Humanism and Renaissance Historiography (History Series (Hambledon Press), V. 21.)

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Humanism and Renaissance

Historiography

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Humanism and Renaissance Historiography E.B. Fryde

THE HAMBLEDON PRESS

The Hambledon Press 1983 35 Gloucester Avenue, London NW1 7AX

History Series 21

ISBN 0 907628 24 9

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Fryde.E.B. Humanism and Renaissance Historiography - (History series; 21) 1. Historiography - History I. Title 907’. 2 D13

©E.B.Frydel983

Printed and Bound in Great Britain by Robert Hartnoll Ltd., Bodmin, Cornwall

CONTENTS Acknowledgments

vii

Preface

ix

Select Bibliography

xi

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

The Revival of a ‘Scientific’ and Erudite Historiography in the Earlier Renaissance The Beginnings of Italian Humanist Historiography: The ‘New Cicero’ of Leonardo Bruni

3

33

The Historical Interests of Guarino of Verona hand his Translations of Strabo’s ‘Geography’ 55

5

Some Fifteenth Century Latin Translations of Ancient Greek Historians

83

Lorenzo de’ Medici: A Survey of the Historiography and of the Primary Sources

115

Lorenzo de’ Medici's Finances and their Influence on his Patronage of Art

143

The Library of Lorenzo de’ Medici

159

List of Manuscripts Cited

229

Index

235


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Chapters 1, 2 and 6 of this book first appeared in the following places, ar are reprinted here by the kind permission of the original publishers. 1

Inaugural Lecture delivered at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth on 21 November 1973 (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1974).

2

The English Historical Review, Vol. XCV (1980), 533-52.

6

Studi in Memoria di Federigo Melis, (Giannini, 1978), III, 453-67.


PREFACE The studies included in this volume arise out of research carried out during the past twelve years and four out of seven articles have never been published before. The three articles reprinted here are published in their original form, except for a brief appendix added to article 2. These seven papers arise out of three of my main interests. One is the study of Lorenzo de’ Medici and of the scholars connected with him, especially Politian. Renaissance historiography is the second and, closely connected with it, is my concern with the story of the preservation of the Greek and Latin classics and their recovery during the Renaissance. The late Dr. Henry Kryszek first introduced me to Italy and this volume is dedicated to his memory. I have received generous help from a large number of friends and scholars, some of which is acknowledged in particular articles. I owe special thanks to Professor A.G. Dickens for making this publication possible and to Professor Arnaldo Momigliano and Professor N. Rubinstein for their help and encouragement over many years. I have received invaluable assistance from Miss A. de la Mare of the Bodleian Library, Dr. C. Ligota of the Warburg Institute in London and my friends, Llinos Davies and D. Huws, of the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth. Edmund Fryde


SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Some other publications by E.B. Fryde on Historiography, auxiliary Historical Sciences and the Renaissance, not included in this volume. 1961

Handbook of British Chronology (London, Royal Historical Soc., Second ed. by Sir M. Powicke and E.B. Fryde), pp. XXXVIII + 565. 1974

‘Historiography and Historical Methodology’, in the New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th. ed., Macropaedia, vol. 8, pp. 945-61. 1976

Review of Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England c. 550 - c. 1307 (Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell U.P., 1974), History and Theory, 15 (1976), pp. 341-46. 1977

‘Lorenzo de’ Medici. High finance and the patronage of art and learning.’ In A.G. Dickens (ed.) The Courts of Europe. Politics, Patronage and Royalty, 1400-1800 (London, Thames and Hudson).


HUMANISM AND RENAISSANCE HISTORIOGRAPHY


1 THE REVIVAL OF A 'SCIENTIFIC' AND ERUDITE HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE EARLIER RENAISSANCE

I An inaugural lecture may be expected to throw some light on the discipline which the new professor is teaching. My way of attempting to do this will be to focus attention on certain significant changes in historiography that took place in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.1 Historiography, strictly speaking, means only the actual writing of history. But I shall be also concerned with the awakening in that period of a more acute sense of historical change. Some of my principal 'heroes' are people who wrote very little history, or even none at all, but who displayed a sharpened sense of historical change in all human affairs. Through being historically minded they were capable of creating new disciplines such as modern philology or the study of the evolution of law, like that Francois Baudouin, who confessed, 'I have become aware that law books are the products of history.'2 Modern historians aim at reconstructing, as accurately as possible, a continuous record of all human activities throughout the known past and of achieving a more profound understanding of how mankind has developed. The way in which this should be done has been excellently defined by Professor M. I. Finley in his recent inaugural lecture: 'By historiography I mean a systematic, critical inquiry into some part or aspect of the past, critical not only in the sense of critical evaluation of evidence, but also in the larger sense of a conscious, rational examination of one's subject, its dimensions and implications, as free as one can make oneself of the automatic acceptance of received views, approaches, habits of mind.'3 This allembracing conception of the historian's task is quite recent, dating 1 This is an extended version of the inaugural lecture delivered at Aberystwyth on 21 November 1973. A full bibliography would be out of place here. I have used notes mostly for specific quotations of sources and for the discussion of special points. Whenever I could, I have used early Renaissance manuscripts in preference to later printed editions. 2 In De Institutione historiae universae et eius cum iurisprudentia coniunctione, written in 1561, cited in D. R. Kelley, 'De Origine Feudorum: the beginnings of an historical problem', Speculum, 39 (1964), p. 209. 3 The Ancestral Constitution (Cambridge U.P., 1972), p. 47.

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Humanism and Renaissance Historiography

only from the late-eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. In that period there first emerged a scientific historiography, cultivated largely by professional historians. This modern historiography springs from an outlook that is fairly new in human experience: the assumption that the study'of history is a natural and a necessary kind of human activity and that it should form a regular part of education. The changes during the early Renaissance that I wish to discuss represent the humble beginnings of this modern situation. Our understanding of them is still very imperfect and there does not exist at present an up-to-date account of the place of the early Renaissance in the development of modern historiography.4 A single lecture is not a place for a comprehensive survey of the achievements of the Renaissance historians. I can merely attempt a partial assessment of the quality of these achievements. As I shall be chiefly concerned with developments that anticipated the more mature historiography of the future, the promising innovations of the Renaissance scholars will concern me more than their abundant shortcomings, though the latter cannot be entirely overlooked. Most of the works I shall be quoting were written during an early period of the Renaissance, in the hundred years between roughly 1360 and 1460, before the introduction of printing into Italy. During that period only a tiny minority of Italian writers were seriously interested in producing historical works. But a greater awareness of historical changes was one of the distinctive features of the new humanist literature and some elements of historical explanation or description appear in many writings of that age. Our main problem is to explain why a marked change in the quality of historiography occurred in Italy during that century. The main interest of the humanists lay in the recovery of the texts of all the writers of classical antiquity. The increased interest in history was largely a by-product of their efforts to interpret their newly recovered literary treasures. Furthermore, the achievement of a certain degree of expertise in dealing with classical texts gave them a novel assurance that they could apply their methods to other branches of learning. Over-confidence was the besetting sin of some 4 Some of the causes of a relative lack of progress in this field of study are analysed by R. Fubini inRivista storica italiana, 77 (1965), p. 967.

The Revival of a 'Scientific' and Erudite Historiography

5

of the men with whom I shall be most concerned. Of Leonardo Bruni (d. 1444) his biographer, Vespasiano da Bisticci, remarked that 'he always held himself to be the sole restorer of Latin'.5 But self-confidence has its uses in a scholar. The humanist historians differed from their medieval predecessors especially in their newly won conviction that, if evidence was adequate, it could settle decisively even highly contentious matters. This novel confidence in their capacity to handle sources will be one of the cornerstones of the new historiography. The rediscovery of the classics falls into two main phases, with the dividing point coming in the last years of the fourteenth century, when the knowledge of ancient Greek was first reintroduced into Italy. Decisive progress in the recovery of Latin texts occurred between c. 1330 and 1370, above all through the activities of Petrarch and his friends. It was not only a matter of rediscovering lost works but also of intelligent improving of previously corrupt or incomplete texts. To Petrarch we owe especially a partial recovery of Cicero and Livy,6 while members of his circle rediscovered some works of Tacitus and Varro, to mention only the outstanding writers. Petrarch's rediscovery, in 1345, of an important part of Cicero's correspondence introduced him to the realities of political and literary life in the last years of the Roman Republic. It helped to equip him for writing a really scholarly biography of Caesar. This unfinished work of Petrarch's old age can be regarded as the first important achievement of the new historiography. For the first time since Antiquity a serious attempt was being made to write Roman history in part from strictly contemporary sources.7 The first major humanist work devoted to Italian history was book I of Leonardo Bruni's History of the Florentine People, completed late in 1415. Bruni wrote a further eight books between 1419 5 Cited from Vespasiano, 'Renaissance Princes, Popes and Prelates: The Vespasiano Memoirs . . ' (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1963), p. an. 6 The best summary is in G. Billanovich, 'II Petrarca e i classici', Petrarca e il Petrarchismo. Atti del III Congresso dell'Associazione Internazionale per gli studi di lingua e letteratura italiana (Bologna, 1961), pp. 21-33. 7 Petrarch, like most medieval readers of Caesar's Commentaries, was uncertain about the name, or names, of the people who had actually written them. He became gradually convinced of their great historical value and came to be assured that they originated in the circle of Caesar's associates. He used them in his late works and did so abundantly in his Life of Caesar, though he still carefully avoided to name their author. Cf. G. Billanovich, 'Nella biblioteca del Petrarca: un altro Svetonio del Petrarca', Italia medioevale e umanistica, 3 (1960), pp. 39-46.

6


and 1439.® In arrangement this work owed most to Livy, but Bruni's conception of how history might be written was also much influenced by Sallust, a writer known to many medieval historians. Bruni's ideological assumptions were notably clarified and sharpened by the reading of Bellum lugurthinum and Bellum Catilinae.9 But while his historiography stemmed from the humanist reappraisal of writers familiar to medieval Europe, it owed also something to Tacitus, parts of whose Annals and Histories had been rediscovered in the third quarter of the fourteenth century.10 Bruni's acquaintance with some of the most penetrating historians of Antiquity was further expanded by the recovery of the Greek historians. In the last years of the fourteenth century the teaching of classical Greek was effectively introduced into Italy. Bruni was one of the first Italians to learn Greek and became one of the earliest and most avid readers of Thucydides and Polybius.11 The impact of Greek literature on fifteenth-century Italians still awaits a really comprehensive study and the uncertainties are particularly great in the field of historiography. More detailed attention will be given to some of those problems later on. The Italian humanists had been initially struggling to recover a correct understanding of the Latin world. The reintroduction of Greek now forced them to familiarize themselves with yet another ancient civilization.12 These were Herculean tasks, as at least one leading humanist, Ermolao Barbaro, described them.13 The scholars 8 Our information about the dates is partly derived from the documents published and discussed by A. Gherardi, 'Alcune notizie intorno a Leonardo Aretino e alle sue storie fiorentine', Archivio storico italiano, ser. ix, 15 (1885), pp. 416-21. See also H. Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, ist edn. (Princeton, 1955), ii, p. 611, n. 14, and pp. 618-19, n. 4. 9 A. La Penna, 'II significato di Sallustio nella storiografia e nel pensiero politico di Leonardo Bruni', appendix i, in Sallustio e la 'rivoluzione' romana (Milan, 1968), pp. 409-31 (cited hereafter as La Penma, Sallustio (1968)). 10 Bruni expressly refers to Cornelius (Tacitus) in his Laudatio Florentinae Urbis written in the first years of the fifteenth century. Cf. the edition of H. Baron in his From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni, Studies in Humanistic and Political Literature (Chicago, 1968), p. 247. See also H. Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, 1955), i. p. 47, and ii. 461, nn. 20 and 23 (cited hereafter as Baron, Crisis (1955))11 See below, p. 26. 12 Cf. the remark of A. Momigliano: 'la filologia umanistica . . . e gia in partenza trasformata dall'ideale di ricuperare la fisionomia complessiva del mondo antico'. (Secondo contributo alia storia degli studi classici, Rome, 1960, p. 469). 13 Barbaro likened their task to 'Hercules combating the monsters.' Cf. V. Branca, 'Ermolao Barbaro and late Quattrocento Venetian Humanism' in J. R. Hale (ed.), Renaissance Venice (London, 1973), p. 221.


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engaged on them were bound to acquire a sharpened sense of history. Furthermore, the quality of Greek literature was bound to have a profound effect on a small elite of scholars and writers. It is only with that elite that I shall be mainly concerned today.

