Carlo Sigonio: The Changing World of the Late Renaissance [Course Book ed.] 9781400860357

Citation preview

CARLO

SIGONIO

WILLIAM

MCCUAIG

CARLO SIGONIO THE C H A N G I N G W O R L D OF THE LATE RENAISSANCE

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS P R I N C E T O N , NEW JERSEY

Copyright © 1989 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Pubhcation Data McCuaig, William, 1949Carlo Sigonio : the changing world of the late Renaissance / William McCuaig. p. cm. Bibliography Includes index. ISBN 0-691-05558-0 (alk. paper) 1. Sigonio, Carlo, 1524-1584. 2. Italy—Intellectual life—1559-1789. 3. Historians—Italy—Biography. 4. Humanists—Italy—Biography. I. Title. DG465.7.S56M371989 945'.06—dcl9 89-30402 This book has been composed in Lmotron Aldus Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Paperbacks, although satisfactory for personal collections, are not usually suitable for library rebinding Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey Designed by Laury A. Egan

CONTENTS

PREFACE VU ABBREVIATIONS XUi CHAPTER ONE

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O 3 CHAPTER

TWO

R O M A N S T U D I E S IN THE S I X T E E N T H

CENTURY-

P A R T ONE 96 CHAPTER THREE

R O M A N S T U D I E S IN THE S I X T E E N T H PART

CENTURY-

TWO

174 CHAPTER FOUR

S I G O N I O V E R S U S THE C E N S O R S 251 CHAPTER FIVE

R E W R I T I N G C I C E R O : THE CONSOLATIO 291 APPENDIX

LETTERS O N THE 327 ν

CONSOLATIO

OF 1 5 8 3

CONTENTS BIBLIOGRAPHY

345 MANUSCRIPTS 371 INDEX 375

PREFACE

T

here offered to the world has been written within the interdisciplinary field of Renaissance studies, and it may be worthwhile at the outset to indicate more precisely the areas of scholarly interest upon which it draws and to which it attempts to make some contribution in return. The book bears as its title the name of an Italian scholar and humanist of the sixteenth century, Carlo Sigonio, famous in his own lifetime and for centuries after in Europe; hence the biographical element in what follows is prominent. The life of Sigonio is recounted in the first and longest of five chapters with emphasis given to events, circumstances, and institutions—in sum, to the public aspect of his existence, rather than to the private one. This biographical chapter is meant to summarize or replace all existing sources of reference, which are in any case meager, on Sigonio's life, but it also has the ambition to contribute to sixteenth-century cultural history by situating Sigonio's personal vicissitudes in the context of Italy and Europe in the century of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Council of Trent, and the Index of Prohibited Books; of the affirmation of the territorial state over ancient communal autonomies in Italy; and of the impact of printed communication. With regard to the last, attention has been paid to Sigonio's choice of publishers in Venice and Bologna, his relations with them, and the publishers in France and Germany with whom arrangements were made to reprint his works through an international network of intellectual correspondents. HE WORK

Chapter 1 also attempts to cast some light on the fate of humanism— "late" humanism—in the sixteenth century. For Sigonio the studia humanitatis signified ancient history, poetry, and rhetoric, and he tended to limit the description of his role as a university professor to this narrowly professional curriculum. He was nevertheless one of the heirs of the fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century tradition that we call humanism and that emphasized the comparative study of the secular development of human societies, and evolved critical methods for reconstructing events and institutions of the ancient world. Sigonio was one of a group VIl

PREFACE

of scholars who, in continuation of this tradition, revolutionized the study of Roman history in the middle of the sixteenth century. In chapter 1 the attempt is made, with the help of surviving fragments of testimony, to observe the results of this refinement of historical knowledge in the halls of Venice, Padua, and Bologna, where Sigonio lectured on the assemblies and magistrates of the Roman republic. When, in a major shift in the direction of his interests, Sigonio began in the 1560s to study the history of late antiquity and the Italian Middle Ages, he brought to his research the same approach to his sources and to the verification through them of historical authenticity that he had inherited from the humanist tradition. The final section of chapter 1 includes an evaluation of Sigonio's accomplishment in his principal work of narrative history, De Regno Italiae. Finally, the biography of Sigonio contained here attempts to situate the man among his contemporaries, commencing with those intellectuals of his native city, Modena, whose religious heterodoxy he refused to share; and following him as he entered the sphere of the Venetian patriciate. The careers and interests of his patrons and associates as they intersected with the life of Sigonio himself are traced, and, it is hoped, there emerges the portrait in detail of a milieu. At Padua Sigonio experienced a savage academic quarrel with a colleague, Francesco Robortello; in Bologna he was supported by the archbishop, Gabriele Paleotti, and a company of enlightened citizens and patricians was formed for the purpose of publishing his works. In the closing years of his life, as his international fame grew and his works were reprinted in Paris and Frankfurt, Sigonio and his allies in Bologna were forced to combat the forces of ecclesiastical censorship emanating from Rome, where Sigonio's works were subjected to a secret campaign of defamation. At the time of his death Sigonio was embroiled in the affair of the Consolatio Ciceronis, a pastiche of a lost work of antiquity whose genuineness he vehemently defended. Chapters 2 and 3 are two parts of one extended thematic study on Roman history in the sixteenth century. Taken together, they form the centerpiece of the present monograph on Sigonio. The areas of scholarship touched upon here are several, but the intention is always to recreate Sigonio's way of seeing the Roman republic, and to counterpoint it with the interpretations of this paradigmatic ancient state offered by his contemporaries and successors. Sigonio emphasized social history in De antiquo iure avium Romanorum, explaining in sociojuridical terms the conflict between the original patrician and plebeian strata, and the VlIl

PREFACE

appearance after its resolution of a new type of social stratification and a new concept of nobility. In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe similar types of social stratification that self-consciously re-created the ancient models appeared. Another area touched upon is political philosophy, for Sigonio was guided in his analysis of the Roman republic by the example of the Greek polis as represented in the Politics of Aristotle. Sigonio, using new epigraphic texts, was able to make a notable contribution to the political history of the late Roman republic, beginning with the Gracchan movement. Chapter 3 introduces the figure of Sigonio's most distinguished contemporary in Roman studies, Nicolas de Grouchy. It was with Grouchy that Sigonio conducted the principal scholarly debate of his life, centered on magistracy and imperium in the Roman republic; the account of this affair given here fills a lacuna in the intellectual history of the sixteenth century. The influence of Sigonio on such writers as Jean Bodin and Charles Loyseau is explored in the concluding section on Roman studies in the sixteenth century. Chapters 2 and 3 will be read, it is hoped, as part of a recent trend in intellectual history to study the work actually done by scholars of past centuries, and to explain why it was significant in relation to the world in which they lived. With chapter 4 the Roman world is abandoned for the history of the Counter-Reformation and of censorship in the sixteenth century. But a common theme that links earlier chapters with this one is the history of historiography, for Sigonio's clash with the Roman censors was determined essentially by his application to the history of the Christian centuries of the same canons of evidence and argumentation that he had applied to the Roman republic as a humanist historian. The book closes with the final episode of Sigonio's life, the debacle of the Consolatio Ciceronis, of which he himself was accused of being the author. The accent in this chapter is on literary history, but also on the history of humanism, since the thesis is advanced that Sigonio's involvement in the affair of the Consolatio was in some way an attempt to revive the manner of an earlier generation of humanists and to bring humanism once more to the center of cultural interest. It will be seen that the arc of my thematic chapters (2-5) follows the arc of Sigonio's life, from Roman studies through late antique and medieval history, to the affair of the Consolatio; in place of a general recapitulation (which I think most readers will not be sorry to see omitted) there is an appendix to chapter 5 consisting of private correspondence about the Consolatio and Sigonio's role in its defense, written by learned men of the sixteenth IX

PREFACE

century. Out of a welter of epistolary voices that of Sigonio himself gradually supersedes the others to sound the cadence of the book in a series of letters written a few months before death brought him release from the state of distress into which he had plunged as a result of the embarrassment that his role in the affair of the Consolatio had brought upon him. The list of those who in the past have written general contributions on the life of Carlo Sigonio begins with two of the most distinguished names in the history of Italian culture in the eighteenth century, Ludovico Antonio Muratori and Girolamo Tiraboschi. The first contributed the Vita Caroli Sigonii to volume 1 of the edition of Sigonio's Opera omnia in six volumes assembled in Milan by Filippo Argelati in the years 1732-37. Girolamo Tiraboschi's Biblioteca modenese (1781-86), a biographical dictionary of the writers of the Duchy of Modena, also in six volumes, will be cited often in the present work. The important entry on Sigonio appears in volume 5 (pp. 76-119). In 1837 J. P. Krebs, a Latinist who felt powerfully the attraction of the world of sixteenth-century scholarship, published Vita Caroli Sigo­ nii, to be followed in 1840 by a German version. Giovanni Franciosi's Delia vita e delle opere di Carlo Sigonio (1872) is of interest principally for the documents and letters it contains. In 1900 the thesis of Alfred Hessel, " 'De Regno Italiae libri viginti' von Carlo Sigonio" provided the most substantial study yet to appear of Sigonio as medievalist. The next important general study of Sigonio was Luigi Simeoni's "Documenti sulla vita e la biblioteca di Carlo Sigonio" (1933). A tesi di laurea, Note per una biografia di Carlo Sigonio by Annunciata Girasoli, was accepted at the University of Bologna in 1963. Articles on Sigonio have been published by Pierre de Nolhac, Amadio Ronchini, Vittorio Cian, Alfonso Professione, G. Bertoni and E. P. Vicini, Federico Patetta, Tommaso Sorbelli, Umberto Benassi, F. Calori Cesis, Albano Sorbelli, T. Ascari, P. Pirri, M. Cesare Nannini, Gina Fasoli, Paolo Prodi, Claudio Scarpati, W. McCuaig, Paolo Brezzi, and Raffaelle Girardi. The bibliography comprises these, and all other literature known to me and relevant to Carlo Sigonio, as well as principal works in the fields of ancient, medieval, and early modern history cited in abbreviated form in the footnotes. In some cases it seemed appropriate to give a full bib­ liographic citation in the footnotes for works that appear in the bibliog­ raphy as well. Books and articles adduced only once in the footnotes in support of specific points have been cited there in full and are not in­ cluded in the bibliography. As a rule my bibliographic references include χ

PREFACE

the name of the publisher as well as place and date of publication. But when I began it was my practice to record this information only for sixteenth-century editions, and I did not at first realize the utility for intellectual history of recording the name of the publisher of every work consulted, whether of the sixteenth century or not. Later I began to do so as a matter of course, but my bibliography and footnotes do contain a few items seen during years of peripatetic study in England and Italy for which only place and date of publication are given. Longer quotations from printed and manuscript sources have been reproduced in the original Latin and Italian in the footnotes, and translated when the quotation appears in the text. A number of shorter quotations appear without translation. Capitalization, punctuation, and accentuation of texts quoted has generally been adapted to modern norms, but original spellings have been retained. Most abbreviations have been silently expanded, but not "V.S." ("Vostra Signoria") or "V.E." ("Vostra Eccellenza"), the respectful formulas for addressing others in the third person universally employed in letters written in Italian in this period. Cross-reference from one part of the text to another is made throughout by giving the relevant footnote in the chapter referred to, with the understanding that the cross-reference also applies to the text to which the note belongs. I am grateful for permission given to rework in the text of my book material which appeared first under these titles in these journals and books: "Carlo Sigonio storico e Ia censura," Atti e memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per Ie provincie di Romagna, 35, 1984, pp. 163-93; "Sigonio and Grouchy: Roman Studies in the Sixteenth Century," Athenaeum 74, 1986, pp. 147-83; "Riscrivere Cicerone: Carlo Sigonio e la Consolatio Ciceronis del 1583," in Scritture di scritture: testi, generi, modelli nel Rinascimento (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1987), pp. 207-15. Like many scholarly monographs, this one is based on research carried out for an academic degree. My Ph.D. thesis on Carlo Sigonio was submitted to and defended at the Warburg Institute, University of London, in 1984. It provided the raw material for a large part of this book, and it gives me pleasure to recall that the main substratum of my Sigonio was laid in the Warburg Institute, and the city of London, her university, and her libraries. It should however be pointed out that the distance between thesis and book is considerable. My book was written in the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, and to that city, her university, Xl

PREFACE

her libraries, and the Scuola Normale my recognition goes as well. Among other institutions and libraries I must single out the British Library, the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, and the Biblioteca Ambrosiana of Milan. Material support was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Overseas Research Student Fees Support Scheme in Great Britain, and the Scuola Normale Superiore in Italy. Many friends and fellow scholars have assisted me in one way or another and all of them have my thanks. But I limit myself here to recording my debt of gratitude and my homage to the late Charles B. Schmitt.

XIl

ABBREVIATIONS

art. article s.a. sub anno s. v. sub voce V. E. Vostra Eccellenza V. S. Vostra Signoria BAM Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan. This is the only manuscript collection assigned an abbreviation. All others are identified in full. Opera omnia (or Op. om.) In all cases in which this title is used without designating an author, Sigonio's Opera omnia (1732-37) are meant. The Opera omnia of other authors are always identified as such. Reference to Sigonio's Opera omnia and to a number of other multivolume works of previous centuries, within which the numeration of single pages can alternate arbitrarily with the numeration of two columns on each page (or with even more complicated configurations), is abbreviated to two figures separated by a period. The first figure designates the volume, the second the pages or columns indifferently. Hence, for example, Op. Om. 3.330-35 = Sigonio, Opera omnia, vol. 3, pages and/or columns 330 to 335. ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum DBI Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani JRS Journal of Roman Studies MEFRA Melanges de I'Ecole Frangaise de Rome—Antiquite MEFRM Melanges de I'Ecole Frangaise de Rome—Moyen Age, Temps Modernes PWRE Pauly-Wissowa, Real-encyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft

XlU

CARLO

SIGONIO

CHAPTER

ONE

LIFE OF CARLO SIGONIO MODENA AND VENICE

C

ARLO SIGONE (later Sigonio) was born in Modena to Nicolo Maria Sigone (d. 1550), a wool merchant, at an unknown date in 1522 or 1523. He died in Modena on 27 August 1584 and thus lived a little more than sixty years. In 1536 the Cretan scholar Francesco Porto began to lecture in Modena, receiving a salary from the commune, on Greek language and literature. Sigonio was among his students. He was instructed as well in the private school of Ludovico Del Monte, where Antonio Bendinelli of Lucca functioned as an assistant master when Del Monte was absent.1 Finally, Sigonio participated, together with other young men of aptitude, in classes or discussions held by Ludovico Castelvetro, a man considered to be the leading representative of intellectual life in the Emilian city. Modena was a center of religious tension resulting from the movement for the reform of the church from at least 1530, and the instruction in Greek given there by Francesco Porto was part of the program of the group known as the Accademia to hostile critics such as the citizen chronicler Tommasino De' Bianchi Lancilotti,2 a group which also led the attack on established ecclesiastical institutions. 1 Previous works on Sigonio are mentioned in the preface. For testimony on Antonio Bendinelli as preceptor in the school of Ludovico Del Monte, see the letter of Sigonio to Bendinelli, 2 June 1568. This letter is published in Bendinelli, Scipionis vita (1568), pp. 148-49. See the same publication for other letters of Sigonio and Bendinelli of 1568-69 referring to Modena in the 1530s and 1540s. 2 The documentary base for all studies of Modena in the first half of the sixteenth century is Tommasmo De' Bianchi, detto del Lancilotti, Cronaca modenese, published in 12 volumes in the Monumenti di storia patria delle provincie modenesi (Parma: Fiaccadori, 1862-84). See vols. 8-11 ad indicem for notices of Carlo Sigonio and his family in Modena (and cf. the entry on the chronicler in DBl 10, 1968, pp. 175-76, by T. Ascan). One other documentary source among many ought to be mentioned here because in manuscript copies in the Biblioteca Estense of Modena it nourished, like the Lancilotti chronicle, a whole tradition of studies, includ-

3

C H A P T E R ONE

The early association of Carlo Sigonio with Ludovico Castelvetro is mentioned in a posthumous life of Castelvetro written by a nephew, in which it is recorded that Castelvetro lectured in his own home and in that of Giovanni Grillenzone on Greek and Latin authors, and that his auditors included Sigonio, "who later showed little gratitude to his preceptor,"3 but the rupture between Sigonio and Castelvetro occurred only later, when Sigonio was in his thirties. The great anatomist Gabriele Falloppia was a coeval and lifelong friend of Sigonio. The influence of the citizen intelligentsia of Modena on the formation of the young scholar may best be grasped, however, through reading the testimony for the life of a man, the force of whose acts and personality were sufficient to guarantee his posthumous memory in the city despite the fact that he did not publish or write, the physician Giovanni Grillenzone. In ing those of Muratori and Tiraboschi, before its publication in this century: Ludovico Castelvetro, Racconto delle vile d'alcuni letterati del suo tempo, published in Giuseppe Cavazutti, Lodovico Castelvetro (1903), app., pp. 1-15. The entry on Castelvetro in DBJ 22,1979, pp. S21, is by V. Marchetti-G. Patrizi. For an introduction to the Modenese crisis, see Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi, Speranze e crisi nel Cinquecento modenese (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1979); and further, Adriano Prosperi, "Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche e Ie idee religiose," in Il Rinascimento nelle corti padane (Bari: De Donato, 1977); Albano Biondi, "Streghe ed eretici nei domini estensi all'epoca dell'Ariosto," ibid.; and Biondi, "Lunga durata e microarticulazione nel territorio di un Uffizio dell'Inquisizione: Il 'Sacro tribunale' a Modena (1292-1785)," in Annali dell'lstituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, 7, 1982, pp. 73-90. On the Accademia it is obligatory to begin with Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modenese 1.1-20, "Discorso storico preliminare I: Delle Accademie modenesi," and s.w. Ludovico Castelvetro, Giovanni Grillenzone, Filippo Valentini, and others. Girolamo Tiraboschi appears to have considered this heterodox group to have been an established literary academy, but it is inexact to view the Accademia modenese as such. Il processo inquisitoriale del cardinal Giovanni Morone, edited by Massimo Firpo and Dario Marcatto (1981- ), is now the important source for documentation and secondary bibliography on Modena and the Accademia: see vol. 1, Il Compendium, ed. M. Firpo, 1981; vol. 2, Il processo d'accusa (2 pts.), ed. Firpo-Marcatto, 1984; vol. 3,1 documenti difensivi, 1985; vol. 4, 1987 (not seen). Further, Firpo-Marcatto, "U primo processo inquisitoriale contro il cardinal Giovanni Morone (1552-1553)," Rivista storica italiana 93, 1981, pp. 70142; Firpo-Marcatto, "L'edizione del processo Morone e Ie sue fonti: un primo bilancio di lavoro," Critica storica 21, 1984, pp. 381-408; Massimo Firpo, "GIi 'Spiritual·!,' l'Accademia di Modena, e il Formulario di Fede del 1542" (1984); and M. Firpo, "La fase del processo inquisitoriale del cardinal Morone: Documenti e problemi," Critica storica 23,1986, pp. 12148. 3 Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modenese, t. 6, pp. 61-82, prints the anonymous life of Ludovico Castelvetro, apparently by Ludovico di Giammana Castelvetro. Those who learned from Castelvetro included "Carlo Sigonio, che poi fu poco grato verso il suo Precettore, come si puo comprendere in alcuni dei suoi scritti, ma con quanta ragione Dio Io sa, e cio forse awenne piu per la natura sua rustica e poco grato ad alcuno, che per altra ragione" (p. 64). There is no hostile or ungrateful allusion to Castelvetro in Sigonio's writings; but see further below nn. 91-95.

4

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

a letter of 3 July 1542 to Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto, written as the crisis of religious dissent in Modena was nearing its climax, Grillenzone re­ viewed his own role in fostering letters in Modena, and gave his con­ struction (not disinterested) of the alleged relation there between Greek learning and heterodoxy. The first teacher of Greek in Modena, a native of Crotone, had taught at a fixed hour in the house of the Grillenzone family. Popular incomprehension and resentment at this innovation had affixed the derisive term Accademia to those who gathered there. When Francesco Porto had come to Modena he had resided with Grillenzone. His foreign nationality had augmented popular suspicion, and when a few of those who had studied with him turned to the private study of the Greek Bible, the threat this had posed to the clerical, and especially Dominican monopoly on the knowledge and interpretation of this text had caused an entire section of the Modenese letterati to be branded as Lutheran.4 Ludovico Castelvetro's posthumous memorial of Giovanni Grillenzone, written in exile, relates substantially the same history.5 Sigonio left Modena to begin the study of philosophy and medicine at Bologna, apparently in 1538, and his earliest surviving letter, written on 4

Giovanni Grillenzone to Jacopo Sadoleto, 3 July 1542: "Gia sono adunque dodeci anni passati, che capitando in Modena un povero Crotoniata, il quale sapeva alquanto Greco, 10 insieme con Ms. Lud. Castelvetro, Ms. Gio. Falloppio et alcuni aim il condussi ad insegnar, et perche la casa nostra pareva piu commoda che alcuna altra della compagnia, in essa ci reducevamo ad un hora ogni giorno determinata, in tale che da lui imparissimo Ii pnmi principii della lingua greca. Di qui naque poi, che il vulgo con grandissimo nostra dispiacere chiamo questa nostra compagnia Academia. Non che noi mai facessimo leggi ο altra cosa, come in alcune altre cittadi si fa, donde si potesse acquistar questo nome vano. . . . Cormnzorno adunque in quel tempo a dire ι calunniatori, Ii quali biasimavano queste lettere, che ad altro non si attendeva tra noi che a dire male, come che altro non si facesse che dar opera alle lettere grece et latine et cosi sempre fino a questo giorno si sia servato senza mai vedersi una minima parola della scnttura sacra, di alcuni in fuori, h quali per haver havuto piu otio, a quella separatamente hanno data opera, et con dihgentia 1'hanno veduta, ma non percio hanno detto mai cosa, che dire non si possa, et manco creduto. Venne dapoi Ms. Francesco [Porto] Greco, per la cui venuta si processe piu oltra nelle lettere grece, con Ie quali crebbe ancora piu il mormorar di costoro riprendendome particolarmente, che Io teneva in casa, et l'ho tenuto 18 mesi, hora dicendo che egli si come Greco non era chnstiano, hora ch' egl' era Turco vel simili altre favole assai, finalmente tra per questo Greco, tra per l'opera che si dava alia scrittura, tirando costoro Ii frati di San Domenico, Ii quali non vornano che nelle cittadi fussero altre lettere che Ie sue, in la loro opinione, diedero il nome alia compagnia di Lutherana. . . ." This letter was published in Franz Dittrich, ed., Regesten und Briefe des Cardinals Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542) (Braunsberg: Huye, 1881), p. 393 (the text followed here with a few modifications); and earlier in Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modenese 3.433ff. For comment on this letter, see Massimo Firpo, "GIi 'Spirituali/ " pp. 76-78. 5 Ludovico Castelvetro, Racconto delle vite d'alcuni letterati, in Cavazutti, Lodovico Castel­ vetro, app., pp. 3-5 (and see n. 2 above).

5

CHAPTER ONE

17 November of that year to Del Monte, glorifies his own strength in disputation and expresses a strong distaste for the life of pedantry.6 At Bologna he heard the lectures of Romolo Amaseo in humanity (Latin literature and ancient history). After three years in Bologna, Sigonio studied for a year in Pavia, where he heard lectures by the philosopher and physician Andrea Camuzio. He never obtained a doctorate from any university/ but this was not unusual. There is no information about Sigonio's life between 1542 and 1545; it must be assumed that he lived for most of this period in Modena and that he continued to study Greek and Latin literature. He may have thought of becoming a courtier, for in 1545 he was employed as a sec­ retary in the household of Cardinal Marino Grimani, patriarch of Aquileia. When, late in 1545, Francesco Porto had to leave Modena for Ferrara (and eventually Geneva), Sigonio was summoned to replace him as com­ munal lecturer in Greek. He gave lectures from January 1546 in two series, one for beginners, the other for advanced students, and in Sep­ tember 1547 he began to lecture on humanity as an additional course.8 At the end of 1548 Sigonio took on the role of tutor to Fulvio Rangone, son of the late Count Claudio Rangone and of the Countess Lucrezia Pico Rangone. The facts about his reluctant assumption of this post are narrated in Lancilotti's chronicle and thence in Muratori and Tiraboschi, 6 Copies, nonautograph, in Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS alpha G.1.18 (Ital. 835) and MS beta 1.3.1 (Ital. 1827); and published in Cian, "Una lettera di Carlo Sigonio contro ι pedanti." On Ludovico Del Monte, see the biographical note in Firpo-Marcatto, Processo Morone, 2.951. 7 Information about Sigonio's university years comes mostly from Sigonio himself in Disputationes Patavinae 2 (1562) f. 64r-v. But N.B. Gabriele Falloppia to Ulisse Aldrovandi, 24 Oct. 1561: "EgIi [Sigonio] udi il Mainetto in logica costi [Bologna] nel principio dello suo studio, poi il Boccadiferro due ο tre anni, et vi fece tanto profitto sotto, che se V. E. Io sente parlare delle cose d'Aristotile naturah et morali et logiche, non Ie parra humanista. Fu in questo tempo anchora continuo uditor di Romulo buona memoria" (Giovanni Fantuzzi, Memorie della vita di Ulisse Aldrovandi [1774], pp. 204-5). Girasoli's fesi di laurea on Sigonio devotes considerable research to his university studies. As for his decision not to take a doctorate, that could be proved from the failure to mention such a degree in Disputationes Patavinae. But as it happens there is positive testimony to this effect from Antonio Riccoboni in his Defensor (1584; a polemic against Sigonio in connection with the Consolatio Ciceronis). Riccoboni ac­ knowledges that Sigonio is his scholarly superior, despite the fact that of the two it is he, Riccoboni, who wears a doctor's robes: "cumque te non aequalem sed longe superiorem, etiam msignibus Doctoris, quae habeo, occultatis, esse confitear, mihi tamen laborandum existimo, ne me, ut videris velle, prorsus opprimas" (p. 143). 8

G. Bertoni and E. P. Vicini, "GIi studi di grammatica e la Rinascenza a Modena," Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di storia patria per Ie provincie modenesi, ser. 5, 4,1906; E. P. Vicini, "Le 'Letture pubbliche' in Modena nei secoli XV-XVII," Rassegna per la storia dell'Universita di Modena, 5, 1935, p. 106; C. G. Mor, Storia dell'Universita di Modena (Modena, 1952), pp. 35-39. 6

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

but they receive a richer context in the pages of the recent edition of the Morone trial. Lucrezia Pico had had in her house for years one of the leaders of the heretical movement in Modena, Girolamo Teggia, as a tutor to her child.9 On the death of Girolamo Teggia in 1548 she convinced Sigonio to replace this locally notorious figure, and he did so for at least the two years of life which remained to Lucrezia Pico. By employing the irreproachable Sigonio in the place of Teggia in 1548 she probably obtained, in addition to an excellent instructor in Greek and Latin, some measure of reassurance against suspicion of heterodoxy. The writer Girolamo Muzio, in effect an agent of religious control, had already warned Lucrezia Pico in 1545, in an epistle later published, against the domestic danger of "the enemy in your household."10 Carlo Sigonio's first publication was an anonymous translation of speeches of Demosthenes, printed in Modena in perhaps 1548 or 1549, and publicly attacked by Antonio Bendinelli, now master in his own right of the school founded by Ludovico Del Monte, and Sigonio's rival. Sigonio defended his translation under the name of the Modenese Saulo Ronchi, evidently his student or friend.11 The subsequent facts about this rivalry, or two versions of them, emerged twenty years later in invectives published against Sigonio by Bendinelli; at the bottom of it was a competition to attract students, the best of whom were stolen from him, according to Bendinelli, by Sigonio. At some point Sigonio or Bendinelli (it is impossible now to know which) decided to write a biography of Scipio Aemilianus and the other immediately set about the same task. Whoever had legitimate priority, Bendinelli published his life of Scipio first in early 1549, effectively forcing the suppression of Sigonio's.12 9

Firpo-Marcatto, Processo Morone, 1.290-91, 2.692, 3.128, 165. Cf. Francesco Panini, Cronica della Citta di Modona, (1978), p. 144 on Fulvio Rangone; p. 169 on Sigonio. 10 Girolamo Muzio, Lettere Catholiche (Venice: Guadagnino, 1571), bk. 2, letter 1, Muzio to Lucretia Pica de' Rangoni, 20 December 1545, pp. 81-83. On Muzio's role in the CounterReformation, see Mario Rosa, "La Chiesa e gli stati regionali nell'eta dell'assolutismo," in Letteratura italiana, vol. 1, Il letterato e Ie istituzioni (Torino: Einaudi, 1982), pp. 275-78. 11 Sigonio alludes dismissively to this episode, antedating it to the early forties rather than to the period of his public teaching in Modena, in Disputationes Patavinae 2 (f. 6Ov). Ludovico Castelvetro provided further details in a memorial of Antonio Bendinelli in Racconto delle vite d'alcuni letterati in Cavazutti, Lodovico Castelvetro, app., p. 8. No exemplar of Sigonio's translation from Demosthenes is known to have survived. On the jurisconsult Saulo Ronchi, see Panini, Cronica della Citta di Modona, pp. 159,168. 12 Antonio Bendinelli, Scipionis vita (1549), Scipionis vita (including Errata Sigonii, 156869), Alia Sigonii errata (1570); and Errata Bendinelli (1570; an anonymous production of Carlo Sigonio and Camillo Coccapani). In the thirties Bendinelli had been a member of the Accademia and in 1538 was briefly incarcerated for satirizing the ignorance of the clergy in Modena: Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modenese 1.10; Firpo-Marcatto, Processo Morone 2.952; and

7

CHAPTER ONE

The wider world beyond Modena was not alarmed by these ripostes. But if in one sense their theater was only the piazza of the Emilian city, in another it was the humanist profession generally in north-central Italy. This profession was represented illustriously at mid-century by Egnazio, Romolo Amaseo, Lazzaro Bonamico, Pier Vettori, Sebastiano Corradi, Paolo Manuzio, and Francesco Robortello; and by a swarm of minor letterati such as Sigonio and Bendinelli, struggling to ascend. Egnazio retired in 1549 from a twenty-nine-year tenure of the chair of humanity in the Scuola di San Marco in Venice. Like Romolo Amaseo, holder of the chair in Bologna from 1524, with some wavering, until 1544, and Lazzaro Bonamico, at Padua from 1530 to 1552, Egnazio is known for excellence as a teacher rather than as author of philological or historical works of outstanding importance.13 Pier Vettori's international reputation commenced with the publication of the four-volume Giuntine Cicero of 1534-37. He held the chair in Florence from 1539, and in 1548 published his edition with commentary of Aristotle's Rhetoric.1* Sebastiano Corradi of Reggio Emilia had been a student of Egnazio, and was active in Reggio as a schoolmaster and municipal lecturer (1529-45) before assuming his major chair at Bologna (1545-56). He published commentaries on the works of Cicero, and two separate versions, both entitled Quaestura (1537, 1555) of a dialogue dealing with historical and literary problems in Cicero's life and career.15 Paolo Mathe biographical entry on Bendinelli in Giammaria Mazzuchelli, GU scrittori d'ltalia, vol. 2 (Brescia 1758). 13 On Egnazio, see the entry under his birth name, Giovanni Battista Cipelli, in DBI 25, 1981, pp. 698-702, by E. Mioni; and J. B. Ross, "Venetian Schools and Teachers" (1976). On Amaseo, see the entry in DBI 2, 1960, pp. 660-66 by R. Avesani; and E. Billanovich and G. Frasso, "Amaseiana," Italia medioevale e umanistica 22, 1979, pp. 531—45. The entry on Lazzaro Bonamico in DBI11, 1969, pp. 533-40, is also by R. Avesani. Lazzaro Bonamico is a protagonist of Sperone Speroni's Dialogo delle lingue, which is set in late 1530, just after Bonamico's appointment to the chair at Padua. Amaseo in famous academic prolusions at Bologna, and Bonamico as represented by Speroni, both took part in the debate about the respective merits of Latin and Tuscan in favor of the former, and Sigonio was to be their late epigone. See Vittorio Cian, "Contro il Volgare," (1911), pp. 251-97; and the Dialogo delle lingue in P. Bembo, S. Speroni, and G. Gelli, Trattatisti del Cinquecento t. 1, ed. Mario Pozzi (MilanNaples: Ricciardi, 1978). (The volume contains a valuable introduction by the editor.) 14 The older bibliography on Pier Vettori, largely inadequate, is reviewed m Lucia Cesarini Martinelli, "Contributo aU'epistolario di Pier Vetton (Lettere a Don Vincenzio Borghini 15461565)," Rinascimento 19, 1979, pp. 189-227; and Cesarini Martinelh, "Pier Vetton e gli umanisti tedeschi," in Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell'Europa del '500, vol. 2 (Florence: Olschki, 1983), pp. 707-26. 15 On Corradi, see Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modenese s.v. A recent entry on Corradi in DBI 29, 1983, pp. 322-23, by F. R. De' Angelis, ignores Tiraboschi's contnbution, to which it is inferior. The two versions of his dialogue: Sebastian! Corradi in M. T. Cicerone quaestura

8

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

nuzio (1512-74), the son and heir of Aldo Manuzio, was an independent scholar and publisher rather than a university teacher; as Sigonio's first Venetian publisher and colleague in Roman studies, he will be mentioned throughout the present work.16 Francesco Robortello issued from Friuli to study under Amaseo at Bologna, then taught at Lucca (153743), Pisa (1543-49), and Venice as successor to Egnazio (1549-52). The year of his emergence was 1548, when Torrentino at Florence published a miscellany of treatises, including De nominibus Romanorum and, separately, the edition with commentary of Aristotle's Poetics, which helped to inaugurate the vogue for that work.17 Carlo Sigonio was by nature one who worked alone. Young and unknown in Modena in the 1540s, driven by ambition to make his mark as a scholarly writer, encouraged by local intellectual circles, he conceived an ambitious project: the compilation of a complete Magistratus reipublicae Romanae. There is no evidence that this was other than a spontaneous inspiration, for Sigonio did not apparently have the sort of continuing direction and encouragement from a senior humanist given, for instance, by Egnazio to Sebastiano Corradi. But he was spurred by the knowledge that large fragments of an Augustan inscription which had originally recorded, as well as the reigns of the seven kings of Rome, all the senior annual magistracies of the Roman republic, had been discovered in 1546 and 1547 in Rome, and relocated on the Capitol.18 Another newly available set of sources for Roman history was the Greek texts of Greek historians writing under Roman rule. When in 1549 a transcription of the Fasti Capitolini was published by Bartolomeo Marliani, Sigonio saw that the material he had accumulated from the literary sources gave him the opportunity to publish a restored version of them—a new complete list of the kings, and the republican consuls, consular tribunes, censors, dictators, and cavalry commanders, with the (Venice: Sabiensis, 1537); and Sebastiani Corradi quaestura vel Egnattus (Bologna: Giaccarelli, 1555). Egnazio is a senior speaker in both dialogues. The two versions can be compared in Corradi, Quaestura, partes duae, ed. J. A. Ernesti (Leipzig, 1754). 16 There is a life of Paolo Manuzio in A.-A. Renouard, Annales de I'imprimerie des Aide, ou Histoire des trois Manuce et de leurs editions 3 vols. (Pans: Renouard, 1803-12), 2: 70106. See also Pierre Costil, "Paul Manuce et l'humanisme a Padoue a l'epoque du Concile de Trente," Revue des questions historiques 60, 1932, pp. 321-62; Ester Pastorello, L'epistolario manuziano (1957). 17 On Robortello, see Liruti, "Francesco Robortello"; Carlini, "L'attivita filologica di Francesco Robortello"; and Eugene E. Ryan, "Robortello and Maggi on Aristotle's Theory of Catharsis," Rinascimento 22,1982, pp. 263-73. 18 The modern standard edition of the Fasti Capitolini, including a complete account of their history, is Attilio Degrassi, /nscriptiones ltaliae, vol. 13, fasc. 1 (1947).

9

CHAPTER ONE

triumphs they had celebrated, from the foundation of Rome to the end of the republic. His original plan for a work that would have included the lesser magistrates as well—praetors, aediles, quaestors, tribunes of the plebs—was therefore abandoned, but it is worth emphasizing the audacity of the idea, especially conceived as it was at a distance from any metropolis by an unknown young scholar.19 Sigonio's debut therefore came in the spring of 1550, in the form of his Regum, consulum, dictatorum ac censorum Romanorum Fasti. At this point Sigonio expected to finish imminently a complete commentary on the Fasti, which would amount to a manual of Roman history. Its speedy appearance is announced on the title page of the Fasti of 1550, and the promise is reiterated in a brief sample of it which he appended to the consular list, De praenominibus Romanorum causis et usu. This, his first published treatise, contained criticism of Robortello's recent De nominibus Romanorum.20 The larger matrix of commentary, however, was postponed for refinement and ramification. Sigonio published nothing for five years, then produced the major works of the quinquennium 1555-1560, namely, the Livy edition with commentary, the second Fasti, and De nominibus Romanorum (all 1555), the third Fasti with complete commentary (1556), the fourth Fasti with revised commentary (1559), and the first two treatises De iure Romanorum (1560). The project conceived in Modena for an encyclopedic contribution to Roman studies was thus fulfilled. The printer of the Fasti of 1550 was Antonio Gadaldini, a man who had participated in the movement of religious dissent in Modena. In October 1537 he had imported a suspect book, the Sommario della sacra scrittura, into Modena, and his shop was for many years "the major 19 "Nam cum praetores, tribunos plebis, aediles curules, aliosque eiusmodi magistratus annuos a principio colhgere instituissem, eos tamen omnes his notatis marmorum inscriptiombus mihi omittendos esse decrevi, partim quod auctorum eorum, quos habemus, incuna me reperire omnes posse diffldebam, partim quod in his item marmoribus eos esse praetermissos intelligebam." Sigonio, preface to the Fasti, first in 1550, quoted here from the fasti of 1555, f. A3r. This preface also acknowledges Sigonio's debt to the Stephanus editions of the Greek texts of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1547) and of Dio Cassius (1548). From 1551 he was able to take account of the Greek text of Appian. The modern instrument of classical studies which corresponds precisely to Sigonio's original intention is T.R.S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (New York: American Philological Association, 1951-60; and Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986). 20 Regum, consulum, dictatorum ac censorum Romanorum fasti . . . Carolo Sigonio auctore. Eiusdem in Vastos et acta triumphorum explicationes propediem edentur. Qui liber erit tanauam totius Romanae historiae commentarius. Excudebat Mutinae Antonius Gadaldinus, MDL Idib. Mart.; including, ff. Elr-E6r, De praenominum Romanorum causis et usu.

10

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

source of the diffusion of heterodox texts in the Emilian city."21 In 1556 his shop was closed and he was incarcerated and interrogated in Rome in 1557, unable to return to Modena until 1559. But Sigonio's Fasti was not a scandalous work and his selection of Gadaldini to print it in 1550 was motivated by the fact that there was practically no other choice locally. Sigonio never sought engagement in religious or ecclesiastical questions: his confrontation with the Roman censors in the 1570s and 1580s was forced upon him. He kept allegiance all his life to the great cardinals (Morone, Bembo, Sadoleto) who had represented church reform and humanistic culture in the pre-Tridentine period, and after the council to those such as Gabriele Paleotti, who worked in Italy to effect its decrees through positive renovation rather than repression and exclusion. This allegiance was based on intellectual and personal sympathy and in specifically religious questions Sigonio was like them an unwavering Catholic. Nevertheless it was as a result of the impulse given to intellectual life in Modena by less orthodox men such as Castelvetro, Grillenzone, and other members of the Accademia that Carlo Sigonio, who had been their pupil, was able to launch a career of scholarship and rival Castelvetro as the greatest Modenese intellectual of the century. When Sigonio returned from his university studies to Modena in the 1540s, he graduated from the position of pupil to one nearer parity of status with Castelvetro. However the years of his absence (1538-42) were those in which the confrontation between the Accademia and religious authority, ambiguously represented by Cardinal Giovanni Morone, bishop of Modena, took place. In 1543-45, years in which we know little of Sigonio's activities, the controversy rumbled on until it was silenced by a ducal edict from Ferrara in 1545 forbidding further discussion of religious questions. Shortly afterward Sigonio returned to Modena to resume his post as lecturer. There is no mention of him, not even the remotest allusion, in any account of the travails of the Accademia, and although his youth and intermittent absence could adequately explain his nonparticipation in this conflict of ideas and convic21 Firpo-Marcatto, Processo Morone, 1.238, from the main biographical notice (pp. 238-40) of Antonio Gadaldini in the volumes of the trial, in which he is frequently mentioned. For an account of Antonio Gadaldini, his heirs, and their editions, see Emilio Paolo Vicini, La stampa nella provincia di Modena, in D. Fava, ed., Tesori delle biblioteche d'ltalia. Emilia e Romagna (Milan: Hoepli, 1932; seen in an offprint dated 1931 with separate pagination; pp. 23-29 on the Gadaldini). See further the entry in Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modenese, on Agostino Gadaldini, the son of the publisher, and in general the literature on Ludovico Castelvetro and the Accademia; Carlo De Frede, "Tipografi, editori, librai italiani del Cinquecento coinvolti in process! d'eresia," in Rivista della storia delta Chiesa in Italia 23,1969, pp. 29-30.

11

CHAPTER ONE

tions, it is surely more correct to think of a deliberate refusal on his part to become involved. Several items of literary testimony, each showing Sigonio in a relationship of amity with Castelvetro, survive from the late 1540s, the period of Sigonio's lectureship in Modena. The first is a Latin poem by Sigonio, Ad Ludovicum Castelvetrum, which is an appeal to Castelvetro to undertake with Sigonio a journey to Rome. Lines 42-49 reveal the admiration of Sigonio and Castelvetro for the cardinals of the Farnese era known as the "Spirituali," and incidentally permit an approximate dating of the poem. Sigonio names "the great Pole, offspring of kings," "Morone, famous for piety," and Bernardino Maffei as the members of the Sacred College whom Castelvetro will especially revere. Maffei was elevated in May 1549 and died in July 1553; Sigonio would have written the poem before leaving Modena, so its composition can be placed in the period 1549-52.22 The second item is a dialogue on the lingua volgare written by Lazzaro Fenucci of Sassuolo and published in Bologna in 1551, in which the principal speaker is Castelvetro.23 The setting is Castelvetro's house in Modena and the dramatic date is approximately 1548-50. Castelvetro reasons extensively about the grammar and phonetics of Tuscan; midway through his discourse Giovanni Grillenzone enters, and it is made clear that he alone of those present is Castelvetro's peer in learning and authority. The principal representative of the rising generation is "M. Carlo Sigoni Modenese, et ivi in Modena publico lettore dell' humane lettere, et nel vero giovene dottissimo, il che guari di tempo non sera, che Ii suoi scritti Io ci mostreranno." Castelvetro is made to amplify this characterization, emphasizing Sigonio's "smisurato desiderio di piu conseguire."24 In 1552 Francesco Robortello left the lectureship in the Scuola di San Marco in Venice to replace Lazzaro Bonamico in the chair of humanity at the University of Padua, thus remaining under the auspices of the Riformatori dello Studio, the three-member board of the Venetian Senate, which controlled both institutions—and many other facets of Venetian cultural life.25 Robortello's competitor for the post in Padua was 22 The poem is printed in Tirabosdu, Biblioteca modenese, s.v. Sigonio, 5.114-15, from BAM, MS D 197 inf., f. 13. Another copy with several textual variants is in Lucca, Bibhoteca Governativa MS 2634, ff. 32r-33r. 23 Lazzaro Fenucci, Ragionamenti sopra alcum osservationi delta lingua volgare (Bologna: Giaccarelli, 1551). 24 Ibid., pp. 42, 77. 25 See Storia della cultura veneta 3, esp. the chapter by Francois Dupuigrenet-Desrouisilles (2: 635—46); and Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press (1977) for

12

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

Francesco Porto, whose candidacy was supported, but in vain, by Ludovico Castelvetro during an excursion to Padua in the spring of 1552. Castelvetro was accompanied on that trip by Carlo Sigonio, who offered his own candidacy, perhaps on the spur of the moment, for the post in the Scuola di San Marco. Sigonio was awarded the position despite the concurrence of Sebastiano Corradi from Bologna, and apparently with the help of Robortello.26 Sigonio was to be the holder of the San Marco lectureship from 1552 until 1560. Modern published research on the Scuola di San Marco stops short with Robortello's departure and Sigonio's arrival. The former chancellery school of Venice had by the sixteenth century developed into two independent lectureships in Latin and Greek, the latter being suspended however from about 1525 to 1553.27 Egnazio held the Latin chair from 1520 to 1549 and as prior of the Ospedale di San Marco was the living embodiment of the school, inasmuch as the lectures were given in this charitable and educational foundation. It was housed in a building known as the "spedaletto," which stood at the foot of the campanile in the Piazza di San Marco.28 The Riformatori dello Studio had since 1544 been formally charged the role of the Riformatori in the censorship of book publication in Venice. Index des livres interdits vol. 3, Index de Venise 1549, Venise et Milan 1554, by J. M. De Bujanda (Sherbrooke, Quebec: Editions de l'Universite de Sherbrooke, 1987), includes a historical introduction by Paul F. Grendler that summarizes and updates the relevant parts of his earlier book; see the entire volume for the onset of official censorship in Venice. (At the moment of writing the publication of new work on the Venetian patriciate and the University of Padua by Dupuigrenet-Desrouisilles, and on humanistic education by Grendler, is expected.) 26 Ludovico Castelvetro to G. B. Ferrari, 15 March 1552, published in Valdrighi, Alcune lettere d'illustri italiani (1827), pp. 13-14. 27 Ross, "Venetian Schools and Teachers" (1976); Storia della cultura veneta 3, especially contributions by V. Branca (1: 25-27), F. Lepori (2: 600-604); Palmer, The Studio of Venice and Its Graduates (1983), pp. 48-49. Ross has a table setting out in parallel form the names and dates of the teachers at the Rialto school and at San Marco. Vettore Fausto, finishing circa 1525, is shown as the last holder of the second or Greek chair. Robortello, finishing in 1551 (i.e., 1551-52), is shown as the last holder of the Latin chair, with no indication that Sigonio and others succeeded him. In fact, the Greek lecture resumed a year after Sigonio's arrival in the person of Giambattista Rasario of Novara. One of the few documents to be published on the Scuola di San Marco after mid-century appears in Palmer, Studio of Venice, p. 49, n. 175. It lists the Latin professors, including Sigonio, from 1549 to 1614 and the Greek professors from 1553 to 1605. The first of these is Rasario, who taught 1553-73. Presumably he was the first to take up the Greek lecture after Vettore Fausto; but this list must be used with caution, as for Sigonio at least it has the wrong dates ("1552-C.1558"). Rasario was a physician and translator of Greek medical writers; see F. E. Cranz, "Alexander Aphrodisias" in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum 1 (1960), pp. 106-7. 28 See Francesco Sansovino, Venetia, citta nobilissima (Venice, 1663), t. 1, p. 138; and DBI s.v. Cipelli, G. B. (= Egnazio; cf. n. 13 above). 13

CHAPTER ONE

with the care of the collection of manuscripts left to the city by Cardinal Bessarion.29 In the 1550s construction of the Marciana Library of Sansovino, the first permanent home for the books, was begun, and included in the design was a new lecture hall in the vestibule to replace the "spedaletto" as the home of the Scuola di San Marco. Construction proceeded so slowly, however, that the entire edifice was not completed until 1591, and neither the new reading room nor the new lecture hall was in use during Sigonio's Venetian years.30 Thus Sigonio continued to lecture in the Ospedale di San Marco31 and to consult the Bessarion codices on loan, in exchange for a considerable deposit, at home: a surviving portion of the lending record shows that he borrowed the first and third decades of Livy in 1553, and a Greek exemplar of Herodian and Zosimus in 1555.32 In September 1558 a new patrician head of the library was appointed: Bernardino di Andrea Loredan, then twenty-five years of age, succeeded to the post formerly held by Andrea Navagero and Pietro Bembo. As it had been for them, the post was partly an honorary one, but the choice did not fall on Bernardino Loredan at random, for the Riformatori accepted his offer to take charge of the library in the knowledge that he, among the younger patricians, was exceptionally devoted to letters.33 He had made a solid contribution to Roman studies in that 29

Labowsky, Bessarion's Library and the Biblioteca Marciana (1979), p. 80; and passim for the library, its custodians, and their inventories, in the sixteenth century. Addendum: At a late stage I was able briefly to consult Marino Zorzi, La Libreria di San Marco (1987), now the fullest work on the history of the Marciana. 30 M. Luxoro, La Biblioteca di San Marco nella sua storia (Florence: Olschki, 1954), pp. 2835; Labowsky, Bessarion's Library, pp. 92-93. The Bessarion collection was installed in the new reading room between 1559 and about 1565, and it is unclear when lectures were first given in the new seat. (Zorzi, La Libreria, must now be seen on all these matters.) 31 "Satis enim constat, Franciscum Vianellum cum Sigonio summa esse famiharitate coniunctum, qui ipsum olim in Xenodochio, quod ad Divi Marci erat, et in quo tunc optimarum artium explicatores ex publico decreto pxofitebantur, imiltos annos una mecum et cum multis aliis litterarum studiosis publice cum maxima sua laude . . . docentem audivit." (Antonio Riccoboni, ludicium secundum [1584], p. 5.) Xenodochmm ad Divi Marci = Ospedale di San Marco, the "spedaletto." 32 Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, MS Lat.14.23 (4660), ff. 8v-9r, edited by Castellani, "Il Prestito." Sigonio's colleague G. B. Rasario, the Greek lecturer, was another who borrowed many Greek codices from the Marciana in these years. 33 Zorzi, La Libreria (pp. 173-76 with notes and app. 2 and 6) discusses the date of Bernardino Loredan's appointment, establishes that it was 26 September 1558, and prints the relevant document. It had been edited by Labowsky, Bessarion's Library, pp. 133-34, with the date 26 September 1554. Bernardino Loredan had delivered, and published, the funeral oration for the Doge Marco Antonio Trevisan in 1554. His first literary distinction had come in 1552 when he contributed a prefatory poem of forty-seven lines to the Scholia in Aeschyli tragoedias omnes of Francesco Robortello (Venice: Valgrisio, 1552), whose student in the Scuola di San Marco 14

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

year with his edition of and commentary on the speeches of Cicero against the agrarian law, and if his later career did not bring him the glory of a Bembo or a Navagero, he remained at the helm of the Marciana for seventeen years, supervising the transfer of the manuscripts to the new library, and retiring in 1575.34 He and his father were among the important patrician patrons of Sigonio in Venice. Andrea Loredan possessed an oustanding collection of antiquities which was at Sigonio's disposal and from which he cited coins and inscriptions in his published works,35 and Bernardino must have been an auditor in the Scuola di San Marco. He received the dedication of Sigonio's Livy in 1555, and his work on Cicero has had the benefit of discussions with Sigonio. The same is true of a slight but technically imposing work of scholarship published in 1555, an attempt to place all the letters of Cicero Ad familiares in corrrect chronological sequence. The author, then twenty years of age, was Girolamo Ragazzoni, a Venetian of Bergamasc descent and a member of the select class known as cittadini. For him, as for Bernardino Loredan, an early interest in Ciceronian studies (and for Ragazzoni in the questione della lingua) gave way to the pressures of life and career. Being excluded from patrician offices, Ragazzoni set his sights in 1555 on the highest service open to cittadini, the Venetian chancellery. He states that he had been an auditor of Sigonio since the latter came to Venice and that the new chronology of the Ciceronian correspondence is in fact partly based on the lectures of, and informal discussion with, the professor from Modena.36 A year later and perhaps he undoubtedly was. Many other dedications and honorable mentions from other literary figures came to him in the future. 34 There is no good published notice of Bernardino Loredan, but some aid in the MS genealogies of the Venetian patricians (Alessandro Cappellan Vivaro, Campidogho veneto t. 2, Biblioteca Marciana MS Ital. 7.16 = 8305, ff. 226-37; Marco Barbara, Arbori dei patrith Veneti t. 2, Biblioteca Marciana MS Ital. 7.926 = 8595, f. 245r) and in the unpublished portion of Agostini (Giovanni Degli Agostini, Notizie istoriche degli scrittori viniziani t. 1, Biblioteca Marciana MS Ital. 7.288 = 8640, p. 181). Bernardino Loredan was born on 16 July 1533, the third son by the second marriage of Andrea di Bernardino. He married in 1559 the eighth child and last daughter of G. B. Dona (Donato), a sister of Leonardo Dona, Doge 1606-12, including the period of the Interdict. Bernardino Loredan, in turn, was father to five sons and two daughters. In government he held several offices, and was a member of the Zonta. He died in January 1611. Labowsky, Bessarion's Library, Inventory G, publishes the inventory compiled in 1575 when Loredan handed over supervision of the library to Alvise Gradenigo. 35 See Oliver Logan, Culture and Society in Venice 1470-1790 (London: Batsford, 1972), pp. 313-14 for information on the collection of Andrea Loredan. Sigonio cites the collection passim in the commentaries on the Fasti and on Livy. 36 Ragazzoni, In epistolas Ciceronis familiares commentarius (1555); the preface is to Vincenzo Ricci of the chancellery: "Quamobrem cum in quotidianae vitae consuetudme multa ab eo [Sigonio] in hanc rem subtiliter et erudite dicta attente collegissem . . . rum me rem facru15

CHAPTER ONE

with a different ambition, Ragazzoni published a translation of the Philippic speeches of Cicero into highly literary Italian. The dedication to Cardinal Giovanni Morone,37 against whom the inquisitors of Carafa were even then preparing the documentation on which to base his arrest in 1557, is a signal of the ecclesiastical career that lay ahead of Girolamo Ragazzoni: delegate to the Council of Trent; bishop of Famagusta; Apostolic Visitor in post-Tridentine Italy; ally of Borromeo and Paleotti; bishop of Bergamo; and papal nuncio in France.38 The youthful essays in scholarship and literature of Girolamo Ragazzoni and Bernardino Loredan were published at the Aldine press by Paolo Manuzio. But Manuzio's major venture in the mid-1550s was the European debut of Carlo Sigonio with a new edition of Livy and a complete apparatus for the consular Fasti. Ludovico Beccadelli, papal nuncio in Venice from 1550 to 1554, encouraged Sigonio to complete his Livy , and to that end furnished Sigonio with manuscripts of Diodorus Siculus and Appian.39 He received Sirum . . . non ingratum putavi, si quae ipse vel per me, vel ab eo plurima in hoc genere didicissem . . . literis memoriaeque mandarem. . . . Sigonio ipsi, postquam ille Venetiis publice profiteri coepit, assiduum me in hac literarum ratione auditorem addixi" (Ff. *2v-*3r). On the chancellery, see Giuseppe Trebbi, "Il segretario veneziano," Archivio storico italiano 146, 1986, pp. 35-73. 37 Girolamo Ragazzoni, Le Vihppiaie di Marco T. Cicerone contra Marco Antonio fatte volgari (Venice: Aldus, 1556). The preface to Morone is followed by a note to the reader in which Ragazzoni explains the principles by which he tried to adapt the language of Cicero to that of Giovanni Villani, Dante, and Boccaccio, with a necessary admixture of latinisms; and cf. on f. 167r, following the errata, further considerations of spelling. 38 Girolamo Ragazzoni, Oratio habita in sessione nona et ultima sacri Concilii Tridentini (Venice: Giordano Ziletti, 1563); Ragazzoni, Oratio ad amplissimos S.R.E. Cardinales ad novum pontificem eligendum (Rome: de Dianis, 1591); Giovanni Guarnieri, Oratio in adventu Reverendissimi D. D. Hieronymi Ragazoni Episcopi Bergomatis habita (Bergamo: Sabbius, 1578); Donato Calvi, Scena letteraria degii scrittori bergamaschi (Bergamo, 1664); Ferdinando Ughelh, Italia sacra t. 4 (Venice, 1719), coll. 505-7; Ivan Cloulas, "Notes sur la participation de Jerome Ragazzoni, eveque de Bergame, a l'oeuvre apostolique des visites des dioceses pendant sa nonciature en France (1583-86)," Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 13,1959, pp. 293-96; Girolamo Ragazzoni, Correspondance de sa nonciature 1583-85 = Acta nunciaturae Gallicae 2, ed. Pierre Blet (Rome-Pans, 1962); Hubert Jedin, Geschtchte des Konzils von Trent t. 4 (Freiburg 1975), ad indicem; E. Camozzzi, "IV Centenario della elezione di Girolamo Ragazzoni a vescovo di Bergamo (1577-1977)," Bergomum 71,1977, pp. 37-91; Angelo Giorgio Ghezzi, "Conflitti giurisdizionali nella Milano di Carlo Borromeo: La visita apostolica di Gerolamo Ragazzoni nel 1575-76," Archivio storico lombardo 108-9, 1982-83, pp. 193-237. Ragazzoni's juvenile interest in pagan history and in the development of a national literary language is not mentioned in any of the items listed here, and many, including ones published in this century, have a strongly Counter-Reformation flavor. 39 See Sigonio, Scholia, at 1.30.2, where he thanks Beccadelli for the use of a manuscript of Diodorus, and 23.11.1, similarly for a manuscript of Appian. 16

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

gonio's respectful salutation when the edition was finished.40 Beccadelli was an adherent of the "Spirituali" of the pre-Tridentine period, and author of a biography of Gasparo Contarini which Girolamo Ragazzoni was to translate into Latin in 1563.41 It is worth pointing out once again Sigonio's lifelong association with such men and implicitly with their values. Temperamental independence, a preference for solitary labor, and a lack of interest in religious questions kept Sigonio from dangerous involvements. The studies of the Roman republic to which he was exclu­ sively devoted in the 1550s seemed to him a haven because the complete exclusion from them of factors touching current religious or national disputes afforded a freedom of thought and expression that was vanish­ ing from the discussion of even remote episodes of the Christian centu­ ries under the pressure of religious controversy. This is the sense of an allusive remark made by Sigonio to Onofrio Panvinio, who had become embroiled with the Polish students of Padua over a slighting reference, based on a misunderstanding, which seemed to them to impugn their national honor, in 1558: "Please let's learn to live, and not stir up wasps' nests, and let's talk in our own way about that rogue Catiline, and even about Sulla if we feel like it, although he was a cruel dictator; and leave those others in peace. Other times now, different conduct."42 To form an idea of the nature and interests of Sigonio's audience in the Scuola di San Marco is not easy, for we know or can guess the names of only a handful of them, preserved for us by testimony rather than by any records of the school. It is a safe presumption, for instance, that Bernardino Loredan was an auditor, and lecture notes on one of Sigo­ nio's courses were preserved by another patrician, Niccolo Vendramin. Francesco Vianello and Girolamo Ragazzoni were Venetian cittadini 40 Sigonio to Ludovico Beccadelli, 11 June 1555; Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Carteggio di Lucca, box 4, busta "C. Sigonio." This is perhaps the earliest surviving autograph by Sigonio; published m L. Beccadelli, Monumenti di varia letteratura, ed. G. Morandi (Bologna 17971804), t. 1, pt. 1, pp. 166-67. 41 On Beccadelli, see DBi 7,1965, pp. 407-13 (G. Alberigo); and Gigliola Fragmto, "Per Io studio dell'epistolografia volgare del Cinquecento: Le lettere di Ludovico Beccadelli," Bibliotheque d'humamsme et Renaissance 43,1981, pp. 61-87; and Fragmto, Memoria individuate e costruzione biografica (1978), which is an excellent study of Beccadelli and the entire period. 42 Sigonio to Onofrio Panvinio, 26 Nov. 1558: "di gratia impariamo a vivere et non stuccicchiamo ι vespai, et parliamo di quel furfante di Catilina a nostro modo, et se ci vien voglia anchora di Silla, anchora che fosse dittatore, et crudele, et lasciamo star costoro. Alia tempora nunc, alii mores" (BAM, MS D 501 inf., f. 168v, and Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1002). Sigonio's "stuccicchiamo" = stuzzichiamo in regular orthography. The conflict between Onofrio Pan­ vinio and the Polish students is explained in McCuaig, "Andreas Patricius, Carlo Sigonio, Onofrio Panvinio."

17

C H A P T E R ONE

who aspired to the chancellery; Vianello persevered and succeeded. For them the ancient function of the school, preparation for the chancellery, had not entirely disappeared. Antonio Riccoboni of Rovigo, a student at Padua driven by the hope of becoming a professional man of letters, traveled from Padua to hear Sigonio in Venice.43 Other students of Padua did likewise, including some from distant lands such as the Pole Andreas Patricius.44 Paolo Grillenzone, most literary of the sons of Giovanni Grillenzone, came to Venice from Modena to hear Sigonio.45 The lectures were free and open to all, and there is some indication that, as in the universities, the official humanist of San Marco gave two successive courses, each consisting of illustrative lectures on a work of ancient literature, in each academic year. What exactly did Sigonio offer in return for the salary paid him by the Venetians? To deal first with his academic prolusions: in 1555 Sigonio published the first four, and in 1560, at the moment of departure from Venice, published seven prolusions from his eight years of teaching in the Scuola di San Marco.46 Six are dated and the undated one corresponds on internal grounds to 155758. There is therefore no prolusion for 1558-59. The contents of Sigonio's prolusions, with some parallel information about what he taught, may be summarized as follows: 1552-53: the prolusion recommends the values of eloquentia, by which Sigonio meant the humanistic disciplines (for him, rhetoric, poetry, and ancient history) and pleads for the study of the ancient languages; there is no indication of the contents of the courses. 1553-54: the prolusion is again Pro eloquentia. There exists a manuscript of the complete course of lectures given in this year on Aristotle's Rhetoric, book 1. 1554—55: Sigonio's oration attacks medieval and contemporary professional philosophy, and announces that, in order to reclaim Aristotle for humanism, "statui vobis hoc anno libros Aristotelis de arte rhetorica atque poetica interpretari." In fact, he lectured on book 2 of Ar43 Vianello rose to the secretariat of the senate and was involved, like Riccoboni and Sigonio, in the affair of the Consolatio Ciceronis of 1583; see n. 31 above and chapter 5, passim. 44 On Andreas Patricius, otherwise Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki, see McCuaig, "Andreas Patricius, Onofno Panvinio, Carlo Sigonio" (1984); and chapter 5 below. 45 Gabriele Falloppia wrote to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese on 16 May 1558 that "il giovan Gnllenzon da Modena" planned to go to Venice to study with Sigonio (quoted by Ronchini, "Carlo Sigonio," p. 282, n. 1, from the Archivio di Stato, Parma). The reference is to Paolo Grillenzone; see Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modenese s.v. Giovanni Grillenzone. 46 Sigonio, Orationes (1555,1560).

18

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

istotle's Rhetoric (the first part of the course survives) and as he tells us, on the Poetics. 1555-56: again the prolusion defends eloquentia. No indication of the contents of his courses is given, but it is likely that he completed his series of lectures on the Rhetoric by lecturing on book 3. 1556-57: no indication of the books lectured on. Sigonio in his prolusion took a new tack by defending Latin and deprecating the use of the Italian language as a substitute for it, in the tradition of his old teacher, Romolo Amaseo.47 This was one of the last manifestations in the Italian Renaissance of the now outdated contest between Latin and the volgare; it might be noted that it was delivered in the year in which his student Girolamo Ragazzoni published his translation into Tuscan of Cicero's Philippics. 1557-58: the prolusion signals a change of direction after five years of teaching rhetoric and poetics; this year Sigonio lectured on Roman history. This almost certainly meant commentary on one of Cicero's orations. 1558-59: no prolusion or other information. 1559-60: the prolusion is uninformative, but Sigonio wrote to Panvinio on 7 October that he was preparing to start his course on the feast of San Luca, 18 October, and three days after starting to lecture he informed his correspondent that the subject for which he had temporarily abandoned his preferred study of Roman history was rhetoric.48 It seems clear that Aristotle's Rhetoric formed the basis of his courses more frequently than any other text. The manuscript that preserves Sigonio's course of 1553-54 is a scribal copy of either an auditor's transcript or else of the lecturer's own notes. It was commissioned by Niccolo Vendramin, who may himself have taken the lecture notes on which the manuscript is based.49 The 160 leaves are divided into seventy-eight lectures ("scholae") and the course 47 See Vittorio Cian, "Contro il volgare," (1911), especially pp. 295-96 on Sigonio; and P. O. Kristeller, "The Origin and Development of the Language of Italian Prose," in P. O. Kristeller, Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1956), pp. 473-93. 48 Sigonio to Panvinio, 7 and 21 October, 1559; BAM, MS D 501 inf., ff. 178, 179; and Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1006, 1007. 49 Bergamo, Biblioteca civica Angelo Mai, MS gamma 6.18, ff. 1-166: "Annotationes in primum Aristotehs librum de arte rhetorica, ex Carolo Sigonio, anno secundo MDLIII, xvn Calend. Novemb. Quas Nicolaus Vendraminus possidet" (f. Ir); "Annotationes in secundum librum Aristotehs de arte rhetorica ex doctissimo viro Carolo Sigonio anno tertio 1554 mense Novembns. Eiusdem in eandem praefatio" (f. 16Ir).

19

CHAPTER ONE

began on 16 October. If lectures were given five days a week the course would have taken about four months to deliver; if they were given less frequently, longer. But in any case it is difficult to see this course as a full year's worth of lectures. More probably it was the first of two courses given in 1553-54, ending in perhaps March, and being followed by another course on a different book. In fact, Sigonio had to curtail the duration of this course abruptly in its closing stages: his method was to expound upon lemmata taken from Latin translations of Aristotle, and in the early part of the course these often give rise to long digressions of a type absent from the later lectures. This change of pace was not enough, and faced with the necessity to finish, Sigonio silently omitted almost three chapters of Aristotle.50 The explanation for this must be that Sigonio had to finish the course on the Rhetoric in order to get started on the second book, whatever it was, in the spring of 1554. When Sigonio began his three-year cycle of courses on the Rhetoric, he was able to draw upon a notable selection of recent work: in 1544 Daniele Barbaro had published a commentary on the Rhetoric, together with the fifteenth-century Latin translation of his uncle Ermolao Barbaro; in 1548 Pier Vettori's edition of the Greek text with Latin paraphrase and sentence-by-sentence commentary had appeared in Florence; and in 1550 Marcantonio Maioragio's translation was published in an exiguous volume in Milan. Sigonio did not lecture on the Greek text of Aristotle, and there is a corresponding avoidance in his lectures of linguistic and philological problems. His lemmata from Latin translations of Aristotle appear in the Bergamo manuscript as rubrics, and we should expect to find that Sigonio used consistently one or another of the available translations, but this is not the case. Rather, he used the Barbaro and Maioragio translations alternately, and occasionally translated for himself.51 In commenting on the text Sigonio aimed not so 50 The last lemma of schola 75 is "Et quos si laeserint multos" (f. 157v = Ar. Rhet. 1.12.31 in Maioragio's translation). Schola 76 begins on the same page: "Deinceps sequitur ut agamus de probatione ilia inartificiali . . ."; the inartificial proofs belong to chapter 15 of Rhetoric 1, and indeed the lext lemma to appear is "Ad haec proderit exempla," (f. 158v, from Ar. Rfoef.1.15.26 in Maioragio's translation). The result is the complete omission of Aristotle's chapters 13 and 14, and a summary discussion of most of chapter 15. 51 Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. Ermolao Barbaro, comm. Daniele Barbaro (1544); Pier Vettori, Commentarii in tres libros Aristoteiis de arte dicendi (Florence: Giunta, 1548); Ar., Rhetoric, trans. Marcantonio Maioragio (1550). The first and second lemmata in the manuscript of Sigonio's lectures are from the Maioragio translation of the Rhetoric, but the third is from the Barbaro translation, which is followed down to f. 15r. The Maioragio translation is used from f. 16r to f. 19v, at which point Sigonio switches back to Barbaro, whom he uses for the bulk of the course. With the lemma "Et quae potest omnes omnibus in rebus" (f. 114v = Rhet. 1.9.4),

20

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

much at a rigorously close analysis as at an expansion of it. Moral philosophy, politics, and ancient history, as well as rhetorical theory, provide the material for this expansion, almost all of the illustrative material coming not from the Hellenic world of Aristotle but from Cicero and the Roman historians. The course was a catch-all, a profuse paraphrase of the text farced with citations, precepts, and examples concerning the use of rhetoric in antiquity, and occasionally in modernity. This technique may briefly be instanced. The commentary on Rhetoric 1.4, in which Aristotle establishes that the five principal subjects of deliberative oratory are revenues, warfare, defense of boundaries, imports and exports, and civil constitutions, offered Sigonio the chance to expatiate on themes of special interest to a Venetian audience, by lauding for instance the current Venetian policy of keeping peace with the Turks in order to protect the city's sources of food supply.52 Constitutions, the last of Aristotle's themes of deliberation, were a subject of more immediate professional interest to Sigonio, and of direct interest to the citizens and patricians of the Venetian republic whom he was addressing. His review of the ancient theory of the three types of correct constitution—kingship, aristocracy, and republic—and their three deviant counterparts—tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy—is conventional, as is his assertion that a mixed constitution combining the features of the first three is optimal. The Roman republic of Scipio Aemilianus is the example adduced of such a constitution.53 Sigonio then offers his auditors a synthesis of the doctrine of Aristotle's Politics, book 5, defined as "those things by which states are conserved or destroyed."54 This amounts to a prescription for the functioning of the mixed constitution, but with a somewhat Venetian cast, for the Venetians believed that they as well had a constitution of the ideal mixed type: the junior magistracies are to be distributed by lot, but the senior ones through careful and secret suffrage. The plebeians will not resent their own ineligibility for office so much as they will contumely from Sigonio returns to the Maioragio translation and from here to the end of the course the lemmata are, with rare exceptions, taken from Maioragio. 52 The lectures on Rhetoric 1.4 are in scholae 25-29, ff. 47v-59v. In Daniele Barbaro's commentary on the Rhetoric, the section on 1.4 is also the one chosen in which to advance a Venetian interpretation of Aristotle's text, and it is clear that Barbaro's commentary exercised some influence on that of Sigonio here. But Barbaro's review of Venetian policy both on the terra firma and in international trade, is much more extensive than Sigonio's. Barbara, unlike Sigonio, says next to nothing about the types of constitution. 53 Ff. 55v-56r. 54 F. 56v. 21

CHAPTER ONE

the powerful: they must be conciliated. There should be special public honors to reward the rich for munificence to the state; the laws must protect the poor and those of low status, but popular agitation must be punished and suppressed. It is obvious that Sigonio is describing the Venetian rather than the Roman polity. In the Roman electoral system the lot was used only in order to determine the order in which the voting blocs were called to the urns, and again to determine the order in which the result of each bloc's vote was announced. No magistracies as such were assigned by lot. Under the Venetian constitution the lot was used in the Consiglio Maggiore to select the members of the nominating committees who in turn selected candidates for certain offices. All the senior posts were filled by elections using the secret ballot, as in Sigonio's prescription. In Rome after the victory of the plebeians over the patrician state, all magistracies were open to them as full-fledged Roman citizens. When Sigonio speaks of plebeians as ineligible for office, he is referring to the Venetian cittadini and popolani, who were so excluded. Special public honors as a reward for munificence (loans) to the state were an intermittent feature of Venetian government, the principal such position being that of Procura t o r di San Marco. Despite Sigonio's use of a Roman terminology that is somewhat imprecise when applied to Venice, it is quite clear that the particular form of mixed constitution lauded here is the Venetian one. After a digression on the subject of the summum bonum as the fount of all practical deliberation, Sigonio ends his lectures on deliberative oratory with a renewed exhortation to take the Scipionic republic as the model of civic concord.55 In chapter 1.5 of the Rhetoric, Aristotle states that beatitude is that which human beings seek, and therefore the motive for their actions; it is a product of nobility, family, friendship, riches, health, beauty, and reputation. Sigonio lectured on this material for eight days, with long digressions dwelling on matters of antiquarian interest. 56 For instance, Aristotle says that riches are a component of happiness; Sigonio provides an excursus on the origin of wealth as possession of livestock among the Romans, and traces certain Roman names (Bubulcus, Porcius) to that archaic period.57 Aristotle mentions good health, exemplified in the various athletic competitions of the Greeks; Sigonio launches 55 56 57

Ff. 58v-59r. Scholae 30-36, ff. 59v-78v. Ff. 64v-65r.

22

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

a major digression, the longest and least relevant in the entire course of lectures, on the public games of the Greeks and Romans.58 The Scuola di San Marco had ceased to be exclusively a chancellery school before Sigonio was born, and he did not give practical instruction in Latin composition to his students there. In return for his public salary, Sigonio provided a general introduction to ancient civilization in the guise of a commentary on Aristotle. Miscellaneous and unsystematic as such courses may seem to us, they were the standard method of imparting such knowledge in the Renaissance. Lecturing on deliberative oratory, Sigonio included comparative material on ancient and contemporary life, for Greco-Roman history and civilization were felt to be both paradigmatic and near by those who gathered to hear him, as were the techniques of persuasion codified in ancient rhetorical theory. In Bernardino Loredan's commentary on the speeches delivered by Cicero in 63 B.C. against Servilius Rullus, a tribune of the plebs who proposed a massive reallocation of state lands through the agency of a commission of ten with extraordinary powers, rhetorical analysis combines with historical information in a manner which shows the influence of Sigonio's public lectures as well as his more technical published studies.59 However, the sensibility of a Venetian patrician is apparent, disregarding the overt pieties of Cicero's discourse while embracing his more private political ethics. Cicero's greatest speeches, Loredan declares, are those in which he persuades the people to act against their own interest in order to preserve the greater justice of political and social stability: this is the highest test of rhetoric.60 Loredan is attentive throughout to the historical background of Cicero's speech—the protracted Roman revolution which began with the Gracchi (whom Cicero, blandishing the mob, pre58

Ff. 69r-73r. Bernardini Lauredani Andreae F. patricii Veneti, in M. TuIHi Oceronis orationes de lege agraria contra P. Servilium Rullum tribunum plebis, commentarius (Venice: Paolo Manuzio, 1558). On the technical side, Sigonio's interest in prosopography is probably responsible for such items as Loredan's recovery of the names of five members of the college of tribunes of the plebs for 63 B.C. from the literary sources (Loredan, Commentarius, p. 90), or those of the living and recently expired consulars of 63 (p. 139). On the other hand, Bernardino Loredan, like another protige of Sigonio, Andreas Patricius, had a gift for textual criticism which he did not receive from Sigonio. Both of them may have learned principles of textual criticism from Sigonio's predecessor, Robortello. Loredan would have studied with Robortello in Venice in the years 1549-52, and he may have been introduced to Hermogenes as a source of rhetorical theory by the same teacher, for it is certain that in 1554 Robortello was lecturing on Hermogenes in the University of Padua (see Valdrighi, Alcune lettere d'illustri italiani [1827], p. 25). Andreas Patricius studied with Robortello in Padua from 1553 to 1556; cf. McCuaig, "Andreas Patricius, Carlo Sigonio," p. 88. 60 Loredan, Commentarius, preface and argumentum. 59

23

C H A P T E R ONE

tends to admire). For Loredan the heart of the matter is the renascence of independent tribunician policies, which poses the problem of whether the conflict between the tribunes as champions of the masses and the consulate as bulwark of the optimates and of the constituted state, is inevitable. The opposition of interests, he decides, is structural, not casual, and must for that reason be palliated.61 The bulk of Loredan's commentary consists of very detailed rhetorical analysis, using principally and quoting in Greek, Hermogenes, of Cicero's means of accomplishing this. While Sigonio was lecturing on Aristotle in 1553-54, he was working on his edition with commentary of Livy. Though Sigonio never gives a reason for his decision to work on the text of this historian, it seems likely that it was an offshoot of his continuing research on the consular list, research which would in any case have required him to compare Livy in detail with the new inscriptional and literary evidence available. Sigonio thanked Ludovico Beccadelli in 1555 for his encouragement, and there must have been instigation as well from Paolo Manuzio, who would have seen an opportunity in Sigonio's expertise to produce a new Italian contribution to the study of Livy. This was something for which the time was ripe, following the distinguished work of Grynaeus, GeIenius, Rhenanus, and Glareanus. Sigonio finished his Livy in June 1555 and the book was published in that year. It made Sigonio's European reputation. In the Swiss and French editions of Livy which held the field at mid-century, the text had not only been augmented through the discovery and publication of books 41-45, but a mass of accessory material had accrued, including notes by Valla, Sabellico, Rhenanus, Gelenius, and, most authoritative and full before Sigonio, those of Glareanus, dating from 1540.62 The Parisian edition of Vascosan (1552), which Sigonio took as the base text for his own edition, included all of this apparatus and more, and represented the Basel-derived vulgate of Livy as it stood after the work of Rhenanus and Gelenius. In the Aldine folio of 1555 the miscellaneous fragments of the various annotators were swept away, and readers were offered a revised text of Livy, majestically printed, and the imposing Scholia of Sigonio alone, scholia which in sheer mass, acumen, and acerbity, far outstripped the combined efforts of all his predecessors.63 These scholia were naturally oriented toward Roman proso61

Ibid., pp. 95-97. A. H. McDonald, "Livius," in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum 2, pp. 33148; and see the entry for Glareanus in the Select Bibliography below. 63 In the Aldme-Sigonio editions of Livy, the scholia are printed in a block following the 62

24

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

pography, constitution, and history. Glareanus's commentary on Livy had inspired many of them, an inspiration not always acknowledged when the content was not controversial, but stressed whenever the impatient and assertive young Italian found that the Swiss had been mistaken, ill-informed, or just affably unable to resolve a problem. GIareanus protested against this treatment in a letter that was widely circulated by, among others, Robortello in Padua. The burden of the Swiss scholar's complaint was that Sigonio had used the new sources for Roman history which had appeared in the 1540s and 1550s—the Fasti Capitolini and the editiones principes of Greek texts—to disparage a prior work, Glareanus's own Adnotationes of 1540. Robortello's antiSigonian De convenientia supputationis and Emendationes of 1557 deal largely with Livian questions, and Sigonio's own Emendationes, also of 1557, reply comprehensively to Robortello and profess wonder at the offense taken by Glareanus.64 Sigonio's Livy was revised and reprinted in cheap editions by Aldo Manuzio, Jr., in 1566, 1572, and 1592.65 Its only European rival during the later part of the century was the series of editions prepared in Frankfurt by the firm of Feyerabend (1568, 1578, 1588). These resumed the old practice of publishing the accumulated commentaries on Livy, which had now swollen to fill a separate volume in each edition. Prefaces by Sigmund Feyerabend and Wilhelm Godelevaeus acknowledge the existence of an international competition in Livian scholarship which had, according to Godelevaeus, been enhanced but embittered by Sigonio's effort to recover the old Aldine preeminence in the edition of the clastext, to which they are very imperfectly keyed. In the Livy of Jacob Gronovius (I have used a late edition [Basel, 1740]) the notes of Sigonio and J. F. Gronovius are digested by book and chapter. In the edition of Livy with variorum commentary edited by Drakenborch, 7 vols., Leiden and Amsterdam, 1738—46, the scholia of Sigonio and others are digested in accordance with the modern system of reference by book-chapter-paragraph. (Vol. 7 contains the adversaria of Sigonio discussed in the following pages, and many others.) Another edition of Livy that contains the complete scholia variorum is the one in usum Delphini of Valpy (London, 1828). In the present work reference to these later editions is assumed and the scholia of Sigonio will be cited simply by book, chapter, and paragraph of Livy. This is a satisfactory, and in fact the best, method of citation as long as the original editions are controlled, in any case in which it might make a difference, to ascertain whether the first appearance of a scholium was in 1555 or later, and the eventual presence of textual variants. See in part 1 of the bibliography below, the entry on Sigonio's Livy under 1555; and in part 2, the entry under Livy. 64 Robortello's two pieces appeared together in the miscellany of 1557 described further below. In Sigonio's Emendationes of 1557, see "Mea adversus Henncum Glareanum opinio defense," ff. 41-44. 65 See below, nn. 172-74.

25

C H A P T E R ONE

sics.66 As subeditor of the collected commentaries he himself treated Sigonio a little unfairly, reprinting Robortello's De convenientia supputationis without Sigonio's reply to it, as well as Glareanus's letter to Hervagius and, interspersed among Sigonio's scholia, selections from Robortello plus previously unedited and now posthumous protests from Glareanus against individual scholia. Sigonio in turn denounced the Frankfurt editors in an appendix to his edition of 1572, after which there was, thankfully, silence.67 His scholia were honored, even in opposition, by the great seventeenth-century commentator on Livy, Gronovius, whose acute responses to Sigonio can be perused in his edition and in the later variorum commentaries. Sigonio was one of the greatest correctors of the text of Livy, as the modern apparatus criticus reveals, but his correction was idiosyncratic. He systematized the names and filiations of countless Roman magistrates whose identities, ancestry, and cursus honorum had become garbled in the transmission, if not the composition (or even before the composition), of Livy's text. This was a concrete improvement made possible by the years of labor that Sigonio had devoted to the comparison of the Fasti Capitolini with the literary sources of Roman prosopography. Sigonio is also the author of a certain number of accepted conjectural emendations—but also of very many suggestions that have been rejected. He had less interest in purely textual problems and critical technique than almost any major contemporary. His scholia aim to be a textual apparatus as well as commentary, hence to record all the cases in which he departed from his copy text, whether by conjecture or on the basis of manuscript readings. The latter are ascribed in the scholia simply to "vet. lib." (i.e., "vetus liber " or alternatively "veteres libri"), a vague citation that drew criticism from readers then and later.68 In fact, only when pressed by Robortello did Sigonio reveal that he had begun with the text of Vascosan, and enumerate some of the libraries of Venice and Padua, including the library of San Marco, which had furnished him with manuscripts of Livy.69 Of these the Bessarion codices are the most 66 T. Livii Patavini libri omnes (Frankfurt: Sigmund Feyerabend, 1568,1578,1588). The last edited by Franciscus Modius; all with a chronology based on Sigonio and Panvinio by Grelhus. 67 "Livianorum scholiorum aliquot defensiones adversus Glareanum et Robortellum," in Livy, ed. Sigonio (1572), with separate fly-title and pagination. 68 Faerno, Epistola, f. A3v; Robortello, Emendationes (1557) 1.7; and in the seventeenth century, Janus Gebhard, who in a series of notes published in Drakenborch's Livy, attacked repeatedly the problem of Sigonio's manuscript sources. See, for instance, Gebhard on Livy 5.30.4. 69 Sigonio, Emendationes (1557), f. 15v for his use of the edition of Livy by Vascosan; and

26

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

readily identifiable, and their quality as textual witnesses seems fully representative of the general run of manuscripts which Sigonio found to hand. Copied in the late 1450s, as their subscriptiones explicitly state, they are deteriores/0 humanistic manuscripts incorporating glosses and scribal "improvements." Sigonio was addicted to variants of this kind because of their characteristic of making the text plainer and more explicit, which is what he as historical commentator sought to do as well, and he included hundreds of them in his text and scholia. True textual criticism would have sought to recover the intention of the writer, even or especially where Livy's intention had been to introduce the deliberate obscurity of literary techniques such as brevity. Paolo Manuzio, who may have been concerned about this tendency, asked Gabriele Faerno of Cremona, a brilliant textual scholar working in the Vatican library, for a private review of Sigonio's Livy. Faerno's reply is of interest for the general history of textual criticism.71 He pointed out that Sigonio's contraction "vet. lib." gave no indication whether one or several manuscripts were meant in each case, let alone identify the manuscripts in question. A selection of places was criticized in detail72 and Faerno sent back to Manuzio a copy of the edition containing corrections of Sigonio's work and further recensions and emendations by himself. He stated that Sigonio had used bad manuscripts without weighing their authority, and argued for a more conservative and careful approach; several places at which Sigonio's scholia did not correspond to the printed text were queried. But if Faerno had intended a public attack on Sigonio he could have selected many places more grossly erroneous than the ones he discussed. His letter to Paolo Manuzio became controversial, however, when Robortello obtained a copy of it and had it printed in Milan in 1557.73 Sifor his manuscripts, f: 1Ov: "manuscriptos dico, quos multos inspexi ex bibhothecis sumptos Divi Joannis de Verdaria Patavii, Divorum Marci, Antonii, Ioannis et Pauli Venetiis, atque multorum amicorum" (among whom he mentions Agostino Gadaldim and Marc-Antoine Muret). 70 Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, MSS Zan. Lat. 362, 363, 365, 366 (not seen). For Sigonio's use of these codices, see n. 32 above. For descriptions of them, see A. M. Zanetti, Latina et Italica D. Marci Bibliotheca codicum manuscriptorum per titulos digesta (Venice, 1741), nos. 362-66, pp. 151-52; and J. Valentinelli, Bibliotheca manuscripta ad S. Marci Venetiarum (Venice, 1863-73), fasc. 6, nos. 24-28, pp. 12-16. 71 See Grafton, Scaliger 1, p. 66; and nn. 109,110. 72 Faerno refers to the following places in Livy: 1.3.8, 1.7.11, 1.9.5, 1.10.5, 1.13.5, 1.13.8, 1.18.10,1.19.6,1.21.2,1.22.4,1.24.8,1.36.3,1.50.9,1.55.9, 3.40.7, 3.40.11, 3.41.3. 73 Gabriele Faerno to Paolo Manuzio, 27 March, 1557. = Pastorello, Epistolario manuziano no. 675. = Faerno, Epistola (1557).

27

C H A P T E R ONE

gonio might have retaliated, but Faerno was able to demonstrate that he had not supplied Robortello with the draft used74 and Sigonio held his peace. In 1559, further confusion: Paolo Manuzio planned a reprint of Livy and Sigonio worked desultorily on a revision. Faerno suspected that his own emendations were going to be appropriated, as they may eventually have been, and Sigonio in turn had to protest, through Panvinio, that he at least was not a party to this. 75 In 1560 Faerno courageously supported Sigonio's De antiquo iure avium Romanorum at a difficult moment; but in 1562, after Faerno's death, Robortello reprinted his letter to Manuzio of 1557 in the Ephemerides Patavinae, and Sigonio belatedly replied to it. 76 Since most of the places adduced by Faerno were genuine cruxes rather than the worst possible examples of bad emendation, Sigonio was able to defend himself plausibly, but was forced to admit that the pressure of writing his scholia had caused him to lose close control over the correspondence between them and the readings of the text which they were meant to accompany. In the 1566 and 1572 editions of the Aldine Livy, Sigonio, or Paolo Manuzio, or Aldo, Jr., returned to the vulgate readings in nearly all of the places upon which Faerno had animadverted. The critical principles enunciated by Faerno in his letter retain their interest independently of the examples chosen, and Sigonio for his part expressed his lack of interest not only in the practice of textual criticism but also in the text of Livy, as he sent a revised copy of the first decade to Paolo Manuzio in 1571. 77 Francesco Robortello had supported Sigonio's candidacy for the post in Venice in 1552, despite Sigonio's criticism of him in 1550. However by 1554 as a result of their proximity professional jealousy had developed between them, and in that year Robortello issued a reprint of Marliani's 1549 edition of the fragments of the Fasti Capitolini with a pref74 L. Ceretti, "Gabriele Faerno filologo in otto lettere inedite al Panvinio," Aevum 27,1953, pp. 307-31, publishing letters from BAM, MS D 501 inf.; cf. the letter of 26 March, 1558, pp. 319-21. 75 Sigonio to Panvinio, 5 October 1559: "Se non fosse che non mette conto il prender garra, dirrei il diavolo di questo Faerno; che pazzie son queste? Come posso io havere Ie sue correttioni, non l'avendo mai visto? . . . ma di questo non dite nulla, anzi raccomandatemegli, accioche se il suo patrone etc." BAM, MS D 501 inf., f. 177r-v; and Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1006. 76 Sigonio, Disputationes Patavinae 2, ff. 68v-72r. 77 Sigonio to Paolo Manuzio, 4 March 1571: "Mando a V. S. Ia prima deca con Ie correttioni nel margine. Son pocche, parte perche la prima deca e stata revista da molti, parte perche io non vi ho voluto mettere studio piu che tanto. . . . V. S. metta nel testo quelle che Ie paiono, che questo non importa a me, che io non voglio saper altro, ne render conto d'altro che de' scolii." BAM, MS E 30 inf., f. 10Or, printed in Ceruti, Lettere inedite, pp. 102-3. = Pastorello no. 1505.

28

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

atory letter containing criticism of Sigonio's treatment of Roman praenomina (forenames). Robortello intended this edition, published by Gryphius in 1555, to be used by his students,78 and as a public challenge to Sigonio it was unobtrusive, but it aroused Sigonio's characteristic impulse to retaliate. His commentary on the Fasti was nearing completion, and perhaps without the stimulus provided by Robortello he would have waited to publish it together with the second edition of the Fasti. Instead, with Livy in the press, Sigonio rewrote the De praenominibus of 1550 as a complete account of Roman onomastics (praenomina, gentilicia, cognomina) with much criticism of Robortello and the first attempt to sketch the transformation of the ancient patrician city into one governed by a patrician-plebeian nobility. This was De nominibus Romanorum, his first full-scale published treatise; coupled with a revised edition of the Capitoline consular list, and with an edition of the Roman calendar by Paolo Manuzio appended, it constituted the Fasti of 1555.79 That this second edition of the Fasti was in some sense a premature publication is indicated by the fact that within a year Sigonio published the third edition of the consular list and the first edition of the commentary upon which he had worked since the 1540s. This commentary contains an entry for each year of the republic, the first part of each entry being an account of the prosopographical evidence for the eponymous college of magistrates for that year; gentilician names and surnames given in the various literary traditions are combined and resolved as far as possible if it is one of the years missing from the Capitoline fragments, and adduced for comparison if it is one of the years extant on the fragments. The second part of each entry, a resume of the principal 78

The edition is described thoroughly in Patetta, "Appunti su Carlo Sigonio" (1910). Patetta reprints Robortello's letter, dated CaI. Sept. 1554; it is Robortello's only contribution to what is otherwise a reprint of Marliani (1549). Robortello states in the preface to his Emendationes (1557) that he had the fragments of the Fasti reprinted for use by his students. Inscriptional texts were not normally the basis of university courses at Padua or elsewhere, and this is evidence of Francesco Robortello's disastrous fifteen-year effort to rival Sigonio in the field of Roman antiquities. 79 Muraton, Vita, p. 6, deceived by Sigonio's imprecise account of the stages of his controversy with Robortello in Emendationes (1557), lists an edition of De nominibus in 1553, a recurrent bibliographical ghost. Sigonio in De nominibus claimed that Roman women had genuine praenomina and at f. Iiir (1555) cites CIL XLl, no. 918, an inscription possessed by Ludovico Castelvetro, for the use of "Prima" as a female personal name. Robortello denied that Roman women had genuine praenomina and it is the modern view as well that descriptive appellations such as Prima, Secunda, and Tenia are not truly personal names. See I. Kajanto, "Women's praenomina Reconsidered," Arctos 7,1972, pp. 13-30. The calendar edited by Manuzio was the Fasti Maffeiani, for which see Degrassi, lnscriptiones ltaliae, vol. 13, fasc. 2 (1963), pp. 70-84.

29

C H A P T E R ONE

events of the year, allowed Sigonio to claim general utility for his book as a guide to Roman history. The Fasti of 1556 were produced, by a sharing arrangement, under two imprints, those of Paolo Manuzio and of Giordano Ziletti. This was Sigonio's first collaboration with Ziletti, who was to be his usual publisher until after 1574. Giordano Ziletti of Brescia had been arrested by the Inquisition in Bologna in 1548, and in Rome in 1550, for the sale of banned books. He settled in Venice in 1556, producing some 140 editions between then and 1578, and was a leader in the resistance by the Venetian booksellers to the attempt to seal off Italy from intellectual contact with the north. 80 Sigonio's references to Ziletti in private correspondence never mention this aspect of his career, being confined to notices of his plans for European distribution of Sigonio's works via the Frankfurt Fair, and also complaints about his promptness and diligence as a printer. When the Fasti of 1556 appeared Sigonio was already planning the monographs of 1560 and after, which he described then as dealing with "familiae et provinciae Romanorum." 81 During May and June of 1557 Francesco Robortello in Padua printed a four-part miscellany, one section of which, De convenientia supputationis, comprised a detailed attack on Sigonio's handling of Roman chronology (the differences between the consular list of Livy and that of the Fasti were, he said, accidental, not substantial, as Sigonio thought) with another, Emendationes, given over to random criticism of Sigonio's scholarship. Sigonio received proof sheets of these, and before Robortello's book had even appeared in August, was composing his reply, also called Emendationes. It came out in September or October 1557, and was a comprehensive defense of his view that the Roman chronology presented in the Fasti Capitolini was fundamentally divergent from that of Livy, with many new charges of ignorance against Robortello. Sigonio published nothing else that year or in 1558, but occupied himself in the research for and drafting of his monographs, and in discussion of their contents with Onofrio Panvinio. Letters from Sigonio to Panvinio survive from May 1557, but there had been correspondence, and perhaps personal acquaintance, earlier. 80 On Ziletti, see Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press [1977), ad indicem. Photocopies of the unpublished research of Ester Pastorello, "Cinquecentine veneziane," available at the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, list the editions of Ziletti and other Venetian printers. These lists were provisional and are unreliable in detail, but serve to give an impression of the production of his firm. Sigonio and persons associated with Sigonio are mainstays of the Latin part of it. 81 Sigonio, prefatory letter to Lorenzo Priuli, In Fastos commentarius (1556), f. a3r.

30

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

Panvinio arrived in Venice in October 1557 to supervise the printing of his works there and in Basel.82 His research had been carried out in the field of historical chronology, both profane (the Roman republican consular list and the chronology of the emperors down to the present one) and sacred (the papacy). Drafts of his work in both departments had been obtained and published in 1557 by Jacopo Strada of Mantua83 but Panvinio disowned these and set about the authentic publication of his materials. Having arrived in Venice with many points of detail still undecided, he discussed these at length in correspondence with two scholars in Rome, Ottavio Pantagato and Antonio Agustin84 and in person with Carlo Sigonio. Despite their mutual intention to publish books on Roman chronology and institutions, cooperation between the two men was, as far as one can tell, unruffled and unreserved. Sigonio is mentioned with respect and admiration by Pantagato and Agustin in their letters to Panvinio, and Sigonio saluted them in turn by way of Panvinio, who was, with Fulvio Orsini, his principal contact with scholarly circles in Rome. Sigonio's own letters to Panvinio from early 1557 and from 1558 to 1568,85 the year of the latter's death, often discuss technical questions but they are the only series of surviving letters by Sigonio to do so, and never at length. Sigonio was by nature a solitary worker, and the measure of what he lost in this isolation is the richness of the letters of Agustin and Pantagato, or for that matter the scholarly correspondence of many distinguished figures, including Pier Vettori and Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, with whom Sigonio was on excellent terms of respect and friendship, but to whom he did not write in detail about the problems on which he was working.86 Among the questions which interested 82 See Perini, Onofrio Panvinio (1899), for the biography and bibliography of Panvinio; and McCuaig, "Andreas Parricius, Carlo Sigonio, Onofrio Panvinio" (1983). 83 Onofrio Panvinio, Fasti et triumphi Romani (1557), and Epitome pontificum Romanorum (Venice: ex musaeo Iacobi Stradae Mantuam, 1557). 84 The correspondence of Agustin, Pantagato, Panvinio, and Fulvio Orsini could by itself furnish a series of monographs. The letters of Pantagato and Agustin to Panvinio while he was in Venice are in the Ambrosiana, MS D 501 inf. Those from Agustin (ff. 92-152) are published in Agustin, Epistolae (1804) and in the recent Epistolario (1980—presumably to be followed by further volumes) down to 24 September 1558. Volumes 4 and 5 of Agustin's Opera omnia (1772-74) contain letters in Italian, Spanish, and Latin. The best orientation to the world of these scholars is De Nolhac, La bibliotheque de Fulvio Orsini (1887). 85 All in BAM, MS D 501 inf. and published in Sigonio, Op. om. t. 6 from the transcription of Giuseppe Antonio Sassi of the Ambrosiana. 86 The collection of letters received by Pier Vettori, now in the British Library and cataloged in Cecil Roth, "I carteggi volgari di Piero Vettori nel British Museum," Rivista storica degli archivi toscani anno 1,1929, 7, fasc. 3, pp. 1-34, is a rich source. The handful of letters in this collection sent to Vettori by Sigonio, some of them not without interest, are published in

31

C H A P T E R ONE

Pantagato, Panvinio, and Sigonio in 1557-58 were the truth of the legend of Pope Joan, the reliability and authorship of the Fasti Capitolini, and the correct identification of the thirty-five territorial tribes in which Roman citizens of the republic voted in the tribal assembly.87 Two items from Panvinio's published harvest of 1558 should be described at this point. The first is his Fastorum libri V (actually ten books, as the five books of lists are accompanied by five books of commentary with extensive prefaces and appendices), a high point in his work on chronology. Book 1 is a complete republican consular list; books 2—4 encompass the Roman and Holy Roman Empires; and book 5 returns to the republic to provide accessory lists of pontifices maximi, principes senatus, and the like. Panvinio's consular list recombines the epigraphic and literary traditions which Sigonio had drastically divided to give a new standard list and numerical designation of the years of Rome ab urbe condita. The second book to be noted is Panvinio's Reipublicae Romanae commentariorum libri III. Its broad division encompasses the topography of Rome in book 1, Roman institutions in book 2, and the Romanization of Italy and the provinces in book 3. Within each book the material is broken down into a number of brief articles, and in these the shortcomings of Panvinio's magpie method become apparent. To be fair, he may never have planned anything more than a reference work; still, the order of the separate entries in such a work, if not purely alphabetical, counts for something, and anyone attempting to read through book 2 for a rational synopsis of the Roman constitution is led on a crazy meander from the primitive curiae and tribes through the Roman priesthoods (with lengthy quotations from Symmachus, AmSimeom, "Documenti." They come from Add. MS 10272, ff. 229-45, except for Sigonio to Vettori, 21 October 1567, in Add. MS 21524, f. 118 (missed by Simeoni but unimportant) and Sigonio to Vettori, 1 February 1569, in Add. MS 12110, f. 32. The much more extensive series from Pantagato and Pinelli in Add. MS 10270 show both men at their best; neither has anything to report to Vettori about Sigonio. One anonymous item from this MS—f. 316—can be added to Roth's catalog as Sigonio's since it is identifiable by the hand and approximately datable. It was originally a postscript to another of the signed letters from Sigonio to Vettori, apparently Add. MS 10272, f. 241 (Sigonio to Vettori, 26 July 1577). In this postscript Sigonio copies in his own hand extracts from a letter sent to him from Monselice by Gian Vincenzo Pinelli in the midst of the plague that was devastating the Veneto. In these, Pmelli laments the evils of the times and enquires after the health of Sigonio, Vettori, and Orsini. Vettori detached this autograph of Sigonio from the letter which it had originally accompanied and placed it among the autograph letters of Pinelli: hence its presence in Add. MS 10270 instead of 10272. 87 Given the length, frequency, and variety of the letters of Pantagato and Agustin to Panvinio, the only reference that can really be given is BAM, MS D 501 inf., passim. For Panvinio's attempt to deal with the legend of the female pope, which had become a subject of religious controversy, see McCuaig, "Andreas Pamcius, Carlo Sigonio, Onofrio Panvinio."

32

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

brose, and Cyprian—sources remote from the Roman republic), back to the assemblies and magistrates, and finally, more or less, to the tribunate of the plebs as the unwelcome product and source of mutations in the state. Much of this, of course, is Sigonio's territory, and he seems to have advised Panvinio freely in the knowledge that Panvinio's composition would never threaten the edifice of treatises which he was preparing. The example of Panvinio's disorganization, in fact, may have inspired him to order his own work more effectively than he would otherwise have done. Panvinio says as much, describing Sigonio as the most learned and humane "of those not resident in Rome," acknowledging Sigonio's help in books 2 and 3, and announcing that Sigonio himself was composing works "de antiquo civium Romanorum et Italiae hire."88 Sigonio's influence is apparent in many places, as for instance in the chapter "De patriciis et plebe; senatu, equitibus et populo," which repeats distinctions between earlier and later political configurations of the republic advanced in De nominibus (1555).89 Sigonio's contact with the scholars of Rome through Panvinio led him to take on the work of supervising the printing in Venice of Antonio Agustin's edition of Festus, a project in which Andrea and Bernardino Loredan involved themselves as, apparently, patrons, and which cost Sigonio a considerable amount of time and trouble.90 Something might be said at this point about Sigonio and Ludovico Castelvetro in the 1550s. From 1553 Castelvetro was involved in a literary feud with Annibal Caro, which grew ugly when Caro used his influence in Rome to have Castelvetro impeached for heresy. In fact, a whole era of heterodoxy in Modena or connected with Modena in some way (the case of Morone) was put on trial under the Carafa papacy. Castelvetro resisted until 1560 the summons to appear in Rome for interrogation; meanwhile on the literary front Caro published his major attack in 1558,91 evoking a response from Castelvetro full of characteristic linguistic schemes and subtleties in 1559.92 Plainly there was dis88

Panvinio, Reipublicae Romanae commentarii (1558) f. Oo4r. Ibid., pp. 297-303. 50 For a complete account of Festus in the Renaissance, including Agustin's important edition, see Grafton, Scaliger 1 (1983), chap. 5. L. Ceretti, "I precedenti e la formazione dell' 'Editio' dj S. Pompeo Festo di Antonio Agustin," (1953) relates the story of this editorial enterprise and Sigonio's part in it with copious citation from the relevant letters of Agustin, Orsini, and Sigonio. 91 [Annibal Caro, et al.] Apologia de gli Accademici di Banchi di Roma contra M. Lodovico Castelvetro da Modena (Parma: Seth Viotto, 1558). 92 Ludovico Castelvetro, Ragione d'alcune cose segnate nella canzone d'Annibal Caro "Ve89

33

C H A P T E R ONE

comfort in all this for Sigonio; he sought neutrality, recommending himself warmly to Caro in letters to Panvinio and Fulvio Orsini.93 Sigonio's relief that Caro had not vilified Modena and the Modenesi indiscriminately is palpable, for his loyalties would in that case have been tested even more than they already were. On Castelvetro's side, there is a letter of 27 January 1558 from him to Giammaria Barbieri which says in part "Messer Carlo has written me a long letter from Venice which contains little of substance; I mean that it is full of polite bombast."94 The charge is one of evasion, and its meaning probably is that Sigonio had failed to offer support in Castelvetro's struggle against Caro and the Roman curia. So the posthumous life of Castelvetro, originating in his family, accuses Sigonio of ingratitude. But the principal slight on Sigonio in this case is a silent one—Ludovico Castelvetro's deliberate failure to include a notice of him (hence the loss of a precious item of contemporary testimony) in the memoir of his Modenese literary contemporaries which he composed in exile after 1560, at a time when Sigonio had already become one of the glories of the city.95 Another area of Venetian life upon which the competence of the Riformatori dello Studio touched was the censorship of printed books, a process requiring many changes and accommodations following the emanation of new norms and a new apparatus of enforcement from Rome after 1542. The Riformatori had to receive a declaration, normally signed by two competent readers, to the innocuous character of every new book, upon receipt of which they released a certificate enabling the publisher to obtain an imprimatur from the Died.96 Some of these tesnite a I'ombra de gran gigli d'oro" (Modena: Gadaldini 1559; Venice: Arrivabene, 1560). I have consulted a later edition. 93 Sigonio to Panvinio, 3 May 1557: "Raccommandatemi a M. Anmbale Caro et persuadetegli ch'io l'amo, anchora ch' io sia da Modona," (BAM, MS D 501 inf., f. 154r; and Sigonio Op. om. 6.993-94); 10 December 1558: "La risposta del Caro e lodata et havuta cara da tutti, et per me mi ha sodisfatto a pieno, poiche ha lasciato star la patria, che non gh ha colpa," (D 501 inf., f. 169r-v; and Op. om. 6.1002-3). Sigonio to Fulvio Orsini, 9 September 1559: "Pregola a nsalutar in mio nome il Sig. Hannibale, il quale io honoro; e venuta a Venezia la risposta del Castelvetro ma pochi l'hanno" (Bibhoteca Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 4105, f. 23r, published in Simeom, "Documenti," no. 28). 94 "Messer Carlo scrive da Vinegia a me una lunga lettera, la quale contiene poco di fermo: io dico che e piena di gentili parolone." (Quoted m Bertoni, "Giammaria Barbieri e Ludovico Castelvetro " (1905), pp. 389-90.) 95 For the biography of Castelvetro, and for Castelvetro's Racconfo delle vite, see nn. 2 and 3 above. 96 See Horace F. Brown, The Venetian Printing Press (London: J. C. Nimmo, 1891; repr. 1969), p. 61 and passim for the procedure; also Stona della cultura veneta 3.2.640 ff. (F. Dupuigrenet-Desrouisilles); and Grendler, Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press (1977).

34

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

timonials survive from the sixteenth century in the archive of the Riformatori;97 according to their usual formula, the readers make solemn profession that the book in question contains nothing against the Catholic faith, princes, or good conduct—an indication of the general constraint upon frank expression that descended in the sixteenth century. The publishers themselves often selected the readers who prepared the testimonials, which thus serves to record a certain amount of quite open collusion among authors and publishers with common interests, and provides some insight into Sigonio's Venetian milieu. One who wrote testimonials for dozens or hundreds of books was the patrician Agostino Valier, who in the late 1550s taught Aristotelian philosophy, as other Venetian patricians had done before him, in the Scuola di Rialto. Traditional rivalry between the Scuola di Rialto and the Scuola di San Marco was probably the basis of Sigonio's attack on Aristotelian philosophy in one of his academic prolusions, an attack that may have been only a rhetorical exercise for the sake of that tradition. Certainly there is no evidence of personal discord between Sigonio and Agostino Valier, but rather firm evidence in the 1570s and 1580s of good will between them, which must have had its origin in the acquaintance formed in Venice.98 Fra Felice Peretti da Montalto, inquisitor from January 1557 to August 1559, himself provided many testimonials for books. Peretti was severe, and zealous to enforce the prohibitions of the new Index librorum prohibitorum of Paul IV Carafa. When the pope died in 1559 he fled Venice; Venice refused to have him back when a new pope was finally chosen.99 Naturally many books were passed to the professional scholars of the city for approval: Carlo Sigonio, Paolo Manuzio, Giambattista Rasario, and Marc-Antoine Muret served as readers frequently, as did their amateur confrere, Bernardino Loredan. One of them would write and sign the necessary declaration, another or sometimes two others would subscribe their assent, cooperation and reciprocation being 97

Venice, Archivio di Stato, Riformatori dello Studio di Padova, busta 284, "Licenze per stampa." 98 For an introduction to Vaher, see Giovanni Santinello, "Politica e filosofia alia Scuola di Rialto: Agostino Valier (1531-1606)," Venezia, Centra Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, 1983. He is seen as a typically repressive figure of the Counter-Reformation by Rotondo in "La censura ecclesiastica e la cultura" (1973), pp. 1439-40, but in 1574 he defended Sigonio's De Regno Italiae when it was under attack. Sigonio wrote to congratulate him on his cardinalate on 20 January 1584 (BAM, MS P 1 sup., ff. 149v-150v). 99 Grendler, Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, pp. 125-26 and ad indicem. Peretti became Pope Sixtus V in 1585.

35

C H A P T E R ONE

evident. Sigonio and Loredan testified together for Panvinio's De ludis saecularibus in 1557, and Peretti, Manuzio, and Sigonio bore witness for the Fastorum libri V of 1558.100 Peretti and Manuzio (the publisher of the book) testified for Loredan's commentary on Cicero's agrarian speeches. Peretti was fulsome, perhaps seeking to gain the favor of the patrician librarian of San Marco and thus to ease slightly the difficulties of his role as representative of the Roman Inquisition and Index in Venice.101 Peretti and Sigonio (the supervising editor) testified for Agustin's Festus.102 Loredan and a member of the chancellery, Gianbattista di Lodovici, found nothing offensive in Castelvetro's reply to Caro in 1560. 103 Sigonio wrote a testimonial for a book the subject of which was part of his professional specialty, Bernardino Parthenio's De imitatione poetica.10i This was also the case with regard to Francesco Patrizi's Died dialoghi dell'historia, for which he and Loredan testified.105 But Sigonio was able to testify, at an uncertain date, for a set of mathematical commentaries, and Peretti and Manuzio subscribed.106 Of the many books published in Venice by Sigonio himself, testimonials survive—in the file examined—only for De Atheniensium temporibus of 1564,107 an indication of the haphazard operation of this clumsy system of censorship, or the incompleteness of the surviving archive of the Riformatori dello Studio for the sixteenth century, or both.

PADUA AND B O L O G N A

The story of Sigonio's final years in Venice is largely that of the publication of four books in 1559-60, after the fallow period 1557-58. For his activity as a teacher, one brief remark to Panvinio in January 1559— ioo L l c e n z e p e r stampa (n. 97 above) fasc. 1557, no. 96, and fasc. 1558 no. 157. In the last, separate testimonials for Panvinio's Fasti by Peretti and Manuzio-Sigonio. 101 Licenze per stampa, fasc. 1558, no. 162. Peretti calls the work "Commentaria et diserti aeque ac nobilis iuvenis et quam expectatissimae spei Magnifici D. Bernardini Lauredani in Orationes tres Ciceronis in legem agranam." 102 Licenze per stampa, fasc. 1559, no. 186. 103 Licenze per stampa, fasc. "senza data" (but 1560), no. 271. 104 Licenze per stampa, fasc "senza data" (but 1559-60), no. 281. io5 L l c e n z e p e r stampa, fasc. "senza data," no. 284. it» Licenze per stampa, fasc. "senza data," no. 282. The works in question were those of Federico Comandino. 107 Licenze per stampa, fasc. "1560-1564-1571," a disordered fascicle. In unnumbered documents of 1564 Lorenzo Massa of the chancellery and Giambattista Rasario testify for Sigonio's work on Greek history.

36

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

"Leggo privatamente delle lettioni piu di quattro"108—reveals an aspect of his profession about which little is known. These private lectures would have been delivered for private remuneration, in patrician palaces, to groups smaller than those which heard the free public lectures in the Ospedale di San Marco. The instruction given must have had a more esoteric character, but about this, the heart of the matter, we remain ignorant. The event that marked the beginning of the end of the Venetian years for Sigonio was the secret departure of Francesco Robortello from Padua to the chair of humanity at Bologna, his (and Sigonio's) alma mater, to replace the recently deceased Sebastiano Corradi, in the autumn of 1557.109 This departure must in some measure have been inspired by Sigonio's rapid production in September of a successful counterpolemic to the Robortellian Emendationes: Robortello would not have relished facing an obstreperous Paduan lecture hall in the wake of that. Humanity in Padua was left in the undistinguished hands of Giovanni Fasolo, who continued to hold the secondary afternoon scuola (lecture) in this subject.110 As for Sigonio, he coveted Robortello's place at Padua and organized support for his claim to it among the students with whom he was friendly there, including the Poles Marian Lezenski and Andreas Patricius (Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki). In the autumn of 1558 he hoped until the last minute to be sent to Padua for the commencement of that academic year, and when he was not, suspended work on De antiquo iure Italiae, the second installment of his opus magnum, to produce an edition of the extant fragments of the lost works of Cicero. The ulterior motive for this enterprise was patent in its dedication, which was given to Marian Lezenski and through him to the Polish nation at Padua and all of the ultramontane students in Italy. In it Sigonio thanked them for pleading his case for the chair at Padua with the Venetian senate—a transparent attempt to force the Venetians to speed the process of transferring him. The Fragmenta Ciceronis, Sigonio's only serious published contribution to Ciceronian studies, came out early in 1559, and a revised edition, minus the ad hoc preface, came out in 1560, 108 Sigonio to Panvinio, 3 Jan. 1559; BAM, MS D 501 inf., f. 172r; and Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1004. io9 Venice, Archivio di Stato, Riformatori dello Studio, busta 63, "Lettere dalli Eccellenti Signori Riformatori." In minutes of letters of 4 and 8 November 1557, to the rectors at Padua, the Riformatori express alarm at the news of Robortello's flight. (A quick perusal of this file revealed nothing of any interest for Sigonio.) 110 McCuaig, "Andreas Patricius, Carlo Sigonio, Onofno Panvinio," n. 11 and passim for what follows.

37

C H A P T E R ONE

after which work on the fragments of Cicero passed from Sigonio's hands to those of Andreas Patricius. Giordano Ziletti was the publisher, and through 1559 and 1560 he was busy in the role of impresario for Sigonio's works on ancient history. Ziletti regularly attended the spring and autumn book fairs at Frankfurt, where he made contact with northern publishers, and where he arranged the publication of the ultimate edition of Sigonio's Fasti (fourth edition of the consular list, third edition of De nominibus, second edition of the commentary on the Fasti) by Nicolaus Episcopius of Basel; the first copies arrived in Italy at the end of 1559. In this work Sigonio took account of the Fasti of Onofrio Panvinio, and it constitutes his final authorial intention as regards the Fasti.111 Ziletti, however, reserved his highest hopes for Sigonio's De antiquo iure avium Romanorum, the sheets of which were printed in the summer of 1559 by Ziletti in cooperation with another Venetian printer, Nicolo Bevilacqua, and which Ziletti advertised at the autumn fair of that year.112 Not even Sigonio was allowed to have a copy, despite Panvinio's demands to see it, because Ziletti feared piracy from the north if sheets were allowed to circulate before the spring fair of 1560, at which time he planned to introduce Sigonio's new treatise. At one point he even projected a folio edition for the German and, through Frankfurt, the European market to accompany the Italian quarto.113 111

The Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris holds a copy from the library of Claude Dupuy of a Ziletti edition of the fasti bearing the date 1565 (shelfmark J. 1111), a unicum which it is difficult to explain. No other copies of such an imprint are known to me and I am convinced that there was no edition of that year. The text is that of the edition of 1556, and it would be simple to conclude that the title page is simply a proof pulled at a later date and attached to a copy of the earlier edition, if not that a handful, but only a handful, of the variants that appeared in 1559 have been incorporated. At best this copy has intermediate status between the texts of 1556 and 1559 and the status of 1559 as the final state of the text is not in doubt. 112 See letters of Sigonio to Panvinio of September-December 1559 in BAM, MS D 501 inf., ff. 176-82; and Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1005-09. On the Frankfurt Book Fair in the sixteenth century, see Albrecht Kirchhoff, Beitrdge zur Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Hinnchs, 1853); Friedrich Kapp, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels bis in das siebzehnte Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Borsenverem der deutschen Buchhandler, 1886); derivative from these sources, Henri Estienne and J. W. Thompson, The Frankfort Book Fair (Chicago: CaxtonClub, 1911; repr. 1969); Alexander Oietz, Zur Geschichte der frankfurter Biichermesse 1462 bis 1792 (Frankfurt: Hauser, 1921); Graham Pollard and Albert Ehrman, The Distribution of Books by Catalogue from the Invention of Printing to AD 1800 (Cambridge: Roxburghe Club, 1965). The original fair catalogs of 1564-92 are digested in Collectio in unum corpus omnium librorum qui in nundinis Francofurtensibus 1564-1592 venales extiterunt (Frankfurt: Bassaeus, 1592). 113 Sigonio to Panvinio, 5 Oct. 1559; BAM, MS D 501 inf., f. 177; and Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1006.

38

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

De antiquo iure avium Romanorum was Sigonio's first important synthetic work. Its importance and its Roman theme made the dedication of the book to papal Rome seem appropriate to Sigonio. Ambition played a part, for he wanted to leave Venice, and was solicited by friends and epistolary acquaintances to seek a place in the household of a cardinal or to continue his teaching career as a university professor in Rome. In the event, the delusion he suffered in the matter of the dedication gave him a lifelong and highly justified mistrust of Rome and the intrigues that festered beneath its allure. The death of Paul IV in August 1559 had brought, amidst the turmoil of the end of the Carafa pontificate, the release of Cardinal Giovanni Morone from imprisonment in Castel Sant'Angelo; but the choice of a successor to Carafa proved difficult. In September and October 1559 Sigonio was pondering the question of the dedication of his work and hoping like all of his friends for a new pope more favorable to humane studies and less inclined to rigid and reactionary enforcement of orthodoxy. He was also tired of research on Roman history and indisposed to do the work necessary to complete De antiquo iure Italiae. Being incapable of idleness, Sigonio turned for recreation to Athenian history. He decided to await the election of the new pope before writing and printing the dedication of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum; by November, with no pope chosen, the thing was becoming tiresome. His friends gave him conflicting advice, and he himself was somewhat fearful even of coming to Rome, a city which he may never have visited before. Ziletti needed to complete work on De antiquo iure avium Romanorum in January in order to be able to present it at the spring fair in Frankfurt; just in time, the new pope was chosen, and without any interval for reflection or for sounding out the matter, Sigonio dedicated the book to Giovanni Angelo de' Medici of Milano, Pope Pius IV.114 But instead of honor and pleasure his reward was dismay. The year 1560 was a delicate moment in the history of the papacy and of Christian Europe. The reconvocation of the Council of Trent was again an imminent possibility; more than that, it was at the top of the agenda for all who realized that the papacy could be saved and fortified only through 114

Cf. the letters cited in n. 6 above and further, letters of January-March 1560 in D 501 inf., ff. 183-89; and Sigonio, Op. otn. 6.1009-012. Sigonio told Panvinio on 6 January: "Ho intesa la vostra conclusione, che e bene che io vegna a Roma, et lasci Venetia; io verro bene volontieri, ma voglio far di quella che fece quello giudeo Parigino, che non si voile far cristiano, prima che non vedesse il papa et i cardinali. Verro et verro senza fallo fra otto mesi, poi mi risolvero . . ." (f. 183r, Op. om. 6.1009-10). 39

C H A P T E R ONE

the construction of a new image of itself. The conclusion of the Council of Trent was to signal the twilight of the Renaissance papacy and the dawn of the Counter-Reformation one, endowed with all of the connotations of religiosity and rigor necessary for the confrontation with schismatic opponents in the north, who had charged the See of St. Peter with paganism, idolatry, and the abusive constitution, over twelve centuries, of a territorial state in Italy. Only if one bears in mind considerations such as these while rereading Sigonio's seemingly innocuous and in fact somewhat clumsily phrased dedication of De antique iure avium Romanorum to Pius IV is it possible to attempt to account for the minor tempest that it apparently raised in Rome. The reaction, Sigonio said to Panvinio, would have been excessive even if, in a book dedicated to the new pope, "I had denied the pontifical power or written a commentary on the Priapeia." The preface begins with commonplace considerations on the rule of mutability in human affairs, which entails the decline and collapse of empires and states. The loss of the ancient liberty of the Roman republic is especially lamented.115 (Is it possible that Sigonio's critics felt that even in these lines, which suggest an animus against the Roman Empire, in which Christianity had risen to be the state religion, umbrage had somehow been cast on the legitimacy of papal Rome and its prospects for temporal duration?) Sigonio continued: we who seek to recover knowledge of the antiquities of ancient Rome are many. But only a few, chosen by God, must supervise the retention of the laws and the imperium of the ancient community. This is the task to which the pope is called.116 (The thought is unclear, the expression of it embarrassed. Sigonio now seems to make the new pope responsible for the revival of the pagan antiquity that had just been declared extinct; and he seems further to announce that the raison d'etre of the papacy is the mundane and political one of securing the safety and integrity of the Roman state—this at a time when the papacy required nothing so much as the reinforcement of its role as the spiritual pastor of all Christians.) The preface ends with an explicit appeal to Pius IV to protect and foster classical studies, and in so doing to reverse the recent neglect of them in 115 Sigonio, De antique iure avium Romanorum libri duo ad Pium 1111 Pont. Max. (1560), preface, f. a2r-v. (The preface stood in later editions.) 116 "Itaque qui obsoletam prope antiquitatum Romanarum notitiam hodie renovare conentur, fortasse multi; qui de vetere civitatis iure atque imperio retinendo cogitent, praeter eos, quibus haec est honestissima cura ab immortali Deo commissa, nulli certe reperiuntur. Quod quidem ad munus cum Vestra paulo ante Sanctitas . . . delecta sit etc." (Sigonio, De antique iure avium Romanorum [1560], preface, f. a3r).

40

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

Italy.117 This was a note that Sigonio had sounded and was to sound in speeches, prefaces, and letters throughout his life. But it is likely that Sigonio here committed his gravest offense, for his words could be, and I suggest were, read in Rome as public condemnation of the Carafa years (and this was rash no matter what private opinion many intellectuals in Italy, and the urban population of the city of Rome, held of Paul IV) and as a direct appeal for a return to the cultural values of the Farnese pon­ tificate, or even to those of the age of Leo X, in reaction to the classiciz­ ing grandeur of which the Reformation had sprung into existence in northern Europe. Such a demand, at a time when the papacy was pre­ paring to armor itself with the new and severe panoply of the CounterReformation, was evidently felt to be so untimely as to amount almost to scandal. By mid-February 1560 Sigonio knew that he had made a serious faux pas, and was close to withdrawing the dedication, despite the ludicrous impression this would have made with the book already in circulation. 1 1 8 At this time two men gallantly took up Sigonio's cause in Rome. One was Gabriele Faerno, the other was Carlo Gualteruzzi, friend and collab­ orator of Bembo and Delia Casa, and a living memorial of cultural and religious aspirations that had passed with the passing of the Farnese era,119 but of which Sigonio's preface had announced, so inappropriately, 117

"me vero . . . litterarum praeterea, quas iampndem negligi atque contemni in Italia coeptas esse constabat, non levis quaedam cum paucis aliquot bonis viris cogitatio commovebat. Quamobrem cum Christianis omnibus atque Italiae universae, turn iis praecipue, qui de anti­ que litterarum laude soliciti sunt, etiam atque etiam gratulor, quod is, quern optabamus, ac votis a Deo perpetuis poscebamus, . . . nobis sit tamdem . . . concessus" (ibid., f. a3r-v). 1,8 Sigonio to Carlo Gualteruzzi, 17 February 1560: "Da tante bande vien ripreso il mio consigho, che hora gia mi parve per cio di mentar alcun premio, hora temo di pena. . . . Horamai sono distnbuiti m diverse terre tutti ι libn in guisa che il libraro fra due mesi e per ristamparli. . . . AlIi libn dati via non veggio rimedio, con tutto che il desiden di trovare: a gli altri vi e questo di levar la dedicazione, come faro subito, che V. S. me ne scriva piu. Di trasferir la dedicazione dal papa al popolo Romano non mi par di poterlo fare senza scorno, essendo pubbhcata la cosa come e. . . . Ho mutato tutto l'animo che io haveva inchinato a tentar la fortune di Roma, et fatto che mi contento di questo stato, havendo intoppato cosi gravamente al primo passo" (Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Autografoteca Campori, busta " C . Sigonio," published by Simeoni, no. 43). The letter is autograph, with no indication of the addressee, who must however be Gualteruzzi. Sigonio to Panvinio, 23 February, 1560: "bastami di questo almeno, ch'io ho fatto un libro degno di essere intitulato al papa, et che in cio ho discorso ragionevolmente. . . . se io havessi negata tutta la potesta pontificia, ο commentato la priapeia, non si dovea far il romore che si fa per questa dedicatione, la quale e giudicata et gravissima et convenientissima et ornatissima di qua" (BAM, MS D 501 inf., f. 187r-v; and Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1012). 119 On Carlo Gualteruzzi, see E. Re, "La casa di Messer Carlo Gualteruzzi da Fano in Regione Pontis," Archivio della Societa rotnana di stona patria 77,1954, pp. 1-14; and Fragmto, Me41

CHAPTER ONE

the revival. Sigonio sent the dedication copy of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum to Panvinio, and Carlo Gualteruzzi, with the support of Gabriele Faerno, presented it to Pius IV in March 1560. Following this Gualteruzzi worked to obtain a Roman professorship for Sigonio.120 The latter had meanwhile resumed work on, and completed, De antiquo iure Italiae, and the parturition of the first scholarly treatise on the Romanization of Italy had left him exhausted but content, as always at the conclusion of laborious composition. This and Gualteruzzi's solicitation on his behalf led him, unrealistically, to expect from De antiquo iure Italiae, which he had decided to dedicate to the city council of Rome in the guise of the "Senatus populusque Romanus," the honorary and financial satisfaction that had conspicuously not attended the appearance of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum. This last had enjoyed commercial success at least, and Ziletti spoke of reprinting it together with the book on Italy in the summer of 1560.121 Antonio Agustin wrote a critique of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum, which Panvinio sent anonymously to Sigonio, and Sigonio sent back a defense of the places touched upon, despite the risk of "una lite simile a quella del Caro," sensing the learning and humanity of the author.122 In the spring and summer of 1560 he continued to be tempted by the thought of a Roman chair, but in September the Riformatori finally capitulated and gave him the one in Padua. Carlo Gualteruzzi and Gabriele Faerno performed the same office as before, presenting Sigonio's De antiquo iure Italiae to the Conservatori of the city of Rome.123 The book moria individuale e costruzione biografica (1978), pp. 41—42. Part of his correspondence, with an introduction, is now published in Ornella Moroni, Carlo Gualteruzzi (1500-1577) e i correspondent (Citta del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1984). 120 Sigonio to Gualteruzzi, 29 March, 1560; Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Barb. Lat. 5695, fasc. 20, published by Tiraboschi in Biblioteca modenese s.v. Sigonio, 5.80-81. 121 Sigonio states several times that Ziletti is about to reprint De antiquo iure avium Romanorum, the last time on 10 May 1560 (MS D 501 inf., f. 191r; Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1013). 122 Antonio Agustin to Panvinio, 4 April 1560: "Ho letto tutto il libro del Sigonio de antiquo iure civium Ro. con grandissimo piacere, et ho trovato molte belle cose, et ben dette et ben pensate . . . et perche in alcune cose mi pare altrimenti che come egli scrive, vi mando la mia censura. . . . Stara alia S. V. il ritenerla, overo mandarsela . . ." (MS D 501 inf. f. 149r; and Agustin, Epistolae [1804], no. 52). Agustin's review is not in the codex, but it is possible to reconstruct its tenor from the comprehensive reply that Sigonio wrote and sent to Panvinio on 25 May 1560 (D 501 inf. ff. 194r-197v; and Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1015-18). See also Sigonio's letters to Panvmio of 19 and 25 May and 15 June (D 501 inf., ff. 192-93 and 198; Op. om. 6.1014, 1019). Agustin's observations and Sigonio's replies regard points of detail and do not address Sigonio's basic ideas on Roman history. 123 Sigonio to Carlo Gualteruzzi, 24 Sept. 1560; Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Autografoteca Campon, busta "C. Sigonio," published in Simeoni, "Documenti," no. 59.

