to meet with Sulaima¯n, the three travellers passed through Ankara. Entering the city they found a large Roman inscription on the exterior façade of a crumbling building, certainly not the first the diplomats had encountered on their voyage through Asia Minor. Worn and difficult to decipher, the inscription filled six full columns each containing around fifty lines of text. The party was halted, and Busbecq and Veranzio set secretaries to copying the inscription. ‘Rerum gestarum Divi Augusti . . . exemplar subjectum’ read the title of the inscription. Even the old salt Zay must have realized that this was not just another Roman monument. The inscription promised to retail the I would like to thank Will Stenhouse for his comments on this paper. It also gives me great pleasure to record two debts to Christopher Ligota: first for providing an opportunity to present an earlier version of this paper to the History of Scholarship Seminar at the Warburg Institute in February 2000; and second for the great generosity with which he has shared his erudition, intelligence, and wit during the course of the Friday evening seminar since its inception in 1993.

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achievements of the emperor Augustus: this was the first modern encounter with the Res gestae divi Augusti. Having made very incomplete copies of their chance discovery, the diplomats continued on their journey. Once they returned to Europe, the transcriptions were tucked into the private papers of the delegation members and promptly forgotten. The inscription would wait another twenty-four years to be published. Hailed as the ‘Queen of Imperial inscriptions’ by Mommsen, the Ankara monument remains an invaluable source for study of the reign of Augustus and a unique piece of evidence from the early empire.1 Written by Augustus himself around ad 14 when the emperor was 76 years old, the Res gestae was intended to stand as a posthumous digest of his accomplishments. The text recapitulates most of the major events of Augustus’ career, and falls into three main parts. The first section records the various honours, titles, and offices received by Augustus; the second reviews impensae—money spent from Augustus’ private coffers on public projects such as buildings, games, gifts to the treasury, and financial subventions to the populace. Finally come the more meaty res gestae: expeditions, conquest, achievements of war. After Augustus’ death, the text of the Res gestae was duly inscribed on two bronze columns erected in front of his mausoleum in the Campus Martius at Rome. No trace remains of this bronze copy. But in addition to its publication in Rome, the Res gestae was very likely widely copied in the provinces. Versions are known to have existed at Apollonia (probably in a Greek translation alone) and Antioch in Pisidia, and at Ankara in Galatia. The Ankara version, the Monumentum Ancyranum, is the best preserved of the Latin inscriptions. It originally graced the temple of Rome and Augustus on six columns, accompanied by a Greek translation for the benefit of the local population. The copy made by Busbecq was a partial transcription of the Latin text. The third and fourth columns alone were transcribed in their entirety, while the four remaining columns were only partially deciphered. Veranzio’s copy was slightly better. The party was entirely unaware of the Greek translation of the text filling twenty columns of what was originally the cella of the temple. The Greek inscription was blocked by a neighbouring building until the eighteenth century and was entirely inaccessible to the party of Western diplomats. 1 See Res gestae divi Augusti, ed. J. Gage ´ (3rd edn., Paris, 1977); E. S. Ramage, The Nature and Purpose of Augustus’ ‘Res Gestae’ (Historia-Einzelschriften, 54; Stuttgart, 1987), esp. 117–57 for a review of 19th- and 20th-c. scholarship on the Res gestae.

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The copies of the Latin text made on the 1555 expedition furnished European scholarship with its main source for the Res gestae until further copies were made in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The last of these, the 1705 transcription of all six columns of the Latin text made by Paul Lucas, would remain authoritative for the next century and a half. It was not until 1882 that the Greek text was copied in its entirety and a full study of the Latin text made possible. This was due to plaster casts procured by Carl Humann, the German consul at Smyrna, and dispatched to the Berlin Academy of Sciences. The result was Mommsen’s 1883 edition of the inscription, the second and last prepared by him.2 The fortune of the Ankara monument from its discovery in 1555 to the plaster casts used by Mommsen now out-housed in a depot of the Berlin Stadtmuseum is a long and unusually interesting one. Due to the monument’s remote geographical position in the Ottoman heartland, the history of its exploitation by Western scholars is as much one of derring-do and diplomatic strong-arming as one of careful epigraphical scholarship. While the details of the 1555 expedition and the transcription of the monument are well known,3 the story of the immediate reception of the Res gestae in early modern scholarship remains untold. In the half century following its discovery, it was published on at least five separate occasions: first in 1579 by Andre´ Schott; twice in 1588, by Justus Lipsius and Joannes Leunclavius; again by Lipsius in 1598; and finally in 1605 by Isaac Casaubon.4 What did early modern scholars make of their find? 2 Res gestae Divi Augusti, ed. Th. Mommsen (Berlin, 1883). References to the Res gestae are to this edition. Mommsen also conveniently publishes an edition of the transcription made on the 1555 expedition, the ‘Busbequianum Exemplum’, pp. xviii–xxiii, with numbered pages and lines corresponding to the columns and lines of the Ankara inscription. References here to the Res gestae include page and line numbers as well as the more usual chapter divisions in order to facilitate consultation of Mommsen’s edition of Busbecq’s transcription. Mommsen furnishes the essential starting point for the study of the early reception of the Res gestae; see his review of the early evidence in Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, iii (Berlin, 1873), 769–72; 1054. 3 Z. R. W. M. von Martels, ‘The Discovery of the Inscription of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti’, Respublica litterarum, 14 (1991), 147–56; D. French, ‘Busbecq and Epigraphic Copyists’, in E. Ploeckinger et al. (eds.), Lebendige Altertumswissenschaft: Festgabe zur Vollendung des 70. Lebensjahres von Hermann Vetters (Vienna, 1985), 366–70. 4 Early editions of the Monumentum Ancyranum: (1) De vita et moribus imperatorum Romanorum [ ¼ Epitome de caesaribus] ed. Andre´ Schott (Antwerp, 1579), ‘Scholia’, 69–77. (2) Justus Lipsius, Auctarium, in Martin Smetius, Inscriptionum antiquarum liber, ed. Justus Lipsius (Antwerp, 1588), 19–22. (3) Joannes Leunclavius, Pandectes historiae Turcicae . . . ad illustrandos annales, in Annales sultanorum Othmanidarum (Frankfurt, 1588), 205–10. (4) Lipsius again published part of the inscription, RG 14–15 (3, 7–21),

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Though complex, the early fortune of the Res gestae is well worth exploring. Study of Rome in the late sixteenth century was at its most intense, carrying in its wake a flurry of discoveries, editions, and interpretation which in some cases would endure for three centuries and more.5 Tracing the reception of the most significant of imperial monuments in one of the brightest periods of Roman scholarship, therefore, offers a unique perspective on late Renaissance study of ancient Rome. Methodologically, the early reception of the Res gestae was shaped by the Renaissance historical school of Roman Law and the editorial scholarship of the Latin historiographical tradition. Yet it was also driven by a deep cultural fascination with imperial administration and what can only be described as the general mechanics of empire. And finally, the history of the early identification and analysis of the Res gestae exposes the convoluted nature of the production and dissemination of antiquarian knowledge in early modern Europe, and reveals paths of interpretation and communication seemingly at odds with the sober face of modern classical scholarship. Two worldly Low Countries humanists, Andre´ Schott and Justus Lipsius, are among the most important figures for apprehending the early reception of the Res gestae. Both were excited by the possibilities the Res gestae offered for the study of Rome at source. The Res gestae detailed an unequalled measure of Rome under the early empire: reams of information, all within a concise overview of Augustus’ career. It was immediately seized upon by both scholars as a precise accounting of imperial resources. As an ‘index’ of the achievements of Augustus the Res gestae was appreciated for its brevity and for its systematic review of a crucial period of Roman history. To late Renaissance eyes, the concision and factuality of the Res gestae embodied many of the implicit in his Admiranda, sive de magnitudine Romana (Antwerp, 1598), with extensive commentary. The Admiranda was reprinted several times (1598, 1599, 1600, 1605, 1617, 1630) and with all subsequent editions (1607, 1637, etc.) of Lipsius’ Opera. (5) Isaac Casaubon published Lipsius’ 1588 text in the Animadversiones to his edition of Suetonius, C. Suetonii Tranquilli de XII caesaribus libri VIII (Geneva, 1605), [pt. iii], 192–204, with many subsequent editions. Cf. Mommsen, Res gestae (as in n. 2), pp. xviii–xix. In addition, the Res gestae found a more or less permanent home with the Epitome well into the 18th c. 5 For specific examples of how early modern antiquarian scholarship was conducted, see in particular J.-L. Ferrary, Onophrio Panvinio et les antiquite´s romaines (Rome, 1996); W. McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio: The Changing World of the Late Renaissance (Princeton, 1989); P. Jacks, The Antiquarian and the Myth of Antiquity: The Origins of Rome in Renaissance Thought (Cambridge, 1993); and above all A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1983–93).

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assumptions of contemporary antiquarian endeavour.6 Yet, perhaps most striking from the standpoint of modern interpretation of the Res gestae, Renaissance scholars never subjected the inscription to a political analysis. The Res gestae was first published in a highly unlikely location. Working in Paris, the young Andre´ Schott published Busbecq’s transcription of the Res gestae in the notes to his 1579 edition of the Epitome de caesaribus. This was not Schott’s first venture with late Latin historical texts. His edition of the De viris illustribus appeared in 1577, published by Plantin in his native Antwerp. Having fled Antwerp after the sack of 1576, Schott travelled first to Douai and then to Paris.7 He was at the beginning of a scholarly career which eventually took him to Spain, where he would be befriended by the legal antiquarian Antonio Agustıń. In Spain Schott entered the Society of Jesus, under whose aegis he would journey to Rome to teach at the Collegio Romano before returning permanently to Antwerp. But it was in Paris that he prepared his edition of the Epitome de caesaribus as part of the Corpus Aurelianum, and where he gained access to Busbecq’s transcription of the Res gestae. Busbecq had resided in Paris since 1574, informally overseeing imperial affairs as ‘Court Prefect’ to Isabelle of Austria. When Schott arrived in Paris in 1578, he was quickly absorbed within his countryman’s household. Once he had gained a foothold in one of the most interesting intellectual and cultural circles of the period, Schott was admitted to Busbecq’s learned gatherings and given the run of his scholarly collections. The latter included not only Busbecq’s books, but a gamut of rare and exotic marvels gathered on Busbecq’s travels— manuscripts, coins, and inscriptions of all kinds.8 It was while rooting through Busbecq’s collections that Schott encountered the transcription of the Res gestae. The Ankara inscription obviously held considerable interest for Schott as an editor of imperial biographical texts. It provided 6 A. Momigliano, ‘Ancient History and the Antiquarian’ (1950), in Contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Rome, 1955), 67–106; and especially Ferrary, Onophrio Panvinio (as in n. 5). 7 On Schott, see G. Tournoy, ‘Schott (Andre ´) (S.J.) (1552–1629)’, in C. Nativel (ed.), Centuriae Latinae (Geneva, 1997), 749–53; on Schott’s antiquarian scholarship, see P. Nelles, ‘Historia magistra antiquitatis: Cicero and Jesuit History Teaching’, Renaissance Studies, 13 (1999), 130–72. 8 Schott, ‘Ep. ded.’ to Busbecq, in De vita et moribus imperatorum, 6: ‘Deinde quia bibliothecam tuam patere mihi, libris meis domi relictis, voluisti; omniaque quae ex longa et diutina peregrinatione collegisses, magnisque sumtibus parasses, libenter communicasti; monumenta rarissima, numismata, et inscriptiones. Quis enim nescit studium in raris et exoticis conquirendis tuum?’

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testimony for the life of Augustus independently of the ancient historiographical tradition, and what was more, it was written by Augustus himself. Schott’s encounter with the Res gestae was thus largely serendipitous. Preparing an edition of the Epitome when he stumbled across Busbecq’s copy of the inscription, he found it convenient to include it in his notes to the Epitome’s treatment of Augustus. Yet, as with most discoveries, this was more than sheer coincidence. Schott’s ability to recognize the significance of the Res gestae was closely related to his editorial scholarship, at that time entirely given over to late Latin historical texts. His understanding of the Latin historiographical tradition was forged within the context of contemporary Parisian legal and antiquarian scholarship. In assessing Schott’s thinking on the Res gestae, we should first consider the purpose of his edition of the Epitome. Though the Epitome was well known to sixteenth-century readers, Schott’s publication fundamentally changed its status within the Latin historiographical tradition. This was due to the fact that Schott’s edition was a mere coda to his capolavoro of 1579: the publication of the editio princeps of the Caesares of Aurelius Victor and the Origo gentis Romanae. Schott had both texts from a single manuscript, the so-called corpus tripartitum, which also included a further version of the well-known De viris illustribus sandwiched between the Origo and the Caesares. The Origo was entirely unknown. Scholars had known of the Caesares through its putative Epitome, but had long thought it lost for good. Drawing on an entirely separate manuscript tradition, Schott published a new edition of the Epitome de caesaribus along with his recent discoveries. Employing the tools of source criticism, Schott was in a position to show that the Epitome was not in fact an abbreviated version of Aurelius Victor. The problem of sources was thus very much at the forefront of Schott’s thinking when he encountered the Res gestae. Schott did not undertake all of this in isolation. He had obtained the text of the corpus tripartitum from Theodore Poelmann before leaving Antwerp in 1576. He complained openly about the manuscript’s difficulty and his own inexperience. In Douai, Schott drew upon the expertise of the jurist Joannes Olivarius. And in Paris he was aided by some of the finest humanist legal scholars in Europe. Claude Dupuy, Nicolas Le Fe`vre, and Pierre and Nicolas Pithou all helped Schott as he set about the task of editing his texts. In addition, formidable collectors such as Jacques Cujas, Pierre Daniel, and Pierre Pithou all supplied manuscripts—and no doubt advice—for his edition of the Epitome. And

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Schott had access to some of the best private libraries in Paris, including the collections of Claude Dupuy and Nicolas Pithou.9 Schott duly recorded the assistance of these scholars and acknowledged their ideas in his commentary to the Caesares. While the degree to which Schott’s broader insights and arguments were influenced by Dupuy and particularly Pithou is impossible to determine, the Paris milieu was undoubtedly of considerable importance for Schott’s understanding of his task. Why then did Schott publish the Res gestae in his commentary to the Epitome rather than in his commentary to the Caesares? His edition of the Caesares, after all, was by far the more important work. An entirely unknown text, it was sure to garner the most attention. As the two editions were readied and published almost simultaneously, there is no reason to believe that the inscription was unknown to Schott when editing the Caesares. The decision to publish it with the Epitome instead lies in the nature and purpose of Schott’s commentaries to the two texts. To begin with, they are very differently titled. The commentary to the Caesares bears the title of Notae, that to the Epitome of Scholia. The notae to the Caesares are rather circumspect, and for the most part justify Schott’s editorial position: emendations, decisions not to emend, and the like. The scholia to the Epitome achieve something quite different. First, it is here that Schott proves that the Epitome is not an abbreviation of Aurelius Victor. By carefully comparing the two texts, he demonstrates that the Epitome contains information which is not in the Caesares. Further, he shows where he believes the Epitome to have drawn on other Latin historical writers such as Suetonius, Eutropius, and Ammianus Marcellinus. In this application of source criticism to editing historical texts Schott would be followed by scholars such as Joseph Scaliger, who would employ Schott’s technique and use Schott’s findings in his De emendatione temporum.10 Further, Schott considered the scholia form more discursive and miscellaneous in nature than the philological notes which accompanied his edition of the Caesares. The purpose of his commentary, Schott 9 Schott in Sexti Aurelii Victoris historiae Romanae breviarium (Antwerp, 1579), 14–15. On Dupuy’s library, rich in classical texts, see J. Delatour, Une bibliothe`que humaniste au temps des guerres de religion: Les livres de Claude Dupuy (Paris, 1998). 10 See Grafton, Scaliger, ii. 514–91; on Scaliger’s use of Schott’s edition of the Epitome, see P. Nelles, ‘Lipsius, Scaliger and the Historians’, in M. Laureys (ed.), The world of Justus Lipsius: A contribution towards his intellectual biography (Brussels, 1998) ¼ Bulletin de l’Institut historique belge de Rome, 68 (1998), 233–54, esp. 248–50.

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stated, was both to explain his editorial method and to illustrate general points of Roman history—‘emendationum ratio explicatur, et historia illustratur’.11 As his editorial technique included source criticism, this double preoccupation with sources and historical subject matter made the scholia to the Epitome the more appropriate place for publishing the Res gestae. Though not a source for the Epitome, the Res gestae was nonetheless a unique witness to the reign of Augustus, including much information not available elsewhere. Schott introduced the inscription as an unpublished ‘fragmentum breviarii imperii Augusti’. In identifying the Monumentum Ancyranum as a breviarium, what did Schott think he had found? The opening lines of Busbecq’s copy of the inscription read as follows: ‘Rerum gestarum Divi Augusti quibus orbem terrarum imperio populi Romani subjecit et impensarum quas in rempublicam populumque Romanum fecit incisarum in duabus aheneis pilis quae sunt Romae positae exemplar subjectum.’ ‘The deeds of the divine Augustus, by which he brought the world under the rule of the Roman people, and the expenses which he bore for the Roman state and people, engraved on two bronze pillars erected in Rome, are here copied below.’ Schott’s evidence in support of his use of the term breviarium to describe the Res gestae was derived from Suetonius. In his life of Augustus (Aug. 101), Suetonius mentions three documents prepared by the emperor: the first consisted of instructions for his funeral; the second was an ‘index rerum a se gestarum’ to be posted in bronze tablets in front of his tomb; the third was a ‘breviarium totius imperii’, containing the number of soldiers in active service throughout the empire, the amounts in the aerarium and the fiscus, and what revenues were owed.12 The inscription copied by Busbecq, argued Schott, was nothing less than the ‘breviarium’ of Augustus mentioned by Suetonius. To be sure, Suetonius’ testimony is still adduced in discussions of the inscription. But the inscription has long been considered a copy of the second rather than the third text mentioned by Suetonius—a copy of the ‘index rerum a se gestarum’ rather than the ‘breviarium’. ‘Res gestae’, after all, are the very first words of the inscription. What accounts for Schott’s misidentification of the Res gestae? His starting point was again Suetonius. Suetonius mentioned other, similar breviaria from which Schott was able to provide a fuller picture of the use and function of breviaria in antiquity. Much of Schott’s work had 11 12

Schott, ‘Scholia’, De vita et moribus imperatorum, 63. Suetonius, Aug. 101. 4.

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already been done for him by Laevinus Torrentius, another Low Countries antiquarian on close terms with members of the circle of Schott and Lipsius such as Theodore Poelmann and Charles Lang. Torrentius had commented extensively on Augustus 101 in his edition of Suetonius published the previous year, like Schott’s texts a Plantin edition. Torrentius adduced a further instance of breviarium— ‘breviarium rationum’ or summary of accounts—at Galba 12. The main significance of this testimony was that it provided a fiscal context for understanding the function of breviaria. Torrentius also read two references to a ‘rationarium Imperii’ (Aug. 28 and Cal. 16) or financial survey as referring to much the same thing, a document he defined as ‘quo Imperii rationes continebantur’, that is, containing imperial financial accounts.13 Indeed he glossed ‘breviarium rationum’ at Galba 12 as ‘breviarium Imperii’.14 He went on, however, to define the genre of breviaria and rationes as ‘tale aliquid liber ille, qui Notitia Imperii Romani inscribitur: rectius fortassis Formula appellaretur’.15 Thus, breviaria and rationes were not restricted to fiscal functions alone, but designated any survey of the empire, including provincial or military lists. In discussing the meaning of breviarium when he introduced the Res gestae, Schott evidently drew on Torrentius when he defined ratio imperii (Suetonius, Aug. 28) as formula Imperii.16 Thus Torrentius and, by extension, Schott used breviarium to designate not so much a historical survey in the style of Eutropius or Festus, as an empirical survey in the mode of the Notitia Dignitatum—a text well known to late sixteenth-century students of the Roman world. As far as Schott was concerned, he now had the document in question in front of him. This is where the text of the Ankara inscription available to Schott is crucial. First, he had its title, providing him with a limited description of its contents: res gestae on the one hand and impensae on the other. He had only the last part of the first section of the text (titles and honours) and the first part of the last section (deeds of war and conquest). His main text was the middle section of the Res gestae appearing on the third and fourth columns of the Ankara monument, the survey of expenses. This he had in its entirety, the only coherent portion of the Res gestae available to him. While Schott knew he had a lacunose text, he had no means of knowing just what was missing. The title’s reference to 13 Laevinus Torrentius, Commentarii in C. Suetonii Tranquilli XII. Caesares (Antwerp, 14 Ibid. 480. 1578), 217. 15 Ibid. 217. 16 Schott, ‘Scholia’, De vita et moribus imperatorum, 69.

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impensae and the long middle section documenting Augustus’ expenses must have dominated Schott’s thinking on the Res gestae. Schott also brought testimony to bear upon the publication of the Monumentum Ancyranum. He knew from Suetonius (Aug. 101) and from the inscription’s use of the first person that the ‘breviarium’ had been written by Augustus himself. But how had it come to be inscribed on a monument at Ankara? Suetonius again furnished a partial answer. His reference to ‘rationes imperii’ at Caligula 16 informed Schott that though the rationes were proposed by Augustus, they were only published under Tiberius. From Tacitus Schott was able to introduce testimony bearing on a libellus proclaimed and published by Tiberius (Annales 1. 11). Tacitus clearly states that it was written in Augustus’ own hand. Schott inferred that it was similar in nature to both the rationes imperii mentioned by Suetonius and the Ankara inscription. Tacitus even provided a summary of the contents of the libellus: ‘opes publicae continebantur, quantum civium sociorumque in armis, quot classes, regna, provinciae, tributa aut vectigalia, et necessitates ac largitiones. Quae cuncta sua manu perscripserat Augustus addideratque consilium coercendi intra terminos imperii.’ ‘It contained an assessment of the strength of the state: the number of citizens and allies in arms, the number of the fleets, protectorates, and provinces, taxes direct and indirect, the amount of necessary expenses and largess. All drafted by Augustus in his own hand and appended with an instruction to confine the empire to its present limits.’ Schott conjectured that the libellus had originally been erected in the Forum (of Augustus) at Rome and had been carried off elsewhere, namely Asia Minor, in consequence of the barbarian invasions.17 The libellus thus provided an important example of a text which appeared to parallel Schott’s inscription. More directly, he used Tacitus’ testimony on the libellus to illustrate the meaning of breviarium: a document bearing the stamp of imperial authority, containing an inventory of provinces, the strength and position of the army, public acts, imperial largesse, taxes, and civil and military offices. The wealth of testimony amassed by Schott was more than enough to confirm the text before him as a fragment of the breviarium mentioned by Suetonius at Augustus 101. By and large, this is how the Res gestae would be viewed by all who followed in Schott’s footsteps: as an important piece of imperial accounting. 17 Schott, ‘Scholia’, De vita et moribus imperatorum, 69: ‘Haec in foro proposita fuisse verisimile est: post Gothica direptione urbis Romae alio translata.’

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Though mistaken, Schott’s identification of the Res gestae set the tone for its later reception. The Res gestae offered facts and figures in abundance: what more could be desired of any historical source? Yet, whereas Schott was content to identify and publish the Res gestae, Justus Lipsius put it to work. Lipsius was more interested in what the inscription revealed about Rome than in what light it might shed on the career and personality of Augustus. Later, Lipsius gained access to copies of the inscription independently of Schott’s printed text. He had Busbecq’s transcription directly, and Veranzio’s as well. The latter was procured by the botanist Carolus Clusius, a colleague at the University of Leiden, from Veranzio’s nephew. Lipsius had his copy from Clusius at a relatively late date, 1587 or early 1588. Veranzio’s transcription took account of line divisions, character form, word separation, and other epigraphic characteristics of the original. It had been compared by Clusius with a transcription of the Res gestae at Vienna in the possession of Sambucus, and it had also been compared by Joannes Leunclavius with another transcription at Constantinople made at Ankara around 1584 by two German nobles. Lipsius would eventually publish the Ankara Res gestae in the Auctarium to his 1588 edition of Smetius’ Inscriptiones, rendering it not only more generally accessible but much improved as well. He illustrated the inscription with brief notes. Curiously, in the Auctarium he did not mention Suetonius’ testimony on the Res gestae.18 Lipsius studied the Monumentum Ancyranum well before he published it. He used the inscription—the year following its publication by Schott—as evidence in his Electa of 1580, a miscellany of short ‘select’ or ‘choice’ essays on the legal, political, social, religious, and literary history of Rome. In form the Electa bears more than a passing resemblance to the Essais of Montaigne published the same year. And as a piece of antiquarian scholarship the Electa represents an important break with the tradition of variae lectiones represented by the Adversaria of Adrien Turne`be, the last instalment of which also appeared in 1580. The variae lectiones genre consisted of a hotchpotch of passages from classical texts, suggested emendations, and assaults of varying sophistication upon the edifice of classical culture. Lipsius’ Electa, by contrast, was ordered topically and tackled specific problems encountered not in classical texts, but in the study of ancient history. It represents his first sustained foray into Roman studies after his 1574 edition of Tacitus. In it, Lipsius 18

Lipsius, Auctarium (as in n. 4), 19–22.

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clearly signals the degree to which study of the Roman past was bound up with contemporary legal scholarship. Many of the individual books of the Electa are dedicated to members of the French legal and antiquarian circles frequented by Schott, such as Claude Dupuy, Pierre Pithou, Jacques Cujas, and Joseph Scaliger. In 1580 Lipsius considered the Res gestae an important imperial source. Unlike Schott, he used the Res gestae as evidence. At this point Lipsius appears to have known the Res gestae through Schott’s edition alone. He confirmed Schott’s identification of the Res gestae as the Suetonian ‘breviarium’, referring to it as either ‘Breviarium rerum gestarum Augusti’ or simply ‘Breviarium Augusti’. Lipsius made no appeal to Suetonius’ description of the text (Aug. 101. 4) in assessing the inscription in the Electa. Within the context in which he used the Res gestae, Lipsius’ identification of the monument—breviarium Augusti— can be rendered either ‘a review of the acts of Augustus’ or ‘the accounts of Augustus’.19 Both are consonant with the context in which he uses the inscription: in discussion of the frumentatio and census. One of the longer essays in the Electa is devoted to a discussion of Roman corn distribution, the frumentatio, for which the Res gestae continues to furnish valuable evidence. Lipsius had the main passages of the inscription bearing on the frumentatio, though in his version he lacked the testimony bearing on Augustus’ acceptance of the cura annonae (RG 5, 1–2) in 22 bc. The Monumentum Ancyranum augmented and confirmed the literary evidence on the problem Lipsius gleaned from Suetonius and Cassius Dio. Given the modern consensus that ‘the evidence for the administration of the distributions under the Empire . . . is by no means full and has to be interpreted’,20 Lipsius’ attempt to provide a coherent account of Roman corn distribution is of considerable interest. He related the origins and fortune of the frumentatio under kings, consuls, and emperors, arguing that it had always been used as a political tool to manipulate the plebs.21 He charted its evolution from a sporadic practice to its enshrinement in law, and he described the distribution of the frumentatio by aediles in the ‘ancient republic’ and subsequently by aediles cereales under Caesar.22 He covered 19 Lipsius, Electa, in Iusti Lipsii Opera omnia, 4 vols. (Antwerp, 1637), i. 246. Cf. 287: ‘Quod non condiderit lustrum: testis mihi extra suspicionem omnem et calumniam lapis, in quo Breviarium Augusti. Ibi sic de se Augustus [quoting RG 8 ( ¼ 2, 8)].’ 20 G. Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome (Oxford, 1980), 158. 21 Electa, 244: ‘Frumentaria largitio antiquissima apud Romanos; et fere semper conciliandae plebi.’ 22 Ibid. 247–8. Lipsius’ sources are Pomponius, De orig. juris; Dio 43.

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the system introduced by Augustus whereby four ex-praetors were chosen to supervise the distribution of grain, later known as praefecti frumenti dandi, though called by Lipsius curatores.23 Lipsius argued that the creation of the Praefectus annonae was due to political pressures encountered during the famine of 23–22 bc.24 He also discussed the tesserae frumentariae which entitled the bearer to free corn—the curatores could not be expected to hand out corn directly, Lipsius pointed out, a base and moreover annoying task. They merely checked the tesserae which were then taken to the horrea or granaries to be exchanged for corn. Lipsius conjectured that the tickets were either of wood or lead, inscribed with some sort of symbol.25 And he also explored the function of the frumentarii or secret police, who terrorized those in receipt of subsidized corn, the plebs frumentaria. Lipsius began his essay on corn distribution by stating that one of the most important aspects of the frumentatio was its use in estimating the greatness and wealth of Rome.26 He differentiated between the census and the recensus, or evaluation of means. The frumentatio was based on the recensus, defined as an ‘examen et disquisitio brevis’ of the plebs frumentaria, first undertaken by Caesar.27 The Ankara inscription offered a key piece of evidence. There, Augustus states that in his thirteenth consulate he had made cash disbursements to the plebs frumentaria, and that he had raised the number of the plebs frumentaria to some two hundred thousand.28 Though this was not an inconsiderable Electa, 248; cf. Rickman, Corn Supply (as in n. 20), 179–80. Electa, 248. The first Praefectus annonae was appointed sometime between 8 and 14 bc; see Rickman, Corn Supply, 63–4, 74, 80. 25 Electa, 248: ‘Ratio distribuendi per tesseras erat. Non enim frumentum ipsum a curatoribus (vile et magnarum molestiarum munus fuisset), sed tesseras frumentarias sive symbola quaedam in ligno aut plumbo capiebant: quibus acceptis, ire iis licebat ad horrea publica petitum frumentum.’ Cf. Rickman, Corn Supply, 186, 244–9. 26 Electa, 244: ‘Siqua res alia, ex qua intellegi magnitudo et opes populi Romani possit: ea, me iudice, frumentatio est.’ 27 Ibid. 246: ‘Non enim censum aut lustrum egit Caesar, . . . sed recensum, id est, examen et disquisitionem brevem in eos qui iure aut iniuria capiebant publicum frumentum.’ Cf. Rickman, Corn Supply, 181. 28 Electa, 246: ‘Ita Augustus, qui inter firmamenta imperii habuit Annonam . . . auxit numerum eorum qui frumentum caperent, et reduxit ad millia ducenta. Id, praeter in Dione, diserte scriptum aut scalptum in lapidibus priscis qui Ancyrae conspiciuntur in Asia minori: quibus comprehensum Breviarium rerum gestarum Augusti. Ait ibi de se Augustus [quoting RG 15 (3, 19–21)]: ‘‘consul tertium decimum sexagenos denarios plebi que tum frumentum publicum acce dedi ea millia hominum paullo plura quam ducenta fuerunt.’’ Vide quam haec convenienter ad Dionem, etiam in pecuniae summa, quam tamen ut ambiguam ponit Dio. Tempus etiam eius recensus ex lapide clarum, videlicet in XIII. consulatu Augusti: at Dio aliquot annis ante posuit, C. Antistio 23 24

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figure, Lipsius was able to point out that well under one-tenth of the Roman population was in fact in receipt of free grain. Lipsius had also learnt from the Res gestae that in the census taken in Augustus’ sixth consulate (28 bc) some four million people had been registered, and he cited this figure here in estimating the percentage of the population in receipt of the frumentatio.29 This part of the Res gestae was quoted again by Lipsius in a separate discussion of the census.30 The Res gestae was not simply another ancient text for Lipsius. While he had other sources for Augustus’ census figure of four million, the confirmation found in the Res gestae placed the figure beyond all suspicion.31 In his discussion of the frumentatio Lipsius was careful to compare the evidence of the Res gestae with Cassius Dio. While the inscription amplified the information available in Dio, significantly Dio did not contradict it. The inscription furnished some scarce figures. Dio on the other hand provided independent confirmation of a source suspect due to the identity of its author and the circumstances of its composition. As the population numbers in Augustus and Dio are in agreement, Lipsius suggested, there was no reason not to accept Augustus’ claim of giving 60 denarii to each, a figure not mentioned by Dio. In the Electa and elsewhere, Lipsius’ use of the Res gestae was strictly antiquarian. That is, he nowhere appears to have reflected on the possible political significance of the inscription. The absence of a political analysis of the Res gestae is thrown into relief by Lipsius’ 1581 Commentarius to Tacitus. Already by 1581, Lipsius had changed his mind on the status of the Res gestae as a breviarium. In his commentary to the passage from Tacitus adduced by Schott (Annales 1. 11)—‘cum proferri libellum recitarique iussit’—Lipsius noted that the libellus published by Tiberius is the same little book which Suetonius called a ‘rationarium imperii’. It had contained, he explained, ‘rationes publicae’. He added that Suetonius elsewhere called it a ‘breviarium imperii’, and he quoted Vetere, et D. Laelio consulibus. Mirum, nisi Augusto de se credendum, prae Dione.’ The conjecture for the lacuna in the passage from the Res gestae is Lipsius’. Cf. Dio 55. 10. 1. 29 Electa, 246–7: ‘Ducenta igitur millia frumentantium sub Augusto. Ingens numerus: nec tamen in eo omnes cives. multum abest; vix, inquam, decima civium pars. Nam census illa aetate ordinarius, ad quadragiens centum millia civium.’ Cf. RG 8 (2, 4). 30 Ibid. 287, quoting RG 8 (2, 4). 31 Ibid.: ‘Reipsa quam grandis numerus civium illa aetate fuerit: facile coniicimus vel ex censibus Augusti; qui omnes ultra quadragies centena millia, ut ex lapide illo clarum, quem publicavit amicus noster A. Schottus, suggerente Augerio Busbequio legato olim Byzantino.’

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the entire passage at Augustus 101 bearing on the three Augustan texts. He further suggested that the publication of the libellus by Tiberius amounted to a statement of the condition of the empire as inherited from Augustus, almost a receipt. Lipsius’ purpose here is to distinguish the Ankara inscription as a text distinct from the libellus. Having introduced the testimony from Suetonius, he cited the title of the Ankara inscription, and compared Suetonius’ description of the ‘index rerum gestarum’ as ‘in aheneis tabulis’ to the ‘in duabus ahenis pilis’ of the Monumentum Ancyranum. On the basis of this testimony Lipsius argued that Suetonius’ ‘index rerum gestarum’ was identical to the monument discovered by Busbecq.32 Here he referred neither to Schott’s identification of the monument, nor to his publication of the inscription. Nonetheless, Schott stood corrected: the Monumentum Ancyranum did not correspond to Suetonius’ breviarium. The title of the inscription, as well as the testimony bearing on its disposition in Rome, corresponded rather more closely to Suetonius’ ‘index’. Lipsius nowhere comments on the status of the Res gestae as a piece of imperial autobiography. The Res gestae does not loom large in the Tacitus, to be cited only once again in a comparison with Cassius Dio. There is nothing of the heavy use made of it in the Electa or in the later 1598 Admiranda, which we will turn to shortly. Of course, the noninclusion of the Res gestae in Lipsius’ edition of Tacitus might be explained by the lack of opportunity to do so: Tacitus does not discuss Augustus in any detail. Yet given the disparate views of empire furnished by Tacitus and the Res gestae and the fact that both texts were popularized largely through Lipsius’ own efforts, it is worth exploring their relationship to wider currents of Lipsius’ Roman scholarship. Lipsius’ rather enthusiastic handling of the Res gestae in the Electa and Admiranda illuminates several neglected aspects of his edition of Tacitus and raises further, more general questions regarding his antiquarian scholarship. To begin, what was the purpose of the Commentarius? Lipsius first published his text of Tacitus in 1574, accompanied by textual notes to 32 Justus Lipsius in C. Cornelii Taciti Opera quae exstant (Antwerp, 1607), 12 n. 84 (to Annales 1. 11, ‘cum proferri libellum’): ‘Libellum eumse, quem Suetonius Rationarium imperii non incommode adpellat. scilicet quia rationes eo publicae continebantur. Videbatur autem prolatione libelli flexus paullum Tiberius, et imperium accepturus, cum curas susciperet. Vocat idem auctor etiam Breviarium imperii, cap. ultimo: ‘‘De tribus . . . residuis’’. Ubi nota mihi etiam, Indicem hunc rerum Augusti, certo illum esse cuius exemplar Ancyrae positum, et curante nobilissimo Busbequio, excriptum. Nam titulus in ea ipsa tabula iste: ‘‘rerum gestarum diui Augusti . . . ’’. De eadem re loqui utrumque, id quidem clarum est.’

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both the Annales and the Historiae. The Liber commentarius finally appeared in 1581, and covers only the Annales. His commentary to the Annales was expanded in subsequent editions, while his notes to the Historiae remained brief ‘notae’ through to his last reworking of 1607. The 1581 Commentarius should thus be considered as distinct from the notae to Lipsius’ first Tacitus edition of 1574, which were entirely devoted to textual matters.33 While the Liber commentarius absorbed the earlier notae on the Annales, Lipsius’ reworking of his material was not simply of greater bulk, but of an entirely different order. As we have seen with Schott’s very different approaches to the Epitome and the Caesares, the purpose of commentaries to classical texts varied, depending on the status of the text and the intentions of its editor. Lipsius’ Commentarius is commonly, and correctly, considered an historical commentary to the Annales. Yet given the acknowledged importance of Tacitus in Lipsius’ political philosophy, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the Commentarius. Momigliano observed long ago that Lipsius’ commentary was, quite pointedly, not political in nature:34 there is little tacitismo in Lipsius’ Tacitus. Study of the place of Tacitus in Lipsius’ political and moral thought tends to look outside his Tacitus, for the most part to the Politica.35 Lipsius was not the first to publish a commentary on Tacitus. A few clues to his purpose can be gleaned by considering the character of previous commentaries. Apart from textual notes supplying variants and explaining conjectures, only three major commentaries had appeared before 1581. All were written from the perspective of Roman Law: the first, by Andrea Alciato, appeared in 1517; another, by Emilio Ferretti, who taught law at various French institutions, in 1551; and a third in 1569, by the Lyon antiquarian Marcus Vertranius. The commentaries of Alciato and Vertranius were probably more influential. Alciato’s is characteristic: his first two notes, both lengthy, are devoted to aspects of the Roman monetary system. The remaining notes comb Tacitus for nuggets of antiquarian lore and use him to explain points of Roman Law. Vertranius, on the other hand, had an extensive knowledge of inscriptions, and he employed them profusely in annotating the text of 33 On the evolution of Lipsius’ Tacitus, see M. Morford, Stoics and Neostoics (Princeton, 1993), 143–55; Nelles, ‘Lipsius’ (as in n. 10), 240–4. 34 A. Momigliano, ‘The First Political Commentary on Tacitus’ (1947), in Contributo (as in n. 6), 37–59. 35 See M. Morford, ‘Tacitean Prudentia and the Doctrines of Justus Lipsius’, in T. J. Luce and A. J. Woodman (eds.), Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition (Princeton, 1993), 129–51.

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Tacitus.36 In his own commentary Lipsius made use of many of the inscriptions introduced by Vertranius. As a whole, the legal commentaries do not pretend to explain the text of Tacitus: these are not schoolroom asides. This trait is shared by Lipsius, who only very occasionally condescends to provide the sense of a passage. Yet neither do the legal commentaries expand upon, still less contest, Tacitus’ historical narrative. Like the legal commentators, Lipsius did not look at Tacitus as a historian of the Roman empire. Rather, he viewed the text of Tacitus as a source dating from the empire which could be used to illuminate the Roman world. The legal humanists sought to understand Roman Law in a new way by apprehending how law functioned within the society it was meant to regulate. This was the point of view seized upon by Lipsius and inverted: how did Roman society actually work? The laws of Rome—to which Lipsius devotes a considerable amount of space in the Commentarius—thus become one kind of source among others to be brought to bear on the study of Rome as a historical entity. Lipsius’ commentary was more detailed and more comprehensive than any of its predecessors. Its coverage of the Roman world was extensive: legislative and fiscal matters, topics in civil and military organization (including the frumentatio), brief disquisitions on more recondite areas of Roman life such as the prison system and public games. Much of Lipsius’ subsequent antiquarian scholarship can be traced to his early work on Tacitus. Even his 1594 De cruce, with its riveting illustrations of crucifixion techniques, has its origin in his discussion of crux and patibulum at Annales 14. 33 in the Commentarius.37 However, the Commentarius was not simply bread and circuses. It was meant to aid the wider moral, social, and cultural instruction of the reader. It was one thing to turn to Tacitus, as Lipsius did in his Politica, for guidance through the moral maze of the politics of court and empire. It was quite another, as he did in the Commentarius, to use Tacitus as a belvedere from which to view with enormous energy and 36 The three legal commentaries mentioned here are conveniently gathered in the variorum edition published by Janus Gruter, C. Cornelii Taciti Opera quae extant ex recognitione Iani Gruteri (Frankfurt, 1607). On Alciato’s commentary, see the very limited discussion available in K. C. Schellhase, Tacitus in Renaissance Political Thought (Chicago, 1976), 84 ff. 37 Lipsius, Tacitus (Antwerp, 1614), 252 n. 100, where he refers the reader to De cruce. The note originated in a much longer discussion (absorbed in part by the De cruce) in the Curae secundae; cf. Lipsius, Tacitus (Leiden, 1588), 72–4. On the De cruce see J. De Landtsheer, ‘Justus Lipsius’s De cruce and the Reception of the Fathers’, Neulateinisches Jahrbuch, 2 (2000), 97–122.

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enthusiasm—not traits generally associated with Tacitus—the civil and military apparatus of the early empire. It is not simply that Tacitus, in Mommsen’s dictum, was the most unmilitary of historians, or, as Lipsius himself pointed out, that Tacitus had little to say on the waging of war or agrarian and grain laws.38 Quite simply, Lipsius’ commentary flies in the face of the tone and purpose of almost every page of the Annales. The key to Lipsius’ commentary perhaps lies in the first pages of Tacitus. While nominally beginning with the death of Augustus, the Annales undertake a brief evaluation of the Augustan achievement which, Tacitus grudgingly admitted, brought peace and stability to Rome. Tacitus’ purpose, of course, was to contrast the calm surface of Augustan Rome with the innate instability and inevitable moral corruption of the Principate instanced in the faction and fighting which erupted after Augustus’ death, and which Tacitus minutely chronicled. This was by no means lost on Lipsius. He arguably took Tacitus very seriously: if the outcome of Augustus’ state-building was a long period (by both ancient and modern standards) of peace, stability, and prosperity, the key to maintaining these public goods lay not in cultivating a nostalgia for republican times and values, but in fostering the civil and military administration which had made the Augustan state a success. Thus in the first pages of the Annales and for almost the only time in Lipsius’ Tacitus, Lipsius and Tacitus shared a common purpose: a survey of the Augustan achievement. Why then did Lipsius fail to use the Res gestae in his Tacitus? It is quite possible that he chose to ignore the inscription on the grounds that the monument was open to a cynical, ‘Tacitean’ analysis. And in general, Lipsius veered away from Tacitus’ ad hominem approach: Lipsius knew that to make his point stick, he would need to be a historian of empire, not emperors. He thus set out to document what made the early empire a success; again and again in the Commentarius, it is the Rome of Augustus and, to a lesser extent, Tiberius to which he recalls the reader. Lipsius’ commentary thus stands as a positive historical evaluation of the Roman imperial state in the shadow of a narrative that was positively scathing on the subject. This perhaps explains his silence on the personal lives of the emperors and Tacitus’ account of the moral decay of Roman life and society: these are simply not relevant to his purpose. And this feature of 38 Lipsius, Tacitus (Antwerp, 1585), sig. 2r–v: ‘Non adfert ille [i.e. Tacitus] vobis speciosa bella aut triumphos, quorum finis sola voluptas legentis sit; non seditiones aut conciones tribunicias; agrarias frumentariasve leges; quae nihil ad saeculi huius usum.’

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Lipsius’ commentary is what most clearly distinguishes it from earlier commentaries. Where the legal commentaries are entirely casual and remain detached from the text of Tacitus, taking much from Tacitus but adding little to him, Lipsius engages Tacitus on the fundamental issue raised in the Annales: the condition of Rome under the empire. Tacitus addressed this problem in moral terms; Lipsius in terms of the state administrative apparatus. Further, Lipsius’ primary interest in the early empire might also explain the absence of an extended commentary to the later Historiae. Lipsius did not so much take Tacitus to task as, like the modern bureaucrat (or social historian), bury him under a minor avalanche of facts and figures. Though the Res gestae remained mute in Lipsius’ Tacitus, it was given a full hearing in his most popular antiquarian work, the Admiranda, sive de magnitudine Romana of 1598. Here, Lipsius returned to the kind of direct use of the Res gestae he had initiated in his 1580 Electa. The Admiranda was an intentional vulgarization in popular dialogue form of much of Lipsius’ earlier work. Though appreciated by G. Oestreich for what it was—a fine piece of cultural history—it is easily overlooked as containing work presented much more exactly elsewhere.39 It was dedicated to the governor of the Spanish Netherlands, Albert of Austria—as ‘Imperatoris filius’. In the Admiranda Lipsius sought to expound the administrative principles and the general mechanics of the Roman empire for the benefit of the modern statesman and his advisers, much as he had done in a slightly different vein in his popular political manual, the Politica. In so doing, he lays bare many of the unstated presuppositions of much of his earlier antiquarian scholarship. Roman studies for Lipsius had a serious moral purpose: it was through emulation of the Roman state that peace and stability could be achieved in the modern world. The Admiranda surveys five aspects of the Roman empire: its fines and copiae, or geographical limits, civil and military installations, and the number of its population, the subject of Book 1; its opes or financial resources, documented in Book 2; its opera or buildings, fora, roads, acquaducts, and bridges, enumerated in Book 3; and the virtutes of 39 Lipsius, Admiranda, sive de magnitudine Romana, in Opera, iii. 373, ‘Ad lectorem’: ‘Admiranda in Imperiis, Lector, quae olim colligere coepimus, nunc disponere, ut vides, et vulgare. Orsi sumus a Romano, quod quattuor his libellis damus: an totum? negabit aliquis, et scio esse quae possint addi.’ Cf. G. Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State, ed. B. Oestreich and H. G. Koenigsberger, trans. D. McLintock (Cambridge, 1982), 61.

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its people (though not, significantly, its rulers), studied in Book 4. More than this, in the Admiranda Lipsius presents the empire as something a good deal greater than the sum of its parts. The miscellaneous and eclectic format of the Electa and the Commentarius to Tacitus is here transformed into a systematic measure of Rome. Can it simply be a matter of coincidence that in its structure the Admiranda so closely resembles the Augustan libellus detailing opes publicae described by Tacitus? If not, this is ‘imperial’ history on a grand scale. Organized under five comprehensive headings, the Admiranda undertakes an inventory of the human and financial resources of Rome. Though a popular work, it managed to convey a good deal of information to the reader. The title was an ironical allusion to the ‘greatness of Rome’ retailed in popular handbooks of the mirabilia of the ancient and medieval Urbs.40 On Lipsius’ telling, Rome’s greatness, the very marvel of Rome, was subject to empirical measure. It was to be found in such humdrum matters as corn distribution, stable finance, an efficient civil administration, a disciplined army, and widespread patronage. To a greater degree than in any of his other works, Lipsius placed Augustus at the head of this achievement. This was the Augustus of the Res gestae. Lipsius put the Res gestae to work twice in Book 2 of the Admiranda. The first instance is found in a discussion of the aurum coronarium or coronary gold customarily offered to the emperor. Lipsius explained how the practice, probably imported to Rome from Greece, had originated in the presentation of a crown of gold to a victor by comrades and allies. The crown was gradually replaced by a cash tribute.41 Lipsius quoted the Res gestae to show that Augustus in his fifth consulate had refused the aurum coronarium from Italian municipia and coloniae, as he subsequently did as emperor whenever it was offered. As he had done in the Electa, Lipsius confirmed Augustus’ testimony with that of the supposedly impartial Greek witness Cassius Dio.42 40 On the place of the Admiranda within the early modern literature on Rome, see M. Laureys, ‘ ‘‘The Grandeur that was Rome’’: Scholarly Analysis and Pious Awe in Lipsius’ Admiranda’, in K. Enenkel et al. (eds.), Recreating Ancient History: Episodes from the Greek and Roman Past in the Arts and Literature of the Early Modern Period (Leiden, 2001), 123–46. 41 Ibid. 401–2: ‘Origo eius [sc. auri coronarii], ut socii et amici, victori Imperatori Coronas aureas offerrent, quasi gratulantes, et meritum ei caput cingentes. Itaque primo quidem Coronae ipsae datae, aut missae: postea invaluit, ut pro iis pecunia offerretur. . . . Mos plane vetus, et a Graecis, nisi erro, ad Romanos imitatione translatus.’ 42 Ibid. 402–3, quoting RG 21 (3, 27–9).

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The second occurrence of the Monumentum Ancyranum in the Admiranda is more revealing. Lipsius uses it extensively in documenting Augustus’ largesse in a chapter devoted to Augusti Principis dona. Though in Busbecq’s transcription Lipsius had an extremely lacunose text, he had more or less intact Augustus’ enumeration of his periodic and not inconsiderable cash payments and corn distribution to the plebs.43 In the Admiranda, Lipsius offered a coherent reading of the record of Augustus’ disbursements in what amounts to a point-by-point commentary on this section of the Res gestae. He acknowledged that many of the resources at Augustus’ disposal were supplied from civil war booty. Countering the objection that Augustus’ vast accumulation of wealth must have ruined the towns and provinces, Lipsius used the testimony of the Res gestae to argue that in the peace and accompanying prosperity which ensued after the war, Augustus was careful to repay and restore what, in more unfortunate times, had been seized by force of arms.44 The lesson for the modern ruler could not be more plain. What remains a puzzle, of course, is the absence of any attempt to subject the Res gestae to a political interpretation. It cannot have been the case that the political character of the Res gestae was simply lost on Lipsius. Who better than Tacitus, after all, to have woken Lipsius to the political and historical significance of the Res gestae, a text bound up with Augustus’ self-presentation and containing a rather unambiguous apology for empire? Yet as we have seen, Lipsius’ use of the Res gestae is entirely consonant with his antiquarian use of Tacitus. Lipsius was a serious student of the Roman state, and much of his antiquarian work was given over to an elucidation of the workings of Roman civil and military administration, of which the Admiranda is only the most egregious example. What then is the relationship between Lipsius’ antiquarian scholarship and his political thought? This is perhaps the most serious question raised by the early reception of the Res gestae. Certainly he did not hesitate to interpret the evidence on the Roman past available to him to its furthest limits. His achievement, both in his use of the Res gestae and more generally, lies in the great leap of historical imagination which allowed him to apprehend and even more 43

Ibid. 411–12, quoting RG 15 (3, 1–21). Ibid. 411: ‘Haec praemia in civili bello iis sunt: cum homines ut ad imperium veniant, imperium paene ipsum donant. Quid donant? perdunt volui dicere: et quomodo tot isti pecuniarum cumuli, sine aperta pernicie provincialium civiumque, colligi potuere? Sane id factum est: sed Pax postea, cum copiae suo cornu, reposuit omnia et reparavit. Enimvero Augustus, ut coeperam dicere, in Principatu quoque perliberalis.’ 44

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remarkably recreate for his readers the complex mechanics of Roman life and society. For Lipsius the Res gestae served above all as a signal post of the greatness of Rome and may well have been intended to provide, along with Cassius Dio and Velleius Paterculus,45 an antidote to Tacitus’ view of the empire. Yet the Augustus of the Res gestae is not in conflict with the pessimistic tone of the Annales, and it was certainly not Lipsius’ intention to suppress or deny the vicissitudes of Roman history. He did, after all, choose Tacitus for a reason. But the Roman state Lipsius excavated from the Res gestae might serve as a counter-model. From the messy standpoint of northern Europe in the late sixteenth century— war-torn, brutalized, and in political turmoil—the society described by Tacitus was a looming reality. Lipsius extended an alternative—one which was to be found not so much in the person of Augustus as in the state he created. 45 On Lipsius’ use of Velleius Paterculus, printed with the 1600 and 1607 editions of Tacitus, see Nelles, ‘Lipsius’ (as in n. 10), 243–4.

4 Critice in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and the Rise of the Notion of Historical Criticism Benedetto Bravo

The purpose of this essay is to call attention to one of the components of the multifarious cultural process that engendered the notion of criticism as an intellectual approach or an intellectual operation indispensable for any kind of knowledge aspiring to objective validity. I shall try to show how scholars professionally studying ancient (Greek and Latin, pagan and Christian) texts in the last quarter of the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth century used the word critice (or critica), how its meaning and function changed during that time, and how, in the last quarter of the seventeenth century (during the great mutation that Paul Hazard called ‘the crisis of European consciousness’), the rather confused conglomerate of notions that had formed around the term critice as a result of the efforts and aspirations of viri docti of that craft, influenced Much of the research embodied in the present paper was done in the spring and summer of 1981, when I was in Wolfenbu¨ttel as a Stipendiat of the Herzog August Bibliothek. The idea that I then formed of the history of the term and of the notion of critice went into hibernation, wrapped up in the sheets of a Stipendiaten-Referat, while I worked on subjects remote from this one. An invitation from Christopher Ligota to speak about critice in his History of Scholarship seminar at the Warburg Institute, and subsequently to contribute to the present volume, encouraged me to go back to my unfinished research. I did what I could to collect more material on critice and to think over the whole question afresh. I know that I have not done enough. I am grateful to both editors for their scrutiny of my text, help with the English, and bibliographical assistance. I profited from the criticisms of the anonymous readers of Oxford University Press. I dedicate this paper to the memory of Sebastiano Timpanaro, a scholar whom I met more than fifty years ago, when I was an undergraduate in Pisa, and whose books and conversation stimulated my interest in the history of classical studies.

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other strands of European culture, contributing to the rise of a new notion, that of historical criticism, for denoting which the old term critice (usually in the guise of critique, criticism, Kritik, etc.) turned out to be convenient. I have concentrated on those scholars of the period 1575–1650 who called themselves critici, and their professional activity critice, and who tried—with varying degrees of success—to build a theory of critice. I have left out those scholars who called themselves, or whom we call, antiquarians, and who professed to study antiquitas or antiquitates of the ancient and/or medieval world.1 This does not mean that I have forgotten them. I know, having learnt this from Krzysztof Pomian long ago, that the ideal of objective historical knowledge and writing—of which the notion of historical criticism is an essential element—was born in the respublica litteraria of the seventeenth century, mainly as a result of the work of antiquarians and of historians of the erudite kind.2 The rise of the notion of literary criticism and of art criticism will remain outside the scope of this paper. This may seem surprising and suspect, especially as regards literary criticism, for a great many of the texts making up ancient Greek and Latin litterae fall within our notion of literature. However, the scholars I am particularly interested in (above all Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon) worked not only on such texts, but also, and far more often, on texts to which our notion of literature applies only partially, if at all: Varro, Festus, Jerome’s Chronicon, Strabo, Athenaeus, etc. This holds true for many of their predecessors too. Politian, for instance, was certainly a respectable poet, but as a scholar, he worked on ancient philosophical, juridical, philological, antiquarian texts at least as much as on ancient poetry. Rudolf Pfeiffer maintained that classical scholarship was born twice, in the third century bc and in the 1 A classic study is A. Momigliano, ‘Ancient History and the Antiquarian’ (1950), in id., Contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Rome, 1955), 67–106. See also Momigliano’s The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography, published posthumously (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990), ch. 3, esp. pp. 54–8. A partly different approach has been proposed by G. Salmeri, ‘L’arcipelago antiquario’, in E. Vaiani (ed.), Dell’antiquaria e dei suoi metodi: Atti delle giornate di studio, Pisa 1998 (published in 2001) ( ¼ Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, ser. 4, Quaderni, 2 (1998)), 256–80. 2 In 1966, or 1967, I read in typescript K. Pomian’s doctoral dissertation ‘Przeszłos ć´ jako przedmiot wiedzy’ [‘The past as an object of knowledge’]. It was ready for the press in March 1968—but this was the ‘Polish March’, a catastrophe for thousands of Poles and for Polish culture; the book was not published until 1992. Pomian’s dissertation, together with Momigliano’s ‘Ancient History and the Antiquarian’ and S. Timpanaro’s Genesi del metodo del Lachmann, are at the origin of my excursion into the world of early modern viri docti.

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fifteenth century ad, and that on both occasions it was engendered by the love of poetry.3 I should rather say that in both instances it was engendered by the desire for an accurate reading and understanding of ancient texts of all kinds and for accurate knowledge about ‘the ancients’ (ofl palaio‹, veteres). Anyway, as regards scholarly ‘critici’ of the period 1575–1650, even if they considered ‘judgement’ (‘iudicium’) concerning the poetic or rhetorical quality of individual passages or of entire works to belong to critice, this was in their opinion just one of its tasks. Moreover, what scholars did in this respect had no appeal for those among their contemporaries who rated specialized and professional learning lower than general, non-professional education of the kind that equipped one for intelligent and pleasant conversation: these people considered taste, and therefore literary judgement, to be their prerogative. In his book on the ‘history of literary criticism from Quintilian to Thomasius’, H. Jaumann devotes a chapter to ars critica and critique mondaine, in which he discusses the work of classical scholars of the sixteenth and of the first half of the seventeenth century as a pattern of intellectual activity characteristic of the period preceding the rise of the notion and practice of literary criticism.4 His topic is critice in relation to literary criticism, just as mine here is critice in relation to historical criticism. This complementarity is welcome but, unfortunately, Jaumann’s work is marred by imperfect knowledge of ancient grammatice, which these scholars were constantly confronting;5 in particular, he tends to blur the distinction between ancient grammatice and ancient rhetoric. I tacitly dissent from Jaumann on many points. Interested readers can compare and form their own opinion. The topic I am going to discuss is, as far as I know, largely unexplored. In work done so far on the history of the term criticism (critique, Kritik) 3 R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford, 1968) (hereafter Pfeiffer, History I); id., History of Classical Scholarship from 1300 to 1850 (Oxford, 1976) (hereafter Pfeiffer, History II). The excellent quality of these two books, especially of the first, which is certainly the better, is not in doubt. But the masterly and incredibly rich sketch by U. von WilamowitzMoellendorff, Geschichte der Philologie, 3rd edn. (1927, repr. Leipzig, 1959) (which draws not only on his reading and immense scholarly experience, but also on his Nachschrift of Otto Jahn’s lectures, which he had attended as an undergraduate in Bonn), seems to me more thought-enhancing. 4 H. Jaumann, Critica: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Literaturkritik zwischen Quintilian und Thomasius (Leiden, 1995), ch. 3 (‘Ars critica, critique mondaine: Spa¨thumanistische Krise und die Wendung der Kritik zur Aktualita¨t’), 158–226; see esp. the first section, pp. 158–81. 5 This shortcoming is particularly clear in a crucial passage, pp. 165–7.

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little or no attention seems to have been paid to the aspect of late sixteenthand early seventeenth-century scholarship I am interested in.6 As to research on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scholars and scholarship— let me single out honoris causa the admirably broad, thorough, and penetrating study by A. Grafton7—the meaning of critice or critica (ars critica) or critique in these centuries has been taken for granted,8 which does not seem to me to be justified; in particular, the question has not been asked in what relation the use of the term stood to the terminology and theory of scholarship that the scholars concerned could find in ancient texts. Nor is this terminology and this theory as well known as one would expect, considering that the subject has never ceased to interest classical scholars since the last quarter of the sixteenth century.9 I think it would not be useless to discuss it anew, but this cannot be fully done here.10 6 This is at any rate the impression I get from reading C. von Bormann’s and G. Tonelli’s contributions to the article ‘Kritik’ in Historisches Wo¨rterbuch der Philosophie, iv (Basle, 1976), esp. cols. 1249–63, and K. Ro¨ttgers’ article ‘Kritik’ in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, iii (Stuttgart, 1982), 651–75. Exaggerated importance has been attached to the appearance of the term of critice, denoting the function of judging whether a sentence is true or false, in the anti-Aristotelian logic of Petrus Ramus. H. Jaumann’s book just cited does not even mention the problem of whether or how the notion of critice could have contributed to the rise of the notion of historical criticism. 7 A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, i: Textual Criticism and Exegesis (Oxford, 1983) (hereafter Grafton, Scaliger I); ii: Historical Chronology (Oxford, 1993) (hereafter Grafton, Scaliger II). At i. 6–7 and 181–2 he passes the problem by without seeing it; see also ii. 687–8 n. 18, where he quotes a crucial text but does not consider it in relation to Scaliger’s notion of critice. 8 In addition to A. Grafton’s work just cited, see especially J. Jehasse, La Renaissance de la critique (Saint E´tienne, 1976); Pfeiffer, History II. The old handbook by J. E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, ii, 3rd edn. (New York, 1921, repr. New York, 1958), is indispensable for factual information on the life and work of individual scholars, but has not much to do with the history of ideas. 9 See e.g. K. Lehrs, Herodiani scripta tria emendatiora (Ko ¨ nigsberg, 1848), 377–401 (ch. ‘De vocabulis fillogov, grammatikv, kritikv’); the articles ‘Grammatikv’ and ‘Kritikv’ in the most recent, revised edition of the Thesaurus Graecae linguae (Paris, 1831–65); the articles concerning the same words, by A. Gudeman, in Real-Encyklopaedie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft; Pfeiffer, History I, passim; C. O. Brink, Horace on Poetry, iii (Cambridge, 1982), 414–91. As regards the kritiko‹ mentioned in several ¨ ber die Gedichte: fragments of Philodemus’ works, see especially Chr. Jensen, Philodemos U Fu¨nftes Buch (Berlin, 1923), esp. 136–40, 147–74; M. Pohlenz, ‘T¿ prpon: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des griechischen Geistes’, in Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Go¨ttingen (1933), 53–92, esp. 80–1; H. Gomoll, ‘Herakleodoros und die kritiko‹ bei Philodem’, Philologus, 91, nf 45 (1936), 373–84, esp. 380–4; D. M. Schenkeveld, ‘Ofl kritiko‹ in Philodemus’, Mnemosyne, 21 (1968), 176–214; J. I. Porter, ‘Ofl kritiko‹: A Reassessment’, in J. G. J. Abbenes (ed.), Greek Literary Theory after Aristotle: A Collection of Papers in Honour of D. M. Schenkeveld (Amsterdam, 1995), 83–109. 10 Apart from remarks in the present essay, see my ‘Felix Jacoby, Arnaldo Momigliano e l’erudizione antica’, in C. Ampolo (ed.), Aspetti dell’opera di Felix Jacoby: Atti del Seminario Arnaldo Momigliano, 20–21 dicembre 2002 (Pisa, 2006).


