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Textual Cultures of Medieval Italy
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Textual Cultures of Medieval Italy Edited by William Robins
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2011 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN
978-1-4426-4272-0 (cloth)
Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Textual Cultures of Medieval Italy/ edited by William Robins. Based on papers presented at the 41st Conference on Editorial Problems held at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont., from Nov. 6–8th, 2005. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4272-0 1. Italian literature – To 1400 – Criticism, Textual. 2. Transmission of texts – Italy – History – To 1500. 3. Manuscripts, Medieval – Italy. I. Robins, William Randolph, 1964– ii. Conference on Editorial Problems (41st : 2005 : University of Toronto) pq4065.t49.2011
850.9'001
c2010-908010-6
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii Acknowledgments xi Figures and Tables xiii Introduction william robins 3 1 The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures william robins 11 part one forms of textual exchange 2 Rhetoric and Reform during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries ronald witt 53 3 Adventures in Textuality: Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia christopher kleinhenz 81 part two materials of textual communication 4 Public Textual Cultures: A Case Study in Southern Italy linda safran 115 5 The Textualization of Early Italian Cantari maria bendinelli predelli 145
vi / Contents part three administrative textual cultures 6 Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum: Written Oaths and Ecclesiastical Discipline in Carolingian Italy nicholas everett 167 7 Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence luca boschetto 217 part four collaborative textual cultures 8 The Death of Angela of Foligno and the Genesis of the Liber Angelae dominique poirel 265 9 Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages susanne lepsius 295 Index of Manuscripts 325 Index of Names and Subjects 329
Notes on Contributors
luca boschetto is research associate at the Department of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Florence. With research interests focusing on Italian humanism and on Florentine social and political history, he has produced studies of Leon Battista Alberti, the merchant court of Renaissance Florence, and literary production in fifteenth-century Florence. Among his many publications is the monograph Leon Battista Alberti: Biografia, storia, letteratura (2000). nicholas everett is associate professor of History and Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. He has published numerous articles on literacy, education, law, charters, manuscripts, inscriptions, documents, hagiography, exegesis, and medical texts in early medieval Europe. He is the author of Literacy in Lombard Italy c. 568–774 AD (2003) and The Alphabet of Galen: Pharmacy from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (forthcoming). christopher kleinhenz is the Carol Mason Kirk Professor Emeritus of Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught Italian literature of the Duecento and Trecento, manuscript studies, and art and literature in medieval Italy, all fields in which he has published widely. Among his books are The Early Italian Sonnet (1986) and Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia (2004). susanne lepsius holds the chair of German and European Legal History and Civil Law at the University of Munich. She has published widely on the history of medieval law and legal writings. Her recent publications include the collection Als die Welt in die Akten kam:
viii / Notes on Contributors Prozeßschriftgut im europäischen Mittelalter (edited with Thomas Wetzstein; 2008) and a critical edition of Max Weber’s Zur Geschichte der Handelsgesellschaften im Mittelalter: Schriften 1889–1894 (with Gerhard Dilcher; 2008). dominique poirel is senior researcher at the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (cnrs), assistant professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, and Doino visiting professor at St Bonaventure University. His main field of research is the intellectual history of the Middle Ages, especially the shift from monastic to scholastic culture. He has published critical editions and studies concerning the school of St Victor in Paris, the reception of Pseudo-Dionysius, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Franciscan authors from Thomas of Celano to Angela of Foligno. maria bendinelli predelli is a retired professor of Italian Studies at McGill University. Her research focuses on the chivalric literature of late medieval Italy, especially in its connection with French epic and courtly poetry, as well as on folkloric and popular literature. Her books include Alle origini del Bel Gherardino (1990), Piccone e poesia: La cultura dell’ottava nel poema d’emigrazione di un contadino lucchese (1997), and Cantari e dintorni (1999). william robins is associate professor of English and Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. He has published widely on the production and transmission of vernacular literary texts in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe, especially in Italy and England, and also on the theory and practice of editing medieval texts. His recent publications include a critical edition of Antonio Pucci’s Cantari della Reina d’Oriente (with Attilio Motta; 2007) and the collection Sacred and Profane in Chaucer and Late Medieval Literature (edited with Robert Epstein; 2010). linda safran has taught ancient, late antique, Byzantine, and medieval art history at the Catholic University of America and the University of Toronto. Her major scholarly focus is material culture and transcultural practices in southern Italy, with a nearly completed book titled Art and Identity in the Medieval Salento. She has edited two widely used books, Heaven on Earth: Art and the Church in Byzantium (1998) and The Early Christian Book (2007), and is engaged in several collaborative projects on medieval art and architecture.
Notes on Contributors / ix ronald witt is William B. Hamilton Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University. His research has concentrated on the history of medieval and early modern thought, especially Italian humanism. His publications include Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life, Works and Thought of Coluccio Salutati (1983), Humanism and Reform (2001), ‘In the Footsteps of the Ancients’: The Origins of Italian Humanism 1250–1420 (2000), and The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy (forthcoming).
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Acknowledgments
Many individuals helped plan and host the conference out of which these essays emerged. I especially would like to thank Lawrin Armstrong, my coorganizer, Fred Unwalla, chair of the Conference on Editorial Problems, and the many graduate student volunteers who made the event such a success. The conference was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and, at the University of Toronto, by the Centre for Medieval Studies, the Department of English, and the Emilio Goggio Chair of Italian Studies. For the preparation of this volume, I offer my thanks for the careful eyes of Jen Koniecszy and Elizabeth Watkins; for the insightful reports of the appraisers; for the copyediting expertise of Miriam Skey; and for the help provided by a series of editors at the University of Toronto Press, especially Siobhan McMenemy, who helped bring this volume to fruition. Sincere thanks go out to the Senate of Victoria University in the University of Toronto, whose generous support has made possible the publication of this volume.
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Figures and Tables
Figure 4.1 Li Monaci, Church of St Michael the Archangel, dedicatory inscription (photo by author) 122 Figure 4.2 Castro, Cathedral, north exterior wall, dedicatory inscription (photo by author) 124 Figure 4.3 Galatina, St Catherine, west entry wall, didactic inscription over south door (photo by author) 125 Figure 4.4 Soleto, Santo Stefano, Crucifixion, detail of didactic text on the cross (photo by author) 127 Figure 4.5 Statte, St Cyprian (or St Julian), hortatory inscription (photo by author) 128 Figure 4.6 Carpignano, St Christine, arcosolium with funerary text and St Christine (photo by author) 132 Figure 4.7 Casaranello, Santa Maria della Croce, votive text in sanctuary (photo by author) 134 Figure 5.1 Layout of ottave at the beginning of Book Nine of the Teseida in Boccaccio’s autograph manuscript (ca. 1340–50). Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Acquisti e Doni 325, fol. 100r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 148 Figure 5.2 Layout of lassas in the Franco-Italian Geste Francor (fourteenth cent.). Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Franc. xiii (256), fol. 109r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 150
xiv / Figures and Tables Figure 5.3 Layout of terzine in Dante’s Commedia as transcribed by Boccaccio (ca 1370). Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ricc. 1035, fol. 7r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 150 Figure 5.4 Layout of ottave in Domenico Scolari’s Istoria di Alessandro Magno (1355). Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, ii.ii.30, fol. 8r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 151 Figure 5.5 Layout of ottave in the Cantare di Piramo e Tisbe (end of the fourteenth cent.). Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. vii, 1066, fol. 40v. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 151 Figure 5.6 Layout of the Cantare di Fiorio e Biancifiore (ca 1345), with capital letters beginning every verse and no break between ottave. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. viii, 1416, fols 31v–2r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 153 Figure 5.7 Layout of the Cantare del Bel Gherardino (ca 1373), in register format, with each ottava written in the manner of prose. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. viii, 1272, fol. 34r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 157 Figure 5.8 Layout of stanzas for songs of Peire Vidal in a chansonnier of troubadour lyrics (mid thirteenth cent.). Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, .r.4.4, fol. 22v. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 157 Figure 5.9 Layout of the Cantare della Guerra degli Otto Santi (after 1378), with pairs of verses written across the page. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. xxv, 19, fol. 72r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 159 Figure 5.10 Layout of a canzone by Petrarch (fourteenth cent.), with pairs of verses written across the page. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Pluteo xli.17, fol. 49r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 159 Figure 6.1 Hand of the Sponsio episcoporum. Vatican City, Biblioteca Vaticana, Vaticano latino 1322a, fol. 280r. Reproduced with permis-
Figures and Tables / xv sion of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; further reproduction by any means is prohibited 169 Figure 7.1 The 1355 register of Franceschino de’ Ghisolabelli, with heading in the vernacular and initial act in Latin. Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mercanzia 1121, 1 Aug. 1355. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali; further reproduction by any means is prohibited 223 Figure 7.2 The 1355 register of Franceschino de’ Ghisolabelli, showing the changeover from Latin to vernacular. Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mercanzia 1121, 4 Aug. 1355. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali; further reproduction by any means is prohibited 224 Figure 7.3 Summons in the case-document submitted by a Florentine notary. Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mercanzia 4420, 19 Dec. 1450. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali; further reproduction by any means is prohibited 233 Figure 7.4 The same summons as recorded in the register of Ser Zaccaria de’ Pierleoni (item at the bottom of the page). Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mercanzia 4417, fol. 42r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali; further reproduction by any means is prohibited 234 Figure 7.5 Marginal drawings in the register of Ugo Comminelli (1465). Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mercanzia 7702, fol. 2r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali; further reproduction by any means is prohibited 242 Table 8.1 The order of the Instructiones of the Liber Angelae 270 Table 8.2 Manuscripts of Instructio 36 and the Notificatio 273 Table 8.3 Proposed stemma codicum 275 Table 8.4 Comparative order of the sections of Instructio 36 276 Table 8.5 Chronological indications in Instructio 36 277 Table 8.6 Textual borrowings in Instructio 36 279 Table 8.7 Synoptic edition of Instructio 36.74–9 286
xvi / Figures and Tables Table 9.1 Introductory chapter of the Tractatus testimoniorum with all variants 304 Figure 9.1 A legal allegation in the margin, keyed by a ‘d’ to ‘respondendum’ in Bartolo’s text. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barberini latino 1398, fol. 132v (Va), pointing hands added. Reproduced with permission of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; further reproduction by any means is prohibited 306 Figure 9.2 Marginal comments about omitting passages of text. Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Ripoll 67, fol. 216/224r (Ba), pointing hands added. With permission of the Archivio de la Corona de Aragón 310 Figure 9.3 Marginal additions of legal citations and personalized comments. Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Hänel 15, fol. 260r/288r (Lp), pointing hands added. Reproduced with permission of the Universitätsbibliothek, Leipzig 312 Figure 9.4 Reference to Baldo degli Ubaldi incorporated into Bartolo’s text. London, British Library, Royal 10 b ix, fol. 227r (Lo), pointing hand added. With permission of the British Library 314
Textual Cultures of Medieval Italy
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WILLIAM ROBINS
Introduction
The essays in this volume arise out of papers given at the conference ‘Textual Cultures of Medieval Italy: Editorial and Other Approaches’ held at the University of Toronto on 6–8 November 2005 as the forty-first Conference on Editorial Problems. Looking back, the conference can be seen as one sign of the emergence over the course of 2005 and 2006 of ‘textual cultures’ as a significant, mainstream critical term. During this period in the United Kingdom a conference in Glasgow announced medieval English ‘textual cultures’ as its theme, while another in Stirling addressed ‘textual culture’ (in the singular) within English literary studies more generally; in the United States the Society for Textual Scholarship relaunched its official journal (previously Text) as Textual Cultures; and here in Canada we saw the inauguration of the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab at the University of Victoria and of the research group Transmission, Translation and Transformation in Medieval Textual Cultures at McGill.1 The term ‘print culture’ had by then established itself as a catchword in the field of Book History, and to some extent the notion of ‘textual cultures’ can be seen as a reaction to that rather monolithic conceptualization; there was a feeling (acutely felt among medievalists, as well as among those working with digital technologies) that the time had come to broaden that field beyond the culture of the printed book (and beyond schematic oppositions between ‘print culture’ and ‘scribal culture’), to work out a less deterministic set of propositions about how texts influence behaviour, and to announce our interest in a much messier plurality of textual forms and their cultural effects.2 Certainly, the formulation signals a desire, at least among anglophone students of pre-print societies, for an ever greater rapprochement between the relatively abstract analyses of textual theory, intellectual history, and the study of ideologies on the one hand,
4 / William Robins and the more concretely inflected specialties of editing, palaeography, codicology, and material philology on the other. As the plural form ‘cultures’ implies, the goal is not to speak of textuality (not even of premodern textuality) as something uniform, but rather to illuminate specific textual habits: to gauge how ideological and conceptual formations may have intersected with (may have enabled or been enabled by, may have disrupted or been disrupted by) the techniques through which particular sorts of texts were produced, transmitted, and interpreted.3 At Toronto, the term helped us reconsider an annual conference that has for decades been devoted to issues of editorial method – the Conference on Editorial Problems – and to adapt that venue to showcase the growing interest among practitioners of various disciplines in understanding how medieval texts served as sites of cultural production.4 This overarching concern with the cultural work performed by texts (an important consideration for any editor of a text) can be approached in equally valid ways by editorial methods and by other modes of historical contextualization. The idea of the conference was to bring together scholars from different fields – literary study, history of culture, art history, legal history, philology – to present case studies on specific moments of textual practice in medieval Italy. Some of the contributions highlighted questions of editorial method, but the majority opted for other historical approaches to illuminate their case. Each contribution provided an example of methods that were specific to a given discipline, in keeping with the aim of studying precise cultural configurations, making the conference not so much interdisciplinary as pluri-disciplinary in its scope. The essays that follow, all of them reworked for inclusion in this volume, could be arranged in various orders any one of which would highlight certain connections among the contributions. They might, for example, be ordered according to the chronology or geography of the phenomena studied, or according to the academic discipline through which those phenomena have been approached, or according to a set of historical themes. In the end, we have opted for an arrangement that suggests some of the basic orientations to be found in the study of medieval Italian textual cultures, with essays paired in four groups after an opening historiographical review of the state of the field. Texts (medieval or otherwise) consist of both an immaterial aspect (structured in the minds of readers and writers through literary form, propositional content, and conceptual patterns) and a material aspect (vocalized sound, ink on a page, etc.). In the first pair of essays, yoked under the
Introduction / 5 rubric Forms of Textual Exchange, the interpretive emphasis falls more on the ideational aspect of texts, with a critical orientation that accordingly surveys and assesses the cultural evolution of particular discursive forms over the course of several decades. In the second pair, Materials of Textual Communication, the balance shifts more toward the material aspect, highlighting the visual and aural aspects of medieval textuality as important factors at work in the production and reception of texts. Approaches to medieval textuality, especially editorial methods, also customarily distinguish between two general species of texts: first, documentary ‘acts’ produced in the course of institutional administration (especially when an act stands as an official record or executive order), which are caught up in a tight web of legal, political, governmental, and archival apparatuses; and second, texts which are not juridical or contractual (for example, literary texts or scientific writings), and which harness narrative or discursive or expressive modes for bringing writers and readers into shared textual practices.5 The essays that make up the third pairing in this collection, under Administrative Textual Cultures, present scenarios in which administrative forms of textuality were operative: the authors explain the workings of the institutions in which these texts took effect, offering documentary transcriptions of noteworthy texts. The final pair, under Collaborative Textual Cultures, examines textual practices where authorial contributions were joined by other voices in the collaborative production of textual meaning, with a critical orientation that explicitly attends to textual change, adaptation, and reception, reflecting upon their implications for editorial method. Such an arrangement in no way aims to map out a general paradigm of critical approaches, but attempts rather to cut across traditional disciplinary divides with some thought-provoking juxtapositions of early and later medieval situations, of Latinate and vernacular writings, and of textual cultures of different geographical and institutional milieux. The pluri-disciplinary characteristics of the current state of the field are described in the first chapter by William Robins, who provides an overview of the study of medieval Italian textuality. Here a case is made for seeing medieval Italy as particularly precocious and complex with respect to the kinds of textual cultures to which it gave rise, and to see the scholarship on these cultures as rich, multiform, and currently undergoing an interesting set of shifts of emphasis. In the first pair of essays, Ronald Witt and Christopher Kleinhenz examine the development of two new forms of written expression, accounting for the cultural impact of ways a writer might address the
6 / William Robins recipient of an epistolary or poetic text. Witt asks why, in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, grammatical education based on study of pagan classics was supplanted, in Italy, by a new rhetoricallegal mode of schooling that took conventional, efficient letter writing (ars dictaminis) as its main basis. The inculcation of impersonal, simple prose composition, he argues, was a direct consequence of the circumstances brought on by the movement toward church reform during the Investiture Struggle. The questioning of the morality of earlier grammatical teaching, the disruption of cathedral schools which made possible new private teaching establishments that focused on law and letter writing, and the vibrant circulation of propaganda to win the hearts and minds of the populations of northern Italian cities: all of these developments democratized education, as Italians endeavoured to extend their practical literacy into the sphere of political debate and rhetorical communication. One genre of lyric poetry in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries especially designed for exchanges was the tenzone, or exchange of sonnets through which poets entered into dialogue about current topics or about metapoetic concerns. Kleinhenz surveys this practice from the poets of the court of Frederick ii in Sicily to the tenzoni of Dante and Cino da Pistoia, attentive to what these poems have to tell us about the way that poetic acquaintanceships and textual communities were sustained. Especially interesting is the way that the mode of exchange nourished in the tenzoni also crops up in meta-literary dialogues found in other works such as Dante’s Vita nuova and Commedia. These two essays, which are both concerned with the circulation of ideas about textual exchange, survey the works and writers that contributed to the consolidation of these new practices of the ars dictaminis and the tenzone. The essays by Linda Safran and Maria Predelli tackle aspects of what we might call the mass-media or multi-media contexts in which texts were actualized in the public sphere, looking in particular at the intersection of writing with visual and performative modes. Bringing an art historian’s eye to carved and painted texts of the Salento from the eighth to the fourteenth centuries, Safran, through a combination of sociolinguistic analyses and an elucidation of visual and spatial features, outlines a variety of functions that these texts took on as forms of public discourse. Through the determined spatial setting of these texts, commissioners, craftsmen, and audience members harnessed the visual potential of public texts as a way of intervening in social and religious discourses, even as the multilingual context of the Salento – which has left us texts in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, many of which also show
Introduction / 7 interference from the nascent Italian vernacular – complicated their strategies for expressing individual and community identities. The poetic genre of the cantare that Predelli examines was similarly shaped by a tension between the presence of written textual forms on the one hand and by performative recitation to local audiences on the other. Predelli looks closely at the mise-en-page of poems in ottava rima from fourteenth-century Tuscany, suggesting that the layout of the poems encodes important information about the extent to which they were expected to be works for reading or works for singing, arguing that the genre contained these two rather different impulses from its earliest instances. These two essays attend to spatial, visual, and performative modes of interaction within which written texts – both those exposed to public view in epigraphy or frescoes, as well as those enmeshed in oral traditions of recitation – took on significance within wide public communities that included literate and illiterate, as well as elite and popular elements. The contributions by Nicholas Everett and Luca Boschetto examine the way in which specific textual practices took effect within local administrative contexts, focusing closely on the complex exchange between local needs and foreign currents and contexts. Everett looks in particular at how Paulinus of Aquileia in the 790s negotiated between the centralizing energies of the Carolingian court and the local traditions of Italian ecclesiastical administration when he devised a new oath for candidate bishops, the Sponsio episcoporum, a vow that was sworn in an oral ceremony as well as signed as a written contract. By editing this text anew, discussing its manuscript context, and tracing its employment of earlier Italian documents, this chapter clarifies how Italian ecclesiasts harnessed to their own ends the practical literacy of their communities in the early Middle Ages. The agents of cultural exchange that Boschetto focuses on are notaries, and in particular those who came to Florence from elsewhere in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to serve at the Mercanzia (the merchant court), where they were required to record documents not in Latin, as they had been trained, but in the vernacular – and in the Florentine vernacular at that. Boschetto traces the reasons behind the employment of the vernacular at the Mercanzia, which was demanded by the kind of legal textuality crucial to the merchant elite; he then demonstrates the effect that this requirement had on the language of the foreign notaries, who were gradually initiated into the lexical and phonological peculiarities of Florentine speech, turning them into important emissaries for the spread of Florentine literary and cultural, and not just legal, customs.
8 / William Robins In the volume’s final pair of essays, Dominique Poirel and Susanne Lepsius focus on written texts that were reworked and transformed through the collaboration of many hands in their circulation, pointing out how communities of readers define themselves in relation to texts that they modify and keep alive. Poirel’s detective work on the Liber Angelae of Angela of Foligno not only uncovers the textual problems generated as members of the male Franciscan community of Assisi rendered into normative Latin discourse Angela’s vernacular record of her visions and spiritual advice, but it also reveals the stages by which that community used the Liber Angelae gradually to expand their store of memories of Angela after her death in 1309. The result was a text in continual evolution, gradually reconfiguring the tension that obtained between Angela’s own anxieties about her approaching death and her followers’ expectations that her ending would be exemplarily saintly, enabling a drama of textual collaboration involving Angela and the Franciscan brothers. Lepsius delves into the transmission of a late legal treatise by Bartolo of Sassoferrato, which entered into circulation at different stages, and was left unfinished at the author’s death in 1357; study of the surviving manuscripts reveals how, gradually, later readers brought the treatise in line with the citational practices expected by the community of legal experts, while also adapting the text to reflect more individual interests. For texts like the Liber Angelae and Bartolo’s Tractatus testimoniorum, the traditional editorial distinction between an authoritative original and its later, corrupt scribal witnesses is troubled by such collaborative processes of alteration and supplementation, raising many thorny problems of editorial practice that both of these essays, by suggesting practical editorial solutions, take pains to address.
NOTES 1
For the Quadrivium Symposium in Medieval English Textual Cultures held on 3–4 November 2005 at the University of Glasgow, see http:// www.arts.gla.ac.uk/quadrivium/. For the Textual Culture Research Group at Stirling, including the Textual Culture Conference of 18–20 July 2005, see http://www.textual-culture.stir.ac.uk. The inaugural issue of Textual Cultures: Text, Contexts, Interpretation, edited by H. Wayne Storey, appeared in 2006. For the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab at the University of Victoria, initiated in 2005, see the home page at http://etcl/uvic.ca. For Transmission, Translation and Transformation
Introduction / 9
2
3
4
5
in Medieval Textual Cultures at McGill University, initiated in 2006, see http://ttt.mcgill.ca. The term ‘print culture’ first gained currency through Elizabeth Eisenstein’s The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). For objections, see especially Joseph Dane, ‘The Myth of Print Culture,’ in The Myth of Print Culture: Essays on Evidence, Textuality, and Bibliographical Method (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 10–31. For attempts to define and explain the critical significance of the term in the singular form (‘textual culture’), see Textual Cultures 2.2 (Autumn 2007), a special issue dedicated to definitions of textual culture, although the claims to be mapping out ‘a new intellectual field’ are rather overstated by Joe Bray and Ruth Evans, ‘Introduction: What Is Textual Culture,’ 1–8 at 1. For reservations regarding the novelty of this ‘shift in nomenclature,’ see David C. Greetham, ‘Philology Redux?’ Ecdotica 3 (2006), 103–27 at 103. The term ‘textual cultures’ had been gaining currency among medievalists for several years prior to 2005; see, for example, Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: ‘Grammatica’ and Literary Theory, 350–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), as well as the announcement in the first volume of New Medieval Literatures 1 (1997) that describes the publication as ‘a new annual of work on medieval textual cultures.’ For the scope and history of the annual conference, which has been held on a different theme every year since 1965, see the website at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/cep. See, for example, the guidelines recently put out by the École nationale des chartes, which dedicate separate volumes to ‘Actes et documents d’archives’ and to all other texts, which are discussed as ‘Textes littéraires’; Conseils pour l’édition des textes médievaux, vol. 1, Conseils géneraux; vol. 2, Actes et documents d’archives; vol. 3, Texes littéraires (Paris: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques – École nationale des chartes, 2001–2).
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WILLIAM ROBINS
1
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures
Writing in Medieval Italy The premodern period, according to general surveys of technologies of communication, is framed, on the one hand, by the profound transformations brought about by the introduction of writing and, on the other hand, by the similarly deep transformations attendant upon the arrival of printing with movable type. Within this period – the chronological limits vary considerably from one culture to another – the situation of medieval Europe is characterized above all by a constant and productive interaction between written and oral modes of communication and, as far as the technology of writing is concerned, by the rise to prominence of the codex format of the book, by the gradual evolution of documentary practices within church and secular bureaucracies, and by a slow and steady rise in the importance of practical literacy. For several centuries after the breakdown of the western Roman Empire, control over the use of books and documents remained largely in the hands of a learned, ecclesiastical elite, who across Europe shared a common training in Latin letters and who possessed as a common focus of textual interpretation the sacred texts of Christian scripture. From about the twelfth century on, the castles and courts of the landed nobility constituted another sphere where the practices of writing were increasingly put to use, both in Latin and in the various vernacular languages of Europe. Members of the ‘third estate’ of working men and women – including merchants, guildsmen, and farmers – began to harness writing for their own practical and recreational purposes toward the end of the Middle Ages and in increasing measure throughout the early modern and modern periods.1
12 / William Robins Such are the main points of the general overview of the period for Europe as a whole, although in fact there was considerable regional variation in the ways in which people made use of or resisted written texts. Furthermore, cutting across these regional variations were several textual practices specific to professions possessing a strong interregional coherence of their own – the textual habits of lawyers, say, or itinerant preachers. Premodern Italy presents an especially rich array of these discrete textual cultures (regional ones, as well as professional ones): no other medieval region of similar size surpasses Italy for the number and variety of distinct habits of writing that took root there.2 The perpetuation of the function of the Roman tabelliones by medieval notarii guaranteed a much higher degree of practical literacy in early medieval Italy than elsewhere in Europe, and this practical literacy was continually extended into new economic and political spheres.3 In part, the variety of textual cultures that emerged was due to geographical divisions that separated parts of the peninsula from each other, with attendant differences in language and political structures; these divisions were never overcome by a centralized system of rule akin to the power of the monarchy in England or France, so local modes of administration remained remarkably heterogeneous, as did local expectations about how individuals might interact with each other (in formal or in informal settings) with the aid of texts. In part, this proliferation of behaviours involving documents and books was due to the economic vibrancy of medieval Italian states, where powerful incentives led members of all classes to document their goods and transactions and to ensure that the requisite educational and legal systems were available to meet their needs. Numerous other factors were at work as well – from the unique kind of socio-textual authority exerted by the papacy in Rome, to the early introduction of paper-making – in making Italian communities especially precocious and multiform in finding ways in which texts could be put to use.4 Even if a survey were to limit itself to those modes of literate behaviour that originated in Italy and then eventually spread throughout Europe to become characteristic of the medieval period as a whole, the field would be wide. The importance of lectio divina as part of the manual labour and common life of cenobitical monasteries was given special prominence during the sixth century, above all at Saint Benedict’s abbey of Monte Cassino; the Benedictine rule stipulated the need not only for liturgical prayers and dinner-time recitations, but also for the continual, ruminative encounter with texts: ‘Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore, the brothers should have specified periods for manual labour
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 13 as well as for prayerful reading.’5 Reading manuscripts, and copying them, would be a central feature of European monasticism largely through the influence of these early Italian establishments. In a very different sphere, the administrative apparatus of the papal chancery was crucial for determining the nature of church-state relations in the early Middle Ages, and, from the early thirteenth century on, it served as the model par excellence for the record-keeping operations of later secular governments across Europe.6 The consolidation of myriad forms of canon and civil law into a manageable corpus was set in motion in Bologna by Gratian and his followers around 1100, inspiring subsequent scholastic endeavours at encyclopedic compilation, and initiating, through the requisite apprenticeship into commentary traditions, the institutional framework for Europe’s first university.7 Another striking example of the wide-ranging impact of a medieval Italian textual innovation is provided by double-entry bookkeeping, first appearing in the accounts of late medieval Italian merchants, eventually spreading throughout the world, and without which the protocapitalist and capitalist enterprises of late medieval and early modern society would have been almost unimaginable.8 Yet alongside such a survey we would also want to acknowledge several textual practices that remained specific to their Italian locale. Take, for example, the huge, parchment Exultet Rolls, on which the texts of the Easter Vigil service were oriented in one direction in order to be recited by officiating deacons while the accompanying and often lavishly illuminated pictures were oriented the opposite way so as to be viewed by the congregation; these rolls were produced, from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, only in southern Italy.9 Also specifically Italian was the shape that writing took in the hands of Italian merchants: schools that were dedicated to teaching basic arithmetic, measuring, and literacy multiplied, while the registro format of book construction served as a vehicle for both accounts and personal diaries; there emerged ‘a separate and specialist technical culture solely in the vernacular language,’ the hallmark of which is its own characteristic script, lettera mercantesca.10 Hundreds of other tantalizing phenomena – whether of local or international significance, whether fleeting or lasting – would also have to be touched upon in any survey of medieval Italian textualities. It would be almost compulsory, for instance, to mention how Augustine, sojourning in Milan, was astonished to see Bishop Ambrose reading without moving his lips, one of our earliest notices of silent reading in the West: ‘When he was reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent.’11
14 / William Robins Equally noteworthy would be the gradual process by which Guido of Arezzo and a succession of monks established the standard, writable musical staff which so decisively changed musical education and performance.12 Dante Alighieri would constitute an obligatory point of reference, not only because he produced the first defence for writing in the vernacular, but also because he put forward the claim, through his own poetry, that vernacular versifiers could be accorded the same status of ‘poet’ previously reserved to classical authors.13 As for significant developments in the history of the book, attention might well turn to the pecia system that arose for copying university texts in the late Middle Ages, out of which emerged an organized system of book production that linked stationers to a book-buying public.14 Nor should one overlook the new letter-forms that fifteenth-century humanists introduced for handwritten and printed texts, forms so successful that they even persist in the principal fonts – ‘roman’ and ‘italic’ – in which this volume is printed.15 The Historical Semiotics of Textual Cultures There has always been considerable interest in learning how medieval texts were produced and circulated. Indeed, the reception of medieval culture, at least in the academic community, has been inseparable from scrutiny of the actual books and documents that have come down to us. An imposing edifice of catalogues of medieval manuscripts, indices of incunabula, and aids to archival organization was erected by the erudite antiquarians of the Enlightenment. Especially important contributions were made by great librarians of Italy, such as Leone Allacci (1588–1669) at the Vatican library, Ludovico Muratori (1672–1750) at the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, Giovanni Lami (1697–1770) at the Biblioteca Riccardiana, and Angelo Maria Bandini (1726–1803) at the Biblioteca Laurenziana; not only did these men establish impressively scientific cataloguing methods, they also penned learned studies of medieval literary, religious, and political culture. By the second half of the nineteenth century a very different framework for research had emerged, bolstered equally by the organization of humanities disciplines within the modern university system, and by the energy unleashed in the service of national unification, thanks to which new importance was attached to Italy’s medieval past. A glance at any issue of the major journals begun at that time, such as the Archivio storico italiano (begun in 1842) or the Giornale storico della letteratura italiana (begun in 1883) makes clear just how much the discovery, description, and critical evaluation
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 15 of documents lay at the very core of historical reflection. Even when, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fields such as art history and literature shifted away from empiricist, historical emphases, the scientific reliability of manuscript studies was being greatly improved by technological advances in photoreproduction;16 these advances were further consolidated by institutional commitments to palaeographical training (the Vatican’s school of palaeography was established in 1884, that at the University of Rome in 1887), and to Medieval Latin as a distinct area of research.17 Nevertheless, it seems fair to state that the discourses of higher learning assigned a decidedly subsidiary status to the study of past writing practices. For historians interested in events, documents remained important above all for the way their contents shed light upon what was happening at a particular place and time; understanding how a document was constructed was meaningful only to the extent of ensuring that historians not be misled about its evidentiary value. In classical philology and vernacular literary studies, too, the study of manuscripts, writing practices, and textual transmission generally figured as ancillary to historical and stylistic evaluations. The study of writing, and of how written texts functioned, was seen as a necessary prelude to interpretation, but it was not seen, within most fields, as constituting in itself a central concern of historical interpretation. Profound transformations in intellectual life in the decades after the Second World War encouraged serious reconsideration of the way in which texts take on meaning within societies. Among the generation of scholars at work after the war, several made bold, new claims about the social imperatives embedded in past forms of textuality: Erich Auerbach’s analysis of sermo humilis in late antiquity and Hans Baron’s political interpretation of Italian humanism are just two well-known examples.18 More thoroughgoing transformations of the disciplines came a decade or two later, with changes brought on by the anthropological, sociological, and linguistic ‘turns’ in the humanities. The anthropological turn, besides introducing new methodological questions about interpreting cultural formations, called into question prevailing Western assumptions about the neutrality of writing and the benefits of literacy, especially by inquiring into the oral bases of communication in nonWestern societies. Lord and Parry’s recognition of the formulaic reelaboration of oral storytelling; Levi-Strauss’s arguments about the power differential that is set into motion by the introduction of writing; Luria’s cultural-psychological analysis of the cognitive patterns of nonliterate peasants; and Goody’s and Ong’s suggestive thoughts about ‘the
16 / William Robins consequences of literacy’ and the ‘psychodynamics of literacy,’ drew attention to the peculiarities of writing when compared to the face-toface oral interactions of traditional societies.19 The analogous technological shift introduced by printing with movable type was seen to have engendered equally pervasive changes in Western culture, as was argued most forcefully by McLuhan and by Eisenstein.20 Accordingly, the preprint manuscript culture of the Middle Ages stood revealed as more different from the modern textual situation than we had previously thought, and medieval culture as a whole was seen to be embedded as much in oral as in textual modes of interaction. Medievalists and early modernists working on Italy increasingly called for the kind of historical imagination and interpretive patience that would enable a more anthropological approach to early modes of communication, with lucid models of such an approach established by many prominent historians, including Peter Brown’s trend-setting studies of late antiquity, Giovanni Tabacco’s analysis of formal and informal institutions of power, and Jacques Le Goff’s influential work on the mindsets of late medieval social groups.21 The traffic of ideas between elite and popular cultures took on special prominence in the work of Carlo Ginzburg, Peter Burke, and Aron Gurevich,22 while studies of kinship structures and ritual ceremonies (such as KlapischZuber’s and Trexler’s studies of renaissance Florence) painted new pictures of the charged contexts in which private and public messages were conveyed.23 In the meantime, a concern with the ethnography of writing transformed the study of orality and literacy in medieval contexts, as pioneered by Zumthor and Cardona.24 As sociological models burgeoned in the social sciences and then extended into adjacent fields, humanists found themselves equipped with even more new methods for grasping how texts might act as determinants in the communication circuits through which societies organized themselves. Assigning special importance to the role played by bureaucratic structures in the logic of the modern state, Max Weber’s work in particular exercised a potent influence on later researchers, as did that of Norbert Elias, attentive to the psycho-social force of civilizing behaviour and forms of speech.25 More recently, the concepts elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu – the ‘habitus’ of social agents, the ‘social space’ within which they interact, and the ‘symbolic capital’ accruing from learned competencies – have helped scholars speak about verbal texts and material books as participating in fields of cultural production.26 In France, in particular, from the late 1950s on, sociological concerns (and to some degree their related quantitative methods) gave rise to the new
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 17 fields of the sociologie de la littérature, especially through the contributions of Robert Escarpit, and of the histoire du livre, for which Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin’s L’apparition du livre sounded the clarion call.27 In Italy, with its strong Marxian traditions of analysis, especially as inflected by Gramscian notions of culture and hegemony, the sociological study of writing took hold and branched out in various directions (mostly concerned with more modern forms of the book trade).28 The circulation of texts during the late medieval and early modern periods received many ground-breaking studies at this time, from Bec’s studies of the book-culture of Italian merchants and of Florentines, to Dionisotti’s influential emphasis on the highly local nature of premodern textual production.29 Other scholars studied the commerce and costs of manuscript books in particular localities in the peninsula.30 Because even more evidence of the costs of production and trade exist for the era of printing, studies of the economic circumstances of early printers flourished, as did detailed analyses of the market-driven roles of publishers and editors.31 The ‘linguistic turn’ has become a familiar catchword for the importance attached to questions of representation, signification, and discursive structure that shook up not only linguistic and literary studies in the 1960s and 1970s, but also philosophy, history, and the humanities generally. Concerns became focused on how functions of signification were combined into overarching structures of meaning, making the nature of ‘textuality’ a particularly prominent topic of debate. A text was no longer seen as a simple, stable entity, but rather as an unstable site where different semiotic codes might be in play. This textual instability might have limits set on it by certain ideas or institutions. Notions of ‘a work,’ of ‘authorship,’ of ‘allusion,’ were seen to be not neutral, valuefree abstractions, but rather disciplinary functions with their own charged histories. Political and cultural institutions, as well, were assessed in terms of the structural logic (or illogic) of power, and in terms of systems of representation that legitimized or contested the exercise of social authority. Such interpretive procedures located the meaning of a piece of writing not in the text itself, but in the cultural discourses that were put into play around and through the text. In Italy, the linguistic turn manifested itself above all through a strong commitment to the new discipline of semiotics, which offered the study of signs as a way to grasp how the linguistic codes of texts intersected with other cultural codes. Of the first generation of Italian semioticians, many had formative training as medievalists and developed their semiotic approaches at least in part through analyses of medieval culture. Umberto Eco’s early work on medieval aesthetics can be read as
18 / William Robins having prepared ground for his later theoretical work on semiotic functions and on the interpretive role of readers, while romance philologists such as Maria Corti, Cesare Segre, and D’Arco Silvio Avalle offered direction to a whole generation of literary critics through their semiotic scrutiny of medieval Italian literary texts, highlighting the potential of what Segre labelled ‘semiotic philology.’32 Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the study of medieval history, art history, philosophy, and religious studies also found vocabularies for addressing concerns about systems of representation, about discursive constellations, and about stable and unstable aspects of cultural codes. The semiotics of cultural systems emerged as an innovative way to reevaluate the cultural history and the ‘textuality’ of the past. Alongside these developments that affected the general intellectual landscape of the time, there were also contemporaneous developments internal to medieval studies that decisively redirected attention to the physical nature of manuscript documents. Codicology emerged as a discipline dedicated to the examination of medieval manuscript books, based on the premise that every aspect of a manuscript – its handwriting, but also its use of materials, its mise-en-page, its binding, etc. – was potentially significant.33 While codicology became institutionalized above all in Belgium and France, in other countries an analogous turn toward the study of the entire manuscript occurred under the aegis of a renewed palaeography, given the label ‘integral palaeography’ by Leonard Boyle.34 Such was especially the case in Italy, where palaeography, especially in the work of Armando Petrucci, reached out into the concerns of literary and cultural studies, establishing a new groundwork for the historical study of literacy.35 The 1977 conference on literacy and written culture organized by Petrucci and Attilio Bartoli Langeli announced the new importance of the study of literacy to which palaeography, ‘understood as the history of writing in its entirety and in its relationship with society,’ would be a major contributor, and for which the study of the spread of the capacities of literacy would be intertwined with assessing ‘the function that writing considered on its own performed in the milieu of every organized society and the function that each graphic type or production performs, in turn, in the milieu of the unique cultural environment that produced and employed it.’36 This was the same year in which Petrucci launched the journal Scrittura e civiltà to make visible this wider terrain of palaeography, in which Febvre and Martin’s Apparition du livre was translated into Italian, and in which Giuglelmo Cavallo put out an important volume of essays on the history of the book.37 Meanwhile, the methods of ‘textual
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 19 bibliography’ that had developed in England and the United States began to have a deep impact on the study of early Italian printing through the work of Conor Fahy and others, even as Italian traditions of bibliography found an important forum through Luigi Balsamo’s direction of the journal Bibliofilia.38 Thus throughout the 1960s and 1970s new vibrant areas of inquiry gained definition; the History of the Book, Literacy Studies, Integral Palaeography, Textuality. These areas delimited common research topics toward which practitioners in disciplines as varied as sociology and art history could gravitate. But the diversity of disciplinary inheritances also pulled scholars away from these centres in all sorts of directions. The vibrancy of the methods derived from anthropology, sociology, and linguistics; the gains made by codicology and palaeography; and the continued interest in traditional questions regarding institutional and cultural history all competed with each other especially at the level of methodology. By about 1980, scholars in the field were asking whether the centripetal forces exerted by these new research areas could counteract the centrifugal tendencies exerted by such disparate approaches. Reflecting upon the field of Book History, Robert Darnton suggested that the field as it was structured lacked real coherence, a case of ‘interdisciplinarity run riot.’39 Literacy Studies, according to Harvey Graff, was at a crossroads, for specific research on literacy was losing steam even as its questions became diffused throughout a whole host of established disciplines.40 Semiotically inflected studies of ‘textuality’ were at times almost aggressively positioned with respect to literary history, prompting established textual critics to wonder if the term ‘text,’ in its more recent theoretical appropriation, had come to mean almost the opposite of its traditional signification. In retrospect, such anxieties can be seen as the prelude to a new consolidation of cross-disciplinary currents that took place over the course of the early 1980s, kindling a new intensification of the historical study of textuality. With respect to the study of medieval Italy, we might single out 1983 (now a quarter of a century ago) as a convenient date for marking how the study of textuality, after several decades of methodological innovation, had reached a new threshold of coherence. Two items published in that year – Armando Petrucci’s contributions to the multi-authored volume Produzione e consumo and Brian Stock’s The Implications of Literacy – seem especially indicative. The multi-volume reference series Letteratura Italiana, directed by Alberto Asor Rosa, was polemically envisaged to bring material and historical considerations back into the forefront of Italian literary study and, in fact, it quickly
20 / William Robins became an obligatory first stop for students in the field and a point of reference for scholars; the second volume in the series, Produzione e consumo, surveyed the conditions under which texts (especially literary texts) were produced and consumed in Italy from medieval to modern times, with several important contributions on the use of texts in the Middle Ages. A highlight of the volume was Petrucci’s contribution, ‘Il libro manoscritto’ (The Manuscript Book), where in a brief twenty-six pages he summarized the relationships, from the twelfth century onwards, that tied techniques of book production to the social organization of writers, copyists, and readers. Not only is this piece a masterful distillation of several decades of palaeographical study, its seamless integration of integral palaeography with the concerns of literary history is notable, and it immediately became a standard in the field.41 Stock’s work, meanwhile, argued that many aspects of the intellectual transformation of twelfth-century Europe had been made possible because of a new prominence granted to written texts and because of the ‘textual communities’ that had arisen as a result. Of the case studies elaborating this argument, most significant was Stock’s discussion of the heretical Patarine movement of twelfth-century Milan, in which he directed attention to ‘textual communities,’ that is, to groups of people whose social activities are centred around texts, or, more precisely, around a literate interpreter of them. The text in question need not be written down nor the majority of listeners actually literate ... Moreover, the group’s members must associate voluntarily; their interaction must take place around an agreed meaning for the text. Above all, they must make the hermeneutic leap from what the text says to what they think it means; the common understanding provides the foundation for changing thought and behaviour.42
By reconceptualizing the way persons defined themselves in relation to textual practices, Stock’s work provided a new model for combining recent theoretical tendencies in sociology and anthropology with the detailed historical knowledge of medievalists. While neither Petrucci nor Stock claimed in these works to be doing anything radically innovative from the point of view of critical method, nevertheless they synthesized various approaches in a way that was remarkably fruitful: their investigations testified to the newly achieved maturity that the study of textuality had attained, and they made visible to a wide, interdisciplinary audience (one that reached far beyond the
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 21 specialists of Italian codicological description or of twelfth-century intellectual history) the great potential to be found in a semiotics of textual culture that was materialistically and historically inflected. After all, textual artefacts and interpretive communities mutually constitute each other through complex, dialectical interactions. Some studies might focus on how communities bestow meanings on texts (i.e., when a group constructs technologies of production and interpretation in order to meet specific social and ideological needs). Petrucci’s contributions, we might say, are exemplary of this direction of investigation. Other studies might focus instead on the way that texts help to create communities (the presence of texts generates interpretive practices that give definition to groups of persons, uniting them through the exigencies of caring for and interpreting documents). Stock’s work on ‘textual communities’ aims in this direction. While these and other studies may, individually, tend toward one or the other side of this dialectic between text and community, the study of medieval Italian textuality since 1983, when taken as a whole, has been characterized by the attention granted to both processes. The way in which communities create textual practices and the way in which textual practices help create communities appear as mutually constitutive and reciprocal aspects of the way textual cultures function. When thinking about the twenty-five years that have passed since 1983, we had best keep in mind the vibrant multifariousness of textual cultures in medieval Italy, for this has in many ways shaped the direction of the field. A book title such as Gellrich’s The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages (even with its two chapters on Dante) would not work well for the Italian Middle Ages, where so many different ‘ideas’ of textuality proliferated.43 Cultural historians have tended to be highly sensitive to the specifics of geography, period, and social class, producing a body of work that is highly articulated, and making the study of medieval Italian textuality a pluri-disciplinary affair. There has not really emerged a distinct subdiscipline organized around the history of written culture akin to the History of the Book in English-speaking countries or the histoire du livre in France (and even to the extent that the storia del libro is a recognized field, it tends to focus on post-medieval, printed books).44 An anchor for studies of medieval textuality continues to be provided by palaeography in the wider, Italian sense of this term as including codicological and historico-cultural analyses.45 Recent research has tended to be very responsive to the needs and directions of specific disciplines – social history, art history, literary study, etc. – even as the study of textual functions has encouraged scholars to reach beyond their
22 / William Robins own disciplinary boundaries for bodies of evidence or for methodological possibilities developed in adjacent fields. Indeed, the study of the institutions and assumptions of writing remains one of the primary grounds for dialogue among medievalists in different departments. The medieval ranks and professions most in control of manuscript production and consumption – monks, ecclesiasts, scholars, lawyers – continue to be subjected to ample historical attention, as do the structures of education in place at local and university levels. Studies of the dynamic interactions between written texts and oral preaching in the mendicant orders, as well as investigations into the administrative operations of judges and notaries, are good examples of the fruitfulness of recent projects on such main arbiters of textual culture.46 The comprehensive identification of the scribes active in particular localities, or general analysis of local scribal activity, is another direction that research is taking.47 Yet it is the research into the documentary cultures of other classes that has been especially innovative in the last quartercentury. The literacy of inhabitants of the rural countryside has been emphasized by Balestracci.48 The account books, contracts, and diaries of merchant writers have been subject to considerable scrutiny.49 Religious contexts outside of official ecclesiastical structures, such as confraternities and popular spiritual movements, have been examined as potent scenes of social communication and textual interpretation.50 The fault lines among different classes, as well as local systems of dispute resolution, gave rise to political issues that have been approached in relation to issues of textual literacy.51 More recently, considerable attention has been directed toward the role of written texts in the lives of medieval and early modern women; a few prominent female religious writers (especially St Catherine of Siena and St Catherine of Bologna) have received several sophisticated recent studies,52 but in general this remains a topic for which much basic groundwork still remains to be done.53 Anthropological interest in the ritual function of medieval texts has taken an interesting turn toward more probing discussions of the performative and visual dimensions of medieval textuality. Studies of performance (continuing the examination of medieval orality in the wake of Ong and Zumthor) examine how texts – legal and religious texts, as well as poetic and narrative ones – were actualized in front of an audience of listeners.54 The influence of specific venues and ceremonies, the techniques of gestural and facial expression, the relationship between script and performance (or, alternatively, between performance
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 23 and memorial transcription) are now understood in some detail.55 In this regard, the contributions being made by musicologists to our understanding of codicology, performance, and the aural aspects of medieval textuality are especially illuminating.56 As for visuality, considerable scrutiny has been paid to the visible nature of writing itself, as well as to the visual ‘paratexts’ that accompanied texts and provided readers with indications about how to receive and interpret them.57 The interaction of writing with other visual codes – painting, sculpture, architecture, textiles, gestures – is a growing area of inquiry, especially regarding publicly visible texts that were mounted as parts of artistic projects.58 Furthermore, through studies of visualization much interesting work is being produced linking textuality to medieval notions of memory; studies of medieval memory have moved beyond abstract notions of the ‘cultural memory’ maintained by texts toward the examination of medieval processes of mnemonic visualization that writers and readers took for granted.59 As a counterweight to the geographical and temporal specificity of the bulk of the work on medieval Italian textual cultures, the time-honoured tradition of studying the transmission of intellectual ideas and artistic styles still runs very strong. For generations this has entailed detailed assessments of manuscript evidence (the reception of classical texts among humanists, the translation of Arabic scientific texts, the spread of French and Provençal poetry thanks to itinerant jongleurs, etc.). Such research questions have increasingly converged with the aims of integral palaeography, becoming transformed into questions demanding the tools of codicologists and social historians, and not limited to the internal logic of intellectual and artistic phenomena.60 In other ways, too, the focus on local textual cultures has increasingly been supplemented by studies of the channels of communication that linked disparate centres and that made cultural traffic take particular forms. Such an emphasis on the cultural traffic of textual production is in many ways still a developing field, but its significance to medievalists is amply shown by the emphasis on space and place signalled by the recent multivolume reference work Lo spazio letterario del Medio Evo.61 The circuits of communication to be studied often extend beyond the confines of the Italian peninsula to other European regions and across the Mediterranean to Byzantine, Arabic, crusader, and other civilizations.62 The material implications of cultural exchange, especially across languages, religions, and political systems, promises to bring together scholars with different competencies over the next decade and more.
24 / William Robins Editing and Textuality The practice of editing texts has long been crucially important for the study of medieval textual cultures, although it is also a practice that introduces its own complications. Especially with respect to our topic – the study of how medieval persons defined themselves as users, producers, and consumers of written texts – editorial method is caught up in a tight hermeneutic circle. We inevitably rely upon edited texts to study medieval attitudes toward all sorts of phenomena, including medieval attitudes about textuality; yet, at the same time, we must posit certain assumptions about medieval textuality whenever we edit a medieval text. Editions do not ‘represent’ a medieval work in all of its features and attributes; rather, an editor chooses, from among a multitude of features, those which seem most deserving of emphasis, and the edition becomes a way of modelling those features for a modern audience. An edition will home in on certain aspects of a text – for example, the presumed ‘authorial’ original of a philosophical treatise, the transactional content of a charter, the improvisational wording of a song, the visual materiality of a manuscript’s layout, etc. – and it will then devise a way to present those features according to the norms of the relevant discipline and according to the degree of readability required for the envisaged audience. In other words, editorial methods inevitably pre-empt the discussion of medieval textuality by starting off with certain enabling assumptions about which aspects of a medieval text ought to be showcased. Despite this limitation, however, the detailed scrutiny of manuscripts that an editor performs often brings to light new evidence that can further refine (or call into question) our understanding of how texts actually circulated and functioned. In Italy especially, for several decades (or even centuries), strong philological and editorial traditions in the humanities disciplines have underpinned the study of medieval texts. In fact, one thing that distinguishes Italian research into medieval textuality is the way in which editions and philological investigations related to editorial projects have provided many of the most prominent contributions to discussions about the nature of medieval texts. Sapori’s editions of the account books of mercantile companies, Barbi’s and Petrocchi’s groundbreaking editions of Dante, Benedetto’s magnificent account of Marco Polo’s Milione, Castellani’s meticulous presentation of early Tuscan documents, and Petrucci’s reproduction of Salutati’s notarial protocol are just some of the better-known and influential models from earlier generations of twentieth-century scholars.63 These editions include
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 25 detailed analyses of the genesis, circulation, and purposes of original documents and scribal copies, and they arrive at important conclusions about the kind of textual cultures that were in play at very specific historical moments and in very specific communities of writers and readers. In fact, Italian philology has been especially attentive to historical issues surrounding the transmission of texts ever since Giorgio Pasquali’s fundamental rethinking of the genealogical methods of classical text editing that had arisen in nineteenth-century Germany. Karl Lachmann had proposed a rigorous method of editing classical texts that began with the process of recensio (sorting out genealogical relations among manuscripts so as to reconstruct the archetypal form of the textual tradition) and then moved on to the process of emendatio (proposing corrections to the archetype in order to bring the text closer to the author’s putative original). Pasquali drew attention to many intransigent problems faced during the process of recensio: copyists might have had recourse to more than one manuscript, some misreadings might have cropped up independently in several places in a textual tradition, there might not always be a stage between authorial and archetypal forms of the text, etc. For Pasquali, an editor had to become thoroughly informed about the storia della tradizione (history of the textual tradition), which was to be considered an integral part of the text that an editor confronts. This required close examination of manuscripts, thinking deeply about the habits of scribes, and understanding the way a classical text might interact with actual medieval practices of copying.64 Subsequent philological methods in Italy have been rooted in thoroughly understanding the history of a text’s transmission. This is especially true for the study of literary texts, as developed through the nuova filologia of Michele Barbi and the variantistica of Gianfranco Contini.65 Documentary (as opposed to literary) text editing has always been less prone to discuss theory and method, but even here the Italian contribution has been especially noteworthy.66 As a consequence, Italian scholars in all the relevant branches of cultural history are accustomed to looking at editorial projects as rich mines of information about medieval textual cultures. It might be useful briefly to draw a contrast with the rather different place of editing in anglophone studies of medieval textuality. If Pasquali was Italy’s greatest classical editor of the early twentieth century, Britain’s was A.E. Housman, who objected to different aspects of the Lachmannian method. For Housman, the editor’s highest calling lay in emendatio, and for this an editor would need to be fully steeped in the
26 / William Robins language and culture of an author, so that textual errors could be easily spotted and plausible emendations intuited. Scribal variants in manuscripts, he argued, were poor guides for emending; instead, deep knowledge of the original context, not of the history of transmission, was the order of the day.67 Housman’s position is indicative of the less important role generally given to the storia della tradizione by anglophone editors. The most important edition of a medieval English text in the late twentieth century was probably Kane and Donaldson’s edition of William Langland’s poem Piers Plowman, in which the editors similarly emphasized the role of aesthetic judgment in reestablishing a text that the chaotic conditions of scribal transmission had irreparably mangled.68 One consequence of this difference in editorial traditions is that medieval editing in the English-speaking world was more susceptible to the critiques of editorial method that were launched beginning in the early 1980s. As the notions of authorship and of the authority of an original version came under theoretical attack, methods of text editing that had relied heavily upon those notions were openly targeted. Some of these critiques called for editors to pay more attention to the social context in which texts circulated; others homed in on the ‘idealist’ aspects of traditional Lachmannian and Housmanian textual criticism as easy targets for rather overblown polemics that came to be known as the ‘New Philology.’69 In Italy, by contrast, the poststructuralist critique of text editing made less headway, in part because Italian philological traditions were already highly attentive to textual variance, and in part because the ‘idealism’ with which Italian critics had to grapple was above all the aesthetics of Benedetto Croce, the best antidote to which was, in fact, sustained historical philology, including attention to such material factors as the role of the author.70 A second consequence of this difference in the role assigned to editions has been that discussions of European (including Italian) medieval textuality in the United Kingdom and North America have tended to be published not as introductions to editions of texts but rather as monographs dealing with specific topics. Where Italian editorial methods have guaranteed a level of empirical detail and methodological scrutiny that is enviable, the monographs associated with non-Italian scholarship often have shown more flexibility in manoeuvering into new methods and topics of discussion. One of the field’s most exciting developments in the last decades of the twentieth century has been the increasing interdependence of philological and cultural studies of textuality. For Italian philologists, the 1990s became a time ‘when one is always expecting more from textediting, and when the text is coming to be seen as the bearer of multiple
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 27 meanings, meanings that also interact with paratextual and extratextual elements, in a complex entity that might meaningfully guide our understanding not only of the genesis of any particular text, but also of its literary, documentary, poetic or religious status.’71 The ‘ancillary’ disciplines of palaeography, codicology, and text editing have become bearers of considerable theoretical and methodological reflection. Not only have the place of these disciplines within the larger system of the academy shifted as a result, but also individual projects increasingly have shown that traditional philological concerns cannot be separated from recent understandings of the complexities of textuality, or, vice versa, that general formulations about the nature of medieval textuality require the tools of palaeography and editing. The editing of medieval civic statutes offers just one example of this confluence; in place of foregrounding the normative dimension of these documents (the motivation for earlier editors), editors of statutes are now just as likely to explore how the drafting of these texts brokered important social and political exchanges: ‘every item in a statutary code has to be understood as part of a larger work that has come together in stages and that undoes itself with repetitions and contradictions, testifying to the variousness and sometimes the incoherence of the history that produced it.’72 Another notable phenomenon of convergence is the current dialogue between Italian traditions of philology and North American models of cultural-literary studies, evident, for example, in the way North American Italianists such as Wayne Storey and Teodolinda Barolini have explored the functions of medieval authorship and readership by considering the discursive significance of palaeographical and codicologial evidence.73 At the Start of the Twenty-First Century There are signs that we are now in the midst of another threshold moment in the study of medieval writing, similar to the consolidations and transformations of twenty-five years ago. In the intervening decades all the relevant humanistic disciplines have responded energetically to the basic imperative to see written documents (and indeed all verbal and non-verbal signs) not so much as transparent windows giving direct access to extra-textual facts, but as complicated material and social phenomena in their own right. The dynamic interplay between texts and social contexts is now taken as a starting premise for research, both for the way in which different ‘interpretive communities’ bestow meanings upon texts and for the way in which texts give rise to distinct ‘textual
28 / William Robins communities.’ There is also a new sophistication in the way literary and cultural historians are weaving questions of textual materiality into their investigations of cultural forms. In codicological terms, ‘materiality’ designates the physical make-up of a manuscript document; in linguistic and semiotic terms (especially in reader-response criticism), ‘materiality’ indicates a dimension of communicative coding which is subsequently actualized through ideation in the mind of a reader or listener; in Marxist traditions of cultural critique, ‘materiality’ designates the ideological context of forces of production. All of these meanings of ‘materiality’ have been important in the study of medieval Italian textuality for many decades, and recently we have seen a widespread confidence in ways of integrating or establishing relations among these different registers, and for uniting questions about materiality to questions about the social logic of discourse.74 We might take as symptomatic the recent predilection in Italian titles for the word fabbrica, as applied to insightful studies of anatomical books (La fabbrica del corpo), writings against witchcraft (La fabbrica delle streghe), chivalric literature (La fabbrica dei cavalieri), the Divine Comedy (La fabbrica della Commedia), and an important codicological summary (La fabbrica del codice).75 This term eludes translation into English: its primary denotation may be ‘factory,’ but because it also suggests the processes of manufacture, the place of labour, and the social construction of cultural artefacts, it should be rendered through a verbal noun such as ‘fabrication,’ ‘fashioning,’ ‘construction,’ or ‘making.’ Equally illustrative of the new state of affairs would be the dramatic development in anglophone studies of medieval Italian literature, where scholars of a new generation, such as Olivia Holmes and Justin Steinberg, having incorporated the codicological interests usually more associated with colleagues in Italy, are producing novel readings of how poetry was situated in relation to basic physical and social parameters of communication and self-definition.76 Significantly, these new developments tend not to take the category of materiality for granted. Instead of seeing the material dimension of a text as a kind of facticity that precedes its decoding by a reader, many researchers are beginning to explore how the physicality of texts is something that has a history. The very corporeality of a text is in part created, or at least summoned up, through the performative nature of writing and reading, even as there are aspects of the material that are not amenable to being captured by discursive sensibilities. In this regard medieval encounters with the physical page may have differed in even the most basic parameters (time, space, touch) from modern encounters.
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 29 The issue of materiality when approached as a problem of corporeality includes experiential and hermeneutic dimensions. As a consequence, issues of authority, ideology, and community are increasingly being inflected into concerns about the experiential phenomenology of reading and writing in the Middle Ages. This is not easy to do, as we possess only scanty evidence for the way most medieval persons experienced the acts of reading or writing;77 but where we do have indications – as for the devotional reading that involves participation in the life of Christ, for the mercantile strategies for warding off anxieties about risk or usury, for the place of visual texts in the art of memory, or for writing as a buffer against death78 – we now sense that there is still much to be learned about the role of affect in the actualization of texts, as well as about the role of the body in the performance of reading and writing. In the meantime, the advent of digital technologies has prompted a host of new approaches to how we study and edit medieval texts. When computers first appeared on the scene, much of the critical discussion among humanists was complicated by polemically utopian praise for the liberatory potentials of hypertext, as well as by anachronistic parallels drawn between medieval, pre-print textual instability and post-modern, post-print networks of indeterminacy. Greater familiarity with the specificity of these new forms of media (with their limitations and their discursive implications) has tempered those initial predictions. Confusions of a more practical sort now arise from the thorny difficulties of establishing standards for the technical work of electronic editing; shared norms that might be intellectually appropriate, easy to implement, enduring, and cost-effective in terms of time and resources are more elusive than had been hoped. Nevertheless, databases such as the Opera del vocabolario italiano and Dante On-Line, as well as hypertext editions designed for scholarly and pedagogical use, are rapidly changing the archive with which medievalists work.79 New computerdriven methodologies for editing are also being explored, as in the application of cladistic procedures to aid in editorial recensio.80 Cataloguing, too, is in a state of upheaval.81 More generally, there can no longer be any doubt that our own immersion in more fluid and unpredictable channels of information has enlarged our sense of the possibilities that may have existed in premodern cultures for establishing circuits of communication. As our own epistemological parameters change, the specificity of premodern textual practice becomes all the more interesting as a topic of study.82 The most palpable change associated with computer technologies is still relatively undertheorized, namely the proliferation of digitized
30 / William Robins manuscript images. Since the turn of the millenium, digitized images have been a central aspect in the publication of catalogues from Italian libraries, of handbooks of palaeography, of facsimiles of entire manuscripts, and of internet exhibitions and teaching sites.83 Leaders in this process have been the catalogues of dated manuscripts in Italian libraries, the Manoscritti datati e databili, with volumes now appearing at a rapid clip in cd-Rom form.84 The accessibility of many images on the web and their easy reproducibility for the classroom has whetted the curiosity of a generation of students about the appearance of medieval documents. It would now be feasible, as Ezio Ornato has pointed out, to store medium-quality images of every page of every medieval European manuscript on a single server (the obstacle consists not in cost or technology, but in the assertion of ownership rights and privileges).85 Yet while textual scholars now have a rich literature of theoretical and methodological reflection about electronic texts and hypertexts, the role of the visual images of manuscripts is still in the process of being understood.86 Such images seem to give viewers more direct access to the phenomena of medieval manuscripts, and yet such a proposition is clearly false: the digitized image is a form of mediation, one which is selective and manipulative even as it provides an illusion of contact. In so far as images are a means of representation and mediation, they have sometimes been heralded as capable of replacing traditional forms of textual editing, for we can increasingly direct students and readers to this visual archive; yet this propositon is also false, especially in the case of medieval manuscripts where skills of palaeography are still called for, and where the task of examining the textual tradition remains undiminished by having such images close to hand. The digital image seems to give us the ‘aura’ of the unique manuscript (in Benjamin’s terms), yet it does so through a process of technological reproduction. The ‘virtual aura’ is not a neutral phenomenon: already the profusion of manuscript images has produced a new, intimate ‘shock of the old,’ and we now approach medieval texts with a heightened visual literacy, and also with an inevitable entanglement in issues of materiality and representation, the unique and the replicable, the tactile and the virtual, ideational content and the logic of media, that are affecting our own textual culture. Perhaps one sign of the new state of affairs is the changing of the guard at some of the pioneering journals in the field. In the Englishspeaking world, the journal Text, which had been a central clearing house for the intersection of critical theory with bibliographical and codicological analyses, put out its last volume in 2002, transforming itself into Textual Cultures, the first volume of which was dedicated in
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 31 large part to early Italian phenomena. After witnessing ‘the profound transformations that have occurred in this rather vast field of scientific interests,’ the twenty-fifth issue of Scrittura e civiltà (for the year 2001) was the last one.87 In the next few years, two new Italian journals of palaeographical study, Segno e testo (2003–) and Litterae caelestes (2004–), arrived to fill the vacuum, and to make sure that the strong traditions of Italian integral palaeography continue to provide a crucial forum for cross-disciplinary discussions. Above, I suggested that consolidation of the field in the early 1980s was structured above all around new understandings of the dynamic interaction between text and community, citing the work of Petrucci and Stock as emblematic examples. This interaction of text and community has now become so extended and complicated that it seems we can speak of a new period of perhaps not consolidation, but at least confluence and excitement. The dynamic interaction of material and discursive aspects of medieval texts is now at least as prominent a concern, no longer just with the intention of seeing what effects of sense are produced by manuscript mise-en-page, but now with an increased understanding that the relation between textual artefacts and discursive meanings is always vexed and unstable, occasioning all sorts of performative modes of realization. In the twenty-first century, our understanding of medieval Italian culture is taking more and more account of the fluidity of textual meaning, the intimate nature of the physical document, and the volatility of the situations in which medieval texts were produced and used.
NOTES 1
See, for example, the brief historical overviews contained in the entry ‘Libro,’ in La piccola Treccani: Dizionario enciclopedico (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1995), 6:737–40; and in the entry by Philip Unwin and George Unwin, ‘Publishing,’ Encyclopædia Brittanica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopædia Brittanica, 1998), 26:415–49. In recent years there have appeared several first-rate book-length surveys of the histories of writing, reading, and book technologies: Henri-Jean Martin, The History and Power of Writing, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Frederick G. Kilgour, The Evolution of the Book (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Guglielmo Cavallo, ed., A History of Reading in the West (London: Polity, 1999); Frédéric Barbier, Histoire du livre, 2nd ed. (Paris: Colin, 2006); Colette
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2
3
4
5
Sirat, Writing as Handwork: A History of Writing in Mediterranean and Western Culture (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006). On the precocity and variety of Italian textualities, see Paolo Cammarosano, Italia medievale: Struttura e geografia delle fonti scritte (Rome: La Nuova Italia scientifica, 1991); Hagen Keller, ‘Vorschrift, Mitschrift, Nachschrift: Instrumente des Willens zu vernunftgemässem Handeln und guter Regierung in den italienischen Kommunen des Duecento,’ in Schriftlichkeit und Lebenspraxis: Erfassen, Bewahren, Verändern, ed. Hagen Keller et al. (Munich: W. Fink, 1999), 25–41; and Ronald Witt, The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). On notaries, see J.C. Brown, ‘The Origin and Early History of the Office of Notary,’ Juridical Review 47 (1935): 201–40, 355–417 ; Armando Petrucci, Notarii: Documenti per la storia del notariato italiano (Milan: Giuffrè, 1958); Mario Amelotti and Giorgio Costamagna, Alle origini del notariato italiano (Rome: Consiglio nazionale del notariato, 1975); Giorgio Tamba, Una corporazione per il potere: Il notariato a Bologna in età comunale (Bologna: clueb, 1998); and Attilio Bartoli Langeli, Notai: Scrivere documenti nell’Italia medievale (Rome: Viella, 2006). On the textual, ceremonial, and political authority of the papacy, the bibliography is vast; see Walter Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages: A Study of the Ideological Relation of Clerical to Lay Power, 3rd ed. (London: Methuen, 1970); Pietro Conte, Chiesa e primato nelle lettere dei papi del secolo VII (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1971); Thomas F.X. Noble, ‘Literacy and the Papal Government in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,’ in The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 82–108. For the introduction of paper, see Jean Irigoin, ‘Les origines de la fabrication du papier en Italie,’ Papiergeschichte 13 (1963): 62–7; Anne Basanoff, Itinerario della carta dall’Oriente all’Occidente e sua diffusione in Europa (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1965); Christian Bouyer, L’histoire du papier (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994); Ezio Ornato et al., La carta occidentale nel tardo Medioevo (Rome: Istituto centrale per la patologia del libro, 2001). RB 1980: The Rule of St Benedict in Latin and English with Notes, ed. Timothy Fry (Collegeville, mn: Liturgical Press, 1981), 249–51 (chap. 48). On Benedict of Nursia and the Regula Benedicti, see Santo Mandolfo, La paideia monastica da S. Pacomio a S. Benetto (Catania: cuecm, 1982); Adalbert de Voguë, The Rule of Saint Benedict: A Doctrinal and Spiritual Commentary (Kalamazoo, mi: Cistercian Publications, 1983); and Vir-
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6
7
8
9
10
ginia Brown, Terra Sancti Benedicti: Studies in the Palaeography, History and Liturgy of Medieval Southern Italy (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2005). On lectio divina in the European monastic tradition, see especially Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi, 3rd ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982). C.R. Cheney, The Study of the Medieval Papal Chancery (Glasgow: Jackson, 1966); Thomas Frenz, I documenti pontifici nel medioevo e nell’età moderna, trans. Verio Santoro e Sergio Pagano (Vatican City: Scuola vaticana di paleografia, diplomatica e archivistica, 1998); Jane E. Sayers, Original Papal Documents in England and Wales from the Accession of Pope Innocent III to the Death of Pope Benedict XI (1198–1304) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Detlev Jasper and Horst Fuhrmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages (Washington, dc: Catholic University of America Press, 2001). Rudolf Weigand, Die Glossen zum Dekret Gratians: Studien zu den frühen Glossen und Glossenkompositionen (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano 1991); James Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (London: Longman, 1995); Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). On the university of Bologna, see Albano Sorbelli, Storia dell’Università di Bologna, vol. 1, Il medioevo (secc. XI–XV) (Bologna: Zanichelii, 1940). On double-entry bookkeeping, see Federigo Melis, Storia della ragioneria (Bologna: Zuffi, 1950); Raymond de Roover, ‘The Development of Accounting Prior to Luca Pacioli According to the Account Books of Medieval Merchants,’ in Business, Banking and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Julius Kirshner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 119–80; Franz-Josef Arlinghaus, Zwischen Notiz und Bilanz: Zur Eigendynamik des Schriftgebrauchs in der kaufmännischen Buchführung am Beispiel der Datini/di Berto-Handelsgesellschaft in Avignon (1367–1373) (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 2000); as well as James Alfred Aho, Confession and Bookkeeping: The Religious, Moral, and Rhetorical Roots of Modern Accounting (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005). On the Exultet Rolls, see Guglielmo Cavallo, ed., Exultet: Rotoli liturgici del medioevo meridionale (Rome: Istituto poligrafico e zecca dello stato, 1994); and Thomas Forest Kelly, The Exultet in Southern Italy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). Armando Petrucci, Breve storia della scrittura latina (Rome: Bagatto, 1989), 157. For a fascinating look at artistic implications of the teaching
34 / William Robins
11
12
13
14
15
16
of mercantile measurement, see Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972). Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 92 (6.3.3). On silent reading, see Paul Saenger, Space between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). On Augustine’s attitude toward texts, see especially Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); and Brian Stock, Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1996). Dolores Pesce, ed., Guido d’Arezzo’s Regulae rhythmicae, Prologus antiphonarii, and Epistola ad Michahelem (Ottawa: Institute of Medieval Music, 1999); David Hiley and Janka Szendrei, ‘Notation iii.1: Plainchant,’ and ‘Notation iii.2: Polyphony and Secular Notation to c1260,’ in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (New York: Macmillan, 2001), 18:84–129. Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia, in Opere Minori, vol. 2, ed. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979). On Dante as poeta, see especially Inferno 4.100–2, Paradiso 25.1–12, and the comments in Robert Hollander, ‘Dante theologus-poeta,’ in Dante Studies (Ravenna: Longo, 1980), 39–89; Teodolinda Barolini, Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the ‘Comedy’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); and Albert Russell Ascoli, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Besides the standard work on pecia by Jean Destrez, La pecia dans les manuscrits universitaires du XIIIe et du XIVe siècle (Paris: Vautrain, 1935), see also Giulio Battelli, ‘Il libro universitario (pecia),’ in Civiltà comunale: Libro, scrittura, documento (Genoa: Società ligure di storia patria, 1989), 279–313; and Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse, ‘The Dissemination of Texts in Pecia at Bologna and Paris,’ in Rationalisierung der Bucherstellung im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Marburg: Institut für Historische Hilfswissenschaften, 1994), 66–77. On humanistic scripts, see Berthold Louis Ullman, The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1960); Albinia Catherine de la Mare, The Handwriting of Italian Humanists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973); and Giorgio Montecchi, Il libro nel Rinascimento (Milan: La storia; Rome: Viella, 1994). Early initiatives in producing facsimiles include Ernesto Monaci, ed., Archivio paleografico italiano, vol. 1– (Rome: Istituto poligrafico dello stato, 1882–); Codices e vaticanis selecti, vol. 1– (Rome: Officina Danesi,
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 35
17
18
19
20
21
1899–); Giuseppe Bonelli, ed., Codice paleografico lombardo: Riproduzione in eliotipia e trascrizione diplomatica di tutti i documenti anteriori al 1000 esistenti in Lombardia, vol. 1, Secolo VIII (Milan: Hoepli, 1908). On the Vatican and Roman schools of palaeography, see Cento anni di cammino: Scuola vaticana di paleografia, diplomatica e archivistica, 1884– 1984, ed. Terzo Natalini (Vatican City: Scuola vaticana di paleografia, diplomatica e archivistica, 1986), and Un secolo di paleografia e diplomatica (1887–1986): Per il centenario dell’Istituto di Paleografia dell’Università di Roma, ed. Armando Petrucci and Alessandro Pratesi (Rome: Gela, 1988). On the development of medieval Latin as a distinct field, see A cinquant’anni dalla prima cattedra di storia della letteratura latina medievale: Padova, 25 novembre 1988 (Florence: Fondazione Ezio Franceschini, 1990); and Claudio Leonardi, ‘La filologia mediolatina,’ in La critica del testo mediolatino: Atti del convegno (Firenze 6–8 dicembre 1990), ed. Claudio Leonardi (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1994), 11–30. Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1955); Erich Auerbach, Literatursprache und Publikum in der lateinischen Spätantike und im Mittelalter (Bern: Franke, 1958) [translated as Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, trans. Ralph Mannheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)]. Albert Bates Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1960); Claude Levi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1962) [translated as The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966)]; A.R. Luria, Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations, trans. Martin Lopez-Morillas and Lynn Solotaroff (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1976); Jack Goody and Ian Watt, ‘The Consequences of Literacy,’ in Literacy in Traditional Societies, ed. Jack Goody (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 27–68; Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologising of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982). Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962); Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), and Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison:
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24 25
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University of Wisconsin Press, 1992); Giovanni Tabacco, Egemonie sociali e strutture del potere nel Medioevo italiano (Turin: Einaudi, 1979) [translated as The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy: Structures of Political Rule, trans. R.B. Jensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)], and the essays now collected in Spiritualità e cultura nel Medioevo: Dodici percorsi nei territori del potere e della fede (Naples: Liguori, 1993); Jacques Le Goff, Pour un autre Moyen Age: Temps, travail et culture en Occident: 18 essais (Paris: Gallimard, 1977) [translated as Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980)]. Carlo Ginzburg, Il formaggio e i vermi: Il cosmo di un mugnaio del ‘500 (Turin: Einaudi, 1976) [translated as The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980)]; Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York: New York University Press, 1978); Aron J. Gurevich, Contadini e santi: Problemi della cultura popolare nel Medioevo, trans. Luciana Montagnani (Turin: Einaudi, 1986). Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1980); as well as Attilio Bartoli Langeli, Scrittura e parentela: Autografia collettiva, scritture personali, rapporti familiari in una fonte italiana quattrocinquecentesca (Brescia: Grafo, 1989). Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale (Paris: Seuil, 1972); Giorgio Raimondo Cardona, Antropologia della scrittura (Turin: Loescher, 1985). Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tübingen: Mohr, 1922) [translated as Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, trans. E. Fischoff (New York: Bedminster, 1968)]; Norbert Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation: Soziogenetische une psychogenetische Untersuchungen (Basel: Falken, 1939) [translated as The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon, 1978)]. Pierre Bourdieu, Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique (Geneva: Droz, 1972) [translated as Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. by Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)], and The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, trans. Susan Emanuel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). Robert Escarpit, Sociologie de la littérature (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1958) [translated as Sociology of Literature, trans. Ernest Pick (London: Cass, 1971)]; Lucien Paul Victor Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, L’apparition du livre (Paris: Michel, 1958) [translated as The
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Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800, trans. David Gerard (London: Verso, 1976)]. See, for example, Antonio Gramsci, Marxismo e letteratura, ed. Guliano Manacorda (Rome: Editori riuniti, 1975); Giuseppe Petronio, L’attività letteraria in Italia: Storia della letteratura (Palermo: Palumbo, 1964); and Gian Carlo Ferretti, Il mercato delle lettere (Turin: Einaudi, 1979). Christian Bec, Les marchands écrivains: Affaires et humanisme à Florence, 1375–1434 (The Hague: Mouton, 1967); Les livres des Florentins (1413– 1608) (Florence: Olschki, 1984); Carlo Dionisotti, Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 1967). On manuscript books, see, for example, Gianfranco Orlandelli, Il libro a Bologna dal 1300 al 1350: Documenti (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1959); Albinia de la Mare, ‘The Shop of a Florentine Cartolaio in 1426,’ in Studi offerti a Roberto Ridolfi, direttore de ‘La Bibliofilia,’ ed. Berta Marachi Biagiarelli and Dennis E. Rhodes (Florence: Olschki, 1973), 237–48. Amadeo Quondam, ‘“Mercanzia d’onore”/“Mercanzia d’utile”: Produzione libraria e lavoro intellettuale a Venezia al Cinquecento,’ in Libri, editori e pubblico nell’Europa moderna, ed. Armando Petrucci (Bari: Laterza, 1977), 51–104; Martin Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979); Paolo Trovato, Con ogni diligenza corretto: La stampa e le revisioni editoriali dei testi letterari italiani (1470–1570) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991); Melissa Conway, The ‘Diario’ of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli 1576– 1484: Commentary and Transcription (Florence: Olschki, 1999); Brian Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Cesare Segre, Semiotica filologica (Turin: Einaudi, 1979); Umberto Eco, Lector in fabula: La cooperazione interpretativa nei testi narrativi (Milan: Bompiani, 1979); Maria Corti, Il viaggio testuale (Turin: Einaudi, 1978); D’Arco Silvio Avalle, Modelli semiologici nella ‘Commedia’ di Dante (Milan: Bompiani, 1975). Léon Gilissen, Prolégomènes à la codicologie: Recherches sur la construction des cahiers et la mise en page des manuscrits médiévaux (Ghent: StoryScientia, 1977); Carla Bozzolo and Ezio Ornato, Pour une histoire du livre manuscrit au Moyen Age: Trois essais de codicologie quantitative (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1980); Albert Derolez, Codicologie des manuscrits en écriture humanistique sur parchemin, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1984). See Leonard E. Boyle, Medieval Latin Palaeography: A Bibliographical Introduction (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984), xv.
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See, for example, Armando Petrucci, La descrizione del manoscritto: Storia, problemi, modelli (Rome: Nuova Italia scientifica, 1984; rev. ed. Rome: Carocci, 2001). Petrucci’s own résumé of the history of these disciplines can be read in ‘Paleografia, diplomatica, codicologia,’ in La storiografia italiana negli ultimi vent’anni, vol. 1, Antichità e medioevo, ed. Luigi De Rosa (Rome: Laterza, 1989), 363–82. The cultural focus of Italian palaeography has also been crucially shaped by Giorgio Cencetti, Lineamenti di storia della scrittura latina (Bologna: Patròn, 1954) [new ed., ed. Gemma Guerrini Ferri (Bologna: Patròn, 1997)]; Alessandro Pratesi, Genesi e forme del documento medievale (Rome: Jouvence, 1979); and Emmanuele Casamassima, Tradizione corsiva e tradizione libraria nella scrittura latina del Medioeveo (Rome: Gela, 1988). During the period of the 1970s, the field was decisively reoriented also by such major projects as the Chartae latinae antiquiores, beginning with Chartae latinae antiquiores, vol. 20, Italy 1, ed. Armando Petrucci and Jan Olof Tjader (Zurich: Graf, 1982); and the catalogues of Manoscritti datati, beginning with the Catalogo dei manoscritti in scrittura latina datati o databili per indicazione di anno di luogo o di copista, vol. 1, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, ed. Viviana Jemolo (Rome: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1971). Attilio Bartoli Langeli and Armando Petrucci, eds, Alfabetismo e cultura scritta nella storia della società italiana: Atti del seminario tenutosi a Perugia il 29–30 marzo 1977 (Perugia: Università degli Studi, 1978). The quotation is from Armando Petrucci, ‘Per la storia dell’alfabetismo e della cultura scritta: Metodi - materiali - quesiti,’ 33–4. Scrittura e civiltà 1 (1977)–25 (2001); Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, La nascita del libro, ed. Armando Petrucci (Bari: Laterza, 1977); Guglielmo Cavallo, ed., Libri e lettori nel medioevo: Guida storica e critica (Bari: Laterza, 1977). Conor Fahy, Saggi di bibliografia testuale (Padua: Antenore, 1988); especially ‘Introduzione alla “bibliografia testuale,”’ 33–63 [orig. published in La Bibliofilia 82 (1980): 151–81]; Pasquale Stoppelli, ed., Filologia dei testi a stampa (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987); and Luigi Balsamo, La bibliografia: Storia di una tradizione (Florence: Sansoni, 1984) [translated as Bibliography: History of a Tradition, trans. William A. Pettas (Berkeley: Rosenthal, 1991)]. For subsequent developments in the field, see Antonio Sorella, ed., Dalla ‘textual bibliography’ alla filologia dei testi a stampa, (Pescara: Libreria dell’Università, 1998); and Neil Harris, ed., Bibliografia testuale o filologia a testi a stampa? Definizioni metodologiche e prospettive future: Convegni di studi in onore di Conor Fahy (Udine: Forum, 1999). Robert Darnton, ‘What Is the History of Books?’ Daedalus 111.3 (1982): 65–83. On this period in Book History, see David Finkelstein and
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Alistair McCleery, An Introduction to Book History (New York: Routledge, 2005), esp. 7–27. Harvey J. Graff, ‘Gli studi di storia dell’alfabetizzazione: Verso la terza generazione,’ Quaderni storici 22 (1987): 203–22. On this period in literacy studies, see the introduction in Duccio Balestracci, Cilastro che sapeva leggere: Alfabetizzazione e istruzione nelle campagne toscane alla fine del Medioevo (XIV–XVI secolo) (Pisa: Pacini, 2004), 9–20, as well as Nicholas Everett, Literacy in Lombard Italy, c. 568–774 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1–13. Armando Petrucci, ‘Il libro manoscritto,’ in Letteratura italiana, vol. 2, Produzione e consumo, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa (Turin: Einaudi, 1983), 499–524. Equally influential was Petrucci’s contribution to another volume in the Einaudi series: ‘Storia e geografia delle culture scritte (dal secolo xi al secolo xviii),’ in Letteratura italiana: Storia e geografia, vol. 2, L’età moderna, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa (Turin: Einaudi, 1988), 1193–292. The two have been combined and translated into English as ‘Reading and Writing Volgare,’ in Writers and Readers in Medieval Italy: Studies in the History of Written Culture, trans. Charles M. Radding (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 169–235. Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 522. See also Brian Stock, Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). Jesse M. Gellrich, The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages: Language Theory, Mythology, and Fiction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985). The essential volume is Marco Santoro, Storia del libro italiano: Libro e società in Italia dal Quattrocento al Novecento (Milan: Editrice bibliografica, 1994). See also Hans Tuzzi, Libro antico libro moderno: Per una storia comparata (Milan: Bonnard, 2006). Major recent guideposts are Ezio Ornato et al., La face cachée du livre médiéval: L’histoire du livre (Rome: Viella, 1997); Marilena Maniaci, Terminologia del libro manoscritto, rev. ed. (Rome: Istituto centrale per la patologia del libro, 1998); Paola Busonero et al., La fabbrica del codice: Materiali per la storia del libro nel tardo medioevo (Rome: Viella, 1999); Attilio Bartoli Langeli, La scrittura dell’italiano (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000); Armando Petrucci, La descrizione del manoscritto: Storia, problemi, modelli, 2nd ed. (Rome: Carocci, 2001); Marilena Maniaci, Archeologia del manoscritto: Metodi, problemi, bibliografia recente (Rome: Viella, 2002); Maria Luisa Agati, Il libro manoscritto: Introduzione alla codicologia (Rome: Bretschneider, 2003); Albert Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic
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Manuscript Books from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Alessandro Pratesi and Paolo Cherubini, eds, Paleografia latina: Tavole (Vatican City: Scuola vaticana di paleografia, diplomatica e archivistica, 2004); Marisa Boschi Rotiroti, Codicologia trecentesca della ‘Commedia’: Entro e oltre l’antica vulgata (Rome: Viella, 2004). Carlo Delcorno, ‘La predicazione volgare in Italia (secc. xiii–xiv): Teoria, produzione, ricezione,’ Revue Mabillon, n.s. 4 (1993): 83–107; Massimo Giansante and Giorgio Marcon, Guidici e poeti toscani a Bologna: Tracce archivistiche fra tardo stilnovismo e preumanesimo (Bologna: Archivio di Stato, 1994); Letizia Pellegrini, I manoscritti dei predicatori: I domenicani dell’Italia mediana e i codici della loro predicazione (sec. XIII–XV) (Rome: Istituto storico domenicano, 1999); Angela Frascadore, La scomunica e la scrittura: Un’indagine sulla cultura grafica di notai, giudici e testimoni nella Puglia del primo Trecento (Florence: sismel, 1999); Lina Bolzoni, La rete delle immagini: Predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena (Turin: Einaudi, 2002) [translated as The Web of Images: Vernacular Preaching from Its Origins to St Bernardino of Siena, trans. Carole Preston and Lisa Chien (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004)]. For example, Paola Supino Martini, Roma e l’area grafica romana (secc. X–XII) (Alessandria, Orso, 1987); Emma Condello, Una scrittura e un territorio: L’onciale dei secoli V–VIII nell’Italia meridionale (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1994); Cristina Carbonetti Vendittelli, ed., Documenti su libro: L’attività documentaria del comune di Viterbo nel Duecento (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1996); Elisabetta Caldelli, Copisti a Roma nel Quattrocento (Rome: Viella, 2006); Giovanna Murano, Copisti a Bologna (1265–1270) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006). Duccio Balestracci, La zappa e la retorica: Memorie familiari di un contadino toscano del Quattrocento (Siena: Salimbeni, 1984); Balestracci, Cilastro che sapeva leggere. Christian Bec, Les marchands ecrivains (Paris: Mouton, 1967); Angelo Cicchetti and Raul Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, vol. 1, Filologia e storiografia letteraria (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1985); Vittore Branca, Mercanti scrittori: Ricordi nella Firenze tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Milan: Rusconi, 1986); Raul Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, vol. 2, Geografia e Storia letteraria (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2001); Lucia Travaini, Monete, mercanti e matematica: Le monete medievali nei trattati di aritmetica e nei libri di mercatura (Rome: Jouvence, 2003); Richard Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
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On medieval confraternities, see Lester K. Little, Liberty, Charity, Fraternity: Lay Religious Confraternities in Bergamo in the Age of the Commune (Bergamo: Lubrina, 1988); Blake Wilson, Music and Merchants: The Laudesi Companies of Republican Florence (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); Nerida Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno: Plays in Churches in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Florence: Olschki, 1996); Konrad Eisenbichler, The Boys of the Archangel Raphael: A Youth Confraternity in Florence, 1411–1785 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998); and Nicholas Terpstra, ed., The Politics of Ritual Kinship: Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). On popular devotion, see Daniel Ethan Bornstein, The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1993); Katherine L. Jansen, The Making of the Magdalene: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). On the textuality of the Florentine proletariat, see Franco Franceschi, ‘La memoire des laboratores à Florence au début du xve siècle,’ Annales E.S.C. 5 (1990): 1143–68; Samuel K. Cohn, Creating the Florentine State: Peasants and Rebellion, 1348–1434 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). For a fascinating examination of structures of dispute resolution, see Chris J. Wickham, Courts and Conflict in Twelfth-Century Tuscany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). The politics of urban writing are also examined in Armando Petrucci and Carlo Romeo, Scriptores in urbibus: Alfabetismo e cultura scritta nell’Italia altomedievale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992); and Lauro Martines, Strong Words: Writing and Social Strain in the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). For Catherine of Siena, now see Jane Tylus, Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: Literacy, Literature, and the Signs of Others (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), and the essays in Lino Leonardi e Pietro Trifone, eds, Dire l'ineffabile: Caterina da Siena e il linguaggio della mistica: Atti del convegno (Siena, 13–14 novembre 2003) (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo – Fondazione Ezio Franceschini, 2006). For Catherine of Bologna, see Vera Fortunati and Claudio Leonardi, Pregare con le immagini: Il Breviario di Caterina Vigri (Bologna: Compositori, 2004); and Claudio Leonardi, ed., Caterina Vigri: La santa e la città: Atti del convegno, Bologna, 13–15 novembre 2002 (Florence: sismel – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2004). See also Katherine Gill, ‘Women and the Production of Religious Literature in the Vernacular, 1300–1500,’ in Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 64–104.
