Albertino Mussato: The Making of a Poet Laureate (Studies in Medieval History and Culture) [1 ed.] 9781032061948, 9781032061955, 9781003201144, 1032061944

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Studies in Medieval History and Culture

ALBERTINO MUSSATO: THE MAKING OF A POET LAUREATE A POLITICAL AND INTELLECTUAL PORTRAIT Aislinn McCabe

Albertino Mussato: The Making of a Poet Laureate

This book examines the life and political career of Albertino Mussato (1261–1329), a Paduan poet, historian, and politician. Mussato was one of the first writers of the late medieval period to begin reviving classical Latin in his works. His classical-style tragic drama Ecerinis, inspired by the writings of Seneca, paved the way for him to be crowned as the first poet laureate since antiquity. This work outlines how Mussato depicted the course of his own career, from being an impoverished teenager of insignificant birth to becoming a celebrated poet and scholar, as well as an influential political figure. It looks specifically at the years leading up to Mussato’s public coronation, on 3 December 1315, as poet laureate for his city. His writings are a key component of his political manoeuvres as he tried to navigate through the troubled waters of northern Italian politics. The book demonstrates how the sources pertaining to Mussato’s life and career are part of an exercise in self-promotion and self-fashioning, intended to secure his position within factional politics but rooted in a philosophical approach derived from his early classical studies. Accordingly, this book acts as a full-fledged account of the interaction between Mussato’s writings and his political career, and how this contributed to his rise to fame. Aislinn McCabe completed her doctoral studies in the Department of History and Centre for Neo-Latin Studies at University College Cork, Ireland. Her work has been presented at several conferences, including the Social History Society Annual Conference (Lincoln, 2019), the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies (Regina, 2018), and the Annual Neo-Latin Symposium (Cork, 2017). Aislinn was the recipient of the Irish Research Council’s ‘Government of Ireland Fellowship’ in 2015.

Studies in Medieval History and Culture

Recent titles include Monetisation and Commercialisation in the Baltic Sea, 1050–1450 Edited by Dariusz Adamczyk and Beata Możejko The Fluctuating Sea Architecture and Movement in the Medieval Mediterranean Saygin Salgirli People, Power and Identity in the Late Middle Ages Essays in Memory of W. Mark Ormrod Edited by Gwilym Dodd, Helen Lacey and Anthony Musson The Experience of Neighbourhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Edited by Bronach C. Kane and Simon Sandall The Myths and Realities of the Viking berserkr Roderick Dale The Others, Identity, and Memory in Early Medieval Italy Luigi Andrea Berto Women and Violence in the Late Medieval Mediterranean, ca. 1100–1500 Edited by Lidia L. Zanetti Domingues, Lorenzo Caravaggi, and Giulia M. Paoletti Albertino Mussato: The Making of a Poet Laureate: A Political and Intellectual Portrait Aislinn McCabe For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Studies-in-Medieval-History-and-Culture/book-series/SMHC

Albertino Mussato: The Making of a Poet Laureate A Political and Intellectual Portrait Aislinn McCabe

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Aislinn McCabe The right of Aislinn McCabe to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-032-06194-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-06195-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-20114-4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003201144 Typeset in Times New Roman by MPS Limited, Dehradun

For Mary, the best research assistant.

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction: Escaping Dante’s shadow 1

2

3

4

5

viii 1

Mussato’s world: the classical revival in late medieval Padua

30

Mussato the poet: philosophy and politics in the early writings

53

Mussato the historian: imperial history at the court of Emperor Henry VII

79

Mussato the statesman: self-promotion in political turmoil

105

Mussato the dramatist: the making of Padua’s new Antichrist

131

Conclusion Bibliography Index

153 160 176

Acknowledgements

This monograph has been many years in the making. I first read Mussato’s work as a bright-eyed final-year undergraduate student. My love of drama and imagination drew me to Mussato’s rather sinister, albeit entertaining, Ecerinis. Upon reading it, however, I found that it was difficult to find information about this Paduan poet in our college library. The questions I asked my lecturer at the time, Dr Jason Harris, were: Where are the rest of his works? Why haven’t I heard about him before in my studies? Why did he write this unusual play in the first place? I spent the last several years trying to answer questions such as these, with this book being the result of my journey, and I would like to take a moment to acknowledge some people who helped me along the way. First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge that this research would not have been possible without my doctoral funding from the Irish Research Council, as part of the Government of Ireland Fellowship, and I am very grateful for this opportunity. During my MA, I contacted Dr Ronald Witt with some questions about various primary sources for Mussato. Sadly, Dr Witt has since passed away, and I will always remember his friendly emails to an unknown young scholar, who lived on another continent. I am grateful to him for his replies and encouragement. I would like to sincerely thank my PhD supervisor Jason, for all the time and support which he has given me over the years and for helping me to pursue my studies of Mussato, and also Dr Diarmuid Scully, who always had time to review my work and who encouraged me to pursue my monograph. I also wish to thank Dr Edward Coleman, who continuously supported me in the publishing process after my viva. Finally, I wish to acknowledge and thank my family and friends who were always on the other end of a phone. For my partner, my brothers and friends, and especially for Alma who shared the joys and the battles of the PhD with me. I dedicate this book to my incredible mother, for her patience in reading my never-ending drafts. The trips to Italy as my ‘research assistant’ must have also been torturous – thanks Mum.

Introduction Escaping Dante’s shadow

Albertino Mussato was born in Padua, Italy, in 1261. A scholar, writer, and public figure, he was renowned for his political activities and for his literary Latin works. Mussato reached the height of his fame on 3 December 1315, when he was crowned as Padua’s poet laureate, a title which had not been used since the coronation of the poet Statius in Rome in the first century AD. Mussato’s attempts at reviving classical Latin and the study of ancient authors, especially Seneca, have been the focus of extensive scholarship, particularly from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. His preoccupation with classical literature began early in his career and was much aided by the help of his older friend Lovato dei Lovati (ca.1240-1309). Here was a northern Italian writer, actively publishing Latin texts in the early fourteenth century, and a contemporary of Italy’s Tre Corone (Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio). His efforts at the revival of classical-style Latin is undeniable, and the research of previous scholars, such as Ronald Witt, Roberto Weiss, Guido Billanovich and Giovanna Gianola, has been instrumental to portray Mussato’s role in the origins of the Renaissance. Yet Mussato’s story often resides as one subject to the shadows cast by his more famous contemporaries. Thus, it is my intention with this work to explore Mussato in his own right. In doing so, I will examine a variety of works by Mussato, focusing on the ways in which his writings incorporate his personal agenda and political outlook. My work will explore the interconnection between Mussato’s oeuvre and his political career to affirm that his texts were a key component of his political manoeuvres. It will utilise both Latin primary source manuscripts and texts and Italian secondary source literature. All translations throughout this book are my own unless otherwise stated. Ultimately, I argue that it was through his historical and poetical writings, and his literary correspondence, that Mussato employed a self-fashioning technique that allowed him to reinvent himself continually in order to overcome the vicissitudes of his political career. My work is laid out in five separate chapters in addition to an introduction and conclusion. The introduction is designed to give a concise biography of Mussato’s early life before his appearance as either a politician or a writer; to provide a brief background to the politics of Padua in the DOI: 10.4324/9781003201144-101

2 Introduction early fourteenth century; to discuss previous scholarship that represents him as a precursor of the early Renaissance humanists; and, finally, to explain clearly the structure of this work for the reader. The book follows a chronological pattern, exploring Mussato’s career development as far as the coronation. While tracing the outline of Mussato’s political career, it will analyse his corresponding literary works and how they reflected his political outlook as it evolved over time. Using Mussato’s own writings, I will explore how Mussato used his written words to manipulate public and private opinion of him and to secure his position in Paduan politics. Mussato was not born into a political family, nor did his father hold any significant wealth. Therefore, to analyse the progression of his political and scholarly career, it is essential to understand Mussato’s background.1 He was born in Padua in 1261, in the suburb of Gazzo,2 and was the son of the notary Giovanni Cavalerio.3 Mussato’s background had similarities with that of Francesco Petrarch, as both men had a notarial father. There has been a considerable amount of debate among scholars regarding the earlier life of Mussato due to the limited contemporary information existing about his youth. The preeminent evidence of his background comes to us from his poem De celebratione suae diei Nativitatis, fienda, vel non, and from a biography of Mussato written by Sicco Polenton in his work Scriptorum illustrium latinae linguae libri xviii.4 Polenton used information from a work by Mussato entitled De natura et moribus suis, an autobiography which has subsequently been lost.5 The precise date of Mussato’s birth remains a subject of some debate among scholars. Antonio Zardo, a nineteenthcentury Italian historian whose work remains influential to scholarship on Mussato, argues that he was born in October of the year 1262, although he provides insufficient evidence for his argument.6 Most historians give 1261 as Mussato’s year of birth, and this is the date which I will use in this work. A second and perhaps more significant debate in scholarship has been the question of Mussato’s parentage. In a notarial document dated 10 October 1282, Mussato himself subscribes: ‘I, Albertino Musso, son of Giovanni Cavalerio’.7 While this appears unambiguous, in his poem De celebratione, Mussato informs us that he was born into abject poverty and that his father died while he was still a teenager and so he was left to care for his two younger brothers and a sister: Esse miser didici teneris infantulus annis, Cuique miser tribuit vix elementa Pater. Bina mihi fratrum series adiuncta Sorori, Et tamen illorum de grege maior eram. His Pater, ut maior, Patris post fata relinquor, Quam fierem pubes, sic Pater ante fui. I learned hardship in the tender years of my infancy; my poor father could scarcely give me the basics. I had two brothers and one sister,