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I am aware that the results of the research presented here are far from sufficient. However, what I have found seems to me to be worth communicating. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the best scholars professionally studying ancient Greek and Latin texts viewed their work as a continuation of the work of those ancient scholars who had been called, in their own time, grammatiko‹ or grammatici, only occasionally kritiko‹ or critici. This is particularly clear in the case of Politian: his two collections of Miscellanea were modelled on Aulus Gellius’ Noctes Atticae.11 The model of scholarly research that Politian and other scholars of his time took over from Antiquity and that was handed down to the scholars I shall be concerned with, was centred on the literal interpretation of texts, and accorded little or no place to allegorical interpretation. It was the model established by Alexandrian scholars of the third and second centuries bc who chose to call themselves grammatiko‹ and were not interested in the allegorical interpretation practised by contemporary Stoic philosophers and Stoic scholars. This is all the more remarkable as in Politian’s time the theory of the ‘four senses’ of Scripture still flourished, and he certainly knew plenty of texts from Late Antiquity (Latin and Greek, pagan and Christian) representing an allegorical, directly or indirectly Neoplatonic, mode of interpretation. Though continuing the work of ancient grammatiko‹ early modern scholars did not apply to themselves the title grammatici, nor did they call their profession grammatice (grammatica). These terms were unwelcome to them, as they were currently applied (as they had been since Late Antiquity) to elementary teaching and teachers of Latin. As for the term kritikv, criticus, it took a long time before scholars accepted it as a title. This happened when they began to attribute to the word kritik a meaning and a function that it had probably never had in Antiquity. It is important to notice that in so far as it is used as an ellipsis not for kritik d¸namiv (‘critical faculty’),12 but for kritik tcnh or tcnh 11 See S. Timpanaro, La genesi del metodo del Lachmann (Padua, 1990), 5. Alessandro Perosa, lecturing on Politian’s first Centuria at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa in 1953, pointed to Aulus Gellius as Politian’s model. 12 Outside this domain kritik (scil. tcnh) occurs in Plato, Politicus, 260 b–c, where it refers to t¿ kritik¿n mrov of gnwstik ; but this is just an ephemeral improvisation. On the other hand, the adjective kritikv, meaning ‘capable of discerning’, is fairly frequent; for t¿ kritikn as ‘the power of discerning’, cf. Aristotle, De anima, 432a16. See moreover Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis in Opera (ed. Ku¨hn), 7. 1, p. 13: d¸namin . . . tn logik n te ka› kritikn nomazomnhn, ‘the so-called power of

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kritik (‘critical craft/art’), kritik occurs only twice in what sixteenth-century scholars could read of ancient Greek literature: in a not very clear—indeed, I should think, a partly corrupt—passage of Sextus Empiricus’ Adversus mathematicos (1. 248; cf. 1. 79) reporting that a particular group of scholars had ‘subordinated’ grammatik to kritik ,13 and in a passage of Dio Chrysostom equating grammatik with what was earlier called kritik (On Homer, Or. 53. 1). The term tcnh kritik in full is attested only once, and in a rather obscure place at that, a notice in the Suda concerning a grammatikv ‘of the Aristarchean school’, Pamphilus of Alexandria, otherwise unknown, to whom a Tcnh kritik is ascribed without further detail. We know today another text attesting kritik tcnh, but this is a medieval scholion which, if I am not mistaken, was not known to the scholars I shall be dealing with: it is one of the Scholia Vaticana (cod. C) edited by A. Hilgard, Scholia in Dionysii Thracis artem grammaticam, in Grammatici Graeci, i, pt. 3 (Leipzig, 1901), 161, ll. 20–3 (about grammatik ): kritik d lgetai tcnh k to kall‹stou mrouv, ‘ kton’ gr sti ‘kr‹siv poihmtwn, ˜ d kllistn sti pntwn tØn n ti tcnhi’, ‘it [i.e. grammar] is called kritik tcnh from its finest part, for ‘‘the sixth part is the judgement of pieces of poetry, which is the finest part of all those of which this art is composed’’ ’ (a quotation from Dionysius Thrax). It is the medieval scholiast who says that grammar is called kritik tcnh; Dionysius Thrax says no such thing. As for ancient Latin texts, one would expect to find critice or critica or ars critica, but none of these appears.14 The extraordinary career of the term kritik or critice, which, in its vernacular offspring critique, criticism, Kritik, critica, came to express a key notion in modern European culture, started from a largely arbitrary treatment of a handful of ancient Greek texts by Joseph Justus Scaliger about 1575. The arbitrariness of the philological operation by which this reasoning and of discerning’. Also of interest, Athenaeus, Dipnosoph., 1. 4 Kaibel (2 b): o˝k basan‹stwv o˝d’ k to paratucntov tv zht seiv poio¸menov ll’ v ni mlista met kritikv tinov ka› Swkratikv pist mhv. 13 For an emendation of this passage see Bravo, ‘Felix Jacoby’ (as in n. 10). 14 We cannot infer the existence of critice from Petronius, 58. 7, where Trimalchio says: ‘non didici geometrias, critica et alogias, þ menias’. (A number of conjectures have been proposed: ‘alogias, naenias’; ‘alogas naenias’; ‘alogias meras’; ‘alogas menias’. I think the first is the best.) We are expected to understand that Trimalchio has heard something about the critici, but does not know that the discipline they practise is called grammatice. Trimalchio’s use of the substantivized adjective ‘critica’ (neuter plural: ‘critical things’) has to be perceived as a manifestation of his lack of, and contempt for, culture, like his use of the plural ‘geometrias’ instead of the singular ‘geometriam’.


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great scholar launched the word kritik or critice as a term applying to the very core of the kind of scholarship practised by him, and, even more, the willingness with which it was accepted by his contemporaries—in particular by another great scholar, Isaac Casaubon, who was more careful and conscientious than J. J. Scaliger—suggests a need felt at the time for a word that would help to conceptualize a more exacting approach to the study of the past. Let us begin by looking at a much earlier scholar, Politian. A. Wesseling has pointed out that in the first ‘centuria’ of his Miscellanea, published in 1489, Politian ‘still uses the term ‘‘grammaticus’’ in the narrow, and in his day usual, sense of ‘‘elementary schoolmaster’’—a usage which later, in the Lamia, he censures’.15 Lamia, Praelectio in Priora Aristotelis Analytica was published in 1492. The passage Wesseling is referring to is worth quoting at length. Politian declares that though he is not a philosopher, he is, and is entitled to be, an interpreter of Aristotle, just as Donatus, Servius, Aristarchus, and Zenodotus interpreted poets, though they were not poets themselves.16 He then gives other examples: Is not Philoponus, the disciple of Ammonius and fellow student of Simplicius, an adequate interpreter of Aristotle? Yet nobody calls him a philosopher, and everybody a grammarian. Indeed, the famous Xenocritus of Cos, the two Rhodians, Aristocles and Aristeas, the two Alexandrians, Antigonus and Didymus, and the most celebrated of them all, Aristarchus—are they not all grammarians? And they all, as Erotian reports, expounded the writings of Hippocrates, as did others whom Galen enumerates. Yet nobody takes them to 15 Politian, Lamia: Praelectio in Priora Aristotelis Analytica, crit. edn., introd., and comm. by A. Wesseling (Leiden, 1986), 100. 16 Ibid. 16–17: ‘An non Philoponus ille Ammonii discipulus Simpliciique condiscipulus idoneus Aristotelis est interpres? At eum nemo philosophum vocat, omnes grammaticum. Quid? Non grammaticus etiam Cous ille Xenocritus et Rhodii duo Aristocles atque Aristeas et Alexandrini item duo Antigonus ac Didymus et omnium celeberrimus idem ille Aristarchus? Qui tamen omnes, ut Erotianus est auctor, Hippocratis interpretati sunt libros, sicut alii quoque, quos Galenus enumerat. Nec eos quisquam medicos esse ob id putat. Grammaticorum enim sunt haec partes, ut omne scriptorum genus, poetas, historicos, oratores, philosophos, medicos, iureconsultos excutiant atque enarrent. Nostra aetas parum perita rerum veterum nimis brevi gyro grammaticum sepsit. At apud antiquos olim tantum auctoritatis hic ordo habuit ut censores essent et iudices scriptorum omnium soli grammatici, quos ob id etiam criticos vocabant, sic ut non versus modo—ita enim Quintilianus ait—censoria quadam virgula notare, sed libros etiam qui falso viderentur inscripti tamquam subditicios submovere familia permiserint sibi, quin auctores etiam quos vellent aut in ordinem redigerent aut omnino eximerent numero. Nec enim aliud grammaticus Graece quam Latine litteratus. Nos autem nomen hoc in ludum trivialem detrusimus tanquam in pistrinum.’ See also Wesseling’s commentary on this passage.

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be physicians on that account. The role of grammarians is to examine and interpret all kinds of writers: poets, historians, orators, philosophers, physicians, jurists. Our age, insufficiently conversant with ancient matters, has confined the grammarian in too narrow a circle. With the ancients the profession had such authority that grammarians were the sole censors and judges of all writers and were, on account of this, also called critics. They felt free—as Quintilian puts it—not only to mark individual verses with a censorial stroke, but also to expel from the family, as supposititious, books they found to be falsely attributed, and further, to include in the canon, or exclude from it, authors as they saw fit. Grammaticus in Greek means the same as litteratus in Latin; we, however, have driven the term into the slavish grind of ordinary school.

In this passage Politian intelligently uses what he has read in Quintilian (especially 1. 4–9) and in other ancient authors. The statement that ‘grammatici’ in Antiquity were ‘iudices scriptorum omnium’, and that this is why they were called ‘critici’, is not based on any explicit statement of Quintilian (who does not use the term criticus at all in his description of grammatice) or of any other ancient author, but it is perfectly in keeping with the ancient idea of grammatik and with the way the ancients used the term kritikv. Grammatiko‹ grammatici could be called kritiko‹ critici in so far as they judged the quality of passages or works and, by so doing, identified spurious material and determined which authors were worthy of inclusion in the list of classics (ofl gkrinmenoi) in any given literary genre. A famous work that does not belong to the main stream of scholarship cannot be left aside in this inquiry: Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Poetice, posthumously published in 1561.17 Its fifth book, entitled ‘Criticus [scil. liber Criticus], De imitatione et iudicio’, compares and judges Greek and Latin poems in order to establish which of them are to be ‘imitated’. Book 6, entitled ‘Hypercriticus, Iudicium de Aetatibus Poeseos Latinae; Iudicium de Poetis’, has a long chapter (4) on modern Latin poets. They are treated in the same way as ancient Latin or Greek poets. Of course, the standards of iudicium are conceived of by the author as founded on the timeless nature of things. Against the opinion of the ancients, Julius Caesar Scaliger does not think that the task of judging the quality of poems and poets ought to be reckoned as a part of grammatice. He writes (1. 5, p. 11; 2nd edn., p. 26; L. Deitz’s edn., i, p. 126): verum nihil non audent iudicare Grammatici: postquam arti suae tertiam partem kritikn adieceˆre. Non enim tanquam Grammaticis iudicium illud esse 17 J. C. Scaliger, Poetices libri septem (Geneva: Petrus Santandreanus, 1561; 2nd edn., 1581). See also the recent edition by L. Deitz and G. Vogt-Spira (Stuttgart, 1994).


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potest attributum: sed existimandum est primi Philosophi officium: penes quem unum ius est omnium scientiarum. Quare stultissime` nobis Grammatici nomen imponunt ex libro nostro De causis linguae Latinae. Omnia enim illa ad libellam Philosophiae appensa sunt. Nam quemadmodum probare potest artifex principia sua? Atqui probamus ibi nos, quaecunque a` Grammaticis pro notis accipiuntur.

This is rather idiosyncratic language, mixing the literary Latin of the humanists with the spoken Latin of university teaching; I am not sure that I understand it completely; here is a translation: However, there is nothing the grammarians will not presume to judge ever since they added kritik as a third part to their art. Indeed, the right of pronouncing judgement in this domain cannot be given to them in so far as they are grammarians (?); it has to be considered as an office of the metaphysician (?),18 who alone has jurisdiction over every science. So it is very foolish to call me grammarian on the strength of my book De causis linguae Latinae. For everything in that book has been weighed according to the rules of philosophy. How can the practitioner of an art account for his own principles? But I account for everything the grammarians assume as known.

The idea that the task of judging the quality of poems and poets ought to belong to the philosopher, and not to the grammaticus, is a development of J. C. Scaliger’s view of grammatica stated long before in the opening pages of De causis linguae Latinae, where he maintains that the interpretation of texts does not belong to the grammaticus.19 What is interesting 18 I take ‘primus Philosophus’ to mean adept of ‘prima philosophia’, i.e. metaphysics, the part of philosophy that is neither logic nor ethics, nor ‘philosophia naturalis’— admittedly, a strange way of expressing the idea. It could also mean ‘a first-class philosopher’, but this would be even stranger, for the relative clause ‘penes quem . . . ’, etc., seems to suggest that the author is thinking not of ‘a philosopher’, but of ‘the philosopher’. Bormann, ‘Kritik’ (as in n. 6), 1257–8, understands the passage to refer to the threefold division of Ramus’ dialectic, ‘deren dritter Teil 1543 noch als exercitatio angeha¨ngt wurde—eben ‘‘die Interpretation von Dichtern, Rednern, Philosophen und allen Ku¨nsten’’.’ He may be right, but I suspect he is not. 19 J. C. Scaliger, De causis linguae Latinae libri tredecim (Geneva: Petrus Santandreanus, 1534), 2–3: ‘Itaque orationem eiusque partes duo artifices diversis modis contemplantur. Dialecticus sub ratione veritatis, tanquam sub fine: grammaticus sub figurationis et compositionis modo, quam vocarunt constructionem, tanquam materiam. Nam tamenetsi grammaticus etiam considerat significatum, qui quasi forma quaedam est, non tamen propter se id agit, sed ut veritatis indagatori subministret . . . Postremo` quo`d officium interpretandorum autorum annumerarunt [as belonging to the grammaticus], id sane` grammatici non est, sed sapientis pro cuiusque rei captu. Est enim Oratorum Poe¨tarumque, atque Historicorum lectio differta variis artibus, atque scientiis: non ad ipsos literatores potius qua`m ad veros artifices pertinens. Nam quod ad interpretationem ipsam attinet: eadem ratio est, et componendi, et composita cognoscendi . . . ’. By ‘veros artifices’ Scaliger means orators, poets, and historians: orators are competent at

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for my purpose is that in the treatise on poetice judging poems and poets is not presented as related to the discernment of the spurious from the authentic: the aim of the criticus is just to offer literary judgement and thereby to point out what deserves to be ‘imitated’. J. C. Scaliger’s notion of criticus has much more to do with Aristotle’s Poetics (where kritikv and kritik do not occur) and with the tradition of ancient ł torev (who were not called kritiko‹)20 than with the tradition of ancient kritiko‹. It is probably from his treatise that the use of critique, criticism, etc. to express the modern notion of literary criticism ultimately derives.21 Another point worth noticing is J. C. Scaliger’s statement that grammatici added to their ‘art’ a ‘third part’, called kritik . Who are these grammatici? To none, either ancient or modern, that I know of, could the statement really apply. It looks as though J. C. Scaliger arbitrarily combined the following data: (1) the notion of grammatica that was current at his time; (2) two passages of a text still unpublished at the time, Sextus Empiricus’ Adversus mathematicos (1. 79; 248–9),22 reporting the theory of Crates of Mallus and of his pupil Tauriscus, according to which grammatik is different from kritik and subordinate to it (however, I do not know how he interpreted 1. 248, where the text of the MSS seems to me absurd: instead of tv kritikv e nai I propose to read tv grammatikv e nai);23 (3) two other passages in Sextus Empiricus (Adv. math. 1. 91–5; 252–3), of which the first reports the division of grammatik that seems to Sextus to be the most reasonable, the second mentions the same division as belonging to Asclepiades of Myrleia: grammatik is composed of three parts (mrh), namely tecnikn, flstorikn, and grammatikn or fidia‹teron, of which the last studies poets and prose writers. interpreting orations, poets at interpreting poems, historians at interpreting histories; ‘literatores’, i.e. ‘grammatici’, cannot interpret any text. This paradoxical opinion has something in common with the opinion of Chares (Per› grammatikv) reported by Sextus Empiricus, Adv. math. 1.76–8. It is the opposite of what Politian says in the passage from Lamia quoted above. 20 e.g. Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Let us remember that Pseudo-Longinus’ On the Sublime, edited by F. Robortello in 1554, was not yet known to the author of the Poetice. 21 R. Wellek, Concepts of Criticism (New Haven, 1963), ch. 2, rightly sees the difference between Julius Caesar Scaliger’s critice and what critici of his time did; but he does not see that these critici did not use the term critice to speak of their work. 22 Editio princeps of Sextus, 1621; first Latin translation 1569. 23 See Bravo, ‘Jacoby’ (as in n. 10), 250 and n. 36.


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It was, I think, from this arbitrary combination of data that J. C. Scaliger drew the conclusion that ancient grammatiko‹ added to their tcnh a third part, called kritik . This conclusion was, of course, completely wrong. J. C. Scaliger’s construction could be dismissed as the fancy of a man who, though very learned, was a dilettante in philological scholarship (he considered himself a philosopher and a physician), were it not that it stimulated his son and pupil, Joseph Justus Scaliger,24 who was anything but a dilettante, to build up, in a not very different way, a different conception, which turned out to be very attractive for his contemporaries. In the Prima Scaligerana,25 recorded by Franciscus Vertunianus,26 J. J. Scaliger at one point speaks of Grammatica, meaning scholarship: ‘If only I were a good grammarian, for it is enough for whoever wants to have a firm understanding of all the authors to be a good grammarian. Those who, speaking of learned men, say that they are ‘‘mere grammarians’’, are very unlearned themselves, you will always find. Quarrels in matters of religion stem from nothing so much as ignorance of grammar.’27 Elsewhere he says: Kritik is the principal and the nobler part of grammar, indeed it is grammar absolute. Whoever has it, will be able to interpret all the authors. Its task is to On this scholar see especially Grafton’s two volumes cited above, n. 7. Prima Scaligerana, nusquam antehac edita, cum praefatione T. Fabri; quibus adjuncta et altera Scaligerana qua`m antea emendatiora, cum Notis cujusdam V.D. Anonymi (Groningen, 1669). Tanaquil Faber (Le Fe`vre) writes in the preface that he is publishing the Prima Scaligerana on the basis of a copy of the ‘Schedae et adversaria Vertuniani’—a copy that had been made and sent to the printer for publication by F. Sigonius, ‘Iurisconsultus apud Augustoritenses [i.e. at Limoges] celeberrimus’. He explains his choice of the title Prima Scaligerana by pointing out that ‘altera illa Scaligerana, quae abhinc duobus tribus-ve annis prodiere, recentiora sunt’. (He is referring to the Scaligerana published at The Hague in 1666 and based on materials from Isaac Vossius’ library.) I do not know what to think of the editor’s declaration: ‘Rogavit [scil. F. Sigonius] porro ut inspicerem; Inspexi; et quaedam sane ad ea [scil. Scaligerana] parabam scribere, quae non omnibus fortasse nota sunt, sed totum id consilii ut abiicerem multa fecere.’ In fact, these Scaligerana are printed together with numerous and sometimes extensive additions by the editor, which are unambiguously distinguished from Scaliger’s words. I was not able to see the collection of Scaligerana published in Cologne in 1595. 26 Franc ¸ois de Saint-Vertunien or simply Vertunien, a physician with whom Joseph Justus Scaliger was in close contact in the 1570s, and who in 1578 published a translation of Hippocrates’ De capitis vulneribus, based on a text critically established by Scaliger. See Grafton, Scaliger I, 180–4. 27 Prima Scaligerana, 86: ‘Utinam essem bonus Grammaticus; sufficit enim ei qui auctores omnes probe vult intelligere esse bonum Grammaticum. Porro quicunque Doctos viros Grammaticos pour tout potage vocant, sunt ipsi indoctissimi, idque semper observabis. Non aliunde dissidia in Religione pendent, quam ab ignoratione Grammaticae.’ 24 25

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emend corruptions, to restore falsely attributed works to their true authors, to examine and discuss every kind of poet, orator, and philosopher: for critics were like censors in respect of books. Varro’s critica showed that out of many comedies only twenty-one were genuinely Plautus’, which were later called Varronianae; only such of Homer’s verses were admitted as had been approved by Aristarchus, only such of Terence’s comedies as had been approved by Calliopius.28

The same view is presented more amply in a letter to Vertunianus,29 dated ‘VIII. Kalend. Ianuarias’, that is—in the language of the pe´dants— 25 December, Christmas Day. The year is not indicated. Since in the collection of Scaliger’s Latin letters, published in 1627 and 1628 by Daniel Heinsius, all the other letters to Vertunianus (nos. 17–19 and 21–2) range from 3 December 1574 to 12 February 1576,30 and since the letter here quoted is printed in the middle of this group, it is very likely that the editor thought, or knew, that that letter belonged chronologically with the others, i.e. to one of the years 1574–6. More than that one cannot say, for the editor was not very accurate in ordering the letters of this group: no. 21 is earlier than nos. 18 and 19. A. Grafton dates no. 20 to 25 December 1574, without any explanation, as though the year was certain;31 he may well be right, but it is not clear on what 28 Prima Scaligerana, 67: ‘Kritik Grammaticae pars principalis et nobilior est, imo Grammatica absolutissima; quam qui tenet, omnes auctores interpretabitur. Eius est depravata emendare, falso attributa suis auctoribus asserere ac vindicare, omne genus Poe¨tarum, Oratorum, et Philosophorum recensere atque excutere: nam Critici erant velut Censores librorum. Varronis Critica docuit ex multis fabulis unam tantum et viginti Plautinas esse, quae postea Varronianae dictae sunt. Versus Homeri illi tantum admissi sunt, quos Aristarchus probavit: Comoediae Terentii, quas Calliopius.’ 29 Iosephi Scaligeri Epistolae (edited by D. Heinsius, as one can gather from the editor’s preface, though the name does not appear; he is named as the author of the long poetic elogium of Scaliger), no. 20 (Leiden 1627), 117–20, or (Frankfurt 1628), 106–9. 30 No. 17 is dated 3. Non. Decembr. ( ¼ 3 Dec.) 1574, and judging by its content, it is the earliest of the letters to Vertunianus printed in this collection, probably the first or one of the first letters Scaliger wrote to him; no. 18 is dated Malavallae, IV. Non. Februar. (¼2 Feb.) 1575; no. 19, Malavallae in limite Lemovicano. VI. Nonarum Mart. ( ¼ 2 Mar.) 1575; no. 20, VIII. Kalend. Ianuarias ( ¼ 25 Dec.); no. 21, Malavallae in Limite Lemovicano. V. Kalend. Februar. ( ¼ 28 Jan.) 1575; no. 22, Prid. Id. Febr. ( ¼ 12 Feb.), no year, but it must be 1576, for the author reminds Vertunianus of what he had written to him ‘a year ago from the Limousin’ (‘Verum est quod e` limite Lemovicano anno tibi scribebamus, non intellexisse Plinium quae scriberet’), which we find in letter no. 18. Since the date of no. 20 does not include the indication ‘Malavallae’ or ‘Malavallae in Limite Lemovicano’, which appears in the letters to Vertunianus of 28 Jan. (no. 21), 2 Feb. (no. 18), and 2 Mar. 1575 (no. 19), I think it was not written during Scaliger’s stay in the Limousin. However, the exact dates of his stay are not known. 31 Grafton, Scaliger I, 317 n. 7.


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grounds.32 An argument in favour of 1574 rather than 1575 might be the fact that the remarks on the word macte contained in this letter are obviously connected with Scaliger’s work on Festus, which was published in 1575, with the preface dated 24 October 1574.33 Scaliger declares that he is going to answer two of the questions that Vertunianus had asked him in the last three letters: (i) what is a criticus? (ii) what does the word macte mean? I wonder whether Vertunianus had really asked him these questions, not very likely ones to occur to a layman. Perhaps they were Scaliger’s own and he wanted to write about them. Answering the first question, he begins by pointing out the worth of grammatice: ‘Those who wrote books concerning this discipline were very great men, also in other domains: Crates, Aristophanes, Nicander, Callimachus, the famous Apollonius of Rhodes, Chrysippus, and other great heroes.’ After this enumeration, which is fanciful and serves the rhetorical purpose of enhancing the worth of the subject, he goes on: They have bequeathed to us in their works the idea that there are three parts of grammatice. The first they called tecnik , the second flstorik , the third fidiaitra. They call tecnik pragmate‹a the part that concentrates on the elements [i.e. vowels and consonants] and their compounds [i.e. syllables and words]. They call flstorik the one that relates to the mythical stories of poets and to descriptions occurring in orators and in histories, sites, mountains, rivers, and to other matters of this kind. By the term fidiaitra they mean the part that does not keep within these limits but goes beyond them and penetrates into the innermost recesses of philosophy [sapientia], which it does when it distinguishes spurious verses of poets from authentic ones, when it corrects corrupt readings, when it assigns falsely attributed works to their real authors, when it examines and discusses the many kinds of poets, orators, and philosophers. Therefore they gave to this part the name of kritik . And as the ancient Romans divided each of the four seasons into three parts, so that they were in the habit of saying ‘ver primum’, ‘ver adultum’, and ‘ver praecipitatum’, in the same way they rightly decided that the fillogov should arrive at the perfect knowledge of filolog‹a through these grades. That is why the first part, the tecnik , is the daily practice among the rabble of schoolteachers—or so they think.34 But very famous men 32 Jehasse, Renaissance (as in n. 8), 295 n. 15, dates the letter to 1575, on the mistaken assumption that all the other letters of this group belong to 1575. 33 On this work see the very interesting pages by Grafton, Scaliger I, 145–60. 34 Cf. Scaliger’s letter to Claude Dupuy, dated 7 July 1580, Lettres franc ¸aises ine´dites de Joseph Scaliger, ed. Ph. Tamizey de Larroque (Agen, 1879), no. 33, pp. 109–10: ‘Certainement je prevois que les petitz grammatics seront cause que non seullement les critiques, mais aussi la critique mesmes sera exposeé en riseé.’ By ‘les petitz grammatics’ Scaliger obviously means those among the grammatici who do not rise above the ‘faex paedagogorum’. According to Jehasse, Renaissance (as in n. 8), 200–1, this is the earliest

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of Antiquity excelled in it: Herodian, Tryphon, Apollonius of Alexandria among the Greeks; among the Romans, Scaurus, Donatus, Caesar himself, and Pliny [the Elder]. The third part, i.e. the noblest of the three, really worthy of a philosopher, was practised by the Greeks Crates, Aristophanes [of Byzantium], Aristarchus, who for this reason was generally known under the name of kritikv; and by an endless number of Romans, among whom Varro, Sisenna, Aelius Iurisconsultus, and others. The intermediate part, i.e. the second one, was cultivated in particular by Hyginus, Palaephatus, Stephanus, and also Caesar. How much more they [i.e. the ancients] appreciated the third part than the other two, you can gather from its name: they did not give it a name taken from its function, as in the case of the other two, the first tecnik because it practises an art, and the second flstorik because it explains stories. But because the third part is not for everybody, only for the few, and does not deal with ordinary authors, but the noblest ones, they called it fidiaitra, as it were private.35 occurrence, in a French text, of the feminine noun critique (‘criticism’) and of the masculine noun critique (‘critic’). As to ‘les petitz grammatics’, the editor writes (109 n. 4): ‘Grammatic (de Grammaticus) est dit ici par deńigrement, comme nous disons aujourd’hui grammatiste. Le mot se´rieux au xvie sie`cle e´tait de´ja` grammairien que l’on trouve dans les Essais de Montaigne. Grammatic manque a` nos recueils lexicographiques anciens et modernes.’ I am not sure that to Scaliger grammatic was disparaging: he may have used it as a Latinism, because he was certainly thinking of the relationship between the notion of criticus and that of grammaticus in Antiquity. It is rather the adjective ‘petitz’ that is disparaging. 35 ‘Qui enim de ea [he refers to grammatice] libros reliquerunt, maximi viri, etiam in aliis studiis, fuerunt, Crates, Aristophanes, Nicander, Callimachus, Apollonius ille Rhodius, Chrysippus, alii heroes magni. Illi igitur in monumentis suis reliquerunt nobis, Grammatices tres partes esse. Quarum primam tecnikn vocarunt, secundam flstorikn, tertiam fidiaitran. Tecnikn pragmate‹an vocant eam, quae in elementorum et syntaxeos disciplina tota est. ‘Istorikn, eam quae in mythologiis poe¨tarum, in Oratorum et Historiarum descriptionibus, locis, montibus, fluminibus versatur, et si quid simile. ’Idiaitran intelligi volunt, quae non illis finibus contenta est, sed ulterius evagatur, et in abditiora sapientiae penetralia se insinuat: cum scilicet spurios versus poe¨tarum a` veris et legitimis discernit, depravata emendat, falso attributa suis auctoribus asserit ac vindicat: omne genus Poe¨tarum, Oratorum, Philosophorum recenset, atque excutit. Hanc partem propterea kritikn vocarunt. Atque ut veteres Romani quatuor partes anni singulas in tres alias diviserunt, ut de vere dicerent, ver primum, ver adultum, ver praecipitatum: ita etiam jure merito per illos gradus voluerunt fillogon ad perfectissimam filolog‹av cognitionem pervenire. Itaque primam illam tecnik n omnes vulgo de faece paedagogorum quotidie tractant, ut sibi videntur. In ea tamen excelluerunt clarissimi viri veteres, Herodianus, Tryphon, Apollonius Alexandrinus apud Graecos: apud Romanos autem Scaurus, Donatus, Caesar ipse et Plinius Secundus. Illam tertiam, id est, nobilissimam omnium, ac vere Philosopho digna, tractarunt Graeci, Crates, Aristophanes, Aristarchus. qui propterea et vulgo kritik¿v dictus est. Romani autem infiniti, inter quos Varro, Sisenna, Aelius Iurisconsultus et alii. Mediam, quae secunda est, inprimis Hyginus, Palaephatus, Stephanus, et Caesar etiam, coluerunt. Quanto tertiam illam quam alias pluris fecerint, ex nomine intelligere potes. Non enim ab officio vocarunt. Ut a tractanda arte primam tecnikn, secundam, ab enarratione historiarum flstorikn. Sed quia non omnium est, sed pauciorum, neque in quibusve auctoribus, sed in nobilissimis versatur, fidiaitran, quasi peculiarem, vocarunt.’ Cf n. 28 above.


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All this is an amazing misinterpretation and transformation of Sextus Empiricus Adv. mathem. 1. 91–5; 252–3, reporting Asclepiades’ division of grammatik . Sextus, i.e. Asclepiades, does not say that the third part (mrov) of grammatik , the grammatikn or fidia‹teron, can be called kritikn (or kritik pragmate‹a). Moreover, by calling that part fidia‹teron he does not mean that it is suitable only for the few, nor that it covers only the noblest authors: he simply means that it is more properly grammatikn than the two other parts taken together, for it consists in the study of poets and prose writers (which is the main object of grammatik ). There is no suggestion that the third part ‘penetrates into the innermost recesses of philosophy’, or that it is ‘really worthy of a philosopher’, or, indeed, that the three parts are three degrees of an ascent to the full possession of filolog‹a, i.e. of learning. Scaliger accomplished this transformation by using two other passages of Sextus Empiricus (Adv. mathem. 1. 79; 248–9), which report (inaccurately, if one does not correct the transmitted text at 248) a theory of Crates and of his pupil Tauriscus that is clearly incompatible with the theory of Asclepiades. In arbitrarily combining these heterogeneous passages J. J. Scaliger walks in the footsteps of his father; however, he does not conclude, as his father had done, that kritik originally was not a part of grammatik and that it ought to belong not to that humble discipline, but to philosophy. On the contrary, he concludes that kritik is the third gradus or the noblest part of grammatik and ‘penetrates into the innermost recesses of philosophy’—words vaguely reminiscent of what Varro (De lingua latina 5. 7–8) had said of the third gradus of etymology (‘tertius gradus, quo philosophia ascendens peruenit’). This conclusion probably owes something to Crates’ statement (reported by Sextus) that the kritikv must possess psa logik pist mh, which I take to mean ‘all rational knowledge’. How are we to justify this operation, which does not seem to conform with the highest standards of scholarly work in the late sixteenth century? The answer seems to me obvious: Scaliger did not aim merely at discerning the character of ancient scholarship. His ultimate purpose was to establish what true scholarship was. It went for him without saying that in this, as well as in any other kind of intellectual activity, the texts of the ancients, expertly investigated, could reveal the general rules according to which the moderns had to work and possibly strive for further progress. Interpretation of texts was in this case an ambiguous matter: it was an effort at historical understanding, but even more, an attempt to enlist the texts in the construction of a theory of scholarship.

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The consequence of Scaliger’s transformation of Asclepiades’ theory was to link together more closely the functions that made up the third part of grammatik in that theory. Two of them, dirqwsiv (emendatio) of corrupt passages of the textus vulgatus (emendation based either on manuscript evidence or on conjecture)36 and x ghsiv (enarratio) of difficult passages, had never before—either in Antiquity or in modern times—been attributed to the grammatikv in his capacity as kritikv. It well may be that in the theory of kritik of Crates of Mallus and his disciples the function of evaluating literary works and that of detecting spurious passages were considered to be connected with emendation and explanation; but this is not what Scaliger could read in Sextus Empiricus, the only evidence he had for Crates’ theory of kritik . Let us remember that Politian—a pioneer of modern textual criticism37—did not connect the title criticus with the task of emendatio. In 1557 Francesco Robortello, a distinguished scholar, published a small treatise on the ‘art of emendation’38—an ‘art’ which he claimed to have invented (an unjustified and typically humanist boast, for his ‘art’ consists of a few rules and pieces of reasonable advice). In this treatise the term critice (or ars critica) does not occur. By putting for the first time emendatio and enarratio under the heading kritik , critice, together with the functions that had hitherto been considered characteristic of the kritikv, Scaliger placed all these functions in a new perspective. This soon turned out to be an important step. Another aspect of the operation must also be noticed: the ‘third part’, which Scaliger calls kritik (kritik pragmate‹a), is the only one that seems really to interest him. The way he describes the first and the second part of grammatik suggests that he does not treat them very seriously, in spite of Sextus Empiricus’ remark (Adv. mathem. 1. 94–5) that the three parts are interdependent. I have the impression that Sextus’ and Asclepiades’ theory of grammatik was for him a useful, but provisional and not really adequate frame within which he tried to articulate the confused idea that he had of the scope, the aim, and the method of his own work. 36 On emendatio in Antiquity and in modern times before the necessity of a systematic recensio was universally recognized, see Timpanaro, Genesi (as in n. 11), 4. 37 On Politian’s textual criticism see Timpanaro, Genesi, 4–6. 38 Franciscus Robortellus Utinensis, De arte sive ratione corrigendi antiquorum libros dissertatio (Padua, 1557), reprinted in J. Gruter’s Lampas, sive Fax artium liberalium, ii (Frankfurt, 1604), 14–28; also together with a reprint of C. Schoppius’ De arte critica (Amsterdam 1662); most recently, with an Italian translation and a commentary by G. Pompella (Naples, 1975; I have only seen this reprint; it reproduces the pagination of the original edition).


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This impression is confirmed by what he writes in the same letter to answer Vertunianus’ second question, the one about macte. He begins as follows: ‘As to what you want from me concerning macte, I must, of course, treat the matter neither kritikØv, nor flstorikØv, but tecnikØv.’39 In fact, he treats the matter in a way that does not correspond at all to the notion of tecnik pragmate‹a described by him a few lines above, or to that of tecnikn (t¿ tecnik¿n mrov) described by Sextus Empiricus/Asclepiades. His remarks on macte constitute a brilliant and admirable piece of philologico-historical research. This is history of words and of religious notions and rites, something that no ancient grammaticus could have done or thought of, and for which no convenient name existed in ancient terminology. I think Scaliger was not quite serious when he wrote that he was going to treat the matter tecnikØv: in this passage he used the ancient classification quite artificially, as an intellectual pastime. Many years after writing these remarks on grammatik and kritik , Scaliger came back to the subject in an undated letter to Petrus Scriverius (Schryver) which was first published as a pamphlet in 1619, based on a copy from the private archive of Ioachim Morsius,40 and later republished, without the first two paragraphs, among Scaliger’s Epistolae,41 probably on the basis of the first edition.42 It was probably written in 1595.43 The addressee (born in 1576) was one of the young men studying in Leiden and seeking instruction and advice through conversation with Scaliger. In this letter the three ‘parts of grammatik ’ are surprisingly described as ‘types of grammarians’: The types of grammarians are three. Some are called tecniko‹, some flstoriko‹, and those of the third type kritiko‹. The tecniko‹ teach the letters of the 39 Epistolae (as in n. 29), no. 20, Leiden edn., 119; Frankfurt edn., 108: ‘De Macte quod petis, plane tractandum est nobis non kritikØv neque flstorikØv sed tecnikØv.’ 40 J. Scaliger, Diatriba de critica, ad V. Cl. P. Scriverium, Nunc primum in lucem edita, Ex Musaeo Ioachimi Morsii (Leiden, 1619)—at present inaccessible to me. The text of this edition, without the first two paragraphs (which are also lacking in Scaliger’s Epistolae), has been reproduced by H. Jaumann, Critica (as in n. 4), ‘Textanhang’, 402–3. 41 Letter no. 451 in J. J. Scaliger, Epistolae (as in n. 29), Leiden edn., 824–6; Frankfurt edn., 755–7. 42 This is—in the collection of Scaliger’s Latin letters published by D. Heinsius—the only letter to P. Scriverius that does not belong to the ‘Epistolarum Appendix. Ex Musaeo Petri Scriverii’ printed at the end of the book (nos. 455–85; P. Scriverius is the addressee of no. 458, undated; no. 459, of 21 Nov. 1602; no. 460, of 28 Nov. 1602; no. 461, undated); the appendix contains those letters of Scaliger (with a few official letters to Scaliger or concerning him) that P. Scriverius transmitted to the editor for publication when the volume (comprising 454 letters) was already in press (see preface). It is therefore likely that letter no. 451 was not printed from the original, but from the pamphlet 43 See Jehasse, Renaissance (as in n. 8), 676. published in 1619.

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alphabet and the rudiments of reading and writing, also the parts of speech, the structure of words, etc. The Greeks call them grammatista‹ rather than grammatiko‹, and the Latins litteratores rather than litterati . . . The flstoriko‹ deal with names of rivers, mountains, regions; they explicate recondite stories or mythical narratives or poetic discourses about the gods; they diligently investigate the genealogies of gods, of heroes, and of men of the oldest times. Clearly they are those whom Juvenal means [Scaliger quotes Sat. 7. 231–6, where Juvenal mocks people interested in futile and ridiculous problems]. Similar pursuits of a grammarian-flstorikv are satirized in Lucian’s On salaried posts in great houses. But, though ridiculed by the authors just mentioned, these are the problems of the part of grammar called flstorik . Nobler than either is kritik . For critics act like censors: they can draw up the list of the senate of old books . . . and remove bad books from their tribes.44

As an account of ancient grammatik , Scaliger’s description is tendentious and mistaken: in Antiquity grammatik could be divided into ‘parts’, but grammatiko‹ were never divided into classes (the four classes of grammatiko‹ of which some of the scholia to Dionysius Thrax speak45 are a medieval fancy). Moreover, it is not true that the term grammatista‹ could be used instead of grammatiko‹. Lastly, the way Scaliger uses (without citing it) a passage of Suetonius concerning the terms litteratus and litterator, namely De grammaticis et rhetoribus 4, is arbitrary. In so far as Scaliger intended to present his own idea of the nature of scholarship, it is obvious that, at the time of writing, he took scholarly research to consist exclusively of kritik . 44 ‘Tria genera Grammaticorum: alij tecniko›; alij flstoriko›; tertium genus kritiko› vocantur. tecniko› elementa et primores literas docent; item partes orationis, structuram verborum, et similia. eos Graeci grammatistv potius, quam grammatikov; et Latini litteratores, non litteratos vocant. . . . Historici in fluminum, montium, regionum nominibus occupati sunt: abstrusas historias, aut muqologo¸mena, aut poihtikØv qeologo¸mena explicant: genealogias Deorum, Heroum ac priscorum diligenter rimantur. Plane sunt quos indicat Iuvenalis [quoting Sat. 7. 231–6]. Eadem quoque in Historico Grammatico ridet Lucianus n t per› tØn p› misq sunntwn. Sed quanquam haec ridentur ab illis, tamen propria sunt huius partis Grammaticae, quae flstorik vocatur. Nobilior utraˆque kritik . Nam Critici tanquam censores quidam, et veterum librorum Senatum legere possunt . . . et non probos tribu movere . . . ’ (I follow Jaumann’s reprint of the 1619 edn., correcting Greek accents and two misprints. It is interesting to note that D. Heinsius’ edition does not give ‘genealogias Deorum, Heroum ac priscorum’, but ‘genealogias Deorum ac priscorum Heroum’; and that it does not give ‘tribu movere’, but ‘tribu amovere’. In both cases Heinsius’ edition is obviously wrong; in the first case we have certainly to do with a bad conjecture, either of Heinsius or of the printer; in the second it is not clear whether we have to do with a conjecture or with an unconscious change, substituting for an uncommon word a trivial one). 45 Scholia in Dionysii Thracis artem grammaticam, ed. A. Hilgard, in Grammatici Graeci, i, pt. 3 (Leipzig 1901), ‘Commentarius Melampodis seu Diomedis (cod. C)’, 12, ll. 3–13; ‘Scholia Vaticana (cod. C), 115, ll. 8–9; 164, ll. 9–11; 170, ll. 17–20.


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In the last part of the letter he enumerates the tasks he thought belonged to the sphere of ancient critici. He relies to a considerable extent on a passage of Diogenes Laertius (3. 66) concerning the critical signs employed in editions of Plato. Scaliger does not acknowledge this or any other source, but this is not surprising. What is surprising is that he distorts part of the information given by Diogenes Laertius. After quoting, not quite accurately, Ausonius on Aristarchus marking spurious lines with marginal signs,46 he goes on: quia pareggegrammna, mbolima·a, noqe¸onta, et similia deculpare, ut eorum verbo utar, solent, et nota culpae apposita damnare: neque tantum quae perperam ab auctoribus dicta, scripta, pronunciata sunt, qete·n, bel‹zein: sed et aliorum Criticorum temere scita notare ac castigare, quam kr‹sin efika‹ouv qet seiv vocabant. Iidem etiam duplices et ambiguas lectiones recensebant, quas dittv cr seiv dixerunt. Nam cr seiv, oratorum, poetarum, historicorum sunt auctoritates et scita. Sed praecipua huius studij pars, transposita in auctoribus suis sedibus vindicare, ut fecit ille, qui sacri lacerum collegit corpus Homeri. quo nomine metaqseiv tØn grafØn valde celebrarunt. Et conciliatio sententiarum etiam in Philosophis ad eos pertinebat, ejusmodi sunt sum wn‹ai tØn dogmtwn in Platone a` veteribus Criticis notatae. Sunt et eorum kloga› kalligraf‹av, quae sunt ab illis in quodam auctore venuste novata: hujus enim artis et haec pars est. Criticae principes apud Graecos sunt Aristophanes, Crates, Aristarchus, Callimachus. Apud Hebraeos Masoritae sunt, qui apud Graecos Critici . . . [there follow details on the Masoretes]. Denique kritik apud eos Masoreth vocatur. apud Latinos nobilissimi Critici sunt Varro, Santra, Sisenna: sed omnium princeps Varro.

This piece of prose is not smooth or free of ambiguity. I understand it as follows: for they [i.e. the ancient critici] are in the habit of incriminating (to use their term) interpolated, substituted, spurious passages, etc. and of condemning them by a sign indicating the fault, moreover of rejecting and marking with an obelus what has been wrongly said, written, or pronounced by the authors, as well as of marking and castigating unfounded decisions of other critici—decisions that they called efika·oi qet seiv [arbitrary rejections]. They also examined divergent and dubious readings, to which they gave the name of ditta› cr seiv. For cr seiv [without the adjective] are authoritative opinions expressed by orators, poets, historians. But the main part of this study consisted in restoring to their proper place transposed lines in authors, as did he ‘who put together the dismembered body of sacred Homer’ [Ausonius, ep., 18, 28]; that is why they very much 46 Scaliger quotes ‘Quique notas spurijs versibus addiderat’ (‘and he who had added marks to spurious lines’). Ausonius, ep. 18. 29, has ‘quique notas spuriis versibus imposuit’. Scaliger is probably quoting from memory.

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practised metaqseiv tØn grafØn [transpositions of readings]. Moreover, showing how opinions [expressed in different passages] in the works of philosophers could be reconciled with each other was also one of their tasks: such are the sumfwn‹ai tØn dogmtwn [concordances of propositions], marked by ancient critici in Plato’s works. To them belonged also the making of kloga› kalligraf‹av [samples of fine writing],47 which are passages in an author elegantly rewritten:48 for this role too belongs to this art. The chief representatives of critice among the Greeks are Aristophanes, Crates, Aristarchus, Callimachus. Among the Jews, the Masoretes, who correspond to critici among the Greeks . . . In short, kritik is called among them [scil. the Jews] masoreth.49 Among the Latins, the most distinguished critici are Varro, Santra, Sisenna, but the most eminent is Varro.

What Scaliger says here about the use of the belv (bel‹zein) finds no support in Diogenes Laertius—who says: ‘bel¿v pr¿v tn qthsin the obelus is used for rejecting spurious passages’—or in any other ancient testimony. It is clear that he was only superficially interested in the ancient critical signs, which were no longer used in his time. He was more interested in making out what it was that ancient critici did, and still more in attributing to them what seemed to him to belong to scholarship in general. He was right in thinking that ancient critici criticized ‘quae perperam ab auctoribus dicta, scripta, pronunciata sunt’. This he had learnt not from Diogenes, but by observing the practice of ancient grammatiko‹. However, when he speaks of the ‘kloga› kalligraf‹av, quae sunt ab illis in quodam auctore venuste novata’, he distorts the meaning of a sentence in Diogenes’ passage: c· periestigmnon pr¿v tv klogv ka› kalligraf‹av, ‘the letter chi with two dots is used for indicating select passages and pieces of fine writing 47 I take ‘Sunt et eorum kloga› kalligraf‹av’ to be an inversion of ‘Eorum sunt et kloga› kalligraf‹av’, but I am not sure this is right. If one assumes that the word order is not inverted, the sense will be: ‘The making of kloga› kalligraf‹av belonged to them too [and not only to others]’; the author would thus seem to oppose tacitly kritiko‹ to ł torev. However, this is not satisfactory, for there is no mention of ł torev earlier in the letter. 48 I thank Ilse Reineke for help with ‘quae sunt ab illis in quodam auctore venuste novata’. 49 Compare this with Scaliger’s letter to Casaubon of 27 Oct. 1601 ( Julian calendar), Epistolae (as in n. 29), no. 62, Leiden edn., p. 197, Frankfurt edn., 180: ‘Quando tuum opus de Critica prodibit? Laudo consilium de Critica Masoritica. Nam nullam aliam habent Iudaei, et posterior est editione Talmudis. Delirant, qui puncta vocalia simul cum lingua nata esse putant: quos ratio, vetustas, ka› fqalmofneia ipsa insanire vincit. Nihil de ea Critica reliquum hodie est, praeter Magnam Masoram, quae cum libris sive Bibliis sacris edita est. Eam recte` exponit Elias, unicus hujus aevi Criticus, et Aristarchus Hebraismi.’


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[in Plato]’. Scaliger probably suppressed the ka‹ and took kalligraf‹av to be a genitive singular and not an accusative plural. I cannot say whether he was right to change the transmitted text (in favour of his conjecture it must be said that kalligraf‹a in plural would be a hapax). In any case he was certainly wrong in thinking that Diogenes meant by kalligraf‹a passages of an author rewritten by a kritikv trying to improve on the author’s style. Scaliger probably had in mind Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ De Thucydide, where many passages of Thucydides that seemed to Dionysius ill-written are rewritten. But Dionysius was a learned rhetor, not a professional scholar; and, though he did judge writers, there is nothing to suggest that he considered himself, or was considered in Antiquity, a kritikv (or a grammatikv). It was, as we shall see, a contemporary of Scaliger, Henricus Stephanus (Henri Estienne), who, in a book published in 1587, placed Dionysius of Halicarnassus among the kritiko‹. Scaliger probably followed him, although he did not attribute to the term kritiko‹ quite the same meaning as Stephanus. Anyway, to my knowledge no ancient kritikv did anything similar to what Dionysius does in De Thucydide. On the other hand, Scaliger at least once rewrote a passage of an ancient poet, seeking to outdo him.50 This makes the mention of kloga› kalligraf‹av all the more significant. Of course, neither this enumeration of the tasks of ancient critice, nor the one in the letter to Vertunianus examined above, can be considered as an exhaustive description of the aims that Scaliger pursued in his own practice of what he called critice. Let us note in particular that it does not comprise the kind of scholarly pursuit that constituted Scaliger’s main occupation in the last forty years of his life, the study of the remains of ancient, pagan and Christian, chronography, and the reconstruction of ancient chronological systems. If anybody had asked Scaliger where this study belonged, he would probably have answered that it belonged to critice. The title of one of his works, De emendatione temporum, seems to me to confirm this, even though the word critice does not occur in it. Scaliger did not confine himself to applying the ordinary methods of scholarship to the remains of ancient chronographical literature: he went further, applying emendatio to the chronological data they contained. It was because of his exuberant confidence in the powers of critice and in his own mastery of it that he believed he was better equipped than 50 See Grafton, Scaliger I (as in n. 7), 112–13: Scaliger wanted to show how one could improve on Ennius’ rendering of a passage of Euripides.

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Kepler and Tycho Brahe for solving calendrical problems, as appears from his discussions with these astronomers.51 One can safely assume that Scaliger called critice any serious research on, or based upon, ancient texts. The use of the allegedly ancient term critice, which meant to him ‘art of judging’, made it possible for him to emphasize the kind of approach that he considered essential to any such research—an approach that we can call critical, provided we do not forget the peculiar traits of this criticism. Antiquity as a whole was for him, as well as for his contemporaries, a normative world, and not—as it began to be for classical scholars and historians two hundred years later—a distant and dead world that philologico-historical research could try to ‘make present’ (vergegenwa¨rtigen) and to understand as a living socio-cultural totality.52 However, no single text belonging to that normative world was to be passively accepted as an authority. Each had to be subjected to a critical reconstruction, interpretation, and evaluation. The aim of these operations was to recover the original shape of the text and the meaning of those of its passages that time had rendered obscure, to gain from it information on ancient knowledge, beliefs, rites, customs, laws, institutions, techniques, etc., and to assess its value on the basis of standards of truth or beauty that seemed a-temporal. Of course, the status of the Holy Books was different from that of any other text: their divine inspiration was not questioned. But faith in divine inspiration certainly was no obstacle, in Scaliger’s eyes, to applying textual criticism and philological interpretation, therefore critice, to the Bible. He planned—obviously with Origen’s Hexapla as a 51 On Scaliger vs. Kepler and Tycho Brahe, see the impressive study by Grafton, Scaliger II, esp. 145–209; 457–88; 497–8. On Scaliger’s discussion of mathematical problems, see ibid. pp. 378–85. 52 Grafton, Scaliger I, 154, is quite right in thinking that ‘[Scaliger] had no interest in bringing a dead world back to life in its entirety. Indeed, there is little evidence to suggest that Scaliger thought of the early Romans as three-dimensional, historical individuals, or of their culture as a single, coherent organism that ought to be resurrected as a whole . . . ’. However, Grafton seems to imply that a different approach to Antiquity was possible in the 16th c. Immediately before the passage just quoted, he writes: ‘Scaliger, certainly, did not produce in the end a comprehensive reconstruction of Roman life like that provided in Sigonio’s De antiquo iure civium Romanorum’. Here I cannot agree. It is true that Sigonius’ work is marvellously compact and organic, which cannot be said of Scaliger’s writings; however, Sigonius (like Lipsius) aimed at a systematic reconstruction of certain notions, norms, and institutions of the Roman state machinery, and not at a reconstruction of ‘Roman life’—if we mean by that the life of a socio-cultural totality. Sigonius’ (and Lipsius’) perspective had probably something in common with that of Varro, when he wrote De uita populi Romani, and with that of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Antiq. Rom. 1. 8), when he took into account the b‹ov tv plewv (but Dionysius excluded the polite‹a from the notion of b‹ov: this comprised only qh and nmoi).


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model—an edition of the Psalms in five languages;53 the project was never carried out, but its existence is significant. The two letters discussing grammatik and kritik examined above are likely to have been intended not only for their addressees, but also, perhaps primarily, for informal publication through circulation among scholarly acquaintances of both author and addressee, and, more widely, among acquaintances of acquaintances. Presenting a rapid sketch of new ideas in the form of a letter addressed to a younger friend asking for instruction would have been a convenient literary device, conforming to an illustrious ancient tradition. When he wrote the letter to Vertunianus (1574 or 1575 or 1576), Scaliger was already one of the most famous scholars in Europe: he could certainly expect widespread interest in whatever he wrote. By the time of the letter to Scriverius, his fame had grown yet further. It can be assumed that many people, especially in France, in the Netherlands, and in Germany, read copies of the two letters in question, or at least heard about the idea of critice they expounded.54 I have no direct evidence to support this hypothesis. But it helps to explain both the singular way in which, in 1604, Ioannes Wowerius used Scaliger’s letter to Scriverius (I discuss this below), and the results of J. Jehasse’s inquiry on the occurrence of critice, critica, and criticus in the sixteenth century. It appears that the regular use of these terms in scholarly contexts set in after 1575.55 I suggest that this fact, and particularly the use of critice, which looked like an ancient Greek technical term, but began to serve in a way for which there was no real ancient 53 See I. Casaubonus, Epistolae . . . , curante Th. Janson. ab Almeloveen, 3rd edn. (Rotterdam, 1709), no. 600, p. 314, to Joannes Deodatus (Giovanni Diodati), 11 June 1608: ‘Josephus Scaliger . . . libri gemmei Psalmorum pentaplam editionem erat pollicitus; qui utinam vel nunc posset impelli, ut priora sua in Rempublicam literariam merita hac ingenti accessione cumularet. Saltem daret nobis vir summus tres illas inter se diversas Paraphrases Arabicas, quas in scriniis cimeliorum suorum multos jam servat annos.’ 54 Unfortunately, I do not know what terms were used by Gian Vincenzo Pinelli of Padua, who—according to Grafton, Scaliger I, 3 and nn. 5 and 6 at p. 230 (with references to the manuscripts in the Bibliothe`que nationale de France)—wrote in 1578 and 1579 to his correspondents in Paris, Claude Dupuy and Jacopo Corbinelli, begging them—as Grafton puts it—‘to obtain for him a statement of Scaliger’s views on the nature of philology and the duties of the critic’. Did Pinelli use the words philologia and criticus (whether in Latin or in Italian), as Grafton’s paraphrase suggests? And how had he come to know that Scaliger, this ‘Aristarco di tutti’, had some novel views on the nature and the tasks of scholarship? 55 Jehasse, Renaissance (as in n. 8), 674–7. At pp. 200–1 he states that the earliest occurrence of critique ‘critic’ and of critique ‘criticism’ is to be found in a letter of J. J. Scaliger of 1580: see above, n. 34.

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parallel, is traceable to the idea launched by Scaliger in the letter to Vertunianus. Of course, the idea will also have spread through conversation with visiting scholars and, from 1593 onwards, with pupils, at Leiden. Further promotion for critice came in Scaliger’s ‘Castigationum in Hippocratis libellum explicatio’, published in Paris in 1578 as an introduction to Hippocratis Coi de capitis vulneribus liber, Latinitate donatus a Francisco Vertuniano.56 Scaliger attacked previous translators and commentators of this treatise, none of whom, he claimed, had spotted its many spurious passages. He added: ‘From this the studious reader will understand how vain are the promises to achieve anything in literary matters of those who lack this one part [of learning] called critice. For it was this one part that the aforesaid scholars, great men in every other respect, lacked.’57 This was echoed by Vertunianus in his prefatory letter: he spoke of errors committed by previous translators ‘Critices ignorantia’. This taunt had a polemical sequel, which is recounted by Grafton. I find it significant that, in his monumental Thesaurus Graecae linguae, published in 1572 (just a few years before Scaliger wrote the letter to Vertunianus discussed above), Henricus Stephanus is apparently unaware that the discipline he is practising could be called critice: this is clear from entries for grammatikv and kritikv;58 kritik as a designation of a branch of scholarship does not figure. Stephanus registers i.a. the iunctura d¸namiv kritik from Lucian’s Hermotimus 68 (kritikn tØn toio¸twn d¸namin porismenon, ‘having acquired the ability to judge matters of this kind’); he explains it as follows: ‘the critical ability, i.e. the competence or skill in judging, possessed by those who are called critici’.59 This explanation is symptomatic, for Lucian does not speak of critics at all; it is clear that Stephanus is particularly interested in the notion of criticus. But facultas critica is not the same as Scaliger’s critice or ars critica. 56 I have not seen this book; I am borrowing the quotations from Grafton, Scaliger I (as in n. 7), 317–18. On Scaliger’s and Vertunianus’ work on the De capitis vulneribus and on the polemic that ensued on the publication of the book, see Grafton, ibid. 180–4. 57 ‘Quare hinc potest colligere studiosus Lector, quam frustra aliquid in literis tractandis promittunt illi, qui huius unius partis, quae Critice vocatur, expertes sunt. Haec enim una pars illis ad perfectionem defuit, cum in caeteris magni viri essent.’ 58 H. Stephanus, Thesaurus Graecae linguae, 1572 (‘excudebat Henr. Stephanus’, n. p.), i, s.v. grfw, col. 862; ii, s.v. kr‹nw, cols. 428–9. 59 Thesaurus, i, col. 429: ‘Dicitur autem et d¸namiv kritik , q.d. Facultas critica, id est Peritia iudicandi seu solertia, qualis inest iis qui critici appellantur. Luc. in Hermot.’.


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Did Stephanus know Scaliger’s letter to Vertunianus when he wrote his ‘dissertation’ on ‘Ancient critics, Greek and Latin, and their various strictures, especially concerning poets’, published in 1587?60 Anyway, the idea of critice sketched out by Scaliger does not appear in Stephanus’ book. He is interested in ancient grammatici or critici as literary critics. He produces evidence in order to show that the term kritikv (criticus) properly applied to those among the grammatiko‹ (grammatici ) who were particularly learned and whose main concern was to judge literary works, especially poems (see especially pp. 17–18, a passage closely related to Thesaurus, i, cols. 428–9; cf. also p. 244). At the same time, he uses the term without much regard for its use in Antiquity. By ‘critici’ he in fact means literary critics, irrespective of whether they belonged or not to the profession of grammatice. The following passage (p. 18) is particularly significant: ‘just as many grammatici were called critici without exercising that function [i.e. the function of judging literary works] . . . so, conversely, many who laid no claim to being grammatici played that role, applying their censorial authority both to prose and verse’.61 Here he cites Quintilian, Aulus Gellius, Macrobius, and the Elder Seneca; the last-mentioned ‘inserted in his Controversiarum libri numerous remarks belonging to the critical faculty’ (‘ad criticam facultatem’). Of the Greeks he mentions Dionysius of Halicarnassus, pseudo-Longinus, and Hermogenes. As far as I know, none of these writers was ever called criticus or kritikv in Antiquity. In the dissertation there occur phrases like ‘censuram suam exercebant’ (p. 17), ‘kritikn quandam . . . exercere censuram’ (p. 207); also ‘critica sententia’, ‘critica reprehensio’, ‘critica censura’ (p. 295). In at least one passage (p. 158) kritik occurs as a noun, but the context suggests that it is used as an equivalent of critica facultas, i.e. kritik d¸namiv, and not of ars critica, kritik tcnh. After quoting a difficult sentence in a philosophical Greek text and enumerating various possibilities of interpreting it, Stephanus concludes the discussion by 60 De criticis vet(eribus) gr(aecis) et latinis eoru ´ mque variis apud poetas potissimu`m reprehensionibus, Dissertatio Henrici Stephani . . . Restitutionis Comment(ariorum) Servii in Virg(ilium) et magnae ad eos accessionis Specimen (Paris, 1587). I could do no more than glance at this book, but Christopher Ligota kindly supplied photocopies of relevant passages. Pfeiffer, History II, 110, amazingly calls it ‘the first modern history of classical scholarship’. 61 ‘hoc certe ` constat: quemadmodum multi grammatici criticorum nomen habuerunt, qui tamen eo munere non fungerentur, (ad eo ut honorarium tantu`m non etiam onerarium illis esse nomen dici posset) ita vicissim has partes suscepisse multos, qui se grammaticos minime` profiterentur: nec minus adversus orationem solutam qua`m poemata censurae suae autoritatem usurpasse’.

