Renaissance Rewritings 9783110525021, 9783110522303

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Renaissance Rewritings

Transformationen der Antike

Herausgegeben von Hartmut Böhme, Horst Bredekamp, Johannes Helmrath, Christoph Markschies, Ernst Osterkamp, Dominik Perler, Ulrich Schmitzer Wissenschaftlicher Beirat: Frank Fehrenbach, Niklaus Largier, Martin Mulsow, Wolfgang Proß, Ernst A. Schmidt, Jürgen Paul Schwindt

Band 50

Renaissance Rewritings Edited by Helmut Pfeiffer, Irene Fantappiè and Tobias Roth

The publication of this volume was made possible through the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, using funds provided to Collaborative Research Center 644 »Transformations of Antiquity«.

ISBN 978-3-11-052230-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-052502-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-052325-6 ISSN 1864-5208 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover illustration: Martin Zech, Bremen Logo »Transformationen der Antike«: Karsten Asshauer – SEQUENZ Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Contents Irene Fantappiè Introduction 1

1

Rewriting

Manuele Gragnolati Without Hierarchy: Diffraction, Performance, and Re-writing as Kippbild in 9 Dante’s Vita nova Helmut Pfeiffer Anakyklosis. Transformation of Transformations

25

Irene Fantappiè Rewriting, Re-figuring. Pietro Aretino’s Transformations of Classical Literature 45 Nicola Cipani Liber mentalis: the Art of Memory and Rewriting

71

2 Rewritings in Early Modern Literature Barbara Kuhn “nulla son io; […] due siam fatti d’uno” (Geta e Birria) – Subtracting by Duplicating, or The Transformations of Amphitryon in the Early Modern 99 Period Tobias Roth From Plague to Scabies. Rewriting Lucretius in Angelo Poliziano’s Sylva in 127 scabiem Clément Godbarge Hippocrates for Princes: Ippolito de’ Medici’s Retratti d’aphorismi

143

Nina Mindt The Inner-Poetic History of Latin Love Poetry in Tito Vespasiano Strozzi’s 157 Eroticon

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Contents

Helmut Pfeiffer Shipwrecked Souls. Menippean Satire and Renaissance Textuality

179

Susanne Goumegou Ariosto’s Rewriting of Ancient and Contemporary Models in Italian Verse Satire 197 Davide Dalmas From Venice to Basel. Curione’s Rewritings

213

Marco Faini Pietro Aretino, St. John the Baptist and the Rewriting of the Psalms Élise Boillet Rewriting the Bible in Pietro Aretino’s Genesi (1538) Giulio Ferroni Aretino’s Rewritings of the Bible

273

253

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Irene Fantappiè (Berlin)

Introduction

“Essere modernamente antichi e anticamente moderni” – this motto from a letter written by Pietro Aretino to his friend the painter Giulio Romano in 1542 sums up the complexity of the relationship between early modern Italian literature and classical antiquity. Aretino conceptualizes the interaction between the two periods in terms of reciprocity. By doing so, he is not only displaying his typical penchant for paradoxes, but also taking a strong poetological stance: he is claiming that the present’s relationship to the past does not follow merely derivative (or imitative) patterns. Rather he understands the link between antichità and modernità as necessarily bidirectional; for him the two terms serve as reciprocal paradigms for one another. Beside shedding light on a specific stage in the early modern Italian literary debate, Aretino’s formula also provides interesting suggestions for rethinking one of the most crucial and at the same time one of the most elusive concepts of literary scholarship: ‘rewriting’. In recent decades there have been numerous attempts at reassessing such a notion, as for instance in the debates on concepts such as ‘intertextuality’ or ‘reception’. But insufficient attention has been drawn to the mutual interaction between present and past literary sources – an idea which recurs, now implicitly now explicitly, throughout literary history. Such an idea finds an echo in the concept of transformation developed by the Collaborative Research Centre 644, “Transformations of Antiquity”, at Humboldt University Berlin. Thanks to its generous support, the research project Appropriation, Imitation, Invention: Transformations of Antiquity in Italian and French Early Modern Literature (1450 – 1590) (Helmut Pfeiffer, Irene Fantappiè, Tobias Roth) was able to organize three scholarly events at Humboldt University which laid the ground for the present publication: the international conference Italian and Latin Poetry in Ferrara around 1480 (6th – 7th. 10. 2014); the two panels Renaissance Transformations of Antiquity: Literary Rewriting in Italy and France I and II, part of the 61st conference of the Renaissance Society of America (26th – 28th. 3. 2015), and the international conference Rewriting, Rewritings in Early Modern Italian Literature (1st – 2nd. 10. 2015). This volume has two goals. On the one side, it aims to investigate a wide range of medieval and early modern case studies in order to contribute to a further reassessment of a notion – ‘rewriting’ – which is as versatile as it is vague, and which is frequently taken for granted without being problematized. On the other side, taking its cue from the different historical connotations of the concept of ‘rewriting’, this volume seeks to provide new interpretations of some crucial literary texts (and contexts) of Italian and French Renaissance literature. Both these aims play a pivotal role in all contributions; nevertheless, the differences in focus have made it possible to divide the essays into two different sections. The first section of the book, Rewriting, gathers essays which investigate medieval or early modern rewritings while at the same time pointing out the theoretical https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-001

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Irene Fantappiè (Berlin)

implications raised by such texts: for example, the problematic character of the hierarchy between original and copy (Gragnolati); or the necessity of complementing the investigation of rewritings with that of authorship, in order to integrate inter-textual and inter-authorial dynamics (Fantappiè); or the urgent need to investigate the ‘rewritings’ of notions which are liminal to the concept of ‘rewriting’ itself (Pfeiffer); or, finally, the need for a joint investigation of the processes of rewriting and memorizing a text (Cipani). The second part of the volume, Rewritings in Early Modern Literature, collects essays which account for different practices of rewriting in early modern Italian and French literature, for instance by investigating some of the dichotomies which are crucial for such a concept. Rewriting is analysed as a process of subtraction and duplication (Kuhn); as verbatim reproduction (i. e. citation) and free reworking (Roth); as textual production and self-fashioning (Godbarge and Faini, but also Gragnolati and Fantappiè); as the transformation of a literary work or genre (Goumegou and Mindt) or of a literary topos (Pfeiffer); as the second edition of an existing book or the first edition of a new book (Dalmas); as an act of approaching alterity (the transformation of a text by someone else) and identity (the transformation of a text of one’s own) (Boillet), or as repetition and multiplication (Ferroni). *** In his essay “Without Hierarchy: Diffraction, Performance, and Re-writing as Kippbild in Dante’s Vita nova”, Manuele Gragnolati (Paris) goes some way towards overcoming the traditional approach to ‘rewriting’ by questioning the hierarchical relationship between the original and the copy. Gragnolati takes a cue from the ‘diffraction theory’ developed by Donna Haraway and focuses on the performative aspects of Dante’s Vita nova. Several poetical compositions of the Vita nova had already been written and included in the Rime. Even quoted verbatim, they change their meaning in the new context. As Gragnolati emphasizes, such a new meaning does not cancel out or replace the previous one. The sonnet A ciascun alma presa e gentil core is a case in point: in the Vita nova it can be read as a premonition of Beatrice’s fate, but at the same time the text remains the ‘erotic dream’ it was in the Rime. According to Gragnolati, such coexisting readings can be regarded as a ‘multistable figure’ (Kippbild). Furthermore, Dante comments on his own texts in the Vita nova, assuming the role of an auctor whose self-exegesis can be interpreted as an act of rewriting. Helmut Pfeiffer’s (Berlin) contribution “Anakyklosis: Transformation of Transformations” takes into account the rewritings of a concept which is liminal to that of rewriting itself. The essay concentrates on the evolution of the concept ‘anakyklosis’ in a three-stage analysis which reaches from classical antiquity to Renaissance Italy and Enlightenment France. Pfeiffer focuses in particular on the works of Polybius, Niccolò Machiavelli and Montesquieu. He begins by investigating Polybius’s understanding of anakyklosis in the sixth book of his Histories, where he discusses the transitions between different forms of government (i. e. between tyranny, oligarchy and

Introduction

3

ochlocracy – the corrupted forms of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy respectively). Secondly, he analyses Machiavelli’s transformation of Polybius’s concept of anakyklosis in his Discorsi, focusing on the relationship between anakyklosis and temporality. And lastly, Pfeiffer’s analysis sheds light on Montesquieu’s transformation of anakyklosis (cf. De l’Esprit des lois) into proof that decline is linked neither to natural law (as in Polybius) nor to temporal dynamics (as in Machiavelli), but is the constitutive principle of all forms of government. The contribution “Rewriting, Re-figuring: Pietro Aretino’s Transformations of Classical Literature” by Irene Fantappiè (Berlin) tackles Pietro Aretino’s relationship with antiquity in a twofold way. On the one hand, Fantappiè focuses on the derivative character of Aretino’s literary work and attempts to provide a new interpretation of his rewritings of Vergil by investigating their poetological significance. On the other hand, her essay questions the traditional interpretation of Aretino as a ‘new author’ arguing that his authorial figure is, by analogy with his texts, a creation au second degré; as an author, he rewrites (or rather ‘re-figures’) other authorial models. Fantappiè submits Aretino’s authorship to the same treatment as his texts and investigates its sources, with particular focus on Aretino’s ‘re-figuring’ of Lucian of Samosata and the peculiar role played by this late-antique author within the cultural context of sixteenth-century Italy. Nicola Cipani (New York) deals with the relationship between rewriting and ars memoriae in his essay “Liber mentalis: the Art of Memory and Rewriting”. Cipani’s starting point is the analogy – present in fifteenth-century treatises – between memory and written text, regarding both the processes (memorizing/writing) and the formats (mnemonic loci/pages). In addition, Cipani refers to two temporally distant voices (Petrarch and Scaliger) to illustrate how, in different epochs, practices related to memory can prompt sentiments of appropriation. Finally, the essay investigates Lodovico Dolce’s Dialogo del modo di accrescer e conservar la memoria and Filippo Gesualdo’s Plutosofia, two further approaches to the appropriation of texts by means of memory which highlight the rewriting entailed in mnemonic transcription. Barbara Kuhn (Eichstätt-Ingoldstadt) follows the transformation of the figure of Amphitryon in the early modern period. In her essay “‘nulla son io; […] due siam fatti d’uno’ (Geta e Birria) – Subtracting by Duplicating, or The Transformations of Amphitryon in the Early Modern Period”, Kuhn investigates Geta e Birria, a tale from the first half of the fifteenth century, attributed to Ghigo Brunelleschi and Domenico da Prato. Although he uses a medieval text as his direct source, the narrator of Geta e Birria cites Plautus as the first inventor of his ‘commedia’. Geta, a character closely resembling Plautus’s characters, refers to a peculiar kind of ‘mathematics’ in which nothing or zero, two and one are, in a certain sense, equivalent. Kuhn shows that the question ‘One, or maybe two, or perhaps none at all?’ in many respects also applies to the way in which this early modern tale rewrites Plautus’s Amphitruo, the myth of Amphitryon, and more generally, literary tradition, transforming the classical antiquity transmitted by the Middle Ages.

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Tobias Roth’s (Berlin) contribution “From Plague to Scabies. Rewriting Lucretius in Angelo Poliziano’s Sylva in scabiem” aims to show that there is a development in Angelo Poliziano’s approach to literary tradition – a shift from citation to rewriting. Roth deals with Poliziano’s transformation of Lucretius’s De rerum natura and focuses on passages from the Epicedion in Albieram and the Sylva in scabiem (two early Latin works of Poliziano) which draw on the same Lucretian verses. As Roth demonstrates, Poliziano writes texts such as these in the hybrid voice of poet and scholar, obfuscating his sources without hiding them, and shifting towards a method of handling literary sources in which rewriting plays a key role. In his contribution “Hippocrates for Princes: Ippolito de’ Medici’s Retratti d’aphorismi”, Clément Godbarge (New York) deals with the literary work of a protagonist of the Italian Renaissance who is better known as a cardinal and a condottiero: Ippolito de’ Medici. Ippolito’s rewritings of Hippocrates’ Aphorisms remained unpublished until the end of the nineteenth century, in spite of praise from Paolo Giovio. Godbarge’s essay sheds light on how Ippolito de’ Medici rewrites Hippocrates attempting to transfer medical precepts into the domain of statecraft. Such a case of literary imitation can, as Godbarge points out, also be interpreted as an act of self-fashioning; for the cardinal, the transposition of Hippocrates’ aphorisms to the realm of politics plays an instrumental role in his attempt to achieve a pre-eminence in statecraft analogous to Hippocrates’ pre-eminence in medicine. Nina Mindt’s (Berlin/Wuppertal) essay “The Inner-Poetic History of Latin Love Poetry in Tito Vespasiano Strozzi’s Eroticon” focuses on intertextuality in love poetry at the court of the Este in Ferrara at the end of the fifteenth century, and in particular on the relationship between ancient love poetry, Neo-Latin elegy and the Italian sonnet. Tito Vespasiano Strozzi’s Eroticon is a good example of the fusion of classical and vernacular models, and helps us to understand the derivative character of the Petrarchan tendencies present in northern Italy at that time. Mindt investigates the way Strozzi explicitly situates himself in a learned tradition of love poets including Tibullus, Catullus, Propertius and Ovid, although he also transforms some classical elements (such as the puella) to the point of ‘inverting’ them. The paper “Shipwrecked Souls: Menippean Satire and Renaissance Textuality” by Helmut Pfeiffer (Berlin) focuses on two major authors whose work constitutes a major contribution to the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century reception and transformation of ancient Menippean satire, mainly through the rewriting of Lucian’s works. Leon Battista Alberti’s only recently rediscovered ‘dinner pieces’ (Intercenales) display an open structure and a multiplicity of themes, including moral, economic and political philosophy. François Rabelais’s Quart Livre on the other hand is a coherent narrative, offering critical discussions of philosophical and scientific knowledge and focusing on one protagonist, Panurge, who is clearly set within the sophist tradition. By relating these texts to Lucian and the Menippean tradition, Pfeiffer underlines their importance for Renaissance textual invention as well as their contribution to the transformation of a satiric form, the ‘Menippean satire’, whose functions

Introduction

5

have been the subject of much discussion since Mikhail Bakhtin’s influential work on Dostoevsky. Susanne Goumegou (Tübingen) investigates a crucial case of Renaissance transformation of classical genres in her essay “Ariosto’s Rewriting of Ancient and Contemporary Models in Italian Verse Satire”. Ludovico Ariosto is credited with having founded two genres in Italy: the ‘commedia erudita’ and the vernacular verse satire. But, as Goumegou points out, both can be considered rewritings of classical genres, especially if we bear in mind the revival, in Ferrara, of both the comedies of Terence and Plautus and the verse satires of Juvenal and Horace. By analysing Ariosto’s fifth satire as a rewriting of Juvenal, Alberti and Bracciolini, Goumegou investigates the complex relationship between vernacular satire and the preceding Latin tradition, while at the same time not neglecting the conflict between the Renaissance topos of the superiority of the ancients and the strong demand for innovation which characterizes early modern Italian literature. In “From Venice to Basel: Curione’s Rewritings”, Davide Dalmas (Turin) investigates Celio Secondo Curione’s literary work. On the one side, Dalmas highlights the presence of classical and moderns sources – no coincidence in the work of an author who was also a translator and commentator. On the other side, the essay focuses on Curione’s rewritings of his own texts, taking into account the external pressures, changing environments, and different types of censorship he encountered. The two editions of the Aranei encomion, published in Venice in 1540 and Basel in 1544 respectively, are a case in point as far as the transformation of textual sources (i. e. Erasmus) are concerned. Another crucial example is Curione’s rewriting of Pasquillus ecstaticus; Dalmas highlights how the author adds or edits numerous passages, completely transforming not only the text but also his own role as an author (the second edition was published anonymously). Marco Faini’s (Rochester) “Pietro Aretino, St. John the Baptist and the Rewriting of the Psalms” deals with one of the most bewildering features of Pietro Aretino’s literary production: the coexistence of devotional and pornographic works during the 1530s. Faini tackles the issue of Aretino’s religiosity by addressing the possible meaning of Aretino’s self-fashioning as a prophet. In particular, the essay suggests Aretino’s identification with St John the Baptist, a figure who combines – as Aretino did – the features of the satyr and the prophet (his uncouth language, his habit of speaking the truth to the powers-that-be, his seclusion from civil union and the skins he dresses in – all these elements establish a link between these two archetypal figures). In the second part of his study, Faini analyses Aretino’s rewriting of the penitential Psalms. Finally, the figure of St John the Baptist is investigated in light of the burgeoning conversation on grace and good deeds in Venice in the 1540s. Aretino’s religious rewritings – his literary transformations of biblical as well as hagiographic sources – are at the centre of both Élise Boillet’s (Tours) and Giulio Ferroni’s (Rome) essays. In her contribution “Rewriting the Bible in Pietro Aretino’s Genesi”, Boillet offers a first-time investigation of a work – Genesi (1538) – which is among those most neglected by Aretinian criticism, although it cannot be regarded

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Irene Fantappiè (Berlin)

as a minor work either within the author’s literary corpus or within the editorial panorama of the sixteenth century. As Boillet points out, the notion of ‘rewriting’ is a fundamental interpretive key to an understanding of Aretino’s approach to the Bible and to various ancient and modern literary texts, as well as to his own works. Such practices of intertextuality – both internal and external to the author’s literary production – interact synergistically, as Boillet demonstrates in her analyses of several textual passages (e. g. the youth of Mary, the episode of Christ among the doctors, or Abraham’s sacrifice). Giulio Ferroni’s essay “Aretino’s Rewritings of the Bible” considers Aretino’s rewritings in the broader context of his literary writing, investigating how his literary transformation of the Bible defines his individual perspective and shapes the public significance of his voice. Ferroni claims that Aretino’s interest for the religious sphere is triggered by its association with a “simple” (immediate, not speculative or anti-discursive) truth, which prevents the risk of using language for purposes of deception. Paradoxically, Aretino renders such a “simple” truth in a highly elaborate style. The essay shows that Aretino tackles religious themes – themes widely discussed throughout the Italian intellectual world before the Tridentine Council – as literary problems, while also using them to show his capacity to assert himself in any cultural sphere thanks to the power of his own ingegno. *** The editors wish to thank Emma Staunton for translating the papers of Élise Boillet, Davide Dalmas and Giulio Ferroni; Imogen Taylor for translating the papers of Susanne Goumegou and Barbara Kuhn and for proofreading the volume; Moritz Rauchhaus for his collaboration with the research project as well as for his editorial work; Jan Fischer for helping with the preparation of the manuscript; the Sonderforschungsbereich 644 “Transformation of Antiquity” of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, whose generous support made this project possible.

1 Rewriting

Manuele Gragnolati (Paris)

Without Hierarchy: Diffraction, Performance, and Re-writing as Kippbild in Dante’s Vita nova This paper focuses on the lyric output of the young Dante and in particular on his Vita nova, the “booklet” (libello) in which at around 1294 he selected some previously written lyrics and organized them within a unitary prose narrative that tells the story of his amorous and poetic development. Drawing on some previous work I did both in the context of a project on performance in the Middle Ages and as author of the notes to the poems in Teodolinda Barolini’s edition of Dante’s lyric poetry, I will put forward the argument that the Vita nova can be considered as a particular kind of rewriting, which produces new poems not by altering their text, but through a “diffractive performance”, that is, by diffracting earlier poems through the new prose narrative.¹ The notion of “diffraction” is inspired by the epistemologist Donna J. Haraway, who proposes a shift of optical metaphors for a new critical mode of thought and practice. Taking as its point of reference the optical phenomenon of diffraction, according to which light-waves striking an object do not reproduce its exact form, but give way to interference patterns that depend equally on the object and the lightwaves themselves, Haraway argues that diffraction produces a different critical consciousness, which, unlike reflection, is not interested in the relationship between original and copy but changes perspective and aims at making a difference: Diffraction patterns record the history of interaction, interference, reinforcement, difference. Diffraction is about heterogeneous history, not about originals. Unlike reflections, diffractions do not displace the same elsewhere, in more or less distorted form, thereby giving rise to industries of metaphysics. Rather, diffraction can be a metaphor for another kind of critical consciousness at the end of this rather painful Christian millennium, one committed to making a difference and not to representing the Sacred Image of the Same.²

In my 2013 book Amor che move I mobilized diffraction in order to propose a new reading of Dante’s texts through two authors who grappled with them in the twentieth century: Pier Paolo Pasolini, who engaged with Dante directly at various points in his career, producing several veritable ‘rewritings’ (like his Mortaccia and Divina Mimesis, and parts of Petrolio), and Elsa Morante, whose encounters with Dante were also a constant feature of her work, if more oblique than those of her friend

 Cf. Gragnolati (2010a), Gragnolati (2010b), and Alighieri (2009).  Haraway (1997), 273. Cf. also Haraway (1992) and Kaiser/Thiele (2014). On the difference between reflection ad diffraction, cf. Deuber-Mankowsky (2011). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-002

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Pasolini.³ In particular, rather than merely looking at the ways in which Pasolini and Morante re-wrote Dante or related to him, relying on diffraction allowed me to revert the perspective and also read Dante through the lenses of Pasolini and Morante, creating an itinerary that begins at Dante’s Vita nova, continues with Pasolini’s Divina Mimesis and Petrolio, returns to Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio and, by way of Aracoeli, Elsa Morante’s last novel, concludes with a reading of the aesthetic of Dante’s Paradiso. While in Amor che move I drew on Haraway’s notion of diffraction in order to make a difference by reading texts through one another beyond any apparent genealogy or hierarchical idea of original and copy, in this paper I argue that in the Vita nova Dante himself engages in a diffractive reading of his own lyric poems and rewrites them. In highlighting this operation of the Vita nova – which is enabled by the fact that, at least for some of the poems, there is evidence that they were understood differently if read independently or integrated within the Vita nova – my aim is to arrive at a notion of re-writing that avoids any hierarchy of original and copy and can be understood as leading to a bi-stable figure, or Kippbild. Dante began his activities as a lyric poet before he turned eighteen in 1283 and for about a decade he wrote poems which, according to the norms of the day, were conceived as standalone texts, independent of one another, without any expectation either that there would be links between the poems or that they would one day be collected. It is a varied and multiform output inspired by the modes and styles of Occitan and European poetry, and even if we might be able to spot, already in this early work, the first signs of the experimentalism which characterizes Dante’s whole output, it is only with the Vita nova, composed around 1294, that Dante undertook his first truly unusual, audacious turn: that of collecting thirty-one lyrics – most of which were certainly written previously, as distinct, freestanding poems – and organising them within a unifying prose narrative which gives an account of their origins and significance. (The prose is divided into ragioni [“explanations”], which describe the events that inspired the poems, and divisioni [“divisions”], which comment upon their structure.) This prosimetrum text presents itself as a coherent account of the poet’s youth and his apprenticeship in the arts of love and poetry: the various phases of his love for the “most noble” (gentilissima) Beatrice, her death, his abandonment of her for the “noble lady” (donna gentile), and finally his return to Beatrice. This innovative textual operation is described in the Vita nova’s proemial paragraph with the famous image of memory as a book made up of several different sections, among which is to be found the chapter about the poet’s youth containing the lyric poems and the memories which he will now transcribe: In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria dinanzi a la quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica la quale dice: Incipit vita nova. Sotto la quale rubrica io trovo scritte le parole le

 Gragnolati (2013).

Without Hierarchy: Diffraction, Performance, and Re-writing

11

quali è mio intendimento d’assemplare in questo libello, e se non tutte, almeno la loro sentenzia (i 1 [1.1]). In the book of my memory – the part of it before which not much is legible – there is the heading Incipit vita nova. Under this heading I find the words which I intend to copy down in this little book; if not all of them, at least their essential meaning.⁴

Incipit vita nova: here begins the story of a life which is “nova” in several senses: because it relates to the youthful experience of Dante’s love for Beatrice; because the life being recounted is extraordinary in its relationship to an exceptional creature like her; and also because the poet’s life is transformed and renewed by Beatrice, as is his understanding of desire and poetry. But there is another sense in which the “vita” is “nova”, the life is new, and in which it is classifiable as a rewriting. It is this sense of the Vita nova as re-writing that I’m interested in discussing and my hypothesis is that it can be thought of in terms of a specific concept of “performance”, which I call “diffractive”. I am calling this specific concept of performance “diffractive” in order to distinguish it from other senses of performance that would spring more readily to mind when thinking of medieval lyric poetry but that are less present in the Vita nova. Indeed, at first glance, the interest in the performative dimension of Dante’s libello, might be surprising, given that it lacks the symbiosis of music and poetry typical of other European lyric poetry in the Middle Ages, which is bound up with the oral performance of the text in front of an aristocratic court audience. There is no court in the Florentine commune of the late thirteenth century and, more pertinently, the separation between music and poetry is not only suggested by the fact that the text presents itself as a written compilation of the memories of the author, but it is also confirmed by the prosimetrum structure of Dante’s libello. ⁵ So, while there is no evidence of a literal performance situation, my hypothesis is that we find other performative aspects in the Vita nova. We can ascertain an initial aspect of this complex performance from Michelangelo Picone’s analysis in his work on the Vita nova. Picone explored the manner in which the text presents itself as a revelation and reconstruction of the past of the protagonist-actor according to an ideal model of amorous and poetic development which corresponds to the process of transformation into an auctor, i. e., one who is both a writer and an auctoritas

 I quote the prose of Dante’s Vita nova from Alighieri (1980), which uses the text by Michele Barbi (Dante [1932]). The indication of the text according to its traditional subdivision into forty-two chapters is followed by its indication according to the subdivision into thirty-one paragraphs proposed by Gugliemo Gorni (Alighieri [1996]). Dante’s lyrics are cited from Barolini’s edition of Rime giovanili e della “Vita Nuova” (Alighieri [2009]). English translations of the Vita nova’s prose passage are taken from Alighieri (2012), while translations of the lyrics are cited from Alighieri (2014).  On the relationship between the Vita nova’s prosimetric character and the separation between poetry and prose, “che era stato sino ad allora soltanto possibile o probabile”, cf. Giunta (2002), 386 – 387, with bibliography.

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(a textual authority), someone who is not merely to be read, but who is to be respected and believed.⁶ In particular, Picone shows how, in the opening paragraph which I’ve just cited, the authorial figure of the Vita nova presents his act of interpreting his own past as a series of progressive operations: that of scriptor, the copyist who transcribes the lyrics written for Beatrice from his own book of memory; that of compilator, who doesn’t just copy those past lyrics from the book of memory, but also selects and organizes them according to a teleological and significant programme; and that of commentator, who, with his “ragioni” and “divisioni” comments on the chosen lyrics and reveals their “sentenzia”, which is to say, in Picone’s words, their ‘final and definitive meaning’ (“il significato ultimo e definitivo”) – a meaning which was not necessarily known or understood at the moment of their composition or at the time the events of the narrative took place, but which is ultimately revealed in Dante’s Vita nova. ⁷ The roles of scriptor, compilator and commentator are the selfsame functions which had, until Dante’s time, been used to interpret Scripture and the auctores of the classical past, but which in the Vita nova, rather than representing the collaboration of a number of different specialists within the medieval scriptorium, instead make up a first, audacious effort of self-exegesis as they are united in the sole figure of the author who collates his own memories to construct the narrative of his own past. As Picone demonstrates, these self-exegetical operations, presented as the means to reveal and communicate the true meaning of the events and poetry of the past, result in the affirmation of an auctor who, although he is still living and writes in vernacular instead of Latin, has achieved a worth similar to that of the auctores of the past and may also offer up his own itinerary as poet-lover as exemplum for contemporary poets. The Vita nova may then be considered a performance in the sense of a mise-enscène in which the poet displays his own past within the parameters of an ideal development from wrong, uncertain beginnings through to the discovery of a correct modality of loving and writing. In particular, through the evolution of the protagonist and in contrast with the previous Romance courtly tradition, especially the elegant but tragic poetry by Guido Cavalcanti, the text shows that desire for the beloved lady can be bound with reason and lead to happiness, even to God.⁸

 The definition of auctor is given by Minnis (1988), 10. Cf. Picone (1977), Picone (1987), Picone (2005).  Cf. Picone (2000) and Picone (2005), especially 177– 81.  Guido Cavalcanti’s role in the Vita nova is ambivalent and if, on the one hand, Dante’s libello acknowledges his significance and celebrates the companionship between him and its younger protagonist, on the other, it stages a progressive distinction between the two poets, which corresponds to Dante’s explicit rejection of Cavalcanti’s love theory, presented as too negative and irrational. The bibliography on the matter is very wide and can be found in Gragnolati (2010b), but I would like to mention the recent essay by Rea (2016) (also with ample bibliography), which maintains that at the moment of Dante’s composition of the Vita nova, Cavalcanti would have ceased writing poetry

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The way in which the author presents himself in the text is an important aspect of the Vita nova’s performance, but my suggestion is that it can also be considered a performance in a more forceful sense, which can be understood as diffraction and rewriting. This sense of performance relies on John L. Austin’s original distinction between constative and performative utterances: constative utterances are those which describe reality and can therefore be judged as true or false, while performative utterances – like oath-swearing or promises, ship-naming or marrying – “do” something and respond primarily to the criteria of the success or failure of the actions which they seek to accomplish. In this case, the criterion against which we assess these utterances is not their truth, but their success, or “felicity”.⁹ Judith Butler’s use of Austin’s concept of performativity has been particularly helpful for my analysis. As is well known, Butler makes a connection between the constitution of gender and the performative power of language and she proposes that gender is not the expression of what one is, but the result of what one does. Personal identity, therefore, should not be considered as the expression of an originary essence or substance, but is constituted through the repetition of actions that, like Austin’s performatives, depend on social conventions and customary ways of doing something in a specific culture. As there are socially-determined ways to promise or bet, to give orders or marry, in the same way there exist also socially determined ways to be a man or a woman. From this perspective, the idea that there is an essential or substantial difference between sexes is the result of such a felicitous performance that one forgets its performative constitution. In the same way, if conventions solidify through their reiteration, they can also be changed.¹⁰ Returning now to the Vita nova and its operation of collecting pre-existent, stand-alone lyrics and glossing them with a prose commentary, one can say that Dante’s libello neither reveals nor describes the true meaning of the poems it contains (as it claims to do and has mainly been read), but rather rewrites them, creating new lyrics which, notwithstanding the fact that they almost always appear textually identical to their pre-Vita nova state, did not exist before. Scholars have indeed noticed that the poems change depending on whether they are read by themselves as free-standing poems or through the prose frame of the Vita nova, but, before Teodolinda Barolini re-opened the issue in her edition of Dante’s Rime della giovinezza e della “Vita Nuova”, they had rarely focussed on the double meaning of the poems, exploring mainly their “sentenzia”, that is to say their “true” meaning, which the

and only committed to the study of philosophy. The relationship between the two poets staged in the libello would therefore not express rivalry, but succession.  Cf. Austin (1962). Later Austin will distinguish between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. For a discussion of Austin’s theory and its significance for literary and cultural criticism, see Culler (2000). For a discussion of Austin’s role in contemporary performance theory, cf. Wirth (2002) and Fischer-Lichte (2004).  Cf. Butler (1990) and Butler (1997).

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Vita nova claims to reveal.¹¹ For example, in an article on Dante’s poems, Picone points out how the poetic texts have a different meaning according to whether they are read on their own or in the contexts of the Vita nova or Convivio,¹² but he maintains that once an individual lyric has been incorporated into one of those two works, it has lost the characteristics of an impromptu effort, coming to make up part of a literary totality from which each poem receives its meaning: “ha perduto il suo carattere di prova estemporanea, per entrare a far parte di una totalità letteraria e di un ingranaggio compositivo dai quali soltanto riceve il suo significato”.¹³ This last assumption forces him to draw the conclusion that the lyrics included in the Vita nova (or the Convivio) lose their status as free-standing rime and therefore should not be published in an edition of Dante’s lyric poetry – and, indeed, various twentieth century editions of Dante’s poems, including Gianfranco Contini’s magisterial and influential endeavour, omit the lyrics included in the Vita nova and those found in the Convivio. ¹⁴ Teodolinda Barolini offers a different perspective, discussing Picone’s argument and noting that his conclusions are conditioned not only by the drive to reveal the “true meaning” of the lyrics transcribed within the Vita nova (thus believing what Dante says he is doing), but also by Petrarch’s later decision to collect his own poems in a unitary collection, his Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, or Canzoniere. ¹⁵ Barolini’s edition therefore includes every lyric poem written by Dante, and her commentary maps the history of “how Dante became Dante”, tracing his intellectual development as well as the connections between his lyric poems and the Commedia. ¹⁶

 As Teodolinda Barolini (2006) pointed out, “the divergence between the prose and the poems is striking and understudied” (the quotation is on p. 439). A similar point had already been made by Marti (1994), esp. 152: Also Carrai (2006) indicates that “l’interazione tra le due componenti del testo è un aspetto di primaria importanza per comprenderne il significato. Eppure esso non sembra avere attratto granché l’attenzione degli studiosi. Pochi in effetti sono i lavori specifici che si registrano sulla complementarità fra prosa e poesie e sulla loro diversa funzionalizzazione” (77). A significant exception is represented, from my perspective, by two essays by Leporatti (1992) and (1994).  “Ha […] ragione Barbi nel ritenere essenzialmente diversa una lirica letta nel contesto della Vita Nuova o del Convivio dalla stessa lirica letta invece singolarmente. Una rima accompagnata o meno dal commento dell’autore non viene insomma recepita allo stesso modo dal lettore” (Picone [1995], 174).  Ibid.  Cf. Alighieri (1939). The same choice has recently been made by Claudio Giunta, who does not include the Vita nova’s or the Convivio’s poems in his commented edition of Dante’s Rime, not even those attested in a pre-Vita nova version: cf. Alighieri (2011). As for Picone, for Giunta, too, “[l]e Rime sono tutte le poesie di Dante che Dante non ha raccolto nella Vita Nuova o inserito nel Convivio” (ibid., 61). See my discussion in Manuele Gragnolati (forthcoming). For a discussion of the criteria informing twentieth- and twenty-first-century editions of Dante’s Rime, including the critical and commented ones by Domenico De Robertis, which do not order Dante’s lyrics according to an ideal reconstruction of their chronology but according to how they have been transmitted in manuscripts (Alighieri [2002] and [2005]), cf. Barolini (2006) and her Introduction to Alighieri (2009).  Barolini (2006), 268.  Cf. Barolini’s Introduction to Alighieri (2009), 12– 16.

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From my standpoint, that is, looking at the Vita nova from a performative perspective, the importance of the question of the ‘true’ meaning of the poems is diminished compared to the question of how the libello manages to rewrite those poems, creating new meanings in such a convincing manner that they replace their prior one. While, at certain points in the Vita nova, Dante introduces (minor) variants at the moment of the inclusion of the lyrics in his new text, it is more commonly the diffraction through the new prose frame that effectively rewrites them and confers on them a new meaning that erases their previous one. In my analysis, then, there is no truth-relationship between the new poems and the old (in the sense that a lyric, once inserted into the Vita nova, becomes a different poem, which isn’t necessarily any nearer to the ‘truth’ than the earlier one), and the critical standpoint that once a poem is placed within the libello it loses its status as a stand-alone lyric does nothing but confirm the felicitous performance of the Vita nova. Indeed, Dante’s text gives its lyrics new meanings so convincingly that they have often replaced their original ones, causing them to be forgotten, as if they had never existed. Through this textual operation, the Vita nova rewrites the lyrics that it collects, thereby not only affirming a new, ideal form of desire but also generating a new kind of author, whose authority derives from his control over both desire and the text. In the rest of this paper, I shall consider what happens in two sonnets of the Vita nova, which both deal with Cavalcanti and in different ways show how the Vita nova rewrites past poems without altering their text. Let us begin with the first case, which is represented by the first sonnet in the work (iii 10 / 1.21): A ciascun’alma presa e gentil core nel cui cospetto vèn lo dir presente, in ciò che mi riscrivan suo parvente, salute in lor segnor, cioè Amore. Già eran quasi che aterzate l’ore del tempo che omne stella n’è lucente, quando m’apparve Amor subitamente, cui essenza membrar mi dà orrore. Allegro mi sembrava Amor tenendo meo core in mano, e nelle braccia avea madonna involta in un drappo dormendo. Poi la svegliava, e d’esto core ardendo lei paventosa umilmente pascea. Apresso gir lo ne vedea piangendo. To every captive soul and noble heart before whose eyes my present words appear, beseeching them the favor of reply, accept my greeting in the name of love. A third of night had almost run its course, a time that every star is shining bright, when Love appeared before me suddenly, the memory of whose manner frightens me. Jubilant, Love seemed to hold my heart

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within his hand, and in his arms he held my Lady wrapped within a cloth, asleep. He woke her then, and she, beset by fear, began to humbly eat my burning heart. And then I saw him go away in tears.

In its original meaning as a standalone poem, the sonnet describes a fearful vision in which Amore – personified Love – first takes a sleeping woman in his arms and then wakes her and makes her eat the poet’s heart, only to then retreat in tears. The text is a poetic riddle which describes an erotic dream in a deliberately ambiguous manner. The sonnet was sent to other poets for them to interpret its meaning, with the intent to establish contact and dialogue between the young Dante and his contemporaries. A ciascun’alma presa e gentil core seems to have achieved its aims, as we have three surviving replies, which, in their diversity of tone and content give an indication of the openness to interpretation of Dante’s sonnet: Dante da Maiano replies in a comical register with the sonnets Di ciò che stato sei dimandatore, maintaining that the fellow poet is talking nonsense, and recommending that he nurse his love-sickness by washing his testicles (“che lavi la tua coglia largamente / a ciò che stinga e passi lo vapore / lo qual ti fa favoleggiar loquendo” [7– 9]);¹⁷ according to Terino da Castelfiorentino (or, less likely, Cino da Pistoia), the dream indicates that the poet’s lady reciprocates his feelings; and also Guido Cavalcanti gives a positive reading of the dream as a sign of achieved happiness. Of these reply-sonnets, only Cavalcanti’s, Vedeste, al mio parere, onne valore, is mentioned in the Vita nova, to demonstrate how this poetic exchange led to the start of a friendship between the two poets. The Vita nova radically changes the significance of Dante’s sonnet and transforms it from an erotic dream into the premonition of Beatrice’s ascent into Heaven, a vision which comes to the protagonist of the libello after the physical disarray that Beatrice’s greeting provokes in him. There is, however, nothing in the poetic text per se to indicate that the lady in Love’s arms is Beatrice. It is only in the framework of the Vita nova, centred as it is on Beatrice’s death and bookended by the image of Beatrice in Heaven, that the dream here described becomes a premonition of her death and her enthroning in celestial glory. The creation of this new meaning is also reinforced by the other particulars indicated by the prose: for instance, while the sonnet merely closes with the image of Love leaving in tears (“Apresso gir lo ne vedea piangendo”), the prose of the Vita nova not only specifies that Love departs bearing the lady in his arms, but also adds the otherwise missing detail that he leaves heavenward, “verso lo cielo” – a detail that would otherwise be absent in the sonnet. This addition is noted by commentators, who generally interpret it as an anticipation of Beatrice’s death. With Picone, I would rather think that, as lines 9 – 11 of Cavalcanti’s reply had already mentioned the hypothesis that the dream

 In da Maiano (1969), 151.

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may refer to Beatrice’s death, in the Vita nova the dream is actually not a premonition of Beatrice’s death but of her glorious destiny in heaven.¹⁸ If the description of an erotic dream can, in this fashion, change to the extent of becoming the premonition of Beatrice’s glorious destiny in Paradise, which will, in turn, be confirmed by the final sonnet of the Vita nova, Oltre la spera che più larga gira, in which the poet’s ‘spirit’ is allowed to ascend to heaven and contemplate Beatrice arrayed in glory, the libello’s first sonnet also changes in another sense and from a riddle with an ambiguous meaning turns into a text with a clear and definite significance. The Vita nova closes the case opened by the riddle-sonnet, revealing its “correct interpretation” (“[l]o verace giudizio”) and stating that this interpretation “was not understood by anyone at first, but now it is clear to even the most simple-minded” (“non fue veduto allora per alcuno, ma ora è manifestissimo a li più semplici”; III 15 [2.2]). Generally, the commentators suggest that this true interpretation of the dream becomes clear after Beatrice’s death, but I find it both more interesting and, indeed, more accurate to think that it is really created by the way in which this sonnet is incorporated in the Vita nova. In other words, while it is unlikely that the sonnet originally referred to Beatrice at all,¹⁹ its ‘true’ meaning is not subsequently revealed by her death, but it is generated through the prose of the Vita nova, which connects the poem to Beatrice, creates a context hinging on her glorious destiny, and adds certain key details to the vision it recounts. We are faced with such a successful operation that afterwards it becomes difficult to return to the more open and fluid meaning of the stand-alone poem, a poem that not only did not refer to the death of the beloved, but probably didn’t even refer to Beatrice at all. Furthermore, the function performed by the sonnet is changed through its new context: while A ciascun’alma presa e gentil core was originally written by the young Dante with the intention of creating a space for friendship and dialogue with other, more established poets, in the Vita nova it serves almost the opposite purpose, becoming instead a text imbued with a providential meaning that serves to confirm the authority of its author and to distinguish him from those other poets, in particular Guido Cavalcanti. Two are the aspects of this operation that I wish to underline: the first is that the Vita nova seems to point towards a greater individuality for the poetic voice with respect to the more collective character with which the sonnet was originally written and which corresponds to the more dialogic mode of lyric poetry before Dante’s libello and, in particular, to the poetic production which will later be retrospectively defined by Dante as the “Dolce Stil Novo”; the second aspect, which is connected to the first, is that, through its prose “explanations” and divisions”, the Vita nova endeavours to hinder the fluidity with which medieval texts circulated and were read, fixing their meanings once and for all. (In this regard, I find very interesting Justin Steinberg’s hypothesis that the prose surrounding the

 Picone (2003), quote on p. 254.  Alighieri (1967), vol. 2, 23. Cf. also Santagata (2011), 150 – 151.

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canzone Donne ch’avete ’ntelletto d’amore in the Vita nova reacts to the way in which the canzone had been “read” and interpreted by the canzone of another author, the so-called Amico di Dante, Ben aggia l’amoroso et dolce chore contained in the manuscript Vaticano 3793).²⁰ In other words, the Vita nova reacts to the way in which poems could be left open to the interpretations and readings of other poets, fixing their meaning in a way that it could not be reopened anymore. In the case of the first sonnet of the Vita nova that we have just considered, it is the libello’s prose context that changes its meaning, but the acts of selection and ordering of the lyrics also exert a great degree of power on the kind of performance realized in Dante’s text and on the sort of author which emerges from it. In the case of the poems left out of the Vita nova, for example, it is interesting to consider that, as Barolini has argued in her introductions to the lyrics, some canzoni, like Lo doloroso amore and E m’increse di me sì duramente, are left out of the Vita nova because they bear witness to a poetic output in which Beatrice is explicitly the bringer of death rather than life, and thus they cannot enter into the libello’s world.²¹ And, in the case of the ordering of the lyrics, suffice it to think of those that bear the hallmarks of Cavalcantian inspiration in the so-called episode of the “gabbo” and that, precisely because they are placed in a specific position within a teleological order, assume the value of a negative poetic experience to which they do not otherwise attest when read as independent, unconnected poems. Without lingering on examples of selection and ordering, I shall mention one final sonnet whose meaning changes without the addition of any textual variant, namely Io mi senti’ svegliar dentro a lo core (xxiv 7 / 15.7): Io mi senti’ svegliar dentro a lo core un spirito amoroso che dormia: e poi vidi venir da lungi Amore allegro sì, che appena il conoscia, dicendo: “Or pensa pur di farmi onore”; e ’n ciascuna parola sua ridia. E poco stando meco il mio segnore, guardando in quella parte onde venia, io vidi monna Vanna e monna Bice venir inver lo loco là ’v’io era, l’una appresso de l’altra maraviglia; e sì come la mente mi ridice, Amor mi disse: “Quell’è Primavera, e quell’ha nome Amor, sì mi somiglia”. I felt a spirit of love begin to stir within my heart, where it was fast asleep; then I saw Love approaching from afar (I barely recognized him for his cheer)

 Steinberg (2007), 61– 92.  Cf. Barolini’s introductions to the lyrics in Alighieri (2009).

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who said, while smiling after every word: “Now only think how you might honour me.” And while my Lord remained with me a while, I turned my eyes to see from where he’d come and saw the ladies Joan and Beatrice draw near the place where I was standing then, one marvel followed by a second one. And as my memory now recollects, Love said: “This one is Spring, the other’s name is Love, because she so resembles me.”

As a free-standing poem it is the description of how the power of love is awoken in the poet by the beloved lady (my lady Bice), accompanied by another lady (my lady Vanna). In the Vita nova, though, the scene takes on a Christological significance linked to Dante’s relationship with Cavalcanti and to the establishment of difference and distinction between the two poets. This new meaning is created by the claim that the name “Primavera” (literally, spring), conferred on Giovanna by Amore – Love personified (l. 13) –, is in fact to be interpreted as “she who comes before” (“prima verrà”) and thus associated with John the Baptist as a precursor figure to Christ: Queste donne andaro presso di me così l’una appresso l’altra, e parve che Amore mi parlasse nel cuore e dicesse: “Quella prima è nominata Primavera solo per questa venuta d’oggi; ché io mossi lo imponitore del nome a chiamarla così Primavera, cioè prima verrà lo die che Beatrice si mosterrà dopo la imaginazione del suo fedele. E se anche vogli considerare lo primo nome suo, tanto è quanto dire “prima verrà”, però che lo suo nome Giovanna è da quello Giovanni lo quale precedette la verace luce, dicendo: ‘Ego vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini’”. (xxiv 4 [15.4]) These women passed near me, one after the other, and it seemed that Love spoke to me in my heart, saying: “That first woman is named Primavera only in honor of today’s coming. I moved the one who gave her that name to call her Primavera, that is, prima verrà, she will come first the day that Beatrice appears, after the imaginings of her faithful one. And if you also consider her given name, you will see that it is practically the same as saying prima verrà, since her name, Giovanna or Joanna, is derived from that John who preceded the true Light, saying ‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord’”.

The theologized context of the Vita nova doesn’t merely cause the reader to create an analogy between Beatrice and Christ; but, as has often been noticed, this analogy also implies that, as John the Baptist had prepared the way for Christ (and Giovanna for Beatrice), so is Cavalcanti to be considered a precursor who, no matter how significant, is nonetheless to be surpassed by Dante himself. Also, while in the Vita Nuova the sonnet belongs explicitly to Dante in opposition to Cavalcanti and serves to mark a schism between the poets, it is interesting to note that in some of the manuscripts transmitting it outside the Vita nova the sonnet can be attributed to Cavalcanti – and this could represent another indication of the fluid-

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ity or ‘interchangeability’ (as Gianfranco Contini called it) of the ‘I’ of pre-Vita nova Dantean lyric²² and of the distinction between poets that the libello seeks, if not to create from nowhere, at least to bolster. It is one of the boldest rewritings of the Vita nova and well exemplifies the new meanings that it creates for the previously-written poems. In the case of Io mi senti’ svegliar dentro a lo core, there are no textual variants or other evidence that it existed before the Vita nova but the fact that some manuscripts attribute it to Cavalcanti, to whom it was originally addressed, has been considered by Barbi-Maggini (and subsequently by Foster-Boyde) as a proof that the sonnet had also circulated before the Vita nova. ²³ Indeed, the difference between the meaning of the poem as a standalone lyric and within Dante’s libello is in this case so noteworthy that it could confirm Barbi-Maggini’s hypothesis. The examples raised in this paper are only a few of the instances which show the textual strategies used by Dante in the Vita nova to imbue the previous poetic texts with new meaning and reconstruct an idealized past along the lines of achieving a renewed form of love. They should nonetheless suffice to show that the Vita nova rewrites the past lyrics and this act of re-writing can be understood as the performance of an author in the sense that, through the re-signification of this past material and through the narrative itself, Dante’s libello succeeds in creating a new author, distinct from that of the pre-existing poems, his Rime. The novelty of this author does not only reside in the fact that the pre-existent lyrics acquire a new meaning; but, in the combination of the authority of the medieval auctor, which, up to that point, had an impersonal and a-historical character, with a new personalized, individualized nature, there emerges a new type of author, too. This new author functions like a modern one and, in recent years, and in dialogue with Hannah Arendt, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, Albert Ascoli has spoken precisely of Dante and the Making of a Modern Author, arguing that the Vita nova is a vital step in this process.²⁴ The authorial voice of Dante’s libello certainly functions, like a modern author, as a guarantee of coherence, of identity and of the meaning of texts, at the point at which he succeeds in continuing to impose his own choices, as demonstrated by those who hold that, once included in the Vita nova, the lyrics take on their true meaning and lose their prior status as standalone poems, as if they had never been individual texts. Focusing on the performative aspect of the operation of the Vita nova, however, and shifting our attention from the concept of truth to that of felicity and success, it becomes evident that the author of the Vita nova is not an essence expressing itself in the text, but the audacious performance carried out by that text itself. It thus becomes possible, rather than allowing ourselves to be convinced by the authority of its

 Contini, “Introduzione”, in: Alighieri (1995), LIX.  Alighieri (1956), 108.  Cf. Ascoli (2011), 178 – 201. On the Vita nova cf. Arendt (1958), Barthes (1968), and Foucault (1969).

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author, to reopen the closure that Dante’s libello wishes to impose on its lyrics, recovering instead their archeological complexity and appreciating their double temporality and existence. Seen from this perspective, the Vita nova neither reveals nor explains the true meaning of the poems within it, but, often without changing them textually, diffracts them through its prose and writes new poems that continue to exist alongside the originals.²⁵ I would like to conclude this essay by proposing that, in this sense, the poems that Dante includes in the Vita nova can be considered as as multistable figures, or Kippbilder in the original German, like the “duck-rabbit” (Figure 1) discussed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Philosophische Untersuchungen, which, without changing materially, can appear either as a duck or as a rabbit, depending on how one looks at it.²⁶

Figure : Enten-Hase ausschließlich. © Pedro Stoichita.

The image can be seen as a duck or as a rabbit; the two statements “It’s a duck – it’s a rabbit” seem to stand in contradiction and the assertion that it is both at the same time seems paradoxical. While we can easily go back and forth between the two aspects, the contradiction seems irresolvable, no mediation, no synthesis and no dialectical progress is possible. In other words, we see either duck or rabbit, but not both at the same time. Yet the image cannot be reduced to either: it is neither (only) duck nor (only) rabbit, but both duck and rabbit. The combination of simultaneity (the co-

 In Barolini’s edition of the Rime giovanili e della “Vita Nuova” (Alighieri [2009]), both the introductions to the individual lyrics and my line notes to them read the poems of the Vita nova in their double existence, outside and within it. Recently a similar concept seems to be endorsed by Donato Pirovano and Marco Grimaldi’s choice of publishing in the same volume both the Vita nova and all the pyric output of the young Dante, including those eventually incorporated in the Vita nova; cf. Alighieri (2015).  Wittgenstein (1953), 194– 194a. Cf. Holzhey (2014); Fortuna (2003) and (2012). Sara Fortuna and I have referred to the concept of Kippbild while reading the poetic language’s possibility in the Paradiso to hold together opposite meanings: cf. Fortuna/Gragnolati (2010). For a reading of the sonnet Era venuta ne la mente mia from the perspective of multistability, cf. Camilletti (2012).

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existence of aspects in one image) and consecution (the change of one aspect to another) yields both either/or and both/and. Analogously, the lyrics included in the Vita nova appear differently depending on whether they are read within or outside of the libello, as in the case of A ciascun’ alma presa e gentil core – the first poem of the Vita nova, which, if read as a freestanding lyric, is an open riddle with an erotic charge, while within the Vita nova is the premonition of Beatrice’s ascension into heaven – or of Io mi senti’svegliar dentro a lo core – which, as standalone poem, celebrates companionship and friendship while within the Vita nova marks difference and distinction. My main interest in raising the idea of the multistable figure in the case of a rewriting, lies in the possibility of extending Haraway’s concept of diffraction as a strategy for challenging a hierarchy between original and copy. While the Vita nova’s particular textual operation gives new meanings to older poems and thereby makes a difference, it risks merely inverting the traditional hierarchy of original and copy. Insisting on the Kippbild and its inherent reversibility and instability means not only avoiding the privileging of the original as more meaningful (in which case the rewriting in the Vita nova would represent a reductive process which alters that meaning), but also not accepting the Dantean affirmation that the true meaning of the poems is the one which is fixed in his libello (in such a way that any other reading of the lyrics would produce an erroneous copy of them). Read in this way as a re-writing without hierarchy, the Vita nova manages to go beyond both the myth of the original text and of the author’s creative autonomy.

Bibliography Primary Sources Alighieri, Dante, Vita Nuova, ed. Michele Barbi, Firenze 1932. Alighieri, Dante, Rime, ed. Gianfranco Contini, Torino 1939. Alighieri, Dante, Rime della “Vita Nuova” e della giovinezza, ed. Michele Barbi/Francesco Maggini, Firenze 1956. Alighieri, Dante, Dante’s Lyric Poetry, ed. Kenelm Foster/Patrick Boyde, 2 vol., Oxford 1967. Alighieri, Dante, Vita Nuova, ed. Domenico De Robertis, Milano/Napoli 1980. Alighieri, Dante, Rime, ed. Gianfranco Contini, Torino 1995 [1939]. Alighieri, Dante, Vita Nova, ed. Guglielmo Gorni, Torino 1996. Alighieri, Dante, Rime, ed. Domenico De Robertis, 3 vol., Firenze 2002. Alighieri, Dante, Rime, ed. Domenico De Robertis, Tavarnuzze (Firenze) 2005. Alighieri, Dante, Rime giovanili e della “Vita Nuova”, ed. Teodolinda Barolini, with notes by Manuele Gragnolati, Milano 2009. Alighieri, Dante, Rime, ed. Claudio Giunta, in: Dante Alighieri, Opere, dir. Marco Santagata, Milano 2011, vol I (Rime, Vita Nuova, De vulgari eloquentia, ed. Claudio Giunta/Giglielmo Gorni/Mirko Tavoni). Alighieri, Dante, Vita nova, ed. Andrew Frisardi, Evanston 2012. Alighieri, Dante, Dante’s Lyric Poetry. Poems of Youth and of the “Vita Nuova”, ed. Teodolinda Barolini; transl. Richard Lansing, Toronto 2014.

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Alighieri, Dante, Vita Nuova, Rime, ed. Donato Pirovano and Marco Grimaldi, Roma 2015. da Maiano, Dante, Rime, ed. Rosanna Bettarini, Firenze 1969.

Secondary Sources Arendt, Hannah, “What is Authority”, in: Between Past and Present: Eight Exercises in Political Thought, New York 1968, 91 – 141. Ascoli, Albert, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author, Cambridge 2011. Austin, John L., How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, ed. J. O. Urmson, Oxford 1962. Barolini, Teodolinda, “Editing Dante’s Rime and Italian Cultural History: Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca … Barbi, Contini, Foster-Boyde, De Robertis”, in: Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture, New York 2006, 245 – 278. Barthes, Roland, “La mort de l’Auteur”, in: Manteia 5,4 (1968), 12 – 17. Butler, Judith, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, in: Writing on the body: Female embodiment and Feminist Theory, ed. Katie Conboy/Nadia Medina/Sarah Stanbury, New York 1997, 401 – 417. Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York/London 1990. Camilletti, Fabio, “Dante Painting an Angel: Image-making, double-oriented sonnets and dissemblance in VN 23”, in: Desire in Dante and the Middle Ages, ed. Manuele Gragnolati/Tristan Kay/Elena Lombardi/Francesca Southerden, Oxford 2012, 71 – 84. Carrai, Stefano, Dante elegiaco. Una chiave di lettura per la “Vita nova”, Firenze 2006. Culler, Jonathan, “Philosophy and Literature: The Fortunes of the Performative”, in: Poetics Today 21 (2000), 503 – 519. Deuber-Mankowsky, Astrid, “Diffraktion statt Reflexion. Zu Donna Haraways Konzept des Situierten Wissens”, in: Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 1 (2011), 83 – 92. Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Ästhetik des Performativen, Frankfurt a.M. 2004. Fortuna Sara, A un secondo sguardo. Il mobile confine tra percezione e linguaggio, Roma 2003. Fortuna, Sara, Wittgensteins Philosophie des Kippbildes. Aspektwechsel, Ethik, Sprache, Wien/Berlin 2012. Fortuna, Sara/Manuele Gragnolati, “Dante after Wittgenstein: ‘Aspetto’, Language, and Subjectivity from Convivio to Paradiso”, in: Dante’s Plurilingualism: Authority, Knowledge, Subjectivity, ed. Sara Fortuna/Manuele Gragnolati/Jürgen Trabant, Oxford 2010, 223 – 48. Foucault, Michel, “Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?”, in: Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 63,3 (1969), 73 – 104. Giunta, Claudio, Versi a un destinatario. Saggio sulla poesia italiana del Medioevo, Bologna 2002. Gragnolati, Manuele, “Authorship and Performance in Dante’s Vita nova”, in: Aspects of the Performative in Medieval Culture, ed. Manuele Gragnolati/Almut Suerbaum, Berlin/New York 2010a, 123 – 40. Gragnolati, Manuele, “Trasformazioni e assenze: la performance della Vita nova e le figure di Dante e Cavalcanti”, in: L’Alighieri 35 (2010b), 5 – 23. Gragnolati, Manuele, Amor che move. Linguaggio del corpo e forma del desiderio in Dante, Pasolini e Morante, Milano 2013. Gragnolati, Manuele, “Rime”, in: Dante’s Other Works, ed. Zygmunt G. Barański/Theodor Cachey, Notre Dame, forthcoming. Haraway, Donna J., Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouseTM: Feminism and Technoscience, New York 1997.

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Haraway, Donna J., “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others”, in: Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg/Cary Nelson/Paula A. Treichler, New York 1992, 295 – 337. Holzhey, Christoph (ed.), Multistable Figures: On the Critical Potentials of Ir/Reversible Aspect-Seeing, Wien/Berlin 2014. Kaiser, Birgit Mara/Kathrin Thiele, “Diffraction: Onto-Epistemology, Quantum Physics and the Critical Humanities”, in: Parallax 20,3 (2014), 165 – 67. Leporatti, Roberto, “Ipotesi sulla Vita Nuova (con una postilla sul Convivio)”, in: Studi italiani VII (1992), 5 – 36. Leporatti, Roberto, “‘Io spero di dicer di lei quello che mai non fue detto d’alcuna’ (V.N., XLII, 2): la Vita Nuova come retractatio della poesia giovanile di Dante”, in: La gloriosa donna de la mente, ed. Vincent Moleta, Firenze 1994, 249 – 291. Marti, Mario, “‘L’una appresso de l’altra maraviglia’ (V.N., XXIV, 8): Stilnovo, Guido, Dante nell’ipostasi vitanovistica”, in: La gloriosa donna de la mente, ed. Vincent Moleta, Firenze 1994, 141 – 159. Minnis, Alistair J., Medieval theory of authorship. Scholastic literary attitudes in the later Middle Ages, Aldershot 1988. Picone, Michelangelo, “Strutture poetiche e strutture prosastiche nella Vita Nuova”, in: Modern Language Notes 92 (1977), 117 – 129. Picone, Michelangelo, “La Vita Nuova tra autobiografia e tipologia” in: Dante e le forme dell’allegoresi, ed. Michelangelo Picone, Ravenna 1987, 59 – 69. Picone, Michelangelo, “Dante rimatore”, in: Letture classensi 24 (1995), 171 – 187. Picone, Michelangelo, “Leggere la Commedia di Dante”, in: Lectura Dantis Turicensis, ed. Georges Güntert/Michelangelo Picone, vol. I: Inferno, Firenze 2000, 13 – 25. Picone, Michelangelo, “La Vita nova come romanzo”, in: Percorsi della lirica duecentesca: dai Siciliani alla “Vita vova”, Fiesole 2003, 249 – 265. Picone, Michelangelo, “La teoria dell’Auctoritas nella Vita nova”, in: Tenzone 6 (2005), 173 – 191. Rea, Roberto, “La Vita Nuova e le Rime: unus philosophus alter poeta. Un’ipotesi per Cavalcanti e Dante”, in: Dante fra il settecentocinquantenario della nascita (2015) e il settecentenario della morte (2021). Atti delle Celebrazioni, del Forum e del Convegno internazionale di Roma: maggio-settembre 2015, ed. Enrico Malato/Andrea Mazzucchi, Roma 2016, 331 – 360. Santagata, Marco, L’io e il mondo. Un’idea di Dante, Bologna 2011. Steinberg, Justin, Accounting for Dante: Urban Readers and Writers in Late Medieval Italy, Notre Dame 2007. Wirth, Uwe, “Der Performazbegriff im Spannungsfeld von Illokution, Iteration und Indexikalität”, in: Performanz. Von Sprachphilosophie zu den Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Uwe Wirth, Frankfurt a.M. 2002, 9 – 53. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations, English and German, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford 1953.

Helmut Pfeiffer (Berlin)

Anakyklosis. Transformation of Transformations 1 Metabolé In the chapters of his Poetics where he discusses the mythos of tragedy, Aristotle draws a distinction between simple and complex plots. He points out that the latter are much better suited to achieve the purpose of tragedy and its desired effect on the spectator. Events inspiring fear or pity are best produced “when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one another; there is more of the marvelous in them than if they happened of themselves or by mere chance”.¹ As he goes on to point out in the following chapter, simple actions tend to be “one continuous whole”; the change of fortune which the protagonists have to undergo takes place “without reversal or discovery”.² Complex plots, on the other hand, are characterized by “one or the other, or both”. Complex plots play out a dramatic entanglement of metabolé and anagnorisis, of sudden change and cognitive reaction. In the Poetics, metabolé means an abrupt turn³ of the situation which, for the protagonists within that situation, comes as a surprise from without, so to speak, whereas the spectator, although initially overwhelmed by the sudden unexpected change, recognizes the reversal as something within the overall logic or verisimilitude of the plot. Metabolé is a “reversal of fortune […] of the kind described from one state of things within the play to its opposite, and that too as we say, in the probable or necessary sequence of events”.⁴ Metabolé and anagnorisis are functionally related in the Poetics; their dramatic interplay acts out various relations between event and cognition; the new and the old, the unexpected and the probable are brought into a variety of constellations. Metabolé means a sudden change, but one which proves to lie within the structural possibilities of the plot; anagnorisis implies a “change from ignorance to knowledge”⁵, thereby realigning consciousness and reality. Anagnorisis is itself a form of metabolé, since it implies a cognitive reversal for the protagonists. Certainly when combined with metabolé, i. e. reversal, anagnorisis (especially in the sense of a “discovery […] of persons” – and not just inanimate things) “will arouse either pity or

 Aristotle, Poet., 2323 (1452a1).  Ibid., 2324.  In Chapter 10, Aristotle uses the term metabasis, in Chapter 11 metabolé. The main difference seems to be that metabasis is characteristic of simple actions and a slow change, whereas metabolé refers mainly “auf einen jähen, durch Szenen von konzentrierter Wucht (eine Peripetie oder Wiedererkennung) bedingten Umschwung”. (Manfred Fuhrmann, in: Aristoteles, Poetik, 115)  Aristotle, Poet., 2324 (1452a1).  Ibid. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-003

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fear – actions of that nature being what tragedy is assumed to represent”⁶. Both have to do with surprise and the suddenness of change. For later periods, the poetological concept of metabolé, with its combination of reversal and stability, has proved a difficult one, especially when it is not combined with anagnorisis or some other kind of subjective cognition. The problematic relation of (natural) order and unforeseen change, of verisimilitude and reversal, which come together in the concept of metabolé, is a fundamental crux, not only in poetics but also in other fields. Originally, metabolé is not a poetic concept. Early uses are found in medical discourse, where the term refers to changes which produce a reversal from health to illness, or from illness to health. It is related to the role played by the art of medicine in bringing about a ‘good’ metabolé and preventing a bad one. The term is also used in physics and natural philosophy. But its most important role is in political thought. Metabolé politeion ⁷ is a widely used term, occurring in the texts of the sophists, in Greek historiography (Herodotus, Thucydides), in Plato’s political treatises (Politeia,⁸ Nomoi), in Aristotle’s Politics (mainly Book V)⁹ and finally in the Histories of Polybius, where it is linked to the concept of a cycle of constitutional changes and reversals. At first, the concept of metabolé politeion tends to imply a movement of decadence and negative transformation, the locus classicus being the eighth book of Platon’s Politeia, with its downward sequence of aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and finally tyranny. But evidently tyranny cannot be an end or the end. There must be a counter-movement. The figure of the circle (an ideal figure, after all) imposes itself here.

2 Anakyklosis The Sixth Book of the Histories (Historiai) of Polybius, a Greek historian living in the second century before Christ, is devoted to a discussion of the constitution of the Roman Empire. Polybius, who was deported to Rome as a prisoner in his early years, later became a friend of Scipio Aemilianus and witnessed the final defeat of Carthage in 146. His analyses are therefore founded on an intimate, first-hand knowl-

 Ibid. (1452b1).  Cf. Ryffel (1949).  In Book 8, Plato uses the term to describe and conceptualize the sequence of ‘bad’, unjust and deficient political constitutions.  At the beginning of Book V (1301b4– 26), “Aristotle distinguishes two sorts of constitutional change (metabolé): replacement and modification. These two sorts of constitutional change seem to be instances of two sorts of change that he distinguishes in the Physics: (1) coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be (genesis and phthora) and (2) alteration (kinesis) (Phys. V. 1. 224b35 – 225a20). The first is change of substance, such as Socrates coming to exist at conception and ceasing to exist at death; the other is change of a substance, such as Socrates walking to the market-place, growing bald, or getting fat. The difference between the two kinds of change is that one destroys identity, the other does not” (Keyt [1999], 66).

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edge of Roman political and military institutions. Unfortunately, the sixth book has reached posterity in fragmentary form, which accounts in part for the widely diverging interpretations of his argument. The Roman constitution, Polybius points out, has produced “a thing the like of which had never happened before”, namely the astounding fact “that in less than fifty-three years nearly the whole world was overcome and fell under the single dominion of Rome”¹⁰. The historian’s rhetorical strategy underlines his astonishment at this feat and shows admiration for the efficiency of the Roman constitution. But he also detects unmistakable signs of fragility and crisis which point to the threat of instability.¹¹ Roman power is overshadowed by Roman decadence. The author deploys various strategies to come to terms with Roman power at its height as well as with the contingencies by which it seems threatened. One of these strategies goes some way towards finding and articulating the natural laws which govern the paths taken by history. Notwithstanding the fragmentary and heterogeneous character of the text, it is possible to distinguish five perspectives which structure the argument of Book VI: 1) an analysis of the Roman constitution as a ‘mixed constitution’ (mikté), which Polybius considers as the best possible kind, since it unites the advantages of the constitutional modes kingship, aristocracy, and democracy;¹² 2) a detailed description of the system of checks and balances, which the Roman constitution uses to guarantee the cooperation of its powerful political institutions, the consuls, the senate and the people; 3) a detailed description of Roman military organization and discipline, whose purpose is to explain the successful self-defense and expansion of the republic; 4) a comparison with other types and examples of (mainly mixed) political constitutions in the ancient, especially in the Greek world; 5) a theoretical account of the transformations which constitutions have to undergo according to a natural law, which he calls anakyklosis or the cycle of constitutions. Polybius’ intention, to quote his own explicit statement, is a fairly modest one. Plato and other philosophers, he declares, may have discussed more accurately “this theory of the natural transformations into each other of the different forms of government”¹³. Their treatment of the topic, however, with all its “arguments [that] are subtle and are stated at great length”¹⁴, lies beyond the scope of common understanding.¹⁵ So he sets out to offer a summary “as far as [he] consider[s] it to apply to  Polybius, Histories, 269 (VI, 1).  Cf. Ryffel (1949), 223 et seq.  Polybius, Histories, 273 (VI, 3). Cf. Nippel (1980), 142 et seq.: Even if the “theoretischen Inkonsistenzen” of the text cannot be denied, the “Verbindung des Mischverfassungsgedankens mit einem Modell von checks-and-balances” constitutes a fundamental “theoretische Weiterentwicklung des Verfassungskonzepts, die für die Rezeption dieses Theorems seit der Renaissance von entscheidender Bedeutung gewesen ist.”  Polybius, Histories, 277 (VI, 5).  Ibid.  Cf. von Fritz (1954): 67 on the cycle theory as a “gross oversimplification”; 68 et seq. on the relation to Plato’s republic.

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the actual history of facts and to appeal to the common intelligence of mankind”¹⁶. This statement is, however, only part of the truth. To endow his pragmatic history with explanatory power, Polybius does what neither Plato nor Aristotle had done: he rewrites the transformation (metabolé) of constitutions, which in the eighth book of Platon’s Politeia had followed a straightforward downward movement, and which in the fifth book of Aristotle’s Politics had given rise to a multiplicity of distinctions, tendencies and possible counter-measures, remodelling it as a natural, law-governed circle. Whereas Aristotle’s analysis varies the perspectives of observer and actor, Polybius restricts himself to describing what will inevitably take place as an effect of natural law. In his view, the transformations of constitutions follow a law-governed cyclical pattern. The circle’s beginning is in its end; it repeats itself, and by working through all the constitutional types, it exhausts all the essential possibilities. In his effort to produce a neat logical pattern, however, Polybius meets with two systemic difficulties, which he tends to ignore, but which his later readers insistently point out: 1) It is not clear how anakyklosis, the circle of constitutions, relates to mixed constitutions, such as are found in Rome (the topic of Book VI), Sparta, or Carthage.¹⁷ Anakyklosis explicitly refers only to the transformations of simple constitutions. Can it be applied to mixed constitutions, whose power of resistance to change and decadence, as the Roman example shows, may be much superior to what can be found in simple constitutions? 2) In Polybius’ text another transformational law can be detected, concerning the growth, zenith and decay of individual constitutions, whose relation to anakyklosis remains unexplained.¹⁸ These apparent inconsistencies have given rise to a number of conjectures, the most prominent being the thesis that Polybius wrote his text over a longer period of time, at first perceiving Rome as a monument of constitutional stability, and later conscious of an incipient crisis in the Roman republic. The circle is a perfect figure of immanence – it ends where it begins. To establish the circle as the natural law of political metabolé, Polybius has to show that there are not merely three distinct types of constitution (kingship, aristocracy, democracy), but six; the ‘good’ forms being doubled, as it were, by their ‘bad’ counterparts, into which they tend to degenerate: tyranny, oligarchy and mob rule. As well as the regular transformation of ‘good’ forms into their ‘bad’ counterparts, then, anakyklosis also comprises the transformation of one ‘bad’ form into the next (i. e. a different) ‘good’ one. The classical exposition of the six constitutional types goes back to the

 Polybius, Histories, 277 (VI, 5).  On the difference between Spartan and Roman mixed constitutions cf. Blösel (1998), 46: “Dem der lykurgischen Staatsordnung zugrundeliegenden Gedankengebäude stellt Polybios dann die Entwicklung des römischen Gemeinwesens als Mischverfassung gegenüber, die erklärtermaßen nicht das Produkt theoretischer Überlegung, sondern das Ergebnis vieler Kämpfe und Anstrengungen darstellt.”  Cf. Ryffel (1949), 208 et seq.: “Die Anwendung der biologischen Wachstums-Theorie auf den Staat und ihr Verhältnis zu Anakyklosis und Mischverfassung”, and Blösel (1998), 48.

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third book of Aristotle’s Politics (Chapter 7). Aristotle also points out typical transformations which he calls parekbasis or ‘perversions’.¹⁹ Later, in Book 5, he again treats the topic of the various transformations of constitutions, pointing out, however, possibilities of at least partially correcting negative effects. Throughout his discussion, Aristotle insists on the heuristic quality of his distinctions. For Polybius, on the other hand, the substantial identity of the constitutional types and the doubling of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms are indispensable in establishing the circle as a natural law. Anakyklosis requires the inherent instability of the constitutional types as well as the directionality of their transformation. The ideal geometrical figure of the circle inscribes the dynamics of transformation in a frame of regular repetition.²⁰ Six constitutional forms can be observed in the reality of political bodies, and neatly paired off into three ‘good’ and three ‘bad’ varieties. The former degenerate into their ‘bad’ counterparts, which are then transformed into the next ‘good’ type of constitution. However, anakyklosis, the cycle of their transformations, needs an additional hypothesis if it is to work. Plato’s Politeia had described a downward movement from aristocracy to tyranny. But how does one return from tyranny to kingship, the constitutional types which for Polybius mark the end and the (new) beginning of the circle? Tyranny cannot be directly transformed back into kingship. In order to solve the problem Polybius invents a fiction which is to join the end of the circle to its beginning, ensuring the closure of a movement based on nature and its laws without introducing the anomaly of transforming the perverted form back into the normative form of the same type. At the same time, this fiction is used to account for the origin of constitutions as such. Polybius asks: “What then are the beginnings […] and what is the first origin of political societies?”²¹ The origin can only be conceived as a preconstitutional state, which is then, by force of nature, transformed into the first constitutional type. The author does not refer to observation or experience in evoking this liminal situation of a constitutional origin; rather, he appeals to the imagination of the reader. Figuring such a degré zéro in a text which deals with forms and their transformation is made easier by the fact that Polybius does not try to feign a situation of absolute origin, whose qualities might require additional hypotheses, but an event of loss or a catastrophe, which he probably borrowed from a similar evocation in the third book of Plato’s Laws: “When owing to floods, famines, failure of crops or other such causes there occurs such a destruction of the human race as tradition tells us has more than once happened […] all arts and crafts [perish] at the same time”²². Such an exercise in subtraction leads to a familiar-sounding conclusion:

 Cf. Aristotle, Politics, 2030: “Of the above-mentioned forms, the perversions are as follows: – of kingship, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy” (1279b1).  Cf. Podes (1991), 385: “Das politische System, so wie es Polybios auf der gesamtgesellschaftlichen Ebene in seiner Lehre von der Anakyklosis darstellt, ist ein total deterministisches Zustandssystem.”  Polybius, Histories, 277 (VI, 5).  Ibid.

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man will be reduced to the state of an animal, but he will not have lost the qualities which constitute the specific difference of human as opposed to animal nature. Nature, then, teaches us that in such a case physical strength will first lead to the establishment of a leader, whose authority lies precisely and exclusively in the fact that he is physically stronger than the others. Polybius calls this state, in which man, although of a superior nature, seems no more than an animal, monarchia, and distinguishes it from the two constitutional forms of kingship, basileia, and tyranny, tyrannis. Since man, however, appearances notwithstanding, is a rational animal, this situation is bound to change; the (re‐)emergence of ethical concepts and norms of behaviour is inevitable: “From all this there arises in everyone a notion of the meaning and theory of duty, which is the beginning and end of justice.”²³ Such ethical norms arise primarily in the domestic sphere; subsequently, they can be observed in the behaviour of individuals and their interaction with one another. From here they spread into what will turn out to be the political sphere, thereby functioning as the beginning of a transformation towards true kingship, arché basileias. Kingship is necessarily the first constitutional form, beginning when physical strength gives way to justice; after this, the king is acknowledged as the one who “apportions rewards and penalties according to desert”; his subjects obey, “no longer because they fear his force, but rather because their judgement approves him.”²⁴ Kingship constitutes the first ‘real’ body politic, and will be the first step whenever mankind works its way out of an animal-like state. The despot is transformed into a king: basileus ek monarchia. Nature, however, which brings about the metabolé from monarchy to true kingship, at the same time prevents the latter from remaining stable. When kingship becomes hereditary, decadence is the inevitable consequence. The genealogical sequence of the generations subverts the normative identity of the constitution. Tyrannous appetites and desires grow ever greater; their development subverts the established order. The vicious behaviour of the king’s sons provokes an “outburst of hatred and passionate resentment”²⁵ in their virtuous subjects. The king becomes a tyrant. As far as the constitution is concerned, it is the generational logic which is responsible for the metabolé from kingship to tyranny. Inevitably, the nobility plots against the ruler and its virtuous members establish an aristocratic constitution, which cannot, however, but repeat the negativity of the preceding transformation of kingship. Once again, original virtue is lost and aristocracy becomes oligarchy, because the sons, oblivious to the virtues of their fathers, give themselves up to selfish and sensual passions, from “greed of gain and unscrupulous money-making” to drinking and debauchery, “the violation of women and the rape of boys”²⁶. Nor is this the end of the story. The people who exile or assassinate the oligarchs establish democracy by taking upon themselves “the responsibility for    

Ibid., 281 (VI, 6). Ibid. Ibid., 285 (VI, 8). Ibid.

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the conduct of affairs”²⁷, only to produce, over the generations, the self-same transformation which had already ruined kingship and aristocracy. Democracy is turned into mob rule, ochlocratia. There is a descent into generalized violence and the body politic is dissolved in the resulting anarchy. We are thrown back to the beginning of the circle, the reign of physical strength, monarchia. History repeats itself. The sequence of transformations, Polybius tells us, is “the cycle of political revolution, the course appointed by nature in which constitutions change, disappear, and finally return to the point from which they started.”²⁸ Anakyklosis is the form assumed by the household of nature (physeos oikonomia) in the sphere of political constitutions. The temptation to understand political change in terms of natural law will come to haunt political thinking, especially when the experience of contingency and disorder becomes overwhelming. The Renaissance rediscovers the work of Polybius; his conception of anakyklosis becomes an important reference, a template against which a new conception of political transformations and discontinuities can be worked out.

3 Temporalization and the Virtue of Beginnings In his Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livo, which were probably written in the years 1513 – 1519 and published posthumously in 1531, Machiavelli declares it his intention to come up with and develop “modi ed ordini nuovi”²⁹. The title may suggest the genre of commentary, a commentary dedicated to the history of ancient Rome as it is narrated in Livy’s historiography, but the author makes it clear from the outset that he intends to follow a new path, “una via […] non essendo suta ancora da alcuno trita”³⁰. As in the Principe, he intends to rely on both his “esperienza delle cose presenti” and his “notizia delle antique”, although he is disparaging about the extent of his double expertise: his little experience and his ingegno povero might render his efforts defective and useless: “questo mio conato difettivo e di non molta utilità”³¹. Still, referring essentially to ancient history, he insists on the importance of the “vera cognizione delle storie”³² to all questions concerning political constitutions, “nello ordinare le republiche, nel mantenere li stati, nel governare e’ regni”³³, and so forth. The second chapter of the first book, Di quante spezie sono le republiche e di quale fu la republica romana, is a spectacular example of a political analysis which is developed through the rewriting of an ancient text. It consists largely of an exposition, transposition and even translation of Polybius’ theory of anaky-

      

Ibid. Ibid., 289 (VI, 9). Machiavelli, Discorsi, 7. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 8.

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klosis. The name of the Greek historian is not mentioned once in the text, but the textual echoes are exceptionally close. Gennaro Sasso has justly remarked that in this chapter, Machiavelli does with Polybius what he does with no other author in the whole of the Discorsi, not even with Livy: he follows the Greek historian to the extent “da dar l’impressione di averla (= la fonte) o parafrasata o addirittura tradotta”.³⁴ In his discussion of the various types of constitutions, Machiavelli restricts himself to those republics or kingdoms (“o come republiche o come principato”) which have had “il principio lontano da ogni servitù esterna”.³⁵ Like Polybius, he concentrates on the immanent structure of constitutions and the logic of their evolution, although his awareness of fundamental contingencies in the relations of power between different states and political bodies is much more explicit than that of Polybius. He follows the latter, however, in another essential distinction: constitutions can come into existence through the act of a legislator, as in the case of Lycurgus and Sparta,³⁶ or they can be established in an ongoing process of creation and correction, action and reaction, as in the case of Rome.³⁷ The Spartans, Machiavelli maintains, thrived under their constitution for eight hundred years without corruption or disorder. Such a long period of constitutional stability is, however, a singular example, in which the original virtue of the founding legislation plays an essential role.³⁸ Machiavelli is not so much interested in the exceptional intervention of the legislator, which will haunt the political theory of the Enlightenment, but in the role played by political institutions in maintaining social and political order. In his view, a modern observer of ancient history can learn much more from those states which, like Rome, start from a “principio buono”³⁹, a good but far from perfect beginning, which they proceed, through the occorrenzia degli accidenti, to transform into an ordine perfetto. The Roman republic shows ways to handle contingency through constitutional adaptation. In the case of Rome, time counts, because the republic has to reorder itself continuously: “è necessitata da se medesima riordinarsi”.⁴⁰ The reconstruction of such an ongoing process is all the more useful, since successive transformations, as reactions to internal disorder and external accidents, are always inherently dangerous; they threaten, “che quella republica rovini avanti che la sia condotta a una perfezione d’ordine.”⁴¹ The history of the Roman republic, as

 Sasso (1967), 214. Sasso also discusses (inconclusively) the question whether Machiavelli read Polybius in a Latin translation or in the original with the help of a friend familiar with Ancient Greek.  Machiavelli, Discorsi, 16.  Ibid.: “[…] ad alcune, o nel principio d’esse o dopo non molto tempo, sono state date da uno solo le leggi ad un tratto”.  Ibid.: “[…] alcune le hanno avute a caso ed in piú volte e secondo li accidenti, come ebbe Roma.”  Cf. Ibid., 16 et seq.: “[…] felice si può chiamare quelle republica la quale sortisce uno uomo sí prudente che gli dia leggi ordinate in modo che, sanza avere bisogne di ricorreggerle, possa vivere sicuramente sotto quelle.”  Ibid., 17.  Ibid.  Ibid.

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told by Livy, is the paramount example for those who want to understand the constitutional crises of the post-medieval world. Rome succeeded where la republica di Firenze failed. This, however, is a different story, which Machiavelli will narrate in his Istorie fiorentine. With the examples of Sparta and Rome, however, Machiavelli is already in the sphere of mixed constitutions. The fundamental question for the author of the Discorsi is: how did Rome arrive at the perfection of its political constitution, “alla sua perfezione”⁴², and how can modern constitutions profit by studying the Roman history of prudent self-maintenance and self-correction? In Polybius, the analysis of the mixed constitution and its relation to his theory of anakyklosis had turned round the akmé and the crisis of Rome which he witnessed in his lifetime. Machiavelli, though he is evidently familiar with the later decadence of the Roman republic, takes a different, evolutionary perspective: how can a political constitution, through a series of internal adaptations and reactions to external challenges, transform itself towards a point of perfection? At this point, the sixth book of the Histories comes into play as a counter bearing: Machiavelli repeats what Polybius says about the theory of the three normative constitutions (Machiavelli calls them il principato, gli ottimati and il popolare) and paraphrasing the Polybian text, he explains their tendency to transform themselves into their ‘corrupt’ counterparts.⁴³ Throughout his argument, Machiavelli stays very close to the text and concepts, the examples and topoi of Polybius. Like the Greek author, he mentions a preconstitutional state, where people live scattered like animals, “disperse a similitudine delle bestie”⁴⁴. Later, once kingship has been established, this state of affairs is superseded by ethical knowledge, “la cognizione delle cose oneste e buone” and “la cognizione della giustizia”⁴⁵. Machiavelli also quotes extensively from Polybius on the principle of constitutional decline through hereditary power,⁴⁶ and mentions the “conspirazioni e congiure” of the virtuous aristocrats, “coloro che per generosità, grandezza d’animo, ricchezza e nobilità avanzavano gli altri”,⁴⁷ a rebellion which leads to the abolishment of tyranny and the establishment of the aristocratic constitution. As in Polybius, the sons of the nobles forget the common good (commune utilità), and indulge their private and political passions, from greed to ambition, “avarizia, ambizione, usurpazione”⁴⁸, so that they in turn cannot avoid meeting the same fate as the tyrant. The stato popolare which follows survives for a short time, because all constitutions enjoy a certain

 Ibid., 18.  Cf. ibid., 19: “il principato facilmente diventa tirannico; gli ottimati con facilità diventano stato di pochi; il popolare sanza difficoltà in licenzioso si converte.”  Ibid., 19 et seq.  Ibid., 20.  Cf. ibid., 21: “[…] come dipoi si cominciò a fare il principe per successione e non per elezione, subito cominciarono li eredi a degenerare dai loro antichi”.  Ibid., 21.  Ibid., 22.

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prestige to begin with,⁴⁹ but soon licentiousness (licenza) takes over, and eventually monarchy is re-established, “si ritorna al principato”.⁵⁰ The cycle of constitutions seems once again to end where it began. But there is a decisive difference. In Machiavelli there is no real circle. He quotes the Polybian image only to deform it. In the Discorsi the concept of anakyklosis loses its distinctive quality of identical repetition: E questo è il cerchio nel quale girando tutte le republiche si sono governate e si governano: ma rade volte ritornano ne’ governi medesimi, perché quasi nessuna repubblica può essere di tanta vita che possa passare molte volte per queste mutazioni e rimanere in piedi.⁵¹

Political constitutions exist within an environment of rival states and complex power constellations. Their history, for Machiavelli, does not unfold through a natural series of transformations, which end up forming a perfect circle, but rather in the context of a contingent world, where they are continually exposed to rival powers. In order to survive, they are forced to develop varying evolutionary strategies of self-defence and self-maintenance. They would be doomed to ruin if they simply followed the Polybian circle. A constitution which is continually exposed to the internal conflict and vicissitudes of its surroundings is forced to adapt itself to changing conditions. Selfmaintenance relies on self-transformation, a process which itself requires both power and prudence. Constitutions have to escape from circular recurrence or be doomed to disaster, and become the victims of other states which are better organized than they are: “[…] una republica, mancandole sempre consiglio e forze, diventa suddita d’uno stato propinquo che sia meglio ordinato di lei […]”.⁵² Machiavelli’s transformation of Polybius’ transformation theory works on several levels, which, taken together, use the circular structure of anakyklosis to open up a fundamentally different conception of political reality and political action. Rewriting becomes textual opposition, reshaping the conceptual basis and opening up possibilities of pragmatic consequences. Machiavelli rewrites the circular movement of constitutions, transferring anakyklosis into a new space, where the old logic of the course of nature is superseded. The perspective of the observer is no longer passive; the observer is now intent on escaping the circular movement. Observation serves the purposes of action. Three major aspects shape Machiavelli’s transformation of the cyclical structure he found in Polybius. a) Temporalization and contingency: The circular transformation of constitutions in Polybius is intimately connected with the sequence of (biological) generations. The sons tend to forget the political ideals for which their fathers stood. Political and ethical norms whose pursuit leads to the gain of power are not resilient enough

   

Ibid., 23: “tutti gli stati nel principio hanno qualche riverenzia”. Ibid. Ibid., 23 et seq. Ibid., 24.

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to remain intact over several generations. Machiavelli brings this Polybian argument into play, but his analysis underlines a different aspect, namely the change of fortune, “la variazione della fortuna”⁵³, and the brevity of time. Whereas change in Polybius follows a slow, generational movement, Machiavelli tends to think in categories of sudden and unpredictable movement. Kingship, for example, is threatened at once, subito, by degeneration. Tyranny is born fast (presto); the “governo di pochi”⁵⁴ is exposed in breve tempo to the fate of tyranny; a sudden change can turn the instability of the popular state into licentiousness. The biologically grounded rhythm of the constitutional circle, a fundamental feature in Polybius’ conception of anakyklosis, is transformed in the Discorsi into a radical shortening and neutralization of intervals of time. Time is the space of contingency which Machiavelli calls fortuna. The latter has no foundation in a well-ordered, law-governed course of nature, it is the realm of caso and accidente which incessantly provokes and requires action.⁵⁵ Constitutions are grounded in contingency and have to face it. b) Singularity: In Polybius, the preconstitutional origin is either a fiction or else a recurrent event which lies outside the circle of the constitutions, but it is necessary for an understanding of the repetition which constitutes their identity. In Machiavelli, the origin, the “principio del mondo”⁵⁶, is a singular beginning, which, relying partly on Lucretius’ De rerum natura, he imagines as a singular scene of cultural beginning. As such, it is not open to cyclical repetition. Once political constitutions have been established, history becomes the scene of political struggle and even antagonism. Decline and disaster are always possible in political constitutions, but they do not lead back into a pre-political state. Constitutional inaptitude leads to a loss of autonomy, foreign control or straightforward destruction, but not to a completely new start within the circular structure of anakyklosis. c) Simple and mixed constitutions: For Machiavelli, the conclusions to be drawn from the study and rewriting of anakyklosis operate on a fundamental level, where the form of the constitution as such is at stake. Political constitutions which are not able to resist the dynamics of metabolé or anakyklosis (which, after all, destroy their form and identity, transforming them into something else) cannot be considered viable political constitutions. This is the case with all forms of simple constitutions. They represent “modi […] pestiferi”⁵⁷, the three normative ones because of the shortness of their life (brevità della vita), their three vicious counterparts because of their inherent malignità. In Polybius the relation of mixed constitutions and anakyklosis remains ultimately undecided; he states the superiority of the mikté, but does not seem to except it from the natural law of growth, zenith, and decadence. For Machia-

 Ibid., 22.  Ibid.  The topic of fortune in Machiavelli has been extensively treated. Cf. for example: Leeker (1989); Pitkin (1984).  Machiavelli, Discorsi, 19.  Ibid., 24.

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velli, this essentially blank space becomes the opening scene for a new and complex analysis which combines the theory of mixed constitutions with the contingency of transformational processes. Only a constitution which participates of “il principato, gli ottimati e il governo popolare”,⁵⁸ i. e. which combines the three ‘good’ constitutional forms, can be considered piú fermo e piú stabile, implying that it is not necessarily subjected to the contingencies of fortune and can survive in the face of rapid and unpredictable change. Metabolé, understood as the change of one political form into another, is itself transformed into self-maintenance as a form of transformation. The obvious example of the long-term stability of a mixed constitution is the Spartan legislation created by Lycurgus. For the political necessities of the present, however, where the myth of the legislator and his foundational act are no longer convincing, the prudent institutional politics of the Roman republic seem to be the more instructive paradigm, since they can be understood as a history of adaptation and self-correction in a changing environment. It is these which Machiavelli considers the necessities of his time. The mixed constitution, the distribution of power between consuls, the senate and the tribuni della plebe, constitute a republica perfetta, maintaining its identity in an evolutionary process which is shaped by the play of checks and balances in the institutions. The Romans could only reach such constitutional perfection by building the critical antagonisms of their society into the very structure of their constitution, e. g. through “la disunione della plebe e del senato”.⁵⁹ Balancing powers and managing power conflicts forecloses transformational directionality and prevents the circular movement of anakyklosis. The first chapter in the third book of the Discorsi, A volere che una sètta o una republica viva lungamente, è necessario ritirarla spesso verso il suo principio, takes up the question of the life-cycle of political constitutions, touching also on other ‘mixed bodies’ (corpi misti), such as religions. It may well be, Machiavelli admits, that “tutte le cose del mondo hanno il termine della loro vita.”⁶⁰ Political bodies are finite bodies – but they are not finite in the same way as biological bodies, and their death does not lead back into circular repetition. Their fragility does not exclude efficient strategies to lengthen the duration of political constitutions, while still preserving their identity. If there is a corso […] ordinato dal cielo, the essential thing is to live it out – a task which most political bodies seem unable to fulfil. It may be better to act as if we knew nothing about a preordained course. At any rate, whatever such a course may be, it is not identical to anakyklosis as understood by Polybius. There can be an art of maintaining the state, of preserving its constitutional identity. The management of change, made necessary by external danger and internal strife, can be efficient without constitutional transformation. Machiavelli, who tends to be extremely critical of general rules which ignore the contingency

 Ibid.  Ibid., 27.  Ibid., 355.

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of situations, even suggests three essential strategies which echo the Polybian text in order to counter its conclusions. Firstly, one should not change a modo ordinato, but if change is unavoidable, it should be a salute e non a danno suo. A continuing order does not need to legitimate its constitutional identity; it should only be able to maintain its constitutional order. Secondly, however, political constitutions (like religions) change all the time. They are subject to alterations, alterazioni, which may have either internal or external causes. The art of politics consists in maintaining order in the face of ongoing change. Constitutional identity requires adaptation to changing environments and is thus an evolutionary process. Finally, change is neither grounded in the biological sequence of generations nor does it necessarily follow the form of metabolé, a sudden reversal which results in a new constitutional identity. The temporal structure of change is diversified, grounded neither (or at least not exclusively) in the course of nature, nor in sudden changes of fortune. At the beginning of Book III of the Discorsi, Machiavelli seems to take into account a large range of changes, from slow, unintended shifts to sudden crises. In all cases, reactions are necessary and possible. For purposes of self-preservation, however, they require orientation. Preserving the identity of a constitutional form cannot mean acting according to the external challenge; it has to follow an internal norm. But what might be the criterion for self-corrections in the face of critical change? The remedy Machiavelli finally ventures to propose is named in the very title of the discorso: “il suo principio”. Machiavelli repeatedly proposes the strategy of going back to the beginning or the origin – at once a strategy of reversion and innovation. Those corrections (alterazioni) of political or religious bodies “che le riducono inverso I principii loro”,⁶¹ are salutary, but it is “cosa più chiara che la luce, che non si rinnovando questi corpi non durano.”⁶² The riduzione is a rinnovazione, the return a step forward. What may look like a conservative, even reactionary measure is conceived as an innovation necessary to preserve the identity of the constitutional form. The riduzione verso il principio, which Machiavelli recommends, seems to be based on two assumptions. In the first place, the principii have already passed what may be called a reality test; they have, to use Machiavelli’s vocabulary, proved their intrinsic quality, their bontà or virtù: “tutti e’principii delle sètte o delle republiche e de’regni conviene che abbiano in sé qualche bontà”⁶³. If they didn’t have a powerful dynamics of their own, they would not have come into existence in the first place; they would not have replaced preceding constitutions or been able to maintain themselves. The challenge they are confronted with is a contingency to which they may react by appealing to the initial bontà. On the other hand, time, not nature, is a force of corruption, and the initial virtue or principle of the constitution tends to get lost in the course of time, “nel processo del tempo quella

 Ibid., 355.  Ibid., 356.  Ibid.

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bontà si corrompe”⁶⁴. Maintaining the order of the form means going back to the origin and its powerful energy. The impulse for the rinnovazione may come from without, per accidente estrinseco, or from within, per prudenza intrinseca. ⁶⁵ A political constitution can be forced to revive its original virtue in the face of necessity, as in the case of the Romans who gained nuova vita e nuova virtù when under attack from foreign powers, and began to (re‐)observe religion and justice, which had begun to fall into oblivion, or at the very least neglect. Prudence, the political virtue par excellence from Antiquity onwards, tends in the Machiavellian texts to be less the habitual resource of political actors than an exceptional and rare strategy to fall back on in the face of danger: “Necessità fa virtù”⁶⁶ is the formula which sums up what Machiavelli has to say about political action under pressure. The Florentines, whose contemporary predicament Machiavelli deplores, once had that virtue at their disposal – from the early fifteenth century, the beginnings of the Medici regime under Cosimo, the pater patriae, until 1494 when they had to leave Florence. Cosimo and his successors believed that it was necessary to go back to the beginning, not just occasionally, but every five years, “come egli era necessario ripigliare ogni cinque anni lo stato, altrimenti era difficile mantenerlo”⁶⁷. Such a maxim implies a drastic shortening of time horizons: the origin has to be restaged every five years, and in the case of Florence and the Medici, this re-enactment of virtù not only consists in reinventing religion and justice as in Rome, but also in spreading terror (terrore) and fear (paura). These were the passions the Medici had used when they took power, and they are also the principio by which they governed Florence in order to maintain the order they had instituted. The principio, Machiavelli’s text implies, can be very different things; it may be attached to political and ethical norms, but it can also reveal itself in the staging of specific political passions. In any case, the virtù of a political order is incorporated in its original power – and every constitution threatens to lose its identity if it forgets the vital energy of its principio. Riduzione as rinnovazione (Machiavelli also uses the verb rinascere) can thus never be a simple repetition of the origin. The contingency of the accidenti and the virtù of the reaction exclude circularity. There is no way back to the origin but only a way forward. Innovation, however, should take the form of maintaining constitutional order through (re‐)enactments of the beginning and its dynamic principles. Self-preservation as self-correction in a world of challenges and discontinuities – Machiavelli’s answer to metabolé (defined as sudden reversal) and anakyklosis (perceived as grounded in the order of nature) takes a reflexive form which seeks to combine identity and difference.