42

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

made no impression on these aldermen, and Sigonio saw the second of the two dedications over which he had so unnecessarily and unwisely agonized, thrown away.124 The story of Sigonio's three years in Padua becomes inevitably the story of his famous dispute with Francesco Robortello, the events of which can more or less be traced in the invectives that both of them wrote and, as it seems, distributed as broadsheets, in the university. These invectives were published, without losing their strong flavor of furious altercation, in the following order: Sigonio, Disputationes Patavinae 1 (April-May 1562); Robortello, Ephemerides Patavinae (JuneJuly 1562); Sigonio, Disputationes Patavinae 2 (September 1562). The second and third of these are notorious for vehemence approaching scurrility, but there is as well a great deal of interesting information about the careers of the two men and about the Italian universities, and some discussion of Roman questions. Francesco Robortello had made his name through the editing and study of Greek poetry, fields in which his achievement is still recognized, with only an occasional contribution in his miscellanies to Roman studies. His challenge to Sigonio in 1557 had been a failure, but, undeterred, he had projected in Bologna a grand series of volumes on "The Way of Life of the Roman People under the Emperors" which would overshadow Sigonio's treatises on the republic, and even induced a partnership of Bologna's not numerous publishers to print the first volume in folio. Nothing more awkward than the result, De vita et victu populi Romani (1559), could be imagined. Fifteen books treat the reigns of the first fifteen emperors, each under eight identical heads; the actual contents of each subcompartment are skeletal: lists of events, enactments, or personages from Suetonius, Dio, Aelian, and others, keyed by numerical references to volumes of commentary intended to explain them, but which never appeared. Nine disputationes are appended. The work is remarkable only for its oddity and had practically no fortuna. We have next to no testimony from Sigonio's first academic year at Padua (1560-61) except that one of his courses was on Cicero's Pro Milone.'125 In October 1561 the Venetian senate rehired Francesco Robortello for Padua while retaining Sigonio, a surprising decision for which there is no obvious explanation, only some indication in Sigonio's invectives that friends and factions were mobilized in Venice and Padua on 124 Sigonio to Panvinio, 2 June 1564; BAM, MS D 501 inf., f. 202v; and Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1021. 125 Sigonio records the fact in Disputationes Patavinae 2, f. 55r.

43

CHAPTER ONE

Robortello's behalf, but in disregard of the general welfare, for a conflict was inevitable and the university had its full normal complement of two humanists with Sigonio teaching the premier course in the morning and Fasolo the secondary one in the afternoon. Neither is it quite clear what subject Robortello was initially given, but if not from the first, his assignment was soon being described as a double one in humanity and moral philosophy, at a salary of four hundred florins (Sigonio got three hundred).126 Robortello represented this as the recovery of his former chair, a chair which was now Sigonio's; the latter, from the moment he learned of Robortello's return, sought secretly to leave Padua and obtain the place left vacant in Bologna. In truth Robortello's position in Padua was anomalous. There had never been an ordinary chair in moral philosophy there, and his lectureship in humanity displaced the unfortunate Fasolo from the rotuli altogether,127 but without filling the afternoon place, into which Sigonio refused to move, although the senate at first decreed that he should. To teach in the evening hour at Padua, even at full salary, would have meant surrender to Robortello. Sigonio was 126

The rotuh (yearly prospectuses of courses offered in the university) and the records of payment for the University of Padua, which survive in late and incomplete transcriptions, show traces of the disturbance engendered in the studio by the dispute. In Padua, Archivio antico dell'universita, vol. 242, Rotuli artistarum 1520-1733, the period of the dispute is not covered at all: f. 23, for the year 1557-58 has Robortello down "Ad Rhetoncam," and Fasolo "Ad literas Graecas." Robortello, however, fled to Bologna before lectures began in this year. F. 24 is for 1564-65, a year after Sigonio had left Padua, and records: "Ad Philosophiam Moralem Ordinariam et politicam. Extraordinariam Retoricae et Poeticae. Ex. D. Franciscus Robortellus Utinensis." F. 25 covers 1568-69, a year after Robortello's death and with Fasolo holding sway. Vol. 651, Stipendi di professori, mancanze, rotuli per I'Universtta artista 15091644, has fewer gaps. For 1561-62 (f. 240), Sigonio and Robortello are both down for "humanita greca e latina," Sigonio in first place, but Robortello with four hundred florins to Sigonio's three hundred. For 1562-63 Robortello has been shifted on the rotulo (f. 241) to "philosophiam moralem ordinariam et politicam et ordinariam retoncam et practicam." Sigonio is down to teach rhetoric. However, the bollettino or record of salaries paid for this year (f. 242) has both Robortello and Sigonio down for "Lettura di Humanita greca et latina," still at four hundred and three hundred florins, respectively. In 1563-64, the year Sigonio left, Robortello is down to teach "Humanita" alone (f. 244). He would perhaps have wanted especially to be styled as the humanity lecturer for that year in order to emphasize what he saw as his success in driving Sigonio from Padua. However, for the next year (1564-65), he is down for moral and political philosophy as well as rhetoric in the rotulo (f. 245) but the bollettino assigns him "Humanita Greca et Latina . . . con Liberta di legger la Morale d'Aristotele" (f. 248). Jacopo Facciolati, Fasti Gymnasii Patavinii, t. 2 (Padua, 1757), attempts to clear up the confusion surrounding Robortello's last years: he says that in 1564, in order to settle the dispute with Sigonio, Robortello was invited to teach moral and political philosophy, and to teach only the minimum of humanity consistent with dignity (p. 315). This might be true, but the year is wrong; Robortello was claiming to teach moral philosophy by 1562. 127

Padua, Archivio antico dell' universita, vol. 651, f. 238.

44

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

supported by the powerful Universita dei Legisti (the law students) and, among other individuals, a new councillor of the Polish Nation, Jan Zamoyski.128 The matter came to a head and was debated fiercely in the Venetian senate for three hours toward the end of November 1561, with the result that Sigonio won by a large majority the right to continue in the morning, in concorrenza with Robortello.129 Robortello then laid claim to the lecture hall normally used by the humanists, and when Sigonio refused to cede this either, there was a stalemate, with lectures suspended. Finally, Sigonio agreed to use another hall offered by the law students, but deposited a declaration to the effect that he reserved his rights about the first hall.130 With this detail settled the competition of Sigonio and Robortello began in earnest in January 1562. At stake was the size of each man's audience, and the university was divided into supporters of Sigonio and of Robortello. On 6 March 1562 Robortello posted a placard announcing that he would begin teaching rhetoric in such a way as to expose the inadequacy of his rival. Sigonio responded in kind, and for a week there were new placards almost daily, as well as criticism of each by the other in the lecture halls.131 Not long after, Sigonio posted a series of ten disputations at three-day intervals, published immediately or shortly thereafter as Disputationes Patavinae 1. They impugn Robortello's understanding of Roman administration, especially in the Roman provinces. Robortello's written response, the Ephemerides, were probably also issued seriatim, and in their collected form bear the date July 1562. They are presented in the guise of notes taken in Robortello's lectures, and attempt unsuccessfully to meet Sigonio on his own ground. Only the obiter dicta are of interest. The gravamen of these is that Sigonio's lectures are farced with minute infor128 Archiwum )ana Zamoysktego, t. 1, pp. 389-90, quoting Padua, Archivio antico dell'umversita, Acta universitatis D. D. Iunstarum Patavini Gymnasii for 11 November, 1561. 129 Gabriele Falloppia to Ulisse Aldrovandi, 4 December 1561: "Costui [Robortello] non voleva che il Sigonio leggesse a sua concorrenza, et ha messo sotto sopra tutto il mondo; ma non se poteva, perche ambidue sono condotti dal Pregadi alia medesima hora, di sorte che e stata forza, che si tratti questa cosa in Pregadi, et si e disputata forte tre hore. Il Robortello non voleva la concorrenza, il Sigonio la voleva. In somma il Robortello non ha scosse salvo che 15 ballotte in favore, et il Sigonio 140 in favore . . ." (G. Fantuzzi, Memorie della vita di Ulisse Aldrovandi [1744], p. 216). 130 Sigonio printed the resolution of the Universitas Iuristarum (the law students) of 29 December offering him an alternative hall, and the protesto of 30 December in which he provisionally accepted the offer, in the appendix of Disputationes Patavinae 2 (ff. V3v-V4r) where they are dated 29-30 Dec. 1562 (i.e., 1561). See Antonio Favaro, AtH della Nazione Germanica Artista nello Studio di Padova (Venice: Deputazione di storia patria di Venezia, 1911), p. 42, for a parallel contemporary notice of the dispute about the lecture hall and its resolution. 131 The placards were reprinted by Sigomo in Disputationes Patavinae 2, ff. T4r-V2r.

45

C H A P T E R ONE

mation about Roman life and institutional procedures such as those in the Roman assemblies.132 The concentration on these last is said to be characteristic of Sigonio's exclusion of imperial history and authors, a field in which Robortello claimed expertise.133 Sigonio proffered random details in whatever order they entered his head, according to Robortello, without the benefit of dialectical subordination and distribution, and his lectures were therefore a descent, in form and content, from the lofty tradition of Lazzaro Bonamico's humanism, which comprised "topica, philosophia moralis, respublica administranda," to the grubbiest sort of antiquarianism.134 With every allowance made for the misrepresentation of which these invectives are full, legitimately so according to the rules of the genre, Robortello's statements are still valuable evidence, the best we have, for the idiosyncrasy of Sigonio's lectures at midpoint in his career. In both 1560-61 and 1561-62 he lectured on speeches by Cicero, and this gave him full scope to expound the Roman antiquities which had anyway formed so large a part of his lectures on rhetoric eight years previously. The principal difference will have been that in the interval his own detailed knowledge had increased greatly as a result of his collaboration with Onofrio Panvinio, of the completion of his own monographs, and of the work of other scholars. The emphasis on procedure in the Roman assemblies, for instance, to which Robortello testifies, will have resulted from the fundamental research and masterly exposition of Nicolas de Grouchy in De comitiis Romanorum (1555), a book upon which Panvinio and Sigonio both frankly relied,135 and which changed the study of Roman history. It seems certain that in Padua Sigonio was in a position 132 "Legit hodie Sigonius? Legit. Quid attuht in medium? Aliquid de comitiis. Quid praeterea? Nihil. Cur de comitiis locutus est? Quia consulem se factum Cicero dicebat, a consuhs verbo ad candidates, ad comitia, ad tribus, ad suffragia, ad nomenclatores, ad dinbitores, postremo ad DIVISORES labitur, et ibi finem facit. Est enim cum de divisonbus loquitur, in suo regno, ac triumphat" (Robortello, Ephemerides Patavinae, f. 32r, and cf. ff. 58v, E2r, DIv, LIr). The divisores represented the sordid side of Roman elections, being the organizers of large-scale bribery. 133 "Imperatorum, ad quorum tempora in primis ille [Robortello] suas illas observationes antiquitatis accommodavit" (Robortello, Ephemerides Patavinae, 1.3, f. CIr). 134 Sigonio, said Robortello, preferred to divagate on "nomina et cognomina . . . de annis Cumaeae Sibyllae . . . quot volumina conscnpserit Numa; quomodo in linteis libris scnbi potuerit; an Tanaquil ante fuerit vir, postea femina; quot servos habuent Tarquinius Priscus. . . . Hk ridet Topica, hie ridet Philosophiam, ndet graecas htteras, nee ahud balbutit totos dies, quam de comitiis, de nominibus centuriarum . . ." (Robortello, Ephemerides Patavinae, f. D4v). 135 Sigonio's dispute with Grouchy is analyzed in chapter 3 below. Panvinio pays tribute to Grouchy in a postscript to Reipublicae Romanae commentarii (f. Oo4v).

46

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

to give much richer, more detailed lectures on Roman history than he had been less than a decade earlier in Venice, and that through the distorting mirror of Robortello's invective we are able to glimpse the result in the lecture hall of the new sophistication in Roman studies. In 1907 Emilio Costa in an important article traced the emergence of a new concept of studia humanitatis as the historical interpretation of the classical writers growing out of the older lectures on rhetoric and poetics during the tenures of Amaseo, Corradi, Robortello, and Sigonio at Bologna.136 The idea, applied to the whole career of Sigonio, seems in its broad outlines still to be valid. Sigonio's final response to Robortello, the second Disputationes Patavinae, is his most contentious, and except for the defense of the Consolatio Ciceronis, perhaps his least creditable publication. It was written and printed in September 1562.137 Coherence is lacking; much of the material printed insists upon points about Roman history that had already received better published discussion. For the unintended benefit of his future biographers Sigonio gives details of his youth, university education, and posts held at Modena, Venice, and Padua, and publishes apposite documents from the chancelleries of those cities.138 Along with much personal abuse there is a selection of defamatory poems about Robortello, all by Sigonio or his followers and all originally fixed to the walls and doors of the Palazzo del Bo in Padua in 1562, in an atmosphere of intense hostility and derision. The sixteenth century was a dangerous and difficult age in Italy and in Europe. Adherence to officially promulgated beliefs was enjoined and enforced on all sides, and delation and persecution, for some exile or execution, had accompanied the crisis of the Protestant schism. A new guardedness grew up, attended by new codifications and classifications of behavior in which the limitation of frankness played an essential part. 136 Costa, "La prima cattedra di umanita nello studio bolognese durante il secolo XVI" (1907). 137 See three letters of Sigonio to Ulisse Aldrovandi, 5 September, 12 September, 1 October 1562, from Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, Fondo Aldrovandi MS 382, ff. 218-20, and published by Emilio Costa in Ulisse Aldrovandi e Io Studio bolognese nella seconda meta del secolo XVI (1907), pp. 83-85. 138 Disputationes Patavinae 2, ff. V2r-V4r. Sigonio prints letters from the Conservatori of Modena to Cardinal Marino Gnmani (8 January 1546) and from Grimani to the Conservatori (2 February 1546) in which Sigonio is released from his commitment to serve the cardinal. From the deliberations of the Rogati (senate) in Venice, he prints resolutions that he be hired at 160 ducats (4 November 1552) in place of Robortello, that his salary be increased to 220 ducats (19 January 1553), that Robortello be hired for Padua (10 May 1552), and that Sigonio in turn should be drafted to Padua (7 October 1560, misprinted "1562").

47

C H A P T E R ONE

The impulses thus frustrated found release in a new quarrelsomeness, which was in turn codified in treatises on honor and the duel. The life of a university scholar did not give shelter. Sigonio's private letters of thirty years are filled with references to the riots endemic in the universities of Italy. At Padua there was street fighting over the remaining elective professorships in 1560, the year of his arrival; and one student, a partisan of Robortello as it seems, wounded Sigonio in the face with a knife early in 1562.139 Twenty years later the "gentlemen" (nobles) among the students still carried arms at Bologna,140 where in 1570 Sigonio's life was threatened for a careless word dishonoring the wedded state of a disruptive student. A year and an infinity of pains were necessary to undo the result of a moment's anger in that case. Ludovico Castelvetro's travail and exile had their origin in his private criticism of the literary style of Annibal Caro—an example of the large-scale tensions of European society intersecting a personal quarrel to produce consequences of monstrous disproportion of which Sigonio was well aware and which was fresh in memory at the time of the events in Padua. Sigonio's own life shows a Livian preference for the dogged study of the remote past as a way of escape from present ills. Italy had changed profoundly since the time of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, and an avoidance of controversial subjects and personalities even in private correspondence is not peculiar to Sigonio but widespread in Italian life and literature in the later sixteenth century. When Sigonio's reserve was broken, as it was by his furious anger against Robortello, he showed how well he knew—indeed was enmeshed in—the times. These remarks aim only to explain what follows, in which inconsistency is not the least of his faults. In the first passage cited he accuses Robortello of driving the distinguished Celio Secondo Curione from Italy by denouncing him as a heretic; in the second he expresses the anticipatory fear that Robortello 139 Robortello in Ephemerides Patavinae gloats over this wound. Antonio Riccoboni of Rovigo, later professor of humanity at Padua and Sigonio's opponent in the case of the Consolatio Ciceronis, was a student at Padua in 1562. As a councillor of the Universita dei Legist! he signed the document of 29 December 1561 in which the law students offered Sigonio an alternative hall (n. 130 above). In a private letter to Sigonio of 5 February 1584, published after Sigonio's death, Riccoboni indicates that this wound left a scar: "nonnunquam dixisti, debere te odio habere Rhodiginos omnes, cum ab uno de Rhodiginis in facie vulneratus et turpiter signatus fueris." Riccoboni, De Gymnasio Patavino (1598), f. 91r. 140 Sigonio to Alberto Bolognetti, 12 January 1580: "Qui non habbiamo cosa alcuna notabile; nel studio e quiete, si come in Padova tumulto. Disidero di veder il fine di queste armi, Ie quah fanno questi giovani oltre il solito insolenti" (Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS alpha G. 1.18 [Ital. 835] no. 8, and published in Per Nozze Valcavi-Rovighi [Modena, 1882]).

48

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

may do the same to him, then threatens to expose Robortello's own secret consensus with the damned heretic, Celio Secondo Curione: Come now, isn't it true that at Lucca you quarreled so bitterly with a man distinguished for learning, Celio Curione, that by giving information against him you drove him not only out of Lucca but out of Italy itself?141 I ought in fact to be extremely grateful to you, because although you have sought to bring all the filthiest charges from the sum of human iniquity against me in order to destroy me, you have passed over in silence that ruinous one which you used to betray many of your friends on a variety of occasions, and which although untrue was very much to be feared in these suspicious times by me: the injurious one of heretical impiety. . . . Have no fear that I may at this time reveal the dishonorable and disgraceful facts about your life, or that I may demonstrate, through letters of yours to him in which you confess it, that you also shared the opinions of Celio Curione, who has been condemned by the Church of Rome, concerning our faith. I should be untrue to myself if I should befoul not only the present work but even my own private thoughts by saying anything about this or going into the matter. Those whose mind is not dedicated to the special preservation of dignity and selfrespect, will inquire; and if no one else responds to their inquiries, yet the mute walls themselves of Lucca, Pisa, and Bologna will certainly re-echo the unspeakable utterances of your friends Curio in the letter addressed to the jurists of Padua and Grifonius in verses already made public.142 MI "Age vero non ne Lucae cum Coeho Curione insigni doctrina viro simultates exercuisti adeo acerbas, ut etiam ilium delatione nominis non Luca solum, sed Italia quoque ipsa depulens?" (Sigonio, Disputationes Patavinae 2, f. 47v). 142 "quippe qui gratiam tibi etiam habeam magnam, quod cum turpissimum quodque, ex summa hominum nequitia, crimen, quo me perderes, conquisiveris, perniciosam illam tamen, qua tu multos amicos tuos adhuc fortunis omnibus evertisti, haereticae impietatis noxam, quae mihi etiam falsa his suspiciosissimis temporibus vehementius erat exhorrescenda, silentio praeterieris. . . . Quae tuae probra atque dedecora vitae noli timere, ne hoc ego tempore prodam, teque etiam cum Coelio Curione ab ecclesia Romana damnato de pietate nostra consensisse, litteris tuis ad eum, quibus id confiteris, ostendam. Essem mei dissimilis, si non modo hoc scriptum, sed ne tacitam quidam cogitationem meam tali aut oratione aut conquisitione foedarem. Quaerent ii, quorum mens non ita in ipsa dignitatis atque honestatis cura defixa est. Quaerentibus autem si non alii, at certe muta ipsa Lucae, Pisarum, ac Bononiae moenia ea respondebunt, quae nefanda armci tui Curio et Grifonius, ille epistola ad iurisconsultos Patavinos scripta, hie iampndem vulgatis versibus prodiderunt" (Sigonio, Disputationes Patavinae, f. 67r-v). 49

C H A P T E R ONE

There are, fortunately, other aspects to Sigonio's tenure at Padua. One is the friendship that developed there between him and Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, a patrician of Genoa born and raised in the kingdom of Naples, where members of his family were feudal magnates. Pinelli had come to Padua in 1558 to study at the university, and although he never took a degree he lived there for the rest of his life, devoting his fortune to private scholarship and the accumulation of an oustanding collection of printed books and manuscripts. Pinelli's interests were universal and his collections documented contemporary European intellectual and public life; the part of his manuscript collections that survived, including many letters and papers concerning Carlo Sigonio cited in the present work, is today located in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.143 Another aspect of Sigonio's professional life that emerges during the years in Padua is a new interest in poetics; his only published work in this field, De dialogo, appeared in 1562. The poet Torquato Tasso entered the University of Padua as a student in the autumn of 1560, at the beginning of Sigonio's teaching career there, and followed Sigonio's courses. Tasso remained in Padua for two years before transferring to Bologna, where his association with Sigonio was to continue.144 In the preface to his Rinaldo, a chivalric romance published in 1562, Tasso praises Sigonio as a brilliant Paduan expositor of Aristotle's Poetics.145 His own theoretical writings include a Discorso dell'arte del dialogo (1585),146 which has obvious affinities with Sigonio's work of 1562 on 143

On Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, see Paulus Gualdus, Vita loannis Vincentii Pinelli (Augsburg: ad insigne Pinus, 1607); Adolfo Rivolta, Catalogo dei codici pinelliani dell Ambrosiana (1933); Marcella Grendler, "A Greek Collection in Padua: The Library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (15351601)," Renaissance Quarterly 33, 1980, pp. 386-416; M. Grendler, "Book Collecting in Counter Reformation Italy: The Library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535-1601)," Journal of Library History 16, 1981, pp. 143-51; Anna Maria Raugei, Un abbozzo di grammatica francese del '500. Le note di Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (Fasano di Puglia and Pans: Schena-Nizet, 1984). 144 See Claudio Scarpati, "Tasso, Sigonio, Vettori" (1982) for details, bibliography, and a full assessment of Sigonio's influence on Tasso; and McCuaig, "Carlo Sigonio's Lectures on Aristotle's Poetics" (1983). Scarpati analyzes the contents of an introduction to a course on Aristotle's Poetics given by Sigonio in Bologna in 1570 (BAM, MS D 221 inf., ff. 46-57). 145 "ed Aristotile chiaramente dica ne la sua Poetica (la qual ora con gloria di se e stupore e invidia altrui, espone in Padoa 1'eloquentissimo Sigonio) che tanto il poeta e mighore, quanto imita piu" (Torquato Tasso, preface to Rinaldo, ed. L. Bonfigh (Bari: Laterza, 1936), p. 5; 1st ed. 1562.) 146 T. Tasso, Discorso dell'arte del dialogo, published in Tasso, Prose, ed. E. Mazzah (MilanNaples: Ricciardi, 1959); and in G. Baldassan, "Il discorso tassiano 'Dell'arte del dialogo'," Rassegna delta letteratura italiana 75, 1971, pp. 93-134. Both publications provide notes indicating the contributions of Sigonio and others to Tasso's ideas on dialogue. These contnbu-

50

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

the same subject. There is enough in this combination of circumstances to suggest that Sigonio, wearied by his long immersion in Roman studies, gave special attention to the subject of poetics while at Padua; and that he may have been responding there to a higher level of interest in this subject among the students of the university, with Tasso at the fore, than he had encountered among the students of the Scuola di San Marco. De dialogo may derive more or less directly from Sigonio's lectures on poetics at Padua, which, like his lectures on rhetoric, were extremely discursive. In common with all contemporary writings on poetics, De dialogo deals with imitation, starting with the basic distinction between literary imitation and the Platonic-Aristotelian poetic mimesis, which is here enlivened by a striking simile from contemporary Venetian culture: you might try to paint as excellently as Titian by copying his technique (literary imitation, the use of another's style), or you might copy the personal appearance and manner of Titian so as to make it seem that Titian was present (a striking illustration of the poetic mimesis, informed by a Platonic sense of the deception inherent in representation).147 It is the poetic mimesis with which Sigonio is concerned in De dialogo: it can be used in every department of literature, although only sparingly in oratory (prosopopoeia) and in history (invented speeches by historical figures). In the case of philosophy, the dialogue, which simulates actual conversations, is the poetic counterpart of the unadorned disquisition, and Plato is the master practitioner of it. This leads Sigonio to consideration of the differences in scope, argumentation, and literary method between Plato and Aristotle. He constructs a definition of dialogue on the model of Aristotle's definition of poetry: its genus is imitation; its differentia are subject matter (philosophically controverted questions), medium (prose), and mode (the gamut from rapid question tions are discussed in G. Baldassan, "Varte del dialogo in Torquato Tasso," Studi tassiani 20, 1970, pp. 5-46. 147 "Etenim si quis dihgenter attenderit, facile inveniet posse nos duobus modis ahquem sive oratorem sive poetam imitando effingere, uno si tota mente atque omni animo eum intuentes, quam maxime possumus verborum gravitate et elegantia et copia figurae eius formaeque dicendi similitudinem assequamur; altero, si eius persona sumpta, orationem eiusdem ita simulemus, ut qui audiunt non nos loqui putent, sed ilium ipsum, quem nobis delegimus imitandum. . . . neque eadem artificn laus debetur, si quis Titiani pictoris hoc tempore nobilissimi in exprimenda viri alicuius effigie solertiam imitabitur, atque si rpsum agentem aut meditantem aliquid ea elegantia simulabit, ut ilium ipsum, non eras imaginem videre, et ex ea mores ac perturbationem animi perspicere videaris." (Sigonio, De dialogo [1562] f. Iv.) The most recent study of Sigonio's contribution to literary theory is Raffaele Girardi, " 'Elegans imitatio et erudita': Sigonio e la teoria del dialogo" (1986). 51

C H A P T E R ONE

and response to lengthy exposition by a series of speakers). With these theoretical points established, Sigonio devotes the remainder of his treatise to an examination of the differences in practice between the two greatest writers of dialogue, Plato and Cicero. Variations in their respective techniques and among individual works in the canon of each are accounted for on the basis of their different purposes and backgrounds. Cicero, for instance, is careful about the composition of time and place, making grave consulars discuss the relatively frivolous subject of rhetoric while at ease in an Alban villa. Plato's Socrates, true to his historical character, begins his conversations casually in the streets of Athens, and Plato is occasionally careless of the temporal and physical setting. De dialogo appeared from the press of Giordano Ziletti with a dedication to Cardinal Giovanni Morone. The interest in Plato revealed by De dialogo is a perhaps unexpected facet of the scholarly character of Sigonio. It is confirmed, however, by the contents of a set of fragmentary autograph lectures by Sigonio on Aristotle's Poetics that date from before 1565 and which may represent part of the course heard in Padua by Torquato Tasso.148 The fragment begins in the middle of the· fourth of a series of lectures on the Poetics and ends in the middle of the seventh. Sigonio's method was to dilate, and divagate upon, the text, with the result that the Poetics itself is only glimpsed at intervals. Lectures 4 and 5, which depend upon Poetics 1.2, are about poetic imitation. Lectures 6 and 7 depend upon Poetics 1.4—6, and are about prosody, rhythm, and rhyme. Sigonio's treatment of poetic imitation is remarkably dependent upon Plato. It is centered upon the passage from the Sophist in which the Eleatic stranger describes the difference between the pictorial and plastic artists who make exact likenesses of their models, and those who produce deceptively beautiful phantasmata by cleverly altering proportion. 149 Imitation for Sigonio partakes of the fantastic quality of the second type. The platonizing bent of his lectures will be clear if the three standard published commentaries on the Poetics available after 1560—Robortello's, Vincenzo Maggi's, and Pier Vettori's—are compared: Plato hardly enters into their discussion of Aristotle's intention at Poetics 1.2. However, Sigonio relied 148 BAM, MS S 91 sup., ff. 296r-299v, published in McCuaig, "Carlo Sigonio's Lectures on Aristotle's Poetics" (1983). The terminus ante quem proposed there for these lectures, 1565, is based on the citation in them of Aristotle's Rhetoric from the translation of Ermolao Barbaro (1544); I have assumed that after the publication in 1565 of his own translation of the Rhetoric Sigonio would have cited it and no other. 149 Plato, Sophist, 235D-236C.

52

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

heavily on Maggi for his analysis of prosody and rhythm in the subsequent portion of these lectures. The humanists at Padua normally lectured on two classical works every year, one Greek and one Latin, and Sigonio must have done so as well. Unfortunately the rotuli, annual calendars which give fairly complete information about the contents of the courses in humanity delivered by Giovanni Fasolo and Antonio Riccoboni in the period after 1567, do not record the books on which Sigonio lectured,150 and we can be certain only of lectures on Cicero, Pro Milone in 1560-61 and on Aristotle's Poetics, probably in 1561-62. Besides Tasso another student and protege of Sigonio was Jan Zamoyski, who as councillor of the Polish Nation had supported him during the feud with Robortello. Zamoyski was rector of the Universita dei Legisti in 1563-64, and later as chancellor of Poland was to become the most distinguished Pole of his age.151 His intellectual interests were broad and included Roman history: in 1563, the year of his rectorship and of Sigonio's departure for Bologna, Giordano Ziletti published Zamoyski's monograph De senatu Romano. This book shows evidence of much hard research and of much thought, in which the author was, beyond reasonable doubt, advised by Carlo Sigonio, though this is not explicitly stated. Sigonio's views on certain questions such as that of Roman citizenship are used and cited, while he is repudiated on others.152 A monograph of the same title by Marcantonio Maioragio had been published posthumously two years earlier in Milan,153 and Zamoyski's intention is plainly to surpass Maioragio by a fuller, more technical approach to the subject, in which he demonstrates that he has used all the most recent literature, especially the work of Sigonio, Panvinio, and Manuzio, that he has their advice and approval,154 and that he is, in sum, 150 Padua, Archivio antico dell'Umversita, vol. 242, Rotuli Artistarum 1520-1733, ff. 25-43 for the period 1568-99. 151 The documents of his life to 1588 are ordered and published in the four volumes of the Archiwum ]ana Zamoyskiego. Paolo Manuzio mentions his friendship with Sigomo in several letters. See either the Archiwum or Pastorello, Epistolario manuziano, both ad indicem. See also S. Lempicki, "Il cancelliere Giovanni Zamoyski e l'Universita di Padova," in Omaggio Cracovia-Padova (1922). 152 See Zamoyski, De senatu Romano, ff. 3r-v, llr-v, 31r. But Zamoyski also proposes quirky and unorthodox views, certainly not shared by Sigonio, such as the attempt to rewrite Festus 29OL to prove that there had not been a plebiscitum Ovinium and that the censors had had the ius lectionis—the right of selecting those admitted to the Roman senate—from their inception rather than acquiring it much later (f. 5r-v). 153 M. Antonii Maioragii De senatu Romano libellus (Milan: F. Moschenius, 1561). 154 Manuzio himself had drafted a work on the senate by 1560, but it was only published

53

C H A P T E R ONE

a product and part of the most advanced school of historical studies. There was no further communication between Sigonio and Zamoyski until 1577, when Zamoyski attempted, in a long letter delivered to Sigonio by a Polish envoy, to persuade Sigonio to live and teach in Poland in return for a handsome salary; the offer was, however, refused.1S5 Sigonio's two Roman treatises of 1560 were reprinted by Ziletti in 1562-63. Sigonio was unable to attend to the final correction of the texts, and later wrote to Pier Vettori that the printer had "scrambled" them.156 He escaped from Padua and the disastrous situation which had been created there by the vitriolic presence of Robortello, in 1563. The Venetians never formally gave him permission to leave but he did so anyway, secure in the knowledge that after two years of negotiation with the Bolognese senate he had been hired to teach in the studio of his youth, and after a halt in Modena arrived in Bologna in October of that year. At the age of forty, after stormy passage, he had come into port. The story of the negotiation has been told, and the relevant letters printed, by Fantuzzi, Costa, Frati, and Zaccagnini.157 The principal figures who spoke for and supported Sigonio in Bologna in 1562 and 1563 were Ulisse Aldrovandi (spurred on by Gabriele Falloppia from Padua) and Giovanni Angelo Papio, both professors in the Studio. However, Sigonio had sought this place from the moment he learned of Robortello's return to Padua, and it is of some interest to note that the first persons to whom he turned in September 1561 were Egidio Foscarari, bishop of Modena as successor to Giovanni Morone since 1550, and Carposthumously in 1581. Zamoyski in De senatu Romano, f. 20r-v, cites Manuzio's Antiquitatum Romanarum liber de legibus (1557) and also lauds Manuzio on f. 6v. Zamoyski makes frequent use of Asconius and the pseudo-Asconian scholia on Cicero (then considered genuine); Asconius was an author in whom both Sigonio and Manuzio were interested, the latter having edited his scholia, and by whom they set considerable store. 155 Archiwum Jana Zamoyshego t. 1, documents 138, 158. Zamoyski wrote to Sigonio on 24 June 1577 describing the enlightenment which would come to the kingdom of Poland under Bathory and inviting Sigonio to participate at a salary of 1500 thalers annually. Sigonio replied on 15 October 1577 expressing his pleasure at hearing news of Zamoyski after the long interval since their Paduan acquaintance. He refused the offer because of his fear of the cold climate of Poland and his own fifty-four years of age. Zamoyski also attempted to secure the services of Muret and Girolamo Mercuriale, with a similar negative result (see letters printed m ibid.). 156 Sigonio to Pier Vettori, 24 November 1566: "me gh strapaccio" [sic, ie. "strapazzo"] (London: British Library, Add. MS 10272, f. 231, published in Simeoni no. 83). 157 See letters of Gabriele Falloppia to Ulisse Aldrovandi of 24 October and 4 December 1561, published in Fantuzzi, Memorie della vita di Ulisse Aldrovandi, pp. 202 ff. (nn. 7,129 above); Costa, "Ulisse Aldrovandi e Io Studio bolognese"; the letter of Sigonio from Modena to the senate of Bologna, 3 October 1563, published in Costa, "Prima cattedra," pp. 40-41; Frati, "Di alcune lettere ad Egidio Foscarari" (1916); Zaccagnini, Stona dello Studio di Bologna durante i/ Rinascimento (1930), pp. 288-95.

54

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

dinal Girolamo Seripando, both then in Trent for the council.158 Seripando, who at some point in late 1560 or the first half of 1561 had arranged in Bologna an ephemeral reconciliation between Robortello and Sigonio,159 did not fail him: a letter of 9 October 1561 from the prelate to the senate of Bologna recommends Sigonio warmly.160 Foscarari and Seripando had both been delegated to the Council of Trent by Pius IV, a considerable rehabilitation in Foscarari's case since in 1559 he had been imprisoned with Morone in Castel Sant'Angelo, accused of false doctrine. For Seripando the Carafa years had been ones of prudent quietude, but he reemerged under Pius IV as Inquisitor in 1560 and cardinal in 1561. Sigonio's choice of these two as patrons is another instance of his continuing allegiance to the men of the enlightened reform within the church. Sigonio's arrival in Bologna coincided with the opening of the Scuole Nuove (now the Palazzo del Archiginnasio), a splendid new edifice built to house the university. It had been erected at the expense of the commune but at the command of the papal government in the person of the vice-legate, Pier Donato Cesi, and with consequent municipal discontent.161 The prolusion given by Sigonio there in 1563, the last such he ever published, celebrates the studia humanitatis, the city of Bologna, his own pleasure at returning to it, and Cesi himself for supporting the hiring (condotta) of Sigonio.162 Sigonio's studies and publications of the 1560s have a somewhat intermediate character: his work on Rome was brought to virtual fruition; the research for the great annalistic histories of the 1570s was begun; and various projects of a more limited or desultory nature were executed. The first of these was the book on the Athenian constitution begun in 1559, De republica Atheniensium, published in Bologna in 1564 by Giovanni Rossi (Rubeius) and in Venice in 1565 by Vincenzo Valgrisio (the only edition of any of Sigonio's works by this publisher). A shorter companion volume on Greek chronology, De Atheniensium temporibus, came out in Venice in 1564 as well, the publisher being Domenico Guerra. In fact the variety of Sigonio's printer-publishers at 158

Frati, "Di alcune lettere ad Egidio Foscarari," p. 138, prints Sigonio's letter to Foscarari of 15 September 1561. 159 Sigonio, Disputationes Patavinae ff. 3v-^ir. 160 Seen in a transcript in Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS beta 1.3.1 (Ital. 1827), from Bologna, Archivio del Senato, Lettere de' Principi t. 14 (1560-62). 161 See Gina Fasoh, "Per il IV centenario della costruzione dell'Archiginnasio" (1962). 162 Sigonio, Oratio habita in Academta Bononiensi (1563), reprinted in Sigonio, Op. om. t. 6.

55

C H A P T E R ONE

this time is notable: in 1565 Benacci in Bologna and then Ziletti in Venice published his translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric. Although Sigonio in his preface utters platitudes about avoiding the extremes of awkward literal fidelity and elegant but distorting paraphrase, his preference as translator is for the former. He uses far fewer words than Ermolao Barbara or Marcantonio Maioragio, the translators whose versions he had hitherto employed for his own lectures, and in many passages follows Aristotle verbatim, achieving the same number of words and a similar sentence structure in Latin to that of the Greek original, hence the same brevity and obscurity.163 In 1565 Sigonio was stimulated to return to Roman studies by a pamphlet published in Paris by Nicolas de Grouchy, the author of De comitiis Romanorum. Sigonio in De antique· iure avium Romanorum had contested Grouchy's understanding of the lex curiata, a measure whose exact significance is still discussed, by which Roman magistrates were confirmed in office, and more importantly of the imperium which Grouchy considered to be synonymous with magistracy, but which Sigonio viewed as conceptually and, in some cases, practically divorceable from it. Grouchy's Responsio of 1565 defended his own interpretation and Sigonio responded rapidly, as always when engaged in controversy, publishing a Disputatio in Bologna in 1566. He was pleased with the quality of this debate because it was conducted without personal injuries of a Robortellian kind.164 Yet Sigonio and Grouchy each attempted to convict the other of error and ignorance using the expostulating tone that had characterized much humanist debate since the early fifteenth century, for the task of putting one's case and impugning another's in orationes scriptae, even in purely technical questions of scholarship, was conducted as a forensic exercise because of the link between humanism and rhetoric. But not all scholars wrote that way and Sigonio's faults cannot be excused as those of the age. He understood the distinctions of genre perfectly, writing his treatises and histories in a neutral, objective style and his controversial pieces in a forensic one, but his forensic style was more aggressive than almost anyone else's, and he was utterly deaf 163 The Bolognese and Venetian editions are, in the passages checked, identical in text but very different in their use of punctuation. Benacci's edition employs full stops and commas in a way completely acceptable to a modern reader, while Ziletti's uses the semicolon indifferently for most of the stopping, obscuring degrees of subordination and producing a syntax difficult to interpret. 164 Sigonio to Pier Vettori, 27 June 1569 (British Library, Add. MS 10272, f. 242, published in Simeoni, "Documenti," no. 109).

56

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

to the fact, being astonished until the end of his life at the vehemence of his opponents without realizing that he himself had provoked it. A good example of the distinction of genres is De antiquo iure provinciarum libri II, the third of the series of treatises begun in 1560. Sigonio had long planned it, but it was written in late 1566 or early 1567,165 after his Disputatio but still under the impetus of the debate with Grouchy, for the definitions of imperium and magistracy were vital to the understanding of Roman government in the provinces. Sigonio treated this subject analytically in book 2 after recounting the acquisition of the provinces chronologically in book 1. He found the return to Roman studies exhilarating after an interval of six years166 and De antiquo iure provinciarum is a splendid book, showing Sigonio at the height of his powers. He planned to combine it with its two predecessors in order to furnish a corpus of Roman antiquities and in November of 1566 approached the firm of the Giunta of Florence through Pier Vettori with a proposal to that effect. This was not accepted, and as he considered the printers of Bologna inadequate to handle his treatises, although sufficient for his polemics, he had to turn once again to Giordano ZiIetti.167 Ziletti was tardy despite being pressed on Sigonio's behalf by Bernardino Loredan168 and De antiquo iure provinciarum appeared only in October 1567, with many copies bearing the imprint 1568. The desire to republish his treatises as an ensemble was not fulfilled until 1574, but while contemplating it in 1567 Sigonio thought of preparing a parallel threefold treatment of the institutions of the Roman Empire from Augustus to Theodosius. Onofrio Panvinio recommended that Sigonio extend the range of the proposed work from the reign of Theodosius (A. D. 379-95) to that of Honorius (A.D. 395^123).169 Sigonio in any case re165 See letters of Sigonio to Pier Vettori, 24 November 1566 (British Library, Add. MS 10272, f. 231, published by Simeoni no. 83) and to Fulvio Orsini, 9 January 1567 (Biblioteca Vaticana MS Lat. 4105, f. 239, published by De Nolhac, "Piero Vettori et Carlo Sigonio," no. 8). 166 Sigonio to Panvinio, 21 February 1567; BAM, MS D 501 inf., f. 207; and Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1023-24. 167 Sigonio proposed this arrangement to Vettori in his letter of 24 November 1566, cited in n. 58 above. On 9 January 1567 he wrote: "Ringratio adunque V. S. della dihgentia usata co Giunti, de quah io resto sodisfatto, con tutto che non servito. Io pighero la strada di Venetia poi che qui non posso far come voglio" (British Library, Add. MS 10272, f. 233, published by Simeoni, no. 84). 168 Sigonio to Panvinio, 1 July 1567; published by Tiraboschi in Biblioteca modenese 5.110. 169 Sigonio to Panvinio, 1 February 1567: "Ho scritto due libri de Provinciis solamente mfin al tempo di Augusto, per fornir il trattato de Italia, che non passa quel tempo, et perche trovo grandissima dissimilitudine, et chi non fa cosi inviluppa il Paradise . . . Ho in animo di scriver separatamente deU'Imperio da Augusto infino a Theodosio, parlando di nuovo del stato della

57

CHAPTER ONE

fused to follow the example of Panvinio and others such as Wolfgang Lazius,170 who had treated Roman history as a continuum from republic to empire and preferred a sharper periodization, dividing the bright world of the Roman republic from the darker one of the emperors. This project to write systematically about the Roman Empire was still halfalive in his mind as late as 1577.171 Sigonio had been able to write De antique iure provinciarum as a judicious treatise only because he composed it immediately after his Disputatio of 1566, in a state of satisfaction that came from having had the last word. But Grouchy emitted a Refutatio in 1567, the appearance of which coincided with that of De antiquo iure provinciarum. This time Sigonio did not respond immediately, but rethought all the questions arising from the lex curiata, the assumption of magistracy, the granting of imperium, and its exercise in war and provincial administration. The resulting treatise, De lege curiata, was published by Giordano Ziletti in 1569 in a typographical format similar to that of the previous Roman treatises, the character of which it largely shares, being a genuine extension of Sigonio's Roman research. But there is an admixture of the polemical, for Sigonio addresses Grouchy insistently throughout in the second person, and prosecutes his case against Grouchy's views. With citta di Roma, de !'Italia, e delle provincie, secondo quei tempi." And on 21 February 1567: "Quanto V. S. mi conforta, a seguitar l'impresa infino ad Onono, io accetto in ottima parte la sua ammonitione, et voglio che ella sappia, ch'io ho lasciato quella materia et nmessa ad altro tempo per due rispetti, uno, perche mi parea di confondere il paradiso, mischiando Ie cose della Repubhca con quelle deU'Imperatori, Ie quali, come sapete, sono diversissime; l'altro, perche mi sono accorto che non si puo ragionar del stato delle provincie sotto gl'Imperatori, che non si ragioni ancora del stato d'ltaha, et della citta di Roma, et cosi mi son risoluto di comprendere in tre volumi il stato sotto la liberta, i quali saranno questi: de iure civium Romanorum, Italiae et provinciarum, et in un altro volume spiegare il stato deH'Imperio, parlando pure della citta di Roma, d'ltalia, et delle provincie" (BAM, MS D 501 inf. ff. 206r, 207r, published in Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1023-24). 170 Sigonio to Panvinio, 28 July 1557: "Venne in luce . . . de migrationibus gentium, di colui che fece quel gran libro de republica Romanorum" (BAM, MS D 501 inf., f. 158r; and Sigonio, Op. om. 6.996-97.) Sigonio is referring to Wolfgang Lazius, Reipubhcae Romanae in extens provinciis constitutae commentariorum libri XIl (Basel: Oporinus, 1551), and its companion volume De gentium aliquot migrationibus libn XlI (Basel: Oporinus, 1557). The first of these is an enormous compilation of Austrian antiquities, together with what would now be called limes studies. It ranges freely from the Roman republic, concentrating on the praetors as the magistracy most involved in provincial government, through the vicissitudes of the empire to the Germanic kingdoms. 171 A letter of Sigonio to an unknown person, written 22 May 1577, explains gently various reasons why the farts of Saint Catherine's martyrdom in Egypt are historically doubtful, and adds, "Non ripongo Egitto fra Ie province nel mio libro percioche non passo i tempi della republica, et mi riservo a parlar de tempi de gh Imperatori" ( Forli, Biblioteca Comunale, Autografoteca Piancastelli, busta "C. Sigonio").

58

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

considerable revision and the abolition of its separate title, De lege curiata became book 3 of De antique» iure provinciarum in the collected corpus of 1574. In 1566 Nicolo Bevilacqua had printed the second edition of Sigonio's Livy for Aldo Manuzio, Jr.172 Text and notes were revised, but the production was much cheaper and less impressive than Paolo Manuzio's first edition of 1555. From about this time there survive letters from Sigonio to Aldo, Jr., as well as a few to the now aged and itinerant Paolo.173 Sigonio continued to feel affection for the father as he had always done but privately expressed disrespect for the son and his style of entrepreneurship. A third edition of the Livy came out under the Aldine imprint in 1572, about which Gian Vincenzo Pinelli reported this judgment of Sigonio to Claude Dupuy: "He says that the recent Livy was assassinated by Aldo Manuzio, and that it has never been printed with greater negligence."174 In September and October of 1566 Sigonio was in Rome, a city that he may have been seeing for the first time, as there is no definite record of any earlier visit there. Rome again deluded him, in some manner at which we can only guess. Writing to Vettori he veiled his dissatisfaction by referring to the "mala stagione dell'aere"175 which he had found, but to Orsini, who must have been aware of whatever had occurred, he admitted his anger.176 The most probable explanation is that he failed to 172 Sigonio wrote to Aldo Manuzio, Jr., on 18 March 1566 that Paolo Manuzio had urged him (Sigonio) to revise the Livy and that Sigonio had done so (he had worked on this revision as early as 1559). The book had been given to Nicolo Bevilacqua to print, but after its appearance Bevilacqua refused to send any copies to Sigonio despite being pressed to do so by Bernardino Loredan. Aldo, Jr., who was now his father's agent, was requested to see that the due copies were supplied to Sigonio (BAM, MS E 34 inf., f. 115r-v, published in Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1026-27, = no. 1262 in Pastorello, Epistolario manuziano.) 173 Three letters from Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli were printed by Ceruti in Lettere inedite (1867, pp. 106-8) as letters to Aldo Manuzio and thus are included incorrectly in Pastorello, Epistolario manuziano: Sigonio to Pinelli, 22 May, 6 July and 28 July 1583; BAM, MS Q 120 sup., ff. 368, 377, 383; and Pastorello nos. 1928,1936,1937. These letters are re-edited in the appendix to chapter 5 below. 174 Gian Vincenzo Pinelli to Claude Dupuy, 29 May 1573: "l'ultimo Livio mi dice che gh e stato assassinato dal Manutio Aldo, e che mai fu stampato con maggior negligenza" (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Dupuy 704, f. 24v). There was a fourth, posthumous Aldine edition of Sigonio's Livy in 1592. 175 Sigonio to Vettori, 24 November 1566 (London: British Library, Add. MS 10272, f. 231, published in Simeom, "Documenti" no. 83). 176 Sigonio to Fulvio Orsini, 9 January 1567: "Venni a Roma et mi partii nel modo che V. S. puote intendere. Ond'io sono stato in tanta colera fin qui, che non ho mai scritto a persona se non provocato" (Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 4105, f. 239, and no. 8 in De Nolhac, "Piero Vettori et Carlo Sigonio").

59

CHAPTER ONE

obtain from the curia, or from whatever cardinals he had concentrated his expectations upon, the recognition (perhaps financial) for which he had hoped. Throughout his life he had sought support of this kind, taking special care to recommend himself to the members of the Farnese family who sustained so many of his friends. To operate in this way was a necessity for an intellectual of relatively low birth and fortune. Sigonio finally realized his hopes when the Boncompagni of Bologna became the papal dynasty in 1572. In 1567 Sigonio undertook to write for purely lucrative reasons177 a biography of Andrea Doria of Genoa at the instigation of Doria's successor Gian Andrea Doria, and using documents or memoirs supplied by him.178 The link between Sigonio and the princely family of Genoa will have been Giovan Battista Doria, papal legate in Bologna from 1566 until 1570. The Genoese delayed publication on the pretext of preparing a translation into Italian,179 then published Sigonio's original text two years after his death, when it was no longer necessary to offer him remuneration; the version in Italian appeared in 1598. Sigonio told Vettori that his life of Doria would be "assai bella historia . . . et per quanto apparteneva a me, prudente, per non dir anchora elegante. Il resto sara colpa de tempi,"180 which means that he had avoided adulation and distortion to the extent possible. Biography was not a critical genre in the sixteenth century, and Sigonio's account of the life of Andrea Doria is an anodyne account of the origins and unhappy results in Italy of the Valois-Hapsburg wars: first military and political turmoil, then the fastening of the grip of Spain and enforced tranquillity in many parts of the peninsula. Doria's career, a long life of voyages, battles, and conspiracies which gave plenty of scope for colorful narrative, is heroically described by Sigonio. A sign of the mercenary nature of the composition is its silent use of Roman political myths and language in the account of Andrea Doria's seizure of power in Genoa in 1528, which is represented as the restoration of the pristine Genoese republic and the end of fac177

Sigonio to Panvirao, 16 October 1567: "voglio attendere ad altro, cioe alia vita del d'Oria, la quale e de pane lucrando" (printed by Tiraboschi, Bihlioteca modenese 5.109-110 from an unidentified MS). 178 Sigonio to Vettori, 10 July 1567: "Io, pregato dal S. Giovan Andrea Dona, scrivo hora la vita del Principe Andrea Doria con la fede dell'informatione havuta da Sua Eccellenza" (London: British Library, Add. MS 10272, f. 235, published in Simeoni, "Documenti" no.100). 179 Sigonio to Vettori, 1 February 1569 (British Library, Add. MS 12110, f. 32, published by Simeoni no. 106). 180 Sigonio to Vettori, 10 July 1567; cf. n. 178 above. 60

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

tional strife.181 The obvious model here is the Augustan settlement, and there are also echoes of the reconciliation of the patricians and plebeians in the first decade of Livy. Sigonio uses impressionistically a Latin vocabulary whose precise range of Roman historical meanings he had done more than anyone else to elucidate to depict the recovery of stability and communal traditions. In a remarkable parallel to the strategy of Augustus, Doria renounced the office of doge for life to become primus inter pares and effective lord of Genoa as priore perpetuo of the board of Sindacatori. Sigonio turns this maneuver into a dramatic set piece filled with Augustan echoes (to which he cannot have been deaf) but naturally without political analysis of any kind, or even an adequate description of the new Genoese constitution of 1528. In the city and in the University of Bologna Sigonio's position was secure and well paid, for he was given Bolognese citizenship and his salary rose to be one of the highest. The story of his ricondotte (the renewals of his contract) is well told by Zaccagnini.182 The first was agreed in November 1568 for five years at 400 gold scudi (or their equivalent value) annually, and with a charge to write a history of Bologna as well as to teach; the second in February 1573 for five years at 450 scudi; and the third in January 1578 for life at 2400 lire Bolognesi annually.183 Sigonio was sought by the Venetians for Padua after Robortello died in March 1567, and half threatened once or twice, but never seriously, to return there if Bologna should prove unwilling to satisfy his demands for remuneration. The payments made to him and to other professors at Bologna in quarterly installments are fully recorded in the Quartironi degli stipendi.18* Payment was by calendar year, not academic year, and each of the increases in salary negotiated took effect in the spring of the succeeding year. After his first year the level of Sigonio's salary was set in scudi d'oro, but the quartironi also record the equivalent value in lire Bolognesi, the rate of conversion fluctuating at a little over four lire per scudo. In 1564 his salary was 1210 lire; in 1565 it was set at 300 scudi, which produced 1305 lire for the year.185 In 1566 and 1567 his salary is given as 1285 lire; however, the express notation "300 scudi" is, unu181

Sigonio, Andrea Doria (1586), ff. 32v-43r. Zaccagnini, Storia dello Studio (1930), pp. 288-95. 183 Bologna, Archivio di Stato, Assunteria di Studio, Requisite dei lettori, letter S, vol. 26, t. 2, carpetta no. 18, "Sigonio, Carlo." 184 Bologna, Archivio di Stato, Riformatori dello Studio, Quartironi degli stipendi, busta 1563-83. 185 Ibid., 1564,1565. 182

61

CHAPTER ONE

sually, added beside his name. 186 Payment of the substantial increase negotiated in 1568 began in 1569 at a rate of 1714 lire annually for a nominal salary of 400 scudi. From 1574 Sigonio received 2016 lire an­ nually for his salary of 450 scudi, which dipped slightly in 1577 to 1912 lire. From 1579 he was paid 2400 lire annually,187 a large amount in a studio in which most of the lecturers were paid much less than 1000 lire annually. Only two other professors reached Sigonio's salary level, and only two exceeded it: the philosopher Federico Pendasio was paid 3400 lire annually and the jurist Giovanni Angelo Papio, 4250. The Bolognese rotuli preserve a complete record of Sigonio's career there, but unfortunately give no indication of the contents of his courses.188 We do have his introduction to a course on Aristotle's Poetics of 1570,189 and a French student of Muret's named Bissonerius who spent some time in Bologna informed Muret that in November 1576 Sigonio was lecturing on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis190 and in Decem­ ber 1577 that he was giving private lessons on Floras.191 The longest serving of Sigonio's fellow humanists when he joined the Studio was Pompilio Amaseo, who had begun to teach there in 1540, and from 1543 taught Greek exclusively. Sebastiano Regolo of Brisighella, who appears in the rotuli from 1541 as a schoolteacher,192 was in 1546, exceptionally for a member of this category, promoted to join the Studio as a human­ ist. Regolo's less prestigious lecture was given in the morning, and Si­ gonio taught in the afternoon—the reverse of the arrangement at Padua. When Regolo died in 1570 he was replaced by Stefano Carli, who had taught before that in the Scuola di San Marco in Venice. Carli died 186 Ibid., 1566, 1567. Sigonio may have taken the option of receiving his salary in actual rather than nominal scudi in those years. 187 Ibid., 1574-83. 188 Dallari, ί rotuli dei lettori legisti ed artisti dello Studio bolognese t. 2 (1889). 189 BAM, MS D 221 inf., ff. 46-57, on which see Scarpati, "Tasso, Sigonio, Vettori." 190 Johannes Bissonerius to M.-A. Muret, 8 November 1576: "Sigonium scito, somnium Scipionis pubhce interpretan ingressum, ut liceat ei in veterum philosophorum hortos excurrere: quae res iam movit quibusdam nausea" (Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 11590, f. 302, printed in Lazzari, Miscellanea t. 2, p. 501). 191 Bissonerius to Muret, 30 December 1577: "Is [Sigonio] modo privatim historiam Romanam L. Flori interpretatur in aedibus Summi Pontificis" (Biblioteca Vaticana, MS. Vat. Lat. 11590, f. 294; and Lazzari, Miscellanea t. 2, p. 507). The reference is evidently to Palazzo Boncompagni in Bologna. Bissonerius also informs Muret of Sigonio's life contract to teach in the Studio, of the imminent completion of De Occidentali lmperio, and makes a further com­ ment on Sigonio's insufficiency as a lecturer ("ad scribendum non ad docendum natus"). 192 Dallari, Rotuli, t. 2. The salaries of teachers (ludi magistri, grammatici) employed by the commune were recorded together with those of the lecturers of the Studio.

62

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

in 1582, and in 1583-84, the last year of Sigonio's life, he was accompanied only by the long-serving Pompilio Amaseo. Sebastiano Regolo published a two-part commentary on book 1 of the Aeneid (1563, 1565) and a commentary on the first of Cicero's Verrine speeches (1564),193 which give some insight into his teaching style as they were based on his courses in the Studio. Though he claims that his analysis of Vergil is based on Aristotle's Poetics, Regolo appears to use in addition a variety of schemes and sources from rhetorical, dialectical, and poetic theory, with a strong concentration on the topics of argument. A similar emphasis on topics theory and practice is present in the commentary on Cicero's first Verrine speech. For every passage, Regolo identifies the orator's loci proprii [utile, honestum, etc.) as well as the dialectical loci communes (cause, effect, adjuncts, etc.). The few passages in which he deals with the facts of Roman history are weak, and his commentary is predominantly rhetorical. Sigonio's lectures had in contrast a strongly historical bias, so that the students at Bologna were offered two markedly diverse styles of studia humanitatis by the two lecturers. In 1569 Sigonio published his juvenile life of Scipio Aemilianus in circumstances strangely similar to those in which he had composed it, for Antonio Bendinelli, his old rival, was also revising his life of Scipio for publication, as well as competing with a minor Modenese humanist, Camillo Coccapani, for a post in Piacenza. Coccapani was befriended by Sigonio, and copies of Sigonio's letters to him from August 1569 to the end of Sigonio's life, forty-four in all, survive in Modena.194 Those from 193 Sebastiani Reguli Brasichellensis in primum Aeneidos Virgihi librum ex Aristotelis de arte poetica et rhetorica praeceptis explicationes (Bologna: Rubeus, 1563), and the Pars altera of the same commentary (Bologna: Benacci, 1565); Regulus, In Ciceronis orationem in C. Verrem primam explicationes (Bologna: Rubnus, 1564). Rubeus and Rubrius are variant Latin designations of the same publisher, Giovanni Rossi. 194 The letters were published in Franciosi, Delia vita e delle opere di Carlo Sigonio in 1872, and with corrections and alterations to the numeration in his Scntti varii of 1878 (see bibliography below). They will be cited here from Franciosi's first edition (1872). Franciosi followed the transcription presently contained in Modena, Biblioteca Estense MS beta 1.3.1 (Ital. 1827) and made from autograph originals possessed by the Marchese Lodovico Coccapani. (It has not been possible to locate these.) Franciosi in an MS note (same MS, fasc. 9, "Bozza di biografia") speaks of another transcription made for Girolamo Tiraboschi. MS alpha L.9.27 (Ital. 841) contains a fasacle with a transcription of the letters which must be the one made for Tiraboschi. It appears to have been done more carefully than the published one, and there are many textual variants. Both manuscripts and Franciosi's edition give the date 12 November 1582 for the letter published as number 41, which must however on irrefragable internal grounds be dated to 12 November 1583. This letter regards the Consolatio Ciceronis and is re-edited in chapter 5 below.

63

C H A P T E R ONE

1569 and 1570 allow us to follow the course of the second feud of Bendinelli and Sigonio, who used Coccapani as a front. Sigonio's Vita Sdpionis came out in February 1569. During the summer of that year Bendinelli's revised Scipionis vita appeared, with an attack on Sigonio, and with their recent correspondence, much of it recalling early days in Modena, appended.195 Between the spring and summer of 1570 an anonymous retort prepared by Sigonio and prefaced by Coccapani came out,196 provoking a further pamphlet from Bendinelli.197 These publications have little intrinsic importance. Although they snarl over the facts of ancient history they are local in character, amounting to a rustic literary duel fought across the hills of the Tosco-emilian Appenine: that of Coccapani and Sigonio was published by Paolo Gadaldini in Modena, Bendinelli's by Busdrago in Lucca. Sigonio's letters to Coccapani, however, display without reserve the instinct of antagonism which has made his literary feuds notorious, but which was absent in his private life, for his personal relations with others were sincere and harmonious. He wanted to publish a further attack on Bendinelli but Coccapani had the sense not to cooperate. Another unfortunate incident, ludicrous but with overtones of violence, disturbed Sigonio's life at the same time.198 When the academic year commenced in November 1569, the tumultuous behavior of two students from Parma, Anton Maria Garimberti and Giulio Toccoli, twice prevented Sigonio from delivering his lectures. On the second occasion he left the hall angrily, and once outside attempted to identify the culprits. He was given Garimberti's name and informed that Garimberti was married to the sister of Toccoli. Sigonio exclaimed, "Come? EgIi ha moglie dunque? O che becazzo!" ("What? He has a wife then? What a cuckold!"). News of the insult spread through the delighted Studio, and the theme of Garimberti's cuckoldry was taken up and developed in placards posted the next day. Garimberti and Toccoli blamed Sigonio entirely for their dishonor, and stalked him, carrying weapons, as he left the lecture hall. They may have challenged him to a duel. The thing had 195

Bendinelli, Scipionis vita with Errata Sigonh et al. (dated 1568). [Sigonio-Coccapani], Errata Bendinelli (1570). 197 Bendinelli, Alia Sigonio errata (1570). 198 The story is told in Ronchini, "Carlo Sigonio" (1868) and in Benassi, "L'origine e la natura ignota di una grave questione di Carlo Sigonio" (1912). Ronchini used documents, most of which he published, from the Archivio di Stato, Parma, Epistolario scelto, s. v. Carlo Sigonio. Benassi used documents from the archive of the family Toccoli. To these sources may be added copies of documents connected with the case in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Carteggi, Lettere autografe, Cassetta 240, "Carlo Sigonio." 196

64

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

become serious and Sigonio tried to settle it in a confrontation with the two students at the home of Camillo Paleotti, but they returned to Parma unsatisfied and put their case to the duke, Ottavio Farnese. The quarrel became an official matter, the subject of correspondence between the duke and the bishop of Bologna; depositions were drawn up and exchanged. Sigonio denied insulting Garimberti, and a tentative reconciliation having been arranged, traveled to Parma in July 1570, accompanied by Giovanni Falloppia of Modena, to sign a formula of concord. The two gentlemen of Parma baulked however, and the affair dragged on until October 1570, when emissaries from Bologna finally obtained in Parma the formal cessation of the quarrel.

BOLOGNA AND MODENA

In 1566 Gabriele Paleotti of Bologna, a canonist and a friend of Sigonio since their youth in the 1530s, since March 1565 a cardinal, was appointed bishop of Bologna and took up residence there. Paleotti sought to realize in Bologna the reforming program of the Council of Trent, and the importance of his activity for Bolognese life and the frustrations he experienced in the service of the pope as spiritual and temporal lord of the city are recounted in an important biography.199 The biographer documents the friendship and collaboration between Paleotti and Sigonio, whom the former protected and utilized in his efforts to foster in Bologna piety as well as—in fact, by means of—humane learning. When Sigonio's contract was renewed in 1568 he was charged with the composition of a history of Bologna, and thus his historical interests took a decisive turn away from the classical world, toward medieval Italy. The research which he undertook on the origins and growth of the commune of Bologna soon led him to formulate plans for a more general history of the Kingdom of Italy (Regnum Italiae), the territorial and political unit within which the north Italian communes were born, to commence with the Longobard invasion. Sigonio utilized chronicles and archives from Bologna and Modena, and wrote to many friends to obtain similar material, or notice of similar material, from further afield.200 His 199 Paolo Prodi, Il cardinale Gabriele Paleotti (vol. 1,1959; vol. 2,1967). All references here are to vol. 2, which deals with Paleotti's activity as bishop of Bologna. 200 -J-J16 article of Gina Fasoli, "Appunti sulla Historia Bononiensis ed altre opere di Carlo Sigonio" (1973), is essential. Bertoni, "Giammaria Barbieri e Ludovico Castelvetro" gives details of Sigonio's contacts with Barbieri (on whom see the relevant entry by G. Folena in DBI

65

C H A P T E R ONE

history of Bologna was soon composed, and was printed in Bologna in late 1570 and early 1571. It relates in annalistic form the political and military events of Bologna from antiquity to A. D. 1267, and also gives much of the general history of Italy in this period. The chronology of Sigonio's activities becomes unclear at this point. He began to print in Bologna the sheets of De Regno ltaliae, as the more general work was called, while continuing to assemble materials and traveling to the cities of Emilia and Lombardy for this purpose. In March 1571 he wrote to Paolo Manuzio that five sheets of De Regno ltaliae had been printed.201 In April he sent a copy of the first sheet to G. B. Pico of Parma to encourage him to hunt for more undiscovered material.202 By 7 April 1571 two books of De Regno ltaliae had been printed.203 In September 1571 Sigonio traveled to Cremona, Milan, Brescia and Verona, for the purpose of research.204 The first version of De Regno ltaliae, which encompassed eight books instead of the eventual fifteen, was completely printed in 1571.205 But although its existence is not in doubt, this version of De Regno ltaliae never saw the light. In late 1571, on the authority of Pope Pius V Ghislieri, the distribution of the history of Bologna already in print was flatly forbidden in Rome,206 and it appears that although this prohibition did not explicitly extend to the history of Italy, Sigonio and those in Bologna who were au courant understood that for the moment the publication in Bologna of any part of his recent historical research was impossible. Sigonio in a letter to Coccapani de6, 1964, pp. 226-30), who furnished him with many medieval documents from Modena. The archive of the CoUegio di San Carlo in Modena contains three autograph letters of Barbieri to Sigonio of 18 November 1568, 12 November 1569, and 1 January 1570 dealing with this subject. On these letters, see G. Bertoni, "Giammaria Barbieri e Ludovico Castelvetro," p. 391. 201 Sigonio to Paolo Manuzio, 4 March 1571 (BAM, MS E 30 inf., f. 100, published in Ceruti, Lettere inedite, pp. 102-3). 202 Sigonio to G. B. Pico, 4 April 1571; Parma, Archivio di Stato, Epistolario scelto, s. v. Carlo Sigonio, and published by Ronchini, "Carlo Sigonio," pp. 285-86. 203 Sigonio to Coccapani, 7 April 1571, no. 14 in Franciosi. 204 Sigonio to Coccapani, 12 October 1571: "Io fui a Cremona . . . Spesi poi tutto il mese di settembre in Milano, Bressa e Verona ed alii 28 tornai a Bologna non toccando Modena" (Franciosi, no. 20). 205 Sigonio to Giovanni Falloppia, 18 April 1571: "ed ora voglio che il mondo abbia per risposta sei libn dell'istoria di Bologna et otto di quella d'ltalia, pieni di mille cose notabili et gravi et inaudite." This letter, published by Franciosi (p. 64), reveals that the first version of De Regno ltaliae was divided into eight books. Sigonio, taking a lofty attitude here, means that his histories will constitute his implicit response to the invectives of Antonio Bendinelli. 206 Prodi, Paleotti, p. 252, and Fasoh, "Appunti sulla Historia Bononiensis," p. 695. The studies of Paolo Prodi and Gma Fasoli on Sigonio, his histories, and the censors are resumed and extended in McCuaig, "Carlo Sigonio storico e la censura." Material from this article appears in the present chapter and in chapter 4 below. 66

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

scribed the decision taken in Rome as the simple result of local malignity207 but the issues at stake were larger ones. As for the suppression of the first version of De Regno ltaliae, Gian Vincenzo Pinelli wrote to Claude Dupuy in 1573 that Sigonio had found so many new sources since the printing of it that the work had been completely rewritten, and hence the loss sustained by scrapping the first version was quite justified.208 The displeasure which Sigonio's history of Bologna aroused in Rome heralded the reception there of his historical works of the succeeding decade. Sigonio in his letter to Coccapani speaks of the hostility of certain Bolognesi as the source of the obstacle, a hostility caused by the fact that he had given scant credit to cherished but absurd local legends and forgeries concerning the foundation of both the city and the university in antiquity by the emperor Theodosius II and the bishop, San Petronio.209 However, the official review of the book was carried out in Rome, first by G. B. Amalteo and Ugo Boncompagni, cardinal of S. Sisto, who between them contributed a handful of admonitions, then by Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto, who contributed 135.210 The Bolognesi sought throughout the 1570s to have the ban on this book rescinded, and meanwhile allowed the copies printed in 1571 to be distributed under the counter, without title page or dedication.211 As for Sigonio he set about revising the work in the late 1570s, and fair copies of this revision exist in Bologna and elsewhere.212 207 Sigonio to Coccapani, 12 October 1571: "La maligmta d'alcum Bolognesi fu tale, che il papa fece soprastare la publicazione dell'istona di Bologna, e per conseguente non ho voluto publicar quella d'ltalia" (Franciosi, no. 20). 208 pi ne lli t 0 Claude Dupuy, 29 May 1573: "L'histone di Bologna del Sigonio sin qui non si veggono fuori; vi furono opposte alcune cose, che per ancora non restano spedite, et I'autore non se ne cura, parendogli questo carico convenir ai Bolognesi. EgIi sta tutto nell'opera de Regno ltaliae, dove ha trovate tame cose di nuovo dopo che fu finita di stampare, che l'ha rifatta interamente, in modo che la prima spesa resta buttata via. Et fu bene, che non fusse data in luce. E' veramente un valenthuomo et non cessa di fatigare a beneficio delle lettere . . . " (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Dupuy 704, f. 24v). 209 See Fasoli, "Appunti sulla Historia Bononiensis" and "La composizione del falso diploma teodosiano" with other material published in her Scritti dx storia medievale. BAM, MS P 193 sup., ff.1-3 contains Sigonio's "De Bononiensi gymnasio an a Theodosio institutum," his demonstration of the historical improbabilities of the privilege; it is printed in Op. om. 6.98992. 210 The censures with Sigonio's replies are printed in Sigonio, Op. om. 3.333-50. They are described in further detail in chapter 4. 211 With consequent bibliographical confusion, wonderfully resolved in Fasoli, "Appunti sulla Historia Bononiensis." Some attempt was made to prepare title pages bearing the date 1578, and this is how it is listed in most catalogs. 212 Rome, Biblioteca Corsiniana, MS 350 (35 F 16). Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, MSS

67

CHAPTER ONE

An interesting reflection of Sigonio's role as a teacher and promoter of the study of history in the University of Bologna comes from an unpublished Ambrosiana manuscript wrongly attributed to him in the catalog. Like most professors, Sigonio boarded students and lectured privately to them and others in his home. One of his boarders, whose identity is unknown, was granted by his family a year of indulgence in humanistic study with Sigonio before proceeding to his law degree, and used it to compose a Historiae tractatio,213 datable between 1565 and 1572.214 It is a compendium of universal history derived from public lectures in the university as well as private tutoring by Sigonio, and from reading in published works, including those of Onofrio Panvinio on historical chronology and of Sigonio himself. The central portion deals with Roman history, and several digressions treat in detail questions in which Sigonio was interested, such as that of the Roman voting assemblies. Sigonio's public lectures are the source here, for the author says, "I have set out to draft in unified form this treatment of history as delivered by Sigonius in the University of Bologna."215 He adds that he sought to augment this core of material with an account of the predecessors and successors of the Romans, and for the former sketches the series of Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires. As for those who followed, the eastern Roman Empire is barely touched upon, but there is evident interest in the empire of Mohammed, and many pages on the 1362,1363 (698 and 699 in the catalogue by Frati). A portion of MS 1363 entitled Continuatio ad Historiam Bonomensem was printed by Argelati in Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1033-62. 213 BAM, MS D 435 inf., ff. 1-83, entitled in the hand of a later possessor or inventanst Sinopsis historiae tractationis quam Carolus Sigonius in Bononienst Gymnasio habuit. The author wrote: "quoniam Deus opt. max. mihi apud Carolum Sigonium, virum turn caeteris rebus praestantissimum, turn in hoc genere excellentissimum, contubernium comparavit, verum cum annus tantum ad haec studia colenda mihi a patre propinquisque concedatur, nullos me esse progressus facturum intellexi, si m hoc tarn exiguo temporis spatio loquendi elegantiae, simul et poetarum tractationi atque historiarum cognitioni (in has enim tres partes hoc humanitatis studium distribuitur) operam navare vellem, quare rerum gestarum tractationi non caeteris tamen omissis hoc totum mihi concessum tempus tribuere constitui" (f. lr-v). 214 This results from the example given on f. 82r of the three orders of the cardinalate: "Alexander Farnesius Episcopus Cardinahs Tusculanensis, Ludovicus Mauritius Diaconus Cardinalis tituli Sancti Onofrii, Gabriel Paleotus Presbiter Cardinalis tituli Sancti Joannis et Pauli." Alessandro Farnese, Lodovico Madruzzi (recte Madrutius), and Gabriele Paleotti held those titular churches contemporaneously only in the period 1565-72. 215 "institui hanc historicam tractationem, quam Sigonius in Bononiensi Gymnasio habuit, in unum redigere, sed ut perfectiorem omnium rerum tarn veterum quam recentiorum mihi cognitionem compararem, opere praecium esse duxi de priscis in primis regnis ac praecipue orientahbus, quae longe antiquitate Romanam Rempublicam antecedunt, disputare, ita ut ostendam quomodo a priscis Regibus ad recentiores, a recentionbus ad praesentes ipsa sint delapsa, quare nihil poterit esse neque utilius neque iucundms neque honestius" (f. lv-2r). 68

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

Goths, Longobards, Franks, and Saxons in the west. The works of Panvinio are cited, but it is quite possible, given the terminus ante quem of the composition, that Sigonio imparted the fruits of his own research into medieval history to this acolyte, concerning whose identity a very tentative hypothesis might be advanced. Giacomo Mainoldi Gallarati, a member of a patrician family of Cre­ mona, had a distinguished career as a jurist and office-holder in the Mil­ anese dominion of Philip II, and at the end of his life in 1612 was presi­ dent of the senate of Milan. The date of his birth must be approximately mid-century. He was the author of De titulis Philippi Austrii liber, a survey of the medieval history of the imperial title and of the modern domains of his sovereign. It was published in 1573 in Bologna, where Mainoldi was a student and where he resided in the home of Carlo Si­ gonio.216 The father of Giacomo Mainoldi was Giovan Battista Mainoldi, also a jurist, who died in 1575; in 1570 and probably in 1571 Carlo Si­ gonio had been a guest in Cremona of G. B Mainoldi during the course of research for De Regno Italiae. Sigonio mentions both father and son amongst those to whom thanks were due for assistance in the prepara­ tion of De Regno Italiae.117 De titulis Philippi Austrii bears a certain resemblance in both the nature of the contents and their organization to the anonymous Historiae tractatio composed circa 1570 by a student and boarder of Sigonio, the identification of whom with Giacomo Mai­ noldi Gallarati is here offered as a possibility. At this point a problem—as I believe a false problem—of literary his­ tory has to be tackled: that of the alleged authorship by Sigonio of a series of works published during his lifetime under the names of his students. These allegations were repeated for centuries in the unreliable compilations which passed in Europe for manuals of literary history, works on which no space or time will here be wasted. They were given plausibility by Sigonio's discreditable involvement in the affair of the 216 The entry on Giacomo Mainoldi Gallarati in F. Arisi, Cremona literata, t. 3 (Cremona: Ricchini, 1741), pp. 114-16, is almost worthless. But cf. J. C. Ruginellus, Tractatus de senatoribus (Milan: Quintus, 1697), pp. 37-38. For testimony that Giacomo Mainoldi was part of Sigonio's household in 1571, see Simeoni, "Documenti," p. 191. 217 On Giovan Battista Mainoldi, see Arisi, Cremona literata, at., 2.210-11; and half a dozen references in G. Politi, Aristocrazia e potere politico nella Cremona di Filippo Π (1976). Sigonio wrote to Camillo Coccapani on 30 July 1570 that he would be staying at the home of G. B. Mainoldi in Cremona in August (Franciosi, no. 6, but reading "Rainoldi" for Mainoldi); and on 12 October 1571 refers to a further visit to Cremona in August of that year (Franciosi, no. 20). On the last page of the Index of De Regno Italiae (1576; 1580) Sigonio mentions the late Giovan Battista—who had died in October 1575—and Giacomo Mainoldi among those deserving thanks for their assistance.

69

CHAPTER ONE

Consolatio Ciceronis, and by the testimony, apparently reliable (but in reality not), of Jacques-Auguste De Thou to the effect that Sigonio had confessed to being the author of the works of Bernardino Loredan, Jan Zamoyski, and Jan Andrzej Krasinski (Joannes Crassinius, the author of Polonia, 1574). More damaging even than the allegations of the literary histories was the uncritical assumption by some library catalogers and inventarists, who had never read the works in question, of the truth of what was asserted, with the result that from time to time one finds that the works of Loredan, Zamoyski, and Krasinski, and of Girolamo Ragazzoni and Giacomo Mainoldi for good measure, are listed as pseudonymous productions of Carlo Sigonio. An example of how inconsiderately this attribution could be made is the work which gave rise to the present discussion, the anonymous Historiae tractatio in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, which passed into the Ambrosiana catalog and thence into derivative publications as Sigonio's—despite the author's plain statement that he was Sigonio's student. The least happy aspect of the whole business is that Sigonio is robbed of recognition of one of his greatest merits as a university professor: that of having stimulated a series of gifted students, men who were destined for diverse careers in the world rather than for the profession of letters, to distill in youth the fruits of their studies into publishable works of excellent quality. That he assisted them in obtaining publication seems past doubt, for Girolamo Ragazzoni and Bernardino Loredan were published by Paolo Manuzio and Jan Zamoyski by Giordano ZiIetti, Sigonio's current publisher in each case. (Peregrinus Bonardus however, the publisher in Bologna of the works of Giacomo Mainoldi Gallarati and Jan Krasinski, was not the publisher of works by Sigonio.) Krasinski's Polonia bears no date of publication but is unanimously assigned to 1574. The author, one of the many Polish students who gave their special allegiance to Sigonio in Padua and Bologna, says in his preface that he has composed the work at the particular insistence of his preceptor, Carlo Sigonio218—a candid statement which nevertheless seems to have baited the false perspicacity of those determined to discover a pseudonym. Girolamo Ragazzoni's equally candid declaration in the preface to his study of the chronology of the Ad familiares of Cicero that he had learned a great deal from Carlo Sigonio evidently produced a similar unintended consequence. 218

Krasinski, Polonia (1574), preface, f. a3. On Krasinski and other Polish students at Bologna at the time of Sigonio, see S. Kot, "Le relazioni secolari della Polonia con Bologna," Studi e memorie per la storia dellUniversita di Bologna 18,1950, pp. 95-122.

70

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

The two works of greatest weight in the category under discussion are Bernardino Loredan's commentary on Cicero's De lege agraria and Jan Zamoyski's De senatu Romano. The latter has been characterized very briefly above and the existence in it of views discrepant to those of Sigonio has been noted.219 Moreover, Zamoyski's style is ungraceful, in the manner of youth, and unSigonian—a proof as valid as any that Sigonio was not the author. As for Bernardino Loredan, in his commentary he takes a position explicitly opposed to that of Sigonio on a fundamental point, that of the procedure followed in Roman voting assemblies for the election of magistrates.220 In sum, adequate attention to the contents of these works should be enough to put an end to the hypothesis of secret authorship by Carlo Sigonio. Jacques-Auguste De Thou visited Sigonio in Bologna in 1573. He was preceded in this by the visit in 1570 of Claude Dupuy, later a councillor of the Parlement de Paris and father of the future royal librarians Pierre and Jacques Dupuy. Dupuy's visit to Italy and the friendship established there between himself and Gian Vincenzo Pinelli of Padua, which was prolonged for decades in correspondence and through the exchange of books, was one of the important instances of Franco-Italian cultural contact in the sixteenth century. Dupuy was not only a leading magistrate but an active participant in the most acute and critical intellectual circles of Paris, a friend of Joseph Scaliger.221 He was to marry the first cousin of Jacques-Auguste De Thou. The latter describes his encounter with Sigonio in Bologna, an encounter protracted over a period of several days in 1573, not in the Histories but in the biographical Commentariorum de vita sua libri.222 The memorial there of Sigonio's career is inexact. It is not true, for instance, that Sigonio was invited to take up the chair in Bologna by Giacomo Boncompagni. In the crucial passage for the attribution of the works in question to Sigonio, De Thou writes (in the third person): 219

See nn. 152-154 above. Below, chap. 3, n. 68. 221 For an introduction to Claude Dupuy and the Collection Dupuy of the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, see S. Solente, "Les manuscrits des Dupuy a la Bibliotheque Nationale," Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Chartes 88,1927, pp. 177-250; Anna Maria Raugei, " 'Je me delecte a present du jardinage . . .': Natura e artificio nel giardino di Claude Dupuy" in La letteratura e i giardini (Florence: Olschki, 1987); and for an introduction to the intellectual world of Claude Dupuy, Grafton, Scaliger 1. 222 Jacques-Auguste De Thou, Commentariorum de vita sua libri Vl in Historiarum sui temporis libri CXXXVIH t. 7 (1733), bk. 1, pp. 16-17. The regular obituary notice of Sigonio in the Histories is a year out of place, being found at the end of 1585 (t. 4, bk. 82, p. 320 in the 1733 ed.) in company with those of Sirleto, Muret, and Vettori. 220

71

CHAPTER ONE

De Thou was with Sigonio for whole days together, and knowing that Sigonio was able to converse in Latin only with difficulty, De Thou preferred to stammer in Italian rather than miss the chance of familiar intercourse with him. Finally De Thou wrung from him the admission that the books on the Roman senate published under the name of Joannes Sarius Samoscius,. . . likewise the Polonia of Petrus [sic] Crassinius and the commentary on the agrarian speeches bearing the name of Bernardinus Lauredanus, had been written by him.223 Never mind that in De Thou's recollection this conversation took place prior to the publication of the Polonia of Krasinski, whose name he misremembers. His testimony is rendered insecure by the admission that he was conversing with difficulty in a language that he commanded much less well than French or Latin, and that he pressed Sigonio ("for days") on the question of pseudonymous authorship before winning what he took to be an acknowledgment. No doubt Sigonio admitted modestly to having advised, even assisted, Loredan and Zamoyski in their respective enterprises and this was taken by De Thou as confirmation of a conviction which he had formed before he ever met Sigonio. The difficulties that Sigonio and the Bolognesi experienced with the Roman curia in the case of the Historia Bononiensis were part of a wider pattern of relations between Bologna and Rome in which the city, deprived from 1506 of genuine political autonomy, tried to retain what it could of its former (anarchic) independence in the fields of communal administration, education, and culture. Prospects for Bologna seemed brighter when the Bolognese jurist Ugo Boncompagni was elected Pope Gregory XIII in 1572; in that year a society of Bolognese patricians and merchants, including Camillo Paleotti, brother of the bishop, and a distinguished senator, Francesco Bolognetti, was incorporated for the purpose of publishing learned works, principally those of Sigonio, who was also a member of the company.224 For the remaining years of his life most of his books appeared under the imprint of the Societas Typographiae Bononiensis. However, this was not the case with the first edition 223 "Cum eo Thuanus totos dies fuit; et cum aegre Sigonium Latine loqui sciret, malebat Italice balbutire, quam non familiariter cum eo versari. Ab eo tandem expressit, et libros de senatu Romano sub Ioannis Sani Samoscii, qui postea non Poloniam solum suam, sed et totum orbem nominis sui gloriae testem habuit, nomine editos, ut et Poloniam Petri Crassini, nee non et commentarium in Agrarias Bernardini Lauredani nomen praeferentem, a se scriptum esse" (De Thou, Commentariorum de vita sua, loc. cit.). 224 See Albano Sorbelli, "Carlo Sigonio e la Societa Tipografica Bolognese" (1921).

72

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

of De Regno ltaliae, which was printed in Venice in 1573-74 by Giordano Ziletti, the last and typographically the finest of all the books he printed for Carlo Sigonio. The higher standard of the craft in Venice may have contributed to Sigonio's decision to print the book there, but the principal reason was the continuing influence of Roman censorship in Bologna, the city in which he had printed the first, abortive version. Despite the formation of a company which in a sense consolidated the support of the Bolognese elite for Sigonio, and the presence of Boncompagni on the Roman throne, those curial forces that had already frustrated Sigonio and viewed him with suspicion remained powerful. Even in Venice the task of publishing De Regno ltaliae was not accomplished without difficulty. Sigonio traveled there in early October 1573 to arrange details of the format with Ziletti225 and by 29 October Pinelli was able to send one of the first sheets to France.226 From Bologna Gabriele Paleotti tried to ease the passage of the work through the hands of the Venetian Inquisition in a letter to the papal nuncio there, G. B. Castagna.227 Printing of the folio sheets was finished in spring or early summer of 1574, and Sigonio this time chose his dedicatee most wisely in the person of Giacomo Boncompagni, natural son of the pope, elevated to title and power soon after the accession of his father.228 Paleotti, whose efforts were obviously coordinated with those of Sigonio, followed up with a letter to Boncompagni explaining that Sigonio's history would serve to exalt rather than to denigrate the church and the Roman see.229 By 5 August the folio printing was complete and Ziletti began immediately to print sheets for a quarto,230 another version of this text that never saw the light and does not survive. Then in September the progress of the folio version was temporarily suspended while work on the quarto proceeded, because the Venetians had found things in De 225

Sigonio to Coccapani, 19 October 1573; Franciosi, no. 28. Pinelli to Claude Dupuy, 29 October 1573 (Pans: Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Dupuy 704, f. 23). 227 Gabnele Paleotti to G. B. Castagna, 17 October 1573; published in Prodi, Gabriele Paleotti, p. 253, from the original in the Archivio Isolani of Bologna. 228 See the entry on Giacomo Boncompagni, Duke of Sora, in DBi 11,1969, pp. 689-92, by U. Coldagelli. 229 Gabnele Paleotti to Giacomo Boncompagni, 24 July 1574; published in Prodi, Paleotti, p. 254, from the original in the Archivio Isolani. 230 Pinelli to Claude Dupuy, 5 August 1574: "Il libro de Regno ltaliae resta finito, et glielo mandaro quando mi venga il suo ordine per mandargli i libri. Voglio ben dirgli come questa prima stampa, che e in foglio, se ben supera l'altra di quarto, ch'e gia cominciata, viene pe'l contro superata da quella nella correttione, nella tavola, (che la prima no l'ha) et in una chronographia" (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Dupuy 704, f. 29 r-v). 226

73

C H A P T E R ONE

Regno ltaliae "non dette a lor modo,"231 not subservient that is to a parochial view of Venetian history. In January 1575 De Regno ltaliae had still not received a licence from the Venetians, and Sigonio sent to Pinelli four corrections that were being made to the text at the instance of powers which he found it prudent not to identify by name, for inclusion in an extra-Italian edition.232 Shortly after the book came finally into the world. Pinelli informed Dupuy that the Venetians had not after all forced changes, but that the four alterations mentioned by Sigonio had been made (at the command of "un altro principe"); however, a copy forwarded previously to Dupuy preserved the text which Sigonio had originally intended.233 It is of considerable interest to note that Sigonio's channel of contact with the transalpine editors of his works was Gian Vincenzo Pinelli and through his mediation Pietro Del Bene and Claude Dupuy. Sigonio with characteristic imprecision refers to the publishers to whom the ultimate emendations of the text were to be communicated by Pinelli and Del Bene as "quelli stampatori." The possibilities of identification here are two, for in 1575 there were editions of De Regno ltaliae by Pietro Perna of Basel and Andreas Wechel of Frankfurt—but Sigonio certainly refers to the second of these, Andreas Wechel, a Huguenot of Paris then in the process of transferring to Frankfurt the firm founded by his father Chretien Wechel. The firm continued to be represented in Paris even after the move to Frankfurt—in later years in the person of Denis Duval— and it is to Andreas Wechel or his agents that Sigonio refers. The heirs 231 Pinelli to Dupuy, 30 September 1574, postscript to a letter of 17 September (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Dupuy 704, f. 33r). The passages to which the Venetians objected were very probably found in Sigonio's account of the truce between the papacy and Frederick I in De Regno ltaliae bk. 14, A.D. 1176 and 1177. In these pages Sigonio deals severely with the overcolored account of the negotiations retailed in Sabellicus, which made the Venetians a third, independent party to the agreement. 232 Sigonio to Pinelli, 3 January 1575: "Mando a V. S. una carta da mandar al Sig. Abbate Delbene, pregandolo a mandarla a quelli stampatori, et pregarli che per ogni modo facciano, che sia cosi scritto, et se bene havessero stampato, ristampino questi quattro fogli in questa maniera et con questa giunta. Il primo errore del pontifecem e stato colpa de' stampatori di Venetia, ne io me ne sono accorto negli errati. Gh altn quattro appartengono a chi puo commandare. Ne supplico V. S. Il medesimo si fa a Venetia. . . . Anchora non ho inteso della licentia di Venetia" (BAM, MS S 109 sup., f. 64r, published in Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1029-30). Sigonio refers to the Abate Pietro Del Bene (also: D'Elbene), a courtier of Catherine de Medici. 233 Pinelli to Dupuy, 18 March 1575: "NeU'historia del Sigonio fecero un gran rumore, ma senza proposito, poiche non e stata punto mutata da quella di prima quanto a Vinegia, per un altro principe si. . . . basta che V. S. ha l'esemplare che non e stato mutato, quello per gratia del libraro, ch'e mio amico" (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Dupuy 704, f. 34d, recto).

74

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

of Andreas Wechel, who died in 1581, became the custodians of Sigonio's posthumous fortuna as a European author. The world of Wechel and his heirs has been called late humanism and characterized as learned and critical, Calvinist but nondogmatic, international and irenic.234 Sigonio was also republished in Paris and Basel, but the Wechel editions of Frankfurt and Hanau were the real basis of his northern reception. Outside Italy he was considered one of the glories of his nation, and this, combined with the general suspicion in Rome of the international book trade and of all international intellectual contact, made him persona non grata in the citadel of the papacy. The year 1574 was an annus mirabilis for Sigonio, for as well as publishing De Regno Italiae in Venice he brought to completion his longplanned corpus of Roman studies, also dedicated to Giacomo Boncompagni, and published it in Bologna in autumn as De antiquo iure populi Romani. In this case too the authorized transalpine edition, which appeared in Paris in 1576, was published through the mediation of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli and Claude Dupuy. For this corpus Sigonio had prepared an introduction to Roman civil and criminal trials entitled De iudiciis, to accompany the third edition of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum and De antiquo iure Italiae and the second of De antiquo iure provinaarum. The volume gives Sigonio's final views on Roman questions and supersedes previous editions as representative of authorial intention. To his annoyance, however, a Parisian publisher, Allard Julien, had produced in 1573 a reprint of the 1563 edition of the first two treatises; a copy of this was sent to Sigonio by Claude Dupuy through Pinelli. In March 1574 Claude Dupuy put to Pinelli and through him to Sigonio a plan to have the Roman treatises reprinted by Jacques Du Puys of Paris.235 Sigonio replied that any future reprint must depend upon the 234 R.J.W. Evans, The Wechel Presses (1975), p. 43 and passim. For the life of Andreas Wechel, see W. R. LeFanu, "Andre Wechel," in Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 21,1966, pp. 58-81. 235 Claude Dupuy to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 28 March 1574: "Les livres de Sigonius de antiquo iure avium Romanorum et de antiquo iure Italiae ont este imprimez in 8° par un brouillon de ceste ViUe norame Alard Julien (c'est celui mesme qui avoit fait les Oraisons) fort mal et incorrectement. Nam praeter menda typographica quibus scatet Veneta editio, quae iste fidehter omnia retinuit, encores en a il fait d'autres sans nombre. Il n'a point imprime de iure provinaarum: il faut dire qu'il ne l'a point veu, car il n'est pas moins requis que ceux la, et il y a ia longtemps que Ion ne trouve plus ni des uns ni des autres. Pour ce, Jacques du-Puys hbraire de cest'Universite estoit nagueres en propos de les imprimer tous ensemble en un volume: mais estant adverti par quelque mien ami auquel j'avois communique vos lettres, que l'auteur les avoit beaucoup corrigez et augmentez, et que j'avois moien de lui faire tomber ceste

75

CHAPTER ONE

revised edition then in preparation in Bologna.236 In January 1575 Jacques Du Puys found that it was impossible for him to undertake the project of reprinting De antiquo iure populi Romani at that time 237 and in March 1575 Claude Dupuy proposed to Pinelli that Andreas Wechel be assigned the task.238 Sigonio's reply to this proposal, forwarded by Pinelli to Dupuy (and later returned from France to a collection in Forli) was that since a reprint would damage the commercial interests of the Bolognese edition, he could agree only on the condition that Wechel purchase a number of copies of that edition, and reprint the work when they had been sold.239 In November 1575 Wechel was still in the runcopie entre mains, il me vient prier de lui procurer ce bien, ce que je Iui ai promis, non tant pour l'amour de lui (ia£Oit que ie Iui voudrois bien faire plaisir) que du public, et pource que ie desire merveilleusement de faire paroistre au Seigneur Sigonio l'attention que j'ai de lui faire servire. Le premier dessein dudit du-Puys estoit d'imprimer quantetquant de repubhca Atheniensium, de Atheniensium et Lacedaemoniorum temporibus, de nominibus Romanorum, de lege curiata etc., de vita Scipioms Aemiliani, ceterosque eiusdem ipsius libros qui ad antiquitatis explicationem pertinent, et de tous ensemble faire un beau volume. Mais ie n'ai este d'advis qu'il Ie fist sans Ie sceu de l'auteur, lequel seroit paraventure bien aise d'avoir cest'occasion de les revoir. Ce que vous lui ferez scavoir par Ie premier, afin que s'il s'y accorde il tienne les copies toutes prestes; et m'en rendrez response Ie plustost que pourrez, a ce que je puisse resoudre ledit du-Puys d'un ou d'autre" (BAM, MS G 77 inf., f. 5Ir). Cf. further Pinelh's letters of 26 May and 5 August 1574 in Pans: Bibliotheque Nationale MS Dupuy 704, ff. 26cd and 28-29. On Jacques Du Puys see Philippe Renouard, Documents sur les imprimeurs, libraires etc. ayant exerce a Paris de 1450 a 1600 (Paris: Champion, 1901), pp. 84-86; and P. Renouard, Repertoire des imprimeurs Parisiens (1470-1600) (Pans: Minard, 1965), pp. 135-36. 236 Sigonio to Pinelli, 19 May 1574 (Pans: Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Dupuy 704, f. 116a) readdressed on the external surface in Pmelli's hand to Dupuy, and wrongly cataloged as a letter to Dupuy from Sigonio; printed in De Nolhac, "Piero Vettori et Carlo Sigonio," p. 151. 237 Claude Dupuy to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 17 January 1575 (BAM, MS G 77 inf., f. 7Ir). The reply: Pinelli to Dupuy, 18 March 1575 (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Dupuy 704, f. 34c verso). 238 Claude Dupuy to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 25 March 1575 (BAM, MS G 77 inf., f. 68r). 239 Sigonio to Pinelli, 13 May 1575: "Io non mi posso pienamente contentare, che il mio libro de iure populi Romani si ristampi fuor d'ltaha per il danno, che io veggio soprastare alia compagnia di Bologna che l'ha stampato, de quale io sono il duodecimo. Ma se il Vechelo volesse farmi cosa grata, Io pregherei a prendere una parte ο particella di detti libn da detta compagnia per honesto pretio et conditione, et smaltita questa ristamparli con alcuna giunta, che all'hora io promettero di darli. Et se esso volesse compiacermi in questo, potra parlar et negociar con M. Antonio Spinelli, mercante Bolognese in Parigi, il quale di cio ha la commissione. Et dove io potro ricambiarlo, Io faro volentieri. Prego adunque V. S. a scriver questo al Signor Puteano, et a pregarlo in mio nome ad adoprarsi in cio, percioche mi fara cosa gratissima, et io mfinitamente mi raccomando nella sua buona gratia. All'altre lettere di V. S. ho risposto. Dal Signor Orsino non ho Ie leggi promessemi. Se V. S. Ie ha me Ie mandi. Le bascio la mano" (Forli, Bibhoteca comunale A. Saffi, Autografi Piancastelli, s.v. Carlo Sigonio). "Si­ gnor Puteano" is Claude Dupuy. This letter, originally enclosed in a covering sheet bearing

76

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

ning,240 but the situation changed over the winter, and Jacques Du Puys issued the complete Roman treatises plus their Athenian counterparts in 1576.241 The first edition from the Wechel press did not arrive until 1593. Sigonio's next project after the two major publications of 1574 was a new history of late antiquity. In undertaking this he shifted his focus backward from the medieval period, not forward from that of the classical Roman republic. De Occidentali lmperio covers annalistically the centuries from Diocletian to Justinian (A.D. 284-565), and despite its title is not strictly confined to events in the west but relates much of the general history of the late Roman Empire, including the schismatic controversies and ecclesiastical councils of the fourth century. It ends where De Regno ltaliae begins, with the death of Justinian in A.D. 565, and the two books are meant to form a combined narrative. When Sigonio's works were systematically combed for error in Rome in the 158Os, De Occidentali lmperio was found to have a large number of repugnant passages because of the quantity of ecclesiastical history which it contains.242 But the issue that raised the most serious conflict between Sigonio and Rome in the period leading up to the publication of De Occidentali lmperio was his refusal to accept the legend of the donation by Constantine of the western empire and specifically the lands of St. Peter, to the Roman church in A.D. 315. Though the donation had been discredited since Valla, the Roman church and specifically Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto continued to insist that Sigonio should include it in his history, and he was forced in the end to capitulate. With this concession made, publication in Bologna became feasible, and De Occidentali lmperio appeared there from the press of the Societas Typographiae BonPinelli's address, was readdressed on the external surface by Pinelli to Dupuy and forwarded to him in Paris like the letter cited in n. 236 above; and like that letter it must have belonged to the Collection Dupuy of the Bibliotheque Nationale, from which it has, however, been subtracted, perhaps in the last century, and sold. 240 Claude Dupuy to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 4 September 1575 (BAM, MS G 77 inf., f. 76v). The response: Pinelli to Dupuy, 11 November 1575 (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Dupuy 704, f.44v). 241 Claude Dupuy to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 14 September 1576: "L'oeuvre du Seigneur Sigonio de antiquo iure populi Romani a este imprime par De-tournes de Lion a la diligence de Jacques Dupuys, fort bien et correctement, j'ose dire mieux qu'a Boulongne, sinon qu'ils y ont mis un grand et sot titre a l'Allemande, lequel a mon opinion desplaira a l'auteur" (BAM, MS G 77inf., f. 78v). 242 The censures, with Sigonio's replies, are printed in Op. om. 6.1077-1110; and see chapter 4 below.

77

C H A P T E R ONE

oniensis in the summer of 1578. Pinelli, who had already sent to Dupuy copies of the first sheets in March, informed his correspondent on 3 September that a large number of copies had been dispatched to Frankfurt for the autumn fair of that year.243 In September and October 1578 Sigonio made his last and longest journey to Rome, in an attempt backed by Paleotti and Giacomo Boncompagni to win acceptance in Rome for his historical research through a campaign of interviews and ceremonies. He was presented to the pope, who made him a Cavaliere di San Paolo and in a surprising decision asked him to write a history of the church, a request which Sigonio accepted.244 Gregory XIII had in fact already mobilized an impressive intellectual industry in Rome in the service of Catholic scholarship, and this independent initiative for an ecclesiastical history to be prepared by Sigonio in Bologna, lacking coordination with one of the major institutional centers in Rome, had no chance of success, but Sigonio failed to see this. Sigonio met Sirleto and they appear to have been amicable, as letters exchanged afterwards between Sirleto and Paleotti reveal satisfaction on both sides.245 Permission was finally given for the history of Bologna to be issued.246 Back in Bologna Sigonio set about the composition of the Historia ecclesiastka, completing a sizeable portion of it by spring, and defending himself against any suggestion that he had worked perfunctorily.247 A letter of April 1579 from Sigonio to Fabio Albergati, then in the service of Giacomo Boncompagni, reveals him interrupting the composition of the Historia ecclesiastka after eleven 243

Pinelli to Dupuy, 3 September 1578 (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Dupuy 704, f.

63). 244 Sigonio to Alberto Bolognetti, 6 December 1578: "Tornai da Roma albergato daU'Eccellentissimo Signore Giacomo honoratamente. Hebbi un cavallenato di S. Paolo et carico di scrivere l'Histona Ecclesiastica con moke promesse appresso" (Modena: Biblioteca Estense, MS alpha G.1.18 [Ital. 835], no. 8, published by Tiraboschi in Biblioteca modenese 5.92). 245 See Prodi, Paleotti, pp. 256-57. 246 Despite this the Historia Bononiensis became bogged down in the process of revision and the revised version remained in manuscript. See n. 212 above, and Fasoli, "Appunti sulla Historia Bononiensis," passim. 247 Sigonio to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, 10 March 1579: "ho mandato tre hbri dell'Histona Ecclesiastica a Roma. La prego a favorirgli, se Ii leggera, et trovera degni di favore. Se non Ii leggera, almeno difendermi contra una nuova calunnia, la quale intendo che infino ad hora mi vien data, che in troppo poco tempo habbia assalito una impresa cosi difficile et importante. Percioche essi considerano il tempo solamente nel quale ho havuto la commissione da Nostro Signore, ma io riguardo quello della mia vita, il quale ho speso tutto in scrivere" (Parma: Archivio di Stato, Epistolario Scelto, s. v. Carlo Sigonio, written by a scribe, signed by Sigonio; published in Ronchini, "Carlo Sigonio" [1868], p. 286).

78

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

books to turn to the revision of the Historia Bononiensis, and hoping for a proximate publication of both,248 a hope in which he was to be deceived. In February 1579 Sigonio sent three books of the Historia ecclesiastica to Rome for review by Sirleto; his letters to Sirleto's assistant show that despite the confidence which he was to express to Alessandro Farnese and Fabio Albergati, Sigonio had realized fully the problems he faced in trying to write the history of the church without the resources of Rome at his disposal.249 The three books that he sent to Rome were 248 Sigonio to Fabio Albergati, 4 April 1579: "Hor hora ho ricevuto la sua delli 28 Marzo, et cos] Ie rispondo. Ho in animo di fermarmi nell'historia Ecclesiastica et riformar quella di Bo­ logna con l'aggiungervi alcune et molte cose trovate in questi dodici anni. Et trall'altre sara il Cardinale Gregorio Albergato, del quale ho havuto una bolla dal Signor Federico Ranaldi con alcune altre cose, delle quah mi serviro salva conscientia. Come sara riformata, la faro leggere a questi signon di nuovo. La corregero secondo il lor gusto. Se la vorranno publicare, bene quidem. Se no, capiemus consilium in arena. Quanto aU'histona Ecclesiastica, V. S. sappia che infino ad hora ho scritto undici libri infino al 260. Trovo che Dio mi da forze sopra I'usato; ma vi fo spesa in scrittori, in libri, carta, et altre cose. Ma ogni cosa mi vien ricompensata bene, se mi trovo in gratia dell'eccellentissimo Signore Jacopo. Per un gran tempo non ho bisogno di scritture di Roma, che io sappia. Ma questo ufficio tocca al Signor Cardinale Sirletto, il quale legendo I'historia potra molto bene vedere quel che io non ho visto, et se έ cosa che io possa trovar di qua, ο non. Aspetto con infinito desiderio che Sua Signoria Illustrissima l'habbia letta et giudicata. Ma la cosa nesce bellissima, oltre quello che io sperai in questi pnmi tempi molto oscuri, et riesce honorata per la chiesa di Roma senza sforzar scritture, ne servirsi di scritture apocnfe, come hanno fatto molti. Sarei di opimone, che come n'ho fatti 25 libri, publicarh, percioche io son mortale et homo bulla, praesertim vero senex. Se senza spesa si puo haver I'historia del Garzone, mi piacera, altrimente no. Percioche io voglio che Ie mie histone siano prese da fonti, et non da ι nvi. Quando era in Roma, mi fu detto che si trovava una historia ecclesiastica di frate Onofrio. Non me ne son curato, percioche ci sono tutti i libri che hebbe frate Onofrio. Ne direi cosa di frate Onofrio, se non sapessi donde egli 1'ha presa. V. S. si prometta di me tutto quello che si puo promettere d'una persona obbligata, et grata. Non fallam opinionem tuam. La prego a basciar la mano in mio nome al eccellentissimo vostro patrone il Signor Jacopo, con dir a Sua Signoria che studio da cane, et faccio maravigliar ogni uno. Et che son pronto a mostrar i fatti, et che Sua Signoria Illustrissima mostri desiderio al Signor Car­ dinale Sirletto che la cosa camini avanti, et poi lasa fare a me. Bascio la mano di V. S." (Forli: Biblioteca comunale A. Saffi, Autografi Piancastelli, s. v. Carlo Sigonio). Federico Ranaldi was a custode (keeper) in the Biblioteca Vaticana, of which Sirleto was Cardinal Librarian. 249 See letters of Sigonio to Federico Ranaldi, 24 February and 21 March 1579 (Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Reg. Lat. 2023, ff. 319, 320). Sigonio says in the second of these, referring to Sirleto: "Si puo far gran profitto, se saro aiutato. Ma come Sua Signoria Illustrissima sa, sono a Bologna, et solo, et senza libri; et come bisognerebbero un mighaio. Mi par di poter scrivere infino ad Innocentio terzo senza bisogno della libraria di Roma, ο almeno senza gran bisogno. Ma pero non senza il consiglio di Sua Signoria Illustrissima, et l'aiuto. Il che ella conoscera meglio delle scritture che io mandero, che io non saprei dire. Pero se nelli tre libri mandati sara cosa che non habbia veduta, et sia sicura, et d'importantia, V. S. me n'avisi. Ella n'havra la sua mercede poi in cielo, et se potro nulla, anche in terra. Mi vien detto da tutti che non faro cosa buona senza vedere Ie centurie. Puo essere. Ma Ie centurie sono scommunicate, ne saprei come far ad haverle; ne voglio spendere quel poco che io ho in libri heretici. Questo scrivo, accioche ella il communichi con Monsignore Illustnssimo, al quale io bascio la mano devotamente" (MS

79

CHAPTER ONE

buried there.250 Cesare Baronio was beginning the labor of decades which was to result in the Annales ecclesiastici,251 and Sigonio's labor of months was simply irrelevant to the great confrontation taking place between Protestant and Catholic historiography. Although his fear of dying with work unpublished was realized in the case of these two books, it is hard to share his chagrin to the full, for they are of less importance than his major histories, De Regno Italiae and De Occidentali Imperio, which had, despite all, been published in excellent editions and distributed throughout Europe. In 1576 Sigonio had published in Bologna a twenty-eight page Index for the 1574 edition of De Regno Italiae, which provided chronologiescum-indices of the various series of kings, emperors, popes, and patriarchs recorded in the work, further errata, and a complete list of the sources used. The thanks there offered to Gabriele Paleotti, Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, Agostino Valier, and others for scholarly assistance was also an expression of gratitude for moral support generously given at a difficult time. In 1580 the Societas Typographiae Bononiensis published the second, definitive edition of De Regno Italiae, the work which, together with the collected Roman treatises, is the major source of Sigonio's posthumous reputation. The two editions published during the author's lifetime cover the period from A.D. 565 to 1199 in fifteen books. The continuation of the work published posthumously in 1591, containing the remainder of book 15 and books 16-20, covers the period A.D. 1200 to 1286. De Regno Italiae is a great book, but a difficult one to characterize in terms of the author's personality, since it recounts a period remote from his own life and is in arrangement strictly annalistic— so much so that it is both convenient and correct to cite it primarily by reference to the years that are indicated in the margin. The annalistic approach inhibits narrative, although it may facilitate consultation, and the work as a whole tends to resist literary and intellectual-historical analysis. Sigonio, in other words, was a different sort of historian from at., £. 32Or). The last part of this letter contains a veiled request for copies of the Magdeburg Centuries to be sent with Sirleto's authorization for Sigonio's use; this passage was cited in Dejob, De I'influence du Concile de !rente (1884), p. 68. 250 Prodi, Paleotti, pp. 257-58; and Sigonio to Sirleto, 12 November 1580 (Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Lat. 6193, vol. 2, f. 628r). At his death Sigonio left drafts of the Historia ecc/estasttca in eleven and fourteen books, now in the Vatican library (MSS Vat. Lat. 3454, 3455). The work is published in Opera omnia t. 4. 251 In letters of 23 November and 18 December 1579 Sigonio wrote to Baronio inviting him to obtain the MS of three books of Historia ecclesiastica from Sirleto, read them, and give Sigonio his opinion, Baronius, Epistolae et opusculae (Rome, 1759-70), 3: 137-39.

80

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

Machiavelli or Guicciardini. Nevertheless themes do emerge, and are highlighted in the two longest digressions that give relief to the progress of events, one on the Ottoman constitution of the kingdom, and the other on the internal constitutions of the north Italian communes.252 There are as well many passages that reveal the interpretation or point of view of the author. The most persistent theme is that of Italian liberty. Sigonio says in his preface that he intends to write the first national history of Italy, something which on his view Flavio Biondo and Sabellicus had failed to accomplish.253 He elected to begin with the invasion of Italy by the Longobards because their arrival signaled the definite collapse of the Roman Empire and the creation of a new Kingdom of Italy. The history of the kingdom contained a paradox, for it was a foreign imposition on the people of the peninsula, but it was to give birth to Italian nationality— for which Sigonio's word is libertas. He describes the kingdom as "instituted by the Longobards, augmented by the Franks, and ordered by the Germans in a way which made possible the achievement of liberty."254 For Sigonio the liberty of the Italians was associated with the 252

The Ottoman digression: bk. 7, A.D. 973, pp. 319-27. The digression on the communes: bk. 10, A.D. 1106, pp. 451-56 (all references are to the edition of De Regno ltaliae of Bologna, 1580). It is to be noted by those who consult De Regno ltaliae that Sigonio does not count the first King Henry of the Saxons as one of the series of monarchs of that name, so that his references to Henry I are to the emperor and king of Italy conventionally called Henry II, his Henry III is the sovereign conventionally called Henry IV, and so on. Secondary literature specifically devoted to De Regno ltaliae is practically limited to Alfred Hessel, 'De Regno ltaliae libri viginti' von Carlo Sigonio (1900). 253 " N a r n cum [Blondus] omnium gentium regumque bella, motusque colligere ac mandare memoriae voluit, Italiam, quam intentiore ornare studio atque accuratiore perpolire opera debuit, festinanti prope stylo ac praecipiti quadam, ut ita dicam, industria pertractavit. Etenim cum res gravissimas multas, annorumque descnptionem diligentem omisit, turn quae scripsit tanta ubique brevitate perstnnxit, ut historiam nobis non solum mancam, sed etiam prope orbam attulerit. Sabellicus autem, qui aemulatione laudis eius accensus in eodem proxime post ilium studio videtur esse versatus, quo altius narrationem repetiit et latiore gentium temporumque quasi campo se extulit, eo angustius atque impeditius universa exposuit" (Sigonio, De Regno ltaliae, preface, p. 4). 254 "Regnum ab exteris nationibus, Romana virtute iam pridem extincta, inductum est, Longobardis, Francis, atque Germanis. Ex quibus Longobardi ipsum instituerunt, Franci auxerunt, Germani opportunionbus ad constituendam hbertatem legibus temperarunt" (De Regno ltaliae, bk. 1, pp. 7-8). These lines and the ones cited in the previous note offer the justification of the fundamental choices made by the author, those of subject matter and of chronological limits. His choice of ca. A.D. 565 as the end of the history of the Roman Empire and the beginning of medieval history in Italy, a choice which has been considered penetrating and significant by many students of historiography, is essentially justified in the words quoted. He considered his task worthwhile because of the general ignorance about the history of the Regnum ltaliae. 81

C H A P T E R ONE

liberty of the papacy—not continuously but at intervals during the course of the centuries. The papacy, which was never part of the kingdom of Italy, is portrayed in different lights at different periods by the historian. He places the final rupture between the emperor of Constantinople and the papacy, supported by the people of Rome, in A.D. 727, asserting that in defending the papacy the Romans defended the liberty of Italy against the hegemonic powers, Imperial and Longobard, in the peninsula.255 In Prankish Italy Sigonio found only the simulacrum of liberty.256 His observation that the German emperors created a constitution out of which Italian liberty could grow is explained in the major digression of the history, that on the Ottonian organization of the kingdom. Sigonio believed, what was to be asserted for centuries after on his authority, that the communes of northern Italy were not spontaneous creations of the expanding urban populations of the eleventh century, but a juridical creation handed down to the cities by the emperor Otto I in the tenth. Liberty meant at first local administration in those cities to which the emperor granted the consular regime,257 a liberty which in the 255 "Multa egregia Romani prae insito genti glome pietatisque studio pro hbertate Italiae ac dignitate Ecclesiae ausi sunt: nihil magnificentius, quam quod Longobardos reges, Graecosque Imperatores sive dominandi Iibidine, sive haereseos pravitate urbi pontificibusque impotentius imminentes semper pro viribus arcuerunt, fidemque Catholicam constantissime defendentes hbertatem dignitatemque Ecclesiae suam esse hbertatem ac dignitatem putarunt. . . . Ita Roma Romanusque Ducatus a Graecis ad Romanum pontificem propter nefandam eorum haeresim impietatemque pervenit" ( De Regno ltahae, bk. 3, A.D. 727, p. 119). Sigonio sincerely wished, in passages such as this one, to pay tribute to the role of the papacy in the history of Italy, and to satisfy to the extent possible the contemporary demand for a confessional historiography on the Catholic side to counter the Magdeburg Centuries. But that demand was exorbitant, and far from being satisfied with what Sigonio offered, the Counter-Reformation condemned him for his failure to endorse the legend of papal supremacy m Italy descending from the Donation of Constantine. 256 "Et, ut libertatis speciem ahquam praebuisse Italiae videretur [Charlemagne], quoties in Italiam venit, conventus episcoporum, abbatum, ac procerum Italicorum habere instituit, et cum us res regni gravissimas, Francorum institute communicavit" (De Regno Italiae, bk. 4, A.D. 774, p. 164). The passage cited is part of Sigonio's bnef description of the constitution of the Frankish kingdom, pp. 163-64. 257 "Libertatem autem civitatum in eo fere posuit, ut leges, consuetudmes, iurisdictionem, magistrates, vectigaha, sui ferme mris atque arbitrii haberent, ita tamen ut sacramentum regibus dicerent" (De Regno Italiae, bk. 7, A.D. 973, p. 320). Sigonio's role in the historiography on the origin of the communes is reviewed in Antonio Pertile, Storia del diritto italiano 2.1 (Turin: Unione tipografico-editrice, 1897), pp. 9-10, 27; and Giovanni Tabacco, Egemonie sociali e strutture del potere nel Medioevo italiano (1979) in the "Introduzione storiografica," pp. 11-16. Tabacco remarks that the explanation advanced by Sigonio—that programmatic decisions taken by the first Saxon king and emperor of Italy had determined the institutional forms which were to develop in the kingdom—was an original contribution by the historian,

82

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

sequel was to be exercised in the wars of the communes among themselves and then in union against the foreign sovereign.258 Hence, liberty in Italy took the form of a struggle for autonomy, a contest internal to the kingdom but in which the papacy was to join in alliance with the cities against the German emperors.259 By the beginning of the twelfth century, liberty also signified the unbridled use of arms in intercity wars and the creation of new communal constitutions adapted to the changed conditions of the kingdom.260 The resistance of the Lombard League to Frederick I was the apotheosis of Italian liberty. Sigonio implicitly endorsed the claim of Frederick I that imperial authority no longer had its source in the Roman people, but had been translated to the German nation.261 The revival of the ancient Populus Romanus in 1143, through the formation in the papal city of a commune speciously calling itself Senatus Populusque Romanorum, he considered irrelevant both to the Holy Roman Empire and to the vicissitudes of the Regnum Italiae. The corollary is that, for Sigonio, Italian liberty had not been transmitted to the north Italian cities as a direct heritage of the ancient Roman republic, even though institutions similar in name and nature to those of ancient Rome reappeared there. Italian liberty was autochthonous. In its two senses—external sovereignty and the absence of internal tyranny—it had been reborn in the new communes of the north, far from Rome. Sigonio's attention was not divided impartially among the regions an attempt to account for the historical phenomena by adducing a type of rational causality recognizable to him and his contemporaries. The thesis he advanced was to remain in circulation locally and internationally for centuries before definitely subsiding. At the local level it was an article of faith that the communal liberties of Bologna had their basis in a privilege of the emperor Otto I; cf. S. Verardi Ventura, "L'ordinamento bolognese dei secoh XVI-XVII," L'Archiginnasio 74, 1979, p. 282. 258 See De Regno Italiae, bk. 7, A.D. 973, p. 325. 259 See De Regno Italiae, bk. 9, A.D. 1077, pp. 419-20. 260 "Imperium inde Henrici filii novum quasi stabiliendae Iibertatis ac dominationis initium ab Italicis ipsis est habitum. Nam hoc imperante Mediolanenses, atque adeo etiam eorum exemplo alii libertate luxunantes, ac regis arma despicientes, controversies, quae regis ante componi sententia consueverant, armis disceptare instiruerunt, atque ad hanc rationem suam singuli rempublicam contulerunt" (De Regno Italiae, bk. 10, preface, A.D. 1106, p. 451). The passage quoted introduces the second major digression of the book, that on the structure of the councils which were to govern the communes until the advent of the signona. (The last was a historical event that fell outside the scope of Sigonio's history and which he never attempted to deal with.) Introductions to later books of De Regno Italiae, including 12 and 14, in which the epic struggle of the Lombard League against Frederick I is narrated, continue to exalt the defense of native Italian liberty against the emperor. 261 Cf. the account in De Regno Italiae, bk. 12, A.D. 1154, pp. 540-41, for the rival claims of the Romans and Frederick I to be heirs to the Roman past. Sigonio's sympathies are with the emperor here.

83

CHAPTER ONE

which constituted the Kingdom of Italy, being concentrated on EmiliaRomagna, Lombardy, and the Veneto. It was in these regions that he carried out personal research, visiting the archives of major cathedral chapters and communes, and in which he had a network of correspondents, hosts, and friends to assist him. Sigonio's connections with contemporary Tuscany were few—he was in touch with Pier Vettori and Vincenzio Borghini—and although he had available sources on Tuscan history, the events of that region appear only intermittently in De Regno Italiae.262 The annalistic method prevents Sigonio from dealing with the structure of the Kingdom of Italy through extended analysis, as he and others had dealt with the Roman republic, and the depiction of the kingdom as a functioning state, other than in the narrative, is limited to two sections of De Regno Italiae, the digression on the Ottoman "constitution" and the description of the great diet held at the Roncalian fields by Frederick I in 1158. In the Ottonian digression Sigonio details the tribute owed by the cities to the emperor when in Italy, and the regalian rights by which Otto bound Italian f eudataries to the crown. With this a "nova nobilitatis ratio," the feudal system, appeared in Italy.263 Disputes between the cities and feudataries of the kingdom were to be resolved by the king while in Italy. Sigonio describes the election and coronation of the king in Germany, and his subsequent coronation as king of Italy in Milan, the diet at the Roncalian fields near Piacenza, the descent to Rome, and the imperial coronation in the Vatican. The main centers of ecclesiastical power were Aquileia, Milan, and Ravenna; Sigonio emphasizes the important role of the bishops in the cities. Otto of Freising is followed for the peculiar structure of Italian society, which allowed social ascent through military service, even to the low-born,264 and Sigonio concludes with a description of the physical appearance of the towns and the state of learning. In an important passage, he defined 262 Cf. De Regno Italiae, bk. 8, A.D. 1004, p. 343, on the emergence of three new populi— the Florentines, Pisans, and Genovesi—to prominence, and pp. 344-45 on the domains of the Canossa (for which his principal source was documents in the cathedral of Modena), on the Florentine capture of Fiesole, on the border wars of Pisa and Lucca, and further A.D. 1164, p. 588; A.D. 1168, p. 600; and A.D. 1170, p. 603 (at which place Sigonio announces that the minor internal conflicts within Tuscany and between Pisa and Genova will no longer be recorded in his history); bk. 11, A.D. 1144, pp. 515-16 on the wars of Florence and Siena and on Guido Guerra, and further A.D. 1146, p. 523; A.D. 1164, p. 588; A.D. 1178, p. 624 (on the gentilician towers of Florence). 263 De Regno Italiae, bk. 7, A.D. 973, p. 321 (pp. 319-27 for the entire digression). 264 Cf. Otto Frisingensis, Gesfa Friderici I Imperatoris, 2.13. Much of Sigonio's digression is anachronistic, projecting back to the reign of Otto I the conditions of Italy as described by Otto of Freising and other later writers.

84

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

the king-emperor as sovereign even in those regions which a famous series of imperial privileges assigned to the Roman papacy: Ravenna and the Exarchate, the Duchy of Spoleto, and the March of Ancona: And certainly, although Italy was held by the king, who was likewise emperor, and by the Roman pontiff, they did not have identical authority. The pontiff held Rome, Ravenna, and the other regions by authority more than by imperium, because the cities regarded the pontiff as princeps in the constitution, but the king as supreme lord, and to him they paid the tribute and the homage which I have mentioned. The powers of the pontiff resided in sacral condemnations, then greatly feared by Christian kings, those of the emperor in armed expeditions, to which the pontiffs themselves were often forced to succumb. From this time however the pontiff, enhanced by the strong support of Italy's favor, began to increase his forces continually. But pontiff and emperor were both sacred powers, instituted for the conservation of the Respublica Christiana.265 Sigonio's description of the diet in 1158 is important in the economy of the work as the instance of the operation of the state structure which he took to have been created in Italy by Otto I.266 He describes the arrival of the bishops, feudataries, and the consuls of the cities at Roncaglia. Frederick I announces his desire to assume effective sovereignty in the Kingdom of Italy and the Bolognese jurists are made judges of the cases brought before the emperor. The same jurists are assigned the resolution of the problem of the emperor's regalian rights—feudal dues and tolls—in the kingdom and in a famous decision the reversion of the regalia to the emperor is pronounced by them. Sigonio credits Frederick I with promoting the first redaction of the feudal laws in Italy, and of course with the edict, paramount in the history of the University of Bologna, protecting the rights of the foreign scholars in the universities. 265 "Et sane, quanquam Italia a rege, eodemque Imperatore, et a Romano Pontifice tenebatur, non eadem tamen erat in utroque auctoritas. Pontifex Romam, Ravennamque et ditiones reliquas tenebat auctoritate magis quam imperio, quod civitates Pontificem Ut reipublicae pnncipem, regem vero ut summum dominum intuerentur, atque ei tributa obsequiaque, quae dixi, praeberent. Et Pontificis vires in sacris detestationibus versabantur, quas Christiam reges turn maxime exhorruerunt, Imperatoris in armis et expeditionibus, quibus ipsi etiam pontifices cedere saepe compulsi sunt. Pontifex tamen ab hoc tempore maiores in dies opes habuit eximiis studiis faventis Italiae sublevatus. Utraque vero potestas sacra erat, et ad Christianam conservandam rempublicam instituta" (De Regno Italiae, bk. 7, A.D. 973, p. 324). 266 De Regno Italiae, bk. 12, A.D. 1158, pp. 560-63.

85

CHAPTER ONE

A particular problem was posed for Sigonio (and for subsequent medieval historiography) by the promises of the kings of the Franks and the emperors to guarantee to the papacy the lands to which it laid claim in the name of St. Peter in Italy. There are historiographical and textual problems surrounding these promises. The first of the Frankish donations to survive in extenso is that of the Ludovicianum, a privilege issued by Louis the Pious in A.D. 817. The text is not extant in an authentic document but was transmitted by later compilations of ecclesiastical charters. The Ottonianum, the privilege issued by Otto I in A.D. 962, repeats much of the substance of the Ludovicianum.267 Sigonio's solution was to print the complete text of the Ludovicianum in De Regno ltaliae268 and to refer only summarily to the contents of the preceding and succeeding promises or documents in the series—those of Pippin, Charlemagne, Otto I, Otto III, and Henry II.269 But the text of the Ludovicianum used and printed by Sigonio, and upon which he had based his antipapal and proimperial interpretation of the relation between the two powers in Italy, contained variants that reversed the sense of the document, transforming it from an affirmation by the Emperor Louis 267 A full discussion of the meaning of the Ludovicianum and the circumstances of its emission, digesting previous scholarship in German, is now available in Thomas F. X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter (1984), pp. 148-76, 299-308. Noble's work covers the years A. D. 680825, and his point of view throughout is insistently papalist. See as well Peter Partner, The Lands of St. Peter (1972), covering a longer span with discussion of the later imperial privileges. Theodor Sickel, Das Privilegium Otto I. fur die romische Kirche vom Jahre 962 (1883) includes, as well as the edition of the Ottonianum, an edition with apparatus of the Ludovicianum. Though Sickel considered that he had given only a provisional text of the Ludovicianum, it retains its authority. 268 -J-J16 Ludovicianum is printed in De Regno ltaliae, bk. 4, A.D. 817, pp. 191-94. Sickel (p. 173) appears to indicate that Sigonio's was the first full publication of the text (minus preliminary and concluding formulae), following an earlier partial publication in the Commentarii of Volaterranus. The MGH edition (LL 2, Capitularia Regum Francorum t. 1, no. 172) is a reprint of Sickel's text without apparatus; a new edition is awaited. (My thanks to Dr. D. Jasper of Monumenta Germaniae Historica for epistolary discussion of the editions of the Ludovicianum.) 265 For the promise of Pippin, De Regno ltaliae, bk. 3, A.D. 754, pp. 141—42; for that of Charlemagne, bk. 3, A.D. 774, p. 163. Sigonio places the privilege of Otto I in A.D. 967 with these words: "ac veterem Pipini, Caroli, ac Ludovici donationem novo diplomate confirmavit" (bk. 7, A.D. 967, p. 315). Still later, Sigonio refers to a renewal of the former privileges by Otto IH: "vetera ab Othone, Pipini, Caroli et Ludovici privilegia Romanae Ecclesiae renovata" (bk. 7, A.D. 998, p. 338). Finally, the privilege of Henry II is mentioned under A.D. 1014, with a reference to the Ludovicianum for the contents of the whole series of documents: "Privilegia inde civitatibus ecclesiisque renovare ingressus in pnmis beneficia ac iura a Pipino, Carolo, Ludovico, Othombus patre et fiho Ecclesiae Romanae quondam concessa firmavit. Eae tabulae adhuc leguntur, nsdem prope verbis conscriptae, quibus Ludovici fuerunt, quae supra huic intextae historiae sunt" (bk. 8, A.D. 1014, p. 347). The dates indicated by Sigonio for several of these documents are not those accepted by modern scholarship.

