Alphabetic Architects

Geofroy Tory and the Renaissance Reconstruction

of the Roman Capital Alphabet
By Gabriel Smedresman
Advised by Christopher Wood
April , 
“Beware of the sorcery and the diabolical attractions of geometry.”
–Le Corbusier
Modulor
Table of Contents

Part One: The Renaissance Reconstruction

of the Roman Capital Alphabet 1

1. Introduction 1
2. The Humanist Revival of Antiquity 3
3. The Geometric Construction 8
4. Other Perspectives 21

Part Two: Geofroy Tory 28

5. Geofroy Tory 28
6. The Meaning Behind the Forms 32
7. Exegesis of the Alphabet 34
8. Medieval Allegorical Techniques 52
9. Synthesis in the Renaissance 64
10. Conclusion 66

Bibliography 80
Part One: The Renaissance Reconstruction of the Roman Capital
Alphabet
1. Introduction

Geofroy Tory, Champfleury, p..

The designer of this woodcut, the Parisian scholar and printer Geofroy Tory, intended it as

an illustration of the choice between virtue and vice. He wrote, explaining its significance:

To give you more clearly to understand this divine Pythagorean letter Ypsilon, I have
drawn it for you once more. Imagine that the upright and broadest limb is the road
of Adolescence, the broader of the two arms is the road of Pleasure, and the narrower
arm the road of memory and virtuous contemplation.1

1
Tory, Geofroy. Champfleury. Trans. Ives. New York: Dover Publications, , p..

1
Geofroy Tory was one in a series of scholars, architects and artists, who, in the late fifteenth

and early sixteenth centuries, invented the capital letter as we know it today. The serif capital

letter was based on Roman inscriptions from the first century AD, which Renaissance

antiquarians believed to be aesthetically superior to the scripts they were using at the time, a

combination of medieval blackletter and a curving script from the ninth century called the

Carolingian. But, as we can already see from Tory’s bizarre conception of the letter Y, the

Renaissance reconstruction of this antique form was no straightforward imitation. By the

time the form had solidified in the s, calligraphy, architecture, literary criticism, biblical

exegesis, mnemonic aids, Platonic philosophy, and Pythagorean number symbolism all

played an essential role in its birth.

Many Renaissance scholars were tight-lipped about the sources of their thoughts,

preferring to preserve the aura of mystery and awe surrounding the antique. But Tory, a

Frenchman outside of the direct academic circles of Italy, in his enthusiasm to explain the

perfection of these letters, reveals much about the thoughts behind the construction. And

while what historian Stanley Morison called Tory’s “cabalistic abracadabra” may have

quickly faded to obscurity, Tory’s work lives on through his student, Claude Garamond,

whose typefaces are built into and used by every computer manufactured on the planet.

The work of Tory and his fellow alphabetic architects is also significant for its role in

the great advances of art and architecture made during the Italian Renaissance. Early

Renaissance architecture and its relationship to the rediscovery of classical literature and

Roman architecture and statuary that characterized Italian humanism has been well

2
documented. It is a complex story of brilliant designs and enigmatic writings, subject to

constant re-interpretation. But the return of artistic lettering to classical forms is a subcurrent

in the fifteenth century humanist revival of antiquity that has been infrequently studied.2

The reconstruction of the Roman capital letter unfolds in the same scholarly circles that

develop the rest of Renaissance architecture, artistic content, and technique, and its

invention is a lens through which we can see many aspects of Renaissance thought, including

the fundamental shift of artistic emphasis towards reconnecting content and form.

In the first part of this paper, I will discuss the revival of the Roman capital letter

within the context of Italian Renaissance architecture and intellectual thought, and how the

letter that we know today was by no means universal, but rather developed as the intellectual

fantasy of a group of antiquarian scholars. I will then proceed to Geofroy Tory, who stands

at the culmination of the development of this alphabetic construction, and discuss the role

his alphabet plays within the story. I will conclude by examining the historical roots of

Tory’s thought, discussing their significance both in understanding Tory’s ideas and as an

aspect of Renaissance humanism in general.

2. The Humanist Revival of Antiquity

In early Renaissance Italian painting and sculpture, letters were not executed in any

historically accurate style. By the first decades of the fifteenth century, though, some forms of

2
For the best and most comprehensive formal study of the revival of the classical roman letter, see Christine
Sperling’s Ph.D. dissertation, Artistic Lettering and the Progress of the Antique Revival in the Quattrocento, at
Brown University.

3
the antique Roman capital began to appear in stone inscriptions. These letters were often

used indiscriminately, appearing side-by-side with older gothic lettering styles.3 But

increasing exposure to both literature and archaeological evidence led to an increasing

historical sensitivity among educated artists. Up to this point, lettering styles had been

chosen for a variety of reasons, including aesthetic appeal, tradition, content (of printed

material), and occasionally a sense of historic allusion. But now, for the first time in artistic

history, Renaissance artists, increasingly using antique artifacts as subjects, demanded that

inscriptions remain consistent with their historical context.4 This marked the first step in a

major artistic shift from a concern with artistic content to artistic form, and lettering styles

would develop accordingly.5

Lorenzo Ghiberti, Tomb of Leonardo Dati. Santa Maria Novella, . Detail. Krautheimer, Plate .

3
Mardersteig, Giovanni. ‘Leon Battista Alberti e la rinascita del carattere lapidario romano nel Quattrocento.’
Italia medioevale e umanistica, II, , pp..
4
Covi, Dario. “Lettering in the Inscriptions of th century Florentine Paintings.” p..
5
The humanistica script, which becomes our modern lower-case alphabet, was developed with a similar
historical awareness. It was an evolution of the Italian gothic script under the influence of the Carolingian
minuscule, a th century script used in Charlemagne’s empire. Renaissance antiquarians, impressed by the
clarity and legibility of the Carolingian, mistakenly considered it to be a classical form. It was first used in 
a manuscript by Poggio Bracciolini, and in  in a polyptych by Fra Angelico. Covi, Dario. “Lettering in the
Inscriptions of th century Florentine Paintings.” p..

4
 Artists in Venice and Florence,

exposed to sarcophagi and medallions from

antiquity collected by local nobility and

antiquarians, began to use the lettering styles

they observed in these artifacts in painting

and sculpture. Ghiberti, and later Donatello,

for example, carved slender and cursive

sepulchral inscriptions, probably based on

Roman inscriptions from the Republican

period. Ghiberti’s tombstone for Leonardo

Dati, executed in  at Santa Maria

Novella in Florence, features this curvaceous

style of lettering. And the painter Masaccio, Masaccio, Trinity. S. Maria Novella, -.
Tavernor, p..
Ghiberti’s contemporary and one of the first

to use perspectival construction and antique architecture in painting, used strikingly similar

characters in the fresco of the Trinity, executed in -, also in the Santa Maria Novella.

Masaccio, Trinity. Santa Maria Novella, -. Detail. Tavernor, p..

5
 But in the latter half of the fifteenth century, the scholarly and literary community of

Padua overtook Florence as the center for calligraphic innovation, and radically shifted the

direction of progress. Most visibly, the Imperial style of Roman inscriptions began to

dominate, replacing the Republican style of Ghiberti and his contemporaries. Since, most

likely, no chronological development in Roman epigraphy was recognized at that time,6 this

shift may have either represented the style of architectural ruins available at Padua, or could

indicate that the Paduans were growing to prefer the Imperial style in particular.

The painter Andrea Mantegna, a prominent member of the Paduan community,

drew the first accurate Roman inscriptions in his frescoes at the Eremitani Chapel around

. It was no coincidence that these were some of the first paintings to consistently use

accurate Roman architecture as a backdrop. Mantegna here showed an interest in tying form

and content: he was one of the first to do so, and also one of the first to do the necessary

research to portray antiquity accurately. Accordingly, some of these frescoes resemble

catalogues of antique artifacts, and, in some, the environment appears as an ideal setting

based in part on classical finds, artistic sensibility, and Alberti’s laws of perspective.7

6
Sperling, Christine M. “Leon Battista Alberti’s Inscriptions on the Holy Sepulchre in the Cappella Rucellai,
San Pancrazo, Florence.” p. Also see Ernst Gombrich, “From the Revival of Letters to the Reform of the
Arts: Niccolo Niccoli and Filippo Brunelleschi,” Essays in the History of Art presented to Rudolph Wittkower, eds.
Douglas Fraser, Howard Hibbard and Milton Lewine, London , pp. -.
7
Pignatti, Terisio. “Introduction to the Frescoes of Mantegna.” p.. in Fiocco, Giuseppe. The frescoes of
Mantegna in the Eremitani Church, Padua. Oxford: Phaidon Press, . Also, cf. Lightbown, Ronald W.
Mantegna: with a complete catalogue of paintings, drawings, and prints. Berkeley: University of California Press,
, p..

6
 But while his forms were remarkably accurate, Mantegna, like most of his

contemporaries, did not honor the correct line-spacing of the inscriptions he copies. Form

still was not his only pursuit; rather, his interest was in the artistic depiction as a whole. This

approach contrasts with that of one of Mantegna’s closest influences, the Veronese scholar

Felice Feliciano, an intimate friend and fellow member of the antiquarian circles at Padua.

The young Feliciano was a book copyist and amateur calligrapher, but more than anything

else he was dedicated to the study of antiquity.8 He found a role model in Ciriaco of Ancona,

a distinguished and well-traveled merchant who was also the first collector of ancient

epigraphy. Feliciano borrowed features from Ciriaco’s journals, which were circulating hand

to hand among fellow enthusiasts, and in fact inherited his collection of inscriptions from

Ciriaco.9

Like many antiquarians even today, Ciriaco was primarily interested in the content of

the inscriptions, copying letters and words without taking note of their forms or line breaks.

But Feliciano and Mantegna both show an increasing interest in the actual form of the

letters: in a dedication to Mantegna, Feliciano writes that in collecting his inscriptions, he

“noted them and wrote them down correctly and truly, with praiseworthy zeal and in a form

8
Feliciano was also interested in humanistic studies, and, in his later days, sought to cultivate a humanistic style
of letter-writing. One of the many functions performed by scribes like Feliciano was writing letters for those
who, as Mardersteig put it, “attached value in giving an elegant form to the contents.” See Mardersteig,
Giovanni. “Introduction to Alphabetum Romanum,” p.. Feliciano’s exercises in crafting elegant rhetoric seem
here to be quite relevant to his later effort to give an elegant form to the letterforms themselves.
9
Feliciano adopted several of Ciriaco’s idiosyncrasies, including the use of tinted pages and inks and exotic
ligatures. Wardrop, James. The Script of Humanism: Some Aspects of Humanistic Script. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
. p..

7
which even an adept could not question.”10 Yet there are differences between the approaches

of the artist and the scholar. Mantegna always retained a context for these inscriptions; he

used them in paintings in order to create convincing depictions of antiquity. His formal

analysis of the letters, which enabled him to paint the most accurate Roman inscriptions

then on canvas, was simply a tool to do just that. Feliciano, on the other hand, was

compelled by his interest in the visual qualities of the letters to create a pure formal

construct: the very first alphabetic treatise.

3. The Geometric Construction

Feliciano, Felice. Alphabetum Romanum. D.

10
In a foreward to his collection of epitaphs, dedicated to Andrea Mantegna, . Mardersteig, “Introduction
to Alphabetum Romanum,” p..

8
 Feliciano’s manuscript Alphabetum Romanum (“Roman Alphabet”), composed of

seventeen sheets of vellum, now resides in the Vatican library in Rome.11 Written in ,12

it is the first known guide to the construction of antique letters. It comes with no

introductory material and is laid out with a large letter on each page, accompanied by brief

drawing instructions directly underneath. Feliciano begins with his crucial insight:

It was an old usage to form the letter from a circle and square…this is what I, Felice
Feliciano, found in old letters by making measurements…both in the noble city of
Rome and in other places.13

Although Feliciano was the first of his contemporaries to have associated a geometric

construction with the ancient letterforms, similar ideas had been developing in humanist

philosophical and architectural discourse. At that time, early versions of the Renaissance

architect Leon Battista Alberti’s influential On the Art of Building were circulating in

manuscript. This manuscript brought to its readers, for the first time, knowledge of

Vitruvius’ On Architecture, the only surviving ancient Roman treatise on architecture.14

In his section on temples, Vitruvius notes the fact that the human body, when

stretched out, will fit inside both a square and a circle:

if a person is imagined lying back with outstretched arms and feet within a circle
whose center is at the navel, the fingers and toes will trace the circumference of this
circle as they move about. But to whatever extent a circular scheme may be present in
the body, a square design may also be discerned there.15

11
Codex Vat. Lat. .
12
Mardersteig, “Introduction to Alphabetum Romanum.” p.. Mardersteig estimates the date based on a close
contextual analysis of Feliciano’s wording.
13
Feliciano, Felice. Alphabetum Romanum. A.
14
Vitruvius’ On Architecture was rediscovered in  by the Florentine humanist Poggio Bracciolini. His On
the Art of Building, published in , was a very loose adaptation of the form of Vitruvius’ treatise.
15
Vitruvius, On Architecture. ...

9
Vitruvius saw this, along with other anatomical correspondences, as proof that the human

body is composed of perfectly proportioned parts, forming a harmonic whole. He believed

that measurements derived from the authority of the human body as well, citing,

The ancients decided that the number called ten was perfect, because it was
discovered from the number of digits on both hands. And if the number of digits on
both hands is perfect by nature, it pleased Plato to state that the number was also
perfect for this reason, that the decad () is achieved by adding together those
individual elements which the Greeks call monades.16

Finally, these principles of number and proportion, for Vitruvius, also applied to design:

Similarly, indeed, the elements of holy temples should have dimensions for each
individual part that agree with the full magnitude of the work…in the same way,
they [the ancients] gathered the principles of measure, which seem to be necessary for
any sort of project, from the components of the human body…the ancients, who
also established the houses of the immortal gods, ordered the elements of those works
so that, in both their shape and their symmetries, fitting dimensions of separate
elements and of the work as a whole might be created.17

These ideas were infectious in Renaissance architectural circles, already infatuated with the

glories of antiquity. Alberti’s On the Art of Building, which repeated and expanded on several

of these principles, launched an era of Renaissance architecture that aimed at recreating the

Platonic spirit and geometric correspondences of the ancient temple.