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a Graeco-Latin hexameter: ‘O quae tot kritik diakr‹nein ne‹kea possit’, i.e. ‘Oh, what sort of critical ability could decide so many disputes?’ After which he writes: ‘Ab his igitur ad poetas nostros (in quos kritikn exercere posse, satis supe´rque etiam to·v kritikwttoiv esse debet) refugiamus’. I think that here kritik has the same meaning as in the hexameter; I translate: ‘Let us therefore escape from these difficulties and take refuge with our poets (for even the most critical men should be content with the possibility of exercising the critical faculty on poets)’. In 1595 Justus Lipsius ( Joest Lips) published at Leiden a collection of some of his printed works. Its title deserves attention: Opera omnia quae ad Criticam proprie spectant. The preface begins as follows: ‘Ecce tibi, Lector, Criticos meos omnes libellos: quos sparsos antea` collegimus et composuimus tibi in hunc fascem.’ What was implied by proprie in the title? Presumably, that such works as De constantia (1584) and Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex (1589) had been left out. In any case, it is interesting to see that the notion of critice applies here to studies that are partly philological, partly antiquarian, and have all to do with Antiquity.62 The collection comprises Antiquarum lectionum libri quinque (pp. 1–97); Epistolicarum quaestionum libri quinque (pp. 199–452); Electorum libri duo (pp. 453–782); Variarum lectionum libri tres (pp. 783–949); and finally a pamphlet, dedicated to Scaliger, on bad and good ‘correctores’ (i.e. on the bad and good use of emendation), Satyra Menippaea, Somnium. Lusus in nostri aevi Criticos (pp. 951–76). As D. G. Morhof rightly remarked in his Polyhistor, ‘Justus Lipsius’ Opera critica . . . present a variety of learning: he offers both antiquarian studies and textual emendations’.63 This is particularly true of the two 62 Not much later, between 1602 and 1612, a pupil of Scaliger’s, Jan Gruter, published in six volumes a collection of scholarly contributions by various authors under the title Lampas, sive Fax Artium Liberalium, hoc est Thesaurus Criticus e Bibliothecis erutus. Here again studies of a philological and antiquarian character concerning Antiquity are assembled under the notion of critice. 63 Daniel Georgius Morhofius, Polyhistor, in tres tonos, Literarium . . . Philosophicum et Practicum . . . divisus. Opus posthumum . . . (Lu¨beck, 1708), t. 1, lib. 5, cap. 1, 221–2: ‘Justi Lipsii Opera Critica . . . variae sunt eruditionis: nam et antiquaria multa habet, et emendat in Auctoribus.’ Books 4–7 of vol. 1 of the Polyhistor belong to the posthumous part. They include material added by Johann Frick with no indication to that effect (as the editor, Johannes Moller, informs us), so the observation about Lipsius might be Frick’s rather than Morhof ’s. It is worth noting that book 5, captioned ‘Criticus’, consists of two chapters, captioned respectively ‘De scriptoribus criticis’ and ‘De scriptoribus antiquariis’. Chapter 2 opens as follows (p. 226): ‘Subjungimus Antiquarios Criticis, ut qui inter se sunt quam maxime cognati: in eadem enim aurifodina laborant, Graecis scilicet et Latinis Auctoribus, et utplurimum fit, ut, qui antiquitates scribunt, iidem krhthk [an obvious misprint for kritikn corrected in the next edition, 1714] in Auctores varios


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books of Electa: Book 1 bears the title Electorum liber primus. In quo, praeter censuras, varii prisci ritus; Book 2, Electorum liber secundus. In quo mixtim Ritus et Censurae. In the Somnium, which was first published in 1581, the term critice does not appear. The term critici occurs twice: in the subtitle and in the speech that one of the characters of the ‘dream’, Varro, delivers in the Senate in order to oppose an indiscriminate condemnation of the ‘correctores’ (p. 972). The latter occurrence is significant: ‘Veros quidem germanosque Criticos magno opere suadeo ut retineatis.’ Those of the ‘correctores’ who emend texts reasonably are ‘true, genuine critici’.64 In the preface opening the whole collection Lipsius maintains that all the ‘critici libelli’ that he has put together, though different ‘facie et formaˆ stili’, are homogeneous in respect of their aim (‘fine’) and of their subject (‘argumento’). He explains: ‘Finis iis, illustrare, emendare: argumentum, genus omne veterum scriptorum.’ This obviously implies a sort of theory of critice, but it must have been a very sketchy one: we may assume that critice consisted in his mind of two kinds of activity, elucidation and emendation (i.e. x ghsiv and dirqwsiv) of any ancient writer (or writing?) that had survived. He must have regarded his own studies on Roman political institutions, on the Roman army, or on Roman amphitheatres as belonging to one of the two aspects of critice, elucidation of ancient texts. In 1597 Gasper Schoppius (later Scioppius—de domo Casper or Kaspar Schoppe), who was then not quite 21,65 published Suspectae exerceant. Intellectos igitur hic praecipue Graecarum Latinarumque antiquitatum Collectores atque vindices volumus, cum Septentrionalium populorum antiquitates proprie huc non spectent, utpote quae parum ad elegantiam literarum conferunt.’ Thus ‘critici’ and ‘antiquarii’, distinct but related, are subsumed under the general heading ‘Criticus’. For the editorial history of Morhof ’s Polyhistor, see F. Waquet, ‘Le Polyhistor, de Daniel Georg Morhof, lieu de me´moire de la Re´publique des Lettres’, in Les Lieux de me´moire et la fabrique de l’oeuvre: Actes du 1er colloque du Centre International de Rencontres sur le XVIIe sie`cle (Kiel . . . 1993), ed. V. Kapp (Biblio 17, Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature; Paris, 1993), 47–60, esp. 52–5. 64 The ‘senatus consultum’ at the end of the pamphlet establishes the following rules concerning emendation (p. 974): ‘Siquis e` libris bonis fidisque correxerit, laudi semper esse. siquis e` coniecturis, noxae. Nisi eae clarae, liquidae, certae sint.’ Here Lipsius rejoins Politian, taking up a definite position in a discussion that had been going on for a hundred years: see the first chapter of Timpanaro’s Genesi del metodo del Lachmann (as in n. 11). 65 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Geschichte (as in n. 3), 23, says of this scholar: ‘er war ein Talent, aber die Charakterlosigkeit hat es zersto¨rt’. On Scioppius’ important edition of Varro’s De lingua latina (1605) see L. Spengel’s preface to his and his son’s (A. Spengel’s) edition of the same work, Berlin 1885, pp. xxviii–xxxiii. L. Spengel points out Scioppius’ ingenuity as well as his dishonesty. For biographical information, see

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lectiones in the form of a series of letters addressed to Scaliger and Casaubon, as well as a short treatise, entitled De arte critica, et praecipue de altera eius parte emendatrice.66 Schoppius says: those who are at present called critici have but one task (munus et officium unicum), that of improving the text of the writers ‘utriusque linguae’, i.e. Greek and Latin, and this can be done in two ways, (i) by elucidating ‘quae in illorum scriptis obscura sunt’, (ii) by correcting errors in the transmitted text—errors due either to ‘vetustas’ or to deliberate distortion. In other words: critice or ars critica is composed of two parts: explanation of obscure passages and emendatio. I think that Schoppius took these general ideas from Lipsius.67 It was probably about 1595 that Isaac Casaubon,68 an original and immensely learned scholar, began to reflect on the notion of critice.69 He was on excellent terms with Scaliger since the end of 1592, when he first wrote to him (they never met). He recognized Scaliger’s superiority but was quite capable of dissent. Casaubon does not seem to have felt it necessary to justify the term critice as a designation of the profession to which he was devoting all his energies. Presumably, he either knew Scaliger’s letter to Vertunianus on critice or had heard about it, and accepted Scaliger’s interpretation of the ancient evidence. He was, rather, keen on showing the functions and importance of critice. Jaumann, Critica (as in n. 4), 163–4 n. 17. See also A. Grafton, ‘Kaspar Schoppe and the Art of Textual Criticism’, in H. Jaumann (ed.), Kaspar Schoppe (1576–1649): Philologe im Dienst der Gegenreformation. Beitra¨ge zur Gelehrtenkultur des europaïschen Spa¨thumanismus (Franfurt am Main,1998) ¼ Zeitspru¨nge. Forschungen zur fru¨hen Neuzeit, 2/3– 4 (1998), 231–43. 66 Gasper Schoppius Francus, De arte critica, et praecipue de altera eius parte emendatrice, quae ratio in Latinis scriptoribus ex ingenio emendandis observari debeat, commentariolus. In quo nonnulla nove` emendantur, alia prius emendata confirmantur . . . (Nuremberg, 1597). See especially the introduction (‘commentatiuncula’) under the title ‘De Criticis et Philologis veteribus et recentioribus’. Jaumann, Critica (as in n. 4), ‘Textanhang’, 399–402, reproduces extracts from the 1662 edition. 67 As regards ancient critici, Schoppius states that, in addition to what Quintilian says about them (at 1. 4. 3), they expounded old writers of various kinds and corrected the received text by means of ‘meliores codices’. This might be an echo of what Lipsius had written in his Somnium: corrections should be made ‘e` libris bonis fidisque’. 68 On Casaubon, see M. Pattison, Isaac Casaubon 1559–1614 (2nd edn., Oxford, 1892; 1st edn. 1875). This otherwise admirable book tends to overlook the intrinsic, specifically scholarly motivation of Casaubon’s investigations. On the religious, cultural, and political background of Casaubon’s work see C. Vivanti, Lotta politica e pace religiosa in Francia fra Cinque e Seicento (Turin 1963); this very rich book has good remarks also on Casaubon himself and his work on the ancient Church, passim, esp. 253–4, 342–5. 69 I. Casaubonus, Epistolae (as in n. 53), no. 8, p. 5, letter dated ‘Genevae, a.d. XVIII. Kal. Jan. 1593’, i.e. 15 Dec. 1592.


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For many years Casaubon continued to collect material for a book to be called De critica, but he never published such a book. In the preface of his Animadversiones on Athenaeus, published in 1600, and in a number of letters dating from the years 1600–5, he says that he has written a ‘commentarius’ De critica, or that it is almost finished (‘affectus’), or that he has still to finish it, or that its completion is a difficult task that requires leisure.70 However, a survey of the detailed modern catalogue of Casaubon’s manuscripts kept at the Bodleian Library,71 the detailed catalogues of his manuscripts compiled by his son Me´ric, now also at the Bodleian (MSS Casaubon 22 and 44, 4 ), and some of the numerous 70 I. Casaubonus, Epistolae, no. 215, to Scaliger (23 Sept. 1600), p. 111 (‘Commentarium de Critica pridem affectum habemus, sed labore isto [on the Historia Augusta] prius defungamur necesse est, qua`m aliud quid suscipimus. De illo igitur alia`s tecum plura: neque enim leviter praeclaram illam hypothesin [ ¼ subject] sumus tractaturi, si dabitur o˝ranqen perficere quod instituimus’); no. 247 (to Scaliger, 8 Sept. 1601, PS), p. 127 (‘Cu`m in eo libro, quem de Critica fecimus, omnem Hebraeorum Kritikn explicare sit animus . . . ’); no. 311 (to Geverhartus Elmenhorstius, 7 Nov. 1602), p. 165 (very busy editing the Historiae Augustae Scriptores, ‘neque de poliendo commentario, quem scripsimus de Critica vel cogitare’; and further on: ‘multa, ut spero, quae habemus non inchoata, sed affecta, brevi edemus. In his est prope jam absolutus commentarius de Lectis et Stragula Veterum Veste . . . Sequetur postea is, de quo nuper scripsisti [certainly the Commentarius de Critica], nescio an accuratior, sed prolixior certe`, nisi fallor, expectatione tuaˆ futurus. Est enim pulcherrimum argumentum, et cujus notitia omnibus, qui in literis serio versantur, sit necessaria. Veru`m ista, quoniam tempore opus est, Deo permittamus’); no. 329 (to Joannes Porthaesius, 30 Jan. 1603), p. 174 (‘Qui existimant, Massoram corruptorum librorum qeopne¸stwn esse argumentum, nae illi magni criminis se obligant; cu`m potius certae fidei et integrae testimonium divino Verbo haec ars praebeat. Quod aliquando . . . nostro quodam exactae diligentiae commentario sumus probaturi.’ There follow some remarks on the signs used in the Hebrew Bible published in Venice; then: ‘Speramus non mediocrem aliquando lucem operaˆ nostraˆ accessuram huic studiorum generi: verum hoc Qeo n go¸nasi ke·tai, crnou gr de· ka› scolv’); no. 400 (to Petrus Scriverius, 29 June 1604), p. 213 (‘Quod me adeo` obnixe` rogas, ut de Critica quae polliciti sumus, publicemus, agnosco etiam in eo affectuˆs tui vehementiam . . . Illa autem lucubratio peculiarem habet difficultatem, cu`m et spinosa sit tota, et quaedam in eo [ea?] contineantur adversus eos disputata, qui scelere immani de Sacra Pagina audent detrahere. Adde quo`d otium desiderat adhuc is noster foetus, si volumus ˛phnmion eum non esse. Laetatus sum nuper, cum viderem Joannem Wouwerium, juvenem eruditissimum, ex parte idem argumentum suscepisse tractandum: magis vero` laetatus essem, si, quae paramus omnia, essent ab illo occupata, ut legitimam occasionem haberemus supersedendi ab eo labore; quod quia ab eo factum non est, dabimus . . . operam, ut tuo desiderio qua`m primum satisfaciamus’); no. 439 (to Carolus Labbaeus, 11 Mar. 1605), p. 235 (‘Pythagoream legem, de qua alicubi mentionem fecimus, . . . in nostro de Critica tractatu fuse` exponimus’). 71 Casaubon’s papers as well as a few printed books that belonged to him and a number of papers which, rightly or wrongly, were added to his Nachlass, are catalogued in the Quarto Catalogues, i: Greek Manuscripts, by H. O. Coxe, reprinted with corrections from the edition of 1853 (Oxford, 1969).

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volumes of his manuscript notes (Adversaria), has yielded no trace of anything remotely like a De critica of book size. One of the volumes of Adversaria, a thick pocket-size codex (MS Casaubon 60, 16mo), contains miscellaneous notes on a number of subjects, one of which is critice. The notes consist of excerpts from, or references to, ancient authors, and of short remarks.72 As regards critice, the material comes from Greek and Latin, pagan and Christian, authors ranging from Cicero to Late Antiquity. Plato and Aristotle appear sporadically. There are also some rare references to major modern scholars (L. Valla, G. Bude´’s De asse, J. J. Scaliger); more frequent are references to C. Baronius. Some notes are about Jewish critice. When were the notes for De critica compiled? One of the authors whom Casaubon draws upon is Athenaeus; at least one reference to this author comes (as is clear from the pagination) from Casaubon’s edition, which was printed in 1597, but at least two derive from an earlier edition; this suggests that the notes were written partly before 1597, partly after. On the other hand, there are references to Casaubon’s commentary on Suetonius, first published in 1595. I am inclined to think that none of the notes is much earlier than that year. In another, much larger volume (MS Casaubon 23, 4 ), one single leaf (fo. 71r–v) contains notes on critici and critice (the modern catalogue describes the content of this leaf as follows: ‘Excerpta de philologiae seu Critices utilitate in veterum Conviviorum ratione’).73 This leaf, I think, might be the place Casaubon refers to in a note entitled Critici and written on one of the first leaves (fo. 7r) of the pocket-size codex 72 Notes on a given subject are not grouped together in a continuous series; they are mostly grouped in small ensembles, chaotically mixed with analogous groups belonging to other subjects. On many pages the place some notes occupy and the colour of the ink show that Casaubon often came back to what he had written and inserted new material. A subject index compiled by Casaubon himself and placed at the beginning of the codex was obviously intended to organize the chaotic content, but it is far too incomplete for the purpose. There are a few instances of cross-referencing. Notes, or groups of notes, manifestly or even explicitly concerning critice occur very frequently in the first forty-six leaves of the codex: fos. 4v; 7r; 8r; 9r; 18v; 19r; 20v; 21r; 23r; 24r–v; 25r–v; 26r–v; 37v; 38r–v; 39r; 40r–v; 44r; 46r. Further on they are very rare. The subject index registers the following leaves for Critice: ‘7 etc. 19. et p. 23. 37 al. 46. 211. cœ(tera)’. 73 Among other things, this leaf contains a list of major Critici (praecipui auctores) and examples of men of action who practised Critice (Alexander the Great, Cassander, ‘Alphonsus rex Lusitaniae’); moreover, an interesting remark on ‘Critici primi Italorum versati literis’: ‘Observatu dignum est, Domitium Calderinum Veronensem et alios Italos renascentibus literis Criticam flagitiosiss(ime) exercuisse: ut quidlibet mutaret supponerent falsa pro veris impune assererent . . . vidit hoc Angelus Politianus divino vir ingenio: qui in admirabili praefatione Miscellaneorum fuse` de hoc queritur . . . ’.


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(MS Casaubon 60): here, immediately under the title Critici, Casaubon notes: ‘Fuse notamus ex multis in altero libro ms.’ I suspect moreover that the notes of MS Casaubon 23, fo. 71, are his earliest notes on critice. I have not seen MS Casaubon 13, fo. 53, which, according to the modern catalogue, contains ‘Grammaticae observationes ex scriptoribus antiquissimis’.74 That is all I have found. Given Casaubon’s character, his earnestness, and his modesty, it is not likely, though not impossible, that his declarations concerning the projected De critica were false. An incomplete manuscript may have existed and have disappeared through accident or design (authorial dissatisfaction?) before his son Me´ric made the catalogues. Casaubon’s notes for De critica contain no definition of critice, no general statement about its field or method or aims or relationship to other disciplines. Two categories of notes are prominent. One, the fuller of the two, concerns the scholarship of the ancients together with the ancient educational system as well as ancient book production, book trade, and libraries. The notes belonging to this category make it evident that Casaubon (probably stimulated by his work on Suetonius’ De grammaticis et rhetoribus and on Athenaeus) had entered on a path which was leading him to a vast and accurate study of ancient scholarship and ancient education. The second category of notes is concerned with examples illustrating errors or deliberate alterations in the tradition of all kinds of texts, among others the Bible (Hebrew Old Testament, Septuagint, Greek New Testament) and texts relating to Church history, as well as false attributions of texts.75 These examples are meant to illustrate at the same time the need for critice, which detects and corrects distortions of the authentic text. There are also examples intended to show how critice is not to be used. The fact that the two categories of notes are intermingled and treated jointly as material for a book De critica is significant. It suggests that, for Casaubon, his own and his contemporaries’ scholarly practice was not a distinct topic, separable from research on ancient scholarship. 74 I have also not seen MS Casaubon 27, fo. 177, which, according to the catalogue, contains ‘Excerpta e Criticis quibusdam, Hartungo, Robortello et Victorio’. 75 It was in the name of critice that Casaubon, as early as 1603, refused to believe that the works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus came ‘ab antiquissimo illo Aegyptio’: see his letter to Scaliger of 28 Aug. 1603 (Epistolae [as in n. 53], no. 349, p. 186): ‘tu`m credam, cu`m t' kritik' nuntium remisero’. On Casaubon and the Corpus Hermeticum see Grafton, Scaliger II, 684–5; 70 n. 29, where Grafton lists his earlier studies on the subject.

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A small proportion of the notes refers to Jewish biblical scholarship, especially to the Masoretes. Casaubon’s interest in this subject is confirmed by his preface to his Animadversiones on Athenaeus (1600), and by two of the letters cited above: the letter to Scaliger of 8 September 1601, where he says that he intends to ‘explain’, in his De critica, ‘the whole Kritik of the Jews’,76 and the letter to J. Porthaesius of 30 January 1603, where he writes: ‘Those who think that the Masora is evidence that the inspired books are corrupt, do indeed involve themselves in a great crime, for this art provides the divine word with testimony that it has been transmitted in a wholly reliable way. I hope I shall prove this sometime, Qeo didntov, in a dissertation of painstaking exactitude’77—by which he means, of course, his future book De critica. Casaubon’s interest in the Masora78 is connected with a problem that was essential for him: to what extent is the transmitted text of the Scriptures to be considered reliable according to the standards of critice? The passage of the letter to Porthaesius just quoted must be read alongside a manuscript note of Casaubon, published by J. Chr. Wolf: The sacred letters, that is the tenor (no v) of the Old and the New Testament, are indeed incorruptible, proof against any deformation; but that the language, which is their vehicle, has, over so long a stretch of time, suffered blemishes or minor deformations, though without damage to the meaning, cannot, I think, be doubted. In the case of the Greek the situation is clear: many things have been slightly changed, some more seriously impaired, but in such a way that the truth has remained unshaken. As for the Hebrew, why should we doubt it? Does not the whole Masora give a most sure testimony to this? See Augustine, De civitate Dei, p. 825 [i.e. 15. 11].79

The problem of the reliability of the transmitted text of the Scriptures seems to have contributed to the difficulty of completing De critica. In his letter to P. Scriverius of 29 June 1604 (quoted above) Casaubon 76

77 Text in n. 70 above. For Scaliger’s reply see n. 49 above. MS Casaubon 10 seems to have something about ‘Massora Rabbi Eliae Levitae’— cf. Quarto Catalogues (as in n. 71), 827 (I have not seen this volume of Adversaria). On Elias Levita cf. also Casaubon’s letter to Porthaesius of 1603: Epistolae (as in n. 53), no. 329, pp. 173–4. 79 Casauboniana sive Isaaci Casauboni Varia de scriptoribus librisque judicia . . . , ed. J. Chr. Wolf (Hamburg, 1710), 67: ‘Literae quidem sacrae h.e. ` no v utriusque testamenti fqarta sunt, et nulli depravationi obnoxia; at lingua, quae literarum illarum veluti frhma est, quin aliquam labem aut labeculam sed sine detrimento to no acceperit longi temporis tractu, non est, ut puto, dubitandum. In Graeco res manifesta: multa leviter immutata, quaedam gravius tentata, sed sic, ut veritas inconcussa maneret. In Hebr. cur dubitemus? Nonne tota Masora certissimum ejus rei testimonium praebet? Vid. Augustin. de C. D. p. 825.’ 78


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writes, ‘This work is particularly difficult: it is full of thorns, and it contains a polemic against those who, guilty of a heinous crime, dare detract from the Sacred Page.’ Who the ‘detractors’ are is not clear, perhaps the same person or persons he refers to in his letter to Porthaesius: ‘Qui existimant, Massoram corruptorum librorum qeopneustwn esse argumentum, nae illi magni criminis se obligant’. However, Casaubon did not devote much energy to applying critice to the Bible. Problems of textual criticism and philological interpretation of biblical passages appear rather sporadically in the manuscript notes published by J. Chr. Wolf, or in the codex I have studied. Reading biblical commentaries by the Church Fathers was for him edifying, although he recognized freely that, technically, modern interpreters could be superior to the ancients.80 It is not clear how aware he was that allegorical interpretation of Scripture, as it was practised by the Church Fathers, was hardly compatible with his idea of critice. Many of Casaubon’s notes in the codex under discussion (almost every page of which begins with the invocation Sn Qe), as well as his 80 Ibid. 7: ‘Tomum I. Commentar(iorum) Chrysostomi qui desinit in Jesaiam, absolvi, opus vere aureum, et quod imperfectum esse majori ex parte sit dolendum . . . . Tanta pietas, tanta in Sac(ra) Scriptura eruditio, quam in illo Viro animadverto et in nonnullis aliis veterum, non sinit me iis adsentiri, qui neoterica atque adeo unum e neotericis toti vetustati anteponunt’. Ibid.: ‘Ambrosii in Psalmos interpretatio omnis vel vocum est, et quaerit sensum ac veram lectionem, vel sensus ac Doctrinae, verbis comprehensae. Utrumque genus interpretationis desiderat S(acra) Scriptura, et utrumque adhibuerunt fere Patres. Idem subinde interpretationes expendit Graec(am) et Latin(am). Denique familiare ipsi est, digredi ad tractationem locorum Sac(rae) Scripturae satis remotorum, ut in Psal. CXIX. passim. Observa etiam, multa pr¿v filolog‹an posse disci a magno illo Viro.’ Answering a letter from Scaliger which contained a sharp censure of John Chrysostom’s arithmetical speculations about the ages of the world ( J. Scaliger, Epistolae, no. 84, Leiden edn., 236–40, Frankfurt edn., 216–19; cf. no. 87, Leiden edn., 243–4, Frankfurt edn., 222–5), Casaubon writes on 27 Mar. 1604, Epistolae (as in n. 53), no. 389, p. 206: ‘Omnino . . . verum est tuum de optimo illo Patre judicium. Nos sane` multa in ejus scriptis adnotavimus, quae tn o˝k mpeir‹an a˝to tv filosof‹av te ka› tv filolog‹av manifesto` arguant: ut de Historia nihil dicam, in qua pene puer aliquando possit videri. Sed nos in viro sanctissimo hos naevos facile` ferimus, qui sciamus, omne illius studium in eo positum fuisse, ut sine jactantia, ka› neu pshv perpere‹av t¿n staurwqnta to ksmou Swtra praedicaret. Longe` diversis moribus coaxatores isti sunt, quorum tribuniciae conciones plenae ostentationis quotidie audiuntur.’ Scaliger’s answer, dated 16 Apr. 1604 of the Julian calendar, Epistolae, no. 93, Leiden edn., 258–9, Frankfurt edn., 236, is also worth quoting: ‘de quo scriptore idem sentio, quod tu. Nullius veterum Patrum lectione magis afficior, tum propter inaffectatum dicendi characterem semper sibi similem; tum quia unicus est omnium veterum, cui probe nota fuerit mens totius Novi Testamenti: in quo genere solus regnum obtinet. Nam in Veteris Instrumenti sensibus ut plurimum longe a` recta veri regione vagari cogit Hebraismi inscitia et LXX interpretum editio, quae quum sit longe mendosissima, tamen eam omnes veteres, quae illorum sinistra fuit kakozhl‹a, non dubitant archetypis Hebraicis anteferre.’

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last work, De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI ad cardinalis Baronii prolegomena . . . (London, 1614), show that the role he assigned to critice in the domain of religion consisted mainly in the correct reading and interpretation of the writings of the Church Fathers and of ancient texts concerning the Church. This fervent, but irenically minded Calvinist was in fact fairly close to the Erasmian attitude to religion and scholarship (which explains the fact that he felt at home among Anglicans and approved of the ideas of Hugo Grotius on ecclesiastical matters).81 In his letters he blames those Calvinist theologians who presume to reject all tradition and to interpret the Bible solely by their own lights, introducing dangerous novelties.82 He thought the tradition of the ancient Church to be an indispensable guide in the search for truth, provided it was the real, authentic tradition, recognized and correctly interpreted by means of solid eruditio and critice, and not the adulterated tradition imposed by the ‘tyranny’ of the Pope and of the ‘papists’. He often complained that circumstances had prevented him from concentrating all his powers on the study of the Church Fathers and the history of the early Church, for the glory of God.83 In spite of his critical alertness and immense knowledge he shared the illusion, frequent at that time among learned and irenically minded members of different churches, that ancient Christianity was free of violent struggles and hatreds bred by theological controversy.84 Apart from the notes in the codex discussed above,85 Casaubon’s view of critice reveals itself in his Animadversionum in Athenaei Dipnosophistas 81 Casaubon, letter to H. Grotius written from London on 27 Jan. 1612, Epistolae (as in n. 53), no. 772, p. 448. Here Casaubon is acting as an intermediary between King James and Grotius. 82 See e.g. his letter to Johannes Drusius, 27 Dec. 1600, Epistolae, no. 221, p. 113; letter to Cornelius van der Myle, 14 July 1612, Epistolae, no. 813, p. 474. 83 See especially a number of letters from the years 1595–6 (first from Geneva, then from Montpellier), nos. 42; 50; 51; 60; 63; 64; 66; 77; 103. Moreover, a number of letters from the years 1600–5 (from Paris), nos. 213; 281; 380; 419; 426; 433. Lastly, a most interesting autobiographical letter written from London on 7 Apr. 1613, no. 879. 84 A good example of this illusion can be found in the treatise of a Calvinist aiming at the reconciliation and reunion of the churches in conflict, especially of Calvinists and Catholics in France: Jean de Serres, Apparatus ad fidem catholicam (Paris, 1597), fo. 5v: ‘Ecquos autem meliores et aptiores illorum [scil. the Sacred Books] interpretes agnoscere possumus quam orthodoxos illos Doctores Ecclesiae Catholicae, qui ante natas controversias vixerunt, in Europaeis, Asianis, Africanis Ecclesiis illustres: Irenaeum puta, Athanasium, Gregorium Nazianzenum, Basilium, Chrysostomum, Ambrosium, Augustinum, Hieronymum caeterosque illos viros augusto Patrum nomine apud omnes maxime reverendos?’ Quoted by Vivanti, Lotta (as in n. 68), 261–2 n. 1. 85 See also a short remark on critice in Casaubon’s Animadversiones in Suetonium: C. Suetonii Tranquilli de xii Caesaribus libri VIII, I. Casaubonus rec. et animadversionum


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libri XV, published in Lyon in 1600 (three years after his edition of that author). In the preface Casaubon writes: It is an old complaint of learned men . . . that the texts of the ancients are full of disfiguring errors . . . This is certainly unfortunate and must be deplored with real tears by lovers of wisdom. For, whence can we obtain learning, whence knowledge of the sciences, whence acquaintance with the entire past, if not from the books of the ancients? . . . Therefore those who think that it makes no difference whether they use an emended book or an unemended one, are quite ridiculous. These people are in part Democritus’ fellow countrymen [i.e. Abderites, simpletons] and acorn-eating Arcadians, in part ill-intentioned fault-finders, perverse in their learning, enemies and despisers of the divine critice (I mean the true one, not one that is promiscuous, and, as Tertullian says, all over the place). The fatuousness and malignity of these people was frequently attacked by the great Galen. And I have proved, in my De critica, which I have written with a most exact diligence, that it is from this source that very many errors have come and gained currency in social life. The teachers of the Jews have a word to designate the need for this study: they say no less truly than elegantly that critice is the fence of divine Law, and does this not apply all the more to human writings?86

Critice is here obviously viewed as textual criticism and text interpretation, applied to the writings of the ancients. Another passage in the Animadversiones sheds light on Casaubon’s idea of ancient critice and, indirectly, on the nature and the present tasks libros adiecit ([Geneva], 1605), sep. pag., 8: he denounces an ‘illness’ frequent among ‘critics’ of his time (‘hodie solemnis et pid miov nostrorum Criticorum morbus’): as soon as they notice in an author something ‘nove et inusitate dictum’, they try to introduce it into other authors, or into another passage of the same author. ‘Hac ratione integerrimi atque incorruptissimi auctorum loci, ceu corrupti et depravati, corriguntur. T¿ d ¯lon, peristh n n kritik efiv kris‹an, tØn palaiØn xuggrafwn dirqwsiv efiv paradirqwsin, swthr‹a efiv pleian.’ This Greek sentence is not a quotation: Casaubon here finds it easier to express himself in Greek than in Latin. The sentence means: ‘And, in a general way, nowadays criticism has turned into lack of judgement, emendation of ancient writers into pseudo-emendation, healing into destruction.’ 86 ‘Vetus est eruditorum querela . . . mendis deformibus antiquorum scatere monumenta. Misera profecto` res, et sapientiae studiosis vel veris lacrymis deflenda. Unde enim nobis eruditio parabilis, unde cognitio disciplinarum, unde totius praeteriti temporis notitia, nisi ex libris antiquorum? . . . Ut plane` ridiculi sint, qui emendatońe an inemendato libro utantur, sua nihil putant interesse. Isti sunt, partim Democriti populares et Arcades balanhfgoi, partim vitiligatores literas perverse docti, divinae Critices (legitimam intelligo, non istam volgivagam, et ut loquitur Tertullianus, passivam) hostes et contemtores: quorum fatuitatem et kako qeian tot locis magnus Galenus acriter est insectatus. Nos autem in eo libro quem accuratissima diligentia de Critica fecimus, plurimos in vitam errores ab hoc fonte manasse, vero vicimus. Sed studij huius necessitatem Hebraeorum doctores verbo indicant, qui Legis divinae, (quanto igitur meliore iure humanorum scriptorum?) sepem esse Criticam non minus vere` qua`m eleganter pronunciant.’

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of critice. Discussing the title of Aristotle’s lost work Per› didaskaliØn [i.e. On dramatic performances], he writes: It is an aberration, commonly found, to translate (this title) by De doctrinis. For it was not on philosophy or the artes liberales that the criticus [i.e. Aristotle!] wrote in this work, but on what is proper to his profession. The knowledge of it is very delightful and most useful for clarifying history [i.e. historiographical narratives]. The matter is little understood today, and I take the opportunity to explain it briefly. The system of studies in the past [i.e. in Antiquity] was based mainly on the reading and understanding of dramatic poets, especially comic poets. They were drawn on for purity of language, for information about political events, for knowledge of the life and habits of the foremost citizens of Athens. Hence great scholars have vied with each other in expounding ancient works of this kind, and this from the very beginnings of the profession of critice, or grammatice, or however you like to name that discipline whose task is the correct interpretation of ancient writers and whose founder, as I show elsewhere [obviously an allusion to De critica], is the divine Aristotle.87

A little further on (p. 261) Casaubon points out the utility of the lists of dramatic performances for chronology: ‘How much the critici, by their diligence, helped the ancient chronologers, only those can tell who know how feeble and slender were the means at the disposal of those who were the first to undertake the calculation of fleeting time.’88 Behind these words there is, of course, Casaubon’s acquaintance with Scaliger’s chronological studies. What Casaubon says here of Aristotle is interesting. The idea that Aristotle had practised kritik could be found in Dio Chrysostom (On Homer, Or. 53. 1), a passage Casaubon mentions in his manuscript notes. However, Dio refers exclusively to the fact that Aristotle, in his dialogues, discussed and praised Homer. Casaubon 87 Animadvers. in Athen., 260: ‘Magna sane interpretum hallucinatio, qui vertunt ubique De doctrinis. Non enim de philosophia aut artibus liberalibus tractaverat eo in opere criticus sed de professionis suae proprio argumento: cuius cognitio et iocundissima, et ad historiae lucem utilissima. Rem hodie non vulgo` cognitam, lubet paucis, quando oblata est occasio, explicare. Studiorum ea fuit quondam ratio, ut maxima eruditionis pars in dramaticorum poe¨tarum, ac praesertim comicorum lectione et intelligentia poneretur. Inde puriorem Hellenismum, inde notitiam eorum quae in Rep. erant gesta, inde vitam et mores primorum civitatis Atheniensium hauriebant. Itaque ad illustranda huius generis veterum scripta, certatim viri magni contenderunt, iam inde ab incunabulis criticae professionis, sive grammaticae, aut quocumque modo appellare volueris, eam disciplinam quae rectam veterum scriptorum interpretatione profitetur, et divinum Aristotelem, ut docemus alibi, auctorem habet primum.’ 88 Ibid. 261: ‘Quantum critici hac diligentia veteres chronologos adiuverint, soli aestimabunt illi, qui norunt qua`m infirma et tenuia praesidia habuerint, qui ad ineundam fugacis temporis rationem primi animum appulerunt.’


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refers to something completely different, namely to Aristotle’s research on Athenian dramatic performances of the past and his publication of the official records concerning them. It is because of this work (antiquarian we would call it) that Aristotle becomes, in Casaubon’s eyes, the founder of critice. Rudolf Pfeiffer would not have been happy with this opinion. In the study of the writings of the ancients, as the passages just quoted and, more clearly, many of his letters prove,89 Casaubon sees the foundations of literae, i.e. of culture, particularly of scientific disciplines and of the knowledge of ‘the entire past’, in what was for him the really significant past, pagan and Christian Antiquity. That is why critice is, in his opinion, essential both for the Respublica literaria and for religion. And this implies, of course, that it is essential for the order and the welfare of the state as well.90 In 1604 Joannes a Wower (or Wowerius, or Wowerus), having studied at Leiden from 1592 to 1597 and met Casaubon at Montpellier (probably in 1597 or 1598),91 published a book on polymathia,92 presenting it as a ‘fragment’ (pospasmtion) of a work he was writing de studiis veterum, i.e. ‘on the intellectual pursuits of the ancients’, or ‘on the studies to which the ancients devoted themselves’—by which he meant the artes liberales, as appears from the plan of the work printed at 89 See e.g. the following letters (Epistolae [as in n. 53]): to J. A. Thuanus, 21 Mar. 1597, no. 124, p. 68; to J. Gillottus, the same day, no. 125, p. 69; to J. Scaliger, 7 June 1597, no. 143, p. 77; to J. Gruterus, 22 Mar. 1601, no. 226, p. 116; to C. Rittershusius, 5 Sept. 1604, no. 409, p. 218. 90 Casaubon’s idea of the role of critice has a deep connection with the use that the noblesse de robe, precisely in the years of his residence in France, were making of their historico-juridical learning in an attempt to promote a new political and religious order. (On these endeavours of the noblesse de robe at the turn of the 16th and the 17th c., see Vivanti, Lotta [as in n. 68], esp. 136–62). Though himself without any political ambition, Casaubon had contacts with some of the political elite supporting Henri IV and found in Henri IV a protector. He thought, for a moment, that his scholarly activity could serve the French monarchy. He was working on a commentary on Polybius (never completed), ‘un ouvrage de ce temps’, as he called it in a letter to Scaliger (exceptionally, and therefore significantly, in French). In the preface to his edition and Latin translation of Polybius, he recommended the historian to the French nobility. He was obviously thinking of J. Lipsius’ De militia Romana libri quinque. Commentarius ad Polybium (1596). Lipsius had tried to draw military instruction from Polybius, useful for the Dutch army. On Scaliger’s attitude to these efforts, see Grafton, Scaliger II, 376–7; 618. 91 The date can be deduced from information given by his friend Geverhartus Elmenhorstius in his ‘Vita Joannis Wowerii’, published in Joh. a Wower, De Polymathia tractatio. Editio nova (Leipzig, 1665); see sig. b 2v–b 3r. 92 In Greek, Wower varies between polumqeia and polumaq‹a.

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the beginning of the ‘fragment’.93 The studia veterum are of course, in Wower’s eyes, the model and the point of departure for any studia of the moderns. The published ‘fragment’ concerns one of the artes liberales, namely grammatice. Wower tries to extract a theory of grammatice out of a staggering number of ancient testimonies (from the third century bc to the end of Antiquity), as though they were all compatible with each other, which they are not. In fact he harmonizes them according to his own ideas on the subject. There is no need here to analyse this construction at length. Two points will suffice. Wower merges two parts or functions of grammatik that figure in different ancient divisions of this discipline: t¿ xhghtikn or x ghsiv, and t¿ flstorikn or lxewn ka› flstoriØn pdosiv. This merger rests on a misinterpretation of ancient terminology (particularly of the term flstor‹ai as used within the discipline of grammatik ) and serves to separate out, as a part of grammatik , something not envisaged by any ancient theorist: xhghtik or filolog‹a, which according to him consists of two interdependent activities, interpreting difficult passages and acquiring knowledge of a variety of facts pertaining to Antiquity. Of course, filolog‹a is an ancient word, but Wower uses it in a new way, as a technical term designating a part of grammatik . (He thinks he is following Seneca, Ep. ad Lucilium, 108, but he is mistaken, for Seneca distinguishes between the ‘grammaticus’ and the ‘philologus’: by the latter term he means the kind of scholar we would call an antiquarian.) Beside xhghtik or filolog‹a Wower distinguishes two other parts of grammatik : tecnik , placed on a lower level, and kritik , the ‘noblest’ of the three. He says (p. 123) that kritik was defined by Sextus Empiricus as follows: fidia‹teron d t¿ mrov tv grammatikv, kata t¿ [sic] tov poihtv ka› suggrafe·v skopo si [sic], kaq¿ t safØv legmena xhgo ntai, t te ˛gi ka› t m toia ta kr‹nousi, t te gn sia p¿ tØn nqwn dior‹zousin. This is partly a paraphrase, partly a literal quotation of Sextus Empiricus, Adv. mathem. 1. 91 and 1. 93. The text of 1. 93 is corrupt in all our manuscripts; I do not know 93 Ioan. a Wower, De polymathia tractatio. Integri operis de studiis veterum pospasmtion, Ex Bibliopolio Frobeniano ([Hamburg], 1603). See the valuable article by L. Deitz, ‘Ioannes Wower of Hamburg, Philologist and Polymath: A Preliminary Sketch of his Life and Works’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 58 (1995), 132–51. Deitz takes de studiis veterum to mean ‘on the studies concerning the ancients’. I think this is wrong—see text.


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what Wower read in the manuscript he used; anyway, what he quotes is impossible Greek. Presumably, he took kata t¿ . . . skopo si to be equivalent to kaq’ ˜ . . . skopo si—which, of course, is impossible— and took the whole passage to mean: ‘The proper part is that part of grammar in which poets and prose writers are examined, what is said obscurely is explained, the sound distinguished from the unsound, and the genuine separated from the spurious.’ Whatever he might have thought about the exact form and meaning of Sextus’ passage, it is certain (and interesting) that he distorted Adv. mathem. 1. 91 and 93, for Sextus Empiricus does not speak of kritik at all, but simply of the ‘third part’. Wower does in an overt way what J. J. Scaliger had done without mentioning any author: he combines Sextus Empiricus’/ Asclepiades’ definition of the ‘third part’ of grammatik with Sextus Empiricus’ witness on Tauriscus (Adv. mathem. 1. 248, cf. 1. 79); this appears from what he says a few lines before (p. 122): ‘The third part of grammar is kritik , the noblest of all; that is why Tauriscus subordinated the whole of grammar to it, as Sextus Empiricus reports in Adversus mathematicos; it is for this very reason that [Sextus] calls kritik the proper part of grammar.’94 Of course, being distinct from what he calls xhghtik or filolog‹a, Wower’s kritik is not identical with Scaliger’s. It consists mainly of two functions: emendatio and iudicium. Wower writes (p. 123): I find that the main parts of critice are two. One of them is that in which they [i.e. ancient scholars] were like censors judging authors, deciding on attributions, separating the true and the genuine from the spurious, and registering all authors in a kind of census. This part you could correctly call iudicium, the other emendatio. For even though the main role in emendatio is played by judgement, yet, as the former part is concerned with correctly judging authors, so the latter with emending them.95

Wower’s divergence from Scaliger is all the more interesting as it can be shown that, at the time of writing, he had before him Scaliger’s letter to Scriverius. (He might have obtained it from Scriverius, whose 94 ‘Tertia Grammaticae pars kritik, quae omnium nobilissima; ideoque huic totam Grammaticam subiecit Tauriscus, ut refert Sextus Empiricus adversus Mathematicos, qui eaˆdem ratione tn kritikn t¿ fidia‹teron mrov tv grammatikv vocat.’ 95 ‘Duas Criticae partes praecipuas reperio, quarum haec est, qua velut Censores de auctoribus iudicabant, sua cuique opera vindicabant, vera et germana a suppositiciis discernebant, et omnium scriptorum quasi quendam censum agebant. Hanc itaque partem recte iudicium dixeris, alteram emendationem. Nam licet etiam in emendatione potiores iudicii sint partes, tamen ut illa [printed illud: certainly a misprint] in recto de auctoribus iudicio, ita haec in eorum emendatione tota est.’

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contemporary he was in Leiden.) At the beginning of chapter 17 (p. 134) he describes one of the two partes of critice, namely emendatio: The second part of critice is complex, but concentrates, as I have said, on emending authors. They [i.e. ancient critici] were in the habit of rejecting and marking with an obelus authors’ mistakes; of condemning spurious passages by adding a mark in the margin; of emending corrupt and faulty passages; of registering variants (that is why the readings adopted by old critici were reported: they are often mentioned by Apollonius [the Homeric lexicon of Apollonius Sophista]); of marking and castigating ill-founded decisions of other critici—decisions they called efika·oi qet seiv; of restoring to their proper place transposed lines in authors (that is why metaqseiv tØn grafØn were often practised; Isidorus writes that Aristarchus ‘applied an asterisk with an obelus to displaced lines’); of dividing works into sections; and of showing how divergent opinions of the authors could be reconciled (the sumfwn‹ai tØn dogmtwn indicated by ancient critici in philosophical texts belong here). All this is mentioned by Diogenes Laertius in his section on Plato.96

It is obvious that Wower here modifies—by variation, omission, or addition—and uses for his own purpose the main passage (quoted above, p. 153) of Scaliger’s letter to Scriverius on grammatici and critici, without citing his model. This is presumably one of the reasons why Scaliger, in private conversation, called Wower ‘un grand plagiaire’.97 Let us go back to the passage where Wower writes: ‘Duas Criticae partes praecipuas reperio’, after which he states that the two principal parts are emendatio and iudicium. What does he mean by ‘reperio’? That he had found in ancient authors an explicit statement to that effect? But no ancient text says this; and, if Wower had mistakenly thought the opposite, he would not have failed to cite it. Therefore, he must mean that what he asserts is an inference from ancient evidence. He had 96 ‘Altera Criticae pars varia, sed tota, ut dixi, in Auctorum emendatione, qua ˆ solebant perperam ab Auctoribus scripta qete·n ka› bel‹zein, t pareggegrammna, mbolima·a, noqe¸onta notaˆ apposita damnare, corrupta et vitiosa emendare, ambiguas lectiones recensere, inde laudabantur veterum Criticorum nagnamata [sic! ], quorum saepe meminit Apollonius Grammaticus, aliorum Criticorum temere` scita notare ac refutare, quam kr‹sin efika‹ouv qet seiv appellabant, transposita in auctoribus suis sedibus reponere, quo nomine celebrabantur metaqseiv tØn grafØn, et Isidorus scribit Aristarchum ‘‘Asterisco obelato usum in iis versibus, qui non erant positi suo loco’’. Opera Auctorum in certas partes distinguere, et eorum sententias conciliare, quo` pertinent sumfwn‹ai tØn dogmtwn in Philosophis a` veteribus Criticis notatae, quorum meminit Diog. Laert. in Platone.’ 97 I know this Scaligeranum from Grafton, Scaliger II, 494 n. 14; Grafton (492–4) has some interesting remarks on Wower as a pupil of Scaliger; his opinion is perhaps too harsh.


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probably drawn it from Varro’s division of grammatice as reported by Diomedes, Ars grammatica, Book 2, chapter ‘De grammatica’ (Grammatici Latini i, Keil, 426): ‘Grammaticae officia, ut adserit Varro, constant in partibus quattuor, lectione enarratione emendatione iudicio.’ Wanting to reduce these four officia to the tripartite division that was for him fundamental,98 being, moreover, persuaded that Varro could not have left out critice, and, lastly, remarking that neither lectio nor enarratio could have been considered as a function of critice, he concluded that critice consisted of emendatio and iudicium. His reasoning was, of course, completely arbitrary, but what matters to us is that there appears here a notion of critice which bears some resemblance to the one nineteenth-century classical scholars have made us familiar with: I am referring to the idea that critice (Kritik), as a component of philologia, consists of two parts, (i) textual criticism operating through recensio and emendatio, (ii) ‘higher criticism’ (ho¨here Kritik, Kritik des Echten und des Unechten), i.e. detecting interpolated passages present in all manuscripts, identifying fakes, and testing traditional attributions. (I do not know when these terms were first employed.)99 Writing to his friend D. Baudius in 1605,100 Wower rejected a rumour, of uncertain origin, reported to him by Baudius, that he had plagiarized Casaubon (i.e., probably, Casaubon’s virtual book on 98 Cf. what Wower writes before, in chapter 8, pp. 52–3: he first reports Marius Victorinus and Diomedes on the officia of grammatice, then adds: ‘ex IV. eius officiis, quae Marius Victorinus et Diomedes referunt, tres illius partes constituam: tecnikn sive meqodikn, xhghtikn et kritikn. Ad hanc divisionem praeit [ ¼ shows the way] Varro apud Diomedem lib. II. cujus haec verba: ‘‘Grammaticae officia, ut adserit Varro, constant in partibus quattuor, lectione enarratione emendatione iudicio’’ . . . Lectio et enarratio sunt tv tecnikv [here the printed text must be incomplete; add: et tv xhghtikv?]. Emendatio et iudicium tv kritikv.’ 99 Bormann, ‘Kritik’ (as in n. 6), 1263, quotes the following definition, allegedly from Ambrosius Calepinus’ Lexicon of 1502: ‘Critica, Philologiae pars est, quae in emendatione auctorum et in judicio consistit.’ Similarly, Ro¨ttgers, ‘Kritik’ (as in n. 6), 653, who states that the definition is to be found in Calepinus’ Lexikon, seu dictionarium XI linguarum (Reggio, 1502), s.v. Criticus. Both are mistaken, Ro¨ttgers doubly so, in that he attributes to the 1502 edition of Calepinus a title that did not appear until the Basle edition of 1590 (the title of the 1502 edn. is simply ‘Calepinus’). There is no mention of critica (or critice) in Calepinus. A. Labarre, Bibliographie du Dictionarium d’Ambrogio Calepinus (1502–1779) (Baden Baden, 1975), describes 211 editions, reprints, and adaptations of this popular work. Christopher Ligota and I have, between us, inspected Reggio, 1502; Venice, 1506; Strasbourg, 1510; Paris, 1518; Cologne, 1534; Basle, 1544 and 1553. I strongly suspect that the passage attributed by Bormann and Ro¨ttgers to Calepinus comes from a text later than Wower’s De polymathia and is influenced by it. 100 Ioannes Wowerus, Epistolarum centuriae II (Hamburg, 1619), letter to Dominicus Baudius of 1 July 1605, Centuria I, nos. 127–8.

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critice).101 Wower admitted that concerning critice he had learnt ‘haud pauca’ from Casaubon at Montpellier. There is, as far as I can see, no way of determining what precisely the ‘haud pauca’ were, but, considering what we have seen of Casaubon’s conception of critice, I would say that the separation of kritik from xhghtik and its division into emendatio and iudicium were not part of them. Ten years after the publication of Wower’s De polymathia the subject ‘grammatice and critice’ was again discussed in print by Philippus Jacobus Maussacus (de Maussac) in the second part of a Dissertatio critica appended to his edition of Harpocration’s Lexicon (Paris, 1614).102 Maussac attacks Wower (‘autor Polymathiae’, as he regularly calls him) as often as he can, but in fact follows him. His Dissertatio seems to me important only in so far as it constitutes yet another testimony of the interest the subject was arousing at that time. In 1627 Daniel Heinsius, a scholar and a poet who had been a favourite pupil of Scaliger, published, under the significant title Aristarchus Sacer, a book on Nonnus’ poetical paraphrase of the Fourth Gospel, with a long introduction (‘Prolegomena’) on ‘the birth and progress of true critice among the ancients and its utility in all disciplines, especially in divinity’; a new edition followed in 1639.103 He takes over (see p. 647) the division of grammatik introduced by Wower (whom he does not mention): tecnik at a lower level, and, at a higher level, xhghtik (vel flstorik ) and kritik . However, this division is by no means at the centre of his attention; he gives it en passant. Nor is he interested in neatly subdividing critice. What matters to him is to show 101 Wower suspected that the rumour had originated with Casaubon himself. He was certainly wrong, as appears from Casaubon’s letter to P. Scriverius of 29 June 1604, quoted above, n. 70. 102 Dictionarium in decem rhetores, Phil. Iacobus Maussacus supplevit et emendavit . . . (Paris, 1614), 334–6, 346–55, 376–98. 103 D. Heinsius, Aristarchus Sacer, sive ad Nonni in Iohannem Metaphrasin exercitationes. Quarum priori parte Interpres examinatur, posteriori Interpretatio ejus cum Sacro Scriptore confertur: in utraque S. Evangelistae plurimi illustrantur loci (Leiden, 1627). The introduction bears the title: Prolegomena ad Aristarchum, sive De verae Criticae apud veteres, ortu, progressu, usuque, cum in caeteris disciplinis, tum, in Theologia praesertim, Dissertatio. I shall quote from the second edition of the Aristarchus Sacer, which goes together with another work by D. Heinsius: Sacrarum exercitationum ad Novum Testamentum libri XX. In quibus Contextus Sacer illustratur, S.S. Patrum aliorumque sententiae examinantur, Interpretationes denique antiquae aliaeque ad eum expenduntur [¼ lastly, the ancient translations and other translations are evaluated through confrontation with it (i.e. the Sacred Text)]. Quibus Aristarchus Sacer, emendatior nec paulo auctior, Indicesque aliquot uberrimi accedunt (Leiden, 1639). In the title of the ‘dissertatio’ the second edition has in Sacris instead of in Theologia praesertim.


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the importance of critice. This he does in accord with both J. J. Scaliger and Casaubon, but in a partly new way. Speaking of the ‘disciplines’ of the ancients, Heinsius maintains (p. 639) that ‘there was one (discipline) to which they subordinated, not some one matter, not a particular discipline, but the entire range of disciplines. They called it Critice or the art of judging.’104 He then follows Scaliger for a while (pp. 639–40) in reporting what the activities of ancient critici were, but soon goes beyond his teacher. He maintains (ibid.) that Aristotle was ‘the first to deserve and to bear the name of criticus, as rightly remarked by Dio Chrysostom and others’, because ‘he applied this art [i.e. critice] to all philosophers of his own time and of earlier times . . . [here a long list of names, from Pythagoras to Speusippus] in the divine and human sciences’, and especially because ‘in the second book of his Politics he scrutinizes all the constitutions of the ancients according to the rules of this art’. After examining the constitutions and the laws of Minos, Lycurgus, Solon, Hippodamus, Phaleas, etc., Aristotle ‘allows none of them to pass without a critical note’.105 Heinsius creates here a bold metaphor: the technical term ‘nota critica’, referring to the critical signs written by ancient scholars in the margins of texts, is here used to denote a judgement pointing out what is defective in a constitution or a law. Immediately after this, Heinsius presents Aristotle as one who ‘emended’ Homer’s text for his pupil Alexander, as one who expressed ‘judgements about all poets (of which there remain some traces in his de Poetica)’, who ‘examined and emended’ the texts of comedies (‘qui et Comicorum fabulas cum cura recensuerat ac emendaverat’: I do not know what Heinsius is referring to), and who, as ‘the great Casaubon’ has shown, put the comedies into chronological order in his work Didaskal‹ai, by which he contributed to ‘rescuing chronology from error’. A few pages further on (p. 644), after saying that Aristotle united ‘Dogmatica’ (neuter plural), i.e. the statement of his own views, with the 104 ‘Una fuit, cui nullum certum argumentum, nullam disciplinam, propriam aut unam, sed in universum omnes subjecerunt.’ 105 ‘diu ante Aristarchum, par naturae rerum et scientiarum omnium fatali quadam lege capax Aristotelis extiterat ingenium, qui, ut primus nomen Critici, quod vere a` Dione Chrysostomo ac aliis notatum est, meruit ac tulit, ita artem hanc adversus omnes sui ac superiorum temporum Philosophos, . . . in divinis ac humanis exercuit scientiis. Nihil tamen majus est augustiusque, quam cum magnus eruditionis ille ac Criticorum Princeps, libro Politicorum secundo, omnes veterum Respublicas, ex artis hujus legibus examinat: omnes censor illustrissimus ad disquisitionem vocat: non Minois, non Lycurgi, non Solonis, non Hippodami, non Phaleae, legislatoris antiquissimi, non ullas caeterorum vel Respublicas vel leges, sine nota Critica dimittit.’

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‘soliditas eruditionis ac judicii’ (‘solidity of learning and judgement’—a iunctura dear to Heinsius), he describes Julius Caesar Scaliger as a pupil of Aristotle, almost equal to his teacher, and the ‘divine’ Joseph Justus Scaliger as not inferior to his father. He recalls that the elder Scaliger employed the same ‘soliditas eruditionis ac judicii’ ‘in the disciplines of poets, of grammatici, of philosophers, disputing with [Theodore] Gaza, Cardanus, Plato, Theophrastus, sometimes, as for instance in the inquiry on animals, even with Aristotle’; and that the younger Scaliger employed it partly ‘in recensendis, emendandis, transponendis . . . autorum scriptis’ (we would say ‘in textual criticism’), partly, when he was older, ‘in emendando tempore’, i.e. in emending chronology by censuring ‘historians, chronologers, astronomers, astrologers, and other mathematici ’, in which activity he ‘followed the usage of Eratosthenes, Callimachus, Eudoxus, and others’. ‘For, as all disciplines are linked together and constitute a whole, so this discipline [i.e. critice], being cognizant of all the disciplines, judges all or any of them, and sits on the tribunal as the chief of all.’106 The assertion that critice is the chief and the judge of any other discipline might seem amazing, but it becomes understandable if we take into account that Heinsius, like Casaubon (and doubtless also Scaliger), was persuaded that no discipline—neither critice nor any other, from natural philosophy and medicine to mathematics and astronomy, from jurisprudence and rhetoric to logic, metaphysics, and theology—could progress without an intimate and solid knowledge of, and a continuous discussion and competition with, the works of the ancients, pagan and Christian alike. These were envisaged and interpreted as works belonging to a definite time and place, but temporal distance was not felt to be important in so far as the value of these works for the literature, science, and religion of the present was concerned: the patterns of thought embodied in them were felt to be valid beyond the confines of their original historical setting. Given the normative status of Antiquity, critice, which reconstructed, interpreted, and evaluated ancient texts critically, was to D. Heinsius not only a specialized discipline, but also the right approach—namely the rational, critical approach—to the foundations of any discipline. Of course, Heinsius could not be entirely unaware that in his time there existed a kind of physics and a kind of philosophy that was not 106 p. 644: ‘Nam ut omnium disciplinarum, unum quoddam vinculum ac corpus est, ita haec de omnibus, aut una aliqua quam sibi sumit, omnibus instructa, judicat, ac, quasi princeps omnium, pro tribunali sedet.’


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interested in conversing with ancient texts. (Galilei had indeed conversed with Aristotle and Ptolemy, but only in order to show how useless this was). Heinsius’ position in the culture of his time was undoubtedly conservative. However, within the limits of a scholarship based on the traditional view of Antiquity, he participated in the general movement of European culture by contributing to form the notion of criticism. The idea that critice was a distinct, homogeneous, and autonomous discipline, entitled to exercise hegemony over other disciplines, was rejected by Gerardus Ioannes Vossius.107 I do not think he was aware that that conception was incompatible with the new trends in scientific thought; more probably he had but a dim feeling of this; in any case he was certainly not capable of criticizing intelligently Scaliger’s and Casaubon’s conception, let alone proposing a more up-to-date one. The pedantic classification of disciplines he elaborated was as much entangled in discussions of the opinions of ancient authors as Scaliger’s and Casaubon’s theory of critice had been, while it lacked the latter’s stimulating and organizing force. According to G. I. Vossius grammatice is a discipline procuring the kind of knowledge that is necessary for ‘speaking well’; judicium or critice should not be considered as part of grammatice, but as ‘a part or product’ (‘partem, vel partum’) of many sciences; there does not exist a special discipline for interpreting every kind of text. G. I. Vossius is interesting as an example of the taste for all-embracing classifications of knowledge, characteristic of his age, and still more as an example of how the great conglomerate that had been Scaliger’s and Casaubon’s critice was dissolving in the intellectual atmosphere of the second quarter of the seventeenth century. Another sign of this process can be found in the Epistolae philologicae of Rolandus Maresius (Desmarets), written for publication and published in Paris in 1650 (Book 1) and 1655 (Book 2, posthumous: the author died in 1653; the two books were re-edited together in Germany in 1687). Though writing in the language of scholars, and not in French, and though addressing many of his ‘epistolae’ to known scholars, Maresius looks at critice or grammatice from outside, taking his stance within a tradition of rhetoric that sees its main models in Cicero, 107 Gerardus Ioannes Vossius, Ars historica (Leiden, 1623), 9–11; id., De arte grammatica, Book 1, ch. 6 (1635), repr. in his Opera, ii (Amsterdam, 1695), 9–10; id., De philologia, published as Book 2, but with independent pagination, of De quatuor artibus popularibus, de philologia, et scientiis mathematicis, cui operi subjungitur chronologia mathematicorum, libri tres (Amsterdam, 1650), 1; 20; 22–7; 29–30; 51–2; id., De philosophia et philosophorum sectis Libri II, ch. 21, ‘De critice’ (The Hague, 1658), 170.