   

Ibid. Ibid., 357. Ibid., 260. Ibid., 360.

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4 Nature and Principle The eighth book of Montesquieu’s Esprit des lois opens with a remarkable sentence: “La corruption de chaque gouvernement commence presque toujours par celles des principes.”⁶⁸ Although firmly embedded in the conceptual structure of the Esprit des lois, the argument takes up the tradition of metabolé and anakyklosis, riduzione and principio, which it rewrites in the context of Enlightenment politics. As is well known, Montesquieu elaborates a systematic distinction of three constitutional orders, which he calls république, monarchie and despotisme. Excluding the doubling of normative and corrupted versions of constitutional forms, Montesquieu also rejects the idea of mixed constitutions as a remedy for the threat of corruption. At the end of Book Eight he discusses the example of the Chinese empire, which according to the report of European missionaries constitutes a “gouvernement admirable, qui mêle ensemble dans son principe la crainte, l’honneur et la vertu”⁶⁹, that is to say, what he calls the principles (as opposed to the nature) of the three types of government he distinguishes in the Esprit des lois. Montesquieu goes out of his way to demonstrate that China, far from being a mixed constitution, is in fact an “Etat despotique, dont le principe est la crainte”.⁷⁰ In a sense, as Montesquieu points out in his famous chapter on the English constitution, there are three types of power in every state, “la puissance législative, la puissance exécutrice des choses qui dépendent du droit des gens, et la puissance exécutrice de celle qui dépendent du droit civil.”⁷¹ For a constitution to work well, they have to work together smoothly, “elles seront forcées d’aller de concert.”⁷² The traditional system of checks and balances within a mixed constitution, exemplified from Polybius to Machiavelli by the Spartan and Roman constitutions, becomes in Montesquieu a structural issue in and an option for every constitutional form.⁷³ At the same time, however, Montesquieu’s conception of the separation of powers points to a new difference of functional systems, which will end up dissolving the old unity of the political system, and taking the place of the structure of checks and balances as instituted in a mixed constitution. The identity of the three constitutional forms in the Esprit des lois maintains itself in the complex environment on which it depends: climate, geography, religion,  Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, 349.  Ibid., 365.  Ibid., 368.  Ibid., 396.  Ibid., 405.  Nippel (1980), 149 et seq., points out that the Polybian construction of checks and balances in mixed constitutions should not be confused with the modern separation of powers. In Polybius he finds the “Fehlen einer tiefergehenden Analyse, welche die gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen der Entstehung des Systems wie seines Funktionierens erhellen könnte.” There is no “normativ begründete Differenzierung von Funktionen”, but an “empirische Feststellung der tatsächlich bestehenden Zuständigkeiten in der römischen Republik.”

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laws, manners, customs, esprit général, and so forth. For every political constitution, there has to be what one might call a differentiated life-world. Moreover, republics have to be small in order to work well, monarchies tend to be medium-sized and despotic regimes often govern a large territory with a numerous population. For Montesquieu, talking about the political system means talking about the (natural, social, religious) environments which are essential to its functioning. Constitutions, however, are still haunted by the spectre of corruption and metabolé. Decline sets in when a constitution loses its particular dynamism or life-principle – what Montesquieu calls its principe. This principle has to be carefully distinguished from what he calls the nature of the government, which is essentially defined by the location of sovereignty and supreme power. In republics, this is either the people as such, “le peuple en corps”⁷⁴, or, in their aristocratic version, a small part of the people (une partie du peuple). In monarchies “un seul gouverne, mais par des lois fixes et établies”⁷⁵, whereas in despotic regimes one single person governs, but without law or rule, “sans loi et sans règle”⁷⁶, according to his will or caprice. These distinctions give a description of the structure, the nature of a constitution, but they do not touch upon the vital spring of the constitutional form. In his conception of the constitutional principles, Montesquieu in a sense takes up what Machiavelli had called virtù, thereby avoiding a traditional weakness of the classical conceptions of metabolé and anakyklosis. These tend to describe an upward evolution from pre-constitutional states to the first constitution mainly in terms of cultural evolution; once within the circle, however, established constitutions of the ‘normal’ type, which rely on normative conceptions, are regarded as threatened by their ‘vicious’ counterparts, which exploit private and political passions. For Montesquieu, there is no need to assume inherent tendencies of metabolé, as long as a constitution functions according to its principle (and as long as other, stronger powers do not weaken or destroy it from the outside). It is evident, however, that this continuity demands adequate environmental conditions. The nature of a constitution defines its identity, its “structure particulière”⁷⁷; the principle, by contrast, is its dynamic spring, “ce qui le fait agir”⁷⁸, “les passions humaines qui le font mouvoir.”⁷⁹ The names of the three principles are: virtue (vertu), which makes republics work, honour (honneur), which keeps monarchies going, and fear (crainte), which maintains despotic regimes. There has been a lot of discussion about the semantics of these principles; it could be complained that they are rather opaque, too heterogeneous, and so forth. This is certainly true, but in the present context the important point lies elsewhere. Montesquieu’s construction does away with the space where corruption, me-

     

Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, 239. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 250 et seq. Ibid., 250. Ibid., 251.

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tabolé or anakyklosis would traditionally take place. Instability is no longer generated through the workings of natural law or temporal dynamics. The specific principle of the constitutions defines the substance of their self-preservation and ongoing stability in the face of internal conflict, but also in their reaction to the threat of external powers: “[…] la force du principe entraîne tout”.⁸⁰ The corruption of a constitution, in the Esprit des lois, is thus always relative to its principle. In a republic, corruption turns around ‘virtue’ and manifests itself in the loss of a sense of equality. Such a loss can go in opposite directions: it can take the form of the weakening of a sense of equality – “lorsqu’on perd l’esprit d’égalité”⁸¹ – but it can also manifest itself as a hyperbolic sense of equality: “quand on prend l’esprit d’égalité extrême”. For Montesquieu, the republic and its dynamic principle of virtue constitute the most complex and exacting form of political reality. There are two modes of excess which have to be avoided in order to keep this principle intact. The first produces an esprit d’inégalité resulting, in the long run, in aristocracy and finally monarchy (which, like the republic, Montesquieu regards as a moderate constitution); the other, the “esprit d’égalité extrême”⁸², ruins the sense of order and functional inequality. In a process where corruption corrupts the corruptors and the corrupted in an accelerating spiral, despotism is inevitable, “le despotisme d’un seul”⁸³. The only way of calling a halt to corruption is to go back to the principles, en rappelant les principes; all other modes of correction are either useless or an aggravation of corruption. Machiavelli, “ce grand homme”⁸⁴, whose name is mentioned only twice in the Esprit des lois, is very much present in this argument, which recommends going back to the ‘principle’. Machiavelli’s principio, the virtue of the beginning, has in Montesquieu’s rewriting become the principe, the principle of a constitutional type. An original quality, to which one should appeal in times of crisis, has thus been turned into the defining feature of a political form, the dynamic spring of the constitution. According to the Esprit des lois, republics can be corrupted in two ways and end up either as (moderate) monarchies or as (excessive) despotic states. From a monarchy, there is only a single path leading to corruption and that path leads straight to

 Ibid., 357.  Montesquieu distinguishes between the véritable esprit d‘égalité and the esprit d’égalité extrême (352). The sense of equality, in its true form, is a ‘moderate’ passion. It consists in the establishment of functional inequality on the basis of law-governed equality, the distribution of power and authority among equals, “à obéir et à commander à ses égaux” (352). ‘Moderate’ thus means a combination of cognitive and passionate elements: insisting on equality on the basis of virtue, acknowledging the necessities of functional differentiation. It is based on the knowledge “à obéir et a commander à ses égaux” (352). This is the opposite of what Montesquieu calls the spirit of extreme equality, where everybody insists on being equal in every respect: “chacun veut être égal à ceux qu’il choisit pour lui commander” (349).  Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, 351.  Ibid.  Ibid., 313.

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despotism. This may be (in exceptional cases, and for a short time) the “despotisme de tous” (i. e. anarchy), but it is usually the “despotisme d’un seul”⁸⁵. Corruption in monarchies means the corruption of the principle of honour. Montesquieu uses the striking formula: when honour comes “into contradiction with honours”⁸⁶, meaning: when the principle of honour (i. e. the passion which guides the political actors in a monarchy) comes into conflict with the honours (i. e. the distinctions) conferred by the monarch. This monarch is transformed into a despot when he no longer respects traditional prerogatives (prérogatives des corps) and privileges (privilèges des villes).⁸⁷ It is then that the premières dignités become nothing more than signs (marques) of the première servitude; les grands no longer respect the people then, but transform them into the instrument of arbitrary power (pouvoir arbitraire).⁸⁸ Thus corruption in a monarchy leads to despotism and is always the transformation from a moderate constitution to an excessive one, the former being “gouvernés par les mœurs”⁸⁹, the latter by arbitrary decisions. Republics and monarchies are both moderate constitutions, governed by laws and customs (les mœurs). The transformation of a republic into a monarchy is therefore only a change “d’un gouvernement modéré à un gouvernement modéré”⁹⁰. An essential constitutional affinity is preserved. Everything changes with the transformation into despotism. The constitutional trinity of republic, monarchy and despotism rests on a fundamental dualism, which for Montesquieu opposes order to disorder, law to arbitrariness, rule to excess. A key boundary separates moderate constitutions from excessive or despotic constitutions, which for an enlightened mind are an insult to human nature.⁹¹ Despotism, therefore, is by definition corrupt. When republics and monarchies lose or give up their constitutive dynamic principles, they descend into despotism. Despotism, on the other hand, cannot be further corrupted into any other form of constitution. It is, however, nevertheless subject to corruption; it corrupts itself. Despotism is corruption built into the nature of a political constitution: “Le principe du gouvernement despotique se corrompt sans cesse, parce qu’il est corrompu par sa nature.”⁹² Republics and monarchies are corrupted through (external, chance) accidents, “quelques causes accidentelles”⁹³; they are, as it were, ‘hetero-destructive’, destroyed from without. Despotism, on the other hand, is self-destructive, destroyed from within. Its principle, fear, turns back  Ibid., 354.  Ibid., 355: “lorsque l’honneur a été mis en contradiction avec les honneurs”.  Ibid., 354.  Ibid., 355.  Ibid., 356.  Ibid.  Cf. ibid.: Europe, the inhabitants of which are still governed “par les mœurs”, would be cruelly injured by despotism: “dans cette belle partie du monde, la nature humaine souffriroit, au moins pour un temps, les insultes qu’on lui fait dans les autres.”  Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, 357.  Ibid.

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upon itself, threatening to devour the constitution, of which it is the life-giving principle. Despotism, therefore, unlike the other forms of constitution, can only survive if it is forced by some external circumstance or event to keep going and establish some kind of order, contrary to its principle: “Il ne se maintient donc que quand des circonstances tirées du climat, de la religion, de la situation ou du génie du peuple, le forcent à suivre quelque ordre, et à souffrir quelque règle.”⁹⁴ Despotism is the perversion of constitutional order: whereas republics and monarchies, if they are not subject to ‘accidents’, maintain themselves by the dynamics of their principle, despotism is self-destructive and has to rely on ‘accidents’ and counter-despotic measures, in order to survive.⁹⁵ Thus while the evolution of moderate constitutions, republics and monarchies, is freed from any form of cyclical logic in the Esprit des lois, despotism, under the auspices of Enlightenment politics, becomes the residual space of metabolé and anakyklosis.

Bibliography Primary Sources Aristoteles, Poetik, Griechisch/Deutsch, ed. Manfred Fuhrmann, Stuttgart 1982. Aristotle, “Poetics”, in: The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. II, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Princeton 1995, 2316 – 2340. Aristotle, “Politics”, in: The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. II, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Princeton 1995, 1986 – 2129. Machiavelli, Niccolò, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, ed. Corrado Vivanti, Torino 1983. Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, “De l’Esprit des lois”, in: Œuvres complètes, vol. II, ed. Roger Caillois, Paris 1951. Polybius, The Histories, with an English translation by W. R. Paton, vol. 3, Cambridge 1979.

Secondary Sources Blösel, Wolfgang, “Die Anakyklosis-Theorie und die Verfassung Roms im Spiegel des Sechsten Buches des Polybios und Ciceros ‘De re publica’, Buch II”, in: Hermes 126, 1 (1998), 31 – 57. Fritz, Kurt von, The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity: A Critical Analysis of Polybius’ Political Ideas, New York 1954. Keyt, David, Politics: Book V and VI, Oxford 1999.

 Ibid.  One must bear in mind, however, that for Montesquieu constitutions are also quantitatively defined: “Que si la propriété naturelle des petits Etats est d’être gouvernés en république; celle des médiocres, d’être soumis à un monarque; celle des grands empires, d’être dominés par un despote; il suit que, pour conserver les principes du gouvernement établi, il faut maintenir l’Etat dans la grandeur qu’il avait déjà; et que cet Etat changera d’esprit, à mesure qu’on rétrécira ou qu’on étendra ses limites” (Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, 356).

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Leeker, Joachim, “Fortuna bei Machiavelli – ein Erbe der Tradition?”, in: Romanische Forschungen 101 (1989), 407 – 432. Nippel, Wilfried, Mischverfassungstheorie und Verfassungsrealität in Antike und früher Neuzeit, Stuttgart 1980. Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel, Fortune is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli, London 1984. Podes, Stephan, “Polybios’ Anakyklosis-Lehre, diskrete Zustandssysteme und das Problem der Mischverfassung”, in: Klio 73 (1991), 382 – 390. Ryffel, Heinrich, Metabole politeion: Der Wandel der Staatsverfassungen: Untersuchungen zu einem Problem der griechischen Staatstheorie, Bern 1949. Sasso, Gennaro, “Machiavelli e la teoria dell’anacyclosis”, in: Studi su Machiavelli, ed. Gennaro Sasso, Milano 1967, 161 – 222.

Irene Fantappiè (Berlin)

Rewriting, Re-figuring. Pietro Aretino’s Transformations of Classical Literature Pietro Aretino’s oeuvre consists largely of rewritings. The derivative character of many of his texts is overtly admitted by the author himself and has been much emphasized by his readers.¹ Aretino rewrites both content and literary genres: Ariosto’s plots are expanded in the Marfisa (1532) and parodied in the Orlandino (1534), while Ragionamento (1534) and Dialogo (1536) take up and ‘invert’ the dialogic genre as practised by Bembo and Castiglione. Aretino’s rewritings range from literal appropriations to radical transformations: he plagiarizes texts (often the volgarizzamenti of classical authors), or assembles homogeneous mosaics from different materials (a case in point are his religious writings, which integrate synoptic and apocryphal gospels as well as devotional and literary texts), or takes free inspiration from authoritative and minor sources, both textual and iconographic. Aretino also rewrites Aretino, that is to say, he rewrites his own works (such as the play Cortegiana, written in 1525 and rewritten in 1534) or parts of them, adapting the same passage to different contexts (using it, for instance, in both devotional and pornographic writings) and thus conferring a ‘horizontal’ unity to his highly variegated corpus. These diverse intertextual practices often intersect within a single text. A case in point is the opening of the second giornata of his erotic dialogue Dialogo (1536). In this passage, which can be read as an autonomous story, Aretino overtly parodies the episode of Dido and Aeneas as it is told in the fourth book of the Aeneid, turning its meaning on its head. At the same time he covertly plagiarizes a volgarizzamento of Virgil in terza rima, composed by Tommaso Cambiatore di Reggio around 1430 and printed in 1532 by the Venetian publisher Bernardino de’ Vitali. Aretino even employs a text of his own as a palimpsest – his description of Christ taking leave of his mother, already published in both his rewritings of the Gospels, Passione di Gesù (1534) and Umanità di Cristo (1535).²

 Throughout the centuries, Aretino’s critical reception has recurrently stressed the derivativity of his texts: for an overview cf. Innamorati (1957), 7– 89. The second-hand character of Aretino’s oeuvre was also manifest to his contemporaries, admirers and enemies alike. Cf. for instance the Vita dello infame Aretino, which is ascribed to Anton Francesco Doni: “Ma una delle più sciocche smemoraggini che habbia la vostra stoltitia è quando rubate di sopra questo libro un passo et l’incrociate su le vostre leggende, e da quell’altro autor buono un altro, come sarebbe da Plutarco, da Senaca, et da tutte le pìstole volgarizzate, et da altri libri tradotti che saria cosa lunga qui da dire […] Non è questa una sciocchezza grande a dir sempre a tutti, tutte le volte che vi vengono intorno, a tutte l’hore, a tutti i propositi, et in tutti i tempi, tutto quello che mille e mille volte (saltando di palo in frasca) havete altre mille et mille ridetto?”. Doni (1901), 34.  Cf. § 2 for literature and for my analysis of Aretino’s sources. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-004

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The second-hand, derivative character of Aretino’s literary production has traditionally been set against the originality and novelty of his authorial figure. Whether execrated or praised, whether confined within the boundaries of rather restrictive categories (such as anticlassicismo)³ or investigated in all its complexity, Aretino’s authorial identity has usually been considered ground-breaking and unprecedented. This is undoubtedly related to his pioneering ability to grasp and orchestrate the cultural changes caused by the “printing revolution”⁴ (for instance, the derivative character of Aretino’s literary oeuvre also sparks from his capacity to profit from the increased reproducibility of texts). One further reason is that his Lettere (1538), the first epistolary collection in the vernacular, have been regarded both as his most innovative and as his most ‘authentic’ literary work (‘authentic’ also in the etymological sense of ‘directly pertaining to the author’).⁵ During the five centuries of his reception, then, Pietro Aretino has largely been historicized and canonized as a “new author”.⁶ Aretino himself insistently endows his authorial posture with novelty and originality, to the point of boasting that he would be able to wear stolen clothes without their former owner recognizing them.⁷ It is of no small significance that this selfpraising metaphor ascribes uniqueness and originality to his persona rather than to his books. In a letter to Agostino Ricchi written in August 1548 Aretino mocks imitators and swears “always to be himself”. While he acknowledges Boccaccio’s “divinity” and Petrarch’s “marvellous compositions”, and admires their ingegni, Aretino is clear about not wanting to “wear them as masks”: Di chi ha invenzione istupisco, e di chi imita mi faccio beffe, conciosia che gli inventori sono mirabili, e gli imitatori ridicoli. Io per me d’ogn’ora mi sforzo di trasformarmi talmente ne l’uso del sapere, e in la disposizion de i trovati, che posso giurare d’esser sempre me stesso, e altri non mai. Non nego la divinità del Boccaccio; confermo il miracoloso comporre di Francesco; ma se bene de i loro ingegni ammiro, non però cerco di mascararmi con essi.⁸

 On Aretino as anticlassico cf. Borsellino (1973). In the recent scholarship there is a lively debate around such a definition. For an overview cf. Malato (1995) and Storia della letteratura italiana 2004, XIV, 302– 304. Cf. also, among others, Procaccioli (1999 and 2010).  Cf. Eisenstein (1983).  Innamorati (1962), 95, defines Lettere “l’invenzione sua più autentica”. Francesco Erspamer (1995), XII, claims that “la grandezza del libro delle Lettere […] è inevitabilmente quella dell’io che le domina” and Larivaille (1997), 228 and 220, calls Lettere an “autoritratto” displaying a “vocazione istrionica agli assolo” which distinguishes Aretino from his contemporaries.  Cf., among others, the classification of Aretino as “The New Man of Letters” in Waddington (2004), 35.  “Non ha più ingegno il ladro che trasforma l’abito che ruba in foggia che portandolo non è dal padron conosciuto, che quello che per non saper pur nascondere il furto ne viene impiccato?”. Aretino (1997– 2002 [1538]), I, 287 (=Lettere, I, 155).  Aretino (1997– 2002 [1550]), V, 217 (=Lettere, V, 282).

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Aretino’s demonstrative posturing as an uomo nuovo is in fact strategically self-imposed. Such self-fashioning serves both literary and commercial purposes; with the rise of the printing press, novelty was progressively becoming a decisive economic factor, due to the increased reproducibility of existing literary texts (“la novità commenda tutte le cose et aggiunge precio alle cose preciose”, as Federico Gonzaga remarks in a letter to Aretino on 7 July 1525).⁹ My claim is that Aretino’s authorial figure is, by analogy with his texts, a creation au second degré. I argue that Aretino’s authorship has, no less than his oeuvre, a derivative character: as an author, he rewrites – or as I would propose: ‘re-figures’ – other authorial models. In order to verify this hypothesis, I intend to submit Aretino’s authorship to the same treatment as his texts and to investigate its sources. What are the ‘primary sources’ of Aretino’s authorship? Aretino explicitly admits to having reprised a number of models. He associates himself with figures such as Pasquino, an emblem of satirical provocation;¹⁰ Giovanni delle Bande Nere, a symbol of strength, generosity and efficacy;¹¹ Titian, a model of successful artistic autonomy,¹² and John the Baptist, who marries the features of the prophet and the satyr.¹³ A statue, a condottiero, a painter, a saint: these are exclusively and ostensibly non-literary models. This is no coincidence. Aretino fashions himself as a non-literary writer; any explicit adhesion to literary authorial models would have contradicted this pose and compromised his attempt at presenting himself as a novelty within the literary milieu. Aretino’s calculated choices should prompt us to search for authorial models in precisely the area he omits – namely, within the field of literature. It seems reasonable to assume that Aretino’s authorship is also derived from literary models, despite the absence of explicit references, because his habit of flaunting ignorance allows him to cover the tracks of any such appropriations. Yet, how can we detect Aretino’s ‘re-figurings’ – I mean his appropriations and adaptations of existing authorial figures, which serve him in the fashioning of his

 Baschet (1866), 127.  Aretino fashions himself as Pasquino throughout his literary career and not only while acting as a “secretario di Pasquino” in Rome. Cf. Procaccioli (2006).  Cf. Aretino (1997– 2002 [1538]), I, 58 (=Lettere, I, 4): “Cotale fu il successo del Gran Giovanni de i Medici, il quale ebbe da le fasce quanto aver si poteva di generosità. Il vigor de l’animo suo era incredibile. La liberalità fu in lui maggiore del potere; e più donò a i soldati che per sé soldato non ritenne. La fatica sempre sostenne con grazia de la pazienza, l’ira no ’l signoreggiava più, e aveva trasformato il suo fare in dire”. Aretino’s description of Giovanni delle Bande Nere has been traditionally interpreted as a self-portrait. Cf. Dublin (1937), 69 : “toutes ces phrases dépeignant Jean des Bandes Noires s’appliquent à l’Arétin”. Larivaille (1997), 125, remarks that Aretino turns the condottiero into an idealized figure. In this respect, he seems to strive to conform both himself and Giovanni delle Bande Nere to the same model.  Cf., among other things, Freedman (1995). For an overview of Aretino’s relationship to Titian cf. Larivaille (1997), 288 – 295.  Cf. the contribution of Marco Faini in this volume.

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own – if he withholds his sources, just as he does with some of his textual rewritings, as for example when he clandestinely plagiarizes volgarizzamenti? Discussing a ‘refiguring’ of someone else’s authorship undoubtedly implies a methodological challenge. The investigation of ‘inter-author-ial’ dynamics demands a different approach from the investigation of inter-text-ual processes. Unlike a rewriting, a ‘re-figuring’ cannot be argued merely by making a philological comparison between texts, or by citing the author’s own meta-poetical affirmations: an author does not necessarily re-figure the same authors he rewrites, nor does he necessarily re-figure those he explicitly designates as his models. I maintain nonetheless that such an operation of ‘re-figuring’ is textually traceable, especially when we are dealing with early modern Italian literature. As scholarship has abundantly demonstrated,¹⁴ the sixteenth century sees the emergence of historical auctores who progressively substitute the timeless auctoritates of the Middle Ages. This new notion of the author does not conform with either that of the individual subject or with a mere intra-textual function. Rather, authorship is understood as a literary construction, as a discourse expressing a poetological and socio-political stance; as such, authorship is liable to transformation. Such transformation of an authorial figure is what I mean by ‘re-figuring’. Given the increasingly artificial and discursive character of literary authorship in the sixteenth century, my proposal is that the imitatio auctorum should be understood and investigated not only in terms of the imitation of authors’ texts, but also in terms of the imitation of authors’ authorships. Such an investigation pertains primarily to the realm of textual analysis: literary authorship is for the most part perceived through reading, and appropriated and adapted through writing.¹⁵ Aretino is one of the best examples of a man of letters who regards his authorial identity as explicitly artificial, as a discourse geared towards cultural, social and commercial dynamics. (Aretino may even be considered as the “author of himself as an author”;¹⁶ his literary production seems to aim precisely at the construction of his own authorial figure). It seems reasonable to suppose that such an authorship builds on existing models, rather than emerging ex nihilo or being deterministically shaped by the socio-cultural setting. In the following pages I will argue that one of the primary sources of Aretino’s anti-literary authorial posture is a literary author – a writer Aretino never rewrites

 Cf. Nelting (2005). Greenblatt’s (1980) concept of Renaissance authorship as ‘self-fashioning’ is still crucial for contemporary scholarship. On the issue of the literary subject in Renaissance literature cf., among others, Hempfer (2001), as well as the concepts of ‘Autorisierung’ (cf. Oesterreicher, Regn, Schulze 2003) and ‘Selbstautorisierung’ (Nelting 2011). Cf. also Berensmeyer’s, Buelens’ and Demoor’s concept of ‘authorship as cultural performance’ (2012).  Authorship also has a non-textual dimension. Particularly important in the case of Aretino are his portraits, which exceed the boundaries of this analysis. Among others, cf. Freedman (1995), Boillet (2008), Procaccioli (2008).  Cf. Fantappiè (2016).

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and does not often mention, but whom he has undoubtedly read: Lucian of Samosata. In the absence of any obvious intertextual common ground, Aretino’s relationship to Lucian has not been investigated.¹⁷ My hypothesis is that Aretino reprises Lucian on another level – that is, as an authorial model – and that the concealment of his model is deliberate. This will not come as a surprise if we consider that Aretino’s oeuvre is studded with hidden palimpsests and unacknowledged influences. I will try to substantiate my hypothesis with a number of textual analyses, focusing on a specific and exemplary case study, the above-mentioned incipit of the second giornata of the Dialogo. I will investigate this as an imitation of both an author’s text and an authors’ authorship – as a rewriting of Virgil and as a re-figuring of Lucian. I will begin by analysing the text as a rewriting of Virgil’s Aeneid, of Cambiatore’s volgarizzamento, and of Aretino’s own rewritings (1). In the second part (2) of my paper, I will investigate the textual traces of the appropriation and adaptation of the authorial figure of Lucian of Samosata. As I will demonstrate, in the Dialogo Aretino does not reprise Lucian’s authorship tout court. ¹⁸ My claim is that Aretino takes his cue from ‘Lucianists’ of his time (for example, Ariosto, Niccolò Franco and other famous readers of Lucian and Erasmus, who moved in Aretino’s circle from the second half of the thirties), but also, directly, from a specific edition of Lucian in the vernacular: that published by Nicolò Zoppino, which was circulating in Venice after 1525. I will then argue that, in the Dialogo, Aretino extrapolates Lucian’s authorship from one text in particular which is contained in Zoppino’s edition: not the Dialogi meretricii [Dialogues of Courtesans], traditionally identified as his Lucianic model, but rather the Vera Historia [A True Story]. I attempt to show that Aretino rewrites Virgil’s text in the above-mentioned opening of the seconda giornata, but that he does so in the guise of an author à la Lucian: the Lucian of the Vera Historia. I will further analyse Aretino’s re-figuring of Lucian from both an external and an internal perspective. On the one hand I will tackle the author’s attitude towards other authors and literary tradition, that is, Lucian as a model for rewriting literary texts; on the other hand I will consider the author’s attitude towards himself, his self-stylisation, that is, Lucian as a model for the author’s alter egos. Finally (3) I will attempt to provide some preliminary reflections on the concept of ‘re-figuring’ as a complementary hermeneutic tool to that of ‘rewriting’. By synergistically examining the dynamics of rewriting and re-figuring in Aretino, I also hope to contribute to the understanding of the long neglected relationship between Aretino and classical antiquity.

 With the exception of Procaccioli (1999), 13, who argues for Aretino’s “classicismo lucianeo”.  Authorship is always shaped by a specific textual corpus, but this is especially true for Lucian, whose oeuvre spans a wide range of genres and topics and whose reception in early modern Italian literature has been characterized by a multitude of literary identities. Cf. § 3.

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1 Rewriting 1.1 Rewriting Virgil Following the Ragionamento and mirroring its structure (both are divided into three giornate), Aretino’s Dialogo consists of a fictional conversation between Nanna and her daughter Pippa about the advantages of the profession of prostitute. The second giornata, devoted to examples of male ungratefulness, opens with a short story about a nobleman – a barone – who manages to escape from the horrors of the Sack of Rome in 1527. After a storm, he is found shipwrecked by a signora who rules over a city; she welcomes him, provides him with help, and, despite having previously vowed to remain faithful to her dead husband, finally surrenders to a passionate love affair with him. Shortly afterwards, however, the barone – bound, as he claims, to a mission – proceeds with his journey, leaving the woman heartbroken and suicidal. The story is evidently a rewriting of the Virgilian episode of Dido and Aeneas. Yet, unlike Virgil’s text, Aretino’s lacks any form of intervention from above, either from a god or from fatum. While Aeneas leaves Dido in order to fulfil his destiny, the barone’s explanation (he too allegedly has a city to found) sounds like an absurd excuse. Rome is no longer an ideal place to struggle for, only a burnt pile of rubble to escape from as quickly as possible. Its destruction – quite unlike the destruction of Virgil’s Troy, which is the palimpsest of Aretino’s description of the Sack of Rome – is not compensated by any utopian alternative. The second giornata has always been regarded as the ultimate proof of Aretino’s anti-normative, subversive attitude towards literary tradition – a further major topos of the reception of his authorial figure.¹⁹ In actual fact, the passage ‘desacralizes’ the author par excellence (Paul Larivaille speaks of “un acte délibérément sacrilège”)²⁰ with regards to both content and the literary genre. The genre of dialogue, glorified by Bembo (in Asolani, 1505, and Prose della volgar lingua, 1525) and Castiglione (Cortegiano, 1528), is twisted into profanity. Even more flagrant is the dissolution of the epic narrative of Virgil into a subplot lacking any exemplary character or systematic structure. Any element of ‘order’ or ‘norm’ in the Aeneid has been erased and replaced by its contrary; Aretino’s is a world of chaos and problematic self-assertion,

 Another topos is the author’s immorality, largely testified by his contemporaries and later endowed with both positive and negative symbolical value. Notoriously, Aretino is used to embody the ethical and political decline of Italy in the Cinquecento in De Sanctis’s Storia della letteratura italiana, 1870, because of his alleged immorality. A few decades later, Guillaume Apollinaire, Giovanni Papini and Tommaso Marinetti all – mutatis mutandis – refer to Aretino as a positive model of iconoclastic immorality and as a kind of avant-gardist ante litteram. For an overview of Aretino’s reception in Italy cf. Innamorati (1957), 7– 89; for an overview of the reception in Europe cf. Fantappiè (2016).  Larivaille (1983), 45. Davico Bonino (1966), 45, speaks of “Virgilio degradato”.

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generated by an authorial figure fashioning himself as an opponent of social and literary constraints.²¹

1.2 Rewriting Virgil’s volgarizzamenti Several passages of Aretino’s text are accurate translations of Virgil’s Aeneid. Philologists²² adduced this seconda giornata in order to free Aretino from the shame of being the ignorant he claims to be (“sempre mi sono doluto di non essere interprete de lo idioma latino”).²³ However, in 1983 Claudio Marangoni demonstrated that Aretino had adapted, and even largely plagiarized, the translation of the Aeneid by Tommaso Cambiatore da Reggio (c. 1365 – 1444) – thus perpetrating one of those “appropriazioni spicce e senza scrupoli”²⁴ typical of the early age of print culture. The volgarizzamento had already undergone an “unscrupulous appropriation”. Composed around 1430, it barely circulated as a manuscript before being printed in 1532 by Bernardino de’ Vitali and ‘corrected’ and edited by Giovanpaolo Vasio. Six years later Vasio republished the translation as his own, not even bothering to change publisher. Aretino extensively copies the volgarizzamento. ²⁵ Yet, he manages to transform Cambiatore’s accurate translation of Virgil into a sharp satire of the Latin source text. While allowing the signora to quote Cambiatore’s version in full and thus closely paraphrase Dido’s words, Aretino drastically condenses Aeneas’s long speech about the importance of his mission. The speech of the barone is still a mosaic of quotations from the volgarizzamento, yet it is so laconic and lacking in logical connectives that the argumentation sounds incoherent – an impression strengthened by the insertion of meaningless Latin words: A la fine, con poche parole disse che non negava gli obblighi che aveva seco, e che sempre era per tenergli ne la mente, e che non pensò mai di partirsi senza dirgnele; negando con volto in-

 On Aretino’s overcoming of Renaissance ‘anthropology’ in Ragionamento and Dialogo cf. Mariani and Nelting (2003).  Especially Paratore (1967).  Aretino (1997– 2002 [1546]), III, 297 (=Lettere, III, 291).  Dionisotti (1967), 241.  For instance, Cambiatore writes: “O Giove, andrà costui per mio dispetto? / Et befferà un stranier mia Signoria? / Et mie arme non faranno alcun effetto? / Et non lo seguiranno in ogni via? / Et altri traran fuor navi? Andate, et foco / Portate et arme, e con e’ remi via, / Che dico o dove son? Chi di fuor di luoco / Mi tol la mente? Ahi Didon infelice, / Tua fortuna crudel hor lungi è poco, / Quando potea doveal far, c’hor non lice”. Virgil (1532), k6r-v. Aretino’s version: “O Iddio, andrassene costui a mio dispetto, e un forestiero spregerà la mia signoria, e le mie forze non hanno a poter nulla seco e nol seguiranno per tutto il mondo? Su, portate arme e fuoco! Ma che dico io? E dove sono? E chi mi toglie la mente dal suo luogo? Ahi, infelice, la tua fortuna crudele è poco lungi: io doveva far ciò quando io poteva, e non ora che non posso”. Aretino (2005 [1536]), 331. Cf. Marangoni (1983), 533 – 534.

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vetriato di averle promesso di torla per moglie, dando la colpa del suo andarsene a celi celorum: e le giurò che l’angelo gli era apparito e comandatogli gran faccende.²⁶

With his misappropriation of Cambiatore’s text and his distorting transformation of Virgil’s plot, Aretino overtly breaks the general rules of literary production, especially with regards to the practice of imitatio. Aretino’s gesture is a “calculated deviation from the norm”,²⁷ and the significance of this deviation emerges in a comparison with his devotional writings. This part of Aretino’s oeuvre has been overlooked – a fact which is strictly related to the neglect of his implicit, but nonetheless existing,²⁸ ‘positive’ poetological stances and to his canonization as a mere iconoclastic figure.

1.3 Rewriting Aretino’s own Rewritings Only in recent years has scholarship fully taken into account that Aretino, “il gran colosso bestiale Antichristo della nostra età” (as Anton Francesco Doni defined him in his Terremoto of 1556), has also authored a dozen biblical and hagiographic rewritings. It is, as Aretino’s publishing history clearly attests, no marginal endeavour. After his arrival in Venice in 1527, Aretino performs his self-legitimation as a uomo di lettere with a double-edged strategy: none of his “volumi allegri” (erotic dialogues, satirical comedies) is to leave the officina of his publisher Marcolini without being accompanied by a “volume divoto” (rewritings of the Bible and hagiographic production).²⁹ As attested by Marcolini’s catalogues, Aretino’s religious texts went into far more reprints than any of his other works;³⁰ they were immediately translated into French³¹ and included in the first Index Librorum Prohibitorum of 1557 (his erotic texts didn’t join the Index until two years later). While most modern readers associate him with pornography, Aretino’s fame among his contemporaries came mostly from his devotional production.

 Aretino (2005 [1536]), 328.  In an essay on Aretino’s Sonetti, Bernard Huss (2013), 215, speaks of a “kalkulierte Ostentation lyrischer Normabweichung” – a remark applicable to the whole of Aretino’s oeuvre.  On Aretino’s “poetica della non poetica” and the need to “ipotizzare il silenzio di una poetica che non è stata enunciata o lo è stata in termini ellittici e criptici”, cf. Procaccioli (1999), 9 – 10.  In 1534 Marcolini, along with Ragionamento and Cortegiana, publishes Aretino’s rewriting of the Passion (Passione di Gesù) and the Psalms (I sette salmi della penitentia di David). In 1535 – 1536 Aretino issues the Umanità di Cristo in three volumes, immediately followed by the Dialogo. In 1538 Aretino complements the publication of Lettere (which consecrates him as “flagello dei principi”) with the Umanità di Cristo, the Genesi and Vita di Maria Vergine. For a detailed investigation of Aretino’s religious production cf. Boillet (2007a).  Cf. Quondam (1995).  Jean Vauzelles (1539 – 1542), a cleric from Lyon close to Marguerite of Navarra, translated Passione and Umanità in 1539, Sette salmi della penitentia di David in 1540 and Genesi in 1542. On Aretino’s reception in France cf. Conconi (2006a).

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Virgil’s texts act as palimpsests for both “volumi allegri” and “divoti”. Aretino makes use of the description of Aeolus’s storm (Aeneid I, 81– 143) in the Umanità di Cristo of 1535 for two episodes of the Gospels (Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus walking on water), and immediately following that, in the above-mentioned Dialogo of 1536, for the narration of the barone’s shipwreck.³² Aretino expands and exalts the tragic majesty of Virgil’s narrative in his rewritings of the Bible, only to drastically condense and radically overturn it a few months later in his erotic dialogue (his insertion of a joke comparing the barone to a ship’s mouse coming out of a hole in the ‘sack’ of Rome³³ is the acme of the ‘desacralisation’ of Virgil). Élise Boillet³⁴ has pointed to another Virgilian passage (Aeneid IV) rewritten twice by Aretino within a short period, once again with diametrically opposed results. Aretino opens his first rewriting of the Gospels, Passione di Gesù Cristo (1534), with a description of Christ taking leave of his mother which recalls the episode of the Congedo di Cristo dalla madre as it occurs in the Meditationes vitae Christi by Pseudo-Bonaventura and in the Imitatio Christi by Thomas à Kempis.³⁵ Aretino’s incipit closely follows the texts of the Meditationes, narrating how Jesus calls his mother to announce his departure for Jerusalem. But then Aretino suddenly stops in his tracks, saying that he must contradict himself because, in fact, Jesus avoids the Virgin Mary and hangs back with the Apostles.³⁶ Why add this correction and why add it as a correction? Aretino attempts to create a clever transition between two heterogeneous source texts by overexposing their very junction, the beginning of his rewriting of Aeneid IV. In Virgil, it is Aeneas who hangs back with his comrades

 Again, Aretino employs Cambiatore’s translation. Cambiatore: “Poi, detto ciò, [Eolo] con la sua lancia percosse / Il cavo monte ov’egli ha sua potenza, / E venti, come gente in schiera fosse, / Ruinan fuor per la concessa porta, / Et di lor fiati la terra turbosse, / Poi sovra ‘l mar si puoser per far morta / La gente de Troiani, e ognun dal fondo / Riversa ‘l tutto, e’l basso in alto porta, / Inseme Africo et Noto et Euro ‘l mondo / Rivolgon d’onte, e ognun gran grido leva”. Virgil (1532), A6v – A8v (= Aeneis I, 81– 144; 147– 157). Aretino: “Christo […] ascese nel monte: et orando al Patre, ecco i venti; che rovinano fuora dalla spelunca, ove egli alberga; quasi gente in schiera. Et movendo piogge, e nembi, con la violenza de i loro fiati conturbano l’aria, et la spargono di nuvoli. Affrico, Noto, et Euro rivolgendo le onde alzano il grido”. Aretino (1535), O2v – O3v. Cf. Conconi (2006b), 186 – 187.  “[…] un Barone romanesco, non romano, uscito per un buco del sacco di Roma, come escono i topi, essendo in non so in che nave, fu gittato con molti suoi compagni, da la bestialità de’ venti pazzi, al liti di una gran cittade, de la quale era padrona una Signora”. Aretino (2005 [1536]), 317.  Cf. Boillet (2007b).  In the religious zeal of the early sixteenth century this episode raises new interest among writers and painters such as Correggio and Lorenzo Lotto. On the relationship between this passage by Aretino and Correggio’s Commiato di Cristo dalla Madre and Lotto’s Commiato di Cristo dalla Madre respectively 1513 and 1521, cf. Boillet (2007b).  “Onde chiamata a sé la Vergine, nido dello Spirito Santo, che udendo la voce di Cristo sentì … Oimè! Che io vacillo parlando di Gesù, però che vedendolo col pensiero prepararsi alla sua Passione, ho detto che egli chiamò a sé Maria, dovendo dire che mentre favellava co’ Discepoli di andare alla ultima cena, si guardava da lei, che si stava col core fitto ne le contemplazioni non si accorgendo de l′ordine che si dava alla partita di Cristo”. Aretino (1534), A4r.

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in order to hide from Dido, as he doesn’t know how to address the “reginam furentem” (Aeneid IV, 283). Aretino’s Jesus, however, avoids Mary for the opposite reason: out of pietas. During the farewell scenes, both Aeneas and the protagonist of Aretino’s story in the Dialogo, the barone, disguise their sadness and list the virtues of the women they are leaving. Virgil insists on Aeneas’s motionlessness: Aeneas keeps his eyes stock-still (“immota […] lumina”, Aeneid IV, 331– 332), staring at an immaterial object, his mission. Conversely, Aretino constantly underlines that Jesus sees his mother and follows her with his eyes. Aretino’s Jesus speaks to Mary “dolcemente”, showing her pity and compassion and even becoming “obietto della pietade” himself.³⁷ In the Umanità di Cristo (1535), Jesus’s pietas towards his mother is even more pronounced: Christ is defined as the epitome of pietas (“Gesù, che per essere la istessa pietade”).³⁸ In his devotional and erotic writings, Aretino twice rewrites the same source text, Virgil’s story of Dido and Aeneas. However, the results are antithetical. Jesus is the true pius Aeneas. Actually, he is even more pius than Aeneas: Aretino’s fictional Jesus seems to outdo the biblical Jesus thanks to his Virgilian pietas. ³⁹ The figure of the barone, on the other hand, is completely lacking in pietas. Thus, the story of the barone and the signora turns the two most authoritative text of Aretino’s time, the Aeneid and the Bible, on their heads. In this respect, the passage I have discussed is an example of the anti-normative aspect of Aretino’s oeuvre. On the other hand, the text is inextricably linked to Aretino’s devotional writings and should be regarded as a complement to them. As a rewriting, this passage is not only a ‘desacralisation’ of Virgil, but also the reverse side of the ‘sacralisation’ already performed in Passione and Umanità. In his rewritings, Aretino approaches literary tradition not as a paradigm, but as a repertoire. Every element of this repertoire is able to undergo diverse – and even radically contradictory – transformations. For Aretino, rewriting means creating a network of seemingly irreconcilable elements, such as pornography and devotion, classical antiquity and Christianity, minimum and maximum pietas. Here the network consists of Virgil and the Dialogo on the one side, and the ‘sacralisation’ and the ‘desacralisation’ of Virgil on the other. In this respect, the derivative character of Aretino’s literary oeuvre entails an implicit but ‘positive’, and even potentially normative, poetological stance.

 Aretino (1534), A5v. Cf. also Boillet (2007b), 227– 234.  Aretino (1535), T2r-v. Cf. also Boillet (2007b), 227– 234.  Notoriously, in the early Cinquecento, rewritings of this sort which manipulate the Scriptures as literary texts are anything but iconoclastic and are embedded in a lively tradition (crucial – although diverging – examples are Jacopo Sannazaro’s and Teofilo Folengo’s religious rewritings).

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2 Re-figuring 2.1 Reading Lucian Virgil is not the only classical author to be rewritten by messer Pietro. The letter Aretino writes to Michelangelo on 25 September 1537,⁴⁰ for instance, blatantly reprises Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, alternating between summary and verbatim plagiarism; his comedy Talanta (1542) borrows several elements from Plautus’s Miles gloriosus; his only tragedy, Orazia (1546), clearly derives from Livy’s Deche, which was published in Venice (Giunti) in 1540 in the translation of Jacopo Nardi (1476 – 1563), a Florentine refugee and correspondent of Aretino. Since his rediscovery at the behest of Manuele Crisolora at the beginning of the fourteenth century, Lucian of Samosata had been one of the most influential classical authors in early modern Italy. In Aretino’s time his texts were available in both Latin and the vernacular.⁴¹ Nevertheless, the oeuvre of Aretino – the plagiarist who claims that “tutto è ciancia, eccetto il far presto e del suo”⁴² – does not exhibit any obvious intertextual relationship with that of the Greek author. Lucian’s name occurs only twice in the vast corpus of the Lettere. ⁴³ Such an absence is striking, especially considering that Aretino read Lucian; scholars have managed to provide a great deal of textual evidence of this in the last century. Aretino’s Ragionamento opens with a mock salutation to Lucian’s Somnium seu Gallus [The Dream or the Cock], the dialogue between the cobbler Micyllus and a talking cockerel who turns out to be a reincarnation of the philosopher Pythagoras.⁴⁴ Furthermore, the reference is part of Aretino’s dedicatory letter to the monicchio, a paradoxical encomium of a monkey, which displays a structure analogous to Lucian’s famous praise of the fly (Musca). In addition, Aquilecchia has pointed out several plagiarisms of the pseudo-Lucianic Amores contained in Aretino’s Ragionamento and Dialogo as well as in the Dia-

 Aretino (1997– 2002 [1538]), I, 277– 279 (=Lettere I, 193).  For the reception of Lucian in Renaissance Italy cf., among others, Robinson (1979), 81– 94; Mattioli (1980); Marsh (1998) (especially 1– 41 on Lucian in the Quattrocento); Geri (2011) (on Alberti and Pontano); Marsh (2012) (on Alberti); Riccucci (2017). For a close analysis of Lucian’s vernacular editions in fifteenth-century Italy cf. Panizza (2007); for an investigation of Lucian motives in Renaissance Italian literature cf. Panizza (2005). For a complete overview of the Latin and vernacular translations of Lucian in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cf. De Faveri (2002).  Cf. Aretino (1997– 2002 [1538]), I, 417 (=Lettere, I, 303) and Aretino (2005 [1536]), 211.  Aretino (1997– 2002 [1538]), I, 409 (=Lettere I, 297) and Aretino (1997– 2002 [1550]), V, 146 (=Lettere, V, 131).  “Salve, mona! Salve, dico, poiché la Fortuna ancora nelle bestie tien mano, e però ti tolse di donde nascesti, dandoti a me che, per essermi accorto che sei un gran maestro sotto la forma di gatto, sì come era Pitagora un filosofo sotto la forma di gallo, ti intitolo le fatiche, anzi lo spasso, di XVIII mattine”. Aretino (2005 [1534]), 3; the reference to Lucian was noticed, among others, by Carlo Cordié and Paolo Procaccioli, cf. Aretino (2005 [1534]), 3.

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logo di Giulia e Maddalena (whose attribution is, however, uncertain). For instance, Lucian’s description of Praxiteles’ statue of Venus in the temple of Cnidos is echoed verbatim both in the first giornata of the Ragionamento and in the description of Tortora contained in the Dialogo di Giulia e Maddalena. ⁴⁵ The general thematic similarity of Aretino’s erotic dialogues with Lucian’s Dialogi meretricii [Dialogues of the Courtesans] has also been highlighted,⁴⁶ particularly with regard to the recurrent topic of the education of a young prostitute, which features in Lucian’s Crobile and Corynna and informs both Aretino’s Ragionamento and Dialogo as well as the Dialogo di Giulia e Maddalena. Aretino must have read Lucian in the edition published by Zoppino in 1525 (either in the first edition or in its reprint of 1529, which displays the same texts and paratexts reorganized into dialogi giocosi and amatori). Two reasons can be adduced for this: firstly, Zoppino’s is the first and only edition to include the Amores, which were never translated by Quattrocento humanists. Secondly, Aretino reprises some of Zoppino’s paratexts. There is, for example, a striking similarity between the short summary of one of the Lucianic dialogues (“Dialogo d’una meretrice che exhorta sua figliuola ad esser meretrice, et l’insegna che via debbi tenire se vuol guadagnare”)⁴⁷ and the title of the first giornata of the Dialogo (“Dialogo nel quale la Nanna insegna a la Pippa sua figliuola a esser puttana […]”).⁴⁸ The volgarizzamento published by Zoppino was printed under the title I dilettevoli dialogi / le vere narrationi / le facete epistole di Luciano philosopho / di greco in volgare novamente tradotte et historiate. Although presented as new (“novamente tradotte”), the translation actually dates back to the previous century:⁴⁹ for the most part, it is the one composed in Ferrara between 1471 and 1491⁵⁰ and attributed to Nicolò da Lonigo (or Leoniceno, 1428 – 1524),⁵¹ courtier, university professor, scholar

 Cf. Aquilecchia (1987), 13 and (2000), 455, where he claims that Lucian’s Amores are also the source of the opening of the same giornata.  Cf. Aquilecchia (2000), 453. There is, however, an evident discrepancy between the general tone of Lucian’s and Aretino’s erotic dialogues. In his introduction to Aretino, Nino Borsellino states: “Più che un esemplare di letteratura pornografica, nel senso letterale di opera di contenuto puttanesco (come il poemetto La puttana errante di Lorenzo Venier), il Ragionamento e il Dialogo sono un unicum che neppure i loro classici modelli, i Dialoghi delle cortigiane di Luciano, riescono a spiegare, chiusi come sono in uno schema bozzettistico e finanche idillico”. Borsellino (2005), XXIV.  Lucian (1525), IIII/r.  Aretino (2005 [1536]), 208.  With the exception of Dialogi meretricii and Amores. Cf. above, p. 56.  Cf. Mattioli (1980), 63.  In the edition of 1525, Zoppino publishes the volgarizzamento as an anonymous translation; in the edition of 1529 he claims that the translator is Leoniceno. Scholarship has often questioned Leoniceno’s ‘paternity’, because neither the only surviving copy of the translation as a manuscript (now in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: Chigi, L, VI, 215) nor Zoppino’s edition displays Leoniceno’s name. However, the presence of the emblem of the Estensi and the divisa of Ercole in the manuscript suggest that the translation can be attributed to Leoniceno. On the complex problem of the attribution of the volgarizzamento see Riccucci 2017. On Leoniceno, see Mugnai Carrara 1991.

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of Greek medicine and translator of Galen. It is widely known that Lucian played a crucial role at the court of Ferrara in the fifteenth century. In the age of Leonello d’Este (1441– 1450), Lucian’s fame was mostly promoted by Guarino da Verona (1374– 1460), who had translated Lucian’s Musca, Calumnia and Parasito during and after his stay in Constantinople (1403 – 1408); later, Lucian enthusiasts of all kinds gathered at the court of Ercole d’Este (1471– 1505). Pandolfo Collenuccio’s (1444– 1504) moral dialogues Apologi,⁵² posthumously published in 1526, were inspired by both Lucian and his most famous Quattrocento follower, Leon Battista Alberti. In one of them, the Specchio d’Esopo, Lucian features as a character and engages in dialogue with Aesop, Plautus and Ercole d’Este; in the “mirror” mentioned in the title they seek to find “quelli dui V V”,⁵³ that is, ‘verità’ (truth) and ‘virtù’ (virtue). Boiardo’s Timone, composed between 1486 and 1494, centres on the figure of the misanthrope and rewrites Lucian’s Timon, adapting it for the stage. Lucian is also one of the sources of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516); the descriptions of the journeys to the underworld and the moon contained in cantos XXIV and XXV openly reprise Lucian’s Menippus and Icaromenippus. Although integral to a context of Lucianism, Leoniceno’s translation remained relatively unknown until 1525, when Nicolò Zoppino printed it, conforming the language to Tuscan standards. The book enjoyed great popularity: between 1525 and 1551 it was republished seven times by four different printers, Zoppino (1525, 1529), Francesco Bindoni e Maffeo Pasini (1527, 1535/6), Bernardino Bindoni (1543), Giovanni de Farri (1541) and Giovanni Padoano (1551). It is significant that Zoppino mostly published classical texts “in lingua volgare diligentissimamente conversi”, as he writes in his preface to Dilettevoli dialogi;⁵⁴ his catalogue includes writers such as Plutarch, Herodian, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, as well as historians such as Livy, Sallust or Caesar. Zoppino’s edition features “dilettevoli dialogi, con le vere narrationi, & argute epistole”;⁵⁵ it includes dialogues (two of the fifteen dialogues were actually forgeries written by Quattrocento Lucianists, Alberti and Maffeo Vegio; another one, from the Dialogi mortuorum [Dialogues of the Dead], is an adaptation of Lucian by Giovanni Aurispa), letters, fictional writings (such as the narrations of the Vera Historia), and paradoxical prose (such as the famous encomium of the fly). Zoppino’s edition constitutes a turning point for the reception of Lucian, not only because it has the merit of popularizing him in the vernacular. The Italian Quattrocento understood Lucian as a moral philosopher: with all their differences, the most prominent texts of fifteenth-century Lucianism – Leon Battista Alberti’s Intercenales, Musca, Canis, Momus (composed in 1430s and 1440s), Pontano’s Charon (written  On Collenuccio cf. Mattioli (1980), 113 – 126. On Boiardo’s Timon cf. Mattioli (1980), 168 – 174. On Ariosto cf., among others, Marsh (1998), 92– 100.  For the Specchio d’Esopo cf. Collenuccio (1929), II.85 – 100; here II.94.  Lucian (1525), II/v.  Lucian (1525), II/v.

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around 1470 and published in 1491) and the above-mentioned Collenuccio dialogues – fostered, mutatis mutandis, an “interpretazione moralistica di Luciano”.⁵⁶ Zoppino’s Lucian, on the other hand, is a source of delight: the aim of the publisher is namely “Luciano philosopho dignissimo alla memoria de le genti reccare, accio che per me in parte s’ammendi i noiosi pensieri, & le fatiche umane, & con nuovi ragionamenti gli animi da varii fastidi & dolori occupati, rallegrare se possino”.⁵⁷ Without obliterating the ‘moral’ Lucian, Zoppino’s edition enriches his authorial figure with a further attribute, that of the writer “piacevole & ridicolo”. Thus in the vernacular, Lucian stands for a combination of serious content and comic style; his poetological position could be summed up in the formula serio ludere. Zoppino’s anthology also redesigns Lucian’s reception⁵⁸ with respect to the textual corpus. It has been regarded as innovative mainly because it included Dialogi meretricii and Amores (they had never been translated before, nor into Latin nor into volgare) and turned Lucian into a model for erotic literature in the vernacular.⁵⁹ The edition also, however, features a further novelty, whose significance has not yet received much attention: it introduced the Vera Historia to the Italian readership. Previously translated into Latin by Lilius Tifernas (1417– 1486) around 1441 and published in Naples in 1475 with scarce circulation, ⁶⁰ the Vera Historia only became truly influential as a vernacular text, when Zoppino printed it in Leoniceno’s translation. As I will later demonstrate, the sudden popularity of Vera Historia utterly transformed the reception of Lucian’s authorial figure in the Italian Cinquecento. In the Vera Historia, the major feature of the authorial voice is what Jacques Bompaire called “relative originality” in the sense of a “higher form of imitation” (“Disons encore que l’originalité relative de l’auteur est une forme supérieure de l’imitation”).⁶¹ In other words, in the Vera Historia Lucian presents himself – far more blatantly than in his other works – as a rewriter. He fashions himself as an author who understands literary production as the practice of selecting, appropriating

 Mattioli (1980), 199. Mattioli also claims that this “interpretazione moralistica” arises from the Humanists’ desire to project on Lucian “i caratteri ‘umanistici’ della sua opera: lo spirito critico, la libertà intellettuale, l’individualismo; [gli umanisti] non avvertono però la profonda differenza che esiste tra di loro e il samosatense; mentre nello scrittore antico l’atteggiamento critico e individualista nasce da una condizione di scetticismo, in loro invece è il frutto di una nuova fede. Essi perciò attribuiscono a Luciano una ricchezza morale che egli in realtà non possiede” (198). On Lucian as a “moral philosopher” in the Quattrocento cf. also Panizza (2007), 72.  Lucian (1525), II/v.  As compared to Latin translations in circulation. For a complete list cf. De Faveri (2002).  Cf. Panizza (2007), 82.  Cf. Marsh (1998), 192. Marsh claims that a passage from the fourth book of Intercoenales shows that Alberti may have read the Vera Historia (the reference would be to Vera Historia 2.45, where Lucian describes a race of men who swim lying on their backs with sails stretched between their erect members). For a critical edition of Tifernas’ translation, cf. Tifernas 1998.  Bompaire (1958), 742. For a closer investigation of the Vera Historia as a rewriting of literary and non-literary sources, cf. Möllendorf (2000).

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and combining existing texts, while rewriting them with a satirical and parodic or serious didactic aim. Such an attitude undoubtedly marks the whole of Lucian’s production; in his dialogue De parasito [Parasite], he tellingly declares parasitism a higher form of art than philosophy, because knowledge consists not in creating, but rather in discerning good elements from bad ones (just as bankers have to distinguish true coins from false ones) and in putting them to as good a use as possible.⁶² In Vera Historia, however, ‘literary parasitism’ plays an even greater role, both as a text-producing process and as a motif. On the one hand, Lucian reprises classical loci, e. g. famous passages from Homer, Herodotus, Hesiod and the Old Testament; on the other hand, the Vera Historia describes how the protagonist meets Homer and Herodotus themselves on his fantastic voyage – transformed into fictional characters and thus into elements of the narration itself. My claim is that Aretino re-figured Lucian’s authorship, extrapolating it from Zoppino’s edition and especially from the Vera Historia. In his preface to the Vera Historia Lucian states that poets, historians, philosophers boast that they are truth-tellers, when in fact they are liars. Even Homer wants us to believe in oneeyed giants and witches who can transform men into pigs; his Odysseus is the “guide and instructor”⁶³ of charlatanry (“archēgos kai didaskalos tēs bōmolochias”, Vera Historia I,3). As a poet himself, Lucian also lies, but in a much more tolerable way than the others, because he confesses to doing so. Here is the passage as it appears in Zoppino’s edition: […] mentendo i philosophi manifestamente essistimavano li altri creder dovesseno il falso per il vero, per la qual cosa anchora io da vanagloria mosso, volendo lasciare qualche cosa alli posteri, per non essere solo privo de tal libertade in finger favole, pero che non occorreva cosa degna de memoria narrare se potesse, alla menzogna me son rivolto. Et secondo il giudicio mio molto più tolerabilmente che gli altri, conciosia che veramente confesso mentire, per questo estimo meritamente non potere essere d’alcuno ripreso, pero che de non dire il vero prometto.⁶⁴

We are faced here with a paradox of self-reference, constructed like the paradox of Epimenides. All poets lie; I am a poet; I lie; but because I admit that I lie, I am actually telling the truth. Only when the poet lies, but uses his lies to unmask the lies of

 “Diremo che uno banchiero abbi l’arte de discernere le monete bone da le false, et che il parasito senza niuna arte conosca li huomini falsi da li boni, non manifestandosi, specialmente cossi presto li huomini come le monete, onde il saggio Euripide si lamenta dicendo, il non è impressa bolla niuna nel corpo de l’homo per la quale il si possa conoscere, tanto maggiore adunque è l’arte del parasito il quale più che uno indivino conosce et prevede cose cossì occulte et obscure. Ma sapere ritrovare parole atte et fatti accorti, per li quali il si faccia familiare, et dimostre di volere grandissimo bene al suo padrone, e non ti pare questo giudicio sufficiente de una grande apprensione e sapienza?”. Lucian (1525), XLVIr.  Lucian (1913), 251.  Lucian (1525), XCv-XCIr.

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others – only then he can be a truth-teller. Literary texts and authors can therefore convey truth precisely because of their fictitiousness: they can only be truthful if they unmask their own falsehood. As Massimo Fusillo puts it, “dans l’Histoire vraie, en effet, la poésie obtient le maximum d’approbation parce qu’elle n’aspire pas à la verité absolue”.⁶⁵ The contrasting fates of Homer and Hesiod in the narration of the Vera Historia reflect Lucian’s celebration of poetic invention over historical referentiality: Lucian places Homer, the father of poetry, in the Isles of the Blest, and Herodotus, the father of history, in the Isles of the Wicked.⁶⁶ The Vera Historia opens with the claim that the only way for a poet to avoid being a liar is to create a truthful fiction – alethē diegēmata, that is, a vera historia ⁶⁷ – which unmasks both its own falsehood and that of others. Lucian applies this paradox to his own authorship, placing it at the core of his self-presentation. His selffashioning strategy moves in two directions. On the one side, Lucian rewrites the texts of other authors in order to denounce their fictitiousness; on the other side, he inserts into his own texts several unmasked, downgraded counter-figures of himself, in order to denounce his own fictitiousness. All in all, Lucian stylises himself as an author who unmasks other writers and himself, in order to mask himself as an unmasked author.

2.2 Re-figuring Lucian In his Dialogo Aretino re-figures this Lucian; firstly with regards to his rewritings of authoritative texts, secondly with regards to his rewritings of himself (his alter egos).

2.2.1 Rewriting the Method of Rewriting: Alternative Reconstructions of Literary Tradition Aretino rewrites Virgil’s text, yet from the perspective of a Lucianic author. I shall provide two examples, starting with a description of the Lucianic sources. In the second part of the Vera Historia, Lucian tells the story of Cinyras, the bold and handsome young son of a king, who falls in love with the beautiful Helen of Troy and de-

 Fusillo (1988), 125.  Cf. Marsh (1998), 188.  The original title of Lucian’s text (alethē diegēmata) is plural, whereas the common Latin translation is singular. “Diegēmata is not really a book title but rather a rhetorical category […] [It] bears the general meaning ‘exercise’. […] The explanation of plural as a title may be simply be that welldocumented phenomenon, abstract nouns used in a concrete sense in the plural […] Why he chose diegēmata rather than (e. g.) istoria we cannot know, but it is worth pointing out that diegēseis as here defined [a collection of stories] would not have been appropriate, since the True History is a continuous narrative, not a collection of separate stories”. Cf. Cameron (2004), 75.

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cides to kidnap her, triggering Menelaus’s wrath and a series of warlike actions aimed at recovering the woman. It is of course a well-known plot, except for the fact that Helen appears to be madly in love with the young lad, consents to the abduction and behaves like an immoral woman. Well aware of her bad behaviour, she ends up crying and covering her face in shame: […] una cosa nova et insperata a caso accadette, però che Ciniro figliolo de Scintaro, grande et formoso, molto tempo impatientemente Helena amava, et essa palesemente allo amore del gargione inclinata se era, et inconvito se cignavano, et se porgevano da bever lun l’altro, e lor soli levandossi da sedere andavan passegiando per la selva, onde Ciniro, costretto così dall’amore come da poco conseglio, se deliberò de rapire Helena, per che ancora lei n’era contenta, et andarsene insieme ad una delle isole sopra iacenti, ovver a Pheloe, o a Tiroesa, et tolseno tre delli nostri compagni giurati delli più audaci che fosseno. Al padre suo lui non rivelò questa faccenda, perché ’l sapeva che gliel’avrebbe vietato. E poi che gli parve el tempo, condussero ad effetto questo inganno. E sopravenendo la notte nel tempo che io non era presente, per che era restato a dormire nel convito, costoro non sapendone li altri niente tolseno Helena seco, et se levorono in fretta dell’isola circa la mezza note. Menelao svegliato, vedendo il letto voido de la sua donna, comenciò a gridare, et avendo tolto il fratello in sua compagnia il se ne giva verso la corte del re Radamanto, et facendosi giorno, le spie disseno che avevano vista la nave non molto distante dal porto, e cosi Radamanto avendo messo in mare cinquanta eroi in una nave de un legno sodo di asfodello gli comandò che dovessino perseguitare coloro. E costoro, avendo navigato molto in fretta, circa il mezzo giorno aggionseno Ciniro et li compagni ch’erano già vicini a Tiroese, tanto poco gli mancò che non fosseno scapoli. Et avendo legata la nave con una catena fatta di rose la conducevano indietro. Helena piangeva, et per vergogna se copriva la faccia.⁶⁸

Another example: shortly afterwards, Lucian is approached by Ulysses who, acting unbeknownst to Penelope, hands him a letter and asks him to deliver it to Calypso on the island of Ogygia. Ulysses’ letter – a parodied summary of the plot of the Odyssey – ends with these words: “molto me pentisco di havere lasciato el bon tempo ch’io havea teco, et la immortalitade la qual tu me promettevi. E se io averò mai il tempo opportuno io ne fugirò, et veroti a ritrovare”.⁶⁹ By portraying Helen as a woman who unleashes wars with her whims and Ulysses as an old man wishing to win back his former young lover, Lucian is telling the inconvenient truth Homer omitted to tell; he is claiming that Homer’s texts are fictions. Aretino operates a re-figuring of the authorship of this Lucian, a writer who rewrites classical literary loci in order to unmask their fictitiousness. A further trait of Lucian’s authorship which undergoes a re-figuring in Aretino is his mock ignorance. Both Lucian and Aretino present – tongue in cheek – their derivative stories as original and new, playing subtly on the distinction between writing and rewriting. Lucian professes Helen’s tale to be “cosa nova et insperata”;⁷⁰ in his preface he underlines the “novitade et piacevolezza de la materia”, promising to nar-

 Lucian (1525), CVv-CVr.  Lucian (1525), CXr.  Lucian (1525), CVv.

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rate new and unheard-of events: “quelle cose che io vidi nel circulo della luna nove et inaudite, per ordine le narrarò”.⁷¹ The story of the barone and the signora contained in Aretino’s Dialogo is similarly studded with mock claims of novelty and originality. When Nanna presents her tale as a forgery (“traditoraggine”), Pippa contradicts her, insisting that Nanna’s expressions are actually brand new: “son nove di zecca le similitudini vostre”.⁷² At the end of Nanna’s tale, when Pippa unveils the primary source of the story (she narrates a dream in which Roman people scream that her mother stole the “fourth book” of Virgil), Nanna retorts that she has never heard of him and even allows herself to tease Virgil for not being clever enough to avoid having his own books stolen: Pippa. Mi pareva che tutta Roma gridasse a la strangolata: “Pippa, o Pippa, tua madre ladroncella, ha furato il quarto di Vergilio, e vassene facendo bella.” Nanna. Ah! ah! ah! Un gocciol gocciolo più ti faceva trasandare più oltre. Che domin so io chi cotestui sia? Ma senza intendere altro, egli debbe essere un badalone, lasciandosi tòrre il quarto di se stesso: e pò sicuramente gittar il resto ai cani, se così è.⁷³

Aretino builds his Dialogo upon a strategy of mock ignorance, seeking to exalt naiveté and illiteracy as guarantees of novelty. Nanna repeatedly shows off her alleged ability to employ words which diverge from their previous usage, especially when it comes to literary sources: […] io favello a la improvvisa, e non istiracchio con gli argani le cose che io dico in un soffio, e non in cento anni come fanno alcune stracca-maestri-che-gli-insegnano-a-fare-i-libri, togliendo a vittura il “dirollovi”, il “farollovi”, il “cacarollovi”, facendo le comedie con detti più stitichi che la stitichezza; e perciò ognuno corre a vedere il mio cicalare, mettendolo ne le stampe come il Verbum caro. ⁷⁴

By flaunting the originality of non-original passages, both Lucian and Aretino openly claim the right to act as parasites. Aretino re-figures Lucian by producing rewritings whose purpose is to stand up to a strictly regulated approach to authoritative texts. On the one hand, he poses as an anti-literary author whose writings are, nevertheless, ‘literature of literature’; on the other, he cynically appropriates the most untouchable milestones of literary tradition and forces them to reveal their fictitiousness. All in all, neither Lucian’s nor Aretino’s rewritings are mere parodical negations of their sources.⁷⁵ These alternative reconstructions of authoritative literary texts aim

 Lucian (1525), XCIr.  Ibid., 317.  Ibid., 334.  Aretino (2005 [1536]), 281.  Here I am also referring to the category of “negation” developed within the ‘theory of transformation’ of the Collaborative Research Center 644 “Transformations of antiquity”. Cf. Böhme et al. (2011), 52.

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at unmasking the falsehood of literature as a discourse on truth, in order to rehabilitate literature as a discourse of truth⁷⁶ – projecting the figure of an author as a truthteller, with the implication that the only way to tell the truth is to unmask falsehood. As far as Aretino’s re-figuring of Lucian is concerned, Ariosto’s mediation seems crucial. I am referring to the famous Canto XXXV of Orlando furioso (1516), where St John the Evangelist, talking with Astolfo on the moon, raises the issue of poetry’s truthfulness. St John claims that the only way to reach the truth (“’l ver”) is to reverse the stories told by poets (“al contrario l’istoria converti”). Dido’s story is a typical example of a story that is rewritten from a diametrically opposed perspective, through an alternative reconstruction of the classical text: […] E se tu vuoi che ’l ver non ti sia ascoso, tutta al contrario l’istoria converti: che i Greci rotti, e che Troia vittrice, e che Penelopea fu meretrice. Da l’altra parte odi che fama lascia Elissa, ch’ebbe il cor tanto pudico; che riputata viene una bagascia, solo perché Maron non le fu amico. […]⁷⁷

Ariosto’s reference to Lucian is patent, and Aretino makes it even more conspicuous when he rewrites Ariosto in the Marfisa (1532), whose incipit reads “D’arme e d’amor veraci fitioni / vengo a cantar con semplice parole”;⁷⁸ “veraci fitioni” (“true fictions”) is as an overt quotation of the title of Lucian’s Vera Historia. Even more striking is Aretino’s Orlandino (1534), whose first ottave can be regarded as a twofold rewriting of Lucian; Aretino rewrites Ariosto with the aim of unmasking his lies, his “menzogne de l’armi e de gli amori”.⁷⁹ Turpino, “prete poltrone”, is accused of having unleashed a number of false stories told by poets: “Mercé vostra, pedante cicalone, / ciascun poeta e ciaratan valente / dice tante menzogne in stil altiero / che di aprir bocca si vergogna il Vero”.⁸⁰ Pulci, Boiardo and Ariosto are expressly called liars, while Aretino boasts of being the only one who tells the truth: “Questa è la verità! Non dice fola, / come ser Pulci, il Conte e l’Ariosto / il mio sol Aretin, che pel ciel vola / con quel lume che ’l sol da mezzo agosto”.⁸¹ There are, however, major differences between Ariosto’s text and Aretino’s. One of the most important is that, in Aretino’s Dialogo, the narrator of the stories “al con-

     

Cf. Stefano Jossa’s articles (2013 and 2014) on literature and fiction in the Italian Renaissance. Ariosto (1976 [1516]), 913 – 914 (Canto XXXV, 27– 28). Ibid., 48. Ibid., 217. Ibid., 217. Ibid., 217– 8.

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trario” is not a saint but a lowered alter ego of the author himself, very similar to the protagonist of Lucian’s Vera Historia.

2.2.2 Rewriting the Author: Reprises of the Author’s Alter Egos Both Lucian’s and Aretino’s authorships feature a high degree of self-reflexivity, as indicated by their preference for homodiegetic narrators who are also self-projections. Such use of narrating alter egos challenges the concept of the author. The text projects the author as a split entity: he is a subject both ‘constituting’ and ‘constituted’. Furthermore, Lucian’s and Aretino’s alter egos are styled as outsiders: their point of view is marginal and de-centred. Lucian, the protagonist of Vera Historia and manifestly a double of the real author, is an anti-hero lost in a world where he can merely survive.⁸² His moral conduct is far from flawless: he acts as a pimp by delivering Ulysses’ letter, and lies when Calypso asks if Penelope is really as beautiful as people say. In the Dialogo, the protagonist Nanna – unanimously acknowledged as Aretino’s alter ego – is a courtesan and anything but a saint, a fact which she proudly flaunts. In addition, both characters – Lucian and Nanna – come across as unreliable narrators: ignorant and forgetful, they claim not to have witnessed the facts they report. Lucian says he was asleep during Helen’s kidnapping – nonetheless, he narrates the story as an eyewitness. Analogously, Aretino’s Nanna pretends not to be the protagonist of her own autobiographical stories, contradicting the very evidence she provides to the reader. She insists on the unreliability of her memory (“ho dato la memoria a rimpedulare”)⁸³ and shows off her incompetence as a story-teller (“lo scompiglio ne lo raccontarlo pietosamente”;⁸⁴ “ho studiato tutta la vita mia in avanzar denari, e non leggende e detti quisiti”).⁸⁵ On a thematic level, Nanna undoubtedly echoes the protagonists of Lucian’s Dialogue of courtesans. Yet, as an authorial counter-figure she reprises the protagonist of Lucian’s Vera Historia. This similarity between alter egos contributes to linking the authorships of Lucian and Aretino – despite, of course, major differences. Aretino transformed Virgil’s story of Dido and Aeneas far more drastically than Lucian did Homer (i. e. inserting a rough description of a contemporary event, the Sack of Rome, and radicalizing the figure of the protagonist). One of the reasons is that, unlike Lucian, Aretino had to deal with a literary milieu which aimed at a “unificazione e rifondazione culturale”⁸⁶. Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua (1525) are a crucial example of such an attempt to re-functionalize literary tradition in order to “unify” and     

For a study of the ‘satirical hero’ in Lucian cf. Camerotto (2014). Aretino (2005 [1536]), 323. Ibid., 331. Ibid., 356. Mazzacurati (1985), 19.

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“re-found” culture. Aretino’s position is provokingly discrepant. His poetological proposal consists in a re-figuring of Lucian, that is to say, in producing alternative reconstructions of authoritative texts and creating distorted alter egos of himself as an author. In this way Aretino tackles literary tradition not as a paradigm but as a repertoire, an approach which is radically different from the normative stances assumed in the cultural and literary context of his time.

2.3 Aretino’s Lucian In Aretino’s Dialogo, Lucian is no longer the “moral philosopher” of his Quattrocento followers, neither he is the “reforming Lucian”⁸⁷ reprised by Nicolò Franco, Ludovico Domenichi, Anton Francesco Doni, Ortensio Lando, Celio Secondo Curione – all of whom, though in different ways, linked Lucian far more explicitly and inseparably to the writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Thomas More. Unlike Aretino, Franco and the other poligrafi do not re-figure Lucian: rather, they rewrite his texts, closely copying his most abstruse motives (Franco, for example, adopts the motif of speaking lamps in his Pistole vulgari, 1542)⁸⁸ or text forms (Doni and Lando produce bizarre encomia of trivial objects modelled on Lucian’s praise of the fly). In doing so, they seem to obliterate the pars construens of Lucian’s authorial figure: his rehabilitation of literature as a fictional – and therefore possibly truthful – discourse, along with his ‘positive’ self-stylisation as an author who practises a discourse of truth, rather than a discourse on truth. As I have already pointed out, Aretino rarely mentions Lucian in his texts. One of the only two occurrences is in the letter to Fausto Sebastiano Longiano of 17 December 1537.⁸⁹ In the first part of the letter Aretino performs a self-presentation full of obviously Lucianic motives, all related to the Vera Historia: first of all, a polemic against literates who lie to their public and convey falsehoods (“il litterato […] per prosunzion d’altri usa ingannar coloro che più si fidano di lui, e bene spesso siamo vituperati da le sentenzie che dànno a l’opre nostre le sue ostinazioni”). Secondly, the motive of eyes and subjective eye-witnessing as opposed to the sharp but blind “eyes of science” (“Io non so quale autore antico o moderno non andasse al cielo per l’alterezza, o ne lo abisso per la vergogna, udendo lodarsi o biasimarsi dagli accorgimenti del vostro vedere ciò che non veggono gli occhi acuti de la scienza”).⁹⁰ Thirdly, the author’s self-fashioning as unmasked and ignorant but nevertheless wiser (“io porto il viso de l’ingegno smascarato, e il mio non sapere un’acca in-

 Cf. Mattioli (1980), 180 – 190, and Panizza (2007), 73.  Panizza (2005), 83 – 88.  Aretino (1997– 2002 [1538]), I, 407– 409 (=Lettere I, 297).  This motif recurs in the Vera Historia. Cf. especially the well-known episode of removable eyes (=Vera Historia I.25), reprised among others in Poliziano’s Lamia; on the motive of eyes in Lucian cf. Panizza (2005), 72– 78.

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segna a quegli che sanno la elle e la emme […]. Imita qua, imita là, tutto è fava, si può dire a le composizioni dei più”). In the second part of the letter, Aretino polemically addresses his contemporaries who imitate Lucian only as producers of mock encomia, targeting in particular Francesco Berni’s Capitolo dei cardi. Aretino claims that Lucian’s oeuvre has a far more relevant significance than his nonsensical eulogies of insects: “Che vi par di quei che si credettero trottar per omnia saecula, coi capitoli dei Cardi, degli Orinali e de le Primiere, non si accorgendo che sì fatte ciance partoriscono un nome che muore il dì che egli nasce? Altro doppo le Lodi de la mosca compose Luciano”.

3 Notes for a Concept of ‘Re-figuring’ The issue of authorship in early modern Italian literature has been widely discussed. To this day, however, there is no study on literary transformations that seeks to complement the investigation of authorship with that of inter-text-uality, in order to shed light on ‘inter-author-ial’ dynamics. The concept of ‘re-figuring’ – i. e. the act of appropriating and adapting someone else’s authorial figure with the aim of fashioning one’s own – appears to be especially suitable for the investigation of sixteenth-century Italian literature. I shall briefly recall two major reasons. Firstly, in such a cultural context the author is increasingly perceived as a cultural artefact, namely as a ‘discourse’ expressing a poetological and socio-political stance. Such a ‘discourse’ can be appropriated and adapted. As a result, authorship becomes increasingly liable to transformation. Secondly, the introduction of the printing press causes a paradigmatic shift from literature as ‘writing’ to literature as ‘rewriting’. Between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, literary production is progressively understood in terms of reproduction: texts are written by appropriating, adapting and plagiarizing other texts. Yet, in the era of the printing press, texts are not the only literary product increasingly subjected to a logic of reproducibility. Literary authorship, too, becomes more easily derivative. More generally, the concept of ‘re-figuring’ may contribute to the investigation of how literature mutates and evolves through languages and epochs. If a text does not exist on its own, neither does authorship. Authorial figures circulate in time and space, undergoing processes of appropriation and adaptation no less than literary texts.

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Aretino, Pietro, Lettere. Libro primo, ed. Francesco Erspamer, Parma 1995a. Aretino, Pietro, Poemi cavallereschi, ed. Danilo Romei, Roma 1995b. Aretino, Pietro, Lettere, ed. Paolo Procaccioli, 7 vol., Roma 1997 – 2002. Aretino, Pietro, Ragionamento. Dialogo, ed. Paolo Procaccioli, Milano 2005a. Aretino, Pietro, Teatro. III. Il Filosofo. L’Orazia, ed. Alessio Decaria/Federico Della Corte, Roma 2005b. Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando furioso, ed. Cesare Segre, Milano 1976. Cambiatore, Tommaso (trans.), La Eneide di Virgilio tradotta in terza rima, Venezia 1532. Collenuccio, Pandolfo, Opere, ed. Alfredo Saviotti, 2 vol., Bari 1929. Doni, Anton Francesco, Vita dello infame Aretino. Lettera CI et ultima di Anton Francesco Doni fiorentino, ed. Costantino Arlia, Città di Castello 1901. Lucian of Samosata, A True Story, in Lucian (Loeb classical library), vol. I, trans. A. M. Harmon, London/Cambridge 1913. Lucian of Samosata, I dilettevoli dialogi: le vere narrationi: le facete epistole di Luciano philosopho: di greco in volgare novamente tradotte et historiate, Venezia 1525 [Fondazione Giorgio Cini, SDA 39782]. Tifernas, Lilius, Luciani De veris narrationibus, ed. Giovanna Dapelo/Barbara Zoppelli, Genova 1998.

Secondary Sources Acocella, Maria Antonietta, L’asino d’oro nel Rinascimento, Ravenna 2001. Aquilecchia, Giovanni, “Aretino’s Sei giornate: literary parody and social reality”, in: Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza, Oxford 2000, 463 – 473. Aquilecchia, Giovanni, Introduzione, in: Il piacevol ragionamento de l’Aretino, Salerno 1987. Baschet, Armand, “Documents inédits tirés des archives de Mantou. Documents concernant la personne de messer Pietro Aretino”, in Archivio storico italiano 3 (1866), 104 – 130. Berensmeyer, Ingo/Buelens, Gert/Demoor, Marysa, “Authorship as Cultural Performance: New Perspectives in Authorship Studies”, in: Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 60 (2012), 5 – 29. Böhme, Hartmut/Bergemann, Lutz/Dönike, Martin/Schirrmeister, Albert/Toepfer, Georg (ed.), Transformation. Ein Konzept zur Erforschung kulturellen Wandels, Paderborn 2011. Boillet, Élise, “Il Congedo di Cristo dalla madre dipinto da Lorenzo Lotto e narrato da Pietro Aretino”, in: Venezia Cinquecento. Studi di storia dell’arte e della cultura 25 (2003), 99 – 130. Boillet, Élise, L’Arétin et la Bible, Genève 2007a. Boillet, Élise, “Riscrittura sacra e riscrittura profana dell’‘Eneide’ in Pietro Aretino”, in: Autorità, modelli e antimodelli nella cultura artistica e letteraria tra Riforma e Controriforma, Atti del Seminario internazionale di studi (Urbino-Sassocorvaro, 9 – 11 novembre 2006), ed. Antonio Corsaro/Harald Hendrix/Paolo Procaccioli, Manziana 2007b, 227 – 242. Boillet, Élise, “L’autore e il suo editore: i ritratti di Pietro Aretino nelle stampe di Francesco Marcolini (1534 – 1553)”, in: Officine del nuovo, ed. Harald Hendrix/Paolo Procaccioli, Manziana 2008, 181 – 201. Bompaire, Jacques, Lucien écrivain. Imitation et création, Paris 1958. Borsellino, Nino, Gli anticlassicisti del Cinquecento. Letteratura italiana Laterza, vol. XX, Roma 1973. Cameron, Alan, Greek Mithography in the Roman World, New York 2004. Camerotto, Alberto, Gli occhi e la lingua della satira. Studi sull’eroe satirico in Luciano di Samosata. Milano/Udine 2014.

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Conconi, Bruna, “Sulla ricezione di Pietro Aretino in Francia”, in: Rivista di Letterature moderne e comparate 59 (2006a), 29 – 58. Conconi, Bruna, “Ancora su Aretino lettore dell’‘Eneide’: il caso dei ‘Tre libri della Humanità di Christo’, tra Italia e Francia”, in: Rivoluzioni dell’antico, ed. Daniela Gallingani, Bologna 2006b, 177 – 211. Davico Bonino, Guido, “Aretino e Virgilio: un’ipotesi di lavoro”, in: Sigma 9 (1966), 41 – 51. De Faveri, Lorena, Le traduzioni di Luciano in Italia nel XV e XVI secolo, Amsterdam 2002. Dionisotti, Carlo, “La letteratura italiana nell’età del concilio di Trento”, in: Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana, Torino 1967, 227 – 254. Dublin, P.G., La Vie de L’Arétin, Paris 1937. Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge 1983. Erspamer, Francesco, “Introduzione”, in: Aretino, Pietro: Lettere. Libro primo, Parma 1995. Fantappiè, Irene, “Pietro Aretino”, in: Letteratura. Il contributo italiano alla storia del pensiero, ed. Giulio Ferroni, Roma 2017. Ferroni, Giulio, Le voci dell’istrione. Pietro Aretino e la dissoluzione del teatro, Napoli 1977. Freedman, Luba, Titian’s Portraits Through Aretino’s Lens, University Park (Pa.) 1999. Fusillo, Massimo, “Le miroir de la Lune: l’Histoire vraie de Lucien, de la satire à l’utopie”, in: Poétique. Revue de théorie et d’analyse littéraires, 73 (1988), 109 – 135. Geri, Lorenzo, A colloquio con Luciano di Samosata: Leon Battista Alberti, Giovanni Pontano ed Erasmo da Rotterdam, Roma 2011. Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: from More to Shakespeare, Chicago 1980. Grendler, Paul F., Critics of the Italian World (1530 – 1560): Anton Francesco Doni, Niccolò Franco and Ortensio Lando, Madison 1969. Hempfer, Klaus W., “Zum Verhältnis von Diskurs und Subjekt: von Bembo zu Petrarca”, in: Über die Schwierigkeiten (s)ich zu sagen, ed. Winfried Wehle, Frankfurt a.M. 2001, 59 – 81. Huss, Bernhard, “Pseudopornographische Zyklik. Pietro Aretinos Sonetti lussuriosi als kalkulierte Ostentation lyrischer Normabweichung”, in: Poiesis. Praktiken der Kreativität in den Künsten der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Valeska von Rose/David Nelting/Jörn Steigerwald, Zürich 2013, 215 – 234. Innamorati, Giuliano, Tradizione e invenzione in Pietro Aretino, Firenze 1957. Innamorati, Giuliano, “Aretino Pietro”, in: Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. IV, Roma 1962, 92 – 104. Jossa, Stefano, “The Lies of Poets: Literature as Fiction in the Italian Renaissance”, in: Renaissance Studies in Honor of Joseph Connors, ed. Machtelt Israëls/Louis A. Waldman, Cambridge (Mass.) 2013, 565 – 574. Jossa, Stefano, “Finzione e menzogna”, in: Letteratura europea, ed. P. Boitani/M. Fusillo, Bologna 2014. Larivaille, Paul, “La grande différence entre les imitateurs et les voleurs: à propos de la parodie des amours de Didon et d’Énée dans les ‘Ragionamenti’ de l’Arétin”, in: Berni, l’Arétin, Castiglione, Grazzini, ed. Jean Toscan, Paris 1983, 41 – 119. Larivaille, Paul, Pietro Aretino, Roma 1997. Malato, Enrico, “Gli studi su Pietro Aretino degli ultimi cinquant’anni”, in: Pietro Aretino nel cinquecentenario della nascita: atti del convegno di Roma-Viterbo-Arezzo (28 settembre-1 ottobre 1992), Toronto (23 – 24 ottobre 1992), Los Angeles (27 – 29 ottobre 1992), vol. II, Roma 1995, 1127 – 1150. Marangoni, Claudio, “Il Virgilio dell’Aretino”, in: Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 160 (1983), 524 – 546. Mariani, Marina/Nelting, David, “Pietro Aretinos Aufhebung rinascimentaler Anthropologie in Ragionamento und Dialogo”, in: Donum Grammaticorum, ed. Hans-Ingo v. Radatz/Rainer Schlösser, Berlin/New York 2010, 211 – 226.

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Marsh, David, Lucian and the Latins: Humor and Humanism in the Early Renaissance, Michigan 1998. Marsh, David, Studies on Alberti and Petrarch, Farnham/Surrey/Burlington 2012. Mattioli, Emilio, Luciano e l’umanesimo, Napoli 1980. Mazzacurati, Giancarlo, Il rinascimento dei moderni, Bologna 1985. Meizoz, Jerôme, Postures littéraires, Genève 2007. Möllendorff, Peter, Auf der Suche nach der verlogenen Wahrheit. Lukians ‘Wahre Geschichten’, Tübingen 2000. Mugnai Carrara, Daniela, La biblioteca di Nicolò Leoniceno. Tra Aristotele e Galeno: cultura e libri di un medico umanista, Firenze Olschki 1991. Nelting, David, “Frühneuzeitliche Autorschaft zwischen Diskurs und Identität. Pietro Aretinos Libro primo der Lettere und die Autorisierung als poeta volgare”, in: Romanistisches Jahrbuch 56 (2005), 124 – 140. Nelting, David, “Frühneuzeitliche Selbstautorisierung zwischen Singularisierung und Sodalisierung (Francesco Petrarca, Pietro Bembo, Joachim Du Bellay)”, in: Romanistisches Jahrbuch 62 (2011), 188 – 214. Oesterreicher, Wulf/Regn, Gerhard/Schulze, Winfried (ed.), Autorität der Form – Autorisierung – institutionelle Autorität, Münster 2003. Panizza, Letizia, “Removable Eyes, Speaking Lamps and a Philosopher-Cock. Lucianic Motifs in the service of Cinquecento Reform”, in: Il Rinascimento italiano di fronte alla Riforma: letteratura e arte, ed. Chrysa Damianaki/Paolo Procaccioli/Angelo Romano/Manziana 2005, 61 – 88. Panizza, Letizia, “Vernacular Lucian in Renaissance Italy: Translations and Transformations”, in: Lucian of Samosata Vivus et Redivivus, ed. Christopher Ligota/Letizia Panizza, London/Torino 2007, 71 – 114. Paratore, Ettore, “Pietro Aretino rielaboratore di Virgilio”, in: Studi in onore di Carmelina Naselli, Catania 1978, vol. II, 223 – 269. Procaccioli, Paolo, “Cinquecento capriccioso e irregolare. Dei lettori di Luciano e di Erasmo; di Aretino e Doni; di altri peregrini ingegni”, in: Cinquecento capriccioso e irregolare. Eresie letterarie nell’Italia del Classicismo, ed. Paolo Procaccioli/Angelo Romano, Roma 1999, 7 – 30. Procaccioli, Paolo, “Tu es Pasquillus in aeterno. Aretino non romano e la maschera di Pasquino”, in: Ex marmore. Pasquini, pasquinisti, pasquinate nell’Europa moderna, ed. Chrysa Damianaki/Paolo Procaccioli/Angelo Romano, Manziana 2006, 67 – 96. Procaccioli, Paolo (ed.), In utrumque paratus: Aretino e Arezzo, Aretino a Arezzo: in margine al ritratto di Sebastiano del Piombo, Roma 2008. Procaccioli, Paolo, “Rinculo o strappo? Episodi di resistenza al Classicismo nel Cinquecento italiano”, in: Classicismo e culture di antico regime, Roma 2010, 213 – 237. Quondam, Amedeo, “Aretino e il libro: un repertorio, per una bibliografia”, in: Pietro Aretino nel cinquecentenario della nascita, vol. I, Roma 1995, 197 – 230. Riccucci, Marina, “L’ippogrifo e la Storia vera di Luciano: Ariosto neologista”, in Il Furioso del 1516 tra rottura e continuità, Toulouse 2017. Robinson, Christopher, Lucian and His Influence in Europe, Chapel Hill 1979. Waddington, Raymond B., Aretino’s Satyr: Sexuality, Satire and Self-Projection in Sixteenth-Century Literature and Art, Toronto 2004.

Nicola Cipani (New York)

Liber mentalis: the Art of Memory and Rewriting Von den Wundermännern des Gedächtnisses, einem Picus von Mirandola, Scaliger, Angelus Politianus, Magliabecchi usw., den Polyhistoren, die eine Ladung Bücher für hundert Kamele als Materialien für die Wissenschaften in ihrem Kopf herumtragen, muß man nicht verächtlich sprechen, weil sie vielleicht die für das Vermögen der Auswahl aller dieser Kenntnisse zum zweckmäßigen Gebrauch angemessene Urtheilskraft nicht besaßen; denn es ist doch schon Verdienst genug, die rohe Materie reichlich herbeigeschafft zu haben; wenngleich andere Köpfe nacher hinzukommen müssen, sie mit Urtheilskraft zu verarbeiten (tantum scimus, quantum memoria tenemus). Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, 1, 1, 34

1 A Mental Book Towards the end of the 1550s in Venice, the philosopher and member of the Accademia della fama, Francesco Patrizi, while recovering from a long fever, receives visitors in his bedroom: his patron Giorgio Contarini, accompanied by his brother Paolo. Patrizi’s behavior makes the visitors skeptical about his actual recovery: he looks transfixed, as if absorbed in the act of reading – which is indeed what he claims to be doing – there is, however, no book in sight. The guests speculate that he might refer to a volume he just perused – perhaps the afterimage of some intoxicating pages, filled with “humore di malinconia”? The servant, summoned, confirms that no book has entered the room since the onset of his illness. It takes a bit of dialogical exchange, along with some checks on pulse rate, temperature, and humoral stability, to reassure the Contarini brothers and clarify the issue: the patient, no longer feverish, is, indeed, reading from a book – though not a tangible one: he reads an inner book, a “libro dell’anima”, engraved on the mind in a pictorial language, “in imagini, nel modo che sono i libri di quelli del Giapan e della Cina”.¹ As Patrizi further explains in this conversation, set at the beginning of the dialogue Il Contarino overo che sia l’historia, ² material “libri di fuori” should ultimately measure against this personal, yet divine, all-embracing, and universal book. Instrumental to the primacy of the inner book is its hieroglyphic-like language, which provides the direct link with res otherwise denied to our common words; it also provides a medium to hieroglyphs proper – to Egypt, idealized as the home of those antichissimi, who were able to preserve memory beyond the cyclical decay of civilizations

 Patrizi (1560), 12r – 19r.  Patrizi’s Contarino is the third dialogue from his work Della historia diece dialoghi. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-005

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(“memoria di due universali corruttioni […] di tutta la machina mondana”).³ Through the example of Egypt, validated by his volume, Patrizi aims at broadening the definition of historia: history can be scrittura but also dipintura, it is the past but also destiny, it includes human and natural phenomena, it is collective memory as well as individual memory – concepts that ostensibly connect Patrizi’s liber animae with other forms of metaphorical books.⁴ Using the borderline condition of convalescence to represent Platonic furor, Patrizi strikes the pose of the inspired, frenzied philosopher – a recurring feature in his Dialoghi. The verdict as to Patrizi’s lucidity wavers when it comes to the elusive object he claims to inspect – an invisible item, which he, nonetheless, treats as a real presence. Yet it is precisely this assertion of reality, the presence of image-filled mental pages open before the eyes, which rests on premises that even interlocutors like his – skeptically disposed towards the “farnetichi di Platone”⁵ – could find admissible. A type of mental object certainly familiar to both Patrizi and his friends and closely related to the topos of inner writing is the inner book obtained by storing one or more libri di fuori in one’s memory through the precepts of mnemonics. This invisible artifact frequently rates as a substitute worthy of its tangible counterpart, eliciting the same praise that Patrizi devotes to his treasured source. Examples of proficiency in carrying a book in one’s mind were known since antiquity – Seneca the Elder tells us for instance about Porcius Latro, who could dispose of books altogether, making them supervacuos, redundant.⁶ Yet the mental copy obtained through the principles of ars memoriae requires the maker to restructure the original text, even when the goal is faithful verbatim recall. Memory praxis involves a series of shifts and makeovers – many of which transform the reader into a viewer, creating a distinctive tension between the original and the mental copy. Thus, its norms and practical solutions touch upon issues of textual remaking, authorship, and (re)configuration of textual networks. This essay focuses on the intersection between memory and written word – between mental page and libri di fuori – with a highlight on the rewriting entailed by mnemonic transcription. I will first outline the terms of the memory/writing analogy, originating from a perceived homology of process that leaves traces on the crafting of formats. After examining efforts at promoting the physical page to a system of mnemonic units, I illustrate with two examples from fifteenth century treatises the inverse procedure of memory loci visualized in page-like fashion. I take the mutually productive relationship between material surface and ars memoriae as a sign of dy-

 Patrizi (1560), 12r-19r. For a discussion of this scene cf. Bolzoni (1980), 63 – 72; Vasoli (1991), 155 – 176; Plastina (1992), 38 – 42, 144– 47 and (2004), 221– 235.  On the significance of the book metaphor: Curtius (1942); Derrida (1967), 21– 31; Blumenberg (1981); Gellrich (1985); Jager (2000); Vanderjagt / Van Berkel (2005).  Patrizi (1560), 12v.  Controversiarum libri, I, 17.