Introduction

3

but I was the eldest of the whole lot. Being the eldest, I was left as father to them after our father’s death. Thus I became a father before I myself had grown up.8

These lines are hard to square with the notion that Giovanni Cavalerio was Mussato’s father, since Giovanni did not die until Mussato was much older. It is likely that the ‘father’ in these lines was a wealthy neighbour, Viviano del Musso, whose death forced the family into poverty. Indeed, Mussato later adapted Viviano del Musso’s name and called himself Albertino Mussato, assuming a small donkey (musso) in his coat of arms.9 The picture is further complicated by the account of Giovanni da Nono (ca.1275-1346), who claims that Mussato was undoubtedly illegitimate.10 He suggests that while Giovanni Cavalerio was ill and hiding under his wife’s bed, he heard her confess to a priest in the room that Mussato was the son of Viviano.11 However, it is very likely that the author of this particular anecdote invented or distorted this story. Da Nono was a contemporary of Mussato who disliked the poet and actively expressed dissatisfaction at his coronation.12 Nevertheless, from examining the sources and Mussato’s own autobiographical poem De celebratione, it does seem likely that Mussato was Viviano’s son. Upon the death of Viviano, Mussato and his family fell into poverty, and Mussato was obliged as a teenager to work for scholars, copying books and manuscripts for them.13 In his poem De Celebratione, Mussato highlights the poverty of his early life: Parua mihi victu praebebant lucra Scholares, Venalisque mea littera facta manu. O labor extremus; sed vitae tuta facultas! O felix mixta conditione miser! Sola fames nostra suberat ventura timori; Ille licet mordax, sed timor unus erat. Selling writing, done by my own hand, to scholars brought me little money with which I could sustain myself, O, it was very hard work; but a safe way to earn a living. I was poor but happy in this mixed condition! Imminent hunger was the only thing that made us afraid; though it was biting, yet it was but one thing to fear.14

Regardless of the details of his parentage, Mussato chose to depict his early years as characterised by hardship and penury, the source of the philosophical outlook that he would lay claim to later on. It will therefore be important to recall, in the course of the following consideration of his career, that Mussato’s rise to prominence within Padua was the product of a determined effort to climb the social ladder through his profile as a writer and astute political operator, although he naturally tried to build upon and

4 Introduction consolidate his achievements through the conventional means of strategic alliances and marriage. The first historical evidence of Mussato’s political career is his commission as a notary on 10 October 1282, when he wrote a document for Viviano’s widow Armerina.15 By 1293 he had obtained a good-enough reputation to be commissioned for the investigation of the Este family inheritance in Ferrara in 1293.16 Sometime in 1294 he married Mabilia Dente Lemici, the daughter of Guglielmo Dente.17 In 1296 at the age of 35 he was elected into the Consiglio Maggiore, the Council of a Thousand, in Padua. In that same year he became a knight for the city. Already at this point in his career, Mussato had established himself as much more than a notary. Along with his literary endeavours, he participated in the military actions of the state as a knight and soon became heavily involved in the political scene of northern Italy. In 1297 he was appointed as podestà of the neighbouring town of Lendinara, which lay within the territory of Padua, and he appears to have served on his first diplomatic mission in 1302, as part of a Paduan embassy to Boniface VIII. In 1309 he served for six months as one of the Executors of the Ordinances of Justice in Florence, just before the arrival into Italy of the new Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII.18 Henry’s presence in Italy would influence the remainder of Mussato’s political career and have a lasting impact on the political scene in Padua, but it is worth noting that Mussato had already been compelled to use his scholarly talents to overcome the hardship of his youth and to put himself in a position to be able to seize the opportunities that Henry’s advent would present him. Mussato participated in four embassies to Henry’s court between 1311 and 1312. His task was to determine Henry’s intentions for Padua and to negotiate a treaty between the emperor and the city. Despite Mussato’s attempts, he was unsuccessful at convincing Padua to accept a treaty or to recognise imperial authority over them, something which will be discussed in Chapter 3. How and why Mussato became an advocate of rapprochement with the emperor is hard to determine, given that he had grown up in a largely Guelph city. But it is the fact that his personal opinions and activities in politics were not always seen as favourable to the city that compelled him to draw upon his considerable literary talents to articulate and justify his position. His success in this respect, as already intimated, was rather varied. Although he had demonstrated his patriotic mettle by participating in wars against Verona and its ruler Cangrande della Scala (1291-1329), and though he had consistently presented himself as an advocate for Paduan liberty, he was driven out of Padua by a mob in April 1314 and was officially exiled on two occasions, in 1318 and 1325. He would ultimately spend the last years of his life in exile in Chioggia. It is one of the goals of this book to show that the turbulence of his political career would come to impact heavily on Mussato’s literary works, both his historical and his poetical writings. It is a central belief of my research that Mussato’s writings were a product of the factional conflicts and tumultuous backdrop of northern Italian

Introduction 19

5

politics. In order to understand Mussato’s career and position in the political scene in and around Padua at the time, it is necessary to examine the two major factors that contributed to the city’s turbulent political environment in the fourteenth century: the emergence of the commune in Italy and the conflict between Guelph and Ghibelline factions. The terms ‘Guelph’ and ‘Ghibelline’ began in the twelfth century and became attached to two opposing parties, those who supported the papacy and those who supported the Holy Roman Empire. Eventually, the conflicts between these two parties reached a crisis point in the late thirteenth and into the fourteenth century in Italy. Guelph was derived from the House of Bavaria, also called the ’House of Welf’ due to the number of princes named ‘Welf’, while Ghibelline took its name from the castle of the Hohenstaufen dukes of Swabia called ’Waiblingen’.20 These names became Italianised into Guelfo and Ghibellino and aligned themselves on opposing sides, with the former supporting the papacy and the latter supporting the Holy Roman Empire.21 However, the term ‘Ghibelline’ was often avoided by those in favour of imperial rule, as it was a derogatory name.22 As a general rule, the Ghibellines were in favour of strong governance which they sought from the empire, while the Guelphs generally favoured a self-ruling system.23 Their major differences arose with the expedition of Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick I, into Italy in 1154, after he was elected as Holy Roman Emperor two years previously.24 The Ghibelline faction supported the emperor and his expansion of imperial power into Italy. Meanwhile, the Guelph cities of Verona, Padua, Vicenza and Republic of Venice set up the Veronese League in 1164 in response to Frederick I. This would eventually become the Lombard League with an aim to counter the attempts of the Hohenstaufen Emperors expanding power into Italy.25 When Frederick II, the grandson of Frederick I, became Holy Roman Emperor, he too began a military campaign to enforce his imperial authority in Italy. Frederick’s relationship with the papacy and his excommunication from the Church exacerbated Guelph-Ghibelline tensions and eventually created further fissures within the factions. Frederick defeated the Second Lombard League in November 1237 at Cortenuova and blocked all possibilities of a peaceful settlement among the empire and the cities of Italy. In that same year he appointed his close ally Ezzelino da Romano III (1194–1259) as his imperial vicar in Padua.26 According to Gérard Rippe, Ezzelino initially modelled his rule on that of Emperor Frederick, where he adopted a system of taking hostages against his adversaries,27 and systematically worked to become the sole ruler of Padua, Verona and Vicenza by the late 1240s. While Ezzelino did not begin his rule as the tyrant he is portrayed as in historiography, Rippe asserts that ‘after 1245, he seems to become a monomaniac of terror’,28 something which the main eye-witness account also attests to. Ezzelino reigned over Verona, Vicenza and Padua for almost two decades, with his brother Alberico (1196-1260) ruling in the neighbouring state of Treviso until they were both finally overthrown.