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Quintilian, and Pliny the Younger. (In respect of literary genre, the Epistolae philologicae are modelled mainly on Books 1–9 of Pliny’s Epistolae). For him critice is just emendation—‘ope codicum’ and ‘ope ingenii’—of ancient texts, which have come down to us disfigured because of the ‘Gothica barbaries’ of the Middle Ages. During the last two hundred years critici have been working to restore them. This work is now done. No important manuscripts lurk in libraries, for these have been thoroughly searched. Maresius advises his readers not to waste their time and intelligence pursuing this kind of work and to turn to other things, for instance history.108 As regards himself, he says that he has turned, ‘for his own pleasure’, to ‘another kind of critice’. This consists in writing ‘about intellectual occupations, especially in the domain of literae humaniores’. He gives advice on ‘the reading of authors’ (probably: on the choice of the authors and the way of reading them) and on the style one should use; he expresses his opinion on certain authors, ancient and modern.109 This different ‘kind of critice’ obviously has as its ancestor Quintilian, not Aristarchus. However, at the time when Maresius wrote, views partly resembling those put forward by D. Heinsius were still held by an acquaintance of his, Henricus Valesius (Henri de Valois), a scholar mainly interested in editing texts (especially of Late Antiquity), to which he added concise, precise, strictly relevant notes, contrasting with the baroque prolixity and messiness of the scholarly literature of his time. At his death in 1676 he left an unfinished treatise De critica. It was published by Peter Burman in 1740. It must have been written not much later than 1651.110 Being incomplete, it is not likely to have circulated in the 108 R. Maresius, Epistolarum philologicarum libri duo . . . (Leipzig, 1687), Book 1, no. 4 (to Aegidius Menagius), 14–17 (a letter in hexameters); Book 2, no. 1 (to the same), 230–1; no. 49 (to Nicolaus Heinsius), 487–91. 109 Ibid., Book 2, no. 7 (to Fridericus Gronovius), 268–72. He says that long before he had made and sent to Gronov a number of emendations ‘in primum et secundum T. Livii librum’, but that he repents doing so; he writes (p. 269): since that time ‘animi causa alii Criticae generi me dedi . . . Criticum igitur ago, non quidem manuscriptos codices excutiendo, ex iisque antiquos scriptores emendando: sed de ratione studiorum, circa literas praesertim humaniores scribendo: nempe quid in illis sequendum putem, tum quod ad auctorum lectionem, tu`m quod ad stylum attinet: quid de scriptoribus quibusdam antiquis, et novis sentiam: denique caetera de genere hoc persequendo, qualia et hic libellus continet, aliique quos eadem de re, Deo favente, editurus sum, complectentur.’ 110 Henricus Valesius, Emendationum libri quinque et De Critica libri duo. Numquam antehac typis vulgati. . . . Edente Petro Burmanno . . . qui praefationem, notas, et indices adjecit (Amsterdam, 1740). The De Critica is not dated by the editor; but at p. 172 the


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author’s lifetime; and by the time it came to be published cultural conditions had changed so much that it can hardly have had any influence. Nevertheless it deserves to be taken into account as an illuminating testimony. Valesius explains why critica is necessary.111 (He uses the Latin form even in the nominative, not the Greek critice or kritik , probably because the term is for him already traditional). First he declares that critica is necessary to everybody because it is ‘the art of forming correct judgements about writings and speeches [scriptis et orationibus] of both the ancients and the moderns’. (What exactly does he mean by orationes as distinguished from scripta? Perhaps extempore speeches taken down by stenographers, such as the homilies of the Church Fathers?) He continues: Another circumstance must be taken into account: there occur in old manuscripts a very great number of errors, which, as though they were reefs, cannot but delay the course of reading. Moreover, there occur many variant readings, the so-called dittograf‹ai, from which it is very difficult to choose the best one. Lastly, there arise many difficulties from obscure words as well as from obscurity of matter and thought. So that one can never easily extricate author refers to Claudius Sarravius ‘qui nuper magno omnium eruditorum damno vita defunctus est’; according to Jo¨cher’s Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon, iv (Leipzig, 1751), col. 152, Claude Sarrau died on 30 May 1651. 111 De Critica (in Emendationes, as in n. 110), 151–2: ‘Usus quidem per se manifestus est. Nam cum Critica ars sit bene judicandi de scriptis et orationibus cum veterum tum recentiorum, quis est tandem qui hujus artis praesidio non egeat? Huc accedit quod in veteribus libris menda plurima occurrunt, quae lectionis cursum tanquam scopuli morentur necesse est. Multae quoque variae lectiones, quas dittograf‹av vocant, sese offerunt, e quibus optimam eligere perquam difficile est. Multae denique difficultates tum ex obscuris vocibus, tum ex rerum ac sententiarum obscuritate nascuntur. Adeo ut nemo unquam ex tantis salebris expedire se facile possit, nisi Criticae auxilio tanquam Ariadnae filo adjuvetur. Polybius gravis auctor inprimis alicubi monet, sic nos ad Historiae lectionem accedere oportere, ut meminerimus nos eorum, quae legimus, judices esse ac censores. Idem in lectione Poe¨tarum et Oratorum et cujusque generis scriptorum, a nobis faciendum est, cavendumque praecipue est, ne animo praeoccupato atque addicto, ac prae verecundia submisso, ad legendum accedamus: neve auctoritatem ac vetustatem scriptoris nobis imponere atque illudere patiamur. Solis Divinis libris hic honos habeatur, ut animo quasi in servitutem redacto, et judicii nostri libertate abjecta eos perlegamus. De caeteris vero omnibus assuescamus inter legendum judicium ferre: quoniam hic praecipuus lectionis fructus est, animadvertere quid commode, quid perperam dictum sit, ut hoc fugere, illud vero imitari possimus. Equidem Criticam appellare soleo facem ac lampadem reliquarum artium, quam qui semel est adeptus, hic non modo tutius per omnes disciplinas incedit, sed etiam longe majores facit progressus quam caeteri. Quod si maximos et celeberrimos tum antiquitatis tum recentioris memoriae scriptores percensere velimus, inveniemus profecto neminem eorum absque hujus artis subsidio ad doctrinarum apicem et ad tantam gloriam pervenisse.’

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oneself from such obstacles, unless critice, like Ariadne’s thread, comes to one’s help.

Here we have obviously to do with critice as textual criticism and as enarratio of obscure passages, activities in which Valesius himself excelled. Without any transition, but in fact turning to a quite different aspect of critica, Valesius goes on: Polybius, a most serious author, warns somewhere [i.e. at 3. 9. 5] that we should approach the reading of histories as judges and censors. The same applies to reading poets, orators, and any other kind of writer; and we have most of all to be careful that we do not set out to read with the mind prejudiced and dependent and submissive out of respect, and that we do not allow the authority or the antiquity of the writer to deceive us. It is only towards the divine books that we have to show respect, reading them with a mind as if enslaved, the freedom of our judgement renounced. As regards all other books, we have to acquire the habit of pronouncing judgement as we read, for the main profit of reading consists in noticing what has been said appropriately and what has been said badly, so that we may avoid the latter and imitate the former. I habitually call critica the torch and lamp of the other arts:112 once in its possession, not only does one find one’s way more securely through all the disciplines, but one makes much greater progress than those who do not have it. If we wanted to review the greatest and most famous writers of antiquity as well as of modern times, we should certainly find that none of them attained the summit of the sciences and great glory without the help of this art.

Several points are worthy of notice here. The notion that our judgement on the value of whatever we read must not succumb to the ‘authority’ any given author may carry is certainly present, but not explicit in earlier descriptions of critica. But there is some ambiguity. Taken by themselves, Valesius’ words (‘commode dictum’ and ‘perperam dictum’, ‘fugere’ and ‘imitari’) would suggest that he has in mind judgement on the literary and/or moral quality of what we read. He probably does mean this, but at the same time he means something different. The stress laid on independence from ‘auctoritas’, the use of the phrase ‘animo praeoccupato’ (‘with the mind prejudiced’), and the reference to Polybius 3. 9. 5113 clearly indicate that what really counts for Valesius is judgement concerning the question: ‘is this true or false?’ 112 Compare the title of the collection of learned works published by J. Gruter in 1602–12: Lampas, sive Fax Artium Liberalium. 113 ‘As for me, I say that readers should give no little credence to the authority [p‹stiv] of the historian, but not consider it as sufficient, and that they should test his statements against the events themselves.’


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Another interesting point is the exclusion of the Bible from the competence of critica. This follows from the previous point. Since Valesius thinks that one of the main tasks of critica is to ask whether what the author writes is true or false, he concludes that applying critica to the Sacred Books would be impious. P. Burman, editing Valesius’ De critica in Amsterdam about ninety years after it had been written, added a long editorial note to this passage, suggesting that Valesius’ statement about the Bible did not correspond to his real thinking, but was a piece of opportunism. Burman was probably wrong. Anyway, irrespective of whether Valesius was sincere or not, the fact that he envisaged (only to reject it) the possibility of submitting the Sacred Books to a test of their truth value is very significant. Casaubon does not seem to have ever thought of such a possibility. Applying critice to the Bible meant to him discussing problems of textual criticism and/or literal interpretation of difficult passages. The same can be said of Louis Cappel, a Calvinist, who wrote a big book bearing the title Critica sacra, sive De variis quae in sacris Veteris Testamenti libris occurrunt lectionibus libri sex: In quibus ex variarum lectionum observatione quamplurima S. Scripturae loca explicantur, illustrantur, atque adeo` emendantur non pauca. Cui subiecta est ejusdem criticae adversus iniustum censorem iusta defensio . . . The book was published in Paris, in 1650, by the author’s son (who had converted to Catholicism) but the main part (i.e. the Critica sacra without the Defensio) had been written much earlier, as appears from the author’s preface, which hints at difficulties with publication.114 In a letter sent from Paris in October 1635 and quoted by Cappel in the Defensio (p. 634), Hugo Grotius says that he has read Critica sacra in manuscript and he praises it.115 As the title suggests, Cappel’s Critica sacra intended to apply to the Holy Writ two kinds of approach that were traditional in the study of the profane writings of the ancients: literal explanation (‘explicare, illustrare’) and textual criticism (‘emendare’). 114 Ad lectorem, sig. e ˜iiijr: ‘At last, after grave perturbations which it suffered for many years on land and sea, the omens being favourable, with Christ as guide and under his auspices, I bring it out.’ According to R. Simon (preface to Histoire critique du Vieux Testament), Cappel’s book did not find a publisher for ten years, whether in Geneva or in Sedan or in Leiden, because of strong Calvinist opposition; finally, D. Petau (a Jesuit), J. Morin (of the Oratoire), and M. Mersenne (a Minim) obtained a royal ‘privilege’ for its publication; the Roman Curia, opposed at first, came round to the view that the book could be a useful weapon against heretics relying on ‘sola Scriptura’. 115 It is worth noticing that Grotius himself practised textual criticism and philological interpretation of the Old Testament—see his Annotata ad Vetus Testamentum, 3 vols. (Paris, 1644); he was a pupil of J. J. Scaliger.

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A radically new approach to the Bible was proposed in 1670 by a man who was not a criticus, but a learned philosopher, well acquainted with the way of thinking and working of scholars studying ancient Greek and Latin texts (though he confessed to an inadequate knowledge of Greek): Spinoza. The leading idea of the ‘theological’ part of his Tractatus theologico-politicus, published anonymously in that year, can be summarized as follows:116 we are to approach Scripture ‘with a mind unhampered and free’ (‘animo integro et libero’: a striking contrast with Valesius’ words, which Spinoza could not have known: ‘animo quasi in servitutem redacto, et judicii nostri libertate abjecta’); interpreting the Sacred Books should not be based on the assumption that they are divinely inspired and that therefore their meaning must be such as to convey truths valuable for us; we should not treat them as though they had been written for us, but recognize the fact that they were written at different periods of the past, by authors who addressed their contemporaries and wanted to be understood by them. Before using these writings for our theological purposes, we should interpret them in order to establish their true meaning (‘verus sensus’), without confusing it with factual truth (‘rerum veritas’); and this we can do if we eliminate our ‘prejudices’ (‘praejudicia’, i.e. pseudo-judgements, judgements that do not originate in our own reason) and follow a rational ‘method’ (‘methodus’). ‘True meaning’ can be established by examining ‘linguistic usage’ (‘linguae usus’, i.e. ‘the nature and the peculiarities of the language in which Scripture was written and which its authors were accustomed to speak’) and of ‘context’ (‘contextus orationis’), or through reasonings based exclusively on Scripture itself (‘vel ex ratiocinio, quod nullum aliud fundamentum agnoscit, quam Scripturam’), i.e. by comparing various passages of the Bible to each other. Once the ‘verus sensus’ has been established, we are to decide whether we can give it our ‘assensus’, i.e. whether or to what extent what is said in the Sacred Books can be accepted as true. It is obvious that Spinoza applies to the study of Scripture some of the ‘rules’ of critice elaborated in the study of ancient writings other than the Sacred Books. New, however, is the distinction between true meaning and factual truth. New also is the statement that interpretation should be 116 [B. Spinoza], Tractatus theologico-politicus continens dissertationes aliquot, quibus ostenditur libertatem philosophandi non tantum salva pietate, et reipublicae pace posse concedi: sed eandem nisi cum pace reipublicae, ipsaque pietate tolli non posse (Hamburg, apud Henricum Ku¨nraht [sic; obviously Ku¨nrath], 1670 [in fact: Amsterdam, Jan Rieuwertsz, 1669/1670]. I refer mainly to the preface and to chapters 7 (esp. pp. 84–7), 9, 10, 15.


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free of ‘praejudicium’. (Remember, however, that Valesius, who had written before Spinoza, had warned against reading ‘animo praeoccupato’). Moreover, it should be noted that for speaking of his ‘methodus interpretandi Scripturam’, Spinoza does not use the term critice, but historia. The word is not unambiguous, but just for this reason it serves him well. Historia can denote the inquiry into ‘linguae usus’ and ‘contextus orationis’, aiming at establishing the ‘verus sensus’, but also something that has no exact analogy in critice practised before him: the reconstruction of the history of the biblical text. He writes: Lastly, this historia relates the vicissitudes of all the extant books of the prophets [i.e. the biblical authors], that is the life, character, and pursuits of the author of each book, who he was, on what occasion, when, for whom, and in what language he wrote. Then the fortunes of each book: how it was first received, into whose hands it fell, how many its variants were, by whose decision it was received among the sacred books, and lastly how all the books that everybody today recognizes as sacred coalesced into one corpus.117

Historia is also used by Spinoza to denote the scientific account or description of natural phenomena; applying historia both to this and to the study of the Bible leads him to suggest—in a somewhat confused manner—an analogy between the two.118 It was not in the perspective of Spinoza’s philosophy, nor with his polemical intention, but nevertheless following a ‘method’ not very 117 Tractatus, p. 87: ‘Denique enarrare debet haec historia casus omnium librorum Prophetarum, quorum memoria apud nos est; videlicet vitam, mores, ac studia authoris uniuscujusque libri, quisnam fuerit, qua occasione, quo tempore, cui, et denique qua lingua scripserit. Deinde uniuscujusque libri fortunam: nempe quomodo prius acceptus fuerit, et in quorum manus inciderit, deinde quot ejus variae lectiones fuerint, et quorum concilio [read consilio?] inter sacros acceptus fuerit, et denique quomodo omnes libri, quos omnes jam sacros esse fatentur, in unum corpus coaluerint.’ Cf. pp. 135–6: ‘His ea quae circa historiam Librorum Veteris Testamenti notare volueram absolvi.’ It seems to me that this sentence cannot be interpreted otherwise than thus: ‘With these remarks I have come to the end of what I had proposed to write about the history of the Books of the Old Testament.’ 118 Tractatus, 84: ‘Nam sicuti methodus interpretandi naturam in hoc potissimum consistit, in concinnanda scilicet historia naturae, ex qua utpote ex certis datis, rerum naturalium definitiones concludimus: sic etiam ad Scripturam interpretandam necesse est ejus sinceram historiam adornare [ ¼ to construct, to put together], ut ex ea tanquam ex certis datis et principiis mentem authorum Scripturae legitimis consequentiis concludere . . . ’. And again (p. 85): ‘Denique Scriptura rerum, de quibus loquitur, definitiones non tradit, ut nec etiam natura. Quare quemadmodum ex diversis naturae actionibus definitiones rerum naturalium concludendae sunt, eodem modo hae [i.e. ‘the definitions of the things of which Scripture speaks’] ex diversis narrationibus, quae de unaquaque re in Scriptis occurrunt, sunt eliciendae.’

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different from Spinoza’s, that Richard Simon, a Catholic priest,119 studied the Bible in a series of works of which the most important are the Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, printed first in Paris in 1678, then, after most of the copies had been destroyed at the request of Bossuet, in Amsterdam in 1680,120 and the Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament (Rotterdam, 1689). He declares that the Sacred Books are divinely inspired, but he delimits the field of his research in such a way as to be able to dispense with this assumption. The theological use of Scripture he leaves respectfully to the authorities of the Roman Church; nor does he ask questions about the truth or untruth of biblical narratives and doctrinal statements. What he is interested in are the biblical texts as products of human activity. He asks: when, by whom, for whom, in what language, on the basis of what information were the narratives of the Old and of the New Testament written? Were the originals transmitted without substantial changes or were they at some point rewritten? When, by whom, and how were they rewritten? When was the Jewish canon of the Sacred Books established? When was the canon of the New Testament established? Are the texts entirely genuine or do they contain interpolations? Which are the best extant manuscripts? What is the worth of the ancient translations as witnesses of the text? etc. All these questions clearly correspond to a part of the programme that Spinoza had assigned to ‘historia’ of the Sacred Books. But in Simon’s language histoire is not so ambiguous as historia is in Spinoza’s: its meaning seems to be fairly close to that which the word has today, though we should not forget that in the title of the journal edited by 119 On R. Simon see J. Le Brun, in J.-P. Schobinger (ed.), Die Philosophie des 17. Jahhunderts, 2/2. Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie begru¨ndet von F. Ueberweg, . . . neubearb. Ausgabe (Basle, 1993), 1013–18; id., ‘Simon (Richard)’, in Supple´ment au Dictionnaire de la Bible, xii, fasc. 71 (Paris, 1996), 1353–83. In the latter article (p. 1371) Le Brun writes: ‘il paraıˆt certain qu’au point de de´part l’entreprise de Simon et ses intuitions les plus neuves, en particulier le dessein d’e´laborer une histoire ‘‘litte´raire’’ de la Bible, ne devaient rien a` Spinoza: ce n’est que dans une seconde e´tape qu’il a reconnu en lui son adversaire le plus important.’ If Le Brun is right, the analogy between Simon and Spinoza becomes even more significant. 120 According to the frontispiece, this edition was made ‘suivant la Copie, imprime é a` Paris’; no place is indicated. It was not supervised by the author. The book was promptly translated into Latin (Historia critica Veteris Testamenti (Amsterdam, 1681)) and English (A Critical History of the Old Testament (London, 1682)). A new edition of the French text, supervised by the author, appeared in Rotterdam in 1685 (non vidi). The title page of the copy of the Latin translation in Warsaw University Library gives false information, obviously intended to deceive the customs and the censor: Historia religionis Judaeorum eorumque demigrationis in Hispaniam aliasque Europae partes, in quas sese post destructionem Hierosolymae receperunt. Per Rabbinum Mosen Levi conscripta (Amsterdam: Petrus de la Faille, 1681).


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H. Basnage de Beauval in the years 1687–1709, Histoire des ouvrages des sçavans, histoire means ‘review’, ‘account’, ‘description’, and not ‘history’. Simon wants to give a historical account of the Old and the New Testament—of the individual books and of the corpus they make up.121 This use of histoire is a striking novelty, for the object of this ‘history’ is literary events, events concerning texts, and not political acts. Still more interesting for us is the adjective critique added to histoire. It serves to indicate that this histoire is a historical account based on research conducted according to the rules of critice.122 Simon is careful to stress that he uses the adjective and the noun critique as a technical and traditional term. In the preface to the Histoire critique du Vieux Testament he recalls the example of Origen and Jerome: Origen and Jerome, who found an infinite number of mistakes in the ancient Greek copies of the Septuagint translation, did not, on that account, reject it. They only attempted to restore it according to the common rules of critique. I have followed the example of these two great men and, as there is nothing on the subject, so far, in French, it should not be surprising that I have on occasion used turns of phrase which are not entirely good French. Every art has its own terms which are peculiar to it. It is in this sense that the word critique will often be found in this work, as well as some others which I have had to use in order to express myself in the terms of the art I was concerned with. Moreover, learned persons are already accustomed to the use of these terms in our language. When, for instance, one speaks of the book that Cappelle has published under the title Critica Sacra, or of the Commentaries on Scripture printed in England under the name of Critici Sacri, one says in French, la Critique de Cappelle, les Critiques d’Angleterre.123 121 The insertion of ‘texte’ in the title of the work on the New Testament hints at a distinction between the original and its translations, on which Simon was planning a separate work—Histoire critique des versions du Nouveau Testament, published eleven years later (Rotterdam, 1690). 122 The collocation appears in 18th-c. titles, e.g. J. Brucker’s Historia critica philosophiae. 123 Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, 1680, preface (unpaginated): ‘Origene et S. Jeroˆme qui ont reconnu une infinite´ de fautes dans les anciens Exemplaires Grecs de la Version des Septante, ne l’ont pas pour cela rejeteé, ils ont tache´ seulement de la re´tablir selon les regles ordinaires de la Critique. J’ay suivi l’exemple de ces deux grands hommes, et comme il n’a encore rien paru en François sur ce sujet, on ne doit pas trouver e´trange que je me sois servy quelquefois de certaines expressions qui ne sont pas tout a` fait du bel usage; chaque art a des termes particuliers et qui luy sont en quelque maniere consacre´s. C’est en ce sens qu’on trouvera souvent dans cet ouvrage le mot de Critique, et quelques autres semblables dont j’ai e´te´ oblige´ de me servir afin de m’exprimer dans les termes de l’art dont je traittois. De plus les personnes sçavantes sont de´ja accouˆtumeés a` l’usage de ces termes dans noˆtre langue. Quand on parle par exemple du livre que Cappelle a fait imprimer sous le titre de Critica Sacra, et des Commentaires sur l’ećriture imprime´s en Angleterre sous le nom de Critici Sacri, on dit en François la Critique de Cappelle les Critiques d’Angleterre.’

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It was certainly not a literary scruple that led Simon to write these lines. This is confirmed by what he says in the preface to the Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament: ‘It is unnecessary to repeat here what has already been said elsewhere concerning the word critique, which is a technical term and which is in a way reserved for works that deal with variant readings in order to re-establish the true ones. The object of those who exercise this art is not to destroy but to restore.’124 The way Simon justifies his use of the term critique is significant. Two observations can be made. First, that the author considers his investigations to be closely connected with the tradition of critice concerning the texts of the ancients, which is universally accepted and respected. Second, that he knows that applying critice to the Bible is bound to arouse misgivings or hostility both in his own and in other churches. In fact he was publicly criticized by people of different confessions, even by such learned and open-minded men as E´zećhiel Spanheim and Jean Le Clerc. This is not surprising. Not only did the ‘critical history’ of the Sacred Books deliberately shake ingrained certitudes concerning the origin of these texts; it also made it possible, against the author’s intention, to ask a question that he had evaded, but that Spinoza had already asked: what are the Sacred Books worth from the point of view of reason? Simon is the main target of the polemical treatise by the Jesuit Ignace de Laubrussel, on ‘the misuses of criticism in religious matters’ (1710–11).125 This treatise is as penetrating as it is tendentious and obscurantist; let me point out a few interesting details. Laubrussel mocks the passionate efforts and debates that ‘critics’ devote to the dating of insignificant events, to inquiries on the chronology of distant ages (here he mentions Petau, Scaliger, Saumaise, Bayle—a mixed company!), to the deciphering of old inscriptions and coins (here he mentions Spanheim), to the establishing of the date and utility of some manuscripts found in the rubbish where ‘our ancestors’ had wisely let them lie.126 124 Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament, Ou ` l’on établit la ve´rite´ des actes sur lesquels la religion chreˆtienne est fondeé (Rotterdam, 1689), preface (unpaginated): ‘Il seroit inutile de repeter icy ce qu’on a deˆja` dit ailleurs touchant le mot de Critique, qui est un terme d’art, et qui est en quelque façon consacre´ aux Ouvrages ou` l’on examine les diverses leçons, pour re´tablir les ve´ritables. Le dessein de ceux qui exercent cet art n’est pas de de´truire, mais d’e´tablir.’ 125 I. de Laubrussel, Traite ´ des abus de la critique en matiere de religion, 2 vols. (Paris 1710–11). 126 He is probably using here for his purpose the criticism of critice by R. Maresius (Desmarets), but he extends it to the entire field of erudite studies.


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Such occupations are not so useful as ‘critics’ think, but they do no harm. Unfortunately, some ‘critics’ have crossed the boundaries of what is permitted, have fallen into ‘libertinage de l’esprit’.127 Indeed, ‘have they not considered the re´publique des lettres as a privileged zone, where one is free to say anything, and their profession as an established right to pronounce on any question and to subject, if it were possible, common opinion to their private opinion, or religion to their doubts?’128 Dominated by the ‘esprit de critique’, those ‘critics’ have dared to tackle matters that the Church alone is entitled to interpret and judge.129 They have undertaken to discuss the Bible ‘sans aveu ni vocation’,130 i.e. as individuals belonging to no institution and not endowed by any institution with the function and the right of doing what they do. The 1680s and 1690s—the time when the main works of Richard Simon appeared—saw a rapid expansion both of the esprit de critique and of the use of the term critique. I have not read enough to be able to document this process as it deserves. I will content myself with the observation that Jean Le Clerc in his Sentimens de quelques theólogiens de Hollande (1685) and Pierre Bayle in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1695–7) use the noun critique, the adjective critique, and the verb Laubrussel, Traite´, i, preface, pp. xxi–xxii. Ibid., p. xvii: ‘Quelques-uns [of the critics] n’ont-ils pas regarde´ la Republique des lettres comme un pays de franchise, ou` l’on se permet de tout dire; et leurs me´tiers comme un droit acquis de trancher sur tout, et d’assujettir, s’il se pouvoit, le sens commun a` leur sens particulier, ou la Religion a` leurs doutes?’ 129 Ibid. 151: ‘la Critique, qui, autrefois renferme é dans des minuties de Grammaire, n’alloit que terre a` terre, et ne s’occupoit que de diverses et d’antiques leçons a` la maniere des Turnebes, des Lambins, des Manuces, des Gruters, des Murets; enhardie depuis par l’exemple des Centuriateurs et d’Erasme, n’a-t-elle pas e´leve´ son vol jusqu’au troˆne de Dieu, pour lui demander compte des faits de sa re´ve´lation, et des miracles ope´rez par la vertu de son bras?’ And pp. 159–60: ‘On l’a dit cent fois, chaque particulier a l’Ecriture en main; mais l’expe´rience des dissensions de tous les siećles, fait voir que la suˆre intelligence n’en a e´te´ re´serveé qu’a` l’Eglise, a` qui le Saint-Esprit a e´te´ promis et donne´.—Sur ce principe si peu gouˆte´, et si mal entendu par plusieurs Critiques, mettons a` la teˆte des erreurs, qu’il nous faut de´plorer, celles qui roulent sur l’Ecriture, a` laquelle il semble que plusieurs d’entre eux n’ayent touche´ que pour la profaner. Certainement de´s qu’on re´flećhit sur la parole de Dieu qui y est contenue¨, et qu’on est peńe´tre´ d’un vrai sentiment de Religion, le nom seul de Critique de la Bible [here a reference to Simon’s preface to the Histoire critique du Vieux Testament] a je ne sçai quoi de choquant, qu’on pardonne a` peine a` la tyrannie de l’usage qui l’a e´tabli: et il paroıˆt honteux a` un Chrestien de se livrer tellement a` cet esprit de critique dans ses recherches sur la Bible, qu’il ne songe ni a` s’y e´difier, ni a` s’y re´gler par la tradition, ni a` y sauver l’analogie de la foy en l’interpretant.’ 130 Ibid. 166. According to Laubrussel, Simon has no right to invoke the example of Origen and Jerome: Jerome had a ‘vocation’, having received it from pope Damasus; Simon has none. 127 128

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critiquer as if they were current terms in philosophical and learned discourse.131 In 1691 Jean Mabillon opens the chapter on critique in his Traite´ des études monastiques as follows: Nothing is today more fashionable than criticism. Everybody meddles in it, even women profess it. It is indeed necessary in many matters, and truth would very often be confused with error, if one did not take care to distinguish them by means of the rules of criticism. But criticism is often misused, and liberties are taken that are no less prejudicial to the mind than error and ignorance. One decides boldly, according to one’s caprice and fancy, without due examination. The use of this liberty is not confined to ordinary subjects that are dealt with in the sciences concerning human affairs. Even dogmas of faith are not secure from it. Points of religion are pronounced upon with greater assurance than a Council’s. This is perhaps one of the diseases of our century. The former centuries erred by excessive simplicity and credulity, but in the present one the self-styled esprits forts do not accept anything that has not passed through their own court. There is, then, a good and a bad criticism.132

Mabillon says that criticism is bad whenever it presumes to pronounce on theological questions, which are the preserve of the Church: Christians should always approach matters of faith ‘with trembling’. Was Simon’s ‘histoire critique’ of the Bible comprised in the category of ‘bad criticism’ for Mabillon? I think not, for Simon carefully distanced himself from theological questions and treated his subject in a scholarly manner to which Mabillon could hardly have been insensitive. Mabillon was not Laubrussel. But in discussing ‘bad criticism’, Mabillon quotes approvingly a passage from A. Godeau’s Histoire eccle´siastique (non vidi) 131 The ‘Avertissement au Lecteur’ added by whoever saw through the press the Histoire critique du Vieux Testament in 1680, says: ‘Comme c’est un Ouvrage de Critique et d’une Critique extraordinaire et hardie, l’on a, ce semble, quelque droit de le censurer et de le Critiquer avec la mesme liberte´ qu’il fait la Critique des autres.’ 132 J. Mabillon, Traite ´ des études monastiques (Paris, 1691, repr. Farnborough, 1967), 290–1: ‘Rien n’est aujourd’huy plus a` la mode que la critique. Tout le monde s’en meˆle, et il n’y a pas jusqu’aux femmes qui n’en fassent profession. Elle est en effet necessaire en beaucoup de choses, et la verite´ bien souvent se trouveroit confondue¨ avec l’erreur, si on n’avoit soin d’en faire le discernement par les regles de la critique. Mais souvent on en abuse, et on se donne des libertez, qui ne sont guere moins prejudiciables a` l’esprit, que l’erreur ou l’ignorance. On dećide hardiment suivant son caprice et sa fantaisie, sans examiner les matieres. On ne se contente pas d’user de cette liberte´ a` l’e´gard des choses communes, qui se traitent dans les sciences humaines. Les dogmes de la foy meˆme n’en sont pas a` couvert, et on prononce sur un point de religion avec plus d’assurance que ne feroit un Concile. C’est la` peut-estre une des maladies de nostre siecle. Les siecles prećedens ont pećhe´ par un exce`s de simplicite´ et de credulite´: mais dans celui-cy les pre´tendus esprits forts ne reçoivent rien qui n’ait passe´ par leur tribunal.—Il y a donc une bonne et une mauvaise critique.’


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indicating the boundaries beyond which ‘grammaire’ (i.e. what Mabillon calls ‘critique’) must not stray: it may not ‘enter the sanctuary of the Sacred Books and of ecclesiastical authors’. To what extent, or in what sense, does Mabillon really accept Godeau’s warning? It is certainly not his view that ‘criticism’ should not apply to the writings of ‘ecclesiastical authors’. This would be incompatible with what he writes elsewhere in this chapter and in the chapter ‘De l’e´tude de l’histoire sacreé et profane’. What is more, it would be very strange, for much of his work and of that of his brethren at the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pre´s and of other scholars whom he held in high esteem (in particular Le Nain de Tillemont, ‘one of the most accurate critics today’, as he says in a letter), concerned the writings of medieval and/or ancient ‘ecclesiastical authors’. Mabillon obviously thinks that ‘criticism’ is illegitimate and dangerous if it is applied to the writings of ‘ecclesiastical authors’ in connection with theological issues. He considers it legitimate and necessary if it is applied to them in order to establish facts in the history of the Church. In matters concerning faith our critical study should have no purpose other than to ‘receive and faithfully preserve the deposit of tradition, recorded for us in ancient ecclesiastical monuments. The Church alone pronounces and decides; our duty is to listen to her, and not to set ourselves up as censors of its decisions.’133 This position might seem, and probably did seem to Mabillon, unambiguous, but it is not. ‘Receiving the deposit of tradition’ by means of a ‘critical’ study of ‘ancient ecclesiastical monuments’ was not, for a Catholic, a theologically neutral activity. It implied the belief that the Roman Church as ‘Ecclesia docens’ was not in possession of the ‘deposit of tradition’, and that this ‘deposit’ could be known only through learned and responsibly ‘critical’ study, which any citizen of the Re´publique des lettres could undertake.134 Mabillon’s conception of ‘critique’ is set forth not only in the chapter ‘De la Critique, et des regles qu’il y faut observer’ (Part II, ch. 13), but also, and even better, in the one entitled ‘De l’e´tude de l’histoire sacreé et profane’ (Part II, ch. 8). He does not treat ‘critique’ as a discipline. 133 Ibid. 293–4: ‘Il ne s’agit que de recueillir et de conserver fidelement le de ´post de la Tradition, qui nous est marqueé dans les anciens monumens Ecclesiastiques. C’est a` l’Eglise qu’il appartient de prononcer et de dećider, et a` nous a` l’ećouter, et non pas a` nous e´riger en censeurs sur ses dećisions.’ 134 On the renovation of the Catholic Church as a driving force in the immense work done by Catholic, especially French Gallican, scholars on the ancient Church during the 17th and 18th cc., see B. Neveu, E´rudition et religion aux XVII e et XVIII e sie`cles (Paris, 1994). On the normative role of the utopia of the re´publique des lettres see K. Pomian, Przeszł os´ć jako przedmiot wiedzy (Warsaw, 1992), 102–59, 213–30.

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He does not define it: he obviously supposes his readers to know, more or less exactly, what it is.135 For him the task of ‘critique’ is to analyse, compare, and evaluate evidence—literary works, especially historical accounts, as well as documents—according to methodical rules, in order to gain a true picture of the past. In other words, he treats ‘critique’ as a set of methodical procedures, indispensable to the study of the past. We can reasonably call it historical criticism, without forgetting that Mabillon himself viewed his researches on the past partly as history and partly (for instance much of his work on ‘res diplomatica’) as ‘antiquaria ars’.136 It is important to add that Mabillon’s historical criticism takes for granted that true cognition of the ‘deposit of tradition’ is cognition of religious truth. When he speaks of ‘bad criticism’, Mabillon has certainly in mind—though he does not clearly say so—a criticism that does not accept this assumption, but places the ‘deposit of tradition’ itself before the court of individual reason. ‘Bad criticism’ is for him most of all criticism as conceived by the ‘libertins’. The ‘esprit de critique’ characteristic of many people, devout or not, of the last quarter of the seventeenth century led, within the domain of professional studies of ancient Greek and Latin texts, to a significant modification of the conception of critice as a discipline, built up by Scaliger, Casaubon, Heinsius et al. The handbook of Jean Le Clerc,137 entitled Ars critica (Amsterdam, 1697; vol. 3, 1700), opens with the 135 Giuseppe Porta of Asti (P. D. Josephus Porta Astensis), who translated the Traite ´ des études monastiques into Latin, did not know. He rendered Mabillon’s sentence ‘Rien n’est aujourd’huy plus a` la mode que la critique’ as: ‘Nihil nostra hac tempestate celebrius, qua`m aliorum censurae vacare’; and he added his own definition of critice: ‘Sed in primis operae pretium videtur exactam Critices notitiam tradere, quae sic definiri potest: Scientia conjecturalis, docens modum recte judicandi de quibusdam operibus, praesertim Authorum, eorumque scriptis’ (Tractatus de studiis monasticis, 2nd edn. (Venice, 1745), 193–4). Sic! Porta may not have been very bright, but he was not illiterate, and his misunderstanding of Mabillon shows that the idea of criticism as an intellectual approach and a method of inquiry was unknown in his milieu. On the cultural situation in Italy towards the end of the 17th and at the beginning of the 18th c. and on the efforts of the leading Italian antiquarii of the time to attain the level of the Benedictines of SaintGermain-des-Pre´s, see A. Momigliano, ‘Mabillon’s Italian Disciples’ (1958), id. Terzo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome, 1966), 135–52. 136 Cf. the enumeration in the title: De re diplomatica libri VI. In quibus quidquid ad veterum instrumentorum antiquitatem [ ¼ age], materiam, scripturam, et stilum; quidquid ad sigilla, monogrammata, subscriptiones, ac notas chronologicas; quidque inde ad antiquariam, historicam, forensemque disciplinam pertinet, explicatur et illustratur (Paris, 1681). The first chapter begins (p. 1): ‘Novum antiquariae artis genus aggredior, in qua [read quo?] de veterum instrumentorum ratione, formulis et auctoritate agitur.’ In the preface Mabillon speaks of ‘antiquitatis scientia’, i.e. antiquarian knowledge. 137 On Le Clerc see A. Barnes, Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736) et la Re ´publique des Lettres (Paris, 1938); Le Brun, Philosophie (as in n. 119), 1019–24.


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following definition (p. 1–2): ‘We call CRITICE the art of understanding the writings of the ancients, both poets and prose writers, and of discerning which writings are genuine and which spurious. It is called KRITIKH because with its help we judge the meaning of what is said and the date of the writers.’ In this definition the traditional ‘ars judicandorum veterum scriptorum’ has been replaced by ‘ars intelligendorum veterum scriptorum’: the ‘judgement’ is confined to establishing the ‘sensus dictorum’ and the ‘aetas scribentium’. The direct influence of Spinoza’s Tractatus is obvious. It is still more obvious a little further on (pp. 2–3): Critica, which we are going to expound, does not concern grammatical rules, which are the basis of language, but takes them to be known to readers. Nor does it supply the knowledge of things themselves, but only opens the way for understanding the discourse of those who wrote about things. Nor is it asked here what is true, what is false, that is, whether what we read does or does not conform to truth. The question is only how we can understand what those, whose writings we read, meant to say. In a word, the inquiry is about the true meaning of what is said, not about the truth of what is said, although the former often carries the torch before the latter, namely in those cases in which the writer, whom we understand, has attained truth.

He then warns his readers against a ‘bad habit’ frequent among critici: ‘we ought not to assume that, when learning the meanings of words or becoming acquainted with the opinions of ancient writers, we are always directing our efforts to truth itself and to the knowledge of things’. He concludes: ‘Critice opens and builds the road towards true learning (‘eruditio’), i.e. to the certain knowledge of things, of which, however, it is not itself a part.’138 138 J. Clericus, Ars Critica, In qua ad studia linguarum Latinae, Graecae, et Hebraicae via munitur; veterumque emendandorum, et spuriorum scriptorum a` genuinis dignoscendorum ratio traditur, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1697); Epistolae Criticae, et Ecclesiasticae, in quibus ostenditur usus Artis Criticae, cujus possunt haberi Volumen Tertium (Amsterdam, 1700), i. 1–2: ‘CRITICEN vocamus Artem intelligendorum Veterum Scriptorum, sive numeris adstrictaˆ, sive solutaˆ oratione utentium; et dignoscendi quaenam eorum genuina scripta sint, quae spuria. Dicitur KRITIKH, quo`d ejus ope judicemus de sensu dictorum, de´que aetate scribentium.’ i. 2–4: ‘Critica, quam sumus tradituri, non attingit Grammaticas Regulas, quae sunt sermonis elementa; sed eas jam notas esse legentibus statuit. Neque etiam rerum ipsarum cognitionem suppeditat, sed viam tantu`m aperit, ad intelligendum eorum sermonem, qui de rebus egerunt. Haud magis quaeritur hıˆc quid verum sit, quid falsum, seu an id quod legimus veritati consentaneum sit, nećne; sed tantum quıˆ possimus intelligere quid sibi velint ii, quorum scripta legimus. Uno verbo, quaeritur dictorum sententia, non veritas eorum quae dicuntur, licet huic illa facem saepe praeferat; cu`m, nempe, Scriptor, quem intelligimus, veritatem assequutus est.—Itaque, quod solenne Criticorum vitium est, cavendum ne, dum verborum significationes discimus, aut

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As we see, Le Clerc has not yet completely rid himself of the idea of critice as the art which leads to truth concerning extra-textual reality (to ‘rerum veritas’, as Spinoza said), but at the same time he wants to combat it: remembering what Spinoza had said about the task of historia applied to the Bible, he states that critice aims at understanding texts independently of the question whether what they say is true or not. What Le Clerc calls critice or ars critica will later split into critice (i.e. textual criticism) and hermeneutice. I do not exactly know when this happened. I would guess that it happened in German Protestant universities during the eighteenth century; at any rate, at the beginning of the nineteenth century F. D. E. Schleiermacher took the distinction of Kritik, in the sense of ‘textual criticism’, from Hermeneutik to be traditional and generally accepted.139 In the age of Enlightenment critique began to be associated with the esprit philosophique. In 1724 Nicolas Fre´ret, one of the main French sçavans of the first half of the eighteenth century, describes ‘true critique’ as the ‘esprit philosophique’ applied to the examination of ‘faits’, i.e. of evidence concerning human affairs:140 There is no need today, I think, to beware of a confusion between the esprit de syste`me and the esprit philosophique, which makes us discuss, examine, and compare everything, draw only natural conclusions, weigh scrupulously the force of each proof in order to assign to every proposition the degree of certainty or probability it truly deserves. We know today how to distinguish the esprit de syste`me from the esprit philosophique: true critique is nothing else than this esprit philosophique applied to the discussion of facts [ ¼ historical facts]; in examining these it follows the same procedure that philosophers use in inquiring into truths Scriptorum veterum sententias cognoscimus, putemus nos semper veritati ipsi, rerumque cognitioni operam dare; ne´ve postqua`m multa talia memoriter tenemus, res ipsas ideo` cognitas habere nos existimemus. Viam aperit ac munit Critice ad veram eruditionem, hoc est, rerum certam notitiam; cujus tamen ipsa pars non est. Qua de causa Thebanus Cebes in septo, cujus ostio Yeudopaide‹a adstabat, collocat Criticos; qui nisi ulterius contendant, in septum Verae Eruditionis numquam perveniunt.’ 139 A little later A. Bo ¨ ckh accepted the distinction, but gave to the term Kritik a much wider meaning, which made for confusion. Did he perhaps want to combine philological Kritik with F. Schlegel’s all-embracing Kritik? His notion of Kritik, as far as I know, had no impact. At any rate, his pupil J. G. Droysen ignored it. 140 See N. Fre ´ret, ‘Re´flexions sur l’e´tude des anciennes histoires et sur le degre´ de certitude de leurs preuves’ (read to the Academy on 17 Mar. 1724), Me´moires de Litte´rature tire´s des Registres de l’Acade´mie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 6 (1729), 146–89, quotation at p. 152; see Ch. Grell, ‘Nicolas Fre´ret, la critique et l’histoire ancienne’, in Ch. Grell and C. Volpilhac-Auger (eds.), Nicolas Fre´ret, le´gende et ve´rite´, Colloque . . . 1991, Clermont-Ferrand (Oxford, 1994), 58–9; ead., L’Histoire entre érudition et philosophie: E´tude sur la connaissance historique a` l’aˆge des Lumie`res (Paris 1993), 84–98.


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of nature. Correctness of reasoning applies to every kind of fact; it is not confined to natural phenomena.141

Of course, ‘true critique’ is here implicitly opposed to a kind of critique that Fre´ret considers as less valuable. This is probably the kind of critice that was practised by sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century scholars. Eighteenth-century philosophes, at least in France, did not hold that kind of study in high esteem. The opinion expressed by Jean François Marmontel in the article ‘Critique’ of Diderot’s and D’Alembert’s Encyclope´die,142 coincides substantially with what R. Maresius (Desmarets) had said in 1653.143 According to Marmontel, we should be grateful to the ‘critics’ of old, who ‘died in the mines’ doing for us a necessary job, that of restoring, editing, and explaining the works of ancient literature; now the job is done. The esprit philosophique of the Enlightenment could easily breathe new life into the tradition of antiquarian studies and transform them, but did not favour the tradition of critice, at least in France. It was much later, in the very different cultural milieu of the German universities of the early nineteenth century, that that tradition was creatively transformed. Joseph Scaliger was then hailed as a precursor—a judgement we can obviously not endorse.

141 Fre ´ret, ‘Re´flexions’ (as in n. 140), 151–2: ‘Je ne crains donc point que l’on confonde aujourd’hui l’esprit de systeˆme avec cet esprit philosophique, qui nous porte a` tout discuter, a` tout examiner, a` comparer tout, a` ne tirer que des conse´quences naturelles, a` peser scrupuleusement la force de chaque preuve, pour assigner a` chaque proposition le ve´ritable de´gre´ de certitude, et meˆme de probabilite´ qu’il doit avoir. On sçait aujourd’hui distinguer l’esprit de systeˆme, de l’esprit philosophique: la vraie critique n’est autre chose que cet esprit philosophique applique´ a` la discussion des faits: elle suit dans leur examen le meˆme proce´de´ que les Philosophes employent dans la recherche des ve´rite´s naturelles. La justesse du raisonnement s’applique a` toutes sortes de faits, elle n’est point borneé aux seuls pheńome`nes de la nature.’ 142 Encyclope ´die, iv (Paris, 1754), 489–97, esp. 490: ‘Les restituteurs de la Litte´rature ancienne n’avoient qu’une voie, encore tre`s-incertaine; c’e´toit de rendre les auteurs intelligibles l’un par l’autre, et a` l’aide des monumens. Mais pour nous transmettre cet or antique, il a fallu pe´rir dans les mines. Avouons-le, nous traitons cette espece de critique avec trop de me´pris, et ceux qui l’ont exerceé si laborieusement pour eux et si utilement 143 See pp. 179–80 above. pour nous, avec trop d’ingratitude.’


5 Early Christianity in Michael Neander’s Greek–Latin Edition of Luther’s Catechism Irena Backus

MICHAEL NEANDER Michael Neander, who to this day has not been the subject of an in-depth study, is generally considered to be one of the most eminent educators of his day.1 Born Michael Neumann in 1525 in Sorau, he began studying in Wittenberg in 1543. We know that he attended Luther’s lectures and those of Justus Jonas and that he came to know Luther personally. His special mentor, however, was the ‘praeceptor Germaniae’ himself, Philip Melanchthon. Thus, as Neander had to leave Wittenberg in 1547 after the battle of Mu¨hlberg, Melanchthon and Jonas recommended him as collaborator to the school at Nordhausen, where he was soon promoted to the post of co-rector. In 1550 he became rector of the school at Ilfeld (again thanks to Melanchthon’s recommendation), a post he was to occupy practically until 1595, the year of his death. The school at Ilfeld had been founded around 1200 as a monastery for Premonstratensian Canons. By the sixteenth century the monastery had largely fallen into disuse and the canon Thomas Stange, after converting to Luther’s doctrines himself, turned it into a school. 1 He was the subject of a Vita in the 1730s. Cf. Gottfried Keyselitz, Vita Michaeli Neandri (Sorau, 1736). Cf. also Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, xxiii (Berlin, 1886), 341–5, s.v.; F. W. Bautz, Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, vi (Herzberg, 1993) 526–7, s.v. The author of the entry ‘Neander’ in the latter work comments as follows: ‘Neben Trotzendorf und Sturm ist er als einer der grossen evangelischen Schu¨lma¨nner des 16. Jahrhunderts in die Geschichte der Theologie und Philologie eingegangen.’

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Neander would have been in charge of anywhere between twelve and forty boys at any given time. During those years his literary output was very considerable. As we shall see, it followed a certain pattern, within which his collection of New Testament Apocrypha can be fitted. As a Christian newly converted to Luther’s doctrines and as an excellent Greek scholar (also a more than passable Hebraist), Neander and his literary output can be characterized by two conflicting tendencies: the need to make his students familiar with the Greek language and its culture and the awareness that several Greek authors contradicted the very Christian principles that he was trying to inculcate. Admittedly, there was no conflict as long as he stuck to writing grammars such as Sanctae linguae Hebraeae erotemata (Basle, 1567), Graecae linguae tabulae (Basle, 1553), Graecae linguae erotemata (Basle, 1561), or indeed Grammatica Latina Philippi Melanchthonis . . . (with Locutionum Latinarum formulae secundum trium causarum genera as an appendix) (Leipzig, 1579). However, at the same time as his grammatical works, Neander produced a fair number of excerpts from classical authors as well as a bilingual edition of the Paraeneseis by Pseudo-Nilus,2 which excited his admiration because it was composed entirely of short (and therefore easy to memorize) sentences. Practically at the same time (1557) as his translation and edition of the Paraeneseis or Praeceptiones, Neander was working on a bilingual anthology of pagan authors in five fascicles, entitled T crus kalo¸mena Puqagrou ph . . . Id est Pythagorae carmina aurea. Phocylidae poema admonitorium. Theognidis Megarensis poetae Siculi gnomologia. Coluthi Lycopolitae Thebaei Helenae raptus. Tryphiodori poetae Aegyptii de Troiae excidio.3 The work was situated, to all intents and purposes, at the antipodes of the didactic and pious ascetic Nilus, whoever he was. Neander was fully aware of this, which is no doubt why the prefaces to the Pythagorae carmina go to some lengths to emphasize the close links between pagan and Christian elements,4 as indeed do 2 Ne‹lou piskpou keflaia . . . Nili Episcopi et martyris capita, seu praeceptiones de vita pie, Christiane ac honeste exigenda graeco-latine. A Michaele Neandro Sorauiense conuersae et expositae (Basle, 1559). Cf. Frank Hieronymus, Griechischer Geist aus Basler Pressen (Basle, 1992), no. 315, pp. 468–70. Neander is aware of the existence of several Niluses and finally attributes it hesitatingly to a Nilus born in 309. 3 Omnia Graecolatina, conuersa simul et exposita a Michaele Neandro Sorauiense . . . (Basle, 1559). I shall be referring to the Leipzig 1577 edition, which does not differ in content from the first edition. 4 Each of the five parts initially constituted a separate publication with its own preface. The structure of the work is described very well in Hieronymus, Griechischer Geist (as in n. 2), no. 314, pp. 464–8.

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Neander’s marginal remarks intended for students. Those links concern form rather than content, the short pithy formula or apophthegm being considered by the Ilfeld schoolmaster to be the most appropriate for expressing wisdom, be it Christian or pagan. In his preface to the first part of the work Pythagorae et Phocylidae poemata antiqua Neander stresses the apophthegmatic character of Sapiential literature, notably Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ecclesiasticus, and does not seem worried in the slightest by questions of canonicity of books such as Ecclesiasticus. As these books are to be found both in the Hebrew Old Testament and in the Septuagint, it is no wonder, he says, that the Greek Fathers modelled themselves on the Prophets and on the ‘veteris primaeque eccclesiae doctores’ and produced collections of pithy sayings. The most notable examples of the genre among the Greeks are Maximus the Confessor’s De charitate quatuor centuriae, [Pseudo-]Nilus’ Paraeneseis, the Carmina of Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Asceticon Magnum of Basil of Caesarea, which Neander considers (not altogether mistakenly) as a compilation of extracts from the New Testament.5 It is in this tradition that the moral dicta of Pythagoras and others are to be firmly situated. The Prophets, the Apostles, and indeed Christ himself did not despise this method of teaching as useful and good. To sum up, Neander’s attitude to moral literature can be characterized by his desire to impose Christian literary forms on pagan Antiquity. This is easy to accomplish if one presents selections of short sayings from the Bible, be it canonical or apocryphal, from the Church Fathers, and from some pagan writers, the last mentioned being thus automatically slotted into a Christian framework which was finally to prevail in Neander’s educational method. Gradually, excerpts from pagan writers gave way to short edifying extracts from Christian literature, including Apocryphal literature. Indeed, by the time he came to publish the moral extracts from ‘Pythagoras’ and other pagan poets, Neander had already seen the interest of teaching Greek via Christian extracts. 5 Pythagorae carmina (Leipzig, 1577), 9–10: ‘Eam docendi breuem et succinctam rationem a Prophetis et veteris primaeque ecclesiae doctoribus acceptam, Patres deinde et Theologi graeci sequuti sunt. Hoc enim genere orationis scriptae sunt Maximi seu Episcopi seu Confessoris seu quicunque tandem fuerit de charitate quatuor Centuriae . . . Nili praeterea Episcopi et Martyris parainseiv de pietate et honestate praescriptae . . . Eo loco habendus etiam est Nazianzeni, per excellentiam Theologi cognominati, liber Carminum . . . Qualis etiam is est quem Basilius Caesariensis Episcopus . . . ex Noui Testamenti sententiis confecit et sub titulo Moralium summarum cum reliquis eius operibus graecis coniunctus est.’

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In 1557 the Sorau schoolmaster had brought out from the presses of Johannes Oporinus in Basle a small 8vo entitled Catechesis Martini Lutheri parua Graeco-Latina. The Catechism was accompanied by ‘diverse other texts, pious, useful and pleasant in content, from which young boys can learn piety as well as the Greek language’.6 In the preface to the Catechism, addressed to Thomas Stange, Neander complains (paradoxically, given that he would have been translating ‘Pythagoras’ and other pagan authors at the time) that too much attention is paid to translation and publication of pagan authors whereas youth would profit infinitely more from reading about God’s love for his creatures than, for example, about the adulterous relationship between Venus and Mars. It was with this in mind that Neander asked a pupil, Johannes Mylius, to translate Luther’s Shorter Catechism into Greek. The translation was checked by several Greek scholars, including Neander himself, who also added the Latin version commonly used in schools. Furthermore, he added some biblical verses, three Creeds, and extracts from several Greek histories (the Suda, Eusebius, Theodoret, Sozomen, Nicephorus, Josephus, Philo, and Epiphanius) and Greek authors such as Clement of Alexandria and Gregory of Nazianzus, ‘little known among young people as their works are expensive and difficult to obtain’.7 At no point 6 Accesserunt et alia quaedam varia, argumenti pii, vtilis et iucundi, vnde et pietatem et linguam Graecam adolescentes discere possunt (Basle, [1557]). 7 Katechesis Martini Lutheri parua Graecolatina [1558], 8–10: ‘Recte, pie etiam et laudabiliter facere non dubitandum est illos qui aliquid operae et temporis ponunt non in Ethnicis scriptis transferendis sed iis potius libris qui nobis recitant non raptus seu puellarum seu puerorum, adulterianae Iouis Venerisue cum Marte concubitum aliaque id genus nefanda et flagitiosa scelera . . . sed quae erudiunt nos sancte, pie atque reuerenter: pios docentes de Dei patris nostri in coelis clementis et misericordis erga nos, miseras ipsius creaturas, propitia, paterna atque beneuola voluntate . . . [12–14]. Eum libellum scholae tuae alumnus Ioannes Mylius Gerenrodensis, adolescens pius et modestus . . . Graece a se conuersum nobis exhibuit, quem emendatum correximus . . . Quem cum ostendissemus . . . clarissimo viro D. Antonio Nigro medicinae doctori vere erudito linguaeque Graecae peritissimo . . . tum etiam aliis quibusdam . . . eam conuersionem non tantum probare sed etiam communem faceremus aliis, nobis hortatores esse coeperunt . . . Addidimus etiam singulis partibus, in quas libellus diuisus est, praecipua sacrae Scripturae dicta ac testimonia de praecipuis capitibus doctrinae Christianae . . . Symbola etiam tria, Nicenum, Athanasii et quod sub Ambrosii et Augustini nomine in ecclesiis canitur, omnia Graecolatina similiter adiecimus. Ad finem quoque appendimus alia quaedam argumenti similiter pii et vtilis, ex Suidae philologia, Eusebio, Theodoreto, Sozomeno, Nicephoro, Iosepho, Philone et Epiphanio, historiae ecclesiasticae scriptoribus, Clementis quoque Alexandrini et Gregorii Nazianzeni scriptis, authoribus graecis, quemadmodum non vulgaribus et vetustis, ita quoque non ita pridem ex bibliothecis, in quibus hactenus sepulti longo tempore delituerant, in conspectum hominum graece productis talibusque qui et apud paucos inueniantur et a paucioribus propter precii magnitudinem comparari possint.’


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in his 1558 edition does Neander mention the word Apocrypha, yet his selection contains Apocryphal pieces which will resurface in 1564 and 1567 when the word Apocrypha begins to figure in his title. In the Catechism Neander sought to recover early Christianity via Apocryphal material which circulated often but not exclusively in the writings of reputable Greek authors such as Flavius Josephus, Eusebius, Theodoret, and others. THE C AT E C HI S M AND THE APOCRYPHA We shall now examine the Apocryphal pieces in Neander’s 1557 Catechism and then show how the Apocryphal corpus is expanded in the 1564 and 1567 editions. The Catechism of 1557 is accompanied by fifteen ‘pious’ extracts. Of those only two, the article Jesus from the Suda and the Abgar story taken from Eusebius–Rufinus, Hist. eccl. 1. 13, can be qualified as Apocrypha. Of the other extracts two have to do with the person of Christ: De Christo Jesu ex Iosepho and the acrostic De Iesu Christo Dei Filio, Saluatore crucifixo (i.e. chapter 18 of Constantine’s Oratio ad sanctorum coetum, which functioned as Book 5 of Eusebius’ Vita Constantini); others are intended as examples of Christian fortitude such as Historia de Basilii Magni constantia from Theodoret 4. 19, Historia de Edessenorum constantia from Sozomen 6. 18; others still are simply pieces of Christian poetry such as a hymn attributed to Clement of Alexandria, some hymns of Gregory of Nazianzus, two odes by Prodromus, an extract from Nonnus’ Paraphrasis in Ioannem (in the edition of Philip Melanchthon), a Latin prayer by Neander’s contemporary Victorinus Strigel, and finally an extract on the Essenes from [Pseudo-]Philo, and a Forma Confessionis fidei from the Ancoratus of Epiphanius of Salamis. The Prodromus pieces and the Nonnus extract are not accompanied by a Latin translation; together with Strigel’s prayer they were not incorporated by Neander into the subsequent editions of his compilation, which by 1564 was to lose its characteristic features of an anthology of apophthegmata drawn from a variety of sources, with a view to improving the knowledge of Greek and the mores of schoolboys. Admittedly, Neander appended a long section of extracts from the Fathers to his second and third editions of the Catechism. However, the title page of the second edition indicates quite clearly that at some point between 1557 and 1563 (the date of the preface) Neander’s focus had shifted from short Sapiential, pagan, and patristic pieces, to the historical

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and didactic value of what we call nowadays Christian Apocrypha. Moreover, he had developed a particular conception of what the term Apocrypha should cover. Given the importance of the 1564 title, I provide an English translation: The short Catechism of Martin Luther in Greek and Latin, newly revised. To it are added some selected sayings of the Fathers and also apocryphal accounts of Christ, Mary, etc. and of Christ’s relatives and family, non-biblical, but found in the works of ancient approved authors, Church Fathers, historians, philologists, and sundry other Greek writers.8

Non-biblical accounts to do with the human Jesus and his family which have the support of reputable ancient Greek authors—this is Neander’s general definition of Apocrypha in 1564. This definition was further refined on the separate title page of the second part of the Catechism, which contained the Apocryphal texts: Apocrypha, that is accounts of Christ, Mary, Joseph, Christ’s relatives and family, not in the Bible, but found in the works of ancient Greek authors, Church Fathers, historians, and philologists (including also the Protevangelion of James, recently discovered in the East and hitherto unpublished), copied from the words of the Oracles and the Sibyls, also from pagan testimonies and from books of many ancient authors, set forth and published in Greek and Latin by Michael Neander of Sorau.9

The value of Apocrypha was not only pedagogical but also historical. Having defined the genre and considerably increased the Apocryphal content of his appendix to Luther’s Catechism, Neander expounds the nature and value of Apocryphal literature in his preface of 10 April 1563, addressed to Syphard von Promnitz. He begins by openly accepting oral 8 Catechesis Martini Lutheri parua, Graecolatina, postremum recognita. Ad eam vero accesserunt sententiae aliquot Patrum selectiores Graecolatinae. Narrationes item apocryphae de Christo, Maria, etc. cognatione ac familia Christi, extra Biblia, sed tamen apud veteres probatos autores, Patres, historicos, philologos et multos alios Scriptores Graecos repertae. Omnia Graecolatina, descripta, exposita et edita studio et opera Michaelis Neandri Sorauiensis (Basle, 1564). 9 Apocrypha, hoc est narrationes de Christo, Maria Ioseph, cognatione et familia Christi extra Biblia; apud veteres tamen Graecos scriptores, patres, historicos et philologos reperta (inserto etiam proteuangelio Iacobi grece, in Oriente nuper reperto, necdum edito hactenus) ex Oraculorum ac Sibyllarum vocibus, gentium etiam testimoniis denique multorum veterum autorum Libris descripta, exposita et edita Graecolatine, a Michaele Neandro Sorauiense. In the 1567 edition, the title page contains the following addition: His nunc primum accessit, praeter alia diui Prochori (qui ex septem ministris unus fuit et Stephani protomartyris consobrinus) de Ioanne Euangelista et Theologo historia Graecolatina, nunquam antea in lucem edita, Sebastiano Castalione interprete. The Acts of Prochorus indeed constituted the sole addition to Neander’s 1567 edition of Luther’s Catechism with its Apocrypha.


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tradition and saying that all the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets as well as Christ and his disciples actually said and did much more than any written account (biblical or not) would lead us to believe.10 If we consider Neander’s elaboration on extra-biblical data concerning Christ, what interests him particularly are first the signs and portents accompanying his birth not found in the Gospel accounts but present in works of history, ancient and medieval, and secondly pagan announcements of Christ’s birth such as the Pythia’s prophecy, which is to be found in the Suda under Augustus.11 It is important to note that the links between Christian and pagan elements remain of central importance to Neander’s concept of education and that these links are to be found in Apocryphal accounts of Christ’s and his family’s acts and sayings. Unlike Lef e`vre d’E´taples, who before Neander was the sole major figure to publish New Testament Apocrypha in any quantity, the Sorau schoolmaster is not at all interested in establishing a hierarchy of sacred texts. Apocryphal texts are of purely historical interest and are to be read in a pagano-Christian or a Judaeo-Christian context. They are, moreover, to be kept apart from the Bible and are to be sharply divided into ‘good Apocrypha’, written down ‘pio studio’ by the Apostles or their disciples, and ‘bad Apocrypha’, written down by heretics to legitimize their errors in the hope of seeing them defended.12 So far as the New Testament is concerned, Neander does not seem to be at all interested in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles collection, although he must have known the Basle editions of the Pseudo-Abdias. That he did not include them suggests that he did not find them edifying enough. This could be due either to the absence of the Greek text or to his sympathy with Luther’s view that there was no need to expand the biographies of the Apostles over and above what was available in the 10 I shall be referring to the 1567 (Basle) edition, which reproduces the content of the 1563 preface unchanged. Catechesis (1567), 323: ‘Nullum est dubium, multa plura dixisse, docuisse et egisse in vita patres, Adam, Seth, Nohe, Abraham, Isaac, Iacob, Ioseph, Mosen et Iosue, Iudices postea et reges in populo Israelitico, sacerdotes ac prophetas, Christum quoque ac huius discipulos, quam literarum monumentis annotata legimus.’ 11 Ibid. 326: ‘Multa vero etiam acciderunt signa et prodigia, quae non referuntur ab Euangelistis, Christo nascente, sed ab aliis autoribus—Eutropio, Paulo Diacono, Orosio, Commestore in Scholastica Historia, Hermanno ac Martino in Chronicis, vndecunque etiam commemorantur. Quo tempore Pythia etiam de Christo, Augusto Caesari oraculum reddidit aliquot versibus.’ 12 Ibid. 327: ‘Horum vero libri Apocryphi alii pio studio vere sic scripti fuerunt: siue ab ipsis patribus, apostolis seu horum discipulis; alii etiam ab haereticis, hostibus doctrinae conficti sunt ad errores suos stabiliendos, quos defensos cupiebant.’