86

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

the Pious of papal sovereignty within the lands of St. Peter to one of continuing sovereignty there by the emperor himself.270 As the belief in a foundation from above of communal government in the Italian cities by the legislative act of an emperor in the tenth century was to be propagated on the basis of Sigonio's authority, so the belief that the Roman law as codified under Justinian had been re-established in Italy through an imperial edict of Lothar II in circa A.D. 1137 was guaranteed by him in De Regno ltaliae. This legend had its origin in a historical "combination" of Pisan origin. The Pisans claimed that the famous antique manuscript of the Digest held in Pisa until 1406, and then in Florence, had been donated to them by the emperor after they had captured it during the conquest of Amalfi in 1135 or 1137. A subsequent decree of Lothar II supposedly replaced the co-existence of Longobard, Salic, and Roman law codes in Italy by the unique authority of the Corpus iuris civilis.271 The belief that the codex had been taken by the Pisans from Amalfi had the function of coordinating two of the military and cultural glories of that city; the belief that an imperial decree had re-established Roman law in Italy explained etiologically the renewal of legal science at the University of Bologna in the twelfth century. Sigonio, whose point of view was Bolognese rather than Pisan, does not assert any connection between the bringing of the codex of the Digest from Amalfi to Pisa and the decree of the Emperor Lothar II reestablishing Roman law. No extant document was available to substantiate the existence or date of the decree of Lothar, but Sigonio considered it a tradition too well established to doubt; evidently it was an article of faith amongst his colleagues in the Bolognese law school. For him the reality of this imperial decision was revealed by the development, which he took to be posterior to the decree of Lothar, of Bolognese jurisprudence. Sigonio found contradictory evidence concerning the period at which the founder of the Bolognese school, Irnerius (d. 1125, a contemporary of the Countess Mathilda), had been active, and he appears to assume that Irnerius had nourished in the period after the decree of Lothar, hence after about 1137.272 270

Cf. chapter 4 below, nn. 81-83. The truth of the various elements of the legend was only discussed critically in the eighteenth century, in the so-called Polemic on the Pandects. Cf., with retrospective bibliography, Danilo Marrara, "Lettere di Giuseppe Averani relative alia polemica pandettaria tra il Grandi e il Tanucci," in Materials per una storm della cultura giuridica 11,1981, pp. 3-35; and Marrara, "La polemica pandettaria e l'epistolario di Guido Grandi. Lettere di Gerardo Maria Capassi," in Bolletino storico pisano 54,1985, pp. 175-96. 272 De Regno Itahae, bk. 4, A.D. 774, p. 164: Sigonio explains that individuals could choose 271

87

C H A P T E R ONE

In the Ottonian digression Sigonio, while recognizing the position of the bishops in tenth-century Italy, identifies the typical form of government of the independent cities as consular; like his source, Otto of Freising, he sees this as a revival of ancient Roman practice.273 In classifying the governments of the Italian communes in terms of ancient political theory, Sigonio regarded the consular regime as aristocratic, and he alludes to the advent of the popolo in the thirteenth century as a passage from the aristocratic to the popular constitution. (He was to describe this transformation more fully in the posthumously published continuation of De Regno Italiae.274) In the second major digression of his history, set at the beginning of the twelfth century, Sigonio describes the communal constitution of Bologna, which he considered sufficiently similar to those of the other north Italian cities to serve as their model.275 The earliest surviving redactions of the relevant Bolognese statutes date in fact from circa 1250, a period at which the institutions of the commune were undergoing definite subordination to those of the popolo. These redactions are Sigonio's source for his description of the organization of the commune a century and a half earlier, which thus suffers from a certain anachronism and a failure to describe development. His understanding of these statutes, and of the fluctuating terms used generally in the archival documents for the councils and assemblies of the medieval city was also imperfect. In result Sigonio describes three separate elections for membership in three different communal councils {credentiae, generale, speto live under Roman, Longobard, or Salic law, a situation which was to persist until Lothar II. Bk. 7, A.D. 973, p. 326: there was no legal culture in Italy, only theology and philosophy, before Lothar II. Bk. 11, A.D. 1137, p. 504: the return of the codex of the Digest from Amalfi to Pisa; and pp. 508-9: "Constans praeterea doctorum hominum monumentis est fama, Lotharium ut ex uno jure civili Romano posthac iudicia fierent, lege sanxisse. Ante hoc tempus Italici certe alii Longobardica, alii Salica, alii Romana lege utebantur. In posterum autem omnes uni iuri unique legi, reliquis abrogatis, nempe Romanae, obtemperarunt. Iusque civile publicis Italiae in gymnasiis maiore celebran studio et diligentiore coli opera coeptum. Primus autem Bononiae Irnerius exponere c o e p i t . . . " (and cf. on p. 509 Sigonio's discussion of the problem of the period at which Irnerius flourished). 273 "Quos vero populi ad regendam civitatem et iura moderanda posthac crearunt, ii consules duo aut plures fuerunt, ex antiqua Romana reipubhcae consuetudine sumpti" (De Regno Italiae, bk. 7, A.D. 973, p. 320). 274 See De Regno Italiae p. 325. For the arrival of the popolo m Bologna in A.D. 1228, see De Regno Italiae quinque reliqui libri (1591), bk. 17, A.D. 1228, pp. 56-58; and below, chap. 2, nn. 66-68. 275 De Regno Italiae, bk. 10, A.D. 1106, pp. 451-56 (1580). Pierre Toubert, "Citta et contado dans l'ltalie medievale. L'emergence d'un theme historiographique entre Renaissance et Romantisme," La cultura 1984, pp. 219—48, opens his survey with a discussion of Sigonio's two digressions.

88

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

dale) whereas in fact, in an annual electoral assembly in December, organized in two phases, the commune selected the members of only two councils, formally distinct but practically interlocking, called special and general. (Consilium speciale was the mid-thirteenth-century term for the old consilium credentiae, the body which had governed the commune in the decades of uncontested aristocracy). In Bologna nominating committees chosen at the electoral assembly from each quarter of the city by a complicated process of sortition called "ad brevia," were responsible for the selection first of five hundred members of the special council, then of six hundred members of the general council. Sigonio describes in detail this characteristic method. A complete account of communal constitutional history, emphasizing development, is difficult enough in the twentieth century and was far beyond Sigonio's powers in the sixteenth.276 His importance lies in his recognizing and bringing to the fore the existence in twelfth-century Italy of the ancient republican ideal of participation by citizens in a self-governing political community. This digression also includes material on the figure of the podesta, who replaced the consuls as chief magistrate in the communes; on the organization of the communal army; on urban guilds; and on the gradual domination of the independent settlements and rural nobility of the contado by the communes. There was one theme of his story which seemed to draw from Sigonio a personal zeal which he generally avoided as unbecoming to a historian: that of the struggle for reform of the church in the eleventh century. He adopts very markedly the point of view of his sources, who were also protagonists, Peter Damian and Hildebrand (Gregory VII), condemning the state of degradation to which the Roman and Milanese clergy had 276 Alfred Hessel, Storia della citta di Bologna dal 1116 al 1280, a cura di Gina Fasoli (Bologna: ALFA, 1975; ed. pr.: Geschichte der Stadt Bologna von 1116 bis 1280 [Berlin: Historische Studien no. 76, 1910]) is still the major modern source for Bologna in the communal age. The elections "ad brevia" are described in chapter 3.1, n. 11, p. 144. For comparison with Sigonio, see chapter 3.2, "La costiruzione comunale," and especially the synthesis of the constitution of A. D. 1250 at pp. 180-81. The statutes of the commune were published in the nineteenth century: Luigi Frati, ed., Dei monumenti istorici pertinenti alle provincie della Romagna. Serie prima, Statuti. Statuti di Bologna dall'anno 1245 all'anno 1267, 3 vols. (Bologna: Regia tipografia, 1869-77). See 3: 63-65 for bk. 10, sec. 19, "De ellectione conscilii credentiae et generahs." It is apparent that Sigonio's description of the communal constitution is based on this source, in which conscilium credencie and conscilium speciale are used alternatively to refer to the same organ. Frati's edition records variants present in successive redactions of the statutes, and reveals some of the purely mechanical problems, such as those of punctuation, which attend the interpretation of these documents. In sum, it is not surprising that Sigonio, the pioneer in using them, thought they referred to three separate councils where in fact there were only two.

89

C H A P T E R ONE

fallen and exalting the work of the Reformers.277 Most partisan of all is his denigrating portrait of the emperor who came to Canossa, Henry IV (III for Sigonio), while the figure of the Countess Mathilda, perhaps not surprisingly is celebrated by the writer, a native of Modena. One of the works left in manuscript at the time of Sigonio's death was De episcopis Bononiensibus, published in 1586, of which a first draft had been completed in 1572.278 The published version concludes with the elevation of Bologna and its diocese to archepiscopal status in December 1582, and the consequent celebrations in early 1583. It is a chronological series of brief biographies, but derived from it were the longer lives, published separately, of two famous bishops of Bologna, Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggi (1474—1539), published by the Societas Typographiae Bononiensis in 1581, and Cardinal Niccolo Albergati (ca. 1375-1443), edited for the first time by the Carthusians in the seventeenth century. Each is encomiastic not only of the individual protagonists but of their antecedents and descendants in the two notable Bolognese families of which they were members, and for each Sigonio read widely in published works of recent history as well as consulting private archives of both families. Despite this research they are best considered CounterReformation tracts (Sigonio did not object to tendentious writing within a tendentious genre), and reveal a certain parallelism in the careers of the two bishops, Albergati combatting disaffection, heresy and conciliarism in England, France, and Basel, and Campeggi doing the same a century later in Maximilian's Germany, Henry VIH's England, and Augsburg. Sigonio's presentation of the history of Bologna is more problematic. The Bolognese senatorial elite of the 1580s enjoyed the security of patrician status within the absorbing, pacifying, and regulating papal state which had finally engrossed the free commune in 1506. Still its members retained an ancestral sense of civic independence, flavored with resentment. The uneasy historical memory of internal factional strife in Bologna, and external interstate wars in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, emphasized the advantages which their obligatory new loyalty brought them, despite the loss of independence. For these men, 277

See De Regno Italiae, bks. 8 and 9 passim. For passages in which Sigonio especially reveals his commitment, see bk. 8, A.D. 1046, pp. 368-69; A.D. 1047, p. 371; bk. 9, A.D. 1068, p. 398; A.D. 1077, pp. 413-15 (the humiliation of the emperor at Canossa). 278 Biblioteca Vaticana, Fondo Boncompagni, MS F 9; cf. Fasoli, "Appunti sulla Historia Bononiensis," p. 698. There are two manuscripts of the later version of the work in Bologna, Biblioteca Universitana: MSS 1557 (Frati 3660) and 2447 (Frati 1248). One or both of these will have been the basis of the edition of 1586.

90

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

Sigonio wrote accounts of the lives of two of their forebears, participants in the events that had shaped modern Bologna—but on the ecclesiastical side. The careers of Niccolo Albergati and Lorenzo Campeggi as bishops of Bologna and cardinals of Rome can be seen as symbolic of the historical movement of Bolognese society from the commune and its divisions to the new possibilities and limitations which came with integration into a modern European regional state. These tensions transpire, in Sigonio's life of Albergati, in the awkward and embarrassed accounts given there of decisive confrontations between the free commune and the ecclesiastical power in the fifteenth century, such as the expulsion of Albergati by the Bolognesi, and his return with the forces of papal condottieri at his back.279 The transformation of Bologna becomes palpable in the vicissitudes of the Campeggi, who suffered violence at the hands of the Bentivoglio during the final convulsions of the commune, but rose under the new dispensation of 1506 to senatorial status, hence to wealth and distinction culminating in the strenuous career of Lorenzo Campeggi himself, and in the otiose one of his son Giovan Battista. Another publication of 1581 was Sigonio's edition with commentary of the chronicle of world history of Sulpicius Severus, an ecclesiastical historian who wrote in a classicizing manner in the fourth century A. D. This edition was intended by Gabriele Paleotti for the edification of the clergy through erudition. Like Sigonio's histories it was to be attacked in secret by the Roman censors shortly after publication.280 In 1582 he published De republica Hebraeorum, an attempt to extract and digest Hebrew antiquities and chronology from the books of the Old Testament on the model of his previous handbook concerning the Athenians. It had a considerable fortuna in the Protestant north (where it must have served pedagogic ends), being reprinted in 1583, 1585, 1608, and 1609 at the Wechel press, and also in Cologne (1583), Speyer (1584), Middelburg (1678), and Leiden (1701). The book appeared with the imprint of Giovanni Rossi rather than that of the Societas Typographiae Bononiensis, which was terminated in 1582 after a decade of activity, during which its major effort had been the publication of the works of Carlo Sigonio himself. The members did not recover their capital in liquid form, and Sigonio was left with copies of De Regno Italiae and De an279

Sigonio, Vtta Nicolai Albergati (1618), p. 78. 280 -J-J16 censures with Sigonio's replies are published in Op. om. 6.1139-72; cf. Paolo Prodi, "Storia sacra e controriforma. Note sulle censure al commento di Carlo Sigonio a Sulpicio Severo" (1977). 91

CHAPTER ONE

tiquo iure populi Romani on his hands which, as he foresaw, proved difficult to dispose of.281 Members of Sigonio's family, persons from Modena who seem to have lacked any social or intellectual amplitude, dwelt with him in Bologna. His house was also shared by scholars paying for their accommodation and for private tuition from him, and of course by servants. His letters to Camillo Coccapani and Gian Vincenzo Pinelli offer the best portrait of his mature personality: he was fairly often ill and subject to melancholy; more than once he used the metaphor of life as a voyage ending in port. He had many friends but there is no evidence that he enjoyed any intimate sentimental bond with another person, and every evidence that he worked unceasingly. His books were his life, and this lack of respite is reflected in their excessive number and uneven quality. He planned to retire to Modena, and in the summer of 1583 purchased property at Ponte Basso, where he began the construction of a large house in which he would have spent his retirement had he lived. He chose his nephew Alessandro Carlo di Gandolfo Sigonio as his heir. The last year of Sigonio's life was rendered miserable by the affair of the Consolatio Ciceronis.282 This literary forgery was confected on the basis of extant genuine fragments, edited by Sigonio and Andreas Patricius, of a lost work of Cicero, and was published in Venice, with no indication of provenance, early in 1583. It aroused much interest, and soon it was known that Francesco Vianello of the Venetian Chancellery had furnished it to the printer. In Bologna Sigonio used his lecture hall to recommend it as authentic, while Antonio Riccoboni decried it as false from the rival chair of humanity in Padua, and thus the affair unfortunately became one of honor between the two men and their universities. Riccoboni printed a pamphlet; Sigonio in turn reprinted the Consolatio in Bologna with two orationes scriptae which attempted to prove in a thoroughly sophistical manner that on purely internal grounds the Consolatio was likely to be what it seemed. The debacle came late in 1583 when Riccoboni printed a long refutation in which Sigonio was accused of being the pseudo-Cicero on the basis of a reported declaration of Francesco Vianello to the effect that Sigonio had provided him with the manuscript of the Consolatio which he had given to the printer. The accusation was generally believed and caused Sigonio a great deal of distress. 281 See Sorbelli, "Carlo Sigonio e la Societa Tipografica Bolognese" (1921); and Sigonio to Coccapani, 15 May 1582 (Franciosi, no. 39); 19 October 1582 (Franciosi, no. 40); 17 January 1583 (Franciosi, no. 42); and 2 March 1583 (Franciosi, no. 43). 282 For what follows, see chapter 5 below.

92

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

His last historical work was the drafting of a further five-and-a-half books of De Regno Italiae to cover the period of Frederick II and the final collapse of the imperial power in Italy. His house at Ponte Basso was habitable by summer 1584, and he was in residence there when on 27 August he died suddenly. He was buried in the church of S. Agostino in Modena.283 According to Sigonio's will the bulk of his library was to be disposed of in order to increase the capital of the estate which he had erected for his legitimate heirs.284 These books were purchased by Giacomo Boncompagni soon after Sigonio's death.285 There was also, however, a testamentary heir, Alessandro Caprara of Bologna, a Jesuit and the son of a friend of Sigonio, Gerolamo Caprara.286 To Alessandro Caprara, and by reversion to his father, Sigonio left his manuscripts for the clear, though unstated, purpose of publication. But Giacomo Boncompagni, on the legal pretext that he had purchased from the legitimate heirs a comprehensive claim to Sigonio's literary effects, demanded from the Caprara the manuscripts of the unpublished works and forbade the publication of any of them in the interim.287 The intention of the Boncompagni was to control the availability of these works in accordance with the requirements of the papacy, a control to which they evidently felt, not without justice, that they were entitled as Sigonio's patrons. The Jesuit Alessandro Caprara was not disposed to resist, but his father Gerolamo showed the spirit of a Bolognese noble, and it took the 283

On Sigonio's private life, see principally Simeoni, "Documenti," and the thesis of Girasoli, Note per una biografia di Carlo Sigonio. The death of the historian was recorded in a private Modenese diary: "Il di 27 agosto lunedi passo a miglior vita il molto magnifico et dottissimo signore il signor Carlo Sigonio. Fu sepulto il giorno seguente in Santo Augustino con bellissimo funerale da dottore et cavaliere con uno sermone fattoli sopra il corpo" (Suor Lucia Pioppi, Diario [1541-1612], [Modena: Panini, 1982], p. 90). On his present funereal monument, see Calon Cesis, "Storm di un busto," and Simeoni, "Documenti," pp. 205-6. 234 The will is published in Franciosi, Vita e opere di Carlo Sigonio, pp. 93-100. 285 Simeoni, "Documenti," pp. 208-26, publishes a Bolognese notary's inventory of Sigonio's books that contains approximately 715 items, plus 177 unbound, unsold copies of De Regno Italiae and 196 copies of De antique iure populi Romani. A similar inventory, minus this unsold stock, was made when the books were received by their purchaser: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Fondo Boncompagni Ludovisi 594, armadio 1, mazzo Q. I have not been able to discover the fate of this collection of Sigonio's books; they do not appear to have entered the Biblioteca Vaticana. 286 On Alessandro Caprara there is an entry in G. Fantuzzi, Notizie degli scrittori bolognesi t. 3 (Bologna, 1783). His letters from 1580, when he entered the Jesuit order, are now in Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS gamma A. 7.12 (Campori 267). There are some draft notes, highly inaccurate, on the life of Sigonio at the end of this codex. 287 On this and what follows see Pirri, "Gregorio XIII e l'eredita della biblioteca di Carlo Sigonio" (1969).

93

C H A P T E R ONE

combined insistence of the Cardinal Legate in Bologna, G. B. Castagna, the cardinal of Santo Sisto, Filippo Boncompagni, the Duke of Sora, Giacomo Boncompagni, and the general of the Jesuits, Claudio Acquaviva, all of whom invoked the will of the pope himself, to persuade him to surrender. The manuscripts and a few printed works were formally handed over by the Caprara to Fabio Albergati, acting for the Boncompagni, on 13 January 1585. In the notarial list of items transferred288 it is possible to recognize in substance a group of manuscripts of De Regno Italiae books 15-20, Historia ecclesiastica, Historia Bononiensis, and De episcopis Bononiensibus which are now distributed in the Biblioteca Vaticana, the Biblioteca Universitaria of Bologna, and the Biblioteca Ambrosiana of Milan. These works, unpublished at his death, are the only part of Sigonio's literary production to survive in manuscript. Even without tracing in detail the movements of each of these codices, the main outlines of their story are clear. The Boncompagni sifted the manuscripts, and seeing that the works on Bologna were of purely local interest, nor likely to be controversial except in Bologna, where there was an element which continued to resent Sigonio's attack on the city's foundation myth, sent them back there.289 Hence the presence in the Biblioteca Universitaria of manuscripts of Historia Bononiensis and De episcopis Bononiensibus, and the publication of the latter there in 1586. The Boncompagni did not control the entire Nachlass, for the Caprara had retained a manuscript of the Historia Bononiensis, probably on the ground that it was part of the "scartafacci e fogli imperfetti" to which the Boncompagni waived their claim.290 Gerolamo Caprara was prepared in 1586 to brave the wrath of the Bolognesi and publish it in Brescia, where his son was then teaching in the Jesuit college, a plan which Alessandro Caprara discouraged.291 But he was faithful to Sigonio in the case of De Regno Italiae books 1520, procuring one of the manuscripts of it from Giacomo Boncompagni 288 pijri, "Gregorio XIH e l'eredita," pp. 95-96. 289 Giacomo Boncompagni to the Reggimento di Bologna, 20 February 1585; transcription in Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS beta 1.3.1 (Ital. 1827), the original (not seen) in the BoIognese archives, Lettere dei Principi t. 24. The Bolognesi had requested the return of the Historia Bononiensis originally commissioned by them, to which Boncompagni agreed, adding that he would soon send back "1'altre scritture che erano con esse." 290 Pirri, "Gregorio XIII e l'eredita," p. 93. The manuscript retained by the Caprara is conjecturally identifiable as the one in Rome, Biblioteca Corsiniana, MS 350 (35 F 16), Caroli Sigonii Historiae Bononienses; cf. the note of ownership on f. II, "Caprarorum est." 291 Alessandro to Gerolamo Caprara, Brescia, 20 March 1586 (Modena: Biblioteca Estense, MS gamma A. 7.12 [Campori 267] f. 9), published in part by Muratori in Vita Caroli Sigonii, p. xx.

94

LIFE OF C A R L O S I G O N I O

and with the aid of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli and Girolamo Mercuriale seeing it through the process of inquisitorial review in Venice, where it was published in 1591.292 The Sigonian manuscripts of most interest to the Boncompagni were certainly those of the Historia ecclesiastica. They remained unnoticed in the papal library until the eighteenth century, when Filippo Argelati and his collaborators broke the silence of a century in which no work of Sigonio had been printed in Italy by editing his Opera omnia, volume 4 of which contained the Historia ecclesiastica, in 1732-37.293 292 The manuscript used is now in BAM, MS D 152 inf., ff. 49-236, Historiae de Regno Italiae lib. 15-20. The first forty-eight leaves of the codex contain drafts of an index for the book, and the correspondence of Pinelli and Caprara of 1590-91 concerning the publication, with contributions from Alvise Mocenigo, Girolamo Mercuriale, and others. Another copy of the continuation of De Regno Italiae is in Biblioteca Vaticana MS Boncompagni F 8 (not seen). 293 On Filippo Argelati, publisher of Muratori's Rerum Italicarum scriptores through the Societas Palatina, and of Sigonio's Opera omnia with the imprint "In aedibus palatinis," cf. the entry in DBI 4, 1962, pp. 112-14, by I. Zican; Luigi Vischi, "La Societa Palatina di MiIano," in Archivio storico lombardo 7,1880, pp. 392-566; and the letters of Argelati to Muratori (of those from Muratori to Argelati only a handful survive) in Edizione nationale del carteggio d L. A. Muratori vol. 3, Carteggio con Filippo Argelati (Firenze: Olschki, 1976). An important collaborator of Argelati in obtaining unpublished or rare material, including the Historia ecclesiastica, was Albenco Archinto (1698-1758); see the entry on him in DBI 3, 1961, pp. 757-59, by E. Gencarelli.

95

CHAPTER

TWO

ROMAN STUDIES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY PART ONE PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS

T

HAT in Renaissance Italy the ancient world was, for educated people, physically and intellectually present to a degree now hard to imagine, is a commonplace of profound truth. For Italians the heritage of Rome was a matter of palpable and evident continuity in the landscape, in the pattern of human settlement, in the road system, and in architecture. In language, the revival of classical latinity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries followed from the recovery of the scattered remnants of Roman literature and the reassembly of them into a patrimony transmitted from antiquity across a gulf of time. These poetical, oratorical, philosophical, and historical works, or fragments of works, when surveyed as a corpus (to survey them in that way marks the passage from a medieval to a Renaissance mentality), and supplemented by the historical and biographical literature of the Hellenistic Greeks, constitute the "literary tradition" of Roman history, and portray the development of a polity which came to be considered the secular paradigm for European civilization. The broad divisions of this history were three: initially a monarchy, the regnum, from 753 B.C., canonical date of the Romulean foundation, to approximately 509 B.C.; then, for 450 years (509-ca.40 B.C.) the respublica, during which Rome was an autonomous city-state comparable to the Greek polis; and finally the new world monarchy, imperium Romanum, from Augustus, the first princeps, to the fifth century (in the 96

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

west) and in the eastern empire far beyond. Of these the Roman republic was, for most Renaissance humanists, the most highly charged with significance. As a city-state it could be studied under the theoretical guidance of Plato and Aristotle, the conditioning example for both of whom is the Athenian polis with its high level, remarkable in any age, of popular participation in public assemblies. Aristotle's extensive discussions in the Politics of the criteria of citizenship are a natural concomitant of this level of participation and influenced directly, as will become apparent, Carlo Sigonio's work on Roman history and society.J No analytical treatise of the Aristotelian type dealing with the constitution of the Roman republic (which was customary, not written), nor unfortunately any adequate description of it, survives. Polybius, writing in the second century B.C., adopted the general classification of types of constitution developed by the Greeks, according to which power might be held by one, by a few, or by many, and in each case in a just or unjust fashion, to give a total of six possibilities: kingship or tyranny, aristocracy or oligarchy, and the rule of the demos—just or unjust. In the last case Aristotle uses the generic term politeia (constitution) for the just form and demokratia for the unjust form, but in Polybius demokratia denotes the just rule of the many, and ochlokratia (mob-rule) the unjust form.2 Polybius is the first surviving writer to assert that they must 1

For Aristotle on citizenship, see Politics 3.1 and bk. 3 passim. I have used Aristotle, The Politics, translated with commentary by T. A. Sinclair and Trevor J. Saunders (1981), and I cite the work according to the book-and-chapter division used there and in most editions. I have found the following secondary literature useful and stimulating: Claude Mosse, "La conception du citoyen dans Ia Politique d'Aristote," Eirene 6, 1967, pp. 17-21; Curtis Johnson, "Who is Aristotle's Citizen?" Phronesis 29, 1984, pp. 73-90; Paul A. Rahe, "The Primacy of Politics in Classical Greece," American Historical Review 89, 1984, pp. 265-93; Luigi Firpo, ed., Storia delle idee politiche, economiche e sociali; vol. 1: L'antichita classica (1982), esp. C. Viano on Aristotle and J.-L. Ferrary on political ideas in the Roman republic; M. I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World (1983), esp. chap. 4 passim on the extension of citizenship in Greece and Rome; Finley, Democracy Ancient and Modern, 2d ed. (London: Hogarth, 1985); Christian Meier, Introduction a I'anthropologic politique de lanttquite classique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984). The Italian reception of Aristotle's Politics in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance is gauged perceptively in Nicolai Rubinstein, "Marsilius of Padua and Italian Political Thought of his Time" in J. R. Hale, J.R.L. Highfield, and Beryl Smalley, eds., Europe in the Late Middle Ages (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), pp. 44-75; N. Rubinstein, "Le dottrine politiche nel Rinascimento" (1979); and in chaps. 8-10 of Charles T. Davis, Dante's Italy and Other Essays (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), consisting of revised versions of Davis's articles on Remigio de' Girolami and Ptolemy of Lucca, the continuator of Aquinas's commentary on the Politics. 2 Politics 3.7; but for all the ramifications and variations presented by Aristotle, bks. 3 and 4 passim, and esp. 3.8 (economic classification of constitutions), 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 (demokratia and oligarchy, the only two which actually obtain), 4.9 (politeia as a mixture of oligarchy and 97

CHAPTER TWO

inevitably succeed one another in a constant cycle, but it is doubtful that he was original in this. Nor is he original in asserting that stability may be achieved and (in his terms) the progress of the cycle slowed or suspended by some mixture of the three just elements. Polybius's importance as a publicist lies in his application of these categories to the Roman republic, which had, he thought, inaugurated a new and universal phase of human history by the extension and consolidation of its hegemony.3 The state he described had a combination of institutions without parallel in the Greek world: elective annual collegial magistrates (consuls, praetors) with executive power in the city, where it was limited, and over the citizen army, where it was nearly absolute (imperium); a council, the senate, composed of ex-magistrates sitting for life with extensive powers of advice, consent, and control; assemblies of the citizens, the timocratically weighted centuriate assembly [comitia centuriata), which elected the higher magistrates and the territorially based tribal assembly (comitia trihuta) with electoral and legislative functions. Magistrates in office were presidents of both the senate and the assemblies. The literary tradition of early Roman history knew of a prolonged period of social conflict between a dominant group, the patricians, and a subordinate one, the plebs: detailed, hence specious narratives are provided by Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. According to these historians, and to other ancient writers who mention the patrician-plebeian conflict, the patricians were the descendants of the city's original aristocracy, one hundred patres appointed by Romulus, the legendary founder, to be members of the senate; later enlargements of the senate by cooptation ("adlection"), down to 509 B.C., are supposed to have indemokratia). That the Western world has known democracies of two profoundly different kinds, ancient and modern, is a generally accepted notion and I have decided throughout to write demokratia for the ancient kind in order to distinguish them. (It has not seemed necessary to make any such graphical distinction between kinds of aristocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy.) Modern democracy was unknown, and the ancient concept of demokratia still retained its full force in the age of Carlo Sigonio. 3 Polybius discusses the Roman constitution in bk. 6 of his Histories, which survives in fragmented form. See F. W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957); Kurt von Fritz, The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity. A Critical Analysis of Polybius's Political Ideals (1954; and cf. the review of von Fritz by Walbank in JRS 45,1955, pp. 150-55); Claude Nicolet, "Polybe et la 'constitution' de Rome: anstocratie et democratie," in C. Nicolet, ed., Demokratia et aristokratia. A propos de Gaius Gracchus: mots grecs et realitos romaines (1983), pp. 15-35; Fergus Millar, "The Political Character of the Classical Roman Republic 200-151 BC," ]RS 74, 1984, pp. 1-19; and F. Millar, "Politics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War (150-90 BC)," ]RS 76,1986, pp. 1-11.

98

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

creased its size to three hundred members. It was the patricians who eventually put an end to the monarchy and established a republic in which they claimed a monopoly of political privilege. The plebs are represented variously as, in origin, agriculturalists bound to the patricians by ties of clientage, or as the indigent and mercenary population of the city, forced to earn their livelihood by manual labor or trade; but also as being organized and having a role to play in the city from the Romulean foundation. The literary tradition assumes that "plebs" is the comprehensive designation for all nonpatrician Roman citizens, creating a patrician-plebeian dualism. The conflict between patricians and plebeians erupted soon after the foundation of the republic. The plebeians claimed judicial protection, political representation, relief from oppressive debt laws, and eventually political parity, in all of which they were successful. Despite a high level of social tension, which peaked in a series of secessions by the plebs, there occurred no armed sedition during the course of this struggle. The plebeian strategy, potent and revolutionary, was the formation of a state within the state, the incorporation of the plebs as a sworn association with its own officers (the tribunes of the plebs) and a plebeian assembly (the concilium piebis) capable of passing binding resolutions. According to Polybius, in an excursus on the archaic history of Rome, the plebeian revolution came to a climax about sixty years after the establishment of the republic, at the time of the Decemvirate (451-50 B. c.) which gave Roman law its first codification in twelve tables.4 This is a proposition which has been extrapolated from the modern study of the fragments of his text, but even without the help of Polybius on this point Renaissance scholars conventionally marked the episode of the Decemvirate and its aftermath as a turning point in the patrician-plebeian struggle. The codification of the private law had in part answered the demands of the plebeians. But the eleventh of the twelve tables, in a notorious revanche by the patricians, is said in the tradition to have ad4

Polybms's bk. 6 included an "Archaeologia," an account of the origins of the Roman constitution, which is lost. Portions of it have been recovered from other sources and are included as an adjunct to the Teubner and Bude editions of Polybius. Its broad outlines can be reconstructed from Cicero, De republica 2.1-64, in which Cicero paraphrases it; but this text was unknown in the Renaissance. Polybius at 6.11.1 appears to allude to the period of the Decemvirate, an extraordinary constituent magistracy, as the beginning of the period of constitutional perfection, but this interpretation of the passage was only advanced in 1888. Cf. von Fritz, Theory of the Mixed Constitution, chap. 6; Walbank Historical Commentary on Polybius; and f.-L. Ferrary, "L'archeologie du De republica (2,2,4-37,63): Ciceron entre Polybe et Platen," 7RS 74,1984, pp. 87-98.

99

CHAPTER TWO

joined to the laws already in force a drastic prohibition on intermarriage [conubium) between themselves and the plebeians. Livy's fourth book opens with the plebeian counterattack, a plebiscite proposed in 445 B.C. by the tribune Gaius Canuleius which abrogates the ban on conubium while seeking to force the opening of all patrician magistracies to plebeian candidates. In a famous speech the tribune denounces patrician exclusivity and argues for the union of the Romans under the sign of liberty and the open and strenuous competition of innate virtue. In result, intermarriage is established and the consulate is replaced for the best part of a century by the compromise magistracy of the consular tribunate ("military tribunes with consular power"), elected in groups of varying size and including a minority of plebeians. The motive for this innovation was that the patricians considered the consulate a purely patrician magistracy, the auspices of which would be polluted by the accession of a plebeian consul.5 The auspices (auspicia) were the distinctively Roman mode of communication with their divinities by means of prognostications based on the observation of natural signs (bird flight, meteorological phenomena). They had in origin both a private and a public domain, to the extent that the private can be separated from the public in a primordial state, and the patricians attempted to monopolize both. Through the veil of Livy's colorful and anachronistic depictions, the lineaments emerge of a paradigmatic case of ancient social conflict: the patricians aimed to transform themselves into a caste by enforcing a regime of endogamy through the ban on conubium. In justification of this they advanced claims to ritual and genetic purity. Ritual purity was expressed as the exclusive right to treat with divinity through the auspices, while genetic purity was expressed as exclusive membership in a legitimate descent group, a gens ("clan"—but the word also means "people," "nation," "kind," or "race"). The gentes are, of course, a familiar institution to students of Roman history: they furnished the fundamental component of Roman names, the gentilicium (Aemilius, Julius, Tullius) which denoted descent from a hypothetical common ancestor, and which was borne in historical times by every Roman. But in Livy the patricians of 5 The speech of Canuleius: Livy 4.3.2-5.6. There are historiographical problems; cf. appendices in the Bude editions of Livy bks. 3 and 4 by J. Bayet (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1954 with later re-editions); and Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy, pp. 451ff., 527ff. On Livy's account of the subsequent period of Roman history, see esp. Ronald T. Ridley, "The Consular Tribunate: The Testimony of Livy" (1986; the author's customary valuable review of previous bibliography reaches back in this case to Sigonio himself).

100

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

the fifth and fourth centuries assert that only they have gentes.6 In fact Livy's patricians equivocate palpably, confounding their exclusive claim to a certain type of formally structured descent group with the claim that the plebeians "had no descent," that they were conceived in promiscuity and knew no parentage. In this lay the threatened pollution of the auspices, as one of Livy's speakers makes clear: What a manifold revolution Gaius Canuleius was attempting—to bring about a commixture of races [gentes) and the disruption of the public and private auspices, so that nothing should be left pure or uncontaminated, and so that, with all distinction abolished, no one should either know who he himself was, nor who his kin were. What else is the import of marriage at random, if not that plebeian and patrician should roll together, copulating in a fashion hardly different to that of wild beasts? That no one should know who, or of what blood, or into whose rites, he was born, half patrician, half plebeian, discordant in his very being.7 The period (444-367 B.C.) during which the Romans elected consular tribunes, putatively in order to avoid the pollution of the consular auspices, is fraught with historiographical problems which cannot be discussed here. Livy, for instance, declares that the first plebeian actually to be chosen a consular tribune, in a college otherwise composed of patricians, was P. Licinius Calvus in 400 B.C.; but five of the six tribunes whom Livy gives as members of this college bear plebeian gentile names.8 Our sources do not state precisely when there began to be plebeian senators. The contest between the patricians and the plebeians became severe about 375 B.C, when the tribunes of the plebs Licinius and Sextius proposed a series of reforms for the alleviation of private debt, for a limitation on the occupation of public land, for an enlargement of one of the Roman priesthoods to include plebeians—and for the return 6 Hence on one view the term patres, used by Livy for "patricians" and "patrician senate," would mean collectively the assembled heads of the gentes. Cf. below n. 16. But Livy will also later call the members of the combined patrician-plebeian senate patres conscripti, or simply patres. * 7 "Quas quantasque res C. Canuleium adgressum! Conluvionem gentium, perturbationem auspiciorum pubhcorum privatorumque adferre, ne quid sinceri, ne quid incontaminati sit, ut discnmine omni sublato nee se quisquam nee suos noverit. Quam enim aliam vim conubia promiscua habere, nisi ut ferarum prope ntu volgenrur concubitus plebis patrumque? ut qui narus sit ignoret, cuius sanguinis, quorum sacrorum sit; dimidius patrum sit, dimidius plebis, ne secum quidem ipse concors" (Livy 4.2.5-6; and cf. 4.1.2 and 4.6.2). 8 Livy 5.12.9-11. Cf. Ronald T. Ridley, "Fastenkntik" (1980), p. 265 and "The Consular Tribunate: The Testimony of Livy" (1986), p. 450.

101

CHAPTER TWO

of the consulship, henceforth to be shared between patricians and plebeians. All these measures were accepted between 367 and 366 B.C. against last-ditch resistance by the patricians which Livy personifies in a speech by Appius Claudius, a member of a clan which had emigrated to Rome and joined the patriciate at the dawn of the republic. The contention that the plebeians "lacked descent" in the literal sense appears no longer to be tenable, for Claudius admits that even if he were not a patrician his status would still be that of a Roman citizen legitimately born of two free parents, and as such, he says, he would wish to protest at the behavior of Licinius and Sextius.9 The perils of miscegenation, decried ninety years before, are now irrevelant, and consequently Claudius defends passionately the last bastion, the ritual purity of the auspices : In whose care then are the auspices according to the custom of our ancestors? Clearly in that of the patricians. The election of a plebeian magistrate is not possible under auspicial sanction. In fact the auspices are our property to the extent that when the people elect patrician magistrates they do so exclusively under auspicial sanction, and further we ourselves furnish the interrex under auspicial sanction without popular suffrage, and can take the auspices in private—a privilege which the plebeians do not have even if they become magistrates.10 Nevertheless, in the two generations which followed, the plebeians acceded to all of the higher magistracies and in 300 B.C. again sought entry to the two senior collegial priesthoods, the augurate and the pontificate. Livy on this occasion gives a speech to the plebeian consular (ex9 "An hoc, si Claudiae familiae non sim nee ex patncio sanguine ortus sed unus Qumtium quilibet, qui modo me duobus ingenuis ortum et vivere in libera civitate sciam, reticere possim . . .?" (Livy 6.40.6.) Quirites is the term for the Roman citizens that emphasizes the peculiarly civic aspect of their lives and status. This passage was to have great importance in Carlo Sigonio's reconstruction of the early history of Rome. 10 "Penes quos igitur sunt auspicia more maiorum? Nempe penes patres; nam plebeius quidem magistratus nullus auspicate creatur; nobis adeo propria sunt auspicia, ut non solum quos populus creat patncios magistratus non aliter quam auspicate creet, sed nos quoque ipsi sine suffragio populi auspicate interregem prodamus et privatim auspicia habeamus, quae isti ne in magistratibus quidem habent" (Livy 6.41.5-6). Auspicato (adv.) = under auspicial sanction; populus = an assembly of the patricians and plebeians; interrex = a patrician able to renew the sacral and electoral machinery should all higher magistracies fall vacant. And cf. the patrician reaction five years later, after the defeat of Genucius, a plebeian consul, in battle (Livy 7.6.10-11).

102

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

consul) P. Decius Mus.11 The orator first characterizes the patrician claim in terms which constitute our best surviving testimony for the fact that the patricians believed that the plebeians had no gentile family structure (hence no right to the auspices and to imperium, military command under auspicial sanction). Decius himself then responds with the counterattack of the plebeians: he asserts that the first patricians had been simply ingenui, persons of established free parentage—the corollary being, clearly, the collapse of all patrician claims to ritual and genetic purity as a group. Decius Mus draws attention to himself, his father, and the prospects of his son as examples of the new nobility of office: The same things are always repeated—that the auspices are yours, that only you have gens, that only you have legitimate imperium and the use of the auspices in the city and in the field. But up till now patrician and plebeian [magistrates] have enjoyed equal success, as they shall continue to do. Have you never heard it said that those first selected as patricians were not in fact sent down from heaven but were persons who could cite a legitimate father—nothing more, that is, than free-born citizens? I can already cite a father who was a consul, and my son in turn will be able to cite a grandfather.12 The plebeians were admitted to the priestly colleges and the ancient and now moribund patrician hope of creating a society of castes died for good. But there remained one last major political victory for the plebeians. In 287 B.C. (in a period for which Livy's text has not survived) the lex Hortensia provided that future resolutions passed by the plebs (plebiscites) would have the same binding validity as laws passed by the populus (patricians and plebeians meeting together, as in the centuriate assembly). Laws of the populus had always required ratification, originally by the patrician senate, later by the patrician section of the patrician-plebeian senate, and continued to require it as a formality prior to passage. This patrician ratification was called "the authority of the Fa11

Livy 10.7.9-8.12. "Semper ista audita sunt eadem penes vos auspicia esse, vos solos gentem habere, vos solos iustum imperium et auspicium dorm militiaeque; aeque adhuc prosperum plebeium et patricium fuit porroque erit. En unquam fando audistis patricios primo esse faaos non de caelo demissos sed qui patrem ciere possent, id est nihil ultra quam ingenuos? Consulem iam patrem ciere possum avumque iam poterit films meus" (Livy 10.8.9-11). The verb cieo ciere in this sense means to call on by name or invoke. 12

103

CHAPTER TWO

thers" (patrum auctoritas). For the fifth and fourth centuries the sources are contradictory and it is possible, according to how they are selected and interpreted, to believe that plebiscites had always been free of patrician ratification, or that they had in practice received it. The truth is evidently that for two centuries two rival communities within the state attempted reciprocally each to dominate the other; that nothing recognizable as constitutional law existed, only rival claims; and that while neither side surrendered these, reciprocity gave rise to situations of practical compromise in which plebiscites were accepted, even recommended, by the patrician senate. But the balance swung definitely to the plebeian side: after the lex Hortensia of 287 B.C. the patricians were bound by the plebiscites, their reciprocal claim to ratify (or to be exempt from them) was annulled, and plebiscites became the usual legislation of the unified community. In terms of Greek theoretical classification, the situation which resulted was crystal-clear. It was a demokratia, the domination of the community by its most numerous and least honorable section.13 Reality was different, as Polybius knew when he described a form of mixed constitution at Rome. The conflict between the patricians and the plebeians was at an end. There followed a century and a half of effective government by the patrician-plebeian senate, social peace, military victory over Carthage, territorial expansion, and the spread of Roman citizenship in Italy. By a constitutional practice probably as old as the institutions themselves all or nearly all Roman legislation during this period was initiated by a resolution of the senate urging the presentation of a bill to the assembly. And since the legislative assembly was now customarily the assembly of the plebs, these resolutions were addressed directly (or indirectly through the consuls) by the senate to the tribunes. They for their part entered the senate, addressed it, and could eventually preside there. As Livy calls the patrician-plebeian senate the patres, so he often calls the preliminary deliberation of the senate which initiated 13 There are many historiographical problems. The sources ascribe to a lex Valeria Horatia of 449 B.C., and to a lex Pubhlia Philonis of 339 B.C., as well as to the lex Hortensia of 287 or 286 B.C., the equalizing of plebiscites to laws of the populus. Only the last may be historical (this was to be Sigonio's opinion), or the equalization may have been achieved in stages of which no precise record survived, and have culminated in the lex Hortensia. See Marina Torelli, Rerum Romanarum fontes 292-265 B.C. (Pisa: Giardini, 1978), pp. 69-72 for ancient testimony and modern bibliography on the lex Hortensia; Rotondi, Leges publicae populi Romani on the lex Hortensia, lex Valeria Horatia de plebiscitis, lex Pubhlia Philonis de plebiscitis, and all other Roman republican legislation; von Fritz, Theory of the Mixed Constitution, pp. 212-14 and passim; and Ridley, "Livy and the Concilium Plebis" (1980).

104

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

legislation by the name of the ancient formula of patrician ratification, patrum auctoritas.1* Structural changes in an agrarian economy and a complex of economic, social, and political factors brought on the subsequent period of social revolution led by tribunes of the plebs acting independently of the senate, and civil war. The first of these tribunes was Tiberius Gracchus (133 B.C.) and by the age of Cicero the revolution had reached its convulsion and created the climate in which Cicero wrote the nostalgic dialogues Cato maior de senectute, Laelius de amicitia and De republica (known only in fragments until 1812). The latter two, set at the end of the life of Scipio Aemilianus, portray an age of social harmony and intellectual enlightenment about to be eclipsed by the Gracchi. As for the latter, their reputation and that of the popularis movement in general naturally suffered from the transmission of this and similar views, and from a hostile historical tradition which, in the absence of genuine accounts of the Roman past, also retrojected social conditions and political programs of the Gracchan age into narratives of the very remote contest of the patricians and plebeians. We see the result of this retrojection in, for instance, Livy's first decade (to 292 B.C), in which turbulent tribunes of the plebs harangue an indigent urban mob in terms all too reminiscent of the Gracchan or Ciceronian periods, while the patricians are continually referred to by Livy as the nobilitas; the latter was, in fact, the term for the political elite, patrician and plebeian, which coalesced after the defeat of patrician exclusivity in the fourth century. Livy (and after him, English usage) also has the habit of referring to the conflict of the patricians and plebeians as a "conflict of the orders" and to the phases of harmony between them as a "concordia ordinum." The usage is anachronistic for the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., and is in fact Cicero's, who used it in reference not to patricians and (early) plebeians but to the senatorial, equestrian, and plebeian orders which emerged in the classical republic; "plebeian" in this second sense is not the opposite of "patrician" but a summary term for a heterogeneous collection of groups ranked beneath the two higher orders in the social 14 The distinction between patrician ratification of legislation on the one hand and the preliminary deliberation of the whole senate on the other, confused by the literary sources, apparently was first established by Mommsen. It was unknown in the sixteenth century, with consequences which will be seen below. The historiographical problems can be pursued in the following bibliography: Willems, JLe senat de la rapublique romaine (1883), 2: 33-91; Mommsen, "Bestatigung und Vorberathung der Volkschliisse," SR 3.2 (1888), pp. 1037-48; Andre Magdelain, "De I'auctoritas patrum a Yauctoritas senatus," Iura 33,1982, pp. 25^15.

105

CHAPTER TWO

hierarchy and internally graded by a gamut of differences in occupational status, income, and corporate privilege. Our literary tradition, in sum, obfuscates the nature of archaic Roman society while transmitting a series of clues which indicate possible versions of the truth. Dominant social strata have always been more successful than those beneath them in perpetuating a historical memory of themselves; thus our clues about the patriciate appear more frequent and reliable than those for the plebs, the original character of whom is a historical enigma. Niebuhr believed the plebs to have been free landed peasants as opposed to the city dwellers who first constituted themselves Roman citizens, and whom he thought to have been nothing less than the original patriciate tout entier. His belief that the patriciate had once been coextensive with the populus became prevalent in the nineteenth century with Mommsen, but the assimilation of the plebs to European serfdom was abandoned in favor of various theories locating them within the primordial city and allotting, or denying, them participation in such urban institutions as the city wards (curiae) whose members formed the original city assembly, the comitia curiata. Hypotheses of invasion from without, and consequent racial or ethnic division within the city, were advanced.15 Many writers on archaic Rome from the nineteenth century to the present have assumed as a datum that the literary tradition, emphasizing patrician clanhood as a factor in the patricianplebeian political struggle, reflects the reality of a more remote period before the formation of the state in which the gentes were sovereign bands or communities: their federation will have given birth to the unified state; their heads were the patres. The plebeians, who lacked a patriarchal clan structure, constituted an underclass with no role in the original community.16 Other historians take the radically different view that whatever social 15 Cf. Jean-Claude Richard, Les origines de la plebe romaine, (1978) chap. 1, for a historiographical review. 16 The canonical text is Livy 10.8.9 (above n. 12), "vos solos gentem habere." A partial bibliography of the "gentilician theory": V. Giuffre, "Plebei gentes non habent," Labeo 16, 1970, pp. 329-34; L. -R. Menager, "Nature et mobiles de l'opposition entre la plebe et Ie patriciat," Revue Internationale des droits de I'Anhquita 19,1972, pp. 367-97; a review of studies in L. Zusi, "Patriziato e plebe. Rassegna degli studi 1966-1971," Cntica storica 12, 1975, pp. 177-230; criticism of the gentilician theory in a review by A. Drummond in ]RS 72,1982, pp. 177-78. Substantial works include: Gennaro Franciosi, Clan gentilizio e strutture tnonogamiche 3d ed. (Naples: Jovene, 1983); G. Franciosi, ed., Ricerche sulla organizzazione gentilizia romana 1 (Naples: Jovene, 1984); Francesco De Martmo, Diritto e societa nell'antica Roma (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1979—the scripta minora of the author of the Storia della costituzione romana, [Naples: Jovene, 1958-]).

106

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

stratification obtained at the birth of the city must have been very fluid, and that the articulations of Roman society that survived into historical times (gentes, patriciate, plebs) must have grown up as the city ex­ panded. It has been denied that there existed an original dualism of pa­ tricians and plebeians; the patricians may have coalesced as an informal elite during the monarchy by monopolizing certain offices and priest­ hoods, and the plebs may have been a faction or movement formed after the expulsion of the kings in order to compete with the patricians for power. Their eventual success would have brought about the situation of dualism (every Roman not a patrician was a plebeian) which the sources retroject to the kingship of Romulus.17 Finally, a related theory proposes that the patriciate itself may not have coalesced at all until the mid-fifth century, when a serrata (the analogy is with the Venetian pa­ triciate) will have distinguished those included from the rest, after which the affirmation of their political monopoly followed. This theory has the advantage of accounting for an anomaly: the surviving lists of annual consuls show a number of names in the half-century from 500 to about 450 B.C. which were borne in the later historical period by unmistakably plebeian gentes.18 But other explanations are possible. A bold one sug­ gests that they are interpolations while a milder one supposes that they represent patricians whose lineage later defected to the plebs, or expired, leaving related or adoptive lineages, or families of freedmen bearing a 17

Jean-Claude Richard, Les origines de la plebe romaine (1978). Cf. as well the many rele­ vant items in Arnaldo Momighano, Contributi, esp. Quarto contribute: (1969); T. J. Cornell, "The Failure of the Plebs," in Tria corda (Scritti Arnaldo Momighano) (Como: New Press, 1983); and J.-C. Richard, "Sur trois problemes du premier age republicain," MEFRA 97,1985, pp. 751-84. (All of the above had been written when I received Kurt A. Raaflaub, ed., Social Struggles in Archaic Rome. New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders [Berkeley: Uni­ versity of California Press, 1986]. Nothing requires modification. The volume in question is an introduction to some work of the early 1980s, and allows the views of Jean-Claude Richard and others to appear in English. There is much talk of methodology, but surely the rudimen­ tary principle of method in a field such as comparative social history is to select one's terms with care. Raaflaub and some of his contributors talk easily about the patrician and plebeian "orders"; Carlo Sigonio had insisted four hundred years ago (this will be seen below) that patriciate and plebs were social formations of a different kind to the senatorial, equestrian, and plebeian orders. This is a significant distinction, which has been forcefully renewed in the work of Claude Nicolet. In addition, Raaflaub's contributors are studious in avoiding any reference to the problem of the gentes, which might contaminate their pages with the outdated anthro­ pology of Marxism.) 18 Andre Magdelain, "Auspicia ad Patres Redeunt," (1964); A. Magdelain, "Procum Patricium," Studi in onore di Edoardo Volterra, vol. 2 (Milan: 1971), pp. 247-66; P. Ch. Ranouil, Recherches sur Ie patriciat (509-356 αν. J.-C.j (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1975); and a review of studies in E. S. Staveley, "The Nature and Aims of the Patriciate," Historia 32, 1983, pp. 24-57.

107

CHAPTER TWO

former owner's gentilicium, to represent that gens as plebeians in the historical period.

N O B I L I T Y IN EARLY M O D E R N E U R O P E

City-states comparable to those of the ancient world appeared in Italy between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Their original characteristic was that of a sworn association of members arrogating to themselves political rights (citizenship) and choosing from their midst the collegial magistracy which they called the consulate. Narratives and documents portray a contest, which became a mainstay of later historiography, between the communes and the infeudated nobles of the contado, the surrounding district, who were forced to become citizens and to dwell for part of each year in the city, where they contributed their own quotient of pride and violence to the social behavior of the urban magnates. In reaction against the oligarchies of the magnates new associations were formed during the thirteenth century, known as the popolo. In many communes they were successful in passing antimagnate legislation which excluded their opponents from political life. Political representation and participation in the Italian city-states assumed manifold forms, from public assemblies of the citizens, through the various guilds or corporations (including the popular compagnie delle armi) to the restricted councils through which in practice the commune was governed by a political elite defined by economic, social and military primacy, but fundamentally fluid and more or less open, according to phases, to a rapid social recirculation. 19 It may be hazarded, as a generalization, that the citizens of the communes were self-governing to an extent fully comparable with that of the city-states of antiquity, whose type of political life they in fact revived. The humanism of the Renaissance, evoking the cultural values of ancient urban elites, was a distinctive product of the 19 For a general introduction, see Daniel Waley, The Italian City-republics, 2d ed. (London: Longman, 1978); John Lamer, Italy m the Age of Dante and Petrarch 1216-1380 (London: Longman, 1980); and Gina Fasoli-Francesca Bocchi, La citta medievale itahana (Florence: Sansoni, 1973). Further: Gioacchino Volpe, "Questioni fondamentah suU'origine e svolgimento dei comuni italiani" in Volpe, Medio Evo italiano (Florence: Sansoni, 1961), pp. 85-118; Giovanni Tabacco, Egemome sociali e strutture del potere nel Medioevo italiano (1979), a text which first appeared in vol. 2 of the multivolume work Storia d'ltalia (Turin: Emaudi, 1972- ), universally known as Storia d'ltalia Einaudi and referred to here under that name. Cf. as well Philip Jones, Economia e societa nell'Italia medievale (1980, originally in Storia d'ltalia Einaudi, Annali 1, 1978). Another offshoot of the Storia d'ltalia Einaudi is Giuseppe Galasso, Potere e istituzioni in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1974).

108

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

city life of early modern Europe. Modern republics celebrated their own florescence as the revival of antique civilization. Parallels between the social history of ancient and modern cities emerged naturally, not only in humanism, but in literate culture generally. Carlo Sigonio chose to emphasize social history in his study of the Roman world, and this fact was to give his work, despite the absence in it of explicit comparisons with modernity, a contemporary relevance now hard to imagine. The signoria, government by a lord or potentate, succeeded the medieval commune, with sooner or later the formation of a family dynasty, and a regional state. Milan and its duchy under the Visconti were the prototype, while Florence was anomalous in that communal forms of government continued to evolve there in seeming defiance of the trend to signoria. But after 1434 the increasing predominance of the Medici produced an effective signoria garbed in the outward forms of traditional Florentine republicanism, and after 1530 Florence and the Medici duchy of Tuscany took a prominent place among the regional states which were to furnish the political structure of Italy until the Risorgimento of the nineteenth century.20 The exhaustion of the medieval type of communal life, hence of communal institutions, and the creation of regionally based centralized states meant, in the cities, the self-definition and closure of local elites into closed hereditary nobilities.21 In Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth 20 Ernesto Sestan, "Le origini delle signorie cittadine: un problema storico esaurito?" in Bullettino dell'htituto storico itahano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratori 73, 1961, pp. 4 1 69; Giorgio Chittolini, La formazione dello Stato regionale e Ie istituzioni del contado (Turin: Emaudi, 1979). In the pages of the Storia d'ltalia Einaudi and alongside it in historical journals a debate has taken place about the real significance of the transition from medieval to early modern society in Italy. See, e.g., Cesare Mozzarelli, "Stato, patriziato e organizzazione della societa nell'Italia moderna," Annali dell'htituto storico ttalo-germanico in Trento 2,1976, pp. 421-512, in which the permanence of ruling elites, mutability notwithstanding, is emphasized. Further: C. Mozzarelli, P. Malanima, C. Donati, "Dal feudalismo al capitalismo," Societa e storia 7,1980, pp. 131-68; Elena Fasano Guarini, "GIi stati dell'Italia centro-settentrionale tra Quattro e Cinquecento: continuita e trasformazione," (1983). For a review of Florentine studies and a contribution to the debate, see Alison Brown, "Florence, Renaissance, and Early Modern State: Reappraisals," journal of Modern History 56,1984, pp. 285-300. 21 The process is called in Italian a serrata or chiusura di ceto. Here and throughout when discussing social stratification I attempt, following Roland Mousnier, to be consistent in using "group" or "stratum" as general terms; "caste" for groups claiming religious purity; "order" or "estate" (Ger. Stand, Ital. ceto) for groups ranked by the honorability of their social function (and sooner or later formally delimited by juridical criteria); and "class" for groups distinguished by economic criteria. Modern social classes will not be mentioned in the present work, but the Roman census classes, five grades of wealth articulating most of the citizens, will. "Elite" will be used here as a general term. The meanings of "nobility" are discussed below. "Aristocracy" is in the ideal scheme the counterpart of "oligarchy," but both terms

109

CHAPTER TWO

centuries it was necessary, in order to be counted a member of the city regime, to enjoy an income without actively engaging in trade or labor, but the principal requirement was to have had ancestors who had taken part in the government of the commune—who had been seated on the city council.22 Aristocratization and the general decline of social mobility thus had their roots in the internal history of the communes themselves, and at first the term in the documents for those included amongst the politically privileged was simply the traditional one of cives. In result the concept of citizenship came to have a narrow acceptation (the recognized aristocracy, those who could govern) as well as a broad one. But formal differentiation soon occurred and the privileged came to call themselves gentilhuomini or nobili.11, Frequently the equivalent term in humanistic Latin, borrowed from Roman history, is patricii, and in many cities the juridical sources also speak of the patricii as the ordo senatorius.24 In modern social history the use of the term patriciates to distinguish urban elites from feudal nobility has become generalized. Like all distinctions in social history it is not a rigid one, for urban patricians continued to desire and acquire feudal or chivalric insignia in order to give their social position a legitimation which could be recognized as valid seem normally to be used in a loose way for their associations of value. Cf. however Arthur Rosenberg, "Respubhca," PWRE IA (1914), cols. 633-74 in which the counterpart of Oligarchic is not Aristocratic but Adelsstaat (cols. 659 ff.), a state in which a number of rich and eminent families succeed in demarcating themselves off from the populace and seizing political leadership, while in oligarchy active citizenship is limited to those exceeding a certain census level. 22 Angelo Ventura, Nobilta e popolo nella societa veneta del '400 e '500 (Ban: Laterza, 1964); Marino Berengo, Nobili e mercanti nella Lucca del Cinquecento (1965); Jean Delumeau and J. Georgelin in Ordres et classes (1973); M. Berengo, "La citta di antico regime," Quaderni storici27,1974, pp. 661-92; Berengo, "Patnziatoe nobilta: il caso Veronese" (1975), reprinted with other material in Elena Fasano Guanni, ed., Potere e societa negli Stati regionali italiani del '500 e '600 (Bologna: Il Muhno, 1978); G. Politi, Aristocrazia e potere politico nella Cremona di Fihppo Il (1976); Bandino Giacomo Zenobi, Cefi e potere nella Marca pontificia. Formazione e organizzazione della piccola nobilta fra '500 e '700 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1976); Cesare Mozzarelh, Pierangelo Schiera, eds., Patriziatt e aristocrazie nobiliari (1978); Enrico Stumpo, "I ceti dingenti in Italia nell'eta moderna. Due modelli diversi: nobilta piemontese e patriziato toscano," in A. Tagliafern, ed., 1 ceti dirigenti in Italia in eta moderna e contemporanea (Udine: Del Bianco, 1984), pp. 151-97. 23 The term nobili, in use earlier in an empirical sense, now designates a juridically delimited group, an estate (ceto, Stand, atat, ordo). 24 See Danilo Marrara, "Nobilta civica e patriziato. Una distinzione terminologica nel pensiero di alcuni autori italiani dell' eta moderna" (1980). Members of supreme city councils such as the Consiglio Generale of Milan customarily traced their institutional origin to the curiae which governed Roman municipalities, and the use of decuriones, ordo decurionum is found, alongside patrician and senatorial titulature, to designate their noble status. 110

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

beyond the local borders of their city or region. Social historians have also noted that the regional states of northern and central Italy, incorporating numbers of formerly independent cities whose ancient communal institutions had been congealed and perpetuated in the patrician aristocracies, never developed the social articulation by estates, and consequent forms of parliamentary representation, characteristic of northern Europe and of those parts of Italy governed by monarchies of a feudal type (the kingdom of Naples, Piedmont).25 In Germany, the history of whose cities has always been recognized to bear a resemblance to that of the Italian communes, the term patricius (Ger. patrizier—but the older and more widespread equivalent was, significantly in view of the evident parallel with archaic Roman history, Geschlechter) was introduced at approximately the same time, the early sixteenth century. There it became universal in view of its particular aptness as applied to the governing elites of the independent imperial cities which maintained their existence throughout the ancien regime. (This usage has been extended by social historians to the Middle Ages, so that it is usual to speak of patriciates when referring to the social history of the towns of Germany and Flanders from their inception in the tenth century and throughout the Middle Ages, whereas in an Italian context it would be more normal to refer to patriciates only after the closures of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries.) Like the politically active elites of Italian cities, the patriciates of the medieval German cities were heterogeneous in origin; and as in Italy there has been much discussion of the role played by merchant capitalists in the development of urban life. In Germany too the city was born as a corporate citizen community, and the concept of citizenship had the same force there. German cities were the scene of a struggle for political power between their patriciates and the guilds representing the manual workers, a struggle phased slightly later (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) than the similar contest in Italy; but Germany shared in the general hierarchization of social relations and reduction of social mobility of the sixteenth century.26 In many cities of middle and north Germany the craft guilds 25

H. G. Koenigsberger, "Parlamenti e istituzioni rappresentative negli antichi Stati italiani," Storia dltalia Einaudi, Annali 1,1978, pp. 575-613; cf. Elena Fasano Guarini, "Gh Stati dell'Italia centro-settentrionale"; and E. Fasano Guarini, "La crisi del modello repubblicano: patnziati e oligarchie," in La stona, vol. 3, ed. N. Tranfagha-M. Firpo (Turin: UTET, 1987), pp. 553-84. 26 For the sixteenth century, see Helmuth Rossler, ed., Deutsches Patriziat 1430-1740 (1968). Introductory is C. Fnedrichs, "The Swiss and German City-States," in R. GnifethC. Thomas, ed., The City-State in Five Cultures (Santa Barbara and Oxford: ABC-Clio, 1981); 111

CHAPTER TWO

retained their share of city government; the south German cities—Nuremberg, Augsburg, UIm—were distinctively patrician. The behavior of German patriciates from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance resembled that of the governing elites of Italian cities, wavering between corporate solidarity with the' urban commune on the one hand and the attractions of a noble life-style and a social position legitimated by universally valid feudal titulature on the other. Individual patrician families were co-opted by the nobility, and in cases where they achieved this without giving up urban residence they constituted a stratum of urban nobility technically one degree superior to the pure patriciate. Even where this was not the case the imitation of noble modes of life by urban patriciates was widespread, and by a natural evolution it became normal and then mandatory in many cities for patricians to refrain from the trade by which they had risen and live on income.27 Despite these trends of the sixteenth and later centuries the urban life of northern Europe was divorced from the rural in a manner which has been28 and is29 considered more clear-cut than was ever the case in Italy. In France the national monarchy had prevented the development of autonomous cities governed by independent patriciates as in Italy and Germany, but the quality of bourgeoisie (citizenship) was generically similar to that of patrician status elsewhere.30 The primary institutional and for a case study in English, see Cerald Strauss, Nuremberg in the Sixteenth Century (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1966). Urban history in Germany has a vast literature and it pleases me to select here a recent monograph on Frankfurt simply because, although Sigonio never went there, the city and its book fair were important in his intellectual life (this was true of all the members of Pinelh's circle), and because the Wechel heirs republished his works in Frankfurt and in nearby Hanau: Matthias Meyn, Die Reichsstadt Frankfurt vor dem Burgeraufstand von 1612 bis 1614, Struktur una Krise (Frankfurt: Kramer, 1980). Meyn's description of the life of a city governed and dominated by a patriciate is of great interest itself, for the literature adduced, and as a stimulus to comparative considerations. 27 The withdrawal from trade was widespread even within the prototypical commercial patriciates of the Netherlands and Venice. On the Netherlands, see Ivo Shaffer in R. Mousnier, ed., Problemes de stratification sociale (1968), p. 128; and on Venice, Philip Jones in Economia e societa, pp. 177-85. 28 Otto of Freising, Gesta Frideria 2.13, noting features unfamiliar and striking to him as a northerner in the society of the Lombard cities of the twelfth century; and Poggio Bracciolini, De nobilitate liber, in Poggii Florentini Opera (1538), t. 1, pp. 68-69, noting from an Italian perspective that German, French, and English nobility, in contrast to the Italian, depends in the fifteenth century on the possession of a rural seat and the rejection of urban life. 29 Max Weber's thesis about the diverse relations between city and country in northern and Mediterranean Europe is taken up by Philip Jones in Economia e societa. 30 Roger Doucet, Les institutions de la France au XVIe Steele (Paris: Picard, 1948), t. 1, pp. 360-95, "Les villes", Pierre Goubert, L'ancien regime t. 1 (Pans: Colin, 1971), esp. pp. 192ff., 218ff. on cities and bourgeoisie; and Roland Mousnier, Les Institutions de la France sous la monarchie absolue t. 1 (Pans: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974), pp. 188ff., 437ff. 112

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

feature of French society was of course its articulation into orders (clergy, nobility, third estate), an articulation which became more pronounced in the-course of the sixteenth century. This period also witnessed the venality of public offices and its consequence, the appearance of a new stratum of office-holders laying claim to the condition of nobility on the basis of their educational and professional preparation as jurists in the universities, and on the importance of their function in the state. Despite the familiar attraction exercised by the ancient esteem attaching to the noble-seigneurial mode of life, the new nobility of the long robe was urban and learned, different in its essence from the rurally bred nobility of the sword. The nobility of the noblesse de robe was a claim, not an undisputed fact: in terms of formal classification they belonged to the third estate. Problems of society, religion, and politics in France during the Wars of Religion and the reign of Henri IV form the background to the works of two of the greatest French writers on state and society, Jean Bodin and Charles Loyseau. Bodin approached problems of social stratification in his De republica, in a chapter which appeared for the first time in the edition of 1586.31 Charles Loyseau's Livre des ordres (1610) gives a comparative account of social stratification by orders in ancient and modern societies. Its appearance coincided with the definitive establishment of this type of society in France in the form known retrospectively as the ancien regime. The revolt against the monarchy by the Parisian Ligue (1588-94) has been interpreted as a last effort of the medieval and mercantile corporate community to reject the new forms of gradation and exclusion entailed by a rigid society of orders: one focus of this resentment was the tendency of the group of jurists holding office as councillors (magistrates) of the Parlement de Paris to elevate themselves as noblesse de robe above the world of bourgeois notability and to put the seal of exclusivity on their new condition by becoming a recognized order.32 (When Loyseau wrote, the councillors of the Parlement de Paris had, for a century or more, usurped the Latin style of "senator.") In the 1960s it was proposed that the term "society of orders" could be used not only as a description of France in the seventeenth century, but as a formal model which, with its counterparts, the society of social 31

Bodin, De republica 3.8, "De ordmibus avium." Robert Descimon, Qui etaient les Seize? Mythes et realities de la Ligue parisienne (15851594) (Pans: Klincksieck, 1983), esp. pp. 260ff.; also p. 57 on the use of the term patriciate by social historians. For narrative combined with analysis, see Elie Barnavi-Robert Descimon, La Sainte Ligue, Ie juge, et Ia potence (Paris: Hachette, 1985). 32

113

CHAPTER TWO

classes and the society of castes, may be used to categorize many or most types of developed civilization.33 At the same time, and since, scholars, particularly in France, have developed the theme of Rome as a society of orders, 34 acknowledging the example of Charles Loyseau and noting that Loyseau had a peculiar intuitive perspicacity about Roman society because of his own experience of a society of orders. Nor were Loyseau's insights merely intuitive: he used the work of sixteenth-century scholars, and above all of Carlo Sigonio, the author who was and remained authoritative on this subject throughout the ancien regime. 35 Something might here be said or conjectured about the traditions which Sigonio, as an Italian and a humanist, inherited. The employment of Roman history as a living analogy for the present may be noted in many aspects of Renaissance culture, from the Roman genealogies which the cities and great families of the peninsula constructed for themselves, to the revival of Ciceronian Latin. Cicero, the writer whose speeches and letters reflect the bitterness of the Roman political class as they surrendered their ancient libertas to Caesar's monarchy, was received by the generations of humanists who followed Petrarca as the model of Latinity, and by a natural conjunction of language and thought 33

Roland Mousnier, ed., Problemes de stratification social (1968); and Mousnier, Les hierarchies sociales de 1450 a nos jours (1969). 34 Claude Nicolet, L'ordre equestre a lepoque rapublicaine t. 1 (1966); C. Nicolet, ed., Recherches sur les structures sociales dans I'Antiquite classiaue (1970); Benjamin Cohen, "La notion d'ordo dans la Rome antique," (1975); C. Nicolet, "Les classes dirigeantes romaines sous la Republique," Annales ESC 1977, pp. 726-55; Nicolet, Les structures de lltalie romaine (1979, esp. chap. 5, "Structures et rapports sociaux"); Y. Thebert, J. Andreau, and C. Nicolet, "Economie, societe, et politique aux deux derniers siecles de la Republique romaine," Annales ESC 1980, pp. 895-919 (for a Marxist critique of the use of the society of orders model, and a reply); C. Nicolet, ed., Des ordres a Rome (1984); M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy 2d ed. (London: Hogarth, 1985), chap. 2, "Orders and Status." 35 "Les humanistes, les antiquaires, les juristes, les historiens des XVIIe et XVIII' siecles avaient deja parle des ordres romains avec, Ie plus souvent, une pertinence innocente qui tenait, tout simplement, a leur propre experience sociale: apres tout, la societe d'Ancien Regime etait, elle aussi, une 'societe d'ordres.' Aucun auteur cependant . . . n'a donne des ordres romains une definition aussi excellente que Charles Loyseau. . . . Partant de la notion (toute francaise mais tiree du droit romain) de puissance publique, il la conjugue (et ceci nous interesse) avec celle de digmte (c'est-a-dire de statut social jundiquement defini). Il opere une deduction etroite non pas, comme on 1'entend trop souvent, de la societe civile a la societe politique, mais exactement inverse. Selon ses fameuses definitions, en effet, I'office est une digmte attachee a 1'exercice et a la fonction de la puissance publique . . . l'ordre enfin est une dignite avec aptitude a la puissance publique. . . . [Q]ui n'a reconnu au passage, dans ces definitions, un schema d'autant plus applicable a Rome qu'il s'inspire longuement des exemples tires de son histoire?" (Claude Nicolet, Des ordres a Rome, preface, pp. 20-21). In his introduction to Recherches sur les structures sociales dans I'Antiquite classique (1970) Nicolet mentions Sigonio specifically at pp. 1,11. 114

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

this reception extended as well in Italian city-states to Cicero's republican ideals, especially in Florence at the beginning of the fifteenth century.36 Aristotle's Politics, profoundly rooted in the world of the polis, was considered not only the maximum treatise of political theory in general, but pertinent to the Italian cities in particular as independent communes, and received its canonical translation from Leonardo Bruni in Florence.37 The ideology of Florentine libertas, and with it a series of treatises from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on the constitution of Venice, imposed on the humanist intellectual tradition a predominantly republican color, and the fact that humanism was diffused in the kingdoms, and princely courts of Italy qualifies, but does not counterbalance, this predominance. The emphasis on republican and civic values, and the related moral philosophy found in humanism, are elements that link it profoundly with bourgeois and lay mentalities which emerge in the early modern period. After the crisis of the first Medici regime in 1494, and that of the revived Florentine republic in 1512, the values of humanism and the lessons of ancient Roman and recent Italian history were re-examined critically by Niccolo Machiavelli, and under the pressure of the failure of Italian political culture, the moral pieties of Cicero, and moral pieties in general, were overturned by the great political writer. After 1530 and the onset of the new, open Medici lordship, Florence at last abandoned the commune and followed the other states in the passage from republic to principate. The natural analogy between Europe in the later sixteenth century and the Roman world of the first century A.D. is endlessly revealing and suggestive and was felt to be so at the time; a reflection of this is the sixteenth-century vogue for the works of Tacitus, fascinating and ambiguous in their portrayal of comportments under the early emperors.38 36

Cf. Nicolai Rubinstein, "Le dottnne politiche nel Rinascimento"; and Quentin Skmner, The foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1, (1978). In chap. 6, "The Survival of Republican Values," Skinner discusses (pp. 148-52) the following book: Mark Salamonii patritii Romani de principatu libri VI (edition seen by me: Paris: Duval, 1578, 2d ed.). This work by the Roman jurisconsult and "patrician" Mario Salamomo (ca. 1450-ca. 1530) is indeed an important document of Renaissance republicanism, and one closer in time to Sigonio than the works of Leonardo Bruni and his generation. But the title given it by Skinner, The Sovereignty of the Roman Patriciate, is a notable mistranslation. 37 Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1983), chap. 3 (on translations) and esp. pp. 67-68, 71 on Bruni. 38 J. H. Whitfield, "Livy)Tacitus," in R. R. Bolgar, ed., Classical Influences on European Culture AD 1500-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); and J. H. Salmon, 115

CHAPTER TWO

A humanist critique of "nobility" as a term for political elites privileged by family tradition, wealth, and office-holding is found in treatises by the Florentines Poggio Bracciolini and Cristoforo Landino. This critique, based on an antithesis between the active and the contemplative life, and promoting instead the true nobility of inner virtue, became a recognized theme of humanist literature.39 Poggio attempted a comparison of modern Italian and transalpine nobilities with Roman nobility, which reveals that he had no systematic notion of the idiosyncratic development of Roman history which gave birth to an essentially political nobility. Instead he adduces a series of criteria of social stratification, some plucked from ancient texts and others anachronistic, from which it results that the Roman nobility was an agrarian elite, while the equestrian order is assimilated to the stratum known in the Italian communes as popolani.40 Landino's work, which remained unpublished until the twentieth century, is longer than Poggio's widely known dialogue. Although it offers more on Roman history, it shows no advance in understanding.41 These dialogues are of interest only as reflections of fifteenth-century society and moral philosophy. Poggio discusses references in Aristotle to nobility which he, or his speaker Niccoli, the representative of Stoic virtue, find inconsistent.42 Actually Aristotle, in the Politics and Rhetoric, had with perfect consistency discussed nobility (eugeneia, good birth) in a nation or polis and in individual families, as a matter primarily of wealth and descent, fac"Cicero and Tacitus in Sixteenth-century France," American Historical Review 85, 1980, pp. 307-31, with a review of bibliography. 39 Aldo Vallone, "Il concetto di nobilta e cortesia nei secoli XIV e XV," Atti dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rendiconti cl. scienze morali etc., 9, 1954, pp. 8-20; Francesco Tateo, "La disputa della nobilta," in Tateo, Tradizione e realta nell'umanesimo italiano (Bari: Dedalo, 1967), pp. 355-421. 40 Poggio Bracciolini, De nobilitate liber, in Poggii Florentim Opera omnia (1538), t. 1, pp. 64-83. 41 Cristoforo Landino, De vera nobilitate, ed. Maria T. Liaci (Florence: Olschki, 1970). 42 "Noble birth, in the case of a nation or State, means that its members or inhabitants are sprung from the soil, or of long standing; that its first members were famous as leaders, and that many of their descendants have been famous for qualities that are highly esteemed. In the case of private individuals, noble birth is derived from either the father's or the mother's side, and on both sides there must be legitimacy; and as in the case of a State, it means that its founders were distinguished for virtue, or wealth, or any other of the things that men honor, and that a number of famous persons, both men and women, young and old, belong to the family" (Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.5.5, trans. Freese, Loeb ed.). "Then there are those who being superior in birth claim that they are too good for mere equality, just because of this inequality of birth; for those who have inherited virtue and wealth from their forbears are commonly reckoned nobly-born" (Aristotle, Politics 5.1.3, trans. Sinclair and Saunders, Penguin ed.). In Poggio De nobilitate, "Niccoli" treats these passages as reprehensible. 116

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

tors in social life, while in the Ethics he naturally dealt with nobility in ethical terms. Niccoli attacks the social criteria used by Aristotle in the Politics and the Rhetoric, while his interlocutor, Lorenzo de' Medici, whose role in the dialogue is the defense of historical and contemporary urban elites and therefore of the social criteria, draws attention to the inadequacy of the common translation of eugeneia as "nobilitas," where generositas would be more correct, and would reflect more accurately the near-universal reality of hereditary transmission of social status.43 Poggio's vivid depiction of two conflicting approaches to the problem of nobility entered the humanist tradition. When Carlo Sigonio, in his course of lectures on Aristotle's Rhetoric in 1553-54, came to expound 1.5.5 (on nobility as one of the felicities) he too adduced the parallel passage from the Politics, and in rehearsing the arguments of the philosophical schools showed similar signs of embarrassment when faced with Aristotle's unblinking acknowledgment of the dependence of nobility on birth and wealth in social life.44 But the same lectures also contain the first traces of Sigonio's own pioneering research on the true meaning of Roman nobility, and in his mature published studies, abandoning overtly ethical criteria, he was to take up the position of Lorenzo in the dialogue of Poggio, concentrating on the concrete historical realities of Roman society. And in 1562 Sigonio had occasion to abandon both moral philosophy and historical study for the active defense of his own descent against the invectives of his enemy Robortello, and thus provided a textbook example of how social status was defended in an early modern city. Robortello had claimed that Sigonio was "born of the dregs of the city," and that he had had for a father a man "engaged in a low trade, a 43 These are by contrast the views of "Lorenzo de' Medici": nobility is a complex of virtue, riches, descent, place of origin, physical splendor, and good fortune (p. 77); the Stoic ideal of liberalitas is useless in human society (p. 78); and similarly, passim. 44 Bergamo, Bibhoteca civica, MS gamma 6.18 (cf. chap. 1, nn. 49-58). Sigonio said: "Sed sciendum, quid diversi diverse sentiunt. Non enim eadem in re nobilitatem ponunt. Alii in virtute propria (ut quidam Philosophi et Euripidis dicebant). Alii vero in laude et dignitate maiorum. Alii in filiis et successoribus [MS: successores]. Multi in divitiis. Nonnulli in magistratibus. Alii ad haec virtutem adiungunt (ut placet Peripateticis). Stoici autem in sola virtute nobilitatem posuerunt. . . . Sed Aristoteles hoc in loco nobilitatem collocat in maionbus, et ipsam dividit in partes duas: in publicam et pnvatam.^. . . Privata nobilitas similiter triplex est (inquit Aristoteles). Pnmum, si sint nati legitimis nuptiiis, si clans et antiquae familiae parentibus. Secundo, si maiores suae familiae virtute, divitiis, aut similium rerum, quae in precio habentur, insignes et illustres fuerint. Annectit enim divitias cum nobihtate Aristoteles, quoniam claritas generis pauperi nihil utilis sit. Tertio, si ex ea familia multi insignes ac praestantissimi viri effluxerint. Aristoteles libro quinto Politicorum collocat nobilitatem in maiorum virtute et divitiis. Non enim hoc modo habebantur Romani nobiles . . ." (ff. 61v-62r).

117

CHAPTER TWO

wool-merchant." 45 Sigonio's reply began with Modena itself: an ancient and illustrious city. It was normal to begin in this way, for social standing beyond the confines of one's own city varied sharply according to the eminence which that city enjoyed. Sigonio claimed that his lineage was respectable, that it had been established in Modena for upwards of three hundred years, and that it had included jurisconsults. External monuments of the family's presence included ancient sepulchres and a palazzo of respectable size in the best quarter of the city. Sigonio's father was (again) respectable and of middling means; as for the wool trade, he had that in common with the best patricians of Venice. Finally—and this was essential—Sigonio could claim that his father had made a recorded appearance as a member of the council of the commune; we gather that it was a fleeting one, and that his status as a avis Mutinensis fell somewhere in the middle between the two definitions, broad and narrow, of citizenship.46 To the extent that Modena recognized a patriciate, Sigonio's father would have been at best a marginal candidate for membership, and the same is true of Sigonio himself. But this reply to Robortello does contain interesting evidence of the extension of the term patricius in Italy. Four of the guarantors cited for Sigonio's social standing are identified as patricians, two of Venice (Bernardino Loredan, Lazaro Mocenigo), one of Bologna (Ulisse Aldrovandi), and one of Genoa (Gian Vincenzo Pinelli).47 If Sigonio had taken a doctorate this would have given a powerful claim to social status, but as it was he was able merely to cite the fact that he had studied at Bologna and Pavia. By 1562 Carlo Sigonio had anyway won a type of singular renown as an author and intellectual which practically obliterated most normal status barriers and in the 45 "me aliquando hypodidascah functum munere arguisti, et ex fece civitatis natum, patremque in vili mimsterio versatum, quippe lananum, pro condone ad contumeliam exprobrasti" (Sigonio, addressing Robortello, in Disputahones Patavinae, 1562, bk. 2, f. 62v). His defense against this charge: ff. 62v-64r. 46 "Parente natus sum honesto, atque cum modicis opibus, turn lis artibus, quae in ea civitate honestae habentur, se, et familiae suae conditionem satis pro loci dignitate tuente; quern, quod tu lananum ad ignomimam appellaris, valde miror, cum eo modo, quo ille lanas tractavit, non in ea solum civitate, sed in opulentissima ac splendidissima quaque, vel si terrarum caput Venetias ipsas enumeres, honestissimi homines, atque honestissimo loco nan tractannt. Cuius rei argumento illud erit, quod ille idem etiam in eius civitatis consilio aliquando fuerit, quemadmodum ex actis ems, et novorum codice statutorum intelhges, de quibus ille etiam suffragium tuht; qui locus sordido atque humili alicui lege moreve nullo unquam tempore patuit . . . " (Sigonio, Disp. Pat. 2, f. 63v). 47 Ulisse Aldrovandi "patricium Bonomensem" (f. 59v); Pinelli, "patricius Genuensis" (f. 65v); Bernardino Loredan, Lazzaro Mocenigo, "patncii Veneti" (ff. 6Ov, 65v).

118

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

1560s and 1570s he habitually mixed on terms of familiarity with patricians of the cities of north-central Italy. When he was made a cavalier of an ephemeral order of papal chivalry in 1578 it added nothing to his self-esteem and was soon forgotten by himself and his friends.48 The world in which Poggio and Landino had composed their treatises on true nobility had changed forever with the French invasion of Italy in 1494. Codes of nobility originating in the feudal centuries and which had never been entirely absent from Italian culture were massively reinforced by the foreign presence in the peninsula. After mid-century changes in the structure of Italian society gave rise to new literary subgenres, the treatise on honor and that on the gentleman. Honor implied the readiness to maintain one's social standing by not giving precedence to an inferior nor accepting an insult, and to defend these points with the sword if necessary—hence, for example, the wearing of these weapons and the habitually challenging manner of the university students to whom Carlo Sigonio lectured in Padua and Bologna. Despite its prevalence this behavior was incompatible with the emerging social regulations of the Counter-Reformation and the absolutist state, two forces which impelled the production of a counterliterature recommending the sublimation of the duel into more complicated and ceremonious forms of satisfaction and pacification between injured parties.49 The highest unequivocal general appellation of honor in the sixteenth century, however, was not "nobleman" but "gentleman" (gentilhomme, gentilhuomo, generosus) and problems of gentilitas (the social weight of birth and lineage rather than the ideal gentilezza of Dantean literature) were more critical than ever as social mobility was reduced. Despite altered circumstance, the terms in which Poggio had set out the debate remained central. A Bolognese writer of the 1550s distinguished sharply between the truly noble who on philosophical criteria possess inner virtue, and the patriciates whose members are generosi because of their lineage, and noble (but only in a vulgar acceptation) because of their consequent places in the councils, their feudal jurisdictions and ti48

Paul III Farnese created various chivalric orders, including that of St. Paul, which did not outlast by much the end of the century; Gregory XIII Boncompagni made Sigonio a Cavaliere di San Paolo in 1578. 49 Cf. Giancarlo Angelozzi, "Cultura dell'onore, codici di comportamento nobiliari e Stato nella Bologna pontincia: un'ipotesi di lavoro," Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 7,1982, pp. 305-24 for general considerations and an analysis of the treatise Del modo di ridurre alia pace I'inimicizie private (1583) by Fabio Albergati of Bologna, a friend of Carlo Sigonio. 119

CHAPTER TWO

ties, their wealth and style of life.50 Girolamo Muzio's dialogue of 1571, Ilgentilhuomo, is a summary of the problem by a writer well acquainted with the Italian literary tradition since Dante as well as with contem­ porary social hierarchies.51 His leading speaker defends the familiar proposition that true nobility is a philosophical absolute. But Muzio's book is known for its acknowledgment that the Italian cities are now ruled by groups of gentilhuomini to whom the categorical style of civic nobility cannot be refused. The writer, however, attempts to limit their claims to true nobility and also to total closure of their stratum, as when he obfuscates Aristotle's frank recognition of such strata in Greek cit­ ies,52 or cites at length the speech of the new man Marius against the Roman nobility in Sallust.53 Muzio points out that the contemporary use of the term gentilis, and hence of gentilhuomo, refers to Roman gentile descent rather than to the gentilezza of the Italian classics Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio.54 But Muzio was not a humanist and his knowl­ edge and use of Roman history are very slight in comparison to the rich canvas of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy which he offers.55 His 50 G. Angelozzi, "La trattatistica su nobilta e onore a Bologna nei secoli XVI e XVII" (1975). The writer in question was Giovanni Antonio Delfino, author of the treatise De nobihtate, published in Bologna in the 1550s; see esp. Angelozzi, pp. 212-19. 51 Il gentilhuomo del Mutio Iustinopolitano (1571). 52 Muzio in Il gentilhuomo concludes that for Aristotle the prime condition of nobility is always virtue (pp. 36-38). Aristotle's conjunction of wealth and nobility still troubles, but is resolved by saying that if riches are antique, that is a sign of virtue: otherwise they would not have been conserved (p. 44); likewise, offices recognize the virtue of the holder (pp. 59-60). Aristotle is quoted against himself on nobility as an internal and an external good (p. 61). In sum, Aristotle in the Rhetoric was, for Muzio, speaking "piii popolarescamente che philosophicamente" (ibid.). At p. 136, he again attempts to discredit what Aristotle had said at Rhet­ oric 1.5.5. 53 Muzio, Il gentilhuomo, p. 70, citing at length Sallust, Iugurtha 85. To the speakers in Muzio's dialogue this criticism seems to have all the more force since the writer, Sallust, was himself "nobile per sangue et per dottnna" (p. 71), but Sallust, of course, was a new man. 54 "et di qui discende il nome di Gentile nella nostra significatione; che appresso Latini tanto vuol dire Gentile, quanto di una stessa famiglia: che parlando Cicerone di Tullio Hostiho, Io chiama suo Gentile. Et iscrive egh nella Topica, Gentih sono quelh, ι quali sono tra loro di un medesimo nome, et da liben hanno la loro origine, de' cui maggion niuno ha servito. Da questa diffinitione si comprende, che questo nome di Gentile ad altre, che a persone di nobih famiglie, non si conveniva. Et percio aviso io, che quella voce, la quale anticamente significava, che questi era con colui di questa, et quegh con quell' altro di quella famiglia nobile, allargandosi il sigmficato hora a noi dimostra in generale, che altri e persona nobile. Et si come gentili si chiamavano tra loro coloro che erano di famiglie nobili, cosi hora coloro, che sono nobili, si chiamano gentili. Et dapoi che gentilezza maggiore non ci e, che quella della virtu, gentilissimi huomini sara da dire che siano i virtuosi" (Muzio, Il gentilhuomo, p. 174). Note the complete failure of the attempt in the last sentence quoted to reconnect nobility and virtue, in other words, to remedy Aristotle—a failure evident throughout Muzio's book. 55 Though he wrote a decade after the appearance of De antique iure avium Romanorum,

120

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

work concludes with a polemic defense of letters and the professions deriving from them, principally that of the jurists, against arms and the cavaliers who bear them, and for this reason his treatise has been rightly judged to represent, despite his reservations about their true nobility, the ideology of urban aristocracies, specifically of Italian patriciates, against chivalric honor.56 A definitive statement of the view which assimilated Roman gentilitas to Roman nobilitas, and both to modern European nobility, had been given in 1508 by Guillaume Bude in his great commentary on the Digest. He defined Roman gentiles as all those with the right to ancestral images of the office-holders of their lineage, and declared that all who lacked such recognition of descent were homines novi, that is to say terrae filii, offspring of the earth. The absurd consequence of this confusion of gentility and nobility must have been that the most famous of all new men, the consul Marcus Tullius Cicero, had been a bastard of no recognizable or nameable parentage, but the magnetic attraction of the supposed analogy between the Roman world and France was sufficiently powerful to hide this from Bude. Our vernacular, he said, is entirely consonant with Roman law in referring to nobles as gentilshommes, since the fundamental social divide in both cases is that between ingenui of unstained lineage and those who have risen from a condition of subjection or servitude to the soil.57 In a later discussion of the same subject, Muzio shows ignorance of that work, in which Sigonio had, for example, challenged the view of Roman gentilitas given in the previous note. Cf. as well n. 53 above; and further in Muzio, pp. 114-15: complete ignorance of the fusion of patricians and plebeians in a new class of office-holders. 56 Berengo, Nobili e mercanti nella Lucca del Cinquecento, pp. 252ff.; Claudio Donati, "L'evoluzione della coscienza nobiliare," in Mozzarelli-Schiera, ed., Patriziati e aristocrazie nobihari, pp. 23-24; D. Marrara, "Nobilta civica e patriziato," p. 219. 57 Guillaume Bude, Omnia opera (Basel: Episcopius, 1557), t. 3: Annotattones in Pandectas priores et posteriores, pp. 1-288 (a revised edition of the commentary on the earlier part of the Digest that had appeared in 1508) and pp. 289-399 (commentary on bks. 47-50 of the Digest, which had appeared in 1526). Of particular interest in the present context are the account of absolute monarchy in the commentary on D.1.3.31, pp. 67-68, in which the superiority of the princeps to the law is based on Aristotle's discussion of nobility in the Politics; and the commentary on D.1.9, pp. 72-102, for Bude's major excursus on Roman institutions. But his pnncipal discussion of nobility and gentility appears in the commentary on D.1.2.24, pp. 5254, including the following: "Sed nobihorum fuisse videtur gentilitas . . . eorum scilicet qui imagines generis sui proferre poterant" (p. 52); and the conclusion: "Qui autem ius gentilitatis et maiorum imagines nullas habebant, n terrae filii et a sese orti et homines novi vocitabantur, quibus locutionibus Cicero non semel usus est. . . . Terrae autem, quod ignotis parentibus natos, terrae filios nominemus . . ." (p. 53). And on French nobility and gentility: "Non temere igitur lingua vernacula gentiles homines pro nobilibus appellat, quasi ingenuos ab origme gentis, et quorum maiores servitutem nullam prorsus servierunt; videlicet ab ascriptitiis et 121

CHAPTER TWO

Bude brings in the passage of Livy in which the plebeian Decius Mus invokes the two successive generations of consular nobility which his family currently enjoys, and the third that lies within its expectation; and citing this text in its current vulgate reading, which equated this achievement with the simple establishment of two generations of clear descent, proclaims the similitude between Roman social usage and French custom, in which three generations of personal nobility were considered necessary to cleanse the blood of its defect and render nobility hereditary.58 For Bude admission to nobility in France and in the Roman republic meant the same thing: the cancellation of the stain of servitude through the recognition of descent. The growth of cities and professions in the early modern period rendered imperative the legitimation of the social status of recent elites in these areas, and legitimation of this sort at this period could only be expressed in terms of nobility. (Bude had observed with stupefaction the establishment of "immense and splendid gentilities" by persons of unnameable ancestry who had risen through favor at court.59) So, for instance, there are the many discussions of the degree of precedence to be granted to the holder of a university doctorate and to the exercise of the professions which flowed from it, law and medicine. An example is the conditione quadam obnoxiis distinguere eos volens, qui ob id eadem lingua villani dicuntur, quod villae, unde villici dicti, ascripti, et colonanae conditiom addicti aut rpsi sint, aut eorum maiores fuerint: quarum rerum vestigia non obscura multis in locis extant" (p. 54). On Bude, see Donald R. Kelley, "Guillaume Bude and the First Historical School of Law," American Historical Review 72, 1967, pp. 807-34; and in Kelley's Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship, chap. 3. 58 Cf. n. 12 above for Livy 10.8.10-11; and nn. 97, 98 below for the textual history of this passage in the sixteenth century. In the vulgate known to Bude it read, "En unquam fando audistis patricios primo esse factos, non de caelo demissos, sed qui patrem avumque ciere possent, id est nihil ultra quam mgenuos? Consulem iam patrem ciere possum, avumque iam poterit filius meus." He cites it thus and adds: "Instar est huius hodie, quod locorum quorundam moribus receptum est, ut ne iusta nobilitas esse censeant, nisi in pronepote et deinceps eras qui natalibus restitutus est. . . . Natalibus autem restituere hodie nobilitare vocamus, et nobilitationem, natalium restitutionem. . . . Dicitur autem natalibus restitui non modo hbertus, ut patronatus observantia liberetur, sed etiam plebeius cum ad nobihtatem asciscitur . . . " (Bude, Annotationes in Pandectas, p. 76). 59 "Phnius libro octavo epistolarum subitas imagines appellat nobihtatem parum antiquam, sed repente fortunaeque beneficio quaesitam. Quo modo nostris temporibus multi extiterunt ignotis natalibus orti, qui ne avum quidem aut etiam patrem ciere aut possent aut auderent; qui subitariis principum beneficiis et aulicorum suffragatiombus supra civile fastigium evecti, ingentium splendidarumque gentilitatum fundamenta iecerunt; partim eorum tantis ornamentis digni, partim indignissimi, quae magna est multitudo" (Bude, Annotationes in Pandectas, p. 54). N.B. the deliberate echo in "avum . . . aut patrem ciere" of the passage of Livy quoted in the previous note. 122

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

Catalogue gloriae mundi of Barthelemy de Chasseneuz, a French jurist and office-holder and a doctor of Pavia, the eighth book of which is on nobility. Chasseneuz discusses the relation of nobiles and gentiles, and like Bude claims superiority for the latter, on the basis that gentilitas was the highest ius amongst the Romans (that is, Roman gentiles had, in modern French idiom, a particular statut juridique) and that gentiles were distinguished by the right to have images.60 His compatriot Andre Tiraqueau, also a jurist, was the author of the widely read Commentarii de nobilitate in which the compatibility of medicine with nobility is especially defended, and many other aspects of the distinctively French problem of dirogeance (loss of noble status) are reviewed. Tiraqueau includes comparative passages on ancient and modern nobility, endorsing Poggio's famous observation ("the truest thing he ever wrote") on the loathing of modern northern European nobilities for urban life.61 The reverse, he said, was true in the ancient world, where the Athenian eupatrides and Roman patricians were urban nobilities and rusticity was the province of the ignoble plebs.62 The last evaluation, of course, stands Poggio on his head, and as well as appreciating historically the urban character of nobilities in ancient society, implicitly justifies the rival claims of modern city elites against the nobility of the sword. That the patriciate appears as representative of Roman nobility generally is not 60

Bartholomaeus Cassanaeus, Catalogue gloriae mundi (Frankfurt: Feyerabend, 1579, edition seen, cited here by chapters; but the book appeared in 1529; the author died in 1541). On nobiles and gentiles, 8.3. On the Italian nobilities, Chasseneuz's notions are taken from Poggio (8.49); N. B. in the same chapter, a distinct vein of polemic against the violence and improvidence of the rural nobility of France. On the nobility of the doctorate, see 7.48, 8.12, 9.1, 10.32. On the councillors of the Parlement de Paris as true senators, see 7.12. 61 Andreas Tiraquellus, Commentarii de nobilitate, 3rd ed. (Lyon: Rouillius, 1566, edition seen; 1st ed. 1549. Tiraqueau died in 1558). "Verum apud Gallos atque Britannos, nobiles de mdustria urbes fugiunt, easque habitare ignomimae loco ducunt, sicuti et retulit Pogius in suo libro de nobilitate, ubi de hac re adeo vere scnpsit, ut nihil unquam venus comperiatur" (2.61, p. 25; cf. Poggio, De nobilitate, pp. 68-69). For Tiraqueau's hostile caricature of French rural nobility, see the same chapter. 62 Tiraqueau, Commentarii de nobilitate, 2.55; 2.56. "Et id quidem, quod diximus, de nobilibus urbium habitatoribus, ex antiquorum Atheniensium et Romanorum imitatione est. . . . Romani quoque ex instituto Romuli nobiles patricios vocabant, quibus et munera civitatum committebant. Ignobiles autem et plebeios colere agros, pascere pecora, et exercere artes quaestuarias iubebant . . ." (2.56, p. 24). Cf. also 2.53 on the gentilhommerie as the nobility of France, in which, like Chasseneuz, he connects the modern use of the term gentilitas with the ancient testimony of Cicero for its legal sense. The problem of purity of blood and its relation to nobility was to be central in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France; cf. Andre Devyver, Le sang tpuri. Les prajugis de race chez les gentilshommes frangais de I'Ancien Regime (1973); and Ellery Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree. Ideas of Nobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). 123

CHAPTER TWO

an accident, for as the preceding pages have tried to show, the Livian account of the closure of the patriciate vis-a-vis the plebeians and the patrician claim to possess a unique gentilitas had re-entered European social consciousness via the humanist rediscovery of the classics and exercised a powerful suggestive sway over the modes of noble self-identification and noble legitimation in Renaissance Europe. Against this background, then, Carlo Sigonio undertook the systematic study of Roman society. Humanist learning, reviving and scrutinizing the life and literature of ancient urban civilization, had since its inception been closely identified with, and offered models for, the elites of modern cities, and Sigonio's investigation of Roman social structure had a contemporary relevance now hard to imagine. But his portrayal of the social and political evolution by which the Roman republic overcame patrician domination was, in important ways, untimely in the second half of the sixteenth century.

THE FORMATION OF ROME

The sources of Sigonio's inspiration must be largely a matter for inference, since with one important exception he does not discuss them. That exception is Aristotle's Politics, specifically cited by Sigonio as his theoretical guide to the problem of citizenship: an example of the pervasive influence of Aristotle's uncompleted attempt to analyze the Greek polis on early modern historical and political thought. The other principal sources for Sigonio's forma mentis are, as I believe, the traditions of Italian humanism, the civic ones of the north Italian cities, and his own study of Roman history. Sigonio gave his work a juridical title, De antiquo iure avium Romanorum, but in fact emphasized what we call social history. He wrote before the modern concept of civil society as something opposed to the state had become current, and he would have had no words to express "the social" as opposed to "the political" or "the juridical." Sigonio knew the phrases societas avium (or societas civilis) only as Leonardo Bruni's translation of Aristotle's he koindnia politike, "the association of men in a polis," and in the polis the political, the juridical, and the social were not distinct. The antiquum ius of the Romans in Sigonio's title means the complex of their institutions, and if the social factor emerges with special clarity, it is because his vision of it was not filtered by a juristic cast of mind. Several important ideas inform his work. One is civitas (citizenship), 124

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

in the sense of full active and passive participation in the respublica; another is the libertas which results from citizenship. Sigonio described the barrier of gentilitas as an artificial one erected by the patricians and the overcoming of it as a victory of civitas. The result was an extensive system of social stratification in ordines and sub-ordines defined by criteria of census-holding, honorability, and—for the senatorial order— success in the annual elections of magistrates in the assembly. Roman nohilitas was not an ordo but a type of honorability (informal, open, political) inherited by families whose exponents had been carried by electoral success to the highest (technically, curule) magistracies. The influence of the humanist tradition on Sigonio's very republican notions of civitas and libertas is hard to prove, for he seldom mentions or evaluates his humanist predecessors. But it is also hard to doubt. Sigonio's love of the Roman republic and hatred of the principate which had smothered its libertas were visceral; and a republican political philosophy based on admiration for the Roman republic had been a major legacy of Quattrocento humanism in Italy. Humanist moral philosophy, stressing the inner virtus of each individual, had borrowed much from the two most eminent surviving writers of the late republic, Cicero and Sallust. Both had been "new men," the first senators in their lineage (novi homines on the broad definition), and in Cicero's case the first consul (therefore a novus on the strictest definition) and powerful exponents of the ideology of personal virtue. Flavio Biondo's Roma triumphans (ca. 1450) was the most significant Renaissance work on Roman history prior to the 1550s; books 3, 4, and 5 deal with constitutional matters. Two minor works of the later fifteenth century were De magistratibus sacerdotibusque Romanorum Iibellus by "L. Fenestella" (Andrea di Domenico Fiocchi) and Pomponio Leto's De magistratibus et sacerdotiis et diversis legibus. All of these were utterly outmoded at the middle of the sixteenth century, despite reprints after that date,63 because of the incremental progress of scholarship, the many new editions of, and commentaries on, ancient writers, including the first editions in the original Greek of Dionysius of HaIicarnassus, Dio Cassius, and Appian, and by the revelation of previously 63 Blondii Flavii forliviensi De Roma triumphante etc., (Basel: Froben, 1559). Cf. Angelo Mazzocco, "Some Philological Aspects of Biondo Flavio's Roma Triumphans" (1979) and "Biondo Flavio and the Antiquarian Tradition," in Acta conventus neo-Latini Bononiensis (Bmghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, N. Y.: 1985), pp. 124r-36. The opuscules of "Fenestella" and of Pompono Leto were reprinted by Sessa in Venice in 1539 and 1568. Cf. Domenico Maffei, GIi inizx dell'umanesimo giuridico (Milan: Giuffre, 1972), pp. 95-125.

125

CHAPTER TWO

unknown material such as books 41—45 of Livy and the Fasti Capitolini. Republican ideology apart, neither Sigonio nor his colleagues Manuzio, Panvinio, and Grouchy owes any apparent debt to predecessors such as Biondo, other than what they may be supposed to have acquired from the use of his works, or those of Pomponio Leto, as manuals at some early stage of their education. There is every reason to believe that in their mature studies Sigonio and the others were stimulated by the publication of the new work of living colleagues and contemporaries, and by personal contacts among themselves, rather than by their scholarly heritage. For Sigonio the most important of these contacts was undoubtedly his association with Paolo Manuzio in Venice in the 1550s. Neither he nor they composed new narrative histories of the Roman republic, since those of the ancient historians were thought, despite gaps in coverage, to lie beyond emulation. 64 The preferred genre was rather to be the analytical treatise, of which Nicolas de Grouchy produced the first and most thorough example in De comitiis Romanorum (1555). Grouchy isolated one institution and examined its working in depth, a type of investigation later generally known and depreciated as antiquarian, but which was an important departure from the then more common practice, allied to that followed in humanist teaching, of writing commentaries on individual ancient works. Grouchy's lead was followed by Sigonio's student, Jan Zamoyski, in his slighter work, De senatu Romano. Sigonio's approach was different. Avoiding concentrated research on any institution, he aimed at a large-scale analysis, first of the development of the city-state in De antiquo lure avium Romanorum, then of the spread of Roman citizenship and political organization in Italy in De antiquo iure ltaliae. During the preparation of the Fasti Capitolini and its apparatus of commentary Sigonio had worked through the entire span of republican history year by year, and no contemporary equalled his grasp of Roman history in its diachronic aspect. It was precisely his attention to historical change over time that enabled him to discover (the word is not too strong) the emergence of a new state out of the resolution of the patrician-plebeian conflict. That such a discovery had to be made was partly a result of the accidents of transmission of Livy's history, which had preserved only the first decade (bks. 1-10, covering the origins to 292 B . C ) , and the third, fourth, and half of the fifth decades (bks. 21-45, from 219-167 B.C.). 64

See Arnaldo Momighano, "Ancient History and the Antiquarian," in Primo contribute/, p. 75. Although not a narrative, Sigonio's Fasti commentary contains a complete digest of Roman republican history. 126

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

The work, in the complete form known in antiquity, had narrated the entire span of Roman history down to the historian's own lifetime, the Augustan era, and had therefore included an account of the revolution which began with the Gracchi. Books 21-45 describe external wars and relatively unbroken harmony within the city. This meant that of the two major periods of social-political conflict during the history of the republic, only the first, between the patricians and the plebeians, has a continuous, thorough, albeit doubtfully historical, report in Latin literature—but the report breaks off at the end of book 10 of Livy, before the conclusion of the struggle. Livy's account of this remote period is accompanied by the florid parallel narrative of the Greek rhetor and historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The second and final epoch of internal conflict, from the Gracchi to Caesar, is illuminated very patchily (some important episodes are detailed with brilliant clarity, others remain hidden in dense obscurity) from monographs, biographies, Greek summaries, and testimony such as the works of Cicero. Livy's first decade—the contest of the patricians and plebeians—therefore drew the attention of those who sought to understand social-political conflict in the ancient city. An indication of this, though its contents exceed the announced scope, is the title of Machiavelli's principal work, the Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. The whole span of republican history was commonly interpreted in the light of the patrician-plebeian conflict, and in fact as if that conflict had never been resolved. This was the obstacle which Carlo Sigonio, in a genuine and important advance in historical understanding, was able to overcome. The libertas of Roman citizens, which Sigonio attempted to codify, is a theme of Roman literature itself, and we are not forced to seek any other source for its prominence in his analysis of Roman society than this. But Sigonio was also a native of northern Italy, where city life had been reborn and the communes had defended their autonomy against Frederick I under the sign of libertas. There existed in Modena and in other communes a lasting historical memory of this, made more poignant in the sixteenth century by the general crisis of Italy. That this tradition, imbibed perhaps from childhood, could indirectly have influenced the Roman studies of Sigonio is proposed in the present work, even though his De Regno ltaliae, researched and written when his Roman studies were substantially complete, can furnish only suggestions of this rather than proof. Libertas in Roman and in Italian communal ideology has two components, freedom from the external domination of another people or state, and freedom from the internal rule of a lord 127

CHAPTER TWO

(dominus, signore, princeps, rex, or tyrannus).65 De Regno Italiae places the accent on the first, the rebellion of the Italian communes against the German emperors, leading to their formal emancipation from imperial lordship. Sigonio takes for granted that the second type of libertas ex^ isted in the Italian communes during the period he covers, a period terminating in 1280 before the rise of the signorie, simply because the commune was a self-governing community (a republic) of citizens; but he does not enumerate in this annalistic work the elements of individual liberty in the communes as he had those of Roman liberty in an analytic treatise. Sigonio considered that the consular government in the Italian communes, for whose origin he gave the high date of circa A.D. 960, had been an aristocracy, and this is the only form of communal constitution which he describes in the first and second editions of De Regno Italiae, which trace Italian history down to A.D. 1200. But he indicated that in a later period, falling outside the scope of the book as it then stood, a popular regime did appear in the communes.66 Only in the posthumously published book 17 of De Regno Italiae does he describe the advent of the popolo at Bologna in A.D. 1228. In Rome populus had been the name of the prior and superior association against which the plebeian revolution was directed, while in the Italian cities the prior and superior association was the commune, and the new association was the popolo (populus): hence Sigonio's account of the formation of the popolo does not verbally imply a close parallel with Roman history.67 The parallel is substantial. 65 Ch. Wirszubski, Libertas (seen in the Italian translation of 1957; 1st ed. 1950); but see also J.-L. Ferrary, "Le idee pohtiche a Roma nell'epoca repubblicana," in L. Firpo, ed., Storia delle idee politiche (1982), esp. pp. 761-65; Ronald Witt, "The Rebirth of the Concept of Republican Liberty in Italy," in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron (Florence: Sansoni, 1971), pp. 173-99; Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1, (1978); Nicolai Rubinstein, "Le dottrine politiche nel Rinascimento" (1979); and N. Rubinstein, "Florentine libertas," in Rinascimento 26,1986, pp. 3-26. 66 "Ceterum omnium citerions Italiae, sed maxime Lombardiae, civitatum eadem ferme reipublicae ratio fuit. Nam et magistratus fere eosdem crearunt, et optimatium primum, deinde popularem statum eundem habuerunt; et eodem modo optimatium rempubhcam tnbus consiliis administrarunt, quae Speciale, Generale, et Credentiae consilia dixere" (De Regno Italiae, s.a. 973, bk. 7, pp. 325-26 in ed. of 1580; cf. p. 320 on the consular government). It is natural and inevitable that Sigonio should discuss the history of the Italian communes in terms of classical political theory. 67 "Condone autem populi advocata placuit novam reipublicae formam in civitatem mvehere, ac Populum instituere. Populum autem vocarunt rempublicam in populi potestate atque impeno positam, quae Communi (id enim optimatum erat) opponeretur. Itaque ab hoc tempore, ut utrasque respublicas comprehenderetur, Commune et Populus Bononiae dici coeptum" (De Regno Italiae s.a. 1228, bk. 17, p. 57, in ed. of 1591).

128

ROMAN STUDIES — PART 1

Sigonio brings it out by quoting, from the De regimine principum attributed to Aquinas, the passage in which Ptolemy of Lucca states that the anziani of the popolo had been instituted to protect the plebeians of Italian cities in a fashion similar to that of the tribunes of the plebs in Rome.68 In the 1550s, Sigonio had begun his search for the Roman past with an invocation of Aristotle, whose Politics he considered the only adequate theoretical guide on his journey69 and through which the Greek polis made a deep impression on his portrait of the Roman city-state. In a review of the six fundamental types of constitution (respublica)70 of a state (civitas)71 Sigonio faced again a problem which he had confronted through the 1550s, the rendition into Latin of the terminology of Greek political philosophy, especially that of the good and bad forms of popular rule, for which problems of nomenclature were already present in the Greek writers. In his lectures of 1553-54, in which the constitutions are reviewed in two places, Sigonio uses predominantly Greek vocabulary in the first72 but experiments with Latin equivalents such as vulgi dom68 "Anrianos vero in urbibus Italiae mstitutos scribit auctor libri de regimine pnncipum, qui D. Thomae Aquinati tribuitur, cum tamen tempora D. Thoma citenora commemoret, ut praesidio essent plebeiis, perinde atque Romae fuere tribuni plebis" (loc. cit.). Sigonio refers to Ptolemy of Lucca, De regimine principum continuatio 4.26: "a populo instituti fuerunt tribuni . . . ; quern locum in civitatibus Italiae tenent antiani, ordinati ad defensionem gentis plebeiae." 69 "Placet igitur Anstoteli aucton omnis gravissimae quaestionis locupletissimo, omnem, quae instituitur de cive et civitate disputationem a republica cuius ilia est civitas, oportere deduci. Scite ille quidem et probe. Etenim, si civis est pars illius societatis, quae civitas appellator; civitatis autem descriptio quaedam respublica existimatur; profecto cum omnis de cive oratio ad reipubhcae quaestionem est referenda, turn vero reipublicae eius, cuius potissimum civem quaerimus, nobis ante est ratio cognoscenda" (De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.1, p. 3. N.B.: All references are to the edition of 1574 unless otherwise stated). 70 Sigonio follows Brum's standard translation of politeia as respublica, rendered in English by "constitution" (in the sense of "regime" or "ordering"—not "constituent legislation"). His explanatory paraphrase of the word respublica is civitatis descriptio (see preceding note); but in 1556 he actually uses constitutio as part of the paraphrase: "civitas ipsa, cuius descriptio ac constitutio quaedam esse respublica dicitur . . . " (In Fastos commentartus, pref., f. 4r in ed. of 1556). 71 I.e., polis; and N.B. in n. 69 above Sigonio's gloss of civitas as societas. This shows the influence of the Leonardo Brum version of the Politics, where Aristotle's he koindma politike is translated as societas civilis. On the development of modern terminology for state and society out of Greek and Latin, the influence of the translations of Aristotle, and the acceptance of the term societas civilis, see in O. Brunner et al., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972- ), the following articles: M. Riedel, "Gesellschaft, burgerliche" in vol. 2 (1975), esp. pp. 719-38; and W. Mager, "Republik" in vol. 5 (1984), esp. pp. 569-70. 71 Rex, aristocratia, respublica (narrow sense); and tyrannus, oligarchia, demokratia (Bergamo, Biblioteca civica, MS gamma VI.18, ff. 55v-56v).

129

CHAPTER TWO

inatus for depraved popular rule in the second.73 In the preface to the Fasti commentary of 1556 he uses Latin equivalents reported by Augustine in a paraphrase of book 3 of Cicero's De republica.74 But in 1560 Sigonio settled on a new, radically latinized translation, using populus for the form of government in which all citizens participate {politeia— narrow sense—in Aristotle, but demokratia in Polybius) and plebs for the domination of one section (demokratia in Aristotle, ochlokratia in Polybius). He asserts that the cycle of these constitutions may be observed in Rome in the passage from the kingship to the tyranny of the Tarquins, and then to the oligarchic domination of the patricians; the proper balance of the mixed constitution was achieved when the plebs were incorporated into the civitas and endured until the Gracchan revolution.75 In this general outline Sigonio remained faithful to the rudiments of Greek political theory, and was conventional in seeing the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus (133 B.C.) as the beginning of domination by the plebs and the end of the period of balance. But Sigonio was original in placing the beginning of the balanced constitution early in the third century and connecting it closely with the issue of citizenship. He had in fact first advanced this view in the preface to the Fasti commentary of 1556. In this remarkable preface Sigonio declared that the presence of an endogamous caste within the citizen body, which is what the patricians were, or tried to become, was a self-evident contradiction of the terms of citizenship; and further that the plebeians had been unconditionally justified in their struggle against the patricians. Their tribunate had been a valid arm of redemption: And indeed what could be as unjust, and not only unjust but also alien to a mixed constitution, as that the entire state should be entrusted to the power of the patrician few, and the plebs entirely 73

Regnum, optimatum imperium, respublica; tyrannis, paucorum imperium, vulgi dominatus (MS cit., ff. 109v-lllr). 74 "Nam cum bene ac iuste res geritur sive ab uno rege, sive a paucis optimatibus, sive ab universo populo, respublica est et quidem recta. At cum iniustus est rex, quern antiqui tyrannum, aut iniusti optimates, quorum consensum factionem vocarunt, aut iniustus populus, cui nomen usitatum nullum repererunt, nisi ut etiam ipsum tyrannum appellarent, non modo vitiosa sed omnino nulla respublica existimanda est" (In Fastos commentarius, pref., f. 4r m 1556; p. 7 in 1559). Cf. Augustine, De civ. Dei 2.21, of which this is in turn a paraphrase. Sigonio goes on to state that extant accounts of the Roman constitution by Polybius and Cicero are unclear and unsatisfactory, this explains his decision to attempt his own, along Aristotelian lines, in 1560. 75 De ant. iur. civ Rom. 1.1, pp. 3-4. 130

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

excluded from any public office? That the patricians alone should control the consulate (that is, the royal power) and religious ritual, should virtually control the assemblies, and have complete power of life and death over the plebs? That the plebs themselves, deprived of any magistracy, should not only obey these optimates but minister to them slavishly, while also being deprived, through the ban on intermarriage, almost of participation in life itself? Hence, that the temperation which was then entirely lacking in the constitution might be introduced, the humbler citizens made equal to the foremost, and the plebs enjoy the same rights of citizenship as the patricians, the sacrosanct tribunate had to be conceded to them by the patres, by which species of keen weapon against the power and lust of the optimates they might protect and defend themselves, their liberty, and their chastity. Intermarriage had to be established so that one part of the citizens should not be patently scorned and held in no account, as if contaminated and unworthy, by the nobles. Finally the highest patrician magistracies had to be opened: no longer could the optimates alone dominate the constitution. In result the plebs won for themselves the consulate, which had always been the firmest stronghold of the power of the patricians; they won as well—not without extreme cases of public conflict—the dictatorship, the censorship, imperium, the rituals, the priesthoods, all of which had previously belonged to the nobility alone. Nothing else now was required for equalizing the law in all constitutional respects than that plebiscites, by which the plebs alone were as yet bound, should apply to all the citizens, and finally this too, after the secession to Mount Janiculum, was enacted in the lex Hortensia.76 76 "Etenim quid tarn non dicam imustum, sed a temperata reipublicae alienum esse potuit, quam universam rempublicam paucorum patnciorum imperio committi, plebem omni prorus reipublicae munere excludi? patncios solos consulatum, id est regium imperium, sacra, comitia fere, atque omnem in plebem et vitae et necis potestatem habere, plebem ipsam non modo omnis expertem honoris optimatibus obedire, sed diremptis connubiis, vitae etiam ipsius prope communione privatam maxima cum indignitate servire? Ergo ut quae turn nulla in republica erat, moderatio induceretur, atque ut tenuiores cum principibus aequarentur, et plebs pari cum patricus in civitate iure uteretur, sacrosanctus ei fuit tribunatus a patribus concedendus, quo ipsa tanquam acerrimo quodam telo contra optimatum potentiam atque libidinem se, hbertatem ac pudicitiam suam tueretur atque defenderet. Connubia communicanda fuerunt, ne pars civium tanquam contaminata atque indigna a nobilibus contemm, ac nullo numero haben videretur. Patricii denique summi honores impertiendi, ne soli optimates in republica dominarentur. Quam ob rem cum plebs consulatum, quae firmissima semper prope arx potentiae patriciorum fuerat, praeterea dictaturam, censuram, imperium, sacra, sacerdotia, quae unius ante nobilitatis fuerant, non sine magnis reipublicae motibus ipsa sibi vmdicasset, iamque nihil aliud ad ius totius reipublicae adaequandum, quam ut plebiscite, quibus turn sola plebs tenebatur,

131

CHAPTER TWO

The heart of his argument here, which will be developed in De antiquo iure avium Romanorum, is that from an early stage of the monarchy the plebeians had gained full Roman citizenship, were counted in the census, and voted in the assemblies, but were denied the political effects of citizenship in that they were excluded from magistracy and the auspices. They laid claim to these rights and obtained them. At the outset of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum, Sigonio lays aside the cycle of six constitutions, and concentrates on the passage from the early oligarchic phase to the inclusive one of patrician-plebeian equality. The movement of the analysis here is entirely Aristotelian, for in the Politics (in its extant form) Aristotle also arrives at an explanation of the actual political life of the Greek cities of his time as an oscillation between only two (not six) forces, those of oligarchy and demokratia; this oscillation is resolved, in the best of cases, in the "middle" constitution which he calls politeia. Sigonio saw in the history of early Rome a resolution of this type: Yet although the status of the Roman constitution changed often, nevertheless the community of citizens itself seems to me never to have had other than two forms: the first when the state was in the power of one or a few, the second when it was in the power of many. For just as, under the domination of the kings and the patricians the plebs had no access to magistracies, when the people were in power they held them in abundance. And just as, under those constitutions, artisans and laborers in shops were excluded from the tally of the citizens, in this one they also attained full rights of citizenship. Consequently, since we seek here to discover what a Roman citizen with full rights of citizenship is, we intend to leave aside the earlier constitutions of kings and patricians in investigating the definition of a Roman citizen, and to direct our entire attention to the constitution which was introduced when magistracies were opened to the plebs, culminating in the period of the Tarentine War [280s B.C., when the lex Hortensia was passed]; and which was not afterwards changed until the emperors reordered the state at their pleasure77 omnes Quirites astnngerent, quaereretur, turn denique hoc etiam, secessione in Ianiculum facta, lege Hortensia consequuta est" (In Fastos commentarius, pref., f. 4r-v in 1556; pp. 7-8 in 1559). Note optimates and nobiles used loosely here for patricians. 77 "Quanquam autem Romanae reipublicae status saepe mutatus est, nunquam tamen nisi duas mihi formas ipsa habuisse civitas videtur: unam cum unius aut paucorum, alteram cum multorum in potestate res fuit. Ut enim regibus et patriciis dominantibus plebs hononbus 132

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

For Sigonio the lex Hortensia of 287 or 286 B.C., which gave resolutions passed by the plebeian assembly the effect of laws unconditionally binding upon the populus Romanus, signalled the attainment of constitutional perfection. In his view this was because, from the moment the plebeians had an independent legislative initiative, they no longer suffered any arbitrary limitations qua citizens because of patrician privilege.78 In this Sigonio effected a markedly personal compromise between Greek political theory and Roman reality. His evaluation of the lex Hortensia was an innovation in which he showed the originality of his view of Roman history. The constitutional arrangement achieved in 287 B.C., formally a demokratia, was considered by Sigonio to be the idiosyncratically Roman version of the ideal mixed constitution. The tension between Greek theory and Roman reality is constant and fruitful in De antiquo iure avium Romanorum, forcing the writer to go beyond a merely antiquarian recital of the data, and to produce an interpretation. Having established this connection between the history of the Roman constitution and individual citizenship, Sigonio broaches his definition of the latter. He includes some discussion of the distinctive gradation of citizenship which accompanied Roman expansion in Italy, but concentrates (like Aristotle) for formal purposes on the citizen with full entitlement, who is configured thus: a free man inhabiting Rome or the ager Romanus who has been included in the census and therefore possesses suffrage through registration in a tribe, and who has the right to be elected to magistracy.79 It may be helpful here to ask to what extent this definition is "Athenian" and therefore misguided in respect to Rome.80 caruit, sic iisdem facile, rerum potiente populo, abundavit. Itaque ut in ilhs rebuspublicis opifices et sellularii civium e numero excludebantur, sic in his optimum etiam ius civitatis assequebantur. Quocirca nos, qui civem Romanum qui optimo iure civis sit hoc loco quaerimus, primam illam vel regum vel patriciorum rempublicam in civis Romani definitione investiganda rehnquemus, ad earn vero quae, aequatis cum plebe, maxime post bellum Tarentinum, honoribus, est inducta, nee post, nisi imperatoribus omnia ex hbidine admimstrantibus, commutata, omnem nostram hanc disputationem accommodabimus" (De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.1, p. 4). 78 Cf. n. 13 above on the lex Hortensia de plebiscitis. For Sigonio on the technical aspects of the lex Hortensia, see the commentary on the Fasti for 467 AUC (= 286 B.C.). He discounted the importance of putative earlier laws to the same effect; if the lex Publilia (339 B.C.) had been passed, he said, it had certainly not been observed. The lex Hortensia had an exact parallel in the history of Bologna, the city which served as Sigonio's model for all the Italian communes. There the assembly of the popolo replaced the assembly of the commune as the legislative organ of the city. 79 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.1, p. 4 (1574). 80 His De republica Atheniensium (1564) is of course posterior; but cf. in it "De populan republica Atheniensium" (pp. 27—42), which contains his major evaluation of Athenian demokratia: it had a narrow phase down to Pericles, then a broad one. In the earlier period, that 133

CHAPTER TWO

Sigonio himself notes that a Roman citizen thus described is not identical with the citizen of a polis defined by Aristotle. This remark he explains in a later chapter on judiciary law: all Athenian citizens were able to serve on juries, and for Aristotle the power to do so is constitutive of citizenship, but this was never true at Rome. There the senatorial and equestrian orders, and eventually an upper stratum of the first census class, the tribuni aerarii, contended for control of the juries, which were not at any period open to the lower census grades. But all census grades were represented in the Roman assemblies.81 There is another fundamental divergence between Rome and Athens: at Rome office-holding was in practice dominated by the nobility. It was moreover necessary to possess a fortune at least equal to the equestrian census in order to be a candidate at the elections, and Sigonio himself believed that admission to the senate depended explicitly on a sufficient census holding.82 What then does he mean when he includes the capacity for magistracy as constitutive of citizenship, since not all the citizens could accede to it? The interplay between Aristotelian theory and Roman reality is subtle here: Sigonio means to indicate that the equestrian and senatorial orders, and within the senate even the nobilitas which held the higher magistracies, were accessible with a rise (to which there was no juridical barrier) in socioeconomic status, with the display of the complex of personal qualities called virtus, and hence with a successful cursus honorum. In the absence of infrangible statute barriers, based on purity of blood and religion, to candidacy for office at Rome, these strata were, in a juridical sense, open rather than closed.83 of Solon and after, not all citizens could hold magistracies, but in the later period they could, and it is on this period that Sigonio's definition of an Athenian citizen will be based: "civem Atheniensem esse defendimus, qui publicorum consiliorum, iudiciorum, magistratuumque iure praeditus fuit" (p. 40). The similarity of his approach here to that of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum will be evident. 81 Sigonio says of his own definition: "ab Aristotelis definitione civis tradita non longe recedit" (De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.1, p. 4). And cf. 2.18, "De iudiciis," in which after explaining the restricted selection of Roman juries Sigonio declares: "Quare in constituendo Romano cive non omnibus in partibus Aristotelicam definitionem civis traditam possumus sequi" (p. 134). 82 Cf. n. 121 below. 83 Sigonio never makes explicit what is stated here. I extrapolate, and I intend to document this extrapolation extensively in what follows, from two premises of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum: the first, that all citizens had the capacity to be chosen as magistrates, the second that only above a certain census level was it effectively possible to become a magistrate and enter the senate. If he had considered these two propositions to be contradictory, his book would make no sense. The motif of magistracy as constitutive of citizenship is taken up again at 1.18, "De iure honorum": "Tandem aliquando pervenimus ad id, quo uno optimum ipsum ius civitatis expletur. Hoc est autem, ut ab initio diximus, ius honorum, quod qui in urbe 134

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

Finally, the banausic problem: Aristotle, in an adjunct to his formal definition, had faced the question of whether people who labored for their livelihood could be counted as true citizens, and answered it in the negative.84 Sigonio's answer to this has already been given in the second of the two long quotations above. At Rome "artisans and laborers in shops" were counted as full citizens. When examined, Sigonio's definition of the Roman citizen reveals a mature and critical use of Aristotle's Politics and a keen perception of similarities and differences between Roman city-state and Greek polis. The Politics made it possible for Sigonio, who was not a political philosopher, to arrive at a definition sufficiently formal to serve as the heuristic principle of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum. In this two-part work, book 1 constructs the definition and discusses the attributes of citizenship. In doing so it mixes aspects of public and private law with information on military, fiscal, and political institutions, including the basic territorial unit in Roman Italy, the tribe,85 and the assemblies, magistracies, and imperium.86 Book 2 is about political and social history after the plebeian success in creating a true politeia. Sigonio proposes a new use of categories for understanding this Roman version of the "mixed constitution": it included a nobilitas structurally open to novi homines, and a social stratification mixing patricians and plebeians in three or dines. He also delineates in categories the failure of the mixed agrove Romano habmt, is quam plemssimum ms civitatis obtinuit. Itaque sate, ut omnia, Aristoteles, qui verum ac germanum civem honorum adipiscendorum, ut dixi, potestate, circunscnpsit" (p. 83). 84 Politics 3.5 85 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.3, "De tribubus et amis." The Roman tribes were in the historical period territorial voting aggregations of citizens drawn from noncontiguous districts of Italy. The problem of their development and organization was discussed by Paolo Manuzio, Ottavio Pantagato, Antonio Agustin, Onofno Panvinio, and Carlo Sigonio during the 1550s, and it would be possible to reconstruct in detail this discussion by using the letters to Panvinio in BAM, MS D 501 inf. from Pantagato, Sigonio (published in Op. om. t. 6) and Agustin (published in Epistolae, 1804). Cf. as well a long letter of 30 July 1552 from Pantagato to Manuzio published by Pastorello in Inedita Manutiana, no. 491 (from BAM, MS E 30 inf., ff. 58-59); and other letters to be identified. Such a reconstruction would be of interest for the history of the use of epigraphic evidence. Manuzio (m a commentary on Cicero, Ad familiares, 1552), Panvinio (Reipublicae Romanae 1558, pp. 296,307,476ff.) and Sigonio (above) published their results, as did, independently of them, Nicolas de Grouchy in De comitiis (1555) 2.1, "Quid essent tributa comma," ff. 63-66. Their work is evaluated at length in Giovanni Forni, "Tribu romane e problemi connessi dal Biondo Flavio al Mommsen." He emphasizes the notable progress made by Grouchy here and generally, and Panvinio's opportune use of epigraphic evidence. Sigonio in contrast is marked by a "spiccata predilezione per Ie fonti letterarie" (p. 43). 86 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.17, "De iure suffragiorum"; 1.20, "De magistratibus"; 1.21, "De impenis." For more on these chapters, and topics, see chap. 3. 135

CHAPTER

TWO

constitution: seeds of dissent germinated in the orders, and there fol­ lowed the disastrous emergence of optimate and popular factiones. Sigonio expressed his sense of the difference between the early (oligarchic) and later (broadly based) phases of Roman history, and the reflection of that difference in the two-part organization of his own treatise, when he said that the conflict of the patricians and plebeians was not a conflict between orders, but rather "was fought out among the gentes."87 Polit­ ical history could really only begin after the primordially dominant group had failed to achieve closure based on purity of blood and had given way to a polislike association in which citizenship entailed the complex of juridical guarantees known as libertas. That there is a close relation between civitas and libertas emerges clearly from Roman texts such as Cicero's Pro Caecina, but Sigonio was the first to discuss the matter in depth. Despite their indivisibility he did not treat them as synonymous. We have seen that for Sigonio civitas is political (polislike). His libertas, on the other hand, may be understood as civil rights; he divides it under five heads, the first of which is not to be another man's property. The two fundamental conditions of men were indeed slavery and freedom, and in Roman law a freed slave auto­ matically became a citizen. Sigonio discusses the fact that while certain political handicaps still attached to freedmen, their newly acquired lib­ ertas was complete. Their civitas in this case was the guarantee of their libertas.88 The second element of freedom is identical with the respub87 "Hinc enim secessio in montem Sacrum . . . hinc in Aventinum . . . hinc denique motus alii urbani excitati de communicandis connubiis . . . de consulatu vulgando . . . quibus de rebus non propne inter ordines sed inter gentes est concertatum . . ." (De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.7, "De iure gentilitatis," p. 43). Sigonio sets out his program in De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.1, "De ordinibus avium Romanorum," declaring that while m book 1 he had developed a ramified portrait of the Roman citizenship, he intends in book 2 to analyze three "divisiones" of Roman society: that of the ofders; that of the nobles and new men; and the final, deleterious division into hostile factions of optimates and populates (p. 91). And cf. finally his restatement of the difference between the earlier and later phases of Roman republican history in 2.21, "De optimatibus et populanbus": "Inter hos [consuls and tribunes of the plebs] autem magna semper discordia, sed alus temponbus alia fuit. Pnmis enim temporibus tribunis plebis consules restiterunt ut patricius magistratus plebeio. Nam tunc nulla alia, nisi ex familiarum patriciarum potentia plebeiis ipsis mtoleranda, audita contentio est. Post autem ubi plebeiis etiam familiis consulatus et ceteri patncii honores communicati sunt, non ita contendit consulatus cum tnbunatu tanquam patricius cum plebeio, sed tanquam optimatum pnnceps cum popularium princrpe, in quo controversiam fecit non generis dissimilitudo, sed voluntatum distractio" (p. 143). 88 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.6, "De iure hbertatis," for this and what follows. And cf. items by Wirszubski and Ferrary cited in n. 65 above. Two articles, interesting for the comparative perspective they offer, may be noted: Philippe Gautier, " 'Generosite' romaine et 'avarice' grecque: sur !'octroi du droit de cite," in Mέlanges d'histoire ancienne offerts a William Seston

136

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

lica: there was no libertas before it under the kings, or after it under the emperors. The third is protection from harsh and arbitrary usage by the magistrates, encoded in the famous series of provocatio laws providing for the intercession of tribunes on behalf of citizens, for appeals, for capital trials in the assembly, and also prohibiting the execution or corporal punishment of citizens. (Sigonio emphasizes that these laws had their origin in the necessity to obtain protection for the plebeians against the patricians.) The fourth and fifth elements of liberty are the laws prohibiting exorbitant punishments for debt; and those providing for voting by secret ballot in the assembly. These five components of libertas are heterogeneous and therefore unsystematic—an occasional weakness of Sigonio's writings directly attributable to the absence of juristic rigor. On the other hand the Romans of the republic (before the efflorescence of imperial jurisprudence) might not have recognized a constitutional code of libertas any more organic than the one provided by Sigonio, and might even have considered his account of it substantially adequate. In discussing the condition of libertas as opposed to slavery Sigonio naturally includes a discussion of the meaning of ingenuus,89 an apparently uncomplicated term (it indicates one born of free parents and therefore free oneself from birth) which actually serves as a fulcrum for one of the most important and controversial arguments of his work. The first passage which he cites to illustrate its meaning is the one from Livy's first decade in which the patrician Appius Claudius concedes that patrician status is supererogatory in respect to the basic condition of being a citizen, that is one of the Quirites born of ingenui and living in liberty. The second is that in which the plebeian Decius Mus goes even farther, asserting that the first patricians had been no more than ingenui themselves, the first who could demonstrate legitimate parentage.90 Sigonio accepted that this contention of a plebeian orator in Livy, revolutionary in its implications, was a historical datum, and on it based his reconstruction of the formation of gentes, of patrician oligarchy, and of the patrician-plebeian struggle in early Rome. In truth it was not a datum but a polemical interpretation, transmitted by the antiquarian industry of the late republic and early empire along with a number of other hypotheses on the origins of the patriciate. It (Paris: Boccard, 1974), pp. 207-15; and Michel Humbert, "Libertas id est civitas: autour d'un confht negatif de citoyennetes au He s. avant J.C," in MEFRA 88,1976, pp. 221-42. 89 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.6, pp. 26-30, and esp. p. 26. 90 Above, nn. 9,12. 137

CHAPTER TWO

had left a handful of traces in the literary record besides the speech of Decius Mus in Livy. Plutarch reports it among other possibilities in the life of Romulus, and Dionysius does the same in his account of the founder of Rome. 91 Festus preserves a fragment from the antiquarian Cincius: "Patrician was the usual appellation of those who would now be called ingenui."92 It is a radical explanation, considered improbable by the same Greek writers in which Sigonio found it, for Dionysius and Plutarch themselves believed that the patricians had been singled out as aristocrats by Romulus for their aristocratic qualities, and this "natural" (in fact moralizing and circular) explanation of the origin of the patriciate was adopted by all Sigonio's contemporaries. Sigonio chose the more difficult explanation, the one requiring from him a higher degree of interpretative commitment, and in this he showed the superior qualities as a historian of the ancient world which set him apart from them and guaranteed his greatness in the centuries after his death. The claim that the first patricians had been simply the earliest free-born of Rome was no longer as politically audacious as it had been in its ancient context. Now, as renewed by Sigonio, it was radical because it gave a purely social-historical account of the formation of an aristocracy at the dawn of historical time. Sigonio substituted it for the moralizing explanations which predominated because he thought more deeply than his contemporaries about the real dynamics of historical phenomena such as the formation of social strata, and concluded that they were more likely to have been based on relations of power and status among human groups than on the employment of wisdom and the recognition of virtue. Yet to the extent that modern aristocracies still claimed to derive part of their ethos from that of the Roman patricians, it was not an entirely academic piece of demolition for Sigonio to cut away the fagade which 91 Plutarch, Romulus 13.3-4: the senators were called patricians, some say, because they were fathers of legitimate children; or, as others say, because they could designate their fathers (emphasis added), which many of the new settlers could not; or because they were patroni. But Plutarch accepts a fourth explanation—that they were the leading and most powerful citizens and Romulus wanted to institutionalize love and respect for them among the rest. Dionysius of Halicarnassus is more openly skeptical: "but others, considering the matter in the light of their own envy and desirous of casting reproach on the city for the ignoble birth of its founders, say they were not called patricians for the reasons just cited, but because these men only could point out their fathers—as if all the rest were fugitives and unable to name free men as their fathers" (2.8.3, Loeb trans., emphasis added). Sigonio takes at face value an etymology which both Plutarch and Dionysius themselves considered doubtful. 92 "Patricios, Cincius ait in libro de comitiis, eos appellan sohtos, qui nunc ingenui vocentur" (Festus 277L).