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namism in the writing/memory metaphor, helpful for a nuanced understanding of its conceptual directions. Drawing a text into memory’s private domain prompts sentiments of appropriation. In order to show how such custody can loosen the boundaries of textual paternity, I refer to two distant voices, Petrarch and Scaliger. Petrarch (throughout the Renaissance a figure of dual significance in the field: both a target of memorization and a reputed mnemonist) uses the language of material possession to express his entitlement to re-write what he knows by heart. Scaliger’s monumental Seven Books on Poetics – containing a thesaurus of Latin verse molded around the author’s towering mental archive – strikingly redefine emendatio as a right to correct past authors in the name of an ideal goal of perfection, reaching beyond the individual sphere. Mature sixteenth-century ars memoriae offers more opportunities for blending and appropriating texts, as I illustrate with the example of Lodovico Dolce. His Dialogo del modo di accrescer e conservar la memoria systematically exploits the juxtaposition of many voices – those found in a well-stocked Venetian library. A valuable glimpse into the challenges of mental rewriting comes from his description of practitioners’ glitches – an issue discussed also by Filippo Gesualdo, my other example of a Renaissance ‘mental librarian’. Gesualdo’s Plutosofia strives to erect a perfect libraria della memoria. While belittling physical libraries as prosthetic, and note-taking as redundant, Plutosofia must come to terms with its limitations, which I take as revelatory inconsistencies of the discourse on liber mentalis.

2 Inner Writing A mental book, liber mentalis, is the stated goal of the art of memory in the terminology of fifteenth century manuals of various provenance.⁷ In drawing a parallel between memory and the written medium, many mention or rephrase the passage of ad Herennium, which equates loci with wax tablets,⁸ memory images with letters engraved in the wax, their disposition in space with writing, and the process of retrieval-delivery with reading.⁹ According to Giordano Bruno, the parallel can also be ex-

 Memoria fecunda … (Pack [1980], 229) “[…] sic potest et adiuvari vita intellectualis arte memorativa, condendo sibi artificium in quo legere valeat, tamquam in libro mentali, ea que inibi scripserit de quibus quis voluerit recordari”; Tractatus artis memorativae … (Rossi [2000], 215): “[…] finalis intentio nostra in hac arte est componere librum mentalem qui quid se habeat ad instar libri arficialis” (28v); Ars memorie … (Heimann-Seelbach [1993], 131): “Liber mentalis sol besetzt sein/Mit bolbekanten personen” (1v).  The influential metaphor of memory as a wax tablet originates from Plato’s Theaetetus (191c,d).  “Nam loci cerae aut cartae simillimi sunt, imagines litteris, dispositio et conlocatio imaginum scripturae, pronuntiatio lectioni.” (Ad Her. III,17). The fifteenth century Tractatus de arte memorativa by Goswinus de Ryt adapts the analogy to the Aristotelian memoria/reminiscentia dual model, asso-

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panded through history: just as the technology of external writing has evolved from carving on bark to engraving on stones, to drawing on papyrus and so on, up to the printing press, so has the art of fashioning what he calls an internus liber steadily progressed toward perfection from the basic rules of Simonides to more advanced methods – in this picture, Bruno casts himself of course as Gutenbergian pinnacle of ars memoriae. ¹⁰ But how tight is this analogy with the written word? Judging from the categorical terms used by Renaissance authors to identify memory with a form of scriptura, it seems almost an understatement to interpret the reference simply as a metaphor. Following the dominant Aristotelian model, memories effectively amount to physical imprints, stored in the brain onto real physical loca. ¹¹ The material quality of mnemonic imprints justifies claims that the inner writing of artificial memory is nothing different from external writing – that it is so and not otherwise. ¹² The inner book is invisible, though not quite immaterial; when crucial discrepancies between source text and recollected text emerge, the common attitude – contrary to what we may assume – is not to blame the liber mentalis for carrying an intrinsic physical deficit, but rather to look for procedural faults and to see the issue in terms of bad coding or decoding.¹³ A typical ‘code’ would feature strings of visual or visual-verbal cues (imagines), orderly disposed along an imagined architectural space, either adapted from the real world, or created ex novo and subdivided into smaller elements (loci), such as intercolumnar areas, rooms, etc. Following our analogy, writing represents the translation of text into cues and their placement onto loci; reading corresponds to their reconversion into text, accomplished during a mental walk through the building(s). Both tasks require interpretive skills – some relating to the content (e. g. how to divide, group, and label a text; how to determine what to learn verbatim and what to excerpt), some to elementary constituents of language (e. g. puns, etymologies, assonances, splitting of words, etc. used as image-producing stratagems). The result is a hidden, personalized replica, written in a rebus-like argot liable to trigger unanti-

ciating memory with the unopened book and reminiscence with the act of reading, of turning the pages, and of actually inspecting the book (Heimann-Seelbach [2000], 182– 83).  Bruno (2004), 234.  Though in less explicit terms, Plato’s wax tablet illustration suggests the same (Draaisma [2000], 25).  Tractatus artis memorativae … (Rossi [2000], 215): “Nam quemadmodum in libro artificiali duo sufficiunt instrumenta duntaxat scilicet carta et scriptura, ita et non aliter in hoc libro mentali quem intendimus per hanc artem conficere duo sufficiunt instrumenta: scilicet loca et rerum similitudines.”; Magister Hainricus: Ars Memorativa (Heimann-Seelbach [2000], 261): “Ars memorandi nihil aliud est nisi quedam subtilitas scribendi” (my emphases).  Luria’s classical study of mnemonist Shereshevsky takes the same stance (Luria [1968], 34– 37). When given a list of words, Shereshevsky’s occasional omissions are not caused by forgetting, but by what Luria calls “defects of perception”, i. e. faulty imaginative design (mental objects fusing with the background due to lack of contrast, illumination, etc.).

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cipated associations – an idiosyncratic double. All the while, some of the norms for proficiently navigating this environment take the analogy with writing to a different level: criteria for setting up the mental scene tend to recall norms of clear legibility – spacing, contrast, proportion, left-right order, etc.¹⁴ The association memoria / scriptura (at its core, a matter of process – the ability to generate a durable record through sensible traces marked on physical matter) signals here the possibility of alignments in design, reinforcing the status of the memory page as a true textual derivate. The coexistence of a source text and a visual double became a target for detractors, who considered the trail of images as an odd parallel encumbrance, a surplus weight for the mind. In the Institutio oratoria, Quintilian, concerned with the amount of imagery required to memorize words, criticizes the “double task imposed on memory” (“duplici memoriae cura”)¹⁵, certain of its negative impact on fluent delivery. The objection resurfaces periodically, as it does in Tommaso Garzoni’s Piazza universale (Venice 1585) which features a piece on “professori di memoria”, often affected by greed (“van machinando contra le borse”)¹⁶ and involved in a questionable trade of burdensome, distracting imagery: L’Arte della memoria artificiosa […] non può stare da se medesima senza memoria naturale, la quale spesse volte è rotta, e interrotta da monstruose imagini e figure, che l’inviluppano in modo, e di tale smania, e frenesia circondano il capo, che da infinite cose intricate non sa dove risolversi, e qual cosa debba più ricordarsi, o le cose principali intente, o l’imagini diverse per esse fabricate. ¹⁷

Quintilian’s counter-remedy deserves mention, since the Institutio is one of the earliest sources clearly linking memorization to the physical appearance of an inscribed surface. Skeptical towards elaborate loci architectures and wishing to offer simpler precepts, Quintilian recommends memorizing passages by looking in detail at the wax tablets used to commit those same texts to writing.¹⁸ Quintilian advises fixing the mind’s eye on each single written line of the tablet, and dwelling on erasures, breaks, and marks. Yet as it zooms into the text, promoting graphic accidents to objects worthy of introspective care, the eye finds a new type of complexity, a new dou-

 Cf. for instance Ad Herennium 3, 19.  Inst.Or. XI, 2, 25.  Garzoni (1585), 532.  Ibid., 531, (my emphasis).  Inst.Or. XI, 2, 32. The choice entails a transfer between two very different types of page, since at the time Quintilian writes, the standard medium for reading text was actually the scroll – wax tablets being normally tasked with operations involving ephemeral or fluid writing activities, such as notes, preliminary drafts, and (as here the case) exercises of copying from texts. As Richard and Mary Rouse (2013), 13 note: “The wax tablet, as support for the written word, had a longer uninterrupted association with literate Western civilization than either parchment or paper, and a more intimate relationship with literary creation […].”

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ble – new loci, albeit not architectural ones – directly on the page.¹⁹ Quintilian’s wax tablet, inviting exploration of its minute physical distinctions, prefigures the medieval mode of memorization that relies on a rectangular codex page, and on the fine articulation of its material attributes – a mode in which the style of the page and the style of memory closely mirror each other.²⁰

3 Mental Pages, Paginal Minds In the Middle Ages, the mnemonic model of choice becomes a flat surface – a pagina. At the same time, the medieval codex exhibits a number of memory-friendly novelties – such as textual divisions, marks, colors, titles, and sometimes veritable imagines agentes. ²¹ Many mnemonic pictograms are structured diagrammatically, with the page subdivided into cells, arranged in tabular form. While, on the one hand, the mnemonic model suffers a dimensional loss, it develops a compensatory richness of form: the added features of the medieval manuscript allow the viewer to read not only along the lines of the page, but also ‘through’ the book, impacting the reading and understanding of a text; as for diagrams, at times instructions might require a practitioner to effectively operate in three dimensions during the mental construction of a given scheme.²² If the rubricated and decorated pagina offers itself as an articulate locus, we observe a somewhat complementary case once the ars memorativa develops as independent genre: mnemonic loci – in the most dynamic sense of preconfigured mental places to be filled with information and potentially reusable – created with the pagina as a model. Such is the case, among the specimens brought to scholarly attention by Sabine Heimann-Seelbach, with the fifteenth century Ars memorandi cum figuris,²³ an anonymous treatise whose primary plan is informed by the intention of composing a liber mentalis with all of a book’s parts. The author lays out a system of loci distributed along a hundred mental pages, each consisting of two columns, and bound in groups of five different fascicles, twenty pages each. The format refers

 As Quintilian himself realizes, when he concludes that his method does not offer an entirely dissimilar recipe afer all (“Ista ratio, ut est illi de qua primum locutus sum arti non dissimilis […].” [XI, 2, 33]).  Quintilian’s advise bases on established customs, for others (such as Cicero and the author of ad Herennium) assume the tablet as standard view in memorization. Since the Institutio remains mostly unknown for centuries until its rediscovery by Poggio Bracciolini, medieval mnemonics develops its plane style independently from Quintilian.  Cf. the chapter “Memory and the Book” in Carruthers (1990), 221– 257.  A good example is Hugh of St. Victor’s Libellus de formatione arche, now published in Carruthers/ Ziolkowski (2002), 41– 70. In the introduction (ibid., 17), the editors point out how “diagram upon diagram”, the Ark’s mental construction requires moving “in three and even four dimensions (for time is an aspect of it too)”.  Heimann-Seelbach (1995), (1996), 394– 97, and (2000), 126 – 130.

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to common book standards – except, as the author explains, that his columns are triangular. This is, however, not the only peculiarity in layout. As the illustration shows (figure 1), each triangular column hosts five pentagons; each of the pentagons represents a row – though the author encourages the reader to visualize them as fingers, thus superimposing a method of bodily loci onto his book plan. On a two-page spread with four columns, the user should see at the same time a complete set of hands and feet. The anthropomorphized volume may then be populated with a word list, designed to tag every page, column, and pentagonal cell of the book with a name. The maker organizes the list, a feature derived from previous manuals, both alphabetically and by category (saints, animals, trees, birds, virgins). The example from the book’s first illustration shows how each page’s sequence emulates the usual left-right reading direction, yet the motion effectively ends up being circular – from six o’ clock, proceeding clockwise: Andreas, Asinus, Abies, Aquila, Agnes / Benedictus, Bubulus, Buxus, Bubo, Barbara). With this system, the operator has the option of going through the book ‘line by line’ (following the order Andreas, Asinus, Abies, etc.) or skipping from one column to the next (Andreas, Benedictus, Cosmas, Dominicus, etc.), hence retrieving the information either linearly or non-linearly. Above on top of the page we read “Asper-” – it has to be joined with the “-ges” of the next page to form the word Asperges, which denotes the spread of pages one and two as a set of ‘hands and feet’. At the same time, Asperges is part of another sequence (Asperges, Agnus, Annulus, etc.) used as guide for the higher order of pages and page groups. Once labeled with the lists, the book is ready to house information. The elements of the two structures, inner and outer book, do not correlate directly (page to page, as it were) but according to shifted correspondences (a line of the liber mentalis may contain an entire chapter, a few pages, or a whole book) – such difference of scale is intended to transform the mental volume into a library capable of accommodating entire fields of knowledge. Further integration of techniques, such as the development of a separate local memory for storing speeches for short term needs, or a more systematic utilization of body parts as an alternative resource for loci, shows how adaptability, rather than faithful consistency, remains paramount for this book with hands and feet. Another interesting specimen of page-informed locus comes from the Liber de arte memorie,²⁴ written by Antonius de Mercatello in the first half of the fifteenth century. Mercatello proposes tree-like structures as optimal loci for speech production; then, however, he offers an adaptation of the structure which effectively converts the tree model into a book page with partitions (figure 2). Remarkably, with the conversion, the script order fully overrules the tree’s bottom-to-top organization; the image still renders the spatial / genealogical progression of radix, truncus, ramus,

 Presented and discussed in Heimann-Seelbach (2000), 161– 166, who underscores Mercatello’s intent to push mnemotechnics in the direction of cryptology practices.

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Figure 1: Ars memorandi cum figuris (anon.), Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg, Hs. 168, 196v (detail). http://dl.ub.uni-freiburg.de/diglit/hs168/0394 © Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg.

folia, fructus, but only through the top-left / bottom-right reading order. This solution indicates how appealing the association between mnemonic places and the page model remains, even when the visual organization seems to embark on a different route.

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Figure : Antonius de Mercatello, Liber de arte memorie, Stuttgart, WLB, Cod. Theol. et Philos. Q., v, r, v (details). http://digital.wlb-stuttgart.de/purl/bsz ©  Zeutschel GmbH, Tübingen. Bildrechte: Württembergische Landesbibliothek

As in the previous example, for the structuring of loci, the practitioner winds up with more alternatives – tree, page, bodily loci, architectures etc. (In fact, Mercatello finds mention among the modi studendi of the Counter Reformation as a virtuoso master and creator of infinite loci).²⁵ Such oversupply constitutes an implicit invitation to explore rearrangements of connections and ranking among the various schemes. Because of its practical orientation, the ars memoriae tends to accumulate, rather than supplanting old with new. What emerges is a heterarchy of schemes. With regards to the evolution of memory diagrams, presenting the Ars memorandi cum figuris and other artifacts, Heimann-Seelbach recalls the paradigm shift that occurred between the twelfth and thirteenth century in manuscript design – that is, the transition from the gloss as ‘textual assistant’ of choice to innovative systems of textual access (citations, column titles, color coded initials, division in paragraphs, cross-references, etc.).²⁶ These tools for improved non-linear inspection, in keeping with an increasingly felt necessity of statim invenire, stimulated the advancement of kindred techniques for mental indexing (destined to grow progressively more abstract and autonomous).²⁷ Rather than seeing memory and writing in perduring antagonism, other recent scholarship has similarly sought to highlight interdependence between the two, accounting more fully for circumstances of productive exchange.²⁸ The relationship is hardly unilateral: one shouldn’t ever assume an ars memoriae at the rearguard, solely responding to novelties in book design, which in fact might themselves have been triggered by mnemonic necessities. The notion of invenire itself seems hard to extricate from its mnemonic implications; and indexing as well as non-linear finding characterize artificial memory from early on.²⁹ To put it in general linguistic terms, it might be problematic to ascribe a fixed ‘direction’ to the analogy

    

Bartolomeo Meduna, Lo scolare (1588), 34r-35r. Cf. Rouse and Rouse (1991). Cf. Heimann-Seelbach (1995) and (1996). I am thinking in particular of the influential works by Carruthers (1990) and Bolzoni (1995). Carruthers (1990), 116, 243.

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writing / memory³⁰ – as much as we find it easier to take writing as the concrete, simpler ‘source’ through which we grasp memory as the more complex ‘target’, the conceptualization runs occasionally in reverse.³¹ “The memory as book” comes along with “the book as memory”.³²

4 Whose Book? While mental books can have a real presence, one of their oft celebrated advantages is that they weigh nothing. The memorious Peter of Ravenna remarks about his vast inner archive “when I left my country to visit as a pilgrim the cities of Italy, I can truly say omnia mea mecum porto”³³. The final motto borrows from Cicero’s Paradoxa a saying of Bias’, the philosopher who was forced to flee his city with nothing but his knowledge. It reminds us of displaced intellectuals – such as Ockham or Wyclif – who could remain productive in isolation or exile, thanks to their largely assorted mental shelves. In Peter’s case, it is the voluntary exile of a peregrinus – since antiquity, a defining attribute of students in their formative years.³⁴ The term applies just as well to the greatest Renaissance wandering mnemonists to follow, Giulio Camillo and Giordano Bruno. Note that the assemblage of inner libri in Peter’s motto becomes not only a vade mecum but also a meum – the liber mentalis belongs less to the authors it contains, instead becoming very fundamentally mine. Petrarch echoes this sentiment in the well-known passage from his 1359 letter to Boccaccio, where he reveals that canonical authors such as Virgil, Horace, Livy, Cicero, take root in his memory and in his marrow, and as a result […] sometimes I may forget the author, since through long usage and continual possession I may adopt them and for some time regard them as my own; and besieged by the mass of such writings forget whose they are and whether they are mine or others. (Fam. XXII, 2)³⁵

The principle that “long usage and continual possession” establishes a valid basis for the acquisition of proprietary privileges has its roots and name in Roman Law:

 Either in the sense of Weinrich’s Gerichtetheit or of Lakoff’s “unidirectionality hypothesis”.  Is writing/reading the model for explaining memory processes, or is it the other way around? Carruthers (1990, 30) notes that there is no term in Greek meaning “to read” as such – the term used is anagignósko, “to know again”, “to recollect”; Latin lego similarly refers to a process of gathering, recollecting. In both cases the implied model to illustrate reading is a memory operation.  Draaisma (2000), 31– 37.  Quoted in Rossi (2000), 21.  For the student peregrinus, “filo rosso della storia della pedagogia”, cf. Patrizi (2005), 71– 77.  Petrarch (1995), 213 (“[…] sed interdum obliviscar auctorem, quippe qui longo usu et possessio continua quasi illa prescripserim diuque pro meis habuerim, et turba talium obsessus, nec cuius sint certe nec aliena meminerim.”).

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usucapio. Writing to his brother Gherardo (Rerum familiarium, XVII, 1), Petrarch refers precisely to this legal term as he claims his right to appropriate words, just as others lay claim to material goods: Today, more than ever, as you can see, I have cited other sources, although we have gleaned from learned men that anything well said becomes ours through usage, for a right of ownership comes with usage (usucapio) in the verbal arena just as in the business domain.³⁶

A process of thorough incorporation is also at work in Petrarch’s Secretum, where Francesco describes his meditation on a Virgilian passage³⁷ in terms of a personal sensory experience. Such simulated experience in the memory enables not simply a hermeneutical result, a gain in meaning, but also something closer to an author’s own interpretive entitlement, one that – as the interlocutor Augustine explains – can be valid “whether or not Virgil himself meant this while he wrote.” (II, 124– 125).³⁸ The statement seems rather noteworthy, considering the undisputed rank of the Virgilian text. Mary Carruthers explains: Virgil’s words having been devoured (or one might say “harvested”), digested, and familiarized by “Francesco” through meditatio, have now become his words as they cue the representational process of his recollection. It is as though at this point the student of the text, having digested it by re-experiencing it in memory, has become not its interpreter, but its new author, or re-author. Petrarch has re-spoken Virgil; “re-written Virgil” we would say […]. (1990), 168.

Petrarch operates within his characteristic time-defying sense of intimate moral closeness with models from the past.³⁹ Yet, if, in his case, the right to re-speak is organically part of a myth of dialoguing with ancient writers, the entitlement of appropriating and rewriting text qua memory persists even as the attitude towards canonical authors grows more history-aware. In fact, the first notable attempt to deliver literary criticism in a more pronounced historical perspective coincides with an attempt to establish a method of work around deliberate edits of Latin originals. Julius Caesar Scaliger’s imposing Poetices libri septem (published 1561, three years following the author’s death), after a theoretical part spanning the first four books, dedicate two large portions (books six and seven) to the praxis of poetizing sustained by imitatio and iudicium. ⁴⁰ In book five (titled Criticus), Scaliger discusses with com-

 Petrarch (1995), 8 (“Multa quidem hodie, ut vides, de alieno supra morem meum interserui, quanquam, ut a doctis viris accepimus, quicquid ab ullo bene dictum est nostrum sit vel utendo certe nostrum fieri possit; est enim ut rerum sic verborum usucapio”).  Aeolus and the cave of winds (Aen. I, 52– 57).  “Sive enim id Virgilius ipse sensit, dum scriberet, sive ab omni tali consideratione remotissimus maritimam his versibus et nil aliud describere voluit tempestatem”.  Aspects of Petrarch relevant in this context of memory and imitatio are discussed in Bolzoni (2004) and Torre (2007).  The Poetices have been recently republished with commentary and translation by Deitz and VogtSpira.

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parative approach Greek models paired with Latin derivates and moves subsequently to a critical anthology of poetical solutions arranged by theme (disease, storm, imprecations, similes, etc.), working his way through over 1500 quotes. Book six (Hypercriticus), which divides the material chronologically and includes Neo-Latin poetry, has the ambition of “verifying whether what has been said by the ancients couldn’t be better said”⁴¹. As it becomes apparent both from direct and indirect textual references, Scaliger copiously relies on his mental library for his impressive deployment and rearrangement of resources.⁴² Memory not only supplies Criticus / Hypercriticus with a wealth of passages, but also informs their structure. Allowing for ordering by topic and commonplace-heads, proceeding non-linearly with continuous parallels, open to sudden growths spurred by mental cross-references and cascading associations, Scaliger’s critical corpus reveals a particular closeness to its mnemonic matrix. The defining operation of his inquiry into the possibility of ameliorating tradition is emendatio – though with a significant distortion from its common meaning of philological correction of a vulgate aimed at restoring the original text. Here emendatio becomes an original intervention of the critic, who deliberately changes a passage deemed unsatisfactory and proposes his own ‘better’ version (more accurate terminologically or conceptually, shorter, more pleasing to the ear, etc.), compensating for what he sees as a transient lapse of iudicium on the part of the author. Scaliger first quotes the significant excerpt, then produces his improved variant, justified with signs of dissatisfaction towards the original – the formulaic marks of the Hypercriticus’s arched eyebrow: “doesn’t fit”, “I’d prefer”, “I would say”, “we’d rather choose”, “simpler”, “properly”, “more effectively”, “more harmoniously”, “more suitably”⁴³. Scaliger’s critical attention can focus on minute elements, as when he suggests substituting fretum with mare or salum at the end of a pentameter, maintaining that volume and vibration of the fr-sound clog the flow of the preceding dactyl.⁴⁴ However,

 Scaliger (2003), 46 “quod ab antiquis dictum an melius dici queat dispiciamus.”  Scaliger (1998), 592: “Hactenus quas memoria potuimus complecti describendas curavimus comparationes … Et omissae sunt a nobis aliquae minus dignae visae quas persequeremur”; ibid., 698: “Ponam igitur aliqua, ut nobis in mentem venerint”. Further evidence of mnemonic recollection in the Criticus, as editor Gregor Vogt-Spira notes, comes from errors in attributing lines to the right book number, from passages quoted more than once with diverging readings, and from the characteristic style of recalling information in cascade-like associations. Hypercriticus offers similar indications of Scaliger’s in promptu recollection: “quae sequebantur in memoria non habeo” ([2003], 202, after quoting several variae lectiones from Sannazaro); “Memini olim a nobis breviore congestum gyro hunc ad modum.” (ibid., 248).  “Versus non satisfaciunt”, “sic illud minus placet”, “non convenit”, “non … sed …”, “efficacius”, “concinnius”, “commodious”, “malim tamen”, “malim etiam legere”, “potuisset etiam”, “aliter dicerem”, “probarim”, “dixerim”, “optavimus potiora”, “potius”, “ego potius dicerem”, “simplicius”, “immo”, “recte”.  Scaliger (2003), 182.

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interventions are not limited to individual words: sometimes Scaliger rewrites entire passages. While such a tour de force strives for refinement and perfection, the reader experiences a regression of the textual material to a magmatic state of virtualities. The customary line-after-line unfolding of a poem is disrupted by the activation of proliferating alternatives – vulgate, variant, imitations, emendatio (and along with his vast memory for the traded text, Scaliger remembers also his past attempts at re-rendering a passage)⁴⁵ – in a confluence that recreates the moment of invention and choice. In such a vast library of possibilities – the product of a powerful literary memory capable of sorting and associating according to different levels and orders – the reconversion of text into pulsating raw material subject to improvement challenges the notion of its exclusive authorship. The practice of judicious imitatio demands, conversely, a peculiar attitude towards one’s own production: as Scaliger puts it, aside from a good selection of the stuff ad imitandum, iudicium requires us also “to examine what we have accomplished and criticize it as if it were foreign (peregrina)”⁴⁶. Thus, emendatio and iudicium constitute two complementary aspects of imitation: appropriating the foreign and alienating what is one’s own. The resulting ambivalent status of literary authorship shows already in the format: with his publication on the craft of poetry, Scaliger becomes the author of a body of text that consists, for a significant part, of quotations and emended near-quotations. As to his right to amend, he has a few words for potential detractors: If anyone believes that it is easy to correct someone else’s work, he should just try. It will be faster and easier to compose a thousand verses on one’s own, than straightening ten crooked ones or polishing them from filth.⁴⁷

5 Dolce and the Library of Second Natures Lodovico Dolce would have likely agreed with Scaliger and extended the judgment to his own translations. Attaining a pleasurable style is hard enough, but how much harder the “officio di tradurre”, where one has to “esprimere i concetti d’altrui” by feigning “un’altra lingua e […] un’altra natura”.⁴⁸ The language and nature of authors shift also when Dolce’s Dialogo del modo di accrescer e conservar la memoria (Venice

 Ibid., 248: “Memini olim a nobis breviore congestum gyro hunc ad modum [. . .]”.  Scaliger (1998), 44 “[…] ut ea quae a nobis confecta fuerint quasi peregrina perpendamus atque etiam exagitemus.”  Scaliger (2003), 62 “Quod si quis hoc facile factu putat, ut aliena corrigantur, periculum faciat. Citius et commodius mille de suo fabricatus fuerit quam aliena decem vel prava direxerit vel squalentia nitore affecerit.”  From Dolce’s preface to his Tyeste (1547), quoted by Torre (Dolce [2001], IX).

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1562) describes the Aristotelian-Averroistic principle of similarity (i. e., the convenience of forming memory cues through analogy): Onde sovvenendomi di Giovenale, mi soverrà subito parimente di Persio, di Horazio e di qualunque altro Poeta abbia scritto Satire. E se udirò nomare Homero, mi ricorderò di Virgilio; se di Dante, mi verrà in mente il Petrarca, il Bembo, il Cappello, il Veniero, il Tasso e ciascun altro buono e gentil Poeta di volgari Rime. Parimente, quando avenisse che si ragionasse di San Giovanni, agevolmente di San Mattheo, di San Marco e di San Luca ci raccorderemmo, essendo che tutti questi santi huomini convengono nel Vangelo.⁴⁹

The list may also intend to outline a personal canon as a wink to the taste of a diversified readership;⁵⁰ at the same time, such a swirl of writers fits well into Dolce’s nonchalance: sure enough, the author Dolce fails to sovvenire or nomare even once in the book is the actual author of the memory treatise Dolce sells for his own – the Dialogo offers for the most part a translation of the Congestorium artificiosae memoriae, published in Venice three decades earlier and written by the dominican preacher Johannes Host von Romberch.⁵¹ In Dolce’s defense, silent appropriations were hardly exceptional in the competitive market of ars memoriae handbooks. Also, Dolce weaves original features into the translated text – most notably superimposing a dialogical framework over Romberch’s didactic treatise, a calculated move for improved delectatio. Au courant with the readers’ taste, and sensible to the value of enticing an enlarged audience, Dolce cleverly connects the readable and the memorable: blending the mimetic style of Platonic dialogue with the didascalic-Ciceronian form, his “civile conversazione veneziana tra maschere”⁵² puts directly into practice the general precept of assisting memory through personification and lively enactment. The Dialogo insists on the choice of good visual and textual models for efficient mental image-making. Here Dolce displays his aesthetic sensibility, moving confidently between examples of writing and painting serviceable for the ars. ⁵³ The recommendation of repurposing images from great artists as memory cues dates back

 Dolce (2001), 135– 36.  Torre (Dolce [2001]), XLVIII.  Once and in passing, Dolce alludes to Romberch as “un Tedesco” ([2001], 109), but only in order to justify to the reader the presence of German words in a diagram printed in the Dialogo.  So Torre (Dolce [2001], XXXIII), who notes how the exposition of mnemotechnics’ history and technique in dialogue form represents a unique choice in the genre. Indeed other known examples offer only partial overlaps of dialogue and ars memorativa. Bruno’s De umbris idearum and Cantus Circaeus (both from 1582) feature dialogical portions, instrumental to readability as well as to preemptive defense against criticism. Meduna’s dialogue Lo scolare (cf. above n. 22) contains a rather lengthy section on memory (eighteen pages between 27r-35v).  Ultimately the ars memoriae itself becomes a tool for painters and poets: “E ciascun buon Poeta e Pittore con più agevolezza si potrà servir dell’ufficio di quest’arte, per la prontezza ch’egli avrà di formar così fatte imagini per cagion della memoria.” (Dolce [2001], 149).

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at least to Bradwardine,⁵⁴ and several authors, including Romberch, follow his lead. With Dolce’s additions, the assortment of image-suppliers inculcated into the memory environment reaches a peak. Travelling the world and seeing cities, as Peter of Ravenna did, helps in the construction of loci, but since it is expensive and not always practical, “recano grandissimo profitto i libri de’ cosmografi: come di Tolomeo, di Strabone, di Plinio, di Pomponio Mela, e di altri”.⁵⁵ With the help of the sacred scriptures, one might construct fictitious loci based on a tripartite afterworld; as a guide for its partition into smaller and well-distinguished levels nothing beats “l’ingegnosa inventiva di Virgilio e di Dante”⁵⁶ – the Dialogo dedicates a whole original section to the latter. Ideally one should also spend time contemplating “la pittura del mappamondo, e così fatte pitture”,⁵⁷ in order to properly learn the respective location not only of a kingdom, “ma quasi di tutto il mondo”⁵⁸. Such planetary synopsis, mostly taken from one’s library, represents essentially the sum of all the available mental paper. The crafting of imagines agentes poses an oft debated challenge: how to represent abstract or imaginary entities. For gods, Dolce recommends looking up authors such as Boccaccio or Fulgentius “che discrivono la natura de gli Dei e raccontano come e con quali figure gli antichi gli dipingevano”.⁵⁹ For planets and astrological signs “sono accommodatissime le imagini d’Igino, se noi c’imaginiamo ch’elle siano vive”.⁶⁰ A single image should sometimes prompt a whole story, like a tableau vivant; to learn the technique of condensing a historical or mythological episode into an exemplary scene, we should look into the “pittura di Tiziano”⁶¹ or, alternatively, tap from the rich offer of visual repertories – “libri con figure, come per lo più hoggidì si sogliono stampare”⁶² – especially those printed by his Venetian friend and publisher, “[l’] accuratissimo Giolito”⁶³. Leaving aside the advertising stunt, quite representative of Dolce’s spirited involvement with the editorial industry, his resort to such libri d’hoggidì provides the mnemonist with plenty of refreshing novelties ready to mingle with other more canonical models – in a blend of ekphrasis and iconography, literature of images, and images from literature.

 In one of the earliest systematic works dedicated to the art of memory, De memoria artificiali adquirenda (1335), the bishop of Canterbury Thomas Bradwardine recommends for representing things “entirely abstract” to “[…] place an image as the painters make it.” (Carruthers/ Ziolkowksi [2003], 211).  Dolce (2001), 46.  Ibid., 36.  Ibid., 46.  Ibid., 46.  Ibid., 148.  Ibid., 149.  Ibid., 146 – 47.  Ibid., 147.  Ibid., 147.

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The cumulative effect of Dolce’s references goes well beyond an occasional repurposing of ready-made solutions: the Dialogo stimulates readers to mobilize their cultural patrimony and to systematically organize around it the mechanics of remembrance. In an interesting shift, text and artifacts which had once exacted time and attention to enter into memory, now offer themselves as natural allies for enhancing the archive of which they are an organic part. Once assimilated, Dante and Titian are converted into something even stronger than a private textual possession: they become mnemonic infrastructure – instruments for containing or encoding other narratives. If the adoption of texts as the system’s features would seem to reinforce their canonical status, it nevertheless also exposes them to repeated interpolations. To begin with, in setting up the memory environment, heterogeneous materials may contribute to the furnishing of the space, the loci proper. Second, as information populates the loci, they accommodate texts from different provenance (e. g. once Virgil’s hell transitions from text to locus, I am free to deposit in it whichever text I see fit). Third, as we encode information and transform our text into individual images or scenes, we turn to other sets of existing stock images taken from poets and painters. Each of these steps entails a complex interplay of media: words interact with images, literary sources with iconographic tradition – sometimes exchanging roles: with texts that depict and pictures that narrate – outer books interact with books already memorized, one and the same textual string can show up in multiple fashions, assuming manifold tasks. Dolce’s mental library demands intrusions and juxtaposition of voices – each page consisting of bits and fragments from other pages and authors. The altra lingua and altra natura required for translating/rewriting describes just as much a fundamental attitude in the mnemonic process.

6 Beware of Equivocal Dogs The Dialogo regularly reiterates the close analogy between remembering and writing / reading.⁶⁴ For the sake of exercise, one should practice the scanning of loci “con di-

 Ibid., 29: “Dirò adunque, con Marco Tullio, che necessari sono i luoghi e le imagini parimente, affine che quelli tengano l’ufficio della carta e queste delle scritture”; 32: “[…] quando alla memoria artificiale si daranno questi sovvenimenti, averrà (come dice lo scrittore ad Herennio) che ciò che l’huomo avrà appreso, reciterà in guisa come egli alhora lo leggesse”; 39: “[…] facendosi bisogno ricordarci di molte cose, abbiamo a porre in molti luoghi molte imagini: come fanno gli scrittori che, avendo a fare una lunga scrittura, prendono un maggior foglio di carta o, quando un foglio non basti, vi aggiungono molti fogli”; 43: “[…] è molto necessario che quegli che incominciano a imparare quest’arte, a guisa de’ fanciulli che apparano a conoscer la lettere sopra una picciola tavola, si contentino di pochi luoghi”; 65: “[…] se avressimo da cercare i luoghi, quando vogliamo porvi le iscrizioni, non sarebbe cosa di minor fastidio di quello che sarebbe a ordinar, come s’è detto, la carta, quando dobbiamo scrivere.”

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ritto ordine” as well as “con contrario ordine”⁶⁵, but ultimately the rectus ordo proceeds “dalla parte manca”. Such was “il modo di Pietro da Ravenna”, who understood that the review of his loci – whole buildings, towns, roads, regions – had to conform “con quell’ordine che noi scriviamo sulla carta le lettere; il qual modo è via più acconcio di qualunque altro.”⁶⁶ If it seems excessive to preserve the reading order in a virtual environment always oriented “da mano sinistra […] verso il corso del Sole”,⁶⁷ consider the mishap of an imprudent beginner who thought of doing otherwise and ended up retrieving his string of data the wrong way round, crawling his way backwards in the argumentation: […] fu uno che, non essendo bene introdotto, da principio caminava all’indietro a guisa che fa il Granchio o il Gambero e, per usar più propria similitudine, sì come fanno gli Hebrei, l’ordine di leggere o di scrivere le lettere incominciò alla rovescia.⁶⁸

While the left-to-right norm, in keeping recollection aligned with reading, wards off the perils of cancrine reasoning, greater problems arise with the treacherous bug of equivocality (“a tutto nostro potere e’ da schifare che la Equivocazione […] madre […] de gli errori, la memoria non inganni”).⁶⁹ This label (an Aristotelian term from Categories) applies here to decoding failures caused by an image with multiple associated meanings, easily mistakable one for the other. If we place “un’imagine che esprimerà questa voce ‘cane’” we should be wary of confusing between “il cane animale nostro domestico e caro”, the “pesce marino”, and the “stella che gli Astrologi s’imaginano nel cielo”⁷⁰. We should therefore look for certainty of meaning – “univocalitas”, as Romberch calls it with scholastic language⁷¹. A passage from the Dominican Thomas Cajetan (Tommaso de Vio), an expert in the terminology at work, might help in clarifying semantics and the issue at stake: They are univocals whose name is common, and the ratio according to that name is absolutely the same. They are pure equivocals whose name is common and the ratio according to that name is absolutely diverse. They are analogates whose name is common, and the ratio according to

 Ibid., 56; see also 58: “E nel vero è cosa agevole, dai luoghi ordinatamente posti, la imaginata materia pronunziar con ordine e con dottrina; con sicura prontezza procedendo da una cosa in un’altra, con diverso ordine, dritto, oblico e contrario.”  Ibid., 66.  Ibid., 66.  Ibid., 66. Several treatises endorse the left-to-right scan (for two fifteenth century examples cf. Pack [1980], 234: “Ordo tamen a sinistris versus dextram procedendo est magis electus, ut ita idem processus observetur in tali descriptione ymaginum mentali qualem tenemus in descriptione litterarum et lectione in libro materiali).”; and Heimann-Seelbach [1993], 136: “Et rectus ordo in hys locis est seruandus: semper incipiendo a sinistris versus dextram tenendo. Quia ordo sumitur secundum motum firmament vel solis, qualiter de oriente in occasum tendendum eciam versus dextram motus eius dirigit”.)  Ibid., 95.  Ibid., 96.  Romberch (1533), 45r.

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that name is somehow the same, and somehow different, or the same in some respect, and different in some respect. […] Whence the analogue is the medium between the pure equivocal and the pure univocal, as between the simply the same and the simply diverse falls the mean, the same in some respect and diverse in some respect.⁷²

Things univocal are the same both in name and ratio; things equivocal share the name but have dissimilar meanings; in the middle lies the territory of analogies: things sharing only some properties and related (with a partial and deliberate equivocation) through a term. Pleading for univocality in mnemonics sounds wishful, if not outright paradoxical, because artificial memory thrives on deliberate equivocations and instigates analogies – in fact, a dog could quite reasonably represent a canis constellation.⁷³ Moreover, the hunt for homonyms, synonyms, and analogies in the ars memoriae is not a mere practical accident – for authors like Della Porta, it is part of a search for nature’s hidden correspondences, reflected in the doctrine of signatures.⁷⁴ Practitioners will likely run into mishaps under the pressure of disputations, as in the following case of equivocazione: […] avenne ad uno il quale, dovendo disputare et avendo posto per la maggior proposizione un Leone e per la minor un Orso, poscia che venne alle mani e gli fu argomentato contra, rispose: ‘Niego il Leone e concedo l’Orso’; volendo inferire ‘niego la maggiore, concedo la minore’.⁷⁵

Bear and lion are equivocal, but not in the same fashion as the previously listed examples (the “cane” domestic dog, marine animal, and constellation). The unskilled operator does not commit an error in translation – he altogether forgets to translate and directly reads out the code. The ambiguity pertains to the inherent duplicity of the mnemonic process, to the co-presence of a string of words and a string of images, not to fuzzy signifiers. Classifying this blunder under equivocazione comes close to silently admitting that the memory double may constitute per se a mine field of burdening equivocals – an involuntary partial concession to Quintilian’s duplici memoriae cura.

 Hochschild (2010), 39. Quote from Cajetan’s commentary on Aquinas’ De Ente et Essentia (1496); Cajetan fully articulates his teaching on analogy in De nominum analogia (1498).  As a further example of equivocality, we read that placing a stone to encode the word “pietra” might prompt as well “flint” or “cobble”; somewhat ironically, throughout the dialogue a trail of stones amplifies the equivocality of the mnemonic pietra: a pietra can stand for someone named Pietro, a Pietro holding keys for St. Peter, a Pietro without keys can stand for just the keys, or viceversa just keys for Pietro (Dolce [2001], 96, 99, 145 – 46, 152. Cf. also 29 – a quote from Aristotles’ De anima, “la pietra non è nell’anima, ma la specie, o diciamo forma della pietra, indottavi dalla fantasia”.  Maggi (2012).  Dolce (2001), 95 – 96.

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7 Gesualdo: Art of Memory and Gesture “Siate cauti nelli sinonimi, e equivoci”,⁷⁶ warns the Franciscan Filippo Gesualdo in his Plutosofia (Padua 1592), a title that eloquently suggests the intellectual enrichment brought by the “publico erario della memoria”⁷⁷. The slippery term chosen to exemplify the difficulty – again, the proverbial dog, “cane” – affords a prosaic mistake: “ponendo il cane, per il can celeste; non diciate cane, che rode l’osso”⁷⁸. Non diciate suggests trouble occurring during lively speech; indeed, Gesualdo follows up with more flaws impacting on speech delivery. Nel collocare, e ripetere l’imagini, si avertisca, di non far’altri gesti, che quelli che si ricercano opportunamente secondo l’arte della pronuntia nel recitatore. E si guardi il formatore di non applicarsi, o collocando, o ripetendo a qualche gesto intensamente fuor dell’arte, come il contar con le dita, tener il capo saldo e erto, mirar in sù, piegarsi in giù; ma indifferentemente resti libero d’ogni intensa applicatione di simili atti; perché altrimente facendo, il recitatore recitando farà poi l’istessi gesti inconvenienti, e perigliosi […]. Per mancamento di questa regola, ho visto alcuni recitanti, stare come che havessero ingiottita una spada, inflessibili e erti; e con gli occhi fitti al muro, che sta lor dirimpetto, quasi che fussero statue. La qual cosa non solamente disdice assai, ma scuopre l’arte […].⁷⁹

“Arte” refers in this passage to two different skills: the “formatore”, working on placement and consolidation of imagines agentes, deals with ars memoriae; the “recitatore” with “arte della pronuntia” (comprehensive of efficient acting during the public discourse). For a successful performance, appropriate motions should follow the text in spoken form – minding pace, pauses, emphases, etc; if instead, gestures mirror the rhythm and emotional color of the visual cues, the audience (and eventually the speaker himself) will experience an absurd lack of synchronicity. The “gesto fuor dell’arte […] scuopre l’arte” – meaning: the infraction against the art of recitation unveils the art of memory. In speech delivery, as orators since Cicero knew, the body talks (De oratore, 3, 222: “est actio quasi sermo corporis”), and hearers respond accordingly.⁸⁰ But with regards to the memory code, the body must keep the secret – “saper celar l’arte”,⁸¹ stresses Gesualdo. The practitioner who conforms gesticulations to the kinesis of imagines agentes unduly exchanges the code with the source, much as Dolce’s disputant who speaks of lions and bears – except here the stamp of equivocation is

 Gesualdo (1592), 48r.  Ibid., 1v.  Ibid., 48r.  Ibid., 48v.  “E però vediamo, che uno che raconti un qualche caso meraviglioso ad altri, egli principalmente si muove, secondo la natura di quello che racconta, e gli ascoltanti chi più, e chi meno, mossi con lui da quei medesimi moti, fanno col corpo simiglianti effetti” (Lomazzo, Trattato del’arte della pittura scultura ed architettura, 6). For this aspect cf. Bolzoni (1995), 164– 74.  Gesualdo (1592), 48v.

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in the flesh, not in words; the body, not the language, betrays the code, burdened by the double task. Perhaps Gesualdo wishes to reaffirm closeness between words and body language, reorienting the human figure towards the text source, when he exhorts his readers to fill bodily loci directly with words, not images (“[…] io assegno questi luoghi della persona per la collocatione immediata senza imagini”).⁸² Covered with letters, without the mediation of visual cues, the body as locus becomes effectively a page surrogate: “[…] queste parole [nella persona] si pongono senza imagine, e immediatamente a guisa che stanno le parole scritte sopra la carta”⁸³. The passage from one locus to the next shouldn’t involve excessive voids, because scattered elements slow down recollection, again in analogy with readability criteria – “si come malamente leggiamo le parole, quando le lett[e]re, sillabe, o le parole ancora son troppo distanti l’una dall’altra”.⁸⁴ Sometimes, however, the formatore in need of a large storage space will have to change buildings, or even cities – “Per esempio, haverò collocato il prohemio, nelli luoghi della chiesa di San Francesco di Palermo; posso collocar la prima parte della Predica […] nelli Luoghi della Minerva di Roma […]”⁸⁵. As it transitions through the parts of the sermon, the mind needs time to regroup from the imaginary travel; Gesualdo describes how to disguise the resulting pauses in delivery, making sure that the audience doesn’t perceive them as hesitations in reasoning or as poor fluency: […] dovendo passar ad un’altra chiesa lontana; fingerò che mi venghi una tosse, o che il compagno mi chiama; e mentre starò, o a tossire e purgarmi, o voltandomi parlar, o attender al compagno; passerò con la memoria e con la mente, al principio dell’altro luogo commune, e trovatolo e ben possedendolo, ripiglio il ragionamento, e così con l’arte, e con l’astutia cuopro il difetto.⁸⁶

Even the expert declaimer must take into account the material impact of the code on the speech and its interference in the coordination of events. The guile deployed to conceal a pause – a cough attack with expectorations, a plunge into communicative absurdity with the back turned to the crowd – wouldn’t properly qualify as suasive sermo corporis, yet Gesualdo must choose the farcical camouflage over the telling lull. The mind turns to the loci, but decorum requires body and voice to mask the memory page and pretend that the source page is the only version. In this sense, the liber mentalis is not just a personal book, but also a secret book.

    

Ibid., 27v. Ibid., 26v. Ibid., 17r. Ibid., 17r-18r. Ibid., 18v.

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8 The “Libraria della memoria” By finding access in memory’s public treasury, Gesualdo pursues the restoration of an order: he intends his mnemonology as a tool for redeeming knowledge from postlapsarian limitations.⁸⁷ The effort should culminate in a mental “biblioteca o libraria”,⁸⁸ destined to embarrass those who take pride in their solid shelves. The “libraria della memoria”⁸⁹ exposes the material book as imperfect and transitory, functional for the recovery of voices, but inherently prosthetic: […] per sovenir e all’ignoranza, e all’oblivione; l’arte ha introdotto l’aiuto delli libri. Li quali ancora soppliscono a due imperfettioni, distanza, e morte; perché non essendo presente la voce dell’auttore o mastro, sopplisce la scrittura del suo libro; et essendo egli morto, vive nella scrittura del libro, per lo che li studenti mentre studiano (come si dice per proverbio) parlano con li morti. Se bene dunque li libri sono utili, e necessari al nostro stato imperfetto; non dimeno studiati che si sono una volta, meglio è haver la memoria per libraria, che la libraria di carte e scritture; poi che la libraria è fatta, per sopplimento della memoria. E se così è, meglio è haver la memoria, che è il principale, che la libraria che è il sopplimento; si come meglio è haver la gamba e piede di carne e d’ossa, che di legno. ⁹⁰

Gesualdo enumerates the signs of the book’s imperfection, contrasting them with the superior quality of the liber mentalis: one is costly, bulky, damaged by use – the other comes for free, can move anywhere (the reference goes to Peter of Ravenna), and gets stronger through use. One “vi fa huomini”, the other “vi fa simili all’angeli e a dio, li quali ogni scientia hanno sempre seco”.⁹¹ A different mode of reasoning takes shape, no longer “col ricorrer con la mano, e l’occhio alli libri”,⁹² but mentally scanning well-ordered loci – which again entails material advantages (avoiding consumption of paper, lamp oil, and sight).⁹³ In order to rival the libraria di carte e scritture, Gesualdo equips his archive with the tools of a conscientious memory librarian. He gives suggestions on forming images that work as book labels, indexing authors and topics; he devotes a paragraph to how to represent punctuation⁹⁴; he fills three pages with a system of referencing quotes, including the formatting necessities of various disciplines and a color coding

 The study of Keller-Dall’Asta discusses Gesualdo’s salvation plan within the context of other sixteenth-century works on memory ([2001], 88 – 148).  Gesualdo (1592), 55v.  Ibid., 55v.  Ibid., 56r (my emphases).  Ibid., 56r.  Ibid., 58r.  Ibid., 56r, 58r.  To represent a full stop, someone hitting “o con un pugno, o un calcio” the image representing the last word in a sentence will do (Ibid., 52v.).

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procedure for added accuracy; he mirrors the thematic order of outer libraries by grouping books around subject-specific loci (districts, cities).⁹⁵ Well-aware of the persistent critique of artificial memory as double task – an “inutile ingombro”⁹⁶ – Gesualdo compares loci and imagines to feathers, “penne”, which add weight to birds but enable flight. His main counterargument seems to address Quintilian’s old realization that focusing on the written surface doesn’t quite eliminate loci: in learning by heart directly from the page, one unwittingly produces “memoria locale, nelli fogli della carta scritta” – a confused form of ars memoriae, which nonetheless “non è senza luoghi, e imagini”⁹⁷. Precisely because the eye tends to create loci in the page, Gesualdo issues a separate instruction, urging to thwart such habit: Nel collocare, prendendo le parole o concetti dalla carta, e riponendo nelli luoghi, non si facci memoria nella carta e parti sue; ma solamente nelli luoghi; perché sarebbe doppia fatica in ricordarsi e delli luoghi, e della carta.⁹⁸

Acknowledging the chance of a doppia fatica, Gesualdo determines that the superfluous double is the memoria nella carta, not the artificial memory, thus subverting the terms of Quintilian’s objection. The declaration of memory’s victory over the libraria di carte e scritture – an apt end point for our review of inner books – appears even more hyperbolic, as it is pronounced just as memory culture is on the verge of fading out. Significant is Gesualdo’s inclusion of a system of luoghi vacoi, empty loci to be used as ‘note-pads’, “nel modo che studiando li libri cava li raggionamenti e li colloca nella carta”⁹⁹: with these empty rooms, Plutosofia makes space for a memory twin of the ars excerpendi – the technique of excerpting and archiving that will eventually become an art of forgetting.¹⁰⁰ The luoghi vacoi would seem to contradict the author’s intention of avoiding a doppia fatica: since their information needs eventually to migrate into permanent loci, the formatore would encounter the same string of images in two different settings – precisely what Gesualdo wanted to sidestep by prohibiting loci on the page. Yet Gesualdo’s inconsistencies in many ways exemplify the century-long discourse on the inner pagina: accounts of the effects of unavoidable duplications, of multiple text-related presences, always seem omissive. Whether the added code translates into uplifting “penne” or into a manufactured cough, with memory the source text enters into a field of coexistences, which goes beyond the binary interplay of original and copy.  Ibid., 49r – 49v; 52v – 54r; 57r – 57v.  Ibid., 60r.  Ibid., 60r.  Ibid., 48v (my emphasis).  Ibid., 58v.  For the transition of the ars excerpendi from memory aid to “arte del dimenticare”, cf. the recent work by Cevolini (2006).

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While the most dramatic (although usually hidden) expression of change takes shape in the code with its idiosyncratic forms, other elements contribute to the makeover of the memorized text. The notion of a mental screen in communication or symbiosis with the writing surface conditions modes of inner writing as well as the development of a mentalized physical page, reexplored in its spatial possibilities – far removed from a ‘text only’ idea. The egocentric, meditated intake of text during the mnemonic commerce projects it into a field of quasi-sensual references that stimulate participative, if not altogether proprietary, attitudes. Once the ars memoriae develops its secondary layers – i. e. when the usage of prefabricated images from one’s cultural patrimony becomes systematic and pieces of the archive convert into tools for its further expansion – the game of second natures reverberates throughout all parts of the system, throughout pages, indexes, and shelves. The accounts of practitioners’ bodies and voices disaligned from the texts they are meant to stage, serve us as a further reminder – albeit anecdotal – of an ineludible multiplicity. The relatively harmless manifestation of directional or semantic mixups adumbrates a more radical and unsettling equivocality of texts and natures sustained by mnemonic praxis.

Bibliography Primary Sources Bruno, Giordano, Opere Mnemotecniche, Tomo I, ed. Marco Matteoli, Rita Sturlese, Nicoletta Tirinnanzi, Milano 2004. Dolce, Lodovico, Dialogo del modo di accrescere e conservar la memoria, ed. Andrea Torre, Pisa 2001. Garzoni, Tommaso, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, Venezia 1585. Gesualdo, Filippo, Plutosofia, Nella quale si spiega l’Arte della Memoria con altre cose notabili pertinenti tanto alla Memoria Naturale quanto all’Artificiale, Padova 1592. Patrizi, Francesco, Della historia diece dialoghi, Venezia 1560. Petrarch, Francesco, Letters on Familiar Matters, vol. III, trans. Aldo Bernardo, New York 2005. Scaliger, Iulius Caesar, Poetices libri septem/Sieben Bücher über die Dichtkunst, vol. IV, book 5, ed. Gregor Vogt-Spira, Stuttgart 1998. Scaliger, Iulius Caesar, Poetices libri septem. Sieben Bücher über die Dichtkunst, vol. IV, book 6 and 7, ed. Gregor Vogt-Spira/Luc Deitz, Stuttgart 2003.

Secondary Sources Blumenberg, Hans, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt, Frankfurt a.M. 1981. Bolzoni, Lina, L’universo dei poemi possibili. Studi su Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, Roma 1980. Bolzoni, Lina, La stanza della memoria: modelli letterari e iconografici nell’età della stampa, Torino, 1995. Bolzoni, Lina, “Lettura come dialogo con gli autori: Un mito letterario fra Petrarca, Erasmo e Tasso”, in: Rivista di letterature moderne e comparate, 57,3 (2004), 287 – 301.

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Carruthers, Mary, The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge 1990. Carruthers, Mary /Jan M. Ziolkowski (ed.), The Medieval Craft of Memory: an Anthology of Texts and Pictures, Philadelphia 2003. Cevolini, Alberto, De arte excerpendi. Imparare a dimenticare nella modernità, Firenze 2006. Curtius, Ernst, “Schrift- und Buchmetaphorik in der Weltliteratur”, in: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 20, 4 (1942), 359 – 411. Derrida, Jacques, De la Grammatologie, Paris 1967. Draaisma, Douwe, Metaphors of memory: A history of ideas about the mind, Cambridge 2000. Gellrich, Jesse M., The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages: Language, Theory, Mythology, and Fiction, Ithaca/London 1985. Heimann-Seelbach, Sabine, “Memoriertraktate der Schedelschen Bibliothek”, in: Ars memorativa: zur kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der Gedächtniskunst 1400 – 1750, ed. Berns, Jörg Jochen/Wolfgang Neuber, Berlin 1993, 126 – 144. Heimann-Seelbach, Sabine, “‘Was Ihr den Geist der Zeiten heisst…’ Ars memorativa als Gegenstand und Methode der Periodisierung.”, in: Daphnis 24,1 (1995), 1 – 16. Heimann-Seelbach, Sabine, “Diagrammatik und Gedächtniskunst. Zur Bedeutung der Schrift für die Ars memorativa im 15. Jahrhundert”, in: Schule und Schüler im Mittelalter. Beiträge zur europäischen Bildungsgeschichte des 9. bis 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Nonn, Ulrich/Martin Kintzinger/Sönke Lorenz/Michael Walter, Köln/Weimar/Wien 1996. Heimann-Seelbach, Sabine, Ars und Scientia: Genese, Überlieferung und Funktionen der mnemotechnischen Traktatliteratur im 15. Jahrhundert. Mit Edition und Untersuchung dreier deutscher Traktate und ihrer lateinischen Vorlagen, Berlin 2000. Hochschild, Joshua P., The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s “De Nominum Analogia”, Notre Dame 2010. Jaeger, Eric, The Book of the Heart, Chicago 2000. Luria, Alexander R., The Mind of a Mnemonist, New York/London 1968. Maggi, Armando, “Under the Sign of Marvel: Della Porta’s Art of Memory as Open-ended Memoirs”, in: Giovan Battista Della Porta, The Art of Remembering/L’arte del ricordare, Ravenna 2012, 7 – 33. Pack, Roger A., “An Ars memorativa from the Later Middle Ages”, in: Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age 46 (1980), 221 – 275. Patrizi, Elisabetta, La trattatistica educativa tra rinascimento e controriforma. L’ Idea dello scolare di Cesare Crispolti, Pisa/Roma, 2005. Plastina, Sandra, Gli alunni di Crono: mito, linguaggio e storia in Francesco Patrizi da Cherso (1529 – 1597), Messina 1992. Plastina, Sandra, “La ‘ragione’ della verità: un confronto tra lo Spaccio de la bestia trionfante di Giordano Bruno e i dialoghi italiani di Francesco Patrizi”, in: Bollettino Filosofico 20 (2004), 221 – 235. Rossi, Paolo, Logic and the Art of Memory: the Quest for a Universal Language, ed. Stephen Clucas, London 2000. Rouse, Richard H./ Rouse, Mary A., “Statim invenire: Schools, Preachers and New Attitudes to the Page”, in: Renaissance and renewal in the twelfth century, eds. Robert Louis Benson, Giles Constable, Carol Dana Lanham, and Charles Homer Haskins, Toronto 1991, 201 – 225. Rouse, Richard H./Rouse, Mary A., “The Vocabulary Of Wax-Tablets”, in: Bound Fast with Letters: Medieval Writers, Readers, and Texts, Notre Dame 2013, 13 – 23. Torre, Andrea, Petrarcheschi segni di memoria: spie, postille, metafore, Pisa 2007. Vanderjagt, Arjo/Klaas van Berkel (ed.), The Book of Nature in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Leuven 2005.

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Vasoli, Cesare, “Alle origini della crisi delle ‘tradizioni’: Francesco Patrizi e la cultura veneta degli anni sessanta”, in: Crisi e rinnovamenti nell’autunno del Rinascimento a Venezia, ed. Vittore Branca/Carlo Ossola, Firenze 1991, 155 – 176.

2 Rewritings in Early Modern Literature

Barbara Kuhn (Eichstätt-Ingolstadt)

“nulla son io; […] due siam fatti d’uno” (Geta e Birria) – Subtracting by Duplicating, or The Transformations of Amphitryon in the Early Modern Period The quotation in this paper’s title¹ points to a quite specific kind of higher – or perhaps lower, but certainly very confused – mathematics, where nothing or zero, two and one are, in a certain sense, equivalent. This impression is confirmed by a reading of Geta e Birria, a tale from the first half of the fifteenth century, now unanimously attributed to two authors, Ghigo Brunelleschi and Domenico da Prato,² and featuring a narrator who, although using a medieval text as his direct source, cites Plautus as the “primo ’nventore” of his “commedia” (182,2) even claiming to follow him verbatim (cf. 173,1− 3). Geta, the character who can be traced back to Plautus’s Sosia, has already been the victim of a similar play on numbers and provoked into complaining: “siàn fatti due ch’eravam’uno” (108,3). Even if the duplication remains incomprehensible to the character who says “I”, he cannot deny the duality because he can hear his own voice coming from without: “udendo me mi fa chiaro di dua” (108,8). He does, it is true, insist in the following line that “Quel ch’è uno è uno”, but this irrefutably expressed dictum is at odds with his experience: “ma i’ che parlo | non sono un sol” (109,1– 2); the only possible solution, if one no longer equals one, is either addition or subtraction: “essere dua, od esser nulla” (111,4). Once the self has been “subtracted”, however – “chi è che sanza me poss’esser io?” (120,8) – little is left: “tu sie Geta et io zero” (124,6); “nulla son io” (136,8); “or di me stesso sono fatto niente” (142,4); “nulla son sanza rimedio” (144,8). These are only a few examples among many. The play with zero, one and two – which are, apparently, entirely interchangeable – seems designed to drive the character who says “I” mad – and with him, the reader, who hardly knows where he stands in this in-between space, this story which falls “between all chairs”. For as I shall show in the first section of my paper, the question “One, or maybe two, or perhaps none at all?” in many ways also applies to this early modern tale itself which, in the course of its dialogue  All quotations are from: Geta e Birria, ed. Chiarini (1982). Strophe and line are indicated in brackets after each quotation. The quotation in the title is from lines 136,8−137,1.  Without, however, ruling out the possibility of further revisions or interventions because, as Mazzotta puts it, there remains a “ragionevole sospetto che l’opera nasconda un insondabile conglomerato di interventi, frutto di quel complesso lavoro di collaborazione ‘attraverso sostituzioni e interpolazioni di ottave, circostanze, episodi, per un bisogno di amplificazione, di illustrazione, di coloritura […] per intrusione di materia estranea, per riorganizzazione e utilizzazione diversa di elementi narrativi o descrittivi’ [Domenico De Robertis]”. Mazzotta (1975), 229. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-006

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with a classical antiquity quite literally transmitted by the Middle Ages, distances itself from both traditions, ancient and medieval, and uses that difference to highlight the dialogic – as opposed to the imitative – aspect of its evocation of the ancient author and his Amphitruo. In order to identify the specific features of the early modern version of the myth, the second part of my paper will focus in more depth than above on the connections between the three numbers and the problem of identity that they imply, and lastly, on this double basis, the third part will examine the question of man raised by the text. First of all, however, I should like to cast a glance at the controversial status of the text in scholarship, because over the past few decades, this has given – and continues to give – frequent rise to disputes, polemic and sometimes fierce attacks. Although it is not possible to go into the details here, it should at least be mentioned that one of the two sides of the debate, and primarily Antonio Lanza, from 1971 right up until 2007 and beyond (his 2007 paper was updated in 2010)³ argues that the text began life in the fourteenth century in the form of an oral, publicly recited narrative, a cantare. The author of this cantare is thought to be Ghigo Brunelleschi who, as is customary in the genre, took his cue from a previous text, Vitalis of Blois’s extremely popular and widely known Geta from the twelfth century. Although Brunelleschi had not mastered the finer points of Latin, he translated Vitalis’s text into Italian, using the eight-line stanzas or ottaverime typical of the cantari. In spite of his misunderstandings, which at times result in completely new characters and episodes, and thanks to the liberties he takes with his source, Brunelleschi produced a text which not only was a great success, but also played its part in the quarrel between traditionalists and humanists raging in Florence in the late Trecento and early Quattrocento. The numerous manuscripts transmitting Geta e Birria, however, name various authors and, most significantly, they state towards the end of the text that while it is thus far the work of Ghigo (or sometimes Filippo) Brunelleschi, the tale has been completed by Domenico da Prato.⁴ Lanza was not the first to argue along these lines; Guerri⁵ before him had suspected this second author of having reworked the first part of the text, introducing entire stanzas and transforming the original cantare into a by and large dull poemetto or verse narrative – for the simple reason that Domenico da Prato, one of the so-called traditionalists, took offence at the text and saw it in his interest to circulate a harmless, watered-down version. Accordingly, in 1971, Lanza produced an appendix to his monograph on the Quattrocen-

 Cf. Lanza (2007) – all subsequent quotations are from this version of the article. For the revised and updated version cf. Lanza (2010).  In the numbering of the edition quoted here which names Pippo (i.e. Filippo) Brunelleschi and Domenico da Prato as the authors, the caesura falls between strophes 161 and 162. Lanza, however, puts the break later (strophe 181 in the edition quoted here), but attributes all the ottaverime up to this point (which also marks the end of his edition of the text) to Ghigo Brunelleschi. Cf. the Mazzotta quotation (1975) in note 6.  Cf. Guerri (1931).

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to in Florence in the form of an “expurgated” version of what he considered the original cantare, omitting thirty-one stanzas from the text transmitted by the manuscripts – stanzas which were, in his opinion, indisputably the work of Domenico.⁶ Lanza’s negative judgement is rejected by Gioachino Chiarini in his 1982 anthology of novellas, which includes the text in its entirety. Chiarini agrees that Domenico da Prato not only completed the story, but also made structural and stylistic changes to the existing text; this was, after all, standard practice in the transmission of such narrative texts, which were constantly being adapted to a particular audience or purpose. But he does not consider the additional ottaverime detrimental to the text; rather he sees the new cornice as playing a structural role: each part of the text, narrative frame and framed narrative alike, complements the other, producing a constant play of interaction and counterpoint. While Lanza, in a long and polemical footnote, rejects this interpretation as “completamente infondata e arbitraria”, at the same time complaining – erroneously – that author and editor used his edition without acknowledgement,⁷ Michelangelo Picone (1993) and Emilio Pasquini (1996) make no mention either of the polemic or of Lanza’s often repetitive contributions to the debate. Instead, Picone refers approvingly to Chiarini’s analysis of the text, citing his edition of the tale in the anthology mentioned above.⁸ Paolo Orvieto, however, who includes and annotates parts of Geta e Birria in the 1998 Antologia della poesia italiana edited by Segre and Ossola, comments on Lanza’s mutilated edition, saying that it is even less usable than the 1879 edition (itself based on an earlier edition), because the deletions are, in his opinion, arbitrary.⁹ In what has so far been the final contribution to the dispute, Lanza’s 2007 paper – originally published in conference proceedings edited by Picone and republished in 2010 – Lanza again reacts touchily to the question raised by Orvieto concerning the reliability of his edition of the text, and proceeds to attack his “amico Orvieto”, describing the eliminations as more or less necessary, a “doverosa operazione di risanamento del cantare”; anyone  Cf. Mazzotta’s justified criticism – not least of Lanza’s edition of the text – and his plea for a more cautious approach to textual attribution: “Suscita non poche perplessità la perentoria espunzione di 31 ottave dell’edizione Arlìa […], operata in conformità alle indicazioni del Guerri al fine di rendere all’operetta l’originaria fisionomia canterina e polemica: in effetti, la proclamata conservazione delle “sole ottave del Brunelleschi” e l’esclusione di “quelle di Domenico’ è ben lungi dal prospettarsi come un’operazione pacifica e senza rischi: è vero che il Geta sembra configurarsi come opera composita […], ma non è certo il caso di sottovalutare il fatto che tante testimonianze riconducono a Domenico le 16 ottave che chiudono l’edizione del Lanza, e, in più occasioni, avanzano attribuzioni diverse (Pippo Brunelleschi, Giovanni da Prato, Antonio da Prato ecc.). Il che impone una maggiore cautela nelle attribuzioni, o, se non altro, una meno drastica distinzione dell parti”. Mazzotta (1975), 229.  Cf. Lanza (1989), 266. Chiarini does in fact list his borrowings from Lanza’s edition in the Nota ai testi to his anthology of novellas: cf. Chiarini (1982), XLVII. The controversial edition of Geta e Birria is only included in the first edition of the study: Lanza (1971), 271– 302, Appendice with eighteen ottaverime by Giovanni Gherardi, 303 – 306.  Cf. Picone (1993), 678; Pasquini (1996), 872−3.  Cf. Orvieto (1998), 1440.

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who considered them arbitrary was so incredibly short-sighted as to be incapable of distinguishing the hand of an “ottimo poeta satirico” from that of a “mediocre poetastro”.¹⁰ Seen from the outside, this positioning and polemicising may seem amusing rather than functional or productive, but it does make one thing very clear: not only is a new and preferably critical edition of this “straordinario testo”,¹¹ this “sofisticata novella in versi”¹² a desideratum; it is also and above all worth focusing more closely on the text itself, because the interesting interpretations, and in particular those of Chiarini and Picone,¹³ examine the text in a wider context, and devote only a few pages of a somewhat summary nature to the novella itself, while Lanza although he returns to what is obviously a sore point in almost all his books,¹⁴ tends to repeat the well-worn arguments of his adored Guerri and, when he does quote at (sometimes great) length from the text, his quotations tend to serve only as self-explanatory evidence. The logic behind this method is that anyone not afflicted with the short-sightedness so deplored by Lanza will have no trouble following his train of thought without further explanation. On several occasions Lanza legitimizes the incontrovertible accuracy of his own opinion simply by pointing to his decades-long interest in the subject – hasn’t he been a fan of Guerri’s book and the Geta e Birria since he was fourteen?¹⁵ – and by pointing out that he published the poetry of Domenico da Prato in his anthology of Tuscan poets of the Quattrocento, so ought to know what the poet was capable of and what he wasn’t. But rather than getting bogged down by the mutilated text, or by authority and its blind acceptance of itself, we would do better to turn to the delights of the text itself and to its peculiar position ‘between all chairs’.

1 In-Between Spaces Although it is not immediately evident in the title, Geta e Birria has a place in the long line of reworkings of the ancient Amphitryon material with which the Middle Ages and the modern era engaged in intense dialogue.¹⁶ The narrator himself invokes

 Lanza (2007), 249 – 254.  Picone/Rubini (2007), IX.  Picone (1993), 679.  Chiarini (1982), XI−XIV; Picone (1993), 678 – 680.  Beside the previously mentioned books and articles, cf. also: Lanza (1991) and Lanza (1994).  Cf. Lanza (2007), 235 and 250.  Cf. Szondi (1973), 153−184; Jauß (1997), 534−584. Jauß does, it is true, give a brief account of the Geta of Vitalis of Blois in between his analyses of the plays of Plautus and Molière (cf. ibid., 547−549), but neither Szondi nor Jauß discusses the Italian fifteenth-century version of the myth which is the focus of my study.

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Plautus twice towards the end of the text,¹⁷ referring to him as his “degno poeta” (182,1; cf. 173,2), although it clearly wasn’t Plautus’s Amphitruo which served him as a source, but the previously mentioned Geta by Vitalis of Blois. Unlike the large majority of literary reworkings of the material, Geta e Birria was not intended to be performed; it is a narrative text, and in this, too, it follows the medieval Latin model which was written in elegiac distichs, although the large proportion of dialogue and the brevity of most of the narrative parts of the text mean that it does offer itself for performance or mime.¹⁸ Here, again, the Italian text resembles its model: in spite of the very different historical and literary background, it provides no unequivocal answer to the question of genre. According to Lanza, the “original text”, i. e. the reconstructed text resulting from his emendations and conjectures, was a cantare which had been reworked into a story, a narrative perhaps not intended to be recited in public, but to be read in private. Others speak of a cantare even when referring to the ‘uncut’ version of the text as it exists in the manuscripts, but this does not prevent them from including it in anthologies purporting to be collections of novellas.¹⁹ Sometimes it is described not only as a “cantare novellistico” (as opposed to a “cantare fiabesco” or a “cantare cavalleresco”), but also as a “poemetto”, or even a “novella in versi”, although others, such as Cesare Segre, regard prose as a defining feature of the novella.²⁰ Such a definition would exclude the text under discussion, and explain why it is excerpted in the Antologia della poesia italiana ²¹ edited by Segre and Ossola; tellingly, the generic ambivalence of the text continues into its programmatic placement in various anthologies. Considering that genres are in any case conventions, it is, however, less important to pigeonhole the text in a specific genre than to remain aware of its peculiarities, and its in-between status in particular. Linked to this in-between status between novella, cantare and poemetto is, as I hinted at in my remarks on the genre cantare, a further ambivalence, and one that is  Referring to written sources in order to legitimize and ennoble one’s own narrative is common practice in the highly self-referential cantari where the canterini often reflect on their own act of narration within the texts: cf. Barbiellini Amidei (1997), 8; 14, note 15.  On elegiac comedy, a genre situated “between written epic and drama”, considered to have been “invented” by Vitalis of Blois “with Geta (1125/30) and Aulularia (circa 1145)”, cf. Schmidt (1975), 35 −38. (These and all subsequent translations of German quotations are by Imogen Taylor.) Cf. also Bertau (2005), 357 and Bertini (1973). Bertini’s study is complemented by the complete Latin text and an Italian prose translation (pp. 90−127). I will hereafter quote from: Vitalis von Blois: Der “Geta”, ed. Paeske, giving the line numbers.  The text is, for example, to be found not only in the anthology edited by Chiarini, but also in the Novelle del Quattrocento edited by Borlenghi.  Cf. Segre (1989), 48. The loose categorization of the cantare in the system of genres is also demonstrated in the same book by Varanini (1989) who, on the one hand, gives a broader definition of the novella than Segre, and on the other hand makes finer distinctions within verse and prose narrative by distinguishing between public recitation and private reading. At the same time, however, he concedes that the cantari were also sometimes intended for private reading (cf. ibid., 407).  Brunelleschi, “Da Geta e Birria”.

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of historico-cultural interest. This is the question of literacy and orality, and it is raised by the text in two respects: firstly through the well-known practice of performing or reciting the cantari, which can be classified as so-called “secondary orality”²², and secondly through signals inscribed in the text itself, which point up its in-between status, such as, for example, the feigned orality of the fictional situation which brings together reciter and audience in a text intended to be read.²³ In the case of the cantari it is in fact (as evidenced in the reference to Plautus which effectively refers to Vitalis) the rule for the first-person narrator to invoke an earlier source, presenting it as a “true story” to give credence to his own narrative, so that as a “genere-crocevia”²⁴ the cantare not only reflects the ambiguity between orality and literacy, but also its own mediatory position between folk culture and literary tradition, “alto” and “basso” and sometimes even between standard language and dialect – a position which, even without the direct link between ancient source and early modern text, again reveals the dialogic relationship with classical antiquity.²⁵ Another recurrent feature of the cantari closely related to the constitutive hybridity of the genre resulting from its in-between status – a hybridity which seems to call for constant self-reflection and self-affirmation – is auto-referentiality. Even when public recital has been relegated to memory and imagination, and we are dealing with a text which is presumably intended to be read,²⁶ the cantari, not least in the

 As is well known, this orality is described as secondary because it does not, as in the case of entirely or predominantly oral cultures, precede the potential act of recording a text which was initially memorized and handed down in an exclusively oral form; rather it is an orality which presupposes and is based on a literary culture, as for example when the reception of a text does not take the form of private reading but that of a public reading, a recital or a mimed performance. Cf. Patrizi (1996), 100−101. Patrizi’s definition follows the research on orality conducted by Maria Corti and above all Paul Zumthor, thus diverging from the concept of a “second orality” – that “of grammophone, telephone, radio and television” – based on the theories of Walter Ong (Schlaffer [1986], 7).  This applies in particular to cantari from the fifteenth century, “destinati esclusivamente alla lettura”: “se l’oralità è una delle caratteristiche stilistico-retoriche che segnano innegabilmente il testo del cantare, gli danno forma, è importante rammentare che tale oralità diviene spesso una finzione di oralità del tutto indipendente da qualsiasi evento di performance.” Barbiellini Amidei (2007), 23.  Barbiellini Amidei (2007), 7.  Cf. Barbiellini Amidei (2007), 7. I should like to thank Bardo Gauly for pointing out that the early palliate, including Plautus’s Amphitruo, are also situated between the literary comedy of the Hellenistic period and the sub-literary drama of the Italic tradition. This means that the dialogue with classical antiquity grows not only out of a return to the ancient myth such as it is transmitted by the medieval text, but also from the pragmatic and performative aspect of the two texts whose distinctiveness stems from their particular foundation in literary and non-literary traditions.  “È difficile separare nel secondo Quattrocento la messa in rima per motivi di cantabilità – che inserisce quindi il testo all’interno di un circuito di comunicazione più spiccatamente vocale – dalla messa in rima ‘d’autore’, specie per alcune novelle particolarmente note, e in particolare a Firenze, dove la letteratura popolareggiante fa le sue prove più riuscite: è questo il caso del volgarizzamento primoquattrocentesco in ottava rima del Geta mediolatino di Vitale di Blois di Ghigo Brunelleschi.” Beer (1996), 13.

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tale of Geta e Birria, refer to themselves as both text and voice,²⁷ often in one and the same text. At the end of the three introductory ottaverime, for instance, where the narrator invokes Amor and links his love to his narration – and before the story itself begins – we find, like a hinge between two worlds, the phrase “come appresso udirà chi bene ascolta” (3,8), which is taken up a little later in the words “Come udirete” (6,8). The narrator repeatedly involves his audience in his discourse – “perché i’ non v’inganni” (11,6), “non vi nascondo” (11,8) – even claiming to take their wishes into account in his narration: “Per ch’i’ son certo che troppo vi grava | parlar di Geta sì lungo sermone | lascerò lui, e parlerovvi un poco | di Birria” (15,5 − 8). Only three stanzas later, however, he emphasises the written composition of the story with the same matter-of-factness with which he had previously stressed the orality of the narration: “el Birria e ’l Geta m’hanno già sì stanco, | che di loro opre misere e cattive | ne lascerò la penna e ’l foglio bianco” (18,3 − 5). Later still he goes back to addressing a fictional audience – “ciascun ch’è qui presente” – urging them to imagine the (only discreetly implied) joys of Jupiter’s love. Even if it has calcified to a “topos letterario”,²⁸ the narrator makes use of the “presenza della voce, del discorso in praesentia” to point to the (fictional or real) orality of the performance: Allo estremo valor, ch’Amor consente, tosto ne venne lo ’nfiammato idio; immagini ciascun ch’è qui presente quant’ebbe di piacer il Signor pio;

 Cf. Barbiellini Amidei (1997), 8. As the text under discussion demonstrates in exemplary fashion, the theory advocated by Barbiellini Amidei and Beer corresponds more closely with the complex reality of the cantare and in particular with Geta e Birria than the indiscriminate pigeonholing of texts into either those intended for solitary reading such as Petrarch’s Canzoniere and Ariosto’s Orlando furioso or the cantari, which are rooted in an oral communication situation – a compartmentalization recently reiterated by Morabito, when he attributed the written aspect of the cantari (he does acknowledge its presence) to primarily “practical necessities”: “In the case of the cantari, […] the oral dimension is to be understood as the real condition of communication: real and exclusive. If, beyond that, the texts were to experience a written existence, then this was partly due to the canterino’s practical necessities concerning memorization; in part it constituted an attempt to move onto a higher level which continued to differentiate itself more and more from ‘popular’ poetry; to move on to the poetry by lettered poets for a lettered audience, which was attempting to establish itself in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as ‘classic’, to stake out room for itself and to earn a status of literary nobility equal to that of the classics”. Morabito (2012), 380. Cf. in contrast: “Per comprendere il significato del cantare non si possono non richiamare alla mente le modalità di ricezione del genere, con le sue dimensioni, quella della lettura privata, e quella dell’ascolto collettivo della performance, in cui ognuno si sente almeno in parte coinvolto e chiamato in causa, poiché è a lui, direttamente, che si rivolge il cantare”. Barbiellini Amidei (1997), 9. The “carattere sociale del cantare” is preserved even when the immediate relationship between canterino and audience is obviously fictitious, because this relationship is the basis for “il meccanismo del testo, la sua tecnica narrativa” (ibid.).  Barbiellini Amidei (1997), 12.

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lasciolo riposar sì dolcemente, per dir del Birria quando si partìo […]. (63,1− 6)

Elsewhere, however, he seems to bypass the authority of the audience, thus underlining the duality of personaggi and autore in a situation of literacy, a motif that will much later be taken up by Pirandello: “lascerò stare la penna e ’l Geta ancora | el saluto aspettar che più gli grada” (146,1− 2). Here we are dealing less with a real or fictional dialogue between the narrator and his audience – an audience whose wishes are supposedly anticipated by the narrator and whose imagination is called upon when the description threatens to become too explicit and thus inappropriate, especially to a divine lover. Rather, as the zeugma makes clear, the readers (in a metalepsis reminiscent of Orlando furioso) are made to wait like the protagonist himself, while the narrator, who has decided to turn his attention elsewhere for the moment – namely to the woman who lives and rules in his heart (cf. 18,6) – lays down his pen. On the one hand, such remarks inscribe Geta e Birria in a specific tradition, for, at a time when the cantari are becoming increasingly literacised, this form of autoreferentiality typical of the genre is becoming something of a formulaic inventory, a specific rhetoric, which will later be adopted in novels such as those of Pulci or Boiardo.²⁹ On the other hand, however, the allusions to the oral performance on the one side and the process of writing and the development of the text on the other have more than a mere genre-constituting function; they also point beyond the tradition of the cantari to the specific genesis of the particular text – to the (presumably) dual (or even multiple) authorship of Geta e Birria. For the two passages of dialogue between the narrator and his audience which I have quoted and which mention the literality are among the stanzas incriminated and thus eliminated by Lanza, but instead of serving as evidence of rigid theories of textual attribution and their concomitant judgements, they could be used to point up a change in narrative forms between the late Trecento and the first half of the Quattrocento. Without wanting to claim that this “pregevolissimo cantare”³⁰ is an anachronistic anticipation of Ariosto and the irony of fiction he develops in Orlando furioso, I should like to emphasize the play on protagonist and reader’s suspense and expectations, rather than try to squeeze the text into old templates. This “play” does not by any means reduce one of the “invenzioni più originali e curiose” (and lively enough to inspire both Ariosto and Molière) to “una delle più scialbe e sbiadite e abusate nenie d’amore”, as Guerri and Lanza complain³¹; rather, the quoted passage (“la-

 Cf. Barbiellini Amidei (1997), 8. On the existence of a “vera e propria ‘retorica giullaresca’” cf. Cabani (1980), 3.  Orvieto (1998a), 259.  Guerri (1931), 16. Instead of reading the framing ottaverime as the traditional and hackneyed formulas of a lover’s well-worn laments, these invocations of Amor and then Venus should be regarded as an answer to the – more common – religious apostrophes, “le invocazioni religiosi che secondo la tecnica ormai fossilizzata del genere aprono e chiudono questi testi” (Barbiellini Amidei [1997], 11);

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scerò stare la penna e ’l Geta […] aspettar”, 146,1− 2) reveals how, within the text, the intermediate status between literacy and orality and between two different authors becomes linked up with the to-ing and fro-ing between two narrative threads and two literary traditions. For the only version of the text to be preserved in the manuscripts and early editions (and thus the version which enjoyed considerable influence and popularity)³² is precisely that in which this duality (ancient myth on the one hand and stil nuovist amatory discourse on the other) plays a constitutive role. At the same time, this duality – of genre, authorship, communication situation, narrative threads – is also reflected on the level of the myth or plot, highlighting the fact that being in the intermediate space between different traditions does not mean everything adding up to the sum of its parts, or exhausting itself in incoherence and contradiction; rather, being in the intermediate space points to the emergence of new and different questions. For not only is the figure of the servant doubled here to Geta and Birria (following not Plautus, but the medieval Latin version – although, as the twin names of the title suggest, Birria’s role has been developed in the Italian text, where the unflattering portrait of Geta is coupled with an equally unattractive one of Birria); it is also, and more importantly, a tale of doppelgängers which, particularly in the confrontation between Geta and Arcade (alias Mercury), assumes dramatic and comic proportions and life-threatening aspects, as was hinted at in the quotations on enigmatic mathematics at the beginning of this paper.

2 Between All Identities: The Loss of Identity and the Search for Identity The motif of the doppelgänger is not, of course, new, either in the medieval text or in the early modern one; it is, after all, the basis for the Amphitryon myth, whose imbroglios, as is well known, stem from the fact that Jupiter and Mercury assume the form of the general Amphitryon and his servant Sosia, giving rise to double confusion among the mortals – the master’s jealousy of his suspected rival and the servant’s fear of losing his identity to whoever has taken his name. Nevertheless, Vitalis’s Geta and Geta e Birria shift the focus and point to other questions raised by the texts or latent in them. The most obvious change, beside the doubling of the serv-

they distinguish Geta e Birria from many other cantari (cf. the examples in the two-volume anthology, Cantari novellistici, ed. Benucci/Manetti/Zabagli). Lanza, on the other hand, following in Guerri’s footsteps, pronounces these strophes (without substantiating his claim with textual references) “ottave amorose scipite e maldestre che tentano di scimmiottare malamente quelle che fanno da cornice al Filostrato e al Ninfale fiesolano.” Lanza (2007), 253−4.  The wide dissemination of the tale is well illustrated by evidence of reception often mentioned in the secondary literature, namely the famous letter of 10 December 1513 from Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori, in which the author compares himself to the unintentionally comic Geta, obviously assuming that his reader, too, is familiar with the text. Cf. Najemy (1993), and in particular 225−230.

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ants,³³ is the almost total shift in action from masters to servants, rendering the wellknown material more unequivocally comic – material which has, in the course of its long history, assumed tragic, comic and even – in Plautus, namely – tragi-comic form.³⁴ Amphitryon and Alcmene are already reduced to marginal figures in the medieval Latin Geta, a state of affairs which the Italian authors adopt in their version, without, however, sticking slavishly to the text of their model. A comparison of all three texts reveals a newer, more interesting shift: whereas Plautus had begun his drama with the long quarrel between Mercurius and poor Sosia, Vitalis, who will make that scene the centre of his text, sets the opening of his comœdia in Heaven, and focuses on Jupiter’s passion for Almena and his jealousy of Amphitrion, the lucky mortal who has been blessed with such a wife. All the ensuing action of the mortals is thus the consequence of the intrigues and impulses of the gods. The early modern text, on the other hand, opens in an entirely human realm: Anfitrione and Almena provide the frame for the story which centres first on Geta and Birria, and then on Geta and Arcade, before proceeding to the happy ending which, unlike in Plautus, is not brought about by a deus ex machina. ³⁵ Here, after Giove has quenched the fires of his love and returned to Heaven (cf. 168 − 9), the four human beings, Geta, Birria, Anfitrione and Almena, meet again before going their separate ways, the two servants to the kitchen, and husband and wife to their bedchamber, “per ristorare i perduti sett’anni” (180,8). Thus, after the almost fatal imbroglios they have experienced, all four can be satisfied with this fairy-tale ending: “con lunga vita ognun di lor fiorisce. | Così d’Anfitrion l’opra finisce” (181,7− 8). The almost fatal nature of the imbroglios has less to do with the fact that Anfitrione – recalling his military past in a way that is amusing for the reader, but fills his wife with terrified bewilderment: “Or che bisogna venir col coltello?” (174,2) – has brief recourse to his weapons at the end of the story;³⁶ it is not Almena, but the serv-

 It is possible, as Jauß suspects in the context of Vitalis’s Geta, that the doubling, which “later crops up again in the repertoire of the commedia dell’arte’ is an echo of “the half hidden tradition of the ancient Mimus”, Jauß (1997), 547.  This is an issue even in the prologue to Amphitruo, where the divine auctor, Mercurius, promises to adapt the play to the taste of his audience, and the combination of dramatis personae means that the play can only be a tragicomoedia (god and king prevent the play from being a mere comedy, while the role allotted to the slave renders a pure tragedy impossible). Cf. lines 50−64 in Titus Macius Plautus, Amphitruo, 10. On the historical reception of this prologue cf. Jauß (1997), 538−9.  Even by the Middle Ages, it is clearly no longer possible to resolve a conflict by bringing on a deus ex machina; Vitalis of Blois replaces it with the elegant and “realistic” solution of the dream, at the same time ingeniously demonstrating that “a woman has a solid grasp of sophisms and gets the better of man and scholar”, Schmidt (1975), 99.  On the contrary: by obediently dropping his weapons as soon as he hears Almena’s angelically spoken command, “Baci e non arme piglia” (174,4), he reveals this action to be mere “quotation”, once more drawing attention to poor Geta who immediately locks the door and searches the entire house (cf. 175−6).

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ant who has returned with Anfitrione from his travels whose existence is threatened. As in Vitalis (but unlike in Plautus), master and servant have not been away at war, but studying in Athens – but unlike in Vitalis where the departure is not explored in depth (it is only mentioned in the Argumentum that Amphitryon is away studying the Greeks),³⁷ the separation of husband and wife becomes a problem in the early modern text, because Almena refuses to accept that her husband leaves her.³⁸ Anfitrione nevertheless resolves to set out into battle like a medieval knight – only that the challenge he sets himself before returning to his beloved wife is not a physical battle, but an intellectual one: […] O donna mia, ad Atene vogl’ir sanza soggiorno: et infin ch’i’ non so ben filosofia a rivederti già mai non ritorno […]. (5,1− 4)

Unlike his medieval predecessors, then, he sets off not so much in quest of honour as in quest of reason: “Onesto è l’andar mio, po’ ch’io n’acquisto | senno, che sai ch’avanza ogn’altra cosa” (9,1− 2). The two texts are, however, comparable, at least on a lexical level, as far as the subject of studies is concerned: it is logic, or rather dialectics which is to improve the students’ minds and which in both texts becomes the focus of satire, while at the same time pointing beyond the satirical to an epistemological transformation. In the older text the scholastic method is prominent, such as it was established in Abelard’s Sic et non, which has its echo in Geta’s distraught “Sic sum, sic non sum” (V. 409), the play with sophisms, some of which come close to being integrated in the text itself; also prominent are the so-called problem of universals, which resonates in the significance attributed to a name, Aristotle’s newly discovered texts, etc.³⁹ In the more recent text, however, it is late scholasticism which could be said to be the target of the satire, if we consider other approximately contemporary texts, such as invectives against William of Ockham, which themselves

 At the beginning of the tale, there is another humorous reference to the contest for Almena in a series of oppositions, when Jupiter announces his intention to take Amphitrion’s place, setting the study of Almena against that of philosophy, love against reading, the admiration of the artes against that of Almena: “Iupiter Almene studeat thalamo, uir Athenis | Philosophetur. Amet Iupiter, ille legat. | Disputet Amphitrion et fallat Iupiter. Artes | Hic colat, Almenam Iupiter ipse suam.” (V. 31 −34).  “Poi che hai preso per partito | di divenir filosofo perfetto | non so che dirmi; ma non è mia voglia | di star qui sola a morirmi di doglia” (7,5−8). It is not until the tenth strophe that Anfitrione manages to soothe and flatter his wife into agreeing – because it is his wish: “Po’ che ti piace, i’ l’acconsento” (10,4). What, on the diegetic level, is a minor – albeit, from the point of view of gender, very interesting – marital spat, can, on the level of the narration, be read as an amusing prolepsis, sealing a pact between the narrator and the clued-up reader who interprets Almena’s reluctance to be left alone as an allusion to Giove’s unimpeded entry into the marital bedchamber.  Cf. Schmidt (1975), 17, 91−94; Grabmann (1940), 12−13.

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point to a fundamental transformation in the perception of the world⁴⁰ and thus also in philosophy. In spite of these divergences, it is in both cases logic that proves the undoing of the unfortunate servants and drives them to the verge of insanity, such as when the Italian Geta realises that none of what he experiences on his return coincides in any way with what he has learnt in Athens. Logic may not rule out – “loica non vieta” (103,3) – that two people speak with a similar voice, or that two men have the same name, but that the other man can, without seeing him, describe him, ugly as he is – so ugly that Giotto would have refused to paint him (cf. 13,5)⁴¹ – better than he could describe himself (cf. 122), and that, what is more, this man has access to Geta’s memories as if they were his own (cf. 105, 125 − 133) – such phenomena cannot be explained by logic, although they cast doubt less on logic itself than on Geta’s sense of self: “Son io errato?” (107,1), “Son impazzato, od ho il cervello secco […]?” (110,1− 2). Logic teaches the law of contradiction which says that nothing can be and not be at the same time. But this is precisely Geta’s experience: he is and he isn’t. Logic teaches the law of identity which says that A is the same as A, but here it is no longer true that Geta is the same as Geta, for if both I and the other are Geta, I would be the same as someone else, which seems absurd. And finally, logic teaches the law of the excluded middle which says that something either is or it isn’t; there is no middle way. This leads Geta to conclude that he must not exist, since the other man is Geta. There is no law of logic allowing him to conclude either that he exists or that he doesn’t exist: the existence of the other man who claims to be Geta would seem to contradict the former, but the latter is contradicted by Geta’s own sensory experiences – the fact that he can hear, see, touch and feel himself, although his self is evidently defunct (cf. 139). Geta blames all this on logic and on those foolish enough to revere it; in a long apostrophe about the fallaciousness of logic, he rails against it, accusing it of allowing him to become nothing by robbing him of his name and his existence:

 Cf. Kurt Flasch’s reading of the Decameron as a “storm zone of late medieval conflicts”, where Ockham is portrayed as a dialectician interested “in exploring the relationship between words and things, […] in rules for extracting new sentences from existing ones, […] in the logic of language”: Flasch (1992), 21−23.  The allusion to Giotto and his art can at the same time be read as a hint at the complex intertextual play between the various versions of Geta and the texts of Boccaccio. For the narrator of Boccaccio’s Amorosa visione also introduces Giotto as the only artist who could have painted such superhumanly beautiful frescoes, thus using the reference to painting as a supplement to his own inadequate powers of description. There is, of course, one significant difference: whereas in Geta e Birria the subliminal topos of unspeakability is concerned with unspeakable ugliness, in the Amorosa visione it is concerned with unspeakable beauty, so that in invoking the text in which Boccaccio provides a brief synopsis of the medieval Latin Geta, the cantare simultaneously turns it on its head. On the function of these references to the fine arts, cf. Kuhn (forthcoming).

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Loica! Maledetto sia chi prima mi disse che tu eri il fior d’ogn’arte; i’ feci d’appararti grande stima, e per lodarti empiuto ho mille carte: or hai sì fatto con tua falsa lima ch’el nome, e l’esser mio da me si parte; dov’util di saperti riputava, sì tu mi nuoce, e quanto puoi mi grava! (140,1− 8)

If the medieval and the early modern Getas are in agreement about these recriminations and accusations,⁴² it is the differences between the two which are of particular interest, because they shed light on the shifts which take place between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, affording us insight into the new questions posed in the early modern period – not least as a result of the renewed dialogue with classical antiquity. A comparison reveals that the question of metamorphosis in particular, and with it the possibility of identity loss,⁴³ seems to play a considerably more central role in the thought and anxieties of the early modern text than in its predecessor.⁴⁴ The question of man’s position between god and beast had clearly become extremely shaky by the early modern period, well before Copernicus and Galileo, and even before Pico and his Oratio de hominis dignitate. Thus the metamorphosis of gods into humans – the link between Heaven and Earth, god and man, which forms the basis of the Amphitryon myth – is pushed explicitly into the background in Geta e Birria, not only because the birth of Hercules, which will become a frequent and weighty topic in the Renaissance,⁴⁵ has no part to play at all,⁴⁶ but also because the narrator fears that the metamorphosis of gods could alienate his audience: “come comprenderete che mai fosse | l’umana forma presa dagl’idii? | Non veggio il modo” (47,2− 5). Moreover the text repeatedly emphasizes that this supposed transformation is in fact more of a kind of disguise; if nothing else, the phoney Geta’s clairvoyant powers make clear that he never relinquishes his divine attributes. This is stressed both in the lines describing the arrival of the two gods – “l’un par

 “Pereat dialectica, per quam | Sic perii penitus. Nunc scio: scire nocet” (V. 409−10). Thus Vitalis, whose accumulation of alliteration, chiasmus, polyptoton and paronamasia impressively insists on the detrimental effect of dialectics in only two lines.  “L’interesse del Geta e Birria, e la ragione della sua vasta diffusione, sta, oltre che nella maniera in cui è costruito, nella tematica trattata: la comica quête da parte del servo Geta della sua identità perduta.” Picone (1993), 679.  And thus also, as Chiarini stresses, in its literary pretensions: “il motivo delle metamorfosi diventò assolutamente centrale in una cultura nella quale l’intervento riplasmatore dell’artefice su uomini e cose era visto come banco di prova decisivo del talento individuale.” Chiarini (1982), XII.  Cf. Picone (1993), 678.  On the contrary, this Almena already has a son, orphaned for seven years by his father’s departure to study philosophy, just as his mother has to all intents and purposes been a widow all that time. There is no mention of another pregnancy. The absence of Hercules in Vitalis was observed by Montaiglon as early as 1848 (477).