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canonical accounts.13 Indeed the list of the New Testament Apocrypha he gives on pp. 328–30 of his collection is far more extensive than what he actually published and he tends to privilege Gospel accounts, including the Euangelium Nicodemi, which he admits ‘adhuc hodie extat’. Why did he not publish it? Perhaps because there was no Greek text. The historically useful Apocrypha for Neander were Greek and he included only a few non-Greek pieces which had either become a part of tradition about Christ (such as Lentulus’ letter) or which possessed equivalents in Greek (such as the Sibylline Oracles). Although limited in his conception of Apocrypha which could be published as an appendix to Luther’s Catechism, Neander had, in general, a more favourable attitude to New Testament Apocrypha than the Pseudo-Gelasian Decree14 or indeed the early medieval Canonists.15 He therefore compiled his list of what he considered as ‘good’ New Testament Apocrypha from a variety of sources, only one of which was the chapter Romana ecclesia of Gratian’s Decretum.16

THE LIST OF APOC RYPHA As might be expected, it is the Greek ecclesiastical histories, and the Panarion of Epiphanius, which serve as the chief source. The list itself, obviously intended as a sort of Lutheran counterpoint to the canon Romana ecclesia—albeit on a smaller scale, in a strictly didactic context, and not at all normative—has one striking characteristic: despite its author’s protestations, it does not distinguish clearly between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ Apocrypha, so that several Apocryphal Gospels which Neander’s sources acknowledge as of heretical origin are listed by him without any caveats. Only a few texts are openly condemned as Gnostic or heterodox. The list is interesting enough to be discussed here in full. Neander introduces it by a simple statement: ‘In the New Testament the following spurious writings and Apocryphal books deserve a mention.’17 13 See I. Backus, Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation (1378–1615) (Leiden, 2003), 292–324. 14 Decretum Gratiani 1a pars, dist. 15, c. 3, ed. A. Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, i (Leipzig, 1878; repr. Graz, 1959), 34–40. 15 Cf. ibid. 38–9. The list of N.T. Apocrypha, according to Friedberg, is not to be found in the earlier manuscripts of the Decree but does figure with some variants in Yvo of 16 Cf. note 14. Chartres, Burchard of Worms, and other canonical collections. 17 Catechesis (1567), 328: ‘In Nouo [Testamento] Scripturae spuriae et libri Apocryphi isti memorantur.’


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He puts the Gospel of Nicodemus at the top of the list. Although he does not cite his source, his remark that the text is still extant (‘Euangelium Nicodemi quod adhuc exstat’) suggests that he would have seen one of its numerous manuscripts or editions. However, he does not seem to be aware that the Gospel of Nicodemus is identical with the Acta Pilati, which he mentions further on in a short list of Acts, where he calls it Liber Acta Pilati dictus, referring to Epiphanius, Panarion haer. 50 and Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 9. 5.18 Although Epiphanius overtly condemns the Acta Pilati as the text on which the Quartodecimans base their mistaken celebration of Easter on the 14th day of the month Nisan, Neander does not class the text as pernicious. Equally non-judgemental seems to be his listing of the other Apocryphal Gospels which he obviously had not seen himself but had only read about, chiefly in Epiphanius’ Panarion: ‘Euangelium secundum Syros (meminit huius Egesippus apud Eusebium, lib. 4, cap. 22)’.19 A brief mention of a Syriac Gospel is indeed made by Eusebius: he says that Hegesippus knew the Evangelium Hebraeorum and a Syriac gospel, thus showing that ‘he had come to the Christian faith from Judaism’. The context is not heretical and the reader can take it that this is definitely one of the ‘good’ Apocrypha. However, Neander gives neither Eusebius nor any other source for either the ‘Euangelium Nazareorum’ or the ‘Euangelium ad Hebraeos’, which he lists slightly further on. Yet he could easily have referred to the same passage of Eusebius or indeed to Epiphanius’ Panarion 29. 9. 4 (MPG 41, 405) where the sect of the Nazarenes is discussed at some length together with their Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew. The ‘Euangelium Thaddaei’, which is next on the list, is cited by Neander, as he admits, from the first part of the Decree of Gratian (dist. 15, c. 3),20 and represents no doubt a confusion with the Abgar legend. There follows the equally unclear ‘Euangelium Barnabae’ (also mentioned by the Decree of Gratian), with no reference. It probably represents a conflation of the Epistle of Barnabas mentioned by Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3. 25. 4, and the Acts of Barnabas mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 2. 31. 2. Both works were familiar to Neander. Why did he not check his sources more carefully? 18 Ibid. 330. For Acta Pilati/Euanglium Nicodemi cf. Gli Apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento, ed. Mario Erbetta, 4 vols. (Turin, 1975–81), i/2, 231–87. 19 Eusebius–Rufinus, Hist. eccl. 4. 22. 8, PG 20: 384. Cf. Gli Apocrifi, ed. Erbetta, i/1, 20 Decretum Gratiani, ed. Friedberg, i. 38. 114–19.

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Lack of time or a desire to present the Apocryphal Gospels in a particular way?21 For the ‘Euangelium Petri’, which comes next on the list, Neander cites Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3. 25. 6–7 as his source, omitting to mention that Eusebius condemns the text as non-apostolic, absurd, and heretical. Similarly, he omits to mention that the ‘Euangelium Mathiae’ and the ‘Euangelium Thomae’, both given with no reference, were considered heretical, a fact he could have easily picked up from his reading of Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3. 25. 5. The ‘Euangelium Philippi’ is cited with a reference to Epiphanius (‘Epiphanius in Gnosticis’: Pan. haer. 26. 13. 2),22 but again without a single caveat. The same goes for the ‘Euangelium secundum Aegyptios’ mentioned by Neander with a reference to Clement of Alexandria’s Strom. 3. 9. 63 but without any allusion to Clement’s condemnation of the text.23 Four Gnostic Gospels—‘Euangelium Euae’, ‘Quaestiones Mariae magnae et paruae’, ‘Reuelationes Adae’, ‘Liber de stirpe Mariae’ are next cited, equally with no caveats and no reference although it is obvious that Neander’s source here would have been Epiphanius’ chapter on Gnosis in the Panarion.24 This neutral attitude contrasts strangely with Neander’s invectives against the ‘Euangelium Perfectionis’,25 mentioned immediately after the ‘Liber de stirpe Mariae’. His invectives are no more and no less than a summary of the corresponding passage in Epiphanius, who this time is mentioned.26 Neander particularly attacks the Gnostic Eucharist or ‘synaxis’ prepared out of a ‘diabolical substance, wicked enough to make the sun, the moon, and the stars go pale with horror’.27 Along with the ‘Euangelium Perfectionis’ the ‘Gospel of Judas’ is singled out for special condemnation also on the basis of Epiphanius.28 Irenaeus’ testimony 21

Cf. also Apocrifi (as in n. 18), ii. 595–600; iii. 11–36. Cf. also ibid., i/1, 213–413. For the Gospel of Mathias and the Gospel of Thomas cf. ibid 288–90 and 253–82 resp. 23 Cf. also ibid., i/1, 147–53. 24 Pan. 26. 2. 6–3.1; Pan. 26. 8. 1–3; Pan. 26. 8. 1–3; Pan. 26. 8. 1; Pan. 26. 12. 1–4. 25 Cf. Apocrifi, i/1, 534. Cf. Apocrifi (as in n. 18), i/1, 537, 292, 206, 297. 26 Catechesis (1567), 328: marginal note: ‘Gnostici turpissimi haeretici. Epiphanius in Gnosticis.’ 27 Ibid. 328: ‘Euangelium Perfectionis habebant Gnostici, haeretici turpissimi, foedissimo errori honestum nomen praetexentes. Cohorresco, cogitans spurcissimam ac abominabilissimam ipsorum synaxin, quam praeparare solebant ex horribili plane ac atroci materia, monstrata ipsis a diabolo, qui fons est et fuit omnis impuritatis a mundi exordio. Ad eam vero coenam non dubium est solem, lunam ac stellas expallescere . . . ’. 28 Ibid. 329: ‘Epiphanius in Cainitis. Euangelium Iudae se habere dicebant Cainitae haeretici. Profitentur autem isti cognatos se esse Cain; Sodomitas vero, Esau ac Core, vt viros sanctos admirantur. O caecitatem immensam, o vim et potestatem tenebrarum . . . ’. Cf. Epiphanius, Panarion haer. 28. 3. 3–5; Apocrifi (as in n. 18), i/1, 291. 22


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was either unknown to our schoolmaster or of no particular interest to him.29 It is obviously the titles of the two lost Apocryphal texts more than anything else that incite Neander to stop all pretence at neutrality and to condemn them. While it could be assumed that a text entitled e.g. ‘Quaestiones Mariae’ would, if found, do a schoolboy no more harm than a non-licentious pagan poem, the same could not be said for pieces entitled ‘the Gospel of Perfection’ or the ‘Gospel of Judas’, which were overtly anti-Christian and not merely pagan. The five Gospel titles that follow were all found by Neander in the Pseudo-Gelasian Decree and therefore receive no adverse comment. These are simply the Latin infancy Gospels:30 ‘Liber Joachim siue de natiuitate Mariae, translated out of the Hebrew language into Latin by Saint Jerome’,31 ‘Liber de infantia Saluatoris, Liber de S. Maria, Liber de obstetrice Saluatoris’. Neander cites the Pseudo-Gelasian Decree verbatim. Before going on to list assorted apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, he mentions the ‘Liber puericiae Jesu’ with a reference to Epiphanius’ heresy 51, ‘which does not accept the Gospel of John’ (Panarion, haer. 51. 20). Obviously it is the Ta paidika tou kyriou32 that is meant but, despite the context in which he found the mention of the Gospel, Neander does nothing to put his pupils on guard against it, should they ever come across it. There follows a brief list of Acts, all mentioned by Epiphanius or Eusebius and, incongruously, one Apocalypse, that of Paul, mentioned by Sozomen.33 This is followed by a condemnation of the Severians, singled out by Epiphanius as a most wicked heretical sect that produced several Apocryphal books. Needless to say, Neander published none of these texts. The list is simply a guide to what in the schoolmaster’s eyes is a vast store of lost texts, particularly Gospels, some of which were written down with good will by men who were pious while others were set down by foes with intent to corrupt. A great deal of literature has been lost, continues 29

Irenaeus, Adu. haer. 1. 31. 1. also condemns the Gospel as a Gnostic fabrication. Cf. Decretum Gratiani, (as in n. 14), i. 38. On the Latin Infancy Gospels cf. JeanDaniel Kaestli, ‘Le Prote´vangile de Jacques en latin: E´tat de la question et perspectives nouvelles’, Revue d’histoire des textes, 26 (1996), 41–102 and the literature cited there. Cf. also Apocrifi (as in n. 18), i/2, 206–8. 31 Catechesis (1567), 329: ‘Liber Ioachim siue de natiuitate Mariae, quem diuus Hieronymus ex sermone Hebraeo Latinum fecit.’ 32 Cf. Apocrifi (as in n. 18), i/2, 78–101. 33 Catechesis (1567), 329–30: ‘Liber Actorum Pauli, Apocalypsis Pauli, Liber Actorum Petri, Liber Apostolorum Constitutiones dictus, Circuitiones Petri, Liber Actorum Andreae, Liber Actorum Ioannis, Liber Actorum Thomae, Liber Acta Pilati dictus.’ 30

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Neander, not just in theology but in all disciplines, through wars and other catastrophes: it is thought not without God’s special counsel, for, given that in many books there was much that was unnecessary, He wanted to relieve us of the great burden of referring to, reading, and becoming familiar with so many authors (for in all of them what would you have found other than the corrupt and depraved intention of human reason and flesh?) so that all those authors, for the most part useless, would not knock out of our hands books that are more useful and so that they would not distract us from matters of greater necessity. Thus only a few things pertaining to the life of Christ, the Prophets, and the Apostles were set down by the Holy Spirit, whilst their teachings were expounded at length, because the former are neither necessary nor profitable to our salvation.34

Neander’s apparently tolerant attitude to New Testament Apocryphal literature is thus based on the safe assumption that most, if not all of it, is lost. He also makes it clear that it constitutes a parallel source for our knowledge of early Christianity as its object is not doctrine, which should be every Christian’s main concern, but the biographies of Christ, the Apostles, etc., which are of secondary importance. Acutely aware of the significance of the recent discovery of the Proteuangelion,35 the Greek text of which appeared for the first time in his own collection, in 1564, Neander could not close off the possibility of further, similar discoveries. Indeed, his attitude to the Proteuangelion is very positive, leaving his readers in no doubt that it is to be classed among the more pious Apocryphal texts, without being accorded any particularly elevated status: There exists also the Gospel of James, which we are publishing here in both Greek and Latin. It was found among Christians in the East by Guillaume 34 Catechesis (1567), 330–1: ‘Ac fuerunt forte multa alia aliorum Euangelia et piorum virorum studio et praua hostium voluntate conscripta quae periere quemadmodum innumeri alii libri in omnibus linguis, artibus, disciplinis ac facultatibus, temporum iniquitatibus, incendiis, bellorum motibus, similiter intercidere, non sine singulari Dei consilio vt existimatur, cum in plerisque libris multa non essent necessaria, qui nos magno fasce leuare voluit euoluendi, legendi ac cognoscendi tot autores, in quibus fere cunctis quid inuenisses aliud quam humanae rationis ac carnis sensum corruptum et deprauatum, ne tot autores, plerique inutiles, e manibus nobis excuterent vtiliora et a magis necessariis abducerent. Ac eo nomine, quae ad vitam Christi, Prophetarum et Apostolorum pertinent, parce admodum videmus descripta a Spiritu sancto, doctrinam vero horum pluribus exponi, quod ea res ad salutem nihil sit necessaria nec proficua.’ 35 On this cf. Irena Backus, ‘Guillaume Postel, The ódore Bibliander et le Prote´vangile de Jacques: Introduction historique, e´dition et traduction française du MS. Londres, British Library, Sloane 1411, 260r.–267r.’, Apocrypha, 6 (1995), 7–65.


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Postel, a Frenchman by nationality, Royal Reader of Foreign Languages in Paris, who wandered through many lands and crossed the sea more than once in his enthusiasm for discovering as much as possible and for tracing books which could be used to better propagate the kingdom of Christ. We leave it to the reader to judge whether this text should be classed with some of the other Apocrypha that we have mentioned. Postel himself asserts that this book is read publicly in the Eastern Christian Churches and the same Postel considers it a jewel among theological texts and a basis or a foundation of the entire Gospel story, indeed a chapter of the Gospel according to Mark.36

Neander implies, however, that his primary intention in publishing his Apocrypha had nothing to do with the recent discovery of the ProtoGospel. ‘But’, he says ‘the Apocryphal accounts contained in our book have been collected by us with pious zeal from the entire Greek antiquity, from historians, philologists, and theologian fathers, also from the sayings of the Sibyls who are the residue of the Patriarchs, of the Church, and of Oracles.’37 He concludes that, although none of these accounts is to be found in the orthodox, holy, and canonical Scriptures, nonetheless they will be read with far greater profit than the more lascivious and disgraceful works of Homer, Apollonius, Ovid, and many others about the adulterous and incestuous affairs of Jupiter.38 In other words, Neander seems to attribute far greater importance to the indirect tradition of New Testament Apocrypha as testimonies of 36 Catechesis (1567), 331–2: ‘Extat autem et Iacobi Euangelium quod Graece et Latine vna nunc damus. Id vero Guilhelmus Postellus, natione Gallus, professor linguarum peregrinarum regius Parisiis, studio cognoscendi plurima et inuestigandi libros, quibus regnum Christi posset commodius propagari, multas regiones peragrauit, etiam mare non semel transgressus, in Oriente apud Christianos reperit. An vero ipsum quoque debeat censeri cum caeteris aliquot Apocryphis, quae commemorauimus, lectoribus iudicium relinquimus. Postellus certe testatur hunc libellum in Ecclesiis orientalibus Christianorum publice legi, ac aestimat ipse Postellus vt gemmam inter libros theologicos et basim atque fundamentum totius historiae Euangelicae et caput Euangelii secundum Marcum.’ 37 Ibid. 332: ‘Porro quae in hoc nostro libello Apocryphae narrationes continentur, pio studio a nobis collectae sunt ex vniuersa Graeca antiquitate, historicis, philologis et Patribus theologis, Sibyllarum etiam quae reliquiae fuerunt Patrum, Ecclesiae et Oraculorum, vocibus.’ 38 Ibid.: ‘Ea[e] vero tametsi in Scriptura, quam Orthodoxam, Sacram et Canonicam, nuncupamus, non reperiantur, tamen sine fructu et voluptate non legentur, ne nos tempus perdidisse videbimur, quod huic opellae tribuimus, cum legantur magno studio ac maiori cura, labore et temporis melioris iactura, non sine sumptu, multa alia foediora etiam et turpiora cum his nostris nullo modo conferenda, quae inquam poetae, Homerus . . . Apollonius, Ouidius et caeteri innumeri propemodum scripserunt de Iouis adulteriis, de stupris et aliis eius nefandis ac incestis concubitibus, qui ne a sorore quidem abstinet.’

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early Christianity than to the direct tradition, of which the Proteuangelion provides an excellent example. The list of contents of Neander’s Apocrypha merits a brief analysis before we go on to discuss the pieces individually, notably the Sibylline Oracles and texts to do with the life of Jesus, some of which had already appeared in various collections earlier in the century.

CONTENTS 340–57: Greek–Latin with annotations, Historia de Iesu Christo Filio Dei, mundi Saluatore (Latin text of Basle edition by M. Cromer and Vitus Amerbach, 1552, Greek text from the Suda). Latin inc. Temporibus maximae pietatis imperatoris Iustiniani; des. quod apud Iudaeos occultatum est credidisse. N 1558: 168–87; N 1564: 340–57.39 356–93: Greek–Latin. Proteuangelion siue de natalibus Iesu Christi et ipsius matris virginis Mariae sermo historicus diui Iacobi Minoris, consobrini et fratris Domini Iesu, Apostoli primarii et episcopi Christianorum primi Hierosolymis. Greek–Latin with annotations, a few from Bibliander’s Latin ed. of 1552, others from Neander’s own. Latin inc. In historiis duodecim tribuum; des. bono viuificoque Spiritu sancto, nunc et semper et in secula seculorum. Amen. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 356–93. 392–7: Greek–Latin. De Christo et Abgaro toparcha Edessenorum (based on Eusebius–Rufinus, Hist. eccl. 1. 13). Latin inc. Postquam Domini ac Seruatoris nostri Iesu Christi diuinitas; des. et tibi et iis qui tecum sunt praestet. N 1558: 188–95; N 1564: 392–7. 396–9: Greek–Latin. De Abgaro Edessenorum rege et de imagine Christi impressa in panno linneo (from John of Damascus, De fide orth. 4. 17). Latin inc. Fertur autem et quaedam historia; des. et sicut tradidi vobis traditiones tenetis. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 396–9. 398–403: Greek–Latin. De imagine Christi iterum (from Evagrius, Hist. eccl. 4. 27). Latin inc. De Edessa quoque et Abgaro; des. ad sua cum ignominia discedit. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 398–403. 39 N 1558 and N 1564 refer respectively to Neander’s 1558 and 1564 editions of Luther’s Catechism. The number of Apocrypha Neander published increased very considerably between 1558 and 1564.


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402–3: Greek–Latin. De Christo Iesu ex Iosepho (from Josephus, Antiq. iud. 18. 63–4). Latin inc. Eodem tempore fuit Iesus vir sapiens; des. ab hoc denominatum non deficit. N 1558: 194–7; N 1564: 402–3. 402–7: Greek–Latin. Pilati ad Tiberium de Christo (from Eusebius– Rufinus, Hist. eccl. 2. 2). Latin inc. cum iam admirabilis Seruatoris nostri resurrectio; des. vniuersum orbem percurreret. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 402–7. 408–9: Greek–Latin. Effigies formae Domini nostri Iesu Christi (from Nicephorus Callistus, Hist. eccl. 1. 40). Latin inc. Porro effigies formae Domini nostri Iesu Christi; des. et immaculatae suae genitrici. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 408–9. 410: Latin only. Pontii Pilati Epistola ad imperatorem Tyberium (from ‘Hegesippus, Anacephaleosis’). inc. Nuper accidit et quod ipse probaui; des. et se a Iudaeis pecuniam accepisse. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 410. 410–11: Latin only. Lentuli epistola ad Imperatorem Tiberium (from ‘Eutropius, Annales Romanorum’). inc. Apparuit his temporibus et adhuc est; des. in colloquio rarus et modestus, speciosus inter filios hominum. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 410–11. 411–13: Latin only. De miraculis et prodigiis tempore natiuitatis Christi (from various sources: Petrus Comestor, Orosius, etc.). inc. Solent autem res miraculosae quae circa natiuitatem; des. indesinenter orate, in omnibus gratias agite. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 411–13. 414–15: Greek–Latin. De eclipsi quae accidit tempore passionis Christi (from the Suda, s.v. Dionysius). inc. Quae vero per traditionem non scriptam; des. sermo de eo prodigio allaturus esset. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 414–15. 414–17: Greek–Latin. De eadem iterum (from [Ps.-]Dionysius, Epist. ad Polycarpum). inc. Ab eo autem quaere quid sentiat de defectione solis; des. Dionysii diuinarum rerum vicissitudines. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 414–17. 418–37: Greek–Latin. Sibyllarum de Christo ac primum Eusebii de Sibyllis sententia (source(s) not specified except for Eusebii narratio De vita Constantini, lib. 5 [i. e. Constantine’s Oratio ad sanctorum coetum 18–19]; direct source: Castellio’s edn. of the Sibylline Oracles (1555), 263–83). inc. Subit autem animum meum; des. ab omnimodo opere et verbo repurgare satagunt. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 418–37.

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436–7: Greek–Latin. Clementis Alexandrini de iisdem sententia (from Castellio’s edn. of 1555, 282–5). inc. Neque vero solus hic sed et Sibylla; des. Lupercum nuncupatur. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 436–7. NB. Neander’s note on p. 437: ‘Romae feruntur adhuc extare quatuordecim libri Oraculorum Sibyllinorum in bibliotheca pontificis Vaticana. Octo vero libros Oporinus iam olim edidit, a Castalione conuersos ac expositos. N 1564: ibid. 436–9: Greek–Latin. Lib. 1 Oraculorum Sibyllinorum (source: Castellio’s edn., 1555). inc. Tum ad mortales veniet, mortalibus ipsis; des. Non oculis cernet, non auribus audiet ipsis. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 436–9. 438–41: Greek–Latin. Lib. 2 Oraculorum Sibyllinorum (source: Castellio’s edn., 1555). inc. Sed postquam Roma Aegyptum reget imperioque; des. Omnia seclorum per tempora sceptra tenebit. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 438–41. 440–1: Greek–Latin. Lib. 6 Oraculorum Sibyllinorum (source: Castellio’s edn., 1555—paraphrase). inc. Flos autem purus florebit, cuncta serenans; des. O lignum foelicissimum, in quo Deus extensus est. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 440–1. 442–4: Latin. Latina Sibyllarum de Christo oracula. Twelve sextets entitled respectively: Persica, Libyca, Delphica, Cimmeria, Samia, Cumana, Hellespontica, Phrygia, Europaea, Tyburtina, Agrippa, Erythraea (source: Castellio’s edn., 1555, 291–4). N 1558 om.; N 1564: 442–4. 444–5: Latin. Acrosticis reddita a Ioanne Lango Silesio (source: Castellio’s edn., 1555, 290–1). inc. Iudicii metuet sudans praesagia tellus; des. Seruator rex aeternus Deus ipse patescit. The acrostic reads: ‘Iesus Christus, Dei Filius, Seruator, Crucs [sic]’. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 444–5. 446–7: Greek–Latin. Mercurii ter maximi de Christo (source unspecified). inc. Accedo ego mens ad sanctos et bonos; des. et omnia in ipso et sub ipsum sunt. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 446–7. In a long marginal note N. concludes ‘Lactantius autem illum [Hermem Trismegistum] inter Sibyllas ac prophetas numerare non dubitat.’ 448–9: Greek–Latin. Pselli de Christo (source: Psellos, Expositio in oracula Chaldaica (Paris, 1538)). inc. Vniuersam rerum conditionem molitus primum in Trinitate Pater; des. Filius autem ipse per se operatur. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 448–9. 448–51: Greek–Latin. [Quatuor] Oracula de Christo (source: Lactantius, Inst. 4. 13). inc. Mortalis erat secundum carnem; des. Modulamina coelestis reuolutionis concinnaui. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 448–51.


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450–7: Greek–Latin. [Decem] Sibyllae de Deo (source: Castellio’s edn., 1555). inc. Vnus qui solus regnat Deus atque supremus; des. solis lux grata aspectu clarissima fulget. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 450–7. 456–63: Greek–Latin. [Duodecim] oracula de Deo (source: Lactantius, Inst. 1. 7). inc. Ex sese constans, sine matre; des. finem vitae exigens obscurum. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 456–63. 462–5: Greek–Latin. De diabolis oraculum (source: unspecified). inc. Natura suadet vt credas esse daemonas puros; des. Et male materiae germina pulchra et bona. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 462–5. 464–5: Greek–Latin. Sibyllae de homine (source: Castellio’s edm. of 1555, lib. 8). One line: Effigies mea homo est, rectae rationis alumna. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 464–5. 464–5: Greek–Latin. Sibyllae de vita ante lapsum (source: Castellio’s edn. of 1555, lib. 1). Four lines, inc. Nec enim tum sollicitudo; des. rex et Seruator amauit. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 464–5. 464–5: Greek–Latin. Sibyllae de turri Babylonica (source: Castellio’s edn. of 1555, lib. 2, paraphrase based on Josephus, Antiq. iud. 1. 6). inc. Cunctis mortalibus vna voce; des. Babylonem contigit vocari vrbem. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 464–5. 464–7: Greek–Latin. [Duae] Sibyllae de Iudaeis (sources: Castellio’s edn. of 1555, lib. 5, Justin, Eusebius of Caesarea, etc.). [1] Three lines, inc. Hanc etenim primam; des. Deo praecellere dante; [2] Two lines, inc. Soli Chaldaei sapientiam; des. genitum sancte colentes. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 464–7. 466–7: Greek–Latin. [Duo] oracula de Iudaeis (source: Lactantius, de ira Dei). [1] Three lines, inc. Et Deum regem (colunt Iudaei); des. et daemones exhorrescunt; [2] Octet, inc. Dura via illa nimis; des. nouit notamque recepit. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 466–7. 466–71: Greek–Latin. [Septem] Sibyllae de Christianis (sources: Castellio’s edn. of 1555, Lactantius, etc.). inc. [1] Foelices famuli, Dominus; des. [7] qui laudauere Tonantem. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 466–71. 470–1: Greek–Latin. Sibyllae de Antichristo (source: Castellio’s edn. of 1555, lib. 2). Five lines, inc. Fallaces aderunt in terris; des. quos saeuior impetet ira. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 470–1. 470–3: Greek–Latin. [Duae] Sibyllae ad idololatras (source: Theophilus, Ad Autolycum, lib. 2). [1] 13 lines, inc. Stulticiae dignam accipietis mercedem; des. in praecordiis vestris; [2] 14 lines, inc. Homines quid

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frustra exaltamini; des. et incorrupta sempiternaque lux. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 470–3. 474–5: Greek–Latin. Oraculum de idololatris (source: ‘refertur a Stephano in Lexico geographico, sub nomine Sybaris),40 inc. Foelix omnino, foelix Sybarita futurus des. tibi atque domestica turba. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 474–5. 474–9: Greek–Latin. [Sex] Sibyllae de Roma (source: Castellio’s edn. of 1555, lib. 5, 8). inc. [1] Deque polo veniet sidus magnum; des. [6] Fiet arena Samus. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 474–9. 480–1: Greek–Latin. [Tres] Sibyllae de Deo puniente peccata (source: Castellio’s edn. of 1555, lib. 2. 3; Theophilus, Ad Autolycum, lib. 2). inc. [1] Pestes atque fames Deus; des. [3] pestem et dolores lugubres. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 480–1. 480–1: Greek–Latin. Sibyllae de inuidia (source: Castellio’s edn. of 1555, lib. 3). One line: Inuidia nihil est peius mortalibus aegris. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 480–1. 480–1: Greek–Latin. Sibyllae de auaricia (source: Castellio’s edn. of 1555, lib. 8). Ten lines, inc. Nam fallacis aeui, auri; des. auro praesente manebit. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 480–1. 482–3: Greek–Latin. Sibyllae concio poenitentiae (source: Castellio’s edn. of 1555, lib. 4). Ten lines, inc. Ah vos resipiscite stulti; des. illi, pietatis amorem. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 482–3. 482–3: Greek–Latin. Sibyllae de vltima mundi senecta (source: Castellio’s edn. of 1555, lib. 2). One line: O nimium praui quos vltima proferet aetas. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 482–3. 482–5: Greek–Latin. [Quatuor] oracula de animae immortalitate (source: Psellos). inc. [1] Anima quidem quoad vinculis; des. [4] seruabis et fragile corpus. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 482–5. 484–9: Greek–Latin. [Septem] Sibyllae de resurrectione, de extremo iudicio et de vita aeterna (sources: Castellio’s edn. of 1555, lib. 1, 2, 8; Theophilus, Ad Autolycum, lib. 2, etc.). inc. [1] At a quibus colitur Deus atque perennis; des. [7] dulcem panem a coelo stellato. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 484–9. 488–91: Greek–Latin. De posteritate Christi et Domitiano Caesare (main source: Eusebius–Rufinus, Hist. eccl. 3. 20). inc. Superarent autem 40

Stfanov per› plewn. Stephanus de urbibus (Venice, 1502), sig. kK1v.


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adhuc quidam de genere; des. tempora in vita superstites fuisse. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 491. 490–49[3]: Greek–Latin. De muliere sanguinis fluxu laborante ac sanata a Christo (source: Eusebius–Rufinus, Hist. eccl. 7. 18). inc. Quandoquidem autem in ciuitatis; des. ad hunc modum honorare soliti fuerint. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 490–3. 492–7: Greek–Latin. De Iuliano Caesare, apostata, statuam Christi ab haemorrhousia sibi positam tollente ac suam substituente (source: Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 5. 21). inc. Cum in Caesarea Philippi; des. quod apud ipsos contigit testes sunt. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 492–7. 496–9: Greek–Latin. Amelii Philosophi Platonici de verbis primi capitis Ioannis Euangelistae: In principio erat Verbum (source: Eusebius, Praep. eu. 11. 10). inc. Amelius quoque illustris inter iuniores Platonicos; des. carnem et hominem deduceretur. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 496–9. 500: Latin. Effigies formae Mariae Deiparae (source: Nicephorus Callistus, Hist. eccl. 2. 23). inc. Mores autem formaeque et staturae eius; des. multa diuinitus inerat gratia. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 500. 500–1: Latin. Forma corporis diui Petri et Pauli Apostolorum (source: Nicephorus Callistus, Hist. eccl. 2. 37). inc. Staturam autem et corporis formam diui Apostoli; des. conformarent et in melius conuerterent. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 500–1. 502–3: Greek–Latin. De Ioanne Baptista (source: Josephus, Antiquitates iud. 18. 116–119; Eusebius–Rufinus, Hist. eccl. 1. 11). inc. Videbatur autem quibusdam ex Iudaeis; des. Machaerunta mittitur ibique occiditur. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 502–3. 502–5: Greek–Latin. De Pilato ex Suidae Nerone. inc. Nero adhuc iuuenis existens; des. ausus fuisset, sine regio mandato. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 502–5. 506–7: Greek–Latin. De obitu Pilati aliter (main source: Eusebius– Rufinus, Hist. eccl. 2. 7). inc. Fuerit autem operae precium; des. simul temporibus gesta commemorant. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 506–7. 506–11: Greek–Latin. De obitu Arii blasphemantis filium Dei et turbantis ecclesias (main source: Theodoret, Hist. eccl. 1. 14). inc. Ego Constantinopoli non fui; des. ipse impietatem supplicio accusauit. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 506–11. 510–15: Greek–Latin. Historia de Edessenorum constantia (source: Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 6. 18). inc. Imperator vero cum Antiochiam

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venisset; des. in confessione dogmatis perstitit. N 1558: 206–11; N 1564: 510–15. 514–21: Greek–Latin. De obitu miserando Herodis Magni (sources: Josephus, Antiq. iud. 17. 183–91; Eusebius–Rufinus, Hist. eccl. 1. 8). inc. Fuerit autem praeterea operae precium; des. Seruatori nostro insidias tendens occidit. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 514–21. 520–5: Greek–Latin. De obitu similiter tristi Herodis Agrippae (source: unnamed). inc. Conatus vero regis contra Christi apostolos; des. quartum, regni vero septimum. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 520–5. 526–663: Greek–Latin. Prochori, qui fuit vnus de septem ministerio praefectis, consobrinus Stephani protomartyris, de Iohanne theologo et Euangelista historia, S. Castalione interprete. (Latin translation by Sebastian Castellio not extant except in N’s 1567 collection of Apocrypha. Cf. Acta Ioannis, ed. Theodor Zahn (Erlangen, 1880; repr. Hildesheim, 1975), I–IX). inc. Accidit vt postquam sublatus est; des. et in omnem seculorum perpetuitatem. Amen. N 1558 om.; N 1564 om. 664: Latin. Epistola Plinii Secundi ad Traianum Caesarem pro Christianis (source: Pliny’s Letters). inc. Solenne est mihi domine omnia; des. emendari possit, si sit poenitentiae locus. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 526–8. 666: Latin. Epistola Traiani responsoria ad Plinium (source Pliny’s Letters). inc. Actum quem debuisti; des. nam et pessimi exempli nec nostri saeculi est. N 1558 om.; N 1564: 528. With the exception of the Proteuangelion and the Acta Ioannis, all the pieces are short and arranged by their editor in historical order, from the birth of Jesus until the persecution of Christians under Trajan, and in several categories. Moreover, the amount of space given over to the Sibylline Oracles, or rather extracts therefrom, bears witness to Neander’s constant interest in combining pagan and Christian elements of Antiquity. The pieces selected thus constitute a whole destined to convey a particular message about the life of the human Christ, his Passion, the way he was viewed by the pagans and the Jews, the events that occurred shortly after his Passion, and the way that Christians generally should follow the example set by Christ and not that set by his persecutors. Significantly, the account of Arius’ death is juxtaposed against the account of the sad end of Pontius Pilate. The first set of the Apocrypha are the article Jesus from the Suda, the Proteuangelion, all the pieces to do with Christ and Abgar, the letters of Pontius Pilate to Tiberius, Lentulus’ letter likewise to the ‘emperor


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Tiberius’, and the two pieces having to do with miracles surrounding Christ’s birth and death. It is important to note that the Abgar correspondence, the ‘Testimonium Flauianum’, the Letter of Lentulus, and Pilate’s ‘Third Letter’ to Tiberius (inc. Nuper accidit) had all been published in the Centuria prima (lib. 1, cap. x) of the Centuries of Magdeburg and thus constituted an authorized corpus of early Christian testimonies about Christ, his appearance, and his death.

THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES The extracts from the Sibylline Oracles are largely (but by no means exclusively) drawn from Sixt Birck’s and Sebastian Castellio’s Greek– Latin edition printed in Basle by Oporinus in 1555.41 In order to assess the nature and method of Neander’s selection, it is necessary first to say something about the nature and origins of the Sibylline Oracles, a title intended as an allusion to the long lost Roman libri sibyllini. The similarity, however, stopped there. The Oracles were compiled by Jewish and Christian authors and attributed to the Sibyls in order to serve as an external witness to Judaeo-Christianity as the only true religion. The dates of the Jewish portion of the collection (twelve books in all, numbered 1–8 and 11–14, only eight of which were known in Neander’s time) range from the Macchabean period (c.170 bc) to the time of Hadrian. The material was freely used by the Christian Apologists of the second century. The Christian additions seem to date from the late second century onwards.42 Books 1 and 2 constitute a unity, originally of Jewish composition, from the time of the birth of Christ, with Christian additions dating from around ad 150. They give an account in prophetic form of the history of the world from the beginning to the fall of Rome. Book 3, also of Jewish origin, contains a defence of Jewish monotheism together with another history of the world and apocalyptic prophecies. Books 4 and 5 are an amalgam of Jewish and pagan elements and deal with Roman history in Nero’s time from a Jewish point of view. Book 6 41 Sibyllinorum Oraculorum libri VIII. Addita Sebastiani Castalionis interpretatione Latina, quae Graeco e regione respondeat. Cum Annotationibus Xysti Betuleij in Graeca Sibyllina oracula et Sebastiani Castalionis in translationem suam . . . Cf. Hieronymus, Griechischer Geist (as in n. 2), no. 462, p. 774. 42 Cf. Apocrifi (as in n. 18), iii. 491–540 and the literature cited there. See also JeanMichel Roessli, ‘Les Oracles sibyllins: Origines paıënnes et appropriations chre´tiennes’ (doctoral thesis, Paris, Ećole pratique des Hautes E´tudes, 2004).

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is a second-century hymn to Christ. Book 7 is of Judaeo-Christian origin; it contains several Gnostic elements and is an intentionally obscure conglomeration of eschatological prophecies and moral and ritual precepts. It is thought to date from the late second century. Book 8 (from c. ad 170) is a valuable witness to the sufferings of second-century Christians with a strong eschatological accent. Particular emphasis is placed on the fall of Rome, the Resurrection, and the Last Judgement. This apparently providential concurrence of pagan and Christian testimony suited Neander’s purpose admirably. He was very careful to choose extracts that contained pagan predictions of the birth of Christ, moral precepts, and prophecies of the Last Judgement. He did his best to make such oracles as he selected seem self-explanatory and devoid of any Gnostic or Jewish elements. In order to justify his choice of Sibylline Oracles as literature for schoolboys, Neander cites the testimony of Eusebius’ De vita Constantini, 5. 18–19 (in fact Constantine’s Oratio ad sanctorum coetum 18–19), where it is noted inter alia that the acrostic ‘Jesus Christus Dei Filius Saluator Crux’ was part of the prophecy of the Erythrean Sibyl and that it had been translated into Latin by Cicero. Eusebius’ testimony is followed by the shorter testimony of Clement of Alexandria. The modern reader cannot but be struck by Neander’s able exploitation of the Sibylline Oracles, which were after all initially written with a view to converting the pagan world to Jewish or Christian doctrines. The two testimonies are followed by lengthy extracts from books 1 and 2. Unaware of their Jewish origins, Neander entitles them quite unequivocally De Christo. These are followed immediately by excerpts from the hymn to Christ contained in book 6. The Christological unity of the prophecies is thus complete. The Greek–Latin excerpts are followed by the Latin Sibyllina concerning Christ taken by Neander wholesale from Castellio’s edition of 1555. As well as some nonSibylline oracles, Neander then inserts excerpts from the Sibyls on God, the devil, man, life before the Fall, the Tower of Babel, Jews, Christians, the Antichrist, idolatry, Rome, God’s punishment, envy, avarice, penance, the end of the world, the immortality of the soul, the Resurrection, the Last Judgement, and eternal life. Although it cannot be said that the extracts set out in this way present the basic tenets of Christian dogma (no mention is made, for example, of the Trinity, the sacraments, or the Church) they do attempt to inculcate a Christian way of life which had been foreseen by the pagan Oracles as becoming possible through the Incarnation, which (Neander implies) had always been the ultimate


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object of prophecy because of the ever-present belief in God, even among non-Christians. Neander stresses the role of Eusebius, Clement, and other Fathers as purveyors of the Oracles. Making no secret of the fact that his main source is Castellio’s edition, he also cites a number of Sibylline extracts from Lactantius’ Institutiones diuinae or De ira Dei, Theophilus’ Ad Autolycum, and the writings of Justin and Pseudo-Justin. The extracts are chosen so as to convey particular moral and doctrinal points. Those from Theophilus are meant as a terrible warning to idolaters who neglect the worship of the one true God for the benefit of images, statues and other human artefacts—a veiled allusion to Roman Catholic practices. The extracts from Lactantius’ Institutiones 4. 13 are intended to convey the doctrine of the two natures of Christ and those from Institutiones 1. 17 the Nicene doctrine of consubstantiality. After taking his pupils through the history of salvation as depicted in the Oracles, Neander reverts to pieces having to do with the life of Christ and his disciples. This category being self-explanatory and drawn from ecclesiastical histories, we shall now analyse Neander’s use of the more specifically Apocryphal (by modern criteria) pieces having to do with the life and Passion of Christ, that is the article Jesus in the Suda, the Proteuangelion, the Abgar legend, the letters from Pilate to Tiberius, and Lentulus’ letter.

J E S US FROM THE S U D A As Neander admits in a marginal note on page 340,43 his source for the Latin text of Jesus was the edition of Martin Cromer and Vitus Amerbach, published in Basle by Oporinus in 1552.44 He does not say where he found the Greek text, but we can safely assume that it came from one of the many editions of the Suda, the editio princeps of which had appeared in Milan in 1499. As well as referring his reader to the Preface of Vitus Amerbach, he mentions Bibliander’s Preface to his 1552 43 Catechesis (1567), 340: ‘Vide de hac historia iudicium Amerbachii, quod est in epistola quae adhaeret quibusdam orationibus Chrysostomi a se in Latinum conuersis. Item praefationem Theodori Bibliandri, quam praefixit Euangelio Iacobi a Gulielmo Postello in Oriente inuento et ex Graeco in Latinum conuerso.’ 44 Aliquot orationes D. Chrysostomi Graecae et Latinae ante hoc tempus Graece nunquam editae, Latine tantum semel cum Epiphanii quadam oratione ac Historia de Iesu Christo. Interpretibus Martino Cromero et Vito Amerpachio (Basle, 1552).

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Latin edition of the Proteuangelion. For Bibliander, the text of Jesus contained the decisive proof of the Jewish custom of the test of the waters of malediction45 and thus constituted supporting evidence for the historical veracity of the Proteuangelion. The Suda story is simple: Theodosius, a pious Jew, was exhorted by a Christian named Philip to adopt the Christian faith. He politely declined, but let Philip into the secret of an ancient document held by the Jews, which showed that they knew that Jesus Christ was the Messiah promised by the Law and the Prophets. According to the document, on the death of one of the twentytwo high priests, it was decided that Jesus should succeed him. Because the names of the parents of all the high priests had to be written down on a scroll, Mary, Jesus’ mother, was summoned. On hearing that the father was God himself, the priests subjected Mary to various tests, and had the midwives make sure that she was a virgin. Finally, they became fully convinced that she was telling the truth. (Contrary to Bibliander’s intimations, however, the text contains no mention of the test of the waters of malediction). The codex containing proof of Jewish recognition of Jesus as the Messiah was to be found in Tiberias, according to Theodosius, the Jewish patriarch who told the story. But when Philip wanted to ask the emperor Justinian to send to Tiberias for the codex, Theodosius advised him against it, saying that nothing but wars and disasters would ensue. The truth of the story, concludes the article, is attested by Flavius Josephus. The story is dubious, to say the least, and Bibliander’s attachment to it is difficult to explain. Vitus Amerbach (1503–57), dean of the Arts Faculty at Wittenberg (1532–1), later to become a bitter opponent of the Reformation and professor of rhetoric at Ingolstadt,46 took a much more sceptical view. Curiously enough, Neander, although he mentions Amerbach in his marginal note, makes no mention either of his confessional sympathies, diametrically opposed to Neander’s own, or of the doubts he cast on the truth of the Jesus entry in the Suda. Yet in his preface addressed to Philip Padniefski, Amerbach, while expressing his respect for the authority of the account, says that he cannot help but wonder at three particular details. First, he asks (and would appreciate Padniefski’s opinion on the matter) how could God allow that the Holy Virgin be subjected to 45

See Numbers 5: 16–28. Cf. ‘Amerbach’ in Neue Deutsche Biographie, i (Berlin, 1953), cols. 248–9 and the literature cited there. 46


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ignoble tests by midwives, normally only carried out on women of dubious virtue? While Amerbach’s doubt on this point is a function of his confessional stance, the other doubts he voices are simply commonsensical. How could it be, he asks, that the Jewish priests accepted Jesus so readily as the Messiah when the entire Jewish race rejected him? And why is it that the Christian, Philip, was asked by Theodosius not to say anything about the codex to Justinian on the unlikely ground that wars would ensue?47 After all, he points out not unjustly, given that the Jews were Roman subjects, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to transmit the codex to Justinian in secret, especially as its existence was barely known. Amerbach’s questions, although no doubt motivated partly by a certain anti-Jewish feeling, are quite pertinent. Neander, who must have read his preface, obviously did not share his doubts, which allows us to assume that, like Bibliander, he thought of the piece as constituting a proof of the Virgin’s submission to the test of the waters of malediction. This would suggest that Neander, despite the fact that he used Amerbach’s Latin translation, had a more positive interest than his Roman Catholic counterpart in the historical details of Christ’s birth and that he saw Jewish rejection of Christ’s status as an important component of that history. As a Lutheran he would not have seen the test as a sign of disrespect for the Virgin, any more than Bibliander would have. Thus his very desire to authenticate the historical background of the New Testament inclined him to accept what was obviously a dubious text. Amerbach for his part adduced perfectly cogent historical and textual arguments showing the text to be dubious, even though his real reasons for rejecting it were of a doctrinal nature. 47 Aliquot orationes (1552): Vitus Amerpachius Philippo Padniefskio, 189–90: ‘Etsi enim liber hic vnde historia sumpta est, magnam habet auctoritatem apud eruditos ac factum sic et narratum vt nemo non videat magnam hoc in se continere speciem veritatis, ego tamen haec duo miror non leuiter: quomodo potuerit a Deo permitti vt beata virgo sic tractaretur ab obstetricibus vt solent nonnunquam tractari de quarum integritate ambigitur, cum non putem ex intuitu solo in eius rei certam cognitionem veniri posse, cumque vt summum Iudaei scelus et blasphemiam semper detestati sint eo tempore, Messiam etiam credere natura Deum esse ac id ipsi Christo, quod non obscure Dei se filium esse dixisset publice obiecerint vt non ferendum flagitium, quomodo sibi sacerdotes illi, a quibus hic scribitur vni ex eis mortuo suffectum esse, tam certo persuadere potuerint Iesum esse Dei filium vt etiam hoc in tabulas publicas referrent. Accedit huc etiam aliud quod non minus pene mouet me cum scribitur Philippum illum Christianum absterritum esse a Theodosio ne rem de codice patefaceret Imperatori, tantum ideo quod non metuerent bellum, caedes et ignominiam cum nihil efficeretur, sed pro certo habuerunt haec futura esse.’

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Neander’s reticence about the origin of the Greek text of the Proteuangelion (of which he published the editio princeps) is difficult to explain. As I have shown elsewhere,48 Neander’s Greek text of the Proteuangelion is remarkably similar to the Greek text copied by Guillaume Postel in 1553 (i.e. after the appearance of Bibliander’s edition of the Latin version). The most interesting similarity I have noted is the omission by both of the passage on Mary’s submission to the test of the waters of malediction, which figures in Bibliander’s Latin version, in Postel’s Latin translation of 1551 (preserved in manuscript),49 and, indeed, in Bibliander’s Latin version as reproduced by Neander,50 who either failed to or chose not to notice the discrepancy between the Greek and the Latin text he was putting at the disposal of his students. However, the similarity between Neander’s and Postel’s Greek text tells us very little, if anything, about the relationship between the manuscript copied by Postel in 1553 and the source used by Neander. Although the two do belong to the same family of texts, generally known as Fa, they are by no means identical. Thus in Anne’s lamentation in Proteuangelion Jacobi (PJ) 3. 2 Neander’s Greek omits the phrases where Anne compares herself unfavourably with the birds and the waters that produce fish. Yet, the corresponding phrases are to be found in Postel’s manuscript Latin version, in Bibliander’s printed version, and in the Greek of MS Sloane 1411 (fo. 253v) copied by Postel.51 Again, Neander, who reproduces Bibliander’s Latin version, makes no mention of the discrepancy between the Greek and the Latin here. This casual attitude is very surprising, given that one of the avowed aims of his Apocrypha was to serve as a Greek reader. As for the origin of the Greek text, we would be tempted to say that Neander or his printer Oporinus simply used Postel’s copy and made some omissions and errors. This hypothesis, however, cannot be tested until a new critical edition of the Cf. Backus, ‘Guillaume Postel’ (as in n. 35), esp. 52–4. Postel’s Latin version in London, British Library, MS Sloane 1411, fos. 260r–267r, obviously served as the basis for Bibliander’s Latin. Postel’s Latin was published for the first time by Backus, ‘Guillaume Postel’, 38–51. 50 Catechesis (1567), 378. Cf. Proteuangelion Jacobi 16. 2. The Latin phrase is: ‘Potauit et Mariam ipsam et misit eam etiam ad montana et rediit incolumis.’ 51 Cf. Backus, ‘Guillaume Postel’ (as in n. 35), 52. 48 49


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Proteuangelion is available, which would take the Greek text of MS Sloane 1411 into account. Be that as it may, it is obvious that his Greek text (whatever its origin) was not of the slightest interest to Neander, seeing that, contrary to his usual practice, he did not annotate it at all. He did, however, put extensive annotations in the margins of the Latin version, expanding considerably Bibliander’s more succinct annotations, which were themselves partly based on Postel’s notes, lost no doubt because of the heretical doctrine they expounded.52 Although Bibliander’s borrowings from Postel do not in any way reflect the latter’s heterodoxy,53 it is legitimate to suppose that Postel’s lost notes emphasized his doctrine of the Restitution in two kinds (masculine and feminine), with the Virgin Mary acting as both a recapitulation of Eve and the female equivalent of God, giving birth to the new Adam, the Saviour, while remaining a virgin. The Proteuangelion was from Postel’s point of view the ideal biblical text. This, coupled with his knowledge of the high respect in which the Eastern Church held it, was sufficient to convince him of its canonicity. Needless to say, nothing of this transpires in Neander’s notes. What interests him, as has been seen from his treatment of the Jesus text, are the supplementary details on the circumstances of Christ’s birth provided by the Proteuangelion. The other concern brought to light by his marginalia is to put an end to legends surrounding the birth of Christ found in medieval church histories and other dubious sources. I shall confine myself to citing one or two examples of each type of note. Commenting on Joachim’s sterility, Neander notes that it was part of God’s design that Mary—just like her Son—should bear the cross, even before she existed, by way of her kinfolk, as later her Son, the Saviour, would bear it on his own limbs.54 The crucifixion of Jesus is thus prefigured in the suffering of his human mother’s Jewish parents. In the same spirit, Neander (ignoring, as we saw, the fact that his Greek text makes no mention of Mary being subjected to the test) insists on the Old Testament source of the test of the waters of malediction.55 He thus makes the point that the coming of Christ was prefigured in the Old 52

For Postel’s doctrines see ibid. 24–30 and the literature cited there. Full list of Bibliander’s notes in Backus, ibid. 52–4. 54 Catechesis (1567), 357: ‘vt etiam ad instar filii sui ipsa Maria antequam esset, crucem in suis ferret parentibus vt postea filius eius mundi Saluator in propriis membris’. 55 Ibid. 379: ‘De aquis redargutionis, de iudicio suspectae de adulterio, de ratione item explorandi ac probandi virginitatem vide cap. 5 Numer., cap. 22 Deutero.’ 53

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Testament. Commenting on the arrival of the magi, the Sorau schoolmaster warns his pupils against Comestor’s ill-founded invention of the three magi called Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.56 Finally, Neander supports and expands on Bibliander’s annotation on the death of Zechariah in the Temple at the hands of Herod’s soldiers, agreeing that Postel is wrong to assert (autumat) that the Lord refers to Zechariah’s death in his invective against the Pharisees in Matthew 23: 30–1.57 T H E A B GA R S T O R Y , P IL AT E ’S L E T T E R S A N D LENTULUS’ LETTER In contrast to the Proteuangelion, there is nothing mysterious about the origin of the Greek texts of the Abgar story. Neander uses Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 1. 13, John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 4. 17, and Evagrius Scholasticus, Hist. eccl. 4. 27. Two questions occur: first, how does Neander justify devoting so much attention to a story that was used throughout the Middle Ages and in the Reformation to defend image worship? Secondly, how does his presentation of the Latin text compare to that of the late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century NT Apocrypha compilers, whose work Neander apparently ignores completely? In other words, do the Abgar pieces reproduced by Neander suggest a particular tradition? Fully in keeping with the Lutheran stance, Neander neither advocates nor forbids image worship. His aim seems to be to seek in the Apocryphal pieces a historical foundation for allowing religious art and images of the saints, though not as objects of worship. Thus, commenting on the Abgar story in John of Damascus’ De fide orthodoxa, he notes that John uses the story to support image worship, and then adds: Saint Augustine gives his assent to this story in his work De doctrina christiana where he also notes that there is an oral tradition according to which Luke the Evangelist painted our Lord, Jesus Christ, and his mother, Mary.58 The Hebrew book, Aemuna, that is the Book of Faith,59 chapter 2, recounts that Christ allowed his picture to be painted prior to the Crucifixion.60 56 Catechesis (1567), 387: ‘Autor Historiae scholasticae Petrus Comestor sine ratione, sine veris testimoniis tres venisse magos prodidit quorum nomina fuerint, Gaspar, Melchior ac 57 Ibid. 391. Balthasar.’ 58 Augustine’s De doctrina christiana says nothing about this! 59 By ‘the Hebrew Book of Faith’ Neander means most probably Joseph Jabez, Yesod ha- Emunah (Ferrara, 1554). 60 Catechesis (1567), 396: ‘Astipulatur eidem historiae beatus etiam Augustinus lib. De doctrina christiana vbi etiam adducit memoriae proditum esse, quod Lucas Euangelista


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Referring to the Hebrew Book of Faith, Neander, once again, insists on Christ’s presence in Jewish tradition. All other marginal notes in the three versions of the Abgar story are merely references. Neander seems almost deliberately to ignore any polemic that might have surrounded the text. His students, it is tacitly implied, will certainly not suffer from reading the legend, which is reduced to the status of a teaching aid— suitable for turning young minds away from lascivious stories to more edifying matters. In setting the Abgar Legend in the context of Lutheran education, Neander sharply distances himself from the fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century reception of the text, which was mainly devotional, as I have shown elsewhere.61 It is also worth noting that Neander, unlike his predecessors, gives his sources with some precision, thus stressing that his concerns are scientific rather than devotional. However, he does not break with late medieval tradition in one important respect: like his (mainly anonymous) ‘predecessors’, he sees the Abgar Legend as one in a group of texts which includes Lentulus’ letter as well as Pilate’s letters to Tiberius. Similarly, the Libellus de infancia Saluatoris (Ps.-Mat.) a beato Hieronymo translatus, published anonymously, probably by Joannes Fabri in Turin around 1475,62 contained the following in an appendix: 1. Epistolam hanc scripsit Lentulus Romanus praeses in Iudea de Christo Iesu Saluatore nostro ad Romanos tempore Octauiani Caesaris. 2. Poncii Pillati ad Claudium Caesarem de Iesu Christi virtutibus, morte et resurrectione Epistola [inc. Nuper accidit in Iherusalem; des. honorifice Romam conducat]—a particularly fanciful variant of Pilate’s first/third letter to Tiberius, i.e. chapter 29 in recension A of the Acta Pilati. 3. The Abgar Legend. More importantly, the mini-collection of Apocryphal pieces published by the German humanist Christoph Scheurl in 1506, 1513, and 1515 (under the general title of Epistola) for Charitas Pirckheimer, abbess of the convent of the Poor Clares at Nuremberg, with a view to dominum nostrum Christum et matrem eius Mariam depinxerit. Liber Hebraeus Aemuna, hoc est fidei, refert Christum suam effigiem depingi passum esse antequam crucifigeretur, cap. 2.’ 61 Cf. Irena Backus, ‘Christoph Scheurl and his Anthology of New Testament Apocrypha’, Apocrypha, 9 (1998), 133–56. 62 8vo. London, British Library, IA 32417.

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encouraging monastic piety, contained in its final edition two of Pilate’s letters, the Abgar Legend, and the letter of Lentulus. Unlike Scheurl, however, Neander avoided conflating the Abgar and the Veronica Legends. Scheurl had added, at the end of the Eusebius– Rufinus extract, a paragraph from the thirteenth-century Catholicon of the Dominican Joannes Balbus of Genoa, available in print from c.1470. Balbus’ text of the Abgar Legend was a curious mosaic composed of fragments from the Legenda aurea, John of Damascus, and other, unidentified, sources, all combined to show how Abgar, unable to come to Jesus, sent a painter to paint him. The painter, however, could not accomplish his task because the light from Jesus’ face dazed him. The Lord then took a piece of cloth and impressed his image on it to give to Abgar.63 Not content with this elaboration on Eusebius–Rufinus, Scheurl added the following observation: ‘this image or imprint or veronica is nowadays to be found in Genoa in a certain venerable monastery of San Bartolomeo degli Armeni’.64 The conflation was thus complete. Scheurl, like all late medieval writers, confused the Abgar and Veronica Legends. Writing a generation later for a Lutheran public, Neander had purified the Abgar Legend of all medieval accretions and decided to adhere to, and not go beyond, the stories of the life of Christ which figured in works of reputable ancient authors, preferably in Greek. Neander does not include Pilate’s so-called second letter to Tiberius (inc. De Jesu Christo quem tibi; des. pati et venundari, vale Quinto Calendas Aprilis/Quarto Nonas Aprilis), probably because it did not figure in the work of a reputable author. The letter had been circulating in print since the last quarter of the fifteenth century, particularly among literature published for the conversion of the Jews.65 It is extremely late, has nothing to do with the Acta Pilati (unlike the first/third letter) and puts the blame of Jesus’ death entirely on the Jews, with Pilate confessing that he ordered the crucifixion only because of fear of popular rebellion. Neander does, however, include Pilate’s first/third letter (inc. Nuper accidit; des. a Iudaeis pecuniam accepisse) which, at least in his eyes, figured in the work of a reputable Greek author. It was of no importance 63 Cf. E. von Dobschu ¨ tz, Christusbilder: Untersuchungen zu der christlichen Legende (Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 18; Leipzig, 1899), 242 –3 . 64 Ibid. 191–2, 241 –3 : ‘Hec autem imago seu effigies aut veronica nunc est Jenue in quodam venerabili monasterio sancti Bartholomei de Ermineis.’ 65 Cf. e.g. Epistola quam misit Poncius Pilatus Tiberio Imperatori Romano in [Samuel Marochitanus] inc. Epistola quam misit Rabi Samuel Israhelita oriundus de ciuitate regis Morochorum ad Rabi Isaac [1474]. London, British Library, IA 30945. 8vo.


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that the original version was lost so that only the Latin survived, given that the translator was believed to be Ambrose of Milan in person. This is Neander’s account of what he thought was the original source of the letter: It is to be found in the Anacephaleosis of Hegesippus, that is a summary of the history of the war of Jerusalem. Hegesippus was a Jew converted to Christianity who wrote five books in the Greek language on the war of Jerusalem. They survive in Latin only, translated, it is thought, by Ambrose of Milan. Hegesippus flourished around ad 160.66

This is naturally no more than a repetition of the confusion between Hegesippus, Pseudo-Hegesippus, and Flavius Josephus. The confusion was common in the sixteenth century. The second-century Church historian Hegesippus, a converted Jew and probably a native of Palestine, with whom, as we have seen, Neander was familiar,67 came to be identified with a Ps.-Hegesippus, invented to be the author of the (non-existent) Greek original of a fourth-century Christian reworking in Latin of Josephus’ De bello Iudaico which paraded as the translation of Josephus, with Ambrose of Milan as the putative translator, until the appearance, sometime in the ninth century, of a philological translation of De bello which led to the fourth-century work being attributed to a different author, one Hegesippus (probably a corruption of Josephus).68 The Anacephaleosis was a summary, yet more pointedly Christian, of the Latin Ps.-Hegesippus, of a later date. The association with Ambrose carried such authority that Neander copied out word for word the recension of Pilate’s letter found in the Anacephaleosis (together with other apocryphal material) and did not so much as refer to other recensions of the letter,69 including the one in the Acta Pilati which had been printed by Scheurl in 1515. The letter of Lentulus to the emperor Tiberius, although one of the most widely circulating forgeries throughout the Middle Ages, was included by Neander for similar reasons. The letter itself, dating from 66 Catechesis (1567), 410: ‘Extat apud Egesippum in Anacephaleosi, hoc est summaria repetitione historiae belli Hierosolymitani. Fuit autem Hegesippus Iudaeus ad fidem christianam conuersus ac scripsit libros quinque Graeco idiomate de bello Hierosolymitano, qui Latine solummodo extant, conuersi a diuo Ambrosio Mediolanense, vt 67 See p. 211 and note 66 above. putatur. Claruit anno 160.’ 68 Cf. Fausto Parente, ‘Sulla doppia trasmissione, filologica ed ecclesiastica, del testo di Flavio Giuseppe: Un contributo alla storia della ricezione della sua opera nel mondo cristiano’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 26 (2000), 3–51, esp. 39 ff. 69 Cf. Apocrifi (as in n. 18), iii. 131–2.

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about the thirteenth century, was no more than a physical description suitable for either hagiographic accounts or religious painting. It breathed ‘superstitious practices’ to any self-respecting reformer, even a fairly tolerant one, and there was naturally no Greek version. The reason why Neander included it in his anthology was that it figured in the Centuries of Magdeburg and that it bore the necessary stamp of Christian antiquity. As he says in his marginal note: This letter is extant in the Annals of the Roman Senators by Eutropius. Eutropius himself was a monk and a priest who flourished around the year 370. He wrote several works, including a remarkable volume in which he set down the entire history of Rome compiled from the writings of various authors. Oporinus printed it in Basle in octavo format with the most learned annotations by Glareanus.70

Eutropius, as is well known, was indeed a fourth-century Roman historian who wrote inter alia a compendium entitled Breuiarium ab vrbe condita in ten concise books. This work was indeed published in 1546 and in 1559–61 by the Protestant Basle printer Joannes Oporinus, with notes by Henricus Glareanus. However, Eutropius was by no means a Christian, let alone a monk. According to Dobschu¨tz,71 the pagan historian had been confused (and continued to be well into Neander’s time) with a Christian priest also called Eutropius, mentioned by Gennadius, in De viris illustribus 50, as the author of two letters written ‘eleganti et aperto sermone’. Dobschu¨tz lists only one manuscript of Eutropius’ Breuiarium (London, BL: MS Harl. 2729 (XII), fo. 1), dating from the fifteenth century, into which Lentulus’ letter was incorporated. It certainly was not incorporated into the Oporinus/ Glareanus edition of Eutropius. However, as Dobschu¨tz has shown, it frequently circulated with the mention ‘extat apud Eutropium in Annalibus Romanorum’. Neander found the letter with this mention in the Centuries of Magdeburg and then, without consulting the Oporinus edition, assumed that it must also figure there. The letter thus acquired a certain respectability. Had Neander read Valla’s De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declaratio (available from 1540 in Valla’s 70 Catechesis (1567), 411: ‘Extat haec epistola apud Eutropium in Annalibus Romanorum senatorum. Eutropius autem monachus fuit ac presbyter qui claruit anno Domini 370. Scripsit tum alia, tum insigne volumen quo Romana historia vniuersa describitur ex diuersorum autorum monumentis collecta, quam Oporinus Basileae 8vo excudit cum doctissimis in eum Glareani scholiis.’ He is referring to Eutropii Breuiarium historiae Romanae libris X . . . published by Johannes Oporinus in Basle in 1546 and in 1559–61. Both editions were in octavo format. 71 Cf. Dobschu ¨ tz, Christusbilder (as in n. 63), 308 –330 .