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Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Le chiavi fiorentine di Barbablù: L’apprendimento della lettura a Firenze nel xv secolo,’ Quaderni storici 57 (1984): 765–92; Luisa Miglio, ‘Scrivere al femminile,’ in Escribir y leer en Occidente, ed. Armando Petrucci and Francisco M. Gimeno Blay (Valencia: Departamento de Historia de la Antiguedad y de la Cultura Escrita, Universitat de Valencia, 1995), 63–108; E. Mattesini, ‘Scrittura femminile e riscrittura notarile, nella Perugina del Quattrocento: Le due redazioni del testamento di Maddalena Narducci (1476),’ Contributi di filologia dell’Italia mediana 10 (1996): 81–167; Linda Guzzetti, ‘Donne e scrittura a Venezia nel tardo Trecento,’ Archivio veneto 152 (1999): 5–31; Judith Bryce, ‘Les Livres des Florentines: Reconsidering Women’s Literacy in Quattrocento Florence,’ in At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy, ed. Stephen J. Milner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005): 133–61; Ann Crab, ‘“If I could write”: Margherita Datini and Letter Writing, 1385–1410,’ Renaissance Quarterly 60 (2007): 1170–1206. More evidence survives for studying the writing habits of early modern women; see Gabriella Zarri, Per lettera: Scrittura epistolare femminile tra archivio e tipografia, secoli 15–18 (Rome: Viella, 1999); Tiziana Plebani, Il ‘genere’ dei libri: Storia e rappresentazioni della lettura al femminile e al maschile tra Medioevo ed età moderna (Milan: Angeli, 2001); Alessandra Contini and Anna Scatigno, eds, Carte di donne: Per un censimento regionale della scrittura delle donne dal XVI al XX secoli, vol. 1, Atti della giornata di studio, Firenze, Archivio di Stato, 5 marzo 2001 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2005), and vol. 2, Atti della giornata di studio, Firenze, Archivio di Stato, 3 febbraio 2005 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2007); and Virginia Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy 1400–1650 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). Carlo Delcorno, ‘Professionisti della parola: Predicatori, giullari, concionatori,’ in Carlo Delcorno et al., Tra storia e simbolo: Studi dedicati a Ezio Raimondi dai direttori, redattori e dall’editore di ‘Lettere italiane’ (Florence: Olschki, 1994), 1–21; Franz-Josef Arlinghaus, ‘From “Improvised Theatre” to Scripted Roles: Literacy and Changes in Communication in North Italian Law Courts (Twelfth–Thirteenth Centuries),’ in Charters and the Use of the Written Word in Medieval Society, ed. Karl Heidecker (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 215–37; Carla Casagrande, Chiara Crisciani, and Silvana Vecchio, eds, Consilium: Teorie e pratiche del consigliare nella cultura medievale (Florence: sismel, 2004). Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio, I peccati della lingua: Disciplina ed etica della parola nella cultura medievale (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1987); Tito Saffioti, I giullari in Italia: Lo spettacolo, il pubblico, i testi (Milan: Xenia, 1990); Paola Ventrone, Gli araldi della commedia:
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Teatro a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Pisa: Pacini, 1993); Claudio Giunta, Versi a un destinatario: Saggio sulla poesia italiana del Medioevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002); Daniele Vianello, L’arte del buffone: Maschere e spettacolo tra Itlia e Bavaria nel XVI secolo (Rome: Bulzoni, 2005); Michelangelo Picone and Luisa Rubini, eds, Il cantare italiano tra folklore e letteratura: Atti del convegno internazionale di Zurigo, Landesmuseum, 23–25 giugno 2005 (Florence: Olschki, 2007). Recent studies include F. Alberto Gallo, Musica nel castello: Trovatori, libri, oratori nelle corti italiane dal XIII al XV secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992) [translated as Music in the Castle: Troubadours, Books, and Orators in Italian Courts of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries, trans. Anna Herkolyz and Kathryn Krug (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Gioia Filocamo, ed., Melodie dimenticate: Stato delle ricerche sui manoscritti di canto liturgico: Atti del convegno, Spoleto, 2–3 ottobre 1999 (Florence: Olschki, 2002); Giulio Cattin and F. Alberto Gallo, eds, Un millenio di polifonia liturgica tra oralità e scrittura (Bologna: Il Mulino; Venice: Fondazione Levi, 2002); Marica Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence: The Service Books of Santa Maria del Fiore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Sandra Dieckmann et al., eds, Kontinuität und Transformation in der italienischen Vokalmusik zwischen Due- und Quattrocento (Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2007); Margaret Bent, ed., Bologna Q15: The Making and Remaking of a Musical Manuscript, 2 vols (Lucca: Libreria musicale italiana, 2008); Timothy J. McGee, The Ceremonial Musicians of Late Medieval Florence (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). On paratextuality, see Vincenzo Fera, Giacomo Ferraù, and Silvia Rizzo, eds, Talking to the Text: Marginalia from Papyri to Print, 2 vols (Messina: Centro interdipartmentale di studi umanistici, 2002); Intorno al testo. Tipologie del corredo esegetico e soluzioni editoriali: Atti del convegno di Urbino, 1–3 ottobre 2001 (Rome: Salerno, 2003); Biancastella Antonino, Marco Santoro, and Maria Gioia Tavoni, eds, Sulle tracce del paratesto (Bologna: Bononia, 2004); Marco Santoro, ed., Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio e il paratesto (Rome: Ateneo, 2006). On the visuality of writing, see Armando Petrucci, La scrittura: Ideologia e rappresentazione (Turin: Einaudi, 1980) [translated as Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture, trans. L. Lapin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)]; Lucia Battaglia Ricci, Parole e immagini nella letteratura italiana medievale: Materiali e problemi (Rome: gei, 1994); Claudio Ciociola, Visibile parlare: Le scritture esposte nei volgari italiani dal Medioevo al Rinascimento (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1997); Testo e immagine nell’Alto Medioevo (Spoleto, 15–21 aprile 1993), 2 vols (Spoleto: Centro
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italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1994); Paola Guerrini, Propaganda politica e profezie figurate nel tardo Medioevo (Naples: Liguori, 1997); Marcello Ciccuto, Figure d’artista: La nascita delle immagini alle origine della letteratura (Fiesole: Cadmo, 2002); and Marta Madero, Tabula picta: La peinture et l’écriture dans le droit médiéval (Paris: ehess, 2004). The imai project to publish the inscriptions of medieval Italy commenced in 1994, with the first volume published in 2002: Luigi Cimarra et al., eds, Inscriptiones Medii Aevi Italiae (saec. VI–XII), vol. 1, Lazio – Viterbo (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2002). Foundational works here are Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Lina Bolzoni, La stanza della memoria: Modelli letterari e iconografi dell’età della stampa (Turin: Einaudio, 1995); see also Fabio Toncarelli, ‘Con la mano del cuore: L’arte della memoria nei codici di Cassiodoro,’ Quaderni medievali 22 (1986): 22–58; and Dale V. Kent, ‘Michele del Giogante’s House of Memory,’ in Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence, ed. William Connell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 110–36. For example, see Corrado Bologna, Tradizione e fortuna dei classici italiani, 2 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 1993); Munk Olsen et al., eds, L’atteggiamento medievale di fronte alla cultura classica (Rome: Unione internazionale degli istituti di archeologia, storia e storia dell’arte, 1994); Guglielmo Cavallo, Dalla parte del libro: Storie di trasmissione dei classici (Urbino: Quattro Venti, 2002). Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo, 1, Il Medioevo latino, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo, Claudio Leonardi and Enrico Menestò, 5 vols (Rome: Salerno, 1992–8); Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo, 2, Il Medioevo volgare, ed. Piero Boitani, Mario Mancini, and Alberto Vàrvaro, 5 vols (Rome: Salerno, 2001–5); Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo, 3, Le culture circostanti, ed. Mario Capaldo, 3 vols to date (Rome: Salerno, 2003–6). Examples include David Wallace, Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Antonio Pioletti and Francesca Rizzo Nervo, eds, Medioevo romanzo e orientale: Il viaggio dei testi: III Colloquio internazionale, Venezia, 10–13 ottobre 1996: Atti (Soveria: Manelli, 1999); David Abulafia, Mediterranean Encounters, Economic, Religious, Political, 1100–1550 (Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2000); Massimo Guidetti, Il Mediterraneo e la formazione dei popoli europei, V–X secolo (Milan: Jaca, 2000); and Chris Wickham, ed., Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
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65
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Armando Sapori, La crisi delle compagnie mercantili dei Bardi e dei Peruzzi (Florence: Olschki, 1926); Armando Sapori, Una compagnia di Calimala ai primi del Trecento (Florence: Olschki, 1932); Michele Barbi, ed., La vita nuova, by Dante Alighieri (Milan: Hoepli, 1907); Michele Barbi, ed., La vita nuova di Dante Alighieri (Florence: Bemporad, 1932); Giorgio Petrocchi, ed., La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, by Dante Alighieri (Milan: Mondadori, 1966–7); Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, ed., Il milione, prima edizione integrale (Florence: Olschki, 1928); Arrigo Ettore Castellani, ed., Nuovi testi fiorentini del Dugento (Florence: Sansoni, 1952); Armando Petrucci, ed., Il protocollo notarile di Coluccio Salutati (1372–1373) (Milan: Giuffrè, 1963). Giorgio Pasquali, Storia della tradizione e critica del testo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1934; rev ed. Florence: Le Lettere, 1988). On Pasquali, see the essays in Fritz Bornmann, ed., Giorgio Pasquali e la filologia classica del novecento: Atti del convegno Firenze-Pisa, 2–3 dicembre 1985 (Florence: Olschki, 1988). On Lachmann and the Lachmannian method, see especially Sebastiano Timpanaro, La genesi del metodo di Lachmann (Florence: Le Monnier, 1963) [translated as The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method, trans. Glenn W. Most (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)]. Michele Barbi, La nuova filologia e l’edizione dei nostri scrittori da Dante a Manzoni (Florence: Sansoni, 1938; 2nd ed., 1973); Gianfranco Contini, Varianti e altri linguistica (Turin: Einaudi, 1970). The directions of twentieth-century Italian philology are well exemplified in two important collections: Studi e problemi di critica testuale: Convegno di studi di filologia italiana nel centenario della Commissione per i testi di lingua, 7–9 aprile 1960 (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1961); and La critica del testo: Problemi di metodo ed esperienze di lavoro: Atti del Convegno di Lecce 22–26 ottobre 1984 (Rome: Salerno, 1985). More generally, see Paolo Cherchi, ‘Italian Literature,’ in Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research, ed. D.C. Greetham (New York: mla, 1995), 438–56; Alfredo Stussi, Breve avviamento alla filologia italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002); and Fabio Zinelli, ‘L’édition des textes médiévaux italiens en Italie,’ in Pratiques philologiques en Europe, ed. Frederic Duval (Paris: École des Chartes, 2006), 77–113. Alessandro Pratesi, ‘Una questione di metodo: L’edizione delle fonti documentarie,’ Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato 17 (1957): 312–33; Armando Petrucci, ‘L’edizione delle fonti documentarie: Un problema sempre aperto,’ Rivista storica italiana 75 (1963): 69–80; and Attilio Bartoli Langeli, ‘L’edizione dei testi documentari: Riflessioni sulla filologia diplomatica,’ Schede medievali 20–1 (1991): 116–31. Thoughtful
46 / William Robins
67
68
69
70 71
72
reflections on editing historical documents also appear in Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989) [orig. published as Miti, emblemi, spie: morfologia e storia (Turin: Einaudi, 1986)]; and Paolo Mari, L’armario del filologo (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2005). See especially A.E. Housman, ‘The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism,’ in The Classical Papers of A.E. Housman, ed. James Diggle and F.R.D. Goodyear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 3:1058–69. George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson, eds, Piers Plowman, the B version: Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-Well, Do-Better and Do-Best (London: Athlone, 1975). Some of the primary criticisms were those offered in Jerome J. McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). For the ‘New Philology,’ see Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Seuil, 1989); and Stephen G. Nichols, ed., The New Philology, special issue of Speculum 65.1 (1990). On the effect of such critiques, see Keith Busby, ed., Toward a New Synthesis: Essays on the New Philology (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1993). See also Alberto Vàrvaro, ‘The “New Philology” from an Italian Perspective,’ Text 12 (1999): 49–58. Vincenzo Placella, ‘Introduzione,’ in I moderni ausili all’ecdotica: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Fisciano, Vietri sul Mare, Napoli, 27–31 ottobre 1990, ed. Vincenzo Placella and Sebastiano Martelli (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane 1994), 5. Lorenzo Tanzini, ed., Statuti e legislazione a Firenze dal 1355 al 1415: Lo statuto cittadino del 1409 (Florence: Olschki, 2004), 3, where he summarizes the concerns raised in Mario Sbriccoli, ‘Conclusioni,’ in Gli statuti delle città: L’esempio di Ascoli nel secolo XIV: Atti del convegno di studio, Ascoli Piceno, 8–9 maggio 1998, ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: cisam, 1999), 165–79. See also Andrea Zorzi, ‘Le fonti normative a Firenze nel tardo medioevo: Un bilancio delle edizioni e degli statuti,’ in Statuti della Reppublica Fiorentina editi a cura di Romolo Caggese, new ed., ed. Giuliano Pinto, Francesco Salvestrini, and Andrea Zorzi (Florence: Deputazione di storia patria per la Toscana, 1999), liii–ci; Mario Ascheri, I diritti del Medioevo italiano: Secoli XI–XV (Rome: Carocci, 2000); and Lorenzo Tanzini, Alle origini della Toscana moderna: Firenze e gli statuti delle comunità soggette tra XIV e XVI secolo, Biblioteca storica toscana 54 (Florence: Olschki, 2007).
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 47 73
74
75
76
77
H. Wayne Storey, Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric (New York: Garland, 1993); Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storey, eds, Petrarch and the Textual Origins of Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 2007). See also Deanna M. Shemek and Michael W. Wyatt, eds, Writing Relations: American Scholars in Italian Archives: Essays for Franca Petrucci Nardelli and Armando Petrucci (Florence: Olschki, 2008). For some recent developments regarding the materiality of texts, see Horst Wenzel et al., eds, Die Verschriftlichung der Welt: Bild, Text und Zahl in der Kultur des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit (Milan and Vienna: Skira, 2000); Roger Chartier, Inscrire et effaçer: Culture écrite et littérature (XIe–XVIIIe siècle) (Paris: Gallimard – Seuil, 2005) [translated as Inscription and Erasure: Literature and Written Culture from the Eleventh to the Eighteenth Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); as well as the special issue on materiality in Editio 22.1 (2008), including Per Röcken, ‘Was ist–aus editorischer Sichte–Materialität? Versuch einer Explication des Ausdrucks und einer sachlichen Klärung,’ Editio 22 (2008): 22–46. Andrea Carlino, La fabbrica del corpo: Libri e dissezione nel Rinascimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1994) [translated as Books of the Body: Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning, trans. John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)]; Federico Pastore, La fabbrica delle streghe: Saggio sui fondamenti teorici e ideologici della repressione della stregoneria nei secoli XIII–XVII (Pasian di Prato: Campanotto, 1997); Marco Villoresi, La fabbrica dei cavalieri: Cantari, poemi, romanzi in prosa fra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Rome: Salerno, 2005); Emilio Pasquini, Dante e le figure del vero: La fabbrica della Commedia (Milan: Mondadori, 2001); Dante e la fabbrica della Commedia, ed. Alfredo Cottignoli, Donatino Domini, and Giorgio Gruppioni (Ravenna: Longo, 2008); and Paola Busonero et al., La fabbrica del codice (see note 45 above). Olivia Holmes, Assembling the Lyric Self: Authorship from Troubadour Song to Italian Poetry Book (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); Justin Steinberg, Accounting for Dante: Urban Readers and Writers in Late Medieval Italy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007); Rhiannon Davis, Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy 1340–1520 (London: Legenda, 2009). Some exceptions (complicated by poetic self-consciousness) are found in the works of the tre corone of Italian literature; see now Giuseppe De Matteis, ed., Dante in lettura (Ravenna, Longo, 2005); Francesco Lo Monaco, Luca Carlo Rossi, and Niccolò Scaffai, eds, ‘Liber,’ ‘fragmenta,’ ‘libellus’ prima e dopo Petrarca: In ricordo di d’Arco Silvio Avalle: Seminario internazionale di studi (Bergamo, 23–25 ottobre 2003) (Florence: sismel –
48 / William Robins
78
79 80
81
82
83
Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2006); Marco Cursi, Il Decameron: Scritture, scriventi, letturi: Storia di un testo (Rome: Viella, 2007). For memory and devotion, see notes, 50, 52, and 59 above. For risk and usury, see note 49 above, as well as William Robins, ‘Vernacular Textualities in Fourteenth-Century Florence,’ in The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity, ed. Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 112–31; and Lawrin Armstrong, Usury and Public Debt in Early Renaissance Florence: Lorenzo Ridolfi on the Monte Comune (Toronto: pims, 2003). For writing and death, see Armando Petrucci, Le scritture ultime: Ideologia della morte e strategie dello scrivere nella tradizione occidentale (Turin: Einaudi, 1995) [translated as Writing the Dead: Death and Writing Strategies in the Western Tradition, trans. Michael Sullivan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998)]. Opera del vocabolario italiano (http://www.ovi.cnr.it); Dante online (http://www.danteonline.it). See Prue Shaw, ed., Dante Alighieri: Monarchia (Leicester: Scholarly Digital editions – Società dantesca italiana, 2006), and Attilio Motta and William Robins, eds, Cantari della Reina d’Oriente: Edizioni critiche, by Antonio Pucci (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 2007). For other developments, see Arianna Ciula and Francesco Stella, eds, Digital Philology and Medieval Texts [with cd-Rom] (Ospedaletto: Pacini, 2007). The most significant web-based cataloguing project is Catalogo aperto dei manoscritti Malatestiani (http://www.malatestiana.it/manoscritti), online since 2003. More generally, see Laura Bragagna and Mauro Hausbergher, eds, Il libro antico: situazione e prospettive di catalogazione e di valorizzazione: Atti della giornata di studio: Trento, 17 dicembre 2001 (Trent: Provincia autnoma di Trento - Servizio beni librari e archivistici, 2003. See especially Domenico Fiormonte, Scrittura e filologia nell’era digitale (Turin: Bollati, 2003); and also Clifford Siskin, ‘Textual Culture in the History of the Real,’ Textual Cultures 2.2 (2007): 118–30. The first Italian manuscript catalogue for a specific collection to use a cd-Rom was Andrea Donello et al., eds, Manoscritti medievali del Veneto: Padova, Biblioteca del Seminario vescovile [cd-rom] (Venice: Regione del Veneto, 1998); the first within the Manoscritti datati dell’Italia series was Maria Maddalena Milazzo et al., eds, I manoscritti datati della Sicilia [with cd-rom] (Florence: sismel, 2003). Palaeographical guides have appeared both in cd-Rom format and as online publications, with examples including Fernando de Lasala, Esercizi di paleografia latina: Trascrizioni, commenti e tavole [with cd-Rom] (Rome: Editrice Pontificia
The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures / 49
84
85
86
87
Università Gregoriana, 1999); and Marco Palma’s Materiali didattici per la paleografia latina (http://www.let.unicas.it/links/didattica/palma/ paldimat.html). Most recently, Teresa De Robertis, Cinzia Di Deo, and Michaelangiola Marchiaro, eds, I manoscritti datati della Biblioteca Medicea Laurenzania di Firenze, vol. 1 (Florence: sismel - Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2008). See also Teresa De Robertis et al., eds, Norme per i collaboratori dei Manoscritti datati d'Italia, 2nd ed. (Padua: cleup, 2007). Ezio Ornato, ‘Bibliotheca manuscripta universalis: Digitalizzazione e catalografia, un viaggio nel regno dell'utopia?’ Gazette du livre médiéval 48 (2006): 1–13. Besides Fiormonte Scrittura e filologia nell’era digitale, see Michaelangiola Marchiaro and Stefano Zamponi, eds, Conoscere il manoscritto: Esperienze, progetti, problemi: Dieci anni del progetto Codex in Toscana (Florence: sismel, 2007). Armando Petrucci, Scrittura e civiltà 25 (2001), v.
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PART ONE Forms of Textual Exchange
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RONALD WITT
2
Rhetoric and Reform during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
In contrast with the rest of Europe, the northern third of the Italian peninsula known as the regnum Italiae had essentially two textual cultures, which from the tenth century became increasingly welldefined: on the one hand, the traditional book culture, dominated by grammar and oriented to the study of the corpus of ancient Latin literature and history together with the Christian and pedagogical heritage of late antiquity and of the early Middle Ages; and, on the other, a legal culture, which developed in two stages. It began as a culture of the document, which the Carolingian conquerors found already active there when they arrived in 773. In the course of the eleventh century this documentary culture spawned a new legal book culture centred on the Justinian corpus. No other medieval European society can be meaningfully discussed from the standpoint of this twofold distinction, initially between the traditional book culture and the culture of the document and, in the course of the eleventh century, between the former and the new culture of the legal book. Of these two textual cultures, the former was located principally in the cathedral, where – as in other parts of western Europe – clerical masters, supported by benefices, nurtured their students with instruction in liturgical practice, religious texts, and late ancient pedagogical treatises, such as the grammars of Donatus and Priscian. In schools offering an advanced level of training, students were introduced to pagan poets and prose writers. Some of the students were expected to become masters themselves, and the best or best-connected among them could anticipate high ecclesiastical preferment. The school was dependent on the cathedral library, which in turn depended on the scriptorium, where teachers and advanced students used their calligraphic and decorative skills in copying and illuminating manuscripts. Intimately tied to the school and
54 / Ronald Witt the scriptorium was the chancery, which maintained written contact with the ecclesiastical and secular world outside and guarded the cathedral’s hoard of documents. The school, scriptorium, and chancery were not usually housed in three distinct offices; especially in smaller dioceses we might better think of these three functions as performed by the same group of clerics. The important point is that whatever intellectual or literary life the cathedral generated was dependent on Latin-literate clerics. As for the documentary culture, nowhere else in medieval Europe from the ninth to the thirteenth century was society at all levels so dependent on written records.1 Nowhere else was there a comparable group of men having practical Latin literacy who earned their living by writing legal documents both for private individuals and for ecclesiastical and secular powers.2 Eminently practical, conscious of the fallibility of memory and the tricks of fortune and of men, the notaries envisioned the written word as the best human means of controlling the future. Enshrined in notarial documents, the written word was widespread in medieval Italian society, nourishing a popular consciousness of the power of the law, placing a premium on practical literacy, and encouraging a litigious mentality foreign to populations north of the Alps. Initially, clerics as well as laymen were the bearers of the documentary culture, but already by 1000, due largely to the policy of lay princes intent on creating a body of legal professionals completely under their control, laymen had generally taken over the notarial profession.3 After 1100 in the new culture of the legal book, lay Roman lawyers and clerical and lay canon lawyers assumed the leading position. The essay by Nicholas Everett in this volume shows how this peculiar Italian interaction of two cultures played out in the thought of Paulinus of Aquileia (740–802) in the early decades of the Carolingian conquest. This essay will trace this relationship in the intellectual development of the regnum in the eleventh and twelfth centuries as a way of explaining the advent of ars dictaminis (art of letter writing), the highly formalized code of rules governing the composition of prose letters in Latin that began in the northern half of the peninsula in the late eleventh century and fell into senescence by the mid-fifteenth.4 The New Style of Letter The character of the letter style to emerge as the standard model by the middle decades of the twelfth century was in large part determined, first, by the rudimentary level of Latin literacy – the Latin would have to be highly formulaic with minimal opportunity for individual input
Rhetoric and Reform during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries / 55 liable to error – and, second, by the increasingly legalistic mentality in the regnum.5 Ars dictaminis aimed at simplifying letter writing, a genre of composition that had hitherto enjoyed great flexibility and had often been used as a medium for attaining literary distinction. The new style of letter writing as developed in Bologna was the sister of the notarial document. The kinds of situations requiring notarial documentation, while numerous, were limited, and even a barely Latin-literate notary could keep at hand a collection of documents covering all occasions to serve as models. Largely for this purpose manuals of ars notarie (art of notarial practice) would not appear until the first quarter of the thirteenth century, with the diffusion of notarial schools. By contrast, the subjects for letter writing were almost infinite in number. Any serious effort to regulate the letter, therefore, demanded manuals laying down general rules of composition. From the outset, examples of model letters were often appended to the manuals, and by the second half of the twelfth century collections of model letters without theoretical introductions began to circulate independently. Although throughout its long career ars dictaminis claimed to be based on ancient antecedents, it was in fact a medieval creation largely determined by the needs of contemporary society.6 Nonetheless, the teachers of ars dictaminis took what help they could from antiquity and sought guidance for letter composition in the ancient handbooks of oratory, primarily in Cicero’s De inventione and the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium. The ancients had understood that official communications, particularly important letters, were often read aloud by the recipient or in the recipient’s presence and thus at the moment of communication took on the appearance of orations. Whereas they wrote little of private letters, they tended to see official letters governed by the rules of oratory.7 Circumstances of political and social life, however, encouraged the medieval dictatores (letter-writers and instructors) to impose on what earlier and later ages considered personal letters the same stylistic practices imposed on official ones. Lacking in large part ancient and modern distinctions between public and private, medieval society had no reason to separate private from public personalities nor individuals from their office or status in a particular group. The letter, whatever its particular purposes, was expected to mirror the power relationship between writer and addressee. Conceived along such impersonal lines, the letter became an efficient vehicle for official purposes. Diplomacy particularly required an elaborate protocol by which subtle changes in formulas or structure
56 / Ronald Witt constituted signals of altered attitudes and situations. Dictamen’s tyranny of stylistic prescriptions, however, discouraged the spontaneity and direct expression of thought and feeling that, at other times in history, gave the personal letter its character. With the diffusion of the prescriptions of ars dictaminis the personal letter as it was known in other ages disappeared.8 That the first surviving handbook of the new discipline in the art of letter-writing, Flores rhetorici, was composed by Alberic (d. 1105) in the more southerly monastic setting of Montecassino around 1075 appears to belie the link between the new interest in letter writing and the rapid economic and political development of the area north of Rome. There is sufficient evidence, however, to suggest that the doctrines taught by Alberic were common to other classrooms in the period, and that his was but the first surviving example of a synthetic treatment of the subject.9 Alberic’s manual begins by dividing the letter into five parts, the salutatio (salutation), the exordium or proemium (introduction), the narratio (statement of the case), the argumentatio (major points in the argument), and the conclusio (conclusion).10 His associations with the model of the ancient oration become clear when he characterizes the task of the exordium as rendering the reader ‘attentive, kindly disposed, and receptive’ and illustrates his discussion of the structure of the letter by examples drawn indiscriminately from letters and speeches.11 He then turns to a detailed consideration of colores rhetorici (rhetorical colours) applicable to all kinds of composition, which takes up more than half the book.12 Because of this latter broad emphasis, the Flores rhetorici would have fit well into a traditional course in Latin composition. Furthermore, the often extensive and frequent quotations of ancient literature reflect the assumption that the student would have had training in pagan texts before studying letter writing. Another of Alberic’s works, the Brevarium de dictamine, also discusses epistolography, but only as part of a longer treatise considering a range of other rhetorical topics.13 Because Alberic wrote the first surviving manual providing the rules for the composition of letters, some scholars tend to regard him as the founder of ars dictaminis. Others – and I include myself among their number – disagree with this judgment. Alberic melds letter writing into a broad treatment of Latin composition.14 In contrast, the prime characteristic of medieval ars dictaminis as it developed in the twelfth century was its separation from the study of rhetoric in general.15 The title of founder of ars dictaminis more properly belongs to Adalbertus of Samaria, a layman teaching in Bologna, whose Praecepta
Rhetoric and Reform during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries / 57 dictaminum (written in Bologna between 1112 and 1118) was concerned only with letter writing to the exclusion of all other aspects of rhetoric.16 He knew Alberic’s work and criticized it for ‘repetitiousness’ (reciprocaciones) and unspecified ‘oddities’ (inusitationes). Nevertheless, while Adalbertus’s focused manual reflected his awareness of a public primarily concerned with knowledge of the mechanics of letter writing, his observation that preparation for letter writing required previous training in grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic suggests that he had not yet divorced ars dictaminis from the traditional curriculum.17 The frequent citation of ancient authors in the theoretical sections of the manual and in the model letters together with the elaborate language of the latter bear further witness to Adalbertus’s commitment to the book culture of the previous century.18 His inclusion of papal, imperial, and episcopal letters indicates that he was setting a high standard for his students to imitate. Nonetheless, Adalbertus’s emphasis on the importance of letter writing threatened the broad curriculum of study that he had inherited. In a passage of one of his own model letters in which he endeavoured to promote dictamen, Adalbertus was unknowingly prophetic when he wrote: ‘For what advantage is it to anyone to sweat for a long time in the profession of grammar, if he does not know how, whenever it shall be necessary, to write at least one letter?’19 If, as the passage suggests, knowledge of letter writing was the goal of one’s formal education, what need was there ‘to sweat for a long time in the profession of grammar’? Like Adalbertus’s, the manuals of two of his contemporaries, Hugo of Bologna’s Rationes dictandi prosaice (ca. 1119–24) and Henry Francigena’s Aurea gemma (ca. 1119–24), probably written in Pavia, were narrowly concerned with letter writing.20 The model letters of Henry follow those of Adalbertus in that they are written in a learned style with occasional classical references, although fewer than in Adalbertus’s collection. Several papal letters are included. By contrast, Hugo’s manual, dedicated not to a cleric but a layman, ‘D. Citizen of Ferrara, most just judge of the sacred palace (judex sacri palatii) of the emperor,’ offers numerous models of letters for different occasions ranging in style from stilus altus (lofty style) to stilus humilis (humble style).21 In this way his manual meets the promise made in his preface that the work was intended for experienced letter-writers as well as for beginners. Generally his models for the salutation and exordium are elaborate, but students could be expected to choose among them for those appropriate for the particular occasion. If Adalbertus was the founder of ars dictaminis, Hugo should be recognized as the creator of
58 / Ronald Witt the letter in stilus humilis, which was to become the trademark of Bolognese ars dictaminis and the dominant style of letter writing in Italy for the next three hundred years.22 In its concern with rhetoric in general, the Summa dictaminum (1144/5) composed by Master Bernard, a cleric who was either French or had close ties to Francia, returns letter writing to its place in the broader field of rhetoric.23 Bernard had already published a manual in Bologna, Rationes dictandi (ca. 1138–43), that was to exert an enormous influence on the field of letter writing. Apparently a rough draft of the longer Summa dictaminum, the Rationes dictandi, laid out in detail what was to become the standard five-part letter of ars dictaminis: salutatio, benevolentie captatio (also called the exordium), narratio, petitio (request), and conclusio.24 While the basic aim of the Summa dictaminum, likely written at Faenza, was to amplify the teachings of the Rationes dictandi on letter writing, the work in its later sections goes beyond dictamen to treat a wide range of genres of literary composition.25 The book begins, uncharacteristically for Italian artes dictaminis of the period, with a verse prologue of thirtysix hexameter lines, seventeen of which were borrowed from the epilogue of Marbord of Rennes’s De ornamentis verborum; proceeds to discuss at length the five-part letter with many examples (fols 1–33); defines and provides examples of six other prose genres (fols 33–49); and closes with a treatment of Latin metrics (fols 49–51).26 We might assume that the evident commitment of the author to the traditional book culture would have produced letters as elaborately worked as those of Adalbertus and Henry. The letters in the collection ascribed to him (dated from their contents to 1142–4), however, disappoint our expectations. Syntactically uncomplicated, highly formulaic in character, they raise the question of why Bernard would have thought the Summa dictaminum’s extensive treatment of rhetorical figures and linguistic detail necessary.27 As for classical references, only two occur in the letters. Aphoristic in character, the one taken from Lucan and the other from Sallust, both had probably already become proverbial among dictatores.28 The collection of model letters attached to the Introductiones prosaici dictaminis (1145–52), a work closely related to the Summa dictaminum, perhaps composed by one of Master Bernard’s students, exhibits the same tendency to streamline letter writing by composing in stilus humilis.29 The anonymous author imitates earlier manuals by including letters from emperors and popes in his collection, but in his case they are imaginary creations, written in the same simplified style as his other models.30 A second contemporary collection, this one of Tuscan origin,
Rhetoric and Reform during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries / 59 dated 1154/5, offers model letters that can easily be imitated. They deal largely with local politics and everyday relationships.31 The editor of the collection refers to it as a ‘forerunner of municipal ars dictandi.’32 Typical of ars dictaminis manuals in the second half of the century, this second collection consists merely of model letters with no discussion of theory.33 It has been suggested that after 1150, dictatores no longer needed to discuss the theoretical aspects of dictamen in their manuals because they could teach theory from the older manuals.34 While this may be partly true, my sense is that the absence of theoretical discussions after 1150 more likely indicates that, given the development of the new streamlined style of letter writing, teachers felt able to teach students dictamen simply by imitating the forms and language of the model letters that they provided in their manuals. About twenty years lay between the first and second generation of manuals, but already in the first generation Hugo showed himself willing to abandon the elitist conception of the letter as a manifestation of the writer’s training in book culture. Despite the elaborate pretensions of second-generation manuals such as the Summa dictaminum and the Introductiones prosaice dictaminis, dictatores realized that style had to fit the capacities of an expanding mass of new learners. This involved fashioning a new form of eloquence using elements of the stilus humilis, a form that could be mastered by students with only a modest level of training in grammar. By the second quarter of the twelfth century, consequently, dictamen had freed itself from the authority of the ancients and constructed a method of letter writing that considerably reduced the need for extensive training in grammar. The minimizing of classical influence in letter writing would characterize Italian ars dictaminis for the next three centuries. Promising to provide a short cut to eloquence, manuals offered a style based on a simplified vocabulary structured in formulas and encoded in a collection of model letters either attached to the manual or circulating independently. It is vital to emphasize, however, that the fate of dictamen in Northern Europe shows there to be no necessary connection between the rules of dictamen and the humble style common by the mid-twelfth century in the regnum. Building on the model letters of Adalbertus and Henry Francigena, northern rhetoricians devised a dictamen style decked out with all sorts of classical echoes and artfully constructed phrases. The contrast in styles of letter writing reflects different publics. The rise of ars dictaminis has generally been assumed to have been a response to the economic and political development of northern and
60 / Ronald Witt central Italy by the beginning of the twelfth century. At least, the economy of the area was the most advanced in western Europe in its day. Traditionally this had been a documentary culture whose population was accustomed to have transferences of property, judicial trials, and the like commemorated in written documents which were authenticated by notaries. Among laymen, notaries constituted the core of those who could read and write the formulaic Latin of the documents, and all but the elite among the clergy were probably no more literate than this. Initially it was this group of laymen and clerics with practical literacy who would have been ideal customers for a formulaic method of letter writing that enabled them to participate more fully in the political and economic life of their society. Ars dictaminis and Investiture While this connection between the economic and political evolution of Italian society and the emergence of ars dictaminis is certainly valid, the explanation does not tell us why ars dictaminis emerged in the decades following 1100. In what follows I contend that the rise of the new rhetoric was closely associated with the Investiture Struggle. This generalization only has meaning if we examine the goals of the traditional grammar curriculum linked as it was to the pagan classics prior to 1100. Cathedral, not monastic, schools had been the primary centres offering this curriculum in the regnum in the Carolingian, Ottonian, and Salian periods.35 One of the effects of the German domination of Italy from 961 was the imposition on the Italian schools of what Stephen Jaeger has called the curriculum of litterae et mores (letters and conduct).36 The goal was to provide a young cleric with education in litterae et mores so as to prepare him for diplomatic and administrative roles both in the imperial church and secular government. While the Carolingians had also considered the training of imperial functionaries as one of the goals of education in the liberal arts, they envisioned learning more broadly as a way of advancing the spiritual welfare of their subjects.37 Because of the preponderantly secular motives behind Ottonian educational policies, the emperors heightened the focus on ancient literature and placed special emphasis on the orators and historians. Nonetheless, a teacher’s role as interpreter of the texts and as author was secondary to the role that he played as a charismatic figure, embodying in his voice and gestures an indwelling greatness of soul laced with humility. The rewards of imperial patronage were bestowed on the basis not of deep religiosity but of apparent highmindedness and physical attractiveness.
Rhetoric and Reform during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries / 61 Anselm of Besate, born of a noble family of Milan about 1020, can be taken as an exemplar of what this education aimed to nurture.38 Having studied in at least three Italian cities and having gone abroad for a period, at some time between 1046 and 1048, the young man sought preferment from the emperor by dedicating to him a treatise entitled Rhetorimachia.39 His stated purpose for the work was to demonstrate the principles of rhetoric taught by ancient writers. The treatise takes the form of a long letter in which the author attempts to convict his cousin, Rotiland, of a wide range of preposterous charges. Aiming to convince his audience of his mastery of Latin, Anselm composed his Rhetorimachia in the best mannerist Latin prose that at points becomes rhymed and at others mixes with poetry (prosimetrum). The prologue to the work is written in hexameters, generally in leonine form, and there are frequent rhymed verses within the body of the prose text such as the following one addressed to his cousin Rotiland: dominium non negasti; cui te miser servum donasti. Illum enim offendere timuisti; confessus es, cum non negasti. Plasma Christi dehonestasti, legem subvertisti, humanum genus minuisti, cum tam preclarum opus domini tam turpi dominio infecisti et ex superna illa gloria ad infimam miseriam descendisti.40 You have not renounced the lord to whom you, miserable one, gave yourself as a slave. For you fear to offend him; you confess, when you do not deny; you have dishonoured the blood of Christ, subverted the law, diminished the human race, since you have corrupted such an excellent work of the lord with such a foul dominion, and you have descended from that heavenly glory to the depths of misery.
The Rhetorimachia’s sentences crowded with rhetorical figures and tropes compel the reader to work hard to understand their meaning. The text resonates with quotations and echoes from at least ten ancient poets. While demonstrating his eligibility for entrance into the emperor’s chapel with this show of learning and cleverness, he also managed through the voice of a speaker in the text to tell the emperor that he was strikingly handsome and well built. Although a few members of the regnum’s secular clergy opposed the worldly character of the imperial church, most of the initiative for
62 / Ronald Witt reform came from men inspired by monastic ideals, primarily those associated with the Camaldulensian order of monks captained by Romualdo (d. 1027) and the Vallombrosans led by Giovanni Gualberto (d. 1073). Both groups pioneered, in their emphasis on the ideal of poverty as the key to monastic reform, an ideal that was to have an enduring influence on European monasticism and spirituality in general. It proved an incendiary standard when poor monks were set against the wealthy and powerful clergy of the imperial church. These new monastic orders were deeply anti-intellectual as well and had little use for learning beyond biblical and devotional literature.41 The Vallombrosians, I should add, were a good deal more aggressive about their convictions than the Camaldulensians and were political activists in stirring up popular lay movements.42 If Pietro Damiani (d. 1073), a Camaldulensian, was reluctant to encourage popular participation in reform, there was no harsher critic of the curriculum of litterae et mores than this contemporary of Anselm of Besate. Pietro Damiani saw the educational program of the imperial church as a major contributor to church corruption. Efforts to learn the liberal arts he regarded not as studia but rather as stultitiae. ‘My grammar is Christ!’ he proclaims.43 Elsewhere he writes: ‘Let them all steeped in the filth of earthly wisdom turn back to their shadows; blinded by the sulphurous splendour of cloudy doctrine, they mean nothing to me.’44 He branded philosophers akin to heretics. As prior of Fonte Avellana after 1043, he showed no interest in establishing a school at the hermitage. Granted, he distinguished at points between monks, priests, and prelates in the matter of education. While he considered an educated monk proud and of doubtful stability in his vows, he recognized the need of education for secular clerics, especially for bishops. His expectations for priests were minimal: they had to be able to read and understand scripture and have some skill at writing. But in the case of bishops, an education in the liberal arts was required.45 There would have been no contradiction had Peter consistently limited his condemnations of the liberal arts by making clear that they applied only to monks and lower clergy, but most of his attacks on learning, especially on pagan learning, were general in character, without qualification. Already before the Investiture Struggle broke out in 1075, consequently, there was a strong current of opposition championed by the influential eremetical orders to the current form of grammatical education cherished by the imperial church. The opposition only grew after 1075. In contrast with the liberal use of pagan authors in earliest surviving Italian treatises defending the imperialist position on investiture, for
Rhetoric and Reform during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries / 63 example, the absence or paucity of such citations in corresponding papalist treatises in the same period suggests that the hostility to the ancients was widely felt in reform circles.46 The cathedral school, which enshrined the culture of the book, moreover, fell victim between 1075 and 1122 to the divisive struggle between pope and emperor.47 In the regnum the conflict was uniquely disruptive because of the relatively urban character of the society and the extent of active involvement of the masses. By contrast, elsewhere in western Europe the dispute aroused little popular interest. Outside the regnum the papacy or their representatives dealt largely with princes, and settlements were reached by agreements between the two parties. In southern Italy Rome negotiated with Norman rulers, in southern Francia with local princes, and in England and northern Francia with monarchs. Granted, in Germany, during almost a half century of warfare, institutional continuity at all levels was interrupted, but the mass of the population appears to have suffered as victims and remained largely uninvolved in the struggle for church reform. Territorial princes were growing in power; the emperor, having witnessed his control over church offices diminish both in theory and materially, was scrambling to find other supports for his authority; and in some areas ecclesiastical institutions were severely weakened at the local level by internal division over the issue of investiture; but in Germany’s largely small urban centres popular elements were rarely actively engaged in the support of one faction or the other. Popular participation in the battle around reform issues began in the regnum almost two decades before 1075. The first popular riots in Milan in the spring of 1057 against the concubinage of the clergy marked the entry of the lower classes into the struggle.48 Ariald, the leading preacher of the radicals, combined the attack on clerical marriage with a denunciation of simony.49 Within months of the outbreak of violence in Milan, local patarie formed and revolted against the ecclesiastical establishment in Brescia and Piacenza as well. In 1059, the murder of the bishop of Brescia by the local clergy, angered by his publication of papal decrees enforcing celibacy, led to widespread refusal throughout Lombardy to accept the sacraments at the hands of married priests or priests living in concubinage.50 Ecclesiastical authorities appear to have responded successfully to the challenge to their power in most of Lombardy, but civil unrest continued to rock the largest city of the regnum over the next half century. In the 1060s, if not earlier, the radical party in Milan drew spiritual support from Vallombrosa, and for a time Giovanni Gualberto was supplying Milan with priests trained at Vallombrosa to perform the sacraments for
64 / Ronald Witt those unwilling to take them at the hands of simonic clerics.51 The death of the movement’s leaders led to the dissolution of the pataria by 1075, but violence related to religious politics had by then become endemic in the city. Three archbishops in succession, Guido da Velate (1045–68), Gotofredo (1068–74), and Tedaldo (1074–85), spent a part of their reigns under papal excommunication; only Anselm da Rho (1086–93), a bishop with imperialist sympathies but one ultimately accepted by the papacy, succeeded temporarily in quieting the bitter dissensions.52 The expulsion and exile for simony of Grosolano, the pro-papal archbishop in 1103, however, shows that the reform program itself could breed factions.53 In Lucca, Anselm, bishop since 1073, was forced to flee in 1080 and a pro-imperial bishop, Peter, took his place.54 In 1091, Gottefredus, probably appointed bishop in Lucca by Urban II, was residing in the Valdinievole, unable to occupy his diocese. Rangerius (d. ca. 1112), the Gregorian bishop elected by the reform party in 1096, could only enter Lucca in 1097.55 Gregory’s deposition of the imperial bishop Gandolfo and consecration of Heribert in 1082 led to a schism in Reggio lasting until 1098.56 Similarly, at Modena, after the excommunication of another bishop Heribert in 1081, rival bishops divided the see until 1095, with the papal one residing at Savignano and the imperial one within the city.57 On the death of Heribert, the pope appointed Bernard as bishop; he held the see until his death in about 1097, but the Modenese objected to the pope’s choice of Bernard’s successor and refused the latter entry into Modena for several years. In Parma, beginning with the election in 1062 of the imperialist bishop Cadaldus (Honorius ii) as pope and rival of Alexander II, pro-imperial sentiment remained strong, until the 1090s when a significant radical-religious faction emerged. Subsequently, after years of bitter struggle between two rival claimants, Parma accepted the papal candidate as bishop in 1106.58 In Bologna the struggle between rival bishops lasted from 1078 to 1104.59 In the diocese of Padua, in 1095, upon the death of the imperial bishop Milo, a strong advocate of the vita communis (life in common) of the clergy, Henry iv, appointed Peter Cizarella, who was subsequently deposed by the Council of Gastalla in 1106 and replaced by a papalist, Sinibaldo. Peter, however, refused to submit and he and Sinibaldo fought over the see for years.60 In 1091, when Henry iv captured Mantua, Ubaldus, the bishop supported by Matilda, fled and the emperor replaced him with a German, Chuno. In 1092, Matilda retook the city and drove Chuno out, but for years afterward, until his death in 1112,
Rhetoric and Reform during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries / 65 Chuno continued to claim the bishopric. In Brescia, the radical party elected Arimanno in 1087 against Oberto, probably a German chosen by the emperor, precipitating a division of the diocese that lasted for ten years.61 In Piacenza, although Bishop Dionigi managed to return to the city within a short time after his expulsion by the local pataria in 1057, he was officially deposed by Gregory vii in 1074.62 Nevertheless, Dionigi appears to have continued to exercise power in the city until his death in 1082, when Gregory sent a certain Maurizio to take his place. But antipapal sentiment still ran high in the city, and when Bonizio assumed the bishopric in 1089, he was almost immediately expelled and an imperial bishop, Winsico, appointed by Henry iv, took his place. The advent of Winsico was followed in 1090 by a bloody battle between pro-papal populares and imperialist milites.63 At some time prior to 1095, Aldo, a papal reformer, replaced Winsico as bishop. The alternation of imperial bishops with bishops of the radical reform party, often involving rivalry between two claimants, either with both residing within the diocese or with one plotting against the other from outside, necessarily resulted in major shifts of fortune for many city dwellers. Many of an exiled bishop’s conspicuous clerical and lay supporters had to accompany him in exile, while those of his people remaining behind plotted their bishop’s return. A lack of documentation for many cities and the fragmentary material surviving even for most of the cities already mentioned make difficult an overall assessment of the disruption occurring during the period from 1075 to the Diet of Worms in 1122. Nonetheless it can safely be said that the issue of reform, combined with tensions over local problems, likely destabilized almost every urban area in central and northern Italy for significant periods between 1075 and 1122 and served to create an extraordinarily active and vocal population even at the lowest strata of society. As a result of the turbulence, the Italian cathedral schools emerged from the struggle over investiture in 1122 in a weakened position, the continuity of their operation having often been broken. Some of these cathedral schools never appear again in the documents of the twelfth century and others only reappear after a gap of forty or fifty years. Significantly we know less about these schools in the twelfth century than we do in the eleventh. Concomitantly, as their importance as educational centres diminished, their grammar curriculum faced increasing competition from that of private schools. Throughout most of the eleventh century there had always been private schools for teaching Roman law, but confusion in the ecclesiasti-
66 / Ronald Witt cal establishment by the early twelfth century invited a proliferation of private schools, not only for teaching Roman law, but also for ars dictaminis and canon law (a new discipline, itself an outgrowth of investiture debates). Ars dictaminis and canon law could be taught in cathedral schools, but because a commercial market for these subjects existed, a substantial number of schools were run by private masters. Moreover, because teachers of the three subjects assumed the burden of teaching whatever grammar was demanded by their speciality, the grammar requirement for entrance into these fields was low.64 Since training in advanced grammar was no longer necessary, private masters had no need of a library but could teach the subject with a single manual. In the case of instruction in ars dictaminis, the weight of the evidence taken from collections of model letters indicates that most of the teaching was done by private masters who moved from one town to another imparting their learning to groups of students specially formed for this purpose. The letter collection of Henry Francigena contains a letter from a teacher of dictamen who, having recently begun teaching in a town, thanked a student for his friendship.65 The itinerancy of many of these teachers also emerges in model correspondence of Adalbert of Samaria. Promising that there were fifty students awaiting the teacher’s instruction in Cremona, the correspondent beseeched Adalbert to come to the city. In his response, Adalbert, who was under contract for a year in Bologna, politely refused, citing his present commitment. Nevertheless, he urged all in Cremona who wanted his instruction to come to Bologna.66 One young man, who in the letter collection of Hugo, canon and priest of the church of Bologna (‘bononensis ecclesiae canonicus et sacerdos’), asked the master where he intended to teach the following winter, certainly expected teachers to be shifting about constantly.67 Determining the preferred teaching arrangement for canon law is more problematic. The few lay canon lawyers like Walfred, one of the most notable canon lawyers of the 1130s in Bologna, would likely have rented their own classrooms. In the case of clerics, however, we have no idea whether they taught in the cathedral, in another church, or in a rented space in town. The only instance we have that provides the location of a cleric’s lessons in canon law is not Bolognese but concerns Gerard Offreducci of Marostica, who taught canon law at Padua.68 Gerard gave his lessons in a house belonging to Martin Gosia ‘which was close to the major Paduan church.’69 Had Gerard been employed by the bishop of Padua we would expect him to have taught in the cathedral.
Rhetoric and Reform during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries / 67 Consequently, not only did the forces of papal reform in the Investiture Struggle render problematic the study of the ancients, basic to the grammatical curriculum, but the chaotic condition of the Italian church promoted the marginalization of the cathedral schools, the centres for these studies, and at the same time the rise of private schools which taught subjects that did not rely heavily or at all on that curriculum. In the case of ars dictaminis, as we have seen, beginning with Hugo, authors of manuals might include detailed instruction in Latin rhetoric, but there was little in their model letters to suggest the need for it. The emphasis on a streamlined form of writing, easily accessible and without ancient precedent, struck at the heart of the traditional program of grammatical studies. The simplification of letter style suggests that the manuals that began to appear in the last years of the Investiture Struggle were composed in response to an increased demand for training in how to write a letter and to a corresponding drop in the education level among the manuals’ expanding audience. The greater awareness of the importance of the written word, I suggest, also relates directly to the fifty years of propaganda battle surrounding religious reform, a battle unlike any before in the Middle Ages. Even with the losses over time, fifty-five papal tracts and forty-eight imperial tracts written between 1075 and 1112 survive.70 Much of the popular fervour demonstrated by the masses was aroused by preaching, but given a relatively widespread practical literacy among laymen, some of it surely was created by reading as well as by hearing propaganda. Almost inevitably the deluge of material dedicated to a subject of such popular concern made broad strata of the population aware of the potential importance of reading and writing and awakened in some an interest in joining the circle of those who had access to these skills.71 Consequently, the reduction of letter writing to a series of fixed rules, sets of formal phrases for each part of the letter, and models to imitate should be interpreted as a response to the demands of this new public. To conclude: the new art of letter writing, ars dictaminis, democratized the art of letter composition and soon thereafter the whole art of prose writing. The teachers of dictamen promised to teach letter writing skills (heretofore based on extensive grammatical training) without demanding of students an extensive background in classical prose and poetry. What we are witnessing in northern and central Italy from the second quarter of the twelfth century is the triumph of the rhetorical/legal culture that the humanists confronted from the second half of the
68 / Ronald Witt thirteenth century in their effort to classicize contemporary Latin. Ars dictaminis and Roman and canon law were the triumphant disciplines of the twelfth and first half of the thirteenth centuries. The deep changes affecting the society of the regnum during the Investiture Struggle help us to understand why the marginalization of grammar, a subject still the focus of transalpine schools to the end of the twelfth century, occurred when it did. I credit the Investiture Conflict in the regnum with (1) questioning the basis of the traditional grammatical program founded on study of the ancients; (2) weakening the institutional structure in which the program was enshrined and encouraging competition from private schools; and (3) intensifying in a population, already accustomed to working with documents and actively participating in events, an awareness of the importance of reading and writing, thereby whetting the appetite for a simplified method of writing letters that took the form of ars dictaminis.
NOTES 1
Whereas the older view was to contrast sharply Italian trust in the validity of documents with their ambiguous status in northern European societies, the current tendency is to deemphasize the differences between the documentary culture of the regnum and that of the transalpine parts of the Carolingian empire in the ninth century. The principal general work representing the newer scholarship remains Rosamond McKitterick’s The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). The essays relating to northern Europe in The Settlement of Disputes, ed. Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), provide significant proof of the importance of documents in certain transalpine regions. Also see the essays in The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). By contrast, Alain de Boüard, Manuel de diplomatique française et pontificale, vol. 2, L’acte privé (Paris: Picard, 1948), 128–49, sharply contrasts the attitude toward the validity of documents in eighth- and ninthcentury Italy and Francia. Cf. Carlo Mor, ‘Dritto romano e diritto canonico,’ in La cultura antica nell’Occidente latino dal vii secolo al xi secolo, Settimane di studio 22 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1975), 713. François L. Ganshof, ‘La preuve dans le droit franc,’ in La Preuve, vol. 2, Moyen âge et temps modernes (Brussels: Éditions de la Librairie encyclopédique, 1965), 71–98 at 90, writes, ‘l’usage
Rhetoric and Reform during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries / 69
2
3
4
5
6
de la preuve écrite est aux temps merovingiens et carolingiens exceptionnel.’ McKitterick, Carolingians and the Written Word, 26, squarely challenges that last statement as regards the Carolingians, and she devotes her book to a refutation of the position. She does not however carry her analysis into the tenth century as does Robert-Henri Bautier, ‘L’authentification des actes privés dans la France médiévale: Notariat public et juridiction gracieuse,’ in Notariado público y documento privado: De los orígenes al siglo XIV: Actas del VII Congreso Internacional de Diplomática, Valencia, 1986, 2 vols (Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana, 1989), 1:701–71, who writes that under the Carolingians the institution of the notariate ‘semble donc avoir été générale en Gaule, mais, dans l’ensemble, elle s’est effacée à des dates variables, dès le cours du ixe siècle, à la fin de ce siècle, ou au mieux, au xe ’ (709). As for episcopal chanceries, with few exceptions after the Carolingian period, ‘dans le plupart des diocèses, la fonction semble disparaître.’ The phrase ‘practical literacy’ is borrowed from Michael T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, ma: Blackwell, 1993), 328. Documentation for this development will be given in my forthcoming volume The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy. By the twelfth century in the regnum, the word dictamen became intimately associated with the rules of letter writing, but the term also designated the manual containing the rules of the art as well as separate collections of model letters. For the interplay between dictamen as both a product of this process and an active force in the construction of the legalistic mentality, see Giles Constable, ‘The Structure of Medieval Society According to the Dictatores of the Twelfth Century,’ in Law, Church, and Society: Essays in Honor of Stephan Kuttner, ed. Kenneth Pennington and Robert Somerville (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 253–67. In fact, the letter was considered by the ancients to need the flexibility of conversation. The earliest surviving Greek treatise (third century ad) defines the structure of the letter as ‘loose and not too long,’ while Cicero contrasts letters written as they are in ‘plebian style’ and ‘everyday words’ with the rich variety of styles used in his orations; George M.A. Grube, A Greek Critic: Demetrius on Style (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), 112. In the case of official or public communications, which were letters read aloud on delivery, the rules governing oratory, for which there were many textbooks, were applicable. Julius Victor in the fourth century contrasts litterae negotiales to litterae
70 / Ronald Witt
7
8
9
familiares; Julius Victor, Ars rhetorica, in Rhetores latini minores, ed. Karl Halm (Leipzig: Teubner, 1863), 447. For more bibliography on ancient epistolography, see my ‘Medieval Ars dictaminis and the Beginnings of Humanism: A New Construction of the Problem,’ Renaissance Quarterly 35 (1982): 1–33 at 7; and John O. Ward, ‘Rhetorical Theory and the Rise and Decline of Dictamen in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance,’ Rhetorica 19 (2001): 175–223 at 177, who cogently attributes the lack of manuals in antiquity to the use of formularies and models in the schools and various secretariats of the Empire. On oral reading of writings, see Ruth Crosby, ‘Oral Delivery in the Middle Ages,’ Speculum 11 (1936): 88–110; and Giles Constable, Letters and Letter Collections, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental 17 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), 53–4. Also see The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable, 2 vols (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1967), 2:27 n. 115. Paul Saenger’s Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) is devoted to a consideration of the relationship between silent and oral reading. The influence of Italian-style dictamen becomes obvious in northern Europe only after 1200. The letters of Peter of Blois (d. 1205) are the last survivors of the old epistolography. Joseph de Ghellinck, L’essor de la littérature latine au XIIe siècle, 2 vols (Brussels: L’Édition universelle, 1946), 2:67, criticizes the dictatores for misunderstanding the character of the letter as a means of communication: ‘en transportant dans le genre épistolaire ce que l’Orator de Cicéron reservait au genre oratoire, appelé à captivé l’oreille pour mieux conquérir l’esprit, ils enlevaient à la lettre tout ce qu’elle pouvait avoir de charme personnel, d’abandon confidentiel, de sentiment et de vie.’ While valid for letters of a personal nature as suggested above, the criticism is unfounded as far as official letters are concerned. The existence of a tradition of rules for writing prior to Alberic’s formulation of the art is the focus of William D. Patt’s study ‘Early Ars dictaminis as Response to a Changing Society,’ Viator 9 (1978): 135–55. Alberic of Montecassino’s manual is published as Flores rhetorici, ed. Mauro Inguanez and Henry M. Willard, Miscellanea cassinese 14 (Rome: Arti grafiche e fotomeccaniche Sansaini, 1938). See the bibliography for Alberic in Anselmo Lentini, ‘Alberico,’ Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 1 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1960), 646; and Paul Oskar Kristeller, ‘Philosophy and Rhetoric from Antiquity to the Renaissance: The Middle Ages,’ in Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, ed. Michael Mooney (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 318 n. 22.
Rhetoric and Reform during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries / 71 10 11
12 13
14 15
16
17
He did not, however, consider the salutatio a part of the letter proper: Flores rhetorici, ed. Inguanez and Willard, 36–8. Because confirmatio and refutatio appear to be included by Alberic in argumentatio, only partitio from the classical oration is omitted; cf. Cicero De inventione 1.22–3. In the edition of Alberic’s work, pages 35–41 are devoted to letter writing and 41–56 to the colores and other aspects of composition. The most complete edition of the Brevarium de dictamine is that by PeterChristian Groll, who edited chapters 1–17 (of 22) for the second part of his doctoral dissertation: ‘Das Enchiridion de prosis et de rithmis des Alberich von Montecassino und die Anonymi ars dictandi’ (phd diss., Universität Freiburg im Breisgau, 1963). His edition, however, was based on only three of the five manuscripts, which have so far been identified. Janine L. Peterson, ‘The Transmission and Reception of Alberic of Montecassino,’ Scriptorium 57 (2003): 27–50 at 34–5, dates the first seventeen chapters as written in 1082, and chapters 18–22 as written early in the twelfth century, perhaps by Alberic. Martin Camargo, Ars dictaminis, Ars dictandi, Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental 60 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 30–1. John Ward, ‘Rhetorical Theory and the Rise and Decline of Dictamen in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance,’ Rhetorica 19 (2001): 175–223, esp. 177–90, maintains that in the twelfth century in both Italy and transalpine Europe ars dictaminis was taught separately from classical rhetorical theory. The text is published in Adalbertus Samaritanus, Praecepta dictaminum, ed. Franz-Josef Schmale (Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1961). Schmale believes him to be a layman (8). For dating, see Franz-Josef Worstbrock, Monika Klaes, and Jutta Lutten, Repertorium der Artes dictandi des Mittelalters, vol. 1, Vom dem Änfangen bis um 1200 (Munich: Fink, 1992) [Repertorium der Artes dictandi], 1. Doubtless there were other masters between Alberic and Adalbertus whose works have not survived. Henry Francigena (fl. 1120s) refers to his own master as Anselm; Patt, ‘Early Ars dictaminis,’ 143. Hugo of Bologna (fl. 1120s) in his Rationes dictandi prosaice published in Ludwig Rockinger, ed., Briefsteller und Formelbücher des eilften bis vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols, Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte 9 (Munich: Georg Franz, l863), 1:49–94, defends Alberic against the attacks of Adalbertus and a certain Aigulf, who remains without further identification (53). Adalbertus, Praecepta dictaminum, ed. Schmale, 31: ‘Primum itaque dictatorem oportet cognoscere grammaticam, rhetoricam, dialeticam, eloquentie studia huic operi necessaria.’
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22 23
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In my discussion of ars dictaminis in Ronald Witt, ‘The Arts of LetterWriting,’ in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 2, The Middle Ages, ed. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 68–83, esp. 70, I presented Adalbertus as both reducing the field of rhetoric to letter writing and divorcing it from the literary tradition grounded in the classics. In contrast, I now conclude that while he deserves credit for the first innovation, the divorce from the Latin classics occurred in the work of writers of the following generation. The letter is included among model letters presented in Hugonis bononiensis Rationes dictandi in Briefsteller und Formelbücher, ed. Rockinger, 1:84: ‘Quid enim prodest alicui diu gramaticae professioni insudare, si nescierit – cum oportuerit – saltim unam epistolam dictare?’ Henry’s collection of letters is published by Botho Odebrecht, ‘Die Briefmuster des Henricus Francigena,’ Archiv für Urkundenforschung 14 (1936): 231–61, esp. 242–61. The preface to the work was published by Ernst H. Kantorowicz, ‘Anonymi Aurea gemma,’ Medievalia et humanistica 1 (1943): 41–57 at 56–7. Hugo’s salutation reads: ‘Ugo bononiensis ecclesie canonicus et sacerdos humillimus seruus crucis Cristi Domini Ferariensium civi sacri palacii imperatoris equissimo iudici salutem et peticionis effectum’; Rationes dictandi, ed. Rockinger, 1:53. As for his audience, he writes that with these rules ‘disciplinam rudibus et documenta provectis breviter commodeque traderem.’ For an example of Hugo’s stilus humilis, see Witt, ‘Arts of LetterWriting,’ 72. Repertorium der Artes dictandi, 30. In his examples in the Summa dictaminum, Bernard mentions place names such as Paris, Lyon, Arles, Cluny, and Clairvaux, along with Italian place names. For a description, see Repertorium der Artes dictandi, 24–7. The first of the two parts of Bernard’s Rationes dictandi was published by Rockinger, ed., Briefsteller und Formelbücher, 1:9–28, who mistakenly attributed it to Alberic of Montecassino; see Repertorium der Artes dictandi, 25. Significantly, in the course of explaining the rules of the art, the author made only one classical reference and that a commonplace, paraphrasing Cicero In Catilinam 3.5: ‘Quis sim, ex eo quem ad te misi cognosces’; however, James J. Murphy, Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 20, who translates from Rockinger’s edition, attributes the quotation to Sallust. For a description of Master Bernard’s Summa dictaminum, which remains unpublished, see Repertorium der Artes dictandi, 29–31. My folio
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26
27
28
29
30
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citations are taken from Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Palatino latino 1801, fols 1–51. Repertorium der Artes dictandi, 36, describes the collection of rhetorical works found in the manuscript Savignano di Romagna, Biblioteca della Rubiconia Accademia dei Filopatridi, ms 45, that, besides the Summa dictaminum, contains six other works ascribed to Bernard: (1) a collection of exordia; (2) a treatise on rhetorical colours, essentially Marbod’s De ornamentis verborum; (3) a tract on metrical poetry; (4) a section on constructing privileges; (5) a tract on rhythm; and (6) a letter collection. It cannot be definitively known whether any of the letters are his. The opening verses and the section on Latin verse in the Summa dictaminum make it highly probable that he was the author of the treatises on Latin metrics and rhythm in the Savignano di Romagna manuscript. Bernard’s manual enjoyed enormous popularity in northern Europe, where it fit well with a thriving traditional book culture; see Repertorium der Artes dictandi, 24. Bernardus Bononiensis, Multiplices epistole que diversis et variis negotiis utiliter possunt accomodari, ed. Virgilio Pini (Bologna: Biblioteca di Quadrivium, 1969). Bernard cites (20) Lucan De bello civile 1.281: ‘semper nocuit diferre paratis’; and quotes (21) Sallust Bellum Iugurthinum 10.6: ‘nam concordia parvae res crescunt, discordia maximae dilabuntur.’ The latter quotation had already appeared both in Adalbertus, Praecepta dictaminum, ed. Schmale, 24, and Henry Francigena, ‘Die Briefmuster,’ ed. Odebrecht, 253. The Introductiones prosaici dictaminis is described in Repertorium der Artes dictandi, 37–42, dating the work between 1145 and 1152 (38), and saying of its author, ‘Möglicherweise handelt es sich um das Werk eines Schülers des Bernardus’ (24). Charles H. Haskins, ‘An Italian Master Bernard,’ in Essays in History Presented to Reginald Lane Poole, ed. H.W. Carless Davis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), 211–26 at 215, notes that no classical author is mentioned in the manual except Cicero. Presumably, the citation(s) from Cicero would have been from the rhetorical manuals. Hermann Kalbfuss, ‘Eine Bologneser Ars dictandi des xii Jahrhunderts,’ Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 16 (1914): 1–35. Helene Wieruszowski, ‘A Twelfth-Century Ars dictaminis in the Barberini Collection of the Vatican Library,’ in Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1971), 331–45. She dates the manuscript 1154/5 (334).
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33
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36
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Wieruszowski, ‘Twelfth-Century Ars dictaminis,’ 336, who considers the references to mythology and the scattering of Ovidian references as indicating that the teaching of ars dictaminis was ‘still based on a thorough study of ancient authors’ (335). Given that these are models, the level of Latin training required of a student to put together his own letter would have been equivalent to Latin 2 in a modern American high school. Cf. Patt, ‘Early Ars dictaminis,’ 149. I should add that two northern Italian manuals were roughly contemporary with Bernard’s Summa dictaminum, the Praecepta prosaici dictaminis secundum Tullium, ca. 1140, and Albertus of Asti, Flores dictandi, ca. 1148–53. Both were devoted strictly to letter writing. For a description of the manuals, see Repertorium der Artes dictandi, 152–3 and 19–20, respectively. Charles H. Haskins, ‘Early Artes dictandi in Italy,’ in Studies in Medieval Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), 170–92 at 188. Cf. Wieruszowski, ‘Twelfth-Century Ars dictaminis,’ 334. In contrast with the intellectual importance of transalpine monasteries in Gaul from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, with the exception of Bobbio, Nonantola, and perhaps one or two others, the monasteries of the regnum appear to have been intellectually dormant. Despite a revival in the eleventh century, they again lapsed into their former condition in the twelfth. The single most important work on the contrast between the Ottonian and Carolingian educational programs is Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe: 950–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 21–52. On the policy of the Ottonians toward education, see especially Josef Fleckenstein, ‘Königshof und Bischofsschule unter Otto dem Grossen,’ Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 38 (1956): 38–64. Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 43, maintains that whereas under the Carolingians monastic education differed in no appreciable way from cathedral education, this was not the case under the Ottonians. Anselm of Besate’s Rhetorimachia is published in Gunzo Epistola ad Augienses und Anselm von Besate Rhetorimachia, ed. Karl Manitius, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Die deutschen Geschichtsquellen des Mittelalters 500–1500, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 2 (Weimar: Böhlaus Nachfolger, l958). Although purportedly on rhetoric, the work, with its classical references and poetic passages, reflects a curriculum founded on grammar. Manitius, ibid., 62–74, provides a sketch of Anselm’s life. Anselm of Besate, Rhetorimachia, ed. Manitius, 169–70; translation is mine. See also Karl Polheim, Die lateinische Reimprosa (Berlin: Weid-
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42
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mannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1963), 421, as well as Bernard Pabst, Prosimetrum: Tradition und Wandel einer Literaturform zwischen Spätantike und Spätmittelalter (Cologne: Böhlau, 1994), 379–87. Pietro Damiani wrote the first and most important biography of Romualdo in 1042. The work is published in Petrus Damiani, Vita beati Romualdi, ed. Giovanni Tabacco, Fonti per la storia d’Italia 94 (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1957). For the origins of the monastery and the movement, see Wilhelm Kurze, ‘Campus Malduli: Die Frühgeschichte Camaldolis,’ Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven 44 (1964): 1–34; and ‘Zu Geschichte Camaldolis im Zeitalter der Reform,’ in Il monachesimo e la riforma ecclesiastica (1049–1122): Atti della quarta Settimana internazionale di studio Mendola, 23–29 agosto 1968 (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1971), 399–415. Brunetto Quilici, ‘Giovanni Gualberto e la sua riforma monastica,’ Archivio storico italiano 99 (1941): 1:113–32; 2:27–62; and 100 (1942): 45–99, provides the basic outline of Gualberto’s life and the nature of his reform. See as well, Sofia Boesch Gajano, ‘Storia e tradizione vallombrosane,’ Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio muratoriano 27 (1964), 99–215; and Antonella degl’Innocenti, ‘Giovanni Gualberto,’ Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 56 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2001), 341–7. Romualdo had little education and Giovanni Gualberto less. Pietro Damiani writes that in later life Romualdo interpreted the ‘psalterium et nonnulla prophetarum cantica luculenter exposuit et licet corrupta grammatice regula, sanum tamen sensum ubique servavit’ (Vita beati Romualdi, ed. Tabacco, 93). In the earliest vita of Giovanni Gualberto, composed ca. 1092, the author characterizes John as ‘inscius litterarum et quasi idiota’: Andrea da Strumi, Vita sancti Iohannis Gualberti, ed. F. Baethgen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores 30.2 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1930), 1080–1104 at 1087. See Andrea di Strumi, Vita Sancti Johannis Gualberti, ed. Baethgen, 1076–1104, esp. 1093–1100. Gualberto supported the popular revolution in Florence against its bishop, Mezzabarba, and was deeply involved in his deposition in 1068. Cf. Degl’Innocenti, ‘Giovanni Gualberto,’ 344. See Robert Davidsohn, Forschungen zur älteren Geschichte von Florenz, 4 vols (Berlin: E.S. Mittler und Sohn, 1896–1908), 1:47–9. Giovanni also sent priests to Milan to minister to those who refused to accept sacraments at the hands of married and simoniac priests (1:42). Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. Kurt Reindel, 4 vols, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1983–93), 1:203: ‘Mea igitur grammatica Christus est.’
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45 46 47 48
49 50
‘Cedant in suas tenebras omnes terrene sapientie fecibus delibuti, nil mihi conferant suphureo caliginose doctrine splendore cecati’; Damiani, Briefe, ed. Reindel, 1:252. Damiani, Briefe, ed. Reindel, 2:179. An analysis of these treatises is to be found in my Two Latin Cultures. I describe the character of the papacy’s negotiations concerning investiture outside the regnum in chapter 4 of my Two Latin Cultures. Cinzio Violante, La pataria milanese e la riforma ecclesiastica, vol. 1, Le premesse (1045–1057) (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1955), 148–9. Attacking what it considered a corrupt clergy, the pataria claimed that sacraments performed by a bad priest were invalid. Their opponents generally defended the episcopal hierarchy and urged respect for the priest regardless of his personal moral status. Violanti considers the pataria to have been mostly composed of artisans, merchants, minters, and popolo minuto (192); he believes, however, that people of other classes were also among their number; see ‘I laici nel movimento patarino,’ in I laici nella societas christiana del secoli XI e XII: Atti della terza Settimana internazionale di studio, Mendola, 21–27 agosto 1965 (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1968), 597–687. Paolo Golinelli, La pataria: Lotte religiose e sociali nella Milano dell’XI secolo (Novara: Europía; Milan: Jaca, 1984), 14–15. Cf. Cinzio Violante, ‘La chiesa bresciana nel medioevo,’ in Storia di Brescia, ed. Giovanni Treccani degli Alfieri, 5 vols (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1963–4), 1:999–1124 , esp. 1035. In the case of Piacenza, the bishop, Dionigi (1048–82), ultimately reentered the city with the approval of the papacy; see Pierre Racine, ‘La nascita del comune,’ in Storia di Piacenza, vol. 2, Dal vescovo alla signoria, ed. Piero Castignoli (Piacenza: Cassa di Risparmio di Piacenza, 1984–2003), 51–74 , esp. 65. On the revolt in Piacenza, see also Giuseppe Fornasari, ‘La riforma gregoriana nel Regnum Italicae,’ Studi gregoriani 13 (1989): 297–305. All that is known about the pataria movement in Cremona is a reference in Bonizone’s account of the reaction to the death of the bishop of Brescia in 1059; see Bonizone of Sutri, Liber ad amicum, ed. Ernst Ludwig Dümmler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum saeculis xi et xii conscripti (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1891–7), 1:594: ‘Quod factum [the attempted assassination of Adelman of Liège] non mediocre patariae dedit incrementum: nam non solum Brixiae, sed et Cremonae et Placentinae et per omnes alias provincias multi se a ineconcubinatorum abstinebant communione.’ On the murder of the bishop of Brescia, see Arsenio Frugoni, Arnaldo da Brescia nelle
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53
54
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fonti del secolo XII (Turin: Einaudi, 1989), 3 n. 1. Cf. Violante, ‘La chiesa bresciana,’ 1:1034–5. See Vita Sancti Johannis Gualberti, pl 146.803–4. Historians disagree as to whether the intervention of Giovanni Gualberto in Milan occurred after or before the popular revolution against the Florentine bishop Mezzabarba and his deposition in 1068; see Degl’Innocenti, ‘Giovanni Gualberto,’ 344. The narrative here is based on Gian Luigi Barni, ‘Dal governo del vescovo a quello dei cittadini,’ and ‘Milano verso l’egemonia,’ in Storia di Milano, vol. 3, Dagli albori del comune all’incoronazione di Federico Barbarossa, 1002–1152 (Milan: Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri per la storia di Milano, 1954), 114–257. Guido was excommunicated in 1066 by Alexander II. Forced to flee Milan briefly in 1067, he resigned his see in 1068. Gotofredo was excommunicated in 1073 and deposed by Henry iv in an effort to placate the Milanese. His choice of Tedaldo, who was never recognized by the papacy, was no more fortunate. The appointment of Anselm da Rho in 1086 ended two years of vacancy. The election of his successor, Arnolfo, in 1093, was initially condemned by Rome as irregular but ultimately allowed. On Arnolfo’s death in 1097, Anselm da Bovisio was elected with papal approval. On his death in 1101, Grosolano was chosen to replace him. See as well the article by Hubert E.J. Cowdrey, ‘The Papacy, the Patarenes and the Church of Milan,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 18 (1968): 25–48; reprinted in his Popes, Monks and Crusaders (London: Hambledon Press, 1984), 25–48. Grosolano was driven from the city in 1103 and deposed in 1112; see Barni, ‘Dal governo del vescovo,’ 270, 303. Giordano di Clivio was elected in that year to replace him, but Grosolano (d. 1117) disputed the archbishopric with him for some years (316). The religious confusion in Milan in this period is highlighted by the fortunes of Grosolano, who may have come from Camaldoli and who ultimately retired there; see Piero Zerbi, ‘Monasteri e riforma a Milano dalla fine del secolo x agli inizi del xii,’ Aevum 24 (1950): 44–60 and 166–78, esp. 55 n. 6. On Lucca, see Martino Giusti, ‘Le canoniche della città e diocesi di Lucca al tempo della Riforma gregoriana,’ Studi gregoriani 3 (1948): 321–67, esp. 333–4. Raffaele Savigni, ‘L’episcopato lucchese di Rangerio (1096–ca. 1112) tra riforma “gregoriana” e nuova coscienza cittadina,’ Ricerche storiche 27 (1997): 5–37, esp. 9–10.
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61 62 63
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Francesca Bocchi, ‘Le città emiliane nel Medioevo,’ in Storia di Emilia Romano, ed. Aldo Berselli, 3 vols (Imola: University Press Bologna, 1976–80), 1:405–43 , esp. 423. See as well Pericle di Pietro, ‘Aspetti socioeconomici e culturali della vita modenese in età matildica,’ in Studi matildici: Atti e memorie del III convegno di studi matildici, Reggio E., 7–8–9 ottobre 1977 (Modena: Aedes Muratoriana, 1978), 161–9, esp. 162. Luigi Simeoni, ‘I vescovi Eriberto e Dodone e le origini del comune di Modena,’ Atti e memorie (Deputazione storia patria per le antiche provincie modenesi), 8th ser., 2 (1949): 77–96. Cf. Bocchi, ‘Le città emiliane,’ 425. Reinhold Schumann, Authority and the Commune, Parma 833–1133 (Parma: Deputazione di storia patria per le province parmensi, 1973), esp. 97, 147–50, l59–63 ; on the makeup of the reform party in Parma, 316–25. Gina Fasoli, ‘Ancora un’ipotesi sull’inizio dell’insegnamento di Pepone e Irnerio,’ in Scritti di storia medievale (Bologna: La fotocromo emiliana, 1974), 567–81, esp. 577–81. See as well Paolo Prodi and Lorenzo Paolini, Storia della chiesa di Bologna, 2 vols (Bologna: Istituto per la storia della chiesa di Bologna, 1997), 1:73–7, 86, 96. Gerhard Schwartz, Die Besetzung der Bistümer Reichsitaliens unter den sächsischen und salischen Kaisern mit den Listen der Bischöfe, 951–1122 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913), 58–9. As late as September 1110, Peter was present ‘in domo solariata predicti episcopi’ (59). Frugoni, Arnaldo da Bresica, 3–4. Cf. Violante, ‘La chiesa bresciana,’ 1039–42. Racine, ‘La nascita del comune,’ 65–6; and Bocchi, ‘Le città emiliane,’ 1:416–18. On this conflict, see Pierre Racine, ‘Città e contado in Emilia e Lombardia nel secolo xi,’ in Evoluzione delle città italiane nell’XI secolo, ed. Renato Bordone and Jörg Jarnut, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico 25 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988): 99–136, esp. 131–3; Bocchi, ‘Le città emiliane,’ 418; and Emilio Nasalli Rocca, ‘Osservazioni su Bonizone come canonista,’ Studi gregoriani 2 (1947): 151–62. A letter in Bene da Firenze’s Candelabrum, ed. Giancarlo Alessio (Padua: Antenore, 1983), a manual which was composed approximately in 1226, suggests that at that time three years of grammar were considered adequate preparation for the study of canon law, stating: ‘Sciatis quod Bononie gramaticam tribus annis audivi, biennio in logica laboravi, tandem in iure canonico sum titulum magisterii consecutus’ (219). In 1246, in Bologna, notaries were required to have had two years of grammar before studying the notariate; Robert Ferrara, ‘Licentia exercendi ed esame di notariato a Bologna nel secolo xiii,’ in Notariato medievale
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bolognese, vol. 2, Atti di un convegno, febbraio 1976, ed. Giorgio Costamagna (Rome: Consiglio nazionale del notariato, 1977), 47–120, esp. 110. The teacher, W. de Saramando, writes: ‘Letor tamen gaudio, cum vestram, quorum ab initio mei adventus in hanc terram amicitiam exoptavi, nunc, ut in litteris vestris continetur, habeo’; Odebrecht, ‘Die Briefmuster des Henricus Francigena,’ 247. Charles H. Haskins, ‘An Early Bolognese Formulary,’ in Mélanges d’histoire offerts à H. Pirenne, ed. Herman van der Linden, François Louis Ganshof, and Gaston G. Dept, 2 vols (Brussels: Vromant, 1926), 1:201– 10, esp. 203–4. Rationes dictandi, ed. Rockinger, 82–3 (see note 16). John Noonan, ‘Gratian Slept Here: The Changing Identity of the Father of the Systematic Study of Canon Law,’ Traditio 35 (1979): 145–72, esp. 155, briefly discusses magister Walfred, imperial judge, canon lawyer, advocate of Monte Cassino. He was described by the canons of St Victor as frater exterior. He had at least one legitimate son. See as well, Burgundio of Pisa, a layman who was both a Roman and a canon lawyer; Peter Classen, Burgundio von Pisa: Richter, Gesandter, Übersetzer (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1974). A document of 1239 refers to the election to the bishopric of Padua in 1165 of Gerard Offreducci of Marostica, ‘qui tunc regebat in legibus in domo Martini de Goxo que erat juxta majorem ecclesiam Paduanam in episcopum Paduanum’; Andrea Gloria, Monumenti della Università di Padova (1222–1318) (Venice: Forni, 1884), 115–17 and n. 564. Carl Mirbt, Die Publizistik im Zeitalter Gregors VII (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrich, 1894), 93–4. See the observations of Ian S. Robinson, Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest: The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978), 8–11. Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 235, writes of the role of literacy in inspiring the Patarine movement in Milan: ‘Above all, the Pataria served as a vehicle for the concentration of issues surrounding the spread of literacy. It brought the controversies over simony, nicolaitism, and the sacraments out of the classroom and into the parish church, even into the streets; and it produced a hybrid religious movement possessing an inner core of clerics and a wider circle of ordinary believers. Both of these achievements were made possible through preaching, that is, through a method of communication ultimately dependent on texts.’
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CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
3
Adventures in Textuality: Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia
The tradition of lyric poetry in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Italy is vast and varied, and the poets who contributed to this great production of literary texts are many and represent a number of regions on the peninsula. In his treatise on language and prosody, De vulgari eloquentia, Dante demonstrates his awareness of this great patchwork quilt of languages/dialects that constitutes medieval Italy, while simultaneously acknowledging the wide range of poets and styles that characterize the lyric tradition. In this case, as in many others, we know Dante’s perspectives on a great many issues, and these, in the absence of other evidence, we gratefully accept, and these opinions have often been raised to canonical status ... rightly or wrongly. To be sure, many of our judgments on early Italian poets are shaped by the views of the Florentine poet, for so powerful is the cult of Dante that few can escape his pervasive influence. Despite the understanding and insights that we have gleaned from Dante’s texts, there are lots of things we do not know about the early Italian poets and about the transmission of lyric texts in the Duecento and early Trecento. About the only thing we know for sure is that much, or most of what survives of the early lyric tradition – and here I refer to the work of those poets who were active at the imperial court of Frederick ii and those who were active in Tuscany in the second half of the thirteenth century (the siculo-toscani) – is contained in three late thirteenth-century codices compiled in Tuscany: Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticano latino 3793; Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Banco Rari 217; and Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Redi 9.1 The transcription of these three principal codices in Tuscan dialect was crucial to the elevation of that dialect, and its Florentine variety in particular, to a position of prestige and cultural
82 / Christopher Kleinhenz dominance in medieval and early Renaissance Italy. The fact that the socalled three crowns of Florence – Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio – all wrote in this Tuscan/Florentine dialect confirmed its linguistic prominence and authority in literature, just as Luca Boschetto demonstrates in his essay in this volume concerning the language of the notarial documents in the Florentine Mercanzia. Through such means Florence exerted its cultural and linguistic hegemony in the areas of literature and law. Some of the lyric texts of the Sicilian and siculo-toscani poets, as well as the lyrics of the dolcestilnovisti (poets of ‘the sweet new style’) and more popular poets, are also contained in some fourteenth-century manuscripts: for example, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barberini latino 3953 (from 1325 to 1335, organized and written in part by Nicolò dei Rossi);2 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Chigi l.viii.305 (mid-fourteenth century);3 and Madrid, Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, latino e.iii.23 (first third of the fourteenth century).4 We possess only a very small fraction of the Sicilian corpus in what may have been its original linguistic guise, and most of these are found in the so-called carte Barbieri (the papers of Giovanni Maria Barbieri, d. 1574).5 The poetic texts in the three earliest codices all appear in their Tuscanized form, which we believe is the result of their transcription by Tuscan scribes, while the linguistic patina of the Barberiniano codex (Barb. lat. 3953) is decidedly from the Veneto region and most likely from Treviso. One great mystery, which will probably never be solved, is how the individual poetic texts were identified, transmitted, transformed, and transcribed into these great verse collections.6 In what form were they when the amanuenses first encountered or ‘found’ them? Were there several copies or a single one? Did the scribes encounter them in written form? Or did they hear them in the piazza? What was the impact of performance or oral transmission on the process of composition? What ordering or organizational principles were used in the codices? Were poems arranged by poetic genre? By author? Or alphabetically, by incipit? These are just some of the questions that continue to concern us. The complex presence of poems and their sheer numbers – almost one thousand texts in Vat. lat. 3793 alone – present formidable challenges to even the most seasoned and astute textual critic. In this essay I intend to draw on my earlier research on the origin and development of the Italian sonnet in the first century of its existence,7 and to a lesser degree on my editorial work for a critical edition and translation of the poetry of Cino da Pistoia.8 In order to limit the scope
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 83 of this essay, however, I will focus on the poetic genre known as the tenzone – literally, a poetic duel or contest – a genre that derives from the Occitan tenso or joc partit, a debate in which poets would compose alternate stanzas of a canso or sirventes on a particular theme, usually amorous.9 The tenzone, then, in very simple terms, is an exchange of sonnets (and, much more rarely, of canzoni)10 between two (or more) poets on a particular topic – amorous, moral, political, religious, or popular.11 We should note that tenzoni come in two varieties, tenzoni reali o vere and tenzoni fittizie, and the meaning of these designations should be obvious: ‘real’ tenzoni are the products of at least two individual authors, while ‘fictitious’ tenzoni are the ‘exchanges’ of sonnets written by the same author. Some scholars have also included in this latter category other poetic genres, such as the contrasto, one famous example of which is by Cielo d’Alcamo:12 ‘Rosa fresca aulentis[s]ima, – c’apari inver la state, le donne ti disïano – pulzell’ e maritate; tra[ji]mi de ste focora – se t’este a bolontate; per te non aio abento notte e dia, penzando pur di voi, madonna mia.’ ‘Se di mevi trabagliti, – follia lo ti fa fare, lo mar potresti arompere, – avanti, a semenare, l’abere de sto secolo – tut[t]o quanto asembrare, avereme non poteri a esto monno, avanti li cavelli m’aritonno.’ ‘Fresh, most fragrant rose, you appear towards summer, the ladies desire you, both maidens and married women; remove me from these flames, if it pleases you; because of you I have no rest, night or day, thinking only of you, my lady.’ ‘If you torment yourself over me, folly makes you do so; even if you could plow and seed the sea and gather all the riches of this world, you could not have me in this world; I’d rather cut my hair first.’
Another fine example of the contrasto is that of Giacomino Pugliese:13 ‘Donna, di voi mi lamento, bella di voi mi richiamo di sì grande fallimento:
84 / Christopher Kleinhenz donastemi auro co ramo. Vostro amor pensai tenere fermo, senza sospecione; or sembra d’altro volere, truovolo in falsa cascione, amore.’ ‘Meo sir, se tu ti lamenti, tu no ài dritto, nè ragione; per te sono in gran tormenti. Dovresti guardar stagione, ancor ti sforzi la voglia d’amore e la gelosia; con senno porta la doglia, non perder per tua follìa amore.’ ‘Lady, I complain of you, beautiful lady, I accuse you of this great failure: you gave me gold with copper. I thought I had your faithful love without worries; now it seems to be of another mind; I find it to be falsely motivated, my love.’ ‘My lord, if you complain, you have no right or reason to do so; for you I am in great torment. You should pay better attention, although you may be compelled by love and jealousy. Bear your pain wisely; do not lose love because of your folly.’
Another poetic genre related to the tenzone is the sonnet in two voices, or sonetto dialogato, as represented in the following example by Cecco Angiolieri:14 ‘Becchin’ amor!’ ‘Che vuo’, falso tradito?’ ‘Che mi perdoni.’ ‘Tu non ne se’ degno.’ ‘Merzé, per Deo!’ ‘Tu vien’ molto gecchito.’ ‘E verrò sempre.’ ‘Che sarammi pegno?’ ‘La buona fé.’ ‘Tu ne se’ mal fornito.’ ‘No inver’ di te.’ ‘Non calmar, ch’i’ ne vegno!’ ‘In che fallai?’ ‘Tu sa’ ch’i’ l’abbo udito.’ ‘Dimmel, amor.’ ‘Va’, che ti veng’ un segno!’ ‘Vuo’ pur ch’i’ muoia?’ ‘Anzi mi par mill’anni.’ ‘Tu non di’ bene.’ ‘Tu m’insegnerai.’
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 85 ‘Ed i’ morrò.’ ‘Omè, che tu m’inganni!’ ‘Die tel perdoni.’ ‘E ché non te ne vai?’ ‘Or potess’io!’ ‘Tègnoti per li panni?’ ‘Tu tieni ‘l cuore.’ ‘E terrò co’ tuo guai.’ ‘Becchina, my love!’ ‘What do you want, false traitor?’ ‘That you forgive me.’ ‘You aren’t worthy of it.’ ‘Mercy, by God!’ ‘You seem so humble.’ ‘And I always will be.’ ‘What will be my guarantee?’ ‘Good faith.’ ‘You are poorly supplied with it.’ ‘Not toward you.’ ‘Don’t try to calm me, because I know your tricks!’ ‘Where did I go wrong?’ ‘You know I heard it.’ ‘Tell me, my love.’ ‘Go away, may you be struck down!’ ‘You want me to die?’ ‘You’ve been around forever.’ ‘You’re not telling the truth.’ ‘And you’ll teach me how.’ ‘And I’ll die.’ ‘Oh, how you trick me!’ ‘May God forgive you.’ ‘Why won’t you go away?’ ‘Oh, would that I could!’ ‘Am I holding on to your clothes?’ ‘You hold my heart.’ ‘And I’ll hold it to your detriment.’
However, we must return to the ‘real’ tenzone. What motivated the earliest Italian poets to write, or, better, to ‘initiate,’ a tenzone? It seems clear that the motivating factor was the desire to communicate, to enter into a conversation with other poets on matters and issues that were deemed important. And, indeed, we might be wise to differentiate between a tenzone (a discussion of a specific argument of more general interest) and a simple exchange of sonnets or rime di corrispondenza (that is, poems not primarily directed toward the elucidation of a subject, but more toward achieving personal goals: the gaining of friendship, a personal request, and so on). The presence of poems of this latter sort in the manuscripts may provide us with a glimpse into the customs and practices of everyday life in literate circles of society, but by and large, they are more epistolary and conversational in nature. One interesting situation is found in the Rediano codex (Redi 9) that begins with the letters of Guittone d’Arezzo and other Tuscan authors. The epistolary genre obviously has a specific addressee and is intended as the initiation of a dialogue. Indeed, some of these letters contain a sonnet, which then forms the basis of a tenzone, thereby doubling the conversational nature and intent of the composition, as we may observe, for example, in the following exchange of letters and attached sonnets by Dotto Reali da Lucca and Meo Abbracciavacca. Dotto Reali’s letter begins in this
86 / Christopher Kleinhenz manner: ‘A te, Meo Abracciavacca, Dotto Reali, menimo frate dell’ordine dei Cavalieri di beata Maria, manda salute’ (To you, Meo Abbracciavacca, Dotto Reali, most lowly brother of the Order of the Knights of Blessed Mary, sends greetings); and then, after a long paragraph in prose, presents the following sonnet:15 Similimente canoscensa move lo cor dell’om, che spesso si disforma, sì come l’aire face quando plove, che per contrario vento si riforma, e venta puro, e mostra cose nove in occhio d’om per parer, non per forma. A simil parlo, per intender prove del meo defetto da ciò che più forma. E ciò è mezzo, di principio fine e di fine principio naturale, ch’assai palese mostra, in cui figura. Qual d’esti dui più sente, e chi di fine intenda, non che porti naturale per sé, manda per compier la figura. Just as knowledge moves man’s heart, which often changes because of its restless nature, so is the air, after a period of rain, reconstituted by an opposing wind that purifies the air and reveals to one’s eye new things in appearance, not in substance. I offer this simile as a way of showing how far my imperfect state is from the intellect [i.e., the first formal principle]. And this [imperfect state] is halfway between the sensitive life (of which it is virtually the end) and the intellective life (of which it is the beginning), and this is readily evident in whomever it appears. Let me know which one of these two [i.e., the sensitive or intellective] has the greater effect on the will, and which one of these may signify the end (of our existence), aside from what the natural appetite allows for itself, in order that the images [in this sonnet] may be completed.
Meo begins his letter of response to Dotto with the salutation: ‘Messer Dotto frate, Meo Abracciavacca salute di bono amore’ (Messer Dotto Reali, Meo Abbracciavacca sends greetings with true love); and after an even longer paragraph in prose includes the following sonnet: Parlare scuro dimandando, dove risposta chiere veder chiaro l’orma,
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 87 non par mistero che sentenzia trove, ma del sentir altrui voler[e] norma. A ciò che ‘ntendo, dico mezo sove di primo fine; e di fine storma qual nel mezo, difetto, fine s’ trove: dunqua per fine ten più vizii a torma. Così bono tornare pregio chine di monte ‘n valle del prefondo male, acciò bisogna di ragione cura. Voi conoscete da la rosa spine: seguir convene voi a fine tale che ‘l primo e ‘l mezo di lod’ agi’ altura. Although one may speak obscurely in asking questions, while a reply requires the ability to understand clearly the subject, it does not appear necessary to reach a determination, but only to understand the other’s view. Based on what I understand, I declare that I know a middle ground that is the end of the beginning, and whoever finds his end in this imperfect middle ground strays from the true end: this one, therefore, has a swarm of vices for an end. Thus, I hold in great esteem the movement of the good here on earth from the high mountain to the valley of profound evil, for the care of reason is necessary to accomplish this. You know how to distinguish the rose from the thorns: you must pursue an end such that the beginning and the middle are worthy of praise.
The earliest tenzoni were written by the poets at the court of Frederick ii, the so-called poets of the Sicilian School (poeti della scuola siciliana). The medium of communication was the sonnet, which had been recently invented, probably by Giacomo da Lentini.16 It was only later in the century that the technical ‘rules’ governing these poetic exchanges were formulated, and by this I mean the practice that poets followed in responding per le rime (i.e., the respondent must use the rhymes of the initial poem in his own composition). Tenzoni present interesting editorial problems, for they are sometimes incomplete, in the sense that we have one sonnet, but not the other, either the proposal or the response. Sometimes we do not even know if we are dealing with a tenzone for there is no correspondence among the rhymes and no specific indications in the manuscript that the two poems go together, except in a very general way. Sometimes an interlocutor is named, but a poem by that individual is missing, if indeed it was ever written.
88 / Christopher Kleinhenz The tenzone seems to me to offer interesting opportunities to see textual cultures and textual communities at work, to observe how they function, and to investigate the complications of such enterprises in a manuscript culture. Given the current limited state of our knowledge about the manuscript tradition of thirteenth-century Italian poetry and the evident problems of transmission of specific poems, we are able only to offer some reasonable hypotheses – certainly no definitive statements. Indeed, there are tantalizing questions that may always be with us, given the absence or incomplete nature of documentary materials and archival evidence. It may be opportune to recall here the apt formulation that Michele Barbi was fond of repeating, almost as a mantra of textual criticism. Following what he had learned from Pio Rajna, Barbi was convinced, and I quote, that ‘the philological problem of one text is different from the philological problem of another text.’17 Even though it may appear to be common sense, this phrase still bears repeating, for it sums up very nicely the principle of the unique ontology of each text and, moreover, provides a cautionary note to those who may wish to formulate general theories of, or ‘rules’ for, textual editing. A bit of history may be appropriate at this point. In the early part of the twentieth century Salvatore Santangelo suggested that many, if not all, of the sonnets written by the poets of the Sicilian School, as well as others composed by poets on the peninsula, formed a large number of tenzoni, what we might call a great and elaborate conversation among poets.18 Santangelo argued that the ‘rule’ of the tenzone (the legge della rispondenza) was the presence of the same or similar rhymes in two (or more) poems and that sonnets related in this way formed tenzoni, one being the proposal and the other the response. This line of reasoning also bolstered his belief that poetic contests (gare poetiche) were common events at the court of Frederick ii. Santangelo’s intriguing argument received harsh criticism,19 and this was in part merited, since definitive codicological or explicit textual evidence that would support such a view was lacking. Indeed, the material record presented by the manuscripts would contradict Santangelo’s view, for tenzoni in the early codices are usually indicated as such in the text.20 The history of lyric poetry in the Duecento is marked by certain signposts, specific poems, generally canzoni, that are generally considered to be major statements of poetic intent or of doctrinal importance. For example, the canzone ‘Amor non vol ch’io clami’ by Giacomo da Lentini has sometimes been viewed as a statement of protest against the stifling influence of the Occitan tradition and perhaps even as a
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 89 proclamation of the invention of the sonnet as the new poetic form that will supplant older models.21 Amor non vole ch’io clami merze[de] c’onn’omo clama, né ch[e] io m’avanti c’ami, c’ogn’omo s’avanta c’ama; che lo servire c’onn’omo sape fare nonn-à nomo, e no è in pregio di laudare quello che sape ciascuno: a voi, bella, tal[e] dono non vorria apresentare. Love doesn’t want me to ask for mercy for which every man asks, nor does he want me to boast that I love, for every man boasts that he loves. The service that every man knows how to give has no name, and it is not held in esteem to praise what everyone knows: to you, beautiful one, such a gift I would not wish to present.