Feliciano’s alphabetical construction shows a significant debt to this kind of

architectural theory. In addition to the overarching scaffold of the square and circle, which

defines his construction, the perfect number, which Feliciano identifies as ten on the very first

16
Vitruvius, On Architecture. ... The last sentence refers to the fact that ten is the sum of the sequential
integers one, two, three, and four, which, when plotted together, form a pyramid shape.
17
Vitruvius, On Architecture. ..-.

10
page, is constantly present. Feliciano introduces a key measure to his alphabetic construction:

the ratio of the broad stroke (like the right-hand side of the letter A) to the total height of the

character, a ratio that he defines as one to ten. This platonic number reappears consistently,

governing the construction. For example, the instructions for the letter B specify that “the

letter shown above must, as we have said, be as thick as the tenth part of its height, and the

lower body must be one tenth more ample than the upper; and take care to thicken the said

letter within and without by one tenth.”18

Feliciano’s and Mantegna’s letters, which were developed in parallel, were closer to

the Roman originals than any others. Certainly, the insight that geometry had some role in

the construction of Roman letters was helpful, and may indeed be accurate for certain

inscriptions from a limited period of Roman history.19 But a contradiction emerges in

Feliciano’s work. The fundamental problem can be seen in how Feliciano attributes his

choice of a stroke ratio of one to ten both to the perfection of the number ten and to direct

observation. In fact, Roman inscriptions did not hold to so strict a geometrical constraint:

most likely, they were actually painted by brush and only later carved into stone.20 Despite

Feliciano’s insistence that his letters were measured from actual ruins, in a number of

instances he actually distorted the letterforms to fit into the square and circle scaffold. For

example, the letters D, N, and K are stretched out of proportion to occupy the entire square,

and the H is squeezed to fit into a half-square. Also, curves on the O, P, and other rounded

18
Feliciano, Felice. Alphabetum Romanum. B.
19
The use of square capitals, or quadrata, reached a peak in the Augustan period of the Roman Empire, around
 AD. In fact, the Trajan column, executed in  AD, which has sometimes been considered the finest of
Roman inscriptions, represents the beginning of a shift back to a looser, more cursive aesthetic.
20
See Sperling, Christine M. Artistic Lettering and the Progress of the Antique Revival in the Quattrocento.

11
characters bulge inaccurately as a result of Feliciano’s insistence on widening the strokes by a

unit of one-tenth.

The obvious distortion of the historical forms to make them fit into Feliciano’s

theoretical framework raises doubts as to just how carefully he actually observed the ancient

examples. Though some of his proportions agree with actual measurements enough to dispel

this doubt, other inconsistencies suggest a slipshod application of his theory.21 A powerful

criticism of his letters, which are drawn in a specifically epigraphic manner, is that the cross-

strokes get too thin to be possibly carved in stone. And Feliciano was known to be a colorful

and eccentric character—his brother describes him as a “vagabond here today and there

tomorrow; fantastic, spendthrift, prodigal, an imitator of difficult things; an alchemist, a

time-waster and a spendthrift on every vain and foolish enterprise.”22 Feliciano did dabble in

alchemy and printing: he, like many of his contemporaries, drew monuments in a “fantastic”

manner, and, according to Mantegna’s biographer Ronald Lightbown, he may have falsified

some of his inscriptions.23 Feliciano’s alphabet, while partially tied to its ancient prototype,

also necessarily reflects the whims and vicissitudes of a creative thinker.

Regardless of the rigor of Feliciano’s historical observations, his treatise established

both the format and basic technique of nearly all alphabetical constructions to follow. The

square and circle, the stroke-ratio, the basic layout of a single letter accompanied by a brief

explanation, all will remain part of the technique of alphabetical construction throughout the

21
Anderson, Donald M. The Art of Written Forms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., , p..
22
In an unpublished letter contained in Harley MS. . See Wardrop, p..
23
Lightbown, p.. Lightbown offers no supporting evidence for this comment.

12
Renaissance.24 Perhaps more importantly, Feliciano’s treatise established the concept of a

single, canonical alphabet, an idea to which most subsequent writers will also subscribe. It is

not perfect—Feliciano did provide alternate methods for the D and the R—but for the most

part, he insisted on a single, correct, formation.

One reason for this conception is based on the limitations of Renaissance

archaeological knowledge: while scholars had isolated antiquity as a distinct period in history,

they had not yet recognized the possibility of chronological development within the period.

The result is a tendency to merge all Roman letters into a single, consistent style. Another

reason is perhaps more philosophical. Much Roman literature and philosophy, newly

significant to Renaissance scholars, represents man in harmony with the universe, in a kind

of ideal Platonic relationship. Vitruvius, in his treatise on architecture, made that worldview

very real, and introduced building as an element in that relationship, conceiving the

relationship of man to building as corresponding to the relationship of building to the

universe. Whether or not these principles were strictly applied in Roman architecture—or

were even relevant—never really mattered; in part because the text of Vitruvius led Alberti

and his successors and colleagues to see Roman ruins as a kind of spiritual monument to a

24
Other letter designers to use the same fundamental framework include Sigismondo Fanti, in , Francesco
Torniello, in , Giovam Baptista Verini, in , and others, including an anonymous manuscript in the
Newberry Library from after , and the influential yet anonymous ‘Schedel’ manuscript. See Tra Latino e
volgare. Per Carlo Dionisotti, ed Gabriella Bernardoni Trezzini et al. (Padua, ) II, -, for a
bibliography of known Italian treatises from  to . One important document may have been Fra
Giocondo’s De Literis, a treatise on the letterform, only a few pages of which have survived to the present day.
This treatise would have collected all contemporary knowledge on the geometric letterform construction, much
like Alberti’s On the Art of Building formed the comprehensive handbook for architects. See Ciapponi, Lucia A.
“A Fragmentary Treatise on Epigraphic Alphabets by Fra Giocondo da Verona.” Renaissance Quarterly 
().

13
great wisdom of the past.25 They assigned to Roman architecture, and, by association,

inscriptions, a sense of cosmic perfection above and beyond any formal or functional

qualities of the work: this was the Renaissance fantasy of the antique.

It was not long before this new geometric method for constructing the Roman

capitals, so compatible with Renaissance architectural theory, was taken up by the first

classicizing architect of the time, Leon Battista Alberti. Just as Mantegna had studied the

remains of Roman architecture, learning their structure and ornament in order to better

represent them on canvas, Alberti formed both his theory and practice of architecture on the

basis of ancient texts and ruins.

Alberti’s first commission as an architect, the refurbishment of the façade of the

Church of Saint Francesco in Rimini, which he took over in , is significant for its strict

adaptation of the nearby Arch of Augustus, both in organization and in ornamentation.26

Placing the form of the classical triumphal arch on the front of a church, Alberti designed

what Robert Tavernor calls “the first modern temple.” And in letters to Matteo de Pasti, the

on-site coordinator of the refurbishment, Alberti asserts his uncompromising conception of

harmony which he would later articulate in On the Art of Building.27

25
The authoritative study of this aspect of Renaissance architecture is Rudolph Wittkower’s Architectural
Principles in the Age of Humanism. New York: Norton, .
26
Tavernor, On Alberti and the Art of Building, p.
27
In this treatise, he makes a reference to inscriptions on public secular buildings that may indicate that he was
familiar with this project at the time of writing.

14
Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini. Arch of Augustus, Rimini. ca  BC. Tavernor, p..
Leon Battista Alberti, . Tavernor, p..

Alberti’s influence is also seen in the inscriptions on the building’s new façade. Most

of the interior lettering was executed by Matteo de Pasti before Alberti took over the project:

these interior letterforms, wide and slender, combine characteristics of Ghiberti’s lettering

with forms used in Roman coins.28 But the monumental dedication on the façade of the

temple, the only inscription executed after , shows clear evidence of Alberti’s influence.

The letters are more accurately classical than any preceding examples.29 Just as the

28
Matteo de Pasti, like Feliciano, interestly, owned a collection of epigraphy by Ciriaco of Ancona. This could
explain his interest in inscriptions. See Mardersteig, “Leon Battista Alberti e la rinascita del carattere lapidario
romano nel Quattrocento”
29
Specifically, in the letters M and N we find the correct, antique, sequence of strokes for the first time. See
Mardersteig, “Leon Battista Alberti e la rinascita del carattere lapidario romano nel Quattrocento”

15
proportions of the architecture, per Alberti’s insistence, were modeled on antique exemplars

like the Arch of Augustus, the letters were held by the same rule.30

In a later project of Alberti’s,

the  Capella Rucellai in

Florence, however, an inscription

with radically new lettering appears.

A sepulcher inside the chapel bears

letterforms that, for the first time in

an architectural inscription, adhere

to the same square and circle

construction found in Feliciano’s

treatise, completed four years

earlier.31 Whereas Alberti’s lettering

on the Tempio Malatesta had relied

on a close observation of the Arch of Rucellai Sepulchre, San Pancrazio, Florence.

Leon Battista Alberti, after . Tavernor, p..

Augustus, here Alberti seizes upon

30
Alberti not once refers to letterforms in his writing. One section of his De Re Aedificatoria, (VIII.) might
possibly refer to the work done in Rimini before Alberti’s arrival and take-over, but merely refers to an
occasional practice, with no further details.
31
Sperling, Leon Battista Alberti’s Inscriptions on the Holy Sepulchre in the Cappella Rucellai, San Pancrazio,
Florence. p..

16
the rationalizing geometry of Feliciano’s square and circle construction and applies it even

more systematically to his own alphabet.32 Accordingly, while the San Pancrazio alphabet

takes slimmer and more elegant proportions than does Feliciano’s manuscript alphabet, it

also shows some of the odd irregularities of Feliciano’s work. In a notable application of the

symmetry implied by construction in a perfect square, Alberti’s Z is actually the shape of an

N turned on its side, serifs and all.33

Alberti’s San Pancrazio Alphabet. Olivetti/Alberti Group. Tavernor, p..

32
Alberti adds to Feliciano’s figures a consideration of the width of the serifs, bringing the proportion of the
width of the foot of each letter to its stroke width to :, the same proportion Vitruvius puts forth as the ratio
of the height of a man to the size of his foot.
33
Either the sculptor was confused between the Z or N, or, more likely, it was an improvisation, since, the Z
was not included in the Latin alphabet, and Greek letters were not included in Alberti’s design. See Mardersteig,
“Leon Battista Alberti e la rinascita del carattere lapidario romano nel Quattrocento.”

17
 These letters probably did not have very much impact on artistic development, as

they were only visible to the small number of people who entered the Capella Rucellai. Three

years later, however, Alberti used the same style in a monumental inscription, a half meter

high, on the façade of the Santa Maria Novella in Florence, his most famous building. With

these letterforms, Alberti officially adopted Feliciano’s theory of letterforms as an integral

element of his architecture. But the flow of ideas was not clearly unidirectional. Solid

evidence of contact between Alberti and Feliciano is slim; however, the two thinkers,

circulating in the tightly-knit antiquarian circles of Florence, Mantua and Rome, would have

had many opportunities to meet.34 In any case, the ideas of geometric construction

circulating around the antiquarian circles of Padua and Florence were clearly tied to

historical, architectural and typographical developments of the mid fifteenth century.

In no small part due to the forceful monumentality and beauty of the inscriptions on

the Santa Maria Novella, the Roman block capital quickly gained popularity among Italian

artists, craftsmen, and architects. Advanced by the force of Leon Battista Alberti’s stature and

influence, the Roman inscriptional capital replaced the mix of gothic styles as the common

artistic vocabulary of sculptors, architects, and painters. From this point forward, practical

handbooks for geometric construction would be published every year or two and circulated

throughout Italy in manuscript or wood-block printing.35

34
Mardersteig, “Leon Battista Alberti e la rinascita del carattere lapidario romano nel Quattrocento.”
35
The first printed treatise on the construction of letters was executed in  by Damiano Da Moyle in Parma.
Sigismondo Fanti (), Francesco Torniello (), Giovanni Baptista Verini (ca. ) all produced
alphabetical constructions that were circulated in printed editions. See Mardersteig, Giovanni. “Introduction to
Alphabetum Romanum.” p.. Others followed, and by the s, woodcut printing of alphabetical treatises

18
 The next synthesis of mathematics, architecture, and lettering occurs in an

encyclopedic text written by the Franciscan monk Luca Pacioli in .36 The treatise is

composed of three books, the first on arithmetic, geometry and proportion, the second on

architecture, and the third on three-dimensional Platonic shapes, all, now, significantly,

under the umbrella title of De Divina Proportione, “Divine Proportion.” Pacioli was a

practical mathematician, known not for his originality but rather for his ability to compile

and assemble, reintroducing to his Renaissance contemporaries the then-obscure principles

of algebra and accounting. And yet, even in his title he refers to the religious aspects implicit

in Platonic geometry, which the square-and-circle construction draws upon. With De Divina

Proportione, Pacioli brought this form to high refinement.

Luca Pacioli, De Divina Proportione. D.

had spread to Belgium. See Carpo, Mario. Architecture in the Age of Printing, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press,
, p..
36
Three versions of the book were printed in Venice shortly thereafter.

19
 Pacioli’s alphabet is based on the same square-and-circle construction that had

guided Alberti in the Santa Maria Novella. This is not surprising, since Pacioli had been in

contact with Alberti since his youth, and actually lived in Alberti’s house in Rome during the

last year of the architect’s life.37 Pacioli was also in touch with Mantegna, and through his

circle could have been influenced by Feliciano’s manuscript. It seems likely that he used

other alphabetical sources as well.38 Perhaps as a result, Pacioli was a little less dogmatic than

his predecessors Alberti and Feliciano, using the thickness of the strokes to somewhat ease

the distortions involved in fitting letters like the N, R, and H into a perfectly square scaffold.

His letters are calligraphic, rather than epigraphic; he drops the three-dimensional shading

that Feliciano had used to emulate stone-carving, and, in so doing, Pacioli drops some of the

pretense that these constructions are faithful copies.

It is important to note that Pacioli’s treatise on the construction of letters appears as a

chapter within his section on architecture. Pacioli explicitly attributes the idea of the square-

and-circle construction to Vitruvius, bringing in the ideas of the proportions of the human

body and proportions of architecture that he surely must have inherited from Alberti. Yet,

like Feliciano, he does not mention the source of this line of thinking, nor does he offer hints

as to how the geometric construction was applied to artistic lettering. It seems that, to Pacioli,

the concept of geometric construction is so obvious as to need no explanation; it is timeless.