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Opera omnia published in Basle72), he would have seen that the letter had been dismissed as a forgery in one brief sentence. CONCLUSION Neander is very careful to portray Christianity as having always been prefigured by the Old Testament and by pagan Oracles. However, he is also very careful not to overemphasize the importance of ‘prisca theologia’. He obviously does not share Postel’s conviction that the Proteuangelion is the only true Gospel and he refuses to relate Jesus’ accusation of the Pharisees in Matthew 23: 30–1 to the murder of Zechariah in the Proteuangelion. At no time does he suggest that he thinks that the Old Testament patriarchs or pagan philosophers were the first theologians and he does not attempt to imitate the Christian cabbalists. What emerges is the author’s interest in the way that paganism and Judaism prefigured Christianity, his wish to make some ante-Nicene Fathers (such as Lactantius) into purveyors of the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, and his desire to recapture the historical details of Jesus’ birth and the aftermath of the Passion. At no stage does he seek to reduce the Jews’ responsibility for Jesus’ death. His sources, as we have seen, are the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius–Rufinus, the Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, the Ecclesiastical Histories of Sozomen, Theodoret, and others. Most importantly, he seems to be the first Lutheran theologian to make systematic use of what is nowadays called Christian Apocryphal Literature to throw light on the beginnings of Christianity. No doubt owing to his desire to make the appendix serve as a textbook of Greek, Neander’s emergent Christianity is Greek and untouched by any heresy, as he makes very sure that he tells his readers the very minimum about the Gnostics. He does, however, constantly put his readers on guard against the Arian heresy, which, he implies, was to mark the decline of early Christianity. The apocryphal accounts selected by Neander had the advantage of putting schoolboys in touch with the texture of early Christianity in a way that doctrinal writings of ante-Nicene Fathers could not. Moreover, they provided a way of reconstructing the Centuria prima of the Church as defined by the Centuriators. The authenticity of the documents 72 Lorenzo Valla, Opera (Basle, 1540), 786: ‘Vtinamque tam vera esset epistola nomine Lentuli missa de effigie Christi quae non minus improbe ementita est quam priuilegium quod confutauimus.’

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Neander published was not an issue. They were apocrypha, useful but not normative. Working from that perspective, Neander, although he would have been aware of at least some of the strictures passed on the Apocrypha by Valla, Erasmus, and others, was not interested in the fact that some early Christian documents that he put at the disposal of his students went back no further than the fourteenth century.

6 A Sixteenth-Century Hebraic Approach to the New Testament Joanna Weinberg

The Jews suffer from a singular misfortune: even when their writings are not read, they meet with displeasure; and while they are considerably reviled by those who have read them, receive much greater abuse by those who have not . . . . They [i.e. the Jews] are the most strident enemies of the doctrine of the Gospel, and yet the text of the Gospel has no clearer interpreters. To say all in a word, to their own Jewish coreligionists they recommend nothing but frivolities, destruction, and poison. But with skill and industry Christians may apply them most usefully and serviceably to their studies and adapt them most satisfactorily for the interpretation of the New Testament.1

With this exhortation to his colleagues at Catherine Hall, Cambridge, John Lightfoot embarked on his commentary to Matthew, which was published in 1658 and comprised the second volume of the Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae, a work impregnated with rabbinic learning, or rather, with ‘the beloved writings of the ill-beloved Authors’.2 Lightfoot’s endeavour, which required coming to grips with ‘their [i.e. the Rabbis’] barbarous and difficult style and the great store of trifles I am grateful to Christopher Ligota, Giulio Lepschy, and Piet van Boxel for their useful comments on this paper. 1 John Lightfoot, In Evangelium sancti Matthaei Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae (Cambridge, 1658): ‘atque hoc laborant infortunio nescio quo singulari, ut etiam non lecta displiceant, et vituperata satis ab iis qui legerunt, ab iis qui non legerunt vituperentur multo magis . . . . Acriores hostes, quam istos non habet doctrina Evangelica; et tamen planiores interpretes quam istos non habet textus Evangelii. Verbo omnia. Judaeis suis nihil nisi nugas propinant, et perniciem et venenum; at Christiani arte et industria sua eos sibi reddere possunt studiis suis utilissime famulantes, atque inservientes commodissime interpretationi Novi Testamenti’ (sig. A3v–4r ). 2 The Works of the Reverend and Learned John Lightfoot (London, 1684), i, preface, p. xiii.

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wherewith they abound’, was motivated by the conviction that ‘an insight into their language and customs was the best way to a safe and sure understanding of the New Testament’.3 Lightfoot’s collation of parallels between the New Testament and rabbinic sources is usually represented as a landmark in Christian Hebraism—‘si Lightfootus non lyrasset, multi non saltassent’.4 And yet the seeds of his method had already been sown by the Christian Hebraists of the sixteenth century, who also grappled with the Hebraic content of their Scriptures by means of Hebrew, Aramaic, and other Semitic languages with which they had become familiar, and which, with varying degrees of expertise, they applied in their reading of the Gospels. True, over the preceding centuries, exegetes had noted the alien or rather non-Greek terms, and had commented on them. But it was in the sixteenth century that philologists partially equipped with the necessary linguistic resources, with or without a mystical slant, made a special study of these ‘Jewish’ expressions and phrases. Interestingly, this subject was not the exclusive domain of Christian Hebraists; a Jewish Hebraist, admittedly a rather exceptional one, Azariah de’ Rossi (1511?–1577), joined the fray and brought his superior command of those same Hebrew and rabbinic sources to bear on the subject.5 This is only a partial description of the quest for the authentic text of the New Testament. I shall not be discussing the Greek text from the perspective of Valla and Erasmus, who examined it with reference to readings in patristic literature and compared the Greek and Latin versions.6 Nor shall I focus on the great philologists of the end of the 3

Works (as in n. 2), i, preface, p. xiii. This Latin saying is a play on Julius Pflug’s adage about Luther, ‘Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus non saltasset’, which went back to Alain of Lille’s saying, ‘Si Lyra non lyrasset, totus mundus delirasset’; see the texts cited by Henri de Lubac in Exe´ge`se me´die´vale: Les quatre sens de l’Ećriture, ii/2 (Paris 1964), 353. I am grateful to Joseph Sievers for drawing my attention to this reference. Lightfoot’s enterprise is not without its chronological and contextual pitfalls, as is patently attested by the Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, which was written nearly three hundred years later by Lightfoot’s most illustrious successor, Paul Billerbeck. 5 De’ Rossi’s work on the Syriac version of the Gospels written in Ferrara for Giacomo Boncompagni and Giulio Antonio Santoro, Cardinal Santa Severina, was never printed. His discussion of the Hebraisms of the Vulgate on the basis of the Syriac version (first printed in Vienna, 1555) is an attempt on the part of a Jew to participate in the current quest for the authentic text of the Gospels. See my edition of the text, Azariah de’ Rossi’s Observations on the Syriac New Testzment. A Critique of the Vulgate by a Sixteenth-Century Jew (London, 2005). 6 See J. H. Bentley, Humanists and the Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton, 1982). 4

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sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, notably Salmasius, Heinsius, and Scaliger, who tried to identify the nature of Hellenistic Greek and its users, although they, too, were not averse to discussing a Hebrew or Aramaic term when necessary.7 But I am concerned with language and theories about language, which, as is well known, abounded in the sixteenth century, some ideological, some intelligible, and others belonging more or less to the realm of fantasy. It was at this time in Italy that the notion of dialect became widespread with the use of the Greek term dilektov rather than the Latin designations such as lingua, sermo, loquela, or idioma. With the entrance of Greek into the humanist system, as Carlo Dionisotti has shown,8 the monopoly of Latin was broken. The five dialects of Greek became the mirror of Italian vernaculars.9 Besides Hebrew, which was the obvious candidate for the Ursprache, another language claimed special attention, namely Aramaic. In an attempt to bypass Latin, it was suggested that Tuscan derived from Etruscan, which was Aramaic, the language introduced by Noah. This was one of the aberrations of Annius of Viterbo, which was developed by Pierfrancesco Giambullari, through whom it acquired political significance.10 The writing of Hebrew and related languages was also commended because, unlike Greek and Latin, they conformed to the natural movement of the first sphere.11 These were just some of the theories that were being proposed in the first half of the sixteenth century. They are not unconnected to our subject. Christian Hebraists who had learnt Hebrew, and progressed to Aramaic and sometimes also to Syriac, had to confront similar questions. 7 See H. J. De Jonge, ‘The Study of the New Testament’, in Th. H. Lusingh Scheurleer and G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes (eds.), Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century: An Exchange of Learning (Leiden, 1975), 65–109. 8 C. Dionisotti, ‘Il Fortunio e la filologia umanistica’, in V. Branca (ed.), Rinascimento europeo e Rinascimento veneziano (Florence, 1967), 21; id., Gli umanisti e il volgare fra Quattro e Cinquecento (Florence, 1968), 23. 9 On this and Renaissance linguistics in general, see M. Tavoni, ‘Renaissance Linguistics’, in G. Lepschy (ed.), History of Linguistics, iii: Renaissance and Early Modern Linguistics (London, 1998), 1–108. 10 See G. Cipriani, Il mito etrusco nel Rinascimento fiorentino (Florence, 1980), ch. 4 and passim. 11 See e.g. Robert Wakefield, On the Three Languages (1524), ed. and trans. G. Lloyd Jones (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies; 68; Binghampton, NY, 1989), 96–7: ‘Hebrew language follows the example of nature by moving from the right to left. For according to Aristotle, in nature it is a fixed rule that a movement which starts from the right should proceed to the left. This is evident in the daily movement of the primal and mobile heaven which gives life to all.’ Similarly, Postel argues that Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic follow the movement of the sun and planets.

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Although the Annian discussion about Aramaic had a particular Tuscan flavour, Chaldaic or Syriac, as they liked to call it,12 was in the air. The status of Aramaic and its relation to the holy tongue was a current issue.13 In his introduction to his commentary on the Psalter, the fifteenth-century Augustinian Perez de Valentia had put forward the view that Aramaic was the first language of the world. He then tempered this position by suggesting that the two languages were identical.14 There were not so many who subscribed to these ‘preposterous views’, as Sebastian Mu¨nster called them. More dominant, not surprisingly, was the view of the Jewish master of the Hebraists, Elijah Levita. Although he begins his Aramaic lexicon, the Meturgeman (1541), with a citation from the Midrash Genesis Rabbah (74: 14), where R. Samuel bar Nahmani states: ‘Do not despise the Aramaic language for the Holy One blessed be He paid tribute to it in the Pentateuch, Prophets, and Hagiographa’ (and then quotes the three standard Aramaic passages, Genesis 31: 47, Jeremiah 10: 11, and Daniel 11: 4), Levita assesses Aramaic as a corruption of Hebrew that occurred after the departure of Abraham from Aram, which was also the name of the youngest son of Shem. The different forms of Aramaic, the Palestinian and the Babylonian (the term dialect is not used), however, are described in terms of their purity; that is to say, their purity is judged by Levita in relation to the extent to which the language has been contaminated by other languages. Had the sack of Rome not occurred, we might have been in the possession of an Aramaic grammar by the foremost Jewish grammarian of the period. But as he himself tells us, all his manuscripts were lost during that time of upheaval. It was therefore his ‘disciple’, Sebastian Mu¨nster, who first put the language in the public eye by producing his Chaldaic grammar ‘a nemine antehac attentata’ in 1527. Despite his inadequacies as an Aramaic teacher, Mu¨nster’s preliminary discussions of the language 12 The word Syriac was used because the Hebrew word Aramit (2 Kings 18: 26; Ezra 4: 7; Dan. 2: 4) is translated by Syriace or sermo Syriacus in the Vulgate; but in his commentaries Jerome uses sermo Chaldaicus. In the LXX (Dan. 2: 26) the word Chaldaisti is used. Thus arose an erroneous use of the word Chaldaean by Christian Hebraists in reference to the Aramaic translations of the Bible. See G. Tamani, ‘Gli studi di aramaico giudaico nel sec. XVI’, in M. Tavoni (ed.), Italia ed Europa nella linguistica del Rinascimento: Confronti e relazioni, ii (Ferrara, 1996), 503–15. 13 For a discussion of earlier Jewish views on Aramaic and the relationship between Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, see I. Zwiep, Mother of Reason and Revelation: A Short History of Medieval Linguistic Thought (Amsterdam, 1997), 165–70; 200–5. 14 Jacobus Perez de Valentia, Expositiones in centum et quinquaginta psalmos Davidicos (Paris, 1518), tractatus sextus: ‘Et sic patet quod lingua Hebraea nil aliud est nisi lingua Chaldaica quam Abraham duxit in terram Chanaan sive Palaestinam’ (fo. 17v).


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paved the way for the proper descriptions and definitions of the Hebrew and Aramaic. As I have shown elsewhere,15 it was Mu¨nster who distinguished between ‘lingua Hebraica’, Hebrew, and ‘lingua Hebraeorum’, ‘Jews’ language’, which may signify Hebrew, or any Jewish vernacular. The implication of this definition was that ‘Jews’ language’ when applied to Jews living in Palestine after the Babylonian exile signified Aramaic rather than Hebrew. To illustrate the situation of the Jews who returned to the land of Israel after the Babylonian exile Mu¨nster makes the hypothetical comparison with German Jews who, given the possibility of regaining possession of the Holy Land, would continue to speak German.16 So, too, he argues, the majority of Jews whose vernacular had become Aramaic during the seventy years of exile on Babylonian soil did not know Hebrew and continued to speak Aramaic. Such was the linguistic situation in the days of Jesus. As he writes: ‘This language was still the vernacular in Jesus’ time even though practically 515 years had elapsed since the return from exile.’17 Accordingly, it was obvious that the expressions in the New Testament which the ignorant assumed to be Hebrew were actually Aramaic.18 While previous Christian scholars had some primitive idea of the Chaldaic or Syriac language, there were few who were in a position to distinguish it from Hebrew in any informed way. True, Robert Wakefield had some years earlier (1524) written an oration in praise of See my article, ‘Azariah de’ Rossi and Septuagint Traditions’, Italia, 5 (1985), 30–2. Sebastian Mu¨nster, Chaldaica grammatica (Basle, 1527), 4: ‘non secus quam si Iudaeis nostris Germanis facultas daretur adeundi et possidendi terram sanctam, Germanorum utique linguam in ea facerent vernaculam, quum paucissimi eorum sciant Hebraice loqui’. 17 Ibid. 5: ‘Non enim sunt Hebraea ut indoctiores aestimant, sed fere omnia Chaldaica sive Syriaca, quae lingua Christi tempore Iudaeis adhuc fuit vernacula quandoquidem a captivitatis relaxatione ad Christum natum vix 515 anni intercesserint.’ 18 More information about his method of tackling the Aramaic expressions in the Gospels is to be found in his annotated Hebrew translation of Matthew, Evangelium secundum Matthaeum in lingua Hebraea cum versione Latina atque annotationibus Sebastiani Munsteri (Basle, 1537). He gives some philological comments, and references to rabbinic sources; but since his purpose is primarily polemical—the text is full of citations from anti-Christian works such as Toledot Yeshu and Sefer-ha-Nizzahon with his refutations—there is a pointed theological dimension to most of his comments. See e.g. his discussion of Matt. 3: 7, 9: ‘O generation of vipers’ blood . . . and do not say within yourselves, ‘‘We have Abraham to our father’’ ’. This is John the Baptist’s observation on the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism. Mu¨nster senses that the rabbinic idea of zekhut avot (ancestral merit) is somehow criticized in these verses and quotes the talmudic story (B. Eruvin 19a) about Abraham standing at the gate of Gehinnom to prevent wicked Israelites from entering its portals (but he fails to recognize those Jews who had concealed the sign of their circumcision in order to have intercourse with heathen women). 15 16

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Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, and also some vague reflections on the Aramaic expressions in the New Testament.19 Mu¨nster, on the other hand, provides a brief but correct list of some of these Aramaic expressions, and refers fleetingly to the corrupt readings of these passages in the more recent Greek and Latin codices. According to Mu¨nster’s reconstruction, therefore, Hebrew had been replaced by Aramaic, a situation reflected in Acts 21, where Paul has to address the people in Aramaic in order to communicate his message. This (simple) fact is presented in all the works of the Christian Hebraists who touch on our theme. Jesus and Paul, when speaking to the Jews, used their vernacular, namely Aramaic. Their use of this language rather than the holy tongue was only in deference to their audience. What was paramount was that their message should be effectively transmitted. (The people were ignorant, not the preachers of the Gospel.)20 One of the most engaging orientalists of the sixteenth century who also set his hand to the question of the Hebraisms of the New Testament was Guillaume Postel. It is difficult to assess his true contribution to our subject. On occasion he assumes the role of the irate pedagogue, castigating scholars for their ignorance of languages, and exposing and ridiculing their distorted pronunciation of the holy words of the liturgy. This apparent scholarly rigour, however, is combined with an unflinching advocacy of the most preposterous linguistic theories. In one passage Postel could argue that Hebrew is the first language, but in another that Hebrew and Chaldaic are one and the same language because the Chaldeans and the Hebrews were the first people to use writing. According to Postel, traces of the first language can be found in all languages, and they are all interrelated. Postel’s genealogy of languages is not easy to elucidate. Hebrew is certainly given precedence, but French or Gallic is not far down in the hierarchy: the people of Gaul, according to Postel, boast a great antiquity, for, as their name demonstrates, they were saved from the waves (galim), their ancient ancestor being Gomer the eldest son of Japhet.21 Postel must have felt a little 19 For Wakefield’s discussion of Hebraisms in the New Testament, see On the Three Languages (as in n. 11), 134–47. 20 Cf. e.g. Mu ¨ nster, Chaldaica Grammatica (as in n. 16), 6: ‘Quod autem Paulus inducitur Act. 21 vulgaribus hominibus respondisse Hebraica lingua, necesse est ut intellegas Hebraeorum lingua, non Hebraica, quippe quam docti tantum intelligebant et non vulgares . . . ’. 21 See Tavoni, ‘Renaissance Linguistics’ (as in n. 9), 53, and extensive reference to these ideas of Postel in recent bibliography, particularly J. Ceárd, ‘Le ‘‘De originibus’’ de Postel et la linguistique de son temps’, in M. L. Kuntz (ed.), Postel, Venezia e il suo tempo (Florence, 1988), 19–43.


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uneasy with regard to his thesis about French. For in his De originibus seu de affinitate linguarum et Hebraicae linguae antiquitate (Paris, 1538), he produces a hypothetical critic who challenges his circuitous quest for Hebrew words in the French language. Thereby he gives himself the opportunity to put forward one of his inimitable arguments. What is surprising, he claims, is that French does not contain more Hebrew words given the size of the Jewish population in France before they were expelled in 1220;22 after all, their Hebrew commentaries are replete with Gallic words.23 The affinity between the two languages is thus, in Postel’s view, clearly attested: and he nonchalantly suggests that he could add two hundred more examples to the list he had compiled in order to illustrate the connection.24 This discussion leads directly to his treatment of the Hebrew/Aramaic expressions of the New Testament. His explanation for the word for Christmas, ‘Noe¨l’, is a classic example of his harmonizing procedures. Interestingly, he treats the word twice within two pages. On the first occasion, he states that the meaning of the word, which is repeated often, and sung by many, is not understood. It means ‘our god’, or ‘let God come to us’, and is sung by the people before Christmas with a certain longing. This interpretation appears in his list of ‘certain words that have been mysteriously preserved’.25 He returns to Noe¨l in his discussion of New Testament expressions. The first word on the list is Emanuel, whose component parts he correctly explains, ‘God is with us’. The word is then directly attached to the French word Noe¨l, a form of the same word, with the first letter truncated. As he puts it, the first letter suffered elision through the repeated singing or recitation of the word during Advent.26 And his etymology transforms the Gallic celebration of Christmas into a mystical Hebraic experience. Onomatopoeic fantasy is not always Postel’s mode of interpreting New Testament expressions. In his discussion of Jesus’ Aramaic words on the cross, ‘eli eli lema sebachthani’ (which mirror the Hebrew words 22 I am not sure to which of the various expulsions of the Jews from France Postel is 23 An obvious reference to the commentaries of Rashi. referring. 24 Guillaume Postel, De originibus seu de Hebraicae linguae et gentis antiquitate, deque variarum linguarum affinitate, Liber (Paris, 1538), sig. E IVv: ‘Unde sane mihi admiratio nulla subit huius affinitatis, cui potuissem ultra ducenta alia vocabula olim observata adiungere.’ 25 Ibid., sig. E3v: ‘Sunt quaedam voces in omnibus linguis quodam mysterio ab illa servatae.’ 26 Ibid., sig. Fr: ‘Noel viginti aut triginta dies ante natalia Christi saepius repetendo efferunt.’

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of Psalm 22: 2), he combines a more scholarly approach with linguistic theory.27 He compares Matthew (27: 46) and Mark (15: 33). He notes that in Matthew, only the last word, sebachthani, is Aramaic,28 whereas in Mark, the entire saying, ‘elohi elohi lamah sebactani’, represents a Greek version of the Aramaic29—he claims that this can be proved by examining the Aramaic translation of Psalm 22.30 He returns to the theme of Aramaic as lingua franca in Jesus’ time. The integrity of Hebrew was retained only by the wise and schooled. Languages mature, stabilize, and grow old through popular use. Thus Hebrew, like Greek and Latin, became corrupt in the hands of the people. As opposed to the straightforward philological method with which he approaches his discussion of ephphatha (Mark 7: 34) and hakal dema (Acts 1: 19), Postel’s treatment of the expression maranata in 1 Corinthians (16: 22), with a transformation of anathema into maranatha, is set in a different exegetical mode.31 Postel’s real philological achievement cannot be assessed in categorical terms. It is indeed telling that after listing a number of Chaldaic expressions in the New Testament, he comes to a halt on the ground that he does not wish to divert the attention of his reader, which has been ‘alerted to higher matters’ (ad maiora).32 The higher matters relate to the affinity of Hebrew idioms with other languages. The subject of the Hebraisms and Aramaisms of the New Testament was also treated by Postel’s contemporary, and more sober scholar, the Italian Christian Hebraist Angelo Canini,33 often described as an early

Postel, De originibus (as in n. 24), sig. Fr-v. Postel actually reads ‘eli eli lamma tsebactani’, apparently reading ‘sebactani’ with the letter tsade instead of sin. 29 Interestingly, Postel’s comment is reflected in the commentary by B. Metzger on Mark (London, 1971), 119, who states that the reading eloi represents the Aramaic elahi, ‘the o for the a sound being due to the influence of the Hebrew elohai’. See also Mu¨nster’s comment on this passage in his Hebrew rendering of Matthew (see above, n. 18): that Jesus expressed the words in Aramaic: ‘sic enim habent omnia vetusta Latina exempla una cum Graecis codicibus’. 30 Postel’s reading for the Aramaic Targum on Psalms is not entirely attested in any of the versions that I have consulted. See L. Diez Merino, Targum de Salmis (Madrid, 1982). 31 At 1 Cor. 16: 22 Paul states: ‘If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be an outcast maranata’ (come Lord); in Postel’s version, maran atha (the Lord has come). Postel correctly translates the words which he recognizes to be Aramaic, and then proposes an interpretation of the text. ‘If anyone does not love our lord Jesus Christ, let there be an 32 Sig. Fiir. anathema maranatha [upon him].’ 33 The most extensive modern biography of Canini is that of R. Ricciardi, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, xviii. 27 28


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comparative linguist.34 He was accorded a place in Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire,35 where he is heralded as one of the most learned grammarians of the sixteenth century. This may be an exaggeration, but there is no question that Canini had some interesting contributions to make. Little is known about his life. He was born in Anghiari near Arezzo in 1521, spent five years in Spain, and then went to the Auvergne where, with the help of Simon Guichard, he came under the protection of Guillaume du Prat, bishop of Clermont,36 who facilitated his move to Paris in 1553. He lived in the Colle`ge des Lombards and then the Colle`ge de Cambrai in 1555, where Postel had earlier taught oriental languages. (Postel taught him Arabic.) Canini is not listed as a teacher at the Colle`ge de France, but his name is invoked as that of a revered teacher in the prefaces of several sixteenth-century scholars resident in Paris, such as Bonaventura Corneille Bertram37 and Andreas Dudith, the so-called Hungarian Erasmus.38 He died in 1557, but reports about the place of his death vary: according to de Thou, his final days were spent in the Auvergne in Du Prat’s entourage,39 but according to one of his students, the Spanish Dominican Francisco Foreiro, he died in Seville: ‘my teacher Angelus Caninius, who seemed to have been born to teach languages, and died in Seville . . . ’.40 The enigmatic terms in which the 34 See D. Droixhe, ‘Le Comparatisme linguistique europe én d’Ange Canini (1554– 1555): Un transfert de rationalite´’, in Italia ed Europa (as in n. 12), ii. 319–32. For a nuanced assessment of Canini’s contribution to semitic linguistics, see R. Contini, ‘I primordi della linguistica semitica comparata nell’Europa rinascimentale: Le Institutiones di Angelo Canini (1554)’, Annali di Ca’ Foscari, 33/3 (serie orientale, 25) (1994), 39–55, who discusses Canini’s innovations in morphology. 35 Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique (Rotterdam, 1715), i. 808–10. 36 Du Prat had represented France at Trent until 1547 and was involved in combating Protestantism. He had erected the Colle`ge de Cambrai in Paris and supported the Jesuits, and erected another building for their benefit in Paris. Canini came to know him through the Minim friar Simon de Guichard, who became the superior of the Convent of Minims in Beauregard. Du Prat also supported other scholars, such as Gabriele Simeoni, who lived for some time in his chaˆteau at Beauregard. 37 Bertram was a professor of theology and oriental languages at Geneva and Lausanne. In his prefaces to his grammatical works, he refers to Canini together with Mercerus as his teacher in Hebrew and Aramaic. For example, in his comparative grammar of Hebrew and Aramaic, entitled Galed (1574), he states ‘ad eam rem manu ductus ante octodecim annos ab Angelo Caninio, deinde post Caninium a Mercero’. 38 Canini refers to Dudith, whom he taught Greek at the Colle `ge de Cambrai, as ‘adolescens moribus amabilissimus’. Dudith wrote a dedicatory poem to Canini, published in the Hellenismos (1555). 39 Jacques Auguste de Thou, Historiarum sui temporis tomus primus, lib. XIII (Paris, 1606), 373: ‘vir linguarum non solum Graecae et Hebraicae, sed Syriacae et aliarum orientalium rara et exquisita cognitione insignis . . . et in Arvernis finem studiis et vitae fecit’. 40 Praefatio in Francisco Foreiro, Iesaiae prophetae vetus et nova ex Hebraico versio (Venice, 1563).

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testimony of Canini’s student is couched undermine the credibility of his evidence about Canini’s death. Like his contemporary François Vatable,41 Canini was truly trilingual. He translated Book 2 of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on Aristotle’s De anima (with the De mixtione) into Latin (Venice, 1546), edited the comedies of Aristophanes (Venice, 1548), and revised Politian’s translation of Simplicius’ commentary on Epictetus’ Enchiridion (Venice, 1546). He wrote a Greek grammar.42 Scaliger suggests that he had used the best parts of Francisco Vergara’s Greek grammar (1537),43 although he does admit that ‘il a mis aussi quelque chose du sien.’44 But the grammar enjoyed a fairly wide dissemination—it was reprinted several times, as were all his works—and was described as a ‘golden book’ by Gaspar Bellerus.45 Particularly intriguing is Canini’s Latin translation of a Hebrew letter written by a Jewish convert to Christianity, Ludovicus Carretus, alias Todros Hacohen, who has been identified as the brother of the noted Jewish chronicler Joseph Hacohen.46 In Paris (1554) Canini published the Hebrew text of the Epistola Ludovici Carreti ad Iudaeos quae inscribitur Liber visorum divinorum: Qua eos ad resipiscentiam invitat, validissimisque rationibus Christianam asserit veritatem, added vocalization, and translated it into Latin. In his address to the pious reader dated 1553, Canini claims that he came across the work a few days ago (‘pervenit superioribus diebus ad manus nostras Epistola’) and gave it his highest recommendation not only for Jews to whom it was addressed, but also for Christians. What is curious, as F. Secret has pointed out,47 is François Vatable (1493–1547) was lecteur royal in Hebrew at the Colle`ge de France. The Greek grammar Hellenismos was first printed in Paris in 1555 and reprinted in Paris, 1578; London, 1613 and 1624; Amsterdam, 1700. The grammar treated morphology, prosody, and syntax and was said to have aided in the establishment of the Erasmian system of Greek and Latin pronunciation. 43 Franciscus Vergara, De Graecae linguae grammatica libri quinque (Alcala ´, 1537). 44 Scaligerana (Cologne, 1667), 42: ‘iuvenis doctissimus, qui hellenismum bonum fecit. Il a pris tout le meilleur de Vergara, et de tous, et a mis aussi quelque chose du sien.’ This comment is ambiguous: Canini is a good grammarian, but his expertise is partly due to his recourse to the best exponents of the subject. 45 This description is found in Bellerus’ letter to Balthasar Suniga in the Antwerp edition (1600) of Canini’s De locis sacrae Scripturae, about which see below. 46 For a definitive identification of the author, see R. Bonfil, ‘Who was the Convert Ludovico Carreto?’ [in Hebrew], in Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Haim Beinart (Jerusalem, 1988), 437–50. The identification of Todros was tentatively offered by D. A. Gross in his edition of the third part of Joseph Hacohen’s Emeq ha-Bakha (Jerusalem, 1955), 81 n. 56. 47 F. Secret, Les Kabbalistes chre ´tiens de la Renaissance, 2nd edn. (Neuilly-sur-Seine and Milan, 1985), 242–5. See also Secret, ‘Notes sur les he´braisants chre´tiens et les Juifs en 41 42


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that the letter, which recounts Ludovico’s visions that led to his conversion, is permeated with typical Christian cabbalistic manipulation of the name of Jesus, which Canini was to combat most vehemently in the work that is the focus of this article. Furthermore, like Postel, Carretus quotes the description, attributed to the eleventh-century authority Hai Gaon (but probably written in about 1230), of the three hidden lights48 that flow without distinction and without beginning into the substance of the deity. As Gershom Scholem noted,49 this idea caught the attention of Christian cabbalists. Of course Canini was not the author of the text, but simply the translator; and yet the mere fact of approving the text by bringing it to print is indicative of a somewhat inconsistent stance on his part. As will be shown, when Canini speaks as a New Testament philologist, he holds his ground, even if this implies rejection of established ecclesiastical opinion, though in other respects he shows deference to theology and theologians.50 It may be that the purpose of his sponsorship of the convert’s work in this bilingual edition was to demonstrate his linguistic expertise and his contempt for Jews and Judaism, a position which would safeguard him from attack. Of particular significance to our enquiry is Canini’s Aramaic grammar, which was published in Paris in 1554.51 Like many others, he complains of the inadequacies of Mu¨nster’s effort, and furthermore has no compunction in criticizing Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Se’adiah for some of their interpretations of Aramaic words. In fact, Canini was the first scholar to discern correctly that the participle with the personal pronoun enclitic rather than the perfect tense was the basis of the conjugation of France’, Revue des études juives, 126 (1967), 417–33 at 418, who cites an eyewitness account of the baptism of one of Carretus’ sons by Nicholas Wotton, who writes: ‘The father [i.e. Ludovicus] being now called Ludovicus Carettus hath made a little book in Hebrew, turned into Latin.’ 48 Epistola, CI: ‘ut dixit Magister noster Hai Gaon, tres luces sunt, lux antiqua, lux pura, et lux purificata, omnes tamen unus Deus . . . ’. 49 Origins of the Kabbalah, trans. Allen Arkush (New York, 1987), 350–4, and particularly n. 308. As both Scholem and Secret mention, the idea of the three lights is also quoted by Postel in his translation of the Zohar on Genesis (London, BL, MS Sloane 1410, fo. 9). 50 e.g. he speaks about the various names of God, while asserting that it is impossible to grasp the essence of God, and states that one can only understand God ‘per signa’. Finally, he writes: ‘Nos theologorum prudentum iudicio rem totam committimus’ (Loci, as in n. 57, 17). 51 Institutiones linguae Syriacae Assyriacae atque Talmudicae una cum Aethiopicae atque Arabicae collatione. The work received its imprimatur from Thomas Papillon and Franciscus Ioverius Valentinus (Iover), author of Sanctiones ecclesiasticae tam synodicae quam pontificiae . . . (Paris 1555), in 1553.

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the verb in Aramaic.52 In the preface, Canini treated the various forms of Aramaic—the Syriac and the Babylonian—which he differentiated according to their antiquity. He argues that the Aramaic spoken by Jesus (equivalent to that of Aquila, Joseph the Blind (a sage of the Babylonian Talmud), and the translators of the Targums of the Hagiographa) began to flourish slightly prior to Jesus’ age. The Aramaic spoken by Jesus to ensure the effective transmission of his message was interspersed with Greek and Latin words. Not unlike Mu¨nster, Canini describes the diglossic situation in Jesus’ time and draws an analogy with the contemporary use of Latin, known only to an educated elite, who use French or Italian in addressing their congregations. Canini dedicated the entire work to his patron, Guillaume du Prat, bishop of Clermont. Although it is unwise to take the rhetorical declarations of dedicatory prefaces too much at face value, it is nevertheless worthy of note that Canini justifies his gift of Aramaic and Talmudic disquisitions as something ‘which befits a Bishop, certainly a Bishop who desires the enhancement of the church of Christ, which many have so vehemently attacked in these days’.53 Knowledge of Aramaic, it would appear, has a role to play in religious controversy.54 In his treatment of these languages Canini combines various concepts and commonplaces. Hebrew is the most ancient language of the world, but the inscription on the cross, written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, points to triads and tetrads. Hebrew gave rise to three dialects, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic; Greek consists of four dialects, and Latin gave rise to Italian, French, and Spanish. The triad and tetrad combine to make a sabbath’s rest.55 This is the closest Canini will go to making a comment of a spiritual nature. As he asserts time and time again, philology is not concerned with the mysteries of the faith. But like all scholars who assert separation of religion from scholarship, he must also justify his undertaking. 52

See Contini, ‘I primordi’ (as in n. 34), 36. Institutiones (as in n. 51), dedicatory preface: ‘Quod argumentum non dedecere Episcopum arbitrati sumus, eumque Episcopum qui Christi ecclesiam quam multi hodie oppugnant vehementissime, auctam atque ornatam cupiat.’ 54 On Du Prat’s involvement in religious controversy, see above, n. 36. Reformers did not have a monopoly of the teaching of Hebrew. At the Colle`ge de France, for example, although Vatable was part of the circle of Meaux, and Mercier was exiled between 1567 and 1570, the other royal readers of Hebrew were Catholics, and Genebrard, for example, was very active in polemics. See S. Kessler Mesguich, ‘L’Enseignement de l’he´breu et de l’arameén a` Paris (1530–1570) (d’apre`s les oeuvres grammaticales des lecteurs royaux)’, in Les Origines du Colle`ge de France (1500–1560) (Paris, 1998), 359. 55 Institutiones (as in n. 51), ‘Hic tetradem in triade nemo non videt e quibus hebdomas et sabbatum quietis conficitur’ (Praefatio). 53


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Canini’s comparative approach to linguistic matters comes to the fore in the appendix to the Aramaic grammar.56 Entitled Novi Testamenti multorum locorum historica enarratio, it consists of fourteen sections on various obscure passages, names, and words in the New Testament expounded by means of Hebrew, Syriac (i.e. Aramaic), Arabic, and Ethiopic.57 Without underplaying the importance of being able to appreciate the dulcet tones of Homer and Demosthenes, Canini insists that a Christian worthy of the name should be able to read and interpret the words of Jesus, an endeavour that does not require deference to any authority or suspension of reason.58 Such a study, he argues somewhat apologetically, enhances understanding of certain passages in the New Testament without affecting the mysteries and dogmas of faith, for which linguistic expertise is not required. What distinguishes Canini’s treatment of this subject is his recourse to Jewish texts and history; his interpretation is not exclusively philological, although as a grammarian, he tends to accord pride of place to philological questions. Consequently, apart from the obvious Aramaic expressions such as ‘raca’, he also discusses the problematic use of Hebrew words such as ‘hosanna’59 and the use of Micah 5: 2 in Matthew (2: 6).60 Like Postel, he discusses the differences between the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.61 Taking his cue from the final disquisition ‘on the daily bread’, he concludes his work with an Aramaic rendering of the ‘precatio dominica’. The work begins with various disquisitions on divine names. Like many others before him, Canini dwells on the name of Jesus.62 His approach is that of a historian (and indeed he explicitly addresses his 56

The appendix is actually of nearly the same length as the Aramaic grammar. In the appendix, it is entitled Loci aliquot Novi Testamenti cum Hebraeorum originibus collati atque historice explicati. (All references here are to this edition.) It was republished several times: as De locis S. Scripturae Hebraicis Angeli Caninii Commentarius (Antwerp, 1600) and in vol. 9 of the Critici sacri (London, 1660, cols. 3687–712) as Disquisitiones in locos aliquot Novi Testamenti obscuriores quibus illi ex Hebraicae Syriacae, Arabicae, et Aethiopicae linguarum originibus quam accuratissime explicantur. 58 Loci (as in n. 57), 2–3: ‘cum enim sacris scriptoribus ea deferenda sit authoritas, ut quanvis ratio non constet, verissima tamen esse quae dixerint, credamus: sic caeteris tantum habendum est fidei quantum rationibus et argumentis probare atque efficere 59 Ibid. 26–9. potuerint’. 60 Ibid. 20–5. 61 Thus e.g. (Loci, 45) he discusses ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me’ and its origin in Psalm 22 and notes that ‘elohi’ given in Mark is Aramaic, but that the word ‘el’ could be used in Aramaic as well as in Hebrew. He therefore suspects that Jesus said ‘Eli’, which would have given rise to the mistaken impression that Jesus was calling for 62 Ibid. 3–14. Elijah (Matt. 27: 47). 57

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work to those who examine origins). He scrutinizes Hebrew literature from the Bible to the Mishnah for occurrences of the name, concluding that ‘Iesu’ is just a form of the name Joshua or Jeshua, an appropriate name, given that it was the leader Joshua and the high priest Jeshua who had been anointed (i.e. mashiah). Rationalist philologist that he is, he has no time for ‘cabbalistic nonsense’.63 He inveighs against Osiander64 and others like him who had committed a grammatical travesty by spelling the name of Jesus with the letters of the tetragrammaton. Canini continues his attack on the cabbalists by turning to other Jewish sources. He argues that Jews of his own time, not to speak of the ancients, commonly used the name Judah, which contains the letters of the tetragrammaton. In other words, the letters were not sacred or mysterious in themselves. Canini’s familiarity with the Talmud is manifested on several occasions. In this context he refers to the passage in the Babylonian Talmud (Bava Qama 80a) which uses the word yeshua in reference to the ritual of the ‘redemption of the first-born’ (Num. 18: 16). He points to the explanatory note of the scholiast (presumably Rashi), who explains that the word yeshua is equivalent to pidyon, the more usual term. Perhaps the most striking element in his discussion is his introduction of a quotation from the Palestinian Talmud to prove his point. He quotes a passage from tractate Sota (7, (1) 21b) about the recitation of the shema65 in which the opinion of Rabbi [Judah the patriarch] that the shema should be recited in the holy tongue is disputed. The story is told of R. Levi ben Haita,66 who went to Caesarea and tried to silence the congregation who were reciting the shema in Greek. R. Yose became 63 Canini’s denunciation of the ‘cabbalistic nonsense’ is problematic if considered in the light of his translation of the letter of the convert Ludovico Carreto discussed above. 64 Andreas Osiander, Annotationum in harmoniam Evangelicam liber unus (Paris, 1545). In a long excursus on chapter 6 of his harmony, following Reuchlin, Osiander repeats the view that the letter shin added to the tetragrammaton forms the name of Jesus. He claims (sig. bbVr) that the three-letter name, Jeshu, according to Jewish commentators, is an acronym for ‘yitaleh shemo u-malkhuto’ (may his name and his kingdom be exalted). Canini attacks Osiander on this point and cites Ibn Ezra, who always uses the name Yeshua (with the letter ayin) and Levita’s statement in his Tishbi (Isny, 1541) that the letter ayin at the end of the word is elided. Canini writes: ‘Sed ex usu linguae Syriacae atque Thalmudicae quas ignorare videtur Osiander, docebimus literas gutturis ut Hebraei vocant, praecipue Aain quae omnium crassissima est, absorberi vel potius excidere’ (p. 11). But see Wakefield, On the Three Languages (as in n. 11), 92–3, who states that the Jews call him Jesu in order to avoid calling him ‘saviour’. 65 Loci (as in n. 57), 12–13. The shema, which consists of three paragraphs—Deut. 6: 4–9; 11: 13–21; Num. 15: 37–41—is the central prayer in the Jewish liturgy. 66 The name Haita is spelt variously, but not ‘Hazota’, as transcribed by Canini.


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angry and stated that the obligation to recite the shema may be fulfilled in any language.67 Canini’s citation of the Palestinian Talmud is remarkable on various counts. First, one cannot help but wonder why he does not simply refer to the Mishnah Sota (7: 1), which states unequivocally that the shema may be recited in any language,68 rather than turn to the more complex discussion of the Talmud. I would suggest that there may be two reasons for Canini’s use of this Jewish source. First, it is written in Aramaic, and he is intent on demonstrating the use of Aramaic in New Testament expressions. But secondly, and perhaps more pertinently, there is the mention of Greek in the story. Canini is discussing a Greek text in its Hebraic framework. The Talmudic text is set in a Judaeo-Hellenistic context; thus in both cases, Jewish and Greek elements are combined. At the same time, the story demonstrates that Jews could recite their most sacred daily prayer—Canini compares it to ‘our Lord’s prayer’—in any language; the search for esoteric meaning in the letters and combination of letters is thereby rendered futile.69 The derivation of names and words, in Canini’s view, is to be established by means of proper philological analysis—accordingly, the name of Jesus is to be connected with the Hebrew word for salvation.70 The Jewish context of the New Testament was also to be sought in passages in which there was no ostensible use of Hebrew or Aramaic. Canini comments on Matthew 19: 24.71 Jesus addresses his disciples and states: ‘I repeat, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’ The key to the interpretation of this and many other strange sayings in the New Testament, he states, is not to be found in Hellenistic writings. He had done his homework and had scanned the literature for similar adages with no success. He had taken on board the suggestion that the word should read ‘rope’ not ‘camel’ (kmilon not kmhlon) and (like Erasmus) had consulted Athenaeus and the second-century Onomasticon of Julius 67 In a comment that betrays a certain degree of familiarity with the Talmudic text, Canini correctly states that Rabbi Yose was a greater authority than Rabbi Levi. 68 The Mishnah was redacted at the end of the second century and is therefore relatively closer in time to the Gospels than the Talmud. 69 Loci (as in n. 57), 14: ‘multo igitur consultius ac magis pium est mysteria non in litteris quod Iudaicum est sed in spiritu quod veri faciunt Christiani vestigare’. 70 See also his interesting study of Amen, ibid., 29–30, with recourse to the Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 47a, for description of three kinds of wrong Amens: he sees the rabbinic disapproval of thoughtless Amens reflected in 1 Cor. 14: 16. 71 Loci (as in n. 57), 39–42.

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Pollux, but the expression was not to be found. The suggestion of Nicholas of Lyra that it referred to a gate in Jerusalem was treated with complete disdain by him. The source and significance of the adage had to be discovered. Once again he turns to Talmudic material and this time he finds two expressions in the Babylonian Talmud to suit his purpose. In the course of the discussion of dreams and their interpretation in tractate Berakhot (55b), it is stated that dreams can only reflect what is suggested by one’s own thoughts. To illustrate the point, an adage is quoted: ‘A person is not shown a golden palm-tree or an elephant going through the eye of a needle.’ An aphorism of a similar nature is produced from another tractate (Bava Metsia 38b), in which R. Sheshet disputing with R. Amram states: ‘Perhaps you are one of those of Pumpeditha who can make an elephant go through the eye of a needle.’ The only problem for Canini is that the Talmudic texts speak of elephants not camels. But he comes up with an easy solution: Jesus was sensitive to his audience’s ignorance of elephants, so he spoke of a camel instead, a more familiar sight in the landscape of the ‘Syria’ of his time. That the Talmudic evidence post-dated the Gospel text and issued from a different (that is, Babylonian not Palestinian) context did not concern Canini, nor, for that matter, Lightfoot, who commenting on the same verse remarkably cites the very same two sayings that Canini had brought to light.72 A notable expression that received constant attention from exegetes is effaqa (Mark 7: 34), when Jesus restores hearing to the deaf man: ‘Looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, Ephphatha which means be opened.’ Discussion of the expression usually revolved around the apparent omission of the letter het (from the root pth), and the use of a double f in Greek to represent the aspirate ph. Canini refers to all these matters, but brings in another dimension, which he claims as his own particular contribution.73 Once again a trip into rabbinic literature enables him to clarify the word (oddly, however, he treats the story as a case of blindness rather than deafness).74 He cites a passage from the Midrash Leviticus Rabba (22: 4)75 which recounts a series of miracle stories about snakes and herbs. The story he selects is about two men walking ‘through the paths of Tiberias’, one blind?, same, the other 72 Lightfoot, In Evangelium (as in n. 1), 222–3. Interestingly, modern commentators 73 Loci (as in n. 57), 42–4. on the Gospels also refer to these Talmudic sayings. 74 I am unable to account for this strange discrepancy. 75 Leviticus Rabba 22: 4 (ed. Margulies, 2nd edn. (Jerusalem, 1953–5), 508). This is a 5th-c. Palestinian homiletic midrash.


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possessed of sight, mefatah.76 The man who could see supported the blind man. ‘They sat down to rest on the road and it happened that they partook of a certain herb. The one who had been blind regained his sight, while the one who had possessed his eyesight became blind; thus before they left that place the one who had been blind was supporting the one who had been able to see.’77 Canini’s use of this Midrash is fascinating. Dissatisfied with the Greek term diano‹cqhti and the Latin adaperire used in the Gospel to express the opening or retrieval of the person’s hearing (he says sight), he once again seeks an Aramaic parallel. His purpose is to find a term that would correspond to the standard word by which Greeks denote ‘someone who possesses sight’, blpwn. The Midrash contained one such expression. But it is clear that this is not simply a search for a verbal parallel. Canini appears to have chosen his Aramaic example also with a view to its context. Like the Gospel, it describes miraculous and supernatural happenings. Moreover, the story in the Midrash took place ‘on the paths of Tiberias’. According to the narration in Mark, Jesus is on his way to the Sea of Galilee. Thus the two stories have several elements in common: vocabulary, miracles, and location. Canini’s purpose is ostensibly to explain what to him appears to be an anomalous expression in the Gospel; but the parallel text which he retrieved from rabbinic literature in order to prove his point might suggest that more critical questions underlie his philological exercise. A wonder herb took away and restored sight. Jesus performed similarly wondrous feats. Canini ends his discussion by disclaiming all knowledge of the miracle drug. Whether it exists or not, he states, is something only physicians can say.78 Such restraint makes it impossible to deduce Canini’s attitude towards the supernatural, and in particular, towards the miracles recounted in the Gospels. To a modern reader, the parallels between these two texts indicate that the author of the Midrash may have known the Gospel miracle stories in some form. Wittingly or not, Canini had based his philological investigation on two texts which appear to have more than mere verbal elements in common. 76

The word petiha is also used. Canini mistranslates one word in the story, gadesh, as ‘ridicule’. It is an uncommon word for ‘lead’. He could also have dwelt on the use of the verb itpetach instead. Cf. the Syriac etpatah (and W. Jennings, Lexicon to the New Testament (Peshitta), rev. edn. (Oxford, 1962), 182, who also refers to the Midrash). 78 Loci (as in n. 57), 44: ‘Porro an herba illa extet vel cheldonium vel alia quae hac vi praedita sit medici viderint.’ 77

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Canini’s observations on some of the expressions in the Lord’s prayer would meet with the approval of modern exegetes.79 He discusses the different readings of the phrase ‘forgive us our debts’, which he categorizes as one of the many Aramaic phrases that had not been changed either by the apostles or by the translators such that its meaning was obscured. In Matthew (6: 12) ‘illa nobilis phrasis’, as he calls it, is ka› fev m·n t feil mata mØn, v ka› me·v f‹emen to·v feiltaiv mØn80 (‘Et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris’). He discusses the Matthean rendering of the remittance of debts and points to its Aramaic origin as exemplified by the expression shevaq hova, which literally means ‘to remit debts’ but signifies ‘forgive sins’ as opposed to the Hebrew terms, selah ‘forgive’ or nasa avon ‘to forgive sin’ or hata ‘to sin’. Canini notes that Luke ‘who was learned in Greek’ gives mart‹av (peccata), that is ‘sins’, in his version (11: 4) instead of ‘debts’. The continuation of the text ‘as we forgive those that trespass against us’ (v ka› me·v f‹emen to·v feiltaiv mØn)—and here he refers to the Latin word debitores—contains an idea that could not be expressed in Greek. Luke thus had to retain the term feiltaiv. Finally, Canini reconciles the two renderings by the general observation that sin is nothing but a debt that needs to be returned by the tears of penitence. In this comparison between the two Gospels, Canini is suggesting that both texts reflect the original Aramaic. According to his reconstruction, Luke, unlike Matthew, does not give a slavish rendering of the Aramaic except in those cases in which the Greek cannot express the required meaning. Implicitly, therefore, Canini is becoming involved in modern questions of translation and redaction. As a finale to his short work, Canini applies his linguistic skills to the knotty problem of the daily bread in the Lord’s prayer ‘in order to delight pious souls’.81 He is familiar with Jerome’s well-known comment that the original Hebrew/Aramaic of the word pio¸siov was mahar, that is ‘tomorrow’82—Jerome states that he saw this reading in 79

Loci (as in n. 57), 46–7. This is the reading in the Greek editions of Erasmus and Stephanus. 81 Loci (as in n. 57), 53–7. 82 Jerome, Comm. in Math., ed. D. Hurst and M. Adriaen, I, ad 6: 11 (Corpus Christianorum, series Lat., 77; Turnhout, 1969), 37. 778–83: ‘In evangelio quod appellatur secundum Hebraeos pro supersubstantiali pani, maar repperi quod dicitur crastinum, ut sit sensus: Panem nostrum crastinum, id est futurum da nobis hodie. Possumus supersubstantialem panem et aliter intelligere qui super omnes substantias ut et universas superet creaturas.’ 80


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the so-called Hebrew Gospel. From this starting point, Canini plies his linguistic trade and proceeds to discuss the grammatical questions surrounding the word.83 He asserts that quotidianus and supersubstantialis, the usual translations of pio¸siov, do not correspond to the Hebrew mahar or dimahar ([bread] of tomorrow). The meaning of pio¸siov had to be understood as a neologism. Despite its rich and felicitous vocabulary, the Greek language did not possess a word that could signify ‘tomorrow’s’. Thus, here, as in other cases, a new word had to be invented.84 The neologism, in this case, was, according to Canini, constructed on the basis of the expression t' pio¸s| [mr{], equivalent to postridie. Canini then reflects on the strange idea of asking ‘today for tomorrow’s bread’. Conscious that he is straying into theologians’ territory, he nevertheless proceeds to analyse the statement. He understands it as an expression of divine providence over fallible human beings, an idea that was likewise manifested in the biblical account of the double portion of manna collected on the day before the Sabbath.85 Likewise, the notion of the sabbatical year and the Jubilee, with the land lying fallow, remittance of debts, and restoration of land prefigured the re-establishment of the heavenly Jerusalem. The foregoing examples of Canini’s disquisitions on the New Testament are representative of his method throughout his ‘aureus libellus’, as Bellerus called it.86 There is a genuine attempt to set the Gospels in their historical and linguistic context. In his discussion of Matthew 5: 22, he observes the triadic nature of the verse: ‘Whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother ‘‘raca’’ shall be in danger of the council; but whosoever shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.’ He then compares it to the different responsibilities and tasks of the three types of Jewish Sanhedrin as described in Jewish sources, thus offering a real contribution to the exegesis of the verse. He was probably the first to dispense with speculative explanations of the unusual name of Iscariot by analysing it in terms of its two Hebraic components ish Carioth 83 His discussion bears remarkable affinity with that of W. Foerster’s entry on pio¸siov in Theologisches Wo¨rterbuch zum Neuen Testament, ed. G. Kittel (Stuttgart, 1935), ii. 587–95. 84 Ibid. 55: ‘Ea enim est vis Hebraici et Syriaci sermonis ut linguae Graecae ubertas atque felicitas inopiam suam agnoscere et nova fingere nomina cogatur.’ 85 A similar remark was also made by Tertullian in Adversus Marcionem, 4. 26. 4. 86 See n. 45.

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(a man of Cariot).87 His reflection on the neologism in the Lord’s prayer mentioned above is certainly an approach to the question of the nature of Hellenistic Greek, which became so lively an issue at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century in the work of Scaliger, Salmasius, and Drusius.88 Whatever his motivation for publishing the visions of the converted Jew Ludovico Carreto with their mystical manipulation of language, in his New Testament observations Canini promotes rational exegesis which takes Jewish views into account. In this endeavour, not unlike Lightfoot and indeed the majority of Christian Hebraists, he availed himself of, and manifested considerable familiarity with, Jewish writings but without abandoning the standard apologetic framework, which tended to favour negative stereotypical assessments of Jews and Judaism. Loci (as in n. 57), 52. Apart from De Jonge, ‘Study’ (as in n. 7), see A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger, ii: Historical Chronology (Oxford, 1993), 416–18. 87 88

7 Robert Bellarmine, Christian Hebraist and Censor Piet van Boxel

A list of Christian hebraists compiled by Raphael Loewe1 includes the name of Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621). At first glance, the inclusion of Bellarmine seems puzzling. After all, it is usually not with Hebrew studies, but rather with the Counter-Reformation that Bellarmine is associated. Indeed, he is regarded as the architect of controversy theology. A chair was already established in 1561 at the Collegio Romano, the most prestigious college of the Jesuits founded by Ignatius of Loyola in 1551. But a coherent theological system as an adequate tool in the controversies with the heretics was not produced until Bellarmine was appointed professor at the College, holding the chair from 1576 until 1586. The fruit of his teaching at the Collegio Romano was his magnum opus De controversiis christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos Disputationes.2 Despite occasional criticism by his contemporaries,3 Bellarmine was undoubtedly one of the main players in the fight against reformers and heresy. Raphael Loewe had little evidence of Bellarmine’s activity as a Christian hebraist: a small Hebrew grammar which, as Bellarmine himself states, was written ‘in order to understand Hebrew books with

Encyclopaedia Judaica ( Jerusalem, 1971), viii. 25. The first volume, treating subjects such as Scripture and tradition, the Church, and the status of the pope, was published in 1586. The second volume, on the sacraments, was completed in 1588. The last volume, which appeared in 1592, deals with theological notions such as grace, free will, and justification. See further J. J. I. von Do¨llinger and F. H. Reusch, Die Selbstbiographie des Cardinals Bellarmin, lateinisch und deutsch mit 3 Ibid. 96–9. geschichtlichen Erlaüterungen (Bonn, 1887), 93. 1 2

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the help of a dictionary’,4 and a commentary on the Psalms.5 His exercise on Psalm 33—an explanation of the Hebrew text—is not mentioned in biographical dictionaries. However, apart from these published documents, there are two manuscripts, both autograph, which have been ignored in biographical studies of this illustrious protagonist of the Counter-Reformation. Scrutiny of these texts sheds more light on Bellarmine as a Christian hebraist.

BELLARMINE’S TRAINING Born on 4 October 1542 in Montepulciano, Bellarmine received his first training in his hometown at a Jesuit school, devoting much of his time to Latin. He read Vergil at night and wrote poems in hexameters with Vergilian vocabulary.6 In 1560 he entered the Society of Jesus and moved to Rome to the Collegio Romano, where in 1563 he graduated in Aristotelian philosophy. After his philosophical studies he taught in Florence and Mondovı`, teaching himself Greek. He was sent to Padua in 1567 for his theological training.7 After one year his superiors decided that he should complete his studies in Louvain,8 the main reason being that the city needed someone to give weekly sermons in Latin, a task which according to his superiors suited nobody better than Bellarmine.9 He arrived in Louvain in the summer of 1569 and stayed until 1576; these years were to be decisive for his intellectual, ecclesiastical, and political life. Louvain was a key location in the struggle against the Reformation. The university had taken the lead in countering Luther and had already condemned several of his propositions in 1519. In 1546, censorship of Do¨llinger and Reusch, Selbstbiographie (as in n. 2), 34. There are a few traces of Jewish exegesis in his commentary on the Psalms (Rome, 1611). He took the greater part of his grammatical and critical remarks in this work from Genebrard’s commentary (Paris, 1581); thus Richard Simon, Histoire critique du Vieux Testament (Paris, 1678), 527. 6 See Giacomo Fuligatti, Vita del Cardinale Roberto Bellarmino (Rome, 1624), 14. 7 Ibid. 27–37. Since all biographies of Bellarmine have strong hagiographical tendencies they should be used with great reserve; see, however, J. Brodrick, Robert Bellarmine 1542–1621, 2 vols. (London, 1928), i. 32–60; A. Fiocchi, S. Roberto Bellarmino della Compagnia di Gesu`, Cardinale di S. Romana Chiesa (Isola del Liri, 1930), 51–86. 8 See L. Ceyssens, ‘Bellarmin et Louvain’, in M. Lamberigts (ed.), L’Augustinisme a ` l’ancienne faculte´ de theólogie de Louvain (Louvain, 1994), 179–205, esp. 184–5. 9 See Fuligatti, Vita (as in n. 6), 38–43. 4 5

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books, Bible editions, and translations was initiated, and led to the first index to be issued with the sanction of the Church. In his The Censorship of the Church of Rome, G. H. Putnam considers it ‘quite fitting that the first official protest of the Church should be made from a place like Louvain, the university of which stood like a picket-post of orthodoxy confronting the perilous heresies advancing from the North and from the East’.10 In 1572 Gregory XIII issued a Bull directing the production of an Index expurgatorius. The index was supposed to be produced on the lines of the one published in 1571 in Antwerp, of which the larger part was prepared by the theological faculty of Louvain.11 There is no indication that Bellarmine was involved in the preparation of the Antwerp Index expurgatorius, but one should not underestimate the impact that such a major theological undertaking must have had upon the young theologian. Less than a decade later Bellarmine himself would play a key role in the censorship of Hebrew literature. The heretics were not only beyond the gates of Louvain. Doctrinal divergences became a threat within the university when Baius (Michel De Bay) put forward his dissenting view on free will and grace.12 After, and probably in consequence of, his (implicit) condemnation by Rome, which, however, did not undermine his position in the university, the Jesuits of Louvain opened a public theological course at their own house of studies in 1570 with the consent of the university. Bellarmine became the first professor of theology in the new school.13 Apart from theological contention in this stronghold of orthodoxy, Bellarmine encountered the followers of the Reformation in person. In his autobiography he describes how at the end of August 1572,14 when the Prince of Orange was advancing on Louvain with a big army, almost all the clergy left, because the city could not be defended easily and the heretic 10 G. H. Putnam, The Censorship of the Church of Rome and its Influence upon the Production and Distribution of Literature, 2 vols. (New York, 1906), i. 143. 11 See F. H. Reusch, Der Index der verbotenen Bu ¨ cher: Ein Beitrag zur Kirchen- und Literaturgeschichte, 2 vols. (Bonn, 1883–5), i. 427–8. The index, which was planned by Gregory XIII, was never published. 12 See Ceyssens, ‘Bellarmin’ (as in n. 8), 190 ff. Bellarmine opposed Baius in his Louvain lectures; see M. Biersack, ‘Bellarmin und die ‘‘Causa Baii’’ ’, in L’Augustinisme (as in n. 8), 167–78. 13 See X. M. Le Bachelet, Bellarmin avant son Cardinalat 1542–1598: Correspondance et documents (Paris, 1911), 73 n. 1. T. Dietrich, Die Theologie der Kirche bei Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621): Systematische Voraussetzungen des Kontroverstheologen (Paderborn, 1999), 31–2, questions whether Bellarmine’s position was formally acknowledged by the university. 14 See Le Bachelet, Bellarmin (as in n. 13), 78 n. 1.