6 Introduction Rolandino of Padua’s (1200–1276) Cronica in factis et circa facta Marchie Trivixane provides a contemporary account of the reign of Ezzelino in Padua.29 Rolandino studied at Bologna under his master Boncompagno da Signa and quickly became a renowned notary in Padua who taught at the University of Padua.30 He was commissioned to write his chronicles after the fall of Ezzelino, whose reign he lived through, being the ‘natural and trustworthy recording secretary’, and he began his work in 1260.31 Rolandino’s work presented Ezzelino as a vicious tyrant and the populace of Padua as the heroes of the story. The commune praised his completed work with a ceremonial reading at the university and endorsed this heroic depiction of the Paduans and its clear condemnation of tyranny.32 He does not mention any Paduan who may have cooperated with Ezzelino, giving the reader a sense that every Paduan suffered under the reign of this tyrant.33 Although Rolandino’s work is evidently partisan, there is no doubt that the reign of Ezzelino in Padua was a terrible one. Claims that he imprisoned 11,000 Paduan noblemen and killed roughly 50,000 citizens may be exaggerated, yet they are indicative of the severity of his rule, which became still more notorious for the use of terrible torture methods on prisoners and enemies, including burning or cutting off peoples’ noses, upper lips, eyes, genitalia or breasts.34 As a consequence of Frederick’s appointment of a tyrant who reigned over Padua with such ferocity, the citizens thereafter ensured that the city remained a Guelph one, constantly watchful in case the Holy Roman Emperor should appoint another similar tyrant as their podestà. Upon Ezzelino’s death, the towns which had been subject to his tyrannical rule submitted to the Guelph faction and the pope. This loyalty to one faction, and fear and hate of the other, would become an important factor when examining the politics of Mussato. Padua then enjoyed more than 40 years of peace from any major external threat. It expanded its territory, the university flourished and the following five decades were viewed by Paduan writers as the city’s golden years.35 The city resumed its commune form of government after the death of Ezzelino, a political structure which had developed in the eleventh century whereby it became a city-state governed by elected individuals.36 Historian John Kenneth Hyde describes the commune as ‘a sworn association of private individuals coming together as equals to promote their common interests’.37 The commune structure became crucially important for the Paduans after the reign of Ezzelino, for fear they might once again be subjected to despotism. Mussato was thus born into a strong Guelph environment, with a city that was fearful of the powers of the Empire turning them from their beloved commune into a city ruled by an imperial despot. After the death of Frederick II in 1250, 60 years passed before the recognition of another emperor in Italy. This occurred with Henry VII in 1310 during Mussato’s lifetime, and indeed it brought him to the high point of his political career. Italy had been left to govern itself without the interference

Introduction

7

of the empire, but the Guelph and Ghibelline factions remained as strongly opposed as ever.38 In Padua, the city was struggling against the power of Verona’s ruler Cangrande and in wars over the neighbouring land Vicenza. Cangrande was fast becoming a serious threat for Padua, and the Paduans feared him overturning their commune and taking control of their city. He was a member of the Ghibelline faction and therefore the tensions between Verona and Padua were coloured by underlying and opposing GuelphGhibelline ideas. Factionalism and internecine hatred for the opposing party were thus part of the political environment in which Mussato grew up, and the politics of northern Italy would naturally feature heavily in his political histories and poetical works. In historiographical outlook, he was influenced especially by the aforementioned work of Rolandino and used this chronicle to create his own version of the tale of Ezzelino, in the form of the Senecan-style tragedy Ecerinis, which will be discussed in Chapter 5. Yet, right from the outset of his literary career, in several of his epistles and poetic correspondences, Mussato demonstrates an evolving concern with literary response to contemporary politics. His poems and historical writings can provide historians with much detail regarding how Mussato chose to represent his own political outlook. It is possible to see these writings as part of his diplomatic career and his attempt to navigate the troubled waters of urban factionalism in Padua, as shall be discussed in this monograph. Mussato wielded his literary works as tools of self-promotion, self-justification and even selfdefence to manipulate and assist his career development and his political position in Padua. Undoubtedly, the highlight of Mussato’s literary career came with his coronation as poet laureate, that is, the officially appointed poet of Padua. The idea for a title of poet laureate originated in ancient Greece when the laurel was used to form a crown of honour for a poet or hero. He was awarded such a distinction for the combined achievement of two of his works: the De gestis Henrici VII Caesaris, a chronicle of Henry’s expedition into Italy, and Ecerinis, a classical-style tragedy that portrayed Ezzelino’s occupation of Padua as a parallel to the threat of Cangrande della Scala. Yet it seems to have been primarily on the basis of the reception of Ecerinis that Mussato’s influence extended beyond the scholarly realm of Padua and across northern Italy. Furthermore, the mere fact of his coronation would have a major influence on other contemporary figures and subsequent imitators during the early Renaissance. Notably, Dante’s poetical exchange with his contemporary Giovanni del Virgilio demonstrates his longing to be crowned poet laureate, just as Mussato had been, in his hometown of Florence, from which he was exiled.39 Moreover, despite Petrarch’s unwillingness to refer to medieval writers in his own work, he praises both Lovato and Mussato: ‘What great offspring the city of the sons of Antenor have celebrated.’40 Petrarch’s own coronation on 8 April 1341 may indeed have been influenced by Mussato’s.

8 Introduction Yet it is what the laureation symbolised that is most important: whereas Dante poetically imagined himself being accepted as a peer of Vergil and the other ancient poets, Mussato orchestrated a real ceremony in which he enacted his crowning as their successor, marking an early triumph for the resurgent classicism that would eventually lead to the wider phenomenon of the quattrocento Renaissance. Both men shared a similar attitude towards classical authors, but their efforts of classical revival reveal a different impact. Ronald Witt has argued that the humanist movement in early modern Europe essentially began with Lovato and Mussato, the first to embrace careful imitation of the Latin literature of pagan antiquity, and that, hence, Petrarch was very much an heir to the Paduan pioneers.41 Witt drew upon the earlier work of Paul Oskar Kristeller, who offered a definition of humanism, that corresponds to the meaning of “humanist” and of the studia humanitatis, clearly defined in the fifteenth century as a cycle of studies that includes grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy and which is based on the reading and imitation of ancient authors, first only Latin and then also Greek.42 It is not the purpose of this monograph to defend such attempts to depict Mussato as a Renaissance humanist avant la lettre. Rather, while recognising the wider significance of his laureation, both as a sign of contemporary trends in literary scholarship and as an intimation of things to come, I hope to outline how the coronation emerged out of the political context of Mussato’s scholarly literature and his consistent efforts to fashion and refashion his profile as a Paduan writer. Mussato’s self-fashioning agenda is at the heart of this monograph. Through his literary works, Mussato adopted or ‘fashioned’ a persona and image of himself which he wished to present, and ultimately promote, to his readers. As this work progresses, we will see how Mussato manipulated this image in response to the political scene in Padua and to his own position in city politics. The work of Stephen Greenblatt, in his groundbreaking book Renaissance Self-Fashioning, argues that literary texts were being used as identity formation by scholars in sixteenth-century Renaissance England, with there being a sense that a persona ‘could be fashioned’.43 Indeed, the effort of ‘fashioning’ a perceived persona is something which can be seen in Mussato’s case. As will become apparent through the course of this work, Mussato’s self-fashioning agenda was evident from early in his career, but it came to fruition with his crowning as Padua’s poet laureate. Accordingly, since it presents a high point of Mussato’s career, before events brought him rapidly down, this work will conclude at the point of the coronation, narrating the writer’s career development and arguing that the celebration was part of a deliberate self-fashioning agenda conducted by Mussato. It will demonstrate how the sources pertaining to his life and career are part of an exercise to secure his position within factional politics.