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lo sposo, e l’altro il suo famiglio” (57,8) – and in Jupiter’s ruse, when he wants to steal away from Almena after making love to her and pretends he has to return to his ships (cf. 168). If, then, god-man metamorphosis remains marginal, Geta e Birria devotes a great deal more space to man-beast metamorphosis than the medieval Geta; even before the doppelgänger motif comes to the fore in the confrontation between the two servants, it is an important topic – and one which poses a constant threat because it casts doubt on the distinction of man from all other living beings. Whereas manbeast metamorphosis plays no part in Plautus’s version of the myth, it is at least discernible in Vitalis, not least because the above-mentioned medieval sophisms he invokes repeatedly touch on the possible transformation of men into asses or on the asininity of man.⁴⁷ As a result, Geta is a figure of ridicule even in the medieval Latin text, because he takes the sophisms at face value and ends up believing he can use his outstanding knowledge of logic to turn Birria into a donkey.⁴⁸ This is directly taken up in the cantare, where Birria (who in the Latin version had replied: ‘erit Birria semper homo’ [V.172]) once again refuses to be intimidated by his scholarly servant’s fantasies of omnipotence: […] sommo loico son, onde si prova che l’asino sia uom mostro per prova. Così farò di ciascuno animale, sillogizando, mutar forma e nome, ciascun del suo prim’esser diseguale, e così a’ colori, all’erbe ancora, a’ pomi. El Birria, perché è lento e poco vale, asino vo’ che sia, perché si domi la schiena sua.’ Il Birria fra sé giura: ‘Ma’ non mi to’ quel che mi dié natura. Ciò che tu mi dirai, Geta, per certo, con tuo sofismi e con tue false prove, i’ ti risponderò col viso aperto: i’ son ver uom, com’è piaciuto a Giove. (79,7− 81,4)

But even before the confrontation between the two servants, the man-beast motif is important – when Birria complains about being woken and sent to the harbour by Almena when news comes of Anfitrione’s imminent return. As Birria sees it, this is an outrageous imposition, which he first stubbornly ignores and then tries to talk his way out of (cf. 51− 56), but Almena is more stubborn still, so that he ends up ha-

 Cf. the numerous examples in treatises of medieval logic which can be found in the appendices of Lambert Marie de Rijk’s monumental study (Vol. I, Appendices, und Vol. II.2, Text Volume to Vol. II.1) and resolved using the Index sophismatum et exemplorum, which also cites the “asinus”: De Rijk (1962 −1967). Cf. also Grabmann (1940), 21−2.  On the man-ass sophism cf. Schmidt (1975), 85 and 92.

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ving to set off whether he likes it or not – although he does complain bitterly about his unfair fate in a monologue as he goes. What took up only nine lines in Vitalis’s text, here goes on for twenty-four (cf. 64− 66), but it isn’t only the change in quantity which is striking. While the medieval Birria’s complaints were levelled above all at the woman, here his misogyny is combined with an envy of animals because, unlike him, they are not subjected to the yoke of a “femmina vana” (65,2): “s’i’ fussi porco, e mangiassi nel truogo, | me’ mi sarebbe, ch’aver forma umana” (65,3 − 4). It is hard to agree with Lanza that the character who speaks these words is the most positive figure in the entire tale, the embodiment of “sana saggezza contadina” and “buon senso comune”.⁴⁹ Birria is neither more flatteringly portrayed than his counterpart, Geta, nor does he represent any positive qualities; only his slowness and laziness and his fondness for withdrawing to the kitchen are repeatedly stressed. This Birria, who would be content to live like an animal and who “bestemmiava ogni parte superna” (74,2) because he is sent to the harbour, is anything but a representative of wisdom and common sense, even if he believes that, unlike Geta, who leaves the ship laden with impedimenta, he is the true man who lives according to reason, because he tries to get out of work, while Geta seems to belong to another species – a kind of pack-ass. Accordingly, Birria is determined not to show sympathy for Geta, even if all the fetching and carrying should end up doing him in: i’ son mal vago di portare incarco; così perisca quel Geta poltrone, che com’asino è vago d’esser domo, ma i’ vivo a ragione, e son ver uomo. (69,5 − 8)

The two servants practically swap attributes. Each has his reasons for believing the other the true ass and himself the true man, so that the text intensifies the connection to the logicians’ sophisms,⁵⁰ while at the same time making each figure appear as the mirror image of the other – and revealing both positions as equally ridiculous. Geta, for instance, who is so proud of his newly acquired knowledge and believes everyone will now see “quanta scienza mia mente assottiglia”, and call him “Maestro Geta” (94,4− 5), spends three strophes (cf. 77− 79) feeling as sorry for himself as Birria had – Birria whom he envies because he “tanto divora | di bere e di mangiar che pare un orso” (77,3 − 4), and whom he would like to see sweat out the wine he has drunk, as he lugs his burden (cf. 77,5 − 7). Even funnier than the “true man” who would rather be a pig, is the “sommo loico”, who would like to eat and drink like

 Lanza (1991), 204. A similar argument is to be found in Lanza’s 2007 article, where Lanza goes even further and claims that the author identifies with this figure: cf. Lanza (2007), 248. The same reductive opposition is already present in Guerri’s book and in Montaiglon’s reading of Vitalis’s text, both criticized by Levi in 1932 for not doing justice to the text: cf. Levi (1932), 524.  The medieval Latin version does not refer to an ass at this point, but to another beast of burden with no connection to the rest of the text: “pondera portet equus, Birria uiuat homo” (V. 130).

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a bear, but also believes he has the power to use his syllogisms to transform other living beings. Once again, the text seems to anticipate Pico’s aforementioned speech (and its irony): the pinnacle of human development and dignity which only a philosopher can reach; the importance that man rise above his physical needs; his degradation to an animal-like or even plant-like being if he fails, etc. Both Geta and Birria, then, consider themselves superior, and both come up against their limits. Birria, for instance, thinks he can protect himself from having to lug things home from the harbour by hiding in a cave when he sees the heavily laden Geta approaching. But Geta has already caught sight of him and counters with a ruse of his own: pretending he has heard something in the cave, perhaps a rabbit or a hare, he throws stones through the opening to kill it and take home to his master for the banquet – an episode that recalls Boccaccio’s Calandrino novella from the eighth day of the Decameron. The Calandrino novella is sometimes mentioned as a possible source,⁵¹ but a very similar episode is also to be found in the medieval Latin tale, which Boccaccio himself copied down in one of his manuscripts and which he also refers to on several occasions in his works,⁵² even giving a brief  Cf. Guerri (1931), 10. Lanza’s theory that the authors of the cantare took their inspiration for the episode of the “stoning” of Birria in his hiding place from Boccaccio’s Calandrino (Decameron, VIII,3), who also believes himself invisible and has stones thrown at him by his friends, calls for refinement, if only because it is possible that Boccaccio’s Calandrino episode was in fact inspired by the Latin Geta. (That Boccaccio was familiar with this work is clear from his epitome in the Amorosa visione and from the manuscript copy of the text he made in his youth.) This “reverse” filiation is already pointed out by Levi (cf. Levi [1932], 527) in his text-based critique of Guerri whom Lanza nevertheless continues to draw on. Borlenghi, too, mentions in his brief introduction to the novella that we see here “ripreso il tema della burlesca lapidazione di Calandrino nel greto del Mugnone, del Boccoccio” (Geta e Birria, ed. Borlenghi, 42– 43) – and Picone, talking of Birria’s “invisibility”, refers once again to Calandrino as the “modello trecentesco” (Picone [1993], 680), without mentioning the similarities and differences in the Latin model.  Cf. Chiarini (1982), XII. So it is not the putative “modello trecentesco” (Picone) which can provide exhaustive information on the changes, but first of all a comparison with the corresponding passage in Vitalis’s version. When Birria begs Geta not to throw any more stones because he is Birria, Geta asks him to stick his head out of the cave as proof and Geta promptly complies in the very same line: “Ergo caput profer!” “Iam profero. Saxa repone, | Ne caput hoc pereat ad tua saxa meum!” (V. 207– 8). With equal swiftness, the attack is ended in the following line – “Cessat hic, hic exit” (V. 209) – and immediately afterwards comes Geta’s question as to why Birria hid in the cave, when it could have been the death of him, and Birria’s answer that the moon hides, so why shouldn’t he follow its example? Both question and answer are taken up in the cantare (cf. 89,8−90,8). Once more, however, it is the additions to the older version which are telling – the lines which the Italian text adds between Birria’s pleas and Geta’s warning of deadly danger (cf. 87,7−89,8). If Geta’s cunning at first consists in refusing to recognize Birria’s identity – “Anima stolta, | tu non se’ il Birria” (88,3 – 4) – Birria desperately hopes that Geta will recognize his identity, his id est or rather io sono, by his voice: “Ora m’ascolta: | non mi conosci tu pure alla boce? | Deh, pon giù i sassi, i’ sono il Birria tuo” (88,5−7). But the “I” remains at the mercy of the “you” in exchange for confirmation of his now uncertain identity; Geta cruelly plays on Birria’s fear, at the same time anticipating his own subsequent meeting with Arcade and the much further-reaching threat to his own self. Several times he gets Birria to testify, “con giuri e con segni” (89,2), to his identity – “Più volte fece il Gieta

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retelling in his Amorosa visione. Unlike Calandrino, however, who is pleased to be stoned by his friends, believing that it proves his invisibility, Birria soon fears for his life, thus transforming himself from a superior being who won’t stoop to carrying burdens into someone reduced to begging for his life. Failing to see through the ruse of the more cunning man, he subjects himself to his power and surrenders his own sovereignty to save his life: “Geta non gittar, ch’i’ sono | il Birria, e viver voglio per tuo dono” (87,7− 8) he cries at first, and even says a little later: “Deh, pon giù i sassi, i’ sono il Birria tuo: | non dee il signor guastare il servo suo” (88,7− 8). Geta may emerge victorious from this encounter, but immediately afterwards he too is begging for his life in words almost identical to Birria’s when he argues with Arcade over who the true Geta is: “Sia tu me, i’ mi ti dono, | po’ che di me a me nulla mi resta” (134,5 − 6). In this way, he in turn, as Schmidt has observed of the medieval Geta, is transformed from an arrogant philosopher to a pleading whiner;⁵³ regardless of apparent differences, he becomes the mirror image of Birria who had lost all his former arrogance in the face of impending nothingness. Birria, however, who is convinced he will continue to live in another form, even if he should undergo metamorphosis,⁵⁴ soon manages to feel like a free man, an “uom franco” (92,6), even if his freedom consists only in being as slow as possible so as to put off the moment when he has to shoulder his burden: “E’ convien ch’i’ m’affronti | a recar di que’ pesi com’uom franco, | po’ che schifare non gli posso, almeno | m’indugerò, quant’a giugner vi peno” (92,5 − 8). For Geta, on the other hand, whom Arcade twice refers to as a beast of burden, “bestia da some” (114,6; cf. 102,2), in the doppelgänger episode, the motif of metamorphosis is linked to the question of existence and thus turns out to play an incomparably more decisive role. For while Birria may fear both work and death, but is sure of his existence as long as he is alive, Geta, thanks to his acquaintance with logic, feels threatened with non-existence when confronted with the existence of another man convincingly claiming to be the true Geta. Since, as the staccato-like iteration of the me and mi in “di me a me nulla mi resta” hammers home, nothing remains to him of his self now that the other has usurped it, he renounces the insidious logic he had trusted in:

farsi fede, | che fusse desso” (89,1– 2) – before allowing him to leave the cave with a gesture of mercy – “I’ non saprei negar merzede” (89,3) – thus granting him a kind of pseudo-Platonic recovery of his identity as the man Birria. As the accumulation of denials and affirmations of identity make clear, the question of the “I’s” identity is central, because clearly problematic, and even at this early point in the story, we can hear a pre-echo of what will be unpacked and intensified later on, when it is not only the denial of certainty of self which is developed in greater breadth and depth than in either the ancient or the medieval text, but also what has already become clear here – that the I am is in essence dependent on being recognized by a ‘you’, on the uncanny nature of Mercury’s – or rather Arcade’s – divine knowledge about Geta which reaches far beyond the deceitful but primitive trick which Geta plays on Birria.  Cf. Schmidt (1975), 88.  “Puossi ben tramutare in atto strano, | ma pur del mondo non far mai partita; | dunque sarò io sempre il Birria” (82,1−3).

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Troppo m’ingannan ora i fatti tuoi, e le tue prove usate falsamente, con esse faccia altrui asini e buoi, or di me stesso son fatto niente. (142,1− 4)

As the desperately repeated number games I quoted at the beginning of this paper make plain to Geta, if he is not the one and only Geta – if the hitherto unquestioningly accepted “one” is no longer a valid solution to the question of his identity, then the only remaining solution is either “zero” or “two”. Either there are two Getas simultaneously and thus no individuality, or else the other has robbed him not only of his position in the house, his name and his appearance, but of everything – his role identity, his natural identity and his self-identity⁵⁵ – a subtraction paradoxically resulting from duplication and leaving him only with zero or nothing. He even has his doubts about the existence of Anfitrione, when he sees him coming towards him – “sendo niente può egl’ire?” (143,7) – but, worse still, he himself is practically annihilated by the workings of logic: Vedi quel che la loica m’ha fatto, che, s’egli è, o non è, non so per vero! E anche me per tal modo ha disfatto, che nulla son secondo il mio pensiero […]. (144,1− 4)

In Vitalis, Geta’s discovery of his own nothingness is directly triggered by the loss of his name and can, as a logical consequence, be resumed in only four lines because the name had guaranteed the existence of the thing, and as soon as the name is absent, the thing it denoted must necessarily be absent too.⁵⁶ Because, however, this is contradicted by sensory experience, there remains only the previously quoted “Sic sum, sic non sum”⁵⁷ (V. 409), the juxtaposition of contradictory statements, from which this pupil, contrary to what Abelard had imagined, can find no way out; all he can do is to curse dialectics and come to the conclusion that: “Nunc scio: scire nocet”. In Geta e Birria, though, Geta’s lament goes on for a full twenty lines (cf. 136,5 − 138,8) and subsequently, too, the topic is far more extensively developed. This is because, as I shall demonstrate in the third section of my paper, the topic of stolen identity which is explored in all possible permutations in the motif of the doppelgänger, and the topic of that other threat to identity, metamorphosis, are here both connected with the question of man as a being composed of mind and body.

 Thus Jauß on Molière’s Sosie, in: Jauß (1997), 557.  “Geta quidem non sum Getaque dicor ego. | Si non sum Geta, non debeo Geta uocari. | Geta uocabar ego; quod mihi nomen erit? | Nomen erit nullum, quia sum nihil. Heu mihi, nil sum!” (V. 400 −403). What was, a short while before, a mere possibility – “ego sim nihil” (V. 393) – has been transformed from the potentialis into the certainty of the indicative. Cf. also Schmidt (1975), 89.  On parallels between medieval literature and early scholastic thought (i. e. Abelard’s Sic et Non) cf. also Lanz-Hubmann (1989), 159 et passim.

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3 The Question of Man The early modern Geta doesn’t simply accept his annihilation; there is no question of that. Instead, he embarks on a permanent quest for new explanations of the inexplicable – explanations which, as he is gradually forced to reject them, inevitably grow more and more fantastic, giving rise to increasingly comic situations, while also testifying to his increasing despair. If his first thought, on hearing the bogus Geta’s voice, was that Birria must be playing tricks on him again, having taken a shortcut home and got there before him (cf. 107), he goes on to wonder whether the voice inside the house might possibly be an echo of his own voice (cf. 110). But this banal and worldly solution is soon put paid to, because whoever is in the house is able to describe to him in detail not only what he looks like, but also what is on his mind, namely his memory of the outrageous pranks he played on Anfitrione in Athens. His next idea, then, is that, since he still seems to have human form, he might perhaps have managed to turn himself into Plato or some other Greek during his studies (cf. 136). But because he knows that if he is a man, he has to be Geta, this experiment too turns out to be a syllogism whose conclusio is once again nothingness: “I’ sarò uom e non altro animale, | […] essendo uom sare’ Geta, com’i’ soglio; | dunque nulla son io […]” (136,5 − 8). And so he experiments with a fourth explanation, splitting himself into mind and body and wondering whether it isn’t possible that half of him is in the house and the other half outside. But this only leads to further aporias: Sarebbe mai che l’alma, con ch’i’ rendo a me ’l giudizio, fosse entrata dentro, e me lasciassi fuori, e ripetendo ogni mi’ atto dalle coste al centro? Esser potria; ma or come i’ comprendo che i’ stia in vita, s’i’ non hommi dentro spirito ch’entenda, apprenda e serbi, e speri e tema, objetti in atti o ’n verbi? (138,1− 8)

Taken to its logical conclusion, this thought experiment reveals the impossibility of its own realization, and Geta’s sensory experiences only add to the confusion, for, “s’i’ parlo, i’ m’odo, veggio e sento” (139,1), how is it possible that the self has ceased to exist: “questo com’è che l’esser mio s’è spento?” (139,5)? In view of the newly asserted Sic et non, “così sono et io non sono” (139,8), the “I” who is literally “beside himself” – the divided being whose body is in one place and whose mind is in another – is left only with the wish to withdraw into himself: “sol ch’i’ ritorni in me di grazia i’ chieggio” (141,5), he implores in an appeal to logic, promising not to juggle with syllogisms any more (cf. 141). Once again, Birria’s three-strophe commentary (cf. 156 − 158), compared with only eight lines in the medieval Latin text, confirms the shift in emphasis that marks the crucial distinction between the early modern text and its medieval coun-

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terpart. Birria, too, stresses that those who devote themselves to studying are “out of it”, “not all there”: “savi eravate, ma or chiaro comprendo | che siete pazzi” (156,5 − 6); he, too, blames logic: “che del loro esser proprio gli trae fuori” (157,4). And yet it falls short of the mark to regard Birria’s position as the propagated ideal and these three ottaverime as the “sugo di tutta la vicenda” with which Ghigo Brunelleschi, the author of the original text, identifies.⁵⁸ The text makes plain that far from embodying common sense, Birria instead commits the converse error: while the other two had put “senno” above everything else – we need only recall Anfitrione’s seven-year-plus absence from his wife and child – and believed themselves superior as a result of this so-called “reason” (cf. 157,2), Birria does the opposite, situating his humanity exclusively in his body and believing himself godlike as a result: “io troppo ben feci | a rimanermi a guardar la cucina, | armando il corpo con forza divina” (156,6 − 8). It is in this divine power – eating and drinking, together with ignorance and the eschewal of studies – that Birria thinks he will find the wisdom which defines him as truly human (without, of course, distinguishing him from the pig he had earlier wished to be).⁵⁹ Beside Birria’s solution of being all body and Geta’s solution of investing everything in reason, the text also offers a third logic, that of Anfitrione. This too is considerably more nuanced than in the medieval Latin version. Geta’s description of his experiences leaves Anfitrione in no doubt as to what is going on and he dismisses his servant’s beliefs in the possibility of metamorphosis as the epitome of naivety: “Un uccel sanza penne | ti fe’ natura; in qual libro si trova | ch’un altro in te, o tu in altro ti muti?” (159,5 − 7). The only logic that counts for Anfitrione – and one that is easily supported by his clearly limited “book knowledge”⁶⁰ – is the logic of the cuckolded husband, familiar from comedies and novellas. To Anfitrione it is self-evident: all the mysteries, he says, can be solved by the assumption that the “donna’s” lover (who  According to Lanza, Birria embodies this “rimatore satirico”, who uses his text to make fun of the “stolidità dei letterati tradizionalisti”. Cf. Lanza (1991), 204– 5.  “Non saper arte troppo giova altrui | se in bestia si converte chi l’appara, | e parendo esser nulla ora a costui, | egli ha fatto di sé troppa gran tara. | I’ son pur savio, e così sempre fui, | et ho, come ver huom, la vita cara; | statti in cucina, e quivi ti trastulla, | loico sia chi vuol per esser nulla.” (158,1−8).  Despite invoking the authority of books, Anfitrione seems not to know the Metamorphoses of Ovid or Apuleius. This passage serves as an interesting bridge to the Novella del Grasso legnaiuolo, a text which is often associated with Geta e Birria, was probably written at about the same time or a little later, in the same Florentine milieu, and also circles around uncanny metamorphosis and suddenly doubtful identity. Today it is usually, although not definitively, attributed to Antonio Manetti. (Interestingly, Filippo Brunelleschi, whom some manuscripts name as one of the authors of the cantare, plays a role in the novella.) Grasso, deeply disturbed because his friends have deluded him into thinking he’s been transformed into someone else, asks the judge whether he’s ever come across such a thing in his reading. The judge reassures him, saying that he has often read of such things and that there are far worse cases than his – Apuleius being turned into an ass for example, or Actaeon being turned into a stag, and of course all the metamorphoses which Circe inflicted on Odysseus’s companions and many others besides. On the appeal to and consolation of books here cf. Kuhn (2003), 220 −224.

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knows all about Geta because he has been observing him) is hiding behind the closed door, or rather in the bedchamber (cf. 160). He is in no doubt about his wife’s betrayal; she seems as false to him as his logic seems to Geta – “Veggio che la mia donna m’è fallace” (160,5) – and when he takes up his arms like his Plautine predecessor, all that interests him is whether or not there is a lover, whether Almena’s hugs and kisses are genuine or false, “fallaci” (177,6). He does, it is true, let Almena beguile him with words from her “boce angelica e vezzosa” (174,3) – “le dolci parole l’han legato, | corse abbracciarla presto così armato” (174,7− 8) – dropping his sword and relenting under Almena’s kisses (cf. 175,1− 2), but his anger soon resurges when Geta asks Almena where the doorkeeper is and she unsuspectingly replies: “O smemorato, | tu guardavi la porta, quando a letto | il mio Anfitrione teneva stretto” (176,6 − 8). Now Anfitrione is sure of her guilt, and the verse confirms this with the ironic emphasis on “veraci” provided by the enjambement, and the equally ironic rhyme with “fallaci”: “gli veraci | abbracciamenti mutava in romore, | gridando: ‘Guai a me, ben son fallaci!’” (177,4− 6). Anfitrione’s reaction and the idea that the man in Almena’s bed was not her husband, leave Almena herself in a state of stunned surprise. For her – and this is the fourth and last logic of the text – there are only two possible conclusions, since she is sure she saw him (or at least she thinks she is): Maravigliossi allor la donna piùe, che quando armato il vide ritornare, dicendo: ‘Come? Or nun fusti esso tue? per certo i’ pur ti vidi, o e’ mi pare. Forse ch’al mondo de’ tuo’ par son due? O forse ch’i’ pote’ fra me sognare? Dunque ogni rio pensier vo’ che giù pogni, ché spesso ingannan l’animo li sogni.’ (178,1− 8)

The repetition of “forse che” in two consecutive lines skilfully masks the difference between the two possibilities: while the second introduces a real possibility (was I maybe dreaming?), the first introduces a statement, which it simultaneously transforms into something unimaginable – can there be another man like you in the world? – and thus impossible. The “logical” alternative to a dream would be reality – “was I maybe dreaming or did I really have someone like you in my arms?” – but Almena cleverly keeps this quiet. Again she uses subtle rhetoric to spirit away “what really happened” (the reality so feared by Anfitrione that she received a lover in his absence): as an alternative to the possibility that she was dreaming, she suggests not the equally possible reality, but the impossibility of a second Anfitrione. Thus flattered, Anfitrione can only accede to Almena and his own vanity, interpret the previously ineluctable-seeming conclusio of the cuckolded husband as a fallacy, endorse the conclusio of his rhetorically gifted wife’s pseudo-syllogism (which must be irrefutable, because it starts with the word “Dunque”) and withdraw “con sommo piacere” into the bedchamber with his “donna tutta lieta” in order to “ristorare i perduti

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sett’anni” (180,8). In other words, if any character in this story “embodies” so-called common sense, i. e. combines mind and body, reason and soul, it is Almena who, in spite of her fear, knows how to use her clever or “sweet” words and angelic voice to transform the fierce warrior’s raging fury into the raging love of a man who is burning with desire after seven years’ abstinence (cf. 174,1− 175,2) and who, thanks to her dreamlike logic and persuasive rhetoric, is able to lead everyone to such a joyful lieto fine that the narrator resorts to the topos of unspeakability and falls silent: “con tal piacer ch’i’ nol so dire” (181,1). *** After this conclusion to the narrated world – “Così d’Anfitrion l’opra finisce” (181,8) – with which Lanza’s version of the text ends, the narrator of the frame story takes up the word again in a kind of epilogue and pronounces the story’s “maggior sustanza”: “Amore è ’l mastro di questa matera” (183,2) – this after previously exclaiming: “Oh quanto vale | negli animi gentili il franco amore!” (182,5 − 6) and quoting the following conclusion from his putative source: “che chi più sa, men vede | gl’inganni, quando più veder gli crede” (182,7− 8). Almena’s ignorance preserves her from recognizing the deceptions imposed on her by divine intervention, permitting her to rescue her marriage, just as the early modern author of the text had intended after misreading his source text.⁶¹ For when Vitalis speaks of Jupiter as the ‘Saturnius’ and has him engage in conversation with his son Arcas (cf. V. 23), Ghigo supposes that Jupiter is asking his father Saturn for help and has Saturn himself take up the word. Here, then, Saturno advises his son Giove to disguise himself together with Arcade, not in order to be more sure of his success, but – very courtly and ungodlike – to preserve the reputation of the “donna”: “così sanza vergogna di tal dama | avrai ciò che ’l tuo cor disia e brama” (44,7− 8). Because the god assumes the guise of her husband, Almena is, from the outset, spared any form of disgrace, even managing at the end, whether naively or artfully, knowingly or unknowingly, to use her realistic dream solution to free Anfitrione (who had thought his great knowledge would enable him to see through any deceit, when in fact the opposite proves to be the case) from the stigma of cuckoldry. Mindful of this lesson, the narrator, who, like Jupiter, is under Amor’s power, first spends two strophes listing various lovers, and then gives himself up to the woman he loves, so as not to

 Cf. Chiarini’s remark on this passage: “un curioso fraintendimento del testo latino di Vitale, che al v. 23 definisce Giove Saturnius, ha trasformato l’originale monologo interiore del dio in un dialogo col padre” (Note on 41,8, Geta e Birria, ed. Chiarini, 44). Like the angels in Dante’s Vita nova complaining to God that Beatrice is on Earth rather than in Heaven with them, and like the saints in Vita nova, following the example of the Minnesänger and begging for “merzede” – not the grace of the “donna” – but the grace of God who is to procure them the “donna” – Giove too begs his father, Saturn, for “merzede”, employing a similar argument: it is a disgrace that a mortal man should possess this “sommo bene”, while he, “un idio, che tanto vale”, should go without, or worse still know only “pene” instead of “piacer” like Anfitrione, the sorrows of love rather than love’s joys (43,1−8).

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suffer in agony alone. As Jupiter turns to Saturn, so he asks Amor for help, evoking both Geta and Birria, who also gave themselves up to another, albeit not a loving woman, who alone is capable of bringing about a lieto fine: E però, Signor mio, nel cui governo son sottoposto, non voler ch’i’ solo compagnia faccia a Tantalo in inferno, anzi di questa vita a picciol volo lieto mi guida, là dov’io discerno cruda mia donna. O Signor, che far puòlo, falla piatosa a me, po’ che suo sono, a lei mi raccomando, e tutto dono. (186,1− 8)

Neither, then, is it possible to sustain the theory that the cornice added by Domenico da Prato is extraneous to the narrative, nor does the frame destroy the immediate effect of that narrative – quite the contrary. I cannot at this point trace in detail the interweaving of the narrative frame and the framed narrative; that would require a separate and more lengthy study.⁶² But an example can at least function as pars pro toto: Giove himself appears as a lover in carnival guise, a kind of stil nuovist or even Petrarchan lover, who has had to suffer unspeakable “pene” in Heaven, but now, on Earth with Almena, experiences “tanto bene” (cf. 59,7− 8) as the “I” of the frame story wishes on himself and his audience, the “cari amanti” (60,7) who are, like him, blissfully in love – and as the first-person narrator wants to make Jupiter himself testify at the end: “per dar miglior prove, | testimon chieggio in quest’opere Giove” (185,7− 8). In analogy to this, the narrator had previously called upon all lovers fortunate enough to enjoy the fruits of love to bear testimony to it (cf. 60,7− 8), before returning to the fiery love of Giove whose “estremo valor” (63,1) had been slightly delayed by his digression. The audience, the narrator says, can imagine for themselves the great desire the God must have felt;⁶³ now he is going to leave him to his sweet repose and tell them about Birria. With a wink at the reader who is familiar with the myth of Amphitryon, he switches the roles, prolonging the god’s tryst  On the controversial role of the cornice, which Guerri and Lanza regard as no more than a nuisance to be got rid of, cf. Picone (1993), 679, and also and above all Chiarini (1982), XIII–XIV, particularly the following passage: “A una prima lettura, il dislivello che separa il registro alto e pesantemente concettoso di questa sezione esterna da quello, prevalentemente comico, della sezione interna sembra essere realmente incolmabile […]. Ma, a guardar più a fondo, se si riconosce l’intenzione autoironica […] della cornice, si scoprono anche, ben presto, più saldi elementi di comunione tra le due parti: non solo i passaggi da un registro all’altro sono abilmente curati, così da istituire un continuo gioco di interazione e contrappunto, ma persino la funzione strutturale di ciascuna è reciproca e complementare a quella dell’altra” (XIII).  Cf. the lines quoted above in connection with the “discorso in praesentia” (63,1−6). A further example of this close interweaving of narrative frame and framed narrative are strophes 95 and 96 which (as in the above-mentioned example where protagonists and readers are made to wait) intensify the height of fall by introducing a retarding element between Geta’s hopes of a “Gran festa” and the disappointment of his hopes when Almena is silent.

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just as Jupiter usually prolongs the night, making it go on until he has satisfied his desire. Through this play with presences and absences, voice and text, and through the to-ing and fro-ing between the various levels of fiction, the text itself ironically and self-mockingly draws our attention to the fact that the power of the god has been transformed into the power of the narrator. Thus, the father of the gods can take his “donna accorta” – a “donna” who has more in common with the clever, shrewd ‘donne’ of many of Boccaccio’s novellas and other, later novellas than with those of stil nuovist or Petrarchan poetry – and withdraw with her to the bedchamber (cf. 61,8). There, undisturbed by the narrator, he can enjoy the pleasures of love for more than a hundred strophes, until, in strophe 168, his fire begins to go out and he and his son return to Heaven, which is immediately ablaze with light. The disconsolate Earth calls them back, but in vain, and Almena is left behind, marvelling at the blazing Heaven, pale and speechless and half dead (cf. 169). She too is abandoned by the narrator for almost four strophes – from “sanza parlar rimase mezza morta” (169,7) until “Rimase Almena sbigottita assai” (173,5) –, left in mute and puzzled consternation while the narrator temporarily resumes his dialogue with Amor and his hope in the “pietà” (170,8; 172,8) of his “donna”, before reminding himself and his readers of Almena and the story he has to tell (cf. 173). If, immediately before the metalepsis, Almena’s face was drained of colour – “quasi il bel viso scolora” (169,6) –, the narrator now portrays her as a true “donna accorta” (61,8), making her rise and go to meet her husband in spite of her horror and fear, a faithful “sposa”, with “boce angelica e vezzosa” and “luminosa | faccia” (174,1− 6) – this, after recalling in his metadiegetic digression the “viso” of his own “donna”, which can brighten up any storm and even makes sighing pleasurable; if only his “donna” weren’t so far away (cf. 171). All he can do is to beg Venere to breathe so much “pietà” into his “donna” – “pietà nella mia donna spira” (172,8) – that she is inspired by the same “spirto” (172,3) as Almena, the spirit of the “donna accorta” of the novellas rather than that of the cruel “donna” of lyric poetry, and a spirit which links the two levels of narrative in the same way as the “merzé” (170,7) which the narrator hopes for in the frame story, just as Jupiter hopes for it in the framed narrative. Instead, then, of complaining that adapting Ghigo’s cantare has rendered the satire ineffective, instead of seeing the text as no more than a literary realization of everyday life in Quattrocento Florence, we should ask why this text could have the influence that it had – an influence evident in the large numbers of manuscripts and early prints (whose existence is itself telling) and the quantities of quotations and references. It seems unlikely that the text owes its resonance to its polemical account of a hardly topical quarrel between traditionalists and innovators. It seems more plausible that Geta e Birria goes deeper than such contemporary matters, for the cantare novellistico poses delicate questions concerning man’s definition of himself – questions which will become the centre of focus in the second half of the Quattrocento and even more so in the Cinquecento. In other words, it seems more plausible that the text possesses not only a satirical component, but also, and equally essentially, a

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philosophico-anthropological component stemming specifically from its status as an instance of Renaissance rewriting – from its intense dialogue with classical antiquity and the Middle Ages – a dialogue which, like the play between orality and literacy on the one hand, and novella and lyric poetry on the other hand, produces both consonance and divergence. It is above all the dialogue between the burlesque version of the Amphitryon myth (with its parody of philosophy) on the one hand and stil nuovist amatory discourse (also the object of parody) on the other hand that provides the answer to the question of man particular to this text and ‘inspired’ by the tradition of the novella – an answer which, crucially, does not work out into a neat, disambiguating opposition – pretentious philosophers on one side, common sense on the other – but instead remains dialogic and procedural. For the play with ancient myth, medieval adaptation and contemporary trends in poetry and narrative, the play with different fictional worlds and levels of fiction, permanently reflecting and commenting on one another, confronts not only the protagonists but also the readers of the text with the never-answered question of man, his metamorphoses and his identities. In this vein, by following the example of Almena – the model for the donna of the narrative frame and a successful practitioner of the art of the word and the logic of dream – the text as a whole sings the double praise of rhetoric and imagination, the praise of literature and its power.

Bibliography Primary Sources Brunelleschi, Ghigo, “Da Geta e Birria”, in: Antologia della poesia italiana, vol. II, Quattrocento – Settecento, ed. Cesare Segre/Carlo Ossola, Torino 1998, 269 – 272. Cantari novellistici: Dal Tre al Cinquecento, ed. Elisabetta Benucci/Roberta Manetti/Franco Zabagli, Roma 2002. Geta e Birria, in: Novelle del Quattrocento, ed. Aldo Borlenghi, Milano 1962, 39 – 99. Geta e Birria, in: Novelle italiane: Il Quattrocento, ed. Gioachino Chiarini, Milano 1982, 29 – 85. Plautus, Titus Macius, Amphitruo, Lateinisch/Deutsch, ed. Jürgen Blänsdorf, Stuttgart 2002. Vitalis von Blois, Der “Geta” des Vitalis von Blois, Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Arnold Paeske, Köln 1976.

Secondary Sources Barbiellini Amidei, Beatrice, “I cantari tra oralità e scrittura”, in: Il cantare italiano fra folklore e letteratura: Atti del Convegno internazionale a Zurigo, 23 – 25 giugno 2005, ed. Michelangelo Picone/Luisa Rubini, Firenze 2007, 19 – 28. Barbiellini Amidei, Beatrice, “Quando il testo si fa voce: A proposito del ‘cantare’ e della sua funzione sociale”, in: Proteo 3 (1997), 7 – 17.

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Beer, Marina, “Alcune osservazioni su oralità e novella italiana in versi (XIV–XV secolo)”, in: La novella, la voce, il libro: Dal “cantare” trecentesco alla penna narratrice barocca, Napoli 1996, 5 – 35. Bertau, Karl, Schrift, Macht, Heiligkeit in den Literaturen des jüdisch-christlich-muslimischen Mittelalters, ed. Sonja Glauch, Berlin 2005. Bertini, Ferruccio, La commedia elegiaca latina in Francia nel secolo XII: Con un saggio di tradizione dell’Amphitryo di Vitale di Blois, Genève 1973. Cabani, Maria Cristina, “Narratore e pubblico nel cantare cavalleresco: I modi della partecipazione emotiva”, in: Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 157 (1980), 1 – 42. Chiarini, Gioachino, “Introduzione”, “Nota ai testi”, in: Novelle italiane: Il Quattrocento, ed. Gioachino Chiarini, Milano 1982, VII-XLII, XLVI-XLIX. De Rijk, Lambert Marie, Logica modernorum: A Contribution to the History of Early Terminist Logic, Assen 1962 – 1967. Flasch, Kurt, “Poesie als Philosophie: Eine Einleitung”, in: Giovanni Boccaccio, Poesie nach der Pest: Der Anfang des Decameron, Italienisch-Deutsch, ed. Kurt Flasch, Mainz 1992, 13 – 32. Grabmann, Martin, Die Sophismataliteratur des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts mit Textausgabe eines Sophisma des Boetius von Dacien: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Einwirkens der Aristotelischen Logik auf die Ausgestaltung der mittelalterlichen philosophischen Disputation, Münster 1940. Guerri, Domenico, La corrente popolare nel Rinascimento: Berte, burle e baie nella Firenze del Brunellesco e del Burchiello, Firenze 1931. Jauß, Hans Robert, “Befragung des Mythos und Behauptung der Identität in der Geschichte des ‘Amphitryon’”, in: Ästhetische Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik, 2nd ed. Frankfurt a.M. 1997. Kuhn, Barbara, Mythos und Metapher: Metamorphosen des Kirke-Mythos in der Literatur der italienischen Renaissance, München 2003 (= Humanistische Bibliothek I, 55). Kuhn, Barbara, “Sprechende Bilder und malende Worte: Boccaccios Amorosa visione als Vexierbild in Worten”, erscheint in: Kunstgeschichten – Parlare dell’arte nell Trecento: Akten der Internationalen Tagung am Kunsthistorischen Institut Florenz, 4.–6. Juni 2009, ed. Gerhard Wolf [forthcoming]. Lanza, Antonio, Polemiche e berte letterarie nella Firenze del primo Quattrocento: Storia e testi, Roma 1971 (= Biblioteca di cultura 27). Lanza, Antonio, Polemiche e berte letterarie nella Firenze del primo Rinascimento: (1375 – 1449), 2nd ed. Roma 1989 (= Biblioteca di cultura 383). Lanza, Antonio, “Il ‘doppio’ nel Rinascimento”, in: Primi secoli, Saggi di letteratura italiana antica, Roma 1991 (= Biblioteca dell’Archivio/Saggi 4), 197 – 218. Lanza, Antonio, La letteratura tardogotica: Arte e poesia a Firenze e Siena nell’autunno del Medioevo, Anzio 1994 (= Medioevo e Rinascimento 4). Lanza, Antonio, “Il Geta e Birria”, in: Il cantare italiano fra folklore e letteratura: Atti del Convegno internazionale a Zurigo, 23 – 25 giugno 2005, ed. Michelangelo Picone/Luisa Rubini, Firenze 2007, 235 – 257. Lanza, Antonio, “Spigolature di letteratura antica”, in: Orti Oricellari 1 (2010), 231 – 264. Lanz-Hubmann, Irene, “Nein unde jâ”: Mehrdeutigkeit im “Tristan” Gottfrieds von Strassburg: ein Rezipientenproblem, Berlin/Frankfurt a.M./New York 1989. Levi, Giulio Augusto, “La novella di Geta e Birria e la sua fonte latina”, in: Convivium 10 (1932), 522 – 527. Mazzotta, Clemente, [review of] Antonio Lanza, Polemiche e berte letterarie nella Firenze del primo Quattrocento: Storia e testi, Roma 1972 [sic], in: Studi e problemi di critica testuale 10 (1975), 228 – 231.

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Montaiglon, Anatole de, “Le Livre de Geta e de Birria, ou l’Amphitryonéide: Poème latin composé par un auteur inconnu nommé Vitalis, et publié d’après cinq manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale”, in: Bibliothèque de l’École de Chartres 9 (1848), 474 – 505. Morabito, Raffaele, “The Italian Cantari between Orality and Writing”, in: Medieval Oral Literature, ed. Karl Reichl, Berlin/Boston 2012, 371 – 386. Najemy, John M., “Geta and the ‘Antiqui Huomini’: (The Letter of 10 December 1513)”, in: Between Friends: Discourses of Power and Desire in the Machiavelli-Vettori Letters of 1513 – 1515, Princeton N.J. 1993, 215 – 40. Orvieto, Paolo, “Ghigo Brunelleschi”, in: Antologia della poesia italiana, Vol. II, Quattrocento – Settecento, ed. Cesare Segre/Carlo Ossola, Torino 1998, 1440. Orvieto, Paolo, “Poesia realistica e burlesca”, in: Antologia della poesia italiana, vol. II, Quattrocento – Settecento, ed. Cesare Segre/Carlo Ossola, Torino 1998a, 258 – 262. Pasquini, Emilio, “Letteratura popolareggiante, comica e giocosa, lirica minore e narrativa in volgare del Quattrocento”, in: Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. III, Il Quattrocento, ed. Enrico Malato, Roma 1996, 803 – 911. Patrizi, Giorgio, “Oralità e oratoria in alcuni novellieri del Cinquecento”, in: La novella, la voce, il libro: Dal “cantare” trecentesco alla penna narratrice barocca, Napoli 1996, 99 – 115. Picone, Michelangelo/Rubini, Luisa, “Premessa”, in: Il cantare italiano fra folklore e letteratura: Atti del Convegno internazionale a Zurigo, 23 – 25 giugno 2005, ed. Michelangelo Picone/Luisa Rubini, Firenze 2007, V-XIII. Picone, Michelangelo, “Il racconto”, in: Manuale di letteratura italiana: Storia per generi e problemi, vol. I, Dalle origini alla fine del Quattrocento, ed. Franco Brioschi/Costanzo di Girolamo, Torino 1993, 587 – 696. Schlaffer, Heinz, “Einleitung”, in: Jack Goody/Ian Watt/Kathleen Gough, Entstehung und Folgen der Schriftkultur, ed. Heinz Schlaffer, Frankfurt a.M. 1986, 7 – 23. Schmidt, Wieland, Untersuchungen zum “Geta” des Vitalis Blesensis, Ratingen/Kastellaun/Düsseldorf 1975 (= Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch/Beihefte 14). Segre, Cesare, “La novella e i generi letterari”, in: La novella italiana: Atti del Convegno di Caprarola, 19 – 24 settembre 1988, vol. I, Roma 1989 (= Biblioteca di “Filologia e critica” 3), 47 – 57. Szondi, Peter, Fünfmal Amphitryon: Plautus, Molière, Kleist, Giraudoux, Kaiser, in: Lektüren und Lektionen: Versuche über Literatur, Literaturtheorie und Literatursoziologie, Frankfurt a.M. 1973. Varanini, Giorgio, “Cantari e novelle”, in: La novella italiana: Atti del Convegno di Caprarola, 19 – 24 settembre 1988, vol. I, Roma 1989 (= Biblioteca di “Filologia e critica” 3), 407 – 430.

Tobias Roth (Berlin)

From Plague to Scabies. Rewriting Lucretius in Angelo Poliziano’s Sylva in scabiem

Even in the very first poetic works with which the young Angelo Poliziano enters the literary stage of Florence in the 1470s, an important role is played by Roman authors who are not situated at the centre of the canon, but are, on the contrary, new authors from the “zone estreme della latinità”¹. Statius is a famous example, but Lucretius, too, has an important place in Poliziano’s repertoire.² His approach to the author of De rerum natura is, however, ambivalent, and somewhat fraught. The philosophical and scientific teachings of Lucretius are explicitly discarded. In his long elegy Ad Bartolomeum Fontium, for example, a poem written in 1473 which describes the everyday business of the young scholar and – particularly important – his private lessons with Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano talks about the “impia non sani dicta Lucreti”³, linking them directly to the errors of Epicure. The rejection of Lucretius is part of Poliziano’s lessons with Ficino on natural sciences, cosmology, medicine and the control of epidemics. But the poetic quality of Lucretius’s teachings seems to have considerable appeal. Poliziano’s close friend and collaborator Giovanni Pico della Mirandola mentions Lucretius within a rhetorical and ethical frame that is set up to separate poetic and moral qualities. In a letter to Ermolao Barbaro of 1485, known as De genere dicendi philosophorum, Pico twice refers to Lucretius while developing a complex argument of considerable sfumato about the relation between eloquentia and sapientia. ⁴ Lucretius and Duns Scotus are presented as two sides of the same coin, Lucretius being sweet and seductive in style but dangerous in content, Scotus vice versa. Pico takes up Lucretius’s own concept of the bitter cup sweetened with honey (DRN, IV, 11 et seq.)⁵ and turns it against the Roman philosopher: whereas Lucretius wanted to sweeten bitter medicine “quasi musaeo dulci […] melle” (DRN, IV, 22), the medicine turns to poison in Pico’s rendering of the simile. But al Bigi (1956), 292.  After Poggio Bracciolini found the De rerum natura in 1417 it was exactly a hundred years until the poem was banned from schools in 1517. The first printed edition came out in Florence in 1512, based on the editorial works of Marullo and Pontano. Cf. Brown (2010) and Pizzani (1996).  Poliziano, Due poemetti latini, 30.  Cf. Bausi (1996), 67 et seq., for the context of this letter in Pico’s early works. Pico’s position in this letter, and particularly his philosophical stance, has been the subject of some controversy, but recent analysis has clearly shown that Pico’s position is not as ‘anti-poetic’ or even as ‘anti-humanistic’ as has been previously suggested. For a summary of the discussion, cf. Kraye (2008) and Huß (2015), 16.  The three central texts discussed in this paper are quoted using the following abbreviations, followed by Roman numbers for books and Arabic numbers for verses: Lucretius, De rerum natura (ed. Ernout) as DRN; Poliziano, Sylva in scabiem (ed. Orvieto) als SIS; Poliziano, Due poemetti latini. Epicedio di Albiera degli Albizi (ed. Bausi) as EAA. (Poliziano’s Elegia a Bartolomeo Fonzio and Bausi’s introduction to this edition are, however, cited in regular form.) https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-007

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though the medicine is turned to poison, the poetic honey is left untouched; Pico does not begrudge Lucretius that.⁶ This double focus was also to be found in Petrarch, who had no access to Lucretius’s text. Petrarch highlights the contrast between insanity and poetic force. In his Laurea occidens, Lucretius is amens and has lost his mind through the pestilence of love, “amor […] pastorum publica pestis”⁷, a clear reference to the story in which the poet goes mad after drinking a love potion⁸ – but he is, nevertheless, presented as a poet, “cui vis erat ampla canore / vocis et ingenii magnus sub pectore torrens”⁹. The same contrast is evident in Polziano’s late Silva Nutricia of 1491, a poem which clearly emulates the Laurea occidens. Here too we find a lovesick and suicidal Lucretius, but although he is obviously crazy, he is not insanus enough to diminish his poetic ability to sing “sublimi ore”¹⁰. This dual position can also be found in Poliziano’s literary practice, as I shall try to show in this paper which examines two early poems, namely the Epicedion in Albieram of 1473 and the Sylva in scabiem, which cannot be dated precisely, but was very likely written some time in the mid to late 1470s.¹¹ In the Sylva in scabiem in par-

 The two passages, Barbaro Pico, Filosofia o eloquenza?, 50 and 60 et seq., read: “At instabit Lucretius, etsi non egeant per se philosophiae commentationes amoenitate dicendi, per eius tamen adhibitionem dissimulandam esse ipsarum rerum austeritatem, sicut absinthia per se pellunt morbos, melle tamen illiniuntur, ut puerorum aetas improvida ludificetur. Hoc forte tibi faciendam erat, o Lucreti, si pueris scribebas tua, si vulgo; faciendum utique tibi, qui non absinthia modo, sed meracissima toxica porpinares.’ and ‘Scribat Lucretius de natura, de Deo, de providentia; scribat de eisdem ex nostris quispiam, scribat Ioannes Scotus, et quidem carmine, ut sit ineptior. […] At dicet [sc. Scotus] insulse, ruditer, non Latinis verbis. Quaeso, quis in dubium revocet uter poeta melior, uter philosophus? Extra omnem est controversiam tam rectius Scotum philosophari quam ille [sc. Lucretius] loquitur ornatius. Sed vide quid differant: huic os insipidum, illi mens desipiens. Hic grammaticorum, ne poetarum dicam, decreta nescit; ille Die atque naturae. Hic, infantissimus dicendo, sentit ea quae laudari dicendo satis non possunt; ille, fando eloquentissimus, eloquitur nefanda.” In a letter of Pico to Lorenzo de’ Medici about poetry in the volgare the ‘Epicuri vacuum’ is used to describe a stylistic beauty devoid of sense and higher meaning. Cf. Bausi (1998), 26.  Petrarch, Laurea occidens, 31.  For Petrarch’s sources concerning the then still undiscovered poem and poet (Jerome’s story of Lucretius’s insanity, as opposed to the praise of Lucretius’s poetry by Macrobius, but also by Vergil and Ovid), cf. Petrarch, Laurea occidens, 76.  Petrarch, Laurea occidens, 31.  Poliziano, Silvae, 142. The passsage reads: “Nec qui philtra bibit nimioque insanus amore / mox ferro incubuit, sic mentem amiserat omnem / ut non sublimi caneret Lucretius ore / arcanas mundi causas elementaque rerum, doctus et Arpino tamen exploratus ab ungui.” Lucretius’s frenzy can be related to poetic furor in a positive or negative way; for differences between Poliziano and Ficino (and Petrarch too, to an extent), cf. Leuker (1997), 149 et seq.  The dating of the poem, conserved only in the MS Palatinus 555 of the Biblioteca Palatina di Parma, has been suggested by the editors of the poem, Alessandro Perosa and Paolo Orvieto, and is broadly acknowleged; cf. Poliziano, Sylva in scabiem, 7 et seq.; SIS, 2 et seq. and 44; De Robertis (1967), 139 et seq.; Leuker (1997), 96 et seq. The date 1493 has been suggested by Giorgio Del Guerra, but this dating relies heavily on biographical speculation, cf. Del Guerra (1967), 85. For this and sim-

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ticular, it is possible to detect a rewriting of Lucretius on an aesthetic and rhetorical level – a rewriting which does not, however, constitute an appropriation of Lucretius’s teachings. I will focus on Poliziano’s poetry, although his philological work on Lucretius and his textual vendettas with other Florentine Lucretianists (particularly his highly interesting quarrel with the Greek Italian Michele Marullo) deserve at least a mention.¹² What does ‘Lucretius’ mean, when we say, in the context of Poliziano’s poetry, that he draws on Lucretius? Poliziano uses De rerum natura as a poetic quarry; he does not think of the text as a philosophical or scientific authority. Along with many other authors he injects Lucretius into a system or a process of writing, which has aptly been described by Francesco Bausi as a ‘frantumanzione’ (a demolition or fragmentation), a “quasi prodigiosa tecnica ‘combinatoria’, che gli consente di dar vita, con arte sapiente, a un dottissimo e insieme raffinatissimo intarsio di fonti molteplici e disparate”¹³. Bausi employs some striking metaphors in the preface to his edition of the Epicedion in Albieram: he talks about ‘coagulation’ around thematic cores, the ‘decomposition’ and ‘resemantization’ of reference texts, about ‘absorption’ and ‘filtration’. Such concepts and metaphors can also be found in some of Poliziano’s poetological statements, for example in his letter to Paolo Cortesi, which played an important role in the debate about imitation and the question of who is to be imitated – only Cicero, or a variety of authors? Classical or non-classical?¹⁴ Poliziano leaves no doubt that good imitation is eclectic and varied; it is based on individual talent and results in an individual style. Strict imitations of Cicero alone he rejects as superstition; the act of imitation requires the body poetic to rework and digest its material: Sed cum Ciceronem, cum bonos alios multum diuque legeris, contriveris, edidiceris, concoxeris et rerum multarum cognitione pectus impleveris, ac iam componere aliquid ipse parabis, tum demum velim (quod dicitur) sine cortice nastes.¹⁵ [But after you have read Cicero and other good writers widely and at length, after you have consumed, thoroughly learned and digested them, and have filled your heart with the knowledge of many matters, and you prepare to compose something yourself, then at last I would wish you to swim (as they say) without a preserver].¹⁶

ilar ‘lectures au premier degré’, mostly based on the history of medicine, cf. Galand-Hallyn (2004), 165 et seq.  Cf. Pizzani (1996) for Poliziano’s Lucretian philology and Pizzani (1990) for the Lucretian background of Poliziano’s Nutricia; for the (mostly Catullian, but also Lucretian) battle between Poliziano and Marullos, cf. Piras (2004), Roth (2014), and Brown (2010), 98 et seq.; for Marullo’s Lucretian philology cf. Baier (2008).  Poliziano, Due poemetti latini, XXXIX. A similar vocabulary of description (intarsio, rifrazione, frantumazione) can be found pre-Bausi in Bettinzoli (1986), 187 et seq.  For this debate cf. Dellaneva (ed.), Ciceronian Controversies, VII et seq.  Dellaneva (ed.), Ciceronian Controversies, 4.  Duvick’s translation in Dellaneva (ed.), Ciceronian Controversies, 5.

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Such a process of appropriation can also result in a strong opposition to the poetic source or quarry. In his Oratio super Fabio Quintiliano et Statii Sylvis, Poliziano maps out his eclectic strategy of writing and defends his predilection for non-classical authors. The imitation of a single author is simply a vitium; proper poetic practice is eclectic. It is no surprise then that Poliziano draws on the image of the bee, the symbol par excellence of eclectic poetics. Appropriately enough he chooses to quote Lucretius’s aureum dictum on the subject of aurea dicta: Itaque cum maximum sit vitium unum tantum aliquem solumque imitari velle, haud ab re profecto facimus, si non minus hos nobis quam illos praeponimus, si quae ad nostrum usum faciunt undique elicimus atque, ut est apud Lucretium, Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant, / omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta. ¹⁷ [Since wanting to imitate one and only one author is a very great vice, we cannot go too far astray if we propose [to imitate] none any less than another, and to take from everywhere what is fit for us to use, or as Lucretius has it, like bees that drink everywhere on the flowering hills, / so also we feed on all the golden sayings.]¹⁸

But Poliziano’s quotation is highly manipulative. These verses from De rerum natura (DRN, III, 11 et seq.) are part of a eulogy of Epicure and Epicure alone, who is presented as the first and foremost of all philosophers, leading mankind out of darkness. The landscape (saltibus) of text, which in a regular bee simile would consist in a variety of different texts, consists in Lucretius of a single one; it is the work of Epicure and no other author: unum solumque. Thus Poliziano turns Lucretius upside down, refiguring the very vitium he is writing against in an affirmation of his own programme. This would also seem to be the reason why Poliziano does not cite Seneca or Petrarch as authorities for his eclectic bees. By inverting Lucretius’s simile, he demonstrates what the concoctio of a ‘strong bee’ can look like. Direct imitation, even direct citation can be made to mean the opposite of what was said in the original. The Sylva in scabiem was discovered by Paul Oskar Kristeller in Parma in 1952. The basic theme of the Sylva, of course, is scabies, and it is presented in an overwhelming speech in the first person. The poetic persona, sometimes preposterously posing as Poliziano himself, is struck with a disease that is devastating, yet not fatal; his agony is limitless, his exhaustion and pain seem to be superhuman. The text is composed of hexameters and can be divided into two parts: a detailed description of the causes and symptoms of the disease (no fewer than 291 lines) and a cry for help and healing (67 lines). There is only one man left who can help in a situation as horrifying as this: Lorenzo de’ Medici. Only the patron (the inevitable pun on his family

 Garin, Prosatori, 878.  All translations are my own, unless stated otherwise.

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name is fortunately not overstretched¹⁹) can rescue the suffering persona and place him in a healthy and enjoyable atmosphere. Still, exactly what kind of disease we are dealing with, is left unclear;²⁰ while the title names scabies, the text itself refers to rabies, and the physical and psychological agony is intermixed and interwoven to form an outrageous tableau of pain. There are also several hints that we are dealing with a form of madness or ira, which is, for the most part, closely modelled on Seneca.²¹ The Sylva in scabiem is a virtuoso piece of literary and intertextual bravura. While the content is minimalized, the arsenal of rhetoric, reference and allusion is very much maximized; the abhorrent subject serves to demonstrate the force of an art which manages to assume a fascinating aesthetic form. The movement of verbal material is wild and seemingly uncontrolled; structures are built up out of apparently chaotic enumerations, and in the middle of this, the helpless pain and rage of the ill persona suddenly meets with what might be called the productive poetic furor,²² a concept which flourished in Florence in the works of writers such as Landino, Ficino and Poliziano himself.²³ Furor is staged in a supposedly formless and endless chaos which is combined with almost unreadable erudition. Poliziano’s extensive use of Lucretius in this context of erudition, furor and writing does not come as a big surprise, seeing as it was Statius himself, who in his own Silvae praised the “docti furor arduus Lucreti”²⁴.

 In Poliziano’s collection of facetiae, Lorenzo is shown using the pun himself, and in quite an intimidating manner: cf. Poliziano, Detti piacevoli, 45; cf. also the contribution of Clément Godbarge in this volume.  There have been attempts to identify the disease, e. g. as syphilis, a suggestion made by Del Guerra (1967), in an argument based on rather doubtful assumptions (among them the silent assumption that a person suffering from the disease described in the Sylva in scabiem would be in a fit state to write a text like the Sylva in scabiem). In my opinion, the identity of the disease, not unlike the identity of Petrarch’s Laura, is not particularly relevant to an interpretation of the text. Still, the strongly psychological outlook of the text and the importance of ira and furor could suggest that the symptoms described are not necessarily to be found in scabies or syphilis, but rather in a diseases such as delusional parasitosis, which “is characterized by a fixed, false conviction that one is infested with living organisms. […] Occasionally, patients describe tactile sensations of crawling, biting or stinging and other perceptual abnormalities such as buzzing or other sounds” (Levenson [2007], 243).  That Poliziano himself was an irascible man is a cornerstone of anti-Poliziano polemics, be it in writing or in pictures, and, as has been shown by Hegener (1996), often linked to his big nose. On the other hand, Poliziano wrote a little treatise to Lorenzo de’ Medici about ira, especially the ira of children, for he taught Lorenzo’s son; in his Quod ira in pueris optimae saepe indolis est argumentum, Poliziano puts forward the idea that ira can also be a positive impetus (cf. Poliziano, Opera, 474– 477).  Accordingly Bettinzoli (1986), 176, wrote about Poliziano’s ‘furor linguistico’, propelling words “come schegge che si propagano dal centro vuoto di un’esplosione.” Bettinzoli (1986), 185, calls the whole Sylva in scabiem, passionately but in my opinion correctly, a “trionfo dell’iperbole macabra e distruttiva, capolavoro dell’assurdo e viaggio ai confini ultimi della lingua”.  For various implementations and aspects of the poetics of furor in Florence cf. Buck (1952), 88 et seq. and Huss (2003).  Statius, Silvae, 162 (= II.7, V.76).

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The Sylva in scabiem has mainly been interpreted in relation to two other works of Poliziano: firstly, it is regarded as the complete opposite of the Stanze per la giostra, replacing their vision of ideal beauty with a vision of coarse materiality,²⁵ and secondly it is seen as chronologically close to the Epicedion in Albieram, and furthermore connected by the Lucretian depiction of febris or illness which it shares with that text.²⁶ Bettinzoli, however, has highlighted the impossibility of a valid interpretation of the Sylva because of the “decomposizione del senso nella forma”²⁷ – and indeed the Sylva seems to invite readings with a deconstructive touch. Bettinzoli sees a “fuga virtualmente perenne”²⁸ – and while the poem appears to proliferate like the scabies it describes, the encomium on Lorenzo de’ Medici as a medic, whose power is proportional to the impact of the disease, does, ultimately, seem to provide a vanishing point. Of course, allusions to Lucretius have been detected in many modern editions of Poliziano, for example by Perosa, Orvieto and Bausi, and De rerum natura has played a crucial part in restoring the only lacuna in the manuscript of the Sylva in scabiem. MS Palatinus 555 of the Biblioteca Palatina di Parma reads V. 352 et seq. of the Sylva (fol. 697): Et genus aequoreū Evocat:

ī luminis oras

Perosa emended²⁹ the phrase with ‘dias’ based on the very similar sentence: DRN, I, 22 et seq. nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras exoritur

 Cf. De Robertis (1967), 148 et seq. For the key concept of varietas with regards to the Sylva in scabiem, cf. Maïer (1966), 204 et seq. and Galand-Hallyn (2004), 163. Vasoli (2001), 14, provides a rather philosophical interpretation of the Sylva in scabiem in a brief remark describing the poem as an “allegoria della caduta dell’uomo nella miseria di una vita soltanto fisica, oscurata dal male e dalla funesta malinconia saturnina, cui si oppone il tema ficiniano della libertà dell’anima e del suo desiderio di risalire all’origine divina.”  Cf. Perosa (2000); De Robertis (1967), 141; Adam (1988), 104; Pizzani (1990), 391; Orvieto (2009), 213 and Orvieto’s introduction to Poliziano’s Due poemetti latini, XXXII.  Bettinzoli (1986), 187. He continues: “l’impossibilità di un’interpretazione definitiva coincide con l’inutilità de in’interpretazione, o – se si preferisce – con la legittimità di tutte le interpretazioni possibili”.  Bettinzoli (1986), 187.  Cf. Perosa’s emendation in Poliziano, Sylva in scabiem, 52. In his introduction, Persosa says that this lacuna “indica […] chiaramente che lo scriba si è trovato imbarazzato dinnanzi ad espressioni di cui non si rendeva perfettamente conto ed ha sostituito la lezione originale con […] uno spazio bianco nel contest” (ibid., 16). The connection between Poliziano’s verse and Lucretius seems so strong, then, that there is no doubt about the lezione originale.

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Against the backdrop of these important editions and commentaries, I would like to focus not so much on the similarities between the Epicedion in Albieram and the Sylva in scabiem as on their differences, as evident in their handling of Lucretian material. Bearing in mind the basic tendency of Poliziano’s eclectic poetics, I will try to show that the two poems are separated by a development which could be described as a development from citation or direct allusion to rewriting. The criteria of content and theme are crucial. The closing passage of De rerum natura, the end of Book VI, presents an impressive depiction of the plague of Athens, that was to become a source for similar depictions even in antiquity. But before focusing on the description of the disease itself, I would like to proceed chronologically and begin by taking a look at the germs which cause the disease and at Poliziano’s speculations about them. In the first example Poliziano alludes to passages from Books I-V of De rerum natura, which are not strictly speaking about diseased bodyparts. As to the germs, Poliziano hazards a pretty modern guess as to the form they take, presenting them as tiny little creatures or monsters, digging and eating ther way through his body: SIS, 128 et seq. Quantaque ad aestivi passim spiracula solis Ludere lascivo temeraria corpora motu Saepe vides [As small as the reckless bodies which you often see in summer, whirring in the spirals of the sun.]

This recalls Lucretius’s famous image of motes of dust: DRN, II, 114 et seq. Contemplator enim, cum solis lumina cumque inserti fundunt radii per opaca domorum: multa minuta modis multis per inane videbis corpora misceri radiorum lumine in ipso, et vel ut aeterno certamine proelia, pugnas edere turmatim certantia, nec dare pausam, conciliis et discidiis exercita crebris; conicere ut possis ex hoc, primordia rerum quale sit in magno iactari semper inani [for behold whenever The sun’s light and the rays, let in, pour down Across dark halls of houses: thou wilt see The many mites in many a manner mixed Amid a void in the very light of the rays, And battling on, as in eternal strife, And in battalions contending without halt, In meetings, partings, harried up and down. From this thou mayest conjecture of what sort

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The ceaseless tossing of primordial seeds Amid the mightier void].³⁰

Poliziano even refers explicitily to his source, when he continues: SIS, 128 et seq. Quantaque ad aestivi passim spiracula solis Ludere lascivo temeraria corpora motu Saepe vides, aut quanta sui fert semina mundi Ridiculus per inane senex, […] Tantus membra patet, tanta est mensura superbi Hostis; at in magno vix unquam larga nocendi Corpore tam saevam rabiem natura locavit. [As small as the reckless bodies which you often see in summer, whirring in the spirals of the sun, and as small as the world’s semen, in emptiness, as the laughing old man would have it, […] Such limbs it has, so great is the extent of the proud enemy; yet nature has not assigned greater destructive power to any larger body.]

Poliziano does not, however, name Lucretius as his source, but the laughing philosopher Democritus. This may seem strange; one detects a certain caution – maybe necessary for a humanist who was also a member of the clergy – or solidarity with another theorist of poetic furor. But the allusion to Democritus, whom Poliziano most likely did not know at first hand, can also lead to the conclusion, that the passage alluded to is itself an allusion. Aristotle writes at the beginning of the second chapter of his De anima (404a), that the striking image of motes of dust in the rays of the sun was used not only by Democritus, but also by Leucippus and some followers of Pythagoras.³¹ Poliziano’s reference opens up new references; a panorama of antique philosophy unfolds which is remarkably wider than at first suspected. There is also another important detail: in describing the motes of dust in the sun, Poliziano is not following the wording of Lucretius; he’s writing on his own. And a hint that he is in fact alluding to Lucretius rather than Aristotle emerges from the space through which the dust flies: emptiness. Both Lucretius and Poliziano use the phrase per inane. But allusion aside, it is striking that from the point of view of a Lucretian atomist, Poliziano makes erroneous use of his motes of dust. For he does not use them to represent the smallest thing possible; for him they are merely relatively small; smaller things exist, because they can be broken down into membra. Poliziano uses the same simile as Lucretius, but to quite different ends: while Lucretius used a poetic technique to explain the teachings of natural science, Poliziano alludes to a system of natural science concerned with the smallest things in order to achieve poetic evidence by describing relatively small things.  Leonard’s translation in Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 49.  Cf. Aristoteles, Opera, 433.

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The way in which Lucretius is incorporated into the Sylva becomes clearer when looked at through the lens of the Epicedion in Albieram, a long poem of condolence dedicated to Sigismondo della Stufa, for whose father Poliziano was working as a secretary at the time. Albiera degli Albizi, an overwhelmingly beautiful woman, dies miserably of some kind of febris following the somewhat Ovidian curse of a hostile goddess: Nemesis commands the goddess Febris to destroy the girl. The depiction of Febris, brilliantly analysed by Alessandro Perosa in 1946,³² is mainly based on the depiction of the Plague of Athens in De rerum natura: the symptoms and effects of the plague, personified as followers of Febris, are cited line by line, and for much of the text even word for word. The sheer extent of the allusion is interesting in itself, as it shows how well acquainted Poliziano is with Lucretius and how happy he is to make use of the controversial author, even as early as 1473. But even more interesting is the use Poliziano makes of this same reservoir of quotations and allusions in his Sylva in scabiem: some are dropped, but others are reused and developed, appearing again in modified form, like semitransparent quotations. Once again, the difference in theme and content seems to be of some importance. Symptoms of fever affecting the throat and pharynx are omitted in the Sylva, including three symptoms which Poliziano takes from Lucretius for his descriptions in the Epicedion, namely (1) the fluids in the throat: DRN, VI, 1187 sudorisque madens per collum splendidus umor EAA, 110 colla madens sudor

(2) the yellow saliva: DRN, VI, 1188 tenvia sputa minuta, croci contacta colore EAA, 115 sputa cadunt rictu croceo contacta colore

and (3) the rough cough: DRN, VI, 1189 salsaque per fauces rauca vix edita tussi EAA, 118 faucibus in salsis tussis acerba sonat

But other passages are reused more directly, without further manipulation, such as the passage about insomnia caused by pain. Here, two lines from Lucretius which appear in contracted form in the Epicedion are reworked more fully in the Sylva:  Here cited as Perosa (2000).

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DRN, VI, 1178 // 1181 et seq. nec requies erat ulla mali // totiens ardentia morbis / lumina versarent oculorum expertia somno EAA, 117 nulla quies nullique premunt membra arida somni SIS 26 // 44 Stillat ubique cruor: requies non ulla laborum. // Non licet in dulcem summittere lumina somnum.

Others again, such as the descriptions of the red orbits and eye-sockets, are varied and amplified: DRN, VI, 1146 et duplicis oculos suffusa luce rubentes EAA, 109 sanguinei flagrant oculi SIS, 16 et seq. rubor igneus excitat orbes Sanguineos, fugiunt oculi

The ‘hollow temples’ are not cited, but developed etymologically, from cavatus to caverna, and instead of just naming the holes, Poliziano shows the tiny monsters of disease doing their bloody digging work: DRN, VI, 1194 cavati oculi, cava tempora³³ EAA, 109 cava tempora frigent SIS, 154 et seq. Itque reditque frequens scatebris longumque cavernas Perforat ac rubro distinguit pectora sulco.

Speechlessness remains a symptom, but the wording describing it has been adapted to fit the particular situation of a poet who has lost both his voice and the power of speech: DRN, VI, 1149 atque animi interpres manabat lingua cruore EAA, 111 animi interpres liventi lingua veneno manat

 Poliziano’s edition of the De rerum natura, the MS. Plut.35.29 of the Biblioteca Laurenziana di Firenze, reads on fol.160r: “Tenvia conati oculi cana tempora frigida pellis’. Poliziano emended this to ‘Tenvia cavati oculi cava tempora frigida pellis”. The manuscript was obviously studied and used; there is no page without emendations or corrections. After Poliziano’s death, the manuscript was kept in the library of San Marco, so that Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici was not able to find it when Francesco Gonzaga asked him for a copy of Lucretius in 1501; instead Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco sent an edition used and emended by Michele Marullo. Cf. Brown (2010), 99.

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SIS, 245 et seq. Ille ego sum, o socii, quanquam ora animosque priores Fortuna eripuit

Even the Muses gathered around the sick poet are mute and begin to turn away, as the persona tries to retain his identity with a list of his literary achivements, above all the Stanze and the partial translation of the Iliad. His furor linguistico peaks with his proclamation of silence. But most relevant are maybe the passages that attempt to emulate and surpass Lucretius in his drastic descriptions. Lucretius, for example, compares the foul odour of the sick to the smell of carcasses, an image so graphic that it may have seemed inappropriate for a poem about the death of a beautiful and noble girl. In the Epicedion, this image of the carcass is missing from an otherwise intact citation, but in the Sylva the smell of the carcass has been replaced by the carcass itself: the persona describes himself as a living cadaver that scares away even his closest friends: DRN, VI, 1154 spiritus ore foras taetrum volvebat odorem, rancida quo perolent proiecta cadavera ritu EAA, 113 spiritus unde gravis taetrum devolvit odorem SIS 241et seq. Heu mihi, quod saevi fugiunt contagia morbi Egregii comites (sic, o sic, maxime, visum, Iuppiter!), attactumque pavent et acerba tuentes Prospiciunt vivum haud secura fronte cadaver.

Something similar can be observed when it comes to the screams of pain. The sick do not moan in the Sylva; they scream. Poliziano has drawn on Seneca for this rhetorical trick (denying moaning in order to accentuate screaming),³⁴ but the shift from moans to screams is padded out using words from Lucretius, which Poliziano had already used in the Epicedion: DRN, VI, 1158 et seq.. intolerabilibusque malis erat anxius angor adsidue comes et gemitu commixta querella, singultusque frequens noctem per saepe diemque EAA, 99 et seq. Et Gemitus gravis et Gemitus commixta Querela Singultusque frequens, Anxietasque ferox SIS, 104 et seq. Hic vero non iam gemitus, non murmure mixtae Proveniunt lachrymae: pavidas it stridor ad auras

 Orvieto has identified the source as (Pseudo‐)Seneca’s Hercules Oetaeus, V.1379 et seq., “flebilis gemitus mihi non excidisset”. Cf. Seneca, Ercole Eteo, 89 et seq.

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Terrificus totosque alto clamore penates Efferus incendit dolor et furialis hanelo Vox pulmone sonat

The effect of the screams is raised to a higher level. Anxietas, the fear of the sick, is now placed outside those who are suffering; pavor affects the very air and even the penates. Thus the suffering persona is filled with pure pain; there is no room for fear or sorrow or anything else. The sick person is not so much terrified as terrifying. Similar processes of augmentation, without precedent in the Epicedion, can be found throughout the Sylva, and the treatment is not only carried out on Lucretius. In some cases, the augmentation takes the form of (quantative or qualitative) amplification; in other cases it takes the form of inversion. The perplexity of the doctors takes up two lines in Lucretius (DRN, VI, 1179 et seq.), but thirteen in Poliziano (SIS, 27 et seq.); the sick man’s thirst is merely named in Lucretius, whereas in Poliziano it is divided into various stages and is the subject of a lengthy description (SIS, 45 et seq.); in Lucretius, the horror of the plague lies in the incredible speed with which it kills, whereas Poliziano prays repeatedly for his death, but to no avail, and the absence of death becomes a grim form of torture (SIS, 142 et seq.); in Lucretius, social bonds crumble under the threat of the plague, but in Poliziano it is also numinous bonds which are dissolved; the sick poet is deserted not only by his friends, but also by the Muses, and as the poet wishes repeatedly for death, his pain gives way to a strange kind of self-hatred (SIS 245 et seq. and 279 et seq.). Such forms of intensification can also be detected in the poem’s overall structure. The catastrophe of the city of Athens is concentrated and boiled down to the calamity of a single individual. At the same time, however, as in the case of the motes of dust in the sun, details, arguments and positions such as self-hatred or the death wish are fundamentally incompatible with the teachings and ethics of Lucretius (e. g. DRN, III, 79 et seq.).³⁵ Structural features and strategies that were used in the Epicedion appear in enhanced and radicalized form in the Sylva, such as for example the grouping of a turba of personifications around a central character. While the Febris of the Epicedion has fourteen companions (EAA, 95 et seq.), a king of diseases in the Sylva has no fewer than twenty-one (SIS, 197 et seq.). What was citation and direct allusion in the Epicedion has become rewriting in the Sylva, a competitive reworking of writing about pestilence. Another form of varietas and aemulatio can be seen in the introduc Such a manipulative bending of the pre-text in favour of the actual work can also be found in Michele Marullo’s hymn to the sun, Soli, the central piece and culmination of the Hymni naturales. Marullo, like Poliziano, seems to be well aware of Lucretius’s “rigido antifinalismo” (Pizzani [1990], 390). The sun is presented as an entity that, like the gods of Lucretius, is fundamentally uninterested in human affairs and whose influence cannot be understood as referring to any form of morality. The fall of Constantinople in 1453, however, affects even the sun, which covers its face in an eclipse, “tantus oculis scelus indignatus cernere rectis” (Marullo, Poems, 270). Cf. Roth (2014), 139 et seq.

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tion of comic language and comic strategies that come and go throughout the Sylva, and could constitute an area of research in their own right.³⁶ This rewriting of the Plague of Athens is driven by small thematic shifts. Obviously the two authors are talking about two different diseases, but in neither case is it possible to determine in clinical terms what disease is being described. This may have to do with the fact that neither text is designed to shed light on the symptoms of the disease in a medical context; they are both more concerned with social effects. Lucretius is writing about the plague, the ‘social disease’ par excellence, in order to show the effects of superstition and religio on a society in times of crisis. Poliziano, for his part, is trying to move a patron, although it remains unclear to what end. The subject of the texts, plague in Lucretius and scabies in Poliziano, has an effect on their intended purpose and their technique, an effect which takes the form of an almost metaphorical relation – again, with a slight shift. In Lucretius superstition is the very pestilence by which it is brought to light; the social consequences of the plague lead to the city’s downfall, so that the drastic display has a ring of enlightenment to it. In Poliziano, literary virtuosity has taken the place of enlightenment: like scabies on the skin or rabies in the mind – like the crowds of mythomorphic monstres running riot in the patient’s body – the text too runs riot; it proliferates, and in a similar fashion, the author writing about his disease and his parasites attacks the literature of antiquity, a heavily learned parasite, a highly contaminated bee. Poliziano not only borrows wording from Lucretius; he also takes strategies from him which are conflated in the repetitive structure of the rewriting. Although the Epicedion and the Sylva refer to the same text, and even to the same passages – although they are quite close in theme and formal composition and separated only by a few years – they perform two different kinds of intertextuality. Whereas in the Epicedion the citations are only adapted to fit the new context, like tesserae, in the Sylva the same components are edited and removed from their source; the exact wording is changed; its origin is obfuscated, the game of identification is harder for any reader. On the other hand, the signals that we are dealing with a text that does not function on its own, but only together with various ancient pre-texts, are quite strong, e. g. the explicit mentioning of Democritus. Questions arise, especially concerning the figure of the author. In his letter to Paolo Cortesi about the imitation of Cicero, maybe his most concise and laconic statement on the development of a distinctive, individual style of writing, Poliziano made the mixing and intermingling of various sources a cornerstone of any stylistic individualisation. It remains doubtful whether the excessive use of ‘alien’ material could ever lead to unity, originality or to the sovereignty of an author. The Sylva, however, with its freely manipulated sources, gives some idea of how alien materials might be fused into a genuine text. To use the words of the letter to Cortesi: whereas in the Epicedion

 Cf. Bettinzoli (1986), 190 et seq. or Galand-Hallyn (2004), 172.

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Poliziano is much closer to being “a parrot or a magpie”³⁷, we can see two of the favourite metaphors of eclecticism at work in the Sylva: digestion (concoctio) and fermentation (fermentum). The elements taken from Lucretius appear transformed and contaminated by other sources and materials; allusions tend to be semantic rather than lexic. Poliziano writes in the hybrid voice of the poet-cum-scholar, obfuscating the sources of his text, but not hiding them – thus rendering the text both attractive and difficult for his colleagues and fellow humanists. This projection of a possible public corresponds with the history of the text; the manuscript must have had a very limited circulation, because there is no record of a printed version and only one manuscript which probably owes its survival to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and his family.³⁸ Even reading the texts only through the lens of Poliziano’s preoccupation with Lucretius, a development can be traced between these two early Latin poems. The liberty and individuality of Poliziano’s imitation increase almost step by step. To suggest a hypothetical continuation of these dynamics, one could argue that the four famous academic Silvae also take part in this development. Here, with even more confidence, sovereignty and megalomania, Poliziano incorporates and reenacts larger tracts of text, and more than ever he makes literature the subject of literature. The entire history of literature serves as the raw material and subject matter in the enormous, omnivorous Silva Nutricia, which I cited at the beginning. As a result, the poem ends on a strong note of hybrid glory which is both poetic and scholarly, and by channelling this glory through the academic success of his pupil Piero de’ Medici, Poliziano manages to set himself up not only as the author of poligraphic varietas, aemulatio and rewriting, but also as their future object: Sic, o sic pergat et ipsum me superet maiore gradu longeque relinquat protinus, et dulci potius plaudatur alumno bisque mei victore illo celebrentur honores!³⁹ [So may he continue, and may he stride past me, soon leaving me far behind, and may there be louder applause for my dear pupil, and may my glory be celebrated twice over in his victory.]⁴⁰

   

Dellaneva (ed.), Ciceronian Controversies, 3. Cf. Poliziano, Sylva in scabiem, 11 et seq., and Bigi (1956), 189 et seq. Poliziano, Silvae, 160. Fantazzi’s translation in Poliziano, Silvae, 161.

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Bibliography Primary sources Aristoteles, Opera Omnia. Graece et Latine cum indice nominum et rerum absolutissimo, vol. III, ed. Cats Bussemaker, Hildesheim/Zürich/New York 1998. Barbaro, Ermolao/Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, Filosofia o eloquenza?, ed. Francesco Bausi, Napoli 1998. Dellaneva, Joann (ed.), Ciceronian Controversies, lat./engl., transl. Brian Duvick, Cambridge (Mass.)/London 2007. Garin, Eugenio (ed.), Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, lat./ital., Milano 1952. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, transl. William Ellery Leonard, London/New York 1916. Lucretius, De rerum natura, lat./fr., ed. Alfred Ernout, transl. Olivier Sers, Paris 2012. [Abbreviation DRN] Marullo, Michele, Poems, lat./engl., ed. Charles Fantazzi, Cambridge (Mass.)/London 2012. Petrarca, Francesco, Laurea occidens. Bucolicum Carmen X, lat./ital., ed. Guido Martellotti, Roma 1968. Poliziano, Angelo, Opera, apud Nicolaum Episcopium iuniorem, Basel 1553. Poliziano, Angelo, Sylva in scabiem, ed. Alessandro Perosa, Roma 1954. Poliziano, Angelo, Detti piacevoli, ed. Tiziano Zanato, Roma 1983. Poliziano, Angelo, Sylva in scabiem, lat./ital., ed. Paolo Orvieto, Roma 1989. [Abbreviation SIS] Poliziano, Angelo, Due poemetti latini. Elegia a Bartolomeo Fonzio, Epicedio di Albiera degli Albizi, lat./ital., ed. Francesco Bausi, Roma 2003. [Abbreviation EAA] Poliziano, Angelo, Silvae, lat./engl. ed. Charles Fantazzi, Cambridge (Mass.)/London 2004. Seneca [Pseudo-Seneca], Ercole Eteo, ed. Giancarlo Giardina, Pisa/Roma 2012. Statius, Silvae, ed. David Roy Shackelton Bailey, Cambridge (Mass.)/London 2003.

Secondary sources Adam, Wolfgang, Poetische und Kritische Wälder. Untersuchungen zu Geschichte und Formen des Schreibens ‘bei Gelegenheit’, Heidelberg 1988. Baier, Thomas, “Marullus und Lukrez”, in: Michael Marullus. Ein Grieche als Renaissancedichter in Italien, ed. Eckard Lefèvre/Eckart Schäfer, Tübingen 2008, 217 – 228. Bausi, Francesco, Nec rhetor neque philosophus. Fonti, lingua e stile nelle prime opere latine di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1484 – 87), Firenze 1996. Bausi, Francesco, “L’epistola di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola a Lorenzo de’ Medici. Testo, Traduzione e Commento”, in: Interpres 17 (1998), 7 – 57. Bettinzoli, Attilio, “Dolus et Error: di alcuni carmi latini del giovane Poliziano”, in: Lettere italiane 38,2 (1986), 166 – 192. Bigi, Emilio, “Angeli Politiani Sylva in scabiem”, ed. Perosa [review], in: Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 133,2 (1956), 289 – 297. Brown, Alison, The return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, Cambridge (Mass.)/London 2010. Buck, August, Italienische Dichtungslehren vom Mittelalter bis zum Ausgang der Renaissance, Tübingen 1952. Galand-Hallyn, Perinne, “Poétique, science et ironie: autour de la Sylva in scabiem d’Ange Politien”, in: Latomus 63,1 (2004), 161 – 177. Del Guerra, Giorgio, “La malattia e la morte di Angelo Poliziano in relazione alla elegia Sylva in scabiem”, in: Scientia veterum 106 (1967), 81 – 90.

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Hegener, Nicole, “Angelus Politianus enormi fuit naso”, in: Antiquarische Gelehrsamkeit und bildende Kunst: Die Gegenwart der Antike in der Renaissance, ed. Katharina Corsepius, Cologne 1996, 85 – 121. Huss, Bernhard, “Regelpoesie und Inspirationsdichtung in der Poetologie Cristoforo Landinos”, in: Varietas und Ordo. Zur Dialektik von Vielfalt und Einheit in Renaissance und Barock, ed. Bernhard Huss/Marc Föcking, Stuttgart 2003, 13 – 32. Huss, Bernhard, “Cum ipsis sensibus labor et pugna. Zur Lyrik von Giovanni Pico della Mirandola”, in: Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 131,1 (2015), 13 – 35. Kraye, Jill, “Pico on the Relationship of Rhetoric and Philosophy”, in: Pico della Mirandola. New Essays, ed. M.V. Dougherty, Cambridge (Mass.) 2008, 13 – 36. Leuker, Tobias, Angelo Poliziano. Dichter, Redner, Stratege, Stuttgart/Leipzig 1997. Levenson, James L. (ed.), Essentials of Psychosomatic Medicine. Washington/London 2007. Maïer, Ida, Ange Politien. La formation d’un poète humaniste (1469 – 1480), Genève 1966. Orvieto, Paolo, Poliziano e l’ambiente mediceo, Roma 2009. Perosa, Alessandro, “Febris. Una creazione poetico-mitologica del Poliziano”, in: Alessandro Perosa, Studi di filologia umanistica, vol. 1: Angelo Poliziano, ed. Paolo Viti, Roma 2000, 53 – 82. Piras, Antonio, “La querelle entre Marulle et Politien sur trois passages catulliens”, in: Revue des études latines 82 (2004), 32 – 35. Pizzani, Ubaldo, “L’erramento ferino e lo sviluppo della Società umana nei Nuctricia di Angelo Poliziano: la presenza di Lucretio”, in: Homo sapiens. Homo humanus, vol. 2, ed. Giovannangiola Tarugi, Firenze 1990, 389 – 406. Pizzani, Ubaldo, “Angelo Poliziano e i primordi della filologia lucreziana”, in: Poliziano nel suo tempo, ed. Luisa Secchi Tarugi, Firenze 1996, 343 – 355. De Robertis, Domenico, “Interpretazione della Sylva in scabiem”, in: Rinascimento 7 (1967), 139 – 156. Roth, Tobias, “Exil aus dem Kopf heraus. Michele Marullos waidwunde Streitlust”, in: Neue Rundschau 125,4 (2014), 131 – 145. Vasoli, Cesare, “Giovanni Pico e la cultura fiorentina dell’età laurenziana”, in: Pulchritudo, Amor, Voluptas. Pico della Mirandola alla corte del Magnifico, ed. Mario Scalini, Firenze 2001, 11 – 19.

Clément Godbarge (New York)

Hippocrates for Princes: Ippolito de’ Medici’s Retratti d’aphorismi The literary activity of Ippolito de’ Medici (1511– 1535) is a rather confidential affair. Of the works of the turbulent young cardinal, only a handful were published after his premature death at the age of twenty-four: a translation of the second book of the Aeneid, a few letters, and eighteen sonnets scattered in several anthologies.¹ Yet his works were sufficiently known by his entourage to be mentioned in subsequent eulogies. In the Elogia, in particular, Paolo Giovio spoke highly of Ippolito de’ Medici’s literary skills, explaining that: […] he showed an innate quality for learning and imitating everything. He had a poetic spirit of astonishing vigour, beyond his age, so much so that he translated beautifully the second book of Virgil’s Aeneid into Tuscan, and transferred the axioms of Hippocrates from the art of medicine to the art of war, a very ingenious effort which equalled the original.²

Giovio’s claims about Ippolito’s talent for literary mimesis have since been confirmed by research published in 1984 by Elissa Weaver, who found in the Vatican Archives many more literary imitations composed by the young Medici cardinal, not least a rifacimento of the first fifteen octaves of Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato, a Latin translation of the Decameron’s ninth story of the first day – Boccaccio’s shortest – and an imitation of Hippocrates’ Aphorisms which remained unpublished until the end of the nineteenth century, despite having been highlighted by Paolo Giovio.³ From a rhetorical point of view, Giovio’s choice to draw attention to this particular imitation is judicious. It allows him to connect the man of letters to the man of war, thereby rendering Ippolito de’ Medici as the perfect courtier. This operation is all the more central to his eulogy for being located, not in the section devoted to men of letters, but in the one devoted to those who “won renown for their courage at war.”⁴ The painting that accompanies his eulogy, moreover, is none other than a portrait of Ippolito himself dressed all’ungaresca, with the military attributes of a condottiero, composed by Titian when the cardinal was returning from his campaign against the Turks.⁵ But it is likely that Paolo Giovio was also intrigued by Ippolito de’ Medi-

 Virgil (1539). For a complete list cf. Rebecchini (2010), 288 – 293.  “Ostendabat enim ingenium habile ad omnia perdiscenda imitandaque. Ei namque supra aetatis ante omnia mira vis inerat poëtici spiritus, sic ut Virgilii secundum ‘Aeneidos’ librum in etruscum sermonem lepidissime verteret, et proloquia Hippocratis ab arte medica, in usum bellicae disciplinae, aemulatione festivissima transferentur.” Giovio (1972), 445 – 446.  Weaver (1984).  Giovio (1972), 421. “[…] uomini d’arme illustri.”  Tiziano Vecellio, Ritratto di Ippolito de’ Medici, 1532, Galleria Palatina, Firenze. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-008

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ci’s interest in Hippocrates because he himself had served as a papal physician for no less than fifteen years, and had lectured in both moral and natural philosophy at the Roman studium. ⁶

1 From Medicine to Statecraft: the Limits of Literary Imitation Be that as it may, Ippolito de Medici’s aphorisms do not merely tackle questions of war as Giovio’s eulogy would lead us to believe. In fact, the text begins with an unequivocal statement about political science: 1. In order to understand the government of states – life is short, art is long, the occasion is fleeting, the experiment is dangerous, judgment is difficult – it is not only necessary for the governor to be ready when in danger, but also the city, its ministers and other circumstances.⁷

After repeating word for word the famous inaugural aphorism of Hippocrates, “Ars longa, vita brevis […]”⁸, Ippolito goes on to reformulate Hippocrates’ idea according to which the doctor needs to secure the cooperation of the patient, the attendants and externals, but with the difference that he substitutes the governor for the physician, the city for the patient, the ministers for the attendants, while the externals are replaced by the vague expression “other circumstances.” This exercise in literary imitation goes on for nine more aphorisms and then ceases abruptly. Only the last three maxims tend to depart from their initial model, although they remain faithful in spirit to the original. All his aphorisms maintain the brevity and the fragmentation that characterize those of Hippocrates. They also fulfil a similar function: to enunciate rules for professionals who practise the same art. It is tempting to ascribe this attempt to transfer medical precepts into the domain of statecraft to the tradition of legal and political texts that relies on the metaphor of the body politic.⁹ Indeed, a glimpse of this metaphor is already apparent in the second aphorism, in which Hippocrates originally discussed the treatment of spontaneous vomiting and bowel disorders:

 Zimmerman (1995), 14.  ASV, Misc. Arm. II, 78, f.291r.: “1. Per intendere bene il governo delli Stati la vita è breve, l’arte longa, l’occasion veloce, la prova periculosa, el iudicio difficile, né solo bisogna che ne lor periculi il governatore sia disposto, ma che la città anchora e ministri e l’altri circumstantie.” Cf. also Guido Rebecchini’s transcription: Rebecchini (2010), 277– 278.  Hippocrates, Aph., f.1r.: “Vita brevis, ars vero longa, occasio autem praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile. Nec solum seipsum paestare oportet opportuna facientem, sed & aegrum, & assidentes, & exteriora.”  Metaphors of the body politic derive primarily from St Paul’s notion of Corpus Mysticum and experience a revival after William of Moerbeke’s translation of Aristotle’s Politics, like Christine de Pizan’s Livre dou corps de policie, John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, and Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor pacis. Cf. also Kantorowicz (2016), 194– 232.

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2. In popular movements, punishing those who need to be punished will be beneficial and easily supported. If not, the opposite will happen. Thus, when it comes to banishment, expelling as many people as necessary from the city, will be beneficial and well supported; otherwise it will be the opposite. It is, therefore, necessary to look at the quality of the peoples.¹⁰

Ippolito de’ Medici transforms Hippocrates’ perturbatio ventris and vomitibus spontinis into the “movement of the people.”¹¹ By doing so, however, he refers to the tradition of the body politic only tangentially. Admittedly, the term “people” appears to be associated with the term ventris, or belly, but this organic similitude is only secondary to a different group of analogies which presents medicine as a methodological and moral paradigm. And indeed, this group of analogies can be traced back to classical antiquity.¹² Ippolito’s second aphorism deals precisely with the moral question of how a prince should punish his subjects. What rules should the prince follow when confronted with popular upheavals? How should he “treat” them? The political equivalent of the purge and the phlebotomy is, for Ippolito de’ Medici, forced exile. Crucially, such treatment is to be administered following the same Hippocratic rules. According to Hippocrates, purges and bloodletting are natural phenomena that the physician should sometimes imitate in order to re-establish the balance of humours within the body. These cures often do more harm than good, however, especially if the doctor unwittingly favours a treatment that evacuates the wrong humour. It is, therefore, important to make sure that the cure is appropriate both to the specific illness and to the patient’s circumstances (age, place, climate). Yet while Hippocrates writes the second aphorism to emphasize a qualitative aspect of medicine – which humour should the doctor help to evacuate: blood, black bile, yellow bile, or phlegm? – Ippolito reorients the topic towards a quantitative question – how intensive should the “treatment” be? Efficiency and harmlessness remain, in Ippolito de’ Medici’s version, the criteria that regulate political repression. But if the prince must adapt his punishment to the “quality of the peoples”, “quality” here is understood merely as the capacity of the people to withstand repressive measures such as forced exile. The political repression advocated by Ippolito de’ Medici appears both methodical and prudent. As the following maxims attest, it is mobilized to ensure the prince’s success in maintaining newly acquired states. Key to this success is Hippocrates’

 ASV, Misc. Arm. II, 78, f.291r.: “2. Ne’ movimenti del populo, se si castigano quei che bisogna giova e facilmente si sopporta. Se non, adviene el contrario, così nello sbandire dala città, se tanti si sbandiranno quanti bisogna, gioverà e sopporterassi bene, altrimenti sarà il contrario. Bisogna pertanto guardare alla qualità de popoli a tempi che corrano, a’ desordini che son nati, se ciò si conviene fare o no.”  Ibid., f.4r.: “In perturbationubus ventris, & vomitibus spontinis, si talia purgentur, qualia purgari oportet: confert & leviter ferunt: sin minus, contra. Sic & vasorum inanitio si talis fiat, qualis fieri debet: confert, & et bene tollerant: sin minus, contra. Inspicere itaque oportet & regionem, & tempus, & aetatem, & morbos in quibus conveniat, aut non.”  Cf. de Romilly (1982) and Vegetti (1995).

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notion of health, defined as a natural balance of humours. When conquering a new state, the Prince must, for example, make sure that the state recovers its natural condition, for excessive zeal in reconstructing a city can be as harmful as neglect.¹³ Similar composure is to be expected when the prince remunerates his soldiers.¹⁴ To translate the notion of regimen that Hippocrates develops in his fourth and fifth aphorisms is feasible. But to retain the coherence of this notion throughout several aphorisms is a much harder task. Nonetheless, Ippolito de’ Medici offers an acceptable compromise: in the former aphorism, regimen designates the salary of soldiers, while in the latter it refers more generically to the effort of war.¹⁵ Always having military forces at one’s disposal is, for Ippolito de’ Medici, a necessity. The military “diet”, in other words, must be permanently observed in order to prevent future wars. When difficulties arise, however, strong “medicines” are required.¹⁶ Interestingly, the medical term rimedi, a metaphor then in an advanced state of lexicalization, remains unchanged in Ippolito de Medici’s version. It becomes indistinguishable from punishment and military force. Similarly, in the seventh aphorism, the equivalence of regimen is further diluted to vaguely designate oppression.¹⁷ Thus, Ippolito’s political redeployment of Hippocratic terminology frequently sacrifices the conceptual specificity of the original terms. The eighth aphorism, which originally dealt with restrictive regimines in illnesses reaching their acme, provides very different advice in Ippolito’s version, since princes are in fact required not to give soldiers new orders at the end of the day.¹⁸ It would be tempting to interpret this last example as an effort on the part of the author to emancipate himself from his literary model, but it seems more likely that Ippolito de’ Medici was actually experiencing technical difficulties in attempting to remain faithful to the Hippocratic model. In this regard, he seems to fare better in his last two aphorisms, where he compares the notion of regimen to siege provisions.¹⁹ There is  ASV, Misc. Arm. II, 78, f.291r.: “3. Gli acquisti e Stati deboli sono pericolosi perché in quelli non si possono mantenere e non si mantenendo, né crescendo in meglio, è forza che caschino nel peggiore et per questo è bene di cercare di ridursi al suo naturale, né anchora bisogna che troppo s’indebolischino, imperoché l’un l’altro è pericoloso, et bisognia advertire che tanto possegghono li stati quanto la natura loro possa sopportare.”  Ibid.: “4. È pericoloso mantenere uno exercito non pochi denari, sì come anchora il tenerlo troppo abondante et grasso è dannoso.”  ASV, Misc. Arm. II, 78, f.291v.: “5. Quando si sta in sospetto di guerra, lo havere poche preparationi è dannoso, imperoché ogni movimento maggiore se farà essendo debole di forze che s’egli havesse più tosto di quel che bisognio li fusse, onde a chi sia fuor di suspecto è pericoloso il tenere poche forze a sua difesa percioché i disordini più difficilmente si sopportano.”  Ibid.: “6. A quelli ultimi pericoli è necessario usare gli ultimi rimedi.”  Ibid.: “7. Nei pericoli grandi d’uno Stato nascono gravissime difficultà, né bisogna gravare li homini fuori delli straordinarii, ma quando il caso non è così pericoloso si può giungniere tanto di più de l’ordinario quanto la natura del Stato possa sopportare” (my emphasis).  Ibid.: “8. Nel punto della giornata el dare altra impresa a soldati non è buono.”  Ibid.: “9. Ne la terra assediata si ha da vedere se le provisioni possano durare a la lunghezza dello assedio o no, e quale d’essi, o le provisioni, o la guerra, habbia prima da mancare. 10. Le provisioni si

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undoubtedly a certain proximity between the idea of a long diet and that of life under a long siege, but this new political translation of the notion of regimen remains in stark contrast with the earlier renderings. Given these difficulties, and Ippolito’s apparent readiness to abandon conceptual rigour for aesthetic analogy, the Retratti d’aphorismi can be described more as an exercise in literary imitation than as a fully-fledged thought experiment. Indeed, ultimately, Ippolito de’ Medici seems more interested in imitating the literary genre of the sententia than in speculating on the conceptual possibilities that the medical paradigm can create in the field of statecraft. That his attempt to translate medical maxims into political precepts appears to be a failure in no way decreases its significance, however. Quite the contrary for, as we will see, appearances and imitation were paramount to the political strategies of Ippolito’s illustrious family at the time, and were more and more explicitly dealt with in the political language of the day. Ippolito would have been but a young man at the time of writing. The genre of the sententia was, however, traditionally the reserve of seasoned authors. Quintilian, in fact, specifically warns that maxims should not be written by mere students of rhetoric, since they ought to be the product of authority and experience.²⁰ But an elegant way of circumventing this rule could be achieved by a different type of thought experiment. Indeed, Ippolito gives voice to Hippocrates all the while imagining what the latter might have had to say about statecraft. In other words, the young Medici’s aphorisms may well represent a rerouting of authority, one that would allow the novice to use a style of writing ordinarily reserved for his elders. What remains to be elucidated is why Ippolito chose to imitate Hippocrates rather than anyone else for, needless to say, the physician from Cos was not the only classical authority to have composed influential maxims upon which the young prince could have drawn.