II

Modern descriptions of Renaissance historiography often stress, as one of its weaknesses, the imitation of ancient models. In doing this modern writers forget that the value we attribute nowadays to originality is something very new in human experience. The types of literary composition preferred by ancient historians were again imitated during the Renaissance. The humanists usually did this more successfully than their medieval predecessors had managed to do. Many of the Renaissance writers were to a much more pronounced degree literary purists to whom style and an appropriate vocabulary mattered at least as much as substance. Their medieval predecessors tended to be more preoccupied with merely setting down what interested them. Purely as sources of information the medieval writers can sometimes be more useful l than the Renaissance historians, whose verbose rhetoric can be infuriating. But these are superficial matters. At a deeper level one of the most important positive achievements of the Renaissance historians was the renewed insistence on the choice of definite, clearly delimited subjects and on a more coherent arrangement of their materials. These qualities were present in the best writers of Antiquity but had partly disappeared in the Middle Ages. The medieval chroniclers were usually interested mainly in their own time. As they were writing for contemporaries about familiar events, most medieval historians simply tried to put down what happened to interest them. Even if this was done in a very unsystematic way, as it often was, it could still remain intelligible and interesting to their readers. The more distant past could not be treated intelligibly in this fashion and most medieval writers made no really serious attempts to do so. The earlier sections of their chronicles are, as a rule, merely a copy or a digest of some more

8


ancient writers and their histories usually become alive only when they approach their own times.14 One of the great innovations of the Renaissance historians was to try to write intelligently about very distant events or to make sense of long stretches of the past. Livy was their most influential model here. But Livy had relied entirely on older historians and, where none were to be found, he felt lost, as he complains in the early portions of his Roman history. The best humanist historians from the start displayed a greater confidence in their critical handling of evidence. They used more readily the non-narrative sources. Bruni's History of the Florentine People covered some sixteen centuries.15 Another impressive achievement of the new historiography was Flavio Biondo's Decades of history since the collapse of the Roman Empire to the writer's own time (written in 1439-44). Biondo decided to begin in 410, with the capture of Rome by Alaric. By thus implying that the Western Roman Empire had not slowly decayed from within, but had been ruined by the German invaders, he started a controversy that has continued to this day.16 Biondo comes nearest to being a professional historian among all the humanists discussed here and I shall give later on some more detailed glimpses of his methods. In his introduction Biondo explains that the 'digestion' of his sources in order that they might be incorporated into a single historical work was his major task.17 This type of history necessitated the imposition of a deliberately selected pattern on historical evidence. Coherent, intelligently arranged works might result from these procedures, but there were also some serious dangers. Biondo was primarily concerned with the Christian West and he dealt with crusades and other western activities in the eastern Mediterranean in a very biased fashion. He was particularly unfair to the Byzantines. This could reach 14

Cf. for example, the remarks of D. Hay in 'History and Historians in France and England during the Fifteenth Century', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 35(1962), pp. I I I - I 2 . 15

There is a wise and appreciative discussion of Bruni as a historian in B. L. Ullman, 'Leonardo Bruni's Humanist Historiography', Medievalia et Humanistica, 4 (1946), pp. 45-61, reprinted in B. L. Ullman, Studies in the Italian Renaissance (Rome, 1955), pp. 321-44. 16 Cf. the comments of A. Momigliano, The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 1963), p. 3. 17 'Quorum digestio, ut unum habeant historiae corpus, maiorem est opinione omnium operam habitura.' 'Historiarum ab inclinato Romano imperio decades/IIF, p. 4 in Blondif Flavii Forliviensis Opera (Froben: Basle, 1559) (cited hereafter as Biondo, Decades (1559)).


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monstrous extremes. For example, he says nothing about the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, but simply remarks that the crusaders 'pacified' the Byzantine capital.18 Up to a point he was following here Lorenzo de Monacis, his main Venetian source,19 who had been writing some twenty years before Biondo. But that earlier writer did at least mention the considerable slaughter in the city, the burning of some churches and of other adjoining buildings.20 Lorenzo de Monacis tempers somewhat the fiercely anti-Byzantine bias of his Venetian sources by incorporating a few details from the long eye-witness report of the capture of Constantinople by Nicetas Choniates. Biondo tends to revert here, and in other places, to the more extreme anti-Byzantine attitudes of the older Venetian sources and he appears to have deliberately chosen to do so.21 Bruni declared that the historian's main subject should be the progress of the free peoples, but he gave a peculiarly narrow sense to the concept of liberty. Because Florence was a republic, her history was to Bruni, by definition, a history of freedom, especially from 1250 onwards when she first achieved full civic autonomy.22 Bruni ignores the oppressions inflicted by the free Florentine republic on her neighbours. Besides, Bruni was a leading servant of one of the most opulent oligarchies of his time, acting after 1427 as the chancellor of Florence. The freedom that he extolled included the right of his patrons to maintain their monopoly of power.23 Clearly, there were losses as well as gains from the new historiography. The Renaissance humanists were trying to understand the ancient writers whom they were seeking to emulate. In doing this they were becoming much more acutely aware of the process of historical change. A thirteenth-century author of the 'Deeds of the Romans', a popular history written in French, could innocently describe 18

Ibid., p. 271: 'Quiete urbi data.' Monacis says 'quietatis motibus urbis'. Cited in A. Pertusi, 'Le fonti greche del "De gestis, moribus et nobilitate civitatis Venetiarum" di Lorenzo de Monacis cancelHere di Greta (1338-1428)', Italia medioevale e umanistica, 8 (1965), p. 192. He probably wrote c. 1421-8. 20 Ibid., p. 192^ 21 Ibid., pp. 205-8. 22 The importance attached by Bruni to the year 1250 as the turning point in Florentine history is stressed by N. Rubinstein, 'II Medio Evo nella storiografia italiana del Rinascimento', Lettere italiane, 24 (1972), pp. 435-6, 444-6. 23 See especially the remarks of A. Renaudet in Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 17 (1956), pp. 322-5. 19

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- Humanism and Renaissance Historiography

Caesar as a bishop, because Suetonius metioned that he was a pontifex maximus.24 Such anachronism was becoming intolerable to the Renaissance scholars. They 'were becoming weary . . . of the fancies of the Middle Ages and craved the more substantial food of truth'25 about the ancient civilization. The ancient writers had to be put back into their correct historical setting. As an example of a humanist scholar steeped in such historical preoccupations we can take Guarino's translation from Greek into Latin of Strabo's Geography. He is particularly suitable for this purpose, because he was one of the most influential humanist teachers of his time (d. 1460) and yet he was never interested in writing a proper history. When a friend asked him in 1427 to write a history of Venice he firmly declined, 'because in the past this could earn enmity and today it could even cost one one's head'.26 He was a citizen of one of Venice's subject cities and knew the dangers of writing honestly. Guarino's translation of Strabo, carried out between 1453 and 1458, was the last major achievement of his long life. It exemplifies the mature elaboration of his normal procedures. His autograph working copy of this translation is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.27 Guarino valued greatly his draft copies, because he jotted down in them anything that seemed of interest.28 The translation of Strabo is profusely annotated by Guarino. Attention is drawn to anything that could help to reconstruct the biography of Strabo: the connection of his family with Knossos in Crete,29 the chronology of his life,30 his attendance at the lectures of a famous teacher, Tyrannion (at Rome),31 the places he 24

'Li Fet des Remains', quoted by J. Rychner, 'Observations sur la traduction de Tite Live par Pierre Bersuire (1354-6)', Journal des Savants (1963), pp. 262-3. 25 B. L. Ullman in the introduction to his edition of Sicco Polenton's History of Latin Literature (1433-7), Sicconis Polentoni Scriptorum Illustrium Latinae Linguae Libri XVIIIi (Rome, 1928), p. vii. 26 'Un procedimento questo che una volta si attirava I'odiosita, oggi pu6 costar la testa.' Quoted in R. Sabbadini, 77 metodo degli umanisti (Florence, 1922), p. 83. 27 Bodleian, Canon. Lat. 301. 28 In 1432-4 Guarino refused to lend the working copy of his recension of the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius as 'adeo veridicum et magna ex parte emendatum, ut eum pro Croesi opibus et auro Midae mutaturus non sim'. Cited by H. Baron in Studies in Philology, 48 (1951), p. 117 and n. 20. In his draft of Strabo he inserted his own description of Verona, but added a note that it was not to be included in the fair copy (Bodleian, Canon. Lat. 301, f. 72* and d). 29 Bodleian, Canon. Lat. 301, f. i6ir. Guarino's marginal note: 'Strabonis maiores Gnossii'. 30 Ibid., ff. 9ov, 205V. 31 Ibid., f. 182V.


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visited (e.g. Populonia in Tuscany, modern Grosseto),32 the mentions of his other works, especially his historical commentaries.33 Between about 1440 and his death in 1457 Valla was one of the most influential humanists. For Valla the meaning of words was not fixed but subject to gradual change. The conventional meanings ascribed to words at different times had to be rediscovered by a careful study of changing linguistic usage. In a preliminary draft of his history of King Ferdinand I of Aragon (written in 1445-6) he discusses in great detail the need for adopting new Latin terms to describe modern institutions and recent technological inventions. In Valla's opinion such words should derive from current colloquial usage in the Italian of his day. A few years earlier Biondo had mentioned the same problem in his Decades.34 A sense of ceaseless historical evolution was planted at the very centre of the humanist preoccupations with the classical languages and with the recovery, the correction, and the interpretation of ancient texts. A sense of historical change is clearly revealed when a scholar tries to recover a vanished civilization in its entirety through a 'systematic collection of all the relics of the past'.35 This was one of Biondo's enterprises. He was following in the footsteps of Varro (d. 27 B.C.), probably the ablest and most erudite ancient investigator of Roman antiquities.36 Biondo was fascinated by the city of Rome, where he resided for many years as a papal official. His description of the Eternal City in Antiquity (written in 1444-6) combined the use of ancient and medieval writers with an exceptionally wide range of other miscellaneous sources, epigraphic, archaeological, and architectural. Biondo's most mature achievement was his last work, Roma Triumphans, written between 1456-60, which he himself described as a superhuman venture.37 It contains a systematic survey of the public and private institutions of the ancient Romans, mainly under the Empire. Biondo's work is uneven because of the 32

Ibid., f. 75v. Ibid., ff. 12V, 1731 ('scriptor historic Strabo'). O. Besomi, 'Dai "Gesta Ferdinandi Regis Aragonum" del Valla al "De Ortographia" del Tortelli', Italia medioevale e umanistica, 9 (1966), pp. 75-121. 35 A. Momigliano, 'Ancient history and the antiquarian', Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), p. 5. 36 As Professor Momigliano has pointed out, however, 'Biondo's method in its relation to ancient antiquarian research has not yet been studied.' (Ibid., p, 31, n. 14.) 37 B. Nogara, Scritti inediti e rari di Biondo Flavio, Studi e Testi no. 48 (Vatican City, 1927), pp. cliv-clv: 'opus supra vires humanas agressi videmur'. 33 34

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varying quality of the sources available to him, but nothing as comprehensive and as penetrating had been attempted since Antiquity. One of the notable things about it was that Biondo was fully aware of the difference between the fundamental values of the ancient Romans and the Christian ideals. If we remember that Biondo was an important papal official and a devout Christian, one of the most astonishing features of this work is his attempt to describe seriously and objectively all the various pagan cults at Rome.

Ill Hitherto I have tried to illustrate the awakening of a sense of historical change. This will serve as an introduction to a more detailed critical appraisal of the Renaissance historians, their views about the nature of historical evidence, their critical judgement in handling facts, and their desire to recapture the rational causes of events. As has been remarked before, one of the distinctive strengths of the new historiography lay in the conviction that if evidence was adequate, especially because it came from well-informed contemporary sources, it could settle decisively even highly contentious matters. This might be best illustrated by a pair of contrasting examples. Giovanni de Matociis, the almoner of the cathedral of Verona (d. 1337), anticipated in many ways the interests of the later Renaissance humanists. Among the treasures of his cathedral library he rediscovered one of the best manuscripts of the correspondence of the younger Pliny. Using this he was able to end once and for all the medieval confusion between the writer of those letters and his uncle, the elder Pliny, who wrote the Natural History. But Giovanni was baffled by the conflict between some of the letters and other sources. Thus, the younger Pliny described in a letter to his friend Tacitus how his uncle had collapsed and died while commanding a naval force that tried to help the victims of the terrible erruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Giovanni set aside this eyewitness report in favour of a different statement by Suetonius, a non-contemporary writer, but of a superior traditional authority. According to Suetonius, the elder Pliny had died while watching an eruption of


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Etna in Sicily.38 By contrast, some thirty years later Petrarch was handling problems of evidence quite differently. In 1361 his friend, the Emperor Charles IV, asked Petrarch to report on two charters, reputedly of Caesar and Nero, granting special privileges to the rulers of Austria. Petrarch had no difficulty in exposing these arrant forgeries, concocted by the emperor's son-in-law and enemy, Archduke Rudolph IV of Austria.39 The significant point is Petrarch's insistence on using arguments based only on authentic documents. He declines to use Caesar's speeches mentioned by other writers as not constituting primary evidence, even though one of them, Sallust, was a contemporary of Caesar. Instead he demonstrates the absurdity of the words found in the alleged charter of Caesar by comparing it with the texts of two of Caesar's letters and an authentic grant by Caesar to the town of Sidon in Syria.40 Petrarch was, of course, an immensely more gifted man than was Giovanni of Verona, but in the fifteenth century ordinary scholars, like Giovanni, would be taught by humanists of Petrarch's stamp to understand the new critical standards of assessing evidence. The newly won assurance in the handling of sources is illustrated in a particularly impressive way by Bruni's account of the foundation of Florence, written in 1415. The traditional, and quite mythical version, repeated by a long succession of medieval writers, attributed this to Caesar. This tradition had been challenged in the circle around Bruni's earliest patron, Coluccio Salutati, the chancellor of Florence (d. 1406). But Bruni went further than any of his predecessors. He 'did not even deign to mention this earlier legendary tradition'.41 He disposes of it in the first sentence of his history of Florence. It is true that he had the added incentive of being able to imitate a comparably terse description of the origins of Rome by Sallust.42 Bruni writes with superb assurance: 'Florence was founded under the Romans by Sulla.' A later sentence names his sources, 38 C. Cipolla, 'Attorno a Giovanni Mansionario e a Guglielmo da Pastrengo', Miscellanea Ceriani nel 777 centenario della Biblioteca Ambrosiana per onorare la memoria di Monsignor Antonio Maria Ceriani (Milan, 1910), pp. 759-60. 39 They are reprinted in P. Piur (ed.), Petrarcas Briefwechsel mil deutschen Zeitgenossen (Berlin, 1933), pp. 120-3. 40 Ibid., p. 116. 41 N. Rubenstein, 'Bartolomeo Scala's Historia Florentinorum', Studi di bibliografia e di storia in onore di Tammaro de Marinis, iv (Verona, 1964), p. 51. 42 La Penna, op. cit., p. 409.