138

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

had been thrown up in antiquity round the origins of Rome's first aristocracy. It is unlikely, of course, that Sigonio had hit upon the right socialhistorical explanation, for the claim made by the plebeians about the origin of the patricians was a reductive and tendentious one, and as embraced by Sigonio it had little diachronic dimension. We gather from his silence that he still thinks of the patriciate as having been created by the fiat of Romulus. Neither Sigonio nor anyone else was yet capable of going much beyond the options offered by the ancient sources. Sigonio faced the necessity of selecting, from among a number of competing tendentious reports, the one carrying the maximum of explanatory power in the light of his Aristotelian views on political life and his knowledge of the type of community which Rome was to become in later centuries. He chose the "plebeian" explanation because it seemed to him to have that power, inasmuch as it explained Roman social history from within the social-historical domain; and that is the important aspect of the question. Having said so, it is worth noting that Sigonio "favors" the Roman plebeians here, just as he does in emphasizing the Tightness of the lex Hortensia. That is tendentious if one wishes, but because of the paucity of the surviving sources the historiography of antiquity cannot do without a bias of some kind and has never been able to do so, certainly not in the twentieth century. Many modern students of the anthropology of archaic societies have been intrigued by the suggestion, also in the speech of Decius Mus, that the patricians had, or claimed to have had, a social structure of clans while the plebeians did not, and on this basis the "gentilician theory," associated in its various ramifications with Marxist historiography, has been built. Obiter dictum: it is a theory to which Sigonio, if he were able to learn of it, would be unlikely to subscribe.93 93 The ideological alignments of Sigomo's lifetime are not comparable with those of the twentieth century. The "gentilician theory" of the sixteenth century was the belief expressed by Livy's patrician speakers (and opposed by Sigonio) that the plebeians did not have legitimate descent in extended kin groups; it was used to justify the primitive origins and permanent validity of European aristocracy. The gentilician theory of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries also believes that the plebs, who only came into existence with the formation of the state and private property, had no gens. It defends the existence, prior to that of the state, of primitive communism in gentes which were bands of equals; the privilege of gentilician identification was employed only later as an instrument of class domination over the plebeians by the patricians. Cf. the items by Gennaro Franciosi listed in the bibliography in n. 16 above; and add his polemic contribution, "Nomen gentiliaum. A proposito di uno studio recente e di un pregmdizio antico," in Sodalitas. Scritti Antonio Guarino vol. 4 (Naples: Iovene, 1984), pp. 1577-92. But on purely technical grounds it may be hazarded that Sigonio would today be

139

CHAPTER TWO

Sigonio formed his own view during the first half of the 1550s and proposed it in the scholia to Livy and in De nominibus Romanorum, both of 1555. The important scholia are those to Livy 4.1.2,10.8.9-10, and 1.8.7. The first of these is his presentation of the issues raised by the Canuleian proposals of 445 B.C., the moment at which the patricians were put on the defensive by an attack on the bases on their collective privilege and responded with the complaint that the "laws governing descent in gentes were being confounded" by the intrusion of plebeian blood.94 Sigonio's note on this is a rationalizing gloss: gentilitas means the sharing of a common gentile name and clan membership is divided amongst a number of direct lineages (stirpes) distinguished by their cognomina. He claimed, correctly to my knowledge, that no previous scholar had made the distinction between extended clans and their component families, and the silent corollary is that this structure of descent and not the blood purity of the patricians constitutes the "laws governing descent in gentes."95 In his notes to the speech of Decius Mus, Sigonio makes explicit the view that the descent of all Romans, and not just the patricians, was structured in this way, citing again the passage from Livy in which Claudius concedes the status of ingenui to all the Quirites. He also adduces a definition of the jurist Q. Mucius Scaevola preserved by Cicero in which one of the substantial conditions of being gentilis is to be a civis born of ingenui.96 Sigonio appears here to assume that the patricians themselves were satisfied with the view that their ancestors had been chosen as the only ingenui and that their claim to be the exclusive bearers of gentile descent was based on no more than this. He wished to reduce the history of the formation of their stratum to this simple mechanism, and make it appear uncontroversial, in order to confirm the historical truth as he saw it, which was that the continuous creation of new descent groups or the aggregation of new members to established gentes had accompanied automatically the growth of the city of Rome. The existence of plebeian gentes was self-evident. found with Jean-Claude Richard, Arnaldo Momighano, and others who believe that the gentes grew up with the growth of the city, that their existence indicates no traceable ethnic difference, that the plebeians had gentes, and that the gentes called "patrician" were those descended from a political elite whose coalition into a stratum occurred toward the end of the regal period rather than as a preliminary to the creation of the state. See nn. 16, 17, and 18 above. 94 "contaminari sanguinem suum patres confundique iura gentium rebantur . . ." (Livy 4.1.2; and cf. above nn. 5, 7). 95 Sigonio, scholium to Livy 4.1.2. 96 Sigonio, scholia to Livy 10.8.9 and 10.8.10. For the text and translation of this passage of Livy, see n. 12 above; for Appius Claudius (Livy 6.40.6), see n. 9 above; and see Cic. Topica 6.29. 140

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

Two interesting examples of textual criticism conditioned by a historian's viewpoint resulted from all this. When Sigonio wrote, both manuscripts and editions of Livy made Decius Mus claim that the ingenuitas which distinguished the first patricians had been the simple result of two generations of established descent, and then compare his own plebeian line, in which he represented two generations not merely of legitimate descent but of consular office-holding. This text is a locus classicus for the contrast between nobility of descent versus nobility of virtue, but the contrast, as Sigonio saw, had been made a little too neat by copyists or editors who had read "patrem . . . avumque" in the second phrase and had assumed that it was required as a parallel in the first as well.97 But in fact one was ingenuus if one's parents had been free, without regard to the generation above them, and Sigonio accordingly modified 10.8.10 to read "qui patrem ciere possent, id est nihil ultra quam ingenuos."98 The emendation, philologically unimpeachable, loosened the underpinning of one small corner of contemporary social ideology, for the vulgate text which ascribed purity of blood only to the third generation had provided support for the belief, widespread in Europe, that several generations of personal nobility were required to cleanse the blood and produce hereditary nobility in the third.99 Finally, there is Sigonio's note to Livy 1.8.7, the passage in which Livy, like Dionysius and Plutarch, gives alternative explanations of Romulus's choice of one hundred aristocrats to be the first senators and to found the patriciate. Livy does not, as they do, offer the possibility that there were only so many at Rome who had legitimate fathers, but says that either one hundred was enough, or that there were only one hundred suited to the role ("soli centum erant qui creari patres possent"). Sigonio judiciously noted the verbal similarity between "creari 97 I.e.: "En unquam fando audistis patncios primo esse factos non de caelo demissos sed qui patrem avumque ciere possent, id est nihil ultra quam mgenuos? Consulem iam patrem ciere possum avumque iam poterit filius meus" (Livy 10.8.10-11). Translation: "Have you never heard it said that those first selected as patricians were not in fact sent down from heaven but were persons who could cite a legitimate father and grandfather—nothing more that is than free-born citizens ? I can already cite a father who was a consul, and my son in turn will be able to cite a grandfather." 98 Sigonio, scholium ad loc.: "Voces avumque inducendae sunt [are to be erased], neque enim repenuntur in vetenbus libns neque vero desiderantur. Patriciorum enim tradit etymologiam, eosque dittos ait, qui patrem ciere possent. Quod etiam Dionysius et Plutarchus in Romulo prodidit. Qui vero avum addiderunt, id credo ea moti ratione fecerunt, quod subdit, Consulem mm patrem ciere possum, avumque iam poterit filius meus. Cuius orationis hie est sensus: si patricii sunt, qui patrem ciere possent, ego certe patncius, qui patrem consulem, multoque magis filius meus, qui patrem et avum ciere consulem potest." 99 On Guillaume Bude's use of this text in its vulgate form, cf. above nn. 58, 59.

141

CHAPTER TWO

patres" here and "patrem ciere" in 10.8.10; then, convinced that Livy must have sustained the theory which he himself favored, emended 1.8.7 to read "soli centum erant qui ciere patres possent." It was a more tendentious and less happy emendation and did not win acceptance.100 As well as the scholia on Livy, the year 1555 also saw the appearance of De nominihus Romanorum, and in it a brief chapter in which the conclusion that the patricians had been simply the earliest stratum to possess ordinary legitimate descent is again drawn from the same evidence. In consequence the Roman nobility for the first time appears in its rightful place in the political history of the Roman republic, detached from the archaic context of contentious claims to purity of blood: "Nobility came not from descent but from death masks, since they were called nobles who could have death masks of their ancestors. But only those who had held a curule magistracy could set up images of themselves and pass them on to their offspring. The first such curule magistracy [sc. in the cursus honorum] was eventually the curule aedileship, which was open to patricians before it was so to plebeians."101 The corollary view that only patricians who had had magistrates in their lineage could be called noble was also advanced, as was the further corollary, a frankly shocking one in the sixteenth century, that some patricians must therefore have been the first of their line to hold office and enter the senate—"new men." Sigonio states this in a passage which appears only in the first edition of De nominihus Romanorum. It may not be entirely fanciful to wonder whether this hypothesis—that some members of the ancient patriciate had been arrivistes—gave rise to adverse comment of a very direct kind when published in Venice in 1555; certainly it was suppressed in the editions of 1556 and 1559. With it was suppressed a brief passage in which Sigonio announced that a third division of Roman ioo Ti16 e( Jit or 0 f the 1914 Oxford edition of Livy, however, was tempted by Sigonio's emendation; see the apparatus ad loc. Sigonio defended his emendation at length, and attacked the vulgate creari patres as a senseless locution, in Emendationes (1557) in the chapter entitled "In caput LV. Cur senatores patres et patricii dicti suit" (sc. his response to Robortello, Emendationes, bk. 2, chap. 55). 101 De nominihus Romanorum (1555), "De patriciis famihis et plebeiis, nobilibus et novis," ff. N2r-01r; and the passage cited: "Neque enim ex genere nobihtas, sed ex imagmibus parabatur, siquidem u nobiles dicti, qui maiorum suorum imagines haberent. Imagmem autem sui ponere ac posteris tradere non poterant, nisi qui curulem magistratum gessissent, quorum post aliquot tempora primus esse caepit aedilitas curulis, qui magistratus ante patriciis patuit, quam plebeiis" (f. N2v). It will be remembered that curule is the technical term for the higher magistracies, those exclusively patrician in origin. This was written at a time when the view of Bude (nn. 57-58 above) on the identity of Roman gentilitas and nobilitas was the near-universal opinion. 142

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

society, that of the senatorial, equestrian, and plebeian orders, would soon be described in a book entitled De familiis by Paolo Manuzio.102 Manuzio, for reasons having to do with character and circumstance, did not bring to fruition his planned corpus of work on Roman antiquities, and the draft treatise to whose existence in 1555 Sigonio testifies perhaps forms part of, or is identical to, the one which appeared posthumously as De avitate Romana in 1585. After 1555 Paolo Manuzio was over­ taken by younger and more determined men, Sigonio and (some lengths behind) Onofrio Panvinio.103 It is likely, however, that personal discus­ sions between Carlo Sigonio and Paolo Manuzio in the early and mid15508, including comparison of their respective drafts and debate on points of difference, contributed much to Sigonio's achievement in Ro­ man studies. Certainly the analysis οι types oi Roman social stratifica­ tion appears to have begun with Manuzio and passed to Sigonio's hands. Sigonio was responsible for its elaboration; he was original in adopting from the ancient sources the plebeian interpretation of patrician gentil­ ity and in recovering from them the true meaning of Roman nobility. In De antiquo iure avium Romanorum (1560) Sigonio provides his definitive treatment of the origins of Rome in 1.7, "De iure gentilitatis," io2 " N e q u e v e r 0 plebeii solum novi esse potuerunt, sed etiam patricn, dummodo maiores eorum honores non cepissent, quod significat Paedianus his verbis: Scaurus ita fuit patrkius, ut tribus supra eum aetatibus iacuerit domus eius fortuna, nam neque pater, neque avus, neque etiam proavus, ut puto, propter tenues opes et nullam vitae industriam honores adepti sunt, ltaque Scauro aeque ac novo homini laborandum fuit. Ut autem genus patricias et plebeias, honores nobiJes et novas, sic ordo senatorias aut equestres aut de plebe familias reddidit. Qua de re in hbro quern de familns inscripsit Paulus Manutius, vir cum ingenio turn iudicio praestantissimus, propediem, ut spero, accuratissime disputabit" (De nomimbus Romanorum, 1555, f. Olr, emphasis added). The entire passage is absent from the relevant section of the editions of 1556 (ff. S4v-Tlv) and 1559 (pp. 385-87). The quotation from Asconius Paedianus, to which I have here added the emphasis, is on p. 25 in the edition of Stangl. It was destined to feature in debates about the nobility of patricians. 103 Cf. Paolo Manuzio, De avitate Romana (1585), pp. 4-9 and p. 57 on patrician and ple­ beian strata and on the Roman orders. Neither this work, nor his De senatu (1581) and De comitiis (1585) will receive much notice here. On most problems they show a lack of focus which betrays their composition at a period when debate had not been sharpened by the works of Sigonio, Grouchy, and Zamoyski. The case is different with Manuzio's De legibus, an effi­ cacious book which he actually managed to publish when it was ripe (1557,1559). In Onofrio Panvinio's Reipublicae Romanae commentarii (1558), bk. 2, pp. 297-303, "De patriais et plebe; senatu, equitibus et populo," we see the influence of the discussion which was going on between Sigonio and Manuzio, and which Sigonio had broached in De nominibus (1555). In these pages Panvinio gives his own interpretation of the contrast between the patrician-ple­ beian division on one hand, and the gradation of the citizens into three orders on the other. It is close to Manuzio's m De civitate Romana and Panvinio may have seen Manuzio's drafts of 1555. Panvinio, like Manuzio, significantly avoids any reference to the problems of nobility, its sources, and the "new men." That was Sigonio's patch of nettles.

143

CHAPTER TWO

and 2.2, "De senatoribus." The first patricians were none other than those who could establish their parentage, and despite the closure of the patrician stratum, the passage of time and the growth of Rome's population meant that an increasing number of persons established their free and legitimate descent (formed or entered a gens) thereby becoming Roman citizens. This was the origin of the plebs.104 Sigonio reports the divergent ancient traditions concerning the various adlections to the patrician senate without indicating a clear preference for one authority over another; this was the traditional humanist method of dealing with technical problems which have been worried at by scholars for centuries. Who were the patres maiorum and minorum gentium? Are there two different groups of senators identified in the phrase patres conscripti, and if so are the conscripti plebeian senators? Sigonio, however, did not believe that plebeians had entered the senate either during the reign of Servius Tullius or in the adlections carried out by the first consuls in 509 B.C. He preferred to follow Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who states that the new senators of 509 were made patricians before their enrollment; and he appears to accept from Festus that the new senators of 509 were first called conscripti. Though these may have been the minores gentes as Tacitus says, Sigonio effectively discounts the possibility that conscripti = plebei.105 In a congeries of citations, Sigonio's own opinion about the early history of the senate is revealed: he conjectures that the first plebeians to enter the senate did so in the middle of the fifth century as former members of the second board of Decemviri, and that the enrollment of plebeians was regularized when they began to be elected to the consular tribunate. 106 Sigonio was not more specific because Livy's account of this process creates confusion. Livy names P. Licinius Calvus as the first plebeian to be elected a consular tribune, in a college of which he was the sole plebeian member (400 B . C ) , but as Sigonio noted in the Fasti commentary, five of the six tribunes of that year were identifiably plebeians; only L. Furius was a patrician.107 104 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.7, "De hire gentilitatis," pp. 38-39. Sigonio cites again all of the testimony, set out above, for the origin of the patricians as ingenui. His thesis on the origin of the plebs is lapidary: "plebeios, ubi patres indicare potuerunt, et ipsos gentem habere coepisse" (p. 38); that is, they became cives. After the closure of the patrician stratum the acquisition of citizenship gave only plebeian, not patrician status (p. 39). 105 For a full, old-fashioned exposition of the contradictions of the literary evidence on the archaic patrician senate, helpful for understanding the histonographical problems faced by the humanists, see Willems, Le sinat de la republique romaine vol. 1 (1st ed. 1878), pp. 9-44. See also nn. 17,18 above. And cf. De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.2, "De senatoribus," pp. 93-94. io6 Qe ant j u r CIU R0m. 2.2, "De senatoribus," pp. 94-95. 107 Cf. Livy 5.12.9, Sigonio's note ad loc. in the Livy scholia, and In Fasios commentarius

144

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

The gentile names of certain consuls from the half-century before the Decemvirate were borne in the historical period only by plebeian gentes,10S but on this Sigonio placed no importance. He assumed that these consuls were members of patrician lineages which later died out, or whose descendants crossed over to the plebs.109 He accepts that the first plebeian consul was elected in 366 B.C., and emphasizes that the plebeians received the full sacral complement of imperium, the auspices.110 The result, and with this we are now fully in the realm of book 2 of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum, was the formation of the patrician-plebeian nobilitas. Sigonio's attempt to define its nature and extension is at the origin of one of the great themes of Roman studies.111 He connected it closely with the official right to the use of death masks and considered that nobility descended to the offspring of any curule officeholder, that is dictator, magister equitum, censor, consul, praetor, or curule aedile. To this point Sigonio would be followed by Mommsen, but unlike the later scholar, who considered all patricians, and even descendants of patricians who had crossed over to the plebs, to have nobility, Sigonio believed that this distinction was so closely tied to the magistracies, hence in the gift of the assembly, that patricians had achieved it only as and when they had won the people's favor. Patricians had been the only nobles during the patrician monopoly of the state—but the only noble patricians had been the families of office-holders, and only for that reason. Sigonio's definition of the new men was symmetrical: they were the first of their line to hold any of the curule offices, and their death masks, the foundation of their family's nobility, were in each case the senior ones in that lineage.112 He avoided restating the radical s. a. 353 AUC. Secondary: Ronald T. Ridley, "The Consular Tribunate: the Testimony of Livy" (1986). 108 Eg. Cassius, Tullius, Sempromus, Minucius, Cominius, Aquillius, and Sicinms. 109 Sigonio gives a list of the possible reasons for the existence of gentiliaa common to patricians and plebeians in De nominibus (1555) f.N2v, repeated in De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.7, p. 42 (1574). 110 387 AUC in Sigonio's Fasti (= 366 B.C.). For his emphasis on the near-total participation in the auspices gained by the plebeians, see De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.7, "De iure gentihtatis," pp. 40-41. Only if all the higher magistracies fell vacant did the "auspices return to the patres," that is, an assembly of patrician senators chose an interrex with the power to renew the auspices and set in motion again the electoral machinery (Above nn. 10,18). 111 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.20, "De nobihbus, novis, et ignobilibus." 112 Mommsen, SR 3.458-75. Matthias Gelzer in 1912 (trans. The Roman Nobility [Oxford: Blackwell, 1969]) proposed a narrower definition of nobility which largely prevailed over that of Mommsen, to the effect that in the late republic nobility attached only to descendants of consuls. A study by P. A. Brunt ("Nobilitas and Novitas," ]RS 72,1982, pp. 1-17) proposed a 145

CHAPTER TWO

corollary which he had allowed to see the light in 1555, for he nowhere says in De antiquo iure avium Romanorum that a patrician could be a "new man"—though this remains implicit. Sigonio's discussion of Roman nobility concludes on a safer tack: he was fascinated by what he perceived to have been an exclusive right to possess a certain type of ancestral image (the idea must have carried peculiar force in what was after all still the Renaissance) and quoted at length from Polybius's and Pliny's descriptions of these brightly colored, life-sized artifacts, which were kept in the atria of Roman homes and which were paraded in public at the funerals of prominent family members.113 It was inevitable that Sigonio at the conclusion of his chapter on nobility should allude, if only briefly, to the eternal debate between nobility as individual virtue and as social fact, and it is to his credit as a historian that he should follow the austere lesson of Aristotle and refuse to confound them. "The nobility of virtue is entirely a matter for the [moral] philosophers;"114 but the transmission of inherited nobility return to Mommsen; but Gelzer is defended in D. R. Shackleton-Bailey, "Nobiles and Novi Reconsidered," American journal of Philology 107,1986, pp. 255-60. The imagines of members of noble families advertised their traditions of accomplishment and service to the republic and created political advantage, nobility in the abstract sense, for scions who chose to capitalize on it; nobility was a heritable quality but a constantly diminishing one if not renewed by new electoral success; and the Roman nobility was an open elite, formally undelimited. These and other points are made in a brief but suggestive essay by Jochen Bleicken ("Die Nobilitat der romischen Republik," Gymnasium 88, 1981, pp. 236-53) which illuminates themes found in Sigonio. In 1983 there appeared a pioneering sociological study of the Roman nobility by Keith Hopkins and Graham Burton (Death and Renewal). In it they maintained that the amount of social recirculation through the Roman nobility must have been higher than what is presented impressionistically in the literary sources. They also included comparative observations on later European nobilities. On the new men, a study of late republican and Augustan Rome by T. P. Wiseman (New Men in the Roman Senate 139 B.C.-A.D. 14,1971) applied the broadest definition of novus—the first in any lineage to enter the senate—and provoked a critical response using much narrower criteria by which the new men are made practically to disappear (M. Dondin-Payre, "Homo novus: un slogan de Caton a Cesar?" Histona 30, 1981, pp. 2281; perhaps most valuable for the appendix, pp. 54-69, giving all the texts and circumstances in which the new men are mentioned). 113 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.20; most recently G. Lahusen, in a work I have not seen (Untersuchungen zur Ehrenstatue in Rom [Rome: Bretschneider, 1983]) includes a chapter on the ius imaginum, the right to the use on formal occasions of the death mask of an ancestor who had held a curule magistracy. See the extended review by R. R. R. Smith in JRS 75,1985, pp. 20912. The reviewer doubts the reality of a ius imaginum, as does Hopkins (Death and Renewal, pp. 255-56). The latter accuses sixteenth-century scholars (read Bude and Sigonio) of excogitating such a right. 114 "Sed haec quidem ex virtute ducta nobilitas tota philosophorum est, ut quae ex imaginibus, populi Romani est universa. . . . Nobilitas autem ex virtute in novis solum populis locum habuit, in quibus nullae dum imagines parari potuerunt" (De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.20, p. 142). 146

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

within political elites is part of the historical life of political communities. After nobility comes the principal matter of the second book of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum, the Roman orders. They were not simply corporations or (at first) strata of the Stand or estate type found in later European history.115 In fact the word ordo is polivalent. It applies to very large aggregations and also to a multitude of subgroups. At the limit, the ensemble of citizens outside the senatorial or equestrian orders may be conceived as the "third order," the plebs (later sense), but is in fact and in usage an aggregate (ceteri ordines) of suborders more or less clearly demarcated, and treated as such by Sigonio. The Romans did not accord a uniform right to participate in public life to citizens, nor, except at the level of the powerful magistracies and in the higher echelons of the senate, the practical possibility to do so as individuals. Ordines were officially recognized status groups with a public function, an activity, professional or political, which involved the collectivity. Membership in an order depended on dignitas, a complex quality measured by social and geographic origin, by kinship, by wealth (census level), and by merit. Membership in the equestrian order had a broad criterion, wealth equivalent to the equestrian census, and a narrow one, reception of the individual by the censor into the eighteen centuries of "equites of the public horse." The serving cavalry of the Roman army was composed of younger members of both sets. The importance of the eighteen centuries was not military but political, not just because they voted separately in the centuriate assembly, but also because in a literal sense they conferred honorability on young men: prior military service in the eighteen centuries was an informal, or perhaps formal, requirement for candidacy at the elections.116 Until the period of the Gracchi those who had success at the elections and therefore entered the senate continued to be members of the eighteen centuries, whose composition must therefore have been many or most senators, their ambitious sons, and wealthy and socially prominent men of Rome and Italy. The symbiosis of senators and equites was interrupted at the time of the Gracchan movement, when a divergence of economic interest between them intervened, senators were, as it seems, 115 The difficulty of seizing the notions contained in the word ordo is brought out by Cohen, "La notion d'ordo dans la Rome antique" (1975) and by Claude Nicolet in the introduction to Des ordres a Rome (1984). See n. 35 above. 116 C. Nicolet, "Le cens senatorial sous la republique et sous Auguste" in Des ordres a Rome, pp. 148-49. (This article first appeared in JRS 66, 1976.)

147

CHAPTER TWO

forced to withdraw from the eighteen centuries, and control of the jury courts passed from them to the nonsenatorial equites. From about this time ordinary language appears to have recognized the high level of heritability within these groups by referring informally to senatorial and equestrian status as attributes of entire families; but formally the or do senatorius still meant senators, or the senate, and ordo equester, on Nicolet's view, the members of the eighteen centuries. With the Augustan revolution the senatorial and equestrian orders became hereditary estates, each devoted to a distinct area of service to the empire and the princeps.117 Sigonio, limiting his discussion to the republic, assumes that the senatorial order was coterminous with the senate, and the equestrian order with the eighteen centuries of the public horse; the problem of hereditary status does not arise for him. He also assumes that the orders had had a separate existence since the foundation of Rome, adopting the etiological perspective of the literary tradition.118 It was a choice of perspective which led him to adopt the difficult view that from the beginning senators were recruited from the equites of the public horse, to which however they ceased to belong once co-opted into the senate; texts which refer to senators and even censors who were members of the eighteen centuries he attempted to explain away.119 Though he does not say so, this was a controversial interpretation, for Nicolas de Grouchy had already published his view that senators might be counted as members of the eighteen centuries.120 Sigonio believed, what has recently been proposed by Nicolet, that at least from the late republic, if not before, there was a specific censusholding required of senators;121 nor did he see in this any contradiction 117

M. I. Henderson, "The Establishment of the Equester Ordo," JRS 53, 1963, pp. 61-72; Nicolet, L'ordre equestre (1966); T. P. Wiseman, "The Definition of eques Romanus in the Late Republic and Early Empire," Historia 19, 1970, pp. 67-83; A. Chastagnol, "La naissance de Vordo senatorius," in Oes ordres a Rome, pp. 175-98 (originally in MEFRA 85, 1973); Nicolet, "Le cens senatorial," cit. previous note; and Nicolet, "Augustus, Government, and the Propertied Classes," in F. Millar and E. Segal, eds., Caesar Augustus. Seven Aspects (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), pp. 89-128. 118 De ant. mr. civ. Rom. 2.3, "De equitibus Romanis," p. 99. 115 The text for which Sigonio had especially to account was Livy 29.37.8; see De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.3, p. 102. 120 Grouchy, De comitns 1.4, f. 47v. The same view was taken by Paolo Manuzio in De civitate Romana (1585; p. 5). This point of difference among three doyens of sixteenth-century Roman studies was reviewed by the philologist Duker in a note to Livy 29.37.8 first published in Drakenborch's Livy. 121 All of the evidence on the matter, as Sigonio himself notes, comes from the very late republic and early empire (cf. articles cited in nn. 116, 117 above) and he leaves open the 148

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

to the principle that magistracy was open to all Roman citizens. The patricians had barred the plebeians on notionally infrangible grounds of sacral and genetic purity which Sigonio considered illegitimate, but economic gradation was fluid, not infrangible, and was not only legitimate but fundamental. For most Romans economic level was the principal factor determining the grade allotted them by the censors in the quinquennial review of the "place" of every citizen, the census. Its relative importance actually declined at the higher grades. Promotion to the senatorial and equestrian orders was made on the basis of an array of factors, including of course the winning of magistracy for the senate, and demotion from either order, and from any lower census grade to disenfranchisement, was possible as a result of the censors' judgment of the unworthiness of an individual. Sigonio gives a rounded portrait of what Nicolet was later to call the cite censitaire.122 Nicolas de Grouchy in 1555 had raised, if not resolved, the problem of the equestrian centuries as voting units in the centuriate assembly,123 and Sigonio did not contribute any views on this. Believing that the equestrian order had been founded by Romulus in conjunction with the serving cavalry, he is naturally puzzled by the intervening centuries of silence for which the literary sources have little or nothing to say about the activities of the second order before its dramatic re-emergence in the Gracchan period, but does not seek a radical explanation.124 A chapter on the tax-farming activities of the publicans, the large-scale equestrian financiers, supplements the chapter on the equestrian order, as does a major chapter on the jury courts.125 In what may be a landmark in the historiography of social history, Sigonio devotes eleven chapters to the plebs as being the most numerous question of when such a census requirement may have been instituted (De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.2, p. 95). 122 See esp. the following chapters of De ant. iur. civ. Rom. for the census-based stratification of Roman society: 2.1, "De ordinibus civium Romanorum"; 2.2, "De senatoribus"; 2.3, "De equitibus Romanis"; 2.5, "De plebe Romana"; 2.16, "De notis ordinum"; 2.17, "De iure ordinum." In Nicolet, Les structures de I'ltalie romaine, see esp. chap. 5, "Structures et rapports sociaux." 123 See second section of chapter 3 below. 124 See De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.3, p. 99. His sense of historical change and development has lapsed, for he was unable to imagine that the Roman orders had grown up spontaneously with the growth of the Republic. Nonetheless, in his work the orders emerge as the important principle of social stratification following, and as a result of, the overcoming of the patricianplebeian division. 125 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.4, "De publicanis," and 2.18, "De iudiciis," on which see the final section of this chapter. 149

CHAPTER TWO

and variegated of the three orders. There is no other contemporary example of a scholar seeking to reveal the depth and diversity of the social strata comprised by the Roman citizenship. Sigonio's analysis deliberately does not extend to the vast areas of the population, including slaves, who did not enjoy citizen rights. He places plebeian suborders in this descending rank: tribuni aerarii, scribes, merchants, expatriate traders, public and private account-keepers, moneylenders, artisans and craftsmen, the urban poor, freedmen, and attendants of magistrates.126 Criteria for this ranking are condition (free or slave) at birth, wealth, and occupational status. Sigonio privileges the first of these, so that all free-born citizens, even indigent ones, are placed ahead of the two ultimate grades, freedmen in general and in particular apparitores, attendants of magistrates, who were mostly freedmen. These attendants would have had more wealth and higher occupational status than the indigent and unoccupied mob whom Sigonio represents as haunting the forum, but the stain of servitude in his view nevertheless reduced them to the lowest level of the citizen hierarchy.127 On this basis Sigonio detaches the scribes, clerk-secretaries in state service who were normally ingenui, from the other apparitores with whom, on a professional or occupational classification, they belonged, and ranks them near the top of the plebeian hierarchy.128 Nothing demonstrates more clearly that, for all the anachronism of the term, Sigonio is here attempting a description of social stratification. His chapters on the scribes and apparitores are notable as well for the publication of the surviving portion of the epigraphic lex Cornelia de XX quaestoribus of 81 B.C., an inscription discovered in 1528 and first pub126 De ant. iur. av. Rom. 2.7, "De plebe urbana" (for the entire ranking); 2.8, "De tribums aerariis" (lit. "army paymasters," which Sigonio assumes them still to have been, actually members of the third order with a census holding approaching or equal to that of the equites); 2.9, "De scribis" (high civil servants); 2.10, "De mercatoribus et negotiatoribus"; 2.11, "De argentariis et foeneratoribus" (distinguishing mensarii, keepers of public accounts, from argentarii, private accountants and entrepreneurs); 2.12, "De opificibus et artificibus"; 2.13, "De turba forensi"; 2.14, "De libertinis"; 2.15, "De appantoribus magistratuum." 127 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.13; and cf. 2.12, p. 122. 128 2.9 "De scribis" and 2.15 "De apparitonbus." Further, Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Senate, pp. 72-74; Benjamin Cohen, "Some Neglected Ordines: The Apparitorial Statusgroups," in Des ordres a Rome, pp. 23-60; and Nicholas Purcell, "The Apparitores, A Study in Social Mobility," Papers of the British School at Rome 51, 1983, pp. 125-73. Both Cohen and Purcell are of interest for methodological reflections on the social history of plebeian suborders. Status distinctions were complex. Purcell asserts that social mobility was higher than has usually been supposed, and that there was not a "gulf" separating ingenm and freedmen, equites and plebeians (p. 137).

150

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

lished here.129 This portion refers in detail to the assignment of scribes and other apparitores to the service of magistrates. Sigonio does not discuss the identification or provenance of the text, but it had evidently been communicated to him in transcription by scholarly friends in Rome. Antonio Agustin, who had studied and transcribed this inscription, arrived at a correct identification of it in 1575, and it was published by him and Orsini in 1583.130 Sigonio's chapter on artisans and craftsmen as Roman citizens addresses historically the banausic problem which the Greek political writers had treated theoretically: Should those employed in petty trades be counted as citizens? Aristotle's answer had been, substantially, no; but Sigonio asked, had they been so counted at Rome? That their occupations were held to be "sordidae et illiherales" he readily allowed, but he just as readily defended their incorporation as Roman citizens from the early regal period, finding the best evidence of this in the supposed foundation by Numa Pompilius or Servius Tullius of clubs or associations (collegia) of tradesmen.131 The stance of Dionysius of Halicarnassus could not be reconciled with this view. Speaking of the Romulean foundation of Rome and the early republican period, Dionysius says that the exercise of petty trades and crafts was the province of slaves and foreigners, never of Roman citizens.132 In similar cases Sigonio had simply recorded conflicting testimony without attempting to criticize or rank the value of his sources, but he considered the question of citizenship too 129 The law was published by Sigonio in two parts: De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.9, "De scribis," pp. 112-13 (1574; first in 1560) and in 2.15, "De appantoribus magistratuum," pp. 129-31 (likewise). Cf. Lex Cornelia de XX quaestoribus, 81 B.C., in CIL (2d ed.) 1.2. no. 587. 130 Agustin-Orsmi, De legibus, in the supplementary tables and with Orsini's notes. Another epigraphic text published by Sigonio is the lex Antonia de Termessibus of 71 B.C. (CIL 1.2 no. 589), in De provinais (1567) 1.10 "De Asia." These two laws were discovered together in the early sixteenth century, and conserved together in palazzo Capranica in Rome. For a comprehensive account of the discovery, study, and publication of the lex Antonia, see JeanLouis Ferrary, "La lex Antonia de Termessibus," Athenaeum 63, 1985, pp. 419-57, in which the author, as well as dealing with Sigonio's publication, discusses the activity of Antonio Agustin and an international group of sixteenth-century scholars interested in epigraphic texts over four decades. 131 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.12, "De opificibus et artificibus"; Ar. Pol. 3.5; and items cited in n. 1 above. For a discussion of the evidence used by Sigonio on the collegia, see Emilio Gabba, "The Collegia of Numa: Problems of Method and Political Ideas," /RS 74, 1984, pp. 81-86. 132 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 2.28.1 and 9.25.2. In the last passage Dionysius says that in the census of 476 B.C. adult citizens were more than 110,000, "and the number of the women, children, domestics, foreign traders, and artisans who plied the menial trades—for no Roman citizen was permitted to earn a livelihood as a tradesman or artisan—was not less than treble the number of citizens" (Loeb trans).

151

CHAPTER TWO

important to handle in that way.133 The testimony of Dionysius can in part be accommodated by attention to chronology (Romulus may have excluded the handworkers from citizenship, but Numa or Servius TuIlius would have reversed his policy), partly by conceding that as a despised class they did not enjoy all the benefits of citizenship. Sigonio explains this by the character of the early census, which was the assembly and tally, in a predominantly agricultural society, of those considered fit for military service and capable of bearing the expense; the urban tradesmen were excluded on grounds of stigma and of indigence. But that all the tradesmen at Rome were slaves and foreigners as Dionysius says, Sigonio considered incredible; they were Roman citizens disenfranchised by the patrician state whose full entitlement was only vindicated under the integrated constitution.134 He is of course able to cite abundant evidence from historical times that the urban population included tradesmen who were Roman citizens and participated in the voting assemblies. Though he refers only to Dionysius, Sigonio's argument in this chapter constitutes a silent departure—in the direction of demokratia—from Aristotelian norms, nor is this the first instance in Sigonio's work of tension between Greek models and Roman reality. By the end Aristotle and the polis have to an extent receded from view, for the classical Greek writers had not described a society of orders such as Rome. But Sigonio was given the means or matrix with which to conceive De antiquo iure avium Romanorum by Aristotle's political philosophy. It is an outstanding example of the creative Aristotelianism of the late Renaissance, and also one of the most important works ever written on Roman history. An aspect of that importance is Sigonio's contribution to the development of the historical way of thinking. Sigonio reveals what no other contemporary was capable of revealing and what many were incapable of appreciating: profound long-term change, historical change, 133

De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.12, p. 121. "Quod si quis non optimo eos iure civitatis usos esse in prima ilia sive regum sive patriciorum republica affirmant, non repugnabo. Quid enim id mirum, in ea republica quae non esset legibus temperata sed humilibus neglectis, tota in pnncipum et divitum esset potestate sita? At postquam plebi universa est communicata respublica, turn et hanc plebis partem mehora iura, quam ante, sibi parasse, quis negare possit. . . ?" (ibid., p. 122). In fact it had been more or less explicitly denied by Nicolas de Grouchy in De comitiis (2.4 f. 94v) on the basis of the same two places in Dionysius. Grouchy seems to suppose either that the handworkers did not vote, or that they voted in a subordinate position within each tribe in the tribal assembly. What he really thinks is that little or nothing changed in this respect since the Romulean foundation. This is an example of the difference between Grouchy's static view of Roman history and Sigonio's dynamic one, more on this in chapter 3 below. 134

152

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

in the social structure and political organization of the Roman republic.135 That is a just appreciation of his revelation that the primordial social cleavage based on the purity of religion and blood claimed by the patricians had been superseded and drained of its force through the instauration of a broadly based citizen community—a politeia—dominated by a multilayered social structure of orders, a political nobility open to new men, and in the end by political factions whose struggle was a novel phenomenon rather than the timeless perpetuation of the archaic one between patricians and plebeians.

THE LATE ROMAN REPUBLIC

De antiquo iure avium Romanorum concludes with the division which proved fatal to the Roman republic, that between optimates and populares, the political factions which held the stage after 133 B.C.136 Sigonio takes as his text a well-known passage from Pro Sextio in which Cicero enumerates the sorts of persons whose opinions are in conformity with those of the best people and who therefore deserve to be called "optimates." In this passage there emerges a favorite theme of Cicero the publicist, the pretense that the line between optimates and populates is drawn without regard for barriers of class, order, wealth, or occupation. A freedman with the right political opinions is an optimate, and the scion of a consular family, even a consul himself, may degenerate into a popularis.137 Sigonio, writing in an age in which ideological analysis was unborn, or naive, accepts these propositions a? a restatement of the principles of republican freedom and of the inclusive Roman citizenship. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus are here denounced, along with Saturninus, Catilina, and other popular leaders, for personal, financial, and political derangement and for revolutionary intent, in harmony with the representation of them by their political enemies which dominates the historical sources.138 135 Donald R. Kelley's Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship (1970) deals principally with sixteenth-century France; cf. esp. the introductory chapter for considerations on the development of historical mentality. I believe that Carlo Sigonio is the leading Italian contributor in this period to the process described by Kelley. 136 De ant. iur, civ. Rom. 2.21, "De optimatibus et popularibus." My thanks to Michael Crawford for his comments on an earlier draft of this section. 137 Cic, Pro Sextio 96-97. us De an( iur CIU Rom. 2.21, pp. 144—45. Bibliography: J.-L. Ferrary, "Le idee politiche a Roma nell'eta repubblicana," in L. Firpo, ed., Storia delle idee politiche (1982); and Claude

153

CHAPTER TWO

The Gracchan movement was the explosion of social and political unrest which had been building since mid-century, a major turning point in Roman history. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a nobilis and tribune of the plebs in 133 B.C., was the spokesman for a party of nobles who sought a drastic remedy for the declining recruitment base of the Roman citizen army caused by rural depopulation, and found it in the famous lex Sempronia agraria carried in the tribal assembly in that year. It was the first genuine agrarian law—a law for the confiscation and redistribution of landholdings—in the history of the Roman republic, and Gracchan publicity attempted to soften its impact by presenting it as little more than the renewal of laws of the distant past de modo agrorum— laws, that is, limiting the amount of public land which could be held by individuals. 139 For the land in question was not private property [ager privatus held by dominium). It was ager publicus Romanus, land originally seized by the state from defeated enemies in Italy and subject to various uses, including assignment as private property to individuals, colonization, and, for the most fertile parts, lease to individuals at a profit to the state. Land not immediately put to these uses was left to the occupation of Roman citizens, an occupation which was called by the term later generally used in European languages for the ownership of property: possessio. Such possession was precarious and could not be rendered imprescriptible by the passage of any amount of time, a point which the Roman state drove home by the imposition of a token rent or tithe. But the limits on individual holdings and the payment of the tithe were widely ignored and large estates worked by slaves had grown up on the public land by the second century. Tiberius Gracchus proposed to confiscate and redistribute public land held in excess of the legal limits, and even offered to secure holdings within those limits against future claims, thus effectively converting them into private property. Historical memory of the precise date and contents of the earlier laws de modo Nicolet, "La polemique politique au lie siecle avant J. - C , " in C. Nicolet, ed., Demokratm et aristokratia (1983). 139 A general introduction is P. A. Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (London: Chatto and Windus, 1971); on the period leading up to the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus and its aftermath, see A. E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), chaps. 13-16; and E. Badian, "Tiberius Gracchus and the Beginning of the Roman Revolution," ANRW 1.1 (1972) pp. 668-731. D. Stockton, The Gracchi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), is very useful. An important review article is E. Badian, "From the Gracchi to Sulla (19401959)." Finally, in what is said here and what follows, much depends on Gianfranco Tibiletti, "Il possesso dell'ager publicus e Ie norme de modo agrorum sino ai Gracchi" (1948-49). 154

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

agrorum had, as it seems, practically disappeared because of the nonobservance of their strictures, and Gracchan propaganda fastened upon the memory of a law pertaining to the ager publicus passed shortly before the first plebeian consulate. The Gracchan publicists claimed, what was historically probable only at a much later date, that the lex Licinia Sextia de modo agrorum of 368 B.C. had codified a limit of five hundred iugera on personal occupation (the iugerum was a measure of land somewhat smaller than an acre) and this reconstruction entered the historical tradition. It appears as the precedent for the lex Sempronia agraria of 133 B.C. in the unhappily meagre surviving narrative accounts of the lives of the Gracchi by Plutarch and Appian. Furthermore, the debates on agrarian reform which continued throughout the Roman revolution were retrojected by other writers back to an even earlier period and occur in Livy and Dionysius as a feature of the fifth-century contest between the patricians and plebeians. Livy and Dionysius recount the tale of Spurius Cassius, the consul of 486 B.C. whose name was a byword in Roman legend for tyrannical ambition, and who in the tale proposes to confiscate public land illegally occupied and redistribute it to the plebs. Livy notes portentously that this was the first of the agrarian laws, which were destined to punctuate with contention the entire history of the city.140 Our information about the agrarian history of Rome and the Gracchan movement, then, is colored by favorable, hostile, even fabulous elements. Appian's narrative, in the first part of book 1 of his Civil Wars, of the Gracchan and post-Gracchan period, an age remote from the imperial peace under which the Alexandrian writer compiled his history, is for him merely prefatory to a fuller account of succeeding seditions, and is in fact a vehicle for the views and interests of Appian's source, a lost writer of antiquity. The source was a Latin historian of the first century B.C. who viewed the actions of Tiberius Gracchus as a response to the combined problems of agrarian and demographic policy and of the position of the Italian allies in Roman Italy. So strong is the Italian point of view in Appian's source that he reduces the importance of internal factors of Roman politics in favor of Italian ones in explaining the career of the Gracchi. The source was a great historian, great enough to abandon the current moralistic explanation of the Roman revolution 140 Dionysius 8.68-79, and Livy 2.41. "Turn primum lex agraria promulgata est, nunquam demde usque ad hanc memoriam sine maximis motibus rerum agitata" (Livy 2.41.3).

155

CHAPTER TWO

(the corrupting effect of peace and luxury after the fall of Carthage) and to account for it in sociopolitical terms. Carlo Sigonio adopted the approach of Appian's source, whom a controversial thesis identifies as Asinius Pollio.141 It is in fact Appian, or Asinius Pollio through Appian, who guides him in his chapters on the agrarian question, from which there emerges an interpretation of the Gracchi rather different to that which, following other sources, Sigonio gives in the chapter on optimates and populares. Sigonio assigns primary importance to landholding in Roman history; it is discussed in four chapters of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum and Italiae.li2 Initially he studies the primitive ager Romanus, the contado so to speak, adjacent to the urban center and confined by the agri of the neighboring cities. He then confirms that the wider ager Romanus, the lands conquered in Italy during the wars of expansion, were part of the state and that residence in them did not diminish citizenship as compared with residence in the narrower and earlier band of territory. The point was not a trite one in Italy of the early modern period, in which, in contrast to Roman citizenship, the entitlement of residents of the contado varied steeply from that of urban citizens. Also, and significantly, Sigonio notes that the wider ager Romanus was in part divided among citizens (assigned as private property) and in part held for the state but given out to be worked.143 In a later chapter on the rural plebs Sigonio describes the development of latifundia worked by slaves but insists that there remained free cultivators in Italy working both their own private holdings and the estates of others, estates composed either of privately owned land or of occupied public land.144 At this point there occurs the first concrete sign of the lengths to which Sigonio was prepared to go in accepting the Gracchan tradition relayed in Appian: he suggests that the Licinian-Sextian law of 368 B.C. had provided for an agrarian triumvirate to assign landholdings to the plebs, apparently on the basis of a reference by Appian to an "expectation" that holdings over five hundred iugera would be redistributed. Thus a relatively mild an141 Emiho Gabba, Appiano e la storia delle guerre civih (1956) pt. 1, "Il libro 1 delle Guerre Civili," pp. 10-115, and esp. "I Gracchi" (pp. 34^73) and "Asinius Pollio" (pp. 79-88). Points made there are summarized in Gabba's preface to his edition with commentary of Appiani bellorum civilium liber primus (1967). 142 De ant. iur. av. Rom. 1.2, "De agro et urbe Romano"; 1.16, "De iure tnbutorum et vectigahum"; 2.6, "De plebe rustica"; De ant. iur. Italiae 2.2, "De colonus." 143 1.2, "De urbe et agro Romano," p. 8. 144 2.6, "De plebe rustica," p. 109.

156

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

ticipation of the lex Sempronia in Appian takes on firm shape and substance in Sigonio.145 In a chapter on state revenue the Licinian-Sextian law as presented in Appian is again given central importance, this time as having been the state's remedy against the abuse of public land by the rich.146 Sigonio accepts that already in the fourth century the formation of large estates on public land was underway through the forcible expulsion of smallholders, and that fraud was added to violence when the payment of the due tithes was omitted. Nonobservance of the Licinian-Sextian law meant that these evils continued; and Tiberius Gracchus renewed the attack on them in the lex Sempronia. Both he and his brother were murdered for their opposition to the interests of the optimates, who then set about to reverse the effect of the Gracchan agrarian laws. Following the publication of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum in 1560, Sigonio resumed work on and completed De antiquo iure Italiae, with its major review of agrarian history in a chapter on colonization. The collocation under this rubric of an essay on the agrarian laws shows the influence of Appian's source, who tendentiously depicts not only Roman colonization but agrarian policy in all of its facets as being directed toward demographic increase. This unification of diverse themes, which was intended to justify the proposals of Tiberius Gracchus as the response to a global problem,147 guided Sigonio's interpretation. In discussing the assignment of public land to individuals, whether as colonists or otherwise, to be held by them as private property, he notes that when the land in question is newly captured, or unoccupied, or purchased for the occasion, the assignment of it takes place without controversy; when the confiscation and redistribution of public land illegally occupied is proposed (sc. by a lex agraria on the narrow definition) the case is different: No bill which expelled rich private individuals from their holdings and settled plebeians on the lands of the nobles, was ever put for145

Ibid., p. 110. Cf. Appian, Bell, civ. 8.34 with Gabba's commentary; and Tibiletti, "Il possesso dell'ager publicus," pp. 194-95. 146 1.16, "De iure tributorum et vectigalium," esp. p. 80. 147 De ant. iur. Italiae 2.2, "De coloniis." And cf. the conclusions of Gabba on the bias of Appian's source: "E, allora, da credere che, per preparare una comprensione migliore e, soprattutto, piu netta delle finalita di Tiberio, (la fonte di) Appiano abbia operato una drastica reductio ad unum e collegando, erroneamente ma volutamente, politica di colomzzazione, norme sul possesso dell'agro pubblico e legislazione de modo agrorum, ne abbia unificato gli scopi verso quelle direzioni che a lei premevano" (Emilio Gabba, Appiano e la storia delle guerre civili, pp. 40-41). 157

CHAPTER TWO

ward without the very greatest political turmoil. The one first proposed by Spurius Cassius as consul [in 486 B.C.] and then aired virtually every year by the tribunes of the plebs, but always nullified or impeded by various devices of the noble faction, was carried in the end by the tribunes of the plebs L. Sextius and C. Licinius [in 368 B.C.] by means of a veto on the holding of the elections for the magistracies.148 The reconstruction undertaken by Sigonio on the basis of, on the one hand, Livy and Dionysius, and on the other the Gracchan tradition in Appian, is now evident: there were leges agrariae in Roman history, but there was only one controversial lex agraria, which both limited holdings of public land and provided for redistribution of the surplus. It was first proposed by Spurius Cassius at the dawn of the republic, was passed by Licinius and Sextius in the fourth century, and was renewed by Tiberius Gracchus at the end of the second. In each case it proposed identical limits on the amount of land to be held and the number and type of livestock to be pastured: "The tribunes L. Sextius and C. Licinius . . . finally carried the agrarian law of Sp. Cassius: that no one should possess more than 500 iugera of land, 100 head of cattle, or 500 head of smaller livestock on public land."149 And of the lex Sempronia Sigonio gives this account: By now the lex Licinia on the 500 iugera limit had begun to lose validity because of the greed of the rich. . . . Appian adds that the nobles and the rich had turned all the land of Italy to their own use, partly by occupying the public land, partly by buying up the plots of the poor and aggregating their holdings; and had gradually driven the plebeians off the land. This was the situation which inspired Tiberius Gracchus to re-propose the lex Licinia in his tribunate . . . that none should possess more than five hundred iugera, and adding as well that their sons should be permitted to hold half we "Q U ae vero [lex] privates divites possessione pellebat, ac plebem in agris nobilium collocabat, ea nunquam sine maxima turbatione reipublicae est promulgate; quae quidem a Sp. Cassio consule primum proposita, deinde quotannis fere per tribunos plebis iactata, ac semper a nobilium factione variis artibus elusa atque impedita, a L. Sextio et C. Licimo tribunis plebis comitia magistratuum haberi prohibentibus, ad extremum est perlata" (De ant. iur. ltaliae 2.2, "De coloniis," p. 217). Note again the anachronistic use of nobiles for the patricians. 149 "L. Sextius et C. Licinius tribuni plebis quos ante commemoravi legem Cassii agrariam tandem pertulerunt, ne quis plus quingenta iugera agri, centum maioris pecoris capita, quingenta minoris possideret, cuius inter alios Livius et Appianus testes sunt" (De ant. iur. ltaliae 2.2, "De coloniis," p. 218). 158

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

as much again, but not to buy or sell their land; and that if any should extend his landholding beyond these limits, tresviri elected annually for this purpose should decide the extent of public and private land.150 Sigonio sought to explain the historical conditions and precedents which had produced the lex Sempronia agraria because it was the act which had inaugurated the Roman revolution. He took over a pro-Gracchan interpretation of it which retrojected its origins to a distant past because of his conviction that the patrician state had been a regime of injustice, and that abuses which deformed the later Roman polity had had their origin in that period. Neither Sigonio nor his contemporaries achieved an unequivocal understanding of the fact that the lex Sempronia had not violated private property, for juridical science had not at that time fully recovered the distinction, very marked in Roman republican law, between proprietary ownership and possessionary tenure. For this reason, and also on the basis of the foundation myths of ancient cities which portrayed radically egalitarian distributions of land as occurring either at the foundation itself (as in Romulean Rome, and ideally in Plato's Laws) or at the refoundation (as in the Sparta of Lycurgus), European publicists from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries represented agrarian laws as characteristic of Utopia, the symbol of radically redistributive social legislation. Out of this tradition there arose the demand for a loi agraire on what was taken to be the Gracchan model in the French Revolution. In the early nineteenth century Savigny finally illuminated the distinction between ownership and possession in ancient Rome, and Niebuhr on this basis defended the historical claims of free peasant proprietors at Rome (the plebs, as he thought) to a share of the public land, and refuted the connection between Roman agrarian legislation and the loi agraire.151 Niebuhr mentioned briefly his prede150 "lam lex Licinia de quingentis iugeribus libidine divitum obsoleverat; cuius rei multa testimoma habemus, et quidem gravissima omnia, Catonis, Livii, Ciceronis, Appiani. . . . Addit Appianus, nobiles homines ac locupletes partim agrum publicum occupando, partim pauperum coemendo, et possessionibus continuandis agros ad se omnes Itahae convertisse, ac sensim plebem ex agris expulisse. Quae caussa Tiberium Gracchum accendit, ut in tnbunatu legem Liciniam referret . . . Ne quis plus quingenta xugera possideret; illlud praeterea adiiciens, ut filiis quidem eorum dimidiutn habere, non tamen coemi agros aut vendi liceret; et ut si quis latius agrum patefaceret, triumviri quotannis ad id creati iudicarent, qua publicus ager esset, qua privatus" (De ant. iur. Itahae 2.2, "De coloniis," pp. 219-20; Sigonio's emphasis). 151 Cf. Alfred Heuss, B. G. Niebuhrs wissenschaftliche Anfange (1981); Arnaldo Momigliano, "AUe origini dell'interesse su Roma arcaica: Niebuhr e l'India," in Settimo contribute), pp. 155-77 (1984; first in Rivista storica italiana 92,1980), including a review of Heuss (orig-

159

CHAPTER TWO

cessors but did not know their work well. Alfred Heuss, in an exegesis of Niebuhr's first scholarly manuscripts, which deal with the agrarian problem, has reviewed earlier Roman studies and given a definitive analysis of Sigonio's contribution: the Italian scholar employed the distinction between private and public land to explain what was at stake in Roman social conflict, but not with perfect trenchancy, inasmuch as he appears to assume in places that long-term occupation of ager publicus rendered it quasi-private property. The corollary would be that the agrarian laws seized and redistributed such private property, but this is not explicit in Sigonio. The oscillation in the terms he uses to describe the lex Sempronia is due in part to his silent use of Frangois Hotman's De legibus populi Romani (1557).152 If Sigonio takes a strong stand in favor of the Gracchan land law this is not for technical reasons but because he believed that it enforced earlier legislation (was not revolutionary) and that it remedied through the high justice of ethical principles a situation of grave social iniquity. The Gracchan land program went ahead for fifteen years despite the death of Tiberius and in the face of serious political opposition from Italian communities and Roman possessors, and the land in excess of five hundred iugera reclaimed from both groups was distributed to the proletariat in allotments of thirty iugera. Gaius Gracchus re-enacted his brother's legislation and restored to the agrarian triumvirate the full powers which its adversaries had diluted in the course of the intervening decade, but in 121 B.C. his career and life ended, like those of his brother, in violence, and their agrarian program was modified or dismantled in the course of the succeeding decade. Appian relates that this was accomplished by means of three laws: the first rendered alienable the allotments given to smallholders under the Gracchan land bills; the second, attributed in all MSS and in sixteenth-century editions and translations of Appian to "Spurius Borius," abolished the triumvirate, arrested the inally in RSI94,1982) in an appendix; and Momigliano, "Niebuhr and the Agrarian Problems of Rome," in New Paths of Classicism in the Nineteenth Century, History and Theory Beiheft 21,1982, pp. 3-15. 152 The italicized clauses of the passage from Sigonio (his emphasis) cited in n. 150 above, relating the contents of the lex Sempronia agraria of 133 B.C., are copied from Hotman's De legibus, s.v. "Sempronia agraria." As Heuss points out (pp. 237-41), they do imply that longterm possession had converted ager publicus into ager privatus, and that the task of the agrarian triumvirate was to delimit the boundary between the amount of such land (500 iugera) which the possessors could keep, and the surplus holding, which returned to the public domain; in other words that the lex agraria had confiscated private property. But it is not clear that these implications were seen or intended by Sigonio when he drew upon Hotman's manual. 160

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

further division of the public land, and secured the possessors in their holdings in return for the payment of a tithe [vectigal) to be used for purposes of social relief; and the third removed even this tithe—the final victory of the rich over the poor in Appian's schematic view.153 In Cicero's Brutus reference is made to one of these three laws, ascribed by Cicero to a certain Thorius whose performance as legislator is described in difficult syntax: "is qui agrum publicum vitiosa et inutili lege vectigali levavit."154 In the sixteenth century and later it was thought that this phrase had only one natural construction, that Thorius "relieved the ager publicus of the vectigal by passing an irregular and useless law," and hence that Cicero was referring to the third of the measures described by Appian and deprecating it for the same reasons. Francois Hotman, however, in the same De legibus of 1557 which Sigonio had consulted on the lex Sempronia, emended the text of Appian from "Borius" to "Thorius" by comparing the passage from Cicero, an emendation philologically irresistible (Borius is not otherwise recorded as a Roman gentilicium) but which left the historical difficulty of deciding whether Thorius was the author of the second law (Appian) or the third (Cicero)—a difficulty which Hotman noted without resolving.155 In the chapter of De antiquo iure civium Romanorum devoted to state revenues, the one in which Sigonio's pro-Gracchan sympathies were first manifested, Hotman's emendation of Appian is silently accepted and the problem of identification is likewise left open, since the sequence and substance of the three laws was not in doubt.156 But study of the question did not rest there, for Sigonio was able to bring to bear upon it an outstanding epigraphic text, the lex agraria of the Tabula Bembina. This bronze tablet, surviving only in fragments, had contained on its obverse the text of a lex repetundarum of the late first century B.C. and on its reverse that of the lex agraria, incised when the lex repetundarum had been superseded (or because the carving was 153

Appian Bell. civ. 1.27. The Greek text read "Borios" for the author of the law. Cicero, Brutus 136. The syntactical possibilities are reducible to two: either lege is an ablative of privation and vectigali one of instrument, and Thorius "relieved the ager publicus from an irregular and useless law by imposing a vectigal," or vice versa and Thorius "relieved the ager publicus of the vectiga\ by passing an irregular and useless law." 155 F. Hotman, De legibus populi Romani liber (1557) s.v. "Toria agraria," p. 75. Hotman's handbook, a nude syllabus of republican legislation in alphabetical order, was published in the same year as Paolo Manuzio's discursive Liber de legibus. Sigonio obtained a copy of Hotman in Venice in the summer of 1557, as he informed Panvinio (Sigonio to Panvinio, 28 July, 1557; BAM, MS D 501 inf., ff. 158-59; and Sigonio Op. om. 6.996-97). 156 £)e anf iur c{v Rom, 1.16, p. 118 (1560) in a passage left unchanged in 1574 (p. 80) despite changes in the context of the problem. 154

161

CHAPTER TWO

faulty). The fragments, eleven of them in five groups, had passed from the collection of the Montefeltro of Urbino to that of Pietro Bembo in Padua in the early years of the sixteenth century, and one fragment (now referred to as A) had been published in Mazzocchi's Epigrammata antiqua urbis Romae (1521). But after the death of Bembo in 1547 his son Torquato began the dispersal of his father's collections. The fragments of the Tabula Bembina remaining in Padua were studied by Carlo Sigonio in the 1560s and given their first edition (for A the second) by him in 1574, after which Fulvio Orsini set about reassembling originals and transcriptions of all the fragments and preparing them for integral republication in 1583.157 When Sigonio reviewed the problem of the three laws in Appian for the second time in De antiquo iure Italiae (1560) the identification of Thorius was left open as before, but he did note the congruence of the fragment of the unidentified epigraphic agrarian law published by Mazzocchi, which contains part of a clause abolishing vectigal, with the third law mentioned in Appian.158 Then, between 1560 and 1563, Sigonio viewed, transcribed, and studied those fragments still in Padua (Aa, Ab, Ba, Bb)1 and perhaps a fifth which he did not publish (Da). In the text of the two parts of A he of course recognized the text published by Mazzocchi in 1521. But the second edition of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum and Italiae appeared in 1563 without recording this discovery. Only in the final edition of his corpus in 1574 did Sigonio publish with his partial restorations the Paduan fragments of the leges agraria and repetundarum.159 Using the first he now attempted to fix the sequence of post-Gracchan agrarian laws. Here, as with the Fasti Capitolini, the problem was to reconcile literary and epigraphic evidence, and as with 157

Theodor Mommsen "Lex repetundarum" and "Lex agraria" (texts and introductions from CIL, 1st ed. vol. 1) in Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften, t. 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1904 [repr. 1965]), pp. 1-64, 65-145; CIL, 2d ed., vol. 1.2; Andrew Lintott, "The So-called Tabula Bembina and the Humanists" (1983); and M. H. Crawford, "The Tabula Bembina" (an unpublished draft paper of 1985 which the author very kindly allowed me to see). 158 "Huius autem legis, aut certe alterius de eadem re per haec tempora latae fragmentum ex omni parte mutilatum ex vetere lapide descriptum legitur in libro veterum Romanarum inscriptionum" (De ant. iur. Italiae 2.2, "De coloniis," f. 67v in the 1560 ed.). 159 Lex agraria: "Legis Thoriae fragmentum unum/alterum" on unnumbered folded sheets inserted in De ant. iur. Italiae 2.2 "De colonus," between pp. 220-21. Lex repetundarum: "Legis Serviliae fragmentum unum/alterum" on unnumbered folded sheets inserted in De iudiciis 2.27, "De legibus de pecuniis repetundis," between pp. 526-27. Sigonio describes the discovery in publishing the lex repetundarum: "Cuius fragmentum ego, cum Patavii profiterer, reperi in nobihssimo Petri Bembi cardinalis musaeo in aeneis tabulis vetustissimis incisum; quod a me magno multis in locis propter exesas consumptasque litteras cum labore ledum atque descriptum, in hunc librum esse putavi connciendum" (p. 525). 162

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

the Fasti Sigonio was the pioneer. About the first of Appian's three laws, which made the Gracchan allotments alienable, there was no question. On the third, which removed the vectigal imposed by the second, Sigonio decided that it was identical with the epigraphic one for the imperative reason that vectigal is removed in a clause of the surviving text; and that the author had been Sp. Thorius as Cicero says. The date of this law, which Sigonio published as lex Thoria, was post-112 B.C., since the consuls of that year are named in the text. Others named include C. Cracchus passim, and, on a badly mutilated fragment, M. Baebius as tribune of the plebs, triumvir for the plantation of a colony, and author of an unidentified plebiscite. The identity of this Baebius is uncertain. When Mommsen published this inscription he suggested that it was M. Baebius, consul of 181 B.C. and earlier triumvir for the plantation of a colony at Sipontum in 196.160 Sigonio had come up with a different conjecture: M. Baebius, he thought, had been an otherwise unrecorded political personage of the Gracchan period, author of the second law securing possession and imposing a vectigal, and recorded as such on the epigraphic lex Thoria. The corollaries, about which Sigonio was silent, were the cancellation of Hotman's emendation of "Borios" to "Thorios" in the Greek text of Appian, and the assumption that "Borios" should be emended to give "Baebius."161 This conjecture did not have any fortune. Later scholarship resolved the seeming equivocation of Cicero and Appian, and there is no doubt that Sp. Thorius was the author of the second law. The author of the epigraphic lex agraria is unknown. Unfortunately for Sigonio his publication of it as lex Thoria has deceived the compilers of some modern manuals, who assume that it was Mommsen who first secured its iden160 Removal of vectigal: w . 19-20 of the epigraphic lex agraria; M. Baebius: w . 43-44. See in PWRE, Baebius, no. 16 ( = the personage of the epigraphic law) and Baebius, no. 44 (= the consul and conjecturally identical with no. 16). 161 "Hie autem fuit, ut opmor, M. Baebius tribunus plebis, idemque triumvir coloniae deducendae, qui tulit, ne agri amplius dividerentur, sed possessores in iis relinquerentur, vectigal pro iis populo Romano solventes, eaque pecunia plebi dividererur. Neque ita multo post Sp. Thorius tribunus plebis legem aham tulit, ne quis vectigal ullum agrorum, quos possideret, solveret. . . . Huius autem legis fragmenta duo in nobilissimo Pern Bembi cardinalis musaeo Patavii reperiuntur, in tabulas aeneas incisa, verum manca admodum atque exesa. Hoc ita esse argumento est, quod in iis et possessores in agris confirmantur, et iidem vectigali publicanis persolvendo hberantur . . . fitque mentio consulum P. Mucii et L. Calpurnii [133 B.C.] quibus Tiberius agrariam legem tulit, C. Sempromi et M. Baebii, qui item, et postremo M. Livii et L. Calpurnii consulum, qui post eos anno DCXLI [= 112 B.C.] consulatum administrant. Ea fragmenta, ut ad multas res utilia his commentarus attexere visum est" (De ant. iur. Itahae 2.2, pp. 220-21).

163

CHAPTER TWO

tification with the third law of Appian, after centuries of error in which it was identified with the second.162 The truth is that the identification with the third law was certain from the first and the honor is Sigonio's. This identification, and the confirmation which results of Appian's account in this particular, constitute the explicit historical use made of the inscription by Sigonio. It may seem slight; but in fact the notices contained in the inscription concerning ager publicus and its possession in Italy constitute documentation of much else which Sigonio had affirmed in his chapter, and his partial restorations in italics of lacunae in the text are also a form of commentary.163 Another theme of political history that begins with the Gracchi and continues to the end of the republic concerns the panels of jurors (indices) of the permanent courts and especially the first of these, the extortion or recovery court [quaestio repetundarum) founded in 149 B.C. to try provincial governors and their staffs for malfeasance. Other jury courts were established before the end of the century, but the dates of these establishments are not preserved. The recovery court itself was fundamentally restructured by C. Gracchus in the late 120s. Because it was for some uncertain period the only permanent jury court, and because some later laws touching upon it, such as one of those passed by C. Gracchus, deal with the composition of the juries sitting in it, leges iudiciariae or de iudiciis as a genus are not at first distinct from leges repetundarum as a species, although the distinction does come into play as the number of courts multiplies.164 Though Sigonio apparently distin162 The apparent discrepancy has been resolved by reading Cic. Brutus 136 on the first of the two possible constructions given in n. 154 above: vectigali is instrumental and Thorius "relieved the ager publicus from an irregular and useless law by imposing a vectigal." E. G. Hardy, Roman Laws and Charters (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912) pp. 47-48; Appian, Bell. civ. 1, with Gabba's nn. to chap. 27 (121-24); E. Badian, "The lex Thoria. A Reconsideration," in Studi Biondi 1 (Milan, 1963), pp. 189-96; and in Badian, Studies in Greek and Roman History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1964), pp. 235-42. For a different view, see A. E. Douglas ed., Cicero, Brutus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), app. C, "The lex Thoria," pp. 247-50. The epigraphic law was at one time identified as a lex Baebia of the tribune C. Baebius, but there is no connection between this conjecture and Sigonio's identification of the second law as a lex Baebia of M. Baebius. The modern manuals: C. G. Bruns, Fontes iuris Romani antiqui; and S. Riccobono et al., Fontes iuris Romani anteiustiniani. The epigraphic text is translated into English with commentary in Hardy, Roman haws and Charters, at., pp. 35-93. 163 j \ j o t studied here as being beyond my competence. But contributions from other scholars to the history of the interpretation of the principal epigraphic texts are appearing; see n. 130. 164 Two review articles: Badian, "From the Gracchi to Sulla (1940-1959)"; and Andrew Lintott, "The Leges de repetundis and Associate Measures under the Republic," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung, romische Abteilung 98,1982, pp. 162-212. Two of the most important earlier studies: J.P.V.D. Balsdon, "The History of the Extortion Court at Rome, 123-70 B.C.,"

164

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

guished them clearly by composing a chapter on judiciary laws in 1560 and a chapter on recovery laws in 1574, the matter is not in fact so simple, for in the interval he discovered the lex repetundarum of the Tabula Bembina, and revised the earlier chapter as well as preparing the latter in light of that discovery. Book 2 of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum contains the first of these two chapters, a miscellaneous assemblage of information about Roman legal procedure; only the part of it which sketched the history of the judiciary laws in relation to the senatorial and equestrian orders was really relevant to the theme of the book.165 The sympathy which Sigonio had shown for Tiberius Gracchus's agrarian reforms was lacking for Gaius Gracchus's transfer of the juries from senators to equites, which he considered, in the wake of his sources, a purely factious maneuver. Sigonio does not discuss the jury courts to which the lex Sempronia iudiciaria applied, but seems to assume that by this time there were in existence others besides the recovery court and that Gaius's law was a generic one. He passes from the lex Sempronia to the lex Servilia Caepionis of 106 B.C. which introduced mixed juries of senators and equites and therefore reduced the power of the latter, but on the basis of literary testimony which showed the equites in control of juries in the period subsequent to 106, assumes that it was abrogated or not observed. Hence the proposals of M. Livius Drusus in 91 B.C. for a reorganization of the juries on the basis of an enlarged senate. This account of the judiciary laws was based on the one given in Paolo Manuzio's Liber de legibus (1557, 1559), where a similar mysterious failure to observe the terms of the lex Servilia Caepionis is assumed.166 The missing key here is the lex Servilia Glauciae, which returned the recovery court at least Papers of the British School at Rome 14,1938, pp. 98-114; and Gianfranco Tibiletti, "Le leggi de iudiciis repetundarum fino alia guerra sociale," Athenaeum 31,1953, pp. 5-100. 165 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 2.18, "De iudiciis," pp. 218-43 (1560), with the discussion of the jury panels and the judiciary laws at pp. 236-41 (and in 1563, pp. 262-66). 166 Paolo Manuzio's Liber de legibus appeared in Venetian and Parisian editions in 1557, published by Manuzio himself in Venice and by Torresano in Paris. The Parisian edition gives a corrected text with respect to the Venetian one; cf. Curt F. Biihler, "Pen Corrections in the First Edition of Paolo Manuzio's Antiauitatum Romanarum liber de legibus," Italia medioeOaIe e umamstica 5,1962, pp. 165-70. I have used the Venetian editions of 1559 and 1569 and found no variants in the pages I compared. From the first there was no subdivision of the text, to which the only guide furnished was the index. Here if anywhere it would be acceptable to consult the edition of Graevius {Thesaurus antiauitatum Romanarum vol. 2; cf. in part one of the bibliography below under 1694), who divides the work into chapters, but the places in the later Venetian editions are: leges iudiciariae, it. 64r-74v (1559) and pp. 116-32 (1569); and leges repetundarum, ff. lllr-118v and pp. 196-208. Sigonio explicitly acknowledges his use of Manuzio on the judiciary laws in De ant. iur. civ. Rom., p. 241 (1560) and p. 266 (1563). 165

CHAPTER TWO

to exclusively equestrian juries within five years of the lex Servilia Caepionis, providing the equites once more with a formidable political weapon. The existence of this law was known from literary sources before Carlo Sigonio studied the Tabula Bembina, but they refer only obscurely to its political effect, and testify much more fully to its provisions for comperendinatio, a procedure by which trials were normally concluded in two hearings. Paolo Manuzio discusses the law of Glaucia and comperendinatio at length in his section on recovery laws, but makes no mention of the composition of the jury panels under that or any other recovery law. Sigonio's long chapter on legal matters is not altered in the second edition of De antique iure avium Romanorum, published in 1563 as his tenure in Padua was drawing to an end. As in the case of the agrarian law, he needed time to analyze the meaning of the recovery law which he had found on the Tabula Bembina before committing himself to print; here as elsewhere the edition of 1563 has purely interim status. But the corpus of 1574 was crowned by the inclusion of a new treatise, De iudiciis, in three books, which took over and expanded most of the juridical material which Sigonio had previously farced into the chapter of the same title, as well as addressing new arguments. Among these is chapter 2.27 on leges repetundarum, in which he published the obverse of the fragments of the Tabula Bembina—Aa, Ab, Ba, Bb—from which he had already published the lex agraria. He identified this lex repetundarum as the lex Servilia Glauciae and dated it to 100 B.C., the year of Glaucia's praetorship.167 This identification is based on the specific character of the law, which emerges from the fragments as one of a series of leges repetundarum: it contains internal references to two previous laws regulating the recovery court, leges Calpurnia and lunia. Sigonio did not discuss the possibility that this inscription might have been the lex Sempronia iudiciaria itself because he took for granted that the latter had been a general judiciary law rather than one for the recovery court alone, and continued to accept the clear distinction between the two sorts of law. The explicit provisions of the epigraphic law for nonsenatorial juries corresponded to what was known of the law of Glaucia in this respect, and if the epigraphic law contained no trace of provisions for comperendinatio, Sigonio assumed that they must have been present in 167 See n. 159 above for the publication; n. 164 for bibliography; to which add Jean-Louis Ferrary, "Recherches sur la legislation de Sarurninus et de Glaucia 2," MEFRA 91, 1979, pp. 85-134. Servilius Glaucia is no. 65 of the Servilii in PWRE. Modern editions of the epigraphic text are listed in nn. 157,162 above.

166

ROMAN STUDIES —PART 1

the lost portions of the inscription. His identification held the field until the nineteenth century, when it was generally abandoned in favor of the view that the epigraphic law is itself the lex Sempronia iudiciaria or a lex Acilia repetundarum of direct Gracchan inspiration. Contributing to this change of identification were legal and historical studies based on the full surviving text of the law and of other inscriptions unknown in the sixteenth century, but even the latest of these studies continues to address the basic questions about the lex repetundarum addressed by Sigonio, and their critique of its identification with the lex Servilia Glauciae, an identification never entirely abandoned,168 may be summarized as follows. The epigraphic law, on its own testimony, is the successor to the leges Calpurnia and Iunia and establishes a nonsenatorial jury court. It is at the same time a judiciary law and a recovery law, probably for the reason that there was no other permanent jury court at the time it was enacted. These conditions point prima facie to the Gracchan period.169 It is not entirely anachronistic to adduce such a critique when discussing Sigonio's identification, for he himself failed to adhere to his own premises. With the addition of a full treatise (De iudiciis) to his corpus, the former miscellaneous chapter on that theme in De antiquo iure avium Romanorum was reduced to an exposition only of the judiciary laws which allotted the jury panels variously to senators, equites, and eventually the wealthier members of the first census class, the tribuni aerarii. In this series Sigonio inserted the lex Servilia Glauciae, which abolished the need to suppose that the lex Servilia Caepionis of 106 B.C. had somehow not taken effect: it was the law of Glaucia which had returned the courts to the equites. This conclusion is also summarized in De iudiciis itself.170 There is the difficulty, however, that Sigonio in these places speaks of the law of Glaucia as though it were a general judiciary measure affecting all the courts, while elsewhere in the same volume he identifies and publishes as Glaucia's an epigraphic text dealing only with the recovery court. He does not refer forward from the chapter on judiciary laws to the one on recovery laws, 168 -r}, e pOSSjbility that Sigonio's identification may be correct is sustained by Harold B. Mattingly in "The Two Republican Laws of the Tabula Bembina," JRS 59,1969, pp. 129-43; "The Extortion Law of the Tabula Bembina," /RS 60,1970, pp. 154-68; and "The Extortion Law of Servihus Glaucia," Classical Quarterly 35,1975, pp. 255-63. 169 A. N. Sherwin-White, "The Date of the Lex repetundarum and Its Consequences," JRS 62,1972, pp. 83-99; and "The Lex repetundarum and the Political Ideas of Gaius Gracchus," JRS 72,1982, pp. 18-31. 170 De ant. iur. cxv. Rom. 2.18, "De iudiciis," p. 135 (1574); and De iudiciis 2.6, "De iudicibus," p. 502 (1574). 167

CHAPTER TWO

nor, except in the vaguest way, backward from the chapter on recovery laws to the one on judiciary laws.171 Despite the greatness of the contribution he made, Sigonio failed here to effect a full synthesis of his historical materials. The epigraphic text is exploited at various places in De iudiciis to document the age limits (thirty to sixty years) within which Roman men were considered capable of jury service, the role of the praetor as president of the court at the annual selection of an album of jurymen for that year, and the process of selection used to obtain juries of fifty members for each trial.172 And in the sphere of political history Sigonio describes the result of the lex Servilia Glauciae, a revanche of the equites which produced such scandalous convictions as that in 92 B.C. of P. Rutilius Rufus, who had checked their exorbitant financial exactions in the province of Asia.173 Fulvio Orsini set about assembling all of the extant fragments of the Tabula Bembina, or transcriptions of them, following Sigonio's publication of 1574, and had attained his objective within a year. This acquisition, with the interpretation of the two laws contained in the fragments, is discussed in correspondence of 1575 between himself and Antonio Agustin. Orsini received from Agustin and published in 1583 the manuscript of the latter's De legibus, a treatise originally drafted in the 1540s and which does not take account of the later publications in the same field by Frangois Hotman and Paolo Manuzio (both in 1557) nor of the epigraphic laws of the Tabula Bembina and Sigonio's discussion of certain categories of Roman legislation in De iudiciis. Thus for instance Agustin's notice of the two leges Serviliae adduces only literary evidence and does so less fully than Manuzio. Orsini for his part attempted to bring the book up to date by publishing in an appendix all the fragments of the two laws of the Tabula Bembina and other inscriptions with brief notes. He was noncommital on the identification of these two laws and left the question open by calling them simply lex agraria and lex iudiciaria.17* 171 "Diximus autem Servilia lege Glauciae iudicia solis equitibus data" (De iudiciis 2.27, p. 525). This is a far from explicit reference to the two places mentioned in the previous note. 172 De iudiciis 2.6, "De iudicibus/' p. 502; and 2.12, "De iudicibus legendis," p. 508. 173 De iudiciis 2.7, p. 526. 174 Bibliography in n. 157 above. Letters of Agustin to Orsini, written in Spain, are published in Agustin, Opera omnia t. 7 (1772), pp. 231-63, and t. 8 (1774), pp. 501-11. See also Antonio Agustin-Fulvio Orsini, De legibus et senatusconsu/tts liber (Rome: Bassa, 1583; Paris: Beysius, 1584; Lyon: Faber, 1592); and in Agustin, Opera omnia t. 1, (1765), pp. 1164.

168

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 1

Next, the Italian question. From his birth in the great cispadane citizen colony of Mutina to his mature decision to make a career and an international reputation in the Veneto and his native Emilia, remaining beyond the Appenine rather than migrate to Rome as he might have done, Sigonio's own life was intimately bound to the soil of Roman Italy. The first two books of De antiquo iure Italiae describe the Roman expansion in Italy and the forms of administration and citizenship devised for the colonies, the municipalities, and the rural districts.175 Sigonio intended them to deal in combination with Italy before the Social War, and book 3 to stand apart as a narrative of Italy from the Social War to Augustus.176 In fact chapter 3.1, "De civitate Latinis atque Italicis data," is one of his epic chapters (like 2.2, "De coloniis"), attempting to trace the theme of Italian agitation for Roman citizenship from its earliest manifestations, with an evident prejudice by the author in favor of the Italians and of the more liberal Roman proposals to accommodate them. On this basis Sigonio accepts the exiguous historical tradition which makes Tiberius Gracchus the author of a proposal to offer Roman citizenship to the Italian allies and to include them in the redistribution of public land.177 He is aware, following his sources, of the ambivalence of Italian opinion and action during the period from the Gracchi to the younger Livius Drusus (91 B.C.), upon whose death the Social War followed. A complex of Italian and Roman political interests attended various programs dealing with land and citizenship, but Sigonio does not try to formulate a synthetic explanation for the politics of the period. The passage of the lex Julia, the fundamental offer of citizenship to the Italians in 90 B.C., and the problems of implementing it, including an attempt to restrict the new citizens to eight new tribes, are covered fully 175 A short introduction to this subject is E. T. Salmon, The Making of Roman Italy (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982); cf. as well A. N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship (1973, 2d ed.). M. H. Crawford in a review article "Italy and Rome" in /RS 71, 1981, pp. 153-60, covers twenty-nine new publications in this field. Note Sigonio's letter to Panvinio of 23 February 1560 expressing frustration at the difficulty of studying the institutions of the towns of Roman Italy, but satisfaction with the new book nevertheless: "e un miracolo che vi siano cosi pocche autonta del governo particolare delle citta; nondimeno ho fatto un libro che mi piace anchora piii di questo uscito" (BAM, MS D 501 inf., f. 187; and Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1012). 176 Cf. De ant. iur. Italiae 1.1, pp. 149-50; 2.1, p. 214; and 3.1, p. 258 (1574). 177 "etsi alia parum fortasse e republica promulgavit, illud tamen ad imperium constituendum aptissime, quod animos Italicorum ac sensus intimos perscrutatus, civitatem Italiae, quod extat apud Paterculum, est pollicitus" (De ant. iur. Itahae 3.1, p. 260). Cf. Velleius Paterculus 2.2.2-3. The common opinion has been that only Roman citizens benefited from the agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus; but see now for all testimony, including Velleius Paterculus, and for an interpretation in Sigonio's sense, J. S. Richardson, "The Ownership of Roman Land: Tiberius Gracchus and the Italians," JRS 70,1980, pp. 1-11.

169

CHAPTER TWO

by Sigonio, and with greater commitment in that, as elsewhere when citizenship was in question, he not only points out contradictions in the meagre available data—the epitome of Livy and the like—but also proposes solutions. Thus he conjectured that the attempt to defraud the Italians of the full franchise was abandoned sooner rather than later, and that they were enrolled in the thirty-five tribes by 86 B.C.—slightly unhistorical in that this process will not have been accomplished at a stroke, but better than leaving the question open.178 The following chapter deals with cispadane and transpadane Gallia, the former granted Roman citizenship by the lex Pompeia of 89 B.C., the latter Latin status by the same law and full citizenship (not however given immediate effect) by Caesar in 49. The extension of full citizenship south of the Po in 89, not explicitly attested, is inferred by Sigonio from an array of evidence and circumstances; he insists several times that the Veneti were numbered among the cispadanes rather than the transpadanes and were therefore full citizens from 89.179 Remaining chapters deal with epigraphic evidence for the enrollment of towns in tribes, the continuing plantation of colonies in Italy from Sulla to Octavian, and Istria and the subalpine region. In discussing Sigonio's chapters on optimates and populares, agrarian and judiciary legislation, and Italian citizenship, the concentration here has been on what he has to say about the Gracchan and post-Gracchan period. These and other chapters, however, do pursue their various arguments down to the end of the republic, which is considered to fall at or a little after the death of Caesar, and all Julian legislation is admitted for consideration despite the coerced passage of much of it. Yet the dramatic events of the 60s and 50s portrayed in the writings of Cicero, Caesar, and Sallust, the very stuff of humanist education, are largely absent, for the ephemeral constitutional innovations and political alliances of the final debacle had little point in a study of a society and its institutions. But it may be legitimate to suspect, especially in view of Sigonio's elaborate publication of both laws from the Tabula Bembina and his obvious interest in their context, that he wished to demonstrate that the period from the Gracchi to Sulla was equal in historical importance to that of Cicero and Caesar. According to the conventional interpretative scheme which he followed, the perfect balance of the Roman constitu178 De ant. iur. ltaliae 3.1, pp. 263-64. Cf. Sherwin-White, Roman Citizenship, pp. 15057; and William Seston, "La lex Julia de 90 av. J.-C. et !'integration des Italiens dans la citoyennete romame," Comptes-rendus de I'Acadamie des Inscriptions, 1978, pp. 529-42. 179 De ant. iur. ltaliae 3.2, "De mre civitatis Galliae provinciae dato," pp. 266-67 (1574).

170

ROMAN STUDIES —PART 1

tion was broken by the popular upsurge of the Gracchan movement, and the dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar were the natural reaction. The fullest statement of this is in the introduction to the Fasti commentary, where Sigonio also emphasizes the contribution of the vacillating Pompeius to these crises.180 He elsewhere names Sulla, Caesar, and Augustus as the assassins of liberty,181 and the countless expressions of repugnance toward them and regret for the disappearance of the free state which appear throughout his published works and private correspondence reveal his visceral reaction to a remote historical fact. Because the Fasti Capitolini extend to the death of Augustus, Sigonio's commentary on them covers the Caesarean dictatorship and the birth of the principate, extending beyond the limits of his treatises. Given the nature of the Fasti commentary this coverage is largely devoted to titulature and chronology, but several long notes on particular subjects do show Sigonio attempting to define the significance of the new powers and titles which appeared. He had to confront the crux that the Fasti Capitolini and another fragmentary inscription, the Fasti Colotiani, gave to Caesar only four dictatorships, whereas the literary sources (Dio, Suetonius, Hirtius) say that he was created dictator five times. Sigonio in a lengthy note explains how the authors of the inscriptions have simplified for epigraphic reasons a complicated series of extraordinary enactments in which Caesar was made dictator for successively lengthier periods, culminating in the perpetual dictatorship, called the fourth in the Fasti, which according to Sigonio, Caesar began to exercise in 44 B.C.182

Like all Roman dictatorships those of Caesar carried a formal designation of the purpose for which the holder of the office had been invested with his powers; but the designations for Caesar do not survive on the extant fragments of the Capitolini. They have, therefore, like the sequence of his dictatorships, been a traditional subject of discussion. Sigonio judged that Caesar's first brief dictatorship in 49 B.C. was for the purpose of holding elections ("comitiorum habendorum causa") but that in his succeeding dictatorships Caesar made himself a tyrant. In 1556, emphasizing the naked exercise of power rather than the consti180

In Fastos commentarius, preface, pp. 8-9 (1559). De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.6, "De iure libertatis," pp. 31, 35. 182 In Fastos commentarius, s.a. 707 AUC ( = 46 B.C.), pp. 313-14 (1559). See Degrassi's commentary (Inscriptiones ltaliae 13.1, pp. 132-34) on the years 49—44 B.C. with notes on Sigonio's contribution and its fortune, in his edition of the Fasti Consulares. The Fasti ColoHani, which had once been part of the collection of Angelo Colocci, are published m the same volume. 181

171

CHAPTER TWO

tutional mechanisms and antecedents of this coup, and viewing Caesar as in effect the first emperor, Sigonio supposed that his title must have reflected this condition.183 Thus in the consular list published in 1556, as in the previous two without commentary, Caesar's second, third, and fourth dictatorships are designated "Imperandi causa." However, this was a designation invented to measure the enormity committed by Caesar, not a historically probable choice of titulature at that or any other time. For the final edition Sigonio reviewed the literary sources and rethought the matter, noting a similar abuse of pretext in the case of Caesar's predecessor Sulla, and that of Caesar's heir in his triumviral phase. He did not alter his view that the goal had been the same for all three, but conjectured that Caesar, like Sulla and Augustus, must have claimed to "reconstitute the state" in the title of his extraordinary office, and that his designation had been "Dictator reipublicae constituendae et rei gerendae causa."184 Later writers accepted one part or another of this double designation according to the interpretation they favored of Caesar's monarchy. Mommsen thought that all of Caesar's dictatorships had been constituent ones, while in the present century it has been supposed that the first was indeed for the purpose of holding elections, and that the later ones used the traditional designation of dictators appointed in military emergencies, "rei gerendae causa" rather than the revolutionary constituent one.185 Sigonio deliberately arrested his study of Roman history and society at the end of the republic. The parallel series of treatises on the Augus183 "Ego non aha caussa dictaturam invasisse Caesarem opinor, quam ut ea potestate, quae summa erat, omne ad se unum ius reipublicae traheret, quod ante multorum erat. Quod posteri eius, sublato iam a M. Antonio consule dictatoris nomine, Imperatoris vocabulo expresserunt. Itaque imperandi caussa factum notavi" (in Fastos commentarius s.a. 706 AUC, f.l32r in ed. of 1556). 184 The passage quoted in the previous note stands in 1559 down to the words "Imperatoris vocabulo expresserunt," after which Sigonio writes: "Itaque constituendae reipublicae et rei gerendae caussa factum notavi. Hunc enim titulum ante Sylla et post triumviri dominationi suae praetulerunt, ut se reipublicae constituendae caussa magistratum eum sumpsisse dicerent" (In Fastos commentarius s.a.706 AUC, p. 312 in ed. of 1559). An intermediate draft of this variant emphasizes only the similarity to Sulla. It is found in a copy of the edition of 1556 (f. 132r) with autograph additions by the author in the Bibhoteca Estense, Modena. (On this volume, shelf-marked alpha F 10.6, see D. Fava, "Di alcuni importanti libn a stampa e manoscntti d'interesse modenese.") The final published version of 1559 is the most historically comprehensive and refined, linking Sulla and Caesar not with the established imperial succession but with its violent precursor, the triumvirate. 185 See Degrassi's commentary (n. 182 above). The possibility that Caesar did formally assume constituent powers continues to be discussed; but cf. M. Sordi, "Ottaviano patrono di Taranto nel 43 a. C , " Epigraphica 31,1969, pp. 79-83 for the contrary view.

172

ROMAN STUDIES —PART 1

tan reconstruction and the Roman Empire which he contemplated were never written, and we are left with only a handful of notes on special subjects in the Fasti commentary to suggest the historian's vision of the great transformation.186 For Sigonio the significance of the new order was negative, lying entirely in the loss of the free republic which it effaced. 186 " c u r Octavius Imperator Caesar dictus sit," s.a. 710 AUC (pp. 323-24,1559); "De bello Actiaco cum M. Antonio et impeno Romano ad unum Imperatorem Caesarem translato," s.a. 722 AUC (pp. 334-35); "Quo modo Imperator Caesar Divi F. imperium confirmaverit et ordinavent et de titulis quibus legitima Imperatoris potentia significatur," s.a. 726 AUC (pp. 338-40). Sigoniols commentary on the Augustan settlement did not have the benefit of the Monumentum Ancyranum, the epigraphic text of Augustus's Res Gestae discovered in 1555 but not published until 1579 by Andreas Schott in an edition of Aurelius Victor.

173

CHAPTER

THREE

ROMAN STUDIES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY PART TWO N I C O L A S DE G R O U C H Y

A

T THE HEART of the debate between Carlo Sigonio and Nicolas de Grouchy, which lasted from 1560 to 1569, with a reprise on Sigonio's part in 1574, lay the historical meaning of the terms magistrates and imperium.1 The Roman notions that lay behind these terms were important for the later history of European states because the Corpus iuris cwilis, codified in the sixth century A.D. under the emperor Justinian, furnished much of the essential vocabulary of later political thought. Despite this late codification, the Corpus of Civil Law contained fragments of the Roman juristic tradition reaching back to the Roman republic—the only period of Roman history considered worthy of study and argument by exponents of the studia humanitatis such as Sigonio and Grouchy. In result, the contentions of Sigonio and Grouchy about the remote period of the Roman republic overlapped with contemporary issues concerning the definition of public power; only to a degree, however, for the imperium and the magistracies of the Roman republic had been transformed in the general transformation from 1 Tim Cornell and John North assisted me in an early attempt to come to grips with the lex curiata and related problems and both of them have my gratitude. The article "Sigonio and Grouchy: Roman Studies in the Sixteenth Century," Athenaeum 74, 1986, pp. 147-73, touches on more details of their dispute than are brought into the present account, and readers with a taste for scholarly controversies of the past may like to look there for what has been dispensed with here—opportune references will be given—for I now attempt to view the affair from a different perspective.

174

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

republic to empire, and Roman law had been codified as the law of the latter. But when Jean Bodin formulated a new theory of public power as abstract sovereignty, he broke with the narrowly juristic approach to political theory, using instead a wide-ranging technique of comparison between ancient and modern history and proposing many examples from the Roman republic. The work of Sigonio and Grouchy was an important part of his intellectual context. Imperium ("command") and potestas ("power") are often alluded to in Livy, Cicero, and other writers on the republic with connotations which, although varying with the historical situation being described, are most explicit when imperium refers to military command imparted by the mysterious measure called the lex curiata.2 But the word receives no precise denotation in the surviving literature or in the Justinianic codification, where it is mentioned only in judicial contexts. Such a denotation may never have existed, and the sense of the word "imperium" must have changed gradually through the course of republican history, as well as being permanently altered by the consolidation of the Roman Empire (literally the "imperium Romanum"), under a series of monarchs served by office-holders who continued to bear the ancient title of those who had once supremely embodied the political will of the Roman people, magistratus.3 In the Digest, the systematic collection of excerpts from earlier jurisprudence which is at the center of the Corpus iuris civilis, iurisdictio and imperium are often mentioned together but the relation between them 2 The following may be noted: E. S. Staveley, "The Constitution of the Roman Republic (1940-54)" (1956); J. Nicholls, "The Content of the Lex Curiata" (1967); Andre Magdelain, Recherckes sur I'imperium, la hi curtate, et les auspices d'tnvesttture (1968); A. J. Marshall, "The Lex Pompeia de provinciis (52 B.C.) and Cicero's Imperium in 51-50 B.C.: Constitutional Aspects," in ANRW 1.1 (1972), pp. 887-921; H. S. Versnel, Triumphus (1970); H. Kloft, Prorogation una ausserordentlichen Imperien 326Sl v. Chr. (1977); R. Develin, "Lex Curiata and the Competence of Magistrates" (1977); A. Magdelain, "I/inauguration de Yurbs et I'imperium" (1977); R. T. Ridley, "The Extraordinary Commands of the Late Republic" (1981); J. Bleicken, "Zum Begriff der romischen Amtsgewalt; auspicium—potestas—imperium" (1981); E. Hermon, "La place de la loi curiate dans l'histoire constitutionelle de la fin de la Republique romaine," Ktema 7, 1982, pp. 297-307. Behind all these stands Theodor Mommsen, Romisches Staatsrecht (SR). For two sides of the modern dispute about the origins of imperium, see Pietro De Francisci, "Intorno alia natura e alia storia dell'auspirium imperiumque," in Studi in memoria di Emilio Albertario (Milan: Giuffre, 1953) 1: 397-432; and Pasquale Voa, "Per la definizione dell'imperium," 2: 65-102. 3 The Novissimo digesto italiano (Turin: UTET) as well as being an encyclopedia of modern Italian law, covers the history of Roman and medieval jurisprudence in a useful way; cf. the articles "Magistrati (Diritto Romano)," "Imperium," "Iurisdictio," "Legati," "Praesides." Another work of reference is Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1953).

175

C H A P T E R THREE

is not made clear and there are contradictions in what is said.4 The relevant passages are largely concerned with the mandating of judicial competence from the princeps to the provincial governors of the developed imperial system (praesides, whether proconsuls or legati Caesaris), and from them to their own legates, and introduce a terminology of "merum" and "mixtum" imperium according to which, on the briefest possible precis and ignoring the contradictions, merum imperium means the highest power to use coercion, the ius gladii, and is not further transmissible once mandated to a praeses, while mixtum imperium includes iurisdictio and can be mandated.5 This rudimentary material was, after the study of the Roman law code had been resumed at the University of Bologna in the eleventh century, construed in the thirteenth into a system in the Gloss of Accursius, according to which, again on a precis, iurisdictio is a genus comprising merum and mixtum imperium. Both the Digest and the Gloss naturally portray imperium as the power of coercion in connection with the highly developed jurisdiction of the imperial period, and have little light to shed on the remote world of the Roman city-state with its annual wars of conquest waged by an army of citizen-soldiers who voted in the assembly to elect the magistrates who would become their commanders during the campaigning season, and who also voted as judges when capital trials were held in the assembly— the world of Livy's history. In the political philosophy and allied jurisprudence of the Middle Ages, based on the belief that the universal political order headed by a princeps which is portrayed in the Corpus iuris civilis continued to exist, potentially if not actually, in the Holy Roman Empire, merum imperium became an essential term for public power. Half a century or more before the completion of the Accursian Gloss, in a legendary debate conducted for the pleasure of the emperor Henry VI, the jurist Lothario attributed to the emperor the full possession of the merum imperium which was exercised by his magistrates, while on the other side Azo recognized the emperor as the highest holder of it, but asserted that 4 "De officio proconsulis et legati" (D. 1.16) and esp. D. 1.16.5 (Papiman),D.1.16.6 (Ulpian), D.l.16.7.2 (Ulpian), D.l.16.11 (Venulems Saturmnus), D.l.16.12 (Paulus), D.l.16.13 (Pomponius); "De officio praesidis" (D.1.18) and esp. D.l.18.1 (Macer), D.l.18.4 (Ulpian), D. 1 18.6.8 (Ulpian); "De officio eius, cui mandata est iurisdictio" (D.1.21 passim); "De iurisdictione" (D. 2.1, entitled in older editions "De iurisdictione omnium iudicum") and esp. D.2.1.2 (lavolenus), D.2.1.3 (Ulpian), D.2.1.5 (Iulianus), D.2.1.16 (Ulpian). 5 For an account admirably clear for laymen, see J. W. Perrin, "Legatus in Medieval Roman Law" (1973); and cf. n. 3 above.

176

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

magistrates were also independently holders of merum imperium.6 The debate was won by Lothario, but much later Bartolus of Sassoferrato, adapting the strictures of the Corpus iuris civilis to the realities of fourteenth-century Europe and of feudal monarchy, vindicated Azo in a system which distinguished six grades of merum imperium, reserving the highest ones to the emperor but allowing lesser ones to the new de facto territorial lords and independent cities of Italy.7 The sixteenth century saw the birth of a historical school of jurisprudence in France, at a time when the central monarchy, in the person of Frangois I, was developing a new and stronger form of sovereignty. This development was reflected in the writings of Guillaume Bude and Andrea Alciato; in those of the latter, merum imperium is reduced once more to judicial significance and the magistrate who exercises it is considered a delegate of the law rather than, as in the Middle Ages, the holder of something approaching a property right: the pendulum had swung back to Lothario's side of the question. In the 1540s and 1550s the jurists Jean Gillot, Pierre Loriot, Antoine de Gouvea, Fra^ois Douaren, Eguiner Baron, and Louis Ie Caron held an extended polemical debate in print on the meanings of imperium and iurisdictio in the Digest. Much that had in the past been obscured by the application of the phrases of the classical jurists Ulpian and Papinian to the medieval empire was now made clear, as that the texts apply only to the judicial powers of magistrates rather than to sovereign power, and that these powers had varied over time with the extension of the Roman state and ramification of its judicial system.8 In the second half of the century the purely historical study of this system was to culminate in the works of Frangois Hotman and Jacques Cujas. 6 On the story of Lothario and Azo, and that of the term merum imperium, see Myron P. Gilmore, Arguments from Roman Law in Political Thought, 1200-1600 (1941). Gilmore's belief that for Accursius, and after, merum imperium meant supreme power in the state has been criticized in J. W. Pernn, "Legatus, the Lawyers, and the Terminology of Power in Medieval Law," in Studia Gratiana 11, 1967, pp. 461-90. Pernn believes that the emperor was viewed as supreme because he held the highest iurisdictio, not because of merum imperium, which was only a degree of iurisdictio shared by a number of the highest magistrates in the medieval hierarchy. 7 Gilmore, Arguments from Roman Law, pp. 36-41. For more on Bartolus and Bartolism, see Julian H. Franklin, ]ean Bodin and the Sixteenth-century Revolution in the Methodology of Law and History (1963), pp. 14ff.; and in Novissimo digesto italiano the article "Postglossatori." 8 On the discussion of merum imperium, see Gilmore, Arguments from Roman Law, passim; and on the context, see Franklin, jean Bodin and the Sixteenth-century Revolution, and Donald R. Kelley, foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship (1970).

177

C H A P T E R THREE

Nicolas de Grouchy (1509-72), fourteen years Sigonio's senior and a native of Rouen, was not a jurist but a humanist who had studied in the University of Paris and who taught at the College de Guyenne in Bordeaux (1534-47) and at Coimbra in Portugal (1547-49). After returning to Normandy in 1549, and with sporadic visits thereafter to Paris, Grouchy won his place in French intellectual life in the 1550s and 1560s. His biographers record his association with George Buchanan and conclude that he was, tendentially at least, a Huguenot. Grouchy died in La Rochelle in the year of the St. Bartholomew, 1572.9 He is best known for his revision for republication of translations into Latin of Aristotle by Joachim Perion, but Grouchy deserves greater recognition for his major original work, De comitiis Romanorum ("On the Roman Assemblies"), which was completed in the early 1550s and published in Paris in 1555. It appeared at a time when the rising generation of scholars in this field had as yet published only preliminary works (Sigonio's Fasti of 1550 and 1555 and De nominibus Romanorum of 1555; Frangois Hotman's edition of Asconius and a portion of a commentary on Cicero; Paolo Manuzio's commentaries on Cicero) or nothing at all (Onofrio Panvinio), and accomplished a qualitative leap of such magnitude that it deserves the recognition of priority in the foundation of Roman studies as a modern historical discipline. The topic which Grouchy selected—the voting assemblies of the republic—is significant. The assembly, already moribund under Augustus, was suppressed during the consolidation of the principate in the first century A.D. It had been the characteristic institution of the ancient citystate, and the one most remote from life in the sixteenth century. To explain how the various assemblies worked—a complicated and ill-documented subject—meant not only a powerful increase in the comprehension of the texts of Livy and Cicero, it also entailed a new confrontation between political theory and the concrete institutions of the Romans. The result of this confrontation was a novel one: contrary to the conventional Polybian account of Rome as a mixed constitution, Nicolas de Grouchy, through his analysis of the assemblies, came to view it as a radical demokratia.10 Polybius had stated that the locus of sover9 Cf. the biography by E. H. de Grouchy and Emile Travers, Etudes sur Nicolas de Grouchy (1878), and the notice by C. H. Lohr in "Renaissance Latin Aristotle Commentaries. Authors G-K," Renaissance Quarterly 30, 1977, p. 707. 10 "Respublica Romanorum quamdiu fuit libera, ex tnbus ilia quidem reipubhcae generibus (quemadmodum docet Polybius) constabat, basileia, aristokratia, demokratia; sed multo ta-

178

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

eignty (to use an anachronism) in Rome was impossible to fix because each of the three parts of the constitution—magistrates, senate, and assembly—appeared supreme according to the perspective adopted;11 and in fact the ancient republic, with no separation between state and society and no abstract theory of public power, knew no sovereignty other than that of the populus Romanus itself. But the membership of the populus Romanus had been an object of contention in the archaic period, when the plebeians had formed an autonomous revolutionary association in order to gain participation in it, and ultimately to impose the binding force of their resolutions on it. Though the jurists later codified the relationship of the plebs to the populus as simply that of part to whole,12 it was a relationship which remained (albeit as a pure abstraction) one of demokratia, and which therefore left unresolved such formal questions men maximam partem obtinuisse mihi videtur demokratia. Quanquam enim regiae potestatis species quaedam in consulum imperio, in senatus vero potestate optimatum principatus quodam modo agnosceretur, populi tamen tanta erat auctoritas supra omnes magistrates et senatum, ut non immerito dici possit omne imperium, omnem maiestatem illius reipublicae penes populum fuisse. Cui rei argumento esse potest ad populum provocatio, quae non fuisset, nisi maior esset populi quam magistratuum potestas. Quinetiam fasces summittendi mos, cum magistratus in concionem ascendebant, confessio erat, populi, quam magistratuum, maiestatem vimque maiorem esse. lam vero de capite avis, omninoque de libertate ac iure civitatis, nullius erat nisi populi iudicium. Leges iubere, bellum pacemque decernere, societatem cum aliquo contrahere aut dissolvere, foedera mire, in populi tantrum erant potestate. Quodque maximum est virtutis in republica praemium, magistratus et honores, cum omnibus paterent, nemo poterat nisi per populum assequi. Quae si maximi sunt in omni republica momenti, populum sane, penes quern haec erant omnia, longe maximam reipublicae Romanae partem obtinuisse fatendum est. Haec a me eo dicuntur, ut ostendam reipublicae Romanae cognitionem multo magis in eo positam esse, ut populi potestas, quae quahsque esset intelhgatur, quam in magistratuum ac senatus potestate percipienda" (Grouchy, De comitiis Romanorum, preface, f. 3r. The terms in italics have been transliterated from the Greek.) Grouchy's views had immediate impact on Roman historians; cf. for instance the unacknowledged echo of them in the following passage from Onofrio Panvinio, where they are justified by reference to the formal demokraha obtaining after the lex Hortensia: "sensim eo res processit, ut suffragiorum ius conversum fuent, neque enim de plebiscite Senatus quidquam statuebat, sed Senatus consultum ratum non erat, nisi id populus approbasset. lure enim sciscendarum legum, vi postremo et secessiombus, populus tantam sibi potestatem, exactis regibus, vmdicavit, ut maximam Reipublicae Romanae partem demum obtmuerit status popularis, quamquam enim regiae potestatis species quaedam in consulum imperio, in Senatus vero potestate optimatum principatus quodammodo agnosceretur, populi tamen tanta auctoritas supra omnes magistratus et Senatum fuit, ut non immerito dici potest, omne imperium atque illius reipublicae maiestatem penes populum fuisse" (Panvinio, "De patriciis et plebe; senatus, equitibus et populo," in Reipublicae Romanae commentarius [1558], p. 302). 11 Polybius 6.11.11-12 (the difficulty of distinguishing the dominant part of the constitution), 6.12 (consuls), 6.13 (senate), 6.14 (assembly). 12 Aulus Gellius, Nodes atticae 10.20.

179

C H A P T E R THREE

as the degree to which the tribunes of the plebs were to be considered magistrates and therefore colleagues of the consuls and other holders of imperium.13 And from the late second century this question was no longer formal but pressingly material, for a claim to represent the populus and its interests against the oligarchy of the senate was advanced by tribunes at the head of a popular movement. The claim was rebutted by the optimates, who largely imposed upon the historical tradition their view of the popular movement as representing exclusively the interests of an underclass—hence the ambivalence of the term populus and its derivatives in the late republic and in the modern European languages. In calling the Roman republic a demokratia, Grouchy referred to the role of all the assemblies, not just that of the plebeian assembly. He was no more a theoretician than Sigonio, and considered his view of the matter to be the simple result of the documentation contained in the body of his treatise; but it was an original intellectual decision of importance, and it may be conjectured that the coagulation of royal sovereignty in France had altered Grouchy's perspective on the Roman republic, distancing it sufficiently from the contemporary world that it became possible for him to abandon the strongly entrenched conventional interpretation of the Roman constitution as a mixture of popular, aristocratic, and monarchical forces working through the three "parts," assembly, senate, and magistracy. For Grouchy, a state in which voting assemblies of citizens held a large portion of public sovereignty (the assemblies were the ultimate instance in justice, in foreign policy, in legislation, in the election of magistrates) could only be called a demokratia. But political participation at Rome, except for those able to compete for office, was largely passive. There was no right to be heard, only the right to cast a vote in assemblies in which a variety of mechanisms such as the tally of votes in blocs reduced to a minimum the weight of the individual preference. Above all the Roman assemblies had no independent initiative, or, strictly speaking, independent existence. Only the magistrate could convoke the assembly; only the magistrate, or those to whom he granted the opportunity to do so, could address the assembly; only the 13

See, for example, Plutarch, Roman Questions 81 for acknowledgment of the anomalous status of the tribunes of the plebs. There exists a modern current of studies which emphasizes this anomalous, and autonomous, status: cf. "Stato e istituzioni nvoluzionari in Roma antica," in Index 3, 1972, pp. 153-267, and Index 7, 1981, with contributions by various authors; Pierangelo Catalano, Populus Romanus Quirites (1974); P. Catalano, "La divisione del potere in Roma," in Studi Giuseppe Grosso (Turin: Giappichelli, 1974), t. 6, pp. 665-91; Giovanni Lobrano, "Plebei magistratus, patricii magistratus, magistratus populi Romani" (1975). 180

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

magistrate could put the question and summon the people to vote.14 And the magistrate controlled the auspices, the religious sanction which validated the assembly's resolution. In result Grouchy's systematic treatise on the Roman assemblies in fact gives a very large role to the Roman magistrates and their imperium. Grouchy treated imperium as a universal and indivisible power to command, deriving its legitimacy from the auspices, hence from the archaic patrician state and from the surviving patricians. The presidency of the assembly was for Grouchy a prime example of the exercise of imperium. His important chapters begin in each case with a section on the magistrates and the internal hierarchy of imperium which determined their presidency of the assemblies. The discussion of the assemblies themselves always follows in second place. The last of the three parts of the constitution, the Roman senate, is practically absent from Grouchy's systematic construction, but the order in which he deals with the other two—first magistracy, then the assembly—reiterates the point made by Polybius, who also began his account of the parts with magistracy: it (and imperium) are primary in a description of the Roman constitution—even one whose subject is the assemblies. Grouchy, then, describes a republic in which the assembly is sovereign (not his word) but in which power is held by the magistrates. But that is an example of the formal distinction between sovereignty and power (state and government) introduced by Jean Bodin; and one of Bodin's principal instances of such a distinction is the Roman republic. His portrayal of it as a demokratia in the Methodus of 1566 shows the direct influence of Grouchy on Bodin's thought. Carlo Sigonio, Grouchy's opponent, is of course prominent in the Methodus as a foil for these views: for Bodin he represents the outdated Aristotelian tradition which asserts that a division and mixture of sovereignty was possible and had existed at Rome. Sigonio's view of magistracy was based on the ideal of the citizen in the Greek polis, one who both governs and is governed. Sigonio did not believe that the magistrate's power to convoke 14 It is important to distinguish, which Livy for example often fails to do, between contio and voting assembly. The contio was a meeting of the populus summoned by a magistrate in order to hear a speech by himself and whomever else he allowed or invited to address the audience. It was open to all citizens, patrician or plebeian, and those who attended mingled to listen, without division by tribes, centuries, curiae, census classes, or orders. In the voting assembly, which might follow directly after the contio, there was no oratory or other formal persuasion (informally the case was different), the patricians were excluded if the assembly was a plebeian one, and the voters were organized into blocs and—in the centuriate assembly— graded in census classes.

181

C H A P T E R THREE

the assembly was identical to the imperium by which he commanded the legion in the field. This introduction to Nicolas de Grouchy and the context of his work may conclude with a few summary remarks concerning his intellectual heritage. When Theodor Mommsen's Romisches Staatsrecht was published in the 1880s, a new era began in Roman studies, an event signalled by Jacob Bernays in an essay in which he reviewed Mommsen's predecessors and found that only Carlo Sigonio and Louis de Beaufort, from the centuries preceding the nineteenth, were worthy to be named.15 The belief that Sigonio had been the Mommsen of his day became a commonplace16 and is true in the sense that his works were (in intention) systematic and hence were used as a handbook of Roman history and society in Europe for two hundred years, as the Romisches Staatsrecht is used today. But anyone possessing even a slight acquaintance with the Romisches Staatsrecht and with the critical discussion which its presentation of Roman public law as a closed and wholly organic system—as the "Wesen des Staats"—has aroused over the course of a century will probably have been struck, in reading this introduction, by the similarity between Mommsen and Nicolas de Grouchy. Like Grouchy, and for that matter like Polybius, Mommsen emphasizes the primacy of magistracy and its gradation of major and minor imperium, as well as the survival of patrician institutions in the patrician-plebeian state. Grouchy's tenacity in attacking and resolving detailed problems of the working of Roman institutions resembles Mommsen's and is a fundamentally different method from that of Sigonio, who is less thorough and who in De antiquo iure civium Romanorum eschewed institutions in favor of a juridically rather informal account of citizenship and a decidedly historical one of social stratification. Sigonio's decision to build his work on the concepts of citizenship and libertas rather than on those of magistracy and imperium has the same fundamental significance as the opposite decision in the case of Grouchy and Mommsen, and is the ground of the dispute between himself and Grouchy. Mommsen's has been described as the "public law" approach to his subject, and if his critics are justified in opposing to it a "constitutionalist" ap15 Jacob Bernays, "Die Behandlung des romischen Staatsrechtes bis auf Theodor Mommsen," in Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Berlin, 1885), 2: 255-75. 16 Cf. Eugen Taubler, "Romisches Staatsrecht und romische Verfassungsgeschichte," Mstorische Zeitschrift 120,1919, pp. 189-209, esp. p. 208; and Arnaldo Momighano's review of the first edition of Ernst Meyer, Romischer Staat und Staatsgedanke (1948) in Primo contribute.

182

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

proach,17 then surely Sigonio is the sixteenth-century representative of constitutionalism, as Grouchy is of the Mommsenian public-law view of the Roman republic.18

O N THE ROMAN ASSEMBLIES

A measure of the immense advance in scholarship represented by De comitiis Romanorum is the fact that Grouchy's point of departure was a statement made half a century earlier by Guillaume Bude to the effect that there had been only two types of assembly at Rome, the comitia centuriata (centuriate assembly) and the comitia tributa (tribal assembly)—the latter also called comitia curiata (curiate assembly) because tribus and curia were the same thing.19 In fact there were three Roman assemblies, and Grouchy accordingly made his monograph a tripartite one. The curiae were the thirty ancient wards of the city of Rome, and the curiate assembly was the primordial assembly of the city-dwellers. During the historical period of the republic the curiate assembly was a nonfunctional relic and the section devoted to it by Grouchy is appropriately brief—except for his discussion of the lex curiata and imperium. 17 Cf. the article by Taubler cited in the previous note, and Lobrano, "Plebei magistratus" with further bibliography there. 18 Some have perceived the influence of Sigonio on Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Catalano, Populus Romanus Quirites, pp. 13-17). Rousseau appears in fact to have possessed a copy of De anhquo iure avium Romanorum and certain affirmations in Du contrat social do resemble, if only genencally, the ideas of Sigonio. But that is probably as true of Montesquieu as it is of Rousseau, and to prove that Sigonio had any decisive influence on the Genevan writer would be a difficult enterprise. The linking of their names was first advanced in an edition of Du contrat social by E. Dreyfus-Brisac (1896) in the notes to 4.4, "Des cornices Romains"; cf. the notes to the same chapter in the Pleiade edition by R. Derathe (Rousseau, Oeuvres completes [Pans: Gallimard, 1964], t. 3). 19 "curiae etiam tribus appellabantur, unde comitia curiata dicta et leges curiatae a centuriatis differentes eo quod suffragia curiatim non centuriatim ferebantur, ut in illis" (Guillaume Bude, Annotationes in Pandectas, in Omnia opera, t. 3, p. 330). The passage cited is part of Bude's comprehensive excursus on the Roman assemblies, pp. 328-32, = commentary on D.48.14. Bude's confusion of the curiate and tribal assemblies, found in Flavio Biondo as well, derives undoubtedly from Paulus's redaction of Festus, where at 47L curia is said to be a synonym for tribus. The error in this had become generally evident by the mid-sixteenth century. Cf. Grafton, Scaliger 1, p. 142. The belief of Biondo and Bude in the identity of the comitia tributa and comitia curiata is mentioned anonymously for refutation by Grouchy in De comitiis 2.1, f. 63v. Grouchy also mentions both among those who have treated the assemblies incorrectly in the past (preface, f. 3r); Bude is contradicted as well on the difference between mdex and praetor (1.2, f. 15v).