In fact, Pacioli’s obvious reverence for the geometric “proportion and

proportionality” that governs all of the arts in The Divine Proportion reflects the attitudes of

37
Taylor, R. Emmet. Luca Pacioli and his Times, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, , p..
38
Taylor, p.. Georg Dehio offers the theory that Pacioli also could have used as his source an anonymous
manuscript discovered by Hartman Schedel. See Dehio , pp. -.

20
the Paduan antiquarian circle and their readings of antique Platonic literature. His alphabet

is a visual realization of those Platonic principles, now released both from the concern with

content characteristic of earlier lettering and from reliance on archeological examples still

visible in Feliciano’s manuscript and Alberti’s earlier work. A creation of pure artistic form,

the content of the alphabet now lay buried in its design.

4. Other Perspectives

Pacioli and the tradition he represented was not the only voice in the development of the

Renaissance letterform. There are a couple of important exceptions to the geometric

construction that, through contrast, show how the form that Pacioli perfects is a uniquely

humanist creation. One of these voices is the great Northern artist Albrecht Dürer, whose

quest for beauty led him to observe nature with a meticulousness and care unmatched by his

peers, ultimately and inevitably causing him to reject the academic constructs of his Italian

contemporaries.

Dürer had always been fascinated by the secrets of the Italian masters; in his youth he

had copied two engravings by Mantegna.39 In  the young artist made a trip to Italy to

learn the secret of perspective from its source, and, bringing his knowledge back to Germany,

continued his career as artist and teacher. Twenty years later, he published a comprehensive

painter’s manual, Unterweysung der Messung. This practical handbook to complex geometric

39
Panofsky, Erwin. The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, , p..

21
constructions followed the tradition of Italian craftsmans’ manuals of the same kind, and it

included a complete section on the construction of the Roman antique block capital.

Albrecht Dürer. Unterweysung der Messung. R. p..

During his stay in Bologna, Dürer most likely had contact with Luca Pacioli,40 and,

on first glance, their two alphabets look remarkably similar. In fact, Dürer’s alphabet is based

on one of the very same sources that inspired Pacioli.41 But there is one crucial difference

between Dürer’s alphabet and all of the others which preceded it: he explicitly and

consistently calls for freehand sketching. Dürer writes in his construction of the letter B,

“these bulges will never become perfect parts of circles because you must draw them by

moving the compass to different positions along the oblique lines and then make some

freehand adjustments.”42 Pacioli’s treatise would never have admitted as much; at one point

Pacioli reminds the reader, “let not scribes and illuminators complain if such necessity has

40
Pacioli is the most likely candidate for Dürer’s mentor during his stay in Bologna, and was probably the
contact through which Dürer came into contact with the teachings of Leonardo da Vinci. See Rupprich, ,
p., and Strauss , p. .
41
Dehio argues that Dürer’s text follows the anonymous Schedel manuscript more closely than it does Pacioli’s
text, indicating that both Dürer and Pacioli shared the Schedel manuscript as a source, rather than, as
previously understood, Dürer having used Pacioli’s alphabet as inspiration. See Dehio, , pp. -,
noted in Strauss, Walter. “Introduction to A Painter’s Manual.” p..
42
Dürer, Albrecht. A Painter’s Manual, p..

22
brought to light the fact that the two essential lines, straight and curved, always suffice for all

things which have to be made in their art.”43

Dürer distances himself from Pacioli in other ways. He circumspectly omits any

textual reference to the golden section, so important to Pacioli throughout the Divina

Proportione, and he avoids Euclid’s pentagon construction, which depends on the knowledge

of that proportion.44 Furthermore, Dürer questions the very existence of an alphabetical

archetype, the foundation of all geometric constructions. Roman inscriptions had several

versions of each letter, each subtly responsive to its neighbors: of these variations, Pacioli is

able to avoid all but the letter O, which he supplies with both vertical and slanted stress. But

Dürer, on the other hand, supplies alternates for  of the  letters in his alphabet, and

three versions of the A, M, and N.

Erwin Panofsky wrote that “after his return from Venice Dürer was forever

convinced that there was not one absolute beauty—not even in the Apollos and Venuses of

classical Antiquity—but many forms of relative beauty…conditioned by the diversity of

breeding, vocation and natural disposition.”45 Dürer rejected Alberti’s notion of human

measure, preferring Leonardo’s greater interest in proportion and “correspondence,” and his

studies of the human body, accordingly, show an attention to ranges of body types and facial

features that most artists had neglected. He was therefore particularly attuned to the subtle

variations in the original letterforms.

43
Taylor, p.. Feliciano mentioned that the tail of the letter R could not be constructed with a compass, but
this was his only exception.
44
Strauss, p..
45
Panofsky, p.. He is referring to Dürer’s  trip.

23
 Furthermore, Dürer, though heavily influenced by his Italian neighbors, was not

himself a humanist scholar. He had always meticulously copied from nature, and probably

never replicated an actual classical statue or relief.46 That particularly Italian passion for

uncovering the infallible wisdom of the ancients is missing in Dürer’s work; his scientific

approach to art made it impossible for him to ignore the subtleties and delicate adjustments

of the ancient alphabet, refinements that the learned humanists ignore for the sake of their

ideal geometric forms.

While Dürer represents a contemporary alternative to the geometric construction, if

we look fifty years in Pacioli’s future we already see an Italian reaction in the alphabet of

Giovan Francesco Cresci, published in  as Essemplare and then refined in  as Il

Perfetto Scrittore. In the earlier version, Cresci emphatically rejected the still-prevalent

practice of compass construction, noting,

I have come to the conclusion that if Euclid, the prince of geometry, returned to this
world of ours, he would never find that the curves of the letters could, by means of
circles made with compasses, be constructed according to the proportion and style of
the ancient letters.47

Upon closer examination of the ancient prototypes, Cresci came to identify those

adjustments and subtleties that made the ancient inscriptions so dynamic, and recorded some

of them:

let no one marvel if on measuring the capitals (as, for example, the A) he finds that
the transversal is thinner than the first (left) stroke, for if it were as thick, it would,
being shorter, seem even thicker. Similar and other differences in measurement

46
Panofsky, p..
47
Cresci, Giovan Francesco. Essemplare, . Quoted by Donald Anderson, “Introduction to a Renaissance
Alphabet,” .

24
 should be carefully considered in the stems and bodies of the letters B. D. G. T. Q. R.
as well as in those letters without bodies. Such considerations please the eye of the
beholder.48

Cresci, Giovan Francesco. Il Perfetto Scrittore. R.

Some of these particular considerations were not new to the art of drawing

letterforms. The varying widths of strokes were details that Feliciano and Pacioli could not

ignore in their drawings but nevertheless would not dignify with mention or explanation; as

always, there are aspects of the drawn letters that go unmentioned in the text. Cresci’s

letterforms, even more than Dürer’s, are radically non-geometric, defined primarily by the

delicate curves of a sensitive and controlled hand, and only subordinately by a geometric

guide. And in his later version Cresci refined his critique of the geometric construction,

asserting that the art of drawing these letters was beyond the purview of any mathematical

rule. He cites the example of painting:

48
Cresci, Giovan Francesco. Il Perfetto Scrittore. .

25
 Although there are rules and proportions to assure that in painting a beautiful figure
its various parts are in harmony, nevertheless, there are still some painters who are so
studious in their craft and so favoured by heaven in their art that despite rules, they
will infuse more life, energy and grace into their figures than will another no matter
how good a painter he may be. I repeat, then, that the possibility of study in these
capitals is so limitless that one should not attempt to lay down precise rules about
them or any other matter which someone, as I have shown in my example, could
surpass in grace and beauty.

Cresci was the first to explicitly recognize the sensitive optical adjustments in ancient

lettering. And unlike Dürer’ intuitive and almost unconscious approach—the product of an

ingrained artistic sense—Cresci’s attention to detail is explicit and intentional.

Both of these alphabets embrace aspects of the form of the ancient capital letter that

the humanist constructions had universally disregarded. What those scholars had seen as

inconsistencies to be smoothed out from their perfect archetype, artists like Dürer and Cresci

saw as subtleties to be admired. This contrast shows how the constructed alphabet, labeled as

a framework for accurately reproducing the beauty of the antique letters, was actually a

product of the humanist imagination—a fiction fueled by the Renaissance fascination with

geometry and form.

Given the overwhelming acceptance of the geometric construction among

Renaissance humanists, it is remarkable that nobody seemed quite sure of its origin. This

could have been a result of the manner in which new ideas could quickly circulate by word of

mouth in the tight intellectual circles of Padua and Florence, leaving little written trace of

their development. Finally, it was a foreigner, thoroughly steeped in the humanist tradition

but distanced from the intellectual frenzy of Italy, who would be the first to attempt to

26
answer this question of origins. In doing so, he will instill the formal alphabetical construct

with a new meaning of its own.

27
Part Two: Geofroy Tory

5. Geofroy Tory

The derivative mold of the alphabetic treatise, largely unimproved since Pacioli’s 

Divine Proportione, was broken by the publication of a polemic on the use of the French

language by a Parisian printer and scholar named Geofroy Tory. Champfleury, his final

publication and crowning artistic achievement, published in , has as its centerpiece a

geometric alphabetical construction. On the surface, this book offers yet another familiar

circle-and-square handbook, coupled this time with lectures on diction, orthography, and

civic duty. But Champfleury is, in fact, unique. Unsatisfied with the soulless formal

constructions of Italian alphabetical engineering, Tory devotes the majority of his book to an

extended attempt to explicate the meaning, what he calls the “ancient allegory,” behind the

letterforms themselves.

Such an endeavor could only be accomplished by a man of prodigious education, and

in this respect, Geofroy Tory was eminently worthy of his task. Born in  in the

provincial capital of Berry, Tory immediately followed his university education with an

extended trip to Italy. He studied at the small but cosmopolitan humanist university La

Sapienza in Rome, and attended the lectures of Filippo Beroaldo, an eminent Latin scholar,

28
in Bologna. He then returned to Paris, serving as a professor at the College of Plessis for four

years before embarking on his ultimate career as an editor and printer.49 Tory’s work,

accordingly, calls upon an impressive catalogue of Latin and occasionally Greek texts. Nor

does Tory limit himself to the antique canon; rather, Tory’s willingness to cite writers from

all historical periods, medieval and late antique included, stands in contrast to the

Renaissance focus on the antique as an isolated historical source.

Geofroy Tory, monogram.

Reprinted in Bernard, p..

Tory’s exposure to humanism and ancient scholarship was not exclusively academic,

either. In , he edited and published a manuscript of Alberti’s On The Art of Building,

and his exposure to this treatise radically influenced his intellectual direction. Since his

return from Italy, Tory had signed all of his writings with the motto civis (citizen). But in the

very next book he published following Alberti’s treatise, the Itinerarium Antonini, this motto

49
Bernard, Auguste. Geofroy Tory: Painter and Engraver: First Royal Printer: Reformer of Orthography and
Typography under Francois I: An Account of his Life and Words. Trans. George B. Ives. Cambridge, Mass:
Riverside Press, . p.. Though it concentrates mostly on his iconography and imagery, this book offers the
most complete picture of Tory’s life that is available

29
appears in a distinctive symmetrical arrangement, strongly hinting of an architectural plan.

Shortly afterwards, determined to study classical forms at their source, Tory abandoned his

professorship and embarked on a second artistic journey to Italy.50

In addition to its erudition, Champfleury is also notable for the extraordinary

audacity of its author. The book was a two-pronged attempt to improve French rhetoric,

both written and oral. Geofroy Tory had taken it upon himself to promote the use of the

French vernacular language over the academic Latin: he was the one to introduce the set of

French accents and the cedilla in order to foster proper diction.51 And to potential critics,

Tory leaves a warning:

I can see lying in ambush someone who would gladly find fault, and would strive to
injure me if he could, but who, fearing lest, if he should show himself, I should
instantly put him to silence by piercing his tongue with my trustworthy compass,
and beating him with my unerring rule, will hold his peace, methinks.52

Tory’s arrogant tone, bold assertions, and questionable logic make it very difficult to come to

terms with his legacy, Champfleury. Auguste Bernard, Tory’s early twentieth century

biographer, wrote, “The second book of ‘Champ fleury’ is, I apprehend, only a paradox; but

that paradox is maintained by arguments so ingenious, that one lacks courage to condemn

it.”53 Champfleury does invite a profound skepticism of both the manic breadth of Tory’s

sources, most of questionable relevance, and the baseless and anachronistic logic of his

50
Bernard, p.. The date of the trip has never been precisely determined, but must have been sometime after
.
51
Ferd. Brunot, Histoire de la Langue francaise, Paris, Colin, . Also, Beaulieux, Charles. Histoire de la
Formation de l’Orthographe Francaise, pp.-, and Les Accents et autres signes auxiliares dans la Langue
Francaise, pp. -, Paris, Champion, . Noted by Cohen, Gustave. “Introduction to Champfleury” xiv.
52
Tory, p..
53
Bernard, p..

30
conclusions. And yet the former makes the read a fascinating adventure, and the latter reveals

his intentions with an almost childlike transparency. Furthermore, the extremes to which

Tory takes his investigation, coupled with his consummate egotism, do not necessarily make

him a total anomaly among his contemporaries. Ultimately, as I will demonstrate, Tory

represents an exaggeration of strains of thought already latent in Renaissance humanist circles.

However, before discussing Tory in the context of his contemporaries, it will be necessary to

examine his remarkable works as they stand on their own.

To begin, the formal aspects of Tory’s alphabet are unexceptional. Tory criticizes

Albrecht Dürer for having “gone astray in the proper proportions of the designs of many

letters,”54 and accuses Luca Pacioli of plagiarism,55 yet Tory’s own letterforms differ only

superficially from those of his predecessors. They are based on the square and circle

construction established in Pacioli, with the additional element of an orthogonal grid

imposed behind the letter. Tory incorporates some of the details they share, such as the

circular cut from the top of the letter A, but falls towards Pacioli in his adherence to a strict

geometric construction using a compass and straightedge.56 Ultimately, perhaps as a result of

54
Tory, p..
55
Many scholars who have written on the history of the Roman letterform, including R. Emmett Taylor,
Pacioli’s biographer, has taken Tory’s assertion that Pacioli stole his alphabet from Leonardo da Vinci seriously.
(See also Donald Anderson, The Art of the Written Letterform, and Walter Strauss, “Introduction to A Painter’s
Manual.”) Notably, Giovanni Mardersteig disagrees, calling Tory’s accusation “completely unjustified.” See
Mardersteig, “Introduction to Alphabetum Romanum.” p.. Having gained a familiarity with Tory’s tendency
to exaggerate and misrepresent, I am far less inclined to do so, particularly because Tory is the only source for
this assertion. Furthermore, Leonardo never demonstrated an interest in letterforms, Leonardo’s attention to
correspondences and relations appears nowhere in Pacioli’s alphabet, and, finally, Pacioli’s designs are, in my
opinion, far too derivative to have been invented by such an innovative thinker as Leonardo da Vinci.
56
There are some similarities in presentation as well. As in the treatises of Alberti, Pacioli, and Dürer, the
construction of the alphabet is placed within the setting of a practical handbook, designed for the use of those
artisans and craftsmen directly responsible for the execution of artistic lettering. In each, the alphabet is a major

31
his extensive exposure to Italian scholarship, Tory mimics elements of existing work in his

own alphabet, and adds little if any innovative thought to the construction.