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Cicero and Sallust,43 both of whom were, of course, contemporaries of Sulla. It must be admitted that Bruni also had ideological reasons for proving that Florence had not been founded under the tyranny of the Roman emperors but in the time of the free republic. Bruni, Biondo, and Valla have all left us some very perceptive comments about the qualities of a good historian. Reading them we have a brief illusion of dealing with our own professional colleagues. Their practice did not, of course, always come up to their ideal standards, but this is the fate of all historians. In 1415-16, in a preface to his brief biography of Cicero (Cicero Novus), Bruni insisted that a historian must give reasons for all his statements and must provide a certain proof of all his assertions.44 Bruni's appreciation of these rules reappears in his short life of Aristotle, written in 1429. This is one of his most intelligent historical works and I shall be discussing it more fully later on. In comparing Aristotle with Plato, he singled out as Aristotle's distinctive virtue just one quality: Aristotle had asserted nothing that he could not prove.45 It is important to note that in Bruni's eyes Aristotle was very historically minded. He was particularly impressed by the vast amount of historical information included in Aristotle's Politics.46 In a letter written in 1437 Biondo similarly insists on the need for assured evidence. He was referring to the writing of contemporary Italian history in the last portion of his Decades, in which he was either dealing with events witnessed by himself or which had been described by the most reliable witnesses.47 The stress on the careful search for reliable evidence may seem 43 E. Santini e C. di Pierro, Leonardo Bruni Aretino: Historiarum Florentini populi Libri XII e Rerum suo Tempore gestarum commentarius', Rerum Italicarum Scriptores t. XIX, fasc. I (1914), p. 5 (cited hereafter as Santind e Pierro, Bruni (1914)). 44 'De singulis ratioraem reddere et eerta probations asserere volumus', ed. in H. Baron, Leonardo Bruni Aretino, Humanistisch-philosophische Schriften (Leipzig, 1928), pp. 113-14 (cited hereafter as Baron, Bruni (1928)). 45 'Aristotiles vero et cautior in tradendo fuit (nihil enim aggreditur quod probare non possit)', ed. in I. During, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (Goteborg, !957). P- '7446 Undated letter to Biondo enclosing Bruni's translation of Aristotle's Politics for transmission to Pope Eugenius IV. The letter is printed very imperfectly in L. Mehus (ed.), Leonardi Bruni Aretini Epixtolarum Libri VIIIi (Florence, 1741), ii. 102-6. The crucial sentence is seriously mutilated there (p. 105) and I am citing the fuller version in Balliol Coll. MS. 310, p. I2ir-i2iv; 'quanta exemplorum historiarum multitudo inducatur ut omnia quae unquam facta sunt nota fuisse huic philosopho videantur.' 47 R. Fubini, 'Biondo Flavio'. Dizionario biografico degli italiani 10 (Rome, 1966), p. 543 (cited hereafter as Fubini, Biondo (1966)).


i5

a very elementary requirement, but the emphatic preoccupation with this particular virtue was something of a novelty. To discerning readers it was also a sign of acquaintance with the newly recovered histories of Thucydides and Polybius. Of even greater interest are the comments of our humanist historians about the need for critical judgement. In the preface to his Florentine history, written in 1415, Bruni mentions among the historian's tasks the need to have his own opinion about everything that he discusses.48 Valla has some particularly important things to say about this. The fullest statement of his views is to be found in the introduction to his History of King Ferdinand of Aragon, written in 1445-6, where he extols history above all other disciplines.49 The historian must proceed like a judge or a doctor. Valla stresses the need for shrewdness, acuteness, judgement.50 In a letter written some years earlier to a close friend, Giovanni Serra, Valla commented on the universal prevalence of controversies in all branches of human knowledge, religious as well as secular. He produced a long list of scholars and other writers who had disagreed with everyone else.51 The more erudite a man was the more it was incumbent upon him to correct the errors of others.52 The exercise of a critical judgement is, in fact, one of the qualities that one may confidently expect from the abler Renaissance scholars. All authorities might be questioned, however eminent, even the religious ones. Petrarch made some very thoughtful and independent comments on the margins of his favourite books. He questioned the contention of St. Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop of Milan, that God had assured the expansion of the Roman Empire in order to facilitate the spreading of Christianity. Petrarch added the comment that he did not know whether this was more a matter of religious conviction or of historical fact.53 Such a distinction between Christian dreams and historical realities would probably 48

'De quaqua re iudicium in medio proferendum', Santini-Pierro, Bruni (1914), p. 3. Laurentius Valla, Opera Omnia (Turin, 1962), ii. 5-6. 50 'Oportet in historico esse . . . in cognoscenda re solertiam, acumen, iudicium', ibid., p. 6. 51 Ibid., pp. 387-94. 52 Ibid., p. 393: 'nam ut quisque eruditissimus est, ita frequentissime insectandis aliorum erroribus et exercetur et exerceri debet.' 53 Ambrose's text: 'Deum rem Romanam usque ad fines orbis propagari voluisse et deinde ecclesia facilius diffunderetur.' Petrarch's note: 'Nota de imperio Romano. Nescio an devote potius dictum quam ystorice.' Petrarch MS. is Paris, Bibl. Nat. MS. lat. 17857. Cited in P. de Nolhac, 'De patrum et medii aevi codicibus in bibliotheca Petrarcae olim collectis', Revue des Bibliotheques (1893), p. 252. 49

16


not have been made by any earlier medieval writer. In his T)e vita solitaria' Petrarch had expressed a doubt whether Peter Abelard had been rightly suspected of religious errors. Petrarch's notes on his own copy of the 'Historia Calamitatum' of Abelard supply more evidence of the sympathy and compassion that Petrarch felt for the twelfth-century scholar.54 In dealing with Bruni's religious attitudes we have unfortunately no private sources about his real views. He deliberately edited his correspondence for public circulation and nothing is to be learnt from the few surviving first drafts of his works. The general impression of caution and orthodoxy, though coming only from his published writings, may yet be substantially correct. A letter of Bruni criticizing a correspondent for trying to learn Hebrew reveals a very old-fashioned refusal to apply the new humanistic learning to religious sources. Bruni explained that he had spent much time on translating authoritative Greek writers, like Aristotle, only because the existing Latin versions were utterly inadequate. He was quite sure that St. Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible, embodied in the official Vulgate version, was completely satisfactory. There was, therefore, no need to check on Jerome's Hebrew sources. If this was unnecessary, Bruni could not conceive of any other reason for wanting to learn Hebrew.55 We are in a different world with Valla, who in the preface to his translation of Thucydides, completed in 1452, urged the need for a fresh translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew and the New Testament from Greek.56 Valla has been described by A. Renaudet as the earliest exponent of 'systematic doubt'.57 The recent rediscovery of the first drafts of several of his writings, including an early version of his Annotations on the New Testament, have increased our appreciation of Valla's great intellectual courage and independence of mind, especially in religious matters. One of his most famous exploits in this field dates from 1440, when he decisively 54 Revue des Bibliotheques (1893), pp. 270-3. Petrarch's MS. is Bibl. Nat. MS. lat. 2923. For a recent discussion of it cf. J. Monfrin, Aboard 'Historia Calamitatum'. Texte critique avec une introduction (Paris,, 1967), pp. 13-14, 18-19. 55 Mehus, op. cit., pp. 160-4. A better text is in Balliol MS 310, pp. I5or-i52v. 56 'Adeo nullum cum deo nos Latini commercium haberemus1 nisi testamentum vetus ex hebreo et novum ex graeco foret traductum.' I am using Cambridge Univ. Libr. MS. Kk 4. 2., brought from Italy in 1454 by Bishop William Gray. 57 A. Renaudet, Humanisme et Renaissance (Geneva, 1958), p. 101.


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disproved the genuineness of the so-called 'Donation' of Constantine.58 The accepted story was that the first Christian emperor had conferred immense privileges on Pope Sylvester I. The 'Donation' which embodied this supposed grant appears, ;n fact, to be a concoction of the eighth century. Its authenticity Lad been questioned by Otto of Freising in the middle of the twelfth century and by Dante and Marsiglio of Padua in the first half of the fourteenth century.59 In 1433, a few years before Valla's attack, it had been questioned at the Council of Basle by Nicholas Cusanus and in 1435-6 a papal official, Leonardo Teronda, had rejected it as an outright forgery in two private memoranda.60 There is at present no evidence to show whether Valla knew anything about these earlier criticisms. Valla's attack on the 'Donation' differed from all the previous ones in its exceptional thoroughness.61 His patron, King Alfonso of Sicily, was at war with Pope Eugenius IV and asked Valla to write some treatise against the papacy. Valla obliged by demolishing the credibility of the 'Donation' which had been used to support papal claims to secular authority in Italy. He proved beyond any reasonable doubt that this document could never have emanated from an ancient Roman emperor. Its Latin was much too barbaric and its use of official nomenclature was absurdly anachronistic. Valla also adduced sufficient historical arguments to show that the 'Donation' conflicted with several known facts about the emperor Constantine. This combination of both historical and linguistic expertise constitutes the main novelty of Valla's methods. One serious limitation of Valla's approach should be mentioned because, possibly, it throws interesting light on the outlook of his own generation of humanists. There is nothing to indicate that he asked himself questions about the descent of the text that he was 58 The best edition of the 'Donation' is in H. Fuhrmann, Constitution Constantini. Fontes iuris germanici antiqui, x (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hanover, 1968). 59 The medieval controversies about the Donation are discussed in G. Laehr, Die Konstantinische Schenkung in der abendldndischen Literatur des Mittelalters bis zur Mitte des 14 Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1926), and in D. Maffei, La donazione di Costantino nei giuristi medievali (Milan, 1964). 60 Published in F. Gaeta, Lorenzo Valla. Filologia e storia nell'umanesimo italiano (Naples, 1955), pp. 201-52. See also G. Billanovich, 'Leonardo Teronda, umanista e curiale', Italia medioevale e umanistica i (1958), pp. 379-81. 61 I have used the edition of P. Ciprotti, Laurentii Vallae De Falso Credita et Ementita Constantini Donatione Declamatio (Milan, 1967). Particularly useful is also the annotated Italian translation in G. Radetti, Lorenzo Valla, scritti filosofici e religiosi (Florence, 1953), PP-285-375-

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criticizing or whether it was a particularly corrupt text. As it happens, the textual history of the 'Donation' is terrifyingly complex62 and no scholar of Valla's time could have handled this particular problem satisfactorily. Some forty years later Angelo Poliziano was at least aware that these problems existed but he was apparently the first Italian pioneer to do so. In the eyes of most Italian humanists Livy was the greatest of the ancient Roman historians. There is in the British Museum Valla's own copy of Livy that had previously belonged to Petrarch. A group of marginal comments that seem to be made by Valla shows a special concern with certain aspects of Roman history, particularly the religious practices and the office-holding under the early republic.63 In his polemics with humanist rivals he published a list of 185 suggested emendations to books 21-6 of Livy, many of which are accepted today by modern scholars.64 But Valla also wrote a little treatise showing that there are internal contradictions in Livy's account of the two Tarquin kings of Rome. Valla asserted, quite correctly, that Livy was confused in calling the second Tarquin a son, and not a grandson, of the first. This represents the first known attempt since Antiquity to discuss critically a detail of the earliest Roman history.65 But to at least one reader, Benedetto Morandi, a Bolognese official, a criticism of Livy constituted a mortal offence to his memory and he complained in 1451 to Pope Nicholas V. In his reply Valla pointed out that he was not trying to belittle Livy, whom he greatly admired, but was simply proving that even Livy could err at times, as do many other historians.66 62 See especially W. Levison, 'Konstantinische Schenkung und Silvester-Legenda' in Miscellanea Fr. Ehrle, ii (Studi e Testi 38, Vatican, 1914), pp. 159-247; S. Williams, 'The oldest text of the Constitutum Gonstaratini', Traditio, 20 (1964); H. Fuhrmano, op. cit. (1968). 63 Brit. Mus., Harl. MS. 24931. Its creation by Petrarch is described in G. Billanovich, 'Petrarch and the textual tradition of Livy', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 14 (1951)) pp. 137-208. What seem to be Valla's notes are found, for example, on pp. 3r, 7v, 8v (against 'L. Quinctius Cincinnatum' a note 'Magister equitum'), 25V, a6v, 281, 41 v ('nofta] de auspiciis pullorum'), 49v. 64 R. Valentini, 'II "Codex Regius" de T. Livio', Studi italiani di filologia dassica, 14 (1906), p. 213. 65 H. J. Erasmus, The Origins of Rome in the Historiography from Petrarch to Perizonius (Leiden, 1962), pp. 28-31, and A. Momigliano, Terzo Contributo alia Storia degli Studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome, 1966), p. 550. 66 'Ego nego me damnare Livium, sed aio una in re ab eo dissentire, ut alii plurimi ab aliis dissenserunt', Erasmus, op. cit., pp. 28-9. See also Valla's letter of 1455 to Giovanni Tortelli in Opera Omnia (cited above), ii. 450, and L. Frati, 'Le polemiche umanistiche di Benedetto Morandi', Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 75 (1920), pp. 2-3.