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Calvinists, of whom the Prince’s army was full, were particularly hostile to the religious.15 Since the enemy had arrived much earlier than expected, the Rector of the college told those present to change clothes and to comb their hair in such a way that the tonsure was not visible. He then divided between them the little money there was in the college and sent them away two by two to seek safety from the imminent danger. N. [i.e. Bellarmine] walked for many days with a confrere in the direction of Artois in difficult and dangerous circumstances, until he came to Douai, where, fleeing from the war, he encountered the plague which was sweeping the city. But God saved them from many perils.16

In the autumn of 1572 the Duke of Alba recaptured Louvain and Bellarmine returned. This experience had a great impact on him. It was during the Louvain years that the foundation was laid for his magnum opus, which he wrote in Rome. He states in his introduction to the Disputationes that, while in Louvain, he started to make notes ‘in order to write books on controversial issues’.17

HEBREW Thus it was in Louvain that Bellarmine’s profession as a theologian and defender of the Catholic faith was established. But his stay there also provided him with the opportunity to study Hebrew and Jewish exegesis and thus to become a Christian hebraist. As will be demonstrated, for Bellarmine the two professions were intimately related. He was taught biblical exegesis at the Jesuit school by Johan Willems of Haarlem, a former student at the Collegium Trilingue.18 In 1566 Willems (Harlemius) had entered the Society of Jesus, but taught at the Trilingue until 1569 as the successor of Andreas van Gennip, and was one of the collaborators of Arias Montanus for the Biblia regia (Antwerp 1569–72).19 In Bellarmine’s days the Collegium Trilingue was a respected institution. The opposition to the use of Greek and Hebrew in biblical exegesis had weakened considerably. For many theologians in Louvain Erasmus’ ideal—that texts should be studied in the original language and in their historical and cultural context, so that no allusion, 15 See E. de Moreau, ‘Pre ˆtres tue´s par les gueux, 1566–1582’, Nouvelle revue theólogique, 69B (1947), 712–85. 16 Do ¨ llinger and Reusch, Selbstbiographie (as in n. 2), 34–5. 17 See Ceyssens, ‘Bellarmin’ (as in n. 8), 201; Do ¨ llinger and Reusch, Selbstbiographie 18 See Ceyssens, ‘Bellarmin’, 186 ff. (as in n. 2), 93. 19 See H. de Vocht, History of the Foundation and the Rise of the Collegium Trilingue Lovaniense 1517–1550 (Louvain, 1955), iv. 156–7.

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no detail should fail to produce in the reader all that the sacred author meant by what he wrote20—had become exegetical practice in Louvain. The study of Greek and Hebrew was no longer suspect, as it had been in the days of Latomus, ‘the instigator of most of the animosity against the Trilingue’ from its very beginning.21 Slowly accepting humanistic ideals, the theologians adapted them, however, to their own purposes. Latomus’ student Clenardus strongly opposed his De trium linguarum et studii theologici ratione dialogus, in which he had rejected the requirement for the theologian to know languages. In several letters written between 1535 and 1541 Clenardus expressed the conviction that only through the knowledge of languages could heresy be halted and people brought back to the Church: ‘Without the help of languages one cannot wage war against error.’22 From being a threat to orthodoxy languages had become a tool in the fight against heresy. Versed in Latin and with a good knowledge of Greek, Bellarmine had never been trained in Hebrew. At age 71, now a cardinal, he wrote about his time at the Jesuit school: In those days N [Bellarmine] considered the Hebrew language very useful for the understanding of the Holy Scriptures and decided to study it. After having been taught the alphabet and some basic grammatical rules by somebody who knew the language, he himself wrote a Hebrew grammar according to a simpler method than that used by the rabbis and in a short time he learned the Hebrew language as far as seemed sufficient for a theologian. He then established an academy and studied Hebrew and Greek with some friends. In order to prove that his grammar was easier than others, he promised one of his students of the theological school, who knew no Hebrew at all, that if he were to teach him for eight days, he would be able to understand Hebrew books with the help of a dictionary, as he himself had managed to do.23

It is unlikely that, as a former student of the Trilingue, Johan Willemsz did not include Hebrew in his teaching of biblical exegesis at the Jesuit school. He certainly taught Bellarmine more than ‘the alphabet and some basic grammatical rules’.24 To what extent Bellarmine devoted 21 Ibid. 326. See further pp. 327–48. 22 Ibid. 341. Ibid., i. 305. Do¨llinger and Reusch, Selbstbiographie (as in n. 2), 34. His claim to be able to teach a student Hebrew within eight days is clearly inspired by the legend that Jerome taught his spiritual daughter Blesilla the Hebrew language in a few days; see N. Frizon, La Vie du Cardinal Bellarmin, de la Compagnie de Jesus (Nancy, 1708), 78. 24 Le Bachelet, Bellarmin (as in n. 13), 68 n. 3, takes Bellarmine’s account at face value and does not consider Willems to have been his teacher. According to Frizon, La Vie, Harlemius taught him the basic principles. See further Do¨llinger and Reusch, Selbstbiographie, 80. 20 23

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himself as a student to the study of Hebrew remains unclear. However, from 1574 onwards, when he was the only professor at the Jesuit school, he taught biblical exegesis, for which knowledge of Hebrew was, according to the exegetical tradition in Louvain, essential.25 It is probable that in those years he wrote his Exercitatio grammatica in Psalmum XXXIII,26 a word-for-word explanation of the Hebrew text of the psalm. Jean Cinquarbres’s Hebrew grammar27 served as an essential reference book in this early work. In the meantime he prepared his own Hebrew grammar, which was published in Rome in 1578.28 In the second edition (Rome, 1580) the Exercitatio grammatica was included. In this combined edition the references in the Exercitatio are no longer to Cinquarbre’s grammar, but to his own Institutiones linguae Hebraicae. The grammars appear to be interchangeable and either one could be used for the Exercitatio grammatica in Psalmum XXXIII.29 In fact, the similarity between the two is so great that it is difficult not to assume that Bellarmine made more than ample use of Cinquarbre’s Institutiones. His user-friendly grammar for Christian hebraists was apparently a success, judging by the number of reprints.30 The grammar published by his confrere and student Georg Mayr in 161631 shows, however, the limitations of Bellarmine’s Institutiones. In his introduction, Mayr refers to Bellarmine’s ‘intention to write a more elaborate grammar so seriously needed, given the lack of good Hebrew books’. He defends Bellarmine for not achieving his aim on the ground that he had been called to more important responsibilities in the Jesuit order and in the Church (he became cardinal in 1599). Thus Mayr had been requested to 25 See Le Bachelet, Bellarmin, 86–7. At the start, in 1570, there were three professors, Harlemius [ Johan Willems] reading Scripture: ‘Lovanii coeptus est cursus Theologiae tribus professoribus, et P. Robertus quidem habet auditores fere centum; P. Joannes Harlemius vero qui legit Scripturam circiter sexaginta et P. Edmundus [Edmond Tenerus] in lectione primae secundae [of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae] circiter quadraginta’; ibid. 75. 26 His first edition has no place of publication, publisher, or date. 27 Joannes Quinquarboreus, Institutiones in linguam Hebraicam (Paris, 1559). 28 Robert Bellarmine, Institutiones linguae Hebraicae ex optimo quoque auctore collectae; et ad quantam maximam fieri potuit brevitatem, perspicuitatem, atque ordinem revocatae (Rome, 1578). 29 Later editions of Cinquarbres’s grammar include also Bellarmine’s Exercitatio (Paris, 1582, 1609, 1619, and 1621). 30 Rome, 1578, 1580, and 1585; Antwerp, 1596; Lyon, 1596; Venice, 1606; Antwerp, 1606 and 1616; Cologne, 1616 and 1618; Geneva, 1619; Paris, 1622; Naples, 1622. 31 Georg Mayr, Institutiones linguae Hebraicae in sex partes distributae (Augsburg, 1616).

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complete Bellarmine’s work and to provide a more elaborate grammar based on the Institutiones.32 From the Exercitatio grammatica in Psalmum XXXIII it becomes clear that Bellarmine considered Hebrew indispensable for the understanding of the biblical text. The statement in his autobiography that a theologian should have sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to read Hebrew books is therefore primarily to be understood as referring to the Hebrew Bible. The importance of Hebrew is highlighted in a small manuscript (an octavo of 120 pages) of the Gregorian University in Rome, which contains Bellarmine’s notes on Genesis (MS 385b). Since Bellarmine’s copy of the Nuremberg edition of the Vulgate (1529) containing his annotations was destroyed by fire in the library of the University of Louvain in 1914,33 the Gregorian manuscript is a precious document which sheds light on Bellarmine’s exegetical methods. Apart from a preliminary study by Alberto Vaccari,34 it has not received the attention it deserves. A certain number of notes in the manuscript relate to rather elementary grammatical and semantic matters, demonstrating Bellarmine’s role as a teacher of Hebrew. Various readings and different meanings of Hebrew words, their roots, and derivations are given, for which Bellarmine refers to Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Shorashim. Thus in Genesis 1: 1 he gives the different meanings of the verb bara, which, apart from ‘to create’, also means ‘to destroy’ and ‘to divide’. This is followed by the remark that contrary to Jerome’s understanding of the verb in his Quaestiones Hebraicae, the verb cannot mean ‘to divide’ since division presupposes existence. In another note on Genesis 1: 1 he writes out the complete conjugation of the verb haya (to be). In a note on the word ruah (spirit) in Genesis 1: 2 he adds: ‘explain why there is a patah at the end?’ This is apparently meant to be taken up in class, as is the conjugation of haya, for which our teacher of Hebrew apparently needed a mnemonic. Apart from this type of annotation Bellarmine concentrates on the much-debated issue of the authentic text of the Bible and on Jewish 32 Mayr was in regular correspondence with Bellarmine, who on several occasions asked for his advice on philological questions; see Laetitia Boehm et al. (eds.), Biographisches Lexikon der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universita¨t Mu¨nchen (Berlin, 1998), i. 260 f. The correspondence is in the archives of the Pontificia Universita` Gregoriana in Rome. In 1622 Simeon de Muis published a revised edition of Bellarmine’s grammar, Roberti Bellarmini Institutiones linguae Hebraicae. Eiusdem exercitatio in Ps. 33. Una cum Simeonis Muisii Aurelianensis . . . annotationibus (Paris, 1622). 33 See Le Bachelet, Bellarmin (as in n. 13), 94 n. 1. 34 ‘Note del Bellarmino al Genesi’, Gregorianum, 2 (1921), 579–88.

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biblical exegesis. But it was not only during his stay in Louvain that Bellarmine occupied himself with these questions. In later years, after he had left Louvain for Rome in 1576, he was involved in the new edition of the Vulgate and in the censorship of Hebrew books, activities which cannot be dissociated from his search for the authentic text of Scripture and his appraisal of Jewish exegesis. The groundwork for all his activities after 1576 had been laid in Louvain.

THE B IBLICAL TEXT Of special interest is Bellarmine’s approach to the biblical text, and in particular the limited authority he assigns to the Vulgate. His position vis-a`-vis the Vulgate should be assessed in the light of the Council of Trent. Defending the Latin translation against the unrestricted emphasis on the Hebrew text by humanists and reformers, the Council had declared ‘that this old and common (vulgata) edition, which has been approved by the long use of so many centuries in the Church, should be considered authentic in public reading, disputations, sermons and explanations . . . ’.35 The authenticity of the Vulgate as claimed by the Council was interpreted in three different ways. There were those who considered it authentic in the sense that not a single word was corrupt and that therefore any other text, be it Hebrew or Greek, was of secondary importance. For others the authenticity of the Vulgate operated only in relation to other Latin translations. A third group restricted the authority of the Vulgate to matters of faith and morals. The different interpretations of the Council’s declaration found their fiery supporters in the Collegium Trilingue. One of the most respected lecturers in Latin at the Trilingue, Peter Nannius, had concluded from his work on the Bible after the method introduced by Erasmus, comparing the text of the Vulgate in various copies with Greek codices, that the Vulgate often represented a far better text than the Greek. Bellarmine considered the Vulgate text a highly important witness of a lost original.36 A slightly stricter position was held by Willem van der Linden (Lindanus), who devoted himself to a rational method of biblical exegesis. From a comparison of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin he concluded that the 35 Sessio IV (8 Apr. 1546), see H. Denzinger and A. Scho ¨ nmetzer, Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 36th edn. (Freiburg im 36 De Vocht, History (as in n. 19), iv. 297. Breisgau, 1976), no. 1506.

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Vulgate, although containing many obscure and bad renderings of the original, was the most authoritative text.37 Lindanus’ view was openly challenged by John Isaac Levita, lecturer in Hebrew at the Trilingue, as well as by Harlemius and Arias Montanus, all fervent advocates of the importance of the Hebrew for the reconstruction of the biblical text. Direct evidence that Bellarmine shared the view of his teacher Harlemius appears from his Notae in Genesim. AUTHENTICITY OF THE HEBREW TEXT In a number of cases Bellarmine stresses the reliability of the Hebrew, which he is not prepared to change to confirm to the Latin. One such example is Genesis 8: 7, about the raven that Noah sent out in order to discover whether the waters of the flood had subsided. Both the Septuagint and the Vulgate read: ‘it went and did not come back until the waters were dried up from the earth’. According to the Hebrew, however, the raven went and did come back.38 Bellarmine defends the Hebrew against alleged corruption39 by a careful reading of the context. For after Noah had sent the raven, he sent a dove ‘but the dove found no place to rest her foot, and returned to him to the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth (v 9)’. From this context it seems plausible that the raven too returned. Furthermore, had the raven not returned, Noah would have concluded that the flood had come to an end and would not have sent the dove. Instead of changing the Hebrew to accord with the Septuagint, the Vulgate, Josephus, and all the Church Fathers,40 Bellarmine prefers to reconcile the Vulgate with the Hebrew Ibid. 379. In the Antwerp edition of the Vulgate (1574) it is indicated in the margin that in various manuscripts the Hebrew text and the Targum say that the raven did return. Bellarmine was certainly familiar with this edition. 39 He refers to Francisco Melchor Cano, De locis theologicis libri duodecim . . . II. 13 (Louvain, 1564; 1st edn., Salamanca, 1563). 40 Cano refers to Jerome, Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, Isidore, Chrysostom, Eusebius, and all the ‘doctores catholici tam Graeci quam Latini, tum vetusti, tum iuniores ex LXX Interpretibus’, but he does not mention Josephus. According to the Greek edition of the Jewish Antiquities (i. 91) (Basle, 1544) and the Latin translation by S. Gelenius (Basle, 1548 and Lyon, 1566), the raven did return. The Latin translation by R. Goullet (Paris, 1513) and earlier editions of S. Gelenius (Basle, 1534 and 1540) were emended according to the Vulgate and read: ‘misit corvum . . . Qui cuncta reperiens inundantia, non regressus est ad Noe’. The Latin translation attributed to Rufinus (Flavii Josephi Hebraei antiquitatum Iudaicarum libri XX (Cologne, 1534) ad loc.) indicates the discrepancy between the Hebrew text and the Vulgate: ‘[non] regressus est ad Noe’. 37 38

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by stating that the raven, according to the Hebrew, did return, but did not enter the ark, circling around it until the waters had dried up.41 For the meeting between Laban and the servant of Abraham in Genesis 24: 32 the Hebrew, followed by the Septuagint and the Targum, has: ‘And he [Laban] gave him [Abraham’s servant] straw and provender for the camels, and water to wash his feet and the feet of the men who were with him.’ Bellarmine notices that according to the Vulgate Laban gave water [to the servant] to wash the feet of the camels, which rendering he rejects, ‘since reason amply confirms that this (i.e. the Hebrew) is more correct’.42 The discrepancy between the Vulgate (which follows the Septuagint) and the Hebrew in Genesis 3: 17 is, according to some commentators, due to the fact that the Septuagint and the Latin reflect a different Hebrew text. In order to harmonize it with the Vulgate the Hebrew baavureha ‘because of you (the ground is cursed)’ should be changed to bavodeha ‘in your (Adam’s) work (the ground is cursed)’. Bellarmine rejects the idea of correcting the Hebrew, and obviates the discrepancy by considering the Latin as a rendering quo ad sensum.43

41 ‘Egrediebatur et non revertebatur. Melchior Canus liber 2 de locis c. 13 putat ex hoc loco convinci, corruptum esse hebraeum textum, quoniam quidem 70, Hieronymus et Josephus liber 1 antiquitatum c. 1 et omnes patres legunt non revertebatur, cum tamen hebraeus codex habeat revertebatur. Sed vero non contradicit hebraeus textus graeco; non enim dicit revertebatur, sed egrediebatur egrediendo et redeundo donec siccarentur aquae, quibus verbis non significatur quod redierit in arcam, ut Canus putat, sed quod volitaverit prope arcam eundo et redeundo. Et quod re vera corvus non abierit procul et quod redierit non quidem intrans in arcam, sed prope, vel supra arcam, ita ut a Noe videretur, patet ex duobus: primo quia adhuc tota terra erat cooperta aquis, ut infra dicetur, et sicut columba non invenerit ubi requiesceret, ita nec corvus invenisset. 2o. quia si corvus non rediisset, Noe putasset finitum esse diluvium, et non mississet columbam, nisi prius ipse respexisset. Nam hoc erat signum cessationis diluvii, si avis missa non rediret. Nam cum columba emissa bis rediret, intelligebat diluvium non cessasse, et ideo misit eam tertio, et cum non rediret intellexit finitum diluvium’; Notae in Genesim ad loc. 42 ‘dedit aquam pedibus camelorum. Graeca, chaldea et hebraea habent pedibus eius id est viri non camelorum et hoc esse verius ratio ipsa ample confirmat’; Notae in Genesim ad loc. The variant mentioned by Bellarmine is found in the margin in the Antwerp edition (1574) of the Vulgate. In the Vulgata Sixtina (1590) Gen. 24: 32 (there 24: 25) has been emended according to the Hebrew. In the Sixto-Clementina edition (1592) it reads again ‘the feet of the camels’. 43 ‘baavureha quidam existimant Hieronymum et ante eum LXX interpretes legisse bavodeha nam verterunt ‘‘in opere tuo’’ et ideo vellent corrigere hunc locum. Sed audiendi non sunt. Nam Hieronymus in quaestionibus in Genesim dicit in hebraeo esse ‘‘propter te’’, non ‘‘in opere tuo’’. Tamen recte vertit ‘‘in opere tuo’’ quo ad sensum, nam ‘‘propter te’’ significat propter peccatum tuum id est propter opus tuum malum’; Notae in Genesim ad loc.

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In his attempts to reconcile the Vulgate with the Hebrew Bellarmine did not question the authenticity of the latter, although he does entertain the possibility of scribal error. He considers the Hebrew of Genesis 6: 3, which reads jadon, corrupt, and prefers the rendering in the Septuagint and the Vulgate, ‘My Spirit will not always remain in man’, that reflects the Hebrew jalon. This translation makes ample sense according to Chrysostom.44

T H E T R AN SL AT I O N S In order to establish a reliable text for his exegesis, Bellarmine carries out a careful comparison of the various translations, including the heavily criticized Latin translation by Pagninus, which had been included in the Antwerp Polyglot. Here, too, he is protective towards the Vulgate,45 although his assessment is, by and large, balanced. It is obvious that when the Vulgate, the Septuagint, and the Targum agree, their rendering of the Hebrew takes precedence over all other translations. Thus Genesis 1: 1 can be translated either as ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’ or as ‘in the beginning, when God created heaven and earth’. The last rendering, which is Pagninus’ translation, is rejected, since the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and the Targum translate ‘In the beginning God created’.46 When translations differ, Bellarmine often gives reasons as to why a translation should be rejected. Thus in Genesis 1: 2 ‘And the world was tohu wabohu’, the Septuagint renders tohu as aoratos (invisibilis), deriving tohu from tehom (abyss) in the sense that the earth was in an abyss and therefore invisible. Bellarmine rejects this derivation and refers 44 ‘Meo iudicio textus hebraeus est corruptus vitio librariorum, et est jadon pro jalon nam graeci verterunt ‘‘non permanebit’’ ut etiam Hieronymus in vulgata editione. Et sensus est ut exponit Chrysostomos ‘‘non permanebit spiritus meus’’ id est vis mea qua homines rego et conservo longo tempore, sed perdam illos quia toti sunt facti carnales’; Notae in Genesim ad loc. 45 In Gen. 26: 17 he defends the Latin translation ‘Isaac encamped in the torrent of Gerar’ against the Septuagint ‘in the valley’ by suggesting that Jerome meant to say that Isaac encamped next to the torrent: ‘habitavit in torrente. LXX habent vallem. Verbum nahal utrumque significat. Forte Hieronymus vult dicere ‘‘in torrente’’ id est ‘‘iuxta torrentem’’ ’; Notae in Genesim ad loc. 46 The same in Gen. 4: 13: ‘Pagninus et alii recentiores vertunt ‘‘maior est poena mea quam ut ferre possim’’. At LXX, Hieronymus et Chaldeus concorditer vertunt ‘‘maior est iniquitas mea, quam ut remitti possit’’. Et quamquam verba hebraea utrumque sensum ferre possunt, tamen nonnisi temere in re ambigua receditur a tanta auctoritate’; Notae in Genesim ad loc.

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to the Targum, Pagninus, Ibn Ezra, and David Kimhi, who give it the meaning ‘solitude’ or ‘desert’. He then approves of Jerome’s translation inanis (void), indicating that grass, flowers, and other things which were the purpose of the world’s creation were lacking.47 When no decision can be made on the basis of semantic, grammatical, or Scriptural arguments, the Vulgate does not hold a privileged position and is not automatically considered to give the correct reading. Thus in Genesis 21: 7 Sarah’s question, ‘who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would suckle children?’, is open to various interpretations. The Targum translates: ‘Who other than God said to Abraham that Sarah would suckle a son, for nobody apart from God could have told such a miraculous thing.’ In the Septuagint ‘who’ refers to the man who announced to Abraham that Sarah would give birth. The Vulgate takes into account the miraculous nature of the event, and reads: ‘To whom would Abraham have said, that Sarah would suckle a child.’48 Since all three interpretations are justifiable, no decision is made as to which translation should be considered the correct one. It would appear that only when the Vulgate supports the doctrine of the Church is it given precedence. Such is the case with Genesis 4: 7, where, according to the Septuagint, Abel will turn to Cain, who will rule over him. Although such an understanding is sustainable, one should keep to the Vulgate, which says that sin’s desire will be towards Cain, but that he will rule over it, since this rendering is proof of man’s free will.49

THE ANTWER P POL YGL OT It is difficult to dissociate Bellarmine’s approach to the biblical text from the heated discussions about the Antwerp Polyglot, to which his teacher 47 ‘erat igitur terra inanis quia carebat herbis, floribus aliisque rebus ad quas producendas creata est’; Notae in Genesim ad loc. 48 ‘Quis auditurum crederet Abraham quod Sara lactaret filium. Hebraea verba Mi milel le-Avraham tribus modis exponuntur a chaldeo, graeco et latino interprete. Chaldeus illud Mi refert ad Deum in hunc sensum, quis fuit nisi Deus qui dixit Abrahae, lactabit Sara filium, nec enim poterat nisi Deus rem tam prodigiosam narrare. Graecus retulit ad hominem, qui nunciavit Abrahae partum Sarae, in hunc sensum quis nunciabit Abrahae rem tam novam quod Sara lactaret filium. Latinus contrario modo exponit quis credet dicenti Abrahamo. Legit enim Latinus pro Mi non quis sed cui, hoc modo cui dicet Abraham lactat Sara filium, quasi dicat cui hoc dicere audebit Abraham, cum incredibile videatur’; Notae in Genesim ad loc. 49 ‘ ‘‘nonne si bene feceris, recipies’’. Graeci vertunt nonne si bene obtuleris, et non recte diviseris (id est meliora tibi quam Deo dederis) peccasti. Sed quiesce (id est ne timeas

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Harlemius’ comparisons of the various versions with the Hebrew Bible had made such an important contribution.50 The initial approbation by Pope Gregory XIII,51 after his predecessor’s rejection of this scholarly masterpiece, did not prevent the Biblia regia becoming a controversial issue within the Church. The spokesman for the opposition was Leon de Castro, of the University of Salamanca. He opposed the inclusion in the Polyglot of the Hebrew text and the Latin translation by Pagninus.52 Invoking the decree of the Tridentine Council, he advocated the exclusive authority of the Vulgate.53 In a letter of 1 April 1575, Bellarmine asked Cardinal Sirleto, whose support had been crucial in obtaining papal approbation of the Polyglot,54 what the Council of Trent exactly meant when attributing authority to the Vulgate. He furthermore wanted the Cardinal’s opinion about the integrity of the Hebrew codices.55 The two questions were intimately interrelated. It is most unlikely that Bellarmine was not acquainted with Sirleto’s opinion that the revision of the Vulgate should be entrusted to experts in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and that authority should be ascribed to the Vulgate only in matters of faith and morals.56 His letter may well be seen as a reaction to propterea amittere primogenituram) nam ad te erit conversio eius (Habel) et tu dominaberis illius. Et vere, litera hebraea sine punctis hanc lectionem ferre patet. At Hieronymus in quaestionibus hebraicis exponit ut nos habemus, et hinc deducit optime liberum arbitrium’; Notae in Genesim ad loc. 50 J. Harlemius, ‘Lectiones in Latinis Bibliis editionis Vulgatae ex vetustissimis Manuscriptis exemplaribus collectae, et ad textum hebraicum, chaldaicum, graecum et syriacum examinatae, opera et industria aliquot Theologorum in Academia Lovaniensi’, in Biblia Sacra, Hebraice, Chaldaice, Graece et Latine . . . [ed. Benedictus Arias Montanus], 8 vols. (Antwerp, 1569 [1571]–1573), vii. 51 At the Council of Trent it was decided that in future all versions of the Bible would have to be approved by the Church; see Concilium Tridentinum: Diariorum, Actorum, Epistularum, Tractatuum nova collectio (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1901 ff.) i. 36 ff.; H. Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, 5 vols. (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1951–75), ii. 57; G. Denzler, Kardinal Guglielmo Sirleto (1514–1585): Leben und Werk (Munich, 1964), 119. The universities of Louvain and Paris had already given their consent; see M. Rooses, Christophe Plantin imprimeur anversois (Antwerp, 1890), 131–3. 52 See H. Ho ¨ pfl, Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der Sixto-Klementinischen Vulgata (Freiburg53 Ibid. 30–2. im-Breisgau, 1913), 107. 54 See Denzler, Sirleto (as in n. 51), 136. 55 Le Bachelet, Bellarmin (as in n. 13), 92–3. 56 Sirleto’s esteem for the Hebrew text is clearly expressed in a letter to Cardinal Cervini, whose personal adviser he was during the Council, referring to what Hermann Lethmathius had said: ‘nemo hoc ita intelligat, ut putet hanc LXX versionem sufficere, et propterea hebraicam originem rejiciendam, sed, ut teste Tertulliano Ptolomeus fecit, potius utramque conjugi debere, quod illa huic nostrae translationi auctoritatem, haec vero hebraicae veritati multum addat lucis et perspicuitatis’; quoted by X. M. Le Bachelet, Bellarmin et la Bible Sixto-Cle´mentine (Paris, 1911), 7.

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Castro’s attack on the Polyglot, which he considered an important tool for biblical exegesis. It is more than likely that he therefore appealed to one of the most respected experts on the subject to pronounce once again on the matter.57 Sirleto, however, did not answer Bellarmine’s letter. That he apparently had lost control over the issue becomes clear from a declaration of the Congregation of the Council dated 17 January 1576, which stated that the mere change of a sentence, a word, a syllable, an iota of the Vulgate text would suffice to call forth the punishment laid down in the decree Insuper.58 With regard to the Antwerp Polyglot, the Congregation stated that the Biblia regia would have been condemned, had it not been published.59 This explicit statement, which did not exclude a revision on the basis of Latin printed editions and manuscripts but ruled out a text-critical function of the Hebrew text, determined the course of events. Sirleto’s role was played out and Bellarmine’s text-critical rules were implicitly questioned. Why Gregory XIII assigned Cardinal Carafa the task of a critical edition of the Septuagint instead of resuming the revision of the Vulgate is not clear.60 But perhaps the Pope, who certainly did not share the view of the Congregation of the Council, wanted to avoid further dissension. During the whole pontificate of Gregory XIII, who died in the same year as Sirleto (1585), no discernable activity with regard to the revision of the Vulgate can be reported.

D I S P UT A T I O N E S During the turbulent years between the declaration of the Congregation of the Council (1576) and the final revision of the Vulgate (1592) 57 That in the same year Lindanus, a supporter of the authority of the Vulgate stricte dictum, addressed Sirleto on the subject, shows the authority attributed to him; see Ho¨pfl, Beitra¨ge (as in n. 52), 34. 58 Le Bachelet, Bellarmin et la Bible (as in n. 56), 8; G. Bedouelle and B. Roussel, (eds.), Le Temps des re´formes et la Bible (Paris, 1989), 266–8; Ho¨pfl, Beitra¨ge (as in n. 52), 35–6. Le Bachelet as well as Ho¨pfl reject any relationship between Bellarmine’s letter and the declaration of the Congregation. 59 In various studies it is claimed that at the time Bellarmine presided over the Congregation of the Council, which assessed the Antwerp Polyglot; see B. Rekers, Benito Arias Montano (1527–1598) (London, 1972), 61; Temps des re´formes (as in n. 58), 268. However, in view of his own interpretation of the decree and the corroboration expected from Sirleto, it is very unlikely that he would have supported such a declaration. 60 Although he courteously mentions Sirleto’s linguistic expertise, to which he had recourse, Carafa did not include him in his commission. See Ho¨pfl, Beitra¨ge (as in n. 52), 121–2.

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Bellarmine kept to his views regarding the limited authority of the Vulgate and the role of the Hebrew. In 1576 he went from Louvain to Rome, where he was appointed professor at the Collegio Romano. In the first volume of his Disputationes (1586) he touches upon the emendation of the Vulgate, positing four cases where the Hebrew should take precedence: whenever the Latin has obvious scribal errors, divergent readings from which the Vulgate reading cannot be retrieved, or unclear words or incomprehensible meanings, and when the Hebrew contributes to a better understanding of an expression.61 These text-critical rules, which attribute only a very limited role to the Hebrew, seem to contradict the central position it is given in the Notae in Genesim. They should, however, be understood as an answer to the Congregation of the Council, which had excluded the Hebrew Bible from any role in the revision of the Vulgate. First of all it should be noted that the text-critical rules as laid down in the Disputationes do not exclude the Hebrew. Furthermore, more importantly, Bellarmine makes it unequivocally clear that these guidelines serve the reconstruction of the ‘vera vulgata lectio’. In order to legitimize the preferential position of the Vulgate vis-a`-vis other Latin translations,62 the most reliable Vulgate text based upon the oldest witnesses should be produced and the Hebrew should only be brought in when Latin witnesses do not suffice to provide an acceptable and readable text.63 Despite the declaration by the Congregation of the Council in 1576, Bellarmine asserts that the Council of Trent had never excluded the Hebrew as primary source, which he considers to be largely reliable.64 61 De controversiis christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos disputationes (Ingolstadt, 1586), i, De verb Dei, 2. 11. 62 ‘nec enim Patres fontium ullam mentionem fecerunt, sed solum ex tot latinis versionibus quae nunc circumferuntur, unam delegerunt, quam caeteris anteponerent’; De verbo Dei, 2. 10. 63 ‘Quando latini codices variant ut non possit certo statui quae sit vera Vulgata lectio, possumus ad fontes recurrere et inde iuvari ad veram lectionem inveniendam’, De verbo Dei, 2. 11. 64 According to Bellarmine the errors in the Hebrew text are of minor importance; see De verbo Dei, 2. 2. Bellarmine’s view of the authority of the Vulgate comes also to the fore in his activity as censor. In a review of Carlo Sigonio’s De republica Hebraeorum (Bologna, 1582) he corrects the censor of the work, stressing that the Council of Trent did not oppose the Vulgate to the Hebrew or the Greek: ‘Falso asserit censor, prohibitas esse alias editiones praeter vulgatam. Concilium enim non opponit vulgatam latinam hebraicis, et graecis editionibus, sed solum aliis latinis, etc.’; Biblioteca Fabroniana (Pistoia), MS 15, p. 486.

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That Bellarmine’s view as proposed in the Disputationes does not basically differ from the text-critical methods he advocated in Louvain is proved by his quotations from his Notae in Genesim, which in the Disputationes serve as illustrations of the primary importance of the Hebrew. He reverts to the subject in connection with Genesis 8: 7 about the raven that returns to the ark,65 and reinforces his position by remarking that some Latin codices conform to the Hebrew.66 As in the Notae in Genesim, he gives priority to the Hebrew in Genesis 3: 17, although he also suggests that scribal error in the Hebrew may have caused the discrepancy between the original and the Vulgate.67 Although the two additional remarks are again a sign of his favourable attitude towards the Vulgate, it appears from the Disputationes that his view on the status of the Hebrew as against the Greek and the Latin has remained unchanged.

THE SIXTINE R EVISION After the death of Sirleto in 1585, Pope Sixtus V made Cardinal Antonio Carafa the head of the commission for the revision of the Vulgate. The death of Sirleto and the initiative of Sixtus V may have been a coincidence, but they certainly helped to bring the endeavour to a conclusion. The emendation took as its base text the Antwerp Bible printed by Plantijn in 1583. This, in turn, was based upon the edition revised in 1574 by the theologians of the University of Louvain, who had taken the Louvain Bible of 1547 as their starting point.68 In the various earlier revisions a number of Vulgate editions and many Latin manuscripts had been taken into account.69 The task of the commission was to emend the Vulgate according to the manuscripts, in particular the codex Amiatinus (early eighth century). The role attributed to the Hebrew was rather limited. As long as the Latin manuscripts gave concordant readings, the Vulgate was given precedence over the Hebrew. Given the interpretation of the Tridentine decree regarding the Vulgate by its chairman Cardinal Antonio Carafa, it is not surprising that the commission proceeded in this way. The criterion for eliminating interpolations, which appears to 65

See n. 41. ‘adde quod etiam non desunt latini codices qui habeant ‘‘egrediebatur et revertebatur’’ ut ex variis lectionibus ad Biblia Lovaniensia annotatis cognosci potest’; De verbo 67 See n. 43. Dei, 2. 2. 68 See Ho 69 See ibid. 56. ¨ pfl, Beitra¨ge (as in n. 52), 106. 66

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have been the main task of the revisers, was the absence of a given passage in both early Latin witnesses and the Hebrew.70 The emendations, and in particular the elimination of interpolations, aroused the indignation of the Pope, who felt that, by admitting that modern editions were permeated with errors, one was giving in to the Reformation. He therefore took the revision into his own hands. In the Sixtina Vulgata published in May 1590, the proposals of the commission were largely ignored. The edition, which was emended according to the Pope’s own criteria, without consultation of Latin manuscripts or of the Hebrew text, and was very close to the Louvain text of 1547, met with severe criticism.71 After his death it was withdrawn, and a new edition prepared under Gregory XIV.

THE EDITIO SIXTO-CLEMENTINA In the preparation of this last edition Bellarmine played a prominent role. According to his proposal a new revision was carried through, in which the omissions, additions, changes, and the punctuation of the editio Sixtina were to be discussed.72 In order not to put any blame on Sixtus V, the new edition was to be published as soon as possible.73 However, the diversity of opinion of the many experts involved slowed down the proceedings of the commission. Bellarmine suggested that their number should be reduced and that the revision should be governed by agreed text-critical rules. The questions to be answered were the following: 1. Is the Latin text to be corrected when the various copies accord with each other, but differ from the Hebrew, Greek, and Chaldaic manuscripts? 70 For the revision under Sixtus V see further Ho ¨ pfl, Beitra¨ge (as in n. 52), 128–58 and Anhang A, 240–77. 71 See Do ¨ llinger and Reusch, Selbstbiographie (as in n. 2) 112–16; Temps des re´formes (as in n. 58), 350–4. 72 ‘ut ablata restituantur, ut adjecta removeantur, immutata considerentur vel corrigantur, ut punctationes perpendantur’; Le Bachelet, Bellarmin et la Bible (as in n. 56), 42; see also Ho¨pfl, Beitra¨ge (as in n. 52), 160–1. 73 Do ¨ llinger and Reusch, Selbstbiographie (as in n. 2), 38. In the preface to the new edition Bellarmine even states that Sixtus V had withdrawn his own edition because of the many errors made by the printer, and had made arrangements for a new one; ibid. 118 f.

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2. Is it to be corrected when there is no divergence in the Vulgate and the text accords with the Greek, but differs from the Hebrew and the Chaldaic? 3. Where there is divergence between various copies of the Vulgate, should the printed text be corrected from the manuscripts, if these differ from the Hebrew, the Chaldaic, and the Greek? 4. Where there is divergence, should the printed text be corrected from the manuscripts if it differs from the Hebrew and the Chaldaic, but accords with the Greek? 5. In the third and the fourth cases, should one have recourse to manuscript evidence if only one manuscript is extant, even though a very early one? 6. When correcting the Vulgate from manuscripts or sources, should one neglect minor variants that do not alter authorial intention or make the text more obscure or awkward?74 One wonders why Bellarmine formulated these text-critical questions and did not refer to his own elaborate discussions of the Vulgate in the Disputationes and the criteria for emending the Vulgate as drawn up there. The answer to this question can only be tentative. My suggestion is that he considered these criteria not appropriate for the task the commission had to accomplish. The criteria formulated in the Disputationes were intended for the reconstruction of the ‘vera vulgata lectio’, and not a text that could be considered as authoritative. For such an endeavour the Hebrew and all existing renderings should be taken into account, as he himself had shown in his Notae in Genesim. It is exactly this concern that comes to the fore in the six text-critical questions.75 74 ‘De ratione servanda in bibliis corrigendis’, published by Le Bachelet, Bellarmin et la Bible (as in n. 56), 40 f., 126 ff. 75 Bellarmine’s own position vis-a `-vis the Vulgate is firmly stated in a manuscript entitled De editione latina vulgata, quo sensu a Concilio Tridentino definitum sit, ut pro authentica habeatur, first published in 1748. In addition to his own argument, Bellarmine quotes eleven theologians in support of his interpretation of the Tridentine decree on the Vulgate, that its authority concerns only Christian faith and morals, and that it takes precedence only over other Latin translations. Five years later the authenticity of this small document was questioned by the Jesuit Charles-Joseph Frevier in an anonymous work, entitled La Vulgate authentique dans tout son texte; plus authentique que le texte he´breu, que le texte grec qui nous restent. Theólogie de Bellarmin; son apologie contre l’ećrit annonce´ dans le Journal de Tre´voux. Article LXXXV, juillet 1750 (Rome 1753). In his rejection of Bellarmine’s authorship Frevier contends that if Bellarmine did write this document, it reflected his ideas as a young man in Louvain, before ordination, ideas which he later completely retracted. Le Bachelet, however, gives convincing evidence that Bellarmine wrote the piece while a member of the Sixto-Clementina commission; see

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However, from the notes of the commission in a copy of the Editio Sixtina it appears that the Editio Sixto-Clementina accords to a large extent with the edition prepared under Sixtus V, which was basically emended from Latin witnesses. Although some comparisons between the Hebrew, Greek, and the Latin were made,76 the substantial difference between the two editions was that the changes made by Sixtus V were, on Bellarmine’s advice, annulled.77 In other words, the commission virtually took over the revision presented to Sixtus V by the Carafa commission. One of the commissioners, Valverde, proposed changes to conform to the Hebrew in over two hundred passages. The fact that this proposal was rejected shows the little regard for the original text.78 The reason why Bellarmine accepted the Carafa commission’s preference for the Latin and its neglect, by and large, of the Hebrew and the Greek must have been his concern, already mentioned, that a long revision procedure would be damaging to the Church and the papacy. The Editio Sixto-Clementina had to be produced as rapidly as possible.79 The only way to achieve this was to accept for the most part the revision prepared by the Carafa commission. Thus pastoral and Church-political motives prevailed over exegetical criteria. And yet, the preface of the first edition (Rome, 1592) shows that he had not renounced his principles. He repeats his firm belief that an authentic text of the Bible should be based upon careful comparison of translations with the originals, which, he claims, is the case for the SixtoClementina. At the same time, probably nearer the truth, he explicitly states that the new edition, though certainly better than earlier editions and other translations, should not be considered as perfect, and that not all the errors have been corrected.80 Aware of the many deficiencies of the revised text, he opposed a possible ban on the use of any other Latin translation and advocated an edition with text variants and notes.81 Le Bachelet, Bellarmin et la Bible (as in n. 56), 26–34. For the text of De editione latina vulgata see ibid. 107–25. 76 ‘Loca praecipua in bibliis Sixti V mutata’; see Le Bachelet, Bellarmin et la Bible, 77 See Do ¨ llinger and Reusch, Selbstbiographie (as in n. 2), 117. 130–4. 78 Ibid. 118. 79 Owing to Bellarmine the whole undertaking was carried through in nineteen days; see Le Bachelet, Bellarmin et la Bible (as in n. 56), 43. 80 ‘Et vero quamvis in hac Bibliorum recognitione in codicibus manuscriptis, Hebraeis, Graecisque fontibus, et ipsis veterum Patrum commentariis conferendis non mediocre studium adhibitum fuerit; in hac tamen pervulgata lectione sicut nonnulla consulto mutata, ita etiam alia, quae mutanda videbantur, consulto immutata relicta 81 See Ho ¨ pfl, Beitra¨ge (as in n. 52), 167–8. sunt.’

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In this context it should be noted that at the time of the revision of 1591 the general of the Jesuits, Aquaviva, asked Bellarmine’s advice as to whether the professors of the Collegio Romano should be forced to accept the unrestricted authority of the Vulgate and to reject any textual contribution of the Hebrew and the Greek. The answer of the former professor at the Collegio Romano to his superior was that they should not, as this would be contrary to everything written on the subject.82 However, within the Jesuit order Bellarmine remained rather isolated in his view of the relationship between the Hebrew and the various renderings. In a study on the Bible in the Counter-Reformation Victor Baroni devoted a whole chapter to ‘the exegesis in the hands of the Jesuits’, which shows them as rather conservative.83 The only exception is Juan Mariana (1536–1624), who as a member of the Spanish Inquisition had to review the Antwerp Polyglot. To the chagrin of his confreres, Mariana did not condemn Montano’s masterpiece. Dedicating his Scholia in vetus et novum testamentum (1619) to Bellarmine, Mariana seems to regard him as an illustrious companion in his respect for the Polyglot.84 J EWIS H EXEGES IS Apart from valuable information about his unchanging position on the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the limited authority of the Vulgate, the Notae in Genesim provide a unique insight into Bellarmine’s exegetical methods as learnt and taught in Louvain. His mode of teaching does not seem polemical and is sometimes remarkably impartial. In order to establish the correct meaning of a text he refers to a wide range of ancient writers, such as Solinus, Josephus, Philo, and the Church Fathers. He often disagrees with Cajetan,85 but sometimes cites him as an ally. But, over the heads of his students, he is also addressing the reformers who, in his view, were undermining the Vulgate and the vital elements of Catholic tradition and doctrine. The most appropriate answer to their attacks was an exegesis based upon the Hebrew text in its 82

See Le Bachelet, Bellarmin et la Bible (as in n. 56), 24–5. V. Baroni, La Contre-Re´forme devant la Bible: La question biblique. Avec un sup84 Ibid. 275–6. ple´ment: Du XVIII e sie`cle a` nos jours (Lausanne, 1943), 245–87. 85 The two basic principles of Cajetan’s exegesis were that the Vulgate was a fallible translation that needed to be checked against the original and that the biblical text should be explained according to its literal meaning. See J. Wicks, Cajetan Responds: A Reader in Reformation Controversy (Washington, DC, 1978), 34–8. 83

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context, and in line with the tradition of the Church Fathers. Bellarmine is a Christian Hebraist, relying when appropriate, like his opponents, on Jewish tradition. Apart from the Targum as an important text witness, he turns more than once to ‘the Hebrews’, whom he uses mainly because of their knowledge of the Hebrew language. As in matters of translation, Bellarmine uses Jewish exegesis in semantic, grammatical, and Scriptural terms. At Genesis 2: 6 he notices the Vulgate rendering ‘there went up a vapour86 from the earth’ of the Hebrew future tense ‘and a vapour will go up from the earth’. His comment makes clear that the future tense is the correct reading: according to Jewish commentators rain will come down after the creation of the herbs on the third day so that herbs may grow in the future. Only if one wants to defend the Vulgate will one keep to the past tense, and take the meaning to be that it did not rain when the herbs were created because rain comes from vapour raised by the sun, and the sun was not created until the fourth day. But in his comment Bellarmine does not show any determination to defend the Vulgate.87 On grammatical and contextual grounds Bellarmine rejects Cajetan’s translation of Genesis 19: 17, which he had been given by the rabbi he usually consulted.88 Lot was told by the angels not to look behind him when he and his family were fleeing from Sodom. Cajetan, however, translates ‘do not make [them] look behind you’ in the sense that his wife and daughters should not fall behind, so that they would see his Bellarmine understands ‘fons’ as ‘vapour’; see n. 87. ‘Et fons ascendebat e terra. Duplex hic difficultas est. Una quod vox ed nusquam in scriptura significat fontem, sed vaporem, aut nubem, vel inundationem. Altera quod quidquid haec significat, videtur falsum quod hic dicitur, nam immediate antea Moses dixit, primas herbas a Deo solo creatas fuisse, et probavit quia tunc neque Deus pluerat super terram ut possent herbae per se generari; neque homo erat, qui eas serere potuisset. At si fons, vel nubes tunc ascendebat de terra et irrigabat universam superficiem terrae falsa est prima illa ratio, nam irrigatio er nubes est pluvia, et irrigatio per fontes aequivalet pluviae. Ad primam dico Hieronymum vocasse fontem non fontem proprie dictum, sed vapores aut nubes propter similitudinem ad fontes; ut enim origo fluminorum dicitur fons ita etiam origo pluviarum dici potest fons. Ad secundum vel dicendum cum hebraeis doctoribus, hic loquitur scriptura de pluviis, quia postea sequutae sunt, ut nimirum explicetur quomodo deinceps nascantur herbae. Nam in hebraeo est verbum futuri temporis weed jaaleh et vapor ascendet, nimirum deinceps. Vel si volumus Vulgatam defendere, quae habet ascendebat, dicendum est hic reddi rationem cur non pluerit initio super terram, cum primae herbae nascerentur, quia nimirum pluviae orientur ex terra per elevationem vaporum a sole; tunc autem sol nondum erat, nam herbae natae sunt tertio die, et sol creatus est quarto die. Hic ergo erit sensus. Nondum pluerat dominus super terram etc. Nam quando coepiunt pluviae fons seu vapor ascendebat e terra et irrigabat omnem superficiem terrae. Quod enim litera vav accipiatur pro enim notum est’; Notae 88 See Wicks, Cajetan Responds (as in n. 85), 34. in Genesim ad loc. 86 87

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back.89 Occasionally he refers to important Jewish commentators like Rashi, Ibn Ezra and Baal ha-Turim [ Jacob b. Asher], whose explanations he uses alongside other sources in his defence of the Catholic tradition.90 But his perusal of Jewish commentators is critical: some interpretations are inadmissible. Thus Genesis 7: 23, ‘Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark’, can only mean that nobody else survived the flood. Bellarmine therefore rejects the tradition, found in some Greek codices, that Methuselah survived as well, or, ‘as the Jews fabulate’, that Og lived through the disaster.91 At the beginning of chapter 10 he asks why no more children were born to Noah after the flood. He refers to Rashi’s explanation that Noah had been castrated by Ham, which he qualifies as nonsense.92 In chapter 11: 31, on the meaning of Ur, he rejects Jerome for following the fabula hebraeorum, who interpret it as fire.93 Remarks like fabulantur, nugae fabula, are characteristic of Bellarmine’s appraisal of Jewish exegesis. Examining the rabbinic commentaries he encountered many explanations that he found not to accord with the literal meaning of the text or with Christian doctrines or morals. Whether he collected these passages while preparing his classes on Genesis cannot be established, but that his attention was drawn to such matters during the Louvain period is most likely. The inclusion of Levi ben Gershom’s explanation of Genesis 18: 21 in his notes points in this direction. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah opens with: ‘I [God] will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the 89 ‘ne respicias post te. Cajetanus quia audivit a suo rabino tabith esse in hifil putat vertendum ‘‘ne facias respicere post te’’ ut sensus sit ut uxor tua et filiae non maneant retro respiciantque tergum tuum. At illud verbum etiam in hifil significat respicere ut patet Gen 15 respice caelum et quod Angelus hic praecepit ne respiceret Sodomam patet ex poena uxoris’; Notae in Genesim ad loc. 90 This seems to indicate his use of the Biblia rabbinica of 1524 or 1547, since it is only in these editions that all three commentaries on Genesis are included. 91 ‘Et remansit solus Noe. Hinc apparet non remansisse virum Methusalem ut ex graecis codicibus colligitur neque Og ut fabulantur Hebraei’; Notae in Genesim ad loc. The tradition that Og was saved from the flood by Noah on the promise that he and his descendants would serve him for ever is found e.g. in Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, ch. 23. 92 ‘Quaeritur primo cur non nominentur filli Noe nati post diluvium. R. Salomon dicit Noe fuisse castratum a Cham. Nugae. Vera ratio est Augustini liber 16 civit cap 3 ubi dicit quod solum nominantur singulares viri, qui dederunt nomina regionibus; et quia tales non fuerunt nisi isti’; Notae in Genesim ad loc. 93 ‘Hieronymus in Quaestionibus hebraicis videtur sequi fabulam Hebraeorum qui per Hur intelligunt ignem. Tamen Josephus dicit esse urbem et LXX verterunt chora regione et nostra versio habet in Hur.’ For the tradition about the furnace from which Abraham was rescued, see Gen. 11: 28 in Targum Neofiti and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, and Genesis Rabbah 38: 13.

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outcry which has come to me.’ According to Bellarmine Levi ben Gershom concludes from this verse that God does not know the future.94 Bellarmine did not include this comment in his notes for exegetical purposes. The only reason must have been that such a blatant contradiction of Christian doctrine should not go unnoticed. In Louvain, Bellarmine was already on the path to becoming a censor of Hebrew literature.

ERRORS OF R ABBI SALOMON IN THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES An extensive collection of inadmissible passages of Jewish exegesis is preserved in another unpublished manuscript,95 held in the Biblioteca Fabroniana in Pistoia. The library owes its name and holdings to the legacy of cardinal Carlo Augusto Fabroni (1651–1727), who bequeathed his books to his native town. Various unpublished autographs of Bellarmine came into Fabroni’s possession through his involvement in Bellarmine’s beatification. The manuscript96 is entitled ‘Errors of Rabbi Salomon in the five books of Moses’,97 with the subtitle for the book of Genesis ‘Places in Rabbi Salomon’s commentary on Genesis which appear to need emendation’.98 The frontispiece shows the gematria on names in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin such as Messias, Soter, Ben David, Israel, Melchisedech, and Martinus Luther. The remaining thirty-five pages consist of a selection from Rashi’s commentary on the Torah in Latin relating to a number of biblical verses cited in their Vulgate version, with an occasional remark or short comment. Rashi’s text is sometimes fully translated, but often only summarized.99 The manuscript is not dated. 94 ‘descendam et videbo. Hinc deducit R. Levi Gerson Deum non scire futurum’; Notae in Genesim ad loc. 95 Le Bachelet mentions the manuscript, but considering it of secondary importance, does not print it; see X. M. Le Bachelet, Auctarium Bellarminianum: Supple´ment aux Oeuvres du Cardinal Bellarmin (Paris, 1913), 658 n. 2. It will be included in my forthcoming book Conversion and Censorship under Pope Gregory XIII, to be published in the 96 Biblioteca Fabroniana, MS 15. series Studi e Testi [2007] p. 275. 97 ‘Errores R. Salomonis in quinque libros Mosis’. 98 ‘Loca quae in commentariis R. Salomonis in Genesim emendanda videntur’. 99 Conrad Pellican translated Rashi’s commentary on the Old Testament (Commentaria in vetus testamentum, tam hebraice, quam latine per Conradum Pellicanum translata). See Le Bachelet, Auctarium (as in n. 95), 658 n. 2. It was never published and there is no indication that Bellarmine used it.

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On the whole Bellarmine’s Latin is an accurate rendering of the Hebrew, but occasionally it reveals the weakness of his knowledge of Hebrew and Jewish tradition.100 On the story of the maltreatment of Jethro’s daughters by the shepherds Exodus 2: 17 says: ‘And the shepherds came and drove them [Jethro’s daughters] away.’ Rashi comments on the phrase ‘drove them away’ by alluding to a Midrash and states: because of the banishment (niddui) into which their father had been driven. Not knowing the difference between nidduj and niddah, Bellarmine makes a rather unfortunate mistake: taking the subject to be the menstruation of Jethro’s daughters, he writes: ‘Thus Rabbi Solomon as always is philosophizing about obscenities.’101 Numbers 11: 16 recounts the induction of the seventy elders. Rashi refers to an earlier group of seventy elders who had functioned as judges in Egypt (Exodus 3: 16). But they had been struck dead because they appeared before God with a light head (nahagu kalut rosh), meaning that they had behaved irreverently towards God, as Exodus 24: 11 says: ‘they beheld God and ate and drank’. Bellarmine, however, misunderstands the expression ‘with a light head’ and includes the passage in his collection of inadmissible passages ‘because it seems to mean that they were punished because they prayed to God with uncovered head, which refers to their (the Jews’) castigation of the way Christians pray’.102 Apart from passages included because of a misreading of the Hebrew, it is rather obvious why Bellarmine opposed certain interpretations. Only occasionally does he give an explicit reason as to why he included a particular passage in his collection. Such is the case with Rashi’s commentary on Genesis 1: 26 God said, ‘Let us make man.’ Rashi states that God said to the angels ‘let us make man’ and goes on to say that the heretics claimed this text, but in vain, since Scripture says ‘and God created’, and not ‘Gods created’. This comment, according to Bellarmine, clearly impugns the mystery of the Trinity and calls the Christians ‘heretics’.103 In the many cases where no reason is given, it is 100 Richard Simon, discussing Bellarmine’s commentary on the Psalms, notices his mediocre knowledge of Hebrew; see Simon, Histoire critique (as in n. 5), 527. 101 ‘ita semper de obscenitatibus philosophatur R. Salomon’. 102 Biblioteca Fabroniana, MS 15, ad loc.: ‘congrega mihi septuaginta senes: quia antea in Exodo inveniuntur septuaginta senes, quaerit R. Salomon cur nunc iterum congregentur septuaginta senes. Respondit quia illos priores Deus occidit, quia incedebant coram Deo levi capite. Qua voce videtur intelligere, quod aperto capite Deum orarent, quod pertinet ad reprehensionem modi orandi christianorum.’ 103 Ibid.: ‘Faciamus hominem: vult R. Salomon Deum angelis dixisse, faciamus hominem et addit haereticos hunc locum pro se arripere, sed frustra, cum scriptum sit,

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because of blasphemy, obscenities, offences against Christians, and errors against reason and natural law that passages are included.104 However, one particular group of texts, over fifty of them, is included not because of their blasphemous or offensive content, but merely because they are based on the Talmud. Bellarmine apparently considered the Talmud an inappropriate source for the understanding of Scripture. He must have shared the view of Church authorities that the Talmud was the symbol of Jewish stubbornness and the main obstacle to the conversion of the Jews. No recognition, in his view, should be given to the Talmud as a tool for biblical exegesis. This verdict on the Talmud should not be seen in isolation. During the pontificate of Gregory XIII a major attempt was made to revise Hebrew books, in particular Jewish commentaries on the Bible. In this endeavour Bellarmine was assigned the task of reviser of collections of inadmissible passages, one of the criteria being the use of the Talmud. His collection of passages from Rashi’s commentary on the Torah served this unique enterprise of censorship.105 It is here that the Christian Hebraist Bellarmine, who had clearly acknowledged the Jewish contribution to the understanding of Scripture, manifests himself undeniably as a censor. creavit Deus, non creaverunt Dii. Quibus verbis satis aperte Trinitatis mysterium oppugnat, et christianos haereticos vocat.’ 104 For a detailed description of the criteria of censorship applied by Bellarmine see Le Bachelet, Auctarium (as in n. 95), 658–60. 105 See my forthcoming Conversion and Censorship [2007].


8 Spencer, Maimonides, and the History of Religion Fausto Parente

S P E N C ER ’ S D E L E G I B U S H E B R A E O R U M RITUALIBUS AND ITS MODERN EVALUATION John Spencer’s De legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus et earum rationibus was published in Cambridge in 1685 in three books. It set out to demonstrate that the majority of Jewish ritual laws were of Egyptian origin.1 A second, expanded edition with an additional fourth book was brought out posthumously in 1727 by Leonard Chappelow.2 It contained, among other material, a dissertation on the origins of phylacteries, which Spencer wrote shortly before his death in 1693. In 1732 the German theologian Ch. M. Pfaff (the author of the famous forgery of the Irenaeus fragments) republished it with a Dissertatio praeliminaris in which he set out at length his own and others’ criticism of the book.3 1 De Legibus Hebraeorum Ritualibus et earum rationibus, Libri tres. Primo, Fuse agitur de Rationibus Legum Judaicarum Generalibus. . . . Secundo, De Legibus Mosaicis quibus Zabiorum Ritus occasionem dedere fuse disseritur. . . . Tertio, De iis Hebraeorum Legibus & Institutis agitur, quibus Gentium usus occasionem praebuit. . . . Authore Johanne Spencero (Cambridge, 1685; all references to this edition). 2 De Legibus Hebraeorum Ritualibus . . . libri quattuor . . . Quarto: De Ritibus & Institutis Hebraeorum a Gentium usu desumptis, nullibi vero (quod scimus) a Deo praeceptis aut ordinatis. Huic accessit Dissertatio de Phylacteriis Judaeorum auctore J.S . . . Editos, MSS cum testimoniis auctorum laudatis recensuit, & indices adjecit Leonardus Chappelow . . . (Cambridge, 1727). 3 Johannis Spenceri . . . De Legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus earumque rationibus, libri quattuor. Ad nuperam Cantabrigiensem, in qua liber quartus, varia capita & dissertationes aliaque autoris supplementa, accessere accurate efformata. Praemittitur Christoph. Matthaei Pfaffii . . . dissertatio praeliminaris, qua de vita Spenceri, de libri pretio & erroribus quoque disseritur, autoresque, qui contra Spencerum scripsere, enarrantur (Tu¨bingen, 1732).

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Thereafter it was never reprinted, and was virtually forgotten. There is justification for this: Spencer’s work, despite the opinion, even now, of a number of scholars, is not, as its subject and the reactions to it would imply, a break with tradition and a pre-empting of historical issues; it is purely theological in nature, and makes no contribution to the question of the development of the Jewish religion and its documentation. Spencer is no easy read. He is the product of an age in which great erudition co-existed with the full acceptance of the principle of God’s intervention in history, particularly in the history of a people considering itself the recipient of his direct revelation. Hence the isolation and the perceived self-sufficiency of the Jewish people and their religion with regard to neighbouring peoples, in the light of which the suggestion that the rituals of the ancient Hebrews were in fact appropriated Egyptian rites could not but appear scandalous. Inevitably, a number of modern historians have seen Spencer’s work as historical rather than theological. But it is not that, and the misconception needs clarifying: Spencer is not a forerunner of modern theory, and if his work has not advanced historical investigation it is not because he was ahead of his time, but because his work is theological, not historical. This is not to detract from his erudition or from the interest of his comparisons between Jewish and Egyptian rites, even if his material was limited to classical sources. His Egypt could only be that of Herodotus and Plutarch, with the result that this aspect of his work was also destined to diminish in importance and interest when indigenous sources became available. The person mainly responsible for the misunderstanding is William Robertson Smith, whose authority secured automatic endorsement for his views. In the Preface to his Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889) he writes: The value of comparative studies for the study of the religion of the Bible was brought out very clearly, two hundred years ago, by one of the greatest of English theologians, Dr. John Spencer, Master of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, whose Latin work on the ritual laws of the Hebrews may justly be said to have laid the foundations of the science of Comparative Religion, and in its special subject, in spite of certain defects that could hardly have been avoided at the time when it was composed, still remains by far the most important book on the religious antiquities of the Hebrews. But Spencer was so much before his time that his work was not followed up; it is often ignored by professed students of the Old Testament, and has hardly exercised any influence

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on the current ideas which are the common property of educated men interested in the Bible.4

Robertson Smith’s evaluation is wrong for two major reasons. First, it is incorrect to speak of a comparative history of religion before Max Friedrich Mu¨ller had formulated the principles of the science, based on the recognition of the basic affinity of languages such as Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit as established by William Jones and grammatically illustrated by Franz Bopp.5 Secondly, Spencer does not compare the Jewish and Egyptian religions, but states (for reasons which have no historical basis, as we shall shortly see) that Jewish ritual laws were those the Jews observed during their Egyptian exile, and continued to observe thereafter. What is ground-breaking in it, at first sight, is the abandonment of the concept of revelation and, consequently, of Jewish ‘self-sufficiency’ mentioned above, derived from the inspired nature of the Scriptures, the base and foundation of the whole Hebraic-Christian tradition.6 This is the position of Hans-Joachim Kraus in the third edition of his authoritative Geschichte der historisch-kritischen Erforschung des Alten Testaments. Kraus considers Spencer to be indebted to Herbert of Cherbury, who, in distinguishing between ‘natural’ and ‘revealed’ religion, is in fact denying the very concept of revelation. Kraus defines Spencer’s work as a blow ‘at the very heart of the supernatural conception of religion’ since Hebrew ritual, i.e. in traditional terms, the concrete enacting of the divine commandments, is that of a people and civilization with which the Hebrews were in long-standing contact.7 4 Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. First Series. The Fundamental Institutions by . . . W. Robertson Smith, new edn. (London, 1907; 1st edn. 1889), p. vi. See: H. P. Smith, Essays in Biblical Interpretation (Boston, 1921), 106 ff.; E. J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History, 2nd edn. (London, 1986; 1st edn. 1975), 17. Robertson Smith’s judgement is endorsed by R. Buddensieg in Realencyklopu¨die fu¨r die protestantische Theologie, 3rd edn., xviii (1906), 608; ‘nicht mit Unrecht ist er der Begru¨nder der vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte gennant worden’. 5 Sharpe, Comparative Religion, 22, 35–46. F. Max Mu ¨ ller, Comparative Mythology (Oxford, 1856); id., Introduction to the Science of Religion (London, 1873); W. Jones, Discourses Delivered before the Asiatic Society, i (London, 1821), 28 (Discourse iii); F. Bopp, Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Gotischen und Deutschen, 6 vols. (Berlin, 1833–52). On the intellectual context of Robertson Smith’s view of Spencer as a major figure in the development of critical thought see J. Sutherland Black and G. Chrystal, The Life of William Robertson Smith (London, 1912), 512 ff.: ‘In following the comparative and historical method which had now for the first time been made possible, Smith from the beginning laid down the principle that it is the ritual, and not the myths or the dogmas, of primitive religions that must, in the first instance, be regarded.’ 6 L. Diestel, Geschichte des Alten Testaments in der christlichen Kirche (Jena, 1869). 7 H.-J. Kraus, Geschichte der historisch-kritischen Erforschung des Alten Testaments, 3rd edn. (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1982), 94: ‘Langsam wirkte es sich aus, daß J. Spencer in

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But the filiation is misconceived because, whereas for Herbert the notiones communes behind ‘natural religion’ are innate ideas, and not the result of divine revelation which he, therefore, rejects, for Spencer it is God who produces an adapted version of the rituals the Hebrews had practised in Egypt in consideration of their inability, coarse and uneducated as they still were, to follow less material forms of worship.