183

CHAPTER THREE

Roman tribes were not kin-groups but districts, originally of the city, then of the city and the surrounding territory, finally of Roman Italy. The tribes of Roman Italy were not compact districts, each one electing a representative, but widely dispersed fragments of territory whose residents (in theory) assembled in Rome and voted as a group at elections and on legislation. The majority decision within the tribe counted as one preference, and as there were eventually thirty-five tribes the majority of the thirty-five preferences decided the question. The tribal assembly, which appeared in the early fifth century soon after the birth of the republic, was the last of the three Roman assemblies to be introduced. The plebeians met and voted as a tribal assembly. The centuriate assembly, the second in order of appearance, was the supreme assembly. The Roman historical tradition assigned its organization to the late phase of the monarchy, specifically to the reign of King Servius Tullius in the sixth century B.C. Its origins evidently correspond to the formation of an army of citizen soldiers equipping themselves with heavy armor and weapons and fighting on foot in a phalanx, originally in units of one hundred called centuriae, in which the most heavily armed soldiers were the wealthiest. The elaborate gradation in five census classes which the tradition assigns to Servius Tullius must have grown up over time. The first class {-prima classis) were holders of the highest census grade among the infantry (pedites). In the assembly the first class comprised eighty centuries, voting blocs whose membership was no longer fixed at one hundred individuals but was variable, and of which forty were composed of active men (juniores) and forty of seniores. The four inferior census grades, representing the correspondingly less wealthy and well-equipped citizens, had a much lighter representation in the assembly: the second, third, and fourth classes had only twenty centuries each, and the fifth class, men whose only equipment was slings and missiles, had thirty. A handful of supernumerary centuries of noncombatants, and at the bottom a single vast century of citizens too poor to undertake military service, completed the pedestrian centuries. Their votes were preceded, in the Servian assembly, by those of eighteen elite centuries of equites (cavalry)—eighteen votes which, together with the eighty of the first class, were predominant: in an assembly with a total of 193 voting centuries, the equites plus first class had an absolute majority of ninety-eight. The equites and the five classes voted in succession until a simple majority was reached, after which voting was suspended; hence unanimity amongst those ninety184

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

eight centuries would decide the question. These are the basic facts about the Servian constitution of the centuriate assembly. They are related fairly clearly, but with minor discrepancies, by Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and in turn by Grouchy in book 1, chapter 1 of De comitiis.20 That the weighting of the votes by census level—timocracy in the Aristotelian sense—was the most important feature of the centuriate assembly was as obvious to Grouchy and to his contemporaries as it is today. Timocratic weighting was to them a powerfully suggestive feature because it corresponded to the overtly hierarchical structure of their own (and all other premodern) societies. The point is worth making because, in a constitutional reform of uncertain date in the third century B.C., which happens to have left almost no trace in the documentary record, the centuriate assembly was reorganized. The scarcity of testimony concerning this change makes it one of the most difficult problems for specialists in Roman history, but the question of fundamental importance, apart from purely mechanical or arithmetical details, remains: In what way if any was the timocratic bias of the centuriate assembly altered? Though Bude had alluded to it, Nicolas de Grouchy was the pioneer in facing this problem. The reform coupled centuriate voting with the basic unit of citizenship, the tribe. It is referred to by Livy at the conclusion of his description of the Servian constitution, in a brief remark to the effect that by the redoubling of the number (thirty-five) of the tribes the total of centuries of juniores and seniores (now seventy) no longer corresponds to the Servian total.21 Livy may mean only that the number of centuries in the first class was reduced from eighty to seventy, with the ten extra centuries being distributed in the lower census grades and the total of voting centuries remaining 193. But his wording at least has been thought to allow the more radical possibility that the reform assigned seventy voting centuries to each of the five census classes, abolishing the weighting in favor of the first class and creating a total of 350 voting pedestrian centuries. Nicolas de Grouchy faced this crux without the aid of textual and inscriptional evidence discovered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and had only the testimony of Livy to work with. He devoted six 20

Dionysius 4.16-21; Livy 1.43; Grouchy, De comitiis 1.1, "Quid essent centuriata comi-

tia." 21

"Nee mirari oportet hunc ordinem, qui nunc est post expletas quinque et triginta tribus, duplicato earum numero, centuriis iuniorum seniorumque ad institutam ab Servio Tullio summam non convenire" (Livy 1.43.12). 185

C H A P T E R THREE

pages to the problem of whether a democratic revolution of astonishing magnitude had taken place in third-century Rome.22 Grouchy read the evidence to mean that the voting power of the lower classes had indeed been broadened and equalized, that is, that the second, third, fourth, and fifth classes each now had seventy centuries. The logic of this reading led inexorably to the conclusion that this had been the case in the first class as well, that its members had seen their voting power reduced to parity—seventy units—with that of each of the lower classes. But Grouchy refused to accept this on the ground that timocratic weighting was the essential feature of the centuriate assembly. He declared that the number of voting centuries in the first class must have been multiplied to an unguessable total, one sufficient to assure continued absolute numerical superiority for that class in combination with the equestrian centuries.23 A bald summary gives little idea of the richness and originality of Grouchy's analysis and of the commitment with which he tackled this important theme. He was aware that there were methodological problems in the solution he had offered, that in the absence of hard evidence his own convictions about Roman public ideology had perforce come into play. Many pages later, concluding his account of the structure and function of the centuriate assembly, Grouchy returned once more to the problem of the weighting of the first-class vote, repeating his opinion that an absolute majority of the voting units must have been retained for these citizens, but avowing that verisimilitude was the only basis for this belief.24 One important feature of the third-century reform did shift symbolic and effective power from the eighteen equestrian centuries (a concen22 Grouchy, De comitiis 1.4, "De modo comitiorum centuriatorum," ff. 43r-45v. Grouchy did not have available De republica 2.22 or the epigraphic text known as the Tabula Hebana, two discoveries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which have complicated the discussion of the reform of the comitia centuriata. A partial bibliography: J. Nicholls, "The Reform of the Comitia Centuriata" (1956); Cesare Letta, "Cicero De rep. 2.22 e 1'ordinamento centunato" (1977); R. Develin, "The Third-century Reform of the Comitia Centuriata" (1978); L. J. Grieve, "The Reform of the Comitia Centuriata" (1985); and cf. n. 30 below. On the Roman assemblies: G. VV. Botsford, The Roman Assemblies (1909); Ursula Hall, "Voting Procedure in Roman Assemblies," Historia 13,1964, pp. 267-306 (a wide-ranging article of general comparative interest); Lily Ross Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies from the Hannibalic War to the Dictatorship of Caesar (1966, the standard monograph, cf. on the reform chap. 5, "The Centuriate Assembly in the Light of New Discoveries"); Giovanni Forni, "Considerazioni sui comizi romani," Rendiconti dell'Istituto lombardo, Classe di lettere etc., 106, 1972, pp. 54366; E. S. Staveley, Greek and Roman Voting and Elections (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972). 23 De comitiis 1.4, f. 45r. 24 Ibid., f. 60r.

186

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

trated locus of wealth, status, and power) to the first class (a more diffused locus of wealth and status, but not really a locus of power). This was the use of sortition to select at random a prerogative century to vote in advance of the other centuries. The result of this prerogative vote, announced immediately, had the status of an omen and powerfully influenced the decision of the following voting blocs. Before the reform the collective vote of the eighteen equestrian centuries had had this prerogative status, but as passages of Livy and Cicero indicate, in the reform these eighteen votes were divided into a group of twelve, voting with the first class, and of six voting ahead of the second class.25 That the new single prerogative century was drawn by lot from among the thirty-five junior first-class centuries only is fairly evident from passages in Livy, sufficiently so that Guillaume Bude had implied as much decades before Grouchy.26 For Grouchy, however, it was possible, while denying that oligarchic weighting could have been abolished systematically by equalizing the voting power of the five census classes, to affirm with no less certainty that an equalizing measure based on the random operation of a sortition must have been radically democratic, being extended to all the voting centuries, equestrian or pedestrian, first class or fifth. The Roman voters, he believed, would have demanded as an imperative matter that this sortition be inclusive rather than restricted.27 A corollary was his belief that the number of equestrian centuries must have been increased from eighteen to at least thirty-five and possibly seventy, one or two per tribe, in order to share in the sortition.28 25

Cicero, Philippics 2.82; Livy 43.16.14. Bude, Omnia opera t. 3, pp. 328-29. For Bude the fundamental point of importance in the history of the Roman assemblies was what he saw as the placing of the census-graded centuriate assembly, based on geometric equality, above a primordial curiate-tnbal assembly in which arithmetical equality was the rule. He was more interested in this than he was in the reform of the centuriate assembly, to which he alludes in the following passage. For him the entire first class rather than the equestrian centuries had been the prerogative voters in the Servian assembly; after the reform there continued to be a plurality of prerogative centuries, drawn at random, as he seems to imply and as Grouchy took him to mean, from the first class (Bude is discussing Livy 1.43.11-12): "Hac constitutione centuriae primae dassis erant praerogativae, sed sorte non ducebantur. Haec ratio postea immutata est, multiplicato populo, ut idem ipse autor est. Prima classis semper prima rogabatur; sed praerogativae centuriae sortito ducebantur, ut ex Cicerone intelhgitur loco supra citato [Cic. Phil. 2.82]" (Bude, p. 329). 27 "Budaeus sane et alii doctrma excellentes viri in ea sententia fuerunt, ut credidermt sortitionem praerogativae inter centurias primae tantum classis fieri solitam. Quod ut credam, vix ac ne vix quidem adduci possum. Nam reliquas classes beneficio sortis excludi iniquum fuisset, praesertim cum eo sors praerogativae inventa fuisse videarur, ne quisquam eo iure exdusus videretur, quod in auctoritate praerogativae Romani esse voluerunt" (Grouchy, De comitiis IA, (. 44r-v). 28 De comitiis 1.4, ff. 44v-45v and 59r-60r. 26

187

C H A P T E R THREE

It was against the background of this published opinion that Ottavio Pantagato discussed the reformed centuriate assembly with Antonio Agustin in Rome between 1555 and 1560; a memorandum of their discussion was published posthumously by Fulvio Orsini in 1595.29 Pantagato advanced the state of the question by supposing, more coherently than Grouchy, that if the rule of 35 + 35 = 70 centuries in the classes applied, it did so evenly in all five census classes and the total of voting pedestrian centuries could be precisely deduced: 350. This, the "Pantagato thesis" about the centuriate assembly, inspired the further hypotheses of Savigny and Mommsen in the nineteenth century, following the partial recovery of the text of Cicero's De republica, in which centuriate voting is referred to.30 Pantagato followed Grouchy in believing that in the third-century reform the equestrian centuries were increased in number; passages in Livy and Cicero which reveal the continued existence of the eighteen centuries, the division of their vote into groups of twelve and six, and the voting position of the latter group, the sex suffragia, after the first class, were ignored, "emended," or explained away.31 Grouchy was the first to attempt to recover the actual mechanics of Roman voting and made giant strides toward understanding the real working of the assembly in the ancient city-state.32 Since he wrote, scholars with a larger and better-digested corpus of evidence have distinguished three important stages in the voting assemblies: the vote of the blocs, the report of the tallies to the president, and the report of the results by the president to the assembly. Simultaneous voting on a large scale became possible in the later republic with the construction of an apposite edifice in the Campus Martius, which contained thirty-five 29 Antonio Agustin-Fulvio Orsini, Tragmenta historicorum et notae (1595), pp. 379-86. On Agustin's redaction of Pantagato's thesis, see G. Forni, "Tnbu romane e problemi connessi," pp. 35-39. 30 See n. 22 above. There are, to simplify greatly, two schools of thought in regard to the reform. On one view, Pantagato was right to think of a total of 350 pedestrian centuries resulting from the attribution of seventy to each census class, but the effective total of votes cast would have been reduced again to 193 by combining groups of two and three centuries of the lower classes through sortition into single blocs (Savigny, Mommsen, Momigliano, and— among those cited in n. 22 above—L. R. Taylor, J. Nicholls, and C. Letta). On another view, the reform was simpler: ten centunes were removed from the first class, reducing it to seventy votes, and were redistributed somehow in the lower classes (L. J. Grieve, R. Develin). 31 Cf. n. 25 above; Pantagato in Agustin-Orsini, Fragmenta historicorum et notae, p. 382; and Forni in "Tnbu romane e problemi connessi," pp. 32, 34, 37-38. 32 For Grouchy on procedure in the centuriate assembly, see De comitiis 1.4, ff. 54r-60r; and in the tribal assembly, 2.4, ff. 92r-93r and 95v-96v.

188

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

channels through which the voters flowed. Then it was possible for voters in each census class in the centuriate assembly, and for all of the tribes in the tribal assembly, to vote simultaneously. For the tribal assembly this should have meant that every voter cast an effective vote, but the Romans had no rational principle of distributive justice dictating that this should be so, and in legislative and judicial tribal assemblies the tribes continued to vote in a succession determined by sortition (distributive justice was obtained by this nonrational random operation), the result of each tribe's vote was announced immediately, and voting stopped when a simple majority had been reached. Even in electoral tribal assemblies, in which all of the tribes did vote because of simultaneity, and in which all of the votes were tallied, the insertion of a random operation was evidently felt to be indispensable and the results of the tallies were announced in an order determined by a continuous sortition. Each candidate was declared elected at the point at which he had accumulated the preferences of eighteen tribes. The passage from successive to simultaneous voting is not discerned or discussed in De comitiis Romanorum, where Grouchy assumes that the same simple succession of voting blocs obtained at all times in all tribal assemblies. But he gave due weight to the random effect of the sortition which determined the succession, and to the anomalies produced by the Roman preference for absolute rather than relative majorities. For the voting in the centuriate assembly, in which the votes were announced successively by classes, Grouchy's account in large part stands, and modern works are able to improve upon it only in questions of detail, or more refined speculation. Grouchy includes a short essay on the auspices and the various methods of sounding out the supernatural forces in use at Rome.33 He explains that an act of auspication was carried out in the predawn hours of the day chosen for the assembly by the presiding magistrate with the assistance of one or more augurs, members of a priestly college instructed in the secret arts of divination, and further that every assembly was subject to suspension should the presence of thunder or lightning be observed by a competent magistrate or augur. Naturally in a general review of the auspices Grouchy does not fail to note that if through accident or circumstance there should be no magistrates in office, a reunion of patrician senators had the power to choose from their number 33

De comitiis 1.4, ff. 35v-41r.

189

C H A P T E R THREE

an interrex, and he in turn was able to renew the machinery for the election of magistrates.34 The constitutional principle that in this way "the auspices return to the Fathers" (auspicia ad patres redeunt) was the most potent remaining symbol of the archaic patrician control of the auspices, a control which the rise of the patrician-plebeian state had all but dissolved. According to the tradition the plebeian assembly (concilium plebis) had, in the period when it was a quasi-revolutionary organ, changed its voting structure from the curiate to the tribal system in 471 B.C. In the patricianplebeian state the plebeian assembly, after the lex Hortensia the principal source of legislation, was joined by a nearly indistinguishable twin or double, the comitia tributa. Formally the difference was that plebeian magistrates (tribunes of the plebs, plebeian aediles) presided at the plebeian assembly, no preliminary auspication attended its meetings, and patricians were barred from voting in it, though not from the contio which preceded the vote; while the tribal assembly was a fully auspicated assembly in which patricians as well as plebeians could vote and at which a magistrate of the populus (consul, praetor) presided. These differences were felt to be so slight (the number of living patricians was minuscule and declining, as was religious belief in the auspices) that Livy, writing at the end of the republic, habitually confuses the two types of assembly in his history. In fact it has been and is possible to argue that we should imagine there having been in effect only one tribal assembly with two different names.35 That plebeians as consuls, censors, dictators, and augurs used the auspices once reserved to the patricians is self-evident. The patrician-plebeian state transformed ancient institutions to the extent that in the middle of the second century, if not before, the consuls and other magistrates were given permission to obstruct plebeian assemblies by announcing ("obnuntiating") the presence of dire omens and the tribunes of the plebs gained the reciprocal power to do so against the consuls, thus appropriating the "patrician" auspices36 (an34 Ibid., f. 39r; cf. chap. 2 above nn. 10,18; and esp. Andre Magdelain "Auspicia ad Patres Redeunt." 35 Cf. L. R. Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies, chap. 4, "The 35 tribes and the Procedure in the Tribal Assembly"; R. T. Ridley, "Livy and the Concilium plebis" (1980). R. Develin, "Comitia tributa plebis," Athenaeum 53, 1975, pp. 302-37, argues the case for one assembly under two names. 36 These measures were among the provisions of the leges (or lex) Aelia Fufia of ca. 150 B.C., on which see W. F. McDonald, "Clodius and the lex Aelia Fufia," ]RS 19,1929, pp. 164-79; L. R. Taylor, "Forerunners of the Gracchi," ]RS 52,1962, pp. 19-27 (pp. 22-23); A. E. Astin, "Leges Aelia et Fufia," Latomus 23,1964, pp. 421-45. But the information about these laws is late, scant, and indirect, and no consensus emerges from manuals and general works on Roman

190

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

other factor in the puzzle of their status as "colleagues" of the consuls and quasi-magistrates). These transformations went unperceived by Nicolas de Grouchy. He had a strong belief in the continuing vitality of the auspices as a patrician institution and accepted at face value patrician claims recorded in Livy for the fifth and fourth centuries as permanent constitutional truths. Like some modern scholars Grouchy treated the comitia tributa and concilium plebis as being virtually the same assembly, but did not recognize its integration into a patrician-plebeian state. For him the tribal assembly remained the autonomous and revolutionary caucus of 471 B.C. That it was subject to interruption while in progress by unfavorable omens such as thunder or lightning Grouchy admitted, but this did not change his view that, lacking the ritual sanction of a preliminary auspication under augural supervision, it was an unauspicated (in Christian terms, "unhallowed") assembly. For Grouchy the connection between "legitimate" assemblies and auspication was felt so strongly that he believed that only through being elected in a legitimate auspicated assembly did a magistrate "have the auspices" (a condition which he appears to view as passive rather than active), and he therefore believed that magistrates of the populus elected in the tribal assembly (quaestors, curule aediles), a fortiori the magistrates of the plebs, "had no auspices." In the main exposition of these views in De comitiis Romanorumi7 the influence of Dionysius of Halicarnassus is decisive. Both Livy and Dionysius provide accounts of the period of severe patrician-plebeian conflict in 472-71 B.C. which terminated with the passage of a law, whose author was the tribune of the plebs Publilius Volero, instituting a plebeian tribal assembly. As always the historiographical problems are manifold, but they can be disregarded here; what requires emphasis is the differing evaluations given by Livy and by Dionysius of the importance of this plebeian success. For Livy the patricians lost the power to manipulate through their clients the voting process by which tribunes history as to the relation of the tribunes to the auspices. Because of this, the position adopted by a scholar about the matter may be, and in some cases clearly is, a test of ideology, or at least of the presuppositions at work; a particularly clear case of this is in fact the Sigonio-Grouchy dispute, as will be seen. Paolo Manuzio in De legibus has fourteen pages on the leges Aelia Fufia (ff. 39r-45v, 1559 ed.), but does not state that the tribunes of the plebs obtained through them, or ever had, a right to the political use of the auspices; this is evidently a finding of later Roman studies. According to one isolated source, Zonaras, the tribunes were given the right to take the aupices by the Valerian-Horatian laws of 449 B.C. (Zonaras 7.19 = Dio Cassius 5.19). 37 De comitiis 2.4, ff. 90r-92v. 191

C H A P T E R THREE

of the plebs would henceforth be elected. In Dionysius the change appears as a turning point of far more revolutionary significance. He insists that the plebeians emancipated their assembly permanently from sacerdotal control: the sacrifices and divinations administered by the priesthoods of the state could no longer annul its resolutions. Even more important, according to Dionysius, was the lapse of senatorial control, for no preliminary deliberation of the senate would henceforth be necessary to initiate the legislative activity of the plebeian tribal assembly.38 Nicolas de Grouchy found convincing the more drastic scenario of Dionysius, which underlies much of his interpretation of the history of the Roman assemblies. For Grouchy the problems of historicality connected with reports in the tradition of repeated bills culminating in the lex Hortensia to impose the binding force of plebiscites upon the community do not exist. He appears to credit the reality of all three of the reported leges de plebiscitis which supposedly did this, but since the first of them is registered in 449 B.C., the result is evidently that for Grouchy the plebeian demokratia was established in the twenty-two years after 471. For a century and a half after 449 the plebeians struggled to win access to the magistracies, but this process, even more than their struggle to impose the plebiscites, vanishes in Grouchy. He is aware, that is, of the result (that after a point Rome had plebeian consuls) but the historical dimension is missing entirely. All the easier then for Grouchy to pluck out one passage from the story of the patrician fight to protect the consulate: the speech of Appius Claudius in Livy in which it is claimed that plebeian magistrates can have no part of the auspices.39 Citing repeatedly this declaration (perhaps only a deliberate dramatic distortion by Livy himself), Grouchy made it a foundation of the Roman constitution as he envisaged it. Specifically, the conclusion he drew from these two places in Livy and Dionysius was that as plebeian magistrates had no auspices, so plebeian assemblies could not be held under the auspices.40 Cases in which divine 38 Cf. Livy's narration at 2.56-58, and that of Dionysius of Halicarnassus at 9.41-49. Grouchy (De Comitiis f. 9Ov) quotes in translation 9.41.3, the passage in which Dionysius gives the fullest description of the antisenatorial and antisacral character of the proposal. Collaboration between the patrician-plebeian senate and the plebeian assembly for the proposal and passage of legislation was a mainstay of the constitutional practice of the Romans; but Dionysius said that it had been ruptured at a stroke in 471 B.C., and Grouchy chose to believe this radical and contrafactual statement. 39 Livy 6.41.5-6; text and translation above, chap. 2, n. 10. 40 "Ex his Dionysii et T. Livii locis intelligi potest plebeios magistratus nulla habuisse auspiria. Unde efficitur non potuisse ea comitia quae haberent, auspicato haberi" (Grouchy, De comitiis 2.4, f. 9Ov); auspicato (adv.) = under auspicated conditions.

192

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

signs have none the less interrupted or vitiated plebeian assemblies which were in progress showed merely that a minimal religious sanction operated upon them.41 When Grouchy proclaims that plebeian assemblies were unauspicated, he really means that they were dangerously autonomous—free of the preventive control exercised by magistrates and augurs through prior auspication.42 More problematic for Grouchy are the cases documented during Cicero's career in which tribunes of the plebs availed themselves of the power to announce the presence of unfavorable omens against political opponents, including consuls. Grouchy had confronted the problem already in his introductory account of the auspices, and had been forced to resort to conjectures of this type: the tribunes of the plebs who were able to obstruct consuls in this way were perhaps augurs acting in that capacity rather than as tribunes, or the consuls may spontaneously have heeded obnuntiations which they were not obliged to recognize.43 Grouchy now returns to this problem, and the global problem of which it is a facet: Is it correct to think of the tribunes of the plebs as a species of magistrate and therefore colleagues of the consuls? His answer is both yes and no.44 But about the status of the tribal assembly Grouchy is adamant in his conviction that it retained the character of an unauspicated plebeian assembly even when summoned by a patrician magistrate.45 In a remarkable example of the overinterpretation of evidence 41

"Dicendum igitur est ad creandos plebeios magistratus nihil opus fuisse captare auspicia adhibitis auguribus pullariisve, ut in magistratibus maioribus fieri solebat, idque esse, quod auspicato creari negantur. Attamen, si quo die creati essent, aut fuigurasset aut tonuisset, vitio creati dicebantur, quia contra commune augurum decretum cum populo aut plebe actum esset, quo die servatum erat de caelo . . ." (Grouchy, De comitiis 2.4, 9Ov). 42 Grouchy's vocabulary and notions about auspication are imprecise. In the passage quoted in the previous note he uses but does not state the distinction between auspicia impetrativa, signs requested prior to an action such as the meeting of the assembly, and auspicia oblativa, signs spontaneously observed—or so it was possible to feign—in the course of the assembly. But he apparently thinks that only the former were directly controllable by the religious hierarchy. On the auspices, see Mommsen, SR 1.97 ff.; Botsford, Roman Assemblies chap. 5; the review article by J. Linderski, "Watching the Birds. Cicero the Augur and the Augural Templa," Classical Philology 81, 1986, pp. 330-^10; and Linderski, Augural Law, in ANRW 2.16.3,1986, pp. 2146-2312. 43 De comitiis 1.4, f. 40v. 44 "Itaque possumus uno modo cum Cicerone dicere, omnes magistratus auspicia habuisse, alio modo cum T. Livio negare plebeios magistratus auspicia habuisse, quia suis actionibus instituendis augures pullanosve non adhiberent: quae erant vera auspicia" (De comitiis 2.4, f. 9Ir). Grouchy refers respectively to Cicero, De legibus 3.10 ("Omnes magistratus auspicium mdiciumque habento") and to Livy 6.41.5-6. 45 "Quod vero dixi tributa comitia a plebeis magistratibus auspicato non haberi, idem ad 193

C H A P T E R THREE

based on a parti pris, Grouchy explains the true relation he envisages between the concilium plebis and the comitia tributa. Though confused, his argument is clear in its tenor: Since the [tribunes] were magistrates of the plebs, it was proper according to the rights inherent in that magistracy for them to convoke only the plebs. Therefore their preliminary edict applied only to the plebs, though attendance or nonattendance was optional for patricians. When comitia tributa were held by patrician magistrates, the relevant edict applied to the entire populus. Nevertheless, because no account was taken of census-holding, rank, or age at this assembly, the leading citizens were accustomed not to attend it. The reason was that the remaining multitude was far superior to them in numbers and there was no hope of their vote having any force against the will of the plebs. Hence it came about that almost all comitia tributa were in the hands of the humble, and the leaders of the state were seldom present. From this we can explain why, in reference to the comitia tributa, we often find the plebs and the populus mentioned in the same context. As far as the right to vote went, all assemblies were assemblies of the people, for no citizen could be excluded from the vote if he wished to attend the assembly. But with regard to the power and right of convocation of the magistrate who proclaimed the assembly, or considering those who usually did attend, that assembly can properly be said to be an assembly of the plebs alone.46 omnia tributa comitia, quae etiam a patnciis habebantur, transfern debet" (De comitiis 2.4, f. 91r, following on directly from the passage quoted in the previous note). 46 "Cum enim plebis essent magistratus, merito flebat ut pro iure sui magistrates non possent nisi cum plebe agere. Itaque praemissum ab lis edictum ad plebem tantum pertinebat, cum interim liberum esset patnciis adesse vel non adesse. Quae vero comitia tributa a patriciis magistratibus habebantur, quod ad edicti quidem vim attinet, universi populi erant; sed tamen quia his comitiis nulla habebatur ratio census, ordinis, aetatis, propterea primores civitatis fere his comitiis adesse non solebant, quia cum numero longe superior esset reliqua multitude spes nulla erat suum suffragium vim ullam habiturum contra plebis voluntatem. Unde eveniebat, ut omnia tributa comitia fere peragerentur ab humilibus, ut vix unquam primores populi adessent. Ex iis invenire caussam possumus, cur cum de tributis comitiis agitur, modo plebis, modo populi fieri mentionem saepe eodem in loco repenamus. Quod enim ad ius suffragii attinet, omnia comitia erant populi, quia nemo civis suffragio excludi poterat, si comitiis adesse vellet. Quod vero ad potestatem et ius vocandi attinet eius magistratus, a quo comitia edicta sunt, aut vero si ad eos spectemus, qui convenire ad ea comitia solebant, non immerito plebis tantum fuisse ea comitia dicuntur" (Grouchy, De comitiis 2.4, f. 92r). Note the assumption that patricians are primores civitatis; Grouchy is oblivious to the rise of the plebeians in wealth, status, and power. 194

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

This conception of a fundamental antinomy between the tribal assembly (the perilously anarchic union of the lower social elements) and the centuriate assembly forms the basis of an elaborate theory of overlapping categorizations of the Roman magistrates into major and minor, and patrician and plebeian. The Tightness or wrongness of Grouchy's theory matters less than his method. His is an abstract construction made of overlapping grades of magistracy and of initiation into the auspices which tends to take the place of diachronic history and to perpetuate relations of power—those between the plebeians and the patricians in the archaic period—which the patrician-plebeian state had overcome. Grouchy's theory was developed in an attempt to reconcile the two most important of the scanty items of testimony concerning the assemblies and the lex curiata. The first is a quotation preserved by Aulus Gellius from the jurist and augur Messala. In a discussion of the degrees of precedence in the use of the auspices, Messala says that full magistracy (magistratus) is given to minor magistrates by the lex curiata after election in the tribal assembly, while the major magistrates receive full magistracy in the centuriate assembly alone.47 But the principal item is a passing reference by Cicero in one of his most tendentious speeches, the second of three De lege agraria made as consul in 63 B.C. against the proposal of the tribune Servilius Rullus to give imperium by means of extraordinary electoral provisions to what was in fact a revolutionary magistracy, a college of decemvirs charged nominally with the reassignment of public land.48 Cicero claims that the lex curiata, and for censors a similar centuriate law, had at an unspecified early period of Roman history, when the curiate assembly was still attended by all the people, had the power to pass judgment again on magistrates already elected and 47 "Reliquorum magistratuum minora sunt auspicia, ideo illi minores, hi maiores magistratus appellantur. minoribus creatis magistratibus tributis comitus magistratus sed iustus cunata datur lege, maiores centuriatis comitus fiunt" (Aulus Gellius, Noctes atticae 13.15.4). In sixteenth-century editions this passage appears in chapter 13.14 and there are two variants, creandis for creatis and iustius for iustus. Many scholars reject this text as garbled, but others accept it, allowing that Messalla has been brief to the point of obscurity, and has been truncated by Gellius. The text is defended by Pierangelo Catalano, Contributo alio studio del diritto augurale (Turin: Giappichelli, 1960), p. 470 (in which see pp. 469-86 passim for material relevant here); Nicholls, "The content of the lex curiata," pp. 271-74; and Magdelain, Recherches sur limperium, p. 14. It is thought corrupt and senseless by Staveley, "The Constitution of the Roman Republic," p. 86; Versnel, Triumphus, p. 325; and Bleicken, "Zum Begriff der romischen Amtsgewalt," pp. 264-65. 48 Cf. A. Afzelius, "Das Ackerverteilungsgesetz des P. Servilius Rullus," Classica et medievalia 3,1940, pp. 214-35; and Emilio Gabba, "Nota sulla rogatio agraria di P. Servilio Rullo," Malanges Andre Piganiol (Pans: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1966), t. 2, pp. 769-75.

195

C H A P T E R THREE

to reject them if they wished.49 Such a double choice is an invention; Cicero's development of the argument shows that he is using sleight of hand. He admits that there is now no longer any second choice, the magistrates being elected in the centuriate assembly or the tribal, with the ceremony of the lex curiata being performed by thirty lictors for the sake of the auspices, then roundly blames Rullus for abrogating the ancient right of the people to a second choice.50 But in the sixteenth century this passage read differently in all standard editions, and made Cicero appear to describe both stages of a twostage electoral procedure, in the first of which a centuriate vote for the censors and a curiate vote for "the other patrician magistrates" was followed by an unspecified second choice.51 This was so anomalous that it 49 "Maiores de singulis magistratibus bis vos sententiam ferre voluerunt. nam cum centuriata lex censonbus ferebatur, cum curiata ceteris patriciis magistratibus, turn iterum de eisdem iudicabatur, ut esset reprehendendi potestas si populum beneficii sui paeniteret. nunc, Quirites, prima ilia comitia tenetis, centuriata et tributa, curiata tantum auspiciorum causa remanserunt" (Cicero, De lege agraria, 2.26—27). Translation: "Our ancestors wanted you to make a judgment twice about each magistrate. For, when the centuriate law was passed for censors, and the curiate law for the other patrician magistrates, on that occasion a further judgment was made about them, so that there should be a possibility of withdrawing the designation, in case the people had had second thoughts about the favor they had conferred. Now, Quirites, you have those primary assemblies, the centuriate and the tribal, and the curiate assembly remains only for the sake of the auspices." Remarks: the words cum . . . cum . • . turn are read as parallel temporal conjunctions, expressing simultaneity. 50 The text continues: "Hie autem tnbunus plebis, quia videbat potestatem neminem iniussu populi aut plebis posse habere, curiatis earn comitiis quae vos non initis confirmavit, tributa quae vestra erant, sustuht. ita cum maiores binis comitiis voluerint vos de singulis magistratibus iudicare, hie homo popularis ne unam quidem populo comitiorum potestatem reliquit" (Cicero, De lege agraria 2.27). And further: "Sint igitur decemviri neque veris comitiis, hoc est populi suffragiis, neque illis ad speciem atque usurpationem vetustatis per XXX lictores auspiciorum causa adumbratis, constituti" (De leg. ag. 2.31). 51 "Maiores de omnibus magistratibus bis vos sententiam ferre voluerunt. nam centuriata lex censoribus ferebatur, cum curiata ceteris patriciis magistratibus; turn iterum de iisdem iudicabatur, ut esset reprehendendi potestas, si populum beneficii sui paeniteret. nunc quia prima ilia comitia tenetis centuriata et tributa, curiata tantum auspiciorum causa remanserunt" (De leg. ag. 2.26-27 as read with insignificant variants in editions of Cicero's speeches before that of Lambin [1565-66] and in the principal single edition of the agrarian speeches, Bernardino Loredan's of 1558; punctuation has been modernized). Translation: "Our ancestors wanted you to make a judgment twice about all magistrates. For the centuriate law was passed for censors and the curiate law for the other patrician magistrates, after which a further judgment was made about them, so that there should be a possibility of withdrawing the designation in case the people had had second thoughts about the favor they had conferred. Now, since you have those primary assemblies, the centuriate and the tribal, the curiate assembly remains only for the sake of the auspices." Remarks: In the absence of the preceding conjunction cum, the phrase cum curiata is naturally read as a preposition with the ablative, and the words turn iterum as an indication of a time shift. The conjunction quia demands a consequential resolution, namely that because the centuriate and tribal assemblies now exercised primary functions

196

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

could not be explained even by reference to a primitive period of Roman history, for there never had been a point at which the arrangements apparently described here were true. Grouchy was a pioneering historian but not a practiced textual critic or editor, and felt free to rewrite the passage very audaciously in order to make what he took to be Cicero's meaning clear.52 In result, Cicero is made to describe a historically more plausible system of double elections in which the first choice, whether made in the centuriate or tribal assembly, is followed by confirmation in the curiate assembly, a confirmation which later withered to a formality performed by lictors. But the prominent division between patrician and plebeian magistracies imported into the passage is Grouchy's emphasis. Grouchy's multiple classification of magistrates into major and minor, and patrician and plebeian, is reiterated and amplified throughout his monograph at the head of chapters on the centuriate and tribal assemblies. The effect of this is to give magistracy primary importance as a part of the Roman constitution, despite the sovereignty of the assemblies. The crucial passages from Messala and Cicero make their first appearance (and Grouchy's radical emendation of the Cicero passage is first proposed) in chapter 1.2, there to make the point that the censors, as major magistrates, are elected in the centuriate assembly.53 The development of the theme is progressive. At the beginning of chapter 1.3 we read, in lines that aim to be systematic in the manner which would later be Mommsen's, that only major magistrates could summon the centuriate assembly because to put a question to the people there required the highest imperium, and thus the major auspices.54 In chapter 1.4 Grouthe curiate assembly had receded (reading Quirites the second clause becomes parallel and independent, not a consequence). Note as well that in order even to begin to make sense of the passage as it stood, it was necessary for the humanists to assume that centuriata lex and curiata lex referred to the choice expressed in an electoral assembly, not to legislation in the strict sense. 52 "Maiores de omnibus magistratibus bis vos sententiam ferre voluerunt. nam centuriata lex consulibus ferebarur, et caeteris patritiis magistratibus, tributa plebeis; turn curiata iterum de iisdem iudicabatur" (De leg. ag. 2.26 as read in Grouchy, De comitiis Romanorum ff. 8rv, 69r, 102v). Translation: "Our ancestors wanted you to make a judgment twice about all magistrates. For the centuriate law was passed for consuls and other patrician magistrates, the tribal law for the plebeian ones. Then by the curiate law a further judgment was made about them." 53 Grouchy, De comitiis, 1.2, f. 8r-v. 54 "Minores sane magistrates, quorum erant minora auspicia, quibusque minus erat imperii, ius habere non poterant vocandi centuriata comitia, quibus et auspiciis maioribus et maximo imperio opus esset" (Grouchy, De comitiis, 1.3, ff. 17v-18r). Note the silent assumption that 197

C H A P T E R THREE

chy expatiates on the link between the major auspices and the centuriate assembly.55 In chapter 2.2 Grouchy gives an abstract account of the result of the historical process (the historical process itself is not there) by which the once exclusively patrician magistracies had been opened to the plebeians, and by which some magistracies once exclusively patrician were filled by elections in the tribal assembly. The result, according to Grouchy, was an overlapping of categories according to which magistrates patricii could mean all of the magistracies formerly reserved to the patricians, or alternatively could mean major magistracies; and magistrates plebei could mean magistracies reserved exclusively to plebeians, or else simply minor magistracies (the quaestorship or curule aedileship).56 Chapter 2.3 begins with the distinction between tribal assemblies at which tribunes of the plebs presided, and at which plebeian magistrates were elected, and tribal assemblies at which consuls presided (Grouchy, it will be remembered, considered such assemblies unauspicated none the less) at which minor magistrates were elected.57 In chapter 2.4 Grouchy heralds his theory that the minor magistrates, whose election in the unauspicated tribal assembly leaves them with an imperfect type of power because they lack the ability to use the religious sanction, gain access to the patrician auspices through the curiate assembly.58 This doctrine receives its grand summation in chapter 3.2,59 where Grouchy pulls all the threads together—Messala on major and minor imperium is the term for the magistrate's powers in respect to the assembly, and in fact the universal term for his powers. It was this which Sigonio challenged. 55 De comitiis 1.4, f. 4Or. 56 Grouchy, De comitiis 2.2, ff. 68v-69r. The passage is too long to quote. The point of it is to coordinate Cicero in De leg ag. 2.26, who in Grouchy's "emended" version of the text speaks of patrician and plebeian magistracies, with Messala in Aulus Gellius Nodes atticae 13.15.4, who speaks of major and minor magistracies. Grouchy's way of organizmg this material made equivocation almost inevitable. 57 De comitiis 2.3, ff. 85r-86r. 58 "Illud ergo fatendum est, tributa horum magistratuum comitia non fuisse auspicata, nisi quatenus obnunciationi parendum erat, qua ex parte omnia comitia erant auspicata; ratione tamen legis curiatae, quae post de his ferebarur, auspicato creari dicendum est. Minora enim patnciorum auspicia erant horum magistratuum minorum. Quod si penes hos erant minora auspicia, necesse est ut auspicato creentur. Hoc enim argumento Livius utitur, penes plebem auspicia non esse quia auspicato plebeii magistratus non crearentur. Unde generalis locus desumi potest, penes eos auspicia esse non posse, qui magistratum auspicato non acciperent. Cum ergo dicat Messala minora patriciorum auspicia penes minores magistratus fuisse, necesse est, ut auspicatis quibusdam comitiis, quorum patres auctores essent, crearentur; cuius generis erant cunata" (Grouchy, De comitiis 2.4, ff. 91r-v). Note again the use of Livy 6.41.5-6. The variant spellings patritius/patncius recur throughout the Vascosan edition of De comitiis, and there are other oscillations as well. 59 Grouchy, De comitiis 3.2, ff. 102v-104v. 198

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

magistrates, Cicero in De lege agraria on patrician and plebeian magistrates, the putative creation of an autonomous tribal assembly in 471 B.C., Plutarch's discussion of the peculiar role of the tribunes as a check on the imperium of magistrates, and the many passages which speak of the lex curiata as being de imperio.60 He emphasizes again his conclusion that the plebeian magistrates do not participate in the patrician auspices, nor in the imperium, which are imparted by the lex curiata—but his equivocation on the term "plebeian magistrates" makes it impossible to see what concretely this means. Grouchy believed that the lex curiata was the channel through which the patrician auspices continued to work in the patrician-plebeian state.61 It was the second half of a two-stage electoral system (bina comitia) in which the first choice was made in the centuriate assembly for major magistrates or the tribal assembly for minor ones. In the latter case the successive lex curiata allowed quaestors and curule aediles to enter office under fully auspicated conditions. But for major magistrates this requirement was obviously satisfied by the first election in the centuriate assembly, and Grouchy never succeeded in explaining what sense the lex curiata would have for such figures as the consul or the praetor. He allows it to be understood that in these cases the lex curiata was the "second choice" invented by Cicero, and that it conferred imperium. Magistracy and imperium both resulted from the two-stage electoral process and were not for Grouchy meaningfully distinguishable. Grouchy often refers to the regular annual offices as the ordinary magistracies, and to all constitutional figures such as the dictator, whose office though indisputably a magistracy was not a regular annual one, as extraordinary magistrates. That magistracy and imperium are virtually synonymous is taken for granted throughout a long excursus by Grouchy on the development of a system of government by magistrates and ex-magistrates of the provinces Rome acquired in the course of her expansion.62 The imperium of 60

For example, Livy 9.38.15: "Papirius C. Junium Bubulcum magistrum equitum dixit, atque ei legem curiatam de imperio ferenti triste omen diem diffidit." Two passages link the lex curiata explicitly with military imperium: Qc. De leg ag. 2.30: "consuli, si legem curiatam non habet, attingere rem militarem non licet"; and Livy 5.52.16: "comitia curiata, quae rem mihtarem continent." 61 "Unde fit, ut non immerito auspicia habere dicantur, qui veris auspiciis, qualia erant ea quae penes solos patricios erant, creati essent. Ex huius quaestionis explicatione cum his locis Ciceronis et A. Gellii collata perspicuum est, exceptis plebeiis magistratibus, curiatis comitiis caeteros omnes magistratus ita creari solitos, ut imperium his comitiis non daretur, nisi qui aliis iam comitiis centuriatis aut tributis creati essent" (Grouchy, De comitiis 3.2, f. 103v). 62 Grouchy, De comitiis 2.2, ff. 72r-80r. (This digression is discussed on pp. 164-68 of the article "Sigonio and Grouchy" in Athenaeum 74,1986.) 199

C H A P T E R THREE

magistrates whose term of office had expired was prolonged ("prorogated") for the purpose of allowing them to function as provincial governors, so that they became proconsuls or propraetors according to the imperium they were given. Prorogation was originally by a vote of the assembly, but the necessity for such an act and the right of the people to pass it were allowed to lapse without being formally revoked, in favor of prorogation by the senate. During the second Punic war, however, when the survival of the state was threatened, the Romans bestowed and prorogated imperium in a manner otherwise unthinkable, upon ex-magistrates who had held it in the past and in one sensational case upon an ex-aedile who had never held imperium, P. Cornelius Scipio in 211 B. c.63 Later Scipio Aemilianus and C. Marius overrode senatorial opposition and obtained special commands and repeated consulships with the support of the assembly. During the convulsions of the late republic Pompeius received imperium from the senate alone before he had been elected to any magistracy. Later in his career, laws passed in his favor by two tribunes of the plebs allowed him to create a prolonged extraordinary command in the east, an example followed by his rival Caesar in Gaul. Grouchy's analysis of the prorogation of imperium for ex-magistrates has the great merit of recognizing the senate's informal supremacy in this respect. In this digression the Roman senate for once assumes a leading role in De comitiis Romanorum as the body which directed provincial expansion, not only prolonging the imperium of magistrates but also allotting the provinces they were to govern. Grouchy discusses many cases in which this process had something more or less unusual about it, as for instance the assignment of a command to the young Scipio in 211 B.C., and qualifies all of them as extraordinary (extra ordinem), but never perceives the fundamental evolution from a state in which military command was always in the hands of the magistrates elected by the people, to one in which, in the age of Pompeius, imperium was divorced from magistracy and from the urban matrix. Finally, a note on social stratification. Nicolas de Grouchy wrote briefly about this in De comitiis6* and his views appeared in the same year, 1555, as Carlo Sigonio's first attempt to deal with the same subject 63 A Roman citizen, if not a magistrate in office, was technically a privates; but an exmagistrate who had held imperium retained something of the halo of power. Scipio, when he was given his command, was a privatus in almost the pure sense, since although he had begun his cursus honorum he had never previously held a senior magistracy or imperium. 64 De comitiis 1.4, ff. 47r-48r.

200

ROMAN STUDIES —PART 2

in De nominibus Romanorum. On a fundamental point, Grouchy and Sigonio both reached the same conclusion: the division into patricians and plebeians was a matter of birth (Grouchy says, of genus) and was independent of stratification by orders and census grades. Like Sigonio and Panvinio Grouchy is struck by the possibility that a patrician, although of the purest birth, might conceivably be found in the equestrian order or even beneath it, as well as in the senatorial order. But Grouchy merely mentions the orders, and does not have Sigonio's crystal vision of Rome as a society based on them.65 This brought one signal benefit: Grouchy stated plainly that senators were to be found inscribed in the equestrian and pedestrian centuries at the assemblies, and that only at the end of the republic did a higher census grade distinguish them from the equites. (Paolo Manuzio was to follow this opinion as well—evidence that the senators had finally been separated from the equestrian centuries in ca. 129 B.C. was not available in the sixteenth century—and Sigonio in contrast wilfully exaggerated the demarcation between the orders by insisting that entry into the senate always entailed leaving the equestrian centuries.66) However, Sigonio in 1555 and in 1560 laid this excessive stress on the distinctness of the orders for programmatic reasons: he wanted to show that they were the original principle of social stratification in the Roman republic, emerging fully after the archaic and illegitimate patrician-plebeian division had been overcome. Conversely the society of orders is evanescent in Grouchy because for him the patrician-plebeian division remained the basic principle of stratification, and his emphasis is equally programmatic. The best evidence of their divergence in point of view is the complete absence in Grouchy of a central problem in Sigonio, that of the nobility and the rise of the new men. This is an indirect result of Grouchy's failure to confront the process of change over time which had brought the plebeians into the highest magistracies. That the major contemporary treatise on the Roman assemblies fails entirely to deal with the theme of nobilitation through election to magistracy is among other things a gauge of Sigonio's innovation in this regard. The idea of an open, political nobility of this type was unthinkable for Grouchy. He did not imagine that Roman nobility was different to what it was for the French gentilhom65 Grouchy in fact compounds stratification in orders with that in census grades, referring to the voting sections of equites and pedites in the centuriate assembly as ordines, and again to the three orders as senatorial, equestrian, and that of the pedites. 66 Above, chap. 2, nn. 118-20.

201

C H A P T E R THREE

merie, that is, the juridical condition of a hereditary estate defined by immemorial purity of blood. For Grouchy as for Bude the Roman nobility was the patriciate. 67

CITIZENS AND IMPERIUM

In 1558, three years after the publication of De comitiis Romanorum Bernardino Loredan published in Venice his edition with commentary of Cicero's agrarian speeches, in which he devoted a long digression to the passage about the "two assemblies" (bina comitia). Loredan printed the vulgate text and did not even discuss the arbitrary alterations made to it by Grouchy; but despite his scrupulous editing the difficulties of the passage caused him to propose, against the advice of Sigonio, a deranged interpretation of Roman elections. Ordinary magistrates, he said, were elected in two stages, first in a session of the centuriate assembly, then by the tribal assembly. In this Loredan opposed the published opinion of the current expert on the subject, Grouchy, and had to acknowledge as well that Sigonio took a different view of the problem of redoubled elections.68 When De antiquo iure avium Romanorum appeared in 1560 Sigonio gave only a brief account of the Roman assemblies. He lauded Grouchy's work and referred readers to it for further information. 69 However he proposed in two separate but related passages an interpretation of the electoral process and of imperium different to Grouchy's. 70 This difference of opinion was made even more injurious by Sigonio's carelessly attributing to Grouchy the rather eccentric opinion about repeated electoral assemblies held by Bernardino Loredan.71 The two passages in 67 The only place at which Grouchy attempts to define the patriciate is f. 47r: "qui genere erant nobilissimi"—avoiding entirely the question of their origin. 68 Cf. Loredan, Commentarius, pp. 115-22; and on p. 121: "Haec in hunc locum mihi afferenda esse duxi, quod hanc binorum comitiorum totam rationem qui proxime de comitiis scripserint [sc. Grouchy] longe aliter tradidennt, neque huius sensum afferre, nisi eo depravato potuennt; interpretes autem huius orationis toto (ut aiunt) caelo aberrarmt. Carolus autem Sigonius, vir doctissimus, mihi narravit, se hunc locum et omnem hanc binorum comitiorum rationem aliter interpretari, neque binis comitiis, ut centuriatis, tributis quenquam magistratum creatum esse, se credere." 69 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.17, "De iure suffragiorum," (1560), p. 123. 70 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.17, pp. 123-25 (1560); and 1.21, "De imperiis," pp. 142-43 (1560). 71 "Apparet placere Gruchio, patricios quondam magistratus binis comitiis esse creatos, centuriatis et curiatis, plebeios item binis, tributis et curiatis. Post autem curiatis comitiis obsole-

202

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

which Grouchy was controverted were reprinted in the second edition of De antique iure avium Romanorum in 1563 with minor changes, but in the compendium edition of 1574 they have been cut. Other chapters of De antiquo iure avium Romanorum were, however, extensively revised in 1574 in order to register ideas about Roman magistracy which Sigonio had developed under the impetus of the debate. Nicolas de Grouchy wrote a pamphlet entitled Responsio against Sigonio in 1565.72 Sigonio replied with a Posterior disputatio in 1566.73 Grouchy's last contribution was a Refutatio of 1567, dedicated to the chancellor of France, Michel de l'Hospital.74 Sigonio's De antiquo iure provinciarum of 156768 addresses problems connected with the dispute in book T1 and he returned to the attack with De lege curiata liber in 1569.75 Partly rewritten and given a new chapter division, it was republished as De antiquo iure provinciarum book 3 in 1574. The altercation between them was one of the notable disputes about the interpretation of ancient history in the sixteenth century, and might be considered first as an episode in the history of classical scholarship, then as an episode of intellectual history. The booklets published on both sides in 1565-67 are an example of the methodology of the period, a methodology influenced by the university disputation. Scholarship was still conducted, by men who were in part professional rhetoricians, as a simulation of forensic litigation, in which the aim of each was to rebut every point made by the other and to convict him of ignorance and error. Although a contribution to the history of scholarship might perhaps be made by tracing the sequence of ripostes between Sigonio and tis, magistratus omnes binis item comitiis declaratos, centuriatis et tributis" (De ant. iur. cm. Rom. 1.17, pp. 124—25 in ed. of 1560). This is Loredan's theory, not Grouchy's, and Sigonio had evidently confused them. In his Responsio of 1565 Grouchy summarized this error for the purpose of refuting it, and it was of course withdrawn by Sigonio, but later the summary was picked out of context by H. J. Erasmus in The Origins of Rome in Historiography from Petrarch to Perizonius (Assen, 1962), pp. 36-37, who gives it as Grouchy's true position. 72 N. Gruchii responsio ad binas Caroli Sigonii reprehensiones. Unam de binis magistratuum comitiis, alteram de lege curiata (Paris: Jacques Du Puys, 1565). Grouchy uses the second edition of De ant. iur. civ. Rom. (1563), as is shown by minor variants in the text of the criticisms of himself by Sigonio which he reprints. 73 Sigonio, De binis comitiis et lege curiata posterior cum Nicolao Gruchio disputatio, printed together with a reprint of Grouchy's Responsio by Sigonio in Nicolai Gruchii Rotomagensts et Caroli Sigonii Mutinensis de binis comitiis et lege curiata contranae inter se disputationes (Bologna: Benacci, 1566). 74 Ad posteriorem Caroli Sigonii de binis magistratuum comitiis et de lege curiata disputationem, refutatio (Paris: Du Puys, 1567). 75 De antiquo iure provinciarum libri Il (Venice: Giordano Ziletti, 1567-1568); and De lege curiata magistratuum et imperatorum ac iure eorum liber (Venice: Ziletti, 1569).

203

C H A P T E R THREE

Grouchy on each of a number of detailed points, something of the sort is attempted here only in relation to the text of Cicero's De lege agraria, where an emendation published by Denis Lambin in 1566 brought new light to a historical problem. Passing from the narrower focus of the history of scholarship to the wider one of intellectual history generally, Sigonio and Grouchy embody the problem of antiquarianism. Arnaldo Momigliano has illustrated the relations of antiquarians and historians in the Renaissance and after, and although he makes it plain that the former term was an honorable one in the sixteenth century, he does not entirely vindicate Sigonio and his contemporaries from the later opprobrious connotations it earned.76 The dispute between Sigonio and Grouchy is, in fact, an apposite example of the failure of antiquarian historiography to draw explicit conclusions of significance from the particulars which are so acutely studied. Sigonio knew (or felt) that the problem of the lex curiata had general significance, and said so, but was unable to articulate what it was. Witness the preface to De lege curiata liber of 1569: Of all the questions regarding any branch of polite letters which have engaged the intelligence of learned contemporaries, perhaps none is more inherently noble or of greater utility than that debated for some years now between myself and Nicolaus Gruchius, inasmuch as it concerns . . . a matter of the greatest importance not only for the study of antiquity, but for that of philosophy as well. Ostensibly we are arguing only about the ancient application of the lex curiata, but in fact we are discussing the constitutional role [ius] of the senate and the Roman people, of magistrates and military commanders, and the most difficult passages to be found in the best ancient writers. Nor are we bringing up once more a series of those well-worn themes of the schools which merely bore their listeners; rather we are exhibiting new subjects of argument, unfamiliar to the present age. For this reason those devoted to political philosophy [civilis disciplina] and not only devotees of Roman studies, can find here not a little utility, and even pleasure.77 76

Arnaldo Momigliano, "Ancient History and the Antiquarian," in Primo contribute), pp. 67-106 (first in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 13,1950). 77 "Ex omnibus quaestiombus, quae his temporibus doctorum hominum ingeniis excitatae in aliqua politiorum litterarum tractatione versantur, haud scio, an ulla alia aut genere ipso nobilior, aut usufructuosior sit, quam quae iamdiu inter me et Nicolaum Gruchium agitatur. Quippe quae sit. . . de re non solum in antiquitatis, sed etiam in philosophiae studio maxima. Nam verbo quidem de antiquo usu legis curiatae contendimus, at re vera de iure senatus, po-

204

ROMAN STUDIES —PART 2

It will be fitting to give a summary of Sigonio's side of the debate and then return to this preface and attempt to explain, as he himself could not, why it was worth the trouble to elucidate the lex curiata. At his first encounter with the problem of "double elections" and the text of De lege agraria as emended by Grouchy, Sigonio accepted only the emendation (a lectio facilior) "centuriata lex consulibus ferebatur"; but like Grouchy he assumed that in the last lines of De lege agraria 2.26 Cicero was describing both stages of a redoubled election procedure. "Centuriata lex consulibus ferebatur, cum curiata ceteris patriciis magistratibus" must refer to the first stage of the elections during the early fifth century, before there were elections in the tribal assembly. "Turn iterum de iisdem iudicabatur . . . " must mean a second full voting session in the centuriate assembly for consuls, and a second full voting session of the curiate assembly for the quaestors, the only other patrician magistrates of that period. The suggestion that the entire centuriate assembly had met and voted twice in succession was egregious but Sigonio made it more plausible by proposing that such a system of repeated votes by entire assemblies had been abbreviated through the introduction of the prerogative century, whose isolated vote represented the first stage; and that the summoning of the remaining multitude of voters represented the second. When the tribal assembly replaced the curiate one as an effective electoral assembly the same system was used, a prerogative tribe voting first and the others following. Hence the vote of an entire assembly, consisting of a prerogative bloc plus the rest, could be comprehensibly described as bina comitia. Sigonio outlined the reform of the centuriate assembly, emphasizing that after it had been effected enrollment in a tribe became the true criterion of Roman citizenship, since it was the basis of one's assignment to a voting century, but not attempting to solve the problem of the numerical total of voting centuries. Grouchy's treatment of this important institutional problem, albeit inconclusive, appeared exhaustive, and Sigonio, though he may have known privately of Ottavio Pantagato's hypothesis, contributed no views. But on a related point Sigonio was forced to oppose Grouchy: he did not accept that the use of a single prerogative century had been inpulique Romani, de iure magistratuum atque imperatorum, de obscurissimis probatissimorum scriptorum locis disputamus. Neque tritas iampridem in scholis quaestiones aliquot, cum eorum, qui audiant, fastidio retractamus, sed novas atque huic saeculo inauditas controversias edimus, unde non Romanarum solum rerum, sed rivilis etiam disciplina[e] studio dediti utilitatis atque adeo etiam voluptatis capere non minimum possint" (De lege curiata, preface, f. *2r-v, and repeated in editions of De ant. iur. prov. bk. 3).

205

C H A P T E R THREE

troduced in the general centuriate reform which occurred after 241 B.C., having located it much earlier (sometime soon after 500 B.C.) to explain the evolution of the bina comitia.78 The essential point about Sigonio's reconstruction of the Roman electoral assemblies is that it eliminated what Nicolas de Grouchy considered essential: the ratification and religious validation of the selection of those who would hold supreme power in the state. For Grouchy the lex curiata, the ineluctable second act, had this profound significance. But Sigonio did not believe in the need for ratification, by a curiate assembly representing (perhaps only ceremonially) the ancient city wards, of the choice of magistrates made in centuriate and tribal assemblies by citizens drawn from all of Roman Italy. Sigonio did not share Grouchy's instinctive feeling for the sacral continuity of Roman magistracy through the initiation of individuals into the permanent mystery of the auspices, and Grouchy did not share Sigonio's appreciation of the elasticity of Rome's city-state institutions, which were adapted to serve the needs of a Roman citizenship extended through Italy. Sigonio defended his interpretation of the supposed double elections to the end, as Grouchy did his, but it was a problem which they were incapable of resolving because they were both chasing a phantom invented by Cicero—an archaic system of voting twice in case the voters changed their minds—of which there was no trace in the historical record, for no valid election had ever been rescinded by a lex curiata or any other resolution of an assembly. Nevertheless Grouchy asserted that the ancient second choice was fossilized in the lex curiata, Sigonio that the ancient first choice was fossilized in the prerogative vote. Like all defective hypotheses, these lacked explanatory power. The only passage they could illuminate was the one from which they were formed (De lege agraria 2.26-7) and this circularity became increasingly apparent to both. Grouchy in the Refutatio of 1567 stated that the riddle of the bina comitia was unimportant compared to the problem of defining imperium.79 Yet neither would give way. Grouchy refused to adopt more reasonable standards of textual emendation, treating the text of De lege agraria as infinitely malleable in order to meet every objection of Sigonio.80 Despite this, his view that the reform of the centuriate assembly 78

De ant. iur. civ, Rom. 1.17 pp. 123-25 (1560); and cf. "Sigonio and Grouchy," Athenaeum 74, pp. 158-59. 79 Grouchy wrote that the problem of imperium "latius patet, et totam pene de binis comitiis quaestionem contmet" (Refutatio f. *4v). 80 "Idcirco Ciceronis locum omnino ita legendum esse ut a me legitur: Nam centuriata lex 206

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

had included the introduction of the prerogative century (and we have seen what importance he attached to it) was sound, and he was able to refute decisively Sigonio's persistent attempts to assign the introduction of the single prerogative century to a remoter period, attempts in which Sigonio tampered almost as boldly with the text of Livy as Grouchy had done with that of Cicero.81 In 1569, however, Sigonio was able to make a real advance in the understanding of Cicero's meaning, first by returning to the vulgate (with its lectio difficilior) "centuriata lex censoribus ferebatur, cum curiata ceteris patriciis magistratibus" and abandoning the presupposition that Cicero was speaking here of both parts of a double procedure.82 Sigonio then cited a new reading published by Denis Lambin in his 156566 edition of Cicero which confirmed this interpretation and which, essentially, gave to the passage its modern form. It is the initial cum,83 the presence of which transforms the syntax "cum . . . cum . . . turn" into a series of parallel temporal conjunctions expressing simultaneity and identifying two different modes in which the secondary law was carried: "nam cum centuriata lex censoribus ferebatur, cum curiata ceteris patriciis magistratibus, turn iterum de iisdem iudicabatur. . . ."84 consulibus ferebatur et ceteris patriciis magistratibus, tributa plebeis; turn curiata iterum. Aut vero si disphcet illud plebeiis accipi pro minoribus magistratibus, Iegatur tributa aliis. Aut denique si patriciorum magistratuum nomine nolimus hie solos intelhgi maiores magistrates, ut interdum apud Ciceronem accipi a me demonstratum est, sed omnino eos in quibus fuit patriciis locus, ad excludendos eos qui tantum plebi patuerunt, turn vero locum parva mutatione sic restituendum esse existimo: Nam centuriata lex aut tributa consulibus ferebatur ac ceteris patriciis magistratibus, turn curiata iterum de iisdem iudicabatur. Quae sane lectio multis fortasse haud temere magis arridebit" (Grouchy, Refutatio f. 87r, juggling with Qc. De leg ag. 2.26). 81 See McCuaig, "Sigonio and Grouchy," pp. 160-61. 82 De lege curiata, chap. 1, p. 10 (1569), and De antique iure provinciarum 3.1, p. 391 (1574). The point is implicit in what Sigonio says at these places. 83 De lege curiata chap. 2, p. 17 (1569), and De antique iure provinciarum 3.2, p. 394 (1574). Gting the new reading Sigonio tactfully does not identify the scholar who had published it, but cf. Qcero, Opera omnia, ed. Denis Lambin, t. 2, Oratwnes (Paris: Torresano, 1565), p. 295 (text) and p. 694 (n. ad loc). Lambin registers the controversy of Grouchy, Loredan, and Sigonio, and although he refuses to take part himself, endorses Sigonio and repudiates his compatriot, Grouchy. Apart from the good addition of cum to De leg. ag. 2.26 Lambin less happily adopts the easier reading consulibus for censoribus in this passage. Throughout his notes on this speech Lambin has high praise for Bernardino Loredan's edition of it—explicit recognition that the young epigone of the Venetian patrician humanist tradition, though not a professional scholar, had reached an international standard of excellence in his essay in humane letters. 84 "For, when the centunate law was passed for censors, and the cunate law for the other patrician magistrates, on that occasion a further judgment was made about them . . ." ( G c , De leg ag. 2.26, emphasis added). Cf. above, nn. 49, 51.

207

C H A P T E R THREE

Sigonio had never denied the existence of a lex curiata de imperio; indeed it was to be essential to his argument against Grouchy that throughout the republic military imperium was given to magistrates by such a bill apart from the electoral process, in order for them to command the army beyond the limits of the city. But now, having acknowledged in Cicero a distinct reference to a ratifying law, quasi-electoral in content, centuriate or curiate in form, Sigonio was driven to the uneconomical hypothesis that there had existed two different leges curiatae in Roman history, the first proposed and passed immediately following electoral assemblies, and asking the people to confirm the names of the persons whom they had elected to be magistrates. This lex curiata had existed only for a brief period in the archaic republic and had fallen into desuetude until speciously revived by Servilius Rullus in 63 B.C. as an ancient democratic right. It had, said Sigonio, no connection with the historical lex curiata de imperio.85 The auspices as a patrician survival had for Sigonio none of the potency which they had for Grouchy. They are accounted for, but have no weight in his more rationalizing reconstruction of Roman institutions. Sigonio accepted that although the tribal assembly might be suspended in the presence of thunder or lightning, it was held without the divine approbation obtained through prior auspication. But where Grouchy interpreted this as a radical lack of religious sanction, a dangerous autonomy, Sigonio simply viewed it as auspication of a different kind.86 He pointed out that "to have the auspices" meant the active possibility to use them, as all magistrates did in the unified patrician-plebeian state, rather than the passive reception of an archaic patrician charisma, which was the sense Grouchy gave to the phrase.87 The passage from Messala 85

De ant. mr. prov. 3.2, p. 393 (1574). The basic text for Sigonio on the auspices is De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.7, "De iure gentihtatis." This chapter has undergone some modification between the first version of 1560 (see pp. 60-61) and the later one of 1574 (p. 40). The earlier version is cursory and does not distinctly oppose the ideas of Grouchy. The later version does so, proposing that the observation of the heavens in order to detect thunder or lightning was a universal type of auspication which always applied to all assemblies. The observation of the flight of birds was a type of auspication which applied to centuriate and curiate assemblies, as the observation of feeding chicks was a type of auspication used on military campaigns. Both of these had been used exclusively by the patricians in the early period m which only they were magistrates, but plebeian magistrates had evidently acceded to them, and hence it was only in a reductive and chronologically limited sense that it could be said (as Grouchy repeatedly and prominently did) that the "plebeians had no auspices." 87 "Magistratum habere auspicia est ne comitiis auspicatis creari, an potius posse in comitiis auspican, id est de caelo servare, et sua nunciatione comma impedire? hoc certe. quia omnibus hoc magistratibus hcuit. . . . quia alio modo accipimus auspicia, cum dicimus magistratus 86

208

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

in which the augur refers to gradations of the auspices and of magistracy, and to a more complete communication of both achieved by the lex curiata, was given a reductive explanation by Sigonio which deprived it of all force or relevance to the historical period of the republic.88 The result is a profound difference of perspective between Sigonio and Grouchy, best revealed by what is absent in Sigonio. He treats the tribal assembly as an assembly like the others with its own role and technical areas of competence, ignoring Grouchy's belief that, free of auspication, and of influence and authority from the senate, it had remained an undigested revolutionary body. With this all Grouchy's apparatus of major-minor/patrician-plebeian magistrates tends to evaporate. Grouchy had, in Sigonio's eyes, been bemused by the election of quaestors and curule aediles, patrician magistrates in a purely antiquated sense, in the tribal assembly; and all the rest was excogitation.89 Sigonio's whole approach to Roman history was different to Grouchy's because it was based on the transformation of the archaic city into a new patricianplebeian state: a conception at which Grouchy never really arrived. The second area of debate between Sigonio and Grouchy is of course the meaning of imperium. In divorcing imperium as military command from the jurisdictional activity of the magistrate in the city, Sigonio wrote as a humanist historian, privileging the Roman republic and implicitly relegating the empire beyond the pale of consideration; hence he diverged from the broad road of the juristic tradition which went back to the Digest and which connected imperium to jurisdictio. Sigonio knew of the contemporary debate among the jurists about this connection, and allowed himself a brief and peripheral reference to it in 1567.90 That he and Grouchy were otherwise able to conduct an extended debate omnes habere auspicia, alio cum dicimus auspicatis eosdem comitiis declarari. Illo observationem de caelo intelhgimus, qua magistratus in omnibus comitiis usi sunt, ut Iupiter ne fulserit an tonuerit fulminaritve attendennt, hoc inspectionem avium, quam augures ad bina tamen comitia curiata et centuriata adhibuerunt" (Sigonio, Posterior disputatio f. 33r). 88 Above, n. 47. In order to account for Messalla, Sigonio supposed that there had been a brief period of transition in the fifth century during which the novelty of elections in the tribal assembly was not fully accepted, and curiate elections continued intermittently in use. Although he used the present tense Messalla was describing only this transitional period when he wrote that "mmoribus creandis magistratibus tnbutis comitiis magistratus, sed iustius curiata datur lege." See Sigonio, Posterior disputatio f. 22r (1566). 89 Sigonio hammers at Grouchy's edifice of categories in De ant. iur. prov. 3.1. His objection is really to Grouchy's approach to Roman history, though the sixteenth century had no ready way of expressing this thought. On the difficulty of discussing methodology in the sixteenth century, see the introduction to Grafton, Scaliger 1. 90 In De ant. iur. prov. 2.5, "De potestate praesidum," pp. 363,365-66 (1574); and cf. below, n. 150.

209

C H A P T E R THREE

on the question without referring to the juristic literature shows a clear demarcation between the disciplines of antiquarian history and jurisprudence. Sigonio preferred the technical term potestas for the powers of the magistrate vis-a-vis the citizen, and though he conceded that the normal coercive use of these could be called imperium, this did not weaken his contention that magistracy was not identical to coercion, much less to military command. Grouchy defended the view that imperium was universal and indivisible, pure power to coerce and command in the city as in the field. Grouchy's position was, in tendency at least, closer to that of the jurists than was Sigonio's, because in the codified law of the empire all imperium was concentrated in the hands of the princeps and delegated downwards as judicial entitlement from this single fount. For Sigonio the urban domain, magistracy, and jurisdiction formed a nexus to which the power of military command was extraneous except under an emergency provision.91 The text which makes his arguments against Grouchy comprehensible is his own De antiquo iure avium Romanorum 1.6, "De iure libertatis." There the third element of Roman liberty is, precisely, the protection against the arbitrary usage of the magistrates afforded by laws prohibiting capital and corporal punishment of citizens, creating the right of appeal to the assembly, and giving the tribunes the power to interrupt the official actions of the magistrate—rights incompatible with the exercise of military command. (Grouchy had cited the existence of these rights as proof that Rome had been a demokratia.) Sigonio had evidently adopted early in his career the view that Roman magistracy had to be understood in terms of Greek theory as the office of a citizen governing temporarily his fellow citizens (he never states this). In his discussion of magistracy in 1560 the denotation of the power thus exercised as potestas rather than imperium, and the emphasis on the judicial functions of the magistrates, make this very clear in a pragmatic way, without explicit resort to theoretical argument. The only theoretical problem raised is one already raised in the ancient sources, that of the status of the tribunes of the plebs. But on Sigonio's view, they cease to be a puzzle or a problem: they were magistrates with potestas, lacking the powers of coercion used by the consuls, but with spe91

The contrast is expressed in the opposition, accentuated by Sigonio, between the adverbs domi ( = "within the city") and militiae (= "m the field"). Emergency provisions included, in the earlier period of Roman history, the appointment of a dictator, and in the later period the senatus consultum ultimum, a resolution authorizing the consuls to guard the safety of the state by all means. 210

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

cial compensatory powers to intercede. The claim that they "had no auspices" was insignificant, for in relation to the assemblies they both wielded and were subject to the powers of interrupting proceedings which the auspices made possible. It was clear that for Sigonio tribunes of the plebs were to be considered integrated components of the hierarchy of magistracies with a differentiated role, and not the anomalous, autonomous representatives of a section which Grouchy considered them to be.92 During the course of his debate with Grouchy, Sigonio was forced to concede that the word imperium might be equivocal: when the magistrate emits an edict formulating the legal procedure to be followed during his term of office, or regulating administratively any matter, or when he uses his powers to summon and constrain, that is a higher type of potestas which may also properly be called imperium.93 It is not the essence of magistracy but the concomitant of his jurisdictional function.94 For the summation of his views in 1574 Sigonio, conceding this equivocation to Grouchy but nothing else, set out a more structured account of the civil activities of Roman magistrates. The first of these is ordinary social regulation accompanied by the minimal power of enforcing obedience—police powers. The second is jurisdiction, consisting in the power both to resolve questions of the interpretation of the law and to appoint a court for the trial of a case. The presidency of the senate and of the assemblies is the third component of magistracy and the tak92 Already in 1555, in his scholium to Livy 3.4.10, and in 1556 in the Fash commentary, in a digression on the office of the praetor (s.a. 387 AUC), Sigonio was insisting on the difference between magistracy and military imperium. De ant. iur. civ. Rom. (1560) 1.20, "De magistratibus," pp. 134-40, his first major statement of this, has been sharpened by his consideration of Grouchy's De comitiis Romanorum. Sigonio records and accepts the report of Zonaras 7.19 (above, n. 36) that from 449 B.C. tribunes of the plebs could resort to the auspices in assemblies, and that the auspices could also be used to block their actions. He also mentions the provisions of the lex Aelia in this sense (pp. 135-36). This chapter ends with the notice (p. 140) that Paolo Manuzio has promised to publish on the Roman magistrates, a promise not kept. 93 "Sic autem statuo, omnes magistratus et urbanos et provinciales civilem potestatem habuisse, verum alios maiorem, alios mmorem. quae minor fuit, earn praecipue potestatem dictam, quae maior, non potestatem solum sed interdum etiam imperium appellatam . . . atque hoc imperium ego dico fuisse eiusmodi, ut totum ius magistratus amplexum sit. quare neminem dictatorem, consulem, praetoremque fuisse, quin hanc potestatem, sive potius hoc imperium obtinuerit" (Sigonio, Posterior disputatio f. 25r-v). Mommsen gives a comparable account of the matter in SR 1.22-24,"Imperium und Potestas." For a different view, see Bleicken, "Zum Begnff der romischen Amtsgewalt," pp. 278ff. 94 "Quomodo plene ius dicet, si quis in ius vocatus non paruerit, neque prehendi potuent?" (De ant. iur. prov. 3.5, p. 402, 1574.) Coercitio is covered in the juristic literature; but for a different approach, see Wilfried Nippel, "Policing Rome," JRS 74,1984, pp. 20-29.

211

C H A P T E R THREE

ing of the auspices the fourth. Sigonio's brief account of the origin and development of the magistracies is rational and linear compared to Grouchy's: the first consuls were the heirs of the unlimited powers of the king, which at first were hedged only by the temporal limitation imposed upon the office, but later checked and split by the passage of the laws protecting liberty, and by the ramification of new magistracies with special areas of competence, praetors, censors, aediles. This account is entirely free of the apparatus of overlapping binary categories—major and minor, and patrician and plebeian, magistracies with greater or lesser auspices—which had made the structure of power in the Roman state intelligible to Grouchy.95 But the limitations set by Roman libertas to the power and discretion of the magistrate in the city, which were pertinent to the question and which would have given it precisely that vitality to which Sigonio laid claim, were barely introduced by him into the debate. This is a good example of what is unsatisfactory about antiquarianism, and it is difficult to explain why it should be so. The answer seems to be in part that Sigonio and Grouchy were forced by the drift of their debate to concentrate on defining the powers of those sent out from the city to wage campaigns and govern provinces rather than to discuss the powers of magistrates over the citizens in the city. Hence pertinent and interesting problems such as that of political obligation get bypassed. Sigonio conceived the lex curiata as a grant of military imperium to magistrates and as the constitutional link between magistracy and imperium in that, being a resolution of an auspicated assembly, it could only be given to someone already in control of the auspices, that is to a magistrate. In this way Sigonio gave due weight to the many ancient testimonia which speak of the lex curiata as being de imperio, while saving Cicero, who says that "the lex curiata remained only for the sake of the auspices."96 It was clear from the start that his views were quite opposite to those of Grouchy, for whom every magistrate was given a lex curiata as part of his election. For Grouchy an elected magistrate obtained ipso facto for a year all of the powers exercised within and without the city, and the imperium by which the citizen was arrested or 95 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. (1574) 1.20, "De magistratibus," and De ant. iur. prov. (1574) 3.5, "Quid sit magistratus." 96 De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.21, "De imperils"; De ant. iur. prov. 2.1, "Qui praesides provinciarum essent et quomodo legerentur"; De ant. iur. prov. 3.2, "De lege curiata magistratuum Sigonii opinio," and 3.6, "Quid sit imperium." (The citation from Cicero: De leg. ag. 2.27, above nn. 49, 50.)

212

R O M A N STUDIES —PART 2

summoned or directed to vote in the assembly was identical to that by which the legionary soldier was commanded. If after a year this power was prorogated, another lex curiata was given.97 Following his descent into the arena in the Posterior disputatio of 1566, Sigonio was careful to avoid polemic when he wrote De antiquo iure provinciarum (1567-68) in two books. Book 1 is a chronological history of the acquisition of the provinces, but to those who were interested it was clear that book 2 was an important contribution to his debate with Grouchy, it is an attempt to describe the course of a provincial governorship from the moment of the allocation of the consular and praetorian provinces by the senate to the return of the governor to Rome. Sigonio introduces the generic term of the imperial period (and the Digest), praeses, for governor and uses it retroactively for all of the consuls, proconsuls, praetors, and propraetors who governed provinces during the republic.98 A radical step is his declaration that all facets of provincial government can be sorted under the heads potestas and imperium; the attempt to prove that a provincial governor can be viewed either as a civic magistrate or military commander is obvious. By somewhat forcing common usage Sigonio is able to maintain this division throughout: thus the allocation of the provinces in Rome, jurisdiction in the province, and financial administration come under the rubric of potestas," while the granting of imperium, the ceremony of departure from Rome, the defense of the province, and the use of the auspices there come under the rubric of imperium.100 In De antiquo iure provinciarum book 3 (1574) the military imperium held by elected magistrates is reviewed again in three chapters, the tenor 97 "adeo ut non satis esset lex curiata omnium magistratuum communis . . . quae lata erat priusquam magistratum in urbe inire possent; sed rursus ferenda erat alia curiata ad continuandum eis in provincia imperium" (Grouchy, De comitiis 3,2, "De causis curiatorum comitiorum," f. 104r). Grouchy later drew back on this point, opining that only former magistrates who had returned to the status of privati in the interval required a fresh lex curiata for the renewal of their imperium [Refutatio ff. 34v-35r). 98 In a parenthesis Sigonio justifies this choice, pointing out the variation in usage of the terms proconsul and propraetor, which could also be applied to privati cum imperio; De ant. iur. prov, 2.1, pp. 339-40. See W. F. Jashemski, The Origins and History o/ the Proconsular and Propraetorian Imperium to TJ BC (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950); H. Kloft, Prorogation und ausserordentliche lmperien (1977); and R. T. Ridley, "The Extraordinary Commands of the Late Republic" (1981). 99 De ant. iur. prov. 2.1; 2.5, "De potestate praesidum et in primis de iurisdictione," and 2.8, "De potestate quaestorum." 100 De ant. iur. prov. 2.1; 2.4, "De profectione praesidum et quaestorum in provinciam," and 2.6, "De imperio praesidum, sive administratione rei mihtaris."

213

C H A P T E R THREE

of which is naturally that it is distinct from magistracy.101 The first argument which Sigonio adduces is based on the difference between electoral and legislative assemblies: the lex curiata de imperio is a bill [rogatio) carried in the name of a particular magistrate in a legislative assembly, while at electoral assemblies there is not a proper rogatio but an open question, "Quos vultis consules fieri?"102 Sigonio exaggerates the procedural difference involved. Grouchy had always held the more plausible view that every actio cum populo, including the putting of the electoral question, took the form of a rogatio.103 More generally Sigonio argues from the sequence of events which he envisions normally occurring when annual magistracy is combined with or prolonged as the governorship of a province. His synchronic description applies to the period after the official year began on 1 January.104 The magistrates entered office on that date in a ceremony on the Capitolium. Henceforth they exercised all of the functions in the city which had previously been described. The following stages are the allocation of provinces by sortition or agreement, then the passing of a lex curiata de imperio, finally the coming into effect of imperium in the departure ceremony which began on the Capitolium and concluded with the crossing of the pomerium, the sacred border of the city.105 Imperium was 101 De ant. iur. prov. 3.7, "An imperium in magistratu fuerit insitum," 3.8, "De imperio consulum qui in magistratu aut ex magistratu bellum gesserunt aut in provincias profecti sunt," 3.9, "De imperio praetorum qui m magistratu aut ex magistratu bellum gesserunt aut in provincias profecti sunt." The same material in its earlier redaction appears in chapters 6 and 7 of De lege curiata (1569). 102 De ant. iur. prov. 3.7, p. 406. 103 Grouchy, De comitiis, 1.4, f. 41r. 104 A complete treatise on the variation over the centuries of the date on which the consuls entered office is in Theodor Mommsen, Die romische Chronologie bis auf Caesar (Berlin: Weidmann, 1858), pp. 75ff. Sigonio wrote no similar treatise and his commentary on the Fasti does not record all the fluctuations of the earlier period (but see his scholium to Livy 9.8.1). For the later period, see his entries in the Fasti commentary for 531 AUC (222 B.C.), the date from which the consuls took office on 15 March, and 600 AUC (153 B.C.), the date from which they took office on 1 January. In the later Roman republic there was a considerable interval between the election of magistrates in summer or autumn and their entry into office on 1 January, and a similar interval between their entry into office and the commencement of the ancient civic calendar on 1 March; the lex curiata, which had become an empty formality, had apparently to be passed by the last date. Sigomo's account of the lex curiata is based on these arrangements. But in the archaic and earlier historical periods, when Rome was only a locally expanding power in Italy, the three events took place within a short space of time and the passage of the lex curiata must have seemed virtually a part of the election. This diachronic variation is likely to be the correct historical explanation for many of the points of interpretation disputed between Sigonio and Grouchy, but their approach was too static, and the historical data insufficiently elaborated when they wrote, for them to employ it. 105 De ant. iur. prov. 3.7, pp. 406-9.

214

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

given to higher magistrates, or to those who had reached the end of their year of magistracy, in the fully auspicated curiate assembly by a lex curiata. Sigonio came in the end to assert that this was a proper assembly of the Roman people and not a simulation performed by thirty lietors.106 The reason he took this position was that he wished to give greater independent importance to the lex curiata de imperio in order to buttress the view that imperium was different from magistracy. The first element of the magistrate's departure which he emphasized was the donning of the military cloak, the paludamentum, as an indication of the essentially military nature of provincial government. (Grouchy accepted that all magistrates leaving the city exchanged the toga for the paludamentum, but denied any significance in the fact. As magistrates they all had imperium; some went to disturbed provinces where they commanded legions in battle, others went to peaceful provinces where their administration had nothing military about it.107) Sigonio assembled the evidence for the change of constitutional status implied in formally crossing the city boundary: the governor made solemn vows on the Capitolium, exchanged the toga for the cloak, and advanced with his lictors, who likewise wore the cloak, to the pomerium where a crowd of citizens awaited them, drawn by the pomp of the occasion. Having crossed the boundary, the holder of imperium was bound not to recross it, but might remain in the vicinity of Rome. On the complex question of the relation between the auspices and military command [imperium auspiciumque) modern doctrine is that the departure ceremonies included a taking of the auspices by the departing magistrate in the city, that the auspices which he then carried out to war remained urban auspices, and that, as a legitimating bond between magistracy and imperium they were a constitutional barrier (ineffective in the end) against the destructive growth of extraordinary commands.108 It is assumed that only a magistrate who had received the lex curiata could undertake this act of auspication. But Sigonio and 106

Cf. above, n. 50, for Cicero's statement that the passing of the lex curiata had become a simulacrum performed by lictors, the attendants of magistrates (De leg. ag. 2.31). Sigonio is possibly the only scholar ever to have seriously doubted that this was true (De ant. iur. prov. 3.1, p. 390). 107 De ant. iur. prov. 2.4, "De profectione praesidum"; and Grouchy, Refutatio, ff. 59-64 (1567). For modern bibliography on the ceremony of departure from the city, and an appreciation of its impact in terms of mass psychology as distinct from juridical formality, see A. J. Marshall, "Symbols and Showmanship in Roman Public Life: The Fasces," Phoenix 38,1984, pp. 121-23. io8 cf "Sigonio and Grouchy," pp. 176-78 passim; and Versnel, Triumphus, ch. 8. 215

C H A P T E R THREE

Grouchy, throughout their debate, continued to discuss the auspices only in connection with the assemblies. In Sigonio's final summation, however, he does show in a few brief phrases that he had perceived some connection between the imperium given to magistrates by the lex curiata and the auspices of departure which were carried beyond the pomerium.109 But Carlo Sigonio did not have the modern view of the nexus of magistracy, imperium, and the auspices as a constitutional fabric rent by the extraordinary commands of Scipio Africanus and his successors. He believed that the people, meeting in the unauspicated tribal assembly, could override the senatorial allocation of provinces and the uncertainties of sortition by assigning to any magistrate command in a given province, and that the bill passed in the tribal assembly in this case gave imperium to that individual with no necessity for the further sanction of the lex curiata or the auspices.110 Sigonio believed, for instance, that this was the method by which Scipio Aemilianus received his two consular commands.111 The belief that the tribal assembly had this recognized alternative role is developed in the final chapters of De antiquo iure provinciarum book three. Sigonio identifies a class of "private citizens with imperium" (privati cum imperio) who were given military imperium while they were not magistrates, and in the two most famous cases, those of Scipio Africanus and Pompeius, before they had held any higher magistracies. Sigonio affirms from the start that imperium, when given apart from magistracy, was absolved from any connection with the urban auspices, which were in the care of elected magistrates of the people, and that it was naturally given in the tribal assembly rather than in the curiate one. These were truly "extraordinary commands"; Sigonio proposes to call such commanders imperatores to distinguish them from magistrates with imperium. He assumes that there was no constitutional difficulty about granting imperium to a person who was not a magistrate (a privatus) in the tribal assembly. As a private citizen the lex curiata would not be available to him in any case because he was not a magistrate, therefore had no participation in the auspices, therefore 109 "Haec autem auspicia accipiebantur a populo curiatis commis, cum legebantur imperatores; e Capitolio, cum paludati exituri erant. . ." [De ant. iur. prov. 3.6, p. 406). 110 This position was adopted in De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.21, "De imperils," in 1560 and defended throughout the dispute with Grouchy; see esp. De ant. iur. prov. 2.1, and bk. 3 passim. 111 De ant. iur. prov. 2.1, p. 336.

216

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

could not be given imperium in an auspicated assembly. Sigonio assumes that for governors who had not gone to a province at the end of their praetorship but returned to the status of privati in the interval, a plebiscite in the tribal assembly was necessary to endow them again with imperium.112 These views, which were all pure anathema to Grouchy, came easily and naturally to Sigonio as consequences of the importance which he had always given to the lex Hortensia, the measure which sealed the victory of the plebeians over the patricians. Dissatisfied with Grouchy's version of the history of provincial government, Sigonio attempted his own chronological reconstruction.113 Here his principal failure was not to appreciate the customary and unwritten feature of the Roman constitution which gave the senate the power to prorogate imperium as well as to choose the consular provinces annually. He assumed that it was authorized to carry out the latter task by an ancient law "which had been lost to memory,"114 and as for the former—one of the fundamental facts of Roman history—he did not recognize its existence. Imperium was always, he thought, given and prorogated in an assembly by the lex curiata or by a plebiscite in the fashion described above. Sigonio curiously misunderstood the lex Sempronia de provinciis passed by Gaius Gracchus in 123-22 B.C., a measure which detracted from the senate's real power by forcing it to choose which provinces would be consular before the elections and in ignorance of who the consuls would be, but described by Sigonio as a prosenatorial reaction to the commands of Scipio Aemilianus which restored to the senate its ancient right of choosing consular and praetorian provinces and removed from the assembly the power to prorogate imperium.115 This weak hypothesis was contradicted, as Sigonio himself was forced to note, by the subsequent career of Marius. But in pursuing the history of provincial imperium through the Sullan settlement and the post-SuIlan period Sigonio was able to amplify some points previously touched upon by Grouchy, as when he correctly assigned the restoration of the tribunician powers suspended by Sulla to 70, rather than, as in Grouchy, to 67 B.C. 116 112 De ant. iur. prov. 3.12, "De imperio eorum qui ex privatis in provincias missi sunt"; 3.13, "De imperio eorum qui ex privatis ad bella missi sunt"; 3.14, "An proconsules et propraetores, qui ex privatis ad bella missi sunt, ut cum imperio, sic cum magistratu fuerunt." 113 De ant. iur. prov. 2.1, 3.11, 3.12. 114 "cuius prorsus obliterata memoria est" (De ant. iur. prov. 2.1, p. 334). 115 De ant. iur. prov. 2.1, pp. 336-37. 116 Ci. McCuaig, "Sigonio and Grouchy," pp. 173-76.

217

CHAPTER THREE

Behind the debate between Sigonio and Grouchy lay two substantially differing conceptions of the nature of the Roman republic. For Grouchy the role of the assemblies as the ultimate instance in the state made Rome a demokratia—though in a highly abstract sense, for over against the sovereignty of the assemblies stood the primacy and powers of the magistrates. The imperium which gave its being to their office was unitary and indivisible—like the royal sovereignty of which a new and harder profile was emerging in sixteenth-century France. In addition the assemblies, the auspices, and the magistracies had a complicated internal gradation because of the adaptation of the patrician state to the intrusion of the plebeians, an incomplete adaptation for Grouchy, carried through against continuing patrician resistance and therefore a source of tension in the republic. This tension was exemplified in the role of the tribal assembly, for Grouchy the source of uncontrolled and unratified decrees which nevertheless bound the community. Like other sixteenth-century readers, Grouchy confounded the emancipation of the plebeian assembly from the rival and reciprocal claim to ratification which the patrician section of the senate was finally forced to surrender in 287 B.C., with the supposed emancipation of the plebeian assembly from senatorial influence tout court at an early date. Sigonio adhered to a personal version of the conventional view of the Roman republic as an example of the mixed constitution. But for him the republic was in some ways much more a practical demokratia than it was for Grouchy. An example is the tribal assembly, given by Sigonio inalienable powers of decision making which had in historical reality passed into the competence of the senate. Like Grouchy, but from a different perspective, Sigonio missed the real weight of the senate because the senate's role had never been codified in the empirical and customary Roman "constitution." Sigonio's approach can be described as more rational than Grouchy's: rational because the magico-religious power of the auspices, and even more the supposed patrician monopoly of them, are entirely etiolated in his Roman republic (imperium can be given without them in the tribal assembly), and rational because for him the assemblies and magistracies, integrated in a state which had absorbed the patrician-plebeian division, formed purely functional hierarchies. Rome knew social tensions; Sigonio had given the best available account of them. But Sigonio did not acknowledge the institutional tension in the structures of the state which Grouchy discerned. The line he drew between the magistrate who gave justice in the city and the commander who assumed imperium in the field was a consequence of the libertas of 218

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

the Roman citizens, a libertas like that of the city republics of Sigonio's native Italy. Returning to Sigonio's preface of 1569, an attempt might now be made to say why he believed that a new and trenchant debate about Roman institutions was automatically of relevance for intellectual and especially political culture. In Politics in the Ancient World M. I. Finley remarks that the Roman Empire falls outside the scope defined by the title of his book, since there were no more politics (meaning self government by free men in a city-state) at Rome after the end of the republic.117 The humanist tradition recognized this, though the recognition was sometimes, as in Sigonio's preface, so immediate to the writer that it was difficult to analyze or articulate. The opposition between Sigonio and Grouchy embraced a range of questions which at one end seem, and which came to seem to them, to be of an otiose kind (bina comitia) and at the other end of high importance (magistracy and imperium). But that is only valid as a first-order distinction, and on a second-order view, the one proposed here, to argue about the role of the assemblies in the city-state, even when the specific question was sometimes badly put, was to confront questions about citizenship and political institutions which linked the Roman world to Europe. A discussion of the republican assemblies and magistrates was a discussion of sovereignty and power from a perspective alien to that of the jurists because located in a political world in which the princeps had not yet appeared. But as humanists and antiquarianizing historians Sigonio and Grouchy were incapable of bringing this out, and it would take another kind of intellectual, a Franqois Bauduin or a Jean Bodin, to do so. Before turning to Sigonio and Bodin a few echoes of contemporary interest in the clash of Sigonio and Grouchy may be recorded. The note of Denis Lambin, published in 1565, has been mentioned above. Sigonio for his part canvassed his views to Latino Latini and Ottavio Pantagato in Rome in September 1566. Latini reported this to Agustin, confirming that Lambin's important emendation to De lege agraria 2.26 was corroborated in five Roman manuscripts, and stating that Pantagato advised the retention of the lectio difficilior, censoribus. Latini and Pantagato almost certainly helped Sigonio come to a better understanding of this text. As for its interpretation, Latini advanced the theory that election to magistracy had originally given no powers of any kind; ius, potestas, and imperium were all imparted by the lex curiata for as long as it was 117

M. I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World, pp. 52-53. 219

C H A P T E R THREE

passed by the full curiate assembly and not thirty lictors.118 Agustin replied in early November; he rightly doubted Sigonio's belief about the prerogative century, but on the central problem was quite unsound, proposing unsupported emendations to De lege agraria to no clear purpose.119 In 1576 there appeared at Paris a posthumous commentary on Cicero's De lege agraria by Adrien Turnebe.120 Though the scholar had died in 1565 his comments on 2.26 appear to date from a period anterior to the publication in 1558 of Bernardino Loredan's commentary on the same speech, and perhaps even to the publication of De comitiis Romanorum in 1555; or else to have been composed in deliberate oblivion of current scholarship. Turnebe reports but does not print in the text the reading "Nam cum centuriata lex . . . ," but his commentary, on this place at least,121 is otherwise without importance in light of the problems raised by Loredan, Sigonio, and Grouchy, and of the existence of much better and more advanced editions and commentaries by Loredan and Lambinus. The Romanorum antiquitates of Joannes Rosinus, which first appeared in 1583 and was later supplemented by an apparatus of testi118 Cf. the letter of Latini to Agustin of 9 September 1566 printed in Latini, Epistolae, coniecturae et observationes t.2 (1667), pp. 122-24 from an unidentified MS and with apparent errors of transcription and understanding ("Nullum" for "Rullum", i.e., Servihus Rullus, the tribune of the plebs who proposed the agrarian law of 63 B.C.). 119 Agustin to Latim, 3 November (no year, but 1566); published in Agustin, Opera omnia t. 8 (1774), pp. 505-6. 120 Adriani Turnebi commentani in M.T. Ciceronis orationes tres de lege agraria contra P. Servilium Rullum tribunum plebis (Pans: Benenatus, 1576). 121 The text of De leg. ag. 2.26-27 at p. 20, and Turnebus's commentary at pp. 58-59. The interest of Turnebus in the speeches of Cicero against the lex agraria goes back at least to 1553, when under the pseudonym of Leodegarius a Quercu (i.e., Leger Duchesne) he had published polemic Animadversiones (not seen) against the then-recent edition of the speeches with commentary by Petrus Ramus: M. Tullii Ciceronis de lege agraria orationes tres, Petri Rami praelectionibus illustratae (Pans: Grandinus, 1552, not seen). Ramus's edition and commentary were included in Praelectiones in Ciceronis orationes octo consulares (Basel: Perna, 1575), actually a memorial edition of the works of the martyred scholar containing much more material than the short title indicates (the edition seen). Ramus's competence in 1552 fell short of the standard then being set, or about to be set, in Roman studies, and as well as the attack from Turnebus he is treated very harshly throughout Loredan's commentary of 1558. His text of De leg. ag. 2.26-27 and commentary are at pp. 176-79 in the 1575 edition of Basel; Ramus's disquisition there on the Roman assemblies shows what progress Grouchy was to make in 1555. But it contains ideas about the state and religion which are characteristic in Grouchy as well, as that: the tribal assembly was the exclusive appanage of the plebs and their tribunes from 471 B.C.; and the curiate assembly existed to give indispensable religious sanction to a purely political decision. These ideas appear to have had peculiar force in France.

220

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

monia by Thomas Dempster, has been cited as the definitive reprise of the approach of Flavio Biondo after a century and more of specialized research.122 The use made of Sigonio in this compilation is in places extensive, and this is frequently acknowledged by its candid author, who says at one point that if Sigonio should ever chance to see the volume, it is to be hoped that he will pardon and approve the borrowing.123 Rosinus's book 1, for example, on citizenship and social categorization, is heavily indebted to De antiquo iure avium Romanorum. For book 6, on the assemblies, he announces that he has followed Grouchy throughout except on points of difference with Sigonio, and indeed it is Sigonio's views—to the letter—on imperium, lex curiata, and bina comitia which are adopted.124 In book 7, on magistrates, Sigonio is followed on all the controverted questions having to do with promagistracy.125 The Annates Romanorum of Pighius are, like the volume of Rosinus, a summa of the antiquarian science of the sixteenth century, and the great scholar of Kampen and Brussels accepted Sigonio's side of the debate with Grouchy as unreservedly as Rosinus had.126 The unanimity of these two is impressive testimony to Sigonio's fortune and to the authority which attached to his work in Europe. But with the jurists the case becomes more problematical. One of the earliest witnesses to the northern reception of Sigonio's works of 1560 was Frangois Bauduin's De institutione historiae universae (1561).127 Si122 Cf. A. Mazzocco, "Some Philological Aspects of Biondo Flavio's Roma triumphans" (1979), esp. p. 14. 123 Cf. the edition prepared by Dempster, Antiquitatum Romanarum corpus absolutissimum (Paris: Le Bouc, 1613), pref. to bk. 9, De iudiciis, p. 687. 124 Rosinus, Antiquitatum Romanarum corpus, pref. to bk. 6 and esp. chaps. 6.3, 6.14, including the following: "quemadmodum supra ex Sigonio docuimus, obsoletis postea curiatis comitiis, factum est Ut praerogativae et iurevocatorum suffragia pro binis comitiis haberentur" (6.14, p. 506). 125 Rosinus, Antiquitatum Romanarum corpus, esp. 7.42, "De proconsulibus," 7.43, "De praetoribus provincialibus," 7.44, "De legatis proconsulum et propraetorum." 126 Stephanus Vinandus Pighius, Annates Romanorum (1599-1615). For Pighius on the problems of the present section, see esp. "De proconsulatus, propraeturae et provinciaram origine" (1: 108-10), including this passage: "Mandabatur autem imperium his dumtaxat magistratibus, dictatori videlicet, consuli, ac praetori. Neque simul statim cum magistratu, sed cum res postularet, neque iisdem comitiis, sed magistrates primum centuriatis, deinde decreta provincia, imperium curiatis plerumque, vel privato tributis, aut senatus consulto. Quemadmodum ex Livio et Cicerone pulchre de civium iure probat Sigonius, ad quern hums argument! studiosum lectorem remitto . . ." (p. 109). 127 Fra^ois Baudum (Balduinus), De institutione historiae universae et eius cum iurisprudentiae coniunctione, prolegomenon libri Il (Paris: Andreas Wechel, 1561), pp. 111-12. On this book, see Julian H. Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Sixteenth-century Revolution in the

221

C H A P T E R THREE

gonio, he said, by revealing the Roman republic to us more clearly than before, sets it at greater distance from modern Europe, given that much of its legal structure is not more applicable to European life than is Roman religious practice. A knowledge of Roman history would be an asset for jurists, just as many literati could deepen their understanding of Latin literature through a knowledge of ancient law, for jurisprudence is important in the Roman republic, but the passage from republican culture to the civilization of the Caesars is characterized by a vast development of legality. The welcome extended by Bauduin to Sigonio's work was not forthcoming from Frangois Hotman, who first established his competence in republican history early in the 1550s. In 1558, as his contribution to the new wave of Roman studies, he published a handbook that distinctively combined Roman history and jurisprudence, the Commentarius verborum iuris, revised and polished in 1563 as Novus commentarius.128 The main section of this opus is organized on the dictionary principle and includes information on Roman history and the history of Roman law down to the sixteenth century; among the appendices are his list of Roman laws, first published in 1557, and articles on the Roman magistrates and the senate. There is also an excellent epitome of Grouchy's De comitiis129 and translations from book 6 of Polybius, the main ancient source for the Roman constitution. Hotman affirmed, what Sigonio had denied, that gentilitas was, and remained, "ius, quod inter se patritii habebant";130 and that consequently the terms nobilis and novus had no application to the patricians, whose primordial nobility was unaffected by the rise of the plebs: nobilis or novus, said Hotman, the distinction could only apply to a plebeian.131 Here of course the opposition to SiMethodology of Law and History, pp. 36, 44-45; D. R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship, pp. 129-36; and J. Moreau-Reibel, Jean Bodin et Ie droit publique comparae, pp. 36-38. 128 1st ed.: Basel: Episcopius, 1558 (not seen), 2d ed.: Novus commentarius de verbis iuris francisci Hotomani, antiquitatum Romanarum elementis amplificatus (Basel: Episcopius, 1563; Venice: N. Bevilacqua, 1564 [edition seen]). 129 This epitome was prepared by Grouchy himself according to Grouchy and Travers, Etude sur Nicolas de Grouchy, p. 134. 130 Hotman, Novus commentarius de verbis iuris, s.v. Gens, p. 119 (1564). 131 Hotman, Novus commentarius, s.v. Patritii: "Non iidem sunt qui nobiles, ut vulgo creditur. Nobiles enim omnes sunt ex plebeiis, ut modo demonstrabimus. Nam populus Romanus ita distinguitur, ut alii patritii essent, alu plebei. Patritii, qui eorum senatorum progenies erant, quos Romulus crearat. . . tales erant Clodius, Piso, Catilina. Plebei vero qui ex populo a Romuleis senatoribus rehquo dimanarunt, ut C. Antonius, C. Cassius, M. Cicero, T. Pomponius Atticus. Horum plebeiorum alii nobiles, alu vero novi homines dicebantur. Nobiles, quorum

222

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

gonio, who is not however named, is fundamental, for Hotman asserts in effect that the contest of the patricians and plebeians had never been transcended as Sigonio believed, by the coalition of a new political elite, combining both, at Rome. Hotman's views are allied to Grouchy's in all respects. Hotman's articles on magistratus and imperium ignore Sigonio and offer a jurist's analysis of merum and mixtum imperium;131 but since the relevant titles of the Digest portray the institutions of the pacific centuries and provinces of the high Roman Empire, and discuss imperium only in relation to the fully developed Roman jurisdiction of that period, Hotman automatically describes Roman magistracy in a way favorable to Grouchy, ignoring the difference (remote from the world of the Digest) between the powers of elected magistrates over citizens in a city-state and their powers as commanders of the citizen army. In 1575 Hotman addressed directly the debate between Sigonio and Grouchy in one of his miscellaneous Observationes, adducing a passage from the Digest (D. 1.2.2) which emphasizes the origin in the Romulean foundation of the curiate assembly, and going on to confirm point for point Grouchy's arguments and to refute those of Sigonio.133 Overall, then, Sigonio's reception was highly favorable among the humanists and antiquarians of the later sixteenth century and more qualified among the jurists. But there was one basic tenet of Sigonio, that of the mixture of constitutional elements at Rome, which even the antiquarian Rosinus threw over in favor of the recent heresy which portrayed the Roman republic as fundamentally a demokratia. Rosinus misses the priority of Grouchy and cites as the proponent of this view a new and challenging intellectual figure, the jurist Jean Bodin.134 parentes curuli aliquo magistratu erant fundi. Novi, qui primi ex sua stirpe magistratum curulem erant adepti" (p. 198). Remarks: the names listed are those of persons from the Ciceronian age—Hotman's way of saying that the patrician-plebeian division was as valid then as it had been at the Romulean foundation. For the analogous ideas of Hotman and others on the social and racial strata of their own country, see chaps. 1-7 of Devyver, Le sang epuri (1973). 132 Hotman, Novus commentarius, s.v. Imperium, p. 128. 133 Francpis Hotman, Observationum liber 1111 (Basel: Episcopius, 1575), no. 33, "Ad controversiam doctissimorum hominum Gruchn et Sigonii, de comitiis cunatis" (pp. 61-67). In Observationum et emendationum in ius civile libri XlIl in Hotman's Opera omnia (Lyon: Vignon and Stoer, 1599), t. 1, the same text appears as no. 5.11 instead of 4.33. 134 "Sed Joannes Bodinus contra multis rationibus probare mtitur, toto illo liberae reipubhcae, praecipue Polybii et post Ciceronis, Dionysii tempore, democratiam politiae formam viguisse; in cuius viri sententiam me quoque gravissimis adductum argumentis pedibus ire non diffiteor" (Rosinus, Antiquitatum Romanarum corpus 7.1, "De generibus politiarum," p. 526).

223

CHAPTER THREE B O D I N AND A F T E R

As a sort of appendix to these chapters on Sigonio and Roman studies in the sixteenth century, in which emphasis has been placed on the resonances between the social history of Sigonio's own contemporary world and that of the Roman republic, a brief review will here be offered of some aspects of his fortune in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and even the early eighteenth centuries. This review begins with Jean Bodin and Charles Loyseau, both French jurists and authors of important systematic works of political and social theory. Bodin and Loyseau were attentive readers of Sigonio. There follows a discussion of a series of obscure and little-known books, a foray into the ideological undergrowth of the European ancien regime; the decision to read and write about them perhaps requires a word of justification. The treatises taken into consideration all deal with the problem of nobility, and two of them specifically with the problem of patrician nobility. They are an alternative to the perhaps more obvious choice, which would have been to study the later historiography of the Roman republic. Why then an examination, and a rapid one at that, of Johannes Jacobus Draco's De origine et iure patriciorum (1627) and Ottaviano Gentili's De patriciorum origine, varietate, praestantia et iuribus (1736) ? Are they any more than rarities from "the charnel-house of dead literature"? In the first place, an exhaustive account of Sigonio's fortune might well require another monograph based on omnicomprehensive erudition, given the wide diffusion and consultation of his works in learned Europe. Sigonio had something to say on most aspects of Roman history, and an account of what later Roman historians thought about each of them would amount to a general history of Roman studies—something beyond contemplation. The line of inquiry proposed here is on its own terms fairly compact and coherent. The last of the writers studied, Ottaviano Gentili, reviewing previous literature on patriciates, considered that the important contributions had come from precisely those who have been or will be protagonists of these pages, beginning with Carlo Sigonio and Nicolas de Grouchy. Third, an attempt was made above to prepare the ground for an account of Sigonio's contribution to Roman studies by reviewing, not previous writings on Roman history, but previous and contemporary ideas on nobility and society; and it has seemed reasonable to pursue this line of inquiry into the centuries after his death. The aim in this is partly to 224

ROMAN STUDIES —PART 2

demonstrate the variety of reasons which determined the fact that, in the Renaissance and after, Roman history was considered a topic of relevance in European life. The fourth reason for making this foray instead of another is to offer a local contribution to cultural periodization by giving a concrete example of the end of the Renaissance and of its afterlife. It has been postulated throughout that Sigonio was one of the last great Italian Renaissance humanists (Pier Vettori was the other), and the postulate has been defended by illustrating his devotion to the republican ethos. An example of the way in which he was increasingly out of phase with his time is the fact that he had no apparent interest at all in Tacitus, preferring Cicero and Livy during years in which the trend of intellectual fashion had turned in favor of the author who described life in Rome under the Julio-Claudian princes. Sigonio's account of the evolution of social strata in Roman republican history, the most markedly interpretative element of his work, was determined by the values of Renaissance humanism. In this he was the spiritual heir of Petrarca, Salutati, and Bruni, and the civic values he endorsed in the Roman republic were anachronistic in light of the affirmation of national patrimonial kingdoms in western Europe and the domination of an international dynastic empire, that of the Hapsburgs, in Italy, accompanied by widespread social closure. To show how his interpretation was accommodated or rejected by a handful of representative late- and post-Renaissance writers will therefore be the aim of what follows. Nicolas de Grouchy's Refutatio of 1567 was dedicated, like other and more famous compositions such as Frangois Hotman's Antitribonianus of the same year, to Michel de !'Hospital, and in it he referred readers to "Jean Bodin and other jurisconsults" for further investigation of juridical issues he had raised.135 This is oblique acknowledgment of the appearance the year before of the Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, a work in which Grouchy's own thesis that the Roman republic had been essentially a demokratia was taken over and developed, and in which a systematic attempt was made to overturn the very principles of Grouchy's opponent, Sigonio.136 Book 6 of the Methodus, "De statu 135 " j j t e n j m doctissimo viro Ioanni Bodmo ceterisque iurisconsultis hanc tecum dirimendam controversiam rehnquam" (Grouchy, Refutatio, f. 5v). Grouchy addresses Sigonio in the second person and refers to their dispute over the meaning of the term mdidum. 136 1st ed.: Paris: Martin Iuvenis, 1566; 2d ed.: Paris: Iuvenis, 1572. Passages in which Bodin refers to Sigonio are not altered in the second edition. 1572 is the text followed in Jean

225

C H A P T E R THREE

rerumpublicarum," is articulated in four sections. In the first, Aristotelian political theory in regard to citizenship, constitutions, power, and magistracy is criticized; in the second there is a discussion of the three classic forms, monarchy, aristocracy, and demokratia; the third contains theoretical and practical analyses of political change; and the fourth illustrates and defends monarchy as the optimal constitution. Only the first of these sections will be briefly examined here. Bodin held that Aristotle's definition of the citizen as an individual capable of judging his fellow citizens, of voting in the assembly, and of serving as magistrate, was applicable only in the Athenian demokratia and that it had no universal validity.137 In result Sigonio is arraigned among the political writers deceived by the Aristotelian Politics into applying these criteria to a polity—Rome—characterized within by extensive social stratification and externally by sovereignty over groups whose subjection was conditioned by widely varying statutes.138 Bodin's Bodin, Oeuvres philosophiques, ed. Pierre Mesnard (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951), which I cite, though it is not even modernized for punctuation (I modernize) and reproduces from the copy text, or introduces, many literal errors. Bibhograpy on the Methodus: Jean Moreau-Reibel, Jean Bodin et Ie droit public compare dans ses rapports avec la philosophic de I'histoire (1933); John L. Brown, The Methodus ad Facilem Historiarum Cognitionem of Jean Bodin (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1939); Vittorio De Caprariis, Propaganda e pensiero politico in Francia durante Ie guerre di rehgione (1559-1572) (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1959), pp. 211-14, 318ff.; Julian H. Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Sixteenth-century Revolution in the Methodology of Law and History (1963); Horst Denzer, ed., Jean Bodin, Verhandlungen der internationalen Bodin Tagung in Miinchen (1973); Vittor Ivo Comparato, "La teoria del magistrato nella Methodus di Jean Bodin," in Per Federico Chabod (1901-1960). I, Lo stato e il potere nel Rinascimento, Perugia, Annali della Facolta di scienze politiche 17,1980-81, pp. 197-209. 137 See Methodus, the section "Quid civis," pp. 167B-173A, and especially the following passage: "Civem definit Aristoteles judiciorum, magistratus et consilu capiendi potestate, quam definitionem populari tantum imperio convenire fatetur. Sed cum definitio debeat esse universorum, nullus Anstotelis judicio civis erit, nisi natus Athenis, et eo tempore quo Pericles" (p. 167B). 138 "Quid igitur fiet Imperatori Antonino, qui omnes homines liberos monarchiae Romanae finibus comprehensos promulgata lege ewes Romanos esse iussit? Nam si Aristoteli credimus, peregnni fuerunt, sublata populari potestate. . . . Atque haec Aristotelis sententia Contarenum, Sigonium, Garimbertum ac plerosque alios impulit in errorem" (Bodin, Methodus, p. 167B). In reference to Roman Italy: "Itaque cives quidem fuerunt eiusdem reipubhcae, non tamen eiusdem civitatis. Sic igitur interpretari debemus legem Juliam, qua Romani bello sociali civitatem omnibus sociis communicarunt: non quod antea cives non essent, cum omnes iisdem imperils tenerentur, sed ab honorum petitione arcebantur" (p. 170A). On Roman social stratification, in deliberate defiance of Sigonio's model: "Romae quidem in iisdem moenibus fuerunt patricii, equites, plebei" (p. 170B). "Omnes ubique iure, legibus, muneribus, suffragus, honoribus, privilegiis, conditione, immunitate aut re quapiam a se invicem divisi; omnes tamen sunt reipublicae cives, veluti membra corporis eiusdem" (p. 171A). "Ex quibus perspicuum fit, definitionem civis ab Aristotele invectam Contareno, Sigonio, Garimberto, Sodermo 226

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

criticism of the application of Aristotelian political theory to Roman reality is cogent; but Bodin isolates this aspect and tacitly ignores the complex framework of Roman society and citizenship to which Sigonio had adapted Aristotle. That Sigonio had recognized the practical limitation of candidacy for Roman magistracy to citizens in the equestrian order is never admitted; nor is his treatment, standard then and for centuries, of the gradation of Roman citizenship among the Latin and Italic peoples of Italy, acknowledged. The real importance of Sigonio's use of the Aristotelian criterion of capacity for magistracy is the illustration it permits of the passage in historical time from a patrician to a patricianplebeian state. This Bodin never discusses. When Bodin first turns his attention to the problem which, from various angles, was always central for him, the definition of public power, the immense gulf between his approach to historical problems and that of Sigonio (and Grouchy) becomes evident. He defines the magistrate as the holder of a portion of public power, and the highest magistrates as the holders of the highest applications of public power short of pure sovereignty; but he gives a jurist's version of the internal hierarchy of Roman magistracies, from which it results that aediles, quaestors, and even tribunes of the plebs were all holders of imperium.139 As in Grouchy the latter is a universal and nonspecific term for public power. Bodin makes very free use of a method of atemporal comparison between ancient and modern institutions, and it would be wrong to condemn him for failing to be a humanist historian. But his method has a high cost— in this case the loss of all the historical specificity of an ancient citizen republic in which the relation of the magistrate to the citizen in the city was fundamentally different from the relation of the same magistrate to the same citizen under arms. Sigonio's juridically unsophisticated but historically sound portrait of Roman magistrates as citizens elected at frequent intervals by the assembly to perform a heterogeneous set of judicial, presidential, and religious functions within a political community vanishes from Bodin's writings because it was irrelevant to the theoretical construction of a modern type of sovereignty suitable to France. In the Methodus the sovereignty which Bodin was attempting to conprobatam, consistere nullo modo posse" (pp. 171B-172A; the last reference is not to an author but to the speech of Paolo Antonio Soderim in Guicriardini, Storia d'ltaha 2.2). Onofrio Panvinio had correctly attributed the Constitutio Antomniana which extended Roman citizenship throughout the empire to Caracalla, but Bodin insisted, in the passage quoted here and elsewhere, that it had been promulgated by Antoninus Pius. 139 "Quid magistrates," in Bodin, Methodus, pp. 173A-174B, attacking Sigonio repeatedly and explicitly.

227

C H A P T E R THREE

figure is called summum imperium (in De republica, maiestas). As is well known he considered it an indivisible power whose highest expression was the appointment of magistrates (but in De republica, legislation) and which, being indivisible, could only be held by a monarch, by optimates, or by the people, but never divided or distributed among these three.140 The holder of sovereignty was princeps in the political order in question. For the purpose of demonstrating that in demokratia the princeps is the populus, Bodin took up the question posed in the Digest, put again to Lothario and Azo and renewed by Alciato: In what sense do magistrates endowed by the princeps with merum imperium possess the independent exercise of it? Bodin proposes that Lothario might be reconciled with Azo by discriminating between two different forms in which the law was administered at Rome.141 He calls these legis actio and officium iudicis. In modern terms the first is that of the jury courts of the city, in which those who presided were magistrates or exmagistrates, but had no real power to determine either verdict (given by the jury) or sentence (prescribed by the relevant legislation). Such a magistrate had no mandate of merum imperium or ius gladii (to use the terms, anachronistic for the republic, of the Digest), but merely the power, not further transmissible by him, of executing the legis actio or stipulated legal procedure. The second is the new criminal justice of the principate and empire, in which the emperor, his delegates, and the consuls began to exercise cognitio extraordinaria, a capital jurisdiction free of appeal and with the power to investigate, to try cases from beginning to conclusion without handing the matter over to a jury, and to vary the penalties imposed according to the demands of equity. Similar powers were later generally extended to the provincial governors of the Roman Empire. The origins of this process are somewhat obscure; the powers given are those denoted merum imperium or ius gladii by the jurists.142 Papinian emphasizes that these powers were always conferred expressly by ad hoc legislation or quasi-legislative acts of the senate or princeps ("quaecumque 140

"Quid summum imperium," in Bodin, Methodus, pp. 174B-177B. Pp. 174-75. 142 Cf. A.H.M. Jones, The Criminal Courts of the Roman Republic and Empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), chap. 3, "The Criminal Courts of the Principate"; H. F. Jolowicz, Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), chaps. 18, 23; and in Italian, standard manuals by, among others, P. De Francisci, G. Grosso, and V. Arangio-Ruiz. Attention ought perhaps to be drawn as well to Riccardo Orestano, "La 'cognitio extra ordinem': una chimera?" Studia et documenta historiae et iuris 46, 1980, pp. 236-47 for an investigation of the use of the term. 141

228

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

specialiter lege vel senatusconsulto vel constitutione principum tribuuntur . . .") and that for this reason they remained with the magistrate who had received them and could not be further mandated by him to the legates who assisted him in his province. But to these legates the magistrate could and did mandate simple jurisdiction because it inhered in his office and had not been conceded to him by a law (/ex).143 In the Methodus, however, Bodin assumes that the "law" in question is not the specific and circumscribed category of imperial legislation to which Papinian does in fact refer, but law in the abstract sense, the codification of norms and penalties, legis actio.144 He further assumes that the dichotomy between such automatic application of the letter of the law, and discretionary deviation from it according to the demands of equity, had been present from the beginnings of Roman history, rather than being a historical sequence resulting from the transformation of the republic into a principate. For Bodin the principate had always existed. The Roman republic was the principate of the populus, from which the law had emanated, just as the later monarchical principates of the Roman Empire and of modern France were emanators of legislation. Bodin thus obtains his end: the demonstration, even in the Roman demokratia, of the contrast between the compliance of the magistrates to the will of the sovereign on one hand, and their exercise of independent powers qua office-holders on the other. Examples of the first are the president of a jury court, whose necessary execution of the letter of the law reduces him in Bodin's view, to virtually mechanical status; and consuls and other commanders who prosecute wars declared by the popular assemblies. Examples of the exercise of autonomy are the praetor's 143

"Quaecumque specialiter lege vel senatus consulto vel constitutione principum tribuuntur, mandata iurisdictione non transferuntur: quae vero iure magistratus competunt, mandari possunt. . . . Qui mandatam iurisdictionem suscepit, propnum nihil habet, sed ems qui mandavit iurisdictione utitur. verms est enim more maiorum iurisdictionem quidem transferri, sed merum imperium quod lege datur non posse transire" (Papinian, D. 1.21.1, "De officio eius, cui mandata est iurisdictio"). 144 "Esse duo capita iuris universi, legem et aequiratem, a quibus pendet legis actio et magistratus officium; et quae ratio legis est ad eius actionem, eadem est aequitatis ad officium magistratus. Hoc igitur Papinianus, hoc Ulpianus, hoc veteres ilh jurisconsulti voluerunt: quaecunque lege tribuuntur, ea magistratum alteri committere non posse, sed nudam duntaxat habere legis actionem, ac propterea non tarn ems esse propria quam legis ipsius. Quae vero eius aequitati permittuntur, ea pro suo iure alteri committere posse" (Bodin, Methodus, p. 175B). Late revision of the text of the present work allows mention of A. London Fell, Origins of Legislative Sovereignty and the Legislative State, vol. 3, Bodin's Humanistic Legal System and Rejection of Medieval Political Theology (Boston: Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Hain, 1987); cf. chap. 6 on legis actio and related matters. 229

C H A P T E R THREE

edict, cognitio extraordinaria in capital cases, and the tactical and disciplinary decisions of the consul in the field.145 The mixed constitution of the Roman republic was a myth for Bodin: it had always been a popularis status.1*6 The consuls, reputedly the representatives of regal power, were in fact agents of a sovereign princeps in the same sense that the later praetorian prefects were, and the supposedly aristocratic senate was likewise no more than an emanation of the popular assemblies. At the apex of the Roman republic stood the populus and the plebs, and the locus of sovereignty was defined in the confrontation between them. Before 287 B.C. sovereignty had lain with the populus, and the plebs had been the penultimate instance, an arrangement which Bodin was prepared to consider legitimate within the terms of a popular state. But the sovereignty of the populus was usurped when the resolutions of the plebeian assembly were given binding force, and it is on this ground that Bodin viewed the lex Hortensia as the abusive measure which brought ruin to the republic: a transfer of the attributes of sovereignty to the lowest elements of society.147 And it was in these conditions that the tribunes of the plebs became in Bodin's eyes the most powerful actors in the state, superior even to the consuls.148 In the portion of book 6 of the Methodus which has here been briefly reviewed Sigonio is repeatedly cited, together with Machiavelli, Gasparo Contarini, and others, as a representative of the political philosophy which Bodin opposed. Even where he is not named, the opposition to his views is explicit, as in Bodin's deprecation of the lex Hortensia, the measure which for Sigonio signalled the creation of a genuine citizen republic by integrating the plebs fully into the Roman constitution. The presence of Grouchy in Bodin is harder to pinpoint, for Bodin was a writer 145

Cf. Bodin, Methodus, p. 176A. Cf. Bodin, Methodus, p. 177A. 147 "Status Romanoram," Methodus, pp. 177B-180A passim. Two passages are noteworthy. The first: "Fuerunt igitur in magistratibus magna impena, sed tamen moderata; in senatu maior quam in magistratibus auctoritas; in plebe maxima potestas. Sed ipsius reipublicae maiestatem et summum imperium m populo fuisse, nemini dubium est in earn rem penitus intuenti." And the second: "quousque Dictator Q. Hortensius eamdem legem anno post quinquagesimo ad populum ferret. Atque hmc imperii Romani labes, quod plebi, hoc est infimae multitudini, permissum sit legem iubere qua perinde tenerentur cives, ac si populus ipse iussisset." [Methodus, p. 179A.) When first published in 1566, these passages implicitly undermined and refuted the then-current model of Roman history presented in Sigonio's De antiquo iure avium Romanorum of 1560, in which a high degree of vertical differentiation within the Roman plebs was shown, and the lex Hortensia was acclaimed as the measure which crowned the conquest of the citizen community by the plebeians. 148 Bodin, Methodus, p. 179B; again, a frontal attack on Sigonio. 146

230

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

more ready to identify the positions against which he reacted than those with which he had an objective affinity.149 And the objective affinity between De comitiis Romanorum, the work in which Roman demokratia was identified and analyzed, and book 6 of the Methodus, cannot be doubted. Sigonio's De provinciis (1567) and De lege curiata (1569) appeared without taking any notice of Bodin. Still, Sigonio may have read the Methodus (though it does not appear in the posthumous inventory of his library) or discussed its contents with Pinelli or with French students in his university. He revealed briefly in 1567 that he was aware of the controversy about mandated imperium,150 and the advances then being made in the historical reconstruction of Roman law by the French school of legal humanists cannot have failed to stimulate him. Sigonio made the decision to crown his own work on the Roman republic with an account of the judicial system which figures so largely in the corpus of Roman literature; this, he evidently felt, would give De antiquo iure populi Romani something like completeness. The result was his De iudiciis of 1574, Sigonio's farewell to Roman studies. The preface follows the French school in criticizing the codification effected by Justinian's commissioners for the distortion and loss which it caused of earlier records of Roman civilization. His own reconstruction is based on republican literary and epigraphic sources (the principal example of the latter is, of course, the recovery law from the Tabula Bembina), and De iudiciis is therefore the contribution of a humanist historian, not that of a jurist. It embraces private law in book 1, the jury court system in book 2, and capital trials in the assembly in book 3. Most of this work is uncontroversial, but Sigonio in one place seeks 149 The main points of similarity between Grouchy and Bodin in contrast to Sigonio are the identical view they held of Rome as generieally a demokratia because of the sovereignty of the assemblies (of which the supposed demokratia exercised through the plebeian assembly was the extreme case) and of public power (imperium) as a universal whose nature did not change in the passage from the city to the military zone. 150 Sigonio, De ant. iur. prov. 2.5, "De potestate praesidum," pp. 365-66. Sigonio prints the text of D. 1.21.1 (Papiman), and describes it as a crux for jurisconsults ("quern locum iurisconsultos torquere plerosque audio"). This is a reference to the past and current debate covered by Gilmore in Arguments from Roman Law in Political Thought (above, nn. 4-8). Sigonio himself proposes that provincial governors normally mandated to their legates only private jurisdiction, meaning the right to hear civil cases. Sigonio's term for criminal jurisdiction is the word normally translated as "jury court," auaestio ("publicarum causarum cognitio"). He contended that the same penal legislation which established the great standing courts of the city was also applied in the provinces, where only the governor could preside—unless the law governing the offense and the relevant auaestio provided for a further mandate of this power as well by the governor to his legates.

231

C H A P T E R THREE

to make a further contribution to the debate on the definition of public power by asserting that the ius gladii had been a symbolic attribute of republican magistrates as presidents of jury courts. When the courts were in session, he claimed, a spear representing jurisdiction and a sword representing the quaestio (court) itself were placed upon the tribunal in addition to the other trappings of formality.151 His evidence, though, is weak. The only explicit testimony which he produces to support this is from Cyprian, the African bishop and martyr of the third century A.D. who in the first fervor of conversion inveighed against the institutions of the secular world, including the forum: "There the spear stands ready, and the sword, and the executioner. . . ."152 This was a lapse in the correct use of evidence caused apparently by Sigonio's desire to make the original contribution which comes fifty pages further on, in a chapter on praetors as presidents of jury courts. Here Sigonio repeats that one of the conditions of formal criminal justice in a jury court was the placing in view of a sword ("gladio . . . posito,") then states that "the jury court, after the republic had been overturned, was called merum imperium."153 The imperial order in other words had simply transformed a republican institution. He was, as it seems, unwilling to grant that a great and beneficial innovation to republican jurisprudence had been accomplished under the emperors—if so much can be deduced from his paragraphs on the question. These show his own desire for originality in the following constatations: merum imperium = cognition of capital cases, mandatable by a proconsul to his legates if special provision for this is made; imperium non merum = jurisdiction in private law; mixturn imperium = both of the preceding. On a conventional reading, available in the sixteenth century in the works of, for example, Cujas, merum imperium is not further mandatable once granted, and mixtum imperium and iurisdictio are synonymous. There is no third term.154 Sigonio did not know French and could not have read Bodin's Six 151 Sigonio, De iudtais 1.7, "De praetoribus sive de ius dicentibus," p. 450; and 2.4, "De praetoribus quaesitoribus," pp. 499-500. 152 Cyprian, Ad Donatum 10—a reference fumbled by Sigonio, relying as usual on memory—in the following passage: "Praetorum autem insignia duo fuere, hasta et gladius, ilia ad iunsdictionem, hie ad quaestionem significandam. Cyprianus, Epistolarum libro II: Saevit invicem discordantium rabies . . . hasta illic el gladius et carmfex praesto est." 153 "Quaestio, eversa republica, merum imperium est appellate" (Sigonio, De iudiciis 2.4, "De praetoribus quaesitoribus," p. 499). 154 Cf. in Cujas (Cuiacms) Opera omnia (Lyons: Pillehotte, 1606), t. 2, coll. 163-84, Cujas's commentary on D. 2.1.1-6; and in t.4, coll. 1914-15, his Observationes et emendationes bk. 21, no. 30.