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A more fundamental criticism of Livy was made by Nicholas Perotti, a humanist in the service of Cardinal Bessarion, in a preface to his Latin translation of the first five books of Polybius dedicated to Pope Nicholas V (in c. H54).67 Perotti pointed out that a part of Livy's account of the beginnings of the Second Punic War was copied almost word for word from Polybius, except that Livy had added various portents and miracles which Polybius had never mentioned. Perotti contemptuously lists the examples of stones retailed by Livy, of a god appearing to Hannibal, a rain of stones, or a baby publicly proclaiming a triumph and the like Perotti concludes that in this respect the Roman historian was clearly inferior to Polybius especially as, in Perotti's opinion, Livy himself did not believe in these tales.68 Biondo's large output of historical works and the seriousness with which he tried to equip himself for becoming a professional historian give him a place apart among the humanists of his time. He is a dull writer and was so regarded by his contemporaries. But he was indefatigable in his search for correct information. Much of what he says is true and very thoughtful, so that one is at times inclined to judge him as if he were a modern historian. I have referred earlier on to Biondo's imaginative grasp of the difference between the Roman civilization and the Christian values. In his Rome Triumphantt he had to face up to the contrast between the ideology of the ancient pagan Romans and the Christian view of the Roman empire as it was formulated by St. Augustine. Biondo understood clearly that if he was to recapture sympathetically the nature of Roman institutions there was no room in his account for Christian apologetics. In discussing, for example, the Roman conception of 'the love of glory' he recognizes the essential part it played in maintaining the Roman state, though, as he explicitly admits, this was contrary to Christian values expressed in St. Augustine's City of God.69 Attention has been drawn already to some of Biondo's inveterate prejudices, such as his hostility to the Byzantines. He was prepared, however, to surmount some of his dislikes, when it became clear 67 I am using Brit. Mus., Harleian MS. 3293, containing a copy very near in time to Perotti's translation. The preface is on ff. 2-4. 68 Ibid., f. y: 'que res ne ab eo [i.e. Livio] quidem sunt credite a quo scribuntur.' 69 Cf. Fubini, Biondo (1966), p. 553.

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that he had got his facts wrong. In his Italia Iliustrata Biondo deliberately belittled the scholarly achievements of Petrarch.70 He began by describing Petrarch as * a man of great intelligence, but of even greater diligence'.71 Anything might be expected after this grudging preface. Biondo proceeded to list all the works of Cicero that Petrarch did not know. In his first draft, completed by 1453, Biondo even denied to Petrarch one of his greatest scholarly triumphs, the rediscovery in 1345 of Cicero's letters to Atticus.72 When in 1462 Biondo produced his revised, final version he tacitly dropped this gratuitous denial of Petrarch's discovery.73 Biondo's diligent search after evidence and his judicious evaluation of sources have been admirably discussed by Professor Denys Hay74 and a few additional examples may suffice to illustrate his methods. Biondo is very 'modern' in his frequent mentions of the authors that he is using. His source for the sack of Genoa by the Moslems in 935 is the narrative of a fourteenth-century Venetian doge, Andrea Dandolo. Biondo noted that this account showed sympathy for Genoa's disaster and that it was all the more reliable for coming from a man during whose dogeship Venice and Genoa had been involved in a bitter war.75 When a particular source underlies a whole section of his narrative Biondo sometimes discusses it at length. He does this with Procopius, our chief source for Justinian's reconquest of Italy. Biondo was aware that Procopius had been an eyewitness of some of the events described in his Gothic War. His interest in Procopius is limited to the facts that he can derive from this Byzantine source and he had no concern with what might lie behind the prejudiced statements of this enigmatic assistant to Belisarius, the Byzantine commander in Italy. The 70 I am using Biondo's first draft, completed by 1453, a copy of which was brought to England by Bishop William Gray in 1454 (Balliol MS. 286). 71 Ibid., p. 6pv; 'Franciscus Petrarcha, magno vir ingenio, maiorque diligencia.' 72 Ibid, 'aliud non vidit volumen earum que ad Atticum inscripte sic grandiorem habent eloquentiam sicut maiora et Ciceronem magis amicum attentumque habentia continent' (the italicized word appears as 'auctorem' in Nogara, op. cit. (1927), p. 223, who prints another version of the first draft). Later on (p. yor) Biondo refers to the Letters to Atticus as discovered 'at an uncertain date'. 73 Nogara, op. cit., p. 223. 74 'Flavio Biondo and the Middle Ages', Proceedings of the British Academy, 45 (1959). I owe thanks to Professor Hay for his generous loans of some of Biondo's works and for much other help. 75 'Italia Iliustrata', Balliol MS. 286, p. 8v;: 'Est quoque testimonium eius eo locupletum* . . . as the Venetians and the Genoese 'per Danduli ducatus tempora gravi ac periculosissimo utroque bello conflict! sunt'.


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Secret History of Procopius, which would suffice to arouse any reader's suspicions had not yet been rediscovered in Biondo's time. Biondo took a great deal of trouble to procure a good text of the Gothic War. He mentions a recent adaptation of it by his friend Bruni, but he obviously did not regard it as sufficient for his purpose. He candidly admits that his own knowledge of Greek was inadequate and that he had therefore arranged for a translation of the relevant portions of Procopius. He stresses his great debt to the Byzantine author, while deploring the errors and confusions. He cites as an example one error of Procopius. Biondo came from Fork', which lies very near Ravenna. It seemed singularly absurd to him that Procopius should have described Ravenna as divided into two halves by the river Po. Biondo mentions that he will have to correct Procopius in other matters. He will not do so out of any desire for controversy but only in the interests of historical truth.76 Several humanist historians were particularly attracted to the study of the origins of the states about which they were writing. They prided themselves on their critical ability to destroy the legends in which various countries and cities had concealed their ignorance of the remote past. For Italians this meant especially the expulsion of Virgil from the ranks of historians. Giovanni Villani in a famous passage ascribed the origin of his Chronicle to a visit to Rome for the jubilee of 1300. This made him think of the deeds of the Romans commemorated by their famous historians starting with Virgil.77 We are in a different world with Bruni. In writing in 1415 the first book of his History of the Florentine People he prefers a statement of Livy to one of Virgil, dismissing the 'poetic figments' of the latter.78 He was equally resolute, though much more nervous in writing in 1418 a letter about the origins of Mantua to its lord, Francesco Gonzaga. He was trying to argue that Virgil, the greatest of Mantua's sons, was wrong to attribute the city's name to Mantos, its traditional founder. Bruni's clumsy repetitions betray an obvious fear of giving offence. He was daring to maintain that nothing certain was known about the origin of Mantua and that Virgil's 76

Biondo, Decades (1559), p. 43. 'Le storie e' grand! fatti de Roman! scritti per Virgilio e per Sallustio e Lucano e Tito Livio . . . e altri maestri d'istorie.' Cited in G. Billanovich, Tra Dante e Petrarca', Italia medioevale e umanistica, 8 (1965), p. 41. 78 Santini e Pierro, Bruni (1914), p. 8. 77

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Mantos was a poetic fiction. Bruni was, however, prepared to concede the poet's authority for facts which could be corroborated from other sources, such as the Etruscan origin of Mantua.79 There are still preserved in the Vatican Library copies of some books that had been used by Biondo containing fascinating marginal comments. Against a passage of the 'Gesta regum francorum' proclaiming the Trojan origin of the Franks, Biondo wrote one single word, 'dreams'.80 In keeping with this, in his Decades he describes the Franks as Germans.81 The mythical Trojan ancestors of the Franks had still, however, a long future ahead of them. As late as 1714 Louis XIV imprisoned Nicholas Freret in the Bastille for stating that the Franks were originally a confederacy of German tribes. Biondo similarly dismissed the History of the Kings of Britain of Geoffrey of Monmouth. This work had had its detractors almost from the time of its first appearance, but most medieval readers had treated it as sober history. Biondo having perused it, entered only a single comment: 'I have never come across anything so stuffed with lies and frivolities.'82 It is an amusing fact, which would have horrified Biondo, that in the inventory of the papal library drawn up in 1475, twelve years after Biondo's death, one of his main works, Italia Illustrata, is entered next to Geoffrey's fabulous book.83 Biondo's most extensive attempt to reconstruct the origins of a state concerned Venice. After discussing this in two of his main works, he returned to the same subject in a separate history of Venice of which he managed to write only an initial fragment.84 Biondo's successive reconstructions of the origins of Venice are unsatisfactory because he tried to find a fixed date for the creation of the first substantial settlements on the Venetian islands and opted for the invasion of Attila and its aftermath in the middle of the fifth century. We realize now that the Venetian archipelago was settled very gradually over a prolonged period and that the story of the 79 I am using the text in Balliol MS. 315, ff. 53V~57V (a manuscript of Bishop William Gray). 80 'Somnia.' Cited in Fubini, Biondo (1966), p. 546. si Ibid. 82 Hay, loc. cit. (1959), p. 118. 83 E. Miintz et P. Fabre, La Bibliotheque du Vatican au XVe siecle . . . (Paris, 1887), p. 223. 84 Edited by Nogara, op. cit. (1927), pp. 77-89; cf. Fubini, Biondo (1966), p. 554.


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emergence of Venice cannot be reconstructed in a satisfactory manner.85 Biondo sensed this himself and a marginal comment on his unfinished draft records his desire for more sources.86

IV The appearance in humanistic historiography of a much higher standard of critical judgement was obviously a complex process. It arose gradually out of the things the humanists were trying to do, their desire to understand the ancient writers and their study of the evolution of the classical languages. But the pace of development seems to have quickened after the introduction of classical Greek literature into Italy. There is much controversy about the nature and extent of the influence of the Byzantine scholars on Italian humanists. I personally rate the small elite of the leading Byzantine scholars very highly. There seems to exist a considerable connection between the special interests and the methods of scholars like Manual Chrysoloras, who first introduced Greek scholarship into Italy, and the novel achievements of their leading Italian pupils.87 In discussing the influence of the recovery of Greek on the Italian humanist historians two separate problems must be faced. There is, first, the narrower problem of the impact of the Greek historical texts on the Italian historians. This is as yet an obscure subject. It is difficult to prove direct stylistic or verbal influences of the ancient Greek historians on the humanist writers. No major humanist historian has been systematically subjected as yet to this kind of scrutiny. The subjects treated by Thucydides or Herodotus were of no special interest to our group of Renaissance historians who were chiefly concerned with writing the history of Italy. Among the major Greek writers only Polybius, Strabo, and Procopius could be of much use for this purpose. Taken as a group, the Greek historical writings could influence the Italian historians profoundly only 85

See especially R. Cessi, Le origini del ducato veneziano (Naples, 1951). 'Vide ntmquid allegari debeant auctores a quibus hec traduntur.' Cited and discussed in A. Pertusi (ed.), La storiografia veneziana fino al secolo XVI (Venice, 1970), p. 302 and n. i. 87 See especially P. O. Kristeller, 'Umanesimo italiano e Bisanzio', in A. Pertusi (ed.), Venezia e I'oriente fra tardo Medioevo e Rinascimento (Florence, 1966), pp. 24-8, yi. 86

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through their intrinsic high quality. How soon this did in fact happen must remain an open question for the time being.88 This brings me to my second, wider problem of the impact of the entire range of Greek literature, of which the historical writers formed only a small part. The intellectual horizons of the early Renaissance historians were bound to be widened by their contact with Greek civilization in all its aspects. This can be clearly seen, for example, in reading Bruni's short life of Aristotle, written in 1429. It is a piece of philosophical and literary criticism based on a profound grasp of the writings of both Plato and Aristotle. It is a reasonable conjecture that Bruni was applying here the methods inculcated by Chrysoloras, his first teacher of Greek. Bruni compares the two Greek philosophers, notes their common basic assumptions, but also traces the way in which Aristotle's interests and methods gradually diverged from those of his master. There are almost no factual errors in this little treatise and Bruni is right on all the essentials.89 The introduction into Italy of the texts of the leading Greek historians was bound to consolidate the lessons that the Italians could draw from the ancient Latin writers. It would make them appreciate more strongly the need for the choice of definite, clearly delimited subjects for historical study and for a more coherent arrangement of materials. It would sharpen their grasp of the nature of evidence and of what constituted a convincing proof. They could learn better how a historian reconstructed a reasonable chain of causes. Plutarch and Xenophon, the two Greek historians most popular with the fifteenth-century Italians, need not be discussed here for their influence could not be very profound. The more weighty historians, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Polybius all reached Italy during the first quarter of the fifteenth century and Procopius was certainly known a few years later. According to my provisional calculations at least twenty-one manuscripts of Thucydides can, with fair probability, be traced in fifteenth-century Italy.90 The com88 O. Luschnat has recently observed in Thukydides der Historiker (Stuttgart, 1971), p. 1310, that there is as yet no study of the influence of Thucydides in the Renaissance and this equally applies1 to most of the other Greek historians. 89 The best critical edition is in During, op. cit. (1957), pp. 169-78. 90 This is a cautious list. I shall discuss the evidence in a future publication. The list, in a roughly chronological order, runs as follows:


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91

parable figures for Herodotus and Polybius are smaller. In the first half of the fifteenth century only a tiny elite of leading humanists could read these writers in the original Greek, but this small group included all the men I have been discussing; Bruni, Guarino, Valla, Perotti. Only Biondo did not know enough Greek and had to use translations. In the later Middle Ages educated Byzantines were familiar with Thucydides and Herodotus. Men like Demetrius Cydones, the friend and patron of Manuel Chrysoloras, cite them quite casually.92 A copy of Thucydides that had once belonged to Giovanni Tortelli throws an interesting light on the importance attached to Thucydides by Byzantine teachers. Tortelli came to play an important part in assisting Pope Nicholas V (1447-55) to procure translations of the major Greek historians. Earlier on, in 1435, Tortelli had gone to Constantinople in order to study Greek. Within two months of his arrival his Byzantine teacher presented him with a manuscript (Not included in my total because unidentified), a MS. of Peter Miani, read by Bruni in 1407. 1. Vat. Urb. gr. 02, inherited by Francesco Barbara in 1415. 2. Laur. 69. %. Sold by Aurispa to Niccoli in 1417. 3. Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 11727. In the Corbinelli Library, 1425. 4. Bodleian Canon, gr. 48, brought to Italy by Ciriaco of Ancona (but probably later on taken by him back to Constantinople). 5. ParisinuS' gr. 1734 (or a lost copy of it) used by Valla for his translation. 6. Neap. HI. B. 10 (or a copy of it) used by Valla for his translation. 7. Vat. gr. 126. Lent by Pope Calixtus HI to Cardinal Isidore Rutenus. 8. Marc. cl. 7 cod. 5. Copied by Palla Strozzi. 9. Cambridge Nn. 3. 18. Copied before 1469 from no. 8. 10. Vat. Pal. gr. 185. Belonged to Gianozzo Manetti. 11. Marc. gr. 364. Copied for Cardinal Bessarion. 12. Ambros. G. 72. Copied in 1461 by Giovanni Rhosos. 13. Bodl. Canon gr. 47. Owned by Ermolao Barbaro. 14. Monac. gr. 126. At Bologna in 1467. 15. Vat. Urb. 91. Copied at Constantinople c. 1461 from no. 4. Probably at Urbino by 1482. 16 and 17. Vat. Urb. gr. 89 and 90. Probably at Urbino by 1482. 18. Oxford, Corpus Ch. 80, copied by Michael Apostolios and therefore presumably destined for Italy. 19. Vat. gr. 1293. Copied in 1479, probably at Rome. 20. Florence, Laur. 69. 30. In the library of S. Marco by 1499-1500. 21. Florence, Laur., Conv. Sopp. 179. Copied at Florence in the fifteenth century. In addition there were in Italy at least three incomplete MSS. (Vat. 1353, Vat. Urb. gr. 131, Barb.gr. 95). 91 I shall list them in a future publication. The paucity of the manuscripts of Polybius was commented upon by Professor A. Momigliano in a lecture at the Warburg Institute in November 1973. 92 The references in the correspondence of Cydones to Greek writers are conveniently indexed in R. J. Loenertz, Demetrius Cydones. Correspondence, ii (Studi e Testi 208, Vatican, 1960), pp. 470-1. See also his remarks, p. xii.

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of Thucydides.93 It is not surprising that soon after 1400 several Italian pupils of Chrysoloras were reading Thucydides. Petro Miani, who in 1409 became bishop of Vicenza, possessed a copy. As early as 1400-1 he lent it to the Paduan humanist Pier Paolo Vergerio, another disciple of Chrysoloras.94 In 1407 Miani lent his copy again to yet another pupil of Chrysoloras, and the ablest of them all, Leonardo Bruni. In a letter to Miani, Bruni apologizes for not returning it because> as he explained, 'I can never read him enough.'95 Bruni is the first important humanist historian to be clearly influenced by the ancient Greek historical writers. He uses them in his earliest historical works. In the first book of his History of the Florentine People, written in 1415, he used Dionysius of Halicarnassus as evidence for the Asiatic origin of the Etruscans.96 In 1418-19 Bruni wrote a commentary on the first Punic War, which is largely a paraphrase of the relevant portions of Polybius. In describing the Roman warfare in Sicily, Bruni also quoted passages from Thucydides giving details about that island.97 Bruni clearly modelled himself on Thucydides in preparing his funeral oration on Nanni degli Strozzi, the Florentine general killed in the war against Milan. In this speech, delivered in 1428, there are obvious echoes of the Periclean oration for the Athenians killed in the first year of the Peloponnesian war.98 Already in 1415 Bruni had used Procopius for his brief account of the Gothic wars in the sixth century A.D." In 1441 he completed an extended narrative of those wars, covering this time the whole of Italy. It is very largely a paraphrase of Procopius. Guarino had no intention of writing history, but he was fascinated by Thucydides and Herodotus. As early as 1411 he was thinking of translating Thucydides, whom he called 'the most noble and dis93 Cited in M. Regoliosi, 'Nuove ricerche intorno a Giovanni Tortelli' Italia medioevale a umanistica, 12 (1969), p. 139. 94 L. Smith (ed.), Epistolario di Pier Paolo Vergerio (Rome, 1934), 240-2. 95 'Thucydides tuus apud me servatur, quern ideo non remitto mine per istos legates quia nondum satis ilium legi', in a letter of Bruni to Miani late in 1408, printed in Baron, Bruni (1928), pp. 200-1. An earlier letter of 1407 is printed ibid., pp. 107-8. 96 Santini e Pierro, Bruni (1914), p. 7, n. i, referring to a letter of Bruni. 97 B. Reynolds, 'Bruni and Perotti present a Greek historian', Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 16 (1954), p. 112. 98 La Penna, Sallustio (1968), p. 414, and Baron, Crisis (1955), i. 358-60. 99 Santini e Pierro, Bruni (1914), p. 20.


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tinguished Greek writer'.100 Of Herodotus he spoke with delight. He translated an incomplete fragment of Herodotus and sought eagerly for a better and fuller text.101 Tortelli's vast orthographic dictionary included entries on several Greek historians. It is not a lively work and Tortelli's own personality is seldom revealed in it. The entry on Herodotus forms one of the rare exceptions. Tortelli confesses in it that he has always read Herodotus 'with the greatest delight'.102 I have already referred previously to Tortelli's share in procuring the Latin translation of several Greek writers, of whom only a few were historians. His correspondence shows that only the lack of suitable collaborators prevented the translation of even more historical texts. Tortelli had tried in vain to arrange for a translation of Procopius by one of Guarino's pupils.103 Most of the successful translations were made by men who were in the papal service at that time. The manner in which the team of translators employed by Pope Nicholas V executed their task tells us something about the attitude of this group of leading humanists to the Greek historians. No exhaustive survey of all the translations commissioned by Nicholas V can be attempted here. Their quality differed greatly. None of them are satisfactory by our modern standards but a few were as good as could be expected around 1450 and their very shortcomings are instructive. At least two were quite deplorable. One of those 'disasters' was Poggio's translation of the first five books of Diodorus Siculus,104 the author of a compilation chiefly valuable for the excerpts from the numerous writers cited in it. When Poggio carried out his translation he was acting as one of the papal secretaries. Poggio had won a great reputation as a rediscoverer of long-lost Latin texts, but he was not a proficient Greek scholar. He tried to turn out an elegant Latin work and produced a version that 100

R. Sabbadini (ed.), Epistolario di Guarino Veronese, i (1915), pp. 17-18, and iii (i 919), p. 13. 101 Ibid., i (1915), pp. 512, 564. See also ibid., ii (1916), pp. 89, 423-4, and R. Truffi, 'Erodoto tradotto da Guarino Veronese', Studi italiani di filologia classica, 10 (1902), pp. 73-94. 102 'Historicus graecus omnibus preferendus cuius historiam magna cum voluptate semper legi.' Balliol MS. 290, p. i68r (a manuscript brought from Italy in 1454 by Bishop William Gray). 103 R. Sabbadini, Epistolario di Guarino Veronese, iii (1919), p. 535. 104 See especially E. Walser, Poggius Florentinus, Leben und Werke (Leipzig-Berlin, 1914), pp. 229-30.

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is more an adaptation than a real translation. There is no evidence that he was seriously concerned with the quality of the manuscript that he was translating. It is not surprising that he was the first to finish his allotted task (by August 1449), nor that the pope asked another scholar, Pier Candido Decembrio, to revise Poggio's version.105 Decembrio's own translation of the bulk of the 'Roman Histories' of Appian must also be regarded as a failure,106 though contemporaries apparently did not realize this. He had entered the papal service in the course of 1450 and Nicholas V, besides putting at his disposal a Vatican manuscript of Appian, borrowed two other manuscripts from Cosimo de' Medici. As we still have all the texts that Decembrio was using, it is clear that he had some very satisfactory manuscripts at his disposal. He mismanaged the translation badly and produced by 1454 a slovenly piece of work. Perhaps he became tired of translating a rather mediocre historian, though he never says so. The most difficult task of translating Thucydides was entrusted to Valla, who had entered the papal service in 1448. Valla greatly admired the Athenian historian whom he coupled with Sallust as an exponent of mature political outlook.107 He felt unequal to the task of translating him, as he honestly admits. Both in letters to his friend Tortelli and in the preface to his translation he deplores the absence from Rome of Cardinal Bessarion, the greatest Greek scholar in Italy. He had agreed to translate Thucydides on the assumption that he could depend on Bessarion's aid and he could not rely on anybody else to help him.108 Valla had at least two Greek texts at his disposal, both belonging to the same family of manuscripts, of which one at least was of high quality. Modern reconstructions of the text of Thucydides have to use at some points 105

V. Zaccaria, 'Sulk opere di Pier Candido Decembrio', Rinascimento, 7 (1956), p. 53. See especially ibid., pp. 47-53, and an earlier study of E. Ditt, Tier Candido Decembrio, contribute alia storia dell'umanesimo italiano', Memorie del Reale Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere, Cl. di Lett . . . 24 (1930), pp. 33-4. Cf. also the Teubner editions of Appian by L. Mendelssohn I (1878), pp. viii-ix, xxi-xxiii, and E. Gabba (1962), pp. xv-xvi. 107 G. Zippel, 'Lorenzo Valla e le originii della storiografia umanistica a Venezia', Rinascimento, 7 (1956), pp. 106-7,. In tne preface to his translation of Thucydides, Valla expresses high praise for the Athenian historian: Tanta in eo gravitas, tanta vis, tanta sine ulla, ut sic dicam, scoria fides.' Cambridge Univ. Libr. MS. Kk 4. 2, p. 2«\ 108 Camb. Univ. Libr. MS. Kk. 4. 2., p. iv; a letter of Valla to Tortelli in L. Valla, Opera Omnia (1962), ii. 425-6. 106


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Valla's translation as the only evidence for a textual tradition now lost.109 How far Valla realized the excellence of what he was using there is no means of telling. His actual translation did not live up to his opportunities and it has been harshly criticized by modern experts.110 My impression is that Valla tried to do the best that his less than perfect mastery of Greek allowed him. He succeeded at least in conveying adequately the high quality of the mind of Thucydides. His translation is at times not easy to follow, but it recaptures the sophisticated complexity of the original and results in some very dramatic passages.111 On completing the translation of Thucydides in 1452, Valla was asked to tackle Herodotus, another of his favourite Greek historians. We are lucky to have all the three manuscripts used by Valla and his marginal annotations allow us to follow his careful comparisons of the original texts. One of his manuscripts is among the best we possess.112 The resultant translation is again disappointing by modern standards.113 But for more than a century, the vast majority of Western Europeans had their only chance of reading Thucydides and Herodotus in these versions of Valla. Perotti completed the translation of the first five books of Polybius (all that was available in Italy at that time), between 1452 and 1454, while he was in the service of Cardinal Bessarion. He probably used two manuscripts, one of which may have belonged to Bessarion, but there is as yet no detailed study of his methods of translating.114 By the late sixteenth century his version justifiably 109 There is an extensive literature on this subject. The best recent summary is in Luschnat, op. cit., pp. 1310-11, 1323. See also G. B. Alberti, 'Tucidide nella traduzione latina di Lorenzo Valla, Studi italiani di filologia classica, N.S., 29 (1957) and G. B. Alberti, 'Question! tucididee', Bollettino del Comitato per la Preparazione dell'Edizione Nazionale dei Classici Greet e Latini, N.S., 15 (1967). 110 See especially Alberti's article (1957) cited in the preceding note, pp. 224-6. 111 I am using the version in Camb. Univ. Libr. MS. Kk. 4. %. Some of the marginal annotations in it must be copies of Valla's own marginal notes: e.g. p. 31'. 'Multa sunt similiter cadentia . . . apud Thucydidem que in Latino reddere laboravi.' A note on p. 65' referring to the speech of Diodotus against Cleon treats Sallust as an imitator of Thucydides: 'mos suus loquendi Thucydidis ut Salustius eum imitatus.' This also is probably a copy of one of Valla's notes. 112 See especially G. B. Alberti, 'Autografi greci di Lorenzo Valla nel Codice Vaticano Greco 122', Italia medioevale e umanistica, 3 (1960), pp. 287-90, 113 Ibid., pp. 289-90, and L. Alberti 'Erodoto nella traduzione latina di Lorenzo Valla' Bollettino del Comitato per la Preparazione dell'Edizione Nazionale dei Classici Greci e Latini, N.S., 7 (1959), pp. 80-2. 114 I have adopted the suggestions of Professor A. Momigliano in a paper read by him at the Warburg Institute in November 1973.