In a similar fashion, Guittone d’Arezzo (who is now identified in the manuscript rubric as fra Guittone and not simply as Guittone) announces in his canzone ‘Ora parrà s’io saverò cantare’ the new religious and moral direction that his poetry will take. The position of this canzone in the Laurentian Rediano codex (it is the first poem following a series of letters) attests to that moment of changeover from one poetic style and theme to another. In much the same way, the canzoni by Guido Guinizzelli (‘Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore’), Guido Cavalcanti (‘Donna me prega perch’io voglio dire’), and Dante (‘Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore’) are signposts that mark the new directions of lyric poetry in the second half of the thirteenth century, although their placement in the codices does not generally reflect this status. Just as the canzoni cited above, certain tenzoni have played similar roles in Italian literary history. Some tenzoni have become cultural markers, indicating spatial-temporal boundaries and representing those particular and decisive moments of change in the literary history in the Duecento. As time passes, attitudes toward a given topic change, and the struggle between the old and the new, between accepted notions and newfangled ideas, manifests itself. Poets themselves undergo change and transformation; the poetry of their later years generally demonstrates a maturity that their earlier lyrics did not possess. One poet in
90 / Christopher Kleinhenz particular – Guido Guinizzelli – displays in his lyrics the dramatic change in his attitude toward love and toward the very concept of how poetry should be written. Two of Guido’s poetic exchanges, first with Guittone d’Arezzo and then with Bonagiunta da Lucca, clearly mark the progress of his evolution as a poet and can also serve to indicate at least one major turning point, or watershed moment, in the development of the lyric tradition. In the first tenzone Guinizzelli addresses a sonnet to Guittone, in which he acknowledges the latter’s leadership role and prestigious position among the peninsular poets, addressing him with the ‘voi’ form and calling him reverently ‘padre meo’:22 Guido Guinizzelli a Guittone d’Arezzo23 [O] caro padre meo, de vostra laude non bisogna ch’alcun omo se ’mbarchi, ché ’n vostra mente intrar vizio non aude, che for de sé vostro saver non l’archi. A ciascun rëo sì la porta claude, che, sembr’, ha più via che Venezi’ ha Marchi; entr’ a’ Gaudenti ben vostr’ alma gaude, ch’al me’ parer li gaudii han sovralarchi. Prendete la canzon, la qual io porgo al saver vostro, che l’aguinchi e cimi, ch’a voi ciò solo com’ a mastr’ accorgo, ch’ell’ è congiunta certo a debel’ vimi: però mirate di lei ciascun borgo per vostra correzion lo vizio limi. O my dear father, no man needs to undertake your praises, since evil dares not enter your mind without your wisdom thrusting it away. It closes the gate to all sins, which seem to outnumber the Marks in Venice; your spirit is buoyed among the Joyous Brethren who delight, to my eyes, in overwhelming joy. Receive my song, which I offer for your judgment, to shape and cut; I entrust it to you alone as my master, for no doubt it is joined by weak bonds. So examine every part of it: correct the fault with your revisions.
To judge from verse 9, ‘Prendete la canzon’ (Receive my song), Guido is evidently sending a canzone (perhaps his ‘Lo fin pregi’ avanzato’) together with the sonnet, for he asks that Guittone subject it to his highly refined critical eye and work his stylistic magic on it.24 As we might imagine, Guittone basks in this adoration, as is evident in his response:
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 91 Guittone a Guido Guinizzelli Figlio mio dilettoso, in faccia laude non con descrezïon, sembrame, m’archi: lauda sua volonter non saggio l’aude, se tutto laudator giusto ben marchi; per che laudar me te non cor me laude, tutto che laude merti e laude marchi: laudando sparte bon de valor laude, legge orrando di saggi e non di marchi. Ma se che degno sia figlio m’acorgo, no amo certo guaire a tte dicimi, ché volonteri a la tua lauda accorgo. La grazia tüa che ‘padre’ dicimi, ch’è figlio tale assai pago, corgo, purché vera sapienzia a ppoder cimi. My delightful son, not with prudence, I think, do you direct your praises to me: a wise man does not gladly hear his own praise, even if a just praiser does it well; and so my heart doesn’t dare to praise you, though you merit praise and send it. A good man, when he praises, separates praise from worth, honouring the laws of the wise and not the foolish. But if, though you are a worthy son, I make corrections, I do not wish at all to lessen your praise, since I freely turn to your compliment. I welcome your devotion in calling me father, for such a son well satisfies, and you shape true wisdom where you can.
Not too many years after this poetic exchange, we would imagine, Bonagiunta da Lucca addresses a sonnet to Guido, in which he takes him to task for ‘having changed the way of writing love lyrics’ – a clear reference to what has become known as Guido’s doctrinal canzone ‘Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore.’ Bonagiunta complains that Guinizzelli has moved from simple and direct forms of poetic expression to a style steeped in learning and subtlety:25 Bonagiunta Orbicciani a Guido Guinizzelli Voi, ch’avete mutata la mainera de li plagenti ditti de l’amore de la forma dell’esser là dov’era, per avansare ogn’altro trovatore, avete fatto como la lumera,
92 / Christopher Kleinhenz ch’a le scure partite dà sprendore, ma non quine ove luce l’alta spera, la quale avansa e passa di chiarore. Così passate voi di sottigliansa, e non si può trovar chi ben ispogna, cotant’ è iscura vostra parlatura. Ed è tenuta gran dissimigliansa, ancor che ‘l senno vegna da Bologna, traier canson per forsa di scrittura. You, who have changed the style of the pleasing love lyrics from the essential form they once had so that you could surpass every other poet, have become like the light that sheds brightness in dark corners; but not here where the sublime light shines which surpasses and outshines yours in brightness. You are thus preeminent in subtlety, and no man can be found to explain your language, so obscure is it. And it’s thought a curious thing, though learning comes from Bologna, to drag song by force out of writing.
Ever civil and seemingly unruffled by these accusations, Guinizzelli responds with the gentlest of putdowns for the older, more traditionally minded poet from Lucca, essentially saying that one should not criticize what one does not understand. We should also note that in his answering sonnet Guinizzelli consistently uses the impersonal third person and not the more direct second person, either tu or voi. While there are still interpretive problems associated with this tenzone, one thing is clear: important changes are taking place in the literary tradition, and this exchange of sonnets captures that particular moment in time very well.26 Guido Guinizzelli a Bonagiunta Orbicciani Omo ch’è saggio non corre leggero, ma a passo grada sì com’ vol misura: quand’ ha pensato, riten su’ pensero infin a tanto che ‘l ver l’asigura. Foll’ è chi crede sol veder lo vero e non pensare che altri i pogna cura: non se dev’ omo tener troppo altero, ma dé guardar so stato e sua natura. Volan ausel’ per air di straine guise ed han diversi loro operamenti,
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 93 né tutti d’un volar né d’un ardire. Deo natura e ‘l mondo in grado mise, e fe’ despari senni e intendimenti: perzò ciò ch’omo pensa non dé dire. A wise man doesn’t run ahead lightly but proceeds step by step, as reason demands: when he has thought it through, he conceals his thought until he’s certain of the truth. A foolish man believes he alone sees the truth and doesn’t think that others search for it: a man shouldn’t hold himself too high but should regard his status and his own nature. Birds of all different kinds fly through the air and have their differing traits – not all of one flight nor all of a single intent. God set nature and the world in degrees and made different intelligences and understandings. And so a man shouldn’t blurt out what he thinks.27
It was undoubtedly his reading of the tenzone between Bonagiunta and Guinizzelli that caused Dante, in canto 24 of Purgatorio, to give the poet from Lucca the role of presenting the historical overview of the several historical periods of poetic schools in the Duecento. Here in the Commedia Bonagiunta recognizes and identifies Dante as the author of the first canzone in the Vita nuova, ‘Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore’: ‘Ma dí s’i’ veggio qui colui che fore trasse le nove rime, cominciando “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore.”’ (Purg. 24.49–51) ‘But tell me if I see here him who brought forth the new rhymes, beginning: “Ladies that have understanding of love?”’28
In his response to these words Dante, as it were, provides the definition of his distinctive poetic voice by describing his sublime inspiration: E io a lui: ‘I’ mi son un che, quando Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo ch’e’ ditta dentro vo significando.’ (Purg. 24.52–4) And I to him, ‘I am one who, when Love inspires me, takes note, and goes setting it forth after the fashion which he dictates within me.’
Bonagiunta’s reaction to and commentary on what Dante says provide both the solution to and the problem of the ‘mystery’ of the Dolce stil
94 / Christopher Kleinhenz novo, for it is here, in these verses, that we find for the first – and only – time these famous three words: ‘O frate, issa vegg’ io,’ diss’ elli, ‘il nodo che ’l Notaro e Guittone e me ritenne di qua dal dolce stil novo ch’ i’ odo! Io veggio ben come le vostre penne di retro al dittator sen vanno strette, che de le nostre certo non avvenne; e qual piú a gradire oltre si mette, non vede piú da l’uno a l’altro stilo.’ (Purg. 29.55–62) ‘O brother,’ he said, ‘now I see the knot which kept the Notary, and Guittone, and me short of the sweet new style that I hear. Clearly I see how your pens follow close after him who dictates, which certainly befell not with ours – and he who sets himself to seek farther can see no other difference between the one style and the other.’
On the basis of this passage it has been argued that Bonagiunta is identifying a group of poets consisting of Guido Guinizzelli, Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, Gianni degli Alfini, Dino Frescobaldi, Cino da Pistoia, and Dante himself. However, it has also been suggested that this passage in Purgatorio represents the definition that Dante gives of his own particular poetics. On the one hand, then, the Dolce stil novo would indicate a ‘school of poets’ and, on the other hand, a single poet, whose virtuosity and subject matter would far surpass all of the others. However this may be, we see in the words Dante puts into his character Bonagiunta’s mouth a retrospective ordering of thirteenth-century poetic production whereby Bonagiunta’s poetry and that of Giacomo da Lentini (the ‘Notary’) and Guittone d’Arezzo are distinct, both stylistically and thematically, from the lyrics of this new ‘school.’ Equally clear from this passage is the recognition both of Dante’s canzone, ‘Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore,’ as marking a major turning point in his own poetic itinerary and of the new conception of the personified figure of Love as the ‘dittator’ (one who dictates). The identity of Love, not as Cupid but as the Holy Spirit who provides the inspiration for a higher, more refined amorous poetry, then sets the stage for the theologizing of love and woman, ideas that began with the poetics of praise of Guido Guinizzelli and that were elaborated and refined by Dante first in the Vita nuova and then, in a definitive manner, in the Commedia.29
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 95 Other tenzoni have suffered critical neglect or scorn at the hands of some scholars because they deal with unseemly matters. For example, the famous – some might say infamous – sonnet exchange between Dante and Forese Donati has been the subject of many attempts to disprove its authenticity, in part because the subject matter, language, style, and tone are, according to some critics, not worthy of Dante, because they are an embarrassment to the great poet of the Vita nuova and Commedia. The desire to ‘protect’ Dante, to ‘save his reputation,’ may stem from the highest and finest of motives, but this blatantly disregards the manuscript evidence that clearly attributes these poems to Dante.30 Independent validation of their authenticity is provided in canto 23 of Purgatorio, where Dante meets Forese, and the intent of that passage is, among other things, to put their earlier scabrous sonnet exchange into perspective and to consider it a bygone episode of their ‘misspent’ youth.31 The first two sonnets in the tenzone are as follows:32 Dante a Forese Chi udisse tossir la malfatata moglie di Bicci vocato Forese, potrebbe dir ch’ell’ha forse vernata ove si fa ‘l cristallo, in quel paese. Di mezzo agosto la truovi infreddata: or sappi che de’ far d’ogni altro mese ...; e non le val perché dorma calzata, merzé del copertoio c’ha cortonese. La tosse, ‘l freddo e l’altra mala voglia no l’addovien per omor’ ch’abbia vecchi, ma per difetto ch’ella sente al nido. Piange la madre, c’ha piú d’una doglia, dicendo: ‘Lassa, che per fichi secchi messa l’avre’ ‘n casa del conte Guido.’ Anyone who heard the coughing of the luckless wife of Bicci, called Forese, might say that maybe she’d passed the winter in the land where crystal is made. You’ll find her frozen in mid-August – so guess how she must fare in any other month! And it’s no use her keeping her stockings on – the bedclothes are too short. The coughing and cold and other troubles – these don’t come to her from ageing humours, but from the gap she feels in the nest. Her mother, who has more than one
96 / Christopher Kleinhenz affliction, weeps saying: ‘Alas, for dried figs I could have married her to Count Guido!’ Forese a Dante L’altra notte mi venne una gran tosse, perch’i’ non avea che tener a dosso; ma incontamente che fu dí, fui mosso per gir a guadagnar ove che fosse. Udite la fortuna ove m’addosse: ch’i’ credetti trovar perle in un bosso e be’ fiorin’ coniati d’oro rosso; ed i’ trovai Alaghier tra le fosse, legato a nodo ch’i’ non saccio ‘l nome, se fu di Salamone o d’altro saggio. Allora mi segna’ verso ‘l levante: e que’ mi disse: ‘Per amor di Dante, scio’mi.’ Ed i’ non potti veder come: tornai a dietro, e compie’ mi’ viaggio. The other night I had a great fit of coughing, because I’d nothing to put over me; but as soon as day came I went off to look for money, wherever it might be found. Hear where luck led me! For I thought I’d find pearls in a wooden box and fine coined florins of red gold, but I found Alighieri among the graves, tied by some knot – I don’t know if the one called Solomon’s, or some other sage’s. Then I made a sign of the cross facing east. And he said to me: ‘For the love of Dante, release me.’ But I couldn’t see how – so turned back and came home.
The accusations lodged by Dante suggest that Forese is not keeping up with his husbandly duties – indeed, that he may be sexually inadequate – and leaves his wife cold and abandoned in bed to the eternal lament of her mother. Forese does not respond per le rime, but takes his cue from the verb tossir (to cough) in verse 1 of Dante’s sonnet, rendering it in its substantive form tosse (a cough) in the first verse of his. Forese’s attack centres on the likely sin – usury – of Dante’s father, whose soul needs assistance either from his son or from Forese for salvation. Whether these two sonnets have any historical basis is of secondary importance to the evidence they provide of a dynamic, intellectualized culture in which literary artefacts provide an ideal, restricted space for the staging of a sort of duel whose sole weapons are words and ideas.
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 97 One of the earliest tenzoni in the thirteenth century features three sonnets, the initial one written by Jacopo Mostacci (‘Solicitando un poco meo savere’), who proposes the general topic on the nature of love and on the existence of the god of Love, Amore. To this invitation Pier delle Vigne (‘Però c’Amore no se pò vedere’) and Giacomo da Lentini responded, and the latter’s sonnet provides the classic description of the operation of love:33 Amor è un[o] desio che ven da core per abondanza di gran piacimento; e li occhi in prima genera[n] l’amore e lo core li dà nutricamento. Ben è alcuna fiata om amatore senza vedere so ‘namoramento, ma quell’amor che stringe con furore da la vista de li occhi à nas[ci]mento. Che li occhi rapresenta[n] a lo core d’onni cosa che veden bono e rio, com’è formata natural[e]mente; e lo cor, che di zo è concepitore, imagina, e piace quel desio: e questo amore regna fra la gente. Love is a desire that comes from the heart through abundance of great beauty; and the eyes first generate love, and the heart gives them nourishment. Sometimes a man becomes a lover without seeing his beloved, but the love that grips with fury is born from the sight of the eyes; for the eyes represent to the heart everything they see, both good or bad, and how they are naturally formed; and the heart, that conceives it, forms an image, and is pleased by that desire: and this love reigns among the people.
It is a curious fact that this tenzone is not contained in the Vatican manuscript (Vat. lat. 3793), which is the source of most of the Sicilian lyrics. Rather it is found uniquely in the Barberiniano manuscript (Barb. lat. 3953), a codex noted more for its gathering of the poetic production of the latter half of the thirteenth century. We wonder about its long itinerary from Sicily to the Veneto. Another tenzone involves Giacomo da Lentini, whom the Abbot of Tivoli engaged in a poetic contest. This poetic exchange is formed of five sonnets, all of which are found in the Vatican codex (Vat. lat. 3793), the
98 / Christopher Kleinhenz premier manuscript for the early Italian lyric, composed in the last decades of the thirteenth century. It is noteworthy that this tenzone opens the section of sonnets in that manuscript. It is often very instructive to observe how codices open and close, how they are structured, how the mise-en-page varies, and how compositions are grouped. The very first composition in Vat. lat. 3793 is a canzone by Giacomo da Lentini, ‘Madonna, dir vi voglio,’ and this incipit, addressed to the poet’s lady, is as it were an invitation to dialogue, to initiate a conversation, but one that remains a monologue on the part of the poet. Nevertheless, the important element is the initial vocative (‘Madonna’) that opens the conversation. The second part of the codex Vat. lat. 3793 begins on fol. 111r with the tenzone between the Abbot of Tivoli and Giacomo da Lentini. Once again, we have a major section of the codex opening with a conversation. The rubric reads ‘tenzone v’ indicating that it is a tenzone composed of five sonnets. In other codices tenzoni are indicated with rubrics noting the names of the initial correspondent and the respondent. In addition to those poems that lack the name of an author, one of the great codicological mysteries is the presence of a number of sonnets that are obviously directed to another poet, but for which we have, apparently, no extant response. I think in particular of the three sonnets written by Cecco Angiolieri and addressed to Dante Alighieri: ‘Dante Alighier, s’i’ so’ buon begolardo,’ ‘Lassar vo’ lo trovare de Becchina,’ and ‘Dante Alighier, Cecco, tu’ serv’e amico.’ However, despite Cecco’s attempts to engage him in poetic conversation, Dante, as far we know, never responded, at least not in sonnet form. And this is a pity, for in ‘Dante Alighier, Cecco tu’ serv’ e amico,’ Cecco shows awareness of the last sonnet in Dante’s Vita nuova, which runs:34 Oltre la spera che più larga gira passa ‘l sospiro ch’esce del mio core: intelligenza nova, che l’Amore piangendo mette in lui, pur su lo tira. Quand’elli è giunto là dove disira, vede una donna, che riceve onore, e luce sì, che per lo suo splendore lo peregrino spirito la mira. Vedela tal, che quando ‘l mi ridice, io no lo intendo, sì parla sottile al cor dolente, che lo fa parlare. So io che parla di quella gentile,
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 99 però che spesso ricorda Beatrice, sì ch’io lo ‘ntendo ben, donne mie care. Beyond the sphere that makes the widest round, passes the sigh arisen from my heart; a new intelligence that Love in tears endowed it with is urging it on high. Once having reached the place of its desiring it sees a lady held in reverence, splendid in light, and through her radiance the pilgrim spirit looks upon her being. But when it tries to tell me what it saw, I cannot understand the subtle words it speaks to the sad heart that makes it speak. I know it tells of that most gracious one, for I often hear the name of Beatrice. This much, at least, is clear to me, dear ladies.
Repeating three of Dante’s rhymes (-ore, -ice, and -are) in his sonnet, Cecco questions the internal consistency of Dante’s sonnet:35 Dante Alighier, Cecco, tu’ serv’e amico, si raccomand’a te com’a segnore; e sì ti prego per lo dio d’Amore, il qual è stat’un tu’ signor antico, che mi perdoni s’i’ spiacer ti dico, ché mi dà sicurtà ‘l tu’ gentil cuore. Quel ch’i’ vo’ dire è di questo tenore: ch’al tu’ sonetto in parte contradico. Ch’al meo parer ne l’una muta dice che non intendi su’ sottil parlare, di que’ che vide la tua Beatrice; e puoi hai detto a le tue donne care che ben lo ‘ntendi: e dunque contradice a sé medesmo questo tu’ trovare. Dante Alighieri, your servant and friend Cecco commends himself to you as to his lord: and by the god of Love – your lord of old – I beg your pardon if I say something disagreeable – your gentle heart gives me confidence to speak. What I say comes to this, that in part I contradict your sonnet. For it seems to me that in one tercet you say you don’t understand the subtle speech of him who saw your Beatrice; after which you told your dear ladies that you understood it: therefore this poem of yours contradicts itself.
This contemporary acknowledgment and questioning of Dante’s works is a precious document, for it gives evidence that his poems were in
100 / Christopher Kleinhenz circulation. If we were to find Dante’s response (assuming that there is one), we would have a fascinating record of how criticism was handled in the medieval period. However, we do possess a response of sorts, for in the prose accompaniment to the last sonnet of the Vita nuova, Dante does attempt to correct this possible misinterpretation of his poem. There Dante takes care to note that the double use of the verb intendere does not necessarily indicate an internal contradiction, and he glosses the first occurrence by using the verb comprendere. The fact that Dante says ‘cioè a dire’ (that is to say) is sufficient to suggest his conscious correction based on Cecco’s criticism. If anything, Dante did not want his text to be misunderstood:36 Ne la quarta dico come elli la vede tale, cioè in tale qualitade, che io non lo posso intendere, cioè a dire che lo mio pensero sale ne la qualitade di costei in grado che lo mio intelletto no lo puote comprendere ... Ne la quinta dico che, avvegna che io non possa intendere là ove lo pensero mi trae, cioè a la sua mirabile qualitade, almeno intendo questo, cioè che tutto è lo cotale pensare de la mia donna però ch’io sento lo suo nome spesso nel mio pensero. In the fourth I tell how it sees her to be such, that is of such a nature, that I cannot understand it: that is to say that my thought ascends into the nature of this lady to such a degree that my mind cannot grasp it ... In the fifth part I say that, even though I cannot understand what my thought has taken me to see, that is, her miraculous nature, at least I understand this much: this thought of mine is entirely about my lady, for many times when it comes to my mind, I hear her name.
This is an amazing account of the dynamics of textual interaction whereby criticism is launched in a poem and the unacknowledged response is made quietly in the final, presumably revised version of the text. We will conclude with a few words on Cino da Pistoia, who, in many respects, was the major poetic link between the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian lyric traditions, for he was an acquaintance not only of Dante and the poets of the Dolce stil novo, but also of Petrarch and Boccaccio. Because of his extreme poetic versatility and longevity, Cino mediated among various ‘schools’ and individual poets, composed lyrics in a number of modes and styles, and ultimately benefited from and contributed directly to the several major literary currents of his age.37
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 101 Cino wrote a number of tenzoni, many of which were addressed to relatively minor figures – Bernardo da Bologna, Guelfo Taviani, Binduccio da Firenze, Mula da Pistoia, Gherarduccio da Bologna, among others – but others were sent to well-known poets such as Dante and Guido Cavalcanti. To the latter he wrote what appears to be a response to a no longer extant composition in which Guido may have accused him of plagiarism:38 Cino a Guido Cavalcanti Qua’ son le cose vostre ch’io vi tolgo, Guido, che fate di me sì vil ladro? Certo bel motto volentier ricolgo: ma funne vostro mai nessun leggiadro? Guardate ben, chéd ogni carta volgo; se dite il vero, i’ non sarò bugiadro. Queste cosette mie, dov’io le sciolgo, ben le sa Amor, innanzi a cui le squadro. Ciò è palese: ch’io non sono artista, né cuopro mia ignoranza con disdegno, ancor che ‘l mondo guardi pur la vista; ma sono un uom cotal di basso ‘ngegno che vo piangendo, tant’ho l’alma trista, per un cor, lasso, ch’è fuor d’esto regno. What are those things of yours that I have taken from you, Guido, such that you call me a vile thief? A well turned phrase I gladly take, but was ever any one of yours so delightful? Be careful, for I turn and read every page. If you are telling the truth, I will not be a liar. Love knows where I write these little things [i.e., in my heart], and in his presence I compose them. This much is clear: I am not an artist, nor do I veil my ignorance with pride, although the world looks only at the appearance. However, I am of such lowly talent that I go about weeping, so saddened is my soul by my heart that is, alas, outside this realm.
What is fascinating about this poem is the use of the word ‘artista’ in verse 9 (perhaps the first occurrence of the term in Italian literature)39 and the rare rhyme ‘squadro’ in verse 8 (which is used by Dante in Inferno 25, the episode of Vanni Fucci, the thief from Pistoia). Given that Dante’s concern in this canto of the Commedia is with ingegno (artistic/poetic virtuosity) it seems plausible that we may be witnessing an
102 / Christopher Kleinhenz intertextual debate on the relative values of poetic invention, imitation, and emulation. Both Dante and Petrarch appreciated the melodious style of Cino. The former, in addition to exchanging a number of sonnets with him, cites him frequently in De vulgari eloquentia, while the latter wrote a fine sonnet lamenting his death:40 Piangete, donne, et con voi pianga Amore; piangete, amanti, per ciascun paese, poi ch’è morto collui che tutto intese in farvi, mentre visse, al mondo honore. Io per me prego il mio acerbo dolore, non sian da lui le lagrime contese, et mi sia di sospir’ tanto cortese, quanto bisogna a disfogare il core. Piangan le rime anchor, piangano i versi, perché ‘l nostro amoroso messer Cino novellamente s’è da noi partito. Pianga Pistoia, e i citadin perversi che perduto ànno sì dolce vicino; et rallegresi il cielo, ov’ello è gito. Weep, Ladies, and let Love weep with you; weep, Lovers, in every land, since he is dead who was all intent to do you honour while he lived in the world. For myself, I pray my cruel sorrow that it not prevent my tears and that it be so courteous as to let me sigh as much as is needful to unburden my heart. Let rhymes weep also, let verses weep, for our loving Messer Cino has recently departed from us. Let Pistoia weep and her wicked citizens, who have lost so sweet a neighbour; and let Heaven be glad, where he has gone.
A defining characteristic of Cino’s lyrics is their phonic quality; for example, he is able to convey the sorrow induced by love through use of mournful notes, as in the following two sonnets, which could be considered a sort of false tenzone: ‘Omo smarruto che pensoso vai’ and ‘Signori, i’ son colui che vidi Amore.’ Cino succeeds in representing aurally the lover’s lament through repeated use of the vowel o, especially in rhyme position (e.g., ‘Signori, i’ son colui che vidi Amore / che mi ferì sì ch’io non camperòe / e sol però così pensoso voe’). The first sonnet contains the questions directed by the ‘pietosa gente’ (the compassionate people) to the grieving lover, while the second presents Cino’s response to their solicitations:41
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 103 ‘Omo smarruto che pensoso vai, or che ha’ tu che se’ così dolente? e che va’ ragionando con la mente, traendo ne’ sospiri spesso guai? Ched e’ non par che tu vedessi mai di ben alcun che core in vita sente; anzi par[e] che mori duramente, negli atti e ne’ sembianti che tu fai. E s’ tu non ti conforti, tu cadrai in disperanza sì malvagiamente, che questo mondo e l’altro perderai. Deh, or vuo’ tu morir così vilmente? Chiama mercede, e tu camperai.’ Questo mi dice la pietosa gente. ‘O bewildered soul, who proceeds immersed in weighty thoughts, what is the reason for your great sorrow? And in your mental ramblings why do you so often combine laments with sighs? For it does not seem that you ever saw any good that a heart feels in life; rather, it seems you’re dying harshly, given your gestures and appearance. And if you are not comforted, you will fall into a state of despair so horrible that you’ll lose this world and the next. We ask, do you wish to die so ignobly? Ask for mercy, and you will escape.’ This is what the compassionate people tell me.
The second sonnet reads as follows: Signori, i’ son colui che vidi Amore che mi ferì sì ch’io non camperòe, e sol però così pensoso voe tenendomi la man presso a lo core; ch’i’ sento in quella parte tal dolore, che spesse volte dico: ‘Ora morròe’; e li atti e li sembianti ched i’ foe son come d’om che ‘n gravitate more. I’ moro in verità, ch’Amor m’ancide, che m’asalisce con tanti sospiri che l’anima ne va di fuor fuggendo; e s’i’ la ‘ntendo ben, dice che vide una donna apparire a’ miei disiri tanto sdegnosa, che ne va piangendo.
104 / Christopher Kleinhenz My lords, I am the one who saw Love, who wounded me so badly that I cannot escape, and for this reason alone I proceed with weighty thoughts, keeping my hand near my heart; for I feel in that region such sorrow that I often say: ‘Now I will die’; and my gestures and appearance are those of a man who dies in grief. In truth I die, for Love kills me, assailing me with so many sighs that my soul flees; and if I understand it well, it says it saw a woman appear before my desires, who was so disdainful that it departs in tears.
In one of his several tenzoni with Cino, Dante accuses him of inconstancy in amorous matters, to which Cino responds by noting how his ‘volubility’ is only apparent: he finds pleasure in many women only in so far as their beauty reminds him of his lady’s (Selvaggia’s) supreme beauty. The historical circumstances are clear: both poets are in exile, thus a date between 1303 and 1306. The problems of transmission of these sonnets may be linked to the difficulties encountered in their initial composition and delivery; since both poets were outside their native city, what address did they use? Where were they residing? The topic, however, is a traditional one: can one love, truly love, more than one person simultaneously? And the mode of response is a delicate blend of the personal and the universal, of the subjective and the objective.42 Dante a Cino Io mi credea del tutto esser partito da queste nostre rime, messer Cino, ché si conviene omai altro cammino a la mia nave più lungi dal lito; ma perch’i’ ho di voi più volte udito che pigliar vi lasciate a ogni uncino, piacemi di prestare un pocolino a questa penna lo stancato dito. Chi s’innamora sì come voi fate, or qua or là, e sé lega e dissolve, mostra ch’Amor leggermente il saetti. Però, se leggier cor così vi volve, priego che con vertù il correggiate, sì che s’accordi i fatti a’ dolci detti. I thought, Messer Cino, that I had quite abandoned this poetry of ours; for now my ship must hold a different course, being further from the
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 105 shore. But since I have heard more than once that you let yourself be caught on every hook, I feel moved to put my tired fingers briefly to this pen. One who falls in love as you do, now here, now there, and both binds and looses himself, shows that Love wounds him but lightly. So, if a fickle heart thus whirls you around, I beg you to correct it with virtue, so that your deeds accord with your sweet words. Cino a Dante Poi ch’i’ fui, Dante, dal mio natal sito fatto per greve essilio pellegrino, e lontanato dal piacer più fino che mai formasse il Piacer infinito, io son piangendo per lo mondo gito sdegnato del morir come meschino; e s’ho trovato a lui simil vicino, dett’ho che questi m’ha lo cor ferito. Né da le prime braccia dispietate, onde ‘l fermato disperar m’assolve, son mosso perch’aiuto non aspetti: ch’un piacer sempre me lega ed involve, il qual conven che, a simil di beltate, in molte donne sparte mi diletti. Dante, ever since harsh exile made me a wanderer from my birthplace and put a distance between me and the most exquisite beauty that ever the infinite Beauty fashioned, I have gone grieving about the world, a poor wretch disdained by death; but when I’ve found near me any beauty like to that one, I’ve said it was this one that wounded my heart. Nor (though I expect no help) have I ever left those first pitiless arms from which a well-grounded despair releases me: for it is always one and the same beauty that binds and trammels me; and this perforce delights me in whatever is like it in beauty in many different women.
The tenzone is usually considered a minor genre, one that is more occasional in nature and thus not among the better or more privileged works of a poet, either stylistically or thematically. Given the contemporary interest in everyday life and in textual communities, the tenzone would seem to be a very promising genre to investigate, for it may be less bound to literary conventions and thus closer to the quotidian reality of Duecento and Trecento society. The subject matter varies
106 / Christopher Kleinhenz widely, from serious discourses on the nature of love and the condition of lovers, to moral, religious, and political themes, and to vituperative attacks on other individuals. I would suggest, in conclusion, that scholars should look more closely at this generally neglected genre, for despite the textual problems that these poems present, the tenzone in its myriad manifestations may lead us to view the literary and social history of medieval Italy in a different, innovative, and ultimately beneficial way.
NOTES Unless otherwise noted, the translations are mine. I would like to thank my research assistant Chad Shorter for his help with the translations. 1 For facsimile editions of these three manuscripts plus a volume of studies devoted to them, see I canzonieri della lirica italiana delle origini, ed. Lino Leonardi, 4 vols: vol. 1, Il canzoniere vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 3793; vol. 2, Il canzoniere laurenziano, Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Redi 9; vol. 3, Il canzoniere palatino, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Banco Rari 217, ex Palatino 418; vol. 4, Studi critici (Tavarnuzze: sismel – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2000–1) 2 For a study of this manuscript see Gino Lega, Il canzoniere Vaticano Barberino latino 3953 (Bologna: Romagnoli-Dall’Acqua, 1905). 3 In addition to the early study of this manuscript by Ernesto Monaci, ‘Chigiano l.viii.305,’ Propugnatore 10.1 (1877): 128–63, 289–342; 10.2 (1887): 335–413; 11.1 (1888): 199–264, 303–32 , see the meticulously edited volume by Giovanni Borriero, Canzonieri italiani, vol. 1, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: Ch (Chig. L. VIII. 305), Intavulare 3 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2006). 4 For fine recent studies of the Escorial codex (with pertinent bibliographical references), see Roberta Capelli, ‘Nuove indagini sulla raccolta di rime italiane del ms. Escorial e.iii.23,’ Medioevo letterario d’Italia 1 (2004): 73–113, and Sull’Escorialense (lat. e.III.23): Problemi e proposte di edizione (Verona: Fiorini, 2006). 5 Barbieri transcribed from the so-called libro siciliano the Sicilian dialect versions of several poems: a canzone by Stefano Protonotaro in its entirety (‘Pir meu cori alligrari’), the first stanza of Guido delle Colonne’s ‘Gioiosamente canto,’ and some thirty verses of Re Enzo’s canzone ‘S’eo trovasse Pietanza’ (vv. 39–70), as well as his seven-verse fragment ‘Alegru cori plenu.’ Recently Giuseppina Brunetti has published her
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discovery of a poem by Giacomino Pugliese in dialectal garb in Il frammento inedito ‘[R]esplendiente stella de albur’ di Giacomino Pugliese e la poesia italiana delle origini (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000). These topics have been addressed by numerous scholars, among whom, more recently, H. Wayne Storey, Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric (New York: Garland, 1993); Olivia Holmes, Assembling the Lyric Self: Authorship from Troubadour Song to Italian Poetry Book (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); and Justin Steinberg, Accounting for Dante: Urban Readers and Writers in Late Medieval Italy (Notre Dame, in: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). Christopher Kleinhenz, The Early Italian Sonnet: The First Century (1220–1321) (Lecce: Milella, 1986). Although the edition is still in progress, see my essay, ‘Cino da Pistoia and the Italian Lyric Tradition,’ in L’imaginaire courtois et son double, ed. Giovanna Angeli and Luciano Formisano (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1992), 147–63. For a very fine collection of recent studies on the tenzone, see Il genere ‘tenzone’ nelle letterature romanze delle origini, ed. Matteo Pedroni and Antonio Stäuble (Ravenna: Longo, 1999), as well as the studies by Claudio Giunta, Due saggi sulla tenzone (Rome: Antenore, 2002), and Versi a un destinatario: Saggio sulla poesia italiana del Medioevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002). In Vat. lat. 3793 the only poem by Dante is ‘Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore,’ and this canzone is followed by one, ‘Ben aggia l’amoroso et dolce chore,’ that responds to it per le rime; it is attributed to the ‘Amico di Dante’ and written in the voice of the ladies whom Dante addressed in his canzone; see Steinberg, Accounting for Dante, 13ff. This last category includes some very comical but equally crude repartees, as, for example, the tenzone between Dante Alighieri and Forese Donati. Cielo d’Alcamo, ‘Rosa fresca aulentissima c’apari inver la state,’ vv. 1–10. The text follows the edition of Bruno Panvini, ed., Le rime della scuola siciliana, Biblioteca dell’ Archivum Romanicum, ser. 1, 65 (Florence: Olschki, 1962), 169–76 at 169. For studies on the contrasto, see, among others, Contrasti amorosi nella poesia italiana antica, ed. Antonia Arveda (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1992). Giacomino Pugliese, ‘Donna di voi mi lamento,’ vv. 1–18. The text follows Panvini, ed., Le rime della scuola siciliana, 189–91 at 189. The text follows Cecco Angiolieri, Le rime, ed. Antonio Lanza (Rome: Archivio Guido Izzo, 1990), 86–7.
108 / Christopher Kleinhenz 15
16 17
18
19
20
21
22
The text for both sonnets follows the edition found in La prosa del Duecento, ed. Cesare Segre and Mario Marti (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1959), 98–101. In the last line of his short letter Dotto asks Meo to ‘show it [i.e., the sonnet] to brother Gaddo and to Finfo’ (mostralo a frate Gaddo e a Finfo), thus effectively enlarging the audience for their ‘conversation.’ This sonnet and Meo’s response present many interpretive problems, and I have relied heavily on the notes in the Segre and Marti edition. For the history of the sonnet, see, among others, Kleinhenz, Early Italian Sonnet. ‘Il problema filologico di un testo è diverso dal problema filologico di un altro testo’; cited in Luigi Russo, ‘Discorso commemorativo,’ in Commemorazione di Michele Barbi, ed. Alberto Chiari (Florence: Sansoni, 1943), 11–36 at 25 [also published as ‘Michele Barbi,’ Annali manzoniani 3 (1942): 5–30]. Salvatore Santangelo, Le tenzoni poetiche nella letteratura italiana delle origini, Biblioteca dell’Archivum Romanicum, ser. 1, 9 (Geneva: Olschki, 1928). Against the criticism of Santangelo lodged by Gianfranco Contini, Poeti del Duecento (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1960), 1:82, and others, some scholars have recently looked more objectively at the question; see Michelangelo Picone, ‘La tenzone “de amore” fra Iacopo Mostacci, Pier della Vigna e il Notaio,’ in Il genere ‘tenzone,’ ed. Pedroni and Stäuble, 13–31; and Roberto Antonelli, ‘”Non truovo chi mi dica chi sia amore”: L’ Eneas in Sicilia,’ in Studi di filologia e letteratura italiana in onore di Maria Picchio Simonelli, ed. Pietro Frassica (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’ Orso, 1992), 1–10. For example, in Vat. lat. 3793 the tenzone between the Abbot of Tivoli and Giacomo da Lentini (fol. 111r) is preceded by the rubric ‘tenzone v,’ in which the ‘v’ indicates that it is composed of five sonnets. Giacomo di Lentini, ‘Amor non vole ch’io clami,’ vv. 1–10. The text follows Giacomo da Lentini, Poesie, ed. Roberto Antonelli (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1979), 57–68 at 64. See Christopher Kleinhenz, ‘Giacomo da Lentino and the Advent of the Sonnet: Divergent Patterns in Early Italian Poetry,’ Forum Italicum 10 (1976): 218–32. While this is the traditional view (with which I am in general agreement), some scholars have argued that Guinizzelli’s tone is here ironic; see, among others, Antonello Borra, Guittone d’Arezzo e le maschere del poeta: La lirica cortese tra ironia e palinodia (Ravenna: Longo, 2000), 10; Paolo Borsa, ‘La tenzone tra Guido Guinizzelli e frate Guittone d’Arez-
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 109
23
24
25 26
zo,’ Studi e problemi di critica testuale 65 (2002): 47–88; and Steinberg, Accounting for Dante, 37. The text of this tenzone follows Contini, ed, Poeti del Duecento, 2:484–5. The translations follow, with slight modifications, those of Robert Edwards, ed. and trans., The Poetry of Guido Guinizelli (New York: Garland, 1987), 62–5. A modern analogy would be T.S. Eliot’s sending a draft of The Wasteland to Ezra Pound for his consideration and revision. And it is not for nothing that, in his eventual dedication of that volume, Eliot calls Pound ‘il miglior fabbro,’ reproducing the phrase that Dante has Guido Guinizzelli use in the Purgatorio 26.117 to refer to the troubadour Arnaut Daniel. Some scholars have argued that the canzone accompanying the sonnet was Guinizzelli’s doctrinal ‘Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore’; for this view, see, among others, Marian Papahagi, ‘Guido Guinizzelli e Guittone d’Arezzo: Contributo a una ridefinizione dello spazio poetico predantesco,’ in Guittone d’Arezzo nel settimo centenario della morte, ed. Michelangelo Picone (Florence: Franco Cesati, 1995), 269–93; and Michelangelo Picone, ‘Guittone, Guinizzelli e Dante,’ in Intorno a Guido Guinizzelli, ed. Luciano Rossi and Sara Alloatti Boller (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2002), 73–88. The text of this tenzone follows Contini, ed, Poeti del Duecento, 2:481–3; translations follow Edwards, Poetry of Guido Guinizelli, 58–61. The textual transmission of this tenzone is intriguing and presents interesting interpretive possibilities. One curious fact is its double appearance in the Laurentian Rediano codex (Redi 9), once in a Pisan hand and once in a Florentine hand. Another is the repetition of Guinizzelli’s sonnet eight times (!) in the Memoriali Bolognesi, in which the sonnet by Bonagiunta does not appear at all; moreover, Guittone’s poems are absent as well. The choice of poems copied in the Memoriali Bolognesi by the notaries would suggest, as Steinberg says, ‘an inclusiveness that corresponds to Guinizzelli’s defenses of poetic variety against the narrower vision of Guittone and Bonagiunta’ (Accounting for Dante, 45). The interaction of literary and legal cultures in medieval Bologna is a fascinating topic (with connections to Luca Boschetto’s discussion of the Florentine Mercanzia in this volume) and suggests the presence of a dynamic textual community. For more on this topic, see Storey, Transcription and Visual Poetics, esp. 111–70, and Steinberg, Accounting for Dante, 17–60. The poems found in the Memoriali Bolognesi have recently been edited by Sandro Orlando, Rime due e trecentesche
110 / Christopher Kleinhenz
27 28
29
30
31
32
33
tratte dall’Archivio di Stato di Bologna (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 2005). Contini, ed, Poeti del Duecento; Edwards, trans., Poetry of Guido Guinizelli, 58–61. The text follows the edition in Giorgio Petrocchi, ed. La commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, by Dante Alighieri (Milan: Mondadori, 1966–7). The translation follows that of Charles S. Singleton, The Divine Comedy: Purgatorio, by Dante Alighieri, vol. 1, Italian Text and Translation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). The bibliography on this particular matter is extensive. See, among others, the following: Giorgio Petrocchi, ‘Il dolce stil novo,’ in Le origini e il Duecento, ed. Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno (Milan: Garzanti, 1965), 729–74; Mark Musa, ‘Le ali di Dante (e il Dolce stil novo): Purg. xxiv,’ Convivium 34 (1966): 361–7; Antonio Enzo Quaglio, ‘Gli stilnovisti,’ in Lo stilnovo e la poesia religiosa, ed. Emilio Pasquini and Antonio Enzo Quaglio (Bari: Laterza, 1971), 9–148; Mario Marti, Storia dello stil nuovo, 2 vols (Lecce: Milella, 1973); Guido Favati, Inchiesta sul dolce stil nuovo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1975); Guglielmo Gorni, Il nodo della lingua e il verbo d’amore: Studi su Dante e altri duecentisti (Florence: Olschki, 1981); Italo Bertelli, La poesia di Guido Guinizzelli e la poetica del ‘dolce stil nuovo’ (Florence: Le Monnier, 1983); and Lino Pertile, ‘Il nodo di Bonagiunta, le penne di Dante e il Dolce Stil Novo,’ Lettere italiane 46 (1994): 44–75. Fabian Alfie has most recently used manuscript evidence to counter the claims of those who would want to deny the historical validity of this poetic exchange: ‘For Want of a Nail: The Guerri-Lanza-Cursietti Argument Regarding the Tenzone,’ Dante Studies 116 (1998): 141–59 (with bibliography). Alfie is currently completing a monograph on the questions surrounding the tenzone. Any rancour between them would appear to have been a literary construct, given the poignant verses that Dante the Pilgrim addresses to Forese in Purgatorio 23.115–17: ‘Se tu riduci a mente / qual fosti meco, e qual io teco fui, / ancor fia grave il memorar presente’ (If you bring back to mind what you have been with me and what I have been with you, the present memory will still be grievous). This is also an obvious literary construct. The text for this tenzone follows Dante Alighieri, Rime, ed. Gianfranco Contini, 2nd ed. (Turin: Einaudi, 1965), 26. The translation follows that of Kenelm Foster and Patrick Boyde, trans., Dante’s Lyric Poetry, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), 1:149–51. The text follows Giacomo da Lentini, Poesie, ed. Antonelli, 275.
Lyric Poetry, the Tenzone, and Cino da Pistoia / 111 34
35
36
37
38 39 40
41 42
The text follows Dante Alighieri, Vita nuova, ed. Domenico De Robertis, in Opere minori, vol. 1, tom. 1 (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1995). The translation follows Mark Musa, trans., Vita Nuova, in The Portable Dante (New York: Penguin, 1995). The text follows Cecco Angiolieri, Le rime, ed. Lanza, 217–18; the translation follows that of Foster and Boyde, trans., Dante’s Lyric Poetry, 1:99. Dante, Vita nuova, ed. Robertis; trans. Musa; emphasis mine. In addition to the commentary in Lanza’s edition, see the discussion of Cecco’s sonnet and Dante’s subtle reaction in Fabian Alfie, Comedy and Culture: Cecco Angiolieri’s Poetry and Late Medieval Society (Leeds: Northern Universities Press, 2001), 155–8. Because of his long career as a lyric poet and because his style displays few alterations over time, I like to think of Cino as a sort of ‘medieval Mick Jagger.’ The text follows Mario Marti, ed., Poeti del Dolce stil nuovo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1969), 746–7. The word ‘artista’ occurs four times in Dante’s Commedia, all in the Paradiso (13.77, 16.51, 18.51 , and 30.33) but these are later attestations. The text follows the edition of Marco Santagata, ed., Canzoniere, by Francesco Petrarca (Milan: Mondadori, 1996), 448 (no. 92). The translation is that of Robert M. Durling, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The ‘Rime sparse’ and Other Lyrics (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1976), 194. The text of both sonnets follows Marti, ed., Poeti del Dolce stil nuovo. The text follows Marti, ed., Poeti del Dolce stil nuovo, 742–5; Foster and Boyde, trans., Dante’s Lyric Poetry, 203–5.
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PART TWO Materials of Textual Communication
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LINDA SAFRAN
4
Public Textual Cultures: A Case Study in Southern Italy
Medieval art historians rarely edit texts and are seldom invited to contribute to conferences and volumes concerned with editorial problems. Even an art historian who specializes in manuscripts usually depends on others to do the ‘editorial’ work of collating variants and regularizing orthography; only then might she address codicology and palaeography before focusing on ornament and illumination, those features of texts that fall squarely within the art-historical domain. Yet art historians may have something to offer traditional text editors, who often pay less attention to the material, artefactual dimensions of their texts and many of whom seldom attend to the mise-en-page.1 In addition, art historians who are not manuscript specialists also have something to contribute to a discussion of editorial problems, because books were not the only repositories of medieval texts. A consideration of texts in the public domain – in other words, regularly available to more than a handful of viewers – expands our understanding of medieval textual culture. One might even argue that such public texts offer greater insight into medieval metalinguistic attitudes than do manuscript texts, because they were created by and for a much wider range of individuals.2 The Salento region, in southernmost Apulia, offers interesting material for a case study of public texts because three medieval epigraphic communities3 are represented. There were villages whose inhabitants spoke either Greek or (late) Latin and cities and sanctuaries that attracted both linguistic groups; Jews in the cities and in many villages spoke at least one of those languages and also read Hebrew. It is important to realize that the Jews and Christians, of both Byzantine and Roman rite, were close neighbours. Thus there are texts in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek (unlike in Sicily, there are no texts in Arabic), and surprisingly often languages are combined in a single text or within a
116 / Linda Safran single monument.4 The linguistic and cultural history of the Salento differs from the rest of mainland Italy because of its Greek component: only this region had ancient Greek colonies, a medieval influx of Greek speakers, two centuries of Byzantine rule, and a large number of villages in which a Greek dialect was spoken.5 Despite these unique features, many of the challenges inherent in reading, interpreting, and editing the region’s public texts are familiar to those who work in more traditional editorial media elsewhere in Italy.6 For several years I have been collecting those inscriptions in the Salento that contribute to an understanding of its ‘multicultural’ medieval occupants.7 While most of the longer Greek texts have been edited in exemplary fashion by André Jacob8 and the Hebrew ones by Cesare Colafemmina,9 the visual qualities of these texts have seldom been used as a tool in analysing their contents. In addition, very few scholars have taken note of the region’s shorter texts, which also contain valuable information about names, languages, status, and religious and social practices – the critical components of medieval identity. My database of these informative public texts – both those painted or carved formally and ‘officially’ and those painted or incised more clumsily as personal graffiti – contains over two hundred fragmentary and complete inscriptions, plus a smaller number of painted depictions of supplicating figures who sometimes accompany a text and sometimes stand (or kneel) alone. My goal in this essay is to combine the approaches developed by text editors and epigraphers with those of an art historian to show how the Salentine texts shared similar functions that transcended confessional and linguistic boundaries. A medieval public text could, and usually did, differ from one contained in a manuscript in terms of medium or type of support, size or scale, content, accessibility, and function. Each of these components can be analysed in turn. Differences in medium are readily apparent: instead of parchment or paper, public texts were sewn, incised, inset, or painted on cloth, wood, metal, stone, or plaster.10 Although we often consider textiles part of the private domain, curtains and wall hangings were ubiquitous in churches in the Middle Ages, and clothing, too, could carry public texts. No medieval textiles are preserved in the Salento, even though cloth making and dyeing were important regional occupations, but looking west to Sicily one can appreciate that the band of Arabic inscription on Roger ii’s coronation mantle carried a public message, regardless of its degree of comprehensibility to non-Arabic readers.11 There is no necessary correlation between medium and function, as public texts in the same medium could be very different in scale and purpose, as will be discussed below.
Public Textual Cultures: A Case Study in Southern Italy / 117 Manuscript texts have no limit on length; more folios could always be added to accommodate a longer text, and the page sizes of medieval books, while limited by the size of the animal that provided the vellum, could be quite large.12 By contrast, the lengthiest medieval public texts rarely consume more than a few metres of space. This was a major change from antiquity, when public texts could be much longer. When Augustus’s Res gestae was copied in Latin and translated into Greek on the walls of a temple at Ankara, the text occupied some 46 sqare metres.13 Although none were as huge as this Monumentum Ancyranum, sizeable public inscriptions were features of urban life until the well-known disruptions of the seventh century. The public texts that occupy the greatest amount of space in the later Middle Ages are probably painted calendars on church walls;14 some upper-class funerary and dedicatory inscriptions are also impressive in scale.15 In the Salento, the longest extant inscription is a thirty-six line funerary text in Greek that is discussed below. The largest text is the dedication of the famous historiated pavement of the Cathedral of Otranto (1163–5), where four separate lines spanning the width and length of the nave give the names of the financier, mosaicist, and ruler. The letter sizes decrease as one moves from the entry toward the altar, quite the opposite of perspectival correction.16 Even though the size of public writing exceeds that of even the largest book script, public contexts could never provide the amount of writing surface that was possible in a book. If public communication is necessarily more concise than in books, it is also much more limited in scope. Medieval books contain an enormous range of topics between their covers, but carved and painted texts have a restricted range of contents dictated by their public functions. Relatively few medieval public texts are literary, or even quasi-literary like the Res gestae; we do not find rhymed passages from Dante on south Italian walls, although Byzantine dodecasyllables have been attempted in at least one case (see below, and figure 4.6).17 While some texts do contain short literary excerpts, these are either explicitly scriptural or drawn from liturgical poetry. An example of the latter is a Hebrew epitaph from Brindisi in which the final quatrain is excerpted from a longer piyyut, a liturgical poem composed for synagogue use around the time the epitaph was carved.18 The contents of some book colophons are akin to certain types of public inscriptions, and quasi-legal material is also occasionally employed in public texts; examples include the penalties stipulated for alienation of property on a hospital dedicatory stele from Andrano,19 and indulgences promised for church attendance on specific days.20 However, in comparison with the wide range of medieval manuscript texts, the content of public texts is narrow
118 / Linda Safran and formulaic, a fact closely connected with their limited range of functions. On the other hand, public texts were uniformly more accessible than those in books. The producers of formal or casual inscriptions intended them to be seen, to be viewed repeatedly and in perpetuity, although only hortatory texts express this objective explicitly. This does not mean that public texts were supposed to be comprehensible to all audiences; in places that had more than one textual community, ostensibly public messages were still targeted ones. Because medieval reading was largely an oral practice,21 the message of the public text would be communicated to anyone within earshot, not just to those with direct visual access. In a sacred setting, oral repetition could constitute the equivalent of perpetual prayer on behalf of the supplicant or author, assuming that the language of the text remained comprehensible to at least some later viewers/speakers. Even people who could not read might still understand a language they heard aloud. The performative potential of public texts might have served to reinforce or distinguish textual communities.22 Surely, however, there were also scenarios in which a text was ‘just’ a text, visible but not comprehensible; nevertheless, as in antiquity, it retained status and power as a written word or series of words, whether or not those words were understood.23 The scribes and notaries who produced medieval books were usually elite textual practitioners who aspired to, and in general could be expected to achieve, a certain level of quality and consistency. At the same time, there were also amateur scribes copying a manuscript for personal use. In the wider world of the public text there were both professional and casual producers with a similarly wide range of competencies.24 In their products we may expect to find greater evidence for local language usage, but care must be taken in inferring actual spoken language patterns from formal epigraphic evidence.25 Epigraphy tends to be a conservative medium, particularly when professional stonecutters are involved. In fact, public texts should never be interpreted exclusively in linguistic terms: they are public speech acts and always have a social dimension. I have analysed some of the sociolinguistic aspects of Salentine texts elsewhere,26 but note here that texts that betray evidence of language contact and bilingual texts in particular can be very useful in problematizing questions of identity for medieval individuals and communities. Books probably reveal more about the spoken language, but public texts had greater potential to shape identity; simply put, more people saw them and responded to them. There are many ways to categorize and organize public texts, like any other data set, and all of them have advantages and disadvantages. We
Public Textual Cultures: A Case Study in Southern Italy / 119 could create a taxonomy based on material, or on the type of monument in (or on) which a text appears, such that stone and plaster would be separate categories, as would church facades and grave markers. We could examine formal, monumental texts apart from informal graffiti, and distinguish carved dedications from carved tombstones. We could arrange our texts by language, which has the advantage of revealing, for instance, that most extant Hebrew texts from the Salento are funerary, and that there are more Greek and even Hebrew epitaphs in the region than Latin ones. We could group inscriptions by date, tracing developments (or lack of them) in language and letter style. Other potential taxonomies could be based on ‘quality’: which texts are ruled, aligned, or rubricated? Which contain the fewest or most orthographic, morphological, or other errors? Which have more ligatures, abbreviations, or punctuation marks? While all of these organizational methods might yield interesting information, in this paper I employ a functional typology that considers why the text was written publicly. This is the approach enjoined by Robert Favreau in his magisterial Épigraphie médiévale. He observes that epigraphy is the study of things that were inscribed, epi-graphein, ‘in order to communicate some element of information to the largest public for the longest time. And the object of epigraphic study is naturally the content of the message transmitted.’27 In other words, the function of the public text is the message. Functionally, then, there are five main types of public text in the medieval Salento: dedicatory, didactic, hortatory, funerary, and devotional, and occasionally two functions could be combined in a single text.28 Dedicatory Texts The best-known public texts, most akin to the manuscript colophons prized by modern scholars, are the dedications. At the heart of a dedicatory text is a verb that publicly proclaims, and thus stakes a permanent claim to, a physical action completed by an individual, family, or group. In every case a male actor made, built, founded, constructed, dedicated, or had something done. Sometimes a spouse, financier, or artisan(s) are also credited, particularly if these last have written the text themselves. Motives for the action are specified: remission of sin and soul, health of family, piety. One or more significant dates may be noted (the oldest dated dedicatory text in the Salento is for a church founded in 1054). When dedicatory texts solicit the aid or attention of a holy person they have much in common with devotional texts, and when they request something from a human audience they serve a hortatory function, but I consider them primarily dedicatory if
120 / Linda Safran they meet the principal criterion of demonstrating that something has been created that had a social function beyond the narrow interests of an individual petitioner. In the Salento, dedicatory inscriptions were associated with churches (both built and excavated), hospitals, pavements, altars, a ciborium, and a candelabrum, and they are well represented in all three local languages (ten in Greek, sixteen in Latin, even three in Hebrew if the geographical borders are extended slightly northward). From Gravina comes a transcription of a now-lost Hebrew dedicatory text:
[]
[] [
]
We have carved this inscription for Baruch, son of Moses, who has paved the synagogue and the courtyard with a pavement of stones and built seats around the interior for the soul of his son, Moses, dead at the age of eighteen years, so that he will be remembered on the Sabbath and festivals. The pavement was completed in the year 4945. May his soul be bound [in the bundle of life]. Amen.29
The date here, given from the creation of the world, translates to 1184/5. Baruch did not build a new house of worship but refurbished an existing one, in accord with a long-standing law prohibiting construction of new synagogues – a law ignored during the reign of Frederick ii, when at least one new synagogue was built in Trani.30 The term used for seats, itztabaot, is borrowed from the Greek stibadion (bench), but it was not new here and cannot be used to infer a close relationship between Baruch and his Greek-speaking neighbours. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the synagogues of southern Italy, which have only survived when converted to another use (as is the case for two in Trani), were located in the heart of the Christian cities and towns. They were often adjacent to the cathedral, a fact confirmed by old maps and streets still named via della Sinagoga and via della Giudecca. The audience for such
Public Textual Cultures: A Case Study in Southern Italy / 121 a Hebrew dedicatory text installed on an interior synagogue wall may have been exclusively Jewish, but this could be a sizeable community: two decades earlier, the traveller Benjamin of Tudela counted 300 Jews or Jewish families in nearby Taranto.31 A feature seen in this dedicatory text proves to be quite common in all kinds of public texts regardless of function: the most important name(s) are placed at the beginnings or ends of lines for greater visual impact. ‘Baruch’ is at the end (left) of line 1, ‘bar Moshe’ at the beginning (right) of line 2. This onomastic emphasis is not paralleled in most manuscript texts, where the amount of text per folio would obscure the effect. On the other hand, book scribes often rubricated or decorated an initial or important word, and such precise methods of emphasis have no equivalent in the public epigraphs of the Salento. The anonymity of the Gravina carver is not unusual; more surprising is that five of the surviving dedicatory texts in all languages, or 17 per cent, do include the name of the carver, mosaicist, or painter in addition to that of the patron. Concluding a dedicatory text with ‘Amen’ is quite unusual in all three languages; it is typical of devotional texts, especially in Greek, and will be considered in that context. Nevertheless, it also occurs in a Greek dedicatory text painted above an arcosolium in a rock-cut chapel at Li Monaci, near Copertino, in 1314/15 (figure 4.1): C
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C C C
[ C
[
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C [ ( C : K(
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32
This most venerable church of the archistrategos Michael was built and decorated with paintings with the cooperation and effort of the knight Soure and his wife and child[ren] during the reign of Robert, third [son] of Charles, in the year 6823, thirteenth indiction; it was painted by the hand of Nicholas and his son Demetrius of Soleto. You who read this, pray to the Lord for them. Amen.
122 / Linda Safran
Figure 4.1 Li Monaci, Church of St Michael the Archangel, dedicatory inscription (photo by author).
In this case the patron’s title (‘stratiotes,’ soldier) and name are emphasized by being placed at the end of line 2, echoing the name and title (‘archistrategos,’ general) of the archangel at the beginning of the same line, and directly above the name of the king whose patronymic appears at the head of the next line. As is typical of public texts, the names of Soure’s wife and child (or children) are omitted, but the artists manage to occupy a prominent place. The hortatory injunction at the end seems to be directed to them as much as to the patron’s family. Like most Hebrew texts, Greek inscriptions also employ a date from the beginning of the world, though naturally the calculation of those dates differed. Greek and Latin dedicatory texts very often supply such additional dating criteria as the regnal year or indiction (the fifteen-year tax cycle).33 What is most interesting about the Li Monaci text, however, is that the Greek of the dedicatory inscription appears to have little to do with the liturgy used at the site. There is no evidence of the liturgical furnishings required in an Orthodox chapel, and such features of the decorative program as the Crucifixion scene in the very shallow apse and the oversized bust-length John the Evangelist in a niche to the left
Public Textual Cultures: A Case Study in Southern Italy / 123 are unusual. That Latin was construed here as a more sacred language than Greek seems clear from the titulus ‘uict[or] mortis’ – a didactic text discussed below – over the Crucifixion, immediately below the dedication, as this particular sacred text, touching the body of Christ, likely would be rendered in the local language thought to have the greatest sacred valence.34 The two Greek-speaking painters imitated the familiar language and formula of a Greek devotional text while faithfully copying Latin pictorial models. Latin dedications in the Salento also highlight the donor’s name and title in the manner characteristic of public inscriptions. A carved example is on the north façade of the Cathedral of Castro (figure 4.2): +an(n)o : d(omi)ni : mill(esim)o ccc : lxxxiii o : ep(iscopv)s donadevs : fieri fecit : ha(n)c : capp(e)lla(m) : pecv(n)ia : reditvv(m) : bonorv(m) : q(v)o(n)da(m) pare(n)tv(m) : eivs : dotatam : bonorv(m) : p(re)d(i)ctorv(m) :35 In the year of the Lord 1383, bishop Donadeus had this chapel made with money from revenues of the properties of his deceased parents, endowing it with these properties.
Now on the exterior of the cathedral facing the town square, this Latin text was still highly public in its original location on an interior chapel wall. It is 53 cm tall,36 and greater visibility was achieved by filling the incised letters with a dark material now only partly preserved; in addition, words are neatly separated by vertical points. Despite the mix of capital and uncial letters and frequent abbreviations, the function of this text was to announce very publicly the financial security of Donadeus’s contribution, which was blessed, figuratively, by an adjacent figure in high relief on the same stone block. The blessing figure may be Christ, although the beardless representation is unusual at this date. To the right, balancing the dedication, is the blazon of the bishopric of Castro. Textual power is thus reinforced by both heraldic and figural imagery.
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Figure 4.2 Castro, Cathedral, north exterior wall, dedicatory inscription (photo by author).
Didactic Texts The function of didactic texts is to instruct or inform. These include the simple captions or identifying labels called didascalia in Italian as well as other texts whose principal intent is to convey information. Thus some didactic texts are signatures, like ‘hoc opus pincxit rinaldus de tarento’ (This work was painted by Rinaldus of Taranto) over the west entry of Santa Maria del Casale near Brindisi (early fourteenth century).37 Others are deictic, designating a place or an object: ‘ C [ ] ... [ C] [ C] ...’ (Here is the chapel of St Catherine) was carved in neatly separated Greek capitals over a side door of the Franciscan church of St Catherine at Galatina in the late fourteenth century (figure 4.3). It is worth noting that the word used for chapel is a Graecized version of the Italian cappella. The most common didactic texts are tituli, the short captions that identify saints or scenes. While such tituli were required for holy figures in Byzantine art after Iconoclasm, the impulse to label was not limited to Greek texts or even to saints. A graffito incised above a hunting scene in the rock-cut church C C ’ (terrible bear) a mix of Santa Margarita at Mottola says ‘ of Greek and Latin words rendered in Greek characters in a chapel with
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Figure 4.3 Galatina, St Catherine, west entry wall, didactic inscription over south door (photo by author).
otherwise exclusively Latin tituli and devotional texts.38 Didactic texts may also appear in a funerary context unrelated to figural decoration. C [ ]+ [ ]’(tomb of [the family of] Constantine) was ‘+ found on a ceramic sherd at the abandoned village of Quattro Macine; presumably it identified a family grave.39 Display texts are inscriptions that are placed on painted books, scrolls, or tablets; they comprise a subset of didactic public texts. Li Monaci contains two examples: the Gospel book held by John the Evangelist, ’ (In the beginning was the whose exposed pages read:‘ Word [ is an error for , the ending of Logos]); and the Crucifixion plaque with ‘uict[or] mortis’ (death’s conqueror), evoking Christ’s victory over death. Such sacred speech, even without a fictive supporting book or plaque, is sometimes rendered in a language that does not appear, or at least does not dominate, elsewhere in the same church. For ’) example, when the archangel Gabriel (labelled in Greek ‘‘ addresses the Virgin in the Annunciation scene in San Pietro at Otranto, his speech is the only instance of Latin in the thirteenth-century fresco layer: ‘a[ve maria] gr[atia] p[lena] d(omi)n(u)s [tecum].’40 Similarly, in churches that contain entirely or mostly Latin didactic texts, Greek
126 / Linda Safran may be used to indicate sacrality. When this occurs in medieval manuscripts, it is probably for the same reason of heightened sacredness, but in the public texts of the Salento there is the additional motive of communicating a hierarchy of languages in the public context of a bilingual community. Quite often didactic texts convey identical information in two languages, as is the case for both the archangel Michael and John the Evangelist at Li Monaci;41 this rarely occurs in manuscripts. We may well ask what function a double titulus served for saints who were commonly represented and presumably recognizable to viewers even without any label at all. A sociolinguistic approach helps make sense of the Greek dedication, bilingual tituli, the Latin display text on the Cross, and the Greek text on the Gospel book. The language mixing is significant because we presume that the church is a public space with a wider audience for its texts than a book might have. At Li Monaci I think we have a church meant to serve for Latin funerary rites (in which a focal Crucifixion would be appropriate), commissioned by a Roman-rite patron who hired Greek-speaking artists who had worked previously for both Orthodox- and Latin-rite patrons, and who therefore had accumulated a variety of pictorial and textual exemplars. Around a decorative program selected by the patron, Soure (not a Greek name), the artists inserted themselves and their cultural background in the form of familiar didactic tituli and a formulaic dedication that may not even have been understood by the patron. , are banal Iotacisms and misspellings, such as o for in in the Middle Ages. It is also not uncommon for didactic and devotional texts in the Salento to betray the influence of spoken language on the individual who executed the text.42 The plaque over the late fourteenthcentury Crucifixion scene at Santo Stefano in Soleto (figure 4.4) is in Greek, but instead of the usual abbreviation for Jesus Christ King of the , the last letter Jews (Matt. 27:37), for ’ reveals the seems to be a gamma not found in any sacred books. ‘ penetration of volgare into even a Greek scriptural text, as implies a pronunciation akin to the modern Italian giudei.43 An earlier example in Latin is St Nicholas Peregrinus, the pilgrim saint who died in Trani, labeled ‘pellegrinus’ in the thirteenth-century Candelora crypt church in Massafra;44 the Italian Pellegrino is not far away. Public didactic texts, which seem so simple at first glance and which, as a result, rarely receive scholarly attention, can in fact reveal a great deal about their contexts.
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Figure 4.4 Soleto, Santo Stefano, Crucifixion, detail of didactic text on the cross (photo by author).
Hortatory Texts The Li Monaci dedication ends with a prayer by the painters to the viewing public: ‘You who read this, pray to the Lord for them. Amen.’ In this case the hortatory injunction concludes someone else’s dedication. More typical are the cases of authors inscribing their own exhortations that they be subjects and objects of other people’s prayer. An example in Latin is in the rock-cut chapel dedicated to St Cyprian (or St Julian at Statte (fourteenth century?) (figure 4.5): + adiuva q(uaesimu)s d(omi)ne famulu(m) tuu(m) iaqui[ntum] p[resbyt]erum.
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Figure 4.5 Statte, St Cyprian (or St Julian), hortatory inscription (photo by author). omnes q(ui) legiti[s] orate pro eo. [a]m[en]. Protect, I pray, O Lord, your servant Iaquintus, priest. All who read this pray for him. Amen.
Iaquintus has painted (many priests were also artists), or has had painted on his behalf, a plea on the wall of a funerary chapel adjacent to an image of St Julian.45 The text functions simultaneously as a private devotional prayer by Iaquintus or an admirer, and as a public exhortation. The orate command is commonly found in Latin incised graffiti, as in the cult site of San Marco at Massafra where one poorly preserved
Public Textual Cultures: A Case Study in Southern Italy / 129 graffito reads ‘di ora pro eius’ (pray for him), and another cites several persons on whose behalf prayer is invoked: ‘... sacerdos Petrus sacerdos Ursus ch(leric)us o(mn)es q(ui) huc i(nc)orsatis orate pro ...is’ (... priest, Peter the priest, Ursus the cleric, all who enter here pray for them).46 Nor is the hortatory function of texts limited to Latin readers. On a funerary stele from Vaste dated 1330, we find the announcement that a servant of God ‘slept’ – the Greek euphemism for death – at a certain date and ~ ( ) ( ) ’ (You time, followed by ‘ ( ) who read this, pray for him).47 With a level of interaction that might seem out of place in a book text, both Latin and Greek public texts occasionally address their readers directly and exhort them to act on behalf of the subject of the text.48 Extant Hebrew texts avoid this construction in favour of a more general invocation of peace that omits such imperative forms of direct address as ‘you’ and ‘pray.’ Funerary Texts All medieval epitaphs functioned as public statements of the status and piety of the deceased. In the Salento they could be visible to, if not always immediately accessible to, individuals and groups of different languages and faiths. This was certainly true of Jewish tombstones, which were always outdoors, whereas privileged Christian burials took place inside churches. The great majority of public texts in Hebrew are epitaphs. In the early Middle Ages these were combined with Greek and later with Latin texts; only in the ninth and tenth centuries was Hebrew (and in one case Aramaic) used alone. After that date the Hebrew gravestones disappear, even though there were Jews in the Salento for at least five more centuries. An instructive example of a bilingual epitaph comes from Oria, which until the eleventh century had an important Jewish community that produced medical and philosophical texts, liturgical poetry, and the earliest Hebrew family chronicle. The epitaph, in the form of a short column squared off at the top, has been dated to the second half of the eighth century.49 It consists of a neatly carved, ten-line Hebrew text on the principal face, shofars and a menorah on the other three sides, and a shorter Latin text on the top.
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ic requiescit d(omi)na anna filia r(ebbitis) guliu etate lvi anini lvi. [Hebrew text:] Here lies a wise woman, ready in all the precepts of the faith. May she find the benevolent face of God upon the reawakening of the countless [progeny of Jacob]. She who died is Hannah, age 56 years.50 [Latin text:] Here rests Lady Anna, daughter of R. Julius, age 56 years, 56.
The epitaph is important for what it reveals through editorial methods of close reading and textual comparison. What is most significant has been communicated in both languages: Hannah, or Anna, died at a ripe old age. Hebrew epitaphs in the Salento rarely give the year of death, which is very different from local Christian epitaphs in both Greek and Latin. They do, however, often provide the name of the author in the , composed the rhymform of an initial acrostic: here Samuel, ing Hebrew text (every line ends in ah). The text was also carved by a native Hebrew speaker. The Hebrew lines are accurate, even elegant, but the Latin is flawed: it was begun from the right rather than the left (the ‘ic’ of ‘Hic requiescit’ was carved at the right as well as the left); the letter ‘n’ is consistently rendered backwards; and both the ‘es’ at the beginning of line 3 and the second ‘lvi’ are dittographs, meaningless repetitions of the letters immediately above. Despite the orthographic and other failings in the Latin, the tombstone was certainly meant to be seen by persons able to read Latin as well as Hebrew. Only the Latin text gives Hannah’s title, ‘Domina,’ and also, in abbreviated form, her father’s – ‘r,’ perhaps for Rabbi, which at that time meant something like Dominus or Magister – and it also states his Latinate name, Julius. Greater
Public Textual Cultures: A Case Study in Southern Italy / 131 space restrictions in the Latin text made the choice to include this status information even more deliberate. Julius has a genitive ‘u’ ending and is rendered with an initial ‘g’ rather than ‘i,’ like the Crucifixion plaque at Soleto even though the two are six centuries apart; here too there is influence from the vernaculars spoken by the Hebrew-speaking carver and the Latin-reading audience. A Hebrew epitaph from Brindisi dated 83251 is unusual in providing a specific death date in addition to kinship information and the age of the deceased; these are both features of local Christian funerary texts, which were thus available as models for the epitaph’s composer. The text begins: ‘Here lies Leah, daughter of Yafeh Mazal, may her soul be in the bundle of life, who died in the year 764 since the destruction of the Temple, at the age of seventeen.’ This method of dating from the fall of the Jerusalem Temple was favoured in southern Italy and Byzantium, but rarely used elsewhere.52 The text continues with formulaic references to Leah’s future resurrection drawn from the ancient funerary liturgy, and ends with a phrase from the Song of Songs: ‘This is my beloved, my companion.’ A strict reliance on the biblical source is apparent, with the male gender for ‘this,’ zeh, maintained instead of the female zot that would more accurately apply to Leah. Abbreviations are less common , the initials for in Hebrew than in Greek or Latin, here limited to Ha Kadosh Baruch Hu (The Holy One, Blessed be He). The text has been made more legible by rubrication, so that Leah’s epitaph was even more publicly accessible – which of course redounds to the credit of her father, whose name appears most prominently at the end of line 1 (Leah’s name is merely centralized). While Latin texts with a primarily funerary function are rare in the Salento, there are many such texts in Greek. The largest, and the most interesting visually, is a fulsome eleventh-century epitaph by a father for his dead son, painted ca. 1055–75 in a burial arcosolium inside a subterranean church at Carpignano Salentino (figure 4.6).53 As is typical of public texts, the proper nouns are placed at the beginning or end of lines to ensure the greatest visibility. At the right edge of the upper-left row, in direct proximity to St Christine to whom the church was dedicated, is ‘Stratigoulais,’ the name of the dead boy. The father’s name, now indecipherable, was at the end of a line on the lower right, while his title, ‘spatharos,’ is at the left edge and the village name is divided into two lines. That this careful placement of significant names is deliberate is underscored by the rather careless quality of the text overall: the heights of letters in the crooked lines varies from 2.5 cm to 5 cm. Nevertheless, care has been taken with the text layout. The xxxxxxxx
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Figure 4.6 Carpignano, St Christine, arcosolium with funerary text and St Christine (photo by author).
Byzantine dodecasyllabic verses are separated by a cross, each syllable is marked by an apostrophe, and vertical justification lines have been painted, if not always respected.54 The viewer’s eye is attracted to the epitaph by colouristic means. The top section of the arcosolium is dark blue, interrupted only by the head and halo of St Christine. The next section consists of red script on a yellow background, while the lowest level is white text on a blue ground. The effect of this play of colours is that the saint appears to stand in front of the inscription, hovering over the tomb itself as if occupying the same space as the viewers. Moreover, there is a tension between the seemingly continuous strips of colour, which suggest horizontal continuity of the text, and the reality of the inscription, which must be read from top to bottom, first on the viewer’s left side and then across St Christine to begin again at the upper right. This requires active viewership of a sort found only in the most complex manuscript illustrations and texts.55
Public Textual Cultures: A Case Study in Southern Italy / 133 Devotional Texts Public devotional texts are short invocations that solicit help or consideration from Christ, the Virgin, or a saint who often is depicted nearby. One or more individuals express humility and ask to be remembered, and the implication is that this remembering will lead to a favourable outcome on Judgment Day. Presumably the author or subject of such a text (the two may not be synonymous) felt a special kinship with the holy person depicted or invoked, and in some cases the inscription and image may have been completed in fulfilment of a vow. These texts are meant to be viewed in perpetuity as evidence of individual piety; they are painted prayers, and it is not unusual for them to conclude with ‘Amen.’ Devotional texts differ functionally from hortatory texts because they make no demands on the reader, and from dedicatory texts in that they claim no credit for a past action. Painted devotional texts in Latin almost invariably begin with the vocative Memento Domine (Remember, Lord). This is followed by ‘your servant,’ either famuli tui, the correct genitive case, or the dative famulo tuo, which is attested in late antiquity but in general is much rarer.56 The dative is used disproportionately in the Salentine texts, even more often than the genitive, either because of a contamination from Greek or an attraction to the case of the supplicant’s name in the vernacular. The priest named Sarulus who was responsible for devotional texts adjacent to thirteenth-century images of St Nicholas and St Margaret in two different churches at Mottola was unlikely to be troubled by the use of famulo in one case and famuli in the other.57 Latin devotional graffiti very rarely use the formal Memento Domine formula. Instead, most begin with Ego, ‘I [am],’ followed by one or more names. Like most (but not all) incised graffiti, these texts are cruder in execution than their painted cousins. There are many more devotional texts in Greek than in Latin, which suggests not that Orthodox patrons were more pious than Roman-rite ones, but that they chose to record their piety in textual form, perhaps because of the greater literacy of Greek versus Latinate-vernacular speakers.58 One uniquely Greek feature, found only in eleventh-century devotional texts, is the use of the isopsephic Amen, indicated by the archaic form of the number 99.59 This is visible in a text prominently placed on the sanctuary wall of Santa Maria della Croce at Casaranello, next to an image of St Nicholas (figure 4.7):
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Figure 4.7 Casaranello, Santa Maria della Croce, votive text in sanctuary (photo by author). C (
)
C
Remember, Lord, your servant George and his children. Amen.
Public Textual Cultures: A Case Study in Southern Italy / 135 This is the reverse of Hebrew gematria, in which letters stand for numbers, a technique used just north of the Salento in a synagogue dedication at Bari. Greek devotional texts, including graffiti, almost always begin with C C ’ (Remember Lord, your servant). This ‘ formula is especially common in the Salento; in other regions with abundant Greek devotional texts the usual invocation is either ‘ ’ (Lord, help), which is very infrequent in Italy, or ‘ C C ’ (petition of the servant of God), which is not used at all. I suspect that the regional popularity of the verb mimniskomai derives from its use in the local Orthodox liturgy as well as influence from the Memento Domine recited in the Latin mass. The many variant spellings of mnesthiti are likely due to the aural reception of the liturgy, as few patrons or artists ever saw a liturgical book. Conclusions Wall texts and tombstones were a form of public discourse that seldom operated in isolation. Meaning in medieval public spaces was communicated by the combination of a spatial and decorative system, images, and texts, and as such the reception of textual messages was affected by their physical and decorative context. While some book texts also present themselves as part of a decorative system, they lack the determined spatial setting of public texts. The tactile potential of book texts is obvious, but many public texts also could be touched (although I know of no studies that investigate patterns of wear). Nor should we neglect the oral and aural dimensions of both types of texts. Because these were mostly read aloud, even auditors who could not read participated in the repeated iteration of dedicatory, didactic, hortatory, funerary, and devotional texts. The reality of multiple readers and listeners of varying languages and literacies complicates the study of public texts even when the aims of the patron seem clear. Readers of books, by contrast, are assumed to be literate in the language of that text. In addition, they received a book’s textual messages in a more structured way and, ideally at least, in a more controlled setting. Access to medieval books was far more restricted than access to churches and synagogues and cemeteries. I would also claim that tituli and tombstones, devotional and hortatory prayers, and even dedications provide access to individuals who rarely figure in medieval manuscripts. In the Salento, some of them paid an artist for a pictorial record of themselves or their loved ones; perhaps half of those doubled their public or spiritual impact by
136 / Linda Safran enlisting both pictures and texts. Yet a sizeable majority commissioned only a text. These people, most of whom were probably not literate themselves, sought a share in the power of the written word. They harnessed the potential of the public text to construct desirable social realities in this world and the next. Even a graffito was intended to insinuate its author physically into the surface of a sacred image, to make him, or theoretically her, present in a social and sacred space.60 The craftsmen who produced public texts revealed their own linguistic and cultural formation in such details as word endings, misspellings, and language mixing. Textual culture in the Salento and elsewhere comprises all kinds of texts – in books and on walls, formal and informal, in the dominant language(s) and in the minority. Public texts have a special role to play in giving voice to the majority who did not own or read books, yet still participated in the epigraphic community of which they were a part. Most editors of texts have neglected to apply their skills to humble public inscriptions (only vernacular inscriptions have received much attention, and these only in the past decade), and they rarely consider such ‘artistic’ features as layout or alignment or colour. Similarly, most art historians have been slow to recognize the variety of ways texts can function as essential components of much of medieval art.61 Manuscript texts and public texts should be read as parts of a shared system of medieval communication, a discourse by no means limited to the written word.62 NOTES I thank William Robins and Lawrin Armstrong for inviting me to discuss public texts before an audience of manuscript specialists, and Blaise Royer and Vincent Debiais for priceless bibliographic suggestions. A French version of this article has been published in Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 52 (2009). 1 Recent methodological developments do accord an important place to the material aspects of writing and to relationships among text, images, and materiality; see Cécile Treffort, Paroles inscrite: À la découverte des sources épigraphiques latines du Moyen Âge, VIIIe–XIIIe siècle (Rosny-sousBois: Breal, 2008), and the thorough historiographic summary by Pierre Chastaing, ‘L’archéologie du texte médiévale: Autour de travaux récents sur l’histoire de l’écrit au Moyen Âge,’ Annales: Histoire, Sciences sociales 63 (2008): 245–69, esp. 252–4. 2 I am using the term ‘text’ here in several ways: first, as the partial or complete contents of a manuscript or book; second, in the sense of a
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3
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continuous multiword inscription, regardless of the medium or scale of its underlying support or the length of the contents; and third, individual words or phrases, incised or painted, such as the titulus or ‘caption’ adjacent to a painted saint or scene. The phrase ‘epigraphic community’ was coined by analogy with ‘speech community,’ meaning ‘a community which is attested through inscriptions which share some linguistic idiosyncrasies typical of the speech community in question: for example, Christian and Jewish catacombs in Rome share typical characteristics’; Martti Leiwo, ‘From Contact to Mixture: Bilingual Inscriptions from Italy,’ in Bilingualism in Ancient Society: Language Contact and the Written Text, ed. J.N. Adams, Mark Janse, and Simon Swain (Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 2002), 168–94; cf. also Chastaing, ‘L’archéologie du texte médiévale,’ 267–9. See Linda Safran, ‘Language Choice in the Medieval Salento: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Greek and Latin Inscriptions,’ in Zwischen Polis, Provinz und Peripherie: Beiträge zur byzantinischen Geschichte und Kultur, ed. Lars M. Hoffmann (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005), 810–40. Greek continues to be spoken by the elderly in eight towns, the socalled Grecía salentina or ‘isola greca,’ even today. See, e.g., Mario Cazzato and Antonio Costantini, Grecía Salentina: Arte, Cultura e Territorio, ed. Luigi Orlando (Galatina: Congedo, 1996). Foremost are the questions of preservation: to what degree do the preserved texts provide an accurate sampling of the medieval textual landscape? Losses have been enormous, but whether these are disproportionate in comparison to losses in the literary and documentary record, I cannot say. Even texts that were visible a few years ago may not be extant today because of their public accessibility; as far as I know, vandalism and neglect are not similarly erasing the manuscript record. My book based on this work, Art and Identity in the Medieval Salento, is nearing completion. Charles Diehl read (and sometimes misread) several inscriptions that no longer survive and made some of the Salento texts available to an international audience with L’art byzantin dans l’Italie méridionale (Paris: Librarie de l’art, 1894). A local polymath, Cosimo De Giorgi, did the same on the local level in La provincia di Lecce: Bozzetti di viaggio, 2 vols (Lecce: G. Spacciante, 1882–8; repr. Galatina: Congedo, 1975). Alba Medea built on these earlier works in Gli affreschi delle cripte eremitiche pugliesi, 2 vols (Rome: Collezione meridionale, 1939). Cosimo Damiano Fonseca, along with A.R. Bruno, V. Ingrosso, and A. Marotta stimulated new work with Gli insediamenti rupestri medioevali nel Basso Salento (Galatina: Congedo, 1979), despite Fonseca’s exclusive focus on the
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9
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so-called civiltà rupestre; so, too, did André Guillou in numerous publications in the 1960s and 1970s, including ‘Notes d’épigraphie byzantine,’ reprinted in his Culture et société en Italie byzantine (VIe–XIe s.) (London: Variorum Reprints, 1978), item 8, and more recently in Recueil des inscriptions grecques médiévales d’Italie (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996). Although many of these earlier readings are flawed, they continue to be repeated in scholarly literature and local websites. Important early compendia of southern Italian Hebrew inscriptions are Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, Iscrizioni inedite o mal note, greche, latine, ebraiche, di antichi sepolcri giudei del Napoletano (Turin and Rome: Loescher, 1880); and Daniel Chwolson, Corpus inscriptionum hebraicarum: Enthaltend Grabschriften aus der Krim und andere Grab- und Inschriften in alter hebräischer Quadratschrift sowie auch Schriftproben aus Handschriften vom IX–XV Jahrhundert (St Petersburg: Schmitzdorff, 1882; repr. Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms, 1974). David Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, vol. 1, Italy (Excluding the City of Rome), Spain and Gaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), is indispensable. Among the important works by Cesare Colafemmina not cited below is ‘Gli ebrei a Taranto nella documentazione epigrafica (secc. iv–x),’ in La chiesa di Taranto: Studi storici in onore di mons. Guglielmo Motolese, arcivescovo di Taranto, nel XXV anniversario del suo episcopato, vol. 1, Dalle origini all’avvento dei Normanni, ed. Cosimo Damiano Fonseca (Galatina: Congedo, 1977), 109–27. Robert Favreau, Épigraphie médiévale, L’atelier du médiéviste 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 47–52. For reasons of climate, texts on wood have not survived in Italy as well as those in other media. In the Salento, fourteenth-century wooden beams in the monastery (later cathedral) of Santa Maria at Nardò contain a dedicatory text; see Clara Gelao, Un capitolo sconosciuto di arte decorativa: ‘Tecta depicta’ di chiese medievale pugliesi (Bari: Quaderni dell’Amministrazione Provinciale di Bari, 1981), 23–6. The letters are 6 cm tall; see Tarif Al Samman, ‘Arabische Inschriften auf den Krönungsgewändern des heiligen römischen Reiches,’ Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 78 (1982): 7–34, esp. 32–4. The best-known medieval textile, the Bayeux ‘tapestry,’ also contains texts that seem to have served a public mnemonic function; see Richard Brilliant, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry: A Stripped Narrative for Their Eyes and Ears,’ Word & Image 7.2 (1991): 98–126. The largest medieval manuscript, the Codex Amiatinus pandect now in Florence (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Amiatinus 1), contains 1030 folios, is 50 cm tall x 34 cm wide, 25 cm thick, weighs 34 kg, and was produced from over 1500 calfskins. See Michael M. Gorman, ‘The
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Codex Amiatinus: A Guide to the Legends and Bibliography,’ Studi medievali 44 (2003): 863–910, esp. 863; and Richard Marsden, The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chap. 4. The Monumentum Ancyranum is the best-known of the copies and translations of the bronze originals that stood outside Augustus’s mausoleum in Rome. See Paula Botteri and Gabriele Fangi, ‘The Ancyra Project: The Temple of Augustus and Rome in Ankara,’ The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences 34, Part 5/w12, available online at http://www.commission5. isprs.org/wg4/workshop_ancona/proceedings/18.pdf. For example, at San Pellegrino in Bominaco, in Abruzzo; see Jérôme Baschet, Lieu sacré, lieu d’images: Les fresques de Bominaco (Abruzzes, 1263): Thèmes, parcours, fonctions (Paris: Découverte; Rome: École française de Rome, 1991), 81–5. The longest medieval text in Rome is the eight-line dedication on the facade of the Casa dei Crescenzi; see the Latin text and Italian translations at http://www.medioevo.roma.it/html/architettura/ crescenzi1.htm. Letter sizes in the strip of text closest to the west entry average 25 cm; the next strip, 23 cm; the third, 20 cm; and in the easternmost strip they vary between 11 and 19 cm. I thank Dr Karen Lüdtke for measuring the inscription heights on my behalf. This height discrepancy has not been noted previously; nor has the likely function of the texts, which seems to me comparable to that of the famous ‘rivers’ of coloured marble in the floor of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople that marked clerical stopping-points during different liturgical processions. Poetic public texts are, however, found in the early fourteenth century in Tuscany; see Furio Brugnolo, ‘“Voi che guardate ...”: Divagazioni sulla poesia per pittura del Trecento,’ in ‘Visibile Parlare’: Le scritture esposte nei volgari italiani dal Medioevo al Rinascimento: Atti del Convegno internazionale di Studi, Cassino–Montecassino, 12–28 ottobre 1992, ed. Claudio Ciociola (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1997), 305–39. Cesare Colafemmina, ‘L’iscrizione brindisina di Baruch ben Yonah e Amittai da Oria,’ Brundisii res 7 (1975): 295–300. This piyyut was later included in the Jewish prayerbook used in Italy. André Jacob, ‘Une fondation d’hôpital à Andrano en Terre d’Otrante,’ Mélanges de l'École française de Rome: Moyen-Âge, Temps modernes 93 (1981): 683–93. Evelyn Jamison, ‘La carriera del logotheta Riccardo di Taranto e l’ufficio del “logotheta sacri palatii” nel regno normanno di Sicilia e d’Italia meridionale,’ Archivio storico pugliese 5 (1952): 169–91, esp. 177, 185–7.
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23 24
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Discussion of oral reading practices in the Middle Ages has expanded greatly since the publication of Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982); and Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). For art history, Michael Camille’s ‘Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy,’ Art History 8 (1985): 26–49, remains fundamental. See also Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), and the stimulating essays in Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, eds, A History of Reading in the West, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Cambridge: Polity, 1999). Nevertheless, except for Vincent Debiais, Messages de pierre: La lecture des inscriptions dans la communication médiévale (XIIIe–XIVe siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), I know of no studies devoted to reading public texts rather than codices. Joyce Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 26 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). See also the following essay in the present volume by Maria Bendinelli Predelli. William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1989), esp. 39, 150, 222. On the question of epigraphic ateliers, see Jean Mallon, ‘Scriptoria épigraphiques,’ Scriptorium 11 (1957): 177–94; Maria Panagiotidi, ‘Le peintre en tant che scribe des inscriptions d’un monument et la question du niveau de sa connaissance grammaticale et orthographique,’ in L’artista a Bisanzio e nel mondo cristiano-orientale, ed. Michele Bacci (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2008), 71–116; and Maria Encarnación Martín López, ‘La escritura publicitaria en la Península Ibérica: Siglo xv,’ in Inschrift und Material, Inschrift und Buchschrift: Fachtagung für mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik, Ingolstadt, 1997, ed. Walter Koch and Christine Steininger (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1997), 191–206. See the stimulating essays in Bilingualism in Ancient Society, ed. Adams, Janse, and Swain, especially the introduction by Adams and Swain; ‘Approaching Bilingualism in Corpus Languages’ by D.R. Langslow; ‘Dead or Alive? The Status of the Standard Language’ by Kees Versteegh; and ‘From Contact to Mixture’ by Leiwo (see above, note 3). These contributions all urge caution in reconstructing a spoken language of the past from written records. Safran, ‘Language Choice.’