232

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

livres de la republique in its original French edition (1576). He died two years before the appearance of the Latin De republica (1586). But if Sigonio could not read Bodin's summa, Bodin could and did read Sigonio's. The confirmation of this comes from a scholar familiar with the textual history of the Republique and De republica, who reports that in the first edition of 1576 Bodin seldom cited Sigonio, and that most of the references to him appear first in the French edition of 1578.155 A plausible reason for this can be offered: Bodin's Parisian publisher, Jacques Du Puys, was also, through the mediation of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli and Claude Dupuy, Sigonio's. Du Puys published both the Republique and the authorized reprint of De antiquo iure populi Romani in 1576, and Bodin, who had probably not looked at Sigonio since the early 1560s, would naturally have reviewed the augmented and revised edition of the Italian scholar's works, coming from the same publisher in the same year as his own, and incorporated his reactions to it in the second edition of the Republique and then in De republica. Bodin elaborates a distinction between regular office-holders and special commissioners, a distinction with which he attempts to resolve problems of definition which had bedevilled Sigonio and Grouchy. Magistrates are office-holders, with a definite assignment of tasks and powers under a permanent statute, while commissioners are given ad hoc powers by a special edict or law, according to Bodin, and on this basis promagistrates as well as the holders of extraordinary commands were special commissioners, not magistrates.156 This solution was much closer to Sigonio than to Grouchy, and although Bodin does not say so, the fact is proved by his silent quotation from Sigonio's conjectural reconstruction of the two different formulas by which presidents of Roman assemblies had in the one case requested the people to elect the magistrates, and in the other proposed a bill giving imperium to an individual.157 155 Marghenta Isnardi Parente, in the introduction to Jean Bodin, 1 sei libri dello Stato, ed. and trans. M. I. Parente, vol.1 (Torino: UTET, 1964), p. 18; and her introduction passim. Il pensiero politico 14, 1981, fasc. 1, pp. 1-186 contains articles exclusively on the Republique and De republica; cf. as well H. Denzer, ed., Jean Bodin (1973), esp. the article by Ralph E. Giesey, "Medieval Jurisprudence in Bodin's Concept of Sovereignty"; and Julian H. Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973). 156 loannis Bodini de republica libri sex (Lyon-Paris: Jacques Du Puys, 1586), chap. 3.2, "De officialibus et curatoribus," pp. 259-72; and 3.3, "De magistratibus," pp. 272-86. There are specific references to Sigonio at pp. 260, 264. And cf. M.-A. Stegmann, "L'apport antique dans Ia reflexion de Bodin sur I'Etat," in Association G. Budi, Actes du neuvieme congres (Paris, 1975, t. 2), pp. 737-57. 157 "Magistratuum vero et curatorum creandorum ratio, non solum munere, sed etiam rogandi forma differunt: nam magistratus crean solebant ex legibus antea latis, magistratu po-

233

C H A P T E R THREE

Sigonio, stumbling onto unfamiliar terrain, had mistakenly imputed ius gladii in its origin to republican presidents of jury courts. Bodin now developed the ideas sketched in the Methodus into something approaching a genuine diachronic account of the changes brought about in jurisdiction by the passage from republic to empire.158 The growth of republican criminal justice culminated in the proliferation of the jury courts, whose presidents, as Bodin notes, had normal powers of coercion but were bound to follow prescribed procedures and sanctions. These jury courts continued for a time under the emperors, and their presidents represent the magistrate as viewed by Lothario.159 But the emperors introduced new forms of jurisdiction, free of the complicated procedural accretions of the jury courts, in which the presiding magistrates came to have final powers to conduct cases and to decide and vary capital penalties (a description of the growth of cognitio extraordinaria), powers given by a specific grant of merum imperium, otherwise ius gladii, proper to themselves. This is the magistrate as viewed by Azo.160 Bodin associates the first type of magistrate, Lothario's, with the Greek and Italian city-states and with elective annual magistracy; and the second with monarchies such as the Roman Empire and the kingdom of France, in which perpetuity of office (the French model) was more appropripulum ita rogante, Quos vellent consules fieri. In curationibus vero his verbis, vellent, iuberent, ut huic imperium esset" (Bodin, De republica, 3.2, p. 271). Cf. Sigonio, De ant. iur. prov. 3.7, "An imperium in magistratu fuerit insitum," p. 406. Sigonio claimed that at electoral assemblies the president put an open question o£ the form "Quos vellent consules fieri?", while a bill to give imperium to an individual was simple legislation, prefaced by a rogatio of the form "Vellent, iuberent ut huic . . . imperiam esset?" (Cf. above, n. 102 and text.) Bodin has followed him verbatim. 158 Bodin, De republica 3.5, "De magistratuum erga privatos imperils, officio, potestate," pp. 299-312. 159 "Mutato reipublicae statu, ereptisque populo iudiciis ac suffragus, praetores tamen publicarum quaestionum aliquandiu iudiciorum ilium ordinem tenuerunt. Id enim satis aperte innuit Papmianus, quern Lotharius sic interpretatur, ut veht pnncipes ac populos, qui iura maiestatis habent, magistratibus poenarum executionem dedisse, arbitrium vero ac potissimum gladu potestatem sibi reservasse. . . . Vera igitur Lotharh sententia fuisset, si semper eum ordinem iudicandi quern diximus praetores pubhcorum iudiciorum tenuissent . . ." (Bodin, De republica 3.5, p. 301-2). 160 "Azo vero ius ipsum gladii in magistratus translatum fuisse iudicabat. . . . Cum enim pnncipes decursu temporum perspexissent mdicia ilia publica, quae tabulis ac sorte fiebant, cum iniquitate coniuncta fuisse, quod in tanta causarum ac locorum varietate unum et idem poenae genus statuerent . . . paulatim iudiciorum ordinem mutarunt . Cum vero eiusmodi crimen esset, quod extra ordinem iudicari oporteret, princeps aut senatus interdum extra ordinem magistratui, aut etiam privato, cuius religionem ac integritatem exploratam haberet, mandabat, ut legibus soluti poenas irrogarent" (Bodin, De republica 3.5, p. 302). The courts based on "lists and a lottery" to which Bodin refers are the permanent courts of the republic, the juries for which were picked by lot from an annual album of available jurors.

234

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

ate.161 So the old dilemma of Lothario and Azo received a resolution solidly based on the history of Roman law which also satisfied the requirements of Bodin's novel theoretics of sovereignty. In 1586 Bodin wrote for the first time at length about social stratification, in a new chapter in which problems of the ordering of ancient society intersect continually with those of the estates of France, and in which many parallels are also drawn from the Italian cities.162 The writer uses the comparative method with such freedom that it is not always clear whether the examples and distinctions adduced are thought of as being limited to a particular epoch, or ideal types, universally applicable. The latter appears to be the case, for instance, with the terms patricii and nobilis, used in the Roman world and renewed in modern Europe to distinguish elites of divergent formation. In an early chapter on gradations of citizenship, Bodin makes clear that this distinction is a meaningful one for him.163 When he returned to the theme in chapter 3.8, "De ordinibus civium," it was the lex Canuleia of 445 B.C. which he selected as the turning point in the fortunes of the Roman patriciate, the moment at which the plebs overcame the barrier of patrician blood purity by obtaining conubium, and the way was opened for the advent of plebeian magistrates.164 161 "Nam Romae magistratus annui fuerunt, nobis vero perpetui. . . . Mud autem animadversione dignum est, quod in populanbus et optimatum imperils, qualia fuerunt Graecorum ac Italorum, hoc unum propositum est, ut magistratus omnes, quoad eius fieri potent, legum vinculis obstriaos teneant, ut ab officio ne tantillum quidem si velint discedere possint, ac veteres multo magis quam nostrae aetatis homines. In regia vero potestate contra fieri solet, nam in iudiciis pubhcis omnia fere poenarum genera, et in privatis id quod cuiusque interest, magistratuum arbitrio decemendum relinquitur" (Bodin, De republica 3.5, p. 306). The dangling portion of the second sentence is possibly meant to be read "ac veteribus multo magis quam nostrae aetatis hominibus," parallel with "populanbus et optimatum imperils." Readers of this first edition of De republica were warned in a note by the publisher, Jacques Du Puys, that it had been prepared in haste from a difficult manuscript in order that copies could reach Frankfurt in time for one of the two book fairs of 1586, and that errors had been inevitable. For more on all the material discussed here, see Vittor Ivo Comparato, "Sulla teona della funzione pubbhca nella Republique di Jean Bodin," Il pensxero politico 14, 1986, pp. 93-112. 162 Bodin, De republica 3.8, "De ordinibus avium," pp. 348-65. Cf. on this chapter Diego Quaglioni, "Una fonte del Bodin: Andre Tiraqueau (1488-1558) giureconsulto," Il pensiero politico 14,1986, pp. 113-27, from which it results that Tiraqueau's Commentarii de nobilitate furnished many of the examples used by Bodin in 3.8. 163 "Civium autem inter ipsos non minor, atque haud scio an maior varietas reperiatur (de qua nonnihil antea diximus), non modo patricios inter ac nobiles, sed etiam nobiles inter ac plebeios" (Bodin, De republica 1.6, "Quid avis etc.," p. 65). 164 See above, chap. 2, nn. 5-7, 94-95 for Sigonio on the significance of the lex Canuleia. Bodin refers to the lex Canuleia in De republica 3.8, pp. 351-52 (1586), where the text reads "lex Camileia," evidently one of the problems resulting from the hasty composition of this edition from a heavily corrected manuscript. (The lex Canuleia is cited correaly at p. 547, and

235

C H A P T E R THREE

Though Sigonio is not mentioned, the influence of his studies is evident here, for Bodin adopts virtually wholesale the interpretation of Roman nobility which was at that time Sigonio's distinctive intellectual property: it attained to the descendants of a new man who reached curule office, and they displayed their own nobility in displaying the death masks of their first and subsequent curule ancestors. Not all patricians were nobles in this sense, and in fact those who had no curule officeholders among their ancestry were classed as ignoble; it was the lex Canuleia which made possible the creation of plebeian nobility and when the criterion of nobility by office-holding was established, the people became its arbiters, communicating it to those whom they elected to the curule magistracies.165 Then Bodin turns the tables on Sigonio, for his thrust as always is to show the inconvenience of demokratia, in this case the possibility that a villain might win an election for himself and create nobility for his sons, however lowborn he himself may have been, whereas the most well-born and highminded of patricians risked remaining ignoble.166 (Though the discussion here is ostensibly about popular election to magistracy, Bodin in fact voices the perturbation caused in French society not by popular election, which was unknown, but simply by nobilitation through office-holding. The patricians are the ideal type of the nobility of immemorial race threatened by this.) Bodin here accepts Sigonio's distinction between patricians and nobles for its analytical utility. But overall in De republica, as in the Methodus, the substance of Sigonio's contribution to Roman history is ignored or implicitly refuted. There is simply no place in Bodin's system for a history of the Roman republic as the history of the realization of the ideal of political association in a citizen community through the incorporation the mistake on pp. 351-52 was rectified in later editions.) These two pages pullulate with further errors of fact and citation, some of which may derive from the hasty use of secondhand sources such as Tiraqueau. Citing Livy 4.6.2, for instance, where a patrician speaker declares that "nemo plebeius auspicia haberet, ideoque decemviros conubium diremisse," Bodin or his publisher prints "conubium decrevisse . . . ," reversing the sense diametrically. Despite such incidentals (Bodin was a bad scholar) the importance of these pages is in the emphasis which Bodin chose to give to the winning by the plebeians of intermarriage with the patricians. 165 Bodin, De republica 3.8, p. 351. 166 "Erat igitur nobihtas Romanorum m popuh suffragiis et arbitrio posita. Mud autem absurdum et iniquum, ut sceleratissimus quisque parncida, quantumvis obscuro genere narus esset, beneficio magistratus curulis nobilitatem ad posteros propagaret, qui vero summis virtutibus, pietate, iustitia, temperantia, fortitudine, eruditione claruisset et patncio sanguine ortus esset, nisi maiorum statuas demonstraret, ignobihs haberetur" (Bodin, De republica 3.8, pp. 351-52). 236

ROMAN STUDIES —PART 2

of plebeian strata. His way of making this clear is a deliberate refusal to adopt Sigonio's model of a society of senatorial, equestrian, and plebeian orders; both in the Methodus and in De republica Bodin confuses the categories which Sigonio had been at pains to establish by referring to the Roman orders as patrician, equestrian, and plebeian.167 This is to deny what Sigonio had demonstrated—the historical fusion of patricians and plebeians in a senatorial order. At a time when the broad trend was to fix social position and reduce mobility, the Roman patricians offered an ancient precedent of magnetic attraction: a closed hereditary nobility whose self-perpetuation was unaffected by vicissitudes of office-holding or any other form of external recognition connected to office-holding (such as membership in the senate or the senatorial order). The Roman patriciate was the obvious ancient example of a nobility which had concluded the arc of development along which most European nobilities were moving. Bodin was far from having the last word on these matters and the development of a society of orders in France meant that parallels between ancient and modern society continued to be topical in the decades after the publication of his work. The theoretician of the society of orders in France was Charles Loyseau.168 Sigonio appears in all three of Loyseau's treatises.169 The Premier livre des offices begins by establishing that the extension of the term office is wider than that of magistratus, which it subsumes, and among the literature on the subject is cited "cette memorable dispute, qui fut du temps de nos peres, entre ces deux grands personnages Sigonius et Grucchius." The citation is repeated in 167 In the Methodus, p. 170B (above n. 138). In De republica, chap. 3.8, pp. 351, 364. Yet on p. 351 Bodin is also able to write that equestrian status changed with entry into the senate, the corollary being that the natural opposition is between equestrian and senatorial, not equestrian and patrician. 168 Cf. above, chap. 2, nn. 33-35 for references in this regard to the work of the modern historian Roland Mousnier (who has used Loyseau's Cinq hvres des offices extensively in his work on the venality of offices and the institutions of France) and the ancient historian Claude Nicolet. Further on social history: William Sewell, "Etats, corps and ordres: some notes on the social vocabulary of the French Old Regime," in Sozialgeschichte Heute (Festschrift Hans Rosenberg) (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1974), pp. 49-68; and on Loyseau as political theorist (in the Livre des seigneuries], see B. Basdevant-Gaudemet, Aux origines de I'etat moderne. Charles Loyseau 1564-1627(Paris: Economica, 1977). 169 Charles Loyseau published the Traits des seigneuries for the first time in 1608, and the Traits des ordres et simples dignitez and the Cinq livres du droit des offices in 1610. For all of them I cite Les oeuvres de Maistre Charles Loyseau (Paris: Rocolet, 1660), in which the editions (with separate pagination) of the Traita (or Livre) des seigneuries and of the Traita (or Livre) des ordres are designated the sixth and third, respectively.

237

C H A P T E R THREE

a later book,170 but although Loyseau accepts from Bodin and develops the view that the difference between ordinary and extraordinary magistrates may be reinterpreted in French terms as the difference between an officier and a commissaire, Sigonio's insistence that libertas in the ancient city entailed the separation of magistracy and imperium (and all of the corollaries debated at length with Grouchy) could have no real moment in Loyseau's discourse on the offices, venal and otherwise, of the kingdom of France. The refinement of the theory of sovereignty in the Livre des seigneuries carried him even farther from Sigonio's domain. But in the Livre des ordres Loyseau systematically counterpoints the ordered society of France with that of Rome. Since he wishes to study the Roman orders in their developed form, Loyseau concentrates on the late republic and early empire, and although well aware of the transition in Roman history represented by the figure of Augustus, he does not accept the extreme view of the discontinuity between the two phases held by Sigonio.171 The latter is nevertheless the source of Loyseau's basic perceptions of Roman society in its similarity to and diversity from the French model. In France the clergy held a separate estate (order) unknown at Rome, and the second estate of France, the nobility, is viewed by Loyseau as an ensemble of all those who would have been counted in the senatorial and equestrian orders, the first and second "estates" of Rome. The third estate of France and the plebs {menu peuple) of Rome are however comparable. Loyseau has few illusions about the criteria for membership in the upper orders at Rome: wisdom and valor may have counted in the archaic period, but they inevitably yield to the necessity for a quantifiable criterion, and "enfin elles [les dignites] furent deferees a la richesse"172—a summary account of the formation of a census-based society. Loyseau describes censorial adlection of ex-magistrates to the senate, and despite some anachronism and confusion makes it clear that archaic Roman society was transformed when the 170

For the phrases cited, see Loyseau, Premier livre des offices (1.1.90), p. 10; and cf. bk. 4, Des offices non-venaux, chap. 5, "Des commissions," pp. 353-54, for summaries and criticism of Sigonio, Grouchy, and Bodin on this problem. 171 But cf. Loyseau, Livre des ordres, chap. 10, "Des simples dignitez de Rome," p. 92, where Loyseau does refer to a revolution in the status of the social orders brought about by the end of the republic. In fact, he is referring to the changes of the third and fourth centuries which introduced the period of late antiquity: the loss of senatorial authority, the conversion of offices and orders into onera, the creation of the new personal title of patricius. 172 Loyseau, Livre des ordres, chap. 2, "Des ordres romains," p. 10; and see the entire chapter.

238

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

"grands offices" were opened to the "menu peuple" (when the plebeians acceded to the consulate). The traditional comparison between the Parle­ ment de Paris and the Roman senate results in the conclusion, also not novel, that the senate was an order where the Parlement is an assembly of magistrates.173 Loyseau's narrowly juridical view of the senate's im­ portance perpetuates a defect of previous humanist studies, including those of Sigonio, which failed to recognize, because no explicit consti­ tutional provision in this sense was extant or had ever existed, that for most of the republic, Roman government had been senatorial govern­ ment. The senate was seen as a mere council, an appendage of the pop­ ular assemblies and the adviser of the magistrates. The full impact of Sigonio's Aristotelian presentation of the meaning of citizenship emerges when Loyseau accepts the difference in entitle­ ment between a citizen of the tiers in France and a civis Romanus: Ro­ man citizenship had constituted a genuine order, a "dignity bearing ap­ titude for public power," something which French citizenship did not. Hence the Roman citizens shared all the privileges of liberty, gentile legitimacy, intermarriage, voting in the assembly, and candidacy for magistracy—rights, said Loyseau, "which I will not take the trouble to explain, since they are explained with great learning by Sigonius. . . ." 1 7 4 Ordre in its concrete sense means any one of the occupa173 Loyseau's extended account of the Roman senate is in the Livre des ordres, chap. 2, pp. 11-15, and is not chronological. He appears to believe that in origin senatorial enrollment was based exclusively on census-holding (p. 11), that at that time the senate was the seedbed from which potential magistrates were drawn, and that only after the plebeian revolution was the situation reversed, so that magistracy became the passage to the senate. Loyseau views the process by which the Roman senate was transformed from a council into the senatorial order synoptically, and concentrates on the result (in his interpretation) of this process: the senate, as an order, returned to its original status of a reservoir from which officers of the state were drawn. Cf. pp. 12-13 for elements of comparison between the senate and the Parlement de Paris. Despite these, Loyseau's view of the senate as fundamentally the ordo senatorius leads him to emphasize the point of contrast: "Non que je vueille dire, qu'a present nos Parlements soient des ordres, ainsi qu'estoit Ie Senat Romain" (p. 12). And cf. Livre des ordres chap. 3, "De l'ordre du clergeY' p. 20, for the constatation that in France, while there is no senatorial order, the estate of the clergy has taken its place. Bude, he says, had been right a century earlier in pointing out that the Roman senate was not a corps of officers, but an order which furnished officers as the noblesse does in France. 174 "[Roman citizenship] estoit encore un vray ordre, c'est a dire une espece de dignite, ce qui n'est pas a nous. Car estre citoyen romain, ce n'estoit pas une qualite de petite importance, dautant qu'en effet c'estoit avoir part a l'estat. Aussi Ie citoyen romain avoit-il de grands droicts et avantages par dessus ceux qui ne l'estoient pas; a βςβνοΐΓ, iura libertatis, gentilitatis, sacrorum, connubiorum, patriae potestatts . . . suffragiorum, honorum, lesquels ie ne m'amuseray a expliquer, pource qu'ils sont expliquez tres doctement par Sigonius en son livre De antique iure avium Romanorum, duquel j'advoue franchement avoir pris presque tout Ie sur­ plus de ce chapitre" (Loyseau, Livre des ordres, chap. 2, p. 17).

239

C H A P T E R THREE

tions ("vacations") by which in France the members of the third estate earned their livelihood. A parallel description of the occupations of the mass of Romans whose place was in the heterogeneous third order below the senatorial and equestrian elite had been given, as Loyseau again notes, by Sigonio. The most honorable of them was that of the tribuni aerarii, translated by Loyseau as "financiers," and followed by the clerks, merchants, magisterial functionaries and other groups or subgroups delineated by Sigonio as components of the "plebeian order." Loyseau's chapter on the Roman orders is closely linked to a later chapter on the "ordres du tiers estat" of France, in which he sharpens the point that in France the tiers is not properly an order in the abstract sense because not properly a dignity (the juridically defined political and social entitlement of a group) but only a collection of various vacations, occupational groups such as the intellectual professions, financiers, merchants, clerks, journeymen and laborers, which may be treated as suborders ("degrees") of the whole.175 Loyseau notes the fact, striking to a French observer, that financial operations of the Roman publicans, taxfarming members of the equestrian order, which would have brought about certain derogeance in France, did not entail loss of status in Rome, and that similar occupations continued to be considered honorable in Venice.176 In fact the comparison with Rome is pervasive, and the inspiration which Loyseau derived from Sigonio's vertical analysis of Roman society is one of the notable examples of Sigonio's intellectual fortune in Europe. Like Bodin, Loyseau had to come to terms with the fact that the Roman nobility, the prototype of later European nobilities, had been a political one, dependent upon office-holding through popular favor. He accepts the difference between Roman nobility and the feudal-monarchic nobility of France, and uses it as the basis for an attempt to resolve questions of contemporary urgency. What was the status of the claim to nobility advanced by all royal office-holders from the third estate? What unified theory could harmonize the nobility of office-holding with that of ancient lineage? These are questions which inform a series of related 175 Loyseau, Livre des ordres, chap. 8, "Des ordres du tiers estat," pp. 74-89, esp. p. 75: "Or en France, ainsi qu'a Rome, il y a plusieurs ordres ou degrez au tiers estat: et comme les Romains avoient tribunes aerarii, scubas, mercatores, apparitores, artifices, opifices, et turbam forensem: aussi nous avons en France les gens de lettres, les financiers, les praticiens, les marchands, les laboureurs, les mimstres de justice et les gens de bras." 176 "Et qui plus est, les partisans, appellez publicani estoient de l'ordre des chevaliers, comme ils sont encore gentils-hommes a Venise, et en plusieurs autres pais" (Loyseau, Livre des ordres, chap. 8, p. 77).

240

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

chapters in the Cinq livres des offices and the Livre des ordres. The office-holders of France, when subsidiary criteria such as that of noble lifestyle were met, affected the title of noble-homme and laid claim to effective social recognition as nobles. The claim was, in the case of the lesser officiers, rejected by the infeudated nobility whose noble descent was either of long standing or immemorial, who adopted the superior distinction of gentilhomme, and who had even renovated the older style of junior feudality, escuyer, in order to distinguish themselves from office-holding nobles-hommes, whose nobility they considered "honoraire, impropre, et imparfaite, que par mepris on appelle Noblesse de ville, qui a la verite est plustost bourgeoisie."177 Loyseau evaluates the nobility of office-holding in the Premier livre des offices: it is premised throughout that office and nobility can only be granted by the holder of public sovereignty—the people in Rome, the monarchy in France. Evidently the offices are graduated, and in France the more powerful and prestigious of them bring the true nobility of a gentilhomme, for the king's collocation of the office creates by a legal fiction an ingenuite formally equal to that of established ancient descent.178 The nobility conferred by high office is immediately hereditary; lesser offices which in themselves ennoble only the holder create hereditary nobility for the third generation if held in succession by grandfather and father.179 The Roman parallel which Loyseau adduces for comparative validation of this usage is the speech of the plebeian consular P. Decius Mus in Livy, in which the speaker claims that the first patricians had been only the first free-born citizens [ingenui), and contrasts the low threshhold of recognition of this status—legitimate descent, the recognition of a father—with the high threshhold for entry to the nobility of office, a barrier which in his own lineage has been triumphantly overcome by winning the consulate in two successive generations.180 For Loyseau this constitutes ancient proof of the rule (in fact, widely accepted in France and in Europe) that several generations of personal nobility are required to produce hereditary nobility in the third.181 177 Loyseau, Premier livre des offices, chap. 7, p. 69; and further on the escuyers, Livre des ordres, chap. 5, "Des simples gentilshommes/' pp. 37-40. 178 Loyseau, Premier livre des offices, chap. 9; "Des privileges des offices," p. 83; and cf. Livre des ordres, chap. 4, "De 1'ordre de noblesse en general," pp. 34-35. 179 Loyseau, Premier livre des offices, chap. 9, p. 86. 180 Cf. above, chap. 2, nn. 12, 98-99, and text. 181 "Les nobles estoient ceux dont Ie pere et ayeul avoient eu successivement quelqu'un des pnncipaux magistrate de Rome, et qui a cette cause avoient droict d'images, comme prouve fort bien Sigonius" (Livre des ordres, chap. 2, p. 18). Loyseau refers to Sigonio as the author-

241

C H A P T E R THREE

The parallelism is indeed suggestive. But it ignores the essential distinction, which Loyseau had nonetheless absorbed from Sigonio, between the Roman nobility, idealized as the open and relatively informal political elite of a city-state republic, and the nobility of France, which was a social order.182 The point that Roman nobility is not an estate (not identical with the senatorial or equestrian orders, or both) is made again forcefully in the Livre des ordres. Yet Loyseau found it inconceivable that by this token the antique nobility of the patriciate had been relegated to purely genealogical importance, as Sigonio said. For Loyseau as for Bodin the patriciate remained the permanent senior component of Roman nobility, and most European publicists accepted this as an article of faith, silently or openly abandoning Sigonio, for European noble ideology prized length and purity of lineage above all else. In his chapter "De 1'ordre de noblesse en general,"183 in which Loyseau analyzes the meaning of good birth (ingenuitas, ingenuite), we can follow his silent shift to a point of view different to Sigonio's. He believed that for the Romans the term had originally signified that one's traceable ancestry contained no freedmen or descendants of freedmen. With the passage of time and the enlargement of the citizen community, the sense of ingenuus had shrunk to the simple technical one given it by Sigonio (the offspring of a free citizen, even one who had been freed from slavery). Then gentilis/'gentilitatis had replaced ingenuus/'ingenuitas as terms for unstained lineage. But in French ingenuite still retained its pristine signification: it still meant unstained lineage, the absence of la roture, an unbroken record of living nobly. This was impressive linguistic and historical analysis. While its principal aim may have been to save the luster of ingenuite as a word and a social fact in modern France, it had the effect of undermining the "plebeian" account of the origins of the Roman patriciate adopted by Sigonio, which depended on the simple sense of ingenuus. Thus Loyseau embraces the main tradition concerning the Roman patriciate: patrician entitlement was based on the dignity of their ancestors, the first senators chosen by Romulus, and "ceux du party du peuple, afin de rabaisser leur dignite, allerent equivoquer assez mal a propos sur leur nom" in calling them itative source on the acquisition of Roman nobility through office-holding. But it had been Sigonio's view that the holding of a magistracy in only one generation was enough to give to a family the "right to have images." 182 "Pource que la noblesse [in France] n'est pas comme un simple privilege inherent et attache inseparablement a 1'ofhce, et qui partant se perde avec l'office, mais c'est un vray ordre et qualite absolue . . ." (Loyseau, Premier livre des offices, chap. 9, p. 87). 183 Loyseau, Livre des ordres, chap. 4.

242

ROMAN STUDIES —PART 2

simple ingenui, the only Romans at that period of demonstrable parentage.184 This refusal of Sigonio, who had embraced the plebeian explanation of patrician origins, would have been plain to many or most of Loyseau's erudite readers. Until the plebeian breakthrough to office the patricians constituted for Loyseau a nobility similar to the French one. The new patrician-plebeian nobility was different: political, dependent upon popular favor, constantly diminishing if not renewed by fresh electoral success, Roman nobility was the opposite of everything Loyseau understood by the term or are. Despite the advent of this nobility the Romans continued to honor lineage in the respect accorded specifically to patrician birth even when divorced from political significance, and in that accorded generally to unstained descent, a respect expressed by the terms ingenuitas and later gentilitas. He detected the same tension between the claims of birth and those of office-holding in Rome which he saw in contemporary France. The modern gentilhomme represented not nobility of office but the primeval superiority of birth which the Franks established over the Gauls at the moment of their conquest. To be perfect such noblesse ought to be traceable back to this period, the origin of the nation, but since this is practically impossible, nobility is generally recognized where three generations have lived nobly. The social status of the French noblesse derives from the state, not from nature, and is not a simple privilege but a part of public law. The idiosyncrasy of the Roman republic is held constantly present by Loyseau: it was the ancestor of modern Europe, yet its constitution remains fundamentally alien, for in Rome every free citizen was a participant in the state and the juridicalsocial status of Roman citizens is strictly comparable to that of the nobility of France.185 184

Ibid., p. 30. "Il est vray qu'en la Republique Romaine (les citoyens de laquelle habebant iura libertatis et imperii, c'est a dire, estoient hbres et exempts tant de la seigneurie publique que de la pnvee, et si avoient part a l'Estat, comme l'ay dit au hvre des Seigneuries) l'ingenuite signifioit settlement une ancienne exemption de servitude et esclavage. . . . Mais en la Monarchic Franioise, ou ces droicts libertatis et imperii n'ont lieu, nous tenons que Ie menu peuple, bien que hbre, c'est a dire exempt d'esclavage et seigneune pnvee, est neantmoins sujet generalement a la seigneurie publique, mesme de droict commun, et regulierement il est sujet a certaines charges viles, comme de payer tallies. . . . Desquelles charges du commun peuple les nobles sont francs et exempts de tout temps pource qu'ils sont employez a chose plus utile et importante a l'Estat, a scavoir a Ie defendre contre les ennemis. De sorte que ceux dont les ancestres ont en tout temps fait estat de porter les armes et qui sont maintenus en !'exemption de ces charges populates se peuvent comparer aux ingenus de Rome" (Loyseau, Lwre des ordres, chap. 4, p. 185

243

C H A P T E R THREE

The position of modern urban nobilities in Germany as "patriciates," as the heirs, that is, of the condition of the Roman patricians, was given its elaborate formulation in 1627 by Johannes Jacobus Draco (15951648), a jurist who had studied at Basel. De origine et iure patriciorum libri tres186 is an interesting minor example of the publicistic literature of this period, and documents (what could be documented as well from a host of similar sources) the pervasive influence of Jean Bodin's De republica in Europe, and the continuing recourse to Sigonio as the essential point of reference on important questions of ancient and medieval history. In Draco's view the city patriciates of modern Germany are the direct surrogates and heirs of the patriciate founded by Romulus in a precise legal sense. Their ius is the ius civile, not the ius gentium,187 and while the civil law survives (as it does in the continuing validity of the Corpus iuris civilis) the continuity between the Ceschlechtern of Ulm and Augsburg and the patriciate founded by Romulus remains, ideally, unbroken. As concrete phenomena, however, ancient and modern patriciates present three disparate historical formations: the original one of the republic and high empire, the personal title of patricius in use in the Byzantine period, and the aristocracies of the German cities from the tenth century until the present. Draco reproves Jean Bodin for using the term without regard for periodization or for the particularity of historical epochs, for using it in fact as though it were a synonym of "noble,"188 and concentrates on the historical individuality of the successive patriciates, devoting a separate book to each. 34). The references by Loyseau to the rights of liberty, and to imperium (meaning "candidacy for magistracy"), of the Roman citizens are of course to Sigonio. 186 £)e origine et iure patriciorum libri tres, editi a Johanne Jacobo Dracone, Lora-Franco, JUD (Basel: Genathus, 1627). The author was born in Lohr, and studied in Jena, Altdorf, and Basel, where he took his doctorate. Having served there as tutor to the sons of German patricians, he dedicated his treatise to the "consuls and senators" of the South German cities, Augsburg, Nuremberg, and Ulm. Draco (not a patrician himself) in later years served the Margrave of Wettin in Coburg (not a free city). On the general problem of the German patriciates see the bibliography cited above, chap. 2, n. 26, and esp. H. Kramm, "Streiflichter auf die Oberschichten der mitteldeutschen Stadte im Ubergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit. Zur Frage des Patnziats," in H. Rossler, ed., Deutsches Patriziat 1430-1740 (1968). I have not noticed that Draco is used as a source here or in other modern works on the subject. 187 Draco, De origine et iure patriciorum, bk. 3, p. 211. 188 "Caeterum patricius in genere definin non potest: est enim ex numero aequivocorum, quorum solum nomen est commune, definitio autem diversa. . . . apud Bodinum et alios, vocabulum patricii valde generahter usurpari et extendi ad omnes nobilitatis ordines . . . " (bk. 1, pp. 14-15). The epigram that heads Draco's work—a homily on the necessity for social discrimination—is nevertheless taken from Bodin, De republica 3.8.

244

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

Though Draco's aim was the establishment of a recognized institutional role for the patriciates, he felt no reluctance in taking over almost unreservedly the account of their origin given by Sigonio.189 Draco saw the domination of the Roman patriciate as Sigonio saw it: as an Adelsstaat (not his term), a society in which the stratum of those whose ancestors had once been the only politically active citizens shrank into a privileged nobility, closed to outsiders and with a monopoly on the organs of the city. Draco followed Bodin, and both followed Sigonio, in seeing the truly radical change in the history of the Roman state as the introduction of nobility by office-holding; but Draco's evaluation of this mutation was close to that of Bodin. He speaks repeatedly of the "importuna oratio" in which the tribune Canuleius demands access to the magistracies, a speech not only importunate but "virulenta et violenta" when the tribune claims the right of intermarriage between patricians and plebeians.190 With nobility through office-holding came the corollary: patricians in whose lineage there had been no magistracies must have been "new men" if they were the first to be elected. Draco reviews the critical discussion which these affirmations of Sigonio had provoked, and sides explicitly with Sigonio against Robortello and Hotman.191 This stance is softened, however, by the stricture that patricians retained the ancient nobility of blood, to which electoral victory could only add the quality of political nobility. Draco's book three, on the patricians of Germany, is of interest for modern social history and for the view it reflects of ancient and medieval society. He emphasizes the specific character of the patriciates as urban nobilities, and cites the Greeks and Romans as the most illustrious examples of the superiority of this type of nobility; but Draco could not of course claim that this was the case in modern Europe, where, as he ac189 "Hinc facilis est patriciorum interpretatio, eos scilicet proprie fuisse cives nobihores, quique plebeii non erant. Aliquando autem cives ingenuos omnes, non patres solum, sed et plebeios, patricios appellatos fuisse satis constat" (Draco, De origine et iure patriciorum, bk. 1, p. 17). "Ius gentilitatis, procedente tempore, etiam inter plebeios locum invenit, ex quo istorum generationes extensae, ut suum patrem, suum avum ingenuum demonstrare possent. Argumentum praebent duo textus Livii. Alter extat lib. 6, ubi Appius Claudius . . . [cites 6.41.57]. Alter extat lib. 10, ubi P. Deems adversus patricios . . . [cites 10.8.8-10]. Ex quibus verbis colligitur, ut ait Carolus Sigonius [De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.7], si qui se ab ingenuis ortum ostendere potest, is gentem habet, profecto plebeios, ubi patres indicare potuerunt, et ipsos gentem habere coepisse" (pp. 84-85). Draco gives the vulgate text of Livy when citing it from other sources and the emended text when citing it from Sigonio, but the oscillation has no real importance. 190 Draco, De origine et iure patriciorum, bk. 1, pp. 82, 84. 191 Draco, De origine et iure patriciorum, bk. 1, pp. 63-64.

245

C H A P T E R THREE

knowledges, it is the common view that a citizen cannot be noble as a country noble can.192 Rather than assert the absolute superiority of the patriciates, Draco's aim was the practical one of obtaining recognition for them as a grade within the universal hierarchy, feudal and signorial in character, which obtained in Germany and Europe. For the heart of the problem was this: the fact that patriciates as such were purely local elites in a world in which recognition of noble status had to come from a superior of more general authority. And for the sake of obtaining this, Draco could even concede that the patricians were "infimum nobilitatis gradum."193 The important thing was the recognition that they did have a grade. (So, for instance, in cities such as Nuremberg in which patricians enjoyed additional feudal distinction, their nobility was superior because chivalric titulature had been added to patrician status.) Long lineage and noble life-style were not enough for acceptance as a patrician. "Senatorial" ancestors (who had been seated in the Rat) were necessary, as was an express cooptation. Draco sought for modern patriciates the explicit privilegium of the Roman patricians: hence the invocation of the continuing validity of the civil law, in which it was guaranteed. As the term patricius had a precise denotation, so a distinct semantic value was to be attributed to the German equivalent, Geschlechter; in its literal sense it seemed to imply that no other nobles, or plebeians for that matter, had legitimate descent. But in fact matters stood here as they had stood in the Roman republic, in which the primeval gentilitas of the patricians later became the attribute of all Roman citizens, and Geschlechter was not to be taken in a generic sense but as the proper name of a recognized order of German nobility, parallel to the princes, counts, and knights of the Holy Roman Empire.194 In many imperial cities the medieval patriciates had been forced, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to share their representation on the Rat with members of the craft guilds. In Germany this type of mixed government was found in Lubeck, Bremen, Cologne, and Frankfurt, according to Draco, while even Augsburg had had a demokratia from 1368 to 1548.195 It is this fact which explains the writer's adherence 192 Draco, De origine et iure patriciorum, bk. 3, p. 219. Sigonio, De ant. iur. civ. Rom. 1.7 is cited here for both Athens and Rome as examples of the superiority of urban civilization over rural. 193 Draco, De origine et ture patriciorum, bk. 3, p. 195; and cf. p. 222: "Taceant ergo qui, ad invidiam patriciorum prom, statuunt quasi pecuhari saltern civitatis consuetudine nobiles censeantur." 194 Draco, bk. 3, p. 214. 195 Ibid., pp. 255-56.

246

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

to the Aristotelian theses of Carlo Sigonio on the social history of the Roman republic: the coexistence of a patriciate and a plebeian nobility of office-holding had been, in his eyes, exactly paralleled in the German cities. This rapid review of the fortune of Sigonio—and of sixteenth-century scholarship—in the ancien regime may conclude with a glance at Italy in the early eighteenth century. In a dissertation on Roman nobility by Stanislao Santinelli196 (1672-1748), a remote successor of Sigonio in the chair of "eloquence" in Venice, all the fundamental interpretations advanced by Sigonio are refuted one after another, for the idea of a political society in which nobility came from popular election to magistracy had become too remote to grasp, at least for this minor writer. Even the busts of their noble ancestors venerated by the Romans become simple marks of bonum genus,197 and so far from accepting Sigonio's view that with the passage of time and the establishment of their free descent the plebeians gained gentilitas, Santinelli makes Sigonio say that their gentilitas only came when they forced their way into the higher magistracies—and then denies that even that much was true.198 The theory of the continuous existence of a distinctive patrician nobility in modern Italy and Germany received its mature formulation in 1736 from the pen of Ottaviano Gentili (1705-1746), a jurist and a native of a town in the Papal State, San Severino Marche, which like many similar communes laid claim to an independent republican tradition extending back to the municipal system of the Roman Empire. Gentili's De patriciorum origine, varietate, praestantia et iuribus199 is comprehensive, treating in four respective books the patriciate of the Roman republic and principate, of the Constantinopolitan Empire, of the Middle Ages (when it was a dignity awarded by the papacy),200 and of modern European towns. The first and last of these are of interest here, for Gen196 Stanislaus Santinellus, De Romanorum veterum nobilitate dissertatio, (Venice: Recurti, 1717). 197 Santinelli, Dissertatio, chap. 2, p. 14. 198 "Utrum vera postquam plebeiis patuit aditus ad honores, ideoque ad nobilitatem, illi quoque gentem habere dicti sint, hoc est, iure gentilitatis suit usi, affirmat quidem Sigonius . . . sed, ut verum fatear, res non videtur mihi tam facile judicanda" (Santinelli, Dissertatio, p. 71). 199 Octavianus Gentilius (sic), De patriciorum origine, varietate, praestantia, et iuribus libri quattuor (Rome: de Rubeis, 1736). For a biographical notice of the author, see F. Vecchietti, T. Moro, Biblioteca picena, vol. 5 (Osimo: Quercetti, 1796); and Danilo Marrara, "Nobilta civica e patriziato." 200 Gentili's account in book three of the title of Patricius awarded to Charlemagne and other medieval emperors emphasizes the papal supremacy. The treatment of the same subject by Draco reverses this polarity and exalts the imperial supremacy.

247

C H A P T E R THREE

tili uses Sigonio and his contemporaries (but also Santinelli) on the ancient patriciate, and Bodin and Draco among other authorities on the modern one, making his work a summa of the conventional early modern interpretation of the social history of cities and city elites. Gentili is a more scientific and cultivated writer than the ephemeral Santinelli, and accepts that Roman society was fundamentally transformed by the plebeian breakthrough to office-holding. As in the case of Bodin and others, Gentili ignores Sigonio's emphasis on the measure which crowned two centuries of plebeian struggle, the lex Hortensia of 287, in favor of the moment of rupture which in their eyes held the greatest significance, the lex Canuleia of 445 B.C. In a society in which endogamy within social orders was the rule, and in which exogamy could produce complicated questions concerning the transmission of the noble condition and of consequent political rights, the victory won in the social sphere by the tribune Canuleius seemed even more portentous than that of the lex Hortensia in the political one. As Gentili says, "when the plebs first gained the right to join in marriage with the patricians, the way was simultaneously opened for them to gain patrician magistracies, and they began to have the auspices."201 The claim of the Roman patricians to be the sole possessors of the auspices, the token of their religious purity as gentilitas was of their purity of blood, contained remarkable suggestive force for later European nobility, even though under the Christian dispensation nobles were hindered from the frank assertion of a similar exclusivity in religion. On the auspices of the patricians, Gentili's principal authority is, significantly, Nicolas de Grouchy, the writer who had assented most fully to the patrician claim to monopolize the religion of the community.202 Further, he joins Santinelli in castigating Sigonio for asserting that the patricians were the primordial nobility of Rome simply because they were the first stratum to hold magistracies.203 In sum, for Gentili as for his predecessors, the an201 "At ubi primum plebeiis licuit cum patriciis inire connubia, simul ad patricios capessendos honores aditus patuit, et auspicia quoque habere coeperunt" (Gentili, De patriciorum origine, bk. 1, p. 46). 202 Gentili, De patriciorum origine, bk. 1, pp. 43-48. 203 "Omnium pnmos patricios nobiles dictos fuisse, ex quo ipsis omnium primis exstitent ius imaginum, ceterique honores, quibus nobilitas comparabatur, putat Sigonius. . . . At rectius profecto sensisse visus est Santinellus . . . ubi patricios nobiles ea tantum de caussa et huiusmodi nomine designatos fuisse prodit, quia patricii erant, nulla habita ratione sanguinis, aut magistratus. . . . Ex eo fit etiam manifestius Sigonium errasse, quia ratione curuhum magistratuum accedere non poterat patriciis nobilitas, nisi post partam reipublicae libertatem, quo tempore curules magistratus invecti fuerunt. . . . Multis itaque viris patriciis nullo adhuc

248

ROMAN STUDIES—PART 2

cient republic depicted by Sigonio was a problematic, and in part unacceptable model. Gentili's fourth book is in some ways the most interesting, in that it contains the historical justification of his own status as a patrician of the eighteenth century. He describes the Roman system of municipal administration, in which towns were self-governing through institutions, including magistracies and a local senate, modelled on those of Rome: surely, he thought, the imitation of the original must have extended to the creation of a patriciate as well.204 What Gentili in fact meant is that the condition of the decuriones, the municipal nobility of the Roman republic and empire, became a hereditary one, became in fact that of an or do. Modern patrician status was a revival of the decurional status of antiquity; in between lay the convulsion of the Middle Ages, in which, as he graphically recounts, ancient institutions dissolved, and factions— Guelphs, Ghibellines, optimates, populates—contended for power in the Italian communes. While there no longer existed a patriciate as such, the diverse magnates, milites, and consortes of the torn gentilizie kept alive the noble ideal in contradistinction to medieval demokratia.205 The outcome of this struggle, which he viewed in fact as European in scale, produced in Gentili's view the variety of constitutions observable until the recent past in modern cities. He cites examples of German cities in which a portion of seats on the town council were still allotted to nonnobles.206 In those cities where titled and infeudated nobility had gained entry to the councils, Gentili is willing like Draco to recognize that theirs is the top stratum, with the patricians coming second;207 in all others the patriciate is the supreme order in the cities. Gentili takes explicit note of the noble closure in the cities which accompanied the revival of learning curuli auctis magistratu nobihtatem fuisse nemo ibit inficias" (Gentili, De patriciorum origine, bk. 1, pp. 28-29). 204 Gentili, bk. 4, p. 456. 205 Gentili, bk. 4, pp. 493-502. 206 Gentili, bk. 4, pp. 503-4. For Gentili, the Aristotelian analysis of political life as, practically, a state of tension between the forces of demokratia and aristocracy is still the valid instrument for understanding the history of modern cities. His principal source for the German cities is an important work of the mid-seventeenth century: Philippus Knipschildt, Tractatus politico-historico-iuridicus de iuribus et privilegiis civitatum imperialium (UIm: B. Kuhnen, 1657). 207 "Mud etiam hie animadvertimus, non ubique patricios inter cives primores fuisse habitos, eosque principem habuisse locum; iuxta peculiarem siquidem regionis morem et consuetudinem, vel primas vel secundas habebant in republicapartes: quemadmodum memorata dementis VII constitutione Placentiae servarum vidimus, ubi supra patricios comites, marchiones doctoresque, uti magnifici ex usu civitatis constituti leguntur. Non ita tamen alibi, ubi patricii primi in ordine censentur" (Gentili, De patriciorum origine, bk. 4, p. 527).

249

C H A P T E R THREE

in the fifteenth century and gathered strength in the sixteenth: in fact he implies that there was a causal connection. He viewed this as the restoration of senatorial government and of the true patriciate208—a closed hereditary urban nobility descended from ancestors who had held seats on the council, and who themselves enjoyed the same exclusive privilege. For Ottaviano Gentili of San Severino Marche, writing in 1737, this crystallization in the Renaissance of the social order was a turning point: it was the moment at which the period recognizable to him as modern history had actually begun. 208 p o r example: "Quae popularmm et plebeiorum seditio adversus nobiles atque potentes praevaluit in rerum publicamm administratione, diu non stetit. . . . Posteriori siquidem aevo Uteris et bonis artibus itemque moribus melioribus exculto, exactis paullatim a rerum administratione plebeiis, nobiles concilium civitatis iterum sibi vindicarunt, atque ita sensim pnstinus fuit eiusdem status restitutus, eademque ferme antiqui senatus ratio atque conditio. . . . Demum in tanto rerum discrimine ac mutatione paullatim reviviscens patriciis nomen vigere iterum coepit . . ." (Gentili, De patriaorum origine, pp. 505-6). But see in its entirety the chapter (4.5, "De renovata apellatione patricii," pp. 504-32) of which this is the preliminary passage, for a panoramic review of the social history of European cities in the passage from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. Despite all of the personal limitations and professional juristic bias of this obscure author, on whom certainly no ray of the Enlightenment had fallen, he conveys his grasp of themes which are central to later historiography.

250

CHAPTER

FOUR

S I G O N I O VERSUS THE CENSORS

U

NTIL 1568 Carlo Sigonio had studied exclusively the ancient world before the advent of the Roman Empire and of Christianity. His difficulties with the ecclesiastical censorship of the Catholic Church began when, in the Historia Bononiensis, composed and printed between 1568 and 1571, he turned his attention to the late antique and medieval periods in the western empire and in Italy. The Historia Bononiensis was subjected to stringent criticism by Roman censors in or about 1571. In a subsequent concerted review circa 1582, De Occidentali Imperio and De Regno ltaliae were attacked together, as were Sigonio's late works on ecclesiastical history, the Commentarius on the Sacra historia of SuIpicius Severus, and De republica Hebraeorum.1 A considerable part of the documentation concerning these two phases of the conflict between Sigonio and the censors is today known only through the edition by Filippo Argelati in Sigonio's Opera omnia, of the critiques of the censors and Sigonio's replies, since Argelati had access to manuscripts whose location and fate are not now known. Some details of an attack on De Regno ltaliae made in 1573 are preserved only in manuscript notes in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. The present chapter will concentrate on the censures directed against Historia Bononiensis, De Occidentali Imperio, and De Regno ltaliae, because in the economy of the present work the contrast between the viewpoint of the ecclesiastical censors and that of the humanist historian of secular events and institutions is important. The study of the contrast between ecclesiastical censors and Sigonio as ecclesiastical historian must be left to other hands. 1 The background to the present chapter will be found above in the third section of chapter 1. Some material presented here appears in a different form in McCuaig, "Carlo Sigonio storico e la censura" (1984). The pioneer in studying the censures of the Historia Bononiensis was Gina Fasoli in "Appunti sulla Historia Bononiensis ed altre opere di Carlo Sigonio" (1973). Of great importance and interest is Paolo Prodi, "Storia sacra e contronforma. Nota sulle censure al commento di Carlo Sigonio a Sulpicio Severo" (1977).

251

C H A P T E R FOUR

For his edition of the Historia Bononiensis in volume 3 of the Opera omnia, Argelati did not reproduce the text of the original Bolognese edition of the work (copies of which had entered circulation without any indication of date or publisher), but used instead the edition of 1604 published in Frankfurt by the Wechel heirs as part of a miscellany of Sigoniana to which they gave the title De rebus Bononiensibus libri VIIL2 Only when the text of the Historia Bononiensis had been set by his printers did Argelati obtain, from a source which he does not identify, a copy of the original Bolognese edition. It contained emendations to the text which Argelati took to be in the hand of Sigonio himself. When Argelati compared the emended Bolognese edition with the Frankfurt text of the Historia Bononiensis which he had followed for the Opera omnia, he found that a number of the emendations had effectively been introduced into the Frankfurt edition. The reason for these emendations was made apparent by a manuscript appendix containing contemporary censures of Sigonio's account of the history of Bologna: the authorial emendations to the text constituted a partial attempt to satisfy the objections raised in the censures. The authors of the censures were identified as Ugo Boncompagni, cardinal of Santo Sisto at the time and later Pope Gregory XIII; "Amaltheus," apparently the letterato Giovan Battista Amalteo (1525-1573); and Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto. As well as their censures the manuscript contained replies by Sigonio.3 Argelati did not advance any explanation for the presence of apparent authorial emendations in a transalpine edition of Sigonio, that of Frankfurt, which was posthumous by twenty years, but several possibilities, 2 In publishing the censures of the Historia Bononiensis (see n. 4) Argelati refers repeatedly to the "Vecheliana editio" to which his own corresponds, or to the publisher of it as " Vechelius," and at one point (3.343) calls the publishers "Hannovienses" in distraction, for the Wechel heirs did later move their production from Frankfurt to Hanau. Despite his vagueness he can only mean Caroli Sigonii Historia de rebus Bononiensibus libri VlU, Francofurti, Apud Claudium Marnium et haeredes Ioannis Aubrii, 1604, the only publication of the Historia Bononiensis from the Wechel press. 3 Fihppo Argelati, preface to the censures: "Jamque typis nostris supposueramus ipsam historiam . . . cum ad nos dono doctissimi viri allatus est liber earumdem historiarum, Bononiae impressus cum pnmum ab auctore suo in vulgus prodiit, ab ipso Sigonio multis in locis manu sua vel emendatus, vel aliam in formam compositus, quodque literato viro, cui librum percurrendum tradidi, apprime placuit, addiderat in calce illius idem Sigonius aliquot folia, in quibus adnotationes varias transcripserat, a tribus viris dignitate ac doctrina clarissimis in suam histonam factas, Eminentissimo nempe Ugone Cardinali S. Xisti, qui mox ad pontificatum maximum evectus Gregoru XIII nomen sumsit, Eminentissimo item Cardinali Sirleto, ac postremo a doctissimo Amaltheo; atque ad earum singulas, responsiones ipse suas subiecerat. . . . curavi ut in ordinem dispositae, atque ad numeros paginarum nostrarum respondentes, in cake historiae imprimerentur, quo praesto essent lectori. . ." (Op. om. 3.331).

252

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

neither documented in any way, do suggest themselves. It might be that Sigonio at some point had arranged to have sent to Andreas Wechel through Gian Vincenzo Pinelli an emended exemplar of the Historia Bononiensis as copy text for a Wechel edition of the work; or alternatively that Pinelli had possessed such an exemplar and had sent it to the Wechel heirs for this purpose some time after Sigonio's death. Argelati resolved to include the censures of the Historia Bononiensis and Sigonio's replies as a supplement to his edition, but instead of reproducing the contents of the manuscript which he had been given, he decided to excerpt parts of it, and to summarize and comment upon other parts. In the absence of the manuscript, the resulting conflation by Argelati remains our best instrument for the study of the attitudes of the censors of 1571.4 However, a Vatican codex containing internal documents of the Congregation for the Index of Prohibited Books5 includes two anonymous lists of censures of the Historia Bononiensis. The first corresponds in part to censures attributed by Argelati on the basis of his manuscript to Ugo Boncompagni, while the second contains censures corresponding to those attributed by Argelati to Amalteo.6 However, the author of the great majority of the objections advanced against the work was Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto. They are an extremely revealing document of the censorial mentality within the Catholic hierarchy during the decades between the appearance of the Magdeburg Centuries and that of Baronio's Annales ecclesiastici. Sirleto was unable to accept a history of Bologna and of medieval Italy in which the papacy was not presented as legitimate sovereign, 4 The text is found in Sigonio, Op. om. 3.330-50. On Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto, see Georg Denzler, Kardinal Guglielmo Sirleto (1514r-1585), Leben und Werk (Munich: Hueber, 1964); Pietro Emidio Commodaro, Il cardinale Guglielmo Sirleto 1514-1585 (Catanzaro 1985, = "La provincia di Catanzaro" anno 3, no. 4); Irena Backus-Benoit Gain, "Le cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto (1514-1585), sa bibliotheque, et ses traductions de Saint Basile," MEFRM 98,1986, pp. 889-955; Charles Dejob, De linfluence du Concile de Trente (1884); Jeanne Bignami Odier, La Bibliotheque Vaticane de Sixte IV a Pie Xl (Citta del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1973 [ad indicem]); Paolo Prodi, Il cardinale Gabriele Paleotti (ad indicem). 5 Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 6207. On this codex, see Paolo Simoncelli, "Documenti interni alia Congregazione dell'Indice, 1571-1590. Logica e ideologia dell'intervento censorio" (1985); Hilgers, Der Index der verbotenen Biicher, pp. 513-14; and Patricia H. Jobe, "Inquisitorial manuscripts in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: a preliminary handlist," in G. Henningsen-J. Tedeschi, ed., The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe (Dekalb, 111.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), pp. 33-53. No. 21 of her handlist is Vat. Lat. 6207. s Vat. Lat. 6207, f. 74r: anonymous untitled censures, but of Sigonio's Historia Bononiensis; cf. Op. om. 3.335, 336, 337, 343 for the attribution of corresponding censures to Ugo Boncompagni. Ff. 98r-100r: censures "Ex Historia Bononiensi"; cf. Op. om. 3.334, 335 for the attribution of three corresponding censures to "Amaltheus."

253

C H A P T E R FOUR

without interruption from the time of the donation of Constantine, of all of the territories later incorporated in the Papal State. Sigonio was forbidden to write that the archbishopric of Ravenna, the German emperors, and the Italian communes had exercised temporal powers in the Italian peninsula in independence from or resistance to the papacy, or that they had used legitimations and sanctions, even unsuccessful ones, of their own, in rivalry with the bishop of Rome. In fact, Sigonio was forbidden to say that there had been opposition in any period of history to the Roman primacy; in other words, he was forbidden to reveal that the primacy had grown up through the long and complicated vicissitudes of centuries of history, out of the muck of which Sirleto sought to sublimate the Holy See. Sigonio had allowed himself the skeptical remark that the reality of the donation by Constantine "was believed by pious men," a phrase to which both Sirleto and Amalteo objected.7 In describing the Ottonian administration of the Kingdom of Italy, Sigonio naturally wrote that the cognition of judicial disputes in the Regnum Italiae was reserved to the king; Sirleto's reply was that "it was reserved to the pope—or else this part is to be omitted."8 Sigonio had described a precise historical period of a century in which the church of Ravenna had been in opposition to Rome; Sirleto found this precision unwelcome. The church of Ravenna was to be portrayed as permanently contumacious against Roman authority, not as an autonomous rival.9 In writing of the Diet at Roncaglia in 1158 Sigonio had commemorated the decision of the Bolognese jurists reasserting the imperial authority of Frederick I over the Italian cities. Ugo Boncompagni recommended the suppression of this, on the ground that it cast doubt on the validity of the donations made to the papacy by the Frankish and Saxon emperors.10 In narrating the events of A. D. 1162 7 "Sirletus: Nimis extenuatur; dicendum, 'ut multi probatae fidei scriptores tradiderunt/ aut quid simile. Amaltheus: verba ilia 'ut a piis hominibus creditur' omnino tollerem, ne donatio a Constantino facta, quae certissima est, in dubium revocan videatur" (Op. om. 3.334; and cf. Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 6207, f. 98r). 8 "Sirletus: Dissentit Petrus Damiani in Libro Defensor Romanae Ecclesiae; nam id reservabatur pontifici, aut haec pars tacenda. Sigomus: De reservata cognitione possum probare mille testimoniis, sed quia nihil ad me silebitur." But Sigonio added a marginal note: "Si hoc est falsum, falsa sunt omnia quae sequuntur ad ius imperatorium in Italia pertinentia, neque hanc histonam scnbere attinet" (Op. om. 3.339). 9 Sigonio, Op. om. 3.342. 10 "Eminentisstmus Cardinalis S. Xistt: Videtur tollenda ilia sententia lata super civitatibus Italiae pro Imperatore, cum sit contra donationes factas Sedi Apostolicae. Sigonius: Non placet civitati, ut tollatur sententia lata quia affert honorem civitati, sed modus adhibebitur, ut satis-

254

S I G O N I O VERSUS THE C E N S O R S

Sigonio had reported the excuses which Bologna was constrained to offer to Frederick I for her support of his opponent, Pope Alexander III: the city, in an attempt to placate the emperor, had alleged that the situation of the papacy, split by schism, was ambiguous, and that it had followed Alexander III rather than the imperial pope Victor because of its old alliance with Alexander. Sirleto insisted that Sigonio must write that the Bolognesi had adhered to the cause of Alexander because they were true Catholics, and because he was the true pope. Sigonio in reply demonstrated at length that it was historically unlikely that the city, in attempting to avoid the emperor's wrath, would have acted in this way, and that the schism was a historical fact which could not be suppressed.11 Sigonio had written that the Bolognesi had given an honorable welcome to the emperor Otto IV in A.D. 1212, at a time when Otto had been dethroned by a papal pronouncement, and when the papal legate in Lombardy was excommunicating other cities which stood with the emperor. Sirleto, as in other cases, declared that either it was not true or it should be omitted, "because if the pope had unseated him, it is incorrect for the Bolognesi to act differently." Sigonio replied that there were detailed accounts of the reception of Otto IV by the city, and that it was historically certain that Bologna had adhered to the emperor and not the papacy at this time. To alter the truth on this point would be to make nonsense of a considerable portion of the narrative. n In describing the growth of the Guelph and Ghibelline factions in Italy, Sigonio had written that the former followed the papal authority, the latter the imperial. Sirleto admonished that only the ecclesiastical side could be said to have auctoritas, the imperial side being a mere faction. In Sigonio's reply there sounded the spirit of an earlier age of Italian historiography: both, he said, had been factions, the ecclesiastical side as well as the imperial fiat utnque" (Op. om. 3.343; and cf. MS Vat. Lat. 6207, f. 74r). Sigonio means that the role of the Bolognese jurists at the Diet of 1158 was a cherished point of local honor in Bologna. 11 Sigonio, Op. om. 3.343-44. 12 "Sirletus: Non videtur verum, quia alii authores aiunt, Bononienses adhaesisse pontifici; aut omittatur, quia si pontifex ilium spoliaverat, non convenit Bononienses secus egisse; et si Iegatus papae excommunicavit populos qui faverant Othoni, cur non etiam Bononienses ? Et tamen Bononienses in hoc non nominantur. Sigonius: Othonem a Bononiensibus honoratum tradunt Chronica Bononiae, quibus nescio cur in hac re fidem non habeamus, in aliis habeamus. Bononienses vero adhaesisse in hoc bello pontifici, nemo, quod legenm, tradit. In Archivo Bononiensi extant consultationes et legationes super hac re, neque aliud est certius, quam eos cum Othone fuisse, non cum pontifice. Si quis voluent hoc mutare, historiam multorum annorum comment; neque ego unquam adducar, ut rem tam falsam scribam, sed me abdicabo potius hoc officio" (Op. om. 3.346).

255

C H A P T E R FOUR

one, and together they had been the ruin of Italy.13 And a final example of Sirleto's will to obscure the reality of medieval Italian history by making the existence of the Papal State perpetual: Sigonio had referred to Carpi as being in the possession of Modena in A. D. 1250; Sirleto's censure was that either Carpi belonged to the church or those words must be omitted. Sigonio replied: "Conditions varied over time; if this were not true, then the entire western empire belonged to the church, and to write differently is to detract from the donation of Constantine. A hard task to write history I"14 A second major theme of the censures of the Historia Bononiensis by Sirleto was the unacceptability of Sigonio's classical Latin as a medium for writing medieval history. From the age of Petrarca and Valla the contemporary application of classical Latin in a nonclassical world had been problematical, and the exaggerated Ciceronianism of the early Cinquecento, refusing any word or construction not used by Cicero himself, had to some extent discredited the movement for linguistic purity in Latin. The issue between Sigonio and Sirleto, however, was not this, but another and more subtle one. Sigonio, writing of the persecutions of the third century, said that the Christians suffered detrimentum (harm), where Sirleto preferred the more forceful word calamitates, to signify the penalties paid by the Christian martyrs for their faith. Both terms belong in good Latin, and detrimentum is an acceptable word for "violent death," but Sirleto wished to produce a more vehement effect in the reader than that produced by detrimentum, a word which conveys the coolly judging and detached viewpoint of the author. In general, the elegance and precision in vocabulary characteristic of Sigonio give the sense of a writer discriminate and reserved, traits which evoked a discomfort in Sirleto that went deeper than style. He objected to Sigonio's use of labes ("ruin" or "blot") and error ("deviation") to describe the Arian heresy, and of pompa for a penitential procession. But Sigonio rejected the alternative advanced by Sirleto, processio, as barbarism. Instead of accommodating his censor by using a Christianized or Italianized Latin, Sigonio preferred aqua lustralis for holy water instead of 13 "Sirletus: Dicendum, aliis Imperii partes, ahis Ecclesiae authoritatem sequentibus; nam verbum 'authoritas' non convenit Imperio. Sigonius: Cur offendamus Imperium, aut Imperiales sine caussa? Cum tarn partes dictae sint Ecclesiae, quam Imperii, et Velforum et Gibellinorum. Quae partes, si damnae aestimentur, vere Italiam perdiderunt" (Op. om. 3.348). 14 "Sirletus: Immo erat Ecclesiae Romanae, aut tollantur ea verba. Sigonius: Carpi erant turn Mutinensium ex chronicis; nee semper eodem statu res fuerunt, alioquin totus Occidens est Ecclesiae, et qui hoc negarit donatiom Constantini detraxerit. O rem duram scribere historiam" (Op. om. 3. 350).

256

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

aqua benedicta. The classical correctness of his vocabulary lacked the fervor and commitment which the times required, and was even, Sirleto suggested, a comfort to the enemy. There are one or two clues to the reasoning behind Sirleto's linguistic hypersensitivity. Sigonio had written that one candidate had "obtained" the papacy [obtinuit) and that another had "held" it {adeptus est). Both are purely neutral terms, but for Sirleto the verb obtenere seemed to imply not that the papacy had been "obtained" but that it had been "won by fraud." The point is that obtenere, like adipisci, is a word whose reference is restricted to the domain of human action, the normal word used of someone who wins an election to a magistracy or to one of the ancient Roman priesthoods. Whenever Sigonio mentions the choice of a new pope he presents the event in a similar way as a human choice, never suggesting that any divine afflatus was at work. His description in neutral language of one of the many contested papal elections at Rome was considered indecent by Cardinal Sirleto.15 The result of the censures of the Historia Bononiensis was of course the decision by Pius V to forbid the distribution of the work. The next encounter between Sigonio and the guardians of orthodoxy took place in 1573, and concerned, apparently, the version of De Regno ltaliae printed in Bologna in 1571 and then suppressed by Sigonio himself. In a dossier entitled "De historia Sigonii De Regno ltaliae iudicia" Gian Vincenzo Pinelli preserved originals and copies of critical remarks on this version of De Regno ltaliae, together with Sigonio's replies, and other notes, for the most part anonymous and disorganized, regarding the published text of 1574.16 The principal complaint of the anonymous censor of 1573 was that Sigonio's history not only failed to give due 15 See the censures to Historia Bononiensis passim for Sirleto's linguistic objections to Sigonio. On the expression "pontificatum obtinuit": "Sirletus: Hoc verbum innuere potest per malas artes eum ascendisse. Sigonius: Obtinere pontificatum aut magistratum dixere veteres etiam de iis, qui bonis artibus adepti sunt" {Op. om. 3.341). 16 BAM, MS R 109 sup., ff. 142-49, "De historia Sigonii De Regno ltaliae iudicia." F. 143r contains notes in Pinelli's hand, beginning "Esso ha cancellato 4 luoghi, dopo stampato il libro, ad instanzia di chi puo comandare . . ." (a phrase which echoes that of Sigonio in his letter to Pinelli of 3 January 1575, "Gli altri quattro appartengono a chi puo comandare," cit above chap. 1, n. 232). F. 144 also contains very rough notes. F. 145 contains a copy by Pinelli of criticisms of De Regno ltaliae, the originals of which are contained in f. 148, a letter to Pinelli from which the name of the sender has been removed. F. 146 contains notes by Pinelli on remarks on the history by Padre Adorno of Genoa. F. 147 is Sigonio's reply to the censures of ff. 145 and 148; it is addressed on the reverse by Sigonio to Pinelli and was originally the plico or cover enclosing f. 149, a letter from Sigonio to Pinelli of 2 May 1573. Ff. 147 and 149 were published in Ceruti, Lettere inedite, pp. 104-5; Ceruti misdates Sigonio's letter by two years, publishing it as of 2 May 1575.

257

C H A P T E R FOUR

prominence to the role of the papacy as the salvation of Italy, but that Sigonio was an explicitly antipapal writer in the tradition of Machiavelli : In the beginning of his history he says that the ruin of Italy was caused by the popes. And aside from the fact that this is the opinion of Machiavelli in the Discorsi, it is a danger in these times. As well, the papacy, both the present one and from time immemorial, has always called for the defense of Italy against the barbarians of France and other kingdoms. And if nothing else, Sigonio being Italian, it fell to him to maintain the reputation of the papacy; for there is no other good in her [Italy] than the Holy See. This political consideration ought certainly to have made Sigonio more cautious.17 Sigonio's reply was an impatient negation of the charge made by his critic18 (whom he believed to be a cardinal, perhaps Sirleto), and his accompanying letter to Pinelli, one of the frankest he ever wrote, would itself be sufficient to show that Sigonio was not indifferent to the intellectual malaise of post-Tridentine Italy.19 Still, in 1575 De Regno Italiae also found a champion in the person of Agostino Valier, now bishop of Verona. He was hardly likely to have been ignorant of the difficulties which the publication in Venice of Si17

Anon, to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, [1573]: "NeI principio della historia dice la ruvina della Italia esser stata causata da Papi. Et oltre che questa e opinione del Machiavelli ne discorsi, e pericola ne tempi d'hora. Oltre che il papato, e questo et sempre, ha chiamato alia defensione di quella contro barbari, et Franza et altri Regni. Et almeno 1'esser itahano el Sigonio, toccava a lui mantener la riputazione del papato; per che altro bene non e in essa, che questa Santa Sede. Et questa ragione politica doveva certo fare piu cauto el Signor Sigonio" (BAM, MS R 109 sup., f. 148r). Sigonio's critic continues in the same vein; it is not yet possible to offer an integral edition of these criticisms or of the remaining unedited portion of the dossier. 18 Carlo Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 2 May 1573: "Che nel principio dell'histona si dica, la rovina dell'Itaha esser stata causata dai papi, questo si nega esser ne detto ne significato" (R 109 sup., f. 147r, and published, with the rest of Sigonio's replies, in Ceruti, Lettereinedite, p. 105). 19 Sigonio to Pinelli, 2 May 1573: "GIi avertimenti mandatimi vengono da un cardinale, et so chi egli e, ma mostra poca cognitione et poca intelligentia et molta passione, et non vi e cosa ne vera ne reale. Vi mando la risposta. Et perche non mi servo, ne son per servirmi, ne e cosa buona il Merula, Io rimando a V. S., et aspetto il sasso Capitolino, sperando che mi conci il stomaco, sicome questi awertimenti me l'hanno guasto. Ma la malignita temprata con 1'ignorantia di questo secolo hanno fatto una tempra tale d'un coltello, che malamente si puo fuggir il suo taglio. Me Ie dono in gratia sua" (MS R 109 sup., f. 149r). Published by Ceruti, Lettere inedite, pp. 104-5 with errors of transcription, including the date, given there as 2 May 1575, and by Simeoni, "Documenti" letter no. 142, much more exactly, but with the date 20 May 1573 and giving the recipient as Fulvio Orsini.

258

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

gonio's history had encountered, and the letter he addressed to Niccolo Barbarigo and Alvise Contarini, "Quaedam de utilitate capienda ex Historiis de Regno Italiae," must be seen as a defense of the orthodoxy and good faith of Sigonio, offering a pro-ecclesiastical, pro-Italian reading of the work. For instance, Sigonio's account of the translation of empire to the Frankish kings, according to Valier, depicted the pope as arbiter of Europe; and the life of Saint Bernard was never better summarized than in De Regno Italiae. A recurrent theme is Valier's regret for the passing of Pius V, the pope whose efforts to unite Christendom against the Turks had not, despite Lepanto, been crowned with lasting success; Valier contrasts this situation with the unity of Europe at the time of the Crusades as shown in Sigonio. The internal wars of the Italian communes were a negative example for modern Italians, the cohesion of the Lombard League against Frederick I a positive one. Valier's letter concludes with an exhortation to Niccolo Barbarigo to undertake the renewal of Venetian historiography on Sigonio's example.20 The donation of Constantine was still in the later sixteenth century the cornerstone of the Catholic claim to the supremacy of the papacy over all the temporal rulers of Europe. A famous cycle of paintings, commissioned for the palace of the Vatican by the second Medici pope during the years prior to the sack of Rome in 1527, had reaffirmed explicitly the legend of the donation of the western empire to Pope Sylvester in A.D. 315.21 The censures of 1571 had shown that in the eighth decade of the sixteenth century the donation of Constantine was also 20 "Augustini Valerii Episcopi Veronensis Quaedam de utilitate capienda ex Histonis de Regno Italiae, ad Nicolaum Barbadicum praetorem et ad Aloysium Contarenum equitem praefectum Veronae, unanimes rectores," published in Sigonio, Op. om. 6.1069-76. This composition can be dated to 1575 on the basis of the career of one of the addressees, Niccolo Barbarigo (d. 1579), podesta in Verona from 1573 to 1576 (cf. the entry in DBi 6, 1964, pp. 76-78, by F. Babinger) and on Valier's statement that De Regno Italiae had recently been published at the time of the discussion which it occasioned between the three men in Verona. The text as published by Argelati represents a version of the letter sent to Rome and intended to have an effect there in favor of Sigonio, Argelati says that he has used a manuscript from the Biblioteca Vaticana. A miscellaneous codex of writings by Valier m BAM, MS D 447 inf., ff. 66r-77v, contains a text of the letter with minor variants and one major variant: where the edition, based on a Roman manuscript, has a long and pious passage about Saint Bernard, the BAM manuscript substitutes a passage about the proofs of Venetian liberty which can be found in Sigonio's history (Op. om. 6.1073, f. 73 r-v in MS). 21 The text of the donation is m Das Constitutum Constantini, ed. Horst Fuhrmann (Hannover: Hahn, 1968); on the decorative cycle of the stanze vaticane which elaborated on the legend, see A. Chastel, Il sacco di Roma, 1527 (Torino: Einaudi, 1983), pp. 36-^15. On the donation in the thought of the jurists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in relation to the status of the papal state, see Paolo Prodi, Il sovrano pontefice (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1982), chaps. 1-2.

259

C H A P T E R FOUR

considered the foundation of the church's temporal dominion in Italy, and that any suggestion of its purely legendary character was simply unacceptable to Roman authority. Hence when Sigonio commenced work on De Occidentali Imperio, probably in 1575, it was inevitable that signals of alarm should begin to sound in Rome and in Bologna, the second city of the Papal State. Sigonio was probably warned that the donation must find a place in his history; the document which we have of this is his reply, "De donatione Constantini sententia," a brief undated memorandum in which he demonstrates irrefutably (what had been evident since Valla) that the legend which made Constantine a persecutor of the Christians in A.D. 315, before his cure and conversion at the hands of Pope Sylvester in that year, was contradicted by his victory over Maxentius under the sign of the cross in A.D. 312. From this memorandum it results that those in Rome had gone so far as to demand that the emperor be portrayed as an Arian persecutor of Catholics, and of Pope Miltiades (whom, against all historical testimony, Sigonio was asked to turn into a martyr), continuously from A.D. 312 to 314. The transparent purpose of this request was to save the "circumstances" of the donation. Sigonio refused to do this, offering only to write that Constantine had been cured and baptized by Sylvester in A.D. 315, and that the pope had been greatly honored by the emperor in result. The anonymity which was to protect his critics, and which still protects them from historical scrutiny, was broken here by Sigonio himself, who named one of them as the bishop of Gubbio, Mariano Savelli.22 The concession which he had offered to make was considered insufficient in Rome. Sigonio attempted a further compromise, the document of which is a manuscript draft, of perhaps late 1577, for another version of the story of the encounter between Constantine and Sylvester in A.D. 315. In this draft, although the supposed persecution of the Christians by Constantine is still absent, Sylvester cures and baptizes the emperor, after which Sigonio offers a summary of the contents of the "edict" of Constantine, mentioning among the other signs of gratitude offered by emperor to pope the donation to him and his successors "of the Occident itself."23 22

Sigonio, De donatione Constantini sententia; BAM, MS P 193 sup., ff. 4-8; and published in Op. om. 6.985-88. He concludes: "Quomodo ergo Constantinus anno 315 potuit esse Arrianus ? Haec eiusmodi confinxerunt qui temere voluerunt defendere omnes partes edicti et nullam historiam tenuerunt, inter quos principatum habet episcopus Eugubinus, qui maledicit potius quam defendit" (Op. om. 6.987). The "edict" to which he refers is of course the "Constitutum Constantini." The bishop of Gubbio (1556-99) was Mariano Savelli. 23 Bibhoteca Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 6160, ff. 132r-138v, anonymous and untitled, but a 260

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

Not even this was enough. Toward the beginning of 1578 Sigonio made a further concession, which was in the end sufficient to render an agreement possible: he retained the story of the actions of Constantine prior to A.D. 315 without suppressions. At that point he inserted not the text of the "edict" of Constantine but a letter of Pope Hadrian I written in A.D. 785 which had been included in the acts of the second Nicene Council. This letter relates synthetically the "narrative" of the events preceding the donation—the persecution of the Christians by Constantine, his leprosy, his cure and conversion.24 In June of 1578 this latest and most awkward attempt by Sigonio to reconcile professional conscience and the demands of orthodoxy was seen in Rome, as a manuscript draft or perhaps a printer's proof, by Sirleto, by the Maestro del Sacro Palazzo, the Dominican Paolo Costabili of Ferrara, and by their collaborators. At that time the Maestro del Sacro Palazzo was the curial official in charge of censorship within the city of Rome, and had in practice extensive powers to direct, on his own behalf and on behalf of the Congregation for the Index, the censorial work of inquisitors throughout the Papal State. In a letter of 18 June 1578 to Sirleto, one of these collaborators, whose identity has been suppressed, reviewed the situation. A preliminary question was the division of competence between the central organs of the Papal State, to whose cognition Sigonio's work had been submitted, and the corresponding local organs in Bologna. Paolo Costabili for his part renounced his claim to jurisdiction in favor of that of the bishop of the city of publication (i.e., Gabriele Paleotti or his deputy) but recommended extreme caution because of the manifest problems which Sigonio's history posed.25 Sirleto had requested from draft by Sigonio for the year A.D. 315 in De Occidentali Imperio. The crucial passage: "Ob id Constantinus e sancto lavacro lepra liber emersus, ut gratiam tanti beneficn Sylvestro referret, edictum, quod nunc quoque legitur, scripsit, in quo, hac historia enarrata, adiicit se ad referendam gratiam, Sylvestrem omnibus ad amplitudinem ac dignitatem Apostohcae sedis ornandam insignibus decorare atque eumdem et successores eius ipso insuper Occidente donare. Quod edictum Ecclesia Romana in hunc usque diem constantissime tenuit" (f. 137v). The writer's disbelief in what he states is plain. 24 The letter of Pope Hadrian I was addressed to Emperor Constantine VI and Empress Irene at the time of the second Nicene Council, and is dated 26 October 785 in P. Jaffe, Regesta pontificum Romanorum (Leipzig 1885). The pope, defending the use of holy images against the iconoclasts of the eastern empire, recounts for the benefit of the imperial couple the power demonstrated by the images of Saints Peter and Paul during the conversion of the persecutor Constantine I by Pope Sylvester in A.D. 315. The letter survived in more than one redaction. An edition of the counals from which Sigonio might have adapted his text was that of L. Surius, Conciliorum omnium tomi IV, t. 3 (Cologne: Calenius and heredes Quentelii, 1567), pp. 65-66. 25 There were three Maestri del Sacro Palazzo during the span of years in which Sigonio was 261

C H A P T E R FOUR

the collaborator an opinion as to whether the Congregation for the Index should follow suit, and leave the judgment of Sigonio's text in the hands of the local office of the Inquisition in Bologna. The collaborator—who may have been the secretary of the Congregation—assumed that if that course were adopted, approval would be automatic, and therefore objected to the surrender of jurisdiction by the central organ.26 He gave his involved with ecclesiastical censorship. They were Thomas Manriquez of Spain (1565-73), Paolo Costabili of Ferrara (1573-80), and Sisto Fabri of Lucca (1580-83), all Dominicans. The office of the Maestro del Sacro Palazzo (MSP) was in origin that of a theological consultancy to the pope, but the censorial responsibilities which later were added became an important part of his institutional role. The Maestro del Sacro Palazzo was a permanent member of the Congregations for the Index and the Inquisition in the role of consultant, as well as having independent responsibilities in the city of Rome. The literature begins with V. M. Fontana, Syllabus Magistrorum Sacri Palatii Apostolici (Rome: Tinassius, 1663); the chronology he gives of the sixteenth-century holders of the office is imperfect. Josephus Catalanus (Ital. Catalani), De Magistro Sacri Palatii Apostolici libri Il (Rome: Fulgonus, 1751), corrects and supplements Fontana. Both authors describe and document the institutional growth of the office. But their biographical entries concentrate on the subsequent careers of the Dominicans who held the office of Maestro del Sacro Palazzo, and who in many cases went on to become Masters-General of their order (as did Costabili and Fabri). Hence, see D.-A. Mortier, Histoire des MaitresGeneraux de I'Ordre des Freres Precheurs t. 5 (1911) for the biographies of Paolo Costabili, Sisto Fabri, and others. But again there is little or nothing on their work as MSP. Names and dates of Dominicans who were involved in censorship at Rome as MSP, commissioners of the Holy Office, and secretaries of the Congregation of the Index, can be found in Innocentius Taurisano, Hierarchia Ordinis Praedicatorum (1916). Recent and important, giving full weight to his role as censor, is the entry on Paolo Costabili in DB/ 30,1984, pp. 261-62, by A. Biondi. Paolo Costabili's refusal in 1578 to approve the text of De Occidentali Imperio may indicate that he himself did not have the power to do this for a book to be published in Bologna, or merely that he wished to show deference in this case to Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, who was giving Sigonio strong personal support. As Maestro del Sacro Palazzo, Costabili normally had and used in these years extensive powers to dirert the operations of the office of the Inquisition in Bologna; this can be verified in Antonio Rotondo, "Nuovi documenti per la storia dell'Indice dei libri proibiti (1572-1638)" (1963), in which document no. 4 is a letter of June 1574 from Costabili imparting instructions to the inquisitor in Bologna, and documents 5-11 are letters of 1576 in which Costabili's underling Damiano Rubeo communicates the wishes of Costabili and of the cardinals of the Congregation for the Index to the same official. 26 Anon, to Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto, 18 June 1578; Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 3455, ff. 9r-14r, a copy lacking the names of sender and recipient. But the latter was certainly Sirleto. As for the sender, he might, on conjecture, have been the first secretary of the Congregation for the Index, the Franciscan Antonio Posi of Montalcino, who held the post until his death in November 1580, or Giovanni Battista Land of Reggio Emilia, a Dominican who worked in the secretary's office under Posi and became secretary in his turn after Posi's death. On Antonio Posi, see Hilgers, Der Index der verbotenen Biicher, p. 514; J. H. Sbaralea, Supplementum et castigatio ad scriptores trium Ordinum S. Franctsci a Waddingo alnsve descriptos (Rome: Contedini, 1806), p. 88; Charles H. Lohr, "Renaissance Latin Aristotle Commentaries, Authors Pi-Sm," in Renaissance Quarterly 33, 1980, pp. 670-71; and Antonio Rotondo, "Nuovi documenti per la storia dell'Indice," documents 2 and 3, letters of February and June 1573 from Posi to the inquisitor of Bologna. On Giovanni Battista Lanci of Reggio Emilia, see Quetif-Echard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum t. 2 (1721), pp. 322-23; and Ca-

262

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

reasons: Sigonio's encompassing narrative contradicted the legend of the donation which had been reluctantly inserted. Specifically, Sigonio related Constantine's actions after A.D. 312 in fa­ vor of the church and Pope Miltiades, who was succeeded by Sylvester only in 314—actions which in Sigonio's reconstruction included the concession of the Lateran palace to Miltiades and the foundation of the basilica of St. John Lateran itself. It all made nonsense of the supposed persecution of the Christians in A.D. 315 which had caused Pope Sylves­ ter to flee to Mount Soracte. This censor, in defense of the orthodox tradition, attempted to discredit the possibility that the Lateran palace could have been the gift of the emperor to Miltiades rather than to Sylvester.27 Sigonio's fundamental error, he said, lay in the selection and talam, De secretario Sacrae Congregations Indicis (1751), pp. 92-94. Quetif-Echard claim that, during the tenure of the Franciscan Antonio Posi, the work of the secretary of the Con­ gregation for the Index was effectively carried out by the Dominican Lanci, who was at the same time attached as a SOCI'MS to the Maestro del Sacro Palazzo, Costabili. To the extent that this claim may be true, Lanci can be considered a possible, or even the probable, author of the letter in question. This letter is cited in Prodi, Paleotti, 2.256, but under the impression that the book with which the censors were dealing was the Historia Bononiensis. 27 Complete publication of the text of the letter is not possible here, but it will be worth giving extracts of some length: "Illustrissimo et Reverendissimo Signore mio osservandissimo. Ho veduti alcuni fogli del Signor Sigonio, dove scrive del tempo di Constantino, et ho notati alcuni advertimenti, quali Sua Signoria harra veduti. Li medesmi fogli hebbe il Padre Maestro del Sacro Palatio [Paolo Costabili], il quale essendo stato richiesto di sottoscriverli, ha nsposto che questo non tocca a lui ma all'ordinani de Ii luoghi overo alii loro deputati, advertendo che s'usi quella diligentia che se deve in esaminar bene I'opere inanzi che se diano alia stampa. Quant'a quel che mi domanda V. S. Illustrissima, se me par che l'lnquisitore et il suo deputato Ii possono sottoscrivere senz'altro: Ie dico che la cosa me par che habbi alcuna difficolta, per che quantunque il Signor Sigonio ha posto quel che si trova nella Epistola di Papa Adriano Primo registrato nel Conciho generate Niceno secondo sopra il Battesmo di Constan­ tino, non dimeno Ie cose dette inanzi nell'istessa historia fanno dubitare come possi esser vero che San Silvestro Papa stesse nascosto nel Monte Soratte per fugire la persecutione dell'Imperatore Constantino, il quale non solo non perseguitava secondo la sopradetta historia h Christiani, ma Ii favoriva. Et se dopo la vittoria che hebbe di Maxentio per septem dies Constantinus gratias Deo agi iussit, atque interim rebus Romanis atque Ecclesiae constituendis se tradidit, come l'Autore scrive, in che modo perseguitava la Chiesa de' Christiani?. . ." (MS Vat. Lat. 3455 f. 9r). "Poco dapoi dice che diede a Milciade Papa il Palatio Lateranense, il che quantunque alcuni scrittori dichino, nondimeno altri piii dotti et diligenti hanno provato il contrario tenendo per fermo che quel Palatio sia stato dato da l'Imperadore Constantino a S. Silvestro dopo il Battesmo, come I'Editto deiia Donatione contiene, scritto in Iittere grece et latine, allegato da Theodora Balsamone nel suo Nomocanone, da Manuel Calega, da Simeone Thessalonicense, da Matthaeo monaco, et dal Cardinale Bessarione, il quale innanzi Papa Ρίο Secondo provo questo decreto esser verissimo rispondendo a tutte l'obiettioni contrarie; ultimamente e approvato da Gennadio Patriarcha Constantinopolitano stampato novamente in Roma. Non bisogna nominare Ii scrittori latini di pieta et dottrina excellenti, quali hanno citato et havuto per autentico quello decreto, come nell'annotationi quali son state fatte sopra il Gratiano s'e mostrato" (f. 9v). 263

C H A P T E R FOUR

use he had made of his sources, preferring Eusebius of Caesarea to writers more favorable to Rome. Eusebius, a contemporary of the events he wrote about, was inconvenient: he related that Constantine had favored the Christians since 312, but that the emperor had only been baptized many years later on his deathbed. Both data contradicted the legend of the donation. The censor recommended strongly that Sigonio abandon Eusebius, whose credibility as a historian was undermined by his adherence to the Arian heresy, and that Sigonio's work not be allowed to appear until all of the scandalous and contradictory material which it contained had been removed.28 This letter reveals how strong the pressures were upon men like Sirleto from within the Roman curia. Despite the recommendations of this censor, Gabriele Paleotti was able to obtain Sirleto's consent for final inquisitorial approval of De Occidential Imperio in Bologna, where the book was published in the summer of 1578. Sirleto imposed the essential condition that the donation of Constantine be included. Despite the fact that a year or more of bargaining between Bologna and Rome had produced a substantially satisfactory result, Sigonio resented this inclusion as a blemish on what he held dearest in life, the attempt to recover knowledge of the past through the research and writing of history, and determined to affix public responsibility for it on Sirleto. To the letter of Pope Hadrian I summarizing the legend of the conversion and baptism of Constantine, Sigonio in the final published text of De Occidentali Imperio appended a declaration (repeating the wording of his previous draft) that Constantine had pro28

"Tutto questo ho voluto scrivere per dire liberamente quel che sento, tanto piu ch'el Padre Maestro del Sacro Palatio [Paolo Costabili] m'ha detto che in questa historia gl'e parso di vedere alcune contradittioni manifeste, et per questo advertiva che se dovesse considerare bene innanzi che si sottoscrivesse. . . . Bisogna dunque ch'el Signor Sigonio scrivi questa historia di Constantino in modo che non ve sia repugnantia alcuna, ma che sia conforme, servando quel ncordo, 'primo ne medium, medio ne discrepet imum.' Per far questo me par che non debbi attendere a tutto quel ch'ognuno ha scntto, et tanto manco a quel ch'ha detto Eusebio Cesanense, al qual stando s'ha a credere Constantino fu Ariano, essendo stato battizato, secondo egh dice nel fine de la sua vita, da Ariani, del che e stato redarguito da Georgio Abbate, da Theophane, da Zonara monacho, da Georgio Cedreno et d'altn, non solo di questa bugia, ma ancora di molte altre. . . . tutta la Chiesa Greca l'ha per santo et celebra la sua festa ogn'anno nelh tanti di maggio, come dunque puo essere che sia stato Ariano? Quest'ho detto per che non si debbi dar credito ad Eusebio, il quale essendo stato Ariano et Signifer Arianorum, come dice San Gerolamo et la settima Synodo, et come si vede nelli suoi trattati, cerca di mostrare che queU'Imperadore Cattholico sia stato di quella setta heretica, quale lui ha fatta condennare nel Concilio Niceno primo. . . . Sopra quel che me domanda Ie replico che non se deve sottoscrivere a questo trattato se prima non si leva tutto quel che genera dubio, et scrupolo, et contradittioni al Decreto della Donatione di Constantino Magno, all'epistola di Papa Adriano, alia settima Synodo generale, Nicena seconda, et al Breviario Romano" (MS Vat. Lat. 3455, f. l l r v). 264

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

claimed the donation of the western empire to Sylvester in an edict, and with impassive irony thanked Sirleto for having sent from Rome opportune reminders of its authenticity. The entire section of the text dealing with the donation was set in a special oversize Italic type (here the irony is visual) by Giovanni Rossi, printer for the Societas Typographiae Bononiensis, and De Occidentali lmperio thus came into the world in defense of the donation of Constantine, certainly the last serious historical work to have this distinction.29 In 1580 the Societas Typographiae Bononiensis published the second edition of De Regno ltaliae. From 1578 Sigonio had worked on ecclesiastical and sacred history as a result of the commission given him by Gregory XIII to write a history of the church. In this, his ultimate attempt to master a new field of historical study, Sigonio was able to see published two works, the Sacrae historiae libri II of Sulpicius Severus with his own commentary in 1581, and De republica Hebraeorum in 1582. It was at this moment—circa 1582—that the four major works published in Bologna by Sigonio since 1578, each dealing incidentally in some way with subjects of controversy between Catholics and Protestants, became the target of a concerted campaign of censorial review in Rome. This campaign was promoted by unidentified persons—a group or faction of some sort—within the institutional ambience of the Maestro del Sacro Palazzo and the Congregation for the Index of Prohibited Books,30 and amounted in substance to a vendetta aimed at discrediting 29 Sigonio, De Occidentali lmperio, A. D. 315, pp. 68-70 (in the 1st ed. of 1578). Sigonio's conclusion: "Constantinus mde, Ut gratiam tanti beneficii Silvestro referret, Edictum, quod nunc quoque VI KaI. Apnlis datum legitur, scripsit, in quo hac historia enarrata adiicit, se ad referendam gratiam Silvestrum omnibus ad amplitudinem et dignitatem Apostolicae sedis ornandam insignibus decorare, atque eundem et successores eius ipso insuper Occidente donare. Quod Edictum ecclesia Romana, atque adeo etiam Orientalis, in mine usque diem constantissime tenuit, Theodoro Balsamone et Emanuele Caleca et Gennadio patriarcha, Graecis scriptoribus, testibus; quorum Illustrissimus Cardinalis Sirletus opportune iam inde Roma usque admonuit" ( p. 70). Note the verbal repetition of part of the draft cited in n. 23 above. And note that the Greek testimony adduced by Sirleto in favor of authenticity had already been suggested to the anonymous recipient of the letter cited in n. 27 above. This confirms that the recipient was Sirleto. 30 On the Congregation for the Index of Prohibited Books, see Catalani, De secretario Sacrae Congregationis lndicis (1751); Franz Heinnch Reusch, Der Index der verbotenen Biicher, vol. 1 (Bonn: Cohen, 1883; repr. 1967), esp. pp. 429-34; Josef Hilgers, Der Index der verbotenen Bucher (1904), esp. the documentary appendices; Charles Dejob, De I'influence du Concile de !rente (1884), esp. chap. 2; Antonio Rotondo, ha censura ecclesiastica e la cultura (1973); Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press (1977); Paolo Simoncelh, "Documenti mterni alia Congregazione dell'Indice 1571-1590." At the moment of writing the publication of vols. 8-10 (on the Roman Indexes) of Index des livres interdits, ed. J. M. De Bujanda (Sherbrooke, Quebec: Centre d'Etudes de la Renaisance), is awaited.

265

C H A P T E R FOUR

Sigonio. It is doubtful that Sigonio's enemies made a serious effort to initiate the institutional procedure which would have led eventually to the condemnation of his works and the placing of them on the Index of Prohibited Books, although the first phase of this procedure was the compilation of lists of places in the works in question suspected of being scandalous. In any case the decisive phase never arrived: there was no condemnation and his name never appeared on the Index librorum prohibitorum. Instead the lists of censures which had been prepared were circulated in Rome, and even communicated to Sigonio, perhaps by Giacomo Boncompagni. The historian replied with defiant outspokenness to each of the hundreds of objections which had been advanced against him. The result was a stalemate for his enemies, who found themselves unable to overcome the weight of support upon which Sigonio could count. Nevertheless these censures, by attaching suspicion to Sigonio's name, perhaps achieved their aim unofficially,31 rendering him persona non grata in the Italy of the Counter-Reformation. The censures of Sigonio's four works, and also his replies to the censures on the commentary on Sulpicius Severus, survive in a number of manuscripts which can be studied today in the Biblioteca Vaticana. But a brief account of their textual history must jump ahead to Argelati's edition of 1737, based on a transcription made for him of a manuscript possessed by an unknown Bolognese. This manuscript contained, and Argelati published, the complete corpus of censures and Sigonio's comprehensive replies. Neither the original nor the transcription is today readily locatable, which means that for Sigonio's replies to the censures of De Regno Italiae, De Occidentali Imperio, and De republica Hebraeorum we have only Argelati's edition to go on. But before Argelati knew of the existence of this important source for the secret history of Sigonio and the ecclesiastical censorship, his collaborator, Alberico Archinto, had already brought to light in the Biblioteca Vaticana the manuscripts containing the entire corpus of censures.32 These are identifiable as two codices of the Vatican Latin series.33 31

Paolo Prodi on Sigonio's edition of Sulpicius Severus: "Come tante altre opere del Sigonio £u nstampata piu volte oltr'Alpe, ma in Italia, anche se non si arrivo ad un insenmento formale nell'Index, fu completamente estromessa dalla circolazione culturale secondo quei sottih metodi di pressione e dissuasione che furono molto piii efficaci per il successo dell'operazione repressiva della controriforma . . . delle stesse condanne formali sulle quali soltanto si era soffermata l'anahsi storica precedente" (Prodi, "Storia sacra e controriforma," p. 81). 32 The censures are published in Op. om. 6.1065-1238, in this order: on De Occidentali Imperio, 6.1077-1110; on De Regno Italiae, 6.1111-1138; on the commentary to Sulpicius Severus, 6.1139-1176; on De republica Hebraeorum, 6.1177-1238. About this edition of the 266

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

In the early twentieth century, with the entry of the Fondo Barberiniano into the Biblioteca Vaticana, there came to the papal library further manuscripts of the censures of De Occidentali lmperio and of the commentary on Sulpicius Severus.34 Finally, the acquisition of the Fondo Boncompagni in the postwar period brought to the Vatican another transcription of the complete series of censures from the archives of the family which had protected Sigonio when the attack against him was launched.35 The texts contained in all of these manuscripts are transcriptions, and all have been executed more or less carelessly. Recension of the censures of De Regno Italiae and De Occidentali lmperio has produced results censures Fihppo Argelati wrote: "Restare tamen videbatur unum, quod tamquam coronidem editioni huic imponeremus, censuras videlicet aliquot, quas in Sigonium jampridem exaratas in Bibliotheca Vaticana percepimus asservan. Movit illico animum cupido eas quoque juris nostn factas in vulgus emittendi. Vota quamobrem nostra nobihssimo praestantissimoque viro significavimus, laborum nostrorum fautori, patrono ac Maecenati optimo, qui quum tunc tempons Romae degeret, in haud mediocri honoris gradu constitutus, auctoritate sua effecit, ut paucis mensibus, quod fuerat nobis exoptatum, obtineremus. Has vero censuras dum edere meditamur, Bononia per virum summa nobis necessitudme conjunctum nuntiarur, inter privates litterati viri schedas deprehendisse se quasdam in Sigonium censuras, quibus praeterea Sigonii tuendi caussa subjectae responsiones visebantur. Operae pretium duximus, nulla interiecta mora, enixe amicum rogare, ut MSS brevi ad nos transmitti curaret. Precibus diu fatigandus non fuit vir humanissimus; per eum enim, elapso vix dum mense, Bononienses censuras, bono Sigonii et editionis nostrae fato, percepimus. Cum Vaticams statim conferentes, easdem ad verbum cum ilhs esse deprehendimus, hac una re Vaticanis praestantes, quod Sigonianas vindicias ad cuiusque censurae calcem exhiberent. Has ergo integras, ut fuerant ad nos transcnptae, praelo subiici mandavimus, paginarum tantum citationibus, lectorum commodo, huic editioni nostrae accommodatis" ("Editoris monitum ad censuras in hbros Caroli Sigonii," Op. om. 6.1067-68, here from p. 1067). It should be added that while the replies to the censures of De Occidentali lmperio, De Regno Italiae, and De republica Hebraeorum are anonymous, there can be no doubt of Sigonio's authorship. 33 Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 3455, ff. lr-93r: censures of Sigonio's commentary on Sulpicius Severus (with Sigonio's replies), and on De republica Hebraeorum, as well as the letter cited in nn. 26-28 above. This portion of this MS is discussed in Dejob, De linfluence du Concile de Trente (1884), pp. 53-56; and in Prodi, "Stona sacra e controriforma." (The MS also contains, with separate foliation, Sigonio's Historta ecclesiastica, bks. 1-11.) MS Vat. Lat. 6160, ff. 40r-66r: censures of De Occidentali lmperio and De Regno Italiae. To my knowledge this portion of this manuscript received no published discussion before the appearance of McCuaig, "Carlo Sigonio storico" in 1986. 34 Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Barb. Lat. 2618, ff. 15-28: censures of De Occidentali lmperio. MS Barb. Lat. 1038, ff. 136-89: censures of the commentary on Sulpicius Severus and Sigonio's replies. These censures with Sigonio's replies are also found in Rome, Biblioteca Valcelliana, MS R44 (not seen), a manuscript cited by Paolo Prodi in "Storia sacra e controriforma," p. 84. 35 Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Boncompagni F9, ff. 68r-375v: the complete corpus of censures to the four works and Sigonio's replies to the censures of the commentary on Sulpicius Severus.

267

C H A P T E R FOUR

which may be rapidly sketched: for the censures of De Occidentali Imperio, the text in MS Barb. lat. 2618 is closely related to that of MS Vat. Lat. 6160, but there is no direct filiation between them. They have been copied from a common original.36 A large number of variants separate the combined text of the censures of De Occidentali Imperio and De Regno Italiae in MS Vat. Lat. 6160 from that of MS Boncompagni F9, and some of these variants are major ones: whole phrases have been omitted from the Boncompagni manuscript, and in the most striking case an entire censure of De Occidentali Imperio has been dropped by the copyist through an eye-skip caused by the near-repetition of the opening word.37 The same variants which separate the text of MS Vat. Lat. 6160 from MS Boncompagni F9 conjoin the latter to the edition of Argelati (which also omits, for instance, the censure skipped in the Boncompagni manuscript) and therefore to the lost manuscript of Bologna containing Sigonio's replies to the censors. In sum, the text of the censures contained in MS Boncompagni F9 is close to the one seen and confuted by Sigonio and reflected in Argelati's edition. Probably Giacomo Boncompagni, Sigonio's protector and a member of the papal family, had intervened, obtaining a copy of the censures and offering Sigonio the opportunity to see and reply to them. Such a confutation was not part of the normal process of deliberation envisaged by the Congregation for the Index. This departure from normal routine, the firmness with which Sigonio replied, and the support of the Boncompagni (and perhaps other elements at Rome) were enough to interrupt the process of formal condemnation if that had originally been intended. If not from the first, these censures were soon transformed into an attempt to discredit Sigonio by semiofficial means. 36 Cf. censure 70 to De Occidentali Imperio in Vat. lat. 6160, ff. 54r-55r; Barb. lat. 2618, ff. 27v-28r; and Boncompagni F9, ff. 372v-375r for the most significant separative variant readings within this set of censures. The text printed in Op. om. 6.1109 reflects in its corruption the difficulties of the passage. 37 Cf. the edition of the censures to De Occidentali Imperio (Op. om. 6.1102), in which the incipit of censure 50 is "Piaculo publice diluisset . . ." and that of censure 51 is "Per multos dies. . . ." MS Boncompagni F9 gives the same text (f. 363v). However, in Vat. Lat. 6160 (f.51r) and Barb. Lat. 2618 (f. 24v) is found the following censure, omitted in the Boncompagni manuscript and in the manuscript used by Argelati because of the homoearchon with censure 50: "Pag. 229. Piaculum imposuit dixit pro poenitentiam imposuit; mox expiantem dicit cum satisfacientem dicere debuisset. Etenim hae voces poenitentiae partes nedum exprimunt, ut etiam maxime confundunt." And cf. De Occidentali Imperio, ed. 1578, p. 229, for the passages to which the censor refers. As with the earlier censures of the Historia Bononiensis, the force of the objection is that Sigonio's classical Latin vocabulary for the sacrament of penance and absolution is not edifying.

268

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

The content of the censures of De Occidental! lmperio and De Regno ltaliae may now be looked at more closely. In Vat. Lat. 6160 they are preceded by a brief unpublished note which recapitulates the principal error committed by Sigonio: he had failed in De Occidentals lmperio to endorse in all of its details the legend of Constantine's donation and hence to validate the claims of the Papal State to a legitimacy based on the donation of the emperor.38 Likewise in De Regno ltaliae, Sigonio had written that until the eighth century the holdings of the Roman church had been only private estates. The censor could not tolerate the idea that the temporal power of the papacy derived merely from the late default of the imperial power in Italy.39 Sigonio's account of the life of Constantine occupies the first four books of De Occidentali lmperio; throughout, the censor found objectionable passages. Sigonio had written that in A. D. 292 the youthful Constantine was envied for his prowess; the censor, seeking edification at every turn, insisted that Constantine must have been envied because he had manifested his tendency to favor the Christians, and that it was Sigonio's duty to report a fact so favorable to the Christian religion.40 It is striking that in this way the censor undermines his own thesis that before his conversion Constantine had been a persecutor, but the immature ecclesiastical censorship of this period had no concern for consistency. The persons given the task of reviewing printed works were apparently capable only of attending to the implications of individual passages, and recommending that each be made a source of honor for the Christian religion and the traditions of the church. Historical context meant nothing to them. From the beginning, the censor used the Ecclesiastical History of the Byzantine historian Nicephorus (ca. A.D. 36 "Quod Constantinus non fuit baptizatus a Sylvestro, neque Constantinus edificavit Basilicas SS Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, sed tantum instauravit: vere somnia. . . . Omnia quae tnbuenda erant Sylvestro tribuit Melchiadi. . . .Oe donatione Constantini loquitur tamquam par ergon" (Bibhoteca Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 6160, £. 4Or). Melchiades = the pope called by Sigonio "Miltiades"; par ergon means "perfunctorily." 39 "Dicit Ecclesiam Romanam non habuisse nisi praedia in provincus Romanis; non possedisse nisi a Gregorio 3° cui Urbs se dedit a Longobardis defendenda" (Vat. Lat. 6160, f. 40r); and cf. censure 23 to De Regno ltaliae (Op. om. 6.1126). 40 Cf. censure 2 of De Occidentali lmperio (the text of the censures given here and throughout is that of the edition of Argelati, emended, usually silently, on the basis of the manuscripts described above): "Sigonius hoc in loco mvidiae causam, quae maxime Christianis favet, omisit, quam veteres auctores aperte retulerunt, et praecipue Nicephorus lib. 7, cap. 18 et 19, qui ait Constantinum ad Diocletianum Nicomediam missum, graecis Uteris imbutum Christianam rehgionem complexum fuisse, quod plane sine criminis nota negligere non debebat hie Auctor, ut Christianae religioni faveret . . ." (Op. om. 6.1079; Vat. Lat. 6160 f. 41v and Barb. Lat 2618, f. 15v).

269

C H A P T E R FOUR

1256-1335) to attack Sigonio's historical interpretation of the Constantinian period, while Sigonio defended himself by citing the contemporary of Constantine, Eusebius, as in his reply to this censure. The censor advanced a whole series of objections to Sigonio on the chronology of Constantine's acts and edicts between A. D. 306, when Constantine had ended the persecution of Christians within his domains, and A.D. 315. These objections are at the same time finicking, factious, and self-contradictory. On the one hand, for the usual purposes of edification, the censor wished to find that Constantine in 306 had actively favored the Christians.41 Likewise, to read in Sigonio of a general decree of religious toleration in 312 was unsatisfactory, since it seemed tacitly to admit paganism on an equal footing with Christianity. In these censures, Sigonio's critic implicitly accepts Sigonio's data and seeks to make Constantine's policies from A.D. 306 more favorable to the Christians than they had actually been.42 But in another place the censor, in an attempt to validate the legend of the donation, tried to prove that the edict of toleration had really been issued in A.D. 315.43 Sigonio had recounted the honor paid to the church of Rome at the moment of Constantine's triumphant entry after the victory over Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian bridge, and the censor pretended to believe—or did he write in good faith?—that Sigonio had confused the entry into Rome of 312 with the opening of the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325.44 The censor denied that Constantine could have donated the Lateran palace to Pope Miltiades and initiated the construction of the new basilica under his pontificate;45 and he attempted to confound the 41 Censures 3 and 4 of De Occidentali lmpeno, Op. om. 6.1080-81. The censor says of Constantine's assumption of power in A.D. 306: "debebat [Sigonius] potius Constantini imperium religion! Christianae, et eius profectui et propagationi, cuius causa maxime Deus Constantino Imperium contulit, ascribere" (censure 3). 42 Censures 9 and 10 of De Occidentali Imperio, Op, om. 6.1082. 43 Censure 12 of De Occidentali Imperio, Op. om. 6.1083, and Sigonio's response, 6.1084. Sigonio's reply is a very detailed demonstration of the correct chronology of the pontificate of Miltiades and of Constantine's actions m A.D. 312 and 313. As in many of these censures and the replies, there is discussion of sources, the censor advancing the testimony of Nicephorus, Sigonio propounding that of Eusebius. The career of Constantine, and the writings of Eusebius as historical sources for the study of it, are the themes of Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981). 44 Censor: "Dum ait episcopos ad se accersitos summis honoribus affecisse, omnia hoc loco involvit: nam id in Concilio Niceno accidit, cum ante Silvestrum latuisse constet." Sigonio: "Non primum episcopos coluit Constantinus in Concilio Nicaeno sed longe antea, ut videre est apud Eusebium. . . . Eusebio autem hisce in rebus summa fides adhibenda" (Censure 7 to De Occidentali Imperio and the reply, Op. om. 6.1082). 45 Censures 8,11,13,16 to De Occidentali Imperio; Op. om. 6.1082-86. Sigonio's principal

270

S I G O N I O VERSUS THE C E N S O R S

facts relating to the first trials of the Donatists in A.D. 313, trials which revealed the collaboration of the emperor with the Roman church at that date.46 It was clear, of course, that all of these censures aimed to cover up circumstances which nullified the legend of Sylvester and Constantine, and Sigonio for his part did not hesitate to declare, as he was able to do in these secret responses, that the legend was an invention.47 Sigonio was accused of having dealt perfunctorily with the donation; the accusation was true of course, and Sigonio's defense—that he had followed the Epistle of Hadrian I—was merely pro forma.48 As for the Council of Nicaea, the first general council of the church and one of the turning points of ecclesiastical history, the censor sought to suppress the role of Constantine in convoking and guiding this conference of bishops, and to make it into an assembly modeled on the Council of Trent, one guided and governed by legates of the bishop of Rome.49 To read in De Occidentali Imperio that Constantine on his own authority had installed a patriarchate at Constantinople was for the censor scandalous, since the authority to do so could only reside with the papacy.50 One of the most delicate points in the life of Constantine was the late baptism of the first Christian emperor—and (on the presentation of the historian and biographer Eusebius of Caesarea) a certain tolerance of, if not favor toward, Arianism, during the long years of doctrinal contest between the factions led on the one hand by Arius and Eusebius of Nkomedia, and on the other by Athanasius of Alexandria. Sigonio provided a fairly full narrative of this contest in book 4 of De Occidentali Imperio, despite the fact that it had little to do with the western empire. His treatment of the question evoked from his censor the repeated charge that Sigonio "seems to favor heretics, and certainly does not have a good opinion of such a pious emperor. Sigonio seems to insinuate that heretics are to be given entree, which is just what they want: to be admitted, source, as for instance in his reply to censure 8, was Optatus Afer, bishop of Milevis, the fourth-century author of a history of the African church and the Donatist schism. 46 Censures 13,15 to De Occidentali Imperio, Op. om. 6.1084^86. 47 "De Lateranensis Palatii donatione satis iam dictum. Acta vero Sylvestn pro pseudoepigraphis iure meritoque habuit Sigonius" (Sigonio, reply to censure 15, Op. om. 6.1086). 48 Censures 17, 18 to De Occidentali Imperio, Op. om. 6.1086-87. The censor made clear what was wanted from Sigonio: "debebat dicere Sigonius, Imperatorem formulam fidei a SiIvestro edoctum, conceptis verbis publice confessum fuisse, et ob earn causam totam Italiam pontifici donasse, Urbe excessisse, novas sedes mutasse . . ." (Censure 17, Op. om. 6.1087). 49 Censure 19 to De Occidentali Imperio (Op. om. 6.1087). And cf. censures 20, 21. 50 Censure 23 to De Occidentali Imperio. Sigonio's reply: "Haec sane censura non Sigonium fent, sed vel Constantinum, qui id praesumpserit, vel scriptores Graecos, qui id revera Constantinum fecisse asseverant" (Op.om. 6.1090). 271

C H A P T E R FOUR

given a hearing, charged with official responsibilities."51 Sigonio replied with energy to this imputation, accusing his anonymous censor of ignorance and impudence.52 The freedom with which he replied in this and similar cases suggests that Sigonio knew that his censors were not men of real learning and authority but functionaries of a lower rank. The true nature of the history which Sigonio had written—the political, military, dynastic, and ethnic annals of late antiquity—had no importance for the censor, who had nothing to say about the aspects which give substance to De Occidentali Imperio. He was interested only in ecclesiastical history, a sphere in which Sigonio, albeit without infringing on historical propriety, had sought where possible to flatter Catholic orthodoxy and the Roman primacy—but in vain. The censor repeated that the entire work, and not just single passages, was erroneous, inasmuch as the history of the western empire was simply identical with the history of the papacy and its primacy.53 Certain difficult phases of the history of the papacy drew the particular attention of the censor: for example, that in which Pope Liberius, exiled by the emperor (A.D. 355) and forced to assent to the doctrines of Arius, was replaced by the deacon Felix. After the return of Liberius (A.D. 358), Felix became an antipope and was confused, in the tradition of the church, with the holy martyr of the same name; in the legend the name of Liberius was even given to his persecutor. Onofrio Panvinio had already attempted to rectify this problem.54 Sigonio for his part wrote in De Occidentali Imperio that 51

Cf. censures 24-28 to De Occidentali Imperio passim, and especially from censure 25: "videtur hie Auctor haereticis favere et certe non bene de tam pio Imperatore sentire; et admittendos esse haereticos insinuare, quoniam illi hoc magnopere expetunt, ut admittantur, audiantur, adhibeantur ad negotia tractanda" (Op. om. 6.1091). What was the occasion for such language? Sigonio had included mention of Constantine's command that Arius be reinstated in the church of Alexandria. 52 See Sigomo's reply to censure 25, Op. om. 6.1091. And cf. the reply to censure 28, which leaves no doubt that Sigonio himself is the author of these responses: "Non indiget Sigonius neque optat a censore tam inepto et imperito approbari" (Op. om. 6.1093). 53 Censure 21 to De Occidentali Imperio (the context is the conclusion of the Council of Nicaea): "Est vero Catholici historici diligenter inquirere, quae ad potestatem pontificis et dignitatem faciant, et ilia referre accurate et clare; nee potest scribere de Imperio Occidentali quin de pontificibus meminent, penes quos erat Italiae potestas, et ut diligentissime perscnbit Imperatorum edicta, et quae ad Imperatores attineant, sic non minus accurate narrare et referre debet, quae ad pontificiam potestatem pertineant, ac multo diligentius, his praesertim temporibus, ad sedandas altercationes quotidie emergentes studio illorum, qui in earn rationem incumbunt, ut diminuant auctoritatem pontificiam, et detrahant vel levissimis argumentis" (Op. om. 6.1088). 54 Onofrio Panvinio made more than one attempt to recover a secure chronology of ecclesiastical history. For the problem of Liberius and Felix, see his Romani pontifices et cardmales

272

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

Liberius, according to some sources, had assented to the doctrines of Arius during the period of his captivity; and that his rival Felix, after having been deposed, had resided in the Via Portuense and had died there. Failure to ratify any part of the church's tradition was in the censor's eyes a potential motive for scruple on the part of innocent readers, and Sigonio was attacked on this point in three censures, the thrust of which was that such scruples had to be removed even at the cost of maintaining two inconsistent versions of the events in question. Pope Liberius must have remained firm in his faith against the Arians; Pope Felix must have been martyred; and Onofrio Panvinio was no longer a reliable guide to orthodox Catholic chronology.55 The rejection of Panvinio is particularly significant, for he had been the major European scholar of profane and sacred chronology in the years before his premature death in 1568, and an intrepid defender of the Catholic Church. But his contribution to this cause was no longer welcomed after 1570, inasmuch as he had always been a historian first and a polemicist second. The other pontificate about which Sigonio had not written in a sufficiently edifying manner in De Occidental! Imperio was that of Innocent I (A.D. 401417). The censor desired to read that this pontiff had done much more than Sigonio allowed in aid of Saint John Chrysostom, to the extent of excommunicating the emperor Arcadius—a circumstance considered unhistorical by Sigonio.56 The censor, in sum, wanted to find that the Roman primacy had existed in its modern form, and with the attributes familiar to him, from the fourth century. The church councils, ecumenical and not, of the fourth and fifth centuries were from this point of view a delicate subject, and Sigonio had repeatedly to defend himself, as in the case of the Council of Nicaea, for not having written that the pope had initiated, and directed through his legates, every one of those councils at his pleasure, without interference from the emperors or rival patriarchs.57 S.R.E. (Venice: Tramezzino, 1557), pp. 14-15; and Chronicon ecclesiasticum (Cologne: Cholinus, 1568, p. 38). 55 Censures 36, 37, 38 to De Occidentali Imperio; Op. om. 6.1095-96. In the last of these, the censor says: "et nihil dicit de martyno S. Foelicis; saltern mentionem facere debuerat, et asserere duas esse opimones, ut de Libeno. Sed secutus est Honuphrium [Panvinium], qui scribit Libenum Sanctum, contra Divum Hieronymum, et Foelicem appellat Antipapam, qui semper in Ecclesia Romana habitus est sanctus, et in antiquo et in reformato Breviano; et diligens scriptor debuit recensere varias opiniones, et potius assentiri Ecclesiae, quae veneratur Foelicem sicut ceteros sanctos" (Op. om. 6.1096). 56 Censures 54, 57, 59, 60 to De Occidentali Imperio; Op. om. 6.1103-05. 57 Censures 19, 33, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 66 to De Occidentali Imperio.

273

C H A P T E R FOUR

There are two examples of repeated reference or cross-reference between the censures of De Occidentali lmperio and those of De Regno Italiae—proof, if any were needed, that the two groups of observations were the work of the same censor, or perhaps group of censors. From polemics published in France against Charles Du Moulin the censor had picked up what he took to be testimony in favor of the reality of the donation of Constantine in the Variae of Cassiodorus: a letter written by Cassiodorus on the occasion of his appointment as Praetorian Prefect in the fourth decade of the sixth century A.D. to Pope John II, in which he proffers elaborate courtesies, flattering to the ecclesiastical preeminence in Italy of the Roman See.58 The censor adduced it against De Occidentali lmperio59 and also against De Regno Italiae60 as proof that the donation of Constantine "had never been abrogated." But as Sigonio remarked, in asserting this with apparent seriousness he merely exposed himself to ridicule, for the Variae of Cassiodorus is a copious source of testimony for the domination in Italy in the sixth century A.D. of the Ostrogothic kingdom. The second case of cross-reference between the two sets of censures is more complex. In recounting the incursion into Italy of Alaric in A.D. 401-3, Sigonio had remarked in De Occidentali lmperio that the Historia Langobardorum of Paulus Diaconus was an unreliable source for the events of this period.61 To this the censor appended with relish the note 58

Cassiodorus, Variae, 11.2. Censure 31 to De Occidentali lmperio (the context is Sigonio's statement that in A.D. 342 Constans had declared that private donations made by his father Constantine would be held to be valid): "Donationes a Divo Genitore suo ex privatis factas valerent, in suspicionem inducit [Sigonius], ut ex publico factas ab eo [Constans] infirmatas credamus, quod tamen falsum est, cum Constantini Donatio Silvestro facta nunquam fuerit abrogata, ut ex Aurelio Cassiodoro lib. 11 epistola ad Joannem Pontificem colligitur. Neque ilia verba inserere necesse habebat [Sigonius], nisi semina iaciat et occasionem interponat infirmandi donationem Constantini" (Op. om. 6.1094). Sigonio's reply was that his only motive for citing the edict of Constans had been to document the emperor's whereabouts on the date the document was issued; and he addded: "Ridiculus vero est Censor, ut dicam obiter, dum serio contendit ex Cassiodoro Variarum lib. 11, epist. 2 colligi, Constantini donationem numquam fuisse revocatam. . . . Certum enim notumque est ex ipsomet Cassiodoro, Theodoricum tunc tempons Romanae Urbi impentasse" (ibid.). 60 Censure 20 to De Regno Italiae: "Molineus hac sola de causa se iam contra Ecclesiam obtinuisse credidit, sed Ruffus vir pius ex epistola Cassiodori lib. 11 Variarum ad Joannem Papam conatum hominis compressit, in qua aperte constat Romanum Pontificem Joannem Urbis impeno magna ex parte potitum fuisse, quare quicquid Ecclesia nacta est, iure suo, non tamen ex seditione fuit consequuta. Haec enim oppida et urbes quae Constantinus Ecclesiae contulit, sibi suo iure obveniunt, non dominatu invaduntur" (Op. om. 6.1125). The censor refers to polemics against Charles Du Moulin by Raymundus Ruffus. 61 Sigonio, De Occidentali lmperio, A.D. 402, p. 260 (1578). 59

274

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

that "he reproves Paulus Diaconus, who is his authority for the affair of the Tria Capitula, a subject on which Paulus Diaconus is more unreliable than anywhere else."62 The censor is not referring to De Occidentali Imperio, in which Sigonio narrates at intervals and without mentioning Paulus Diaconus the complicated affair of the Councils of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) and of Constantinople II (A.D. 553), the first of which had defended doctrines (the Tria Capitula) condemned by the second.63 The censor is referring instead to De Regno Italiae, in which Sigonio uses Paulus as a source for the narration of the secession caused by this doctrinal controversy in Aquileia circa A.D. 585.64 But Paulus in this case has been both brief and unorthodox. His account only makes sense if those he calls orthodox are the faction conventionally considered schismatic in Aquileia.65 Sigonio, deceived by this source, had written that the error of Elia, bishop of Aquileia, had been to deny the authority of the Council of Chalcedon, which is the exact opposite of the truth; this gave the censor the opportunity to attack him with severity in the third censure to De Regno Italiae. The attack against Sigonio is here carried well beyond the specific point at issue, on which Sigonio acknowledged his error, with the censor in fact accusing Sigonio of suggesting that one ecumenical council had condemned another. Technically this is not the case, and Sigonio had been careful to avoid saying so. But he had taken note of the historical fact that the Council of Chalcedon had defended the three figures whose doctrines were condemned by the second Council of Constantinople. For this the censor accused him of deliberately exposing the internal fractures of official doctrinal history and hence of being a friend to the Protestants.66 The attack on De Regno Italiae then is a continuation of the one on 62

Censure 55 to De Occidentali Imperio: "Improbat Paulum Diaconum, quern de tribus capitulis magis perturbate quam usquam alibi disserentem, habuit auctorem" (Op. om. 6.1103). 63 Sigonio, De Occidentali Imperio, pp. 516-17, 532-34, 545-46, 553-54 (1578); and cf. the manuals of ecclesiastical history. 64 De Regno Italiae (1580), A.D. 585, p. 27; A.D. 587, p. 30; and further references to the continuing doctrinal dissent over the Tria Capitula at A.D. 593, p. 43; and A.D. 621, pp. 65-66. 65 Paulus Diaconus, Historta Langobardorum, 3.20, 3.26. Cf., in the edition of Hannover, Hahn, 1878 (= MGH Script. Rer. Germ. 48) the long note on pp. 129-31, a note which also appears in the edition of Rome, Istiruto Stonco Italiano, 1918, pp. 134-35. 66 Censure 72, the final one to De Occidentali Imperio (Op. om. 6.1110) expresses the censor's first doubts about Sigonio's treatment of the problem of the Tria Capitula. The main attack comes in censure 3 to De Regno Italiae (Op. om. 6.1113-14; the censor refers to the places given in n. 64 above). In Sigonio's reply to this censure he defends himself on doctrinal points but acknowledges his error on the facts of the schism of Aquileia, identifying Paulus Diaconus as the source of the mistake.

275

C H A P T E R FOUR

De Occidentali Imperio; and as before the exclusive concern of the censor is with ecclesiastical history. Among his preoccupations was the problem of papal elections. Sigonio had to write of centuries in which, before the definitive rupture in the eighth century between east and west, the emperor at Constantinople claimed, and intermittently exercised in practice, the right to guide the choice of the bishop of Rome, or to ratify the choice made there by the clergy and people of the city. The censor opened the attack on De Regno Italiae on this front, and Sigonio replied with a defense of the historian's duty to relate, without distortion and without railing, events which, according to the consensus of the sources, had really taken place.67 In a later censure Sigonio was accused of not explaining from a partisan point of view the decree of the emperor Phocas of A. D. 605 which enunciated the primacy of the Roman See. Since the Defensor pads of Marsilius of Padua, and prominently in Protestant polemic of the sixteenth century, this decree had been used by the enemies of Rome to illustrate the late and controversial growth of the Roman primacy. Sigonio, said the censor, ought to have explained that the papacy solicited this decree merely in order to repress the rising insolence of the bishop of Constantinople and re-establish the Roman primacy: if he gives only a bare statement of the facts, anyone can draw their own conclusion.68 In an analogous case, Sigonio reported the existence in the ancient Milanese church, of the custom and right of the citizens to approve the new bishop, and for this was accused by the censor of favoring the modern heresy which propounded the popular election of the clergy.69 Sigonio felt all the historical importance and grandeur of the separation of the Roman papal church from the empire of Constantinople in the eighth century, which he implicitly recognized as the first step toward the creation of modern Italy and modern Europe. He sought to express this recognition in several passages written in an elevated style 67

Censure 1 to De Regno Italiae and Sigonio's reply, Op. om. 6.1111-13. Censure 7 to De Regno Italiae: "sed satis fecisse arbitrator [Sigonius], si ita nude explicet, ut cuique trahendi m suam partem occasionem praebeat" (Op. om. 6.1116). In reply Sigonio changes his tactic, attempting to show that he had fulfilled the censor's prescription for a committed historiography in this case. For an account of the historical controversy over the decree of Phocas, see Pontien Polman, !!Element historique dans la controverse religteuse du XVIe siecle (1932) pp. 165-66. 69 Cf. De Regno Italiae, A.D. 593, p. 42 (1580); and censure 5 of this book: "Nihil magis votis omnibus expetunt haeretici, et praesertim Hermannus Bodius in CoUectaneis, quam quod sponte populo concessit Sigonius, qui non solum populi auctoritatem in episcoporum electione concessit, sed etiam cleri concilium a populo confirmandum existimat" (Op. om. 6.1115). 68

276

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

in book 3 of De Regno Italiae (A.D. 712-774).70 He signalled the recrudescence of the iconoclastic controversy as "the commencement of grave turmoils, through which the manifest domination of the Church in Italy was constituted"71 and he narrated with emphasis the crucial moment at which (according to his reconstruction) the Roman people swore to defend and obey Pope Gregory, with the result that "Rome and the Roman duchy passed from the Greeks to the Roman pontiff."72 The papacy, he later wrote, was "resplendent" in its new principate.73 The forcefulness with which Sigonio emphasized the importance of this historical turning point brought down upon him a concentrated effort to confute such a representation of the history of the papacy. His censor noted thirteen suspect passages in book 3 of De Regno Italiae (the highest concentration found for any of the fifteen books into which the history is divided). The first of these was of course the introductory passage cited above: "An evil opinion of the temporal dominion of the church . . . Sigonio claims that the pontiffs, suffering from the wicked desire for aggrandizement, took control of their territory; this is what the heretics fling at the pontiffs, when they object that they were tyrants, or that they usurped their rights to the detriment of Italy."74 Sigonio's view that the Roman people had helped to free the papacy from Byzantine domination 70

Sigonio introduced De Regno Italiae book 3 thus: "Sequenti libro insignes duos ac maxime memorabiles Italiae motus aperiemus, quibus nova duo in ilia impena instituta sunt. Nam qua ratione Graecis Imperatonbus Romana, Ravennatique ditione lapsis, et Longobardis regibus Italico regno depulsis, illam Romani pontifices, hoc Francorum reges inierint, exponemus. Quas mutationes satis constat ab iisdem fontibus ambas fluxisse, nempe pravo haereseos studio, et dira late dominandi cupiditate, quae omnibus popuhs regnisque certum semper exitium intulere" (A.D. 712, p. 107). Sigonio evidently means that the Greek emperors had embraced a heretical doctrine, and that the Lombard kingdom had been betrayed by a lust to extend its territorial power; but his syntax leaves open the possibility that territorial greed, if not heresy, had been a common characteristic of the four dynasties—Greek, Longobard, Frankish, and papal—which he mentions, and which he sets on the same ontological footing, without making the dominion of the papacy in Italy a special and sacred instance, as his censors desired to see it portrayed. 71 "Magnarum abhinc rerum, et gravium seditionum mitia sunt inducta, quibus insignis in Italia Ecclesiae dominatus est constitutus" (Sigonio, De Regno Italiae A.D. 722, p. 113). The denial of the donation of Constantme is patent in this. 72 Sigonio, De Regno Italiae, A.D. 727, p. 119. For this passage in context, cf. above chap. 1, n. 255. 73 "pontificem novo principatu fulgentem . . ." (Sigonio, De Regno Italiae, A.D. 738, p. 125). 74 Censure 17 to De Regno Italiae: "Male de dominio temporali ecclesiae sentit. . . . notat pontifices dira cupiditate vexatos Romanam ditionem accepisse, quod haeretici pontificibus conviciantur, cum eos vel tyrannos, vel non pro aequo et bono Italiae iura usurpasse obiiciant" (Op. om. 6.1123). And cf. censure 20 (Op. om. 6.1125) for the censor's response to the passage given in n. 71.