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ceased to satisfy the more meticulous scholars like Casaubon.115 Perotti's preface is of special interest, revealing a sincere admiration for Polybius whom he regarded as an outstanding historian, superior in some respects to Livy.116 The translation of Strabo's 'Geography' was tackled by Guarino, who was justifiably regarded as the most experienced textual scholar of his generation. This was to be his last major work. The first two books were completed and sent to Nicholas V already by March I 453>117 though the whole work was completed only in I458.118 Nicholas V placed at his disposal one good text and Guarino possessed also two other texts belonging to the same family of manuscripts. We still possess all of them and they contain Guarino's marginal notes that can be compared with his translation.119 In the surviving draft of this translation, his invaluable working copy, Guarino repeatedly recorded what gaps he had encountered in any one of his manuscripts and how he filled them from his other sources. This draft, with its crossings out and alternative versions of sentences, also reveals Guarino's painstaking efforts to hit upon the right words.120 The resultant translation is too literal to be readily readable. Sabbadini, a stern but fair critic, remarked that it could serve better as an aid to the reading of the Greek text of Strabo than as an independent version.121 The prefaces to all the translations lavish praise on Pope Nicholas V. These tributes were thoroughly deserved. He had commissioned these works, had procured the necessary Greek manuscripts and had paid generously for the completed translations. Without the initiative of this first humanist pope most of the principal Greek historians would not have been translated so soon. 115

Reynolds, loc. cit., p. 118. Brit. Mus., Harleian MS. 3293, pp. v-if. Mention of the first section sent to Pope Nicholas V in a letter of Guarino to Tortelli of 7 March 1453 im R. Sabbadini, Epistolario di Guarino Veronese, ii (1916), p. 609. My suggestion that this may correspond to the first two books is based on a marginal note in Guarino's draft at the end of Book 2: 'hunc usque transcriptum missum est ad pontificem maximum' (Bodleian Libr., Canon. MS. 301, p. 42v). 118 Ibid., p. 2v, cited in Sabbadini, Epistolario, iii (1919), p. 485. 119 See especially A. Diller, 'The Greek codices of Palla Strozzi and Guarino Veronese', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 24 (1961), p. 321, and A. Diller, 'Codex B of Strabo', American Journal of Philology, 56 (1935), pp. 97-9. 120 Bodleian Libr., Canon. MS. 301, passim. 121 In La scuola e gli studi di Guarino Guarini Veronese (Catania, 1896), p. 129. 116

117


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V Despite promising beginnings, historiography as a systematic discipline did not make any decisive progress during the Renaissance. It did not emerge as a securely established branch of knowledge before the nineteenth century. The reasons for this delay would fill a large book, but one vital factor must be mentioned now: the fear to write freely. The Renaissance governments, much more than their medieval predecessors, were aware that historians could be valuable propagandists, but also dangerous enemies, because what they wrote was now likely to reach a wider and more influential audience. I have already referred to Guarino's refusal, out of fear, to write a history of Venice. Valla put his finger on the vital point in a candid private letter to Biondo written in 1444. He was explaining why he would not satisfy the wish of his master, King Alfonso I of Naples, that he should write the King's life. Valla referred with contempt to the recent adulatory life of Alfonso, written by the King's doctor. He, Valla, could not write like that and he also implied that he could not in this case procure the true facts that mattered. He preferred therefore to remain silent.122 Probably the greatest historical work by a Renaissance Italian was the History of Italy, written during the Italian Wars (between 1494 and 1534), by Francesco Guicciardini. It was written by that eminent Florentine statesman at the end of his life (c. 1535-40), mostly, it seems, in order to clear up in his own mind what had gone wrong with Italy during his lifetime. He wanted to explain the terrible tragedy of the foreign invasions which had destroyed Italian and Florentine liberty. He was dealing also with his own personal tragedy of failing, as the papal lieutenant-general, to avert the sack of Rome in 1527, with its sequel of the rebellion and the downfall of his native Florence. Guicciardini tried to puu the record absolutely straight, but he came to realize that his work could not, therefore, be safely published. When dictating his last will the day before he died, he firmly ordered that the History should be burnt.123 Fortunately his relatives disregarded this last directive, but twentyone years passed before they deemed it politic to publish the History. 122

In Opera Omnia (1962), ii. 411-12. R. Ridolfi, 'Fortune della "Storia d'ltalia" Guicciardiniana prima della stampa', La Rinascita, ii (1939), p. 829 and n. 2. 123


2

THE BEGINNINGS OF ITALIAN HUMANIST HISTORIOGRAPHY: THE 'NEW CICERO' OF LEONARDO BRUNI I IN 1962, while surveying the progress of Renaissance studies during the preceding twenty years, P. O. Kristeller noted that 'strangely enough' comparatively little had been written on humanist historiography. He ascribed this partly 'to the prejudice against the rhetorical style of the humanist historians, partly to the recent tendency among historians to concentrate either on documents rather than on narrative sources, or else on the intellectual history of the period'.1 The situation is not much different today after the passage of a further sixteen years. In addition to the factors enumerated by Kristeller, the absence of well-annotated, critical editions forms another major obstacle to fruitful study. Most of the more important or interesting works of Italian humanist historians of the fifteenth century must still be read in the original Renaissance editions or have to be studied in widely scattered manuscripts. In the case of Leonardo Bruni, the pioneer humanist historian, scholars have been exceptionally ill-served by some of the modern editions of his writings. In re-editing in 1928 a few sections of Bruni's Cicero Novus, Dr Hans Baron explained that he was omitting the bulk of this work as 'for a good part, though not always, it closely follows Plutarch, as is stated in Bruni's preface'.2 In fact Bruni departed later on much further from this plan than his preface might suggest, but this has not been generally realized. Bruni's initial statement probably accounts for subsequent neglect of Bruni's biography of Cicero. He has even led astray so acute a scholar as Antonio La Penna, who in his book on Sallust devoted a very interesting chapter to the influence of the Roman historian on Bruni,3 but omitted to include in it Bruni's Cicero Novus. Baron never gave the slightest hint that Sallust's Conspiracy of Catiline was one of the primary sources used by Bruni in his reconstruction of this episode. Bruni tried to revive most of the main types of ancient historiography and to acquaint his contemporaries with some of the best 1. P. O. Kristeller, 'Studies on Renaissance humanism during the last twenty years', Studies in the Renaissance, ix (1962). 2. H. Baron, Leonardo Bruni Aretinos Humanistisch philosophische Schriften (LeipzigBerlin, 1928), p. 114, n. 2. The sections of the Cicero Novus published by Baron are printed on pp. 113-20. Cited thereafter as Baron (1928). 3. A. La Penna, Sallustio e la 'rivolu^ione' romana (3rd ed., Milan 1973,). Appendice prima, pp. 409-31.

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works on the history of Italy by ancient Greek writers.1 He made a start with Latin translations of some of Plutarch's lives, chiefly of Roman statesmen or of Greek invaders of Italy. This encouraged him to attempt original biographies of his own, beginning with Cicero, which was certainly completed some time in 1416, and possibly earlier. It is one of the more carefully prepared early historical works by Bruni, exhibiting his mastery of a wide range of classical sources and his critical capacity for combining and correcting his primary authorities. A remarkable short life of Aristotle followed, not later than 1429, and a few years later brief sketches, in Italian, of the lives of Dante and Petrarch. Bruni's enthusiastic reading of Thucydides2 and Sallust encouraged him to cultivate a terse Latin style and to present crucial episodes in a dramatic manner. Most important of all, they taught him the art of cogent and rational discussion of the causes of events. His most ambitious work was a continuous history of Florence from its foundation by the Romans to his own time. In conception and arrangement it was modelled on Livy's 'History of Rome'. The first book was completed by 1416 and Bruni was still working on the twelfth book shortly before his death in 1444. Thucydides and Sallust provided models of historical monographs on important but clearly delimited subjects. By 1419 he had completed a history of the First Punic War, mainly based on Polybius.3 This offered to readers ignorant of Greek a chapter of Roman history missing from the surviving portions of Livy. In 1441 Bruni similarly narrated what to him would appear as the last episode in the ancient history of Italy, its reconquest by the Emperor Justinian. This was principally based on the account of Procopius, but Bruni may have also used some other unspecified sources.4 His main excursion into Greek history consisted of a brief summary of Xenophon's Hellenica, completed 1. In what follows I give bibliographical references only to those of Bruni's works which will be cited again in this article, but which will not require detailed discussion. Further information is provided by the publications of E. Santini (1914) and B. L. Ullman (1946), cited below. 2. For Bruni's avid reading of Thucydides in 1407-8 see E. B. Fryde, The Revival of a 'Scientific' andErudite Historiography in the Earlier Renaissance , supra, p. 26 and n. 95. 3. The most recent discussions of this work are in B. Reynolds, 'Bruni and Perotti present a Greek historian', Bibliotheque d'humanisme et renaissance, xvi (1954), 108-14 and A. Momigliano, 'Polybius' reappearance in western Europe' in Entretiens sur I'Antiquite Classique, xx, Polybe (Geneva, 1973), 352-7.1 have extensively compared Miss Reynolds' summary of Bruni's work with his text. Her article needs amplifying but its main conclusions are fully justified. For Bruni's text I have used several fifteenth-century manuscripts including B.L. Add. MS 14777 (°f tne Gonzaga of Mantua), Florence, Laur. MS 65.11 (of Francesco Sassetti) and Riccardiana MSS Rice. 690 and 882. 4. E.g. Bruni's account of Totila's burning in Rome of the buildings on the Capitoline Hill and the Roman Forum is not based on Procopius ot any other easily identifiable source. It is on p. 3 8V of Leonard Aretini de Eello Gothorum seu de Bella Italico LibriQuattuor (ed. S. Petit, Paris, 1507). Bruni's manuscript of Procopius was almost certainly Laur. MS 69.8, with Bruni's autograph marginalia (e.g. fos. 2r, i8 r ). Cf., infra, chapter 4. For Bruni's hand, cf. the Appendix, infra, p. 53.

The 'New Cicero' of Leonardo Bruni

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probably in I439-1 ^ was written, apparently, for moralistic reasons, to warn his contemporaries of the dangers of internal discord and is the least satisfactory of all his historical writings. An autobiography modelled on Caesar's Commentaries was occupying Bruni in his old age. He brought it down to 1440, four years before his death. Another glance at the texts might usefully conclude this introduction. The History of the Florentine People was edited in 1914 by E. Santini,2 whose introduction must form the starting point for all serious work on Bruni as a historian. It is not an entirely satisfactory edition but is serviceable.3 The same is true of Bruni's autobiographical Commentaries, edited in 1926 by C. di Pierro.4 All his other historical writings await proper editions. Bruni's works were popular, they frequently survive in numerous manuscripts and the tracing of these texts to their original versions needs careful scrutiny. Before discussing further his edition of the Cicero Novus, a brief comment is needed on the only other modern edition of one of Bruni's historical works, I. Diiring's text of Bruni's Life of Aristotle, published in 1957. I shall be comparing this work, later on, with Bruni's biography of Cicero and the deficiencies of the printed text must therefore be mentioned. During frankly admitted that he had used only one late manuscript, presumably because it happened to be readily available at the British Library.5 It differs on a number of significant points from three other manuscripts, all apparently independent of each other, preserved today at Florence.6 In one crucial passage, Diiring's edition speaks of Plato's rather despicable (despicabilius] advocacy of the community of women, but the three Florentine manuscripts instead regard Plato's idea as rather inexplicable (inexplicabilius}.1 One is tempted to treat this second version as representing what Bruni may really have written. Dr Baron's edition of Bruni's writings, published in 1928, does contain much useful information, but its sources need controlling.8 1. Bruni's Xenophon manuscript was probably Laur. S. Marco 330. It contains several Greek marginal notes that may be in his hand. Cf. Appendix, infra, p. 53. 2. Leonardi Aretini Historiarum Florentini Populi Libri XII, Raccolta degli Storici Italiani, xix, pt. 3 (Citta di Castello, 1914). 3. Cf. La Penna, op. cit. p. 409, n. i. 4. Leonardo Bruni, Kerum suo Tempore Gestarum Commentarius (1)78-1440), Raccolta degli Storici Italiani, xix, pt. 3 (Bologna, 1926). 5. I. During, Aristotle in the Ancient biographical Tradition (Goteborg, 1957). Bruni's Life of Aristotle is edited from Add. MS 27491 (ibid. p. 168) which had once belonged to the abbey of St Flora. The text is printed on pp. 168-78 and the annotation of its non-textual aspects is very useful. 6. Florence Laur. MS 52.3, Laur. MS 52.5 and Riccardiana, Morenianus MS Fullani 22. 7. In Diiring's edition this passage is on p. 174. In Laur. MS 52.3 it is on fo. 86r, in Laur. 52.5 on fo. 99' and in Rice. Morenianus Fullani 22 on fo. 7 V . In collating these manuscripts with Diiring's edition I have noted numerous other significant differences. 8. Cf. L. Bertalot, 'Forschungen iiber Leonardo Bruni Aretino', Archivum Romanitum, xv (1931), 284-320; in Historische Vierteljahrschrift, xxix (1934), 385-400; 'zur Bibliographic der Ubersetzungen des Leonardus Brunus Aretinus', Quellen und Forschungen aus