Public Textual Cultures: A Case Study in Southern Italy / 141 27
28
29
30
31
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Favreau, Épigraphie médiévale, 5: ‘en vue de communiquer quelque élément d’information au public le plus large, et pour la plus large durée. Et l’objet de son étude, c’est naturellement le contenu du message qu’elle transmet.’ This typology differs from the categories elaborated by Favreau, Épigraphie médiévale, because in the Salento we do not find all the types of inscriptions that he considers. Cesare Colafemmina, Ebrei e cristiani novelli in Puglia: Le comunità minori (Bari: Regione Puglia, Assessorato alla cultura – Istituto ecumenico S. Nicola, 1991), 11–16. Transliteration: ‘Michtav ze chakaknu le-baruch / Bar Moshe sheratzaf ha-knesset / [Ve] hachatzer beritzpat avanim / Ve-itztabaot saviv lenefesh / Bno Moshe hane-esaf ben shmona / Esre shana le-hazkiro be-shabbat / [Ve] be-yom tov ve-tishlam haritzpa / Bishnat 4945 nafsho Tze- / ora [bitzror hachayim] Amen.’ All translations are my own. The Trani dedicatory inscription from 1247 is preserved, and may be translated thus: ‘In the year 5007 since the creation, this sanctuary was built by a congenial group devoted to the congregation, with a lofty, decorated cupola and a window open to the light and new doors for closing; the elevated pavement was laid, and seats for the chanters, in order that their piety be recorded before Him who inhabits the beautiful heavens.’ For the context, see Cesare Colafemmina, ‘La cultura nelle giudecche e nelle sinagoghe,’ in Centri di produzione della cultura nel Mezzogiorno normanno-svevo: Atti delle dodicesime giornate normanno-sveve, Bari, 17–20 ottobre 1995, ed. Giosuè Musca (Bari: Edizioni Dedalo, 1997), 113–15. See Sandra Benjamin, The World of Benjamin of Tudela: A Medieval Mediterranean Travelogue (London: Associated University Presses, 1995), 99–116; Cesare Colafemmina, ‘L’itinerario pugliese di Beniamino da Tudela,’ Archivio storico pugliese 28 (1975): 81–100. ~ ~ μ / ‘ C μ ( ) [ ]( ) / μ ( ) [ or ][ ] μ / [ ] . ( ) .[ ] / ( ) ˜ ˜ C ( ) -/ (μ ) [ ] ˜ ˜ . ( ) μ .’ André Jacob, ‘Une dédicace de sanctuaire inédite à la masseria Li Monaci, près de Copertino en Terre d’Otrante,’ Mélanges de l'École française de Rome: Moyen-Âge, Temps modernes 94 (1982): 703-10. The minuscule μ inserted above the name Demetrius is a scribal correction akin to one in a book.
142 / Linda Safran 33
34 35 36 37
38
39
40 41
42
43
Overviews of dating components in medieval Latin are in Iiro Kajanto, ‘Dating in the Latin Inscriptions of Medieval and Renaissance Rome,’ Arctos: Acta Philologica Fennica 11 (1977): 41–61; and Robert Favreau, ‘La datation dans les inscriptions médiévales françaises,’ Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 157 (1999): 11–39. Irven M. Resnick, ‘Lingua Dei, lingua hominis: Sacred Language and Medieval Texts,’ Viator 21 (1990): 51–74. See André Jacob, ‘Une fondation de chapelle par l’évêque Dieudonné de Castro en 1383,’ Bollettino storico di Terra d’Otranto 2 (1992): 85–9. Jacob, ‘Fondation de chapelle,’ 87. Maria Stella Calò, La chiesa di S. Maria del Casale presso Brindisi (Brindisi: Lions Club, 1967); Rosario Jurlaro, ‘Epigrafi medievali brindisine,’ Studi salentini 31 (1968): 252. Roberto Caprara, Società ed economia nei villaggi rupestri: La vita quotidiana nelle gravine dell’arco Jonico Tarentino (Fasano: Schena, 2001), 222. The text is no longer visible. Paul Arthur, ‘Masseria Quattro Macine – A Deserted Medieval Village and Its Territory in Southern Apulia: An Interim Report on Field Survey, Excavation and Document Analysis,’ Papers of the British School at Rome 64 (1996): 181–237, at 170. Safran, ‘Language Choice,’ 866; additional examples 867–71. and ‘s io euagelista’; ‘ . ’ and ‘archage‘ lus michael’ (with abbreviations and mixed capital, uncial, and minuscule letters). For double tituli elsewhere in the region, see Safran, ‘Language Choice,’ 861–2. We need to maintain the distinction between an individual’s idiosyncratic speech and writing and the larger linguistic community’s maintenance of linguistic standards – Saussure’s parole vs. langue. See John Phillips and Chrissie Tan, ‘Langue and Parole,’ in The Literary Encyclopedia, 8 February 2005, http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php? rec=true&UID=662. With Bakhtin, my own interest lies more in parole than in langue, and it is these peculiarities that I would claim are visible in public texts. Public texts in volgare first appear in the Salento in a later scene at Santo Stefano, the Last Judgment on the interior of the west wall; see Maria Teresa Romanello, ‘L’affermazione del volgare nel Salento medievale,’ Archivio storico per le province napoletane, ser. 3, 17 (1978): 9–65. For public texts in Latin or volgare elsewhere in southern Italy, see, e.g., Guglielmo Cavallo and Francesco Magistrale, ‘Mezzogiorno normanno e scritture esposte,’ in Epigrafia medievale greca e latina: Ideologia e funzione: Atti del seminario di Erice, 12–18 settembre 1991, ed. Guglielmo
Public Textual Cultures: A Case Study in Southern Italy / 143
44 45
46 47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54 55
Cavallo and Cyril Mango (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1995), 293–329; Nicola De Blasi, ‘Iscrizioni in volgare nell’Italia meridionale: Prime esplorazioni,’ in ‘Visibile Parlare,’ ed. Ciociola, 261–301. Marina Falla Castelfranchi, Pittura monumentale bizantina in Puglia (Milan: Electa, 1991), 201–9 and fig. 186. Roberto Caprara, Le chiese rupestri del territorio di Taranto (Taranto: Comune di Taranto, 1981), 143–68; Roberto Caprara, Carmela Crescenzi, and Marcello Scalzo, Iconografia dei Santi: Le chiese rupestri di Taranto (Taranto: a & b, 1990), 76–86. Roberto Caprara, La chiesa rupestre di San Marco a Massafra (Florence: Roberto Caprara 1979), 64, 78–84. André Jacob, ‘Notes sur quelques inscriptions byzantines du Salento méridional (Soleto, Alessano, Vaste, Apigliano),’ Mélanges de l'École française de Rome: Moyen-Âge, Temps modernes 95 (1983), 65–88, at 78–83. See Cécile Treffort, ‘Appels à la prière et oraisons de pierre dans les inscriptions funéraires des viiie–xie siècles,’ in La prière en latin de l’Antiquité au XVIe siècle: Formes, évolutions, significations, ed. Jean-François Cottier, Collection d’études médiévales de Nice 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 273–89; and Debiais, Messages de pierre, esp. 172–8. I take this opportunity to thank Dr Debiais for sending me a copy of his useful and exhaustive book. Cesare Colafemmina, ‘Note su di una iscrizione ebraico-latina di Oria,’ Vetera Christianorum 25.2 (1988): 641–51 ; Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe 1:274–7. Transliteration: ‘Shochevet po / Isha nevona / Mochenet bechol / Mitzvot emona / Ve-timtza pney / El chanina / Leyekizat mi / Mana zo sheniftera / Chana bat / 56 shana.’ Chwolson, Corpus Inscriptionum Hebraicarum, no. 83, cols 163–4; Cesare Colafemmina, ‘Iscrizioni ebraiche a Brindisi,’ Brundisii res 5 (1973): 91–106. Colette Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. Nicholas De Lange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 219. The Temple was thought to have been destroyed in 68 rather than 70 based on a miscalculation in Seder Olam Rabba. See André Jacob, ‘L’inscription métrique de l’enfeu de Carpignano,’ Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici, n.s. 20–1 (1983–4): 103–22. The rectangle of text is 1.43 m wide (104). Jacob, ‘Inscription métrique,’ 104. For reading in the Middle Ages, see History of Reading in the West, ed. Cavallo and Chartier (above, note 21), and Debiais, Messages de pierre,
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57
58
59
60
61
62
esp. the second part, ‘Lire les inscriptions médiévales: Définition du public épigraphique.’ The phrase in the plural, Memento Domine famulorum tuorum, is from the prayer for the dead in the canon of the mass; Favreau, Épigraphie médiévale, 240. ‘meme[n]- / to d(omi)ne / famu- / lo tuo / sarulo / sacer[dote]’ (at St Nicholas); ‘meme[n]to d(omi)n[e] / famuli tui / saruli sa- / cerdot[is]’ (at St Margaret). For these rock-cut churches see Cosimo Damiano Fonseca, Civiltà rupestre in Terra Jonica (Milan and Rome: Bestetti, 1970), 172–203. Literacy was never a clerical monopoly in Byzantium as it was in the West. See Robert Browning, ‘Further Reflections on Literacy in Byzan: Studies in Honor of Speros Vryonis, Jr., ed. John S. tium,’ Langdon et al. (New Rochelle, NY: Caratzas, 1993), 1:68–84. André Jacob, ‘Inscriptions byzantines datées de la province de Lecce (Carpignano, Cavallino, San Cesario),’ Rendiconti: Atti della Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, ser. 8, 37 (1982): 41–61 at 51; André Jacob, ‘Un nouvel amen isopséphique en Terre d’Otrante (Nociglia, Chapelle de la Madonna dell’Itri),’ Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici 26 (1989): 187–95. See, e.g., Véronique Plesch, ‘Memory on the Wall: Graffiti on Religious Wall Paintings,’ Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32 (2002): 167–97; and Cécile Treffort, ‘Inscrire son nom dans l’espace liturgique à l’époque romane,’ Les Cahiers de Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa 34 (2003): 147–60. There are no preserved graffiti from the medieval Salento that feature a female name. See, however, the work of epigraphist and palaeographer Armando Petrucci, including La scrittura: Ideologia e rappresentazione (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), translated by Linda Lappin as Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); and that of art historian Stefano Riccioni, including most recently Il mosaico absidale di S. Clemente a Roma: Exemplum della chiesa riformata (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2006), and ‘Épiconographie de l’art roman en France et en Italie (Bourgogne/Latium): L’art médiéval en tant que discours visuel et la naissance d’un nouveau langage,’ Bulletin du Centre d’études médiévales d’Auxerre 12 (2008), available online at http://cem.revues.org/index7132.html. See now Debiais, Messages de pierre.
MARIA BENDINELLI PREDELLI
5
The Textualization of Early Italian Cantari
New approaches to the study of medieval texts promoted by Armando Petrucci and others have taught us to ask questions and gather information not only from what the texts say but also from their physical appearance, in pursuit of what William Robins, in his introductory chapter to this volume, calls a ‘semiotics of textual culture materialistically and historically inflected.’ My study here follows those by such scholars as Furio Brugnolo, H. Wayne Storey, and Peter Weinmann, who have demonstrated that the very material layout of poetic texts offers preliminary indications about what genre a medieval reader could expect to encounter.1 This paper investigates the physical layout of the first occurrences of the early Italian cantari, the genre which later gave rise to the famed Italian Renaissance epic poems such as Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata. The origins of the genre are inextricably linked to the origins of its verse-form, the ottava rima. It is hoped that the following investigation into the visible distribution of the text of cantari on the manuscript page may shed some light on these questions about origins which have so far eluded satisfactory answers. Today scholars agree that the verse-form of ottava rima appeared during the course of the fourteenth century and that cantari are a product of the late part of that century, abandoning the opinion held by earlier scholars that cantari were already popular in Italy at the end of the thirteenth century. However, a debate remains concerning the origins of the ottava rima: whether it was invented by Boccaccio for his Filostrato and Teseida (much as the terzina verse-form was invented by Dante) or whether Boccaccio adopted the metre of an already existing genre. At the end of a clear exposé of the various contributions to the debates, Aldo Menichetti, one of the most respected experts in problems of Italian metrics, concluded that ‘the debate about the origins of ottava
146 / Maria Bendinelli Predelli rima remains more open than ever.’2 I shall not attempt to solve the problem of whether or not we can speak of ‘the cantare before Boccaccio,’ but I will refer to a few elements which could help shift the focus of the discussion. The theses of Roncaglia, Gorni, and Balduino on the origins of ottava rima are well known to specialists and I shall not repeat them here; different as they are, they all have in common the notion that the eight-line stanza of ottava rima (the ottava) must have originally been a kind of stanza for a canzone (or for a religious lauda, according to Balduino), thus linking the ottava to a genre of lyric poetry and thereby stressing a direct association between ottava rima and singing.3 What I have always found perplexing about these theories is that ottava rima has always been used, from its very inception and throughout its history, primarily as a narrative structure and not as a lyric one. The use of ottava rima in genres other than narrative poetry on legendary subjects has been very rare. In the fourteenth century it was used in a few works whose historical subject matter might have been rendered otherwise in the verse-form known as the serventese: the Profezia by the friar Stoppa de’ Bostichi (1347), the Cantare della Guerra degli Otto Santi (after 1378), and the Lamento on the death of Bernabò Visconti (1385). It was also used in some laude of Bianco da Siena, who entered the order of Gesuati in 1367 and whose works date to the second half of the fourteenth century.4 Later it was also common in religious drama.5 As opposed to the abundance of love poetry in sonetti and canzoni, I do not know of any love poetry in ottave from the fourteenth century. The strambotti and rispetti of the fifteenth century that reproduce the structure of the ottava and may be labelled as love poetry are to be considered as derived from and not as antecedents to the epic poems in ottave.6 Examples of lyric structures used for narrative purposes are, again, quite rare. One may recall the sonnets of Il Fiore (the Italian re-elaboration of Roman de la Rose) and Antonio Pucci’s canzone ‘Un cavalier di Roma una fiata’;7 but by this stage both the sonetto and the canzone had been severed from the sphere of performance for a long time and were considered the metres of primarily written, not oral, genres. Although ottava rima is usually considered the metre of the cantare genre, one must not forget that a good number of early poems in ottava rima do not share the ‘oral-performative’ characteristics that we associate with the cantari (and that are implied in the derivation of the noun cantare from the verb cantare, to sing). A good example is the way several early poems were divided not according to the needs of performance but according to other criteria. In fact, the earliest known poem in ottava rima, Boccaccio’s Filostrato (ca. 1335), is divided into ‘parts’ of very
The Textualization of Early Italian Cantari / 147 irregular length, varying from the eight stanzas of the ninth part to the 167 stanzas of the fourth part.8 The first and last stanzas of each ‘part’ have more characteristics of classical prologues and epilogues than of the orality typical of the cantare genre. Furthermore, within each ‘part’ the flow of ottave is often interrupted by rubrics announcing the content to follow, as if they were the titles of chapters in a prose romance. Similar titles are also found in the subsequent work in ottava rima by Boccaccio, the Teseida, which is subdivided this time according to classical models, into ‘books.’9 The length is again considerably varied, from the sixty-one octaves of Book Six to the 138 of Book One. Boccaccio’s works, and especially the Teseida, enjoyed lasting fame and significantly contributed to the success of this new narrative metre. Another very early poem in ottave is the Istoria di Alessandro Magno by Domenico Scolari, which bears the date 1355.10 Like the Teseida, the poem by Scolari is divided into four books and further subdivided into parts introduced by rubrics.11 After the middle of the century, we find the Sienese religious poems composed by Saint Catherine’s followers: Niccolò di Mino Cicerchia narrated La passione in an uninterrupted flow of 282 stanzas (1364); Neri Pagliaresi divided his story of Giosafà (after 1371) into fourteen partes just as Boccaccio had divided his Filostrato into ‘parts’; and fra’ Felice Tancredi da Massa wrote La fanciullezza di Gesù (between 1380 and 1385) in 448 stanzas with no subdivisions whatsoever.12 Even the earliest known example of a cantare, Fiorio and Biancifiore (transcribed between 1343 and 1349), is not a typical one as far as major textual divisions are concerned – as we shall see below. One must wait for the cantare of Bel Gherardino (transcribed ca. 1373) before we find the canonical form of the cantare subdivided into two cantos with typical opening and closing ottave. Antonio Pucci’s cantari are also assignable to this stretch of decades, as the author was active between the 1330s and his death in 1388, but the precise dates of his poems are unknown. Let us consider how these early poems are physically written down on the manuscript pages. Of Boccaccio’s Teseida we are fortunate enough to have an autograph manuscript (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Acquisti e Doni 325), in all likelihood transcribed between 1340 and 1350. In this manuscript the text is written in one column aligned to the left of the page, with one verse of poetry per line. The division into stanzas is marked by a capital letter appearing further to the left of the column; however, there is no line of blank space between the ottave (see figure 5.1). It is not surprising to find such an orderly layout of Boccaccio’s work on a page. We know that Boccaccio was fascinated by books, literature, and writing. We also know that he xxxxxxxx
148 / Maria Bendinelli Predelli
Figure 5.1 Layout of ottave at the beginning of Book Nine of the Teseida in Boccaccio’s autograph manuscript (ca. 1340–50). Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Acquisti e Doni 325, fol. 100r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.
mastered more than one style of handwriting and that he was meticulous when it came to the physical presentation of his works. Whether or not he invented the metre of ottava rima, it is certain that in the layout of this poem Boccaccio imitated prestigious models of a narrative nature.13 In fact, a similar layout is found in manuscripts of classical poems such as Statius’s Thebaid and Virgil’s Aeneid, as well as in manuscripts of Dante’s Commedia (of which we also have a copy transcribed by Boccaccio). Of course, Latin epic poems have no stanzaic division. If accompanied by glossae, Latin epics were normally transcribed in one column on the left hand side of the page, one verse per line, usually with the beginning of each verse emphasized by a larger letter. French narrative poems, whether Carolingian epic or Arthurian romance, and including Franco-Italian poems, were also transcribed in this way, one
The Textualization of Early Italian Cantari / 149 verse per line, with initial capital letters, but with no space at the beginning of each lassa (see figure 5.2). Dante’s Commedia, on the other hand, was usually transcribed, even in its earliest manuscripts, by emphasizing the beginning of each three-line stanza, or terzina, by means of a larger letter shifted to the left of the column (see figure 5.3).14 This seems to be the closest model to the layout of the ottava and this is exactly how Boccaccio transcribed his epic poems, which were not destined to be sung in public squares but read to a circle of aristocratic ladies and cultivated readers. In my opinion, the layout of Boccaccio’s autograph Teseida emphasizes that the ottava was primarily conceived of as a narrative device, a metre appropriate to a continuous, albeit rhythmic, flow of discourse. With the column aligned in the centre of the page, this layout became standard for presenting poems in ottava rima. It is used, for example, for the Istoria di Alessandro Magno (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, ii.ii.30, fols 7r–94r) and the Cantare di Pirramo e Tisbe (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Magl. vii, 1066, fols 37v–43v) (see figures 5.4 and 5.5). Even a manuscript as late as the Ginori Venturi Lisci codex from the latter half of the fifteenth century, now Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Acquisti e Doni 759, preserves this traditional layout. At this point I would like to invoke Petrucci’s classification of medieval manuscripts. Apart from the classical Latin texts which were entrusted to so-called libri da banco (bench-books, which are large, heavy books written by professional copyists and to be consulted usually at a bench or lectern), the manuscripts that carry vernacular works belong to two basic categories: (1) the libro cortese (court-book), which was of relatively small dimensions, usually made of parchment, written in a gothic book-script (gotica libraria) by professional copyists, sometimes illustrated, and presumably destined to be read aloud to a small circle of people; and (2) the libro-registro (register-book), which was influenced by legal and administrative documents such as registers and accounting books, made of paper rather than parchment, and written in cursive script: register-books tended to contain texts of a disparate nature and to be of relatively untidy appearance. As Petrucci explains, during the fourteenth century, the libro-registro gave rise to two further variations: (1) the libro-registro di lusso (de luxe register-book), which was sometimes in parchment and illuminated, but always written in a cursive script (minuscola cancelleresca); and (2) the libro zibaldone (notebook), which was of small to medium dimensions, made of paper, undecorated, and written more and more frequently in the cursive merchant script (lettera
Figure 5.2 Layout of lassas in the Franco-Italian Geste Francor (fourteenth cent.). Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Franc. xiii (256), fol. 109r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.
Figure 5.3 Layout of terzine in Dante’s Commedia as transcribed by Boccaccio (ca 1370). Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ricc. 1035, fol. 7r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.
Figure 5.4 Layout of ottave in Domenico Scolari’s Istoria di Alessandro Magno (1355). Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, ii.ii.30, fol. 8r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.
Figure 5.5 Layout of ottave in the Cantare di Piramo e Tisbe (end of the fourteenth cent.). Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. vii, 1066, fol. 40v. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.
152 / Maria Bendinelli Predelli mercantesca).15 Most of the manuscripts I have mentioned above fall into the category that Petrucci calls the libro cortese. Between 1343 and 1349 Fiorio e Biancifiore appears. Fiorio e Biancifiore is the earliest documented popular poem in ottava rima (i.e., it is the earliest cantare) and it enjoyed lasting popularity, being handed down in approximately ten manuscripts, each preserving its own version of the work. The earliest transcription is in a manuscript that in Petrucci’s terms is a libro zibaldone (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Magl. viii, 1416), the appearance and composition of which clearly reveal that it was destined for private use. It was probably assembled after the texts were transcribed, as the first and last pages are written in a different hand. The dimensions are approximately 22 cm by 15 cm. The contents are varied, the only reason for their compilation being that someone considered each item individually worthy of preservation. The story of Fiorio and Biancifiore is found between an incomplete notice on the twelve signs of the zodiac and a rule for calculating the accumulation of capital and interest on one side, and some tables for abacus and monetary calculations on the other; the codex also includes the vernacular translation of a treatise in prose by Martino Dumense on the four cardinal virtues (Liber Senache pisolapus romanus), a fragment of the Gradi di S. Girolamo, several short narratives, as well as sayings of philosophers, all in prose, and finally, both before and after the story of Fiorio e Biancifiore, notes on debts and credits.16 The cantare starts on the recto of fol. 31, the loss of the preceding leaf having unfortunately deprived us of the beginning of the story. The title of the work can however be inferred by the explicit on the recto of fol. 47 which reads ‘Finito è i libro fiori e biancifiore / amen amen amen’ (The book of Fiorio and Biancifiore is finished. Amen, amen, amen). The date 1343 appears on the recto of fol. 25. This cantare is transcribed one verse per line, with a larger letter at the beginning of each verse, similar to the layout of the narrative works we have just considered, which have one column to the left of the page, one verse per line, and emphasis on the initial letter of each verse (see figure 5.6). In Fiorio e Biancifiore there is no sign to distinguish one stanza from another, which is not surprising given the nature of the manuscript, though in fact there may have been other reasons. Since Fiorio e Biancifiore is considered the first example of the cantare genre, it may be worth signalling a few more details. The poem is not subdivided into cantos but consists of one long narrative stretch of nearly 140 stanzas (too many to be sung in one session or even in two). The text is not designated as a cantare by the copyist but as a book (libro): ‘Finito è i libro
Figure 5.6 Layout of the Cantare di Fiorio e Biancifiore (ca 1345), with capital letters beginning every verse and no break between ottave. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. viii, 1416, fols 31v–2r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.
154 / Maria Bendinelli Predelli Fiori e Biancifiore’ (The book of Florio and Biancifiore is finished).17 Unfortunately, the first stanzas of the cantare, where many characteristics of orality are usually concentrated, are lost. However, they can be approximated thanks to the testimony of other transcriptions. In the manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashburnham 1473, for example, the opening (which here appears as a six-line sestina) reads: [O] buona gente, vi voglio pregare Che ol mio detto sia bene ascoltato, Di quello che io vi vo dire e contare E questo intenda ogni omo inamorato, Sì come nacque Fiorio e Biancifiore, Insieme s’allevor con grande amore. O good people, I pray you that you listen attentively to my words for what I intend to say and tell; let every person in love hear how Fiorio and Biancifiore were born; together they grew with great love.
In other words, although cantari usually devote the first stanza to an invocation to God or saints and relegate the announcement of the topic to the second or even to the third stanza, this does not seem to be the case in Fiorio e Biancifiore. Furthermore, although it is common for medieval verses in manuscript to be hypermetrical on account of words that are written in their entirety even if meant to be pronounced in a truncated form (for example, where amore is written for amor, baroni for baron, grande for gran, quello for quel, etc.) some of the lines in Fiorio e Biancifiore in Magl. viii, 1416 have very peculiar ways of generating a wrong measure in excess of the eleven syllables proper to the hendecasyllabic line. Some examples (with the number of syllables given in brackets) follow:18 E poi diceva: ‘Misera tapina, Venduta sono alli malvagi cani Che mi meneranno inella stranitade, E già mai non tornerò nelle dolce contrade.’
[11] [11] [12] [14]
And then she said: ‘Alas, I, miserable wretch, am sold [as a slave] to the evil dogs who will take me into their foreign lands; I shall never come back to my lovely country.’ (74.5–8) O signor mio, come faremo noi di Fiorio? Ché, s’elli ispia novelle, voi bene sapete ...
[13] [13]
The Textualization of Early Italian Cantari / 155 O my lord, what shall we do with Florio? You well know that if he learns the news ... (78.2–3) E di sopra la torre ha uno giardino Ed in quello giardino sì hae una fontana bella E di sopra da la fontana sì ha uno albore [fino].
[11] [15] [16]
And at the top of the tower there is a garden, and in the garden there is a beautiful fountain, and above the fountain there is a handsome tree. (103.1–3)
To my ear, these extra-long lines sound as if the copyist was not completely appreciative of the verse structure and worked as if he was copying a text in prose.19 In fact, they reveal the slow movement typical of narration in prose, which reinforces the notion that the eight-line stanza was perceived at this stage first and foremost as a narrative structure. The cantari transcribed in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Magl. viii, 1272 show a very different picture.20 This manuscript may also be classified as a libro zibaldone. It consists of ninety-eight folios in paper, measuring 30 cm by 23 cm, and is written in cursive script. It contains the Cantare del Bel Gherardino and the Cantari di Tristano, but also the Storia d’Apollonio di Tiro in prose, the Ordine della vita cristiana by Simone da Cascia, the Passione di santo Istagio, a fragment from Dante’s Paradiso, poetry by Sacchetti and others, a geographical description of Europe, and rhetorical precepts. These texts are interspersed with letters, accounts, notes, and fragments of other cantari, as if someone were trying to fill in the blanks, or needed space for miscellaneous records. The writing is in two columns, and the cantari are consistently transcribed without any attention to the division into verse, as if they were in prose. However, the beginning of each stanza is clearly signalled by a larger initial letter at the beginning of the line (see figure 5.7). The same layout is also used in another manuscript, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze ii.iv.163, which preserves the first twenty-eight stanzas of Bel Gherardino. This manuscript is another libro registro, originally a collection of legal formulas, as the title on the first page suggests: ‘Formule di saramenti di vari savi’ (formulas for oaths gathered from various learned men), presumably a repertoire of useful formulas for a notary. Such a method of transcribing cantare texts is not the result of the inattention that often characterizes manuscripts compiled for private use. It is the normal format used to transcribe lyric texts such as canzoni,
156 / Maria Bendinelli Predelli and originally it was the main format used to transcribe texts to be sung. We find it, for example, in thirteenth-century manuscripts that preserve troubadour Provençal lyrics, which were commonly considered musical texts. In this kind of layout the essential element is the division into stanzas; within each stanza the words are perceived as a continuum and the lines are written without divisions, although the end of the verse is usually signalled by some kind of mark, such as a period, a colon, or one or two oblique bars (see figure 5.8). The same layout continued to be used for Italian ‘lyric’ poems even long after these genres had been severed from music and the poems were perceived essentially as literary texts. The information we can gather from this layout for ottave is therefore somewhat ambiguous: it may suggest that these poems in ottava rima were perceived by the scribes as lyric poems, such as canzoni and sonetti. More likely this layout suggests that those who transcribed Bel Gherardino and the Cantari di Tristano perceived the texts as inseparable from their musical performance: the narrative poems had become cantari. One may recall that at the end of the third day of the Decameron, Boccaccio refers to the story ‘about Sir Guglielmo and the Lady of Vergiù’ sung by Dioneo and Fiammetta (these figures are the subjects of a well-known cantare),21 and that in Boccaccio’s Corbaccio, the widow reads with gusto ‘the Song [canzone] of the Riddle and that of Florio and Biancifiore.’22 We might infer from this that the term canzone could be attributed to a narrative text in ottava rima. In the layout of Bel Gherardino we therefore seem to have further testimony to the practice of singing narrative stories in ottava rima. What we have seen so far are texts of cantari that were transcribed in two very different styles: one that links cantari to narrative texts in verse, the other that links cantare to the performative style of lyric canzoni. To complicate the issue further, in the midst of a Florentine chronicle commonly known as the Diario di anonimo (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Magl. xxv, 19, written in minuscola cancelleresca) the writer abruptly inserted a poem relating events that took place in 1375–6 during the War of the Eight Saints between Florence and the pope. One editor of this text, Armando Balduino, has entitled it the Cantare della Guerra degli Otto Santi.23 Here the stanzas are written across the full page, the beginning of each stanza is emphasized by a larger initial letter shifted toward the left, but the verses are written two per line, separated by a sort of parenthesis mark (see figure 5.9). This is the only example known to me of such a layout for a poem in ottave. It is extremely interesting that this layout distances itself from both the xxxxxx
Figure 5.7 Layout of the Cantare del Bel Gherardino (ca 1373), in register format, with each ottava written in the manner of prose. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. viii, 1272, fol. 34r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.
Figure 5.8 Layout of stanzas for songs of Peire Vidal in a chansonnier of troubadour lyrics (mid thirteenth cent.). Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, .R.4.4, fol. 22v. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.
158 / Maria Bendinelli Predelli perception of the ottava as a primarily narrative device linked to reading and the perception of it as a stanza di canzone linked to a musical performance. Rather, such an arrangement emphasizes the binary rhythm of the couplets (rhyming ab ab ab cc), suggesting that the ottava was at this point perceived as a poetic structure fit for written literary poetry as if it were a sonnet or an Italian textual – not musical – stanza di canzone. This is confirmed by a comparison with the layout of Petrarchan sonnets and canzoni, where the stanzas are normally laid out in two-verse lines (see figure 5.10). Such a layout is also reminiscent of a common format for yet another metrical structure of interest in the study of the origins of the ottava, that of the serventese. Thus around 1380 the Tuscan ottava had reached full recognition as an autonomous poetic structure, paving the way for the single-stanza strambotti and rispetti of the fifteenth century. Before attempting to reach any conclusions I would like to mention an issue that has not often been raised, that of the various degrees of ‘singability’ of texts delivered orally. We might agree that the cantari we read in these manuscripts were destined to be delivered orally, sung in public. However, might there have been a difference between the melodies used to narrate a story and the melodies used for troubadour songs? This question admits of no solution (given the lack of sound recordings from the Middle Ages). However, it is reasonable to assume that such a difference existed and that the distinction would have been very clear to a medieval listener. This seems especially likely in light of sacred texts: doesn’t Gregorian chant distinguish between syllabic, neumatic, and melismatic styles according to the different texts to which the cantus is to be applied?24 Now, it may be possible to draw some conclusions from this evidence concerning the layout of the ottava rima in its earliest occurrences. The written representations of early cantari are too limited to allow us to reach any definite conclusions; nevertheless, I offer a tentative hypothesis. The early cantare Fiorio e Biancifiore is characterized by a specifically narrative mode; this narrative aspect adds to my perplexity regarding hypotheses that the eight-line stanza of ottava rima was derived from lyric poetry. From the very beginning, the metre of ottava rima was perceived by both Boccaccio and the anonymous copyist of Fiorio e Biancifiore as a narrative metre, and as such it was received by Domenico Scolari and by the Sienese authors of religious narrative poems. This implies that, if we want to investigate the origins of ottava rima, we should perhaps concentrate on narrative antecedents rather than on lyric ones. In this context, we should perhaps pay more attention to narrative xxxxx
Figure 5.9 Layout of the Cantare della Guerra degli Otto Santi (after 1378), with pairs of verses written across the page. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. xxv, 19, fol. 72r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.
Figure 5.10 Layout of a canzone by Petrarch (fourteenth cent.), with pairs of verses written across the page. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Pluteo xli.17, fol. 49r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.
160 / Maria Bendinelli Predelli metres such as those used in serventesi, following De Robertis who already in 1980 underlined the similarities between the serventese and the cantare.25 A variant form of serventese seems to have developed into the extremely popular six-line narrative stanza, the sestina narrativa (in the terminology of Raffaele Spongano, the serventese ritornellato). Although the sestina appears more often with the rhyme pattern aaaabb, the rhyme pattern ababcc also existed and is documented, for example, in a historical contrasto by Gidino di Sommacampagna dated 1384.26An interesting eight-line rhyme scheme is found in the Atrovare del vivo e del morto, whose octaves consist of couplets of hendecasyllables with the rhyme pattern aabbccdd.27 Rhymed couplets of eight- and nine-syllable lines (otto-novenari) were common in early narrative poetry (one example is in Detto del gatto lupesco) and represented the Italian version of the primary narrative metre of the French courtly poems. It is precisely these poems that offer the legendary subject matter for most of the early cantari (beginning with Fiorio e Biancifiore). Thirty or forty years after Boccaccio’s narrative works, the singing of poems in ottava rima had become common practice. The stories were commonly divided into at least two cantos. The signs of oral delivery in the text, especially at the beginning of a canto, became prominent; the rhythm also became much smoother and more euphonious, as one notices when comparing the rhythm of the verses in, for example, Bel Gherardino with those of earlier poems in ottave. It is not by chance that Bel Gherardino is transcribed as if it were a canzone. It is worth noting however that, with the exception of Fiorio e Biancifiore, the stories sung in public squares seem to have nothing to do with the early written experiments of the genre: neither the Filostrato nor the Teseida nor the Istoria di Alessandro Magno appear to have ever been sung as cantari. It seems legitimate to identify two traditions, a written one that includes Boccaccio’s poems, the Istoria di Alessandro Magno, and the poemetti religiosi, and an oral one, or rather a body of poems that entered the repertoire of jongleurs and were entrusted to writing only in order to be sung, beginning with Fiorio e Biancifiore and including Pucci’s cantari. The fact that it is possible to identify two traditions that run parallel, without any evidence of one having been derived from the other, justifies a philological argument for a preexisting structure that incorporated elements of both traditions: that of being written for narrative purposes, and that of being composed for oral delivery. The libro of Fiorio e Biancifiore (which I believe to be an antecedent to and not a derivative of Boccaccio’s Filocolo) seems to respond to both criteria. By virtue of the fact that it appears to be a translation (and also a rewriting) of a much older French poem, this very first cantare seems to presuppose
The Textualization of Early Italian Cantari / 161 a written text rather than an oral tradition. It is not inconceivable that Boccaccio received the suggestion of the new metre from a manuscript containing something similar to the story of Fiorio e Biancifiore (and possibly from a manuscript with that very poem: the story obviously impressed him so much that he reworked it in his prose novel the Filocolo). Nevertheless, Fiorio e Biancifiore was part of a jongleur repertoire: it was composed in order to be recited, narrated, or sung. In the second half of the fourteenth century the practice of singing narrative poems of French descent and legendary subject matter became more common in peninsular Italy and the old jongleur made room for the new figure of the canterino. This explains the term canzone used by Boccaccio for works that may have been cantari, and it certainly influenced the way in which copyists transmitted the Bel Gherardino. The literariness of the prestigious Boccaccian poems, on the other hand, as well as the way in which the narrative poems were sung (which must have been different from that of lyric songs) facilitated the reception of the ottava as a poetic structure similar to other canonical forms of literary poetry. This explains the adoption of the metre not only by authors like Pucci but also, later on, by poets as refined as Poliziano. The cantare genre thus appears, from its very inception, to have been characterized by a mixing of oral and written traditions, an enigmatic and intriguing quality of so much medieval literature. NOTES 1
Excellent studies on the mise-en-page of Petrarch’s Canzoniere have been provided by Furio Brugnolo, ‘Libro d’autore e forma-canzoniere: Implicazioni grafico-visive nell’originale dei Rerum vulgarium fragmenta,’ and H. Wayne Storey, ‘All’interno della poetica grafico-visiva di Petrarca,’ both in ‘Rerum vulgarium fragmenta’: Codice Vat. Lat. 3195: Commentario all’edizione in fac-simile, ed. Gino Belloni, Furio Brugnolo, H. Wayne Storey, and Stefano Zamponi (Padua: Antenore, 2003), 105–29 and 131–71. For the mise-en-page of other lyrical texts, see also Geneviève Hasenohr, ‘Le rythme et la versification,’ and ‘Les recueils lyriques,’ in Mise en page et mise en texte du livre manuscrit, ed. Henri-Jean Martin et Jean Vezin (Paris: Editions du Cercle de la librairie – Promodis, 1990), 235–8 and 329–33; Peter Weinmann, Sonett-Idealität und Sonett-Realität: Neue Aspekte der Gliederung des Sonetts von seinen Anfängen bis Petrarca (Tübingen: G. Narr, 1989); and the bibliography by Barbara Frank, Layout-Entwicklung mittelalterlicher Handschrisften, available online at http://www.barbara-job.de/biblio/tex_bib.htm#medien.
162 / Maria Bendinelli Predelli 2
3
4
5
6
7
8
‘Il dibattito intorno alle origini dell’ottava rima è più che mai aperto’; Aldo Menichetti, ‘Problemi della metrica,’ in Letteratura italiana, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa, vol. 3, Le forme del testo, tom. 1, Teoria e poesia (Turin: Einaudi, 1984), 349–90 at 390 (translation mine). For a brief overview of the cantare genre, see Eugenio Ragni, ‘Cantare,’ in Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana, ed. Vittore Branca (Turin: utet, 1986), 1:480–8. See Aurelio Roncaglia, ‘Per la storia dell’ottava rima,’ Cultura neolatina 25 (1965): 5–14; Michelangelo Picone, ‘Boccaccio e la codificazione dell’ottava,’ in Boccaccio: Secoli di vita: Atti del Congresso internazionale Boccaccio 1975, University of California, Los Angeles, 17–19 ottobre 1975, ed. Marga Cottino-Jones and Edward F. Tuttle (Ravenna: Longo, 1977), 53–65; Guglielmo Gorni, ‘Un’ipotesi sull’origine dell’ottava rima,’ Metrica 1 (1978): 79–94; and Armando Balduino, ‘Pater semper incertus: Ancora sulle origini dell’ottava rima,’ in Boccaccio, Petrarca e altri poeti del Trecento (Florence: Olschki, 1984), 93–140. According to Raffaele Spongano the ottava ‘si sviluppò ... dallo schema fondamentale dell’antica poesia destinata alla danza: aaab’; Nozioni ed esempi di metrica italiana, 2nd ed. (Bologna: Patron, 1974), 51. See Domenico De Robertis, ‘Nascita, tradizione e venture del cantare in ottava rima,’ in I Cantari: Struttura e tradizione, ed. Michelangelo Picone and Maria Bendinelli Predelli (Florence: Olschki, 1984), 9–24, esp. 15 n. 24. The fact that religious poems in ottave were composed by Sienese authors may explain the use of the ottava in the laude by Bianco da Siena. See for example the sacre rappresentazioni edited in Vincenzo De Bartholomaeis, Il teatro abruzzese del Medio Evo (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1924; facsimile repr. Bologna: Forni, 1979). Antonio Maria Cirese, ‘Note per una nuova indagine sugli strambotti delle origini romanze, della società quattro-cinquecentesca e della tradizione orale moderna,’ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 144 (1967): 1–54, 491–566. An interesting example of a ballad with the same rhyme pattern as the ottava can be found in Par les bons Gedeons, written in French by Filippotto da Caserta, which because it exalts the antipope Clement vii is dated after 1378; see Antonio Cappelli, ed., Ballate rispetti d’amore e poesie varie (Modena: Cappelli, 1866), 23. For the latter, see Anna Bettarini Bruni, ‘Intorno ai cantari di Antonio Pucci,’ in I Cantari: Struttura e tradizione, ed. Picone and Bendinelli Predelli, 143–60. Giovanni Boccaccio, Filostrato, ed. Vittore Branca, in Giovanni Boccaccio, Tutte le opere, ed. Vittore Branca, vol. 2 (Milan: Mondadori, 1994), 1–228.
The Textualization of Early Italian Cantari / 163 9 10
11
12
13
14
15
16 17
18
Giovanni Boccaccio, Teseida delle nozze di Emilia, ed. Alberto Limentani, in Boccaccio, Tutte le opere, ed. Branca, 2:229–664. In the poem’s final stanza the author purports to have drawn his subject from a work in Latin prose: ‘ch’era per prosa e in gramatica prima.’ I have read the poem in the unpublished thesis of Emanuela Bariani, ‘Domenico Scolari, Istoria di Re Alessandro (edizione critica),’ directed by Armando Balduino (Tesi di Laurea, Università degli studi di Padova, 1980–1). In Boccaccio’s Teseida, each canto is preceded by an introductory sonnet. The Istoria di Re Alessandro is preceded by a rhymed summary of the whole poem, divided into 176 quartine; the metre probably represents an Italian version of the French couplet d’octosyllabes, being rhymed couplets of otto-novenari. See Poemetti religiosi senesi del Trecento, ed. Giorgio Varanini (Bari: Laterza, 1965). La fanciullezza di Gesù was left unfinished due to the death of the writer. Another poem by Niccolò di Mino Cicerchia, La risurrezione, of uncertain date, is divided into two cantos. It is interesting to note that this layout is found in the semi-autograph manuscript of Petrarch’s Canzoniere (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticano latino 3195), where it is exclusively reserved for the canzoni in sestine. The layout is a significant and intentional innovation by Petrarch according to Furio Brugnolo, ‘Libro d’autore e forma-canzoniere,’ 119–21. These observations converge with those of Brugnolo, who states: ‘l’incolonnamento è normale, anzi pressoché esclusivo e insomma obbligatorio, fin dalle origini, per i componimenti non-lirici ... essendo assai più agevole impaginare e incolonnare testi in versi caratterizzati da una rigida e costante isometria – epica, narrativa, didattica, eccetera – che non testi, come quelli appartenenti alla lirica d’arte’; Brugnolo, ‘Libro d’autore e forma-canzoniere,’ 116. See Armando Petrucci, ‘Il libro manoscritto,’ Letteratura italiana, vol. 2, Produzione e consumo, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa (Turin: Einaudi, 1983), 499– 524. See description in Domenico De Robertis, ‘Cantari antichi,’ Studi di filologia italiana 28 (1970): 67–175, at 71–2. Il cantare di Fiorio e Biancifiore, ed. Domenico De Robertis, in ‘Cantari antichi,’ 78–109, at 109. Citations to the poem as found in Magl. viii, 1416 are given by stanza and verse, following this edition. Other examples include: ‘E disse: “Perché sète voi qui venuti? [12] / Hacci qui veruna cosa che vi piaccia?”’ [12] (68.5–6); ‘Alora disse Fiorio: “Ed io vi voglio andare”’ [13] (89.1); ‘Sì portarai teco, e nonn-avere
164 / Maria Bendinelli Predelli
19
20 21
22
23
24
25 26
27
dotanza’ [13] (90.6); ‘Sì disse: “Donna, ista colla buona ventura”’ [13] (94.6). See also: ‘Ora vi va’, figliuolo, e fa’ lo suo comando [13] / Ched ello ti manda molto salutando’ [12] (19.7–8); Giuliano Tanturli (in seminar) has stated that he has not encountered verses that are hypermetrical on account of the euphonic ‘d’ (as here with ‘ched’). De Robertis, ‘Cantari antichi,’ 72–4, describes Magl. viii, 1272, noting that the verses are transcribed ‘a mo’ di prosa’ (72). ‘Dioneo e la Fiammetta cominciarono a cantare di messer Guglielmo e della Dama del Vergiù.’ Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Vittore Branca, vol. 4 of Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Vittorre Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1976), 340 (3. Conclusione); The Decameron, trans. Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella (New York: Norton, 1982), 240–1. ‘Legge la canzone dello indovinello e quella di Florio e di Biancifiore e simili cose assai.’ Giovanni Boccaccio, Corbaccio, ed. Giorgio Padoan, in Boccaccio, Tutte le opere, ed. Branca, vol. 5.2.499 (§ 316); The Corbaccio, trans. Anthony K. Cassell (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 60 (emphasis mine). Cantari del Trecento, ed. Armando Balduino (Milan: Marzorati, 1970), 239–51, 318–23. Recently Anna Bettarini Bruni has proposed recognizing Antonio Pucci as the author of the cantare; see ‘L’impegno civile di Antonio Pucci versificatore dei Vangeli,’ in Firenze alla vigilia del Rinascimento: Antonio Pucci e i suoi contemporanei, ed. Maria Bendinelli Predelli (Fiesole: Cadmo, 2006), 33–63. As Timothy McGee puts it, ‘Recitare simply separates the type of singing that employs a relatively small vocal range and simple style from the more elaborate types of song. Such a distinction has always been employed in opera, for example, where the elaborate melodies are known as arias and the simple, chantlike, melodies are called recitativi.’ Timothy J. McGee, ‘Dinner Music for the Florentine Signoria, 1350– 1450,’ Speculum 74 (1999), 95–114 at 96 n. 7. De Robertis, ‘Nascita, tradizione e venture.’ See Gidino da Sommacampagna, Trattato e arte deli rithimi volgari: Riproduzione fotografica del Cod. CCCCXLIV della Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona, ed. Gian Paolo Caprettini (Vago di Lavagna: La Grafica, 1993); and Trattato dei ritmi volgari, ed. Giovan Battista Carlo Giuliari (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1870). The contrasto is partially reproduced in Spongano, Nozioni ed esempi, 289–90. The sestina with rhyme pattern aaaabb is also found, for example, in the Cantare del Corpo di Cristo, edited by De Robertis, ‘Cantari antichi,’ 139–42. Edited by De Robertis, ‘Cantari antichi,’ 143–75.
PART THREE Administrative Textual Cultures
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NICHOLAS EVERETT
6
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum: Written Oaths and Ecclesiastical Discipline in Carolingian Italy
Sometime toward the end of his life, after governing the church of Aquileia for nearly thirteen years, the patriarch Paulinus (ca. 740–802) devised a solemn vow upon the Gospels to be taken by episcopal candidates at their consecration and recorded in a document signed by both Paulinus and his new suffragan. The formulary for this Sponsio episcoporum ad sanctam Aquileiensem sedem (The Promise of Bishops to the Holy See of Aquileia) was attached in the ninth century to an earlier manuscript of the Acts of Chalcedon, and a faulty transcription of it was printed among the earliest editions of Paulinus’s works, first by De Rubeis, then Madrisio, whose edition was reprinted in Migne’s Patrologia Latina.1 The Sponsio has received no attention from modern scholarship, with the exception of three descriptive pages in Paschini’s biography of Paulinus from over a century ago, despite a number of more recent conference papers on Paulinus that have brought his writings and their importance to light.2 Yet the text deserves closer inspection, as well as the new transcription given here, for Paulinus’s concerns in the Sponsio throw further light on his ill-documented biography and career as an exponent of Carolingian ecclesiastical reforms in Italy. Moreover, the Sponsio is the only known example, hitherto unnoticed, of the use of the papal Liber diurnus romanorum pontificum (Formulary of the Roman Pontiffs) in the Carolingian period outside of Rome. Drawing on diverse but complementary traditions, the Sponsio is a unique document in the history of the early medieval church, let alone Italian ecclesiastical history. It reveals how the impetus toward increasing the use of literacy in ecclesiastical administration, as promoted by the Carolingian court, was received and acted upon in an ancient and prestigious metropolitan church that had long experience of documentation. Its form and content deserve closer scrutiny.3
168 / Nicholas Everett In what follows, I shall first discuss the text’s manuscript context, and then briefly describe the contents of the Sponsio before attempting to place its concerns in the context of Paulinus’s activities as a Carolingian reformer in Italy. Indeed, the content and the form of the Sponsio demonstrate two influences that converge in Paulinus, for while its content reflects his involvement in Frankish reform councils and his close association with the Carolingian court, the Sponsio’s form owes much to Italian ecclesiastical traditions of documentary practices for governing clergy and administering churches, as witnessed in the charters of Lombard Italy (and particularly Lucca), and in the Liber diurnus, which drew from the same, deeply rooted culture of written contracts. We can trace, moreover, a degree of tension within Paulinus’s writing, including the Sponsio, concerning the close association of the church with the interests of secular power, and this shall be explored briefly as a fitting conclusion. The Manuscript: Vaticano latino 1322 and 1322a The only surviving recension of the Sponsio was written in a mid-ninth to early tenth-century Carolingian minuscule script found on the first three folios of a manuscript (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticano latino 1322a) consisting of only five folios, the last two folios containing documents which concern two twelfth-century Veronese clerics.4 Obviously this was not the original manuscript context of the Sponsio; in modern times these five folios were detached from the end of a copy of the Acts of Chalcedon dating from the late sixth or early seventh century (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticano latino 1322), as betrayed by the continuous numbering of folios between the two codices (Vat. lat 1322, fols 1–279; Vat. lat. 1322a, fols 280–5), and confirmed by an undated note of Father Franz Erhle (1845–1934) on the final frontispiece of the earlier codex.5We might immediately excuse this modern manipulation of manuscripts on the grounds that someone only separated what should never have been put together in the first place – the Sponsio and the later Veronese documents seem like careless additions to a venerably ancient copy of the Acts of Chalcedon. But looking closer at the latter reveals the connection between the two texts: the first twenty-four folios of Vat. lat. 1322, containing the ‘Actio prima’ of Chalcedon, are a restoration of the text in a hand that is similar to, if not the same as, the text of the Sponsio (the hand of the Sponsio is shown in figure 6.1).
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 169
Figure 6.1 Hand of the Sponsio episcoporum. Vatican City, Biblioteca Vaticana, Vaticano latino 1322a, fol. 280r. Reproduced with permission of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; further reproduction by any means is prohibited.
It would appear, then, that restoration of the opening twenty-four folios and the additional five folios (three of which contain the Sponsio) were added at the same time, just a few generations after Paulinus. The question remains where. On the basis of script and provenance of both manuscripts, Verona seems the most likely choice.6 On the other hand, there is no reason why the Sponsio, and the restorations, could not have been completed in Aquileia, and the manuscript transferred at some later date to Verona, where by the mid-twelfth century the bishop Tebald and his archpriest used the blank folios to record their transactions. There were indeed strong links between Verona and Aquileia
170 / Nicholas Everett precisely at this time, for in 1140 the bishop of Aquileia, Pellegrinus, ‘rediscovered’ the patriarchal rights of his see over the province of Veneto, and in particular over the church in Verona, a development which Bishop Tebald and other Veronese clergy actively promoted in the interests of gaining further prestige and independence from Milan, Rome, and secular interference.7 Curiously enough, throughout Vat. lat. 1322 and Vat. lat. 1322a there are marginal notes in a ninth-century hand, in the past uncritically and erroneously attributed to Pacificus of Verona,8 which suggest someone was reading the Acts of Chalcedon specifically with a view to relations between bishops and their metropolitan.9 The comments are too few and too generic in nature to determine anything more about the annotator, and equally intriguing are the two different notes scribbled on the last folio of Vat. lat. 1322. The first of these is in a hand similar to that of the Sponsio (and to that of the restorations to Vat. lat. 1322) and records a quotation from Hilary of Poitiers’s De trinitate concerning the Holy Spirit.10 Interestingly, in his Contra Felicem, which like the Sponsio was written toward the end of his life, Paulinus does cite Hilary’s De trinitate (simply called ‘his 12 books’) several times on the topic of the Holy Spirit, devoting a chapter to the refutation of Felix’s misuse of Hilary’s words, and in the following chapter he served the heretic a selection of quotes from Hilary to boot.11 Paulinus did not, however, cite the passage given in the marginal quotation, nor did he anywhere else in his corpus of writings. The quotation seems geared toward use in disputation (Hilary did strive to achieve this effect) and does reflect Paulinus’s interests in the Contra Felicem, but in that work he rightly focused more upon the relation of Christ to the Father than upon pneumatology.12 In the second note on this last folio of Vat. lat. 1322, from the same hand mentioned above which wrote marginal notes through the manuscript, we find a prayer (perhaps a probatio pennae?) to uphold secular power.13 The note was clearly inspired by the invocations to the emperors in the Acts of Chalcedon 1.6, which appear on fol. 7 of the manuscript,14 where the same annotator also wrote in the margin ‘absit invidia regno u[e]stro’ (may envy be absent from your realm). It would be folly to link any of this to Paulinus without further evidence, but this type of laudatory language was certainly encouraged at the Frankish court, and it is not unreasonable to suggest that the annotator’s interests reflect the general ambience of Carolingian reforms. We can deduce no more than that, but overall the restoration of Vat. lat. 1322 and the addition of the Sponsio can be firmly located in a context of ninth-century ‘research’ (why not?) on definitions of orthodoxy and, though much less
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 171 so, on relations between metropolitans and their suffragan bishops. Moreover, in the course of the Sponsio, Paulinus refers to the ‘catholicae fidei regula iuxta definitionem Nicaeni concilii et ut tomus beati declarat papae leonis’ (Catholic faith determined by the council of Nicea and as is declared in the Tome of the blessed Pope Leo; lines 34–6), the ‘statuta canonum ab orthodoxis salubriter digesta praesulibus’ (statutes of the canons that have been profitably determined by the orthodox prelates; lines 43–4), the ‘canonica documenta’ (canonical teachings; lines 51–2), and so on.15 Hence the attachment of the Sponsio to the Acts of Chalcedon was a logical addition to the manuscript in the ninth century. The Text of the Sponsio episcoporum Paulinus has enjoyed a mixed reputation as a Latin stylist, and the rhetoric of the Sponsio further demonstrates why. Norberg has described Paulinus’s Latin as being neither a model of elegance nor of grammatical purity.16 His often highly baroque style can recall the abstract Latinity of late antique authors, and his enthusiasm for hyperbaton and inverted subordinate clauses can obscure his meaning in favour of conveying a multiplicity of metaphor and allusion. He was also inventive: a ‘bold creator’ of neologisms, he coined over sixty new words for which lexicographers are grateful.17 Yet we can only agree with Norberg that ‘one can judge his mannered and bombastic style, as well as his love of neologisms, to be still tolerable. It is harder to excuse his grammatical mistakes.’18 The language of the Sponsio often obscures any precise meaning,19 particularly with regard to oaths (lines 15–27, 50–2) and the bishop’s self-censure (lines 73–8, 104–7), but the overall message against perjury and relying on others to police one’s behaviour is clear enough. The occasion was highly ceremonial, and Paulinus’s language aims higher than a careful description of earthly duties. I offer below, alongside the Latin text, an English translation, perhaps jarringly literal in places, more to avoid laborious line-by-line explications than to provide a definitive interpretation; I also list the concordances between the Sponsio and Paulinus’s other works (which confirm his authorship, provide insight into Paulinus’s style, and help untangle his meaning in places) and between the Sponsio and the papal formulary known as the Liber diurnus (which confirm that Paulinus knew this work and was partly inspired by it for his Sponsio). The Sponsio opens by emphasizing the importance of the public perception of the bishop (inspired by 1 Tim. 3:1), and then fastens upon
172 / Nicholas Everett perjury, a subject raised several times throughout the Sponsio (lines 21–2, 30–1, 56–7, 68–9) and clearly a primary concern of Paulinus here, for reasons we shall suggest below. The crime of perjury is wicked enough to negate any care taken with pastoral duties; therefore, Paulinus explains, as pontiff of a ‘first see’ he is obligated to ensure that his episcopal candidates do not swear an oath they will be forced to break: the language of ‘snares’ and ‘chains’ extends beyond the episcopal oath to include any oaths. Thereafter three chief obligations are spelled out quickly and clearly: the bishop must keep the faith of the fathers (the touchstones being ‘Nicaea’ and the ‘tomus’ of Pope Leo), must preach this faith to the best of his ability, and must adhere to the canons. The meaning of the following section on oaths, which separates ‘hidden’ crimes (simony, sodomy, bestiality, adultery, corrupting nuns) from openly knowable or forensically soluble crimes (homicide, theft, false witness, and ‘crimes similar to these’), is rendered in a manner far from clear; the theme was obviously inspired by 1Tim. 5:24–5, but it is difficult to determine the undercurrent of Paulinus’s thought here. The categories seem to reflect different spheres of secular and canon law, and that Paulinus advocated restricting episcopal oaths to religious and ecclesiastical affairs. Attention is then returned to the bishop’s own behaviour, where the threat of losing office for failing in his duties is appropriately sounded just prior to the injunction to attend synods when summoned and that of obeying the ordinances of one’s metropolitan and receiving his envoys with full hospitality. A final section repeating ecclesiastical duties craftily prefaces the obligations of administering church property. The document is then signed by the candidate and whoever else is present, and presented to Paulinus. We are even given a date, although unfortunately the regnal years of Charlemagne and Pippin do not quite add up: the 29th year of Charlemagne’s reign would be 797, the 19th of Pippin (781–810) would be 800; the lack of imperial title therefore narrows the date to 797–9. The Carolingian Context Why did Paulinus find it necessary to reassert his metropolitan authority over bishops at their consecration in the form of a signed guarantee at this time? We may suspect that some local circumstance – a rebellious bishop, or jurisdictional conflict with Istria or neighbouring Salzburg – prompted Paulinus’s actions, but we find no trace of such in our sources, which are fairly meagre anyway for piecing together Paulinus’s biography at any point. Instead, we must look to the general context of
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 173 Paulinus’s career and activity as an advocate of Carolingian ecclesiastical reform in Italy, and here we can determine two trends which combined to inspire the form and concerns of the Sponsio. First, Paulinus’s involvement in the great Frankish reform synods of Regensburg (792), Frankfurt (794), and the one held ‘on the banks of the Danube’ (ad ripas Danubii, 796) in the wake of the Carolingian defeat of the Avars, not to mention his commissions from Charlemagne to write learned treatises (the Libellus sacrosyllabus and the Contra Felicem) against the Adoptionist heresy, ensured that he channelled the currents of Carolingian reform and its concerns into Italy, particularly with respect to the new profile of the clergy as powerful agents of government, as witnessed in the council he himself called and presided over in Friuli (796).20 Second, Paulinus sought to capitalize on the ancient prestige of his ‘primary’ see (Sponsio, line 17), and attempted to raise its profile to something commensurate with its glorious and, according to legend, apostolic past. Paulinus’s Sponsio can be seen as an Italian, ecclesiastical response to the preoccupations with oaths of fidelity at Charlemagne’s court, beginning with their imposition in 789 and culminating in the personal oath to Charlemagne that ‘the emperor’ required of all subjects in 802.21 This premium on the oath was a reaction to its increasing popularity and importance among the secular hierarchy, rather than an ingenious, topdown innovation in the means of governing on Charlemagne’s part, for it was precisely in response to oaths of conspiracy and mutual solidarity among magnates which seriously threatened the king’s grip on power that he decided to fight fire with fire, as it were. The oath, then, became the touchstone for legitimate political power and military activity, and its implementation resulted in a fundamental structural shift in the kingdom from the pyramids of highly localized and personalized bonds of vassalic ties to a simplified hierarchy emphasising the paramount importance of obligations to the king above all else.22 It provided the reference point against which the ruler could measure the behaviour of his subjects, and applied a necessary dose of theological force in the absence of coercive forces and institutions. Hence it is hardly surprising that prelates, given leading roles in promoting Charlemagne’s renovatio of society, would borrow from the oath’s new clothes. After all, even the pope in this period was forced to clear himself of the charges against him with an oath.23 Charlemagne never specifically mandated that metropolitans extract oaths from episcopal candidates, nor do we find other archbishops in Francia drawing up anything like Paulinus’s Sponsio for their suffragans. Yet the first mention of the use of oaths in Carolingian legislation
174 / Nicholas Everett coincides with another change instituted by Charlemagne and directly relevant to the content of the Sponsio, namely, the revival of metropolitan authority over suffragan bishops, as recorded in the first chapter of the first of the great reform capitularies which was issued at the synod of Herstal (779). The concern with oaths was limited to prohibiting associations concluded with mutual oaths (coniurationes), doubtless a reaction to the crisis of 778.24 Just as the employment of the oath of fidelity was gradually developed over the next decade, so too the opening chapter, baldly reasserting metropolitan authority over suffragans, points to a more conscious policy, not fully implemented until 811, of establishing archbishops (archiepiscopi) as heads of provinces and as key figures of government, though the policy was not systematic, and much ambiguity remained between the two titles – ‘metropolitan’ and ‘archbishop’ – and their significance.25 Hence the Sponsio is precisely the sort of document we might expect to emerge from a coalescence of these twin Carolingian concerns of regulating oaths, on the one hand, and metropolitan authority, on the other, yet no examples have come down to us from Frankish prelates. Interestingly, the few surviving examples of the oath which Charlemagne imposed on all subjects, lay and clerical, have the guarantor use the term repromitto (I promise in return), a scriptural term which appears several times in the Sponsio (lines 42, 69, 96, 99) but otherwise is relatively rare in Frankish sources.26 As we shall see, Paulinus borrowed his language from Italian traditions of ecclesiastical formularies, including the papal Liber diurnus, for his promissio (see Sponsio, line 108). Charlemagne may have done so also. We do not know if Paulinus was present at the Frankish court around 789 when Charlemagne’s second great reform capitulary, the Admonitio generalis, was promulgated, but the Sponsio reflects many of the issues concerning bishops found in the legislation of the Admonitio generalis, particularly the ‘new’ chapters (chaps 60–82) drawn up for the occasion, in which Alcuin, a friend of Paulinus, may have had a hand.27 The warnings against perjury, ‘sive intra ecclesiam, sive extra’ (whether within the church or outside of it; chap. 64, where it is coupled with an injunction to fast before oaths), as well as those against giving false testimony, ‘sicut saepe rogavimus’ (as we have often asked; chap. 68),28 echo the preoccupation of the Sponsio with oaths (lines 20–7, 56, 68–9, 103–4), as do the prohibitions against theft and adultery (Admonitio generalis, chap. 68; cf. Sponsio, lines 54–5), and others less specific, such as the injunction to preach (Admonitio generalis, chaps 61, 82; cf. Sponsio, lines 14, 41–2), and so on. In any case, Paulinus was certainly at the synod of Regensburg (792/3), where the condemnation of Pippin the Hunchback and fellow
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 175 conspirators resulted in a tightening up of the use of the oath to secure loyalty to the monarch; from then on the oath was imposed on all bishops, abbots, and ranks of the lower clergy, along with secular official and royal vassals as before. Interestingly, Paulinus may have been directly involved with uncovering the Hunchback’s plot: Fardulf, the Lombard who exposed it, was promptly awarded with the abbacy of St Denis for his loyalty. And it is presumably at this council that Charlemagne issued two royal charters to Paulinus which guaranteed the free election of future patriarchs of Aquileia and fiscal immunities in recompense for stationing troops on the church’s land when necessary against threats from the east. Whether or not we see the grants to Paulinus in the same context as the rewards to Fardulf for exposing the plot (we know that they later acted as representatives, missi, together in 798 in Pistoia) it is clear from these charters that Paulinus’s church was envisaged as the key instrument in the expansion of Carolingian power in the region. Paulinus’s close friendship with Duke Heric, and his own participation in the expedition of 796 against the Avars, suggest Charlemagne chose well.29 A year after Regensburg, at the synod of Frankfurt (794), Paulinus presented his Libellus sacrosyllabus, a treatise refuting the Adoptionist heresy and personally commissioned by Charlemagne, whom Paulinus called ‘king and priest.’30 Besides the two top priorities of neutralizing Adoptionist ‘poison’ and marshalling objections to iconoclasm, the synod also dealt with three cases involving the discipline of bishops, oaths, and definitions of metropolitan authority, and these must have had a direct influence on Paulinus when he composed the Sponsio.31 One case involved the archbishops of Vienne and Arles and how many suffragans each was allowed to have. For resolution the court consulted the ‘epistles of the blessed Gregory, Zosimus, Leo, and Symmachus’ and found that Vienne can have four suffragans, Arles can have nine: a delegation had been sent to the pope to decide on the sees of Moutier en Tarentaise, Embrun, and Aachen. Another case deliberated upon at Frankfurt was that of Bishop Peter of Verdun, who was accused of treason; though he had sworn ‘in the presence of God and his angels’ and with two or three others, that he did not ‘conspire against the life of the king, nor was ever unfaithful,’ he could not provide witnesses to the oath, and so chose ‘one of his men’ to do battle in an ordeal to prove his innocence, and the fellow won. The pardon granted to Peter by the synod, on the basis that he who faced the ordeal did so of his own will, without orders from a synod or bishop, reveals that, despite the constant appeal to canonical tradition at these synods, in practice the Frankish church was finding its own solutions. Likewise with our third case, that
176 / Nicholas Everett of Gaerbodus (see unknown), who claimed that he was a bishop but had no witnesses to his ordination. His metropolitan, Archbishop Magnard of Rouen, had pursued the man and the matter and claimed that Gaerbodus was only a deacon who had been ordained priest in an uncanonical fashion, and so Gaerbodus was stripped of his office by ‘the metropolitan and fellow provincial bishops’ (conprovinciales episcopi). These three cases heard at Frankfurt doubtless inspired the elevation of metropolitan authority in an accompanying act of legislation that addressed the problem of clergy who were disgruntled with their bishop’s decisions in court: The clergy must go to their metropolitan, and he will judge the case with his suffragan bishops. Let our counts also attend to the judgment of bishops. And if there is anything which the metropolitan cannot correct or pacify, then let the plaintiffs come [to us] with their accusation and with a letter from their metropolitan, so that we might know the truth of the matter.32
Hence at Frankfurt not only did Paulinus witness the elevation of metropolitan authority as the key to episcopal and clerical discipline, he also saw the deficiencies of ordinations and oaths without proof – two problems that the text of the Sponsio addresses. The synod was a big occasion for Paulinus, and these deliberations must have affected his understanding of his role as patriarch. Yet he avoided using that title, or even that of archbishop, when he presented his Libellus sacrosyllabus to the synod, though he granted that title to Milan: I, Paulinus, an unworthy sinner and last of the servants of the Lord, bishop by name rather than merit of the see of Aquileia, which I serve by the authority of God and which is girded by the Hesperian lands, together with the most reverend Peter, worthy of all honours and archbishop of the Milanese see and with all of our brother-colleagues and fellow priests and venerable bishops of the Catholic churches of Liguria, Austria, Hisperia, Emilia.33
Two years later, when Paulinus composed the acts of the synod held on the banks of the Danube in the wake of the Carolingian expedition against the Avars, he described himself as the ‘guardian of the holy and orthodox see of the church of Aquileia and a companion of these venerable brothers.’34 We know from a letter of Alcuin that one of the venerabiles fratres was Bishop Arno of Salzburg, who was elevated to
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 177 status of archbishop in 797 by Leo iii at the request of Charlemagne. Was Arno’s elevation or some subsequent problem with ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the neighbouring see of Carantania the immediate cause for the creation of the Sponsio? After all, Paulinus’s successor, Ursus (802–11) appeared at Charlemagne’s court brandishing documents and claiming that Carantania should be under Aquileia’s jurisdiction: as a solution the king merely split the two sees at the Drava river.35 We find no such acrimony in our sources for Paulinus, but rather the opposite. He and Arno were friends and seem to have shared the same goals, judging from Alcuin’s letters to the two.36 The surviving legislation from the synod ‘ad ripas Danubii’ (796), redacted by Paulinus himself, provides no answers to these questions of context for the Sponsio, for it constitutes a treatise on baptism, geared toward bringing ‘the minds of fierce peoples to gentle compliance,’ although other matters must have been discussed at the synod.37 But that same year, and presumably soon after the summer ‘ad ripas Danubii,’ Paulinus held his own council in the town of the Friulians which he now qualified as the metroplitan see of Aquileia (Foroiulium municipium, metropolim Aquilligensem) and the legislation that resulted points further to the inspirations behind the composition of the Sponsio.38 Prior to his own legislation, however, is a long exordium in which Paulinus set out a theology of the Trinity against Constantinople over the filioque controversy, clearly the main reason Paulinus held the council, though we do not know if this was at the request of Charlemagne. In any case, Paulinus paraphrased the Symbolum of Athanasius and decreed that clerics, priests, and every rank of the church are to learn these paraphrases by heart, with the greatest study and with no mistakes, and they have one year to do so, or will be punished.39The laity, in turn, must learn the Symbolum and the Lord’s Prayer. To complement this drive for doctrinal orthodoxy (reflected in the Sponsio, lines 33–50), Paulinus also issued fourteen acts of legislation at the council of Friuli, and forwarded them to Charlemagne asking the king to promulgate them throughout the kingdom. Although ‘the statutes of this council are not those of a general council, but a local one,’ they were ‘special, with the provincial bishops of this see and other bishops in agreement.’40 Although he also qualifies his legislation as ‘collected from the ancient canons and expounded in a new style,’41 the first two acts repeat stipulations, and even the same language and scriptural citations, of the Admonitio generalis: first, that priests should live according to canonical rules (chap. 1), and here Paulinus singles out simony in the same manner found in the Sponsio (lines 61–3) and the
178 / Nicholas Everett Admonitio generalis; and second, a general injunction that priests should be the light of the world and the salt of the earth (chap. 2, cf. Matt. 5:13–16).42 Another chapter (chap. 7) forbids any bishop, priest, deacon, or abbot (archimandrita) from deposing any other member of the clergy ‘without having consulted this venerable see.’ Although perhaps inspired by the synod of Frankfurt (chap. 6, quoted above), Paulinus uses the same language for the threat of losing office as found in the Sponsio episcoporum (lines 72–3). On other subjects, such as prohibiting cohabitation with women (chap. 4), strictures against incestuous marriages (chap. 8), adultery (chap. 10), or widows taking monastic vows (chap. 11), Paulinus’s legislation goes beyond the Admonitio generalis or earlier canons and reveals a degree of local colour and circumstance and himself to be even more authoritarian than preexisting canons and Frankish legislation.43 The direct quotations from the Admonitio generalis against simony in both Paulinus’s legislation and the Sponsio underscores Paulinus’s commitment to the ideals of reform promoted at the Frankish court, and we can see how the Sponsio itself was a response to many of the issues raised at the synods, in particular the imposition of oaths of loyalty and the need to tighten clerical discipline by a firm, diocesan hierarchy, with metropolitans at the top. Paulinus’s enthusiasm for Charlemagne, his involvement with Frankish reform councils, his activities as a churchman, and his authorship of theological tracts, poetic hymns, acts of councils, and a handful of surviving letters all seem to separate him from Italian ecclesiastical culture, which has left a disturbingly silent record from the sixth to the eighth century.44 But when we look more closely at the form of the Sponsio, we can see that he has indeed drawn on Italian traditions to create his own unique, written instrument in the service of establishing episcopal discipline, and to these traditions we now turn. The Italian Context Paulinus’s experience as a representative (missus) for Charlemagne, and his writings that touch on the subject of law, reveal a degree of legal knowledge and ability well-suited for his role as the ‘rector’ envisaged in Carolingian legislation.45 But it has been hitherto unnoticed, because the Sponsio has been largely ignored by modern scholarship, that Paulinus knew the papal formulary known as the Liber diurnus, seemingly the only person outside Rome at this time who did.46 As the concordances between the Sponsio and the Liber diurnus show (see Appendix), Paulinus seems to have used the papal formulary as a
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 179 source of inspiration, particularly in the use of the precept from 1 Tim. 3:2 (‘Oportet episcopum inreprehensibilem esse’; cf. Sponsio lines 3, 6, 105), and in citing the Council of Nicea and the tomus of Pope Leo as touchstones of orthodoxy that all bishops should know well. Unsurprisingly, Paulinus borrowed from the formulas in the Liber diurnus immediately relevant to the Sponsio, namely, the Promissio fidei episcopi (LD 73, pp. 69–74), composed sometime soon after the Sixth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (680) to ensure new bishops were untainted by monothelite heresy, and from which Paulinus seems to have pilfered the papal epithet ter beatissimus (thrice-blessed) for himself, though without the superlative (Sponsio line 110); and the Cautio episcopi (LD 74, pp. 74–8) composed around the same time, and in which the new bishop declares a detailed list of duties and liturgical obligations. He even seems to have consulted the long formula for establishing popes (Indiculum pontificis, LD 83, pp. 90–3), and for papal circular letters to clergy (LD 84–5, pp. 93–110), and, surprisingly, the earlier formulas for bestowing the pallium (De usu pallei, LD 45–6, pp. 32–8).47 Paulinus, therefore, seems to have been one of the few people outside the papal chancery who knew and used the Liber diurnus, in contrast to Carolingian Francia where, despite the pro-papal and Romanizing ecclesiastical policies of Charlemagne and Louis, it never made a mark. Of the three surviving manuscripts of the Liber diurnus, all date from the ninth century, and at least two are north Italian in origin, and probably the third also.48 The earliest appears to be the one now preserved at the Vatican (Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Misc. Arm. xi.19) and written sometime in the first half of the ninth century. While the abbey of Nonantola has been convincingly trumpeted as its place of origin, Bischoff’s suggestion of Verona should not be dismissed, and requires further investigation.49 In any case, arguably the Liber diurnus received a boost in profile precisely at the time when Paulinus appeared on the historical stage, for its final section of formularies (LD 86–99, pp. 111–31) date to the pontificate of Hadrian (772–95) and were added to the preexisting formularies dating to the seventh century. In seeking to reinvigorate his awesomely ancient church in the new cultural climate of Carolingian reform, Paulinus looked to the Liber diurnus for inspiration, and there found a powerful precedent for the use of episcopal sponsiones to ensure loyalty and obedience among his suffragan clergy. But outside of Rome, Italian churches had long developed their own traditions of using repromissiones (promises) for leases and contracts guaranteeing adherence to canonical norms, and it is interesting to contrast these with Paulinus’s Sponsio for the sense of ceremony and
180 / Nicholas Everett rhetorical solemnity he attempted to achieve for his own authority. Our pre-Carolingian evidence demonstrates that bishops in Lombard Italy used charters in the form of repromissiones. Curiously enough, use of the term repromitto (I promise) is largely restricted to charters from Lucca, where it became part of stock formulas for introducing and concluding a range of different transactions, ecclesiastical and lay.50 But one of our earliest charters from Lombard Tuscany records the promise (‘repromissio’) made by John, recently elected bishop of Pistoia, to the bishop of Lucca, Balsari, that he will fulfil ecclesiastical duties, that he will make no ordinations or administer his church’s property without Balsari’s consent, and the document was to be signed (‘per scripto fermari’ [sic]) by John’s own clergy.51 A little later we find a repromissio formula used by the bishop of Lucca when appointing parish priests. It is worth repeating here to contrast its more earthly, administrative tone with Paulinus’s Sponsio: It has been made evident by me, Ratpert, priest, that I sought and requested that you, lord and most blessed fellow Peredeo, bishop in the name of God, appoint me as rector in the house of the church of St Genesius in the place and parish of Valari, and in your compassion you deigned to hear me. Therefore I place my hand in yours and promise (repromitto) that every day of my life that whatever has been granted to me through any ordinance I wish it to remain the property of the abovementioned church; and I promise (promitto) that I will reside there for the rest of my days and perform ecclesiastical offices according to regulations, and light the candles day and night at any time, and that I will obey and serve you as prescribed by our holy canonical law; and I promise (promitto) to do your will in all things, and I should never act against you in any way, nor presume to aid your enemy or give any counsel against you, nor will I exploit any financial gain or privilege from the property of that place, and I promise (promitto) to increase the worth of all the property owned by the church. And if I do not meet and uphold all these above-mentioned conditions, and therefore my insufficient tenure must pass to another, I vow (spondeo) that I will compensate you with two hundred gold solidi. May this document, which I have requested the deacon Osprand to write for confirmation, remain binding. Transacted in Lucca.52
Here we see the merging of Roman and ecclesiastical legal traditions in the twin emphases of contractual obligations of the lease, owed to late Roman property law,53 and episcopal authority as the key to ecclesiasti-
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 181 cal discipline. The pastoral obligations of the cura animarum, reduced simply to services and candles (luminaria), are mentioned only briefly without any type of paraliturgical phraseology, and seem secondary to establishing the rights and duties of proprietor (bishop) and tenant (priest). The scant attention paid to spiritual or pastoral duties in these leases, whether between bishops and their suffragan clergy, or merely among the clergy themselves in appointing parish priests,54 remind us that they were primarily legal rather than disciplinary instruments, concerned with church land more than its personnel. It was this very substructure of ecclesiastical administration which prelates such as Paulinus could draw upon when attempting to use the written word to guarantee clerical discipline and orthodoxy of belief. It is precisely concern about orthodoxy of belief to which we owe our only other Italian example of documentary coercion at the episcopal level outside of the formularies in the Liber diurnus. A form-letter survives among Pope Gregory I’s Registrum in which a heretical bishop renounced his error and promised to adhere to the apostolic see on matters of faith.55 It was probably intended for Three Chapters schismatics, and given that Aquileia was the home of resistance to papal and imperial policy on the issue, Paulinus probably knew of it. Like Paulinus’s Sponsio, it is rhetorically ambitious, invokes the ceremonial solemnity of swearing upon the Gospels,56 and finishes with the repentant bishop declaring that he has ratified his promissio in the present document by signing it and having his suffragan clergy sign also.57 Interestingly, this form-letter from Gregory characterizes any future deviancy from the unity of the church as ‘falling into the crime of perjury’ (perjurii reatum incurrens), which perhaps helps us to understand Paulinus’s difficult comments in the opening of the Sponsio (lines 8–9), if we read ‘perjury’ more as any behaviour or action by a bishop that impugns the reputation of the prelate, hence threatening the unity of the church. Conclusion: Documents, Oaths, and negotia saecularia There are two points of tension that run through the Sponsio worth tracing in conclusion which help us to fill out the picture of Paulinus’s career and the cultural context behind his innovative document: the relationship between the spoken and written word in the Carolingian period, and Paulinus’s ambiguous attitude toward the close relationship between the church and secular power promoted by the Carolingian court under Charlemagne.