2 Literary Imitation as an Act of Self-fashioning A first reason for this choice may be found in the name and surname of Ippolito de’ Medici. No one will fail to notice the pun on the word, which may refer to the Florentine family as well as to the medical profession. The name Ippolito is also phonetically very close to Hippocrates in Italian, Ippocrate. The Medici, in any case, repeatedly showed their devotion to this kind of play on words. Giovanni di Bicci was particularly enthralled by this similarity and, in the early fifteenth century, appointed Cosmas and Damian – the two patron saints of medicine – as the protectors of the Medici family. According to Scipione Ammirato, Giovanni was so taken by this ho-

hanno da fare quanto possin bastare, ma inanzi al pericolo imperoché alhora solo si ha d’attendere a passare quello.”  Quintilian, Inst. 8.5.8.

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monymy that he even named his own sons Damiano and Cosimo.²¹ The two saints came to symbolize the Medici family, and appeared in several representations as a mnemonic device to recall their beneficial role in the city of Florence.²² The old sacristy of the basilica of San Lorenzo where Giovanni di Bicci is buried, for example, has a polychrome terracotta of the two saints. In the same sacristy, Donatello’s door of the apostles shows Cosmas and Damian with their usual iconographic attributes: the palms of martyrdom, a book and a box of medicines.²³ Just as the humble but saintly twin brothers had provided healthcare free of charge and to the glory of God, so too the Medici helped the citizens of Florence in a disinterested manner – or at least, so the story goes. Cosimo the elder continued this tradition by commissioning altars from Fra Angelico’s bottega, several of which included these two saints.²⁴ The altarpiece of San Marco illustrates well the Medici attachment to homonymous saints, and in particular to Cosmas and Damian. Commissioned for the Dominican church of San Marco, the altarpiece represents each of the homonymous saints of the Medici family’s leading members, in addition to Saint Marc and Saint Dominic who personify the church and the monastic order respectively.²⁵ The saints Cosmas and Damian appear in the centre of the altarpiece, and are meant to represent Cosimo de’ Medici next to his brother Damiano, whose back is turned to the public, probably to symbolize his premature death.²⁶ To further emphasize the family’s attachment to their protectors, the altarpiece was surrounded by episodes illustrating the legendary deeds of Cosmas and Damian. This figurative tradition probably reached its heyday at the time of Cosimo the Elder. Of particular interest is the fact that the two saints reappear in artistic commissions of the first half of the sixteenth century. With the election of Pope Leo X in 1513, the feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian was celebrated in both Florence and Rome.²⁷ The Venetian patrician Marcantonio Michiel reports in his diary that, by establishing such a tradition, Leo X was continuing the “custom of his ancestors, since the saints Cosmas and Damian were physicians and they [the Medici] were descended from doctors.”²⁸ Another remarkable example from this period is doubtless the “testone” that Alessandro de’ Medici, first Duke of Florence, commissioned from Benvenuto Cellini in the year of Ippolito de’ Medici’s death. The front of this hammered coin rep-

 Ammirato (1853), 301.  Cf. Sebregondi (2002).  Ibid., 80.  Ibid., 83.  Among these members we find Giovanni di Bicci, Lorenzo di Giovanni, Piero di Cosimo “il Gottoso” and Francesco di Lorenzo (ibid.).  Ibid.  O’Bryan (2015), 592. Cf. also Trexler (1991), 423.  O’Bryan (2015), 593 (translated by O’Bryan).

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resents Alessandro, while the reverse replaces Florence’s Giglio with an image of the two healing saints. Ippolito de’ Medici, brought up under the shadow of his family’s mythical glory, would inevitably have been familiar with this figurative tradition and with its use as Medici propaganda. It is no surprise, in fact, that Leo X and his court resorted many times to the conceit of the ruling healer in order to represent the Pope’s power.²⁹ Some eulogies describe the actions of Pope Leo X as curative; others compare him to the healing god Apollo.³⁰ Paolo Giovio, for example, concludes his Vita de Leonis decimus with the claim that the pope “[…] brought back to us the golden age of the healing of mankind […]”.³¹ Born an illegitimate son in 1511, Pasqualino, as Ippolito was first named, grew up in Rome under the protection of Leo X himself. It was, moreover, in Rome that he acquired the more dignified name of Ippolito while receiving an education worthy of a prince.³² Thus, a second reason for choosing to imitate Hippocrates may be found in Ippolito de’ Medici’s own biography. With the death of Ippolito’s father, Giuliano Duke of Nemours, in 1516, and of Lorenzo Duke of Urbino, in 1519, the Medici lost the main branch of their family. Leo X, however, resolved this dynastic crisis by officially legitimating Ippolito as a Medici, along with his younger cousin Alessandro. It would seem that Alessandro was initially destined for an ecclesiastical career, while Ippolito “il Magnifico” grew up with the conviction that he would one day govern Florence.³³ Indeed, in 1524, at the beginning of Clement VII’s pontificate, Ippolito was sent to Florence to learn the rudiments of government under the supervision of Cardinal Passerini and the humanist Pierio Valeriano. According to Guido Rebecchini, Ippolito de’ Medici is likely to have written his aphorisms during this stay in Florence.³⁴ The manuscript of the Aphorisms is not dated, however, and we cannot exclude the possibility that he composed the aphorisms later in life. Be that as it may, with the descent of imperial forces into Italy in 1527 the Medici were exiled from Florence for several years. And when, in 1530, the family was restored to power, Clement VII no longer supported Ippolito as Duke of Florence but rather his cousin and rival Alessandro. Instead, Ippolito was made Cardinal and Archbishop of Avignon – a choice he never truly came to accept.³⁵ These biographical elements allow us to grasp better the kind of investment that Ippolito de’ Medici is likely to have put into the act of rewriting some of Hippocrates’ aphorisms. It would not have been merely an exercise in literary imitation, but also

 Ibid., 594.  Ibid.  “[…] ad salutem humani generis auream aetatem condiderat…” Giovio (1551), 111, quoted in O’Bryan (2015), 594.  Rebecchini (2010), 21– 28.  Ibid., 33.  Ibid., 32 and 84.  Ibid., 72.

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an act of self-fashioning, albeit a subtle one. Indeed, by transposing some of Hippocrates’ aphorisms from the domain of medicine to that of politics, it appears that Ippolito de’ Medici was seeking an eminence in the field of statecraft analogous to that of Hippocrates in medicine – at least as the latter was represented in the popular imagination. But by modelling himself on a man who was commonly known as the “the prince of physicians”, Ippolito also, and crucially, signalled his own vocation and competence to govern, and to govern not like a saint, according to the example of Cosmas and Damian, but all’antica, according to the example of ancient medicine.

3 Ippolito de’ Medici and the Early 16th-century Hippocratic Revival This approach to politics was in line with the spirit of the times; it was fashionable, and Hippocrates in particular was revisited by several humanists of the period. In 1525, Marco Fabio Calvo edited the first Latin edition of Hippocrates’ works in Rome.³⁶ The same year, the Aldine edition of Galen’s works also offered a version of Hippocrates’ Aphorisms with a commentary.³⁷ Finally, in 1526, the Aldine press produced the first Greek edition of Hippocrates.³⁸ In Ippolito de’ Medici’s immediate entourage, Pierio Valeriano showed an unequivocal interest for medicine in general and for Hippocrates in particular. Valeriano moved to Florence when he was appointed the preceptor of Alessandro and Ippolito.³⁹ There he started working on his major encyclopedic work, the Hieroglyphica, which was devoted to the interpretation of nature’s signs, some of which he thought would yield new therapeutic possibilities.⁴⁰ Valeriano studied in Padua under Leonico Tomeo, who taught medicine and philosophy.⁴¹ He claims to have associated with the great humanist physician Girolamo Fracastoro, to whom he dedicates a book of his Hieroglyphica. ⁴² He praised Paolo Giovio for his treatise of ichthyology, the De Romanis piscibus libellus, which gave much space to the therapeutic virtues of different kinds of fish.⁴³ Paolo Giovio’s relationship to medicine was more ambivalent, however, than Valeriano’s. He criticized the world of contemporary medicine as “a sea of envy, an ocean of error”⁴⁴. Yet he

        

Calvus (1525), 504– 523. Galen (1525), 100r-155r. Hippocrates (1526), 167v-172v. Rebecchini (2010), 27. Riva (2001). Valeriano (1999), 5 – 6. Valeriano (1614), 630. Zimmerman (1995), 16. Ibid., 18.

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also professed a return to the soft medicine of Hippocrates, whom he cited extensively, emphasizing the importance of natural recovery, exercise and diet.⁴⁵ A revival of interest in medicine was, however, also taking place further afield, among political writers of the period. In an attempt to relieve the weight of Christian morals and juridical sciences on political language, Machiavelli presented medicine as an alternative model for statecraft. In the introduction to his Discorsi, he cites medicine as an example in order to encourage statesmen to reflect methodically on experiences of the past, something which he felt to be sorely lacking in contemporary politics: And I am even more amazed when I see that in civil disputes which arise among citizens, or in sicknesses that break out, men always have recourse to those judgements or remedies which were pronounced or prescribed by the ancients. For civil law is nothing other than the judgments given by ancient jurists which, organized into a system, instruct our jurists today. Nor is medicine anything other than the experiments carried out by ancient jurists which, organized into a system, instruct our jurists today. Nevertheless, in instituting republics, maintaining states, governing kingdoms, organizing the army and administering a war, dispensing justice to subjects, and increasing an empire one cannot find a prince or a republic that has recourse to the examples of the ancients.⁴⁶

As Stefano Albertini has aptly observed, this passage is too often interpreted as a pedestrian reiteration of the Ciceronian commonplace according to which “history is life’s teacher”⁴⁷. It is important to add, however, that by attributing the same political dignity to medicine as he does to the juridical sciences, Machiavelli is in fact setting himself apart from a long humanist tradition that valorized jurists over physicians, and denied the latter any relevance in the context of public affairs.⁴⁸ In the light of the disputa delle arti, Machiavelli’s introduction to the Discorsi endows medicine with a new political legitimacy. In Machiavelli’s view, medicine is a useful paradigm for politics, for it deals methodically with contingency. In our sublunar world, human bodies are dynamic organisms which, like states, are mortal and naturally inclined to decay. In the words of Machiavelli, these bodies are “compound bodies”, that is to say bodies ob-

 Ibid., 17.  Machiavelli (1997), 198: “E tanto più, quanto io veggo nelle diferenzie che intra cittadini civilmente nascano, o nelle malattie nelle quali li uomini incorrono, essersi sempre ricorso a quelli iudizii o a quelli remedii che dagli antichi sono stati iudicati o ordinati: perché le leggi civili non sono altro che sentenze date dagli antiqui iureconsulti, le quali, ridutte in ordine, a’ presenti nostri iureconsulti iudicare insegnano. Né ancora la medicina è altro che esperienze fatte dagli antiqui medici, sopra le quali fondano e’ medici presenti e’ loro iudizii. Nondimanco, nello ordinare le republiche, nel mantenere li stati, nel governare e’ regni, nello ordinare la milizia ed amministrare la guerra, nel iudicare e’ sudditi, nello accrescere l’imperio, non si truova principe né republica che agli esempli delli antiqui ricorra.” All translations of Machiavelli are from Musa (1979).  For a discussion of Machiavelli and the disputa delle arti cf. Albertini (1997), 140 – 157.  Cf. Garin (1947). Cf. also Petrarca (2003), 2– 179.

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tained from the mixture of simple bodies (air, fire, water, earth) and various qualities (dry, wet, cold, hot).⁴⁹ The statesman works to prevent this corruption from accelerating, just as the physician tries to keep compound bodies close to their original “mixture”: Since I am speaking of compound bodies, such as republics and religious groups, let me say that healthy changes are those which bring such bodies back to their beginnings […], for all the origins of religious groups, republics, and kingdoms contain within them some goodness by means of which they have gained their initial reputation and their first growth. Since, in the course of time, this goodness becomes corrupted, if nothing intervenes that may bring it up to the proper mark, that body is, of necessity, killed by such corruption. And doctors of medicine say, when speaking of the body of man: “Quod quotidie aggregatur aliquid, quod quandoque indiget curatione”.⁵⁰

The notion of the mixed body enables Machiavelli to add dynamism and conflict to the old Thomist idea of mixed government. Mixed governments, like Venice and Sparta, were traditionally thought to be models of social harmony. In Machiavelli’s view, however, the example of ancient Rome proves that the conflicts arising between those who want to rule and those who do not want to be ruled can be harnessed for the benefit of the city and its freedom. To illustrate this idea, he adapts the medical theory of humors, albeit reducing the four traditional humours to two – the populo and the grandi. ⁵¹ The unstable equilibrium between the opposing humours, that Machiavelli’s medical analogy illustrates, defines the health of civic life.⁵² Besides this humoral metaphor, Machiavelli also deploys a medically inflected vocabulary to advocate a science capable of informing political action. He does so in the concluding chapter of the Discorsi. ⁵³ It is also worth noting that, in stark con-

 Aristotle, De Gen. et Corr., 2.8.  Machiavelli (1997), 416: “E perché io parlo de’ corpi misti come sono le republiche e le sètte, dico che quelle alterazioni sono a salute che le riducano inverso i principii loro […] perché tutti e principii delle sètte e delle republiche e de’ regni conviene che abbiano in sé qualche bontà, mediante la quale ripiglino la prima riputazione ed il primo augumento loro. E perché nel processo del tempo quella bontà si corrompe, se non interviene cosa che la riduca al segno, ammazza di necessità quel corpo. E questi dottori di medicina dicono, parlando de’ corpi degli uomini: ‘Quod quotidie aggregatur aliquid, quod quandoque indiget curatione’.” The medical axiom quoted by Machiavelli looks like an aphorism of Hippocrates, but its exact origin remains a mystery.  Machiavelli (1997), 143: “Perché in ogni città si truovano questi dua umori diversi; e nasce da questo, che il populo desidera non essere comandato né oppresso da’ grandi; e da questi dua appetiti diversi nasce nelle città uno de’ tre effetti, o principato, o libertà o licenzia.”  For an exhaustive account of Machiavelli’s use of humoral theory cf. Gaille-Nikodimov (2003) and Geuna (2012).  “Ibid.: È di necessità, come altre volte si è detto, che ciascuno dì in una città grande naschino accidenti che abbiano bisogno del medico; e secondo che gl’importano più, conviene trovare il medico più savio. E se in alcuna città nacquono mai simili accidenti, nacquono in Roma e strani ed insperati” Machiavelli, (1997), 524. [emphasis added]; “E benché questi morbi in una republica faccino cattivi

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trast to the framework of the introductory chapter, references to the juridical sciences have completely disappeared in this final chapter.⁵⁴ The ancient wisdom of lawyers is replaced by the prudence of Roman physicians; this prudence is the wisdom that enables physicians to anticipate the evolution of illnesses and to act promptly lest the illness worsen and the patient deteriorate.⁵⁵ In the Prince, Machiavelli praises the Romans for their ability to recognize political challenges from the outset and to act accordingly. He compares this capacity to medical practice: For in such instances the Romans did what all wise princes should: such princes must watch out not only for present problems, but also for future ones, and they must take great care to avoid them; for when problems are recognized ahead of time, they can be easily cured; but if you wait for them to present themselves, it will be too late for medicine because the disease will have become incurable. And what physicians say about tuberculosis is applicable here: that at the beginning a disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose; but as time passes, and the disease is neither recognized nor treated, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. The same occurs in affairs of state; for by recognizing from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to the prudent ruler), they can be cured quickly; but when they are not recognized, but left to grow until everyone recognizes them, there is no longer a cure.⁵⁶

Machiavelli’s optimism regarding the potential for political agency is thus rooted to a large extent in his observations about medicine. The same cannot be said of Francesco Guicciardini, who also resorted to medical tropes, but in a more sceptical and disenchanted way than Machiavelli. In the Storia d’Italia, the image of medicine is mostly used to illustrate failure: the wrong medicine, the unintended consequences of a treatment, or simply doing more harm

effetti, non sono a morte, perché sempre quasi si ha tempo a correggergli: ma non si ha già tempo in quelli che riguardano lo stato, i quali, se non sono da uno prudente corretti, rovinano la città” (emphasis added).  In the words of Stefano Albertini (1997), 153: “La sapienza degli ‘antiqui iureconsulti’, che all’inizio dei Discorsi era stata associata a quella degli ‘antiqui medici’ è completamente sparita.”  Machiavelli (1997), 156: “Per tanto colui che non conosce e’ mali quando nascono, non è veramente savio; e questo è dato a pochi.”  Machiavelli (1997), 124: “Perché i Romani fecero in questi casi quello che tutti i principi saggi debbono fare: che non solamente devono pensare alle discordie e ai disordini presenti, ma anche a quelli futuri ed evitarli tutti con ogni mezzo, perché prevedendoli in anticipo, vi si può porre rimedio con facilità, ma se aspetti che si avvicinino, la medicina non arriva in tempo perché il male è diventato incurabile. E di questo avviene quel che dicono i medici del tisico, che all’inizio la sua malattia è facile da curare e difficile da diagnosticare, ma, col passare del tempo, non avendola diagnosticata fin dall’inizio né curata, diventa facile da diagnosticare e difficile da curare. Allo stesso modo accade negli affari di Stato; perché conoscendoli in anticipo, i mali che nascono nello Stato (e questo non è concesso se non ai saggi previdenti) vengono presto guariti; ma quando, per non averli conosciuti, li hai fatti crescere fino al punto che ognuno li conosca, non c’è più rimedio. Perciò i Romani, vedendo in anticipo le difficoltà, sempre ebbero pronto il rimedio; e non permisero mai che crescessero per evitare una guerra, perché sapevano che una guerra non si evita, ma si rimanda a vantaggio di altri” (emphasis added).

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than good.⁵⁷ The medical paradigm, however, remains implicit and reads like a Hippocratic aphorism: using a medicine regardless of the nature of the particular illness and constitution of the patient is reckless. A similar observation is formulated by Bernardo del Nero, the central character of Guicciardini’s Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze. Statesmen, Bernardo argues, should mirror this medical precept and adapt their actions to variable circumstances while remaining aware, nonetheless, that they have far fewer therapeutic options than physicians.⁵⁸ Guicciardini did not share Machiavelli’s infatuation with medicine, but the unsystematic digest of professional experience that he distils in the Ricordi do bear some resemblance to Hippocrates’ aphorisms. Admittedly, Guicciardini’s maxims are slightly longer than Hippocrates’, but his attempt to keep them brief and syntactically autonomous is palpable. Their probabilistic nature, moreover, alongside their professional vocation, makes them very close to Hippocratic aphorisms. We know that Ippolito de’ Medici’s path crossed those of Francesco Guicciardini and Niccolò Machiavelli. In 1527, the Cardinal de’ Medici and Francesco Guicciardini, then governor of Bologna and long-time servant of the Medici Popes, conducted negotiations with the Emperor Charles V.⁵⁹ From 1526 to 1527, Machiavelli was chancellor of the Procuratori delle mura della città which was composed of five citizens of Florence, one of which was Ippolito de’ Medici.⁶⁰ While it has been amply documented that Machiavelli’s manuscripts circulated in the courts of Florence and Rome, Guicciardini’s texts were much more confidential.⁶¹ Ippolito de’ Medici was likely to have read at least some of them, and it cannot be excluded that his Retratti d’aforismi were written in the aftermath of such readings. However, contrary to what Elissa Weaver and Guido Rebecchini claim, Ippolito’s aphorisms do not necessarily constitute a piece of machiavellian ideology.

 Guicciardini (1971), 721: “come spesso accade ne’ corpi ripieni di umori corrotti, che uno rimedio usato per provedere al disordine di una parte ne genera de’ piú perniciosi e di maggiore pericolo”; ibid., 149: “cosí come in uno corpo infetto e abbondante di pravi umori non giovano le medicine come in uno corpo purificato”; ibid., 599: “erano miserabili le condizioni degli uomini, non essendo meno grave la medicina che la infermità che si cercava di curare”; ibid., 1501 (in a speech made by Andrea Gritti): “è, sotto nome di medicina salutifera, pestifero veleno, né si ricordando quanto sia pernicioso l’usare medicina piú potente che non comporti la natura della infermità e la complessione dello infermo.”  Guicciardini (1932), 99: “Ma considerato la natura, le qualità, le condizioni, la inclinazione, e per stringere tutte queste cose in una parola, gli umori della città e de’ cittadini, cercare di uno Governo, che non siamo sanza speranza che pure si potessi persuadere e introducere, e che introdotto si potessi secondo il gusto lo esemplo de’ medici, che sebbene sono più liberi che non siamo noi, perché agli infermi possono dare tutte le medicine che pare loro, non li danno però tutte quelle che in sé sono buone e lodate, ma quelle che lo infermo secondo la complessione sua e altri accidenti è atto a sopportare.”  Ridolfi (1982), 280.  Rebecchini (2010), 34.  Procacci (1995), 40.

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Another work that Ippolito de’ Medici is likely to have been familiar with is Machiavelli’s comedy La mandragola, which was played in Rome at the request of Pope Leo X in 1520 and possibly also in 1524 at the court of Clement VII.⁶² The play narrates how a young man, Callimaco, succeeds in seducing Lucrezia, the wife of an old, asinine and impotent lawyer named Nicia. With the assistance of a corrupt priest, Timoteo, and of Lucrezia’s mother, Callimaco succeeds in his endeavour by disguising himself as a physician. As a result, this play too can be read against the backdrop of the disputa delle arti. Indeed, as Stefano Albertini has suggested, Machiavelli’s satire can even be interpreted as a targeted critique of how the rulers of the republic lost Florence to the Medici in 1513.⁶³ Nicia would then represent the old republican ruling class, the beautiful Lucrezia would embody Florence, Timoteo would incarnate the church, while Callimaco would symbolize the new generation of Medici rulers.⁶⁴ This allegorical reading is all the more relevant given the extent to which this particular generation of Medici enjoyed presenting themselves as guardians of the salus publica, great healers of the state. Ippolito de’ Medici is no exception. By rewriting the Aphorisms of the prince of physicians, he appropriates the wisdom of ancient doctors in order to apply it to the activity he aspires to practise. But this wisdom is medical only in appearance. Just as Callimaco dons a doctor’s cape to seduce Lucrezia and claim her as his own, so Ippolito assumes the authority of the medical profession in order to claim his right to rule. In this light, the boundaries between purely stylistic mimesis and theoretical innovation through imitation begin to blur. Indeed, in the case of Ippolito de’ Medici, the content of his literary imitation ultimately matters less than the sheer fact that he set about composing one in the first place. Whether or not his rewriting of Hippocrates’ aphorisms will give rise to theoretical innovations in the political domain appears to be of little interest to Ippolito, for whom the most important and, indeed, effective point is the act of rewriting itself: the world is to know that his political writing is modelled on Hippocrates, and that he will be to politics what Hippocrates has always been to medicine.

Bibliography Primary Sources Ammirato, Scipione, Istorie Fiorentine di Scipione Ammirato, vol. VI, Torino 1853. Galen, Galeni librorum pars tertia, Venezia 1525.

 Blackburn (1992), 27. We know that Ippolito de’ Medici was present during the premiere of Clizia, Machiavelli’s second play: cf. Machiavelli (1997), 1617.  Albertini (1997), 170.  Ibid.

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Giovio, Paolo, Gli elogi degli uomini illustri, ed. Renzo Meregazzi, Roma 1972. Giovio, Paolo, Vita Leonis Decimi, Pontifici Maximi libri IV, Firenze 1551. Guicciardini, Francesco, Dialogo e discorsi del reggimento di Firenze, ed. Roberto Palmarocchi, Bari 1932. Guicciardini, Francesco, Storia d’Italia, ed. Silvana Seidel Menchi, Torino 1971. Hippocrates, Aphorismi, ed. Niccolò Leoniceno, Paris 1526. Hippocrates, Hippocratis Octoginta volumina…, ed. Fabius Calvus, Roma 1525. Hippocrates, Opera omnia, Venezia 1526. Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Portable Machiavelli, ed. Mark Musa/Peter Bondanella, New York 1979. Machiavelli, Niccolò, Opere, ed. Corrado Vivanti, Torino 1997. Petrarca, Francesco, Invectives, ed. David Marsh, Cambridge (Mass.) 2003. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, ed. Adriano Pennacini, Torino 2001. Virgil, Publius Maro, Il secondo di Vergilio in lingua volgare tradotto da Hippolito de Medici cardinale, Venezia 1539. Valeriano, Pierio, Hieroglyphica: sive de sacris Aegyptiorum aliarumque gentium literis, Frankfurt a.M. 1614. Valeriano, Pierio, Pierio Valeriano on the ill fortune of learned men a Renaissance humanist and his world, Ann Arbor 1999.

Secondary Sources Albertini, Stefano, Revenge, sacrifice, and the judicial system in Machiavelli, Ann Arbor 1997. Blackburn, Bonnie, “Music and Festivities at the Court of Leo X: A Venetian View”, in: Early Music History, 11 (1992), 1 – 37. Gaille-Nikodimov, Marie, “A la recherche d’une définition des institutions de la liberté, La médecine, langage du politique chez Machiavel”, in: Astérion, 1 (2003), 70 – 86. Garin, Eugenio, La disputa delle arti nel quattrocento, Firenze 1947. Geuna, Marco, “Nella riflessione di Machiavelli sulla storia di Roma”, in: Machiavelli: tempo e conflitto, ed. Riccardo Caporali/Vittorio Morfino/Stefano Visentin, Milano 2012. Menon, Madhavi, Wanton Words: Rhetoric and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama, Toronto 2003. Kantorowicz, Ernst, The King’s Two Bodies, a Study in Medieval Politcal Theology, Princeton 2016. Procacci, Giuliano, Machiavelli nella cultura europea dell’età moderna, Bari 1995. Rebecchini, Guido, Un altro Lorenzo: Ippolito de’ Medici tra Firenze e Roma (1511 – 1535), Venezia 2010. Ridolfi, Roberto, Vita di Francesco Guicciardini, Milano 1982. Riva, Ernesto, “Medicina e simboli nei ‘geroglifici’ di Pierio Valeriano”, in: Umanisti bellunesi fra Quattro e Cinquecento : atti del Convegno di Belluno, 5 novembre 1999, 2001. de Romilly, Jacqueline, “Théorie politique et théorie médicale dans la Grèce antique”, in: Actualités odonto-stomatologiques, 138 (1982), 157 – 170. Sebregondi, Ludovica, “Cosma e Damiano. Santi Medici e Medicei”, in: Cosma e Damiano: dall’Oriente a Firenze, ed. Elena Giannarelli, Firenze 2002. Shearman, John, Raphael’s Cartoons in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, London 1972. Trexler, Richard, Public life in Renaissance Florence, Ithaca 1991. Vegetti, Mario, La medicina in Platone, Venezia 1995. Weaver, Elissa, “Inediti vaticani di Ippolito de’ Medici”, in: Filologia e Critica 9 (1984), 122 – 135. Zimmerman, T. C. Price, Paolo Giovio the Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy, Princeton 1995.

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The Inner-Poetic History of Latin Love Poetry in Tito Vespasiano Strozzi’s Eroticon 1 Introduction Love poetry in Ferrara reveals an interesting interaction between ancient love poetry, Neo-Latin elegy and the Italian sonnet. There are several forms and functions of intertextuality and allusions in the little poetic circle at the court of Este, and it is fruitful to analyse the relationship between Latin and vernacular poetry in order to define more precisely the influence of ancient love poetry on the Petrarchism of northern Italy. The Eroticon of Tito Vespasiano Strozzi (1424– 1505)¹ is a good example of the fusion of classical love poetry and Petrarchan tendencies,² but as a classical philologist I am able to discuss only part of these complex interrelations. This paper, therefore, aims to concentrate on the presence and representation of ancient love poetry in Strozzi’s Eroticon and on the transformation of ancient Latin love poetry, and the inner-poetic history in particular, in order to give some indication of the concept of ancient love poetry that existed for the authors of love poetry at the court of Este in Ferrara. Writing inner-poetic literary history was an established meta-poetical strategy even in ancient times among poets who sought to place themselves in a certain tradition.³ The ancient intertexts Strozzi alludes to often have a highly programmatic function and are employed to reinforce his own poetic programme. At the same time, the contexts in which such traditions were cultivated belong to the field of literary history. This paper, therefore, investigates Strozzi’s references to ancient Latin love poetry not only on a textual level, but also on a socio-cultural and contextual level (which may of course itself become visible in the text). Strozzi also uses amatory topics to celebrate the House of Este, and this, conversely serves to elevate his own status as a poet.

 For Tito Vespasiano Strozzi see Albrecht (1891). There are fifteen manuscripts of the Eroticon dating from 1458 to 1496 and differing in extent, as well as the editio princeps of 1513 edited by Manuzio (Strozii poetae pater et filius, Venetiae, in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Asulani soceri). Cf. della Guardia (1916). On the status quaestionis of Strozzi’s Eroticon cf. Caterino (2012); for more detail on the corpus of the texts cf. Mesdijan (1997). Cf. also Tissoni Benvenuti (2004) and Tissoni Benvenuti (2009).  For the influence of Petrarch on the poetic culture in Ferrara in the Quattrocento, cf. Pantani (2002). Parker (2012), 479, notes about Strozzi: “His is a new voice in Latin, setting his own experience within and against the classical past. So Erotica 1.2 echoes Prop. 1.1, as Cupid makes the poet fall in love with Anthia for the first time, but the setting is Ferrara at the Palio on St George’s Day, a detail which is in turn an allusion to the day Petrarch first saw Laura.” Beleggia (2006) indicates Petrarchan echoes in Strozzi’s Eroticon.  Cf. Schmidt (2001). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-009

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Luke Houghton has identified three characteristics of Latin love elegy of the Renaissance in dealing with ancient elegy: “recreation”, “contamination” and “succession”⁴. These characteristics correspond to the Eroticon libri’s interrelations with ancient love poetry, not only from an inner-poetic point of view, but also from a sociocultural perspective. “Transformation”, a concept and framework developed by the Collaborative Research Centre “Transformations of Antiquity” in Berlin (SFB 644 “Transformationen der Antike”), presents an important opportunity for the analysis and description of such complex forms of reception, or rather “productive appropriation” or “transformation”⁵. In accordance with transformation theory, references to classical antiquity (or any other text, body of texts, work of art, or culture) forge a dynamic and reciprocally dependent interrelation between the source and the target cultures, enacting a mutual construction of self and other. In the act of referencing, the target material not only draws on the source material, but also exerts its own influence upon the source. As a result the object of reference is not a stable, fixed, or invariant entity, but something which itself is reconstituted by the act of referencing, i. e. by the transformation. This paper is thus divided into two parts, one focusing on ancient Latin love poetry, and a second focusing more specifically on Latin love poetry composed in Ferrara by Tito Vespasiano Strozzi. I will try to detect transformations of antiquity not only in the reception of topics and motifs and other intertextual procedures, but also in the socio-cultural context. To do this I will take into consideration literary circles (the neoterics for Catullus, Messalla for Tibullus, Maecenas for Vergil, Horace and Propertius, the courts of Roman emperors such as Domitian for Martial and Statius), both as they are presented in ancient poetry itself and as they are later perceived. This is important for an analysis of the way in which allusions function in a small circle of poets, serving both to consolidate a group and to nobilise that group.

2 Ancient Latin Love Poetry Ancient Latin love poetry was of course a main object of reference for the Neo-Latin love poetry from the middle of the Quattrocento and especially from the 1480s.⁶ As Houghton rightly states: “Latin love elegists of the Renaissance are quite open about

 Houghton (2013). Parker (2012) offers another overview of Renaissance Latin elegy. Cf. also Braden (2010) and Chappuis Sandoz (2011). On lyric poetry, including elegy, cf. the résumé by Moul (2015).  The concept of “transformation” as an analytic instrument is explained by Böhme et al. (2012) and Bergemann et al. (2012).  Cf. Robert (2003), 47, on the eclectic and pluralistic poetics of love poetry and on the amalgamation of Roman love poetry and compatible elements of vernacular and Latin poetry. Cf. also Robert (2004).

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their relationship with ancient elegy”⁷; Enea Silvio Piccolomini in his Cinthia, for example, and Cristoforo Landino in his Xandra are quite clear about their debt to Propertius. As reference authors in Strozzi’s Eroticon, there is of course the canon of the four Latin love elegists, Gallus, Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid, constructed by Ovid himself (see below), but it would be reductive to equate love poetry with the genre of elegy. Propertius “elegized” Vergil and Martial as early as the end of the first century A.D., constructing a canon of Latin love poets, made up of Catullus, the four elegists, Vergil and himself – and Renaissance authors followed suit. But do the love poets in Ferrara recur directly to Latin love elegy or were they influenced by Martial’s epigrammatic history of literature as an important step in the transformation of Latin love poetry (we might think in particular of the contamination between the genres of elegy and epigram)?⁸ Neo-Latin love poetry not only recurs to the Roman elegists Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid, but also to Catullus and Horace,⁹ and even Martial. There is, however, no doubt that the elegiac genre was the main point of reference. Before analyzing Strozzi’s transformations of the ancient Latin love elegy, therefore, it is important to characterize and clarify the genre.

2.1 Roman Love Elegy¹⁰ a) One amator – one puella? The poeta-amator (poet-lover) tells a ‘love story’ or ‘amatory novel’¹¹ describing the ups and downs of his relationship, but to define elegy as poetry that describes the love story of the poet for a single pseudonymous woman (Catullus’s Lesbia, Gallus’s Lycoris, Propertius’s Cynthia, Tibullus’s Delia and Nemesis, and Ovid’s Corinna) is to oversimplify. Such oversimplification, however, is not rare, even among the ancient elegists; it has to do with the widespread practice of biographical interpretation in Antiquity. But there is not only one puella; there are many puellae. (There are also male beloveds: Tibullus’s elegies 1.4, 1.8 and 1.9. are addressed to Marathus.) In keeping with the more complicated elegiac relationship between amator and puella(e), Strozzi at first concentrates on Anthia; subsequently, in the years following 1453 when Strozzi introduces other loves to the Eroticon, there are fewer allusions to that particular puella. The two main puellae, Anthia and Philliroe, may recall Tibullus with ‘his’ two puellae, Delia and Nemesis, but the relationships are quite differ-

 Houghton (2013), 291.  On the renewal of elegy and epigram during the Humanist period, cf. Cardini/Coppini (2009).  On Roman love poets from Catullus to Horace by way of the elegists cf. Lyne (1996).  On this genre cf. the recent companions by Gold (2012) and Thorsen (2013).  On the structure as ‘romance’ cf. Holzberg (2015), passim. The amatory novel does not, however, follow a fixable and chronological plot, but consists of episodes and elegiac situations. On the amatory novel of the three books of Ovid’s Amores cf. Holzberg (1997), 55 – 72.

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ent, especially Strozzi’s relationship to Philliroe as compared with Tibullus’s relationship to Nemesis.¹²

b) Biography and Reality vs. Construction Latin love elegy involved the very successful construction of a “poetic I”. Naturally, the persona of the poeta-amator must be distinguished from the historical author. It is very difficult to determine to what extent the poetry includes biography and reality and to what extent it is ‘only’ a poetic construction and illusion. The inner-generic tradition maintains the fiction of personal experience. I will later discuss Strozzi’s level of success in creating the illusion of personal feelings.

c) (Not Only) Love The elegiac woman is a literary construct, too, shaped, in part, by generic conventions. This makes her a scripta puella – a creation of the poet.¹³ As the object of the poeta-amator’s love, the elegiac puella can also stand emblematically for the poetry itself. In 1.18.21, for example, Propertius plays with the double meaning of Cynthia as woman and text. ‘Cynthia’ circulates among Propertius and his friends, patrons and rivals; the poems written in the elegiac distich are not only about love and do not only address the puella. In collections of ancient love poetry, there are also panegyric passages, in many cases in the form of a recusatio, an alleged refusal to write poetry of a higher genre or status, often singing the praises of a high ranking person (sometimes the emperor). Thus the heterogeneous subject matter of elegiac collections in the Renaissance, which is sometimes misconceived as a softening of generic standards, is in fact equally typical of the ancient collections. I will focus, therefore, not only on the relations ‘Strozzi’ – ‘Anthia’/ ‘Philliroe’, but also on other important characters and features of the Eroticon that constitute the transformation of antiquity. The starting point of my paper is ancient love poetry – its poetics, its self-positioning and the author’s references to each other. I will point out direct and indirect strategies of poetic self-canonization within a certain tradition.

2.2 Roman Love Poetry’s Creation of its Own Literary Genealogy Latin love poets wrote many programmatic passages concerning the tradition of the chosen genre, passages that establish a kind of inner-poetic history of literature. In

 On Philliroe, cf. Caterino (2011).  For the concept of the elegiac women as scriptae puellae see Wyke’s fundamental analysis of Propertius’s scripta puella: Wyke (1987).

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the final passage of the last poem of his second book (Prop. 2.34b.87– 94), Propertius claims fame for his puella and his poetry, recalling the tradition of other couples of love poetry: Catullus and Lesbia, Calvus and Quintilia, Gallus and Lycoris, and also ‘Propertius’ himself with ‘his’ Cynthia.¹⁴ haec quoque lascivi cantarunt scripta Catulli, Lesbia quis ipsa notior est Helena; haec etiam docti confessa est pagina Calvi, cum caneret miserae funera Quintiliae. et modo formosa quam multa Lycoride Gallus mortuus inferna vulnera lavit aqua! Cynthia quin etiam versu laudata Properti, hos inter si me ponere Fama volet. Such are the songs that wanton Catullus wrote, whose Lesbia is better known than Helen. Such things also the pages of learned Calvus did confess, when he sang of the death of hapless Quintilia; and dead Gallus too, that of late laved in the streams of Hell the many wounds dealt him by fair Lycoris. Nay, Cynthia also has been glorified by Propertius – if Fame shall grant me a place mid such as they.¹⁵

In the last poem of his first book of Amores, Ovid argues against the fame of his predecessors and the immortality of poetry, preferring to concentrate on the poeta-amator (Ov. Am. 1.15.27– 30): donec erunt ignes arcusque Cupidinis arma, discentur numeri, culte Tibulle, tui; Gallus et Hesperiis et Gallus notus Eois, et sua cum Gallo nota Lycoris erit. So long as Cupid wields his fires and bends his bow, your metres, skilled Tibullus, will be remembered. In the West and in the East the name of Gallus shall be known to fame, and because of Gallus, the name of Lycoris will live on.¹⁶

In his Tristia 2, Ovid draws up his famous and subsequently canonic list of the Latin love elegists, Gallus, Tibullus, Propertius and their successor, his ego successi (Ov. Trist. 2.467), Ovid. He wants to show the princeps Augustus that there is no infamy attached to the works of his predecessors (and that none should be attached to his), but this concrete context is often neglected in favour of the catalogue itself. Non fuit opprobrio celebrasse Lycorida Gallo,

 The single quotation marks are used because the Roman love elegy uses the first person for the poeta-amator which of course, as an intradiegetic character, has to be distinguished from the biographical author. The same applies mutatis mutandis for the puella.  Adapted from Butler’s Loeb translation.  If not indicated otherwise, the translations are my own.

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sed linguam nimio non tenuisse mero. Credere iuranti durum putat esse Tibullus, sic etiam de se quod neget illa viro: […] Non fuit hoc illi fraudi, legiturque Tibullus et placet, et iam te principe notus erat. Invenies eadem blandi praecepta Properti: destrictus minima nec tamen ille nota est. His ego successi, quoniam praestantia candor nomina vivorum dissimulare iubet. (Ov. Trist. 2.445 – 468) It was no reproach to Gallus that he gave fame to Lycoris, but that from too much wine he did not constrain his tongue. Tibullus thinks it hard to believe his lady under oath because she makes the same denials about himself to her lord. […] This did not injure him, for Tibullus is still read with favor; he was famous when you were first called princeps, you will find the same teachings in alluring Propertius; yet not the least shame has touched him. I was their successor, for generosity bids me withhold the names of prominent living men.

Even more compact are the lines in Ovids ‘autobiography’ Tristia 4.10, in a passage that reflects Ovid’s early period as poet (Ov. Trist. 4.10.51– 53): ….nec avara Tibullo tempus amicitiae fata dedere meae. successor fuit hic tibi, Galle, Propertius illi; quartus ab his serie temporis ipse fui. and to Tibullus greedy fate gave no time for friendship with me. Tibullus was thy successor, Gallus, and Propertius his; after them came I, fourth in order of time.

In Epigram VIII 73, Martial continues the list of famous Latin love poets in a humorous summary of the literary history of Roman love poetry with its most known representatives: Instanti, quo nec sincerior alter habetur pectore nec nivea simplicitate prior, si dare vis nostrae vires animosque Thaliae et victura petis carmina, da quod amem. Cynthia te vatem fecit, lascive Properti; ingenium Galli pulchra Lycoris erat; fama est arguti Nemesis formosa Tibulli; Lesbia dictavit, docte Catulle, tibi: non me Paeligni nec spernet Mantua vatem, si qua Corinna mihi, si quis Alexis erit. Instantius, than whom no one is reputed more sincere in heart, or more eminent for unsullied simplicity, if you wish to give strength and spirit to my muse, and desire of me verses which shall live, give me something to love. Cynthia made playful Propertius a poet; the fair Lycoris was the genius of Gallus. The beautiful Nemesis gave fame to the ingenious Tibullus; while Lesbia in-

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spired the learned Catullus. Neither the Pelignians [= Ovid], nor the Mantuans [= or Vergil], will refuse me the name of a bard, if I meet with a Corinna or an Alexis.

In my opinion, this epigram constitutes a central passage in the tradition of the inner-poetic literary history of ancient love poets. Martial transforms the literary figure of the mistress into a real person and assigns her a concrete function: the puellae become Muses, inspiration for the poets. Martial combines literary history and the topic of patronage,¹⁷ presenting the beloved person as a gift from the patronus (da quod amem). He highlights the socio-cultural context of composing love poetry in Rome: the poet must have a patron or influential friends.

2.3 The Addressee and Poetic Self-Positioning: Friends and Patrons, Service and recusatio The authors of ancient Latin love poetry – the ‘canon’ of the four elegists, Gallus, Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid, and their predecessors Catullus and Horace – not only address poems to their puellae in order to talk about love; they also make very clever use of the second-person addressee, who becomes a partner in dialogue with whom a wide range of themes can be discussed. Martial does the same in his epigrams. Catullus opens his collection with a gift-poem for Cornelius Nepos before beginning to tell the story of ‘his’ love for ‘his’ puella, Lesbia, in the second poem – and Lesbia is the subject of only 25 of the 116 carmina. Tibullus, in his first poem, begins by explaining ‘his’ lifestyle and poetics to his patron Messalla (Tib. 1.1.53 – 55): te bellare decet terra, Messalla, marique, ut domus hostiles praeferat exuvias: Me retinent vinctum formosae vincla puellae. It’s right for you to war by land and sea, Messalla, so that your house might display the enemy spoils: but the ties of a lovely girl bind me captive.

In Elegy 1.3, Tibullus positions himself in relation to Messalla and Delia (Messala–Tibullus, Tibullus–Delia) combining Messalla (as patron and as commander) with Delia (as love), and playing with the terms militia meaning ‘military service’ and militia amoris. ¹⁸ The persona Tibullus excuses himself: he cannot continue to follow  On (literary) patronage as the socio-cultural background of Roman poetry and a poetic topic in antiquity cf. Nauta (2002); White (1993) and (2007); Zetzel (1982). For the character of Renaissance patronage cf. Cooper (2012).  Tib. 1.3 1– 3 Ibitis Aegaeas sine me, Messalla, per undas, o utinam memores ipse cohorsque mei! Me tenet ignotis aegrum Phaeacia terris.

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Messalla, because he is ill, and he imagines his own death and his reunion with Delia. In poem 1.5, the elegiac I dreams of an existence in the countryside with his puella, but he also invites Messalla to visit him there: “rura colam, frugumque aderit mea Delia custos” (l. 21: “I will live in the country, and my Delia, will be there, guarding the crop […]”) and “huc veniet Messalla meus, cui dulcia poma / Delia selectis detrahat arboribus” (l. 31 et seq.: “Here my Messalla will come, for whom Delia will pull down sweetest fruit from chosen trees”). Several activities and discourses (military, rural, religious, prophetic, erotic) intermingle here. Propertius mentions several amici, patrons and rivals (e. g. Bassus in 1.4; Gallus in 1.2; 10; 13 and 29; Ponticus in 1.7 and 9; Demophoon in 2.22, Lynceus in 2.34 and Horos in 4.1) and tries to establish himself as a member of the circle of Maecenas (e. g. in 2.1 and 3.9).¹⁹ In his programmatic elegy 1.7, Propertius addresses Ponticus, setting his own lifestyle and his own poetry against that of his addressee (Prop. 1.7.1– 6): Dum tibi Cadmeae dicuntur, Pontice, Thebae armaque fraternae tristia militiae atque, ita sim felix, primo contendis Homero (sint modo fata tuis mollia carminibus) nos, ut consuemus, nostros agitamus amores, atque aliquid duram quaerimus in dominam. While you write of Cadmus’s Thebes, and the bitter struggle of that war of brothers, and (bless me!) contest Homer’s primacy (if the Fates are kind to your song) I, Ponticus, as usual, follow my passions, and search for a means to suffer my lady.

The first poem of the second book, addressed to Maecenas, has a programmatic statement as well. Prop. 2.1 19: non ego Titanas canerem… “I would not sing the Titans […]” 25 et seq.: bellaque resque tui memorarem Caesaris, et tu / Caesare sub magno cura secunda fores

[…] 55 et seq. HIC IACET IMMITI CONSUMPTUS MORTE TIBULLUS. MESSALLAM TERRA DUM SEQUITURQUE MARI. 89 – 92 Tunc veniam subito, nec quisquam nuntiet ante, sed videar caelo missus adesse tibi. Tunc mihi, quails eris, longos turbata capillos, obvia nudato, Delia, curre pede.  On Propertius as an Augustan elegist and his relationship to Maecenas cf. Cairns (2006).

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“I would remember the wars of your Caesar, his doings, and you [Maecenas] under mighty Caesar, will be my next concern. […]” 45: nos contra angusto versantes proelia lecto “while we for our part tell of lovers’ wars upon a narrow couch”

My main intention in quoting these passages is to show the interrelation between literary history and the socio-cultural context inscribed in the poems. Friends and patrons crop up in these collections of love poems and a learned and intimate literary circle is constructed. The poems, written in the first person and directed to a second person, serve to elevate the addressee and enable poetic self-fashioning. Even if the poet employs the technique of recusatio, his function is to ‘serve’ within the cultural and political elite. Love poetry does not limit itself to the topic of love, and the topic of love does not only serve to describe subjective feelings and a closed two-person relationship; it also integrates the social context. The programmatic poems to Maecenas and Augustus, in particular, which use such strategies, have been productively received in the aftermath. It is no coincidence that there are several parallels linking the poetry of the Augustan age, to that of the Roman Empire, that of the court of Charlemagne, the court of Este in Ferrara and the Aragonese court in Naples. In Strozzi’s Eroticon, the engagement with this ancient tradition is clear.

3 Tito Vespasiano Strozzi and his Inner-Poetic Literary History of Latin Love Poetry 3.1 The Presence of Ancient Texts and Contexts – medias in res Tito Vespasiano Stozzi III (Prete 1968) Si Leonelle mihi princeps clarissime fontis Praetarent sacri pocula Pierides Aut si Pindarico ceu spiritus ore sonaret Qualis Vergilii Callimachique fuit Te canerem et nostris ingentia facta Camoenis Estensemque domum cum genre atque tuo: Sed mihi deficient scribendis carmina gestis Nec faciunt cymbae grandia vela meae. Attamen in magnis sat erit voluisse. Voluntas Ac stadium fuerint gloria summa mihi. Tanta etenim, Leonelle, tuae monumenta supersunt Virtutis, laudum gloria tanta nitet. Omnia facundo quae sunt memoranda poetae Et quae sunt celsis cuncta canenda modis.

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[…] If, Most Illustrious Prince Leonellus, the Muses were to give me drinks drawn from their sacred fountain, or if my voice were to sing with the lips of Pindar, as if it belonged to Vergil or Callimachus, I would sing about you with your Muse, and all the glorious deeds, and the House of Este, and all its generations; but I lack the words for writing your deeds, nor does my little skiff spread mighty sails. Nevertheless, it will be enough to have aspired to great things and my will and enthusiasm shall be my highest glory. Indeed, Leonellus, such great monument of your virtue remain, and so much glory shines forth to your praises; all of it must be immortalized by an eloquent poet and must be sung in the most splendid rhythms.

These lines are addressed to Leonello d’Este (1407– 1450), one of the three dukes of Ferrara who patronized Tito Vespasiano Strozzi. It was Leonello to whom Strozzi dedicated the first version of the Eroticon in 1443 (Erot. I 1– 7) and the second edition of 1450. Leonello (who reigned from 1441– 1450), Borso (1450 – 1471) and Ercole d’Este (1471– 1505) encouraged the composition of Latin poetry at their court in the tradition of the ancient patron Gaius Maecenas whose name has become synonymous with ‘patron of arts’.²⁰ Evoking the history of ancient poetry, Strozzi inserts himself in this tradition. He does so (a) with explicit references to an ancient poet and (b) implicitly, by means of intertextuality. With Pindarico … ore Strozzi alludes to Propertius’ hymn to Bacchus in which Pindar is portrayed as the master of an elevated poetic style (3.17.39 et seq.: “haec ego non humili referam memoranda coturno / qualis Pindarico spiritus ore tonat.” “These I’ll tell of not humbly, but in elevated style, in such a breath as sounded from Pindar’s lips.”). Using Propertius’s expression Pindarico ore, Strozzi inserts himself in the poetic genealogy Pindar–Propertius–Strozzi. He continues the tradition of writing an inner-poetic literary history in the next line when he refers to Callimachus and Vergil; in an elegy about his poetic role and his future fame (2.34), Propertius had also drawn up a catalogue of ancient love poets including Callimachus and Vergil.²¹ In line 9 (“attamen in magnis sat erit voluisse”), Strozzi recalls Propertius and Ovid. Prop. 2.10.5 et seq.: quod si deficient vires, audacia certe / laus erit: in magnis voluisse sat est “But if I lack the power, then surely my courage will be praised: it’s enough simply to have willed great things.” Ov. Pont. 3.4.79: ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas “Even though the power is lacking, the will is to be praised all the same.”²²

 Bellandi (1995) shows how Maecenas was synonymous with ideal patronage even in antiquity. Cooper (1996) asks “Mecenatismo or Clientelismo?” regarding Renaissance patronage.  This pair of poets is cited not only by Strozzi, but also by Giovanni Marrasio: “O utinam de te possem, componere versus, / Quales Virgilius Callimachusque tulit” (Marr. Ang. epil. 11 et seq.: “If I only could compose such verses on you like those Vergil and Callimachus wrote!”). Here, too, Propertius is a likely mediator.  Maybe Strozzi is also evoking the Panegyricus Messallae from the Corpus Tibullianum, which he would have ascribed to Tibullus himself (Pan. in Mess. 7: “est nobis voluisse satis,” “It is enough

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Strozzi includes the whole sentence from Propertius 2.10.5 et seq., beginning at line 7: “sed mihi deficient […] carmina”, where he changes only vires (poetic power) into the more concrete carmina (poems). In line 8, Strozzi inserts an Ovidian statement, which is nearly a quotation (“conveniunt cymbae minora vela meae”, Ov., Ars 3.26: “smaller sails fit my little skiff”). Strozzi’s nec grandia (= parva) corresponds to Ovid’s minora. Since the ship is a metaphor for the composition of poetry, Strozzi has chosen an apt line for the variatio that redoubles the expressions of poetic activity, whether vires (Propertius) or carmina (Strozzi). Strozzi comes to the end of his Propertian reasoning in line 9, which closes with the Ovidian voluntas (also Ovidian is the metrical position of the word at the end of the line). The reference texts of the two ancient elegiac poets are interwoven and mutually intensify the arguments. Finally, Strozzi aptly closes the cited passage with the ancient topos of fame resulting from poetry. A famous exemplum of the traditional form of this topos outside the elegiac genre is Horace’s carmen 3,30 “exegi monumentum,” possibly evoked by monumenta in Strozzi’s discourse (l. 11).²³ Previously, however Strozzi had continued the rhetorics of the recusatio (‘refusal’, ‘rejection’): ‘I am not able to praise you; someone else must do that’. This commonly employed ancient strategy (see above) cleverly includes the supposedly excluded by mentioning the addressee and his deeds. It is a technique which constitutes an important form of literary communication between poets and patrons.²⁴ A sub-form could be called the excusatio (‘excuse’), as for instance when Strozzi excuses himself for not writing high-ranking epic poetry on the monumenta of Leonello d’Este. The poet-persona of Strozzi makes clear that he is a poet of shorter poems, of genera minora. Tito Vespasiano Strozzi was in fact the author of eclogues and epigrams, but above all the author of the Eroticon libri, a collection of love poems inspired by ancient poetry and included in the six-volume edition of Strozzi’s works which was published posthumously in 1514 by Aldus Manutius and gathers most of Strozzi’s poems, among them the Aeolosticha in distichs, a collection of Sermones, and the Borsias, an incomplete epic poem, celebrating the glories of Borso D’Este, Ercole I., the court of the family d’Este and Ferrara.²⁵ A recusatio such as the one to Leonello (Strozzi III) does not categorically exclude a poet from writing panegyric epic poetry; it is a strategy to define the poem in question rather than an absolute position.²⁶

for me to have willed”), and the Praise of Piso (Laus Pis. 215: “at voluisse sat est”), but there is no doubt that his main influence is a combination of Propertius and Ovid.  In a special form of this topos in the Roman love elegy, the puella becomes famous as a result of the poems of the poeta-amator (see above).  On recusatio and patronage in Ancient Latin poetry, cf. the contributions of Zetzel (1982), White (1993), Gold (2013) and Roman (2014).  For the Borsias cf. Ludwig (1977).  Pieper (2008) uses the example of Landino to show how poetics and politics are interwoven, even in the genre of elegy.

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In all genres, minora and maiora, the ancients were among Strozzi’s models. Thus one epigram compares Strozzi with ancient epic poets (Homer and Vergil) and love poets (Tibullus, Catullus, Propertius and Ovid): Smirna suo quantum divo concessit Homero Itala tu quantum Mantua Virgilio quamque tibi quondam caput orbis Roma, Tibulle, quam Verona parens, docte Catullo, tibi atque suo quantum foelix nimis Umbria vati, quam tibi Pelligni [= Paeligni], Naso poeta, solum, Tusca tibi tantum tribuit Florentia, o Tite; Tito praestabunt saecula nulla parem. Henricus Petro iust. dictator (?), 1459 Just as Smirna gave precedence to the divine Homer; just as you, Italic Mantua, gave precendence to Vergil and Rome, just as the head of the world, gave precedence to you, Tibullus; just as mother Verona gave precedence to you, learned Catullus, and lucky Umbria to her bard [=Propertius]; just as the Pelignans, poet Naso, gave precedence only to you [= Ovid], so Tuscan Florence will give precendence to you, o Tito; no century will grant someone similar to Tito.

The epigram constructs a marked relation and succession of classical authors, who are cited in connection with their hometowns. The association of poets with their hometowns is a typical feature of inner-poetic literary history, often used by both the poets themselves and their successors.²⁷ The auto-epitaph written by Strozzi himself describes his literary career (Strozzi, Aeol. 2.83 – 88) but also refers to ancient poetry, albeit indirectly: Quod si forte aliquis post ultima noscere fata Nos velit, in nostro haec marmore verba legat: “Prima fuit Strozae Florentia gentis origo At Tito vitam haec Urbs dedit et rapuit. Post elegos cecinit pastoria, Borsias illi Carmen erat, rupit mors opus. Hic tegitur“ If anyone wants to know me after my death, he should read the following words on my grave: “The first origin of the Strozzi family was Florence, but this town [Ferrara] gave birth to Tito and carried him off. After elegies he sang pastoral songs; his was the poem Borsias; death interrupted his work. Here he lies buried.”

Vergil is an obvious literary model:²⁸ the Vita Suetoniana-Donatiana (23) transmits the pseudo-Vergilian epitaph as follows: “Mantua me genuit; Calabri rapuere; tenet nunc / Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces.” In Ael. 2, Strozzi names Florence as the place of origin of the Strozzi family, refers to Ferrara (haec Urbs) as the

 Cf. e. g. Ov. Am. 3.15.7 et seq. (“Mantua Vergilio gaudet, Verona Catullo, Paelignae dicar gloria gentis ego”) or Mart. I 61 and XIV 195.  Cf. Putnam (2010) on Vergil’s model career.

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city of his birth (as Vergil refers to Mantua), mentions his death (using the verb rapere like Vergil) and his grave (as Vergil refers to Naples). He then lists three steps in his poetic production (elegies, bucolics and epics), the highest of which – in accordance with the traditional hierarchic system of genres in antiquity – is epic poetry. In the same way Vergil climbs up the hierarchy of genres with his Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid – bucolic, didactic and epic poetry. But Strozzi’s poetic production in distichs was more felicitous.

3.2 The Eroticon as a Complex Transformation of Antiquity The collection Eroticon libri by Tito Vespasiano Strozzi consists of poems written in elegiac distichs. (The only poem in hexameters is presumably an imitation of the Panegyricus Messallae in the Corpus Tibullianum). As far as form goes, the collection clearly belongs to the tradition of Roman love elegy: the poems are for the most part relatively long elegies; only a few are short or getting on for epigrammatic. A look at the implicit literary history evident in the intertextuality of the collection and the references it makes to tradition reveals interactions with ancient love poetry.

a) Implicit Literary History In Erot. I 1 Strozzi describes his poetry like this: Erot. I 1.81 et seq. Invenies aliquid teneros hic praeter amores, Iudicio damnes quod minus ipse tuo. You will find something else beside tender loves / tender love poems, something that you personally will damn less with your judgment.

The reader will find teneros amores in this collection – and tener was one of the central adjectives of ancient love poetry. Ovid uses it in Ars 3.333 to characterize Propertius and in Trist. 2.361 to point to the tradition of love poetry: “denique composui teneros non solus amores” (“moreover, I was not alone in composing tender loves”). This line may be the concrete intertext for Strozzi’s teneros … amores, which are in the same metrical position, but the word also occurs in Ov. Rem. 757: […] “teneros ne tange poetas!” (“don’t touch the tender poets!”).²⁹ In the first edition of 1443, Strozzi focuses on Anthia, just as Propertius had focused on Cynthia in the Monobiblos; subsequently, as in Propertius’s last four books, other themes and discourses appear. The love story with all its vicissitudes, typical of

 Catullus uses tener in Cat. 35,1 to describe a certain kind of poetry, and Martial in VII 14.3 applies it to Catullus (teneri Catulli). Tener also describes erotic verse in concreto (cf. s.v. 6b), e. g. Ov. Am. 2.1.4. (teneris modis) and Ars 2.273 (teneros … versus).

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the Latin love elegy, binds the collection together, but as Strozzi points out, his poems do not deal only with love; the duke of Ferrara will find other topics: “invenies aliquid teneros hic praeter amores” (“something else”). There are, for example, panegyric passages which conform, as we have seen, to the ancient tradition of collections of love poems. Like Ovid, Strozzi uses his verse to justify his amatory poetry to the powers that be. His first elegy, for example, employs strategies of self-definition and auto-legitimization typical to ancient authors. Even in the very first lines of the opening poem, whose position alone lends it programmatic significance, Strozzi uses an ancient poetical technique when he addresses the personification of a book representing his poetry (or himself as poet).³⁰ This book is usually a gift, dedicated by the poet to someone of higher social status. Strozzi sends his to the duke of Ferrara: Erot. I 1.1– 8: Vade liber securus ad Herculis aedeis³¹ Nam faciles aditus regia mitis habet; Nec vereare, licet magnis ego vatibus impar Sandalias biberim non Heliconis aquas; Scis tamen ut nostras viridis Venus aurea myrti Non dedignetur cingere fronda comas. Vade igitur, nec te properantem proxima tardent Atria, magnanimi nobile regis opus; Book, go safely to the home of Ercole, for the benign palace has an accessible entrance. And don’t be frightened; it may be that, unlike the great bards, I have not drunk from the waters of Mount Helicon, but you know that the golden Venus did not refuse to crown my hair with a garland of fresh myrtle. Therefore go, and the near halls, the noble building of the magnanimous king, will not retain you in your hurry.

The references to Mount Helicon and the spring of inspiration, and to Venus and the garland of myrtle are ancient topoi of poetic production; in addition, the charged term ‘vates’ stands for ancient poets (“bards”), and more precisely for ancient love poets (cf. Venus). The first line of the Eroticon libri also serves as an immediate marker to patronage and its ancient tradition. In the earlier version (“parve liber, quamvis doctis ego vatibus impar”: “Little book, although I am not equal to the learned bards”), Strozzi’s reference text is the opening poem of Ovid’s Tristia: “Parve, nec invideo, sine me, liber, ibis in urbem” (Ov. Trist. 1.1.1: “Little book – and I don’t envy you – you will go to town = Rome without me”). In the later version, which includes Ercole d’Este, the reference seems to be Martial, a poet who often reworks Ovidian passages and strategies himself (see e. g. Mart. III 4.1: “Romam vade, liber”). Of course, Strozzi does not send the book to Rome (Romam, in urbem), but to the court of the Este family (l. 7 et seq.). The term atria (Strozzi, line 8) is linked with pa-

 The passages in ancient Latin poetry are collected by Wissig-Baving (1989).  1a: “Parve liber, quamvis doctis ego vatibus impar.”

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tronage and recalls Mart. III 38, 11: “atria magna colam” (“I frequent great halls”). In fact, the explicit of the first book is more of an epigram (Erot. I 9), combining once more programmatic passages from Ovid and Martial: Despice, parve liber, morsus livoris edaces, jam tibi Caesareo contigit ore legi. Maxima perpetuae referes praeconia laudis, carmina judicio si probat ille suo. Disdain, little book, the voracious bites of envy;³² you have already managed to be read by the imperial mouth. If Caesar is appreciative in his judgment of the poems, you will pronounce great eulogies.

Beside dedication poems to the duke(s) of Ferrara, Strozzi also includes “poetic letters” to friends and colleagues in his collection, Erot. I 8 (to Giano Pannonio) for example,³³ III 6 (to Francesco Philelpho) and a great number of the poems of book four (IV 17; IV 18; IV 22; IV 23). To some degree, the topic of love serves as a medium for other purposes, for poetic communication within a certain circle – just like the collections of ancient love poetry. The titles of the poems alone make it obvious that the puella is sometimes only a vehicle to discuss other topics, as in the following examples: Erot. II 3. ad Hieronymum Castellum medicum. Ad Iovinianum poetam Siculum quod Anthia sibi in amore non respondeat (“To the doctor Hieronymus Castellus. To the poet Giovoniano Sicolo that Anthia does not respond to his love”) Erot. III 1. laudat Ferrariam ab exilio rediens, cum diu iussu amicae exulavisset. De conciliatione Anthiae et de laudibus urbis Ferrariae (“praises Ferrara, returning from exile, after being banished for a long time by order of his amica. About the acquisition of Anthia and the praises of the city of Ferrara”)

The status of the relation between poeta-amator and puella (often also called ‘amica’) serves as an occasion for the literary communication of the Este circle. It is not always the emotional development which is at the centre of a poem (and sometimes it is not even mentioned). Modern critics of Strozzi’s poetry observe a certain emotional distance in his relationship with Anthia and his other puellae. One reason may be that Strozzi, as a  If one prefers to read the more usual iunctura “livoris edacis” instead of “morsus livoris edaces”, the translation would be: “the bites of voracious envy” (which of course, read as an example of enallage, means the same).  Pantani (2012) analyses poetic correspondences, including this one between Tito Strozzi and Ianus Pannonius / Giano Pannonio (= János Csemiczei).

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poeta doctus, aware of the rich intertextual web he was weaving, wrote in too learned a manner, and that his references to ancient poetry took precedence over other aspects of his poetry. He [Strozzi] views love from a certain distance, through the experience of the classical world. Woman is still portrayed as a pagan goddess rather than as a person whom the poet can address directly. The Anthia of Strozzi has not emerged completely from the erudite world in which the poet has been educated and which he has absorbed so thoroughly.³⁴

It has also been supposed that the real intention of Strozzi’s elegies was not to meet with feminine approval, but with that of other humanists: Er hat in der Hauptsache Liebeslieder verfaßt, aber sie sollten den Beifall ihm verwandter Humanisten finden und waren nicht für die Frauen bestimmt, die er geliebt hat. Kein leidenschaftlicher Erguß heißer Empfindungen, eher ein Kokettieren mit der Liebe.³⁵

The two explanations are not contradictory; they complement one another. Strozzi was on occasion very faithful to his models of Roman love elegy – in his portrayal of the woman as stereotypical rather than individual, for example. In addition, as we have seen, the puella sometimes functions as a means to other ends, and in Strozzi’s poetry as in ancient poetry, the focus is not on providing a detailed depiction of an emotional affair. As well as the approval of other humanists, the approval of the court, and above all the approval of the regents and patrons form a central preoccupation of Strozzi’s poetic production. The context in which he composed his poetry had a clear influence on the poems themselves. Strozzi studied together with Ercole d’Este, the addressee of the initial poem in the later version by Guarino. Ercole recognized the tradition Strozzi alluded to and acknowledged its application to the court of Ferrara. Although Strozzi does not name his models explicitly, speaking only in general terms of the magni vates, he often recalls the long tradition by referring to magni / docti / veteres vates / poetae in several other poems. By way of example, I cite the following poems: Erot. I 3.37 et seq.: Nam tibi vix similem veteres cecinere poetae, / Nec videt immenso Phoebus in orbe parem “Since the classical poets sang, there has hardly been a girl similar to you [Anthia], and Phoebus Apollo did not see an equal one in the immense world” Erot. I 5.21: novimus infaustos casus “we know unlucky cases” Erot. V 2.145 et seq.: Hoc nostras facere et veteres fecisse puellas / Qui neget “Who denies that our ladies do this or that the ancient puellae did it”

 Prete (1978), 6.  von Chledowski (1910), 96.

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Strozzi demonstrates several ways of expressing his engagement with predecessors – from stating his knowledge of previous cases to drawing parallels (nostras … et veteres) or writing in a competitive or agonistic mode (vix … nec). A glance at the sixth poem of the first book is enough to make clear how compact Strozzi’s intertextuality is and how varied his models. The title alone of Erot. I 6 Amica potitus gloriatur recalls the two poems of Propertius (2.24 and 2.15), in which the poeta-amator does just that – he takes possession of the puella and boasts about his conquest.³⁶ In lines 25 – 30 of Erot. I 6, several ancient reference texts are conflated: not only the elegies of Propertius and Tibullus, but also Vergil’s Eclogues: lines. 25 et seq. …Congerat o quantum cupiat sibi quilibet auri, Me satis est duram pellere posse famem, Aestivamque sitim sedare fluentibus undis, Et satis est humileis incoluisse casas. O quam me in viridi tecum recubare iuvaret Gramine fagus… Let others gather themselves as much gold as they want; for me it is enough to be able to satisfy my intense hunger and quench the thirst of summer with water from the river; it is enough to live in humble dwellings. O, how much I would like to lie down with you in the grass under the beech.

Here we find the Tibullan rejection of wealth in the bucolic tradition, and the bucolic position par excellence – lying in the grass under a tree – only that in Strozzi, the puella is in the grass with the poet (tecum). Tib. 1.1 line 1: Divitias alius fulvo sibi congerat auro line 5: me mea paupertas vitae traducat inerti line 43: parva seges satis est, satis est requiescere lecto line 78: dites despiciam despiciamque famem. Verg. Ecl. 2.28 et seq. O tantum libeat mecum tibi sordida rura atque humilis habitare casas … Verg. Ecl.1.1: Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi Prop. 2.13.11 et seq.: me iuvet in gremio doctae legisse puellae auribus et puris scripta probasse mea. I would rather have read my verse in the arms of a learned girl and have pleased her pure ears with my writing.

 On the intertextual references to Propertius in Erot. I 6.1– 10, cf. Wenzel (2012), 118 et seq.

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Propertius had declared Vergil’s Eclogues a kind of love poetry and the elegies of Tibullus can to a certain extent be characterized as ‘bucuolic’. In some of his elegies, Strozzi perpetuates this “contamination” of genres. In a first step, I have pointed to intertextuality as a possible way in which Strozzi situated himself in a learned tradition; this included not only textual poetic memory, but also ancient poetic strategies in general. In a next step, I will quote some examples in which Strozzi can be seen explicitly writing a kind of inner-poetic literary history.

b) Explicit Literary History In the eighth poem of the first book, Strozzi makes overt reference to a number of ancient poets: Erot. I 8.281– 286 His comes accedit Calvus, mollisque Catullus Atque Anser flammas qui cecinere suas. Abstulit ardentem Gallum formosa Lycoris; Carmine amatoris Cynthia clara sui est. Vivit ab insigni Nemesis celebrata Tibullo; Vivit Pelignis nota Corinna sonis. These as companion came along Calvus and the soft Catullus and Anser, who sung their flames. Beautiful Lycoris let the burning Gallus die. Cynthia is famous because of her lover’s poetry. Nemesis lives because she was celebrated by the extraordinary Tibullus. Corinna lived, famous because of the Pelignan [= Ovidian] sounds.

The model of this passage is Ovid’s Tristia II: sic sua lascivo cantata est saepe Catullo femina, cui falsum Lesbia nomen erat; nec contentus ea, multos vulgauit amores, in quibus ipse suum fassus adulterium est. Par fuit exigui similisque licentia Calvi, detexit variis qui sua furta modis. Cinna quoque his comes est, Cinnaque procacior Anser, et leve Cornifici parque Catonis opus. Yet wanton Catullus sang oft of her who was falsely called Lesbia, and not content with her he noised abroad many other loves in which he admitted his own intrigues. Equal in degree and of the same kind was the license of diminutive Calvus, who revealed his own love adventures in various metres. With them Cinna too belongs and Anser, more wanton than Cinna, and the light poems of Cornificius and Cato.

In these lines, Ovid refers to Catullus, Calvus and Anser. Strozzi appropriates them from Ovid and adds the “canonical four” Gallus, Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid, which he takes from other Ovidian poems on literary history (see above). Strozzi combines several passages to write his catalogue of model poets. In some cases,

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however, he is only ‘namedropping’ – mentioning poets whose texts are for the most part lost. Such names act as a sort of ‘spolia’ within Strozzi’s poetic catalogues of authors. We can define such a practice of reception as the transformation type ‘encapsulation’.³⁷ The second poem of the collection (Erot. I 2 “quod die solemni divi Georgii amara Anthiam coeperit”) is a programmatic elegy in the ancient tradition, cleverly transferred to the present; we can define it as the transformation type ‘assimilation’:³⁸ Strozzi takes ancient elements and makes them topographically and poetically more concrete and up to date by mixing them with contemporary elements (e. g. allusions to Ferrara and Petrarch). Following the ancient Roman elegist, the poeta-amator Strozzi declares that he has been struck by Amor / Cupid so that he can now sing only of love. Using a technique typical of the ancient love poets (and poets of the genera minora in general), he sets ‘himself’ apart from ‘the others’ (vos, l. 63), saying: “At mihi, formosam satis est cecinisse puellam” (l. 63) and “et satis est, si mea culta puella probet.” (l. 70): “But for me it is enough to have sung about my girl”, “it is enough if my learned girl acknowledges it”. Propertius insistently expresses similar simple desires – to sing about his puella and earn her approval (Pro. 1.6; 1.7; 2.13.11 et seq.: “me iuvet in gremio doctae legisse puellae / auribus et puris scripta probasse mea”, see above). After this implicit reference to Propertius, Strozzi makes explicit reference to some ancient predecessors (Erot. I 2, 75 – 80): Tyndaris Iliaco si dura fuisset amanti, Non ita e Moeonio carmine nota foret. Cyntia clara minus, Nemesisque obscurior esset, Sed facilis Nemesis, Cyntia mitis erat. If Tyndaris [= Helen] was stone-hearted towards her Trojan lover, she would not have been made famous by Homer’s poem. Cynthia would be less famous and Nemesis more obscure, but Nemesis was yielding and Cynthia was gentle.

Strozzi takes up a favourite motif of the Roman elegists: fame for the puella and the poeta-amator thanks to his poetry. Homer’s Helen is a common example of this. Cynthia is Propertius’s puella; Nemesis Tibullus’s. A catalogue of predecessors is a frequent strategy of authors in the Italian Renaissance³⁹ to elevate the status of their own poetry. But Strozzi goes further, carrying out a selective transformation which is nearly an inversion.⁴⁰ The puellae or dominae  Bergemann et al. (2012) define various types of transformation; on ‘encapsulation’ cf. ibid., 49 et seq.  On ‘assimilation’ cf. Bergemann et al. (2012), 48 et seq.  Cf. Houghton (2013), 300 et seq.  Houghton (2013), 302: “Tito Vespasiano Strozzi (1424– 1505), from Ferrara, even goes so far as to misrepresent the painfully recalcitrant as a model of the rewards contingent upon properly acquiescent conduct”. On ‘focusing’ / ‘selection’ cf. Bergemann et al. (2012), 50, on ‘inversion’ ibid., 53 et seq.

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of Roman elegy were usually neither willing nor kind. Strozzi knew this, of course, but he cherishes hopes all the same. Tibullus wrote: Tibullus, 2.6.27 et seq.: Spes facilem Nemesim spondet mihi – sed negat illa. Ei mihi, ne vincas, dura puella, deam. (The goddess) Hope promises me that Nemesis will be yielding – but she (Nemesis) refuses. Ah me, harsh girl, don’t overcome the goddess (i. e. Hope).

Strozzi borrows only the first part of line 27 – and ignores Nemesis’s refusal to be yielding (although in other passages he maintains the concept of the dura puella, see e. g. Erot. IV 25.50 – 53): Atque, aliquid quoniam mihi semper amare necesse est, Succedet regnis culta puella tuis. Digna erit illa meo fieri celeberrima versu, And, since I always need something to love, a learned puella will succeed your reign [i. e. the ‘reign’ of Anthia]. She will be worthy of being made very famous by my verse.

In this elegy entitled ad Anthiam amicam quod solverit fidem, Strozzi’s persona writes that he needs something (not someone) to love (aliquid …amare) and that another puella will follow Anthia – the puellae succeed one another, like the poets. The neuter pronoun aliquid to refer to the puella also occurs in Erot. VI 9 (ad Carolum. amicum suum optimum, quod Philliroem vehementer amet), 9 et seq.: “Si quid amem quaeres, ubi nos male fida reliquit / Anthia, successit candida Phylliroe” (“If you are looking for something for me to love, now that unfaithful Anthia has left me, the beautiful Phylliroe has succeeded her.”). The expression quid amem recalls Martial’s quod amem (see above). The topic of succession in Strozzi is as prominent as in Ovid, not only where the puellae are concerned. Strozzi is acutely aware of the way succession works. He knew that an author of love poetry in the tradition of Roman love elegy would be linked with his puellae – and that he himself, as a poet, was to no small degree a successor to the ancient love poets.

Bibliography Primary Sources Della Guardia, Anita (ed.), Tito Vespasiano Strozzi. Poesie latine tratte dall’Aldina confrontate coi codici, Modena 1916. Hall, John B. (ed.), P. Ovidi Nasonis Tristia, Stuttgart/Leipzig 1995. Heyworth, S. J. (ed.), Sexti Properti Elegos, Oxford 2007. Kenney, Edward J. (ed.), P. Ovidi Nasonis Amores, Medicamina Faciei Femineae, Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, Oxford 1961. Luck, Georg (ed.), Albius Tibullus, Carmina, 2nd ed., Berlin/New York 2003.

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Ludwig, Walther (ed.), Die Borsias des Tito Strozzi. Ein lateinisches Epos der Renaissance, München 1977. Mynors, R.A.B. (ed.), C. Valerii Catulli Carmina, Oxford 1958. Ottaviano, Silvia /Conte, Gian Biagio (ed.), P. Vergilius Maro, Bucolica et Georgica, Berlin/New York 2013. Resta, Gianvito (ed.), Johannis Marrasii Angelinetum et carmina varia, Palermo 1976. Shackleton-Bailey, David Roy (ed), M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammata. Post W. Heraeum, Stuttgart 1990.

Secondary Sources Albrecht, Reinhart, Tito Vespasiano Strozzi. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Humanismus in Ferrarum, Leipzig 1891. Arnaldi, Francesco/Gualdo Rosa, Lucia/Monti Sabia, Liliana, Poeti latini de Quattrocento, Milano/Napoli 1964, 262 – 267. Bellandi, Franco, “L’immagine di Mecenate protettore delle lettere nella poesia fra I e II sec. D.C.”, in: A&R 40 (1995), 78 – 101. Beleggia, Barbara, “Echi petracheschi negli Eroticon libri di Tito Vespasiano Strozzi”, in: Il Petrarchismo. Un modello di poesia per l’Europa, vol. II, ed. F. Calitti/R. Gigliucci, Roma 2006, 553 – 568. Bergemann, Lutz/Dönike, Martin/Schirrmeister, Albert/Toepfer, Georg/ M. Walter, J. Weitbrecht, “Transformation. Ein Konzept zur Erforschung kulturellen Wandels”, in: Transformation. Ein Konzept Zur Erforschung kulturellen Wandels, ed. Hartmut Böhme et al., München 2012, 39 – 56. Böhme, Hartmut, “Einladung zur Transformation”, in: Transformation. Ein Konzept zur Erforschung kulturellen Wandels, ed. Hartmut Böhme et al., München 2012, 7 – 38. Braden, Gordon, “Classical Love Elegy in the Renaissance (and after)”, in: The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy, ed. Karen Weisman, Oxford 2010, 153 – 169. Cairns, Francis, Sextus Propertius, the Augustan Elegist, Cambridge 2006. Cardini, Roberto/Coppini, Donatella (ed.), Il rinnovamento umanistico della poesia: L’epigramma e l’elegia, Firenze 2009. Caterino, Antonello Fabio, “Folliroe e i suoi poeti: da Tito Strozzi a Ludovico Ariosto”, in: Annali Online di Lettere – Ferrara 1 – 2 (2011), 182 – 208. Caterino, Antonello Fabio, “Per uno status quaestionis degli studi sull’Eroticon di Tito Vespasiano Strozzi,” in: Spolia. Journal of medieval studies 2012. Chappuis Sandoz, Laure (ed.), Au-delà de l’élégie d’amour: Métamorphoses et renouvellements d’un genre latin dans l’Antiquité et à la Renaissance (Lectures de la Renaissance latine 2), Paris 2011. Chledowski, Casimir von, Der Hof von Ferrara, Berlin 1910. Cooper, Tracy E., “Mecenatismo or Clientelismo? The Character of Renaissance Patronage”, in: The Search for a Patron in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. D.G. Wilkins/R.L. Wilkins, Lewiston 1996, 19 – 32. Gold, Barbara K., “Patronage and the Elegists: Social Reality or Literary Construction?”, in: A Companion to Roman Love Elegy, ed. B.A. Gold, Malden (Mass.). 2012, 303 – 317. Holzberg, Niklas, Ovid. Dichter und Werk, München 1997. Holzberg, Niklas, Die römische Liebeselegie. Eine Einführung, 6nd ed., Darmstadt 2015. Houghton, Luke B. T., “Renaissance Latin love elegy”, in: The Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy, ed. Thea S. Thorsen, Cambridge 2013, 290 – 305. Lyne, R.O.A.M., The Latin Love Poets. From Catullus to Horace, Oxford 1996.

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Mesdijan, Béatrice, “Eros dans l’ ’Eroticon’ de T. V. Strozzi”, in: Eros et Priapus. Erotisme et obscénité dans la littérature néo-latine, ed. I. de Smet/Ph. Ford, Genève 1997, 25 – 42. Moul, Victoria, “Lyric Poetry”, in: Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin, ed. S. Knight/St. Tilg, Oxford 2015, 41 – 56. Nauta, Ruud R., Poetry for Patrons: Literary Communication in the Age of Domitian, Leiden 2002. Pantani, Italo, La fonte d’ogni eloquenzia: il canzoniere petrarchesco nella cultura poetica del Quattrocento ferrarese, Roma 2002. Pantani, Italo, Responsa poetae: Corrispondenze poetiche esemplari dal Vannozzo a Della Casa (Dulces Musae: Collana di Studi e Testi di Letteratura Italiana 8), Roma 2012. Parker, Holt N., “Renaissance Latin Elegy”, in: A Companion to Roman Love Elegy, ed. Barbara K. Gold, Malden (Mass.) 2012, 476 – 488. Pieper, Christoph, Elegos redolere Vergiliosque sapere: Cristoforo Landinos “Xandra” zwischen Liebe und Gesellschaft, Noctes Neolatinae, vol. VIII, Hildesheim 2008. Prete, Sesto, Some unknown poems by Tito Vespasiano Strozzi, Fano 1968. Prete, Sesto, Studies in Latin Poets of the Quattrocento 1978, The University of Kansas 1978. Putnam, Michael C. J., “Some Virgilian Unities”, in: Classical Literary Careers and Their Reception, ed. P. Hardie/H. Moore, Cambridge 2010, 17 – 38. Robert, Jörn, “Lateinischer Petrarkismus und lyrischer Strukturwandel. Die Autorisierung der Liebeselegie im Licht ihrer rinascimentalen Kommentierung”, in: Questo leggiadrissimo Poeta! Autoritätskonstruktionen im rinascimentalen Lyrik-Kommentar, ed. Gerhard Regn, Münster 2004, 111 – 154. Robert, Jörn, “Amabit sapiens, cruciabitur autem stultus. Neuplatonische Poetik der Elegie und Pluralisierung des erotischen Diskurses um 1500”, in: Lateinische Lyrik der frühen Neuzeit. Poetische Kleinformen und ihre Funktionen zwischen Renaissance und Aufklärung, ed. Beate Czapla/Ralf Georg Czapla/Robert Seidel, Tübingen 2003 (Frühe Neuzeit 77), 35 – 73. Roman, Luke, Poetic Autonomy in Ancient Rome, Oxford 2014. Tissoni Benvenuti, Antonia, “Prime indagini sulla tradizione degli “Eroticon Libri” di Tito Vespasiano Strozzi”, in: Filologia italiana 1 (2004), 89 – 112. Tissoni Benvenuti, Antonia, “Prime indagini sulla tradizione degli Eroticon libri di Tito Vespasiano Strozzi”, in: Rinnovamento umanistico della poesia: L‘epigramma e l‘elegia, ed. Roberto Cardini/Donatella Coppini, Firenze 2009, 1 – 35. Thorsen Thea S. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy, Cambridge/New York 2013. Schmidt, E.A. (ed.), L’Historie Littéraire Immanente dans la Poésie Latine, Genève 2001. Wenzel, Antonia, “Neulateinische Gedichtbücher des Quattrocento. Vier italienische Humanisten und ihr Umgang mit dem antiken Erbe”, in: Enzyklopädie der Philologie: Themen und Methoden der Klassischen Philologie heute, ed. Ulrich Schmitzer, Göttingen 2012. White, Peter, Promised Verse: Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome, Cambridge 1993. White, Peter, “Friendship, Patronage and Horatian Socio-Poetics”, in: The Cambridge Companion to Horace, ed. Stephen Harrison, Cambridge 2007, 195 – 206. Wissig-Baving, Gabriele, Die Anrede an das Buch in der römischen Dichtung. Studien zum Verhältnis des Dichters zu seinem Werk, Frankfurt a.M./Bern/New York/Paris 1989. Wyke, Maria, “Written Women: Propertius’ Scripta Puella”, in: The Journal of Roman Studies 77 (1987), 47 – 61. Zetzel, James E. G., “The Poetics of Patronage in the Late First Century B.C.”, in: Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome, ed. B.K. Gold, Austin 1982, 87 – 102.

Helmut Pfeiffer (Berlin)

Shipwrecked Souls. Menippean Satire and Renaissance Textuality 1 Pascal’s Wager “[…] vous êtes embarqué.”¹ In the famous fragment 397 of his Pensées, Pascal asks the decisive, ‘final’ question which we, despite being equipped with natural reason, lumières naturelles, cannot ultimately escape, although most people may think so: does God exist and what can we know about his existence? The question itself, Pascal argues, subverts the foundations of natural reason. Without knowing it, natural reason is from the outset not on solid ground, but on the high seas, where its certainties count for nothing and its presumptions are rendered void. Pascal’s fragmentary text, heavily interspersed with annotations and additions, develops a highly dynamic and complex rhetoric whose addressee is presumably a libertine public with sceptical philosophical and religious views. For such a public, the existence of God is not primarily a matter of faith, but of rational argument. Pascal’s maritime metaphor subverts this conviction. If God exists, Pascal maintains, he has no parts and no boundaries, making him parfaitement incompréhensible – absolutely unintelligible – to us and our natural reason. God and man are separated by an epistemological abyss: “Il y a un chaos infini qui nous sépare.”² As St. Paul remarked in his First Epistle to the Corinthians,³ pious Christian believers acknowledge God’s infinite difference by admitting that, in the eyes of the world, their belief is mere stupidity, “sottise, stultitia”⁴. But even the libertine gambler, as Pascal points out to his imaginary interlocutor, cannot avoid the question of God’s existence, and his answer must take the form of a bet, in which an eternity of life and happiness is at stake, an “éternité de vie et de bonheur”⁵. The objection that one might avoid the bet by not judging at all – “le juste est de ne point parier”⁶ – is countered by Pascal with the unavoidability of betting in a situation of utter uncertainty; we are always already embarqué, on the high seas, without firm ground on which to stand. We have to gamble: “il faut nécessairement choisir, en choisissant l’un que l’autre.”⁷ Moreover Pascal demon-

 Pascal, Œuvres, 677. The literature on this fragment is vast. Cf. for introductory reading and the current range of interpretation: Le Guern/Le Guern (1972), 34– 55; Lønning (1980); Jordan, ed. (1994).  Pascal, Œuvres, 677.  Cf. 1 Cor. I, 21 et seq.  Ibid.  Pascal, Œuvres, 678. Pascal adds: “[…] il y a ici une infinité de vie infiniment heureuse à gagner, un hasard de gain contre un nombre fini de hasards de perte […]”.  Ibid., 677.  Ibid., 678. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-010

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strates that, since the chances of gain or loss are equal, since there is “pareil hasard de gain et de perte”⁸, it is ultimately rational to bet on God’s existence when faced with a prospect of infinite gain, or better: the gain of the infinite. It is not the much-discussed logic of the wager I want to focus on, but Pascal’s metaphorical appeal, his recourse to an existential metaphor (a Daseinsmetapher, to quote Hans Blumenberg’s concept,⁹ which in turn alludes to Heidegger’s concept of Dasein, the human form of being in the world): “[…] il faut parier. Cela n’est pas volontaire, vous êtes embarqué.”¹⁰ The central implication of this metaphor, which transcends the context of libertine gambling, is the lack of validity of a time-honoured opposition: land as opposed to water, solid ground as opposed to dangerous seas, security as opposed to risk. Relying on our natural, rational faculties, whose certainties are illusory, we are already on the open sea and exposed to its dangers. The land as a safe harbour, the sea as an amorphous element of destruction and annihilation – this graphic opposition, which translates into contrasting modes of existence, has, as Blumenberg points out, its locus classicus at the beginning of the second book of Lucretius’ De rerum natura: “Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis / e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem, / non quia vexari quemquamst iucunda voluptas, / sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.”¹¹ (“’Tis sweet, when, down the mighty main, the winds / Roll up its waste of waters, from the land / To watch another’s labouring anguish far, / Not that we joyously delight that man / Should thus be smitten, but because ’tis sweet / To mark what evils we ourselves be spared”, tr. William Ellery Leonard.) The existential metaphor ‘shipwreck with spectator’ is rhetorically efficient because it dramatizes the opposition of land and sea in a vivid scene: a spectator watches a storm and tumultuous waves; he witnesses the shipwreck of a person who has ventured forth on treacherous seas. Pascal, however, alludes to the difference of land and sea in his fragment only to subvert its pertinence to the human situation. Worldly wisdom is not a safe harbour; it is blindness to the infinite difference of the transcendent God. This difference cannot be ignored even by those who would like to remain within the bounds of their lumières naturelles. Pascal overturns the existential metaphor which is organized around a firmly grounded spectator and a hopelessly lost castaway. The polemical force of his concise metaphorical argument is heightened by the fact that for the authors of the Renaissance – whose treacherous metaphorical knowledge was, for Pascal, concentrated in the Essais of Montaigne – the existential metaphor had become

 Ibid.  Cf. Blumenberg (1979).  Pascal, Œuvres, 677.  Lucretius, De rerum natura, II, 1– 4. Diels translates as follows: “Wonnevoll ist’s bei wogender See, wenn der Sturm die Gewässer / Aufwühlt, ruhig vom Lande zu sehn, wie ein andrer sich abmüht, / Nicht als ob es uns freute, wenn jemand Leiden erduldet, / Sondern aus Wonnegefühl, dass man selber vom Leiden befreit ist.”

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a productive topos for exploring the opposition of old and new, experimental knowledge, repetition and invention, authority and subversion. And there was no textual form more productive for playing out the implications of the metaphorical opposition than what has become labelled the genre (or the genres) of the Menippean satire.

2 Naufragus: Leon Battista Alberti’s Allegorical Shipwreck Naufragus is the only text of the ninth book of the Intercenales (“Dinner pieces”, in David Marsh’s translation), a collection in (at least) eleven books of heterogeneous generic forms, including dialogues, dream visions, and fantastical voyages. Leon Battista Alberti wrote these texts early in his life, during the third decade of the quattrocento; more than fifty of them are collected in the most recent edition, and the author informs us in his autobiography that, although there were several others which excited much laughter, he burnt them because they didn’t seem mature enough to him.¹² The ludic and occasional nature of the texts is signalled from the outset by the generic name Alberti invents for them: the Intercenales are, as it were, embedded in the social rituals of everyday life, they do not require the exclusive and concentrated attention of the listener (or reader); their aim is to entertain him, to make him laugh. The Intercenales stage political, religious and social ideas in flexible rhetorical forms. Alberti’s reading of Lucian – the complete Greek text of his works was available as early as 1396 and there was an intense activity of translation before and during the period when Alberti was writing the Intercenales – must have hit him with elementary force.¹³ Like the later Momus, the Intercenales attest to the fact, that for Alberti the experience of the Menippean satire was essentially an event of authorial intertextuality. To his unruly and experimental mind, the countercanonical and anticlassical multiplicity of the Menippean satire as he found it in the works of Lucian offered a fictional space allowing the projection of religious, moral, economic and political concepts, while at the same time staging and displaying perceptual and emotional reactions analysed in the classical terminology of the faculties of the soul. In this way, the Intercenales constitute an early, highly complex example of the Menippean paradigm in the Renaissance. Alberti never provided a systematic collection of the texts. The Intercenales have no definitive order and probably no such order was intended by the author. They are neither an organic whole, nor a work in progress, but an open series of variations and centrifugal evolution. In the version we are now able to read, thanks to the editorial diligence of Franco Bacchelli and Luca D’Ascia, only a few of the individual books are characterized by what might be called thematic (though not formal) coher Leonis Baptistae de Albertis Vita, 70: “ex quibus, quod non sibi satis mature editae viderentur, tametsi festivissimae forent et multos risus excitarent”.  A classical treatment of the Menippean form is to be found in Bakhtin (1984); cf. also Lestringant/ Ménager, ed., (1985).

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ence. The first book concentrates on the relation of virtus and fortuna; the second privileges the tension of oikonomia and chrematistics; the tenth discusses political themes from republicanism to tyranny. But signposting dominant themes in this way fails to do credit to the playful relations of similarity and difference, analogy and asymmetry, and ignores the intertextual and interdiscursive density of the Intercenales. In other words, the balance of coherence and variation is not a textual given; it is up to the reader to construct textual patterns if he wishes to submit the texts to criteria of aesthetic or ideological closure. In the Prohemium ad Paulum Toscanellum, Alberti writes that his aim in putting together the Intercenales, which he has started to collect in little booklets (parvos libellos), is to contribute to healing the soul “per risum atque hilaritatem”¹⁴. This remark certainly ties up with Bakhtin’s remarks on the function of laughter in the Menippean satire and its role as a representative and mediator of carnival. Insisting on the healing power of the vis comica is, however, a traditional, highly conventional argument not restricted to the sphere of satire or even comedy; the topos was also used by Boccaccio in his Decameron. On the other hand, the digressive multiplicity of the Intercenales cannot be reduced to or contained by its comic power. They are characterized by the fundamental instability of their implied author, which undermines any coherent pragmatic or aesthetic response. The seriocomic versatility of the Intercenales opens up a wide range of satiric, parodic, polemic, pedagogic and moral intentions, and the patterns of indirectness and inversion, contrast and reversal with which these are developed render the text polyphonic. It seems to have been the Roman polymath Varro who coined the term saturae menippeae. It is not clear, however, whether there was ever a distinct consciousness of generic identity, or a distinct set of defining features. The Menippean satire gets its name from an author whose work is lost (to the Renaissance and later periods) and whose generic name is associated with Roman verse satire, with which the Menippean has little in common.¹⁵ The lack of distinctiveness is further increased by the variety of satiric forms produced by the European literatures of the Renaissance, and seems to have worked as an incentive for generic experimentation. The nomadic quality of the texts and collections of texts was certainly promoted as a result. Alberti’s Intercenales mobilize a wide variety of discursive and narrative forms: dialogues of the Gods and the dead, allegorical personifications, various forms of descriptions and ekphrasis, short gnomic forms (apophthegm, maxim, witty repartee), portraits, novellas, exempla and so forth. A wide variety of simple forms (einfache Formen in the sense coined by André Jolles) is integrated in the textual play of the Intercenales. The intertextual references are far from homogeneous; they don’t remain on  Alberti, Intercenales, 2.  The main difference being the presence or absence of a normative standpoint from which the satirist speaks. Cf. Blanchard (1995), 19: “The ideal norm that is always presupposed in Roman verse satire is conspicuously lacking in Menippean works, and its absence argues for the consideration of these genres as distinct on grounds broader than their formal or stylistic differences.”