36


The Cicero Novas happens to represent one of the more extreme examples of its overhasty textual scholarship. A critical edition of Bruni's biography of Cicero would have to go beyond Dr Baron's use of an inadequate edition of iSiy. 1 While Dr Baron's observed that Sicco Polenton's life of Cicero, completed some twenty years after Bruni's 'New Cicero', had tried to expand Bruni's biography,2 it escaped his notice that Polenton incorporates almost word for word large sections of Bruni's text. B. L. Ullman, who edited Polenton's Life of Cicero, also did not perceive this, but his critical comments on Polenton's sources provide, in effect, an invaluable guide to the classical texts used by Bruni.3 II

The best introduction to Bruni's achievements as a historian is to be found in B. L. Ullman's 'Leonardo Bruni and Humanistic Historiography', published in 1946.4 He successfully refutes Edward Fueter's grotesque underestimate of Bruni's ability and importance,5 but he does not try to trace Bruni's gradual development as a critical researcher and skilled historical writer. It is the aim of this article to throw some fresh light on the early stages of Bruni's apprenticeship to the historian's craft. His Cicero Novus, which is the main subject of this study, had an important place in Bruni's evolution as a historian. In a letter written probably late in 1416, Bruni remarked that he had been studying Greek literature for eighteen years.6 He claimed Italienischen Arcbiven und Bibliotheken, xxvii (1936-7), 178-95 and ibid, xxviii (1937-8), especially, pp. 268-85. Except for the article of 1931, I use the reprinted versions in L. Bertalot, Studien %um italienischen und deutschen Humanismus (Rome, 1974). 1. Bertalot, he. cit. (1934), reprinted 1974, p. 431. For establishing my own text I have used sections of a fifteenth-century manuscript, 136 of Bibl. Riccardiana at Florence (fos. i74r-2O4v), annotated by a well-informed humanist. I have collated it with the first printed edition in G. A. Campano's version of all the Latin translations of Plutarch's Parallel Lives (Rome, Udalricus Gallus, 1470) vol. u (using the copy at Venice, Bibl. Marciana, Incun. 98). I have also used two other Italian manuscripts of the fifteenth century in the British Library, Harleian MS 3426, fos. I34 v -i57 r and Add. MS 22318, fos. 2O2V-227V. This is a superbly illustrated manuscript produced for some princely patron in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, studied by C. Mitchell, A Fifteenth Century Italian Plutarch (London, 1961). 2. H. Baron, 'Cicero and the Roman civic spirit in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance', Bulletin of John Rj'lands Library, xxii (1938), 91, n. i. 3. The life of Cicero fills pp. 265-462 ofB. L. Ullman (ed.),SicconisPolentoni Scriptorum Illustrium Latinae Linguae Libri XVlll (Rome, 1928). 4. Published originally in Medievalia et Humanistica, iv (1946), and reprinted, without any changes, in B. L. Ullman, Studies in the Italian Renaissance (2nd ed., Rome, 1973), pp. 321-43. 5. In Geschichte der neueren Historiographie (1911, republished without altering the comments on Bruni in 1936). Cf. Ullman, op. cit. (1973, ed.), p. 323 and nn. 9 and 10. 6. B.L., Harleian MS 3426, fos. 6or-6iv (a hitherto unpublished letter from a miscellaneous collection of Bruni's writings).


37

that during that period he had not neglected any important Greek writer.1 His translations had included numerous works of Plato, Demosthenes, Plutarch and Xenophon. Bruni's first translation of a historical work was his version of Plutarch's Life of Mark Antony, carried out perhaps before 1405, and dedicated to the chancellor of Florence, Coluccio Salutati, his chief patron. This dedicatory preface gave Bruni his first opportunity for a few brief reflections on the historian's tasks. As he saw it 'there were only two ways of writing history: one was to observe and recount contemporary facts and the other to discover new sources and to present their accounts in one's own appropriate language'.2 The second type of enterprise was the harder of the two.3 He also informed Salutati that he intended to translate all the surviving biographies written by Plutarch.4 We know for certain of six more translations. Some twenty years later Bruni referred to all his renderings of Plutarch's works as belonging to an early stage of his scholarly activity5 and they should probably all be placed between 1405 and 1413. Only two, the lives of Sertorius and of Pyrrhus, cannot be dated with any precision. While Dr Baron, for unaccountable reasons, dated them between 1420 and 1423, L. Bertalot was most probably right in placing them some ten years earlier.6 Bruni's decision to switch from translations of historians to the writing of his own histories needs explaining, for it turned him into the leading historian of his time. The evolution of his plans can be traced from his letters and from the preface to the Cicero Novus, though they only tell one part of the story. We do not know whether the decision to write his own biography of Cicero preceded the project to embark on a history of Florence. The two works were connected, as some of the research involved in writing the story of Cicero's consulate would also provide evidence about the earliest Roman settlers at Florence. For some years after 1405 Bruni's efforts to translate Plutarch's lives of Roman statesmen were hampered by the lack of satisfactory manuscripts. Though as early as October 1405 he was working on a translation of the Life of the Younger Cato, this was still unfinished in 1407, because he was searching for a better Greek text. At that time he was also torn between the desire to continue his historical 1. Ibid., fo. 6ov: 'nullum prestantem grece lingue autorem'. 2. Momigliano, loc. cit. (1974), pp. 355-6. 3. Ibid. p. 356: 'In utroque enim par labor est, aut etiam maior in secundo''. Ten years later the Cicero Novus will represent one of Bruni's first attempts to write this most difficult kind of history. 4. Cited in Bertalot, loc. cit. (1938, reprinted 1974), p. 287. 5. In the preface to Bruni's translation of Plato's Phaedrus (in Baron, 1928, p. 167). Dr Baron unaccountably ignored this conclusive piece of evidence. 6. Bertalot, loc. cit. (1931), p. 290 and (1934, reprinted 1974), p. 436; Baron (1928), p. 123.

38


translations and a growing interest in Greek philosophy.1 However, by 1412 he did apparently translate five more biographies, four of Roman statesmen (Aemilius Paullus, the conqueror of Macedonia, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, Sertorius) and the fifth of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, an opponent of the Romans in southern Italy. One has an impression that Bruni was not doing his best work in tackling this group of translations. Only the Life of Sertorius contains a preface and that is of scant interest.2 Bruni's contemporaries had particularly harsh things to say about that translation of Sertorius. A Milanese humanist, Pier Candido Decembrio, even accused him of omitting some passages 'by design or accident'.3 Bruni was more interested in Demosthenes. Between 1406 and 1412 he had also translated several speeches of the great Athenian orator. Loren2o Valla, a fastidious critic, later hailed them as Bruni's masterpieces. Bruni claimed that he had undertaken them in order to compensate for the loss of the famous Ciceronian translations of the same speeches.4 One is not surprised to find Bruni also working in 1412 on the translation of Plutarch's parallel lives of Demosthenes and Cicero. In the prefaces to his translations of the orations of Demosthenes Bruni was careful to add useful brief historical commentaries and this may have whetted his interest in providing a Latin version of Plutarch's biography of the Athenian statesman. Another consideration may also have influenced Bruni, though this is only a mere conjecture. We know that at some stage in his career Bruni used and annotated the best and oldest extant manuscript containing this particular pair of Plutarch's Lives, Vaticanus graecus 13 8.5 Future research will be needed to clear up whether this text was accessible to Bruni as early as 1412. His translation of the Life of Demosthenes was completed by December i4i2. 6 Bruni was delighted that his former Greek teacher, the great Manuel Chrysoloras, should have praised it, but work on 1. R. Sabbadini, 'Briciole umanistiche', Giornale Storico delta Leiterafura Ita/iana, xvii (1891), 219-20 (letter of 12 Oct. 1405); Baron (1928), 107-8 (letter probably of Oct.Nov. 1407); Sabbadini, loc. tit. 224-5, 227~8 (letters of 17 and 20 Dec. 1407). 2. Published in Baron (1928), pp. 123-5. 3. Firenze, Bibl. Riccardiana, MS 827, fo. 37r and v (a collection of correspondence of Pier Candido Decembrio). 4. For translations of the speeches of Demosthenes (and of a connected speech of Aeschines) see Bertalot (loc. «'/., 1931), pp. 299, 303-4 who extensively corrects Baron (1928); F. de Marco 'Un nuovo codice di Leonardo Bruni traduttore', Aevum, xxxiii (1959), 274-7. Baron's partial editions of texts (1928), pp. 108-9, 128-32 must be supplemented (for historical comments of Bruni) from unpublished manuscripts. I have used Oxford, Bodl. Libr., MS Canonici Lat. Class. 304, Venice, Bibl. Marciana, MS 4711 and Laur. MS 82.8 (a book of Piero de' Medici, copied in 1457). For Valla's praise of Bruni's translations cf. Bertalot (1937-8, reprinted 1974), p. 279. 5. I owe this information to the kindness of Professor David Thomason who had identified several of the Greek manuscripts used by Bruni. 6. Letters of Bruni, book 4, no. i, dated 26 Dec. 1412.1 have used vol. i of the edition of L. Mehus, Leonardi Bruni Aretini Epistolarum Libri VIII (Florence, 1741) and have collated it with fuller versions in Oxford, Balliol MS 310.


39 1

the parallel Life of Cicero was giving him no pleasure. He had originally embarked on this translation because he had become very dissatisfied with an earlier Latin version, produced by Jacopo Angeli, another pupil of Chrysoloras. But as Bruni, in turn, worked on it, he began to doubt whether it was worth doing. In a letter that seems to belong to 1412, he remarks wistfully that he is much less pleased with this task than with reading the speeches of Demosthenes.2 He became convinced that Plutarch's biography did not do justice to Cicero and that Plutarch's comparisons with Demosthenes were unfavourable, to the Roman statesman. Bruni was right. Plutarch's Life of Cicero is today generally regarded as one of his less successful biographies and it is unfortunate that it happens to be the only ancient 'Life of Cicero' that has survived in full. D. R. ShackletonBailey harshly, but not unjustifiably, refers to it as 'largely anecdotal'.3 Ill

The years 1413-14 form an almost complete gap in Bruni's surviving correspondence. This largely explains why we know nothing about Bruni's scholarly activities during that dangerous and turbulent period of his life, when his whole future in the papal service was increasingly in jeopardy.4 Early in 1415, with his erstwhile patron, Pope John XXIII, rapidly heading for disaster, Bruni realized that only a hasty withdrawal from the Council of Constance could reestablish his fortunes. He appears to have reached Florence by the middle of March5 and permanently settled there. He was now a fairly wealthy man and a mature scholar of 45, 6 with ten years of varied political experience behind him. He had been, at times, very close to the centre of papal government. His assurance that he knew how to write history may have owed much to this practical familiarity with politics. Within a year of his return to Florence Bruni produced the first book of his Florentine History, which earned him Florentine citizenship in June I4i6. 7 During the same period he also completed his biography of Cicero.8 It now emerged as an independent historical 1. Mehus (1741), book 3, no. 19 and Bruni's preface to the Cicero Novus, in Baron (1928), pp. 113-14. This portion of Baron's edition of the text is quite correct. 2. Mehus (1741), book 3, no. 19. 3. D. R. Shackleton-Bailey, Cicero (London, 1971), p. xii. There is a useful survey of all the recorded ancient biographies of Cicero in J. Guillen, 'Conoscimento indirecto de Ciceron a traves de sus biografos', Atti del I Congresso Internationale di Studi Ciceroniani (Rome, 1961), i. 4. The best account of Bruni's life is by C. Vasoli in Di^ionario Biografico degli Italiani, xiv (1972), 613-31. 5. Ibid. p. 624 and A. Gherardi, 'Alcune notizie intorno a Leonardo Aretino e alle sue Storie Florentine', Archivio Storico Italiano, ser. 4, xv (1885), 418. 6. Cf. H. Baron, 'The year of Leonardo Bruni's birth . . .', Speculum, Hi (1977). 7. Gherardi, loc. cit. p. 416. 8. A manuscript containing the Cicero Novus was copied at Constance in 1416 (Bertalot, loc. cit., 1938, reprinted 1974, p. 289, n. i). A letter of Bruni, Mehus (1741), book 4, no.