182 / Nicholas Everett As is now well known, thanks to the pioneering work of McKitterick and those who have followed her lead, the Carolingian period witnessed an explosion in the uses of the written word.58 While arguably that claim is best justified in terms of manuscript production and the composition of new works, new forms of documentation were also introduced for government and ecclesiastical administration, particularly in the use of capitularies and the role of the missi, who disseminated the commands of the king and were required to report back to the court.59 It is difficult to assess the impact of these developments in Italy for two reasons: first, Italy’s deep Roman roots and longer history of functional literacy meant that many of these administrative methods were already in place;60 and second, despite the exchange of Lombard for Carolingian kings, the Frankish conquest changed little on the ground in Italy, which continued to develop along its own lines in terms of uses of literacy, the lay notariate being an eloquent example.61 The Franks found an Italy far more accustomed to documents: Charlemagne’s first acts of legislation in Italy (776) concerned charters, and in 806 he complained that some of his fideles in Italy had refused to obey his recent additions to the Frankish Lex Salica because they did not hear them announced by the (now) emperor himself.62 It is doubtful that Lombard retainers (gasindii, fideles) ever tried to use the same excuse, for nearly all law was written law in Italy.63 That Paulinus could demand obedience to his ‘salutary precepts ... whether issued through the spoken word or set out in holy letters’ (Sponsio, lines 83–7) reminds us that for churchmen the relationship between the written and spoken word was more complementary, because far more complicated by the logocentrism of their belief and practices of worship.64 ‘For Carolingian churchmen, the written mode always coexisted with oral mode ... Whatever emphasis the church put on writing, it always stressed, at the same time, that Truth was revealed through speech.’65 The force of Paulinus’s Sponsio derives precisely from its performance as a solemn declaration before his presence. Yet its redaction in writing served more than merely as an aide-memoire for the new bishop to recall his responsibilities. Paulinus’s use of the scriptural term chirographus (cyrografi, line 70) to describe his Sponsio demonstrates his full intention to exploit the depth of the connection between clerics and their documents: he cited that singular scriptural reference (Col. 2:14) several times in his corpus of writing, and on one occasion even coined the term paternus chirographus to describe the contract between God and fallen man that is the human condition.66 As chirographus, Paulinus’s Sponsio reminded his suffragan bishops that their contract
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 183 was with God as much as with their metropolitan. Its written form, too, predicated on the prospect of disobedience, or forgetfulness, was simply a reminder of human frailty, and hence also served to remind the episcopal candidates of their weakness before their omnipotent creator. Yet, as we have noted above, despite the Frankish court’s promotion of literate means to regulate and record, no chirographus similar to Paulinus’s Sponsio survives from churchmen beyond the Alps, and I have tried to show here that Paulinus matched Carolingian ideology with Italian practice to create a unique and innovative document in the history of the church. Finally, the issue of Frankish and Italian influences raises the issue of Paulinus’s own attitude toward the Franks and their use of the church as an agent of the state and ideological buttress to justify their conquests. It is too easy to see Paulinus as another ecclesiastical toady of Charlemagne or even some sort of turncoat scholar, given the grants of property confiscated from Lombard rebels he received from the king as grammar master (magister artis grammaticae), his appointment as ‘patriarch’ of Aquileia ten years later, his possible involvement in exposing the plot of Pippin the Hunchback in 792, the subsequent immunities Charlemagne granted to the church of Aquileia to aid Frankish expansion eastwards, and so on.67 Yet throughout his corpus of writings one can trace a degree of tension concerning the church’s close relationship to secular power, and some of his actions point in opposite directions from the culture of the Frankish court. Paulinus rejected the secular sanction of the collection of tithes decreed with such vigour at the synod of Frankfurt.68 His composition of thematic hymns to be included in church services, and his encouragement of others to do the same, flew in the face of Carolingian concerns for liturgical uniformity.69 In a letter to Charlemagne (unfortunately undated), Paulinus reminded the king that the secular and religious realms were not to be mixed: I strongly advise and beseech you, most pious ruler ... that you will fight for our sakes against the visible enemies for the love of Christ and with the Lord’s help, while we, for your sake, will battle with spiritual arms against the invisible enemies, beseeching the power of the Lord. For let the priests of the Lord serve only the Lord according to apostolic precepts and those of the Gospels, and let them do battle only in the Lord’s fields, for as the voice of the Lord made clear: ‘No one can serve two masters’ (Matt. 6:24), and Paul says: ‘No one who is a soldier of
184 / Nicholas Everett God gets involved in secular affairs, since his aim is to satisfy the one who enlisted him’ (2 Tim. 2:4). Let no one fool himself that he can serve both God and the world.70
Paulinus echoed similar sentiments at the end of his Libellus sacrosyllabus, and again in a decree from his own council in Friuli (796), where he quoted the same passage from 2 Tim. 2:4.71 We can imagine why. That same year, 796, Charlemagne wrote to Pope Leo to advise him that, ‘Our task is to defend the holy church of Christ with arms against the attacks of pagans and devastation by infidels from without, and to fortify it from within with knowledge of the Catholic faith. Your task, holy father, is to lift up your hands to God, like Moses, so as to aid our troops.’72 Reducing the church to a state Department of Prayer would certainly have worried many prelates, let alone our theologically oriented patriarch of an awesomely ancient metropolitan church. But another concern was the type of worldly prelate which Charlmagne’s rhetoric encouraged, and it is easy to read Paulinus’s Sponsio as addressing such problems of bad behaviour as bad reputation (lines 1–15), fast promotion from ‘inappropriate bonds’ (lines 17–19) or without proper examination (lines 50–3), simony (lines 60–2), false accusations (lines 73–8), failure to attend synods (lines 78–80), not obeying one’s metropolitan (lines 80–90), not diligently performing church services (lines 90–6), abusing church property (lines 96–9), and the assistance (or not) of secular power to help administer it (lines 100–4). Among Paulinus’s surviving letters is one (again unfortunately undated) addressed to the bishops in his archdiocese in which he rails against them neglecting their spiritual duties and cites canons prescribing when and how often they may ‘go to the palace.’73 The church’s alliance with the Frankish monarchy came with a price. But there was reason enough to make the price worthwhile for Paulinus, who recognized that without the support of secular power, the people and clerics of his diocese, particularly toward the east, were without the protection they needed. In the prefatory letter to Charlemagne which Paulinus attached to the acts of his council at Friuli, he was forced to ask the king to adjudicate on a recent and particularly brutal attack on some priests who were ‘beaten and left half-dead by the boiling rage of the devil’s subordinates.’74 The judgment was not Paulinus’s to make, but was that of the king, for Paulinus had read while at the court a ‘certain judicial book’ in which the holy fathers reasoned ‘that no one was more powerful to avenge the holy church for the injuries it suffers than royal chastisement.’ Paulinus therefore requested
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 185 that Charlemagne issue ‘vengeance of a decretal judgment’ (decretalis sententiae ultio) for this case which will then be valid and ‘disseminated widely throughout the entire rule of your kingdom,’ for ‘truly the grim fame of this crime may prevail against the churches in other parts of the world if discipline is not applied’ (ibid., 519-20). If Charlemagne could discipline behaviour toward the clergy with military might, it was up to Paulinus to discipline his clergy with whatever means he had at his disposal. The Sponsio episcoporum was an innovative, practical solution for an Italian prelate imbued with Carolingian ideals.75
NOTES My sincerest thanks to George Rigg for his characteristically generous and invaluable help with the language of the Sponsio episcoporum. Thanks also to Roger Reynolds for advice on the liturgical context of the Sponsio, and to William Robins for some insightful suggestions to improve this article. 1 Bernardo Maria De Rubeis, ed., Monumenta ecclesiae Aquileiensis (Argentorati, 1740), 378; Giovanni Francesco Madrisio, ed., Sancti patris nostri Paulini Aquileiensis opera (Venice: Typ. Pitteriana, 1737), 260; Jacques-Paul Migne, ed., Sancti Paulini patriarchae Aquileiensis opera omnia, in Patrologiae cursus completus: Series latina [PL] (Paris: Migne, 1864), 99.635c–7b. 2 Pio Paschini, San Paolino patriarca e la chiesa d’Aquileiese alla fine del secolo VIII (1906; repr. Udine: La nuova base, 1977), 111–13. For more on Paulinus, see Pio Paschini, Storia del Friuli, 3rd ed. (Udine: Arti grafiche friulane 1975), 1:137–49. Cf. Max Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, vol. 1 (Munich: Beck, 1911), 378–80; Ireneo Daniele, ‘Paolino, patriarca di Aquileia, santo,’ in Bibliotheca sanctorum (Rome: Pontificia Università Lateranense, 1968), 10:144–8; D. Schaller, in Die Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters Verfasserlexikon, ed. Wolfgang Stammler et al., vol. 7, bk. 2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), cols 376–82; A. Solignac, ‘Paulin d’Aquilée,’ in Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ed. Marcel Viller et al., vol. 12 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1983), cols 584–8. Four conference proceedings have since helped fill out the picture: Aquileia e le Venezie nell’alto medievo: Atti della XVIII Settimana di studi aquileiesi, 30 aprile–5 maggio 1987, Antichità altoadriatiche 32 (Udine: Arti grafiche friulane, 1988); Atti del covegno internazionale di studio su Paolino d’Aquileia nel XII centenario dell’episcopato, ed. Giuseppe Fornasir (Udine: Arti grafiche friulane, 1998); XII centenario del Concilio di Cividale (796–1996): Convegno storico-teologico, ed. Sandro Piussi (Udine: Arti grafiche
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friulane, 1998); and Paolino d’Aquileia e il contributo italiano all’Europa carolingia: Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Cividale del Friuli – Premariacco, 10–13 ottobre 2002, ed. Paolo Chiesa (Udine: Forum, 2003). My earlier study, Nicholas Everett, ‘Paulinus, the Carolingians, and famosissima Aquileia,’ in Paolino d’Aquileia e il contributo italiano, ed. Chiesa, 115–54, is complementary to the concerns here and contains a fuller bibliography on Paulinus. The Sponsio seems to have inspired the (much shorter) oaths devised two centuries later by Paulinus’s remote successor the patriarch Poppo (1019–42), edited in PL 99.640d–1b. See Storia della società friulana, vol. 1, Il Medioevo, ed. Paolo Cammarosano (Udine: Casamassima Editore, 1988), 81–7; Paschini, Storia del Friuli, 2:27–36; I.D.L. Clark, ‘Patriarch Poppo (1019–42) and the Rebuilding of the Basilica at Aquileia: The Politics of Conspicuous Expenditure,’ Studies in Church History 24 (1987): 37–45. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticano latino 1322a: fols 280–2v, Sponsio episcoporum (9th cent.); fol. 283r blank; fols 283v–4r, charter of ‘Gilbertus archipresbiter’ (dated erroneously to 1190; my thanks to Lawrin Armstrong for help with this); fol. 284r–v, accounting document recording the loans of bishop Tebald (1135–57); fols 284v–5r second document concerning Tebald; fol. 285r bottom, marginal note in twelfth-century hand, ‘Ite[m] gandulfo diacono lib. c,’ an addition to Tebald’s document; fol. 285v, blank. Tebald’s documents were transcribed by Ferdinando Ughelli, Italia Sacra (Venice: Sebastianum Coleti, 1717–22), 5:797. On their context, see Maureen C. Miller, The Formation of a Medieval Church: Ecclesiastical Change in Verona, 950–1150 (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1993), 166–74 (esp. notes 101, 112, 123), 181–2. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticano latino 1322: fols 1–24 (9th cent.), fols 25–280 (late 6th cent.), Acts of Chalcedon. See E.A. Lowe, ed., Codices Latini Antiquiores [CLA], vol. 1 (London: Clarendon Press, 1947), 4–5 (item 8). On the text of the acts, see Friedrich Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen und der Literatur des canonischen Rechts im Abendlande bis zum Ausgange des Mittelalters, vol. 1 (Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky, 1870), 737–42, 745 ; Albert Siegmund, Die Überlieferung der griechischen christlichen Literatur in der lateinischen Kirche bis zum zwölften Jahrhundert, Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Benediktiner-Akademie 5 (Munich: Filser-Verlag, 1949), 149–50. Further facsimiles of Vat. lat. 1322 (fols 34, 25, 136, 178v, 253–4, 278–9) are provided in Enrico Carusi and W.M. Lindsay, eds, Monumenta palaeographica Veronensia, vol. 1 (Rome: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1929), plates 16–18. It seems to
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have escaped notice that Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, i (1), append. frag. v (see CLA 4.476), a badly damaged folio containing part of the ‘Actio seconda’ of the council of Chalcedon, was written in a halfuncial script very similar to that which we find in Vat. lat. 1322, further supporting the Veronese origin of both manuscripts. Vat. lat. 1322, fol. 25r, contains the common fifteenth-century entry ‘de Verona.’ Lowe noted the similarities of script with Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, liii (51) (Facundus; see CLA 4.505), Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, lix (57) (Acts of Chalcedon, Vigilius Tapensis, etc.; see CLA 4.509), Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, lxxv (80) (Sacramentum Leonianum; see CLA 4.514), and also Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticano latino 5750, and Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, latin 10233 (see CLA 1.26b, 5.592), but these last two seem irrelevant. Paulinus’s work reached Verona quickly, judging by Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, xc (85), saec. ix med., which contains two of Paulinus’s hymns, ‘De die paschali’ and ‘De charitate; see Dag Norberg, ed., L’oeuvre poetique de Paulin d’Aquilee (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell International, 1979), no. 9, pp. 141–3 (commentary, pp. 59–63), and no. 8, pp. 138–9. The anachronisms concerning Aquileiese authority over Verona appear in the same falsified charters in which we find Pacificus of Verona upheld as a model cleric; Cristina La Rocca, Pacifico di Verona: Il passato carolingio nella costruzione della memoria urbana (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1995), 92–3, 194–7. La Rocca argues that the collaboration between Tebald, his clergy, and the patriarch Pellegrinus was crucial for their ‘rediscovery’ of Verona’s Carolingian past (195). See CLA 1.8; Teresa Venturini, Ricerche paleografiche intorno all’arcidiacono Pacifico di Verona (Verona: Tipografica veronese, 1929), 27; Vittorio Lazzarini, ‘Scuola calligrafica veronsese del secolo ix,’ in Vittorio Lazzarini, Scritti di paleografia e diplomatica, Medioevo e umanesimo 6 (Padua: Antenore, 1969), 10–27; Augusto Campana, ‘Veronensia,’ in Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati, vol. 2, Letteratura medievale, Studi e testi 122 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1946), 57–91. A study on the marginalia of Pacificus is currently in preparation. Vat, lat. 1322, fol. 7r, bottom, ‘absit invidia regno v(e)stro’; fol. 12v, bottom, ‘quam ille praedicaverat fidei’; fol. 24v, bottom, ‘Si quis vero extra cohortullianam ut litoranea(m)’; fol. 148v, top left, ‘si(m)bolu(m) Nikiiu ccc xviii patru(m)’; fol. 163v, top left, ‘Si(m)bolu(m) Nikiiu(m) ccc viii patr(u)m’; fol. 163v bottom, ‘Simbolum Anastasio [?] patris’; fol. 189v, left margin ‘xxx sex et xii testes pp (= p(ro)p(ter)?) illud
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dictum n(on) invideo xpt(us) facto d(omin)o.’ Also fol. 189v, bottom (cursive, 7th cent.), ‘amen amen dico vobis si quis sermonem meum servaverit mortem non videbit in aeternum’ (cf. John 8:51). Note also fol. 41, bottom (half-uncial, 7th cent.), ‘hs (Iesus) carn quarun pritex homi et quan(tum) sp(irit)u.’ Another seventh-century Italian copy (from Bobbio) of the Acts of Chalcedon annotated for a special occasion is Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, E. 147 sup + Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticano latino 5750, fols 114, 116 (see CLA 1.26b+c); Nicholas Everett, Literacy in Lombard Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 286. Vat. lat. 1322, fol. 279v, ‘In libroru(m) hilarii pictauensis ep(iscop)i inter cetera ad locum De sp(irit)o autem s(an)c(t)o nec tacere oportet, nec loqui necesse est: sed sileri a nobis, eorum causa qui nesciunt, non potest. loqui autem de eo non necesse est, qui patre et filio auctorib(us) confitendus est’; cf. Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, ed. P. Smulders, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 62a (Turnhout: Brepols, 1980), 64 (2.29); also PL 10.69a. ‘Helarium namque beate memoriae pectauiensis sedis antistitem cur lacerare non parcis? ... Hoc tu dicis, non Helarius.’ Paulinus of Aquileia, Contra Felicem, ed. Dag Norberg, Contra Felicem libri tres, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 95 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1990), 104 (3.19.8–9, 20). Norberg sourced fifteen or so citations, but all are from Hilary’s De trinitate books 7–12. Alcuin used only book 6 of De trinitate for his Libri contra haeresim Felicis, ed. Gary B. Blumenshine, Studi e testi 285 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1980), 108. But cf. Contra Felicem 3.20.19–22 (105), ‘Et rursus [Hilarius ait], “Si per naturam dei Christus tibi dominus est, habes spiritum sanctum. Si vero per adoptiuum nomen hic dominus est, spiritum sanctum carens, spiritu erroris animaris”’; citing Hilarius, De trinitate 8.28. Vat. lat. 1332, fol. 279v: ‘deus custodiat potestate(m) v(e)str(a)m deus pacificet imperiu(m) u(e)str(u)m v(e)stra vita cautela cunctorum est celestis rex terrenu(m) custodi celestis rex augustu(m) custodi.’ Cf. Ps. 120:7–8, Ezek. 17:14, Num. 6:24. Vat. lat. 1322, fol. 7r: ‘multis annis vestrum regnum deus servet, hereticos deposuisti fide vos servastis vestrum imperium per saecula.’ Note a few lines down: ‘fecit haberi conciliu(m) metropolitani iuris privilegio gloriari decremus honore tantum modo servato videlicet metropolitano iure proprio [sic] dignitatis nicomedensiu(m) civitati.’ See also: ‘saluberrima praecepta [metropolitani] non contraria institutis’ (Sponsio, lines 83–5), ‘canonicas regulas gubernare’ (line 103); could
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‘ab his ergo capitulis’ (lines 56–7) be referring to the Acts of Chalcedon? ‘On pouurait croire que le latin de Paulin, représentant éminent de la réforme carolingienee, est un modèle, sinon d’élégance, du moins de pureté grammaticale. Il’n’en est rien.’ Norberg, ed., Contra Felicem, vii. ‘créateur hardi’; Norberg, ed., L’Oeuvre poétique de Paulin de Aquilée. See the list given by Norberg (21–3), which updates that of Otto Prinz, ‘Mittellateinisch “bibicus”: Bemerkungen zum Wortschatz des Paulinus von Aquileia,’ in Orbis mediaevalis: Festgabe für Anton Blashka zum 75 Geburtstag am 7 Oktober 1967, ed. Horst Gericke, Manfred Lemmer, and Walter Zöllner (Weimar: Nachfolger, 1970), 211–22; see now Mechthild Pörnbacher, ‘Les néologismes comme moyens stylistiques chez Paulin de Aquilée, Rathier de Liège et Frowin d’Engelberg,’ Bulletin du Cange: Archivium latinitatis Medii Aevi 63 (2005): 83–97. ‘On pourrait croire que le latin de Paulin, représentant éminent de la réforme carolingienne, est un modèle, sinon d’élégance, du moins de pureté grammaticale. Il’n’en est rien. On peut juger encore tolérable son style maniéré et boursouflé, ou son amour des neologismes. Il est plus difficile d’excuser ses incorrections grammaticales.’ Norberg, ed. Contra Felicem, vii. Cf. F.J.E. Raby, A History of Christian Latin Poetry from the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), 169: ‘In spite of his grammatical studies, Paulinus was a careless prosodist.’ See further Paolo Tremoli, ‘Stratigrafia e fusione culturale nel linguaggio poetico di Paolino d’Aquileia,’ in Aquileia e le Venezie nell’alto medievo, 203–34; Francesco Stella, La poesia carolingia a tema biblico, Biblioteca di Medioevo Latino 9 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1995), 363–4. Contra Paschini, San Paolino patriarca, 111: ‘[lingua] semplice e piana e senza frasi colorite.’ Discussed below. On Paulinus’s career, I reiterate my scepticism concerning Schaller’s attribution of two poems (the hymn ‘Regi regum’ and the ‘Carmen de conversione Saxonum’) to Paulinus and his subsequent theory of the latter’s role at the early Carolingian court, both of which have been accepted by Francesco Stella, ‘Il ruolo di Paolino nell’evoluzione della poesia politica e religiosa dell’Europa carolingia alle luci di recenti attribuzioni,’ in Paolino d’Aquileia e il contributo italiano, ed. Chiesa, 439–52, and Donald Bullough, Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 317 n. 205; see Everett, ‘Paulinus, the Carolingians,’ 121–9. Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Alfred Boretius and Victor Krause, 2 vols, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Legum sectio ii (Hannover:
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Hahn, 1883–97) [mgh Capitularia], 1:92–3 (33, ‘Capitulare missorum generale,’ chaps 2–8). See Matthias Becher, Eid und Herrschaft: Untersuchungen zum Herrscherethos Karls des Grossen (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1993), 78–87, 195–201 ; cf. Régine Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc, VIIIe–Xe siècles (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1995), 122–30. Matthew Innes, ‘Charlemagne’s Government,’ in Charlemagne: Empire and Society, ed. Joanna Story (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 71–89 at 81. See Howard Adelson and Robert Baker, ‘The Oath of Purgation of Pope Leo iii in 800,’ Traditio 8 (1952): 35–80; and Luitpold Wallach, ‘The Genuine and the Forged Oath of Pope Leo iii,’ Traditio 11 (1955): 37–63. mgh Capitularia 1:47–51 (20, ‘Capitulare Haristallense,’ chap. 16). Note also the concern with perjury, chap. 10. mgh Capitularia 1:47 (20, chap. 1): ‘De metropolitanis episcopis, ut suffraganii episcopi eis secundum canones subiecti sint, et ea quae erga ministerium illorum emendanda cognoscunt, libenti animo emendent atque corrigant.’ A study of Charlemagne’s policy with archbishops is needed, but see François L. Ganshof, ‘L’église et le pouvoir royal dans la monarchie franque sous Pépin iii et Charlemagne,’ in Le chiese nei regni dell'Europa occidentale e i loro rapporti con Roma sino all'800, Settimane di Studio 7 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1960), 95–140, esp. 108–12; Emile Lesne, La hiérarchie épiscopale; provinces, métropolitains, primats en Gaule et Germaine (Paris: Lille Facultés catholiques 1905), 62–71. For the verb repromittere, see Heb. 12:26, Ecclus. 29:23; for the noun repromissio, Acts 2:39, 13:32, 26:6, Rom. 4:20, Heb. 6:15, 7:6, 8:6, 9:15, 11:9, 13, 17, 33, 39, 1 Jo. 2:25. Charlemagne’s short, earlier oath (of 789) used simply ‘Sic promitto ego’; mgh Capitularia 1:62 (23, chap. 18); but those of 802 were considerably longer, more theologically tuned and use repromitto, ‘Sacramentale qualiter ego repromitto,’ etc.; mgh Capitularia, 1:101 (34, conclusion). The formula promissione letatus libens vovi dimissusque a supernis reddi appears in three Merovingian charters of Dagobert i; Die Urkunden der Merowinger, ed. Theo Kölzer, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Diplomata regum Francorum e stirpe merovingica (Hannover: Hahn, 2001), 1:153 (no. 61, dated 613), 161 (no. 64, dated 645), and 172 (no. 68, dated 655). mgh Capitularia 1:52–62 (22, ‘Admonitio generalis’). Much of the legislation in the abbreviated, earlier chapters concerning bishops (chaps
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11, 12, 41 24, 42, 50, 52, 55, 56, 59 ) repeats concerns common to canon law tradition, though a few are directly relevant to the Sponsio: bishops should properly investigate candidates for ordination (chap. 2); respect their metropolitans and not act without their counsel and consent (chap. 8); depose priests who act presumptuously against the established decrees (chap. 58). For Paulinus’s possible presence in 789, see Gian Carlo Menis, ‘San Paolino d’Aquileia grande vescovo riformatore,’ in XII centenario del Concilio, ed. Piussi, 76–87 at 77. On Alcuin’s involvement, see Bullough, Alcuin, 379–84. mgh Capitularia, 1:59 (22, chap. 68): ‘Item et furta et iniusta conubia necnon falsa testimonia, sicut saepe rogavimus, prohibite diligenter, sicut lex Domini prohibet’ (citing Exod. 20:14–16). The Sponsio included homicide; the Admonitio generalis concerned ‘homicidia’ and the need to report it ‘iudicibus nostris’ (1:59; 22, chap. 67). These aspects of Paulinus’s career are documented and discussed in Everett, ‘Paulinus, the Carolingians,’ 119, 129–33. For the Frankfurt Synod, see Concilia aevi Karolini, ed. Albert Werminghoff, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Legum sectio iii, vol. 2 (Hannover: Hahn, 1906–8) [mgh Concilia], 2.1.110–71 (19, ‘Concilium Francofurtense’); the Libellus sacrosyllabus episcoporum Italiae forms part of this material, 2.1.130–42 (19d): ‘sit rex et sacerdos, sit omnium Christianorum moderantissimus gubernator’ 142. On the method and Christology behind the Libellus sacrosyllabus, see Claudio Leonardi, ‘Una scheda per Paolino di Aquileia,’ in Lateinische Kultur im VIII Jahrhundert: Traube-Gedenkschrift, ed. Albert Lehrner and Walter Berschin (St Ottilien: Eos, 1990), 179–87. On Frankfurt, see Johannes Fried, ed., 794 Karle der Grosse in Frankfurt am Main: Ein könig dei der Arbeit; Ausstellung zum 1200 Jahre-Jubiläum der Stadt Frankfurt am Main (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994). mgh Capitularia, 1:73–8 (28, ‘Synodus Francofurtense’); the three cases discussed here occur in chaps 8, 9, and 10. The fifty-six chapters of the capitulary contain many general ecclesiastical precepts from earlier councils (including repetitions from the Admonitio generalis), some specifically focused on bishops: instructing clergy (chap. 29); judging criminal cases of clergy (chap. 39); absence and succession (chap. 41); reporting bad abbesses directly to the king (chap. 47); charity (chap. 48); priest’s standing (chap. 38); etc. ‘venient ad metropolitanum suum, et ille diiudicet causam cum suffraganeis suis. Comites quoque nostri veniant ad iudicium episcoporum. Et si aliquid est quod episcopus metropolitanus non possit corri-
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gere vel pacificare, tunc tandem veniant accusatores cum accusati cum litteris metropolitano, ut sciamus veritatem rei.’ mgh Capitularia, 1:74–5 (28, chap. 6). ‘Quapropter ego Paulinus, licet indignus peccator, omniumque servorum Domini ultimus servus, Aquileiensis sedis Hesperiis oris accinctae, cui Deo auctore deservio, nomine non merito praesul, una cum reverendissimo et omni honore digno Petro Mediolanensis sedis archiepiscopo cunctisque collegis, fratribus, et consacerdotibus nostris Liguriae, Austriae, Hesperiae, Aemiliae catholicarum Ecclesiarum venerandis praesulibus.’ mgh Concilia 2.1:131 (19d). ‘valvicula sanctae et orthodoxae Aquilegensis ecclesiae sedis, horum venerabilium fratrum et socius’; mgh Concilia 2.1.176 (20, ‘Conventus episcoporum ad ripas Danubii’). On the term valvicula (guardian), see Norberg, L’oeuvre poetique de Paulin d’Aquilee, 21 n. 21, and Pörnbacher, ‘Les néologismes,’ 68. On the council, see Rajko Brato , ‘La cristianizzazione degli Slavi negli atti del Covegno “ad ripas Danubii” e del Concilio di Cividale,’ in XII Centenario del Concilio, 145–202, esp. 158–60. Die Urkunden der Karolinger: Diplomata Karolinorum, ed. Englebert Mühlbacher, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Diplomata (Hannover: Hahn, 1906), 1:282–3 (211 ). See Herwig Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich: Die ‘Coversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum’ und die Quellen ihrer Zeit (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1995). On Arno, see Warren Brown, Unjust Seizure: Conflict, Interest and Authority in an Early Medieval Society (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 2001), 102–23. See D. Bullough, ‘Charlemagne’s Men of God: Alcuin, Hildebald, Arn,’ in Charlemagne, ed. Story, 136–50. ‘ferocium gentium mentes ad lenitatis mansuetudinem in praefinito perducere dignatus fuisset tempore’; mgh Concilia 2.1.173–4 (20). mgh Concilia 2.1:179 (21, ‘Concilium Foroiuliense,’ prol.). mgh Concilia 2.1:186–7 (21, prol.): ‘de causa nempe fidei polliciti sumus contra eos disputare qui variis erroribus implicati non recte sentiunt de mysterio trinitatis ... Obsecramus vos, fratres ... scribentes illa non in membranis et morticinis pellibus, sed in tabulis cordis carnalibus, memoria retinere curetis.’ Paulinus of Aquileia, Letter to Charlemagne (Epistola 15), in Epistolae Karolini aevi, ed. Ernst Dümmler et al., 6 vols, vols 3–8 of Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae (Berlin: Weidmann, 1892–1975), [Epistolae Karolini aevi] 2[4]:517–20 at 519: ‘quoniam huius statua concilii non quasi generalia, sed localia, vel specialia, cum provincialibus istius sedis consentaneisque episcopis.’
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mgh Concilia 2.1:189 (21, prol.): ‘sed sacris paternorum canonum recensitis foliis ea ... recentiori stilo opere praecium duximus renovare.’ On simony, cf. Mgh Capitularia 1:55 (22 ‘Admonitio generalis,’ chap. 21), and ‘quam heresim iam ipse princeps apostolorum in Simone mago terribiliter damnavit.’ For the citation of Matt. 5:13–16, cf. Admonitio generalis chap. 72 (1:59); note that Paulinus omitted the famous section ‘ut scholae legentium puerorum fiant.’ Giovanni Francesco Madrisio’s long dissertation (‘observationes et notae,’ reprinted in PL 99.302d–42c) on Paulinus’s legislation, its debts to earlier canons, and its local character is full of interesting insights, if now oddly antiquarian; see further Paschini, San Paolino patriarca, 101–11. The subject needs further study, but see Giuseppe Cuscito, ‘Paolino d’Aquileia nelle sinodi di Francoforte e di Cividale,’ in Paulino d’Aquileia e il contributo italiano, ed. Chiesa, 145–60. Note that chap. 3 against priests drinking uses language (‘honoris iactura pereclitari,’ 1:190) similar to chap. 7 cited above; cf. also chap. 6, which encourages the writing of hymns, and chap. 8 which appears to revise Lombard laws of inheritance. Everett, Literacy in Lombard Italy, 283–92. See Nino Tamassia, ‘Le opere di Paolino patriarca d’Aquileia: Note storico-giuridiche,’ in Miscellanea di studi storici e ricerche critiche ricorrendo il XI centenario della morte di Paolino d’Aquileia, ed. Luigi Suttina (Milan: Hoepli, 1905), 11–20, based on the juridical language concerning ‘adoption’ in the Libellus sacrosyllabus and Contra Felicem. Cf. Wilfried Hartmann, ‘Il vescovo come giudice: La giurisdizione ecclesiastica su crimini di laici nell’alto medioevo (secoli vi–ix),’ Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 40 (1986): 320–41, esp. 327. To these observations I would add that the letter to Haistulf (Epistola 16) also exhibits legalisms: ‘prima causa criminis ... investiganda,’ etc. (mgh Epistolae Karolini aevi, 2[4]:520–2). For citations the Liber diurnus is abbreviated as LD. On the dates of individual formulas, I have relied on Theodor von Sickel’s introduction to his edition, Liber diurnus romanorum pontificum (1889; repr. Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1966), which I have preferred here over the trifold diplomatic edition of Hans Phillip Foerster, Liber diurnus romanorum pontificum (Bern: Francke, 1958), also consulted, along with the collected studies of Leo Santifaller in Liber diurnus: Studien und Forschungen, Päpste und Papsttum 10 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1976). Updates are Jean-Marie Sansterre, ‘La date des formules 60–63 du Liber diurnus,’ Byzantion 48 (1978): 226–73; and Hans Hubert Anton, ‘Der Liber diurnus
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in angeblichen und verfälschten Papstprivilegien des früheren Mittelalters,’ in Fälschungen im Mittelalter: Internationaler Kongreß der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München, 16-19 September 1986, vol. 3, Diplomatische Fälschungen I, ed. Wolfram Setz, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 33.3 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1988), 115–42. The Liber diurnus was used in Rome until the end of the eleventh century: Harry Bresslau, Handbuch der Urkundenlehre für Deutschland und Italien (Leipzig: Veit, 1912), 2:242–7. It is interesting to note that although Paulinus could ignore, because now obsolete, the two formulas for the obedience of bishops to the holy see and Roman empire rather than to the Lombard kingdom (Indiculum epsicopi, LD 75, pp. 79–80; and Indiculum episcopi de Langobardia, LD 76, pp. 80–1), the same cautio in those forumulas (‘reus inveniar in aeterno iudicio et ultionem Annanie et Saphire incurram,’ pp. 80 and 81) was used in some Lombard charters; for example, cf. Codice Diplomatico Longobardo, ed. Luigi Schiaparelli, 4 vols, Fonti per la storia d’Italia 62–5 (Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1929) [CDL], 1:170 (no. 50): ‘cum Anania et Saphira permaneat in Gehenna.’ This is a reminder that documentary culture in Italy was pervasive irrespective of political or lay-ecclesiastical divisions. Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Misc. Arm. x.19 (V). The entire text of V was written in only one hand of Carolingian minuscule with distinctly north Italian features; a full description is in Santifaller, Liber diurnus: Studien und Forschungen, 170–2. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, i.2 sup (A). A facsimile of A has been published in Luigi Gramatica and Giovanni Galbiati, eds, Il codice ambrosiano del Liber diurnus romanorum pontificum, Analecta Ambrosiana 7 (Milan and Rome: Alfieri & Lacroix, 1921); Bernhard Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne, trans. Michael Gorman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 45–6 n. 129, dates A, usually attributed to Bobbio, to ‘the second quarter of the ninth century by hands trained in southwest Germany.’ The Codex Claramontanus (C) is now in the possession of the abbey of Egmond-Binnen, Netherlands; according to Bischoff, ibid., manuscript C was written in north Italy 850–900. See Jacques Huyben, ‘Een verloren gewaand handschrift van den Liber diurnus romanorum pontificum,’ in Miscellanea historica in honorem Alberti de Meyer (Louvain: Bibliothèque de l’Université, 1946), 1:225–65. See Marco Palma, ‘L’origine del codice vaticano del Liber diurnus,’ Scrittura e civiltà 4 (1980): 295–310, an exemplary study that argues strongly for Nonantola; see also Luigi Schiaparelli, Influenze straniere nella scrittura italiana dei secoli VIII e IX (Rome: Biblioteca Apostolica
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Vaticana, 1927), 60–1. Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries, 45–6 n. 129, suggests Verona on the basis of early ninth-century productions in Verona, specifically the first two hands in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Phillips 1727 (Sedulius, Opus Paschale; CLA 8.1058). CDL nos. 149, 164, 199, 236, 240, 241, 244, 256 ; cf. also 109, 181. Secular uses of repromissiones: CDL nos. 104, 191, 192. The formula is not always used, and the pattern continues after 774: see Domenico Barsocchini, Memorie e documenti per servire all’istoria del ducato di Lucca, vol. 5, pt. 2 (Lucca: Bertini, 1837), nos. 208, 242, 270, 298, 303, 305, 319, 326, 327, 330, 331, 350, 351, 353, 354, 355, 356, 358, 359, 363, 364, 365. On the innovative traditions of Lucchese scribes, see Everett, Literacy in Lombard Italy, 119–22, 224–9, and passim. CDL 12 (1:29–32; May 21, 700, Lucca; copy of the 17th cent.); see the comments of Schiaparelli in his edition of Codice Diplomatico Longobardo, 1:29–31. CDL 173 (2:133–5; 17 April, 763, Lucca): ‘Manifestum est mihi Ratpert presbitero ... quia petiui et rogaui te domno et uiro beatissimo Peredeo in Dei nomine episcopo, ut me rectore ordinare iubiris in casa eclesiae Sancti Genesi in loco et plebe ad uico Uualari; et pro tua misericordia me audire dignatus es. proinde repromitto et manus mea facio tibi, ut die uite meae omnia quolibet res adquirere potuero per quolibet ordine, uolo ut sit in potestate suprascripte eclesie; et die uite mee iuidem semper habitare et officio ecclesiastico legibus et luminaria facere promitto, die noctuque, omni tempore, et legibus nostre sancte cannonice tibi oboedire et seruire; et in omnibus uoluntate facere promitto. et numquam contra te agere debeam, nec cum tuo inimico me adunare aut consiliare contra te presumam, nec aliqua peculiarina uel subtractione de quolibet res in alio loco faciam. et omnes res eidem eclesie pertenente in omnibus meliorare promitto. et si hec omnia suprascripta capitola ad me adimpleta et conseruata non fuerint, et in aliquo exinde ad me disruptum et adimpletum non fuerit, spondeo tibi esse conponiturus in auro soledos ducenti; et hanc pagina in sua maneat firmitate. Et pro confirmatione Osprandum diaconum scriuere rogaui. Actum Luca.’ The same formula is used in CDL 202 (2:203–5; 1 Dec. 766, Lucca). See Ernst Levy, West Roman Vulgar Law: The Law of Property (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1951), 23–32, 34–40, 84–90 ; and Dante Gemmiti, La chiesa privilegiata nel Codice Teodosiano: Vescovo, clero e monaci, aspetti emblematici (Naples: ler, 1991), 5–17. Ecclesiastical obligations are rarely elaborated upon unless a local or particular practice is insisted upon. One of the lengthiest descriptions
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is found in a lease between a layman, Odolpert (qualified only as a barbanus) who built a church (S. Maria di Feruniano) and subsequently ‘ordinavit’ his nephew, a priest, to govern it, with the obligation of a set rent and ‘die noctuque officium et luminaria facere debeam, secundum Dei praeceptum et sancte canones constitutionem et messarum solemnia cotidie diebus inibi pro te et parentibus tuis seo proles tuas facere, et Dominum deprecare debeam.’ Barsocchini, Memorie e documenti, 811 (no. 376). Gregory I, ‘Promissio quam solvi feci,’ in Gregorii I papae Registrum epistolarum, ed. Paul Ewald and Ludo Moritz Hartmann, 2 vols, vols 1–2 of Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae (Berlin: Weidmann, 1887–9), 2:353–4 (12.7 , dated to 602). It is authentic according to Dag Norberg, In Registrum Gregorii magni studia critica (Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksell, 1937–9), 2:38, and possibly intended for Firminius of Istria: see also Registrum 2:360 (12.13), but cf. Registrum 2:362 (12.6, from Ravenna). Gregory seems to request such a document (‘in unitate ecclesiae scripturae proveniente cautela permanere consentit’) if travelling to Rome is difficult, Registrum 2:151 (9.150), cf. 1:233–5 (4.2). Registrum 2:354 (12.7): ‘Unde juratus dico per Deum omnipotentem et haec sancta quattuor evangelia, quae in manibus meis teneo, et salutem geniumque illus atque illius dominorum nostrorum rempublicam gubernantium’ (here paired with the traditional oath on the emperor’s health). Ibid.: ‘Hanc autem confessionis promissionisque meae cartulam illi noto meo cum consensu presbyterorum et diaconorum atque cleri qui, me in hac unitate obligantes in suprascriptis omnibus prona similiter voluntate secuti atque propriis manibus subscripturi sunt, scribendam dictavi et propria manu subscribens tibi tradidi.’ Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Rosamond McKitterick, ed., The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), within which the superb paper by Janet L. Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian Government,’ 258–96, relates directly to the concerns of this study. Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian Government,’ esp. 268, 274–89. Everett, Literacy in Lombard Italy, 186–94. See Hagen Keller, ‘Der Gerichtsort in oberitalienischen und toskanischen Städten,’ Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 49 (1969): 5–62. For the legislation regarding charters, see mgh Capitularia, 1:187–8 (88, ‘Karoli Magni notitia italica’). For the complaint about fideles, see mgh
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Capitularia, 1:212 (103, ‘Karoli ad Pippinum filium epistola’): ‘quod nos nequaquam illis hanc causam ad notitiam per nosmetipsos condictam habeamus, et ideo nolunt eo oboedire nec consentire neque pro lege tenere.’ Cf. Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian Government,’ 267. Chris Wickham, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400–1000 (London: Macmillan, 1981), 124. This is not a subject to be explored here, but see Werner H. Kelber, The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983); William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995). Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian Government,’ 265. Col. 2:14: ‘He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the written code (chirogaphus), with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.’ Cf. Paulinus of Aquileia, Liber exhortationis 61 (PL 99.271): ‘ex paterno chirographo.’ Paulinus was doubtless aware of the term’s legal connotations (Gaius Inst. 3.134; Dig. 20.1.26; 49.14.3). Everett, ‘Paulinus, the Carolingians,’ 117–20, 131–3. mgh Concilia 2.1:195 (21, ‘Concilium Foroiuliense,’ chap. 13, ‘De decimis’); for Frankfurt, mgh Concilia 2.1:168–9 (19, chap. 25). Cf. Giuseppe Cuscito, ‘Aspetti e problemi della chiesa locale al tempo di Paolino,’ in XII Centenario del Concilio, ed. Piussi, 89–110, esp. 106–7. On encouraging composition, see mgh Concilia, 2.1:138 (21, ‘Concilium Foroiuliense,’ chap. 6). See also Giuseppe Cuscito, ‘Il patriarca e la liturgia di Aquileia,’ in Aquileia e le Venezie nell’alto medioevo, 149–72. On Frankish liturgical reform during Charlemagne’s reign, see Yitzhk Hen, The Royal Patronage of Liturgy in Frankish Gaul to the Death of Charles the Bald (877), Henry Bradshaw Society Subsidia 3 (London: Boydell Press, 2001), 65–95. Paulinus of Aquileia, Letter to Charlemagne (Epistola 18a), mgh Epistolae Karolini aevi, 2[4]:525: ‘Moneo et deprecor obnixe, piissime princeps ... ut tu pro nobis contra visibiles hostes pro Christi amore Domino opitulante dimices, et nos pro te contra invisibiles hostes Domini deprecantes potentiam spiritualibus armis pugnemus, liceatque Domini sacerdotes iuxta evangelicas et apostolicas regulas simpliciter Domino deservire, militare in solis castris dominicis, quia iuxta eiusdem Domini vocem “nemo potest duobus dominis servire.” Et
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Paulus: “Nemo militans Deo implicat se negotiis saecularibus, ut placeat ei cui se probavit.” Nemo sibi blandiatur, quod utrumque possit et Deo et mundo servire.’ mgh Capitularia, 2.1:191 (21, chap. 5); notably also cited in Frankfurt, mgh Concilia 2.1: 168 (19g, chap. 11). Letter from Charlemagne to Pope Leo (Alcuin, Epistola 93), mgh Epistolae Karolini aevi, 2[4]:136–8: ‘Nostrum est: secundum auxilium divinae pietatis sanctam undique Christi ecclesiam ab incursu paganorum et ab infidelium devastatione armis defendere foris, et intus catholicae fidei agnitione munire. Vestrum est, sanctissime pater: elevatis ad Deum cum Moyse manibus nostram adiuvare militiam.’ The contrast was also noted by Giuseppe Fornasari, Il pensiero, 120–1. Paulinus, Letter to the Bishops of Aquileia (Epistola 18b), mgh Epistolae Karolini aevi, 2[4]:525–6: ‘quando et pro quibus causis episcopi ad palatium ire debeant’; also ‘sed quasi rapaces et milites armorum ad excitandos et provocandos eos qui sanguinem effudunt et multa flagitia committunt discurrere non metuunt.’ Paulinus, Letter to Charlemagne (Epistola 15), mgh Epistolae Karolini aevi, 2[4]:519: ‘De sacerdotibus autem plagis inpositis semisque vivis relictis, vel certe diabolico fervescente furore per eius satellites interemptis, non meum, sed vestrae definitionis erit judicium.’ We have no other information to identify further this ugly event, though chronology and ‘diabolico ... satellites’ suggest a pagan reaction in the wake of the eastern expedition against the Avars. Since this essay was first submitted in July 2006 two works have appeared which throw further light on the issues discussed here. Rosamond McKitterick’s excellent monograph, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), provides further context for Charlemagne’s program of reform and its effect across different areas of Francia, in particular the importance of the Admonitio generalis as a touchstone for reformers (237–42, 306–15), and on the role of bishops, including the increasing attention given to issues of metropolitan authority (299–304). Carine van Rhijn, Shepherds of the Lord: Priests and Episcopal Statutes in the Carolingian Period (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007) provides a valuable dicussion of how different Carolingian bishops instituted reforms in their diocese with respect to their suffragan priests, drawing in particular on the evidence of capitula episcoporum (localized legislation drawn up by bishops). In many ways her study confirms how innovative Paulinus was in his concern for policing the behaviour of his bishops outside the contexts of their liturgical duties and pastoral care, which receives
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 199 scant attention before the period 800–20 (110). Van Rhijn’s study also confirms the singularity of the Sponsio episcoporum when one compares it to its closest analogues, the examples of examinations of priests conducted by bishops, which are surprisingly few in number (see 87–9). Also, her discussion (104–6 and passim) of Theodulf of Orléans’s episcopal statutes from ca. 800, one of the earliest and most widely copied set of capitula episcoporum, highlights the importance of the Admonitio generalis as a source of inspiration for Theodulf; in this respect, the many parallels between Theodulf’s and Paulinus’s own legislation at the council of Cividale are worthy of study in their own right.
200 / Nicholas Everett
APPENDIX The Sponsio episcoporum: Edition, Translation, and Concordances. The following diplomatic edition of Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum is transcribed from Vatican City, Biblioteca Vaticana, Vaticano latino 1322a, fols 280r–2v, the only known surviving copy. I have respected line endings as found in the manuscript. Expanded abbreviations are indicated by parentheses (). In the manuscript, standard abbreviations of the period have been used for dicitur (dr, with horizontal bar above), and the nomina sacra: xps = Christus, dns = dominus. The variant misreadings in Patrologia Latina 99.635c–637b are recorded in an apparatus below. Two concordances are also provided. The first notes similar usages in Paulinus’s oeuvre. The second concordance notes similarities with the Liber diurnus. Individual poems and hymns are cited from Dag Norberg, ed., L’oeuvre poétique de Paulin d’Aquliée (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell International, 1979), and biblical references are given when relevant. The following abbreviations are used: Con. Fel.
Contra Felicem libri tres, ed. Dag Norberg, cccm 95 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1990). Conc. Foro. Concilium Foroiuliense, ed. A. Werminghoff, mgh Concilia, 2.1:175–95. Ep. Epistolae, ed. E. Dümmler, mgh Epistolae Karolini aevi, 2[4]: 516–29. Lib.Ex. Liber exhortationis, ed. J.-P. Migne (PL 99.271). Lib.Sac. Libellus sacrosyllabus episcoporum, ed. A. Werminghoff, mgh Concilia, 2.1:130–42. LD Liber diurnus romanorum pontificum, ed. Theodor von Sickel (1889; repr. Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1966).
‘Sponsio episcoporum’
202 / Nicholas Everett Diplomatic Edition of the Sponsio episcoporum
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sponsio ep(iscop)orum ad s(an)c(t)am aquileiensem sedem. Doctoris igitur mundi praecepta testantur. Oportere ep(iscopu)m inreprehensibilem esse. et bonam eu(m) famam habere. Ab his etiam qui foris sunt. atque ad omne esse opus bonu(m) paratu(m). sed ualde rep(re) hensibile(m), et nimis infamiae turpe famosum et indignae opinionis esse obscuru(m) uidetur. si p(er)iurii crimine reus ab intus et foris quis accu setur. Quatenus lingua, quae ueritate(m) quae chr(istu)s d(omi)n(u)s est. siue in uenerandis missaru(m) solemnita tib(us) seu in utrorumq(ue) testamentoru(m) paginis. nec non in psalmis, ymnis, et canticis spiritualib(us), uel etiam in cotidiana locutione limpidissimo studio praedicare. mendatii sit ante iniquissima f(o)editate polluta. Unde summopere conside randu(m) e(st), ac tota mentis intentione studiose a pontificib(us) prim(a)e sedis cauendu(m). ne forte inconsiderate relationis zelo succensi. eos quos ad sacri ordinis gradus subleuare festinant. [fol. 280v] in fouea(m) mendatii a qua eos ne cadant. debent modis omnib(us) retinere in iurisiurandi laqueos ineuitabiliter implicatos conpellant quan totius pr(a)ecipites ut incedant; Quamobrem ommissis his peccatoru(m) uinculis in quib(us) quilibet, si mentis gressus implicare non p(er)timuerit nullo ab his procul dubio pacto absq(ue) animae auelli poterit detrimento: Ego ergo ill(e) praesentis temporis ordinandus ep(iscopu)s. Idcirco non iuxta aliam. sed secundu(m) illa(m) quam magis tru(m) gentiu(m) didici forumla(m) Paulu(m) religiose iurasse apostolu(m): Testor nunc tactis sacro s(an)c(t)is euangeliis cora(m) d(omin)o et chri(ist)o Ih(es)u qui iudicatu rus est uiuos et mortuos et aduentu(m) eius catho licae fidei regula iuxta definitione(m) nic(a)eni
11 seu] sive. 12 non] sive. 13 locutione] locatione. 14 mendatii] mendacii. 18 relationis] elationis. 19 ad] om. 20 mendatii] mendacii. 22 conpellant] impellant; quantotius] quantocius. 26 pacto] puto.
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 203 Translation [1–15] The Promise of Bishops to the Holy See of Aquileia. The commands of the teacher of the world attest that a bishop should be beyond reproach [1 Tim 3.1–3], that he should enjoy a good reputation even among those outside [the church] and be prepared to perform all good works. But truly reprehensible seems he whose gross infamy is well known and is shadowed by unfavourable opinions. For if anyone is accused from inside or outside as guilty of the crime of perjury, then his tongue, which oughta to preach with clear zeal the truth that is the Lord Christ in the venerable solemnities of masses, in the pages of either Testament, in singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual chants, or even in everyday conversation, has already been polluted by the shameful foulness of falsity.
[15–42] Pontiffs of a first see should take great care and be cautious, lest, inflamed by zeal for an inappropriate bond, they drive those they have hastened to raise through the ranks of holy orders to walk headlong into unavoidably entangled snares of swearing oaths, and hence into a pit of falsehood, from which the pontiffs ought in every way to hold them back lest they fall.b Therefore, setting aside these chains of sins in which anyone, if he has not been afraid to involve the steps of his mind, will no way be able to be pulled out without the loss of his soul, i, x, episcopal candidate at the present time, hereby testify, according to no other covenant than that which I have learned the Apostle Paul, teacher of the gentiles, swore religiously. Now holding the Gospels and in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, who will come to judge the living and the dead, I swear that I will preserve sacrosanct in my heart His return according to the definition of the Catholic faith determined by the council of Nicea and as is declared in the Tome of the blessed Pope Leo, and I promise to preach it sincerely to listeners according to the capacity of my intellect, with the Lord’s help, and whenever it is considered necessary.
a b
Reading an implied debet after praedicare (line 14). Construing lines 17–23, ‘ne compellant eos quos festinant ... ad sacri ordinis gradus subleuare ... ut quantocius praecipites incedant in iusiurandi laqueos inevitabiliter implicatos, in foveam mendatii, a qua debent retinere ne cadant.’
204 / Nicholas Everett 35 concilii. et ut tomus beati declarat papae leonis: Secundu(m) uires nimiru(m) intelligentiae meae et in quantu(m) auxiliante d(omi)no conari po tuero et in corde inuiolabiliter retinere [fol. 281r] et in ore si quando ne [ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ] 40 cessitas exegerit. [ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .] iuxta captu(m) ingenii [ . . . . . . . . ] mei audientib(us) sinceriter pr(a)edicare: [ . . . . . . . . ] Repromitto etia(m) statuta canonu(m) ab orthodoxis salubriter digesta praesulib(us) qu(a)e sanae fidei non aduersantur. et p(er) 45 desuetudinem non sunt in ec(c)lesiae gremio abolita secundu(m) possibilitatis mensura(m) et ut uiriu(m) con cesserit qualitas mearu(m), et qualiter temporis dictauerit ordo. et intellig(en)tiae meae subministra uerit facultas. pleno inmutilato pectore con 50 seruare: Spondeo et hoc igitur solo sub huius iuris iurandi praeconio. quia sine examine s(e)c(un)d(u)m canonica documenta. Promoueri ad sacerdotale culmen non. debeo: Idcirco pr(a)eter illa quae non libentia sed manifesta sunt peccata. Ut est. homicidium furtu(m) 55 falsu(m) testimoniu(m) et his similia: Quae quia probari possunt. Ideo de his iurare omitto: Ab his ergo capitulis, in quib(us) occulta latent peccata [fol. 281v] quae no [ . . . . . . . . . . . . . ] minatim expressa leguntur. [ . . . . . . . . . . .] alienu(m) me esse pro 60 fiteor. [ . . . . . . . . . ] Id est ab impia uidelicet peste synmoniaca. [ . . . . ] a primo nihilominus eccl(esi)ae anathematizato pastore. quae nulli est incog nita canonico uiro. et a nefandissimi criminis lepra. quod peccatu(m) non dubie d(icitu)r sodomitaru(m). 65 et a sporcissimo quadrapede(m) scelere. necnon a maledicto alterius uxoris concubitu uel certe a corruptione uirginis d(omin)o dicat(a)e. De his haec sint satis. De reliquis uero diuersaru(m) reru(m) negotiis iam [. . . hoc non] iure iurando repromitto. sed sola 70 litterarum conligatione sub huius cyrografi titulo ecclesiasticis me correptionib(us) subdo. 37 conari] om. 44 sanae] sanctae. 46 possibilitatis] possibilitatem; ut] om. 49 inmutilatoque] inviolatoque. 53 non] ‘exemplar D a Turre non habet’ (eds); libentia] latentia. 62 anathematizato] anathematizata. 65 sporcissimo] spurcissimo. 69 ... hoc non] suppl. PL
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 205
[42–50] I promise also with my entire and full heart to maintain the statutes of the canons that have been profitably determined by the orthodox prelates, which contain nothing against the holy faith, and which have not been expelled from the lap of the church through disuse, and as much as the quality of my strength permits according to the occasion and in proper measure, and however the order of time dictates, and with the powers of my intelligence assisting. [50–68] I also therefore swear this only under the proclamation of this oath; that I ought not to be promoted to the summit of priesthood without an examination according to canonical teachings. Therefore, I omit to swear concerning those sins which are not hiddenc but are apparent [cf. 1 Tim. 5:24–5], that is, homicide, theft, false testimony, and any matters similar to these which can be proved. Consequently, I declare myself to be alien to these crimes in which secret sins lie hidden and which are read out and listed specifically, namely, the wicked plague of simony, which was nevertheless anathematizedd by the first pastor of the church, which is well known to every canonical man, and from the leprosy of that most unspeakable crime which is indubitably named the sin of the Sodomites, and from the foulest sin with quadrupeds, and the accursed coupling with another’s wife, and certainly the seduction of a girl dedicated to God. Let this suffice for these sins.
[68–96] Concerning various other matters, I promise not with this oath but rather with the union of letters that constitute this chirograph to submit myself to ecclesiastical reproach, and more importantly, I recognize that I am in danger of losing my office, for the following reasons, namely: if it is proven, in these matters of which I c d
Reading latentia (PL) instead of libentia (53) Reading anathematizata (PL) instead of anathematizato (62).
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Et quod est potius proprii me honoris censeo periclitari dispendio. Ea uidelicet ratione si in his rebus de quib(us) accusare uidear uerius me temere deliquisse adprobatu(m) fuerit et non me iusta excusatione necessitatis scilicet [fol. 282r] [ . . . . ] intentione compulso offendisse defendi potuero. Si uocatus quoq(ue) ad synodu(m) cessante prorsus iusta excusatione iactantia quidem inflatus uenire contempsero. Si s(e)c(un)d(u)m uirium qualitate(m) et intelligentiae quantitatem primae sedis ep(iscop)o hoc est metropolitano meo inobe diens exstitero et non ut dignu(m) e(st) saluberrima eius praecepta quae rectae fidei et canonicis non sunt contraria institutis. et a ueritatis tramite non diuertunt siue per uerba edita siue per sacras litteras explicata sincera non ob temperauero affectione missos etiam eius honorifice suscipere et obsequiu(m) humanitatis eis corde non renuero exhibere p(er)fecto. In officiis quippe ecclesiasticis uel in sedula missarum celebratione. in psalmis. ymnis et canticis modulatis in luminariis candelabroru(m) et in fu micandis tymiamatib(us) diuersoru(m) temporum horis exhibendis sollicitu(m) me officiosissime [fol. 282v] repromitto: In rebus quidem ecclesiasticis seu mobilib(us) seu inmobilibu(s) seseq(ue) mouentib(us) studiose me agere iuxta ut uires mihi intelligentiae effectu(m) efficiendi praebuerint repromitto. Ac p(er) hoc si uis mihi temporaliu(m) potestatu(m) inlata non fuerit. quatenus necessitate iniecta a recto exorbitare itinere compellar inui tus s(e)c(un)d(u)m canonicas regulas gubernare uel disponere me non abiuro. Quod si de pre fatis his negotiis p(er) incuriam reprehensibile(m) me p(er) ueritatis adprobatione(m) exhibuero super-
74 his] aliis; accusare] accusari. 76 iusta] iuxta; excusatione] excusationem. 79 iusta] iuxta. 88 eius] om. 89 obsequium] obsequia. 93 fumicandis] fumigandis. 96 seu] om. 97 seu] siue; inmobilibus] immobilibus. 99 praebuerint] praehuerint.
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 207 seem to be accused,e that in fact I have rashly been at fault and I am unable to be defended by a just excuse of necessity, that is, that I have offended by intention or compulsion; and if also, having been summoned to a synod and puffed up with vanity I refuse to come, with a just excuse completely lacking; and if I do not live in obedience to the bishop of the first see, that is, my metropolitan, according to the level of my strength and the sum of my intelligence; and if I do not, as is proper, carry out with sincere affection his salutary precepts which are correct in faith and not contrary to canonical institutes, and which do not deviate from the path of truth, whether issued through the spoken word or set out in holy letters; and also if I refusef to receive his messengers honourably or offer them services of humanity from a perfect heart. I promise that I will dutifully care for ecclesiastical duties, the diligent celebration of the mass, the singing of psalms, hymns and canticles, lighting the candles, and burning incense in celebrating the hours of different occasions.
[96–107] With respect to ecclesiastical property, immovable, movable, and living,g I promise to care for these diligently and administer to them as effectively as the strength of my intelligence has granted. And if the forces of secular power were not granted to me for this and as a result I am unwillingly compelled by a sudden emergency to deviate from the direct route, I swear that I will govern and administer according to canonical regulations. But if I show myself, through reproof of truth, to be reprehensible for neglect in any of the above-mentioned matters, I judge myself to be liable to the punishments mentioned above. e f g
Reading accusari (PL) rather than accusare (74). Omitting non from non renuero (90) Cf. CTh. 2.1.8, ‘rei mobilis ac moventis’; Gaius, Inst. 4.16., ‘mobilia ... et moventia.’ Also Augustine, Quæstiones in Heptateuchum, 2:47 (re Exod. 12:37, Itala), ‘quo verbo non solum mobilia, verum etiam moventia significare indicat scriptura.’
208 / Nicholas Everett ius comprehensa me iudico percelli uindicta: Quam uero p(ro)missionis man(u) mea(m) subter subscribens. uel qui subscriberint de praesenti 110 admonui et rogaui. et uobis ter beato paulino patriarch(a)e optuli de praesenti. Anno domi norum n(ost)r(oru)m Karoli et Pipini filii eius uiris excellentissimis regib(us) xxviiii. et xviiii. sub indictione nona feliciter
108 promissionis] promissionem.
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 209 [107–114] In my own hand I have ratified this promiseh by signing it and requesting thosei present to sign also, and have presently brought it before you, thrice-blessed patriarch Paulinus. In the twenty-ninth and nineteenth year of our lords the kings Charles and his son Pippin, in the ninth indiction. Happily.
h i
Reading promissionem manu mea (PL) instead of promissionis man(u) mea(m) (108). Understanding eos before qui (109).
210 / Nicholas Everett Concordance with Paulinus’s oeuvre 2
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doctoris mundi: Con. Fel. 2.1, ‘Initium igitur libri secundi de principio sane epistolarum beati apostoli mundique doctoris egregii exordiri incipiam’ (cf. Rom. 1:1.); 3.19, ‘juxta ejusdem sensum doctoris,’ 3.21, ‘venerandi doctoris testimonium.’ Conc. Foro. prol. 7, ‘admirabilis doctor,’ ‘doctor et magister gentium.’ oportere: 1 Tim. 3:1–3, ‘fidelis sermo si quis episcopatum desiderat bonum opus desiderat oportet ergo episcopum inreprehensibilem esse’; cf. 1 Tim. 5:7 ‘ut inreprehensibiles sint,’ 6:14, ‘sine macula inreprehensibile.’ ab his etiam qui foris sunt: 1 Tim. 3:7, ‘oportet autem illum et testimonium habere bonum ab his qui foris sunt.’ famam: Carmen de regula fidei lines 126–7, ‘Quorum nulla meo poterit de pectore famam / Auferre oblivio, pactoque abolerier ullo.’ ad omne esse opus bonum: 1 Tim. 5:10, ‘si omne opus bonum.’ reprehensibile: Conc. Foro. chap. 12, ‘Quam sit inreligiosum et reprehensibile.’ periurii: Lib. Ex. 11, ‘Gaudet periurus si hujus saeculi facultates iurando acquisierit’; 32, ‘De periuriis scriptum est: Vir multum iurans non effugiet peccatum nec recedet plaga de domo ejus (Ecclus. 23:12)’; 41, ‘maledici et periuri amarissime flebunt’; and cf. ibid. 19, 29. crimine reus: 1Tim. 3:10, ‘nullum crimen habentes’; Con. Fel. 1.9, ‘duorum quapropter criminum, facti scilicet et mendacii reus.’ cotidiana locutione: Lib. Ex. 1, ‘quotidianis precibus integro cordis desiderio eum, etsi indignus, deprecari studeo.’ praedicare: Conc. Foro. prol. i, ‘Ipse enim admirabilis doctor prohibet variis nos et peregrinis abduci (Hebr. 13:9), sanam tamen doctrinam docet fidelibus modis omnibus praedicari.’ summopere: Conc. Foro. prol. iv, ‘necessarium duximus summopere festinantes’; Conc. Foro. chap. 1, ‘Illud summopere, vigilantique studio praecaventes decernere curavimus’; Con. Fel. 1.4, ‘cavendum summopere est, ne forte per campestria evagantes inveniantur’; 1.6, ‘cavendum est modis omnibus ne torpescat, et cum depositis considerandum est ut deponatur.’ Cf. Apologia Paulini pro carmine suo (PL 99.472a), ‘Considerare summopere stude, ne quando cum sarmentis pampineas etiam amputasse te gemmulas poenitearis,’ etc. primae sedis: Lib. Sac. 6, ‘nunc qualiter primus pastor Ecclesiae fidei posuerit fundamentum’; 13, ‘summi pontificis domini et Patris nostri Adriani primae sedis beatissimi papae’; 14, ‘et beati Petri primi pastoris Ecclesiae’; Con. Foro. chap. 1, ‘primus pastor Ecclesiae ... anathematis
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ferro funditus resecare curavit’; Con. Fel. 1:17, ‘Ait enim primus pastor Ecclesiae, Christo autem in carne passo’ (1 Pet. 4:1). succensi: De rectoribus, in Ep. 4:526, ‘fideles fidei ardore et Christi amore succensi.’ foveam: Carmen de regula fidei, ‘Arrius in foveam corruit’; Con. Fel. 2.4, ‘Patefacta nimirum constat mendacii tui’; 2.9, ‘duarum tibi grandi discissione voraginis hiatus patet fovearum!’ mendacii: Con. Fel. 1:44, ‘In eo ergo mendacii laqueo non te refugis strangulare’; Lib. Sac. 7, ‘Obdurata nempe illorum corda, mendacii latibula.’ iusiurandi: Con. Fel. 1:6, ‘Oblitus [Felix] praeterea foederis iurisiurandi quod cum Deo pepigerat ... Nam tactis sacrosanctis Evangeliis, jurejurando protestatus est.’ laqueos: 1 Tim. 3:7, ‘incidat et laqueum diaboli’; 1 Tim. 6:9, ‘in temptationem et laqueum’; Ep. ad Aistulf, in Ep. 4:522, ‘ipse tibi sis judex, et in laqueo diabolico inretitus permanebis’; Lib. Ex. 19, ‘paucos tibi diabolicae fraudis laqueos’; Lib. Ex. 26, ‘Evita, quaeso, a tuis auribus laqueos detractionum’; Con. Fel. 1.44, ‘mendacii laqueo’ (cf. above, line 20); Con. Fel. 2.5, ‘ut resipiscas tamen aliquando a diaboli laqueo, a quo captivus teneri in speculo’; Con. Fel. 2.8, ‘duarum haereseum laqueis strangulatum’; Con. Fel. 2.9, ‘unius adhuc laquei ansula sugillatus’; Carmen de regula fidei, ‘Eunomius aqueo sese suspendit in alto’; Hymnus in natali ss. apostolorum Petri et Pauli, ‘Petrus beatus catenarum laqueos, Christo jubente, rupit mirabiliter.’ implicatos: Conc. Foro. prol. xi, ‘polliciti sumus contra eos disputare qui variis erroribus implicati’; Lib. Sac. 14, ‘Et Paulus: “Nemo militans Deo implicat se negotiis saecularibus, ut placeat ei cui se probavit” (2 Tim. 2:4)’ (also cited in his letter to Charlemagne, in Ep. 4:525); Con. Fel. 1:31, ‘qui nullo unquam necessitatis vinculo, ut purus quilibet electorum hominum, fuerat implicatus.’ quantocius: Con. Fel. 1.22, ‘quantocius poterunt indiciis obiiciendo probari.’ praecipites: Con. Fel. 1.3, ‘Sed quoniam propter imminentium hostium bella, ad arma spiritalia quantocius festinamus: ne forte dum evagamus ad otiosa, hostium cunei derepente praecipites Ecclesiae valvas inopinato infringant incursu’ (cf. Pörnbacher, ‘Les néologismes,’ 86); Con. Fel. 1.8, ‘modo abruptis vesaniae versari prospicitur praecipitiis’; Con. Fel. 1.11, ‘Hinc etenim de moderatius temperato, et de effrenatius praecipiti.’ incedant: Lib. Ex. 35, ‘Simus ergo boni et edocti aurigae corpori nostro, ut per viam rectam possimus incedere; Con. Fel. 1:8, ‘quoniam quandiu
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praecedentium patrum vestigia sequitur, ac tritam eorum rectae fidei gressibus viam scandere non divertit, composito incedere dinoscitur gradu’; Con. Fel. 3.18, ‘nunc ad praedicatores sanctae catholicae atque apostolicae ccclesiae, cultoresque orthodoxae fidei, rectis incedendo styli gressibus veniamus.’ quam obrem: Con. Fel. 1.9, ‘quamobrem Judaei vellent eum interficere’; 3.9 ‘Et quamobrem non ejicias quasi interrogatus exponis’; 3.15, ‘Quamobrem docere velim quomodo detur intellegi.’ vinculiis: Ep. ad Aist., in Ep. 4, ‘resolvat te sancta Ecclesia ab hoc vinculo peccati.’ mentis gressus ... avelli: cf. Gregory I, Epistola 24 (Ad Sabinianum), ‘[ut] ... nulla valeat impulsione convelli, mentis gressus in eius petrae soliditate, sicut coepistis, dirigite.’ nullo pacto: Lib. Sac. 9, ‘nullo namque pacto sine anima videre potest.’ secundum uires intelligentiae meae: Con. Fel. 3.28, ‘quia necessitate compulsus juxta vires intellegentiae meae’; Conc. Foro. chap. 13, ‘Nos autem, qui sacerdotes vocamur ... in quantum vires permittunt.’ inviolabiliter: Conc. Foro. prol. viii, ‘et sancta Ecclesia inviolabiliter fundata super eam persistit petram.’ iuxta captum ingenii meii: Lib Sac. prol., ‘ut unusquisque quidquid ingenii captu rectius sentire potuisset.’ repromitto: Con. Fel. 1.19, ‘quae ad patres nostros repromissio facta est’; Conc. Foro. prol. iv, ‘qui suis dignanter sese fidelibus repromisit in medio adfuturum’; prol. vii, ‘me repromisisse profiteor sermone dicturum’; prol. x, ‘Nunc autem his ita digestis proposita nostrae repromissionis debita.’ salubriter: Lib. Sac. prol., ‘Incipit libellus sacrosyllabus, catholico salubriter editus stylo’; Conc. Foro. prol. ii, ‘hymnisque spiritualibus salubriter praelibatis’; prol. vi, ‘ipsum textum symboli salubriter a sanctis editum patribus’; prol. vii, ‘a sanctis patribus bene salubriterque sunt promulgata’; prol. xii, ‘Si quis post hanc definitionem huius reverendi concilii, de his quae consona voce, salubriterque statuta sunt’; Con. Fel. 1.13, ‘et ore profiteri salubriter incitat ad salutem’ (cf. Rom. 10:10). gremio: Lib. Sac. 14, ‘unda baptismatis in gremio aggregentur matris ecclesiae’; Conc. Foro. prol. vii, ‘expulsum de Ecclesiae gremio’; prol. xii ‘reus ab Ecclesiae gremio evellatur’; Carmen. de reg. fidei, ‘De gremio avelli sancto’; Ep. ad papam Leonem, in Ep. 4:527, ‘charitatis vinculo religatus in gremio suspicatur ecclesiae.’ mensuram: Con. Fel. 1.55, ‘juxta exilis intelligentiae meae mensuram.’ dictauerit ordo: Conc. Foro. prol. ii, ‘juxta metropolitani ejusdem regionis arbitrium, et ut temporis commodius dictaverit ordo.’
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inmutiliato pectore: Lib. Sac. 14, ‘corda nostra in recta fidei puritate immutilato iure conservet.’ Note also the prayer attributed to Paulinus in a liturgical manuscript (saec. ix) in Brescia: ‘ut eam [fidem] inviolatam in meo pectore peccatori et in omnium fidelium tuorum iubeas conservare,’ in Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. Fernand Cabrol and Henri Leclercq (Paris: Letouzey, 1920–53), 2:1156–7. praeconio: Conc. Foro. prol. v, ‘Clamat profecto illa praeconia voce in amoris Cantico’; Con. Fel. 2.21, ‘uoce praeconia confitentur’; 1.1, ‘vox nostra famoso audita est in terra praeconio’; 1.11, ‘sicuti illustribus verissime evangelicis declaratur praeconiis’; 3.27, ‘Gregorius in eodem Moralium stili libro uicenismo secundo uoce praeconia est professus.’ sacerdotale culmen: Ep. ad Carolum regem, in Ep. 4:517, ‘sacerdotalis coetus’; Ep. II De rectoribus, in Ep. 4:526, ‘sacerdotali ministerio.’ manifesta peccata; 1 Tim. 5:24–5, ‘quorundam hominum peccata manifesta sunt praecedentia ad iudicium quosdam autem et subsequuntur, similiter et facta bona manifesta sunt et quae aliter se habent abscondi non possunt’; cf. 1 Cor. 11:19, ‘haereses esse, ut qui probati sunt manifesti fiant,’ cited in Lib. Sac. prol. ii. a primo nihilominus ecclesiae anathematizato pastore: Conc. Foro. 1, ‘Hanc quippe pestiferam simoniacam haeresim primus pastor Ecclesiae in ipsa, ut ita dixerim, originali cupiditatis radice, anathematis ferro funditus resecare curavit’ (Acts 8:18). concubitu: Conc. Foro. prol. viii, ‘imitati prorsus Zambri (Num. 25), in adulterino concubitu exarserunt.’ cyrografi: Lib. Ex. 61, ‘Optime nosti hujus pauperis et pupilli, generis scilicet humani causam, quae ex paterno chirographo debetur’; De poenitentiae, in Ep. 4:520, ‘Ergo chirographum de quo se monachus debitum ex tota fide promiserit implere’; De resurrectione Domini, ‘Claustra gehennae fregit, et chirographum / Mortis cruore diluit rosifluo’; Con. Fel. 1.23, 25, ‘delens quod adversum nos erat chyrographum decreti, quod erat contrarium nobis, et ipsum tulit de medio, affigens illud cruci’ (citing Col. 2:14). correptionibus: Conc. Foro. prol. viii, ‘Quia videlicet censura ecclesias ticae disciplinae haereticum hominem post unam vel alteram correptionem (Tit. 3.10) expulsum de Ecclesiae gremio.’ proprii honoris: Conc Foro. 12, ‘honoris proprii amissione nudatus.’ dispendio: cf. Conc. Foro. 7, ‘Item placuit ut nullus episcoporum presbyterum, vel diaconum, vel archimandritam in dispendio honoris condemnare praesumat absque hujus venerandae sedis consultu. Si quis post haec prohibita temerarius usurpare tentaverit, non erit ambiguus de sui honoris periculo.’
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periclitari: Conc. Foro. 3, ‘Unde et in ecclesiastico canone sententialiter constat decisum, aut cessare ab hujusmodi a vitii ingurgitatione, aut certe perseverantes honoris iactura periclitari debere.’ excusatione necessitatis: Con. Fel. 1.9, ‘necessitatis excusare satagit voto’; 1.48, ‘Et quanquam mendaci tergiversatione, excusatione excusare te specie tenus nitaris non duos astruere Deos.’ iactantia ... inflatus: Con. Fel. 1.7, ‘Goliae istius gigantea inflati jactantia (i Reg. 50), fulminis ad instar acutissimo ictu concisa duplici perfidiae ruga frons impudica fodiatur’; 2.6, ‘Cuius te jactanter inflat superbiae typhos.’ metropolitano: Conc. Foro. prol. ii, ‘fraternum quorumdam episcoporum contubernium Forumjulium municipium metropolim Aquileiensem’; prol. iii, ‘iuxta metropolitani eiusdem regionis arbitrium’; Lib. Sac. prol., ‘Incipit libellus sacrosyllabus, catholico salubriter editus stylo, in concilio divino nutu habito in suburbanis Moguntiae metropolitanae civitatis.’ saluberrima praecepta: Lib. Sac. 9, ‘iuxta praecedentium catholicorum patrum saluberrimae promulgationis doctrinam’; 13, ‘saluberrimam definitionem’; Con Fel. prol., ’Igitur saluberrimis venerabilium incitantibus litterarum vestrarum imperiis.’ effectum efficiendi: Con. Fel. 1.34, ‘Et licet frustatorie coneris, non tamen effectum consequeris efficiendi.’ percelli vindicata: Lib. Sac. 13, ‘simili eos sententiae vindicta sancimus esse plectendos’; Ep. ad Aistulf, in Ep. 4:521, ‘secundum legis tramitem, debuit excipere ultionis vindictam’; Conc. Foro. prol. v, ‘sanctos praedicatores ecclesiae haec non percellit ultionis vindicta’; prol. xi, ‘et de hostibus eius ultrici invectionis sententia non desinat vindicare’; prol. 8, ‘de hoc negotio judicialis sententiae elimata sub poenitentiae flagello persistit vindicta’; prol. 11, ‘e judicio corporalibus coercitae vindictis’; prol. 12, ‘temerario ausu violare tentaverit, canonicis coerceatur vindictis’; ibid, ‘Hae enim sunt canonicae ultrices vindictae’; Con. Fel. 1.3, ‘similique vindictae ultione plectendos’; 1.20, ‘ex eo non te posse ultro judicialis inhibere vindictae.’
Paulinus of Aquileia’s Sponsio episcoporum / 215 Concordance with Formulas in the Liber Diurnus 3
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oportere ... inreprehensibilem: LD 45 [De usu pallei], ‘quatenus deo miserante talis possis existere qualem sacra lectio precepit dicens: oportet episcopum inreprehensibilem esse’ (1 Tim. 3:2); LD 6 [Synodale quem accepit episcopus], ‘hic ergo sedis nostrae praecepta servanti devotis animis obsequi vos oportet, ut inreprehensibile placidumque fiat corpus ecclesiae’; LD 77 [Privilegium monasterii in alia provincia constituti], ‘ac vita inreprehensibili exornare’; LD 83 [Indiculum pontificis], ‘ut inreprehensibilis appaream ante conspectum iudicis omnium domini nostri Iesu Christi.’ reprehensibile ... opinionis: LD 67 [De xenodocho], ‘quatenus et apud hominum opiniones laudem adquiras et omnipotenti domino nullis de neglectu reprehensionum maculis.’ ab intus et foris: LD 45 [De usu pallei], ‘quod foris accepisse ostenderis intus habes.’ praedicare: LD 46 [De usu pallei], ‘predicationem tuam vita commendet.’ tota mentis intentione studiose: LD 46 [De usu pallei], ‘in his igitur studium adhibe, in his tota mentis intentione persiste.’ iurisiurandi: LD 73 [Promissio fidei episcopi], ‘devota mentis integritate et pura coscientia (et iureiuurando corporiali) ut oportet proposito.’ nicaeni: LD 73 [Promissio fidei episcopi], ‘reverendam Nicenam sinodum trecentorum decem et octo patrem ... deinde tres aliae sanctae synodi (Constantinopolitana, Efesana, Calcedonensis) ... et beate recordationis Leonis apostolice sedis antistitis epistulam ad Flavianum Contantinopolitanum episcopum datam qui et tomus appellatur’; cf. LD 84 [Indiculum pontificis], ‘concilium quod in Nicea sub magno principe Constantino convenit ... Leo ... cuius dei gratia reserante venerabili tomo firmati.’ in corde inuiolabiliter retinere: LD 73 [Promissio fidei episcopi], ‘Leonis ... epistulam ... qui et tomus apellatur, sed et omnes eius epistolas de fidei firmitate prescriptas per omnia et in omnibus inviolabiliter custodire et semper libere sicut predicatis predicare’; LD 84 [Indiculum pontificis], ‘apostolici nostri ac probatissimi predecessores inmutilabiliter servaverunt ad defenderunt, huius apostolicae traditionis normam inviolabiliter custodiens. venerandum sanctorum trecentorum decem et octo patrum concilium quod in Nicea sub magno principe convenit.’ spondeo ... promovere: LD 74 [Cautio episcopi], ‘spondeo me de ordinationibus clericorum ab hostario usque ad presbiterum nullum proaemium esse accpeturum, sed eos quos deo consideratione ad offocium clericatus elegerint, gratis me ordinaturum.’
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honoris ... periclitari: LD 74 [Cautio episcopi], ‘quod si contra haec quae superius continentur, aut contra quodlibet eorum me egisse vel fecisse convictus fuero, tunc non solum ea quae ecclesiae meae competenter amiserim vel forte iniuste percepero, a me heredibusque meis restituenda confirmo, verum etim honoris mei periculum subiturum.’ saluberrima ... praecepta: LD 92 [Privilegium], ‘divina nos saluberrima praecepta et sanctorum canonum ac venerabilium patrum instabunt efficaciter documenta.’ quam vero promissionis manu meam: LD 74 [Cautio episcopi], ‘quam cautionem meam ill. et quod est ecclesiae meae scribendam dictavi, in qua et ego subter manu propria subscripsi et testes ut subscriberent rogavi, exhortatione domni et beatissimi pape ill. stipulantibus vobis domno ill. primicerio seu domno ill. secundicerio sanctae sedis apostolicae in omnibus superius conprehensis, in verbis solemnibus spopondi. Actu Roma die imperatore consule suprascriptis. subscriptio episcopi ill.indignus episcopus sanctae ecclesiae ill. huic cautioni spontionisque meae ad omnia suprascripta relegens consentiensque subscripsi et testes qui subscriberent rogavi. subscriptio testium. Ill.tribunus huic cautioni spontionisque facte ab ill. episcopo sanctae ill. ecclesiae rogatus ab eo testes subscripsi. subscriptio scriptoris Ill.talis et quod est santae ecclesiae ill. qui supra scriptor post testium subscriptionem supplebi.’ Cf. LD 73 [Promissio fidei epicopi], ‘ut nostrae fidei vestro apostolatui sanctaeque catholicae ecclesie integritas ac puritas monstraretur, presentis professionis nostrae paginam per illum notarium scribendam dictavimus et in scrinio sanctae apostolicae sedis beatitudini vestrae condidimus.’ Subscriptio episcopi and subscriptio sacerdotum eiusdem ecclesiae similar to LD 74 above. vobis ter beato paulino patriarchae: LD 73 [Promissio fidei], ‘vobis domino meo sanctissimo et ter beatissmo ill. summo pontifici seu universali pape.’
LUCA BOSCHETTO
7
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence
This essay examines how the vernacular was introduced into the records kept by the tribunals of the Florentine guilds over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with particular attention given to the most important commercial tribunal of Florence, the merchant court known as the Mercanzia. The subject first attracted my attention several years ago when I published, in a study of the architect and humanist Leon Battista Alberti and his family, some procedural documents from the Florentine Mercanzia. Most of those texts were in the vernacular, and editing them posed various problems that arose because of their peculiar linguistic status; these problems have since spurred me on toward a deeper understanding of how such documents were produced, and toward a comparison of their features with analogous documents produced during the same period at the other guild-based tribunals. To do this, I have had to tackle the archives of the commercial courts of late medieval Italy, some of the most greatly overlooked sources for historical, as well as linguistic, research.1 This essay falls into two parts. In the first, after providing a brief sketch of the Florentine Mercanzia, I will examine the trend away from relying on Latin and toward using the vernacular at mercantile courts during the late Middle Ages. The growing use of the vernacular at these institutions is a phenomenon that has been passed over in silence (unjustly so, in my view) in almost all of the principal works on the history of the Italian language. Here my approach will be to set normative texts such as laws and statutes, which have at least in part been published, alongside some of the judicial documentation that has survived but that now lies completely forgotten in the archives. In the second section, my concern is primarily with teasing out the linguistic implications of the movement toward the vernacular at the Florentine
218 / Luca Boschetto Mercanzia. In particular, I hope to clarify how the procedural acts of the court were generated, and to give some examples of texts that, thanks to this method of production, present a particularly hybrid linguistic appearance (that is, a mix of Florentine and non-Florentine features). From the middle of the fourteenth until the end of the fifteenth century, record-keeping at the Mercanzia depended upon the efforts of hundreds of obscure notaries and copyists, all of them non-Florentine, who came to Florence and remained there only for a few months as members of the retinue (familia) of the foreign official (Ufficiale) who had been appointed to administer justice and to preside at the tribunal. Doubtless, there is a sort of irony in the fact that the creation of what is still one of the greatest and richest Florentine archives of vernacular texts resulted from the work of these foreign notaries. The notaries from the Marches mocked by Boccaccio in one of the stories of the Decameron, where he criticizes officials who ‘bring along with them judges and notaries who seem more like men trained behind a plow or a cobbler’s bench than men educated in a school of law,’ have been granted a nice way to get even with their Florentine critic.2 The Court of the Mercanzia The Mercanzia will not be unfamiliar to students of Florentine literature of the Trecento and Quattrocento, especially as we have the recently discovered case of the fourteenth-century poet Antonio Pucci, who served as Guardian of the Acts at the Mercanzia in the final years of his career and who compiled a very interesting autograph Memoriale of the ceremonies of the court.3 For the fifteenth century, the court of the Mercanzia is one of the settings for the celebrated Novella del grasso legnaiuolo;4 and we can be sure that the tribunal was present in the literary imagination of fifteenth-century Florentines by the way that some of the better-known message-boys (messi) of the court are mentioned in the poetry of Burchiello and Luigi Pulci.5 The Florentine Mercanzia was created in 1308 through an association of five of the seven major guilds: the Arte della Lana (the guild of the wool-producers), Arte del Cambio (money-changers), Arte di Calimala (wool-merchants), Arte di Por Santa Maria (silk-makers), and Arte dei Medici e degli Speziali (doctors and apothecaries). Throughout its first century of existence it enjoyed significant political privileges and remarkable autonomy. The Mercanzia expressed the interests of the mercantile elite, who used the court to control the civic guild system, particularly by establishing their precedence over the other, minor
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 219 guilds (which only gained the right to participate in the governance of the Mercanzia in the 1370s).6 The political power of the court flagged during the last decades of the fourteenth and the first decades of the fifteenth centuries with the creation of the Florentine territorial state, but it is crucial to emphasize that, as a judiciary court designed to regulate economic activity and protect property rights, the Mercanzia never suffered any diminution of its importance.7 The citizens of Florence moved with exceptional ease among a constellation of various civic courts. Until the end of the Quattrocento, the courts of the individual guilds maintained an important role, as the guilds regularly looked after the administration of justice within their organizations, tenaciously defending their traditional privileges.8 Yet in this same period there also appeared a notable increase in cases brought before the Mercanzia, which extended its competency over a wider and wider range of civil matters and reached into nearly all aspects of life in the commune. The Mercanzia in the Quattrocento thus became the most frequented tribunal among the Florentines, second in its volume of activity only to the court of the Podestà, where matters of criminal and civil law were heard. The establishment of a merchant court was not original to Florence; in more or less every city of central and northern Italy, and even in many cities elsewhere in Europe, analogous tribunals took on the task of regulating the conduct of economic activities. Compared to other available courts of law, these tribunals offered merchants and guildsmen a less formal and more speedy kind of justice, for they recognized the probative value of records pertinent to industrial and commercial activities, such as account books and private documents.9 For this reason, these tribunals were usually more open to accepting evidence in the vernacular, while the ordinary courts – such as the court of the Podestà and the court of the Capitano del Popolo in Florence, not to mention the court of the Archbishop – remained strongholds of Latin.10 The Florentine Mercanzia also holds a special interest for us because of the fact that its imposing archive is far and away the richest among all of the commercial and guild tribunals of Italy of the period. The fondo of the Mercanzia preserved at the Archivio di Stato di Firenze [asf] in Florence boasts more than 12,000 volumes, covering five centuries of the court’s history, from its origins in the Trecento until its suppression in the 1770s.11 In step with what was happening in neighbouring cities, the Mercanzia of Florence was directed by a foreign judge (Ufficiale), supported by a small group of counsellors who were Florentine merchants. During the
220 / Luca Boschetto institution’s first century, the number of counsellors varied from five to nine, becoming fixed at six during the Quattrocento. The ‘Six of the Mercanzia’ (Sei della Mercanzia) represented the five major guilds, as well as the fourteen lesser guilds which together had the right to only one representative. The foreign judge, by contrast, was a jurist who usually held office for six months. He was required to bring to Florence, at his own expense, a small retinue (familia) made up of a few servants and, at first, two notaries who had to be non-Florentines. To these notaries the judge assigned the operation of the ‘Ordinary Office’ (ufficio ordinario) and ‘Extraordinary Office’ (ufficio straordinario) of the court. After 1427, an ‘Office of Sentences’ (ufficio delle sentenze) was added, with an increase from two to three notaries in the service of the foreign judge.12 It is these notaries who are the true protagonists of the story told in this essay. The Florentine Guilds and the Vernacular What language was used at the tribunals of the Florentine guilds over the course of the Trecento, and what were the respective positions held by Latin and the vernacular in this environment? During the first half of the fourteenth century the situation seems to have varied from guild to guild. At the vanguard of the use of the vernacular was the Arte di Calimala, the guild that brought together the great exporters of Florentine wool cloth to foreign markets, the most important merchants of the time.13 The guild’s statutes of 1339 established ‘that, in cases which are and are to come before the court of the Arte di Calimala, procedures of merchant law are to be used, and agreements are to be written in the vernacular, without judges or procurators or notaries, acting more in accordance with proper equity than strict legal reasoning.’ Moreover, so that every claimant could better ‘understand the statutes and regulations that are done for him and against him,’ the statute writers had straightaway determined ‘that the statutes of this guild should always be written in vernacular speech, and no statute of the guild should be in Latin.’ This last provision is almost revolutionary, having apparently no real analogies at the time.14 The judicial documentation of the Arte di Calimala has unfortunately not survived, yet there is no reason to doubt such explicit provisions. The lofty situation of the Arte di Calimala, however, does not seem to have set a new norm. The statutes of the other Florentine guilds drawn up in the first half of the Trecento tell us nothing about the language used for procedural documents; in the only two cases for which relevant documents have survived from the Trecento – those of the Arte del
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 221 Cambio (the moneychangers’ guild) and the Arte del Lana (the woolproducers) – business seem to have been conducted differently:15 only petitions for obtaining justice from an insolvent debtor were usually transcribed in the vernacular, while all of the other written acts, including sentences, were written strictly in Latin. On the basis of a few soundings of the surviving documentation from the Arte del Cambio, vernacular petitions appear rather rare in the oldest register of ‘Acts and Sentences’ (Atti e sentenze), dated to 1312, where there are only three petitions not written in Latin.16 Writing petitions in the vernacular becomes the norm, however, in the next oldest surviving register, for the years 1322–4, and the practice continues through to the end of the century.17 The same can be said of the Arte della Lana: beginning with the oldest surviving register, from 1335, only the petitions are normally written in the vernacular, as well as extracts from account books, private writings, and letters of exchange presented as evidence.18 With respect to the other guilds nothing can be stated with certainty, though it seems plausible that throughout the Trecento their practices would have resembled those found at the Arte del Cambio and the Arte della Lana, rather than those (so favourable to the vernacular) initiated by the great merchants of the Calimala. The Law of 30 July 1355 and the Linguistic Politics of the Mercanzia What about the court of the Mercanzia? For the first half of the Trecento the procedures of the Mercanzia recorded in the court’s registers are completely in Latin. However, matters changed abruptly in the summer of 1355 thanks to a law passed by the Florentine republic on 30 July. Because this legislation has so far escaped the attention of historians of the language, it deserves to be reported here. The law declared that from the subsequent day, 1 August 1355, at the tribunal of the Mercanzia of Florence, no judicial act could be recorded ‘in Latin, otherwise referred to as literate or grammatical speech,’ but rather that all the cases which would be heard by the court from that time forward, during both the phase of the hearing and the phase in which the sentence was pronounced, ‘ought to be written and spoken only in the vernacular, and not in literate, grammatical language [i.e., in Latin].’ The motivation behind this provision, stated in the preamble, is of interest: the provision was established ‘especially so that those things which have been done or contracted in good faith in the vernacular shall not be drawn into malicious prosecutions through the subtlety of the law and through the method of legal judgments.’ The contracts and accounts that served as
222 / Luca Boschetto the material evidence for controversies brought before the court had all been drawn up in the vernacular, and this legislation expresses the desire to act in such a way that learned law should not deform the transparency of these vernacular documents.19 The law was applied immediately, as is demonstrated in the acts recorded right after its approval. For example, the first two leaves of a register of ‘ordinary’ cases (asf, Mercanzia 1121) reveals the momentous change. On the first leaf is a heading written entirely in the vernacular by the current notary, Franceschino de’ Ghisolabelli of Bologna, who was in Florence as part of the familia of the judge of the Mercanzia, Ricco di Moranno of Modena (‘Francischinus filius condam Çamboni de Ghixolabellis’) (see figure 7.1). This rather unusual heading is certainly due to the desire of the notary scrupulously to apply the decree of 30 July.20 The register opens with 1 August 1355, exactly when the new law was to enter into force. The first act, a petition recorded under 1 August, is still in Latin, but the next act, dated 4 August (see figure 7.2), passes to the vernacular, and the vernacular will not be abandoned in any of the subsequent volumes of this series (or of the other series recording the acts of cases) until the suppression of the Florentine Mercanzia five centuries later. Moreover, the fact that the first act in the vernacular in the history of the Mercanzia involves a sentence pronounced in favour of a woman (a certain Fiore, ‘daughter of the late Lupero Nucci of Buggiano,’ for whom the judge and counsellors of the Mercanzia find in favour against one of her debtors) is a coincidence that is not insignificant: indeed, there could be no clearer sign of the difference already separating the Mercanzia from the other civic courts of the Podestà and the Capitano, where women were not permitted to enter and where they could act only through a procurator. The records of the Mercanzia furnish a picture somewhat different from other sources more frequented by historians, particularly regarding the rights of more vulnerable subjects, such as women, who in this court could in some cases act directly as their own procurators.21 What caused this decisive and precocious shift? In light of what was happening more generally in Florence during these months of 1355, this provision should be read alongside other measures taken to lend greater security to the course of economic life in the years following the huge demographic and social upheaval brought about by the Black Plague. The same Signoria that was in government in the two-month period of July–August 1355 lay behind at least two other fundamental measures moving in this same direction. On 10 June it advanced legislation
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 223
Figure 7.1 The 1355 register of Franceschino de’ Ghisolabelli, with heading in the vernacular and initial act in Latin. Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mercanzia 1121, 1 Aug. 1355. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali; further reproduction by any means is prohibited.
224 / Luca Boschetto
Figure 7.2 The 1355 register of Franceschino de’ Ghisolabelli, showing the changeover from Latin to vernacular. Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mercanzia 1121, 4 Aug. 1355. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali; further reproduction by any means is prohibited.
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 225 requiring Florentine citizens to inform the foreign judge of the Mercanzia of the coming of age (emancipazione) of any child or grandchild, male or female.22 On 3 August it had the councils vote on establishing a Tavola delle possessioni, that is a census of all the real estate in the city (this proposal, however, failed, and the idea would not be taken up again until the census of 1427). It is as part of this active struggle against fraud launched by the Signoria of the summer of 1355 that the legislation concerning the Mercanzia is mentioned in the Istorie fiorentine of Scipione Ammirato, the only historian to acknowledge this legislation explicitly.23 But there is also another suggestive link with the cultural context of the time: our legislation coincides almost exactly – and this is unlikely to be by chance – with the laborious program to vernacularize the new communal statutes, set in motion in November of 1355 and begun by the notary Andrea Lancia (a figure well known to Dante studies).24 During the second half of the Trecento this legislation was strictly observed at the Mercanzia. There are several cases where objections were successfully raised against the presentation of Latin documents.25 However, notaries could, in some cases, have the procedural documents copied into Latin, although they had to obtain express permission for this from the court. These provisions were reaffirmed when the statutes of the Mercanzia were revised in 1394. Once again, the statutes made it clear that all procedural documents ‘should be conceived and written in the vernacular and not in Latin,’ with the sole exception of documents to be sent out ‘to other parts of the world.’ In that case, if both parties desired and if the judge and the six counsellors granted authorization, such documents could be recorded in Latin in order to facilitate comprehension.26 The Obligatory Introduction of the Vernacular in the Acts of the Guild Courts (27 March 1414) Until the second decade of the Quattrocento in Florence there existed this one grand tribunal in which all of the guilds had a stake, the Mercanzia, which was characterized by a total adoption of the vernacular, while most of the courts of the individual guilds were characterized instead by an alternation between vernacular and Latin, with a clear predominance of Latin (in which the actual sentences, especially, had to be drawn up). Latin, however, continued to be the norm at the other two principal civic courts – the court of the Capitano del Popolo and that of the Podestà – which had general jurisdiction over civil and criminal matters. This state of affairs was not shaken up until March of 1414,
226 / Luca Boschetto when a proposal came before the Signoria that, beginning on the first of January, ‘all the writings of agreements and sentences that will be done or ought to be done by the Six (Sei) or the Judge (Ufficiale) of the Mercanzia, or in their court, or in the courts of the guilds of the city of Florence, or in any of these guilds, ought to be done and written in the vernacular, and not otherwise.’27 The proposal was approved by the Councils, and the new law entered into force at the appointed time in all the guild courts, as can be confirmed by looking at the court records of the Arte del Cambio and the Arte della Lana.28 Of all the documents pertaining to my topic, this provision of 1414 is the only one that has been featured in studies of the history of the Italian language. Developing a suggestion made by nineteenth-century historians, Paul Oscar Kristeller in 1946 adduced the 1414 legislation when he asserted that ‘the fifteenth century also shows a marked increase in the use of the vernacular in public documents of domestic nature.’29 This cue from Kristeller was taken up a few years later by Giacomo Devoto in his 1953 Profilo di storia linguistica italiana30 and then in 1960 by Bruno Migliorini in the chapter on the Quattrocento in his Storia della lingua italiana where he extensively cites the relevant passages of the provision.31 In 1974 Devoto turned again to the provision of 1414 in a page of his Il linguaggio d’Italia, highlighting the ‘fundamental sociological import’ of a law of this kind, and indeed, while statutory laws are a direct expression of the will of the ruling elites, the acts of a guild tribunal with general competency, such as the Mercanzia, to some degree expressed the will of all sectors of the society, thanks to the massive participation of minor guildsmen and otherwise underprivileged groups who probably actually had little say in the decision about what the normative language should be.32 The subject of the language used at the Florentine courts – a phenomenon that seemed so important to Devoto – has subsequently passed out of sight, and it is now absent from the numerous surveys of the history of the language that have appeared over the last two decades. This is true even of the wide-ranging study of the language of Tuscany by Teresa Poggi Salani, in which linguistic hypotheses are joined to the history of the region,33 as well as the fundamental studies that Piero Fiorelli has dedicated to legal language, in which the riches of statutory law have been privileged.34 It goes without saying that the way these topics are treated in our histories of the language reflects the historical research being done in the area. And as long as studies and editions of the relevant documents are lacking, even the best linguistic historians
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 227 will remain silent about a sector of legal language that, nevertheless, is documented in an enviable manner (as the hundreds of registers conserved in the archive of the Florentine Mercanzia demonstrate superbly).35 The Wider Italian Scene It is crucial to repeat that the wholesale move toward the vernacular at the Mercanzia occurred in 1355 and not in 1414 (which is still asserted, thanks to repeated reliance on the information gathered by nineteenthcentury researchers). It is also crucial to highlight just how precocious this shift was with respect to the wider Italian scene. In fact, if we glance at the various other merchant courts for which enough judiciary documentation has survived, we see that not one of these courts seems to have preceded Florence in adopting the vernacular. This is certainly true, for example, with respect to the Foro dei Mercanti in Bologna, which has left us one of the most complete archives of this kind, with a sizable number of registers of proceedings from the Quattrocento. Bologna’s Foro dei Mercanti, established in the 1380s by the twelve major guilds of the city as a Universitas mercatorum campsorum et artificum, had still not given up on Latin in the middle of the Quattrocento, at least for recording its cases. Its oldest statutes, written in the vernacular in the year 1400, insist on ‘the requirement that proceedings be conducted in the vernacular language’; nevertheless, the recording of the proceedings was always in Latin, ‘except when reporting a written declaration of settlement, the text of a letter of exchange, or a promise of payment.’36 The documents from the Corte dei Mercanti in Lucca (for which case records are extant from 1366 onwards, albeit with many gaps) reveal that the vernacular does not predominate until late in the Quattrocento, being mostly limited until then to the texts of petitions, while the notaries still continued to summarize the other stages of cases in Latin.37 Many mercantile courts have have not left us any medieval documentation, yet their statutes give us no reason to believe that things were handled much differently.38 It is especially unfortunate that for the two major centres of Milan and Genoa no Quattrocento documentation survives of the acts of the relevant tribunals. For Venice, too, the Quattrocento records of the Consoli dei Mercanti and of the Giudici del Forestier are lost; by the fifteenth century, however, the local dialect was used normally in the co-presence of Latin at the Curia di Petizion, which was ‘undoubtedly the most important Venetian civil tribunal of first
228 / Luca Boschetto resort, with wide competencies,’ including wide-ranging jurisdiction over commercial activities.39 Around the middle of the Quattrocento, in the main commercial centres the situation was about to change in favour of the vernacular, as is indicated by a provision of the Mercanzia of Siena dating from 1442. This addition to the tribunal’s own statutes decreed that the written proceedings of the court records be recorded now in the vernacular, the reason being that such was already the practice in the most significant merchant courts in Italy: ‘And this is done,’ argued the officials of the Sienese court, ‘because they recognize that such is the custom in the other good cities regarding the office of the Mercanzia.’40 This comment deserves special attention because it comes from Siena, which had been in the vanguard of vernacularizing communal statutes and laws in Tuscany, but which during the Quattrocento had apparently fallen slightly behind more dynamic urban centres on the peninsula.41 While the picture traced here is far from being complete, this partial gathering of evidence suggests that Florence first opened the way for using the vernacular in the records of its guild and merchant courts. In this manner it probably set an important example also for nearby cities and demonstrated the maturity of its mercantile culture. Pride was not a negligible factor for a Florentine merchant class that had attained such a high grade of self-consciousness, if we take seriously the words of Goro Dati, the Florentine silk-merchant and chronicler, regarding the Mercanzia court of his own city, which he describes as the greatest merchant court in all of Italy, and whose ‘wonderful judgements’ and ‘noteworthy decisions’ he praises.42 The Mercanzia and Its Foreign Notaries, 1355–1496 The second part of this essay addresses these questions: How were the new legislative provisions concerning the vernacular put into documentary practice at the Florentine Mercanzia after the middle of the Trecento? And, what kind of effect did this shift from Latin to the vernacular have on the language of the documents produced by the notaries who worked there? The topic is an interesting one thanks to the somewhat paradoxical situation discussed above: the proceedings of the Mercanzia constitute one of the most complete Florentine archives in the vernacular that has come down to us from before the grand census of the Florentine Catasto of 1427,43 and yet this body of documentation does not transmit a written linguistic form (a scripta) close to the
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 229 Florentine vernacular, but rather it presents a hybrid language, where features from various dialects of central and northern Italy rest upon a general Latinate base derived from the usual formulas of civil proceedings (and this hybridity increased as the Quattrocento approached). This circumstance is easily explained, once we recognize how the documents were produced and archived at the Mercanzia by the foreign notaries who formed part of the retinue of the non-Florentine Ufficiale. What did the work of these notaries involve? The first thing to bear in mind is that litigants who had recourse to the tribunal did not write their petitions and documents in their own handwriting, but instead had them redacted by Florentine notary-procurators who worked in the service of the court and who knew well the style of the court (stilus curiae). These local notaries wrote their documents in loose leaves, usually bifolia, and when these writings were ready they were brought, either by the notary or by the client, to the bench of deliberation (banco della ragione) of the court; here the documents were accepted by the foreign notaries, and sorted according to the relevant office to which they pertained. The foreign notaries performed two fundamental duties. The first was to file all of the pertinent documents presented by the litigants, assigning to them the date on which they were presented. The second was to ensure that every one of these documents was recopied into the official registers of the court. When the notary finished his term of service, the registers of the office to which he had been assigned, and which were transcribed in his own hand, were consigned to the Guardians of the Acts of the Mercanzia and entered into the court’s archive. In fact, the registers generated by these three offices now constitute the most complete sets of documentation within the Mercanzia records at the Florentine state archives, where they are duly catalogued as the ‘Acts in ordinary cases’ (Atti in cause ordinarie), ‘Acts in extraordinary and executive cases’ (Atti in cause straordinarie ed esecutive), and ‘Sentences’ (Sentenze).44 Procedures seem to have differed significantly at the merchant courts in neighbouring cities, where the registration of the acts was carried out for the most part by citizen chancellors and notaries, not by foreign notaries. There is no doubt that when the decision was taken to move from Latin to the vernacular in Florence in the middle of the Trecento, the work of these notaries became much more complicated. Although it is a much-repeated truth that ‘the notarial environment even in Tuscany was essential for the development of the vernacular,’ nevertheless it is equally true that ‘among the vast array of practical activities, one of the
230 / Luca Boschetto points where the writing of Latin offered resistance [was constituted] by the daily working habits of notaries and chancellors,’ such that the move toward the vernacular was something that could have generated considerable annoyance even among the native Florentine notaries.45 We can imagine that the prospect of copying judiciary documents in the vernacular must have been, at least at first, even more perplexing for the notaries who came from lands located well outside the Florentine dominion and thus from different linguistic environments. An initial difficulty would have arisen from the fact that the documents delivered over to the foreign notaries were products of different Florentine writers, each one furnished with his own particular handwriting. Moreover, the texts to be copied were often full of corrections inserted in the margins in a tiny script, as is shown in the few files that have come down to us. There were, however, greater difficulties of an interpretive and linguistic nature. The names of persons and the professional titles that appear in the vernacular in these acts, perfectly familiar to anyone who knew the geography and social reality of the Florentine territory, could present major difficulties for somebody sojourning in Florence for only a short time. Moreover, the Florentine vernacular itself, especially for written prose of a practical character, was far from homogenous either grammatically or linguistically. It is well known how in the century following the plague of 1348 the language of the city was profoundly transformed by heavy immigration from various Florentine-controlled parts of Tuscany. As a final complication, the writings to be copied in a large court like the Mercanzia were numerous, and the number grew ever more massive throughout the first decades of the fifteenth century, forcing the foreign notaries into ever more intense rhythms of labour.46 Given these conditions, it is understandable that many notaries, as they made copies, reproduced the phonetic and morphological characteristics of their own native dialects (indeed, such ‘interference’ is a phenomenon that regularly occurs when scribes are operating in linguistic environments different from their own place of origin). It should be noted, however, that this linguistic interference usually diminished as work progressed, as if such intense work, combined with an extended stay in the city, functioned like an immersion course in the characteristic features of the Florentine vernacular. As the weeks passed, after what were probably a first few days of bafflement, the foreign notaries usually adopted a written form (scripta) that included more and more ‘Tuscan’ features.