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one stylistic level or within one class of authors, and even have a tendency to reach out towards the stylistic and narrative conventions of the genus sublime. The issue is further complicated by varying strategies of meaning and signification, a feature which has often been recognized as belonging to the early tradition of Menippean satires, but which seems to become even more prominent in Renaissance texts. The sign can be a mask, a simulacrum, an idol, but it can also be an allegorical signifier, or an iconic sign. In Italian humanism, the linguistic versatility is enhanced by alternative textual versions in Latin or in Italian (as in some of Alberti’s Intercenales); in the French Renaissance, e. g. in Rabelais, by a wide range of languages and linguistic registers. The Renaissance Menippean satire stages variable relations of signifier and signified. The Intercenales exploit the textual and generic repertoires of late antique Menippean satire, but they do so in a different cultural context. The poetics of imitation and aemulatio, dominant in the era, are haunted by the intuition of deeply rooted difference. Thomas Greene coined the expression historical solitude to express the tension between phantasms of resurrection and the perception of irredeemable estrangement.¹⁶ The Menippean tradition, however, situated as it is on the margins of normative poetics, is in a different position; it can use forms and genres outside the canon of ancient literature. Alberti’s Intercenales show quite clearly that their author is not only familiar with the variety of satirical forms practised by Lucian, and with narrative genres such as the Hellenistic novel; he also integrates genres stemming from medieval – particularly late medieval – literature. The most important example of this is certainly the novella. This hybridization of ancient and medieval forms means that the Renaissance author has to deal not only with the classical opposition of the probable and the improbable, but also with the new and different dichotomy of the real and the contingent. Allegory and allegorical modes of signification are present in ancient authors such as Lucian, but with medieval psychomachy and its oppositions, which can be understood as taking place within and outside the soul, Menippean satire acquires new possibilities of playfully staging and fictionalizing Greek and Roman philosophical concepts. This intertextual and intergeneric density produces new layers of textual resonance and representational opacity. Alberti’s Naufragus can be read in a Latin and in an Italian version. Even at first sight the text gives the impression of an allegorical narrative. The protagonists, at any rate, are not social types but personifications of concepts, even if their specific identity is not immediately evident. The textual context of the Intercenales proves useful. The traditionally close association of shipwreck with the workings of the goddess Fortuna links the text to the philosophical dream vision of Fatum et Fortuna, which can be read in the first book of the Intercenales. In this text Alberti, following the tradition of the Somnium Scipionis and Boethius’ Menippean prosimetrum De consolatione philosophiae, develops a vision of the river of life. Three aspects of

 Greene (1982).

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Fatum et Fortuna are particularly relevant for the narrative logic of Naufragus: the conception of the state (imperium) as a ship, on board which it is possible to navigate the steep banks of the river by working together effectively and hierarchically;¹⁷ the possibility of relying on the ‘good arts’ (bonae artes) as the best means of avoiding the dangerous rocks in the river of life of an individual; and the distinction between fatum and fortuna, which conceives of fate as the orderly course of life (cursum rerum in vita hominum), and regards fortune as a force that can be successfully handled, at least partially,¹⁸ provided one disposes of adequate means – a plank or a boat. The narrative frame of the sea voyage is a traditional literary topos, present in various genres, from the (high) epic to the (low) satire. Alberti certainly has in mind not only classical examples of shipwreck, but also the second and third book of the Decameron, where Boccaccio’s novellas not only present catastrophes and shipwrecks, but also explore the power of fortune in its relation to human luck, cunning and industriousness.¹⁹ Alberti’s shipwreck, however, avoids both the fantastic improbability of the Menippean satire (as in Lucian’s True history) and the circumstantial realism of the novella, narrating instead an allegorical conflict, a sort of psychomachy acted out by the survivors. In its narrative teleology, however, the story also invites readings with mythological resonances: its allegorical antagonism opens up into a myth of separation and unity, death and rebirth. The text begins with a fictional dialogue. The narrators’ friends, “viri amicissimi”²⁰, want to hear about his shipwreck, which he attributes to fortune. Telling his story, for the narrator, means repeating the catastrophe in his soul (“perpessam inuiriam animo repetere”²¹) and he admits that he can’t do this without tears and sorrow, lachrimis et merore. At the same time, reliving the shipwreck imaginatively also means sharing the event, which is “memoria et admiratione dignissimam”²², with his listeners. The narrative will be short, breviter narrabo, but he hopes it will inspire prudence in the mind of the listener and an awareness of the mutability of fortune. One should avoid (fugiendam) fortune invidiam et inconstantiam. On the high seas, Fortune and the perfidious Neptune work together. Anyone who has ever met with storm and shipwreck will, like the narrator, be forced into a loathing of navigation, navigationis odium. Seafaring, for the narrator, is not the discovery of the world or the expansion of power; it is self-exposure and self-surrender. Whoever sails the seas becomes his own enemy, or as Alberti writes in the Italian version of his text:

 Cf. Wolf (2013), 187 et seq.: “Das Staatsschiff. Kulturtechniken frühneuzeitlicher ‘Seenahme’”.  Cf. Alberti, Intercenales, 56: “fortunam vero illis esse faciliorem anidmadverti, qui tum in fluvium cecidere, cum iuxta aut integre asserule aut navicula fortassis aliqua aderat.”  Compare the general topics of day II: “si ragiona di chi, da diverse cose infestato, sia oltre alla sua spreanza riuscito a lieto fine” and day III: “si ragiona […] di chi alcuna cosa da lui desiderata con industria acquistasse o la perduta ricoverasse” (Boccaccio, Decameron, pp. 129 and 312).  Cf. Alberti, Intercenales, 572.  Ibid.  Ibid.

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“tanto mi dispiace ogni cosa marittima che io non ama chi navica e iudicolo inimico di se stesso e di sua salute.”²³ By reducing his experience to such simple maxims, however, the narrator is in the end belied by his own story; he becomes, so to speak, unreliable and the story begins to work against its own narrator. Naufragus, as might be expected, begins with images of prosperity and nautical competence. Three hundred sailors are on board; the ship is excellently equipped, “valida et munitissma”²⁴; the harbour is not far away. The important thing is to reach home; the story thrives on expectation; even at the very beginning, ‘the sense of an ending’ (F. Kermode) dominates. The passengers are looking forward to participating in the annual feasts and banquets, “cenas et festem diem”²⁵, of the (nameless) city they are heading for in an atmosphere of delightful expectation, “omnis navis letitia et congratulationibus ardescebat”.²⁶ There is also a beautiful young woman on board whose bridegroom is waiting for her. But then a sudden reversal of the situation occurs. Fortune intervenes, sending a sudden storm, like a heavenly plague, quasi emissa celitus peste, which causes a shipwreck and demonstrates the fragility of human hope: “o fragilis hominum spes!”²⁷ Only three out of the three hundred passengers survive: the beautiful woman (remarkably), the narrator and a Scythian barbarian, “barbarus quidam ex Scythia”²⁸, who had not previously been mentioned. This triad of survivors is evidently far removed from any criteria of probability – the shipwreck, in a sense, changes not only the situation of the passengers but also the semiotic regime of the text. Ruin and rescue, miro quidam et incredibile modo, plunge the reader into a new narrative constellation, where the conflict between the surviving protagonists can be translated onto an allegorical plain. The narrator, who continues to impress with his simplicity, remains, on the one hand, an active force between the bride and the barbarian; on the other hand he acts out the role of the observer who will finally have to narrate and relive the shipwreck. The new semiotic regime reaches out not only to the protagonists but also to the things on board the ship. The survivors are at its stern, surrounded by what Heidegger would call ‘Zeug’ (equipment), “sparsa et perseminata fabrorum ad navis usum coacta ferramenta”,²⁹ which now seems useless. The ferramenta fabrilia are, in Stoic (Senecan) language, not inventions of wisdom (sapientia), but of ingenuity (sagacitas).³⁰ That seems to be the narrator’s position. One should not forget, however,

 Ibid., 596.  Ibid., 572.  Ibid., 574.  Ibid.  Ibid.  Ibid.  Ibid.  Seneca, Ep., 90, 11 (against Posidonius): “On another point also I differ from Posidonius, when he holds that mechanical tools were the invention of wise men […] It was man’s ingenuity, not his wis-

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that the author, who is distinct from the narrator, will later turn out to be a first-rate expert in architecture;³¹ in his autobiography Alberti mentions the instruction he received in the technical (mechanical) arts from various experts including ship builders.³² For the desperate shipwrecked castaways, on the other hand, the tools no longer appear as instruments of survival, but threaten to injure the survivors and hinder their movement. While for the sailor, the nautical equipment functions as an essential tool for navigation, for the shipwrecked people it can – on an allegorical level and from a Stoical perspective – only divert and distract from the essential task of cura sui, as cura animi. Nautical tools come into conflict with the movements of the soul; technical competence with the control of the passions. In this predicament, the castaways throw away all implements and are left almost naked, “ex parte nudi”, between fear and hope, “spes et metus futurorum”.³³ They follow Senecan recommendations, but are unable to reach the Stoic tranquillitas animi. Stoicism held a lifelong fascination for Alberti; he discusses it in his philosophical dialogues, and in Della famiglia the essential concept of the art of the household, masserizia, has clearly been worked out against the background of the tenets of the Stoic cura sui. Naufragus points in the same direction. The Stoic position is nothing but an illusion of the narrator. The allegorical antagonism of the survivors, who are tossed between conflicting passions, breaks out as soon as their ‘theoretical’ desire to find firm ground and a safe harbour is threatened by the awakening of their natural needs. Hunger becomes ‘vehement’ (vehementius) and turns out to be the worst of the “mala durissima et crudelissima”³⁴ which plague the survivors. The Scythian barbarian, a natura ferox, loses all self-control, in sevitiam exarsit. Without the means for ‘technical’ action or self-preservation, the castaways play out a psychomachy of animal desire and virtuous rationality. The barbarian suggests they kill and eat the woman, an unheard-of cannibalistic atrocity, “facinus inauditum et omnium memorabile”.³⁵ The tempest unchains the subliminal savagery of the human heart.³⁶ This cannibalistic inversion of human dignity (dignitas hominis, to quote the term later used by Pico della Mirandola), and the triumph of atrocitas mobilize, once again, a conflict of passion in the narrator, between pity (misericordia) for the woman and fear (timor) for his own life. Since he is not an irrational animal like the barbar-

dom, that discovered all these devices.” (“In illo quoque dissentio a Posidonio, quod ferramenta fabrilia excogitata a sapientibus viris iudicat […] Omnia enim ista sagacitas hominum, non sapientia invenit.”)  Alberti probably wrote De re aedificatoria in the years 1443 – 1452.  Leonis Baptistae de Albertis Vita, 72: “A fabris, ab architectis, a naviculariis, ab ipsis sutoribus sciscitabatur, si quidam forte rarum sua in arte et reconditum quasi peculiar servarent”.  Alberti, Intercenales, 578.  Ibid., 580.  Ibid.  In Shakespeares Tempest, Ariel, who, instructed by Prospero, had raised the storm, reports to his master Prospero: “Not a soul / But felt a fever of the mad, and play’d / Some tricks of desperation.” (Shakespeare, Tempest, 23 and 208 et seq.)

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ian, these movements of the soul are not visible as physiognomic signs, but are translated into discourse. And his story flatly contradicts his Stoic maxims. The narrator turns out to be the locus of an unresolved antagonism. Once again, the text repeats the movement from techne to psyche; the remaining equipment is thrown overboard, and the truculuentum […] monstrum is to have no chance of transforming the nautical tools into instruments of cannibalism. The narrator, on the other hand, is set free to observe the ways of cura animi. He is the textual instance which organizes the transfer from the technicalities of self-preservation to the rhetoric of the movements of the soul. Since he has given up acting, he is free to observe, to see and to hear; his eyes and ears take in the theatre of the afflicted soul played out by the beautiful woman – a spectacle so overwhelming that it touches not only the narrator who is sensitive by nature (quem natura mitissimum procreavit) but even the “immanis barbarus”.³⁷ He is changed back from animal to man after the narrator reminds him of his humanity: “Tene hominem esse non meministi?”³⁸ The shift from technicality to spectacle, from activity to self-mirroring is intensified in the dramatic appeals the narrator addresses to his listeners. The amici et viri optimi should imagine, and even repeat (mecum repitete) in their imagination the conversion from hope to desperation, from joy to mourning (expectatio/desperatio, gaudium/luctum). Despite the ferocious antagonism of the survivors,³⁹ the roles are distributed with allegorical neatness: the Scythian barbarian stands for the fury of wrath,⁴⁰ the puella represents virtuous desperation, but also helpless fear, the narrator observes the durissimum spectaculum without losing self-control and presence of mind. The allegorical reading proposed by Rinaldo Rinaldi,⁴¹ which discovers in the text a platonic “triade allegorica” in which the three parts of the soul are represented by the story’s three protagonists, is not at all implausible, although it ignores narrative roles and the heterogeneity of the discursive contexts. The end of the story celebrates resurrection and reconciliation. Luckily or by divine intervention (superum gratia et pietate), some fishermen notice the remains of the ship (naufragii reliquias). The ensuing excess of joy renders the survivors unconscious; to those who rescue them, they look like corpses who have been dead for three days. The Christian resonances of the scene – the pseudo-resurrection, the

 Alberti, Intercenales, 582.  Ibid., 584.  The terror may be immense, but it is not without precedent. Alberti’s narrator recalls the siege of Sagunt, Jerusalem and Cassilino (his sources seem to be Silvio Italico, Punica, Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., and Livy) – drastic examples of the transformations undergone as a result of hunger and desperation, including recourse to cannibalism.  Again, the reference seems to be Seneca, who in De ira qualifies ire as a form of madness: “non esse sanos quos ira possedit” (Seneca, Ira, I, I, 3). Alberti repeats the physiognomic signs of the passion in part, especially the flaming eyes: oculis iam tum flammas iactantibus.  Cf. Rinaldi (2002), 41. The main reference is Plato’s Republic, Book IV.

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time that has elapsed, and the role of the fishermen – can hardly be overlooked, but they are subject to comic inversion: the Scythian barbarian, who is now charitably acknowledged (“cum caritate amplectabamur”⁴²), is changed from a would-be cannibal into a man who cannot even eat one small fish, whereas the narrator loses all self-control and starts to devour the fish raw. It looks as if Momus, the god of non-identity and metamorphosis, is staging the scene. But the text also offers a symbolic counterpart. The puella finally encounters her bridegroom (sponsus), who is wearing a ring lost by the narrator’s drowned brother. Christian symbolism is woven into the comic reconciliation of the end of the text, suggesting closure, but the authorial suggestion is undercut by the narrator’s ignorance. He offers two significantly different conclusions in the Latin and Italian versions of the text, but both are blind to the comedy and symbolism of the story. While the Latin version ends on a note of uncertainty – the narrator does not know (nescio) whether to end on a note of sorrow (merore) or joy (letitia) – the Italian text is more explicit, even dogmatic. The commutazion di fortuna is now made responsible for the vicissitudes of the story and the passionate reactions of dolore and letizia. The narrator is ready to draw a succinct moral: “Indi imparai, amicissimi miei, a nulla mai disperarmi.”⁴³ In both cases too, the conclusion is blind to the story’s allegorical (conceptual) and symbolic (mythological) implications. Their multiplicity remains unresolved, and no auctorial voice prescribes an integration of the levels of signification.

3 Tempest at Sea: Rabelais’ Quart livre Alberti’s Naufragus exists in two languages. Rabelais’ storm in the Quart livre des faicts et dicts Heroiques du bon Pantagruel has come down to us in an early version (1548) and a final version (1552) which is a rewriting of the earlier text. There are various reasons for the rewriting – theological, as well as literary and political,⁴⁴ but the essential point of the narrative transformation seems to be the different role allotted to Pantagruel who is, after all, as the title tells us, the book’s hero. After the discursive, controversial and intellectual Tiers livre, the Quart livre goes to the other extreme of Menippean satire and deploys the topos of the fantastic voyage. (“Icaromenippe” is mentioned in the long and circumstantial Prologue de l’Autheur,⁴⁵ but Lucian’s True History is probably the more important reference.) The aim of the company is still the same: the voyage to the Oracle de la Dive Bouteille is to settle the question of Panurge’s marriage which was left open at the end of the Tiers livre.

 Alberti, Intercenales, 590.  Ibid., 601.  Cf. Screech (1979), 341, who goes so far as to claim a “fundamental rewriting of the Storm episode”: “The 1548 Storm was a classical affair […] The 1552 storm is Christian in its actual terms, while being even more successful a mock-heroic classical storm as well.”  Rabelais, Œuvres, 529.

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The fantastic quality of the book is grounded not so much in the fiction of the giants (which merely continues the convention of Rabelais’ earlier books), but in the ingenious combination of mythological schemes (primarily the Argonautica orphica) and modern histories of discovery since 1492. In Chapter 17 of the Quart livre, Pantagruel and his companions pass the islands of Thohu and Bohu, where they find nothing to eat. The comic doubling of the almost homophonic islands refers back to the second verse of the first chapter of Genesis in its Hebraic version. After God has created the heaven and the earth, he finds the latter “without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”⁴⁶ In the Quart livre the allusion to an original chaos is however immediately countered by the grotesque death of the windmill-eater Bringuenarilles, the result of indigestion following the consumption of various cooking utensils and the wrong therapy (devouring too much butter) – a death which elicits a long series of extraordinary and memorable deaths, including the well-known death of Aeschylus who, induced by an ominous prophecy to avoid the interior of houses, is killed by a turtle falling from the claws of an eagle, or that of Philomenes, who is stifled by his own laughter while watching an ass eating his figs. This grotesque and digressive series of memorable deaths prepares the ground for what is to follow: the allusion to original chaos is made void (or at least bracketed) by further fictitious pairs of islands, this time without Biblical resonance, once more distinguished only by minimal phonological differences, from Nargues and Zargues to Enig and Ebig. In Naufragium, one of the dialogues of his Colloquia familiaria, Erasmus had used shipwreck as an event eliciting a wide variety of theological topics, religious attitudes and superstitious rituals in the terrified passengers exposed to it. Rabelais explicitly alludes to the Erasmian ‘pre-text’ on a number of occasions, but his focus is on a specific contemporary constellation. The twelve ships of Pantagruel’s apostolic company⁴⁷ meet with nine ships containing monks from thirteen different orders (an unhappy constellation) who are on their way to the concile de Chesnil, where controversial articles of faith are to be discussed and defended against the nouveaulx haereticques. The Hebrew word ‘chesnil’ means ‘mad’; the allusion to the council of Trent (1545 – 1563) which was taking place at the very time Rabelais was writing, is evident. The position of the author in the theological controversies of his time is a complicated story in its own right. In the Quart livre Rabelais focuses on the highly divergent reactions of his protagonists (who, as in Alberti’s Naufragus, number three throughout the episode). Panurge, the protean sophist, reacts with an excés de joye, and supplies the monks on the other ships with eatables, and money (angelotz) for the souls

 The Vulgate translates: “Terra autem erat inanis et vacua, et tenebrae erant super faciem abyssi […]”. Luther’s version runs as follows : “Und die Erde war wuest und leer / Und es war finster auf der tieffe […]”.  Cf. Weinberg (1980), 132: “The Pantagrueline ships are twelve in number, thus symbolizing, for any Renaissance churchman, the twelve disciples and hence the early Christians who were models for the Evangelical movement.” Cf. also Smith (1987), 83 et seq.

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of the dead. He feeds, one might translate, the spirit of discord embodied by the different orders of the monks. Pantagruel, meanwhile, remains tout pensif et melancholicque, an attitude not habitually associated with him. The Pantagruel of the Quart livre is not a laughing giant, but a melancholic hero who stands apart from his companions. It is not clear whether his melancholy is caused by the passing cohorts of monks and his consciousness of their theological strife, or by his apprehension of the oncoming storm – and the two may, in fact, be the same thing, the one metaphorically referring to and metonymically provoking the other. The tight knot of metonymy and metaphor continues when the tempestuous winds which now begin to whip up turn out to be as multifarious as the dogmatic positions: Soubdain la mer commença s’enfler et tumultuer du bas abysme, les fortes vagues batre les flans de nos vaisseaux, le Maistral acompaigné d’un cole effrené, de noires Gruppades, de terribles Sions, de mortelles Bourrasques, siffler à travers nos antemnes.⁴⁸

The violent conflict of the storms, which follows the passage on theological dissension, recalls primeval chaos. Panurge will later define the storm in terms of the elements involved: “Je ne voy ne Ciel, ne Terre […] De quatre elemens ne nous reste icy que feu et eau.”⁴⁹ He associates the storm with the deadly elements of fire and water, and with the loss of those which seem to guarantee cosmic order. Pantagruel and his companions are exposed to the tempest. It will test their reactions, and the borderline situation will bring out fundamental ethical and religious attitudes – or a lack of them. The protagonists will, however, be spared shipwreck. It is Panurge whose lack of ethical and religious substance facilitates comic inversion. After providing food for the monks, he throws up the undigested contents of his stomach to feed the scatophagous fish. Like the shipwrecked characters in Erasmus’ Naufragium, he calls on all kinds of different saints and, anticipating the results of the council of Trent, he promises to confess in the right place and at the right time. Panurge, whose quest for a wife had been the official reason for the voyage, now emphasizes the topical opposition of safe land and risky seafaring; he would rather be en terre ferme bien à mon aise; happy are, according to his wisdom of the moment, “ceulx qui plantent chous”⁵⁰; the evidence of the fundamental difference between

 Rabelais, Œuvres, 582. Mentioning the antemna (the main yard) in this context is not gratuitous, but anticipates Pantagruel’s later behaviour. Cf. Rahner (1957), 316: “Mastbaum und Antenne bilden eine deutliche Kreuzfigur.” Rahner quotes Hippolytus: “Das Meer ist die Welt, in der die Kirche wie ein Schiff auf den Fluten vom Sturm umhergeworfen wird, aber nicht untergeht. Denn sie hat bei sich den erfahrenen Steuermann Christus. Und in der Mitte trägt sie das Siegeszeichen gegen den Tod, weil sie das Kreuz des Herrn bei sich hat. Und die Leiter, die in ihr zur Höhe bis zur Querstange der Antenne hinaufführt, ist das Leiden Christi, das die Gläubigen zur Heimfahrt in den Himmel zieht” (ibid., 317).  Rabelais, Œuvres, 587.  Ibid., 582.

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land and sea, he argues, renders unnecessary⁵¹ disputes about happiness and the highest good, “félicité et bien souverain”⁵². Later he will dream about the idyllic places near the Loire, the “clos de Seuillé” and the “cave paincte à Chinon”⁵³. This is what Montaigne, in his essay De mesnager sa volonté, will call “moustarde apres disner”⁵⁴, a now proverbial phrase meaning gratuitous wisdom, or insight which comes too late. Throughout the storm, in fact, Panurge’s habitual linguistic virtuosity disappears completely, to be replaced by heterogeneous scraps of language and repetitive interjections which signal the disintegration of the rational, speaking animal; he gives voice to his desperation in a beautiful German-sounding phrase: everything is “frelore bigoth”⁵⁵. The tempest brings out the fundamental differences in contenance, separating the three protagonists, Panurge, Frère Jan, and Pantagruel. Here, as with the triad in Alberti’s Naufragus, a suggestive analogy with Plato’s conception of the three parts of the soul has been proposed: Florence Weinberg points out that “Rabelais’ main characters represent the hierarchy of the three Platonic souls: the appetitive, spirited, and the intellective.”⁵⁶ Again, Platonic concepts and distinctions are woven into the texture of the story, but they don’t make Rabelais a systematic Platonist. The relation of the protagonist is played out on different levels. Panurge remains passive, pleurant et lamentant; the disintegration of his rational and linguistic powers is repeated on a bodily level. Jan calls him a “pleurard de merde”, while Panurge describes himself as “tout foireux et tout breneux”⁵⁷. This might be read, in a Bakhtinian vein, as another example of the joyful positivity of the grotesque body, if there were not a blasphemous dimension to Panurge’s anxiety-ridden behaviour. His linguistic disintegration does not prevent him from appropriating Christ’s final words on the cross for his own predicament, transforming him into a diabolical simulacrum: “Consummatum est. C’est faict de moy.”⁵⁸ The honest monk, Frère Jan, on the other hand, works wholeheartedly and pragmatically to defend the ship against the storm, tempted to throw the useless and passive Panurge into the waters; a plethora of technical terms and nautical minutiae are invoked even au fort de la tempeste. On the other hand, Jan, Christian monk though he is, conceives the tempest in mythological terms, as a manifestation of infernal and chthonic powers: “Je croy que tous les Diables sont deschainez aujourd’hui, ou que Proserpine est en trav-

 Later Panurge will recall Erasmus (Adagia, I, ii, 91: “Iucundissima nauigatio iuxta terram, ambulatio iuxta mare”) when he recommends, quoting the “doctrine des bons Philosophes […] soy promener prés la mer et naviger prés la terre” as a “chose moult sceure et delectable” (ibid., 594).  Ibid., 583.  Ibid., 587.  Montaigne, Essais, 1055.  Rabelais, Œuvres, 583.  Weinberg (1980), 138.  Rabelais, Œuvres, 585.  Ibid.

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ail d’enfant.”⁵⁹ This is not so much Christian piety as mythological heroism. The opposition of Panurge and Jan is played out on various levels, pragmatically (active as opposed to passive), emotionally (fearful as opposed to courageous), linguistically (bodily and mental disintegration as opposed to mythological heroism) and theologically (blasphemous language as opposed to comic heterodoxy). It is taken up again after the storm when Panurge, having regained his habitual rhetorical virtuosity, seeks to ascribe to himself all the qualities demonstrated by Jan during the tempest. The discussion remains, however, within the dialogic relativity of Menippean play. The essential difference comes with the entrance of Pantagruel who, although the hero of the book, is virtually absent in the 1548 storm. His excentric position repeats the excentricity of Alberti’s narrator, but in a very different way. The communication between him and his companions, especially those in the narrative foreground, is suspended. Two different textual worlds open up, which are no longer dialogically related. Pantagruel piously asks the Dieu servateur for help, setting an example with a fervent public prayer, “oraison publicque en fervente devotion”⁶⁰. He holds fast to the threatened mast of the ship, “par l’advis du pilot tenoit l’arbre fort et ferme”.⁶¹ While the comic relativism is played out in the opposition of Panurge and Jan, Pantagruel introduces a very different theological and figural dimension. The “maistre pilot”, Jamet Brahier, who has successfully navigated the ship through the competing winds, ends up by recommending thoughts of salvation: “Chacun pense de son ame, et se mette en devotion, n’esperons ayde que par le miracle des Cieulx.”⁶² Pantagruel renews his prayer in the seemingly desperate situation: “En sommes nous là?”⁶³ Later he repeats Christ’s prayer on the Mount of Olives.⁶⁴ After the end of the storm (Ch. XXII) he reminds his companions of what was, apart from the prayer, his one decisive act during the storm: “Ne tenoys je l’arbre sceurement des mains, et plus droict que ne feroient deux cens gumenes?”⁶⁵ In this way he becomes a double of the Christian Odysseus, who, by binding himself to the mast in the presence of the sirens, was read throughout the Middle Ages as a figure of Christ. Hugo Rahner has demonstrated convincingly and with an overwhelming mass of textual documents the importance of the siren episode of the Odyssey in patristic exegesis: Odysseus, bound to the mast of his ship, is a prefigu-

 Ibid., 586. This remark from Ch. 19 is repeated in Ch. 20: “Je croy que au jourd’huy est l’infeste feste de tous les millions de Diables” (ibid., 588).  Ibid., 584. Cf. Screech (1979), 343: “In 1548 Frère Jean’s efforts, with those of Epistemon and the crew, come close to actually saving the ship. In 1552 two new characters emerge in the Storm: Pantagruel and God.”  Rabelais, Œuvres, 584.  Ibid., 588.  Ibid.  Luke 22, 42. Cf. Rabelais, Œuvres, 590: “Allors feut ouye une piteuse exclamation de Pantagruel disant à haulte voix. ‘Seigneur Dieu, saulve nous. Nous perissons. Non toutesfoys advieigne scelon nos affections. Mais ta saincte volunté soit faicte.’”  Ibid., 592.

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ration of Christ nailed to the Cross, and “Christus ist […] der ans Holz des Mastbaums angebundene himmlische Odysseus”⁶⁶. The Pantagruel of the Quart livre is, in this respect, an Odysseus redivivus, and the fact that he is neither bound nor binds himself to the mast, but sustains the mast throughout the danger, demands a theological interpretation beyond the narrative motivation of the scene. In a sense, the required theological commentary is supplied by Epistemon in his quarrel with Panurge. The latter’s unredeemable worldliness comes to the fore when, in the moment of danger, he ignores salvation by proposing the juridical topic of a will and the literary topic of a cenotaph. Epistemon not only demonstrates that the companions will either be drowned or saved – and that a last will and testament will be useless in the first case and superfluous in the second; he also rejects the traditional opposition of land and sea. When Panurge quotes the Lucretian or Erasmian council, that it is safe and pleasant to walk along the sea or to navigate close to the land, Epistemon, the spokesman of the silent Pantagruel, answers with a theological argument taken from St. Paul’s, the sainct Envoyé, First Epistle to the Corinthians. ⁶⁷ Men should be ‘helpers’, adiutores, of God. Rabelais, against the text of the Vulgate and closer to the Humanistic translations by Erasmus and Lefèvre d’Etaples, renders this as “cooperateurs”⁶⁸ of God.⁶⁹ This may be a convenient commentary for Pantagruel’s attitude during the tempest, praying and sustaining the mast of his ship. What becomes evident is that the Quart livre, with its relation of Pantagruel’s words and deeds during the tempest, takes its hero out of Menippean playfulness and into the sphere of theological truth.

4 Coda: Mimesis and Anatomy The Satyre Ménippée, a political anti-league pamphlet by several authors published in 1594,⁷⁰ proposes in its concluding Discours de l‘imprimeur a distinction between the Roman satire, as represented by Horace, Juvenal and others, and the Menippean satire: the first is a “poëme de mesdisance pour reprendre les vices des particuliers” while the latter belongs to the “escrits remplis de diverses choses et de divers arguments, meslez de proses et de vers entrelardez, comme entremets de langues de bœufs salées.”⁷¹ The word satire itself is associated with the public ceremonies of the Greeks, where men were presented deguisez en Satyres, qu’on feignit estre

 Rahner (1957), 322.  Cf. 1 Cor. III, 9.  Rabelais, Œuvres, 594.  In Pantagruel, XXIX, Rabelais still uses the term “coadjuteur” (Rabelais, Œuvres, 317). Luther translates: “wir sind Gottes gehuelffen”; the King James Bible “we are labourers together with God.” Cf. Screech (1979), 446.  Cf. Lestringant/Ménager (1985).  Rabelais, Œuvres, 329.

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demi-dieux lascifs et folastres. The Menippean satire is thus understood to present a plurality of masked voices. But in the text of the Satire Ménippée, a polemical voice and an antagonistic rhetoric dominate. The latter seem to have overshadowed the reception of its ancient and Renaissance textual traditions. When, in the late eighteenth century, Diderot uses the generic subtitle satire seconde for his Neveu de Rameau, the probable reference to the Menippean and Lucianic tradition will not be acknowledged for a long time. It will require the roundabout route of Bakhtin’s reading of Dostoevsky for the Menippean quality of the Enlightenment dialogue to be understood.⁷² The ‘final questions’ in an ethical, practical sense, Bakhtin argues in his book on Dostoevsky, constitute the genuine theme of the Menippean satire, and they tend to be discussed within the context of exceptional or liminal situations. With its multiplicity of styles, genres and voices, the Menippean satire is identified as one, maybe even the forerunner of the polyphonous novel. The ‘final position’ of the author, Bakhtin suggests, is still intact, but, one might add, it can only be reconstructed through multiple layers of tones, styles and voices. At any rate, the Renaissance transformation of the Menippean satire is staged between the mimesis of the attitudes and diseases of the mind, and the anatomy (the term Northrop Frye proposes as a possible modern synonym for the Menippean satire⁷³) of their parts, the dissection of their unruly dynamics.

Bibliography Primary Sources Alberti, Leon Battista, Intercenales, ed. Franco Bacchelli/Luca D’Ascia, Bologna 2003. Alberti, Leon Battista, Momus, ed. Sarah Knight/Virginia Brown, Cambridge, Massachusetts/London 2003. Leonis Baptistae de Albertis Vita, ed. R. Fubini/A. Menci Gallorini, in: Rinascimento II 12 (1972), 68 – 78. Boccaccio, Giovanni, Decameron, ed. Vittore Branca, Torino 1980. Lukrez, Von der Natur, Latin-German edition, ed. Hermann Diels, Düsseldorf/Zürich 1991. Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, Les Essais, ed. Jean Balsamo/Alain Legros, Paris 2007. Pascal, Blaise, Œuvres complètes, Vol. II, ed. Michel Le Guern, Paris 2000. Rabelais, François, Œuvres complètes, ed. Mireille Huchon, Paris 1994. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, “De ira”, in: Moral Essays, with an English translation by John W. Basore, London 1970, 106 – 355.

 Cf. Jauss (1984).  Frye (1957), 311 et seq.: “The word ‘anatomy’ in Burton’s title (The Anatomy of Melancholy, H.P.) means a dissection or analysis, and expresses very accurately the intellectualized approach of his form. We may as well adopt it as a convenient name to replace the cumbersome and in modern times rather misleading ‘Menippean satire’.”

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Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, Moral letters to Lucilius, translated by Richard Mott Gummere, London 1920. Shakespeare, William, The Tempest, ed. Frank Kermode, London 1976.

Secondary Sources Bakhtin, Mikhail, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Minnesota 1984. Blanchard, Scott W., Scholar’s Bedlam: Menippean Satire in the Renaissance, London/Toronto 1995. Blumenberg, Hans, Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer: Paradigma einer Daseinsmetapher, Frankfurt a.M. 1979. Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism, Princeton 1957. Greene, Thomas, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry, New Haven/London 1982. Jauss, Hans-Robert, “Der dialogische und der dialektische Neveu de Rameau”, in: Das Gespräch. Poetik und Hermeneutik 11, ed. Karlheinz Stierle/Rainer Warning, München 1984, 393 – 419. Jordan, Jeffrey (ed.), Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal’s Wager, Lanham 1994. Le Guern, Michel/Le Guern, Marie-Rose, Les Pensées de Pascal: De l’anthropologie à la théologie, Paris 1972. Lestringant, Frank/Ménager, Daniel (ed.), Etudes sur la ‘Satyre Ménippée’, Genève 1985. Lønning, Per, Cet effrayant pari: Une ‘pensée’ pascalienne et ses critiques, Paris 1980. Rahner, Hugo, “Odysseus am Mastbaum”, in: Griechische Mythen in christlicher Deutung, ed. Hugo Rahner, Zürich 1957, 281 – 318. Rinaldi, Rinaldo, ‘Melancholia Christiana’: Studi sulle fonti di Leon Battista Alberti, Firenze 2002. Screech, Michael A., Rabelais, London 1979. Smith, Paul J., Voyage et écriture. Etude sur le ‘Quart livre’ de Rabelais, Genève 1987. Weinberg, Florence, “Comic and Religious Elements in Rabelais’ ‘tempête en mer’”, in: Etudes rabelaisiennes 15 (1980), 129 – 143. Wolf, Burkhardt, Fortuna di mare, Zürich/Berlin 2013.

Susanne Goumegou (Tübingen)

Ariosto’s Rewriting of Ancient and Contemporary Models in Italian Verse Satire Ludovico Ariosto is credited with having started the tradition of two genres in Italy: his 1508 comedy, La Cassaria, lays the foundations for the ‘commedia erudita’ and his satires (albeit posthumous) mark the beginning of the vernacular verse satire, as Piero Floriani clearly postulates in his major study on Satira classicistica nel Cinquecento: ‘La fondazione del genere satirico volgare porta, com’è comunemente riconosciuto, la data della prima satira ariostesca, il 1517’.¹ Ariosto’s invention of these genres in the vernacular is by no means a creation ex nihilo. Beginning in 1486, the late Quattrocento sees the revival of the comedies of Terence and Plautus – especially Plautus – at the Court of Ferrara, while at about the same time the Roman verse satires of Juvenal and Horace begin to appear in print.² Ariosto’s contribution is therefore not strictly speaking an invention of new genres, but rather the transformation of classical genres. In this sense, the commedia erudita and the vernacular satire can be understood as rewritings which stand in a complex relationship to the preceding Latin tradition and situate themselves in an ambivalent way between the Renaissance cult of the ancient world and Ariosto’s confident claim to innovation. We may gain an insight into the complexities of positioning within this tension-ridden field by looking at Ariosto’s first prologue to La Cassaria (1508). On the one hand, he confidently announces a “nova commedia […] piena / Di varii giochi, che né mai latine / Né greche lingue recitarno in scena” (v. 1– 3).³ This claim to novelty is mostly based on the fact that, unlike a number of authors at the Court of Ferrara, Ariosto has not merely adapted a single Latin comedy into the vernacular, but instead combined plot elements from a variety of Latin models. With this in mind, he presents himself as an innovator who has outdone classical tradition – a pose, however, which itself goes back to the tradition of prologues to Latin comedies, where departures from the Greek model are a common theme.⁴ Ariosto’s rewritings of the Roman comedies are thus modelled on plays which are themselves rewritings of Greek models and invariably remark on this connection in their prologues.

 Floriani (1988), 63.  There is a plethora of literature on the origins of Italian comedy in the Cinquecento. For paradigmatic studies on the subject cf. Herrick (1966); Radcliff-Umstead (1969); Guidotti (1983); Bonino (1989) and Padoan (1996). On the development of Italian verse satire cf. Floriani (1988), Galbiati (1987) and Brummack (1971); on the tradition of the Roman satire in the Renaissance cf. Knoche (1971).  The prologue to Cassaria is quoted from Borlenghi (1959), Vol. I, 979.  On prologues to Roman comedies, cf. Wessels (2012). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-011

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On the other hand, Ariosto also positions himself within the topos of the superiority of the ancients. The speaker of the prologue addresses his audience as people who hold the ancient authors in higher esteem than the moderns and will thus regard his ‘nova commedia’ with scepticism: Parmi veder che la più parte incline A riprenderla, subito c’ho detto Nova, senza ascoltarne mezzo o fine: Che tale impresa non li par soggetto De li moderni ingegni, e solo estima Quel che li antiqui han detto esser perfetti. (v. 4– 9)

Caught in this dilemma between the Renaissance demand for innovation and the respect for ancient models, Ariosto opts for a dual strategy, acknowledging the superiority of the ancients on a linguistic level, but claiming equality on the level of ingegno: È ver che né volgar prosa né rima Ha paragon con prose antique o versi, Né pari è l’eloquenzia a quella prima. Ma l’ingegni non son però diversi Da quel che fur, che ancor per quello Artista Fansi, per cui nel tempo indrieto fèrsi (v. 10 – 15).

Although he concedes the rhetorical superiority of the ancient authors, Ariosto insists on the modern’s ingegni being at the same level. This equality allows them not only to imitate the classical tradition, but also to transform it in an innovative fashion, by inventing “varii giochi”⁵. This kind of innovative transformation can be understood as a form of rewriting because it continues to draw on existing comedy material with its finite stock of characters and subjects. The originality to which Ariosto lays claim lies not in the invention of new subjects, but in the use of contaminatio, i. e. Ariosto conflates elements from a variety of comedies. In his later comedies, he goes even further in this regard, integrating components borrowed from the Italian novella, thereby extending the traditional repertoire with vernacular material to which he grants as much importance as to his classical models. He also increasingly takes settings and problems from contemporary reality, and in the thirties, moreover, he switches from prose to verse, thus raising himself up to the level of the ancients in the area of eloquenzia as well. We

 The semantics of ‘giochi’ oscillates between the Latin words ludus and iocus. Cf. Nuti (1998), 18 – 19. In the context of the prologue, the appropriate meaning to apply to the word is presumably one that comes close to ‘feints’ in the plot or Plautine ludi. Cf. Ferroni (1980), 106: “In tutti questi casi il ‘gioco’ appare dunque come creazione di oggetti e di mosse finte, che servono ad avviluppare una vittima dentro un falso ‘creder’, a ridurlo alla dimensione di ‘pazzo’ o di ‘sciocco’, e quindi di bersaglio ludico”.

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can thus observe a gradual transformation of the genre into the vernacular, a transformation which is marked by a steady increase in autonomy: first performances of original Roman comedies in Italian translation at the end of the Quattrocento are followed by first adaptations by Italian authors; these in turn are succeeded by the commedia erudita which originates in Ariosto’s attempts to go beyond these adaptations by employing contaminatio in La Cassaria – and which will continue to gain autonomy in the years to come.⁶ In what follows, however, I will not be talking about comedy, but about Ariosto’s satires. If I began by quoting the prologue to Cassaria, I did so because it contains programmatic statements made by Ariosto on his relationship to classical antiquity. No such statements exist for the satires; this lack of metapoetic paratexts may result from the fact that Ariosto did not publish the satires himself. Nonetheless the question of how Ariosto combines imitative and innovative elements in his ‘fondazione di genere’ – how he transforms ancient models and adapts them to contemporary reality – is also relevant to the satires. Furthermore, in the satires, too, he not only transforms ancient models, but also, as in the comedies, includes contemporary models in his repertoire. Satire’s relationship to the classical tradition is, in fact, even more complex than is the case with comedy, with its fixed stock of characters and plot elements. At first glance, it may seem strange to explore satire from the perspective of the literary transformation of classical antiquity, since it is a genre usually seen to be steeped in contemporary reality. Research, however, has long since shown that Ariosto’s satires are by no means to be read as autobiographical statements in which an “Ariosto in veste di camera” (Croce) airs his private views on contemporary reality. In fact, they closely follow the Horatian model and contain a large number of intertextual references to Horace’s satires.⁷ In the following sections, I shall first outline the main features of the development of the genre at the end of the Quattrocento and the specific features of Ariosto’s satires, and then proceed to a close reading of Ariosto’s fifth satire.

1 The Origins of Ariosto’s Italian Verse Satire In the late Quattrocento, the foundations are laid for the development of Italian verse satire.⁸ Crucial to this development is the role of Roman verse satire at that time. The dominant model is Juvenal, whose satires are printed more than fifty times between 1470 and 1500, but mention should also be made of the numerous printings of Hor-

 For paradigmatic studies on the subject cf. Ferroni (1980) and Guidotti (1983).  On the adaptation of the generic model cf. Floriani (1988); on concrete intertextual references cf. Petrocchi (1972), Marsh (1975), Sarkissian (1985).  Cf. especially Galbiati (1987) and Floriani (1988), but also Knoche (1971) and Brummack (1971).

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ace and the somewhat less numerous editions of Persius.⁹ These editions often contain important commentaries by humanist authors which develop a first Renaissance theory of satire and lay particular emphasis on satire’s coupling of prodesse and delectare. ¹⁰ In order to open up Latin verse satire to a broader public, Italian translations appear in print: Giorgio Sommariva translates Juvenal into Italian as early as 1480, while Horace has to wait until 1559 to be translated into the vernacular by Lodovico Dolce. These translations meet a growing interest in moral poetry during this period. Floriani interprets the various forms of moral poetry in the vernacular, which occur in genres as different as the sonnet or the capitolo, as a symptom of the humanist crisis and of the humanists’ ethico-political consciousness.¹¹ The Italian verse of Antonio Vinciguerra, printed in Bologna in 1495, could even be classified as the first Italian satire. But, according to Floriani, Ariosto’s satires differ from these Italian predecessors in one crucial respect: they combine the moral subjects of vernacular poetry with a classical generic model, namely the Horatian-style satire. The crucial difference compared with existing vernacular genres is the communication structure, which is based on the Horatian model. Florian defines it as: testo poetico in terzine nel quale uno speaker che coincide con la persona storica dell’autore si rivolge in forma epistolare (prevalente) o colloquiale ad un contemporaneo suo: gli scrive o gli parla del presente, col linguaggio della conversazione ‘normale’: il giudizio, pungente o bonario, sui vizi e sulle convenzioni risibili del mondo, viene emesso in questo contesto […] come il risultato inevitabile del confronto dell’io dello speaker con la realtà di cui si parla.¹²

In line with the authors of classical antiquity, the satire is regarded as a sermo humilis, linked – and this is paramount – to a dialogical communication situation. Floriani further stresses the importance that the satires be anchored in contemporary reality, or rather in the contemporary system of discourse. He omits, however, another equally crucial aspect, namely Ariosto’s intertextual references to classical satires; the speaker of his satires refers not only to the ‘realtà di cui si parla’, but also to the ancient pre-texts. This invocation of an intertextual level of reference is largely neglected in research on satirical discourse, but it is nonetheless crucial, adding as it does another level to an already complex field. Let us now take a closer look at satire as a discursive practice. Research that considers satire from the perspective of communication theory has shown that satirical discourse is a form of indirect communication in which real circumstances do not feature directly; instead, reference to those circumstances is made on the basis of

 Cf. Knoche (1971), 96.  The commentaries on the Roman satirists first printed in around 1470 tend to repeat the problems outlined by the authors themselves. Cf. especially Brummack (1971), 296 and Galbiati (1987), 12– 25.  Cf. Floriani (1988), 29 – 54.  Ibid., 6.

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knowledge shared by sender and receiver. A triadic structure is formed, consisting of the satirist A, the satiree B and the satirized (= target of satire) C.¹³ What is particular about satirical communication is that it is based on an indirect speech act in which there is no direct link between what is said and what is meant. As a result, satirical communication can only be successful if the addressee shares knowledge of the extratextual real circumstances which are pre-supposed, but not actually mentioned by the speaker.¹⁴ Behind the text, then, there is a second, implicit field of reference, which will be activated during the process of reception; this is the true target of satirical discourse – and should, strictly speaking, be referred to not as “reality”, but as a “discourse-dependent construction of reality”.¹⁵ Such explanations of satirical discourse, however, which consider the satirical from the perspective of communication theory without taking into account its literary implementation, neglect the additional level of reference present in both Roman and Renaissance verse satire, namely literary imitation or intertextuality. Consideration of this additional aspect yields an even more complex play on references. For it is not only the discourse on contemporary reality that belongs to the second field of reference, but also the literary pre-texts; it is not only knowledge of the discourse-dependent construction of reality, but also knowledge of the intertexts invoked that is necessary to the understanding of a given satire and that makes it a text which contains its own models. Let us see more precisely how this works by taking a look at Ariosto’s satires.¹⁶ Ariosto never published his satires. These take the form of letters, but it is not possible to establish whether the epistolary situation is a fiction or whether Ariosto actually sent them.¹⁷ Either way, the private communication situation of the satires invites an autobiographical reading. The first satire is a response to the rift which divided Ariosto from Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, after Ariosto refused to follow him to Hungary. This external motivation becomes the motivation for broader criticism of

 I follow here the model of the triadic structure of satire as it is developed by Simpson (2003), 85 – 88. Successful satire brings positions A and B closer together while distancing both from position C. Failed satire, on the other hand, brings B and C closer together. The communication between A and B, and this is the satirical part, only partly flouts the Gricean maxims of conversation; more precisely it assumes that A and B are in agreement that truth and sincerity are suspended and that irony plays a crucial role (96).  Mahler (1992), 39 – 55 und Simpson (2003), 90 et seq.  Mahler (1992), 53. Simpson conceptualizes this as “orders of discourse in social, cultural, and political organisation”, without taking into account the reality behind (Simpson [2003], 86), while Mahler explicitly distinguishes between contingent reality and its discursive construction which eliminates contingency (Mahler [1992], 62).  The following remarks derive from Goumegou (2010). Ariosto’s satires are quoted from Ariosto, Satire, ed. Cesare Segre, Torino 1987.  Grimm (1969) regards it as a fiction; Schunck (1970) and Segre (1976), 43 believe it genuine. Paoli (2000) argues plausibly that the satires were actually dispatched to the addressees at the time of writing.

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the structures of court society in general and the role of the court poet in particular. To formulate this criticism, Ariosto draws on the Horatian model, to a certain extent the Sermones, but more particularly the Epistulae. The form of the satires makes this particularly clear; like Horace’s satires, Ariosto’s present themselves, in spite of their elaborate form, as pragmatic texts, letters with clearly identifiable addressees, which borrow heavily from the private letter. First of all, this (possibly fictional) epistolary situation makes it possible to create an ideal circle of recipients, which in turn allows the writer to present himself in a private context as a speaker who is free from social conventions, and thus frank and honest. Secondly, the deictic references typical of the letter as a pragmatic genre provide a connection to the realm of the factual, linking the satires to specific, extratextual events which can, for the most part at least, be historically situated. In this way, the speaker inscribes himself in existing social structures and creates his own ideal recipient within the text while, at the same time, meeting the challenges put to the satirist in satire theory around 1500: he must write for a small circle and for his private pleasure; he must be innocent and dedicated to virtus, and he must cultivate a sensible and realistic style. In other words, he must present himself as a “maestro di pubblica moralità”¹⁸ and employ a “tono medio”. In Ariosto’s first satire, the satirist is the persona of the satire, who shares a large number of biographemes with Ariosto;¹⁹ the satiree is the ideal circle of recipients who share this persona’s convictions, and the satirized, i. e. the target of satire, is the prince and his courtiers. Biographical research tends to read the satire as a direct reference to Ariosto’s world, but although there clearly are biographical elements in the text, Ariosto’s life is not the only reference level. Elsewhere I have shown how, in the first satire, Ariosto prefers to employ methods which leave it unclear whether his statements are to be read as factual or intertextual. At the end of the text, for instance, he claims that he is forty-four, which, for the time of writing, at least, is not the case. The statement can, however, be read as a reference to an identical claim made in Horace’s last satire, where mention of Horace’s age (externally datable because he also specifies the year of the consulate) and other personal data become the book’s signature.²⁰ Possibly more important than Ariosto’s true age, then, is the reference to Horace. What at first appears to be a strategy of factual authentification turns out to be an intertextual reference as well. By having recourse to Horace, Ariosto can also project the ideal of a free and selfsufficient poet – an ideal that contrasts starkly with the constraints in force at Ippolito’s court. Even without a detailed exploration of the intertextual references,²¹ it becomes clear that Ariosto is projecting a relationship between prince and poet which  Fatini (1933), 504.  The split between author and persona that is a common feature of Roman verse satire is not allowed for in Simpson’s model of communication (Simpson [2003]) and has to be added.  Cf. Goumegou (2010), 125.  Cf. ibid., 131– 138.

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is modelled on that of Horace and Maecenas – and it becomes equally clear that Ippolito does not live up to the role of Maecenas. The full meaning of the satire, therefore, is only revealed in confrontation with the ancient model. Nor is that all. Ariosto also writes himself a role as author which, on the one hand, draws on the model of Horatian autarkeia, while on the other hand echoing a sonnet by Petrarch (RVF 187); in this way, he claims for himself a model of renowned contemporary authorship.²²

2 The Fifth Satire: Rewriting Juvenal, Alberti and Bracciolini The fifth satire is to a certain extent an exception in Ariosto’s work in that it contains significantly fewer autobiographical elements than most of his other satires and borrows its subject matter not from Horace, but from Juvenal.²³ There are however only a few direct references to Juvenal or rather to Renaissance vernacular translations of his satires, but similarities exist on a structural and thematic level.²⁴ Juvenal’s sixth satire, famous as a paradigm of misogyny, presents “a satirical reworking of a standard rhetorical set-piece on the theme of whether or not a man should marry”²⁵ and deals primarily with the topic of female adultery, with some extremely aggressive criticism of the debauchery of depraved women along the way. This has led to discussion in scholarship as to whether the target of the satire is women or marriage, or rather the satire’s persona, who reveals himself to be excessively misogynistic.²⁶ Juvenal follows the schema and topoi of the epithalamium in his satire, adapting and inverting them, of course, to his own, diametrically opposed purposes.²⁷ Ariosto’s satire follows the ancient model in a number of important points, even if he differs clearly from Juvenal in other respects. Like Juvenal, who is obviously very well-versed in the contemporary discourse on marriage and makes satirical references to it, Ariosto presents his satire as an epithalamium and invokes the humanist texts on the subject. Besides the vernacular translations and adaptations of Juvenal’s satire by Giorgio Sommariva, Nicolò Lelio Cosmico and Antonio Vinciguerra,²⁸ mention should be made of two other pre-texts: Leon Battista Alberti’s advice on how to choose a suitable wife in his Libri della famiglia on the one hand and on the other

 On the imitation of other vernacular literature of the Renaissance, and especially the romanzi, cf. Orto (2002).  Debenedetti (1944), 115 regards it as unique; Schunck gives similar arguments (1970), 72– 73.  Cf. Corsaro (1980), 468 – 470.  Braund (1992), 82.  On Juvenal’s sixth satire cf. especially Braund (1992). See too Smith (1980), Anderson (1982), Wiesen (1989), Henderson (1989) and Watson (2007). On the tradition of satirical writing about women and marriage form classical antiquity to the Middle Ages cf. Smith (2005).  Cf. Braund (1992), 80.  Cf. Giorgio Sommariva, Compendiosa materia de tutta l’opera de Juvenale composta per el nobile et generoso Georgio Summaripa veronese; Nicolò Lelio Cosmico, Una satira di Niccolò Lelio Cosmico; Antonio Vinciguerra, Utrum deceat sapientem ducere uxorem an in coelibatu vivere.

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(for the end of the satire) a facetia by Poggio Bracciolini.²⁹ The heterogeneity of the underlying texts is striking and is reflected in the different readings of the satire. While Peter Schunck regards the fifth satire as a “wedding joke”, “an amusing gift for a friend in search of a wife”³⁰, Antonio Corsaro reads it as a kind of ‘trattatello’, in which – departing from the Juvenalian model and following Alberti – Ariosto proffers rules on how to choose a wife and how to treat her once you have married her.³¹ In what follows I will aim to show how Ariosto deals with the topic of marriage, using Juvenal as a foil, while at the same time borrowing from Alberti. I will demonstrate that Ariosto’s satire presents a further ‘satirical reworking’ of the topic – a reworking which adopts the premise of Juvenal’s satire that sexual infidelity is inevitable, but on diametrically opposed grounds and in a different context. Moreover, the target of satire has shifted and Ariosto’s satire is a great deal less misogynistic than Juvenal’s and less pessimistic about marriage. Ariosto, too, may write about lussuria, but in his satire men are at least as much the focus of criticism as women. In keeping with the classical conventions of the epithalamium, Juvenal’s sixth satire begins by looking back to a mythological past that witnesses the disappearance of pudicitia from the world and the emergence of adultery in the Silver Age. Against this backdrop, the satirical persona turns to Postumus, who is preparing to marry – and whose sanity is in question: “Certe sanus eras. Uxorem, Postume, ducis?” (v. 28).³² The satirical persona dismisses the notion as suicidal and paints a drastic picture for the future husband of what awaits him after matrimony – a picture in which the woman’s infidelity and lust for power culminate in an attempt to kill her husband. Most space, however, is devoted to depicting the matrona as a meretrix and describing – with undisguised relish – her insatiable sexual greed.³³ The beginning of Ariosto’s satire takes an opposite tack, but, as in Juvenal, the occasion for the satire is an imminent wedding – that of his cousin Annibale Malegucio. By speaking directly to the addressee, whose plans for marriage he claims only to have heard about from third parties, Ariosto creates the private communication situation typical of his satires. He does not neglect to mention his own unmarried state, and begs Malegucio not to conclude from this that he is against marriage in principle. Instead, he concludes the opening section with the words: fui di parer sempre, […] […] che senza moglie a lato non puote uomo in bontade esser perfetto (vv. 13 – 15).

    

‘Visio Francisci Philelphi’, in: Opera omnia, P. Bracciolini, Torino 1964. Schunck (1970), 73. Cf. Corsaro (1980). Juvenal’s sixth satire is quoted from Juvenal, Satires, 56 – 85. Cf. Watson (2007).

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By claiming that it is not until he has a wife that a man can be ‘in bontade perfetto’, Ariosto makes it clear that he intends to tackle the subject matter from a point of view diametrically opposed to that of Juvenal, and begins his satire as a praise of marriage. In keeping with notions of an ideal communion between man and woman, Ariosto seems at first to focus on the self-perfection of man in marriage.³⁴ In his explanation, however, a satirical dimension emerges and Ariosto takes up Juvenal’s main topic, sexual infidelity – albeit with the difference that here the problem concerns not women, but men: che chi non ha del suo, fuor accattarne, mendicando o rubandolo, è sforzato (vv. 17– 18).

In a hunting image in the next lines, male lussuria is metaphorically portrayed as the devouring of birds;³⁵ at the end, a priest is described as “sí ingorda e sí crudel canaglia” (v. 24). The topic of sexuality also informs the arguments that follow. The topos of the lecherous priest is followed by that of the old man in search of a wife, who is introduced as a warning to the cousin not to put off getting married for too long. It is at this point that mention is first made of women’s sexual desire which, combined with the impotence of an aged husband – another element that is depicted with relish³⁶ – could result in adultery: Non voglion rimaner però le spose nel danno; sempre ci è mano adiutrice che soviene alle pover bisognose. (vv. 41– 42)

Unmarried men – this is the next satirical element – also tend to produce illegitimate children. With mention of the situation in Ferrara, Ariosto comments on the state of affairs as follows: “Quindi è falsificato di Ferrara / in gran parte il buon sangue” (vv. 68 – 69). In the opening section, then, Ariosto criticizes the sexual lapses of unmarried men in satirical fashion. The initial notion that man perfects himself in marriage proves, on closer inspection, to stem from the basic assumption that man (just like woman) is out to satisfy his sexual urges. This means that marriage no longer serves the perfection of man, but is at most a means to domesticate male lussuria. After this satirical introduction comes the main body of the satire which begins by offering suggestions on how to choose the right wife (vv. 73 – 246) and advice on how a husband should behave (vv. 247– 294). It is these sections which have led Corsaro to characterize the satire as a trattatello. Choosing a wife is indeed a significant

 This is the interpretation of Grimm (1969), 25, who discusses the quotation out of context.  “[…] oggi tordo o quaglia, / diman fagiani, uno altro dì vuol starne” (vv. 20 – 21).  “Il vecchio, allora che ‘l desir lo spinge, / di sé presume e spera far gran cose; / si sganna poi che al paragon si stringe” (vv. 37– 39).

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topic in paterfamilias literature of the Quattro- and Cinquecento,³⁷ the most important example being Leon Battista Alberti’s Libri della famiglia. The second book of the Libri contains Lionardo’s defence of marriage. The discourse is set in a context of ideal housekeeping and focuses above all on the survival and reproduction of the family, so that Lionardo names procreation and a lifelong compagnia as goals of marriage: “E stiagli l’animo a prendere moglie per due cagioni: la prima per stendersi in figliuoli, l’altra per avere compagnia in tutta la vita ferma e stabile”.³⁸ The topic of infidelity hardly features in this context. In the search for a suitable wife, Lionardo observes, “bellezze, parentado e ricchezze” are crucial selection criteria.³⁹ Particular attention is paid to a woman’s ability to give birth to children of sound intellect and morals, so that ‘bellezze’ are looked for primarily in morals and virtue and only subsequently in outward appearance. In his satire, Ariosto follows the criteria mentioned by Alberti. He begins with the aspect of parentado, recommending an inspection of the woman’s mother and nurse – an opportunity for him to outline with satirical hyperbole the scenario of a woman with several lovers: Se la madre ha duo amanti, ella ne mira a quattro e a cinque, e spesso a piú di sei, et a quanti più può la rete tira. (vv. 109 – 111)

The seriously intentioned advice of the Libri della famiglia is combined here with Juvenalian motifs to foreground female infidelity and target the unfaithful woman. The next aspect Ariosto deals with is ricchezze; his advice is to marry neither above nor beneath one’s own station. The potential consequences of choosing a wife from too high up the social scale are also cited in a style that owes much to Juvenal: Vorrà una nana, un bufoncello, un pazzo, e compagni da tavola e da guoco che tutto il dí la tengano in solazzo. (vv.124– 126)

Finally, as regards bellezze, Ariosto recommends a mediocre forma – a golden mean in the Arisotelian sense – so as to prevent all the other men from falling passionately in love: [… ] non ir dove tu inciampi in troppo bella moglie, sì che ognuno per lei d’amor e di desire avampi. (vv. 163 – 165)

 Cf., for example, Frigo (1985), especially 110 – 116, and Richarz (1991).  Alberti, I libri della famiglia, 132.  Ibid.

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Still in line with Alberti, Ariosto attaches great importance to morals – and to the woman’s being ten to twelve years younger than her husband. He follows up this serious advice by turning his attention to two points of a clearly satirical nature: firstly, the suggestion that the woman should avoid contact with priests (this leads to further satirical remarks on the subject of priests), and secondly, a long invective against make-up. The subject of make-up is a very popular one in literary tradition from Ovid through Juvenal to Alberti – and Ariosto, too, devotes a passage of almost thirty lines to the topic (vv. 202– 231), using a stile umile which often tips over into burlesque. He lays particular stress on the ingredients of make-up, highlighting their repulsiveness by means of obscene comparisons: Se sapesse Erculan dove le labbia Pon quando bacia Lidia, avria più a schivo Che se baciasse un cul marzo di scabbia. (vv. 208 – 210)

At his point he gives a list of the putative – and pretty unappetizing – ingredients: “il salivo delle giudee”, “la merda […] di circonsisi lor bambini”, “il grasso / d’orride serpi” (vv. 211– 216). Finally, Ariosto draws the obscene conclusion: Sì che quei che le baciano, ben ponno con men schivezza e stomachi più saldi baciar lor anco a nuova luna il conno. (vv. 220 – 222)

From a stylistic point of view, Ariosto has come a long way from the trattatello, moving closer to Juvenal who, like him, does not baulk at obscenities, even if he is rather less expansive on the subject of make-up.⁴⁰ The second part of the main body of the text, however, which deals with the treatment and education of a wife, returns to the stylistic level of the trattatello, even if the transitional lines do contain a sexually suggestive riding metaphor.⁴¹ Following Alberti again, Ariosto argues that a wife should be made a compagna rather than a serva, prompting Corsaro to detect a “disegno culturale comune ai due scrittori”⁴². In the case of minor lapses, Ariosto recommends fond severity, but also warns that supervision should not be neglected. The topic of sexual fidelity remains, but in Ariosto the warnings are aimed at the husband as well as the wife: “Tolto che moglie avrai, lascia li nidi / degli altri, e sta sul tuo” (vv. 250 – 251). Marital fidelity is thus considered a duty for both sexes – albeit

 Juvenal devotes only twelve lines to make-up (vv. 461– 473), and his strongest statement is: “facies dicetur an ulcus?” (v. 473).  The transitional lines are: “Poi ch’io t’ho posto assai bene a cavallo, / ti voglio anco mostrar come lo guidi, / come spinger lo déi, come fermallo” (vv. 247– 249). It is true, however, that the metaphor refers explicitly to the topic of controlling a horse.  Corsaro (1980), 475.

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without any guarantee of success. It is in this vein that Ariosto concludes the second part of the main body of his satire – with a call to keep one’s cool: Lievale quanto puoi la occasïone d’esser puttana, e pur se avien che sia, almen che ella non sia per tua cagione. […] Ma s’ella n’avrà voglio, alcun non creda di ripararci: ella saprà ben come far qu’al suo inganno il tuo consiglio ceda. (vv. 289 – 297)

The topic of sexual infidelity is once more given particular emphasis in the final part of the satire. In the role of the apologo, Ariosto takes up a facetia by Poggio Bracciolini which presents the misogynous topos of the notorious infidelity of women (vv. 296 – 328). The artist Galasso paints the Devil in the guise of a beautiful woman. When the Devil appears to him in a dream, wanting to reward him, the artist asks for some means to ensure that his wife remain faithful and, on receiving a ring on his finger, he believes the Devil is promising him: “Fin che ce’l tenghi, esser non puoi tradito” (v. 321). But when Galasso wakes up, his happiness is short-lived, for he soon discovers that what he has been given is no magic ring, but a far more banal means of preventing his wife’s infidelity: “truova / che ‘l dito alla moglier ha ne la fica” (v. 324). Ariosto ends his satire with the admonition that this ring be kept firmly on one’s finger, but he adds that it cannot nonetheless provide complete security: “pur qu’ella voglia, e farlo si dispogna” (v. 328). In this way he humorously takes to its limit the motif of man’s powerlessness in the face of female infidelity. Corsaro interprets this attitude as “disilluso scetticismo”⁴³, as the realization of the “impossibilità di un controllo completo sulla realtà” or as a “ripiego fatalistico”⁴⁴. According to him Ariosto refers to Alberti’s ideal model, but in an ironically dismantled form, because he considers it inappropriate to the reality of the Cinquecento. I should like, however, to put Ariosto’s satire in a different perspective, taking into account the various levels of rewriting mentioned before. Ariosto takes up a topic which has been around since Juvenal and which has, on the whole, been treated in a misogynistic fashion. He enacts a speech situation that can be traced back to the Horatian model, and suggests that a man should choose a woman of “mediocre forma” (v. 170) – meaning not mediocrity but the golden mean between the extremes. In the context of this setting, fuelled as it is by an ethico-moral humanist stance, Ariosto’s art consists in incorporating motifs of Juvenalian satire into this disegno culturale. He may indeed begin with the alleged perfetta bontade of marriage, but he ends by invoking the impossibility of female fidelity. Unlike Juvenal’s persona, however, he does not work himself into a tirade against women, but presents the two

 Ibid.  Ibid., 477.

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sexes as being under equal pressure from lussuria. This transforms the message of the satire. Whereas Juvenal’s satire presents itself as an “argument against marriage on the grounds of likely infidelity by the wife”⁴⁵, Ariosto takes up the basic premise of inevitable infidelity, but does not conclude that marriage should be condemned. Instead he highlights the comic side of the subject, both in his polemical criticism of priests and of the lords of Ferrara, and in the burlesque jokes he incorporates into the text. The way in which Ariosto ‘contaminates’ Alberti’s advice to the padre di famiglia with the basic motifs of Juvenalian satire, culminating in Poggio Bracciolini’s facezia, thus points not only to a relativization of the ethico-moral stance of the satirical persona, but also to a play with obscenity entirely appropriate to the speech occasion of the satire. In light of the imminent wedding, it is clear that we are not dealing with serious advice on how to choose the right wife, but rather with a piece of light-hearted entertainment for a bridegroom who is about to enter into matrimony. If Ariosto combines Juvenal and Horace, Alberti and Bracciolini, he obtains a satura in which the most diverse elements are mingled. By doing this, he not only rewrites ancient models, but also allows humanist authors to join the ranks of his models on an equal footing. Rather than being regarded as an expression of a morally pessimist ‘scetticismo disilluso’, then, his satire should be read as a virtuoso combination of various forms of rewriting.

Bibliography Primary sources Alberti, Leon Battista, I libri della famiglia, ed. Ruggiero Romano, Alberto Tenenti, Torino 1972. Ariosto, Ludovico, Satire, ed. Cesare Segre, Torino 1987. Borlenghi, Aldo (ed.), Commedie del Cinquecento, Milano 1959. Cosmico, Nicolò Lelio: Una satira di Niccolò Lelio Cosmico, ed. V. Cian, Pisa 1903. Juvenal, Satires, ed. Pierre de Labriolle, Jean Gérard, 12th ed., Paris 1983. Sommariva, Giorgio: Compendiosa materia de tutta l’opera de Juvenale composta per el nobile et generoso Georgio Summaripa veronese, Treviso 1480. Antonio Vinciguerra: Utrum deceat sapientem ducere uxorem an in coelibatu vivere, Bologna 1495.

Secondary sources Anderson, William, “Juvenal 6: A Problem in Structure”, in: Essays on Roman Satire, Princeton 1982, 255 – 276. Baumert, Jürgen, “Identifikation und Distanz: Eine Erprobung satirischer Kategorien bei Juvenal”, in: Rise and Decline of the Roman World, part II: Principate, vol. XXIII.1, ed. Wolfgang Haase, Berlin/New York 1989, 734 – 769.

 Braund (1992), 76.

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Bonino, Guido Davico: La commedia italiana del Cinquecento e altre note su letteratura e teatro, Torino 1989. Braund, Susanna, “Juvenal – Misogynist or Misogamist”, in: The Journal of Roman Studies 82 (1992), 71 – 86. Brummack, Jürgen, “Zu Begriff und Theorie der Satire”, in: DVJS 45 (1971), 275 – 377. Corsaro, Antonio, “Sulla satira quinta dell’Ariosto”, in: Italianistica 9 (1980), 466 – 477. Croce, Benedetto, Ariosto, Shakespeare, Corneille, Bari 1957 (1922). Debenedetti, Santorre, “Intorno alle Satire dell’Ariosto”, in: Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 122:364/366 (1944), 109 – 130. Fatini, Giuseppe, “Umanità e poesia dell’Ariosto nelle Satire”, in: Archivum Romanicum 17 (1933), 497 – 564. Ferroni, Giulio, “Gioco, trucco, illusione: La corte nel corso del tempo”, in: Giulio Ferroni: Il testo e la scena. Saggi sul teatro del Cinquecento, Roma 1980, 99 – 162. Floriani, Piero, Il modello ariostesco. La satira classicistica nel Cinquecento, Roma 1988. Frigo, Daniela, Il padre di famiglia. Governo della casa e governo civile nella tradizione dell’“economica” tra cinque e seicento, Roma 1985. Galbiati, Giuseppina M. Stella, “Per una teoria della satira fra Quattro e Cinquecento”, in: Italianistica 16,1 (1987), 9 – 37. Goumegou, Susanne, “Faktual oder fiktional? Der Aussagestatus der Ariost’schen Satire und die Selbstinszenierung des Dichters”, in: Fiktionen des Faktischen in der Renaissance, ed. Ulrike Schneider/Anita Traninger, Stuttgart 2010, 121 – 142. Grimm, Jürgen, Die Einheit der Ariost’schen Satire, Frankfurt a. M. 1969. Guidotti, Angela, Il modello e la trasgressione. Commedie del primo ’500, Roma 1983. Henderson, John, “… when Satire writes ‘Woman’”, in: Satire and Society in Ancient Rome, ed. Susan Braund, Exeter 1989, 89 – 126. Herrick, Marvin T., Italian Comedy in the Renaissance, London 1966. Knoche, Ulrich, Die römische Satire, 3rd ed., Göttingen 1971. Mahler, Andreas, Moderne Satireforschung und elisabethanische Verssatire, München 1992. Marini, Paolo, “Ariosto magnanimo. Sulla figura dell’io poetico nelle Satireˮ, in: Lettere Italiane LX,1 (2008), 84 – 101. Marsh, David, “Horatian Influence and Imitation in Ariosto’s Satires”, in: Comparative Literature 27,4 (1975), 307 – 326. Nuti, Andrea, Ludus e iocus. Percorsi di ludicità nella lingua latina, Treviso/Roma 1998. Orto, Alfredo d’, “Criteri e techiche di imitazione nelle Satire dell’Ariosto”, in: Critica letteraria 29 (2002), 419 – 433. Padoan, Giorgio: L’avventura della commedia rinascimentale, Padova/Milano 1996. Paoli, Michel, “‘Quale fu la prima satira che composeʼ: storia vs. letteratura nelle satire ariostescheˮ, in: Fra satire e rime ariostesche, ed. Claudia Berra, Gardagno del Garda (14 – 16 ottobre 1999), Milano 2000, 35 – 63. Petrocchi, Giorgio, “Orazio e Ariosto”, in: I fantasmi di Trancredi, Roma 1972, 261 – 275. Radcliff-Umstead, Douglas: The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy, Chicago 1969. Richarz, Irmintraut, Oikos, Haus und Haushalt. Ursprung und Geschichte der Haushaltsö konomik. Gö ttingen 1991. Sarkissian, John, “Allusions to Classical Satire in Ariosto’s First and Third Satire”, in: The Early Renaissance, ed. Anthony Pellegrini, Binghampton (NY) 1985, 107 – 120. Schunck, Peter, “Die Stellung Ariosts in der Tradition der klassischen Satire”, in: ZRPh LXXXVI (1970), 49 – 82. Segre, Cesare, “Struttura dialogica delle Satire ariostesche”, in: Ariosto 1974 in America, ed. A. Scoglione, Ravenna 1976, 41 – 54.

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Simpson, Paul, On the Discourse of Satire. Towards a Stylistic Model of Satirical Humour, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2003. Smith, Warren S., “Husband vs. Wife in Juvenal’s Sixth Satire”, in: The Classical World 73, 6 (1980), 323 – 332. Smith, Warren S., Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage, Michigan 2005. Watson, Patricia, “Juvenal’s scripta matrona: Elegiac Resonances in Satire 6”, in: Mnemosyne 60,4 (2007), 628 – 640. Wessels, Antje, “Zur Exposition bei Plautus”, in: Der Einsatz des Dramas. Dramenanfänge, Wissenschaftspoetik und Gattungspolitik, ed. Claude Haas/Andrea Polaschegg, Freiburg i.B. 2012, 59 – 74. Wiesen, David, “The Verbal Basis of Juvenal’s Satiric Vision”, in: Rise and Decline of the Roman World, part II: Principate, vol. XXXIII.1, ed. Wolfgang Haase, Berlin/New York 1989, 708 – 733.

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From Venice to Basel. Curione’s Rewritings

The intellectual path and writings of Celio Secondo Curione (1503 – 1569)¹ present themselves in an especially stimulating way, primarily because of their complex and dynamic placement along a series of rifts. The times and places in which he lived were consumed with the ruptures between the Roman and Protestant churches, as well as between the magisterial Reformation and more radical experiments. The links between studia humanitas and theology, between the literary auctoritas of the classics and the authority of the Scripture, between hope for collective renewal, propagandist demands on the ideas and freedom of personal research without constraints, were contested. The relationships between writing in Latin and in the vernacular, between the publishing world and the changing ecclesiastical and academic institutions² were rich and not unequivocal. Consequently it is not surprising that Curione’s profile has often be marked by ambiguity, or even enigma: from Antonio Rotondò, who considered Curione “perhaps the most indecipherable enigma”³ among the Italian religionis causa exiles, to Susanna Peyronel, who sees him as “an anti-Calvinist Calvinist, a Nicodemite who condemns Nicodemism, in brief, an enigmatic personality”.⁴ A convincing explanation is proposed by Biasiori, who advises prudence toward who “sought to hide everything from everyone and even at times resorted to two different circuits of communication, one public and one private”⁵, and goes beyond the label of Nicodemism, inviting us “not to consider the diverse religious opinions recognizable in the life and writings of Curione as an irreconcilable contradiction”, but the example of “a grey area, in which heterodox tendencies of various origin meet and amalgamate into something difficult to categorize under a single theological label”.⁶

 Finally an updated and accurate complete profile is also available in Italian: Biasiori (2015). The only comprehensive monograph for a long time was Kutter (1955), but in the historical studies on the 16th century religious crisis Curione had considerable importance, at least starting with Cantimori (1939).  If we accept Paul Grendler’s definition of the long century 1450 – 1575 as the golden age for humanists in the university, Curione lived through its final phase, in all its different forms. He taught in an Italian university (Pavia), in a more northern one (Basel, for more than twenty years, until his death), but also in an example of the new teaching structures tightly bound to the establishment of the Reformation (Lausanne’s Schola). Cf. Grendler (2002), 248.  Rotondò (1968), 299.  Peyronel Rambaldi (2011), 35, which concludes: “Probably open to the most daring speculations, he always evaded doctrinal disputes, rejecting religious repression in the name of freedom of one’s interior life and of mutual compassion.”  Biasiori (2015), 14.  Ibid, 16. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-012

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In order to understand Curione’s multiform and continued inclination to rewriting it is necessary to keep in mind the external pressures, the changing environments, the different types of censorship encountered and the different experiences of anonymity and pseudonymity, as well as the inner restlessness of interminable reasoning. The processes which begin by going back, both patently and surreptitiously, to texts which were already written (though not always previously published) by himself and by others, are at the core of all of the intellectual activity of Curione (according to Prosperi a “highly adept rewriter of texts”),⁷ who was a curator of classical and contemporary works, translator, and commentator, and who inserted more or less disguised quotations in his own works, reformulating them in various ways as well as constructing complex macrotexts. It isn’t only about stylistic choices, when the whole range of quotation, re-taking, manipulation, imitation and concealed transformation is performed in texts which place themselves on potentially fatal boundaries, with the very real possibility of their being condemned by the Roman Inquisition⁸ or by the leaders of the Swiss churches (and even by the censorship of “tolerant” Basel).⁹ Indeed, despite not being the exile that, having left the papacy’s Italy, more resolutely defects to the opposition even of the reformed churches, it is Curione who symbolises the passage from the phase of propaganda against the pope-Antichrist in Pasquin in Ecstasy to the much more general affirmation that “non in sola Italia est Antichristus, non in sola Italia est omnium scelerum, omnis impietatis et malorum autor Papatus; sed ubicumque sunt homines, quoniam ex eadem argilla et luto facti, et eodem afflati veneno, iisdem cupiditatibus ducuntur, ibi Sathanam, ibi Antichristum, ibi Papatum esse dubitari non potest”.¹⁰ For all these reasons, to construct a real profile of Curione as a rewriter would probably mean retracing his entire life and work. I will limit myself to proposing certain tendencies, paying particular attention to the relationship between Venice and Basel. This transfer, from a relatively short stay about which we know little for certain, to the longer-lasting and more productive sojourn from which the better part of his works and documents are derived, is also highly symbolic. In the middle

 Prosperi (1998), 185.  Curione’s escape from Italy is tied closely to the relaunching of the Roman Inquisition with Paul III’s edict Licet ab initio, enacted 21 July 1542. The following day a letter from the Luccan cardinal Bartolomeo Guidiccioni to the Senate of Lucca intimates: “Intanto pareria che le S. V., col lor braccio ordinassero che il vicario del vescovo facese incontinente prendere quel Cellio, che sta in casa di messer Niccolò Arnolfini, il quale dicono haver tradotto in volgare alchune opere di Martino [Lutero], per dar quel bel cibo sino alle semplici donne de la nostra città, et che ha fatto stampar quei precetti a sua fantasia: oltreché et da Vinegia et da Ferrara se ne intende di lui pessimo odore”. The letter is cited in Tommasi’s Documenti (1847), 164.  Curione’s most important book, De amplitudine beati regni Dei, first (1554) did not obtain a publication permit and later (1556), having been printed elsewhere, underwent an actual trial.  Curione (1550), 2v.

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are the last attempts to find an Italian base, from Ferrara to Lucca, and the first prolonged sojourn in the Swiss environment at Lausanne. Regarding the edition of the works, however, the direct channel between the editorial capitals Venice and Basel is not random. This also signifies the transition from the city of “Pasquin incarnate”, Pietro Aretino,¹¹ to Eleutheropoli, the city of the free (the utopian typographical name assumed for the edition of Pasquillorum tomi duo),¹² which is also the city of Erasmus’ inheritance.¹³ The Pasquillorum tomi duo are a first example of macroscopic rewriting: the carmina and the verses ascribed to Pasquin, drawn both from the official editions and illegal circulation, are sometimes altered,¹⁴ but even when they appear without any modification they acquire fresh nuances, placed as they are in a context which revives the broadest European anticlerical tradition, taking pieces from Poliziano to Sannazaro, from Erasmus to Hutten.¹⁵ Curione stayed in Venice for a brief (c. 1539 – 1541)¹⁶ but fundamental period, also because he made his debut as a published author, first releasing a short grammatical text,¹⁷ and later the first version of the Aranei encomion,¹⁸ mentioned thus by Ortensio Lando: “Celio Secondo le lodi del ragno cantò e per entro vi chiuse altissimi misterij della divina providenza”,¹⁹ which would be rewritten and reprinted in 1544, obviously in Basel²⁰. Curione’s stay in Venice coincided with the years in which Francis I.’s ambassador in the city was François Pellicier, bishop of Montpellier, with whom he came into contact perhaps through Renée of France²¹, and to whom he dedicated

 Procaccioli (2006), p. 78 argues that Curione and Aretino probably met in Venice.  Curione (1544a).  On the complex relationship with Erasmus, in the first place cf. D’Ascia (1995).  For the first volume, one may now also refer to an edition with an Italian translation: Mevoli (2013).  Refer back to Dalmas (2011) and Dalmas (2013).  Precise information on the period preceding exile is scarce, largely dependent on documents dating back to Curione himself: a manuscript preserved at the Universitätsbibliothek of Basel, derived from Curione’s desire to find news on his family of origin, and the funeral eulogy held by his successor as the chair of Rhetoric in Basel, Giovanni Niccolò Stoppani (1542– 1621), who was in turn tied to the direct declarations of the master. Stupanus is also an interesting editor, curator e translator of Italian works into Latin (by Alessandro Piccolomini, Francesco Patrizi, Pandolfo Collenuccio, Giovanni Pietro Contarini) and caused a scandal wanting to insert a dedication to the bishop of Basel, Jacob Christoph Blarer, in the second editon of the Latin translation of Machiavelli’s The Prince (1580), provoking the Huguenots’ anger, beginning with François Hotman. Compare Kaegi (1960) and Koelbing (1970).  Curione (1539). Edit16 (National census of 16th century editions: http://edit16.iccu.sbn.it/) indicates a single copy, preserved inVenice at the Biblioteca d’arte of the Correr civic Museum (Opusc. Cicogna 79.1).  Curione (1540).  Lando (1552), 467.  Curione (1544b).  Cf. Biasiori (2015), 38.

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the Aranei encomion ²² (in addition to alluding to him twice in Pasquin in Ecstasy). Pellicier, who as a good humanist collected Greek, Syrian and Hebrew manuscripts in Venice, also sought to promote a policy opposed to Charles V., which was supposed to distance Venice from the pope and the emperor, and align it with the Turks. His Venetian agents, however, were discovered and executed, and Pellicier recalled to France and substituted: Pellicier “was in fact one of the principal nodes of a francophile party in favour of the heretical infiltrations, both for anti-papal as well as anti-imperial purposes, to which as many French people belonged as Italians.”²³ Here we can see a second area of rewriting concerning the revival of texts which are not only personally reformulated but transported into very different discursive contexts. Eulogizing the spider, Curione openly enters into a discursive genre characterized by intellectual ludus and paradoxical forms of thought, but also exploits the possibilities of concealed communication, at the boundary between literature, philosophy and theology. Following the genre’s tradition, it begins with a “call to the usual catalogue of the authors of paradoxes”:²⁴ “Nos enim non febrem quartanam, non fungos, non calvitiem, non Busyridem, non stultitiam huc accessimus laudaturi, sed Araneum, pusillum quidem corpore, sed virtute magnum.”²⁵ Also given the explicit reference to stultitia, the placement of the work in the wake of Erasmus appears immediately evident. However, Delio Cantimori²⁶ directs the reading not so much towards In Praise of Folly as towards Erasmian commentary on the adage Scarabeus aquilam quaerit, that in the 1508 edition offered ethical advice (one must never underestimate an adversary, as contemptible as he may be, because even a defenceless person can, on certain occasions, be dangerous), while the 1515 Basel edition also invested the little beetle with greater symbolic meanings.²⁷ The second Erasmian element deals exactly with the little spider as a possible symbol of God’s power, that “summam potentiam declaravit solo nutu condito hoc opere mirabili, cujus nulla pars est non plena miraculis, ipsis etiam culicibus et araneis clamitantibus opificis immensam virtutem”.²⁸ It comes from De magnitudine misericordiarum Domini con-

 Curione (1540), 2r-v: the bishop Pellicier was invited to receive “araneum istum tam solertem ac eruditum. Nam si (ut saepe a te audivi) tanto opere rerum naturalium inspectione afficitur ut rerum divinarum studium, aliasque innumeras Episcopi dotes omittam, non poterit non vehementer, isto tam ingenioso animalculo delectari. […] Accipe itaque nostrum hunc Araneolum eique si minus in tuo musaeo, vel cubiculo, saltem in atrio locum concede: in quo suam instruere officinam, telasque possit expandere: non sine voluptate eius industriam moresque miraturus. […]”  Biasiori (2015), 39. Biasiori’s book puts in order a large number of clues which suggest a close link between Curione, particularly but not exclusively in the Italian years, and this “party”.  Longhi (1983), 151.  Curione (1540), 3. A copy of the text, preserved at the British Library [1079.c.2.(3.)] is not linked by chance to various texts among which are actually Erasmus’ Sileni Alcibiadis and Scarabeus.  Cantimori (1936).  Cf. Erasmus (1980), 168: “antiquitus inter sacras imagines et in vatum mysteriis cum primis habitus est scarabeus, egregi bellatoris aptissimum symbolum”.  Cit. in D’Ascia (2003), 84.

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cio, a text from 1524 which was to be important (even through Marsilio Andreasi’s version) for Curione’s most challenging work, De amplitudine beati regni Dei. ²⁹ More recently, however, comparing the two drafts of the Aranei encomion, Luca D’Ascia has highlighted that, in addition to Curione’s fundamental and well known relationship with Erasmus, he also operates a “work of selection and adaptation” on one of the last texts by the Zurich reformer Zwingli, De providentia Dei anamnema (1530). Curione, then, rewrites not only modifying and concealing citations (indeed these were only revealed many centuries later), but also effecting a decisive shift of genre. The material taken from Zwingli’s strict conceptual “treatise” structure is transformed when moved in a paradoxical eulogy, “rich in digressions, mythological allegories and satirical points which are more effective the more they are disguised.”³⁰ La struttura concettuale del De providentia può essere schematizzata in una serie di loci: l’unità della sostanza; l’attribuzione dell’Essere a Dio solo e la negazione dell’essere pieno degli enti particolari; la rivalutazione della metempsicosi come enunciazione fantastica del principio dell’indistruttibilità della materia; il determinismo collegato alla teologia della predestinazione e il rifiuto di ammettere l’esistenza di cause seconde; l’insistenza sull’onnipotenza divina e, pertanto, sulla possibilità della grazia in assenza di segni visibili dell’elezione.³¹

D’Ascia’s essay analyses the “work of selection and adaptation” carried out by Curione to transform this rigorous conceptual structure “in the ‘pleasant’ and enthralling flow of oratio continua”³² dedicated to the emblematic spider. Furthermore, together with Erasmus and Zwingli, we can also see the influence of Francesco Zorzi’s De harmonia mundi. This “explains the overall attitude towards ancient wisdom which made Curione belittle the autonomy of the different traditions and to interpret them as facets of one single body of knowledge”³³ – another possible point of contact between Aranei encomion and De amplitudine. Perhaps some passages from the first version of the eulogy “which are characterized by near antitrinitarian tendencies and for the audacious definition of Christ as the man through whom God, who as much as he is omnipresent and omnipotent is also unseen, made himself visible to us”³⁴, also derive from Zorzi. And the peculiar expression “nobis conspicuous factus est” was eliminated from the Basel edition. But this is not enough. The transition from the first to the second edition of the Eulogy of the Spider, precisely from Venice to Basel, also means a complete restructuring of the overall textual structure. First of all Curione extracts a minor work, De immortalitate animorum, from the unified treatment of the Encomion, and presents it

     

Cf. Seidel Menchi (1979). D’Ascia (2003), 87. Ibid., 86 – 87. Ibid., 87. Biasiori (2015), 41. Ibid.

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as an independent piece. But more generally, under the new title Araneus the Basel book becomes a personal anthology which includes many other writings besides the eponymous piece, all strongly tied to Italian experiences. We find several funeral orations, two Paradossi (paradoxes), and a pedagogical treatise De liberis pie Christianeque educandis, that is another example of Curione’s frequent act of disguised rewriting, so much so that it would only be precisely identified many centuries later. Also in this case, the most explicit intertextual dialogue is with Erasmus, though nearly three quarters of Curione’s De liberis – as Susanna Peyronel has demonstrated³⁵ – paraphrases or almost literally translates chapter XXIII (titled Come li parenti debbeno instruire et governare loro figliuoli secondo lo Evangelio) of Sommario della Sacra Scrittura, another anonymous book like Pasquin in Ecstasy that was widely diffused in the heterodox ambit. In addition, regarding the multiform relationship with Erasmus, it must be added further that in Araneus Curione also inserts a paraphrase (another form of rewriting) of the beginning of the gospel of John,³⁶ which cannot therefore escape comparison to the perhaps more delicate point of revolutionary Erasmian translation. The logos, translated by Jerome with verbum, in Novum instrumentum (Basel 1516) becomes sermo. In paraphrasing, Curione does not make choices, and keeps all the possibilities together: “λόγος, hoc est verbum, sermo, oraculum, atque sapientia”.³⁷ Venice is also fundamental for the most complex example of Curione’s rewritings, Pasquin in Ecstasy: as regards its origin, the first circulation (and condemnation), but above all the content of the text itself. Here Venice is seen as the great hope for religious and political transformation in Italy. According to the working hypotheses of Prandi and Cordibella’s critical edition of the work (in preparation)³⁸, Curione’s full authorial responsibility in the first phase of the text extends only as far as the Latin version³⁹. The “corruptions, the misunderstandings, the errors”⁴⁰ of the Italian version bring to mind the interference of more perfunctory hands, and “the introduction of inserts […] that tend to increase the polemical tone, that of invective or of confessional struggle” are suitable “for the book’s altered destination, no longer directed at an educated public but rather at a popular audience, as well as the erasure of classical references or allusions”⁴¹. Some of the rewritings coming from the transition from Latin to the vernacular may also have more directly political motives: among the people involved in Pellicier’s spy network was the “mystic of noble ori-

 Peyronel Rambaldi (1997).  Coelii Secundi Curionis Paraphrasis in principium Evangelii Sancti Ioannis, quae pro commentariolo esse potest, in Curione (1544b), 190 – 198.  Ibid., p. 191.  Cf. Cordibella/Prandi (2012) and Cordibella/Prandi (2014).  Curione (1543?a).  Cordibella/Prandi (2014), p. 98.  Ibid.

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gins”⁴² Camilla Pallavicini, who was forced to leave Venice in 1542. According to Biasiori, as in the case of another “divine mother”, Ludovica Torelli, Pasquin’s strong complaints are not exempt “from an ill-concealed attraction on Curione’s part”,⁴³ but certainly the vernacular version attenuates the direct knowledge, perhaps to render the spiritual condemnation more decisive, but probably also to distance himself on the “political” plane as well. The two Italian versions,⁴⁴ then, are at the extremes of the rewriting and reconstructing processes. The first presents the dialogue in its most concise form, while Pasquin in Ecstasy, New and Much Fuller than the First takes in various other material, including Pasquin’s proposal to speak at the Council of Trent and the narration of another exceptional voyage, into hell. The motivation for Pasquin’s voyage (the contrast between the world-revered saints’ dazzling riches and the simplicity and poverty of their past lives) is another interpretive rewriting of Erasmus’ Apotheosis Capnionis from the Colloquia. ⁴⁵ Curione also begins with the difference between the saint as he is represented on Earth and his heavenly reality, but rewriting he becomes more radical. Pasquin goes into ecstasy to see the heavens, in order to understand why the mother of Christ (refigured in the Gospels as “castissima, costumatissima, santissima, humilissima sovra ogn’altra creatura”, and then as “dottissima nella santa scrittura, piena di carità verso i poveri, senza punto di avaritia, senza desiderio di guadagno, né di richezze”, who does not care “di corone, né di vesti pompose”) is so different from the Madonna visible today in the churches, honoured by the world “con tanta cera, con tanto oro, et argento, con tante collane, et monili, et con tanti fumi”.⁴⁶ I would like to insert a parentheses here as a reminder of perhaps the most challenging of Curione’s rewritings in the vernacular. Among these ostentatious displays of wealth that in his view mar the face of the “humilissima sovra ogn’altra creatura” could be numbered the superb canzone that concludes Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, that drives the exaltation to the choice of expressions, such as “per te pò la mia vita esser ioconda” or “dal mio stato assai misero et vile | per le tue man resurgo”, which evidently must have required correction. Thus, despite not being very active in writing poetry, Curione undertook an arduous project of rewriting

 Biasiori (2015), 18.  Ibid., 26.  Curione (1543?b) and Curione (1546?).  In the Apotheosis Capnionis, Erasmus starts right from the difference between the saint as he is represented on Earth and the heavenly reality, but, far from constructing the consequences that Curione would imagine for them, later we will see the genuine elevation amongst the saints of Johannes Reuchlin, who becomes a sort of patron saint of the humanists, proposed for veneration, with many images and prayers to learn and repeat.  The first Italian editing of Pasquino in estasi, in which expressions can be read which remain in the second Pasquino, nuovo e più pieno che ’l primo, was perhaps printed in Venice in January 1543: cf. Cordibella/Prandi (2012), 351. For a wider look at the reworking processes of the two edits in Italian I refer back to Dalmas (2014).

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that stands out in the vernacular version of his Institutione della Christiana religione, published in Basel in 1550.⁴⁷ Recently I have compared the experiment⁴⁸ with another one of very similar intentions, by Antonio Brucioli. Both choose the route of “serious” parody, searching, in different ways, to reclaim the most evident stylistic traits from the original text. The first stanza of the two rewritings immediately highlights the most conspicuous correction, which is obviously to erase the elegant continuous refrain of the key term “Vergine”. Curione accomplishes a faithful imitation even on this level, systematically substituting the term “Vergine” with “Signor”, both in the first and in the ninth verse of each stanza (the only case in which the key word does not appear in the ninth verse, substituted by a formally pagan “O summo e vero Giove”, is corrected in the second edition with “Signor unico e solo”). He follows Petrarch’s poem also in the addition of predications to the invoked name, precisely in the same stanzas, the first six and the tenth: Curione’s “Signor” is called “onipotente’, “prudente”, “di puritade imortal speglio”, “benigno e pien di rari doni”, “meraviglioso, senza esempio”, “verace e stabile in eterno” and finally “mio dolce, immaculat’agnello”. Curione maintains the structure of the invocation, based on the regular repetition of the name at the opening of the first and ninth verse of each stanza. And he scrupulously reclaims even the number and scheme of the stanzas, the number of verses in each stanza (thirteen, of which only three are septenaries), and the rhyme scheme: ABCBACCddCEf(f5)E, in the envoy AbbACd(d5)C. He therefore includes even the internal rhyme within the last two lines of each strophe, which creates a pentasyllabic line in rhyming couplets with the preceding septenary in the middle of the last hendecasyllable. Compared with Brucioli, who reused Petrarch’s rhymes, word-rhymes, hemistiches and even entire verses, Curione seems to favour less glaring parallels, such as metric and stylistic ones (the metric scheme and the system of anaphora). Or, at times, even subtler ones, such as the refrain, without evident lexical coincidences, of the light’s centrality in the first stanza, and of the theme of purity in the third. Returning to Pasquin in Ecstasy, from the protagonist’s reclamation and reinvention to the same idea of a demystifying journey in heaven, the entire work places itself in a strong intertextual dimension. Pasquin, having found the means to go into ecstasy in a convent full of disharmony (like Michele in canto XIV of Orlando furioso), ascending beyond the sphere of fire above Elia’s cart (like Astolfo in canto XXXIV), finds himself in front of the spectacle of all the things that “human madness” wishes to possess or escape from, while Astolfo found everything which here is lost. In short, significant similarities with Ariosto are not lacking, even if the discourse seems very different. In the unfolding of the dialogues between Pasquin and Marforio, in fact, the extraordinary ambiguity of Ariosto’s lunar discourse (and of texts such as Eras-

 Curione (1550).  Dalmas (2016).

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mus’ Colloquia or Moriae Encomion) is weakened by the needs of a text of combat, of propaganda. The papist heaven that Pasquin sees initially appears as the negative of Ariosto’s lunar world: not the transformation of deficiencies, of failures and of man’s vain dreams into corporeal images, but rather an expanded repetition of the deception of certain precisely-identified men. The “false” heaven was “fabricato per man de’ Papi e d’huomini che havevano poca architettura”, carrying controversial Erasmian ideas to extreme consequences. Criticizing the punctilious formalities of monastic rules and the pride for the names of the orders, Moriae Encomion gave voice to Christ, who interrupted the empty boasting: “costoro che vogliono sembrare più santi perfino di me possono […] farsi costruire un nuovo cielo da chi ha introdotto le meschine tradizioni da loro anteposte ai miei precetti.”⁴⁹ This humorous sign is now a reality realized fully and in detail in the “papist heaven” of Pasquin in Ecstasy (and the “little architecture” denounced by Pasquin assumes a more pungent tone if one thinks that in Andrea Guarna’s Simia, the builder of the “new Paradise” is Donato Bramante).⁵⁰ Extending and rewriting suggestions from the serio-ludica tradition, in particular those derived from the by then long-standing European revival of Lucian, from Pontano and Alberti to Erasmus and Ariosto, Curione specified the satirical target, and, further, partly transformed Pasquin into a catechist, making use of a great number of biblical quotations. The strongest period of rewriting and reworking of texts linked to the figure of Pasquin occurred during the 40’s, with the apex in the Lausanne period, until 1546, when the most energetic activity developed around this character, whom Curione made undergo all types of rewriting. I have already mentioned the process of compiling the Pasquillorum tomi duo, where he inserts an intense interpretation of the phenomenon, in the Praefatio. During the same period, Curione carried out a vigorous exercise in rewriting within his own contribution to the genre, Pasquillus ecstaticus, with numerous editions and translations, additions and reworkings. In more concealed and covert way (which actually only emerged thanks to a confiscation of documents), however, evidence that linked Curione to Pasquin’s mask was discovered another ten years later. Now the University of Basel professor and Geneva are in the phase of complete rupture, after Servetus’ death at the stake, defended by Calvin and denounced by the Basel group with De haereticis an sint persequendi, in which Curione played an important role. In 1558 among the papers belonging to Jacques Chardon (one of the three accused of having collaborated on an uprising of the Bresse region, in favour of the duke of Savoy, an historical enemy of Geneva), “were found some epigrams against Calvin and compositions in defense of Servetus, of which the most interesting is, in our opinion, Dialogus Marphori et Pas-

 Erasmo (1989), 201.  D’Ascia/Simoncini (2005), 35 – 36.