Introduction

9

This book will explore how his writings reveal his attempts to navigate through these factional conflicts and to promote himself as a skilled politician and an accomplished scholar. Thus, while much previous scholarship on Mussato has focused on the significance of the coronation in the context of the tragedy Ecerinis, the present work is primarily concerned with how the play and the coronation both proceed naturally from what was, by this stage in Mussato’s career, a well-established strategy of self-promotion in the context of political manoeuvering. As such, this book will construct a fullfledged account of his political career leading up to the height of his fame. Although it is still necessary to draw upon earlier textual scholarship from the nineteenth century, the broad parameters for study of Mussato’s works have been laid out by three modern scholars: Guido Billanovich (c. 20th), Giovanna Gianola (c. 21st) and Ronald Witt (c. 21st). Billanovich was the first to bring the fruits of modern philological scholarship to bear on what he called ‘prehumanism’ in Padua. He established the framework for interpreting what he, and other Italian scholars, termed the cenacolo padovano (referring to the group of Paduan scholars associated with Lovato and Mussato), as being an important stage in the development of the classical tradition, particularly regarding reception of the works of Seneca. Francesco Novati was the first to term the Paduan scholars as a cenacolo padovano, and the name has since stuck in scholarship. Billanovich placed these scholars within the context of Italian culture of the time and examined connections with urban patronage and politics. Giovanna Gianola continued the work of Billanovich with her research, which examined the various texts of Mussato in an analytical and technical manner. Her work has provided scholars with far greater knowledge of the primary sources themselves and of the relationship of the manuscripts to one another. She has also contributed to scholarship on Mussato in her attempts to date his writings correctly and by examining the prologues to his histories, which had previously been neglected. Ronald Witt, building on the work of Roberto Weiss, placed Mussato’s writings within the context of the larger development of literary and intellectual culture in Italy from the eleventh to the fifteenth century as part of a project to identify the origins of Renaissance humanism. His insistence upon the importance of these Paduan scholars underscored the need for more detailed study in this area. Witt argues that Mussato became ‘one of the most powerful figures in the last years of Padua’s commune’, applauding him as ‘the last and most gifted defender of Paduan communal liberty’.44 However, political context or significance is not the focus of Witt’s analysis; indeed, it has been a marginal consideration in the work of all three of these scholars. I hope, therefore, to build upon their significant contributions both in terms of the detail of Mussato’s articulation of political positions and in light of the wider concerns of the ‘new cultural history’, considering the political significance of the very act of writing in a classicising manner during this period.

10

Introduction

Despite the copying and circulation of manuscripts of Mussato’s works throughout the fifteenth century, early Renaissance humanist histories of classical scholarship tended to overlook his contribution (with the notable exception of Polenton, mentioned earlier) as he was eclipsed by the figures of Petrarch and Dante, and it was not until the seventeenth century that his works entered print.45 David Lummus, in a comparative study between the poetry of Mussato, Petrarch, Dante, and Boccaccio, suggests that it was the popularity of the study of vernacular medieval Italian literature, as opposed to Latin works, that might have contributed to Mussato’s neglect. He argues: ‘The result of this separation of the Latin and vernacular has been that the works of a Latin poet like Mussato have been all but eliminated from the history of Italian literature.’46 Unlike vernacular works from Italy’s Tre Corone, Mussato’s Latin writings were simply not accessible to a wider audience in their original forms. No sustained philological attention was devoted to the surviving Mussato manuscripts until the nineteenth century, when northern European Romantic interest in the Renaissance began to inspire archival and philological explorations of Mussato’s surviving manuscripts in Italy. Accordingly, the works of Antonio Zardo, Luigi Padrin, and Francesco Novati, despite their age, remain an essential point of departure for the study of Mussato. Much of their information on the earlier life of Mussato was taken from the fifteenthcentury biography written by Sicco Polenton, which can be found in a variety of editions in different manuscripts.47 In 1883, Francesco Novati published an article about Polenton’s biography and provided his own commentary about these manuscripts. Prior to this, Giacomo Zanella released an article in the mid-nineteenth century which outlined the rudiments of Mussato’s life in a concise manner.48 Zanella’s article gives a brief biography of Mussato and an account of his political activities which he seems to derive directly from Mussato’s own histories, though he does not provide any references. Following Zanella, Antonio Zardo published a more comprehensive study of the life and works of Mussato, using Zanella’s article as a reference for his own research. Zardo’s biography is still useful as a source of information about Mussato’s life, especially in its attempt to expand upon Zanella’s study by adding political context and details of the wars between Padua and Cangrande. Nevertheless, rather too much of Zardo’s work has been taken at face value by subsequent scholars, since the factual core of the book is, in places, far too reliant upon the version of events as told by Mussato in his De gestis Henrici, leading Zardo to conclude that Padua would have been much better off if its leaders had simply followed the advice of Mussato.49 Moreover, Zardo propagated into the nineteenth century the characterisation of Mussato’s oeuvre found in the seventeenth-century Venetian edition: giving prominence to the De gestis Henrici over the other historical works and poetry. No doubt influenced by the fact that the Venetian imprint only contains the first seven books of the De gestis Italicorum, he claims that it is

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‘inferior, in many respects, to the De gestis Henrici, which forms Albertino’s main glory as a historian’.50 Helpfully, however, Zardo notes that the De gestis Henrici must have been finished before April 1314 because it does not contain any reference to the revolt in Padua of that same month, and also Philip the Fair, who died on 29 November 1314, is referred to as still living. Finally, he picks up on the problem of Mussato’s political outlook and its relation to his historical writing, though he rather uncritically accepts the author’s self-portraiture, concluding that he was impartial in his history because, although he professed himself a Guelph, he showed clear admiration for Henry – a feeling that was ‘the guarantee of his impartiality in judging men and things’.51 This succinctly raises an issue which is of central concern to this book, but rather than accepting Mussato’s claims to impartiality, I have tried to interpret them in the light of the fact that they were part of a work distributed after the death of Henry, when Cangrande of Verona was threatening Padua’s independence, and thus Mussato’s recent pro-imperial diplomacy appeared to have brought imminent disaster upon the city. Zardo’s work is helpfully complemented by the studies of Luigi Padrin, who brought more attention to Mussato’s tragedy Ecerinis, of which he published an edition along with a commentary written on the drama in 1317.52 The edition includes an anonymous prologue to the play, which seems contemporary and which outlines the background of Ezzelino’s rule and the history that inspired Mussato to write the play. Padrin is also responsible for finding and editing seven previously unpublished books of the De gestis Italicorum, drawn from the oldest surviving manuscript of the text, and for producing an edition of the poetry that Lovato, Mussato, and some of their contemporaries exchanged among themselves.53 These poems are transcribed by Padrin alongside some commentary, yet they are not marked by headings, nor are they necessarily in the right order, as was later pointed out by Guido Billanovich. As we shall see in the first chapter, some of the editorial decisions of Padrin and those who followed him have considerable significance for the interpretation of Mussato’s career and goals. Francesco Novati also published editions of some of the works of Mussato, as well as an edition of the biographical account written by Sicco Polenton. His article ‘Nuovi aneddoti sul cenacolo letterario padovano del primissimo Trecento’ provides an edition of the staged poetic disputation between Lovato and Mussato, along with the judgement given by Zambono of Andrea, using a different manuscript to the one that had been used by Padrin.54 The differences between these two editions are of some importance for reconstructing Mussato’s political outlook early in his life. Moreover, Novati spends much of the introduction dealing with the problematic issue of who judged the debate and finally settles upon giving the credit to Zambono of Andrea.55 Here, Novati explains how when Padrin was faced with this problem in his edition, he eventually decided ‘to pretend that that the obstacle did not exist’.56 Novati also published the poem from Mussato

12

Introduction

to Marsiglio of Padua on the nature of Senecan metre. His contribution was instrumental in constructing the image of what he called the cenacolo padovano – which he conceived of as a group of collaborating scholars responsible for a mini-Renaissance of classical literature and scholarship in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. This idea was to have lasting historiographical impact, with the positive effect of attracting further attention to Mussato and his contemporaries, but also serving somewhat to diminish the unique circumstances that affected Mussato’s career and compositions. Together, the writings of Zanella, Zardo, Padrin, and Novati marked a turning point in the studies on Mussato and the fourteenth-century Paduans. Their acute source criticism led to the publication of valuable editions of works that had languished out of view in the archives. In this it is possible to discern the impact of the teachings of Leopold von Ranke, whose emphasis on archival and source-based research of the Renaissance and early modern period had a major impact on the formation of the modern discipline of history.57 Mussato had not yet made it into the mainstream of historical scholarship on the origins of the Renaissance; nevertheless, the image of him as one of a group of like-minded classicists who paved the way for later humanists was beginning to be more clearly delineated. It was Roberto Weiss who brought the fruits of this Italian scholarship to a much wider, international audience. Tracing the origins of humanism in a series of studies published in 1949, Weiss refers to the importance of the cenacolo padovano for the subsequent development of renaissance classicism.58 He argues that Mussato and Lovato were leading members of his scholarly group and that the early traces of renaissance humanism can be seen among them at the end of the thirteenth century in Padua. This theory was further expounded in his book The Dawn of Humanism, 1970, in which he states outright that Petrarch and his followers were not in fact the originators of Italian humanism, ‘for the simple reason that it already existed before them’.59 Weiss does not point to a single individual who he believes can claim the title of being the founder of humanism, but rather he argues that it developed simultaneously at Padua, Verona, Vicenza, Venice, Milan, Bologna, Florence, and Naples, though he assigns considerable prominence to Mussato because his works surpassed the achievements of his contemporaries.60 There can be no doubt that such claims resulted in increased attention being paid to Mussato, Lovato, and their peers; nonetheless, in some respects Mussato has not been well served by the retrospective look that has viewed his works through the lens of later renaissance humanism. His Latinity could not, of course, live up to such an invidious comparison, and the focus on how he anticipated later developments naturally drew attention away to what was immediate and particular about his literary and scholarly engagement with the political vicissitudes of his life. If Mussato has tended to fall into the shadow of later humanists, he has also been somewhat eclipsed by the stellar figure of his immediate contemporary