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 231 These considerations will become clearer with some concrete examples. It is obvious that if we wish fully to understand the work of our notaries we need to be able to compare the actual documents that they received from the Florentine notary-procurators with the registers into which they copied them. Because of the contingencies affecting the survival of the archive of the Mercanzia, however, comparisons of this sort are very difficult. As a rule, only the official registers have been carefully preserved. The fate of the files (filze) of the documents prepared by the native Florentine notaries has been much more problematic. Initially, these were also kept, but eventually reasons of space and practical usefulness led to decisions to get rid of them. Already during the Quattrocento these files were subject to drastic culling. In 1452, for example, the leaders of the court decided to eliminate all the files prior to 1400, because they found they were in a poor state of conservation.47 And likewise, at another early date, elimination of files from the years between 1400 and 1450 seems to have occurred. The remaining files for the period from 1450 to 1496 (the year when copying by the foreign notaries ceased) were part of a general culling of the Mercanzia and other Tuscan archives that occurred between 1773 and 1779, when the files were not kept unless they served to fill in gaps in the series of registers. Obviously, if this task had been accomplished without any mistakes it would be impossible for us today to compare any of the registers copied by the foreign notaries with the files that served as their exemplars.48 Fortunately for us, a direct examination of the archive reveals at least one case of the mistaken preservation of two files (both containing documents delivered to the ‘Extraordinary Office’ by various Florentine notary-procurators) and one register (containing transcriptions by the foreign notary) that cover the same chronological period. As a result, we have an opportunity to place the files and the register side by side. A Case Study: The Notary Zaccaria di Giovanni de’ Pierleoni from Rome As it turns out, the foreign notary in question came from Rome. He was called Ser Zaccaria di Giovanni de’ Pierleoni, and he belonged to a noble family of that city.49 He was one of the three notaries in the retinue of the Doctor of Laws Messer Simone de’ Pierleoni (who was in fact his brother), who began his six-month term as the foreign judge (Ufficiale) of the Mercanzia on 12 November 1450. From his first days on the job,
232 / Luca Boschetto Ser Zaccaria was entrusted with the ‘Extraordinary Office’ of the court, an office which primarily took charge of cases arising when the litigants presented documents endowed with executive authority (for instance, notarial deeds, or sentences handed down either by other courts or by the Mercanzia itself).50 The documents consigned to Ser Zaccaria are still preserved in two files kept among the acts of the ‘Extraordinary Office,’ one covering the three-month period from mid-November 1450 to midFebruary 1451 (asf, Mercanzia 4420),51 and the next covering the following three months up to the end of the judge’s term (asf, Mercanzia 4421).52 The files were assembled by Ser Zaccaria, who dated all of the documents consigned to him and then recopied them in his own hand in the register; at the end of his six-month term, the register for the whole six-month period from 16 November 1450 to 14 May 1451 was bound and handed over to the court’s Guardians of the Acts (asf, Mercanzia 4417).53 Comparison of a randomly chosen leaf chosen from the first file – a case document produced by one of the Florentine notary-procurators active at the Mercanzia, describing the summons of a certain Agnolo, son of the late barber Bartolomeo di Agnolo (see figure 7.3) – with the corresponding leaf from register kept by Ser Zaccaria (see figure 7.4), gives us a good idea of what these documents were like. First of all, we see the date that Ser Zaccaria wrote upon the document, ‘die xviiij dicembris,’ and the cross-reference that he added at the top left, ‘c. 42,’ which signified that he had transcribed this document onto leaf 42 of his register. On the document Ser Zaccaria also wrote the abbreviation ‘Rta’, meaning ‘registrata’ (registered), signifying that it had been transcribed. In this case, the script of the Florentine notary is very clear and orderly (often the handwriting could be much sloppier, making things more difficult for Ser Zaccaria, who had to copy texts in the vernacular rather than in Latin).54 The document corresponds to the third item transcribed by Ser Zaccaria on fol. 42r of his register, the foliation of which is visible at the top right.55 As for the linguistic effects of these procedures, examples of interference of the Roman dialect can be spotted easily, as is especially frequent in the earlier documents copied out by Ser Zaccaria. The following transcription presents the text of the first document consigned to Ser Zaccaria on his first day of work, 16 November 1450 (text 1a), alongside the copy he made in his register (text 1b); the case involves bringing to judgment a man named Biagio di Niccolò.56
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 233
Figure 7.3 Summons in the case-document submitted by a Florentine notary. Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mercanzia 4420, 19 Dec. 1450. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali; further reproduction by any means is prohibited.
234 / Luca Boschetto
Figure 7.4 The same summons as recorded in the register of Ser Zaccaria de’ Pierleoni (item at the bottom of the page). Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mercanzia 4417, fol. 42r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali; further reproduction by any means is prohibited.
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 235 1A. asf, Mercanzia 4420 (unpaginated) die 16 novembris Constituto personalmente in iudicio dinanzi al decto uficiale et corte et a me notaio / Biagio di Niccolò per cagione della presura di lui indebitamente / facta in decta corte ad petitione di Giovanni di Benozo per lire viij. / Et salve et riservate al decto Biagio tucte sue ragioni, exceptioni / et difese. Promisse etc., stare fermo a ragione in decta corte con / decto Giovanni et paghare il giudicato che contro gli venisse / insino in decta quantittà et ristituire le spese et ubidire a’ mandati / di decto uficiale in tucto et per tucto, secondo la forma delli statuti di decta / corte. Et però observare. Obligò etc. Rinunziò etc. Soctomisesi etc. / Et per lui et a suoi prieghi et mandati sodò et stecte mallevadore / in tucte le soprascritte cose: / Antonio di Bartolomeo calzolaio et a decta arte matricolato. / Il quale promisse etc. Obligò etc. Rinunziò etc. Soctomisesi etc. / Approvato fu decto mallevadore per Boninsegna Attavanti / guardiano etc.
1B. asf, Mercanzia 4417, fol. 2r. 1450 die 16 novembris Custituto personalemente in iudicio denassi a dicto hofficiale / et corte et a mi notaio / Biascio de Nicolò per cascione della presura de lui indebitamecte facta / in dicta corte ad petitione de Ioanni de Benozo per libre 8. Salvi [et] resavati a dicto / Biascio tucti soi rascioni, exceptioni et difese. Promise etc., sta[re] fermo a rascione / in dicta corte con dicto Ioanni et pacare lo iudicato che contro li venisse insino in dicta / quattità et restituire le spese et hubidire a’ mandati di dicto hofficiale in tucto et per tucto, / secundo la forma delli statuti de dicta corte. Et però hosservare obligò etc. Rinunziò etc. / Socto[misesi] etc. Et per lui et a’ soi pregi et mandati sodò et stecte malevatore / de tucte le soprascritte coxe: / Antonio de Bartolomeo calzolaro et a dicto arte matricolato lo quale li promise etc. / Obligò etc. Rinunziò etc. Socto[misesi] etc. Aprovato fo dicto malevatore per Boni- / insegni Atavacti guardiano etc.
Recently much material has been brought to light regarding the Roman dialect of the second half of the Quattrocento, with practical documents expressing the interests of writers from almost every social level.57 Almost all of the features that stand out in the writing of Ser Zaccaria and that distance it from its Florentine model find precise correspondences in the scripta of his fellow Romans. A few examples should suffice to make this clear. First of all, there is the presence, in Ser Zaccaria’s transcription, of the accented personal pronoun mi, functioning as a complement in the expression ‘a mi notaio’ (this shows no pressure from the corresponding Latin formula ‘coram me notario,’ which Ser Zaccaria certainly had in mind).58
236 / Luca Boschetto The presence of Roman dialect (or at least of features typical of the dialects of central Italy) is indisputable when Ser Zaccaria writes Biascio (from the Latin blasium) e chascione (from the Latin occasionem), where the unvoiced palatal sibilant replaces the voiced palatal sibilant used by the Tuscan notary in the forms Biagio and cagione;59 the same is true where Ser Zaccaria writes rascione and rascioni (from the Latin ratio) in place of the forms ragione and ragioni used by the Tuscan notary.60 Equally revealing is the fact that the writing of the Roman dialect during the Quattrocento strongly tended toward keeping occlusive consonants unvoiced between vowels, which Ser Zaccaria does when he writes pacare instead of paghare.61 Because of the pressure exerted by Latin, the forms Ioanni and iudicato might seem less conclusive, yet these forms differ from the way the local notary wrote Giovanni and giudicato, and the contrast between the Florentine notary’s paghare il giudicato and Ser Zaccaria’s pacare lo iudicato seems pretty indicative on its own.62 Equally illuminating is the form calzolaro instead of calzolaio, with the reduction of -RJ- to -R-; the same is true for the numerous cases of unaccented e instead of i, in the preposition de in the place of di, and denassi in the place of dinanzi (the reduction of Latin -RJ- to -R-, and of unaccented, non-final -E- to -I-, are features still alive and well in Roman speech today).63 A second example, likewise from the earliest phase of Ser Zaccaria’s work, pits another document written by a Florentine notary (2a) against its copy in the register (2b). Dated 18 November, this act involves the summons of an inhabitant of the Florentine countryside, Biagio d’Antonio dello Spiccia da Montughi.64 2A. asf, Mercanzia 4420 (unpaginated) die 18 novembris Conpari dinançi al detto messere ufficiale et sua corte / Biagio d’Antonio dello Spiccia da Montughi contado di Firençe / per cagione della presura facta in detta corte ad sua petitione di / Filippo di Giovanni Dini borsaio da Firençe. Et volendo detto / Biagio giustificare detta captura et dire proporre et dichiarare / la ragione cagione chosa
2B. asf, Mercanzia 4417, fols 5v–6r die xviij novembris Comparì [dinanzi] al dicto misser officiale et sua corte Biascio de Antonio dello Spitica de Mott- / huchi contado de Fioreza per cascione della presura fatta in dicta corte a sua petitione / de Filippo de Ioanni Dini borssaio de Fioreze. Et volenno dicto Biascio iustificare dicta cattura, / et dire et perponere et dicharare la rascione et chascione, coxe et quattità, perché à fatta fare / dicta presura et
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 237 et quantità perché à facto fare detta presura / et ditenere in detta corte detto Filippo, disse et giustificando propuose / averlo facto pigliare et ditenere per fiorini otto d’oro et lire / venti piccioli, riservandosi ongni altra sua ragione, nome et actione / avesse contro a detto Filippo, perché egli è certa chosa che dell’anno / 1448, essendo certa differentia tra detto Biagio da una parte et / detto Filippo dall’altra di più chose et masseritie che detto Filippo / aveva avute di quelle di detto Biagio, detto Biagio da una parte et / detto Filippo dall’altra di ciò feciono nella presente corte commissione / insieme per meççanità de’ Sei consiglieri che allora erano in officio / nella presente corte nel provido huomo Filippo del Migliore tavo- / liere et cittadino, che allora era del numero de’ Sei di detta corte / sì come in loro arbitro et arbitratore […]
detenere dicto Philippo in dicta corte, dixe et iustificando et propuse / averllo fatto pigliare per fiorini 8 d’oro et libre 20 piccioli, reservanose ugne altra sua / rascione, nome et attione avessi contro dicto Filippo perché gli [è] cierta cosa che dell’anni 1448 / [fol. 6r] essenno certa diffirettia tra dicto Biascio d’una parte et dicto Philippo dall’atra / de più coxe et massaritie che dicto Philippo avea auto de dicto Biasco, dicto Biasco d’una / parte et dicto Philippo dall’atra de ciò feciero nella presette corte commissione insiemi per / mezanità delli Sei consiglieri che allora erano in officio della presette corte nel provido / homo Filippo del Miiore, cavalieri et citadino che allora era del numaro delli Sei / de dicta corte sì come el loro arbitro et arbitratore [...]
Ser Zaccaria’s transcription here allows us to see another typical feature of south-central dialects, namely the assimilation of the Latin consonantal blend -ND- into -nn-, apparent in the forms volenno, reservanose, and essenno where the Florentine notary had written volendo, reservandosi, and essendo (this is another feature of the Roman dialect that resisted the general process of ‘Tuscanization’ during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries).65 We can also spot a typical misunderstanding of professional titles, as Ser Zaccaria alters Filippo del Migliore tavoliere (money-changer) into Filippo del Miiore cavaliere (knight), and in this case we also see the typical reduction in southern dialects of -LJ- to a simple -L-. Such features continue to appear in the texts that Ser Zaccaria copied over the subsequent weeks. Nevertheless, Ser Zaccaria learned from these first exercises in writing the Florentine vernacular: his ability to interpret correctly the texts and the handwriting of Florentine notaries demonstrably increased with the passing of his weeks in office, and his scripta approached closer and xxxxxxxxxx
238 / Luca Boschetto closer to that of his models. This process can be exemplified if we jump directly to one of the acts that Ser Zaccaria transcribed on 11 May 1451, just a few days before he left office, and thus after having worked for six months copying vernacular texts at the Mercanzia. This act brings to justice Antonio di Giovanni da Prato, the chaplain of the church of San Iacopo tra le fosse in Florence. When comparing the text written by the Florentine notary (3a) with Ser Zaccaria’s transcription (3b), it is fairly self-evident that he is now very faithfully following his model even with respect to its linguistic aspect.66 3A. asf, Mercanzia 4421 (unpaginated) die xi madii Constituto personalmente in iudicio dinanzi al decto ufficiale et corte / prete Antonio di Giovanni da Prato cappellano in San Iacopo tra lle / fosse per cagione d’una lite et questione che egli intende / in decta corte muovere contro a monna Tancia donna di Simone di / Bartolo fabro in San Romeo, et un’altra che egli intende muovere di per sé contro al decto Simone. Et acciò che le ragioni / sue contro di loro gli sieno admesse, protestatione premessa etc. / promisse etc. di stare a ragione in decta corte co’ decti monna Tancia et / Simone et con ciascuno di loro di per sé in causa et caso di conventione / et riconventione et pagare il giudicato et ristituire le spese et ubi- / dire a’ comandamenti del decto ufficiale. Et però observare obligò etc. / Rinunziò etc. Soctomisesi etc. / Et per lo quale ser Antonio et a’ suoi / prieghi et mandato in tucte le predecte cose sodò et stecte / mallevadore / Giannoço di Giovanni di Giovanni degli Stroçi matricolato
3B. asf, Mercanzia 4417, fol. 348v die xj madii Constituto personalmente in iudicio dinazi al dicto ufficiale et corte / prete Antonio di Ioanni da Prato capellano in San Iacopo tra lle fosse / per cagione d’una lite et questione che egli intende in dicta corte / movere contro a monna Tancia donna di Simone di Bartolo fabro in / San Romeo et un’altra che egli intende movere di per sé contro / al dicto Simone. Et acciò che le ragioni sue / contro di loro gli siano admesse, protestatione premessa etc., promixe etc., / di stare a ragione in dicta corte con dicta monna Tancia et Simone et con / ciascheuno di loro di per sé in causa et caso di convectione et / riconvectione, et pagare il iudicato et ristituire le spese et ubidire / a’ comandamenti del dicto ufficiale. Et però observare obligò etc. / Rinunziò etc. Soctomisesi etc. / Et per lo quale ser Antonio et a’ suoi pregi et madati in tucte le predicte / cose sodò et stecte mallevadore: / Gianozzo di Ioanni di Ioanni delli Strozi matricolato all’arte di / Kalimala
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 239 all’arte / di Kalimala della cictà di Firençe et manceppato come disse / carta per mano di ser Bartolomeo di ser Simone Berti notaio / fiorentino. Et promisse etc. Obligò etc. Rinunziò etc. Soctomisesi etc.
della cità di Fiorenze et mancipato come / disse, carta per mano di ser Bartolomeo di ser Simone Berti notaio / fiorentino. Et promixe etc. Obligò etc. Rinunziò etc. Sottomisesi etc.
Final Considerations It is possible, from what has been presented above, to draw a few conclusions. In the first place, one should point out the degree of tolerance shown by Florentines of the Trecento and Quattrocento, who allowed the documents of their private lawsuits to be recorded in registers made up in an artificial language, a scripta in many cases far removed from the vernacular used by themselves in their own books of accounts and records. These official books contained not only foreign linguisitic features, but also frequent errors of fact and intermittent manglings of place names, personal names, and job titles. Undoubtedly, all of this reflects the unstandardized state of the vernacular language of the Quattrocento. It is interesting that the persons in charge of the Florentine Mercanzia decided to begin abandoning having the foreign notaries copy and register the court’s acts, resolving to preserve only the files of the documents prepared by the Florentine notary-procurators. In June of 1476 this became the case for the series of ‘Sentences,’ and then in 1496 it was decided that a ‘faithful and diligent notary who is a Florentine citizen’ should replace the two foreign notaries in charge of the ‘Ordinary Office’ and the ‘Extraordinary Office.’67 It is true that this change can be explained by the decrease in the role of itinerant justices throughout Italy, but at the same time it seems a curious coincidence that this dissatisfaction with the work of these notaries, and this abandonment of their hybrid scripta, should occur just when Florence experienced a huge growth of vernacular humanism as well as Lorenzo the Magnificent’s project, largely political, to promote the Florentine language. In the second place, we should stress the value that this hybrid scripta holds for us, for it allows us to discover something about the linguisic babel that characterized the commerical milieux of late medieval Italy. In the registers of our notaries we eavesdrop upon an environment in which a lingua franca based on the Tuscan dialect dominates, but which is also inflected by the different accents of merchants from the Italian peninsula and from various Mediterranean countries. The commercial
240 / Luca Boschetto courts, together with markets and fairs, provided the ideal stage for this drama, which might be described as a sort of ‘comedy of languages.’ It is no accident that a novella by Franco Sacchetti shows a Florentine protagonist, Massaleo degli Albizzi, meeting up in the Florentine prison with a ‘clear and clean’ but irremediably naive judge of the Mercanzia, who speaks to the wise Florentine with an unmistakable accent of the Veneto.68 This novella belongs to that strain of the ‘satire of pedantry’ in which foreign judges are targeted, which begins with the judge from the Marches portrayed in the Boccaccian novella mentioned earlier; in this case, however, Sacchetti’s novella urges us to think about the linguistic world of the Florentine Mercanzia. With litigants from various parts of the Florentine countryside and territory, as well as from far-off lands, and with the judge and his familia always foreigners, the sessions at the Mercanzia must have been animated by the sounds of the most diverse voices and accents, of which the registers that our notaries have left us are partial witnesses. By way of a final conclusion, I want to highlight what is perhaps the most important aspect of this evidence if we look at it from the perspective of the foreign notaries? Might not this thankless work of copying have had some kind of lasting effect on the language and culture of our notaries. What might it have meant for these men to come to Florence from the shores of the Adriatic, from Venetian or Lombard territories, from Lazio, from Umbria, from the area around Bologna, and even from Naples and Sicily (especially during the Quattrocento, when the catchment area for the foreign judges and their entourages took in almost the entire peninsula), only to discover that instead of copying Latin documents, as they would have been expected to do in just about every other Italian city, they were called on to transcribe Florentine and Tuscan texts? We should not rule out the likelihood that this unique apprenticeship in the Florentine vernacular scripta would have added to the notaries’ linguistic range. As a professional category, notaries in general made fundamental contributions to Italian literature, and perhaps the work of the foreign notaries at the Florentine Mercanzia copying texts that were not of a literary nature might have served as a formative experience, after which they may have looked at other more literary kinds of Tuscan prose with different eyes. In any event, their experience in Florence led nearly all of them to adopt a particular sort of vernacular for juridical and documentary texts, as the case of Ser Zaccaria makes visible. From this perpective, it would be useful to have a list of the names of the more than six hundred foreign notaries who, from 1355 until the end
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 241 of the Quattrocento, passed through the offices of the Florentine Mercanzia, copying out vernacular documents. Unfortunately, no volumes preserve the names of the Ufficiali and their familiae. An examination of the registers of Emancipazioni (Emancipations) which were also maintained by the foreign notaries of the Mercanzia (generally by those assigned to the ‘Extraordinary Office’), makes it possible to know the names of almost three hundred (the list of these names is published below as an Appendix). It would be worth having, some day, a complete picture of the holders of this office that played an important role in Florentine judicial and cultural life, an office that also had some important implications for the diffusion of the Florentine vernacular into various parts of the peninsula. Certainly, many of the anonymous notaries who, like Ser Zaccaria, passed through the Mercanzia did not leave any great marks on the cultural history of the period. Alongside these, however, are bound to be others who made significant contributions to the history of the Renaissance.69 One such figure is the notary who presided over the court’s Office of the Sentences between December 1465 and June 1466 and whose register is still extant. This notary was a Frenchman from Mezières, Hugo Commineau (Ugo Comminelli, or, in Latin, Hugo Nicolai de Comminellis), who came to the Mercanzia of Florence in the retinue of the judge Sigismondo degli Arcolani of Forli.70 His registry is written out in a staid, professional hand, but the pen-trials and drawings placed in the margins around the writing area are rather elegant and indicate something of the personality of this notary (see figure 7.5). Ugo Comminelli is one of the most polished copyists of the second half of the Quattrocento. At Florence he worked with Vespasiano degli Bisticci, as has been recognized by Albinia de la Mare, who assigned his Florentine stay to between 1469 and 1482; his presence at the Mercanzia now allows us to move that date forward by a few years. Comminelli was again employed for another stint at the Florentine Mercanzia in the opening months of 1479, arriving in the entourage of the judge Roberto Orsini of Rimini, himself a figure close to Lorenzo the Magnificent.71 Numerous copies of Ptolemy’s Geografia were copied by Ugo Comminelli, all of them works of especially graceful craftsmanship. He also copied books in the vernacular, such as the geographical poetry of Francesco Berlinghieri, but he is best known as the scribe of the Bible of Federico da Montefeltro, a work of two volumes (now Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urbinate latino 1 and Urbinate latino 2), which is one of the most famous manuscripts of the Quattrocento thanks to its extraordinary decoration. ‘The superb two-volume Bible,’ writes de la xxxxxxxx
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Figure 7.5 Marginal drawings in the register of Ugo Comminelli (1465). Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mercanzia 7702, fol. 2r. Reproduced with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali; further reproduction by any means is prohibited.
Mare, ‘is remarkable not only for its illumination, executed by some of the finest Florentine illuminators of the day ... but also because it is written in a fine, large regular humanistic hand, rather than the gothic script which was still usual for books of this kind.’72 Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that Vespasiano da Bisticci, in his Commentario della Vita di Federico, Duca d’Urbino, considered this Bible to be his masterpiece: ‘He had an edition of the Bible made in two most beautiful volumes, illustrated in the finest possible manner and bound in gold brocade with rich silver fittings. It was given this rich form as the chief of all writings.’73
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 243 In sum, the Mercanzia (as well as the other great Florentine courts of the Podestà and the Capitano) served as a place of employment for sojourning foreign notaries, some of whom were, like Ugo Comminelli, expert copyists well suited to collaborating in the city’s humanist milieu. It is hard to say how many persons of this sort are hiding in the list of the notaries of the Mercanzia; more far-reaching surveys would be useful at least to bring their names out of the shadows. Constrained to abandon their professional language of Latin, and asked instead to write in a vernacular that was not their own, at a time when vernacular Italian was far from having fixed norms, these men served as protagonists in a unique experiment that lasted for a century and a half. It is not without irony that this experience in vernacularization occured in the very city that at that very time was witnessing a triumph of Latin and humanistic studies.
NOTES Translated by William Robins. I want to thank Lawrin Armstrong and William Robins for the invitation to participate in the conference on Textual Cultures of Medieval Italy and for their help with this text. Sincere thanks, also, to Niall Atkinsons and David Lines, as well as the participants in the ‘Seminario di filologia’ at the Dipartimento di Studi sul Medioevo ed il Rinascimento of the Università degli Studi di Firenze, where this research was presented in November 2005. The research upon which this essay is based is part of a larger project dedicated to the study of the vast archive of the fifteenth-century court of the Florentine Mercanzia, generously supported by fellowships at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (1999–2000), and at the National Humanities Center (2001–2). In the essay all dates are given according to the modern calendar; notes provide double dates that take account of the fact that the Florentine calendar began the new year on 25 March. In the transcription of the vernacular texts, the following criteria have been observed: division of words, upper-case and lower-case, punctuation, and diacritical signs are presented in accord with modern usage; abbreviations have been expanded in italics; pointed brackets indicate expunctions; square brackets indicate editorial integration of letters or words lacking due to oversights by the copyists, as well as gaps due to damage to the document. 1 Various different fifteenth-century procedural documents from the Mercanzia archive have been edited in the appendix of Luca Boschetto, Leon Battista Alberti e Firenze: Biografia, storia, letteratura (Florence:
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2
3 4
5
6
7
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Olschki, 2000). Both the official acts of the civil courts of medieval cities and the procedural documents relating to the medieval guilds have fallen into scholarly oblivion, as is pointedly mentioned in Paolo Cammarosano, Italia medievale: Struttura e geografia delle fonti scritte (Rome: La Nuova Italia scientifica, 1991), 166–74, 205–10 . ‘Come voi tutte potete avere udito, nella nostra città vegnono molto spesso rettori marchigiani, li quali ... menan seco e giudici e notari che paiono uomini levati più tosto dall’aratro o tratti dalla calzoleria, che delle scuole delle leggi.’ Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Vittore Branca, vol. 4 of Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1976), 698 (novella 8.5); translation from Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, trans. Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella (New York: Norton, 1982), 495. William Robins, ‘Antonio Pucci, Guardiano degli Atti della Mercanzia,’ Studi e problemi di critica testuale 61 (2000): 29–70. Antonio Manetti, ‘The Fat Woodcarver,’ trans. Murtha Baca, in Lauro Martines, An Italian Renaissance Sextet: Six Tales in Historical Context (New York: Marsilio, 1994), 171–241. For example, in Burchiello’s poetry appear the names of message-boys of the Mercanzia active during the 1430s, Caporosso, Lisa (or Lisca), and Fallalbacchio; see I sonetti del Burchiello, ed. Michelangelo Zaccarello (Turin: Einaudi, 2004), 80–1 (sonnet 57), 87–8 (sonnet 62), 101–2 (sonnet 72); Fallalbacchio’s name was bestowed upon one of the giants in cantare 24 of Luigi Pulci’s Morgante. For the political role played by the Mercanzia during the Trecento and for its ties with the guilds, see John Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280–1400 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Antonella Astorri, La Mercanzia a Firenze nella prima metà del Trecento: Il potere dei grandi mercanti (Florence: Olschki, 1998); and Antonella Astorri and David Friedman, ‘The Florentine Mercanzia and Its Palace,’ I Tatti Studies 10 (2005): 11–68. The history of the Merchant Court in the fifteenth century remains to be written, but the importance of the institution during this period has been emphasized by Lauro Martines, Lawyers and Statecraft in Renaissance Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 130–45. On the Mercanzia during the age of Lorenzo the Magnificent, see Antonella Astorri, ‘Note sulla Mercanzia fiorentina sotto Lorenzo de’ Medici: Aspetti istituzionali e politici,’ Archivio storico italiano 110 (1992): 965–93. On the Florentine guild system, still fundamental is Alfred Doren, Le arti fiorentine, trans. G.B. Klein, 2 vols (Florence: Le Monnier, 1940). See also the recent and supple synthesis in Franco Franceschi, ‘La parabola
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 245 delle corporazioni nella Firenze del tardo Medioevo,’ in Arti fiorentine: La grande storia dell’artigianato, vol. 1, Il Medioevo, ed. Gloria Fossi et al. (Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 1998), 77–101. 9 On the role played by merchant courts like the Mercanzia in the regulation of economic activity, see the observations of Carlo Marco Belfanti, ‘Le regole e i privilegi: L’Università Maggiore e l’economia mantovana (secoli xiii–xvii),’ in Gli statuti dell’Università Maggiore dei Mercanti di Mantova (secoli XV–XVIII): Radici storiche del rapporto tra economia cultura e istituzioni mantovane, ed. Daniela Ferrari (Mantua: Camera di commercio, 1998), 11–29. Belfanti’s study is based primarily on the approach of the New Institutional Economics school (which, however, in the case of Mantua, cannot be checked against actual practice, given the almost complete loss of the judicial documents produced by the court there). 10 On the centrality of these two tribunals in the administering of penal justice, see the studies of Andrea Zorzi, L’amministrazione della giustizia penale nella Repubblica fiorentina: Aspetti e problemi (Florence: Olschki, 1988); and Laura Ikins Stern, The Criminal Law System of Medieval and Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). The civil jurisdiction of the Podestà and the Capitano, by contrast, remains practically unexplored, thanks to major gaps in the documentation, especially in the archive of the court of the Podestà. A comparison between the procedures followed in civil cases at the court of the Podestà in the middle of the Trecento with the procedures followed at the court of the Mercanzia, which reveals some strong similarities, has recently been completed by Vincenzo Colli, ‘Acta civilia in curia potestatis: Firenze 1344,’ in Praxis der Gerichtsbarkeit in europäischen Städten des Spätmittelalters, ed. Franz-Josef Arlinghaus et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2006), 271–303. 11 On the archival fondo of the Mercanzia, see Piero D’Angiolini and Claudio Pavone, eds, Guida generale degli archivi di stato italiani, 4 vols (Rome: Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali – Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1981–94), 2:60–1, 75 (with bibliography). 12 It is impossible in this setting to provide a picture of the entire operations of the court of the Mercanzia (whose salaried personnel never amounted to more than thirty persons). It should be mentioned, however, that, unlike the other major civic tribunals which relied upon the commune to carry their costs, the Mercanzia paid the salaries of its employees and covered all of their other costs (including the enormous costs related to bringing in the foreign judges), having recourse solely to the income from dues and from the procedural fees paid by the litigants. Its financial autonomy from the commune ceased only at the start
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of the age of Lorenzo, with the reforms of the early 1470s. A particularly important change in the organization of labour at the court was the creation of a chancellor, whose position had already been outlined (book 1, rubric 2) in the new redaction of the statutes completed in 1394 (asf, Mercanzia 5, fol. 8v), and whose tasks were definitively set out in a deliberation of the six counsellors in September of the same year (asf, Mercanzia 224, 18 Sept. 1394). On the activities of the merchants of the Calimala during this period, see Richard A. Goldthwaite, Enzo Settesoldi, and Marco Spallanzani, eds, Due libri mastri degli Alberti: Una grande compagnia di Calimala 1348– 1358, 2 vols (Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 1995). ‘Perciò che nele questioni che sono e che si fanno nella corte dell’Arte di Calamala mercantilmente si procede, e ’ piati si scrivono volgarmente, sança iudici o procuratori o notari, più di buona equità che di strecta ragione procedendo, e acciò che ciascuno litigante possa e sappia vedere e intendere gli statuti e capitoli che fanno per lui e contra lui, proveduto è che lo statuto di questa Arte sempre sia e stea scricto in volgare sermone e niuno statuto sia nella decta Arte in grammatica.’ The text is in book 3, rubric 25 (entitled Che llo statuto della decta arte sempre stea scripto in volgare sermone) of the statutes of the Arte di Calimala (asf, Arte di Calimala 5, fol. 54v). This statute is traditionally assigned to 1339. On the production of normative legislation at the Florentine guilds, see the exhaustive study by Andrea Zorzi, ‘Le fonti normative a Firenze nel tardo Medioevo: Un bilancio delle edizioni e degli studi,’ in Statuti della Repubblica fiorentina, ed. Romolo Caggese, new ed., ed. Giuliano Pinto, Francesco Salvestrini, and Andrea Zorzi, 2 vols (Florence: Olschki, 1999), 1:liii–ci. asf, Arte del Cambio 54 (14 July 1312–4 Jan. 1313/14, unpaginated). The three brief items in vernacular were all presented on 25 August 1312; to give just one example, the first item reads: ‘Die xxv augusti. Dinanzi da voi sengnori consoli dell’arte del cambio, Cherichino del Chericho si richiama del Trincia di messer Albizzo Corbinelli di settanta fiorini d’oro in una parte et di quindici in una altra, i quali debbo avere da llui per saldo d’una ragione d’ariento ch’ebbe da me.’ asf, Arte del Cambio 55 (7 Jan. 1322/3–20 July 1324). Compare the vernacular petitions on fols 2v, 6r, 8v, 11r, 19r, 29r, 34r, 36r, 38r, 41r, 51r, 52r, 63r, 64v, 65r, 70v, 77v, 81r, 86r. The same thing occurs in asf, Arte del Cambio 59 (6 May 1355–27 Aug. 1358), and then in asf, Arte del Cambio 65 (2 Sept. 1409–29 Dec. 1414). asf, Arte della Lana 71 (4 May 1355–22 Aug. 1335). This volume, now the second in the inventory, is the first in the series Partiti, atti e sentenze.
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 247 As with the Arte del Cambio, here the only items in the vernacular are the petitions addressed to the consuls of the guild; all other items in the various stages of a case are recorded in Latin. The same thing occurs, for example, also in asf, Arte della Lana 324 (2 Jan. 1394/5–30 Apr. 1395), the first volume in the series of Cause civili. For a study that makes good use of the case documents in this archive, see Franco Franceschi, Oltre il ‘Tumulto’: I lavoratori fiorentini dell’Arte della Lana fra Tre e Quattrocento (Florence: Olschki, 1993), 156 and n. 34. 19 asf, Provvisioni Registri 42, fol. 96r–v (30 July 1355). In the margin: ‘Quod in Curia Universitatis Mercantie vulgariter causetur.’ The legislation decreed, ‘ut presertim que bona fide fiunt seu vulgariter contrauntur per iuris subtilitatem et iudiciarium ordinem in calupniam non trahantur,’ that from then on, ‘in Curia Universitatis Mercantie seu Mercatorum civitatis Florentie nulla petitio, libellus seu querimonia, nullaque exceptio, replicatio seu dupplicatio, nullaque interogatio, positio, articulus seu responsio, nullaque allegatio, nec aliquis actus iudiciarius, possit offerri, porrigi, dari, fieri seu scribi in latino seu licterali vel gramaticali sermone. Sed omnia que in dicta Curia attitabuntur seu fient, et tam in procedendo quam in pronumptiando seu sententiando, fiant, dicantur et fieri scribi et dici debeant solummodo vulgariter, et non licteraliter seu gramaticaliter. Et quod secus fieret sit ipso iure nullum.’ The English translation used here is taken, with slight modifications, from William Robins, ‘Vernacular Textualities in FourteenthCentury Florence,’ in The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity, ed. Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson (University Park, pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 112–31 at 112. 20 asf, Mercanzia 1121 (1 Aug. 1355–26 Nov. 1355, unpaginated). The titulus reads: ‘Al nome de Deo, ame. Questo sì è lo livro overo quaterno che contiene in si petitione overo libelli, citatione, commissione citatorie e relatorie, comparitione, responsione, contestatione de piati, positione, capituli, intentione, iuramento de testimonii, compromissione, laudi, sententie, bandi e multe varie e diverse scripture overo acti editi fatti e composti a petitione et instantia deli infrascripti homini e persone e contra li infrascripti homini e persone e per le infrascripte casone al tempo del’ofitio et suto l’axaminamento del savio e discreto homo miser Richo da Morrano da Modena excelentissemo doctore de leçce honorevele iudice et offitiale al’ofitio del’università de merchatanti e dela merchadandia dela cità de Fiorença e scripto e exemplato per mi Franceschino de Coçaindrè de miser Çambono de Gixilabelli da Bologna publicho e per imperiale auctorità nodaro e mo’ nodaro offitiale e scrivano del decto miser Richo iudece et offitiale ac etiamdeo del’università predicta suto li anni da l’incharnatione del
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nostro signore miser Yhesu Christo milletrecentoçinquantaçinque, indictione octava ai die et ai mesi si chomo de soto per ordene se contiene.’ In the rest of the register, the hands of the other two foreign notaries alternate with Franceschino’s. The same notary also drafted the titulus of the register asf, Mercanzia 165 (unpaginated), in the series of Deliberazioni, riformagioni, provvisioni e partiti dell’Uffiziale forestiero, that opens on 7 August 1355. In the next registers in both series, the titulus is again written in Latin, even if the contents of the acts are entirely in the vernacular. On the general legal condition of women in Florentine society at the time, see Thomas Kuehn, ‘Figlie, madri, mogli e vedove: Donne come persone giuridiche,’ in Tempi e spazi di vita femminile tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Silvana Seidel Menchi, Anne Jacobson Schutte, and Thomas Kuehn (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 431–60. On this law, and on the tasks assigned to the Mercanzia with respect to recording these emancipations, see Thomas Kuehn, Emancipation in Late Medieval Florence (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982), 37–9. ‘Pur per ovviare a gli inganni,’ as Ammirato succinctly put it, ‘fu provisto: Che nell’università della mercanzia di Firenze non si potesse fare alcun atto che in lingua vulgare.’ ‘Istorie fiorentine’ di Scipione Ammirato ... con l’aggiunte di Scipione Ammirato il Giovane, vol. 1, tom. 1 (Florence: Stamperia d’Amador Massi ad istanza di G. B. Landini, 1647), 576a–c. On this, and on the role played throughout the Trecento by bilingual notaries in recovering the classical tradition through translations, see Luca Azzetta, ‘Introduzione,’ in Ordinamenti, provvisioni e riformagioni del Comune di Firenze volgarizzati da Andrea Lancia (1355–1357), ed. Luca Azzetta (Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 2001), 9–125, esp. 40–9. A good example is the objection presented in February 1381 by an innkeeper from Dicomano, Niccolò di Michele, against the deposition of witnesses produced by the opposing party, the carter Galigaro di Guido da Forlì, in so far as they had deposed ‘sopra una intencione e capitoli in latino e literalmente, la quale né mai si diede né dare si poteva nella decta corte, né data varrebbe né vale,’ in particular because ‘gli atti e scripte che ssi fanno e dannosi nella decta corte e ne’ piati e questioni di quella si debbono dare e scriversi per volgare e non per letera né in latino secondo la riformagione e ordine dela decta corte e del Comune di Firenze. Et quello atto che altrimenti si facesse di ragione non vale e non tienne’; asf, Mercanzia 1181, fols 126v–8r (18 Feb. 1380/1), citation from
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 249
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fol. 127r). I thank Antonella Astorri for generously pointing out this document to me. asf, Mercanzia 5, fol. 18r (book 2, rubric 1, De offitio et balia dicti offitialis Mercantie in causis et casibus infrascriptis): ‘Item quod omnes et singule scripture quorumcumque actorum fiendorum coram dicto offitiali vel in eius curia in causis et questionibus quibuscumque aut circa causas et questiones quascumque, et ipsa omnia acta et gesta, fieri, concipi et scribi debeant in vulgari sermone et non gramaticali, et quidquid secus fieret vel scriberetur sit irritum et inane et nullius momenti. Salvo quod si alique scripture vel aliqua gesta dicte curie venirent transmictenda ad aliquas mundi partes. Tunc, si partes litigantes voluerint, vel si dicto offitiali et offitio Sex consiliariorum videretur, etiam in quocumque casu pro faciliori intelligentia talium scripturarum et gestarum, possint et debeant huiusmodi scripture latina seu gramaticali lingua concipi et describi, et in actis et libris dicte curie poni et registrari, non obstantibus supradictis.’ asf, Provvisioni Registri 103, fol. 2v. Significantly, the text of the petition was copied in the vernacular, and it was recorded thus in the registers of the Republic. The petition was approved in the Consiglio del Popolo on 27 March with 186 votes in favour and 28 opposed; the next day it was passed by the Consiglio del Comune with 160 in favour and 17 opposed (fol. 3v). The text of this petition was first published by Alessandro Gherardi, ‘Il volgare nelle scritture delle Arti Fiorentine,’ Miscellanea fiorentina di erudizione e storia 1 (1886): 28–9. For example, see the volume asf, Arte della Lana 319, fol. 57r–v (18 Jan. 1414/15). On the switch from Latin to the vernacular in the acts of the Arte della Lana, coinciding perfectly with the new law entering into force, see also Franco Franceschi, ‘Il linguaggio della memoria: Le deposizioni dei testimoni in un tribunale corporativo fiorentino fra xiv e xv secolo,’ in La parola all’accusato, ed. Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Palermo: Sellerio, 1991), 213–32, esp. 221. Paul Oskar Kristeller, ‘The Origin and Development of the Language of Italian Prose,’ Word 2 (1946): 50–65, cited from Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1956), 473–93, esp. 485 and n. 37: ‘The use of the vernacular was made mandatory for the courts of trades and crafts in Florence through a decree of 1414.’ Kristeller obtained this information from Girolamo Mancini, ‘Un nuovo documento sul certame coronario di Firenze del 1441,’ Archivio storico italiano, 5th ser., 9 (1892): 326–46, 334 , who in turn relied upon the notice provided a few years before by Gherardi, ‘Il volgare nelle scritture.’
250 / Luca Boschetto 30 Giacomo Devoto, Profilo di storia linguistica italiana (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1953), 71. 31 Bruno Migliorini, Storia della lingua italiana (Florence: Sansoni, 1960), 254. 32 Giacomo Devoto, Il linguaggio d’Italia: Storia e strutture linguistiche italiane dalla preistoria ai nostri giorni (Milan: Rizzoli, 1974), 279: ‘Ma nel frattempo si era compiuto in Toscana un avvenimento di portata sociolinguistica fondamentale: non già la pubblicazione di un testo nella lingua normalizzata, a cui la Toscana era arrivata con forze proprie, ma un riconoscimento come l’uso reso obbligatorio del volgare nei tribunali commerciali (1414).’ 33 Teresa Poggi Salani, ‘La Toscana,’ in L’italiano nelle regioni: Lingua nazionale e identità regionali, ed. Francesco Bruni (Turin: utet, 1992), 402–61. The same is also true for the important study of Paola Manni, ‘Toscana,’ in Storia della lingua italiana, ed. Luca Serianni and Pietro Trifone, 3 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 1994), 3:294–329; and for the surveys in the series ‘Storia della lingua italiana’ edited by Francesco Bruni, namely Paola Manni, Il Trecento toscano: La lingua di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), and Mirko Tavoni, Il Quattrocento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992). 34 In fact, studies of the history of the language have traditionally illustrated the sphere of juridical language principally through examples of communal and guild statutes; see the recent overview by Piero Fiorelli, ‘La lingua del diritto e dell’amministrazione,’ in Storia della lingua italiana, ed. Serianni and Trifone, 2:553–97; as well as Fiorelli’s introduction to Giovan Battista De Luca, Se sia bene trattare la legge in lingua volgare, ed. Piero Fiorelli (Florence: clusf cooperativa editrice universitaria, 1980), 5–20; and his ‘Gli “Ordinamenti di giustizia” di latino in volgare,’ in Ordinamenti di giustizia fiorentini: Studi in occasione del VII centenario, ed. Vanna Arrighi (Florence: Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, 1995), 65–103. The situation is obviously different when it comes to the documentation of criminal cases (and for the Venetian territories perhaps also for the documentation emerging from some civic courts); one thinks of the celebrated records of the Podestà of Lio Mazor: Atti del podestà di Lio Mazor, ed. Mahmoud Salem Elsheikh (Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 1999); and, for instances of slander, of the Ingiurie, improperi, contumelie ecc.: Saggio di lingua parlata del Trecento cavato dai libri criminali di Lucca per opera di Salvatore Bongi, new ed., ed. Daniela Marcheschi (Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1983). See also the recent study on the typology of these texts, with up-to-date bibliography, in Pär Larson, ‘Ingiurie e
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 251 villanie dagli Atti podestarili pistoiesi del 1295,’ Bollettino dell’Opera del vocabolario italiano 9 (2004): 349–54. 35 The case documents of the court of the Florentine Mercanzia are represented by only two items in the huge corpus of the Tesoro della lingua italiana delle origini, based on edited Italian texts from before 1375; see Bibliografia dei testi in volgare fino al 1375 preparati per lo spoglio lessicale (Florence: Opera del vocabolario italiano – Centro di studi del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche presso l’Accademia della Crusca, 1992), items 1583, 1910. 36 Cf. Francesca Boris, ‘L’archivio del Foro dei Mercanti di Bologna: Problemi di riordinamento e prospettive di ricerca,’ Archivi per la storia 4 (1991): 279–89 at 285, which is also useful for a general description of the magistracy and of the substantial archive of documents that it left behind, containing about 750 items covering the period 1426– 1796. For the first phase of this institution, see also Francesca Boris, ‘Il Foro dei Mercanti: L’autocoscienza di un ceto,’ Atti e Memorie della Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Province di Romagna 43 (1992): 317–31. The draft of the statutes from 1400 is preserved in Bologna, Archivio di Stato di Bologna, Codici miniati 30 (Statuti del Foro dei Mercanti, 1400). On the retention of Latin in the acts of the court of Bologna until at least the beginnings of the 1440s, see Luca Boschetto, ‘Nuovi documenti su Carlo di Lorenzo degli Alberti e una proposta per la datazione del “De commodis litterarum atque incommodis,”’ Albertiana 1 (1998): 43–60. 37 On the history of Lucca’s Corte dei Mercanti, see Augusto Mancini, Umberto Dorini, and Eugenio Lazzareschi, eds, Lo statuto della Corte dei Mercanti in Lucca del 1376 (Florence: Olschki, 1927). A detailed sketch of this archive is found in Salvatore Bongi, Inventario: Archivio di Stato in Lucca: Strumenti per la ricerca, vol. 5.2 (1872; Lucca: Istituto storico lucchese, 1999), 233–44. The earliest surviving register of the series of civil cases, dating to 1366, contains only a single petition in the vernacular (Lucca, Archivio di Stato di Lucca, Corte de’ Mercanti 136, fol. 175r, 12 June 1366); also in the vernacular is another document related to this case (fol. 176r–v, 3 July 1366). Even if there was more room for the vernacular in subsequent decades, a check of a few registers of this series makes it clear that the choice of language in which the acts were to be written was left to the discretion of the parties, so that the alternation between Latin and vernacular did not cease even in the second half of the Quattrocento; see, for example, Archivio di Stato di Lucca, Corte de’ Mercanti 145 (from the second half of 1415), and Corte de’ Mercanti 155 (from 1475).
252 / Luca Boschetto 38 This issue is not addressed in the comparative study by Alessandro Lattes, Il diritto commerciale nella legislazione statutaria delle città italiane (Milan: Hoepli, 1882). 39 Karin Nehlsen-von Stryk, L’assicurazione marittima a Venezia nel XV secolo (Rome: Il Veltro, 1988), 39, 45. See also, for its interesting observations on the language used in this court’s Trecento registers of Sentenze a giustizia, Lorenzo Tomasin, Il volgare e la legge: Storia linguistica del diritto veneziano (secoli XIII–XVIII) (Padua: Esedra, 2001), 223–33. 40 See the addition numbered 238, 22 March 1442 (Della pena del notaio se scrivesse per lectera): ‘Item perché el più delle volte gli Officiali della Mercantia non intendono per lectera et contentarebbersi alle volte tucti insieme o di per sé prima che dessero alcuna sententia examinare tucti gli atti facti senza farsegli leggere al notaio, providero et ordinaro che tucte le scripture che in decta casa si faranno, così per lo notaio come per lo Camarlingho, si faccino tucte per vulgare, alla pena di lire dieci per ciascuno di loro et per ciaschuna volta che contra facessero. Et questo si fa perché ànno notitia che così si costuma nelle altre buone ciptà all’offitio della Mercantia. Con questo inteso, che se alcuno volesse dal notaio sententie, lodi o protesti o altri acti che in decta casa si fussero facti, el notaio gli possa fare et publicare in latino, al modo che al presente si costuma.’ Monica Chiantini, La Mercanzia di Siena nel Rinascimento: La normativa dei secoli XIV–XVI (Siena: Edizioni Cantagalli, 1996), 155. 41 Il costituto del comune di Siena volgarizzato nel MCCCIX–MCCCX, ed. Mahmoud Salem Elsheikh, 4 vols (Siena: Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena, 2002). 42 Gregorio Dati, L’Istoria di Firenze di Gregorio Dati dal 1380 al 1405 (Norcia: T. Cesare, 1902), 157. 43 See David Herlihy and Christane Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 44 The series of Atti in cause ordinarie for the period from 1355 to 1500 consists of 452 volumes, of which 50 pertain to the years 1355–75 (asf, Mercanzia 1121–1573). The series of Atti in cause straordinarie ed esecutive, in the same period consists of 324 volumes, 47 from 1355–75 (asf, Mercanzia 4203–527). The series of Sentenze, for the period from 1427 to 1500 consists of 224 volumes (asf, Mercanzia 7114bis–338). 45 Poggi Salani, ‘La Toscana,’ 412–14. 46 On the transformations of the Florentine language in the later Trecento and in the Quattrocento, see Manni, ‘Toscana,’ 321–9; and also, especially for the attention given to the links between linguistic and demographic phenomena, Massimo Palermo, ‘Sull’evoluzione del fiorentino
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47
48
49
50
51
nel Tre-Quattrocento,’ Nuovi Annali della Facoltà di Magistero dell’Università di Messina 8–10 (1990–2): 131–56. asf, Mercanzia 283, 18 Feb. 1451/2 (unpaginated). The six counsellors, seeing ‘quod super palcho et solario posito in domo dicte universitatis super sala maiori terrena dicte universitatis, super quo palcho in presenti sunt multi libri et filze et scripture actitatorum in dicta curia temporibus preteritis; et quod inter cetera sunt multe filze huiusmodi actorum infilzate et sfilzate in malo ordine, et occupant totum locum sine aliquo fructu, maxime quia sunt libri in quibus sunt registrate dicte filze,’ decided that the Guardians of the Acts must ‘huiusmodi filzas actorum, videlicet illas que sunt ab anno millesimo quadringentesimo retro inclusive, et etiam alias ab ipso anno citra existentes ruptas et seu exfilzatas et disordinatas, prout eorum discretioni videbitur, vendere et alienare cum meliori utilitate quam poterint, ad utilitatem dicte universitatis.’ The status of the Mercanzia archive just before the culling is described in a missive sent to Grandduke Pietro Leopoldo on 5 August, 1773, by the historian Giovanni Francesco Pagnini, director of the palace archive, and assigned to preside over the reordering of the archive of the Mercanzia court (asf, Auditore poi Segretario delle Riformagioni 111, fols 350r–2v). Pagnini’s opinion on the uselessness of the ‘duplicati de’ giornali, le filze degli atti, e delle giustificazioni di quelle sentenze’ (fol. 351r–v) led to the dispersal of 202 files of Sentenze (the period from 1427 to 1477), 157 files of Atti in cause esecutive (from 1450 to 1495), and 264 files of Atti in cause ordinarie (from 1450 to 1495), as was recorded in the inventory compiled in 1779 (asf, Vecchi Inventari 686, pp. 261–99). On the Pierleoni family, see the bibliography given in Maurizio Trifone, Lingua e società nella Roma rinascimentale, vol. 1, Testi e scriventi (Florence: F. Cesati, 1999), 91–2, 203. The nature of the writings that were deposited with the notary of the Extraordinary Office (arising from decisions relating to the work of the court, and not formalized by statute) is recoverable not only from examining the actual files, but also from the list of their own tasks that several notaries prepared for their own purposes and that sometimes are preserved on the flyleaves of the registers (e.g., asf, Mercanzia 7177). asf, Mercanzia 4420 (16 Nov. 1450–13 Feb. 1450/1, unpaginated). This file is composed of fascicles of various size, later bound together, totalling about six hundred paper leaves (the inventory of the archive erroneously indicates the dates as Nov. 1451 to Feb. 1451/2); the front cover carries the title: ‘filça straordinaria prima / di mes ERe simone da roma’; the titulus reads: ‘In Christi nomine, amen. Hic est liber quaternus continens omnes et singulos actus extraordinarios factus et
254 / Luca Boschetto compositus tempore officii egregii legum doctoris domini Simonis de Perleonibus de Roma officialis Mercantie et Universitatis Mercatorum civitatis Florentie, rogatus per me Zacchariam de Perleonibus notarium et officialem ad dictum officium extraordinariorum per dictum dominum officialem inter alia deputatum, sub anis domini nostri Yhesu Christi mccccl et partim 1451, diebus et mensibus infrascriptis.’ 52 asf, Mercanzia 4421 (14 Feb. 1450/1–15 May 1451, unpaginated). This file is composed of fascicles of various size, later bound together, totalling about six hundred paper leaves (the inventory erroneously indicates the dates as Feb. 1451/2 to May 1452); the front cover carries the title: ‘filça straordinaria seconda di mes ER / simone da roma moccccli’; the titulus reads: ‘In Christi nomine, amen. Hic est liber sive quaternus continens in se omnes et singulos actus extraordinarios factus et compositus tempore officii egregii et eximii legum doctoris domini Simonis de Perleonibus de Roma officialis Mercatantie et Universitatis Mercatorum civitatis Florentie, rogatus per me Zacchariam de Perleonibus de Roma notarium et ofitialem ad dictum officium extraordinariorum per dictum dominum offitialem inter alia deputatum sub anis domini nostri Yhesu Christi mccccl et partim 1451, diebus et mensibus infrascriptis.’ 53 asf, Mercanzia 4417. This register consists of 360 paper leaves (the first 356 are numbered). The titulus, on fol. 1r, reads: ‘Hic est liber sive quaternus in se continens omnes et singulas sequestrationes, hubricationes, fideguiones, cexiones, rellationes stagimentorum et quamplures alios varios et diversos actus et inscripturas spectantes et pertinentes ad hofficium extraordinarium Mercatantie et Universitatis Mercatorum inclite ac magnifice civitatis Florentie, factus edictus et compositus tempore egregii et exsimii legum doctoris domini Simonis Iohannis domini Georgii de Perleonibus de Roma, dignissimi officialis prefate Mercatantie dicte magnifice civitatis Florentie per sex menssibus infrascriptis, scriptus et plubicatus per me Zacchariam Iohannis domini Georgii de Perleonibus de Roma notarium plubicum et nunc notarium depotatum per dictum dominum officialem supradictum ad dictum officium extraordinariorum per sex mensibus i[ni]ciatis die xv mensis novembris 1450 indictione xiiiia tempore sactissimi in Christo patris et domini domini Nicolai divina providectia pape quitti.’ 54 The surprising thing about the writings by Florentine notaries contained in these files is the almost complete lack of abbreviations, an unusual phenomenon in comparison with the notaries’ Latin writings, and one that is perhaps connected not only to a desire to allow litigants to oversee the contents of the documents drafted on their behalf, but
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 255
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56
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60 61 62 63 64
also, as Susanne Lepsius has pointed out to me, to the fact that the notaries were paid on the basis of the length of the document they wrote out. In both the file and the register, the text of this summons continued naturally onto the next pages, with a long list of equipment and belongings in the workshop of the deceased barber. The first line of this list, which in the file reads as ‘secte bacini d’octone da barbieri tra buoni et cattivi,’ was transcribed by Ser Zaccaria as ‘7 bacini d’atone da barbieri tra boni e gattivi’ (fol. 42r). This act, a guarantee, can be summarized thus: Biagio di Niccolò, imprisoned at the court of the Mercanzia on a charge from Giovanni di Benozzo for a debt of 8 lire, promises to appear for judgment, to pay the sum determined there, and to obey the decisions of the foreign judge; Antonio di Bartolomeo, cobbler, swears to serve as his guarantor. I refer in particular to the linguistic commentary on the material gathered in Maurizio Trifone, Le carte di Battista Frangipane (1471–1500), nobile romano e ‘mercante di campagna’ (Heidelberg: Winter, 1998). More generally, for a recent profile of the Roman language of the Quattrocento, which was subject to a thoroughgoing process of Tuscanization that continued with even more force in the subsequent century, see Pietro Trifone, ‘Roma e il Lazio,’ in L’italiano nelle regioni: Lingua nazionale e identità regionali, ed. Francesco Bruni (Turin: utet, 1992), 540–93 , esp. 553–66. Cf. Trifone, Le carte di Battista Frangipane, 155 (§ 70, pronomi). Trifone notes that, among the accented pronouns functioning as a verbal complement, ‘per la prima persona singolare l’uso sistematico di mi e della forma epitetica mine.’ In the rest of the register, while the formula a me notaio is clearly more common, there are still other occurrences of a mi notaio (e.g., asf, Mercanzia 4417, fols 10v, 24v). Trifone, Le carte di Battista Frangipane, 135–6, (§ 56, -sj-, -ssj-); in the Frangipane documents, one encounters ‘sia l’esito in sibilante palatale, condiviso anche dal toscano e dovuto a influssi letterari, sia l’originario esito indigeno in –s- sorda, proprio in generale dell’area meridionale.’ Ibid., 137, (§ 57, -tj-). Ibid., 116–18 (§ 40, occlusive sorde e sonore). Ibid., 108–11 (§ 33, esiti di J e G + vocale palatale). Ibid., 91–3 (§ 25, trattamento di e atona non finale). The entire act can be summarized as follows: Biagio d’Antonio dello Spiccia, from Montughi in the territory of Florence, justifies the seizure that was performed by the Mercanzia at his instigation of Filippo di Giovanni Dini, purse-maker, affirming that he had this done because of
256 / Luca Boschetto
65
66
67
68
69
a debt equal to 8 gold florins and 20 small lire; in particular, he recalls how in 1448, through the solicitations of the six counsellors of the Mercanzia, the parties had made a compromise in their controversy, choosing as arbitrator Filippo del Migliore, tavoliere, who at that time was one of the six counsellors. Cf. Trifone, Le carte di Battista Frangipane, 122–5, (§ 43, -mb-, -nd-, -ld-). In the Frangipane documents, however, this ending is not constant, ‘per la pressione congiunta del latino e del toscano,’ and also because ‘nel romanesco del Quattro-Cinquecento il fenomeno assimilatorio sembra essere fortemente marcato dal punto di vista sociolinguistico,’ and it seems that this feature ‘rientri non tanto nella varietà “media”, quanto piuttosto in quella “bassa.”’ asf, Mercanzia 4421, 11 May 1451 (unpaginated). This act, another guarantee, can be summarized as follows: Antonio di Giovanni da Prato, chaplain of S. Iacopo tra le Fosse, presents himself for judgment regarding two cases that he intends to present at the court of the Mercanzia, respectively against Tancia, wife of Simone di Bartolo, builder, and against Simone himself; until he can be heard by the court, he promises to appear for judgment, to pay the sum determined there, and to obey the decisions of the foreign judge; Giannozzo di Giovanni di Giovanni Strozzi, member of the Arte di Calimala, swears to serve as his guarantor. The reform regarding the Sentenze was adopted on 14 May 1476 by a decision of the statutory office-holders (asf, Mercanzia 5, fols 87r–8v). The substitution of a single Florentine notary for the ‘dua notai forestieri che rigistravano gli acti publici della presente corte,’ justified by the aims to ‘obviare a molti inconvenienti et disordini che ogni dì seghuivono et multiplicavano in decta corte’ and to follow ‘anchora in questa parte le buone et laudabili consuetudini et observantie dell’altre corti,’ was sanctioned in the new draft of the statutes in 1496, to go into effect the following September (asf, Mercanzia 9, fols 2v–3r). Franco Sacchetti, Il Trecentonovelle, ed. Valerio Marucci (Rome: Salerno, 1996), 423–4 (Novella 139): ‘Uno Massaleo da Firenze, essendo in prigione con uno iudice stato della Mercatantia con una strana piacevolezza usata nel iudice si mostra avere errato.’ On the difficulty of reconstructing the retinues of the foreign judges (albeit for a period earlier than ours), see the observations preceding the prosopographical study coordinated by Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, I podestà dell’Italia comunale, vol. 1, Reclutamento e circolazione degli ufficiali forestieri (fine XII sec.–metà XIV sec.) (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2000), 4. There is, however, one striking exception, pre-
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71
72
73
sented in Vittorio Giorgetti, Podestà, capitani del popolo e loro ufficiali a Perugia (1195–1500) (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1993). asf, Mercanzia 7702 (9 Dec. 1465–20 June 1466). This register contains 630 paper leaves; a title on the front cover reads: ‘sentençie.’ The existence of this register was generously communicated to me by Lorenz Boeninger, whom I wish to thank. Comminelli’s second term of service, which leaves a trace in the appearance of his hand in a register of Emancipazioni (asf, Mercanzia 10822, fols 80r–3v, where he records the emancipations from 11 Jan. 1478/9 to 24 Apr. 1479), is documented by the register of Extraordinary Acts that he compiled from 17 Jan. 1478/9 to 24 Apr. 1479, written, as it states in the titulus, ‘per me Ugonem Nicolai de Comminellis notarium publicum deputatum ad officium capse Curie Mercantie’ (asf, Mercanzia 4486). On 1 April 1479, Lorenzo de’ Medici recomended Roberto Orsini, who had taken up a one-year term as judge of the Mercanzia, to Federigo Gonzaga, the Marquis of Mantua, describing him as ‘doctor di legge, mio carissimo, stato qui officiale de la Mercatantia nostra, dove si è portato con tanta iustitia, integrità et modestia, che ne riporta la gratia di tutta questa città’; Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lettere 4 (1479–1480), ed. Nicolai Rubinstein (Florence: Giunti-Barbèra, 1981), 47–8. Albinia de la Mare, ‘New Research on Humanistic Scribes in Florence,’ in Miniatura fiorentina del Rinascimento, 1440–1525: Un primo censimento, ed. Annarosa Garzelli, 2 vols (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1985), 1:393– 600 at 450. On the Bible of Federico, see also Annarosa Garzelli, La Bibbia di Federico da Montefeltro: Un’officina libraria fiorentina, 1476–1478 (Rome: Multigrafica, 1977); and La Bibbia di Federico da Montefeltro: Codici Urbinati latini 1–2, Biblioteca apostolica vaticana (Modena: Panini; Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2003–5). ‘La Bibia, libro excellentissimo, hallo facto in dua volumi istoriati, tanto ricco et degno quanto dire si potessi, coperto di brocato d’oro, fornita d’ariento richissimamente, et questa ha facta così rica, come capo di tutti gli scrittori’; Vespasiano da Bisticci, ‘Comentario de la vita del signore Federico, duca d’Urbino,’ in Vespasiano da Bisticci, Le vite, ed. Aulo Greco, 2 vols (Florence: Istituto nazionale di studi sul rinascimento, 1970–6), 1:355–416 at 390; translation from Vespasiano da Bisticci, Renaissance Princes, Popes, and Prelates: The Vespasiano Memoirs, Lives of Illustrious Men of the XVth Century, trans. William George and Emily Waters, introduction by Myron P. Gilmore (New York, Harper & Row, 1963), 103.
258 / Luca Boschetto
APPENDIX Foreign Notaries of the Court of the Mercanzia, 1355–1480 (A Partial List Gathered out of the Registers of Emancipations) Sources: Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mercanzia 10819bis (Emancipations from 1355 to 1381); Mercanzia 10819ter (Emancipations from 1381 to 1399); Mercanzia 10820 (Emancipations from 1400 to 1417); Mercanzia 10820bis (Emancipations from 1417 to 1451); Mercanzia 10821 (Emancipations from 1453 to 1474); Mercanzia 10822 (Emancipations from 1474 to 1499). 1355–60 Iohannes ser Cichini de Macreto de Mutina Nerius Pieri de Castro Citerne Stefanus ser Nerii de Montecornario Nicolaus ser Lippi Bettini de Arimino Bartholomeus Galducii de Castro Chiuslini Petrus Nardi de Graffignano Angelus domini Francisci de Sancto Angelo in Vado Ludovichus Rusteghi de Celaia 1361–70 Francischus Angelutii de Eugubio Iustus ser Gualfredi de Vulterra Lucas Iohannis de Vulterra Facius ser Malgarucii de Tauxignano (comitatus Imole) Thomas Aççi de Regio Bartholus Niccolai ser Gualteri de Gualterolis de Imola Bartolomeus ser Martini de Bictonio Tebonus Nerii Teboni de Sancto Angelo in Vado Bondus Guidonis Bondi de Civitate Castelli Orius domini Iacobi de Barateriis de Bononia Simon Severii de Captaneiis del Prato de Tredoçio
Iohannes ser Baroncelli de Querceto de Mutina Francischus Boni de Buralibus de Mutina Francischus Pauli de Frassineto (comitatus Aretii) Antolinus Ciucii de Roccha Sancti Cassiani in Cassaticho Anthonius ser Cinoli de Capuciis de Imola Bartolus Ciani Gratiani de Civitate Castelli Rigus Tebaldini de Lendenaria Almenardus Francisci magistri Almenardi medici de Montagnana (Paduane diocesis)
1371–80 Marsilius Spini de Faventia Tadeus domini Coradi de Rigoglosiis de Imola Antonius Henrici de Urbeveteri Benignus Cole de Aquapendente Petrus Vannis Petri de Colistaciario (comitatus Eugubii) Moschatus Rustichutii Seghi de Tuderto Martinus Notti Bigotti de Casulis Guido domini Prosdocimi de Guaiardis de Citadella (comitatus Padue) Dosius ser Iohannis de Capuciis de Imola
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 259 Sanctus condam ser Ciuchii de Civitate Castelli Broccholutius Iohannis de Panichale Hostexanus Guidoncini de Plantavignis de Bononia Aymerichus Bernardini de Vivollis de Faventia Christofanus ser Iacopi Cola Angeli de Racaneto Iohannes Tedeschi de Angna Iohannes Petri Gratioli de Montecchio Monte domini Gori ser Vannis de Civitate Castelli Barontus magistri Iuliani de Mondavio Francischus Nardi de Callio Dosius ser Iohannis de Capuciis de Imola 1381–90 Iacobus Dadioli de Montevetularum Baldassinus Blasius Iohannis de Monte Viridi Anthonius Michaelis de Vulterra Antonius Roberti de Urbeveteri Laurentius Covetti de Urbeveteri Paulus ser Iohannis de Interamne Petrus Iohannis de Botiis de Urbeveteri. Hericus Cholani de Arbona Paulinus condam Bonvisini de Forlivio Angelus Petri de Castro Citerne Petrus Nicholaii de Chapelinis de Ferraria Iohannes Obiçonis de Griffonibus de Ferraria Paulus Bartoli de Civitate Castelli Iohannes Iacobi de Pedemontium Iohannes Bonzanini de Varegnana (comitatus Bononie) Iacobus ser Antonii Ugolini de Castro Durante Lucas ser Simeonis Nicolai de Interamne Ludovicus magistri Anthonii de Callio Iohannes Bianchelli de Fulgineo Amator ser Donini de Grossis de Parma Thomas Andree domini Francisci de Interamne 1391–1400 Nicholaus ser Leonardi ser Guidonis de Turisella de Cesena
Filippus magistri Iacobi de Castagnolis de Bononia Paulus Iohannis de Oddofredis de Bononia Nicolaus Nicole de Bonaziis de Perusio Andreas Simonis Colutii de Fulgineo Iulianus Bectoli de Perusio Tomas Antonii de Fulgineo Vannes Pieri de Castillione Aretino Petrus Anthonii de Esculo Francischus Octaviani de Roccha Sancti Zenonis de Interamne Princivalle Petri de Pergula Angelus Vannis Paulutii Perusinelli de Perusio Çenobius ser Peri de Civitate Castelli Angelus Nicolai Poni de Monte Sancto Andreas Simonis Colutii de Fulgineo Antonius de Sernano Iohannesphilippus Anthonii de Castaldis de Ferraria Lodovicus ser Michaelis de Avenantibus de Ferraria Iacobus Bucii de Pascis de Sancto Martino de Aprutio Petruspaulus magistri Iohannis de Fulgineo Petrus Iohannis de Urbeveteri Iohannes Fredelli de Bictonio Bartolomeus ser Angeli de Neapoli Georgius ser Iohannis de Capuciis de Imola Iacobus Mathei de Savorris de Faventia
1401–10 Petrus Iohannis Cole de Guerrettis de Interamne Iohannes ser Moscati Iohannis de Tuderto Cola Colutii de Ripatransone Iohannes Thome de Montefiliorum Iohannes Ventoruccii de Eugubio Thomas ser Matthei de Interamne Renovatus Baldassare de Altiburgis de Casali Flumanensi (comitatus Imole) Paulus Petri de Urbeveteri Paulus Fratris Sanctini de Marchonibus de Cluxunia
260 / Luca Boschetto Petrus Iohannis Cole de Guerrettis de Interamne Gabriel ser Andree de Parma Iohannes ser Anthonii de Sancta Victoria Meglior Blaxii de Spinetulo (comitatus Eschuli) Guido Dominici de Civitate Castelli Baptista ser Angeli de Civitate Castelli Iohannes ser Gervasini de Musachis de Parma Cesar Iohannis de Parma Angelus Mathei ser Angelis de Apilatiis de Interamne Guilielmus Constantini de Capua Petrus ser Iohannis de Mercatello Iohannes Guidonis de Parma Vannes Pieri Nestasani de Castillione Aretino Iohannes Greppiuoli de Castillione Aretino Dominicus Mactei de Castillione Florentino Petrus Iohannis Cole de Interamne Nicolaus ser Iohannis de Macerata Iohannes ser Antonii de Paulis de Lugo 1411–20 Iohannes Simonis de Faventia Francischus magistri Zuffoli de Roncho de Faventia Beltramus Guilielmi de Gixleriis de Terdona Agnelus Vannis de Camereno Iacobus Butii ser Franchi de Orto Geronimus Iohannis Francisci de Nursia Nicolaus ser Iuliani de Luchinis de Urbino Beltramus Guilielmi de Gixleriis de Terdona Thomasius Petri de Ciramallis de Priverno Lodovicus ser Iohannis de Morellis de Argenta Vangnelista Putii de Firmo Antonius Pallatinus ser Nicolai Pallatini Francischus domini Iacobi de Caputiis de Imola Iohannes Nicholai de Gandano Simon Brunatii de Monteleone
Antonius domini Iohannis de Nicolitis de Argenta Paulus Iacobi ser Pauli de Arziliano Iohannes ser Petri de Corneto Paulus Iacobi ser Pauli de Arziliano Iacobus ser Andree de Orto Ieronimus ser Tadei de Zandoriis de Mutina Iohannes Francisci Lucii de Esculo Francischus Bartholomei de Ferrariis dictus de Corvis 1421–30 Nicholaus ser Georgii Massii de Rocchacontrata Iohannes Eçie de Fossanbruno Iohannes Ventoruccii de Eugubio Rodulfus Francisci de Cassia Leonardus Antoni de Sartiano Iohannes domini Anthonii de Paganis de Regio Guilielmus Antonii de Perusia Nicholaus Francisci de Fulgineo Christoforus ser Ture ser Iohannis de Barzeliniis de Bononia Francischus Petri Iacopi de Rolandis de Bononia Bonçilius Antonii domini Bonzilii de Vello de Vincentia Simon Colucii de Esculo Domenichus Negrini Stefani de Casa Nova de Fivizzano Matricianus ser Iohannis de Toscanellis de Interamne Augustinus ser Nichole de Serra Santi Quirici Marinus Iacobi Iacobuctii de Firmo Arcangelus Antonii ser Bartolomei de Urbino Antonius Laurentii de Castropieri Vannutius Angelecti de Civitanova de Marchia Ancone Iacobus ser Alidesii de Castro Francho (comitatus Tervisii) 1431–40 Gabriel Iohannis de Gualdo Alexandrus ser Luce de Benamatis de Cantiano
Writing the Vernacular at the Merchant Court of Florence / 261 Antonius Donini de Cantiano Petrus Braussi de Visso Boetius domini Ambrosii de Visso Ventura ser Barnabei de Visso Antonius Francisci de Traversariis de Monticulo Vallis Amonis Antonius Guiducci domini Iohannis de Vulterra Pasquinus Margheriti de Narnea Iohannes Bisoncii Pavi de Aureo Campo Rainaldus Anselmi de Civitate Castelli Floravante de Heritiis de Padua Petrus Barnabe de Interamne Pasquinus domini Antonii de Interamne Laurentius ser Iuliani de Mercatantibus de Cesena Petrus Bartolamei de Ambrosiis de Ferraria Iacobus Antonelli de Castignano Galeoctus Rosati de Nursia Tarsilius Leonis de Cividato Belluni Ambrosius domini Guilielmi della Pigna Veronensis Alexandrus Cesarii de Eugubio Sansonectus Nataddey de Panniollis de Terra Gualdi Cicutius Peri de Sancto Severeno de Marchia Ancone Silvester ser Philippini de Cochapanis de Carpo Ascensius ser Dominici de Sancta Victoria 1441–50 Berardinus Francisci de Burgo Sancti Sepulcri Fabritius domini Iacobi de Urbe Nicholaus Boninchontri de Brazoduris de Vincentia Antonius magistri Francisci de Roma Iohannes Lodovici de Cingulo Laurentius ser Uberti de Novaria Nicolaus Gasparis de Vincentia Iacobus Martini de Nissa de Alamagnia Iacobus Bartolomei Bencivennis de Pensauro Paradisus de Paradisis de Interasse Christoforus Marini Casutii de Fulgineo
Felix Antonii de Munaldis de Tuderto Vannutius Marchi de Montesancto Andriotius ser Iohannis de Callio Iacobus Antonii Iohannis de Pretella Paulus ser Francisi Pauli de Rayneriis de Interamne Ugolinus magistri Dominici de Pisauro Constantinus domini Iohannis de Caprinis de Viterbio Nicolaus Bernardini de Lupis de Monticulo, civis Faventinus Iob domini Zanardi de Mirachis de Papia Laurentius Iacobi de Castaneis de Neapoli Çaccharias Iohannis domini Georgii de Perleonibus de Roma 1451–60 Rosatus Mathei de Faris de Viterbio Lodevicus Iacobi de Nobilibus de Belforti Andreas Guilielmi de Sancto Genexio Gaspar Iohannis de Monte Galeoctus Iohannis de Monterubiano Leonorus Petri de Interamne Iulianus Bartolomei de Carsedoneis de Castello Conradus Lodovici Conradi de Sancta Cruce de Fabriano Periacobus Pauli de Spoleto Ambroxius ser Iannini de Ponzano Franciscus ser Iohannis de Urbeveteri Iohannes Baptista Petripauli de Spada de Interamne Bartholomeus ser Anthonii de Monte Sancte Marie in Georgio Gabriel ser Honofrii de Spoleto Bactista ser Vannis de Cosignano Nicolaus Bernardini de Faventia Bernardus Christofori ser Iacobi domini Andree de Casali de Faventia 1461–70 Iacobus ser Antoni de Monteulmi Laurentius Iacobi Simonis de Anticis de Recaneto Nicolaus de Faventia Bernardus Christofori ser Iacobi domini Andree de Casali de Faventia
262 / Luca Boschetto Dominicus Antonius Dominici de Pretis Iohannes Maria ser Andree Petri de Seraptis de Pontremulo Simon Petri Pauli de Sanctis de Fulgineo Petrus ser Lazari de Pellizzaris de Pontremulo Aurelius domini Iohannispauli de Corbolis de Urbino Franciscus Iohannis Petruccii a Piscibus de Forlivio Iohannes Iacobus domini Iohannis de Tortis de Pontremulo Franciscus Iohannis Petruccii a Piscibus de Forlivio Alexander Trottus Nicolai Trotti de Ferraria Ambroxius ser Bartolomei de Vigliarana Christoforus Frolidi de Capucciis de Civitate Castelli Arcangelus Ansovini de Camerino Fusco de Fusconibus de Nursia Petrus Paulus Francisci de Monteprandone Dominicus Antonii de Cruce (comitatus Esculi) Antonius ser Simonis de Vannis de Urbino Arcangelus ser Ludovici de Saffaritiis de Lugnano Petrus Antoninus magistri Bartolomei de Chochis de Tauxignano (comitatus Imole) Iulianus de Terentiis de Arimino 1471-80 Dominicus Luce de Cruce (comitatus Asculi) Gaspar Francisci Gasparis de Fabriano Alexandrus Iohannis de Mazonibus de Castro Casalis Flumanensis (comitatus Imole) Iohannes magistri Cristofori de Merlo de Imola Iohannes Franciscus ser Iohannis de Braida de Mantua
Bernardinus ser Iohannini de Mascopis de Mantua Antonius ser Guasparis de Candelibus de Bertenorio Bernardinus Pauli de Canthiana Antonius Gasparis de Cardenalibus de Bertenorio Tadeus Andree de Cartariis de Regio Laurentius Iacobi de Madalais de Bononia Lazarus Iacobi de San Romano, civis Regii Iohannes ser Nicolai Iuffredi de Moronis de Petrasancta Luchinus ser Nicolai domini Francisci domini Luchoti de Burgo de Cremona Andreas Francisci de Mediolano Iohannes Ottoboni dela Spata de Regio Iacobus Antonius Georgii de Multisdenariis de Cremona Ricardus Iohannis Nannis de Arimino Ugo Nicolai de Cominellis de Francia Bernardinus de Pastis de Ferraria David Bartolomei Laurentii de Bandutiis Tomas Alexandri de Canellis de Faventia 1481–96 Alexander ser Mathei de Collenuciis de Saxoferato, civis Pisaurensis Antonaccius Pauli Ioannis Petri ser Pauli de Leoninis de Ameria Apolonius de Angussolis de Regio Andreas Iacobi de Bononia Christoforus Benedicti de Petrolinis de Civitate Castelli Iohannes Pauli de Alexandria Mattheus Fantegutius de Faventia Leonardus Mathei de Vitorclano Iulianus domini Andree de Vavasoribus de Taliano Petrus Antonius ser Francisci ser Cristofori de Carolis de Brisighella Marioctus Dominici de Rotella Franciscus Leonardi de Pontemulo
PART FOUR Collaborative Textual Cultures
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DOMINIQUE POIREL
8
The Death of Angela of Foligno and the Genesis of the Liber Angelae
For a long time responsibilities in the field of history were clearly demarcated between the philologist who would edit sources, and the historian proper who would exploit them, that is, examine their credibility and establish a correct interpretation for them. Within this framework, the philologist’s mission consists in producing neutral, unbiased, and reliable documents, so that they might open the way for subsequent historical discussion. Such a ‘positivistic’ conception of history is actually quite ‘negative’ in its obsession with placing the detection of error and falsehood at every step of the historical enterprise: textual criticism relies on diagnosing common ‘mistakes’ in order to deduce a genealogy of the witnesses and to restore original texts; authenticity criticism seeks out ‘fakes’ or forgeries in order to retain as reliable only those documents whose pedigree is irreproachable; finally, the aim of interpretative criticism is to purge documents of religious or partisan fabrication in order to recover original ‘facts.’ However, the very idea of an objective and unprejudiced edition soon proved to be a myth. In practice, editing and interpreting sources are not two separate stages of historical research. Rather, they are two simultaneous and complementary approaches ceaselessly supporting and nourishing one another. Just as attempting merely to edit a text without first understanding it would be absurd (beginning with transcribing it, correcting it, and punctuating it correctly), similarly it would be naive to interpret a piece of writing without first checking and evaluating the editor’s choices, at least implicitly. Moreover, interpreting a text in good faith requires situating it in the successive contexts in which it was created, initially received, and subsequently transmitted to us. That is why the subtitle of this conference, ‘editorial and other approaches,’ is particularly appropriate, especially if we take this
266 / Dominique Poirel conjunction ‘and’ as inclusive. By this I mean that the best edition would be one that incorporates elements from all other approaches and, as a consequence, will in the future enable the widest possible range of readings which those approaches permit. While publishing sources is the inevitable starting point for all historical operations, it is also, in some other way, the result toward which those operations converge. I wish to support this claim by taking up Angela of Foligno’s Liber Angelae, which offers a perfect illustration thanks to the numerous puzzles that it raises. Once stripped of legends and hasty inferences, the life of Angela is reducible to a few meager facts:1 toward the end of the thirteenth century a rich laywoman from Foligno, married and the mother of children, experienced a spiritual crisis that brought her into close relations with the Franciscan community at Foligno, especially after her husband and children died in quick succession. Among the Franciscan community she chose as her confessor ‘Brother A.,’ to whom she dictated, little by little, the story of her interior journey and her fervent visions. The Memoriale that resulted from this is still today a classic of Italian mystical literature. This was gradually supplemented by the Instructiones, various texts of spiritual direction that this unlettered laywoman dictated up to the time of her death or that other persons composed on the same themes. The ensemble of the Memoriale and the Instructiones is known as the Liber Angelae. Over the course of years this penitent became a kind of spiritual mother to the community at Assisi. Surrounded by her ‘sons,’ she died on 4 January 1309 in the odour of sanctity. Although never canonized, she was soon called ‘Blessed’ (Beata) and became the object of a local cult. Such at least is the information to be derived mostly from the Liber Angelae; yet it is worth asking how much confidence to place in the historical testimony of such an unusual and mysterious work, which in fact raises numerous difficulties of various kinds. Angela of Foligno’s Liber Angelae: The status questionis The first difficulty lies in the book’s subject. The Liber Angelae tells of a dialogue between Angela and God. From the start we are in the realm of the ineffable, and Angela repeatedly stresses her inability to express herself – it is a sort of blasphemy, she says2 – and, with all the more reason, she voices her disappointment when faced with texts that never fully translate her inner experience.3 A second difficulty arises from the way these texts took shape. The Memoriale (the first part of the Liber Angelae) gives an account of the
The Death of Angela of Foligno / 267 circumstances under which the Memoriale was written: it was dictated by Angela to her confessor and secretary, whose name we do not know for sure. Indeed, while tradition mentions a Brother Arnaldo, in the texts the confessor is mentioned simply as ‘Brother A.’4 What is certain, however, is that between Angela’s own spoken words and the discourse as reported by Brother A., a fivefold change occurred with respect to medium, language, gender, social status, and education. When he put Angela’s words into writing, not only did Brother A. translate them from her Umbrian dialect into Latin, but he also transposed them from the world of an illiterate laywoman into the male, clerical, and university culture of a Franciscan religious, with every distorting prism one can imagine. Third, Brother A.’s texts have reached us through a plethora of manuscripts which are heterogeneous both in language (besides the Latin text, there also exist Italian and Catalan translations) and in the textual states that they preserve. No less than six major textual states can be identified, and their genealogical arrangement is far from obvious.5 On the basis of the evidence, several seem to stem from a revised text, including the short and relatively stable version that spread throughout Belgium and the Rhineland. All attempts at unifying these multiple states into a single redaction have appeared unconvincing and open to debate.6 The chaotic manuscript tradition leads to a fourth problem, namely the diversity of the various modern editions. In 1925, Paul Doncœur first published the Liber Angelae on the basis of a few manuscripts. Two years later, Martin-Jean Ferré edited the same text on the basis of a single but crucial manuscript (I will explain this point below), Assisi, Biblioteca Comunale, 342, originating from the convent at Assisi and probably dating from about 1309, the very year when Angela died at Foligno.7 Finally, in 1985 Ludger Thier and Abele Calufetti published an edition based on nearly all of the witnesses. When comparing these differing editions, one might think the case of the Liber Angelae had been especially designed to fuel the debate over editorial approaches between those who support following a single base manuscript and those in favour of the stemmatic method – without arriving at any clear conclusion, however, as in this case neither approach is fully satisfactory. Close to Beata Angela in many ways, the Assisi manuscript is nevertheless marred by numerous copying errors so that it is often unacceptable as a single witness.8 As for Thier and Calufetti’s reconstuctionist edition, its stemmatic choices are unanimously rejected today because the two editors surprisingly believed that the shorter redaction from the area of
268 / Dominique Poirel Belgium and the Rhineland (which, in fact, is the most distant from Angela with respect to the age and location of the manuscripts) was the earliest version of the text. Since then, the Italian scholars Enrico Menestò and Emore Paoli have proved convincingly that this northern version was, on the contrary, a fairly late rewriting.9 In 1995 Jacques Dalarun wrote an article somewhat provocatively entitled, ‘Did Angela of Foligno exist?’ Refreshingly, he demonstrates that what we know for sure about Angela and the Liber Angelae does not amount to much. Summing up the various issues raised when interpreting the Liber Angelae, he identified a fifth problem: between Angela and Brother A. on the one hand, and the manuscripts and editions on the other, somebody else may have intervened and altered the text. This could have been the Franciscan community of Foligno, which had demonstrable ties with dissenters such as Ubertino da Casale and Angelo Clareno, or else the cardinal Giacomo Colonna, famous for his conflict with Pope Boniface viii and author of a Testificatio of the Liber Angelae that was copied, but then rubbed out, at the beginning of the Assisi manuscript.10 Jacques Dalarun was also an organizer of two scholarly conferences dedicated to the Liber Angelae, both of which shared the same objective of bringing together several diverse disciplines: palaeography, codicology, library history, textual criticism, as well as stylistic, literary, historical, and ideological analysis, in order to shed their complementary lights on an altogether enigmatic text. The proceedings of the first encounter were published in 1999 in the Collection de l’École française de Rome under the title Angèle de Foligno, le dossier. Following the second conference, three articles were published in the Revue d’histoire des textes in 2004.11 In one of the latter articles I examined the manuscript tradition of the Memoriale, which makes up the first part of the Liber Angelae, where Angela recounts her spiritual itinerary, her visions of Christ, and her internal dialogues. By comparing witnesses, I concluded that this manuscript tradition is fundamentally and abnormally impossible to classify, to such an extent that no stemmatic hypothesis could summarize it adequately. For every proposed stemma, an impressive number of variants would radically contradict it. My explanation for this is that the archetype was initially an ambiguous witness, one which presented itself in the form of an editio variorum. In several places, the text would have been laden with alternative lessons inscribed interlinearly or in the margin, so that for each word or group of words subject to variation, successive scribes would have had a choice between adopting the first
The Death of Angela of Foligno / 269 reading, or replacing it instead with the second, or even juxtaposing the two readings.12 This juxtaposition of optional readings, whenever it can be spotted, reveals the reviser’s intentions to lose nothing that might approach more closely to Angela’s original words. Thus, at one point, the reviser hesitated between two Latin translations of the same Italian word.13 His interventions do not aim to transform the text by distancing it gradually from his written source, but rather to get behind the written traces and return back to the oral source of the Memoriale as much as possible. This reviser is therefore in his own way an editor of sorts. Sometimes two long and almost identical passages are copied one after another, and a deliberate preference is expressed favouring the one over the other (signalled by ita, ou valde melius). Thus this reviser produces, still in his own way, a kind of critical edition.14 Several clues combine to show that he is none other than Brother A., Angela’s secretary, and that the lost archetype ought to be identified with notes he took under her dictation, which he would have subsequently revised, either on his own or after reading them in Angela’s presence, the better to retain the resonance of her words.15 Instructiones 7 and 36: A Comparative Examination To test this hypothesis, I devoted two year-long introductory seminars on textual editing held at the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes to the Instructiones (the shorter texts of spiritual direction that follow the Memoriale in the Liber Angelae). With these Instructiones we face a sixth difficulty, namely the incredible disarray of the manuscript tradition. Certain Instructiones are common to all witnesses, others exist only in a few; the placement of every text varies significantly from one manuscript to another (see table 8.1). Did each scribe make an individual selection from material that was originally a complete collection? Several clues suggest that, on the contrary, the number of Instructiones has increased over time: in fact the Assisi manuscript, the oldest, contains only twentyeight Instructiones compared with thirty-six in later versions. To obtain a clearer view of this we conducted an experiment. We began by positing that if certain Instructiones had been dictated by Angela while others had been composed without her initiative, this difference of textual genesis would most likely be evident in the modes of manuscript transmission. Therefore, we examined in succession two Instructiones: the first was Instructio 7, generally considered authentic and surviving in all extant manuscripts;16 the second, Instructio 36, is xxxxxxxxx
270 / Dominique Poirel Table 8.1 The order of the Instructiones of the Liber Angelae Order of Instructiones in different witnesses b Instructio a 3. In Christo fuit dolor ineffabilis
6. 4. 28. 31. 29. 11. 29.
Primum signum veri amoris Hec est mutatio donorum Altissimi Oratio est ubi invenitur Deus Deus habens evisceratum amorem Oportet quod homo cognoscat Si unus solus faceret omnes In festo sancti Petri ad Vincula
20. 21. 19. 23. 9. 10. 14. 7.
In festo Angelorum Quadam vice quando iacebam In purificatione beate Virginis Feria quarta maioris hebdomade O carissimi anime mee Nihil est nobis necesse nisi Deus Non miremini, fili mei Ego sum occecata
8. 15. 12. 18. 27. 25. 32. 34. 5. 7.
O fili, desidero cum tota me Si lumen divine gratie, o fili Rogo te ego misera Desidero multum, fili carissime Hec dulcissima Dei dona Quando Deus dat libertatem Si anima vellet Iste Deus noster Respicite, filii mei bendicti Ego sum occecata
30. 22. 2. O. X. N. M1. M2. Y. 1. 13. 16. 17.