6. The Meaning Behind the Forms

Tory’s uniqueness lies in his search for meaning behind the very shapes of the letters

themselves. By the s, the time that Tory is writing, the square-and-circle construction

mentioned off-hand by Feliciano and unimproved since the publication of Alphabetum

Romanum must have entered the shared knowledge base of humanist scholars. The

instructions in published handbooks of the time, following Feliciano’s precedent, were

pragmatic sequences of steps, offering no insight into the reasoning or research of their

authors. Even the architect Alberti does not mention the inscriptional form in any of his

writings. Tory the scholar senses this dearth with frustration, noting, “Frere Lucas

Paciol…who has essayed to draw the Attic letters, says nothing about them, nor gives

explanations…Nor does Sigismund Fante, a noble Ferrarian, who teaches how to write many

sorts of letters, give explanations; & the like is true of Messire Ludovico Vincentino,”57 all of

those mentioned having also published alphabetical handbooks.

If the origins of these techniques were well-known among Italian intellectuals and

were thereby simply unnecessary to mention, the fact that Tory is confused by this means

part of a larger compendium of relevant information. Furthermore, Tory’s endorsement of the local vernacular
was an opinion shared by his Italian contemporaries. While Alberti’s On the Art of Building, intended for
scholars, was written in Latin, many of his and Pacioli’s other treatises used and celebrated the native Tuscan
dialect. Dürer’s Painter’s Manual, similarly, was written in German.
57
Tory, p.

32
that he was on the outside of this circle of knowledge. This inference is supported by several

facts. First, Tory was a foreigner, educated in Rome but not exposed to the scholarly

communities in Florence and Padua where advances in letterform construction had initially

been made. More importantly, Tory appears to have had only a superficial understanding of

architecture and a meager understanding of the principles of proportion that Vitruvius and

Alberti discuss in their works. These principles would have been essential to any sound

explanation of the square and circle method behind Feliciano’s original alphabet.58

In any case, frustrated by this wealth of practical writing with no accompanying

reasoning or scholarship besides an occasional offhand reference to Vitruvius or aesthetic

impression, but knowing that the square-and-circle construction must have a humanist basis,

Tory became the first writer to document a search for an underlying meaning that he

believed nobody else had even considered. He writes, “I have found no author, Greek or

Latin or French, who has written or drawn these things as I have now done. I make them

only the better to set forth the meaning, the secret, and the allegory of the Ancients.”59

Fundamental to this search is the preconception of the alphabet as a static and

perfectly harmonious set. Tory presumed the existence of the alphabetic archetype as

established by Feliciano, even though he held a strikingly good grasp of the geography of the

58
This is intermittently shown by Tory’s suboptimal choices of quotations, or reliance on intuition above
suitable quotation. For instance, Feliciano, Alberti, and others had privileged the number ten based entirely the
solid precedents of Plato and Vitruvius. Tory, on the other hand, writes, “Nature, he [Vitruvius] says, has so
constituted the human body that the space occupied by the face…is the tenth part of the body…The same
Vitruvius, a little further on…divides the human body into six parts…Martianus Capella…divides the body of
man into seven parts…I will pass by the division into six parts, which is known to all, and will pause at that
into seven parts, and ten; that is to say, the seven Liberal Arts, and the nine Muses with their inspirer Apollo.
(Tory, p.).
59
Tory, p.

33
transmission of the letterform, from Phoenicia to Greece to Rome.60 Accordingly, while he

admits that the alphabet is a human “invention,” he nevertheless insists that

knowledge & inspiration of letters comes to us from Heaven and from God; that
these letters are so closely akin and so nearly connected that they all have a share in
each other; likewise the Sciences, and consequently the Virtues.61

Champfleury is Tory’s argument for this hypothesis. Tory seeks the significances of both the

basic shapes of the letters and their proportions, calling upon the long-standing tradition of

allegorical interpretation. He finds hints within the letterforms themselves in order to prove

their divinity and perfection.

7. Exegesis of the Alphabet

What results can only be described as an exegesis of the alphabet. In an attempt to prove the

divine inspiration of the letter forms, he treats them much as one would treat a divine text.

In keeping with traditions of biblical exposition and literary criticism characteristic of late

antiquity and the middle ages, Tory reads several levels of meaning into the shape, structure,

and proportion of the letters.

The title of Tory’s work, Champfleury, is a good compass to introduce us to his world.

Despite Tory’s insistence that he chose the title for the “grace and smoothness of the name”

alone,62 the name is relevant to our understanding of the book. Literally, the French word

Champfleury means “flowery fields,” as Tory later describes, “the vast fields of poesy and

60
Tory, p.-. Tory admirably notes here that “as to the invention of letters, there are different opinions.”
61
Tory, p..
62
Tory, viii.

34
rhetoric, full of fair and wholesome & sweet-smelling flowers of speech.”63 This striking

metaphor is possibly referring to a collection of poetry published by Tory’s contemporary,

Antoine Vérard, around , entitled Le Jardin de Plaisance et fleur de Rhétorique (“The

garden of pleasure and the flowers of rhetoric”). 64 The flowers in this work represent

knowledge awaiting contemplation, and Tory uses similar imagery when he describes

variations of the letters in Champfleury, noting that “when the flowers & violets are in all

their vigour & beauty, I see that in a garden some pluck, for their pleasure, a lovely red rose

or a white one, others a wall-flower or a pretty violet…so in like manner you can use Hebrew

letters, or Greek, or Latin.”65 Throughout the book he equates well-formed letters with

broader knowledge: he chose a title indicating the wealth of knowledge he offers to those

inclined to pluck it. But as Cohen notes, Champfleury could also refer to “camp flori,” a

poetic idiom for Paradise in thirteenth century French verse, such as the metrical romance

Floire et Blancheflor, which was popular throughout Western Europe.66 Indeed, throughout

the book, Tory presents knowledge of “well-formed letters” as the path to Heaven and moral

virtue. The title, more than a pretty name, foreshadows the significance of the journey to

come.

The process of associating meaning is the core tool of biblical exegesis, or the

allegorical readings of biblical and literary texts. It is fundamentally based on a conception of

63
Tory, xxiii.
64
Published in facsimile by the Société de Anc. Textes Francais, . See “Introduction to Champ-fleury”,
Gustave Cohen, viii.
65
Tory, p.
66
Floire et Blancheflor, st verse, . See for other usages Godefroy, Dictionnaire de L'ancienne Langue
Francaise, Complément, IX, p., cols. a and b.

35
a universe with an underlying unity that transcends time: regardless of authorship or date,

every story contributes its intertwined meanings to the unity and beauty of the whole.67 Thus,

all interpreted connections, even those that are rationally groundless, are nevertheless valid

and meaningful. Obviously this process is not a strictly logical one. Defying causality, it is

instead characterized by anachronism, a kind of timelessness. The distinguishing feature of

the exegesis that results is what I choose to call proof by comparison: for the biblical exegete

such as Tory, a similarity in content is sufficient evidence to assert a factual link, regardless of

historical fact.

During the upheaval of paganism and the spread of Christianity after the fall of

Rome in the fourth century, allegory proved a powerful tool for the very reason of its

timelessness, because it enabled those wishing to preserve the Old Testament to show how it

“prefigured” the New. For this reason, among others, allegorical interpretation of scripture

would dominate biblical scholarship in late antiquity. Christian and pagan scholars also

applied the process to literature, particularly the revered Roman poet Virgil. These

techniques lived on in allegorical art throughout the early middle ages, and regained their

popularity in literature and monastic scholasticism in the twelfth century. Christ-affirming

allegorical interpretations would remain a hallmark of biblical exegesis from then on. In

Tory’s work, we can see both the methodology and the unbridled enthusiasm of medieval

biblical scholars engaged in this style of reading.

67
Robertson, D.W. A Preface to Chaucer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, , p..

36
 A popular framework for understanding allegory has come to us from antiquity, and,

though it was by no means universal, it can help guide us through Tory’s wandering

interpretation of the geometric alphabetical construction. It involves four levels of allegorical

meaning: the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical (“leading upward,” or

referring directly to salvation). The Italian allegorical poet Dante best explains:

This mode of treatment, for its better manifestation, may be considered in this verse:
“When Israel came out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from a people of strange
speech, Judaea became his sanctification, Israel his power.”

For if we inspect the letter alone the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt in
the time of Moses is presented to us; if the allegory, our redemption wrought by
Christ; if the moral sense, the conversion of the soul from the grief and misery of sin
to the taste of grace is presented to us; if the anagogical, the departure of the holy
soul from the slavery of this corruption to the liberty of eternal glory is presented to
us.68

These four levels of meaning, each more specific than the next, will guide us in sorting

through Tory’s interpretations of the alphabetical forms in Champfleury. The basic reading is

the most general, involving only the formal characteristics of those letters, such as Tory’s

choice of a stroke-ratio of :, his use of a compass and straight-edge for construction, and

the circle and square scaffold over which each letter was imposed. At this level, Tory’s

alphabet differs very little from its predecessors.

Tory left the beaten path of alphabetical constructions and began to strike his own

ground when he began to read the letters on an allegorical level. Literary critics of pre-

Christian antiquity and the middle ages, not knowing which stories were literal and which

68
Dante Alighieri, “Epistola X,” in A Translation of the Latin Works of Dante Alighieri, tr. A. G. Ferrers Howell
and Philip H. Wicksteed (London, ), pp. -. Verse in first sentence quoted from Psalms : -.

37
actually had allegorical content, often interpreted secular stories in an allegorical manner as

well, looking for additional levels of meaning on their texts. In this allegorical style, Tory

extracts concrete aspects of the letterforms themselves, such as the stroke-ratio, the shapes of

serifs and the positioning of cross-bars, with the goal of exposing the connected meanings of

the alphabet, and thereby proving its divine origins. Therefore, while he constantly reminds

us that it is he, the author, who is laying down these comparisons, he remains equally firm

that the connections do exist in an absolute sense.

Tory’s first allegorical interpretation is a sort of a creation myth for the alphabet,

comparing it to the Greek myth of Io, which was known in the Middle Ages through the

poetry of Ovid,69 and in the Renaissance by Boccaccio’s treatise De Genealogia Deorum, “The

Genealogy of the Gods.”70 To briefly summarize: Io, a young Greek maiden, falls prey to

Jupiter’s amorous advances, but Jupiter is forced to transform the girl into a cow to conceal

her from his jealous wife. After a brief imprisonment, the cow-shaped Io is rescued by the

god Mercury, and, coming to a local farmer, proves her humanity by tracing the letters “I”

and “Ω,” her name, into the earth.

Tory is not content here with Feliciano’s insubstantial comments regarding the

square and circle; he searches deeply in mythology for a more satisfying explanation of the

square and circle in the alphabetical forms. He finds the meaning of the geometric

construction partly in this myth, but only by emphasizing the subsidiary importance of the

69
Ovid, Metamorphoses. Book I, -.
70
Boccaccio’s Genealogia Deorum has not been translated into English, but for a general reference, see Coulter,
Cornelia C. “The Genealogy of the Gods.” Vassar Mediaeval Studies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
. pp.-.

38
name Io in the story. Referring to their similarities to the basic geometric shapes, Tory

attributes these two letters, I and O, as being the

foundations from which the rest of the alphabet was

constructed. 71 He writes, “the A is made from the I

alone. The B is made from the I, and from the O

divided…and in like manner all other letters are

made either from one of these two, or from both

together, as I shall show hereafter, & shall prove,

with our Lord’s assistance, by figure &

proportion.”72 In diagram, he shows how this

transformation can graphically take place.

Tory, p..
Tory further allegorizes the fable in order to

explain his own interpretation of the meaning of the letters:

Argus…signifies those who, of their rudeness & evil knowledge, persecute goodly letters & learning
with their wicked, sterile, and crude teaching…In the hands of such men, knowledge is in durance &
is not fed on the sweet herbs of grammar, or on flowers of rhetoric, but on the rough bark of
barbarism…

Mercury…will be interpreted here as the man who is diligent in seeking the purity of all goodly letters
and true knowledge, by employing for the better instruction of others both his spoken and written
words, and quelling & putting to shame the inveterate barbarisms of the unlearned.73

Tory’s background, philosophy, and purpose in writing Champfleury are all elaborated here.

Mercury is portrayed, much as Tory viewed himself, as an ideal reader and student: an

71
Tory uses the short form O (Omicron), instead of Ω (Omega), noting simply that the rounder form fits in
better with his scheme. Cf. Tory, p..
72
Tory, p..
73
Tory, p..

39
enlightened scholar seeking to apply his knowledge of letters and the arts and sciences for the

good of humankind. Here, Tory’s consistent conflation of “goodly letters and true

knowledge” reveals the fact that, in this allegory, as in Champfleury as a whole, Tory really

sees no difference between the two.

Tory illustrated the link between the letterforms and knowledge most clearly with

two diagrams depicting the letter I paired with the nine Greek Muses, agents of creative

inspiration that are often associated with the

sciences, and the letter O paired with the seven

Liberal Arts, a construction of medieval scholars.