40


monograph, not a mere translation. In the dedicatory preface to his friend Niccoli, Bruni expressly stresses that he 'had not written as a translator but had composed his narrative according to his own judgment and wishes'.1 He was therefore pleased to call it the 'New Cicero'.2 His biography still owed a great deal to Plutarch, but it contained much else besides. It set the pattern for his subsequent handling of other Greek historians. He would henceforth produce adaptations or summaries of Polybius, Diogenes Laertius, Xenophon and Procopius, but never again mere translations of ancient historians. At this decisive moment in his scholarly career Bruni was very self-conscious about the duties of a historian. He had learnt from the best ancient authorities that he should explain in his prefaces what he was trying to do. In introducing his Cicero Novus he stressed that 'he must give reasons for all his statements and provide certain proof for all his assertions'.3 A less conventional comment appears in the preface to Book i of his History of the Florentine People dating from the same period. There he mentions among the historian's preoccupations 'the need to have his own opinion about everything he discusses'.4 This is one of Bruni's most thoughtful and penetrating observations. Outside his prefaces Bruni was not normally in the habit of explaining the rules that he meant to observe in selecting his evidence. We hear very little about how he tried to reconcile conflicting versions derived from different authorities. As Professor A. Momigliano had rightly noted, he does not appear to have ever 'formulated any general principle about the solution of such difficulties'.5 But in his biography of Cicero he repeatedly had to correct Plutarch and this work offers, therefore, an unusual opportunity for scrutinizing Bruni's criteria for preferring one type of authority over another. The sources used by Plutarch and Bruni for their biographies of Cicero demand some comment. This is a controversial subject. Professor F. Millar in his book on the historian Dio Cassius has urged that in studying an ancient historian a modern scholar has more important tasks than speculating about the sources that his author might have used. Even if some of the sources are fairly certain, 7, answering queries by a correspondent who had seen the completed Cicero Novus, appears in the edition of Bruni's correspondence based on Bruni's own selection between a letter (bk. 4, no. 6), dated i Dec. 1416 and another (bk. 4, no. 8) dated 4 Dec. 1416. (F. Beck, Studien %u Lionardo Bruni, Berlin und Leipzig, 1912, pp. 71, 82). 1. Baron (1928), p. 113: 'vitam et mores et res gestas eius . . . non ut interpretes, sedpro nostro arhitrio voluntateque descripsimus'. 2. Ibid. p. 114: 'Ciceronem hunc novum diligenter leges'. 3. Ibid. p. 113-14: 'De singulis rationem reddere et certa probatione asserere valeamus''. I printed this incorrectly in my paper of 1974. (fit. supra, p. 14). 4. Santini, op. at. (1914), fasc. i, p. 3 : 'de quaqua re iudidum in medio proferendum'. 5. Momigliano, loc. fit. (1974), p. 356.


41

which is rare, this cannot take us very far because 'we do not know enough about how ancient historians worked. We have no grounds for general assumptions about what an ancient historian would do when using one or more existing works as sources of material.'1 The same doubts apply equally well to Bruni. Millar went on to explain that he was chiefly concerned with the pattern of Dio's narrative and with what Dio regarded as worth saying rather than with the precise derivation of his materials. This must also be our main approach to a thoughtful historian like Bruni, who deliberately combined quite varied authorities in a way that best suited his purpose. A dispassionate survey of Plutarch's methods confirms that he, too, worked in a similar way.2 Plutarch's priorities were different from Bruni's and the latter sensed this, though he could not define the difference as clearly as we can grasp it today. Plutarch stressed more than once that he was writing not history but biography, which he regarded as something quite distinct. He was primarily a writer of readable, moralizing essays offering edifying examples of distinguished men. He was trying to convey their characters through a selection of incidents from their lives.3 Bruni was convinced that Plutarch's treatment of Cicero had produced an unsatisfactory picture of the Roman statesman. He was determined to improve upon it by providing a more historical work, a fuller account of Cicero's career and achievements, which would, therefore, do him better justice. In his preface to the Cirero Novus he expressed his dissatisfaction with Plutarch's 'Life' by claiming that he had to turn away from Plutarch to other Latin and Greek sources. In fact, his authorities may not have differed as much from Plutarch's sources as he imagined, but Bruni's choice of new information was, at times, significantly different. Most scholars would agree with Shackleton-Bailey's comment that in dealing with Plutarch's Life of Cicero 'as a rule it is impossible to trace particular statements . . . to their sources'.4 One of the main difficulties is created by the uncertainty whether Plutarch used some of his sources at first hand or through unidentifiable secondary authorities. The same doubts beset us when we speculate about Bruni's sources, though here we are on firmer ground over essentials. He certainly derived significant additional information from some of Cicero's speeches and letters. Secondly, in retelling the story of Cicero's con1. F. Millar, A Study ofCassius Dio (Oxford, 1964), p. viii. 2. For a very fair and balanced discussion see A. W. Gomme, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford, 1945), i, pp. 54-84, and particularly the comments on pp. 81-82. I owe this reference to my friend Professor Bryan Reardon, who has given me invaluable advice on all the classical ^sources used in this article. 3. Gomme, op. cit. pp. 54-56, quoting all the relevant passages from Plutarch. For a general discussion of ancient Greek biographical writing see especially A. Momigliano, The Development of Greek Biography (Cambridge, Mass., 1971). 4. Shackleton-Bailey, op. cit. (1971), p. xii.

42 Humanism and Renaissance Historiography sulate he corrected and supplemented Plutarch's remarkable narrative of the events of that year by using Sallust's Conspiracy of Catiline, which Plutarch, probably, had not known at first hand.1 IV

Only a man steeped for many years in Cicero's dialogues, speeches and letters could have produced the sort of improved version of Plutarch's 'Life' that Bruni was able to write. In one of his earliest works, Dialogi ad Petrum Histrum, he was, clearly modelling himself on Cicero's De Oratore and there are echoes of phrases used in Cicero's correspondence in some of Bruni's earliest surviving letters.2 By November 1407 he had a manuscript of the speeches against Verres and was complaining in a letter to Niccoli about the corruptions in its text.3 A month later he was hoping to procure a better text of the collection of Cicero's letters to Atticus. In March 1408 he was reporting the acquisition of several more speeches of Cicero which Poggio was transcribing for him.4 Bruni's use of Cicero's speeches in the Cicero Novus is quite varied. They were particularly important for his narrative of Cicero's consulate.5 Sometimes he expanded Plutarch's reference to a speech by adding direct quotations from it. He did this, for example, by citing a particularly dramatic passage in Cicero's successful defence in October 46 B.C. of Q. Ligarius prosecuted at Caesar's instigation. Plutarch mentions that Cicero embarrassed Caesar by referring in his presence to the fratricidal bloodshed at the battle of Pharsalus. Bruni cited Cicero's actual words which had so greatly disturbed Caesar.6 A characteristic example, illustrating Bruni's familiarity with Cicero's speeches, comes from his account of an incident in 74. According to Plutarch, Cicero after acting as a questor in Sicily, discovered to his great surprise from a chance encounter with a friend that influential people had heard nothing of his exploits. According to Plutarch he met this friend somewhere in Campania. Bruni traced the source of Plutarch's anecdote to a passage in the speech 'Pro Cn. Plancio'. 1. For the relation of Plutarch's biography to Sallust see especially D. Magnino, Plutarchi Vita Ciceronis (Florence, 1963), pp. x-xi. 2. R. Sabbadini in Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, xcvi (1930), 129-33; idem., Storia e Critica di Testi latini (new ed., Padua, 1971), pp. 57-58, 60. 3. Ibid. (1971), pp. 40-41. The manuscript of Cicero referred to in this letter is Laur. Strozzi 44. It contains several autograph notes of Bruni. Cf. Appendix, infra, p. 53. 4. Sabbadini, op. fit. (1971), pp. 40-41; idem., Giornale Storico della L.etteratura Italiana, xvii (1891), 225, 228. 5. See below. For Plutarch's text I use the edition of R. Flaceliere et E. Chambry, Plutarque, Vies, xn, Demosthene-Ciceron (Collection G. Bude, Paris, 1976) cited hereafter as Plutarque (1976). 6. Plutarque (1976), Ciceron, 39, 6-7; Baron, op. cit. (1928), p. 117. Baron's text is quite correct here.


43

Cicero had said there that it had happened at Puteoli. Bruni replaced this by 'at the baths', as presumably more intelligible to his readers.1 Bruni did particularly impressive preparatory work on the texts of Cicero's letters. When he cites them verbatim, his transcripts are so careful that it is possible to identify with complete assurance the manuscript that he was using. One of the letters cited integrally by Bruni is the message sent by Caesar to Cicero on 16 April 49. It so happens that important emendations to this letter are derived entirely from one particular manuscript (MS H).2 Bruni too gives all these correct readings.3 His manuscript was derived from an ancient text (yolumen antiquissimum sane ac veneranduni] that he and Niccoli had acquired in the autumn of 1409 from Bishop Bartolomeo Capra of Cremona. In reporting on this manuscript to Niccoli on i November 1409, Bruni observed that it contained only the first seven books of the letters to Atticus, but that it could be used to emend the text that they already had.4 The story does not end here. Some years later, we do not know when, Bruni came to own a famous manuscript of Cicero's letters to Atticus which had once been possessed by Salutati.5 This belongs to a different, and somewhat less reliable family of manuscripts, and does not appear to have been used by Bruni for his Cicero Novus. But, after it came into his possession, he began to insert in it conjectural emendations, some of which have been subsequently accepted by modern scholars as representing the best readings.6 At least one letter thus emended was summarised by Bruni in his Cicero Novus.1 Bruni's textual scholarship obviously inspires respect. Only a critical edition of the text, accompanied by a detailed commentary, can display fully Bruni's use of Plutarch and of other classical sources. The selection of examples that follows merely tries to illustrate Bruni's approach to such problems. 'He was well aware that ancient writers contradicted each other because they followed different sources. He thought he was imitating the ancients in so far as the ancients themselves blindly followed their sources; he knew that this situation created difficulties.'8 The Cicero Novus is a good text for studying how Bruni tried to cope with this predicament. 1. Plutarque (1976), Ciceron, 6, 3; A. C. Clark, M. Tulii Ciceronis Orationes (Oxford, 1911), 26, 64-65; Bruni, MS Riccard. 136, fo. 177". 2. D. R. Shackleton-Bailey, Cicero's Letters to Atticus (Cambridge), i (1965), 78-79 and iv (1968), 252-5. 3. Bruni, MS Riccard. 136, fo. 191' and v. 4. In Mehus (1741), book 13, no. 9. Bruni's description of this manuscript provides the evidence for the modern identification of the manuscripts stemming from it. See especially A. C. Clark, 'A Paris manuscript of the letters to Atticus', Classical Rev., x (1896), 321-3. 5. B. L. Ullman, The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script (Rome, 1960), p. 76. 6. For a list of the most useful emendations see W. S. Watt, M. Tulli Ciceronis Epistulae, n, i (Oxford, 1965), p. viii (to the end of book 8). A few more emendations from books 9, 10 and 14 are noted by D. Shackleton-Bailey, ibid. n. ii (Oxford, 1961), 22, 27, 49, 79, 218-19. Bruni must have used for this purpose other manuscripts besides MS H. 7. Book VII, no. i (Watt, op. cit. p. 225); Bruni, MS Riccard. 136, fos. i89v-i9Or. 8. Momigliano, loc. cit. (1974), p. 356.

44


Bruni could be very prejudiced and obstinately wrong-headed. In his History of the First Punic War, written around 1418-19, because he suspected everywhere hostile bias against his beloved Romans, 'he deduced rather perversely* from Polybius that while Livy had followed the chief Roman authority, Fabius Pictor, 'Polybius had preferred Philinus', a pro-Carthaginian source.1 In fact, any dispassionate reading of Polybius shows that he had tried to use them both impartially and that he had often followed Fabius Pictor. The Cicero Novus starts with a very one-sided and uncritical discussion of Cicero's origins. Fortunately, a reader questioned Bruni about his sources at this point and Bruni's reply supplies valuable additional information.2 Faced with Plutarch's rather malicious statement that, while some said that Cicero was descended from an ancient king of the Volscians, others alleged that his father had been raised in a fuller's workshop, Bruni refused even to mention the second alternative. Here he was quite wise, but he was less well-advised in treating Cicero's royal descent as a certainty.3 He appealed to most 'authoritative writers',4 but it is somewhat disturbing to note that he only named one of them, St Jerome, in the Latin version of De Temporibus of Eusebius. Perhaps Bruni really did believe that this patristic authority silenced all doubt. Bruni tried to bolster up his case further by mentioning that Cicero himself had once referred to his regal descent. Cicero did so, indeed, jestingly, in the Tusculans, but Bruni accepts this in deadly earnest.5 In his letter he piles up some very specious reasons why Cicero on all other occasions might have been always reticent about his royal ancestors. He is on solid ground only in dealing with the evidence of Sallust. His correspondent had adduced Sallust's mention of Cicero's undistinguished origins. Bruni, quite correctly, replied that Sallust had merely spoken of Cicero as a 'new man' among the Roman senators. In the Cicero Novus, after this initial display of encomiastic prejudice, Bruni went on to record soberly that Cicero was of knightly rank. Plutarch did not bother to mention it in this context, though he did record it later when speaking of Cicero's election to the consulate.6 Bruni showed at this point his special interest in Roman institutions by adding an explanatory note that the knights were a group in the middle between the senatorial class and the ordinary plebeians.7 Other sensible things follow. Plutarch failed to indicate Cicero's youthful age when the latter had undertaken his first legal 1. Ibid. pp. 356-7. 2. MS Riccard. 136, fos. iy4 v -i75 r , modifying Plutarch's account, i, 1-2; Bruni's letter in Mehus (1741), i. 115-17 (bk. 4, no. 7 of Dec. 1416, cf. supra). 3. MS Riccard. 136, fos. 174^175': 'Principium vero generis Tullium Volscorum regem satis constanti opinione hominum referebat'. 4. Mehus (1974), i. 115: 'probatissimos auc'tores'. 5. Cf. the commentary of D. Magnino, Plutarchi Vita Ciceronis (1963), p. 4. 6. Plutarch, n, 3 (p. 78 of Bude edition). 7. MS Riccard. 136, fo. 174": 'equestrem locum qui medius interpatres etplebem habeb

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