Tria sunt necessaria O filii Dei, transformamini Nihil est in mundo Notificatio Transiit autem uenerabilis sponsa
Ne inflatura mundane sapientie Ista est quedam humilitas Quadam uice respondens Signa quibus Deus Pater O carissime mi et intimate
A
I
M
S
1
1
3
9
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
16 2 3 4 5 21 29*
6 4 26 28
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16* 26* 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 16* 27 28 29 30* 31 32
30* 7 8 19 20 14 17
18 19 17 21 9 10 13 7
15 10 16 17 18 19 7* 21* 34 30 33 29 12 8 27 26
18 15 22 24 28 27 9 10 6 17
8 14 12 16 25 23 29 31 5 7
5 28 35 2 24 31 14 4 11 26
11 25 12 31*
27 20 2
13 1 25
32
34 35
38 40
32 13
1
23
15
11 24
39 32 3 22 23
R 6* 10* 23* 25 30 8
12 2 3 4 1* 11* 5 13 14 15 9 16 17 20 7 11* 1* 19 21 28 30 18 29 31 26 22
B
P 7*
8 9 13 14 15 10 11*
4 6 5* 3 12
3
11 4 14 15 26 1 24 22 23 27 7 5 8 16
20 21 17 3
6 9 10 21 28 25 18 17 13 16
19 2 18
19 20 12
24 25
32 33
1 16
29
The Death of Angela of Foligno / 271 Table 8.1 (continued) Order of Instructiones in different witnesses b Instructio a 24. 33. 35. 36. a b
Item dixit aliquando quod Interrogata aliquando a duobus Hec est ultima littera In nomine Domini nostri Iesu
A
I
M
S
26
23
6 20 36 37
32 33
R
B
P 2
24 27
22 23
30 31
Numbers and incipits are according to the edition of Thier and Calufetti. An asterisk (*) indicates an Instructio written in separate parts.
extant in most witnesses but not in the Assisi manuscript, and it is surely not Angela’s text since it recounts her death: a brief note (Notificatio), beginning ‘Transiit autem ...,’ follows it in the manuscripts and gives the precise date of Angela’s death.17 In this way, we could evaluate how the manuscript tradition of these two texts, both emerging out of the community of Foligno, may have differed depending on whether the text was attributable to the Beata or not. Instructiones 7 and 36 were thus considered from three angles: the charting of textual variation, an analysis of sources, and an examination of the relationships between Angela and the community of Foligno. On the whole, the manuscript tradition of Instructio 7 is very similar to that of the Memoriale. For the most part the text is stable, but at several instances it seems that copyists hesitated on where to insert marginal notes, as these are found in different places in different families of manuscripts.18 Furthermore, in two manuscripts (including the Assisi manuscript) Instructio 7 is copied out in two sections that stand a few pages apart, and that were later linked together by a cross-referencing sign.19 This can be explained by a situation in which the Instructiones, in the archetype, most likely consisted of loose, unbound sheets, and that as a result they were copied out in different orders in one manuscript than in another. It seems plausible that Instructio 7 existed on two different sheets that probably became separated; the first part of the text, unlike the second, could be taken to stand as a complete entity, but when copying the second part the scribe would probably have realized that the beginning was missing and would have added the crossreferencing sign connecting the two parts together. Comparing the extant witnesses helps us reconstruct the general appearance of the lost archetype. Instructio 36 presents anomalies of a different and more problematic kind. To better understand the nature of the problem, let us look at the manuscript tradition. This consists of eleven witnesses, four of them
272 / Dominique Poirel originating in Italy, especially central Italy (three come from the neighbouring towns of Assisi, Rieti, and Subiaco, and one from Venice); a fifth manuscript was copied in Avignon; three more were copied in what is today Belgium (Brussels, Liège, and Enghien); and the last three in the Rhineland (Trier and Cologne) (see table 8.2). The six northern manuscripts show a stable and complete text and their stemmatic genealogy is easy to reconstruct, whereas each Italian manuscript contains its own version of the text, each differing from the others not only in the number of small variants but also in more significant ones which alter the very structure of the text. Manuscript S (Subiaco, Monastero di Santa Scolastica, 112) from Subiaco is the closest to the Belgian and Rhineland traditions from which, however, it is set apart by numerous deliberate stylistic differences. Between the textual state of S and that of the northern manuscripts (or vice versa) the text was intentionally revised, apparently in line with some criteria of literary style. Manuscript R (Rieti, Biblioteca Comunale Paroniana, Fontecolombo i.2.11) from Rieti is the next most similar to S. The main difference is that it fails to include a significant section of the text near the beginning of the Instructio that concerns a vision that Angela supposedly had during the onset of her illness;20 the text instead begins at the point when the Beata’s condition is already worsening. Manuscripts Pa (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Latin 5620) originating in Avignon, and F1 (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Conventi Soppressi i.c. .iii [d.7.886]) originating in Venice, contain still shorter texts, dissimilar from each other. In fact, they are composed of sections of the text copied one after another, in a different order in each witness. Moreover, while they have many parts in common, each version contains unique sections that cannot always be found in other more complete witnesses.21 Finally, manuscript A, from Assisi, is the only one in our corpus of witnesses which entirely lacks Instructio 36. We have nevertheless included it because it briefly reports Angela’s death with the Notificatio, not included in the text proper of A but occurring in the margin of the Memoriale shortly before the end (fol. 48v). It is generally inferred from this that Angela’s death, which occurred on 4 February 1309, was brought to the knowledge of the copyist before he completed copying this work;22 such an assumption is in keeping with the codicological and palaeographic analyses of the manuscript, for if one compares it to two other manuscripts (Assisi, Biblioteca Comunale, 572 and Perugia, Biblioteca Augusta, 1046) it can be dated to around 1310.23
The Death of Angela of Foligno / 273 Table 8.2 Manuscripts of Instructio 36 and the Notificatio Siglum Manuscript Italian and Southern Tradition A Assisi, Biblioteca Comunale, 342 (only the Notificatio) Pa Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Latin 5620 F1 Florence, BNCF, Conventi Soppressi I C. .III (D.7.886) R Rieti, Biblioteca Paroniana, Fontecolombo I.2.11 S Subiaco, Monastero di Santa Scolastica, 112
Northern Tradition a) Belgium B2 Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, 11851–3 B5 Liège, Bibliothèque du Grand Séminaire, 6.g.4 B4 Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, Lat. 1741 b) Rhineland Bx2 Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 206 (1242) Bx1 Bx
Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 774 (1347) Cologne, Historisches Archiv, W.172
Origin
Date
Assisi
1309
Avignon
ca. 1400
Venice Fontecolombo S. Scolastica (Subiaco)
1422–3 sec. XV
Brussels Liège Enghien
ca. 1420 1424 1485
S. Alban (near Trier) Trier Cologne
1470 1481 ca. 1570
sec. XV
On the basis of this information, several possible scenarios could be proposed. The original version could be the longer version that we read in the Subiaco manuscript and in the northern witnesses; this original version would then have been shortened and corrupted in the other Italian witnesses, perhaps because each scribe made his own selections from common material. Or else the first version was a short one which gradually grew in length for reasons yet to be determined. Or, according to a third scenario, the truth would lie somewhere in between, with the original being a medium-length version to which omissions were made on one hand and additions on the other. Two sets of reasons, codicological and literary, lead us to prefer the second hypothesis of a gradual and continual lengthening of the text. Indeed, the text’s length is on the whole proportional to the age of the manuscripts. The oldest is also the shortest, namely A, which at first contained nothing but what was subsequently provided with a marginal notation regarding Angela’s death. The next in line are Pa and F1, two witnesses that transcribe portions of text in different orders. Then comes
274 / Dominique Poirel R, which contains an even longer text, and then S, which further supplements it. So far all of this is happening in Italy. However, at the beginning of the fifteenth century the tradition of the Belgian and Rhineland manuscripts takes a full text, similar to that of S, and subjects it to a stylistic reworking (this is the era of the Renaissance, when it is more fashionable to employ a Latin felt to be purer than that of centuries past) (see the stemma proposed in table 8.3). A literary analysis of the different recensions also supports our hypothesis of a gradual enlargement. Indeed, the many small inconsistencies in the longer version deserve attention: in many places, a current theme appears to be cut in half by an irrelevant passage not found in the intermediate versions of Pa and F1. On the other hand, those two manuscripts also carry anomalies (for instance, the same passage has been copied in two separate places in F1).24 Basically, apart from the minimal text of A, no other stage of the text is really satisfactory, and in all of them one can detect clumsy attempts to fashion a single text out of scattered elements. In this way, we can see how the text was born and grew. In 1309, at the time when the scribe of the Assisi manuscript began his work, Angela was still alive. The announcement of her death reached him before he finished his work. He therefore is content to restrict the sad news to the margin of his manuscript. Instructio 36 does not yet exist. However, as the news of Angela’s death spreads, the Franciscan community of Foligno takes it upon itself to collect, put into writing, and arrange memories of the Beata’s final moments. The memories of the community arrive in bits and pieces, and in several stages (see table 8.4). Originally, there must have been several separate witnesses of variable sizes, probably recorded on paper or parchment schedulae. However, transcribing them required imposing an order upon them. The incomplete and unsatisfactory redactions of Pa and F1 testify to two successive and independent efforts to put the collected information in order. However, testimonials kept being added. Moreover, in order to explain some of Angela’s last words, these were linked to some of her earlier statements. Simplifying a bit, we could say that the community’s memory expanded backward in time, concentrating first on Angela’s death, then integrating her final moments, then her last days, and then her last weeks, until the entire duration of her illness over several months was surveyed. Certain testimonials are datable because they mention liturgical feasts, and thanks to these clues we can see how one final phase of composition made a notable effort to arrange the numerous bits of narrative into a chronological order (see table 8.5), resulting xxxxxxxxxxxxx
The Death of Angela of Foligno / 275 Table 8.3 Proposed stemma codicum 1300 A Assisi
1 2 3 4
1400
5
Pa Avignon F1 Venice R Rieti
S Subiaco
B5 Liège
B2 Brussels
B4 Enghien
Bx1 Trier
Bx2 Trier
1500
Bx Cologne Italy
Belgium
Rhineland
in the R version, which the version in S supplemented further; upon S in turn the northern manuscripts depended, contenting themselves with slightly modernizing its style. There is, therefore, a major difference between Instructiones 7 and 36 with regard to textual variation. Instructio 7 presents the same editorial problems as the Memoriale: an original text, probably dictated by Angela, presented several surface difficulties, such that it was subsequently reworked, annotated, and revised in the margins or interlinearly. Nevertheless, there was a preexisting text that was not modified in its overall content. On the contrary, Instructio 36 was created ex nihilo. We observe a gradual growth between the Assisi and the Subiaco witnesses. Indeed, although we speak of this as a single Instructio, we really behold a process of secondary elaboration that raises within a single piece more or less all of the difficulties posed by the entire collection of the Instructiones.
276 / Dominique Poirel Table 8.4 Comparative order of the sections of Instructio 36 A
Pa
F1
1. In nomine
2. Hec sunt verba 3. Circa 4. Ultima 5. O Deus meus 6. Rogata sancta
2. Hec sunt verba
15. Circa festum 17. O in veritate
1. Ista que volo 9. Ecce Deus 10. Studete vos 12. Et ego non 14. Imposuit 13. Illi qui 2. In hoc quod 3. ...et conserves 11. Studeatis 16. Dixit quod
R
1. In nomine
7. Studete vos 8. Et ego non 9. Imposuit 10. Illi qui 11. In hoc quod 12. Studeatis 14. Dixit quod
3. Ultima
4. Circa festum 5. O in veritate 6. Dixerat enim 7. O filioli mei, 8. Ista que volo 9. Ecce Deus 10. Studete vos 11. Et ego non 12. Imposuit 13. Illi qui 14. In hoc quod
15. Studeatis 16. Dixit quod 17. Hoc est illud 18. O sponsa 15. O sponsa 18. O sponsa 16. Veni, quia 19. Veni, quia 19. Ego non 17. Ego non 20. Ego non 20. Dixerat enim 21. Dixerat enim 4. Maledicte sint 19. Maledicte sint 22. Maledicte sint 20. O filioli 23. O filioli 6. O nichil 21. O nichil 24. O nichil 8. O filioli mei 7. In veritate 25. In veritate non non 5. Et maior 26. Et maior 27. Et iterum 21. Quando erat 13. Quando erat 28. Quando erat 22. Et tunc 18. Et tunc 29. Et tunc diximus diximus diximus 23. Cessantibus 22. Cessantibus 30. Cessantibus 1. Transiit 24. Transiit autem 23. Transiit autem 31. Transiit autem autem 25. Et sic laudetur (only in Pa)
S+B 1. In nomine (only in S) 2. Hec sunt verba 3. Circa 4. Ultima
5. Circa festum 6. O in veritate 7. Dixerat enim 8. O filioli mei, 9. Ista que volo 10. Ecce Deus 11. Studete vos 12. Et ego non 13. Imposuit 14. Illi qui 15. In hoc quod 16. Studeatis 17. Dixit quod 18. Hoc est illud 19. O sponsa 20. Veni, quia 21. Ego non 22. Dixerat enim 23. Maledicte sint 24. O filioli 25. O nichil 26. In veritate non 27. Et maior 28. Et iterum 29. Quando erat 30. Et tunc diximus 31. Cessantibus 32. Transiit autem
33. Hec ancilla (only in B)
The Death of Angela of Foligno / 277 Table 8.5 Chronological indications in Instructio 36 Linea 36.7 36.11 36.31 36.35 36.41 36.42 36.45 36.50 36.53 36.74 36.78 36.80 36.99 36.122 36.124 36.135 36.142
p. 738, line 2 a
Hec sunt verba novissima que dixit legitima sponsa Christi Angela de Fulgineo, quando ad suum felicem exitum propinquavit ... Primo igitur, circa principium sue infirmitatis, in festo Angelorum de mense septembri... (= Sunday, 29 September 1308) Postmodum vero ipsa Angela, ultima infirmitate quassata ... Dixit quadam vice, circa festum Nativitatis Domini, quo scilicet tempore ipsa transivit ad Christum ... (= ca. Wednesday, 25 December 1308) Et postea dixit ... Dixerat enim ante ... Iterum dixit ... Item alia vice dixit nobis ... Et dixit ... Et postea dixit ... Et dixit ... Et postea dixit ... Item alia vice dixit ... Item alia vice dixit ... Et postea clamavit dicens ... Item alia vice, quando erat prope transitum, scilicet die precedenti ... (= Friday, 3 January 1309) Et tunc, eodem scilicet die, cessantibus doloribus cunctis ... usque post Completorium diei sabbati ... ipsa die, scilicet octava Innocentium, ultima hora diei, quasi leniter dormiens, requievit in pace (= Friday, 3 January–Saturday, 4 January 1309; and the octave of 28 December 1308) Transiit ... anno dominice Incarnationis MCCCIX, pridie nonas Ianuarii, tempore domini Clementis pape (= Saturday, 4 January 1309).
Line numbers and text according to the edition of Thier and Calufetti.
Instructiones 7 and 36 differ not only from the point of view of establishing a text, but also from the point of view of studying sources. Instructio 7, indeed, seems unconnected to any sources. We have not detected any explicit or implicit borrowings, whether ad litteram or ad sensum. This makes even more plausible the hypothesis that this piece was directly dictated by Angela: not only does the text demonstrate the hesitant and sometimes repetitive quality of orality, but the surprising negative result of our search for sources (there are not any biblical ones, not even for themes which would seem to invite biblical echoes) renders the idea of clerical composition unlikely.25 Nor can we offer the theory of a devious forgery executed by some genius anticipating the questions of modern philology: the lack of biblical intertextuality may strike us as a sign of genuineness, but in the fourteenth century it would have probably implied a certain lack of authority. It is simplest to accept that
278 / Dominique Poirel Instructio 7 represents relatively faithfully the words that Angela dictated to one of the friars. By contrast, Instructio 36 is much richer in borrowings, although these occur in a very uneven fashion. The text is composed of Angela’s words framed by narratives that explain them or that situate them relative to the progression of her illness or the liturgical calendar. The narrative sections contain several literal quotations from scripture and Franciscan sources, such as the Legenda minor of Saint Francis (see table 8.6). Textual parallels leave no doubt about the deliberate nature of the borrowing, and for a Franciscan reader it must have been easy to perceive. There is a clear intention to present Angela as a female Saint Francis. The comparison is supported by some rather common expressions, yet the writer modifies borrowed phrases to insist on what, according to him, constitutes the core of the Angela’s message. Thus, while recycling a phrase about Saint Francis, Angela is insistently designated as Christ’s bride (‘legitima sponsa,’ Instr. 36.7–8), thereby emphasizing one of the principal themes of Instructio 36 and the Notificatio (see table 8.6). In this Instructio, the words ascribed to Angela are less dense in citations, although they are not entirely devoid of them. For instance, it is said, plausibly, that the saint recited, with some slight modifications, the response In manus tuas, Domine.26 Here and there we note a few scriptural allusions in her discourse.27 Two interpretations for this are possible. Either Angela increased her biblical culture over time as she was in contact with the Franciscan community, or (and to us this seems more likely) the Franciscan community played a bigger role in the elaboration of Instructio 36 than Instructio 7. Whereas for Instructio 7, the statements of the Beata seem to have been directly transcribed, probably under dictation, for Instructio 36, by contrast, there must have been an interval between Angela’s death and the composition of the narrative during which Angela’s acts and words underwent refashioning through collective remembrance. There was probably no secretary at Angela’s bedside to put her actual words into writing. Rather, the words ascribed to her are the result of an effort of anamnesis, that is, of collecting, ordering, interpreting, reactualizing, and reformulating recollections while letting them rise up from the bottom of memory to the surface of consciousness. This is why the friars play a larger role in composing Instructio 36, including the report of Angela’s words, than in Instructio 7. If we accept that the story of Angela’s last moments is the result of a collaboration between Angela, who lives and speaks until the end, and
The Death of Angela of Foligno / 279 Table 8.6 Textual borrowings in Instructio 36 Source
Liber Angelae
2 Reg. 23:1 Hec autem sunt verba novissima que dixit David filius Isai
Instructio 36.7–8 Hec sunt verba novissima que dixit legitima sponsa Christi Angela de Fulg.
Bonaventura, Legenda minor 16.6.2 infirmitate quassatus
Instructio 36.31–2 infirmitate quassata
Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius 9.55 abyssum infinitate bonitatis divine
Instructio 36.32 in abyssum divine infinitatis absorpta
Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius 51.11 fuit absorpta anima eius et assumpta in abysso divine deitatis et claritatis et sepulta in pelago eternitatis et infinitatis divine
Instructio 36.32 in abyssum divine infinitatis absorpta
Bonaventura, Legenda minor 7.5.5 Tandem, cunctis in eum completis mysteriis, orans et psallens, vir beatus obdormivit in Domino et anima illa sanctissima carne soluta in eterne claritatis abyssum absorpta est.
Instructio 36.147–54 Et in hac quiete ac mentis iocunditatis usque post completorium diei sabati letissima iacens, multis fratribus circumstantibus eam et mysteriorum officia exhibentibus, ipsa die scilicet octava Innocentium, ultima hora diei, quasi leniter dormiens, requievit in pace et anima illa sanctissima carne soluta in abyssum divine claritatis absorpta, innocentie et immortalitatis stolam a Christo sponso suo recepit, perenniter regnatura cum ipso.
Bonaventura, Legenda minor 15.6.1 Transiit autem venerabilis pater ex huius mundi naufragio anno dominice incarnationis MCCXXVI, quarto nonas Octobris, die sabbati, in sero sepultus in die dominico.
Notificatio Transiit autem venerabilis sponsa Christi Angela de Fulgineo ex huius mundi naufragio ad celi gaudia longo sibi ante tempore iam promissa anno dominice incarnationis MCCCIX, pridie nonas Ianuarii, tempore domini Clementis pape V.
the brothers who listen to her and remember, the entire text should be studied as a drama unfolding between two principal characters: the dying saint and the community surrounding her. At times, indeed, speeches alternate back and forth, for example when Angela’s entourage questions her about her more enigmatic statements in order to clarify their meaning.28 Or when Angela for the first time speaks about her death, and they exclaim, ‘So, you wish to leave and abandon us?’ to
280 / Dominique Poirel which she firmly replies, ’I have concealed this from you with all my might, but now I reveal to you that I must absolutely depart.’29 Most often, the collaboration takes the form of Angela saying something that is subsequently explained and glossed by the chorus of brothers. It is less a duet than a song where the voice of the soloist is accompanied, enhanced, and continued by the musical backing of the community of Foligno. It is worth scrutinizing the musical score, if I may call it that, in order to understand the collaboration between Angela and her spiritual sons in creating the text as we have it. A portion of text, absent from Pa but appearing in F1, serves as an overture to the whole of the Instructio; it explains the delicate conditions under which they listened to Angela’s ultima verba: ‘Shaken by the end of her illness with her mind absorbed even more than usually in the depths of divine infinity’ – up to this point this is a borrowing from the Legenda minor – ‘she spoke only rarely, with interruptions, and with digressions; however, in as much as we, who were present there, could understand her words, we have collected them briefly, and here they are.’30 Brevity, interruptions, digressions: the author of this section underlines for the reader the text’s literary defects, explaining their presence as a consequence of the illness and ecstasies of Angela. To this explanation, which probably contains some truth, we could add another. If the text of Instructio 36 is so fragmented, this is because of its chaotic genesis and (to put it in a more positive way) because the community of Foligno did not strive to rewrite her words so as to turn them into an entirely smooth and conventional text of spiritual edification. Literally speaking, the brothers briefly ‘re-collected’ Angela’s words: they have ‘remembered’ and ‘gathered’ them, in both senses of the Latin verb recolligere. There is one moment where the ear of the philologist seems to discern a false note, or at least a dissonance, between the principal voice and the accompaniment. This concerns one of the recurring themes of the Instructiones, that of a divine ‘promise’ that God may have made to Angela. According to the history of the textual layers of our narrative, this theme probably derives from Angela herself, for it is present in the marginal note of the Assisi manuscript: ‘The venerable spouse of Christ, Angela of Foligno, passed from the shipwreck of this world to the joys of the heaven, which were promised to her a long time beforehand, in the year of our Lord’s Incarnation 1309, on the eve of the nones of January, in the time of our lord Pope Clement V.’31 This theme reappears in the two intermediate redactions, Pa and F1. In Pa, curiously, it is even preserved in Italian: ‘And then she said, “O
The Death of Angela of Foligno / 281 truly, see how my God has kept his promise (che me ha adtesa la ‘mpromessa), for Christ, his Son, has just presented me to the Father.”’32 This promise has a nuptial quality that is developed in the other intermediate composition, F1. Tortured by the fact that her illness prevented her from taking communion on the feast of Saint Michael, Angela received a vision of a crowd of angels in the presence of the celestial altar; they assured her that she would lose nothing if she was not able to take communion, for soon she would be receiving him who is the perfection and fulfilment of the sacrament she desires. ‘And they say, “Prepare to receive him who has become engaged to you with the ring of his love”; and “The marriage has already been concluded, and he wants to celebrate it anew.”’33 We are to understand that Angela, espoused to Christ in this life, will become his bride by passing through death. Later, the content of this promise (in which we recognize the language of the Song of Songs) is specified: And my soul heard those words that were told to her, ‘O my bride, my beauty, my dearly beloved, truly, I do not want you to come to me in pain, but with untold jubilation and joy, as it is appropriate that a king marries the bride whom he has long loved, bestowing upon her a royal garment.’ And he showed the garment that the groom shows to the bride he has long loved, and it was neither crimson, nor scarlet, nor made of cendal or samite, but it was a certain marvellous light that clothed the soul. And he told me, ‘I will not entrust you to angels nor to other saints to escort you, but I will come for you in person and I will raise you up to me.’34
In reading all this, we find a saint who is longing to die in order to join Christ, so as to consummate in heaven a spiritual union that was contracted in the present life. This ideal portrayal, common in hagiographical texts, of such a serene, confident, and impatient end to life, should be modified by a few shades of grey produced by Angela’s own words. Immediately after this passage where she says that God kept his promise to her, the Italian witnesses of the longer and later version add this illustration: ‘Indeed, she had said beforehand, “You know, when Christ was in the boat, and there were great storms, truly so it goes within my soul; he allows the storms to strike while he seems to sleep.” And she also said, “In truth, it happens sometimes that God does not allow for the storms to end until a person is entirely shaken and beaten. And he acts like this particularly towards his legitimate children.”’35 Within these words we
282 / Dominique Poirel can detect a form of anxiety, even agitation – literally an internal storm coupled with a sense of abandonment. The divine promise thus becomes the site of an internal battle. Still, according to her own words, Angela remains confident. She sees in this trial the sign of her election: God acts thus with his ‘legitimate children.’ A little further on we find this anxiety and this eagerness associated with each other. More precisely, Angela expresses her fear, a fear which is not at all benign since it is a fear of being duped by God. The brothers who gloss her words interpret this worry, paradoxically, as a fear of being healed, for Angela longs to die so as to be definitely united with Christ: ‘Moreover, another time she told us: “O my dear children, I would tell you a few words, if I knew that God was not tricking me” – meaning, about the promise regarding her death, since, because of her desire to die, she was worried, as she told us, to be relieved of her illness.’36 ‘I would tell you a few words’ (dicerem vobis aliqua verba). What does Angela mean? We will never know because the manuscripts diverge over the context for these statements and no sequence is entirely coherent, so that we cannot clearly tell in what way Angela fears she might be deceived. In any case, the interpretation of the author of this passage, apparently based on the Beata’s own words, according to which the holy woman fears to be ‘relieved of her illness,’ does not agree with what follows immediately after.37 There was probably a double effort on the part of the brothers: first, to preserve as literally as possible Angela’s enigmatic comments; and second, to give them a meaning appropriate to the image they had of a saint on her deathbed. But sometimes this double effort failed. Further on, Angela describes a vision: she sees her soul washed and purified in Christ’s blood. To this passage, present already in Pa and F1, the later redaction adds this: ‘And my soul was told, “Here is what has purified you”; and my soul answered, “O my God, have I been mistaken?” And she was told, “No.”’38 Angela’s attitude with respect to the divine promise is thus far less serene that it first seemed. For the second time, she expresses her fear of being deceived. Even later, while Angela repeats the Psalmist’s words, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my soul and my spirit,’ she hears in response, ‘What has been impressed on your heart in life, it is impossible that you will not possess it in death.’39 In other words, God reassures Angela about the feelings she will have at the time of her death. It is difficult not to conclude that Angela fears she will not die gracefully and that she wonders about something such as: ‘What will happen if I die without feeling the proper feelings?’
The Death of Angela of Foligno / 283 Angela’s anxiety unravels during her final hours, as the end of Instructio 36 narrates, informing us again that up to that moment her illness had made her suffer atrociously: And on the same day ceased all the pain that for many days had been horridly tormenting her and afflicting all her limbs, inside and out, and she was resting in such great bodily serenity and spiritual joy that she seemed to be tasting something of the joy she had been promised. And so we questioned her to find out whether the promised jubilation had already been granted. And she answered that this jubilation had indeed begun. And, reposing very joyously in this peace and spiritual joy until the Saturday compline service, surrounded by many brothers who were celebrating the Holy offices, on that very day, the octave of the feast of the Holy Innocents, she rested in peace, as though gently falling asleep.40
There is something almost tragic, it seems to me, in the discrepancy between the brothers’ expectations and what Angela is actually experiencing, in as much as we can discern it. Convinced of the saintliness of their spiritual mother, the brothers of Foligno expect to receive edifying words from her and to behold an exemplary death, in conformity with the hagiographical texts to which they are accustomed, in particular those devoted to their founder Saint Francis, from which the author of this narrative has frequently taken inspiration, beginning with the Notificatio. In the end, it is they who are impatient, impatient to hear memorable words and to witness something extraordinary, perhaps even miraculous, that would fit with their veneration of the Beata. But, in this period of spiritual anxiety during the beginning of the fourteenth century, Angela does not die quietly. She has left her ‘sons’ with a magnificent spiritual testimony commanding them to love all men all over the world, including those across the sea,41 and to not judge sinners, even mortal sinners, for God’s judgments are beyond the measure of man.42 She herself suffers cruelly ‘inside and out’ until the eve of her death; she experiences a sense of having been abandoned by Christ, and evokes several times her fear of being tricked by God and her fear of not dying gracefully with the ‘proper feelings’ in her heart. Perhaps her spiritual sons, who observe her smallest words and acts, who anticipate the jubilation of her death, burden her with their pious curiosity: will she meet their expectations? Once we have observed that several points of view are interwoven into Angela’s last Instructio and that her voice mixes itself with the diverse, at times divergent, voices of the community of Foligno, I do not
284 / Dominique Poirel think that the historical veracity of the text is diminished. In fact, perhaps it plumbs a greater depth of humanity. Behind the Beata revered by the Franciscan brothers we discover a woman who, in a quite ordinary and almost modern way, in her dying underwent pain, anxiety, and, in some way, loneliness. Curiously, it seems that a certain period of time had to elapse before the community of Foligno remembered and communicated the dark and painful side of this agony, since the most telling passages appear only as later additions, absent from the first texts. Are they any less true for that? I do not think so. It often requires some time to pass in order to accept events, to extract their meaning, and to create for them some place in memory, even in a collective memory. Conclusion For Instructio 36, editing and interpretation ought to be separated less than ever. Hence the question that I wish to ask in conclusion: What would our ideal critical edition of these texts look like? It is a difficult question to answer. Surely, an edition of all the Instructiones based on a single manuscript would be very frustrating. If one were to choose a base manuscript of the Instructiones, it probably ought to be manuscript A, the very one that does not contain Instructio 36! Even if we were to choose another witness, we would be dealing with a single state of the text, without being able to see the slow genesis of an evolving text. Yet, for this same reason a stemmatic edition, which would synthesize all the various states in order to produce a single text, would not fully serve the purposes of historians. On the other hand, the exhaustive publication of the different states of the text (perhaps online with the possibility of zapping from one version to another) would provide, at best, a set of preliminary materials rather than an edition that is truly critical, synthetic, and not simply syncretic. For these reasons, I would propose a critical edition composed of three parts. First, a separate edition and commentary of each of the sections that we can infer originally existed separately before being inserted into a continuous narrative. Through a comparison of the extant witnesses we can identify textual blocks that maintain their integrity in all of the manuscripts, and we can edit these items one at a time. In order to approach the original state as closely as possible, we would prefer to rely on the oldest manuscripts (oldest both in terms of date and, we believe, in content), namely A, Pa, and F1. This would be, in a way, a critical edition of the original testimonials, as close as the extant manuscripts allow us to get to them. Whenever we discern a revision of the text, we
The Death of Angela of Foligno / 285 would adopt a synoptic edition, similar to the way we have proceeded for the passage from Instructio 36 (corresponding to 36.74–9 in the edition of Thier and Calufetti) presented in table 8.7. Second, we would describe and comment upon the successive ways in which these materials were put into order, referring to the items previously edited. For each arrangement we would try to discover the intention of the author, that is, the reasons governing such an assemblage, such a selection (if relevant), and such a sequence. We would hope thereby to obtain some clues about whether there were several authors, one for each redaction, or a single author working and reworking his material. Third, it would be necessary to produce a critical edition of the complete and final version of the text. A stemmatic edition would be most suitable. The archetype is indeed known through three branches: the Rieti manuscipt, R (which, however, lacks a section of the text), the Subiaco manuscript, S (complete), and finally the group of BelgianRhenish witnesses (which count as a single witness since they all derive from the same subarchetype). In cases of doubt, we could also, whenever possible, admit the evidence of the earlier redactions A, Pa, and F1. In this fashion, we should eventually be able to present the point of departure, the point of arrival, and, in between them, the general evolution of a text that is fascinating as much for the questions of methodology that it raises as for its rich contribution to our knowledge of Italian religious history. In effect, when faced with multiform and complex texts like the Liber Angelae, an editor has to decide between two principal interpretations: either textual variation exists as the ‘corruption’ of an original text (an unwelcome but inevitable consequence of the negligence or creativity of the scribes), such that it is appropriate to track such variation down and expunge it, at best relegating it to a critical apparatus that only a small number of specialists will read; or else textual variation registers not only the history of reception of a work but also the history of its gradual, shape-shifting genesis, such that it is appropriate not to scorn it but to analyse and interpret it. When this happens, the care that philologists direct toward textual variants, from the most minute discrepancies to the most stunning disturbances, may find ample compensation. Especially for Instructio 36 and the Notificatio, a patient collation of the different witnesses has allowed us to establish not ‘the’ unique text of a fixed, original report, but rather the different textual states of an evolving, collective memory. In fact, by taking seriously the different textual strata that the xxxxxxxxxxxx
286 / Dominique Poirel Table 8.7 Synoptic edition of Instructio 36.74–9 Edition of text of Pa In hoc autem quod volo dicere nichil habeo facere a me, sed totum est Dei. Nam placuit divine bonitati 5 dare michi curam et sollicitudinem omnium filiorum suorum et filiarum suarum qui sunt in hoc mundo, et ultra et citra mare. Ego autem custodivi eos ut potui et doloravi eos, et plures fuerunt dolores pro eis 10 quam vos credatis.
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O Deus meus, amodo reassigno eos tibi. Et rogo quod per tuam ineffabilem caritatem quod tu custodias eos ab omni malo, et conserves eos in omni bono, in amore paupertatis, despectus et doloris, et in transformacione et immutacione vite tue et perfectione quam nobis verbo et facto, forma et vita vana ostendere voluisti. O filioli mei amatissimi, exortor hac exhortacione ultima ut studeatis esse pauperi, humiles atque mansueti, non solum opere exterius, ymo eciam profundo corde, ut vere sitis* scolares et vere discipuli illius qui dicit : « Discite a me, quia mitis sum et humilis corde », nec curetis de potentia, honoribus neque prelationem.
Pa
Critical edition of other witnesses Et postea dixit : « In hoc quod volo dicere nichil habeo facere, sed totum est Dei. Nam placuit divine bonitati 5 dare michi sollicitudinem et curam filiorum suorum et filiarum qui sunt in mundo, qui sunt ultra mare et citra mare. Et custodivi eos et doloravi eos, et dolores mei fuerunt 10 plures quam sciatis. Et dixit : « O Deus meus, amodo reassigno eos tibi ut tu custodias et 15 conserves eos ab omni malo. »
F1 R S B2 B4 B5 Bx Bx1 Bx2 26. sitis] conieci, scitis Pa
1. Et postea] deinde Bx Bx1 Bx2 3. habeo] de me add. Bx Bx1 Bx2 5. dare michi] michi dare Bx Bx1 Bx2 sollicitudinem et curam] curam et sollicitudinem Pa S et] om. Bxa.c. 6. filiarum] suarum add. B2 B4 B5 7. in mundo] om. B5a.c. qui sunt] om. Pa Bx Bx1 Bx2 mare] om. Bx Bx1 Bx2 8. eos] om. Bx Bx1 Bx2 9. eos] id est pro eis dolui add. B2 B4 B5 Bx Bx1 Bx2 10. sciatis] scitis B2 B4 B5, sciveritis Bx Bx1 Bx2 12. meus] iam add. F1 15. ab omni] a Sa.c
The Death of Angela of Foligno / 287 manuscripts transmit, we can discern a logic and a chronology in their succession. Moving from a minimal obituary notice to a sustained narrative of Angela’s last months, the Franciscan community of Assisi performed the slow work of anamnesis, of collecting, fixing in writing, enlarging, and placing in order their recollections of the Beata. Reconstructing that work of anamnesis lets us see how a definitive version originated, and lets us couch it within a history, to retrace its stages, to permit the chorus of the textual community behind Angela’s voice to be heard. Doing this also throws some light on the tensions generated by the polyphonic nature of our texts. On the one hand, the brothers of Assisi strove not to lose any part of their recollections of the Beata, since for them their memories were a treasure. On the other hand, even without effecting any substantial sorting or alteration (for they seem to have worked by accumulation rather than by selection or distortion), the simple fact of reshaping isolated testimonials into a continuous narrative subtly and inevitably affected each item; the resulting whole loses some of the living and profuse complexity of the original testimonials even as it gains in unity and in coherence of sense. Little by little, the figure of the Beata is smoothed over, polished, made commonplace, in such a way that any reader sticking to the definitive version risks having the original awkwardness and contradictions pass unnoticed. Another advantage of the labours of philology and textual archaeology is that they bring to light traces of an image of Angela before this subtle remodelling began (which was all the more thorough to the degree that it was unconscious and involuntary). Beyond, or before, or alongside the image of a mystical saint who, eager to rejoin her heavenly Bridegroom, rejoiced over her death, one can just make out the no less moving image of a woman troubled by suffering, anxiety, and uncertainty. The exemplary death of the Beata is also, in a way, an ordinary death. The differences among the manuscript witnesses reveal differences at work within the memories of the brothers of Assisi, torn between the expectation of a happy ending and the reality of Angela’s painful agony. The task of the philologist can never be separated from that of the historian, as is seen in the case of texts as thoroughly enigmatic as the Liber Angelae of Angela of Foligno. To edit the texts that make up the Liber Angelae (above all, tackling their genesis and reception) is to conduct an investigation into the textual community that produced, assembled, and transmitted them, making sense of the contrasting ways in which this textual community remembered the message, the life, and
288 / Dominique Poirel the person of Angela. A historian who prefers to tread water at the surface of these texts rather than dive into their flowing and shapeshifting depths would be deprived of whole currents of information regarding some of the most persistent questions that historians pose. Equally puzzling for the philologist and the historian, the Liber Angelae does not begin to reveal its secrets to either until together they shine their double light upon it. NOTES Translated by William Robins and Isabelle Pinard. 1 Jacques Dalarun, ‘Angèle de Foligno a-t-elle existé?’ in ‘Alla signorina’: Mélanges offerts à Noëlle de La Blanchardière, Collection de l’Ècole française de Rome 204 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1955), 59–97. 2 ‘Et omnia ista quae modo dico sunt ita male dicere et minus dicere quod est blasphemare illa’ (And all that I have said, is spoken so wrongly, and spoken so insufficiently, that it is blaspheming); Angela of Foligno, Memoriale 9.301–2, in Il Libro della beata Angela da Foligno (edizione critica), ed. Ludger Thier and Abele Calufetti, Spicilegium Bonaventurianum 25 (Grottaferrata: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Quas, 1985), 380; English translations are ours. Cf. Bruno Clement, ‘Les moindres parcelles de vérité,’ in Angèle de Foligno, le dossier, ed. Giulia Barone and Jacques Dalarun, Collection de l’École française de Rome 255 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1999), 169–84, esp. 181. 3 Memoriale 2.143–67, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 172. 4 Dalarun, ‘Angèle de Foligno a-t-elle existé?’ See also Dalarun’s introduction in Angèle de Foligno, le dossier, ed. Barone and Dalarun, 3–4. 5 See the editors’ introduction in Libro, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 51–73. 6 Libro, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 108–17; Enrico Menestò, ‘Problemi criticotestuali nel Liber della beata Angela,’ in Angela da Foligno terziaria francescana: Atti del Convegno storico nel VII centenario dell’ingresso della beata Angela da Foligno nell’Ordine Francescano Secolare (1291–1991), Foligno, 17–19 novembre 1991, ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1992), 161–80, esp. 169–75; Emore Paoli, ‘Le due redazioni del Liber: Il perché di una riscrittura,’ in Angèle de Foligno, le dossier, ed. Barone and Dalarun, 29–70; Giovanni Pozzi, Angela da Foligno: Il libro dell’esperienza, 2nd ed. (Milan: Fabbri, 2001), 277–98. For a comparison of the various stemmatic hypotheses, see Dominique Poirel, ‘Le Liber d’Angèle de Foligno: Enquête sur un exemplar disparu,’ Revue d’histoire des textes 32 (2002): 225–63.
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Le livre de la bienheureuse Angèle de Foligno: Documents originaux, ed. P. Paul Doncoeur and Faloci Pulignani (Paris and Toulouse: Librairie de l’art catholique, 1925); Angela of Foligno, Le livre de l’expérience des vrais fidèles; Texte latin publié d’après le manuscrit d’Assise, ed. Martin-Jean Ferré (Paris: Droz, 1927). Regarding this Assisi manuscript, see Attilio Bartoli Langeli, ‘Il codice di Assisi, ovvero il Liber sororis Lelle,’ in Angèle de Foligno, le dossier, ed. Barone and Dalarun, 7–27. Menestò, ‘Problemi critico-testuali’; Paoli, ‘Le due redazioni.’ Dalarun, ‘Angèle de Foligno a-t-elle existé?’ 65–72. Poirel, ‘Le Liber d’Angèle de Foligno’; Donatella Nebbiai Dalla Guarda, ‘Angèle et les spirituels: À propos des livres d’Arnaud de Villeneuve († 1311),’ Revue d’histoire des textes 32 (2002): 265–83; Patricia Stirnemann, ‘Les livrets associés au Liber sororis Lelle,’ Revue d’histoire des textes 32 (2002): 285. For example, ‘Et videbatur michi quod ego cogebar’ I; ‘Et videbatur michi quod ego cogerer’ B; ‘Et videbatur michi quod ego cogerer et quod ego cogebar’ ASR; Memoriale 6.288–9, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 280. Elsewhere, the scribes hesitate over more substantial readings; see Poirel, ‘Le Liber d’Angèle de Foligno,’ 248–59. ‘Et postquam ego colcavi me in te’ A; ‘Et postquam ego collocavi uel pausavi me in te’ S; cf. the Umbrian translation: ‘E poi ch’io mi posai in te’ M; Memoriale 3.46–7, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 180. In fact, the Italian posai can be translated by the Latin posui or collocavi (‘I have put down’), or by pausavi or quievi (‘I rested,’ ‘I put myself to rest’). Thus the words ‘vel valde melius’ in AISB (‘over tropo meglio’ in M’s Umbrian translation) make sense in relation to the two partially redundant passages, only if we understand them as expressing a judgment of preference between two versions of the same passage; Memoriale 6.56–7, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 260. Poirel, ‘Le Liber d’Angèle de Foligno,’ 259–63. Libro, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 532–43 (Instructio 7). Libro, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 724–37 (Instructio 36) and 738–9 (Notificatio). For example, the manuscripts Ch and R omit the words ‘cum placimento efficitur culpa sed veniendo’ and position them a little later, in a different order: ‘sed veniendo cum placimento anime efficitur culpa’ (Instr. 7.20, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 534). Further, in the same manuscripts there is an analogous occurence regarding the words ‘operatur in nobis vindictam suam; et in hoc multum gaudeamus videndo iustitiam Dei quae,’ which are displaced and rearranged a few lines below:
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‘operatur et in hoc multum gaudeamus quia operatur in nobis vindictam suam’ (Instr. 7.52–3, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 536). Unknown to the editors, manuscript Ch is Chicago, Newberry Library, 31.2; see Paolo Mariani, ‘Liber e contesto,’ in Angèle de Foligno, le dossier, ed. Barone and Dalarun, 143–4. The two manuscripts A and R transcribe Instructio 7 in two distinct parts, which they subsequently join together with the following notes added at the end of the first part: ‘Hic debet esse illa lictera que super sic incipit: Tres autem sunt transformationes etc. ubi est tale signum,’ A (fol. 46r); ‘Residuum non prosequitur quia videtur michi quod sit false scriptum,’ R (fol. 316, where this note has subsequently been crossed out and replaced by ‘Residuum require infra ad tale signum + 324)’; see Thier and Calufetti, 538–9 n. 8. This is the passage running from ‘circa principium suae infirmitatis, in festo Angelorum de mense septembri‘ to ‘plus quam possum dicere. Postmodum vero ipsa Angela’; Instr. 36.11–31, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 724–6. For example, see the portion of text belonging to Pa in table 8.7 at the end of this essay. See Bartoli Langeli, ‘Il codice di Assisi,’ 14–16. Bartoli Langeli, ‘Il codice di Assisi,’ 16–21. F1 contains the phrase ‘Veni quia omnes chori angelorum expectant te cum gaudio et magna laetitia,’ which more or less corresponds to the reading of the other witnesses, ‘Veni quia omnes sancti expectant te cum magna laetitia’ (Instr. 36.115, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 734), with the exception of the two variants signalled by italics. By contrast F1 is the only manuscript to have included this phrase in its text: ‘Veni quia omnes sancti expectant te cum magna leticia et exultacione’ (after ‘O sponsa, o speciosa, o amata a me cum dilectione’); Instr. 36.103–4, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 732. Accordingly, we may draw conclusions about the way in which the scribe of F1 worked: in producing a ‘collage’ of the separate portions of text, he twice encountered the text that began Veni quia omnes, which he slightly amplified each time (gaudio et; et exultacione). In addition, the second time, he attempted to conceal the repetition by exchanging sancti with chori angelorum. For instance, it would be tempting to find a biblical source for such phrases as ‘non faciamus sicut faciunt fatui, quia ubi est oculus fatui, ibi est totum cor suum’ (Instr. 7.88–9, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 540), but the only connections we would find are superficial and fortuitous. ‘Pater, in manus tuas commendo animam et spiritum meum.’ Instr. 36.136–7, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 736; cf. Ps. 30:6 and Luke 23:46.
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At Instr. 36.15–20, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 724, the words ‘laudem angelorum,’ ‘laudare Deum’ and ‘multitudo angelorum’ echo the Angels’ annunciation to the shepherds (‘et subito facta est cum angelo multitudo militiae caelestis laudantium Deum’ Luke 2:13). This connection is made more plausible by the liturgical correspondence between this text and the celebration of Christmas. Also, ‘laetificat animam’ (36.28, p. 726) could refer back to ‘laetifica animam’ (Ps. 85:4), and ‘consolationes tuae laetificaverunt animam meam’ (Ps. 93:19); ‘Omnia mea tua sunt et tua mea sunt’ (36.57, p. 728) to ‘Et mea omnia tua sunt et tua mea sunt’ (John 17:10); ‘Studete vos diligere invicem’ (36.60, p. 728) to ‘Mandatum novum do vobis, ut diligatis invicem‘ (John 13:14 ; cf. 15:12; 15:17, etc.); ‘non est maior caritas in terra quam dolorare peccata proximi’ (36.83–4, p. 730) to ‘Maiorem hac dilectionem nemo habet ut animam suam quis ponat pro amicis suis’ (John 15:13); ‘neminem iudicetis’ (36.89, p. 730) to ‘Nolite iudicare’ (Matt. 7:1 and passim); ‘O sponsa, o speciosa, o amata a me’ (36.103–4, p. 732) and ‘Veni dilecta mea, speciosa mea, amata a me’ (36.114, p. 734) to ‘Surge, amica mea, speciosa mea, veni’ (Cant. 2:13). ‘“O totus intellectus angelorum non sufficit!” Et interrogata a nobis: “Ad quid deficit omnis creatura et intellectus angelicus non sufficit?” respondit: “Ad comprehendum.”’ Instr. 36.37–40, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 726. ‘Et tunc diximus ei: “Ergo vis recedere et relinquere nos?” Et illa respondit: “Tantum celavi vobis quod amodo non celo plus, quia omnino debeo recedere.”’ Instr. 36.139–41, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 736. ‘[I]psa Angela, ultima infirmitate quassata ac mente ipsius abundantius solito in abyssum divinae infinitatis absorpta, interrupte et cum interpolatione loquebatur et raro; verba tamen ipsius, prout capere poteramus qui praesentes eramus, breviter recollegimus, quae sunt haec.’ Instr. 36.31–4, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 726. ‘Transiit autem venerabilis sponsa Christi Angela de Fulgineo ex huius mundi naufragio ad celi gaudia longo sibi ante tempore iam promissa anno dominice incarnationis mcccix, pridie nonas Ianuarii, tempore domini Clementis pape v.’ Notif. 1–5, Thier and Calufetti, 738; emphasis added. ‘Et postea dixit: “O in veritate, ecce Deus meus che me ha adtesa la ’mpromessa [promessa (Thier – Calufetti)], quia Christus, Filius suus, modo presentavit me Patri.”’ Instr. 36.41–2, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 726; emphasis added. ‘Et dixerunt [angeli]: “Prepara te ad recipiendum illum, qui te desponsavit anulo suo amoris.” Et: “Coniugamentum iam factum est, et iterum de novo vult facere coniugamentum.”’ Instr. 36.22–4, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 726; emphasis added.
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‘Et anima audivit sibi dici ista verba: “O sponsa, o speciosa, o amata a me cum dilectione. In veritate nolo quod venias ad me cum istis doloribus, sed cum iubilo et letitia inenarrabili, sicut decet regem ducere sponsam diu amatam, cum regio vestimento.” Et demonstravit michi vestimentum quod demonstrat sponsus sponse diu amate. Et hoc non erat de purpura, nec de scarleto, nec de cendato, nec de samito, sed erat quoddam lumen mirificum quod vestitur anima ... Et dixit etiam hoc: “Ego non committam te angelis nec aliis sanctis ut te deducant, sed ego personaliter veniam pro te et assumam te ad me.”’ Instr. 36.103–9, 116–17, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 732, 734; emphasis added. ‘Dixerat enim ante: “Scitis vos quando Christus erat in navi et tempestates erant ibi magne, in veritate ita est aliquando in anima, quod permittit tempestates venire et ipse videtur dormire.” In veritate, donec Deus permittat personam totam pistari et suppeditari, non sinit aliquando finiri tempestates. Et hoc facit specialiter suis legitimis filiis.’ Instr. 36.42–7, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 726–8. ‘Item alia vice dixit nobis: “O filioli mei, libenter dicerem vobis aliqua verba, si scirem quod Deus me non deciperet” – scilicet de promissione sui exitus, quia propter desiderium moriendi timebat multum, sicut ipsa dicebat, ne de illa infirmitate liberaretur.’ Instr. 36.50–3, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 728; emphasis added. After this passage, the final version adds a phrase which was already included in the earlier version Pa, with a few minor differences, and at a different place in the text: ‘“Filioli mei, que dico vobis non dico nisi solum amore Dei et ut promisi vobis, quod non libenter porto sub terra aliquid quod vobis possit prodesse.”’ Pa, fol. 74v (cf. Instr. 36.54–6, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 728). Next, in Pa, comes this phrase: ‘In hoc autem quod volo dicere, nichil habeo facere a me, sed totum est Dei. Nam placuit divine bonitati dare michi curam et sollicitudinem omnium filiorum suorum et filiarum suarum ...’ (36.74–6, p. 730); and this one in the long text (in RSB): ‘Ecce Deus dicit anime: “Omnia mea tua sunt et tua mea sunt ...”’ followed by an invitation to mutual love (36.57–65, p. 728). ‘Item alia vice dixit quod anima sua fuit lavata [levata (Thier and Calufetti)] et mundata et subpozzata in sanguine Christi, qui erat ita recens et calidus sicut exiret de corpore Crucifixi. Et dictum fuit anime tunc: “Hoc est illud quod mundavit te.” Et respondit anima: “O Deus meus, ero decepta?” Et dictum fuit sibi: “Non.”’ Instr. 36.99–102, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 732. ‘Item alia vice, quand erat prope transitum, scilicet die precedenti, dicebat frequenter: “Pater, in manus tuas commendo animam et spiritum
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meum.” Et semel post dictum verbum, dixit nobis: “Modo ad istud verbum responsio michi facta est talis: Quod impressum est cordi tuo in vita, impossibile est quod non habeas in morte.”’ Instr. 36.135–9, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 736. ‘Et tunc, eodem scilicet die, cessantibus doloribus cunctis, quibus multis diebus ante per membra singula interius et exterius horribiliter tormentata fuerat et afflicta, in tanta quiete corporis et spiritus iocunditate iacebat, quod iam videbatur de promissa sibi letitia aliquid degustare. Et tunc interrogavimus eam, si predictus iubilus erat sibi datus adhuc. Et illa respondit quod iam inceperat iubilus supradictus. Et in hac quiete ac mentis iocunditate usque post completorium diei sabbati letissima iacens, multis fratribus circumstantibus eam et mysteriorum officia exhibentibus, ipsa die, scilicet octava Innocentium, ultima hora diei, quasi leniter dormiens, requievit in pace.’ Instr. 36.142–51, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 736; emphasis added. ‘Et ego non facio aliud testamentum, nisi quod recommendo vobis mutuam dilectionem ... Nam placuit divinae bonitati dare michi sollicitudinem et curam filiorum suorum et filiarum qui sunt in mundo, qui sunt ultra mare et citra mare.’ Instr. 36.62–3, 75–7, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 728, 830. ‘Et neminem iudicetis, etiam si videritis hominem peccare mortaliter ... quia nescitis iudicia Dei.’ Instr. 36.89–92, ed. Thier and Calufetti, 730–2.
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SUSANNE LEPSIUS
9
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages
During the late Middle Ages, the production and transmission of legal texts rose to new heights. This was due mainly to a university-based system of production and distribution in which lenders of master texts (stationarii), copyists (scriptores), and correctors (correctores) participated. These professionals and students produced a veritable ocean of legal text that remains to be explored, let alone edited: almost all the medieval legal texts used by legal and social historians lack modern critical editions. Whenever we study ordinary people, their conflicts, their strategies of interaction, or their mentalities through the lens of legal doctrine, most scholars, with few exceptions, have to rely on incunable and sixteenth-century editions of even the most famous jurists.1 While there are numerous difficulties in attributing authorship of a legal text to a particular jurist, in this essay I will analyse some examples for which an individual author is identifiable, an author whose bio-bibliography is mostly known, and who might even have written in an identifiable style. In this respect, legal texts from the late Middle Ages differ from the anonymously compiled collections of canons and glosses typical of the period prior to the twelfth century.2 Those earlier collections were not authored by a single person, and they usually pose problems characteristic of composite texts that were put together at various stages, often making a critical edition virtually impossible.3 Yet another type of documentation, the archival deposits of court records from the thirteenth century onward, are for the most part unique texts, but because of the volume of these records and the comparative unoriginality of their content, researchers are rarely tempted to prepare editions of them.4
296 / Susanne Lepsius Genres of Legal Texts in the Late Middle Ages One of the most characteristic types of text produced by universitytrained jurists in the late Middle Ages was a commentary on the main legal corpora, closely following the sequence of headings (tituli) and laws (leges) or canons (canones) in the standard texts either of the Corpus iuris civilis or of the various collections of canon law which later on were known as the Corpus iuris canonici. Canonistic commentaries were produced by jurists from the thirteenth century onwards, whereas in civil law the period of commentaries came into full bloom during the fourteenth century, when an entire generation of late medieval jurists were called ‘commentators.’ These commentaries contain sophisticated arguments, laid out according to scholastic schemes of argumentation, extending well beyond the individual logical and grammatical word-forword explanations provided by the thirteenth-century Glossa ordinaria. For example, the famous commentary of Bartolo of Sassoferrato (1314–57) on the Digestum vetus alone contains about 200 folios in the printed editions, and was taxed by medieval stationarii as 106 peciae (the sections into which master copies were divided for further copying).5 In contrast to collections of glosses (apparatus glossarum), commentaries were the work of a single author, although for editing purposes it must be remembered that the law professor composing them might have reformulated and elaborated his thoughts several times while repeatedly teaching the standard course, thus leaving behind manuscript versions – and later printed editions – of an old lecture (lectura vetus) and one or more new lectures (lecturae novae). Moreover, review sessions (repetitiones) on individual sections of the laws, which served as special university exercises in interpretation,6 could sometimes provide the kernel for a new commentary or passage of commentary.7 In this respect, commentaries might be described as ‘living texts,’ too. Nevertheless, in most cases preparing a genetic edition, working with one manuscript from each Textstufe, would seem to be impossible, taking into account that next to no autographs by the lawyer-authors survive. One also has to consider that jurists often dictated their texts in several stages to different scribes and, moreover, that through the pecia system of copying at medieval universities no single complete and authorized text of a given commentary or apparatus of glosses survives.8 For editorial purposes it would be helpful to discover the pecia manuscripts of a commentary, which were presumably the best obtainable texts since they were controlled and rented out for further copying by the universities’ stationarii, who in theory had received the
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages / 297 original from the author. Unfortunately, not many pecia manuscripts of commentaries have survived (they were often damaged as a result of frequent copying and discarded when no longer readable). The surviving manuscripts of commentaries of the famous jurists usually are copies made from such peciae, and they reflect different pecia booklets as their base texts. Because of the sheer length of these texts, as well as their complex transmission history, no serious effort has so far been undertaken to study the dependence of manuscript copies on surviving pecia, let alone to prepare a modern critical edition of an entire commentary. Another characteristic type of text consists of consilia, which, with respect to length, are the opposite of commentaries, often occupying only a single column or page. Consilia were expert opinions rendered by famous university professors or local iudices either at the request of a judge in a case pending in his court (consilium sapientis) or by one of the parties to the suit with a view to bolstering its legal position before going to court (consilium pro parte). Because of their entirely practical, caseoriented character, the doctrinal, legal validity of consilia has often been questioned.9 The practical, court-based circumstances surrounding their production had implications for the transmission of consilia, as well as for modern editors. On the one hand, an original consilium written by the jurist himself, or at least dictated by him to an amanuensis, might survive in an autograph. Such original consilia are identifiable by their wax seal and the autograph signature of the jurist-author.10 They are sometimes found in archives in series of court records, often together with the proceedings of a case, which, with luck, might allow a historian to reconstruct an entire legal process; sometimes they are found bound together in a manuscript book.11 Identifying original consilia facilitates the editor’s work enormously,12 since this text can be taken as the base text, making it the main task of the editor to identify material sources and, if possible, to chart the transmission history of the particular text in other manuscripts. Original consilia were only very rarely printed by early modern printers, with the consequence that many important texts remain to be discovered in libraries and archives. Usually, however, consilia were transmitted in copies, and survive not as authorial originals but rather as transcripts, usually in manuscript books containing the consilia of a single jurist or of jurists from a certain city or period. Such a collection might have been compiled by the author, who among his private documents would have kept a copy of each consilium he rendered to the court; alternatively, it might be made up of later transcriptions. Such miscellaneous manuscripts of consilia collections often served as base texts for early modern printers. These
298 / Susanne Lepsius manuscripts present modern editors with the familiar editorial problems involved in establishing patterns of transmission and locating internal cases of textual interdependence. Here traditional methods of editing might be applied relatively reliably, since these texts were produced and finished by one single author, identifiable by name through the signature he put at the bottom before rendering the consilium to his client;13 because they were not rewritten but were issued to solve one specific case in question, they usually are not ‘living texts.’ Unfortunately, however, the task of providing a critical edition of consilia is rendered almost impossible, at the present time, by the particularly poor state of cataloguing for this genre of legal texts. Because they are considered ‘minor’ texts (with respect to both their length and their legal content) even modern catalogues usually provide only rudimentary indications that a given manuscript contains consilia of specific jurists, without indicating their precise incipits or lengths, thereby making unfeasible the delimitation of the manuscript tradition for any specific consilium, which would be the necessary first step toward a critical edition.14 Only for the two most famous jurists of the late Middle Ages – Bartolo of Sassoferrato and Baldo degli Ubaldi – are research tools on the manuscript tradition of their consilia in preparation which will allow us to identify a sufficient number of relevant manuscripts for a specific consilium as a foundation for future editions.15 Miscellaneous manuscript books containing either original consilia or transcripts can be found in the libraries throughout Europe (and even in several North American university libraries),16 reflecting the wide geographical diffusion of the intellectual production of late medieval jurists; through these jurists, and through their public audience of medieval readers, these legal productions became a true ius commune.17 A third genre of legal texts in the late Middle Ages consisted of tracts (tractatus). In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, texts identified as tractatus were usually anonymous compilations of reference citations from the law codes on certain topics.18 From the late thirteenth century on, tractatus tend to be more refined discussions of a distinct legal problem in monographic form, usually written by a single author. The first sort of legal tracts existed as ‘open texts,’ in the sense that they had neither a distinct structure of argumentation nor a single author. For instance, one law professor might have formulated a certain legal argument which he taught in the schools, and then some of his pupils might have extended it, refining the argument and adding allegations from more recent law texts, with the result that there might be different versions of the text in the surviving manuscripts. Given these circumstances of textual transmission, the idea of furnishing a traditional
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages / 299 critical edition (one which implies the notion of an original author who completed a text on a specific topic at a certain point in time and subsequently put it into circulation) seems impossible, and it also seems undesirable, because every surviving manuscript documents a particular reading of historical and doctrinal interest. The task of producing a critical edition could only be seriously considered for the other sort of tractatus. These are ‘closed texts,’ in the sense that an individual author developed arguments on a specific issue in a specific form; they were often produced in response to new legal problems specific to the author’s context which could not be resolved directly by referring to Roman law texts. A simple arrangement that followed the order of headings and laws (tituli and leges) in the Corpus iuris civilis, or of the canons and chapters (canones and capitula) in the Corpus iuris canonici was no longer practical in monographic tracts; instead, one possible, and frequently adopted, scheme for structuring the argument was provided by scholastic categories. From their inception, these sorts of tracts were conceived of as written texts rather than as texts for teaching purposes, and accordingly they were mostly transmitted outside of the regular university pecia system.19 The Tractatus testimoniorum by Bartolo of Sassoferrato Some of the difficulties as well as some of the insights that can arise from closely studying the manuscripts of such a tractatus in the course of preparing a new edition might be exemplified by the Tractatus testimoniorum, dealing with proof by witnesses, which was left incomplete at his death by Bartolo of Sassoferrato (1313/14–1357), one of the most famous professors of civil law, who taught at the universities of Pisa and Perugia. An edition of this tract was presented as part of my doctoral dissertation and published in 2003, and in this essay I will summarize and reflect upon some of the editorial decisions made there, as a way of highlighting some of the specific problems presented to researchers of medieval legal history by the manuscript textual traditions of medieval legal texts.20 An investigation of the manuscript tradition of this tractatus seemed particularly likely to bear fruit because of several pieces of external information that drew attention to the text and that called out for more research. First of all, according to a note of Alexander Tartagnus in the early printed editions of the tract, there once existed both a longer and a shorter version of this text, of which the longer one was possessed by only a few jurists.21 Furthermore, the information that Bartolo left this text unfinished at his death in 135722 also raises the question of whether
300 / Susanne Lepsius the text, at least as it has come down to us in all printed editions, was entirely his own work or whether it was continued by others, most likely either by his son-in-law, Nicola Alessandri, himself a lawyer, or else by his pupil Baldo degli Ubaldi, who was at least as renowned a legal scholar as Bartolo.23 Both of these jurists have been shown by recent scholarship to have completed other ‘unfinished’ texts by Bartolo. (If such completion and rewriting of this tractatus could be demonstrated, then this case might be analogous to the process of rewriting a text after the death of the author that Dominique Poirel, in the preceding essay in this volume, has traced with respect to the Libro of Angela of Foligno). Finally, the content of this particular text of Bartolo arouses curiosity because Baldo, usually quite critical of his master, spoke of it as a subtle and philosophically sophisticated text: Qui ultra etiam quam legistas expediat cum intellectu volaverat ad ea, que non possunt intelligi, ergo nec probari, nisi per summos viros, qui cognoscunt genus et differentias sicut sunt vitia tacita et virtutes que etiam generantur ex actibus. Quis dabit mihi pennas columbe et volabo.24 He, with an intellect exceeding even what is appropriate to lawyers, had flown toward things which cannot be understood, and which therefore cannot be tested, except by the highest minds who understand categories and differences as if they are silent vices and virtues which arise out of actions. Who shall give to me the wings of the dove that I might fly?
Because of this praise, it becomes all the more important to establish from the surviving manuscripts whether the text was indeed written by Bartolo, either entirely or in part; we cannot simply accept the attribution of this text to Bartolo by early modern printers, who often attributed anonymous medieval manuscripts to famous lawyers with a view to improving sales of new editions by claiming to offer new and hitherto unknown material by an important medieval jurist.25 A modern edition of this text might allow for a better understanding and interpretation of the text itself, and also help us trace the reception of Bartolo’s ideas by later jurists, readers, and copyists of this text. Of Bartolo’s Tractatus testimoniorum, forty-five manuscripts have been identified so far.26 This large number of manuscripts is intimidating and perhaps is an impediment to the task of undertaking an edition (although even greater numbers of textual witnesses survive of other texts written by Bartolo).27 All surviving manuscripts of the Tractatus
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages / 301 testimoniorum name Bartolo as their author and do not give any indication of a later revision or addition by Nicola Alessandri or Baldo.28 If a title to the text is indicated at all, in most cases it is called Tractatus testimoniorum, ‘Tract on the testimony of witnesses’ (not a ‘Tract on witnesses,’ as the printed editions suggest with their title Tractatus de testibus).29 The most striking characteristic of the manuscript tradition, one that sets it apart from the Renaissance printed editions, is that three texts of different lengths can be identified, two of which are presumably due to distinct stages in Bartolo’s thought. These three versions consist of: (a) the entire text as found in the printed editions, with a full length of 125 chapters; (b) a middle-length text of sixty-five chapters, about half the extent of the long version; and (c) a short version providing the first forty-six chapters, amounting to about one quarter of the long text.30 Another important discovery arising from an examination of the manuscripts is that all manuscripts share a chapter arrangement that differs noticeably from the order of chapters in the early modern printed editions. The sequence of chapters in the manuscript tradition follows a differentiated yet logical order that makes much more sense than that of the early printed editions.31 From chapter 20 on, Bartolo’s original and detailed argumentation about testimonies is arranged according to Aristotelian categories, setting out a positive and a negative proof within each category regarding the content of a witness’s testimony. In the manuscript tradition, chapters 20 to 46 tackle questions of proof according to the following scheme (the chapter numbers given here are those of the printed edition; the manuscripts are not numbered or rubricated in chapters): I. Substance (chaps 20–33) A. With respect to things 1. Substance of a thing (chaps 21–5) 2. Non-substance of a thing in general (chap. 35, plus reference ‘infra suis locis’) 3. Substance of a specific thing (chap. 34, ‘vinum’) B. With respect to persons 1. Substance of a person (chap. 36, ‘hominem vivum’) 2. Non-substance of a person (chaps 37–41, ‘homo mortuus’) 3. Substance of a specific person (chaps 42–6, ‘Titius’) C. Sameness/confusions of identity 1. Same person (chaps 26–7) 2. Same thing (chaps 28–31) 3. Non-substance of the individualized thing (chaps 31–3).
302 / Susanne Lepsius After chapter 46, there follow the arguments about proving quantity (chaps 46–55) and quality. To my knowledge, only in a single printed edition of the text – an extremely rare edition with no relation to the editions of Bartolo’s work produced by the major legal printing houses – is this convincing arrangement of the chapters to be found; yet this edition, printed by Pasquier Bonhomme of Paris in 1477, presents only the short version of the text.32 This significant confusion of the chapter sequence by the early printers made it even more necessary for me to provide a better edition of this tractatus in order to make the medieval text more accessible for modern legal historical research. For this purpose, it appeared more important to provide an edition of the longest surviving version as that which reflected Bartolo’s final thoughts on the issues of proof, instead of a genetic edition that might indicate the development of his thoughts from the earliest stage of his text to the last ones.33 (Especially in the case of legal texts for which no critical edition exists, a choice to follow the longest and latest version of a text, if provided by the author himself, might turn out to be the most efficient way to prepare an edition, and it might also be most legible for the wider audience of legal historians who are not necessarily engaged with the difficult intricacies that would be on display in a fully genetic edition; the intended audience for an edition of a legal text has to be carefully kept in mind).34 Making such an editorial choice in favour of the long version of the text also seemed justified because in the surviving manuscripts of this version only Bartolo is ever named as the author: there is no indication that this longer text was completed by other authors. This decision made it possible to restrict to twenty-two the number of manuscripts to be analysed for variant readings in order to establish a stemma. Another editorial choice, which was made in order to reduce the number of variants contained in the critical apparatus, was to use one manuscript, Va (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barberini latino 1398) as a base text, faithfully presenting its readings and keeping to a minimum the number of editorial corrections on the basis of other manuscripts; all variant readings from five selected manuscripts as well as from the first incunable were indicated, in order to demonstrate the main textual differences in the transmission history of the text, without attempting to reconstruct common readings of lost apographs that may have existed.35 Therefore, the edition that I presented in my dissertation might not be a fully ‘critical’ one, as it does not depict all the readings of all manuscripts of the long version;36 nevertheless, by indicating readings from some extant witnesses, it aimed to avoid the opposite
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages / 303 danger of inventing lost intermediate levels of the text by means of a Lachmannian approach (an approach that might work better for texts from earlier periods for which only a few manuscripts still exist).37 The number of variant readings one would have to have taken into consideration for a fully documented critical edition can be suggested by the sample edition of the introductory chapter of the text provided in table 9.1. When investigating the internal history of the text’s genesis, I relied especially upon differences in legal argumentation and citation; such differences seemed most meaningful both because Bartolo was a university-trained jurist, and because the main audience for my edition was likely to be composed of modern legal historians and lawyers. For the task of constructing a genealogical stemma of the extant witnesses, presumed grammatical errors or stylistically uneven readings seemed less significant than variant readings that provided a better legal argument or citation. Indeed, stylistic arguments are all the less meaningful because Bartolo’s Latin was said to have been not particularly good,38 and he might have intended to improve on style had he not died before finishing his text; he probably gave more weight to a stringent legal argument in first penning his thoughts. For these reasons, I did not focus on a sample of any specific chapter in Bartolo’s text but rather I identified a total of seventy-four passages where meaningful variant readings in the long version of the text occurred; these often provided three differing readings, which allowed for the construction of a tripartite stemma. To illustrate the kinds of variants that I considered meaningful as far as their legal content is concerned, three examples may suffice. Because this is a tract dealing with the testimony of witnesses and emphasizing the validity of testimony when it is founded on sensual perceptions, the words ‘verbo de visu’ (from a word concerning sight) make more sense than ‘ubi de usu’ (where concerning use). Similarly convincing is the more precise description of the content of a certain legal allegation as ‘constitutio temporis’ (constituted by time) instead of ‘constitutio principis’ (constituted by the ruler). Finally, in the course of introducing witnesses in the court proceedings, it makes more sense to ‘produce’ than to ‘continue’ with witnesses: ‘producendi testes’ rather than ‘procedendi testes.’39 The earliest manuscripts do not necessarily provide the best readings (this is a well-known caveat for all editors). For example, manuscript Re (Reims, Bibliothèque Municipale, 829), dated to 1409, contains many errors in the legal allegations, even though it was written by Hamon Kerredan, who had earned his baccalarius legum
304 / Susanne Lepsius Table 9.1 Introductory chapter of the Tractatus testimoniorum with all variants Text: Testimoniorum usus frequens1 et necessarius2 est3 et circa4 personas,5 modum6 producendi,7 cogendi,8 iurandi,9 examinandi, publicandi10 multa11 dubia oriuntur, ad12 que13 declaranda14 presens opusculum15 non16 intendit. Postquam uero17 predicta18 discussa19 sunt ad dicta20 testium21 litigantes ueniunt22 et an23 dicta sufficientia sint24 ad probandum id quod intenditur25 disputationem uertunt.26 Super quo27 iurium28 conditores29 et antiqui30 iuris31 interpretes32 ac etiam33 moderni ita34 uniuersaliter35 tractauerunt,36 quod ad particularia trahere37 est contentiosum38 partibus, iudicibus39 durum,40 quoniam contra41 se42 moleste43 ferunt44 litigantes.45 Propter46 que47 ueritas48 sepe49 subuertitur,50 scandala oriuntur.51 Super hiis uiri52 scolastici53 et etiam54 causidici55 remanent56 sitientes,57 quibus obuiare58 cupit59 scribentis60 intentio.61 Apparatus: 1 quens Md. 2 cottidianus Mc. 3 esset Ma. 4 et circa | contra Ma. 5 pars Mb; personas om. To, Vb. 6 personas modum | personis modis Wü. 7 procedendi | Ba, Ca, Fo, Gz, Lü, Mü, Vd, Ve; probandi Md. 8 cogendi om. Ba, Mc, Ip. 9 iurandi om. Ve. 10 precticandi Ma; proclicandi (?) Vf. 11 nonnulla Be. 12 ad om. Vb. 13 quando Mb; atque Nü, quod Vc. 14 declaranda om. Be; declarandum MaK; que add. Ip. 15 opus Mc; om. et vac. Pa. 16 non om. Fl, Mc, Sg; hoc Mb, Vb; nunc Ox. 17 autem Ma. 18 premissa Pa. 19 discussio Mz. 20 dicta | causa Vb. 21 declaranda add. Md. 22 ueniunt om. Ma, Vf; perueniunt Mü. 23 et an | que Vi. 24 sit Mz, Sg. 25 intendunt To, intendens Vc. 26 disputationem uertunt (Lo, Mc, Pa, Re, Vg, Vh) | dispositionem uertam Ba; in disputationem ueniunt Bs, Lü; Sl; in dispositione uenit Be; in disputationem ueniuntur Cu; et (in add. intra lin.) disputationes ueniuntur Di; disputationem uertunt Ei; disputationes oriuntur Fo, Vd, Ve; disputationes uertuntur Fr, Mb, Md, Sv; in disputationem uertuntur Gz; in disputatione vertuntur Ca; in disputationem uertunt Lp, Vi, Ip; disputationem vertuntur Ma; in disputacione ueniunt Mz, Nü, Pr, To, Tr, Vb, Wü; in dubium uertunt Mü; disputacionis uertunt Ox; disputacione uertunt Sg, Vf; disputationes uertunt Vc. 27 qua Vb. 28 legum Di; iuris Fl, virium Mc; iuramentum Pa. 29 conditiones Mz, aditores Pr. 30 iuris om. Lü. 31 continenti add. Md. 32 interpretatores Ei, Lü, Mz; interpetratores Sl; interpres Ma, Vf; glosatores et interpretes add. Mb; impetres Vc. 33 ac etiam | iuri Vc. 34 ita om. Nü, Pa, Re. 35 ita uniuersaliter | utiliter Md. 36 pertractaverunt Be, narraverunt Mc; certauerunt Nü. 37 trahere om. Be. 38 periculosum alteri contentiosum Lp; iudicare add. Nü. 39 iudicibus om. Ma. 40 durasset Ma, om. Sv. 41 quoniam contra | infra Sg. 42 se | fidem Pa; et Ip. 43 molestam Gz; molestiam Mz, Nü, Sl; molesti Pa; modesti To; molestum Ca, Vi; molestes Ip. 44 fuerunt Ma, Mc, Mz, Sg, To, Vf; frarunt Mb; fecerunt Ox; sint Pa; faciunt Sv, Vd, Ve. 45 ambuguitantes Be; dignitatem Gz; dignitates Ca, Nü; litiganti Pa; dignitate add. Tr; litigare Ve. 46 per Ma. 47 propter que | postquam Ei; propter quod To. 48 ueritas om. Ca. 49 sepius Lp; semper Ip. 50 in add. Bs; subtrahitur seu subuertitur Be; sortire Cu; subuertitur | sortiri non potest To; sortire Vb; subuertantur Vc. 51 oriuntur | obruunt Ca et add. : iurgiaque conscendunt ;iurgiaque conscendunt add. Vi; occurrunt et oriuntur add. Vc. 52 uiri | unde Mü; uires Nü; ueri Pa; iuri Vf; iuris Ca, Vi. 53 scolastici om. Fo. 54 et etiam | atque Ba; et omnes Lp; hic ac. Ma. 55 clausidici Cu, Vb; clasidici To. 56 manerent Ma; temerarie Nü, remaneant Sg; manent Vf. 57 scientes Be, Mc, Vb, Vc, Ve; sentientes Ma, Vf; incientes Mb; inscientes Md; scicientes Ox, Pa, Wü; scienter To ; siscientes Ip. 58 euullare ? Be; ouihare Cu, occurere Mü; euitare Nü; quibus obviare
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages / 305 Table 9.1 (continued) quia inhere Vb. 59 cupiunt Mb, Nü; cupiens Wü. 60 scribentium Ei; scribens Mz, scribentes Nü; scribens To. 61 interceptio Be; intentio om. Nü; ipsius intencionis To. Note: Sigla of witnesses as in Lepsius, Der Richter und die Zeugen, xvii–xviii, and note 26 above. Bold sigla indicate witnesses with the full text (up to chap. 125), italic sigla indicate a middle version, and roman sigla indicate a short text (up to chap. 65).
at the university of Paris; Kerredan produced this very luxurious copy of the tract, written on parchment in an elegant bastarda script, for Bishop Simon de Cramaud of Reims during the council of Pisa (a good illustration of how church reform councils also acted as fairs for exchanging manuscripts). Upon closer internal inspection of the manuscript tradition, two more reasons for the apparent incompleteness of this text may be adduced. First of all, a discernable difference in the citation techniques used by Bartolo can be discerned. In the first twenty chapters of this text, in which, according to his own outline, he wanted to discuss general questions related to proof by witness (tractatus universalium), he included legal cross-references to the Digest and to more recent legal authorities (mainly to Duranti and Innocent IV); he supplied the full citations in the margins, while providing only a cursory reference within the text itself, references such as ‘Imperator noster constituit,’ ‘legibus comprobatur,’ ‘responsum est,’ ‘receptum est’ (the emperor has established it, it is demonstrated by the laws, the answer is, so it is received).40 It thus seems evident that Bartolo first wrote down the main line of his argument, only providing in the most general way the necessary legal cross-references (presumably from memory) which he then filled in himself or had filled in by his colleague Francesco Tigrini of Vicopisano, who is said to have helped him because of his bad memory.41 A good example of this method of Bartolo’s is found in manuscript Va (Barb. lat. 1398) which was chosen for several reasons as the base-text for the edition. As can be seen in the marked sections in figure 9.1, the word ‘respondendum [corr. responsum est]’ in the main text is glossed in the margin with ‘d - per Inno. ex. de testi. c. cum cauam et in Spe. e. § nunc tractandum verbo de visu.’ Such marginal legal allegations were faithfully copied by most subsequent scribes into the main text of their manuscripts, as the traditional citation practice for lawyers would require. Only a few manuscripts provide versions in which the scribes had apparently forgotten to copy or even incorporate the marginal allegations into their copies.
306 / Susanne Lepsius
Figure 9.1 A legal allegation in the margin, keyed by a ‘d’ to ‘respondendum’ in Bartolo’s text. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barberini latino 1398, fol. 132v (Va), pointing hands added. Reproduced with permission of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; further reproduction by any means is prohibited.
In the later sections, in particular from chapter 46 on, Bartolo only gives relatively vague clues about the sources he wished to refer to. For example, when referring to the various legal fragments of Roman jurists contained in the Digest he only indicates them by their name, according to the inscription of the lex of the Digest: ‘ut Celsus ait’ (as Celsus says), or Paulus or Gaius or Ulpianus; or when referring to a passage of the Code, ‘ut imperator constituit’ (as the emperor established), etc., thereby citing the laws of ancient Roman emperors at the same level of normative validity as the most recent constitutions of medieval Holy Roman Emperors. Because of his early death, Bartolo was unable to fill in the missing references in the correct citation style current at medieval law faculties. Thus Bartolo after writing ‘est enim res sanctissima hec civilis
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages / 307 sapientia’ (such civil wisdom is a holy thing) adds the reference ‘ut ait Ulpian’ (as Ulpian says)42 instead of alleging ‘ut l. Preses provinciae de mercedibus, ff. de variis et extraordinariis cognitionibus § est quidem res sanctissima,’ as would have been the university style for referencing the passage of the Digest corresponding (in modern citation practice) to Dig. 50.13.1.5. Likewise, Bartolo might cite a passage of Thomas Aquinas or Aristotle only in superficial terms, without further reference to a specific book or chapter of their works. It is apparent from the textual witnesses that Bartolo died before he could fill in his own ‘footnotes,’ and as a consequence the modern editor is left not only with the task of indicating variant readings in the apparatus criticus, but also with the task of identifying in an apparatus fontium the sources that Bartolo presumably wanted to cite with his vague cross-references. For legal historians, the sources of legal material are especially important for establishing how original or how derivative Bartolo’s thoughts might be in relation to the existing legal doctrine, and accordingly in my edition of the tractatus this apparatus fontium was printed above the critical apparatus, reversing the traditional hierarchy of the apparatus. Another aspect in which the Tractatus testimoniorum is incomplete is its range of argumentation, for the tract fell short of Bartolo’s original outline for the questions he intended to discuss. He had announced that he wished to present questions regarding testimony according to all ten Aristotelian categories,43 but the text, despite its length of twenty-three folios, discusses ‘only’ the categories of substantia, quantitas, and qualitas (and within qualitas only the cardinal virtue prudentia, but not the other three virtues, even though Bartolo indicated several times by references to a certain tractatus that he intended to discuss these issues as well).44 Nothing is to be found on proving the remaining seven categories of relatio, actio, passio, locus, tempus, situs, and habitus. What he might have discussed in those sections remains a matter of speculation beyond the task and competence of a modern editor. The internal incompleteness of the text is perhaps also the reason why an official, authorized copy never seems to have been handed to a stationarius by Bartolo himself in order to be disseminated within the official university publishing system. All surviving manuscripts seem to descend from private copies made on the initiative of individuals over the course of at least two different stages of the text (as the existence of a longer and a shorter version of the text testifies). The discoveries made from examining the manuscripts are crucial for a better understanding of how Bartolo conceived of his text, and in
308 / Susanne Lepsius general they are sufficient for a reconstruction of the text that attempts to come as close as possible to Bartolo’s own understanding of his treatise. Bartolo is an important figure in legal history not only in his own right, but even more so because of the enormous impact his thought had on the medieval tradition of civil law; famously, the adage ran ‘nemo iurista nisi bartolista’ (nobody is a jurist unless he is a Bartolist). Indeed, the importance of Bartolo cannot be separated from the historic impact of his ideas (the Wirkungsgeschichte), which can also be described more precisely through an analysis of the surviving manuscripts. Accordingly, it seemed mandatory for the edition not only to provide a polished text (a text such as Bartolo might have left on his desk at his death), but also to include individual scribes’ and readers’ later treatments of the Tractatus testimoniorum. The readers of Bartolo’s Tractatus testimoniorum, who often bequeathed their manuscripts to the libraries of the institutions where they were active, were at work not only in Italy (Rome, Florence, etc.) but also throughout Europe, from Seville in the west to Prague in the east to Oxford in the north, which attests to how common the ius commune really was. Many of the transalpine manuscripts are to be found today in church settings; these tend to have belonged to German students who studied in one of the Italian universities, copied their texts in Italy, and then brought them back to Germany, where they sometimes rose to high church offices. Such prelates include Simon de Cramaud, archbishop of Reims, possessor of manuscript Re; Heinrich von Knöringen, prince bishop of Augsburg, owner of Di (Dillingen, Studienbibliothek, xv 93); Helwig von Boppard, general vicar in Mainz, owner of Tr (Trier, Stadtbibliothek, ms 959/1859); and Albrecht von Eyb, canon of the cathedral churches in Bamberg, Würzburg, and Eichstätt, owner of Ei (Eichstätt, Staatliche Bibliothek, sb 5).45 Among the surviving manuscripts, there are two large groups that represent the two versions of the text descending from the two presumed stages at which Bartolo permitted scribes to make copies of the Tractatus testimoniorum. They represent either the tractatus brevior (chap. 1–middle of chap. 46) or the tractatus longior. Besides these, there exist manuscripts of varying lengths, which can be attributed to the decisions of individual scribes to break off copying at a certain point. Four scribes indicated that they knew of a longer version which was circulating in their time, but which for whatever reason they did not reproduce in their individual copies: ‘hic reperitur textus incompletus’ (here the text remains incomplete).46 Also, there exist manuscripts whose scribes interrupted their transcribing of the longer version right in the middle
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages / 309 of a column of text; they seem to have had a longer version at hand, yet decided to stop copying, perhaps because the text was too long or no longer interesting. This is particularly clear in the case of the scribe of Bn (Bologna, Collegio di Spagna, cs 271), who had already lined the verso page of his leaf in preparation for copying more of the text, but who changed his mind and abruptly stopped his transcription on the recto page, just after chapter 20 (that is, directly after the chapter where Bartolo started discussing particular questions, having restated the traditional doctrine on proof by witnesses – the tractatus universalium – in his own words before leaving it behind, and where Bartolo also ceased to fill in his citations).47 The scribe of Ba (Barcelona, Archivio de la Corona de Aragon, Ripoll 67), on the other hand, apparently had an exemplar of the short version before his eyes, which he copied and subscribed with a proper explicit. Later on, the possessor of the manuscript seems to have realized that a longer version of the text also existed, and he had this copied out eight folios further on in the manuscript (after another tract), subscribing it with another explicit to indicate that this text had finally been completed.48 Nevertheless, when transcribing the more philosophical questions of the second half of the text (where, for instance, proof of prudentia regnativa and prudentia politica was treated by Bartolo), this second scribe of Ba seems to have decided that such questions were too philosophical for the daily work of a lawyer, and left out the more abstract definitions that Bartolo had provided, relying instead mainly on Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. The omitted passages are easily discernible because of the obvious gaps their absence causes. In the margins of two such sections, in chapters 86 and 91, the scribe commented upon his decision to omit content that was not useful: ‘latius hic prosequitur, sed non curo, quia par proficit scire’ (this is continued more thoroughly, but I don’t care, because knowing it is of no more use), and a bit further on ‘idem’ (see the passages indicated in figure 9.2). Another challenge to copyists of Bartolo’s Tractatus testimoniorum was his unorthodox citation practice. On the one hand, this led to understandable omissions due to inattentiveness; on the other hand, certain scribes appeared particularly aware of the deficiencies of the text’s citations and tried to improve the text. The first of these attitudes is illustrated by the manuscripts Bs, Cu, Pr, Vb, and Wü:49 these provide rather faithful copies as far as the legal argumentation is concerned, with few textual corruptions, but they completely omit all cross-references in the sections between chapters 1 and 20, where Bartolo had added in the margins the complete reference according to the standard university xxxxxxxxxx
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Figure 9.2 Marginal comments about omitting passages of text. Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Ripoll 67, fol. 216/224r (Ba), pointing hands added. Reproduced with permission of the Archivio de la Corona de Aragón.
citation practice. This phenomenon can be most convincingly explained by assuming that these manuscripts descend from an exemplar that still had the citational references as marginal notes; when copying the central text, which contained only Bartolo’s vague indications of cross-references (his usual practice, when preparing a first draft, of leaving references to be filled in later), the scribes of these manuscripts easily overlooked them. Other copyists proved more diligent, so diligent, indeed, that some of them reproduced the entire lay-out with lining gaps and cross-references in the margins, such as is the case with manuscript Gz (Graz, Universitätsbibliothek 59). In general, manuscripts that fall later in the transmission history of the text – that is to say, those for which a greater number of intermediary stages of copying can be identified on the basis of textual corruptions – are more likely to incorporate cross-references (even those at first existing solely as marginal notations) into the main text according to the most common mode of legal citation.
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages / 311 On the other hand, we can also find readers and scribes who were not content with this superficial mode of references. They filled in the correct citation, guessing what Bartolo intended to cite and sometimes even expressing doubts about the possible sources to which he wished to refer. The way in which Bartolo’s missing footnotes are filled in often gives a clear indication of a copyist’s own interests and legal thought, for the density with which particular sections are treated in this way differs greatly from manuscript to manuscript. An especially interesting example of an individualized reading, which almost takes the form of a debate with Bartolo himself, is reflected in manuscript Lp (Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Hänel 15), originally a Neapolitan manuscript. In contrast to the copyist of manuscript Ba, this scribe was especially interested in the philosophical-political questions of Bartolo’s argument in chaps 33 to 125. Here the writer added most of the citations as he thought Bartolo might have done, for example adding in the left margin, as a gloss to ‘puniunt,’ the cross-reference ‘ff. de penis, l. Cogitationis’ (i.e., Dig. 48.19.18) (see the first of the passages indicated in figure 9.3). Sometimes he even expressed his doubts about whether his assumptions were correct: ‘credo quod sentiat’ (I think this is what he means). In addition, he glossed the text heavily, supplying short annotations concerning the content, and indicating his areas of most intense interest, especially with regard to the abstract philosophical definitions that the copyist of Ba deemed superfluous. For instance, at the word ‘nunc’ (now), the scribe of Lp glossed Bartolo’s discussion of prudence proving a quality: ‘hic assumit et declarat definitionem prudentie et quid sit et in quo consistit’ (here he assumes and declares the definition of prudence, and what it is and in what it consists) (see the second of the passages marked in the left margin in figure 9.3). The scribe was so absorbed by the definition of experientia given by Bartolo that he added another reference from canon law, and (using a proverb in the vernacular) recorded his own negative experience in buying a book of bad quality, an experience that perhaps now dictated his own diligence as a copyist (see passages indicated in the lower right margin in figure 9.3): Unde ait beatus Paulus cuius devotus servitio semper fui et sum. Omnia autem probate quod bonum est, tenete prudentia ut acquiritur per doctrinam aut per experientiam. Unde dicimus tu empararai se none ale tue spese, uti mihi contingit de emptione librorum. So says Saint Paul, to whose service I have always been and still am devoted. And everything that you test to see whether it is good, keep it
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Figure 9.3 Marginal additions of legal citations and personalized comments. Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Hänel 15, fol. 260r/288r (Lp), pointing hands added. Reproduced with permission of the Universitätsbibliothek, Leipzig.
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages / 313 in mind, so that prudence might be obtained through learning or through experience. As we say, ‘Otherwise, you will purchase at your own cost,’ just as it happened to me when purchasing a book.
Glossing and all other detailed signs of readerly interest in medieval legal texts (such as the frequently encountered finger-pointing hand to emphasize a particular argument) constitute for legal historians important traces of the actual reception of learned law, evidence that goes beyond recording the simple distribution of certain texts in library collections. Scribal emendations that provide more appropriate legal terms, as well as glosses that adduce additional legal allegations, are pieces of evidence for the reception and influence of legal texts, especially those related to the ‘Bartolism’ of the late Middle Ages. For this reason they should be documented in an edition aimed at modern legal historians, though this has to be done in a way that does not blur the difference between marginal glosses attributable to Bartolo himself and glosses added by later readers according to their individual interests. For this reason, in the edition of the Tractatus testimoniorum, it seemed appropriate to provide all individual, later glosses in an appendix, while indicating in the apparatus fontium the content of glosses providing information about legal citations that a modern editor is expected to provide. Medieval readers, of course, were not interested in a historical-genetic approach to textual criticism when they supplied references to rectify Bartolo’s citational gaps. For example, the manuscripts Lo (London, British Library, BL Royal Ms 10 bix) and Mc (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional 2209) have a gloss integrated into the main text referring to Bartolo’s student Baldo, whom Bartolo himself never, to my knowledge, ever cited (see the marked passage in figure 9.4, an insertion where Lo reads, ‘de hoc vide per Bal. in l. solam de test.’). Conclusion Even texts written by a single jurist in the later Middle Ages prove to a certain extent to be ‘living texts.’ Upon close inspection, they offer illuminating insights into the composition of a text by the author, as well as into several stages of reformulation and comparison of the text by later readers and scribes. These general observations, true for many literary genres, still need to be emphasized for legal texts. For some genres of legal texts, editions may not be practicable or even desirable. Others, such as tracts, more readily lend themselves to critical editing, not least because they are of a manageable size (usually only a handful
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Figure 9.4 Reference to Baldo degli Ubaldi incorporated into Bartolo’s text. London, British Library, Royal 10 b ix, fol. 227r (Lo), pointing hand added. Reproduced with permission of the British Library.
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages / 315 of folios), unlike, for example, complete commentaries. Nevertheless, almost every manuscript displays individual features indicative of the interest of particular readers, and these might be just as important for legal historical research as the original words of the author. Faithfully depicting all of these singularities would require a sophisticated edition in digitized form, allowing the modern reader to open new frames with all variant readings and with the glosses of all manuscripts.50 But even as important an author as Bartolo of Sassoferrato might not merit the huge amount of editorial energy it would take to pull all this information together, and to the extent that his work might be deserving of such attention, it is not his tracts but rather his commentaries that would be the best candidates for such a large, collective, multigenerational research project. On the other hand, if we consider that it is not the aim of an edition to present non-specialized readers with a mass of information that cannot be digested, then it becomes apparent that every printed edition necessarily involves a reduction of complexity (there are obvious disadvantages if a new edition should cause the complexity of a manuscript tradition to be disregarded, or even to vanish from view). Reconstructing and reproducing the transmission history of a text requires making some initial editorial choices. Should an editor choose an individual manuscript as a base text? How are variant readings to be evaluated as being either significant or not significant for establishing relationships among manuscripts and for devising a usable stemma? What is the most appropriate layout for the apparatus criticus and apparatus fontium, and how might the cross-references and glosses of later readers be best presented? When I edited the Tractatus testimoniorum, my own perspective as a lawyer and legal historian guided my basic editorial decisions, as did my sense of what made the text so interesting in the first place, my primary aim being to provide a usable but not too complicated text as a basis of interpretation for legal historians. If an editor were to adopt a different perspective, then other ways of resolving these editorial decisions might suggest themselves, or indeed it might seem altogether unnecessary, or even impossible, to achieve a critical edition of a legal text of this sort. Yet, in practical terms, that would leave legal historians in the unsatisfactory situation of still having to rely upon the early printed editions of legal works,51 although these rarely provide a reliable text, as can be demonstrated by the case of the Tractatus testimoniorum of Bartolus of Sassoferrato.