He explains,

the nine Muses were created by the

ancients to signify covertly as many
methods for those who seek to acquire
knowledge…I make these two diagrams
the better to confirm what I have written
above, and to show how the good
Ancients were so virtuous that they were
desirous to establish in the designs of
their letters all perfection and harmony.74

Tory was not simply superimposing the Greek

Tory, p..
Muses and Liberal Arts upon the form of the

letter, nor was he just describing a similarity. Rather, having seen the connections between

the letterforms and a set of morals or values, and having explained them in writing, Tory also

found it convenient to demonstrate this relationship visually, synthesizing sets of meanings

74
Tory, p..

40
into an explanatory drawing which is a creative product itself. This expositional diagram uses

the dimensions of the letters, juxtaposed with the number of Liberal Arts, to show how the

arts and sciences latently exist within the forms of the letter. By discovering them and

illustrating them so, Tory saw himself as revealing the secret of their eternal existence to the

reader. The I is ten units high; there are nine Muses and one associated god Apollo. This was

proof by comparison: the relationships in proportion and form, for Tory, sufficed to prove a

solid and real link.

Tory, p.. Detail.

Tory begins to address the letterforms themselves in allegory when he explains his

basic geometric scaffold. Each writer of an alphabetical construction up to Pacioli had chosen

a particular stroke-width ratio; Tory chose :, explaining that the number ten matched the

sum of the nine Muses and their Apollo.75 His frame consisted of a grid of ten by ten squares,

an inscribed circle, and two diagonal lines across the square frame, all in agreement with
75
The number ten has been privileged throughout history; Tory does occasionally mention other reasons why
selects the ratio of :. For instance, on page  he quotes the poet Horace, who remarked that ‘things ten
times repeated will give you great pleasure.’ He additionally makes reference to Pythagoras’ consideration of the
number ten as perfect, attributing it to “the Ancient Fathers” (p.). This idea was repeated in Vitruvius and
later Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria, one of many sources where Tory may have come across this idea.

41
well-established precedent in alphabet design. Tory’s first original move was to overlay on

this grid the stretched-out figure of a man, recalling earlier illustrations of Vitruvius’ ten

books on architecture. While the square-and-circle construction of Feliciano alluded to this

Vitruvian arrangement, Tory was the first to make this literal reference absolutely clear.

Once he became determined to

trace a comparison between the

letterforms and the proportions of the

human body, Tory expanded the scale of

comparison to show the relationship

between the grid and the proportions of

the human face. Superimposing the O

and I upon the face, he comments on a

few of the correlations between the

letterforms and the human face, pointing

out, for instance, that “the human face

Tory, p..
adapts itself to the division, & the

division to it. The pupil of the eyes, placed upon the central horizontal line, proves to us

what I have said above, that every letter having a joint should have it exactly upon the said

central line, and not anywhere else.”76 Elsewhere he suggests that the crossbar of the letter A,

76
Tory, p..

42
which is lower than the crossbars of other letters, is so in order to cover the genitalia of the

male body over which the letter is superimposed.77

The Muses and Liberal arts re-appear at this point, with the new addition of the four

cardinal virtues—justice, strength, prudence and moderation—in several diagrams of the face

and body. They show, for Tory, that the letters, to

be thoroughly designed & made, require, through Justice, careful attention to their
height & breadth, according to their shape; through Prudence, the use of rule and
compasses; through Force, a constant and obstinate persistence in dividing and
measuring them & giving them their due proportions; through Moderation, a certain
discretion in placing them between the two chief equidistant lines.

Here, both in textual interpretation and in an explanatory diagram, Tory compares the

construction of the letters to the form of the human face and body and to the moral virtues

of man.78

Another shift in scale leads Tory to compare the letterforms to architectural figures,

making the allusion to Alberti’s comparisons between the proportions of humans and

buildings strikingly clear. Tory argues, the “A represents the gable end of the house…the

aspirate H represents the body of the house…built stoutly…to avoid the violence of high

winds.” 79 Likewise, the K represents a straight staircase, the S a spiral one. Furthermore, he

77
Tory, p..
78
Tory will emphasize this point in an anatomical diagram entitled “Lhomme Letre” (‘letter-man’), which
shows that the virtues and the organs of the human body are related in and of themselves. See Tory, p.. This
diagram is important because he leaves the bounds of the letterform entirely, pursuing the more traditional
Platonic correspondence of the human body to the divine.
79
Tory, p..

43
shows how the shapes of the letterforms could conceivably provide a floor plan for a gallery

space, or a hall or theatre.80

Tory, p.-.

Tory’s architectural studies culminate in a single page which synthesizes many of

these architectural elements into a diagram of a small church. The letters in this image

actually take their places in the church’s structure. This diagram, however, differs from other

examples of visual allegorical construction in several ways. First, several small construction

lines are added in significant places: one directly above the letter A, indicating a cross at the

precise spot that it would appear on a country church, and three others on the right-hand

80
Tory, p.. This usage of symbolism in the ground plan is strikingly similar to the design of Gothic
cathedrals, which, in plan, resembled the cruciform shape. In fact, it also curiously echoes Alberti’s
methodology. In On the Art of Building, Alberti describes a method for constructing columnal ornamentation
using permutations of the shapes of the letters L, S, and C in a very literal way. See Alberti, VI., p.-,
and Carpo, Architecture in the Age of Printing, p..

44
side, representing the architectural detail of a chimney. Finally, the typographical layout of

the entire page represents a colossally out-of scale cruciform, also fittingly placed at the top of

the architectural construction. All of these creative elements are, like the previous allegorical

interpretations, aimed at showing us the perfect harmony of these letters, “that our said Attic

letters need to be so logically made that they may be conscious in themselves, instinctively, of

all due proportion and of the art of architecture.”81

While we have only begun to explore the rich and winding path of meaning that

Tory weaves through the alphabetical forms, we have experienced a taste of the breadth and

enthusiasm with which Tory searches for meaning through the process of comparison, and

how he conflates the knowledge of well-formed letters with knowledge of the arts and

sciences. But in addition, many of these diagrams bear messages of moral significance to the

reader. References to the four Cardinal Virtues, the three Graces, or the pursuit of virtue all

reveal Tory sees the road to literacy and well-formed letters and the road to virtue itself as

coincident.

At this moral level of interpretation of the alphabet, Tory’s literacy comes to the fore.

Like his counterparts in late antiquity, he relies on literary material of well-known antique

poets to add a depth of imagery to his moral interpretations of the letterforms. The third

level of biblical exegesis allows the interpreter to find in a text moral relevance for the present

day reader. And as Tory nears the end of the alphabetical sequence, reaching the uniquely

81
Tory, p..

45
charged letter Y, he comes to an opportunity to combine his formal and literary

sensitivities—clearly putting forth the moral of this whole endeavor.

Tory, p.-.

The letter Y has been associated with Pythagoras since antiquity.82 It has been said to

have been invented by the Greek philosopher, who allegedly believed that it represented the

forked path of the choice between virtue and vice. An epigram by the minor Latin poet

Maximinus has preserved this association to the present:

The letter of Pythagoras, which is divided into two horns,

Shows us in its shape the course of our mortal life;
Inasmuch as the noble path of Virtue stretches away on the right side,

82
Upsher Smith Jr., Richard. “The Pythagorean Letter and Virgil’s Golden Bough.” Dionysius. XVIII ():
-, p..

46
 In such wise that at the beginning it is narrow and very difficult,
But at the end, and above, it widens and affords space for repose.
The other road, which is broad, offers a very easy passage,
But at the end there is much stumbling
Over many a sharp stone, huge rock, and steep cliff.
Of a surety he who shall endure heat and cold,
and such matters, to reach the side of Virtue,
Shall acquire all praise and all honour.
But he who like a sluggard shall follow every sort of idleness and riotous living,
Whilst unthinkingly he shuns all toil & labour,
He is all bemused that he remains infamous, poor, and wicked,
And that he has passed his time wretchedly and employed it ill.83

Tory quotes this verse in his explanation of the letter Y, mistakenly attributing it to Virgil.84

The importance here, and the distinction between this allegorical interpretation and others,

like the Virgilian flageolet discussed earlier, is that this letter illustrates the path of the reader

towards the moral achievement of virtue and honor; it allegorizes every man’s choice between

heaven and hell. Tory draws two synthetic illustrations to show clearly the journey to heaven

and hell represented by the form of the letter Y, each more richly pedagogic than the last. In

the first diagram, Tory hangs on the broad road of pleasure “a sword, a scourge, rod, a gibbet

& a flame, to show that at the end of Pleasure wait & follow all lamentable ills & grievous

torments,” illustrating even for the densest reader the consequences of moral choice, as

pictured by the fork in the letter Y. To depict the alternatives to vice, he festoons the

narrower road of Virtue, the right-hand form of the letter Y, with “a laurel wreath, palm

leaves, a scepter, and a crown, to give it to be known and understood that from Virtue

83
The original poem by Maximinus can be found in Poetae Latini Minores by Emil Baehrens, IV, . Quoted
in Tory, p..
84
As we shall discuss later, this mistake is not an error on Tory’s part, but is attributable to his source, literary
critic Servius. See Comparetti, Domenico. Vergil in the Middle Ages. Trans. E. F. M. Benecke. Hamden, CT:
Archon Books, , p..

47
proceed all pure glory, all reward, all honor, and all royal preeminence.”85 In the second

explanatory diagram, which deserves close examination, Tory vividly portrays the dangers

involved in the path to virtue, explicitly alluding to Dante’s Divine Comedy,86 alongside the

temptations of vice and consequent fires of Hell.

Just as Dante, through poetry and autobiography in his Divine Comedy, had shown

the reader the difficult path to heaven, so Tory, through this illustration of the letter Y, gives

a well-intentioned if slightly condescending version of the very same thing. He writes,

look well to it, therefore, O ye young children, & leave not behind you the
knowledge of well-made letters—the true buckler against adversity and all ills, and
the means to attain to the supreme felicity of this mortal life, which is perfect
virtue.87

This statement of intent applies not just to this single letter; rather, it has been relevant all

along. For instance, in his perspective drawing of Virgil’s flute, we notice the caption

“Virgil’s Flute, in perspective, and morality.”88 Likewise, the four cardinal Virtues bordering

the superimposition of the human face upon the Vitruvian grid are meant to represent this

synonymity: by telling how the letters require “through Moderation, a certain discretion in

placing them between the two chief equidistant lines,”89 he is comparing the reader’s

85
Tory, p.. This last phrase could veil an autobiographical reference, as Tory by that time had achieved a
certain “royal preeminence” for himself, as the official printer of the French monarch.
86
Tory places along the right-hand path to Virtue three dangerous beasts, first a leopard, then a lion, then a
wolf, exactly mirroring the procession Dante faces in the first canto of the Inferno. Dante writes “and almost
where the hillside starts to rise—look there!—a leopard, very quick and lithe, a leopard covered with a spotted
hide,” and, a few lines later, “but hope was hardly able to prevent the fear I felt when I beheld a lion.” Finally,
“and then a she-wolf showed herself; she seemed to carry every craving in her leanness.” Dante Alighieri, Inferno,
Canto I, lines -.
87
Tory, p..
88
Tory, p..
89
Tory, p..

48
placement of those letters to the reader’s adequate demonstration of the virtue of Moderation.

And so on through several examples throughout the alphabetical construction, through the

Pythagorean Y, until he reaches the final letter and so must bring the moral choice, once

overcome, to its ultimate conclusion in

the letter Z. He writes, describing a final

synthetic diagram of almost all the

allegorical materials covered so far,

I can say that the worthy ancient

fathers covertly and purposely
placed this as the last letter in
alphabetical order, to indicate
that those who are perfectly
accomplished & learned in well-
made letters are inspectors and
sovereign judges of the revenue
and of the knowledge of the
seven Liberal Arts & of the nine
Muses, without knowledge of
whom man can be neither
learned nor perfect…We find
there in shortened perspective
nine steps, as of a ladder…these
steps signify in allegory the
upward path to beatitude.90

Tory, p.. Detail.

The caption crowning the image reads

in Latin, roughly, as “And to each, himself, virtue is the most valuable treasure of all.”91 Like

Dante, Tory has concluded his alphabetical allegory with the anagogical meaning, the

90
Tory, p..
91
Translation by Brian Noell.

49
“upward path to beatitude,” and his story, representing the path of the reader along his own

moral trajectory, shows in a visual exposition this ultimate direction.

Tory continues his reading of the anagogical meaning of the alphabet in two ways,

each referring the reader to his ultimate spiritual salvation. His first poetic metaphor is the

golden chain of the chief Greek god Jupiter, drawn from Homer’s Iliad, which Tory uses to

draw the conclusion that “the knowledge & inspiration of letters comes to us from Heaven

and from God; that these letters are so closely akin and so nearly connected that they all have

a share in each other; likewise the Sciences, and consequently the Virtues.”92

On the surface this phrase is not so different from explanations we have gone

through previously; it shows the synchronistic relationship of all aspects of letterform,

knowledge and virtue, illustrated in Tory’s explanatory diagrams. Until this point, Tory has

shown the relationship between the letterforms and certain divine attributes, and has shown

how the quest for the right letters can be compared to the quest for moral rectitude. But in

regard to Jupiter’s chain, he asserts something different. He uses the words “comes to us

from Heaven,” which in no way refers to customary epithets of “knowledgeable reader” or

“lover of well-formed letters.” Rather, the fact that he has “adapted the Homeric chain of

gold to our model letter I” is intended to assert something far more absolute:93 despite his

admission of the historical developments and the mortal involvements with the invention of

these letterforms; Tory is showing that the letterform set is itself heaven-sent.

92
Tory, p.. See Homer, Iliad, Book VIII. “Hangs me a golden chain from heaven, and lay hold of it all of
you, gods and goddesses together- tug as you will, you will not drag Jove the supreme counsellor from heaven
to earth.” Trans. Butler.
93
Tory, p..

50
 This anagogical understanding is only made clearer by his second metaphor, the

golden bough from Virgil’s Aeneid.94 Tory employs the image of the golden bough to

represent the arts and sciences, writing, “this beautiful golden bough, like Homer’s golden

chain, signifies Learning, & its leaves, which are three-and-twenty in number, are the three-

and-twenty letters of the Alphabet.”95

There is allegorical content here but

it is of a fundamentally different nature

than it was in the expositional Y. Whereas

in the Y the letterform itself formed the

moral tale, an allegory illustrating the

journey of man towards virtue, here the

golden bough, representing such virtue and

knowledge and, by Tory’s extension, the

alphabet, is the object of that search.

Thus, instead of representing the

path of virtue, and allegorizing the journey

of the reader towards heaven, here the

Tory, p.. Detail.
knowledge of the alphabet, encapsulated in

the metaphor of the Virgilian golden bough, is virtue itself. Though Tory doesn’t mention

94
Virgil, Aeneid. Book VI.
95
Tory follows this up with a brief analysis of Sybil’s counsel to Aeneas. He argues that Virgil made Sybil’s
speech last “three-&-twenty verses; which number [Virgil] made to correspond covertly to the three-&-twenty
letters of the Alphabet, without which one can acquire neither learning nor perfect virtue.” See Tory, p..