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Dante. Nevertheless, John Kenneth Hyde’s Padua in the Age of Dante shows an interest in a more political approach to fourteenth-century Padua, aiming to outline the birth of commune and give an account of the years 1256–1328, which he refers to as ‘the communal period’.61 Hyde uses the history of Padua, written by Giovanni da Nono, in order to give his readers the most accurate account of Padua in the beginnings of the Renaissance. Hyde maintains that ‘any inquiry into the origins of the Paduan pre-humanist movement must begin with Lovato Lovati’.62 He places enormous importance on the coronation of Mussato, referring to it as marking ‘the cultural apogee of the Paduan commune’.63 He also argues that Ecerinis was indeed so successful that Mussato may be called the ‘father of renaissance tragedy’ – reflecting the obsession with father figures seen in the oft-repeated idea that Petrarch was the father of the Renaissance.64 Hyde asserts that the two works that earned Mussato his coronation, Ecerinis and the De gestis Henrici, ‘were the culmination of the whole early humanist movement in Padua’.65 He states that it was not simply Mussato’s study of the ancients, nor the influence of Provencal poetry or Lovato’s teachings, that allowed him to create his best works, but rather that his two works arose as a response to Padua’s recent history and also stemmed from Mussato’s own political position and relationship with Henry VII: ‘much as he owed to the ancients and Lovato, it was his role as a Paduan citizen which inspired his highest achievements’.66 This insight has, rather surprisingly, not been further developed in much subsequent scholarship, but it is fundamental to the approach taken in this monograph. Yet it remains the case that Hyde gives Lovato and ‘the Paduan circle’ a crucial role in the origins of humanism. He argues that there were two separate stages in the development of the Paduan humanist movement. Initially, according to Hyde, the movement began via literary studies within the Paduan humanist circle, with Lovato at the centre, but it soon transformed into something much more public and political: The change may be placed in the 1290s when Lovato’s position was established socially and politically and he had gathered round him a group of friends and pupils of the younger generation. It was in response to the promptings of these younger men that the new orientation seems to have come about.67 Thus, Hyde places great importance on the second-generation humanists, but especially Mussato and the Paduan scholarly circle.68 As I shall argue, there are indeed political elements visible in the earliest stages of Mussato’s career as a writer, but his increasing involvement in politics often sets him at odds with other Paduan scholars and writers. Undoubtedly, one of the most influential works in the study of Mussato is Guido Billanovich’s lengthy article Il preumanesimo padovano.69 As Weiss before him, Billanovich argues that Lovato led a circle of scholars in Padua which he calls a cenacolo. Billanovich appears to have picked up on the term

14

Introduction

used by Novati and Weiss, along with the cognate idea that there was a distinctively Paduan group of classical scholars at the end of the thirteenth century. The existence and nature of the cenacolo padovano, as it has come to be called in both Anglophone and Italian scholarship, are something which the first chapter of this work will address in detail. It is Billanovich’s careful codicological research and philological approach to the primary sources that constitutes his biggest contribution to Mussato studies. Among his many contributions in matters of detail, Billanovich corrects the work of both Padrin and Novati with regard to the identification of the character of Zambono of Andrea, the judge of the poetic debate, known as De prole, between Lovato and Mussato. Billanovich argues that it was neither a Giovanni Buono d’Andrea de’ Bovetini nor Giambono d’Andrea de’ Favafoschi because none of the notarial documents are signed with these family names. Instead Billanovich argues that he was a Paduan notary called Zambono, son of the draper Andrea, who came from the district of San Niccolò.70 He also argues that the debate between Lovato and Mussato ought to be, in fact, attributed only to the authorship of Mussato. Regarding another poetic debate between the two Paduans, which had been edited by Padrin, Billanovich offers an entirely different sequence for the poems, helping to reconstruct the logic of the original sequence and, hence, of the debate itself. Moreover, his article also briefly examines the poetry of Mussato and the information we get about his relationships with other contemporaries from these poems. It is the aim of my research to expand on this approach using some of the frameworks of modern cultural and intellectual history. Billanovich has also done extensive work on the manuscript Vat. Lat. 1769 in the Vatican archives.71 This manuscript comprises a copy of the Senecan tragedies, which finish on f. 246r, and on f. 246 v there is a note by Lovato on Senecan metre and a handwritten note by Rolando da Piazzola. The notes on Senecan metre by Lovato in this document are often referred to by historians as being evidential of the training Mussato would have received on Senecan metre from Lovato.72 Billanovich argues that this training ‘formed the core of the Evidentia tragediarum Senece (or Tractatus super tragediis componendis), dedicated to Marsiglio of Padua, of the Senece vita et mores of Albertino Mussato’.73 The following page, f. 247r, contained notes by Mussato which have now been erased, although Billanovich has focused on recreating these notes.74 He provides transcriptions of two fragments of 16 lines long, one on page f. 246 v, in libraria, the other on page f. 247r, in corsiva, of the same text but which vary slightly in spelling. One is addressed to a ‘G’, the other to a ‘Z’; more than likely both these addressees are Zambono da Andrea, which is also spelled Giambono. These fragments, of the same text but with slight variations, are a commentary on the profile of the Emperor Henry VII and are almost identical to the one given by Mussato in the first book of the De gestis Henrici. Billanovich argues that the cursive writing on f. 247r of the profile of the

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emperor is the first edition of this profile. Then in De gestis Henrici it is repeated, but the addressee, Zambono, is not mentioned. The later edition also contains a description of the empress. Billanovich argues that it was in all likelihood upon his return from his first legation to Henry that Mussato wrote that physical portrait of the new emperor for Zambono, which would then become part of his historical chronicle. Billanovich also adds that underneath that portrait of Henry are two poems that are typical of the medieval age, one in praise and one disapproving of Henry. At the end of his article, Billanovich suggests that the erasing of these two poems and of the two notes on the description of Henry was undertaken by Mussato himself. He hypothesises that this occurred because they were inadequate drafts of what would be subsequently used by the author for his finalised history of Henry. In sum, Billanovich has contributed a wealth of detail to our understanding of Mussato’s compositions; though his work maintains the notion that Mussato should be seen in the light of later humanism, his meticulous and painstaking philological research has provided the key to many matters of interpretation that arise in the following monograph. In the wake of his contributions, most Italian scholarship on Mussato still focuses on the texts themselves and a technical analysis of them, whereas much of the leading Anglophone scholarship tends to focus on the origins of humanism and Mussato’s role in its development. Mussato has been termed as a ‘prehumanist’ by some historians, such as Manlio Dazzi, whose work remains fundamental for Mussato studies,75 and thus much scholarship places him in this category. Following the work of Weiss and others, some scholars began to categorise Mussato not as a pre-humanist but as an earlier humanist.76 Others such as Ronald Witt have given him a far more central role in the beginnings of early humanism and the Renaissance.77 Ronald Witt’s work picks up on the earlier ideas of Weiss, Hyde, and Billanovich, strongly pointing to the role of Lovato and Mussato in the beginnings of the Renaissance and the origins of humanism, going so far as to call Lovato ‘the founder of Italian humanism’ in his work The Two Latin Cultures,78 and he uses this as his central argument in his slightly earlier work In the Footsteps of the Ancients.79 Witt adopts much of the framework used by Hyde when he refers to Lovato as part of the first generation of humanists in Padua, with his student Mussato becoming the leader of the second generation. Mussato’s importance, according to Witt, can be seen in his ‘striking superiority’ over the historian Rolandino in his presentation of the story of Ezzelino through a Senecan-style tragedy.80 For Witt, Mussato’s play Ecerinis ‘marked the highest literary achievement of the Paduan circle’.81 The difference between the chronicle of Rolandino and Mussato’s tragedy Ecerinis and history De gestis Henrici is commented on by Witt in order to show the effect that humanism and, in particular, the teachings of Lovato had on Latin literature in a short period and displayed ‘a new skill in dealing with temporality, one that could not have been derived from forms