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An overview of the printed legal texts of the civil law tradition and their various editions from the sixteenth century on can be found in Douglas Osler, Catalogue of Books Printed on the Continent of Europe from the Beginning of Printing to 1600 in the Library of the Max-Planck-Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2000); Douglas Osler, Catalogue of Books Printed in Spain, Portugal and the Southern and Northern Netherlands from the Beginning of Printing to 1800 in the Library of the Max-Planck-Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2000); Douglas Osler, Jurisprudence of the Baroque, Bibliographica iuridica 4–6 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2009). On the possibility of comparing different canonical collections and their formal and material sources, see Dominique Bauer, ‘The Content of Canonical Collections: A Method of Historical Interpretation,’ Sacris erudiri: A Journal on the Inheritance of Early and Medieval Christianity 43 (2004): 235–60. Legal texts with glosses are described as textes vivants (‘living texts,’ which cannot be analysed according to traditional editorial methods that presume a stable ancestral manuscript and dependent manuscript families) by Gero Dolezalek, ‘Libri magistrorum and the Transmission of Glosses in Legal Textbooks (12th and Early 13th Century),’ in Juristische Buchproduktion im Mittelalter, ed. Vincenzo Colli, Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte 155 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2002), 315–49, esp. 329–33. A critical edition of the commentary of Johannes Teutonicus on the first two books of the Compilatio tertia is provided by Pennington, who argues that, in this particular case, a critical edition of an apparatus of glosses can be undertaken, following the usual procedures for establishing a stemma and families of manuscripts, because this apparatus circulated only for a short time and never became an authoritative gloss that circulated in large numbers and contained numerous individual additions; see Johannis Teutonici, Apparatus glossarum in Compilationem tertiam, ed. Kenneth Pennington (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1981), esp. xviii–xxi. A good survey of the editorial history of early medieval canon law texts up to Gratian is provided by Wilfried Hartmann, ‘Schwierigkeiten beim Edieren: Gelungene und gescheiterte Editionen von großen Kirchenrechtssammlungen,’ in Fortschritt durch Fälschungen? Ursprung, Gestalt und Wirkungen der pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen: Beiträge zum gleichnamigen Symposium an der Universität Tübingen vom 27 und 28 Juli 2001, ed. Wilfried Hartmann and Gerhard Schmitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte 31 (Han-
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nover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2002), 211–27. Corresponding editorial problems arise for the late medieval law books compiled in Germany, because their production was not controlled by the university system. Interestingly, discussions about providing genetic editions or editions of relevant compositorial stages for such law books are similar to discussions regarding canon law texts; for example, see Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, ‘Überlieferungs- und Editionsprobleme deutscher Rechtsbücher,’ in Methoden und Probleme der Edition mittelalterlicher deutscher Texte, ed. Rolf Bergmann and Kurt Gärtner, Beihefte zu Editio 4 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993), 63–81. Such court records make possible case studies and thick descriptions of the microlegal cosmos of an entire city, such as the masterful studies of Florence by Thomas Kuehn, Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); and of Marseille by Daniel L. Smail, The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264–1423 (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 2003). On the genesis and documentation practices of court records in Italy and certain other European cities, see the collection Als die Welt in die Akten kam: Prozeßschriftgut im europäischen Mittelalter, ed. Susanne Lepsius and Thomas Wetzstein, Rechtsprechung, Materialien und Studien 27 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2008). Giovanna Murano, Opere diffuse per exemplar e pecia (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 151; and Bartolo of Sassoferrato, Commentaria in Digesto veteri (Venice: Baptista de Tortis, 1526; repr. Rome: Il Cigno Galileo Galilei, 1996). It remains to be determined which parts of Bartolo’s Lectura Digesti veteris were really composed by him. Heavy doubts as to his authorship were raised in the early modern period by Thomas Diplovatatius; see his Liber de claris iuris consultis: Pars posterior, ed. Fritz Schulz, Hermann Kantorowicz, and Giuseppe Rabotti (Bologna: Institutum Gratianum, 1968), 274–6. Norbert Horn, ‘Die legistische Literatur der Kommentatorenzeit,’ in Handbuch der Quellen und Literatur der neueren europäischen Privatrechtsgeschichte, vol. 1, Das Mittelalter (1100–1500), ed. Helmut Coing (München: C.H. Beck, 1973), 261–364, esp. 321–6. For the commentaries of Baldo degli Ubaldi, see Vincenzo Colli, ‘Le opere di Baldo dal codice d’autore all’edizione a stampa,’ in VI Centenario della morte di Baldo degli Ubaldi 1400–2000, ed. Carla Frova, Maria Grazia Nico Ottaviani, and Stefania Zucchini (Perugia: Università degli Studi, 2005), 25–85, esp. 55–82. See the criticism directed at Horst Heinrich Jakobs, Magna Glossa: Textstufen der legistischen Glossa ordinaria, Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Görresgesellschaft, N.F. 114 (Paderborn:
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Schöningh, 2006), by Vincenzo Colli, ‘Considerazioni su Hermann Kantorowicz filologo, 87 anni fa: Le sue Textstufen e Accursio al tempo d’oggi,’ Rechtsgeschichte 13 (2008): 47–59. Colli argues convincingly that only with a text such as Albertus Gandinus’s Tractatus de maleficiis, which was never handed over to publication via the pecia system of the universities, might the identification and consequently the editing of several Textstufen be possible, whereas this might not be attainable in cases such as the Glossa ordinaria of Accursius; and we might add that the same point holds for the commentaries of the later Middle Ages that were standard core curricular texts of the time. On the controversy as to the historiographical importance of consilia, see Ingrid Baumgärtner, ‘Einführung,’ in Consilia im späten Mittelalter: Zum historischen Aussagewert einer Quellengattung, ed. Ingrid Baumgärtner, Studi del Centro tedesco di studi veneziani 13 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1995), 9–15; Manlio Bellomo, ‘Factum proponitur certum, sed dubium est de iure,’ in Die Kunst der Disputation: Probleme der Rechtsauslegung und Rechtsanwendung im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert, ed. Manlio Bellomo, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs 38 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997), 1–28, esp. 10; and, for a balanced view, Mario Ascheri, ‘Le fonti e la flessibilità del diritto comune: Il paradosso del consilium sapientis,’ in Legal Consulting in the Civil Law Tradition, ed. Mario Ascheri, Ingrid Baumgärtner, and Julius Kirshner, Studies in Comparative Legal History (Berkeley: Robbins Collection, 1999), 11–53, esp. 13–15, 19 n. 25. Even in the early modern period, jurists considered the opinions of their legal predecessors in their consilia as biased, and thus as less authoritative than their arguments in commentaries or quaestiones; see Mario Ascheri, ‘I consilia dei giuristi: Una fonte per il tardo Medioevo,’ Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo 105 (2003): 305–34, esp. 324–6. See the descriptions of such original consilia in Julius Kirshner, ‘Consilia as Authority in Late Medieval Italy: The Case of Florence,’ in Legal Consulting, ed. Ascheri, Baumgärtner, and Kirshner, 107–40, esp. 112–17. One example of a manuscript containing original consilia dating from the late Middle Ages is Bartolo of Sassoferrato’s autograph manuscript (Ravenna, Biblioteca Classense, ms 485); see Mario Ascheri, ‘The Formation of the Consilia Collection of Bartolus of Saxoferrato and Some of His Autographs,’ in The Two Laws: Studies in Medieval Legal History Dedicated to Stephan Kuttner, ed. Laurent Mayali and Stephanie A.J. Tibbetts, Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law 1 (Washington, dc: Catholic University Press of America, 1990), 188–201. Autographs also allow glimpses into the working methods of jurists, providing insight into how arguments were elaborated, how recent norms were integrated, etc. For identifications of autograph manu-
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scripts of Johannes Andreae and Baldo degli Ubaldi, see Vincenzo Colli, ‘Lo Speculum iudiciale di Guillaume Durand: Codice d’autore ed edizione universitaria,’ in Juristische Buchproduktion im Mittelalter, ed. Vincenzo Colli, Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte 156 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2002), 517–66; Vincenzo Colli, ‘L’idiografo della Lectura super primo, secundo et tertio libro Codicis di Baldo degli Ubaldi,’ Ius commune 26 (1999): 91–122; Vincenzo Colli and Giovanna Murano, ‘Un codice d’autore con autografi di Giovanni d’Andrea (ms. Cesena, Biblioteca Malatestiana, s.ii.3),’ Ius commune 24 (1997): 1–23. For this reason original consilia often present the most important sources for identifying the handwriting of a given jurist; for example, see the hand of Baldo degli Ubaldi reproduced in Julius Kirshner, ‘Baldus de Ubaldis on Disinheritance: Contexts, Controversies, Consilia,’ Ius commune 27 (2000): 118–214, fig. 1 at 150. But even if the same consilium was transmitted by later apographs, the identification of the author in most cases remains unquestionable, because the signature usually was copied reliably; cf. the reproduction from a later manuscript in Susanne Lepsius, ‘Die Ehe, die Mitgift und der Tod’, in Fälle aus der Rechtsgeschichte, ed. Ulrich Falk, Michele Luminati, and Mathias Schmoeckel (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2008), 129. For an example of a catalogue that only vaguely indicates the existence of ‘consilia varia,’ see A Catalogue of Canon and Roman Law Manuscripts in the Vatican Library, ed. Stephan Kuttner and Reinhard Elze, vol. 1, Codices Vaticani latini 541–2299, Studi e testi 322 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1986); vol. 2, Codices Vaticani latini 2300–2746, Studi e testi 328 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1987). A superbly meticulous counter-example, providing exact incipits and explicits even of the shortest consilia, is I codici del Collegio di Spagna di Bologna, ed. Domenico Maffei et al., Orbis academicus 5 (Milan: Giuffrè, 1992). Susanne Lepsius, ‘Bartolus de Sassoferrato,’ in Compendium auctorum latinorum medii aevi, vol. 2.1, ed. Michael Lapidge (Florence: Società internazionale per lo studio del medioevo latino – Edizioni del Galuzzo, 2004), 101–56. Dr Vincenzo Colli of the Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte is preparing a much more detailed inventory of the about 3,000 consilia penned by Baldo degli Ubaldi. See Thomas Izbicki and Julius Kirshner, ‘Consilia of Baldus of Perugia in the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago,’ Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, n.s. 15 (1985): 95–115. On the idea of manuscript dissemination as an important indicator of a late medieval reading public, see Diego Quaglioni, ‘Das Publikum der Legisten im 14 Jahrhundert: “Die Leser” des Bartolus von Sassoferrato,’
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22
23
in Das Publikum politischer Theorie im 14 Jahrhundert, ed. Jürgen Miethke and Arnold Bühler, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, Kolloquien 21 (Munich: R. Oldenburg Verlag, 1992), 93–110. Ennio Cortese, Il rinascimento giuridico medievale (Rome: Bulzoni, 1996), 71–5. The situation is not entirely clear. Because they are short texts, individual tracts are never listed by their titles in the medieval catalogues of stationarii. However, Quaglioni suggests that Bartolo himself ‘published’ his so-called political tracts, i.e., he might have given a polished copy to the university-text publication system (as Bartolo writes, ‘et sub forma infrascripta libellum composui, et uniuersitate nostrae tradidi’); see Diego Quaglioni, Politica e diritto nel Trecento italiano (Florence: Olschki, 1983), 90, 96. Susanne Lepsius, Der Richter und die Zeugen: Eine Untersuchung anhand des ‘Tractatus testimoniorum’ des Bartolus von Sassoferrato (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2003), 67–102, 329–63 (manuscripts), 233–328 (edition). For the interpretation of this text and the specific problems of proof in the ius commune, see also Susanne Lepsius,Von Zweifeln zur Überzeugung: Der Zeugenbeweis im gelehrten Recht ausgehend von der Abhandlung des Bartolus von Sassoferrato (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2003). On the biography of Bartolo, see Julius Kirshner, ‘Bartolo da Sassoferrato,’ in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer (New York: Scribners, 1982), 1:114–16. Alexander Tartagnus, cons. 141 and commentary to ‘l. Si cum dotem § Si maritus, ff. soluto matrimonio’ (Dig. 24.3.22.7); see also Diego Quaglioni, ‘Regnativa prudentia: Diritto e teologia nel Tractatus testimoniorum Bartoliano,’ in Théologie et droit dans la science politique de l’état moderne, Collection de l’École française de Rome 147 (Rome: l’École française de Rome, 1991), 155–70, esp. 167. Further external evidence is also provided by the humanist editor of Bartolo of Sassoferrato’s complete works, Thomas Diplovatatius; see Bartolo of Sassoferrato, Commentaria, cum additionibus Thomae Diplovatatii et aliorum excellentissimorum doctorum, vol. 9, Volumen Consilia; Quaestiones; Tractatus (Rome: Il Cigno Galileo Galillei, 1996; facsimile reprint of Venice: de Tortis, 1526–9), fol. 156v (s.v. ‘tractatus testimoniorum’). Similarly left unfinished was Bartolo’s tract on coats of arms and ensigns, the Tractatus de armis et insignis; see Osvaldo Cavallar, Susanne Degenring, and Julius Kirshner, A Grammar of Signs: Bartolo da Sassoferrato’s Tract on Insignia and Coats of Arms (Berkeley: University of California, 1994), 29–40. Baldo degli Ubaldi wrote a continuation to the tract De duobus fratribus, which Bartolo began but could not finish because of his early death; see
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages / 321
24
25
26
27
28 29
30
Osvaldo Cavallar, ‘Personaggi in cerca di “editore”: Una proposta di lettura per alcuni degli ultimi trattati bartoliani,’ Rivista internazionale di diritto commune 15 (2004): 97–142, esp. 102 n. 16. On Baldo degli Ubaldi, see Julius Kirshner, ‘Baldus,’ in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 1:57. Baldo degli Ubaldi, Lectura in primam et secundam Codicis (Lyon: Claudius Servanius, 1561), ‘ad l. Edita actio, Cod. de edendo’ (Cod. 2.1.3), fol. 89vb n. 117; translations are mine. This phenomenon has been aptly labelled ‘historical concentration’ by Domenico Maffei, ‘Manuscripts and Legal Publishers in the Early Sixteenth Century (Notes and Suggestions),’ in Studi di storia delle università e della letteratura giuridica (Goldbach: Keip, 1995), 49–54. To the forty-two manuscripts analysed in my dissertation (Lepsius, Der Richter und die Zeugen, 329–36, with a list of sigla on xvii–xviii), three more can now be added thanks to recent manuscript catalogues: Camerino, Biblioteca Valentiniana e Comunale 97, fols 95r–114r (Ca); Salamanca, Biblioteca Universidad, 2190, fols 62va–7ra (Sa); and Schlierbach, Zisterzienserstiftsbibliothek, 19, fols 180ra–190ra (Sl, which is incomplete, breaking of at the end of chapter 66). All of the manuscript features discussed in this essay are described in more detail in the relevant sections of Lepsius, Der Richter und die Zeugen. For example, Bartolo’s Tractatus de armis et insigniis is extant in about 100 manuscripts; see Cavallar, Degenring, and Kirshner, Grammar of Signs, 93. For the Liber minoricarum, 106 extant manuscripts (and five lost manuscripts) have been tracked by Andrea Bartocci, Ereditare in povertà (Naples: Jovene, 2009), 409–81. By contrast, Quaglioni in his edition of the Tractatus de regimine civitatis, the Tractatus de Guelfis et Gebellinis, and the Tractatus de tyranno, had to grapple with ‘only’ ten, sixteen, and thirty-seven manuscripts respectively; see Quaglioni, Politica e diritto, 89. See Lepsius, Der Richter und die Zeugen, 90ff. The late manuscripts Bs, Be, Bn, Di, Lü, Mc, Mü, Mz, Re, Sv, Vf, Vg, Vh, and Wü, also entitle the text Tractatus de testibus, thereby corroborating the evidence that almost all printed editions, from the first incunabula version, Ic (Venice: Vindelinus de Spira 1472), to the many large editions from sixteenth-century Venice and Lyon, depend on the late and contaminated manuscript tradition. On the striking textual variants and contaminations that suggest that the incunable, Ic, is closest to the third, heavily contaminated branch of the manuscript stemma, see Lepsius, Der Richter und die Zeugen, 215–17. None of the chapter numbers are to be found in any manuscripts or incunables because they were added only in the printed editions of the sixteenth century. For the sake of reference, I cite the text by these
322 / Susanne Lepsius
31
32
33
34 35 36
37
(anachronistic) chapter numbers. Manuscripts with the full length of the text are Ba, Be, Bl, Bs, Ca, Cu, Di, Fo, Fr, Lp, Lü, Mz, Pr,Sv, Tr, Va, Vb, Vc, Vd, Vg, Vh, Vi, and Wü; those with some form of middle version are Bn, Gz, Ma, Nü, Sl, To, Ve, and Vf; and those with the short version are Ba, Bg, Ei, Lo, Mb, Mc, Md, Mü, Ox, Pa, Re, Sa, and Sg. Of the contrary opinion is Pennington, who interprets the differing chapter sequence in the early modern prints as intentional rearrangement of the printers to make Bartolo’s text more coherent; see Kenneth Pennington, review of Der Richter und die Zeugen by Susanne Lepsius, Speculum 80 (2005): 263. Listed in the Illustrated Incunabula Short Title Catalogue on CD-Rom, 2nd ed., cd-Rom (Reading: British Library – Primary Source Media, 1998), ‘Paris: Pasquier Bonhomme, 28.8.1477,’ n. iu00034950. The case for providing a genetic edition is made by Pennington, review of Der Richter und die Zeugen, 264. Unlike the Apparatus glossarum in Compilationem tertiam by Johannes Teutonicus, edited by Kenneth Pennington (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1981), which shows considerable evolution over time, the various stages of Bartolo’s text represent only the straightforward addition of new passages when Bartolo resumed his work after an interruption, without any reelaboration of the sections already written. See William Robins’s comments on this point in the introductory essay in this volume. This has been done in the three editions presented in Diego Quaglioni, Politica e diritto. While Pennington criticized the edition for indicating only single readings, on the other hand Izbicki, in his review in Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004): 680, felt that too many of the variant readings in the critical apparatus were not textually pertinent. Despite the fact that the edition is based on an existing manuscript and did not follow a Lachmannian procedure of textual reconstruction, nevertheless it has been criticized (strangely, I think) as presenting a text ‘zu schön, um wahr zu sein’ (too good to be true) by Mathias Schmoeckel, review of Der Richter und die Zeugen: Eine Untersuchung anhand des Tractatus testimoniorum des Bartolus von Sassoferrato,’ by Susanne Lepsius, Forum historiae iuris (2003), no. 8, available online at http://www.rewi.hu-berlin.de/fhi//rezensionen/0312schmoeckel. htm. Quaglioni, by contrast, was attacked for his truly Lachmannian editions by Paolo Mari, mainly on the grounds that Quaglioni had relied too much on an ideal type of manuscript stemma, not taking into account contamination and authorial revision; see Paolo Mari, ‘Prob-
Editing Legal Texts from the Late Middle Ages / 323
38 39
40
41
42
43
lemi di critica bartoliana,’ Studi Medievali 26 (1985): 907–40; as well as the reply by Diego Quaglioni, ‘Un tetrafarmaco per il filologo: A proposito di alcuni esercizi di critica bartoliana,’ Studi Medievali 29 (1988): 785–803. It is not clear, whether or not Mari would support the idea of preparing modern editions of late medieval texts at all; see Paolo Mari, ‘Note di metodo critico sull’edizione dei tractatus giuridici,’ Initium: Revista catalana d’història del dret 7 (2002): 241–58, and ‘Interpolazione e probabilità,’ Initium: Revista catalana d’història del dret 9 (2004): 443–86. One consequence of such acerbic critiquing of editions is that legal historians might simply continue to cite error-ridden early modern printings, and so might not become aware of the manuscript traditions of the texts they interpret. One trend in editorial debates is leading more and more toward relying on a single manuscript as a base text, indicating only the variant readings in other surviving manuscripts; see Alfredo Stussi, ‘Filologia d’autore,’ in Fondamenti di critica testuale, ed. Alfredo Stussi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998), 287–99. Bartolo was ridiculed for his bad Latin by the humanist Lorenzo Valla; see Cavallar, Degenring, and Kirshner, Grammar of Signs, 3–5, 179–200. These variants are discussed in Lepsius, Der Richter und die Zeugen, 215 n. 69, 225 n. 105, 220 n. 90 (ubi de usu), 205 n. 26, 213 n. 63, 214 n. 67 (constitutio principis), 207 n. 36, 211 n. 54, 214 n. 68, 217 n. 78, 222 n. 94 (procedendi). Bartolo of Sassoferrato, Tractatus testimoniorum, ed. Lepsius, Der Richter und die Zeugen, 235 (chap. 2), 236 (chap. 4), 236 (chap. 5), 239 (chap. 8), 239 (chap. 9). Thomas Diplovatatius, the humanist editor of Bartolo’s opera omnia, relates how Bartolo, because of his bad memory, asked his friend Francesco Tigrini for help, or else used his notebook as a reference tool; see Diplovatatius, Liber de claris iuris consultis, ed. Schultz, Kantorowicz, and Rabotti, 280. The close cooperation in the legal day-to-day work between Bartolo of Sassoferrato and Francesco Tigrini is documented through quite a number of consilia signed by both jurists. On Francesco Tigrini, see Piergiorgio Peruzzi, ‘Prime note sulla vita e sull’opera scientifica di Francesco Tigrini da Pisa,’ Studi Medievali 31 (1990): 853–99. Bartolo da Sassoferrato, Tractatus testimoniorum, ed. Lepsius, Der Richter und die Zeugen, 280 (chap. 70), 315 (chap. 107), 316 (chap. 109), 320 (chap. 112), 322 (chap. 115), and so on. ‘Omnis autem res super qua testis potest interrogari aut est res aliqua in actu aut in potentia ad esse. Item eorum que sunt in actu, aut est res aliqua in intentione aut res aliqua extra intentionem. Item eorum que
324 / Susanne Lepsius
44 45 46
47
48
49
50
51
extra sunt, aut est substantia aut quantitas aut qualitas aut relatio aut actio aut passio aut locus aut tempus aut situs aut habitus. Aut est aliquid compositum ex predictis vel aliquibus predictorum. Et predicta per suas rubricas infra singulariter prosequamur.’ Bartolo da Sassoferrato, Tractatus testimoniorum, 244–5 (chap. 20). Bartolo tended to refer to smaller sections of his work as tractatus, whereas he called the entire text a liber. On the medieval readers and possessors of the work, see Lepsius, Der Richter und die Zeugen, 73–82. Manuscripts Gz, Ma, Ve, and Vf all end at the same point of the text, suggesting a common exemplar for this middle-length version. Furthermore, two manuscripts of the long version also indicate that the text is not complete: Lü (chap. 125, fol. 162v: ‘Et videtur item tractatus imperfectus reperitur’) and Vi (chap. 125, fol. 129r: ‘Et hic finem fatio oppressus morbo, qui finaliter me devicit subdicoque telam auream, quam vix fatum rodirit permisit’); see Lepsius, Der Richter und die Zeugen, 92 n. 174, 88 n. 162, 340, 343, 361. Pennington, review of Der Richter und die Zeugen, is not convinced of the scribes’ voluntary choice to end their transcriptions, and argues instead that these manuscripts might represent stages in Bartolo’s composition of the text. I am more inclined to see scribal choice at work here, since the folios have already been lined, and since the scribes indicate that they are aware of longer versions of the text. Ba, fol. 213v (end of chap. 33) and fol. 228r (end of chap. 125), has two explicits, one after the short version and another one after the entire text. Manuscripts Vg and Vh also have two explicits, one after each of the short and the long versions which are copied consecutively. Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, c.iii.13 (Bs); Bernkastel-Kues, SanktNikolaushospital, 257 (Cu); Prague, Narodni Muzeum, ms a5 (Pr); Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticano latino 2289 (Vb); Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M.ch.fol.39 (Wü). Such an approach would be an adaptation of Kuttner’s suggestion about how to edit early medieval law texts that typically survive in only two to four copies; Kuttner pleaded for synoptically printing the entire text of different recensions in parallel columns, leaving the reader to decipher the relevant distinctions; see Stephan Kuttner, ‘Notes on the Presentation of Text and Apparatus in Editing Works of the Decretists and Decretalists,’ Traditio 15 (1959): 452–62, 453 n. 2c. See Douglas Osler, ‘Text and Technology,’ Rechtshistorisches Journal 14 (1995): 309–31.
Index of Manuscripts
Assisi, Biblioteca Comunale, 342 (=A): 267–76, 270–1tab8.1, 273tab8.2, 275tab8.3, 276tab8.4, 280, 289nn7–8, 290nn22–3; —, 572: 272 Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Ripoll 67 (=Ba): 304– 5tab9.1, 309, 310fig9.2, 311, 321– 2n30, 324n48 Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, C.III.13 67 (=Bs): 304–5tab9.1, 309, 321n29, 321–2n30, 324n49 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Phillips 1727: 194–5n49 Bernkastel-Kues, Sankt- Nikolaushospital, 257 (=Cu): 304–5tab9.1, 309, 321–2n30, 324n49 Bologna, Archivio di Stato di Bologna, Codici miniati 30: 251n36 Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, Lat. 1741 (=B4): 273tab8.2, 275tab8.3, 286tab8.7 Bologna, Collegio di Spagna, CS 271 (=Bn): 309, 321n29, 321–2n30 Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, 11851–3 (=B2): 273tab8.2, 275tab8.3, 286tab8.7
Camerino, Biblioteca Valentiniana e Comunale, 97 (=Ca): 304–5tab9.1, 321n26, 321–2n30 Chicago, Newberry Library, 31.2 (=Ch): 289–90n18 Cologne, Historisches Archiv, W.172 (=Bx): 272, 273tab8.2, 275tab8.3, 286tab8.7 Dillingen, Studienbibliothek, XV 93 (=Di): 308, 321n29, 321– 2n30 Egmond-Binnen, Sint-Adelbertabdij, Codex Claramontanus: 194n48 Eichstätt, Staatliche Bibliothek, SB 5 (=Ei): 304–5tab9.1, 308 Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Arte del Cambio 54: 246n16; Arte del Cambio 55: 246n17; Arte del Cambio 59: 246n17; Arte del Cambio 65: 246n17 – Arte della Lana 71: 246–7n18; Arte della Lana 319: 249n28; Arte della Lana 324: 246–7n18 – Arte di Calimala 5: 246n14
326 / Index of Manuscripts – Auditore poi Segretario delle Riformagioni 111: 253n48 – Mercanzia 5: 246n12, 249n26, 256n67; Mercanzia 9: 256n67; Mercanzia 283: 253n47; Mercanzia 1121: 222, 223fig7.1, 224fig7.2, 247n20, 252n44; Mercanzia 1181: 248–9n25; Mercanzia 4417: 232, 234fig7.4, 235–8, 254n53, 255n58; Mercanzia 4420: 232, 233fig7.3, 235–7, 253–4n51; Mercanzia 4421: 232, 238–9, 254n52, 256n66; Mercanzia 7114bis: 252n44; Mercanzia 7177: 253n50; Mercanzia 7338: 252n44; Mercanzia 7702: 242fig7.5, 257n70; Mercanzia 10819bis: 258; Mercanzia 10819ter: 258; Mercanzia 10820: 258; Mercanzia 10820bis: 258; Mercanzia 10821: 258; Mercanzia 10822: 257n71, 258 – Provvisioni Registri 42: 103 – Vecchi Inventari 686: 253n48 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Acquisti e Doni 325: 147–8, 148fig5 – Acquisti e Doni 759 (Ginori Venturi Lisci 3): 159 – Amiatinus 1: 138–9n12 – Ashburnham 1473: 154 – Pluteo XLI.17: 159fig5.10 – Redi 9: 81, 85, 106n1, 109–10n26 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, II.II.30: 149, 151fig5.4 – II.IV.163: 155 – Banco Rari 217: 81, 106n1 – Conventi Soppressi I.C. .III (d.7.886) (=F1): 272–4, 273tab8.2, 275tab8.3, 276tab8.4, 280–5, 286tab8.7, 290n24
– Magl. VII, 1066: 149, 151fig5.5 – Magl. VIII, 1272: 155, 157fig5.7, 164n20 – Magl. VIII, 1416: 152, 154–5, 153fig5.6, 163n16 – Magl. XXV, 19: 156–7, 159fig5.9 Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ricc. 1035: 150fig5.3 Graz, Universitätsbibliothek, 59 (=Gz): 304–5tab9.1, 310, 321–2n30, 324n46 Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Hänel 15 (=Lp): 311, 312fig9.3 Liège, Bibliothèque du Grand Séminaire, 6.g.4 (=B5): 272, 273tab8.2, 275tab8.3, 286tab8.7 London, British Library, Royal 10 B IX (=Lo): 313, 314fig9.4 Lucca, Archivio di Stato di Lucca, Corte de’ Mercanti 136: 155 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, 2209 (=Mc): 313 Madrid, Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Latino e.III.23: 82, 106n4 Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, E.147sup: 187–8n9; —, I.2 sup: 194n48 Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, .R.4.4: 157fig5.8 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, latin 5620 (=Pa): 272, 273tab8.2, 273–4, 275tab8.3, 276tab8.4, 280–2, 286tab8.7, 290n21; —, latin 10233: 187n6 Perugia, Biblioteca Augusta, 1046: 272
Index of Manuscripts / 327 Prague, Narodni Muzeum, MS a5 (=Pr): 324n49, 304–5tab9.1, 309, 321–2n30 Ravenna, Bibliotheca Classense, MS 485: 318n11 Reims, Bibliothèque Municipale, 829 (=Re): 303, 304–5tab9.1, 321n29, 321–2n30 Rieti, Biblioteca Comunale Paroniana, Fontecolombo I.2.11 (=R): 270–1tab8.1, 272, 273tab8.2, 275, 275tab8.3, 276tab8.4, 285, 287tab8.7, 289–90n18, 290n19 Salamanca, Biblioteca Universidad, 2190 (=Sa): 321n26, 321–2n30 Savignano di Romagna, Biblioteca della Rubiconia Accademia dei Filopatridi, MS 45: 73nn25–6 Schlierbach, Zisterzienserstiftsbibliothek, 19 (=Sl): 321n26, 321–2n30 Subiaco, Monastero di Santa Scolastica, 112 (=S): 272, 273tab8.2, 273, 275tab8.3, 275, 285 Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 206/1242 (=Bx2): 272, 273tab8.2, 275tab8.3, 286tab8.7; —, 774/1347 (=Bx1): 272, 273tab8.2, 275tab8.3, 286tab8.7; —, 959/1859 (=Tr): 304–5tab9.1, 308, 321–2n30
Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Misc. Arm. XI.19: 179, 194n48 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barberini latino 3953: 82, 97, 106n2 – Barberini latino 1398 (=Va): 302, 305, 306fig9.1, 321–2n30 – Chigi L.VIII.305: 82, 106n3 – Palatino latino 1801: 72–3n25 – Vaticano latino 1322a: 168–71, 169fig.6.1, 186n4, 200 – Vaticano latino 2289 (=Vb): 304–5tab9.1, 309, 321–2n30, 324n49 – Vaticano latino 3195: 161n1, 163n13 – Vaticano latino 3793: 81, 82, 97–8, 106n1, 107n10, 108n20 – Vaticano latino 5750: 187n6, 187–8n9 Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Franc. XIII (256): 150fig5.2 Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, I (1): 186–7n5; —, LIII (51): 187n6; —, LIX (57): 187n6; —, LXXV (80): 187n6; —, XC (85): 187n6 Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M.ch.fol.39 (=Wü): 304–5tab9.1, 309, 321n29, 321–2n30, 324n49
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Index of Names and Subjects
abbreviations: in Hebrew, 131; in notarial documents, 254–5n54 Abruzzo, 139n14 Abulafia, David, 44n62 account books, 13, 219, 221–2; and double-entry bookkeeping, 13, 33n8; editions of, 24; probative value of, 219, 221–2; and registro format, 22, 149 Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius, 279 Adalbertus of Samaria, 56–7, 66, 71–2nn16–18, 73n28 Adams, J.N., 137n3, 140n25 Adelson, Howard, 190n23 Admonitio generalis, 174, 177–8, 190–1n27, 191nn28–31, 193n42, 198–9n75 Agati, Maria Luisa, 39–40n45 Agnolo, son of Bartolomeo di Agnolo, 232 Aho, James Alfred, 33n8 Al Samman, Tarif, 138n11 Alberic of Montecassino, 56–7, 70n9, 71nn10–16, 72n24 Alberti, Leon Battista, 217, 243–4n1 Albertus of Asti, 74n33 Albrecht von Eyb, 308
Alcuin, 174, 176–7, 188n11, 190–1n27 Aldo, bishop of Piacenza, 65 Alessandri, Nicola, 300–1 Alexander ii, pope, 64, 77n52 Alfie, Fabian, 110n30, 111n36 Alfini, Gianni degli, 94 Allacci, Leone, 14 Ambrose of Milan, Saint, 13 Amelotti, Mario, 32n3 Amico di Dante, 107n10 Ammirato, Scipione, 225, 248n23 Andrano, hospital at, 117 Andrea di Strumi, 75nn41–2 Angela of Foligno, 8, 265–93 Ankara, 117 Anselm, bishop of Lucca, 64 Anselm, teacher of Henry Francigena, 71n16 Anselm da Boviso, archbishop of Milan, 77n52 Anselm of Besate, Rhetorimachia, 61–2, 74nn38–9, 74–5n40 Anselm of Rho, archbishop of Milan, 64, 77n52 anthropology, 15–16, 19–20, 22 Anton, Hans Hubert, 193–4n46 Antonelli, Roberto, 108nn19, 20
330 / Index of Names and Subjects Antonino, Biancastella, 43n57 Antonio di Giovanni da Prato, 238 Apulia, 115 Aquileia, 167, 169–76 passim, 181 Arabic, texts in, 23, 115–16 Aramaic, texts in, 129 Archivio storico italiano, 14 Arcolani, Sigismondo degli, judge, 241 Ariald, preacher, 63 Arimanno, bishop of Brescia, 65 Aristotle, 307, 309; Aristotelian categories, 301, 307 Arles, 72n23; archbishops of, 175 Arlinghaus, Franz-Josef, 33n8, 42n54 Armstrong, Lawrin, 48n78, 136n, 186n4, 243n Arnaldo, Franciscan brother, 267 Arnaut Daniel, 109n24 Arno, bishop of Salzburg, 176–7, 192n35 Arnolfo, archbishop of Milan, 77n52 ars dictaminis (dictamen) 6, 54–60, 66–8, 69nn4–5, 69–70n6, 70n7, 71nn14–15, 72n18, 74n34 Arthur, Paul, 142n39 Arveda, Antonia, 107n12 Ascheri, Mario, 46n72, 318nn9, 11 Ascoli, 46n72 Ascoli, Albert Russell, 34n13 Ascoli, Grazia Isaia, 138n9 Asor Rosa, Alberto, 19 Assisi, 8, 266–7, 272, 273, 287, 289n8 Astorri, Antonella, 244nn6–7, 248–9n25 Athanasius, Saint, 177 Atkinsons, Niall, 243n
Auerbach, Erich, 15, 35n18 Augustine of Hippo, Saint, 13, 34n11, 223 Augustus, emperor, 117, 139n13 authorship, 14, 17, 24, 26, 27, 34n13, 47n76, 60, 98, 101–2, 171, 178, 285, 295–9 passim autograph manuscripts, 147–9, 163n13, 218, 296–7, 318 n11, 318–19n12, 319n13 Avalle, D’Arco Silvio, 18, 37n32 Avignon, 272, 273 Azzetta, Luca, 248n24 Baker, Robert, 190n23 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 142n42 Baldo degli Ubaldi, 298, 300–1, 313–14, 317n7, 318–19n12, 319nn13, 15, 320–1n23, 321n24 Balduino, Armando, 146, 156, 162n3, 164n23 Balestracci, Duccio, 22, 39n40, 40n48 Balsamo, Luigi, 19, 38n38 Balsari, bishop of Lucca, 180 Bandini, Angelo Maria, 14 Barbi, Michele, 24, 25, 45nn63, 65, 88, 108n17 Barbier, Frédéric, 31–2n1 Barbieri, Giovanni Maria, 82, 106–7n5 Bari, 135 Bariani, Emanuela, 163n10 Barni, Gian Luigi, 77nn52–3 Barolini, Teodolinda, 27, 34n13, 47n73 Baron, Hans, 15, 35n18 Barone, Giulia, 288n2 Barsocchini, Domenico, 195n50, 195–6n54 Bartocci, Andrea, 321n27
Index of Names and Subjects / 331 Bartoli Langeli, Attilio, 18, 32n3, 36n23, 38n36, 39–40n45, 45–6n66, 289n8, 290nn22–3 Bartolo of Sassoferrato, 8, 298, 299–315 passim, 320n21; autograph consilia, 318n11; commentary on the Digestum vetus, 296, 317n5; political tracts, 320n19, 320–1n23; Tractatus de armis et insigniis, 320n22, 321n27; Tractatus testimoniorum, 8, 299–315, 321nn26–9, 321–2n30, 322nn31–3, 323nn38–42, 323–4n43, 324nn44–5 Baruch, son of Moses, 120–1 Basanoff, Anne, 32n4 Baschet, Jérôme, 139n14 Battaglia Ricci, Lucia, 43–4n58 Battelli, Giulio, 34n14 Bauer, Dominique, 316n2 Baumgärtner, Ingrid, 318n9 Bautier, Robert-Henri, 68–9n1 Baxandall, Michael, 33–4n10 Bayeux tapestry, 138n11 Bec, Christian, 17, 37n29, 40n49 Becher, Matthias, 189–90n21 Belfanti, Carlo Marco, 245n9 Bellomo, Manlio, 318n9 Bene da Firenze, 78–9n64 Benedetto, Luigi Foscolo, 24, 45n63 Benedict of Nursia, Saint, 12 Benedictine Rule, 12–13, 32–3n5 Benjamin of Tudela, 121, 141n31 Benjamin, Sandra, 141n31 Benjamin, Walter, 30 Bent, Margaret, 43n56 Berlinghieri, Francesco, 241 Bernard, bishop of Modena, 64 Bernard, master, 58, 72nn23–4, 72–3n25, 73nn26–8, 74n33 Bernardino of Siena, Saint, 40n46
Bernardo da Bologna, 101 Bertelli, Italo, 110n29 Bettarini Bruni, Anna, 162n7, 164n23 Biagio d’Antonio dello Spicca da Montughi, 236–7, 255–6n64 Biagio di Niccolò, 232–3, 255n56 Bianco da Siena, 146, 162n4 Bible, 11, 62, 197n64, 207; Bible of Federico da Montefeltro, 241–2, 257nn72–3; biblical echoes, 277–8, 290nn25–6; Gospels, 125–6, 167, 181 – books of: Exod., 191n28; Num., 188n13, 213; 2 Reg., 279; Ps., 188n13, 282, 290n26, 291n27; Cant., 131, 281, 291n27; Ezek., 188n13; Ecclus., 190n26, 210; Matt., 126, 178, 183, 193n41, 291n27; Luke, 290n26, 291n27; John, 291n27; Acts, 190n26, 213; Rom., 190n26, 210, 212; 1 Cor., 213; Col., 182, 197n66, 213; 1 Tim., 171, 172, 179, 205, 210, 211, 213, 215; 2 Tim., 184; Heb., 190n26; 1 Pet., 211; 1 John, 190n26 Bibliofilia, 19 bibliography, textual, 18–19 Binduccio da Firenze, 101 Bischoff, Bernhard, 179, 194n48, 194–5n49 Bobbio, 74n35, 187–8n9, 194n48 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 43n57, 47n76, 48–9n77, 82, 100, 160–1; autograph manuscripts of, 147–8, 149; and invention of ottava rima, 145–6, 158, 161, 162 n3 – works: Corbaccio, 156, 164n22; Decameron, 156, 164n21, 218, 240, 244n2; Filocolo, 160–1; Filostrato,
332 / Index of Names and Subjects 145, 146–7, 160, 162n8; Teseida, 145, 147–9, 160, 163nn9, 11 Bocchi, Francesca, 78nn56, 57, 62, 63 Boesch Gajano, Sofia, 75n41 Boitani, Piero, 44n61 Bologna, 92, 240; ars dictaminis at, 55, 56–7, 58, 66; book cultures at, 37n30, 40n46, 47, 109–10n26; Foro dei Mercanti, 227, 251n36; legal studies at, 13, 33n7, 66; notaries at, 32n3, 78–9n64; struggle between bishops, 64, 78n59; university of, 13, 33n7, 34n14. See also Memoriali Bolognesi Bologna, Corrado, 44n60 Bolzoni, Lina, 40n46, 44n59 Bominaco, church of San Pellegrino, 139n14 Bonagiunta da Lucca, 90, 91–4, 109–10n26, 110n29 Bonaventura, Saint, 279. See also Legenda minor Bondanella, Peter, 164n21, 244n2 Bonelli, Giuseppe, 34–5n16 Bongi, Salvatore, 250–1n34, 251n37 Bonhomme, Pasquier, 302, 322n32 Boniface viii, pope, 268 Bonizio, bishop of Piacenza, 65 Bonizone of Sutri, 76–7n50 Book History (History of the Book), 3, 17, 18, 19, 21, 31–2 n1, 38–9n39, 39–40n45; histoire du livre, 17, 21, 37n33; storia del libro, 21, 39n44 Boretius, Alfred, 189–90n21 Boris, Francesca, 251n36 Bornmann, Fritz, 45n64 Bornstein, Daniel Ethan, 41n50 Borra, Antonello, 108–9n22 Borriero, Giovanni, 106n3
Boschetto, Luca, 7, 82, 109–10n26, 243–4n1, 251n36 Botteri, Paula, 139n13 Boüard, Alain de, 68–9n1 Bourdieu, Pierre, 16, 36n26 Bouyer, Christian, 32n4 Boyde, Patrick, 110n32 Boyle, Leonard, 18, 37–8n34 Bozzolo, Carla, 37n33 Bragagna, Laura, 48n81 Branca, Vittore, 40n49, 162n8, 164n21, 244n2 Brato , Rajko, 192n34 Bray, Joe, 9n3 Brescia, 63, 65, 76–7n50, 213n49 Bresslau, Harry, 193–4n46 Brilliant, Richard, 138n11 Brindisi, 117, 131; church of Santa Maria del Casale, 124, 142n37 Brown, C., 32n3 Brown, Peter, 16, 34n11, 35– 6n21 Brown, Virginia, 32–3n5 Brown, Warren, 192n35 Browning, Robert, 144n58 Brugnolo, Furio, 139n17, 145, 161n1, 163nn13, 14 Brundage, James, 33n7 Brunetti, Giuseppina, 106–7n5 Bruni, Francesco, 250n33 Bruno, A.V., 137–8n8 Bryce, Judith, 42n53 Bullough, Donald, 189n20, 190– 1n27, 192n36 Burchiello, 218, 244n5 Burgundio of Pisa, 79n68 Burke, Peter, 16, 36n22 Busby, Keith, 46n69 Busonero, Paola, 39–40n45, 47n75
Index of Names and Subjects / 333 Caldelli, Elisabetta, 40n47 Calò, Maria Stella, 142n37 Calufetti, Abele, 267, 285, 288n2 Camargo, Martin, 71n14 Camille, Michael, 140n21 Cammarosano, Paolo, 32n2, 243–4n1 Campana, Augusto, 187n8 Cantare del Corpo di Cristo, 164n26 Cantare della Guerra degli Otto Santi, 146, 156, 159, 164n23 Cantare di Bel Gherardino, 147, 155, 156, 157, 160, 161 Cantare di Fiorio e Biancifiore, 147, 152–5, 156, 158, 160–1, 163nn16–17, 163–4n18, 164n19 Cantare di Pirramo e Tisbe, 149, 151 Cantare di Tristano, 155, 156 cantari, 7, 42–3n55, 47n75, 145–61, 161n1, 162nn2, 4, 163n16; editing of, 48n80; manuscripts of, 147–60; singing of, 146, 147, 156, 158, 160 canzoni, 83, 88–91, 93–4, 98, 106–7n5, 107n10, 109n24, 146, 155–61; canso, 83 Capaldo, Mario, 44n61 Capelli, Roberta, 106n4 Cappelli, Antonio, 162n6 Caprara, Roberto, 142n38, 143nn45–6 Carantania, see of, 177, 192n35 Carbonetti Venditelli, Cristina, 40n47 Cardona, Raimondo, 16, 36n24 Carlino, Andrea, 47n75 Carpignano Salentino, church of St Christine, 131–2, 143n53 Carruthers, Mary J., 44n59 Carusi, Enrico, 186–7n5 Casagrande, Carla, 42n54, 42–3n55
Casamassima, Emmanuele, 38n35 Casaranello, church of Santa Maria della Croce, 133–5 Cassell, Anthony K., 164n22 Castelfranchi, Marina Falla, 143n44 Castellani, Arrigo Ettore, 24, 45n63 Castro, Cathedral of, 123–4, 142n35 catalogues: of manuscripts, 14; and computers, 29–30, 48n81, 48–9n83, 49n85; of dated manuscripts, 30, 38n35, 48–9n83; of incunables, 322n32; of legal consilia, 298, 316n1, 319n14; medieval, 320n19 Catherine of Bologna, Saint (Caterina Vigri), 22, 41n52 Catherine of Siena, Saint, 22, 41n52, 147 Cattin, Giulio, 43n56 Cavalcanti, Guido, 89, 94, 101–2 Cavallar, Osvaldo, 320n22, 320–1n23, 321n27, 323n38 Cavallo, Guiglielmo, 18, 31–2n1, 33n9, 38n37, 44nn60–1, 140n21, 142–3n43, 143–4n55 Cazzato, Mario, 137n5 Cecco Angiolieri, 84–5, 98–100, 107n14, 111n35 Cencetti, Giorgio, 38n35 Cerquiglini, Bernard, 46n69 Chalcedon, Acts of, 167–71 passim, 186–7n5, 187n6, 187–8n9, 188–9n15 Charlemagne, 172–9, 181–5, 190nn22, 25, 26, 192n40, 197nn69, 70, 198nn72, 74, 198–9n75 charters, 24, 168, 175, 180, 182, 186n4, 187n7, 190n26, 194n47, 196–7n62
334 / Index of Names and Subjects Chartier, Roger, 47n74, 140n21, 143–4n55 Chastaing, Pierre, 136n1, 137n3 Cheney, C.R., 33n6 Cherchi, Paolo, 45n65 Cherubini, Paolo, 39–40n45 Chiantini, Monica, 252n40 Chuno, bishop of Mantua, 64–5 Chwolson, Daniel, 138n9, 143n51 Cicchetti, Angelo, 40n49 Ciccuto, Marcello, 43–4n58 Cicerchia, Niccolò di Mino, 147, 163n12 Cicero, 69–70n6, 70n8, 73n29; De inventione, 55, 71n11; In Catilinam, 72n24 Cicero, pseudo-, Ad Herennium, 55 Cielo d’Alcamo, 83, 107n12 Cimarra, Luigi, 43–4n58 Cino da Pistoia, 6, 82, 94, 100–5, 107n8, 111n37 Ciociola, Claudio, 43–4n58, 139n17 Cirese, Antonio Maria, 162n6 Ciula, Arianna, 48n80 Cividale, council of, 198–9n75 Clanchy, Michael T., 69n2 Clareno, Angelo, 268 Classen, Peter, 79n68 Clement, Bruno, 288n2 Clement v, pope, 272, 279, 280, 291n31 Clement vii, antipope, 162n6 codex, 11, 116–17 Codex Amiatinus, 138–9n12 codicology, 3, 18, 19, 21, 23, 27, 28, 37n33, 38n35, 39–40n45, 268, 272–3 Cohn, Samuel K., 41n51 Colafemmina, Cesare, 116, 138n9, 139n18, 141nn29, 30, 31, 143nn49, 51
Coleman, Joyce, 140n22 collaboration, 8, 278–88 passim Colli, Vincenzo, 245n10, 316n2, 317n7, 317–18n8, 318–19n12, 319n15 Colonna, Giacomo, 268 Comminelli, Ugo (Hugo Commineau), 241–3, 257n71 Condello, Emma, 40n47 Conference on Editorial Problems (University of Toronto), 3–4, 9n4, 115, 243n confraternities, 22, 41n50 Constable, Giles, 69n5, 70n7 Constantinople, 177; church of Hagia Sophia, 139n16; Ecumenical Council of, 179 Conte, Pietro, 32n4 Contini, Alessandra, 42n53 Contini, Gianfranco, 25, 45n65, 108n19, 110n32 contracts, 5, 7, 22, 66, 168, 179–80, 182–3, 221–2 contrasto, 83, 107n12, 160, 164n26 Conway, Melissa, 37n31 Copertino, 121. See also Li Monaci Corpus iuris canonici, 296, 299; Corpus iuris civilis, 296, 299 Cortese, Ennio, 320n18 Corti, Maria, 18, 37n32 Costamagna, Giorgio, 32n3 Costantini, Antonio, 137n5 Cowdrey, Hubert E.J., 77n52 Cox, Virginia, 42n53 Crab, Ann, 42n53 Cremona, 66, 76–7n50 Crescenzi, Carmela, 143n45 Croce, Benedetto, 26 Crosby, Ruth, 70n7 Cursi, Marco, 47–8n77 Cuscito, Giuseppe, 193n43, 197nn68, 69
Index of Names and Subjects / 335 Dagobert i, king, 190n26 Dalarun, Jacques, 268, 288nn1, 2, 4, 6, 289n10 Dane, Joseph, 9n2 D’Angiolini, Piero, 245n11 Daniele, Ireneo, 185–6n2 Dante Alighieri, 6, 14, 21, 47n76, 47–8n77, 81–2, 99, 117, 225 ; and invention of terzina, 145; as ‘artista,’ 101, 111n39; Dante OnLine, 29, 48n79; editions of, 24, 45n63, 48n80, 110n28; manuscripts of 107n10, 148–50 – works: Commedia, 6, 14, 28, 34n13, 39–40n45, 47n75, 93–5, 148–50; Inferno, 34n13, 101–2; Paradiso, 34n13, 111n39, 155; Purgatorio, 93–5, 109n24, 110n31; De vulgari eloquentia, 14, 34n13, 81, 102; Monarchia, 48n80; Rime, 110n32; ‘Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore,’ 89, 93, 107n10; poetic exchange with Cecco Angiolieri, 98–100, 111n36; with Cino da Pistoia, 6, 101, 104–5; with Forese Donati, 95–6, 107n11; Vita nuova 6, 93–100 passim, 111nn34–6 Danube River, synod at, 173, 176–7, 208n34 Darnton, Robert, 19, 38–9n39 Dati, Goro, 228, 252n42 Datini, Margherita, 42n53 Davidsohn, Robert, 75n42 Davies, Wendy, 68–9n1 Davis, Rhiannon, 47n76 death and writing, 29, 48n78, 280–4, 300 De Bartholomaeis, Vincenzo, 162n5 Debiais, Vincent, 136n, 140n21, 143n48, 143–4n55, 144n 62 De Blasi, Nicola, 142–3n43
Degenring, Susanne, 320n22, 321n27, 323n38 De Giorgi, Cosimo, 137–8n8 Degl’Innocenti, Antonella, 75nn41, 42, 77n51 De la Mare, Albinia Catherine, 34n15, 37n30, 241–2, 257n72 Delcorno, Carlo, 40n46, 42n54 De Luca, Giovan Battista, 250–1n34 De Matteis, Giuseppe, 47–8n77 Demetrius, 69–70n6 De Robertis, Domenico, 111n34, 160, 162n4, 163nn16, 17, 164nn20, 25, 26, 27 De Robertis, Teresa, 49n84 Derolez, Albert, 37n33, 39–40n45 De Roover, Raymond, 33n8 De Rubeis, Bernardo Maria, 167, 185n1 Destrez, Jean, 34n14 Detto del gatto lupesco, 160 Devoto, Giacomo, 226, 250nn30, 32 Diario di anonimo, 156 dictation, 267–9, 278, 287 Di Deo, Cinzia, 49n84 Dieckmann, Sandra, 43n56 Diehl, Charles, 137–8n8 Diet of Worms, 65 Digest, 305, 306, 307; Digestum vetus, 296, 317n5 digitization of manuscripts, 29–30, 48–9n83, 315 Dionigi, bishop of Piacenza, 65, 76–7n50 Dionisotti, Carlo, 17, 37n29 Di Pietro, Pericle, 78n56 Diplovatatius, Thomas, 317n5, 320n21, 323n41 dolce stil novo, 82, 93–4, 100, 110n29, 111n38 Dolezalek, Gero, 316n2
336 / Index of Names and Subjects Donaldson, E. Talbot, 26, 46n68 Donati, Forese, 95–6, 107n11, 110n31 Donatus, 53 Doncœur, Paul, 267, 289n7 Donello, Andrea, 48–9n83 Doren, Alfred, 244–5n8 Dorini, Umberto, 251n37 Dotto Reali da Lucca, 85–7, 108n15 Dumense, Martino, 152 Dümmler, Ernst Ludwig, 76–7n50, 192n40, 200 Duranti, Gulielmus, 305 Durling, Robert M., 111n40 Eco, Umberto, 17–18, 37n32 École nationale des chartes, 9n5 editing, 3–4, 24–7, 29, 284–7 ; and art history, 115, 136; and cladistics, 29, 48n80; and digitized images, 30; of documentary texts, 5, 9n5, 25, 45–6n66, 218; electronic, 29–30, 48n80; and genetic editions, 296, 302, 322n33; and interpretation, 265, 287–8; of legal texts, 295–315; methods of, 4, 8, 9n5, 82, 88, 267, 284–7 ; of statutes, 27, 46n72; of tenzoni, 82, 87–8. See also philology education, 12, 22, 267; at cathedral schools, 53, 60, 65–8; grammatical, 6, 57, 62, 65; legal, 66, 298; of merchants, 13; musical, 14; notarial, 55; at private schools, 13, 65–6; under Carolingians and Ottonians, 60–8, 74nn36, 37. See also law; universities Edwards, Robert, 109n23 Eisenbichler, Konrad, 41n50 Eisenstein, Elizabeth, 9n2, 16, 35n20 Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (University of Victoria), 3, 8–9n1
Elias, Norbert, 16, 36n25 Eliot, T.S., 109n24 Elsheikh, Mahmoud Salem, 250–1n34, 252n41 Elze, Reinhard, 319n14 Enzo, king of Torres (Re Enzo), 106–7n5 epigraphy, 7, 43–4n58, 115–21, 136n1, 138n10; epigraphic community, 136, 137n3; epigraphic ateliers, 140n24 Erhle, Franz, 168 Escarpit, Robert, 17, 36–7n27 Evans, Ruth, 9n3 Everett, Nicholas, 7, 39n40, 54, 185–6n2, 187–8n9, 189n20, 191n29, 193n44, 195n50, 197n67 Ewald, Paul, 196n55 Exultet Rolls, 13, 33n9 facsimiles and photoreproduction, 15, 29–30, 34–5n16, 48–9n83, 49n84, 106n1, 186–7n5, 194n48 Faenza, 58 Fahy, Conor, 19, 38n38 Fangi, Gabriele, 139n13 Fardulf, abbot of St Denis, 175 Fasoli, Gina, 78n59 Favati, Guido, 110n29 Favreau, Robert, 119, 138n10, 141nn27–8, 142n33, 144n56 Febvre, Lucien, 17, 18, 36–7n27, 38n37 Federico da Montefeltro, 241, 257n72 Fera, Vincenzo, 43n57 Ferrara, 57 Ferrara, Robert, 78–9n64 Ferré, Martin-Jean, 267, 289n7 Ferretti, Gian Carlo, 37n28 Filipotto da Caserta, 162n6 Filocamo, Gioia, 43n56
Index of Names and Subjects / 337 Finkelstein, David, 38–9n39 Fiore, daughter of Lupero Nucci, 222 Fiore, Il, 146 Fiorelli, Piero, 226, 250–1n34 Fiormonte, Domenico, 48n82, 49n86 Firminius of Istria, 196n55 Florence, 7; book-cultures of, 17, 81–2; 239–44; civic courts of, 219, 222–7, 245n10; dialect of, 81–2, 228–30, 235–40; guilds of, 218–20, 225–6; merchants of, 218–19; music in, 43n56; and popular revolution against bishop, 75n42; proletariat of, 50n51; statutes of, 46n72, 225; and war of the Eight Saints, 156, 217; women’s writing in, 42n53 – institutions: Archivio di Stato, 219, 253n48; Arte di Calimala, 220, 245n11, 245–6n12; Arte del Cambio, 220–1, 226, 246nn16, 17; Arte della Lana, 221, 226, 246–7n18, 249n28; Biblioteca Laurenziana, 14; Biblioteca Riccardiana, 14; Mercanzia, 7, 82, 217–62; San Iacopo tra le fosse, 238; Signoria, 164n24, 222–6 Foerster, Hans Phillip, 193–4n46 Foligno, 266–84 passim Fonseca, Cosimo Damiano, 137–8n8, 138n9, 144n57 Fonte Avellana, 62 Fornasari, Giuseppe, 76–7n50, 198n72 Fornasir, Giuseppe, 185–6n2 Fortunati, Vera, 41n52 Foster, Kenelm, 110n32 Fouracre, Paul, 68–9n1 Franceschi, Franco, 41n51, 244–5n8, 246–7n18, 249n28
Franceschino de’ Ghisolabelli, notary, 222–4, 247–8n20 Francis, Saint, 278, 283 Franciscans, 8, 124, 266–8, 274–87 Franco-Italian poetry, 148–50 Frank, Barbara, 161n1 Frankfurt, synod of, 173–6, 177, 183, 191n30, 197n68 Frascadore, Angela, 40n46 Frederick ii, king of Sicily, 6, 81, 87–8, 120 Frenz, Thomas, 33n6 Frescobaldi, Dino, 94 Fried, Johannes, 191n30 Friedman, David, 244n6 Friuli, council of, 173, 177, 184 Frugoni, Arsenio, 76–7n50, 78n61 Fuhrmann, Horst, 33n6 Gaerbodus, bishop, 175–6 Galatina, church of St Catherine, 124–5 Galbiati, Giovanni, 194n48 Gallo, F. Alberto, 43n56 Gamble, Harry Y., 197n64 Gandinus, Albertus, 317–18n8 Gandolfo, bishop of Reggio, 64 Ganshof, François L., 68–9n1, 190n25 Garzelli, Annarosa, 257n72 Gellrich, Jesse M., 21, 39n43 Gemmiti, Dante, 195n53 Genoa, merchant tribunal, 227 Gerard Offreducci of Marostica, 66, 79n69 Gerusalemme liberata, 145 Ghellinck, Joseph de, 70n8 Gherardi, Alessandro, 249nn27, 29 Gherarduccio da Bologna, 101 Giacomino Pugliese, 83, 106–7n5, 107n13
338 / Index of Names and Subjects Giacomo da Lentini, 87, 88–9, 94, 97–8, 108nn20–1, 110n33 Giansante, Massimo, 40n46 Gidino da Sommacampagna, 160, 164n26 Gilissen, Léon, 37n33 Gill, Katherine, 41n52 Ginzburg, Carlo, 16, 36n22, 45–6n66 Giordano di Clivio, 77n53 Giorgetti, Vitorio, 256–7n69 Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 14 Giovanni Gualberto, 62–4, 75nn41–2, 77n51 Giunta, Claudio, 42–3n55, 107n9 Giusti, Martino, 77n54 Gloria, Andrea, 79n69 Glossa ordinaria, 296, 317–18n8 glosses, 148, 296, 316–17n3, 322n33 Goldthwaite, Richard, 40n49, 246n13 Golinelli, Paolo, 76n49 Gonzaga, Federigo, 257n71 Goody, Jack, 15–16, 35n19 Gorman, Michael M., 138–9n12 Gorni, Guglielmo, 110n29, 146, 162n3 Gotofredo, archbishop of Milan, 64, 77n52 Gottefredus, bishop of Lucca, 64 Graff, Harvey J., 19, 39n40 Graham, William A., 197n64 Gramatica, Luigi, 194n48 grammar, study of, 53, 57–68 passim, 74n38, 78–9n64, 183 Gramsci, Antonio, 17, 37n28 Gratian, 13, 33n7, 79n68, 316–17n3 Gravina, 120–1, 142n38 Greco, Aulo, 257n73 Greek, 69–70n6, 115–26, 129–31, 133, 135, 137nn4–5
Gregory i, pope, 175, 181, 196n55, 212 Gregory vii, pope, 64, 65 Greetham, David C., 9n3 Groll, Peter-Christian, 71n13 Grosolano, archbishop of Milan 64, 77nn52–3 Grube, George M.A., 69–70n6 Guerrini, Paola, 43–4n58 Guidetti, Massimo, 44n62 Guido da Velate, 64, 77n52 Guido delle Colonne, 106–7n5 Guido of Arezzo, 14, 34n12 Guillou, André, 137–8n8 Guinizelli, Guido, 89–94, 108–9n22, 109nn23–5, 109–10n26, 110nn27, 29 Guittone d’Arezzo, 85, 89–91, 94, 108–9n22, 109n24, 109–10n26 Gurevich, Aron, 16, 36n22 Hadrian, pope, 179 Halm, Karl, 69–70n6 Harris, Neil, 38n38 Harris, William V., 140n23 Hartmann, Ludo Moritz, 196n55 Hartmann, Wilfried, 193n45, 316–17n3 Hasenohr Geneviève, 161n1 Haskins, Charles H., 73n29, 74n33, 79n66 Hausberger, Mauro, 48n81 Hebrew, texts in, 115–22, 129–31, 135, 138n9, 143n52 Heinrich von Knöringen, 308 Helwig von Boppard, 308 Hen, Yitzhk 197n69 Henry iv, pope, 64, 65, 77n52 Henry Francigena, 57, 66, 71n16, 72n20, 73n28, 79n65 Heribert, bishop of Modena, 64
Index of Names and Subjects / 339 Heribert, bishop of Reggio, 64 Heric, Duke, 175 Herlihy, David, 252n43 Herstal, synod of, 174 Hilary of Poitiers, 170, 188nn10, 11 Hiley, David, 34n12 History of the Book. See Book History Hollander, Robert, 34n13 Holmes, Olivia, 28, 47n76, 107n6 Honorius ii, pope, 64 Horn, Norbert, 317n6 Housman, A.E., 25–6, 46n67 Hugo of Bologna, Rationes dictandi prosaice, 57, 71n16, 72nn19, 21, 22 humanism and humanists, 14, 15, 23, 34n15, 35n18, 67–8, 239, 243, 323n38 Huyben, Jacques, 194n48 illuminated manuscripts, 13, 115, 149, 242 incunabula, 14, 296, 322n32 Ingrosso, V., 137–8n8 Innes, Matthew, 190n22 Innocent iv, pope, 305 inscriptions. See epigraphy Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (Paris), 269 Introductiones prosaici dicatminis, 58, 73n29 Investiture Conflict, 60–8 Irigoin, Jean, 32n4 Irvine, Martin, 9n3 Istria, 172 Izbicki, Thomas, 319n16, 322n36 Jacob, André, 116, 139n19, 141n32, 142nn35–6, 143nn47, 53, 54, 144n59
Jaeger, Stephen, 60, 74nn36–7 Jakobs, Horst Heinrich, 317–18n8 Jamison, Evelyn, 139n20 Janse, Mark, 137n3, 140n25 Jansen, Katherine L., 41n50 Jasper, Detlev, 33n6 Jews, 115–16, 120–1, 129–31, 138n9, 139n18 Johannes Andreae, 318–19n12 Johannes Teutonicus (Johannes von Wildeshausen), 316–17n3, 322n33 John, bishop of Pistoia, 180 jongleurs (giullari, buffoni, canterini), 23, 42n54, 42–3n55, 160–1 Julius Victor, 69–70n6 Jurlaro, Rosario, 142n37 Justinian legal corpus, 53 Kajanto, Iiro, 142n33 Kalbfuss, Hermann, 73n30 Kane, George, 26, 46n68 Kantorowicz, Ernst H., 72n20 Kantorowicz, Hermann, 317n5, 317–18n8 Kelber, Werner H., 197n64 Keller, Hagen, 32n2, 196n61 Kelly, Thomas Forest, 33n9 Kent, Dale V., 44n59 Kerredan, Hamon, 303–4 Kilgour, Frederick G., 31–2n1 Kirshner, Julius, 33n8, 318nn9–10, 319n16, 320nn20, 22, 320–1n23, 321n27, 323n38 Klaes, Monika, 71n16 Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane, 16, 36n23, 42n53, 252n43 Kleinhenz, Christopher, 5–6, 107nn7–8, 108nn16, 21 Kölzer, Theo, 190n26 Krause, Victor, 189–90n21
340 / Index of Names and Subjects Kristeller, Paul Oskar, 70n9, 226, 249n29 Kuehn, Thomas, 248nn21, 22, 317n4 Kurze, Wilhelm, 75n41 Kuttner, Stephan, 69n5, 318n11, 319n14, 324n50 Lachmann, Karl, 25–6, 45n64, 303, 322–3n37 Lami, Giovanni, 14 Lancia, Andrea, 225, 248n24 Langland, William, Piers Plowman, 26, 45n68 Langslow, D.R., 140n25 Lanza, Antonio, 107n14, 111n36 Lapo Gianni, 94 La Rocca, Cristina, 187n7 Larson, Pär, 250–1n34 Lasala, Fernando de, 48–9n83 Lattes, Alessandro, 252n38 law, 12, 66–8, 295–324 passim; canon and civil, 13, 33n7, 66–8, 172–85 passim, 245n10; Carolingian, 173–4, 177; commercial, 218–25, 244n7, 245n9, 252nn38, 39; lawyers, 12, 22, 54, 66, 296, 300, 305, 309, 315 ; Lex Salica, 182; Roman property law, 180–1. See also under education – legal texts: and book culture 53–4; canons and glosses, 295–6; citational practices in, 8, 298, 303–13; commentaries, 296; consilia, 297–8, 318nn9, 10; court records, 217, 219, 226–31, 295, 297, 317n4; and documentary culture, 53–4; episcopal oaths, 167–85; and legal textuality, 7–8; in public texts, 117; statutes, 27, 46n72, 217, 220, 225–8, 245–6 n12, 246nn13, 15, 250–1n34, 251n36,
252n38; tracts, 298–315 passim; and vernacular language, 226 Lazzareschi, Eugenio, 251n37 Lazzarini, Vittorio, 187n8 Leclercq, Jean, 32–3n5 lectio divina, 12, 32–3n5 Lega, Gino, 106n2 Legenda minor, 278, 279, 280 Le Goff, Jacques, 16, 35–6n21 Leiwo, Martti, 137n3, 140n25 Le Jan, Régine, 189–90n21 Lentini, Anselmo, 70n9 Leo i, pope, 171, 172, 175, 179 Leo iii, pope, 176–7, 184, 190n23, 198n72, 202–3 Leonardi, Claudio, 35n17, 41n52, 44n61, 191n30 Leonardi, Lino, 41n52, 106n1 Lepsius, Susanne, 8, 254–5n54, 305, 317n4, 319nn13, 15, 320n20, 321nn26, 28, 29, 323n39, 324n45 Lesne, Emile, 190n25 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 15 Levy, Ernst, 195n53 Li Monaci, 121–3, 125–7 Liber diurnus romanorum pontificum, 167–8, 171, 174, 178–81, 193– 4n46, 194n48, 194–5n49, 215–16, 231–2 libraries: Enlightenment, 14; medieval, 53, 66, 194n48, 308 Limentani, Alberto, 163n9 Lindsay, W.M., 186–7n5 Lines, David, 243n linguistics, 17–19, 118, 217, 226, 250nn30–3, 250–1n34 Lio Mazor, 250–1n34 literacy, 11–13, 22, 54–5, 68–9 n1, 79n71, 133, 135, 140nn21, 23; Byzantine, 144n58; Carolingian, 167, 182, 196n58, 197n64;
Index of Names and Subjects / 341 modern study of, 15–16, 18–19, 35n19, 39nn40–2; practical (functional), 6–7, 11, 54, 60, 67–8, 69 n2, 182; visual, 30 Litterae caelestes, 31 Little, Lester K., 41n50 liturgy, 12, 32–3n5, 43n56, 53, 117, 129–31, 135, 139n16, 179, 183, 197n69, 274–5, 278, 291 Lombardy, 63, 240 Lo Monaco, Francesco, 47–8n77 Lord, Albert Bates, 15, 35n19 Lowe, E.A., 186–7n5 Lowry, Martin, 37n31 Lucan, 58, 73n28 Lucca, 64, 77n54, 92–3, 168, 180, 195nn50–2; Corte dei Mercanti, 227, 251n37 Lüdtke, Karen, 139n16 Luria, A.R., 15, 35n19 Lutten, Jutta, 71n16 Maassen, Friedrich, 186–7n5 Madero, Marta, 43–4n58 Madrisio, Giovanni Francesco, 167, 185n1, 193n43 Maffei, Domenico, 319n14, 321n25 Magistrale, Francesco, 142–3n43 Magnard, archbishop of Rouen, 176 Mallon, Jean, 140n24 Mancini, Augusto, 251n37 Mancini, Girolamo, 249n29 Mancini, Mario, 44n61 Mandolfo, Santo, 32–3n5 Manetti, Antonio, 244n4 Maniaci, Marilena, 39–40n45 Manitius, Karl, 74nn38–9 Manitius, Max, 185–6n2 Manni, Paola, 250n33, 252–3n46 Mantua, 64, 245n9, 257n61
Marbod of Rennes, De ornamentis verborum, 58, 72–3n25 Marches, 218, 240 Marcheschi, Daniela, 250–1n34 Marchiaro, Michaelangiola, 49nn84, 86 Marcon, Giorgio, 40n46 Mari, Paolo, 45–6n66, 322–3n37 Mariani, Paolo, 289–90n18 Marotta, A., 137–8n8 Marsden, Richard, 138–9n12 Marti, Mario, 108n15, 110n29, 111n38 Martin, Henri-Jean, 17, 18, 31–2n1, 36–7n27, 38n37 Martin Gosia, houseowner in Padua, 66 Martín López, Maria Encarnación, 140n24 Martines, Lauro, 41n51, 244nn4, 7 Martini, Paola Supino, 40n47 Marxian and Marxist approaches to textuality, 17, 28, 37n28 Massafra, church of Candelora, 126; church of San Marco, 128–9, 143n46 materiality of texts, 5, 18, 22–3, 24, 27–31, 47n74, 115, 135–6, 136 n1, 145 Matilda, 64–5 Mattesini, E., 42n53 Maurizio, bishop of Piacenza, 65 McCleery, Alistair, 38–9n39 McGann, Jerome J., 46n69 McGee, Timothy J., 43n56, 164n24 McKitterick, Rosamond, 68–9n1, 182, 196n58, 198–9n75 McLuhan, Marshall, 16, 35n20 Medea, Alba, 137–8n8 Medici, Lorenzo de’, 239, 241, 244n7, 245–6n12, 257n71
342 / Index of Names and Subjects Medieval Latin, 15, 35n17 Melis, Federigo, 33n8 Memoriali Bolognesi, 109–10n26 memory, 23, 29, 44n59, 48n78, 274; collective, 278–87; faulty, 54, 305, 323n41; providing citations from, 305 Menestò, Enrico, 44n61, 46n72, 268, 288n6, 289n9 Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo, 34n13 Menichetti, Aldo, 145–6, 162n2 Menis, Gian Carlo, 190–1n27 Meo Abbracciavacca, 85–7, 108n15 merchant courts. See under name of city merchants, 11, 13, 17, 22, 24, 29, 33n8, 40n49, 48n78, 219–21, 239–40, 246n13 Mezzabarba, bishop of Florence, 75n42, 77n51 Miglio, Luisa, 42n53 Migliorini, Bruno, 226, 250n31 Migne, Jacques-Paul, 167, 185n1 Milan, 13, 20, 61, 63–4, 75 n42, 76n48, 77nn51–3, 79n71, 170; archbishopric of, 176; merchant tribunals, 227 Milazzo, Maria Maddalena, 48–9n83 Miller, Maureen, 186n4 Milner, Stephen, J., 42n53 Milo, bishop of Padua, 64 Mirbt, Carl, 79n70 Modena, 64, 78nn56, 57; Biblioteca Estense, 14 Monaci, Ernesto, 34–5n16, 106n3 monasticism, 12–13, 178; Benedictine, 12, 32–3n5, 56, 60–2, 74nn35, 37; Camaldulensian, 62, 75n41, 77n53; Gesuati, 146; Vallombrosan, 62, 63–4, 75n41
Monte Cassino, 12, 56, 79n68 Montecchi, Giorgio, 34n15 Monumentum Ancyranum, 117, 139n13 Mor, Carlo, 68–9n1 Mordenti, Raul, 40n49 Mostacci, Jacopo, 97, 108n19 Motta, Attilio, 48n80 Mottola: church of Santa Margarita, 124–5, 133; church of St Nicholas, 133 Mühlbacher, Engelbert, 192n35 Mula da Pistoia, 101 Murano, Giovanna, 40n47, 317n5, 318–19n12 Muratori, Ludovico, 14 Murphy, James J., 72n24 Musa, Mark, 110n29, 111n34, 164n21, 244n2 music, 14, 23, 34n12, 41n50, 43n56, 156, 158, 164n24 Najemy, John, 244n6 Naples, 311 Nardò, church of Santa Maria, 138n10 Narducci, Maddalena, 42n53 Nasalli Rocca, Emilio, 78n63 Nebbiai Dalla Guarda, Donatella, 289n11 Nehlsen-von Stryk, Karin, 252n39 Nelson, Janet L., 196nn58–9, 197nn62, 65 New Philology, 26, 46nn69–70 Newbigin, Nerida, 41n50 Nicea, Council of, 170–2, 179, 202–3, 215 Nichols, Stephen G., 46n69 Noble, Thomas F.X., 32n4 Nonantola, 74n35, 179, 194–5n49 Noonan, John, 79n68
Index of Names and Subjects / 343 Norberg, Dag, 171, 187n6, 188n11, 189nn16, 17, 18, 192n34, 196n55, 200 notaries, 22, 32n3, 54, 60; ars notarie, 55; in Carolingian Italy, 68–9n1, 182; and documentary culture, 22, 54, 55, 60, 82, 118, 229–30, 254–5n54; at the Florentine Mercanzia, 7, 218, 220, 225, 227, 228–43, 258–62; instruction of, 55, 78–9n64; and literature, 109– 10n26, 218, 240–1, 248 n24; notarial protocols, 24, 45n63; successors of Roman tabelliones, 12 Novella del grasso legnaiuolo, 218 Noy, David, 138n9, 143n49 nuova filologia, 25, 45n65 oaths, 7, 155, 171–8, 181–3, 186n3, 190nn23, 26, 196n56 Oberto, bishop of Brescia, 65 Occitan poetry. See Provençal poetry Odebrecht, Botho, 72n20, 78–9n65 Olsen, Munk, 44n60 Ong, Walter J., 15–16, 22, 35n19, 140n21 orality, 11, 22; of oaths, 7, 182; and performance, 22, 146, 158; of poetry, 82, 146–61 passim, 162n6; of preaching, 22; of reading, 70n7, 118, 135, 140n21, 197n64; study of, 15–16, 35n19; and textual transmission, 82, 267–9, 277 Oria, 129–31 Orlandelli, Gianfranco, 37n30 Orlando, Sandro, 109–10n26 Orlando furioso, 145 Ornato, Ezio, 30, 32n4, 37n33, 39–40n45, 49n85
Orsini, Roberto, judge 241, 257n71 Osler, Douglas, 316n1, 324n51 Otranto: Cathedral of, 117; church of San Pietro, 125 ottava rima, 145–78 passim Ovid, 74n32 Pabst, Bernard, 74–5n40 Pacificus of Verona, 170, 187nn7–8 Padoan, Giorgio, 164n22 Padua, 64, 66, 79n69 Pagliaresi, Neri, 147 Pagnini, Giovanni Francesco, 253n48 palaeography, 3–4, 18–22, 27, 30, 33–4n10, 34n15, 37–8n34, 39–40n45, 144n61, 268, 272; and art history, 115; and digital images, 30, 34–5n16, 48–9n83; handbooks of, 20, 30, 38n35, 48–9n83; ‘integral palaeography,’ 18, 19, 20, 31; journals of, 18, 31; schools of, 15, 35n17 Palermo, Massimo, 252–3n46 Palma, Marco, 48–9n83, 194–5n49 Panagiotidi, Maria, 140n24 Panvini, Bruno, 107n12 Paoli, Emore, 268, 288n6, 289n9 Paolini, Lorenzo, 78n59 papacy, 62–5, 76n47, 76–7n50, 77n52, 175, 181; papal chancery, 13, 33n6, 179; papal formularies, 167, 171, 174, 178–9 ; papal letters, 57, 58, 179; papal reform, 67; and textual culture, 12, 32n4; war against Florence, 156. See also Investiture Conflict; Vatican City Papahagi, Marian, 109n24 paper, 12, 32n4, 149, 155, 274 Paris, 34n14, 72n23, 302, 304–5 Parma, 64, 78n58
344 / Index of Names and Subjects Parry, Milman, 15 Paschini, Pio, 167, 185–6n2, 189n19, 193n43 Pasquini, Emilio, 47n75 Pasquali, Giorgio, 25, 45n64 Pastore, Federico, 47n75 patarie, 20, 63–5, 76nn48–9, 76–7n50, 79n71 Patt, William D., 70n9, 71n16, 74n32 Paulinus of Aquileia, 7, 54, 167–215 – works: Contra Felicem, 170, 173, 188nn11, 12, 200, 210–14 passim; hymns, 187n6, 189n20; letter to Charlemagne, 183–5, 192n40, 197n70; letter to Haistulf, 193n45; letter to bishops of Aquileia, 198n73; letters, 200, 210–12 passim; Libellus sacrosyllabus, 173, 176, 184, 191n30, 200, 210–14 passim; Sponsio episcoporum, 7, 167–85, 200–15 Pavia, 57 Pavone, Claudio, 245n11 pecia, 14, 34n14, 296–7, 299, 317 n5, 317–18n8 Pedroni, Matteo, 107n9 Pellegrini, Letizia, 40n46 Pellegrinus, bishop of Aquileia, 170, 187n7 Pennington, Kenneth, 316–17n3, 322nn31, 33, 36, 324n47 performance of texts, 6–7, 22–3, 28, 31, 42n54, 42–3n55; and body, 28–9; and improvisation, 24, 164n24; musical, 14, 156–8; of oaths, 182; of poetry 7, 82, 146, 155–61; of public texts, 118; of religious texts (recitation), 12, 13, 135, 278 Pertile, Lino, 110n29
Perugia, 42n53, 256–7n69; university of, 299 Peruzzi, Piergiorgio, 323n41 Pesce, Dolores, 34n12 Peter, bishop of Lucca, 64 Peter Cizarella, bishop of Padua, 64, 78n60 Peter of Blois, 70n8 Peter of Verdun, 175 Peterson, Janine L., 71n13 Petrarch, Francis, 43n57, 47n73, 47–8n77, 82, 100; layout of poetry, 158–9, 161n1, 163n13; sonnet on death of Cino da Pistoia, 102, 111n40 Petrocchi, Giorgio, 24, 45n63, 110nn28–9 Petronio, Giuseppe, 37n28 Petrucci, Armando, 18, 19–21, 24, 31, 32n3, 33–4n10, 35n17, 38n35–7, 39nn41, 45, 41n51, 43–4n58, 45n63, 45–6n66, 47n73, 48n78, 49n87, 144n61, 145, 149, 152, 163n15 Phillips, John, 142n42 philology: anglophone traditions of, 25–7; classical, 15, 25; critiques of, 26, 46n69; and historical disciplines, 265, 280, 287–8; Italian traditions of, 24–7, 45n65, 88; material, 4; romance, 18; ‘semiotic philology,’ 17; and study of textuality, 26–7. See also editing Piacenza, 63, 65, 76–7n50 Picone, Michelangelo, 42–3n55, 108n19, 109n24, 162n3 Pier delle Vigne, 97 Pierleoni, Messer Simone de’, judge, 231
Index of Names and Subjects / 345 Pierleoni, Ser Zaccaria di Giovanni de’, notary, 231–41, 253nn49–50, 253–4n51, 254nn52–3, 254–5n54, 255n55 Pietro Damiani, 62, 75nn41, 43, 76nn44–5 Pietro Leopoldo, Grandduke, 253n48 Pioletti, Antonio, 44n62 Pippin, emperor, 172, 196–7n62, 208–9 Pippin the Hunchback, 174–5, 183 Pisa, university of, 299; council of, 305 Pistoia, 101–2, 175 Placella, Vincenzo, 26–7, 46n71 Plebani, Tiziana, 42n53 Plesch, Véronique, 144n60 Poggi Salani, Teresa, 226, 250n33, 252n45 Poirel, Dominique, 8, 288n6, 289nn11, 12, 15, 300 Polheim, Karl, 74–5n40 Poliziano, 161 Polo, Marco, Milione, 24, 45n63 Poppo, patriarch of Aquileia, 186n3 popular culture, 16, 36n22; and Investiture Conflict, 62–3, 67; popular spiritual movements, 22, 41n50, 62 Pörnbacher, Mechthild, 189n17, 192n34, 211 Pound, Ezra, 109n24 Pratesi, Alessandro, 35n17, 38n35, 39–40n45, 45–6n66 preaching, 12, 67, 172; oral and written aspects of, 12, 22, 40n46, 41n50, 79n71
Predelli, Maria, 6–7, 140n22, 162n4, 164n23 ‘print culture,’ 3–4, 9n2 printing, 11, 16, 17, 19, 35n20, 36–7nn27, 31, 302. See also bibliography, textual Prinz, Otto, 189n17 Priscian, 53 Prodi, Paolo, 78n59 Provençal (Occitan) poetry, 23, 83, 88–9, 156–7 Ptolemy, 241 Pucci, Antonio, 48n80, 146, 147, 160–1, 162n7, 164n23, 218, 244n3 Pulci, Luigi, 218, 244n5 Puglia, 40n46, 141n29, 143n44 Pulignari, Faloci, 289n7 Quadrivium Symposium in Medieval English Textual Cultures (University of Glasgow), 3, 8–9n1 Quaglio, Antonio Enzo, 110n29 Quaglioni, Diego, 319–20n17, 320nn19, 21, 321n27, 322n35, 322–3n37 Quattro Macine, 125, 142n39 Quilici, Brunetto, 75n41 Quondam, Amadeo, 37n31 Raby, F.J.E., 189n18 Racine, Pierre, 76–7n50, 78nn62–3 Ragni, Eugenio, 162n2 Rajna, Pio, 88 Rangerius, bishop of Lucca, 64, 77n55 reading: corporeality of, 28–9; devotional, 29, 133–5; history of, 31–2n1, 143–4n55; oral, 70n7,
346 / Index of Names and Subjects 118, 140nn21–2, 158; silent, 13, 34n11, 70n7 Regensburg, synod of, 173, 174–5 Reggio, 64 registro format, 13, 149, 155 Reindel, Kurt, 75n43 Resnick, Irven M., 142n34 Reynolds, Roger, 185 rhetoric, 6, 56–61, 67–8 Rhijn, Carine van, 198–9n75 Riccioni, Stefano, 144n61 Ricco di Moranno of Modena, judge, 222 Richardson, Brian, 37n31 Rigg, George, 185n Rinaldus of Taranto, 124 Rizzo, Silvia, 43n57 Rizzo Nervo, Francesca, 44n62 Robins, William, 5, 48n78, 48n80, 136n, 145, 185n, 243n, 244n3, 247n19, 288n, 322n34 Robinson, Ian S., 79n70 Röcken, Per, 47n74 Rockinger, Ludwig, 71n16, 72n24 Roger ii, king of Sicily, 116 Roman de la Rose, 146 Romanello, Maria Teresa, 142n33 Rome, 12, 56, 63, 77n52, 139n13, 142n33, 167, 170, 178, 179, 184n46, 253n49, 308; catacombs of, 137n3; difficulty of travel to, 196n55; notaries from, 12, 231–9; Roman dialect, 232–9, 255nn57–9; Roman empire, 11, 182, 194n47, 306; scribal activity at, 40n47 – institutions: Augustus’s mausoleum, 139n13; Casa dei Crescenzi, 139n15; University of Rome, 15. See also papacy; Vatican City Romeo, Carlo, 41n51
Romualdo, 61–2, 75n41 Roncaglia, Aurelio, 146, 162n3 Rotiland, cousin of Anselm of Besate, 61 Rotiroti, Maria Bosch, 39–40n45 Rouse, Mary A., 34n14 Rouse, Richard H., 34n14 Royer, Blaise, 136n Rubini, Luisa, 42–3n55 Rubinstein, Nicolai, 257n71 Sacchetti, Franco, 155, 240, 256n68 Saenger, Paul, 34n11, 70n7, 140n21 Saffioti, Tito, 42–3n55 Safran, Linda, 6–7, 137nn4, 7, 140n26, 142nn40–1 Salento, 6, 115–36, 141n28 Sallust, 58, 72n24, 73n28 Salutati, Coluccio, 24, 45n63 Salzburg, 172 Sansterre, Jean-Marie, 193–4n46 Santagata, Marco, 111n40 Santangelo, Salvatore, 88, 108nn18–19 Santifaller, Leo, 193–4n46, 194n48 Santoro, Marco, 39n44, 43n57 Sapori, Armando, 24, 45n63 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 142n42 Savignano, 64 Savigni, Raffaele, 77n55 Sayers, Jane E., 33n6 Sbriccoli, Mario, 46n72 Scalzo, Marcello, 143n45 Scatigno, Anna, 42n53 Schaller, D., 185–6n2, 189n20 schedulae, 274 Schiaparelli, Luigi, 194n47, 194–5n49, 195n51 Schmale, Franz-Josef, 71n16 Schmidt-Wiegand, Ruth, 316–17n3 Schmoeckel, Mathias, 322n37
Index of Names and Subjects / 347 Schumann, Reinhold, 78n58 Schwartz, Gerhard, 78n60 Scolari, Domenico, Istoria di Alessandro Magno 147, 149–50, 158, 160, 163nn10, 11 scribes and copyists, 22, 25, 26, 53, 82, 118, 136, 229–30, 241–3, 268–9, 271, 274, 295, 303, 305, 308–9 scripts: bastarda, 305; Carolingian minuscule, 168, 194n47; cursive (minuscola cancelleresca), 149, 155, 156; of Florentine documents, 230, 232; gothic bookhand (gotica libraria), 39–40n45, 149–52, 242; half-unical, 187; humanist 14, 34n15, 37n33, 242, 257n72; merchant (lettera mercantesca), 13, 152; of public texts, 117, 123, 132 Scrittura e civiltà, 18, 31, 38n37 Segno e testo, 31 Segre, Cesare, 18, 37n32, 108n15 semiotics, 17–19, 28, 37n32; of textual culture, 21, 145 sermo humilis, 15; stilus humilis, 57–8, 59, 72n22 serventese, 146, 156, 158, 160; sirventes, 83 Settesoldi, Enzo, 246n13 Shaw, Prue, 48n80 Shemek, Deanna M., 47n73 Shorter, Chad, 106 Sicilian School of poetry, 81–2, 87–8, 97, 106–7n5, 107n12 Sicily, 6, 81, 97, 115, 116, 240 Sickel, Theodor von, 193–4n46, 200 Siegmund, Albert, 186–7n5 Siena: authors from, 147, 158 162n4; communal statutes of, 228, 252n41; Mercanzia of, 228,
252n40. See also Bernardino of Siena; Catherine of Siena Simeoni, Luigi, 78n57 Simon de Cramaud, archbishop of Reims, 305, 308 Simone da Cascia, 155 Singleton, Charles S., 110n28 Sinibaldo, bishop of Padua, 64 Sirat, Colette, 31–2n1, 143n52 Siskin, Clifford, 48n82 Smail, Daniel L., 317n4 Society for Textual Scholarship, 3; journals of (Text, Textual Cultures), 3, 8–9n1, 9n3, 30–1 sociolinguistics, 6, 118, 126 sociology, 16–17, 19, 20, 36n25, 36–7n27, 226 Soleto, church of Santo Stefano, 121, 126–7, 142–3n43 Solignac, A., 185–6n2 sonnets, 6, 82–106 passim; 108n16, 146, 158, 244n5 Sorbelli, Albano, 33n7 Sorella, Antonio, 38n38 Spallanzani, Marco, 246n13 Spongano, Raffaele, 160, 162n3, 164n26 Statius, 148 Statte, chapel of St Julian, 127–8 Stäuble, Antonio, 107n9 Stefano Protonotaro, 106–7n5 Steinberg, Justin, 28, 47n76, 107nn6, 10, 108–9n22, 109–10n26 Stella, Francesco, 48n80, 189nn18, 20 Stern, Laura Ikens, 245n10 Stirnemann, Patricia, 289n11 Stock, Brian, 19–21, 31, 34n11, 39n42, 79–80n71, 140n21 Stoppa de’ Bistichi, 146 Stoppelli, Pasquale, 38n38
348 / Index of Names and Subjects Storey, H. Wayne, 8–9n1, 27, 47n73, 107n6, 109–10n26, 145, 161n1 storia della tradizione, 25, 26 Storia di Apollonio di Tiro, 155 Strozzi, Giannozzo di Giovanni di Giovanni, 256n66 Stussi, Alfredo, 45n65, 322–3n37 Subiaco, 272 Swain, Simon, 137n3, 140n25 Szendrei, Janka, 34n12 Tabacco, Giovanni, 16, 35–6n21, 75n41 Tacconi, Marica, 43n56 Tamassia, Nino, 193n45 Tamba, Giorgio, 32n3 Tan, Chrissie, 142n42 Tancredi da Massa, Felice, 147 Tanturli, Giuliano, 164n19 Tanzini, Lorenzo, 27, 46n72 Taranto, 121, 138n10, 143n45 Tartagnus, Alexander, 299, 320n21 Taviani, Guelfo, 101 Tavoni, Maria Gioia, 43n57 Tavoni, Mirko, 250n33 Tebald, bishop of Verona, 169–70, 186n4, 187n7 Tedaldo, archbishop of Milan, 64, 77n52 tenzone, 6, 83–105 Terpstra, Nicholas, 41n50 Tesoro della lingua italiana delle origini, 251n35 textiles, 23, 116, 138n11 ‘textual communities,’ 6, 20–1, 27–8, 88, 105, 109–10n26, 118, 287–8 Textual Culture Research Group (Stirling), 3, 8–9n1 textual cultures: administrative, 5, 7, 13; collaborative, 5, 8; and
materials of communication, 4–5, 145; in medieval Italy, 11–31, 53–54, 88; public, 136; as a term, 3–4, 9n3, 21, 48n82; and textual exchange, 4–5. See also ‘textual communities’ textual instability, 17–18, 29, 31; and reception, 285–67; and textual variants, 25–6, 135, 268, 303, 315; textes vivants, 316n2 textuality: as a field of study, 17–21, 24–7, 28; medieval, 4–7, 13, 22, 23, 24, 32n2, 41n51, 48n78; paratextuality, 43n57 Thier, Ludger, 267, 285, 288n2 Theodulf of Orléans, 198–9n75 Thomas Aquinas, 307, 309 Tigrini, Francesco of Vicopisano, 305, 323n41 Timpanaro, Sebastiano, 45n64 Tivoli, Abbot of, 97–8, 108n20 Tjader, Jan Olof, 38n35 Tomasin, Lorenzo, 252n39 Toncarelli, Fabio, 44n59 Trani, 120, 126, 141n30 translation, 23, 117, 152, 160, 248n24, 267, 269, 289n13 Transmission, Translation and Transformation in Medieval Textual Cultures (McGill University), 3, 8–9n1 Travaini, Lucia, 40n49 Treffort, Cécile, 136n1, 143n48, 144n60 Tremoli, Paolo, 189n18 Treviso, 82 Trexler, Richard C., 16, 36n23 Trifone, Maurizio, 253n49, 255nn57–63 Trifone, Pietro, 41n52, 250n33, 255n57, 256n65
Index of Names and Subjects / 349 Trovato, Paolo, 37n31 Tuscany, 7, 24, 41n51, 58, 81–2, 85, 139n17, 158, 180, 228, 230; Tuscan language, 81–2, 226–40 Tuzzi, Hans, 39n44 Tylus, Jane, 41n52 Ubaldus, bishop of Mantua, 64 Ubertino da Casale, 268 Ughelli, Ferdinando, 186n4 Ullman, Berthold Louis, 34n15 Ullmann, Walter, 32n4 Umbria, 240; Umbrian dialect, 267, 289nn13–14 universities, 13, 22, 267; copying texts at, 14, 34n14, 295, 296–7, 307; legal texts at, 49n7, 295–9, 307–10, 316–17n3, 317–18n8, 320n19, 321n25; nineteenthcentury, 14 – McGill University, 3, 8–9n1; university of Bologna, 13, 33n7; University of Glasgow, 8–9n1; university of Paris, 304–5; University of Rome, 15, 35n17; University of Toronto, 3, 9n4; University of Victoria, 3, 8–9n1 Unwin, George, 31–2n1 Unwin, Philip, 31–2n1 Urban ii, pope, 64 Ursus, patriarch of Aquileia, 177 Valla, Lorenzo, 323n38 Varanini, Giorgio, 163n12 variantistica, 25 Vàrvaro, Alberto, 44n61, 46n70 Vaste, 129 Vatican City: library, 14, 34–5n16, 319n14; school of palaeography, 15, 35n17. See also papacy; Rome Vecchio, Silvana, 42n54, 42–3n55
Veneto, 82, 97, 170, 240, 250–1 n34 Venice, 42n53, 90, 272, 273; merchant tribunals of, 227, 250–1n34, 252n39; printing at, 37n31, 321n29 Ventrone, Paola, 42–3n55 Venturini, Teresa, 187n8 vernacular, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 48n78, 131, 133, 136, 165, 243, 311 ; at the Mercanzia of Florence, 217–43; in statutes, 225, 227, 250–1n34 Verona, 168–70, 179, 186n4, 186–7n5, 187nn6, 7, 194–5n49 Versteegh, Kees, 140n25 Vespasiano da Bisticci, 241–2, 257n73 Vianello, Daniele, 42–3n55 Vidal, Peire, 157 Vienne, archbishops of, 175 Vigueur, Jean-Claude Maire, 249n28, 256–7n69 Villoresi, Marco, 47n75 Violante, Cinzia, 76n48, 76–7n50, 78n61 Virgil, 148 visual aspects: of manuscripts in digital images, 30; of manuscript layout, 24, 145–61 passim; of medieval textuality, 5, 6–7, 22–3; of memory, 23, 29; of public texts, 6–7, 23, 115–36 passim, 139n17; of writing, 6, 7, 23, 43–4n58, 47n73 Visconti, Bernabò, 146 Viterbo, 40n47, 43–4n58 Vogüe, Adalbert de, 32–3n5 W. de Saramando, teacher, 78–9n65 Walfred, canon lawyer, 66, 79n68 Wallace, David, 44n62
350 / Index of Names and Subjects Ward, John O., 69–70n6, 71n15 Watt, Ian, 35n19 Weber, Max, 16, 36n25 Weigand, Rudolf, 33n7 Weinmann, Peter, 145, 161n1 Wenzel, Horst, 47n74 Werminghoff, Albert, 191n30 Wetzstein, Thomas, 317n4 Wickham, Chris J., 41n51, 44n62, 197n63 Wieruszowski, Helene, 73n31, 74nn32, 34 Wilson, Blake, 41n50 Winroth, Anders, 33n7 Winsico, bishop of Piacenza, 65 Witt, Ronald, 5–6, 32n2, 69n3, 69–70n6, 72n18, 76n46
Wolfram, Hervig, 192n35 women: as writers, 22, 41n52, 42n53, 266–7; legal status of, 222, 248n21 Worstbrock, Franz-Josef, 71n16 writing, history of, 11–14, 31–2n1 Wyatt, Michael W., 47n73 Zaccarello, Michelangelo, 244n5 Zamponi, Stefano, 49n86, 161n1 Zarri, Gabriella, 42n53 Zerbi, Piero, 77n53 Zinelli, Fabio, 45n65 Zorzi, Andrea, 46n72, 245n10, 246n15 Zumthor, Paul, 16, 22, 36n24