51
this, in the Aeneid the golden bough performs the same function. Aeneas picks up the bough

before starting on his journey through the underworld, and, once he passes through, and

finds himself at the gates of the Elysian Fields, must lay down this bough to be admitted.96 In

Tory’s interpretation, the golden bough is Aeneas’ key to the afterlife, and

he who shall succeed in finding it in the great forest of the miseries of this world & in
the valleys thereof, he is an Aeneas, that is to say, a man of great qualities and worthy
of all praise…seeking the said golden bough that he might go down into the dark
places of profound meditation upon the vices & virtues of this mortal life.97

This alphabetical branch of the letters, arts, sciences, virtues and graces, amidst its multitude

of other meanings, is Tory’s key to heaven, his path to the flowery fields of Champfleury.

8. Medieval Allegorical Techniques

As incredible as Tory’s interpretations may seem, especially in comparison to the dryness of

the treatises preceding it, they are firmly rooted in traditions of late antique literary criticism

and medieval biblical scholarship. These traditions did not die in the birth of humanism but

were readily available and even pervasive throughout Renaissance Europe. The methods of

allegorical interpretation and explanatory diagrams were inspired by ancient Platonism, and,

by investigating the histories of each of these techniques, we will see how Tory employs them

all in his version of the constructed alphabet.

96
Sybil says, “no one may enter hidden depths below the earth unless he picks this bough, the tree’s fruit, with
its foliage of gold.” Aeneid, Book VI, lines -, trans. Fitzgerald. Richard Upsher Smith Jr. argues that the
golden bough and the Pythagorean Y are actually complementary symbols in Virgil’s original text. See Upsher
Smith Jr., Richard. “The Pythagorean Letter and Virgil’s Golden Bough.” Dionysius. XVIII (): -.
97
Tory, p..

52
 Tory’s misattribution of the allegorical epigram of the letter Y to Virgil leads us to

pinpoint medieval literary commentary as the source for Tory’s style of exegesis. This

mistake was not Tory’s, but rather was initially made by Servius, a fifth century Roman

writer whose popular commentary on the works of Virgil was a standard academic

supplement to the original poetry.98 Servius is a major example of the stream of allegorical

interpretation that had begun with the rising prevalence of Christianity and the necessity to

reconcile it with the paganism of the revered classic poets.

To be fair, the allegorical readings of Virgil were not entirely a fantasy of religious

revisionists. We do know, as mentioned earlier, that Virgil indulged in a veiled

autobiography in his Bucolics, a series of poems illustrating an ideal pastoral life, and that he

gave no indication of which passages were to be read literally and which carried additional

autobiographical meaning. In Servius’ age, critics often erred enthusiastically on the side of

the latter; though Servius shows remarkable restraint in comparison to his peers, he is not

immune to the temptation to allegorize or offer tenuous interpretations. For instance, in his

commentary on the very first Eclogue, Servius reads Tityrus as standing for the

autobiographical Virgil, and further explains the pine trees as representing Rome, the

fountains as poets or senators, and the shrubs as grammarians.99 We can clearly see where

Tory is drawing his inspiration.

Perhaps this constant discovery of new meanings and allusions in Virgil’s works made

an exaggerated conception of his wisdom inevitable. In various parts of his commentary,

98
Comparetti, p..
99
Comparetti, p..

53
Servius notes Virgil’s extraordinary knowledge, writing in one case that “all Vergil is full of

wisdom.”100 This theme persists, coming to a height in the Saturnalia, written by the th

century Roman neo-platonic philosopher Macrobius. The book is presented as a transcript of

conversations held by a group of friends over several days, held in the house of one of the

political leaders of the pagan intellectual movement in an increasingly Christian late imperial

Rome. Books three through six are dedicated to a discussion of Virgil’s poetic merit.

Macrobius’ commentary unabashedly venerates the poet; his cast of characters systematically

expounds on Virgil’s “authority in every branch of learning,”101 and even Servius himself is

included. 102 The ode is only occasionally interrupted by a weak opposition by Evangelus, a

one-dimensional and unsympathetically portrayed character, which is promptly and

resoundingly refuted—providing yet another opportunity to extol Virgil’s merit.

Tory picks up this attitude towards Virgil, expressing throughout Champfleury an

abiding belief that Virgil is privy to the ancient secrets he is uncovering. On uncovering a

particularly juicy interpretation, Tory calls the poet “king of all good Latin poets &

philosophers,”103 and continually lends to the Roman a sense of unimpeachable authority.

Tory’s generous endorsements show a general willingness to exaggerate in praise

characteristic of the late antique literary criticism exemplified in the commentaries of Servius

100
See Servius’s commentary on the Sixth Book of the Aeneid.
101
Macrobius, Saturnalia, ...
102
According to some scholars, Macrobius does not use Servius as an example, but rather, the text of Servius
was interpolated from Macrobius. As both of these texts were constantly abridged, added to, and generally
distorted in their transmission from antiquity to the present, we cannot accurately prove either hypothesis. See
Vide Wissowa, De Macrobii fontibus (Bresl., ), p.. Note by Comparetti, p.. Furthermore, Macrobius
does not paraphrase Servius’s actual criticism; rather, they both drew from earlier commentators. Also see
Nettleship, “Ancient Commentators on Virgil.”
103
Tory, p..

54
and Macrobius.104 Like his prototypes, he uses overblown language to conflate what he

approves of with what is universally good, perhaps explaining his ability to acknowledge the

human and historical origins of the alphabet while still maintaining its divine perfection.

However, Tory’s debt to antiquity is not limited to rhetorical techniques: Tory draws

one of his most important tools, Neoplatonic number symbolism, from Macrobius.

Numbers were given great import in ancient Greek philosophy, but Neoplatonists like

Macrobius in the fourth and fifth centuries merged the Platonic belief in a world of forms

with newer esoteric traditions of numerology and mysticism, including the revived cult of

Pythagoras.105 In addition to their mathematical value, numbers took on a mystical meaning.

This assignment of meaning and symbolism to number can be seen in the writings of

both Macrobius and Tory. In the middle of his analysis of the Virgilian flute, Tory writes,

see, therefore, how in shapely letters the worthy Ancients made use of the even and
odd numbers, as Virgil did in the first book of his Aeneid, when he said: “O thrice
and four times blessed!”106

104
But he also uses this style of extravagant praise in his commendation of contemporaries. He writes, referring
to two French authors Pierre de Sainct Cloct and Jehan Linevelois, “I think that, if they had lived…today, they
would have surpassed all Greek and Latin writers. They have, I say, in their compositions the perfect gift of
every grace in flowers of rhetoric & ancient poesy” (Tory, p.). And, praising a French draftsman Simon
Hayeneufve, he sings, “therefore, let us without pretense consecrate and dedicate his name to immortality,
declaring him to be a second Vitruvius, a holy man & good Christian” (Tory, p.).
105
Neoplatonism in the Renaissance is one of many topics covered in Selznec, Jean, The Survival of the Pagan
Gods; the Mythological Tradition and its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art. trans. Barbara F. Sessions. New
York: Pantheon Books, . For a collection of primary sources, see The Golden Chain: An Anthology of
Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy, ed. Uždavinys, Bloomington, IN : World Wisdom, Inc., . Charles
Trinkaus presents a critical point of view, commenting that Protagoras, one of the most important Neoplatonic
writers, was most often used to support already existing theories; his true intentions may not have been
completely understood. See Trinkaus, C. “Protagoras in the Renaissance: An Explanation,” Philosophy and
Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. E.P. Mahoney. Leiden: E.J. Brill, ,
p.-.
106
Tory, p.. I have translated the Latin “O terque quaterque beati!,” as it appears in Tory, into English.

55
The reference to “even and odd numbers” in this passage shows the influence of Neoplatonic

number symbolism in Tory’s writing and thought. The wording of the phrase is not a

rhetorical flourish; it alludes to a more nuanced idea which Tory grazes, but never clearly

explains. Elsewhere in Champfleury, Tory does quote Macrobius on this matter, writing,

the odd number, as Macrobius says in the first book of De Saturnalibus, represents
the male, & the even number the female, which means that, as by the conjunction of
male & female man is engendered, so by the conjunction of letters syllables are made,
and by the conjunction of syllables, words.107

The split of the integers into even and odd to represent female and male, it turns out, is an

ancient Pythagorean tradition with great significance in the eyes of Macrobius and the

Neoplatonists, which Tory picks up on but does not seem to have addressed in a manner

beyond superficial mention.108 Macrobius’ commentary, in addition to his Saturnalia, would

become a basic source to medieval scholars, and thus Macrobius, using Cicero’s text as a

scaffold from which to hang expositions on Neoplatonic doctrine, is responsible in a very

large way for transmitting Platonic doctrine to the Renaissance, and to Geofroy Tory, who

parrots it in Champfleury.

Tory’s second allusion, his remark on the meaning of Virgil’s phrase “thrice and four

times blessed,” has a history that goes far into the past.109 Macrobius says that “Virgil,

schooled in all the arts,” used that very phrase “when he wished to express that men were

107
Tory, p.. The text he is referring to is not actually a part of the Saturnalia but rather a separate
commentary on Cicero’s The Dream of Scipio: a part of the Roman orator’s important work De Re Publica,
which was based, in part, on Plato’s Republic.
108
William Stahl, translator of the Commentary, refers the reader to F.E. Robbins, “Arithmetic in Philo
Judaeus,” Classical Philology, XXVI (), . Cf. Saturnalia, p..
109
See Virgil, Aeneid, I.. The phrase is actually originally found in Homer’s Odyssey v., used in a similar
context, and was first assigned meaning by Pseudo-Iamblichus, a Pythagorean. (Stahl, Saturnalia, p.)

56
fully blessed in all respects.”110 This usage connects Virgil with the number seven, the sum of

three and four, which as Macrobius quotes Cicero, is “one might almost say, the key to the

universe.”111 Tory’s comparison of odd and even numbers to the seven Liberal Arts and nine

Muses plus Apollo is similar to Macrobius’ analysis of the lifespan of the central character in

Dream of Scipio:

…the two numbers which, when multiplied with each other, determine the life span
of the courageous Scipio, the one is even, the other odd. Indeed, that is truly perfect
which is begotten from a union of these numbers. An odd number is called male and
an even female…accordingly we are given to understand that these two numbers, I
mean seven and eight, which combine to make up the lifespan of a consummate
statesman, have alone been judged suitable for producing the World-Soul, for there
can be no higher perfection than the Creator.112

Tory and Macrobius indulge in the same type of search for numerical analogy, with the

difference that where Macrobius looked at the ancient text itself, Tory was finding meaning

in his own visual constructions, and, only by comparison, in the ancient letterforms. To him,

a connection in his own explanatory diagrams was tantamount to a connection in the actual

text. Furthermore, he shows even less cognizance of the philosophical sources of his work

than Macrobius had. Even as he had paraphrased the arguments of contemporary Platonists

and Neoplatonists, Macrobius still mentioned the classical works to which he had pretended

to refer, whereas Tory did not. And while Macrobius has a firm philosophical position, Tory

shows little evidence of understanding the philosophical meanings to which he alludes.

110
Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, I...
111
Cicero, The Dream of Scipio, v..
112
Macrobius, Saturnalia, I..-, p..

57
 Examples of numerical symbolism are also evident in Tory’s studies of language. A

curious Latin verse, quoted by Tory as an “Enigma,” begins us on this path, where number

symbolism and letter symbolism start to merge. It reads,

Confestum est numeris quicquid natura creauit,

ter tria sunt septem, septem sex, sex quoque sunt tres.
Si numeres recte, sunt bis tria, milia quinque.

Every natural thing is contained in number,

thrice three is seven, seven six, six also is three.
If you count correctly, two are three, and a thousand is five.113

Tory’s tells us the solution to this riddle: “in these two Latin wods, ter & tria, there are seven

letters…in the word septem there are six…It does not mean that...three times three are seven,

for that would not be true; but, as I have said, it refers to the number of letters contained in

the particular words set down.”114 He quickly returns to the familiar rhetoric of the

proportions of man mirroring the proportions of goodly letters, but, for a moment, he has

applied these numerical games to the operations of language and rhetoric.

In explaining the Roman numerals, Tory does a similar thing slightly differently,

explaining: “D stands for five hundred, because between D and M in alphabetical order there

are five letters—E,F,G,I,L, the K…& the aspirate H…are not counted.”115 Here he has co-

opted the very alphabetical order in order to find numerical relationships. And again,

explaining the significance of the total number of letters in the alphabet, he advises the reader

to look up the sixth book of the Aeneid,

113
Tory, p..
114
Tory, p..
115
Tory, p..

58
 where, as I have quoted, Virgil introduces the Sibyl counselling Aeneas to seek the
golden bough, and he will find that the Poet wittingly and covertly makes her speak
in three-&-twenty verses…Thus, then, in the said Golden Bough of Virgil are
comprised and covertly suggested the nine Muses, the seven Liberal Arts, the four
Cardinal Virtues, and the three Graces, which make the full number of the three-
and-twenty letters of the Alphabet.116

This method of analysis has been highly influenced by the Neoplatonic technique of

associating mystical meaning with number and quantity. Tory merged it here with his

understanding of the alphabet, a comparison that is only made possible by the assumption of

underlying unity in these different areas of study.

In these examples the influence of pagan antique Neoplatonism on Tory’s thought is

at its clearest. However, these techniques were also transmitted to the Renaissance through

religious channels. St. Augustine of Hippo (-), in his mature treatise The City of God,

which in many ways set and clarified early Christianity’s attitudes towards its pagan roots,

shows us one of these indirect paths by which Platonic philosophy passed through to the

Renaissance. In contrast to explicit literary commentary like the Saturnalia, which cites,

quotes, or at least demonstrates a debt to the past, religious expositions like The City of God

assimilate these historical viewpoints. The transfer of ideas through medieval religious

channels is fluid and communal, when compared to the transmission of philosophical

thought through antique literary criticism.