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Introduction

of Latin discourse currently in use in Italy’.82 Ultimately, Witt’s argument is a solid one, and a groundbreaking work for the scholarship on Mussato, whereby he emphasises that Mussato should no longer be labelled as a prehumanist and places Mussato in a significant role in the story of the origins of the Renaissance. Scholarship on Ecerinis and on the coronation has in fact been quite extensive in comparison to research on Mussato’s other works. His revival of the ancient title ‘poet laureate’, his imitation of Seneca, and his attempt to write in classical style in the play have been at the centre of scholarly discussion. Attention on this play increased further as a result of the sevenhundred-year anniversary of its composition in 2015. Perhaps in anticipation of this anniversary, Matteo Bosisio published an article in 2013 entitled Mussato Medievale: Le cronache della Marca Trevigiana come supporto ideologico all’Ecerinis. In it he examines the period leading up to Mussato’s writing of Ecerinis.83 This work argues that the political events of his surrounding area were an ideal inspiration for Ecerinis, and thus the contemporary political climate was a contributing factor to the creation of such a political work. His findings help to demonstrate the political historiography that informed Mussato’s play. Bosisio points out how Mussato played on the ‘popular legends and propaganda formulas’ by making the protagonist Ezzelino the son of Satan, a parallel already made by the chronicler Rolandino of Padua. Bosisio argues that Mussato’s writing of Ecerinis, which linked the elements of tragedy with the writing of historical chronicles, was fundamental for Mussato in the composition of the De gestis Henrici.84 He analyses Ecerinis while looking at both the faithful and the unfaithful historical details of the tragedy, notably, how Mussato demonised the tyrant and how he reworked some of the issues in the tragedy to parallel Padua’s own contemporary political issues. By doing so, Bosisio outlines the differences in Rolandino’s chronicles and Mussato’s tragedy, detailing where one can see Mussato’s elements of demonisation coming into the history. In his conclusion, Bosisio claims that the prologue of Rolandino seems to lay the groundwork for Ecerinis, insofar as Rolandino tells his reader how his historical chronicle was written to be comprehensible, but that he hopes future poets will tell the story in a much greater detail and write works of greater significance. Bosisio argues that this ‘false modesty’, as he calls it, may have provided the impetus for Mussato to rise to Rolandino’s challenge and write a work on the same theme.85 It is clear, at any rate, that Mussato drew heavily upon Rolandino’s chronicle during composition of Ecerinis; whether or not it was the original inspiration for the project, it certainly provided material that suited Mussato’s intellectual trajectory, both in his writing and in his political career. Along with Bosisio, several other historians based in northern Italy have recently made significant contributions to scholarship on Mussato. In particular, Giovanna Gianola and her former PhD student Rino Modonutti

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have each examined historical works by Mussato that had previously been neglected in scholarship, providing editions of the texts along with detailed notes on their content. The first example was Gianola’s edition of Mussato’s De obsidione domini Canis Grandis de Verona ante civitatem Paduanem, which provides an edition of the work with detailed textual notes, along with an introduction that discusses the dating of the work, the historical background, and the manuscript tradition.86 De obsidione is a poetic history composed in three books, with a prologue beforehand, detailing the events of the Veronese leader Cangrande della Scala’s siege of Padua beginning in August 1319; the poem ends in August 1320 when Henry III of Gorzia assisted the Paduans in driving Cangrande from his camp. Though the work itself dates from the period immediately after that under consideration in this book, the political context and themes are, naturally, pertinent to the analysis presented here. In 1318, a peace treaty had been signed in Padua between Giacomo da Carrara of Padua and Cangrande. Mussato was opposed to this peace and was exiled as a result. However, when Cangrande laid siege to Padua in August 1319, the banishment of those opposed to the peace was lifted and Mussato was among the exiles who opted to return to Padua. As a result, he was able to write a first-hand and detailed account of the siege between August 1319 and the August of the following year. This siege is also alluded to by Mussato in his De Lite inter Naturam et Fortunam, which was composed after his exile in 1325, and also in his historical work De gestis Italicorum, to which he continued to add until June 1321. Gianola underscores the fact that what is known regarding the composition of the De obsidione comes from the prologue of the poem itself, in which Mussato addresses the guild of notaries in Padua and their request for him to compose a work on the siege of Padua by Cangrande, which ultimately ended in Cangrande’s defeat. She demonstrates that the part of the De gestis Italicorum concerning the siege had already been written and was known to these notaries. This is a useful corroboration of what seems to have been Mussato’s practice earlier in his career, too: distributing parts of his annalistic works as they were written, year by year, not awaiting completion of the work as a whole. This process of immediate publication is crucial to interpretation of how Mussato presents himself in his historical writings, adapting to his audience year by year as circumstances unfolded. Gianola also discusses at length how the notaries asked Mussato to write this poetic work in a more accessible style, compared to his history which was written in a ‘more lofty style’, so that the common people might understand it. 87 This, perhaps counter-intuitive, contrast between the accessibility of Latin verse (which was usually written in shorter sentences) and the relative inaccessibility of complex rhetorical prose, is important for understanding Mussato’s different audiences and aims when he wrote the elaborately stylised prose of the De gestis Henrici and the more immediately accessible verse of his play Ecerinis, which, though it reflected groundbreaking experiments in reconstructing Senecan metrics, was assumed to be

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Introduction

sufficiently dramatic and comprehensible to allow public readings before the urban populace. Gianola has recently extended her examination of the manuscripts containing Mussato’s historical works, offering an account of how each of the prologues relate to the texts to which they are attached.88 Gianola demonstrates that there is no one manuscript which contains the entire De gestis Henrici on its own, and she explores the complexity of the textual tradition by pursuing lexical nuances and the interaction between the text and other compositions, notably Mussato’s Epistola II addressed to Henry.89 In the case of Mussato’s later histories, the De traditione and the Ludovicus Bavarus, Gianola points out how their prologues are always integral to the main text in the manuscripts.90 By contrast, the prologues of the earlier works, the De gestis Henrici and the De gestis Italicorum, are presented separately from the main text, and not all of the manuscripts contain them. Through collation and stemmatic analysis, Gianola outlines the relationships between the six oldest and most authoritative manuscripts and concludes that four of them are descended from one main collection of Mussato’s histories, while the other two are descended from a different, older manuscript, now lost. The Vatican manuscript, Vat. Lat. 2962, is the oldest surviving manuscript and the only one which contains the prologues and the full texts of both the De gestis Henrici and the De gestis Italicorum. The Vatican manuscript is thus the most complete collection of the histories which has been handed down to scholars from the now lost original manuscripts. Gianola also suggests, in this same article, that the first four books of the De gestis Italicorum may have been part of Mussato’s coronation ceremony, or were at least finished by this time. Her argument for this is based on the layout of the Paduan manuscript B.P. 935, which she says is derived from the same source as Vat. Lat. 2962. This manuscript does not contain the prologue of the De gestis Henrici and it only contains the first four books of the De gestis Italicorum. Gianola concludes therefore that the manuscript contains the historical works of Mussato which were available for the coronation only. Gianola supposes that, along with the De gestis Henrici, the first four books of the De gestis Italicorum may also have been presented to the Paduans in 1315, as they were ‘a natural continuation’ of his first history and concern the events leading up to 1314.91 It is possible to lend some credence to the ingenuity of Gianola’s technical analysis of the manuscripts, adding the observation that this would mean the original De gestis Henrici comprised twenty books (a satisfyingly round number that would fit with Mussato’s occasionally noticeable propensity for mathematical neatness in his compositions), and that it is indeed plausible that one can discern a discursive break at the beginning of book five of De gestis Italicorum. Nevertheless, the hypothesis is far from proven and faces the not inconsiderable obstacle of requiring an explanation of why Mussato would subsequently reapportion into another work altogether the final twenty percent