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quilli de Serveto combusto Genevae.”⁵¹ The Dialogus had been given to Chardon by a former Augustinian, Léger Grymoult, in contact with Castellion in Geneva and who fled to Basel in 1551. However, according to Biasiori, the author was actually Curione himself, who with this extreme reuse of the figure of Pasquin succeeds in completely reversing its meaning. Confiding his desire to Marforio to leave Rome, where the Pope has learned of his conversion to the Gospel, Pasquin declares that he would like to rush hurry to Geneva, where Christ suffers no perils. Marforio laughs: Pasquin wouldn’t even be safe in Geneva anymore, seeing that another Pope had taken over there who had just burnt the good Servetus at the stake for having denied ‘triplicem esse Deum’. On hearing that news, Pasquin decides that if he really would like to die for Christ, then it would be better to do so in Rome, to be an example to his fellow citizens. It is also better like this—Marforio concludes as well—because the torments for the innocents are less severe (‘leviora’). Pasquin therefore returns home and entrusts himself ‘manibus Christi qui mihi portus est’ […]. Comparing this Pasquin with the ecstaticus, it seems to reflect Curione’s personal experience: if in his Italian years he had given voice to the figure in order to promote his experience of conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism, now he needed it to suggest his doubts about the opportuneness of that same decision.⁵²

The extreme rewriting, then, would lead almost to a palinode, to the swapping of roles between Pasquin’s and Marforio’s masks (in Pasquin in Ecstasy the latter was completely dominated by the former, initially astonished and upset then convinced and converted), and a general reversal. In the 40’s Curione used Pasquin explicitly, even putting his name as author in printed books.⁵³ In the 50’s Pasquin returned to anonymity, to the covert circulation of manuscripts: the forms of the libertas dicendi, which needs a mask to attack in direct and incontrovertible speech the conduct which nobody would have the courage to denounce publicly and openly.⁵⁴ And the more challenging affirmations in the theological field are now assigned to the characters of a serious and entirely different sort of dialogue, De amplitudine beati regni Dei, where the interlocutors are no longer masked. Indeed, they are Celio himself and his friend from his Italian years, Agostino Mainardi.

Bibliography Primary sources Curione, Celio Secondo, Nova isagoge, seu introductio ad grammaticen: qua nulla unquam visa est absolutior, nulla item brevior, nulla tenere aetati aptior, Venezia 1539.

 Biasiori (2015), 84, which refers back to Dufour (1966) and to Bietenholz (1971).  Biasiori (2015), 85.  For example Curione (1544c), the Latin edition where the author’s names, the date, place of printing (Geneva), and the editor (Jean Girard) are specified.  References to Curione’s Praefatio (1544a).

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Curione, Celio Secondo, Aranei Encomion in quo aranei erudita natura Rhetorico Schemate explixatur. Et in eo loci Communes de Ente supremo et unico de divina Providentia, de Spiritus humani perpetuitate, allisque nonnullis scitu dignis, Venezia 1540. Curione, Celio Secondo, Pasquilli extatici, seu nuper e coelo reversi, de rebus partim superis, partim inter homines in Christiana religione passim hodie controversis, cum Marphorio colloquium, multa pietate, elegantia, ac festivitate refertum, s.l. [Basel?] s.d. [1543?a]. Curione, Celio Secondo, Pasquino in estasi, Roma [Venezia?] s. d. [1543?b]. Curione, Celio Secondo (ed.), Pasquillorum tomi duo. Quorum primo versibus ac rhythmis, altero soluta oratione conscripta quamplurima continentur, ad exhilarandum, confirmandumque hoc perturbatissimo rerum statu pii lectoris animum, apprime conducentia, Eleutheropoli [Basel] 1544a. Curione, Celio Secondo, Araneus, seu de Providentia Dei, libellus vere aureus, cum aliis nonnullis eiusdem Opusculis, lectu dignissimis, nuncquam primum in lucem editis, Basel 1544b. Curione, Celio Secondo, Pasquillus ecstaticus non ille prior, sed totus plane alter, auctus et expolitus: cum aliquot aliis sanctis pariter et lepidis Dialogis, Genève 1544c. Curione, Celio Secondo, Pasquino in estasi, nuovo, e molto più pieno, ch’el primo, insieme co’l viaggio de l’Inferno. Aggiunte, le propositioni del medesimo da disputare nel Concilio di Trento, Roma [Basel?], s. d. [1546?]. Curione, Celio Secondo, Una familiare et paterna institutione della Christiana religione, di M. Celio Secondo Curione, piu copiosa, et piu chiara che la latina del medesimo, con certe altre cose pie, Basel, s.d. [1550]. Curione, Celio Secondo (ed.), Francisci Spierae, qui quod susceptam semel Evangelicae veritatis professionem abnegasset, damnassetque, in horrendam incidit desperationem, historia, Basel 1550. Erasmus of Rotterdam, Adagia. Sei saggi politici in forma di proverbi, ed. Silvana Seidel Menchi, Torino 1980. Erasmus of Rotterdam, Elogio della follia, ed. Luca D’Ascia, Milano 1989. Lando, Ortensio, I Sette libri de cathaloghi a varie cose appartenenti, non solo antiche, ma anche moderne: opera utile molto alla Historia, et da cui prender si po materia di favellare d’ogni proposito che ci occorra, Venezia 1552.

Secondary sources Biasiori, Lucio, L’eresia di un umanista. Celio Secondo Curione nell’Europa del Cinquecento, Roma 2015. Bietenholz, Peter G., Basle and France in the Sixteenth Century: The Basle Humanists and Printers in Their Contacts with Francophone Culture, Genève 1971. Cantimori, Delio, “Note su Erasmo e la vita morale e religiosa italiana del sec. XVI”, in: Gedenkschrift zum 400. Todestage des Erasmus von Rotterdam, Basel 1936, 98 – 112. Cantimori, Delio, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento, Firenze 1939. Cordibella, Giovanna/Prandi, Stefano, “Preliminari per l’edizione critica del ‘Pasquino in estasi’ di Celio Secondo Curione (prima redazione)”, in: Lettere italiane, 64 (2012), 345 – 371. Cordibella, Giovanna/Prandi, Stefano, “Il Pasquillus extaticus e il Pasquino in estasi: problemi ecdotici e prima circolazione europea”, in: Damianaki/Romano (2014), 85 – 113. Dalmas, Davide, “Pasquinata come satira. La ‘Praefatio’ ai ‘Pasquillorum tomi duo’”, in: “Però convien ch’io canti per disdegno”. La satira in versi tra Italia e Spagna dal Medioevo al Seicento, ed. Antonio Gargano, Napoli 2011, 141 – 159. Dalmas, Davide, “Presentazione”, in Mevoli (2013), 11 – 24.

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Dalmas, Davide, “Forme della riscrittura nel ‘Pasquino in estasi’”, in: Damianaki/Romano (2014), 61 – 83. Dalmas, Davide, “Letture e riscritture “riformate” della canzone alla Vergine di Petrarca nel Cinquecento”, in: Les Muses sacrées. Poésie et Théâtre de la Réforme entre France et Italie, ed. Véronique Ferrer/Rosanna Gorris Camos, Genève 2016, 203 – 221. Damianaki, Chrysa/Romano, Angelo (eds.), Pasquin, lord of Satire, and his Disciples in 16th Century Struggles for religious and political Reform / Pasquino, signore della satira, e la lotta dei suoi discepoli per la Riforma religiosa e politica nel Cinquecento, London/Roma 2014. D’Ascia, Luca, “Celio Secondo Curione, erasmista o antierasmista?”, in: Erasmo, Venezia e la cultura padana nel Cinquecento, ed. Achille Olivieri, Rovigo 1995, 209 – 223. Also in: D’Ascia (2003), 145 – 170. D’Ascia, Luca, Frontiere. Erasmo da Rotterdam, Celio Secondo Curione, Giordano Bruno, Bologna 2003. D’Ascia, Luca/Simoncini, Stefano, “Il ‘Simia’ di Andrea Guarna e lo ‘Julius exclusus’ di Erasmo: elementi per un confronto”, in: Il Rinascimento italiano di fronte alla Riforma: letteratura e arte, ed. Chrysa Damianaki/Paolo Procaccioli/Angelo Romano, Manziana 2005. Dufour, Alain, “Vers latins pour Servet”, in: Histoire et psychologie historique, Genève 1966, 97 – 115. Grendler, Paul F., The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, Baltimore/London 2002. Kaegi, Werner, “Machiavelli a Basilea”, in: Meditazioni storiche, ed. Delio Cantimori, Bari 1960, 174 – 199. Koelbing, Huldrych Martin, “Johannes Nicolaus Stupanus, Rhaetus (1542 – 1621)”, in: Äskulap in Graubünden. Beiträge der Medizin und des Ärztestandes, ed. Bündner Ärzteverein, Chur 1970, 628 – 646. Kutter, Markus, Celio Secondo Curione. Sein Leben und sein Werk (1503 – 1569), Basel/Stuttgart 1955. Longhi, Silvia, Lusus. Il capitolo burlesco nel Cinquecento, Padova 1983. Mevoli, Damiano (ed.): Pasquillorum tomi duo. Tomus primus, Manziana 2013. Peyronel Rambaldi, Susanna, Dai Paesi Bassi all’Italia. ‘Il Sommario della Sacra Scrittura’. Un libro proibito nella società italiana del Cinquecento, Firenze 1997. Peyronel Rambaldi, Susanna, “Celio Secondo Curione”, in: Fratelli d’Italia. Riformatori italiani nel Cinquecento, ed. Mario Biagioni/Matteo Duni/Lucia Felici, Torino 2011, 35 – 44. Procaccioli, Paolo, “Tu es Pasquillus in aeterno. Aretino non romano e la maschera di Pasquino”, in: Ex marmore. Pasquini, pasquinisti, pasquinate nell’Europa moderna, ed. Chrysa Damianaki/Paolo Procaccioli/Angelo Romano, Manziana 2006, 67 – 96. Prosperi, Adriano, “Celio Secondo Curione e gli autori italiani. Da Pico al ‘Beneficio di Cristo’”, in: Giovanni e Gianfrancesco Pico. L’opera e la fortuna di due studenti ferraresi, ed. Patrizia Castelli, Firenze 1998, 163 – 185. Rotondò, Antonio, Calvino e gli antitrinitari italiani, 1968, in: Ibid., Studi di storia ereticale del Cinquecento, 2 vol., Firenze 2008, vol. I, 297 – 321. Seidel Menchi, Silvana, “La circolazione clandestina di Erasmo in Italia. I casi di Antonio Brucioli e di Marsilio Andreasi”, in: Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 9 (1979), 573 – 601. Tommasi, Girolamo, Sommario della storia di Lucca dall’anno MIV all’anno MDCC, continuato sino all’anno 1779 e seguito da una scelta degl’indicati documenti per cura di Carlo Minutoli, Firenze.

Marco Faini (Rochester)

Pietro Aretino, St. John the Baptist and the Rewriting of the Psalms 1 Introduction One of the most bewildering features of Pietro Aretino’s literary production is the coexistence of devotional and pornographic works during the 1530s. In 1534 he published his Passione di Giesù, the Sette salmi de la penitentia di David and the Ragionamento della Nanna e della Antonia. The sacred and the pornographic mingle in his works – sometimes even within the same work, as in the case of the play Cortigiana, also published in 1534.¹ While this may puzzle scholars, sexuality seems deeply intertwined with devotion not only in Aretino’s works, but also in Renaissance cultural production in general.² This is too large an issue to be dealt with in this essay, and one that brings with it the complex problem of (the possibility of) establishing Aretino’s true literary and religious identity, something that also seems to have baffled critics for decades. In the following pages, I will limit myself to some observations on Aretino’s religiosity as it emerges from his early devotional works of 1534 and 1535 and their context. As is well known, Aretino’s religious works were in many cases commissioned by his patrons, or written in order to please them. As early as the 1530s, Aretino also understood and complied with the reading public’s increasing demand for the devotional, offering captivating works, which were perfectly attuned to new literary tastes.³ Aretino wrote seven devotional works; these were published between 1534 and 1543 and reprinted several times. Such dedication – triggered, to a certain extent, by Aretino’s ambition to emulate Pietro Bembo, who had been appointed cardinal in pectore in 1538 –⁴ cannot only be accounted for by his eagerness to exploit a new market or the need to please powerful patrons. In recent years, scholars have investigated Aretino’s religiosity, placing it in the context of the religious debate in Venice in the 1530s and 1540s; Élise Boillet and Raymond Waddington especially have worked extensively on Aretino as a religious writer.⁵ As a consequence, Aretino’s devotional works and their European circulation have received increasing attention.⁶ Scholarship has acknowledged Aretino’s programmatic refusal, if not his inability, to build a coherent theological and

     

Cf. Gareffi (2004). Waddington (2004); Steinberg (1996). Cf. Riga (2015), 210. Cf. Procaccioli (2005). Cf. Waddington (2004), (2006) and (2009). Cf. also Cairns (1985), 69 – 124. For an overview of recent scholarship cf. Faini (2014).

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doctrinal set of ideas. This seems to hinder both the possibility to account in full for his ideas – one finds contradictory statements even within the same work – and to make direct and cogent comparisons (at least on a theoretical basis) with the major contemporary strands of devotion.⁷ In the first part of this article, I will try to add something to the debate on Aretino’s religiosity by addressing the possible meaning of Aretino’s self-fashioning as a prophet. In particular, I will suggest Aretino’s identification with St. John the Baptist, a figure who combines – as Aretino did – the features of the satyr and of the prophet. In the second part of this study, I will analyse Aretino’s rewriting of the penitential Psalms. In conclusion, I will turn again to the figure of St. John the Baptist in light of the burgeoning conversation on grace and good deeds in Venice in the 1540s.

2 Aretino as St John the Baptist In a letter sent to Aretino from the convent of Santa Giustina, Padua, on 6 December, 1539, the Florentine Benedictine monk Paolo Bellandini wrote: oggi siete una Collonna, una lucerna, una face, uno splendore della santa Chiesa; la quale se potessi parlare, gli darebbe le entrate di Chieti, di Farnese, di Santa Fiore, e di quelli altri scioperoni, dicendo: ‘Sieno date al Signore Pietro, che mi illustra, che mi essalta, che mi onora, in cui s’accoglie la suttilità di Agostino, la moralità di Gregorio, i profondi sensi di Ieronimo, il sentenzioso stile di Ambrosio’. Questo nol dico io, ma tutto ’l mondo, che siete uno novo Paulo, che avete portato ’l nome del figliuolo di Dio dinanzi alli Re, alli Signori e Principi dell’universo; siete uno novo Battista, che con ardito animo, senza temenza, avete ripreso, corretto, dimonstrato l’iniquità, la malizia, l’ipocresia a tutte le genti del mondo; siete uno novo Evangelista Giovanni, in essortare, in pregare, in essaltare, in onorare li buoni, li retti, li virtuosi.⁸

Aretino is emphatically eulogized as a Father of the Church, a prophet and an evangelist. The comparison with John the Baptist is particularly striking, as it seems to connect Aretino’s former identity as a satirist and his (then) new public image as the author of sacred works. This identification was by no means a unicum. In a later letter from Florence on 15 January 1545, Niccolò Martelli, who often referred to Aretino as a prophet in his letters, informed his friend that he had been appointed a member of the Accademia Fiorentina. The Accademici had in fact realized that they were missing “il gran lume Aretino, del quale si può dire come il Salvator del Battista, ecce profeta & plusquam profeta.”⁹ The evangelical passage to which Martelli alludes comes from the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, where Jesus addresses the disciples of the Baptist. The passage

 Cf., for example, Di Monte/Mozzetti/Sarti (1992), 139 – 140.  Lettere scritte a Pietro Aretino, vol. II, 83.  Martelli (2009), 74.

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may have had a certain anti-courtly appeal for Aretino, for here St. John is distinguished from those who inhabit “the houses of the kings”: Ecce, qui in veste pretiosa sunt et in deliciis, in domibus regum sunt. Sed qui existis videre? Prophetam? Utique, dico vobis, et plus quam prophetam. [Luke 7, 24– 26] Ecce, qui mollibus vestiuntur, in domibus regum sunt. Sed qui existis videre? Prophetam? Etiam, dico vobis, et plus quam prophetam. [Matthew 11, 7– 9]¹⁰

It is interesting to compare the Latin text to an Italian version that Aretino might well have been familiar with, that of his friend Antonio Brucioli. In his version of Matthew’s Gospel in Il nuovo Testamento […] tradotto in vulgare italiano (1544), Brucioli faithfully translates the sentence “in domibus regum” as “nelle case de’ Re”. The same expression is rendered as “nelle corti de’ Re” in the translation of Luke.¹¹ This embryonic hint at anti-courtliness is further developed in Brucioli’s Commento (1546) to the Old and New Testaments where he paraphrases this passage as follows: Forse vi è apparso delicato, e di delicato vestimento, del quale voi dovessi udire cose più carnali e delettabili alla carne? Certamente vi apparve uno altro. Et dovevavi ammunire quella veste de peli de camegli che esso insegnava cose forti e da huomini e le quali superino ogni humana virtù, cioè tutta la renovation della vita. ¹²

Brucioli seems here to resort to traditional anti-courtly topoi, such as the effeminate dress and the wanton inclination to carnality (which is missing from the original text) of those who inhabit the courts. St. John the Baptist, on the other hand, is characterized by a strongly masculine attitude; he utters “strong and manly” words. These sexual undertones in the passage are further reinforced by the reference to the “renewal of life”, as if the act of giving life were intended to be at the same time spiritual and physical. *** The sexualized description of the Baptist adds to his nature as prophet. An eroticized version of St. John the Baptist was by no means uncommon, and can also be found in some lyrical texts from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. These texts belong to the tradition of parodia sacra studied by Francesco Novati and, more recently, by Folke Gernert in her book Parodia y “Contrafacta” ¹³. Among the texts collected by Gernert, at least two demand our attention for the purposes of this study. The first is a capitolo entitled Jesus in which each terzina closes with a Latin verse from the Bible:

   

All Biblical passages are taken from the Nova vulgata (2005) (my emphasis). Brucioli (1544), cc. 28r and 147v. Brucioli (1546), c. 39r (my emphasis). Novati (1889); Gernert (2009).

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Di pelle accincto e vilmente coperto Tra duri saxi, appiè d’un freddo smalto Facto son vox clamantis in deserto. Degna, donna, apparir: to’ via l’assalto de l’ombre obscure, acciò possiam dir chiari visitavit nos oriens ex alto. ¹⁴

The speaker identifies himself with St. John the Baptist and his lover with Jesus Christ. The lover is summoned to cast away the shadows and bring in the light, and is described in the terms used in Luke I, 78 to designate Christ. The second text is contained in a miscellany entitled Epistola del Tebaldeo, which was printed several times between the late fifteenth century and the mid-Cinquecento. Each of the stanzas (they are all six lines long) ends with the line Vox clamantis in deserto: Vox clamantis in deserto Fatto son che pietà chiamo e la donna che tanto amo del mio mal non è ancor certo. Vox clamantis in deserto.¹⁵

In these lines, the voice of the Baptist is compared to that of the lovesick poet calling out to his beloved. I would suggest that the figure of St. John the Baptist could be eroticized, and that it was not devoid of sexual connotations.¹⁶ Finally, I would like to recall briefly that Herod Antipas, whom the Baptist warned “Non licet tibi habere uxorem fratris tui” (Marc, 6, 18), had an ambivalent attitude towards the prophet; although afraid of him, he also enjoyed his conversation. In fact, one reads in Marc 6, 20: “Herodes enim metuebat Ioannem, sciens eum virum iustum et sanctum, et custodiebat eum, et, audito eo, multum haesitabat et libenter eum audiebat.” This mix of fear and admiration was peculiar to Aretino, whom princes both feared and cherished. This is made clear on the medal by Alessandro Vittoria which displays Aretino’s profile on the recto, and on the verso a bearded figure, closely resembling Aretino, seated on a curule seat while men and women bow and present him with gifts. The motto reads “I principi tributati dai popoli il servo

 Gernert (2009), vol. II, 59 – 60.  Gernert (2009), vol. II, 102– 103.  The erotic appropriation of religious figures and texts – especially of those concerning the Passion of Christ – has also been thought of as a consequence of the devotio moderna movement: “La repercusión que en la espiritualidad tardomedieval tuvieron los sufrimientos de Cristo desvinculados del contexto escatológico explica y hace comprensible que citas e imágenes pasionales fueran transladables sin grandes problemas a un contexto amoroso literario. Ese empleo no implica ni la denigración ni la difamación de la Sagrada Escritura o de los contenidos religiosos aludidos”, Gernert (2009), vol. I, 100.

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loro tributano”¹⁷, making clear the ambiguous relationship between Aretino and the rulers of the earth, to whom he was (or aimed to be) concurrently a humble servant and a ruthless master. Bartolomeo Egnazio of Fossombrone epitomized the relationship between Aretino and the powerful in a letter sent from Fossombrone on 8 May 1540, in which he compares Aretino to Christ himself: se l’Imperatore, o veramente il Papa che dovevo dire prima, se il Re, se li Prencipi, se li Duci non si sdegnano che li diciate la verità, e che li reprendiate de li loro pessimi vizii […] e hanno solo tanto di bontà in loro, che dove quelli dal tempo antique lapidavano e occidevano li Profeti, perché gli dicevano la verità, questi de oggidì vi presentano e premiano […] ma si potrebbe dire che voi non siate Profeta, né men Sibilla […] ma dirò bene che siate figliuolo di Dio, con patto però che questi fratacci che vanno postilando il Credo non mi apuntano, perché Dio è summa verità in Cielo, e voi essa verità in terra.¹⁸

It is, in fact, also possible that Vittoria’s medal contains Christological undertones; in the Umanità di Cristo, the Virgin, when contemplating the crucified Christ, is reminded of his birth and of “i re che dandogli tributo lo adorarono”¹⁹. In sum, St. John the Baptist emerges as a figure endowed with clear anti-courtly features, including a powerful masculine sexuality. His seclusion from society, the fact that he feeds only on locusts and wild honey and his camel’s hair clothing – all these factors point to a quasi-feral or satyr-like figure. Moreover, his uncouth language and the way he defiantly speaks the truth to the powers that be (which eventually leads to his beheading and was to be celebrated in the mid-1540s in Scipione Capece’s Latin poem De vate maximo) mark the Baptist out as a satirist; he was, at the same time, a prophet, a satirist, and a satyr. Indeed, as has been observed: The language and strategy of the Hebrew prophets […] bear striking and pervasive resemblances to satire, however unconscious those resemblances. The Hebrew prophets did not speak to entertain: they spoke to proclaim the judgment of the Lord. The basic similarity that prophecy has to satire is that both are criticism, both are judgment. […] Any biblical writing that ridicules is treading in the domain of satire.²⁰

It is therefore likely that the identification of Aretino with St. John the Baptist was not merely exaggerated praise; rather, it revealed the deep meaning behind Aretino’s self-fashioning. St. John the Baptist seems to provide an archetype for the figure of the prophet-satirist-satyr. It is possible that Dante was aware of such connotations, the literary efficacy of which he may have exploited in Canto XIX of the Inferno, where Dante fashions himself as both prophet and satirist in the famous episode of the breakage of the baptismal “vaso” in the church of St. John the Baptist in Florence. As scholars have observed, Dante also represents himself as a satyr here; the    

The medal is reproduced in Mazzuchelli (1763), fig. IV. Lettere scritte a Pietro Aretino, vol. II, 100 – 101. Aretino (2016b), 414. Jemielity (2007), 20.

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bolgia of the simoniaci is the “pozza liturgica della sua consacrazione a satiro”; and Dante portrays himself as a hybrid creature equipped with all the characteristics of a satyr.²¹

3 Aretino’s Salmi de la penitenza di David in Context Unlike the Old Testament prophets, St. John the Baptist was able to be at once prophet, satyr, and satirist; it is no wonder, then, that he serves as the archetypal figure for Aretino’s self-stylization as a prophet. Raymond Waddington, who has stressed the links between the satyr and the satirist in Aretino’s thought, has called attention to a letter sent by Aretino to Giustiniano Nelli in 1539, in which he highly praised Bernardino Ochino, the capuchin monk who famously converted to Protestantism and fled from Italy: Con che lucide, e con che vive catene, che gli lega insieme il vecchio e il nuovo testamento; servando sempre i lor sensi sacrosanti ne la dovuta religione, onde le torme de i popoli non altrimenti si trasferiscono a udirlo, che se egli fusse il Battista ne le solitudini.²²

The friar, who converted Aretino himself (the “conversione Aretina” is mentioned in the letter to Paul III. of 21 April, 1539)²³ is thus compared to St. John the Baptist in an attempt to extol his virtue as a preacher. St. John the Baptist was clearly a crucial influence in the construction of Aretino’s religiosity and his self-fashioning as a prophet and as the fifth evangelist. This calls to mind the much-debated question of his religiosity, and the extent to which it can be considered authentic. Raymond Waddington has argued that “his scripture-based, Christ-centred religion with its emphasis on justification by faith, and his affinities with a network of proto- and cryptoProtestant spirituali need greater recognition”²⁴. Aretino’s identification with David in his rewriting of the Psalms allows us to recognize precisely the features of Aretino’s religiosity pointed out by Waddington. Aretino’s identification with the figure of David has already been extensively and most convincingly studied by Élise Boillet. In fact, as Boillet has shown, “David est […] une figure clé chez l’Arétin. Dans ses œuvres bibliques, il est un personnage essentiel dans le traitement littéraire de la question du salut […]. Il est plus largement une autorité qui justifie le parcours du satiriste devenu prophète du Christ”²⁵. David and St. John the Baptist thus become the ideal masks for Aretino, as they allow him

 Cf. Camozzi Pistoja (2015), 36. On the role of this canto in Dante’s self-fashioning as a prophet, cf. Tavoni (1992).  Aretino (1998), 101 (n. 96).  Ibid., 106.  Waddington (2006), 291– 292.  Boillet (2014), 362.

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to overcome – in different ways – the chasm between his persona of satirist and that of prophet. In particular, David, the repented sinner granted salvation by the grace of God, becomes the ideal doppelgänger for the repented satirist aiming to become a religious writer. This is stressed in his previously mentioned letter to Paul III., in which Aretino affirms “esser più merito ne la emenda del peccato che ne la continenza del non peccare”. In the same letter Aretino, while pretending to repent of his satirical writings, once again emphasizes his prophetic role: “le chiegga perdono de la ingiuria fatta a la corte da la stoltizia de le scritture mie, benché tutto quello che io ne ho detto con la bocca e scritto con la penna, l’hanno ordinato i Cieli”.²⁶ Aretino’s self-stylization as prophet possibly reaches its peak in the Salmi de la penitenza di David. This work filled a gap in the editorial market: the paraphrase of a biblical text, presented in a narrative that takes the reader through the different stages of David’s conversion. It was a rather peculiar solution; in fact, after the Psalter’s first publication in 1476, many other editions followed that provided a vernacular version of the text, often accompanied by a commentary. In 1534, six months before Aretino’s Salmi was published, Antonio Brucioli published his translation and commentary on the Psalms (a translation without commentary had already appeared in 1531). The most widespread versions of the penitential Psalms pre-dating Brucioli’s edition were those by Girolamo Benivieni (1505) and Ludovico Pittorio (1524, a collection of sermons on the Psalms).²⁷ Significantly, both Benivieni and Pittorio belonged to the Savonarolian circles of, respectively, Florence and Ferrara. Aretino’s paraphrase of the Psalms was aimed at a wide readership “of cities and the Italian courts, combining a secular and ecclesiastical audience”.²⁸ The long-lasting success of the work, in Italy and Europe, confirms how successful Aretino was in selecting his readership.²⁹ The year 1534 was certainly a crucial one in Aretino’s career. On the one hand, in his Pronostico for the year he seemed to reinforce his reputation as the “Scourge of Princes”; on the other hand, in rewriting the Cortigiana (he wrote the first version in 1525) Aretino seemed to leave the world of the Roman court behind, in his first incarnation as Pasquino. At the same time, two religious works, the vernacular version of the Psalms and La Passione di Gesù, offered a new image of Aretino as a religious writer. There is in fact no gap between the former satirist and the new author of sacred prose since, as Élise Boillet has demonstrated, there are both stylistic and ideological continuities between the “pre-1534” Aretino and his devotional works.³⁰ One such example of ideological continuity is represented by the warnings issued against kings. In Boillet’s view, prophetism is given a pivotal role in the Salmi in comparison with the original texts because of the emphasis on David’s role as a prophet. Further    

Aretino (1998), 106. Boillet (2013). Boillet (2015), 229. On the European fortune of the work cf. Concolato (1993); Waddington (2006); Boillet (2014). Cf. Boillet (2007), especially the introduction.

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more, according to Boillet, Aretino identifies himself with David, both in a negative sense – they are both inclined to lust and pride – and in a positive one: Aretino, like David, is the “righteous one”, persecuted for telling the truth and for being the conscience of princes.³¹ At the same time, Aretino seems to project himself onto the figure of the prophet Nathan, who warns David and persuades him to repent at the beginning of the Sette salmi (“e spaventatolo con la pena che il Cielo apparecchiava a la sua colpa, sentissi il buon vecchio e da l’anima, e dal core, e da i sensi dileguare il desiderio, il fuoco e il piacere”).³² Here Aretino may have had Dante in mind again, since for him too, Nathan was a “prefigurazione di sé stesso e della propria non meno provvidenziale ‘missio’ di profeta”.³³

4 The Prophet and the Court In shaping his public image as a prophet, Aretino, the “fifth evangelist”, gradually began to leave behind the sharp lampooning and ad personam satire of his Roman years. He tried to convey his criticism to a broader audience, reflecting on the very nature of power. In doing so, he no longer needed to attack individual characters; instead he turned to the very institution that represented the power he aimed to chastise: the court itself. One can see the evolution of Aretino’s satire, from the Pronostico of 1534, still redolent of the Pasquinesque style of the 1520s, to the Ragionamento delle corti of 1538, which reflects on the court in general. His reflections on the court thus evolve alongside his religious works; in the Ragionamento delle corti all earthly courts are cast as inferior in comparison to the celestial court. The ideal court was also displaced in the Heavens in the Passione di Gesù, in a passage inserted soon after the speech of the penitent thief. The reign of Christ is described as opposed to the world of the court: In lui non han punto di ragione i sospettti del tradimento né le malignità dei tiranni. Ivi non si temano gli incendii né le ruine. Nella sua corte non sono inganni né invidie. Non vi è l’ambizione gonfiata sotto la porpora. Ivi la gola non è allettata dalle vivande fumanti ne i vasi d’oro. In cotal regno non si move la lascivia nello ozio delle piume. In cotal regno non si pregia l’adulazione. Lassù non si contrista alcuno pel favor perduto, né alcuno divine superbo per averlo racquistato.³⁴

This passage is echoed and partially rewritten by Aretino in the Salmi, in a section where David speaks about his body:

 Ibid., 277– 286.  Aretino (2016c), 453. “l’Arétin narrateur n’a pas donné la parole au prophète Natân. En fait, le narrateur devient la voix de la conscience des princes de son temps, comme Natân été celle du roi David” Boillet (2007), 285.  Sarolli (1970).  Aretino (2016d), 579 (my emphasis). The same passage also in Aretino (2016b), 417.

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Egli consentiva che per gli miei prieghi a mezzo il verno di uscir de le piume su ’l far del dì per confessarti le colpe sue con l’orazione, né prima aveva fuor de gli agi il piede, che si ritornava a covare il caldo temperato della sua pigrizia […] Veniva al prandio e a la cena, e nel vetargli io il vino e le vivande affisava in me quel guardo, che affisa l’infermo a chi gli ruba cosa che con danno de la salute sua gli aggrade. Strano e duro gli è parso il vedersi spogliar l’oro e la porpora, e di aspro e ruvido drappo rivestirsi.³⁵

David is thus represented as a corrupt courtier. Across his works, Aretino builds a thick intra-textual web of similes which connects similar passages using analogies and stark contrapositions. In the Passione, for example, in a passage shortly following his mention of the reign of Christ, Aretino describes Mary Magdalene at the foot of the Cross. Her hair is “molli del sangue sparso, parevano fila d’oro mal forbito velate di porpora”³⁶. There is a strong contrast between the gold and purple that mark the corruption and the wicked ambition of the court, and the gold and purple that characterize the repentant sinner. What is more, in the Umanità di Cristo of 1535, Aretino employs the same image to describe the Virgin shortly before the Annunciation: “Nel giunger suo [i. e., of the Angel], la Vergine, ritratta dal partir l’oro da la porpora, le cui fila tesseva per gli ornamenti de i sacerdoti, aveva occupato tutto lo intelletto ne gli occulti sensi de le profezie”.³⁷ The gold and purple symbolizing the wicked ambition of the courtiers are here transposed into a spiritual, positive key. It is no accident, then, that David’s first act in the Salmi is to throw away his crown and strip off his purple garment: “trattosi di testa e di dosso la corona e la porpora […] ricoperta la vergogna de le carni con un poco di panno ruvido”.³⁸ David then ruffles his hair and beard, “scompigliata la chioma e la barba”,³⁹ just as St. John the Baptist in the Umanità, has “la chioma inculta, con la barba orrida”.⁴⁰ *** Comparisons can be made not only within the corpus of Aretino’s sacred works, but also to (non-sacred) works of his that are superficially quite different. For example, the celestial court of the Passione finds an earthly equivalent in the city of Venice in the third act of the 1534 Cortigiana, where it is referred to as “la città santa et il Paradiso terrestre”. If in the celestial Court, “non si contrista alcuno pel favor perduto”, in Venice, “non è in arbitrio di niun favorito né di niuna favorita di assassinare i poverini” (Act III, scene vii).⁴¹ In the same scene, Aretino mentions the “coppe d’oro” presented to him by Antonio de Leyva, the imperial Governor of Milan, together with the “catene d’oro” donated by Francis I. While in the Passione the “vasi d’oro” hint at the

      

Aretino Aretino Aretino Aretino Ibid. Aretino Aretino

(2016c), 458 – 459 (my emphasis). (2016d), 582 and Aretino (2016b), 419. (2016b), 268. (2016c), 453. (2016b), 313. (2010), 284.

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vain and lavish display of courtly pomp, in the Cortigiana the “catene” and the “coppe d’oro” represent a gift from the King of France, and a testimony to the Emperor’s appreciation of Aretino. These generous gifts actually prevented Aretino from fleeing from Venice and joining his friend Alvise Gritti in Costantinople. Yet, the “coppe” in the Cortigiana are not entirely deprived of religious meaning. The illegitimate scion of the doge Andrea, Alvise Gritti – a Christian living in Costantinople – was perceived as a double renegade by both Venetians and Turks. Had Aretino joined him, he would probably have met with the same fate (Gritti eventually died fighting against the Hungarian army). Aretino, whose original plan was to dedicate the Salmi to Alvise Gritti himself, paid Leyva back by instead dedicating his Salmi to him – a work where the writer presents himself as “fervido predicatore de la vertù”.⁴²

5 The Sky is open. Or is it? It is tempting to question whether, and to what extent, other continuities exist between the Cortigiana and Aretino’s religious works. One particular passage in Act III, scene xii demands attention; it is a short dialogue between Aluigia and the guardian friar of Araceli; Aluigia: Siete sempre fitto ne gli orationi. Guardiano: Io non me ne for però troppo guasto, perché io non son di questi frettolosi circa l’andare in Paradiso, che se non ci andrò oggi, ci andrò domani egli è pur sì grande che ci capiremo tutti, Dio gratia. ⁴³

The friar of Araceli seems to make an unequivocal statement that everyone will end up in Paradise. He also affirms that “così l’anime del Paradiso non occupano luogo, sì come etiam le bugie non ingombrano punto. Et in somma in Paradiso capirebbono duo mondi”⁴⁴. So certain is he in his assumption, that he is not concerned with praying or other devotional practices. The passage ends with a “Dio gratia” which, if taken literally, could mean that salvation is granted by God’s grace. The passage was already present in the 1525 version. The dialogue between Aluigia and the friar is notably disconnected from the main plot of the play, which makes it difficult to assess (and because it is a rewriting of Act III, scene iii of Niccolò Machiavelli’s Mandragola). It contains evident criticism of the Church (softened, however, in com-

 Cf. Waddington (2011).  Aretino (2010), 294 (my emphasis). On the theology of the open sky cf. Seidel Menchi (1987), 143 – 167. Around 1555, in Pirano, a priest by the name of Aloise del Preto reassured one of his parishioners, who was troubled by not having attended the Sunday Mass, saying that “State sicuro che o ad una via o al’altra siamo tutti salvi” – a statement comparable to that of the friar of Araceli.  Aretino (2010), 295.

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parison with the 1525 version). In the first version, the sentence declaring the Heavens so large that everybody will be admitted is pronounced by Aluigia, and the reasoning behind it is comparatively shorter. Aretino seems to be trying, albeit ambiguously, to give a new, more serious, theological meaning to this scene. One might, at a pinch, believe that, by assigning the statement to an ambiguous figure such as the friar of Araceli, Aretino was being a Nicodemite. Although it may seem risky to make inferences based on short sentences in a play with as a complex plot as the Cortegiana, there are two further passages that seem coherent with Evangelical ideas. The first comes from Act V, scene xx and is pronounced by Aluigia who asks for “misericordia, e non giustizia”; the second is spoken by Rosso who begs for “perdono, e non penitentia”.⁴⁵ The two short passages revolve around the idea of mercy as something that exceeds both the merits of penitence and justice.⁴⁶ The idea of salvation conveyed by the statement about the “openness” of the sky should be compared with the depiction of Judgment Day in the Genesi (1538). Here Aretino is much less ambiguous and much more orthodox in stressing the distinction between those destined for salvation and those destined to perpetual damnation. At the beginning of the relevant sequence, emphasis is put on the infinite number of souls who will be resurrected on Judgment Day: “Non è spettacolo da comparazione quello del numero senza simiglianza de i resurgenti da morte […] si vedevano le geneologie de i parentadi di tutto il mondo […] non si può imaginare se non con l’occhio de l’interna considerazione la calca e la folta de le genti risuscitate e non morte”⁴⁷. Despite these initial similarities, however, the conclusion is very different from that of the Cortigiana: “Ma ecco da la bocca sacrosanta di Cristo sonare in lingua di Dio: ‘Venite a me, giusti, e andate a Satan, rei’”⁴⁸. Christopher Cairns has identified a watershed moment in 1538 between the first phase of Aretino’s religious writing, which he defines as “confessional”, and its second, “hagiographical” phase. The Salmi, the Passione and the Umanità were an attempt to “provide a popular counterpart to the learned discussions of the Justification by Faith and Works” and were “unorthodox, but orthodoxy was negotiable up to Ratisbon”. From 1538 on, Aretino “remained carefully on safe ground”.⁴⁹ *** One might wonder whether Aretino is mocking the friar and his theological statements in the Cortigiana. The idea that Heaven is so welcoming that everyone will be admitted seems, however, to resonate with analogous ideas expressed in the

 Aretino (2010), 331 and 334.  The two passages are recalled also in Gareffi (2004), 100. According to Gareffi, Aluigia and Rosso “chiedono insomma atti gratuiti, in cambio di niente al di fuori di un qualsiasi sistema di valori che non sia quello dei valori del comico”.  Aretino (2016), 142– 143.  Ibid., 145.  Cairns (1985), 122.

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Salmi, and could hardly have been misunderstood in the 1530s. In fact, the whole passage appears to allude to the so-called “broad way” to salvation. This Valdesian tenet of Italian Reformation became especially popular after the publication of the vernacular version of Erasmus’s Concio de immensa Dei misericordia, translated into Italian by the Carmelite friar Marsilio Andreasi and published in 1542 in Brescia by Ludovico Britannico under the title Trattato divoto et utilissimo della divina misericordia. ⁵⁰ As scholars have shown, Andreasi’s version was more of a rewriting than a translation proper.⁵¹ The presence of such theological issues in a comedy should not be surprising; Lucia Lazzerini has located such traces – together with other Lutheran themes – in the so-called poliglotta theatre that flourished in Venice in the 1540s and 1550s, particularly in Andrea Calmo’s Spagnolas (1549) and in Gigio Artemio Giancarli’s Zingana (1545) and Capraria (1544). According to Lazzerini, these plays reflect the spread in the Veneto of the theory of the cielo aperto, or the idea that Salvation is granted to everyone through the beneficio of Christ – in other words, his incarnation and death. As Andreasi’s treatise reads: Et tu, misero, per disperatione ti diparti dal Signore? Altre volte regnando fra le genti impunitamente il peccato, pareva che la Misericordia d’Iddio fosse ristretta ne gli angusti confine della Giudea. A’ nostri tempi, se è dilatata questa Misericordia per tutte le parti della terra.⁵²

The conclusion takes the form of a rhetorical question: “Ti è aperto il cielo, et tu ti dai al precipitio?”⁵³ Predictably, this theory gave rise to a series of conflicts among Venetian writers. Aretino was by no means excluded from these discussions. The Lutheran jeweller and poet Alessandro Caravia dedicated his work La verra antiga de Castellani, Canaruoli e Gnatti to Aretino in 1550, accompanying the dedication with the gift of a precious ring. As a sign of his gratitude, Aretino praised him highly in a letter, in which he compared him favourably to his rival Andrea Calmo (elliptically described as il tintore).⁵⁴ Caravia was in turn attacked in a sonnet by Calmo himself, who had already changed his view to a more orthodox position. In his comedy Il Travaglia (1546) he had in fact reversed his alleged ideas concerning the “openness” of Heaven, which was now deemed closed to anyone apart from Christians. All this testifies to the importance of comedy in the diffusion of heterodox ideas in Venice during the first half of the sixteenth century.⁵⁵

 On Andreasi cf. Seidel Menchi (1979).  Cf. Ibid., 158.  Andreasi (1542), 33r.  Ibid., 50r.  “E per che i romanzi de la vostra veniziana lingua in bulesco, vivacemente penetrano in chi gli legge e conosce, vi antepongo sono stato per dire a Belisario e a Girone, non che a Gian Polo e al Tintore”, Aretino (2001), 372.  “La puntigliosa precisazione del Travaglia, un testo che alla Zingana (composta appena un anno prima) è debitore sino a sfiorare il plagio, sull’esclusione dalla salvezza di ‘sarasì, mori, turchi, ebrei, maccometani’ non fa che confermare il sospetto che la poliglossia estrema del teatro veneto cinque-

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6 Rewriting the Psalms and the Religion of Aretino In reconstructing Aretino’s religious beliefs, scholarship has often analysed his circle (s), giving prominence to his Letters. I would suggest, however, that one should turn to his literary works for a clearer sense of his religious ideas. A preliminary warning: it is perhaps incorrect to place Aretino definitively in either the orthodox or the heterodox camp. Not only is it well known that, in the early 1530s, the boundary between orthodoxy and heterodoxy was rather ambiguous; in Aretino’s works, as Élise Boillet has shown, perfectly orthodox statements can coexist with more “suspicious” ones. In the following pages I would like to call attention to some passages in Aretino’s rewriting that seem close to reform ideas. I would like especially to examine the Salmi against the background of Italian Evangelism, suggesting a more nuanced position, or a third way of understanding the relation between salvation through faith and works. I shall begin by returning to the significance of purple garments or “porpora” and the association of the colour purple with sinfulness. The reference to purple, besides being an obvious anti-courtly stereotype, also has biblical connotations. In Isaiah I, 18, we read: “Si fuerint peccata vestra ut coccinum, quasi nic dealbabuntur; et, si fuerint rubra quasi vermiculus, velut lana erunt”. This passage was appropriated by the reformers, and can be found translated literally in Marsilio Andreasi’s Trattato utilissimo: “Se saranno (dice Esaia) i vostri peccati come la porpora, saranno fatti bianchi quasi a modo di neve, e se saranno rossi come il vermicello, diventaranno bianchi come lana”⁵⁶. These words hint at the radical wickedness of human nature which is, nevertheless, healed by God’s grace or by his mercy. As in Aretino, man is unable to perform good deeds after the fall of Adam. From this perspective, Psalm 143 (Domine, exaudi orationem meam), for example, seems crucial to both Aretino and Andreasi. For both of them, lust was the main sign of the corruption of human nature following the Fall; and in both cases, hypocrisy seems a direct consequence of the Fall (hence, perhaps, the stress on telling the truth): Appresso gli uomini, molti appaiono giusti, appresso Iddio niuno è giusto, ma tutte le giustizie nostre sono come il panno di una donna imbrattato dal mestruo. Paolo sentì la legge della carne repugnare alla legge della mente e gridò: ‘O infelice uomo, chi mi libererà del corpo di questa morte?’ […] Anche David profeta ha paura del giudizio d’Iddio, se prima non si sarà lavato nella sua molta misericordia, e dice: ‘Non entrerai in giudizio col tuo servo perché nessuno che vive si può giustificare nel tuo cospetto’.⁵⁷

centesco, dietro la maschera accattivante della commedia ridicolosa e del plurilinguismo da repertorio buffonesco, sia, almeno inizialmente, legata alla diffusione surrettizia delle idee protestanti”, Lazzerini (2005), 141.  Andreasi (1542), 40v.  Ibid., 19v-20r.

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While the last sentence faithfully translates Psalms 143, 2, the entire sequence can be fruitfully compared to Aretino’s rendition of the same Psalm. The idea of the conflict between the “law of the flesh” and the “law of the mind” is crucial to all of Aretino’s texts. What is more, the first sentence of the passage recalls – but inverts – the opening of Andreasi’s passage: Molti sono appresso di te giusti che appresso de’ giudizii del mondo sono tenuti rei; ma il contrario appare in me, perché da le genti sono stimato giusto, e nel conspetto tuo mi conosco sì pieno di peccati.⁵⁸

In his paraphrase of Psalm 143, Aretino seems to conform to the Reformers’ idea of the “’infermità congenita dell’uomo e della sua inettitudine al bene”⁵⁹, which, as the Beneficio di Cristo makes clear, is a consequence of Adam’s fall: Insomma questa nostra natura per lo peccato di Adamo tutta si corruppe e, sì come prima era superiore a tutte le creature, così divenne suggetta a tutte, serva del demonio, del peccato e della morte […]. Il iudicio del tutto si perdette, e cominciossi a dire il bene male e il male bene, stimandosi le cose false per vere e le vere false.⁶⁰

Analogously, Aretino expands 143, 5’s “memor fui dierum antiquorum”, inserting a long reference to the consequences of Adam’s fall: Io mi ricordai de i giorni antiqui, e ricordandomene pensai a la felicità ne la quale la larga bontade tua pose il nostro primo padre; e considerai ancora come per la trasgressione del tuo comandamento egli fu punito da te non solamente con la morte, ma col sudore, con la tema, col freddo, con la fame, con la vergogna e con tutte le altre passioni con cui nasce ogni uomo.⁶¹

It is only God’s mercy that saves man from the consequences of Adam’s fall, and it does so regardless of man’s merit (“la esaltazione che senza alcuno mio metro ho ricevuto”).⁶² It is therefore tempting to further explore Aretino’s paraphrase of Psalm 143 to see whether it can reveal more of the author’s ideas concerning sin, justice and grace. After a few lines, David claims: Signore, essaudisci la mia orazione […] non secondo la verità e la giustizia de le leggi, le quali condannano e puniscano […] ma secondo la verità e giustizia con cui è congiunta quella misericordia ch’è solo in te.⁶³

     

Aretino (2016c), 508. Seidel Menchi (1979), 591. Fontanini (1975), 215. Aretino (2016c), 510. Ibid., 496. Ibid., 508.

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And in Psalm 5, again, and more clearly: “la veritade predicate per bocca del Figliuolo tuo, il quale a la giustizia di prima aggiungerà la misericordia”⁶⁴. Similarly, in the Beneficio, the Law is a consequence of Adam’s fall, but is eventually replaced by God’s mercy: Avendo adunque il nostro Dio mandato quel gran profeta che ci avea promesso, che è l’unigenito suo Figlio, accioché esso ci liberi dalla maledizion della Legge, e riconcilii con lo nostro Dio, e faccia abile la nostra volontà alle buone opere, sanando il libero arbitrio, e ci restituisca a quella divina imagine, che perduta abbiamo per la colpa de’ nostri primi parenti.⁶⁵

The opposition between law and mercy represented by the Old and New Testaments is only apparent in Andreasi’s treatise, where the concept of misericordia occupies a central position: Ma ove sono questi più tosto franetici [sic] che heretici, i quali han volute porre dui Dei, l’uno del vecchio testamento tanto giusto che non poteva essere buono, l’altro del nuovo testamento così buono, che ha non potuto esser giusto?⁶⁶

The promise of universal forgiveness in the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New, when justice is overcome by infinite mercy, like a deluge that washes away our sins. Here I quote a short passage which bears certain clear similarities to some passages in Aretino’s work: In questo [the New Testament], un largo fonte di tutta la misericordia, anzi più tosto un mare, il quale inundantemente si è sparso in ogni natione di tutto il mondo, lavando colla sue copiosa e abondante acqua tutti i mali di ciascun mortale. Questo è veramente quel felice diluvio della divina misericordia.⁶⁷

This is a most delicate theological issue, and one that deserves special attention. Aretino first claims that if God were to judge us according to our sins, none of us would be saved (“saremmo tutti in perdizione”).⁶⁸ He then exhorts God to forget the world’s sins, and put aside his justice: Sì che oblia parte de le colpe nostre, e non le voler por tutte davanti il tribunale del tuo giustissimo giudizio, perché quelli che qui si tengon giusti, ne l’altra vita […] non saranno appresso di te giustificati.⁶⁹

     

Ibid., 499 – 500. Fontanini (1975), 218. Andreasi (1542), 37v. Ibid., 38r. Aretino (2016c), 509. Ibid.

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Beyond God’s justice, there is his grace. This is more powerful, and everyone is worthy of it: Largiscimi e fammi degno del dono de la tua grazia, de la quale da la tua bontà è fatto degno ciascuno che ti offerisce la semplicità e la innocenzia de l’anima sua per il mezzo del cor contrito.⁷⁰

God’s justice cooperates with his mercy, which in the end prevails; otherwise, there would be no difference between the just and the unjust “non essendo le opre pagate secondo il merito”.⁷¹ This last sentence does not seem to me to be a Pelagian statement (concerning the causal relationship between good works and salvation), but rather a reminder that without inner conversion and repentance, we cannot attain salvation.⁷² In this sense, it is true that, as Boillet points out, mercy is not entirely alternative to justice, but instead co-operates with it, becoming what she defines as “équité”.⁷³ Aretino’s text, however, appears to be in line with contemporary Erasmian and evangelical ideas concerning salvation, as the linguistic analysis of Aretino’s version of Psalm 143 also reveals. One cannot but notice the recurrence of terms such as “grazia” (thirteen times), “merito” (three times), “beneficio” (once). A further keyword that unmistakably hints at reform ideas is “disperazione” (recurring four times, sometimes in the infinitive form “disperare”). According to Andreasi, desperation was the worst of all sins; throughout his text, he admonishes his readers not to succumb to the temptation of desperation. Desperation regarding God’s mercy – in other words, the feeling that our sins are too grave to be forgiven – prevents men from accepting God’s grace. Indeed, all other sins stem from desperation: “Nondimeno se cosa può essere peggiore di tutto quello che è pessimo, questo tale è la disperatione, che è il principio e il fondamento di tutte le sceleraggini”;⁷⁴ and, again: “Il peccato più grave è la disperatione”.⁷⁵ Desperation differentiates David from Judas, who did not believe in Christ’s mercy (misericordia) and hanged himself, thus losing his soul, as Aretino writes in the Umanità: poi che stimo il mio fallo maggior de l’altrui misericordia, e da che io sono tanto degno di giustizia, quanto indegno di perdono, e perché io merito che moia l’anima e il corpo, è giusto che uno pata la pena del peccato ne lo Inferno, e l’altro nel mondo.⁷⁶

 Ibid.  Ibid.  Although “L’Arétin affirme donc de façon claire et appuyée l’idée de mérite attaché aux actions humaines”, Boillet (2007), 308.  Boillet (2007), 317: “l’Arétin utilise la notion d’équité pour décrire une miséricorde qui n’élimine pas la justice, mais qui la dépasse en l’englobant”.  Andreasi (1542), 5v.  Ibid., 30v.  Aretino (2016b), 401.

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7 King David from Court to Grace I have already discussed how, according to Boillet, Aretino the satirist and Aretino the religious writer go hand in hand in the Salmi. The subject of the court recurs throughout the text and is further expanded on in the conclusion, where David becomes the model of the ideal king, humble enough to repent and atone for his sins: Ma che secoli fortunati, che età felici, che tempi beati sarebbeno quelli di coloro che vivessero sotto le leggi di quei prencipi che, deposta giù l’alterezza de lo animo e la superbia de i regni, confessassero gli errori i quali commettono a danno de gli uomini e a disnor di Dio? Veramente le genti sarieno più beate che non sono misere, se coloro che le reggono, non dico che piangessero le disoneste crudeltà de gli omicidi e de gli adulteri con quel fervore di animo che fece David, ma s’eglino, come che se Iddio non fosse, o essendo non avesse potestà sopra la lor superbia, almeno non si gloriassero ne gli adulteri, e ne gli omicidi, e ne impietà che commettano con aperto dispregio di Colui che tardi o per tempo appaga ciascuno col premio o con la pena.⁷⁷

In Andreasi’s Trattato utilissimo, the story of David becomes exemplary of how God’s infinite mercy can erase even the greatest of sins. This theological argument draws largely on the Psalms, and long paragraphs are devoted to the explanation of the way in which grace intervenes in the course of human actions. At the same time, the treatise develops some anti-courtly cues. David tests the power of God’s mercy by committing the basest of sins. His concupiscence leads him to commit adultery and homicide, followed by a host of further sins. This was particularly unacceptable because of his position; as a king, he should have set an example of piety, hence, the conclusion that “gli Principi quanto più impunitamente peccano appo gli huomini, tanto più gravemente offendono Dio”.⁷⁸ God chose David to show his infinite mercy and to demonstrate that even the most just and praised among men can err. Kings and princes should not hide behind the example of the fallen king David, however, since in many other respects, he was adorned with extraordinary virtues; above all, in his desire to atone, he inflicted upon himself the harshest of punishments. For Andreasi, as for Aretino, David’s unparallelled will to repent seems lacking in contemporary rulers: Quanti Signori e principi sono che colli loro adulterii e homicidi sono adescati dall’esempio di David, né hanno risguardo ch’egli era ornato d’infinite altre egreggie virtù […] Egli adunque scoprendo il suo peccato, sprezzate le delicie regali, in luogo di porpora vestiva il cilitio, mangiava la cenere in iscambio di pane, lavava colle lagrime ogni notte il suo letto.⁷⁹

 Aretino (2016c), 516.  Andreasi (1542), 9r.  Ibid., 47v. The passage paraphrases Psalm 102, 10 and is rendered by Aretino as follows: “Perché io umilmente mangiava la cenere come ancora il pane, e mescolava il mio bere con le lagrime”, Aretino (2016c), 496.

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The second part of this passage recalls some passages from Aretino (compare the bed washed in tears with Aretino’s “e se mai corcherò queste membra nel letto, lo righerò […] con la pioggia de gli occhi miei”).⁸⁰ Most of all, the underlying idea that contemporary rulers should at least try to imitate David instead of committing “adulterii e homicidi” –the king’s own sins – is present in both Andreasi and Aretino. Precisely because of the immensity of his sin, David becomes the ideal example of God’s infinite mercy, and the most apt embodiment of how grace overcomes works: In questa guisa intervenne a David, il quale ingenuamente confessato il suo peccato, conoscendosi colpevole di vendetta, udite quanta speranza prese della Misericordia del Signore. Dice adunque: ‘Tu mi aspergerai, Signore, coll’hisopo e sarò mondato, tu mi laverai e diventerò più bianco della neve’. Non si promette David l’aspersione per le sue buone opere, ma bene per lo sparso sangue dell’immacolato agnello si crede di essere mondato. Et anchor che si conosca bruttato nelle sporcitie de’ peccati dal ventre della madre, nondimanco spera per mezzo di questo lavacro di ricevere il candore della innocenza, al quale cede anchor il candor della neve.⁸¹

For both Aretino and Andreasi-Erasmus, David represents not only the most significant example of God’s mercy, but also serves to expand the conversation of the injustice of courts and rulers.

8 From David to Savonarola The above-mentioned passages point, without doubt, in the direction of the contemporary discussions on salvation through grace, and on free will. I would argue that the Salmi were more than an attempt on Aretino’s part at positioning himself in the expanding market of devotional literature. In this sense, a well-known letter sent by Pier Paolo Vergerio to Aretino on 10 December 1540, seems unequivocal: La Paraphrasi vostra piace molto a Trento [Bernardo Cles, bishop of Trento], come io comprendo; a me è parsa eziandio cosa grave e divota. Questa è la via, Aretino, di riuscire al mondo, perché se tutti i favori vi avessero a mancare, Iesù Cristo, il quale solo precipuamente averete tolto a laudare e ringraziare con le fatiche vostre, troverà esso via di commodarvi e di onorarvi. In somma, a me pare che con questa profession abbiate legata la vostra vertù in puro Oro là dove prima ella era in ferro, e cotale Metallo disonorato.⁸²

The term ‘professione’ seems to allude to a declaration on the matter of religion – an unmistakable stance on faith. What is less clear is the source of Aretino’s statements. Sure enough, these were much-debated topics in the 1530s, but in 1534 neither the Beneficio di Cristo nor Andreasi’s Trattato had yet appeared in print. Erasmus’ De im-

 Aretino (2016c), 459.  Andreasi (1542), 48v-49r.  Lettere scritte a Pietro Aretino, vol. I, 174.

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mensa Dei misericordia dates from 1524, but there is no evidence that Aretino – who could not read Latin – had access to a vernacular manuscript version of it. It is true that it is possible to discern faint traces of a possible connection between Andreasi and Aretino. In 1552, Anton Francesco Doni – who at the time was still on good terms with Aretino – dedicated his Pistolotti Amorosi to Andreasi. The following year he published his Mondi and Inferni with Francesco Marcolini, the printer of the Salmi, the Passione, and many other works by Aretino. Doni dedicated the second of the Inferni to Aretino, and the fourth to Andreasi.⁸³ One should also bear in mind that Erasmus’s treatise had been published in 1526 by Giovanni Antonio Nicolini da Sabbio; it is not unlikely that Ludovico Dolce, who, according to Cairns, acted as a mediator of Erasmus’s Latin works for Aretino between 1527 and 1533, could also have provided a translation of the De immensa Dei misericordia. ⁸⁴ Finally, the dedicatee of the second vernacular translation of the work, published under the title Trattato della grandezza delle misericordie del Signore (Venice 1551) was the Benedictine Ippolito Ballarini da Novara, with whom Aretino exchanged letters.⁸⁵ We should, however, bear in mind that further to what Aretino could gather from his good friends Antonio Brucioli and Pietro Paolo Vergerio, oral discussions and sermon attendance would also have allowed him to get acquainted with the issues related to the Reformation. One must also consider contemporary devotional literature. Boillet has persuasively demonstrated the influence of some Savonarolian works – namely the Trattato dell’amor di Gesù Cristo (1492), possibly mediated through Pietro da Lucca’s Arte del ben pensare la Passione del nostro Signor Gesù Cristo (1525) – on Aretino’s Passione. ⁸⁶ If Aretino was familiar with Savonarola’s Trattato in 1534, he might also have had other works by the Ferrarese preacher to hand. This would account for the pervasiveness of the reflection on grace and predestination in the Salmi. Recently, Luigi Lazzerini has investigated at length the influence of some Savonarolian writings on the Beneficio di Cristo and, more generally, on the Italian Reformation. He focuses on two late works, both written in 1498, and both in the form of a commentary on a Psalm: one on the Psalm Miserere mei and one on In te Domine speravi. ⁸⁷ Boillet has stressed the prominent role of grace in both Savonarola and Benivieni’s commentaries to the Psalms, which, in turn, should be considered in the broader context of the reflection on misericordia in Italian devotional literature of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century.⁸⁸ In Psalm 7, 10 – 12 we find the following expressions: “mi voglia piover sopra de la tua grazia […] perché l’anima mia è a punto come una terra senza acqua avanti a te”; “spargimi, dico, sopra de la grazia tua”; “lascia cadere sopra di me l’acque de la

     

Cf. the dedication letters to Aretino and Andreasi in Doni (1994), 393 and 394– 395. Cairns (1985), 57– 62. Seidel Menchi (1987), 159 – 163. Cf. Boillet (2003). Cf. Lazzerini (2013). Boillet (2007), 234– 235 and Ginzburg-Prosperi (1975), 124– 128.

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tua grazia”; “piovermi sopra de la divina grazia tua”; “pur che la grazia […] abbondi sopra di me”.⁸⁹ Aretino builds on Psalm 143, 6 – 7: “Expandi manus meas ad te, / anima mea sicut terra sine aqua tibi. / Velociter exaudi me, Domine; / defecit spiritus meus”. The mannerist insistence on the scriptural image of “water” may derive from contemporary devotional literature. I have already pointed out how it is employed by Andreasi in his Trattato to symbolize God’s mercy; it is also fruitful to compare the treatment that this image receives in some of Savonarola’s writings. The sentence “lascia cadere l’acque de la tua grazia,” for example, bears a striking resemblance to a similar one from Savonarola’s Espositione sopra il salmo Miserere mei: Lavami, dico, Signore, con l’acqua delle tue grazie, con l’acqua della quale chi beve non ha più sete, ma farassi in lui una fonte d’acqua viva […]. Lavami con l’acqua delle mie lagrime, lavami con l’acqua delle tue Scritture.⁹⁰

The rhetorical structure of this passage (which comments on Psalm 51, 4: “Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea / et a peccato meo munda me”) is more similar to Aretino’s rewriting of 143, 6 – 7 than to his rewriting of 51, 4. In his Trattato dell’amore di Gesù Cristo Savonarola refers to the “acqua della grazia, dalla quale procede la carità”⁹¹. The “acqua della grazia” distinguishes those who are predestined for salvation from those who are bound to eternal death. One of the sermons on the Psalm Quam bonus Israel Deus (1493), number 8, states this clearly: “Et questi sono gli eletti pieni dell’acqua della grazia celeste”.⁹² As Savonarola writes: Non è adunque vero che per l’opere e meriti nostri preesistenti Iddio ci dia la gratia e che siamo predestinati ad vita eternale, quasi che l’opere e li meriti sieno causa della predestinatione, cum sit che sia tutto l’opposito! Perché l’opere e li meriti sono effetti della predestinatione, e la volontà divina è causa della predestinatione.⁹³

It is certainly intriguing that, following the example of St. Paul, Savonarola identifies the “eletti” as “vasi d’oro”: tutto ha fatto Iddio […] che alcuni siano connumerati in vasi di Gloria e d’honore e alcuni in vasi d’ira e di contumelia […] perché in questo mondo veggiamo […] che nelle cose de’ gran maestri non solo sono vasi d’oro et d’argento, ma etiandio vasi di legno e di terra.⁹⁴

The problem of grace is undoubtedly central to the Salmi, though Aretino seems to refuse the idea of predestination. Savonarola’s sermons on the Psalm Quam bonus,

     

Aretino (2016c), 511. Savonarola (1548), 4v. Savonarola (1976), 83. Savonarola (1544), 86v. Ibid., 77r. Ibid., 75r.

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in particular number 8, Della preparatione di se stesso, reflect on the problem of salvation through faith and works some forty-five years before the Beneficio di Cristo. It should be no surprise that they were published in Venice in 1544, a year after the Beneficio appeared, with a dedication by Antonio Brucioli. Moving away from the problem of grace, Savonarola and Aretino seem to share a pessimistic view on the nature of mankind. In his commentary on Psalm 38,8 Aretino comments on the text “Quoniam lumbi mei impleti sunt ardoribus” as follows: Ma perché i miei lombi sono ripieni di illusioni, perché la mia anima è circondata da la rimembranza che ella ha de la vanità de le vanitati in cui ella si è cotanto piaciuta, non è sanità nelle mie membra, e la vertù de i miei sentimenti è tutta rivolta nel suo contrario. Le mie mani, i miei occhi, le mie orecchie, la mia bocca, e il mio naso sono privi del loro debito senso. In somma, io sento corrotte tutte quelle vertù che Dio mi ha concesso come dono de la bontà sua.⁹⁵

A similar paragraph can be found in Savonarola’s commentary on the Psalm Miserere mei, following a line that translates Psalm 38,7, “Inclinatus sum et incurvatus nimis” (“Et però l’huomo concetto e nato in questo peccato è tutto obliquo e tutto curvo”): La carne ha concupiscentia contra el spirto; la ragione è debile. La volontà infirma. L’huomo fragile è simile alla vanità. I sensi gli mostrano una cosa per un’altra. La imaginatione l’inganna. L’ignorantia lo mena fuori della via. […] Perché io non so quel bene ch’io voglio, ma so quel male ch’io non voglio, perché io trovo un’altra legge nelle membra mia repugnante alla legge della mente mia e conducemi prigione nella legge de peccato.⁹⁶

It seems to me that these two passages bear close similarities: the reflection on vanitas; the frailty of reason; the war between the senses on the one hand, and between will and reason on the other; illusions and false perceptions; the deceit of the senses. Most of all, the passage from Savonarola focuses on the same contrast between the senses and the soul so central to Aretino’s Salmi. A comparison between Savonarola’s tracts and Brucioli’s learned commentary on the Psalms makes it clear that Aretino found the vibrant, prophetic words he was looking for in the Dominican’s writings as he wrote his own devotional works.

9 St. John the Baptist and the Debate on Grace It appears clear, then, that many of the most prevalent reform ideas of the day can be found in Aretino’s works. In particular, these ideas seem to be present in Psalm 7 – in many respects, the most theologically complex of the psalms.⁹⁷ Aretino’s approach to the debate on grace and good works is certainly complex and not uncontroversial;  Aretino (2016c), 473.  Savonarola (1548), 6v.  Psalm 7 is “le plus dense du point de vue doctrinale […] formant à lui tout seul comme une sorte de petit traité”, Boillet (2007), 316.

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some passages from the Salmi appear deeply influenced by the belief in salvation through grace. In Psalm 4, Aretino paraphrases Psalm 51 (Miserere mei, Deus). His version of Psalm 51,14 and 51,17 reads as follows: Redde mihi laetitiam salutaris tui | et spiritu promptissimo confirma me. Rendimi la letizia di salvarmi, la quale per opra del peccato io aveva perduta, ché, non me la rendendo tu per grazia, son più che sicuro di non la racquistar mai per merito.⁹⁸ Domine labia mea aperies | et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam. Signore, essendo io posto nel grado dove assidono i buoni, per bontà de la tua bontade, e non per merito de i miei meriti, et essendo di empio fatto giusto pur per grazia tua, tu istesso aprirai le labbra mie col tuo spirito.⁹⁹

Aretino’s additions unequivocally point to the question of salvation through grace, and seem all the more significant precisely because they are deliberate additions to the original text. In Psalm 6 Aretino rewrites Psalm 129,7 “Speret Israel in Domino” as “Nel Signore confidano gli eletti”,¹⁰⁰ a sentence that might appear at odds with the theology of the broad way to salvation, but which is in fact perfectly aligned with it, since in many Evangelical texts “eletti” has the broad meaning of those who are bound – but not pre-destined – to salvation.¹⁰¹ As Aretino writes in the Umanità: “il suo sangue era sparto per qualunche si sia”;¹⁰² or in the Salmi: “la misericordia de la redenzione ne debbe salvare tutti”¹⁰³. The connection between justice and mercy (giustizia and misericordia) is especially relevant to Aretino’s theological thought, and one that recurs relatively frequently in the Umanità. The concept of misericordia has been analysed by scholars in recent years; I find especially striking a hypothesis that passed rather unnoticed among Aretino scholars, formulated by Giovanna Sarti in her study on Titian’s St. John the Baptist for the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Venice, painted in the early 1540s.¹⁰⁴ Sarti notes the classical iconography adopted by Titian for St. John, who resembles a classical orator more than the emaciated prophet portrayed in visual and written sources until the 1530s, which conflated the iconography of the prophet and that of the preacher, following a season in which itinerant preachers and prophets had enjoyed considerable success at the end of the fifteenth century. Further to that, Sarti notes that the posture of the Baptist closely resembles that of Pilate-Aretino in Titian’s Ecce Homo. Sarti reconstructs the original position of Ti-

 Aretino (2016c), 487– 488 (my emphasis).  Ibid., 489 (my emphasis).  Ibid., 507.  As Ambrogio Catarino Politi readily pointed out in his Rimedio a la pestilente dottrina de frate Bernardino Ochino (1544): “Costor dicono: crede d’esser de li eletti, et sarai di quelli […] et questo è il gran beneficio di Christo che costor propongono”, quoted in Ginzburg-Prosperi (1975), p. 160.  Aretino (2016b), 420.  Aretino (2016c), 499.  Cf. Sarti (1999).

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tian’s painting in the Polani family chapel: his pointing finger would have been directed towards the major altar of the church. In doing so, Titian – who, in his painting, relegates Christ’s baptism to the background – stresses the role of the Baptist as the prophet of the new era, announcing the sacrifice of Christ. His finger, however, is not directed at the lamb, but at the altar; according to Sarti, Titian’s choice represents the opposition between the Law and the age of redemption following Christ’s sacrifice, renewed on the altar.¹⁰⁵ Furthermore, the Baptist is crying: through an analysis of coeval Italian devotional texts, Sarti recognizes the role of tears and crying as the first, necessary step towards salvation, meaning the self-consciousness of sin and of one’s inadequacy in front of the Law. As a matter of fact, Aretino’s David also begins his process of salvation by crying (“presa la cetera, la quale immollava tuttavia il pianto che distillava il core per bear l’anima”).¹⁰⁶ The motif of crying recurs in the Umanità di Cristo, in the episode of the conversion of Mary Magdalene, where Aretino expands on the original evangelical text: the episode takes a precise stance on issues such as sin, forgiveness, good works, conversion.¹⁰⁷ Titian thus represents St. John the Baptist as a crying penitent – much as Aretino represents himself in the opening lines of his Passione: “con gli occhi della mente piangeva i torti che io gli aveva fatti, e con quelli della fronte mirava le piaghe che egli per amarci si lasciò fare”.¹⁰⁸ In Sarti’s exegesis, St. John the Baptist is not only the penitent but also the one who announces “l’avvento di Cristo che si fa carico dei mali dell’umanità, con un atto supremo di misericordia”,¹⁰⁹ recalling a passage from the Umanità: Ecco lo Agnello d’Iddio, ecco Colui che, col preponere la sua misericordia al merito, toglie i peccati del mondo. Egli è l’uomo che io vi predissi che verrebbe dopo di me. Egli è il mio Creatore, e io sono sua creatura.¹¹⁰

Aretino was perhaps voicing common ideas; in his 1548 Sermone della natività del Signore, for example, the aforementioned Ippolito Ballarini wrote: Iohan Battista dice: ‘Ecco l’agnel d’Iddio, il quale lieva gli peccati del mondo’. […] Se li peccati sono tolti dal mondo non ci sono più, et non vi essendo più, per consequentia non c’è più né morte né inferno, le qual cose sono pene del peccato.¹¹¹

 Ibid., 23.  Aretino (2016c), 454.  As it has been pointed out, “L’episodio acquista un’estensione non giustificabile con la dipendenza dal dettato evangelico”, Di Monte/Mozzetti/Sarti (1992), 147.  Aretino (2016d), 519.  Sarti (1999), 28. On the concept of misericordia in Aretino and its Erasmian derivation, see also Di Monte/Mozzetti/Sarti (1992), 152– 153  Aretino (2016b), 316 (my emphasis).  Quoted in Seidel Menchi (1987), 161, my emphasis.

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As Sarti points out, the sentence concerning the misericordia is an addition to the original text, stressing the importance of mercy as compared with merito. The connection between a new law and God’s infinite mercy, which exceeds one’s merits, also recurs in the dialogue between the Baptist and Christ immediately preceding the previous passage: ‘Non è macula in te, mio Signore e Dio. Sì che monda me, che sono tutto immerso nel fango del mondo, con il liquore de la misericordia tua’. E Cristo a lui: ‘Spargimi l’acque sopra il capo […] e così si instituirà l’ordine de la nova religione’.¹¹²

The topic of the end of the era of sacrifice (the Baptist’s finger pointing not at the lamb, but at the altar) is also present in Umanità in the episode taken from Luke 2, 41– 50, of Jesus at the Temple, where Aretino makes another addition, in which he imagines that “gli animali, il cui sangue aveva a spargersi pure alora […] si dileguarono, dimostrando che non si conveniva più sacrificare tori né agni, ma cuori.”¹¹³ The same idea is repeated in the episode of Mary Magdalene’s conversion, where Martha warns her sister: “e se pur vuoi macerarti, fallo in modo che tu non ti occida, perché egli non richiede cotali vittime”.¹¹⁴ Mercy (misericordia) and merit may not be entirely co-extensive with grace and works, but certainly the boundaries between these two conceptual dyads are so blurred as to virtually coincide. One finds sentences like this: “ecco Giesù, che, mosso da quella misericordia sotto il cui lembo tessuto di grazia divina i nostri meriti scampano le croci de lo Inferno”, which suggest a certain degree of overlap between misericordia and grazia. ¹¹⁵ In general, however, I believe that Aretino emphasizes the role of God’s mercy and of grazia, as compared with that of our merits or works – although the value of those merits and works is never denied. Similar ideas are voiced in the Beneficio di Cristo, where one reads that “per la testimonianza che rende lo Spirito santo allo spirito loro, sanno che Dio gli ha chiamati et eletti, e ciò per sua mera misericordia, e non per li meriti loro”.¹¹⁶ Aretino’s reflection was perfectly in line with Italian Evangelism; after all, it was misericordia that served as the keyword of Erasmus’s treatise, and the central principle of Italian reformers. Aretino always denied being a Lutheran; as I have at-

 Aretino (2016b), 314. The connection between crying and mercy is further stressed in the episode of the good thief, in which Aretino comments: “La misericordia di Cristo è pur inestimabile […] poi che dopo mille offese […] con due lagrime che si sparghin con la tenerezza del core, e cadendo ginocchione dire: “Io ho peccato, io il confesso, io me ne pento”, non pur ti perdona, non pur ti restituisce la grazia sua, ma ti fa parte di quel suo regno nel qual non balena, non tuona, non fulmina e non piove” (416).  Aretino (2016b), 308.  Ibid., 355.  Ibid., 330. See also “la grazia de la misericordia sua”, Aretino (2016c), 499.  Fontanini (1975), 254.

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tempted to demonstrate, however, many of his ideas in the mid-1530s were consonant with the Evangelical tenets so prominent in the world around him. *** Titian’s St. John’s the Baptist portrays the saint as an orator whose gestures and stance suggest that he is both eloquent and simple in his speech – immediately comprehensible: in a word, in line with the precepts of simplicity and purity that informed both Reformers and the new devotional works. Aretino himself stressed the importance of purity and simplicity of style as a way of expressing the purity of Christ.¹¹⁷ In a painting clearly inspired to an extent by the principles of Evangelism, and focused around the idea of misericordia, Titian seems to draw on Aretino’s writing, establishing a visual correspondence between the Baptist and the Pilate-Aretino of the Ecce Homo. The rewriting of the Psalms and of the Gospels is thus an excellent means through which to unravel the little-analysed appellation of Aretino as the new Baptist, and to better understand his religious ideas during a highly controversial period in Italian religious debate.

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Fontanini, Benedetto, Trattato utilissimo del beneficio di Giesù Cristo crocifisso verso i cristiani, in: Ginzburg, Carlo-Prosperi, Adriano, Giochi di pazienza. Un seminario sul “Beneficio di Cristo”, Torino 1975, 213 – 269. Lettere scritte a Pietro Aretino, ed. Paolo Procaccioli, vol. I, Roma 2003. Lettere scritte a Pietro Aretino, ed. Paolo Procaccioli, vol. II, Roma 2004. Martelli, Niccolò, Il primo libro delle lettere (Firenze, Doni, 1546), ed. Barnaba Lucchesi (2009), 74; available online at: http://www.nuovorinascimento.org/cinquecento/martelli.pdf (accessed 01/08/2015) Nova vulgata bibliorum sacrorum editio sacrosanti Œecumenici Concilii Vaticani II ratione habita […], Città del Vaticano 2005. Savonarola, Girolamo, Prediche […] sopra il salmo Quam bonus Israel […], Vinegia, Bernardino de’ Bindoni, 1544. Savonarola, Girolamo, Espositione […] sopra il salmo Miserere mei Deus […], Venezia 1548. Savonarola, Girolamo, “Trattato dell’amore di Gesù Cristo”, in: Operette spirituali, ed. Mario Ferrara, vol. I, Roma 1976, 77 – 127.

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Lazzerini, Lucia, “Il teatro poliglotta veneto e la teologia del ‘cielo aperto’”, in: La maschera e l’altro, ed. Maria Grazia Profeti, Firenze 2005, 117 – 142. Lazzerini, Luigi, “Dal Miserere al Beneficio. Fonti savonaroliane della Riforma italiana”, in: Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 49 (2013), 63 – 132. Mazzuchelli, Giammaria, Vita di Pietro Aretino, 2nd ed., Brescia 1763. Novati, Francesco, “La parodia sacra nelle letterature moderne”, in: Studi critici e letterari, Torino 1889, 177 – 310. Procaccioli, Paolo, “Un cappello per il Divino. Note sul miraggio cardinalesco di Pietro Aretino”, in: Studi sul Rinascimento italiano. Italian Renaissance Studies. In memoria di Giovanni Aquilecchia, ed. Angelo Romano and Paolo Procaccioli, Manziana 2005, 189 – 226. Riga, Pietro Giulio, “Un episodio della fortuna dell’Aretino salmista: le parafrasi di Giovan Francesco Loredano”, in: La Bibbia in poesia. Volgarizzamenti dei Salmi e poesia religiosa in età moderna, ed. Rosanna Pettinelli, Pietro Petteruti Pellegrino, Roma 2015, 209 – 26. Sarolli, Gian Roberto, “Natan”, in: Enciclopedia Dantesca: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/natan_(Enciclopedia-Dantesca)/ (accessed 09/06/2016). Sarti, Maria Giovanna, “Muta praedicatio: il San Giovanni Battista di Tiziano”, in: Venezia Cinquecento 9 (1999), 5 – 35. Seidel Menchi, Silvana, “La circolazione clandestina di Erasmo in Italia. I casi di Antonio Brucioli e di Marsilio Andreasi”, in: Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 9 (1979), 573 – 601. Seidel Menchi, Silvana, “Il cielo aperto, ovvero l’infinita misericordia di Dio”, in: Erasmo in Italia 1520 – 1580, Torino 1987, 143 – 167. Steinberg, Leo, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, Chicago 1996. Tavoni, Mirko, “Effrazione battesimale tra i simoniaci (Inf. XIX 13 – 21)”, in: Rivista di Letteratura italiana 10 (1992), 457 – 512. Waddington, Raymond B., Aretino’s Satyr: Sexuality, Satire and Self-projection in Sixteenth-Century Literature and Art, Toronto 2004. Waddington, Raymond B., “Pietro Aretino religious writer”, in: Renaissance Studies 20 (2006), 277 – 292. Waddington, Raymond B., “Aretino, Titian and ‘La Humanità di Cristo’”, in: Forms of Faith in Sixteenth-Century Italy, ed. Abigail Brundin and Matthew Treherne, Aldershot 2009, 171 – 198. Waddington, Raymond B., “Go East: Pietro Aretino’s Flirtation with Constantinople”, in: Venezia Cinquecento 41 (2011), 61 – 85.

Élise Boillet (Tours)

Rewriting the Bible in Pietro Aretino’s Genesi (1538) This contribution will concentrate on Pietro Aretino’s Genesi (Genesis). It is amongst the works most neglected by Aretinian criticism and ignored by literary history, yet it does not represent a minor work, neither within the author’s literary corpus nor within the editorial panorama of 16th century biblical literature. As with Aretino’s earlier biblical paraphrases, the notion of rewriting is a fundamental interpretative key regarding its links to the Bible, to various ancient and modern literary texts as well as the author’s works themselves. Applied to the Genesi, such a notion, besides defining the specific outlines of the work, sheds light as much on the evolution of Aretino’s religious prose as on the editorial market for biblical literature in the 16th century. Aretino’s fourth biblical paraphrase appeared in 1538, three years after the first three books: La Passione di Gesù Cristo (The Passion of Jesus Christ), June 1534; I Sette salmi della penitenzia di David (The Seven Psalms of David’s Penitence), November 1534; and La Umanità di Cristo (The Humanity of Christ), May 1535. The collection formed by these works, published in less than a year, merits the special attention that I paid them in my monograph on Aretino and the Bible.¹ It is nonetheless obvious that the Genesi is in line with the previous biblical paraphrases, as made clear in 1551– 1552 by the author’s intended new edition of all his sacred works, with the first volume containing Genesi, Umanità, and Salmi ² and the second the Vite (Lives) of the Virgin Mary, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and Thomas Aquinas. ³ In a recent contribution I highlighted some of the links which connect the Genesi to previous paraphrases, in particular the inclusion of some figures of patriarchs and prophets to support the centrality of the figure of Christ and the exaltation of God’s infinite mercy.⁴ However previous to the monograph on Aretino and the Bible I had already examined the Genesi, in a contribution to a volume centred on the theme of dreams in literature.⁵ As the complete title of the work – Il genesi di M. Pietro Aretino con la visione di Noè ne la quale vede i misterii del Testamento Vecchio e del Nuovo, diviso in tre libri – emphasizes, the free invention of Noah’s vision is a powerful and defining point in the text. Here I would like to revisit the final quotation from this contribution, taken from a letter by Niccolò Martelli dated 1540 in  Boillet (2007a). While the first chapter contextualises the entire religious oeuvre throughout the author’s career and in the historical background of their creation, the following three chapters are dedicated to each one of the first three works. Paul Larivaille was the first to concentrate on this group of works in: Larivaille (1980), VI/1, 229 – 273, e Larivaille (1997), V.5, 205 – 210.  Aretino, Al beatissimo Giulio Terzo; Aretino, Opere religiose, I.  Aretino, A la somma bontà di Giulio III; Aretino, Opere religiose, II.  Cf. Boillet (2015).  Cf. Boillet (2003a). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-014

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which the Florentine man of letters praises the narrative and stylistic quality of the Genesi: Quella Bibbia ch’era una istoriata lunga e menata il can per l’aia un pezzo innanti che proferisse il senso, dipoi lo proferiva in un certo modo che altrui se ne faceva beffe, voi (la Dio mercè) l’aveti ridotta in breve e vere sentenzie con un modo di porgerle e di conficarle ne l’Anima altrui che non solamente par che le vostre parole abbino voci vive, e spirito di verità, ma par che ancora voi fussi in quel tempo, e quanto è lungo e odiosa quella, tanto il vostro Genesi diletta et è lodato e bello.⁶

Even if it is most certainly partial,⁷ this enthusiastic judgment is reflected in the editorial success of the work, comparable to that of the best-sellers the Umanità and the Salmi. While there were nine editions of the Umanità (including both those authorised and unauthorised by the writer) and nine of the Salmi before the 1551 re-edition, for the Genesi there were six,⁸ a comparable number given the shorter arc of time. Modern criticism’s judgment, declaring the work repetitive, long, and boring, does not echo the positive assessment given by Martelli, who was reassured by objective editorial success. The judgment expressed in 1948 by Giorgio Petrocchi, one of the first critics to have taken Aretino’s religious writing seriously,⁹ was corroborated substantially in 1995 by Mario Scotti during the important Italian-American conference dedicated to the author.¹⁰ In fact, when the Genesi was not ignored altogether or mentioned merely in parentheses,¹¹ it was deemed inferior to previous paraphrases. The Genesi is comparable to the Umanità in its reach and structure of three books, as well as for its literary undertaking, of which we will see different examples.¹² The first half of the first book takes us from the creation of the world to the flood, while the second half contains Noah’s vision, which consists of an historical compendium that runs from the life of Moses to the end of the world and the last judgment, also retracing briefly the life of Christ and the acts of the apostles. The sec-

 Lettere scritte a Pietro Aretino, II. 60, 72. Cf. Boillet (2003a), 189 – 190.  Member of the Accademia degli Umidi and then of the Accademia fiorentina, of which he became president, Niccolò Martelli admired Aretino so that in 1520 – 1521 he introduced him to Roman literary circles.  Venezia, Francesco Marcolini, 1538, with another release in 1539; s.l., s.t., 1539 (cc. 120); s.l., s.t., 1539 (cc. 112); Venezia, Alvise de Tortis, 1539; Venezia, s.t., 1541; Venezia, s.t., 1545 (cf. Aretino, Opere religiose, I, Nota ai testi).  “[…] son rari momenti (assieme con il Diluvio universale, la visione di Noè, e, all’inizio, il Paradiso Terrestre) che rompono la noiosa parafrasi del Genesi biblico” (Petrocchi [1948]).  “[…] salvo l’impennata di qualche capitolo e paragrafo, il libro del Genesi […] offr[e] di sé, nel suo insieme, l’immagine di una monotonia sbiadita “ (Scotti [1995], 139).  For example, Christopher Cairns’s fundamental book mentions the Genesi two times in parentheses (Cairns [1985], 109 and 122). The introductory sentence to the first of the two chapters discussing the religious works mentions all the works except the Genesi (ibid., 69).  Genesi’s title mentions a structure divided in three “books”, while the internal titles of the work in the various 16th century editions state “first part”, “second part”, “third part”.

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ond book takes up the thread of history related to the Old Testament, again beginning with the flood and continues to the life of Jacob, while the third book narrates the story of his son Joseph. Besides Noah’s vision, in the organization of the Biblical material Aretino accomplishes another smaller modification, altering the placement of the pre-flood patriarchs’ genealogy. While a similar genealogy appears after the episode of the flood in the Bible, in the Genesi it is placed before Esau’s genealogy in the concluding part of the third book, which adopts both a retrospective and prospective function. Leaving apart these two changes, Aretino also follows the order of the Biblical story in Noah’s vision. While loyalty to “evangelical simplicity” determined narrative choices in the Umanità distinct from Sannazaro’s and Vida’s (e. g. beginning in medias res, interweaving of recollections and predictions), the revisiting of religious history in its entirety in the Genesi accompanies variations which, without breaking away from the preceding arrangement, allows the author to emphasize the close tie between the history of the Old and the New Testaments.¹³ Following the suggestion offered by the 1551– 1552 edition, modern criticism deemed the Genesi the final and less successful effort of the first generation of biblical works, establishing the distinction between biblical works and hagiographic works on a politico-religious and aesthetic, as well as contentual, basis. Christopher Cairns, therefore, spoke of a “confessional phase” of adherence to new religious ideas of Erasmian origin, to which the biblical works (including the Genesi) belong. The latter are considered more inspired than those produced afterwards, in the less well-known “hagiographic phase”.¹⁴ Paul Larivaille declared, after the Passione, the increasingly mechanical exploitation of religious material for opportunistic means to be a trend already noticeable in the last part of the Salmi and in the Umanità, and a distinctive characteristic of the successive works.¹⁵ Drawing from these analyses, in the introduction to the recent critical edition of the Vite, Paolo Marini has indicated that the Vita di Maria should be recognized as holding “an objective pre-eminent position” within this group. He specifies: Anche a fronte di una maggiore estensione e di una superiore qualità letteraria del testo, la Vita di Maria si colloca di fatto in una posizione intermedia tra le due fasi, ultima delle opere sacre di argomento biblico e prima di quelle di materia agiografica.¹⁶

Now that the complete critical text of the religious works is available, the evolution of Aretino’s religious writings seems to me to be one of the principal matters to reconsider.¹⁷ It is a question of more comprehensively studying the evolution of both the

 Boillet (2003a), 174– 176.  Cairns (1985), 121– 122.  Larivaille (1997), 210 e 340.  Marini (2011), 11. Cf. also ibid., 56.  Cf. the conclusion of the Introduction to the critical edition of the biblical works, Boillet (2016), 70 – 72.

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biblical works and the entire body of religious writings, looking in any case to go beyond the simple idea of a progressive decline.¹⁸ From this point of view, it is possible to observe that, among the first three biblical works on one side and the last two hagiographic ones on the other,¹⁹ the Genesi can be placed in the “intermediary position” which Paolo Marini discusses regarding the Vita di Maria appeared a year later. Indeed, while the Genesi anticipates characteristics of subsequent works, especially in describing the holy life of the patriarchs and their families (of which we will see some examples), the Vita di Maria relates to the recent Genesi, valorising its content and form, as illustrated in a particular way by two passages which we will discuss now. The first passage concerns Mary’s youth, spent in the temple in Jerusalem with other virgins of noble ascendency. Aretino describes their life as that of a monastic community, emphasizing the familiarity with the Holy Scriptures and imagining that Mary read and interpreted the Bible for her companions. It in fact refers to the: […] interpretazioni che per lei si davano agli scritti sacri de la gran Biblia, i sensi de la quale sono tanto occulti quanto divini e tanto profondi quanto fedeli. Che veraci esposizioni erano quelle che facilitava lo intelletto del suo spirito agli ascoltanti le cose notate dal dito del Signore!²⁰

Further on, Aretino speaks of the maidens who listen to the Virgin Mary’s lessons: Così, in processo degli anni che stettero ivi, con gli occhi del core viddero, mercé di Maria, tutte le bellezze degli spiriti e dei sensi, da le cui virtù è sostenuto il corpo mirabilissimo e le membra altissime del Genesi, de l’Esodo, del Levitivo, dei Numeri, del Deuteronomio, di Iosuè, dei Iudici, dei Re, del Paralipomenon, di Neemia, di Tobia, di Iudit, di Ester, di Iob, del Salmista, dei Proverbi, de la Cantica, de la Sapienza, de lo Ecclesiastico, d’Isaia, di Gieremia, di Baruc, di Ezechiel, di Daniel, di Osea, di Ioel, di Amos, di Naum, di Abacuc, di Sofonia, di Aggeo, di Zaccaria e altri tutti.²¹

The passage emphasizes two dimensions of the use of the sacred texts which are central to the biblical works: the hearing of the text being read and explained orally, and the seeing of the things heard “with the heart’s eyes” or “with the mind’s eyes”.²² These modes of accessing the biblical text establish not only the author’s vision

 Regarding the evolution from biblical works to hagiographical works, Paolo Marini has underlined the importance of the latter on the historical-literary level in that they represent “il compimento di un percorso stilistico” (Marini [2011], 10).  Rearranged in a modern edition edited by Flavia Santin (Aretino, Le vite dei santi), the two Vite were the object of an intervention by Paolo Fasoli in the acts of the same conference in which Mario Scotti’s above-mentioned contribution may be read (Fasoli [1995]). Because they are tied to Alfonso d’Avalos’ direct order, they form a “dittico agiografico” (Marini [2011], 61).  Aretino, Vita di Maria, in: Ibid., Opere religiose, II, 130.  Ibid., 130 – 131.  The two expressions recur in the religious works, often in opposition to “gli occhi della fronte”.

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with which the Passione di Gesù is opened, legitimizing its story,²³ but also Noah’s vision that in the Genesi assumes the status of a personality, commenting on the sacred history which Noah witnesses unfolding with his own eyes as though he were present.²⁴ The same Aretinian style in the biblical works aims to tell the religious history and to make the readers see it, imitating both preaching²⁵ and the figurative arts.²⁶ The narration concentrates on the actions, gestures, and words of the characters, leaving the reconstruction of scenes and environments to a small number of great frescoes.²⁷ In the Genesi, the expansion of the discourse, already noticeable in the Umanità, is heightened markedly, anticipating a section of the hagiographies.²⁸ Later we will return to the list of biblical books mentioned in the passage above, when it is time to compare the Genesi’s prose and contemporary biblical translations. The second passage from the Vita di Maria is taken from the second book, and concerns the episode of twelve-year-old Christ amongst the doctors of the temple of Jerusalem. Aretino, who had proclaimed himself the “fifth evangelist” in the parodical sphere of the astrological predictions,²⁹ paraphrased and in part invented the words spoken by God, the angels, and Jesus himself in the Passione and the Umanità, in this emulating Sannazaro and Vida.³⁰ In Umanità, however, he moderated his prophetic passion through the introduction of qualifying terms such as “disse simili parole” or “forse disse queste parole”.³¹ Yet in the extract from the Vita di Maria that we will consider now, the religious writer proves himself to be particularly audacious, in that it is no longer Aretino taking the liberty of making Jesus speak, but Jesus himself who quotes Aretino. In fact, Jesus’ long response to the doctors, who ask him “dove stava Iddio quando non era la macchina elementale”, takes almost word for word the grandiose opening of the Genesi, that describes the divine presence before creation, adapting the final phrase which begins to discuss the first things created: […] E sí come lo in-un-tratto che fa comparire un lume, cacciando le tenebre, discopre le forme che ci asconde il buio de la notte, cosí lo in-uno-istante, tosto che ne la potenza di Dio venne la volontà di creare ciò che c’è di creato, fece apparire il fermamento in mezzo a l’acque, le quali si congregarono nel luogo stabilitogli da lui, che le chiamò mare e l’arrida terra.³²

 Cf. Boillet (2007a), 133 – 138.  Cf. Boillet (2003a), 178 – 184.  Cf. Boillet (2007a), 138 – 141.  Cf. Kammerer (2004); Boillet (2007a), 209 – 211, 506 – 507; Boillet (2003b); Marini (2011), 11.  For Passione, cf. Boillet (2007a), 180 – 223, for the Umanità, ibid., 474– 526.  Cf. Boillet (2007a), 395, 397– 398, and Marini (2011), 58, 60 – 61, 66.  Cf. Boillet (2005).  For example in the initial episode of the mission entrusted to the angel Gabriel by God, in which Aretino emulates both Sannazaro and Folengo (cf. Boillet [2007a], 487– 501).  Cf. Boillet (2007a), 382– 383.  Aretino, Il Genesi, in: Ibid., Opere religiose, I, 94.

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[…] E sí come lo in-un-tratto che fa comparire un lume, cacciando le tenebre, discopre le forme che ci asconde il buio de la notte, cosí lo in-uno-istante, tosto che ne la potestà di Dio ne venne la volontà, creò ciò che c’è di creato.³³

The “true interpretations” capable of “facilitating” an understanding of the Bible attributed to the Virgin in the first passage are thus demonstrated concretely in this second passage. Such audacity on the author’s part is at the level of that shown by Martelli, who does not hesitate to declare the Bible boring, because it is long and incomprehensible, and the Genesi enjoyable, because it is clear and beautiful. This intertextual dimension of Aretino’s production is a fundamental aspect of his religious prose, Abraham’s sacrifice being another example which we shall see. It seems to me that another important line of enquiry, now that the complete critical text of the religious works is available, is the place occupied by this group of writings in the religious literature of that era, considering both specific texts and the types of works then in circulation. Regarding the Genesi, within the limits of the essay dedicated to Noah’s vision, I identified precise intertextual links with literary works³⁴ as well as the clear influence of a type of devotional text.³⁵ Now we will see that the comparison to the panorama of biblical books fully reveals the essential trait of Aretino’s biblical rewriting, that is, of referring to different genres in order to offer the reader a polyvalent text which is needed to represent the biblical history explicitly, to see and hear it, to contemplate it spiritually, to take the prayers from it, to understand the doctrinal implications and to extract the moral ‘fruit’, all at once. Such a comparison was facilitated by a parallel study conducted by Erminia Ardissino in close collaboration with me, in view of the publication Repertorio della letteratura biblica a stampa in italiano (1463?-1650). ³⁶ This census allows the various genres of books on the subject of the biblical Genesis to be traced: translations, commentaries, anthological books, historical compendiums, and mystery plays. In the 1530’s, Italian translations of the Bible which include the book of Genesis are numerous.³⁷ In 1532, Brucioli, a friend of Aretino’s in Venice, published a new translation in Italian which he declared was produced from the Hebrew source,

 Aretino, Vita di Maria, in: Ibid., Opere religiose, II, 227– 228.  With Dante’s Paradiso (Boillet [2003a], 178), Petrarch’s Trionfo dell’eternità (ibid., 188 – 189), Sannazaro’s De Partu Virginis (ibid., 174– 175).  With the literature of meditation (ibid., 183 – 184).  This catalogue will appear at Brepols Publishers in the series ‘Études Renaissantes’. It was thought in connection with the project ‘The laity and the Bible. Religious reading in early modern Europe’, carried out at the CESR of Tours in 2015 with the support of Le Studium – Institute for Advanced Research.  On Brucioli, Folengo and Aretino’s activity during this crucial decade for Italian biblical culture, cf. Boillet (2007b).