For example, Augustine remarks in a letter to a friend, “we affirm the existence of

anything only in so far as it continues and is one (in consequence of which, unity is the

116
Keep in mind that J,U, and W had not yet been added to the Roman alphabet by . See Tory, p.

59
condition essential to beauty in every form).”117 Here, he refers to a purely spiritual world

very similar to Plato’s world of forms, without mentioning Plato at all.118 The evolution of

Platonic thought through Christian theology reveals a distinct continuity from antiquity to

the Middle Ages to the Renaissance,119 which can be seen constantly in Tory’s attitudes and

rhetorical techniques.

Tory shows his reliance on this medieval religious tradition in the moral level of his

exegesis, for which he uses the tool of visual synthetic expositions. These graphic

constructions (for instance, his construction of the Virgilian flute) draw many features from

the medieval technique of artistic and architectural allegory in biblical scholarship. The

organizational techniques that Tory uses in his explanatory diagrams are rooted in the

ancient rhetorical technique of memory devices.

The antique conception of memory was considered as a part of rhetoric,120 but it also

had an ethical significance. In the earliest canons of philosophy, Aristotle writes that the

117
Saint Augustine, Letter . The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume .
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/.htm. Noted by Zoubov, V, “Leon Battista Alberti et les auteurs du
moyen-age.” Medieval and Renaissance Studies  (), p..
118
Augustine was in fact highly indebted to Platonic philosophy, particularly the Timaeus. He spent a
significant portion of his youth as a member of the Manichaen sect before converting to Christianity, and held
the Enneads of Plotinus, a Neoplatonist, in high regard. See Dyson, R.W. “Introduction to The City of God,”
in Augustine’s The City of God against the Pagans, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, .
119
Though literary allegory survived through the Middle Ages primarily in a religious scholarly setting, as just
illustrated, Tory also shows familiarity with the technique of allegory in secular and religious poetry, prevalent
in France and England. For more information, see Christiania Whitehead’s Castles of the Mind: A Study of
Medieval Architectural Allegory. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, . Also note that the title Champfleury
references a French secular poem.
120
The earliest known usage of the technique of the “memory palace” appears in an anonymous Latin
manuscript Rhetorica ad herennium, from - B.C. (See Yates, Francis. The Art of Memory. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, .) Cicero briefly mentions it in his On the Ideal Orator. The rhetorician
Quintilian, a century later, is the first to explicitly set the technique in a classical villa. See Quintilian, Institutio
oratia. trans. H. E. Butler., Loeb Classical Library, . XI. . -.

60
memory of virtuous acts in childhood will dispose one to virtuous acts in the present.121 And

Cicero categorizes memory as one of the three aspects of prudence, itself one of what would

later be called the four cardinal virtues.122 Given this ethical significance, it is unsurprising

that these techniques caught the interest of the early church father St. Augustine,123 and also

prove relevant to Tory’s moralizing illustrations.

Visual memory aids took recognizable shape in the twelfth century, when scholar

Hugh of Saint Victor wrote the first medieval discussion of memory that created an

organization on the manuscript page.124 Hugh of St. Victor classifies the three methods of

mental ordering as number, location, and occasion, and, importantly, places the items to be

remembered along the axes of the page: horizontal and vertical. Already we see the stirring

roots of Tory’s style of moral exposition: for example, when, in his Vitruvian grid, he places

the nine Muses in order from top to bottom, or when, in his figure of the human face, he

places the four cardinal virtues on each corner.

This kind of organization demanded an interaction between the material to be

memorized and the organization of that text; even in these early memory aids, form was

starting to become coupled with content. The technique takes on a life of its own, however,

121
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics. trans. W. D. Ross. .-. Noted by Whitehead, p..
122
Cicero, De Inventione. trans. C. D. Yonge. .. Noted by Whitehead, p..
123
Trained as a rhetoric teacher, Augustine was exposed to the classical picture of memory as a “large and
boundless inner hall,” (Augustine, Confessions, trans. Oudler. ...) but, in his early autobiography
Confessions, he already envisions it as a site of holiness as well, asking, “in which part of my memory are you
present, O Lord?...What sanctuary have you built there for yourself?” (Augustine, Confessions, trans. O’Donnell.
...) He marvels throughout this portion of the Confessions at the astonishing capacity of memory and
compares it to the omniscience of God himself.
124
Memory aids were revived in the twelfth century, when increasing knowledge and a renewed emphasis on
public speaking, especially among the Dominican order, led to a rediscovery of mnemonic techniques and the
publication of new treatises on memory. See Yates. p., and Hugh of Saint Victor, De tribus maximis
circumstantiis gestorum, ed. W. M. Green, Speculum,  (), -. Noted by Whitehead, p..

61
when it is freed from a reliance on textual models. Occasionally in the past, scriptural

buildings had been used as subjects of allegorical analysis,125 but in the mid twelfth century,

we see architectural or visual designs being created to fit a set of content. Hugh of Saint

Victor, for example, created a vision of Noah’s ark in which the three dimensions

represented time, the volume of scripture, and the sum of all believers of Christ.126 And we

can see a new autonomy in the structure of moral diagrams particularly in the setting of the

tower of virtue, an element in a set of spiritual handbooks known as the Speculum Theologiae

(“theological mirrors”).

Speculum Theologiae, r. Tower of Virtue.

125
Origen in the third century had performed an exegesis on the Old Testament tabernacle, interpreting the
pillars as Christian virtues. Bede, in his seventh century line-by-line commentary on the scriptural temple, De
Tabernaculo, adds more detail, interpreting specific architectural details as, for example, the writings of the
apostles, or the Mosaic laws. He imagines the temple as a written statement of faith. See Whitehead, pp.-.
126
Hugh of Saint Victor, De arca Noë morali. See Whitehead, p..

62
Here we can see the techniques that Tory is using, where, instead of a visual or architectural

setting guiding a textual interpretation, a textual foundation is made into a detailed visual

exposition incorporating aspects of both visual allegory and mnemonic aids.

The document pictured is one rendition of a thematic tower of virtue, an image

which appears in similar but varying forms throughout thirteenth century European

monasteries.127 This page consists of a depiction of a tower, each architectural element of

which is labeled with either a virtuous quality or an exhortation to act. An alphabetical

sequence typical of mnemonic aids guides the reader from the bottom of the tower,

representing the inner soul, to the top, bordering the outside world. Starting with humility,

the mother of virtues, the reader is first guided through a lower level of foundational

principles of Christianity, continues up the seven steps that a Christian must take to receive

absolution, and is led through a main door and up the brickwork courses of the tower.

Elements are deliberately oriented along the visual axes according to their content: the

drawing indicates, “the height of the tower of wisdom is perseverance and good,” and “the

length of the tower is charity which is common to all.”

Tory’s visual constructions follow the very methodologies employed in medieval

allegorical images like this. Renaissance and medieval illustrations alike were invented visual

expositions of textual precepts—in Tory’s case, the imagined meanings of the form of the

Roman alphabet. The conclusion of the alphabet, Tory’s illustration of the letter Z,

illustrates all of these points, and, in fact, shows a striking formal similarity to medieval

127
Speculum Theologiae. Beinecke Library, New Haven, CT. MS , r. The collection in which this page
appears was compiled by Jonathan Metz at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century,
and belonged to the Cistercian monastery of Kempen, Germany.

63
expositions like the tower of virtue. The liberal arts and muses, representing the arts and

sciences respectively, are organized in ascending order along the horizontal and vertical axes

of the image, related to specific points on the ten by ten Vitruvian grid. Steps, literally carved

into the letterform, mark a path for the reader through the organized grid, a path that could

easily serve as a mnemonic aid for the spiritual content within. Furthermore, even exposure

to this path, a public service that Tory is so diligently performing, could lead the observer to

greater virtue. And finally, the image is capped with its moral message: that virtue itself is the

greatest treasure awarded to the one who fulfills this path.

Seen in the context of their immediate historical precedents, Tory’s fantastic visual

constructions no longer seem unique, though they are certainly inventive. His textual

expositions and explanatory diagrams are both rooted in techniques deeply traditional to the

medieval and late antique past. But Tory would not have seen it this way; just as he had

divested the subjects of his allegory from their place in history, he applied analytical

techniques without conception of context in which those tools were used. His approach is

fundamentally medieval for the very reason that it transcends time. This can start to explain

the pervading strangeness that results when Tory wraps the Renaissance alphabetical

construction, which is fundamentally reliant on an awareness of history, with a medieval

conflation of ideas purely based on their content, a technique marked by its complete

disregard of historical context and foundation in time.

9. Synthesis in the Renaissance

64
Tory’s exegesis of the form of the Renaissance alphabet represents a merging of the two

approaches to allegory he found in the past, that of late antique literary criticism and that of

medieval visual exposition. Furthermore, he is not the only one to act accordingly. Feliciano,

with the very first alphabetical construction, had begun this game of imparting meaning

upon a vocabulary of shape, proportion, and form.

Using the principles of the square and circle, abstract ideas that he imagined had

played a role in the construction of the Roman letterforms, Feliciano proceeded to construct

an alphabet of his own, a purely formal fantasy that replaced the archaeological forms that he

was allegedly imitating. The square and circle, for Tory and for his Renaissance

contemporaries, represented the fundamental presupposition that the rules of the universe

are based on geometry and that the ancients, knowing this truth, imbued their letters with

that knowledge. Feliciano took this powerful idea, one that might be called secular but

during the Renaissance edged on spirituality, and used it as the basis for his alphabetical

construction, which was the first visual representation of those ideas. This ideal of the square

and circle was then buried, implicit, in the form of the letters, and nobody spoke of it in

writing again.

Tory, while continuing the path that Feliciano had set out by refining the square and

circle construction, was not satisfied with the implicit Platonic philosophy that it bore, if he

even noticed it at all. Rather, he already felt a need to impart an explicit meaning into the

letterforms. In doing so, he revived the literary technique of reading and interpreting allegory

to fill in and behind the forms with a content of his own, validated by his process of

65
comparison. Just as Macrobius had recast Virgil to suit his convictions, Tory recast the forms

of the alphabet handed down to him for his own pedagogical purposes.

But, in the case of the alphabetical construction, Tory interpreted what was in part

his own design, work that, like Feliciano and the anonymous author of the tower of virtue,

Tory had synthesized according to textual principles. Furthermore, Tory used this technique

of synthetic visual exposition to illustrate the meaning that he himself created. In illustrating

meaning, interpreting it, and illustrating it down again, Tory merged these two modes of

allegorical symbolism and made them parallel, creating form based on content and

interpreting content from form at the same time. His application of a fundamentally

medieval conceptual toolset to a uniquely Renaissance form was an attempt to discover, in

the sense of invention and of detection, a lost content to the formal constructions of the early

geometric alphabets.

10. Conclusion

In his assignment of meaning to the alphabet, Tory reveals some commonalities that this

reading of explicit content in the alphabet shares with the implicit meaning present in the

geometric construction.128 At the core, the Renaissance revivals of letterform design and

128
In addition to the main argument of this section, there are also some striking similarities in agenda, which,
while perhaps not solid enough to warrant any firm claims, still merit mention. Tory, Dürer, Pacioli, and
Alberti all agree in their endorsements of their respective vernacular tongues. This is coupled with a shared
concern for proper diction, which stems from the liberal art of rhetoric. Alberti in particular was often
compared to Cicero in his oratical skill. Furthermore, Tory’s mythicization of the art of printing can be seen as
parallel to the crucial project of all early Renaissance artists to legitimize their profession, turning it from a
manual craft to an intellectual art on the level of poetry.

66
architectural design are linked to each other and to their historical precedents in their

attempt to embody Platonic ideals of harmony.

Alberti was the source from which this conception of harmony, which appears in

Vitruvius, spread to humanists. He was also its most influential spokesman, writing, for

example, “nature delights primarily in the circle”129 and “just as the head, foot, and indeed

any member must correspond to each other and to all the rest of the body in an animal, so in

a building, and especially a temple, the parts of the whole body must be composed that they

all correspond one to another.”130 The square and circle, as the essence of geometric unity,

was the foundation of that notion of harmony rooted in Nature. This basic idea—that

everything ought to have an overarching consistency—is what led antiquarian artists and

scholars like Mantegna to a closer examination of the ancient letterforms.

But the notion of harmony extended beyond a concern with artistic consistency. The

writings that inspired it, combined with the newfound reverence of the antique that came in

a large part with the rise of historical awareness, is what led the humanists to expect such

harmony in the ancients…and what drove them to create it in their alleged imitations.

Feliciano’s fantasy, that the square and circle construction was an “old usage,” was in fact

shared by many of his contemporaries. Alberti, writing that “anyone who builds so as to be

praised for it…must adhere to a consistent theory,”131 in his later and allegedly classicizing

architecture embraced the idea that the most desirable church would be round in plan,

129
Alberti, VII..
130
Alberti, VII..
131
Alberti, VI.

67
despite the fact that Vitruvius had not even mentioned that form in his chapter on

temples.132

The square and circle construction for inscriptional lettering eventually became very

popular in early Renaissance Italy, yet for all its concern with antiquity, it did not represent a

complete break with the recent past. The ad quadratum (“from a square”) method for

building medieval cathedrals was well known in the Renaissance. Furthermore, throughout

the middle ages, writings of St. Augustine and the late antique Neoplatonists had remained

in circulation; and copies of these writings continually discussed the perfection of platonic

shapes. Augustine writes in his early and sincere Confessions,

What is it that we love except what is beautiful?...I looked around and saw that
within physical objects there is one sort of beauty that comes, so to speak, from the
totality, and another which gives a sense of harmony through the congruence with
which it fits in with another object, as part of a body fits in with the whole, or as a
shoe fits a foot, and so forth. This thought welled up in the depths of my heart and
filled my mind, and I wrote a work called Beauty and Congruence.133

Augustine’s use of the term pulchrum, ‘beauty,’ and aptum, ‘congruence,’ is a striking

foreshadow to Alberti’s novel pulchritudo: “that reasoned harmony of all the parts within a

body.”134 Here, that conception of harmony that Alberti had associated so firmly with the

antique was actually present in the religious writings of St. Augustine and others throughout

the middle ages.

Tory, in his willingness to cite medieval as well as antique sources, revealed other

interesting aspects of the construction that the Italian humanists preferred not to address in

132
Wittkower, p.. The round form of the temple appears as a sort of appendix in Book VII.
133
Augustine, Confessions. IV... trans. Pusey.
134
Alberti, VI..

68
writing. His letters were based on the I and O, which he based, in turn, on the straight line

and circular arc. Likewise, all of Tory’s analogies, connections and syllogisms came from one

essential preconception: that this alphabet was a harmonic whole, that every detail was

connected, and that connection was summarized by a unity represented by the essential

figures of geometry, the square and circle. This was Tory’s answer to the question of why the

letterforms looked the way they did, the question that none of his Italian contemporaries

needed to ask.

What makes Tory’s answer unique is the language in which it is veiled, language that

is so wrapped in the Christian tradition of allegory that it seems foreign not only to modern

sensibilities but also to the modern conception of the Renaissance. But it was not foreign at

all. Alberti himself had been familiar with many of the sources that Tory quoted, particularly

Macrobius. Alberti lifted significant blocks of information from Macrobius and repeats

them in On the Art of Building several times without ever acknowledging Macrobius by

name.135 Admittedly, Alberti used Macrobius primarily for historical background, and did

not rely on him for any core elements of his theory. Yet Macrobius was an influence on

Alberti, an influence that the architect purged from his list of citations in an attempt to

“antiquate” his treatise—to, essentially, make it trendy by citing newly translated classical

authors like Plato.136 Tory, in contrast, was willing to acknowledge all of his creative sources.

In doing so, Tory illuminates certain shared presuppositions, and therefore an

essential continuity, between the medieval Christian artistic tradition, with its explicit

135
Zoubov, p.. Alberti also omitted Macrobius’s name when copying from the commentator various
quotations of Laberius and Thucydides.
136
Zoubov, p..

69
allegorical content, and the Renaissance theory of architectural design, with its implicit

platonic doctrine of geometry as a channel for “harmonization with the cosmos.”

Nor was this just a philosophical idealism: Renaissance builders perceived the power

of geometry as very real. Wittkower speaks best for them, describing the Renaissance attitude

towards geometric building techniques in churches as tapping into a “vital force which lies

behind all matter and binds the universe together. Without such sympathy between the

microcosm of man and the macrocosm of God, prayer cannot be effective.”137 Luca Pacioli

agrees, writing that prayer and divine functions are of little value if the church has not been

built “with correct proportion.”138

Alberti was convinced of the very real power of this beauty, not just pertaining to the

spiritual realm, but in actually shaping civic behavior. He writes in On the Art of Building,

the security, dignity, and honor of the republic depend greatly on the architect: it is
he who is responsibly for our delight, entertainment, and health while at leisure and
our profit and advantage while at work, and in short that we live in a dignified
manner free from any danger.139

He adds,

Who would not claim to dwell more comfortably between walls that are ornate,
rather than neglected? What other human art might sufficiently protect a building to
save it from human attack? Beauty may even influence an enemy, by restraining his
anger and so preventing the work from being violated. Thus I might be so bold as to
state: No other mean is as effective in protecting a work from damage and human
injury as is dignity and grace of form.140

137
Wittkower, p..
138
Pacioli, Luca. Summa de Arithmetica, Venice , dist. VI, tract. , artic. .
139
Alberti, Prologue, p..
140
Alberti, VI..

70
This startling statement comes from a man who was surely familiar with the fate of so many

magnificent specimens of Roman art and architecture.141 Greater than a factual statement, it

represents a hope fostered by philosophy, a firmly-held belief in the tangible power of a

geometric approach to architecture as a conduit to the cosmos. Of course, architectural

projects satisfy functional requirements as well: shelter, protection, and usable space. For

Alberti, architecture was beautiful when it satisfied its functional requirements along with the

universal requirements of geometry and harmony, simultaneously.

The same critical framework can be applied to moral content in biblical allegory,

specifically as Tory presents it. A presupposition of the allegorical approach is that there is

some connection between biblical type and anti-type, and that analogies drawn between

these themes of human existence are, in fact, valid. Going further, the power of these

analogies are very real: by memorization and habituation—as the history of monastic

memory aids proves—what one reads is what one becomes; the act of scholarship, of learning

and connecting and exposing oneself to the mysteries of Scripture, is, itself, godliness. As an

author, Tory’s task, like that of Dante as a poet, is to help guide the reader towards virtue.

Dante, in the very beginning of his Inferno, writes as a man gone astray,

Midway upon the road of our life I found myself within a dark wood, for the right
way had been missed. Ah! how hard a thing it is to tell what this wild and rough and
dense wood was.142

141
Bialostocki, Jan. “The Power of Beauty: The Utopian Idea of Leone Battista Alberti,” Studien zur
Toskanischen Kunst: Festschrift für Ludwig H. Heydenreich. Munich, , p. .
142
Dante Alighieri, Inferno. Canto I.

71
Like Dante, Tory, in ending his introduction to Champfleury, offers a path through these

woods of confusion:

I pray you, let us all enhearten one another, and bestir ourselves to purify it [our
tongue]. All things have had a beginning. When one shall have treated of the letters,
and another of the vowels, a third will appear, who will explain the words, & then
will come still another, who will set in order the fine discourse. Thus we shall find
that, little by little, we shall traverse the long road, and shall come to the vast fields of
poesy and rhetoric, full of fair and wholesome and sweet-smelling flowers of speech,
& can say downrightly and easily whatsoever we wish.143

Here the functional and universal roles of Champfleury are merged into one: fine oratory and

persuasive speech, legible and well-formed characters, proper spelling and orthography, are

all conflated with “purification” on the path Tory sets forth, through the vehicle of Tory’s

artistic lettering.

Tory’s path, just like the trail in Dante’s Divine Comedy, raises questions about the

relationship of his readers with the author. Dante writes autobiographically; in the poem, he

is the pilgrim being led towards virtue by his guide, Virgil. But Dante is also the guide,

leading the reader, by allegory, along that very same path. Tory acts in much the same way,

guiding the reader along a carefully scripted path to moral salvation through contemplation

of the letterforms. Yet Tory is also pursuing his own road to virtue as an author, per Cicero’s

injunction “that we are not born into this world for ourselves alone, but to serve & give

pleasure to our friends & country.”144

143
Tory, xxiii.
144
Tory, p.. He quotes Cicero’s De Officiis, .., in which Cicero attributes the quotation to Plato.

72
Tory, monogram. Reprinted in Bernard, p..

The best indicator that we have of Tory’s true motivation, as a writer and as a teacher,

is his motto and cipher: civis, “citizen.” Auguste Bernard, Tory’s biographer, notes that

Tory’s adoption of this motto reflects both a pride in his education and class, and an

acceptance of his responsibility towards society, the state, and toward God as well.145 Alberti,

similarly, wrote of the social responsibility of the architect in the same treatise which inspired

Tory to place his motto in an architectural frame.146 Tory’s civis diagram signifies duty,

loyalty, and virtue, conflated with a primitive design of Roman letterforms, conflated once

more with a geometric architectural plan strikingly reminiscent of the centralized church.

However much material Tory misappropriates in his scramble for pedagogic analogy, and

145
Bernard, p..
146
“The security, dignity, and honor of the republic depend greatly on the architect: it is he who is responsible
for our delight, entertainment, and health while at leisure, and our profit and advantage while at work, and in
short, that we live in a dignified manner” (Alberti, prologue).

73
however much importance he places on antique text or artistic detail, the core of his mission

is present in this geometric representation of the pursuit of a greater ideal.

But this obsession with the geometric and conceptual has never been limited to the

Italian Renaissance; rather, throughout time, it has been a fascination of powerful artistic

minds. The European modernist movement in particular was fired by this kind of idealistic

rationalism, and the pursuit of repeatable Platonic forms as a solution to human problems.

The leader of this movement, the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, was perhaps in this way the

purest son of the Renaissance humanists. His depiction of the “object-type” in his Purist

paintings echoes Feliciano’s alphabetical archetype. Although Corbusier himself never

designed an alphabet, the purist ideals of his journal L’Esprit Nouveau heavily influenced the

Bauhaus, an avant-garde artistic and architectural workshop developing in Weimar Germany.

Bayer, Herbert. Universal, . P22 Foundry.

The practical lessons of the geometric alphabetical construction would be realized at

this intellectual and interdisciplinary workshop, where Feliciano’s spiritual successor,

74
Bauhaus typographer Herbert Bayer, essentially re-enacted the story that had played itself out

in Italy four hundred years earlier. Bayer’s pursuit of Sachlichkeit, an elusive term often

translated as “objectivity,” led him to the same almost spiritual quest for the geometric

essence of the letterforms that had lured the Renaissance humanists. But Bayer’s complete

renunciation of history, as opposed to the adherence to an alleged antiquity characteristic of

Feliciano and the humanists, enabled him to bring the project to its ideological conclusion.

The result: Universal, the first geometric sans-serif typeface, finished in . It was a

practical failure. Bayer’s dogmatic employment of the compass and ruler meant that, at small

type sizes, Universal was illegible, and useless for setting text.147

ABCDEFGHIJKL
MNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijkl
mnopqrstuvwxyz
Futura, Paul Renner, . Adobe type design.

Just as Feliciano’s uniform application of geometry was contrasted by Albrecht

Dürer’s sensitive eye to calligraphic nuance, Bayer’s artistic foil would be typographer and

one-time architectural student Paul Renner, the director of the German Werkbund.

Working independently of the Bauhaus, Renner released Futura in , a geometric sans-

147
Burke, Christopher. Paul Renner: the art of typography. London: Hyphen, , p..

75
serif guided by the same “sachlichkeit, service, total submersion in the task”148 that had led to

Universal. Futura, however, was marked by a constant attention to the subtleties required for

a legible book type.149 The result is a sophisticated and versatile set of letters which is still

used to great effect today, contrasting the failures of dogmatic academic approaches to

letterform design.

Like Renner, who had rejected an uncompromisingly ideological approach to design,

Tory also represents a break with his contemporaries, a protest and backlash against the

enchanting formal inventions of the Renaissance. First of all, in his exultant and almost

irresponsibly sweeping quest to prove the divine perfection of the geometric alphabetical

construction, he only reveals the too-human fantasy of that very conception, his alphabet

design, and that of every alphabetic architect to precede or follow him.

Feliciano had been the innovator, but every humanist to subsequently design a

geometric alphabet followed closely in his footsteps, particularly in maintaining the

assumption that the square and circle construction was an “old usage.” Only those more

distanced from the humanist fervor, Dürer the scientific artist and Cresci the sensitive

calligrapher, would see the fallacy in their fellows’ endeavors, illustrating that the geometric

alphabetic archetype was indeed a uniquely and consistently humanist fiction: a fantasy

inseparably tied to two other aspects of humanist intellectual thought, the growing interest in

tying form and content, and Alberti’s notion of harmony.

148
Paul Renner, “Das Formproblem der Druckschrift,” (c) p.. Translated by Christopher Burke.
149
Burke, p..

76
 Geofroy Tory played the paradoxical role of attempting to enrich and exalt the

geometric construction, yet, in his efforts, only undermining it. In seeking an underlying

meaning in the blank canvas of a series of visual forms he interprets, essentially, as Scripture,

Tory “discovered” what he had expected all along. But despite his ingenuity, Tory’s exegesis

tells us about his unique psychology, not the “ancient allegory.” Likewise, the humanist

fiction of the geometric constructed alphabet tells us volumes about what the humanist

architects and scholars wanted to see—harmonization, unity, proportion, symmetry: in a

word, meaning—but next to nothing about actual Roman inscriptional techniques. Tory

reveals this shortcoming only by questioning the basics of the square and circle construction,

marking his exclusion from those self-reinforcing antiquarian communities responsible for

the very conception. By questioning, participating, and eventually finding some kind of

answer, he shows the seams and inventions that form the Renaissance fantasy of the

geometric alphabet.

And by exposing the humanist fiction of the antique letter, Tory reveals Bayer and

Feliciano as ideological innovators at the spearhead of an ideological movement, adventurous

and perhaps dreamy pioneers willing to forgo function and practicality to get as close as

possible to a pure creation of the mind. But later, inevitably, their projects would be

absorbed and rerouted by their successors. Their quest for the absolute was compromised by

Tory’s additions of meaning, by Dürer’s dismissal of the idea of the archetype, and Cresci’s

dismissal of geometric rules. The geometric sans-serif only reached success with Renner’s

sensitive employment of optical effects for legibility. And even Le Corbusier, though he

77
spoke lyrically of the magic of the right angle in his Poème de l’angle droit,150 learned from the

failures of his predecessors. He knew of the allure of creation, and while he was certainly

guilty of some ideological conceits,151 perhaps he was warning us about that very fascination

with harmony when he quoted Fénelon’s reflection on Renaissance humanism: “beware of

the sorcery and the diabolical attractions of geometry.”152 Despite their spiritual ambitions

and the technical rhetoric of perfection, it is as if these movements were almost too pure; to

many, this vague idea of an implicit unity was simply unsatisfying.

Certainly, Tory’s dissatisfaction with the simplicity of the implicit platonic ideal is

evident. Tory needed something explicit, something literal: something exciting. And this

discontent can also be seen in a larger movement stirring during the High Renaissance of the

early sixteenth century, in which artists seeking richness and complexity took over the lofty

constructs of the early Renaissance, distorting them and twisting them into something that,

if not perfect, was at least new. Postmodernism would do something similar to Bayer and his

architectural colleagues and contemporaries, making light of the forms which, to their

creators, had meant more than just minimalism. The common thread that these reactions

share is an insistence that there is something more to design than an exaltation of geometry,

and a realization that this pursuit of the absolute is ultimately a dead end.

150
“Droit sur le plateau terrestre des choses saisissables tu contractes avec la nature un pacte de solidarité: c’est
l’angle droit,” or, roughly, “Upright on the ground-plane of knowable things, you forge a covenant with nature:
the right angle.” Le Corbusier, Le Poème de l’angle droit. Tokyo, Japan: GA Gallery, , A.. Translation by
the author.
151
See Une Ville Contemporaine, Le Corbusier’s ideal plan for Paris which would have laid massive glass
skyscrapers in a Cartesian grid on broad parkland.
152
Le Corbusier, The modulor; a harmonious measure to the human scale universally applicable to architecture and
mechanics. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, , p..

78
 Tory’s is a different kind of twisting, to be sure; it is a distortion of content rather

than form. As Tory fills the humanist letterforms with an allegorical content of his own

invention, he does not merely supplant the implicit Platonic value, the “harmonization,” that

the geometric construction strives towards, he dismisses it. There is no absolute truth in

Tory’s alphabet, despite the fact that this is essentially his only topic of conversation. Rather,

by dragging artistic content out of its hiding place of the implicit absolute, he brings

“meaning” into the arena of relativity, where it will never be quite so comfortable.

79
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