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of a book which he had already published to considerable acclaim. Moreover, the death of Henry at the end of book sixteen of the De gestis Henrici presents a natural conclusion, supported by all other manuscripts; the apparent continuity of events and themes into the first four chapters of Mussato’s subsequent book is what one would expect, given the annalistic structure of each text. Accordingly, while Gianola’s suggestion is certainly attractive, it must for now remain moot. In the same year as she published her work on the prologues of the histories of Mussato, 2015, Gianola collaborated with Rino Modonutti on a book which examines both the De traditione and the Ludovicus Bavarus, two more historical works by Mussato. This work provides a good biography of Mussato which could act as an up-to-date replacement of the efforts of nineteenth-century scholars. It demonstrates the connection between the historical work Ludovicus Bavarus, and Mussato’s epistle to Marsiglio of Padua written in 1326, when Marsiglio had already reached the court of Ludwig of Bavaria and was acting as his counsellor. Mussato asks his friend to send him news on the movements of the emperor, as it is Mussato’s intention to compose a work on Ludwig. The authors speculate that perhaps the arrival of the new emperor into Italy might have given birth to the desire in Mussato to go back to writing historical chronicles, and especially one like the De gestis Henrici which focused on the events surrounding the descent of Henry VII into Italy. Yet the context of writing is quite different, the tone of the dedication to Mussato’s son is bitter and disillusioned, and this excellent study thus serves to underline the value of terminating the present work at the point of Mussato’s coronation, for subsequent events were to disrupt the continuity of the project and life course that he had, till then, pursued with a degree of coherence that is here the subject of analysis.92 Modonutti has also published his doctoral thesis, which he obtained under the supervision of Gianola, on the first four books of the De gestis Italicorum, which he translates into Italian and adorns with commentary and a survey of the manuscript tradition.93 Mussato’s historical chronicle has been rather neglected in scholarship. Only the first seven books have been edited in publications from the late nineteenth century. Padrin published an unedited work of the last seven books over a century ago and these seven books have remained neglected in scholarship since. Modonutti’s work is of vital importance to studies of Mussato, as it provides a detailed description of the manuscripts which contain the De gestis Italicorum, as well as giving the reader a summary followed by a full translation, in Italian, of the first four books of this chronicle. His work documents an array of different spelling and grammar mistakes that occur in the first four books in the various manuscripts, such that he suggests that these first four books may not have been revised and edited properly by Mussato himself. Yet Modonutti agrees with the argument originally set forth by Gianola that these first four books of the De gestis Italicorum had been completed and were known by the time of Mussato’s coronation, and he suggests that the

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Introduction

De gestis Henrici, the De gestis Italicorum, and perhaps even the Traditio, should be considered part of a single historical chronicle surrounding the events of Padua. While it is true that there is great continuity between these works, it is a central goal of the present book to demonstrate the value of interpreting each within the specific circumstances of their time of composition, not least because the turbulent course of Mussato’s life meant that his relationship to his readers changed substantially on many occasions while he was writing these works. The upsurge of recent scholarship, such as Gianola’s and Modonutti’s, ensured that the seventh centenary of Mussato’s coronation and publication of Ecerinis did not go unmarked. In 2017 a series of articles on the coronation and its significance were published in a book entitled Moribus antiquis sibi me fecere poetam: Albertino Mussato nel VII centenario dell’incoronazione poetica, edited by Rino Modonutti and Enrico Zucchi.94 Many of the articles in this book are concerned with how Mussato’s coronation and his work relate to Dante, who desired a coronation of his own. Gabriella Albanese examines the importance of coronations for both Mussato and Dante and explores Dante’s preoccupation with a coronation as can be seen in his Commedia.95 Giorgio Ronconi meanwhile looks at the theme of coronation in Dante’s poetry and the influence of Mussato on Dante’s idea of becoming a poet laureate.96 Gianola also contributes an article to this edition, focusing on Epistola II dedicated to Henry and the De gestis Henrici, which also serves to give greater insight to Epistola I to the College of Judges.97 In this article Gianola argues that the reason Ecerinis was given so much prominence over the De gestis Henrici was in order to concur with the idea of a poet laureate. De gestis Henrici was a historical prose and Mussato’s poetic tragedy was emphasised more strongly than his historiographical work for the ceremony. Luca Lombardo explores the significance of Mussato’s epistles in his article within this edition and outlines some of the numerous classical references contained with these poems.98 Marino Zabbia’s article gives a small biography of Mussato, but in particular he outlines where the autobiographical information can be found in Mussato’s works.99 Zabbia argues in his conclusion that Mussato, particularly in his later years, tried to model himself on Cicero and portrayed himself as a writer-politician, following the ideals of Cicero’s ‘new man’. Although Zabbia is unable to adduce direct evidence for Mussato’s reading or imitation of Cicero, he argues that the parallels between the two men’s lives are striking, and that Mussato could have known this on the basis of the availability in Padua at that time of sufficient writings by and about Cicero’s political career.100 However one may judge the substance of Zabbia’s claim in relation to Cicero, the idea of Mussato self-consciously shaping a public persona in his writings, and of his modelling himself upon a classical figure to do so, is crucial to bear in mind when examining his classicism and the relation of his literary endeavours to his political career.

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As already stated, while much of the Italian scholarship on Mussato is devoted to the manuscripts themselves and a technical analysis of them, a significant portion of the leading Anglophone scholarship focuses on the origins of humanism and Mussato’s role in its development.101 Recent scholarship is often concerned with the coronation and a discussion of Ecerinis,102 on the grounds that it is the first Senecan-style tragedy to be written in imitation of ancient metres and language since the fall of the Roman Empire. Gary Grund has recently published a translation of the play in the I Tatti series of Neo-Latin texts, albeit without appending extensive notes.103 The most detailed study of the play remains in Luigi Padrin’s critical edition, published in 1900. I hope to build upon previous scholarship, which has alluded to the political message of the play, by setting it in the context of the self-fashioning process traced throughout the preceding chapters of this book. In summary, the overall aim of my research is to explore and analyse the Latin writings of Mussato that detail his involvement with, and interpretation of, the political history of Padua and northern Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Rather than look at Mussato in the context of other early Renaissance men, such as Petrarch and Dante, I wish to examine Mussato in his own right and to explore how his writings advanced his political career. Although Mussato was an ambassador for the city of Padua at the court of Emperor Henry VII and a key figure in the city government during its conflict with Cangrande della Scala, nevertheless, his political engagement has played a minimal role in accounts of his literary and intellectual activities. The central aim of my work is to demonstrate their interconnection. The objectives of this research are, therefore, to undertake the first sustained study in English of Mussato’s histories and poems; to examine the political positions that they articulate; to place these writings in the context of Mussato’s actual decision-making and personal connections as a political figure; and to construct a fully-fledged account of his political career leading up to the height of his fame with his coronation, enriched by a study of how his works reflected upon and contributed to that career. The research will examine what a close reading and linguistic analysis reveals of the political outlook of Mussato’s histories; how Mussato’s personal and political connections match this outlook; whether there was an organised scholarly group called the cenacolo padovano and if this group had a coherent political vision. Finally, this research will determine to what extent are the sources pertaining to Mussato’s life and career part of an exercise in self-promotion and factional politics, which itself reveals an understanding of the nature of political life in fourteenth-century Italy. As stated previously, the main time which this book is concerned with is the period where his works lead up to his coronation in 1315, and those immediately after while in the height of his success and fame in Padua. Accordingly, the sources most relevant to this research are: his two early and fully complete political histories, the De gestis Henrici septimi Caesaris and

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the De gestis Italicorum post Henricum VII Caesarem; the Senecan style tragedy Ecerinis; his early poems written in correspondence with Lovato dei Lovati; and finally, a number of his epistles addressed to a variety of contemporaries and friends. The main text of Mussato’s works which I have used is the 1636 edition by Felice Osio et al.,104 although I also used the Sette libri inediti by Luigi Padrin published in 1903,105 which contains the second part of the De gestis Italicorum omitted in the 1636 edition. The 1636 Venetian edition of Mussato’s works relied upon the manuscripts B.P. 935 of the Biblioteca Civica in Padua, and the A 261 inf., of the Ambrosian library in Milan, neither of which contains the last seven books of the De gestis Italicorum. Accordingly, I have consulted the oldest complete set of Mussato’s De gestis Italicorum in the Vatican archives, manuscript Vat. Lat. 2962. Yet the originality of this monograph is not grounded in a new combination of archival sources, rather it is based upon a different approach to examining the evolution of Mussato’s self-representation in his writings within the context of the vicissitudes of his political career. The first chapter is broadly historiographical, examining what is meant by the ‘cenacolo padovano’, how the concept has developed and shaped modern scholarship, and what we can tell from the sources about how the individuals customarily associated with the group actually interacted with one another. The remaining chapters are arranged more or less chronologically. Having gained a clearer picture into Mussato’s own world and friendship network, I move on, in the second chapter, to consider Mussato’s early political outlook prior to the arrival of Henry VII. The overall aim for this chapter is to establish a context in which to study Mussato’s political outlook for the remainder of the book. Having concentrated solely on Mussato’s poetical interactions with his contemporaries in the first two chapters, I turn to his prose works in Chapter 3, beginning to examine his political histories, focusing mainly on the De gestis Henrici, Mussato’s first political history, and on his relationship with the Emperor Henry VII. Chapter 4 analyses the De gestis Italicorum to investigate Mussato’s political career after the death of Henry and up to the point of his coronation as poet laureate. It considers Mussato’s role in the war against Cangrande, attempting to explain how, in the space of little over a year, Mussato went from being chased out of his city by an angry mob to being publicly celebrated on the streets of that same city. The fifth and final chapter concentrates on arguably the best known of Mussato’s works, Ecerinis, demonstrating how it reflects and develops the approach to political selfrepresentation that Mussato had cultivated in the preceding years. Within a period of several years, adumbrated in this study, Mussato was forced continuously to adapt and re-fashion an ever-evolving literary persona by way of response to contemporary political events and changes in his social situation: arguments with friends, the death of Emperor Henry VII, the establishment of Cangrande della Scala as imperial vicar of Vicenza, and the subsequent wars with Verona. Mussato’s celeritous transition from exile