T H E PR IM AR Y AN D S E C O N D A R Y P U R P O SE O F T H E MO SA I C L A W Despite the size of Spencer’s work (some one thousand pages in the first edition alone) and its enormous erudition it is, I think, possible to discern its conceptual framework, to trace its sources, and to grasp the doctrine behind it. The first edition consists of an introduction (Prolegomena) and three books. In the introduction Spencer observes that a number of Hebrew laws have no immediately obvious justification, and seem to prescribe, and proscribe, things which are essentially unimportant. He rejects the argument sometimes offered, that the laws should be taken simply as an expression of divine will, arguing that one cannot attribute to God acts that have no intelligible purpose. It is therefore legitimate and necessary to posit a purpose behind each single law and try to account for it. In Book 1, Spencer lists the topics dealt with and the sections in which they are discussed. His basic theme is the overall purpose of the Law: it is to wean the Hebrews from idolatry to which, after years of slavery in Egypt, they were firmly attached. This idolatry had two distinct origins: 1. At the time of the Hebrews’ departure from Egypt, the whole world was under the influence of the cult of the stars. The pagans (the ‘Sabians’—see below) practised a variety of superstitious and immoral rites. God was thus obliged to ban many seemingly innocuous procedures because of their links with pagan superstitions which were far from innocuous. These links and the way God went about neutralizing them—by enacting quite specific laws—is what needs elucidating, and what Spencer sets out to do in Book 2, which is entitled De legibus Mosaicis quibus Zabiorum Ritus occasionem dedisse fuse disseritur. seinem Buch De legibus Hebraeorum . . . das Herzstu¨ck des supranaturalen Religionsversta¨ndnisses, das go¨ttliche Gesetz des Alten Testaments, angegriffen hatte.’


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2. In Egypt the Hebrews had absorbed ‘lethalem superstitionis Aegiptiacae succum’: they had long practised Egyptian rites and were quite unable to adapt without transition to new and superior religious practices. To avoid their relapsing into idolatry the deity wisely allowed them to continue with a censored version of a number of rites such as sacrifice, purification, temple worship, observation of lunar festivals, etc. This would explain why Hebrew rites and observances are so similar to their Egyptian counterparts, as so many commentators had noted, contending, however, that it was Egypt which followed Israel and not vice versa.8 This is the content of Book 3, comprising eight dissertations, the first of which deals with the question in general terms (Generalius agitur de Ritibus e Gentium moribus in Legem translatis), while the remaining seven analyse individual religious practices or cultual institutions (II De origine sacrificiorum; III De purificationibus; IV De Neomeniis; V De Arca et Cherubinis; VI De Templo; VII De Urim et Thummim; VIII De Hirco emissario). In each case God imposed the law neither to promote piety nor to impose his will, but solely to eradicate practices absorbed from Israel’s pagan neighbours. Revelation is thus essentially a question of accommodatio: God—not a human legislator—enacted ordinances suited to the condition of ignorance and immaturity of his people. For a Christian, Christ’s advent automatically abolished these laws, their only significance lying in their having allegorically or typologically announced the truth of the Gospel. Spencer defines this as the secondary purpose of the law, discussing it in Chapter 2 of the first book: De legum rituumque Mosaicarum fine secundario.

MAIMONIDES’ M O R E H N E B U K I M A S T H E M A I N S O U R C E O F S P ENC ER’ S D E L E G I B U S With the obvious exception of this last, all the elements comprising the argument are to be found in a number of chapters in the third section of Maimonides’ Moreh Nebukim, Spencer’s primary source, a fact commentators have insufficiently understood. In his Fremantle Lectures of 1973, Frank E. Manuel, after mentioning Edward Pococke’s translation 8 See e.g. Pierre-Daniel Huet, Demonstratio Evangelica ad serenissimum Delphinum 8th edn. (Venice, 1783), 72a–76b; Herman Witsius, Aegyptiaca . . . , 3rd edn. (Herborn, 1717), 193–291.

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of part of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, continues: ‘and the substance of the rest of his vast body of work was communicated to the learned world by John Spencer in a magnificent, 500-page analytic compendium of Maimonides’ writings in Latin, which bore a title that had best be translated as Explanation of the Laws of the Hebrews’.9 Having announced the connection so enigmatically, however, Manuel has nothing more to say on the matter. The problem has recently been addressed again by Jan Assmann in a book which constitutes an important contribution to the history of European thought and erudition. Assmann traces the ‘Egyptian’ interpretation of the figure of Moses, from Manetho to Sigmund Freud.10 Spencer appears as a major figure and as the initiator of the ‘modern’ phase; once again, he ‘erweist sich als ein Vorlaüfer des Historismus und der vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte’.11 Assmann recognizes Spencer’s indebtedness to Maimonides, discusses it at length, but, in my opinion, the exact nature of it escapes him. It may, therefore, be advisable to examine carefully what Maimonides says in those parts of Moreh Nebukim which constitute the conceptual basis of Spencer’s De legibus.12

MAIMONIDES ON THE PURPOSE OF DIVINE LAWS Maimonides was a rationalist. He challenged the position of those who ‘consider it a grievous thing that causes should be given for any law; what would please them most is that the intellect would not find a meaning for the commandments and prohibitions’.13 His response is clear and 9 F. E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (The Fremantle Lectures 1973; Oxford, 1974), 87. On Maimonides as a source of Spencer, see J. Guttmann, ‘John Spencers Erkla¨rung der biblischen Gesetze in ihrer Beziehung zu Maimonides’, in Festskrift i anledning af Professor David Simonsen 70-aarige fødselsdag (Copenhagen, 1923), 258–76. According to Guttmann, Robertson Smith saw Spencer as a rationalist and a ‘historian of religion’, a view that in Guttmann’s opinion ‘wird unter diesem Gesichtspunkt auf dem More Nabuchim des Maimonides angewendet werden du¨rfen’. 10 The book was first published in English: J. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), and afterwards, considerably modified, in German: Moses der A¨gypter: Entzifferung einer Geda¨chtnisspur (Munich, 1998; 2nd edn., 2000). All quotations are from the 2nd German edition. 11 Assmann, Moses, 111. 12 I have used Shlomo Pines’s translation: Moses ben Maimun, The Guide of the Perplexed . . . translated with an introduction and notes by Shlomo Pines (Chicago, 13 Maimonides, Moreh Nebukim 3. 31; 523 Pines. 1963).


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simple: ‘It is, however, the doctrine of all of us—both of the multitude and of the elite—that all the Laws have a cause, though we ignore the causes for some of them and we do not know the manner in which they conform to wisdom.’14 He quotes the midrash to Genesis (Bereshit Rabbah 44: 1 on Genesis 15: 1): ‘what does it matter to the Holy One, blessed be He, that animals are slaughtered by cutting their neck in front or in the back? Say therefore that the commandments were only given in order to purify the people. For it is said: ‘‘the word of the Lord is purified’’.’15 He observes, as can be deduced from a number of passages in the Pentateuch, that ‘the first intention of the Law as a whole is to put an end to idolatry, to wipe out its traces and all that is bound up with it, even its memory’.16 Now, Maimonides argues, if we require to know the reasons for the promulgation by God of rules on altogether secondary matters, ‘the knowledge of these opinions and practices is a very important chapter in the exposition of the reasons for the commandments. For the foundation of the whole of our Law and the pivot around which it turns, consists in the effacement of these opinions from the minds and of these monuments from existence’.17 Consequently, Assmann states: ‘In diesem Sinne wandte sich also schon Maimonides, fu¨nfhundert Jahre vor Spencer, auf der Basis seiner Theologie der List genuiner religionsgeschichtlicher Forschung zu.’ ‘So kam Maimonides zu seiner Entdeckung (oder Erfindung) der Sabier’18—a somewhat contentious statement, given that Maimonides can hardly be considered a historian of religion. The converse is more likely to be true: Maimonides considered he had found in the books of the ‘Sabians’ (particularly in the Nabataean Agriculture, as we shall see below) the practices and rites targeted by the Law, and had constructed his argument on this basis. To state that ‘Maimonides’ Sabier sind eine imagina¨re Kultur, die er durch die konsequente Anwendung von Manethos Prinzip der normativen Inversion konstruierte’19 is to misread Maimonides, since the Sabian civilization can only be deemed ‘imaginary’ if is traced back to the time of Abraham. Maimonides had no sense of history, and in his opinion the Sabians’ religious beliefs (astrolatry) and practices (soothsaying and magic) were manifestations of an idolatry that knew no 14 15 16 18 19

Ibid., ch. 26; 507 Pines. 2 Sam. 22: 31 ¼ Ps. 18: 31. Maimonides, Moreh Nebukim 3. 26; 508 Pines. 17 Ibid. 521 Pines. Maimonides, Moreh Nebukim 3. 29; 517 Pines. Assmann, Moses (as in n. 10), 92. Ibid. 90. On Manetho see Josephus, Contra Apionem, 1. 249

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change. Like Shahrasta¯nı¯, he used the term sa¯bi’a as synonymous with ˙ of paganism as an ori‘pagan’ in general, accepting Mas‘u¯dı¯’s theory ginally astral religion, subsequently transformed by false prophets into idolatry in the true sense of the word, the worship of statues claimed to represent stars and planets.20 According to the Qur’a¯n the religion practised in Abraham’s original milieu, against which he rebelled, was a form of paganism consisting in star worship.21 Maimonides concluded from this that ‘our father Abraham was raised in the religion of the Sabians who believe in no other God except the stars’ and that this religion, which he rejected, continued to prevail so that ‘such opinions developed among them that some of them became soothsayers, enchanters, sorcerers, charmers, consulters with familiar spirits, wizards, and necromancers’ (Deut. 18: 10–11).22 The errors of the Sabians, i.e. pagans, thus explain a number of biblical commandments: ‘as you will hear when I explain the reasons for the commandments that are considered to be without cause’:23 there follow examples mainly from the Nabatean Agriculture, al-Filaha al-Nabatiyya, a geoponic compilation attributed to a Chaldaean sage, Kotha¯mi, and translated from Syriac into Arabic by Abu¯-Bakr A’hmed ben ’Ali Ibn Wa’hshı¯ja in 291 of the hidjra (ad 904). Before 1835, when E´tienne Quatreme`re described it on the basis of an incomplete Paris manuscript, the work had been known only through these quotations in Maimonides. That Maimonides considers the text to belong to remote antiquity is hardly surprising: in the nineteenth century both Quatreme`re and Daniel Chwolson still believed its original nucleus to date from some centuries before the Christian era. It was Ernest Renan who finally laid to 20 Tadj al Din Abu l-Fath Muhammad ash Shahrastanı ¯ ¯ ¯, Kitab al Milal wa ’l Nihal [‘book of religious and philosophic sects’], ed. W. Cureton (London, 1846), ii. 203–52; German trans. Religionspartheien und Philosophen-Schulen zum ersten Male . . . u¨bersetzt von Th. Haarbru¨cker, 2 vols. (Halle, 1850–1), ii. 4–77 ¼ D. A. Chwolson, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus (St Petersburg, 1856), ii. 415–50. Shahrasta¯nı¯ distinguishes between the Sabians who pray beneath the stars, called ‘temples’, and those who represent the stars in the form of temples. See Al-Mas‘u¯dı¯, Mu¯rug˘ al Dahab [‘the golden meadows’], ed. Ch. Pellat, ii (Beirut, 1966), 379 ff. and Ch. Genequand, ‘Idolaˆtrie, astrolaˆtrie et sabeísme’, Studia Islamica, 89 (1999), 109–20, where the passage is translated on p. 110. 21 Abraham is not a pagan but a hanif, neither Jewish nor Christian (2. 135; 3. 67), as against his father, Azar, for whom he˙ prays that he may abandon idolatry (9. 114; 26. 86), identified as a cult of the stars (6. 75–8), but involving the worship of idols which Abraham destroys (21. 52–70). See R. Paret, Encyclopaedia of Islam, iii (1971), 980–1, 22 Maimonides, Moreh Nebukim 3. 29; 514, 517 Pines. s.v. Ibra¯hı¯m. 23 Ibid. 518 Pines.


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rest the myth of its antiquity, preceded by Spencer himself, who, however, was unable (or unwilling) to draw the logical conclusions.24 T H E ‘ S A B IA N S ’ OF TH E Q U R ’ A¯ N A ND T HE ‘ S A BI A N S ’ O F H A R R A¯ N ˙ But who were the ‘Sabians’?25 The Qur’a¯n (2. 62, 5. 69, and 22. 17) uses the term sa¯bi’a, a phonetic modification of the root sb‘, ‘to wet’, ‘to immerse ˙[in water]’, and, as a secondary meaning,˙ ‘to baptize [by immersion]’, and thus, ‘baptists’, to indicate a religious community, which, together with Jews, Christians, and, in the last-mentioned verse, Zoroastrians ( ¼ magicians), comprises the ‘people of the book’, who are thus tolerated in Islam: ‘nothing need they fear nor shall they be grieved’ (Qur’a¯n, 5. 69). Chwolson, and many others before him, identified them with the Mandeans, members of a baptist sect who claimed John ´ . Quatreme`re, ‘Me´moire sur les Nabateéns’, Nouveau Journal asiatique, 2nd ser. 24 E 15 (1835), 5–55; 97–137; 209–71. On the date, pp. 230–40: ‘on peut . . . admettre, comme une opinion fort probable, que la composition du livre de l’Agriculture nabateénne remonte a` une e´poque tre`s ancienne’, pp. 231–2. Chwolson, Ssabier (as in n. 20), i. 711–12: ‘Die Hauptquelle des Maimonides u¨ber die Ssabier und den Ssabismus ist also ein ohne Zweifel lange vor Christus in Babylonien abgefasstes und spa¨ter am Ende des 9. Jahrhunderts von einem chaldaïschen Hexenmeister und Alchymisten bearbeitetes Buch, welches von der Agricultur handelt, die mit dem babylonischen Heidenthum, mit Astrologie, und mit verschiedenen Arten von Zauberei eng verbunden war. Dieses Buch hat nichts mit unsern nordmesopotamischen jungen Harraniern zu thun, und M. gab es nur deshalb fu¨r ein ssabisches Buch aus, weil es vom Heidenthum und von Zauberei handelt; diese beiden sind bei ihm mit Ssabismus vo¨llig identisch.’ Chwolson discusses ¨ ber die U ¨ berreste der altbabylothe dating of the Nabatean Agriculture also in his ‘U ¨ bersetzungen’, Me´moires des savants étrangers de l’Acanischen Literatur in arabischen U de´mie Impe´riale de St. Petersburg, 8 (1859), 331–523, esp. 362 ff. E. Renan, ‘Me´moire sur l’aˆge du livre intitule´ Agriculture Nabateénne’, Me´moires de l’Acade´mie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 24 (1861), 139–90 ¼ ‘Sur les de´bris de l’ancienne litte´rature babylonienne conserve´s dans les traductions arabes’, Revue germanique, 10 (1860), 136–66; Eng. trans., An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture (London, 1862), and ‘Me´moire sur le traite´ de l’Agriculture nabateénne’, Comptes rendus de l’Acade´mie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 4 (1860), 47–59. Spencer, De legibus, 242–3: ‘Conjicerem autem (si res tam obscura conjecturam pateretur) eos sub expirantis Judaismi tempora primitus in lucem irrepsisse . . . Sed quocumque demum seculo Sabiorum libri scripti fuerint, id pro certo habendum Arabes non ante seculum septimum aut octavum eos in linguam Arabicam transtulisse.’ Cf. the interesting observations by Johann Christoph Wolf, Dissertatio de hypotesi spenceriana de Zabiis (Wittenberg, 1706), summed up in Manichaeismus ante Manichaeos, et in Christianismo Redivivus . . . (Hamburg, 1707), 85–91. 25 B. Carra de Vaux, Enzyklopaedie des Isla ¯ m, iv (1934), 22b–23b s.v. sa¯bi’a; T. Fahd, ˙ Encyclopaedia of Islam, viii (1995), 675–8 s.v. sa¯bi’a. ˙

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the Baptist as their prophet, and who live to the present day along the banks of the Lower Tigris and Euphrates: the ‘St. John Christians’, called by the Arabs subba or subbi, ‘baptists’. This theory seems no longer ˙ of the sources, and recent commentators tenable after J. Hja¨˙rpe’s survey tend to identify the Qur’a¯n Sabians either with a Judaeo-Christian gnosticizing sect mentioned by Epiphanius26 (M. Tardieu) or with Manicheans (F. C. de Blois).27 To confuse matters, the term is used by Arab writers to indicate a people who lived in the early centuries of the hidjra in Northern Mesopotamia, in Harra¯n (the ancient Carrhae), and practised an astral ˙ cult. Sabians are frequently mentioned by Arab writers: Muhammad ben ˙ Isha¯q al-Nadı¯m recounts that, when the caliph al-Ma’mu¯n visited ˙ Harra¯n in ad 830, the local population escaped the accusation of ˙ paganism by referring to themselves as sa¯bi’a, thus presenting themselves ˙ acceptable to Islam. They were as hunafa¯’, ‘monotheists’, and therefore ˙ apparently believed, even though Arab sources refer to them sometimes as sa¯bi’at H arra¯n in the sense of ‘those who bow down (to the stars)’.28 ˙The story ˙ is certainly plausible: a group of Harra¯n intellectuals in ˙ Islamic sympathies conflict with their compatriots on account of their had already moved to Baghdad, creating a composite cultural movement based predominantly on astrological motifs. They also translated into Arabic a number of treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum (hence the expression ‘Arabic hermeticism’).29 The Arabic translation of Nabataean Agriculture belongs to this cultural climate. Epiphanius Const., Haereses 29. 7. 7; 40. 1. 5. For a history of the arguments surrounding the ‘Sabians’, see Chwolson, Ssabier (as in n. 20), i. 100–38; J. Hja¨rpe, Analyse critique des traditions arabes sur les sabeéns H arraniens (typescript, Uppsala, 1972); C. Buck, ‘The Identity of the Saˆbi’un: An ˙ Historical Quest’, Muslim World, 74 (1984), 97–186; M. Tardieu, ‘Saˆbiens coraniques et ‘‘Saˆbiens’’ de Harraˆn’, Journal asiatique, 276 (1986), 1–44; S˛. Gu¨ndu¨z, The Knowledge of Life: The Origins and Early History of the Mandaeans in their Relation to the Sabians of the Qur’an and the Harranians ¼ Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 3 (Oxford, 1994); Gu¨ndu¨z’s conclusions are as follows: ‘Besides these vitally important points there are also many other differences between the religion of Harranians and that of the Mandaeans, such as in prayers, fasts, feasts and sacrifices. It should therefore be accepted without any hesitation that Mandaeism and Harranian religion are two completely different traditions’, p. 236; F. C. de Blois, Encyclopaedia of Islam, viii (1995), 672–5, s.v. sa¯bi’. 28 In the opinion of Genequand, ‘Idola ˆtrie’ (as in n. 20), 126–7, ‘le nom˙ de´rive du verbe saba’a ila¯ (ou: saba¯ ila¯) dans le sens de ‘‘incliner vers’’, ‘‘de´vier’’, et de la` ‘‘changer de religion’’ ’. ‘Cette interpre´tation est donneé par de nombreux auteurs et lexicographes arabes, ce qui lui confe`re de´ja` une certaine autorite´’, and only this etymology ‘peut rendre compte de l’ensemble des te´moignages et des faits conteste´s’. 29 The account of the caliph Ma’mun’s visit to H arran (in Muhammad ben Ishaq ¯ ¯ ¯ ˙ al-Nadı¯m, Kita¯b al-Fihrist, book 9, ch. 1) was translated into Latin˙ and published˙by 26 27


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MAIMONIDES AND THE PRINCIPLE OF ‘ N O R M A T I V E I N V E R S IO N’ As Assmann points out, to account for laws the purpose of which was otherwise obscure, Maimonides drew on the principle of ‘normative inversion’: ‘Wenn das Gesetz eine Ta¨tigkeit ‘‘x’’ verbietet, dann muß es eine heidnische Gruppe gegeben haben, die ‘‘x’’ praktiziert hat.’30 This must indeed have been the historical reason behind the formulation of so many prohibitions. One of the clearest cases is that regarding the cooking of the flesh of a kid in its mother’s milk (Exodus 23: 19; 24: 26 and Deuteronomy 14: 21), frequently explained as an Arab rite,31 while Ugaritic texts make it unequivocally clear that it was Cananaean.32 Maimonides applied the principle since he believed that the main purpose of the Law was to eradicate various idolatrous practices even if in some instances no exact correspondence existed between the offending pagan practice and the provisions of the law. Let me give two examples. In Moreh Nebukim 3. 30, Maimonides states that ‘among all men it was an accepted view that through the worship of stars the earth becomes populated and the soil fertile’; should the stars be provoked by human disobedience, ‘the land will become barren and devastated’. God, however, wishing ‘in His pity for us to efface this error from our minds. . . . through the abolition of these tiring and useless practices and to give us Laws through the instrumentality of Moses our Master, the latter informed us in His name. . . . that if the stars

Johann H. Hottinger, Historia Orientalis (Zu¨rich, 1651), 165–9. It is quoted by Spencer, De legibus, 241. Cf. Chwolson, Ssabier (as in n. 20), ii. 14–19 (text and translation of the passage in al-Nadı¯m) and i. 28–30. The theology and philosophy of the Harra¯nians of ˙ Chwolson, Baghdad have been illustrated in numerous works by Tha¯bit ibn Kurra (see Ssabier, ii., pp. i–iv). On ‘Arabic hermeticism’, see L. Massignon’s appendix, ‘Inventaire de la litte´rature herme´tique arabe’, in A.-J. Festugie`re, La Re´ve´lation d’Herme`s Trisme´giste, i: L’Astrologie et les sciences occultes (2nd edn., Paris, 1950), 384–400; J. Doresse, ‘L’Herme´tisme e´gyptianisant’, Encyclope´die de la Pleíade. Histoire des Religions, ii (Paris, 1972), 431–97 at 478–93, ‘L’Herme´tisme arabe’. 30 Assmann, Moses (as in n. 10), 90. 31 M. Haran, ‘Seething a Kid in Mother’s Milk’, Journal of Jewish Studies, 30 (1979), 23–34; O. Keel, Das Bo¨cklein in der Milch seiner Mutter und Verwandtes (Go¨ttingen, 1980). See E. Firmage in Anchor Bible Dictionary, vi (1992), 1128a–b. 32 Ch. Virolleaud, ‘La Naissance des dieux gracieux et beaux: Poe `me pheńicien de RasShamra’, Syria, 14 (1933), 128–51 at 130 (text); 133 (trans.); 140 (comm.), on the rites required to ensure the fecundation of a freshly tilled and sown field.

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and the planets were worshipped, their worship would be a cause for the rain ceasing to fall, for the land being devastated. . . . ’.33 This is summed up with the words ‘These are the intentions of the words of the covenant, which the Lord made’ (Deuteronomy 28: 69),34 which undoubtedly refers to Deuteronomy’s curses on the violators of the law. The exact words, however, are ‘If thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. . . . the Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed’ (28: 15 and 23), and not, as Maimonides states, ‘if the stars and the planets were worshipped, their worship would be a cause for the rain ceasing to fall, for the land being devastated’. Maimonides’ justification for the prohibition of grafting is also significant in this context. Quoting a passage from Nabataean Agriculture which states that to facilitate the union of two plants any graft has to be accompanied by sexual intercourse between a man and a woman, he comments: ‘Therefore the mingling [of diverse species], I mean the grafting of one tree upon another, is forbidden . . . ’.35 Scripture (Leviticus 19: 19 and Deuteronomy 22: 9–11) prohibits coupling between animals of different species, sowing with different kinds of seed, and weaving cloth with different threads, prohibitions almost certainly echoing Cananaean practices to be eliminated. But a prohibition of grafting is not among them. It is a rabbinical ruling deduced from the Leviticus passage, as Maimonides himself states in the Book on agriculture of his Mishneh Torah.36 All the above is expounded by Spencer in the second book of De legibus and commented on by Assmann, who analyses the ‘normative inversion’ which Spencer himself, as stated above, had perceptively grasped.37 33 Maimonides, Moreh Nebukim 3. 30; 522–3 Pines. Yahweh’s wrath ‘shut up the heaven, that there be no rain’ (Deut. 11: 17 and 1 Kings 8: 35); He will send the rain ‘in due season’ or make the ‘heaven as iron’ (Lev. 26: 4 and 19). 34 Lit.: ‘These are the words of the covenant which Yahweh has commanded Moses to make with the sons of Israel.’ 35 Maimonides, Moreh Nebukim 3. 37; 548 Pines. 36 The Book of Agriculture, trans. I. Klein (The Code of Maimonides Book 7) (New Haven, 1978), 5 ff. 37 De legibus, 235. ‘Cum autem Zabiorum plerique cum idolatria ˆ & magiaˆ proxime conjungerentur, & Mosis aetate passim increbescerent; Deo visum est Legem tradere, cujus praecepta plurima [affirmativa, cumprimis autem negativa] rituum Zabiorum nt‹qesin continerent, ne mores consimiles idolatriae contagionem inter Israe¨litas tandem importarent.’


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M A I M O N I D E S A N D T H E R A T I O N A L I T Y O F G O D’ S BEHAVIOUR IN REVELATION In the Moreh Nebukim, Maimonides has more things to say on the subject of Hebrew ritual related to revelation and its modus operandi. These chapters constitute Spencer’s source for his third book. The way he uses Maimonides shows differences between the two which help to explain the rationale of Spencer’s work. The principle of ‘normative inversion’ adopted by God to neutralize pagan superstition is explained by Maimonides in terms of divine providence. Revelation does not occur through the communication of abstract principles but is a process of adaptation (an accommodatio) to a given reality in order to overturn it (as in the case of pagan superstition) or modify it (as in the case of the Egyptian rites and practices adopted by the Hebrews). In Moreh Nebukim 3. 21 Maimonides returns to the problem of apparently pointless prescriptions and prohibitions, citing the very interesting argument of those who considered it illegitimate to seek a rational explanation. If, they argued, we were to assume that every law had a discernible purpose, we might conclude that it was enacted not by God but by a wise legislator. It is the absence of such a purpose that obliges us to conclude that the enactment is divine and not that of man, a rational animal. Maimonides’ answer is that this would make man appear more perfect than his creator, and that, by prohibiting acts that cause man no harm, God would be acting pointlessly. The opposite must be true, he concludes, ‘since God always seeks our good’. In the following chapter, he deals with divine providence. He begins with medical matters, showing how the rational workings of the human organs are ordained by divine wisdom and foresight. He uses the example of mammals unable to feed on solid substances immediately after birth—they are provided with milk, the perfect nourishment for their condition. He builds on this example to enter into general considerations on the nature of divine revelation: Many things in our Law are due to something similar to this very governance on the part of Him who governs . . . For a sudden transition from one opposite to another is impossibile. And therefore man, according to his nature, is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which he was accustomed.

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There existed at the time of the revelation on Sinai a world-wide custom—practised also by the Jews, who had spent a long time in Egypt, and had been brought up in this ‘universal cult’—which consisted ‘in offering various species of living beings in the temples in which images were set up, in worshipping the latter and in burning incense before them’. God’s wisdom ‘did not require that He give us a Law prescribing the rejection, abandonment, and abolition of all these kinds of worship. For one could not then conceive the acceptance of [such a Law], considering the nature of man, which always likes that to which it is accustomed’. Thus God allowed the various forms of worship to remain, ordering that none of them should henceforward be addressed to created objects and imaginary and unreal entities. He ordered the building of a temple, and the offering of sacrifices, but with the proviso that they be made to Him alone: ‘thou shalt worship no other god’ (Exodus 34: 14). Through this divine ruse it came about that the memory of idolatry was effaced and that the grandest and true foundation of our belief—namely, the existence and oneness of the deity—was firmly established, while at the same time the souls had no feeling of repugnance and were not repelled because of abolition of modes of worship to which they were accustomed and than which no other mode of worship was known at that time.38

These passages show Maimonides’ total rationalism: he refuses to accept that the Law contains precepts and prohibitions that do not have a precise reason; he feels the need to explain why the Jews, the recipients of God’s special revelation, should have religious institutions and ceremonial laws which hardly differ from those of other peoples.

M AR SH AM : A S TEP FO RW A R D TOW AR DS HISTORY The last of these problems came to the fore when the question of possible contacts between Israel and neighbouring peoples, not least Egypt, began to be considered in a quasi-historical perspective, subverting the traditional theological thesis that it was other peoples who imitated Israel, and not vice versa. This transition from a theological to a basically historical perspective is already clear in John Marsham’s Chronicus Canon Aegyptiacus, Ebraicus, Graecus, published in London in 38

Maimonides, Moreh Nebukim 3. 32; 525–7 Pines.


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1672.39 This is a chronographic work in which the history of Egypt, Israel, and Greece involves an evaluation of the contacts between the different civilizations, particularly between Egypt and Israel. Marsham quotes Maimonides at length, while not sharing his opinions.40 On the question of sacrifices Marsham writes: ‘The differentiation of cattle and of gender, and the rationale of bodily defects became part of the Hebrew religion after the exodus from Egypt. Nor was Moses the first to institute sacrifices, he merely prescribed ways of performing them’41—i.e. after the departure from Egypt Mosaic Law accepted sacrifices as a fact and merely prescribed what animals were to be chosen and that they should be whole (tamim) and male (Exodus 12: 5). As to the fact that the immediate purpose of various commandments and prohibitions was less than clear, he writes: ‘The law prescribes many things and prohibits many. Moses is silent on the causes. This baffles the mind, unless it is permissible to have recourse to the earliest customs.’42 After citing Maimonides, according to whom there is no known reason why hyssop twigs should be used for sprinkling the lintel and the sideposts of doors with the blood of the paschal Lamb (Exodus 12: 22),43 he writes: ‘But the Egyptians attribute a purifying effect to hyssop’, with a reference to Porphyry, De abstinentia 4. 6. 9.44 In his Quaestiones conviviales (IV, quaest. 6; 669 f), Plutarch says that the pig was 39 John Marsham, Canon Chronicus Ægyptiacus, Ebraicus, Graecus, et disquisitiones. Liber non Chronologicae tantum, sed et Historicae Antiquitatis reconditissima complexus; Londini primum A. 1672 editus; Deinde in Germania recusus, nunc vero longe emendatior typis expressus . . . (Franequer, 1696) (all references are to this edn.). 40 Marsham, Canon, 202–3: ‘Dicit [sc. Maimonides] gentem Zabiorum implevisse totum Orbem: id est, Superstitiones Aegyptias longe lateque fuisse propagatas’; 162: ‘Zabiorum autem nomine, Aegyptios, maxime Mendesios, intelligere videtur.’ For Marsham, the Sabeans are, in fact, Egyptians. 41 Ibid. 201: ‘Pecudum sexusque discrimen, & vitii corporalis ratio, post exitum ex Aegypto in religionem Ebraicam recepta sunt. Neque Moses primus Sacrificia instituit sed sacrificandi modum praescripsit.’ Marsham corroborates his statement with passages from Jerome, Theodoret, and Chrysostom (these are also cited by Spencer—see n. 49); he also quotes Maimonides, Moreh Nebukim 3. 32. 42 Marsham, Canon, 212: ‘Multa jubet lex, multa vetat; quorum causas non tradidit Moses. Haeret in his ingenium humanum; nisi ad consuetudines pristinas concedatur 43 Maimonides, Moreh Nebukim 3. 47; 597 Pines. refugium.’ 44 Marsham, Canon, 212. Hyssop, in Hebrew ’ezob, Greek ˇsswpov, is used for puri¯ ficatory sprinkling: Lev. 14: 6, 49, 51–2 (against leprosy); Num. 19: 6, 18 (sacrifice of the red heifer); 1 Kings 4: 33; Ps. 51: 7: ‘Purge me with hyssop’; Mishnah Nega’im 14: 6; Pesahim 9: 5; Parah 3: 10; 11: 6–9; 12: 1, 3, 5, 11. For its purifying power in the pagan ˙ see W. Dittenberger, Sylloge inscriptionum Graecarum, 4th edn., no. 1218, 16 [5th c. world, bc]; Chaeremon, Frag. 10 (reported by Porphyry, loc. cit. in text) 44. 6 Schwyzer; L. Baldensperger and G. M. Crowfoot, ‘Hyssop’, Palestine Exploration Fund (1931), 89–98.

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considered impure by the Jews. But, Marsham observes, in De Iside et Osiride (353 f) he says that this was equally the opinion of Egyptian priests.45 Marsham quotes Philo (De specialibus legibus 1. 5) to the effect that the purpose of circumcision among the Jews was to keep the body clean, and that it was practised for the same reason by Egyptian priests who, in addition, shaved their bodies.46 Marsham’s distance from Maimonides, on whom he draws, will be clear from these few examples. On the question of Egyptian–Jewish relations and the possibility that Jewish religious rites and institutions derive from the Egyptians, he enunciates no general (theological) principles, suggesting that each instance must be considered individually: ‘Moses plerosque Aegyptiorum ritus abrogavit, quosdam immutavit, quosdam pro indifferentibus habuit, quosdam permisit, imo & iussit.’47 Marsham’s Canon was published, as mentioned above, in 1672; Spencer’s De legibus in 1685. So Spencer knew Marsham, but if Marsham had taken one step forward towards history, Spencer remained within the confines of theology.

THE OLD TESTAMENT ANNOUNCES THE NEW: SO CINO ’S OPINIO N ON T HE SUBJECT As stated above, Book 3 of De legibus is composed of eight dissertations on Hebrew rites learnt in Egypt. The first examines the problem in general terms, and it merits some analysis. The origin of these rites, Spencer affirms, is enveloped in mystery; a number of them derived from rules instituted by the patriarchs in an attempt to cope with the difficulty of adoring an invisible god. These rules were few in number, but men, desirous of novelty and inspired by the devil, soon instituted many 45 Marsham, Canon, 213. On the ban of pork and pigs in Egypt, see Herod. 2. 47; Plut. de Iside et Osir. 353 f; Athen. Deipnos. 7. 300 A; Sextus Emp. Pyr. Hypoth. 3. 223. 46 Marsham, Canon, 215–16. Philo states: ‘Secondly, it promotes the cleanliness of the whole body as befits the consecrated order, and therefore the Egyptians carry the practice to a further extreme and have the bodies of their priests shaved. For some substances which need to be cleared away collect and secrete themselves both in the hair and the foreskin’ (translation by F. H. Colson). On circumcision in Egypt, see the Suda s.v. Ywlv (4. 849–50 Adler): ofl d Afig¸ptioi ywlo› lgontai e nai toutsti peritetmhmnoi and P. Wendland, ‘Die hellenistischen Zeugnisse u¨ber die a¨gyptische Beschneidung’, Archiv fu¨r Papyrusforschung, 2 (1903), 22–31. 47 Marsham, Canon, 154–5.


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more: hence the devil’s absolute sway over humanity and its lapse into every imaginable kind of wickedness. Seeing this, God decided to intervene and restore the Israelites to the original piety of their fathers, forbidding idolatry by eradicating several pagan practices and superstitions (this is the subject of Book 2) and allowing the Hebrews to continue to observe a reformed version of the rites they had practised in Egypt provided He was their sole object.48 So far Spencer is simply reiterating what Maimonides had written in Moreh Nebukim 3. 32. It was inevitable, however, that they should part company since in the opinion of the Hebrew philosopher, Jewish rites had lost none of their validity even if the destruction of the Temple had made some of them impracticable. Even laws prescribed in order to eradicate a specific idolatrous practice remained valid long after the practice had ceased. For Christians, all ritual laws had been superseded by the coming of Christ, their only significance lying in their representing ‘typus et umbrae rerum futurarum’: i.e. of announcing, like the words of the prophets, Christ’s advent.49 In consequence, accepting or rejecting the prophetic import of a rite radically affected its meaning: in the first case, God’s work is seen as revelation, a typological annunciation of Christ; in the second, it was a providential measure, an accommodatio De legibus, 519–20. The Christian understanding of prophecy distinguishes between prophecy as the announcement of a future event contained in the writings of Old Testament prophets and fulfilled in the New Testament—e.g. Isa. 7: 14 (LXX) / Matt. 1: 23 (the coming of the Emmanuel)—and typological prophecy, the foreshadowing or prefiguration in Old Testament figures and events of New Testament figures and events—e.g. Rom. 5: 14: Adam is the t¸pov of the Adam who is to come, i.e. Christ; Esau and Jacob are not only the sons of Joseph, but also t¸poi of Hebrews and Christians (Augustine, De civ. Dei 16. 42). The Jewish ceremonial laws are interpreted in this sense: the pascal lamb is the t¸pov of Christ par excellence. The school of Antioch (Theodore of Mopsuestia in particular) strongly opposed this kind of interpretation; the Reformers accepted it, although some considered the mystico-typological sense as an ‘accommodatio sensus litteralis ad aliam rem spiritualem’ (Abr. Calov, Systema locorum theologicorum, i (Wittenberg, 1655), 663); the Socinians (see below) and Arminians (Grotius, Limborch) rejected it totally; while Christian Thomasius defined it as ‘atheistis larga ridendi occasio’ (quoted by Diestel, Geschichte [as in n. 6], 477). This anti-typological tendency was widely resisted (see e.g. S. Deyling, De amplitudine sensus biblici non coarctanda, in Observationum sacrarum pars quinta . . . (Leipzig, 1747), 235–47). For Pfaff’s views see Appendix; Diestel, Geschichte, 83 ff.; 131–6; 268 ff.; 377 ff.; 477 ff.; 531 ff.; 699 ff.; 752 ff.; A. Blumenthal, ‘t¸pov und pardeigma’, Hermes, 63 (1928), 391–414; L. Goppelt, Typos: Die typologische Deutung des AT im Neuen (Beitra¨ge zur Fo¨rderung christlicher Theologie, 2/43; Gu¨tersloh, 1939:); R. Bultmann, ‘Ursprung und Sinn der Typologie als hermeneutischer Methode’, Theologische Literaturzeitung, 75 (1950), 205–12 ¼ his Exegetica . . . (Tu¨bingen, 1967), 369–80; Goppelt, in Theologisches Wo¨rterbuch des Neuen Testaments, viii (1965), 246–60, s.v. t¸pov. 48 49

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for the exclusive use of the Hebrews, who were unable to grasp higher truths. Both the ecclesiastical tradition and the Reformers had maintained that the Old Testament announced the New, and that, prophetically or typologically, Christ was prefigured and announced in the Hebrew Scriptures, though a number of theologians stressed the Law’s specific and limited significance, given that its essential purpose was to eradicate idolatry. Eusebius, for example, read the Prophets and the Psalms as the true prophetic core of the Old Testament. Moses’ aim in revising earlier ritual was twofold: not only to restore the Hebrews to the patriarchal virtues, banishing idolatry and curing them of the ‘Egyptian illness’ (Dem. ev. 1. 6; 27. 32 Heikel), but also to prefigure the coming of Christ. In any case, in Dem. ev. 1. 2 (9. 2–3 Heikel) Eusebius gives a decidedly negative reading of Mosaic Law, defining it as an qeloqrhske‹a (literally, ‘self-chosen worship’, ‘superstition’), the term used by Paul (Colossians 2: 23) to indicate the precepts (‘thou shalt not take’, ‘thou shalt not eat’, ‘thou shalt not touch’) that he dismissed as the ‘prescriptions and teachings of men’ (the expression is found in Mark 7: 7 and in Matthew 15: 9). The passage is ambiguous, and it is far from certain that Paul was referring to Hebrew laws, but this is Eusebius’ interpretation, which amounts to a denial of the prophetic value of Hebrew ritual. Spencer quotes this passage together with others from the Church Fathers, medieval and modern theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, who, without denying its prophetic value, interpreted Hebrew law as essentially a ‘cure’ for a primitive people otherwise in danger of returning to idolatrous ways.50 Spencer’s citations are certainly not 50 De legibus, 524–7. Among the Church Fathers, he cites Jerome, who, in his Commentarium in Mattheum (ad 5. 34), states that ‘hoc quasi parvulis fuerat lege concessum ut quo modo victimas immolabant Deo ne eas idolis immolarent, sic et jurare permitterentur in Deum, non quo recte hoc facerent, sed quo melius esset Deo id exhibere quam daemonibus’ (ed. D. Hurst and M. Adriaen, Corpus Christianorum, series Latina, 77; Turnhout, 1969, 32) and Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Graecarum affectionum curatio, 7. De sacrificiis, 16, ed. P. Canivet (Sources chre´tiennes, 57; Paris, 1948), 300, according to whom, after their long exile in Egypt, the Hebrews were so steeped in local rites that God, in his desire to purge them, ‘permitted them to make sacrifices, though not of every kind and not to the false gods of Egypt, but to sacrifice solely to himself’. Among medieval authors, Spencer cites William of Auvergne, Liber de legibus, in Opera (Venice, 1591), i. 31, who observes that the offering of shewbread on the table within the Temple (Exod. 25: 30) was reserved for priests alone (the only ones allowed entrance), and was intended to eradicate the use Jeremiah mentions (7: 18 and 44: 19), of making cakes for the ‘queen of heaven’. Among modern commentators he cites Conrad Pellicanus, Commentaria Bibliorum, i (Zurich, 1538), fol. 100r, who, in his note on Exod. 25: 6


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exhaustive but one omission is perhaps significant. In his Introductio ad utilem lectionem librorum Novi Testamenti Johann Ludwig von Wol(l)zogen states: It is obvious that a prudent legislator will prescribe such laws to his people as best suit that people’s nature, customs, and circumstances. One people will require a harsher and stricter, another a more lenient and relaxed rule. Thus God, as a most wise legislator, gave the Israelites such laws as fitted perfectly with that people’s stubborn and servile nature, and the not yet adult age of the world in which they lived.51

Wolzogen was a Socinian, and, as such, an opponent of typological prophecy. Socinus holds that it is impossible to make inferences from the Old Testament to the New, but only from the New to the Old, the latter being a carrier of revelation only in so far as it is cited in the New, and only in the passages cited. Old Testament prophecies refer to the facts and situations of their own time, and it is only New Testament citations of them that allow reference to the advent of Christ.52 Wolzogen means something very different from seemingly analogous statements in other theologians. In his conception, the accommodatio embodied in the laws God gave to the Hebrews through Moses concerns the Hebrew people alone and in no way constitutes a revelation.53 How is one to account for Spencer’s failure to call on an apparent ally? To observes that by the offering of spices for annointing oil ‘non tam Deus delectabatur, quam populus’, but God allowed it ‘ne diffluerent ad idolorum sacrilegia’, and Alfonso Tostado, Opera, vi (Cologne, 1613), 225–6, who, in his commentary on 1 Kings 8 points out that ‘si voluisset Deus arctare eos negando quaedam quae Gentilibus licebant, non sustinerent Judaei legem tam arctam & recederent’. Of Hebrew texts, he quotes Moreh Nebukim 3. 32 and the re´sume´ by Paolo Riccio in De coelesti agricultura (Basle, 1587), 73: ‘Dicit [Maimonides] plurimas leges cerimoniales magis propter hominum hebetudinem & consuetudinem idolatricam traditas esse, quam quod legislator cuperet.’ 51 ‘Notum est, quemvis prudentem legislatorem id spectare, ut populo suo tales praescribat leges, quae naturae eius, moribus ac conditioni quam optime conveniant. Alii severiori & adductiori, alii mitiori ac remissiori imperio indigent. Ita Deus quoque utpote sapientissimus legislator, tales Israe¨litico populo tradidit leges, quae in ipsius contumacem et servilem naturam, & in illam nondum adultam mundi aetatem apprime quadrabant.’ Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum (Irenopoli [ ¼ Amsterdam], IX, post a.D. 1656), 243, in part quoted in L. Diestel, ‘Die socinianische Anschauung vom Alten Testament in ihrer geschichtlichen und theologischen Bedeutung’, Jahrbu¨cher fu¨r deutsche Theologie, 7 (1862), 709–77 at 755. 52 Diestel, ‘Die socinianische Anschauung’; Geschichte (as in n. 6), 534–9. 53 According to the Socinians, in the Old Testament revelation ‘reducirt sich auf go¨ttliche Mittheilung: der Begriff ist rein formal, der Inhalt der Offenbarung selbst steht mit dem tiefsten Wesen des offenbarenden Gottes in keinem genuinen Zusammenhange’; Diestel, ‘Anschauung’, 745. For Wol(l)zogen, see P. Tschakert in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xliv (1898), 551–2.

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answer this question, it is necessary to elucidate the theological import of De legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus.

SPENCER AND THE SECONDARY PURPOSE OF TH E HEBR EW L AW In the first chapter of Book 1, Spencer distinguishes between a primary and a secondary purpose of Hebrew law. God gave the laws to Israel primarily to wean it from idolatry; secondarily ‘to serve as figurations of certain aspects of the Gospels and of certain moral requirements’.54 De legum rituumque Mosaicorum fine secundario is the title of chapter 11. It merits particular attention in that it allows us to infer Spencer’s basic purpose. His first observation is that the interpretations of ‘allegorist’ exegetes are often absurd and almost always contradictory: ‘many [sc. exegetes], intent on fathoming the mysteries of the Law, stray into divergent pursuits and meanings, treating the Law of Moses like a wax nose, shaping it this way or that, according to the fancies of their minds’.55 It is true that the New Testament contains passages which carry a prophetic reading of Hebrew law, such as, for example, John 1: 17 and 4: 27; Hebrews 8: 5, 9: 24, and 10: 1, but the Talmud equally states that God prescribed the form of the Tabernacle as an image of ‘higher things’.56 A number of Church fathers, such as Origenes and Epiphanius, similarly affirmed that Hebrew ritual was but the figuration and image of a future reality, and modern theologians have followed suit to excess, ‘reading frigid and jejune allegories into the smallest points of the Law’.57 Spencer finds further possible indications of a second meaning in Hebrew law in the veil covering Moses’ face (Exodus 34: 33); in the need for a gradual revelation, and in Moses’ ‘Egyptian education’, which 54 De legibus, 21 : ‘ut . . . rebus quibusdam Evangelicis & officiis moralibus, tanquam in imagine repraesentandis, inservirent’. 55 Ibid. 179: ‘plerique vero, Legis mysteriis indagandis occupati, in studia sensusque discrepantes abeunt, legem Mosaicam tamquam nasum cereum, in hanc vel illam formam, pro varia cerebri sui figura, convertentes’. 56 Ibid. 180. The indication Berakhot, 5 in fine is wrong: see Exodus Rabbah 35: 6 (on Exod. 26: 15); Num. R. 12.13 (on Num. 7: 1). 57 Ibid. 181: ‘Quaslibet pene Legis apiculas ad allegorias frigidas & exangues trahere solent, & ad omnia Mosis verba et instituta accedere, certi mysteria vel invenire vel facere.’


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Philo mentions.58 On this last, Spencer writes: ‘God conveyed in the Law many things enveloped in types and figures, perhaps in order to adapt the Law to Moses’ own mind and education’:59 a conclusion indirectly endorsed not only by Philo, but by the frequent observation of various commentators that the Holy Spirit, speaking through the prophets, ‘accommodated its outpourings very much to their individual minds, customs, and functions’.60 It is thus possible to maintain (quidni itaque credamus) that in making his revelation to Moses and in electing him as his prophet, God took into account Moses’ ‘Egyptian education’, especially his acquaintance with hieroglyphics, which would enable him to record the Law as an encoding of higher truths. In antiquity, Spencer observes, ‘hardly any precepts of religion, politics, or philosophy presented themselves openly; important matters were, in one way or another, veiled’.61 Thus the Hebrew idea of the secret significance of the law was common to the Egyptians, the Chaldaeans, and even the Greeks, as is affirmed e.g. by Francesco Patrizi.62 If we accept that an ulterior truth is encoded in Hebrew law, it is logical to ask which laws encode what higher truths. But the interpretations offered by the ‘allegorists’ are so many and so discordant, Spencer concludes, that they can only be the product of less than sound minds.63 However, he goes on, it is easy to object that allegories in the New Testament, such as the tripartite division of the Temple in the image of 58 Ibid. 182. Philo, De vita Mosis, 1. 23: ‘These [the Egyptian priests] further instructed him [sc. Moses] in the philosophy conveyed in symbols as displayed in the socalled holy inscriptions and in the regard paid to animals, to which they even pay divine honours’ (trans. F. H. Colson). This is the only reference to an initiation of Moses into the mysteries of Egyptian hieroglyphics. All others (Acts 7: 22; Ezekiel the Tragic, 438b; Clement Alexandr. Strom 1. 15) derive from it; Ecclus. 45 says nothing on the matter and there is nothing on it in either Jewish-Hellenistic or Rabbinic literature. 59 De legibus, 182: ‘Deus multa in lege typorum & figurarum tegumentis involuta tradidit, forsan ut lex Mosaica cum ipso Mosis ingenio et educatione consensus coleret.’ 60 Ibid.: ‘afflatum suum ad varia eorum ingenia, mores & officia civilia plurimum accommodasse’. 61 Ibid.: ‘vix ulla religionis, politiae vel philosophiae dogmata apertam gestabant faciem, sed res quaeque praeclarae velo aliquo tegebantur’. 62 Ibid. 184; Francesco Patrizi, Discussionum peripateticarum tomi IV quibus Aristotelicae Philosophiae universa Historia atque Dogmata cum Veterum Placitis collata, eleganter & erudite declarantur (Basle, 1581), t. 3, lib. 1, pp. 293–4: ‘Hunc morem Moses est secutus, cum legum libros solis sacerdotibus, & aperuit et custodiendos commendauit, cum omnia eius scripta figuris ac velaminibus adumbrauit, unde Cabala illa secretissima orta. Hunc eundem morem Prophetae omnes sanctissimi obseruarunt: non nisi sub figuris ac aenigmatibus sunt locuti. Hinc ergo fabulae Orphei ortae sunt, aenigmata, figurae, hinc initio poematis sui profanos ab intelligentia arcet . . . ’ 63 De legibus, 185–7.

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the heavens (Hebrews 8: 5 and 9: 24), belong conceptually to the late Hebrew world (Wisdom 9: 8) which in its turn took them from Greek philosophy, particularly Plato and his theory that all reality is the image of a transcendent archetype. Justin (Dial. cum Tryph. 261) declares everything ordered by Moses to be a prefiguration of all that would be fulfilled in Christ, although Philo, in De fuga et inventione 108, had already affirmed that ‘the High Priest is not a man, but a Divine Word, immune from all unrighteousness whether intentional or unintentional’.64 The chapter, then, as shrewd as it is ironic, offers the following considerations: 1. Spencer never rejects an allegorical interpretation explicitly, but for every argument in favour, offers a counter-argument. 2. The symbolic value of Hebrew rites and institutions as affirmed in the New Testament and the Church Fathers derives, he argues, from a similar interpretative line found in Jewish-Hellenistic writers, particularly Philo, but also Josephus, the Letter of Aristeas, etc. It is the effect of the absorption of elements of Greek philosophy into Hebrew culture. 3. The many contradictions in the more recent allegorists’ interpretations of the Scriptures (many of them arbitrary) are evidence of an unsound mind. 4. The fact that Moses’ ‘Egyptian education’, in particular his knowledge of hieroglyphics, enabled him to encode in the Law higher and secret meanings is taken into account by Spencer only as one indication among several of a possible ‘secondary purpose’ of the Law. 5. The accommodatio by virtue of which the Hebrews could continue to practise rituals they had become used to in Egypt was God’s doing, not Moses’, the latter being merely God’s instrument in bringing it about; consequently it had nothing to do with Moses’ ‘Egyptian education’. This last remark takes us back to Assmann’s study. Moses is its undisputed hero, and, by a kind of metonymous displacement, becomes the hero of Spencer’s De legibus. By isolating and, in my opinion, decontextualizing what little Spencer has to say about Moses, Assmann is able to affirm that, according to Spencer, ‘Moses lernte dieses Prinzip einer doppelten Kodierung von seinen a¨gyptischen Lehrern’ and that 64

Trans. G. H. Whitaker (Loeb; London, 1934).


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‘aus diesem Grund hat Gott ihn zu seinem ersten Propheten erwa¨hlt’.65 Those reading only Assmann might well conclude that Spencer holds the ‘secondary purpose’ of the Law to be connected to the ‘dual codification’ of hieroglyphics, which Moses learnt from his Egyptian masters. One comment of Assmann’s on this point is extremely interesting, and goes a long way towards accounting for the erroneous view of Spencer held by most scholars. Assmann finds Spencer’s position on the ‘secondary purpose of the Law’ ‘nu¨chtern und zuru¨ckhaltend’, but can only explain this coolness with the help of Bayle’s Dictionnaire,66 interpreting it as a rationalist position. This could not be further from the truth. While rationalist currents were undoubtedly present in seventeenth-century England, both among historians (e.g. Marsham) and religious polemicists (the Deists, not least Charles Blount), Spencer is most certainly not of their number. Even if a Socinian in petto, his line of argument is marked by extreme prudence—for cogent reasons. Spencer was a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England (and a pluralist at that). Having subscribed to the Thirty-Nine Articles according to law, he could not openly express Socinian beliefs.67

ANTITRINITARIANS AND HISTORICAL ENQUIRY IN SUPPORT OF THEOLOGICAL POSITIONS As the Dissertatio praeliminaris prefixed by Pfaff to his edition of Spencer68 shows, contemporary and slightly later critics had fully understood the theological import of the work. I discuss this in the Appendix. Among modern scholars the first to recognize Spencer’s crypto-Socianism was Ludwig Diestel.69 Recently, Martin Mulsow has given substance to the hypothesis by citing a letter of the royal librarian Assmann, Moses (as in n. 10), 116. Ibid. 115 and 304 n. 231: ‘Spencers Spott u¨ber das Allegorisieren entspricht einem allgemeinen Trend zur De-Allegorisierung und zur Wahrnehmung des Gewo¨hnlichen, wo a¨ltere Generationen geheime Konnotationen gesucht hatten, der fu¨r das spa¨te 17. Jahrhundert und besonders fu¨r Pierre Bayle typisch ist, dessen Dictionnaire historique et critique 1697 erschien.’ 67 For an account of Socinianism in England see St. Kot, A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England and America (Cambridge, Mass., 1952); H. J. MacLachlan, 68 Cf. n. 3 above. Socinianism in 17th Century England (Oxford, 1951). 69 Diestel, Geschichte (as in n. 6), 543: ‘Verfehlt ist freilich seine [sc. Spencers] Meinung von der Verwandtschaft der hebr. Riten mit den a¨gyptischen (der indess ja heute die meisten Aegyptologen huldigen), sowie die Zuru¨ckfu¨hrung alles streng Verbotenen auf den Dienst der Zabier. Seinen etwa aüsserlichen Supranaturalismus 65 66

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in Berlin, Mathurin Veyssie`re La Croze, to Johann Christoph Wolf which offers a specific pointer to Spencer’s sympathies.70 Mulsow reconstructs the web of relationships between the various exponents of English Antitrinitarian thought in the early eighteenth century and shows the importance of Spencer’s work for them. Newton planned a new edition of De legibus, accumulating a great deal of material, partly used by Chappelow in his edition of 1727.71 What Mulsow does not perhaps sufficiently bring out is the fact that, at this time, especially in England, Antitrinitarianism called forth a number of investigations designed to establish historically the truth of certain theological positions. The five volumes of Primitive Christianity Reviv’d, which William Whiston published in 1711 and 1712, were intended to show on the basis of the earliest Christian documents that the doctrine of the Trinity was but an ‘Athanasian forgery’. By virtue of such discoveries, for which he was violently attacked, Whiston believed himself to be an instrument of God for the re-establishment of authentic Christianity.72 In 1726 Samuel Crell published in England, under a pseudonym, a book on the prologue of the Fourth Gospel in which he mantained that John had in fact written not ‘Et Deus erat verbum’, but ‘Et Dei erat Verbum’.73 It is to this kind of historical literature that Spencer’s De legibus belongs. His was not a rationalist investigation, as most modern scholars have thought, but a strictly religious one. Spencer, then, was unwilling to entschuldigt reichlich der theologische Zeitgeist und erkla¨rt die Beru¨hrung mit socianischen Ideen.’ 70 M. Mulsow, ‘Orientalistik im Kontext der sozinianischen und deistischen Debatten um 1700: Spencer, Crell, Locke und Newton’, Scientia Poetica: Jahrbuch fu¨r Geschichte der Literatur und Wissenschaft, 2 (1998), 27–57. The letter, dated 4 Aug. 1718, now at the Staats- und Universita¨tsbibliothek Hamburg (Sup. Epist. Uffenbachi et Wolfiorum, 115, 364) reports what Samuel Crell, grandson of Johann Crell, told him about a visit to Spencer: ‘Cum nuper inter nos familiariter de sectae illius rebus ageremus, non sine stupore audivi narrantem se a Joanne Spencero cum in Anglia esset ut fratrem acceptum fuisse, & cum his verbis valedictoriis dimissum, quae fideliter memoriae mandavi: ‘‘Ego calidis votis causam vestram Deo commendo’’ ’, as quoted by Mulsow, ‘Orienta71 Cf. n. 2 above. listik’, 28 n. 5. 72 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston containing Memoirs of Several of his Friends also. Written by Himself (London, 1749), 198: ‘In the Proposal whereof to the Christian World, the Providence of God has been pleased to make use of me, as an Instrument, and for my Faithfulness to which Trust all this Hardship has befallen me’; 358: ‘In the Year 1736, I published Athanasian Forgeries, Impositions, and Interpolations, under the title of, A Lover of Truth, and of true Religion’. On Whiston, see J. E. Force, William Whiston: Honest Newtonian (Cambridge, 1985). 73 Initium Evangelii S. Joannis Apostoli ex Antiquitate Ecclesiastica restitutum, indidemque Nova ratione illustratum. In isto Opere ante omnia probatur, Joannem non scripsisse,


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destroy the idea of revelation by affirming that the Hebrew laws were in fact Egyptian, or by setting Mosaic law against natural law. If he does not give Moses’ Egyptian education as an explanation, it is because he believes it was the action of God, and not of Moses. He wanted to use erudition to prove that the Mosaic laws were dictated to Israel solely to combat idolatry, since, in Wolzogen’s words, he believed ‘among the many errors that have crept into the Christian religion, not the least is the failure to understand and expound correctly the difference between the Old and the New Covenant or between the Law of Moses and the Gospel of Jesus Christ: the two are confused with one another, so that it is almost impossible to know whether Christians should be called Jews, or Jews Christians’.74 Appendix: Pfaff on Spencer The judgement of Christoph Matthaeus Pfaff on John Spencer’s De legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus is expounded in his De recta theologiae typicae conformatione (1727) and in the Dissertatio praeliminaris prefixed to the 1732 edition of Spencer. Between 1723 and 1729 Pfaff, at that time professor of theology and chancellor of the university in Tu¨bingen, published three commentationes academicae on the theological problems involved in the relationship between the Old and the New Testament. The first is concerned with typology (De recta theologiae typicae conformatione, Tu¨bingen, 1723), the second with prophecy (De recta theologiae propheticae conformatione, Tu¨bingen, 1728), the third with allegory and parable, analysing at length the use of the latter in both Testaments (De recta theologiae parabolicae et allegoricae conformatione, Tu¨bingen, 1729). It is the first of the three that is relevant to our purpose. Pfaff made a reputation for himself by his learning and his balanced views. A moderately rationalist Lutheran with a tincture of pietism, he worked for a rapprochement between Lutherans and Calvinists. The views expressed in the treatise on typology reflect this. The commentatio is divided into two chapters: Et Deus erat verbum, sed, Et Dei erat Verbum. Tum etiam tota 18. prima eius Evangelii commata, & alia multa dicta Scripturae S. illustrantur: & non pauca antiquorum Ecclesiasticorum ac Hereticorum loca ventilantur ac emendantur. Per L.M. Artemonium Anno Domini 1726. 74 ‘Inter plurimos errores qui in Christianam religionem irrepserunt, haud exiguus est, quod discrimen inter Vetus ac Novum Foedus seu inter legem Mosis et Evangelium Jesu Christi non recte intelligatur et explicetur, sed utraque ita confundantur, ut paene sciri nequeat, Christianine Judaei an Judaei Christiani dicendi sint.’ Joh. Lud. Wolzogen, Introductio, Bibl. Fratr. Pol. IX, 1, quoted by Diestel, Anschauung (as in n. 51), 747 n. 1.

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primum idque theticum [qetikv expounding the various arguments]; secundum idque polemicum [expounding the refutations]. The second chapter opens with a programmatic statement: We suggested above that, in typological theology, Scylla should be avoided, as well as Charybdis. We prefer the middle way, which is the royal way. Types should not be multiplied beyond reason, but neither should they be removed altogether. The extremes of excess and deficiency should be avoided. Theologians who follow Jo[hannes] Coccejus are said to sin by excess, whereas deficiency is the mark of Socinians, Remonstrants, Marsham, Spencer, Joncourt, Poiret.75

But not even the Socinians, Pfaff observes, reject typology entirely, as Spencer maintains, since Socinus himself considers that the high priest was a t¸pov of Christ. Among the Remonstrants, Grotius, Episcopius, and Limborg recognize the existence of t¸poi, though they limit them to instances of explicit enunciation (‘qui kat r

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