277

C H A P T E R FOUR

was considered to give a dangerous and illusory foundation of popular authority to the simple recovery by the papacy of the sovereign rights accorded it by Constantine, a resumption resisted rather than furthered by a tumultuous Roman plebs according to the censor.75 Sigonio, attacked for referring to a "new and splendid principate" of the papacy, had to defend the historical rectitude of this description.76 He repeatedly declared that the legend of the donation of Constantine was a fable.77 The censor was appalled that the faithful should be able to read in Sigonio that the temporal dominion had emerged over time, out of strife and contest against other powers using rival sanctions and claims of legitimacy of their own in contraposition to the papacy. He wished to have the papacy elevated since the moment of the donation of Constantine serenely above the stuff of history—controversy, development, change—in which Sigonio had mired it. The doctrine of the censor was, in abstract, systematic and coherent. From the time of the donation the popes had had supreme authority in the Occident, exercised through the mediation of kings and emperors in most of Europe, but without intermediation in the lands of the Papal State in Italy. The later privileges of the Frankish and Saxon kings and emperors were to be understood as promises to restore these lands to their legitimate lord. If the censor had been able to accept that papal supremacy had existed de iure since the time of Constantine, and that its de facto historical realization had been slow and difficult, his task would have been simpler. But he was writing in Rome during the most extreme decades of the Catholic reaction to the Protestant attack, and any deviation from the literal interpretation of the legend was considered an intolerable concession to the enemy. For this 75

Censure 23 to De Regno ltaliae: "Facit Sigonius . . . Romanum Ducatum populi beneficio a Graeas ad Romanum pontificem pervenisse, quae sane absurda et temeraria sunt. Habuit quidem tunc Romanus pontifex populum defensorem, non tamen populus authoritatem in pontificem traduxit, sed priori dominatu abrogato, quem Christiana patientia perferebat, statim pontifex suo potitus est iure, nullo iam impediente; quod cum haec assent Sigonius, necesse est ut tarn novos populi Romani revocet tumultus, quibus hac sola de causa plebs nimium pontificibus obfuit" (Op. om. 6.1126; the passage added in italics is here restored to the text from MS Vat. Lat. 6160, f.63r). 76 Cf. censure 24 to De Regno ltaliae, Op. om. 6.1126-27 (the censor refers to the passage given in n. 73 above), and Sigonio's reply: "Cur novum pnncipatum, dominatumque Sigonius non diceret, cum antea et Graeci Romanis impentarent? Iure an iniuna id a Graecis fieret, Sigonius non discutit. Res facti est, in quam historici omnes [ie historical sources] conspirant; ad Constantinianam donationem respicit censor" (Op. om. 6.1127). 77 Cf. Sigonio's responses to censures 20, 24, 26; he says in the last "nam acta S. Silvestri fabulis, ut opinor, scatent" (Op. om. 6.1127).

278

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

reason, once past the narrative of the first half of the eighth century, the censor's attention was directed to Sigonio's account of the relations be­ tween the papacy and the Frankish and Saxon sovereigns. His objections are perhaps predictable. He thought that Sigonio should have had Char­ lemagne as a young man kiss the feet of the pope on first encountering him,78 and he would have preferred not to read that Charlemagne had at a later date accepted the swearing of papal oaths of loyalty.79 In recount­ ing the scene of Charlemagne's coronation in A. D. 800, Sigonio made the Roman people give their assent to the papal gesture, provoking the wrath of the censor.80 But the most important aspect of Sigonio's confrontation with the censor on this terrain was his publication of the privilege of Louis the Pious (the Ludovicianum) given in A.D. 817 to the Roman church, and the interpretation, based on this document, which he adopted of the re­ lation in Italy between the medieval empire and papacy. The historical problems accompanying this document and its successors such as the Ottonianum, the privilege given by Otto I to the church in A.D. 962, have been a crux for specialists. While much of the content of the earlier privilege is repeated in the subsequent one, the Ludovicianum does not survive in authentic copies, but only as transcribed in compilations such as the Liber censuum of Cencius.81 Sigonio gives the complete text of the Ludovicianum, minus the opening and concluding formulae; he bases his interpretation of the series of earlier and later privileges on the content of the Ludovicianum, referring only summarily to the others.82 One passage of the text published by Sigonio contains variant readings (the most significant of which are based on a banal confusion between the letters η and v) not found in the good manuscripts of the Ludovi­ cianum and therefore not in editions subsequent to his, beginning with 78

Censure 28 to De Regno Italiae, Op. om. 6.1127. Censure 32 to De Regno Italiae, Op. om. 6.1129. 80 Censure 33 to De Regno Italiae, Op. om. 6.1129. And cf. censure 34, in which the censor objects that the new augustal dignity of the emperor ought not to be considered by Sigonio any more important than the dignity of "Patricius of the Romans" already conferred by the pope; and censure 35, based again on Sigonio's failure to portray the Carolingian emperors as simple vassals of the pope. 81 Cf. Theodor Sickel, Das Privilegium Otto I. fur die wmische Kirche vom Jahre 962, (1883) which includes the edition of the privileges of both Louis the Pious and Otto I; Paul Fabre, Etude sur Ie Liber censuum de 1'Eglise Romaine (1892); Paul Fabre-Louis Duchesne, Le Liber censuum de 1'Eglise Romaine (1910); Peter Partner, The Lands of St. Peter (1972); and Thomas F. X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter (1984). 82 Cf. above, chap. 1, nn. 267-69. 79

279

C H A P T E R FOUR

that of Baronio. This passage, which turns the sense of the document upside down, reads as follows (the variants peculiar to Sigonio are italicized) : Ceterum sicut diximus, omnia superius nominata ita ad nostram partem per hoc nostrae confirmationis decretum roboramus, ut in nostro nostrorumque successorum permaneant iure, principatu, atque ditione, ut neque a nobis neque a filiis vel successoribus nostris per quodlibet argumentum sive machinamentum in quacunque parte muniatur nostra potestas, aut nobis de suprascriptis omnibus, vel successoribus nostris inde aliquid subtrahatur. . . .83 But as we said, all that which is named above by this our decree of confirmation we so reinforce in our favor, that it shall remain in the right, principate, and domain of us and our successors; and that neither by us nor our sons or successors, in whatever territory our power may be fortified, through any argument whatsoever or contrivance shall any part of what is listed above be taken away from us or our successors. The results of Sigonio's use of this source are evident throughout De Regno Italiae in the author's assumption that the medieval emperors had retained supreme lordship of all the lands claimed by the papacy in Italy. He stated that Charlemagne in A.D. 774 had used the same formula later included in the Ludovicianum, reserving to himself the "right, principate, and domain" of the lands which were "assigned" to the papacy.84 When challenged on this point by the censor Sigonio responded that the text of the Ludovicianum (as printed by him) evidently reflected the intentions of Charlemagne as well as those of Louis the 83 Sigonio, De Regno Italiae, bk. 4, A.D. 817, p. 193. Cf. the same portion of text as read in Sickel's edition: "Ceterum sicut diximus omnia superius nominata ita ad vestram partem per hoc nostrae confirmationis decretum roboramus, ut in vestro vestrorumque successorum permaneant iure, principatu atque ditione, ut neque a nobis neque a filiis vel successoribus nostris per quodlibet argumentum sive machinationem in quacumque parte minuatur vestra potestas aut vobis de suprascriptis omnibus vel successoribus vestris inde aliquid subtrahatur . . ." (Sickel, Das Pnvilegium Otto I, app. 1, "Pnvilegium Ludwig des Frommen," p. 176). Translation: "But as we said, everything named above by this decree of our confirmation we so reinforce in your favor, that it shall remain in the right, principate and domain of you and your successors; and that neither by us nor our sons or successors through any argument whatsoever or contrivance shall your power be reduced in any way, nor shall any part of what is listed above be taken away from you or your successors. . . ." 84 "Exarchatum Ravennatem, Pentapohm, Ducatum Romanum, Tuscum et Campanum, iure principatu et iitione sibi retenta, pontmci permisit [Charlemagne]. Reliqua ipse sibi nomine Regni retinuit" (Sigonio, De Regno Italiae, bk. 4, A.D. 774, p. 163, his emphasis).

280

S I G O N I O VERSUS THE C E N S O R S

Pious.85 But Sigonio regarded the Prankish kingdom as merely preliminary, considering the constitution of the kingdom of Italy to be chiefly the work of the Saxon emperor Otto I; and in his digression on that constitution he depicts the secular power as sovereign in Italy, and the ecclesiastical power as restricted to the spiritual realm.86 One of his warrants for this was the Ottonianum, the privilege of Otto I which for Sigonio renewed to the letter the provisions of the earlier privilege of Louis the Pious. The censor attacked this position with severity, in two extended censures which begin with the blunt statement that Sigonio favors the modern heretics because, like them, he removes the power of temporal jurisdiction from the pope.87 Imperium had been given by Christ to Saint Peter: this gift Sigonio sought repeatedly to annul, when he claimed that the pope had no imperium in the cities of the Lands of St. Peter in Italy. But the pope was prince and lord, the censor insisted, possessing his cites with imperium and exercising dominion in them;88 and further, the imperium exercised in their dominions by the kings of Europefloweddown to them from the pope, rather than deriving directly from God, as Sigonio and the heretics unanimously claimed.89 Sigonio is here charged directly with doctrinal error and with the betrayal of the cause of Catholicism to its enemies. He responded to this 85 Cf. censure 30 of De Regno Italiae, Op. om. 6.1128, in which Sigonio is reproved for the passage quoted in the previous note; and Sigonio's reply (ibid.); "Carolum Magnum iure, principatu et ditione sibi retenta, Exarchatum etc. pontifici permisisse, diserte eruitur ex donatione Ludavici Imperatoris Caroli Magni filii, quae data est, instante Paschali Pontifice, ad confirmandum pactum, quod cum Apostolica Sede Pipinus et Carolus Magnus inierunt. Porro in hac donatione, quam refert Sigonius pag. [193] haec expresse leguntur. . . . En unde Sigonius limitationem hausent, quam Carolinae donatiom apposuit." 86 Cf. above, chap. 1, n. 265, citing De Regno Italiae, bk. 7, A.D. 973, p. 324. 87 The censor refers, in censures 42 and 43 of De Regno Italiae, to the passage cited in the previous note. His attack begins thus: "In hac parte Sigonius haereticis nostri temporis favet, qui iurisdictionem temporalem a Romano pontifice sustulerunt" [Op. om. 6.1133). 88 "Quare qui tollit imperium a Romano pontifice, gladii materialis potestatem tollat necesse est, quam Petro contuht Chnstus, Lucae 22; quod aperte significat Sigonius, cum pontificis vires in detestatiombus constituat, idest in gladio spirituali, Imperatoris vero in armis; cum tamen in utraque re pontificis Romani vigeat authoritas. . . . Sigonius tollit imperium a pontifice, quia illius tollit dominarum, in quam rem nullis non conatibus incumbit. Est enim pontifex et princeps et dominus qui imperio possidet urbes, et dominatum in eas exercet" (Censure 42 to De Regno Italiae, Op. om. 6.1133-34). 89 "Omnia erroribus scatent; utraque, inquit, potestas sacra erat, et ad Christianam conservandam rempublicam constituta, in qua re haeretici non minus, quam in aliis rebus omnibus, peccant, cum negant imperium a pontifice pendere, sed a Deo institutum fuisse; in quam suspicionem adducor, cum de translatione imperii nunquam exacte loquatur [Sigonius], sed circuitione involvat omnia" (Censure 43 to De Regno Italiae, Op. om. 6.1135).

281

C H A P T E R FOUR

charge both on doctrinal and historical grounds. The errors of the modern heretics in respect of the temporal power of the papacy were two: either they limited it arbitrarily in denying its genuine historicality (sc. not the false historicality of the donation), or else they denied that any cleric, even the supreme one, could exercise temporal power. From both of these errors Sigonio declared himself free.90 His account of the division of powers between papacy and empire in the tenth century was sincere and historical; and his distinction between papal authority and regal imperium was significant, since it expressed the foundations of the power of each.91 To make this distinction, and to assert that the emperor retained supreme dominion in Italy, was not to deny that the pope exercised the power of the sword in the territories controlled by him; this Sigonio readily affirmed. That the pope did so on the juridical basis of Christ's gift to Peter, Sigonio neither affirmed nor denied; but he did deny that Christ had given to Peter a precisely delimited dominion in tenth-century Italy.92 Sigonio concluded his self-defense by returning once more to the text of the Ludovicianum: despite all the powers regularly exercised in his territories by the pope, the emperor had, at the period of which Sigonio wrote, de facto reserved to himself supreme dominion there.93 It has not been possible to identify with precision the source of the text of the Ludovicianum used by Sigonio; generically, however, it is 90

Cf. the first part of Sigonio's lengthy reply to censure 42, Op. om. 6.1134. "Sincere ex probatis auctoribus refert, quid ab Imperatoribus temporalis dominatus Pontifici collatum sit, quid ablatum, quid restitutum, auctumve, qua in re a Sigonio peccatum non est, quum partes suas explevent. Quod si aliquando pontificis iura violata sunt, non est Sigonii vitium id referentis, sed principum. . . . Loquitur strictim et de potestate ea, quae pnmario et ex sui natura convenit papae vel Imperaton; pontifici emm primario competit potestas spirituahs ordinata ex se ad spirituale bonum Christianae reipublicae, quae spiritualis potestas in linea coercitiva in sacns detestationibus versatur. At vero Imperatori pnmario convenit temporalis potestas ex se, suaque natura ad temporarium reipublicae bonum ordinata, quae in ratione coercendi in armis potissimum versatur et expeditionibus. Porro potestas utraque sacra est, hoc est a Deo institute, ordinataque ad Chnstianam rempublicam conservandam" (Sigonio, reply to censure 42 of De Regno ltaliae, Op. om. 6.1134-35). 92 "At gladii potestas, inquit censor, collata fuit Petro Lucae 22. Si de actuali rerum temporalium dominio et principatu censor loquatur, falsum hoc est; si vero de iure, quo possit Romanus pontifex legitime ac licite in temporalia dominan, hoc damus libenter; verum id ex eo textu Lucae, quum secus a vetenbus omnibus mterpretetur, rite censor non probabit" (Sigonio, reply to censure 42 of De Regno ltaliae, Op. om. 6.1135). 93 "Tandem clamat censor, papam esse pnncipem et dominum, imperio urbes possidere, et dominatum in easdem exercere. Ita sane; haec numquam negavit Sigonius, si supremum dominium excipias, quod iis temporibus, de quibus Sigonius scribit, de facto in pontifice non apparebat, quum illud sibi reservassent Imperatores" (Sigonio, reply to censure 42 of De Regno ltaliae, Op. om. 6.1135). 91

282

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

likely to have been one of the deterior copies of the Liber censuum of Cencius which were copied and circulated in Italy in the sixteenth century as part of the campaign by the church to defend the legitimacy of her territorial holdings in the peninsula. Sigonio himself makes reference, in the list of sources appended to De Regno Italiae, to his source in terms which suggest that he had before him either a copy of the Liber censuum, or (perhaps more likely) extracts from it prepared for his use, calling it "Inventarium et summa omnium privilegiorum quae in bibliotheca Vaticana et in Castro S. Angeli reperiuntur."94 The Liber censuum put together by Cencius in A.D. 1192 contained in one of its sections just such an assembly of privileges from the history of the Roman See, an assembly which had in fact largely been taken over by Cencius from earlier such collections.95 When the manuscripts of the Liber censuum were reviewed by Paul Fabre it was found that fully thirteen of them were sixteenth-century copies on paper, diffused through the libraries of Italy.96 Of the handful of these which it has been possible to examine, none shows the peculiarities in the text of the Ludovicianum which make Sigonio's edition so distinctive; hence the possibility that he worked with a badly prepared transcript which he discarded once it had served its purpose. The successive edition of the Ludovicianum in the Annates ecclesiastici of Baronio removes the anomalies which had reversed the sense of the emperor's promise in Sigonio's text; but marginalia in Baronio's edition record Sigonio's variants.97 Formally the attack on Sigonio launched from Rome in the 158Os had no institutional result, in that his works were not listed on the Index of Prohibited Books. In substance however this was an extremely indicative episode in the history of Counter-Reformation censorship, since it reveals the mentality of the reaction at its apogee, and the consequent threat in Italy to the cultural heritage of Renaissance humanism. On the first point, it was Sigonio's misfortune to move into the field of late 94

Sigonio, De Regno Italiae, Index, f. k2v (1580). Cf. Paul Fabre, Etude sur Ie Liber censuum de I'Eglise Romaine (1892); and Therese Montecchi Palazzi, "Cencius camerarius et la formation du 'Liber censuum'," MEFRM 96, 1984, pp. 49-93. The edition of the Liber censuum is P. Fabre and L. Duchesne, Le Liber censuum de I'Eglise Romaine (1910), in which document 77 (p. 363) is the "Privilegium Lodowici Imperatoris de regahbus confirmandis Pape Paschali." 96 Cf. Fabre, Etude sur Ie Liber censuum, chap. 4, "Les manuscrits du Liber censuum," pp. 170-227; and Fabre-Duchesne, Le Liber censuum, chap. 4, "Description des manuscrits," pp. 26-35. 97 C. Baromus, Annates ecclesiastici 9: 652-54 (ed. Antwerp 1601); 13: 591-94 (ed. Lucca 1743). 95

283

C H A P T E R FOUR

antique and medieval history, with the intention of studying and writing impartially about the Western Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, during decades in which the great confrontation between Protestant and Catholic historiography was taking place. Into this confrontation he was inevitably drawn, against his will and against his intentions. On the Protestant side the heaviest assault on the Roman tradition had come from the Ecclesiastical History, better known as the Magdeburg Centuries, directed by Matthias Flacius Illyricus and published in Basel during the 1560s. The thrust of this work was to undermine the legitimacy of the primacy of the Roman See in the Christian world through a highly polemical investigation of its historical origins. The papacy was here treated as a purely human, when not as a diabolical, creation, hence as a center of power which emerged and expanded through centuries of change as part of the historical process undergone by every other human institution.98 Since the papacy did and does in fact have an institutional history, quite apart from the dogmatic beliefs of Catholicism, the Magdeburg Centuries, a classic example of polemical historiography, was the most serious attack launched by the Protestants against their Catholic opponents. The presence of the Centuries conditioned the reception of every historiographical work undertaken or completed in Catholic territory during the succeeding decades, before the appearance of the Annales ecclesiastici of Baronio at the end of the century. As the most important Catholic historian writing in Italy during those decades, Sigonio bore the full brunt of the reaction to the Magdeburg Centuries. On the second point—the decline of humanism—Sigonio was, with Pier Vettori, the last great humanist of Renaissance Italy, and had learned the historian's trade through the study of the Roman republic, a field in which controversy, as for instance the discussion he conducted with Nicolas de Grouchy, was purely scientific. Thus his criteria were those (making every allowance for the methodological limitations of his age) of critical independent research, and his approach to historical phenomena was secular—not guided by the search for divine providence in human affairs. The hostility which this aspect of his historical work aroused in Rome is an important indication of the end of the Renaissance in Italy. For Sigonio, coming from the study of ancient states, it was natural to treat the barbarian kingdoms and the German empire as the successor 98

Pontien Polman, L'Element historique dans la controverse religieuse du XVIe Steele (1932), pp. 213-34 on the Magdeburg Centuries; and P. Polman, "Flacius Illyricus, histonen de l'Eglise," in Revue d'histoire ecclisiastique 27,1931, pp. 27-73.

284

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

states in Italy to the Roman republic and Empire, and the Lombard communes as the authentic state formations of the Italian people. But he wrote at a time when the Catholic hierarchy pressingly required a defense of the tradition of papal Rome against the Protestant attack; and the tradition of papal Rome, in the extreme form which was then embraced, allowed little space for states in Italy, or even theoretically in Europe, which were not papal creations and dependencies. By refusing to endorse these extreme claims Sigonio brought upon himself the wrath of the Roman censors, who conceived it his automatic duty as an Italian Catholic to do so. He never thought of himself as a historian writing in opposition to the papacy, nor was he. The papacy appears in a good or a bad light in De Regno Italiae accordingly as its moral and institutional fortunes rose or fell. For the period preceding the reform movement of the eleventh century its disarray on both planes was evident in the sources and is conveyed by the historian, while conversely he warmly approved the reforming papacy. Gregory VII emerges as a hero in the pages of De Regno Italiae. If Sigonio's censor had read far enough and carefully enough to consider the last point he might not have been so ready to accuse Sigonio of being in league with the Protestant enemy, for that of Hildebrand was the most detested of all the pontificates reviewed in the pages of the Magdeburg Centuries. Yet in the year of Sigonio's death there was published at Strasbourg a translation into German of De Regno Italiae by the Lutheran controversialist Georg Nigrinus (Schwartz), which in the crudity of its antipapal polemic may perhaps go some way to justify the preoccupations of the censor. Nigrinus considered Sigonio to be a committed Catholic author who had through a combination of ingenuousness and professional integrity inadvertently made available many cutting anecdotes about the reality of papal power, anecdotes which, suitably translated and glossed, would be edifying to those who believed with Nigrinus that the pope was the antichrist." 99

Caroli Sigonii von Geschichtem des Kbnigreichs Italiae Fiinffzehen Biicher, trans. Georgius Nigrinus (Strasbourg: Bernard Jobin, 1584). (This publication is inventoried as V9.1.25 in Miriam Usher Chrisman, Bibliography of Strasbourg Imprints 1480-1599, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.) There is no study of Nigrinus's translation, the major one of any work of Sigonio into any modern language; for articles on the life of the translator, see Jocher, Gelehrten-Lexicon and Allgemeine Deutsche Biographic For Nigrinus's attitude toward the original, and toward Sigonio, see his Vorrede. He believed that Sigonio had subscribed to far too many of the papal "fables" but had not written purposely with the design to advance the papal cause, which he in fact undercut. Sigonio was a diligent and experienced historian, but in theology and religious matters generally "understood less than a child of seven years." 285

C H A P T E R FOUR

Many shadowy areas still remain in the story of Carlo Sigonio and the censors, areas which one may hope to see illuminated in the future in studies, based on archival holdings not accessible at present, of the Roman Congregations of the Index and the Inquisition in the sixteenth century. Sigonio's books had been issued with the official approval of the episcopal curia of Bologna and of the local office of the Inquisition, and did not require further clearance from the Congregation for the Index in Rome. For this reason as well it seems that the surviving documentation does not represent a stage in the regular procedure by which a book was censured and then placed on the Index. Another consideration: the readers employed in the work of reviewing books for the Index were not paid for their labors, with the result that the work was done ill and perfunctorily when it was done at all. 10° But in the case of the censures against Sigonio there was real commitment and motivation shown in the elaboration of bulky and impressive-seeming lists of supposedly unsound and doctrinally dangerous passages. There is in sum reason to think that what we have before us in the censorial documents concerning Sigonio is not the result of a regular process of review but rather an exceptional, "unprocedural" case in which the works of an individual author have been made the target of a campaign of denigration. Who were the authors of this campaign? Their identity remains a mystery, for Roman censors protected themselves with anonymity; and perhaps only the opening of the archive of the Congregation for the Index would solve it, for they were without doubt persons operating in the institutional ambit of that Congregation or of one of the powerful offices associated with it, that of the Maestro del Sacro Palazzo. At this point, and as a challenge to the anonymity adopted by the censors, a historical researcher may venture to allege, on conjectural grounds, the names of some individuals who may have played a role in Nignnus's glosses are inserted in the text in small type, and endorse places in Sigonio which serve for instance to show (to the satisfaction of Nigrinus) that there was no primatus Petri in the seventh century, and that the churches of Milan and Ravenna had claimed equality with Rome. I have not seen Chrisman V9.3.11: Deutschen Romischen Reichs Hoch Achtung und dessert von Teutschen Keysern, Konigen una verwesen riihmlicher Regierung una Verwaltung nothwendige stattliche Ehren Rettung, wider etliche offentlich auszkommene partheiliche Halianische Scribenten und bevorab den sonst vil beriimbten historicum Carolum Sigonium, ed. Georgius Nigrinus (Strasbourg: Jobin, 1584). This may consist of extracts or summaries of those parts of De Regno Italiae in which Sigonio had described the imperial administration in Italy. ioo -r/ne t, e s t t e x t for t n e haphazard and inefficient bureaucratic procedures of Roman censorship in the 1580s is still Charles Dejob, De I'influence du Concile du Trente (1884), pp. 1-80; other bibliography in n. 30 above. 286

SIGONIO VERSUS THE CENSORS

the censure of Sigonio. There is good reason to suppose that we should direct our attention to persons who would already have known of, or have been involved in, the intermittent conflict between Sigonio and the Roman authorities in the 1570s—a conflict which reached its highest pitch in 1578—and who in 1582 must have decided to reopen a case to which they already felt they had a commitment. That the order of Saint Dominic had a recognized competence in the held of censorship hardly needs to be stated; the names to be adduced are those of some of the Dominicans known to have been active in Rome as censors during the 1570s and early 1580s. These are men who, rather than having actually done the necessary research and drafted the censures themselves, are likely to have inspired and directed those who did the work. At the minimum it-can be assumed that they had inside knowledge of what took place. The first of them is Paolo Costabili of Ferrara, Maestro del Sacro Palazzo in 1573-80 and Master-general of the Dominican order in 158082. He received the office of Maestro del Sacro Palazzo as a direct appointment from Gregory XIII and the Master-generalship through the intervention of the same pope in the electoral assembly of the order. Though the fact is not recorded, Carlo Sigonio must perforce have been acquainted personally with this fierce defender of orthodoxy, for Paolo Costabili (born, like Sigonio, a subject of the dukes of Ferrara) had served in Modena as inquisitor-general of the Ferrarese state in 156872. There he had reopened many cases of suspected or confessed heresy dating from earlier decades, some of which must have involved men who had been Sigonio's friends and contemporaries. We have seen above that in Rome in 1578, as Maestro del Sacro Palazzo, he had urged that a firm hand be used with Sigonio. As Master-general he would not have had time or opportunity to follow up such cases, for this high office was traditionally exercised in itinerant fashion, with the affairs of the order being managed at Rome by a vicar-general. Paolo Costabili was, however, in Rome for the first three months of 1582, and it is not impossible that at that time he directed, or concurred in, the preparation of the attack on Sigonio. He died in September of that year. In the hiatus between his death and the election of his successor in May 1583 the affairs of the order were administered by Tommaso Zobbia, commissioner of the Inquisition since 1576, twice a candidate for the Master-generalship, and then Maestro del Sacro Palazzo from May 1583 until 1589.101 101

On Paolo Costabili see the entry in DBl (cit. n. 25 above), the one in Mortier, Histoire 287

C H A P T E R FOUR

The principal rival of Paolo Costabili for leadership in the order was Sisto Fabri of Lucca, vicar-general in 1576-80, Maestro del Sacro Palazzo in 1580-83, and then Master-general from May 1583 until his fall in 1589. That Sisto Fabri as Maestro del Sacro Palazzo at least sanctioned, if he did not supervise, the preparation of the censures of Sigonio in 1582 is highly likely, but is not (yet) provable.102 One of the closest collaborators of Sisto Fabri was Giovanni Battista Lanci of Reggio Emilia. Lanci was socius (assistant, deputy) of Fabri during the latter's tenure of the offices of Maestro del Sacro Palazzo and of Master-general, and himself became Maestro del Sacro Palazzo briefly late in life (1597-98). In addition Lanci was secretary of the Congregation for the Index in 1580-83 after having served in that department under Antonio Posi before 1580. Lanci thus appears to meet the criteria of having been party to the confrontation between Rome and Sigonio in the 1570s, and of having occupied a key position in 1582, for when he became secretary of the Congregation for the Index Lanci's influence must have increased greatly, and given his simultaneous attachment to the current Maestro del Sacro Palazzo, Sisto Fabri, his power to coordinate the operations of the two offices must have been notable. His participation in the campaign against Sigonio is in the highest degree probable. On a conjectural reconstruction, Lanci would have been the man to give direct orders to the anonymous operatives who combed Sigonio's works and drafted the censures of them.103 des Maitres-Geniraux de I'Ordre des Freres Precheurs t. 5 (1911), pp. 589-606; Taurisano, Hierarchia Ordinis Praedicatorum 1 (1916); and further, for Costabili and others listed here, older items noted in n. 25 above, and Quetif-Echard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum t. 2 (1721). 102 On Sisto Fabri, see Mortier, Histoire des Maitres-Generaux t. 5, pp. 607-57. In Rotondo, "Nuovi documenti per la storia dell'Indice dei libri proibiti," document no. 12 consists of a series of requests from cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, bishop of Bologna, for guidance in relation to books on the Index, and the replies given by Sisto Fabri in January 1583, while he was still Maestro del Sacro Palazzo. On this document, see Prodi, Paleotti, pp. 241-42. 103 The contents of the entry on Giovanni Battista Lanci in Quetif-Echard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum (2.322-23) are partly described in n. 26 above. Information about the career of Lanci emerges as well from the pages of Mortier, Histoire des Maitres-Generaux t. 5, p. 626 (in the biography of Sisto Fabri) and t. 6, pp. 7-8 (in the biography of Ippolito Maria Beccaria). Quetif-Echard report that in the period before 1580 Lanci was socius of Paolo Costabili, while for Mortier he was in this period already a socius of Sisto Fabri. The truth is probably that Lanci was attached in this capacity to the one and the other in turn. But it is clear that from 1580 he was Sisto Fabri's socius and close collaborator. For an interesting account of meetings in March and April 1581 between Michel de Montaigne and the Maestro del Sacro Palazzo, acting in his capacity as censor, see Montaigne, Journal de voyage, ed. Fausta Garavini (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), pp. 221-22,237. On the first occasion the Maestro was attended by a number of other Dominicans, on the second by his "compagnon" (socius). None of these persons is 288

S I G O N I O V E R S U S THE C E N S O R S

The commemorative scholarship of the Dominican order itself makes it possible to bring forward these names. Commemoration of this type is not so readily available for the Congregation for the Index (except in the case of the Dominicans who regularly served it as secretaries after 1580) and the possibility exists that Sigonio's censors could have been dependents of that organization without necessarily being Dominicans or being affiliated with the office of the Maestro del Sacro Palazzo. The Congregation (actually a more informal cardinalatial commission during the period in question) had no designated president in the sixteenth century. It had been created in 1571 by Pius V, enlarged by Gregory XIII in 1572, and would be given increased powers by Sixtus V in 1587 and Clement VIII in 1595. But the true capo, the figure at the center of its operations during Sigonio's lifetime, was Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto, a figure of great learning and probity who was also, amongst his other responsibilities, in charge of the Vatican Library. Sirleto displayed an almost heroic energy in attempting to cope with the impossible task imposed upon the Congregation for the Index of controlling and purifying of scandalous material all of the printed literature available in the Papal State and in Italy: witness for example the thoroughness in 1571 of his censure of Sigonio's Historia Bononiensis in comparison with the slight effort made by his two fellow censors, Ugo Boncompagni and Giovanni Battista Amalteo. The question must be asked: Was he involved in the massive attack of the 1580s upon Carlo Sigonio? A certain answer cannot be given, but there are perhaps some factors which suggest that he was not. For one thing, the freedom with which Sigonio responded implies that he knew or suspected with whom he was dealing, and that it was not a prelate of high rank. Sigonio had great respect for Sirleto despite their differences, and cannot himself have believed that he was crossing swords in this way with such a man. The intellectual level of the censures is in fact unworthy of Guglielmo Sirleto, even with allowance made for the obscurantism which formed part of the character of the great cardinal from Calabria. They are the work of zealots—but zealots who, while they may have been operating at one or more removes from Sirleto, may yet have been under his ultimate institutional command. The fascination of Sirleto's role is that he was the key figure in Rome charged with mediating between such extreme proponents of the preidentified by name in the journal, nor by the editor of the edition cited, but the Maestro del Sacro Palazzo is Sisto Fabn, the "compagnon" is Giovanni Battista Land.

289

C H A P T E R FOUR

rogatives of the Roman curia on the one hand, and on the other the world of humane letters, to which he also belonged and which was threatened by the onset of the mechanism of repression directed by him. But the Rome over which Ugo Boncompagni presided as Gregory XIII was not a city devoted merely to reaction in defense of the papal past. His reign brought a renewal of sacred scholarship, and saw the foundation or expansion of many new national colleges for the instruction of a post-Tridentine clergy capable of meeting the Protestant challenge. Together with learning, the art of controversy was cultivated in Gregorian Rome, where Roberto Bellarmino was active in the 1580s. Bellarmino was known for his rejection of the contributions of a Catholic scholar of the generation previous to his own, Sigonio's colleague Onofrio Panvinio.104 This mistrust of Onofrio Panvinio was shared by the author of the censures of Carlo Sigonio. The salient fact about Carlo Sigonio as a student of late-antique, medieval, and ecclesiastical history was that he was not integrated into any of the official Roman teams of Catholic researchers. Sigonio was an independent scholar; the separation between his base in Bologna and the papal city to which Bologna was subject was not only geographical but cultural. The direct protection which he received from the papal family, a protection which bypassed the regular channels of censorial control, must have depended to some extent on the fact that the Boncompagni were Bolognesi. One of the conditioning factors of his encounter with Roman censorship was his native sentiment toward the lands of the former Regnum Italiae. His love of Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, and the Veneto had inspired with personal commitment the research on Roman Italy which had produced De antiquo iure Italiae in 1560. Such love is especially evident in De Regno Italiae. This great history of the peoples of northern Italy, of the establishment there of the medieval empire and the development of the new civilization of the communes which struggled against the empire for liberty, a story researched and written in those same lands, could never have satisfied the urgent requirement, at the height of the Counter-Reformation, for a confessional historiography entirely given over to the exaltation of the Rome of the papacy. 104 Jose Luis Orella y Unzue, "Il concetto di Impero Romano e il problema della Translatio' nella polemica tra Flaccio Illirico e Bellarmino," in Roma Costantinopoli Mosca (Napoh: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1983), pp. 151-71. In the same author's Respuestas catolicas a las Centurias de Magdehurgo (1559-1588) (Madrid: Fundacion Universitana Espanola, 1976), there is a section on Carlo Sigonio (pp. 335-40); the author appears to consider the episode of Sigonio and the censors to be without significance.

290

CHAPTER

FIVE

REWRITING CICERO: THE CONSOLATIO

OF 1583

C

ARLO SiGONiO thought often of his own senescence and of the part it would play in his reputation, and at the age of around sixty began to prepare the material setting for a grave and studious retirement according to the accepted model of a wise elder, and for a final transformation from animate to posthumous, purely literate existence through the fame of his books. This serene intention was disrupted by his involvement in an attempt to pass off as genuine the false Consolatio Ciceronis of 1583, then by his early death in August 1584. Sigonio was accused by Antonio Riccoboni during a prolonged exchange of controversial pamphlets of having written the Consolatio Ciceronis himself, a charge which has been widely reported and generally believed ever since and which caused Sigonio extraordinary distress, ruining as it did the fagade of gravity and seniority which he was then fashioning of his life. The problem of authorship has been the main attraction for students of this work, 1 but no novel solution will be offered in the present con1 The first and second editions of the Consolatio, published in Venice and Bologna, respectively, in 1583, are described below and in the bibliography. They are the only important witnesses for this text. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Consolatio was reprinted several times in the Opera omnia of both Cicero and Sigonio (t. 6). In the nineteenth century it was edited as an adjunct to two Teubner editions of Cicero and divided into chapters: Ciceronis opera omnia, ed. C. F. A Nobbe (Leipzig: 1850), pp. 1345-63; and Ciceronis scripta quae manserunt omnia, ed. R. Klotz, pt. 4, vol. 3 (Leipzig: 1855), pp. 372-431. After this Teubner ceased to think the Consolatio worthy of even this much consideration, and it was dropped from their editions of Cicero; but Klotz's text has been reproduced as Incerti auctoris (Caroli Sigomi) Consolatio in Cicero, Opera philosophica t. 7, = Scriptorum Romanorum quae extant omnia tt. 102-03, Padua, In aedibus Livianis, 1968. Here the Consolatio will be referred to both by the Teubner chapters and by the foliation of the editio princeps. The publications of Sigonio and Riccoboni about the Consolatio are described below and in

291

C H A P T E R FIVE

tribution. Riccoboni was able to produce testimony that Sigonio had supplied the manuscript of the Consolatio Ciceronis for publication, testimony which will here be treated as reliable; a second significant datum for present purposes is Sigonio's bad faith (this will be shown) in defending the Consolatio. From these two considerations it can be assumed that Sigonio either composed the Consolatio Ciceronis himself, or that the author was his protege or collaborator: in sum, no injustice was committed by his contemporaries or by later literary history in affixing responsibility for the counterfeit of 1583 on Carlo Sigonio. The aim here will be to review Sigonio's conduct in the affair of the Consolatio as a part of his personal biography, and as an episode in the decline of Renaissance humanism in Italy. The origins and models of the Consolatio will be discussed, as will its reception among letterati in Italy and northern Europe; in an appendix, letters, many previously unedited, from Sigonio and others concerning the affair are printed or excerpted in chronological order. The source for these has been two dossiers on the Consolatio originally assembled by Gian Vincenzo Pinelli. In Sigonio's private intellectual pantheon distinguished figures from the first half of the century, the period of his own youth, had a prominent place, especially the great cardinals who had represented irenicism, reform, and a classicizing Latin literature under the Medici and Farnese popes. These included the Venetian Pietro Bembo, Giovanni Morone the bibliography, but following is a list of them according to the short titles used: Riccoboni, Indicium (1583), Sigonio, Pro Consolatione orationes duae (1583), Riccoboni, Iudicium secundum quattuor disceptationibus explicatum (1584), Sigonio, Accusator (1584—the last work by Sigonio published during the author's lifetime), Riccoboni, Defensor (1584), and Sigonio, Postrema oratio (1599). Of these six items the first two have been reprinted often, the second pair once each, and the third pair never. Except where indicated I refer to first editions. Antonio Riccoboni published a resume of the affair, including correspondence by himself, Sigonio, and others, in De Gymnasio Patavino (1598) ff. 82v-94r. One other contemporary published a contribution: Janus Gulielmus, Adversus Carolum Sigonium assertio (1584). Modern bibliography on the Consolatio of 1583: Schulz, De Ciceronis Consolatione dissertatio (1860); E. T. Sage, The Pseudo-Ciceronian Consolatio (1910); S. Reinach, "Sigonius vindicates" (1931); M. Cytowska, "Sur la Consolatio de Ciceron: Sigonio-Nidecki-Kumaniecki" (1980); McCuaig, "Riscrivere Cicerone: Carlo Sigonio e la Consolatio Ciceronis del 1583" (1987). Schulz proposed that the author of the Consolatio was Gasparino Barzjzza (ca. 1360-1431), while Reinach took up a suggestion broached in B. L. Ullman's edition of Sicco Polenton's Scriptorum illustrium Latinae linguae libri XVlII to the effect that Polenton (ca. 1400) showed acquaintance with the Consolatio published in 1583; composition of the latter would therefore have taken place prior to 1400. Both of these are negligible. Sage's thesis, despite its limitations, is the only solid work on the Consolatio of 1583; he is especially good on metrical clausulae and on the ancient sources used in composing it. It was still possible in 1910 to treat the question of authenticity as an open one, which Sage did, concluding correctly, however, that the author was not Cicero and had lived in the sixteenth century.

292

REWRITING CICERO

(Modenese by adoption and twice bishop of Modena; not, however, a letterato), and above all Jacopo Sadoleto, also a fellow citizen of Sigonio. For Sigonio Sadoleto embodied that ideal of humanity in life and letters which the humanists claimed to teach. In a letter of July 1580 to Paolo Sacrati of Ferrara, a nephew of Jacopo Sadoleto, Carlo Sigonio spoke of the private cult which he preserved for the memory of the cardinal, who had died in 1547: I as well when I was a young man, following his example albeit at a far inferior level, elected to dedicate myself to the study of letters, nor did I ever afterwards, in mind or spirit, forget the happy memory of Jacopo Sadoleto. I possess his illustrious works, and rereading them frequently I recognize the distinguished character of his genius. I have a picture of him, which wonderfully represents the marvelous gravity and dignity of his visage, and which, as I enter my studio every day I greet, in veneration of his virtue.2 Sigonio's admiration for Sadoleto did not derive exclusively from the luster which Sadoleto's eminence had brought to Modena. Sadoleto was a champion of the revival of ancient models in literature, especially the supreme model of Latin prose literature, Cicero, whose style was made to live again in the papal briefs which had brought Sadoleto fame in the Rome of Leo X. In the period subsequent to the death of Leo (1521), Sadoleto began the composition of the first part of the work which was to stand as his major contribution to the re-creation of Ciceronian literature in the Renaissance, De laudibus philosophiae.3 The model here was the lost dialogue of Cicero, Hortensius. An idea of the contents and structure of Hortensius could be derived from references to it by Cicero and others, as well as fragments preserved through quotation in the writings of Nonius Marcellus and Augustine of Hippo. In the first part of the dialogue, the renowned advocate Hortensius attacked philosophy, to be answered in part 2 by Cicero himself, who defended the search for 2 Carlo Sigonio to Paolo Sacrati, 18 July 1580: "Sic ego quoque emsdem [Jacopo Sadoleto] exemplum iam turn cum aetate florerem, longe inferiore ratione secutus, ad haec potissimum studia complectenda me contuli, neque post unquam iucundam illius memoriam animo menteque mea deposui. Habeo enim ornatissima scripta eius, quibus assidue relegendis praeclaram illam animi atque ingenii indolem recognosco. Habeo pictam eius imaginem, quam miram oris illius gravitatem dignitatemque egregie referentem quotidie cubiculum meum ingrediens non sine praecipua virtutis ipsius veneratione saluto" (Epistolarum Paulh Sacrati canonict Ferrariensis libri sex [Ferrara: Baldmi, 1580], pp. 417-18). 3 Cf. the monograph by Richard M. Douglas, Jacopo Sadoleto 1477-1547 (1959), pp. 50, 72, 77-79, on the composition and contents of De laudibus philosophiae. The entry on Sadoleto in Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modenese t. 4, is as always essential.

293

C H A P T E R FIVE

wisdom. In part 1 of Sadoleto's De laudibus philosophiae, which is set in Rome in the first decade of the sixteenth century, the role of hostile critic is taken by Tommaso Inghirami under the name by which he was universally known in Renaissance Rome, Phaedrus. (In editions of the dialogue Phaedrus is the title given to part 1.) The composition of part 2 was delayed until the 1530s; in it Sadoleto himself, assuming like Cicero the authorial voice, speaks in defense of philosophy. Sadoleto's letters make explicit the parallel between the Hortensius of Cicero and his own accomplishment in De laudibus philosophiae; the work was published for the first time in Lyons in 1538, then in Venice in 1539 and Basel in 1541.4 Phaedrus decries the universal pretensions of philosophy: when each branch of knowledge is assigned its proper title, "philosophy" is revealed to be an empty shell. The task of a wise man is to participate in whatever may be the affairs considered most vital by his contemporaries, and to adapt his position and convictions according to the flux of worldly events. Among Roman statesmen the figure of Julius Caesar is especially admired by the antiphilosophical speaker, and in general the ancient heroes and founders of cities, such as Romulus, were, he says, untouched by philosophy. Philosophical rationality can have nothing to do with heroic virtue, which comes from the motions of the soul. The abstract ideal of justice which philosophy proposes is remote from the civil law which governs the real Rome in which men live. Philosophy is harmful in that it calls into question both what is natural to us, and what has been handed down to us as ancestral tradition, inducing a radical incapacity to will and to act in social life. From a Christian point of view the mystery of the trinity, to be revered fideistically in deliberate ignorance of God, reduces the debates of the philosophers to mere quibbling over words. Sadoleto's response commences by blaming ancient sophistry for the divorce of eloquence and wisdom; the modern adepts of the second, whose diction is deliberately barbarous and impure, are the professional scholastic philosophers. They attempt to command our acquiescence by stunning our senses through their production of tomes, but lack all nicety of judgment. Vain speakers on the other hand are an active force of evil: such were the political leaders who ruined the cities of Greece. The varieties of philosophy condemned by Phaedrus are really only the 4 De laudibus philosophiae is also published in Sadoleto, Opera omnia t. 3, (1738), pp. 127244. Cf. the translation into Italian with introduction by G. Toffanin: Jacopo Sadoleto, Elogio delta sapienza, trad. A. Altamura (Naples: Pironti, 1950).

294

REWRITING CICERO

human facets of one central discipline; and his appeal to the consensus of worldly men can be read as an appeal to the consensus of the vulgar. Phaedrus has embraced the sophistical view that there is no absolute standard of good. Is the measure of good therefore only opinion, and as such dependent on the random outcomes of fortune? The answer is to distinguish prudentia, the mundane calculation of probabilities, from sapientia, the knowledge of eternals. When put to use, such higher knowledge serves the end of realizing the true dignity of man and therefore of bringing him close to divinity. Sadoleto expounds three levels of being—vegetable, sentient, and rational—which are compounded in man. When the two lower levels predominate, the result is a human characterized by greed or voluptuousness; while if the third part, the intellect, excludes the lower two entirely it makes men uncouth and melancholy, continually stupefied by external occurrences. Sadoleto rejects the later skeptical Academy for the original Platonic doctrine in which the appetite for beauty moves us toward the contemplation of a luminous One. When first plunged from the contemplation of eternal truth to that of disorder and variety the mind will be confused, but then it sets about its duty of guiding the human being in whom it resides, and therefore of integrating the three levels. The wise man is ready to live in—in fact, is prepared to govern—political society. De laudibus philosophiae is an exemplar of the humanist literary tradition expounding the dignity of man. Allusions to Christian doctrine are few, and for Sadoleto perfection comes to man through intellect rather than from grace.5 Sadoleto's polemic against scholastic philosophy carried forward an established theme of humanist literature. Traces of this polemic are found in the academic prolusions in defense of the subjects which he taught—history, poetics, and rhetoric—which Carlo Sigonio delivered and published in Venice in the 1550s. In the prolusion of 1554 Sigonio proffered a personal testimony to the intellectual and linguistic insufficiency of some of the students of philosphy whom he had encountered while a student himself in the Italian universities in the late 1530s and early 1540s: with little learning and a singular inability to discourse, they held to a few tenets of the Peripatetics and defended them as though they were the sacred doctrines of religion.6 In the prolusion of 1559 Sigonio deplored, in terms similar to those used by Sadoleto, the separation of philosophy and eloquence. 5 6

The last three points are made by Douglas in Jacopo Sadoleto, p. 79. Sigonio, Pro eloquentia oratio tertia, 1554, in Orationes septem, 1560, i. 19r.

295

C H A P T E R FIVE

In Venice and Padua Sigonio published two works which were not part of his program of study of ancient Roman institutions. These two works, the edition of the Fragmenta Ciceronis (1559, 1560), and De dialogo (1562), have some bearing on the complex of attitudes toward philosophy, literature, and humanism which led him decades later to the affair of the Consolatio Ciceronis. The collection of the fragments pertained to the general interest in the lost literature of antiquity which had also inspired Sadoleto. Before 1559 such a collection had been made for the fragments of Cicero's De republica. It had appeared together with the Somnium Scipionis, which is a major fragment of the same work, in volume 4 of the Stephanus edition of Cicero's Opera omnia in 1538. In 1558, while seeking a transfer from Venice to Padua, Sigonio had completed in a matter of months a collection of these and the other fragments of the lost prose works of Cicero, and had dedicated it to one of the leaders of the Polish Nation at Padua, Marian Lezenski.7 The first edition of 1559 was followed rapidly by the second in 1560.8 Another learned Polish student, Andreas Patricius (Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki) fol7 Fragmenta Ciceronis variis in locxs dispersa, Caroli Sigomi diligentia collecta et scholiis illustrata (Venice: Ziletti, 1559). The preface to Mananus Lezentius praises the achievement of the Polish students at Padua, emphasizes their interest in the studia humanttatis, and thanks them for their efforts on behalf of Sigonio's candidature for the chair at Padua. The surrender by the Italians of their former leadership in humanistic studies is deplored. In this edition each group of fragments is followed by the relevant commentary. 8 Fragmenta Ciceronis passim dispersa, Caroli Sigomi diligentia collecta et scholiis illustrata, secunda editio (Venice: Ziletti, 1560). In this edition the preface to Lezenski does not appear and the assembled commentaries follow the edition of the fragments instead of being interspersed. Professor Jean-Louis Ferrary took the trouble to examine, more carefully than I had done, the two editions of Sigonio's Fragmenta Ciceronis, and the letters of Sigonio to Fulvio Orsini from the years 1559-1560 contained in Bibhoteca Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 4105 and published by Simeoni. He saved me from error (private correspondence, 1987) and established what follows. After the publication of the first edition, Orsmi sent to Sigonio manuscript notes of Antonio Agustin which contained information on further fragments of Cicero, including ones to be found in a codex of grammatical excerpts ascribed to Cornelius Fronto. Sigonio considered them important, and requested that Fulvio Orsini send him the MS of "Fronto" or a transcription. Orsini did so in the autumn of 1559. Sigonio included these new fragments of Cicero in the edition of 1560. He stated in a note that they constituted the major improvement in his second edition, that they had been obtained from a codex entitled Elocutionum exempla ascribed to Cornelius Fronto and possessed by Cardinal Ranutio Farnese, and that this codex had been sent to him by Fulvio Orsini (Sigonio, Fragmenta Ciceronis, 1560, ff. 56v-57r = H2r-H3v, in the first scholium to Cic, De republica). The codex used by Sigonio was perhaps Vat. Lat. 5216 or Vat. Lat. 3402, or a derived transcription. These MSS, the second of which was owned by Orsini, contain excerpts from the Exempla elocutionum of Arusianus Messius, which they ascribe to Cornelius Fronto. The full surviving text of Arusianus Messius is published in H. Keil, Grammahci Latini vol. 7 (1880; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961, pp. 437514). On the MSS of the abbreviated text ascribed to Fronto and the use made of them by Sigonio, Andreas Patricius, and Fulvio Orsini, see Keil's introduction, pp. 444-46.

296

REWRITING CICERO

lowed closely Sigonio's work on the fragments, receiving from Sigonio copies of the sheets as they were printed.9 Patricius in 1561 issued his own edition through Sigonio's publisher, Giordano Ziletti, to be followed by expanded editions in 1565 and 1578; these editions included the verse fragments of Cicero.10 The detailed commentary of Patricius on the fragments was an improvement on Sigonio's pioneering effort, and their editions remained standard for centuries. In the treatise De dialogo which appeared in 1562, and which was one of the few fruits borne of Sigonio's triennial lectureship in the University of Padua, Sigonio proposes a marked distinction between stylistic imitation on the one hand and poetic, fictive imitation on the other. It is the latter type of imitation which interested the author of De dialogo, for the writer of a dialogue is necessarily involved in an attempt to produce the illusion of a genuine conversation among speakers who are, to an extent, his own mimetic creatures. Lecture notes of Sigonio on poetics, datable to the early 1560s, show an even more marked interest in fantasy and deception as components of poetic imitation.11 Two decades 9 For further details, see McCuaig, "Andreas Patricius, Carlo Sigonio, Onofrio Panvinio" (1983). There is a monograph in Polish on Patricius: K. Morawski, Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki (Cracow, 1892); a brief biography in Polski Slownik Bwgraficzny t. 15 (1977); and a bibliography in Bibliografia Literatury Polshej "Noioy Korbut" t. 2 (1964). (My use of these sources has necessarily been limited.) See as well K. Morawski, "Contributo alia storia della filologia in Polonia nel Rinascimento," in Omaggio dell' Accademia Polacca all Universita di Padova (1922). 10 Fragmentorum M. Tulht Ciceroms tomi IUl cum Andreae Patricii adnotationibus (Venice: Giordano Ziletti, 1561). This work was sent from Poland to Venice for publication before Patricius had seen Sigonio's second edition. JM. Tullii Ciceronis fragmentorum tomi llll cum Andreae Patricii Stnceconis adnotationibus, omnia ex eiusdem secunda editione (Venice: Giordano Ziletti, 1565). The commentary in this edition is much fuller than that offered in the edition of 1561. The four sections comprise fragments of lost orations, epistles, philosophical works, and poetry and are followed by four sections of commentary; each of these eight sections is foliated separately. Omnium M. Tulhi Ciceronis ooerum quae desiderantur fragmenta in tomos quattuor digesta . . . ex diversis auctoribus collecta . . . per Andream Patricium Striceconem, omnia ex eiusdem tertia editione (Venice: Francesco Ziletti, 1578). The second and third editions contain in the preface a tribute to Carlo Sigonio for the encouragement he gave to Patncius's work on the fragments of Cicero. This preface makes it plain that Sigonio helped to obtain publication of Patncius's work in Venice by Ziletti. Sigonio apparently gave practical help as well: a copy of "Cornelii Frontonis exempla elocutionum" (i.e. of the excerpts from Arusianus Messius) was received by Jan Zamoyski from Sigonio in Padua and sent on to Patricius in Poland. Patricius was able to take account of it in his second and third editions; cf. Keil, Grammatici Latini, loc. cit. n. 8 above. There were reprints (not seen) of Patricius's edition of the fragments of Cicero by Antonius Gryphius in Lyon (1574,1579, 1585) and the Wechel heirs in Hanau (1606). 11 On Sigonio's De dialogo and on his contribution to poetics, cf. above chap. 1, nn. 14449; Claudio Scarpati, "Tasso, Sigonio, Vettori", and McCuaig, "Carlo Sigonio's Lectures on Aristotle's Poetics."

297

C H A P T E R FIVE

later the great humanist may have decided, as he approached his sixtieth year, to step forth onto the world's stage clad not in his own severe robes of professor and historian, but as a mimetic phantasm of Marcus Tullius Cicero. In De dialogo Sigonio's discussion is rigorously confined to ancient literature, principally the works of Plato and Cicero. The Latin literature of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento, and a fortiori that in the volgare, albeit both are rich in works composed in dialogue form, are excluded from consideration by Sigonio. A recent critic has nevertheless found that Sigonio's strategy is in part that of "exercising a function of nor­ malization and control on the increasingly variegated and heterogeneous scene of the Cinquecento dialogue." Sigonio's emphasis on the classical examples of perfection is said implicitly to reprove the comic or facetious elements which had crept into humanist dialogues, and even more the licentious and unharmonious production of the anticlassical volgare writers of his own century.12 Sigonio's silence on modern dialogue is not, however, total; in his earlier commentary on the fragments of Cic­ ero there is discussion of one modern dialogue. This exception may per­ haps go some way to justify the view that he found the majority of modern works in this genre unsatisfactory when judged by classical standards. The work in question is Sadoleto's De laudibus philosophiae, adduced by Sigonio in his commentary on the fragments of Cicero's Hortensius as an outstanding example of the re-creation of the spirit and substance of a work of ancient literature. Sigonio declares that in seeking to recover the essence of the Hortensius from the extant fragments, he himself aims to accomplish through philology what Sadoleto had accom­ plished through stylistic imitation: I have mentioned the work of Sadoleto in order to indicate to those who wish to know more clearly what the argument of the Horten12 The recent analysis of De dialogo is Raffaelle Girardi, " 'Elegans imitatio et erudita:' Sigonio e la teona del dialogo." Girardi states that Sigonio wished to apply the principles of Aristotelian imitation to the prose dialogue in order to "esercitare una funzione di normalizzazione e di controllo sulla scena sempre piu variegata ed eterogenea del dialogo cinquecentesco" (p. 325). And further: "Tanto meno stupisce il fatto che l'analisi sigoniana operi un totale black-out sulla scena affollatissima delle esperienze dialogiche umanistico-nnascimentali, verso Ie quali ι riferimenti possibih sono configurati . . . nel sistema di esclusioni e di divieti, che il modello dialogico sigoniano contempla, tuttavia, con una perentorieta che non risparmia colpi a certe indulgenze 'comiche' rawisabili nella tradizione del dialogo umanistico e ancor phi in certa esperienza libertina e anticlassica del dialogo cinquecentesco. L'assolutismo degli archetipi classici e per Sigonio una prova di ngore da opporre alle smaghature e alle disarmonie strutturali che connotano la produzione contemporanea" ( p. 326).

298

REWRITING CICERO

sius was, a source in which they may find an express likeness of it. We also, following in the distinguished steps of our great compatriot, will now attempt, as accurately and as clearly as possible, to show what the real content of the Hortensius was by considering the individual fragments of it.13 Sadoleto was for Sigonio the outstanding contemporary figure whose powers as a writer and whose overtly classicizing stance had enabled him to approach the threshold of ancient literature. Sadoleto had come as close to the re-embodiment of a work of Cicero as stylistic imitation allowed. Sigonio then attempted the same thing in a purely philological key in his study of the extant genuine fragments of Cicero. Still the threshold remained, tantalizing, uncrossed. To pass over that threshold, Sadoleto's epigone would have to use all the resources of stylistic imitation and of philology—but in the service of a poetic illusion. To summarize then: an attempt has been made here to suggest that if Sigonio was the author of the Consolatio Ciceronis, much of the genesis of that work in his own personality and career is to be sought not in the 1580s, but twenty and more years before, in Venice in the 1550s and Padua in the 1560s, while he was still immersed in the study of the classical, in all its facets. A decade and a half of concentration on medieval and ecclesiastical history would intervene before his dramatic return to a classical, Ciceronian question in the affair of the Consolatio. The suggestion that in this affair Jacopo Sadoleto played the role of the ghost to Sigonio's Hamlet can be given a little more substance. In 1577 Andreas Wechel in Frankfurt published a miscellany of consolatory literature edited by Joachim Camerarius the younger in Nuremberg and containing material by Joachim Camerarius senior, Joannes Sambucus, 13 Sigonio's complete reference to Sadoleto's work: "Nostra vero aetate Jacobus Sadoletus Cardinalis, vir cum ipsa sacerdotii dignitate amplissimus, turn omnium htterarum cognitione clarissimus, cum argument! hums praestantiam animo agitaret, dedit operam ut, quantum in se fuit, eo tractando Hortensii Ciceroniani desiderium aequiore animo perferremus. Scripsit enim libros duos, unum in quo philosophiae studium accusavit, alterum in quo defendit. Quorum utrunque tanta cum ingenii, ac iudicii laude, tanta demum verborum ac sententiarum copia est assecutus, ut acrius ne ab eo reprehensa, an ornatius laudata philosophia sit, haud facile iudicare possis. Cuius libri non iccirco feci mentionem, ut Sadoleti laudes egregias obscure hoc in loco attmgerem, quas ne iusto quidem volumine complecti pro dignitate omnes possem, sed ut iis qui Hortensii argumentum quale fuerit, iUustrius cognoscere cupiunt, unde expressam eius simihtudinem peterent, demonstrarem. Cuius et nos civis optimi vestigia praeclarissima hoc tempore persecuti conemur, ut quam venssime ac quam planissime possumus, singulis fragmentis considerandis, germanam huius libn sententiam ostendamus" (Sigonio, Fragmenta Ciceronis in the commentary on Cicero's Hortensius, f. 83r-v in 1559, f. 10Ir in 1560).

299

C H A P T E R FIVE

and Jacopo Sadoleto.14 Sadoleto's contribution, the major item in the volume, was a consolatory epistle written from Rome in 1502 to Johann von Dalberg, bishop of Worms, upon the death of his mother. In it the young letterato from Modena had essayed for perhaps the first time what he was later to bring off in De laudibus philosophiae, the re-creation of a lost work of Cicero: the Consolatio. The manuscript of this letter had passed to the property of Sambucus and had been sent by him to Joachim Camerarius senior for the purpose of publication.15 In this way the text of one of Sadoleto's earliest compositions received its first edition thirty years after his death. Sadoleto's letter to Dalberg prefigures the later De laudibus philosophiae in rejecting recent trends in Renaissance Latin literature for a close adherence to a specific antique model. Though the Consolatio of Cicero had beefi lost, much could be known or conjectured about its contents even before Sigonio's edition of the extant fragments. In book 3 of the Tusculanae disputationes, a work in which he cited and discussed his own Consolatio, Cicero presents rational, Stoic arguments to be used in consoling the bereaved: death, the common fate of all men, is, if not a positive good, certainly not an evil, and grief is foolish. In the Consolatio itself Cicero had, consistently with this Stoic attitude, collected examples of Roman parents who had borne impassively the loss of one or more of their children. But his prescriptions for the control of grief had been contested in the fifteenth century, first by Coluccio Salutati, then by Gianozzo Manetti and Francesco Filelfo; these writers had proposed 14 Philosophicae consolationes et meditationes in adversis, Jacobo Sadoleto et loachimo Camerario Pabepergensi authortbus. Accessere et eiusdem argumenti Joannis Sambuci, media et historici caesarei, et loachimi, loachimi F. Camerarii, epistolae et carmina (Frankfurt: Andreas Wechel, 1577). 15 "Ioanni Camerario Dalburgio, Pontifici Vormaciensi, Jacobus Sadoletus cubicularius apostolicus, S." in Philosophicae consolationes, cit., pp. 7-99; and in Sadoleto, Opera omnia t. 3 (1738), pp. 30-66. The letter is dated "Romae ex palatio apostolico, VII KaI. Novemb. Anno salutis nostrae MDII." The attribution of this epistle to Sadoleto has been called into question in Richard M. Douglas, ]acopo Sadoleto (1959) in an appendix, "Sadoleto's authorship of the Consolationes philosophicae" (pp. 221-22) on the ground that although the writer of the epistle refers to the death of his own mother as an event which had already taken place, Jacopo Sadoleto's mother lived for some time after the death of Johann von Dalberg (1455-1503). This is a forceful-seeming objection. On the other hand the titular formula of salutation which identifies author and recipient can hardly have been invented by Sambucus or Camerarius, Jr., and must have been present in the manuscript which they had before them. As well, the manner of imitating a specific work of Cicero in this composition speaks for Sadoleto's authorship. I think that we must suppose him to have feigned a personal bereavement which had not in fact occurred in order to dramatize the condolence which he wished to convey in this highly literary and artificial letter to a remote correspondent.

300

REWRITING CICERO

a more Christian, Peripatetic, emotional and volitional view of grief in opposition to the rationalism of the Stoic position.16 In his consolatory letter to Dalberg of 1502, however, Sadoleto ignores these innovations of fifteenth-century thought and returns to the classical model presented by Cicero in the Tusculanae and in the Consolatio, arguing that death is not an evil, that in fact it had often been granted by the gods to favored individuals, and that many who had come to a miserable end would have been happier if they had died sooner. Death is to be welcomed as a release from ills. Like Cicero in the Consolatio Sadoleto gathers famous examples of Romans who bore the death of loved ones with equanimity. When, just six years after the publication in 1577 of this classicizing consolatory work by Jacopo Sadoleto, a work written in imitation of the Consolatio of Cicero, there appeared in Venice a book purporting to be the Consolatio of Cicero itself, contemporaries would be struck by the coincidence. To return to 1559: in the Fragmenta Ciceronis Carlo Sigonio edited seven fragments of the original Consolatio.17 Six of them derived from quotations or near-quotations (close paraphrases) of the work by Lactantius in his lnstitutiones, and the seventh from a quotation by Cicero himself in the Tusculanae, also partly reproduced by Lactantius. Testimony concerning the Consolatio was discussed in Sigonio's commentary on the fragments. Andreas Patricius edited eight fragments, adding ahead of those identified by Sigonio the brief quotation from the Consolatio recorded in the preface to Pliny's Natural History.18 Since the nineteenth century a standard edition of all the fragments of Cicero has been that of C. Mueller.19 For the Consolatio he produced a numbered series of seventeen items, some of which contain the text of individual 16 For all of the above, see George W. McClure, "The Art of Mourning: Autobiographical Writings on the Loss of a Son in Italian Humanist Thought (1400-1461)," in Renaissance Quarterly 39, 1986, pp. 440-75. This valuable article illustrates the knowledge of the consolatory tradition and of Cicero's Consolatio present in Renaissance culture long before the appearance of the false Consolatio of 1583. Cicero's rational arguments against the expression of grief are found in Tusculanae 3.77. 17 Sigonio, Fragmenta Ciceronis, ff. 103r-108r (1559); and ff. 26v-27v (fragments 1560) and ff. 118r-122r (commentary 1560). 18 In the edition of 1565 (M. Tullii Ciceronis fragmenta tomi /7/7, cf. n. 10 above), perhaps the most widely diffused of Patricius's three editions, the fragments of the Consolatio are given in bk. 3, ff. 27v-28r; and the commentary in pt. 2, bk. 3, ff. 40r-42v. Patricius edits the fragments in the order followed by Sigonio. 19 In Cicero, Opera omnia, pt. 4, t. 3, ed. C. Mueller (Leipzig: Teubner, 1898), the fragments of the Consolatio appear at pp. 332-38. (An earlier edition by Mueller had appeared in 1879.) Reference will be made here to the fragments edited by Mueller as Ml, M2, M3, etc.

301

C H A P T E R FIVE

fragments, while others group fragments of text with passages containing testimony about the Consolatio. In some of these items Mueller assembled too much, as in his fragment no. 8, where he joins two separate passages from Lactantius. Even Sigonio, centuries before, had had the perspicacity to print these passages as two distinct fragments.20 In 1979 C. Vitelli produced the first independent edition of the fragments of Cicero's Consolatio,21 in which, understandably, a much greater articulation of the fragments than that found in the previous editions was sought. Excluding testimony, Vitelli distinguishes twenty-three fragments or groups of fragments of the Consolatio, some containing direct quotation and others recording information about the contents of the work. The texts united by Mueller as item no. 8 are, for example, in this edition dissected into four different items. Sigonio gave a summary reconstruction of the structure which he thought the Consolatio to have had: Cicero must have deplored the miseries of human life, then asserted that they are bearable because death removes them all in an instant. Following this he must have collected the famous parallels to his own loss of a daughter, in order to stiffen himself through such examples of fortitude in bereavement. Cicero had then illustrated the likely immortality of the soul, ending with the apotheosis of his daughter Tullia, whose death early in 45 B.C. was the occasion of the Consolatio. Sigonio discussed the place in this scheme of each of the fragments he had edited, but—a sign of carelessness—his discussion treats the fragments in an order slightly different to that in which he had printed them.22 Patricius in his commentary had discussed the text and meaning of each fragment but did not attempt to reconstruct the design of the original Consolatio, implicitly accepting Sigo20 Lactantius, Inst. 3.18.18 appears as fragment I in Sigonio; and Inst. 3.14.20 as fragment 3. Mueller prints them together as fragment M8. 21 M. Tulli Ciceronis consolationis fragmenta, ed. Claudius Vitelli (N. p.: Arnaldo Mondadori, 1979—part of a series of editions produced by the Centra di Studi Ciceroniani, Rome). The fragments as edited by Vitelli will here be referred to as Vl, V2, V3, etc. It may be useful to give a concordance of the fragments of Cicero's Consolatio as edited by Sigonio, Mueller, and Vitelli: Sigonio fragment 1 = M8 = Vl Sigonio fragment 2 = M9 = V9 Sigonio fragment 3 = M8 = V2 Sigonio fragment 4 = MlO = V21 Sigonio fragment 5 = M i l = V23 Sigonio fragment 6 = M12 = V22 Sigonio fragment 7 = M13 = V3 22 Sigonio's commentary discusses the fragments in the order 1-2-3-4-6-5-7.

302

REWRITING CICERO

nio's view of the matter, and printing the fragments in the same sequence in which they appear in Sigonio's edition. The author of the Consolatio of 1583 based his composition on the work of Sigonio and Patricius. His aim was to write a Consolatio following the scheme suggested by Sigonio, in which the genuine fragments could be embedded in a seemingly natural way so as to convince readers that an authentic Ciceronian work had been found. The genuine fragments do in fact appear—not, however, in the order in which they had been edited but in the order in which Sigonio had discussed them in his commentary. The production of such forgeries was part of the longstanding fascination which ancient literature held for Renaissance writers. Sadoleto, in choosing the entirely honorable method of rewriting according to the spirit, not the letter, of the ancient originals, was nevertheless animated by an impulse akin to that which drove others over the boundary into the innocent deceit of poetic imitation. The writer of the Consolatio of 1583 was one of these. The technique he used, that of inserting genuine fragments in a contrived context, was a novel variant in mimesis, a technical improvement made possible by philology through the editions of the fragments by Sigonio and Patricius. This use of Sigonio's philological work did not, however, in itself create the suspicion that Sigonio had been the author; it was his disingenuous endorsement of the Consolatio which was damning. That, and Riccoboni's circumstantial allegation that he had furnished the manuscript, were and are enough to convict him of complicity, and probably of authorship. The possibility that Sigonio, as pseudo-Cicero, had drawn inspiration from the consolatory letter of Jacopo Sadoleto published in 1577 was suggested by Riccoboni in a spirit of vulgar polemic. Riccoboni, who had merely learned of the existence of Sadoleto's recently published early essay in the Ciceronian style of consolation, also drew attention to Sigonio's published declaration of 1580 to Paolo Sacrati that Sadoleto had been his model in embarking on a career in letters.23 Riccoboni wanted only to discredit Sigonio by implying that the literary men of Modena were apes: one had followed another in imitating Cicero. But this might be more true, and in a more exalted sense, than Riccoboni (who had failed to note the important passage of 1559-60 in which Sigonio praised Sadoleto's recreation of the Hortensius) understood or intended. That the production of the false Consolatio of 1583 was a transformation of Sadoleto's mimetic approach, a transformation the significance of which 23

Riccoboni, Secundum iudkium, pp. 7-8. 303

C H A P T E R FIVE

is rooted decades earlier in Sigonio's career, is a proposition which has been defended above. To suppose further that the publication in 1577 of Sadoleto's juvenile consolatory epistle could have given Sigonio the final triggering impulse to attempt the re-creation of the very Consolatio of Cicero which had inspired the young Sadoleto is only to add a subsidiary and more concrete corollary. The general hypothesis reflects the "rewriting," the continual return to earlier texts as sources for the production of new texts, characteristic of Renaissance literature. Complexity is added if one accepts the view espoused here: that the Consolatio was a return not only to classical antiquity, but to the world of the classicizing high Renaissance. The Consolatio actualizes a desire, Sigonio's yearning for the world, idealized by him, of the decades preceding his own birth and those of his youth. At the summer solstice of classicism in the pontificate of Leo X, and during its long autumn in that of Paul III Farnese (1534-49), humanistic literature inspired by antiquity had been a vital cultural force, whereas Sigonio believed that throughout the decades of his adult professional life, beginning more or less with his move to Venice in 1552, interest in the classical languages and the classical world was dying out in Italy.24 What Sigonio "rewrote" was not only a work 24 Sigonio expressed publicly and privately over many years the view that classical culture (i.e., Renaissance humanism) was rronbund in Italy. These statements are significant and are not to be dismissed as topoi or as uttreflective complaint. In the preface to De antiquo iure avium Romanorum (1560) he allowed himself to come a shade too close to hinting at what everyone knew: that during the pontificate of the late Paul IV Carafa intellectual liberty had been reduced, and the cultural space occupied by religious and ecclesiastical matters had widened at the expense of the classical subjects (above, chap. 1, nn. 115-18). Let us leave aside the personality of Gian Pietro Carafa, and consider the question in the abstraa and over a longer span of time: what Sigonio in fact had stated was that the Counter-Reformation was in its nature inimical to humanism. Another and parallel trend which disturbed Sigonio, and whose existence can be objectively verified, was the spread of the vernacular language at the expense of Latin. For documentation of the increasing quantity of religious and vernacular books and the decline in the publication of the kind of books Sigonio liked at the very moment at which he wrote this preface, see Amedeo Quondam, "Mercanzia d'honore/Mercanzia d'utile," in Armando Petrucci, ed., Libri, editori, e pubblico nell'Europa (Roma: Laterza, 1977), pp. 5 1 104. It was Sigonio's belief, and this is perhaps a more subjective impression, that latinity had remained healthy in Italy as late as the pontificate of Paul III Farnese, which ended only in 1549. See for instance his letter to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese of 10 March 1579: "tanto sono pochi quelli, i quali hoggidi attendono a questi studi. O secolo di Papa Paolo terzo, dove sei ito? nel quale erano piu i perfetti oratori, et poeti latini, che hoggi non sono i mediocri legisti?" (Parma, Archivio di Stato, Epistolario scelto, s. v. Carlo Sigonio; and partly published in Ronchini, "Carlo Sigonio," p. 286). This statement too can be given a more abstract and general formulation. Sigomo is addressing in his own terms one of the important questions addressed by the modern cultural historiography of the sixteenth century: Where do we locate the turning point at which the Renaissance ends and the succeeding phase begins ? From the testimony

304

REWRITING CICERO

which, as Cicero's, belongs to antiquity, but also a text which "belongs to" the world of Sadoleto. The supposed rediscovery of a Ciceronian original naturally created much more interest than the publication of a contemporary tract in moral philosopy, whether by Sadoleto or any other modern writer. Sigonio's first attempt to impose the Consolatio on the world took place in his lecture hall. Perhaps it was here, in the university, that he first intended to turn the excitement which had been aroused to the advantage of humanistic studies, before the affair widened and innocent deceit turned into something riskier. To stimulate the interest of his students in the Ciceronian (and Sadoletan) style of moral philosophy might also have seemed to Sigonio a coup for humanism in its mock-war against the Peripatetics. Latin style and a rhetorically based moral philosophy were two components of the humanist curriculum which had flowed into the composition of the Consolatio. But in the open debate which ensued between Sigonio and Riccoboni, forensic rhetoric alone held sway as Sigonio argued the a priori grounds for its authenticity and attempted to suppress any discussion of actual authorship or provenance. For a brief season he believed that he had succeeded in doing this, and was gratified by the temporary return of humanism and its arts to the center of the stage. Then Riccoboni's ad hominem reply shattered his peace, and the final months of Sigonio's life were embittered by the aftermath of the affair, as his last letters to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli reveal. The Consolatio was published in Venice in the early months of 1583—February or March—by an established printer, Girolamo Polo. The volume was a 12mo printed in italics and the title page announced the first publication of a newly found manuscript of a hitherto lost work.25 There was no preface or introduction of any sort, and no editorial apparatus save a notice at one point of a lacuna.26 Although it was reprinted in various European countries, an obscure edition procured in Piacenza in the summer of that year, to be sold there and in Cremona, provides evidence of the immediate discussion of the Consolatio in the University of Bologna, and Sigonio's effort to spread the conviction among his students that it was genuine. The preface to this edition, by Pietro Bozzola, states that an unnamed youth of Cremona, a student of adduced here, the answer is, I think, that Sigonio placed the decisive shift in the middle and late 1550s. 25 M. TuIHi Ciceronis consolatio. Liber quo se ipsum de filiae morte consolatus est; nunc primutn repertus et in lucem editus (Venetiis: apud Hieronymum Polum, 1583). 26 "Desunt nonnulla," Cons. 91, f. 39r.

305

C H A P T E R FIVE

law at Bologna, had recently returned to his home town bearing a copy of the new Consolatio and the report that "he had heard from the learned men who profess publicly humane letters in Bologna, that this little book is not bastard or bogus, but the true creation of Cicero."27 Sigonio was later to write that he became convinced of the book's excellence while reading it aloud "multis audientibus," that is, in his lecture hall. At the same time Antonio Riccoboni in Padua was denouncing it from his lecture platform as a forgery.28 In March and April, as this difference of opinion became known, interest mingled with wariness grew. Riccoboni was the first to come out in print with an attack on the Consolatio. His De consolationis libro iudicium, a tiny 16mo brochure in the form of a letter to Girolamo Mercuriale, is dated in the preface 28 April, and will have begun to be seen in May. By this time it was known that Francesco Vianello, a secretary in the Venetian chancellery, had supplied the manuscript to the printer. One of the earliest letters in Pinelli's dossier belongs to this period, although the copy of it in the dossier is undated (app., no. 1); the writer was Paolo Torelli of Bologna, the recipient Niccolo del Antello of Padua. Torelli asks to be sent a copy of Riccoboni's Iudicium, and in the meantime offers reasons for the defense given by Sigonio. Even when retailed in this fashion at second hand, the urgency and partiality of Sigonio's advocacy are plainly preserved in the quasi-verbatim report of Torelli: the Consolatio exceeds the powers of any established modern writer, much more those of any youth; only someone who had lost a daughter could have written it; the style and arrangement are seamless; and so on. More than anything else Sigonio sought to impress his interlocutors with the presence of the genuine fragments, and the fact that one of them occurred in an expanded form, of which the previously known text, quoted by Lactantius, was now revealed to have been an abridgement. Paolo Torelli ends his letter on a note of caution: del Antello should refrain from showing the present letter to Riccoboni, in order not to get involved in any unpleasantness, but may show it to Pinelli. In fact, anyone who set pen to paper in this affair had to reckon that 27 Ciceronis consolatio . . . (Placentiae: instantia Petri Bozzolae, 1583). Colophon: Placentiae apud Jo. Bazzachium et Antheum Comitem socios, 1583. From the preface: "illius libri copiam multis fecit m hac nostra civitate [Cremona] primus omnium nobihs iuvenis expectationis incredibihs, qui hoc anno iuri civili Bononiae operam dedit, quique affirmavit, se ab iis viris doctissimis audivisse, qui ilhc humanitatis publice profitentur litteras, libellum hunc non adulterinum et subdititium, sed verum et Ciceronis esse naturalem" (Pietro Bozzola, Cremona, July 1583). 28 Sigonio, Pro consolatione, p. 146; Riccoboni, ludxcium, f. 4r.

306

REWRITING CICERO

he was writing a more or less public document, such was the general zeal for showing, copying, even printing private correspondence about the Consolatio. Some letters were written with circulation in mind, such as the one sent by Francesco Vianello to Sigonio on 7 May 1583 and published with a reply by Sigonio five months later. The transparent purpose of these two letters was to establish that Sigonio was an independent and disinterested outside observer. Vianello writes: I have learned that you defend the Consolatio; it has been edited by me without any preface or epistle, in order that everyone may be free to judge it on internal grounds alone. We await your judgment above all—and there may be more long-lost works yet to come forth. Sigonio replies: I must continue to maintain that the Consolatio is genuine and I shall be able to vanquish the doubters if you will reveal the source of the manuscript.29 These letters were clearly intended to set the rules for the future discussion of the Consolatio on purely internal grounds, but Sigonio's letter to Vianello also puts on record his pro forma request that Vianello reveal the facts of the provenance of the manuscript. A senior savant could hardly do otherwise. Vianello, however, was left in an exposed and unhappy position, forced to face alone the demands for a rational account of the origin of the published text. This Venetian cittadino (that is, of the rank, itself exclusive, below that of the patricians) had been a student of Sigonio in the Scuola di San Marco in the 1550s and had risen in the chancellery to the secretariat of the senate. 30 His colleagues there were naturally intrigued at his sudden notoriety and pressed him to reveal his secret. This would have been tolerable or enjoyable if the Consolatio had succeeded, but it became an unbearable burden as the work was increasingly doubted and derided. Vianello's nerve broke and he named Sigonio as the source of the manuscript; probably this happened in September or October 1583. Vianello's confession was reported by Antonio Riccoboni at the end of that year, and this report is as close as we have got to receiving testimony on the subject from Vianello. Riccoboni might seem to be an interested, hence doubtful, source, and when he first published his information he did not name his informant. But in 1584 in letters to Sigonio (no doubt widely displayed in copies at the time) which he later published, Riccoboni revealed that Vianello had made his confession to another secretary of the chancellery, Lorenzo Massa, and that Lorenzo 29

Sigonio, Pro consolatione, pp. 143-44. Cf. Riccoboni, ludicium secundum, p. 5, quoted in chap. 1, n. 31; and a notice of Vianello in Cicogna, Delle iscrizioni veneziane, t. 6.2, p. 868. 30

307

C H A P T E R FIVE

Massa had related the fact to Riccoboni in the presence of Bernardino Petrella, a professor of logic at Padua.31 Lorenzo Massa's name inspires confidence in this information, for he was a colleague of Vianello, known for learning, and a distinguished and responsible figure among the secretaries of the senate.32 In 1583 he was assigned to the service of the Riformatori dello Studio, which caused him to be often in Padua. It is not difficult to imagine Massa and other chancellery colleagues having taxed Francesco Vianello with questions and scoffing imputations about the Consolatio, nor that the poor fellow finally revealed the name of his mentor, Sigonio. Lorenzo Massa would hardly have invented this embarrassing, and in the circumstances explosive, story. Vianello and Sigonio had colluded in the publication of the Consolatio Ciceronis and Sigonio had supplied the manuscript; retrospective knowledge of these facts must guide our interpretation of Sigonio's conduct in 1583. Gian Vincenzo Pinelli prudently wrote to Paolo Torelli and to Antonio Gigante in Bologna to learn Sigonio's justification of the Consolatio rather than ask Sigonio directly. But Gigante was even more prudent (app., no. 3). He would let Sigonio answer for himself rather than get involved, "massime che si dice essere in Padova chi tiene et scrive in contrario." Pinelli was important to Sigonio. No one in Italian literary society had more respect and influence; no one was better informed. And Pinelli lived in Padua, Riccoboni's enclave. Sigonio wrote on 22 May, reproaching Pinelli for failure to write him directly and seeking to convince him that the Consolatio was genuine. Sigonio had seen Riccoboni's brochure and depreciated it. Pinelli was requested to give an account of the national reception of the Consolatio: "What do they think in Venice, what in Rome, the arbiter of the world?" (app., no. 2). The answer was an unhappy one for Sigonio. Most people, especially in Rome, saw that the Consolatio was a pastiche production. This was the gravamen of Riccoboni's Indicium: the Consolatio contained many 31

Riccoboni to Sigonio, December 1583: "narravit mihi vir quidam gravissimus et clarissimus . . . et quidem narravit praesente et admirante Bernardino Petrella logicae facultatis in hoc gymnasio explicatore, ipsum Vianellum interrogatum, an ipse talem Consolationem contra me defensurus esset, respondisse eiusmodi defensionem non ad se, sed ad eum qui librum Consolationis edendum ad ipsum miserat, Carolum Sigonium, attinere" (Riccoboni, De Gymnasio Patavino, f. 86r-v). Riccoboni to Sigonio, 14 January 1584: "Destiti tamen rem illam notam facere, quam ipse [Vianello] fortasse dicere non debebat, et de qua alias te certiorem feci: quod affirmaverit, ut praesente Bernardino Petrella logico Laurentius Massa vir a secretis Reipublicae Venetae mihi narravit, non ad se Consolationis defensionem, sed ad eum, qui ipsam edendam misisset, Carolum Sigonium, attinere" (De Gymnasio Patavino, f. 88r). 32 Cicogna, DeIIe iscrizioni veneziane, t. 5, pp. 18-22.

308

REWRITING CICERO

verbal echoes from various works of Cicero, including the Familiares, De officiis, Pro Archia poeta, and the Somnium Scipionis. Above ail the writer had drawn upon book 1 of the Tusculanae disputationes, in which Cicero discusses the fate of the soul and the prospects of immortality. Variations in word order and sentence construction could not conceal the derivation of these passages from readers who had much of Cicero engraved verbatim on their memories. As for the fragments of the genuine Consolatio, their appearance in the very sequence conjectured decades before by Sigonio was an obvious cause for suspicion. That was not all. Riccoboni had detected three places in which the pseudo-Cicero had adapted passages from the published prolusions of Marc-Antoine Muret, then an acknowledged master of Latin prose, and printed them together with their originals.33 Riccoboni's Indicium, though brief, had identified most of the fundamental internal inconsistencies and sources of the Consolatio, of which it was essentially an adequate refutation. But Riccoboni used several inane arguments as well: the Consolatio of 1583 begins with the statement that the author, "Cicero," is breaking the rule against applying medicine to a fresh wound by thus consoling himself for his recent loss ("Quamquam recentibus morbis medicinam adhibere vetant sapientes . . ."). The writer of the Consolatio got the idea for this exordium from Tusculanae 4.63, where Cicero wrote, in reference to his Consolatio, "quodque vetat Chrysippus, ad recentes quasi tumores animi remedium adhibere, id nos fecimus. . . ." For Riccoboni it was not enough to point out the obvious derivation of the exordium of the false Consolatio in the Tusculanae. He also claimed that if the real Cicero had written this exordium, he would have given some justification for thus breaking the rule. Riccoboni based this judgment upon a literal interpretation of Aristotle's Rhetoric 2.21 to the effect that the contravention of a common opinion should be buttressed with some excuse. However, this apparent failure to conform to Aristotle's precept is not a sound argument against Ciceronian authorship.34 In another case Riccoboni claimed that the passsages in the Consolatio 33

Cf. Riccoboni, Indicium, ff. 17r-19v; M.-A. Muret, Orationum Ciceronis in Catilinam explicatio (Venice, 1557), the prolusion to the fourth oration (p. 636 in Muret, Opera omnia t. 2 [Leiden, 1789]); and Muret's academic prolusion of November 1564 (Op. om. t. 1, p. 68). Note the following passages for the chain of stylistic derivation: Cic. De or. 3.8-10 = Muret, prolusion to the fourth Catilinarian = Consolatio 119-21, ff. 49r-50r; Cic. De or. 1.13 = Muret, same prolusion = Cons. 197, f. 8Or; Cic. De finibus 1.43 = Muret, prolusion of 1564 = Cons. 183, f. 74r-v. 34 Riccoboni, Indicium, ff. 4v-6r. 309

C H A P T E R FIVE

which dwell upon the misery of old age conflict openly with what Cicero was to write in praise of old age not long after in Cato maior de senectute. If Cicero had written the Consolatio, he would have inserted some sort of apology for this variation in doctrine in his Cato. But as the dramatic date of Cafo is more than one hundred years prior to the date of the Consolatio, it would have been difficult and unnecessary to make the elder Cato apologize for the future opinions of Cicero.35 These are not the only examples of unimpressive argument in Riccoboni; they are noted here because even Gulielmus, who argued cogently against the authenticity of the Consolatio, expressly dissociated himself from Riccoboni on these two points.36 From Rome, Pinelli and Mercuriale received a series of weekly reports from the elderly, idle Latino Latini (app., nos. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). At this distance from Bologna and Padua, Sigonio's controversial stance was not known so quickly, and did not loom so largely in consideration of the Consolatio. Latini, Muret, and Sirleto all denied that it was Cicero's. Latini saw a copy of Riccoboni's brochure, sent by Camillo Paleotti of Bologna, before he saw the Consolatio itself. On 18 June, at the climax of his role as reporter of Roman opinion, Latini sent to Pinelli and Mercuriale his own deposition, and that of "acri censori Romani" against the Consolatio.37 These are lists of inconsistencies, faulty expressions, post-Ciceronian Latin, and the like, all found within the new book. The writer of the Consolatio had, surprisingly, not been careful to choose all his vocabulary from the Ciceronian wordbooks. The critics noted the presence of captivitas, vagitus, immerentes,38 and many similar items. The gerundive use of poenitendum39 was also called into question. The solecism iuvarint40 for iuverint appeared to be just that in a text which otherwise bore few signs of having undergone any process of transmission. In treating the topic of the immortality of souls, pseudo-Cicero had inadvertently used a Christianized Latin, speaking of the soul's flight "ad futuram vitam" and of its release "in mortis articulo."41 And the 35

Ibid., f. 8r. Gulielmus, Assertio, pp. 88-89, 93. 37 Latini's letter to Mercuriale of 18 June 1583 (BAM, MS Q 120 sup., f. 360, excerpted in the app. no. 7 below) contains a list of twenty-eight places in the Consolatio which inspire suspicion; these are from anonymous Roman "censors." Ff. 381r-382v is a four-page list of similar observations and criticisms, apparently the work of Latini himself. See also f. 375, a list of anonymous criticisms sent to Pinelli by a certain Gemmari from Rome. 38 Cons. 19, f. 8v; Cons. 8, f. 4v; Cons. 31, f. 12r. 39 Cons. 121, f. 49v. 40 Loc. cit. « Cons. 45, f. 17r; Cons. 137, f. 55v. 36

310

REWRITING CICERO

writer unconsciously revealed his acquaintance with the Romance languages of modern Europe when he used homines*2 instead of viri to designate the members of the male sex. Latini's assiduous correspondence with Pinelli and Mercuriale was apparently the principal channel through which Padua, Venice, and Bologna learned that Rome condemned the Consolatio. The lists he sent were copied and discussed; Sigonio received them, but not from the cautious Pinelli, whom he again reproached for want of frankness (app., no. 10). As for the "acri censori" of Rome, the authors of these lists of suspect language in the Consolatio, they remain anonymous, although participation by Muret and Sirleto is probable. The cloak of anonymity suited the style of intellectual Rome, molded in its habits by such organs as the Congregations for the Inquisition and the Index. Every aspect of intellectual life had been affected by the schism of the sixteenth century, and even in areas remote from theological controversy a sense of wariness grew. The Consolatio of 1583 was the most clamorous of a series of pseudepigraphica of the later sixteenth century, and investigation of the circumstances surrounding it has revealed the existence and suppression in the 1580s of yet another: a counterfeit of the Anticatones of Julius Caesar. In the summer of 1583 Alfonso Ceccarelli of Bevagna was executed as a forger and falsifier on the Ponte Sant'Angelo.43 Ceccarelli had had a career of amazing success as a supplier of "genealogies" and "histories" composed by "Fanucius Campanus"; in 1575 even Sigonio was having the works of Fanucius copied for him in Naples.44 The termination of his life and enterprise on the Ponte Sant'Angelo had been caused by the revelation of his falsification of legal documents. Before his death, Ceccarelli had even managed to embroil the papal family Boncompagni in his affairs, and perhaps to cause them a certain amount of embarrassment. Clearly his position was remote from that of the writer of the Consolatio, for whom no one ever demanded a capital penalty. However, there were disquieting ripples from the case of Ceccarelli, especially for Sigonio, who was very prominently the protetto of Giacomo Boncompagni, duke of Sora and son of the pope. Some time before his fall Ceccarelli had branched out into literary forgery and had sold to the duke of Sora a manuscript putatively con42

Cons. 25, f. 1Or. See the entry in DBi 23, 1979, pp. 199-202 (A. Petrucci) for an account of his activities, and bibliography. 44 Cf. the letter of Sigonio to Pinelli, 3 January 1575; BAM, MS S 109 sup., f. 64, and printed in Op. om. 6.1029-30. 43

311

C H A P T E R FIVE

taining the Anticatones, screeds known to have been composed by Julius Caesar against the memory of M. Porcius Cato the younger in 45 B.C. after Cicero had written in praise of the distinguished republican suicide.45 Ceccarelli's composition was effectively suppressed, and appears to be unknown to later literary history,46 but the episode can be reconstructed from letters of Latino Latini and Carlo Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli and Girolamo Mercuriale (app., nos. 4, 5, 8, 10). Latini's letters make it clear that Boncompagni had purchased the Anticatones from Ceccarelli, and was now trying to prevent discussion of them as a further source of possible embarrassment in the context of Ceccarelli's ruin and execution. Nevertheless the coincidence by which the Consolatio Ciceronis and the Anticatones Caesaris, both composed in 45 B.C., had reappeared almost simultaneously sixteen centuries later was not lost on Pinelli and Latini, for the case of Ceccarelli was an ongoing cynosure: he confessed on 15 February 1583, was condemned on 1 June, and executed on 9 July. Pinelli finally turned to Sigonio for information on the Anticatones, and the latter cannot have enjoyed this reminder of Ceccarelli's rival forgery, in which he did his best to quell Pinelli's interest: "The Duke of Sora showed me these Anticatones previously in Rome, and having read a few lines, I told him to burn them, because it was the composition of a pedant; therefore he has not sent them to me, nor should you expect to receive them" (app., no. 10). By the end of July 1583 Sigonio had prepared a defense in two parts of the Consolatio, asserting the likelihood on internal grounds (that is, its contents) that it was genuine, and rebutting Riccoboni. The rationale of his actions as he gives it here is that the Consolatio is authentic and defense of it a duty owed to truth. Privately his rationale was somewhat different: "I don't base myself upon the verity of the original [manuscript] but on the book [i.e., the contents] itself," he wrote to Pinelli, and added in a postscript, unable to conceal his obsession, that if the Consolatio were false, which no one could know, "I profess to defend a paradox, and to try whether the art of rhetoric is true, whether that is it is capable of persuading even what is false" (app., no. 10). What Sigonio promised Pinelli was a show of a very superior kind, a public perfor45

See H. J. Tschiedel, Caesars "Anticato." Eine Untersuchung der Testtmonien una Fragmente (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981); and PWRE 10.1, coll. 264-66. 46 L. Fumi, "L'opera di falsificaziorte di Alfonso Ceccarelli," in Bolletino della Regia Deputazione di storia patria per I'Umbria 8, 1902, pp. 213-77, includes inventories of Ceccarelli's publications and documents; there is no sign of the Anticatones in it. 312

REWRITING CICERO

mance in the art of rhetoric. Pinelli and others foresaw a spectacle of a different kind, and kept their distance from Sigonio. In September 1583 Sigonio published in a single volume the second edition of the Consolatio, adding the genuine original fragments and commentaries on them written by himself and Patricius two decades earlier, and Riccoboni's Indicium against the Consolatio; this assemblage of republished material was topped off by Sigonio's own Pro consolatione orationes duae in defense of it. Everything about this publication was calculated to impress and convince, yet it reeked of manipulation and created nothing but suspicion among alert readers. The text of the Consolatio was silently revised in respect of grammar and syntax in a handful of places,47 but Sigonio gave no indication of the editorial basis either of the first edition or of these alterations. It is hard to account for the lack of judgment revealed by his belief that readers would accept his specious arguments for the Consolatio as proof of authenticity in the absence of material evidence. Perhaps he hoped to enjoy a temporary and dazzling success with the Consolatio, then rapidly reveal the true author.48 The cornerstone of Sigonio's case was the presence in the Consolatio of the genuine fragments of the Ciceronian original. Instead of giving rise to the credence which Sigonio had anticipated, their presence in the exact order of Sigonio's conjectural reconstruction of 1559 roused an instinctive suspicion, which Sigonio attempted to invert. It would have been ground for suspicion if those fragments had not occurred, therefore their presence was reason to believe. There were certain interesting facts about the text of the fragments, however, to which Sigonio did not draw attention. He himself had simply used a vulgate edition of Lactantius in editing the fragments in 1559 and 1560; but Andreas Patricius, who had a bent for textual criticism and who possessed a good manuscript of Lactantius, attempted to give a more correct text of the fragments of Cicero 47

The principal ones can be scanned in the apparatus of the Teubner edition of Nobbe. Sigonio affected to regret that the new Consolatio had not been universally welcomed as an excellent work, whether genuine or not, because, if it were the creation of a modern imitator, he would have been lured into the open by the sweetness of the praise which his opuscule deserved (Pro consolatione, p. 190). Sigonio was not a coxcomb. Would he have written this sort of thing before revealing that he himself was the pseudo-Cicero? The orientation of this chapter has been to explain the Consolatio on the basis of Sigonio's own life and works. But that orientation is also compatible with an auxiliary hypothesis, viz., that the Consolatio was the combined work of Sigonio and a youthful student or protege, the revelation of whose authorship would have been a triumph if the deception had succeeded. But it did not succeed. And for the august Sigonio the imputation of authorship and of intent to deceive produced anguish, sharpened by the fact that the masquerade had failed. 48

313

C H A P T E R FIVE

preserved by the Christian apologist.49 The writer of the Consolatio compared the editions of Sigonio and Patricius carefully, using their respective texts and notes.50 For most of his emendations Patricius specifies that he is using the authority of his manuscript: in each of these cases the writer of the Consolatio follows him. His aim was to incorporate the fragments in the most convincing way, reproducing neither Sigonio nor Patricius with complete fidelity, but amalgamating them, using the readings from Patricius which had been expressly authenticated in order to gain a false authentication for his own product. However, traces of Sigonio and Patricius in the Consolatio were difficult to efface completely. In the first fragment in Sigonio's collection, the second in Patricius's (and in the Consolatio of 1583), Lactantius does not quote Cicero directly but paraphrases an opinion which Cicero in his distress had vented twice in the Consolatio: that it seemed men were born in order to suffer in the world in expiation of human crimes.51 The writer of the Consolatio of 1583 therefore inserted two appropriately varied renditions of the thought.52 But Sigonio in his commentary gives a conjectural resume of the structure of the Consolatio in which he also paraphrases Cicero's sententia, adding his own small interjection in the form of the conjunction quasi; this conjunction recurs in the supposedly original version of the Consolatio.53 49 This manuscript is called simply "meus Lactantius" in Patricius's commentary to the fragments. The apparatus of L. Caeli Firmiani Lactantii opera omnia, ed. S. Brandt and G. Laubmann (Vienna: CSEL, 1890), contains no reference to any manuscript connected with Patricius or Poland. (It will be clear that the present chapter does not seek to make an original contribution to philology, in this or other respects.) 50 The fragments are distributed in the Consolatio as follows: M7 = V4atCons.7, f. 4v M8 = Vl at Cons. 7, f. 4v M8 = V7 at Cons. 28, f. H r M9 = V9 at Cons. 36, f. 13r M8 (second part) = V2 at Cons. 55, f. 21v MlO = V21 at Cons. 156-57, ff. 63v-64v M12 = V22 at Cons. 192, f. 78r M H = V23 at Cons. 212, ff. 85r-v and 216, ff. 86v-87r (interpolated) M13 = V3 at Cons. 217, f. 87v 51 "Quid Ciceroni faciemus? qui cum in principio Consolationis suae dixisset luendorum scelerum causa nasci homines, iteravit id ipsum postea . . ." (Lactantius, Inst. 3.18.18, fragment M8 = Vl). 52 "ut quasi luendorum scelerum caussa nasci homines, et in hanc lucem ingredi, possis agnoscere" {Cons. 7, f. 4v), "parumque sapiunt ii, qui hominem luendorum scelerum caussa natum felicem aut beatum audent nominare" (Cons. 28, f. Hr). 53 "Primum miseries hominum mihi videtur [Cicero] deplorasse, qui quasi luendorum scelerum causa in hanc vitam prodierint" (Sigonio, Fragmenta Ciceronis f. 118v in ed. of 1560).

314

REWRITING CICERO

Another fragment of the Consolatio preserved by Lactantius contains Cicero's reflections on the general grounds of apotheosis and the specific claims to this honor of his daughter Tullia.54 Pseudo-Cicero, here at his most egregious, interpolated the fragment twice so that this startling variation of the text of the fragments as heretofore edited would abolish any suspicion that the known fragments had germinated the Consolatio. The commentary of Patricius was especially useful to the writer in dealing with this fragment. The opening words had been abridged in Sigonio's edition to "Cum vero mares et feminas . . ." and Patricius restored this to its correct polysyndetic form ("Cum vero et mares et feminas . . ."). "In eorum urbibus" was read in the first sentence by Sigonio, but Patricius's manuscript of Lactantius gave "eorum in urbibus" which he printed and defended in context. Also in the first sentence, the vulgate reading was "assentiam eorum sapientiae," using the first person singular of the active form of the verb. Patricius's manuscript gave the lectio difficilior "assentiamur eorum sapientiae," with the deponent form in the first person plural. All three of these corrections were incorporated in the first part of the fragment as written into the Consolatio. The second sentence of the extant fragment begins with an abrupt transition on the part of Cicero from generalities to his daughter: "Quod si ullum umquam animal consecrandum fuit, illud profectum fuit." Patricius understood that the term animal could apply as easily to a person as to any other animated being, but he found the use of the pronoun illud, referring to Tullia but in agreement with animal, too harsh to be possible. He declared the text to be corrupt, and went on to recommend sweeping conjectural emendations; it was one of the few cases in which Patricius went too far, and Gulielmus, when he reviewed the Consolatio, was at pains to defend the text as it stood. Pseudo-Cicero, however, took his cue from Patricius, whose objections to the text of the fragment he had not perhaps thoroughly assimilated. He could not of course write Patricius's conjectures directly into the Consolatio, but he wrote in his own, taking the term animal to mean "beast," and producing: Quod si ullum unquam animal consecrandum fuit, aualia multa consecraverunt Aegyptii, quod nullum profecto fuit; si Cadmi aut Cf. the previous note. NB that Sigonio's "in hanc vitam prodiennt" probably also suggested "in hanc lucem ingredi" in Cons. 7. 54 Lactantius, Inst. 1.15.19-20, fragment M i l = V23. 315

C H A P T E R FIVE

Amphitryonis progenies aut Tyndari in coelum tollenda fama fuit, huic idem honos certe dicandus est.55 This invention betrays a user of the modern European languages (in which the Romance derivatives of animal do mean "beast") and the fact would be noted by Riccoboni, Lipsius, and Gulielmus. It was one of the writer's worst mistakes, but also the occasion for an exercise in cunning, the first stage of which was to write a passage into the Consolatio several chapters before the fragment in question in which "Cicero" derides the Egyptian cult of beasts and their forms,56 thus making the later insertion plausible. Then, having already interpolated the second part of the fragment, he interpolates the first at length, extending Cicero's euhaemeristic ruminations about the grounds of apotheosis and making a smoother transition to the subject of Tullia than the one in the genuine fragment. This elaborate creation was the finest flower of pseudo-Cicero's genius, the example of unquestionable veracity with which Sigonio had from the first crowned his advocacy of the Consolatio, for it seemed to show that the full text of a previously known fragment had only come to light in 1583. Sigonio had promised Pinelli that his Pro consolatione orationes duae would test the powers of the persuasive art, and this orientation is apparent everywhere in them. He used rhetorical concession against his adversary, acknowledging frankly that the Consolatio is filled with echoes of Cicero's other works, and producing further examples of the fact.57 These repetitions were proofs of authenticity, he said, and introduced a prosopopoeia of Cicero himself, who verifies the fact. There were other cases of verbal repetition within the Ciceronian canon, and if the Consolatio had a high proportion of echoes from the Tusculanae, that was because the two essays treated the same subject, the fate of the soul. 58 Sigonio's reply to the charge that the Consolatio contains anticipations of Christian doctrine is that the flight of the soul toward a future life is as congruent with the Platonic philosophy as it is with Christianity, philosophy having been God's gift to the Greeks as the law was his gift to the Hebrews. Sigonio asserts the consensus of Plato and Moses, and of Cicero with those traditions of ancient philosophy closest 55

Cons. 216, f. 86v (emphasis added); and for the entire complex of fragment plus interpolation, Cons. 212-16, ff. 85r-87r. 56 Cons. 206-08, ff. 83v-84r. 57 Sigonio, Pro consolatione, pp. 206-13. 58 Ibid., pp. 201-2. 316

REWRITING CICERO

to Christianity: these traditions, he said, were the source of the supposed anachronism of the Consolatio.59 The affair of the Consolatio revived in a new form some old questions about Ciceronianism. Normal Latin style in the later sixteenth century could be derived from a fairly broad range of latinity, and the question in 1583 was not whether contemporaries should write like Cicero, but whether or not the author of the Consolatio had done so. Sigonio, however, tried to shift attention to the former. Correct latinity, he said, should not be circumscribed by the limits of Cicero's recorded usage; Cicero had imported or created many new words in Latin; an imitator would have been more careful to employ only approved and recorded Ciceronian vocabulary; therefore the presence of some items not found in other Ciceronian texts should prove authenticity, not otherwise.60 Sigonio's theoretical cohesion and historical acumen are impressive here. His defense of the Consolatio is in the tradition of Poliziano and Erasmus, the champions of a more liberal Latin usage from the humanist past. In context, however, that is, in the technical evaluation of a putative work of Cicero, this laudable and well-argued line of defense was an answer to a charge which nobody had made. The question was not whether Plautus or Sallust or Livy should be excluded as sources of good vocabulary, but whether Cicero would have used the noun vagitus or the gerundive poenitendum, or quite a few other words from the Consolatio which appear to have had their vogue in the Latin of the poets Lucretius and Virgil, or the prose of Pliny and Suetonius. The proportion of these items was too high, or so it seemed to readers steeped in Cicero. Sigonio used several a fortiori arguments, not all of which sort well with one another. He pointed out that various works of ancient literature such as the Rhetorica ad Herennium had been reattributed on the basis of a few discordant fragments. In the Consolatio all of the fragments are perfectly concordant; therefore it should be embraced.61 Another argument ran: in the previous century such major works of Cicero as the letters to Atticus had been discovered in an unhappy condition, showing obvious novelties and grave defects of latinity, yet they were accepted and revered. How fastidious the sixteenth century had become, refusing to acknowledge this virtually perfect Consolatio because of a 59

Ibid., pp. 213-15. » Ibid., pp. 238,245-48. 61 Ibid., pp. 226-27. 317

C H A P T E R FIVE

few slight anomalies.62 Sigonio uses this specious appeal from the sixteenth century to the fifteenth and fourteenth repeatedly, with the intention of placing the Consolatio in the direct line of the great discoveries of Petrarca and Poggio.63 The rhetorical art recognizes the necessity to counter or confound an opponent's argument, and in the worst case to ignore it. Riccoboni had identified several cases in which the wording of the Consolatio derived from prolusions of Muret; Sigonio selected one of these and showed that Muret himself had derived it from Cicero's De finibus.6i "I seem to see Cicero alternately angry and amused," wrote Sigonio in another prosopopoeia, suggesting that Cicero had already imitated himself in basing a passage from De finibus on the Consolatio.65 But Riccoboni in riposte was able to point out that Muret, in adapting the passage of De finibus, had varied it with terms which recur in the passage from the Consolatio.66 Sigonio also adduced the parallelism of the Consolatio and De oratore, implying that Muret had nothing to do with them as they were both genuine Cicero. Riccoboni made the same reply: much that was distinct in Muret had also entered the Consolatio.67 Even more disconcerting was the revelation of Sigonio himself in the Consolatio, in the form of the word quasi added to fragment M8. To defend the Consolatio Sigonio had somehow to explain this. He devotes a long passage to doing so in his second oration,68 explaining that he had purposely added quasi to his paraphrase because as a Christian he held reservations about the doctrine of migration of souls implied in the fragment, and giving ancient parallels for the general sentiment about the expiatory nature of life's troubles, showing how they varied in expression. None of this explains how the word quasi had got into the Consolatio, and it amounts to a cloud of ink intended to create the impression that the repetition of the word was pure coincidence. Sigonio's defense of the Consolatio is not, in sum, a frank or disinterested composition, but one which uses every technique of rhetorical distortion to carry its point. It exemplifies many of the fallacies of argument outlined in Aristotle's Rhetoric 2.24, including indignant language, post hoc propter hoc, selection of examples, and others: an 62

Ibid., pp. 235-36. « Ibid., pp. 149-50. 64 Above, n. 33. 65 Pro cons., p. 234. 66 Riccoboni, ludicium secundum, pp. 35-36. 67 Sigonio, Pro cons., pp. 185-87; Riccoboni, ludicium secundum, pp. 34-35. 68 Pro cons., pp. 217-20. 318

REWRITING CICERO

accomplished exercise, perhaps, but quite unconvincing in the real world upon which Sigonio hoped to foist the Consolatio. The opposite is true of Riccoboni's Iudicium, which plods for all that it is hasty, and is lacklustre, but serves the cause of truth. Sigonio had a fairly clear sense of his own intellectual superiority to Riccoboni.69 He had in this case answered the latter's unsound arguments and, as he thought, baffled the solid ones.70 A bad conscience about the verities of the affair led him to behave as if the only just issue would be a strict point-by-point comparison of Riccoboni's Iudicium and his own Pro consolatione, the winner to be the one which best displayed the arts of argumentation and persuasion. This attitude is evident in the letters of Sigonio to Pinelli sent from Bologna to Padua during the period September 1583-March 1584. The first of these (app., no. 12) was written on 25 September and accompanied a copy of Sigonio's edition of the Consolatio with his orations in defense of it. Sigonio sought to impress upon Pinelli that he had answered Riccoboni with sufficient courtesy and effectiveness to extinguish the sparks of controversy; as always, he wanted to have the last word. The tone of self-justification which pervades this and later letters to Pinelli is obsessive, anxious, and somewhat unbalanced—a state of mind explainable by the fact that he was, if not the author, a secret collaborator in the production and publication of the Consolatio, and had abused his own authority and scholarship in defending it. His self-respect took refuge in the insistent refrain that the only point at issue was the validity of his arguments for authenticity as against the negative ones of Riccoboni. Sigonio's mistake was to think that by willing it he could force others to limit their discussion to this narrow question, whereas most were hungry for facts, or failing that rumors, about the provenance of the work. The first item in Pinelli's dossier from beyond the Alps is a copy of a letter from Joannes Crato of Crafftheim to Girolamo Mercuriale in Padua (app., no. 11). Both were distinguished medical practitioners and 69

Riccoboni gives a biography of himself in De Gymnasio Patavino, ff. 53r-57v. His rhetorical theory is discussed in Giancarlo Mazzacurati, La en's/ della retorica umanistica nel Onquecento (Antonio Riccobono) (Naples, 1961). There is a good deal of Riccoboniana in BAM, MS D 221 inf., one of Pinelli's miscellanies (but not included in Rivolta, Catalogo). Not long after gaining the chair at Padua, the self-important Riccoboni organized an epistolary symposium on the difference between signum and verosimile (Ar. Rhet. 1.2.14^18), eliciting a brief letter on the subject from, among others, Sigonio (Sigonio to Riccoboni, 2 January 1572, MS D 221 inf., f. 19, unpublished). 70 Sigonio, Pro cons., pp. 193-99, dwelling at length on the two weak arguments of Riccoboni mentioned above and others. 319

C H A P T E R FIVE

intellectuals, and Crato's letter of 6 September 1583 is devoted mainly to professional questions. However, in a postscript Crato, who like Latini some months earlier had read Riccoboni's Iudicium but not the Consolatio itself, expressed qualified approbation of Riccoboni's skeptical position. Mercuriale did not fail to pass this letter on to Riccoboni, for it contained a report of immediate concern: Crato assured his correspondent that Jan Zamoyski, now chancellor of Poland, had possessed many years before a manuscript copy of the Consolatio.71 Zamoyski of course had been a student at Padua during Sigonio's tenure, and had published with Giordano Ziletti his monograph on the Roman senate in 1563. Shortly before Andreas Patricius had edited for Ziletti's press the fragments of Cicero, building on Sigonio's edition, and with his cooperation: two Poles, both students and allies of Sigonio from the old days, appeared to be linked with the mystery of the Consolatio. Francesco Vianello was another figure from that place and time, as was Riccoboni himself, who had frequented Sigonio's lectures in Venice and Padua. What a concatenation! Riccoboni thought he saw filaments of conspiracy somehow interwoven with the vicissitudes of his own life, which had brought him back to Padua and a treasured position as humanist in the university of his youth after years of obscurity in Rovigo. He felt himself appointed to reveal the imposture, and from October 1583 was at work on the composition of a reply in four parts to Sigonio. The latter knew in mid-October that Riccoboni was preparing a response, but his letters to Pinelli in November continued to be sanguine, although somewhat apprehensive about the length and contents of Riccoboni's production (app., nos. 13, 14,16). Pinelli was requested to ask Riccoboni not to address it to Sigonio, and duly did so; at this stage the worst Sigonio feared was invective and provocations from Riccoboni. He mentions several times that he was enjoying calm in his university ("buon studio et quietissimo")—but when in December Sigonio learned that Riccoboni was about to name him in print as the forger of the Consolatio his life became a nightmare, and he no longer had peace in his lecture hall or anywhere else. To the period before this disaster belongs a letter written by Sigonio to Camillo Coccapani of Modena on 12 November 1583 (app., no. 15) but misdated in extant manuscript copies and in the published edition to 12 November 1582. The correct date is guar71 Crato's statement, which appears in app. no. 11 below, was printed by Riccoboni, Iudicium secundum, p. 6. But nothing was ever produced in support of this rumor. There is no reference of any kind to the Consolatio at any period of Zamoyski's life in the indices of the volumes of the Archiwum Jana Zamoyskiego.

320

REWRITING CICERO

anteed by the information contained therein that Sigonio had ordered the materials for the construction of a villa on his new property at Ponte Basso, near Modena, which he had purchased in July 1583 (cf. Appendix, no. 10). In this letter as well Sigonio mentions the present satisfactory state of the studio at Bologna, but warns Coccapani, who had just acceded to the public lectureship at Ferrara, to arm himself with the constancy necessary for an academic career in which he would encounter both apathy toward classical studies on the part of his students, and in the universities occasional outbursts of violent turmoil and disruption. But Sigonio's letter to Coccapani has attracted attention because it states that Sigonio has sent to Tarquinia Molza, a learned lady of Modena/2 "a book on the Consolatio which I have written" ("un mio libro de Consolatione, il quale scrivea"). He meant the Bolognese compendium of September 1583, which included the Consolatio and his own orations in defense of it, but when this letter was published in the nineteenth century with the date 12 November 1582, a few scholars thought they had uncovered not only knowledge of the Consolatio prior to publication but a virtual confession of authorship on Sigonio's part. The Consolatio of 1583 was discussed in literary circles throughout Europe, and traces of this discussion can be found in the correspondence of Joseph Scaliger, Justus Lipsius, and many others. Pinelli's dossier documents a special interest in the Consolatio among Italian intellectuals expatriate in the Hapsburg domain while retaining numerous contacts in Venice and Italy, and two eminent northern scholars, Crato of Crafftheim and Andreas Dudith.73 It is thus of interest for the history of intellectual exchange between these two centers among persons of scientific and cosmopolitan interests. The Italians included the exiled letterato Gian Michele Bruto; Giacopo Scutellari of Parma, who was a physician to the emperor; and Girolamo Ramusio of the Venetian chancellery, attached to the Venetian embassy in Prague from 1582 to 1584.74 72 On Tarquinia Molza, see P. di Pietro, "La biblioteca di una letterata modenese del Cinquecento, Tarquinia Molza," in Atti e memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per Ie antiche provincie modenesi, ser. 10, 8,1973, pp. 55-64. In an unfinished dialogue of Francesco Patrizi, L'amorosa filosofia, ed. J. C. Nelson (Florence, 1963), the first speaker is Carlo Sigonio, who lauds the erudition of Tarquinia Molza. 73 On these two men and their intellectual milieu, see part 1 of Pierre Costil, Andre Dudith, humaniste hongrois 1533-1589 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1935), pp. 1-221. 74 On Gian Michele Bruto, see the entry in DBI14, 1972, pp. 730-34, by D. Caccamo; on Giacopo Scutellari, who is little known, Ireneo Affo, Memorie degli scrittori e letterati parmigiani vol. 4 (Parma, 1793), pp. 180-83; on Girolamo Ramusio, grandson of Giambattista Ramusio and son of Paolo Ramusio, see Cicogna, Delle iscrizioni veneziane, 2.335-36.

321

CHAPTER FIVE

Both Crato and Dudith had studied in Padua, and had nourished a youthful interest in literary humanism—an interest which each emphatically forswore in 1583. The pretexts which they gave for doing so are in a small way indicative of certain tensions in European intellectual life at this time, tensions which could be activated by any controversial embroilment and had been present at the margins of the life of Carlo Sigonio since the 1540s, as in the case of the Accademia of Modena, the affair of Ludovico Castelvetro, and the quarrel with Robortello, in which veiled suggestions of unorthodoxy had been floated. By the 1580s Sigonio's last public wrangle lay far behind him, and his position was, at least publicly, tranquil and secure; but secretly he and his allies in Bologna and Rome were grappling with ecclesiastical censors who did not hesitate to accuse Sigonio of complicity with the Protestant heretics of northern Europe. The embarrassment which the affair of the Consolatio brought upon him and by reflection on his patrons and protectors, the Boncompagni, therefore came at a bad time in view of his secret vulnerability. Of those in the north who interested themselves in the Consolatio, Dudith was the most exposed to obloquy because of the notorious vicissitudes of his career, but most people had reason to avoid controversy, even of a purely literary kind, a fact which underlies the desperation of Sigonio's last letters to Pinelli as well as the caution of Dudith. On 15 December Crato informed Giacopo Scutellari that the Consolatio was a fraud, and Sigonio's defense of it "not in the least sincere" (app., no. 18). But he was sufficiently interested in its reception to seek the opinions of Dudith and Gian Michele Bruto—both of whom were reluctant to commit themselves. Five days later Andreas Dudith wrote from Breslau a long letter in Italian to Giacopo Scutellari in Prague in which he discussed the Consolatio and reflected on the various phases of his own life and interests (app., no. 19). Dudith denied his own competence to enter the ranks of the "lodati et gravi censori"; from the time of his juvenile studies in Paris and Italy thirty years ago he had preferred to attend to "cose [piu] che alle parole et ornamenti del dire," and he retained his predilection, he said, for medicine and scholastic philosophy. Not all of this was strictly true, for Dudith had been a devotee of humanism and an esteemed friend and correspondent of Paolo Manuzio. In the present letter, having excused himself in this way, he goes on to discuss the Consolatio. Dudith praises the work for itself, and is impressed with the possibility that a manuscript could have remained unnoticed in any of the great Italian libraries; he had heard from Gian Michele Bruto that the Greek scholar Michele Soffiano had seen a man322

REWRITING CICERO

uscript of the Consolatio years before in Venice (like Crato's rumor about Zamoyski's possession of a manuscript of the Consolatio, this one came to nothing). At this time Dudith was under the impression that Muret as well as Sigonio had recommended the new work. As well as giving his own circumspect opinion, Dudith relays the more forthright one of Gian Michele Bruto (a letter from whom he quotes) in favor of the Consolatio and scorn of its "cattivo e povero" detractor, Riccoboni. Dudith's letter was widely seen. In Prague Giacopo Scutellari provided Girolamo Ramusio with a copy, which Ramusio sent on to his chancellery colleague Francesco Vianello, believing that these endorsements of the Consolatio by Dudith and Bruto would please or assist the beleaguered Vianello (app., no. 20). Ramusio substituted a pseudonym for Riccoboni's name in transmitting the letter to Venice, which deceived no one when Vianello duly circulated it. Riccoboni naturally was offended and later clumsily attempted a retort against Gian Michele Bruto.75 Of some interest is the reason given by Ramusio to Vianello for Dudith's curious way of offering an opinion about the Consolatio, which obviously fascinated him, while seeming to duck any responsibility for it. Most people in Prague, said Ramusio, had expected Dudith to keep silent altogether, "and the principal reason for the denial he made of any wish to write about it is religion, because if there should be a published reply to any opinion of his, he greatly fears that he would be straightaway reviled as a heretic." Antonio Riccoboni's De consolatione iudicium secundum quattuor disceptationibus explicatum, printed in Vicenza and dated 1584, was in distribution by December 1583. The second, third, and fourth parts rebut Sigonio's defense of the Consolatio, but most interest centered on the first, which contained a series of charges and innuendos about its origin. Francesco Vianello and Girolamo Polo were accused of trying to establish a traffic in literary forgeries to their own profit, while Andreas Patricius and Jan Zamoyski were branded with suspicion as probable parties to the confection of the work.76 Riccoboni triumphantly retailed the report that Sigonio had passed the manuscript to Vianello, but maliciously affected to believe that so poor a thing as the Consolatio could not have been written by him. There was malice as well in the suggestion that the Modenesi writers, Sadoleto, Castelvetro, and Sigonio, had 75

Riccoboni's anger at Gian Michele Bruto and gratification at the esteem of Joannes Crato can be observed in letters of Crato to Mercuriale, 21 April 1584, and Riccoboni to Crato, May 1584, published in Riccoboni, De Cymnasw Patavino, ff. 93-94. 76 Riccoboni, Iudicium secundum, pp. 5,12-13.

323

C H A P T E R FIVE

a low taste for literary mimicry. The unhappiness which the publication of this invective caused for Sigonio is attributable in part to the offensive, insulting, and "personal" tone adopted by Antonio Riccoboni. But the real cause of Sigonio's despondency was that he was shown to the world to have acted frivolously and impudently in defending, and perhaps in writing, the Consolatio Ciceronis. The gravity which was such an important part of Sigonio's own image of himself had been ruined. To Riccoboni on 18 January Sigonio wrote a dignified letter of remonstrance, declaring that he was composing yet another pamphlet, in which he intended to return to the validity of Riccoboni's first objections to the Consolatio and ignore the recent slanders. This pamphlet, Accusator, abandoned the form of the written "oration" for that of the dialogue, a genre which Sigonio considered intrinsically less offensive to an adversary.77 But the decision to rehearse once again a part of the debate in which no one was now interested indicates despair. Sigonio sent a copy of Accusator to Pinelli on 28 February with a letter which revealed the depth of his misery (app., no. 21). The news of Riccoboni's dramatic imputation of authorship had convulsed the University of Bologna, in which exactly a year earlier Sigonio had begun to laud the Consolatio. The discovery that their professor had tried to delude them by imposing upon them his own work as that of Cicero had rendered the students (especially those from Milan for some reason) extremely contumacious. Sigonio drained the dregs of bitter regret in March 1584, when he learned that Riccoboni was writing a third tract, the dialogue eventually called Defensor.78 His ultimate letters to Pinelli (app., nos. 23, 24) are disconcertingly unfocused, and include a continued pretence that the world outside Rome is more convinced every day by the Consolatio, and the repeated demand that Vianello should reveal the source of the manuscript—as though the events of the last nine months had not taken place. Sigonio himself apologized for the inconstancy of these letters, and they present 77 Sigonio to Riccoboni, 18 January 1584: "Il modo della mia nsposta non sara piu oratione per fuggir alcune figure, Ie quali v'offendono, ma un paragone delle ragioni dell'uno e dell'altro brevissimo, percioche io non ho tempo da parlar mtorno queste ciancie, Ie quali tutte insieme non valgono un dinaro" (BAM, MS Q 120 sup., ff. 355-56, a copy with the date 8 January). This passage is printed in Ceruti, Letters inedite, p. 112. The Latin translation of the letter published m Riccoboni, De Gymnasio Patavino, ff. 89v-90v, is dated 18 January and this is the correct date. 78 Antonio Riccoboni, De consolatione edita sub nomine Ciceronis defensor (1584) was dedicated to Lorenzo Massa, and contains a catalog of all of the places debated ad nauseam between Sigonio and Riccoboni.

324

REWRITING CICERO

an accurate image of his personality in these months ("scrivo come parlo"), distracted by anger and regret and thinking often of death. Toward the end of the 1560s he had left the study of classical antiquity for late antique and medieval history, partly perhaps to enjoy the pleasure of studying in a field where he had few fellows, therefore few controversies. The switch to medieval history had been a solid success, but Sigonio's attempt in the late 1570s to conquer a third field, that of ecclesiastical history, had had a mixed result, including the suppression of a major undertaking, the Historia ecclesiastica; and had touched off secret, severe reprisals from Rome against his works in both medieval and ecclesiastical history. The adventure of the Consolatio Ciceronis, which was at the same time an escape from those periods and themes which interested his censors (and from sobriety), a return through mimetic subterfuge to the classical world, and an expression of nostalgia for an earlier age of humanism, had now deteriorated into a shambles. In the last year of his life Sigonio carried forward his work on books 15-20 of De Regno Italiae. He felt a painful contrast between the austere majesty of his folio volumes on medieval history and the demeaning affair of the Consolatio, and his thoughts alternated often between these two facets of his reputation. He was thinking of De Regno Italiae when he wrote in his last letter to Pinelli, using the metaphor of the literary feud as a duel which threatened to distract him from it: "I won't let myself be stirred from my desk." Not even this promise was kept, and after the appearance of Riccoboni's Defensor in April 1584 Sigonio wrote an ultimate account of the points at issue showing that Riccoboni was in unwitting agreement with Sigonio's principal contentions. This composition was circulated in manuscript, and was published in Bologna only in 1599.79 Sigonio's last ephemeral writings are no longer even concerned primarily with the Consolatio, but dwell obsessively, as do his letters, upon two aspects of his own Pro consolatione orationes duae: whether his argumentation was formally superior to Riccoboni's, and whether his style had constituted a provocation to Riccoboni. Questions of argumentation and language were part of the professional baggage of both men, but Sigonio's ability to judge such questions realistically seems to have deserted him at the end. He really believed that his demonstration of the art of countering and obfuscating an opponent's arguments would 79 Caroli Sigonii postrema oratio pro consolatione Ciceronis, Bologna, heredes Ioannis Rossi, 1599. MSS include BAM, MS R 116 sup., ff. 265-83 (two copies) and MS S 99 sup, ff. 21-31; and Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS Pal. 986-87, pacco 47, t. 8.

325

CHAPTER FIVE

bring credence for the Consolatio, and it was the exaggerated forensic style with which, as always on such occasions, he comported his literary self, that forced Riccoboni, the slighter man, to defend himself by whatever means. There is a small sign of Sigonio's confusion in his use of the word retorica to designate both the pyrotechnics of argument through which, as he promised Pinelli, he would prove that black was white, and also the invective from which he considered himself so chastely to have abstained (app., nos. 13, 24). Sigonio had spent a lifetime teaching the art of rhetoric as one of the components, together with classical literary style and historical information about the ancient world, of a harmonious curriculum of humanitas. He had explicated in academic lectures the mysterious power of the poetic mimesis to create illusion. The attempt to fuse these elements in the writing of the false Consolatio and the imposition of it upon the world, thereby reviving not only the vigor of that curriculum, but the brighter age of Sadoleto, collapsed back on itself, bringing failure and dismay in the somewhat darker 1580s.

326

APPENDIX

LETTERS ON THE

CONSOLATIO

T

of the letters, and extracts from letters, published here are with one exception (no. 15) two dossiers kept by Gian Vincenzo Pinelli; both are now part of the manuscript collection of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (BAM). The letters and extracts have been selected to represent the contents of these dossiers, and to show the importance of Pinelli's role as participant in and archivist of Italian intellectual life. The principal dossier is MS Q 120 sup., ff. 337-83, the complete contents of which are approximately described in Rivolta, Catalogo dei codici pinelliani, no. 119, pp. 60-62. Items in it by Carlo Sigonio include copies of three letters to Antonio Riccoboni of late 1583 and 1584. These were published by Ceruti in Lettere inedite (1867), pp. 108-12 and in accurate Latin translations by Riccoboni himself, in De Gymnasio Patavino (1598), ff. 83r-90v, and have not been included here. Ceruti also published from this dossier three autograph letters of Carlo Sigonio to Pinelli written in the period May-July 1583 {Lettere inedite, pp. 106-8) with errors of transcription and dating, and giving the recipient as Aldo Manuzio, Jr. It seemed reasonable to re-edit these three letters below (nos. 2, 9,10). The remaining items here from Q 120 sup. are nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,11,18,19, and 20, written by Latino Latini, Andreas Dudith, and others. All of them are to my knowledge unedited, but it is difficult to be certain of this. HE SOURCES

Pinelli's second dossier on the Consolatio is MS G 271 inf., ff. 77—89 (Rivolta, Catalogo no. 251, p. 233) containing exclusively letters from Carlo Sigonio to Pinelli and Girolamo Mercuriale from late 1583 and 1584. All of them are edited below for the first time (nos. 12,13,14,16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24). Most of the items in the first MS are third- or fourth-hand copies, many of them by the same scribe, of widely circulated letters. They have been modernized in regard to punctuation and accents, and banal errors 327

APPENDIX

of orthography have been rectified. The autograph letters of Sigonio have been lightly modified in punctuation and accents, while respecting as much as possible the characteristic parataxis and quasi-oral immedi­ acy of Sigonio's epistolary style. 1. Paolo Torelli (Bologna) to Niccolo del Antello, mid-May 1583 (excerpt)1 Io all'incontro vi mando alcune ragioni per la parte affermativa che cos! ragionando ho sentite dal Sigonio. Questo tale che ha composto il libro ο e huomo d'eta ο giovane; se d'eta, e impossibile che sia stato ascosto tanto tempo un cosi raro et bel dicitore perche tutti quelli che conosciamo hoggi al mondo per grande ο picciola fama di loro, non havere che fare co'l compositore di questo libro, perche Io stile e del tutto diverso da quello di questi tali, e di gran lunga a dietro se Io lascia; se e giovane sarebbe un mostro e sforzo di natura, et io Io terrei maggior di Cicerone perche pigliare in se la persona d'un altro che parli nella nativa lingua e che si ritrovi in caso d'haver perso una figliola amata tanto . . . non e possibile che gli sappia ο che gli fusse riuscito cosi felicemente assomigliarseli. . . . In oltre Lattantio cita un frammento di questo li­ bro, pone il principio et il fine di quella parte, lascia il mezzo perche non faceva a suo proposito. . . . come donque puo essere che un tale l'habbia visto? . . . egli pruova fondatamente queste ragioni dette e mostra i luoghi. . . . Volendolo voi mostrare, io non vi dico che non Io facciate, ma non gia al Riccobono ο a simile . . . anzi havro a caro Io mostriate al Sig. Paolo Aicardo ο al Sig. Giovan Vincenzo. . . . 2. Carlo Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 12 May 15832 V. S non mi vuol piu bene, poiche non mi scrive, scrivendo a Messer Antonio Giganti et al Sig. Paulo Torelli. Disidero sue lettere et massime il suo parere intorno la Consolatione, et cio che se ne parla in coteste parti in utranque partem. Qui ce ne sono pocche copie ma quelli che Than viste, acconsentono a me, il quale affermo, che e di Cicerone, in modo che se venisse uno, che mi dicesse d'esserne 1'autore esso, non gliel'crederei, et direi che scrivesse una altra opera simile. Che si crede 1 BAM, MS Q 120 sup., ff. 370r-371r; not autograph. It is apparent from the context that the sender writes from Bologna to a recipient in Padua or possibly Venice. 2 Q 120 sup., f. 368r; autograph; published m Ceruti, Lettere inedite, p. 106 as if to Aldo Manuzio and dated 27 May; hence in Pastorello, Epistolario manuziano no. 1928.

328

APPENDIX

in Venetia, che in Roma, giudicatrice del mondo? Se fosse cosi facil cosa il tener la parte affirmativa, come e la negativa, direi a V. S perche. Ma in somma non ho altro, se non che non ci trovo contradittione alcuna, et Ie apparenti si tolgono da se medesime, salvo se non vogliamo mettere in consideratione YAdeo quod dell'amico nostro, del quale mi duole che habbia fatta una simil scappata; de qua ipse viderit. Se io fossi all'orecchio di V. S. direi molte cose che io taccio. Orsu, ella non mi faccia piu desiderar sue lettere, massime con tanta occasione di scrivere. Le bascio la mano. Di Bologna, il 22 Maggio 1583. 3. Antonio Gigante (Bologna) to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 26 May 1583 (excerpt)3 [Sigonio] in somma giudica che l'opera sia, et non possa esser d'altri, che dell'autore, di cui porta il titolo in fronte. Le ragioni ch'a cio l'inducono, oltre alio stile conforme et non imitabile, lascero che Sua Signoria Ie dica ο scriva quando et a chi Ie piace; perche la mia rozza penna non si conforta di riferirle, temendo di non stroppiarle in qualche parte: massime che si dice essere in Padova chi tiene et scrive in contrario; ipsi viderint. Io l'ho letta con molto gusto, quando ho saputo ch'el Sig. Si­ gonio ha cio fatto piu et piu volte, non ostante ch'anche qui si trovino alcuni della contraria opinione, i quali io non voglio nominare per non parere censore dell'altrui giuditio. 4. Latino Latini (Rome) to Girolamo Mercuriale (Padua), 28 May 1583 (excerpt)* . . . della Consolatione, la quale senza haver veduta altrimente, sospettai dal primo di ch'intesi d'essa, che fusse cosi finta come Ie cose del Ceccarello da Bevagna. 3 Q 120 sup., f. 365r; autograph. "Stroppiarle" = storptarle in regular orthography. An­ tonio Gigante (1535-98) of Fossombrone, a well-known letterato, had been a secretary of Ludovico Beccadelli and was in the service of Gabnele Paleotti. 4 Q 120 sup., f. 367r; this sheet is actually a letter of Latini to Pinelli, on to which has been copied a letter written on the same day to Mercuriale, from which the present extract is taken. Latino Latini (1513-93) of Viterbo was an assiduous correspondent; see his Epistolae, comecturae et observations (1659, 1667) for part of his correspondence and for a brief biography. In the Ambrosiana his letters to Pinelli, with some to Girolamo Mercuriale, are bound in MSS D169 inf., and D 424 inf. The letters of Latini found in Q 120 sup. belong naturally to the series in D 169 inf., from which they were withdrawn by Pinelli when he assembled his special dossier on the Consolatio Ciceronis of 1583. Other letters remaining in D 169 inf. also contain references to the affair of the Consolatio and to Sigonio.

329

APPENDIX

5. Latino Latini to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 4 June 1583 (excerpt)5 Dal Sig. Camillo Paleotto mi fu mandato il giuditio stampato del Sig. Riccobono, col quale io sertza vederlo gia concorreva, ancora avanti che da Messer Federico mi fusse fatto intendere il parere del Cardinale Sirleto: di cui Messer Federico non referi, se non quel che a lui parse d'intendere: et ancora avanti ch'el Sig. Mureto mi fece intendere che era esercitatione di giovane, da fame poco conto. Credo pero, come V. S. scrive, che l'opra per huomo di nostri tempi sia degna di vedersi; e che se il Sig. Riccobono non Io conosce, dico l'autore d'essa, habbia usato parole alquanto meno che honorevoli contra di lui. . . . Quel che V. S. desidera de Ii Anticatoni non posso io ne mandarne saggio, ne sapere ancora se sia stato vero ch'el Ceccarello Ii vendesse all'Illustrissimo Sig. Jacomo. Cercaro d'intenderlo, e ne daro aviso. 6. Latino Latini to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 11 June 15836 Per fuggir la solitudine otiosa, et odiosa, scrivo a V. S parendomi cosi alleggerirmi molto il peso e noia del'eta grave, de la poca sanita, e de la solitudine. Come scrissi sabbato passato hebbi il libretto nuovo accompagnato con la censura ο congetture del Riccobono; il quale per quanto io sento, non ha se non leggiermente notato quel che gli e parso. A me pecca il libro tutto in quel che e primo fondamento, per voler parer Ci­ cerone: non parlo de Io stile ο forma di dire, ne di tessere, ne de la vera proprieta de, Ie parole latine, sole ο congiunte, ne del numero, e struttura molle e corrente; ma dico del modo di trattare un'argumento, nel quale si proponeva per fine la consolatione propria de Io scrittore, e non d'altri. Onde havendo mantenuto Marco Tullio con gran decoro e con 5

Q 120 sup., f. 366r. "Messer Federico" is Federico Ranaldi of the Bibhoteca Vaticana. In a letter to Pinelli of 8 July 1583, Latim will confirm that Giacomo Boncompagni had indeed received the fake Anticatones from Alfonso Ceccarelli, and had passed them to Sigonio (BAM, MS D 169 inf., f. 73r). Pmelli will then ask Sigonio for them, in a letter which does not survive; and Sigonio will reply dismissively in the letter of 28 July 1583 which appears as no. 10 of this appendix. 6 Q 120 sup., f. 364r. Latino Latmi reasons ill in this letter, claiming that the genuine Consolatio must have been written in dialogue form. It was plain enough from the extant frag­ ments of Cicero's Consolatio, and the testimony about it, that such was not the case, and so the alert pseudo-Cicero had rewritten the Consolatio of 1583 as a hortatory monologue. The currency of bad arguments (in favor of true conclusions) such as this one of Latini exasperated the frustration of Sigonio, who was using what he insisted were good arguments in favor of a conclusion he secretly knew to be false.

330

APPENDIX

grand'autorita l'usanza Platonica in tutti quasi i trattati suoi, come puo parer verisimile che ne la Consolatione, per consular se stesso, non habbia fatto il medesimo, inducendo persone vive di grand'autorita, che discorrendo Ie pongano inanzi a gli occhi tutte quelle ragioni che, cavate da Ie midolle de la vera filosoiia, hanno forza di far toccar con mani il vero, e quelli esempi che sono efficacissimi a moverci e mutarci d'un stato misero in piu tolerabile, se non quieto a fatto? Che peso ο autorita puo havere appresso di se medesimo l'autore istesso; che si possa dire che con decoro sostenga la persona addolorata tanto, che sia in preda de la passione, e de l'altra consolatrice? Hanno alcuni divisi se medesimi per far questo in senso e ragione, altri in soliloquii con Dio, altri excitati i morti in sogno, come fece ne la repubblica Cicerone, come si vede nel fragmento che noi ne habbiamo; di modo che necessariamente questo argumento deveva trattarsi con altra maniera di scrittione, perche con decoro e gravita et autorita, si potesse credere che fusse uscito da Cice­ rone. L'imitatore studioso del detto scrittore ha fatto quanto ha saputo per parer Cicerone, ma non ha pesato ne considerato a bastanza quanto si ricercava intorno al trattare detto argumento. Onde viene spesse volte a replicare: haec praetermitti non debent, sed videamus si placet, e simili modi di dire; i quali scrivendosi per consolar altri, ο vero ragionando con altri, si potevano comportare, ma con se stesso, chi non vede che e cosa non dico ridicola ma molto absurda? Una cosa ha finto conveniente a scritto di molti anni, mangiato e consumato da Ie tarme, cio e la lacuna del mancamento. Eccovi l'otio noioso e solitudine quel che sa fare, per ragionar con quelli che ama, confidentemente: come prego V. S. che habbia per grato, e che tenga per se sola questo mio, forse poco prudente, discorso. Se pero sotto'l medesimo sigillo, non giudica che sia ben fatto, di conferirlo col Sig. Mercuriale, con patto pero, che 1'un e 1'altro me ne dicano il Ioro parere. Dio la contenti. Di Roma a di XI di Giugno. MDLXXXIII. 7. Latino Latini to Girolamo Mercuriale, 7 18 June 1583 (excerpt) Gia con poca mia consolatione haveva letto agiatamente il libretto de Consolatione . . . mando inclusa copia di quel che mi parse di detto Ii7 Q 120 sup., f. 36Or. In this and the following letter of the same date to Pinelli, Latini speaks somewhat unclearly of communicating to both men his own judgment about the Consolatio and that of "acute censors" of Rome. The letter excerpted here contains a list of twenty-eight places considered doubtful; this seems to be the judgment of the "censors."

331

APPENDIX

bretto. Qui sono censori acri che pesano tutte Ie parole. . . . Consideri hora V. S. quanta stima si debba fare e del giuditio di questi censori e del mio discorso, di che mando copia inclusa, con patto che'l tutto serva a lei sola. . . . 8. Latino Latini to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 18 June 1583 (excerpt)8 Ecco il resto del debito, pagato al medesimo tempo a duoi gran' creditori. Mi sara molto caro ch'in breve habbiamo luce del autore del nuovo libro. Il quale, se ben' io ho sospettato che venga da buona mano et huomo maturo, per un contrasegno che mi si scrive, e confermamisi ben due volte, d'una persona che giudica al fermo che'l libro sia veramente di Marco Tullio, non di meno conosco la debilezza de l'argumento; potendo di cio esserne cagione ο la gran memoria che riconosce il tutto in Marco Tullio, ο l'esquisito examine, che approva il tutto per cosa propria e familiare a Cicerone. Il che io non posso affermare, huomo di pochissima memoria, e di molto tempo alienato da la lettione di quel scrittore. Mando adonque quanto deveva a V. S., cioe quel medesimo che intorno a cio ne fanno i censori di qua giuditio, coi quali concorro in gran parte. Servira a V. S. sola ο al piu al Sig. Mercuriale. Del Zigero lasciaremone il pensiero, come ancora fara V. S. del'Anticatoni, se pero non mi offerisse occasione da poter haverne quel che si desidera. 9. Carlo Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 6 July 15839 Io sono in villa, et pero non ho cosi commodita di haver a tempo Ie lettere sue et di risponderle; pero V. S. mi perdoni. Hebbi risposta da Modena et gliela mando. Intendo che in Roma non e persona che non tenga per falsa la Consolatione, et ho anchora havute certe loro oppositioni, onde trovandomi solo dalla parte affirmativa, sono costretto dall'ufficio mio a difender l'honor di questo bel libro, et rispondere alle ragioni de gli awersarii, il che faccio non nominando alcuno, et solamente pesando gli argomenti fatti. Vorro vedere se Ie passioni potranno piu che Ie ragioni. A me in somma par cosi; a Roma et a Fiorenza par uno strazzo. Bascio la mano di V. S. Di Bologna il 6 Luglio 1583. 8

Q 120 sup. f., 361r. Latini speaks here of Sigonio as an authoritative supporter of the Consolatio, but without naming him. The dossier contains a list of observations and criticisms (ff. 381r-382r) which are apparently those of Latini. 9 Q 120 sup., f. 377r; autograph; published in Ceruti, Lettere inedite, pp. 106-7 as if to Aldo Manuzio; in Pastorello, Epistolario manuziano no. 1936.

332

APPENDIX

10. Carlo Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 28 July 1583w Sono avisato anch'io che l'inventore della Consolatione furri per essere stato trattato da barro, et che vuol scrivere, ma poco mi puo giovare, percioche non mi fondo sopra la verita dellOriginale, ma sopra il libro medesimo, non trovando cosa che provi falsita. Per dire a V. S., si come al Sig. Riccobono venne capriccio subito di far una scrittura contro questo libro, cosi venne a me di fame una in favore, percioche trovava qui et in altri luoghi molti che vacillavano. Et cosi scrissi una orationcella con Ie prove; intanto venne fuori la cosa del Sig. Riccobono, et cosi gli amici che havean commendata la mia difesa, m'hanno persuaso a voler sciogliere Ie ragioni di esso Riccobono, al che m'ho fatto pregare per non parere ch'io voglia offenderlo. Ma poi ricordatomi che esso ha scritto di me cio che gli e parso, et come gli e parso, ne io mi sono turbato con lui, mi sono persuaso che esso non si turbera con me, massimamente non portandomi peggio seco, di quello che esso ha fatto meco, et gia si sarebbe dato fuori, se non che mi sono andato tratenendo per trovar modo piu dolce da sciogliere Ie sue ragioni, che fosse possibile. Percioche non nomino la persona in modo alcuno, ma credo bene che siano sciolti i suoi argomenti cosi realmente che esso medesimo restera appagato. Il Sig. Duca di Sora mi mostro gia in Roma questi Anticatoni, et io, lettone alcuni versi, dissi che Ii brusciasse percioche era scrittura d'un pedante, et pero non me Ii ha mandati. Ne V. S. Ii aspetti. Queste mie saranno due orationi, una in prova della verita della Consolatione, scritta avanti che havesse il Riccobono, l'altra in risposta di tutto quello che ho udito dir contra, dove sono altre oppositioni mandate da Roma, Ie quali sono venute in mano di V. S. et ella non me ne fa mentione, et altre d'altri ma Ie piu gagliarde sono quelle del Sig. Riccobono. Ma esso precipito la sua scrittura, et credo che Io confessera. Le bascio la mano. Di Ravone il 28 Luglio 1583. [Postscript] Per dargli questa nuova ho voluto voltar carta. Hieri fermai il contratto di una possessione bellissima vicina a Modena un miglio e mezzo sopra il fiume Secchia, bellissimo sito, dove andro a star questa altra estate, et questo sara il porto della mia vecchiezza et de miei studii, come havro lasciata la lettura, al che questo e un preambulo. Di piu Ie 10 Q 120 sup., f. 383r-v; autograph; written at Ravone, now a suburb of Bologna. Published by Ceruti in Lettere inedite, pp. 107-8 as if to Aldo Manuzio (Pastorello, Epistolano manuztano no. 1937). Sigonio had also written on 23 July to Fulvio Orsini justifying himself and the Consolatio in the same terms he uses to Pinelli (Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Lat. 4104, f. 164, published in de Nolhac, "Piero Vettori et Carlo Sigonio," pp. 148-49).

333

APPENDIX

dico che se bene la Consolatione non fosse di Cicerone, che Dio solo il sa, faccio professione di difendere una paradossa et di provar se l'arte Rhetorica e vera, cioe se vale anche a persuadere il falso. 11. Johannes Crato (Breslau) to Girolamo Mercuriale (Padua), 6 September 1583 (excerpt)11 Librum de consolatione nondum vidi. Cancellarium Zamoscium Regni Poloniae ante multos annos scriptum habuisse pro certo scio. Iudicii rationes de eo ad te perscriptas misit mini Scutellarius. Eas ad meum iudicium non revoco. In earn sententiam, ne Ciceronis libellum qui in Ciceronis nomine apparet putem, facile adducor. Sed de imitatione Ciceroniana a tuo Riccobono dissentio. Diu autem haec studia elegantiae, et puri latinique sermonis non voluntate verum necessitate, quam mihi misera mea servitus attulit, abieci. Ad ea nunc redire cum in coelum via sit quaerenda, et munienda, non debeo. Riccobonum ut a me salutes peto. 12. Carlo Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 25 September 158312 Vi mando Ie mie due orationi fatte in favore della Consolatione; ho aspettato quella difesa che V. S. mi dicea che era per uscir di giorno in giorno, ma tardando troppo, et instandomi il stampatore, il quale stampa a sue spese, insieme con molti amici, i quali hanno udito da me Ie mie ragioni, non ho potuto tardar piu. So certo ο almeno mi dubito, che il Sig. Antonio non habbia per male, che io dissento da lui, ma si devra contentare, che io non habbia a grave che egli dissenta da me et in questo et in altre cose. Vi prometto bene che io mi sono ingegnato con ogni maniera di modestia di sciogliere Ie sue ragioni, percioche puo essere, che i contradicenti habbiano ragione, ma i loro argomenti certo non sono ragionevoli; et mi dolgo che il Sig. Antonio habbia scritto di questa ma­ niera. Quando cominciai a scrivere non pensai di scrivere altro che la prima 11 Q 120 sup., f. 35Or; not autograph; this excerpt was also published by Riccoboni in Iudi­ cium secundum, p. 6. This is the postscript to a letter occupying ff. 349r-350r. Like no. 18 below it is dated from "Wratislavia" ( = Breslau = Wroclaw), the Silesian city in which Crato and Dudith both resided. 12 BAM, MS G 271 inf., f. 78r; autograph. Note in the concluding sentences of this letter the vacillation of Sigonio's thought between the debate about the Consolatio and his work on medieval history. Sigonio wrote to Riccoboni on the same date (Q 120 sup., ff. 355-56 = Riccoboni, De Gymnasio Patavino f. 83r = Ceruti, Lettere inedite, pp. 108-9). On 9 October Riccoboni replied to Sigonio (De Gymnasio Patavino, f. 83r-v).

334

APPENDIX

oratione, et questo bastava a dichiarare la mia coniettura; ma essendo poi uscita in luce et la sua accusa, et alcune altre, sono stato sforzato a far la seconda, et ad interrompere il corso d'altri miei studi phi impor­ tant!: percioche credo che V. S. habbia inteso da me, come sono a buon termine del compimento dell' historia de regno Italiae. Havro piacere che V. S. mi scriva cio che sente di queste mie conietture, et cio che ne dicano gli altri. Per Ie continue scritture fatte questi anni passati drento da questi studii ove era dimenticato quasi ogni cosa, et ho havuto fatica a rinovar la memoria di molte, credo che in simile argomento non si sia mai scritto tanto. Le bascio la mano. Di Bologna il 25 Settembre 1583. 13. Carlo Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 18 October 158313 Staro aspettando quanto V. S mi scrive; intanto voglio, che V. S. mi serva di far un officio col Sig. Riccoboni in questa materia. Esso mi scrive, che tosto mi mandera molti altri dubbii da sciogliere intorno alia Consolatione. Se intende di dirizzar questo ragionamento a me, vorrei che V. S. Io persuadesse a non farlo, percioche non vorrei, che mi s'imponesse necessita di contrastar seco, et massime in cosa, che non importa a me, ne a lui; percioche niuno di noi e autore ο inventore di questo libro, et io ne voglio, et quando volessi non posso, per esser occupato, come ella sa, in materie diversissime da questa, attendere a simili dispute, Ie quali non si possono trattar cosi modestamente, che l'amico non si tenga offeso. Come e avenuto in questa mia, nella quale ho posto ogni diligentia di non offendere il Sig. Riccoboni, rinegando tutti i precetti di Retorica, et non di meno esso scrivendomi, dice che io Io rappresento un ciarlone. Sia lodato Dio. Hora comincio a conoscere che io non intendo Latino, poiche io dico quello, che io non sento; et se vuol propor nuove ragioni contro quel libro, Io puo chiamar secondo giudicio ο seconde ragioni, per Ie quali si puo dubitar, che quel libro non sia di Cice­ rone parlando in universale, come ho fatto io; percioche non mancheranno chi Io consigliara a far peggio per desiderio di veder cartelli. Io havrei scritto il medesimo a Sua Signoria ma per un mio rispetto, mi e parso meglio che V. S. gli significhi la mia volonta, et poi pregarla che in presentia sua stracci questa lettera. Da Vinetia vien scritto, che egli apparecchia tre orationi, et tre difese. Credo che Ie persone gli aggiungano, percioche io giudico che una buona sia assai, la quale sia fatta con maturita. Et pero V. S. anchora Io potra 13

G 271 inf., f. 80r-v; autograph.

335

APPENDIX

consigliare amichevolmente intorno a questo quanto Ie parera opportuno; che in tutto et in parte mi rimetto al suo prudentissimo giudicio et di tacere et di parlare; che in questo non gli voglio togliere la liberta di dar il parer suo, ma solamente consigliarlo a non dirizzar il parlar a me, per fuggir l'occasione che io gli habbia da rispondere. Il Sig. Secretario Vianello mi scrive, che l'inventor del libro s'apparecchia di rispondere et di chiarire questo dubbio: il che aspetteremo. Ma nel vero costui si porta male a tardar tanto, che con poca f atica potea levar queste controversie. Io so certo, che quelli letterati, i quali havranno detto una volta, che questa opera non gli par di Cicerone, non si moveranno di proposito, ne anche se Cicerone gliel'giurasse, et pero non aspetto di sentir che si siano rimossi, ma se si giudichera, che in questo proposito si sia detto quanto era opportuno a dire; et con quello fine bascio la mano di V. S. molto Illustre. Di Bologna il 18 Ottobre 1583. 14. CaWo Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 4 November 158314 Io mando Ii due libri addimandati. La prego a salutarmi il Sig. Mercuriale. La ringratio deH'officio fatto, il quale alia fine tornera in maggior servitio all'amico, che a me, se obbedira. Intorno a questo fatto non m'occorre di dir altro, se non che ci ha bisogno d'altro che di ciancie. Qui habbiamo il studio ordinario nostro. Si dice per certo che il papa torna qui a Pasqua. Anchora queeti Signori sperano di haver qui a quaresima il Gratiano che legge in Pavia; nel resto io sono sano. Et Ie bascio la mano. Di Bologna il 4 Novembre 1583. 15. Carlo Sigonio to Camillo Coccapani, 12 November 158315 Con infinito mio piacere ho inteso della condotta di V. S. et del felice principio dato alle sue lezioni, et me ne rallegro con lei come et quanto debbo, si per onor et comodo suo, come perche questa Ie sara sicura scala a maggior lettura, come questa mia, la quale desidero et disegno di las14

G 271 inf., f. 82r; autograph. No. 41 of the letters of Sigonio to Camillo Coccapani published by Franciosi in Delia vita e delle opere di Carlo Sigonio (1872, pp. 85-86) from an MS copy in Modena, Biblioteca Estense MS beta 1.3.1 (Ital. 1827), re-edited here with variants from another copy in MS alpha L.9.27 (Ital. 841) and with other adaptations to the usus of the writer. An attempt to locate the originals in Modena proved unsuccessful; cf. above chap. 1, n. 194. Both MS copies of this letter and both of Franciosi's editions bear the date 12 November 1582, but the original must necessarily have been dated 12 November 1583, for Sigonio speaks in the letter of the property he had purchased in July 1583; see app., no. 10. 15

336

APPENDIX

ciar presto, ma la dolcezza di questa citta, et di molti amici, non mi lascia risolvere. V. S. farebbe bene a stampar l'orazione per molti rispetti. Ella dimandi alia Signora Tarquinia, se ha avuto una mia lettera con un mio libro de Consolatione, il quale scrivea, che ella mostrasse a V. S., il parer della quale desidero intorno a quello. Poiche questa e la prima lettura sua in studio pubblico, la conforto ad armarsi di costanza percioche ella patira, se non presto, tardi, molte cose, che Ie daranno poco gusto, et vedra poca volonta di studiare, et poco gusto di queste lettere; ma bisogna far il fatto suo. Io pur ho scuola ottima et molto quieta, ma non v'e mare cosi tranquillo, che non si turbi qualche volta. Comprai una possessione al ponte basso con animo di goderla et di ripatriare, et cosi desidero: gia ho ordinata la materia per fabricarvi. Io non so che dire, et vorrei ragionar con lei. Solamente Ie ricordero, che questo e il tempo di accomodarsi per la vecchiezza. Bascio la mano della Signora Tarquinia, et sua. Di Bologna il 12 Novembre [1583]. 16. Carlo Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 22 November 158316 Da piu parti ho lettere di persone letterate che lodano la mia opinione, cioe che Ie mie ragioni per la Consolatione siano reali et efficaci. Vero e che alcuni satrapi, et massime in Roma, i quali una volta hanno negato, stanno su la sua opinione, et hanno ragione. Sicome piu ragione di tutti ha Messer Antonio, pero che piu di tutti si e manifestato; et pero Io lodo a difendere la sua positione. Ma vorrei bene che stesse tra Ii termini prescrittigli di modestia, accioche non havessi occasione di rispondergli per Ie rime. Et pero staremo ad aspettar, come si portera. Qui habbiamo buon studio, anchor noi, et quietissimo. Io son sano, et quasi scioperato, se non quanto Ie lettioni mi occupano. Del sicuro il papa sara qui a Pasqua, ο dopo Pasqua. Anchora che io vado a pericolo d'haver la casa piena di familiari, nondimeno se V. S. verra, la vedro volontieri, et stara meco, se non bene, almeno meglio, che aH'hostaria, et questo sia per aviso. Le bascio la mano. Di Bologna il 22 Novembre 1583. [Postscript] Il Sig. Sperone Speroni e della mia opinione, et il Sig. Paolo Sacrato, il Card. Vercelli, M. Julio Iaccoboni, tutti gli intendenti di Bologna. V. S. mi scriva, se sa, che assentitia, et che dissentitia, in queste parti. Non e possibile che in Vinetia non se ne faccia schiamazzo, et non se ne parli direttamente. 16

G 271 inf., f. 84r; autograph.

337

APPENDIX

17. Carlo Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 10 December 158317 Io non havea che scrivere a V. S. molto Illustre se un amico mio da Padoa non m'havesse scritto una cosa maravigliosa, cio e che Messer Antonio nella quarta oratione delle quattro che fa stampare, mi fa autore del Libro de Consolatione per certe sue conietture, et in una delle tre altre mostra che questo libro e stato fatto ad imitatione d'alcune cose del Mureto. Io non ne credo niente, ο poco: ma se fosse vero, dubiterei che questo huomo non fosse uscito di se, essendo tutto cio fuor di proposito. Percioche bastara a lui a dir il suo parere, et non haver per male che altri dica il suo, havendolo detto con tanta modestia verso di lui, et di tutti. Et se pur volea far risentimento, bastara a difendere Ie sue ragioni, Ie quali sono realmente solute tutte. Se queste ciancie saranno vere, non accade, che vi ci risponda. Et possono esser vere, percioche che cosa potrebbe egli dire in tante orationi se non parlasse fuor di proposito? Di gratia due parole, se ne sa niente; benche aspetto da lui piu tosto il libro con una bravata. Le bascio la mano. Di Bologna il 10 di Dicembre 1583. 18. Johannes Crato (Breslau) to Giacopo Scutellari (Prague), 15 December 1583 (excerpt)18 De libello qui in Ciceronis nomine de Consolatione apparet, satis meam sententiam exposui. Quid aliud est, quaeso, nisi collectio consolationum e veterum scriptis, quarum nulla est consolatio? quae, utcumque Ciceronianis verbis est ornata, male omnino inter se cohaerens, et interdum particulis minime Ciceroni usitatis, connexa. Sigonii patrocinium minime ex animo scriptum esse apparet. Duditius, quod sciam, nihil scripsit, et interrogatus a me iudicium suum se interponere nolle dixit. A Bruto litteras elicere non potui. 19. Andreas Dudith (Breslau) to Giacopo Scutellari (Prague), 19 20 December 1583 (excerpt) Quanto al libretto de Consolatione, me ne scrisse alquanti di sono anco il Sig. Bruto; ma chi son'io che possi, ο debba, entrare nella schiera 17 G 271 inf., f. 77r; autograph. Also in December there was a busy correspondence between Marc-Antome Muret in Rome and Riccoboni m Padua, reproduced in De Gymnasto Patavino ff. 83-86. 18 Q 120 sup., f. 362r-v; not autograph. 15 Q 120 sup., ff. 351r-352v; not autograph. Banal errors in this scribal copy of Dudith's letter have been silently corrected.

338

APPENDIX

dei lodati et gravi censori? Non passai in questi studii mai innanzi tanto, ch'io potessi scriver cosa, che meritasse lode, ne mi curai d'acquistarmi in cio nome alcuno. Per cio cominciando a conoscer sin dal tempo ch'io studiai in Parigi, che sono poco men di 30 anni, et poi in Italia molto piu, che molto meglio era d'attendere alle cose, che alle parole et ornamenti del dire, mi voltai alio studio di cose piu sode, alle quali, sempre che Ii negotii di corte et legationi me l'hanno permesso, ho atteso con mio gran gusto, et se pur per Ii studii miei giovenili ne restai un poco infarinato, come si suol dire, Ie prometto ch'hora ne sono del tutto netto, percioche da molti anni in qua non piglio simili scrittori in mano, se non di rado, essendomi tanto innamorato della filosophia et della vostra medicina et di theologia et questa poi come quella per Io piu scolastica, come ella vien chiamata (la quale maniera di scriver affina l'intelletto et ingrossa la lingua) che non mi vien ne anco voglia se non a caso di maneggiar altri libri, se non fosse alle volte per diporto qualche libro mathematico per introdurre mio figlio a questa bella et ben ordinata scienza . . . Leggendo pero Ii di passati in quel libro, trovai un homines in luogo di viri, contraponendolo alle donne. Riconnobi il modo di parlar piu tosto italiano che latino, ne mi raccordai haver mai letto che gli antichi l'usassero in questo modo per l'altra parte del sesso humano come fa hoggi l'ltalia, dicendo, questo e huomo, questa donna, come se questa non fosse sotto la specie humana; il che pero dissero alcuni filosofi greci. Lo dissi al Dottor Cratone, che resto confirmato nella opinione ch'io haveva, ma un amico mio volse piu tosto affermare che questo errore non [fosse] dell'autore, ma fosse dello scrittore, et si deve legger omnes o w e r eos, di che awisai il Sig. Bruto; il quale dice, che avanti molti anni gli fu affermato da M. Michele Sophiano greco, huomo di gran giuditio et litteratura et in quelli tempi mio grand'amico, ben conosciuto dall'Illustrissimo Michele, et da V. S. ancora, ch'egli haveva veduto questo libro in Venetia nella libreria di S. Antonio se ben mi ricordo. Ma per tornar a quel homines, ecco quello che mi scrisse il Sig. Bruto:—"Intorno a quello homines la risposta e facile, non si dovendo creder che chi ha saputo cosi ben tesser habbia trapelato tra la seta et l'oro di cosi vaga tela et gentile, il canapo condannato al fango et alia spazzatura. Mi piace la congiettura del Sig. Dottor Wachker, ma sia ο homines pro eos, ο sia pro omnes, che non sarebbe gran caso questo, tengo per fermo che sia errore uscito dalla penna non di chi Io scrisse, ma di chi Io trascrisse. Il Re, che sostenta l'opinione contraria alia vostra et mia, mi pare cattivo et povero da gli altri suoi scritti."— 339

APPENDIX

Grave sarebbe Terror mio, s'io far volessi giuditio contrario a questo del Sig. Bruto, che in questi studii d'eloquenza e consumato. Oltre che anco il dottissimo Sigonio (come intendo dalle lettere di V. E.) diffende questa medesima opinione, se vi ci aggiunge anco Mons. Mureto et quakh'altro valente Ciceroniano d'ltalia, che bisogna dunque dubitarne piii ? De gli antichi non so niun ch'habbi imitato si felicemente Cicerone, ne che habbi voluto entrar in simil esercitio. Dei nuovi non veggo alcuno che possi scriver con questa tessitura cosi bella, cosi ordinata, con cosi soave melodia et numero, et con cosi amabile eloquenza; ne forse si trovarebbe alcuno tanto poco ambitioso, che volesse donare un cosi bello et d'ogni parte compito parto dell'ingegno suo a Cicerone ο a qual si voglia altro scrittore, massime non riportandone qualche gran dono. Al tempo di Filelfo furono trovati quei bellissimi libri de Oratore poco avanti questa nostra eta et dei padri nostri, come altri libri; perche non puo esser stato anco questo sepolto in qualche libraria, cacciato al fine di qualche altro libro, senza ch'alcuno se n'accorgesse prima?. . . . ma non m'accorgendo entro in quello steccato che dicevo voler fuggir, non senza ragione, tanto in oltre mi ha tirato il desiderio di ragionar con V. E. . . . 20. Girolamo Ramusio (Prague) to Francesco Vianello (Venice), 24 January 1584 (excerpt)20 Ho sentito per certo molta consolatione della lettera che scrive il Sig. Dudithio al Sig. Scutellari intorno al libro de consolatione, perche havendo fatto quello che ogn'uno si persuadeva qui che non dovesse fare, con questo principio potra (come si tiene) allargar la mano et esplicar piu copiosamente il senso dell'animo suo. Et la principale cagione della negativa che fece di non voler scrivere e la religione, per che sendo risposto in scritto al suo giudicio, teme grandemente che a primo incontro non Ii sia detto in faccia che sia heretico. Staremo a vedere s'uscira altro, il che inviero subito a Vostra Magnificenza; si come faccio la copia della sopra detta lettera, dalla quale mi do a creder ch'ella sia per ricevere molto contento d'animo vedendo ch'il Dudithio, stimato il maggiore litterato di questa provincia, sia dell'opinione dell'Eccellentissimo Sigonio. Ho lasciato per ogni buon rispetto nella penna il nome del Sig. Riccobono, ponendo in vece di quello " u n Re," il che serve per intelligenza alia Mag­ nificenza Vostra. . . . 20

Q 120 sup., f. 353r; not autograph.

340

APPENDIX

21. Carlo Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 28 February 158421 Quanto io fossi lontano da rispondere al Sig. Antonio V. S. et alcuni altri amici Io sanno, i quali ho pregato che Io pregassero a non mi nominare, si come io non havea nominato lui; ma esso non solamente m'ha nominato, ma punto, et provocato, et quasi chiamato a battaglia, et scritte due lettere in guisa di due cartelli formali; de quali l'uno e pieno di punture, di villanie, et di minaccie. Ond'io con tutto che desiderassi di quetarmi sono stato astretto a rispondere. Tanto piu che mi era scritto, che mostrava Ie mie lettere, et Ie mandava in volta, come in trionfo, a mostrar che mi havea fatto tacere. Non voglio dir piu in questo caso, ma solamente questo. Ho difeso quel libro con quell'autorita ch'egli l'ha ripreso; rispondo astretto dalle sue provocationi, ma non rispondo alle sue nuove oppositioni, parendomi che non sia obbligato ad andar piu oltre. Basta che mostri esser vero quello che io ho detto, cioe che per quelle sue prime ragioni non si conchiude, che quel libro non sia di Cicerone. V. S. intendera come il nostro studio e sottosopra, e come il Sig. Spinola suo ci e intricato a caso. Si tratta di accordo. Dio ce la conceda. I Milanesi tutti sono contumaci, i quali erano il fiore della mia scuola. O quanto desidero, che veniat plenitudo dierum. Ho veduto volontieri il Sig. Domenico, si come veggio tutti i suoi amici. Le mando due risposte reali, et non sofistiche, et Ie bascio la mano. Di Bologna il 28 Febraro, 1584. 22. Carlo Sigonio to Girolamo Mercuriale, 29 February 158422 Mando a V. S una copia d'una risposta fatta al secondo giudicio dal Sig. Antonio, per accompagnar quelli, che ella mi dimando. Ne mando un altra per il Sig. Antonio, al quale non scrivo per la cagione che io Ie diro. Io l'havea pregato, che s'astenesse di publicar Ie lettere, che io gli scrivo, per esser cosa incivile, et biasimata da M. Tullio. Esso m'ha risposto, che Io vuol fare ogni volta che gli piace. Onde io, per non havere a dargli occasione di commettere questo errore con offesa dell'amicitia, ho preso per consiglio di non scrivergli piu, et tanto meno, che egli non 21

G 271 inf., f. 87r; autograph. Previously Riccobom had sent his last letter to Sigonio (5 February 1584, published in De Gymnasio Patavino ff. 90v-92v), the one described here by Sigonio as "full of stings, of boorishness, and of threats." These qualities have to be judged from Riccobom's Latin version; it is undoubtedly a letter of defiance, if not of menace. 22 G 271 inf., f. 85r; autograph. 341

APPENDIX

mi scrive lettere, ma cartelli pieni di punture, minaccie, et villanie tutte contrarie alia professione, che dice di fare, cioe di honorarmi. Perche io habbia preso la difesa di questo libro, et perche hora risponda, e scritto nelle mie scritture, si come anche appare, quanto humanamente mi sia portato. Anchora la sua risposta mostra il rispetto che m'ha. V. E. mi creda, che non feci mai cosa piu contro la mia volonta, percioche sono quindici anni che verso in studii diversissimi da questi, come mostrano Ie opere stampate, et quelle che hora son per stampare. Ne solamente non desidero di conculcar alcuno in questi studi, come egli mi getta in occhio, ma in breve voglio cedere questo luogo a chi Io vuole. Et dio volesse che Io potessi dar al Sig. Antonio, accioche egli si accommodasse, come ho fatto io. Non ho mala volonta contra di lui. Et se non mi nominava, ο non mi chiamava a duello, et non mi dicea villania, volontieri mi quetava. Et che sia vero, V. S. vedra, che io non tocco Ie sue nuove oppositioni, et Io lascio correr il campo a modo suo. Prego V. S. a non mostrargli questa lettera, ma stracciarla subito, accioche non senta per cio altra querela. Et Ie bascio la mano. Di Bologna il 29 Febraro 1584. 23. Carlo Sigonio to Girolamo Mercuriale, 17 March 158423 Ne Vostra Eccelenza ne io habbiamo colpa in questa controversia nata sopra la Consolatione: ma chi I'ha publicata et sa la verita, et non la vuol dire. V. S Eccellentissima, vaga di sapere, ha dimandato il parer di Messer Antonio. Messer Antonio l'ha detto, io ho detto il mio. Se Messer Antonio si contentava di rispondere mostrando piu tosto di voler dichiarare Ie sue ragioni, che di volerle mantenere per verissime, ne si portava verso di me, se non come io m'era portato verso di lui, io non era per far parola; et cosi gli scrissi, havendo trascorso il suo libro con l'animo rivolto ad altro. Ma poi che io mi sono sentito chiamar a duello piu volte per nome, non ho potuto fare, che non risponda; et se saro chiamato a questo modo, sempre rispondero. Messer Antonio ne prima ne hora mi ha stimato, se non quanto gli e tomato commodo: per questo ho perso poco, percioche egli essendosi fatto aperto nemico havra minor autorita in parlar di me; et di questo sia detto assai. Lodo cio che ella ha fatto di quella lettera, et la prego a far il medesimo di questa, et Ie bascio la mano. Se V. S. havesse alcuna cronica di Rimini, la prego a mandarmela, percioche vedro se ci e cosa che io non habbia; percioche m'occorre molto 23

G 271 inf., f. 88r; autograph.

342

APPENDIX

il parlar di quella citta in questa opera che hora ho per Ie mani, et ho finita; ne aspetto altro che il stampatore. Di Bologna il 17 Marzo 1584. 24. Carlo Sigonio to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 17 March 15842i Vegga di gratia V. S. dove io son condotto: ο mi bisogna tacere, quando altri parla, ο mi bisogna contrastare, et udire et dir cose indegne di me et d'altri. Perche non dovea io, et potea, ο per giuoco ο per altro, dir il mio parere, con tanta utilita di chi ne sa meno? Et se Io dovea fare, come Io poteva io far piu modestamente, di quel che io ho fatto? Se Messer Antonio volea rispondere, Io potea fare, troncando 1'occasione che io havessi necessita di dir altro, ma esso m'ha invitato, come ella puo haver letto. Et poi si grava che io gli risponda. Ma il rispondere et replicare l'ho per un spasso, se egli Io sapesse fare senza dir villania. Il Sig. Mercuriale mi prega a non gli rispondere: ma come mi posso tenere, se saro invitato? Come si vede io non esco del proposito, ne meno ho risposto alle seconde obiettioni piu leggieri et false delle prime, et ho usato tanta bonita, et modestia, quanta si vede. Et pur come ella dice, ella non e finita, et altri mi scrivono, che vuol passar piu avanti, et egli e cosi privo d'amici, che non e alcuno, che gli dica che quanto piu si vuol lavare, tanto piu s'imbratta, non dico per I'opinione che quel libro non sia di Cicerone, ma delle ragioni addotte da lui con cosi poca consideratione, et poi mantenute con minore. Giuro a V. S. che io I'amava, et gli volea proccacciare il mio luogo, il quale io voglio lasciare tosto, et che sempre l'ho lodato, et servito, come posso mostrar per lettere sue, et che io mi ho creduto d'honorarlo con dissentir da lui, et esso m'ha ringratiato di cio. Ma l'ultima sua lettera scrittami e stata piena di tante villanie, che io ho deliberato di non scrivergli piu; et prego dio, che non mi dia occasione di rispondergli secondo 1'arte che noi insegniamo, percioche io ho lasciato molti belli tratti per esservi amico. Se pare di dir alcuna di queste cose al Sig. Mercuriale, Io rimetto allei, percioche egli m'ha scritto, ma per non parlar piu di questo non gli riscrivo cosa alcuna. Ma questo gentilhuomo va a risico di perdere piu che guadagnare, percioche a me non e per tor niente, percioche sono in porto; et ho navigato tutto'l tempo della vita mia. Ne mi lascero levar da su la scrivania, cioe staro sulle promesse; et non rispondero ad altro fuor del caso. Ho havuto i pareri scritti d'alcuni letterati di Spagna, i 24

G 271 inf., f. 89r-v; autograph. This letter is difficult to read as the paper has been torn. What Sigonio intended to convey in the last part of the penultimate paragraph is not clear.

343

APPENDIX

quali si maravigliano di noi che dubitiamo. Da Roma in fuori, pocchi sono altrove che sentano altramente; ma io non biasimo chi tiene il contrario, ma Ie ragioni fin qui addotte per la parte contraria, percioche non provano; ma piu chi Ie difende cosi ostinatamente, potendo ritirarsi con honor suo, et di quelli, i quali esso in una Iettera scrittami confessa; che e insanire sessanta volte. Et mi prega per l'amor che Ii porto, che non Io voglia ruinare ο scrivendoli contro, ο aiutando altri. Ma che questo Vianello ? Come si puo difendere et non palesare chi gliel'ha data? Piu volte ha scritto a me, che I'inventore vuol rispondere al Riccobono, et che e per mandar fuori non so che. Ma riescono ciancie. V. S. mi perdoni di queste mie cosi inconstanti lettere: scrivo come parlo. Le bascio la mano. Di Bologna il 17 Marzo 1584.

344

BIBLIOGRAPHY

T

that follows is divided into two sections: (1) the published editions of Carlo Sigonio's works; (2) secondary bibliography. Sigonio's works are given in chronological order and I aim at completeness rather than bibliographical refinement: this is a handlist. Not even completeness is attempted, however, in the case of Sigonio's notes on Livy; his notes on the fragments of Cicero, and the Consolatio Ciceronis which he probably wrote; his seven academic prolusions; and De republica Hebraeorum. The justification for not seeking out all the editions of these fragments of Sigonio's oeuvre is that they were split off and published frequently—too frequently—as appendages to other works: in the first case to editions of Livy (see under 1555); in the second to editions of Cicero (1560,1583); in the third case to the prolusions and speeches of Marc-Antoine Muret (1560); and in the fourth case, to the scriptural commentaries of the Jesuit Giovanni Stefano Menochio (1719). Since library catalogs do not record all the compilatory appearances under other headings of what were originally independent publications, and since the frequent republication and consequent wide dispersal of the works of Livy, Cicero, Muret, and Menochio would have made physical verification too onerous, I did not attempt it. Attention should especially be drawn to the posthumous fortune of Sigonio's De republica Hebraeorum. This concise handbook to the Old Testament was found useful on both sides of the confessional divide. Indeed I may have missed one or two minor editions of it among the many that appeared in the Protestant North. This phenomenon merits further research. Almost all of the editions listed have been seen; those not seen have been derived from critical consultation of library catalogs and bibliographies. Titles and publishers' names are given in summary form. Places of publication are Anglicized. I give the names of the publishers of Latin books in their vernacular form when that is the familiar one, especially in the case of publishers referred to in the text (e.g., Giordano Ziletti, Paolo Manuzio); otherwise they are in Latin. HE BIBLIOGRAPHY

345

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The select bibliography given in the second section contains the books and articles referred to in abbreviated form (and sometimes fully) in the notes. As the nature of the work dictates, they have been drawn from many departments of history and literature, and sixteenth-century works by Sigonio's contemporaries are here ranged among those of later periods, the only principle of ordering being the alphabetical one. I hope that most readers will prefer, as I do, the rapidity of reference provided by such a unified list to the analytical utility of a series of separate lists of works classified by period of publication or subject matter.

W O R K S BY S I G O N I O

1550

Regum, consulum, dictatorum ac censorum Romanorum Fasti; includes De praenominum Romanorum causis et usu. Modena: Antonio Gadaldini.

1555

Livy, Historiarum ab urbe condita libri. Edited by Carlo Sigonio; includes Scholia in Livium and Chronologia. Venice: Paolo Manuzio. Cf. 1566, 1572, and 1592 for later Aldine editions of Sigonio's Livy. They are inferior to the editio princeps of 1555. The text of Sigonio's Scholia was revised in 1566 and 1572. Sigonio's Scholia and Chronologia were reprinted in many subsequent editions of Livy. See chapter 1 for brief mention of other important sixteenth-century editions, and of the way in which Aldo, Jr., managed the re-editions of Sigonio's Aldine Livy. In the seventeenth century the Elsevier editions of J. F. Gronovius and Jacob Gronovius, published in Amsterdam, were the important ones. In the edition of Jacob Gronovius of 1678-79 (not seen by me) the complete notes of Sigonio and J. F. Gronovius are digested by book and chapter. I have used frequently the edition of Basel, apud fratres Thurnisios, 1740; it aims to present a corrected recension of the text of Jacob Gronovius. The editors claim to have corrected the text of Sigonio's Scholia as well, by reference to the 1556 edition of Basel (below). Drakenborch's sevenvolume edition of Livy (Leiden and Amsterdam, 1738-46) marks a new stage: the notes of Sigonio, Gronovius, and others are distributed in accordance with the chapters and paragraph lines still in use. I have also made use of Drakenborch's edition. While consultation of later editions of Livy is initially preferable to con346

BIBLIOGRAPHY

sultation of the originals because they make it possible to key Sigonio's Scholia to the text of Livy, Sigonio's own editions should be checked—in cases where it might matter—to see what he actually wrote in 1555 or 1566 or 1572. Similarly, of course, his scholia have to be read in relation to the sixteenth-century vulgate text of Livy, and to the text of his own edition, not in relation to the seventeenth-century, or twentieth-century, Livy text. (Cf. μ ^ ε τ "Livy" in the second section of this bibliog­ raphy.) Drakenborch's apparatus is reproduced in the edition "in usum Delphini" of Valpy, London (1828), the last occasion, as far as I know, when Sigonio's scholia were republished. Sigonio's Scholia and Chronologia were printed separately from the text of Livy in 1556 (see below) and in Sigonio, Opera omnia t. 3. Regum, consulum, dictatorum ac censorum Romanorum Fasti (2d ed.); includes De nominibus Romanorum liber (1st ed.). Venice: Paolo Manuzio. Pro eloquentia orationes IHI. Venice: Paolo Manuzio. 1556

Fasti consulares ac triumphi acti (3rd ed.); In Fastos et triumphos commentarius (1st ed.); De nominibus Romanorum (2d ed.); Venice: Paolo Manuzio; and Venice: Giordano Ziletti. Scholia in Livium. Basel: Nicolaus Episcopius.

1557

Emendationum libri II. Venice: Paolo Manuzio. Partially re­ printed as Livianorum scholiorum aliquot defensiones in Livy, edited by Sigonio, 1572.

1559

Fragmenta Ciceronis, variis in locis dispersa, Caroli Sigonii diligentia collecta et scholiis illustrata. Venice: Giordano Ziletti. Fasti consulares ac triumphi acti (4th ed.); In Fastos et triumphos commentarius (2d ed.); De nominibus Romanorum (3rd ed.). Basel: Nicolaus Episcopius.

1560

De antiquo iure civium Romanorum libri II. Venice: Giordano Ziletti. De antiquo iure ltaliae libri III. Venice: Giordano Ziletti. Fragmenta Ciceronis passim dispersa, Caroli Sigonii diligentia collecta et scholiis illustrata (2d ed.). Venice: Giordano Ziletti. 347

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Orationes septem Caroli Sigonii. Venice: Paolo Manuzio, and Venice: Giordano Ziletti. See below for a further edition of 1573. From the 1580s, Sigonio's orations appeared frequently as an adjunct to editions of the speeches of Marc-Antoine Muret. Oratio in Gymnasio Patavino habita VUI Idus Novembris anno MDLX. Padua. 1562

De dialogo liber. Venice: Giordano Ziletti. Disputationum Patavinarum adversus Franciscum Robortellum liber primus. Padua: Gratiosus Perchacinus. Patavinarum disputationum adversus Franciscum Robortellum liber secundus. Padua: Gratiosus Perchacinus.

1563

De antiquo iure civium Romanorum libri U; De antiquo iure Italiae libri IU (both 2d ed.). Venice: Giordano Ziletti. Oratio habita in Academia Bononiensi, VIII Idus Novembris MDLXIII. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi.

1564 De republica Atheniensium libri IUI. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi. De Atheniensium Lacedaemoniorumque temporibus liber. Venice: Dominicus et Ioannes Baptista Guerreius. 1565

De republica Atheniensium libri UII. Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisio. Aristotle, De arte rhetorica. Translated by Carlo Sigonio. Bologna: Alessandro Benacci. (-1566) Aristotle, De arte rhetorica. Translated by Carlo Sigonio. Venice: Giordano Ziletti. At least one copy of this edition bears the date 1565, but most are dated 1566.

1566

Livy, Historiarum ab urbe condita libri. Edited by Carlo Sigonio (2d ed.); includes Scholia in Livium and Chronologia (2d ed.). Venice: Paolo Manuzio. De binis comitiis et lege curiata posterior cum Nicolao Gruchio disputatio [= Post, disp.] in Nicolai Gruchii Rotomagensis et Caroli Sigonii Mutinensis de binis comitiis et lege curiata contrariae inter se disputationes. Edited by Carlo Sigonio. Bologna: Alessandro Benacci. 348

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1567

(-1568) De antiquo iure provinciarum libri II. Venice: Giordano Ziletti. Extant copies bear both dates.

1568

Fasti consulares and In Fastos commentarius; De nominibus Romanorum; all in Varii historiae Romanae scriptores t. 1. N.p.: H. Stephanus.

1569

De lege curiata magistratuum et imperatorum ac iure eorum liber. Venice: Giordano Ziletti. Reprinted in 1574 and thenceforth in a revised edition as De antiquo iure provinciarum, bk. 3. De vita et rebus gestis P. Scipionis Aemiliani liber. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi.

1570

[Anon.] Errata Bendinelli in P. Cornelii Scipionis Aemyliani vita. Modena: Paolo Gadaldini. Written by Sigonio and published with a preface by Camillo Coccapani.

1571 Historiae Bononiensis libri VI. This work was printed in Bologna in 1571 and later allowed to circulate without a title page. Copies in the Biblioteca del Archiginnasio in Bologna have title pages bearing the date 1578. 1572

Livy, Historiarum ab urbe condita libri. Edited by Carlo Sigonio (3rd ed.); includes Scholia in Livium and Chronologia. Venice: "in aedibus Manutianis" [Aldo Manuzio, Jr.]. Aristotle, De arte rhetorica. Translated by Carlo Sigonio, in Aristotle, Opera omnia. Venice: ad signum Seminantis.

1573

De antiquo iure civium Romanorum; De antiquo iure Italiae. Paris: Allard Julien. A reprint of the 1563 edition. Orationes septem. Paris: Allard Julien.

1574

Historiarum de Regno Italiae libri XV. Venice: Giordano Ziletti. De antiquo iure populi Romani. Bologna: Societas Typographiae Bononiensis; includes De antiquo iure civium Romanorum libri II (3rd ed.), De antiquo iure Italiae libri III (3rd ed.); De antiquo iure provinciarum libri III (2d ed.); De iudiciis (1st ed.). Aristotle, De arte rhetorica. Translated by Carlo Sigonio, in Aristotelis de rhetorica et poetica libri cum Averrois in eosdem paraphrasibus. Venice: Giunta. 349

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1575

Historiarum de Regno ltaliae libri XV. Frankfurt: Andreas Wechel. Historiarum de Regno ltaliae libri XV. Basel: Pietro Perna. Oratio habita Bononiae V Nonas Octobris cum D. Rodericus de Pazos Figueroa a Pontevedra Hispanus insignia Scholae rectoratus acciperet. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi. Aristotle, De arte rhetorica. Translated by Carlo Sigonio, in Aristotle, Opera omnia. Venice: Giunta.

1576

Index historiarum de Regno ltaliae Caroli Sigonii. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi. (No title page.) De antiquo iure civium Romanorum, ltaliae, provinciarum, Romanae iurisprudentiae iudiciis libri Xl; De republica Atheniensium eorumque ac Lacedaemoniorum temporibus libri V. Paris: Jacques Du Puys. This edition, a reprint based on the 1574 Bologna edition, also appeared with the title De antiquo iure populi Romani libri XL

1577 Aristotle, De arte rhetorica. Translated by Carlo Sigonio. Cracow: Stanislaus Scharffenbergius. Aristotle, De arte rhetorica: Translated by Carlo Sigonio. Rostock: Jacobus Transylvanus. 1578

Historiarum de Occidentali Imperio libri XX. Bologna: Societas Typographiae Bononiensis.

1579

Historiarum de Occidentali Imperio libri XX. Basel: Thomas Guarinus.

1580

Historiarum de Regno ltaliae libri XV (2d ed.). Bologna: Societas Typographiae Bononiensis.

1581 Sulpicius Severus, Sacrae historiae libri II. Edited by Carlo Sigonio; includes In eosdem Caroli Sigonii commentarius. Bologna: Societas Typographiae Bononiensis. De vita Laurentii Campegii Cardinalis liber. Bologna: Societas Typographiae Bononiensis. 1582

De republica Hebraeorum libri VII. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi. 350

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1583

Cicero [i.e. pseudo-Cicero], Consolatio. Venice: Girolamo Polo. The probability of Sigonio's authorship is discussed in chapter 5. See also Select Bibliography, s.v. Cicero. Pro consolatione Ciceronis orationes II, in Ciceronis consolatio et ah, (2d ed.). Edited by Carlo Sigonio. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi. See under 1584 and 1585 for re-editions of this compilation. De republica Hebraeorum lihri VH. Frankfurt: Wechel heirs. N.B.: The Wechel heirs were Claude de Marne (Marnius) and Jean Aubri (Aubrius), and eventually their own heirs in various permutations. Their imprints are usually, but not always, identified on the title page as products of the Wechel press, and in this bibliography are ascribed uniformly to the "Wechel heirs" without distinction. (Cf. Evans, The Wechel Presses.) De republica Hebraeorum libri VII. Cologne: M. Cholinus.

1584 Accusator, seu de consolatione Ciceronis. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi. This publication appeared without a title page. Von Geschichtem des Konigreichs Italiae Funffzehen Bucher. Translated by Georgius Nigrinus. Strasbourg: Bernard Jobin. De republica Hebraeorum libri VII. Speyer: B. Albinus. Pro consolatione Ciceronis orationes II. Padua: Paolo Meietti. Pro consolatione Ciceronis orationes II, in Ciceronis consolatio et al. Lyon: Antonius Gryphius. Pro consolatione Ciceronis orationes II, in Ciceronis consolatio et al. Nuremberg: Officina Gerlachiana. Pro consolatione Ciceronis orationes II, in Ciceronis consolatio et al. Frankfurt: Wechel heirs. Aristotle, De arte rhetorica. Translated by Carlo Sigonio. Brescia: Thomas Bozzola and also Petrus Maria Marchetti. Aristotle, De arte rhetorica. Translated by Carlo Sigonio, in Aristotle, Opera omnia. Venice: Bruniolus and Moretti. 1585

Pro consolatione Ciceronis orationes II, in Ciceronis consolatio et al. Paris: Joannes Richerius. 351

BIBLIOGRAPHY

De republica Hebraeorum libri VII. Frankfurt: Wechel heirs. De nominibus Romanorum in D. Godefroy, ed., Auctores Latinae linguae. Geneva (edition seen: Geneva: de la Rouiere, 1622). 1586

De episcopis Bononiensibus. Bologna: Alessandro Benacci. De vita et rebus gestis Andreae Auriae Melphiae principis libri II. Genoa: Hieronymus Bartolus.

1588

Fasti consulares; In Fastos commentarius; De nominibus Romanorum in Historiae Romanae scriptores Latini minores, t. 1. Edited by Fridericus Sylburgius. Frankfurt: Wechel heirs.

1591 Historiarum de Regno Italiae quinque reliqui libri. Venice: Franciscus Franciscius. Historiarum de Regno Italiae libri XX. Frankfurt: Wechel heirs. 1592

Livy, Historiarum ab urbe condita libri. Edited by Carlo Sigonio; includes Scholia in Livium and C/trono/ogia. Venice: Aldo Manuzio, Jr.

1593 De antiquo iure civium Romanorum, Italiae, provinciarum, ac Romanae iurisprudentiae iudiciis libri XI; De republica Atheniensium, eorumque ac Lacedaemoniorum temporibus libri V; De republica Hebraeorum libri VIl; Sulpicius Severus, Sacrae historiae libri Il with Sigonio's Commentarius. Frankfurt: Wechel heirs. Historiarum de Occidentali Imperio libri XX. Frankfurt: Wechel heirs. 1596

De dialogo liber. Edited by J. Jessenius. Leipzig: Berwald.

1598

Delia vita et fatti di Andrea Doria, Principe di Melfi, libri 11. Translated by Pompeo Arnolfini. Genoa: Giuseppe Pavoni.

1599

Postrema oratio pro consolatione Ciceronis. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi heirs.

1602

Sulpicius Severus, Sacrae historiae libri Il with Commentarius of Sigonio. Hanau: G. Antonius and P. Egenolphus.

1604

Historia de rebus Bononiensibus libri VIlI. Frankfurt: Wechel heirs. Contents: Iudicium de historicis qui res Romanas scrip352

BIBLIOGRAPHY

serunt (1st ed.); Historiae Bononiensis libri VZ; De episcopis Bononiensibus libri V; De vita Andreae Doriae libri 11; De dialogo liber; Orationes VlI; Emendationum libri II; Disputationes Patavinae; De binis comitiis et lege curiata posterior disputatio; also Nicolas de Grouchy, De comitiis Romanorum libri III, Responsio, Refutatio. Emendationum libri II in J. Grater, ed., Lampas, sive Fax liberalium artium, t. 2. Frankfurt: Rhodius. 1608

De republica Hebraeorum libri VIlI. Hanau: Wechel heirs.

1609

De antique iure civium Romanorum. . . . (as Frankfurt 1593). Hanau: Wechel heirs. Fasti consulares; In Fastos commentarius; De nominibus Romanorum. Hanau: Wechel heirs.

1613

Historiarum de Regno Italiae libri XX. Hanau: Wechel heirs.

1618

Vita Nicolai Albergati in Vita B. Mem. Nicolai Albergati Carthusiani . . . conscripta olim a tubus celeberrimis viris Jacobo Zeno, Poggio Florentino, et Carolo Sigonio. Edited by G. Garnefelt. Cologne: Kinchius. (Reprinted in Acta Sanctorum, Maii, t. 2, Antwerp 1680, pp. 477-90.) Historiarum de Occidentali Imperio libri XX. Hanau: Wechel heirs. Historiarum de Regno Italiae quinque reliqui libri. Hanau: Wechel heirs.

1627 Iudicium de historicis qui res Romanas scripserunt. Venice: Antonio Pinelli. (Reprinted: Helmestedt, 1666, 1674; and in Robert!, Miscellanea Italica erudita t. 3, Parma, 1691.) 1670 De republica Hebraeorum. Middelburg: G. Goeree. (Reprinted 1676,1678; only the last edition seen.) 1677

La vie de Cardinale Campege. Translated by F. Maucroix, in Tome second du schisme d'Angleterre, ou Les vies des Cardinaulx Polus et Campege. Paris: Andre Pralard. (The life of Reginald Pole is by Ludovico Beccadelli. Reprinted: Paris, 1685, Lyons, 1685.) 353

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1685

De republica Hebraeorum libri VlL Edited by J. Nicolai. HeImstedt, Hamml. (Also 1686).

1694

(-1699) Thesaurus antiquitatum Romanarum, Edited by J. G. Graevius. Utrecht and Leiden: Franciscus Halma. Vol. 1, De antiquo iure avium Romanorum; Posterior cum Nicolao Gruchio disputatio; De lege curiata magistratuum et imperatorum ac iure eorum liber; De antiquo iure Italiae; De antiquo iure provinciarum; vol. 2, De iudiciis; De nominibus Romanorum.

1697

(-1702) Thesaurus Graecarum antiquitatum. Edited by Jacobus Gronovius. Leiden: Van der Aa. Vol. 5 includes De republica Atheniensium.

1701 De republica Hebraeorum libri VII. Edited by Joannes Nicolai. Leiden: Boutestein. The second edition by J. Nicolai, with extensive commentary on Sigonio's text. 1715

De antiquo iure populi Romani libri XI. Edited by Christian Thomasius. Leipzig and Halle: Adam Sellius.

1719

(etc.) De republica Hebraeorum libri VIl in J. S. Menochius, Commentarii tonus sacrae scripturae t. 2. Paris: Cavelier (the edition seen). The commentaries of Menochio were first published in the seventeenth century, and went through many editions in the eighteenth, including this one, numerous ones in Venice, and at least one in Avignon. It is likely that many or most of the eighteenth-century editions contain, like this one, Sigonio's De republica Hebraeorum, but as catalog entries rarely indicate this information explicitly, I renounced the task of confirming it. The editions are too many and copies are too dispersed. See, for instance, in the National Union Catalogue of pre-1956 Imprints, vol. 376, entries NM 0453027-0453039. The re-edition of Sigonio's summary guide to the Old Testament as an adjunct to the scriptural commentaries of Menochio was the counterpart on the Catholic side to the many Protestant editions of it.

1732

(-1737) Opera omnia edita et inedita. Edited by Filippo Argelati. Milan "In aedibus palatinis" [Filippo Argelati]. Vol. 1: L. A. Muratori, Vita Caroli Sigonii; Fasti consulares and 354

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In Fastos commentarius; Historiarum de Occidentali lmperio libri XX. Vol. 2: Historiarum de Regno Italiae libri XX. Vol. 3: Historiae Bononiensis libri Vl, with censures and rebuttals; De episcopis Bononiensibus libri V; Scholia in Livium, Chronologia Liviana, Aliquot defensiones; Vita Scipionis Aemiliani; Vita Andreae Auriae. Vol. 4: De republica Hebraeorum libri VlI; Sulpicius Severus, Sacrae historiae libri Il and Commentarius; Historiae ecclesiasticae libri XIV (1st ed.). Vol. 5: De republica Atheniensium libri IV; De temporibus Atheniensium Lacedaemoniorumque liber; De antiquo iure avium Romanorum libri 11; De antiquo iure Italiae libri III; De antiquo iure provinciarum libri 111; De iudiciis libri 111. Vol. 6: Emendationum libri II; Disputationes Patavinae; Posterior disputatio cum Nicolao Gruchio; De nominibus Romanorum; De dialogo; Orationes; Aristotle, De arte Rhetorica; Fragmenta Ciceronis and commentary; Ciceronis consolatio; Pro consolatione orationes II; Accusator; De rex Romanae scriptoribus iudicium; Vita del Padre Onofrio Zarrabini; Opuscula de donatione Constantini et de scholiis Bononiensibus; Epistolae to Onofrio Panvinio, Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, Paolo and Aldo Manuzio; Continuatio ad historiam Bononiensem; Censurae in varia Caroli Sigonii opera; Agostino Valier, De utilitate capienda ex historiis Caroli Sigonii de Regno Italiae; Julius Signius, Epicedium on Sigonio. [The Opera omnia inadvertently omits the biographies of Niccolo Albergati and Lorenzo Campeggi by Sigonio.] 1733

Vita Scipionis Aemiliani in Sextus Aurelius Victor, Historia Romana. Amsterdam: apud Janssonio-Waesbergios.

1745

De republica Hebraeorum libri VIl with commentary of Joannes Nicolai in Thesaurus antiquitatum sacrarum, vol. 4. Edited by Blasius Ugolinus. Venice: Joannes Herthz.

1801 Fasti consulares and In Fastos commentarius. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 355

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1824

Vita di Publio Scipione Emiliano. Translated by Giuseppe Seletti. Milan: Bonfanti.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Agustin [Augustinus], Antonio, and Fulvio Orsini [Ursinus]. De legibus et senatusconsultis liber. Rome: Basa, 1583; Paris: Beysius, 1584; Lyon: Fabrus, 1592. . Fragmenta historicorum et notae. Antwerp: Plantin-Moretus, 1595. Agustin [Augustinus], Antonio. Opera omnia 8 vols. Lucca: Rocchius, 1765-74. . Epistolae Latinae et ltalicae. Edited by Joannes Andresius. Parma: Mussi, 1804. . Epistolario. Edited by Candido Flores Selles. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1980. Angelozzi, Giancarlo. "La trattatistica su nobilta e onore a Bologna nei secoli XVI e XVII," Atti e memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per Ie provincie di Romagna 25-26,1974-75, pp. 187-264. Appian. Bellorum dvilium liber primus. Edited by Emilio Gabba. 2d ed. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1967. Archiwum Jana Zamoyskiego. See Zamoyski, Jan. Aristotle. Rhetoric. Translated by E. Barbara, commentary by D. Barbara. = Rhetoricorum Aristotelis libri tres, interprete Hermolao Barbaro P.V. Commentaria in eosdem Danielis Barbari. Venice: P. Gerardus, 1544. . Rhetoric. Translated by Maioragio. = Aristoteles Stagiritae rhetoricorum libri tres, quos M. Antonius Maioragius vertebat. Milan: apud Metios, 1550. . The Politics. Translated with commentary by T. A. Sinclair and Trevor J. Saunders. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981. Ascari, Tiziano. "L'orazione 'De laudibus historiae' di Carlo Sigonio," Memorie dell'Accademia delle scienze di Modena s. 5, 9,1951, pp. 54-63. Backus, Irena, and Benoit Gain. "Le cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto (1514— 1585), sa bibliotheque, et ses traductions de Saint Basile," MEFRM 98,1986, pp. 889-955. Badian, Ernst. "From the Gracchi to Sulla (1940-1959)," Historia 11, 1962, pp. 197-245. 356

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benassi, Umberto. "L'origine e la natura ignota d'una grave questione di Carlo Sigonio," Archivio storico per Ie provincie parmensi, 12, 1912, pp. 313-23. Bendinelli, Antonio. P. Cornelii Scipionis Aemiliani Africani Minoris vita. Florence: Torrentinus, 1549. . P. Cornelii Scipionis Aemiliani Africani Minoris vita plus "Errata Sigonii" (pp. 117-45). Lucca: Busdrago, 1568 (1569). . Alia Caroli Sigonii errata longe plura auam quae nuper sunt edita . . . ab eodem Antonio Bendinellio patefacta. Lucca: Busdrago, 1570. Berengo, Marino. Nobili e mercanti nella Lucca del Cinquecento. Torino: Einaudi, 1965. . "Patriziato e nobilta: il caso Veronese," Rivista storica italiana 87,1975, pp. 493-517; reprinted in Elena Fasano Guarini, ed., Potere e societa negli Stati regionali italiani del '500 e '600. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1978. Bertoni, Giulio. "Giammaria Barbieri e Ludovico Castelvetro," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 46,1905, pp. 383-400. Bertoni, G., and E. P. Vicini, Nota sigoniana. Per nozze FormigginiSantamaria. Modena, 1906. Bleicken, J. "Zum Begriff der romischen Amtsgewalt: auspicium—potestas—imperium," Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften im Gottingen 1; phiioiogisch-fristorischeK/assel981,no. 9, pp. 257-300. Bodin, Jean. De republica libri sex, Latine ab autore redditi. LyonParis: Jacques Du Puys, 1586. . Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem. Edited by P. Mesnard, in Jean Bodin, Oeuvres philosophiques t. 1. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951 (1st ed. 1566). Botsford, George W. The Roman Assemblies. New York, Macmillan, 1909 (repr. 1968). Brezzi, Paolo. "Uno storico modenese precursore del Muratori. Carlo Sigonio nel IV centenario della morte," Cultura e scuola 92,1984, pp. 88-98. Bude [Budaeus], Guillaume. Omnia opera. 4 vols. Basel: Nicolaus Episcopius, 1557. Calori Cesis, F. Storia di un busto. Modena: Societa tipografica modenese, 1913. Carlini, Antonio. "L'attivita filologica di Francesco Robortello," Atti dell' Accademia di Udine s. 7, 7,1966-69, pp. 53-84. 357

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Castellani, Carlo. "Il prestito dei codici MS della Biblioteca di San Marco," Atti dell'lstituto veneto di scienze, lettere e arti s. 7, 8, 1896-97, pp. 311-77. Catalani [Catalanus], Giuseppe. De secretario Sacrae Congregationis lndicis libri II. Rome: Fulgonus, 1751. Catalano, Pierangelo. Populus Romanus Quirites. Turin: Giappichelli, 1974. Catalogus translationum et commentariorum. Edited by P. O. Kristeller and F. E. Cranz. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1960- . Cavazutti, Giuseppe. Ludovico Castelvetro. Modena: Societa tipografica modenese, 1903. Ceretti, Luisa. "I precedenti e la formazione dell' Editio di S. Pompeo Festo di Antonio Agustin," Atti dell'lstituto veneto di scienze, lettere e arti, 111, 1952-53, pp. 153-64. Ceruti, Antonio. Lettere inedite di dotti italiani del secolo XVI tratte dagli autografi della Biblioteca Ambrosiana. Per nozze Ceruti-Pirovano. Milan: Tipografia arcivescovile, 1867. Chasseneuz [Cassanaeus], Barthelemy de. Catalogus gloriae mundi. Frankfurt: Sigmund Feyerabend, 1579. Cian, Vittorio. "Una lettera di Carlo Sigonio contro i pedanti," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 15,1890, pp. 459-61. . "Contro il volgare," Studi letterari e linguistici dedicati a Pio Rajna. Florence: Ariani, 1911, pp. 251-97. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Orationes de lege agraria. Edited by Bernardino Loredan. See Loredan, Bernardino. . Fragmenta. Edited by Carlo Sigonio. See Sigonio, 1559, 1560; ed. Andreas Patricius (1561, 1565, 1578): cf. Patricius, A.; edited by C. Mueller in Ciceronis opera omnia, pt. 4, t. 3, Leipzig: Teubner, 1898. . Consolationis fragmenta. Edited by Claudius Vitelli. N.p.: Arnaldo Mondadori, 1979. Cicero, pseudo-. Consolatio. 1st ed. Venice: Girolamo Polo, 1583; 2d ed.: Bologna: Giovanni Rossi, 1583, edited by Sigonio. There were further independent editions in the sixteenth century, followed by publication in editions of the collected works of Cicero. The editions of the modern era are the following: in Cicero, Opera omnia. Edited by C. F. Nobbe. Leipzig: Teubner, 1850; in Cicero, Scripta quae manserunt omnia. Edited by R. Klotz, pt. 4, t. 3, Leipzig: Teubner, 1855; and in Cicero, Opera philosophica, t. 7, Padua: in 358

BIBLIOGRAPHY

aedibus Livianis, 1968. I list the Consolatio among the works of Carlo Sigonio in the first section, under 1583. In general, see chapter 5. Cicogna, Emmanuele Antonio. Delle iscrizioni veneziane. 6 vols. Venice: Orlandelli, 1824-61. Cohen, Benjamin. "La notion d'ordo dans la Rome antique," Bulletin de I'Association Guillaume Bude, 1975, pp. 259-82. Costa, Emilio. "La prima cattedra di umanita nello Studio bolognese durante il secolo XVI," Studi e memorie per la storia dell'Universita di Bologna 1,1907, pp. 25-63. . Ulisse Aldrovandi e Io Studio Bolognese nella seconda meta del secolo XVl. Bologna: Stabilimento poligrafico emiliano, 1907. Cytowska, Maria. "Sur la Consolatio de Ciceron. Sigonio-Nidecki-Kumaniecki," Eos 68,1980, pp. 123-27. Dallari, Umberto. I rotuli dei lettori legisti e artisti dello Studio bolognese 1384-1799. Bologna: Fratelli Merlani, 1888-1924. Degrassi, Attilio. Inscriptiones Italiae, vol. 13, fasc. 1, Fasti consulares et triumphales. Rome: Libreria dello stato, 1947. Dejob, Charles. De I'influence du Concile de Trente sur la litterature et les beaux-arts chez les peuples catholiques. Paris: Ernest Thorin, 1884. Denzer, Horst, ed. Jean Bodin. Verhandlungen der internationalen Bodin Tagung in Miinchen. Munich: Beck, 1973. De Thou [Thuanus], Jacques-Auguste. Commentariorum de vita sua libri Vl in Historiarum sui temporis libri CXXXVlIl, t. 7. London: Samuel Buckley, 1733. Develin, R. "Lex Curiata and the Competence of Magistrates," Mnemosyne 30,1977, pp. 49-65. . "The Third-century Reform of the Comitia Centuriata," Athenaeum 56,1978, pp. 346-77. Devyver, Andre. Le sang epure. Les prejuges de race chez les gentilhommes frangais de I'Ancien Regime (1560-1720). Brussels: Editions de l'Universite de Bruxelles, 1973. Douglas, Richard M. Jacopo Sadoleto 1477-1547, Humanist and Reformer. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959. Draco, Johannes Jacobus. De origine et iure patriciorum libri tres. Basel: Johannes Genathus, 1627. Evans, RJ.W. The Wechel Presses. Humanism and Calvinism in Central Europe 1572-1627. Oxford: Past and Present Society, 1975. 359

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fabre, Paul. Etude sur Ie Liber censuum de I'Eglise romaine. Paris: Ernest Thorin, 1892. Fabre, Paul, and Louis Duchesne. Le Liber censuum de I'Eglise romaine. Paris: Fontemoing, 1910. Faerno, Gabriele. Epistola qua continetur censura emendationum Livianarum Caroli Sigonii. Milan, 1557. (Reprinted in Francesco Robortello, Ephemerides Patavinae, 1562.) Fantuzzi, Giovanni. Memorie della vita di Ulisse Aldrovandi, medico e filosofo bolognese. Bologna: Lelio Dalla Volpe, 1774. Fasano Guarini, Elena. "GIi Stati dell'Italia centro-settentrionale tra Quattro e Cinquecento: continuita e trasformazione," Societa e storia 21,1983, pp. 617-39. Fasoli, Gina. "La composizione del falso diploma teodosiano," in Gina Fasoli, Scritti di storia medievale. Bologna: Patron, 1974, pp. 583608. Originally in Studi e memorie per la storia dell'Universita di Bologna 3,1961. . "Per il quarto centenario della costruzione dell'Archiginnasio," in Gina Fasoli, Scritti di storia medievale, pp. 623—42. Originally in L'Archiginnasio 57,1962. . "Appunti sulla Historia Bononiensis ed altre opere di Carlo Sigonio (1522-1584)," in Gina Fasoli, Scritti di storia medievale, pp. 683-710. Originally in Atti dell'Accademia delle scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna, Classe di scienze morali, Rendiconti, 1973. Fava, Domenico. "Di alcuni importanti libri a stampa e manoscritti d'interesse modenese," Atti e memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per Ie provincie modenesi s. 7, 7,1932, pp. 67-81. Fenucci, Lazzaro. Ragionamenti sopra alcune osservationi della lingua volgare. Bologna: Giaccarelli, 1551. Ferrary, Jean-Louis. "Le idee politiche a Roma nell'epoca repubblicana," in Luigi Firpo, ed., Storia delle idee politiche, economiche, e sociali, vol. 1, L'antichita classica. Torino: UTET, 1982, pp. 723-804. Finley, M. I. Politics in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Firpo, Luigi, ed. Storia delle idee politiche, economiche, e sociali, vol. 1, L'antichita classica. Torino: UTET, 1982. Firpo, Massimo. "Gli 'Spirituali/ l'Accademia di Modena, e il Formulario di Fede del 1542: Controllo del dissenso religioso e nicodemismo," Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 20, 1984, pp. 40111. Firpo, Massimo, and Dario Marcatto. Il processo inquisitoriale del car360

BIBLIOGRAPHY

dinal Giovanni Morone. Rome: Istituto storico italiano per l'eta moderna e contemporanea, 1981- . Vol. 1, Il Compendium (ed. M. Firpo) 1981; vol. 2, Il processo d'accusa, 1984; vol. 3, I document! difensivi, 1985; vol. 4, Il processo difensivo bolognese. La sentenza, 1987. Forni, Giovanni. "Tribu romane e problemi connessi dal Biondo Flavio al Mommsen," in Studi di storia antica in memoria di Luca De Regibus. Genova: Istituto di storia antica dell'Universita di Genova, 1969, pp. 17-90. Fragnito, Gigliola. Memoria individuale e construzione biografica. Beccadelli, Delia Casa, Vettori all'origine di un mito. Urbino: Argalia, 1978. Franciosi, Giovanni. Delia vita e delle opere di Carlo Sigonio. Modena: Tipografia sociale, 1872. Reprinted in G. Franciosi, Scritti varii, Florence: Le Monnier, 1878. (Reference in the present work is to the 1872 edition.) Franklin, Julian H. Jean Bodin and the Sixteenth-century Revolution in the Methodology of Law and History. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1963. Frati, Lodovico. "Di alcune lettere ad Egidio Foscarari," Archivio storico italiano 74,1916, pp. 136-47. Fritz, Kurt von. The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1954. Gabba, Emilio. Appiano e la storia delle guerre civili. Florence: La nuova Italia, 1956. See also Appian. Gentili [Gentilius], Ottaviano. De patriciorum origine, varietate, praestantia et iuribus libri IV. Rome: Antonius de Rubeis, 1736. Gilmore, Myron P. Argument from Roman Law in Political Thought 1200-1600. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941. Girardi, Raffaelle. " 'Elegans imitatio et erudita': Sigonio e la teoria del dialogo," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 163, 1986, pp. 321-54. Girasoli, Annunciata. Note per una biografia di Carlo Sigonio. Tesi di laurea, Universita di Bologna: Facolta di Magistero, 1962-63. Glareanus, Henricus Loritus. In omneis T Livi decadas annotationes; includes his Chronologia sive temporum supputatio in omnem Romanam historiam. Basel: Isingrinius, 1540. Grafton, Anthony. Joseph Scaliger, A Study in the History of the Classical Tradition, vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983. 361

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grendler, Paul F. The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 15401605. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Grieve, Lucy J. "The Reform of the Comitia Centuriata," Historia 34, 1985, pp. 278-309. Grouchy [Gruchius], Nicolas de. De comitiis Romanorum libri tres. Paris: Michel Vascosan, 1555. . Responsio ad binas Caroli Sigonii reprehensiones, unam de hints magistratuum comitiis, alteram de lege curiata. Paris: Jacques Du Puys, 1565. . Ad posteriorem Caroli Sigonii de binis magistratuum comitiis, et de lege curiata disputationem, refutatio. Paris: Jacques Du Puys, 1567. Grouchy, E. H. de, and Emile Travers. Etude sur Nicolas de Grouchy. Paris-Caen, 1878. Gulielmus, Janus [Johann Wilhelm]. Adversus Carolum Sigonium assertio, non esse aut M. Tullii, aut satis dignam M. Tullio, earn quae illius nomine venditetur, consolationem. Paris: Aegidius Beysius, 1584. Hessel, Alfred. 'De Regno Italiae libri viginti' von Carlo Sigonio. Berlin, Historische Studien, ed. E. Ebering, no. 13,1900. Heuss, Alfred. Barthold Georg Niebuhrs wissenschaftliche Anfange. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1981; = Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen, philologisch-historische Klasse, dritte Folge, 114. Hilgers, Joseph. Der Index der verbotenen Biicher. Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Herder, 1904. Hopkins, Keith. Death and Renewal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Hotman [Hotomanus], Frangois. De legibus populi Romani liber. Basel: Nicolaus Episcopius, 1557. . Novus commentarius de verbis iuris; De legibus; De senatu et senatusconsultis; De magistratibus populi Romani; Epitomen Gruchii de comitiis. Venice: Niccolo Bevilacqua, 1564 (1st ed. 1563). Jones, Philip. "Economia e societa nell'Italia medievale: il mito della borghesia," in Philip Jones, Economia e societa nell'Italia medievale. Torino: Einaudi, 1980, pp. 4-189 (originally in Storia d'Italia Einaudi, Annali 1,1978). Kelley, Donald R. Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1970. 362

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kloft, Hans. Prorogation und ausserordentliche lmperien 326-81 v. Chr. Meisenheim: Hain, 1977. Krasinski [Crassinius], Joannes. Polonia. Bologna: Peregrinus Bonardus, s.d. [1574]. Krebs, Johannes P. Vita Caroli Sigonii. Weilburg: Lanzii, 1837. . Carl Sigonius. Frankfurt: Bronner, 1840. Labowsky, Lotte. Bessarion's Library and the Biblioteca Marciana. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1979. Latini, Latino. Epistolae, coniecturae et observationes. Edited by D. Magri. Rome: Tinassius, 1659 (t. 1); Viterbo: Martinellus, 1667 (t. 2). Lazzari, Pietro. Miscellaneorum ex codicibus MSS bibliothecae Collegii Romani Societatis Jesu. 2 vols. Rome: Fratres Palearini, 1754, 1757. Letta, Cesare. "Cic. De Re P. 11,22 e 1'ordinamento centuriato," Studi classici e orientali 27,1977, pp. 193-282. Lintott, Andrew. "The so-called Tabula Bembina and the Humanists," Athenaeum 51,1983, pp. 201-14. Liruti, Gian-Giuseppe. "Francesco Robortello," in Notizie delle vite ed opere scritte da letterati del Friuli, vol. 2. Venice: Fenzo, 1762, pp. 413-83. Livy. Historiarum ab urbe condita libri. Edited by Carlo Sigonio. Venice: Paolo and Aldo Manuzio, Jr., 1555,1566,1572,1592. See also the first section of this bibliography under 1555. Reference in the present work is almost exclusively to the first decade of Livy. For the modern text with apparatus I have generally relied on the Oxford Classical Texts of R. M. Ogilvie (1974) for books 1-5, and C. F. Walters and R. S. Conway (1919, repr. 1979) for books 6-10. Lobrano, Giovanni. "Plebei magistratus, patricii magistratus, magistratus populi Romani," Studia et documenta historiae et iuris 41, 1975, pp. 245-77. Loredan, Bernardino. Commentarius. = Bernardini Lauredani Andreae F., Patricii Veneti, in M. Tullii Ciceronis orationes de lege agraria contra P. Servilium Rullum tribunum plebis, commentarius. Venice: Paolo Manuzio, 1558. Loyseau, Charles. Les oeuvres de Maistre Charles Loyseau. Paris: Rocolet, 1660. McCuaig, William. "Andreas Patricius, Carlo Sigonio, Onofrio Panvinio, and the Polish Nation of the University of Padua," History of Universities 3, 1983, pp. 87-100; = "Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki, 363

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carlo Sigonio, Onofrio Panvinio i nacja polska na uniwersytecie padewskim," Odrodzenie i reformacja w polsce 32, 1987, pp. 7789. . "Carlo Sigonio's Lectures on Aristotle's Poetics," Quaderni per la storia dell'Universitd di Padova 16,1983, pp. 43-69. . Carlo Sigonio (c. 1523-1584): A Study in Late Humanism. Ph. D. thesis, Warburg Institute, University of London, 1984. . "Carlo Sigonio storico e la censura," Atti e memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per Ie provincie di Romagna 35, 1984 (1986), pp. 163-93. . "Sigonio and Grouchy: Roman Studies in the Sixteenth Century," Athenaeum 74,1986, pp. 147-83. . "Riscrivere Cicerone: Carlo Sigonio e la Consolatio Ciceronis del 1583," in Giancarlo Mazzacurati, and Michel Plaisance, eds., Scritture di scritture. Testi, generi, modelli nel Rinascimento. Rome: Bulzoni, 1987, pp. 207-15. Magdelain, Andre. "Auspicia ad patres redeunt," Hommages a Jean Bayet, Brussels: Latomus, 1964, pp. 427-73. . Recherch.es sur I'imperium, la loi curtate, et les auspices d'investiture. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1968. . "L'inauguration de 1'urbs et l'imperium," MEFRA 89,1977, pp. 11-29. Mainoldi Gallarati [Mainoldus Galeratus], Giacomo. De titulis Philippi Austrii liber. Bologna: Peregrinus Bonardus, 1573. Manuzio [Manutius], Paolo. Antiquitatum Romanarum liber de legibus. Venice: Paolo Manuzio, 1559 (1st ed. 1557). . Antiquitatum Romanarum liber de senatu. Venice: [Aldo Manuzio], 1581. . Antiquitatum Romanarum liber de civitate Romana. Rome: Bartholomaeus Grassus [colophon: Ab Aldo, typis Francisci Zanetti], 1585. . Antiquitatum Romanarum liber de comitiis. Bologna: [Aldo Manuzio], 1585. Marliani, Giovanni Bartolomeo. Consulum, dictatorum, censorumque series quae marmoribus scalpta in foro reperta est. Rome, 1549. Marrara, Danilo. "Nobilta civica e patriziato. Una distinzione terminologica nel pensiero di alcuni autori italiani dell'eta moderna," Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Classe di lettere, s. 3, 10,1980, pp. 219-32. 364

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mazzocco, Angelo. "Some Philological Aspects of Biondo Flavio's Roma Triumphans," Humanistica Lovaniensia 28,1979, pp. 1-26. Momigliano, Arnaldo. Contributo alia storia degli studi classici (1955), Secondo contributo (1960), Terzo contributo alia storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (1966), Quarto contributo etc. (1969), Quinto contributo (1975), Sesto contributo (1980), Settimo contributo (1984). Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura. Mommsen, Theodor. Romisches Staatsrecht = SR. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1887-88. Moreau-Reibel, Jean. Jean Bodin et Ie droit public compare dans ses rapports avec la philosophie de lhistoire. Paris: Vrin, 1933. Mortier, D.-A. Histoire des Maitres—Generaux de I'Ordre des Freres Precheurs, t. 5, Paris: Picard, 1911. Mousnier, Roland, ed. Problemes de stratification sociale. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968. . Les hierarchies sociales de 1450 a nos jours. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1969. Mozzarelli, Cesare, and Pierangelo Schiera, eds. Patriziati e aristocrazie nobiliari. Trent: Libera Universita degli Studi, [1978]. Muratori, Ludovico Antonio. "Vita Caroli Sigonii," in Sigonio, Opera omnia vol. 1,1732, pp. i-xx. Muzio, Girolamo. Il gentilhuomo del Mutio Iustinopolitano. Venice: Giovan Andrea Valvassori detto Guadagnino, 1571. Nannini, M. Cesare. "L'huomo Carlo Sigonio visto da un medico," Atti e memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per Ie antiche provincie modenesi s. 10, 8,1973, pp. 133-39. Nicholls, J. J. "The Reform of the Comitia Centuriata," American journal of Philology 77,1956, pp. 225-54. . "The Content of the Lex Curiata," American journal of Philology 88,1967, pp. 257-78. Nicolet, Claude. L'ordre equestre a I'epoque republicaine (312-43 av. j.-C.) 2 vols. Paris: Boccard, 1966,1970. , ed. Recherches sur les structures sociales dans lantiquiti classique. Paris: CNRS, 1970. . Les structures de I'ltalie romaine. Rome et la conquete du monde mediterraneen 264-27 av. J.-C, t. 1. 2d ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1979. , ed. Demokratia et aristokratia. A propos de Gains Gracchus: mots grecs et realities romaines. Paris: Sorbonne, 1983. , ed. Des ordres a Rome. Paris: Sorbonne, 1984. 365

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nidecki, Andrzej Patrycy. See Patricius, Andreas. Noble, Thomas F. X. The Republic of St. Peter. The Birth of the Papal State 680-825. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. Nolhac, Pierre de. La bibliotheque de Fuhio Orsini. Paris: Bouillon and Vieweg, 1887. . "Piero Vettori et Carlo Sigonio. Correspondance avec Fulvio Orsini," Studi e documenti di storia e diritto 10,1889, pp. 91-152. Ogilvie, R. M. A Commentary on Livy 1-5. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. Omaggio dellAccademia Polacca di Scienze e Lettere all'Universita di Padova nel settimo centenario della sua fondazione. Cracow, 1922. Ordres et classes. Colloque d'histoire sociale. Paris: Mouton, 1973. Orsini, Fulvio. See Agustin, Antonio. Otto of Freising. Ottonis et Rahewini Gesta Friderici I Imperatoris. Edited by G. Waitz. Hannover-Leipzig: Hahn, 1912. Palmer, Richard. The Studio of Venice and Its Graduates in the Sixteenth Century. Padua: Antenore, 1983. Panini, Francesco. Cronica della Citta di Modona. Edited by R. Bussi and R. Montagnani. Modena: Panini, [1978]. Panvinio, Onofrio. Fasti et triumphi Romani. Venice: Jacopo Strada, 1557. . Fastorum libri V, euisdem in Fastorum libros commentarii. Venice: Valgrisio, 1558. . Reipublicae Romanae commentariorum libri III et alia quaedam. Venice: Valgrisio, 1558. Partner, Peter. The Lands of Saint Peter. London: Eyre Methuen, 1972. Pastorello, Ester. Uepistolario manuziano. Inventario cronologico-analitico 1483-1597. Florence: Olschki, 1957. . lnedita Manutiana. Florence: Olschki, 1960. Patetta, Federico. "Appunti su Carlo Sigonio," Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di storia patria per Ie provincie modenesi s. 5, 6,1910, pp. 39-48. Patricius, Andreas. Fragmentorum M. Tullii Ciceronis tomi llll cum Andreae Patricii adnotationibus. Venice: Giordano Ziletti, 1561. . M. Tullii Ciceronis fragmentorum tomi llll cum Andreae Patricii Striceconis adnotationibus. Omnia ex eiusdem secunda editione. Venice: Giordano Ziletti, 1565. . Omnium M. Tullii Ciceronis operum quae desiderantur fragmenta . . . ex diversis auctoribus collecta . . . per Andream Patri366

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rubinstein, Nicolai. "Le dottrine politiche nel Rinascimento," in Il Rinascimento. Interpretazioni e problemi, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1979, pp. 183-237. Sadoleto, Jacopo. Opera omnia. 4 vols. Verona: Tumermanus, 1737-38. , et al. Philosophicae consolationes et meditationes in adversis, ]acobo Sadoleto et Ioachimo Camerario Pabepergensi authorihus. Frankfurt: Andreas Wechel, 1577. Sage, Evan T. The pseudo-Ciceronian Consolatio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1910. Santinelli, Stanislao. De Romanorum veterum nobilitate dissertatio. Venice: Recurti, 1717. Scarpati, Claudio. "Tasso, Sigonio, Vettori," in Claudio Scarpati, Studi sul Cinauecento italiano. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1982, pp. 156200. Schulz, Bernardus. De Ciceronis consolatione dissertatio. Greifswald: Hache, 1860. Sherwin-White, A. N. The Roman Citizenship. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. Sickel, Theodor. Das Privilegium Otto 1. fur die romische Kirche vom ]ahre 962. Innsbruck: Wagner, 1883. Simeoni, Luigi. "Documenti sulla vita e la biblioteca di Carlo Sigonio," Studi e memorie per la storia dell'Unwersita di Bologna 11, 1933, pp. 183-262. Simoncelli, Paolo. "Documenti interni alia Congregazione dell'Indice 1571-1590. Logica e ideologia dell'intervento censorio," Annuario dell'Istituto storico italiano per I'eta moderna e contemporanea 3536,1983-84, pp. 187-215. Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Sorbelli, Albano. "Carlo Sigonio e Ia Societa Tipograiica Bolognese," La Bibliofilia 23,1921-22, pp. 95-105. Sorbelli, T. Torauato Tasso e Carlo Sigonio. Modena, 1911 (pamphlet). Staveley, E. S. "The Constitution of the Roman Republic (1940-54)," Historia 5,1956, pp. 74-122. Storia della cultura veneta, pt. 3. Edited by Girolamo Arnaldi and M. P. Stocchi; Dal primo Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento. 3 vols. Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1980-81. Tabacco, Giovanni. Egemonie sociali e strutture del potere nel Medioevo italiano. Torino: Einaudi, 1979. 369

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Taurisano, Innocentius. Hierarchia Ordinis Praedicatorum. 2d ed. Rome: Unio typographica Manuzio, 1916. Taylor, Lily Ross. Roman Voting Assemblies from the Hannibalic War to the Dictatorship of Caesar. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966. Tibiletti, Gianfranco. "Il possesso dell'ager publicus e Ie norme de modo agrorum sino ai Gracchi," Athenaeum 26, 1948, pp. 173-236; 27, 1949, pp. 3-42. Tiraboschi, Girolamo. Biblioteca modenese. 6 vols. Modena: Societa tipografica, 1781-86. Tiraqueau [Tiraquellus], Andre. Commentarii de nobilitate et iure primigeniorum; tertia hac eademque postrema editione. Lyon: Rouillius, 1566. Valdrighi, Mario, ed. Alcune lettere d'illustri italiani ed Il Treperuno di Giammaria Barbieri modenese. Per nozze Coccapani ImperialiSeghizzi. Modena: Vincenzi, 1827. Versnel, H. S. Triumphus. Leiden: Brill, 1970. Vicini, E. P. See Bertoni, Giulio. Willems, Pierre. Le senat de la republique romaine. 3 vols. LouvainParis: Peeters, 1878-85 (repr. New York, 1975). Wirszubski, Ch. Libertas. Bari: Laterza, 1957 (1st ed.: Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950). Wiseman, T. P. New Men in the Roman Senate 139 BC-AD14. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971. Zaccagnini, Guido. Storia dello Studio di Bologna durante il Rinascimento. Geneva: Olschki, 1930. Zamoyski, Jan [Joannes Sarius Zamoscius]. De senatu Romano libri duo. Venice: Giordano Ziletti, 1563. . Archiwum )ana Zamoyskiego. 4 vols. Warsaw-Cracow: Laskaver, 1904-1948. Zorzi, Marino. La Libreria di San Marco. Milan: Mondadori, 1987.

370

MANUSCRIPTS

A

LiST is given here of the manuscripts cited in the text and footnotes. I refer to the footnotes on the understanding that reference to the corresponding place in the text is implied as well. Bergamo, Biblioteca civica Angela Mai MS gamma 6.18 - 1, nn. 49-58; 2, n. 44 Bologna, Archivio di Stato Assunteria di Studio, Requisiti dei lettori - 1, n. 183 Assunteria di Studio, Quartironi degli stipendi - 1, nn. 184-87 Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria Fondo Aldrovandi, MS 382 - 1 , n. 137 MS 1362 - 1, n. 212 MS 1363 - 1, n. 212 MS 1557 - 1 , n. 278 MS 2447 - 1, n. 278 Forli, Biblioteca comunale Aurelio Saffi Autografoteca Piancastelli - 1 , nn. 171, 239, 248 London, British Library MS Add. 10270 - 1, n. 86 MS Add. 10272 - 1, nn. 86,156,164, 165,167,175,178,180 MS Add. 12110 - 1 , nn. 86,179 MS Add. 21524 - 1 , n. 86 Lucca, Biblioteca Governativa MS 2634 - 1, n. 22 Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana (BAM) MS D 152 inf. - 1, n. 292 371

MANUSCRIPTS

MS D 169 inf. - 5 Appendix, nn. 4, 5 MS D 197 inf. - 1, n. 22 MS D 221 inf. - 1, nn. 144,189, 5, n. 69 MS D 424 inf. - 5 Appendix, n. 4 MS D 435 inf. - 1, nn. 213, 214, 215 MS D 447 inf. - 4, n. 20 MS D 501 inf. - 1 passim; 2, nn. 85,175 MS E 30 inf. - 1, nn. 77, 201; 2, n. 85 MS E 34 inf. - 1, n. 172 MS G 77 inf. - 1, n. 235, 237, 238, 240, 241 MS G 271 inf. - 5 Appendix passim MS P 1 sup. - 1 , n. 98 MS P 193 sup. - 1, n. 209; 4, n. 22 MS Q 120 sup. - 1, n. 173; 5, nn. 37, 77;5 Appendix passim MS R 109 sup. - 4, nn. 16,17,18,19 MS R 116 sup. - 5, n. 79 MS S 91 sup. - 1, n. 148 MS S 99 sup. - 5, n. 79 MS S 109 sup. - 1, n. 232; 5, n. 44 Modena, Biblioteca Estense MS alpha G. 1.18 (Ital. 835) - 1, nn. 6,140, 244 MS alpha L.9.27 (Ital. 841) - 1, n. 194; 5 Appendix, n. 15 MS beta 1.3.1 (Ital. 1827) - 1, nn. 6,160,194, 289; 5 Appendix, n. 15 MS gamma A. 7.12 (Campori 267) - 1, nn. 286, 291 Autografoteca Campori - 1, nn. 118,123 Modena, Collegio di San Carlo Archivio - 1 , n. 200 Padua, Archivio antico dell'Universita vol. 242 - 1, nn. 126,150 vol. 651 - 1, nn. 126,127 Pan's, Bibliotheque Nationale MS Dupuy 704 - 1 , nn. 174, 208, 226, 230,231, 233, 235, 236, 237, 240, 243 Parma, Archivio di Stato Epistolario scelto - 1, nn. 198, 202, 247 372

MANUSCRIPTS

Parma, Biblioteca Palatina Carteggio di Lucca - 1, n. 40 Carteggi - 1, n. 198 MS Pal. 986-87 - 5, n. 79 Rome, Biblioteca Corsiniana MS 350 (35 F 16) - 1, nn. 212, 290 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Vat. Lat. 3454 - 1, n. 250 MS Vat. Lat. 3455 - 1, n. 250; 4, nn. 26, 27, 28, 33 MS Vat. Lat. 4104 - 5 Appendix, n. 10 MS Vat. Lat. 4105 - 1 , nn. 93,165,176; 5, n. 8 MS Vat. Lat. 6160 - 4, nn. 23, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 75, MS Vat. Lat. 6193 - 1, n. 250 MS Vat. Lat. 6207 - 4, nn. 5, 6, 7,10 MS Vat. Lat. 11590 - 1 , nn. 190,191 MS Barb. Lat. 1038 - 4, n. 34 MS Barb. Lat. 2618 - 4, nn. 34, 36, 37, 40 MS Barb. Lat. 5695 - 1, n. 120 MS Boncompagni F 8 - 1, n. 292 MS Boncompagni F 9 - 1, n. 278; 4, nn. 35, 36, 37 MS Reg. Lat. 2023 - 1, n. 249 Venice, Archivio di Stato Riformatori dello Studio di Padova, 284 - 1 , nn. 97,100-7 Riformatori dello Studio di Padova, 63 - 1, n. 109 Venice, Biblioteca Marciana MS Lat. 14.23 (4660) - 1, n. 32 MSItal. 7.16(8305)-1, n. 34 MS Ital. 7.926 (8595) - 1, n. 34 MSItal. 7.288 (8640) - 1, n. 34 MSS Zan. Lat. 362, 363, 365, 366 - 1, n. 70 Ester Pastorello, "Cinquecentine veneziane" - 1, n. 80

373

INDEX

Accademia di Modena, 3, 4, 5, 11, 322 Accursius, 176 Acquaviva, Claudio, 94

Baronio, Cardinal Cesare, 80, 253, 280, 2 8 3 84 Bartolus of Sassoferrato, 177

Adorno, Padre, 257 Aelia Fufia lex, 190-91 Agustm, Antonio, 31, 33, 36, 4 2 , 1 3 5 , 1 5 1 , 188, 219-20, 296 Aicardo, Paolo, 328 Alaric, 274 Albergati, Fabio, 78-79, 94, 119 Albergati, Cardinal Niccolo, 90-91 Alciato, Andrea, 177, 228 Aldrovandi, Ulisse, 6, 45, 47, 54, 118 Alexander III, Pope, 255 Amalteo, G. B., 67, 252-54, 289 Amaseo, Pompilio, 62-63 Amaseo, Romolo, 6, 8 - 9 , 1 9 , 47 Antello, Niccolo del, 306, 328 Antonia, lex, 151 Appian, 1 0 , 1 6 , 1 2 5 , 1 5 5 - 5 8 , 1 6 0 - 6 4 Arcadius, Emperor, 273 Archinto, Albenco, 95, 266 Argelati, Filippo, x, 95, 251-53, 259, 266-69 Aristotle: Poetics, 9 , 1 8 - 1 9 , 50-53, 62-63, 298; Politics, 21, 9 7 , 1 1 5 - 1 7 , 1 2 0 - 2 1 , 1 2 4 , 129,132-35,139,146, 151-52,181,185, 226-27, 239, 247, 249; Rhetoric, 8 , 1 8 - 2 3 , 52, 56, 1 1 6 - 1 7 , 1 2 0 , 309, 318-19 Arusianus Messius, 296-97 Asconius Paedianus, Q., 5 4 , 1 4 3 , 1 7 8 Asinius Pollio, C., 156 Augustine of Hippo, 130, 293 Augustus, Caesar, 57, 61, 9 6 , 1 7 1 - 7 3 , 1 7 8 , 238 Azo, 176-77, 228, 234-35

Barzizza, Gasparino, 292 Bauduin, Francois, 219, 221-22 Beaufort, Louis de, 182 Beccadelli, Ludovico, 16-17, 329 Bellarmino, Roberto, 290 Bembo, Cardinal Pietro, 11, 4 1 , 1 6 2 - 6 3 , 292 Benacci, Alessandro, 56 Bendinelli, Antonio, 3, 7, 8, 63-64, 66 Bernard, Saint, 259 Bernays, Jacob, 182 Bessarion, Cardinal, 14, 26, 263 Bevilacqua, Nicolo, 38, 59 Bianchi, detto del Lancilotti, Tommasino De', 3, 6 Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, 31, 50, 68, 70, 251, 259, 327 Biblioteca Estense, Modena, 3, 6 3 , 1 7 2 , 3 3 6 37 Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, 14-15, 26, 30 Biblioteca Universitana, Bologna, 94 Biblioteca Vaticana, 27, 93, 253, 259, 2 6 6 69, 283, 330 Bibliotheque Nationale, Pans, 38, 76-77 Biondo, Flavio, 8 1 , 1 2 5 - 2 6 , 1 8 3 , 221 Bissonerius, Johannes, 62 Bodin, Jean, 1 1 3 , 1 7 5 , 1 8 1 , 219, 223-36, 238, 240, 242, 244—45, 248 Bologna, University of, 8-9, 37, 44, 47-48, 54-55, 61-64, 68, 85, 87, 9 2 , 1 1 9 , 1 7 6 , 305-6, 320-21, 324, 336-37, 341 Bolognetti, Alberto, 48, 78 Bolognetti, Francesco, 72 Bonamico, Lazzaro, 8 , 1 2 , 46

Baebius, M., 163-64 Barbarigo, Niccolo, 259 Barbara, Daniele, 20-21 Barbara, Ermolao, 20, 52, 56 Barbieri, Giammaria, 34, 65-66

Bonardus, Peregrinus, 70 Boncompagm, Cardinal Filippo, 94 Boncompagni, Giacomo, Duke of Sora, 71, 73, 75, 78-79, 93-94, 266, 268, 311-12, 330, 333

375

INDEX Coccapani, Camillo, 7, 63-64, 66-67, 69, 73, 92,320-21, 336-37 Constans, Emperor, 274 Constantine, Emperor, 77, 82, 254, 256, 259, 260-61, 263-65, 269-72, 274,278 Contarini, Alvise, 259 Contarini, Cardinal Gasparo, 17, 226, 230 Cornelia, lex, 150-51 Corradi, Sebastiano, 8-9,13, 37, 47 Costa, Emilio, 47 Costabili, Paolo, 261-64, 287-88 Counter-Reformation, 35, 40-41, 47-49, 82, 90,119, 266, 278, 283-84, 290, 304 Crato, Joannes, 319-23, 334, 338-39 Cujas, Jacques, 177, 232 Curione, Celio Secondo, 48-49 Cyprian, 33, 232

Boncompagni, Cardinal Ugo, 67, 72, 252-54, 289. See also Pope Gregory XIII Boncompagni family, 60, 62, 93, 95, 267-68, 290, 311, 322 Borghmi, Vincenzio, 84 Bozzola, Pietro, 305-6 British Library, London, 31-32 Bruni, Leonardo, 115,124,129, 225 Bruto, Gian Michele, 321-23, 339-40 Buchanan, George, 178 Bude, Guillaume, 121-23,141-42,177,183, 185,187, 202, 239 Caesar, C. Julius, 114, 127, 170-72, 200, 294, 311-12 Camerarius, Joachim Jr., 299 Camerarius, Joachim Sr., 299-300 Campeggi, Giovan Battista, 91 Campeggi, Cardinal Lorenzo, 90-91 Camuzio, Andrea, 6 Canuleia, lex, 235-36, 248 Canuleius, G., 100-101,140, 245, 248 Caprara, Alessandro, 93-95 Caprara, Gerolamo, 93-94 Carafa, Gian Pietro. See Paul IV, Pope Carli, Stefano, 62 Caro, Annibal, 33-34, 36, 42, 48 Cassiodorus, 274 Cassius, Spurius, 155,158 Castagna, G. B., 73, 94 Castelvetro, Ludovico, 3-5, 7,11-13, 29, 3 3 34, 36, 48, 322-23 Catalani, Giuseppe, 262, 265 Catilina, L. Sergius, 17 Cato, M. Porcius the Elder, 310 Cato, M. Porcius the Younger, 312 Ceccarelli, Alfonso, 311-12, 330 Cencius camerarius, 279, 283 Ceruti, Antonio, 257, 327 Cesi, Pier Donato, 55 Charlemagne, Emperor, 82, 247, 279, 28081 Chasseneuz, Barthelemy de, 123 Cicero, M. Tullius, 8,15-16,19, 21, 24, 3738, 43, 46, 52-54, 62-63, 92,114-15,121, 127,130,136,153,161,170,175,178, 187-88,193,195-97,199, 204, 207-8, 212, 215, 222, 225, 256, 293-94, 296-306, 309-11, 313-18, 320, 324, 328-32,33436, 338, 340-43, 345 Claudius, Appms, 102,137,140,192, 245 Clement VIII, Pope, 289

Dalberg, Johann von, 300-301 Decius, P., Mus, 103,122,137-41, 241, 245 Del Bene, Pietro, 74 Del Monte, Ludovico, 3, 6-7 Demosthenes, 7 Dempster, Thomas, 221 De Thou, Jacques-Auguste, 70-72 Diodorus Siculus, 16 Dionysms of Halicarnassus, 10, 98,125,127, 138,141,144,151-52,155,158,185, 191-92 Doria, Andrea, 60 Doria, Gian Andrea, 60 Doria, Giovan Battista, 60 Draco, Johannes Jacobus, 224, 244-49 Drakenborch, Arnold, 25-26 Dudith, Andreas, 321-23, 327, 338-41 Du Moulin, Charles, 274 Dupuy, Claude, 59, 67, 71, 73-78, 233 Du Puys, Jacques, 75-77, 233, 235 Duval, Denis, 74 Egnazio, 8-9,13 Elia, 275 Episcopius, Nicolaus, 38 Erasmus, 317 Eusebius of Caesarea, 264, 270-71 Fabre, Paul, 283 Fabn, Sisto, 262, 288-89 Faerno, Gabriele, 26-28, 4 1 ^ 2 Falloppia, Gabriele, 4, 6,18, 45, 54 Falloppia, Giovanni, 65-66

376

INDEX Farnese, Cardinal Alessandro, 18, 68, 78-79, 304 Farnese, Cardinal Ranutio, 296 Farnese family, 60, 65. See also Paul III, Pope Fasolo, Giovanni, 37, 44, 53 Fasti capitolini, 9-10,16, 25-26, 28-30, 32, 171-72, 211,214 Fausto, Vettore, 13 Felix, Pope, 272-73 "Fenestella." See Fiocchi Fenucci, Lazzaro, 12 Ferrary, Jean-Louis, 296 Festus, S. Pompeius, 33, 36, 53,138,144, 183 Feyerabend, Sigmund, 25-26 Filelfo, Francesco, 300, 340 Finley, M. 1.,219 Fiocchi, Andrea di Domenico, 125 Florus, 62 Fontana, Vincenzo Maria, 262 Foscarari, Egidio, 54—55 Franciosi, Giovanni, x, 63, 337 Frangois I, King, 177 Frankfurt Book Fair, 30, 38-39, 78,112, 235 Frederick I, Emperor, 83-85,127, 254-55, 259 Frederick II, Emperor, 93 Fronto, Cornelius, 296-97 Gadaldim, Agostino, 11, 27 Gadaldini, Antonio, 10-11 Gadaldim, Paolo, 64 Ganmberti, Anton Maria, 64-65 Gebhard, Janus, 26 Gellius, Aulus, 179,195, 198-99 gentes, gentilitas, 100-103,106-8,119-25, 136-37,139-40,142^5, 222, 239,24143, 246-48 Gentili, Ottaviano, 224, 247-50 Ghislien. See Pius V, Pope Gigante, Antonio, 308, 329 Giuntine press, 57 GIareanus, Henricus Loritus, 24-26 Godelevaeus, Wilhelm, 25-26 Gracchi (Gracchan movement; Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, Gaius Sempronius Gracchus), 23, 127,130,147,149, 153-61, 164-65,167,169-71, 217 Gregory II, Pope, 277 Gregory VII, Pope, 89, 285 Gregory XIII, Pope, 72-73, 78, 94,119, 265, 377

287, 289-90, 336-37. See also Ugo Boncompagni Grifonius, 49 Grillenzone, Giovanni, 4, 5,11-12,18 Grillenzone, Paolo, 18 Grimani, Cardinal Marino, 6, 47 Gronovius, J. F., 25-26 Gronovius, Jacob, 25 Grouchy, Nicolas de, 46, 56-58,126,135, 143,148-49,152,174-75,178-83,18589,191-95,197-225, 227, 230-31, 233, 237-38, 248, 284 Gualteruzzi, Carlo, 41-42 Guerra, Domenico, 55 Guicciardini, Francesco, 48, 81, 227 Guhelmus, Janus, 292, 310, 315-16 Hadrian I, Pope, 261, 263-64, 271 Henry IV, Emperor, 90 Henry VI, Emperor, 176 Hermogenes, 23-24 Herodian, 14 Hortensia, lex, 103-4,131-33,139,190, 192, 217-18, 230, 248 Hospital, Michel de 1', 203, 225 Hotman, F r a u d s , 160-61,163,168,17778, 222-23, 225, 245 humanism, vn, ιχ, 6, 8,18-23, 44, 46-47, 51-53, 56, 62-63, 68,108-10,114-17, 124-26,144,174, 203, 209-10, 219, 223, 225, 227, 231, 239, 251, 256, 283-84, 292, 295-96, 298, 304-5, 322, 325-26 Index of Prohibited Books, 35-36, 266, 283 Index of Prohibited Books, Congregation for the, 253, 261-62, 265, 268, 286, 288-89, 311 Innocent I, Pope, 273 Inquisition, Roman and Venetian, 30, 35-36, 73, 95, 261-63 Irnerius, 87-88 John Chrysostom, Saint, 273 John II, Pope, 274 Julia, lex, 169 Julien, Allard, 75 Krasinski, Jan Andrzej, 70, 72 Lactantius, L. Caehus Firmianus, 301-2, 306, 313-15, 328 Lambin, Denis, 204, 207, 219-20

INDEX Land, Giovanni Battista, 262-63, 288-89 Lancilotti. See Bianchi Landino, Cristoforo, 1 1 6 , 1 1 9 Latino Latini, 219-20, 310-12, 320, 327, 329-32 Lazius, Wolfgang, 58 Leo X, Pope (Giovanni de' Media), 41, 2 9 2 93, 304 Lezenski, Marian, 37, 296 Liberius, Pope, 272-73 liberty, 8 1 - 8 3 , 1 0 0 , 1 1 4 - 1 5 , 1 2 5 , 1 2 7 - 2 8 , 136-37, 171, 182, 212, 218-19, 238, 290 Licinia sextia de modo agrorum, lex, 155-59 Licinius, P., Calvus, 1 0 1 , 1 4 4 Licinius, G., Stolo, 1 0 1 - 2 , 1 5 8 Lipsius, Justus, 316, 321 Livius Drasus, M., 1 6 5 , 1 6 9 Livy (T. Livius), 1 0 , 1 4 - 1 6 , 2 4 - 2 8 , 4 8 , 59, 61, 9 8 , 1 0 0 - 1 0 2 , 1 0 4 - 6 , 1 2 2 , 1 2 4 , 1 2 6 - 2 7 , 137,139,140-43,148,155,158,170, 175-76,178,181,185,187-88,190-93, 199, 207, 211, 214, 225, 241, 245, 317, 345 Loredan, Andrea, 14-15, 33 Loredan, Bernardino, 14r~17, 23-24, 33, 3 5 36, 57, 59, 7 0 - 7 2 , 1 1 8 , 202-3, 207, 220 Lothar II, Emperor, 87-88 Lothario, 176-77, 228, 234-35 Louis the Pious, Emperor, 86-87, 279-83 Loyseau, Charles, 113-14, 224, 237-44 Ludovicianum. See Louis the Pious Machiavelh, Niccolo, 48, 8 1 , 1 1 5 , 1 2 7 , 230, 258 Madruzzi, Cardinal Lodovico, 68 Maffei, Cardinal Bernardino, 12 Maggi, Vincenzo, 52-53 Mainoldi Gallarati, Giacomo, 69-70 Mainoldi, Giovan Battista, 69 Maioragio, Marcantonio, 20-21, 53, 56 Manetti, Gianozzo, 300 Manriquez, Thomas, 262 Manuzio, Aldo Jr., 25, 28, 59, 327, 332-33 Manuzio, Paolo, 8 , 1 6 , 24, 27-30, 35-36, 53-54, 59, 66, 7 0 , 1 2 6 , 1 3 5 , 1 4 3 , 1 4 8 , 1 6 1 , 1 6 5 - 6 6 , 1 6 8 , 1 7 8 , 1 9 1 , 201, 211, 322, 345 Marius, C., 120, 200, 217 Marliani, Bartolomeo, 9, 2 8 - 2 9 Massa, Lorenzo, 307-8, 324 Mathilda, Countess of Canossa, 84, 87, 90 Menochio, Giovanni Stefano, 345 Mercuriale, Girolamo, 54, 95, 306, 310-12,

319-20, 323, 327, 329, 331-32, 334, 336, 341-44 Messala, M. Valerius, 195,197-98, 208-9 Miltiades, Pope, 260, 263, 269-70 Mocenigo, Alvise, 95 Mocenigo, Lazaro, 118 Molza, Tarquinia, 321, 337 Momigliano, Arnaldo, 204 Mommsen, Theodor, 1 0 5 , 1 4 5 , 1 6 2 - 6 3 , 1 7 2 , 1 7 5 , 1 8 2 - 8 3 , 1 8 8 , 1 9 3 , 1 9 7 , 211, 214 Montaigne, Michel de, 288 Montesquieu, 183 Morone, Cardinal Giovanni, 4, 7 , 1 1 - 1 2 , 1 6 , 33, 39, 52, 54-55, 292 Mueller, C., 301-2 Muratori, Ludovico Antonio, x, 4, 6, 29, 95 Muret, Marc-Antoine, 27, 35, 54, 62, 71, 309-11, 318, 323, 330, 338, 340, 345 Muzio, Girolamo, 7 , 1 2 0 - 2 1 Nicephorus, 269-70 Nicolet, Claude, 148-49 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, 1 0 6 , 1 5 9 - 6 0 Nidecki, Andrzej Patrycy. See Patricius, Andreas Nigrinus, Georg, 285-86 orders (ordines), social, 1 0 5 , 1 0 7 , 1 1 0 , 1 1 3 14,125,134-36,143, 147-50,152-53, 201, 237-40, 242-43, 248 Orsini, Fulvio, 31-32, 34, 57, 59, 7 6 , 1 5 1 , 162,168, 188, 258, 296, 333 Otto I, Emperor, 81-86, 279, 281 Otto IV, Emperor, 255 Otto of Freising, 84, 8 8 , 1 1 2 Ottonianum. See Otto I, Emperor Ovinium, plebiscitum, 53 Padua, University of, 8 , 1 2 , 1 7 - 1 8 , 23, 29, 37, 42-48, 50-54, 61, 9 2 , 1 1 9 , 296-97, 306, 308, 320, 322 Paleotti, Camillo, 65, 72, 310, 330 Paleotti, Cardinal Gabnele, 1 1 , 1 6 , 65, 68, 73, 78, 80, 91, 261-62, 264, 288, 329 Pantagato, Ottavia, 3 1 - 3 2 , 1 3 5 , 1 8 8 , 205, 219 Panvinio, Onofno, 17,19, 26, 28, 30-34, 3 6 - 3 9 , 4 1 - 4 3 , 4 6 , 53, 57-58, 60, 68-69, 7 9 , 1 2 6 , 1 3 5 , 1 4 3 , 1 6 1 , 1 6 9 , 1 7 8 - 7 9 , 201, 227, 272-73, 290 Papinian, 176-77, 228-29, 231, 234 Papio, Giovanni Angelo, 54, 62

378

INDEX Parthenio, Bernardino, 36 Patricius, Andreas (Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki), 18, 23, 37-38, 92, 296-97, 301-3, 313-15, 320,323 Patrizi, Francesco, 36, 321 Paul III, Pope (Alessandro Farnese), 12, 41, 119, 292, 304 Paul IV, Pope (Gian Pietro Carafa), 16, 33, 35, 39-40, 55, 304 Paulus Diaconus, 183, 274-75 Pendasio, Fedenco, 62 Peretti, Fra Felice, 35-36. See also Sixtus V Perna, Pietro, 74 Peter Damian, 89, 254 Petrella, Bernardino, 308 Phaedrus (Tommaso Inghirami), 294-95 Phocas, Emperor, 276 Pico, G. B., 66 Pighius, Stephanus Vinandus, 221 Pinelli, Gian Vincenzo, 31-32, 50, 59, 67, 71, 73-78, 80, 92, 95,118, 231, 233, 253, 257-58, 292, 305-6, 308, 310-13, 316, 319-22, 324-30, 332-38, 341, 343 Pius IV, Pope (Giovanni Angelo de' Medici), 39-40, 42, 55 Pius V, Pope (Michele Ghislieri), 66, 257, 259, 289 Plato, 51-52,159, 295, 298, 316, 331 Pliny the Elder (C. Plinius Secundus), 301 Plutarch, 138, 141, 155, 180, 199 Poggio Bracciolini, 112,116-17,119, 123, 318 Pole, Cardinal Reginald, 12 Polenton, Sicco, 292 political theory, 21-22, 97-98,104,128-30, 132-33,152,178-81, 210, 212, 218-19, 225-28, 230-31 Poliziano, 317 Polo, Girolamo, 305, 323 Polybius, 97-99, 104,130,146,178-79, 181-82, 222 Pompeia, lex, 170 Pompeius, Gn., 171, 200, 216 Pomponio, Leto, 125-26 Porto, Francesco, 3, 5-6,13 Posi, Antonio, 262-63, 288 Priuli, Lorenzo, 30 Ptolemy of Lucca, 129 Publilms Volero, 191 Ragazzoni, Girolamo, 15-17,19, 70 Ramus, Petrus, 220

Ramusio, Girolamo, 321, 323, 340 Ranaldi, Federico, 79, 330 Rangone family, 6-7 Rasano, Giambattista, 13-14, 35 Regolo, Sebastiano, 62-63 Ricci, Vincenzo, 15 Riccoboni, Antonio, 6,14,18, 48, 53, 92, 291-92, 303, 305-9, 312-13, 316, 318-20, 323-28, 330, 333-38, 341-44 Robortello, Francesco, 8-9, 12-14, 23, 2530, 37,43-49, 52-55,61,117-18,142, 245,322 Romulus, 98,107,138-39,141,149,15152,159, 223, 244, 294 Ronchi, Saulo, 7 Rosinus, Joannes, 220-21, 223 Rossi, Giovanni, 55, 63, 91, 265, 334 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 183 Rubeo, Damiano, 262 Ruffus, Raymundus, 274 Sabelhcus, M. A.,74,81 Sacrati, Paolo, 293, 303, 338 Sadoleto, Cardinal Jacopo, 5,11, 293-96, 298-301, 303-5, 323, 326 Salamomo, Mario, 115 Sallustius, C , Crispus, 120,170, 317 Salutati, Coluccio, 300 Sambucus, Joannes, 299-300 Santinelli, Stanislao, 247-48 Savelli, Mariano, 260 Savigny, Karl von, 159,188 Scaliger, Joseph, 71, 321 Schmitt, Charles B., xii Scipio Aemilianus, P. Cornelius, 7, 21-22, 63-64, 200, 216-17 Scipio Afncanus, P. Cornelius, 200, 216 Scutellari, Giacopo, 321-23, 334, 338-40 Sempronia agraria, lex, 154-55,157-61 Sempronia de provinciis, lex, 217 Sempronia iudiaaria, lex, 165,167 Seripando, Cardinal Girolamo, 55 Servilia Caepionis, lex, 165-68 Servilia Glauciae, lex, 165-68 Servilius Rullus, P., 23,195-96, 208, 220 Servius Tullius, King, 144, 184-85 Sextius, L., Lateranus, 101-2, 158 Sickel, Theodor, 86 Sigone, Nicolo Maria, 3, 117-18 Sigonio, Alessandro Carlo di Gandolfo, 92 Sirleto, Cardinal Guglielmo, 67, 71, 77-80, 252-58, 261-62, 264-65, 289, 310-11, 330 379

INDEX Sixtus V, 35, 289. See also Peretti, Fra Felice Societas Typographiae Bononiensis, 72, 7677, 80, 90-91, 265 Soffiano, Michele, 322, 339 Speroni, Sperone, 8, 338 Spinelli, Antonio, 76 Strada, Jacopo, 31 Sulla, L. Cornelius, 17,170-72, 217 Sulpicius Severus, 91, 251, 265-67 Sylvester, Pope, 259-60, 263, 265, 269, 271 Tabula Bembina, 161-62,165-68,170, 231 Tacitus, 115, 225 Tasso, Torquato, 50-53 Teggia, Girolamo, 7 textual criticism, 23, 26-28,141,161,163, 197, 206-7, 219, 267-68, 279, 310, 313-15 Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 129 Thoria, lex, 163 Thorius, Sp., 161-64 Tiraboschi, Girolamo, x, 4, 6, 63 Tiraqueau, Andre, 123, 235-36 Titian, 51 Toccoli, Giulio, 64 Torelli, Paolo, 306, 308, 328-29 Tullia, 302, 315-16, 328 Turnebe, Adnen, 220 Ulpian, 176-77, 229

Valgrisio, Vincenzo, 55 Vaher, Agostmo, 35, 80, 258 Vascosan, Michel, 24, 26 Velleius Paterculus, 169 Vendramm, Niccoio, 17, 19 Venice: Riformatori dello Studio, 12-14, 3437, 42, 308; Scuola di San Marco, 8-9, 12-15,17-23, 35, 37, 51, 62,117, 295, 307,320 Vergil, 63 Vettore, Fausto, 13 Vettori, Pier, 8, 20, 31-32, 50-52, 54, 56-57, 59-60, 71, 84, 225, 284 Vianello, Francesco, 14, 17-18, 92, 306-7, 320, 323-24, 336, 340, 344 Vitelli, C.,302

Wechel, Andreas, 74-76, 221, 253, 299 Wechel presses, 74-75, 77, 91, 252-53, 297

Zamoyski, Jan, 45, 53-54, 70-72, 126, 143, 297,320, 323, 334 Ziletti, Giordano, 30, 38-39,42, 52-54, 5658, 70, 73, 297, 320, 345 Zobbia, Tommaso, 287 Zonaras, 191, 211, 264 Zosimus, 14

380