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while Malerbi’s translation based on the Vulgate was reprinted.³⁸ In April 1538, some months before the publication of the Genesi,³⁹ a new translation by the Dominican Santi Marmochino, also presented as being based on the Hebrew source⁴⁰, appeared; although it competed with layman Brucioli’s version, this does not mean it represents an official orthodox response.⁴¹ Beginning with the list of biblical books provided in the first passage of the Vita di Maria cited above, note that Aretino carefully follows the order of the books in the Vulgate, reproduced by Malerbi and Marmochino, without echoing the sequence retained in Brucioli’s translation.⁴² In particular, he restores the order Tobias-JudithEsther-Job. Note that Aretino does not allude to the division of the Old Testament into legislative, historical, sapiential and prophetic books, very evident in the tables preceding Brucioli’s and Marmochino’s translations.⁴³ It can be seen, moreover, that he omits certain books, ending his list with the expression “e altri tutti”. It seems that these omissions serve more than anything to lighten an already lengthy list, which is meant to be an illustration of the number of biblical books rather than an exhaustive chart. Among the omitted books, only the two books of Ruth and the first one of Ezra are also absent in the Genesi and Aretino’s other religious works. The book of the Maccabees is instead mentioned in Noah’s vision, at the moment the series of prophets who announce the arrival of the Messiah are introduced. Among these, the figures of Jonah, Micah and Malachi are also brought back.⁴⁴ Obadiah is mentioned in two passages of the Umanità ⁴⁵ and in the Vita di Tommaso, ⁴⁶ which also provide the list

 Brucioli, La Biblia; Malerbi, Biblia vulgare. For Brucioli’s 1532 Bible, see Barbieri (1992), 246– 250, and for Malerbi’s from the same year, ibid., 251– 252. Malerbi’s translation was reprinted, besides in 1532, another two times in 1535 (cf. ibid., 253 – 256). The edition which we have been able to consult is the one which was printed in Venice by Elisabetta Rusconi in 1525.  Cf. here below the text with notes 78 – 81.  Marmochino, La Bibia.  Cf. Saracco (2008).  In Brucioli’s Bible, the order indicated in the table is different from that followed in the text, where the deuterocanonical books (Baruch, Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Maccabees I and II) are regrouped at the end. On Aretino’s use of Brucioli’s translation and the relationship between their biblical writings, cf. Boillet (2007a), 321– 322, and Boillet (2007b), 163 – 175.  With differences between the two translators in the distribution of individual books in the four categories.  “[…] trascorrendo con la vista tutte le battaglie de i Macabei, assegnate con gloria del gran Giuda, affissò l’attenzione de le orecchie alle voci e gridi de i Profeti, lo antivedere de i quali annunziavano la venuta del Messia” (Aretino, Il Genesi, in: Ibid., Opere religiose, I, 128). The names Job, Isaiah, Jonas, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Sophonias, Haggai, Zechariah, Daniel, Hosea, Ezekiel, Joel, Baruch and Malachi are then mentioned. Seven are accompanied by a prophetic quotation.  “Et esposti tutti i detti di Iesaia, di Ieremia, di Ezechiel, di Daniel, di Osea, di Ioel, di Amos, di Abdias, di Iona, di Micheas, di Naum, di Abacuc, di Zefonia, di Aggeo, di Zaccaria e di Malachia, e dimostrate tutte le vie di Adam, di Enoc, di Noè, di Abraam, di Isac, di Iacob, di Iosef, di Moisè, di Aron, di Iosuè e di David, cominciò a dire sí come era venuto il Figliuol d’Iddio e il vero Messia cantato da tante voci e da tante carte” (Aretino, L’Umanità di Cristo, in: Ibid., Opere religiose, I, 306).

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of prophets announcing the Son of God’s coming. So from the Umanità, where twelve-year-old Jesus makes a review of the prophets amongst the doctors of the temple of Jerusalem, to the Genesi, where Noah’s vision allows him to hear the prophets’ words before he witnesses the Messiah’s arrival, to the Vita di Maria, where the Virgin teaches the mysteries of the Bible in the same temple where her son will later teach, and to the Vita di Tommaso, where the Dominican preaches from the pulpit of the basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome in the Pope’s presence, the list of prophets is reintroduced by the central character in each of these works. The list in the Vita di Maria, which must illustrate the Bible’s structure, maintains the biblical sequence, while the other three, which compare the names of the prophets to the prophecy of the Messiah, offer alternative arrangements. The recurrence of the list of prophets responds in this way to a literary principle of variatio that accompanies the continual valorisation of the theme of reading and meditating on the Bible. Now let us compare the text of the Genesi with the biblical translations in the vernacular, choosing as a first example the initial episode from the creation of the world. In the biblical text, after the creation of the plants on the fourth day, the creation of the animals on the fifth and the sixth days on several occasions evokes, using the same words, the variety of species created in the sky, on land, and in the sea. Malerbi alternates “specie” and “generazione”, while Brucioli and Marmochino consistently use “specie”. Malerbi employs the terms “reptile” and “volatile” and the expression “uccelli del cielo”, while Brucioli uses “serpibile” and “volatile”, retained in “volatile del cielo”, and Marmochino uses “serpeggiante”, “volatile”, and “uccello del cielo”. Aretino distinguishes between “generazione”, which appears one time relating to the vegetable world, and “specie”, which also appears once relating to the world of animals. He uses “pesce” and “uccello”, but as metaphors, in order to later denote the various animal species through an assemblage which allows him to go into detail about their physical characteristics: Il veloce del pesce, il presto de l’uccello e il ratto del pensiero è tardo a comparazione de la subitezza con cui Iddio creò, insieme con l’altre maraviglie, il sole, la luna e le stelle, dandogli splendore, vivacità, moto e fermezza, per ciò che a quello che esso delibera non si attraversa distanzia, né s’interpone impaccio; e il medesimo punto che vidde le dette opere scorse anco, sopra la terra, sotto il cielo e nel seno de l’acque, ogni spezie di animale ricoperto da corteccia, da cuoio, da setole, da pelle, da guscio, da squame, da velli, da piume, da penne, da pelo e da spini; e conoscendogli ottimi, il Verbo suo, tutto virtú, tutto potenza e tutto perfezzione, benedicendogli diede loro non solo il modo di moltiplicare e di crescere, ma la maniera di volare, di correre e di notare.⁴⁷

 “[…] non accade circa lo avvenimento de lo Unigenito di Dio allegare ciò che ne sentì, ne esclamò, ne previde, ne affermò, ne disse, ne conchiuse e ne annunziò Osea, Ioel, Amos, Isaia e Michea, Iona e Abdia, Naum e Abacuc, Ieremia e Sofonia, Daniello et Ezechiele, Aggeo, Malachia, Zacaria et Esdra con tutti gli altri uomini santi e con la schiera di tutte le veraci sibille, avenga che la somma de le lor profezie ci sono più note che il sole” (Aretino, Vita di san Tommaso, in: Ibid., Opere religiose, II, 580).  Aretino, Il Genesi, in: Ibid., Opere religiose, I, 94.

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The idea of the variety of the animal species is in fact associated with the key idea of Aretino’s tale of creation (and, in parallel, of the end of the world, which describes the annihilation of everything): the immediacy of the creative act, already present as it is seen in the opening to Genesi. The same idea further determines the use of another assemblage that condenses the passing of seven days with originality, which in the biblical story instead signals the successive stages of the creation: Avendo la Maestà superna dato perfezzione ad ogni sua opera, e fatto il tempo e il numero, onde l’ordine di primo, di secondo, di terzo, di quarto, di quinto, di sesto e di settimo avevano somma nel trapassare di sette mattine, di sette sere, di cotanti giorni e di altretante notti, […].⁴⁸

This phrase, where the creation of time appears as that which integrates all the other creations, serves as a transition from the paraphrase of the first and second chapters of Genesis, the beginning of which states that God rested on the seventh day. The biblical reference to four categories of animals (“[g]li animali che vanno serpendo, con tutti quegli che sono mossi dal corso, dal volo e dal noto”, deriving from Gen 1, 25) will be recycled later in another transition phrase between the story of the creation of the world and of man, and the description of earthly paradise (which begins in Gen 2, 8).⁴⁹ In other passages from the Genesi, the amplification and literary reworking of the biblical style are considerably more cautious and simple, but not any less important for this. Thus, the interpretation of the dialogue in which Abraham asks God to spare the city of Sodom, introduces, beyond the specific pardon that may or may not be granted to Sodom, the more general theme of man’s salvation along the lines of what is shown in the Salmi and the Umanità. The verb “salvare”, not found in Malerbi, Brucioli, or Marmochino is effectively repeated three times, while the notions of “mercy” and “grace” derive from biblical “forgiveness”. Furthermore, exploiting the syntagma “per amore di”, which in Malerbi alone qualifies the possibility of divine forgiveness “per amore dei giusti” (“propter iustos”) three times, Aretino establishes a link between the patriarch and God. The former is moved by his love for his neighbour, the latter will be moved to pity towards the entire city if he will find just ten righteous people. The beginning of the passage, also, with the metaphor of God’s justice that “non volendo piú sofferire il fetore del peccato di sí empia generazione, alzava già il braccio per punire le colpe de gli iniqui”⁵⁰, specularly foretells Abraham’s sacrifice, stopped in the act of raising his arm to kill his son. This episode shows clearly how the rewriting suggests a religious interpretation of the biblical text in the literary reworking. The translation in itself may contain an interpretation (as the expression “per amore di” in Malerbi demonstrates), but not in the way the commentary and paraphrase develop. In the Genesi, the essential themes

 Ibid.  Ibid., 96.  Ibid., 158.

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of the doctrinal interpretation are, besides the mystery of the Redemption illustrated in Noah’s vision, those of the Trinity seen in the episode of the creation of man and that of the three men sent by God to announce Isaac’s conception to Abraham. The figural interpretation applies only to Isaac, demanded by God as a sacrifice, and to Joseph, who is sold by his brothers, both presented as Christ-figures. The most frequent interpretation is actually moral. It principally concerns family ethics and in particular sexual ethics, to which we will return further on. The commentaries on the Genesi printed in Italian, those of Brucioli and Pico della Mirandola, are subsequent to Aretino’s Genesi and are different both in terms of the formal separation between translation and commentary and the latter’s content, for the fact that the text’s declaration is not subordinated to the historical narration.⁵¹ Rather, in Aretino’s rendering, the ambition to restore the biblical letter and to explain it are united in the voice of a narrator who lends the sacred history its continuity. Even if the Genesi seeks to be a literary text to substitute the entire Bible (recall the full title of the book), the narrative criterion determines a selection of biblical material to include (the majority of the narrative material) or to exclude (most of the legislative material), to be narrated protractedly or to be summarized in Noah’s vision. From this point of view, the Genesi should be compared, besides the translations and commentaries, to the books which are presented as collections of biblical material. Besides complete biblical translations, Brucioli published anthological versions: for the New Testament, the Epistole e vangeli printed in 1533 and 1538; for the Bible, the Compendio di tutte l’orationi de’ santi Padri printed in 1534 and 1538, which in reality consists of the free reworking of a book by Otto Brunfels.⁵² Also in the absence of specific intertextual links (to be ascertained through a textual comparison still to be carried out), this publication should nonetheless be highlighted, given that Aretino’s religious works gather the biblical prayers and valorises them along with the theme of prayer itself.⁵³ Moreover one can see that the 1541 re-edition of Brucioli’s Bible includes a brief final text titled Somma di tutta la sacra scrittura, first appearing in Robert Estienne’s and Lefèvre d’Étaples’ Latin and French Bibles, and then later reclaimed in other Italian Bibles, including those of Malerbi.⁵⁴ The text, only two pages long, is not narrative in nature, but rather consists of theological interpretation – consistent with protestant texts – of the Old and New Testaments and their connection.

 Brucioli’s commentary on the Old Testament (I sacrosanti libri del Vecchio Testamento) was published in 1540 and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s on Genesis (Le sette sposizioni) in 1555. Pico’s commentary divides it into seven philosophical-theological “trattati” (“treatises”) corresponding to the seven days of creation.  Otto Brunfels’ Le Precationes biblicae was published in Strasbourg in 1528, then translated in French in 1529, edited in Latin in 1531 and translated again in French together with texts by Luther in 1533 (cf. Higman [1998], 193).  On the rendering of the Pater, cf. Boillet (2007a), 457– 461.  Cf. Barbieri (1992), I, 123 – 125.

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A preceding text, both theological and narrative in character and much longer, was Fioretto o Fiore della Bibbia. It was readily accessible and a great success, published in many editions before the 1530’s.⁵⁵ This book presents an outline of the sacred history along with a summary of Christian theology founded on the Bible. Based on the biblical narration of creation, the first twenty-three chapters deal with the divine, angelic, and human natures, with the divine act of creation, and the origin of evil. The successive chapters narrate the biblical story, focusing on the figures of Adam, Cain, Noah, and Abraham, and later on those of Moses, Samuel, and David, while among these two series, only one chapter is dedicated to Isaac, two to Jacob, and one to Joseph. Following a selection of stories which talk about Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, the Romans, Daniel, and Julius Caesar, it reaches Mary and Jesus. Thus, the work integrates, besides many apocryphal elements and in particular those relating to the life of Adam and Eve and Jesus’ childhood, stories taken from the history of the world, including Italian history, with the origins of Tuscany and Italy. The Genesi distinguishes itself from this text by offering a continuous narrative which adheres substantially to biblical history and plays on the literary magnification of the biblical dictum as a means of illustration and explanation. Beginning in the thirties, the success of the Fiore della Bibbia was supplanted by new compendiums of a different sort. In 1535 the vernacular version of a Latin text from the beginning of the 16th century appeared, the Croniche del mondo by Augustinian Giacomo Filippo Foresti, which was reprinted until 1581.⁵⁶ The Croniche relate the history of the world beginning with creation and trace it to contemporary times, that is, the year 1535 for the first edition. For this reason, and because it is a work of historical scholarship, the sources are varied: biblical and extra-canonical, religious and profane. The author comments on the first line of Genesis, “Nel principio Dio creò i cieli e la terra”, going back to the third chapter of book XI of Augustine’s Città di Dio where it describes the visible world created by invisible God. After the description of the creation of the world and of man, in a section titled “Del Diavolo nota”, the author illustrates a discussion on hell citing sixteen verses from book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid, before describing earthly paradise with its five rivers and the island of Meroe, mentioning the ‟femine che hanno le tette grande” of Juvenal’s thirteenth Satire. ⁵⁷ The description of the earth, a summary of geographical knowledge, is further divided into sections titled “La distintione della terra”, “Misura di tutta la terra”, ‟Qui scrivonsi i nomi del mare” and “L’isole più famose & note qui per alphabeto se

 Fioretto della Bibbia hystoriato, printed in 1515, 1517 e 1519, was reprinted in 1523, then in 1543, 1551 and 1552. There weren’t any editions in the Thirties. The edition we have been able to consult is the one from 1551 (El fiore de tutta la Bibia hystoriato).  Foresti, Il supplemento volgare. The author was born in Solto in 1434 to a noble family, and died in S. Agostino di Bergamo in 1520 (cf. Megli Fratini [1997]). His work was translated into the vernacular in 1508 by Francesco Cei, Florentine poet and lyrist. I was able to consult the Venetian edition from 1540.  Ibid., c. 1r, 3v–4r.

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descrivono, & in quale mare siano poste”, this last section presenting a list arranged in two columns.⁵⁸ Thus Foresti’s work, not centred on historical biblical material alone and with a primarily encyclopaedic purpose, aspires towards the organized accumulation of news, exactly as in a chronicle, rather than to the continued narration of religious history. After that of Foresti, starting from the 1570’s, the success of the genre of the historical compendium, written by ecclesiastical as well as secular authors, broadened considerably. In particular, Bartolomeo Dionigi’s Compendio istorico del Vecchio e del Nuovo Testamento must be mentioned for its notable editorial success.⁵⁹ The author, a cleric from Fano, published it in 1586, while the Tridentine Index of 1564 was in force. This index had relaxed the severity of the Pauline Index of 1559 in regards to biblical volgarizzamenti, allowing special reading permits to be requested from local inquisitors and bishops. However, the severity was soon reinstated with provisions that the Roman organs responsible for censorship enacted between 1571 and 1583.⁶⁰ Replying to two gentlewomen who in 1576 complained about the difficulty in obtaining a licence to possess a vernacular Bible, Dionigi responded that the Church forbid access, certainly, to the vernacular text of the Bible, but not to its historical content, which was in practice accessible in many books that had integrated it into universal history or that had presented it as history in its own right.⁶¹ Dionigi’s Compendio historico, which was intended as a means of overcoming the difficulty in obtaining the vernacular Bible, however, found itself included in the list of banned books delivered to bishops and inquisitors in application of the 1596 Index.⁶² Much more so than Foresti’s Fiore della Bibbia and Croniche del mondo, Genesi is comparable to Dionigi’s work in its literary mould and continuous narrative form. In the Genesi, the work could have found, if not a model, at least a literary and editorial precedent. On the other hand, even the editorial success of the two books is partly comparable. After the first success, the Genesi was added to the Index in 1558 with the author’s opera omnia. In a less radical way, the success of the Compendio was also impeded by ecclesiastical censorship. Given the book’s and the author’s placement in the Index, the Genesi was reprinted only under the anagram Partenio Etiro and the title Dello specchio delle opere di Dio nello stato di natura libri tre, just three times in 1628, 1629 and 1635. The Compendio, instead, was more easily recoverable and numerous editions were published between 1662 and 1800. Finally, considering the particular importance given to the figures of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph in the Genesi it also compares to the mystery play, with

  six   

Ibid., c. 4v–5v. Dionigi, Compendio historico. The work was circulated widely: between 1587 and 1593, there were Venetian editions; in 1588 alone there were three editions in Venice, Turin and Mantua. Cf. Fragnito (1997), 121– 142. Cf. Dionigi’s testimony cited in: Fragnito (1997), 108 – 109. Fragnito (1997), 109, 290 – 292. Cf. also Fragnito (2005), 110 – 112.

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which biblical paraphrases in general have no shortage of dialogue.⁶³ Regarding the figure of Joseph, the work by humanist Pandolfo Collenuccio should be mentioned, of which three Venetian editions were published in the 1520’s, and which was later reprinted several more times between 1540 and 1550.⁶⁴ Even if there appear to be no particular intertextual links, this long work, due to its success, perhaps prompted Aretino to dedicate the entire third book of the Genesi to the story of Joseph. Conversely, one might also think that the editorial success of Aretino’s Genesi relaunched Collenuccio’s book, which had remained unprinted in the 1530’s. Two mystery plays are centred on the figure of Abraham. The anonymous Rappresentatione di quando Abram cacciò Agar, printed in 1515 and 1516, was reprinted in Venice under the title Rappresentatione di Abraam e Sarra sua moglie in 1556, 1573 and 1581.⁶⁵ In this reworking of a more ancient drama, a father has two children, one exemplary and the other idle and disobedient, much like the prodigal son of the Gospels. The entire piece is driven by the theme of educating children and warning parents. In order to convert his wayward son, the father brings him to see a play showing Abraham’s two sons, the exemplary Isaac, son of Sarah, and Ishmael, son of Hagar, who was chased into the desert along with his mother; the play is presented as the just punishment for bad behaviour. Aretino’s Genesi treats the episode of Hagar being chased into the desert in a completely different way: Ishmael is an innocent child, and the emphasis is placed on the rivalry between Hagar and Sarah, as the Bible itself suggests and according to the particular consideration on Aretino’s part towards the female characters, of whom more will be said later on. Feo Belcari’s Rappresentatione di Abramo e Isacco, also centred on Abraham’s sacrifice, appears in 1485 and was released in various editions during the Cinquecento, among these one which was presumably printed in Florence in 1536.⁶⁶ The first 16th century edition with a precise date was printed in Siena in 1545, and the last in Venice in 1590. The work was later reissued in Venice in 1636, during the period which also saw the re-edition of the Genesi. In announcing the theme, the angel invites a meditation on God’s harsh test for Abraham, having to kill his only son at the end of a harrowing three-day wait. Before leaving, Abraham orders his son not to let his mother hear him. Left alone and worried by the absence of her husband and son, Sarah resolves to ask a servant, who attempts to comfort her. At the end, Abraham and Isaac, returning home happily, recount their story to Sarah. Like Belcari but in a much freer manner, Aretino exploits both the biblical indication of the three days and the dramatic potential tied to Sarah’s involvement, which is not mentioned in the Bible’s version

 For example, in the theatrical episodes of Christ’s farewell to his mother and of Mary Magdalene’s conversion (cf. Boillet [2007a], 201– 211 e 512– 526).  Collenuccio, Comedia dilettosa. I was able to consult the 1547 Venetian edition.  La rappresentatione di Abraam e di Sarra. I was able to consult the 1556 Florentine edition containing twelve pages.  Belcari, La rappresentazione di Abraam. For the location and date of this edition, see Sander, Le livre à figures italien depuis 1467 jusqu’à 1530, n. 6110.

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of this episode. Thus, during the night preceding Abraham’s departure, Sarah is woken by the sighs and sobbing of her husband. The ensuing dialogue between the two echoes the farewell scene between Jesus and his mother narrated in the Passione and the Umanità, which rewrote both the biblical text and the Virgilian episode of Dido’s death after being abandoned by Aeneas.⁶⁷ Note that the reason for keeping Aeneas’ departure secret, which Aeneas imposes on his companions when he commands them not to let themselves be seen by Dido, is found both in Belcari, when Abraham commands his son to conceal their departure from Sarah, and in Aretino, when the apostles prepare to accompany Jesus – who is wary of his mother (“si guarda dalla madre”) – to make his personal sacrifice.⁶⁸ In the Genesi, the reason for the secret is not present, but, in the same way that the Virgin, gripped by an intuition, questions Jesus and implores him not to leave, Sarah, woken in the night by her husband’s weeping, questions him and begs him not to carry their son away with him.⁶⁹ In this exchange Aretino is able to attribute Dido’s uncontrollable passion to Sarah, in line with the strong character that she manifests in other biblical episodes, which decorum forbade him from applying to the Mother of God.⁷⁰ Instead, in a situation parallel to Jesus’ farewell to his mother, Abraham appears both firm in his decision to obey the divine command and tender in his attempt to comfort his wife.⁷¹ Thus marital affection pushes him to lie to his wife about the time that must pass before carrying out the terrible sacrifice, remaining silent about the three days imposed by God and instead mentioning eight days.⁷² While Belcari maintains Sarah’s absence in the biblical episode, limiting her role to that of listener hearing of the events experienced by her husband and son without her knowledge, Aretino incorporates her as an actual protagonist. In general Genesi features a notable cast of strong female characters, including Eve, Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, Rachael, Leah, Tamar, and Potiphar’s wife, even if, unsurprisingly, moral  Cf. Boillet (2007c).  Cf. ibid., 227– 228.  In this dialogue the image reappears of the “ferro” (“iron”) that pierced the woman’s heart, which returned in the farewell to Dido’s suicide and to the Virgin’s “spada di dolore” (“sword of pain”) prophesised by Simeon (Luke, 2 35), an image also here associated to the pathetic final swoon of the woman overcome by pain (cf. ibid., 229 – 230). Thus, at the end of the dialogue, Sarah turns to God saying: “‘Il ferro sacro e il fuoco santo ferisca e arda queste membra, e serbisi Isaac per seme de la gran gente e de la successione promessaci da le tue parole inviolabili e irrevocabili. E quando sia che tu cosí pur voglia, ritogli questo fiato e ripigliati questa anima che tu mi hai concesso’, non poté dire, perché, mancatale la lena, fu riportata da le ancille, corse al rumore del suo languire dove si era levata” (Aretino, Il Genesi, in: Ibid., Opere religiose, I, 168).  Cf. Boillet (2007c), 228. In Genesi: “Ella, scagliatasi fuor del letto, voleva con il furore de la doglia corso nel pronto de le mani, vendicarsi con il rugoso de la faccia e con il canuto de i capegli, se il marito non ci interponeva i preghi, le ammonizioni e le forze” (Aretino, Il Genesi, in: Ibid., Opere religiose, I, 169).  Cf. Boillet (2007c), 230 – 231.  “Egli disse cinque dí piú per non l’accorare con la prestezza del tempo” (Aretino, Il Genesi, in: Ibid., Opere religiose, I, 170).

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strength is seen as a male virtue and weakness a female defect. Aretino pays particular attention to the story of Rachael and Rebecca before marriage, and also to Tamar’s, placing figures of married women alongside those of the Virgin and the widow. Such a gallery of women constitutes in some ways the sacred pendant of that found in Ragionamento della Nanna e della Antonia (1534), where Aretino had denounced, in a completely corrupt world, the sexual avidity of women of every state. The Genesi instead represents a world regulated by a sexual ethic centred on fundamental chastity before, during, and after marriage, contrary to the concupiscence that leads to lust, even within marriage, and to adultery. After the Genesi and in line with this work, the successive Vita di Maria, of Catherine of Alexandria, and of Thomas Aquinas extol a superior, virginal level of chastity, even in marriage. In the Genesi, promotion of chastity begins with the creation of Eve, presented as the foundation of the sacrament of marriage, which God entrusts her not to violate. The paraphrase of the ten commandments doubles the commandment concerning sexual behaviour: to “Non commettere adulterio” a “Non fornicare” is added, that is, not having sexual relations other than for reproductive means. Conversely, the conjugal duty to produce offspring is affirmed in the severe condemnation of the Sodomites’ and Onan’s sexual practices, both qualifying as “detestabile”. On the female side, the widow Tamar is judged to be more “giusta” (“righteous”) than her father-in-law by desiring the third husband that Jacob, against custom, refuses her, lying to her and forcing her to use deception herself, and to commit an act of adultery for which the father-inlaw will take the blame. Instead, the wife of Potifar, driven by a combination of envy and lust, takes revenge for Joseph’s rejection of the illegitimate desire for carnal union by slander. The two episodes, told one after the other, form a sacred pendant to the portrayal of female sexual abandon in the 1534 Ragionamento, but also to that of the male infidelities for which the women seek revenge in the Dialogo nel quale la Nanna insegna alla Pippa (1536). In the other episodes, the Genesi praises the innocent state of the first patriarchs’ world: Aretino exonerates Abraham, who does not bother to send his wife to the pharaoh, counting on the Lord to look after matrimonial wellbeing, and Lot, whose surreptitious copulation with his daughters guarantees him a line of descendants. Parallel to this, while he lauds Rebecca and Rachael’s modesty, Aretino denounces Dinah’s imprudence. Dinah, who is “così baldanzosa che bella”, arouses her brother’s desire, yet is praised by Aretino for forgiving the rape and condemning the rejection. Later Aretino expatiates on Jacob’s “saintly love” (“l’amor santo”) and “simple affection” (“l’affezione semplice”), rare in amorous passion. Jacob’s innocent behaviour, whom we see kissing the flowers touched by Rachael, writing and then removing the name of his beloved on the trees, and picking up a stone but not daring to throw it into the river where she washes her feet, contrasts with the indecent conduct of Potiphar’s wife, who does not hesitate to touch Joseph nor to spray water in his face as he washes his hands. Yet later on in the story, learning of the presumed death of his son, the by now elderly Jacob recognises this death as divine punishment for the excessive love he felt for Rachael. Penitence and punishment, in this way, allow the particular amplification of the ro-

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mance between Jacob and Rachael, which constitutes a true love story in the second book of the Genesi. For the same reason, in the second book of the Umanità Aretino was able to stress the description of the Magdalene’s varied behaviours, first as a personification of pagan lasciviousness and later the incarnation of Christian penitence and sanctity. Abraham and Joseph, placed in the narrative as figures not of transformation but of unfailing obedience to divine will, are models of perfect chastity, even in marriage, so that Sarah’s beauty is described in relation to the desire of those who wrongfully lust after her, but not as an object of Abraham’s carnal pleasure. There are additional reasons for the special insistence in the Genesi on this theme and on sexual ethics. First of all, the biblical scenario, full of the stravaganze amorose (“amorous eccentricities”) of the patriarchs, lent itself to this purpose.⁷³ Furthermore, following the palpable excitement of the first half of the 1530’s, the evolution of the religious climate could have compelled Aretino to prefer moral over doctrinal commentary. An indication may be the complaint, in a famous letter to Antonio Brucioli in 1537, about the ‟chiacchiarar de i frati”, made against the laymen who like Brucioli and Aretino wrote about religion.⁷⁴ Among the propitious arguments against the empty philosophical disquisitions of the friars, Aretino cited the resurrection of the dead, which in the Genesi is the object of literary representation in the imposing fresco of the end of the world and last judgment.⁷⁵ It seems, however, that Genesi might have been perceived by contemporaries as in line with preceding biblical works, that is, also marked by its Christocentric stance and by the emphasis on mercy and divine grace. Effectively, to the encouragement that Vittoria Colonna gave the religious writer in February 1538 and that of Pier Paolo Vergerio (perhaps more premature but about which we know by a letter dated March 1539), may be added that same month Bernardino Ochino’s praise of the Genesi, Ochino being linked to the group of spirituali like Vittoria Colonna.⁷⁶ If the Umanità was prioritarily suspected by the Roman Church, the Genesi was directly criticized. As a letter from 1548 testifies, some predicant friars visited Aretino’s house to tell him: ‟Aretino, tu scrivi nel principio del Genesi, che Iddio è la natura, e la natura non è Dio; onde ti preghiamo che tu ci chiarisca il perché la natura non è Dio, e Dio è la natura”.⁷⁷ However, Genesi’s insistence on sexual morals is more likely explained by the fact that the work was published within the context of the extremely stringent defamation campaign launched against Aretino following the triumphant publication of his Lettere in January 1538.⁷⁸ Between April and May, the author was struck with an accusation of blasphemy and sodomy, forcing him to leave Venice for a brief period

 Picking up again the expression “stravaganze amorose” from the collective volume edited by Boillet/Lastraioli (2010).  Aretino, Lettere (ed. Procaccioli), I 220.  Boillet (2003), 185 – 186.  Aretino, Lettere (ed. Procaccioli), II 96. Cf. Boillet (2016), 65.  Aretino, Lettere (ed. Procaccioli), IV 390. Cf. Boillet (2007d), 356 – 358; Boillet (2016), 62.  On the various aspects of the context of Genesi’s publication, cf. Boillet (2016), 45 – 46.

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from the 12th to the 28th of May, avoiding the trial thanks to the Duke of Urbino’s protection.⁷⁹ This escape probably contributed to the delay in Genesi’s publication.⁸⁰ Then, during the summer, the ignominious Vita di Pietro Aretino del Berna, written by someone who intended to criticize the support Aretino received by the emperor.⁸¹ In September, the new edition of the first book of Lettere with an additional forty-five letters written to the author reaffirmed his own status, as did the publication of two new works, the Genesi and Ragionamento delle corti. Thus the flaunted promotion of Christian sexual ethics, centred on chastity, must certainly have contributed to restoring the reputation of one who, since the Salmi (1534) and then the Lettere (1538), had declared himself “dimostratore dei vizi e predicatore della virtù”.⁸² Aretino’s paraphrase of the biblical Genesis therefore is based on rewriting both faithful to the biblical text and rich in literary reminisces coming both from texts pertaining to the well-noted classical and modern literary traditions as well as the devotional tradition, and to his own writings, both sacred and profane. The depiction of the world of the first patriarchs, with the centrality of the theme of reading and meditating on the Bible, the space given to the discourses – between prayers and sermons – of characters or again the emphasis placed on the sacred virtue of chastity, connect the Genesi closely to the rest of Aretino’s religious oeuvre, to which it represents an essential milestone. On the other hand, because it resembles different types of biblically-themed books, the Genesi is an important work within the study of the evolution of biblical literature during the 16th and 17th century. The work was fully involved in the tournant of the 1530’s. It takes its place alongside the renewal of the biblical tradition triggered by Brucioli which also includes the persistence of the fundamental reference of Malerbi’s translation; it is found between Fiore della Bibbia and Compendio historico del Vecchio e del Nuovo Testamento; it dialogues with the mystery plays. Study of the Genesi allows one to follow the thread of the editorial success of these texts and of the genres to which they belong. On the one hand, Aretino was able to grasp the suggestions offered to him by Belcari and Collenuccio; on the other hand, Genesi’s success allowed their works to reappear in the 1540s and beyond. Dionigi perhaps did not ignore the controversial author’s work in compiling his own historical compendium, with intent to both respect Roman directives and meet the faifhtful’s demand. The fact Belcari’s Rappresentazione, Aretino’s Genesi, and Dionigi’s Compendio were among the biblical works to re-emerge in the 17th century underlines the long reach of these works created at the end of the 15th, and the first and then second half of the 16th centuries. Genesi’s originality is found in overcoming the barriers of the genres in plural dialogue, in a text which is otherwise very organic, with texts of varied natures produced in varied contexts. It allows us to search for the notion of rewriting not only in precise intertextual links, but also,    

Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf.

Larivaille (1997), 316. Aretino, Lettere (ed. Erspamer), II 24, 50, n. 12. Procaccioli, Introduzione, in: Albicante, Occasioni aretiniane, 9 – 12. Boillet (2016), 35, 44– 45.

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from the broadened viewpoint of influence, in the literary opportunities that present themselves or that disappear, in the particular success of a form or theme, and in the effects of style.

Bibliography Primary sources La rappresentatione di Abraam e di Sarra sua moglie, Firenze 1556 [1a ed. 1515]. El fiore de tutta la Bibia hystoriato & di nouo in lingua Tosca corretto. Con certe predicationi, tutto tratto del testamento uecchio. Cominciando dalla creatione del mondo infino alla Natiuita di Iesu Christo, Venezia 1551 [1a ed. 1515]. Albicante, Giovani Alberto, Occasioni aretiniane (Vita di Pietro Aretino del Berna, Abbattimento, Nuova contentione), ed. Paolo Procaccioli, Manziana 1999. Aretino, Pietro, Il genesi di M. Pietro Aretino con la visione di Noè ne la quale vede i misterii del Testamento Vecchio e del Nuovo, diviso in tre libri, Venezia 1538. Aretino, Pietro, Al beatissimo Giulio Terzo, papa com’il II. ammirando il Genesi l’Humanita di Christo, & i Salmi. Opere di M. Pietro Aretino del sacrosanto Monte humil germe, & per diuina gratia huomo libero, Venezia 1551. Aretino, Pietro, A la somma bontà di Giulio III. Pontefice al par del II. invittiss. La vita di Maria Vergine, di Caterina santa e di Tomaso Aquinate beato. Compositioni di M. Pietro Aretino del Monte eccelso divoto, & per divina gratia huomo libero, Venezia 1552. Aretino, Pietro, Le vite dei santi. Santa Caterina Vergine. San Tommaso d’Aquino. 1540 – 1543, ed. Flavia Santin, Roma 1977. Aretino, Pietro, Lettere, ed. Francesco Erspamer, I-II, Milano-Parma, 1995 – 1998. Aretino, Pietro, Lettere, ed. Paolo Procaccioli, I-VI, Roma 1997 – 2002. Aretino, Pietro, Trois livres de l’humanité de Jésus-Christ, ed. Elsa Kammerer, Paris 2005. Aretino, Pietro, Opere religiose, II, Vita di Maria Vergine, Vita di santa Caterina, Vita di san Tommaso, ed. Paolo Marini, Roma 2011. Aretino, Pietro, Opere religiose, I, Genesi, Umanità di Cristo, Sette salmi, Passione di Gesù, ed. Élise Boillet, Roma 2017. Belcari, Feo, La rappresentazione di Abraam, et Isaac suo figliuolo, Firenze [1536] [1a ed. 1485]. Brucioli, Antonio, La Biblia quale contiene i sacri libri del Vecchio Testamento, tradotti nuovamente de la hebraica verita in lingua toscana per Antonio Brucioli. Co divini libri del nuouo testamento di Christo Giesu signore et salvatore nostro. Tradotti di greco in lingua toscana pel medesimo, Venezia 1532; Venezia 1541. Brucioli, Antonio, Compendio di tutte l’orationi de’ Santi Padri raccolte da sacri libri del vecchio et nuovo Testamento, Venezia 1534. Brucioli, Antonio, I sacrosanti libri del Vecchio Testamento, tradotti dalla ebraica uerità in lingua italiana, & con breue & catholico commento dichiarati. Per Antonio Brucioli, Venezia 1540. Collenuccio, Pandolfo, Comedia dilettosa raccolta nel Vecchio Testamento … nella quale si ragiona de Iacob, et de Ioseph …, Venezia 1547 [1a ed. 1523]. Dionigi, Bartolomeo, Compendio historico del Vecchio, e del Nuouo Testamento, cauato dalla sacra Bibbia, da don Bartolomeo Dionigi da Fano. Nel quale si descriueno tutte le cose notabili, che successero nel popolo hebreo, dalla creatione del mondo, sino alla vltima destruttione di Ierusalem. Con la vita di Giesu Christo, saluator del mondo, et con la disseminatione dell’euangelio, e della sua santa fede, Venezia 1586.

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Foresti, Giacomo Filippo, Il supplemento volgare de tutte le croniche del mondo. Intitulato Supplemento delli supplimenti, qual tratta sotto breuita, ogni historia dal principio del mondo, fino al 1535. Prima composto per lo eccellente Iacobo Philippo heremitano, & dipoi con le ultime gionte ampliato, Venezia 1540 [1a ed. 1535]. Malerbi, Niccolò, Biblia vulgare nouamente impressa. Corretta e hystoriata. Con le rubrice e capitulatione, Venezia 1525 [1a ed. 1471]. Marmochino, Santi, La Bibia nuouamente tradotta dalla hebraica verita in lingua thoscana er maestro Santi Marmochino Fiorentino dell’ordine de predicatori della prouincia Romana, colle chroniche dei tempi della scrittura, coll’auttorita degli historiographi gentili, con alcune espositioni, & punti pertinenti al testo, co nomi hebrei posti in margine come si harebbono a pronuntiare. Co sommarij a ogni capitolo. Con tre ordeni di tauole […], Venezia 1538. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, Le sette sposizioni del s. Giouanni Pico de la Mirandola intitolate Heptaplo, sopra i sei giorni del Genesi. Tradotte in lingua toscana da M. Antonio Buonagrazia Canonico di Pescia e da M. Pompeo de la Barba raccolte in breui somme con una pistola del medesimo al decano di Lucca che è l’epilogo di tutta l’opera, Pescia 1555.

Secondary sources Barbieri, Edoardo, Le Bibbie italiane del Quattrocento e del Cinquecento, 2 vol., Milano 1992. Boillet, Élise, “La visione di Noè nel Genesi dell’Aretino (1538)”, in: Sogno e Racconto. Archetipi e funzioni, Atti del convegno di Macerata (7 – 9 maggio 2002), ed. Cingolani Gabriele/Riccini Marco, Firenze 2003a, 174 – 190. Boillet, Élise, “Il Congedo di Cristo dalla madre dipinto da Lorenzo Lotto e narrato da Pietro Aretino”, in: Venezia Cinquecento. Studi di storia dell’arte e della cultura, 2003b, XIII. 25, 99 – 130. Boillet, Élise, “L’adaptation des ambitions romaines de l’Arétin aux événements de 1533 – 1534: du Pronostic de l’année 1534 aux lettres de dédicace des Psaumes”, in: L’actualité et sa mise en écriture (Espagne, France, Italie et Portugal XVe-XVIIe siècles), Actes du Colloque international du LECEMO (Université Paris III – La Sorbonne Nouvelle), 18 – 19 – 20 octobre 2000, ed. Pierre Civil/Danielle Boillet, Paris 2005, 169 – 189. Boillet, Élise, L’Arétin et la Bible, Genève 2007a. Boillet, Élise, “L’Écriture traduite, commentée, réécrite: Antonio Brucioli, Teofilo Folengo, l’Arétin”, in: Les années Trente du XVIe siècle italien, Actes du Colloque International (Paris, 3 – 5 juin 2004), ed. Danielle Boillet/Michel Plaisance, Paris 2007b, p. 163 – 181. Boillet, Élise, “Riscrittura sacra e riscrittura profana dell’Eneide in Pietro Aretino”, in: Autorità, modelli e antimodelli nella cultura artistica e letteraria tra Riforma e Controriforma, Atti del Seminario internazionale di studi Urbino-Sassocorvaro, 9 – 11 novembre 2006, ed. Antonio Corsaro/Harald Hendrix/Paolo Procaccioli, Manziana 2007c, 227 – 242. Boillet, Élise, “L’Arétin et les papes de son temps. Les formes et la fortune d’une écriture au service de la papauté”, in: La Papauté à la Renaissance, ed. Florence Alazard/Frank La Brasca, Paris 2007d, 325 – 368. Boillet, Élise/Lastraioli, Chiara (ed.), Extravagances amoureuses: l’amour au-delà de la norme à la Renaissance. Stravaganze amorose: l’amore oltre l anorma nel Rinascimento, Actes du Colloque de Tours (18 – 20 septembre 2008), Paris 2010. Boillet, Élise, “David, personnage et masque de l’Arétin entre XVIe et XVIIe siècle”, in: Les figures de David à la Renaissance, ed. Élise Boillet/Sonia Cavicchioli/Paul-Alexis Mellet, Genève 2015, 329 – 362. Boillet, Élise, “Introduzione”, in: Aretino, Opere religiose, 2017, I, 31 – 72.

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Cairns, Christopher, Pietro Aretino and the republic of Venice. Researches on Aretino and his circle in Venice 1527 – 1556, Firenze 1985. Fasoli, Paolo, “Con la penna della fragilità”. Considerazioni sull’Aretino ascetico, in: Pietro Aretino nel cinquecentenario della nascita, Atti del Convegno di Roma-Viterbo-Arezzo, 28 settembre-1° ottobre 1992, Toronto, 23 – 24 ottobre 1992, Los Angeles, 27 – 29 ottobre 1992, Roma 1995, II, 619 – 639. Fragnito, Gigliola, La Bibbia al rago: La censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della scrittura (1471 – 1605), Bologna 1997. Fragnito, Gigliola, Proibito capire.La Chiesae il volgare nella prima età moderna, Bologna 2005. Higman, Francis, Lire et découvrir: la circulation des idées au temps de la Réforme, Genève 1998. Larivaille, Paul, Pietro Aretino, Roma 1997. Larivaille, Paul, Pietro Aretino fra Rinascimento e Manierismo, Roma 1980. Marini, Paolo, “Introduzione”, in: Aretino, Opere religiose, 2011, II, 9 – 68. Megli Fratini, Lucia, “Foresti, Giacomo Filippo”, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 48, 1997 [http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giacomo-filippo-foresti (Dizionario-Biografico)/ (access on 28th September 2016)]. Petrocchi, Giorgio, “Intorno alle prose sacre”, in: Ibid., Pietro Aretino tra Rinascimento e Controriforma, Milano 1948, 264 – 97. Scotti, Mario, “Gli scritti religiosi”, in: Pietro Aretino nel cinquecentenario della nascita, Atti del Convegno di Roma-Viterbo-Arezzo, 28 settembre-1° ottobre 1992, Toronto, 23 – 24 ottobre 1992, Los Angeles, 27 – 29 ottobre 1992, Roma 1995, I, 121 – 143. Sander, Max, Le livre à figures italien depuis 1467 jusqu’à 1530, I, Milano 1942. Saracco, Lisa, “Marmochino, Santi”, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 70, 2008 [http:// www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/santi-marmochino_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/ (access on 28th September 2016).

Giulio Ferroni (Roma)

Aretino’s Rewritings of the Bible 1. For Pietro Aretino, confronting the theme of religion means investing an essential aspect of reality, of social life and of contemporary culture with his own voice and the enveloping force of his own writing: with his exuberant individuality he deftly strikes a nerve of the present, extending to images and questions which were the order of the day, which struggled in various ways in the environments to which he was connected and which he certainly could not disregard in his ambitious role of “secretary of the world”. Like he does with every theme and experiential fact, Aretino also pushes religion in its literary effect, in the way in which it can be adopted into what he considers the absolute naturalness of his own voice, within the connections he is able to establish through the public circulation of his words (and clearly, not without the intention of deriving prestige, success, and appropriate financial compensation from them, often displayed without reticence). Thus the religious code fits into the author’s system and modes of writing, defining its own particular perspective within his conception of the public significance of his own voice. Aretino’s approach can be traced definitively to a generalized humanistic poetics, which conceives of writing as artificial lode of noblemen and princes, of those who are high on the social ladder: writing as fictio, artifice and deception as the creators of history and prestige. This gives the writer the essential role of confirming the princes’ worth, a role which is compensated with adequate recognition on the princes’ part. On the prominence and authority of his own lode, Aretino constructs his own prestige and fortune. In a continuing demand for remuneration, a missing donation could provoke the threatening emergence of disapprobation. This notion of writing as an artifice which constructs history, and which alone lends persistence to the princes’ names, recurs throughout Aretino’s work. It is expanded upon most diversely in his Letters, but does also appear in the dedication letter of the first printing of Umanità di Cristo, addressed to Count Massimiano Stampa. Here, beginning with an initial thought to dedicate the book to Christ himself, Aretino goes on to compose an extensive list of possible dedicatees, a survey of the greatest powers of the day. Eventually, in a final extravagant eulogy he returns to the original dedicatee, whose greater worth is evident in his ability to sustain “the noble spirits” who with their “inks” preserve the memory of the greats (he gives the example of Alexander the Great, who lives only through the “courtesy” (cortesia) of the “intellects” (intelletti) who have preserved his memory, while a curious comparison demonstrates how little an “emperor” whom no-one writes about is worth): Ma per non potere altro, benedico il giorno che nasceste per salute de gli spiriti nobili, de i quali sete sostegno. E si convien proprio a voi l’averne cura, che ben sapete che per dargli il pane dieci o venti anni, i nomi di ch’il fa, sono alimentati da i loro inchiostri di secolo in secolo. E Alessandro, che ebbe infiniti esserciti, infiniti regni e infiniti tesori, oggi non è altro che quel che

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ne gridano gli intelletti che per lor cortesia ne han fatto memoria. E uno imperadore che more senza aver chi ne scriva, se bene ha il sepolcro di marmo, superbo per le statue, e lo epitafio, che lo rammenta, simiglia la testa di un leone appesa sopra le porte di un gran palagio, la quale è guardata da ciascuno, come si guardano le fere che sono state terribili.¹

2. In his role as eulogist and “scourge” (flagello) of princes, Aretino espouses all the social values that go along with the concept of writing as the artificial memory of the greats: he sustains his presence in the world precisely through the exercise of praise and disapprobation, and the inevitable deception which this entails (it is that “far sovente/ di false lodi i principi satolli”, according to Ariosto, Satire, VI, 53 – 54). But at the same time, driven by the pressure to affirm the absolute specificity of his own voice, Aretino attacks those same social values, assailing them with his destructive fury, with that dissolvent thrust which forms the deepest mainspring of his own writing. In the very act of expanding his own writing towards the most widespread social artifice, the “false praise” strategy, it is as if Aretino is compelled to reveal the deception of writing, to affirm a radical rejection of its social landscape, of the conflict to which it gave rise, with the prevalent and recognized speculative and discursive culture which prevailed on the public level: he opposes the rising and uncontrolled force of “wit” (ingegno) and “nature” (natura), of his own “wit” and own “nature”. He opposes himself and the very avoidance of every binding and predetermined institution. Pedants of every kind detract from nature’s vital breath, types who speculate and make use of language in vain arguments and in futile establishment of the emptiness within themselves: philosophers, like the protagonist of the later comedy Il filosofo (The Philosopher), physicians, grammarians, scientists, theologians – all those who profess to institutionalize knowledge, to dwell on pre-established meaning and to expand on it through vain discourse and social deception. The authenticity of the religious sphere is made possible by its distance from all possible deception and by its self-determination as simple, immediate, not speculative or anti-discursive truth. The divine word reveals itself directly within the spontaneous naturalness of its own self-manifesting, which wipes out the blather of those who claim to examine the mysteries of nature and the universe. It is the complete alternative to the futile investigation of the scientists, scholars, pedants, to all those spheres of knowledge which he always dismisses, even if at times he solemnly professes deference towards them for opportunistic ends. An excellent example is the letter that appears in Book I of the first printings of Lettere, addressed to Agostino Ricchi (dated 4 August 1538), and then later, in the 1542 edition, to the physician Michelangelo Biondo (dated 28 December 1537), which turns against “i segreti de la gran medicina, tesoro de i filosofi e gloria de la filosofia”. The philosophers “diman-

 Aretino (2017), 608. The quotations from Aretino’s religious writings are taken from the text prepared for the new national edition of the Opere published by Salerno editore; I would like to thank Élise Boillet and the editor for providing me with the text prior to publication.

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darono, cercarono, e disputarono de le cose sopra umane, rompendosi il capo circa lo intendere la cagione del pieno e del voto, del finito e de lo infinito. E con tanti lor fernetichi non sepper mai fare che non ci dolesse il corpo”. Their investigation and presentation of theories on the manifold likenesses between parts of the universe appears as if it is cancelled out by the greater significance of divine power: “Io credo certo che le cose disotto rispondino a quelle disopra, e che quelle isopra comunichino con quelle disotto; nientedimeno l’autore de le maraviglie è Iddio solo, da la cui potenza discendano i mirabili effetti de le operazioni.”² Sealing his antipedanticism, Aretino soon pronounced a sort of judgment through the voice of Peno, a character from his most typically manneristic comedy, La Talanta (act V, scene 1): “Insomma, si dee essere filosofo con la disputa e cristiano con la mente; che altro è la verità e altro la contesa.”³ Faced with the deception and vanity of writing and of science, of the circle of contesa (conflict) which they have entered, the religious writing and rewriting that Aretino undertakes paradoxically represent an anti-writing, a writing that is anti-cultural and anti-pedantic – as well as freedom from the falsity always implicit in the encomiastic function of the religious writings: falsity that Ariosto, moreover, had denounced ironically in St. John’s speech in canto XXXV of Orlando furioso, in a context in which the ironic play indirectly calls into question even the truth of the Gospels. The approach to the rewriting of the Bible, with the Passione and Sette Salmi, starts off this way immediately, dominated by simplicity. The opening of the Passione, removed when the Passione is inserted as the fourth book of the Umanità di Cristo, unfolds as the tale of a dream/vision, in which Aretino sees four characters with books in their hands. He recognizes “i Vangeli i quali scrisse la semplicità dettandogliene il vero di sua propria bocca”⁴. Spurred by this vision, his intention to narrate the passion of Christ emerges: parlarò di lui puramente e semplicemente. E sol co ’l testimonio dell’Evangelo vi rappresenterò il martiro della bontà divina. Perché siamo tanto chiari di Dio, che senza altre scritture e senza altri miracoli abbiam certezza di quello di che non fur mai in dubbio, se non alcuni intelletti, che, per acquistar nome filosofando, cercano malignamente di por la benda dinanzi a gli occhi del vero con la confusione della scienza, della quale gli pare esser pieni.⁵

Even more significant is this passage which concludes Book I of Umanità di Cristo, commenting on the assertion that he wanted to follow only what the Gospels say of Christ, excluding every other narrative fact: Si maraviglia forse alcuno come Cristo non eleggesse scrittori eguali al merito de le opre sue: sciocchi, se pensano che Cristo consentisse che l’istorie mendaci e superbe parlassino de la

   

Aretino, Lettere, 457– 458. Aretino, Teatro, 457. Aretino (2017), 520. Ibid., 521.

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sua veritade e de l’umiltà sua! Adunque gli stili, i colori e l’arte doveva inalzar lui, sí come inalzano i prencipi terreni, i quali lo ingegno altrui fa parer quello che non furono? Quante sentenze gravi, quante parole saggie e quanti consigli sani si leggano ne i volumi che fanno memoria de gli uomini che non uscir mai da coloro il cui nome gridano immortalmente le carte affezzionate a la liberalità che gli è piovuta sopra? La semplicità e la purità di Cristo ha voluto puri e semplici scrittori, i quali hanno ritratto il suo vero puramente e semplicemente. E già non si comprende altro che semplicitade e puritade ne la fede sua. Cotali vuol le menti e cosí fatti brama i cori. E beati coloro che vivano ne la purità e ne la semplicità natia, e credendo si contentano in quella credenza verace che fa pro a l’anima con piacere disusato.⁶

The letter dedicated to Antonio de Leyva in the 1536 printing of Sette Salmi, also, leads back the originality of the work to its distance from the empty flattery found in other types of works (let us leave aside the fact that immediately following this, the same letter becomes profuse in laudatory hyperbole towards the dedicatee and many other powerful contemporaries): La eroica adulazione, la quale con isperanza di guiderdone suol celebrare altrui, non vi si conviene, perché le menzogne de i vaghi ingegni son trovate per appagare i graditi da la fortuna, i quali, gonfiati per le iperboli poetiche, vaneggiano superbamente mentre il vento de la laude si muove per alzargli, e perciò le chiare penne exaltano il finto merito loro con le fizzioni.⁷

3. The intention to speak “purely and simply” (puramente e semplicemente) finds confirmation in the selection of a religious stance which, against the doctrinal and theological complications, points precisely to the simple evidence of the divine word. The Passione, the Sette Salmi (The Seven Psalms), and the Umanità di Cristo reveal the close link with religious viewpoints prevalent towards the end of the thirties among the environments and people with whom Aretino was in contact. With his characteristic receptive disposition, he was subjected to various requests for reform on Erasmian and Nicodemite lines that circulated around Venice: without touching heretical stances directly, he courted concepts which were soon to become heresy. Élise Boillet’s Introductory Note to the first volume of Opere religiose clearly indicates the circumstances and reasons for Aretino’s proximity to heretical perspectives. In the first place, the relationships with Antonio Brucioli, with the Capuchins’ general Bernardino Ochino (who fled to Switzerland in 1542), and the bishop Pier Paolo Vergerio, who was denounced as a Lutheran and escaped to Switzerland in 1549, are telling. However, distant from any theological standpoint and without any sympathy for the transalpine reformers, Aretino shares a sensibility with the teachings of Juan de Valdés, which were echoed numerously in Venice, particularly in the treatise Il beneficio di Cristo (The Benefit of Christ). In the treatise this is evident in the trust to divine mercy, to the decisive action of grace, and to the central and justificatory value of faith, with a partial undervaluation of the works and rites,  Ibid., 311– 312.  Ibid., 601.

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but without the extremism of the doctrines advocating faith alone. Above all, it can be traced through the emphasis on the individual and also sentimental aspects of the relationship with the divine, against a backdrop of vague aspirations towards a church reform entrusted to a shepherd capable of reviving the “old faith”. In the previously-cited dedication of the Sette Salmi to de Leyva, Aretino identifies this leader as the newly-elected pope Paul III., “perché è giunto il tempo cotanto bramato da i giusti. La stagione ria è cessata, la fede vecchia ritorna, ecco la giustizia, ecco la carità, che uscita di essiglio riede a la patria Roma”.⁸ The manifold insistence on mercy (misericordia) brings it back to the tenderness of forgiveness (perdono), to the inexhaustible divine willingness to accept the sinner. Likewise, in the Passione the case of the good thief, to whom Christ assures entry to paradise, prompts an observation on the ease of forgiveness. God is prepared for even the gravest sins, provided he observes “two tears” shed from the “tenderness of the heart”: La misericordia di Cristo è pure inestimabile, ella è pur pia, ella è pur grande, poi che dopo mille offese che se gli fanno in ogni tempo, in ogni luogo e a tutte l’ore, ingiuriandosi il suo nome, il suo corpo e il suo sangue, maladicendosi la sua Aria, il suo Cielo, la sua Terra, la sua Acqua e il suo Fuoco, con due lagrime che si sparghino con la tenerezza del cuore, e cadendo inginocchioni dire: “Io ho peccato, io il confesso, io me ne pento”, non pur ti perdona, non pur ti restituisce la grazia sua, ma ti fa parte di quel suo regno nel qual non balena, non tuona, non fulmina e non piove, nel quale non ha grandine la state, né il verno neve, nel quale non si accampano né uomini né armi.⁹

The benefit of His grace (here the convergence with Il beneficio di Cristo is extremely evident) ensures that God’s love pardons, even apart from any act of penitence: O beati coloro le cui iniquità perdona Iddio, lasciandole impunite, non per le opere de la contrizione, né de la penitenzia (se ben senza esse le colpe nostre non hanno remissione), ma per benefizio de la grazia sua; la bontà mirabile de la quale nel cor rintenerito riguarda, e per la compunzione sua move a ricoprirgli i peccati col lembo de la misericordia.¹⁰

This concept of the breadth of divine mercy reaches as far as suggesting the possibility of universal redemption, touched upon in the paraphrase of Psalm 32: “perciò che la misericordia de la redenzione ne debbe salvare tutti, perché tutti egualmente ci ama”¹¹. Unable to go as far as denying the existence of hell, Aretino brings back reason not to the damnation for the seriousness of the errors, but rather to the stubbornness of the sinner who does not wish to accept the tenderness of divine forgiveness or the consolation of hope,

 Ibid., 604.  Ibid., 578 – 579, cf. also ibid., 416.  Ibid., 463.  Ibid., 499.

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e se ancora i meriti de le nostre maladette colpe ci danneranno ne lo Inferno, ciò fia pur con gloria sua; perché in tale atto la sua potenza si mostrerà a tutti quelli che hanno voluto che in quanto a loro il suo sangue sia sparso indarno, e rimanendosi sempre ne la perfidia non si sono mai consolati con la speranza di salvarsi, onde Iddio non gli girò mai l’occhio de la sua pietade, con il quale risguarda gli umili. Egli ha risguardato a la orazione de gli umili, e ciò ha fatto perché la cagione de la perdizione non è la gravità né la quantità de i peccati, ma il pericolo stassi ne la durezza de lo animo, ne la iniquità del non volersi convertire, e ne la superbia del non ricorrere a Dio.¹²

In the Umanità di Cristo the evangelical passage on the Pater noster (following a vulgarization of Pico’s Expositio, as Élise Boillet has demonstrated) is developed into an explanation of the prayer as the offering of one’s own heart to the divine gaze: L’orare non è altro che, per elevazione di mente et eccitamento de lo affetto, notificare a Dio i suoi desiderii; per ciò, quando vi ponete in ginocchioni guardando il cielo, accioché Iddio vi guardi il core, chiedetegli il bene che infonde la carità de la sua grazia, per cui vi congiungete seco.¹³

As it already does in della Mirandola’s Expositio, the prayer opens with an entreaty, although extended with cautious reservation, of salvation for the infidels: Venga il regno promessoci da le nostre opere, e osservatoci da la tua pietade. E perché ti glorifichi in noi per misericordia, oriamo per gli infideli ancora, desiderando con tutto il cuore che tu regni in tutti per tua bontà, preponendo perciò la gloria tua a la salute nostra. [186] Sia la volontade tua, sí come in cielo, anco in terra. Ma se ben vorremmo che tutte le genti si convertissino, disponendo tu de i lor peccati altrimenti, adempiscasi il tuo volere ne gli uomini, come si adempí ne gli angeli che peccarono; onde fu magnificata et esaltata la tua potenza per giustizia, come si magnifica et esalta per misericordia.¹⁴

The christian’s prayer, on the other hand, seems to matter more for its emotional intensity than for its explicit self-awakening: it is something which rests more in the heart than in speech. Thus, Psalm 101 (Salmi, V) is paraphrased: risguarda me che prego piú con il core, che io non esclamo con la lingua, perché io so bene che chi si volta a Dio con la sincerità de la intenzione adempisce la orazion sua prima che la parola gli esca di bocca, non aspettando la bontà tua che la voce ti comparisca dinanzi.¹⁵

4. The fact must not be ignored that Aretino’s confluences with themes and prospects widespread throughout the Italian intellectual world before the Tridentine stranglehold, his evident link to the trends of contemporary evangelism, function for him on writing’s determining level as a test of his own capacity to assert himself in any    

Ibid. Ibid., 360. Ibid., 360 – 361. Ibid., 492.

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sphere by the natural force of his own wit (ingegno). It seems that to him the religious problem also is a writing problem, and a key opportunity (given the importance of religion to the social life of the time) to prove himself: a test which is that much more crucial given that in this case his writing is based on sacred writing, on rewriting and projecting on it further imagery and heterogeneous expansions, yet which started with that need for simplicity which he maintains is the basis of authentic Christian experience. However, this demand for simplicity, as I have already noted, converges with his nullifying impulse and programmatic anti-pedanticism: it seems to guarantee writing far removed from all fiction and mendacity, hostile to the falseness of philosophy, of science, and of social artifice. Moreover, in the Umanità di Cristo he even profits from the first of the Beatitudes of Matthew (5, 3) to contrast the simplicity of faith with the temerity of science: Beati coloro il cui spirito mendico di argomenti si sta contento ne la credenza sua, e ciò che vede, e ciò che spera, e ciò che possiede tiene dono d’Iddio, né sa confondersi nel dubbio in cui pone la temerità de le scienze. Il regno del Cielo è di chi nutrisce l’intelletto con la semplicità de la fede…¹⁶

However, the constitutive paradox of the entire Aretinian experience lies precisely here: the simplicity that sacred writing appears to guarantee succeeds in fulfilling itself only through an accumulation of “invented” – connoted both socially and artificially – writing. Simplicity and truth are expressed only through rhetorical expansion, inventive inflation (what we of course know as mendacity). And ultimately, faced with Aretino’s experience as a writer and man of the world, the “scourge of princes”, the status of everything regarding religion is ambiguous, in that while he recognises Christianity’s attainment of “simple” truth – the supreme alternative to the falsehood of the “sciences” – in the reality of relationships and behaviour he finds himself emphasising it precisely as a social value, authorised by tradition and rooted in the establishment, in that accumulation of writings and forms already created which revolve around the same Bible. He who always proclaims the absolute originality of his work, his “far presto e del suo”, must base this “simple” religious writing on what has already been written, on the absolute and final word spoken definitively on the sacred texts, infinite routes, retraced and repeated from tradition: he must rewrite them, intervening by recharging them through inventive reinforcement, extension, etc. The assertion of maximum simplicity turns out to be maximum artifice; Aretino can strive to attain that programmatic simplicity only through artifice. On the other hand, the very taking-over of the religious code, even from this particular position so near evangelism’s tendencies, supplies artifice with internal discharging possibilities, with the nullification of the same language that is being expanded. In this para Ibid., 356– 357.

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doxical web, the amplification ends by converging near the point where the “simple” language corresponds to its self-erasure, to the void, and to silence. After all, talking about Christ is like effecting the unutterable, embellishing around a proliferation of words which ultimately equate to silence, given that “i miracoli apparsi, apparendo egli, furono tanti e tali, che non capeno nel pensiero di alcuno. E perciò tutto quello che se ne dice è nulla”¹⁷. The Gospel according to John, moreover, concludes (21, 25) with the observation that, if it were to recount all of Jesus’ actions, the world itself would not be able to contain all of the books which would have to be written. 5. This paradoxical artifice of simplicity is positioned in an historical and stylistic horizon that several decades ago used to be characterized as manneristic, with extraordinary results in the Passione/Umanità, with ever more explicit projections in subsequent religious writings, already in Genesi and even more so in Vite. The letter to papal legate Girolamo Verallo in the epilogue to the first edition of Vita di Maria Vergine underscores his obligation to extol and to enlarge (estollere e a ringrandire), going as far as to consider the poetic lies (menzogne poetiche) appropriated by the religious writings: E perché ogni cosa pensata, detta e scritta in lode del Signore è autentica, tutto il mio sforzo è suto in estollere le azioni, le bellezze e le virtù de la Vergine con ogni sorte di parole atte a ringrandire il religioso de le meditazioni mie. E non è dubbio che le menzogne poetiche diventano evangeli allora che, posto da parte il celebrar le chiome, gli occhi, la bocca e il viso di questa e di quella, si rivolgono a cantar di Colei che è rifugio de le speranze nostre. E beati gli inchiostri, beate le penne, beate le carte che si spendano, si affaticano e si spiegano nei pregi di Maria.¹⁸

The dedication letter to the marquis del Vasto in the Vita di santa Caterina insists on the importance of authorial invention (invenzione), which becomes authentic (autentica) solely because it appears to be “in glory of God”: Ecco, lo scriver mio, sempre ne l’ire, ne le minacce, ne le prigioni, negli spaventi, nei supplizii e ne le morti, si sostien quasi tutto in sul dosso de la invenzione, però che, oltre che ogni cosa che risulta in gloria di Dio è autentica, l’opera, che in sé stessa è poca, sarebbe nulla senza lo aiuto che io le ho dato meditando.¹⁹

This Aretinian device is stimulated by continual stretching elsewhere, by his own repeated self-negation and self-fragmentation. It is as if the same magniloquence, the same proliferate expansion of the images perpetually moves itself towards a definitive non-conviction of self, and this could express itself only as disintegration and nullification of the discourse or as its abstract suspension, almost metaphysically hovering over itself.

 Aretino, Umanità, in: Ibid., 304.  Ibid., 605 – 606.  Ibid., 607.

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Thus, reading these formidable pages, marked by an uncontrollable impulse towards excess, by a withering figurative expansiveness, and a varied unwinding of language in sumptuous compositions, one can distinguish two converse and parallel directions. One direction, that of artificial invention, disdainfully extends itself, articulating itself and breaking itself down, the spectacular temperament of an overburdened and teeming life; the other, the nullifying tension and destructive impulse, bursts from that same vital expansion, overloading itself with the same religious ideology of simplicity. Exceptional are the descriptive tours de force, the moving pictures which Aretino draws with a dazzling sureness of gaze, especially when this touches lines of transgression regarding the direct evangelical story – projections of particular situations “in negative” – as in a very modern insistence on “low desire”. Likewise in the crusaders’ return home, where the writing observes the shabby vulgarity of their private spaces, prolonged and projected beyond the surprising simile to hunters, who come to be charged and eliminated: Ora le turbe, forse sazie come stanche nello affliger Giesú, ritornarono in Gierusalemme; et entrati per le lor case, chi gittatosi là senza spogliarsi pur le armi, si addormentava. Chi aventatosi a un vaso di acqua, tuffatoci dentro il viso, se la beeva quasi tutta in un sorso. Alcuno, trovato la tavola acconcia, si poneva a mangiare, tuttavia contando alla sua famiglia il fine di Cristo. Altri, ridendo, parlando forte, diceva: “Io gli feci e dissi”. Eravi alcuno che narrava di punto in punto la cosa. Altri non appicava una verità con l’altra. E non so chi, fermatosi in su la porta della sua casa, trattosi l’elmo e sfibiatosi la corazza, ad un groppo di vecchi, che per la età non potereno andare a Calvaria, non lasciava indietro un che né un ma di Cristo crocifisso. In somma, tutti insieme nel raccontare il fatto parevano una moltitudine di cacciatori ritornati dalla selva, intorno al fuoco o posti a cena, che nel raccontare il valore de i cani, l’asprezza de i cinghiali e la vertú di lor medesimi, mescolando le bugie col vero, dicano quel che gli viene alla bocca con riso e con maraviglia di coloro che gli ascoltano. Ben che altro fu l’udire il vanto che si diereno i Giudei di Cristo, che quel che si danno i cacciatori delle fere.²⁰

Naturally, Aretino could not allow an exaggerated situation like the Massacre of the Innocents, already thoroughly explored in the visual arts, to escape him. In the Umanità, it unfolds in two different phases: in the first, Herod only feels the echo from a distance, while he witnesses the second like he would a performance. It is an artificial game of sadistic inventiveness that takes place in an irresistible figurative complacency, in which the lacerated bodies are tangled in the most diverse positions, like in the writhing of tossing material: Ecco i manigoldi eletti a l’offizio orribile e a l’opra detestabile. Oimè! i coltelli sono in alto, e piombando giuso feriscano le teste, rompano i seni, forono le gole, aprano le reni, tagliano le coscie, isdruciscono i ventri, mozzano le mani e cavano gli occhi. Già la terra si bagna di sangue, si copre di viscere, si sparge di membra. I lupi famelici sono entrati ne gli ovili e fanno strage de gli agnelli: le mandri belano e i pastori esclamano. Già gli esecutori de la impietà reale sono per

 Ibid., 585 – 586, ibid., 421– 422.

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l’altrui case. Ecco quello, tra il padre e la madre giacenti in letto, uccide il figlio, il quale scherzando gli rallegra. Ecco quell’altro che lo trae di braccio a colei che piú che sé lo ama, e gittandolo da un balcone, la proverbia mentre ella se ne ramarica. Eccone là nel fuoco con i legami che ci fasciano ne i primi giorni. Onde ardendo e piangendo si torcano, e dibattendo l’una e l’altra spalla si muoiano. Questi sono rapiti da i petti, suggendo i vasi materni, e scannati senza indugio, e quelli, avventati insieme con le culle giú per le scale, danno ad ogni grado tributo di sangue, di membra e di cerebri. Ne sono rotti nel muro, se ne scagliano da i tetti, se ne tuffano ne le acque che bollano, se ne affoga con i lacci, se ne strangola con le mani, se ne trafigge con i piedi, se ne schiaccia con i pugni, se ne gitta ne le latrine, se ne sbranano, e se ne tagliano in pezzi.²¹

The various guises of the Magdalene in the Umanità must still be remembered, with the formidable description of the banquet in which she bids farewell to her life of sin (from her provocative dress to her appearance in front of the banquet guests as “Citerea che uscisse del suo cielo”²²), or the scene of her self-flagellation, with “un flagello di cinture scropulose per le gioie e acute per i diamanti”, which produces the following effect: percotendosi le carni con quella crudeltà che se le percuote la stoltizia de la disperazione, ecco spruzzare fuora il sangue cadendo per la delicatezza del nettissimo corpo. E moltiplicando i colpi, il bianco che toglieva il vanto a le brine cominciò a vergarsi de i segni neri che in lui stampava il flagello. Al fine (mercé de le percosse) il nero e il bianco diventò vermiglio. E quello che pur ora luceva piú che il puro del latte, e piú che il candido de l’avorio, perduto lo splendore d’ogni sua vaghezza, era sí miserabile, che non lo averebbe potuto riguardar l’occhio de l’iniquità.²³

6. However, as has already been said, artistry and pictorial expansion tend towards exactly the opposite through continual inner excavation, an internal self-contemplation within empty tension, as a form of self-thwarting. In its self-expansion, in its desire to occupy all possible spaces, language seems to direct itself towards a boundary of nothingness, nearing the point in which every cultural and figurative fact, every invention, ignites. The simplicity sought programmatically in the first group of these writings does not conclude with an innocent – or therefore simple – act; it is not the form of religious and spiritual balance but rather the picture of Aretino’s aggressive anti-cultural rage which negates speech exactly by means of its excess. This nullifying impulse manifests itself through a series of alternations between opposites, among which the oscillations between noise and silence, light and darkness, and frenetic movement and immobility/petrification acquire particular suggestiveness. Naturally silence constitutes the most explicit equivalent to the voiding of the discourse: it undermines the portrayal, it is in fact the corresponding interior of

 Ibid., 295 – 296.  Ibid., 349.  Ibid., 353 – 354.

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the clamorous collective scenes. In this way, in the Passione the clamour of the throngs, the growing voices, the shouts of the crowds that witness Christ’s martyrdom, in their overburdening and extending of themselves, always lead to a point in which they unload themselves in a gaping silence. That is how Aretino, in a measured and wise manner, repeatedly opposes Mary and John’s silence before the cross, to the din of the surrounding throngs: when the nails are driven in, the crowds “gridavano come si grida nel teatro nel cadere e nello arizzarsi della fiera”.²⁴ The psalmodizing of David, who wishes to move beyond verbal expression, is always concealed in silence; at the end of Salmo II (31) his silence makes it seem as if “il suo silenzio ragionasse con la spelonca dove era rinchiuso de la pace ch’egli aveva fatto con Dio”.²⁵ Umanità starts from the silence and calming of the prophets’ voices, making its way as if on a horizon of absolute silence; Mary is characterized by love for silence and for “poche parole” (“few words”²⁶), while Christ’s baptism is witnessed by the universe’s silence. The dense descriptions are imbued with multiple contrasts of light/dark and radiance/dullness which, especially in the Passione, well and truly anticipate Tintoretto: however the final result always seems to be the darkness of the cavern in which Aretino sets David’s prayers, “un luogo oscuro che si stava sotterra come carcere del suo peccato, nel quale entrando il suo errore fu spaventato da le tenebre de lo speco”.²⁷ The artificial exuberance of the bodies and objects are set in statuesque and metallic elements, fixed there in an alarming mineral state, scarred by the fate of death, which appears to have erased biological breaths and heartbeats. Looking at the affected portrait of Christ on the way to Calvary, the frozen quality of the human figure almost suggests a depletion of physicality, due to the way they overlap: Il suo capo simigliava un pino senza chiome, la sua fronte un quadro di cristallo pieno di ghiacci, le sue ciglia due filze d’ambre nere minutissime sfilate. Le sue guancie non erano dissimili da un rosaio di verno. Il suo naso pareva un canellino di ariento filato, calpesto dalla trascuraggine dello artefice. La sua barba pareva proprio un cespo di viole senza ciocche, e tutto il suo volto insieme si confaceva alla alba sepolta nella nebbia.²⁸

The birth of Jesus, as in so many 15th century paintings, is set among the ruins of an ancient structure. The Egyptian gods disintegrate in the presence of the holy family in flight:

    

Ibid., 572. Ibid., 469. Ibid., 269. Ibid., 454. Ibid., 568.

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Parevano i dei di Egitto, rotti in mille pezzi e sparsi per tutto il pavimento, una moltitudine di statue abbattute dal tempo, ritrovate dentro una rovina antica, che hanno qua la testa, là i piedi, altrove le gambe, in una altra parte il busto, qui son mezze, e quindi oltre quasi intere.²⁹

At Christ’s departure, Egypt itself seems to vanish, sinking into nothingness: E in quel punto Egitto si spogliò del suo manto verde, perché la partenza di Cristo gli fu autunno. Gli uccelli si diede|19r|ro a piangere, l’aria si fece pallida, tutte le genti, non altrimenti che fossero rimaste senza luce, si attenebrarono, e gli pareva movere il passo per sentiero torto, gli pareva cadere ne i precipizii.³⁰

To the dissolutive spirit of Aretino’s writing, moreover, false simile becomes an essential device, reflecting the figured on the figurant: as Christ “only resembles himself” (“simiglia solo a se stesso”³¹), so many things and figures around him replicate on top of themselves, only resembling themselves, in a sort of self-production that is like self-erasure. The tautological analogies do nothing else beyond repeating what already is: resembling oneself is nothing but retracing the fixed space of what is already given. Here are the pontiffs reproached by Christ who hearing his words “si dipinsero de i colori che si veggano nel viso di quelli che sentano improverarsi i lor vituperi”³²; here are the Apostles listening to the Jesus at the last supper, “i quali tenendo fitti i volti nel volto del suo Signore e le orecchie appese alle parole sue, sembravano gli apostoli depinti, che sedendo con Cristo ascoltano i suoi detti”.³³ But if God’s realm can be said only by denying all of life’s habits, its great occasions and little banalities, of atmospheric events, social conflicts, of every science and every culture, Aretino cannot refrain from depicting the end of everything: of all things and of the categories themselves in which the world arranges itself, the same mental pictures in which we interpret and understand existence. The description of the end of the world and the last judgment is a crowning feat of his nullifying writing, which he even places in Genesi in a vision of the future assigned to Noah. It is an apocalyptic rewriting that, with enormous originality, repositions so many descriptions and images of the end of time. They are formidable and absolute pages. At first, with the resurrection of bodies the bonds, affections, institutions, and forms of social life are erased: I mariti non conoscono le moglieri, né i figliuoli i padri. L’oro, le perle e le gioie sono cadute del seno de l’avarizia. Il lascivo de la lussuria e il superbo de la pompa è in dispregio de gli essecutori del vizio e de |23r| la vanità. Il consiglio e l’animo, i quali sono i primi a fuggire nel sopragiugnere del pericolo, hanno abbandonato i savi e i valorosi. La conscienza, comparita in publico, apre le porte di tutti i cori. Lo antivedere, non sapendo che farsi del senno, non essorta

    

Ibid., 295. Ibid., 303. Aretino, Umanità, in: Ibid., 315. Ibid., 338 – 339. Aretino, Passione, in: Ibid., 531; Umanità, in: Ibid., 380.

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e non provede. Il pentimento non ha piú spazio di amendarsi. I gradi, le corone e gli scettri hanno perduto l’onore e l’ubbidienza. La nobiltà e la plebe non danno piú cura de l’altezza, né de la bassezza. La volontà non desidera e lo ingegno non si industria. Solo il pensiero de la salute e de la dannazione si essercita in altrui. I termini de i campi cascano, le facultà divise si rimescolano, le ricchezze perdano il pregio e le virtú la gloria. La gentilezza e la rusticità non han chi le guardi né chi le schifi.³⁴

However once the judgment has been passed, with the definitive separation of the blessed and the damned, it is nature itself in its entirety, with the same categories from which it is comprised (primarily time and space), to vanish: Ecco che gonfia il mare, ecco ch’enfia la terra, e in un istante sgonfiato e disenfiata l’uno e l’altra. I pesci e le fere, mughiando e stridendo, si disfeceno. Morí la Natura e il Tempo, con il luogo del “fu”, con lo spazio del “sarà” e con il campo de l’“era”. I momenti, |24v| l’ore, lo istamani e lo istasera, l’ieri e l’oggi perdettono il nome. Il poco e il troppo, tolti da l’estremo, diventarono il tutto de lo insieme; andarono in oblio le memorie de le cose, il “che fui” e il “che sarò”, smenticossi il passato e il futuro, morirono i cieli, serrarono i loro occhi, e nel disfarsi udissi il fato che si lamentò de la prosunzione datagli da i loro influssi, le potestà de i quali ardirono concorrere con quella di Dio, e perciò perirono nel peccato de la superbia di Lucifero e d’Adamo. Nel perire del sole, de la luna e de le stelle, scossesi il sito d’ogni clima, d’ogni emispero e d’ogni regione, con il tremendo de l’ultimo rumore; e dissolvendosi la machina elementale, il Tauro, il Sinai, l’Apennino, con ogni altro monte, ne la fine de l’universo ritornarono ciò che furono inanzi al mondo, rimanendosi nel suo presente l’Imperio di Dio e il regno del Demonio; e i beati, restituiti ne l’età piú fiorita e piú splendida, sedevano ne le sede loro, quando Noè, per aver l’anima rinchiusa ne la prigione de la carne, non potendo piú soffrire l’ineffabile del gioco che provava ne le viscere, squarciò le larve del sonno, e destossi.³⁵

Bibliography Primary Sources Ariosto, Ludovico, Satire, Torino 1987. Aretino, Pietro, Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Pietro Aretino, IV/1, Lettere, ed. Paolo Procaccioli, Roma 1997. Aretino, Pietro, Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Pietro Aretino, V/II, Teatro, ed. Giovanni Rabitti/Carmine Boccia/Enrico Garavelli, Roma 2010. Aretino, Pietro, Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Pietro Aretino, VII/I, Opere religiose, ed. Élise Boillet, Roma 2017 [in print].

 Ibid., 142.  Ibid., 145 – 146.

Index of names Abraham (biblical figure) 6, 258, 261 – 268 Adam (biblical figure) 237 – 239, 259, 263, 285 Aesop 57 Alberti, Leon Battista 4 f., 55, 57 f., 181 – 184, 186 – 189, 191 f., 203 f., 206 – 209, 221 Alexander the Great 263, 273 Alighieri, Dante 2, 9 – 22, 84 – 86, 120, 229 f., 232, 258 Aloise del Preto 234 Ambrose (Saint) 226 Amos (prophet) 256, 259 f. Andreasi, Marsilio 217, 236 – 244 Antonius de Mercatello 77, 79 Apollinaire, Guillaume 50 Aquinas, Thomas 88, 253, 267 Arendt, Hannah 20 Aretino, Pietro 1, 3, 5 f., 45 – 56, 59 – 66, 215, 225 – 249, 253 – 262, 265 – 269, 273 – 284 Ariosto, Ludovico 5, 45, 49, 57, 63, 105 f., 197 – 209, 220 f., 274 f. Aristotle 25 f., 28 f., 73 f., 84, 87 f., 109, 134, 144, 152 Arnolfini, Niccolò 214 Augustin (Saint) 81, 263 Augustus 161, 165 Aurispa, Giovanni 57 Avalos (d’), Alfonso (Governor of the Duchy of Milan) 256 Ballarini, Ippolito 243, 247 Barbaro, Ermolao 127 f. Barbieri, Edoardo 259, 262 Barthes, Roland 20 Baruch (prophet) 256, 259 Baschet, Armand 47 Belcari, Feo 265 f., 269 Bellandini, Paolo 226 Bembo, Pietro 45, 50, 64, 84, 225 Benivieni, Girolamo 231, 243 Bernardo Clesio 242 Berni, Francesco 66 Bias of Priene 80 Bindoni, Bernardino 57 Bindoni, Francesco 57 Biondo, Michelangelo 274 Blarer, Jacob Christoph 215

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525021-016

Boccaccio, Giovanni 46, 80, 85, 110, 114, 122, 143, 182, 184 Boiardo, Matteo Maria 57, 63, 106, 143 Bracciolini, Poggio 5, 76, 127, 203 f., 208 f. Bradwardine, Thomas 85 Bramante, Donato 221 Britannico, Ludovico 236 Brucioli, Antonio 220, 227, 231, 243, 245, 258 – 262, 268 f., 276 Brunelleschi, Filippo 100 f. Brunelleschi, Ghigo 3, 99 – 104, 118 Brunfels, Otto 262 Bruno, Giordano 73 f., 80, 84 Cadmus 164 Caesar, Julius 57, 164 f., 171, 263 Cain (biblical figure) 263 Cajetan, Thomas (Tommaso de Vio) 87 f. Callimachus 155, 165 f. Calmo, Andrea 236 Calvo, Marco Fabio 150 Cambiatore da Reggio, Tommaso 45, 49, 51 – 53 Camillo (Delminio), Giulio 80 Camozzi Pistoja, Ambrogio 230 Capece, Scipione 229 Caravia, Alessandro 236 Castellus, Hieronymus 171 Castiglione, Baldassarre 45, 50 Catarino Politi, Ambrogio 246 Catherine (biblical figure) 253, 267 Catherine of Alexandria 253, 267 Catullus 4, 129, 158 f., 161 – 163, 168 f., 174 Cavalcanti, Guido 12, 15 – 20 Cei, Francesco 263 Cellini, Benvenuto 148 Charlemagne 165 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) 154, 216 Chledowski, Casimir von 172 Christ, Jesus 6, 19, 26, 45, 53 f., 190 – 193, 217, 219, 221 f., 228 – 230, 232 f., 236, 240, 246 – 249, 253 f., 257, 262, 265, 273, 275 – 277, 280, 283 f. Cicero 76, 80, 89, 129, 139, 151 Cino da Pistoia 16 Collenuccio, Pandolfo 57 f., 215, 265, 269 Colonna, Vittoria 268 Contarini, Giorgio 71

288

Index of names

Contarini, Giovanni Pietro 215 Contarini, Paolo 71 Cortesi, Paolo 129, 139 Cosmas (Saint) 77, 147 f., 150 Cosmico, Nicolò Lelio 203 Crisolora, Manuele 55 Croce, Benedetto 199 Curione, Celio Secondo 5, 65, 213 – 222 Curtius, Ernst 72 Damian (Saint) 147 f., 150 Daniel (biblical figure) 256, 259 f., 263 Dante da Maiano 16 David (biblical figure) 52, 225, 230 – 233, 237 f., 240 – 242, 247, 253, 259, 263, 283 de Farri, Giovanni 57 de Leyva, Antonio 233 f., 276 f. de Pizan, Christine 144 De Valdés, Juan 276 degli Albizi, Albiera 135 Della Porta, Giovan Battista 88 Della Rovere, Francesco Maria I. (Duca di Urbino) 269 della Stufa, Sigismondo 135 delle Bande Nere, Giovanni 47 Democritus 134, 139 Derrida, Jacques 72 Dinah (biblical figure) 267 Diodorus Siculus 57 Dionigi, Bartolomeo 264, 269 Dionisotti, Carlo 51 Dolce, Ludovico 3, 73, 83 – 86, 88 f., 200, 243 Domenichi, Ludovico 65 Domenico da Prato 3, 99 – 102, 121 Dominic (Saint) 148 Domitian 158 Doni, Anton Francesco 45, 52, 65, 243 Duns Scotus, Ioannes 127 Egnazio of Fossombrone, Bartolomeo 229 Epicure 127 f., 130 Epimenides 59 Erasmus of Rotterdam 5, 49, 65, 189, 191, 193, 215 – 219, 221, 236, 242 f., 247 f., 255, 276 Este (d’), Borso (Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio) 166 f. Este (d’), Ercole (Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio) 56 f., 166 f., 170, 172 Este (d’), Ippolito (Prince of Modena) 201

Este (d’), Leonello (Marquess of Ferrara) 166 f. Esther (biblical figure) 256, 259 Estienne, Robert 262 Etiro, Partenio 264 Eve (biblical figure) 263, 266 f. Ezechiel (biblical figure) 256, 259 f. Ezra (biblical figure) 259

57,

Farnese, Alessandro (Pope Paul III) 214, 230 f., 277 Ficino, Marsilio 127 f., 131 Folengo, Teofilo 54, 257 f. Fontanini, Benedetto 238 f., 248 Foresti, Giacomo Filippo 263 f. Foucault, Michel 20 Fra Angelico 148 Fracastoro, Girolamo 150 Fragnito, Gigliola 264 Francis I (King of France) 215, 233 Franco, Niccolò 49, 65 Fulgentius 85 Fusillo, Massimo 60 Gabriel (biblical figure) 257 Galen, Aelius Galenus 57, 150 Gallus 159, 161 – 164, 174 Garzoni, Tommaso 75 Gesualdo, Filippo 3, 73, 89 – 92 Gian Polo 236 Giancarli, Gigio Artemio 236 Ginzburg, Carlo 243, 246 Giolito de’ Ferrari, Gabriele 85 Giovanni Padoano 57 Giovio, Paolo 4, 143 f., 149 f. Gonzaga, Federico 47 Gonzaga, Francesco II. (Marquess of Mantua) 136 Gregory the Great 226 Gritti, Andrea 154 Gritti, Alvise 234 Grymoult, Léger 222 Guarino da Verona 57, 172 Guarna, Andrea 221 Guicciardini, Francesco 153 f. Guidiccioni, Bartolomeo 214 Habakkuk (biblical figure) 259 Hagar (biblical figure) 265 f. Haggai (biblical figure) 259

Index of names

Herod Antipas 228 Herodian 57 Herodotus 26, 59 f. Hesiod 59 f. Hippocrates 4, 143 – 147, 149 – 152, 154 f. Homer 59 – 61, 64, 84, 164, 168, 175 Horace 5, 80, 158 f., 163, 167, 193, 197, 199 f., 202 f., 209 Hosea (biblical figure) 259 Hotman, François 215 Hugh of St. Victor 76 Isaac (biblical figure) 262 – 266 Isaiah (biblical figure) 237, 256, 259 f. Ishmael (biblical figure) 265 Jacob (Saint) 255, 263 f., 267 f. Jeremiah (biblical figure) 256, 259 f. Jerome (Saint) 128, 218 Job (biblical figure) 256, 259 Joel (biblical figure) 256, 259 f. John of Salisbury 144 John the Baptist 5, 19, 47, 225 – 230, 233, 245 – 247, 249, 283 John the Evangelist 63, 218, 275, 280 Jonah (biblical figure) 259 Joseph (biblical figure) 255, 262 – 265, 267 f. Joshua (biblical figure) 256, 259 Judas (biblical figure) 240 Judith (biblical figure) 259 Juvenal 5, 193, 197, 199 f., 203 – 209, 263 Kant, Immanuel

71

Landino, Cristoforo 131, 159, 167 Lando, Ortensio 65, 215 Latro Porcius 72 Lefèvre d’Étaples, Jacques 193, 262 Leoniceno, Niccolò 56 – 58 Leucippus 134 Livy 31 – 33, 55, 57, 80, 187 Lomazzo, Gian Paolo 89 Longiano, Fausto Sebastiano 65 Lucian of Samosata 3 f., 49, 55 – 66, 181, 183 f., 188, 194, 221 Lucifer (biblical figure) 285 Lucretius 4, 35, 127 – 140, 180, 193 Luke the Evangelist 84, 226 – 228, 248, 266 Luther, Martin 189, 193, 262 Lycurgus 32, 36

289

Machiavelli, Niccolò 2 f., 31 – 41, 107, 151 – 155, 215, 234 Macrobius 128 Maecenas 158, 164 – 166, 203 Magliabecchi, Antonio 71 Mainardi, Agostino 222 Malachi (biblical figure) 259 f. Malegucio, Annibale 204 Malerbi, Niccolò 259 – 262, 269 Manetti, Antonio 118 Manuzio, Aldo 157 Marc the Evangelist 84, 148, 228 Marcolini, Francesco 52, 243, 254 Marguerite of Navarra 52 Marinetti, Tommaso 50 Marmochino, Santi 259 – 261 Marrasio, Giovanni 166 Martelli, Niccolò 226, 253 f., 258 Martha (biblical figure) 248 Martial 158 f., 162 f., 169 – 171, 176 Marullo, Michele 127, 129, 136, 138 Mary Magdalene 233, 247 f., 265, 268, 282 Mary (Saint) 6, 53 f., 253, 256, 263, 283 Matthew the Evangelist 84, 226 f., 279 Medici (de’), Alessandro (Duke of Florence) 148 – 150 Medici (de’), Cosimo (the Elder) 38, 148 Medici (de’), Damiano 148 Medici (de’), Giovanni di Bicci 147 f. Medici (de’), Giovanni di Lorenzo (Pope Leo X) 148 f., 155 Medici (de’), Giovanni 47 Medici (de’), Giuliano di Lorenzo (Duke of Nemours) 149 Medici (de’), Giulio di Giuliano (Pope Clement VII) 149, 155 Medici (de’), Ippolito (Lord of Florence) 4, 143 – 150, 154 f. Medici (de’), Lorenzo (il magnifico) 128, 130 – 132 Medici (de’), Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco 136 Medici (de’), Lorenzo di Piero (Duke of Urbino) 149 Medici (de’), Piero 140 Meduna, Bartolomeo 79, 84 Messalla 158, 163 f. Micah (biblical figure) 259 Michiel, Marcantonio 148 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) 102, 106, 116

290

Index of names

Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat 2 f., 39 – 43 Morante, Elsa 9 f. More, Thomas 65 Moses (biblical figure) 254, 259, 263 Nahum (prophet) 259 Nardi, Jacopo 55 Nathan (prophet) 232 Nebuchadnezzar II (King of Babylon, biblical figure) 263 Nelli, Giustiniano 230 Nepos, Cornelius 163 Nicolini da Sabbio, Giovanni Antonio 243 Noah (biblical figure) 253 – 255, 257 – 260, 262 f., 284 Ochino, Bernardino 230, 268, 276 Ovid 4, 118, 128, 135, 159, 161 – 163, 166 – 171, 174, 176, 207 Pannonio, Giano 171 Pascal, Blaise 179 f. Pasini, Maffeo 57 Pasolini, Pier Paolo 9 f. Passerini, Silvio 149 Patrizi (da Cherso), Francesco 71 f., 80, 215 Paul (Saint) 144, 179, 193, 226, 244 Pellicier, Pierre François 215 f., 218 Persius 200 Peter of Ravenna (Petrus Tomai) 80, 85, 87, 91 Peter (Saint) 88 Petrarca, Francesco 3, 14, 46, 73, 80 f., 84, 105, 128, 130 f., 151, 157, 175, 203, 219 f., 258 Philelpho, Francesco 171 Piccolomini, Alessandro 215 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio (Pope Pius II) 159 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 111, 114, 127 f., 140, 186, 262, 278 Pietro da Lucca 243 Pilate, Pontius 246, 249 Pindar 166 Pittorio, Ludovico 231 Plato 26 – 29, 72 – 74, 117, 187, 191 Plautus 3, 5, 55, 57, 99, 102 – 104, 107 – 109, 112, 197 f. Pliny the Elder 55 Plutarch 45, 57 Polani (family) 247

Poliziano, Angelo 4, 65, 127 – 140, 215 Polybius 2 f., 26 – 36, 39, 57 Pomponius Mela 85 Pontano, Giovanni Gioviano 55, 57, 127, 221 Potiphar (biblical figure) 266 f. Praxiteles 56 Propertius 4, 158 – 164, 166 – 169, 173 – 175 Pseudo-Bonaventura 53 Ptolemy 85 Pulci, Luigi 63, 106 Pythagoras 55, 134 Quintilian

75 f., 88, 92, 147

Rabelais, François 4, 183, 188 – 193 Rachel (biblical figure) 266 – 268 Rebecca (biblical figure) 266 f. Reuchlin, Johannes 219 Ricchi, Agostino 46, 274 Ruth (biblical figure) 259 Sallust 57 Samuel (biblical figure) 263 Sannazaro, Jacopo 54, 82, 215, 255, 257 f. Sarah (biblical figure) 265 f., 268 Savonarola, Girolamo 242 – 245 Scaliger, Iulius Caesar 3, 71, 73, 81 – 83 Scipio Aemilianus 26 Seneca the Elder 72 Seneca the Younger 130 f., 137, 185, 187 Shereshevsky, Solomon 74 Simeon (biblical figure) 266 Simonides of Ceos 74 Sommariva, Giorgio 200, 203 Sophonias (biblical figure) 259 Stampa, Massimiano 273 Statius 127, 131, 158 Stoppani, Giovanni Niccolò 215 Strabo 85 Strozzi, Tito Vespasiano 4, 157 – 160, 165 – 176 Tamar (biblical figure) 266 f. Tebaldeo, Antonio 228 Terence 5, 197 Terino da Castelfiorentino 16 Thomas à Kempis 53 Thucydides 26 Tibullus 4, 158 – 164, 166, 168, 173 – 176 Tifernas, Lilius 58 Tintoretto, Jacopo 283

Index of names

Tobit (biblical figure) 256, 259 Tomeo, Leonico 150 Torelli, Ludovica 219 Ulrich von Hutten

215

Valeriano, Pierio 149 f. Varro 182 Vasio, Giovanpaolo 51 Vauzelles, Jean 52 Vecellio, Tiziano 47, 86, 143, 246 f., 249 Vegio, Maffeo 57 Venier, Lorenzo 56 Verallo, Girolamo 280 Vergerio, Pietro Paolo 242 f., 268, 276 Vida, Marco Girolamo 255, 257 Vinciguerra, Antonio 200, 203

291

Virgil 45, 49 – 55, 60, 62, 64, 80 f., 84 – 86, 143, 166, 168, 263, 266 Vitali (de’), Bernardino 45, 51 Vitalis of Blois 100, 102 – 104, 108 f., 111 – 114, 116, 120 Vittoria, Alessandro 228 f. William of Morbeke 144 William of Ockham 109 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 21 Wyclif, John 80 Zecharia (prophet) 259 Zoppino, Nicolò 49, 56 – 59 Zorzi, Francesco 217 Zwingli, Ulrich 217