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in 1314 to exaltation in 1315 is indicative of the extreme pressures that came to bear upon his attempts to forge a career for himself and articulate his outlook. His moment of greatest literary success and fame came after his moment of greatest political crisis. Therefore, this book draws upon ideas of self-fashioning in the context of crisis, paying careful attention to the chronology of Mussato’s career and to the literary character of many of the sources. Despite being embroiled in tumultuous events, Mussato managed to promote himself via his writings and ultimately achieve his moment of triumph as a crowned poet laureate. His equally rapid descent from these heights in the years that followed is beyond the scope of this book, but is certainly worth the attention of further study.

Notes 1 For a brief biography of Mussato, see: Marino Zabbia, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 77 (2012). 2 In the Commentum written by Guizzardo da Bologna and Castellano da Bassano, which Luigi Padrin provided in his work, Mussato is said to have been born in this suburb: Guzzardo da Bologna and Castellano da Bassano, from, Ex cod. Florentino Magliabechiano (ms. VII, 6, 926), ‘Comentum super tragoedia Ecerinide editum a magistro Guicardo Bononiensi trvialium doctore et Castellano Bassianese artis gramaticae professore ab aliisque artistis examinatum et probatum’, in, Luigi Padrin, Albertino Mussato: Ecerinide, pp. 69-247, p. 71. In other accounts he is said to be born in the village of San Daniele d’Abano, see: Antonio Zardo, Albertino Mussato: Studio Storico e Letterario (Padua, 1884), p. 8. 3 The work of Francesco Novati is noteworthy at this point regarding Giovanni Cavalerio’s name. In his work on the biography of Mussato written by Sicco Polenton, Novati argues that Cavalerii may not be the surname of Mussato’s father. Giovanni da Nono, a contemporary of Mussato, provides his own account of where the surname comes from in the following passage: ‘Duo [fratres Albertini] fuerunt filii Johannis Cavalerii, preconis comitis paduani’. For the work of Giovanni da Nono, see Appendix II in the work of Antonio Zardo, where he provides the section of da Nono’s work relevant to Mussato: Giovanni da Nono, Liber de generatione aliquorum civium urbis Padue tam nobilium quam ignobilium, in, Antonio Zardo, Albertino Mussato, ‘Appendice’, II, pp. 366-369. However, Novati suspects that Cavalerius is only actually da Nono’s translation of the Italian word Cavallaro. It is a word which derives from an antique version of corriere. For further reference on this argument see: Francesco Novati, ‘La Biografia di Albertino Mussato nel de Scriptoribus Illustribus di Sicco Polentone’, in, Archivo storico per Trieste, l’Istria, e il Trentino, Vol. 2 (1883), pp. 79-92, p. 89. 4 Sicco Polenton (1375-1447) completed this work in 1437. In Francesco Novati’s article, he outlines the various manuscripts where Polenton’s biography of Mussato can be found. He compares two versions of this biography side by side to one another, one from the manuscript Riccardiano 191, the other from the Ambrosiano II.II.21 manuscript: Novati, ‘La biografia di Albertino Mussato’. Mussato’s biography can be found in Book IV of Sicco’s work and has since been transcribed by some authors in their works, including in Novati’s aforementioned article. 5 Novati, ‘La biografia di Albertino Mussato’, p. 91.

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6 For Zardo’s argument on using the dating of 1262 see his work: Zardo, Albertino Mussato, p. 8, ft. 1. Zardo argues that there has been a misinterpretation of Mussato’s poem De celebratione, which Mussato tells us was written in 1317: Sexta dies haec est et quinquagesima nobis (Tempora narrabat si mihi vera parens) Musta reconduntur vasis septemque decemque, Nunc nova post ortum mille trecenta Deum. Zardo recalls the earlier argument by A. Gloria, that while scholars have interpreted this to mean that Mussato was fifty-six at the time of the harvest of 1317, Mussato was born in 1262 because the harvest was later, and thus Mussato was born at the beginning of 1262, before the harvest of 1262. A more recent scholar Carrie Benes also uses Zardo’s suggestion of 1262 for Mussato, see: Carrie E. Benes, Urban Legends: Civic Identity and the Classical Past in Northern Italy, 1250-1350 (University Park: Penn State Press, 2011), p. 54. 7 ‘Ego Albertinus Muxus fil. Iohannis Cavalerii’. See: Zardo, Albertino Mussato, ‘Appendice’, I, pp. 365-366. 8 Albertino Mussato, De celebratione suae diei Natavitatis, fienda, vel non, in, Albertino Mussato, Historia augusta Henrici VII caesaris et alia quae extant opera, Pignorius, Laurentius; Osio, Felice; Villani, Nicola (eds.) (Venice: 1636) (hereafter referred to as ‘Mussato, De celebratione’), pp. 81-93, p. 81, ll. 17-22. Note that all translations are my own, unless otherwise stated. 9 See: Zardo, Albertino Mussato, p. 14. Also, Novati explains in his work ‘La biografia di Albertino Mussato’, how musso was the word for donkey in Venetian dialect, see: Novati, ‘La biografia di Albertino Mussato’, p. 89. 10 Giovanni da Nono, Liber de generatione aliquorum civium urbis Padue tam nobilium quam ignobilium, in, Zardo, Albertino Mussato, ‘Appendice’, II, pp. 366-369. 11 Giovanni da Nono, Liber de generatione, in, Zardo, Albertino Mussato, p. 366: ‘Fertur pro veritate quod hic Iohannes Cavalerius, uxore grave infirmitate oppressa sub lecto tunc latitavit, quando sacerdos Sancti Iacobi venit pro audienda confessione peccatorum illius; at ipse audiit uxorem confitentem, quod Albertinus Muxatus erat filius Viviani de Muxo’. 12 Da Nono expresses a highly negative opinion towards his contemporary and goes so far as to say about Mussato that he was: ‘the poet who brayed out these verses like an ass [donkey]’. Giovanni da Nono, in, Giovanni Fabris, Cronache e cronisti padovani (Fossalta di Piave: Rebellato Editore, 1977), p. 62: ‘asellus poeta hos ululat versus’. 13 For further information on the education system at this time, see: Robert Black, Humanism and education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Tradition and Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 14 Mussato, De celebratione, l. 25-30, p. 81. Note the echo of Lucan’s ‘O vitae tuta facultas/Pauperis’. See: Lucan, G. W. Ginger, M. Annaei Lucani Pharsalia (Glasguae: Excudebant Andreas et Jacobus Duncan, Academiae Typographi; impensis Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown; R. Priestley; Lackington & Soc.; J. Black & Fil.; Law & Whittaker; G. Ginger; Baldwin, Cradock & Joy; Cowie & Soc.; et Rodwell & Martin; Londini., 1816), l. 528/529, p. 250. 15 See appendix I of Zardo, Albertino Mussato, pp. 365-366. 16 Iura possessiones et bona dominorum Azonis et Franceschini Estensium, ALFA.F.10.11, Ms., 1293, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria. Mussato signs his name on the bottom of this document. 17 Da Nono adds in his history that Mabilia was the illegitimate daughter of Guglielmo. 18 See the footnote of Zardo, Albertino Mussato, p. 30, which gives evidence for Mussato beginning in Florence on the 1st of April 1309: Officiales forenses Civ.

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Fior., e. i9: