Baker-Italian Renaissance - Humanism in The Mirror (2005) PDF

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE HUMANISM IN
T H E M I R RO R
This important study takes a new approach to understanding Italian

Renaissance humanism, based not on scholarly paradigms or philo-
sophical concepts, but on a neglected yet indispensable perspective:
the humanists’ understanding of themselves. Through a series of close
textual studies, Patrick Baker excavates what humanists thought was
important about humanism, how they viewed their own history, what
goals they enunciated, what triumphs they celebrated – in short, he
attempts to reconstruct humanist identity. What emerges is a small,
coherent community dedicated primarily not to political ideology,
a philosophy of man, an educational ethos, or moral improvement,
but rather to the pursuit of classical Latin eloquence. Grasping the
significance this stylistic ideal had for the humanists is essential to
understanding both their sense of themselves and the importance
they and others attached to their movement. For eloquence was no
mere aesthetic affair, but rather appeared to them as the guarantor of
civilization itself.
p a t r i c k b a k e r is a senior research associate at Humboldt-

Universität zu Berlin. He has previously published an English trans-
lation of two monographic essays by the late Salvatore Camporeale
(co-edited with Christopher S. Celenza), entitled Christianity, Latin-
ity, and Culture: Two Studies on Lorenzo Valla.
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id ea s in con tex t
Edited by
David Armitage, Richard Bourke, Jennifer Pitts, and John Robertson
The books in this series will discuss the emergence of intellectual traditions and of
related new disciplines. The procedures, aims, and vocabularies that were generated
will be set in the context of the alternatives available within the contemporary
frameworks of ideas and institutions. Through detailed studies of the evolution of
such traditions, and their modification by different audiences, it is hoped that a
new picture will form of the development of ideas in their concrete contexts. By
this means, artificial distinctions between the history of philosophy, of the various
sciences, of society and politics, and of literature may be seen to dissolve.
The series is published with the support of the Exxon Foundation.
A list of books in the series will be found at the end of the volume.
I TA L I A N RENA I SSANCE
H U M ANI S M I N TH E MIR ROR
PATRICK BAKER
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom
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education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107111868

C Patrick Baker 2015
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2015
Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc
The publication of this volume was made possible in part through the support of the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, using funds provided to Collaborative Research
Centre 644 “Transformations of Antiquity.”
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Baker, Patrick, 1976–
Italian Renaissance humanism in the mirror / Patrick Baker.
pages cm. – (Ideas in context)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-107-11186-8 (hardback) – isbn 978-1-107-53069-0 (paperback)
1. Renaissance – Italy – History. 2. Humanism – Italy – History.
3. Eloquence in literature. 4. Latin language. I. Title.
cb367.b35 2015
945 .05 – dc23 2015006640
isbn 978-1-107-11186-8 Hardback
isbn 978-1-107-53069-0 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
For My Parents
Contents
Acknowledgments page viii
Introduction 1
1 The renaissance of eloquence 36
2 The scholastic studia humanitatis and the hagiography
of humanism 90
3 The triumph of Cicero 133
4 Philology, printing, and the perfection of humanism 184
5 Humanism in the mirror 234
Appendix. The pantheon of humanism 281

Bibliography 291
Index 324
vii
Acknowledgments
This book began in 2004 in the Biblioteca Berenson of Villa I Tatti in

Florence, where for one year I had the great privilege of reading freely
in the literature of antiquity and the Renaissance. It was in my time
there as Reader in Renaissance Studies that I stumbled upon my sources
and conceived the study based on them. Therefore my first grazie must
go to Joseph Connors, whose lofty vision and determination to offer a
graduate student “a year off to read primary sources and think” is what
made possible my doctoral dissertation, fully rethought and revised for
the present offering. I also owe great thanks to the staff of the Biblioteca
Berenson, which for the past decade has consistently supported me in my
research, as well as to the rest of the I Tatti staff for the kindness they
have always shown to me and my family. Eve Borsook deserves a special
mention. If not for her example and encouragement to write “my kind of
book,” I might not have done so.
Beyond the generosity of Villa I Tatti, my work has been supported
by doctoral fellowships from Harvard University and the Scuola Normale
Superiore di Pisa. The transformation of a dissertation into a book was
substantially assisted by the American Academy in Rome, where I spent
the 2012–2013 academic year as the Lily Auchincloss Post-Doctoral Rome
Prize Fellow in Renaissance and Early Modern Italian Studies. I would
like to take this opportunity to express profound thanks to the Drue
Heinz Librarian, Sebastian Hierl. Many aspects of my research have also
been facilitated by funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG) and Sonderforschungsbereich 644 “Transformationen der Antike”
at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; the DFG graciously bore the cost of
indexing for this volume.
In preparing the manuscript I have received the indispensable assistance
of mentors and colleagues. My dissertation committee, composed of James
Hankins, Michael McCormick, and Christopher Celenza, was rigorous
and relentless in both criticism and generosity, and ultimately in friendship.
viii
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Acknowledgments ix
Christopher Celenza has continued to be a trusted consigliere, helping me
to frame my ideas in terms of the questions that are truly worth asking.
To my graduate advisor James Hankins I owe an ineffable debt: not only
for nurturing my text all these years but for all he has taught me, for
his time, for his fellowship, for his humanitas. This book would not have
reached its current form without the careful eyes of Kim Bowes, Robert
Fredona, Johannes Helmrath, and Anthony Kaldellis, all of whom reviewed
various chapters. I am also grateful to Gary Ianziti and Ronald Witt for
many discussions and above all for their encouragement, as well as to the
anonymous readers at Cambridge University Press for helping to make this
book so much better than it was. It is a pleasure, finally, to express boundless
gratitude to my many research assistants over the years: Olga Bode, Janis
El-Bira, Tobias Enseleit, Christian Faust, Moritz Füser, Pia Kazmierczak,
Daniel Müller, Viktoria Overfeld, Ricarda Peters, Lukas Reddemann, and
Lisa Schlüter.
Many other individuals have contributed to this project through
their friendship, generosity, conversation, and criticism: Niall Atkinson,
John Baker, Leonard Barkan, Darcy and Treacy Beyer, the Bietolini
family, Harald Brandt, Jason Clower, John Gagné, Günter and Ulla
Grote, Nicole Hegener, Erik Heinrichs, Ronny Kaiser, Craig Kallendorf,
Brigitte Kammigan-Brandt, Joshua Liberatore, Evan MacCarthy, Elizabeth
Mellyn, Carol Nisbet, Fabio Pedron, Angiolo Pergolini, Diego Pirillo,
Maike Priesterjahn, Damiano Rebecchini, Dominique Kirchner Reill,
Albert Schirrmeister, Stefan Schlelein, Patrizia Tanini, and Don Wilcox.
Ultimately, nothing would have been possible without the inspiration of
my children Sofia and Henny and the support of my wife Katrin.
Introduction
Italian Renaissance humanism entered its heyday in the second quarter

of the fifteenth century. By then it had become a fixture in courts and
chanceries all over the peninsula, had gained a sturdy foothold in univer-
sities, and had seeped into the consciousness of political and economic
elites. Furthermore, Italian humanists could boast of a remarkable array
of achievements, having hunted down an impressive number of wholly or
partially lost ancient texts, reintroduced Greek to the Latin West, reformed
Latin style and orthography to accord with classicizing tastes, and broadly
instituted their brand of education in the classics. Finally, they were still
relatively impervious to the twin challenges of the vernacular at home and
cultural competition from across the Alps, both of which would eventually
undermine their hegemony. It was a time of triumph – and of reflection.
Having ascended to the apex of culture, Italian humanists turned around
to take a view of the path they had trodden. They ruminated on their
own education and development, recorded the deeds of the forerunners,
founders, and great exponents of the humanist movement, took stock of
the goals by which they had been guided, and honored the ideals that had
nourished them on their way.
One such piece of humanist self-reflection is provided by Leonardo
Bruni, the chancellor of Florence and the undisputed princeps of the city’s
intellectual life, who in old age committed to his Memoirs (ca. 1440)
an account of his youthful studies, vividly recalling his fateful decision
to abandon law and learn Greek with the Byzantine scholar and
diplomat Manuel Chrysoloras. Not only would he thus “come face to
face with Homer, Plato and Demosthenes . . . and converse with them
and become steeped in their marvellous teaching,” but he would also
win “useful knowledge” and “abundant pleasure” as well as “enhanced
repute,” since “for seven centuries now no one in Italy has cultivated the
literature of Greece and yet we recognize that all learning comes from
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2 Italian Renaissance Humanism in the Mirror
there.”1 Bruni then goes on to describe his cohort of fellow students. He
singles out the Florentine patricians Roberto de’ Rossi and Palla Strozzi
as two who had made the most progress, notes that some students, such
as Jacopo Angeli da Scarperia, were of advanced age, and remarks that
the logician Pier Paolo Vergerio, although “an ornament of the schools of
Padua, was drawn by the reputation of Chrysoloras to come to Florence to
study under him there.”2 In a few, short paragraphs Bruni offers precious
testimony about a formative moment in the evolution of humanism: the
arrival of Manuel Chrysoloras and the enduring instauration of Greek
studies in Italy. This passage holds many further insights for the historian:
that Greek was pursued by rich and humble, young and old alike; that the
opportunity afforded by Chrysoloras attracted to the city non-Florentines
of established reputation in different fields; and that the young Bruni
claimed to have been lured away from the assured income of a legal career
by an idealistic longing to commune with the ancients.
Bruni’s Memoirs are also a valuable source for the way humanists viewed
humanism and their involvement in it, giving voice to the passionate zeal
for an (initially) unremunerative labor of love, to the regard for revered
teachers, to the perceived importance of certain cities, and so on. In another
sense, however, a source like the Memoirs is wholly unremarkable: it is far
from unique. Even a cursory reading of humanist letters, literary prefaces
and dedications, ceremonial speeches and poetry, biographies and works of
history reveals that their authors enjoyed few things as much as comment-
ing on the content, nature, and what they (usually) considered to be the
success of humanism. There were also more formal sources for thinking
about humanism, such as necrologies, funeral orations and anthologies,
verse compilations in praise of great poets, and dialogues discussing the
contributions of leading literati.3 Ultimately, exhaustive accounts and
1 Leonardo Bruni, Memoirs [De temporibus suis], ed. and tr. James Hankins with D.J.W. Bradley,
in Bruni, History of the Florentine People, ed. and tr. James Hankins, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.,
2001–2007), vol. III, pp. 320–321 (par. 25): “Homerum et Platonem et Demosthenem . . . intueri
atque una colloqui ac eorum mirabili disciplina imbui . . . Septingentis iam annis nemo per Italiam
graecas litteras tenuit, et tamen doctrinas omnes ab illis esse confitemur. Quanta igitur vel ad
cognitionem utilitas vel ad famam accessio vel ad voluptatem cumulatio tibi ex linguae huius
cognitione proveniet?” (tr. Bradley).
2 Bruni, Memoirs, pp. 322–323 (par. 26): “cum Patavii studio floreret, secutus Chrysolorae famam, sese
Florentiam contulerat ad eum audiendum.”
3 The following examples are meant only to be indicative, not exhaustive. Necrology: Mauro de
Nichilo, I viri illustres del cod. Vat. lat. 3920 (Rome, 1997). Funeral oration: Poggio Bracciolini,
Oratio funebris in obitu Leonardi Arretini, in Leonardo Bruni, Epistolarum libri VIII, recensente
Laurentio Mehus (1741), ed. James Hankins, 2 vols. (Rome, 2007), vol. I, pp. cxv–cxxvi. Funeral
anthology: for the anthology dedicated to the humanist patron Cosimo de’ Medici, see Alison
Introduction 3
histories of humanism were even written.4 Literary self-reflection seems to
have been as automatic as it was unceasing in the humanist community.
This book is concerned with that self-reflection and the self-conception
of Italian Renaissance humanists embodied therein. By self-conception is
intended specifically what humanists thought they were doing qua human-
ists, what they thought the goals of their movement were, what cultural
significance it had for them, and how they viewed their common history.
The broad aim of this study is to reconsider the nature of humanism
without recourse to theoretical or philosophical categories, especially those
extraneous to the time period or not identified as relevant by the historical
actors themselves. On the contrary, the point is to take humanists on their
own terms and thereby to restore as much as possible of the spirit of their
movement to the body that has been so thoroughly dissected on the his-
torian’s examination table. This approach is motivated by a desire to give
humanists, for the first time in a modern historical monograph, the chance
to explain themselves, and thereby to contribute to the necessary project
of redefining our understanding of Italian Renaissance humanism.
I say necessary because no broad study has yet been undertaken into
what humanists thought humanism was. And yet it is a commonplace of
historical method that any object of inquiry must first be understood on its
own terms before it can be understood on ours.5 Without concern for this
fundamental insight, since World War II scholars have cast humanists as
republican ideologues, educational and moral reformers, philosophers and
legislators of social norms, devotees of a stylistic ideal, lovers of eloquence,
Brown, “The Humanist Portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici, Pater Patriae,” Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, 24 (1961), pp. 186–221. Verse compilation: Lacrimae amicorum in memory of
Celso Mellini, on which see Stefano Benedetti, Ex perfecta antiquorum eloquentia: oratoria e poesia
a Roma nel primo Cinquecento (Rome, 2010), pp. 133–160; Francesco Arsilli, De poetis urbanis, in
Coryciana, ed. Jozef Ijsewijn (Rome, 1997), pp. 341–559, on which see Rosanna Alhaique Pettinelli,
“Francesco Arsilli e i ‘poeti urbani,’” in Rosanna Alhaique Pettinelli (ed.), L’umana compagnia: studi
in onore di Gennaro Savarese (Rome, 1999), pp. 27–35. Dialogues: Lapo da Castiglionchio’s De
curiae commodis, in Christopher S. Celenza, Renaissance Humanism and the Papal Curia: Lapo da
Castiglionchio the Younger’s De curiae commodis (Ann Arbor, 1999); Angelo Camillo Decembrio, De
politia litteraria, ed. Norbert Witten (Munich, 2002). Another formal source was laudatory poems in
praise of a given city’s great humanists, e.g., Virgilio Zavarise’s poem commemorating the humanists
of Verona, in G. Banterle, “Il carme di Virgilio Zavarise cum enumeratione poetarum oratorumque
veronensium,” Atti e memorie dell’Accademia di Agricoltura, Scienze, e Lettere di Verona, s. VI, 26
(1974–1975), pp. 121–170. For further types of sources and examples, see Rosanna Alhaique Pettinelli,
“Presenze eterodosse in cataloghi di letterati della prima metà del Cinquecento,” in Vincenzo De
Caprio and Concetta Ranieri (eds.), Presenze eterodosse nel viterbese tra Quattro e Cinquecento: Atti
del convegno internazionale, Viterbo, 2–3 dicembre 1996 (Rome, 2000), pp. 105–121.
4 See the sources reviewed below, pp. 15–20.
5 Cf., e.g., Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and
Theory, 8 (1969), pp. 3–53, at 28–30.
and a professional movement of novi homines attached to the disciplines
that comprised the studia humanitatis.6 Most of these views are indebted
at least as much to modern concerns as they are to contemporary sources.
On the other hand, under the spell of Paul Oskar Kristeller’s powerful and
influential – and ostensibly non-ideological – interpretation, humanism has
gradually lost any convincing raison d’être beyond the universal motivations
of careerism and financial gain. The upshot is a Lilliputian view in which the
comprehensibility of humanism decreases the more closely the magnifying
glass is applied to its features; and much as happened to Gulliver when
perched upon a Brobdingnagian bosom, microscopic familiarity has bred
contempt.7
Paying attention to what humanists thought was important about what
they were doing can correct our perspective in two indispensable ways.
First, it pushes essential characteristics of humanism to the fore, that is,
those traits and activities that humanists themselves discerned as central
to their identity, those by which they recognized each other and which
served to distinguish them as humanists in the eyes of others.8 Second, it
connects those characteristics to cultural aspirations and ideals that make
humanism comprehensible as a widespread movement, a movement, fur-
thermore, in which many individuals took pride in taking part or with
which they expressly sought to identify themselves. The first insight will
help us to understand better what humanism was, the second for what
purpose it existed. And with this information we can then retrieve not
only the magnificent sense of importance humanists enjoyed about them-
selves, but also the gigantic significance humanism had in its own day
6 Syntheses of past interpretations of humanism and scholarly currents can be found in: Angelo Maz-
zocco (ed.), Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism (Leiden, 2006); Riccardo Fubini, L’umanesimo
italiano e i suoi storici: origini rinascimentali – critica moderna (Milan, 2001), esp. Part III:
“L’Umanesimo e il Rinascimento nella storiografia moderna” (pp. 209–336); William Caferro,
Contesting the Renaissance (Malden, Mass., 2011), ch. 4: “Humanism: Renovation or Innovation?
Transmission or Reception?” (pp. 98–125); Paul F. Grendler, “The Italian Renaissance in the Past
Seventy Years: Humanism, Social History, and Early Modern in Anglo-American and Italian Scholar-
ship,” in Allen J. Grieco, Michael Rocke, and Fiorella Gioffredi Superbi (eds.), The Italian Renaissance
in the Twentieth Century. Acts of an International Conference, Florence, Villa I Tatti, June 9–11, 1999
(Florence, 2002), pp. 3–23; and, for scholarship since the year 2000, Mark Jurdjevic, “Hedgehogs
and Foxes: The Present and Future of Italian Renaissance Intellectual History,” Past and Present,
195:1 (2007), pp. 241–268.
7 See Kenneth Gouwens, “Perceiving the Past: Renaissance Humanism after the ‘Cognitive Turn,’”
The American Historical Review, 103 (1998), pp. 55–82, at 57: “an entire generation of social historians
has practically written humanism out of its narrative of the Renaissance.” Cf. Eckhard Keßler,
“Renaissance Humanism: The Rhetorical Turn,” in Mazzocco (ed.), Interpretations of Renaissance
Humanism, pp. 181–197, at 181–183.
8 Cf. Christopher S. Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s Legacy
(Baltimore, 2004), p. 119.
Introduction 5
and in subsequent history. If Quattrocento humanists were first and fore-
most rhetoricians, if they were determined to revive classical Latin in their
time, if they cherished the beauty of eloquence – petty concerns from
the modern standpoint, esoteric if not elitist and thus considered of little
importance for broad cultural trends – we must wonder why the human-
ist program captivated contemporaries and generations, indeed centuries,
to come and managed enduringly to transform European culture. As this
study argues, it is because language was insolubly linked for humanists with
broader cultural conditions and ideals, and in a way that is inverse to our
understanding of the mechanisms of civilization. Whereas we tend to view
cultural excellence as the product of social stability, economic prosperity,
political power, and military might, the humanists believed it to be the
premise to these latter conditions. The remedy for Italy’s social, political,
and military ills, they reasoned, was cultural refinement. And there was no
greater refinement than linguistic refinement. As they saw it, reviving the
glory of ancient Latin language and literature was the path to reviving the
strength, the excellence, the greatness of Roman antiquity. From this per-
spective, humanism emerges as an elixir, a strategy for renewing civilization
via the literature that stood as the greatest testament to the possibility of
civilization itself.
∗ ∗ ∗
The sources for humanist self-conception have barely been tapped for their
invaluable evidence, and they have been largely ignored in recent work.9
They received the most sustained attention in the nineteenth century.
Georg Voigt drew substantially from the humanists’ claims about their
own movement, especially as found in letters and literary dedications, in his
magnum opus, whose title plainly states his understanding of humanism:
9 A related question, that of the humanist conception of the Renaissance, received a great deal of
attention in the 1930s and 1940s, and some of those studies inevitably drew on a smattering of
the sources alluded to above. See, e.g., Wallace K. Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought:
Five Centuries of Interpretation (Boston, 1948), esp. ch. 1: “The Early Humanist Tradition in Italy,”
who provides ample bibliography of previous studies in nn. 2 and 3 on p. 2; Franco Simone, “La
coscienza della Rinascita negli umanisti,” La Rinascita, 2 (1939), pp. 838–871 and 3 (1940), pp. 163–186;
Herbert Weisinger, “Who Began the Revival of Learning? The Renaissance Point of View,” Papers
of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters, 30 (1945), pp. 625–638; Weisinger, “Renaissance
Theories of the Revival of the Fine Arts,” Italica, 20:4 (1943), pp. 163–170; and Weisinger, “The
Self-Awareness of the Renaissance as a Criterion of the Renaissance,” Papers of the Michigan Academy
of Science, Arts and Letters, 29 (1944), pp. 561–567. These studies, especially those of Ferguson and
Weisinger, as well as the earlier approach of Konrad Burdach (see Ferguson, The Renaissance in
Historical Thought, p. 2, n. 3), would later be criticized in Eugenio Garin, Rinascite e rivoluzioni:
Movimenti culturali dal XIV al XVIII secolo, new ed. (Rome, 2007), ch. 1: “Età buie e rinascita: un
problema di confini.”
Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums, oder, Das erste Jahrhundert
des Humanismus (The Revival of Classical Antiquity, or The First Century
of Humanism, 1859/1893).10 Attention to humanists’ explicit claims is also
manifest in the canonical interpretation of humanism bequeathed from
the nineteenth century, Jacob Burckhardt’s Civilization of the Renaissance
in Italy (1860).11 Burckhardt was heavily influenced by the biography of
the humanist Leon Battista Alberti, subsequently considered by scholars
a deceptive autobiography, which celebrated the perfection of the ideal
individual. Although only one of many sources and pieces of evidence that
underlie Civilization, it was instrumental for Burckhardt’s conception of
humanism as a distinctly modern culture of individualistic liberation from
the intellectual and spiritual straitjacket of the Middle Ages.12
Historiographical currents in the twentieth century took decidedly less
interest in humanist accounts of humanism. These played no perceptible
role in the major challenges to Burckhardt’s vision, which came in the 1950s
first at the hands of two German scholars, both émigrés who found their
permanent homes in American academic institutions: Hans Baron and Paul
Oskar Kristeller. Baron formulated his theory of civic humanism by focus-
ing his attention on Florence at the turn of the fifteenth century, which
at that time found itself menaced by the expansion of Milanese tyranny.13
Baron’s close reading of polemics and other texts of that period convinced
him that the renascent passion ignited by Petrarch for classical literature
10 Georg Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums, oder, Das erste Jahrhundert des Humanis-
mus, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1893). Although first published in 1859, the third edition of 1893 is the definitive
version in German; there is also an important Italian translation with an introduction by Eugenio
Garin and many additions to the notes: Il Risorgimento dell’antichità classica, ovvero il primo secolo
d’Umanesimo, tr. D. Valbusa, facsimile reprint ed. Eugenio Garin (Florence, 1968). On the much
neglected Voigt see Paul F. Grendler, “Georg Voigt: Historian of Humanism,” in Christopher S.
Celenza and Kenneth Gouwens (eds.), Humanism and Creativity in the Renaissance: Essays in Honor
of Ronald G. Witt (Leiden, 2006), pp. 295–325.
11 First published Jacob Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien: Ein Versuch (Basel, 1860). A
standard English translation is The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, tr. S.G.C. Middlermore
(New York, 2002). For a resume of Burckhardt’s view of humanism and of the major scholarly
reactions to it, see Robert Black, “Humanism,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. VII:
c. 1415–c. 1500, ed. C.T. Allmand (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 243–277, at 243–252.
12 Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge,
Mass., 2002), pp. 14–18. Grafton also notes that Burckhardt drew his inspiration for Civilization
from Vespasiano da Bisticci’s Vite, and that he carefully studied Vasari’s Vite and Giovio’s Elogia
in his “search for the ideal type of the Renaissance man” (p. 17). Important considerations on
Burckhardt’s use of the Alberti (auto)biography are also found in Karl A.E. Enenkel, Die Erfindung
des Menschen. Die Autobiographik des frühneuzeitlichen Humanismus von Petrarca bis Lipsius (Berlin,
2008), pp. 189–228; Enenkel argues that the Alberti vita is not an autobiography but rather a
biography by Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger.
13 Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in
an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (Princeton, 1955).
Introduction 7
and eloquent Latin had become fused with the intellectual defense of the
republican commune against the growing trend towards signory in Italy.
Although long influential, Baron’s idealistic view has now been reduced
to a more grounded interpretation both of Renaissance republicanism and
of humanism’s relationship to it;14 nonetheless the concept of umanesimo
civile still holds sway in Italian scholarship.15 Kristeller, on the other hand,
based his interpretation not so much on a thorough reading of a selection
of texts as on his magisterial view of the whole corpus of humanist liter-
ature. He concluded that Italian humanism was a rhetorical and literary
movement, steeped in the (especially Latin) classical tradition, that took
shape in a professional class of notaries, teachers, secretaries, and diplomats.
In his view, humanism lacked any coherent civic ideology, was generally
devoid of sophisticated philosophical content, and was basically equivalent
to the studia humanitatis, the cycle of disciplines comprised of grammar,
rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy.16 Contemporaneously with
14 James Hankins, “The ‘Baron Thesis’ after Forty Years and Some Recent Studies of Leonardo
Bruni,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 56:2 (1995), pp. 309–338; Hankins (ed.), Renaissance Civic
Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections (Cambridge, 2000); Kay Schiller, Gelehrte Gegenwelten:
Über humanistische Leitbilder im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 2000) [an earlier English version
is “Hans Baron’s Humanism,” Storia della storiografia, 34 (1998), pp. 51–99]; the AHR Forum
devoted to Baron in The American Historical Review, 101:1 (1996), pp. 107–144 (contributions by
Ronald G. Witt, “Introduction: Hans Baron’s Humanism,” pp. 107–109; Witt, “The Crisis after
Forty Years,” pp. 110–118; John M. Najemy, “Baron’s Machiavelli and Renaissance Republicanism,”
pp. 119–129; Craig Kallendorf, “The Historical Petrarch,” pp. 130–141; and Werner Gundersheimer,
“Hans Baron’s Renaissance Humanism: A Comment,” pp. 142–144); Riccardo Fubini, “Renaissance
Historian: The Career of Hans Baron,” Journal of Modern History, 64:3 (1992), pp. 541–574,
esp. 569–574; Albert Rabil, Jr., “The Significance of ‘Civic Humanism’ in the Interpretation of the
Italian Renaissance,” in Rabil (ed.), Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, 3 vols.
(Philadelphia, 1988), vol. I, pp. 141–174. For the outright rejection of Baron’s thesis, see Robert
Black’s review of Hankins (ed.), Renaissance Civic Humanism, in The English Historical Review,
116:467 (2001), pp. 715–716.
15 Especially through the writings of Eugenio Garin. See, e.g., his L’umanesimo italiano: filosofia e
vita civile nel Rinascimento (Rome, 1952/1993) [originally published as Der italienische Humanismus
(Bern, 1947)], esp. ch. 2: “La vita civile,” pp. 47–93. In his “Nota bibliografica,” Garin writes, “Fra
le opere d’insieme, che hanno riprospettato con originalità di indagini e di materiali i problemi di
cui si tocca in questo libro, sono da porsi in promo luogo le opere di H. Baron” (p. 257). And in
his “Avvertenza all’edizione 1994,” Garin writes, “Può darsi che talora certe ipotesi ci prendessero
la mano. Ma c’era non poco di vero in molte tesi sull’umanesimo civile che fra gli anni Trenta a
Quaranta cominciarono ad affacciarsi, e non solo nei primi saggi di Hans Baron e miei, ma in testi
di Chabod e di Nino Valeri” (p. xvii), adding in a related note, “Lo stesso Baron ebbe a ricordare
come già nel ’41 io sottolineassi l’interesse delle sue idee e come certe nostre linee di recerca si fossero
incontrate molto presto” (n. 10).
16 A good synthesis of Kristeller’s view can be found in his Renaissance Thought and its Sources, ed.
Michael Mooney (New York, 1979). It is also represented richly and manifoldly in his collection
Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, 4 vols. (Rome, 1956–1996). On Kristeller’s view of
humanism, see John Monfasani, “Toward the Genesis of the Kristeller Thesis of Renaissance
Humanism: Four Bibliographical Notes,” Renaissance Quarterly, 53:4 (2000), pp. 1156–1173; see also
Kristeller, the Italian scholar Eugenio Garin developed a contrary view of
humanism, one very much descended from Burckhardt.17 The two parted
ways at their respective conceptions of philosophy, which Kristeller under-
stood as a rigorous, systematic investigation of truth within a restricted
range of topics. Garin, on the other hand, had a broader understanding of
what constituted philosophy. He concentrated his work especially on the
close reading of literary texts, drawing out of them their authors’ philoso-
phies of life and general worldviews.18 Thus he considered humanism to be
a fundamentally philosophical movement, and one generative of important
new conceptions of man, of religion, and of social relations – a movement
of thought with certain common themes, analogous to the Enlightenment.
Garin also identified humanism with the general intellectual culture of the
Renaissance period as a whole, tending to broaden the concept precisely
where Kristeller narrowed it.19
the recent publication of essays on Kristeller and the influence of his thought, John Monfasani
(ed.), Kristeller Reconsidered: Essays on his Life and Scholarship (New York, 2006).
17 Garin articulated his position many times in diverse studies. Representative texts are his L’umanesimo
italiano and Medioevo e rinascimento: studi e ricerche (Rome, 1954/2005). On Garin, see Michele
Ciliberto, Eugenio Garin. Un intelletuale nel Novecento (Rome, 2011); Ciliberto, “Una meditazione
sulla condizione umana. Eugenio Garin interprete del Rinascimento,” Rivista di storia della filosofia,
63:4 (2008), pp. 653–692; Olivia Catanorchi and Valentina Lepri (eds.), Eugenio Garin. Dal Rinasci-
mento all’Illuminismo, Atti del convegno, Firenze, 6–8 marzo 2009 (Rome, 2011); Claudio Cesa,
“Momenti della formazione di uno storico della filosofia (1929–1947),” in Felicita Audisio and
Alessandro Savorelli (eds.), Eugenio Garin. Il percorso storiografico di un maestro del Novecento
(Florence, 2003), pp. 15–34; Massimiliano Capati, Cantimori, Contini, Garin: crisi di una cultura
idealistica (Bologna, 1997); Franco Cambi (ed.), Tra scienza e storia: percorsi del neostoricismo italiano:
Eugenio Garin, Paolo Rossi, Sergio Moravio (Milan, 1992); Black, “Humanism,” pp. 245–246.
18 Garin explained the difference between the two over philosophy in the autobiographical essay
attached to the new edition of his La filosofia come sapere storico: con un saggio autobiografico (Rome,
1990), pp. 146–147; this public statement substantially reproduces what he says in a personal letter to
Kristeller of September 25, 1953 (see James Hankins, “Garin and Paul Oskar Kristeller,” cited below,
who demonstrates the connection between the two writings). See also Celenza, The Lost Italian
Renaissance, ch. 2: “Italian Renaissance Humanism in the Twentieth Century: Eugenio Garin and
Paul Oskar Kristeller,” pp. 16–57; James Hankins, “Garin and Paul Oskar Kristeller: Existentialism,
Neo-Kantianism, and the Post-War Interpretation of Renaissance Humanism,” in Catanorchi and
Lepri (eds.), Eugenio Garin. Dal Rinascimento all’Illuminismo, pp. 481–505; Hankins, “Renaissance
Philosophy between God and the Devil,” in Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, vol. I, pp. 591–615,
at 604–615 [originally published in The Italian Renaissance in the Twentieth Century. Proceedings of
a conference held at the Villa I Tatti, June 9–11, 1999 (Florence, 2002), pp. 265–289]; and Hankins,
“Two Twentieth-Century Interpreters of Renaissance Humanism: Eugenio Garin and Paul Oskar
Kristeller,” in Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, vol. I, pp. 573–590 [originally published in
Comparative Criticism, 23 (2001), pp. 3–19].
19 An example is his Rinascite e rivoluzioni, ch. 1: “Età buie e rinascita: un problema di confini,” where
the thought of fifteenth-century humanists like Bruni and Valla is joined with the revolutionary
stance of Cola di Rienzo, on the one hand, and early Enlightenment figures, on the other. Kristeller
articulated this major difference between his approach and Garin’s in a letter to Garin dated
September 21, 1953 (Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore, Fondo Garin): “Quando concludi dalla mia
asserzione che gli umanisti italiani non furono filosofi (e penso al Poggio, al Guarino, a Pio II, al
Introduction 9
The result has tended to be a broad and unsatisfying split between
Italian and Anglo-American scholarship.20 The former, following Garin
and concentrating on what seem to be representative writings, such as
histories, educational treatises, or works of political or moral philosophy,
conceives of humanism as an essentially ideological phenomenon growing
out of a reaction against medieval culture.21 The latter, taking its cue from
Kristeller, emphasizes continuity with the Middle Ages and has tried to
penetrate to the deeper meaning of humanism by way of the activities and
especially the professional interests of its participants.22 This interpretive
bifurcation is especially evident in related fields of Renaissance scholarship,
such as political, economic, social, or art history, where the focus is not
on humanism itself but in which some understanding of humanism is
nevertheless deemed necessary for the topic under discussion. In such
cases, Italian scholars are generally content to rely on Garin, Anglophones
to fall back on Kristeller. And no wonder, as both their interpretations
are eminently useful, broadly inclusive, and pliable enough to admit of all
kinds of research within their explanatory boundaries.
And yet, despite their clear advantages over the paradigms of Burckhardt
and Baron, neither of these interpretations can claim to be definitive. The
strength of Garin’s understanding is that it places humanism within an
intelligible intellectual and cultural context in European history; its weak-
ness is that it has great difficulty identifying the various aspects that make
up a humanist profile. It is strong on why, weak on what. The opposite is
the case for Kristeller, who developed his view largely in reaction to other
schools of thought he saw as too preoccupied with the coming of modernity
Filelfo ecc., ma non al Ficino o al Pico) che io rifiuto qualsiasi significato filosofico al Rinascimento,
non fai altro che identificare umanesimo e rinascimento, cioè mi attribuisci quell’uso di parole che
tu veramente segui nel tuo volume sull’umanesimo.”
20 Although certain currents of scholarship are attempting to bridge the divide. See, e.g., James
Hankins, “Machiavelli, Civic Humanism, and the Humanist Politics of Virtue,” Italian Culture,
32:2 (2014), pp. 98–109; Hankins, “Exclusivist Republicanism and the Non-Monarchical Republic,”
Political Theory, 38 (2010), pp. 452–482; Christopher S. Celenza, “The Platonic Revival,” in James
Hankins (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 72–96;
Celenza, “Lorenzo Valla and the Traditions and Transmissions of Philosophy,” Journal of the History
of Ideas, 66 (2005), pp. 483–506; Celenza, “Petrarch, Latin, and Italian Renaissance Latinity,” Journal
of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 35 (2005), pp. 509–536. The present study is also undertaken
in this conciliatory spirit.
21 An important recent example is Luca D’Ascia, “Coscienza della Rinascita e coscienza antibarbara.
Appunti sulla visione storica del Rinascimento nei secoli XV e XVI,” in Renzo Ragghianti and
Alessandro Savorelli (eds.), Rinascimento mito e concetto (Pisa, 2005), pp. 1–37.
22 Evidence of Kristeller’s ascendance is the canonization of his view in the New Cambridge Medieval
History: Black, “Humanism,” as well as in the three-volume synthesis of humanism edited by Albert
Rabil, Jr., Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy (Philadelphia, 1988).
and with reigning ideological controversies – Burckhardt with liberalism,
Baron with republicanism and the civic applicability of Bildung, and Garin
with modern science, the Enlightenment, and the Gramscian notion of
organic philosophers – rather than with the phenomenon itself.23 To be
sure, Kristeller’s view of humanism was also shaped by ideological battles of
the twentieth century.24 But where others (like Baron and Garin) cleaved
to one side or another, Kristeller tried to purge humanism of all ideologi-
cal overtones according to the model of scientific research (Wissenschaft).25
Wanting to describe humanism in the least tendentious and most value-
free way possible, he reduced it to the barest facts he could. The result is
an interpretation surely sound in its component parts but that lacks a con-
vincing rationale. Kristeller can reliably tell us about many of humanism’s
salient characteristics, but he cannot tell us about one of the most, if not
the most, important: for what purpose did humanism come about, i.e.,
what did humanists strive for?26 What sense does a professional movement
guided by the revived studia humanitatis make in the larger context of
European history? Why did anyone want to be a humanist, especially in
its earlier stages when it held no widespread social or economic advantage?
At stake is the telos, the final cause, of humanism.27
An attempt has been made to answer this question by focusing on
humanists in their role as educators.28 Heavily influenced by his reading of
humanist educational treatises, Paul Grendler described humanism as an
educational ethos dedicated to instilling virtue in students by way of reading
the great literary works of the ancients.29 Grendler was responding in part
23 On Burckhardt, see Lionel Gossman, Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas
(Chicago, 2000), Part III: “Jacob Burckhardt,” pp. 201–346; on Baron, see Fubini, “Renaissance
Historian”; Schiller, Gelehrte Gegenwelten; and Schiller, “Made ‘fit for America’: The Renaissance
Historian Hans Baron in London Exile 1936–38,” in Stefan Berger, Peter Lambert, and Peter Schu-
mann (eds.), Historikerdialoge. Geschichte, Mythos und Gedächtnis im deutsch-britischen kulturellen
Austausch 1750–2000 (Göttingen, 2003), pp. 345–359; on Garin, see Ciliberto, “Una meditazione”;
Cesa, “Momenti della formazione”; and Hankins, “Garin and Paul Oskar Kristeller.”
24 See Hankins, “Two Twentieth-Century Interpreters,” esp. pp. 581–586.
25 See Hankins, “Renaissance Philosophy between God and the Devil,” pp. 611–612.
26 Kristeller’s evident lack of interest in the causes of humanism has been pointed out by Ronald G.
Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden, 2000),
pp. 3–4.
27 This issue has been insightfully addressed, though not from within the Kristellerian paradigm,
by Francisco Rico, El sueño del humanismo: (De Petrarca a Erasmo) (Madrid, 1993); and D’Ascia,
“Coscienza della Rinascita.”
28 The classic study of humanist education, to which all subsequent scholarship has added or
responded, is Eugenio Garin, L’educazione in Europa (1400–1600). Problemi e programmi (Bari,
1957).
29 Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (Baltimore, 1989).
On humanist educational ideals, see Humanist Educational Treatises, ed. and tr. Craig Kallendorf
Introduction 11
to Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, who in a grand polemic against the
usefulness of the modern humanities had impugned their roots in Renais-
sance humanism.30 Through their examination of texts by marginalized
groups such as women, they had deconstructed the humanists’ education
in virtue and depicted it instead as the self-serving advertisement of a
new professional class. In their view, humanist rhetoric about virtue and
love of classical literature was little more than hot air aimed at inflating
their standing and lifting them into the university posts hitherto held by
scholastic theologians. Grendler’s work might have seemed a substantial
counter-argument, but his attempt at salvaging an ethos for the human-
ists suffered shortly thereafter from a forceful rebuttal by Robert Black.31
Black undermined Grendler’s position by comparing the claims of the
humanist educational treatises to actual classroom practice, such as he
was able to reconstruct it from documentary sources, and by revealing a
widespread misunderstanding about the supposed similarity between the
subjects proper to grammar-school and university-level education. From
his research into grammar education in Tuscany, Black concludes that
virtue played no part in the humanist classroom.
Another noteworthy attempt has been made to endow humanism with
an intelligible rationale, this one disavowing the explanatory power Kris-
teller attributed to the professional context. In an important article Hanna
Gray distilled the essence of humanism down to what she called the “pursuit
of eloquence.”32 Taking issue with Kristeller, she wrote:
To say that the humanists merely introduced a more classical tone into a
fixed series of activities does not indicate why it appeared so essential to
them to return to the classical models of the studia humanitatis, or why they
failed to recognize, indeed disclaimed, continuity with medieval practice.
To suggest that their attitudes are explicable in terms of their professional
(Cambridge, Mass., 2002), with Kallendorf’s introduction. Cf. Paul F. Gehl, A Moral Art: Grammar,
Society, and Culture in Trecento Florence (Ithaca, 1993).
30 Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal
Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1986).
31 The debate began in Journal of the History of Ideas: Robert Black, “Italian Renaissance Education:
Changing Perspectives and Continuing Controversies,” 52:2 (1991), pp. 315–334; Paul F. Grendler,
“Reply to Robert Black,” 52:2 (1991), pp. 335–337; Robert Black, “Reply to Paul Grendler,” 52:3
(1991), pp. 519–520. Black has since written two monographs on the topic: Humanism and Education
in Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Tradition and Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the
Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, 2001); and Education and Society in Florentine Tuscany: Teachers,
Pupils and Schools, c. 1250 to 1500 (Leiden, 2007). For a recapitulation of Black’s view, see Black,
“Humanism,” pp. 258–262.
32 Hanna H. Gray, “Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence,” Journal of the History of
Ideas, 24 (1963), pp. 497–514.
concerns, which are naturally in competition with those of other professions,
does not explain how they articulated those concerns, how and why in a
particular age men should have turned to rhetoric and claimed for it a special
educational and cultural role.33
Her view was that the eloquence at the root of the studia humanitatis –
eloquence understood, that is, as the “harmonious union of wisdom and
style” – provided humanists with an antidote to the impotence they per-
ceived in scholasticism and a viable model for pursuing their own, different
kind of philosophy.34 More recently, Ronald G. Witt has concurred with
Gray’s critique, minimizing the importance of the professional context and
arguing that humanists were essentially driven by a stylistic ideal: the imi-
tation of the ancient Latin authors.35 According to his In the Footsteps of the
Ancients, humanism began as the preoccupation of a few individuals with
the imitation of classical Latin poetry, which imitation eventually spread
to prose and then was harnessed by Petrarch to a broader cultural program
of Christian piety and moral renewal. Through subsequent changes in
the persons of Coluccio Salutati and Leonardo Bruni, humanism became
institutionalized in chanceries and communal governments and eventually
lost its Christian emphasis, although it still represented a valid alternative
to the cultural standards inherited from the Middle Ages.
The vast differences between these schools of thought suggest that the
definition of humanism is today as open a question as it was when first
taken up by modern historiography one and a half centuries ago. What is
more, the claims to validity, or at least to thoroughness and universality, of
the prevailing interpretations of humanism have recently been challenged
by a provocative appeal in the form of Christopher S. Celenza’s essay,
The Lost Italian Renaissance.36 This work argues that our knowledge of
humanism is fatally limited by the field’s general ignorance of the sources,
and specifically of humanist literary texts, which for the most part lie
33 Ibid., p. 500. 34 Ibid., p. 498.

35 Witt, Footsteps. Witt enunciated the broad contours of this view earlier in his essay “Medieval
Italian Culture and the Origins of Humanism as a Stylistic Ideal,” in Rabil (ed.), Renaissance
Humanism, vol. I, pp. 29–70; and he refined it further in “Kristeller’s Humanists as Heirs of the
Medieval Dictatores,” in Mazzocco (ed.), Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism, pp. 21–35. Cf.
also Keßler, “Renaissance Humanism: The Rhetorical Turn.” For Witt’s view on the deep origins of
humanism, see The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval
Italy (Cambridge, 2011).
36 Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance. The validity and timeliness of Celenza’s argument have
achieved wide recognition among Renaissance scholars. See the reviews of Michael J.B. Allen in
Renaissance Quarterly, 58:2 (2005), pp. 576–577; Jurdjevic, “Hedgehogs and Foxes,” esp. pp. 265–
266; and Maurizio Campanelli, published electronically on H-Italy, H-Net Reviews, February 2006
(http://www.net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11391).
Introduction 13
unread in the dust of manuscript repositories and pre-modern editions.
In view of the unresolved (and perhaps unresolvable) historiographical
dispute between the Kristeller and Garin camps, the reigning uncertainty
about humanism’s cultural importance, and now of Celenza’s critique, the
understanding of Italian Renaissance humanism clearly needs an overhaul.
Celenza emphasizes that such a reconsideration should not be limited to
well-known evidence but should rather prefer the examination of hitherto
neglected sources. Within such a framework, which one cannot but agree is
highly desirable, a more historicizing and text-driven approach to defining
Renaissance humanism must surely put a high priority on bringing to light
the great many humanist testimonies specifically of humanism.
The very little work done in this area indicates how fruitful such research
can be. In the past fifty-five years two studies have been specifically devoted
to the self-conception of the humanists. In 1960, Charles Trinkaus pub-
lished an article on Bartolomeo della Fonte’s inaugural orations at the
University of Florence in the 1480s, intending it as a mild corrective to
Kristeller’s view of humanists as a professional class with little in the way
of an ethos and nothing of a philosophy.37 Trinkaus argues that, for della
Fonte, humanism, being composed of the five disciplines of the studia
humanitatis (grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, moral philosophy) but
with a special emphasis on rhetoric, was a particularly humanizing pur-
suit – i.e., that it was of all pursuits the one most apt to make man more
human. Furthermore, it was highly useful in private and civic life, nor was
it in any way contrary to religion. Finally, humanism was definitely distinct
from philosophy, and the humanist, or rhetorician, not the philosopher,
was the highest human type. The orations also iterated several times a his-
tory of rhetoric, charting its rise in ancient Greece and Rome, its decline in
the wake of the barbarian invasions of the fifth century, and its subsequent
reawakening with Petrarch. Based on what he judged to be della Fonte’s
manifest unoriginality in every area except textual scholarship, Trinkaus
concluded that the view of humanism found in the inaugural orations
represented not only della Fonte’s own opinion but also that of his cultural
milieu, and thus that it could be attributed generally to the scholars, the
students, and the patrons of humanism in Florence in the last quarter of the
fifteenth century. The other scholarly consideration of the self-conception
37 Charles Edward Trinkaus, “A Humanist’s Conception of Humanism: The Inaugural Orations of

Bartolomeo della Fonte,” Studies in the Renaissance, 7 (1960), pp. 90–147, at 90–91 and 123–125
for his work’s relationship to Kristeller’s view of humanism [reprinted in Trinkhaus, The Scope of
Renaissance Humanism (Ann Arbor, 1983), pp. 52–87, but without the appendices and bibliographies
of della Fonte].
of the humanists is contained in John M. McManamon’s Funeral Oratory
and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism.38 From his broad considera-
tion of humanist funeral orations throughout the entire fifteenth century
and all over Italy, McManamon arrives at very different conclusions about
humanism from Trinkaus’s. First, the true founder of humanism was not
Petrarch but rather the team of Manuel Chrysoloras and Leonardo Bruni.
Second, the great accomplishment of humanism was to have resurrected
the ancient tradition of bonae litterae and the artes liberales. There is no
talk of making man more human, although humanist education is praised
as leading students to virtue.
As Trinkaus’s and McManamon’s studies indicate, further investigations
into humanist accounts of humanism can shed much light on the human-
ists’ sense of their own contribution to the culture of their age, of their rela-
tionship to formal philosophy and other disciplines like law and medicine,
of their history, founders, and exemplary exponents, of their cultural ideals,
of their view of the past, of their hopes for the future, and so on. Yet their
example is also indicative of the difficulties inherent in using such sources.
For one they can reveal as much contradiction as concord, resulting from a
difference not only of authors but more importantly of genre, context, and
audience. Although both Trinkaus and McManamon considered ceremo-
nial orations, the former interpreted academic orations intended to defend
humanism’s value against other disciplines and to encourage a learned and
especially a humanist audience (or at least one sympathetic to humanism)
in its studies in Florence,39 whereas the latter considered funeral orations
intended to console and to honor the values of a civic, non-humanist
audience all over Italy. Another, graver problem with such sources is their
radical subjectivity. Consider the passages from Bruni’s Memoirs quoted at
the outset. No matter how intimately revealing the text may seem about
his decision to learn Greek, his regard for his teacher, and his estimation
of his fellow students, Bruni’s is still only one lone, albeit authoritative,
voice. Taken by itself, it floats tantalizingly in the void. In order for it to do
more than enunciate an idiosyncratic view, it must be considered together
with similar texts, all of which must ultimately be compared, weighed,
and searched for common patterns – surely an admirable goal but also
38 John M. McManamon, S.J., Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism (Chapel
Hill, 1989), ch. 6: “Academic Ideals: ‘Perfected in the Arts Appropriate to Humanity’” and ch. 7:
“Ethos Enshrined.”
39 As Trinkaus notes, the University of Florence was by this time completely dedicated to humanistic
subjects, whereas other faculties like law had been relocated to Pisa. See Trinkaus, “A Humanist’s
Conception,” pp. 91–92.
Introduction 15
premature, considering the very little work that has been done in this field
and the lack even of a detailed overview of the pertinent sources.
∗ ∗ ∗
There is a corpus of texts, however, that stands out as being particularly
worthy of scrutiny and promising of a broadly representative view: a motley
assortment of treatises, biographical collections, and dialogues that provide
global accounts of the humanist movement. Apart from the treatises, such
works were basically modeled on three ancient bio-historiographical gen-
res popular in the Renaissance: (1) bio-bibliographical registers of works
and achievements after the manner of Jerome’s De viris illustribus; (2) vita
collections in the tradition of Cornelius Nepos, Plutarch, or Suetonius’
Lives of the Caesars and Lives of the Grammarians; and (3) dialogues mod-
eled on Cicero’s Brutus. The name of the first of these text types – De
viris illustribus, or On Famous Men – was often eponymously ascribed
to all such collective biographical works, and many authors incorporated
it, or some modified form of it, into their titles, no matter which spe-
cific generic form their work took. Throughout the Middle Ages works
of this kind served often, but not exclusively, as vehicles for what we
would commonly think of as literary history. Thus Gennadius (ca. 490),
Isidore of Seville (ca. 630), and Ildephonsus of Toledo (ca. 660) contin-
ued Jerome’s work in homonymous writings, whereas Peter the Deacon
commemorated members of his monastic community in his De viris illus-
tribus casinensibus, Benzo d’Alessandria narrated large spans of history by
way of brief biographical entries in his Chronicon (ca. 1320), and Boc-
caccio recorded the exploits of famous women in his De mulieribus claris
(ca. 1360).40
Growing thus out of an ancient (but also a medieval) tradition
of celebrating political, religious, and cultural heroes and other great
representatives of intellectual and literary traditions, collective biographies
in various forms developed in the fifteenth century into a sophisticated
40 Gennadius, Liber de viris inlustribus, ed. E.C. Richardson (Leipzig, 1896), pp. 57–97; Isidore of
Seville, El De viris illustribus de Isidoro de Sevilla. Estudio y edición critica, ed. C. Codoñer Merino
(Salamanca, 1964); Ildephonsus of Toledo, El De viris illustribus de Ildefonso de Toledo. Estudio
y edición critica, ed. C. Codoñer Merino (Salamanca, 1972); Peter the Deacon, De viris illus-
tribus casinensibus, in PL, vol. CLXXIII, pp. 1003–1050, with a supplement by Placidus Romanus
(pp. 1049–1062) [a modern Italian translation is Pietro Diacono, De viris illustribus casinensibus, tr.
and ed. G. Sperduti (Cassino, 1995)]; Benzo d’Alessandria, Il Chronicon di Benzo d’Alessandria e i
classici latini all’inizio del XIV secolo: edizione critica del libro XXIV: “De moribus et vita philosopho-
rum,” ed. M. Petoletti (Milan, 2000); Giovanni Boccaccio, On Famous Women, ed. and tr. Virginia
Brown (Cambridge, Mass., 2001).
tool for commemorating the pioneers and premier figures of humanism.41
Some of the biographies can seem schematic, and some appear to be little
more than lists, but even these are replete with useful information. In the
course of enumerating the activities and works of a range of humanists,
each text offers insight into how its humanist author understood the
development, essence, and aspirations of the movement in which he
himself was a participant. Not all such works set out to narrate the history
of humanism per se – indeed, what they have to say about humanism is
seldom inscribed in a formal narrative at all – but they are all nevertheless
attempts to take stock of humanism as a whole, to give an account of what
it was and what it meant. With careful interpretation and the requisite
attention paid to the stories the authors wish to tell, we can reconstruct
the narrative that lies beneath the surface and thus approach such sources
as humanist histories of humanism.42
Among all the sources for humanist self-conception, these biographical
collections promise to be the most considered and representative. Discrete
biographies and reminiscences in letters, literary dedications, ceremonial
orations, and commemorative poetry all abound in useful statements,
but these tend to be desultory, incomplete, or panegyrical. Collective
41 See Guglielmo Bottari, “Introduzione,” in Guglielmo da Pastrengo, De viris illustribus, et, De orig-
inibus, ed. Guglielmo Bottari (Padua, 1991), pp. ix–xciv; Rudolf Blum, “Die Literaturverzeichnung
im Altertum und Mittelalter: Versuch einer Geschichte der Biobibliographie von den Anfängen
bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit,” Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, 24 (1983), coll. 1–256; Man-
fred Fuhrmann, “Die Geschichte der Literaturgeschichtsschreibung von den Anfängen bis zum
19. Jahrhundert,” in Bernard Cerquiglini and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (eds.), Der Diskurs der
Literatur- und Sprachhistorie (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), pp. 49–72; Massimo Miglio, “Biografia
e raccolte biografiche nel Quattrocento italiano,” Atti dell’Accademia delle Scienze dell’Istituto di
Bologna (Classe di Scienze Morali), 63 (1974–1975), pp. 166–199; Rosanna Alhaique Pettinelli, “La
critica nell’età umanistica,” in Giorgio Baroni (ed.), Storia della critica letteraria in Italia (Turin,
1997), pp. 116–174, at 119–133; Klaus Arnold, “De viris illustribus. Aus den Anfängen der humanis-
tischen Literatur-geschichtsschreibung: Johannes Trithemius und andere Schriftstellerkataloge des
15. Jahrhunderts,” Humanistica lovaniensia, 42 (1993), pp. 52–70; and Eric Cochrane, Historians and
Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1981), pp. 393–400.
42 I have discussed the nature of such texts and made arguments for considering them proper works
of history in three articles: Patrick Baker, “A Labyrinth of Praise and Blame: On the Form and
Structure of Marcantonio Sabellico’s De latinae linguae reparatione,” in Johannes Helmrath, Albert
Schirrmeister, and Stefan Schlelein (eds.), Historiographie des Humanismus. Literarische Verfahren,
soziale Praxis, geschichtliche Räume (Berlin, 2013), pp. 209–240; Baker, “Writing History in Cicero’s
Shadow,” in Anna Heinze, Albert Schirrmeister, and Julia Weitbrecht (eds.), Antikes erzählen.
Narrative Transformationen von Antike in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Berlin, 2013), pp. 75–90;
and Baker, “Collective Biography as Historiography: The De viris illustribus of Bartolomeo Facio,”
in Baker (ed.), Biography, Historiography, and Modes of Philosophizing: The Tradition of Collective
Biography in Early Modern Europe (forthcoming). See also Massimo Miglio, “Biografia e raccolte
biografiche nel Quattrocento italiano,” in P. Tuynman, G. C. Kuiper, and E. Keßler (eds.), Acta
conventus neo-latini amstelodamensis. Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Neo-Latin
Studies, Amsterdam, August 19–24, 1973 (Munich, 1979), pp. 775–785.
Introduction 17
biographies, on the other hand, are more deliberate, comprehensive, and
comparative. This last attribute is of especial importance. Whereas the
author of an individual biography or a funeral oration generally erects an
oversized monument to his subject, praising him inordinately and attribut-
ing to him all manner of accomplishments, the collective biographer must
place each individual into a larger cultural landscape. Although the latter’s
intention is still to praise, he must, like the curator of a museum, take
a panoptic view when lining up many viri illustres next to one another.
When comparison with other figures is easy, obvious, and encouraged, it
becomes more difficult for any one person to be praised beyond measure,
or at least beyond the measure accorded to all. Finally, in addition to
being highly expressive and circumspect, these sources are also likely to be
more representative of humanists’ sincere self-understanding than those
which were generally written for a non-humanist audience and which
had the object of defending or selling humanism, such as educational
treatises or ceremonial orations. For these accounts of humanism seem
to have been written largely for a humanist audience (including patrons
who participated meaningfully in humanism), and they contain little of
the ideological grandstanding typical of other genres. To adapt Clifford
Geertz’s famous formulation: these sources are a humanist reading of
humanist experience, a story they tell themselves about themselves.43 It is
the object of this book to re-evoke that inner narrative.
Humanists began to write global accounts of their movement in the
fourth decade of the fifteenth century, in what appears to have been a
moment of intense self-awareness. Tendencies in this direction can be
detected in Sicco Polenton’s Scriptorum illustrium latinae linguae libri XVIII
(1437), which charts the development of Latin style across the auctores of
antiquity but also mentions the few who in modern times achieved the
old eloquence.44 In the next year Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger
published his dialogue De curiae commodis, one section of which celebrates
the great humanists of the papal curia.45 Shortly thereafter, in 1441, the
Hellenist Cyriac of Ancona dedicated to Pope Eugenius IV his Itinerarium,
an epistolary treatise describing his (Cyriac’s) travels and especially the
43 Cf. Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” Daedalus, 101:1 (1972), pp. 1–37
[reprinted in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973)].
44 Sicco Polenton, Scriptorum illustrium latinae linguae libri XVIII, ed. B.L. Ullman (Rome, 1928). The
moderns mentioned include: Albertino Mussato, Lovato dei Lovati, Dante, and Petrarch (pp. 126–
139), Giovanni Conversini da Ravenna (p. 166), and Francesco Barbaro (pp. 253 and 465) [as noted
in M.L. McLaughlin, “Histories of Literature in the Quattrocento,” in P. Hainsworth et al. (eds.),
The Languages of Literature in Renaissance Italy (Oxford, 1988), pp. 63–80, at 68–69].
45 Celenza, Renaissance Humanism and the Papal Curia.
humanists he met along the way, their activities, and, in a typical lapse of
modesty, their praises of the author.46 These sources, however, lack a certain
maturity and comprehensiveness. Polenton mentions Italian humanists but
gives them very little space in his massive text, Lapo focuses exclusively on
humanists employed in the curia, and Cyriac confines himself to humanists
of his own acquaintance.
The first to embrace the phenomenon of humanism as a widespread
movement, to describe its history, and to give voice specifically to its aspira-
tions or cultural ideals, albeit on a small scale, was the Florentine Giannozzo
Manetti. His Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vita (1440) contains
comparative biographies of the Three Crowns of Florence (Dante, Petrarch,
and Boccaccio), depicting all three as full-fledged humanists. Especially
when read in light of related treatments of Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati,
and Niccolò Niccoli in his coeval De illustribus longaevis (1439), and of a
section dedicated to humanists in his later Contra Judaeos et Gentes (1452–
1458), these biographies constitute Manetti’s attempt not only to defend
the humanist credentials of the Three Crowns but also to attribute to them,
especially the latter two, the foundation of a broad cultural movement.47
In the mid- to late 1440s Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, then at the episcopal
stage of his astonishing Church career, profiled in his De viris illustribus
the leading men and women of European politics and culture.48 Only
one humanist, Leonardo Bruni, receives an entry, but the article becomes
a history of the humanist movement, starting with Bruni as its greatest
exponent and then branching out into his teachers, fellows, and succes-
sors. Similarly, Biondo Flavio singles out humanism for special treatment
in a famous passage of his Italia illustrata (1453), a toponymic and cul-
tural gazetteer of Italy.49 This time the occasion arises not with Bruni but
with Giovanni da Ravenna, and the historical method is more rigorous:
Biondo goes into greater depth, seeks to explain the causes for the evo-
lution and spread of humanism, and clearly differentiates developmental
46 Cyriac of Ancona, Itinerarium, ed. Lorenzo Mehus (Florentiae: Ex novo Typographio Joannis Pauli
Giovannelli ad Insigne Palmae, 1742; facsimile reprint Bologna, 1969). On the dating of the work see
Mehus’ “Praefatio ad lectorem,” pp. xxxiv–xxxvi. According to Mehus (pp. xxxvi–xxxvii): “Multum
vero utilitatis ex hoc opusculo percipi potest tum propter praestissimos illius aetatis viros, qui in hoc
Itinerario memorantur, tum propter prima illorum studiorum rudimenta, quae nunc ad tantam
amplitudinem evecta conspicimus.”
47 The relevant sections of Manetti’s works are available in Giannozzo Manetti, Biographical Writings,
ed. and tr. Stefano U. Baldassarri and Rolf Bagemihl (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).
48 Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, De viris illustribus, ed. A. Van Heck (Vatican City, 1991).
49 Biondo Flavio, Italy Illuminated, ed. and tr. Jeffrey A. White (Cambridge, Mass., 2005–). Another
edition, already complete, is Biondo Flavio’s Italia Illustrata: Text, Translation, and Commentary,
ed. and tr. Catherine J. Castner, 2 vols. (Binghamton, NY, 2005–2010).
Introduction 19
stages. Like Piccolomini’s treatment, it is only one small chapter in a much
larger text with a broader cultural and geographical purview; nevertheless,
Biondo portrays humanism as the cornerstone of Italian culture. A similar
emphasis is found in the De viris illustribus (1456) of Bartolomeo Facio, a
lesser-known Ligurian humanist at the court of Alfonso the Magnificent in
Naples.50 It, too, catalogues the achievements of great men across several
departments of contemporary life and gives humanists absolute priority.
The superior importance of humanism is made even clearer by the organi-
zation of the work: the humanists come first, and they greatly outnumber
the illustrious figures in law, medicine, the visual arts, war, and politics.
Finally, at the end of the 1480s, two texts appear, temporally coincidental
though hailing from different regions of Italy, that record the history of
humanism in dialogues imitating Cicero’s Brutus. That is, instead of in
a synthetic narrative, the great humanists and their accomplishments are
reviewed and judged over the course of informal conversation and speeches.
These are the first texts dedicated exclusively to humanism and which con-
sider it without reference to any broader intellectual or cultural context.
In Rome, Paolo Cortesi, best known for his polemic with Poliziano over
imitation and specifically Ciceronianism in Latin style, charts humanism’s
development according to the recovery of proper Ciceronian language in
his De hominibus doctis (ca. 1489).51 Criticism of style also drives the De lati-
nae linguae reparatione (ca. 1489) of Marcantonio Sabellico, an important
teacher and historian in Venice who has largely been forgotten by modern
scholars.52 As opposed to Cortesi, however, Sabellico does not use Cicero as
his measuring stick, and he offers a different vision of humanism’s origins
and cultural significance.
Humanist accounts of humanism continue into the sixteenth century,
most (in)famously with Erasmus’ Ciceronianus (1528), yet another imitation
of Cicero’s Brutus and the first writing in the genre to get its author into
serious trouble. Erasmus reaped the whirlwind for his unrepentant critique
and sometimes downright mockery of too-zealous humanist imitators of
Cicero all over Europe but especially in Italy, and he spent the rest of his
life soothing egos and ruing the day he had ever published, much less
50 Bartolomeo Facio, De viris illustribus liber, ed. Laurentius Mehus (Florentiae: Ex typ. Joannis Pauli
Giovannelli, 1745) [facsimile reprint in Anita Di Stefano et al. (eds.), La storiografia umanistica.
Convegno internazionale di studi, Messina 22–25 ottobre 1987, 2 vols. in 3 (Messina, 1992), vol. II,
pp. 11–164].
51 Paolo Cortesi, De hominibus doctis, ed. Giacomo Ferraù (Palermo, 1979).
52 Marcantonio Sabellico, De latinae linguae reparatione, ed. Guglielmo Bottari (Messina, 1999),
hereafter referred to as Sabellico, DLLR.
composed, his text.53 Other important contributions came in the form
of Pierio Valeriano’s dialogue De litteratorum infelicitate (ca. 1529), Paolo
Giovio’s dialogue De viris et feminis aetate nostra florentibus (1527) and
biographical collection Elogia virorum doctorum (1546), and Lilio Gregorio
Giraldi’s dialogue De poetis nostrorum temporum (1553).54
These sources have not been extensively used by historians of humanism,
though they have not been entirely neglected, either.55 Enlightenment
scholars like Apostolo Zeno and Lorenzo Mehus relied on them to recon-
struct the history of humanism and its literature, and, as mentioned above,
they were instrumental for Georg Voigt’s Wiederbelebung des classischen
53 See Betty I. Knot, “Introductory Note” to Ciceronianus, in Desiderius Erasmus, The Collected Works
of Erasmus, vol. XXVIII: Literary and Educational Writings 6, ed. A.H.T. Levi (Toronto, 1974–2006),
pp. 330–334.
54 These works are available in the following editions: Desiderius Erasmus, Dialogus ciceronianus,
ed. Pierre Mesnard, in Erasmus, Opera Omnia, ordinis primi tomus secundus (Amsterdam, 1971);
Pierio Valeriano, Pierio Valeriano on the Ill Fortune of Learned Men: A Renaissance Humanist and his
World, ed. and tr. Julia Haig Gaisser (Ann Arbor, 1999); Paolo Giovio, Notable Men and Women of
Our Time, ed. and tr. Kenneth Gouwens (Cambridge, Mass., 2013); Giovio, Gli elogi degli uomini
illustri, letterati, artisti, uomini d’arme, ed. Renzo Meregazzi (Rome, 1972); Lilio Gregorio Giraldi,
Due dialoghi sui poeti dei nostri tempi, ed. Claudia Pandolfi (Ferrara, 1999); and Giraldi, Modern
Poets, ed. and tr. John N. Grant (Cambridge, Mass., 2011).
In addition to the texts listed in these paragraphs, there are many kindred sources that, however,
do not pretend to offer global accounts of the humanist movement. Some are too briefly sketched,
such as the catalogue of humanists contained in Jacopo Foresti da Bergamo’s universal chronicle
Supplementum Chronicarum, on which see Achim Krümmel, Das “Supplementum Chronicarum” des
Augustinermönches Jacobus Philippus Foresti von Bergamo. Eine der ältesten Bilderchroniken und ihre
Wirkungsgeschichte (Herzberg, 1992). There are also works devoted to only one city instead of all
of Italy, e.g., Virgilio Zavarise’s poem commemorating the humanists of Verona, in Banterle, “Il
carme”; and the proem to Cristoforo Landino’s Comento sopra la Comedia, ed. Paolo Procaccioli
(Rome, 2001), which considers only Florentines (both works date to the second half of the fifteenth
century). Another fascinating source is the biographical collection (ca. 1492) of the Florentine
bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci, who, however, was not himself a humanist (although he surely
participated in the world of humanism): Vespasiano da Bisticci, Le Vite, ed. Aulo Greco, 2 vols.
(Florence, 1970–1976). Another source is Benedetto Accolti’s De praestantia virorum sui aevis. As
Robert Black argues, however, it was a rhetorical showpiece meant to impress its dedicatee, Lorenzo
de’ Medici, by sustaining an insincere and outlandish position, namely the superiority of modern
religion, arms, and philosophy over their ancient counterparts. See Robert Black, “Ancients and
Moderns in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and History in Accolti’s Dialogue on the Preeminence of Men
of his Own Time,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 43:1 (1982), pp. 3–32. Black has since somewhat
modified his view of the dialogue and the issue of Accolti’s sincerity, but its general interpretation
is still far from certain. See Black, “Benedetto Accolti: A Portrait,” in Celenza and Gowens (eds.),
Humanism and Creativity, pp. 61–83, at 74–82; for a different view of the dialogue, see D’Ascia,
“Coscienza della Rinascita,” pp. 13–15.
55 Until recently most such texts were not even available in modern editions. From Polenton to Giraldi,
only the works of Polenton himself, Giovio, and Erasmus were edited until about thirty years ago.
A satisfactory text of Giovio’s Elogia has still not been issued, though; see the “Nota al testo” of
the recent Italian translation: Paolo Giovio, Elogi degli uomini illustri, ed. Franco Minonzio, tr.
Andrea Guasparri and Franco Minonzio (Turin, 2006), pp. lxxxix–xcviii, at lxxxix–xcii. Even more
indicative of the neglect these sources have suffered is the fact that Cyriac’s Itinerarium and Facio’s
De viris illustribus are still available only in facsimile reprints of unreliable eighteenth-century
editions.
Introduction 21
Alterthums.56 In the twentieth century, Eugenio Garin used Paolo Cortesi’s
De hominibus doctis to describe the literary ideas of the circle around
Pomponio Leto, and Michael Baxandall investigated Bartolomeo Facio’s
De viris illustribus as part of his larger treatment of the humanist criticism
of art.57 Furthermore, Biondo Flavio’s Italia illustrata has often been cited
as an important contemporary witness to the development and significance
of the humanist movement in the early Quattrocento.58 Finally, Erasmus’
Ciceronianus is a famous text and has received ample attention as part of the
cottage industry devoted to its author.59 Despite such studies, these texts
have rarely been considered as a unit with regard to their central purpose –
to portray humanism and to illustrate its larger cultural meaning – and
they have never been studied systematically to deepen our understanding
of humanism, much less of the humanists’ own understanding of
themselves.60
56 Zeno used Cortesi’s De hominibus doctis in his Dissertazioni Vossiane (Venice, 1752–1753) [mentioned
in Maria Teresa Graziosi, “Introduzione,” in Paolo Cortesi, De hominibus doctis dialogus (Rome,
1973), pp. vii–xxxii, at xxxii] and Sabellico’s De latinae linguae reparatione in his Degl’istorici delle cose
veneziane, i quali hanno scritto per pubblico decreto (Venice, 1718–1722) (mentioned in Guglielmo
Bottari, “Introduzione,” in Sabellico, DLLR, pp. 7–67, at 7, 23, 66). See also de Nichilo, I viri
illustres, p. 25. Mehus edited Bartolomeo Facio’s De viris illustribus (Florence, 1745) and Cyriac of
Ancona’s Itinerarium (Florence, 1742), and his conviction of their usefulness for writing a history
of humanism (which he never completed) emerges from his respective letters to the reader.
57 Eugenio Garin, “La letteratura degli umanisti,” in E. Cecchi and N. Sapegno (eds.), Storia della
letteratura italiana (Milan, 1965–1969), vol. III (1966), pp. 5–353, at 148 [cited in Giacomo Ferraù,
“Introduzione,” in Paolo Cortesi, De hominibus doctis (Palermo, 1979), p. 39]; Michael Baxandall,
“Bartholomeus Facius on Painting: A Fifteenth-Century Manuscript of the De viris illustribus,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 27 (1964), pp. 90–107, at 90–97, later integrated
into Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of
Pictorial Composition, 1350–1450 (Oxford, 1971), pp. 97–111.
58 Bibliography available in Gabriella Albanese, “Mehrsprachigkeit und Literaturgeschichte im Renais-
sancehumanismus,” in Christiane Maass and Annett Volmer (eds.), Mehrsprachigkeit in der Renais-
sance (Heidelberg, 2005), pp. 23–56, at 24–25, n. 5, who notes, however, that the relevant passage’s
“Bedeutung bislang noch nicht adäquat gewürdigt wurde” (p. 24). To Albanese’s citations should
be added Ottavio Clavuot, “Flavio Biondos Italia illustrata: Porträt und historisch-geographische
Legitimation der humanistischen Elite Italiens,” in Johannes Helmrath, Ulrich Muhlack, and Gerrit
Walther (eds.), Diffusion des Humanismus: Studien zur nationalen Geschichtsschreibung europäischer
Humanisten (Göttingen, 2002), pp. 55–76.
59 E.g., Luca D’Ascia, Erasmo e l’Umanesimo romano (Florence, 1991); G.W. Pigman III, “Imitation
and the Renaissance Sense of the Past: The Reception of Erasmus’ Ciceronianus,” Journal of Medieval
and Renaissance Studies, 9 (1979), pp. 155–177; and H.C. Gotoff, “Cicero vs. Ciceronianism in the
Ciceronianus,” Illinois Classical Studies, 5 (1980), pp. 163–173.
60 Nevertheless, they have several times been recognized as a valuable corpus for doing just that. In
their introductions and notes to Paolo Cortesi’s De hominibus doctis and Marcantonio Sabellico’s De
latinae linguae reparatione, Giacomo Ferraù and Guglielmo Bottari, respectively, have given atten-
tion to humanist accounts of humanism, mentioning or briefly describing many of the works listed
above and comparing them to the texts whose editions they crafted. Neither, however, makes any
attempt at synthesis. Similarly, Konrad Krautter has placed Sabellico’s De latinae linguae reparatione
in the same tradition, which he understands more narrowly as the tradition of humanist literary
history, and has mentioned the desirability of a close comparison with Cortesi’s text – a study
which has not yet been undertaken; see Konrad Krautter, “Marcus Antonius Sabellicus’ Dialog ‘De
Considering how truly undiscovered the country of humanist accounts
of humanism is, it has seemed appropriate not to try to survey the whole vast
landscape of this literature in a pioneering study but rather to take as deep
a view as possible within a logically coherent and historically meaningful
panorama. This study will therefore be confined to the more comprehensive
accounts from the fifteenth century, from Manetti to Sabellico. The reasons
for this have mostly to do with developments within humanism, but
also partly with the nature of the sources and partly with the history of
scholarship. Regarding the starting point, as discussed above, sources of this
kind do not appear until the 1430s, and even the texts by Sicco Polenton,
Lapo da Castiglionchio, and Cyriac of Ancona lack the comprehensiveness
necessary for sustained and relevant comparison with those of Manetti,
Piccolomini, Biondo, and so on. The moment of self-awareness crystallized
in these latter authors’ works provides a logical first bookend.
Moving to the other chronological terminus, the end of the fifteenth
century makes a natural boundary for the present study, as the changes that
took place during the sixteenth century make it a separate period worthy of
study in its own right. First, that is when humanism ceased to be a distinctly
Italian phenomenon. Of course, non-Italians, especially Greeks, played a
major role in humanism throughout the Quattrocento. But the Greeks
generally adapted themselves to the needs of their Italian students, and the
inspiration, sources, and training of northern humanists were primarily Ital-
ian. By the Cinquecento many leaders of the movement were based north of
the Alps, and from the 1490s on humanist grammatical training was firmly
planted in schools outside Italy. The majority of the movement’s important
figures were non-Italians like Erasmus, Thomas More, Guillaume Budé,
and Philipp Melanchthon, and the dissemination of humanist writings
had undergone a major change: it was now based in international print-
ing centers like Venice and Paris, and later Basel and Lyon. The name
of Melanchthon calls to mind a larger historical development that also
latinae linguae reparatione’: Bemerkungen zur Struktur humanistischer Literaturgeschichtsschrei-

bung,” in P. Tuynman, G.C. Kuiper, and E. Keßler (eds.), Acta conventus neo-latini amstelodamensis:
Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, Amsterdam 19–24 August 1973
(Munich, 1979), pp. 635–646, esp. 635 and 641. These sources have also formed the basis for related
studies in Renaissance culture. In the field of literary criticism, for example, M.L. McLaughlin has
used many of them to assemble a theretofore missing history of the criticism of Latin literature in
the Quattrocento; see McLaughlin, “Histories of Literature in the Quattrocento”; and McLaughlin,
“Humanist Criticism of Latin and Vernacular Prose,” in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism
(Cambridge, 1989–), vol. 2: The Middle Ages, eds. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson, pp. 648–665.
And more recently, these texts have provided the bulk of the evidence for Gabriella Albanese’s study
of multilingualism in the Renaissance; see Albanese, “Mehrsprachigkeit.”
Introduction 23
changed the nature of humanism: the Reformation. The vicissitudes of
confessionalization, the Inquisition, and the Index turned humanism in
different directions, on the one hand harnessing it to the needs of Protes-
tant education, on the other reshaping it by enforcing stricter standards of
orthodoxy. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there was a linguistic
shift. The Quattrocento is for all intents and purposes a Latin century in
Italy.61 The ennobling of the vernacular that began with Dante was largely
ignored in humanist culture and would not gain strength again until the age
of Lorenzo the Magnificent in Florence, and it would not be the dominant
literary language until the sixteenth century.62 By limiting ourselves to the
major sources of the fifteenth century we can investigate more profoundly
the phenomenon of pre-Reformation, Latinate, Italian humanism.
Finally, a focus on the fifteenth century is desirable in light of this study’s
underlying motivation, namely to supply a neglected point of view from
which to re-evaluate our understanding of the nature of humanism. The
Baron thesis relies on events and writings from the turn of the century.
Kristeller and Garin parted ways especially over the philosophical status
of much fifteenth-century literature. The humanist educational treatises
span from 1403 to the end of the 1450s. The lion’s share of the evidence for
the institutional and professional meaning of the studia humanitatis also
comes from the Quattrocento, as is the case with the sources adduced by
Hanna Gray in her critique of Kristeller. Witt’s view, admittedly, is more
firmly entrenched in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but it is just
as decisively shaped by developments in the fifteenth. This is the period in
which the major interpretations of and debates over humanism are most
securely anchored, so this is where it will be most profitable to hear what
the humanists themselves have to say.
∗ ∗ ∗
Chapter 1 considers together Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini’s and Bartolomeo
Facio’s De viris illustribus and Biondo Flavio’s Italia illustrata, as all three
61 A secolo senza poesia, according to a view that discounts humanist Latin literature. See Letizia A.
Panizza, “The Quattrocento,” in Peter Brand and Lino Pertile (eds.), The Cambridge History of
Italian Literature (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 129–177, at 131; and Martin McLaughlin, “Latin and
Vernacular from Dante to the Age of Lorenzo (1321–c. 1500),” in The Cambridge History of Literary
Criticism, vol. 2, pp. 612–625, esp. at 625: “it must be remembered that the defence of the volgare
in the Quattrocento was proclaimed by only a few lone voices in a generally hostile environment.”
62 See Angelo Mazzocco, Linguistic Theories in Dante and the Humanists: Studies of Language and
Intellectual History in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy (Leiden, 1993). But cf. also Mazzocco,
“Kristeller and the Italian Vernacular,” in Monfasani (ed.), Kristeller Reconsidered, pp. 163–181, for
a summary and review of Kristeller’s important modification of this view.
texts are thematically related and come from roughly the same period.
They give a general impression from the 1440s and 1450s of humanism as
a movement for the resuscitation of classical, especially Ciceronian, Latin,
and the latter two sources also emphasize a more general interest in the arts
and culture of classical antiquity. They depict a period of wonder, discovery,
recovery of the ancient literary past, and they convey the excitement of
individuals who know that they are experiencing (the flourishing of ) a
revolutionary cultural undertaking in its prime. This chapter provides a
kind of baseline, a standard of comparison for other authors and, in light
of that comparison, a description of the basic meaning humanism had for
a broad group of individuals across Italy in the fifteenth century.
Chapter 2 focuses on Giannozzo Manetti’s writings. Although two of
them chronologically predate the works of Piccolomini, Biondo, and Facio,
their significance will appear more clearly after the discussions of the
first chapter. Manetti’s writings give special insight into the peculiar way
Florentines viewed humanism – a conception that, in light of the other
authors considered, turns out not to be as representative of broader trends
as the last century of scholarship has led us to expect. Manetti significantly
broadens the meaning of the term studia humanitatis with respect to the
previous authors. To the basic components of Latinity and reverence for
antiquity they describe he adds vernacular poetry, a concern for spirituality,
and the striving for Christian virtue. Furthermore, he blurs the boundaries
between humanism and scholasticism to depict an age of general cultural
flourishing. But the most striking aspect of Manetti’s humanism is that
it is a setting for a kind of lay monasticism, in which a combination of
self-abnegation and the study of Latin literature leads to the beatissima vita.
Chapters 3 and 4 deal respectively with Paolo Cortesi’s De hominibus
doctis and Marcantonio Sabellico’s De latinae linguae reparatione, both of
which date to the end of the 1480s. Both authors enunciate a triumphant
narrative for humanism, portraying their predecessors, as Cicero does in
his Brutus, as evolutionary stages on the way to the perfection of their own
day. For both of them, perfection equals the restoration of classical Latin
eloquence.
In Chapter 3 we shall see how Cortesi views humanism as the continua-
tion of an uninterrupted tradition, one that had moved to Greece with the
fall of the Western Empire, but now, with the fall of the Eastern Empire
to the Ottomans, returned to its home in Italy. Its central project was
to restore Latinity to its one-time greatness and purity in Cicero, which
Cortesi intimates has happened in Rome in his own day, and for which
this very dialogue is perhaps intended as the first sure proof.
Introduction 25
Chapter 4 shows how Sabellico, on the other hand, conceives of human-
ism as a purely homegrown, Italian phenomenon. Like Cortesi he puts the
restoration of good Latin style squarely in the middle of the movement, but
he considers more authors than Cicero to be worthy of imitation. One of
the most interesting aspects of his work is its sophisticated understanding
of the mechanisms of cultural and intellectual change, both in the process
of Latin’s renewal and in the structures necessary to cement it. He pays
special attention to the new technology of printing and especially to the
flourishing of philology and textual criticism, which he sees as the guar-
antors of humanism’s success. As these topics suggest, to a certain extent
Sabellico takes a Venetian point of view.
The object of Chapter 5, finally, is to collate, compare, and contrast
the various views of humanism investigated in the previous chapters, and
thereby to arrive, to the extent possible, at a synthesis of humanist self-
conception in fifteenth-century Italy. The idea is not to take a lowest-
common-denominator approach, resting complacent after having found a
few mundane things that everyone has in common, like beards on Antonine
emperors. My object is to home in on shared traits that the humanists
themselves identify as important, as central to their identity as humanists.
Furthermore, our line of sight will mainly be trained not down but up: at
the cherished goals and ideals the humanists enunciate, and at the activities
and structures in everyday life they thought would earn them fame in the
great humanist beyond.
When reading these accounts of humanism, we cannot help but be
amazed at how greatly they differ from most reigning scholarly interpreta-
tions. For when humanists set to recording their own history, they did not
describe humanism as a set of institutional disciplines, a political ideology,
an activist mentality, a philosophy of life, or a vision of man. They did
not describe it as an educational ethos, nor did they necessarily equate it
with virtue. On the contrary, at heart it was for them something much
more basic, simple, and in our view perhaps unexciting: a linguistic enter-
prise, its medium Latin, its object eloquence. The primary immediate goal
humanists enunciated was the restoration of classical Latin style and the
banishment of medieval lexical, grammatical, and syntactical practices.
This sounds remarkably similar to what Hanna Gray told us about
humanism a little over fifty years ago. Yet there are very important differ-
ences between Gray’s view and the one reconstructed here, and grasping
them will help us to understand better what it is the humanists thought
they were doing. Gray enunciated her theory of humanism as “the pursuit
of eloquence” primarily to explain the humanist critique of scholasticism
and to elucidate the nature of humanist work in the realm of philosophy.
As she writes,
True eloquence, according to the humanists, could arise only out of a
harmonious union between wisdom and style; its aim was to guide men
toward virtue and worthwhile goals, not to mislead them for vicious or
trivial purposes. It was this conception of eloquence which the humanists
placed in opposition to scholastic philosophy.63
The alternative they proposed was no philosophical system or program

in its own right but rather a rhetorical method that, by playing on the
strings of the will while simultaneously pulling on those of the intellect,
was more apt to lead their audience to live a good life.64 The examples
Gray gives in the works of Pico, Ermolao Barbaro, Melanchthon, Valla, and
Erasmus are all to her significant point, which was a helpful corrective to
Kristeller, but that point is only tangentially related to the view of eloquence
that, according to our authors, broadly informed humanist identity. First,
they never mention wisdom, not even the Catonian commonplace that
the rhetorician is the good man speaking well (although they doubtless
believed it).65 Second, they do not claim that eloquence or rhetoric is a
mode of philosophizing. Accordingly, Pico and Barbaro do not loom large
in their accounts, and Valla, albeit praised for his Elegantiae and teaching of
Latin, is not memorialized for his ideas. Finally, although our authors did
not doubt that eloquence had the persuasive power Gray describes, they
promoted it in contradistinction not to arid scholastic philosophy, which,
as we shall see in Chapter 2, could even be brought within the humanist
fold, but rather to barbaric medieval style in any and all fields of learning
and genres of literature. Indeed, philosophy, be it moral or natural, is only
one, and hardly the most important, of the many mansions of the word in
need of renovation.
The self-conception evinced by our humanist authors manifests the
greatest similarities with the theory that humanism was a stylistic ideal,
elaborated most clearly and thoroughly by Ronald Witt. In a sense, this
study can be thought of as taking up where Witt left off. For he ended
63 Gray, “Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence,” pp. 498–499.

64 See ibid., esp. pp. 500–505. See also the related discussions in Keßler, “Renaissance Humanism”;
and above all in Salvatore Camporeale’s scholarship on Lorenzo Valla and the relationship between
rhetoric, philosophy, and theology. For a summa of Camporeale’s thought, see Camporeale, Chris-
tianity, Latinity, and Culture: Two Studies on Lorenzo Valla, eds. Patrick Baker and Christopher S.
Celenza, tr. Patrick Baker (Leiden, 2014).
65 Cato the Elder’s view of the vir bonus, dicendi peritus is recorded in Quintilian, Institutio oratoria,
12, 1, 1.
Introduction 27
his seminal research into the origins and nature of humanism with the
figure of Leonardo Bruni, and it is precisely with Bruni that the accounts
considered here tend to start. Thus one of the upshots of this study is to
show that the yearning for classical eloquence was not only an impetus to
humanism but also that it persisted as the ethos of humanism throughout
the fifteenth century.
As the sources examined here consistently imply, argue, or outright
assert, this stylistic ideal turns out to be the root of the affinity humanists
had for ancient culture in general. That is, it is the Latin language and
literature of Roman antiquity that endowed the rest of classical culture
with special meaning for the humanists. Thus, they could be attracted
to ancient art and architecture, military strategy, political organization, or
philosophy, but the urgency they felt in connection with these things, their
desire to appropriate and possess them, ultimately stemmed from their
passion for ancient language. It bears repeating that this love was directed
almost exclusively at classical Latin. As the distinct linguistic hierarchy
established in the texts shows, Latin towers above the rest, Greek occupies
a distant second place (and is valued mostly as a handmaiden to Latin),
while other ancient languages like Hebrew are barely perceptible at the
bottom; the vernacular, in contrast, is largely portrayed as unimportant or
even as an ignoble competitor. To walk in the footsteps of the ancients
meant first and foremost to write Latin like them, or else to contribute to
the revival of their language through teaching. These were the marks of a
(great) humanist.
Yet the sources do more than give voice to a stylistic ideal. They pro-
claim a cultural paradigm in which the eloquence of bonae litterae has deep,
wide, and lasting civilizational consequences. As they testify, the pursuit
of eloquence was underlain by profound assumptions about human and
cultural excellence, and it was motivated by a desire to equal the perceived
greatness of classical, especially Roman antiquity. Our authors enunciate
various, overlapping views of what that means and how it should hap-
pen, but all agree about the connection, if not the identity, between the
language of antiquity and its preeminence, as well as about the imper-
ative of re-establishing both in their own day. For some the humanist
project amounted to a renewal of a backward and barbarous Italy, for oth-
ers it was the path to personal moral perfection. Others, in turn, equated
humanism with the fulfillment of individual and collective intellectual
potential, whereas others still saw it as a vehicle for Italian cultural coher-
ence and identity, and thus perhaps to a reversal of the peninsula’s political
fortunes.
Beyond describing humanism as an abstract ideal and a paradigm for cul-
tural flourishing, the sources also portray it as a community of individuals,
a coherent group held together by shared personal characteristics, activities,
rules of behavior, notions of honor, criteria for inclusion and exclusion,
and finally by a sense of belonging to an elite cadre with a distinct history,
a clear goal, and a common conviction of the inherent nobility of Latin.
Humanism emerges as a widespread movement, not anchored to any one
center or clique but diffused in many of Italy’s most important cities. This
movement was understood to be a distinct cultural entity or pursuit, more
or less separate from others like law or medicine or theology. It is gen-
erally portrayed as superior to these pursuits, and it is even celebrated as
the hallmark of the Renaissance as a whole, the premier manifestation of
the new classical orientation of the arts in Italy. Nevertheless, we must be
careful when comparing humanism to law or medicine, for none of our
authors identifies humanism as either a professional career (like doctor or
lawyer) or a defined program of study (like law or medicine), nor does any
of them strictly identify it with the five disciplines of the studia humanitatis
(although the term is used in a general way). For them, being a humanist
consisted rather in producing eloquent Latin literature, helping others to
do so by teaching, and by competing with others for distinction in these
pursuits. It also required, in order to belong to the truly elite group of
the illustrious, that one adhere to norms of sociability, and more impor-
tantly that one be a man and an Italian, or at least a Byzantine émigré;
the inscription above the portal to the higher realms of humanism read
“no women or barbari allowed.” The object of the authors examined in
this study was to celebrate the achievements of the greatest humanists, and
from their writings emerges a core group of viri illustres – what Johannes
Helmrath has dubbed the humanist corona66 – that remains remarkably
stable throughout the fifteenth century. This group endowed the rest of
the humanists with a sense of common history, identity, and orientation.
It is their example that the up-and-coming follow, to their reputation and
glory they hope to attain.
What is the import of these findings for the fundamental debate in
the field, still best encapsulated by the distinct positions of Kristeller and
Garin? First, I hope to offer a corrective to what must be recognized as the
66 Johannes Helmrath, “Streitkultur. Die ‘Invektive’ bei den italienischen Humanisten,” in Marc
Laureys and Roswitha Simons (eds.), Die Kunst des Streitens. Inszenierung, Formen und Funktionen
öffentlichen Streits in historischer Perspektive (Göttingen, 2010), pp. 259–293, at 264–265. See also
Harald Müller, Habit und Habitus. Mönche und Humanisten im Gespräch (Tübingen, 2006), esp.
pp. 55–78.
Introduction 29
myopia of the Kristeller thesis. As noted above, Kristeller was strong on
what, weak on why. Thus, regardless of how precisely he described various
aspects of humanism, by failing to provide a convincing rationale for it
his vision of the whole remains essentially distorted. Emblematic is the
Iter Italicum.67 In the process of surveying an unprecedented number of
humanistic manuscripts, Kristeller amassed a body of evidence whose enor-
mousness cannot be convincingly accounted for by the professional and
disciplinary motives he ascribed in the rest of his scholarship to the codices’
authors, scribes, owners, and commissioners. Once we grasp the ethos that
informed humanism, however, and especially the humanists’ belief in the
transformative power, in the civilizational potential, of eloquence, we can
immediately make sense of these seven large volumes of tiny print arranged
in double columns: they become the embodiment not of thousands of pay-
checks or courses of study but of a combined commitment to the Good
Life of bonae litterae. They are a testament to the vocation of humanism.
If focusing on the ethos expressed by the humanists supplements the
Kristeller thesis with missing values and ideas, on the other it tempers
the idealism of Garin’s interpretation. Garin applied to humanism meta-
or trans-historical ideals, thereby explaining it as a stage in the history of
philosophy and of human mental evolution across the ages. To be sure, he
grounded his interpretation in relevant primary sources, but his selection
of these sources can be tendentious, and at decisive moments his evidence
is disproportionately Florentine. What my research suggests is that, despite
Garin’s sensitivity to the grand cultural importance humanists had of
themselves and their enterprise, the ideals he latched onto – the awakening
of the human mind through a dialogue with the ancients, or the desire
to construct a perfect civic community – were not representative of the
humanist movement at large. This does not necessarily mean that Garin’s
insights are invalid with regard to specific texts or on the philosophical plane
on which he posited them, but rather that they do not reflect how humanists
themselves broadly understood what they were doing, and thus that they
are less helpful for understanding humanism historically. If Kristeller’s
mistake was to ignore the content of humanist thought, one could say
that Garin erred by giving greater attention to specific content than to
the general form. That is, he underestimated the extent to which the
form itself of good letters was what mattered most to humanists – form
67 Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued
Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries, 7 vols. in 10 (London and
Leiden, 1963–1997).
not in a mere aesthetic sense, but as the artful, perfected expression of
the human mind, an expression that was capable of effecting meaningful,
lasting cultural change, and that, in the eyes of humanists, was a sign that
such change might already have come. Thus humanism did constitute a
transformational period in human history, but not entirely or exactly as
Garin argued.
As should be obvious, this study will not topple these two schools of
thought, nor does it intend to do so. On the contrary, it will, if anything,
make Kristeller’s and Garin’s interpretations more meaningful by supplying
the deficiencies that significantly weaken them, as well as by showing how
they can be approached as complementary. Such reconciliation, however,
is not the primary motivation of this book. Instead its aim is to make
humanism more comprehensible in its own right: as a stylistic ideal, as a
paradigm for personal and cultural excellence, and as a movement made up
of a relatively small group of individuals, known to each other and to us,
whose powerful vision had an immeasurable impact on contemporaries and
posterity. When approached in this way, perhaps humanism will even rise
again as a central subject of Renaissance studies and of Western intellectual
history. Such is called for, at any rate, by the humanists’ own sense of the
value of humanism.
∗ ∗ ∗
Any study devoted to a reconsideration of the nature of humanism must
first confront a central terminological issue. As has long been known,
humanists did not actually call themselves “humanists” but instead
employed a wide variety of words such as oratores, poetae, and litterati.
Therefore the term “humanist” has long been embattled and is now
generally used only as a label of convenience by historians.68 To alleviate
some of the embarrassment, one of the aims of this study is to compile
68 The classic studies on the contemporary validity of the term “humanism” and its cognates are
Augusto Campana, “The Origin of the Word ‘Humanist,’” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes, 9 (1946), pp. 60–73; Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Humanism and Scholasticism in the Italian
Renaissance,” Byzantion, 17 (1944–1945), pp. 346–374, at 366 (reprinted in Renaissance Thought
and its Sources, pp. 85–105, at 99); and Vito R. Giustiniani, “Homo, humanus, and the Meaning
of Humanism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 46:2 (1985), pp. 167–195. A recent overview of
the meaning of the terms “humanist” and “humanism” is Jean-Louis Charlet, “De l’humaniste
à l’humanisme par les humanités: histoire de mots,” in Ladislaus Havas and Emericus Tegyey
(eds.), Hercules latinus: Acta colloquiorum minorum anno MMIV Aquis Sextiis, sequenti autem anno
Debrecini causa praeparandi grandis eius XIII conventus habitorum, quem Societatas Internationalis
Studiis Neolatinis Provehendis diebus 6–13 m. Aug. a. MMVI in Hungariae finibus instituet (Debrecen,
2006), pp. 29–39. See also Christopher S. Celenza, “Humanism and the Classical Tradition,” Annali
d’Italianistica, 26 (2008), pp. 25–49.
Introduction 31
a lexicon of the terms humanists did use. In the meantime, we are stuck
with a word, “humanist,” that appears at best to be anachronistic: an
overly broad, retrospective application of a title (umanista) proper to the
educational context of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.69
But the word “humanist” has another defect as well, namely that it
admits all too easily of conflation with notions of vague human values
or humanitarianism, and for a time it was confused with the modern
philosophy of secular humanism – all errors that Paul Oskar Kristeller
was especially keen to dispel.70 In contrast, Kristeller forcefully and
vehemently argued that the humanitas in studia humanitatis has none of
these connotations but rather refers to the cultural and especially linguistic
refinement offered by the new learning of the Renaissance.71 Perhaps,
however, the problem is even greater. Perhaps it is our very terminological
confusion that is responsible, in the words of Ronald Witt, for “the nearly
total failure of modern scholars to consider important what the humanists
themselves considered the key to understanding their movement.”72 The
solution, I propose, is to take our bearings from the humanists themselves.
But who counts as a humanist? About whom should we investigate? Whom
should we interrogate? How can we identify humanists qualified to say
what humanism was if they did not consistently use a specialized term for
one another, thus tipping us off to who was a humanist and who was not?
This sounds like a thorny methodological problem, but actually there
has never been any major disagreement, either among modern scholars or
among the humanists themselves, as to who made up the core group of
the movement, figures like Leonardo Bruni, Antonio Beccadelli, Francesco
Filelfo, Lorenzo Valla, Niccolò Perotti, Pomponio Leto, Giovanni Pontano,
Angelo Poliziano, as well as all six of our authors. They knew who each
other were, were in communication and competition with one another,
and in the works to be investigated here certain of them even went through
a process of conscious self-reflection on the nature, status, and signifi-
cance of the entire group. There are disputes on the boundaries, as there
always are. Modern scholars will disagree about whether Nicholas of Cusa
was a humanist, for example, with Germans taking it for granted and
69 Campana, “The Origin of the Word ‘Humanist.’”

70 Kristeller, “The Humanist Movement,” which I have consulted in Renaissance Thought and its
Sources, pp. 21–32, at 21–23. Cf. Giustiniani, “Homo, humanus,” p. 187. On modern philosophies
of humanism, see ibid., pp. 174–183.
71 Cf. Benjamin Kohl, “The Changing Concept of the studia humanitatis in the Early Renaissance,”
Renaissance Studies, 6:2 (1992), pp. 185–202.
72 Witt, Footsteps, p. 506.
most others scratching their heads. Kristeller and Garin parted ways pre-
cisely over the status of individuals like Ficino, Pico, Pomponazzi, Telesio,
and Bruno. The humanists themselves, as we shall see, disagreed about
Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, even about the “Renaissance man” Leon Bat-
tista Alberti. Rather than disorienting us, however, these disputes aid in
grasping the constitution of the humanist community by the very cri-
teria they adduce for inclusion and exclusion. Discussion and above all
disagreement about boundaries, definitions, and norms serves primarily
to reinforce, not to undermine them; indeed, it is essential for their very
existence.73
So the humanist census-taker knows in which neighborhood to look,
but how do we know that we are knocking on the right doors? Or on
enough doors? Six is a small number, and readers will legitimately wonder
if the authors to be studied here are either too few or too idiosyncratic
to provide meaningful insight into the nature of such a multifaceted
movement as Renaissance humanism. Obviously we cannot be fully sure
whether our sample, so to speak, is representative, given the large number
of unpublished humanist texts and the manifold nature of all complex
historical groups, but we can be relatively certain that the self-conception
of humanism reconstructed here is representative of at least a significant,
and maybe even the preponderant, segment of the humanist movement.
As will become evident throughout the individual chapters, these accounts
of humanism are on the whole remarkably similar in their understanding
of the movement’s origins and mission. Furthermore, their authors were
active in different cities in Italy which just happened to be most of the
major centers of humanism: Manetti in Florence, Biondo and Cortesi in
Rome, Facio in Naples, and Sabellico in Venice. For his part, Piccolomini
provides us with testimony informed by a career that spanned all of Europe
and brought him into close contact with many of the temporal and intel-
lectual princes of the day. The geographical and temporal scope will thus be
as broad as possible within the parameters set. Moreover, nearly all of our
authors were generally recognized by their contemporaries as exemplary
humanists and had quite influential voices in their own time: Piccolomini,
the international diplomat and then the second humanist pope (as Pius
II); Biondo, a leading antiquarian and influential historian; Manetti,
73 Cf. Alois Hahn, “Transgression und Innovation,” in Werner Helmich, Helmut Meter, and Astrid
Poier-Bernhard (eds.), Poetologische Umbrüche. Romanistische Studien zu Ehren von Ulrich Schulz-
Buschhaus (Munich, 2002), pp. 452–465; Émile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method and
Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method, ed. Steven Lukes, tr. W.D. Halls (New York, 1982), ch. 3:
“Rules for the Distinction of the Normal from the Pathological,” esp. pp. 97–104.
Introduction 33
considered by Vespasiano da Bisticci to be the greatest humanist of his
age; Cortesi, the new Roman Cicero and a successor to Pomponio Leto’s
school; Sabellico, the focal point of Venetian humanism at the turn of the
sixteenth century. Only Facio was a minor figure in his own time. Still, he
acted as official historiographer to Alfonso the Magnanimous in Naples,
earned the respect and esteem of greats like Antonio Beccadelli and Poggio
Bracciolini, and won the support of many all over Italy in a celebrated
dispute with Lorenzo Valla. On the other hand, Facio’s lesser stature might
actually endow him with greater significance: his is the closest we will get
to a bottom-up view of humanism. Is this study focused too much on
elites, then? There is always the danger of outliers, but I think it is less
acute when trying to grasp the essence of a cultural movement. For it is
in the nature of movements that they are led by charismatic captains at
the top, not foot-soldiers at the bottom.74 Thus when orienting himself,
Giovanni Umanista likely took his cues less from anonymous notaries and
grammar teachers than from the famous individuals he sought to imitate
and whose ranks he hoped to join, singular figures like Bruni or Poliziano,
Biondo or Piccolomini.
Thus I think this small corpus of works indeed promises a broadly rep-
resentative view, certainly one broad enough to get us seriously started in
re-evaluating the nature of Italian Renaissance humanism. I stress “get-
ting started.” For the self-conception these sources embody cannot simply
stand alone as a dazzling new definition, one that will outshine the inter-
pretations that now hold sway or that will spread illumination over all the
lingering questions. Self-understanding is not necessarily self-knowledge.
And even if it were, it would have very limited meaning for us unless
informed by scholarship that approaches humanism differently, consider-
ing, for example, its social context or penetrating to the deeper meanings
of its philosophical literature. The inner narrative of historical actors will
never line up with the one the historian constructs, if only because those
narratives start and end at different places and aim at answering different
questions.75 Rather, the usefulness of reconstructing the humanists’ self-
conception lies in recovering a neglected perspective, and moreover one
grounded in the period in question, from which to reconsider, challenge,
problematize, at times even to overturn – but also to elucidate – what we
74 Cf. Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (Cambridge,
Mass., 1998), esp. pp. 1–53.
75 Cf. Jonathan Gilmore, The Life of a Style: Beginnings and Endings in the Narrative History of Art
(Ithaca, 2000), pp. 30–31. This study is an excellent guide to thinking about the inner workings,
evolution, beginning, and ending of cultural and artistic movements.
(think we) already know (and will learn in the future) about humanism.
The idea is to glimpse the highly subjective world that the humanists
saw when they regarded themselves in the cultural mirror. This subjective
sense of self, which corresponds perfectly to no world except the interior
dimensions of the mind, is the most essential trait to capture. For who we
think we are is more important, to us at any rate, than who we actually
are (however that might be determined) or how we are perceived by others
(although that perception does have an influence). Our self-image, our
self-conception, is the cornerstone of our identity. A communist who does
not actually achieve the community of goods is still a communist, just as
a faltering monk may still seek the kingdom of heaven. When it comes
to identity, success in an endeavor, unswerving fealty to ideals in practice,
is secondary if not immaterial; one is who one projects oneself to be in
one’s own mind. Identity is perhaps the only aspect of human life entirely
defined by so-called actors’ categories.
Reconstructing this identity will supply a necessary term that has long
been missing from the humanist equation, one that provides humanism
with a rationale and thus endows it with greater intelligibility in itself
as well as in the general context of the Renaissance. Authoritative voices
have doubted the very possibility of finding a consistent ethos within
humanism. Kristeller argued against searching for one within the realm of
philosophy, noting dryly, “any particular statement gleaned from the work
of a humanist may be countered by contrary assertions in the writings of
contemporary authors or even of the same author.”76 More recently, Robert
Black has stressed the difficulties inherent in identifying enduring, universal
aims of any kind that might characterize Renaissance humanism.77 Earlier,
in what has become the standard overview of humanism in English, he
took a sober, down-to-earth approach to crafting a definition, concluding:
“a humanist is . . . someone who acts like other humanists; this is how
contemporaries would have identified humanists, and such a definition,
stripped of historicist paraphernalia, will work equally well for us.”78 But
what does it mean to act like a humanist, to do humanism? Does it simply
mean to be employed like other humanists, to write Latin like they did, to
76 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and its Sources, p. 32 (from the essay “The Humanist Movement,”
at end). Quoted in Gouwens, “Perceiving the Past,” pp. 58–59, n. 11; Gouwens’ general discussion
is relevant.
77 Robert Black, “The Renaissance and the Middle Ages: Chronologies, Ideologies, Geographies,” in
Alexander Lee, Pit Péporté, and Harry Schnitker (eds.), Renaissance? Perceptions of Continuity and
Discontinuity in Europe, c.1300–c.1500 (Leiden, 2010), pp. 27–44, esp. 27–29.
78 Black, “Humanism,” p. 252.
Introduction 35
have a similar education? Or did it entail something more sublime as well?
Surely it comprehended being motivated by similar ideals, sharing a sense
of belonging to a specific cultural undertaking. Acting like a humanist did
not only mean engaging in behavior typical of humanists; it also meant
acting on a set of shared assumptions, assumptions about the value of
what one was doing and its place in the culture of the age and in human
history. This ethos may be difficult to find. It may be less strictly defined
or less philosophical than we might like. It may look so different from
what we expect that we do not recognize it as such. I believe it has been
lurking in places where most scholars have not yet deigned to look. But
find it we must, for without accounting for this component, any definition
of humanism will be incomplete if not distorting. To say that humanists
worked in chanceries, wrote classicizing Latin, espoused a certain form
of education, convinced elites of the normative value of antiquity – but
without saying why they thought any of this was worth doing – would be
like minutely describing the Catholic Eucharist without mentioning that
the priest considers it “the source and summit of the Christian life”: the
worship of God and the refreshment of the human soul would appear as an
inexplicably intricate, deeply unsatisfying alimentary ritual.79 If this study
aspires to anything, it is to breathe some of the spirit back into the body,
to assist in re-endowing the creature of Italian Renaissance humanism with
life.
∗ ∗ ∗
As a final note, I would like to mention two important studies of obvious
relevance to the themes of this book that appeared too late to be taken into
consideration: Brian Maxson’s monograph The Humanist World of Renais-
sance Florence, and Clémence Revest’s article “La naissance de l’humanisme
comme mouvement au tournant du XVe siècle.”80 Both approach human-
ism from a sociological standpoint and thus form a contrast (but also a
complement) to my own work. The reader is enthusiastically referred to
these insightful studies.
79 Catechismus Catholicae Ecclesiae 1324 (pars secunda, sectio secunda, caput primum, articulus 3:
“sacramentum eucharistiae”): “fons et culmen vitae ecclesialis.”
80 Brian Maxson, The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, 2014); Clémence Revest,
“La naissance de l’humanisme comme mouvement au tournant du XVe siècle,” Annales: Histoire,
Sciences sociales, 68:3 (2013), 665–696.
ch a p ter 1
The renaissance of eloquence
Group identity is born in retrospect. Founders of cultural movements

are generally ignorant of their status and are assigned it posthumously.
Only after a certain momentum has been built up, and the giants who
are perceived to have set things going are dying or departed, does an
inheriting generation look back with longing, scrambling to assemble the
elements of the past that might account for its own behavior, beliefs, and
budding esprit de corps. The structures erected can be fanciful, buttressed
as much by myth as by fact, but they are no less real on that account.
That is, although in part historically dubious, they are constitutive of a
group identity that is nevertheless authentic, that provides the individuals
it animates with meaningful explanations and powerful motives for action.
Something along these lines was happening in Italy in the fourth and
fifth decades of the fifteenth century. This is the period when humanists
began not only to “do” humanism, so to speak, but also to meditate on it.
They sought to identify their own essential characteristics, precisely define
their goals and higher aspirations, and investigate their particular history
and place within a broader realm of culture and learning, paying special
attention to those individuals they considered to be the founders of their
movement, the ones responsible for making what they did a recognizable
activity in its own right, separate from, and in certain cases in competition
with, other activities. This contemplation was motivated at least in part
by the passing of a great generation of forebears. In his funeral oration for
Leonardo Bruni (d. 1444), Poggio Bracciolini complained of the cruelty of
fate that had deprived him of all those to whom he had been bound most
dearly and tenderly by his youthful studia litterarum:
We lost first Coluccio Salutati, the common father of all learned men
and himself most humane and learned, then Roberto de’ Rossi and Niccolò
Niccoli, men outstanding in every kind of literature and especially the studia
humanitatis, then Lorenzo de Medici [the Elder], famous for his virtue, and
36
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The renaissance of eloquence 37
many other close friends as well. Only this one associate of our old studies
remained [i.e., Bruni], this one member of our once renascent academy, so
to speak, with whom I was accustomed to discuss not only our studies but
also my thoughts, always bringing our conversations back to the happiness
of our earlier days, when all those whom I have just mentioned were still
alive.1
The sense of loss expressed by Poggio is personal, the lament of an old

man abandoned by his friends on the final leg of life’s journey. For the
next generation of humanists, though, the deaths of Salutati, Niccoli,
Bruni, and others marked a turning point, an occasion for transforming
the very significance of that loss. What for Poggio was the closing of an
important but socially and personally circumscribed cultural moment, his
descendents framed as the point at which a widespread movement, to which
they themselves adhered, entered its maturity. They did not merely bury
the dead; they erected a monument and with it a group identity, setting
the stage for an independent, geographically diffused cultural movement
(theoretically) open to anyone willing to invest in the ethos they channeled.
This chapter will focus on three such monuments from the 1440s and
1450s. Two are by individuals now considered to have been leading figures in
the humanist movement: Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and Biondo Flavio.
The third is by an author of lesser stature, Bartolomeo Facio, but who
turns out to be the most revealing of the three sources on the subject of
humanist identity. When approaching these first self-conscious attempts to
take stock of humanism as a widespread movement, it would be reasonable
to expect them to reflect, or at least to take note of, cultural currents we
have become accustomed to associate intimately with early Quattrocento
humanism. For instance, they could promote a civic ideology, evince a
secular outlook, advertise a specific brand of education, rain invective on
cultural competitors in the world of scholasticism, or boast of the great
virtue to be found solely in the studia humanitatis. Yet at best only a
faint echo can be heard from these directions, and often nothing at all.
1 Poggio Bracciolini, Oratio funebris in obitu Leonardi Arretini, in Bruni, Epistolarum libri VIII, ed.
Hankins, vol. I, pp. cxvi–cxvii: “queri . . . deque fatorum injuria, quae me omnibus his privarunt,
quos mecum ab ineunte adolescentia litterarum studia summa caritate, et benivolentia devinxerunt.
Nam primo communem doctorum omnium parentem Colucium Salutatum humanissimum, ac
doctissimum virum, tum Robertum cognomento Rusum, deinde Nicolaum Nicolum, viros omni
litterarum genere, et humanitatis studiis praestantissimos, deinceps omni virtute virum celebrem
Laurentium de Medicis, pluresque alios summa mihi amicitia conjunctos eripuit nobis. Restabat hic
unus veterum studiorum, et quasi renascentis olim academiae socius, quocum non solum studia, sed
cogitationes quoque communicare solitus eram, revocans saepe sermones nostros ad illam prioris
aetatis nostrae jocunditatem, cum omnes hi viverent, quos modo nominavi.”
Instead, what we encounter, time and again, is something much more akin
to the stylistic ideal described by Ronald G. Witt.2 For all three authors
portray humanism primarily as the revival of classical, i.e., Ciceronian Latin
eloquence. Biondo and Facio extend their vision to include a broader revival
of the culture of antiquity, and Facio casts the renaissance of eloquence in
moral terms. A sense of recovery pervades all three authors, as does an idea
of the greatness of the times, an excitement about recent and emerging
achievements in the distinct realm of culture carved out by humanists.
∗ ∗ ∗
The first synthetic account of humanism to be considered is contained
in Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini’s (1405–1464) De viris illustribus, written
between 1445 and 1450.3 We could hardly begin with a more authoritative
voice. Of early Quattrocento figures, Aeneas Sylvius was one of the most
adept at releasing the potential for intellectual, social, economic, and polit-
ical advancement that was bound up in humanism. A law-school dropout
from an impoverished Sienese noble family, his mastery of Latin rhetoric
and of the proper forms of chancery and diplomatic communication made
him indispensable to several cardinals, anti-Pope Felix V, Emperor Freder-
ick III, and even to his erstwhile adversary, Pope Eugenius IV. His silver
tongue brought him further still. It made him an influential participant
2 Witt, Footsteps.
3 The bibliography on Piccolomini is immense. The foundational study remains Georg Voigt, Enea
Silvio de’ Piccolomini, als Papst Pius der Zweite, und sein Zeitalter, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1856–1863). For
more recent treatments, see at least R.J. Mitchell, The Laurels and the Tiara: Pope Pius II, 1458–
1464 (London, 1962); Eugenio Garin, Ritratti di umanisti (Florence, 1967), pp. 3–39; Enea Silvio
Piccolomini Papa Pio II. Atti del convegno per il V centenario della morte e altri scritti, ed. Domenico
Maffei (Siena, 1968); Gioacchino Paparelli, Enea Silvio Piccolomini: L’umanesimo sul soglio di Pietro
(Ravenna, 1978); Pio II e la cultura del suo tempo. Atti del I convegno internazionale – 1989, ed. Luisa
Rotondi Secchi Tarugi (Milan, 1991).
The most recent edition, and also the most complete and reliable, is Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini,
De viris illustribus, ed. Adrianus van Heck (Vatican City, 1991), hereafter referred to as Piccolomini,
DVI. On the state of the text see also Hermann Diener, “Fridericus dux Austriae Hernesti filius aus De
viris illustribus des Enea Silvio Piccolomini,” Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 28 (1986), pp. 185–
208. On DVI see Paolo Viti, “Osservazioni sul De viris aetate sua claris di Enea Silvio Piccolomini,”
in Pio II e la cultura del suo tempo, pp. 199–214. Viti (p. 202) notes that the autograph ms. (Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 3887) of the DVI also contains letters signed “episcopus tergestinus,”
dated 1449 and 1450, and thus assigns it to this period, but Adrianus van Heck, “Ad lectorem,” in
Piccolomini, De viris illustribus, pp. v–xv, places the composition more broadly between 1445 and
1450. Diener (pp. 191–196) considers the issue of date at length on the basis of both internal and
external evidence; he places the drafting of the vita of Frederick III at the beginning of 1446 and
identifies November 26, 1449 as the terminus ante quem for the whole work. For a consideration
of the structure of Piccolomini’s DVI, see Viti, “Osservazioni,” pp. 202–204, and in greater detail
Sabine Schmolinsky, “Biographie und Zeitgeschichte bei Enea Silvio Piccolomini: Überlegungen
zum Texttyp von ‘De viris illustribus,’” Humanistica lovaniensia, 44 (1995), pp. 79–89.
at imperial diets and Church councils alike and eventually launched him
to the episcopacy and then the papacy itself. After Nicholas V (1447–1555,
born Tommaso Parentucelli) he was the second humanist to become pope,
at which point he assumed his second Virgilian name, Pius II (1458–1464).
Yet Piccolomini’s papacy, which is remembered most for ending in a failed
Crusade, is less important for his status as a humanist than are his many
literary works, which include histories, poetry, countless letters, a novel, a
lengthy memoir, an educational treatise, and the text to be discussed here,
the De viris illustribus.
In this work of collective biography, Piccolomini assembled the most
important personages of his time in politics and culture from all over
Europe: kings, queens, and princes, condottieri, popes, cardinals, bish-
ops, monks and friars, jurisconsults and men of letters. Although sizeable
and stylistically polished, the work seems nevertheless to have been left
unfinished.4 In his own opuscule of the same name, Bartolomeo Facio
claims that Piccolomini’s De viris illustribus was dedicated to Alfonso the
Magnanimous, which might suggest that it was at some point completed
and that the dedication copy has been lost.5 Whatever the case may be, the
literary work as it is extant today has no proem and no dedicatory letter,
and thus also no explicit explanation of its object.
As far as can be distilled from its contents, the central theme is the poli-
tics of the Church, of Italy, and of Europe in general.6 As the vast majority
of the individuals treated were men of action, it should be no surprise that
the intellectual component to their lives remains for the most part on the
margins of their biographies. It is considered as one of many aspects –
and hardly ever the most important – contributing to the composition of
their character. For example, Niccolò d’Este is reported to have loved liter-
ature (studia litterarum) and patronized its foremost representatives, even
employing the eminent schoolmaster Guarino Veronese and the Sicilian
4 See Van Heck, “Ad lectorem,” pp. vi–ix, and Schmolinksy, “Biographie und Zeitgeschichte,” pp. 82
and 86, who, however, disagree as to whether the beginning (Schmolinsky) or the end (Van Heck)
of the work is defective.
5 Assuming, that is, that the work Facio calls De egregiis dictis, ac factis clarorum hominum and says
was dedicated to Alfonso is indeed the same as the work that has come down to us under the title De
viris illustribus. See Facio, DVI, p. 26. See note 34 below, however, for a consideration that weakens
this hypothesis.
6 This pan-European vision might help to rehabilitate Piccolomini’s status as “Father of the Concept
of Europe,” recently called into question by Johannes Helmrath, “Enea Silvio Piccolomini (Pius
II.) – Ein Humanist als Vater des Europagedankens?,” in R. Hohls, I. Schröder, and H. Siegrist
(eds.), Europa und die Europäer. Quellen und Essays zur modernen europäischen Geschichte (Stuttgart,
2005), pp. 361–366.
humanist Giovanni Aurispa as tutors to his sons.7 Such crumbs can be
gathered as they fall from Piccolomini’s table in order to reconstruct his
concept of humanism, but it must be recognized that they are not represen-
tative of the feast prepared.8 Aeneas Sylvius, although himself a leading –
if not the leading – humanist of his day, is here (as elsewhere) primarily
interested in politics. Nevertheless, one major humanist, Leonardo Bruni,9
is singled out for the honor of a full biography – a biography that quickly
turns into a brief history of humanism.
Piccolomini assigns Bruni the role of protagonist, if not of true founder,
of the renaissance of classical Latin. As he reports, Bruni distinguished him-
self as apostolic secretary to John XXIII and Martin V before taking charge
of the Florentine chancery. More importantly, “he wrote very elegantly,”10
putting his pen both to translations (of Aristotle, Plutarch, St. Basil, and
Xenophon) and to original compositions of all kinds, such as biographies,
orations, works of moral philosophy, histories, and dialogues.11 From these
works emerges the reason for Bruni’s great reputation and thus his inclusion
in Piccolomini’s work: “with his writing Bruni exceeded everyone . . . nor
has our age found his equal.”12
Somewhat surprising is the fact that, according to Piccolomini, Bruni
owed his famed eloquence not to his father figure, Coluccio Salutati,
but to his Greek teacher, the Byzantine scholar and diplomat Manuel
Chrysoloras.13 Citing from the beginning of the biography:
7 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 22.18–27.

8 Cf. Viti, “Osservazioni,” p. 205, who notes desultory references to the humanist activity of Francesco
Barbaro and Francesco Filelfo, as well as to Cosimo de’ Medici’s founding of the library in San
Marco.
9 The bibliography on Bruni is quite large, although he still lacks a proper biography. As an ersatz
see the first eight essays in James Hankins, Humanism and Platonism in the Italian Renaissance,
2 vols. (Rome, 2003–2004), vol. I, pp. 9–239, along with The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni: Selected
Texts, trs. Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins, and David Thompson (Binghamton, NY, 1987) for a
biographical sketch (pp. 3–50) and an overview and contextualization of his writings (passim). See
also Cesare Vasoli, “Leonardo Bruni,” in DBI, vol. XIV (1972), pp. 618–633; and for a brief ritratto,
Lucia Gualdo Rosa, “Bruni, Leonardo (1370–1444),” in Colette Nativel (ed.), Centuriae Latinae.
Cent une figures humanistes de la Renaissance aux Lumières offertes à Jacques Chomarat (Geneva,
1997), pp. 1057–1062.
10 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 34: “scripsit hic admodum ornate.”
11 The “dialogues” mentioned are presumably the two dialogues that make up the Dialogi ad Petrum
Paulum Histrum but might also include the Isagogicon moralis disciplinae, which was written in
dialogue form.
12 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 36: “omnes scribendo superavit Aretinus . . . nec etas nostra parem invenit.”
13 For Chrysoloras, see Riccardo Maisano and Antonio Rollo (eds.), Manuele Crisolora e il ritorno del
greco in Occidente. Atti del convegno internazionale: Napoli, 26–29 giugno 1997 (Naples, 2002); and
Mariarosa Cortesi, “Umanesimo greco,” in Lo spazio letterario del medioevo: 1. Il medioevo latino,
5 vols. (Rome, 1992–1998), vol. III, pp. 457–507.
He first studied literature under Salutati, who was then chancellor of Flo-
rence. And then he advanced further under Manuel Chrysoloras of Con-
stantinople, who . . . had come to Italy and reintroduced the ancient method
and Ciceronian style of writing. For Coluccio retained [in his style] certain
follies typical of his time. He was therefore surpassed by Leonardo, who in
some of his letters to Coluccio even warns him about his errors and exhorts
him to abandon the squalor of his age.14
At first sight it surely must seem strange that a Byzantine Greek was
responsible for reintroducing into Italy the ancient manner of writing
Latin, not to mention Ciceronian style. Such is especially the case in
light of the fact that Chrysoloras never gained a full command of Latin15
and that he certainly knew it less well when in Florence, one of his first
permanent residences in Italy. It was, however, a commonplace in fifteenth-
century humanism that only by learning Greek could one develop an
appropriate Latin style – an idea that goes back to Cicero himself.16 This
notion dovetailed, more importantly, with a broader humanist tradition
according to which Chrysoloras was the fountainhead of humanist Latin
eloquence. As Christine Smith has shown, Piccolomini joined Guarino
Veronese, Poggio Bracciolini, and others in voicing this communis opinio.17
Smith sees more than mere encomium at work here, arguing instead that
Chrysoloras provided the Italians with essential theoretical and conceptual
tools for the composition of Latin – a thesis that will be revisited in
14 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 34.2–10: “litteras sub Coluccio Pierio, qui tunc Florentinorum cancellarius erat,
edidicit. postea sub Manuele Chrisolora Constantinopolitano, qui . . . Italiam intraverat priscumque
modum scribendi ac ciceronianum morem induxerat, magis profecit. nam Coluccius ineptias
quasdam sui seculi retinebat; itaque superatus est a Leonardo, qui etiam in quibusdam epistolis ad
eum scribens suorum eum erratorum admonet suadetque, ut squalorem illum sui temporis deserat.”
Bruni had tried to save Salutati’s reputation from precisely this kind of attack by (unsuccessfully)
suppressing these letters from his epistolary. See James Hankins, “Notes on the Textual Tradition
of Leonardo Bruni’s Epistulae familiares,” in Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, vol. I, pp. 63–84,
at 72 [reprinted from Vincenzo Fera and Giacomo Ferraù (eds.), Filologia umanistica per Gianvito
Resta (Padua, 1997), vol. II, pp. 1023–1062].
15 So much is clear from Chrysoloras’ collaboration with Uberto Decembrio in translating Plato’s
Republic. Cf. James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1990), vol. I, p. 108.
16 James Hankins, “Lo studio del greco in occidente fra medioevo ed età moderna,” in Salvatore Settis
(ed.), I Greci: Storia Cultura Arte Società, vol. III: I Greci oltre la Grecia (Turin, 2001), pp. 1245–
1262, at 1252–1253 [reprinted in English in Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, vol. I, pp. 273–291].
On the study of Greek in the Renaissance, see Federica Ciccolella, Donati Graeci: Learning Greek
in the Renaissance (Leiden, 2009); and Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities,
pp. 99–121. Cicero’s view of Greek’s role in Latin eloquence is found in De oratore I, 4 and I, 34, 155.
17 Christine Smith, Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Eloquence,
1400–1470 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 133–135. Smith is wrong (p. 134), however, to attribute the same
opinion to Bruni on the basis of his Memoirs. There Bruni only discusses Chrysoloras’ role
in his Greek studies, not his acquisition of Latin eloquence. See Bruni, Memoirs, pp. 320–323
(pars. 24–26).
Chapter 3.18 For now, let it suffice to underline that, in Piccolomini’s view,
Bruni’s classical style was not born full-grown out of the head of Zeus, nor
much less from Salutati’s Latin, which is here described as defective, full of
errors (“follies”), and polluted by the “squalor of his age,” but instead from
Chrysoloras’ teaching.
Piccolomini then sets Bruni’s stylistic achievement within the context
of a short history of the Latin language, tracing its perfection, decline, and
rebirth in an arc that spans from Cicero to Bruni himself:
For literature, too, gives way to change, as one kind belongs to one age and
another to another. From its very founders, the Latin language developed
continually in the elegance of its expression and literary study up to the
time of Cicero, when it achieved its true fullness and could not possibly
have evolved further, since it was then at its apex. It remained there for
many years down to the likes of Jerome and Gregory [the Great], although
not without diminution, and thereafter it died out utterly. For after that
period no ornate writer of the language was to be found. Later, Francesco
Petrarca gave Latin a little luster, but it was Manuel who brought more light
to it, and he was followed by Leonardo.19
Piccolomini conceives of Latin historically and in terms of a natural pro-

cess of evolution and decline. Good Latin lasted from the time of Cicero
more or less to that of Gregory the Great, but then it died in the Middle
Ages. With Petrarch it began a slow and barely perceptible recovery, but it
was Chrysoloras and then Bruni who were responsible for its true resus-
citation. For Aeneas Sylvius, the best style of Latin was Ciceronian, and
thus the re-establishment of good Latin meant reascending to that ancient
apex.
18 See below, pp. 145–146.

19 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 34.11–20: “Patiuntur nempe et littere mutationem; nam alie sunt uno, alie alio
tempore. ab ipsis etenim lingue latine repertoribus ornatus dicendi et studia litterarum continuo
creverunt usque ad tempora Ciceronis, ubi vere plenitudinem acceperunt nec amplius crescere
potuerunt, cum jam essent in culmine. manserunt igitur postea per plures annos ac usque ad
Jeronimum atque Gregorium viguerunt, non tamen absque minutione, exin perierunt funditus;
nec enim post illa tempora qui ornate scripserit reperitur. post Franciscus Petrarcha aliquantulum
splendoris litteris dedit, sed Emanuel maiorem attulit lucem, quem secutus est Leonardus.” Aeneas
Sylvius’ source for the history of Latin literature might have been Bruni’s Vita del Petrarca. See
Leonardo Bruni, Opere letterarie e politiche, ed. Paolo Viti (Turin, 1996), pp. 537–557, at 554 (English
translation in The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni, pp. 85–100, at 97). Viti, “Osservazioni,” p. 209
notes that this vision of the history of Latin was “non nuova ma ormai comune . . . diffusa nella
tradizione umanistica.” He traces the drawing of its specific contours to Sicco Polenton’s Scriptorum
illustrium latinae linguae libri. For further considerations on this tradition and its origins ca. 1400
(but also somewhat in Boccaccio), see James Hankins, “Petrarch and the Canon of Neo-Latin
Literature,” Quaderni petrarcheschi, 17–18 (2007–2008), pp. 905–922.
Bruni led the climb – “for he was the most similar to Cicero”20 – but
he was followed by a team well equipped to reach the summit. Indeed,
the future pope dedicates half of the biography to these other humanists,
many of them Bruni’s personal friends, highlighting their contributions to
the rebirth of Ciceronian eloquence. The text is relatively short and will be
well worth considering in its entirety.
Niccolò Niccoli functioned as “arbiter of knowledge,” thanks to his
expertise in both Latin and Greek, his very great learning, and his excellent
judgment. At his death he left a priceless library.21 “Nevertheless he never
wrote or spoke in Latin,” and not only because he “distrusted his own
talent.” He was so used to criticizing others (verbally) that he feared the
criticism he might receive in return. He was indeed so abusive that he even
managed to alienate his one-time best friend, Bruni. Niccoli’s fastidiousness
was legend: “he approved not one living person, and of the dead only four:
Plato, Virgil, Jerome, and Horace.”22
In the same period flourished Ambrogio Traversari, general of the Camal-
dolensian Order.23 He was known for his many Latin translations of Greek
literature, as well as for his ability as a diplomat (orator). He represented
Eugenius IV at the Council of Basel and at Sigismund’s court in Hungary.
Poggio Bracciolini, “although he did not know Greek, spoke Latin
better than everyone.” Apostolic secretary in Constance, he wrote many
things, especially dialogues. In later life he suffered infamy for marrying a
much, much younger, and beautiful, woman; his defense consisted of the
“witty and elegant” Whether an Old Man Should Marry (An seni sit uxor
ducenda).24
20 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 36.22–23: “nam simillimus Ciceroni fuit.”

21 Ibid., p. 35.17–18: “in libris autem circiter quatuor milia aureorum moriens reliquit.” On Niccoli’s
library, see Berthold L. Ullman and Philip A. Stadter, The Public Library of Renaissance Florence:
Niccolò Niccoli, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Library of San Marco (Padua, 1972).
22 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 35.7–18; 12: “arbiter of knowledge” (“arbiter de scientia”); 13–14: “never wrote
or spoke . . . ” (“numquam tamen vel scripsit vel locutus est latine”); 14: “distrusted his own talent”
(“diffidebat enim ingenio suo”); 16–17: “approved not one . . . ” (“nullum enim viventem com-
mendavit, ex mortuis solum quatuor: Platonem, Virgilium, Jeronimum et Oratium”). Piccolimini
offers precious testimony to Niccoli’s knowledge of Greek, which most modern scholars do not
credit (including Davies [below], p. 128). On Niccoli and the difficulty of knowing anything about
him with certainty, see Martin C. Davies, “An Emperor without Clothes? Niccolò Niccoli under
Attack,” Italia medioevale e umanistica, 30 (1987), pp. 95–148. See also Giuseppe Zippel’s work on
Niccoli, collected in his Storia e cultura del Rinascimento italiano, ed. Gianni Zippel (Padua, 1979),
and further bibliography in Davies, “Emperor,” p. 95, n. 1 and p. 101, n. 20.
23 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 35.19–23. For Traversi, see Charles L. Stinger, Humanism and the Church
Fathers: Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439) and Christian Antiquity in the Italian Renaissance (Albany,
1997).
24 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 35.24–36.10; 35.24–25: “although he did not know Greek . . . ” (qui licet grece
lingue ignarus fuerit, nulli tamen in dicendo fuit inferior”); 36.9–10: “witty and elegant” (“non
A number of other humanists receive shorter treatments. Guarino
Veronese is commemorated for his teaching of rhetoric in Ferrara and for
his translation work.25 The Augustinian Andrea Biglia was an historian.26
The Franciscan Antonio da Rho wrote on Latin style.27 Bartolomeo da
Montepulciano was secretary, counselor, and friend to Martin V.28 Giovani
Aurispa and Antonio Beccadelli also enjoyed great fame.29
Returning briefly to Bruni, Piccolomini then notes that he was succeeded
as Florentine chancellor by Carlo Marsuppini.30 Like his predecessor, Mar-
suppini knew Greek and Latin, and he was as elegant a poet as a prose
writer. He had already translated some Greek poetry into Latin at the time
of Piccolomini’s writing; greater things are expected of him still.
Finally, the biography concludes with a summary of the state of elo-
quence in Piccolomini’s native Siena. At one time it had employed the “vir
elegans” Berto di Antonio as chancellor, but now the city could boast of
the talents of another native son, Francesco Patrizi, who was famous for his
learning, his knowledge of “both languages,” and his teaching of rhetoric.31
infacetum neque inornatum”). One wonders if Piccolomini was ignorant of Poggio’s moderate
ability in Greek, or whether our author was simply in agreement with the many in his day who
considered Poggio’s ability to be considerably less than moderate. For Poggio, see Ernst Walser,
Poggius Florentinus: Leben und Werke (Hildesheim, 1974). For his knowledge of Greek, see ibid.,
pp. 228–232.
25 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 35.23–25. For the revered humanist educator Guarino, see Gino Pistilli,
“Guarini, Guarino (Guarino Veronese, Varino),” in DBI, vol. LX (2003), pp. 357–369.
26 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 36.10–12. On Biglia, see the article (no author) “Biglia, Andrea (Andrea da
Milano, Andrea de Biliis),” in DBI, vol. X (1968), pp. 413–415; Rudolph Arbesmann, “Andrea
Biglia, Augustinian Friar and Humanist,” Analecta Augustiniana, 28 (1965), pp. 154–218; and Joseph
C. Schnaubelt, “Andrea Biglia (ca. 1394–1435), His Life and Writings,” Augustiniana, 43 (1993),
pp. 103–159.
27 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 36.12–14. For Antonio da Rho, see David A. Rutherford, Early Renaissance
Invective and the Controversies of Antonio da Rho (Tempe, 2005); and Riccardo Fubini, “Antonio
da Rho,” in DBI, vol. III (1961), pp. 574–577. The work to which Piccolomini refers is likely De
imitatione eloquentiae.
28 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 36.14–20. For Bartolomeo da Montepulciano, see “Aragazzi, Bartolomeo,” in
DBI, vol. III (1961), pp. 686–688.
29 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 36.20–21. For Aurispa, known principally as a teacher and for bringing a hoard
of Greek manuscripts to Italy, see Emilio Bigi, “Aurispa, Giovanni” in DBI, 4 (1962), pp. 593–595. For
Beccadelli, who began the humanist academy in Naples, see Gianvito Resta, “Beccadelli, Antonio,
detto il Panormita,” in DBI, vol. VII (1965), pp. 400–406.
30 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 37.1–5. For Marsuppini, see Paolo Viti, “Marsuppini, Carlo,” in DBI, vol. LXXI
(2008), pp. 14–22.
31 For Berto di Antonio Berti, who served several times as chancellor of Siena and was a friend of Bruni,
see Piccolomini, DVI, p. 37.6–7; and Gianfranco Fioravanti, “Alcuni aspetti della cultura umanistica
senese nel ’400,” Rinascimento, ser. 2, 19 (1979), pp. 117–167 [reprinted in Fioravanti, Università
e città: cultura umanistica e cultura scolastica a Siena nel ’400 (Florence, 1980)]. For Francesco
Patrizi da Siena, now best known for his political thought, see Piccolomini, DVI, p. 37.9–11 (10–11:
“knows both languages” [“linguam utramque novit”]); and Felice Battaglia, Enea Silvio Piccolomini
e Francesco Patrizi: due politici senesi del Quattrocento (Florence, 1936).
Admittedly, this roll call of humanists is far from complete. Other
important exponents of early Quattrocento humanism are conspicuously,
curiously absent, such as Pier Paolo Vergerio and Gasparino Barzizza (to
name only two). Not only did both achieve pan-Italian renown, but Verg-
erio was a friend of Bruni and fellow Chrysoloras student, and Barzizza
educated a whole line of humanists including Beccadelli and, like Bar-
tolomeo da Montepulciano, served Martin V as secretary.32 In addition, a
few eminent humanists crop up in other biographies but not in this one:
Vittorino da Feltre as tutor to Gianfrancesco Gonzaga’s progeny in Man-
tua, Francesco Barbaro as a leading litteratus in Francesco Foscari’s Venice,
and Francesco Filelfo as a teacher of rhetoric and an enemy of Cosimo
de’ Medici.33 Cosimo himself is remembered for his patronage of human-
ism, although strangely his building of the library of San Marco, while
mentioned, is not related to the book collection of Niccolò Niccoli that
formed its core.34 Furthermore, still other figures appear in Piccolomini’s
De viris illustribus who share important attributes with the humanists but
are not grouped with them in the Bruni biography. Three are full-fledged
biographees: Bernardino of Siena “devoted his youth to the study of elo-
quence”; the Sienese jurist Mariano Sozzini is called eloquens and is noted
as a writer of “elegant poetry and ornate prose”; and the Milanese bishop
Bartolomeo della Capra, whom modern scholars would unhesitatingly con-
sider a humanist, is accordingly described as a lover of poetry as well as a
master of prose and especially of epistolary style.35 Others include Rafaele
32 For Vergerio, author of the popular educational treatise De ingenuis moribus, see John M. McMana-
mon, Pierpaolo Vergerio the Elder: The Humanist as Orator (Tempe, 1996). For the influential
teacher Barzizza, see R.G.G. Mercer, The Teaching of Gasparino Barzizza: With Special Reference to
His Place in Paduan Humanism (London, 1979); and Lucia Gualdo Rosa (ed.), Gasparino Barzizza
e la rinascita degli studi classici. Fra continuità e rinnovamento. Atti del seminario di studi, Napoli –
Palazzo Sforza, 11 aprile 1997 (Naples, 1999).
33 For Vittorino, see Piccolomini, DVI, p. 25.27–28: “cui [i.e., Carlo Gonzaga] magister fuit Victorinus,
grece ac latine lingue peritissimus”; for Barbaro, p. 29.22–23: “Inter litteratos apud Venetos prima-
tum obtinet Franciscus Barbaro, qui latinam et grecam linguam novit”; for Filelfo, see p. 33.12–14:
“huic [i.e., Cosimo de’ Medici] Philelphus, qui oratoriam Florentie legit, infensus fuit; nam parti
adverse favebat; que res eum ex urbe precipitavit.”
34 Ibid., p. 33.5–9,11–12: “in Florentia claustrum Sancti Marci . . . confecit. ubi . . . bibliotheca mirabilis
latinis et grecis libris referta . . . favet hic vir etiam litteris et presertim oratoriis.” Inexplicably, the
rather long biography of another great litteratorum fautor, Alfonso the Magnanimous, makes no
mention of his extensive patronage of humanism; this omission would seem to militate against the
possibility that Alfonso was the dedicatee of Piccolomini’s work.
35 For Bernardino, see ibid., p. 37.13–14: “eloquentie studiis adolescentiam suam ac juri pontificio
tradidit”; as well as Raoul Manselli, “Bernardino da Siena, santo,” in DBI, vol. IX (1967), pp. 215–
226; and, among recent studies in English, Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino
of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1999). For Sozzini, see
p. 41.26–27: “fuit eloquens, carmen fecit elegans, prosa scripsit ornate”; and Paolo Nardi, Mariano
Adorno (Doge of Genoa) and Francesco Pizzolpasso (Capra’s successor
in Milan), both “highly lettered,” as well as the Franciscans Alberto da
Sarteano, a student of Guarino, and Antonio da Massa Marittima, who
knew Greek and Latin.36
These apparent irregularities might seem to detract from Piccolomini’s
account of humanism, but they actually help to draw its contours more
sharply. For the omission of the Franciscans suggests that they were not
associated in Piccolomini’s mind with humanism; of others, that humanism
was not what distinguished them on this rhetorical occasion. Let us begin
with the latter men. Sozzini is praised first and foremost as a jurisconsult,
Adorno as a statesman. Capra and Pizzolpasso appear in episcopal garb,
that is as ecclesiastical power brokers. In the context of the De viris illus-
tribus, devoted as it is to describing the political, and only secondarily the
cultural, landscape of Europe, it makes sense for these men to be consid-
ered separately and, primarily, with regard to their political role or status.
The individuals populating the biography of Bruni, on the other hand, are
described as having distinguished themselves primarily in the context of
humanism. That is, as opposed to the other “illustrious men” in Piccolo-
mini’s collection, their importance consisted mainly in having contributed
to the revival of classical Latin eloquence.37
Sozzini, giureconsulto senese del quattrocento (Milan, 1974). Interestingly, Sozzini is depicted as a
“Renaissance man” in the manner often associated with Leon Battista Alberti. The biography
continues (pp. 41.27–42.4): “pinxit scripsitque manu propria admodum pulcre, cum juvenis fuit,
pila lusit, jaciebat lapidem, luctari scivit, in musicis et litteris novit, saltavit. omnia scivit, que
hominem liberum scire phas est, sed cantare ignoravit. geometriam, arismetricam astrologiamque
novit.” For Capra, see p. 44.23–26: “fuit autem vir admodum doctus, sed poetice magis datus
quam aliis scientiis; semper enim Virgilium ante se habuit elegantesque versus fecit, scriptis tamen
et prosam ornatam maximeque in epistolari genere floruit”; and Dieter Girgensohn, “Capra,
Bartolomeo della,” DBI, XIX (1976), pp. 108–113.
36 For Adorno, see Piccolomini, DVI, p. 43.15–16: “vir litterarum multarum et prudentie singularis”;
and Giuseppe Oreste, “Adorno, Raffaele,” in DBI, vol. I (1960), pp. 304–305. For Pizzolpasso,
p. 44.29: “vir multarum litterarum et continui studii”; and Riccardo Fubini, Umanesimo e secolariz-
zazione da Petrarca a Valla (Rome, 1990), pp. 77–135. For Alberto da Sarteano, p. 40.7: “eloquentiam
doctus sub Guarrino”; and Enrico Cerulli, “Berdini, Alberto (in religione Alberto da Sarteano),”
in DBI, vol. VIII (1966), pp. 800–804. For Antonio da Massa Marittima, p. 40.29: “qui grecis et
latinis litteris eruditus erat”; and Riccardo Pratesi, “Antonio da Massa Marittima,” in DBI, vol. III
(1961), pp. 555–556.
37 A different view is taken by Schmolinsky, “Biographie und Zeitgeschichte,” pp. 83–84, who argues
that the sequence (found in Piccolomini’s autograph index nominum on the margins of fol. 92v
of Vat. lat. 3887 but not mirrored exactly in the actual sequence of biographies found in DVI)
of Bruni, Mariano Sozzini, Giovani da Imola, and Bartolomeo della Capra represents a mini-
group of “gelehrte Humanisten” (p. 83) within DVI. While I would agree with Schmolinsky that
Piccolomini intends to group together all learned men (Gelehrten) in this section of his work, I
would, for the reasons adduced in the present and following paragraphs, disagree with her that
Piccolomini considers all of these individuals primarily (or at all) to be humanists. Similarly, Viti,
This reasoning is supported by a structural aspect of Piccolomini’s work,
which tends to gather several individuals constitutive of a distinct, coherent
group under the heading of a single, exemplary biography. Bruni’s vita
provides the occasion for a sketch of leading humanists. Bernardino of
Siena’s, in turn, is a locus for a resume of influential Franciscans. In the
same way, Mario Sozzini’s biography ends with a description of the state
of civil and canon law in Siena, and Giovanni da Imola’s does the same
for Bologna. Although it might be an exaggeration to say that Piccolomini
has a precise method, it is nevertheless clear that he consistently uses the
biography of the most prominent individual in a given field as a voce
under which to describe that field in greater detail. Bruni is the voce for
humanism.
As for the inexplicable displacement of Vittorino, Barbaro, and Filelfo,
perhaps it can be chalked up to what might be called Piccolomini’s stream-
of-consciousness style.38 For even though the De viris illustribus appears
to have been composed according to a few relatively strict organizing
principles – e.g., a division between Italians and non-Italians, religious
figures treated before secular ones, an order of descending hierarchy39 – the
appearance of individual figures, both biographical subjects and incidental
characters, nevertheless seems to be guided largely by association with the
present context or with what has come before.40 Considering also that the
text that has come down to us is not a finished copy but a draft, it should
be no surprise if it lacks rigor, completeness, or ascertainable coherence.
Therefore, the fact that these three individuals do not reappear in the Bruni
biography should probably not be seen as a statement on their status as
humanists.
“Osservazioni,” p. 203, refers to this sequence as “meno omogenea” and likewise differentiates
between the individuals it comprises: “l’umanista Leonardo Bruni, San Bernardino da Siena, i
giurisperiti Mariano Sozzini e Giovanni da Imola, . . . l’arcivescovo di Milano Bartolomeo Capra.”
Elsewhere he groups Bruni, Giovanni da Imola, and Mariano Sozzini as “uomini di cultura” (p. 205)
but specifies that Bruni is “l’unico letterato inserito a pieno titolo nel De viris” (p. 206).
38 It cannot be explained, at least not consistently, by hypothesizing that Piccolomini did not desire
to mention individual figures more than once, and thus that these three could be omitted because
they had already taken the stage. As noted above (note 7), Guarino and Aurispa appear as humanists
in the biography of Niccolò d’Este before that of Bruni.
39 See Viti, “Osservazioni,” p. 202, and especially Schmolinksy, “Biographie und Zeitgeschichte,”
passim, who soundly refutes Voigt’s earlier view (quoted on p. 81) that DVI is “ohne sonderliche
Ordnung.” Cf. Voigt, Enea Silvio de’ Piccolomini, vol. II, p. 324.
40 Although the categories of illustrious men he treats are clearly chosen and rather strictly adhered to,
Piccolomini generally appears to meander his way through the individuals composing each of these
categories (popes, cardinals, secular rulers, etc.). Schmolinsky, “Biographie und Zeitgeschichte,”
specifically notes, for example, the odd placement of the biographies of Tommaso Fregoso (Thomas
Fulgosius, p. 84) and the anti-pope Benedict XIII (Petrus de Luna, p. 85).
Such a statement does, however, seem to be made with regard to
Bernardino of Siena, Alberto da Sarteano, and Antonio da Massa Marit-
tima, who are depicted as central figures in Franciscan preaching and the
hierarchy of the Order. Piccolomini describes Bernardino as a master ora-
tor, capable of “bringing people now to tears, now to laughter, and bending
their minds whichever way he wanted.”41 Unlike Bruni et alii, however,
Bernardino’s primary medium was the vernacular, not Latin.42 More impor-
tantly, Franciscan eloquence was fundamentally different from its human-
istic counterpart, as can be seen in the description of Alberto da Sarteano:
He first was taught eloquence and instructed in secular literature under
Guarino, but then he became a Minorite and learned the eloquence of God
under Bernardino, and he preached to the people quite graciously.43
The implication is clear: the classical Latin eloquence pursued by the
humanists was distinct from and indeed unsuited to the vernacular
eloquence of preaching; in their object as well as their application, the
former tended to be worldly while the latter was divine.
It is tempting to see in this distinction support for the notion, most
notably associated with the work of Riccardo Fubini, that humanism was
a secular or secularizing movement.44 Fubini traces a line of descent from
Petrarch to the most prominent humanists of the early Quattrocento, above
all Poggio and Lorenzo Valla, identifying in them an ideology of liberation
from medieval scholasticism and from the Church’s concerns and authority.
As opposed to a bygone tendency to associate humanism with paganism,
Fubini emphasizes instead that humanists offered an alternative moral
vision within the larger Christian tradition – an apostolic ethics not of the
cloth but of a proper life in the world. It was characteristic for them to
wage the polemics of their secular ideology on the battleground of patristic
exegesis, and these polemics could spill over into rabid anticlericalism.
41 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 37: “homines nunc ad lacrimas, nunc ad risum trahebat, flectebatque mentes
hominum, quocumque volebat.”
42 Schmolinsky, “Biographie und Zeitgeschichte,” p. 84, views the matter differently: “Eloquentia Dei,
die er [sc. Piccolomini] auch an den Schülern des Predigers [sc. Bernardino] hervorhob, sicherte
diesem einen Platz unter den humanistischen Gelehrten nahe dem Sienesen Sozzini.” But she
does not note that Piccolomini intentionally sets Bernardino’s eloquentia Dei against Guarino’s
litterae seculares (see note 43 below), thus clearly contrasting the eloquence of preachers with that
of humanists.
43 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 40.7–10: “eloquentiam doctus sub Guarrino litterisque secularibus apprime
instructus et ipse postea Minor factus sub Bernardino eloquentiam Dei didicit predicavitque populis
cum magna gratia.”
44 Most prominently in Umanesimo e secolarizzazione and “L’umanista: ritorno di un paradigma?
Saggio per un profilo storico da Petrarca ad Erasmo,” in Fubini, L’umanesimo italiano e i suoi storici,
pp. 15–72.
Piccolomini, whose own reputation teetered between worldly indulgence
and holy aspirations and who, after his election to the papacy, famously
urged the world to reject Aeneas and accept Pius, would seem to be a
touchstone for this issue.45 Significantly, he barely names any humanist
contributions to religious literature, and none at all in the case of Traversari,
who was an assiduous translator of the Greek Fathers.46 Furthermore, of
the humanists selected for his account, Antonio da Rho was a religious
who defended the study of secular literature, and Andrea Biglia wrote
against Bernardino, an embattled figure among the humanists, accusing
him of a hypocritical desire for fame, ignorance of the Bible, and for
flirting with heresy.47 Piccolomini does not adduce these titles, however,
and, arguing in the same manner, one could just as easily point out that
Traversari was an enthusiastic supporter of Bernardino, as, indeed, was
Piccolomini himself.48 Aeneas Sylvius does mention one (quite famous
and influential) humanist text critical of Bernardino: Poggio’s De avaritia,
which he judges as elegans. Yet here, instead of joining the chorus against the
Franciscan’s preaching, he quips disparagingly that Poggio wrote on avarice
“even though, in the manner of men more keenly aware of others’ vices than
of their own, he himself could in no way be thought liberal.”49 Rather than
45 For an English translation of the official letter, In minoribus, in which Pius discusses his character, see
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Reject Aeneas, Accept Pius: Selected Letters of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini
(Pope Pius II), intr. and tr. Thomas M. Izbicki, Gerald Christianson, and Philip Krey (Washington,
DC, 2006), pp. 392–406.
46 He says only generically that Traversari “translated many Greek texts into Latin” (Piccolomini,
DVI, p. 35.20–21: “plurima ex grecis operibus in latinum vertit”). For Traversari’s patristic studies,
see Stinger, Humanism and the Church Fathers, pp. 83–166.
47 Antonio da Rho defended bonae litterae in his In Lactantium (1443); see Hankins, Plato in the
Italian Renaissance, vol. I, pp. 148–149; and Rutherford, Early Renaissance Invective, pp. 14–16.
Biglia’s impotent attack on Bernardino is entitled De institutis, discipulis et doctrina fratris Bernardini
(1426–1427); see Fubini, “Antonio da Rho.” For a discussion of San Bernardino and Poggio, see
Fubini, Umanesimo e secolarizzazione, pp. 183–219.
48 See Stinger, Humanism and the Church Fathers, pp. 61–66. In the biography of Bernardino in the
De viris illustribus, Piccolomini recounts that he was tempted to join the Franciscans after hearing
Bernardino preach in Siena: “Is cum Senis predicaret, me intantum commovit, ut paululum abfuerit,
quin et ego religionem suam ingrederer. sed amicorum preces me retraxerunt; quod pro meliori
recipio; nescimus enim, quid nobis magis expediat” (DVI, p. 38.19–22).
49 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 36.3–5: “scripsit De avaritia elegantem tractatum, quamvis ipse more
hominum, qui aliena potius quam sua pernoscunt vitia, nequaquam liberalis putetur.” The De
viris illustribus might also contain a silent, intertextual reproof of Poggio. Piccolomini’s description
of Bernardino (p. 37: “homines nunc ad lacrimas, nunc ad risum trahebat, flectebatque mentes
hominum, quocumque volebat”) is very similar to one found in De avaritia: “una in re maxime
excellit, in persuadendo ac excitandum affectibus flectit populum et quo vult deducit, movens ad
lachrymas et cum res patitur ad risum” (quoted in Fubini, Umanesimo e secolarizzazione, p. 190). As
Fubini explains (p. 191), though, Poggio ultimately accuses Bernardino for misusing the power of
his eloquence (“verum in una re . . . errare mihi videntur et ipse et caeteri huiusmodi praedicatores.
Nam cum multa loquantur, non accommodant orationes suas ad nostram utilitatem, sed ad suam
take sides in this debate, Piccolomini is content to pass it over in silence,
and in the sequel he portrays Bernardino positively. As with hostility to
Bernardino in particular, there is no evidence of anticlericalism generally
in the text. Nor does the De viris illustribus fashion, transmit, report, or
reflect arguments against the Church’s or the pope’s worldly authority.
Indeed, Piccolomini praises Traversari’s diplomatic work for Eugenius IV
at the Council of Basel, which was aimed at nothing less than defending
papal supremacy against conciliarism, thus reinforcing the pontiff’s place
in the political matrix of Europe.50 The De viris illustribus as a whole takes
for granted the Church’s involvement in secular politics without rendering
moral judgment. This is a far cry from Lorenzo Valla’s coeval Oration on
the Donation of Constantine, in which Valla, perhaps the most prominent
humanist of the day to be passed over by Piccolomini, famously railed
against the “tyranny of the pope” and urged the supreme pontiff to be the
vicar of Christ rather than of Caesar.51 Ultimately, Piccolomini is aware of
the anticlerical and secular nature of some humanist writings, but he neither
promotes it nor portrays it as an identifying characteristic of humanism at
large. At most he can be thought to illustrate the largely secular framework
of early Quattrocento humanism, whose model of rhetorical excellence,
Cicero, was a pre-Christian author and whose representatives tended to
apply their eloquence to worldly, not religious, concerns (and certainly not
to popular preaching).
Equally remote from Piccolomini’s view of humanism is any sort of
civic orientation or application. This is especially surprising, considering
that Leonardo Bruni functions as his exemplary humanist. Ever since the
work of Hans Baron, Bruni has been primarily known to scholars as
an emblematic “civic humanist,” a scholar-statesman who harnessed the
love of literature to the cause of patriotism. According to Baron, Bruni
elaborated a republican identity for the city of Florence that cemented
a civic consciousness at home and warded off tyranny from abroad.52
In the view of Eugenio Garin, Bruni “paid special attention to the civic
loquicatatem”). Whether Piccolomini had Poggio’s text in mind, or whether both reflect a common
opinion, the fact remains that Piccolomini only reports the praise of Bernardino’s eloquence.
50 For Traversari’s work at the Council of Basel, see Stinger, Humanism and the Church Fathers,
pp. 186–192 (pp. 190–192 for his famous oration in defense of papal supremacy).
51 See Salvatore I. Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla e il De falso credita donatione. Rhetorica, libertà ed
ecclesiologia nel ’400,” in Camporeale, Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, pp. 463–589, esp. 470
and 574 (translated in Christianity, Latinity, and Culture, pp. 17–143, esp. 25 and 129–130).
52 Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, esp. pp. 191–269; Leonardo Bruni, Humanistisch-
philosophische Schriften mit einer Chronologie seiner Werke und Briefe, ed. Hans Baron (Leipzig,
1928). Cf. Hankins, “The ‘Baron Thesis.’”
virtues . . . [His] interest is always directed to worldly affairs and to the
affairs of his city, for the latter is considered the frame in which virtues
are maintained and tried.”53 J.G.A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner have
subsequently inscribed Bruni into the Renaissance keystone of a republican
arch spanning from antiquity to modernity. And James Hankins, while
significantly revising the Baron thesis and advising restraint with regard to
republicanism, has shown how Bruni used his works to teach civil prudence
to the elites at the helm of the ship of state.54 It is quite striking, then, that in
a work as dedicated to political affairs as the De viris illustribus Piccolomini
does not record Bruni’s efforts on behalf of his adopted city. Or rather,
when he does mention works now understood as representative of Bruni’s
civic ethos – the Laudatio Florentinae urbis and the History of the Florentine
People – he adduces them as evidence of Bruni’s stylistic mastery, not of
his patriotism or ideology.55 For Piccolomini, Bruni is the one who, after
nearly a millennium of neglect, restored not classical political thought but
classical eloquence. And so much is in accord with Bruni’s contemporary
reputation: he was fêted all over Europe as neither ideologue nor advisor
but as an historian, translator, and model of Latin style.56 Bruni’s hallmark
in the De viris illustribus is that scripsit . . . admodum ornate. Above, this
phrase was translated generically as “he wrote very elegantly,” but there
is more at stake than the English word “elegance” implies to a modern
audience.57 To get a sense for the significance of ornatus, we can turn to
De oratore (I, 32, 144), where Cicero explains that elegance, or ornate loqui,
is one of the four virtues contributing to proper Latin style (elocutio),
the other three being grammatical correctness, clarity of ideas, words, and
53 Eugenio Garin, Italian Humanism: Philosophy and Civic Life in the Renaissance, tr. Peter Munz
(Oxford, 1965), p. 41 (original Italian version = L’umanesimo italiano, p. 52).
54 J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican
Tradition (Princeton, 2003), esp. pp. 86–91; Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, 3 vols. (Cambridge,
2002), vol. II, esp. pp. 118–159; Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge,
1978), esp. pp. 69–189; James Hankins, “Teaching Civil Prudence in Leonardo Bruni’s History of
the Florentine People, in S. Ebbersmeyer and E. Keßler (eds.), Ethik – Wissenschaft oder Lebenskunst?
Modelle der Normenbegründung von der Antike bis zur Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, 2007), pp. 143–157;
Hankins (ed.), Renaissance Civic Humanism, esp. pp. 1–13 and 143–178.
55 Piccolomini adduces these works, which he calls De laudibus Florentine urbis and Gesta Florentino-
rum, as evidence of Bruni’s elegant style in DVI, pp. 34.23–35.6.
56 See James Hankins, “Life and Works,” in Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, vol. I, pp. 9–18, esp.
9–11.
57 On the place of ornatus in Latin rhetoric, see Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen
Rhetorik. Eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschaft (Stuttgart, 2008), §538 and ad indicem; and
A.D. Leeman, Orationis ratio: The Stylistic Theories and Practice of the Roman Orators, Historians,
and Philosophers, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1963), vol. I, pp. 33–42, 124–135, and 299–310. I would like
to thank Shane Butler for pointing out to me the centrality and import of ornatus in Piccolomini’s
text.
syntax, and propriety of tone. Later in the same work (III, 14, 53) he clarifies
further that the ability to express oneself ornate ranks higher than the other
virtues; it is what makes the orator truly great, what makes him considered
“a god among men.”58
Piccolomini portrays Bruni’s approximation of Ciceronian style, his
ability to write ornate, as the essence of humanism. Furthermore, it is
the defining moment, the sine qua non of the past which all those who
consider themselves humanists have in common. As such, it is the source
of inspiration for their activity, which aims at the linguistic perfection once
reached by Cicero but that was still waiting to be reclaimed. For although
“with his writing” he “exceeded everyone,” Bruni was only “most similar to
Cicero” – not simply similar or equal to him. And while “our age” might not
have “found his equal,” the master still suffered from some serious defects:
In speaking he was a bit slow and if not forewarned he would not have been
able to say anything; therefore when speaking extemporaneously he looked
stupid. In poetry he achieved nothing; for although he possessed the art, he
lacked natural ability.59
The other humanists described by Piccolomini seem in part to serve
the function of filling the lacunas in Bruni’s ability. The new generation
mentioned at the end – composed of the promising young Marsuppini
(who wrote elegant prose and poetry) and the Sienese humanists – is
meant to represent the continuation of, and perhaps the potential for
completing, the humanist project.
To summarize, this project consisted primarily in literary activity, the
studia litterarum: in writing or speaking in Latin, in translating from Greek,
and in composing letters, orations, treatises, dialogues, and the like. Niccoli,
as one who creates nothing, might seem to be an exception to the rule.
Yet his refined judgment and great erudition make him the “arbiter of
knowledge”; that is, he performs the corrective, prescriptive function of
the critic. A humanist should also know “both languages”: Latin and
Greek. Here Poggio is the exception – Piccolomini apologizes for him –
but his superior Latin speech and his vast (Latin) literary output keep
him in the club. Most of the individuals mentioned are not said to write
poetry, and Bruni is explicitly described as having “achieved nothing” in
it. Nevertheless, Beccadelli was known first and foremost as a poet; this
58 Cicero, De oratore, tr. E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1942/1988).
59 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 36.23–26: “in dicendo tardiusculus erat et nisi premonitus nihil dicere potuis-
set; ubi namque ex tempore locutus est, quasi amens videbatur. in carmine quoque nihil potuit;
nam etsi artem habuit, venam tamen nature non habuit.”
is likely the “reputation” to which Aeneas Sylvius refers. Marsuppini, as
Bruni’s successor, writes both poetry and prose elegantly. The central setting
for humanism is obviously Florence, although other Italian cities such as
Rome, Ferrara, Milan, and Siena share in its glory. Remarkably, little or
nothing is said about humanists in Naples or Venice. The humanists work as
secretaries, chancellors, ambassadors, or teachers. As seen with reference to
Niccolò d’Este and in connection with Bruni’s career, in these occupations
patronage could merge with what might otherwise be civic employment.
Other humanists live as private citizens, like Niccoli; others still, such as
Traversari, Bartolomeo da Montepulciano, and Antonio da Rho, lead the
religious life.
∗ ∗ ∗
Piccolomini’s view of humanism receives substantial corroboration from
one of the foremost historians of the fifteenth century, Biondo Flavio
(1392–1463).60 While describing the physical and cultural geography of
Italy in his Italia illustrata (1453),61 Biondo identifies many of the same
60 The foundational study of Biondo remains the introduction in Bartolomeo Nogara, Scritti inediti
e rari di Biondo Flavio (Rome, 1927), pp. xix–clxxxiii; see also Riccardo Fubini, “Biondo Flavio,”
in DBI, vol. X, pp. 536–559. For Biondo as an historian, see Denys Hay, “Flavio Biondo and the
Middle Ages,” Proceedings of the British Academy (1959), pp. 97–128 [reprinted in Hay, Renaissance
Essays (London, 1988), pp. 35–66].
61 I refer to the edition in the I Tatti Renaissance Library: Biondo Flavio, Italy Illuminated, ed. and tr.
White, hereafter referred to as Biondo, II. For the sake of clarity reference will always be made to
region and paragraph number, disregarding book number, as some books contain more than one
region, and White’s edition begins paragraph numeration anew with each region, not book. All
translations are White’s (with modifications noted when made). A complete non-critical edition
and translation of Italia illustrata with commentary is available: Biondo Flavio’s Italia Illustrata,
ed. and tr. Castner. As of the submission of my own manuscript, Paolo Pontari has published the
first two of three projected volumes of a critical edition of the Latin text (Rome, 2011–). The most
helpful treatments I have found of Italia illustrata, and the ones on which this paragraph and a
good portion of my analysis are based, are Jeffrey A. White, “Introduction” to Biondo, II, pp. vii–
xxvii; Clavuot, “Flavio Biondos Italia illustrata”; Clavuot, Biondos Italia illustrata – Summa oder
Neuschöpfung? Über die Arbeitsmethoden eines Humanisten (Tübingen, 1990), esp. pp. 55–137; Rita
Cappelletto, “Italia Illustrata di Biondo Flavio,” in Letteratura italiana. Le opere, vol. I: Dalle origini
al Cinquecento, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa (Turin, 1992), pp. 681–712; Paolo Viti, “Umanesimo letterario
e primato regionale nell’Italia illustrata di F. Biondo,” in Giorgio Varanini and Palmiro Pinagli (eds.),
Studi filologici, letterari e storici: in memoria di Guido Favati (Padua, 1977), vol. II, pp. 711–732;
Nogara, Scritti inediti, pp. cxii–cxxix, clxvi–clxxi; and Fubini, “Biondo Flavio,” pp. 548–551. Other
studies of Italia illustrata with a focus similar to mine are Viti, “Umanesimo letterario,” pp. 723–
730; Vincenzo Fera, “L’identità dell’Umanesimo,” in Gino Rizzo (ed.), L’identità nazionale nella
cultura letteraria italiana. Atti del terzo Congresso nazionale dell’ADI, Lecce-Otranto 20–22 settembre
1999, 2 vols. (Lecce, 2001), vol. I, pp. 15–31; and Albanese, “Mehrsprachigkeit,” who notes that the
importance of Biondo’s account of humanism has neither been widely recognized nor adequately
treated (p. 24) – an observation also made by White, “Introduction,” p. xiv, and Fera, “L’identità,”
p. 22.
salient characteristics of the humanist movement that emerged in Piccolo-
mini’s De viris illustribus: its forerunner in Petrarch and founder in Manuel
Chrysoloras; its primary object of striving: the eloquent Latin style of
Cicero; its medium: translations and original writings, both prose and
poetry; other essential aspects: the study of Greek, a love of antiquity, and
book collecting; its temporal range: from the late fourteenth century to
the present; and its geographical focus: northern and central Italian cities.
The only significant disagreement between the two authors pertains to
the success of humanism: whereas Piccolomini thinks the climb towards
Ciceronian speech is still in progress, Biondo believes the summit has been
reached. Two further distinguishing features of Biondo’s text strengthen
our grasp of the humanists’ self-understanding. First, as we might expect
from the author of the Decades (1439–1452), the first history of late antiq-
uity and medieval Europe, and the Roma instaurata (1444–1446) and Roma
triumphans (1453–1460), works of towering antiquarian erudition, Biondo
offers a fuller and more nuanced history of the humanists’ revival of clas-
sical Latin eloquence; he explains the stages of its development as well as
the mechanisms of its diffusion. Second, Biondo endows humanism with a
larger cultural significance, portraying it as a cornerstone of modern Italian
identity.
Biondo Flavio enjoyed a brilliant career as apostolic secretary in the
curia of Eugenius IV (1431–1447) but fell out of favor upon the accession of
Nicholas V. In an attempt to regain a source of patronage during this period
of effective exile from Rome, he commenced work on the Italia illustrata,
a project initially promoted by Alfonso the Magnanimous of Aragon, who
desired a celebration of the achievements of the great men of the age.62
Harnessing encomium to his antiquarian and linguistic interests, Biondo
set to work “illustrating” the notable places and people of all eighteen of the
classical regions of Italy, which he eventually compressed into fourteen.63
He states the broad aim of Italia illustrata in the preface:
to discover if, through the practical experience of the history of Italy I

have gained, I shall be able to apply the names of current coinage to the
62 Alfonso’s desire for a resume of Italy’s illustrious men would eventually be satisfied for him by the
third work examined in this chapter, Bartolomeo Facio’s De viris illustribus. Biondo dedicated indi-
vidual portions of the Italia illustrata to various potentates, including Alfonso, Prospero Colonna,
and Malatesta Novello; the work as a whole bears a dedication to Nicholas V. See Clavuot, “Flavio
Biondos Italia illustrata,” p. 65, n. 41.
63 See White, “Introduction,” p. xii (and esp. n. 22), for an overview; a more comprehensive treatment
is found in Cappelletto, “Italia illustrata,” pp. 692–695. A summary of each region is provided in
Johann Clemens Husslein, Flavio Biondo als Geograph des Frühhumanismus (Würzburg, 1901).
appropriate places and peoples of Italian antiquity, to settle the authenticity
of the new nomenclature, to revive and record the names that have been
obliterated, and in a word to bring some light to bear upon the murkiness
of Italian history.64
But his work goes far beyond the intention announced in this programmatic
statement. In a longer, more in-depth description of his undertaking at the
beginning of book 1, Biondo notes:
I shall enumerate the pre-eminent men born in former times in her [sc.
Italy’s] cities and regions severally, as well as those who are living still,
especially those who have distinguished themselves with a reputation for letters
or for any great virtue; and I shall briefly set forth the noteworthy historical
events of her individual regions. So this work will be not just a description
of Italy, but also a catalogue of her famous and outstanding men, as well as a
summary of no small part of Italian history.65
In the process of compiling this bio-geographico-historical descriptio,

Biondo pioneered a new genre, chorography. This new text type (based
in part on Pomponius Mela’s De situ orbis and Pausanias), once placed
in the rich soil of Tacitus’ rediscovered Germania and Annius of Viterbo’s
imaginative Antiquitates, would go on to sprout under the lamp of German
pride and eventually flourish all over early modern Europe.66 Biondo claims
to have traversed all of Italy and to have based much of his account on
autopsy, but such assertions are somewhat overblown. At least as important
as personal experience were boundless reading and the help of numerous
64 Biondo, II, Pref.3: “ . . . tentare volui an per eam quam sum nactus Italiae rerum peritiam vetus-
tioribus locis eius et populis nominum novitatem, novis auctoritatem, deletis vitam memoriae dare,
denique rerum Italiae obscuritatem illustrare potero.”
65 Ibid., i.10: “viros praestantiores qui singulis in urbibus et locis pridem geniti fuerunt, eosque qui
sunt superstites, praesertim litterarum aut cuiuspiam virtutis gloria claros, enumerabo; atque res in
singulis locis scribi dignas breviter enarrabo, ut non magis haec Italiae sit descriptio quam virorum
eius illustrium praestantiumque catalogus ac non parvae partis historiarum Italiae breviarium”
(emphasis mine).
66 Conrad Keltis dreamed of a Germania illustrata, and Beatus Rhenanus came as close as anyone
to realizing the project in his Rerum Germanicarum libri tres (1531). On Biondo’s influence and
the new genre of chorography, see Johannes Helmrath, “Probleme und Formen nationaler und
regionaler Historiographie des deutschen und europäischen Humanismus um 1500,” in Matthias
Werner (ed.), Spätmittelalterliches Landesbewusstsein in Deutschland (Ostfildern, 2005), pp. 333–392
[reprinted in Helmrath, Wege des Humanismus. Studien zu Praxis und Diffusion der Antikeleidenschaft
im 15. Jahrhundert (Tübingen, 2013), pp. 213–278]; Ulrich Muhlack, “Das Projekt der Germania
illustrata. Ein Paradigma der Diffusion des Humanismus?,” in Helmrath, Muhlack, and Walther
(eds.), Diffusion des Humanismus, pp. 142–158; and Albert Schirrmeister, “Was sind humanistische
Landesbeschreibungen? Korpusfragen und Textsorten,” in Johannes Helmrath, Albert Schirrmeis-
ter, and Stefan Schlelein (eds.), Medien und Sprachen humanistischer Geschichtsschreibung (Berlin,
2009), pp. 5–46.
friends and acquaintances.67 The Italia illustrata is the product of human-
ist Großforschung, with Biondo playing the part of lead researcher and
energetic project director. In this role he comes across as an enthusiast for
Romano-Italian history and culture, for the grandeur of classical antiquity
in all its manifestations, and for the movement of humanism in which he
was an active and, in his own opinion, a leading participant.68
In the fourth book (comprising the sixth region) of Italia illustrata,
devoted wholly to his native Romagna, Biondo digresses to include a short
but thorough account of the revival of eloquence then underway through-
out all of Italy.69 In so doing, he offers a brief history of humanism and with
it a statement of humanist self-conception and identity.70 The digression
is occasioned by the mention of Giovanni Malpaghini da Ravenna,71 one
of many illustrious men of the Romagna:
In the last century [Ravenna] . . . bore the learned grammarian and rhetori-
cian Giovanni Malpaghini, who was the first to bring back to Italy the
study of eloquence, now so flourishing here after its long exile, as Leonardo
Bruni used to say – a most solid and reliable authority on all matters, but
specially on this one. It is a subject that certainly merits discussion here in
my illustration of Italy.72
67 For an example of Biondo’s boasting, cf. Biondo, II, i.10: “Postquam vero omnem Italiam pera-
graturus ero . . . ” (“After I have ranged over all of Italy . . . ”). On the issue of autopsy in Biondo’s
work, see Rita Cappelletto, “‘Peragrare ac lustrare Italiam coepi.’ Alcune considerazioni sull’Italia
illustrata e sulla sua fortuna,” in Anita di Stefano et al. (eds.), La storiografia umanistica. Convegno
internazionale di studi, Messina, 22–25 ottobre 1987, 2 vols. in 3 (Messina, 1992), pp. 181–203, at
181–189, which also identifies several of Biondo’s collaborators in gathering information on Italy, its
history, and its geography; Cappelletto, “Italia Illustrata,” pp. 684–687; and Catherine J. Castner,
“Direct Observation and Biondo Flavio’s Additions to Italia Illustrata: The Case of Ocriculum,”
Medievalia et humanistica, n.s. 25 (1998), pp. 93–108. See also White, “Introduction,” p. xi, includ-
ing n. 20, which provides further bibliography on this point and relates an amusing example of
Biondo’s duplicity, as well as p. xx for Biondo’s collaborators.
68 For Biondo’s self-estimation as a participant in humanism, cf. the high value he assigns the Italia
illustrata itself (and his Roma instaurata) as a mark of the renovatio Italiae in Biondo, II, vi.53.
69 This digression spans paragraphs 25 to 31 of regio sexta (Romagna), which corresponds to Biondo,
II, pp. 300–309.
70 Cf. Clavuot, Biondos Italia illustrata – Summa oder Neuschöpfung, p. 33, who is followed by Fera,
“L’identità,” pp. 24–25.
71 The identity of Giovanni da Ravenna here as either Giovanni Malpaghini or Giovanni Conversini,
or a confused conflation of the two, is still disputed. I follow the judgment of Jeffrey A. White,
the editor and translator of the text for the I Tatti Renaissance Library, and of Witt, Footsteps,
pp. 339–346. See also Witt, “Still the Matter of the Two Giovannis: A Note on Malpaghini and
Conversini,” Rinascimento, 35 (1996), pp. 179–199. For an argument in favor of Giovanni Conversini,
see Albanese, “Mehrsprachigkeit,” pp. 29–30. For the view that Biondo conflates the two Giovannis
into one mythical persona, see Viti, “Umanesimo letterario,” pp. 725–726.
72 Biondo, II, vi.25: “Genuit quoque superiori saeculo . . . Iohannem grammaticum rhetoremque
doctissimum, quem solitus dicere fuit Leonardus Arretinus, omni in re sed potissime in hac una
gravissimus locupletissimusque testis, fuisse primum a quo eloquentiae studia – tantopere nunc
A few points in particular should be brought to the fore immediately: (1)
Giovanni was the first to bring eloquence back to Italy after a long period
of exile; (2) eloquence now flourishes in Biondo’s time; (3) the source of
this information is Leonardo Bruni.73
Then follows a history of the Latin language that is quite similar to that
found in Piccolomini’s De viris illustribus, although Biondo’s is fuller and
more detailed:
Those who have developed a sure and true taste for Latin literature realize
and appreciate that few authors, indeed hardly any, wrote Latin with any
measure of elegance after the time of the doctors of the Church, Ambrose,
Jerome, and Augustine – the very period of the decline of the Roman
empire – unless we are to include in their numbers St. Gregory and the
Venerable Bede, who came just afterwards, and St. Bernard, who was much
later.74
More attentive to historical reasoning than Aeneas Sylvius, Biondo connects
the decline of eloquence with that of the Roman empire. He is also a bit
more tolerant in setting the confines of proper Latin, willing to consider
not only Gregory the Great but also Bede and even St. Bernard, a clerical
writer of the twelfth century, as exemplars of good style.
Both authors, however, agree in considering the Middle Ages a period
essentially without eloquence, as well as in identifying the roots of human-
ism’s revival of eloquence in Petrarch:
The very first to rouse Latin poetry and eloquence was Francesco Petrarca,
a man of great talent and even greater industry, even if he never attained the
full flower of Ciceronian eloquence that we see gracing so many men of our
own time.75
From the age of Augustine to Petrarch, only three authors were worth
noting for their eloquence (two more than in Piccolomini, it might be
florentia longe postliminio – in Italiam fuerint reducta: digna certe cognitio quae a nobis nunc
illustranda Italia in medium adducatur.”
73 Fera, “L’identità,” p. 24, doubts that Bruni is truly a source for this view as Biondo presents it;
instead he believes Biondo is vying with Bruni’s own view of Florence’s importance as explained in
the Funeral Oration for Nanni Strozzi and the Memoirs (pp. 22–23).
74 Biondo, II, vi.26: “Vident atque intellegunt qui Latinas litteras vero et suo cum sapore degustant,
paucos ac prope nullos post doctorum ecclesiae Ambrosii, Hieronymi et Augustini <tempora>,
quae et eadem inclinantis Romanorum imperii tempora fuerunt, aliqua cum elegantia scripsisse,
nisi illis propinqui temporibus beatus Gregorius ac venerabilis Beda et, qui longo his posterior
tempore fuit, beatus Bernardus in eorum numerum sint ponendi.”
75 Ibid., vi.26: “Primus vero omnium Franciscus Petrarcha, magno vir ingenio maiorique diligentia,
et poesim et eloquentiam excitare coepit. Nec tamen eum attigit Ciceronianae eloquentiae florem
quo multos in hoc saeculo videmus ornatos” (White’s translation slightly modified).
noted). The project, and the achievement, of humanism was to revive
eloquence and to spread it far and wide. In a noteworthy contrast to
Aeneas Sylvius, Biondo is confident that “Ciceronian eloquence” graces
“so many men of our own time.” Piccolomini’s most eloquent humanist
was Bruni, who was only “most similar to Cicero.”
Whether the stylistic Geist of Cicero was speaking through the mouths
of Biondo’s contemporaries or not, it is certain that Petrarch did not have
the spirit. In Piccolomini’s eyes he had given Latin “a little lustre.” Here
he fares a mite better, but only thanks to an exculpatory explanation: “we
do not criticize in him want or defect of natural ability so much as lack
of books.”76 This passage is reminiscent of Leonardo Bruni’s Dialogues,
in which the protagonist Niccolò Niccoli (Piccolomini’s “abusive” “arbiter
of knowledge”) bemoans the very possibility of having a Renaissance on
account of this same deficiency. Niccoli’s complaint is likely insincere,
yet it is not contradicted in the Dialogues, and the reader is left with a
sense of doubt about humanism’s possibility.77 Biondo Flavio, however,
has no misgivings. Writing half a century after Bruni, humanism and
the Renaissance are for him established facts. How did they manage to
overcome this challenge, one that could be summed up in a single word:
ignorance?
Aeneas Sylvius goes straight to Manuel Chrysoloras for the explanation,
but Biondo stops to emphasize the importance of the Latin schoolmaster
who occasioned his digression in the first place, Giovanni da Ravenna:
Giovanni Malpaghini as a boy knew Petrarch in his old age, and saw those
books no more than Petrarch did, nor did he leave anything in writing. And
yet by dint of his natural talent and (as Leonardo [Bruni] used to say) the
grace of God, . . . he managed to kindle in his students a passion for “good
letters” (as he put it) and for the imitation of Cicero, even if he was unable
to teach subjects he was entirely ignorant of.78
76 Ibid., vi.26: “in quo quidem nos librorum magis quam ingenii carentiam defectumque culpamus.”
77 Leonardo Bruni, Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, ed. Stefano U. Baldassarri (Florence, 1994).
For the interpretation of Bruni’s Dialogues, see David Quint, “Humanism and Modernity: A
Reconsideration of Bruni’s Dialogues,” Renaissance Quarterly, 38 (1985), pp. 423–445. Bruni would
later express greater optimism about humanism in his Vita del Petrarca, based on the success for
which he himself was largely responsible; see James Hankins, “Humanism in the Vernacular: The
Case of Leonardo Bruni,” in Celenza and Gouwens (eds.), Humanism and Creativity, pp. 11–29, at
14; Hankins, “Petrarch and the Canon”; and for a slightly different view, see D’Ascia, “Coscienza
della Rinascita,” pp. 3–7.
78 Biondo, II, vi.27: “Iohannes autem Ravennas Petrarcham senem puer novit nec eos aliter quam
Petrarcha vidit libros neque quod sciamus aliquid a se scriptum reliquit. Et tamen suopte inge-
nio et quodam dei munere, sicut fuit solitus dicere Leonardus, . . . auditores suos, si non satis quod
plene nesciebat docere potuit, in bonarum ut dicebat litterarum amorem Ciceronisque imitationem
Biondo names as his students Pier Paolo Vergerio, Ognibene Scola,
Roberto de’ Rossi, Jacopo Angeli da Scarperia, Poggio Bracciolini, Guarino
Veronese, and Vittorino da Feltre – many of the most important humanists
of the early fifteenth century.79
But the Latin magister did not suffice:
At the same time, Manuel Chrysoloras of Constantinople came to Italy,

a man pre-eminent in scholarship and all the virtues; he taught Greek to
nearly all those students of Giovanni Malpaghini, in Venice, in Florence
and in the Roman Curia, with which he was associated. His teaching lasted
only a few years, but it had the effect that those who did not know Greek
appeared ignorant in Latin.80
Like Piccolomini, Biondo puts Chrysoloras at the moment of humanism’s

definitive take-off, at the kernel of its identity. Yet he does more. Whereas
Aeneas Sylvius had simply asserted the humanists’ debt to Chrysoloras,
saying that the Byzantine “reintroduced the ancient method and Ciceronian
style of writing,” Biondo explains how this actually happened:
The arrival of Greek letters was no small help in the acquisition of eloquence;
and it was actually a stimulus to doing so, because, quite apart from the
sheer knowledge and the huge supply of historical and moral material they
gained from it, those who knew Greek attempted a good many translations
into Latin, and so by constant practice in composition, their skill in writing
improved, if they had any to begin with; or if they hadn’t, they acquired
some.81
Biondo’s explanation is clear: the practice of translation provided the bridge

from Greek to Latin eloquence.82
inflammabat.” Fera, “L’identità,” p. 24, believes that Biondo’s Giovanni is a “mistificazione ideo-
logica,” an ideal composite of Giovanni Conversini and Giovanni Malpaghini meant to embody
an “idealizzata figura di un mitico savio, un Socrate romagnolo.”
79 Biondo, II, vi.27.
80 Ibid., vi.27: “Interea Emanuel Chrysoloras Constantinopolitanus, vir doctrina et omni virtute
excellentissimus, cum se in Italiam contulisset, partim Venetiis, partim Florentiae, partim in Romana
curia quam secutus est, praedictos paene omnes Iohannis Ravennatis auditores litteras docuit
Graecas; effecitque eius doctrina paucis tamen continuata annis ut qui Graecas nescirent litteras,
Latinas minus viderentur edocti.”
81 Ibid., vi.30: “Nec parvum fuit cum adiumentum ad discendum eloquentiam tum etiam incita-
mentum Graecarum accessio litterarum, quod, qui eas didicere – praeter doctrinam et ingentem
historiarum exemplorumque copiam inde comparatam – conati sunt multa ex Graecis in Latini-
tatem vertere, in quo usu aut assiduitate scribendi, aut reddiderunt eam quam habebant eloquentiam
meliorem aut qui nullam prius habuerant inde aliquam compararunt.” This passage exhibits some
interesting similarities with Cicero, De oratore, 1, 4.
82 Cf. Witt, Footsteps, pp. 342–343. See also Chapter 3 below, pp. 144–146.
At this point one thing was still lacking for the full rebirth of ancient
eloquence: books, especially those containing the eloquent works of the
ancients; Biondo stresses particularly the writings of Cicero and Quintil-
ian. In his view, the search for “the lost books of the Romans and old
Italy”83 began with the Council of Constance, which occasioned the ran-
sacking of Swiss and German monasteries. Among the earliest discoveries
he records were the first complete manuscript of Quintilian’s Institutio ora-
toria and Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, shortly followed (in Lodi) by Cicero’s
treatises on the art of rhetoric De oratore, Brutus, and Orator. Biondo
singles out especially Poggio Bracciolini and the humanist schoolmaster
Gasparino Barzizza for their praiseworthy efforts to find, safeguard, tran-
scribe, and proliferate these texts. He also mentions his own small role in
their transmission.84
Now, armed with the right literature, a special unit of humanist teachers
brought eloquence to every part of Italy. “The famous grammarian and
rhetorician Gasparino Barzizza instructed a number” of students in Padua,
Venice, and Milan “with his uncommonly good teaching, and roused many
more to follow his example in these studies.”85 Giovanni Malpaghini’s
influence is also to be seen here:
Two of [his] pupils . . . , Guarino and Vittorino, have educated a whole host
of students almost without number, the former at Venice, Verona, Florence,
and finally Ferrara, the latter at Mantua, and among their pupils were the
princes of Ferrara and Mantua.86
Chrysoloras, too, plays a role: “Francesco Filelfo, himself educated by
Chrysoloras’ own progeny at Constantinople, has taught a great many
people Greek and Latin letters in Venice, Florence, Siena, Bologna, and
finally at Milan.”87 Then several other teachers are mentioned by name,
83 Biondo, II, vi.28: “ . . . ex deperditis Romanorum et Italiae olim libris.”

84 Ibid., vi.29. For the history of the recovery of classical texts wholly or partially lost in the Middle
Ages, see Remigio Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne’ secoli XIV e XV. Edizione anastatica
con nuove aggiunte e correzioni dell’autore a cura di Eugenio Garin (Florence, 1967); and L.D.
Reynolds and N.G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin
Literature, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1991), pp. 113–163.
85 Biondo, II, vi.28: “Gasparinus Bergomensis, grammaticus rhetorque celeberrimus, . . . meliori solito
doctrina nonnullos erudivit, plurimos ad ea imitanda studia incitavit.”
86 Ibid., vi.31: “Ex his autem quos Iohanni nostro Ravennati diximus fuisse discipulos . . . Guarinus
et Victorinus, hic Mantuae, ille Venetiis, Veronae, Florentiae et demum Ferrariae, infinitam paene
turbam, et in his Ferrarienses Mantuanosque principes, erudierunt.”
87 Ibid., vi.31: “Franciscus vero Philelphus ab ipsa gente Chrysolora Constantinopoli eruditus Venetiis,
Florentiae, Senis, Bononiae et demum Mediolani plurimos Graecas litteras docuit et Latinas.” For
the poet, teacher, and notoriously fickle Filelfo, see Diana Robin, Filelfo in Milan: Writings, 1451–
1477 (Princeton, 1991); and Paolo Viti, “Filelfo, Francesco,” in DBI, vol. XLVII (1997), pp. 613–626.
including George of Trebizond, who instructed Italians and foreigners in
Rome, and Lorenzo Valla, who educated all of Italy with his Elegantiae.88
In a few strokes, Biondo clearly outlines the steps that ensured human-
ism’s success, the mechanisms that turned it from a minor curiosity into
a widespread movement for the re-establishment of eloquence. It began
with a few dedicated individuals, the visionary Petrarch and early teachers
like Giovanni Malpaghini and Chrysoloras. Subsequently, the recovery of
the right books was the essential factor in transforming their zeal into a
sustained movement:
We can see that the benefit brought to our countrymen by so many books –
the tinder of eloquence itself – resulted in our age having richer and finer
resources at its disposal than Petrarch enjoyed.89
Add in the study of Greek, which gave the early humanists practice in
composition through translation, and eloquence was bound to put down
firm roots:
And so academies all over Italy have long been hives of activity, and they are
more and more active now with each passing day. The schools are generally
in the cities, where it is a fine and pleasant spectacle to see pupils surpassing
their teachers in the polish of their speech or writing, and not just after
their education is complete but even while they are actually declaiming and
composing under the teacher’s very rod.90
Finally, good teachers are the captains of the movement: as an army, they
“are striving might and main to fill Italy with good letters” (bonae litterae).91
If Biondo is optimistic about the success of this revival, poetry would
nevertheless seem to be lagging behind somewhat. Indeed, poetry is men-
tioned explicitly only twice in his account of humanism: in the impetus
Petrarch gave to the revival of “Latin poetry and eloquence,” and in the
“courses on rhetoric and poetry” George of Trebizond is said to have offered
88 Biondo, II, vi.31. For the Byzantine émigré George of Trebizond, see John Monfasani, George
of Trebizond: A Biography and a Study of His Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden, 1976); for Valla, most
famous today for his attack on the Donation of Constantine, see Maristella Lorch, “Italy’s Leading
Humanist: Lorenzo Valla,” in Rabil (ed.), Renaissance Humanism, vol. I, pp. 332–349.
89 Biondo, II, vi.30: “Quo ex tot librorum, ipsius eloquentiae fomitum, allato nostris hominibus
adiumento factum videmus ut maior meliorque ea quam Petrarcha habuit dicendi copia in nostram
pervenerit aetatem.”
90 Ibid., vi.30: “Hinc ferbuerunt diu magisque nunc ac magis fervent per Italiam gymnasia. Plerique
sunt in civitatibus ludi, in quibus pulcherrimum iucundumque est videre discipulos, non solum
postquam sunt dimissi, sed quousque etiam sub ipsa ferula declamant et scribunt, praeceptores
dicendi scribendive elegantia superare” (translation altered).
91 Ibid., vi.31: “ . . . Italiam bonis litteris implere pro viribus enituntur.”
in Rome.92 Clearly Biondo has mainly prose in mind when speaking of
Latin eloquence. Nevertheless, poets are named throughout Italia illustrata.
And one of them, Giovanni Pontano, the versatile humanist who would
achieve fame in Naples, even gave Biondo cause to be sanguine about the
revival of classical verse. In an excursus on the Pontano family, from the
Umbrian town of Ponte di Cerreto, he writes:
Gioviano of the same Pontano family, a young man of great natural ability, is
now coming into his own: utterly dedicated as he is to the writing of iambic
and elegiac verse, he seems destined to match the glory of his countrymen
Propertius and Callimachus, or of Ovid, whom he resembles, or of Catullus
of Verona, his chief model.93
Still, unlike prose, which supposedly had already attained to ancient stan-
dards of excellence, poetry is merely “destined” to do so in the figure of
Pontano. As in Piccolomini’s work, here, too, poetry is running second
in humanism’s race. Having fallen behind when attention was turned to
imitating Cicero, only now, at mid-century, is it catching up.
Accustomed as we are to thinking of humanism as only one (small)
part of a larger artistic renaissance, we would expect Biondo to place the
humanists’ achievement in that broader cultural context. And so he does,
in a way. In a preface addressed to the humanist Pope Nicholas V, Biondo
characterized his time as one divinely blessed with a new flourishing of
culture. It is a time in which, “God being more gracious to us now, . . . the
cultivation of the rest of the arts and of eloquence, especially, has come alive
again.”94 The evidence for this Golden Age consists in the approximately
92 For Petrarch, see note 75 above; for George of Trebizond, cf. ibid., vi.31: “At the University of
Rome, George of Trebizond has alongside Italian students many Spaniards, French, and Germans,
some of them important and distinguished men, for his courses on rhetoric and poetry” (“Georgius
Trapezuntius publico Romae gymnasio Hispanos, Gallos Germanosque multos, in quis nonnulli
aliquando sunt magni praestantesque viri, simul cum Italicis oratoriae ac poeticae auditores habet”).
93 Ibid., iv.11: “Magne etiam indolis praedictae succrescit Pontanae gentis adulescens Jovianus, qui
iambico versu et scribendis elegiis assiduo deditus studio Propertii et Callimachi contribulium,
aut vicini Ovidii, aut quem magis imitatur, Catulli Veronensis, laudibus responsurus videtur.” For
Pontano and his poetry, see Carol Kidwell, Pontano: Poet and Prime Minister (London, 1991); Rodney
G. Dennis, “Introduction,” in Giovanni Gioviano Pontano, Baiae, tr. R.G. Dennis (Cambridge,
Mass., 2006), pp. vii–xxiv; and Julia Haig Gaisser, Catullus and His Renaissance Readers (Oxford,
1993), pp. 220–229.
94 Biondo, II, Pref.3: “ . . . propitiore nobis deo nostro meliora habet aetas nostra, et cum ceterarum
artium tum maxime eloquentiae studia revixerunt . . . ” Biondo eventually discarded this preface
and any mention of Nicholas V, as the pope did not patronize him as well as his predecessor
(Eugenius IV) had and actually dismissed him from the curia, ending his involvement in papal
politics. See White, “Introduction,” pp. xx–xxi; and Hay, “Flavio Biondo and the Middle Ages,”
pp. 100–101.
four hundred individuals whose achievements Italia illustrata describes,
not all of whom belong to the arts. Military and political figures, for
example, enjoy a certain prominence. One of the most celebrated is the
condottiere Alberigo da Barbiano, the leader of the Compagnia di San
Giorgio, to whom Biondo ascribes the revival of Italian military valor.95
Nevertheless, such individuals are greatly outnumbered by men of learn-
ing, who constitute about sixty percent of the approximately four hundred
persons treated.96 Of these the vast majority are humanists – those partici-
pating in the God-granted revival of eloquence – while jurists make up the
second-largest bloc. Twenty-five percent of all the individuals named by
Biondo are ecclesiastics, and the smallest group of meaningful size is that
of princes, leading citizens, and military men.97 The point of naming all of
these great individuals and describing their accomplishments, as Ottavio
Clavuot has explained, is “to show why Italy, despite its political fragmenta-
tion, ought to be considered a unit and what meaning it has in the context
of world history.”98 Geography is only one aspect of Italy’s coherence, oth-
ers being its Roman past, the rediscovery of its archaeological and linguistic
95 Clavuot, “Flavio Biondos Italia illustrata,” pp. 62–64. Cf. Biondo, II, vi.40–53. It should be noted
that Biondo’s enthusiasm for how Alberigo da Barbiano “changed the face of warfare in Italy”
(vi.40: “qui maximam in re militari Italica fecit mutationem”) builds up to a rather weak crescendo.
After claiming “that the expulsion of foreign soldiers from Italy . . . was of such importance that
her wealth increased and she had greater peace – certainly a more secure peace – ever afterwards,”
Biondo must then concede: “It is true that in the wars that have been waged after the foreigners were
thrown out, the pillaging of towns and cities does take place, but our people commonly restrain
themselves from wholesale destruction, burning, and murdering. And what is lost as plunder to one
Italian piles up as wealth for another, which the barbarous foreigner would have made off with”
(vi.50: “nostra fert opinio tanti fuisse externos milites . . . Italia pulsos esse ut postea et opibus magis
abundaverit et maiorem, certe tutiorem quieta [postea] semper habuerit. Nam etsi in bellis quae
post eam externorum eiectionem sunt gesta urbium oppidorumque direptiones committuntur, ab
excidio tamen incendio et sanguine nostri saepius temperant et quod uni in expilatione damno est
opes alteri Italico accumulat – quas externus barbarusque asportasset”). This changed state of affairs
no doubt offered some consolation, but it must have been cold comfort for one, like Biondo, who
longed for lasting peace and unity.
96 All of the information on the relative prominence of different cultural, religious, political, and
military groups comes from Clavuot, “Flavio Biondos Italia illustrata,” pp. 65–70.
97 Obviously, some of these groups intersect, such as humanists and ecclesiastics (a common enough
combination), but others rarely do, such as humanists and political or military leaders. Biondo’s
focus is clearly on men of learning, not men of action.
98 Clavuot, “Flavio Biondos Italia illustrata,” p. 57: “hat Biondo in der Italia illustrata darzustellen
versucht, weshalb Italien trotz politischer Zersplitterung als Einheit zu begreifen sei und welche
Bedeutung es für die Weltgeschichte habe.” This view contrasts with, and is to my mind superior
to, that of Denys Hay, “The Italian View of Renaissance Italy,” in J.G. Rowe and W.H. Stockdale
(eds.), Florilegium Historiale: Essays Presented to Wallace K. Ferguson (Toronto, 1971), pp. 3–17, esp.
7 [reprinted in Hay, Renaissance Essays, pp. 375–388], who describes Biondo’s conception of Italy
and his purpose in Italia illustrata as purely geographical and antiquarian.
heritage, and the hope for its political and military independence from the
rest of Europe. The most important, however, is the cultural and political
Renaissance of the time.99
With this focus on culture, and considering Biondo’s programmatic
statement about “the rest of the arts,” it is surprising that he pays com-
paratively little attention to the renaissance of the belle arti. Indeed, he
almost entirely ignores it, naming only six artists and two musicians.100 It
is instead men of learning, especially humanists, who give Italy its coher-
ence and meaning as a valid cultural and possibly a political unit. Even
political and military actors pale in comparison, for their putative efforts
to unite Italy ultimately prove illusory, effectively useful only as a myth.
Humanism, on the other hand, provides modern Italians with a concrete,
modern identity.101 In the words of Jeffrey White, “Humanism makes the
reintegration of classical past and Italian present possible.”102
A relationship between humanism and modern identity has been familiar
to scholars ever since Burckhardt declared Renaissance Italians to be the
“firstborn among the sons of modern Europe.”103 Burckhardt connected
modernity with the sense of individuality that he postulated had developed
out of the peculiar political character of the medieval city-states. It could be
seen emblematically, he argued, in the allseitig Leon Battista Alberti as well
as in the celebrity achieved by the humanists. For Eugenio Garin, the new
sense of man that developed within humanism manifested itself in a proper
philosophy of life, an outlook that would determine Italian character and
thought for centuries to come. As he summarized in the epilogue to his
Umanesimo italiano,
If it is true that humanism consisted in a renewed confidence in man and his
possibilities and in an appreciation of man’s activity in every possible sense,
it is only fair to give Humanism credit for the new methods of scientific
investigation, the renewed vision of the world and the new attitude towards
objects with a view to using them and to dominating them. During the
15th and 16th centuries, the civilization of Italy, in spite of oscillations and
contrasts, witnessed the emergence of a fully fashioned idea of man. This
99 Clavuot, “Flavio Biondos Italia illustrata,” pp. 57, 64–76.

100 Ibid., pp. 65 (and n. 43) and 70 (and nn. 75–78). Furthermore, Biondo gives no synthetic account
of the history of the revival of the arts (p. 61), whereas he does for humanism (see below).
101 Ibid., pp. 61–75. See also Fera, “L’identità,” pp. 26–29. Cf. note 98 above.
102 White, “Introduction,” p. xiii.
103 Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, p. 93. The famous quotation is found in
the introduction to the second part of Civilization, “The Development of the Individual,” and is
adduced by Robert Black, “Humanism,” p. 246, in a discussion (pp. 245–246) that in large part
informs this paragraph.
idea was made possible by the studia humanitatis and by an active expansion
in the world.104
Biondo casts the relationship between humanism and Italian identity dif-
ferently. He does not posit in humanism a fresh understanding of man’s
nature or predict that it will lead to liberating epistemes and mentalities;
rather he implies that the common identity available in humanist cul-
ture has the potential to unite Italians at a crucial, felicitous moment of
changing political fortunes.105 After lamenting Italy’s medieval history of
invasion at the hands of German emperors and the long omnipresence
of foreign mercenaries across the peninsula, he rejoices at the expulsion of
English, Breton, and German troops and the attendant increase in peace,
security, and prosperity the Italians of his time enjoy. Homegrown condot-
tieri have renewed ancient Italian arms, the humanists have revived ancient
eloquence, and now he himself has restored knowledge of Italian history
with his works. The stage is set, he all but shouts, for a renovatio Italiae.
Humanism has (or Biondo hopes it will have) political consequences. By
uniting Italians with a common culture, one, moreover, that takes its bear-
ings from the ancient greatness of the Roman empire – whose hallmarks
are eloquence and military might and which represents the last point in
time in which Italians were confederated under one power – humanism
has the potential to cement the autonomy of the peninsula.
To summarize Biondo’s view, humanism is synonymous with the revival
of eloquence and good letters, bonae litterae, and it is the result of: (1) three
key founders: Petrarch, Giovanni Malpaghini da Ravenna, and Manuel
Chrysoloras; (2) the recovery of the “lost books of the Romans and old
Italy” (especially Quintilian and Cicero’s rhetorical works), which are “the
tinder of eloquence itself”; (3) the introduction of Greek, “no small help
in the acquisition of eloquence”; and (4) an army of “grammarians and
rhetoricians” who are “striving might and main to fill Italy with good
letters.” Biondo gives a much more detailed and incisive account than
Piccolomini, but ultimately he is in accord with the latter, who described
humanism as the effort to revive “the ancient method and Ciceronian
style of writing.” The two authors also agree on the central role played
by Chrysoloras, and both hold Leonardo Bruni in the highest esteem. For
Biondo he is also a personal friend (and sparring partner) and is the most
104 In the translation of Peter Munz: Italian Humanism, p. 221 [original Italian version in Garin,
L’umanesimo italiano, p. 252].
105 Biondo, II, vi.41–53.
reliable witness to the development of the movement.106 The two authors
part ways only with regard to the completion of humanism’s central goal
and its larger cultural importance. For Piccolomini, ancient, Ciceronian
eloquence has not yet become common, and the group of people devoted
to it constitutes only one brick in the cultural edifice of Italy and the rest
of Europe. In Biondo Flavio’s Italia illustrata, however, “the full flower
of Ciceronian eloquence” can be seen “gracing so many men of our own
time,” and it is this eloquence that makes Italy whole.
∗ ∗ ∗
Having heard from two of the leading humanists of the fifteenth century,
we now turn to a less influential figure, Bartolomeo Facio (1400–1457).107
Of the authors whose texts are considered in this book, he brings us closest
to the point of view of the humanist everyman, that of a follower rather than
a trailblazer, a participant in rather than a shaper of the movement. Despite
this difference in status, his De viris illustribus (1456) depicts humanism in
essentially the same way as the first two authors did, namely as a project
to restore ancient Latin eloquence.108 This shared conception doubtless
106 Bruni appears as an authority throughout. For a complete list of passages cf. the index in Biondo,
II, p. 453.
107 On Facio, see Paolo Viti, “Facio, Bartolomeo,” in DBI, vol. XLIV (1994), pp. 113–121; and Gabriella
Albanese (ed.), Studi su Bartolomeo Facio (Pisa, 2000). For an introduction in English, see Paul
Oskar Kristeller, “The Humanist Bartolomeo Facio and His Unknown Correspondence,” in
Kristeller, Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, vol. II, pp. 265–280, 507–529, at 275–276
[reprinted with additional appendices from its earlier appearance in C.H. Carter (ed.), From the
Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation: Essays in Honor of Garrett Mattingly (New York, 1965),
pp. 56–74]; Ennio I. Rao, “Preface,” in Bartolomeo Facio, Invective in Laurentium Vallam (Naples,
1978), pp. 7–42; and the brief overview in Jerry H. Bentley, Politics and Culture in Renaissance
Naples (Princeton, 1987), pp. 100–108. See also Ubaldo Mazzini, “Appunti e notizie per servire alla
bio-bibliografia di Bartolomeo Facio,” Giornale storico e letterario della Liguria, 4 (1903), pp. 400–
454; and Claudio Marchiori, Bartolomeo Facio tra letteratura e vita (Milan, 1971), although cf. the
criticisms of Marchiori’s work as derivative in Bentley, Politics and Culture, p. 101, n. 42 and as
unreliable in Albanese (ed.), Studi su Bartolomeo Facio, pp. 2, n. 2 and 47, n. 4. Further bibliography
in Viti, “Facio, Bartolomeo,” pp. 119–121.
108 This work has no modern edition; all references are to Bartolomeo Facio, De viris illustribus liber,
ed. Laurentius Mehus (Florentiae: Ex typ. Joannis Pauli Giovannelli, 1745), which I have consulted
in the facsimile reprint available in Di Stefano et al. (eds.), La storiografia umanistica, vol. II,
pp. 11–164, hereafter referred to as Facio, DVI. References are to Mehus’ original page numbers;
all translations are my own. More correct versions of portions of the text, based on manuscript
witnesses, have been provided by Baxandall, “Bartholomeus Facius on Painting,” pp. 90–97,
later integrated into Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators, pp. 97–111; and Gabriella Albanese, “Le
sezioni De pictoribus e De sculptoribus nel De viris illustribus di Bartolomeo Facio,” in Gabriella
Albanese and Paolo Pontari, “‘De pictoribus atque sculptoribus qui hac aetate nostra claruerunt.’
Alle origini della biografia artistica rinascimentale: gli storici dell’umanesimo,” Letteratura e Arte 1
(2003), 59–110, at 65–79. For the dating and a list of the known manuscripts of DVI, see Mariarosa
Cortesi, “Il codice Vaticano lat. 13650 e il De viris illustribus di Bartolomeo Facio,” Italia medioevale
owes something to the fact that all three men worked for years as secre-
taries to princes temporal or spiritual, in which role they performed many
of the same characteristically humanist tasks, such as overseeing official
correspondence and writing works of literature that smacked of antiquity.
Yet there were also important geographical, social, and biographical differ-
ences among them that make their agreement all the more remarkable. The
Sienese nobleman Aeneas Sylvius, having spent about two decades in and
(mostly) out of Italy, composed his De viris illustribus as a bishop. Biondo
Flavio of Forlı̀, once a power player in papal politics, wrote the Italia illus-
trata as an ex-curialist in fear of poverty. And Facio, a Ligurian transplant
in Naples, was handsomely rewarded for his own De viris illustribus by
one of the most powerful patrons of the day, Alfonso the Magnanimous.
The fact that Facio’s work was commissioned accounts in part for several
peculiarities in his point of view. Of all three authors he is the most vocal
about patronage, and he is alone in praising the virtue of humanists as well
as that of those who supported them. Furthermore, he is much stricter
about policing the internal and external boundaries of humanism. On the
one hand he divides his fellows into discreet groups based on their literary
production. On the other he explicitly sets them apart from, and above,
other cultural figures like jurists, physicians, and philosophers. Finally, he
portrays humanism as a truly great human endeavor, on par with, if not
superior to, artistic production, military valor, and the exercise of political
power.
A native of La Spezia and a student of Guarino, Facio was described
by Kristeller as “a significant, if not an important figure” in Italian
humanism.109 In his younger years he was a teacher to the children of
Francesco Foscari, doge of Venice, and a functionary of the republic of
Genoa before finding his place in the Aragonese court of Alfonso the
Magnanimous in Naples (1444–1457). There he came into contact with
Lorenzo Valla, and the polemical exchange between the two has secured
for Facio whatever amount of fame he still enjoys.110 In his day, however,
e umanistica, 31 (1988), pp. 409–418, at 411–413. See also Aulo Greco, “Forme di letteratura e di vita
nel De viris illustribus di B. Facio,” in Greco, La memoria delle lettere (Rome, 1985), pp. 26–43. On
Facio’s works and their relationship to his patron in Naples, see Gabriella Albanese, “Lo scrittoio
di Facio e lo scriptorium di corte,” in Albanese (ed.), Studi su Bartolomeo Facio, pp. 1–32.
109 Kristeller, “The Humanist Bartolomeo Facio,” p. 266.
110 The debate between the two, over the Latinity and dignitas of Valla’s Gesta Ferdinandi regis, was
sparked in 1446 and ultimately consumed all of Italy, dividing the ranks of humanists into pro-
and anti-Valla camps. Cf. Facio, Invective in Laurentium Vallam; and Lorenzo Valla, Antidotum in
Facium, ed. Mariangela Regoliosi (Padua, 1981). A short description is also available in Ennio I.
Rao, Curmudgeons in High Dudgeon: 101 Years of Invective (1352–1453) (Messina, 2007), pp. 83–85.
he was a respected friend and correspondent of leading humanists like
Antonio Beccadelli, Poggio Bracciolini, and Biondo Flavio. Furthermore,
he undertook, with the help of the Byzantine émigrés Theodore Gaza and
Niccolò Sagundino, to revise Pier Paolo Vergerio’s rudimentary translation
of Arrian’s Anabasis (of which he only finished a quarter before his death),
and he was known for several original works of history. In most endeavors
his chief object was the celebration of his benefactor, Alfonso, and it was
partly to this end as well that he composed his De viris illustribus.
Like Biondo’s Italia illustrata, Facio’s De viris illustribus includes great
men from all departments of culture and politics and from all over Italy,
occasionally (unlike Biondo) even ranging afield to the rest of Europe.
Facio treats fewer figures, but his biographies are on the whole much more
detailed. In contrast to Aeneas Sylvius he lacks a true European vision, but
he gives much more attention than the Sienese humanist to individuals and
their achievements outside the realm of politics. Facio divides his De viris
illustribus into nine distinct categories: poets, orators, jurisconsults, doctors
(including physicians, philosophers, and theologians), painters, sculptors,
great private citizens, condottieri, and kings and princes; each receives its
own section introduced by a programmatic preface. The first two groups –
poets (six biographies) and orators (thirty-five biographies) – represent the
world of humanism and make up half of the total work.111
The significance of Facio’s De viris illustribus has generally been
ignored.112 The work was dismissed by Eric Cochrane in his Historians
and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance. Even Kristeller overlooked its
importance despite defending it against unnamed detractors by whom it
111 The humanists recorded by Facio are (in the following order): poetae: Antonio Loschi, Anto-
nio Beccadelli, Francesco Filelfo, Giovanni Marrasio, Tito Strozzi, Giovanni Pontano; oratores:
Manuel Chrysoloras, Pier Paolo Vergerio, Jacopo Angeli da Scarperia, Leonardo Bruni, Ambro-
gio Traversari, Niccolò Niccoli, Carlo Marsuppini, Leonardo Giustinian, Leon Battista Alberti,
Vittorino da Feltre, Niccolò Perotti, Guiniforte Barzizza, Leodrisio Crivelli, Francesco Griffolini,
Francesco Barbaro, Antonio Cassarino, Poggio Bracciolini, Gaurino Veronese, Giovanni Aurispa,
Giannozzo Manetti, Jacopo Bracelli, Basilios Bessarion, George of Trebizond, Niccolò Sagundino,
Girolamo da Castello (a.k.a. Girolamo Castelli), Lampo Birago, Lorenzo Valla, Pier Candido
Decembrio, Timoteo Maffei (a.k.a. Timothy of Verona), Giovanni Tortelli, Gregorio Tifernate,
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Jacopo da San Cassiano (a.k.a. Jacopo of Cremona), Theodore Gaza,
Gasparino Barzizza. For comments on the structure of DVI, see Gabriella Albanese, “Lo spazio
della gloria. Il condottiero nel De viris illustribus di Facio e nella trattatistica dell’umanesimo,” in
Albanese (ed.), Studi su Bartolomeo Facio, pp. 215–255, at 231ff.
112 Its biographies of artists are considered in Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators, pp. 97–111; and
Albanese, “Le sezioni De pictoribus”; its treatment of condottieri in Albanese, “Lo spazio della
gloria.” Albanese has done more than anyone to give Facio his due, both throughout Studi su
Bartolomeo Facio and (with Paolo Pontari) in “‘De pictoribus atque sculptoribus.’” See also Cortesi,
“Il codice Vaticano,” pp. 409–411, 418, who highlights the significance of Facio’s biography of Valla
both for their personal relationship and for questions of DVI’s authorship.
had “been criticized for the brevity of its presentation,” saying only generi-
cally that “the work reflects the range of human achievements that seemed
important to the author and his time.”113 Clearly, the human achievement
Facio considered most important was humanism, and it is as a contem-
porary witness to its character and meaning that his De viris illustribus
deserves our attention. Unlike Piccolomini and Biondo, however, Facio
offers neither a narrative history nor a discrete description of humanism,
nor does he endeavor explicitly to explain the causes and mechanisms
of the movement’s growth and evolution. Rather, he provides a series of
bio-bibliographical entries in the manner of Jerome’s De viris illustribus,
i.e., a series of vitae devoted more to cataloguing individuals’ writings
than to chronicling their lives’ other accomplishments. Yet this does not
make Facio’s work a mere list. On the contrary, it does the same thing
for humanism that Jerome did for Christianity: it depicts the landscape of
an intellectual and literary culture by means of a combined monument to
individual authors. Thus Facio’s vision of humanism remains a gestalt, but
it can be broken down by means of a close reading of the various biogra-
phies and a collation of the common characteristics that bind the various
individuals together as a group, as well as by paying heed to programmatic
statements in the various section prefaces, where Facio gives voice to his
understanding of fifteenth-century culture and of humanism’s place in it.114
Poetae and oratores

By dividing the humanists between poets and orators, poetae and oratores,
Facio is the first of our authors to explicitly differentiate humanists as a
group from other learned or professional categories and to endow them with
their own peculiar labels. The meaning of the first, poeta, is clear enough,
but the second is more problematic. Instinctively we think of an orator as
a public speaker, someone who delivers orations, and those familiar with
the lexicon of humanist Latin will quickly note that ambassadors were also
called oratores. Such a definition, however, covers only part of the range of
humanist usage, and it does not pertain to all the men grouped here under
this particular rubric. Indeed, Facio has a much broader concept in mind.
113 Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, pp. 396–397; Kristeller, “The Humanist Bartolomeo
Facio,” pp. 275–276.
114 The importance of the prefaces has been recognized and exploited to reconstruct Facio’s vision of
the relationship of men of politics and arms to civil society in Albanese, “Lo spazio della gloria,”
p. 231ff.
Grasping the comprehensive nature of the terms poetae and oratores is the
first step to understanding his conception of humanism.
Facio treats poets first, as he states in his preface, “because they are the
oldest and are attested before orators.”115 Poetry is also more difficult, he
explains later, since it must organize its words according to strict meter.116
Meter is indeed the key to understanding who counts as a poet. None
of those singled out as such dedicated himself exclusively to this field.
Rather, the deciding factor is the imitation of classical Latin meters, i.e.,
quantitative meters based on vowel length, in whatever poetry each wrote.
Apart from hexameter and certain forms used in hymns (e.g., iambic
dimeter), such meters had largely disappeared in the Middle Ages and been
replaced with simpler schemes based on stress accent and rhyme. Only with
Giovanni Pontano – the muse of Biondo’s poetic optimism, whom Facio
met in Naples but who would first truly flourish in the decades after Facio’s
writing – would the full range of classical lyric meters (such as sapphics
and alcaics) be restored.117
Orators, for their part, are quite similar to poets, “since both deal with
the force and the proper use of words.” Furthermore, both must “master
language” if they do not want to look “feeble and foolish.” Orators of Facio’s
day, however, suffer a disadvantage with respect to their ancient counter-
parts: the scope of their activity has been radically reduced. Of the “three
genres . . . which the ancient orators were accustomed to handling, . . . only
one has been left to our orators.” Facio refers to the three traditional cate-
gories of rhetoric – judicial or forensic, deliberative, and demonstrative or
epideictic – of which the first had become “the realm of the jurisconsults,”
and the second was no longer the bailiwick of Latin but of the vernacular.118
115 Facio, DVI, p. 3: “A Poetis vero, quoniam ii antiquissimi, et ante Oratores fuisse traduntur, scribere
ordiar.”
116 More precisely, he says in his preface to the section on orators that prose is easier than poetry
because it does not adhere to strict meter. See note 118 below.
117 On the disappearance of classical meters in the Middle Ages and the rise of rhythmical verse,
see A.G. Rigg, “Latin Meter,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 13 vols. (New York, 1982–1989),
vol. VII, pp. 371–376; and D. Norberg, An Introduction to the Study of Medieval Latin Versification,
tr. Grant C. Roti and Jacqueline de La Chapelle Skubly (Washington, DC, 2004), pp. 48–80. See
also note 93 above.
118 Facio, DVI, p. 7: “I shall proceed from poets to orators, for the two are close kin. Their shared
attribute is a near equal concern with the power and proper use of words, and the fact that poets,
too, would seem barren and foolish if they lacked a method to their speech . . . But there have
always been more orators than poets, as their compositions are freer with regard to meter and thus
easier to craft. And yet, if we engaged in the three genres of oratory which were customary for
the ancients, perhaps the orator would be worthy of no less admiration [than the poet]. But of
the three genres only one has been left to our orators. For the judicial is the realm solely of the
jurisconsults, and we have given up the deliberative, as we no longer use it [i.e., deliberative Latin
Renaissance orators were consequently confined to demonstrative rhetoric,
the genre of praise and blame which classically took the form not only of
funeral orations, ceremonial speeches, and flashy display pieces, but also
of biography and history.119 Orators were thus rhetoricians who exercised
their activity – the mastery of language – in both spoken and written
forms.
Still, relatively few oratores, such as Ambrogio Traversari, Leonardo
Giustinian, and Guarino Veronese, are actually mentioned as delivering
orations.120 On the other hand, many humanists are said to have written
orationes. For example, Leonardo Bruni’s invective against Niccolò Niccoli
is entitled Oratio in nebulonem maledicum, and Poggio’s and Filelfo’s invec-
tives are called “orationes invectivas,” although none of these invectivae
was intended for oral delivery.121 Similarly, Facio refers to his own De viris
illustribus as an oratio.122 Furthermore, as in Piccolomini’s work, the orator
Niccoli is mentioned as never having written anything,123 nor is his rep-
utation said to rely on oratory. Finally, Chrysoloras, certainly not known
oratory] in a council or with princes but rather attempt to persuade and dissuade in the vernacular”
(“A Poetis ad Oratores transgrediar. His enim maxime cum poetis illa cognatio, atque affinitas
est, quod utrique circa vim, ac proprietatem verborum prope aeque desudant, et quod Poeta,
nisi dicendi rationem teneat, jejunus, atque ineptus . . . videatur . . . Sed oratorum semper utique
major numerus, quam poetarum fuit, quod liberioribus adstricta numeris illorum dictio est, atque
ideo contextu facilior. Quamquam si tria genera causarum persequeremur, quae antiqui oratores
tractare consueverunt, fortasse non minus admirandus orator, quam poeta videretur. Sed ex tribus
generibus unum modo oratoribus nostris relictum est. Nam et judiciale totum jureconsultorum
est, et deliberativum omisimus. Neque enim amplius in Senatu, aut apud Principes eo utimur, sed
vulgari sermone aut suadere, aut dissuadere aliquid nitimur”).
119 According to the standard Aristotelian conception of the three genres of rhetoric (Rhetoric, book I,
chapter 3), the thread running through all the species of demonstrative rhetoric is that the audience
is not asked to render judgment about what is shown, or demonstrated, to it; the audience is a
spectator (as opposed to judicial and deliberative rhetoric, where the audience must choose between
people, points of view, courses of action, and so on). See George A. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and
Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (London, 1980), pp. 72–75; and
Heinrich Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study, tr. Matthew T.
Bliss, Annemiek Jannsen, and David E. Orton (Leiden, 1998), §§61.3, 239–254.
120 Cf. Facio, DVI, pp. 11 (Traversari), 12–13 (Giustinian), and 17–18 (Guarino). For Giustinian, the
Venetian statesman and author of Latin orations, Latin translations of Plutarch, and popular
vernacular songs, see Franco Pignatti, “Giustinian, Leonardo,” in DBI, vol. LVII (2001), pp. 249–
255.
121 Cf. Facio, DVI, pp. 5, 10, 17. The disjunction between spoken and written oratio is heightened
if one considers that the great model for humanist invective was Cicero’s (spoken) oration In
Pisonem. See Davies, “An Emperor without Clothes,” pp. 101–102 and passim. On Cicero’s In
Pisonem, see Severin Koster, Die Invektive in der griechischen und römischen Literatur (Meisenheim
am Glan, 1980), pp. 210–281.
122 Facio, DVI, p. 76: “nostra terminabit oratio.”
123 Ibid., p. 12, although here the explanation is more flattering: “Nevertheless he wrote nothing in
either Latin or Greek, having been content with the writings of the ancients” (“Nihil tamen latine,
aut graece scripsit scriptis veterum contentus”).
for his speeches, writings, or style in Latin, is the very first orator in the
collection.124 In the context of Facio’s De viris illustribus, then, an orator
turns out to be someone who “deals with the force and the proper use of
words.” That is, anyone who works with oratio, which can mean variously
oration, any kind of prose work, style, or simply formal, ordered speech in
general (as opposed to informal speech less attentive to rules). An orator is
thus a master of language, of rhetoric, of eloquence.125
Thus the primary characteristic of Facio’s humanists is their proficiency
in language. But which one(s)? Typically the biographies begin by stating
specifically which languages the humanist knew.126 Nearly all are said to be
masters of Latin and Greek, and the combination is so common that it is
sometimes referred to simply as “both languages.”127 Only one humanist,
Giannozzo Manetti, is said to know a third: Hebrew. This is a reminder of
how uncommon, indeed unimportant, Hebrew was for fifteenth-century
humanists, apart from a few outliers like Manetti and Pico, and even of
how suspect it could be.128 We are a long way from the foundation of
the Collegium Trilingue at Louvain and the positive reception Reformers
like Melanchthon gave Hebrew. Facio reports Manetti’s achievement – one
we consider remarkable – without enthusiasm: “Giannozzo Manetti of
Florence is praised for his knowledge not only of Latin and Greek but also
of Hebrew.”129
124 Ibid., p. 8. Facio even apologizes for Chrysoloras’ deficient Latin, saying that he “was not ignorant
of Latin” (“litterarum quoque latinarum non ignarus”) and that he translated Plato’s Republic “as
well as he could” (“ut potuit”).
125 Cf. Cicero, De officiis, II.48. See also Giuseppe Billanovich, “Auctorista, humanista, orator,”
Rivista di cultura classica e medioevale, 7 (1965), pp. 143–163, at 160–162 for the use of orator as a
fifteenth-century term for ‘humanist.’
126 E.g., Leonardo Bruni (Facio, DVI, p. 9): “Bruni was one of the best educated in Greek and
Latin . . . ” (“Leonardus Arretinus Graecis, ac latinis literis in primis eruditus . . . ”); Carlo Mar-
suppini (p. 12): “Marsuppini knew Latin and Greek very well . . . ” (“Carolus Arretinus latinae, ac
graecae linguae doctissimus . . . ”); Francesco Barbaro (p. 15): “Barbaro the Venetian was trained in
Latin and Greek . . . ” (“Franciscus Barbarus Venetus latinis, ac graecis literis praeditus . . . ”).
127 E.g., Francesco Griffolini (Facio, DVI, p. 15): “Griffolini was an expert in both languages . . . ”
(“Franciscus Arretinus utriusque linguae peritia . . . ”).
128 See Paul Botley, Latin Translation in the Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Leonardo Bruni,
Giannozzo Manetti, and Desiderius Erasmus (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 102–104; Daniel Stein Kokin,
“The Hebrew Question in the Italian Renaissance: Linguistic, Cultural, and Mystical Perspectives,”
PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2006; and Erika Rummel, The Humanist–Scholastic Debate
in the Renaissance and Reformation (Cambridge, Mass., 1995). For a less pessimistic and also
less nuanced view, which does not cite Rummel, see Dvora Bregman, “Hebrew Literature and
Language,” in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul F. Grendler, 6 vols. (New York, 1999),
vol. III, pp. 121–125.
129 Facio, DVI, p. 19: “Jannotius Manettus Florentinus litterarum non latinarum tantum, et graecarum,
sed etiam Hebraicarum cognitione laudatur.”
The vernacular, for its part, is never mentioned as a mode of humanistic
expression. Thus Facio is now the third author in a row to exclude the
vernacular from the world of humanism completely – and this despite
devoting entries to two authors now considered to be among the age’s
most important humanist contributors to the volgare: Bruni and Leon
Battista Alberti.130 Facio himself is known to have prepared an Italian
translation of Isocrates’ To Nicocles at the request of Alfonso’s son Ferrante.
Yet it was a duty he performed with obvious discomfort and from which he
tried to distance himself.131 When it came to literature, Facio’s sympathies
were solely with Latin. Moreover, as noted above, he laments the historical
reality that Latin oratores were excluded from the vernacular realm of
deliberative rhetoric.132 This passage merits closer attention. After claiming
the demonstrative genre for humanists but relinquishing the forensic to the
jurisconsults, Facio continues: “we have given up the deliberative, as we no
longer use it in a council or with princes but rather attempt to persuade
and dissuade in the vernacular.”133 The vernacular is portrayed here as
a competitor to Latin and, although a legitimate means of persuading
and dissuading, as excluded from the bona fide genus demonstrativum of
humanism. Thus although humanists would have used the vernacular when
participating in government business, they were only oratores when they
communicated in Latin.
The particular importance of Greek as a second language is underlined
by the ordering of the biographies. Chrysoloras is the first orator treated,
and the first thing said of him – and thus the first thing said of any orator – is
that “he was the first to bring Greek back to Italy after about seven hundred
years of disuse.”134 The next five humanists were all students of his. Like
Biondo Flavio, Bartolomeo Facio is keen to stress the central place of Greek
in humanism. Accordingly, nearly as many humanists as are given credit
for knowing Greek are also remembered for at least one translation. Most
are cited for more than one, many from several different authors, some for
130 For an overview of the relationship between Latin and the vernacular in Quattrocento Italian
humanism, including the role played by Bruni and Alberti, see M.L. McLaughlin, “Humanism
and Italian Literature,” in Jill Kraye (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism
(Cambridge, 1996), pp. 224–245. See also Hankins, “Humanism in the Vernacular.”
131 See Bentley, Politics and Culture, p. 69. 132 Cf. Witt, Footsteps, p. 451.
133 See note 118 above.
134 Facio, DVI, p. 8: “Manuel Chrysolora Constantinopolitanus literas graecas, quae jam supra septin-
gentos ferme annos in Italia obsoleverant, primus ad Latinos ex Graecia reportavit.” The meaning
of this strangely precise yet mysterious chronology is unclear. Facio’s source is undoubtedly Bruni’s
De temporibus suis. See Bruni, Memoirs, pp. 320–321 (par. 24).
multiple genres, and a few even for translating both classical/pagan and
religious texts.135 Leonardo Bruni and George of Trebizond were especially
prolific; the lists of their translations go on for nearly an entire page each.136
Less common but still central to the humanist literary production Facio
reports were original works in Latin, with the main genres being letters,
works of history, dialogues, and poetry (especially love poetry and epi-
grams). Less frequently noted are works of moral philosophy, orations,
treatises, style guides, and biography.137
In addition to concerning themselves with language and producing clas-
sicizing writings – both original works and translations – Facio’s humanists
share a passion for classical culture in general. First, Chrysoloras’ restitu-
tion of Greek to Italy can be seen as a restoration of the Italians’ classical
heritage, a central component of which, beginning with Cicero’s contri-
bution to and transformation of Roman high culture, was Greek language
and literature.138 For Facio’s endless inventories of humanist translations
emphasize not so much the practice they afforded in Latin composition
(which was Biondo’s point), but rather the availability of Greek literature
itself. He also mentions that the ancients, too, engaged in translation –
specifically naming Cicero – thus implying that this is a way for the
humanists to imitate them.139 Greek and its literature are not the only
ancient things that Facio proudly announces have been brought back
into current use. He praises the restoration of ancient literary genres like
the elegy and the reintroduction of ancient cultural traditions, such as the
practice of poetic crownings (whose revival he erroneously attributes to the
135 Mentioned for translating both pagan and religious literature are Leonardo Bruni (Facio, DVI,
p. 10), Ambrogio Traversari (p. 11), Leonardo Giustinian (p. 12), Niccolò Perotti (p. 14), and George
of Trebizond (pp. 20–21).
136 Facio, DVI, pp. 10, 20–21. Of Bruni it is said (p. 10): “just about no one of our age left so
many monuments to his own industry” (“nec fere alius quisquam nostri temporis aeque multa
monumenta industriae suae reliquit”).
137 Facio mentions Manetti’s De illustribus longaevis (Facio, DVI, p. 19, which he calls De viris senioribus
omnium superiorum aetatem) and a work that might be Aeneas Sylvius’ De viris illustribus (p. 26,
here called De egregiis dictis ac factis clarorum hominum and said to be dedicated to Alfonso of
Aragon).
138 Cf. James Hankins, “Greek Studies in Italy: From Petrarch to Bruni,” Quaderni Petrarcheschi, 12–13
(2002–2003), pp. 329–339, at 338, who stresses that “throughout the Italian Renaissance, Greek
was always learned primarily for the enrichment of Latin culture; Cicero’s perspective on Greek
culture remained the dominant one.”
139 In his biography of Giovanni Aurispa, he mentions that the Sicilian humanist “translated
Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, just like Cicero had in his youth” (Facio, DVI, p. 19: “ . . . ac Xenophon-
tis librum, qui Oeconomicus inscribitur, in latinum traduxit, quem Cicero adolescens, ut scriptum
reliquit, e graeco in latinum converterat”).
emperor Sigismund).140 The general passion for everything antique can
perhaps best be seen in the biography of Niccolò Niccoli, who is singled
out for his “enthusiasm” not only “for Greek and Latin” but also “for . . . all
of antiquity”:
He called back into use painting, statuary, ancient script, and the other noble
arts which are entrusted to the minds and hands of artisans but which had
fallen into disuse among us. He discovered many lost books, and he most
diligently sought out the works of Cicero and of many other illustrious
authors. He assembled a vast collection of Greek and Latin books on all
kinds of art and learning . . . When about to die he donated his books to
the library that Cosimo de’ Medici had built in San Marco, so that even in
death he could be a benefit to the living.141
In the person of Niccoli humanism embraces “all kinds of art and learning,”
all the “noble arts,” the artes nobiles, of antiquity. Perhaps this is why in
other biographies Facio does not speak of bonae litterae, as Biondo does,
but rather of the apparently more global bonae artes and studia humanitatis
to refer to humanism.142 In addition to poetae and oratores, he also refers
to humanists simply as homines docti,143 learned men.
Praise and virtue

None of this eloquence or zeal for antiquity, none of the bonae artes or
the studia humanitatis would have been possible without money. As in the
works of Piccolomini and Biondo, here, too, the homines docti are said
to work as apostolic secretaries, chancellors, advisors, and diplomats to
140 Facio, DVI, p. 4: “Antonio Beccadelli . . . roused the elegy from its long sleep and brought it back
into the light” (“Antonius Panormita . . . elegiam, quae perdju jacuerat, rursus in lucem excitavit”);
pp. 72–73: “the emperor Sigismund was the first to crown poets with laurel after the ancient
custom” (“Sigismundus Imperator . . . primus Poetas more majorum laurea corona exornavit”).
141 Ibid., pp. 11–12: “Graece, et latinae linguae, omnisque antiquitatis studiosus picturam, statuariam,
ac veterem elementorum formam, caeterasque artes nobiles, quae vel ingenio, vel manu artificum
commendantur, quae jamdju apud nos consenuerant, in usum revocavit. Librorum quoque exor-
nandorum inventor, operum Ciceronis, et aliorum illustrium Auctorum diligentissimus inquisitor
fuit. Librorum magnam copiam tum Graecorum, tum latinorum cujuscumque artis, et doctri-
nae comparavit . . . Moriens Bibliothecae, quae erat in Marci Evangelistae Templo, quam Cosmus
Medices effecerat, libros suos, ut mortuus etiam viventibus prodesset, dedicavit.”
142 Facio uses bonae artes, e.g., in his biography of Antonio Beccadelli (Facio, DVI, p. 4); studia
humanitatis, e.g., in his biographies of Giovani Pontano (p. 6), Gasparino Barzizza (p. 28), and
Andrea Biglia (p. 40). To refer to a more general group of intellectual disciplines including theology
and philosophy, Facio uses liberales disciplinas, e.g., in his biographies of Aeneas Sylvius (p. 26)
and Alfonso of Aragon (p. 78).
143 E.g., Facio, DVI, p. 76.
earn their keep and feed their passion.144 But Facio emphasizes another
element, one that was only implicit in the other authors, which stands
out in the biography of Niccoli quoted above: patronage. There Cosimo
de’ Medici is remembered for building the library at San Marco. So much
is repeated in his own biography, where it is said that he paid for the
purchase or copying of all the codices housed in it.145 He is also praised
for his own literary interests and the time he spent with “philosophers.”146
Pope Nicholas V is likewise honored for financing a library (the Vatican
Library), whose collection he secured by sending cohorts of humanists
to scour Europe for the “authors lost as casualties of war.” Facio also
mentions Nicholas’ patronage of Greek studies, which took the form of
fixed annual salaries to support translation activity.147 The greatest praise,
however, is reserved for Facio’s own patron, King Alfonso of Aragon. He
is mentioned constantly throughout De viris illustribus for his financial
support of individual humanists.148 Furthermore, his construction of an
144 The evidence for these occupations is too overwhelming to even begin to cite.
145 Cf. Facio, DVI, p. 57. Which is actually both true and strangely not in contradiction with what
Facio says about Niccoli’s will. Niccoli did indeed donate his books to Cosimo’s library at San
Marco. The vast majority of those books, however, were technically owned by Cosimo, who lent
Niccoli the money to buy them and was never paid back. See Ullman and Stadter, The Public
Library of Renaissance Florence, pp. 3–15; Eugenio Garin, La biblioteca di San Marco (Florence,
1999), pp. 15–23 [reprinted from La Chiesa e il Convento di San Marco a Firenze, 2 vols. (Florence,
1989–1990), vol. I, pp. 79–148].
146 Facio, DVI, p. 57: “Learned in both Latin and Greek, he divided his life between philosophers
and those who govern the republic, devoting as much time to letters as was left over from
his administration of public affairs” (“litteris non tam latinis modo, sed etiam graecis instructus
vitam inter philosophos, et eos, qui Rempublicam gerunt, mediam agit tantum litteris temporis
impertiens, quantum sibi a negociis Reipublicae superest”). For Cosimo de’ Medici as a patron
of humanism, see James Hankins, “Cosimo de’ Medici as a Patron of Humanistic Literature,” in
Francis Ames-Lewis (ed.), Cosimo “il Vecchio” de’ Medici, 1389–1464: Essays in Commemoration of
the 600th Anniversary of Cosimo de’ Medici’s Birth (Oxford, 1992), pp. 69–94.
147 Cf. Facio, DVI, pp. 75–76, esp. 76: “He established a library at huge expense containing a
nearly infinite number of Greek and Latin books. He sent humanists to Greece, Germany, and
France in search of the authors lost as casualties of war” (“Bibliothecam condidit innumerabilium
prope librorum tum graecorum, tum latinorum ingenti sumptu missis in Graeciam, Germaniam,
Galliam viris doctis, qui amissos bellorum casibus auctores conquirerent”). On Nicholas’ patronage
of the Vatican Library and translations from Greek, see Massimo Miglio, “Curial Humanism
Seen through the Prism of the Papal Library,” in Mazzocco (ed.), Interpretations of Renaissance
Humanism, pp. 97–112; and Charles L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome (Bloomington, 1985),
pp. 282–288.
148 Namely Beccadelli (Facio, DVI, p. 4), Filelfo (p. 5), Pontano (p. 6), Antonio Cassarino (p. 16),
Poggio (p. 17), Manetti (p. 19), Valla (p. 23), Pier Candido Decembrio (p. 24), Piccolomini (p. 26),
Theodore Gaza (p. 28). Add Facio himself, and Alfonso is explicitly said to have patronized more
than one quarter of the humanists mentioned in De viris illustribus. On Alfonso, see Alan Ryder,
Alfonso the Magnanimous: King of Aragon, Naples, and Sicily, 1396–1458 (Oxford, 1990); Bentley,
Politics and Culture, passim; and for a brief treatment of Alfonso as patron, Mario Santoro,
“Humanism in Naples,” in Rabil (ed.), Renaissance Humanism, vol. III, pp. 296–331, esp. 296–300.
important library (in Naples) is noted, and he is lauded beyond all others
for his personal excellence and largesse:
An enthusiast of philosophy, theology, and all antiquity, well educated in
the other liberal disciplines, endowed by nature with a remarkable memory,
he honors and supports each and every learned man of our age.149
What is the purpose of all this praise, which in this case is as incredible as
it is generous? Certainly Facio hopes with his De viris illustribus to repay,
justify, or induce more of the goodwill already shown to him by Alfonso,
as well as to honor friends and respected colleagues in general. But the
scope of the work is too broad for its contents to be explained by personal
interest alone. Here Facio’s general preface can provide further insight into
his greater design:
Of the many things that it might be worthy to entrust to posterity, the most
amenable seemed that of writing about the famous men of our time and of
recent memory. And I judged that in celebrating such men I would have
a very good chance of earning the thanks of many. For the knowledge of
famous men brings no little pleasure, and it also bears fruit. Their example
excites naturally well-ordered souls, acting like a kind of stimulus to honor,
to reputation, to glory. For when they see those names made immortal
through the writings of others, they put all their enthusiasm and energy
into pursuing virtue in the hopes of attaining immortal glory themselves. It
happens, however, that when we contemplate the lives of the ancients, the
soul submits to a kind of despair – despair of not being equal to their glory;
they take on the status of minor divinities, and we regard them with wonder,
as was the intention of the writers who honored and praised them. But with
the living, no matter how outstanding or distinguished they might be, the
vision of them before us excites hope – the hope that we might manage to
equal them in virtue or glory.150
149 Facio, DVI, pp. 77–78: “Philosophiae, Theologiae, atque omnis antiquitatis studiosus, ceterisque
liberalibus disciplinis excultus, memoriaque admirabili a natura donatus eruditos quosque nostri
saeculi viros ornat, ac fovet.”
150 Ibid., pp. 1–2: “Ex multis autem, quae mihi occurrebant digna, quae posteritati mandarentur,
illud prae caeteris jucundum fore existimavi, si de illustribus Viris aetatis, memoriaeque nostrae
scriberem. In quo illud saltem assequi me posse arbitratus sum, quod in ejusmodi Viris celebrandis
multorum mihi mortalium gratiam compararem. Habet enim in se non parum voluptatis, ac fruc-
tus clarorum hominum cognitio, quorum exempla animos natura bene constitutos, quasi stimuli
quidam ad decus, ad honestatem, ad gloriam concitant. Nam cum illorum nomen immortale
factum alienis scriptis vident, et ipsi toto studio, ac nixu virtuti incumbunt, quo immortalem
gloriam consequantur. Accedit eodem, quod cum nobis veterum exempla proponimus, subit ani-
mum desperatio quaedam, ne eorum gloriam adaequare valeamus, cum plane illos veluti Numina
quaedam habeamus, atque admiremur: usque adeo a scriptoribus celebrati, atque illustrati sunt.
Presentes autem, etiamsi excellentes, magnificique fuerint, quoniam in oculis nostris obversantur,
nobis non omnino auferre spem videntur, quin jis vel virtute, vel gloria pares esse valeamus” (the
Thus the purpose of Facio’s praise is to encourage his readers to virtue
through the promise of glory. The better Facio makes the humanists and
their patrons sound, the more likely it is that they will be imitated in
their pursuit and support of Latin eloquence and in their love of antiq-
uity. The glory he promises to his readers is ensured by his very own text,
which, by recording the greatness of his own time, makes the representa-
tives of that greatness ipso facto worthy of imitation. Here Facio achieves
a neat inversion of the relationship between facta and verba. It is initially
the deeds that inspire the words and make them worth writing. Once
those words, however, are used to glorify the deeds, they themselves
become an inspiration to further deeds, and, in this case, greater virtue.
Here the power of the word comes to exceed the power of the deed, at least
insofar as virtue is concerned.
Facio’s text is even more subtle, for he ends up arguing that this power
of the word makes his age superior to those preceding it. He begins by
positing a certain relativity of the virtue and culture of ages, claiming that
the only difference between them is the presence or absence of writers to
record them:
I often wonder why in so many centuries so few have written about illustrious
men, especially since there should have been some writers in every age to
make literary monuments to the men who excelled in any one art or study,
such that we could know who the most outstanding men were of each period.
For no age is so unrefined and devoid of virtue as to produce no renowned
or outstanding men. But since they lacked the praise of the eloquent, their
reputation died with them.151
The salient difference between ages is the presence or absence of eloquent

men willing and able to praise them. Yet Facio has already argued that it is
precisely praise that drives men on to greater virtue. To be more specific, it
is the praise of one’s contemporaries that functions in this way. Praise of the
ancients, on the other hand, leads to “despair.” Ancient writings on ancient
exemplars of virtue are therefore inadequate; the genre must be continued
word in italics, animum, is Albanese’s reading of ms. Vat. lat. 13650, reported in Albanese, “Lo
spazio della gloria,” p. 217; Mehus prints animus).
151 Facio, DVI, p. 2: “Admirari autem soleo, cur ex tot seculis tam pauci de illustribus Viris scripserint,
cum quidem singulis aetatibus aliqui scriptores extitisse debuerint, qui eos Viros, qui sua aetate in
aliqua arte, aut studio excelluerunt, literarum monumentis commendarent, ut singularum aetatum
praestantissimos quosque Viros scire possemus. Neque vero unquam ulla aetas adeo inculta, atque
virtutum expers fuit, quin aliqui praeclari, atque praestantes Viri in ea extiterint. Sed quoniam
caruerunt disertorum hominum praeconio, propterea illorum nomen una cum vita finitum est.”
or taken up – in this case resuscitated by Facio in his contribution to
humanism – in one’s own age. Eloquent men are thus necessary not only
to record the virtue of an age, but also to increase it. This is the grounds for
the excellence of Facio’s own time, and the responsibility for this greatness
lies wholly within the realm of humanism, the realm of the orators who
“deal with the force and the proper use of words.”
Yet another step can be taken with Facio’s text. His De viris illustribus
gives high praise to eloquence in its own right. It celebrates eloquent men
in the same pages with princes and kings, rich private citizens, and masters
of war – the typical sitters for portraits of virtue. Facio’s initial point was
that the eloquent praise of a thing turns it into an object of desire and
its attainment into virtue. Now eloquence is praised by eloquence. Thus
eloquence itself becomes an object of desire; the attainment of eloquence
becomes virtue.
Much ink has been spilled in the last thirty years over the relationship of
humanism to virtue. This is especially the case in the context of humanist
education, a subject that will be addressed in the following chapters.152
Here I would like to draw attention to two unexpected aspects of Facio’s
characterization that can help us to understand how humanists understood
humanism. First, Facio is the only one of our first three authors to make any
connection at all between virtue and eloquence. This suggests, as Anthony
Grafton and Lisa Jardine have argued, that the link posited between the
two that we find in the letters of Guarino Veronese, for example, or in
the oft-cited humanist educational treatises is more genre-specific than
has been widely appreciated.153 Whereas it suited the professional needs of
humanists intent on either defending humanism against competitors or on
selling humanism to a non-humanist or, more importantly, a potentially
humanist audience, it appears to have been less appropriate when speaking
to an audience composed of actual humanists. This does not necessarily
mean that the sentiment was not held or heartfelt, but certainly that it
was felt less urgently when talking to insiders. Biondo obviously wrote the
Italia illustrata in part with other humanists in mind, and he is silent about
virtue despite his unbounded enthusiasm for humanism. Aeneas Sylvius’
audience is unclear, but it is nothing short of astounding that he does
not call the humanists virtuous when recounting their accomplishments
in the context of the viri illustres of European politics and culture. For he
152 See below, pp. 127–129, 171, 206–207, 263.

153 Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, pp. 1–28.
is the author of one of the most cited of the aforementioned educational
treatises: De liberorum educatione, or The Education of Boys (1450).154 In
that work, whose date of composition coincides almost exactly with his
De viris illustribus, he consistently recommends his brand of education in
eloquence precisely in terms of the virtue it affords. Why leave out that
seemingly essential aspect of humanism when praising Bruni, the most
eloquent man of his age? To return to Facio, his primary audience included
his patron, Alfonso, from whom he hoped to continue reaping rewards for
the one thing he had to offer: eloquence. Of course he praises eloquence
as virtuous, just as he praises those who underwrite eloquence as virtuous.
Yet it seems wrong to attribute Facio’s statements entirely to petty self-
interest, and this brings us to the second noteworthy aspect of his point
of view. The humanist educators (including Piccolomini) tended to draw
a logical connection – admittedly fuzzy – between the labor of learning
or the specific curriculum on the one hand and the virtue attained on the
other, and they were keen to stress the social and political applications
of their instruction.155 Facio, however, does not assert a simple, generic
equation between humanism and virtue, nor does he say anything about
eloquence’s social value (in terms of mores), of its political usefulness, or of
the education required to attain it. Rather he makes a complex argument
about the power of the word and its relationship to the power of the deed;
indeed, he gives (eloquent) words the status of great deeds. In his view,
eloquence does not merely lead to virtue (although it can); eloquence itself
is virtuous. In his own way Facio, like Piccolomini and Biondo, presents
eloquence as a good in itself. It is the good which makes his age superior.
Drawing boundaries
The praise of eloquence finds its way into nearly every humanist biography.
For example, Antonio Loschi “toiled for eloquence.”156 Pier Paolo Verge-
rio “pursued eloquence with very great zeal and excelled in it.”157 Bruni,
“although not scorning the other arts, gave himself over to eloquence.”158
Traversari was “famed for his eloquence.”159 These quotations come from
154 In Humanist Educational Treatises, pp. 126–259.
155 Ibid., pp. vii–ix and passim; Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy, pp. 117–121. See also note 154
above.
156 Facio, DVI, p. 3: “eloquentiae operam dedit.” For the Milanese chancellor and papal secretary
Antonio Loschi, see Paolo Viti, “Loschi, Antonio,” in DBI, vol. LXVI (2006), pp. 154–160.
157 Facio, DVI, p. 8: “Eloquentiam summo studio secutus in ea re excelluit.”
158 Ibid., p. 9: “Caeteras artes non aspernatus eloquentiae sese dedit.”
159 Ibid., p. 11: “eloquentia claruit.”
the first eleven biographies alone. Evidence of the centrality of eloquence
abounds. Perhaps the most forceful indication that eloquence is at the heart
of humanism comes from the biography of Leon Battista Alberti:
The Florentine Baptista Alberti was not only eloquent, but he also seemed
to have been born for the rest of the liberal arts. To eloquence he added
philosophy and mathematics. An enthusiast of painting and learned in it to
boot, he issued one book on the art’s principles. He also wrote two books
on architecture and another two which he entitled Intercoenales. But still he
is more to be counted among the philosophers than among the orators.160
Looking past the factual inaccuracies of this description of Alberti’s oeuvre,

we note that it is Alberti’s eloquence, if anything, that identifies him as a
humanist.161 Nevertheless he devoted himself to too many other disciplines,
especially philosophy, and thus his humanist status is in doubt. Despite his
eloquence, “he is more to be counted among the philosophers than among
the orators.”162
Alberti’s biography thus indicates a boundary that, in Facio’s view at
least, separates humanists from devotees of other intellectual disciplines.
Philosophy – the natural philosophy of scholasticism – was a realm apart,
as were theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and music.163 Nothing
160 Ibid., p. 13: “Baptista Albertus Florentinus non eloquens modo, verum et ad omnes reliquas liberales
artes natus videtur. Eloquentiae, ac Philosophiae Mathematicas addidit. Picturae studiosus, ac
doctus de artis ipsius principjis librum unum edidit. Scripsit et de Architectura libros duos,
alios item duos quos intercoenales inscripsit. Inter Philosophos tamen magis, quam inter Oratores
numerandus.” The words italicized in the Latin text, “alios item duos,” are omitted by Mehus
but are supplied from ms. BAV, Vat. lat. 13650 by Albanese, “Le sezioni De pictoribus,” p. 69. For
Alberti, see Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti.
161 Alberti’s opuscule on art, De pictura, was written in three books, not one; his work on building,
De re aedificatoria, is composed of ten books; and the Intercenales, short works of wit in imitation
of Lucian, are collected in eleven books. Cf. Leon Battista Alberti, De pictura, ed. and tr. Cecil
Grayson (London, 1972), but now also On Painting: A New Translation and Critical Edition, ed.
and tr. Rocco Sinisgalli (Cambridge, 2011); L’architettura (De re aedificatoria), ed. and tr. Giovanni
Orlandi (Milan, 1966), as well as On the Art of Building in Ten Books, tr. Joseph Rykwert, Neil
Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass., 1988); and Intercenales, ed. and tr. Franco Bacchelli
and Luca D’Ascia (Bologna, 2003), as well as Dinner Pieces, tr. David Marsh (Binghamton, NY,
1987).
162 Cf. Biondo’s similarly ambiguous description of Alberti. When treating Florence, he says that
Alberti was endowed with a “noble and versatile intelligence in many good arts” (Biondi, II, ii.32:
“nobili et ad multas artes bonas versatili ingenio”), but when reporting Alberti’s famous raising of
the ancient ships sunk in Lago di Nemi, he calls him “the great mathematician of our age” (iii.47:
“geometra nostro tempore egregius”).
163 Despite the exclusion of traditional, scholastic philosophy from humanism, it is obvious from their
numerous translations of ancient philosophers (as reported in the biographies) that the oratores
were actively interested in both moral and natural philosophy. Nevertheless, this interest did
not generally manifest itself in a traditional, scholastic context, such as disputations, summae, or
university professorships in philosophy. When it did cross the line, such as in Alberti’s too active
prevented humanists from taking an interest in these fields. Indeed, many
are said to have studied, even to have loved, the one or the other, but they
are portrayed as alien to humanism proper.164
Not only does Facio distinguish humanism from these other pursuits,
he also implies that it stands above them in the hierarchy of praise and
glory. It is clear from the prefaces to each section that Facio has organized
his material in order of descending importance. Admittedly, the order of
the individuals within each group supposedly has no particular meaning:
“I will observe neither the rank nor the relative ability of the men treated
in each section, but each will be set down as he comes into my mind.”
Nevertheless, he has taken special care to “write about each individual class
and type separately.”165 While honoring all the various occupations and
pursuits, he intends to demonstrate why humanism is the highest.
After the humanists come the jurisconsults, who, as Facio explains in the
section preface, have the honor of preserving society through law. “Yet very
few have distinguished themselves” in his time, “nor have they achieved
glory for speaking or writing to the same degree as the orators.” Perhaps it
is a more difficult art to learn, he reasons, but the cause could also be its
great cost, which prevents most people from buying the necessary books
pursuit of mathematics and the scientific aspects of painting (or does Facio have other, unnamed
works or activities in mind?), the humanist is “rather to be counted among the philosophers than
the orators.”
164 For the sake of example, here follow some humanists said to have studied or loved these other
disciplines. The list is not exhaustive. Philosophy: Leonardo Giustinian (Facio, DVI, p. 12),
Vittorino da Feltre (p. 13), Francesco Barbaro (p. 15); theology: Giannozzo Manetti (p. 19),
Bessarion (p. 20), Piccolomini (p. 26); law: Vergerio (p. 8), Bruni (p. 9), Guiniforte Barzizza
(p. 14); medicine: Giovanni Marrasio (p. 5), Gregorio Tifernate (p. 25), Theodore Gaza (p. 28);
mathematics: Alberti (p. 13), Vittorino da Feltre (p. 13), George of Trebizond (p. 20). Only one
humanist is said to love music: Leonardo Giustinian (p. 12).
165 Facio, DVI, pp. 2–3: “It was my intention to commemorate the famous men of each skill and class
who enjoyed fame in my time. But if perhaps I omit anyone on account of either forgetfulness or
ignorance, please do not be angry with me. Once I have remembered or been told about them,
these people will be mentioned in a second book. At any rate I will observe neither the rank nor
the relative ability of the men treated in each section, but each will be set down as he comes
into my mind. I have only taken care of this one thing: to write about each individual class and
type separately. I think it will be more pleasing to the mind that way” (“Meum vero institutum
fuit de cujusque facultatis, atque ordinis Viris claris memorare, qui tempestate mea claruerunt.
Quod si fortasse quempiam per oblivionem, vel per inscientiam omisero, ne sit quaeso, qui mihi
succenseat. Post enim, ubi commeminero, vel admonitus fuero, in alterum librum conferetur.
Ego tamen neque dignitatem, neque excellentiam hominum in suo genere in jis commemorandis
observabo, sed ut quisque mihi prior occurrerit, ita a me literis mandabitur. Unum illud curae
fuerit, ut de singulis quibusque ordinibus, ac generibus seorsim scribam. Sic enim res, ut opinor,
fiet cognitu jucundior”). Facio’s claim to follow no particular order within each section is belied,
however, by a deliberate reordering of the biographies in what appears to be his working manuscript
of the text, BAV, Vat. lat. 13650. Cf. Cortesi, “Il codice Vaticano,” pp. 414–415.
and thus from pursuing it.166 Similar to law is medicine, the next category,
which likewise is said to contribute to the well-being of the city, this time
by preserving the health of its citizens. The section De medicis includes not
only physicians, however, but also philosophers and theologians – “since
there can be no doctors without philosophy”167 – thereby embracing all the
practitioners of the standard university disciplines of medicine, theology,
and philosophy. These individuals, along with the jurisconsults, were in
point of fact far more numerous than humanists, but in Facio’s account
they are treated in a mere eleven biographies. For their part, the jurists
numbered only nine, and Facio was sure to say in their regard that “very few
have distinguished themselves, nor have they achieved glory for speaking or
writing to the same degree as the orators” (emphasis mine). We have seen the
importance of glory and its intimate connection to eloquence. In contrast to
the forty-one humanists treated, Facio memorializes the combined twenty
jurisconsults and (broadly construed) doctors less for their writings than for
their teaching. In terms of geographical and temporal extension, therefore,
teaching, being of necessity a local phenomenon (in an age before e-
learning), must be secondary to writing, which in the form of manuscripts
and printed books could travel as far as zealous readers and enterprising
booksellers might take them – to say nothing of their Horatian potential
for permanence. Following Facio’s logic regarding eloquence and virtue,
teaching cannot help but seem ephemeral when compared with writing.
What Facio said about ages can thus be applied equally to disciplines: the
absence of written eloquence diminishes glory.
Facio also portrays humanists as more comprehensive in their interests
and their studies than the jurists and scholastics. Whereas many of the
humanists dedicated themselves to other disciplines, including law, philos-
ophy, theology, and medicine, they appear to be traveling a one-way street.
166 Facio, DVI, p. 29: “Now the jurisconsults will be treated. They are deserving of honor, as their
studies pertain to the preservation of human society. On that account men of this type have always
been held in high esteem in well-ordered cities . . . Yet very few have distinguished themselves in
our time or memory, nor have they achieved glory for speaking or writing to the same degree as
the orators. This is either because this art is more difficult to learn, or because of lack of money.
For these studies require a great number of books, and they cannot be fit into the family budget”
(“Nunc de Juris Consultis dicendum. Iis etenim suus dandus est honor, quorum studia pertinent
ad conservationem societatis humanae, atque ob eam quidem causam semper ejusmodi Viri in
civitatibus bene constitutis summo honore affecti sunt . . . Sed sane admodum pauci hac nostra
tempestate memoriaque floruerunt, nec porro tam multi, ut in dicendo, aut in scribendo Oratores
gloriam consecuti sunt, sive quod ars illa sit cognitu difficilior, sive, quod multi propter angustias
rei familiaris, magnam enim librorum vim postulant haec studia, amplecti non possunt”).
167 Ibid., p. 36: “Non erit autem indecens, ut arbitror, claros aliquot Philosophos, et Theologos
Medicis adjungere, quandoquidem absque Philosophia Medici esse nulli possunt.”
Indeed, only one philosopher is also described as a devotee of humanism:
the Augustinian Andrea Biglia, who taught moral and natural philosophy
at the University of Florence and wrote commentaries on Aristotle’s Meta-
physics and De caelo. Interestingly, Piccolomini was wont to consider Biglia
a humanist, on account of his historical works but likely also due to his
association with the group around Leonardo Bruni and his teaching of
rhetoric. Facio, too, says that his “reputation is not much less among the
orators than it is among the philosophers.”168
Obviously, these categories are somewhat fluid, and attribution to any
particular one is a matter of subjective judgment. Could Facio not have
included Biglia with the humanists? And more importantly, should not
some of the humanists rather have been classified as theologians, philoso-
phers, or doctors? Facio himself was clearly of two minds with regard to
Leon Battista Alberti. Another case in point is Giovanni Marrasio, Facio’s
fourth poeta. True, his Angelinetum generally earns him humanist status (as
it does here), but, Facio complains, “he would have become even better in
this genre if he had continued his study of poetry. But he dedicated himself
to medicine, and after becoming a priest he gave up poetry.”169 Why not
just call him a doctor who in his youth wrote poetry? What makes him so
different from Biglia?
Probably little else than that Facio is primarily interested in glorifying
humanism (and did not want to reduce the already small number of
poets!). He sees it as his age’s greatest ornament, plainly superior to – more
honorable, more worthy of glory, more virtuous than – the other pursuits.
This applies just as well to the belle arti of painting and sculpture, whose
practitioners follow the doctors and are the last in the line of creators
(unless the great citizens, condottieri, and princes that follow them can be
considered creators of states), and who number only seven. Although their
pursuits are at the center of the modern perception of the Renaissance,
for the humanist Facio they are at the periphery of high culture.170 In his
168 Ibid., p. 40. Facio notes that Biglia taught philosophy, but also that he “cultivated the studia
humanitatis” and wrote a “history of his own times” and “a sizeable Latin dictionary” (“ . . . Senis
et alibi Philosophiam professus est. Studia quoque humanitatis coluit: historiam sui temporis
scripsit . . . Volumen praeterea de verborum latinorum interpretatione haud parvum reliquit. Inter
Oratores non multo minor, quam inter Philosophos judicatus . . . ”).
169 Ibid., p. 5: “ . . . fuissetque in hoc genere major evasurus, si poeticae studia persecutus esset. Sed
medicinae deditus, ac deinde Sacerdos factus ab eo studio discessit.”
170 Facio does, however, deploy the ut pictura poesis topos and admits that it might have been
convenientius to treat the painters directly after the poets. Cf. Facio, DVI, p. 43: “now we come
to painters, although it might have been more proper to put the painters after the poets. For, as
you know, there is a great affinity between the two, a painting being nothing other than a silent
poem” (“nunc ad pictores veniamus, quamquam fortasse convenientius fuit, ut post poetas pictores
work, humanism is not only central to the Renaissance. Humanism is the
Renaissance – the renaissance, or revival, of classical eloquence and thus,
so his argument goes, of a level of virtue only possible in a world where
eloquence reigns. The pursuit of eloquence renders Facio’s age superior to
those preceding it. Humanism makes his age superior.
∗ ∗ ∗
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini’s De viris illustribus, Biondo Flavio’s Italia illus-
trata, and Bartolomeo Facio’s De viris illustribus are among the earliest
mature and self-conscious attempts to depict the movement of humanism.
The first was in all likelihood unknown to the latter two, and the second,
although undoubtedly a source for the third (whose author had in turn
supplied information for the Italia illustrata), did not determine its struc-
ture or contents.171 The clarity of their conceptions of humanism is thus
all the more striking, as is the substantial agreement among them. When
humanists decided to tell their own story, they had remarkably coherent
raw materials on which to draw. With their harmony they show them-
selves cognizant of occupying an independent, well-defined, and widely
recognized field of culture.
The names used for this field of culture in the first half of the fifteenth
century were litterarum studia (Piccolomini), bonae litterae (Flavio), bonae
artes, and studia humanitatis (Facio). Three emphases immediately come to
the fore, one on studia: “studies,” as the generalization of the object of one’s
zeal, enthusiasm, or exertion; another on bonae: which could be translated
simply as “good” (as in excellent) but whose primary meaning has the sense
of “morally good” and “beautiful”; and a final one on litterae: literature,
or the mark of learning and culture, which is the locus of the bonum and
the material object of the studia.172 Humanism is the nexus of these three
locarentur. Est enim, ut scis, inter Pictores, ac Poetas magna quaedam affinitas. Neque enim aliud
est pictura, quam poema tacitum”).
171 As mentioned above (p. 39), Facio seems to say that Piccolomini’s De viris illustribus was dedicated
to Alfonso. Being in the Aragonese court, he likely would have had access to Piccolomini’s work,
yet his De viris illustribus betrays no borrowing from Piccolomini’s. Piccolomini knew Facio’s De
viris illustribus, but not until years after his own was finished. See the correspondence between
the two men in Facio, DVI, pp. 107–108. Facio seems to have relied on Biondo in his treatment
of artists; see Albanese, “Le sezioni De pictoribus,” pp. 62, 69–70, and passim. Although Albanese
provides evidence that “i due testi di Biondo e Facio sono strettamente connessi tra loro” (p. 62)
with regard to the treatment of visual artists, this does not seem to be the case for their treatment
of humanists.
172 Cf. A. Ernout and A. Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, histoire de mots, 4th ed.
(Paris, 1967), pp. 73 (bonus), 363 (littera), and 658 (studeo). Cf. also the Thesaurus linguae latinae
(Leipzig, 1900–), vol. II, coll. 2079–2127 (bonus and bonus [bene]) and vol. VII.2, coll. 1514–1529
(littera).
concepts. Decisive is also the meaning of humanitas, i.e., the essential trait
of human beings.173 If in his highest nature man tends to what is good (in
the broad sense of excellent, moral, and beautiful), then the connection
between humanitas and the obsession with eloquence, achieved through the
medium of bonae litterae, becomes immediately intelligible. The human-
ists’ enthusiasm for beautiful (eloquent) and morally good literature (i.e.,
the genres and species of ancient literature not devoted to purely theoretical
or practical disciplines like logic, law, or medicine) makes sense if one con-
siders that theirs was a world in which the good, the beautiful, the noble,
and the moral were generally thought to coincide. Indeed, this notion of
bonae litterae held into modern times, when its cognate belles lettres still
denoted “beautiful literature” or “good literature” in the sense of writing
that is morally good or has a morally good effect.174 Hence also the use of a
term like oratores (in Facio) to describe the devotees of humanism. On the
one hand, their medium was language (oratio, litterae), and so they should
rightfully call themselves oratores, or masters of rhetoric (in the broad sense
of the art or science of language). On the other hand, if, as Cicero and
Lorenzo Valla argued, man distinguishes himself from animals primarily
through his use of language, then studia humanitatis – the accumulated
zeal for humanitas – must comprehend the mastery of language necessary
to the orator’s eloquence.175 It is in this conception of man and his potential
that Facio’s equation of virtue and eloquence finds its true home.
Strangely, for us, Facio is the only one of our first three authors to use the
term studia humanitatis. More than terminology is at stake in this observa-
tion. Kristeller more or less equated humanism with the cycle of educational
and university disciplines that, in his view, made up the studia humanitatis:
grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy.176 When these
categories arise in our authors, however, they do so in the form of genres
of writing or speaking, not as disciplines or subjects of study. Furthermore,
no author describes humanist involvement in education except insofar as
he sings the praises of humanist educators, whose contribution, in turn,
consists of teaching eloquent Latin, not Kristeller’s studia humanitatis. One
could argue that Facio, by explicitly separating humanists from lawyers,
173 Cf. Thesaurus linguae latinae, vol. VI.3, coll. 3075–3038 (humanitas).
174 Cf. Vito R. Giustiniani, “Homo, humanus, and the Meaning of Humanism,” Journal of the History
of Ideas, 46:2 (1985), pp. 167–195, at 168. On the medieval and Renaissance notion of grammar as
a moral art, see Gehl, A Moral Art.
175 See Giustiniani, “Homo, humanus,” pp. 168–169; and Salvatore I. Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla.
Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma (Rome, 2002), pp. 566–568 [tr. in Christianity, Latinity, and
Culture, pp. 121–123].
176 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and its Sources, pp. 22–25, 88–100.
physicians, and philosophers, envisions humanism similarly to Kristeller.
Yet he divides humanists not along Kristeller’s lines but according to the
rubric of poetae and oratores. Although we can lump the humanists’ inter-
ests and teaching subjects into the categories discerned by Kristeller, it is
instructive that Piccolomini, Biondo, and Facio did not do so when they
composed the first synthetic accounts of humanism.
It is equally instructive that they did not rely on negative definitions.
That is, they do not define humanism against an “other” that it was not
but rather on the basis of its own distinct characteristics. There is a strange
silence in their texts where we might expect to hear the anti-scholastic
polemics familiar from Petrarch or Valla, or else the “noisy advertisements,”
as Kristeller characterized the verbal assaults hurled in the “battle of the
arts,” meant “to neutralize and to overcome the claims of other, rivaling
sciences.”177 Instead, our authors portray humanism unmistakably on its
own terms: as the project to revive ancient, Ciceronian Latin eloquence.
Aeneas Sylvius and Biondo explicitly equate good Latin with Cicero, place
its ultimate demise in the fifth century (after the age of Jerome and Augus-
tine), and characterize just about all intervening times and writers as bereft
of eloquence. According to both, Petrarch began the renewal of good Latin
but did not achieve true eloquence. Then opinions diverge. For Piccolo-
mini it appears that this project was not yet complete in his own times,
although Bruni had become “most similar to Cicero,” whereas Biondo
claims twice that his age abounds in eloquence. In any case, they agree that
whatever eloquence there was owed its existence to a Greek, the Byzantine
educator and diplomat Manuel Chrysoloras. Biondo posits other necessary
factors, too, such as the inspirational teaching of Giovanni da Ravenna,
the hunt for lost ancient Latin literature, and the proliferation of humanist
teachers.
In the big picture, the arrival of Greek is portrayed as the turning
point in humanism’s development and as the formative moment for it as
a movement, helping it to evolve beyond Petrarch’s linguistic limitations
and to spread throughout Italy. On the one hand it was necessary for
Latin eloquence. Piccolomini does not elaborate on this, but the message
of his oracle is clear: “Chrysoloras . . . reintroduced the ancient method
177 Ibid., p. 92. Cf. Rummel, The Humanist–Scholastic Debate; Francesco Petrarca, Invectives, ed. and
tr. David Marsh (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), esp. pp. 222–363 (De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia);
Garin, L’umanesimo italiano, pp. 31–35; and Camporeale, Umanesimo, riforma, e controriforma,
pp. 151–176 [tr. in Christianity, Latinity, and Culture, pp. 175–202, along with the Latin text
and the English translation of the relevant sections of Valla’s Encomium of St. Thomas Aquinas,
pp. 306–311 (§§13–20)].
and Ciceronian style of writing.” Biondo is more specific, explaining that
ancient Latin eloquence reappeared thanks to the practice in Latin compo-
sition afforded by translation from Greek. On the other hand, knowledge
of Greek became an indispensable characteristic of humanism in its own
right. All three authors mention its mastery as an accomplishment, and
Facio goes further by making it central to a humanist profile. Chrysoloras
is the first orator in his collection, and nearly all the others are said to know
Greek and to have translated Greek texts into Latin. What is more, Facio
does not associate Greek with Latin style but instead treats it as a distinct
category of achievement. Once reintroduced to Italy by Chrysoloras, Greek
gave access to lost pagan and Christian literature alike, although the former
is mentioned more often.
While translations seem to have been the major product of the human-
ists’ erudition in Latin and Greek, they were accompanied by a vast array of
original compositions: letters, histories, poetry, dialogues, orations, invec-
tives, and so on. Indeed, some sort of output in a recognized genre of
classical Latin letters – either spoken or written – was fundamental to
humanist status. Niccolò Niccoli is the exception that proves the rule; he
produced nothing but demonstrated in other impressive ways his enormous
knowledge of and devotion to classical letters.
Niccoli also embodies Facio’s broader conception of humanism as a
passionate desire for Greco-Roman antiquity. “The arbiter of knowledge”
was an amateur antiquarian, in the best sense of both terms. He collected
statuary, reconstructed ancient orthography, and searched for lost works
of literature. Most importantly, he was instrumental in restocking the
library of ancient texts for the common benefit of the larger community
of humanists. The establishment of libraries, moreover, is set into high
relief by Facio, who connects not only Niccoli but also Cosimo de’ Medici,
Nicholas V, and Alfonso of Aragon to such benefaction.178
The latter three were among the great patrons of humanism, emblematic
of its underwriting by wealthy private citizens, princes, and popes. Facio is
emphatic about patronage, but its importance can just as well be inferred
from Piccolomini’s biography of Niccolò d’Este and Biondo’s dedication
to Nicholas. The boundaries of patronage could blur with professional
178 It is worth noting that Alfonso is at least implicated in the composition of all three of the texts
included in this chapter. There is no doubt that he was the initial impetus for Italia illustrata and
the dedicatee of Facio’s De viris illustribus, and he might have also patronized Piccolomini’s De
viris illustribus.
employment, which humanists most often found as secretaries, chancel-
lors, diplomats, and teachers. Otherwise they are depicted as leading the
religious life, like Traversari or Antonio da Rho, or as enjoying the benefits
of private wealth, like Niccoli. Here we can note another interesting diver-
gence between Kristeller’s conception of humanism and the humanists’
view of themselves. For Kristeller, humanists could be defined best as a
professional class of rhetoricians, and their involvement with classical liter-
ature and language was inseparable from the exigencies of the professional
context in which they operated.179 Yet our authors, despite corroborating
the basic facts about where humanists tended to work, do not evince any
cognizance, beyond Facio’s sensitivity to patronage, of belonging to a group
defined by that employment.
Instead, Piccolomini, Biondo, and Facio describe an energetic, pan-
Italian cultural movement not tied to any one person or milieu. The only
non-Italians mentioned are Greek émigrés like Manuel Chrysoloras and
George of Trebizond (as well as George’s international students in Rome).
Florence seems to be a particularly warm home for humanism in Piccolo-
mini’s text, but neither Biondo nor Facio favors it. Humanism pervades the
peninsula. By general consensus its leading exponent is Leonardo Bruni,
who is known not for civic engagement but for his Latin style. According
to Piccolomini, “in writing Bruni exceeded everyone. For he was the most
similar to Cicero, nor has our age found his equal.” Bruni, as Ciceroni
simillimus, embodied the renaissance of eloquence in the first half of the
fifteenth century.
ch a p ter 2
The scholastic studia humanitatis and the

hagiography of humanism
If the similarity of Piccolomini’s, Biondo’s, and Facio’s presentations

encourages a monolithic view of humanism at mid-century, such an impres-
sion is undermined by a series of collective biographies written by the
Florentine Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) in the same period.1 Whereas
in the previous chapter humanism emerged as a distinct realm of cul-
ture identified squarely with the revival of Latin eloquence and to a lesser
degree with Roman antiquity and virtue, here it will appear as a general
cultural flourishing integrating vernacular poetry and scholasticism with
Latin rhetoric and Greek studies. In a neat sleight of hand Manetti nearly
dissolves humanism within the larger intellectual and literary culture of the
age, one that includes almost all of the disciplines and pursuits explicitly
(Facio) or implicitly (Aeneas Sylvius, Biondo) excluded in Chapter 1: natu-
ral philosophy, theology, mathematics, and music. Only law, both civil and
canon, is banished from the realm of the studia humanitatis. Manetti uses
this term in many places to describe something basically equivalent with
the artes liberales (the scholastic preparation of the trivium of grammar,
rhetoric, and logic, and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astron-
omy, and music), with natural philosophy and theology, and with what he
nebulously calls “the study of things human and divine.” Manetti does not
entirely dissolve humanism as a distinct cultural category, though. Despite
the conflation of the name studia humanitatis with scholasticism, human-
ism does ultimately emerge an integral, independent concept, although
not precisely in the form described by our first three authors. Here it is
still primarily a literary pursuit, but one which embraces vernacular as well
1 On Manetti, see Simona Foà, “Manetti, Giannozzo,” in DBI, vol. LXVIII (2007), pp. 613–617; Lauro
Martines, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 1390–1460 (Princeton, 1963); Christine Smith
and Joseph F. O’Connor, Building the Kingdom: Giannozzo Manetti on the Material and Spiritual
Edifice (Tempe, 2006), pp. xi–xiv; and Stefano U. Baldassarri (ed.), Dignitas et excellentia hominis:
Atti del convegno internazionale di studi su Giannozzo Manetti. Georgetown University – Kent State
University, Fiesole – Firenze, 18–20 giugno 2007 (Florence, 2008).
90
The scholastic studia humanitatis and the hagiography of humanism 91
as Latin eloquence. Furthermore, it begins with the rebirth of vernacular
poetry, before continuing with the revival of classical Latin and the reintro-
duction of Greek into Italy. In another departure, Manetti adds an element
of hagiography into his depiction of humanism and its exemplary expo-
nents. He not only defends the new learning as compatible with Christian
orthodoxy, but he even portrays it as the path to the good life.
Manetti emerged from a different cultural matrix and had notably dif-
ferent intellectual allegiances from our first three authors. He learned Latin
relatively late, when he was already in his twenties (ca. 1420), after training
to be a merchant in accordance with his father’s wishes. He undertook his
studies of Latin and classical literature in the Augustinian monastery of
Santo Spirito in Florence, where the new learning had flourished since the
Trecento.2 It was in Santo Spirito that Giovanni Boccaccio had deposited
his own personal library, and also where Salutati had received much of his
own advanced training. Eugenio Garin has emphasized that in this context
Manetti “absorbed the ideas of early humanism, the teaching of Petrarch,
Salutati, and [Luigi] Marsili” – not an intellectual genealogy boasted by
our first three authors.3 Thereafter Manetti learned Greek from the Camal-
dolese monk Ambrogio Traversari in another monastic setting, Santa Maria
degli Angeli. As a wealthy fiorentino of the highest social standing, Manetti
was heavily invested in the city’s chief source of cultural capital: the literary
production and reputations of the so-called Three Crowns of Florence,
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Against detractors both within and with-
out Florence, he insists doggedly on their humanist status, praising their
vernacular works as a matter of course and defending the orthodoxy of
their lives and studies. Petrarch is a liminal, if not a marginal figure in
Piccolomini and Biondo, and he is ignored by Facio. Dante and Boccaccio
suffer the fate of oblivion in our first three authors. The same pattern
recurs, as we shall see, in the texts of Paolo Cortesi and Marcantonio Sabel-
lico to be discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. But for Manetti, the nature and
the value of humanism stand and fall with these three Trecento writers.
Manetti’s texts are invaluable for giving us insight into the understanding
Florentines, or a leading group of Florentines, had of humanism in the
middle of the fifteenth century. This insight is of fundamental significance
for two reasons. On the one hand Manetti’s vision largely corroborates
that of Eugenio Garin. In Garin’s view, Dante and Petrarch inaugurated a
2 On the milieu of Santo Spirito, see Rudolph Arbesmann, Der Augustinereremitenorden und der
Beginn der humanistischen Bewegung (Würzburg, 1965), pp. 73–119.
3 Garin, Italian Humanism, p. 56 [Italian original in L’umanesimo italiano, p. 69].
bona fide age of umanesimo by turning their backs on medieval authori-
ties and taking their orientation instead from ancient auctores, boasting a
revolutionary program (substantially animated by Petrarch) of humanitas
in the grandest anthropological, social, and political senses of the term.4
On the other hand, as much as Manetti accords with Garin, he diverges
in this respect from all the other authors considered in this study. This
incongruity suggests that the interpretation of humanism enunciated by
Garin and now taken for granted in Italian scholarship is representative of
a specific Florentine situation and perspective but less relevant to a broadly
Italian conception of what humanism was and meant.
In this chapter an attempt will be made to distill Manetti’s syncretic
notion of humanism from three different but related accounts contained
in collective biographies dating from 1439 to 1458.5 The main focus will
be on the Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vita (The Lives of the
Three Illustrious Florentine Poets, 1440). This work contains the lives of the
Three Crowns Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio (these lives will generally
be referred to individually as the Vita Dantis, Vita Petrarchae, and Vita
Boccacii) as well as parallel biographies of two ancient philosophers, Socrates
and Seneca. These five vitae formed a unit and were handed down together
in the manuscript tradition.6 The parallel lives of Socrates and Seneca were
inspired by Plutarch’s Lives, but Manetti adds his own innovative twist:
in addition to comparing an ancient Greek to a Roman famous in the
same field – here moral philosophy – he sets up a comparison between
the three modern poets as well. There is an explicit comparatio at the end
of both sections, and the reader is also encouraged to measure the two
sections against one another for himself, and thus to weigh the ancients
against the moderns.7 The biographies contained in this collection are the
4 Particularly expressive of this view are Garin, Rinascite e rivoluzioni, pp. 49–88, esp. 75–76; Garin,
L’umanesimo italiano, pp. 25–46, esp. 25–28.
5 The relevant sections of these texts are all found in Manetti, Biographical Writings. This volume
contains the full text of the Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vita (Vita) and of the Vita Socratis
(VSoc) and Vita Senecae (VSen), plus excerpts from De illustribus longaevis (DIL) and Contra Judaeos
et Gentes (CJEG). Baldassarri and Bagemihl’s text is the most extensive and philologically rigorous
partial edition of DIL. The entire Latin text of the sixth book of CJEG is available elsewhere: Il De
scriptoribus prophanis di Giannozzo Manetti, ed. Gianna Gardenal (Verona, 2008). For complete
bibliography of previous partial editions, see Manetti, Biographical Writings, pp. 319–320. References
will be made to the paragraph number of the work in question, not to page numbers, and the
lives of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in the Vita will be referred to under the separate titles Vita
Dantis (VD), Vita Petrarchae (VP), and Vita Boccacii (VB) (e.g., VD, 6 = Vita Dantis, par. 6); all
translations are those of Baldassarri and Bagemihl, with modifications noted when made.
6 For the unity of these apparently separate works, see Stefano U. Baldassarri, “Introduction,” in
Manetti, Biographical Writings, pp. xv–xvi.
7 Ibid., p. xvi.
most extensive encountered so far. As opposed to the more or less short
sketches presented by Piccolomini, Biondo, and Facio, Manetti paints a full
portrait of each figure, describing his youth and education, achievements
and writings, and lastly his physiognomy and habits.
Details of these portraits crop up in two other biographical collections
by Manetti, and it will be useful to interpret the main text from time
to time in light of the variations among them, as well as of the other
biographies of humanists they include. The first, De illustribus longaevis
(On Famous Men of Great Age, 1439), contains the nucleus of the later
Vita Petrarchae and includes two other biographies relevant to this study,
namely those of Coluccio Salutati and Niccolò Niccoli. The second, Contra
Judaeos et Gentes (Against the Jews and the Gentiles, 1452–1458), is a massive
work meant to show the superiority of Christianity and the proper place
of ancient, non-Christian learning in the modern, Christian world. Its
sixth book contains a collective biography of the learned men of Manetti’s
age, who are set up as an example of the proper synthesis of ancient and
modern, pagan and Christian.8 Unfortunately, the state of the text of these
latter two sources is too uncertain for them to be used for any but the
most tentative and conservative analysis and comparison.9 Nevertheless,
their bearing on the main text under consideration in this chapter (the
Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vita) suggests that they should
8 Descriptions of CJEG are available in Alfonso De Petris, “L’Adversus Judaeos et Gentes di Giannozzo
Manetti,” Rinascimento, ser. 2, 16 (1976), pp. 193–205, esp. p. 205: “In un eclettismo filosofico-
religioso a base di fede, del pensiero antico vengono recuperati quegli elementi che, alla pienezza dei
tempi, confluiscono nella nuova religione”; and Gianfranco Fioravanti, “L’apologetica anti-giudaica
di Giannozzo Manetti,” Rinascimento, ser. 2, 23 (1983), pp. 3–32.
9 Both are huge works only portions of which have been published (see note 5 above). I have not seen
the extant manuscripts, and it is therefore impossible to contextualize adequately the sections available
in print. Brief descriptions of the works are given in Baldassarri, “Introduction”; and as in note 8
above. A general overview of the manuscript tradition of CJEG is available in De Petris, “L’Adversus
Judaeos”; and Manetti, Il De scriptoribus prophanis, pp. 9–41. Exacerbating these difficulties is the
fact that printed excerpts of these works indicate lacunae whose contents are nowhere described
by the editor, nor are the criteria used in selecting and editing the passages announced. Finally,
none of the three works examined in this chapter has received sufficient scholarly attention, and
so there is no solid foundation upon which to build. In addition to the bibliography in notes 5
and 8 above, see the partial discussion and observations in: Stefano U. Baldassarri, “Clichés and
Myth-Making in Giannozzo Manetti’s Biographies,” Italian History and Culture, 8 (2002), pp. 15–33
[on the Vita and DIL]; Christoph Dröge, Giannozzo Manetti als Denker und Hebraist (Frankfurt
am Main, 1987), pp. 65–85 [on CJEG]; Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity
and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1970), vol. II, pp. 726–734 [on CJEG];
Nicola Badaloni, “Filosofia della mente e filosofia delle arti in Giannozzo Manetti,” Critica storica,
2:4 (1963), pp. 395–450, at 429–435 [on CJEG, DIL, VSoc, VSen]; Giannozzo Manetti, Vita Socratis
et Senecae, ed. Alfonso De Petris (Florence, 1979), pp. 3–105, 207–216 [on DIL, VSoc, VSen]. Also
useful is James Hankins, “Manetti’s Socrates and the Socrateses of Antiquity,” in Baldassarri (ed.),
Dignitas et excellentia hominis, pp. 203–219 [on VSoc].
be consulted when it seems most appropriate and least tendentious, and
always under the guidance of restraint.
With these caveats in mind, we can now move on to the interpretation
of Manetti’s writings and the reconstruction of the view of humanism they
evoke. What follows has three parts. The first examines the elastic way
in which Manetti uses the term studia humanitatis. The second shifts the
focus to his history of humanism and depiction of its chief figures. In
the third, finally, Manetti’s hagiography of humanism, which is the most
intriguing and unique aspect of his account, will occupy the foreground.
Things human and divine

The Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vita (hereafter referred to
simply as Vita) is an overtly apologetic text whose central purpose is to
defend the Three Crowns before the tribunal of Latin humanism. Manetti
explains in his preface:
Above all, I was moved by the desire to have their great merits, hitherto
hidden among the common people, spread to the erudite and the learned,
who until now have despised and dismissed all works of vernacular literature,
of which our poets are duly regarded as the chief ornaments.10
The erudite and learned despisers of vernacular literature are first and
foremost the group of humanists that flourished around Leonardo Bruni
and Niccolò Niccoli in the first decades of the fifteenth century.11 Their
extreme position on the superiority of proper Ciceronian Latin, as well as
their dismissal of the Three Crowns, were classically enunciated by Bruni
in his Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, composed in the opening years
of the fifteenth century.12 Bruni would ultimately soften his stance, first as
part of his public break with Niccoli (In nebulonem maledicum, early 1420s),
and then more fully in his Vite di Dante e del Petrarca (1436). This latter
work, significantly written in the “despised” vernacular, celebrates varying
civic contributions of Dante and Petrarch and recognizes the latter’s role
10 Manetti, VD, 6: “ . . . idque praecipue ea causa adductus feci, ut maximas eorum laudes, quae in
plebecula hactenus latere videbantur, ad eruditos et doctos viros tandem aliquando conferrem, qui
vulgaria cunctorum hominum scripta, qualia pleraque nostrorum poetarum praecipua et habentur
et sunt, semper contemnere atque floccipendere consueverunt.”
11 On which see George Holmes, The Florentine Enlightenment, 1400–1450 (London, 1969), ch. 1:
“The Humanist Avant-Garde.”
12 The dating of the Dialogi has long been a subject of contention. See Stefano U. Baldassarri,
“Introduzione,” in Bruni, Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, pp. 3–232, at 61–64. For the inter-
pretation of the Dialogi, see David Quint, “Humanism and Modernity: A Reconsideration of
Bruni’s Dialogues,” Renaissance Quarterly, 38 (1985), pp. 423–445.
in humanism in a way similar to that found in Piccolomini and Biondo.13
There is no indication, however, that Niccoli ever changed his rigid classicist
views. Niccoli’s stance, furthermore, was shared by a broad segment of the
humanist movement, if, that is, the three authors examined in Chapter 1 can
be taken as representative. For none of them so much as mentions Dante
or Boccaccio, and Petrarch, when included in accounts of humanism, is
dispatched as an inspirational but nonetheless ineloquent figure. It is to
this view that Manetti intends to craft a reply, but he also has in mind
the civic lens of Bruni’s recent biographies and a larger tradition dating
back to Boccaccio’s Trattatello in laude di Dante (1357), which (as far as
he is concerned) have not treated the illustrious poets either adequately
or correctly.14 At stake are thus two connected issues: the Three Crowns’
status as humanists, and the kind of life – active or contemplative – proper
to humanism.
Manetti’s first order of business is to bolster the humanist credentials of
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, whose fame rested primarily on their
vernacular writings and whose un-Ciceronian Latin now undermined
their status in humanist circles. This he does first by playing a kind of
name game. To whatever learned interest, pursuit, or accomplishment he
mentions – be it scholastic university education, the writing of vernacular
poetry, or the reading of Latin authors – Manetti simply applies the label
studia humanitatis. He thereby conflates activities and qualities singled out
by our first three authors as essential to humanism, e.g., eloquence and
Latin style, with others they would have excluded, e.g., theological dispu-
tations and excellence in vernacular composition. In addition to dissolving
these linguistic and disciplinary boundaries, Manetti pushes humanism’s
temporal borders back to the thirteenth century, when Dante received
his education. Such a view would be simply incomprehensible to Aeneas
Sylvius and Biondo, who began their accounts of humanism with Petrarch,
and especially for Facio, who began his with Chrysoloras. The overall effect
is thus both to include all of the Three Crowns in humanist culture and to
vastly expand the sense of what humanism is.
Let us begin with the description of Dante’s university education in the
Vita Dantis:
He went to Paris for the sole purpose of studying, for at the time that city
was generally regarded as the best place in the world to study all things
human and divine. Putting everything else aside, he studied with incredible
13 See Hankins, “Humanism in the Vernacular”; and Garin, Rinascite e rivoluzioni, pp. 72–73.
14 Manetti, VD, 5.
zeal and dedication both natural and divine sciences, learning so much that
in many of those debates which are commonly held there on these subjects
he managed to surpass, as everybody agreed, some great philosophers and
even some of those who are called “theologians.”15
In the context of Paris and the scholastic-style disputations in which Dante

is said to have excelled, the study of “things human and divine,” or “the
natural and divine sciences,” must be Aristotelian natural philosophy and
theology, although it is quite likely that Manetti, following Cicero, also
intends res humanae et divinae more generally as a formula for universal
knowledge. At any rate, there is no doubt that Dante, “putting everything
else aside,” pursued in Paris the scholastic education par excellence. Nev-
ertheless, one line later he is described as having been “safely and quietly
immersed in the studia humanitatis.” Lest there be any question of Manetti’s
having moved on to rhetoric without telling the reader, these studies are
immediately referred to as “calm and divine.”16
The conflation of humanist and non-humanist names and pursuits con-
tinues throughout the biography. At one point Manetti seems to portray
Dante in a way that would resonate with Facio, Biondo, and Piccolomini:
he endows him with “unparalleled eloquence,” remarking, “they say he
gave extremely elegant orations, which is attested by his many missions
to various illustrious princes and supreme pontiffs.”17 On the other hand,
Manetti lists Dante’s major works as vernacular poetry (La divina comme-
dia) and a scholastic treatise in Latin (De monarchia), genres unlikely to
pique the enthusiasm of someone like Facio.18 Moreover, Manetti refers to
Dante twice as a “philosopher,” and in his Divine Comedy “Dante not only
touched on subjects proper to poetry and poets, but also on moral, natural,
and divine things.”19 That is, he combined what would become humanistic
15 Manetti, VD, 32: “ . . . in Parisiensium urbem – studiorum dumtaxat gratia – se contulit, quippe in
hoc loco humanarum et divinarum rerum studia ceteris orbis terrarum locis celebratiora, consensu
omnium, ferebantur. Ibique ceteris omnibus posthabitis, naturalium ac divinarum rerum studiis
assiduam et paene incredibilem operam navavit, in quibus usque adeo profecit ut in frequentissimis
memoratarum rerum disceptationibus, pro more civitatis, et magnos quidem philosophos et quos
etiam ‘theologos’ vocant, una voce omnium, saepenumero superaret.”
16 Ibid., 33: “Dum itaque in huiusmodi humanitatis studiis quietissime simul atque securissime
viveret . . . ”; “pertranquilla ac divina studia” (translation modified; emphasis mine).
17 Ibid., 45: “summam eius elegantiam”; “Elegantissimum in orando fuisse perhibent, quod frequentes
eius legationes ad multos cum illustres principes tum ad summos pontifices manifeste declarant”
(translation modified).
18 Ibid., 51–54.
19 Ibid., 43 (“viro philosopho”) and 46 (“tanto ac tam gravi philosopho”); 52: “In hoc divino, ut dixi,
poemate non modo poetica ipsa et quae proprie ad poetas pertinent, sed moralia quoque naturalia
ac divina.”
subjects – poetics and moral philosophy – with the standard scholastic dis-
ciplines of natural philosophy and theology. And when recounting Dante’s
achievements and summing up his knowledge, Manetti writes:
he rapidly succeeded in attaining a vast knowledge of things human and
divine, thanks to the almost divine excellence of his intellect. And so in
mathematics – the science that studies numbers, dimensions and harmonics,
together with the movements and the revolutions of the stars – as well as
in both kinds of philosophy, moral and natural, and finally in the Sacred
Scriptures, which embrace all divinity.20
These studies (except moral philosophy) fall under the rubrics of scholas-
ticism and the artes liberales, yet elsewhere we read, “Up to the end of his
life, he diligently pursued the studia humanitatis – of which he had always
been fond . . . in a truly remarkable way.”21
A similar syncretism of scholasticism and humanism occurs in the Vita
Petrarchae, where the travails of the poet’s early education are recounted:
After studying Latin for four years and finishing his primary education,
he . . . was sent to Montpellier . . . to study civil law. This he disliked, for
he already delighted to an amazing extent in the delicious books of Cicero
and Virgil. After spending another four years there in the study of civil law,
he complied with his father’s wishes and went to Bologna, where he wasted
a further four years learning civil law. He thus spent about seven years in
the study of civil law to no purpose, as he attests in a letter where he com-
plains bitterly about having thrown away so much time. Nevertheless, . . . he
managed to read several works of Cicero and Virgil in secret . . .
Upon his father’s death, having finally become independent, he rid himself
of all civil law texts and their foolish commentaries. He was then in the early
years of his maturity and decided to dedicate himself completely to the
studia humanitatis.22
20 Manetti, VB, 15:“ob quandam tamen divinam ingenii sui excellentiam magnam humanarum et
divinarum rerum cognitionem brevi tempore comparavit. Quippe et in mathematicis – quae
scientia tum numeros tum dimensiones, tum consonantias, tum astrorum motus et conversiones
una complectitur – et in utraque philosophia, quae ad mores et ad naturalia pertinet, et in Sacris
denique Scripturis, quae omnem divinitatem penitus comprehendunt . . . ”
21 Manetti, VD, 38: “humanitatis studia – retenta semper animo . . . magna diligentia mirum in
modum usque ad extremum vitae prosecutus est.”
22 Manetti, VP, 3–4: “Inde quadriennio grammaticis eruditus, postea quam prima illa puerilia studia
transegit e vestigio ad Montem Pesulanum . . . ut ius civile cognosceret (non sine molestia, quod
suavibus Ciceronis et Maronis libris iam mirum in modum oblectaretur) vicina iam pubertate tra-
ducitur. Ubi quadriennio etiam in cognoscendo iure civili consumpto, non iniussu patris Bononiam
proficiscitur, quo in loco alterum itidem quadriennium in cognitione iuris prope contrivit. Septem
namque annos in studiis civilibus incassum amisit, ut ipse in epistula quadam aperte demonstrat,
in qua de hac tanta temporis iactura vehementius conqueritur, quamvis nonnullos Ciceronis et
Virgilii libros clanculum . . . legisset.
Yet, once free of “wasting” his time on civil law and its “foolish com-
mentaries,” no longer forced to indulge in Cicero and Virgil in secret, and
finally having the opportunity “to dedicate himself completely to the studia
humanitatis,” what did Petrarch do? He studied for the next twelve years in
Toulouse, Paris, and Naples, where he “made great progress in the study of
things human and divine.”23 As in the case of Dante, here, too, humanism
can be pursued in Paris and other university centers, and it consists in “the
study of all things human and divine,” the standard scholastic disciplines
of natural philosophy and theology.
Again as with Dante, Manetti ascribes to Petrarch something which in
Chapter 1 appeared as a humanist accomplishment. This time it is the
revival of good Latin: “among the many remarkable fruits of his studies,
the principal one was his revival of Latin elegance, which he brought back
to light out of darkness after it had been nearly defunct for over a thousand
years.”24 Manetti is not really in accord with our first three authors, though.
Piccolomini explicitly attributed the revival of Ciceronian Latin to Manuel
Chrysoloras’ reintroduction of Greek to Italy, and for Biondo it required
a combination of Petrarch’s inspiration, Giovanni Malpaghini’s teaching,
the reintroduction of Greek, the hunt for lost works of literature, and the
flourishing of humanist schools. Manetti, on the other hand, calls it “a
remarkable fruit of [Petrarch’s] studies” and a result of “his uncommon
and almost divine genius.”25 The revival of classical Latin is therefore the
offspring of a standard scholastic education and a superhuman intellect.
Blurring the contours of humanism even more, Manetti attributes
Petrarch’s “pursuit of the studia humanitatis in many different and dis-
tant lands” to “his worthy imitation of Pythagoras and Plato, those two
supreme philosophers.”26 Like Dante (again), Petrarch is portrayed as a
philosopher; or if not explicitly so, he is at least put into the proper com-
pany by way of his “imitation.” Nor did Petrarch neglect sacred literature:
“as soon as he had run through all the secular writings of non-Christian
Post obitum vero patris, utpote tunc primum sui iuris effectus, cunctis iuris civilis codicibus
eiusque ineptis commentationibus abdicatis, circa primos adulescentiae suae annos humanitatis
studiis omnino se dedicavit . . . ” (translation modified; emphasis mine).
23 Ibid., 4. For the quotation, see note 24 below.
24 Ibid., 6: “In his igitur humanarum et divinarum rerum studiis . . . versatus, usque adeo profecit ut
inter ceteros praecipuos laborum suorum fructus primus dicendi elegantiam, iam supra mille annos
paene defunctam . . . praecipua quadam ac prope divina ingenii excellentia e tenebris in lucem
revocavit” (translation modified).
26 Ibid., 13: “Cum haec igitur humanitatis studia per longinqua ac diversa terrarum loca (Pythagoram
et Platonem, duos summos philosophos, egregie imitatus) diutius perscrutaretur . . . ” (translation
modified).
authors, he at length devoted his efforts to sacred letters, taking incredible
pleasure in reading those venerable pages.”27 What we have here is a full
portrait of Petrarch as the exponent of the proper synthesis of Christian and
pagan, scholastic and humanistic, ancient and modern studies, all under
the general name studia humanitatis. The only subject explicitly excluded
from this rubric is law, whose study is “to no purpose” and “foolish.”
The biography of Boccaccio has the same general outline. First he was
forced by his father into an apprenticeship in shopkeeping and com-
merce, which is described as “an irreparable waste of time.” Then he
“wasted . . . almost as many years” on the study of canon law and its “mind-
less commentaries.” Yet “his nature . . . seemed to be particularly suited to
literary studies.” Indeed, “he was so born for poetry that he seemed to have
been created by God for it alone.”28 Although he was totally devoted to
poetry, he studied mathematics and “read the Bible with great interest and
pleasure.” In short, he was “a man intensely involved in the study of things
human and divine.”29
Poetry, mathematics, the Bible, the revival of Latin, scholasticism, music,
natural philosophy, theological disputations, things Christian and pagan,
human and divine – Manetti is intent on reducing humanism to a name
for general culture and learning. This impression is confirmed by pas-
sages from the collective biography found in Book VI of Contra Judaeos
et Gentes. In a section devoted to writers from the Duecento, Manetti
calls the age “illiterate and uncouth,” undoubtedly in reference to the
fact that it precedes Petrarch’s “divine” revival of good Latin. Neverthe-
less, we then read that the stilnovo poet Guido Cavalcanti managed to
write verse “with great elegance” that merited commentary by Dino del
Garbo, “an excellent philosopher,” and even by Giles of Rome, “regarded
as the prince of all theologians.”30 Brunetto Latini, the author of the Trésor
27 Ibid., 20: “simul ac cuncta profana gentilium volumina legendo percurrit, postremo sacris codicibus
operam dedit, quorum veneranda lectione incredibiliter delectabatur.”
28 Manetti, VB, 2–3: “se nihil aliud egisse quam irrecuperabile tempus incassum contrivise confirmat”;
“totidem . . . magna cum molestia frustra consumpsit”; “ineptissimas commentationes”; “suapte
natura . . . litterarum studiis aptior videbatur”; “ad ipsa poetica ita natus erat, ut paene ab ipso Deo
factus ad haec sola fuisse videbatur.”
29 Ibid., 5: “Sacros quoque Sanctarum Scripturarum libros libentius avidiusque perlegit”; “homini
circa cognitionem humanarum et divinarum rerum propterea occupatissimo.”
30 Manetti, CJEG, 1: “aetas illa indocta et rudis”; “elegantissime”; “optimus . . . philosophus”; “theol-
ogorum princeps et caput.” For Guido Cavalcanti, see Mario Marti, “Cavalcanti, Guido,” in DBI,
vol. XXII (1979), pp. 628–636. For Dino del Garbo, who wrote a Latin commentary on Cavalcanti’s
famous poem Donna me prega, see Augusto De Ferrari, “Del Garbo, Dino (Aldobrandino, Dinus de
Florentia),” in DBI, vol. XXXVI (1988), pp. 578–581. For Giles of Rome, see Francesco Del Punta,
S. Donati, and C. Luna, “Egidio Romano,” in DBI, vol. XLII (1993), pp. 319–341.
immortalized among the sodomites in the Divine Comedy, is also said to
have had “great skill in speaking.”31 So elegance did crop up amid illit-
eracy, but its home was among philosophi, theologi, and vernacular poets
rather than Latin oratores. A later section devoted distinctly to Quattro-
cento humanists contains biographies of the Milanese chancellor and papal
secretary Antonio Loschi, the Florentine gentleman Roberto de’ Rossi, the
Venetian diplomat Francesco Barbaro, and others in a style that generally
resembles the short sketches of Facio’s collection.32 These vitae highlight
eloquence, knowledge of Latin and Greek (the Venetian patrician Marco
Lippomano is said to know Hebrew as well33 ), translations, and origi-
nal compositions, especially letters and orations. Interestingly, most are
Florentine/Tuscan or Venetian.34 Interspersed in the ranks, however, are
individuals who do not quite fit the mold crafted by our first three authors
(and who were at any rate not mentioned by them), such as the vernac-
ular chronicler Matteo Villani and Domenico di Bandino of Arezzo, a
friend of Salutati and the author of a universal encyclopedia (in Latin).35
Unlike Piccolomini, Biondo, or Facio, Manetti is not concerned to carve
out boundaries between classicizing, Latinate humanists and other literary
men of the period. Emblematic of Manetti’s catholic conception is Roberto
de’ Rossi, who was an intimate of Bruni and Niccoli and who here receives
rather more praise than most others. He is “regarded as a great humanist
(orator) and a leading philosopher of the time.” His knowledge is said
to encompass Greek and Latin literature, poetry, oratory, history, mathe-
matics, natural and moral philosophy, and metaphysics. “All the books of
Aristotle that he translated from Greek into Latin” are still available.36 Of
31 Manetti, CJEG, 2: “arte dicendi valuisse traditur.” It is not clear if Manetti intends the vernacular or
Latin here. For Brunetto Latini, see Giorgio Inglese, “Latini, Brunetto,” in DBI, vol. LXIV (2005),
pp. 4–12.
32 For Rossi, see Aldo Manetti, “Roberto de’ Rossi,” Rinascimento, 2 (1951), pp. 33–55; and Martines,
The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, esp. pp. 108–110, 154–165; for Barbaro, see Margaret
King, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton, 1986), pp. 323–325.
33 Manetti, CJEG, 29. For Lippomano, see King, Venetian Humanism, pp. 389–390.
34 Also noted in Fioravanti, “L’apologetica anti-giudaica,” p. 13.
35 For Villani, see Franca Ragone, Giovanni Villani e i suoi continuatori. La scrittura delle cronache
a Firenze nel Trecento (Rome, 1998), esp. pp. 214–233. For Domenico di Bandino, see Teresa
Hankey, “Bandini, Domenico (Domenico di Bandino),” in DBI, vol. V (1963), pp. 707–709; for
his massive but little-studied encyclopedia, see Markus Schürer, “Enzyklopädik als Naturkunde und
Kunde vom Menschen. Einige Thesen zum Fons memorabilium universi des Domenico Bandini,”
Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 45:1 (2010), pp. 115–131 and his forthcoming monograph Biographik als
enzyklopädisches Projekt. Studien zu Domenico Bandini und seinem Fons memorabilium universi.
36 Manetti, CJEG, 26: “magnus orator ingensque illius temporis philosophus haberetur . . . Inter cetera
rerum suarum monumenta omnes Aristotelis libri ab eo e greco in latinum traducti comperiuntur”
(translation modified). Rossi is a character in Bruni’s Dialogi, the second part of which is set at his
estate.
course, translations of Aristotle are in no way a disqualification of human-
ist status; Bruni, too, had rendered Aristotle in Latin, and he had even
used his versions of the Ethics and Politics, upon whose literary merits he
insisted, as a showcase for the humanist ad sensum style of translation.37
Yet Rossi is best known for his translation of the Posterior Analytics, one
of Aristotle’s logical treatises – not exactly a platform for Latin eloquence.
Faced with Rossi and his interests in logic, metaphysics, mathematics, and
natural philosophy, Facio would have been at pains to decide whether to
classify him among the oratores or the philosophi/medici. Manetti, however,
feels no such compunction. On the contrary, Rossi is an ideal complement
to his portrayal of the Three Crowns and to his view of humanism as
seamlessly interwoven with the many other strands of Italian intellectual
and literary culture (excluding only the study of law).
Whether Manetti succeeded in his defense of Dante, Petrarch, and Boc-
caccio is not a question we are in a position to answer, but it is worthwhile
to consider why he sought to defend them the way he does. What kind of
power might Manetti’s argument have had over humanists who were gen-
erally hostile to vernacular literature (and likely scholastic learning as well)?
Would such men have been convinced by his application of the term studia
humanitatis to pursuits they would not recognize as pertaining to them-
selves as poetae and oratores? Would it have been coherent to them at all?
Indeed, the Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vita is so eclectic that
it has been criticized by its most recent editor, Stefano U. Baldassarri, for its
apparently “undiscriminating use of . . . sources and . . . tendency to accu-
mulate information regardless of its reliability or provenance.” Baldassarri
attributes to Manetti a “mosaic technique” of composition behind which
there is neither rhyme nor reason, according to which the author “copied
down all the information he found on a certain topic” and “then rearranged
the sources thus collected, often without making significant changes in the
language and the syntax of the original.” With regard to the Vita Dantis
Baldassarri concludes, “such a portrait could only be extremely eclectic, not
to say inconsistent.”38 James Hankins, however, while identifying the same
cut-and-paste method in a study of the related Vita Socratis, sees therein
rather more method than madness. According to Hankins, “the seem-
ingly random collection of material is in fact carefully curated to achieve a
37 See Paolo Viti, “Introduzione,” in Leonardo Bruni, Sulla perfetta traduzione, ed. Paolo Viti (Naples,
2004), esp. pp. 22–51.
38 Baldassarri, “Introduction,” p. xiii; and at greater length in “Clichés and Myth-Making,” where he
describes Manetti’s “method, or lack thereof” (p. 25; “mosaic technique” on p. 28).
particular purpose; it achieves its effect” – in that case to present Socrates
as a classical model for the humanist movement – “pointillistically by the
arrangement and juxtaposition of facts, quotations and anecdotes.”39 In
my view, Manetti used the same procedure in his treatment of the Three
Crowns. For although the Vita may at first glance seem to be an incoherent
jumble of memorabilia, the Gesamtbild it portrays corresponds quite well
to the reality of Manetti’s own life, education, and activity as a humanist.
We recall that Manetti was a latecomer to humanism and a product of
the monastic milieux of Santo Spirito and Santa Maria degli Angeli. He
also learned Hebrew for purposes of Biblical scholarship. As for his “liter-
ary and intellectual personality,” Christine Smith and Joseph F. O’Connor
have argued that Manetti had a “pronounced attachment to Scholastic
and Aristotelian dialectic, Augustine’s understanding of the human condi-
tion, and Paul’s spirituality.”40 These conclusions are perfectly in line with
Manetti’s education and with his presentation of humanism in the Vita and
the Contra Judaeos et Gentes; Smith and O’Connor omit only the centrality
of classicizing Latin to his cultural orientation. It is also worth noting that
Manetti’s own personal experience of apprenticeship to worldly business
at the behest of his father, and thus of the deferral of his humanistic stud-
ies, mirrors the early lives of both Petrarch and Boccaccio as recounted
in the Vita, both of whom were forced to train for legal and mercantile
careers before they were able to embrace the studia humanitatis. Manetti,
then, portrays his own brand of humanism in the Vita, and, considering
his reputation, one likely shared by others as well. Manetti was extolled
as an exemplary humanist by none other than Vespasiano da Bisticci.41
Furthermore, he was chosen to give the laudatio at Leonardo Bruni’s
funeral (1444), at the end of which he personally crowned the deceased
chancellor of Florence with laurel.42 Manetti’s conception of humanism
doubtless resonated with other humanists, at least within the walls of
Florence.
To deepen our understanding of this conception, let us consider a curious
digression found towards the end of the Vita Senecae, one of the companion
39 Hankins, “Manetti’s Socrates,” p. 204. 40 Smith and O’Connor, Building the Kingdom, p. xi.
41 Vespasiano included a relatively long biography of Manetti in his Vite and also wrote a separate
biography that is quite extensive, the Comentario della Vita di Giannozzo Manetti; both are in
Vespasiano da Bisticci, Le Vite, ed. Greco. On the relationship between Vespasiano and Manetti,
see Heinz Willi Wittschier, “Vespasiano da Bisticci und Giannozzo Manetti,” Romanische Forschun-
gen, 79:3 (1967), pp. 271–287. On the Florentine bookseller Vespasiano, see Giuseppe M. Cagni,
Vespasiano da Bisticci e il suo epistolario (Rome, 1969).
42 Cf. Giannozzo Manetti, Oratio funebris in solemni Leonardi historici, oratoris ac poetae laureatione,
in Bruni, Epistolarum libri VIII, ed. Hankins.
pieces to the Vita of the Three Crowns. In this passage Manetti discusses
the controversy then raging over the Roman philosopher’s oeuvre, namely,
which works should be attributed to him and whether there were in fact
two Senecas. After rehearsing the various positions on the matter, Manetti
exclaims in frustration:
We believe it is much better in the end to leave it to the grammarians
to investigate such frivolous and idle things rather than waste time, the
most precious possession of all, by investigating minute and trivial matters
in vain. So we leave it to the grammarians and mere professors of literature
to resolve the issue in some fashion or other, adding this task to their
foolish little controversies. Let the men who think these childish and frivolous
investigations, which it is shameful even for boys to study, should be pursued
into old age, weigh these matters with diligence and accuracy from every
angle.43
These grammarians and “mere professors of literature” have to be humanists

and could very well be identified with the teachers so highly praised by
Biondo Flavio. Biondo’s beloved Giovanni da Ravenna was, after all, a
grammaticus, as was Gasparino Barzizza.44 In support of this view is the
fact that none of the teachers mentioned in the history of humanism in
Italia illustrata – not even Guarino or Vittorino da Feltre – receives a
biography in Contra Judaeos et Gentes. For Manetti is not interested in
“minute and trivial matters” or “childish and frivolous investigations.” On
the contrary, proper humanists, in his view, devote themselves more broadly
to the “study of things human and divine.”
Manetti’s disparagement of the grammatici resembles similar criticism
familiar from Petrarch, who censured his friend Zanobi da Strada for exactly
such teaching.45 More importantly, it resembles the criticism leveled at a
certain kind of humanism several decades earlier by Cino Rinuccini in his
Invettiva contro a certi calunniatori di Dante e di messer Francesco Petrarca e di
43 Manetti, VSen, 45: “ac demum satis esse duximus frivola haec et inutilia grammaticis perquirenda
dimittere, quam tempus, cuiuscumque suppelectilis pretiosissimum, in parvarum et minimarum
rerum investigatione frustra conterere. Itaque haec, qualiacumque sint, grammaticis ac litterarum
dumtaxat professoribus solvenda dimittimus, atque hoc eis leviuscularum controversiarum opus
iniungimus, ut diligentius et accuratius hinc inde librentur qui puerilia haec et frivola usque ad
senectutem putant esse discenda quae ne pueris didicisse turpe erat.” Half a century later, it is
precisely this sense of the word grammaticus that Angelo Poliziano would take pains to combat
in his Lamia, endowing it instead with the grander sense of ‘philologist.’ See Angelo Poliziano,
Lamia, pars. 68–72, in Angelo Poliziano’s Lamia: Text, Translation, and Introductory Studies, ed.
Christopher S. Celenza (Leiden, 2010). See also all four of the excellent introductory studies, but
esp. pp. 39–41, for a concise treatment.
44 For Giovanni, see Biondo, II, vi.25; for Barzizza, ibid., vi.28.
45 See Black, Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, p. 31.
Messer Giovanni Boccaci (Invective against Certain Calumniators of Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio).46 There the lyric poet and teacher of rhetoric
berates a younger generation of Florentine humanists just after the turn of
the fifteenth century – specifically the circle around Bruni and Niccoli –
for their obsession with the minutiae of Latin orthography and diphthongs
and their disparagement of the city’s great vernacular poets. It is this same
type of “erudite and learned men” to whom Manetti would like to spread
the appreciation of the Three Crowns.
Manetti, then, is in direct polemical discourse with the kind of human-
ism portrayed in Bruni’s Dialogi, as well as with that reconstructed in
Chapter 1 of this study. Much had, of course, changed between the first
and fourth decades of the Quattrocento, and it would be incorrect to view
Manetti as an epigone of Rinuccini.47 Manetti does not pay “tribute to
the arts of the trivium and the quadrivium,” as Rinuccini does. Indeed,
he nowhere defends scholasticism against its detractors but simply por-
trays it, implicitly, as a setting for Dante’s and Petrarch’s humanism.48 Nor
does the Vita simply play out one side of a “philosophico-literary debate
between defenders and accusers of the old medieval culture and the vernac-
ular tradition.”49 Manetti belongs to a different context, one in which, as
noted earlier, Bruni ended up softening his original hard line. Bruni mel-
lowed as he slowly became the éminence grise of a movement that was now
firmly established and that no longer had anything to fear from cultural
competitors.50 Moreover, his willingness to align himself with the cultural
46 See Antonio Lanza, Polemiche e berte letterarie nella Firenze del primo Quattrocento. Storia e testi
(Rome, 1972), pp. 92–100 and 259–267; Holmes, Florentine Enlightenment, ch. 1; Giuliano Tanturli,
“Cino Rinuccini e la scuola di Santa Maria in Campo,” Studi medievali, 3rd ser., 17 (1976), pp. 625–
674; Witt, Footsteps, pp. 402–403; and Garin, L’umanesimo italiano, pp. 33–34. Baron, The Crisis of
the Early Italian Renaissance, pp. 286–331, may be used with caution. Only a vernacular translation
of this work is extant, but the original was, significantly, written in Latin (“perché direttamente
indirizzato agli umanisti,” Lanza, Polemiche e berte letterarie, p. 93). It dates to the first decade of
the fifteenth century; Witt argues more precisely for 1405/1406. I have not been able to ascertain
the date of the Italian translation.
47 Hans Baron, in contrast, does treat Manetti as an epigone of Rinuccini in The Crisis of the Early
Italian Renaissance, pp. 322–323. For a description of Rinuccini’s intellectual milieu, see Antonio
Lanza, “Le polemiche tra umanisti e tradizionalisti nella Firenze tardogotica,” in Théa Picquet,
Lucien Faggion, and Pascal Gandoulphe (eds.), L’Humanisme italien de la Renaissance et l’Europe
(Aix-en-Provence, 2010), pp. 53–80.
48 Interestingly, Eugenio Garin argues that Dante himself was “isolated, archaic, and anachronistic on
the more properly philosophical and scientific territory” of the “Gothic university.” See Rinascite e
rivoluzioni, pp. 74–75: “In realtà, in quella ‘università gotica’ . . . , Dante appare un isolato, arcaico
e fuori tempo sul terreno più propriamente filosofico e scientifico.”
49 Thus Lanza, Polemiche e berte letterarie, pp. 93 and 98, characterizes Cino’s Invettiva.
50 See Hankins, “Humanism in the Vernacular”; and Hankins, “Petrarch and the Canon of Neo-Latin
Literature,” pp. 905–922.
identity of his adopted city only could have increased after serving for years
as chancellor and taking a more active role in Florentine politics.51 As for
Niccolò Niccoli, the true bête noire of Rinuccini and the more cultur-
ally conservative Florentines, he had just died (1437) when Manetti wrote
the Vita, and by then, having lost nearly all of his friends, his position no
longer possessed authority.52 If Manetti aimed his text against the stragglers
of what George Holmes called the “Florentine Avant-Garde,” even more
so he sought to offer a corrective to a kind of humanism, especially as it
had developed outside of Florence, which took the young, fiery Bruni as
its model, the Bruni who had criticized the “squalor” of Salutati’s Latin in
his letters (as we saw reported by Piccolomini) and who recognized no lit-
erature as worthy of the name that was not graced with Ciceronian charm.
Piccolomini, Biondo, and Facio (and the humanism they represent) did
not make their peace with vernacular literature as Bruni had, nor would
they have had any civic or cultural reasons for doing so. The Three Crowns
were not claimed by the cities and regions in which our first three authors
operated – Rome, Naples, and the larger context of Italy and the Empire –
nor was the Tuscan of Florence a language they had any stake in promoting.
The humanism of Chapter 1 is a purist movement; Manetti, on the other
hand, represents an eclectic strain.
An eclectic strain full of vigor, however. Rinuccini combined a humanist
penchant for Ciceronian style with respect for the Three Crowns as early
as the mid-1380s.53 Manetti was writing fifty years later. And about thirty
years after that Cristoforo Landino, professor of rhetoric and poetry at the
Florentine Studio, would take the innovative step of teaching a course on
Petrarch’s vernacular sonnets. As Eugenio Garin has noted, this decision
amounted to a “defense of the vernacular tradition as an essential element
of the renewed culture of humanism” – a defense that accorded fully with
the cultural politics of Medici Florence.54 In 1481 Landino then published
his Comento sopra la Comedia, in the preface to which he outlined Flo-
rence’s grand cultural tradition of vernacular and Latin literature as well
as of music, art, and architecture. The Comento on Dante was formally
51 For Bruni’s political involvement in Florence, see Hankins, “Life and Works,” vol. I, p. 10.
52 For Niccoli as the primary target of Rinuccini and others, see Lanza, Polemiche e berte letterarie,
pp. 93–96.
53 See Witt, Footsteps, pp. 366–370. Cf. also Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance,
pp. 332–353.
54 Garin, Rinascite e rivoluzioni, p. 71: “difesa della tradizione volgare quale elemento integrante
della rinnovata cultura umanistica.” See also the discussion of the lecture course as well as the
summary of the Comento sopra la Comedia in Simona Foà, “Landino (Landini), Cristoforo,” in DBI,
vol. LXIII (2004), pp. 428–433, at 429–430, 431.
presented to the Signoria, on which occasion Landino held a public ora-
tion, and the work went on to be a great publishing success throughout the
sixteenth century. Garin explains that, in this context, Dante and Petrarch
had unquestionably become classics: “both are consecrated auctores; both
recognized as fathers of the new culture, of the rinascita, exalted among
the moderns precisely because restorers of the ancients.”55 Manetti gives ear-
lier voice to this tradition, a long, distinguished, emphatically Florentine
tradition not necessarily of defending scholasticism (as Rinuccini had) but
rather of asserting the foundational role Dante and Petrarch played in the
humanist turn – a turn towards the ancient authors as a source of cultural
and moral guidance.
The Three Crowns: Fathers of humanism

One might well wonder at this point if it is still possible to speak of a
distinct phenomenon called humanism, considering Manetti’s peculiarly
Florentine view and the lengths to which he has gone in the Vita to integrate
traditional scholasticism and vernacular literature with the new drive for
classicizing Latin, all within the confines of the studia humanitatis. What
saves the phenomenon, first, is Manetti’s own identification of certain of
its elements as new – the resuscitation of poetry and good Latin letters, the
revival of Greek studies, a cultural orientation towards classical antiquity –
and the identity of many of these elements with those considered essential
to humanism in Chapter 1. Second, Manetti puts his concept of humanism
on a firm foundation by narrating a distinct history of development and
by ascribing specific cultural characteristics to its foremost figures, thus
portraying humanists as a discrete group of individuals bound together by
a common history, shared traits, and a united cultural vision.
Manetti concurs with our previous authors about the importance of the
revival of Latin for learning and culture, and he is also in accord with the
general timeline they give for Latin’s ancient decline and modern reprise.
Reading at greater length in the biography of Guido Cavalcanti in Contra
Judaeos et Gentes:
Guido . . . was a highly educated man. He possessed a wide knowledge of
important subjects, as much as was possible in that illiterate and uncouth
age. Since at that time Latin style and the rhetorical art, not being held in
high esteem, had lost all of their strength and vigor, he composed with great
55 Garin, Rinascite e rivoluzioni, p. 72: “Della classicità di Dante e Petrarca nessuno dubita più.
Entrambi sono auctores consacrati; entrambi riconosciuti padri della nuova cultura, della ‘rinascita’:
esaltati fra i moderni proprio perché restauratori degli antichi.”
elegance some wonderful poems in the vernacular, which at that time was
much prized.56
All this changed with Petrarch’s revitalization of good Latin (“elegantiam
dicendi”).
Turning back to the Vita, we read that Petrarch brought Latin “back to
light out of darkness after it had been nearly defunct for over a thousand
years.” Following the historical paradigm established by Bruni in his History
of the Florentine People, Manetti explains Latin’s initial demise thus:
It had died, in the first place, because of the inhuman ferocity of the Roman
emperors, who had wickedly oppressed the city of Rome with every sort
of cruelty, slaughtering numerous upright and learned men, and secondly
because of the savage rule of the Lombards, who sacked all of Italy during
their two-hundred-and-four-year occupation.57
Biondo and Piccolomini had given a similar chronology, agreeing that
the general use of eloquent Latin ended more or less with the death of
Augustine. Manetti basically concurs, but, following the judgment of his
fellow Florentine Filippo Villani, he places the end of ancient eloquence
in a different auctor: the poet Claudian.58 Describing Petrarch’s crowning
with laurel in Rome, he explains, “among the ancient Greeks and Latins
[it] was conferred solely upon emperors and the greatest poets.” Manetti
continues, “he alone deserved to be crowned poet laureate, a title which
had not been granted for over nine hundred and fifty years, from the time
of Claudian, who flourished under the elder Emperor Theodosius, until
our Petrarca.”59 The difference between “over a thousand years” (as stated
in VP, 6) and “over nine hundred and fifty years” (VP, 12) is relatively small
and perhaps not worth observing. Manetti might have meant to equate
56 Manetti, CJEG, 1: “Guido . . . vir apprime eruditus fuit. Nam et multarum et magnarum rerum,
quantum aetas illa indocta et rudis pati et ferre posse videbatur, cognitionem habuit. Et quia ea
tempestate elegantiae latinae et artis oratoriae facultas omnes vires cunctosque nervos suos penitus
amiserat, cum in honorem non haberetur, nonnullas peregregias cantilenas materno sermone, qui
tunc in pretio putabatur, elegantissime composuit” (emphasis mine).
57 Manetti, VP, 6: “ob inhumanam quandam primo Romanorum imperatorum crudelitatem, qui
urbem Romam omni saevitiarum genere, crebris proborum et doctorum virorum trucidationibus,
nefarie nimis vexaverant, ob saevissimum deinde Longobardorum dominatum, qui totam Italiam
quattuor supra ducentos circiter annos occupatam penitus devastaverant.” For Manetti’s reliance
on Bruni’s paradigm of decline, see Manetti, Biographical Writings, p. 302, n. 8.
58 Filippo Villani, De origine civitatis florentie et de eiusdem famosis civibus, ed. Giuliano Tanturli
(Padua, 1997). Tanturli reports in full several different versions of the text, varying widely among
one another. For Villani’s treatment of Claudian, see pp. 68–72 (redaction A–A1 xxi), 339–348
(redaction ß2 –ß3 , B II i), 431–433 (vernacular redaction ß3 , C I).
59 Manetti, VP, 12: “qua apud veteres Graecos et Latinos imperatores egregiosque poetas tantummodo
coronatos fuisse constat . . . Hanc poeticam lauream – per quinquaginta supra noningentos circiter
annos a Claudiani temporibus (qui imperante seniore Theodosio floruit) usque ad hunc nostrum
Petrarcham perpetuo intermissam – solus ipse non immerito assumpsit.”
the two and to hold up Claudian as the last exponent of ancient Latin
eloquence generally. To be safe (and respectful to Manetti’s text), however,
one could hypothesize that Petrarch was the first both to resurrect ancient
Latin eloquence in prose and to revive it in poetry, the former strangely
having died out before the latter. Such would be in accord, at least, with
Manetti’s insistence elsewhere on Petrarch’s “peculiar and almost divine
grace of excelling in both forms of composition.”60
At any rate, with this reference to Claudian, Manetti emphasizes that
good Latin poetry is a particularly Florentine pursuit. For Claudian,
although an Alexandrian Greek, was generally believed at the time to
have been a Florentine (at least by his supposed fellow citizens): “hence
an honor that long ago an ancient Florentine poet had been the last to
obtain was renewed in the like manner by a modern Florentine bard, who
received it after the passage of many years.”61 Indulging yet again in Floren-
tine chauvinism, Manetti implies that not only the renaissance of poetry,
but poetry itself, is a Florentine affair. This focus on Florence is echoed
in the Contra Judaeos et Gentes, where, as noted, all of the humanists are
either Tuscan or Venetian.
The attention to Petrarch’s poetic excellence underlines another founda-
tional element of Manetti’s idiosyncratic concept of Renaissance human-
ism: the rebirth of poetry, both vernacular and Latin. Dante was the first
to play a part:62
This exceptional poet was the first to awaken poetry to life after it had been
moribund or asleep for about nine hundred years. He raised it from the
60 Ibid., 8: “Solus, igitur Petrarcha, hac praecipua et paene divina gratia praeditus, in utroque dicendi
genere valuit” (translation modified).
61 Ibid., 12: “ut quod florentinus et vetus poeta iamdiu antea ultimo accepisset, florentinus et novus
vates eodem modo accipiens post tot annorum curricula renovaret.” Claudian receives the first
biography in Villani’s De origine civitatis. See note 58 above. In accordance with the legend, Claudian
was portrayed in a fresco cycle of Florentine uomini illustri in the Palazzo Vecchio, for which Salutati
composed the epigram: “Egipto genitum nova me florentia civem / Legibus agnovit, magnis
iam digna poetis. / Infernos raptus cecini pugnasque deorum, Cesareas laudes, necnon stiliconis
honores.” See Teresa Hankey, “Salutati’s Epigrams for the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence,” Journal
of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 22 (1959), pp. 363–365, at 364; and Nicolai Rubinstein,
“Classical Themes in the Decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence,” Journal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institutes, 50 (1987), pp. 29–43. For the historical Claudian, see Alan Cameron,
Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, 1970). Cf. also the related
treatment of poetic crowning and the Florentine connection in Manetti’s funeral oration for Bruni:
Oratio funebris, pp. cv–cxiv, esp. cxiv.
62 Manetti reports in CJEG that, prior to or coeval with Dante, Guido Cavalcanti had managed to
compose “with great elegance some wonderful poems in the vernacular, which at that time was
much prized.” Nevertheless, in VD he chooses Dante as the sole protagonist of vernacular poetry’s
revival. Cf. Manetti, CJEG, 1: “nonnullas peregregias cantilenas materno sermone, qui tunc in pretio
putabatur, elegantissime composuit.”
ground where it was lying prostrate, so that he seems to have recalled it from
exile or restored its civic rights or brought it back to the light after it had
lain in the darkness of the grave for many years. And not only did he bring
it back to light, but he proved it to be perfectly consistent with our Catholic
faith, just as if the ancient poets had somehow been divinely inspired to sing
the sound and true doctrine.63
Let us overlook this additional fifty-year shift in the decline of poetry.

Dante was succeeded by Petrarch, and Petrarch by Boccaccio, who was
“born for poetry.” Manetti comments:
I believe this succession of distinguished poets to be the work of nature her-
self, which caused those extraordinary geniuses to flourish around the same
time, so that what had been lacking to the human race for almost a thousand
years – namely, poetry – might be restored to it after so many centuries, at
an opportune moment, almost as though on purpose. Otherwise, if it had
lain in darkness any longer, poetry might be thought to have abandoned the
human race completely.64
Thus, thanks to the efforts of these three poets, all of whom were dedicated
to the studia humanitatis, poetry – here celebrated in both its vernacular
and Latin forms – had returned to Italy after an absence of nine hundred
to over a thousand years.65
The next resuscitations in Manetti’s Renaissance are standard chapters
in the humanist revival of Latin eloquence as narrated by our first three
63 Manetti, VD, 47: “Quippe poeticam, diu antea per noningentos circiter annos vel demortuam vel
sopitam, summus hic poeta primum in lucem excitavit, iacentemque ac prostratam ita erexit ut vel
ab exilio per eum revocata, vel postliminio reversa, vel e tenebris in lucem excitata fuisse videatur,
cum iampridem tot annos demortua iacuisset. Ac non solum primum eam in lucem excitavit, sed
cum sana etiam catholicaque nostrae fedei doctrina convenire mirabiliter demonstravit, perinde ac
veteres poetae divino quodam spiritu afflati fuissent ac sanam et veram doctrinam cecinissent.”
64 Manetti, VB, 1: “In hac itaque vicissitudinaria horum praestantium poetarum successione, huius-
modi acerrima eorum ingenia ideo iisdem paene temporibus ex ipsa natura pullulasse arbitror, ut
in quo humanum genus per mille circiter annos destitutum fuisse videbatur, in eo – quasi oppor-
tune post tot saecula aliquantisper dedita opera – restauraretur, ne poetica ab hominibus omnino
recessisse crederetur, si diutius in tenebris iacuisset.”
65 One could resolve this time discrepancy by pointing to the fact that the three poets came from
different generations. Although this might partially account for the different time spans given,
nevertheless it would not account for how the revival of poetry could happen at three different
times. The reasonable solution to this problem is to posit, as Manetti does in the above quotation,
that the revival took place over the broad period from Dante to Boccaccio, and at the same time
not to expect too much from the numbers, which are all too round to admit of precision anyway.
One could also posit, as does Baldassarri generally about Manetti (“Clichés and Myth-Making”),
that such statements do not have precise meaning due to the nature of humanist epideictic rhetoric;
according to this line of thought, there is no problem to resolve because Manetti himself never
meant to establish an exact chronology. Whatever the case may be, Manetti presents us at the very
least with a general chronology.
authors: the hunt for manuscripts and the reprise of Greek in the Latin
West. Yet here, too, Manetti adds his own twist by emphasizing the leading
roles of Petrarch and Boccaccio, neither of whom were even mentioned in
this regard by Piccolomini, Facio, or Biondo. After describing Petrarch’s
single-handed revival of good Latin, Manetti continues:
It was Petrarca, in fact, who first restored to us, by virtue of his unremitting
zeal, a large number of Cicero’s works that had been unknown and almost
lost to the Italians for many centuries, and it was Petrarca who also collected
his scattered epistles in the order in which we now read them.66
And a bit later:

Dissatisfied with the Latin books commonly available at the time, he set out
to search tirelessly for ancient manuscripts that would contain the works
he knew to have been written by Varro, Cicero, and other learned men.
At the age of twenty-five, for instance, he was in the Low Countries and
Switzerland, as he himself attests, seeking books with great care.67
Manetti is not so bold as to claim for Petrarch the responsibility for having
restocked the entire library of classical antiquity, but he does put Petrarch
at the founding of this key aspect of humanism. Interestingly, there is
an important difference between the kinds of works found by Petrarch
and those considered significant by Biondo. Manetti refers generically to
Cicero’s letters, whereas Biondo marks the sea change in eloquence specifi-
cally with the discovery of the Letters to Atticus (which he considered more
eloquent and more carefully crafted than the Familiares) and especially of
rhetorical works like De oratore, Orator, and Brutus, as well as with the
restitution of Quintilian’s complete text. As we have seen, Biondo goes so
far as to state that the letters of Cicero available to Petrarch were insufficient
for restoring ancient eloquence, and he excuses Petrarch’s rude style by his
ignorance of the right books. The availability of generically eloquent mod-
els was apparently not sufficient in Biondo’s mind; more sublime examples
had to be at hand, and he implies that theoretical works on rhetoric were
necessary to supply proper understanding.68 For Manetti, on the other
66 Manetti, VP, 6: “Nam et primus complures Ciceronis libros per multa saecula Italis antea occultos
ac propemodum amissos sua singulari diligentia nobis restituit, atque eius epistulas, prius hinc inde
varie dispersas, eo ordine quo nunc videmus in sua volumina redegit.”
67 Ibid., 18: “Itaque non contentus latinae linguae libris qui per id tempus vulgo habebantur, vetustos
codices quos et Varronem et Ciceronem aliosque doctissimos viros quondam posteris scriptos
reliquisse noverat assidue perquirebat. Unde inter Belgas et Helvetios, sicut ipse testatur, viginti
quinque aetatis annos natus accuratissime quaeritabat” (translation modified).
68 Biondo, II, vi.26, 30. See also Chapter 1, p. 57.
hand, the simple discovery of Cicero’s letters was a formative moment in
humanism’s revival of good Latin.
Now for Greek. Petrarch’s searches for manuscripts were prompted by
an “inexhaustible desire to read,”69 and so was his “desire to learn Greek –
a language utterly unusual and foreign at that time and, so to speak,
repugnant to Italy.”70 Therefore he began to learn the language under the
monk Barlaam. His progress, unfortunately, was fatally checked by the
death of his teacher, and Greek would lie dormant a bit longer until taken
up by Boccaccio, who is according to Manetti (at least in one passage) the
real founder of Greek studies in Italy.71
Like Petrarch, Boccaccio was driven to learn Greek by a hunger left
unsated by available Latin literature. And like Petrarch, he found a Greek
to teach him the language: Leontius Pilatus. He hosted the teacher in his
own home and secured for him “a public stipend to give public readings
of Greek books. [Pilatus] is said to have been the first to give such public
lectures in Greek in our city.” Pilatus brought Greek manuscripts with him
to Florence, and “it was said that no one before him had ever brought
Greek books back to Tuscany.”72 Modern scholars generally consider the
instruction of Barlaam and Pilatus to be a false start before the gun properly
went off with Chrysoloras.73 Manetti, however, sees things differently:
These first fruits of Greek letters brought forth by the two distinguished
poets seem to have provided a kind of seedbed which, finding in later times
more fertile ground, germinated gradually day by day until they finally
flourished in our times, bearing the richest fruits.74
Only after citing this key intervention does Manetti pass on to the cus-
tomary description of Chrysoloras’ contribution. Yet he will not suffer
69 Manetti, VP, 18: “inexhausta quadam legendi cupiditate ferebatur.”

70 Ibid., 19: “linguam graecam, per ea tempora omnino novam et peregrinam atque, ut ita dixerim,
ab Italia longe abhorrentem, discere concupivit.”
71 Actually, it seems that Petrarch’s poor progress in Greek was rather the result of his unwillingness to
learn it. According to Roberto Weiss, Medieval and Humanist Greek: Collected Essays (Padua, 1977),
p. 179, Petrarch had many opportunities to learn Greek but spurned them because of his distaste for
Greek culture and religion: “si può insomma dire che se il Petrarca non imparò il greco fu proprio
perché non lo volle imparare” (cited in Hankins, “Greek Studies in Italy,” p. 331). Manetti offers a
brief history of Greek studies in VB, 6–8. See below.
72 Manetti, VB, 6: “atque ita curavit ut publica mercede ad legendum codices graecos publice conduc-
eretur; quod ei primo in civitate nostra contigisse dicitur ut graece ibidem publice legeret”; “quod
ante eum nullus fecisse dicebatur ut in Etruriam graeca volumina retulisset.”
73 See Hankins, “Greek Studies in Italy.”
74 Manetti, VB, 6: “Huiusmodi veteres duorum tam insignium poetarum graecarum litterarum primi-
tiae quasi seminarium quoddam extitisse videntur, quod uberiorem terram postea nactum gradatim
adeo in dies pullulavit ut, temporibus nostris florens, uberrimos iam fructus peperit.”
the Byzantine diplomat to take all the glory. Summing up the permanent
revival of Greek, Manetti writes:
This Manuel Chrysoloras was the fountainhead from whom many eminent
disciples flowed, who afterwards disseminated the Greek language, as though
it were a new seed of letters, not only through Tuscany but also through
several of the chief regions of Italy as well . . . But someone might ask: why
say all this about Greek letters? What is your point? My point is to show that
we owe all our knowledge of the Greeks to our Boccaccio, who first brought
back to Tuscany at his own expense a teacher and Greek books which had
previously lain far away from us, over land and sea.75
Here it seems as if Manetti truly attributes the revival of Greek to Boccaccio.
Before putting too much stock in this affirmation, however, a parallel
passage should be considered from the biography of Niccolò Niccoli found
in the coeval De illustribus longaevis:
It is obvious that the learned Chrysoloras taught Greek to many men, as
though planting a seedbed, and that all this is something for which our
Niccolò deserves the credit, as it was he who called this foreign teacher to
Florence and Tuscany “from the heart of Greece,” as they say.76
A few lines earlier in this vita, however, Manetti states that “our Niccolò”
does not actually deserve the credit all alone, but that he had “joined
forces with Coluccio Salutati . . . to bring to Florence over land and sea
from far-off Constantinople the most distinguished of the Greeks, Manuel
Chrysoloras, in order to have him lecture here.”77 Furthermore, as opposed
to Petrarch and Boccaccio, who learned Greek because they were still
75 Ibid., 8: “Hic est ille Emmanuel Chrysoloras a quo multi peregregii discipuli primitus profluxerunt,
qui postea peregrinam Graecorum linguam non modo per Etruriam sed per nonnullas etiam
nobiliores Italiae partes, quasi novum litterarum semen . . . Sed quorsum haec tam multa de litteris
graecis, dicet quispiam? Quorsum? Ut totum hoc quicquid apud nos Graecorum est Boccacio
nostro feratur acceptum, qui primus praeceptorem et libros graecos, a nobis per longa terrarum
marisque spatia distantes, propriis sumptibus in Etruriam reduxit” (emphasis mine). Incidentally,
Manetti’s source is Boccaccio’s own De genealogia deorum, XV, 7, 3–7, where Boccaccio describes
his founding of Greek studies in a passage ostensibly aimed at defending his citations of Greek
poetry in Latin writings. The importance of this passage of Boccaccio as a source for the history
of Greek in the Renaissance has been highlighted by Albanese, “Mehrsprachigkeit,” pp. 32–33. For
the passage in question, see Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogie deorum gentilium, ed. Vittore Zaccaria
(Milan, 1998), pp. 1540–1545.
76 Manetti, DIL, 23: “Nam ab hoc eruditissimo viro multos graece edoctos, velut seminarium quod-
dam, profluxisse manifestum est, quae omnia a Nicolao nostro accepta referre debemus, qui pere-
grinum praeceptorem e media, ut aiunt, Graecia Florentiam usque in Etruriam evocavit.”
77 Ibid., 23: “Proinde cum Colucio Salutato . . . dedita opera Manuelem quendam Chrysoloram con-
stantinopolitanum, Graecorum omnium facile principem, e Constantinopoli per tot maris ter-
rarumque spatia legendi causa Florentiam usque accersiverant.” Note the linguistic echo to the
Boccaccio passage in “over land and sea.”
hungry after having devoured Latin literature, Niccoli did so for a reason
that finds an echo in Biondo: “since without this knowledge the study of
Latin seemed crippled and weak.”78
One must wonder, then, like Manetti’s imaginary interlocutor, “What is
the point?” Why cite Boccaccio as the true founder of Greek studies, while
noting the assistance of Petrarch, and then in a related text cite Niccoli as
the true founder, while noting the assistance of Salutati? Here it is useful to
recall the caveat of Stefano U. Baldassarri, who, in line with his criticism of
Manetti’s “mosaic technique” of composition, counsels caution generally
when reading humanist Latin literature.79 In Baldassarri’s judicious view,
one should be wary when any single individual is memorialized as the
anything, in light of the humanist tendency to hyperbole. Still, it might
not be necessary to take an entirely reductive approach to these passages. For
what matters here is not their truth or sincerity, but rather the way Manetti
tries to place the Three Crowns in the context of the Renaissance and the
studia humanitatis. He knows that Chrysoloras is the most important cause
for the permanent revival of Greek throughout Italy – as he makes clear in
both of the passages referred to above – and also that Niccoli and Salutati
deserve the credit for bringing him to Florence. Nevertheless, the central
aim of his Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vita is, as noted at its
outset, to “have the great merits [of the Three Crowns] . . . spread to the
erudite and the learned, who until now have despised and dismissed all
works of vernacular literature.” What better way to save the reputation of
these vernacular writers among “the learned and erudite” – i.e., humanists –
than by stressing their importance for the revival not only of classical Latin
but also of Greek?
It is this same desire to legitimate the Three Crowns’ status as humanists
that motivates Manetti’s calculated praise of Dante’s, Petrarch’s, and Boc-
caccio’s works. In the comparatio concluding the Vita, he declares Dante’s
general preeminence in learning; Petrarch’s superiority to Dante “in broad
knowledge of Latin letters and the sure mastery of ancient history,” as well
as “Latin verse and prose”; and Boccaccio’s overall distinction for “knowl-
edge of Greek letters . . . and prose works in the vernacular.”80 Except for
the vernacular literature, these pursuits would have earned the respect of
78 Ibid., 23: “sine quibus nostra haec studia manca ac debilia esse videbantur.”
79 Baldassarri, “Clichés and Myth-Making,” esp. pp. 16–17. Baldassarri also notes the similarities
between these passages, among others.
80 Manetti, VB, 15: “cum integra latinarum litterarum scientia, tum etiam certa veterum historiarum
perceptione superatur”; “In carmine quoque et soluta oratione Dantes ab eo itidem vincitur”; “in
graecarum scilicet litterarum cognitione . . . et in materna ac soluta oratione.”
Niccoli, the young Bruni, and the whole humanist tradition represented in
Chapter 1. As we shall see below, it is significant that unlike Bruni, whose
praise in the Vite di Dante e del Petrarca was set primarily in civic terms
(Dante was a patriot and Petrarch’s works are an ornament to the city),
Manetti chooses to highlight specifically literary accomplishments.
Yet Manetti is not content simply to bolster the humanist credentials of
the Three Crowns; he also wants to put them at the origins of a tradition
of cultural flourishing and excellence that not only imitates but equals, and
might just surpass, antiquity. Thus he repeatedly compares them positively
to the ancients. He reports Salutati’s eulogy of Boccaccio: “yielding to
none of the ancients.”81 He likens Dante to Cicero for “making his peace
with books again” after his exile, and to Cato for being “a glutton for
books.”82 He puts Dante in the company of Homer and Virgil for being
“the first Italian to ennoble the art of writing poetry in the vernacular,” since
they achieved the same in their respective culturo-linguistic contexts.83 He
attributes Dante’s choice to pursue poetry to a desire to attain the greatest
glory possible:
Good poets, in fact, were at the time more difficult to find than philosophers,
mathematicians, and even theologians – as has been the case since the world’s
inception and continues to be so in our own times. Good poetae and oratores
have always been very rare.84
Thus Dante aspired to the glory of poetae and oratores – of humanists – who
were rare even in antiquity, and there is no doubt but that he attained it.
Manetti even goes so far as to compare Dante with Socrates, who had been
a humanist icon since Petrarch and Salutati and was an increasingly well-
known figure (and properly bowdlerized for a Christian audience) thanks to
81 Ibid., 13: “nulli cessurus veterum.”

82 For Cicero, Manetti, VD, 32. For Cato, ibid., 44: “helluo libri.”
83 Manetti, VD, 39: “Hanc suam materni sermonis poeticam hic noster poeta primus apud
Italos . . . non secus nobilitavit.” Here Manetti gives classical justification for the vernacular’s value,
and he might be implying that Greek and Latin were also natural languages. Latin’s status as an
artificial or natural language was a hotly contested point in the first half of the Quattrocento. See
Mazzocco, Linguistic Theories in Dante and the Humanists; Fubini, Umanesimo e secolarizzazione,
pp. 1–75; and Mirko Tavoni, Latino, grammatica, volgare. Storia di una questione umanistica (Padua,
1984).
84 Ibid., 46: “Etenim poetae boni ea tempestate quam aut philosophi aut mathematici aut denique
theologi longe pauciores erant, quod etiam antea, a conditione orbis terrarum usque ad haec
nostra tempora, repetitum fuisse constat. Semper enim poetae boni et oratores paucissimi fuerunt”
(translation modified). Note the contrast to Facio’s De viris illustribus, in which poetae and oratores
far outnumber philosophi and theologi.
Bruni’s translations of a significant portion of the Platonic corpus.85 Dante
is compared to Socrates once (explicitly) for his natural predisposition to
sensuality, once (implicitly) for his unbelievable capacity for intellectual
absorption.86
Manetti’s praise of Petrarch is particularly important considering the
shabby treatment the latter received in Chapter 1 (and will continue to
receive in subsequent chapters of this study). For Aeneas Sylvius and
Biondo, Petrarch was an inspiring figure but ultimately worthy of admi-
ration for little more than his passion and diligence. In their view, his
works show either little or no eloquence. For Manetti, on the other hand,
Petrarch’s Latin was and is (still) eloquent. At least, such is the impression
he would like to convey. In one place he says, “with his unparalleled elo-
quence he presented himself as a model for future writers both in prose and
in verse”;87 and in a parallel passage in De illustribus longaevis, Petrarch is
said to have “presented himself as a model for us to imitate.”88 James Hank-
ins has argued that Manetti’s careful phrasing (“he presented himself . . . ”)
was meant to distance himself subtly from Petrarch’s own judgment; if
so, it might reveal a greater affinity than initially seemed the case between
his assessment of Petrarch’s style and that formulated by Aeneas Sylvius
and Biondo.89 Nevertheless, the fact remains that Manetti does his best to
portray Petrarch’s style in a positive light. Moreover, like Dante, Petrarch
is compared to Cato, although in this case for his late attempt to learn
Greek.90 Also like Dante, “his chief concern in composing [his] many
writings seems to have been to bequeath a glory after death not at all infe-
rior to the one he enjoyed in his lifetime – nay, an even greater one.”91 His
fame was so great that “all the peoples of every country possessing some
degree of culture were seen to venerate his name.”92 Significantly, the Latin
word translated here as “possessing some degree of culture” is humaniores,
85 James Hankins, “Socrates in the Italian Renaissance,” in M.B. Trapp (ed.), Socrates, from Antiquity
to the Enlightenment (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 179–208.
86 Sensuality: Manetti, VD, 43; intellectual absorption: ibid., 44. Although the explicit comparison
here is to a description by Cicero of Cato, a deaf ear cannot be turned to the repeated echoes of
Socrates’ similar behavior in Manetti’s own Vita Socratis: VSoc, 16, 28, and 43.
87 Manetti, VP, 7: “Et suo quodam excellentiori quodam genere dicendi seipsum posteris in soluta
oratione et carmine ad imitandum praestitit” (translation modified).
88 Manetti, DIL, 4: “ . . . et suo excellentiori quodam genere dicendi se ipsum nobis ad imitandum
praestitit” (translation modified; emphasis mine).
89 Hankins, “Petrarch and the Canon,” n. 15. 90 Manetti, VP, 19.
91 Ibid., 22: “Quas ob res in hac tanta scriptorum suorum confectione id praecipue curasse visus est, ne
moriens minorem, vel maiorem potius, nominis sui gloriam relinqueret quam vivens reportasset.”
92 Ibid., 8: “Cuncti etiam paulo humaniores omnium gentium populi eius nomen venerari videbantur”
(translation modified).
linguistically and culturally related to studia humanitatis. The association
is clear: real humanists honor Petrarch.
The excellence of the Three Crowns is carried forward, in Manetti’s
account, by the humanists who sprouted from the “seedbed” they prepared.
The biography of Coluccio Salutati in the De illustribus longaevis offers a
very different picture from that presented by Aeneas Sylvius, who criticized
him for his poor Latin style:
he was naturally inclined and constantly spurred to take up rhetoric and
poetry . . . It can scarcely be described how much praise and glory he attained
in these disciplines, for to all the gifts that nature had bestowed upon him
he added so much diligence in reading and practice that he easily came to
surpass all his contemporaries, as if he had been born and made for these
studies by some god. The many literary works in both genres that he left for
future generations to read bear witness to this.93
The intervention of “some god” brings to mind Boccaccio’s similar beati-
tude, and the extended praise of his works recalls the (self-)assessment of
Petrarch as “a model for us to imitate.” Yet, as in his praise of Petrarch,
here, too, Manetti judiciously avoids commenting directly on the quality
of Salutati’s style, preferring to focus instead on his diligence and his excel-
lence in comparison with his contemporaries. Rather than call attention to
the shortcomings of these figures, Manetti brushes over their imperfections
in his portrayal of a general age of continuous flourishing. Thus, unlike
Piccolomini, who seemed to relish Bruni’s rebuke of his teacher’s stylistic
imprisonment in the literary “squalor of his age,” Manetti notes with pride
that Salutati was honored with the laurel wreath after death, thus putting
him in the company of Petrarch and making him “just like the ancient
poets many centuries earlier.”94 Salutati is also praised for his way of life;
the description of his reaction to his son’s death is the perfect portrait of
Stoic fortitude:
Indeed, during the whole illness he never absented himself from his son’s
sickbed, so that he was there to inhale his last breath; but he immediately
laid out his son’s body, closed his eyelids with his own hands, then his lips,
and arranged his hands and arms in the shape of a cross. Finally, having
93 Manetti, DIL, 12–13: “ad oratoriam et poeticam, suapte natura et quotidianis quibusdam stimulis,
agebatur . . . Quibus quidem in rebus quantum laudis et gloriae consequeretur vix dici potest,
siquidem cunctis naturae muneribus ornatus tantam legendi et exercendi sui diligentiam adhibuit
ut ceteris sui aetatis hominibus facile praestitisse et quasi ad ea natus et ab aliquo deo factus esse
videretur. Testes huius rei sunt plura litterarum monumenta quae in utraque facultate posteris
legenda reliquit” (translation modified).
94 Ibid., 14: “ut instar veterum poetarum . . . post multa temporum curricula.”
looked at his face again and again, he departed – wondrous to say – without
showing any sign of sorrow.95
Here is yet another implicit positive comparison of a major figure in the

history of humanism to the excellence of the ancients.
Niccolò Niccoli, whose importance in relation to Greek studies was
seen above, receives even better treatment than the other humanists. For
in addition to being likened to the ancients (to Cato, as were Dante and
Petrarch),96 he is the only one said to have surpassed them. Specifically,
Manetti is awed by Niccoli’s donation of his personal book collection to
found a public library upon his death:
The more I think about his bequest of so many noble volumes, the more I
am convinced that this admirable act is enough to put him beyond praise.
As a matter of fact, leaving aside poets and orators, was there ever any
philosopher who bequeathed a library like this?
Manetti explains that, of the greatest philosophers, neither Plato nor Aris-
totle even makes reference to his books in his will. Theophrastus does, but
only to make a personal dedication.
He did not, however, intend to establish a public library, as did our Niccolò,
in which the books would be splendidly and well preserved as a perpetual
memorial to the donor and for the eternal benefit of all scholars. It is
impossible to imagine the high praises that writers would have showered on
the bequest of such a splendid and precious library – not a private but a
public one – if it had been founded in those ancient times, in what might
be called the age of learning.97
95 Ibid., 15: “ab eius namque latere toto aegrotationis suae tempore numquam discedebat ut extremum
filii spiritum forte hauriret, quem ut toto pectore accepit, illico supinum cadaver statuit, palpebras
oculorum propriis manibus composuit, labia clausit, manus insuper et brachia in crucem constituit.
Ad extremum, cum vultus eius etiam atque etiam intueretur, nullum maestitiae signum, mirabile
dictu, exinde discedens prae se tulit.” Cf. Garin, L’umanesimo italiano, pp. 69–72, who portrays
Manetti himself as a staunch anti-Stoic.
96 Like Dante, he is called a “glutton for books,” ibid., 29.
97 Ibid., 31: “Hanc solam tantorum ac tam nobilium librorum legationem mecum ipse considerans
tanti facere soleo ut ex hoc uno eius dignissimo facto satis hominem laudare non posse putem. Qualis
enim, omissis poetis et oratoribus, philosophus umquam fuit qui huiusmodi librariae dumtaxat
supellectilis testamentum faceret? . . . non publice, ut Nicolaus noster, bibliothecam fieri et construi
voluit, in qua ad perpetuam rei memoriam et ad perennem quandam doctorum hominum utilitatem
optime simul atque speciosissime reconderentur. Quare si huiusmodi tam praeclarae ac tam pretiosae
supellectilis non privata, sed publica et communis omnium legatio priscis illis temporibus et eruditis,
ut ita dixerim, saeculis instituta fuisset, quantis et quam summis in caelum laudibus a scriptoribus
efferretur non satis dici posset.”
At least in this one respect, Niccoli surpasses the greatest ancient philoso-
phers; and thus his own time, with its “poets and orators,” surpasses “the
age of learning.”98
Holy humanism
Manetti portrays a continuous line of great humanists from Dante, through
Salutati and Niccoli, to the great Florentines and Venetians of his own day.
He depicts a period of cultural flourishing that stands up to the ancients and
includes vernacular and Latin literature, scholasticism and eloquence, all
of which he packs into the general category of the studia humanitatis. This
constitutes a radical expansion of what humanism meant to Piccolomini,
Biondo, and Facio, but the limit of its significance has not yet been sounded.
For Manetti adds another new aspect to the concept of humanism, one
that brings it to a higher plane: the choice to be made between the active
and the contemplative life. This is the standard by which Manetti makes
his Plutarchan comparison of the Three Crowns.99 Specifically, the studia
humanitatis offers for the first time (outside the monastery) the possibility of
shunning the active life of civic participation and employment in preference
for a quiet existence of contemplation and study. At the highest level, the
contemplative life turns into an opportunity for holiness, and the studia
humanitatis becomes the direct path to beatitude.100
Although coinciding on many essential points, in this respect Manetti
diverges noticeably from the position of Eugenio Garin, according to whom
“early humanism” – meaning humanism from Petrarch through the whole
98 In point of fact, we know of several public libraries donated by private individuals in Roman
antiquity. The earliest was the bequest of Gaius Asinius Pollio. See T. Keith Dix and George
W. Houston, “Public Libraries in the City of Rome: From the Augustan Age to the Time of
Diocletian,” Mélange de l’École française de Rome: Antiquité, 118 (2006), pp. 671–717. Literary
references to ancient public libraries are found in several Roman authors including the Elder
(Natural History, 7.115 and 35.10) and Younger Pliny (Ep., 1.8), Ovid (Tristia, 3.1), Suetonius
(Caesar, 44; Augustus, 29), and Aulus Gellius (Attic Nights, 7.17, 11.17, 16.8). I am indebted to Tom
Hendrickson for these references.
99 Manetti, VB, 14: “Hoc ergo tamquam principio quodam vere in hac nostra comparatione
praesupposito.”
100 On the issue of the contemplative and the active life in Renaissance humanism, see Garin,
L’umanesimo italiano, pp. 25–132; Paul Oskar Kristeller, “The Active and the Contemplative Life in
Renaissance Humanism,” in Brian Vickers (ed.), Arbeit, Musse, Meditation. Betrachtungen zur “Vita
activa” und “Vita contemplativa” (Zürich, 1985), pp. 133–152; Victoria Kahn, “Coluccio Salutati
on the Active and Contemplative Lives,” in Vickers (ed.), Arbeit, Musse, Meditation, pp. 153–
179; Letizia A. Panizza, “Active and Contemplative in Lorenzo Valla: The Fusion of Opposites,”
in Vickers (ed.), Arbeit, Musse, Meditation, pp. 181–223; Ursula Rombach, Vita activa und vita
contemplativa bei Cristoforo Landino (Stuttgart, 1991), esp. pp. 33–55; and Paul A. Lombardo, “Vita
Activa versus Vita Contemplativa in Petrarch and Salutati,” Italica, 59 (1982), pp. 83–92.
first half of the fifteenth century – “was a glorification of civic life and
of the construction of an earthly city by man.”101 In Garin’s view, primo
umanesimo entailed a commitment to the active life, to the usefulness,
the applicability of humanae litterae to the here and now. Even Petrarch’s
“withdrawal into solitude” he interpreted in a social and civic key.
[Petrarch] insisted above all that it is necessary to find first one’s own self and
to discover oneself as a man among men. The love of the fatherland and the
love of one’s neighbor are not only not incompatible with, but are closely
connected with, the inward education which is the condition of all fruitful
earthly activity . . . Solitude was not a monastic retirement into a barbarous
isolation, but an initiation into a truer society, into a more effective form of
love. The appeal in favor of inwardness . . . has nothing to do with isolation
as usually understood, but is an exaltation of the world of man, of the world
of values and of actions, of language and of the sociability that links men
through time and space and defies all limits.102
Hence Petrarch’s distaste for scholasticism, which he saw as “pure con-
templation” disconnected from real life. And “even though he did not
actually defend the primacy of virtue active in this world, he insisted nev-
ertheless upon the necessity of recognizing its value side by side with that
of contemplative virtue.”103 Garin, arguing on the basis of another text,
the De excellentia et praestantia hominis, fits Manetti into this tradition,
summarizing the Florentine’s worldview thus: “man shines mainly through
his earthly works, in his daily construction of the earthly city, in the seri-
ous dedication to civic life.”104 A radically different picture emerges from
Manetti’s biographical works. That humanists could take various positions
on whether the active or the contemplative life was superior, and also that
they were fully capable of recognizing the relative merits of each path for
different kinds of people, was pointed out by Kristeller.105 The discrepancy
seems quite important in this case. For the treatise on the dignity of man
was written at the behest of a philohumanist patron, Alfonso the Magnan-
imous, as a response to the pessimism about man’s nature embodied in
Pope Innocent III’s De contemptu mundi. In contrast, Manetti composed
the Vita as an apology for the Three Crowns with a specifically humanist
101 Garin, Italian Humanism, p. 78 [original Italian = L’umanesimo italiano, p. 94]. Garin explains
his position fully in the first two chapters of this work (L’umanesimo italiano, pp. 25–97; Italian
Humanism, pp. 18–81).
102 Ibid., pp. 20–21 [L’umanesimo italiano, pp. 28–29].
103 Ibid., p. 25 [L’umanesimo italiano, p. 33].
104 Ibid., p. 60 [L’umanesimo italiano, p. 74]. See pp. 56–60 [69–74] for Manetti generally and the
concept of the dignity of man.
105 Kristeller, “The Active and the Contemplative Life,” pp. 138–143.
audience in mind. Indeed, he intended it in part as a complement, if not
a rebuttal, to Bruni’s Vite di Dante e del Petrarca, whose primary criterion
for judgment was not literary but the civic contribution of the two poets.
Furthermore, Manetti intended his biography of Niccolò Niccoli, another
text of great relevance for this issue, as a mirror of the ideal humanist.
Considering the centrality of the Florentine milieu for the promotion of
the active life, not to mention for Garin’s interpretation of humanism gen-
erally, we should give particular weight to Manetti’s dissent when trying
to reconstruct how humanists viewed this issue with regard to their own
activity as humanists.106
When it came to declaring in these biographical writings which kind of
life was more amenable to humanistic pursuits, Manetti’s sympathies were
clearly with the contemplative life. His position emerges distinctly in the
biography of Dante. Although Manetti praises the poet’s civic participation
(office-holding and ambassadorial duties) and devotion to his city (up
to the point of his exile), he does so with great reservation.107 At one
point he sighs, “We can only imagine what an extraordinary man this
divine poet could have been if he had been granted the opportunity to
study with greater calm and tranquility, rather than in such uncertain and
tempestuous conditions.”108 Nevertheless, Manetti does not hide the fact
that Dante clearly preferred the active life and only devoted himself to
letters when excluded from it. Accordingly Dante is twice compared to
Cicero for having “made his peace with books again”109 in compensation
for his forced retirement from political life. Almost to his chagrin, Manetti
is forced to admit Dante’s superiority to the other Two Crowns despite the
poet’s preference for the active life:
Having set everything else aside and devoted themselves solely to [the con-
templative] life, Petrarca and Boccaccio should have surpassed Dante, for
they led longer, more quiet and peaceful lives. Yet this is not true at all; in
fact, although Dante did not reach old age and never enjoyed much tran-
quility in his life . . . , he rapidly succeeded in attaining a vast knowledge
of things human and divine, thanks to the almost divine excellence of his
intellect.110
106 Cf. ibid., 140–143. Florence’s centrality for Garin’s understanding of Quattrocento humanism is
implicit throughout L’umanesimo italiano.
107 Manetti, VB, 14–15.
108 Manetti, VD, 38: “Quod si quietiora ac tranquilliora non autem fluctuantia et procellosa studia
divinus poeta habuisset, qualem et quantum virum futurum coniectura augurari possumus.”
109 Ibid., 32 and 38: “in gratiam rursus cum libris redire.”
110 Manetti, VB, 15: “Petrarcha itaque et Boccacius huic soli, ceteris posthabitis, dediti, eum pro-
fecto superare debuerunt, quo quidem et diuturniorem et longe quietiorem ac pacatiorem vitam
Despite Manetti’s reservations about worldly engagement, a fruitful com-
bination of the active and contemplative lives could be found among lesser
lights. Salutati would seem to have enjoyed the most success:
He wrote all this and much more while deeply involved in both private and
public business. He looked after his large family with ten children while
carrying on his shoulders the whole weight of the city as chancellor of the
Florentine people. He died happily at seventy-six, leaving a rather ample
patrimony to his many young sons, together with a large number of books
and the singular glory of his name. His above-mentioned books won for
him the laurel crown.111
A less happy but still successful mix of the two kinds of life is attributed
to Leonardo Bruni. After devoting a whole page to the Aretine’s numerous
works, Manetti observes:
And he wrote all this while leading a very busy life, partly agitated by the
constant instability of the Roman curia, in which he served diligently for
many years as papal secretary under various popes, partly distracted hither
and yon by the affairs of the Florentine people, whose chancellor he was for
a long time, and partly burdened by his own family cares. So his literary
achievements should be considered even more admirable and praiseworthy
than if he had written so many lengthy works while leading a quiet and
leisured life.112
These examples of Bruni and Salutati show that Manetti was not opposed
to the active life in principle. On the contrary, Boccaccio’s biography shows
that he respected the need for work, money, and patronage, even if they
might be seen as necessary evils, in order for studies not to be hindered.
The third Crown “was often preoccupied by his poverty, for he saw it
obstructing the smooth course of the studies whose heights he hoped to
tenuerunt. At id longe secus est; quamquam enim Dantes neque senuerit neque etiam id quod
datum est vitae tranquillum habuerit . . . , ob quandam tamen divinam ingenii sui excellentiam
magnam humanarum et divinarum rerum cognitionem brevi tempore comparavit.”
111 Manetti, DIL, 14: “Atque haec omnia pluraque alia in maximis privatarum et publicarum rerum
occupationibus memoriae mandavit. Magnum namque familiae ac decem liberorum onus gubern-
abat et florentini populi scriba omne civitatis pondus suis humeris sustinebat . . . Nam septuagesimo
sexto aetatis suae anno feliciter obiit; quippe amplo satis patrimonio [et] pluribus adulescentibus
filiis et magna librorum copia simul cum singulari quadam nominis sui gloria relictis, ob memorata
rerum suarum monumenta lauream promeretur.”
112 Manetti, CJEG, 31: “Atque haec omnia ipsum in vita semper occupatissima – partim continuis
romanae curiae fluctibus agitatum, in qua quidem per multos annos pluribus summis pontificibus
in secretariatus officio diligentissime inserviverat, partim florentini populi, cuius scriba diutius
fuerat, negotiis hinc inde distractum, partim denique rei familiaris molibus oppressum – scripsisse
constat. Quod admirabilius ac longe laudabilius fore non iniuria existimatur et creditur quam si
in vita quieta et otiosa talia tantaque scripsisset.”
reach.” Nevertheless he refused to find a remedy. Manetti’s description has
the odor of criticism:
By nature he was so irascible and resentful that, though terribly harassed by

lack of money, he never consented to live at any prince’s court, not even for
a short while. That is why, in my opinion, he was never satisfied with his
resources and why his writings are filled with bitter complaints about his
conditions in life.113
Lest this passage be seen as a justification for money-making and profit,

attention should be given to the beginning of the same biography. There
Boccaccio’s early education in an abacus school and subsequent appren-
ticeship to a merchant, said to have been forced upon him by his father
“for the sake of gain,”114 are described as “an irreparable waste of time,
for his nature abhorred these money-grubbing arts and seemed particu-
larly suited to literary studies.”115 Similar language occurs in the biography
of Niccoli, who “put aside all business matters as trivial and useless and
turned to the study of the Latin language,”116 for he “never longed to amass
wealth like the greedy.”117 Manetti’s position is opposed to that of, say,
Leonardo Bruni, who was the first modern to provide a theoretical defense
of wealth in terms of virtue.118 Instead he sets the contemplative life of study
against and above the active life of commerce, which in comparison he calls
“money-grubbing,” “a waste of time,” and “trivial and useless.” Although
himself the active inheritor of healthy commercial interests, Manetti in
no way sanctions a life purely or predominantly dedicated to amassing
wealth.119
113 Manetti, VB, 12: “Suapte natura adeo indignabundus erat ut, quamquam tenuitate patrimonii
vehementer angeretur, cum nullis tamen terrarum principibus commorari vel paululum tolleraret;
ex quo factum esse arbitror ut, numquam rebus suis contentus, pluribus scriptorum suorum locis
statum suum vehementius deploraret.”
114 Ibid., 4: “lucrandi gratia.”
115 Ibid., 2: “se nihil aliud egisse quam irrecuperabile tempus incasum contrivisse confirmat, quoniam
suapte natura ab huiuscemodi quaestoriis artibus abhorrebat ac litterarum studiis aptior videbatur.”
116 Manetti, DIL, 17: “omnibus mercaturis velut frivolis et inanibus rebus praetermissis, ad latinae
linguae cognitionem se contulisse dicitur.”
117 Ibid., 21: “Neque postea ullo umquam tempore aut comparandis opibus, ut cupidi, inhiavit.”
118 Bruni made the argument in the dedicatory letter to Cosimo de’ Medici of his translation of
the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomics. Text in Bruni, Sulla perfetta traduzione, pp. 262–263. An
older edition is available in Bruni, Humanistisch-philosophische Schriften, pp. 120–121. An English
translation with introduction, along with excerpts of Bruni’s notes to the text, is available in The
Humanism of Leonardo Bruni, pp. 300–317.
119 For the wealth and commercial activity of Manetti and his family, see Martines, The Social World,
pp. 131–138 and 176–191.
Boccaccio’s case shows that Manetti respected the need to work in order
to support one’s studies if necessary, but his ideal was a life of cultivated
leisure. Its fulfillment can be seen in Niccoli:
Being thus free of all public and private concerns, he enjoyed leisure – not
the indolent and worthless kind, but rather leisure of a cultivated and nobler
sort. Accordingly he spent his time partly reading, partly transcribing old
manuscripts, and partly sharing in the affairs of his friends. Whatever time
was left over he spent amassing and collecting books from every source.120
Leisure, like wealth, can be used for both noble and ignoble purposes. It
can be a means to a life of study, or it can be desired for its own sake and
thus squandered. In this respect, and also in another as we shall soon see,
Niccoli appears as the humanist par excellence, an amasser not of wealth
but of books.
Petrarch took the ideal of noble leisure to a higher level. Having no
contact with civic affairs (he was born an exile) and wary of the conditions
of service, he is said to have shunned offers to join several courts. In his
younger years he was, admittedly, affiliated with courts in both Avignon
and Milan, in the latter even distinguishing himself as a diplomat.121 But
he tended to separate himself not only from mundane duties but even
from human contact. His first retreat was “the Sorgue,” a spring outside of
Avignon where “he led a retired life for many years, completing the studies
that enabled him to leave behind him so many works.”122 The second was
Arquà, outside of Padua, where
he finally embraced a solitary life as more befitting the study of things
human and divine. Accordingly, he renounced all worldly pomp and honors
and went to live a retired life in the Euganean Hills. There he built himself
a small house to protect his privacy . . . In this place, perfectly convenient
and suited to his studies, he spent the rest of his long life, composing a large
number of works.123
120 Manetti, DIL, 22: “Per hunc itaque modum publicis simul atque privatis occupationibus carens
otio non desidioso illo et ignobili se litterato et generoso fruebatur. Proinde partim legendo,
partim vetustos codices transcribendo, partim amicorum negotiis impartiendo, quod reliquum
erat temporis in cumulandis et congregandis undique voluminibus consumebatur” (translation
modified).
121 Manetti, VP, 9–10.
122 Ibid., 21: “complures ibi annos quietissime habitavit atque studia sua ita peregit ut multa memoriae
mandaret.”
123 Ibid., 13: “ . . . demum vitam solitariam, utpote huiusmodi humanarum ac divinarum rerum studiis
accommodatiorem, adamavit. Proinde, ceteris omnibus mundi pompis et honoribus posthabitis, in
Euganeis collibus . . . se in otium contulit; ubi et domum parvam, solitudinis gratia, instruxit . . . In
hoc tam opportuno atque tam accommodato loco in studiis suis usque ad extremum vitae longius
versatus, multa memoriae mandavit.”
The Florentine humanist Roberto de’ Rossi made a similar life decision:
[He] set aside public offices, wife and children – in short, the secular world
with all its pomps – and attained great and admirable knowledge of various
literatures, Greek as well as Latin, including poetry and oratory, history,
mathematics, natural and moral philosophy, and finally metaphysics. Even-
tually, he excelled so much in the aforesaid fields of study that he came to
be regarded as a great orator and a leading philosopher of the time.
Unlike Petrarch, however, Rossi enjoyed the company of other people and
even won for himself “a troop of disciples, the sons of distinguished and
noble families.”124 The description of Rossi illustrates Garin’s view of how
the contemplative life can intersect with the active, but Manetti’s portrayal
of Petrarch does not. As far as Manetti is concerned, Petrarch eschews the
vita activa entirely in his eremitic pursuit of solitude. As a consequence he
achieves holiness, even saintliness.125
The sleight of hand Manetti employed to incorporate scholasticism
into the studia humanitatis appears clumsy in comparison to the masterful
operation involved in his saintly makeover of Petrarch. Here he reaps the
greatest advantage from his “mosaic technique,” juxtaposing anecdotes
involving prodigies, portents, and a saintly way of life with the details of
Petrarch’s birth, education, and literary production. He thereby obscures
Petrarch’s reputation as an unserious, lascivious love poet and replaces it
with one for ascetic self-abnegation, control of the passions, concern for
the soul, and holy meditation.
His soul was no less beautiful than his body. Even . . . when he seems
in his lyrics to have indulged amorous passions . . . , he actually never
departed more than a finger’s breadth, so to speak, from the most austere
gravity . . . From adolescence to almost the last year of his life, for instance,
he maintained a fixed regime of fasting. In addition to fasting on Fridays he
also drank only water, as though seasoning his fasts with bitter salt. He used
to rise faithfully in the middle of the night to sing the praises of Christ, a
habit he always observed with great care, except in case of illness.
124 Manetti, CJEG, 26: “Robertus Russus . . . ceteris omnibus cum civitatis magistratibus tum
uxor<e> et liberis tum denique saeculo et pompis suis posthabitis, assiduam quandam et
admirabilem diversarum litterarum, et poeticae et oratoriae, historiarum et mathematicorum et
philosophiae naturalis ac moralis ac demum metaphysicae graecae ac latinae linguae cognitionem
navavit. Quocirca in omnibus praedictorum studiorum generibus usque adeo profecisse creditur
ut magnus orator ingensque illius temporis philosophus haberetur atque ob hanc singularem et
praecipuam doctrinae et eruditionis suae excellentiam factum est ut eius domus magna quadam
generosorum et nobilium discipulorum caterva quotidie frequentaretur.”
125 Manetti’s pious makeover of Petrarch has also been observed by Baldassarri, “Clichés and Myth-
Making,” p. 25, who identifies the sources for Manetti’s sketch.
In short, he was so far from indulging amorous passions that, owing to
his almost religious self-control and his severe, holy habits of life, not a
few people claimed that he observed perpetual chastity and virginity. Such
claims will not surprise us if we bear in mind his plain and meager diet, his
habits of drinking water and eating just uncooked vegetables and fruit, his
regular and unremitting fasts – all of which, far from harming him, brought
him intense pleasure.126
What is more, “he formed close relationships with the most holy and
learned men of his time, and he often asked them in his letters to remember
him unceasingly in their prayers.”127 In the twilight of his existence “he
dwelt sweetly in uninterrupted contemplation of the holy mysteries and in
long meditation on eternal life.”128 Even his great learning and fame take
on a holy aspect. Manetti relates that “antiquity would have marveled . . . ,
recording it as a miracle,” how “noble and clever men came not only
from other parts of Italy, but also from Transalpine Gaul for the sole
purpose of seeing him.”129 As if this were not enough, Manetti goes on to
describe how Petrarch was sought out and venerated in the manner of a live
saint:
A blind grammar school teacher finally succeeded in meeting him after

having searched for him all over Italy . . . He was so overcome with the desire
to meet him that he had his son and his pupil, who were carrying him, lift
him up in their arms so that he might cover the poet’s head and right hand
126 Manetti, VP, 16–17: “Nec minor animi sui decor quam corporis fuit . . . et quamquam . . . in odis
suis . . . lascivis amoribus indulsisse videretur, a gravitate tamen censoria ungue latius, ut dicitur,
non recedebat . . . Siquidem ieiunium a pueritia animose coeptum usque ad extremum fere vitae
suae annum accuratissime simul atque constantissime sine intermissione retinuit; idque ieiunium
ita accurate custoditum, inedia sextae feriae, cum solo aquae potu, quasi acriori sale, condiebat.
Media insuper nocte ad dicendum Christo laudes igitur surgebat, qui mos ab eo magna cum cura
servabatur nisi forte aliqui morbi nonnumquam interrupissent.
Quid plura? Tantum abest ut ipse lascivis amoribus inhaereret ut ob religiosam quandam vitae
continentiam atque severitatem et sanctimoniam morum non defuerint qui ipsum perpetuam
castitatem ac virginitatem continuisse traderent; quod forte mirari desinemus, si abstinentiam et
asperitatem victus, si aquae haustum, si crudas herbas, si pomorum esum, si praeterea quotidianum
et perpetuum ieiunium, quibus non modo non offendebatur sed vehementius oblectabatur.”
127 Ibid., 20: “et cum religiosissimis simul atque doctissimis eius temporis viris magnam per epis-
tulas familiaritatem contraxerat, ita ut eos crebro per litteras precaretur ut sui in divinis eorum
orationibus . . . sine intermissione meminissent.”
128 Ibid., 23: “in continua quadam altissimarum rerum contemplatione simul atque diuturna aeternae
vitae praemeditatione . . . suavissime commorabatur.”
129 Ibid., 11: “ . . . quod ita mirabile est ut quiddam huic nostro simile mirata antiquitatis pro miraculo
litteris mandaverit. Etenim . . . non modo de Italia sed de ulteriori etiam Gallia nobiles quosdam
et ingeniosos viros, sola visendi gratia . . . ad se ipsum venisse testatur” (emphasis mine, translation
modified).
with kisses, as though, being unable to see him, only actual physical contact
with him would satisfy his extraordinary and almost insatiable desire.130
Even Petrarch’s death was apparently accompanied by a prodigy:
When Petrarca breathed his last sigh he exhaled something like a surpassingly
white cloud that, like burning frankincense, went up to the roofbeams and
stayed there for a short while before vanishing little by little into the limpid
air. This extraordinary event . . . is considered a miracle, clearly confirming
that the divine spirit of the poet returned to God.131
As inventive as these stories may seem, all of them derive from fourteenth-
century accounts and thus are nothing new (some even come directly
from Petrarch’s own letters!).132 They had, however, been jettisoned by
later biographers, including Bruni, and Manetti’s decision to reincorporate
them into Petrarch’s persona amounts therefore to an insistence on the
validity of the older view.133 What is more, Manetti’s concern for reporting
prodigies and miracles and holy ways of life extends beyond the biography
of Petrarch. It is found throughout the Vita Dantis134 as well, and it also
crops up in a rather unexpected place: the biography of the notoriously
“abusive” Niccolò Niccoli in De illustribus longaevis.135 Indeed, in his person
not only does the preference for the vita contemplativa result in holiness,
but with his passionate and single-minded pursuit of the studia humanitatis
he follows “the true path to a good and happy life.”136 Behold the apotheosis
of humanism.
As a youth Niccoli was forced by his father to study business but felt that
he “was born for higher and nobler goals.” Once out from under his father’s
130 Ibid., 11: “caecum namque grammaticum per totam ferme Italiam ipsum quaeritasse ac tandem
aliquando convenisse tradit; atque prae nimio conveniendi sui desiderio ipsum sublatum manibus
filii et discipuli, quibus ambobus pro vehiculo utebatur, caput eius et dexteram manum crebris
osculationibus petiisse describit, quasi tactu ipso eximio et paene insatiabili sui desiderio satisfac-
eret, quandoquidem visu satiari non posset.”
131 Ibid., 23: “Ipsum scilicet moribundum in extrema ultimi spiritus sui efflatione aerem quendam
tenuissimum in candidissimae nubeculae speciem exhalasse, qui instar incensi thuris usque ad
laquearia tabulati altius elatus ibidem vel paululum requievit; postremo in aerem limpidissimum
paulatim resolutum evanuisse. Hoc adeo mirabile . . . pro miraculo habitum, divinum poetae
spiritum ad Deum revertisse propalam indicavit.”
132 See Baldassarri, “Clichés and Myth-Making,” p. 25.
133 For the biographies of Petrarch, see Angelo Solerti, Le vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio, scritte
fino al secolo decimosesto (Milan, 1904–1905).
134 See Manetti, VD, 10, where a dream foretells Dante’s birth and portends his destiny as a poet; and
VD, 53, where Dante appears after his death in his son’s dream to tell him where to find a hidden
manuscript of Paradiso.
135 Niccoli was called “abusive” by Bruni, who entitled his invective against Niccoli Oratio in nebu-
lonem maledicum; Piccolomini calls him “maledicus” in Piccolomini, DVI, p. 35.15.
136 Manetti, DIL, 19: “veram bene beateque vivendi viam.”
thumb, “he put aside all business matters as trivial and useless and turned
to the study of the Latin language.”137 The pattern is familiar: the “higher
and nobler goals” of “the study of the Latin language” are contrasted with
the “trivial and useless” study of business. And now we see why:
He disregarded all the other arts, although they might appear to be more
useful and profitable, in favor of studying Latin literature. He had a unique
love for humanistic studies (peritia humanitatis), from which all virtues
derive, and decided to follow his passion. It is obvious that the principal
aim of the studia humanitatis has to do with virtue, for in them, much more
than in other disciplines, the object is moral rectitude – an object that is
always found when truly sought. And it is from moral rectitude that justice,
fortitude, modesty and all the other virtues spring forth and derive.138
Throughout his biographies, Manetti has broadened the content and mean-
ing of the studia humanitatis to include philosophy, theology, mathematics,
music – in short, to include all of the artes liberales. Now, however, he offers
a version of the studia humanitatis that accords perfectly with that of Pic-
colomini, Biondo, and Facio. For Niccoli is said to have “turned to the
study of the Latin language,” and to have “disregarded all the other arts . . . in
favor of studying Latin literature.” Furthermore, Manetti adds an element
to the mix that was surprisingly missing from our first three authors: the
equation of humanist education and virtue.
That the study of Latin could be related to virtue in any way is bound
to baffle most modern readers. Yet the claim that the acquisition of elo-
quent Latin and the study of the Roman classics instilled in the student the
virtue necessary for proper personal development, social maturity, political
action – in short, for humanitas – is a familiar one from the letters in which
Guarino describes his own school, as well as from the humanist educational
treatises written by Pier Paolo Vergerio, Leonardo Bruni, Aeneas Sylvius
Piccolomini, Battista Guarino, and Maffeo Vegio.139 For about thirty years
now there has been great debate over these texts: Are the humanists’ claims
137 Ibid., 17: “quasi ad altiora et digniora nasceretur”; “omnibus mercaturis velut frivolis et inanibus
rebus praetermissis, ad latinae linguae cognitionem se contulisse dicitur” (emphasis mine).
138 Ibid., 18: “post latinarum litterarum eruditionem ceterarum artium studia neglexit quamquam util-
iora ac vendibiliora viderentur; humanitatis vero peritiam, unde virtutes eruuntur, unice adamavit
adamatamque sibi delegit et voluit. Haec enim humanitatis studia ad virtutem apprime spectare
et pertinere manifestum est. Nam in his ipsis prae aliis artium studiis honestum quaeritur quaesi-
tumque haud dubie reperitur. Ex honesto autem iustitia, fortitudo, modestia ceteraeque virtutes
emanare et effluere viderentur” (translation altered).
139 For the texts in question and discussions of them, see Humanist Educational Treatises; McMana-
mon, Pierpaolo Vergerio the Elder, pp. 89–103 (on Vergerio’s De ingenuis moribus); The Humanism
of Leonardo Bruni, pp. 235–254 (on Bruni); Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humani-
ties, pp. 1–28 (on Guarino); Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy, pp. 110–141, 407–410; Garin,
about virtue true? What actually went on in the humanist classroom?
What was its intention, its effect on students, its usefulness to individu-
als, society, and the political regime?140 Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine
challenged the traditional view of Eugenio Garin, subsequently restated by
Paul Grendler, which essentially takes the educational ideal elaborated by
the humanists as a statement of fact.141 Treating Guarino’s letters and other
descriptions by his students as advertising material rather than pure con-
fessions of the heart, Grafton and Jardine argue instead that such accounts
cannot be taken as an indication of what happened in the classroom, nor as
a reliable guide to how virtue was transmitted there, if at all. In their anal-
ysis, when the humanist classroom did initiate students “into the whole of
ancient culture and the concomitant elevated attitudes and beliefs,” such
did not follow from the content or the method of the curriculum. Rather it
took place “as a lived emulation of a teacher who projects the cultural ideal
above and beyond the drilling he provides in curriculum subjects.” Thus
humanist education worked, when it worked as advertised, not because of
a specific content or method but because of “a charismatic teacher.”142
It is fascinating to see that the controversial conclusion deduced by
Grafton and Jardine is enunciated and expounded by Manetti:
Niccolò thus became a friend and a disciple of a certain Luigi Marsili – an
exceptional man of that time for his piety, holiness, and the excellence of
his learning – so as to learn the true path to a good and happy life while
studying the bonae artes . . . Having given himself over to learning from this
unique and erudite man, he studied with such care and diligence under his
guidance that he never left his side. Thus it happened that, in addition to a
deep understanding of many different subjects, he also acquired from him
an excellent moral character and a fine pattern of life . . . For it commonly
happens that we imitate the behavior of those with whom we consort and
become a kind of copy of the person imitated, and this happens more easily
and more often when we respect and admire such persons.143
Ritratti di umanisti, pp. 69–106 (on Guarino); Garin, L’educazione in Europa; Garin, L’umanesimo
italiano, pp. 90–93; L’educazione umanistica in Italia, ed. Eugenio Garin (Bari, 1949).
140 For the history of scholarship on humanist education and a resume of this debate, see Black,
Humanism and Education, pp. 12–33.
141 See note 139 above. 142 Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, p. 27.
143 Manetti, DIL, 19–20: “Quocirca in familiaritatem et disciplinam cuiusdam Lodovici Marsilii sese
recepit, viri per ea tempora et religione et sanctimonia vitae et excellentia doctrinae praestantissimi,
ut una cum bonarum artium studiis veram bene beateque vivendi viam exinde perciperet . . . In
huius ergo singularissimi atque eruditissimi viri disciplina deditus, ita in huiusmodi ludo diligenter
accurateque perseveravit ut ab eius fere latere numquam recederet. Ex quo factum est ut praeter
singularem quandam plurimarum rerum cognitionem, egregios quoque mores et optima instituta
vitae ab eo reportaret . . . Fit enim plerumque ut mores eorum imitemur imitatique similitudinem
quandam exprimamus cum quibus diutius conversamur; atque id ipsum facilius ac frequentius
Thus virtue did not actually flow directly from the studia humanitatis.
Instead the study of Latin acted as a conduit by which the moral rectitude
of the teacher passed to the student. Its effect on Niccoli was nothing short
of marvelous:
Our Niccolò was so taken with Luigi’s learning . . . that he put aside all
the desires most people naturally have for riches, honors and children and
devoted himself entirely to the study of the bonae artes. From that time on
he never longed to amass wealth like the greedy, nor sought honors like the
ambitious, nor indulged in matrimony in order to raise a family. Instead,
he remained poor, unknown and celibate, entirely free of all worldly cares,
living happily with his books in the greatest quiet and tranquility.144
Niccoli is the picture of a humanist monk. According to Kristeller, the secu-
larization of the monastic ideal is “characteristic of Renaissance humanism”
and “even more significant than [its] outright defense or rejection.” But
what we see in Manetti is more than what Kristeller described as a simple
“transfer of the ideal of the solitary life from the monk and hermit to the lay
scholar.”145 According to this passage, the pursuit of humanism entailed a
life of poverty, humility, and celibacy – the very Christian virtues lived out
by monks. Here Manetti offers a new lay version not only of the monastic
ideal of solitude but also of the monastic life proper: an escape from the
business of the unclean secular world not by way of prayer or meditation on
sacred texts, but by way of the study of secular Latin literature. If Petrarch
led a holy life in addition to being a humanist, Niccoli led a holy life because
he was a humanist.
Curiously, the actual facts of Niccoli’s life in no way accord with Manetti’s
presentation.146 For example, he lived on a mass of inherited and borrowed
wealth and was sustained by the friendship, patronage, and unflagging sup-
port of Cosimo de’ Medici, yet he complained bitterly of this dependence.
He was a notoriously “abusive” (maledicus) critic feared for his ferocious
contingit si cum aliqua observatione et admiratione intuemur” (translation altered). For the
Augustinian monk Luigi Marsili, see Paolo Falzoni, “Marsili, Luigi,” in DBI, vol. LXX (2008),
pp. 767–771; and Arbesmann, Der Augustinereremitenorden, pp. 73–119.
144 Manetti, DIL, 21: “Ita huius doctrina, ita mores, ita instituta mirabili quoddam dicendi lepore
condita Nicolao nostro placuerunt ut ceteris vel divitiarum vel honorum vel suscipiendorum
liberorum, quae maxime ab hominibus suapte natura expetantur, cupiditatibus posthabitis totum
se in otium ad bonarum artium studia converteret. Neque postea ullo umquam tempore aut
comparandis opibus, ut cupidi, inhiavit, aut aucupandis honoribus, ut ambitiosi, inservivit, aut rei
uxoriae, procreandi prolis gratia, indulsit, sed potius egenus et inglorius et caelebs, omni saeculari
cura liber et vacuus, in summa quiete et tranquillitate una cum libris suis feliciter vivebat.”
145 Kristeller, “The Active and the Contemplative Life,” pp. 139–141 (quotations on 139); cf. also
Lombardo, “Vita Activa,” p. 86.
146 For Niccoli, see Davies, “An Emperor without Clothes.”
and cruel censure of others. At times he acted like a sociopath, throughout
the course of his life alienating the affection of nearly all his friends, Bruni
and Poggio included; only the monk Traversari never broke with him. He
quarreled constantly with his brothers. He could not stand the fame of
others and thus chased away the eminent humanists, like Guarino and
Filelfo, who were invited to teach Greek at the University of Florence. And
finally, he was infamous throughout Italy for having an illicit affair with
his housekeeper, Benvenuta, whom he was reputed to keep at home as a
concubine.
Clearly, poverty, humility, and celibacy were components of neither the
life nor the reputation of Niccolò Niccoli. Nevertheless, Manetti’s text
need not be read in a sardonic spirit or merely as a product of rhetorical
ornatio. Much of what he reports in the biographies is, as we have seen,
legendary, and some of it intentionally so. Manetti does not intend to take
a photograph of humanism but rather to paint an idealized portrait of it.
Like his extension of the studia humanitatis to Dante’s scholastic education
in Paris, or his attribution to Boccaccio of the flourishing of Greek studies,
his beatification of Niccoli serves the purpose of filling in the details of
that ideal. Niccoli had died only two years earlier, and his memory was fair
game. Manetti clearly sought to rehabilitate Niccoli’s reputation. Poggio
had already begun this process in his funeral oration for Niccoli, and
much of Manetti’s biography is drawn from that source.147 More was at
stake here, however. As usual with his mosaic technique, there is a specific
design behind Manetti’s choice of passages to cut from other works and
paste into his own. With what must have been a profound sense of irony,
Manetti transformed Niccoli into the scion of a noble line of humanists
beginning with the very three poets that he, Niccoli, had so famously
despised: Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Beyond devoting themselves to
the studia humanitatis, all these men lived holy lives of divine study, moral
purity, and even humanistic beatification.
Would it be proper to call Manetti’s portrayals of Petrarch and Niccoli
the hagiography of humanism? Indeed, the texts bear more than a pass-
ing resemblance to the practices of the Christian tradition of hagiography,
viz. the glorification of the subject’s holiness and the citing of miracles
147 The similarities were noted by Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, pp. 322–323 (as
cited in Manetti, Biographical Writings, p. 305, n. 6). Baron, however, interprets both Manetti’s
and Poggio’s ritratti as following in the tradition of Cino Rinuccini’s Invettiva, and thus as critical
of Niccoli. For Poggio’s Oratio in funere Nicolai Nicoli civis florentini, see the text in Poggio
Bracciolini, Opera omnia, ed. Riccardo Fubini, 4 vols. (Turin, 1964), vol. I, pp. 270–277; and the
discussion in Walser, Poggius Florentinus, pp. 203–204.
and divine signs as proof, the purpose being to provide holy examples
for the reader and ultimately to save his soul. It is rather unlikely that
Manetti intends to lead anyone to eternal salvation through the inspira-
tional retelling of a holy life accredited by God Himself, but his readers
nonetheless would have recognized the narrative elements of hagiography
that pervade his writings. Manetti is consciously co-opting a popular genre
and using it to portray humanism in a particular way. He intends to show
that the studia humanitatis is a, if not the, proper pursuit for a modern
Christian. Dante and Petrarch studied theology in Paris, the center of
Christian learning. What is more, their lives were surrounded and con-
firmed by divine signs and miracles. Petrarch lived the life of an ascetic
hermit in addition to resurrecting good Latin. And now, Niccoli, whose
engagement with secular Latin literature amounts to a regime of spiritual
exercises, approximates the ideal of Christian monasticism – but in the
world. Here we see the glorification of holiness that is one of the essential
aspects of hagiography. And we might also glimpse the second: a soterio-
logical purpose. For the genre of biography, as a species of demonstrative
rhetoric, uses praise of the subject to persuade the reader to imitate that
subject (as described by Facio in his De viris illustribus). Thus in writing
these biographies, Manetti not only describes his subjects as good Chris-
tians who devoted themselves to the studia humanitatis, he encourages
the reader to follow in their footsteps. With little hyperbole and only a
slight escape into metaphor, we can justifiably call this the hagiography of
humanism.148
Manetti’s collective biographies convey a conception of humanism that
is related to but nonetheless distinct from the one found in Piccolomini,
Biondo, and Facio. As in their writings, here, too, humanism entails the
resuscitation of Ciceronian Latin, the search for classical literature, the
collection and copying of manuscripts, the study of Greek, and the general
love of antiquity (although all of these receive a different shading). Yet
Manetti’s humanism also includes the revival of poetry, both in Latin and
in the vernacular. Furthermore, its contours, instead of being rigidly fixed
at points of contact with other learned contexts, are much softer. They even
blend into the confines of scholastic philosophy and theology and seem
closed off only to law (and perhaps medicine). Moreover, a new spiritual,
sacred side to learning pervades Manetti’s conception. In the end, despite
148 But still, of course, to be distinguished from actual Christian hagiography written by humanists,
on which see Alison Knowles Frazier, Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy (New
York, 2005).
the name studia humanitatis, humanism comes to signify all liberal, i.e.,
non-professional, branches of knowledge, and to embrace things divine as
well as human. The recurring phrase “things human and divine” signifies
a range of meanings, from the standard scholastic disciplines to the private
reading of sacred and secular texts. It comes close to standing for “uni-
versal knowledge.” This knowledge is best achieved in the pursuit of the
contemplative life, a new possibility for lay existence offered by the studia
humanitatis, excellence in which elevates the mere scholar to saintliness.
Even if outright sainthood should remain out of reach, the pursuit of the
studia humanitatis – understood not as a set of propositions, disciplines,
or curricular contents but as a way of life – is nevertheless the sure path to
virtue.
ch a p ter 3
The triumph of Cicero
After the flurry of writings around the middle of the fifteenth century,
the next pieces of sustained humanist literary self-reflection do not come
until about thirty years later. Both are ultimately products of the Roman
academy of Pomponio Leto, although neither can be said directly to reflect
the intellectual and cultural milieu that he created. Rather each writing
announces new directions in humanism related to fresh social, political,
and technological circumstances. They are also linked to particular civic
settings: Paolo Cortesi’s De hominibus doctis to Rome, Marcantonio Sabel-
lico’s De latinae linguae reparatione to Venice.
In his De hominibus doctis, Paolo Cortesi emphatically portrays human-
ism as the movement to reconstitute Ciceronian Latin eloquence.1 This
conception has much in common with the one reconstructed in Chapter 1,
especially as seen in Piccolomini’s praise of Bruni as Ciceroni simillimus.
Here, however, the concept is simultaneously narrower and more expansive.
On the one hand, whereas Ciceronian language was an object of striving
and thus of inspiration in the accounts of Piccolomini and Biondo, for
Cortesi it has become restrictive, a measuring stick, a prescription for
rhetorical excellence to which all true, full-fledged humanists must adhere
1 The text is available in two modern critical editions: Paolo Cortesi, De hominibus doctis, ed. Giacomo
Ferraù (Palermo, 1979), and De hominibus doctis dialogus, ed. and tr. Maria Teresa Graziosi (Rome,
1973). All citations are to Ferraù’s edition, hereafter cited as Cortesi, DHD; all translations are my
own. The most comprehensive examinations of the text to date are the introductions of Ferraù
(“Introduzione” and “Nota al testo,” pp. 5–91) and Graziosi (“Introduzione,” pp. vii–xxxii), both
of which are based on previous studies that are fully incorporated into the new ones: Giacomo
Ferraù, “Il De hominibus doctis di Paolo Cortesi,” in Umanità e storia. Scritti in onore di Adelchi
Attisani (Naples, 1971), vol. II, pp. 261–290; and Maria Teresa Graziosi, “Note su Paolo Cortesi e il
dialogo De hominibus doctis,” Annali dell’Istituto universitario orientale di Napoli. Sezione romanza,
10 (1968), pp. 355–376. Other short but important considerations of DHD are found in Robert
Black, “The New Laws of History,” Renaissance Studies, 1:1 (1987), pp. 126–156, at 132–137; D’Ascia,
Erasmo e l’Umanesimo romano, pp. 117–124; and Martin McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian
Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo (Oxford,
1995), pp. 217–221. For earlier scholarship, see the bibliography in Ferraù, “Introduzione,” pp. 7–8.
133
to be worthy of the title. On the other hand, linguistic virtuosity fully
transcends the aesthetic dimension. Cortesi links eloquence – the ability to
express oneself at the highest level – necessarily and fundamentally to the
ability to think at the highest level, and thus to the excellence of any kind of
intellectual or literary effort or production. In short, eloquence opens the
way to the highest potential of the human mind. Cortesi intimates that this
eloquence has finally returned in its full form to Italy, indeed to its ancient
home in Rome, thanks to the combination of the efforts of humanists
and world-changing historical events. Specifically, he emphasizes the role
of Byzantine émigrés, especially Manuel Chrysoloras, in retrieving classi-
cal eloquence from Greece in a renewal of the old translatio studii, now
brought on by the Ottoman conquest of the waning Byzantine empire.
If Cortesi largely agrees with Piccolomini, Biondo, and Facio as to the
centrality of Latin eloquence in humanism, he also evinces certain com-
monalities with Manetti regarding the cultural significance of bonae litterae.
In the biographies of Petrarch and especially Niccoli we saw humanism por-
trayed as a good in itself, as a way of life. Cortesi also depicts humanists
as pursuing Latin eloquence for its own sake, for the sheer love and pas-
sion they feel for literature, out of their yearning to participate in a grand
ancient tradition. Accordingly, he advises against political involvement,
recommends rising above base economic interests, and prescribes a set of
standards of sociability and good conduct for participation in the humanist
sodalitas litterarum. He describes the humanist milieu in a way that makes
it intelligible as a social and intellectual arena for distinction and honor,
and thus he can help us to understand humanism in a way that avoids
the drawbacks of Kristeller’s hard-headed positivism, the teleological ide-
alism of Garin, and the cynicism about humanists’ motives encouraged
by Grafton and Jardine’s ostensible deconstruction of their rhetoric. As
might be expected from a product of the Roman context, Cortesi subtly
indicates that Roman humanism is the best and – now differing radically
from Manetti – that it is superior specifically to Florentine humanism. In
this respect his dialogue is especially valuable, as it gives insight into how
non-Florentine humanists, who had equally proud traditions, who were
far more numerous, yet who have received far less attention than their
Florentine counterparts, understood the larger enterprise in which they
were all engaged.
Although little known today, Paolo Cortesi (1465–1510) was a leading
humanist in Rome at the turn of the fifteenth century.2 Apart from studies
2 This biographical sketch is based on John F. D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome:
Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation (Baltimore, 1983), passim but esp. pp. 76–80;
The triumph of Cicero 135
in San Gimignano (his family’s base outside Rome), perhaps under Michele
Marullo, he received his training from two of the more distinguished
teachers in Rome: Platina and, most influentially, Pomponio Leto.3 Cortesi
carried forward the tradition of Leto’s Accademia Romana (beginning ca.
1490), in the sense that he opened his home to daily, informal gatherings
of Rome’s literary elite.4 He overtook Platina’s position as papal scriptor
in 1491, held the post of apostolic secretary from 1498 to 1503, and was
apostolic protonotary to Alexander VI, Pius III, and Julius II. Thereafter
he left Rome permanently for his family villa, the Castrum Cortesianum
(or Cortesium), outside San Gimignano, in order to devote himself to
writing and to concentrate on assembling the patronage necessary to further
his ecclesiastical career.5 De hominibus doctis dates to his Roman period,
Roberto Ricciardi, “Cortesi (Cortesius, de Cortesiis), Paolo,” in DBI, vol. XXIX (1983), pp. 766–
770; Roberto Weiss, “Cortesi, Paolo (1465–1510),” in Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana, ed.
Vittore Branca, 2nd ed. (Turin, 1986), vol. II, pp. 56–58; Ferraù, “Introduzione,” pp. 5–6; Graziosi,
“Introduzione,” pp. vii–xiii; Pio Paschini, “Una famiglia di curiali nella Roma del Quattrocento: i
Cortesi,” Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 11 (1957), pp. 26–48. There is debate about Cortesi’s
date of birth: the traditional date given is 1465, but this was challenged by Graziosi, “Introduzione,”
p. vii, who prefers 1471. Graziosi’s redating was itself challenged by Elena Miele, in her review of
Graziosi’s edition in La rassegna della letteratura italiana, ser. 7, no. 82 (1978), pp. 254–256, and by
Ricciardi, “Cortesi, Paolo,” p. 766, but Graziosi’s new date was accepted by Ferraù, “Introduzione,”
p. 5. The traditional date of 1465 may be supposed correct in light of the document stipulating
Cortesi’s employment as papal scriptor, which was dated October 20, 1481, and claims that he
was sixteen at the time; in support of this position see John Monfasani, “The Puzzling Dates of
Paolo Cortesi,” in Fabrizio Meroi and Elisabetta Scapparone (eds.), Humanistica per Cesare Vasoli
(Florence, 2004), pp. 87–97, at 87–92. For the documentation of Cortesi’s employment, see Paschini,
“Una famiglia,” p. 27; Massimo Miglio, “Una famiglia di curiali nella Roma del Quattrocento: i
Cortesi,” Miscellanea Storica della Valdelsa, 108:3 (2002), pp. 41–48; and Philippa Jackson, “Investing
in Curial Offices: The Case of the Apostolic Secretary Paolo Cortesi,” in Philippa Jackson and Guido
Rebecchini (eds.), Mantova e il rinascimento italiano. Studi in onore di David S. Chambers (Mantua,
2011), pp. 315–328. In general on Cortesi, see also the other three essays, by S. Gensini, G. Fragnito,
and M. Giannini, collected in Miscellanea Storica della Valdelsa, 108:3 (2002); all four essays were
initially supposed to appear in the acts of the 1991 conference “Paolo Cortesi e la cultura del suo
tempo,” which were never published. I would like to thank Philippa Jackson for pointing out to me
several of these bibliographical references.
3 For Platina, see below, note 84. For Leto, see Cortesi, DHD, 139.23–140.3. In addition to the
bibliography listed in ibid., p. 140, n. 39, see Maria Accame Lanzillotta, Pomponio Leto: vita e
insegnamento (Tivoli, 2008); Anna Modigliani et al. (eds.), Pomponio Leto tra identità locale e cultura
internazionale. Atti del convegno internazionale (Teggiano, 3–5 ottobre 2008) (Rome, 2011); and the
online resource Repertorium Pomponianum: http://www.repertoriumpomponianum.it/.
4 Contemporary descriptions cited in Paschini, “Una famiglia,” pp. 35–36, and in D’Amico, Renaissance
Humanism, pp. 102–107, who uses them to reconstruct the milieu (for the date of 1490, p. 77). An
account of Cortesi’s Academy is also available in John F. D’Amico, “Humanism in Rome,” in Rabil
(ed.), Renaissance Humanism, vol. I, pp. 264–295, at 277–278.
5 See D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, p. 78. Peter Partner, The Pope’s Men: The Papal Civil Service
in the Renaissance (Oxford, 1990), p. 139, views Cortesi’s decision to withdraw from papal service as
an ill-advised way to amass patronage and casts it instead as an effective retirement. Paschini, “Una
famiglia,” p. 37, hypothesizes that Cortesi fled Rome after having incurred the disfavor of the volatile
Cesare Borgia.
whereas he wrote his two other major works in the quiet of his Tuscan
retreat. They were a piece of humanist theology with a standard scholastic
name, the Liber sententiarum (1504), and an exposition of the Renaissance
cardinalate, De cardinalatu (1510).6 Cortesi is best known today, however,
for what he later considered juvenilia: his epistolary debate with Angelo
Poliziano over the correct method of literary imitation, and specifically
over the propriety of the exclusive imitation of Cicero.7 As is well known,
Cortesi championed the cause of Ciceronianism, which Poliziano belittled
as mindless “aping” and to which he counterposed his own characteristic
eclecticism.8 The young Cortesi’s position was more sophisticated than
Poliziano initially imagined (and than Erasmus would later caricature in
his Ciceronianus), and in the sixteenth century it would be cited approvingly
by Pietro Bembo for the benefit of his own Ciceronianism on the Latin
side of the questione della lingua.9
It is in the aftermath and the context of this debate that Cortesi com-
posed his dialogue De hominibus doctis (1489–1490).10 In reply to Poliziano,
6 On the Liber sententiarum see D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, passim but p. 78 for general
comments and pp. 148–168 for analysis. An English translation (by William Felver) of the preface to
the first book is available in Leonard A. Kelley (ed.), Renaissance Philosophy: New Translations (The
Hague, 1973), pp. 32–36. There is no modern printed edition. On De cardinalatu see D’Amico,
Renaissance Humanism, passim but pp. 78–80 for general comments and pp. 227–237 for an in-depth
analysis.
7 The Latin text and an English translation of the correspondence are available in Ciceronian Con-
troversies, ed. JoAnn Dellaneva, tr. Brian Duvick (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), pp. 2–15, otherwise in
Latin with Italian translation in Eugenio Garin (ed.), Prosatori Latini del Quattrocento (Milan, 1952),
pp. 902–911. Many scholars have written on this famous debate, but an exceptionally full treat-
ment of the two humanists’ theory and practice of imitation is provided by McLaughlin, Literary
Imitation, ch. 10: “The Dispute between Poliziano and Cortesi,” pp. 187–227. For a different view
of the matter, see Vincenzo Fera, “Il problema dell’imitatio tra Poliziano e Cortesi,” in Vincenzo
Fera and Augusto Guida (eds.), Vetustatis indagator. Scritti offerti a Filippo Benedetto (Messina,
1999), pp. 155–181. For broader treatments of Ciceronianism and humanist disputes over imitation
in Latin style, see Christopher S. Celenza, “End Game: Humanist Latin in the Late Fifteenth
Century,” in Latinitas Perennis, vol. II: Appropriation and Latin Literature (Leiden, 2009), pp. 201–
242; D’Ascia, Erasmo e l’Umanesimo romano, ch. 4: “La polemica sull’imitazione nell’umanesimo
italiano” (pp. 105–160); and Marc Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence: rhétorique et “res literaria,” de la
Renaissance au seuil de l’époque classique (Geneva, 1980), esp. pp. 77–230. Cortesi described his letter
to Poliziano as “youthful” in his later De cardinalatu (Castrum Cortesium, 1510), p. lxxxxv: “non
tam videri maturitate potest quam aetatis spe et ingenii significatione grandis” (cited in Ferraù,
“Introduzione,” p. 44, n. 63). For Poliziano, philologist extraordinaire and intimate of Lorenzo
de’ Medici, see Vittore Branca, Poliziano e l’umanesimo della parola (Milan, 1952); and for more
recent literature: Vincenzo Fera and Mario Martelli (eds.), Agnolo Poliziano: poeta, scrittore, filologo
(Florence, 1998).
8 For Ciceronianism in Rome, see D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, pp. 123–134.
9 Cf. Celenza, “End Game,” pp. 201–212.
10 The date of DHD is still not certain. See Ferraù, “Nota al testo,” pp. 61–64, and the less precise
considerations in Graziosi, “Introduzione,” pp. xxi–xxii. The date of Cortesi’s exchange with
Poliziano is equally uncertain. It is usually put at the end of the 1480s, but McLaughlin (Literary
Cortesi had defended the exclusive imitation of Cicero as the only sure way
to achieve a correct style. Now he developed his position further, elaborat-
ing a theory of stylistic imitation and meaningful expression that posited a
dynamic relationship between ars, i.e., the rules that govern proper speech
and the knowledge of them, and imitation of the most excellent model(s).11
In short, imitation was still the key to stylistic excellence, but it could not
be done properly without knowledge of what was good and bad, proper
and improper, i.e., without ars.12 This was no idle theory but rather a
model that explained for Cortesi the fifteenth-century revival of classical
Latin eloquence, so much of whose ars had been lost since antiquity. And
this is precisely the theme of De hominibus doctis. In the dialogue Cortesi
traces the historical development of humanism, which in his eyes had been
devoted primarily to eloquence and had progressed in time via the gradual
recovery of the ars of rhetoric and corresponding improvements in proper
stylistic imitation.13 De hominibus doctis is itself an emblematic act of imi-
tation, namely of Cicero’s dialogue Brutus, which traces the development
of Greek and Roman eloquence in antiquity by means of a register and
critique of its major representatives.14 In his own work, Cortesi charts the
humanists’ progress in reviving and progressing towards the old Latin elo-
quence in modern times, judging them, by the standard of Cicero, ever
more positively as they approach his own generation.15
De hominibus doctis takes the form of a dramatic dialogue. As in its
model, Cicero’s Brutus, one authoritative speaker, here “a certain Antonio,”
holds forth while two minor characters, Paolo Cortesi himself and his close
Imitation, p. 202) has argued for an earlier date of 1485, which is accepted in Ciceronian Controversies,
p. vii. Some scholars believe that DHD predates the epistolary debate with Poliziano: see Fera,
“Il problema”; Monfasani, “Puzzling Dates,” pp. 92–97; Piero Floriani, Review of Cortesi, De
hominibus doctis dialogus, ed. Graziosi (1973), Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 152 (1975),
pp. 148–152; and Weiss, “Cortesi, Paolo,” p. 56.
11 A different view is taken by Black, “New Laws,” p. 135, who claims that Cortesi had “rejected his
original position on imitation . . . when he wrote De hominibus doctis” and that “Cortesi’s views
have changed since his original dispute with Poliziano.” It seems rather more correct to say that
Cortesi added several levels of sophistication to his original position, but not that it is repudiated in
DHD. I agree with Black, though, that there was a greater affinity between Cortesi and Poliziano
than is usually recognized (pp. 132–140), and also that Cortesi was influenced by Poliziano’s critique
in the further development of his own ideas (p. 136).
12 For a slightly different interpretation, see D’Ascia, Erasmo e l’Umanesimo romano, pp. 117–124.
13 On the historical nature of Cortesi’s dialogue, see Baker, “Writing History in Cicero’s Shadow.”
14 For Cortesi’s adaptation of the Brutus and of DHD’s relationship to Cicero in general, see Ferraù,
“Introduzione,” pp. 9–17.
15 An appreciation for irony demands citing, in light of Cortesi’s program of judging all the important
humanists of the fifteenth century, a passage from his letter to Poliziano: “I too am the sort of
person, as Cicero says, who would not wish to judge another, even if I could, nor could I, even if I
wanted to” (Ciceronian Controversies, p. 7).
friend Alessandro Farnese, the future Pope Paul III, play supporting roles.16
(For purposes of clarity, from now on the character of Paolo Cortesi in the
dialogue will be referred to as Paolo, the author as Cortesi.) The job of
these lesser characters is to agree or to disagree, to interject their own
opinions or to ask questions, or sometimes just to move the discussion
along after it gets bogged down in digressions – all of which is aimed at
making the dialogue lively and giving it the feel of a real-life conversation.
The dialogue is set on an island in Lago di Bolsena, in the territory of
the Farnese, where a group of young men from Rome has come to engage
in learned conversation.17 After touching on various topics including the
beauty of the setting and the greatness of Alessandro’s ancestors, the group
falls into a discussion about “who exactly it was whose minds roused our
studies from their sleep.” Antonio, who is a bit older than the others and
who has introduced the topic of “men of all kinds of learning,” is chosen
to “set forth what he thinks about them.”18
Although the references to “our studies” (studia) and “men of all kinds
of learning” (multi omni genere doctrinae), as well as others that crop up
like “learned studies” (studia doctrinae),19 at first appear rather generic, the
precise theme quickly materializes when Paolo says, “I especially admire
those men whose efforts opened the way to eloquence. So, Antonio, . . . it
would greatly please us to hear what you think de hominibus doctis” – about
these learned men.20 Antonio later sums up his task as follows: “So, you
are asking me to judge and describe those who are considered well spoken
and who have done the most to achieve some praise for eloquence.”21 Who
16 The precise identity of Antonius remains unknown (Cortesi, DHD, 103.23: “quendam Antonium”),
which for our purposes does not matter. Vladimir Zabughin, Giulio Pomponio Leto: saggio critico,
2 vols. (Rome, 1909–1912), vol. I, pp. 82 and 209, identifies Antonio as Antonio Augusto Baldo
(or Valdo), whereas Graziosi, “Introduzione,” pp. xxiii–xxiv, identifies him instead with Giovanni
Antonio Sulpizio da Veroli. Ferraù, “Introduzione,” p. 9, accepts Zabughin’s identification, but
D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, pp. 77 and 267, n. 67, agrees with Graziosi; neither justifies
his preference. For Alessandro Farnese, see Cortesi, DHD, 103.18–20: “Alexander Farnesius, ado-
lescens . . . summa mecum benevolentia coniunctus”; and Rosemary Devonshire Jones, “Paul III,”
in Peter G. Bietenholz and Thomas B. Deutscher (eds.), Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical
Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, 3 vols. (Toronto, 2003), vol. III, pp. 53–56. In Cicero’s
Brutus the supporting roles are played by Cicero’s friend Atticus and protégé Brutus.
17 Information on the setting and the circumstances of the dialogue is gathered from the dedicatory
letter, 103.10–104.3, and from the dialogue itself, 105.1–107.13.
18 Cortesi, DHD, 103.22–25: “quinam essent hi, quorum ingeniis sunt sopita studia excitavit, rogavimus
omnes Antonium . . . ut . . . quid de his viris sentiret explicaret”; “men of all kinds of learning”:
106.14–15 (“multi omni genere doctrinae floruerunt”).
19 Ibid., 103.12.
20 Ibid., 106.17–20: “hos etiam amo, quorum industria sunt nobis aditus ad eloquentiam patefacti.
Sed quoniam, Antoni, . . . erit nobis pergratum si de his doctis hominibus quid sentias explicabis.”
21 Ibid., 107.8–10: “Quaeritis igitur quanti et quales in disertorum numero habiti sint et qui mihi ad
aliquam eloquentiae laudem maxime accessisse videantur.”
are these well-spoken homines docti? None other than all the great figures
in the humanist movement from 1400 to 1480, as well as, perhaps, Dante,
Petrarch, and other forerunners.22 Cortesi in no uncertain terms conceives
of humanism as the movement to restore eloquence, and he equates the
efforts to revive eloquence with the history of humanism.
That humanism must be understood more precisely as the movement to
restore Ciceronian eloquence is nowhere stated explicitly in the dialogue,
but such can be inferred from several factors. First, Cortesi’s reputation as
a Ciceronian was second to none.23 It is true that later in life, as can be
seen in his De cardinalatu, Cortesi appears to have moved away from the
strict Ciceronianism of his youth.24 Nevertheless, it is precisely this style
that characterizes De hominibus doctis and that won it praise from one of
the other great Ciceronians in Rome, Adriano Castellesi.25 Furthermore,
as mentioned above, this dialogue appeared directly after the exchange
with Poliziano and acted as a theoretical expansion of the position taken
there. Accordingly, many of the most important passages from the let-
ter to Poliziano are integrated, often verbatim, into De hominibus doctis.26
Finally, as Martin McLaughlin has noted, “The De Hominibus Doctis repre-
sents the application of Ciceronian standards to the Latin of Quattrocento
humanists.”27 Not only is Cicero the implicit touchstone of good Latin,
22 Ferraù, “Introduzione,” p. 38, notes that “non un nome di quelli che pure hanno rilievo in una
odierna prospettiva viene trascurato.” The exception is the great Florentine humanists of Lorenzo de’
Medici’s circle, whose absence is in part explained by Cortesi’s decision not to treat contemporaries,
in part by a subtle polemic against their particular brand of humanism. See below, pp. 166–167.
23 Martin McLaughlin (Literary Imitation, pp. 202–206, 217–227) has revised the general view of
Cortesi as a “reactionary Ciceronian,” by which is meant someone who thinks Cicero must be
imitated in every way and is “the sole source of Latin diction” (p. 217). Such, he notes, is “an
extreme position that belongs to the sixteenth not the fifteenth century” (p. 217). Cortesi’s position,
on the contrary, is that Cicero is the best author and thus the only one to be imitated in the
development of one’s own style, but that the proper imitator does not resemble the object of his
imitation in the manner of Poliziano’s ape but rather as a son does a father, resembling him in
many ways but still retaining his own essence. McLaughlin emphasizes that Cortesi shared the goal
of self-expression with Poliziano and that the two only disagreed on the means to achieving it,
Poliziano favoring eclecticism, Cortesi Ciceronianism. On the nature of Cortesi’s Ciceronianism,
see also the brief but insightful remarks in John Monfasani, “The Ciceronian Controversy,” in The
Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. III, pp. 395–401, at 396.
24 See D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, pp. 79–80, and McLaughlin, Literary Imitation, pp. 224–226.
Black’s characterization of an outright rejection (“New Laws,” p. 135) seems too strong. There is,
however, more support for his position in Fera, “Il problema,” pp. 178–181.
25 See Paschini, “Una famiglia,” p. 29; D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, pp. 132–133; and Ferraù’s
apparatus fontium in Cortesi, DHD, which records the imitation and adaptation of Cicero’s rhetor-
ical works and speeches in nearly every sentence. Although the modern Latinist might find the
imitation less than perfect, contemporaries were convinced of its success. Cf. the praise offered by
Lucio Fosforo in a congratulatory letter: “apparet te in legendo Cicerone operam non amisisse, ita
eum effinxisti, ipsum certe audire videor” (in Cortesi, DHD, 99.4–6).
26 See Ferraù, “Introduzione,” pp. 44–46.
27 McLaughlin, Literary Imitation, p. 217.
he is also held up several times as a model for stylistic imitation in the
dialogue; indeed, his is nearly the only ancient name explicitly mentioned
in this connection, and the most highly valued.28
Before continuing to an analysis of the dialogue, two words about its
curious fortuna might be of interest. Cortesi was evidently proud of his
opus, dedicating it to no less prominent a patron than Lorenzo il Mag-
nifico, clients of whom the Cortesi family had long been, and submitting
it to the approval of the same Poliziano who had so recently rebuked
him.29 Poliziano’s response was short but approving, and the work received
high praise from several other prominent individuals.30 It failed, however,
to secure the patronage Cortesi sought from Lorenzo de’ Medici. Then
it suddenly and inexplicably disappeared, suppressed by the author him-
self after its initial circulation among friends, colleagues, and potential
patrons.31 Cortesi apparently continued to polish it over the years, and
several of its judgments were integrated into the later De cardinalatu. Yet
De hominibus doctis remained unknown and was not destined to see the
light of day again until its discovery at the end of the seventeenth century,
when it was diffused rapidly in Florence and elsewhere; it was first printed
in 1734.32
The investigation that follows is divided into three parts, each dealing
with a different aspect of Cortesi’s conception of humanism. The first
traces the history of the movement as outlined through the course of the
dialogue, illustrating and explaining Cortesi’s periodization of the move-
ment and its progress through the contributions of important individuals.
The second section distills the elements that, in Cortesi’s view, made up
28 As a stylist to be imitated, see Cortesi, DHD, 121.4–5, 135.8–136.2, 172.11–13; the latter two passages
emphasize the difficulty of the proper imitation of Cicero. The only other ancients mentioned for
style are Livy, who is ranked lower than Cicero: “in his History [Bruni] strives after a Livian kind
of style; I would not dare call it Ciceronian” (121.4–5: “Consectatur in historia quiddam Livianum,
non ausim dicere Ciceronianum”); and Plautus, in imitation of whom Antonio Beccadelli is said
to have failed (145.3–5).
30 Poliziano’s epistolary reaction to the dialogue is printed in Cortesi, DHD, 99.14–100.3. Black, “New
Laws,” pp. 138–139, demonstrates that Poliziano was even influenced by Cortesi, regarding the need
for an ars historica, in the opening lecture to his 1490–1491 course on Suetonius. Cortesi’s work
was approved by Cardinal Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini and Adriano Castellesi. See Paschini,
“Una famiglia,” pp. 28–29, and Ferraù, “Nota al testo,” pp. 62–64.
31 For a theory on why Cortesi decided not to publish his dialogue, see Monfasani, “Puzzling Dates,”
pp. 95–97.
32 See Ferraù, “Introduzione,” pp. 65–67. The first edition was Paolo Cortesi, De hominibus doctis
dialogus nunc primum in lucem editus [ . . . ] cum adnotationibus. Accedit auctoris vita (Florence,
1734) [reprinted in Filippo Villani, Liber de civitatis Florentiae famosis civibus, ed. Gustavo Camillo
Galletti (Florence, 1847), pp. 215–284].
a general humanist profile and constituted the humanist milieu. Finally, a
third section describes the larger cultural meaning and significance Cortesi
attributed to humanism, showing that the restoration of eloquence was no
mere matter of taste.
From homines docti to oratores

Cortesi divides his historical account of humanism’s restoration of Cicero-
nian Latin into four distinct (albeit slightly overlapping) periods cor-
responding to chronological development and stylistic improvement:
(1) fourteenth-century forerunners of humanism beginning with Dante;
(2) the first phase of true humanism, from roughly 1400 through the third
quarter of the century, from Leonardo Bruni to Platina; (3) a second, later
phase represented substantially by Roman humanists, roughly 1460–1490;33
(4) his own contemporaries.34 Of these the second period is given the most
attention (it constitutes about three-quarters of the whole text) and con-
tains the most detailed treatment; it provides nearly all of the information
on humanism’s historical development. The first period, on the contrary, is
presented as an afterthought, with Antonio urged by Alessandro to go back
and say what he thinks about Dante and Petrarch after he has already begun
with fifteenth-century figures.35 The third period is dealt with quickly and
rather superficially. The fourth is not directly described at all, as Antonio

34 It is tempting to make both more and less of these divisions, but ultimately they are the ones
indicated by Cortesi. One could make more by trying to discover a more subtle breakdown in
the second period. Antonio often treats humanists in mini-groups that seem to cohere according
to geography, occupation, or shared period of flourishing, and a general chronological flow from
Bruni to Platina is obvious (according to geography, e.g., the series Manetti–Alberti–Palla Strozzi–
Benedetto Accolti–Poggio is related to Florence; according to occupation, e.g., the series George of
Trebizond–Pomponio Leto–Antonio Loschi–Vittorino da Feltre–Gasparino Barzizza–Ognibene da
Lonigo–Lorenzo Valla embraces teachers; according to floruit, e.g., the observations that Boccaccio
was “about ten years younger than Petrarch” (Cortesi, DHD, 115.7–116.1: “Ioannes Boccaccius, sed
decennio fere minor quam Petrarcha”), and “Guarino was a contemporary of Bruni” (122.1–2:
“Leonardi igitur fere aequalis fuit Guarinus Veronensis, doctus magister”). Yet such groupings are
desultory, irregular, and inconsistent, and ultimately Antonio must be taken at his word when
he begs “for indulgence if chronological order is not observed, since all the humanists lived at
about the same time and were more or less contemporaries, and since their life spans in large
part overlapped” (117.1–4: “quoniam uno tempore omnes ac prope aequales fuerunt multique
sunt multorum aetatibus implicati, dabitis veniam si minus aetatum ordines servabuntur”). One
could also make less of this periodization by observing that nothing substantial seems to separate the
second from the third period and that some of their members overlap chronologically. Nevertheless,
Antonio clearly indicates a historical break (167.11–12: “sed iam ad inferiorem, si placet, aetatem
veniamus”), and thus Cortesi apparently wants these humanists, predominantly figures related to
Pomponio Leto’s academy in Rome, treated as a case apart.
35 See Cortesi, DHD, 113.5–13.
refuses to discuss his contemporaries;36 nevertheless, some of its salient
characteristics can be reconstructed from comments made throughout the
text. Cortesi characterizes each of these periods by describing the contri-
butions of singular individuals to particular themes, especially the recovery
of general canons of style, the growing ability to imitate Cicero, and the
revival of ancient literary genres that had been lost in the Middle Ages.
In the words of Cortesi’s Antonio, humanism has its origins in an age
completely bereft of eloquence, in the “dregs of all time” when the “orna-
ments of writing were absent” and “eloquence had utterly lost its voice.”37
This period brought forth famous works of literature, but none attained
to the standards and achievements of true eloquence. Enter Dante, whose
“famous poem” testifies to his “incredibly great talent” and to the “wonder”
of his “daring to treat such difficult and abstruse subjects in the vernac-
ular.” In one sense he was eloquent: “it is unbelievable how ardent and
forcible he was in persuading and moving.” And yet he did not possess the
proper linguistic skills: “if only he had excelled as highly in committing his
thoughts to Latin literature as he did in spreading the renown of his mother
tongue.”38 Dante was no humanist. Enter Petrarch, “whose intelligence and
industry is proven by his large number of books.” Unfortunately, “his style
is not really Latin and is sometimes downright frightful. His thoughts are
many but disjointed, the words are cast down at random, and everything
is composed rather more diligently than elegantly.”39
Nevertheless, Petrarch, as opposed to Dante, was able to play a founda-
tional role for humanism (in a manner similar to that found in Piccolomini
and Biondo):
He possessed such a great abundance of talent and memory that he was the
first to dare to call the pursuit of eloquence (studia eloquentiae) back to light:
36 For Antonio’s refusal, which he justifies by the lateness of the hour but which Alessandro and
Paolo ascribe to other motives, see Cortesi, DHD, 185.2–187.4. Four living humanists are, however,
treated in the text: Pomponio Leto, Giovanni Pontano, Ermolao Barbaro, and Giorgio Merula. For
the significance of their inclusion, see Ferraù, “Introduzione,” pp. 38–54, esp. 53–54, and below,
pp. 166–167.
37 Cortesi, DHD, 114.20–115.1: “in faece omnium saeculorum . . . illa scribendi ornamenta defuerunt”;
107.11: “ita reperiam eloquentiam obmutuisse.”
38 Ibid., 113.14–114.8: “praeclarum eius poema plane bene indicat incredibilem ingenii magnitudinem.
Mirabile illud certe fuit, quod res tam difficiles tamque abstrusas vulgari sermone auderet expli-
care . . . In permovendo autem et incitando non est credibile quam sit concitatus et vehemens.
Utinam tam bene cogitationes suas Latinis litteris mandare potuisset, quam bene patrium ser-
monem illustravit.”
39 Ibid., 114.9–14: “cuius de ingenio industriaque ex tam multis eius libris existimari potest . . . Huius
sermo nec est Latinus et aliquando horridior; sententiae autem multae sunt sed concisae, verba
abiecta, res compositae diligentius quam elegantius.”
for Italy was first enlivened, and equally persuaded and moved to this pursuit
by the affluence of his ability.40
Like Dante, Petrarch possessed the rhetorician’s signature capacity to per-

suade (impellere) the mind and to move (incitare) the emotions or passions,
but he lacked the proper language for real eloquence: “His vernacular poetry
shows how much this man could have achieved with his talent, if only he
had possessed the glory and magnificence of Latin.” His works can be
recommended for their usefulness (utilitas) rather than for pleasure (delec-
tatio); they are like “strong medicine, taken not because it is sweet but
because it is healthy.” Ultimately, though, “they please somehow despite
their inelegance,” and Petrarch is “held in high honor for his broad knowl-
edge and his reputation for native intelligence.”41 Petrarch, therefore, but
not Dante, is a kind of spiritual father of humanism; he cannot himself be
considered a true humanist, but he gave impetus to the movement through
his inspirational message, through his overwhelming desire for the ancient
eloquence he was unable to achieve.
Petrarch’s immediate successors did not move beyond his accomplish-
ment. Boccaccio’s “most remarkable intelligence” was “oppressed” by the
“fatal evil” of his style, and “Giovanni [Conversini] da Ravenna and Coluc-
cio Salutati, who never managed to rid themselves of harsh and gloomy
language, can be judged similarly.”42 Antonio notes that Boccaccio’s De
genealogia deorum is still read, since “it is useful, but it cannot be compared
to Petrarch’s ability.” On the other hand Giovanni’s Dialogues “can barely
40 Ibid., 114.14–17: “Fuit in illo ingenii atque memoriae tanta magnitudo ut primus ausus sit eloquentiae
studia in lucem revocare: nam huius ingenii affluentia primum Italia exhilarata et tanquam ad studia
impulsa atque incensa est” (emphasis mine). As for Piccolomini, the model for Cortesi here might
be Leonardo Bruni. Cf. Bruni’s Vite di Dante e del Petrarca in Bruni, Opere letterarie e politiche,
pp. 537–557, at 555–556. See also Chapter 1 above, note 19.
41 Cortesi, DHD, 114.18–115.6: “Declarant eius rhytmi, qui in vulgus feruntur, quantum ille vir
consequi potuisset ingenio, si Latini sermonis lumen et splendor affuisset . . . Sed, ut saluberrimae
potiones non suavitatis sed sanitatis causa dantur, sic eo non est delectatio petenda sed transferenda
utilitas, quanquam omnia eius, nescio quo pacto, sic inornata delectant. Huic ob multarum rerum
doctrinam et ingenii famam honores amplissimi habiti sunt.”
42 Ibid., 116.1–10: “huius etiam praeclarissimi ingenii cursum fatale illud malum oppres-
sit . . . Eodemque modo de Ioanne Ravennate et Coluccio Salutato iudicare licet, qui nunquam
etiam ab orationis asperitate moestitiaque abesse potuerunt.” The identification of Giovanni da
Ravenna with Conversini and not Malpaghini follows Witt, Footsteps, pp. 339–346. On Gio-
vanni Conversini, a teacher and author of many works including short treatises, an autobiography
(Rationarium vitae), and a dialogue on political philosophy (Dragmalogia), see Benjamin Kohl,
“Conversini (Conversano, Conversino), Giovanni (Giovanni da Ravenna),” in DBI, vol. XXVIII
(1983), pp. 574–578.
be read through even once,” and Salutati’s letters, “which used to be held
in honor, are not in circulation.”43
The position taken (sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly) in all
three authors in Chapter 1, and then combatted by Manetti, is here restated
and expounded: no Trecento figure, not even Salutati, achieved the Latin
style necessary to be worthy of the title of humanist. A similar stance will be
taken implicitly by Sabellico in Chapter 4. Few aspects of the texts under
consideration in this study could be more surprising to us. Scholars have
long been unsure what to call the forerunners of Petrarch in Padua and
elsewhere, men like Lovato dei Lovati and Albertino Mussato. Whereas
most prefer the designation “prehumanist” or “proto-humanist,” Roberto
Weiss and Ronald Witt have insisted on calling them humanists proper.44
Here we see, instead, that, outside of Florence, humanists tended to think
of Petrarch as the “prehumanist,” whereas they neglected his ancestors
and direct heirs altogether. This turn of events has been attributed, at
least with regard to Petrarch, largely to the change in taste evident in the
circle around Leonardo Bruni and its subsequent polemic against Petrarch’s
Latin.45 However steadfastly Manetti struggled to keep this rising tide of
anti-Petrarchan sentiment from sweeping the rest of Italy, Cortesi’s De
hominibus doctis shows how little effect he had.46
Echoing Piccolomini, Biondo, and Facio, Cortesi claims that true
humanism only began with assistance from outside Italy, in the form of a
teacher who could help the Italians overcome the inherited roughness of
their style: Manuel Chrysoloras. Through his teaching Chrysoloras man-
aged to turn the longing for eloquence inspired by Petrarch into, if not
eloquence proper, then the true beginning of such:
After the studies of the greatest arts had lain so long, sorrowful and alone,
in mourning, everyone knows that Chrysoloras the Byzantine brought the
teaching of them to Italy from beyond the sea. Under his tutelage the
Italians, once completely lacking in practice and ars, learned Greek and
applied themselves earnestly to the pursuit of eloquence.47
43 Cortesi, DHD, 121.14–18: “Dialogi Ioannis Ravennatis vix semel leguntur et Coluccii Epistolae,
quae tum in honore erant, non apparent; sed Boccaccii Deorum Genealogiam legimus, utilem illam
quidem, sed non tamen cum Petrarchae ingenio conferendam.”
44 See Witt, Footsteps, pp. 18–19.
45 See Hankins, “Petrarch and the Canon of Neo-Latin Literature.”
46 Incidentally, Cortesi’s characterization of Petrarch’s works as useful and medicinal might also
indicate that another of Hankins’ findings (see previous note), namely that Petrarch’s fame outside
of Italy rested on his status as a moral philosopher, might apply inside Italy as well.
47 Cortesi, DHD, 111.8–13: “Nam posteaquam maximarum artium studia tam diu in sordibus aegra
desertaque iacuerunt, satis constat Grisoloram Bisantium transmarinam illam disciplinam in Italiam
As we saw in Chapter 1, attributing the revival of Latin eloquence to
Chrysoloras was common among Quattrocento humanists, who, however,
tended not to explain the mechanism at work. Antonio is not as explicit as
we might like, but he does hint, along Biondo’s lines, that the mechanism
had to do with Chrysoloras’ students’ translation and imitation of Greek
works, especially historiography, hailed here and elsewhere as “the single
greatest rhetorical genre.”48
There was, however, something more fundamental. As Antonio explains
a bit later, in a digression aimed at establishing the proper relationship
between ars and imitatio:
without theoretical knowledge (artificium) we just as easily strive after vice
as virtue in our imitation . . . For no one is so full of natural ability and so
diligent in imitation as to be able to compose well without knowledge of
the ars of speech.49
This had been the stumbling block for Petrarch and the other forerunners
of humanism, who in their imitation of the ancients could not distin-
guish between usus and abusus. It was this sensitivity that Chrysoloras
provided. He was no mere language teacher in the strict sense, but rather
an authority on the theory, the ars behind the stylistic eloquence that was a
common hallmark of the ancient Greek and Latin literary traditions. This
explanation resembles somewhat the one provided by Christine Smith,
who likewise argues that Chrysoloras provided the humanists with the
conceptual and theoretical tools they had hitherto lacked.50 In her esti-
mation, however, Chrysoloras’ contribution consisted essentially in teach-
ing humanists how to “transfer . . . master terms and concepts” from one
branch of knowledge to another. She argues that humanists adopted from
Chrysoloras the “decompartmentalization of knowledge characteristic of
Byzantine learning,” which “emphasized the relations, rather than the dis-
tinctions, between branches of human learning, fostering the formation
of the cultivated generalist . . . rather than the narrow specialist or profes-
sional.” Smith concludes that “this method placed an abundance of new
advexisse; quo doctore adhibito primum nostri homines totius exercitationis atque artis ignari,
cognitis Graecis litteris, vehementer sese ad eloquentiae studia excitaverunt.”
48 Ibid., 113.1–3: “incredibile eorum studium fuit in scribendis vertendisque ex Graecis in Latinum
sermonem historiis. Sed cum historia munus sit unum vel maximum oratorium.” This is an echo of
Cicero, De oratore, 2, 15, 62: “Videtisne quantum munus sit oratoris historia? Haud scio an flumine
orationis et varietate maximum.” See note 116 below.
49 Ibid., 120.3–9: “sine artificio tam facile possumus vitia quam virtutes imitando consectari . . . Nulli
est enim tanta ubertas ingenii, nulli tam diligens imitandi industria quam sine huius [sc. disserendi]
artis ratione bene disposita ac praeclare inventa possit effingere.”
50 Smith, Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism, pp. 133–149. See also Chapter 1, note 17.
terms, categories, and concepts in the hands of Italian humanists, which
they were free to apply to the subjects that interested them.”51 Smith may
be correct about the benefits of this aspect of Byzantine education, but it
is clearly not what Cortesi had in mind, nor is it, in my opinion, likely
to be what Guarino and others appreciated so much about their beloved
teacher.52 Cortesi shows concern not for the ability to speak in general
terms about a wide variety of subjects but rather for the very ability to
speak eloquently, regardless of the subject. What hindered Petrarch was
not overspecialization but rather ignorance of what makes certain word
combinations sound good and others not. He did not know which authors
and passages were worth imitating in which circumstances. In Cortesi’s
view, Chrysoloras acted as the guide to proper composition, illuminating
for Petrarch’s heirs the distinction between “virtuous” and “vicious” imita-
tion. This marked the true starting point of humanism, whose development
consisted in the steady recovery of the “ars of speech” and the increasingly
correct application of this ars to the imitation of the best model, Cicero.
With Chrysoloras’ students begins Cortesi’s second period, whose first
and greatest representative is Leonardo Bruni.53 According to Antonio, “he
was the first to reform the uncouth method of writing, giving it a rhythmic
kind of sound, and he provided humanists with something really quite
brilliant.”54 Bruni is praised generally for his style and specifically for his
orations and translations, but above all for his revival of the ancient genre
of funeral oratory and his historiography.55 Regarding his excellence in the
latter, Bruni is judged “easily to tower over all who came after him.”56
Yet Bruni’s reputation is not nearly as pristine here as it was in Biondo’s
or Facio’s work, and even Piccolomini’s awareness of Bruni’s limitations
pales in comparison to the harsher criticism of him that apparently marked
Cortesi’s time. Referring to current dissatisfaction with Bruni, Antonio
notes, “I see that he is no longer refined enough, nor is he acceptable
51 Ibid., p. 137.
52 Cf. Witt, Footsteps, p. 343, n. 14, for similar skepticism about Smith’s explanation.
53 For Bruni, see Cortesi, DHD, 117.7–118.13, 120.21–121.26, and 185.21–22.
54 Ibid., 117.8–118.2: “hic primus inconditam scribendi consuetudinem ad numerosum quendam
sonum inflexit et attulit hominibus nostris aliquid certe splendidius.” Cortesi might be referring to
prose rhythm, an issue that he discusses at length elsewhere in DHD. See below, note 81.
55 It has been argued that funeral oratory was actually first revived by Pier Paolo Vergerio, not Bruni.
See McManamon, Funeral Oratory, p. 10; and McManamon, Pierpaolo Vergerio the Elder, esp.
p. 39. Witt, however, disagrees and gives Vergerio’s style a poor evaluation. See Witt, Footsteps,
pp. 371–372, n. 91, and 377–381. On Bruni as an historian, see the recent synthesis by Gary Ianziti,
Writing History in Renaissance Italy: Leonardo Bruni and the Uses of the Past (Cambridge, Mass.,
2012).
56 Cortesi, DHD, 121.7–8: “omnibus, mea sententia, qui post eum fuerunt, facile praestiterit.”
to a more delicate palate.” And Alessandro adds, “I have always praised
Leonardo as learned and eloquent and the prince of his age. But you
know how humanists are nowadays, praising nothing unless it is cultivated,
elegant, polished, ornate.”57 Nevertheless, it is agreed that Bruni represents
a major advance with respect to his predecessors.58
After Bruni comes Guarino Veronese, who is treated in a similar manner:
first praise for what he has done, then criticism.59 In this case Guarino’s
high reputation rests entirely on his activity as a teacher: “His home was
like a kind of workshop of the bonae artes,” and “just about everyone
who achieved some fame for writing in that age acknowledged himself a
product of his school.”60 Guarino’s writings, however, do not recommend
him nearly as highly. In addition to relating George of Trebizond’s criticism
of Guarino’s style – “abrupt and juvenile” – Antonio reports the view that
“Guarino would have helped his reputation if he had written nothing
at all; . . . his writings not only do his name no honor, they continually
diminish it.” Nevertheless Antonio ultimately defends Guarino’s Latin
as possessing “a certain gravitas,” saying, “if he did not achieve perfect
eloquence (whose form he saw as if through a fog), he is at least worthy of
some praise for his writings.”61
Thus the dialogue continues, praising, critiquing, and comparing
humanists, all the while noting their contributions to the ars of speech.
Other teachers like Vittorino da Feltre and Gasparino Barzizza are men-
tioned besides Guarino, but it is George of Trebizond who stands out
for Cortesi as the next great instructor in the precepts, the artificium, of
57 Ibid., 121.13–14: “Et ego video hunc nondum satis esse limatum nec delicatiori fastidio tolerabilem”;
121.23–26: “Sane quidem semper Leonardum ut doctum hominem, ut eloquentem, ut illius aetatis
principem laudavi. Sed nosti morem nostrorum hominum, qui nihil nisi excultum, nisi elegans,
nisi politum, nisi pictum probant.”
58 See ibid., 121.14–22. According to Black, “New Laws,” p. 142, “Cortesi damned . . . Leonardo
Bruni . . . with faint praise.” In my view, however, the praise is not faint but rather relative, and in
the context of the dialogue as a whole there does not seem to be any reason to take the positive
assessment of Bruni as anything but genuine, esp. considering the fact that Bruni is listed at the
end of the dialogue as one of the four greatest humanists of the fifteenth century (see below, p. 153).
59 For Guarino, see Cortesi, DHD, 122.1–123.16.
60 Ibid., 122.4–5: “huius domus quasi officina quaedam fuit bonarum artium”; 122.12–15: “ut omnes
fere illius aetatis, qui aliquam sunt scribendi laudem consequuti, sese omnino faterentur ex huius
hominis umbraculis . . . profectos” (the line numbers are incorrect on this page of Ferraù’s ed.,
which gives 3–4 and 11–14, respectively, for these quotations).
61 Ibid., 123.2–16: “Hunc Georgius Trapezuntius exagitat ut praefractum et in compositione puerilem.
Memoria teneo quendam familiarem meum solitum dicere, melius Guarinum eius famae consuluisse
si nihil umquam scripsisset; . . . non modo nomen eius non illustretur scriptis, sed etiam in dies magis
obscuretur . . . nec temere Guarino gravitatem quandam in scribendo . . . adimo; . . . at laudandus
est ut qui multum nostris hominibus profuerit et ut qui, si non perfectam eloquentiam (cuius
speciem quasi per caliginem quandam viderat) at aliquam in scribendo laudem sit consequutus.”
eloquence.62 Once again, it is a Greek who brings to his Italian students
the theoretical knowledge of eloquence, his own mastery of which is here
attributed to his study of the Peripatetics, who “treat the art of speaking
(ratio dicendi) more deeply than other philosophers.”63 Lorenzo Valla is also
given credit for making an important contribution to the broad diffusion
of correct Latin with his teaching and writings.64 An “expert on Roman
history and lexicography,” Valla was “an incredibly learned writer whose
sharpness of mind is generally agreed to have revivified all of Italy.”65 Nev-
ertheless, he was “annoying and abusive” (molestus . . . et stomachosus), and,
what is worse in Cortesi’s eyes, he did not achieve the highest style. For,
although “Valla wrote so diligently about the proper use (ratio) of Latin
vocabulary, he himself does not seem to have spoken Latin well enough.”66
Antonio elaborates:
Writing and teaching rely on different principles. Valla tried to explain the
meaning of words and to teach ways (although not correct ones) to structure
speech, and he certainly cleaned up the polluted language of his time and
improved his pupils. But there is a different way of writing, which Valla
either disregarded or didn’t know. A fine, sweet, and incorrupt Latin style
requires a certain cementing and grouping of words [i.e., periodic structure],
by which concinnitas is produced with respect to sound.67
62 For Vittorino, see ibid., 140.6–141.2; for Barzizza, 141.2–5; for George, 139.17–23. For the possibility
that the figure of “Gasparinus Veronensis” (141.2) is to be identified with Gaspare da Verona instead
of Barzizza (who properly would be Bergomensis, not Veronensis), as well as the possibility that
Cortesi simply conflates the two, see ibid., pp. 141–142, n. 42.
63 Ibid., 139.20–23: “adhibuit in scribendo illa adiumenta quae habuerat a Peripateticis, qui, praeter
coeteros philosophos, rationem dicendi latioribus quibusdam praeceptis complectuntur.” Interest-
ingly, Cortesi is the first humanist to make recourse to Aristotle in his theory of imitation, which
he does in his letter to Poliziano (Ciceronian Controversies, pp. 10–12). See McLaughlin, Literary
Imitation, p. 205, although Cortesi’s idea of art imitating nature has also been attributed to Seneca
(Ciceronian Controversies, p. 237, n. 22).
64 For Valla, see Cortesi, DHD, 142.5–144.20.
65 Ibid., 142.5–7: “scriptor egregie doctus, cuius ingenii acumine constare inter omnes audio Italiam
esse recreatam, sed erat acer et maledicus et toto genere paulo asperior, diligentissimus tamen
Romanarum rerum atque verborum investigator.”
66 Ibid., 142.9–10: “molestus erat et stomachosus”; 144.6–10: “tam diligenter Valla de ratione verborum
Latinorum scripserit, ipse non bene satis loqui Latine videatur.”
67 Ibid., 144.10–17: “Non est enim . . . eadem ratio scribendi quam praecipiendi. Conabatur Valla vim
verborum exprimere et quasi vias (sed eas non rectas) tradebat ad structuram orationis, in quo tamen
et inquinatam dicendi consuetudinem emendavit et multum acuit iuventutem. Sed est certe alia
scribendi ratio quae a Valla aut praetermissa est aut ignorata. Florens enim ille et suavis et incorruptus
Latinus sermo postulat sane conglutinationem et comprehensionem quandam verborum, quibus
conficitur ipsa concinnitas ad sonum.” As if to emphasize that Cicero’s periodic style is meant,
Cortesi silently quotes Cicero’s Brutus and Orator in his description. See Cortesi, DHD, p. 144,
apparatus fontium.
Valla was famous for championing Quintilian over Cicero, so it should
come as no surprise that he did not write in Ciceronian periods. To Cortesi’s
mind, however, Valla’s preference was a mistake resulting from a lack of
ars, which his age, despite its many advances, had not yet recovered.
The same difficulty, Cortesi argues, inhibited progress in the restoration
of ancient literary genres. As noted above, Bruni is honored for reviving
ancient funeral oratory and receives high marks as an historian. Neverthe-
less, “in history he strove after a Livian kind of style; I would not dare call
it Ciceronian.”68 Biondo Flavio, the Quattrocento’s other foremost histo-
rian, also comes in for criticism. Even though “he wrote many good works
of history” and “excelled his contemporaries in invention,” ultimately he
“seems to be an example for others that they should write with greater
artificium and in a better style.”69 Oratory suffered from the same lack
of theoretical knowledge. Consider Poggio, who was “like the picture of
eloquence for his times,” and who “left orations that show his fluency
and wondrous mental powers.” Alas, “if he had had as much artificium
in writing as natural ability, he surely would have attained more glory for
speaking than all his contemporaries.”70 Similarly, Leonardo Giustinian’s
famous funeral oration for Carlo Zeno is criticized as “good but not noble
enough in its language and relying more on a certain kind of copia than on
an understanding of the rules of rhetoric (oratorium artificium).” The fault
is not Giustinian’s but of his age, “which thought that eloquence in speech
came from abundance, but did not know when enough was enough.”71
Likewise in poetry.72 Antonio Beccadelli’s achievement in reviving ancient
68 Ibid., 121.4–5: “Consectatur in historia quiddam Livianum, non ausim dicere Ciceronianum.”
69 Ibid., 148.3–149.2: “prosequutus est historiam diligenter sane ac probe . . . Admonere enim reliquos
videtur ut maiori artificio ac illustrioribus litteris historiam aggrediantur. In excogitando tamen
quid scriberet omnibus his viris, qui fuerunt fere eius aequales meo quidem iudicio praestitit.” The
discussions of historiography in De hominibus doctis would themselves go on to spark humanist
theorizing on historiography. See Cortesi, DHD, p. 138, n. 37; Black, “New Laws,” p. 139; Patrick
Baker, “Launching the ars historica: Paolo Cortesi’s Dialogue with Cicero on Historiography,” in
Machtelt Isräels and Louis A. Waldman (eds.), Renaissance Studies in Honor of Joseph Connors, 2
vols. (Florence, 2013), vol. II, pp. 453–462; and Baker, “Writing History in Cicero’s Shadow.”
70 For Poggio, see Cortesi, DHD, 135.3–136.6; quotations: “illis temporibus in Poggio Florentino
quaedam species eloquentiae apparuit, in quo si tale artificium fuisset quale ingenium ad scribendum
fuit, omnes profecto eius aequales dicendi gloria vicisset. Is orationes reliquit, quae et facundiam et
mirificam ingenii facilitatem ostendunt.”
71 Ibid., 129.4–7: “bona illa quidem sed non satis splendida verbis et quae magis copiam quandam
quam oratorium artificium prae se ferat. Nam haec aetas ponebat eloquentiam in orationis quadam
abundantia nec plane cognovit quid esset satis.” On the funeral oration for Carlo Zeno see McMana-
mon, Funeral Oratory, pp. 88–91. For the Venetian patrician Giustinian, see Cortesi, DHD, 129.1–5
and King, Venetian Humanism, pp. 383–385, with further bibliography.
72 It is interesting that poets considered excellent by Facio only thirty years earlier – Loschi, Marrasio,
Strozzi – are not even mentioned by Cortesi.
meters is recorded, but little progress seems to have been made thereafter.
Indeed, the age could boast of few poets, so few, in fact, that even one
as bad (in Antonio’s estimation) as Porcellio could achieve the “highest
popularity.”73 Chief among Porcellio’s many faults, narrated here at length,
was his lack of varietas, the metrical and stylistic variety that makes a
collection of poems lively (since a constant meter and even style would
otherwise lead to boredom).74 Porcellio wrote Virgilian hexameters which
“had nothing to recommend them but evenness.” The problem was not
Porcellio’s alone, but rather of “his age,” which “utterly lacked varietas.”75
Much worse, as can be gathered from the critique of Maffeo Vegio’s “pre-
sumptuous” continuation of the Aeneid, the age also “lacked knowledge of
the hidden artificium” of poetry, preferring instead to rely on “inspiration”
(vi naturae).76 Although the specific object of critique here is Vegio, Cortesi
likely has in mind the Neoplatonic poetics being propounded in his own
day in Florence by Cristoforo Landino and especially by Marsilio Ficino,
who had famously declared that “poetry is not a product of ars but of some
frenzy (furor).”77
Yet progress in all these genres, as well as in general Latin style, can be
perceived in other humanists starting around the middle of the century.
Giovanni Pontano “first restored poetry to greater splendor and grasped
metrical variety,” and he was therefore “the prince of all the great humanists
in this connection.”78 Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini distinguished himself in
73 For Porcellio, a retainer of princes in Naples, Rimini, and Milan who was crowned poet laureate
in 1452 by Frederick III, see Cortesi, DHD, 151.4–152.10. In addition to the bibliography provided
by Ferraù in n. 57, see Ulrich Pfisterer, “Filaretes Künstlerwissen und der Wiederaufgefundene
Traktat De arte fuxoria des Giannantonio Porcellio de’ Pandoni,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen
Institutes in Florenz, 46 (2002), pp. 121–151; and Fedele Marletta, “Per la biografia di Porcelio dei
Pandoni,” La Rinascita, 3 (1940), pp. 842–881.
74 For the meaning and importance of varietas in poetry, see Cortesi, De hominibus doctis dialogus (ed.
Graziosi, 1973), p. 99, n. 88.
75 Cortesi, DHD, 152.1–7: “ad summam nominis famam pervenerat; ex quo potest quanta tum fuerit
ex omni numero poetarum paucitas. Exametri enim eius . . . nihilque afferant praeter aequalitatem.
Caruit omnino varietate haec aetas.”
76 Ibid., 127.6–8: “Audax iste . . . qui Maroni voluerit vicarius succedere”; 127.10–14: “Nam, cum poeta
vi naturae inflammetur . . . ; cum . . . reconditum artificium non agnoscant.” For the epic poet
Vegio, who served in the curia of Eugenius IV as abbreviator and then datary, see ibid., 127.2–8; and
Michael J. Putnam’s “Introduction,” in Maffeo Vegio, Short Epics, ed. and tr. Michael J. Putnam,
with James Hankins (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), pp. vii–lviii, esp. p. vii and the bibliography in n. 1.
77 For Ficino and Landino as the targets of this polemic, see Ferraù, “Introduzione,” pp. 46–53, esp.
51–52; Black, “New Laws,” p. 136, n. 52, considers this notion “far-fetched.” Ferraù cites Ficino
on p. 47, from a letter to Baccio Ugolini, in Marsilio Ficino, Opera (Basilea, 1576), pp. 634–635:
“ . . . poesim non ab arte sed a furore aliquo proficisci.”
78 For Pontano, see Cortesi, DHD, 152.14–19; quotations from 152.14–17: “Modo enim hoc scribendi
genus magnificentius renovatum est et cognita primum numerorum varietas a Pontano principe
huius memoriae doctissimorum hominum.”
oratory, history, and poetry and “could be called the only true humanist in
this army of learned men.”79 Antonio Campano was the first to have “a more
flowery and brilliant kind of style.” His orations “are highly approved,” and
his writing “seemed to flow as if composed according to a kind of rhythm.”
Cortesi notes, however, that the restoration of rhythmic clausulae to Latin
prose was not a result of theoretical knowledge but of Campano’s fortunate
imitation of the right sources, “such that his speech had a very agreeable
and rhythmical cadence.”80 True understanding of prose rhythm, a topic
that Cicero had treated at length in his Orator and that crops up several
times in De hominibus doctis, would have to wait.81 Be that as it may,
eloquence was moving forward. Several other individuals are singled out
for the quality of their Latin style, such as the rival philologists Niccolò
Perotti and Domizio Calderini, and extremely high praise is reserved for the
Byzantine Theodore Gaza and for Cortesi’s former teacher Platina.82 Gaza
was “the first to join the highest eloquence with the highest philosophy.”
His life was so virtuous and his style so excellent that “he was rightly judged
79 For Piccolomini, see ibid., 153.5–154.8; quotation from 154.2–3: “Licet enim hunc prope solum
oratorem ex hac acie doctorum adducere.” For the translation of orator as “true humanist” in this
context, see the discussion on p. 154 below.
80 For the Neapolitan Campano, professor of rhetoric in Perugia, member of the papal curia, and
bishop of Crotone and then Teramo, see ibid., 155.10–156.8; quotations: “Hoc in viro primum
apparuit florentius ac splendidius quoddam orationis genus . . . Orationes autem eius valde proban-
tur . . . Utebatur facili et ita candido quodam scribendi genere ut numeris quibusdam adstrictus
fuere videatur; quamquam numerus orationis abest ingeniis nostris, ita tamen imitandi quadam
industria orationem inflexerat ad sonum ut cadat plerumque iucunde et numerose.” In addition
to the bibliography on p. 156, n. 62, see also Flavio Di Bernardo, Un vescovo umanista alla corte
pontificia: Giannantonio Campano (1429–1477) (Rome, 1975); Frank-Rutger Hausmann, “Giovanni
Antonio Campano,” in DBI, vol. XVII (1974), pp. 424–429; and Susanna de Beer, The Poetics of
Patronage: Poetry as Self-Advancement in Giannantonio Campano (Turnhout, 2012).
81 There is a digression devoted specifically to the issue of prose rhythm in DHD, 156.7–158.4. As
Ferraù notes (ibid., p. 157, n. 63), knowledge of classical numerus had actually been available since
Barzizza’s De compositione (1423) and is evinced in the works of Piccolomini and Bruni. Bruni
even considers it an important component of preserving the tenor of the Greek original in Latin
translations; see his De interpretatione recta in Bruni, Opere letterarie, pp. 150–192, specifically at 158,
162, 166, and 192, as well as in the general discussion on pp. 164–178. Nevertheless this knowledge
was seldom put into practice before the 1490s, on which see John O. Ward, “Cicero and Quintilian,”
in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. III, pp. 77–87. Prose rhythm is alluded to several
times in the Brutus; see A.E. Douglas, “Introduction,” in Marcus Tullius Cicero, Brutus, ed. A.E.
Douglas (Oxford, 1966), pp. ix–lxii, at xxx.
82 For the tireless commentator and lexicographer Perotti, archbishop of Siponto, who was best
known for his Cornucopiae and for his feud with Calderini, see Cortesi, DHD, 159.6–10, and Jean-
Louis Charlet, “Perotti (Niccolò),” in Nativel (ed.), Centuriae Latinae, pp. 601–605. For Calderini,
who served as secretary to Cardinal Bessarion and specialized in commentaries on difficult texts,
see Cortesi, DHD, 159.9–161.5 with related bibliography; see also Alessandro Perosa, “Calderini
(Calderinus, Caldarinus, de Caldarinis), Domizio (Domitius, Domicius, Domicus),” in DBI, vol.
XVI (1973), pp. 597–605; and Maurizio Campanelli, Polemiche e filologia ai primordi della stampa:
le Observationes di Domizio Calderini (Rome, 2001).
the leading man (princeps) by the common consent of Italy.”83 Platina, in
addition to his “affable and perfectly urbane style,” was, “to the extent
permitted by his age, the wisest of men.”84
Further advances, albeit not perfection, were then to be achieved in
Cortesi’s third period. The twenty-four humanists grouped together by
Antonio into this “more recent generation”85 were for the most part active in
Rome and were affiliated specifically with Pomponio Leto’s circle, although
humanists unaffiliated with Rome do also appear.86 In comparison to the
second period, the information on this generation is sparse and tends to
be superficial. Nevertheless a focus on poetry and oratory emerges. Poetic
distinction is said to have been earned by the Pomponiani Settimuleio
Campano, Paolo Marsi, and Flavio Pantagato, as well as by Bonino Mom-
brizio, professor of Latin and Greek in Milan, and Cherubino Quarqualio,
a friend of Ficino and secretary to cardinals Cosimo Orsini and Giovanni
Conti.87 Antonio reserves his highest praise, however, for the Hungarian
student of Guarino, Janus Pannonius – “the one to overshadow all the
rest in poetic glory” – although this praise is challenged by Alessandro,
according to whom Janus had all the faults of the earlier poets and “did not
even once suspect what in the world varietas was.”88 In oratory, honorable
83 For Gaza, an intimate of Bessarion renowned both for teaching Greek and for translating Greek
scientific texts into Latin, see Cortesi, DHD, 160.15–162.1; quotations: “in eo primum cum summa
philosophia summam eloquentiam coniunctam”; “Iure igitur totius Italiae consensu est princeps
iudicatus.” See also Concetta Bianca, “Gaza, Teodoro,” in DBI, vol. LII (1999), pp. 737–746.
84 For the papal librarian and biographer Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi), see Cortesi, DHD, 166.1–
167.10; quotations: “quantum illius aetatis iudicio patiebatur, non dubitarem eum unum inter
multos sapientissimum appellare. Erat enim is cum sermone comis et perurbanus . . . ” See also
Mary Ella Milham’s “Introduction” to Platina, On Right Pleasure and Good Health: A Critical
Edition and Translation of De Honesta Voluptate et Valetudine, ed. and tr. M.E. Milham (Tempe,
1998), pp. 1–45.
86 On the Roman connection of the majority of humanists in this generation, see Ferraù, “Intro-
duzione,” pp. 38–39, and passim in the notes to each figure in Cortesi, DHD, pp. 168–185.
87 For Settimuleio Campano (called il Campanino), who was arrested and tortured along with Platina
in relation to the plot against Paul II, see Cortesi, DHD, 168.20–169.2 with related bibliography. For
Paolo Marsi, a professor of rhetoric in Rome, see Cortesi, DHD, 176.3–11 and Paolo Pontari, “Marsi,
Paolo,” in DBI, vol. LXX (2008), pp. 741–744. For Flavio Pantagato (Giovan Battista Capranica),
elected bishop of Fermo in 1478 and killed there in 1484 via defenestration for alleged philander-
ing, see Cortesi, DHD, 176.12–177.9 and Massimo Miglio, “Capranica, Giovan Battista (Flavius
Panthagatus),” in DBI, vol. XIX (1976), pp. 154–157. For Bonino Mombrizio, see Cortesi, DHD,
174.7–10 and Serena Spanò Martinelli, “Mombrizio (Montebretto), Bonino,” in DBI, vol. LXXV
(2011), pp. 471–475. For Quarqualio, see Cortesi, DHD, 180.11–182.1 with related bibliography.
88 Cortesi, DHD, 172.8–10: “nec ipse unquam suspicatus est quaenam essent numerorum varietates.”
For more on this exchange and its implications for Italian exceptionalism in humanism, see below,
pp. 164–165. On Janus Pannonius, bishop of Pécs, a friend of and then conspirator against King
Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, see Cortesi, DHD, 171.14–20. See also Marianna D. Birnbaum,
Janus Pannonius, Poet and Politician (Zagreb, 1981); and Ian Thomson, Humanist Pietas: The
Panegyric of Ianus Pannonius on Guarinus Veronensis (Bloomington, Ind., 1998), pp. 1–65.
mention is given to Antonio Lolli and to Ludovico Carbone, the latter
of whom pronounced the funeral oration for Guarino Veronese. Bernardo
Giustinian’s Oratio apud Sixtum IV, held in Rome on December 2, 1471, is
described as “affluent and rich in its language.”89 Historiography, however,
and another activity one might expect to find – philology – are barely
mentioned.90
At the end of the dialogue Antonio picks out four individuals from the
whole history of humanism for special praise:
Leonardo Bruni, the prince of his age, will please us enough if we look to
him for dignity of expression and copia. No less agreeable was Theodore
Gaza’s learned, pithy, and sweet style. As for Antonio Campano, what
magnificence, what ornament did his style lack? And who showed more
natural ability than Poggio in his ease in speaking, who so much native
intelligence? It is amazing how much each one pleases in his own way.91
Notably, all of these humanists belong to the second period, whose weak
division, which as we saw above started around mid-century, seems to be
incorporated in the choice of two earlier humanists, Bruni and Poggio, and
two later ones, Gaza and Campano. Poggio’s especial importance likely
comes as much from his ability in speaking as from another attribute:
“He applied his whole soul to imitating Cicero, which he practiced every
day.”92
Nevertheless, none of these humanists was simply good without reserva-
tion, for all, per the title of the dialogue, were merely homines docti (learned
89 For the esteemed orator (but otherwise obscure) Antonio Lolli, who was a papal chaplain and
apostolic secretary to Pius II and secretary to Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, see Cortesi, DHD,
180.11–182.2 with related bibliography; see also the final paragraph before the “Fonti e Bibl.” section
(p. 441, col. 1) of Marco Pellegrini, “Loli (Lolli), Gregorio (Goro),” in DBI, vol. LXV (2005),
pp. 438–441. For Ludovico Carbone, a popular orator and a professor of rhetoric and humanae
litterae in Ferrara, see Cortesi, DHD, 184.6–185.2 with related bibliography and Lao Paoletti,
“Carbone, Ludovico,” in DBI, vol. XIX (1976), pp. 699–703. For the Venetian statesman, orator,
and historian Bernardo Giustinian, see Cortesi, DHD, 183.5–8; quotation: “affluenti et copioso.”
For the identification of this oration, which the text merely describes as “illa Romae habita” (183.8),
see ibid., p. 183, n. 94. Further on Giustinian, see Patricia H. Labalme, Bernardo Giustiniani, a
Venetian of the Quattrocento (Rome, 1969) and King, Venetian Humanism, pp. 381–383.
90 Flavio Pantagato is said to have written a Life of Trajan (Cortesi, DHD, 177.8–9; Ferraù [ibid.,
p. 177, n. 86] cannot confirm the existence of this work), and Lorenzo Bonincontri di San Miniato
is said to have written a work of history “as well as he could” (183.9–184.1: “quoquo modo potuit”).
Lorenzo’s commentary on Manilius (184.1–5) is the only philological work explicitly mentioned in
this generation.
91 Ibid., 185.21–186.1: “Leonardus Arretinus, illius aetatis princeps, satis nos delectabit, si in eo ampli-
tudinem et copiam requisiverimus; nec minus iucunditatis habet erudita illa Theodori Gazae et
sententiosa et mollis oratio. Iam vero Antonio Campano quod lumen orationis, quae ornamenta
desunt? Quid Poggi ingeniosa in dicendo facilitas, quis coeterorum praeclara ingenia? Mirum est
quantum in suo quisque genere delectet.”
92 Ibid., 135.8–9: “tendebat toto animo et quotidiano quodam usu ad effingendum M. Tullium.”
men), not, as Facio or Biondo would have said, oratores (orators). This is
an important distinction for Cortesi, one which he signals near the begin-
ning of the dialogue when his own character, Paolo, says, “let’s continue
with the discussion we had started about learned men (hominibus doctis);
I wouldn’t dare yet call them orators (oratoribus).”93 As Giacomo Ferraù
has explained, the point is to call attention to the distance separating the
humanists from the objects of their imitation: the oratores of ancient Rome,
the Latin stylists whose history Cicero had written in his Brutus (the work
that provides Cortesi with his own literary model).94 Admittedly, one doc-
tus homo in the dialogue is called an orator – Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini –
and thus Antonio’s description of him was translated above as “the only
true humanist (solum oratorem) in this army of learned men (ex hac acie
doctorum).”95 Is this praise hyperbolic?96 At any rate it is not extended to
anyone else, not even the four greats exalted at the end of the dialogue. For
all intents and purposes, the men of Cicero’s time were oratores, whereas
the humanists were homines docti whose project was to become oratores
through the revival of studia doctrinae, or studia eloquentiae. The path was
long, and, as Cicero himself reminds us, “nihil est enim simul et inventum
et perfectum” (Brutus, xviii.71).
Was the humanist project then ever completed? Did it ever produce true
oratores? No unequivocal answer emerges from De hominibus doctis, but
Cortesi implies that such has indeed happened in his own generation. One
indication is given at the end of the dialogue. There Paolo and Alessandro
beg Antonio to give his opinion about living humanists, which he politely
but steadfastly refuses to do. While making excuses he notes that Paolo
would take greater pleasure in “the praises of the living than of the dead,
93 Ibid., 110.2–4: “Sed pergamus potius ad ea quae coepimus de hominibus doctis, oratoribus enim
non ausim iam dicere.”
94 Ferraù, “Introduzione,” p. 9, n. 10. At one point in the dialogue, the appellation homines docti is
made equivalent to diserti, or “the well-spoken,” a term that indicates eloquence but on a level
inferior to one who is truly eloquens. See Cortesi, DHD, 107.8–9: “Quaeritis igitur quanti et quales
in disertorum numero habiti sint et qui mihi ad aliquam eloquentiae laudem maxime accessisse
videantur.” See Thesaurus linguae latinae, fasc. V.1.2, sub voce “disertus,” IV (col. 1377). The phrase
as used by Cortesi here is borrowed from Cicero’s Brutus, xxxv.135 (see Cortesi, DHD, p. 107,
apparatus fontium), where it is applied to orators who flourished before Latin reached its maturity
in the generation of Antonius and Crassus.
95 See above, note 79.
96 The possible insincerity of Antonio’s praise is suggested by the fact that Cortesi’s treatment of
Piccolomini is modeled very closely on Cicero’s portrait of Marcus Porcius Cato in the Brutus
(xv.61ff.) (see Ferraù, “Introduzione,” p. 12). As emerges in the Brutus (lxxxv.294), Cicero’s portrait
of Cato is itself insincere. Cortesi’s treatment of Piccolomini might then be equally insincere,
although such depends on the meanings Cortesi intended to attribute to his various intertextual
borrowings and his assumptions about his readers’ ability to recognize the source.
since you perhaps think that the studia eloquentiae have been advanced
by more illustrious writings in our time.”97 Paolo does not respond, but
Antonio’s assumption that his interlocutors esteem their contemporaries
more highly than their predecessors is partly confirmed by Alessandro, who
attributes Antonio’s reticence to a fear of “diminishing the glory of those
you have mentioned through a comparison to the living.” He elaborates:
This is what I think about them in general: they devoted themselves whole-
heartedly to every kind of learning, but they did not achieve the beauty
and flower of Latin style, which you cannot deny has been more elegantly
cultivated by the men of our age and increased with greater artificium.98
Antonio concurs about the excellence of “our fellows,” saying that they
“have recently discovered (inventum) or explained (illustratum) what was
unknown for about a thousand years.”99
Another indication that humanists of Cortesi’s time have become true
oratores is provided by the way in which Antonio and the others judge their
predecessors. By ascribing Bernardo Giustinian’s deficiencies in oratory, or
Porcellio’s in poetry, or Valla’s in periodic syntax, or Poggio’s in general
style to their age’s ignorance of oratorium artificium, the implication is that
the current age, on the contrary, does possess knowledge of these rules;
otherwise it could not judge them on such grounds.100 This theoretical
knowledge is what the forerunners of humanism completely lacked, and
what teachers like Chrysoloras, George of Trebizond, and Pomponio Leto
helped their students to recover by guiding them in the proper imitation
of the best ancient sources. Cortesi’s schema suggests that if the history
of humanism is equivalent to steady progress in reconstructing the ars
97 Cortesi, DHD, 185.16–19: “Quanquam tu quidem, Paule, quod fortasse hac aetate illustrioribus
litteris eloquentiae studia aucta putes, vivorum magis laudibus delecteris quam eorum qui vita
excesserunt” (emphasis mine).
98 Ibid., 186.4–9: “ . . . ne forte minuere eorum, quos collegisti, gloriam videreris, si eos cum his qui
vivunt conferres. Equidem de quibusdam sic existimo: ipsos multum in omni genere doctrinae
esse versatos, sed nondum lumen et florem Latinae orationis attigisse, quam tu negare non poteris
ab huius aetatis hominibus et excultam esse politius et maiori artificio amplificatam” (emphasis
mine).
99 Ibid., 186.16–19: “ . . . in quo gloriari nobis liceat, id esse nuper ab ingeniis nostrorum hominum
vel inventum vel illustratum quod mille iam prope annos ignoratum sit.”
100 A parallel passage is the collective judgment on the style of Giovanni Aurispa, Pier Candido
Decembrio, and Niccolò Sagundino (whom Cortesi here erroneously calls Niccolò Euboico: see
ibid., p. 125, n. 19): “their knowledge was rude and rustic, lacking the polish of more refined
efforts. The more elegant method of writing had not yet been introduced” (124.5–125.3: “sed
istorum omnium fuit disciplina horrida et agrestis, sine nitore elegantioris industriae: nondum
erat politior haec scribendi ratio importata”). The implication, of course, is that it has now been
introduced.
oratoria, then that history reaches its end, becomes perfectum, when a later
generation of humanists (thinks that it) grasps that ars so well that it can
judge its predecessors precisely on such grounds.101
Finally, the excellence of Cortesi’s own generation is demonstrated by De
hominibus doctis as a work of literature. At the most basic level it is intended
as a stylistic tour de force, an illustration of the proper imitation of Cicero.102
This applies not only to general lexis and syntax but also to numerus or
cursus, the prose rhythm that Campano had hit upon by lucky imitation
but whose artificium he and the rest of his age supposedly lacked.103 In the
dedicatory letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Cortesi boasts that his dialogue
pleases both for its copia and for its orationis cursus, thereby declaring his
recovery of this hitherto unassimilated aspect of Cicero’s style.104 And to
the extent that Cortesi claims to have written down a dialogue that actually
happened,105 he implicitly praises the other two interlocutors as well for
their Ciceronianism. Furthermore, De hominibus doctis is not only a stylistic
imitation of Cicero’s language but also a formal imitation of his Brutus,
and the intertextual parallels between the two dialogues amount to the
declaration of a manifesto. According to the Brutus, where Cicero traces
the development of oratory in Greece and then in Rome, Latin historically
reached its maturity in the generation of Antonius and Crassus and its
ultimate perfection in his own time – perhaps in the likes of Hortensius,
Marcellus, and Caesar but certainly in himself.106 Likewise, Cortesi seems
to identify a kind of maturity in the Latin of Piccolomini, Campano,
101 Only in the realm of historiography does doubt linger about the current generation’s mastery of its
precepts; in that connection Paolo says that “we lack these tools, and if we write anything worthy
of praise at all in this genre it is only by accident or chance” (ibid., 137.11–13: “nostros autem
his instrumentis omnino carere atque eosdem in hoc praesertim scribendi genere nihil admodum
laudis consequi posse, nisi quando temere aut casu”).
102 This is not to say that Cortesi’s Latin is just like Cicero’s; in reality it exhibits noteworthy lexical
aberrations from the master (see Ferraù, “Nota al testo,” p. 90). Yet strict lexical adherence to
Cicero was not part of Cortesi’s Ciceronianism, on which see above, note 23. As for the high
degree of difficulty in properly imitating Cicero, see Cortesi, DHD, 135.9–136.2, which echoes a
passage from his letter to Poliziano (Ciceronian Controversies, p. 10), and 172.13–15.
103 Cf. Hermann Gmelin, Das Prinzip der Imitatio in den romanischen Literaturen der Renaissance
(Erlangen, 1932), pp. 180–181.
104 Cortesi, DHD, 104.1–3: “tantum me illa vel copia vel illo orationis cursu delectavit ut decreverim
eum ipsum sermonem mandare litteris.”
105 See ibid., 103.15–104.3.
106 Cicero, Brutus, xxxvi.138, xliii.161. In the latter passage Cicero says, “I set this down precisely for
this reason, that the time when Latin eloquence first came to maturity may be marked, and that
it may be made clear that it now had been brought to all but the highest perfection. Henceforth
no one could expect to add anything considerable to it unless he should come better equipped
in philosophy, in law, in history” (tr. G.L. Hendrickson). Of course the one “better equipped”
is Cicero himself, as the sequel ironically implies (162): “‘Shall we ever find such a one as you
contemplate,’ said Brutus, ‘or is he indeed already here?’ ‘I cannot say,’ I replied.”
Gaza, and Platina, and, by parallelism with the Brutus, perfection in his
own day – perhaps in figures like Leto and Pontano (who technically belong
to an earlier generation but were still alive and active), and most likely in
himself. By writing a dialogue that is a proper imitation of the Brutus in
every respect (form, style, subject matter), Cortesi indicates that he is a
true orator and the Cicero of his own age.
And indeed, this view seems to have found an echo in a fresco portraying
rhetoric (1492–1494) in the Borgia apartments in the Vatican painted by
Pinturicchio’s workshop, a detail of which is reproduced on the cover of
this book. In line with the larger cycle of the liberal arts of which it is a part,
the personification of rhetoric ought to be flanked by its ancient Roman
exemplar, Cicero; the image to the right of the seated figure, however, is a
portrait of none other than Paolo Cortesi himself.107 The student has taken
the place of the master.
The humanist milieu

The striving for eloquence is clearly the sine qua non of Cortesi’s humanism.
Accordingly, although once referring to the humanists’ endeavor as studia
humanitatis, he more regularly calls it, as had Biondo Flavio, studium or
studia eloquentiae, the “study” or “pursuit of eloquence.”108 But how exactly
did humanists pursue eloquence? What activities did they engage in and
what did they produce? In what context and under what circumstances did
they operate? What was their position in society? Who were they? What
107 Sabina Poeschel, “An Unknown Portrait of a Well-Known Humanist,” Renaissance Quarterly, 43:1
(1990), pp. 146–154.
108 Studia humanitatis: Cortesi, DHD, 167.14; studium eloquentiae: 117.6–7; studia eloquentiae: 111.13,
114.15, 185.17–18. Cortesi freely uses a variety of other terms that stand in an uncertain or undefined
relationship to humanism, none of which however occurs with the frequency or consistency
of studia eloquentiae. For example, educators like Chrysoloras and Guarino are said to provide
instruction in the maximae artes (111.8), bonae artes (122.5, incorrectly numbered as 122.4), and
honestissimae artes (122.15, incorrectly numbered as 122.14). These, especially bonae artes, are in
all likelihood synonyms for studia eloquentiae. Elsewhere, however, there are vague references to
other terms whose nature and content are unclear: artes elegantes et ingenuae (101.19, attributed
to Lorenzo de’ Medici); ingenuae artes (103.19, referring to Alessandro’s education); graviores artes
(133.1, attributed to Ermolao Barbaro); gravissimae disciplinae (101.20–21, attributed to Lorenzo de’
Medici, where it likely refers to politics); disciplinae maximae (136.11, which are said to be above
the visual arts and music); studia and studium doctrinae (103.12, 134.8, 164.9 and passim, where it
has a general sense of “learning” of subjects or skills as opposed to the natural ability or talent of
ingenium; see also below, pp. 179–182). Only one individual’s artes are specifically enumerated: in
the dedicatory letter, Lorenzo de’ Medici is attributed with eloquence but also with other artes,
such as music, mathematics, and philosophy, that are not (the first two), or are not typically (the
last), attributed to the humanists in the dialogue. However, the praise of Lorenzo is pure panegyric,
not critique, and thus it cannot be collated directly with that of the humanists.
kind of lives did they live? How, in short, did Cortesi envision the humanist
milieu?
On the level of ideals, the pursuit of eloquence is closely coupled with a
passion for antiquity. But while the latter would appear to be a necessary
trait of humanists, it is nevertheless not alone sufficient grounds to be
included in their number. Such can be inferred from an important pas-
sage near the beginning of the dialogue. When challenged by Alessandro
for not mentioning Dante and Petrarch, Antonio defends his choice to
begin with Chrysoloras and thus to pass over Italians from the Trecento,
saying:
I began with Chrysoloras . . . because eloquence generally seems to have risen

in his time . . . I would not dare to deny that Dante and Petrarch burned with
an overwhelming zeal for antiquity. But Dante is like an ancient painting:
the colors are gone and only the outlines remain to give some kind of
pleasure.109
As for Petrarch, we saw above that “his style is not really Latin and is some-
times downright frightful.”110 Therefore, although he and Dante possessed
the zeal for classical antiquity that was generally understood to be a trait of
humanists, and on account of which some people (like Alessandro) might
actually consider them such, in Cortesi’s eyes it could not make up for
their utter lack of Latin eloquence. This is because – as is implied in the
comparison of Dante to a faded painting – eloquence itself is considered
the essence of antiquity. Love of antiquity that fails to grasp that essence
ends up a somewhat pleasing but nonetheless hollow form.
In the pages of De hominibus doctis, passion for eloquence and antiq-
uity manifests itself in certain activities, most commonly either teaching
eloquence to others or, preferably, producing writings that embodied it.
Perhaps overstating the case a bit, Cortesi claims in his dedicatory let-
ter, “anything that is written down, of whatever kind, is in and of itself
praiseworthy.”111 On the other hand, those who leave no writings tend to
forfeit their title as proper humanists. Accordingly, otherwise accomplished
individuals who have written nothing are purposefully excluded from the
109 Ibid., 113.8–17: “a Grisolora exordium coepi . . . quoniam illis temporibus erexisse se admodum
eloquentia videri solet . . . Ego vero negare non ausim flagrantissimum in Dante et in Petrarcha
studium fuisse priscarum rerum; sed in Dante tanquam in veteri pictura, detractis coloribus,
nonnisi lineamenta delectant.”
111 Cortesi, DHD, 104.8–9: “quicquid litteris mandatur, qualecumque sit, per se laudabile est.”
dialogue,112 and Paolo even digresses at one point to wage a polemic against
those who criticize the works of others while producing none of their own:
Those who try to appear wise but write nothing upset me very much, unless
they really are wise or contribute to educating the young. This hateful and
useless brand of people harms the living and posterity alike, tearing the works
of others to pieces but daring to write nothing themselves. They claim to
be motivated by modesty and an awareness of their own limitations, but all
they do is hinder the studies of more gifted men.113
Antonio agrees: “such people are rightly left out of our account, since they
did nothing while living to be included.”114 Whether or not Cortesi has
specific individuals in mind here is unclear. One such person does, however,
mysteriously appear in the dialogue: Niccolò Niccoli, Manetti’s paragon of
virtue who in reality was infamous for perfectly corresponding to Paolo’s
description. Fittingly, he is mentioned as having “achieved high fame”
not for contributing to eloquence but “in cultivating friendships with the
greatest humanists.”115 Considering his notoriety for losing the friendship of
the great humanists, one must question the sincerity of this passage. Is this
indirect criticism, veiled in order not to estrange the dedicatee, Lorenzo de’
Medici, whose grandfather Cosimo was counted among Niccoli’s closest
friends? Be that as it may, Niccoli is the only individual treated in the
dialogue who was neither a writer nor a teacher.
Of writings, Cortesi has the highest respect for historiography, which
he calls “the single greatest rhetorical genre” and elsewhere “a great genre
and the most difficult of all.”116 In prose, oratory seems to follow history in
112 See ibid., 168.2–7: “I do not doubt that many accomplished men have been passed over, but this
is their own fault for having left no writings. For we said in the beginning that our discussion
would include those who we know were praised by our forefathers or who submitted writings to
the judgment of critics” (“Nec enim ego dubito multos praeteritos fuisse ex veteribus eruditos
homines, sed hoc accidit culpa eorum qui nihil scriptum reliquerunt. Diximus autem nos a
principio eos in hunc sermonem relaturos, quos aut a maioribus laudatos accepimus aut quorum
scripta in existimantium arbitrio versentur”).
113 Ibid., 168.8–14: “Nam isti, qui nihil scribendo volunt videri sapere (nisi alioqui doctissimi sint aut
erudiant iuventutem) nullo modo mihi placent. Odiosum sane genus hominum et inutile videtur,
non solum vivis, sed etiam posteris nocere, cum aliena lacerant, ipsi nihil audeant scribere atque
id se facere modestia et conscientia ingenii commotos dicant, ingeniosiorum quidem hominum
studia retardant.” This digression is a creative adaptation of Cicero, Brutus, xxiv.91–92.
114 Cortesi, DHD, 168.17–18: “Merito isti nullo loco sunt numerandi, qui nihil in vita effecerunt ut
numerarentur.”
115 For Niccoli, see ibid., 123.17–124.2: “Hisdem temporibus fuit Nicolaus Nicolus, qui magnam
gloriam adeptus est in colendis amicitiis doctissimorum hominum.” See Chapter 2 above,
pp. 129–130, on Niccoli’s reputation as an overly harsh critic.
116 See Cortesi, DHD, 121.5: “cum historia sit rerum omnium difficillima”; 136.4–6: “est magnum
munus historia et, ut paulo ante dixi, omnium rerum difficillimum.” Once again, this is a creative
importance. Textual scholarship is mentioned almost as an afterthought.117
It is translation, though, that seems to occupy the lowest rung – a notable
change of fortune from its high estimation in the works of Facio and
Biondo. Antonio sneers that humanists through mid-century “preferred to
produce translations,” and that “there seemed to be as great a desire to write
something as there was a paucity of original compositions.” He attributes
this predilection to a lack of ability:
as if at the dawn of literature, they did not trust themselves and, like toddlers,
could not move to and fro unless in a carriage or with a guide to follow. And
so, since translation was easier, providing all these aids to learning seemed to
them a good way to be highly esteemed by posterity.118
As for the relationship between prose and poetry, Cortesi does not appear
to conceive of a hierarchy. But he does demand specialization in one or
the other, thus being the only one of our authors to prescribe, rather than
simply describe, a division in humanism between poets and prose writers.
Antonio reasons:
We are not made by nature to be able to excel at several things at the same
time. Therefore we should let nature be our guide and follow only where she
herself leads or takes us. That way we could reach perfection in one genre
rather than stretching ourselves across the study of multiple different arts.119
Accordingly, two humanists – Martino Filetico, a student of Guarino and

himself a teacher, and the otherwise obscure Daniel Francinus – are said
to have failed to develop a decent style on account of wanting to excel
adaptation of Cicero, De oratore, 2, 15, 62: “Videtisne quantum munus sit oratoris historia? Haud
scio an flumine orationis et varietate maximum.” See note 48 above. For a discussion of Cortesi’s
intention in adapting the quotation as he does, see Baker, “Launching the ars historica.”
117 Philology is mentioned in relation to only three humanists: Domizio Calderini (Cortesi, DHD,
159.9–161.5), Giovanni Andrea Bussi (154.11–155.1), and Lorenzo Bonincontri di S. Miniato (184.4–
5), of whom de’ Bussi is criticized for lacking the proper ratio and relying too much on conjecture.
Antonio could very well be referring to philology when he describes the achievement of living
humanists thus: “our fellows have recently discovered (inventum) or explained (illustratum) what
was unknown for about a thousand years” (see above, note 99).
118 Cortesi, DHD, 146.2–10: “Atque ego in ipsis et in aliis quos enumeravimus intelligo homines
libentius ad interpretum munera esse conversos: sed nos tamen colligimus omnes, ut appareat
quam multi scribendi cupiditate flagrarint, quam pauci aliquid ex suo protulerint . . . Quia veluti
tum nascentibus litteris sibi ipsi diffiderant et erant tanquam anniculi infantes qui nonnisi in
curriculo aut praeeunte duce inambulant. Itaque, cum esset facilius illud vertendi munus, bene de
posteris suis mereri videbantur si tam multa adiumenta ingeniis suppeditarent” (emphasis mine).
119 Ibid., 179.2–180.3: “Neque enim ita facti a natura sumus ut possimus pluribus simul rebus excellere:
itaque in hoc arbitror sequendam esse naturam ducem atque eo tantummodo eundum quo ab
ipsa trahimur et ducimur, ut simus potius simplici in genere perfecti quam nos totos variarum
multipliciumque artium studiis applicemus.”
in both poetry and prose.120 The rule was not ironclad though: human-
ists like Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and Antonio Campano distinguished
themselves in both genres.121
All of this literary production was of course in Latin. As we saw above,
Antonio recognizes the high quality of the vernacular works of Dante and
Petrarch but laments that these writers could not channel their extraor-
dinary ingenia into Latin composition. No other vernacular efforts are
mentioned in the dialogue, which suggests that for Cortesi, as for all our
other authors except Manetti, humanism had nothing to do with the volgar
lingua.
The relationship of Cortesi’s humanism to the vernacular is, however,
a bit ambiguous and requires clarification. Cortesi is known to have com-
posed verse in the vernacular, and a contemporary account of his academy
portrays him expounding on decorum in Dante’s and Petrarch’s vernacular
poetry.122 What is more, Ciceronians in general were not averse to the
vernacular (e.g., Pietro Bembo), and as John Monfasani has pointed out:
Ciceronianism had consequences for how one viewed the vernacular, but,
contrary to common belief, in the case of many Ciceronians it meant
embracing the vernacular as the ordinary language of discourse and also as
a literary language.123
Such might have been the case for the mature Cortesi, who in his De
cardinalatu would classify the various vernaculars, defend Tuscan as the
best, and explain how its speech can be properly ornamented.124 But if
Cortesi did ultimately embrace the vernacular as a literary language, he
120 See ibid., 178.7–179.2; applied to both is the description: “when working at one he studied the
other too little and excelled in neither” (178.10–12: “cum in altero laboraret, in altero parum studii
poneret, in neutro excellebat”). On Filetico, see, in addition to the bibliography in ibid., p. 178,
n. 88, Concetta Bianca, “Filetico (Filettico), Martino,” in DBI, vol. XLVII (1997), pp. 636–640.
For Francinus, see Cortesi, DHD, p. 179, n. 89.
121 For Piccolomini, see ibid., 153.5–154.8; for Campano, 155.11–159.5, whose epigrams are specifically
mentioned (159.3).
122 See D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, p. 106, and McLaughlin, Literary Imitation, p. 221. In
“Humanism in Rome,” p. 280, D’Amico explains the Roman humanists’ “cultivation of Petrarchan
verse” as “a form becoming to court life.”
123 Monfasani, “The Ciceronian Controversy,” p. 398. As Monfasani notes, Bembo was only one of
many Ciceronians to champion the vernacular and even to prefer it for everyday use. Indeed,
the vernacular’s value for quotidian concerns had been defended continuously since Dante, who
considered it the natural language of discourse as opposed to Latin, an artificial literary language.
Dante’s position, in various forms, had adherents among Quattrocento humanists, most notably
Leonardo Bruni. See Mazzocco, Linguistic Theories in Dante and the Humanists.
124 See the chapter De sermone in Book Two, reproduced in full in Carlo Dionisotti, Gli umanisti e il
volgare fra Quattro e Cinquecento, ed. Vincenzo Fera (Milan, 2003), pp. 56–65. See also Dionisotti’s
comments on Cortesi’s stance towards the vernacular, pp. 65–69.
nevertheless does not seem to have accepted it as a language of learned
discourse in the period when he wrote De hominibus doctis.125 For he
presents his dialogue, which is aimed precisely at showcasing his own
literary talent, as the written form of an actual, informal but highly learned
conversation in perfect Ciceronian Latin. Furthermore, as we have seen,
he characterizes the age of Dante and Petrarch as a time when “eloquence
had utterly lost its voice.”126 And in his description of Dante, he directly
attributes the poet’s “unintelligibility” in certain matters to the vernacular’s
inability to express complex ideas.127 For the Cortesi of De hominibus doctis,
there is no doubt that humanism’s central goal of reviving eloquence was
a strictly Latin affair.
In addition to Latin, Greek features prominently in Cortesi’s humanists.
Special emphasis is placed on this accomplishment for figures in the first
half of the fifteenth century, who, as Antonio says, devoted so much effort
to translation from Greek into Latin. As time passes, however, Greek is
mentioned less and less often, and the impression is that it is not essential
to a humanist profile.128 The reason for this is likely that, as knowledge
of the oratorium artificium increased and humanists, to continue Cortesi’s
own metaphor, grew up linguistically, Greek was no longer seen as an
essential guide to proper composition and eloquence in Latin. This is not
to say that knowledge of Greek decreased or became less widespread – the
opposite is in fact the case129 – but only that its importance for humanism
waned in Cortesi’s eyes as it lost its initial usefulness for Latin. On the
other hand, Cicero claimed that knowledge of Greek was always necessary
for good Latin, and so perhaps Cortesi’s characters take knowledge of
Greek for granted as their review reaches their own time. It is also possible,
however – indeed probable – that the scant attention paid to Greek is in
part a reflection of Cortesi’s own apparent ignorance of the language as
well as of the priorities of Pomponio Leto’s Academy, where the knowledge
of Greek was less prized than elsewhere.130
125 McLaughlin, Literary Imitation, p. 221, dates Cortesi’s interest in the vernacular to a period posterior
to DHD.
126 See above, note 37. 127 See below, pp. 180–181.
128 Not counting Byzantine émigrés: in Cortesi’s first period (Dante to Salutati), no humanist is said to
know Greek; in the second period (Bruni to Platina), there are eight, all of whom flourished before
mid-century; in the third period (Settimuleio Campano to Ludovico Carbone), three. Significantly,
Biondo Flavio is said to have written history “without knowledge of Greek” (Cortesi, DHD, 148.4–
5: “Flavius enim Blondus sine Graecis litteris prosequutus est historiam diligenter . . . ”).
129 Hankins, “Lo studio del greco.”
130 Cortesi’s command of Greek is uncertain. On the subordinate status of Greek in late fifteenth-
century Rome, see D’Amico, “Humanism in Rome,” pp. 279–280. Regarding Leto’s teaching, note
the lack of any significant Greek element in the activity traced by Accame Lanzillotta, Pomponio
If Cortesi portrays humanists as primarily occupied with Latin elo-
quence, he does not bind this pursuit to any disciplinary categories. He
never considers excluding anyone from the ranks of humanism, as Facio
did with Alberti, simply for having additional interests or even a career in
a traditional university field like law or philosophy. Antonio Beccadelli’s
expertise in law is mentioned without further comment, and Francesco
Accolti d’Arezzo is praised as “the one great humanist who was a truly
great jurisconsult,” as well as for his vast learning “in all the arts and
disciplines.”131 This is a surprising change, as not even the ecumenical
Manetti allowed such a combination. Even more unexpected is the special
relationship philosophy has to humanism in De hominibus doctis. On the
one hand, several humanists, especially the Byzantine émigrés, are said to
have studied it. At times Cortesi appears to have moral philosophy in mind,
as when he says that Piccolomini’s philosophical studies were reflected in the
sententiae of his orations,132 or when he attributes Theodore Gaza’s virtue
to his pursuit of “the study of philosophy with his way of life, not with
mere words.”133 Yet Gaza was an Aristotelian. And although the description
of Gaza might seem to imply a typical humanist criticism of scholastic phi-
losophy, Cortesi partially connects the humanist recovery of eloquence to
Aristotelian rhetoric.134 As seen above, George of Trebizond’s study of the
Peripatetics made him one of the great teachers of oratorium artificium.135
Furthermore, John Argyropoulos was “just about a perfect Peripatetic and
quite an agreeable writer,” and “his student Donato Acciaiuoli was rather
Leto, pp. 85–189; Accame Lanzillotta, “L’insegnamento di Pomponio Leto nello Studium Urbis,”
in Lidia Capo and Maria Rosa Di Simone (eds.), Storia della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia de
“La Sapienza” (Rome, 2000), pp. 71–91; and Maurizio Campanelli and Maria Agata Pincelli,
“La lettura dei classici nello Studium Urbis tra Umanesimo e Rinascimento,” in ibid., pp. 93–
195, at 168–174. See also D’Amico’s description of the interests of Leto’s Academy in Renaissance
Humanism, pp. 91–92 and 97–102.
131 For Beccadelli, see Cortesi, DHD, 145.2; for Accolti, 182.5–183.3: “fuit unus doctissimorum
hominum iurisconsultissimus. Nihil est enim litteris mandatum, nihil in artibus disciplinisque
omnibus traditum quod ab hoc homine non sit aut cognitum aut investigatum.” For Accolti, see
the anonymous entry “Accolti, Francesco (detto Francesco Aretino o, per antonomasia, l’Aretino),”
in DBI, vol. I (1960), pp. 104–105.
132 See Cortesi, DHD, 153.17–154.1. Piccolomini is not known to have studied philosophy. We have
very little information about his education, though, beyond that he studied law under Mariano
Sozzini in Siena.
133 Ibid., 161.6–12; quotation at 8–10: “nec erat is in eorum numero qui, usurpatione disciplinae, verbis
magis quam vita philosophiae studia persequuntur.”
134 In addition to the textual passages cited here, Cortesi might also have found value in Aristotle’s
discussion of prose rhythm and periodic structure, two aspects of elocutio dear to Cortesi, in
chapters 8 and 9 respectively of Book III of the Rhetoric.
well spoken.”136 Ultimately, however, Cortesi cites relatively few examples
of cohabitation between humanism and traditional university disciplines
(as the praise of Accolti also implies). Nor does he ever extend this cohab-
itation to medicine or theology,137 which he simply omits. Nevertheless,
the reason that such pursuits are generally ignored would appear to be not
that they are illicit but rather that they were comparatively less common or
less suitable areas for distinction in Latin eloquence. Unlike Facio, Cortesi
does not feel obliged to distance humanism from the university, perhaps
because the two had become well enough integrated in his time.138
Humanism’s integrity does need defending, however, when it comes
to national boundaries. Antonio’s review contains only one northern
humanist – Janus Pannonius, or Jan the Hungarian – whose treatment
shows that humanism was, or ought to be, in Cortesi’s mind an essentially
Italian enterprise. First, Antonio proffers a bit of backhanded praise for
Janus’ poetry: “It was truly amazing that this foreigner (externus), this bar-
barus, whose people are usually less receptive to the Muses, achieved the
highest admiration and fame for his talent.”139 Alessandro then immedi-
ately objects:
Why are you extolling this foreigner (externum) so highly, as if he really

did win more of every kind of praise than the Italians (nostros) and even
scared them away from writing? If you’re being ironic, then you do well to
encourage the barbari by praising Janus; but if you’re serious, be careful that
you don’t bite off more than you can chew. If you praise him as intelligent
136 Cortesi, DHD, 164.1–6: “Joannes Argiropolus Bisantius, prope perfectus peripateticus et sane toler-
abilis scriptor . . . Huius auditor fuit Donatus Acciaiolus, homo non indisertus.” For Argyropoulos,
professor at the Florentine Studio and teacher of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Landino, and Poliziano, see
N.G. Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance (London, 1992),
pp. 86–90; and Emilio Bigi, “Argiropulo, Giovanni,” in DBI, vol. IV (1962), pp. 129–131. For
Acciaiuoli, translator of Aristotle and of Leonardo Bruni (into Italian), see Garin, Medioevo e
rinascimento, pp. 199–267.
137 Although many of Cortesi’s humanists are ecclesiastics. We should also remember that one of
Cortesi’s major works was his Liber sententiarum, a standard work of theology in Ciceronian
language.
138 It was precisely in the period between Facio’s and Cortesi’s writings – the second half of the fifteenth
century – that humanism began to flourish in universities, whereas in the first quarter of the century
humanists had avoided universities, and in the second they only began to stake their claim there;
see Paul F. Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore, 2002), pp. 205–222; and
for a more recent consideration with a different focus, David Lines, “Humanism and the Italian
Universities,” in Celenza and Gouwens (eds.), Humanism and Creativity, pp. 327–346. Consider
also that Cortesi’s teacher, Pomponio Leto, taught at Rome’s university, the Sapienza, and that his
friend Poliziano taught at the Florentine Studio.
139 Cortesi, DHD, 171.17–20: “Illud certe mirabile in hoc homine fuit, quod externus, quod barbarus
(quae gens durior ad Musas videri solet) ad summam admirationem et ingenii famam pervenerit.”
and highly learned, then I wholeheartedly agree. So praise him this way
now, and don’t try to deprive our people (nostris) of their glory.140
Here we have a case of Italian exceptionalism: humanism is Italian, and

only Italians can be the best humanists and achieve the highest praise. For-
eigners (externi) might participate in humanism, but as barbarians (barbari)
they are not particularly suited to it – even if they, like Janus, had studied
with Guarino. This haughtiness towards the barbari and their supposedly
natural inability with the Latin language would endure throughout the
sixteenth century and was sometimes even acknowledged by the “barbar-
ians” themselves.141 Still, Alessandro seems also to belie his pride by a kind
of jealousy and perhaps even uncertainty over the undisputed mastery of
Italians within humanism; for if their status were secure, there would be no
reason to defend it so vehemently. Be that as it may, Alessandro’s tirade is
the dialogue’s only indication, admittedly oblique, that humanism was in
the process of breaking free of Italy’s borders and developing independently
across the Alps.142
What of the Byzantines, who appear in good number and who receive
almost unconditional praise?143 As non-Italians they should logically be
externi, foreigners, but they are never labeled that way, nor is there ever any
indication that they might be barbari. On the contrary, they seem to be
welcomed into the group of nostri. As we shall see below in greater detail,
Cortesi recognizes a cultural kinship between Italian humanists and the
Greek diplomats and refugees who, starting with Chrysoloras, were some
of their most important teachers. As carriers of the tradition supposedly
140 Ibid., 172.1–7: “Quid tu tantum externum effers, quasi vero iste, non modo nostros omni genere
laudum superarit, sed etiam a scribendo deterruerit? Si iocaris, belle mihi videris eum laudando
suffragari barbaris; sin asseveras, cave ne plus quaestionis suscipias quam possis sustinere. Eum
laudas si ut ingeniosum ac plane doctum, prorsus assentior: modo ita laudes, ne gloriam nostris
praereptam velis.”
141 See Kristian Jensen, “The Humanist Reform of Latin and Latin Teaching,” in Kraye (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, pp. 63–81, at 65–66. Cf. also Caspar Hirschi,
The Origins of Nationalism: An Alternative History from Ancient Rome to Early Modern Germany
(Cambridge, 2012), pp. 142–152.
142 On the diffusion of humanism from Italy to the rest of Europe, see Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich
(eds.), The Renaissance in National Context (Cambridge, 1992); Rabil (ed.), Renaissance Humanism,
vol. II; Johannes Helmrath, “Diffusion des Humanismus: zur Einführung” in Helmrath, Muhlack,
and Walther (eds.), Diffusion des Humanismus, pp. 9–29; and Paul Oskar Kristeller, “The European
Diffusion of Italian Humanism,” in Kristeller, Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, vol. II,
pp. 147–165, with related bibliography on p. 147.
143 The dotti bizantini who appear in DHD are: Manuel Chrysoloras (111.8–113.12), Nicolò Sagundino
(124.4–125.3, treated erroneously as two different people: Nicolò Euboico and Nicolò Sagundino),
George of Trebizond (139.17–23), Theodore Gaza (160.15–162.7), Cardinal Bessarion (162.9–163.10),
and John Argyropoulos (164.1–5). Only Sagundino is moderately criticized.
lost to Italy in the fifth century and being revived there in the fifteenth,
there is no question of the Byzantines’ place in humanism.
In addition to his outspoken hierarchy between nostri and
externi/barbari, Cortesi establishes a gradation within Italy as well, silently
aggrandizing Rome and marginalizing Florence. As the dialogue progresses,
what began as a pan-Italian vision (in the generations of Bruni and Valla)
slowly narrows to focus almost exclusively on the Eternal City. By the 1460s
the great humanists (with the exception of Pontano) are increasingly asso-
ciated with Rome (Campano, Perotti, Calderini, Gaza, Bessarion, Platina),
although many can still be claimed by Florence (Benedetto Accolti, Argy-
ropoulos, Acciaiuoli, Matteo Palmieri).144 In the third period, as noted
above, the focus is almost exclusively on Rome, and not one Florentine
is named. The competition between these two loci of humanism is as
palpable as it is unspoken. That Cortesi has not forgotten the intimates
of his dedicatee – men like Ficino, Landino, Pico, Poliziano, and Bar-
tolomeo della Fonte – but is purposefully neglecting them emerges from
an oblique reference to Poliziano, who is called “our friend” and whose
critique of Ciceronians (“apes of Cicero”) is taken up and applied to those
who imitate Cicero without the proper ars.145 It is tempting to attribute the
oblivion of Florence to Antonio’s refusal to talk about contemporaries, but
Giacomo Ferraù has demonstrated that Cortesi’s procedure amounts to a
damnatio memoriae of sorts.146 For four contemporaries are indeed men-
tioned – Giorgio Merula, Pomponio Leto, Ermolao Barbaro, and Giovanni
Pontano – three of whom act as foils for Florentine humanism: Merula
had a heated polemic with Poliziano;147 Barbaro defended rhetoric against
Pico;148 and, as we have seen, the praise of Pontano’s poetic ars must be
144 For the Romans, see Cortesi, DHD, 155.10–163.10, 166.1–167.10, to whose number Piccolomini
might be added (153.5–154.8); for the Florentines, 164.1–165.4 and 135.1–3 for Accolti, whom Cortesi
seems to see as actually belonging to the earlier generation of Florentines like Palla Strozzi and
Poggio (134.7–135.4: “Tum etiam ex eo genere numerabatur Pallas Stroza . . . Nec longo intervallo
aberat Benedictus Arretinus . . . Nam illis temporibus in Poggio Florentino”).
145 This is said specifically in relation to Andrea Contrario, a Venetian active mostly in Rome. See
ibid., 172.13–15: “But he strayed far from the best kind of imitation and, as our friend shrewdly says,
acted not like a student but an ape” (“Sed aliquanto tamen abest ab optimo genere imitandi et, ut
scite amicus noster ait, non ille quidem ut alumnus, sed ut simia effingit”). Fera, “Il problema,”
p. 157, denies that Poliziano is the friend cited.
146 See Ferraù, “Introduzione,” pp. 53–54. See also Paolo Viti, “La Valdelsa e l’Umanesimo: i Cortesi,”
in Gian Carlo Garfagnini (ed.), Callimaco Esperiente poeta e politico del ’400 (Florence, 1987),
pp. 247–299, at 293–299.
147 On the philological and personal rivalry between Merula and Poliziano, see Roberto Ricciardi, La
polemica fra Angelo Poliziano e Giorgio Merula: ricerche e documenti (Alessandria, 2010).
148 On this debate, see Ermolao Barbaro and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Filosofia o eloquenza?,
ed. Francesco Bausi (Naples, 1998).
understood in part as a silent rebuke to the divine frenzy of Ficino and
Landino. Leto’s presence, on the other hand, combined with that of an
overwhelming number of his students in the third period, serves to portray
him as the true inheritor of humanism, thus making his student Cortesi
the following generation’s heir apparent. Other strands of humanism, such
as Ficino’s poetics or Poliziano’s eclecticism, are not presented as viable
alternatives but rather are ignored as deviant.
The marginalization of Florence which we see here, as well as in Cortesi’s
quick dispatching of the Three Crowns and even of Salutati, the revered
Florentine chancellor renowned especially for the power of his rhetoric,
makes little sense in a work dedicated to Lorenzo the Magnificent.149 Yet
it is undeniable, and it is a needfully sobering reminder that the modern
understanding of humanism has been unduly dominated by developments
in Florence. One thinks of the enormous influence of Hans Baron’s “civic
humanism” thesis, based entirely on events and writings dealing with
Florence at the turn of the fifteenth century. More important, because
implicitly claiming a universal scope, is Eugenio Garin’s L’umanesimo ital-
iano – another work of inestimable impact on scholarship – in which
the discussion of Quattrocento humanism revolves almost entirely around
Florence. Subsequently, no other homes of humanism have received the
same magnitude of microstudies of individual figures or intellectual cir-
cles. Not even the papal curia, despite its warm, unflagging hospitality to
humanism from the very beginning of the fifteenth century, occupies as
much space on university bookshelves or digital databases.150 The upshot,
or “revenge,” as Randolph Starn has written, “of Florentine exceptionalism
is to make whatever lies beyond Florence look unexceptional, ordinary, and
routine.”151 And to those used to hearing about the Platonism of Ficino
and Landino, the poetics of divine frenzy, the philological breakthroughs
149 On the reputation of Salutati’s rhetoric, see Ronald G. Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life,
Works, and Thought of Coluccio Salutati (Durham, NC, 1983), esp. pp. 111–177. On p. 159 Witt
reports the famous detto attributed to Giangaleazzo Visconti of Milan, viz. that “a letter of Salutati
was worth a thousand horses.”
150 On the relationship between the papal curia and humanism, see James Hankins, “The Popes
and Humanism,” in Humanism and Platonism, vol. I, pp. 469–494, esp. 470–477; and Hankins,
“Roma caput mundi: Humanism in High Renaissance Rome,” in Humanism and Platonism,
vol. I, pp. 495–507. The main studies on humanism in Rome are D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism;
John W. O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the
Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521 (Durham, NC, 1993); and now Elizabeth McCahill,
Reviving the Eternal City: Rome and the Papal Court, 1420–1447 (Cambridge, Mass., 2013).
151 Randolph Starn, “Afterword: Where is Beyond Florence?,” in Paula Findlen, Michelle M. Fontaine,
and Duane J. Osheim (eds.), Beyond Florence: The Contours of Medieval and Early Modern Italy
(Stanford, 2003), pp. 233–239, at 234.
of Poliziano, or about Pico’s attempts at religious, intellectual, and cultural
syncretism, the imitative nature of Roman Ciceronianism must at first
glance seem unexceptional, ordinary, if not downright boring.152 Similarly,
Charles Stinger felt it necessary to explain the seemingly strange absence
of advanced Greek studies in Roman humanism, to account for why
no specific intellectual program or cultural ideology evolved from Greek
wisdom, as happened in Florence with the civic humanists’ rediscovery of
the political and moral values of the Periclean polis and with the Platonic
Academy’s dedication to Neo-Platonic metaphysics and aesthetics.
Despite recognizing that “Latin classicism in Renaissance Rome . . . meant

more than a merely literary revival,” he nevertheless offered a purely reduc-
tive explanation:
Humanism in Rome was in large part a courtier culture, finding its expres-
sion in oratory, in poetry, and in elegant and witty conversation within
the setting of the orti litterari. This placed a premium on refinement of
style.153
Regardless of the factual accuracy of this statement, its reasoning neglects

the enormously significant fact that the pursuit of Latin eloquence had
been a – and as the texts of Piccolomini, Biondo, and Facio suggest, the –
driving force of humanism throughout the fifteenth century. Thus Rome
did not represent an aberration from Florence but rather the continuation
of a mainstream tradition. What our sources indicate is that it was the
ideal of Latin eloquence that nourished the souls of humanists all over
Italy and that characterized their efforts outside of Florence (and in it as
well, we must remember) throughout the entire Quattrocento, whereas the
peculiar accomplishments of Laurentian Florence were just that – peculiar
to Laurentian Florence, but not representative of broader trends in Italian
humanism. This is one of the most important messages De hominibus doctis
holds for us.
If Cortesi differentiates humanists according to civic affiliation and intel-
lectual persuasion, he links them in their common reliance on patronage
and in their association with princes.154 In a short digression prompted
by the mention of Cosimo de’ Medici, Alessandro interjects, “I think the
152 For an example of the underestimation of Roman Ciceronianism, see D’Amico, Renaissance
Humanism, pp. 115–143; see also Kenneth Gouwens, “Perceiving the Past: Renaissance Humanism
after the ‘Cognitive Turn,’” The American Historical Review, 103 (1998), pp. 55–82, at 63–64, who
criticizes this view.
153 Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, pp. 287–288. 154 Cf. Ferraù, “Introduzione,” pp. 25–26.
princes of that age greatly aided the best minds.” And Paolo concurs:
“You’re right. Their studies were nourished with rewards and came of age,
as it were, in the bosom of princes.”155 Patronage is also emphasized in
the dedicatory letter, where it is the first theme sounded after humanism
itself. Principes like Cosimo and Piero de’ Medici are praised for having
“given such great aid to the humanists’ search for learning that they seemed
themselves to have taken up the protection (patrocinium) of the neglected
disciplines.” As for Lorenzo, “you have increased their glory not only by
supporting the studies of gifted men, but also by spending all of your
free time from affairs of state on the elegant and noble arts.”156 Several
more princes are said in the body of the dialogue to participate directly
in humanism. Three are even portrayed as humanists in their own right.
Two of them, Nicholas V and Pius II, distinguished themselves as such
long before achieving temporal, and in their case spiritual, power, while
the third, Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, was first and foremost
a condottiere.157 Nicholas is also praised for having “supported humanists
with money and honors.”158 Other rulers are lauded just for associating
with great humanists. Thus Cosimo de’ Medici crops up in the section on
Ambrogio Traversari, where their friendship is explained by the fact that
“this great man always had humanists around him, whose company and
conversation helped him, as it were, pleasantly to relax his mind when he
was free from official duties.”159 Similarly, the description of Lorenzo Valla
occasions a cameo of his patron Alfonso of Aragon: “Alfonso enriched his
great and unbelievable virtues with this additional praise, that he was not
only on very close terms with humanists, but that he even ate together with
them.”160
155 Cortesi, DHD, 128.10–14: “Mea quidem sententia est principes illius aetatis multum summis
ingeniis profuisse. / [Paul.] Est ut dicis: aluntur profecto praemiis haec studia et quasi in principum
sinu pubescunt.”
156 Ibid., 101.11–20: “Quorum studiis principes illius aetatis tantum ad facultatem perquirendae doc-
trinae profuerunt, ut pariter desertarum disciplinarum patrocinium suscepisse viderentur; quo in
genere avus et pater tuus, sapientissimi homines, extiterunt qui, cum florerent omnibus virtutibus,
hac tamen laude ingeniorum excitandorum longe coeteris praestiterunt. Tu vero, huius gloriae
praeclarus amplificator, non modo extollis ingeniosorum hominum studia, sed etiam in maximis
occupationibus omne domesticum tempus ad artes elegantes atque ingenuas confers.”
157 For Nicholas V, see ibid., 130.2–131.2; for Pius II (Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini), 153.5–154.9; for
Malatesta, 152.20–153.4.
158 Ibid., 131.1–2: “ab eo sunt docti homines et opibus aucti et honoribus.”
159 Ibid., 128.6–9: “Carus is fuit Cosmo Medici, nam semper magnus ille vir secum habuit palam
doctos homines quorum in congressu et sermone, cum esset publicis muneribus vacuus, tanquam
in iucundo quodam animi laxamento requiescebat.”
160 Ibid., 144.2–5: “Nam Alphonsus ipse ad summas incredibilesque eius virtutes adiecerat etiam hanc
laudem, ut, non solum hominibus doctis familiarissime uteretur, sed etiam haberet in convictu.”
Princely patronage was necessary, in Cortesi’s mind, if humanists were to
pursue the proper kind of life for their studies: a contemplative one.161 The
better humanists towards the end of the second period, like Campano,
Gaza, and Platina, tend to be professional literary men who relied on
the favor of popes and cardinals for employment and other support.162
On the other hand, the fame of Giannozzo Manetti, who (despite the
clear preference for the vita contemplativa expressed in his biographical
works) combined humanism with an active political life, is said to be
“dimmer” than that of other humanists; he is held up as an example that
“sure ability in one activity is worth more for fame and reputation than
combining several different activities in which one is not the best.”163 Worse
than pursuing one’s own political career is involving oneself in political
intrigue. Alessandro cites Cola Montano, whose republican rabble-rousing
led to the murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan (1476) and thus
to his own “sad end,” as an example that “nothing is more unsuitable
than turning literature, which is nourished by leisure and which requires
free time for practice, to ruinous civil discord.”164 Cortesi’s opposition to
political involvement was undoubtedly shaped by the harsh suppression of
Pomponio Leto’s Academy in 1468 in response to its supposed involvement
in a coup against Paul II.165 Even more so than our first three authors,
who elicited surprise by ignoring the purported political dimension of
humanism that is so familiar to us, Cortesi, like Manetti, belies any essential
link between humanism and civic or republican engagement.
If political involvement was off limits to humanists, so was petty com-
petition with one another for popular fame. Citing the fate of Andrea
Contrario and Francesco Griffolini, who wished each other dead rather
than countenance the other’s reputation (and who, incredibly, each died in
the manner desired by the other), Antonio complains that some humanists
161 Cf. Ferraù, “Introduzione,” pp. 37–38.
162 This was a distinctive mark of Roman curial humanism. See D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism,
pp. 3–37. For the mechanisms of patronage and the duties and rewards of curial officials, see
Partner, The Pope’s Men.
163 Cortesi, DHD, 134.3–6: “Ex quo profecto intelligi potest plus valere ad famam et celebritatem
nominis unius simplicis generis virtutem absolutam quam multa annexa genera virtutum non per-
fectarum.” It is worth noting that this passage undermines Burckhardt’s notion of the “Renaissance
man.”
164 Ibid., 175.7–12: “tristem exitum habuit. / [Alex.] . . . Nihil est enim, ut opinor, incongruentius quam
litteras, quae aluntur ocio et usui commodoque parantur, ad perniciem hominum seditionemque
convertere.” On Cola Montano, professor of Latin in Milan and an early promoter of the printing
press, see Paolo Orvieto, “Capponi, Nicola, detto Cola Montano,” in DBI, vol. XIX (1976),
pp. 83–86.
165 Cf. Anthony F. D’Elia, A Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome
(Cambridge, Mass., 2009).
have “turned competition, which is otherwise quite useful, to injury, and
everywhere the whole vulgar mob unanimously rushes to judgment.”166
Proper competition, instead, is dignified and aimed at winning the approval
of a learned judge.167
A quiet, contemplative life of literary study was attended by true glory
and virtue, as opposed to the ostensible virtue of noble birth or military
accomplishments. At last, one of our authors chants the tune familiar
from the humanist educational treatises and the letters of Guarino. It is
surprising that we must wait until the end of the fifteenth century for this
to be the case. When describing Guarino’s school Cortesi writes:
His house was like a workshop of the bonae artes. And although in those
days grave and everlasting war raged in Italy, and the state of affairs was such
that just about all young men thought that greater glory was to be sought in
war rather than in learning, Guarino never interrupted his teaching efforts.
His house was full of the noblest youths who had entrusted themselves
to his instruction. Everyday they discussed the meaning of texts, practiced
speaking, and were thoroughly educated in Greek and Latin.168
To emphasize the virtue of this purely rhetorical education over that of

military honor or of the high birth of his students, Antonio then describes
Guarino’s school as “a kind of training ground in the most honorable arts
(honestissimarum artium).”169 And later in the dialogue, Antonio cites Cam-
pano, who supposedly grew up an impoverished shepherd, as an example
of “how little an obscure birth hinders the attainment of virtue” – virtue
which he acquired through his “turn to the more serious arts.”170
Nevertheless, virtue did not grace all humanists, as we saw above in
the rabble-rouser Cola Montano and the dishonorable competitors Andrea
Contrario and Francesco Griffolini. Another example of vicious humanism
comes in the person of Francesco Filelfo, here criticized for his greed:
166 Cortesi, DHD, 173.13–15: “Utilissimum certamen convertunt ad iniuriam atque omnis undique
concurrit ad iudicandum consentiens indoctorum turba.”
167 As in the case of Niccolò Valla, who desired only the approval of Theodore Gaza. See ibid., 170.3–5.
168 Ibid., 122.4–12 (incorrectly labeled as 3–11): “huius domus quasi officina quaedam fuit bonarum
artium. Nam, cum illis temporibus diuturno gravissimoque bello Italia flagraret et is esset rerum
status ut nemo fere adolescens non sibi potius gloriam bello quam doctrina quaerendam putarit,
nunquam sunt ab eo instituendi ac docendi studia intermissa. Erat referta domus nobilissimis
adolescentibus qui se in eius disciplinam tradiderant: quotidie et commentabantur et declamabant
ac ita diligenter Graecis Latinisque litteris erudiebantur.”
169 Ibid., 122.15 (incorrectly labeled as 14): “tanquam ex ludo quodam honestissimarum artium.”
170 Ibid., 158.6–15: “Is enim meo iudicio coeteris exemplo esse potest quam parum obsit ad virtutem
comparandam obscuro loco nasci . . . gravioribus artibus applicaretur.” Ferraù (ibid., p. 158, n. 64)
considers the story of Campano’s youth apocryphal.
He was an utterly mercenary writer, one who preferred money to literary
fame. For it is common knowledge that there was no Italian prince of his
age whom he did not visit, none to whom he did not pay compliments with
his writings, in order to dig money out of him.171
There is thus a fine line between relying on princes for patronage and
being a hired pen: on one side lies the virtuous pursuit of honorable praise,
reputation, and remuneration, on the other base economic calculation. Be
that as it may, Alessandro defends Filelfo: “To me he seems wise for having
procured enrichment with literature, especially since eloquence tends to
become more hateful and suspicious the greater it is.”172 This defense makes
us wonder whether the virtue of a Campano or a Gaza was the rule among
humanists or the exception.
Like Giannozzo Manetti, Paolo Cortesi envisions a hierarchy within
humanism based on adherence to a set of values. The two agree that the
yardstick is the contemplative life. Cortesi goes further, though, positing
standards of civil discourse, aloofness from the uneducated, and honorable
commerce with patrons. His ideal is a leisured existence, detached from
petty, mundane concerns, devoted to eloquent expression and the glory it
brings.
This ideal can be brought into better perspective by considering the
relationship of Cortesi’s homines docti to their model, the ancient oratores
and especially Cicero. As has been emphasized many times, eloquence is
a fraught endeavor for Cortesi’s humanists, simultaneously bringing them
closer to the ancients but, so long as true eloquence remained out of reach,
highlighting the distance between them. The divide between ancients and
moderns, however, is deeper and wider than Cortesi intimates, for the
milieu of the humanists was markedly different from that of the orators
of Cicero’s time. Most importantly, ancient Roman orators were first and
foremost just that – orators. Theirs was an essentially spoken art,173 whereas
humanists, except when performing their poetry or delivering orations –
genres which all our authors depict as minor – concentrated mostly on
written works. Therefore the ancient orators’ preparation included delivery
and memory in addition to the precepts of invention, arrangement, and
171 Ibid., 150.3–7: “Sed erat vendibilis sane scriptor et is qui opes quam scribendi laudem consequi
malebat. Constat enim neminem principum illis temporibus in Italia fuisse, quin adierit, quin
cum scriptis salutaverit, ut ex his pecuniam erueret.”
172 Ibid., 151.1–3: “Mihi vero ille . . . hoc facto sapiens videtur, qui ex litteris divitias quaesierit, propterea
quod eloquentia, quo maior est, eo hominibus invisior ac suspectior.”
173 See Cicero, Brutus, xxviii.108, where he makes a neat distinction between orators and “men of
letters” (studiosi litterarum). Another nice distinction between writers and true orators is found
at lxxvii.267, with regard to “Marcus Bibulus, whose activity in writing, and writing carefully, is
surprising, since he was no orator” (tr. Hendrickson).
style, while the humanists focused on the latter.174 Even written works
were meant to be read aloud in antiquity and were thus also more oriented
towards performance than those of humanists, which were intended for
silent reading (a partial cause, one imagines, for the slow development of
the ancient numerus bemoaned by Cortesi’s characters).175
Audiences were also different. Obviously both groups, since highly edu-
cated, aimed for the approval of their learned peers. Ancient orators, how-
ever, also had to be approved by the common people. Furthermore, Cicero
argues that the ignorant multitude and the expert will agree in identifying
good and bad orators, the only difference between them being that the
former will know that an oration was good or bad, the latter also why.176
This is the opposite of Cortesi’s position that the “vulgar mob” is not a
good judge and thus that humanists should shun its fickle praise.
Another important difference is that ancient Roman orators were
emphatically political operators, effective oratory being necessary for high
advancement in the cursus honorum. Cortesi’s humanists, on the other
hand, had for the most part no political power; their eloquence was mainly
useful (when its use was considered) for a kind of career advancement
that, while unavoidably intermingled with political figures (such as their
patrons or civic employers), was almost always disconnected from direct
political activity. Reconsiderations of the Baron thesis have revealed a simi-
lar distance from ideological engagement and direct political participation
even in Florentine humanism. In the case of the pivotal figure of Leonardo
Bruni, James Hankins has argued that he was “not the fiery republican
ideologue and populist of Hans Baron’s imagination.” Indeed, his “famous
orations” were
not intended to reflect either historical reality or Bruni’s own political con-
victions. Their primary purpose was to serve as propaganda vehicles, and
their primary audience was foreign elites.177
Similarly, but pulling the levers of power even less directly themselves,
curialists in Rome were instrumental in crafting a new image of papal
174 Cortesi does, however, pay attention to both of these pillars of ancient oratory in relation to
humanist orations. See, e.g., Cortesi, DHD, 183.6–7, where Bernardo Giustinian is said to use
the excellence of his delivery to cover up for his sub-par Latin, and 180.6–11, where Bartholomeo
Lampridio is mocked for his terrible memory and subsequent oratorical flops. The performative
aspect of Latin received greater stress in Rome in the period directly following Cortesi’s departure
from the city, roughly 1500–1530. See Benedetti, Ex perfecta antiquorum eloquentia.
175 See Paul Saenger, Space between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, 1997).
176 See Cicero, Brutus, xlix.184–liv.200.
177 See Hankins (ed.), Renaissance Civic Humanism, pp. 11–12, and the essays by Hankins, Mikael
Hörnqvist, and John Najemy. Quotation at p. 12.
hegemony through their letters, orations, diplomacy at Church councils,
and transformation of the liturgy.178 Yet it is not for these works and services
that they gained distinction as humanists in Cortesi’s world, but rather for
their contribution to the revival of Latin eloquence. And their audience,
far from being composed of foreign elites or domestic politicos, was made
up of other humanists.
This brings us to a final distinguishing characteristic of the Renaissance
milieu: if for ancient orators eloquence was in the service of a career,
usually political, for humanists like Cortesi a career in a chancery, at the
curia, or as a personal secretary was ideally in the service of eloquence.
Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine have argued in the opposite direction in
From Humanism to the Humanities, assuming that there was nothing “in
it,” so to speak, for humanists beyond a professional opportunity. Thus
with regard to female humanists, to whom no career path was open, they
conclude that all humanist learning could be was a hollow “end in itself,
like fine needlepoint or the ability to perform ably on lute or virginals.”179
In fact, Cortesi does see humanism primarily as an end in itself – but
a glorious, not a hollow one. Of course, he also sees it as a way to get
his bread buttered. Humanists naturally sought advancement, patronage,
even high rank. And why not? No matter how much of the monastic ideal
the humanists adopted, they could not achieve glory, much less feed their
stomachs, by ostensibly humbling their station. Humanists enunciated no
ideal of holy poverty; there was no institutional apparatus (of Orders,
cloisters, or monasteries) to support all but the desert hermit humanists
who rejected even its modest comfort; and there was no equivalent servus
servorum humanitatis. Cortesi wrote all of his works with preferment in
mind, and he penned his own masterpiece, De cardinalatu, as a means to
winning a red hat for himself. But these were not his paramount goals, nor
did he present them as the goals of (or as criteria for judging) the human-
ists in his intellectual and cultural community. What Cortesi’s humanists
did seek, as Christopher Celenza has argued for humanism in general,
was distinction in the world of Latin letters.180 And what Cortesi sought
personally was to be recognized as the Cicero of his generation. In giv-
ing voice to the goals and ideals of Italian humanists towards the end of
the fifteenth century, Cortesi betrays none of the propaganda, advertising,
178 Hankins, “The Popes and Humanism,” pp. 478–484; O’Malley, Praise and Blame.
179 Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, p. 56.
180 See Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance, pp. 115–133, esp. 119, where Celenza gives his argument
in a nutshell: “esteem and honor depended mostly on what their fellow intellectuals thought of
their literary effort.”
or cynicism that Grafton and Jardine identified in humanist discourse.
Nor do I think it sensible, much less necessary, to read Cortesi cynically.
De hominibus doctis is not an attempt to sell humanism to outsiders but
a declaration of preeminence to other members of the same community.
Cortesi is announcing, “I am the best of us, recognize my excellence,”
not “I have something that you need, and you can buy it from me.” If
we want to understand what was “in it” for humanists, to understand
why they chose to participate in the humanist community as opposed to
another, why they evince rapture at a well-formulated period and could
wish their stylistic enemies dead, in short, why they make an ideal of Latin
eloquence, we must resist the temptation to reduce their behavior entirely
to the lowest common denominator of economic and political advantage.
We must learn to listen – not naı̈vely but intelligently and with searching
sympathy – when they tell us. What Cortesi tells us is that, as opposed
to Cicero’s oratores, for whom eloquence was a means to an end, for the
homines docti of the Italian Renaissance, eloquence was the end.
Culture and barbarism

Eloquence as an end in itself might seem a mere, or worse a rarefied,
aesthetic goal, one whose realization, while noteworthy, remains at the
periphery and not at the center of civilization. For Cortesi, however, reviv-
ing ancient eloquence meant restoring the hallmark of Roman culture in
his own times, culture understood in its original, restricted, magnificent
sense as the cultivation and refinement of human life. Eloquence was the
gateway to creative flourishing, the vehicle for transcending the supposed
barbarism of the Middle Ages and restoring the splendor of antiquity.
One way to understand the importance claimed for eloquence is to take
notice of “the reasons for which the studia eloquentiae were utterly removed
from Italy”181 in the first place. Using an historical paradigm made popular
by Biondo Flavio, Antonio explains:182
181 Cortesi, DHD, 108.10–11: “hae causae quae eloquentiae studia funditus ex Italia sustulerunt.”
182 Ferraù, “Introduzione,” p. 23, believes that Bruni is the source for Cortesi. Yet Cortesi does not
attribute the decline of language to the Romans’ loss of liberty under the emperors, as does
Bruni; and for Bruni the barbarian invasions are not the first strike against Roman culture but the
deathblow. Biondo’s paradigm in the Decades seems to fit better. See Angelo Mazzocco, “Decline
and Rebirth in Bruni and Biondo,” in Paolo Brezzi and Maristella de Panizza Lorch (eds.),
Umanesimo a Roma nel Quattrocento (Rome, 1984), pp. 249–266. Consider also the description
and discussion of Biondo’s view of the vernacular as a corruption of Latin resulting from the
barbarian invasions in Mazzocco, Linguistic Theories, ch. 1 and esp. p. 17. For Bruni’s view, see his
Vite di Dante e del Petrarca, pp. 554–555.
First, the transfer of the imperial seat from Italy to Greece seems to me to
have contributed most to the expulsion of eloquence. Thereafter the entrance
to Italy was left open to barbarian cruelty, and the means of Roman rule
collapsed. The barbarian nations, angry at their long servitude and eager to
wipe out the Roman name, fell upon Italy like on easy prey. Great calamities
ensued: citizens were driven from their homes; savage peoples were mixed
into our race; cities were overthrown; and the commonwealth, once so
prosperous, perished. These peoples, however, were not content with their
spoils, but kept possession of Italy for about one thousand years, shaking
it with the bitterest violence. Hence our intermixing with the barbarians;
hence the childish, polluted manner so many have of speaking Latin; hence
the destruction and burning of an infinite abundance of books. For these
reasons budding minds were robbed of all ability and, submerged deep in
barbarism, became enfeebled.183
Constantine’s translatio imperii from Rome to Constantinople weakened

Italy, leaving it vulnerable to attack.184 The Gothic invasions wiped out
what was left of Roman administration, destroyed Italy’s well-being, and
uprooted Roman culture, which was connected to linguistic purity and
was represented above all by books. An age of stultifying barbarism began.
Cortesi envisions humanism as the inverse of this barbarous removal
of cultivated eloquence from Italy: a translatio studii in which the literary
culture of ancient Rome returns after one thousand years to its modern
counterpart. The preservers and carriers of this culture are learned Byzan-
tines like Chrysoloras, George of Trebizond, Cardinal Bessarion, and John
Argyropoulos, who pass on their knowledge of the ars to their Italian
protégés.185 As we saw above, Chrysoloras sparked humanist eloquence by
183 Cortesi, DHD, 108.12–109.1: “Ac primum mihi quidem videtur translatio illa domicilii imperii
Romani ex Italia in Thraciam non minimam attulisse eloquentiae iacturam; qua profecto emigra-
tione et aditus Italiae patuerunt barbaricae nationes, odio diuturnae servitutis ac delendi nominis
Romani cupiditate, in Italiam tamquam ad certam praedam confluxerunt; ex quo tantae calamitates
sequutae sunt ut cives suis sedibus pellerentur, immanes gentes in nostrum genus infunderentur
et civitates everterentur et fortunatissima quondam respublica dilaberetur. Nec vero solum hae
nationes una tantum praeda contentae fuerunt, sed etiam mille prope annorum Italiae posses-
sionem acerbissima vexatione tenuerunt. Hinc colligatio affinitatis cum barbaris, hinc multis
involucris inquinata Latine loquendi consuetudo, hinc direpta atque exusta infinita librorum
copia. Quibus rebus factum est ut nascentia ingenia omni ope destituta et penitus in barbariem
immersa languerint.”
184 On the origin of the notion that Constantine’s translatio imperii caused Rome’s decline, see
Patricia Osmond de Martino, “The ‘Idea of Constantinople’: A Prolegomenon to Further Study,”
Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques, 15:2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 323–336.
185 For an overview of the role played by Byzantines in the development of Italian humanism, see Deno
J. Geanakoplos, “Italian Humanism and Byzantine Émigré Scholars,” in Rabil (ed.), Renaissance
Humanism, vol. II, pp. 350–381.
bringing his teaching “to Italy from beyond the sea,” and George of Trebi-
zond used his knowledge of Aristotelian rhetoric to increase the diffusion
of the oratorium artificium in Italy. The other Byzantines are also presented
as classroom teachers (Gaza, Argyropoulos) or informal points of reference
for Italians seeking to increase their eloquence (Gaza, Bessarion). This cul-
tural transfer began with the Ottoman threat to Byzantium at the turn of
the fifteenth century.186 Then “the Greeks (Graeci) brought many things
to Italy, and likewise the Italians (nostri) went to Constantinople to study
as if to a kind of home of learning (domus doctrinae).”187 When the domus
doctrinae was conquered, however, “Latin letters received a deep wound,”
the only consolation being that “more Byzantine scholars flooded into Italy
then ever before.”188
It is unclear where exactly Byzantine expertise comes from. Since Cicero
in his Brutus cites the Greeks as the source of ancient Roman eloquence,
which moved from East to West along with philosophy in the first trans-
latio studii, perhaps Cortesi sees the Greeks as perpetually eloquent and
learned, ever able throughout the ages to pass on their art to others. On
the other hand, he might well perceive the Byzantines as the inheritors
of a continuous Roman cultural tradition dating to the days of Constan-
tine’s translatio imperii, with the culture of the old empire following the
capital across the sea to the Nova Roma at Byzantium. Such would be in
accord with Cortesi’s claim that eloquence was “removed” and “expelled”
from Italy, not destroyed, in the wake of the translatio imperii. Cortesi also
would have known that the Byzantines considered themselves, correctly, to
be Romans and called themselves such (Rhomaioi), although this identifi-
cation was generally rejected in the Latin West.189 But no matter whether
Constantinople represented a true home or simply a place of exile for
Roman culture, it was the source from which humanist eloquence flowed.
Now it is clear why Cortesi considers the Byzantine émigrés to be neither
barbari nor externi but rather to belong to nostri (although in discussing
the conquest of Constantinople he explicitly calls them Graeci). When
186 For the role of the Turks, see Cortesi, DHD, 131.3–10.
187 Ibid., 131.13–15: “a Graecis multa in Italiam importarentur et nostri item studiorum causam
Bisantium tanquam ad domum quandam doctrinae proficiscerentur.”
188 Ibid., 131.3–4: “magnum vulnus res Latinae ex direptione Bisantii”; 132.3–4: “plures post importu-
nam illam cladem in Italiam confluxisse quam unquam antea.” Argyropoulos is said explicitly to
have come to Italy as a refugee (164.3–4: “is, cum bello Bisantino domo pulsus in Italiam venisset,
multos docuit”).
189 On the Roman identity of what is commonly called the Byzantine empire, see Anthony Kaldellis,
Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformation of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical
Tradition (Cambridge, 2007).
Chrysoloras began his teaching, he was reinstating the common culture
that linked the descendents of the Western and Eastern Romans of late
antiquity. To the extent that they were the modern carriers of a shared
past, these Graeci were as much nostri as native-born Italians. The sharply
qualified praise of a barbarus like Janus Pannonius also makes more sense
now, as does the prejudice against his people as “less receptive to the Muses.”
If it was northern European peoples who expelled eloquence from Italy in
the first place, why should they be receptive to it now that the Italians were
busy putting their shattered culture back together? Such would seem to be
the thought process of Alessandro.190
Cortesi’s vision of a translatio studii emphasizes continuity with the
ancient past, linking the cultural greatness of ancient Rome and its ora-
tores to modern Rome and its homines docti through a common, time-
less pursuit. Significantly, Cortesi nowhere uses the metaphor of rebirth,
of renaissance, to describe humanism, and thus although his historical
paradigm announces decline it does not imply death. Rather, the ancient
studia eloquentiae had moved away, or fallen asleep, or been taken prisoner,
or lost their voice, or been abandoned in the dark; and now they are being
saved from ruin, wakened from sleep, freed from barbarism, or returned
to light by the humanists.191 This may seem like hair-splitting, but if we
are to take Cortesi on his own terms and not on those to which we have
become accustomed, we should recognize that, as far as he was concerned,
humanists were not reanimating something that had utterly passed out of
existence, as is implied in the metaphor of death and rebirth – a main-
stay of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century descriptions of the visual arts.192
Rather, they were restoring an ancient tradition that had been lost for
a thousand years to them but which had enjoyed continuous thriving in
the New Rome of Byzantium. Now the Eastern Romans, in the face of
the Ottoman conquest, were returning to Italy, the ancient center of the
imperium, bringing its culture, its eloquence, back with them. Over the
190 Distaste for the barbari was a hallmark of the historical Alessandro Farnese. See Léon Dorez, La
Cour du Pape Paul III, 2 vols. (Paris, 1932), vol. I, p. 23.
191 For the metaphor of waking eloquence from sleep, see Cortesi, DHD, 103.22–23; for freedom
from barbarism, 101.8–10; for the return to light from darkness, 101.7–8; for muteness, see above,
note 37; for abandonment, 101.12–13; for being saved from ruin, 103.12.
192 See Salvatore Settis, “Art History and Criticism,” in Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and
Salvatore Settis (eds.), The Classical Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), pp. 78–83, esp. 80;
and Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (New York, 1969/1972), ch. 1:
“‘Renaissance’ – Self-Definition or Self-Deception.” Cf. also Garin, Rinascite e rivoluzioni, pp. 5–
47, and esp. 39–47, where Garin distinguishes between the humanist revolutionary dream of
renovatio, “che . . . vuole cambiare il mondo” (p. 41), and the Vasarian sense of rinascita as a
“momento di un ciclo naturale” (p. 46).
course of the fifteenth century Rome gained in importance, once again
becoming, as Cortesi presents it, the center of humanistic culture. And
now, in Cortesi and his generation, Rome might have fully regained its
oratores, evidence for which is provided by De hominibus doctis itself.
It has been argued that the linguistic restoration of High Renaissance
Rome was linked, at least on a subconscious level, to a new imperial vision
of the papacy, and that the linguistic orthodoxy required by Ciceronianism
doubled as a tool of social and religious control.193 It is thus tempting to
link Cortesi’s modern translatio studii with yet another translatio imperii,
but Cortesi himself does not do so. There is not one hint in the dialogue
that the cultural restoration of ancient Rome is connected to its political
or military restoration, much less that the city has regained its status as
the seat of a world empire, political or cultural. De hominibus doctis is
not the Elegantiae, the Latin style manual in which half a century earlier
Lorenzo Valla had programmatically and somewhat drunkenly proclaimed,
romanum imperium ibi esse, ubi romana lingua dominatur (“The Roman
Empire exists where the Roman language holds sway”).194 It is possible that
the connection between language and power was so obvious to Cortesi as
to need neither elaboration nor even a wink. Yet a celebration of papal
imperialism does not fit very well with a dedication to Lorenzo de’ Medici.
Then again, neither does the dialogue’s glorification of Roman humanism
at the expense of Florentine developments.
Thankfully, if we are searching for a deeper significance to De hominibus
doctis, there is no need to speculate. For Cortesi clearly infuses humanism
with a transcendent cultural meaning, one related not to military power or
lordship – whose glory he rejects in no uncertain terms in the description
of Guarino’s school – but to the fulfillment of man’s highest creative
potential. If the effect of the Gothic invasions was that “budding minds
were robbed of all ability and, submerged deep in barbarism, became
enfeebled,”195 then the task of humanism was to recreate the conditions for
the intellectual flourishing that had reigned in ancient Rome, or rather the
condition: Latin eloquence. The emphasis on intellectual liberation from
barbarism evokes an important aspect of Eugenio Garin’s interpretation of
humanism.196 Garin argued that humanism liberated the human mind by
putting it in active dialogue with the ancients, resulting in the “acquisition
193 Hankins, “The Popes and Humanism,” pp. 482–483; Hankins, “Roma caput mundi,” pp. 501–503.
Cf. also D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, pp. 115–143.
194 As quoted in Hankins, “Roma caput mundi,” p. 502. For a further discussion of Valla’s Elegantiae,
see below, pp. 196–198.
195 See above, note 183. 196 Cf. Garin, Rinascite e rivoluzioni, pp. 5–38.
of historical consciousness and critical consciousness, of awareness of self
and others, of an understanding of the fullness of the human world and its
development.”197 But for Cortesi the rub is not in dialogue, nor in specific
ancient texts, nor necessarily in any kind of research into antiquity, nor even
in consciousness of any particular thing. Rather, the liberating potential of
humanism resides in the power of proper language, in eloquence itself.
Cortesi posits a strict and direct relationship between eloquence and
intellectual potential: the latter can only rise as high as the former allows it,
no matter how great any individual’s natural talents. It is not so much the
emotive capacity of eloquence as the knowledge necessary for it, oratorium
artificium or doctrina, that unleashes the potential of ingenium, a term
which might be translated as “natural ability,” “native intelligence,” or sim-
ply “talent.” Poliziano had argued that ingenium sufficed for eloquence;198
Cortesi rejects this position: “For no one is so full of natural ability (inge-
nium) and so diligent in imitation as to be able to compose well without
knowledge of the ars of speech.”199
That eloquence is necessary for intellectual expression and not only for
aesthetic effect emerges from the treatment of Dante. There Antonio mar-
vels at the poet’s “daring to treat such difficult and abstruse subjects in the
vernacular,” the implication clearly being that the vernacular is generally
incapable of expressing them.200 Dante’s merits end up overshadowed by
his being “unintelligible in other things whose meaning is not obvious
enough.”201 The vernacular lacks the oratorium artificium available in elo-
quent Latin.202 What is at stake in the case of Dante is therefore no simple
stylistic issue. His problem is not that he did not write beautifully enough
or persuasively enough – indeed he is praised for these very things – but
197 Garin, L’educazione in Europa, p. 103 (as quoted in Black, Humanism and Education in Medieval
and Renaissance Italy, p. 15).
198 Black, “New Laws,” pp. 134–138. Consider also Angelo Poliziano, Commento inedito alle Selve di
Stazio, ed. Lucia Cesarini Martinelli (Florence, 1978), p. 29.18–23: “Verum nulla tanta ars est, quae
afflationem illam mentis, quam enthousiasmón Graeci dicunt, imitari possit, unde existit Platonis
illa atque ante ipsum Democriti opinio: ‘poetam bonum neminem sine inflammatione animorum
existere posse et sine quodam afflatu quasi furoris.’ Sed de poetico furore paulo post suo tempore
plura dicemus.”
199 See above, note 49. Cortesi’s position is representative of wider trends in the direction of transform-
ing the notion of eloquence into one of technical proficiency. See Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence.
201 Cortesi, DHD, 114.4: “sed interdum etiam rebus non satis apertis oscurus.”
202 Thus Cortesi contradicts Dante’s position on the illustrious potential of the vernacular as enun-
ciated in the first treatise of the Convivio and the De vulgari eloquentia, a potential he strove to
reach in his own writings. See Mazzocco, Linguistic Theories, chs. 2 and 8.
that he could not express complicated ideas clearly. Whether Dante was
able to think complicated ideas is not an issue explored by Cortesi, but
the implication is that he could not rise to the highest level of thought; it
is difficult to imagine too distinct a line between internal comprehension
and the ability to express oneself clearly. And such is implied in Antonio’s
claim that “minds were robbed of all ability . . . and became enfeebled”
in the wake of the barbarian invasions and the subsequent pollution of
language. Dante’s times, in not permitting eloquence, did not permit his
extraordinary ingenium to flourish as it otherwise might have.
The calculus of ingenium and doctrina present in any given age or
individual person provides Cortesi with his criterion for judging. It was
a lack of doctrina that kept the forerunners of humanism from writing
anything worthwhile, whereas it was Chrysoloras’ reintroduction of it that
set humanism in motion. The progressive recovery of the ars of rhetoric
throughout the fifteenth century increasingly enabled its participants to
reach the potential of their ingenium. As we have seen, writers belonging
to the early humanist generations of Bruni and Valla are often said to have
been held back by the “iniquity” or “vice”203 of their times rather than
by any fault of their own. True eloquence simply was not possible until
later. First with Piccolomini (if Antonio’s praise is indeed genuine) did
doctrina catch up with ingenium. The reason that Piccolomini “could be
called the only true humanist in this army of learned men” is that “he was
endowed equally with natural ability (natura) and doctrina.”204 Thereafter
the relationship between ingenium and doctrina reached equilibrium, at
least in a few exemplary individuals like Calderini, Gaza, and Platina. The
combined efforts of the humanists had made enough doctrina available that
one needed only apply the proper ingenium to achieve, or almost achieve,
eloquence.205
This is the sense in which “the times” are what essentially separate a
Dante or a Petrarch from a Bruni from a Piccolomini from a Cortesi: the
203 E.g., the forerunners of humanism were held back by “iniquitas temporum” (Cortesi, DHD,
116.12); Bruni’s “vitium” is not his own but rather belongs to his “aetati” (121.11). See also
pp. 155–156 above.
204 Ibid., 154.2–4: “Licet enim hunc prope solum oratorem ex hac acie doctorum adducere, cui natura
pariter et doctrina inservierit.”
205 Calderini is characterized as “ingenio peracri et flagranti studio” (ibid., 159.10–11); Gaza “non modo
acuere industriam, sed etiam alere quibusdam orationis nutrimentis in ingenium possit” (161.14–
15); Platina “plurimum . . . ingenio et doctrina valuisse” (167.8–9). Campano is the exception which
proves the rule, since he “could not bear studying, which often happens to those swelling and
overflowing with natural talents” (155.13–14: “studiorum laborem ferre non poterat, quod saepe
fere contigit uberrimis ingeniis habundantibus”).
times are equivalent to the sum of doctrina available for refining the raw
material of ingenium. Antiquity had been a “good time,” the Middle Ages
a “bad” one, in which minds had become “enfeebled” by the pollution of
language and the loss of books. Humanists set about restoring the nec-
essary theoretical knowledge (doctrina, artificium, ars) for bringing “good
times” back to the present in the form of eloquence, in which complex
thought and beauty of expression are united. Humanism set the stage for
ingenium’s reprise. Hence Cortesi’s decision to call the humanists homines
docti, “learned men.” If their lack of true eloquence marked their distance
from the oratores of antiquity, it was precisely their greater knowledge of
the ars of speech, their greater learning (doctrina), that distinguished them
from the writers of the Middle Ages and put them on track to regain the
ancient title.
Indeed, they might have stood before an even grander future. For
although Cortesi emphasizes the inferiority of most, if not all, of the
Quattrocento to the age of Cicero, in another respect he suggests that the
outlook might be brighter on his side of the medium aevum of barbarism.
The dominant subtheme of Cicero’s Brutus is that, despite the perfection
of oratory achieved in the figure of Cicero, the civil wars and Caesar’s
imminent overthrow of the Republic have ended free speech and thus
destroyed the place of oratory in public life.206 The eloquence that so far
had secured the young Brutus a brilliant career already seems doomed, and
therefore the triumph Cicero enjoys in his own rhetoric is bittersweet; he
shall likely have no heirs. The situation is manifestly different for Cortesi,
who presides over a resurgence of eloquence promoted, not threatened, by
the modern Roman (pontifical) principate.207
The comparison to Brutus is not idle. For although it has been stressed
throughout this chapter that Cortesi presents himself as a new Cicero,
he could also be considered a new but very different kind of Brutus – a
modern heir to Cicero set to take up where the great mentor left off. The
parallel emerges on the formal level, with the character of Paolo taking the
place in De hominibus doctis occupied by Brutus in the Ciceronian dialogue
named for him.208 It is not, however, Brutus’ reputation as a republican
206 On the political subtext of the Brutus, cf. Douglas, “Introduction,” pp. xi–xv.
207 For a succinct description of the symbiosis between humanism and the Roman ecclesiastical
hierarchy, see D’Amico, “Humanism in Rome,” pp. 264–274; at greater length, see D’Amico,
Renaissance Humanism, pp. 3–60.
208 Antonio takes the place of the authoritative main speaker, Cicero, and Alessandro fills Atticus’ role
as wealthy aristocrat and junior active partner. Paolo, like Brutus, plays a passive part and serves
mostly to move the conversation along.
tyrannicide that attracts Cortesi but rather his status as Cicero’s protégé.209
As seen in the criticism of Cola Montano, humanism and its rhetorical edu-
cation are not supposed to be turned to political involvement and certainly
not to political murder. Cortesi’s ideal is not that of the republican orator
or political operative but of the leisured aesthete, the retainer of princes
who as a reward for his faithful service receives their patronage of his private
passion.210 If he follows the true spirit of humanism, his contemplative life
of study will adorn him with virtue and win him the honorable praise of
the expert few for his hard-won eloquence. Brutus had taken up the tradi-
tion of Ciceronian eloquence, but not that of quiet study. Cortesi would
now set things right. Ever since Petrarch’s discovery of the Familiar Letters,
Cicero had presented a double aspect to his admirers, who often felt them-
selves obliged to take sides over his seemingly split personality. Did his
essence lie in shrewd involvement in republican politics, or in the enjoy-
ment of a retired life of literature? Cortesi obviously chose the latter, and he
therefore considered himself, in a way superior to the historical Brutus, to
be Cicero’s proper heir: one who makes his peace with princely power – in
modern times the Roman papacy – to secure the flourishing of eloquence.
If in 1490 Latin eloquence appeared to have reascended the peak it had
previously occupied in 46 bc, humanists had just started to take in the view
and had not yet glanced at the downward slope. Especially in Rome, where
Ciceronianism reigned and the curia and cardinalate alike had become a
reliable source of patronage, the future of eloquence had to seem assured
to Cortesi and the intimates of his academy. At least in their small but
significant circle, they had managed to reclaim the triumph of Cicero.
209 For the relationship between Cicero and Brutus, both as portrayed in the Brutus and in real life,
see Douglas, “Introduction,” pp. xviii–xxii.
210 Partner, The Pope’s Men, p. 130, sees the upshot for Roman curial humanism as a “drift . . . towards
a more conventional, courtly approach to literature and learned leisure.” Cf. D’Amico, Renaissance
Humanism, p. 125.
c h a p ter 4
Philology, printing, and the perfection

of humanism
At roughly the same time De hominibus doctis was making the rounds
in Rome and Florence, in Venice Marcantonio Sabellico was putting the
finishing touches on his own imitation of Cicero’s Brutus, De latinae lin-
guae reparatione.1 Their common literary model and their shared roots in
the Accademia Pomponiana endow these two works with many similari-
ties, especially a preoccupation with the purity of Latin and the tendency
to attribute the grandest cultural importance to language. Like Cortesi,
Sabellico portrays humanism as a battle against barbarism. He evokes
a dramatic struggle for the salvation of ancient Roman civilization, all
wrapped up in the effort, signaled by the title of the dialogue, to “restore
the Latin language” (latinae linguae reparatio). An important intertext for
Sabellico’s particular paradigm is Lorenzo Valla’s first preface to the Elegan-
tiae, which militaristically called for the very linguistic undertaking whose
history Sabellico’s dialogue narrates. A comparison of the two works shows
that Sabellico, while adopting Valla’s view of Latin’s power, channels that
energy, like Flavio Biondo, into Italian identity.
1 Sabellico, DLLR. On Sabellico, the most thorough general source (albeit rare) is Giovanni Rita, Da
Vicovaro a Venezia: Introduzione a Marcantio Sabellico (Vicovaro, 2004). Shorter, more accessible
synthetic accounts are Francesco Tateo, “Coccio, Marcantonio, detto Marcantonio Sabellico,” in
DBI, vol. XXVI (1982), pp. 510–515; and Egmont Lee, “Marcantonio Sabellico of Vicovaro, 1436–
1506),” in Bietenholz and Deutscher (eds.), Contemporaries of Erasmus, vol. III, pp. 181–182. Among
older bibliography, see especially Giovanni Mercati, Ultimi contributi alla storia degli umanisti, fasc.
2 (Vatican City, 1939), pp. 1–23. See also the more recent treatments by Ruth Chavasse, “The
studia humanitatis and the Making of a Humanist Career: Marcantonio Sabellico’s Exploitation
of Humanist Literary Genres,” Renaissance Studies, 17:1 (2003), pp. 27–38; Chavasse, “Humanism
Commemorated: The Venetian Memorials to Benedetto Brugnolo and Marcantonio Sabellico,”
in Peter Denley and Caroline Elam (eds.), Florence and Italy: Renaissance Studies in Honour of
Nicolai Rubinstein (London, 1988), pp. 455–461; Chavasse, “The First Known Author’s Copyright,
September 1486, in the Context of a Humanist Career,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 69
(1986), pp. 11–37; King, Venetian Humanism, esp. pp. 425–427 (with bibliography); and Guglielmo
Bottari, “Introduzione,” in Sabellico, DLLR, pp. 7–67. Further bibliography is available in Rita, Da
Vicovaro a Venezia, pp. 165–168, and Tateo, “Coccio, Marcantonio,” pp. 514–515.
184
Philology, printing, and the perfection of humanism 185
In addition to its connection to Roman humanism, De latinae linguae
reparatione is distinguished by its proximity to the Venetian milieu as well
as by the peculiar vision of its author. Sabellico takes a decidedly northern
point of view and even places humanism’s origins in the teaching of the
great schoolmaster of Padua, Gasparino Barzizza. A certain amount of the
dialogue is also dedicated to describing the special character of humanism in
Venice, part of which includes patriotic praise of the city. In another depar-
ture from the narrative to which we have become accustomed, Sabellico
almost entirely neglects the Byzantine contribution to humanism. Stun-
ningly, even Manuel Chrysoloras disappears from humanism’s history. As
if to announce that humanism had utterly renounced its origins, Sabellico
also ignores Petrarch and all other Trecento figures. Humanism miracu-
lously begins, in his account, with an instance of spontaneous combustion
in the Po Valley. Apart from this foible, the history Sabellico recounts is
the most complete and nuanced we have yet encountered. With surprising
sensitivity to how cultural movements evolve over time, he identifies stages
of development, pivotal figures who hoisted humanism from one platform
to the next, and key turning points and innovations essential to humanism’s
success.
In another unexpected aspect of his text, Sabellico relates this success
directly to textual editing, the novel technology of printing, and their
marriage in printed philological commentaries – all hallmarks of humanism
in Venice. His discussion of commentaries bears on generational divides
and differences of opinion in the humanist community, structural changes
in the transmission of knowledge, and the nature of humanist education.
But most striking is his notion that commentaries are the vehicle for
bringing the humanist project to completion. Sabellico’s attention to these
facets of humanism give us great insight into the literary culture of his day.
Unlike the other humanists in this study, he inhabits a bustling world of
bibliophiles, of overflowing book shops and trend-setting libraries, and of
overwhelmed litterati struggling to accrue the blessings of the multitudo
librorum without bending fatally under its collective weight.2
Marcantonio Coccio, better known as Sabellico (1436–1506), has left
his mark primarily as an historian.3 His two longest and most important
2 Cf. Ann Blair, Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New
Haven, 2010), pp. 46–61.
3 See Felix Gilbert, “Biondo, Sabellico, and the Beginnings of Venetian Official Historiography,” in
J.G. Rowe and W.H. Stockdale (eds.), Florilegium Historiale: Essays Presented to Wallace K. Ferguson
(Toronto, 1971), pp. 276–293. For a damning assessment of Sabellico’s historiography, see Cochrane,
Historians and Historiography, pp. 83–86, esp. 84: “Thus Sabellico managed to combine the principal
works are a history of Venice, the Historiae rerum venetarum ab urbe con-
dita (1487), and the Enneades (1498–1504), a massive universal history. A
native of Vicovaro, in the Sabina region northeast of Rome, he studied
under Pomponio Leto and Domizio Calderini. Under Leto’s direction he
dedicated himself to poetry, and he is said to have been crowned poet
laureate by Emperor Frederick III in 1469.4 After the breakup of Leto’s first
Academy (1468), Sabellico left Rome in the 1470s to make his career in
northern Italy and especially in Venice, where he spent the last twenty years
of his life and eventually became professor of literature at the School of San
Marco. His fame in his own day, especially in Venice, was substantial.5 His
Historiae rerum venetarum was adopted by the city as an official history.6
He published in a variety of other genres as well, including poetry, ora-
tions, letters, and philological commentaries,7 works reprinted many times
both before and after his death. His Epistulae were among the first to
be conceived for the printed book market (coeval with Aldus’ edition of
Poliziano’s letters) and appear to have been used as a school text in north-
ern Europe.8 As Martin Lowry has noted, Sabellico “probably deserves the
title usually reserved for Erasmus – that of being the first writer to make a
career from the new medium” of printing.9 Upon his death he received a
state funeral (with an oration delivered by his one-time enemy, Giambat-
tista Egnazio) and was buried in accordance with his wish in the monastic
church of S. Maria delle Grazie; his tomb, now in the Correr Museum,
defects both of Quattrocento humanist historiography and of the Venetian chronicle tradition.”
Cochrane does not consider De latinae linguae reparatione. Rita, Da Vicovaro a Venezia, is largely
devoted to rehabilitating Sabellico as an historian.
4 For Sabellico’s poetic output, see especially Rita, Da Vicovaro a Venezia, pp. 23–31. On Sabellico’s
crowning, see Chavasse, “The studia humanitatis,” p. 37. Rita, Da Vicovaro a Venezia, pp. 23–24 and
n. 34, treats the episode with skepticism.
5 In the estimation of Dionisotti, Gli umanisti, p. 15, “L’umanesimo a Venezia, fra Quattro e Cinque-
cento, non si identifica con Aldo e con il gruppo che a lui fa capo. Dopo la morte di Giorgio Valla
(1500), il più autorevole umanista ivi rimasto era, senza dubbio alcuno, Marcantonio Sabellico.”
Another mark of Sabellico’s importance is that he was named librarian of the Marciana, an office
he apparently discharged with as little devotion as possible. See Martin Lowry, The World of Aldus
Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice (Oxford, 1979), p. 51.
6 As clarified in Chavasse, “The First Known Author’s Copyright,” the Historiae was not commissioned
as an official history but was recognized as such after its composition and was therefore given a
copyright by the city.
7 For a review of Sabellico’s emendations to Catullus, see Gaisser, Catullus and his Renaissance Readers,
pp. 48–52.
8 Chavasse, “The studia humanitatis,” p. 37. An extended treatment of Sabellico’s letters is found in
Rita, Da Vicovaro a Venezia, pp. 113–138.
9 Lowry, World of Aldus, p. 28 (quoted in Chavasse, “The First Known Author’s Copyright,” p. 11).
Chavasse, “The studia humanitatis,” traces what she calls Sabellico’s “exploitation of humanist
literary genres” and his systematic use of printing (his own works) in order to advance his career as
a professional humanist.
was venerated by his students and other scholars throughout the sixteenth
century.10
In modern times, however, Sabellico occupies a much lower niche in
the pantheon of humanism, and his De latinae linguae reparatione, which
even at the time of its publication was considered a minor work, has sunk
almost entirely into oblivion.11 The dialogue’s precise date of composition
is difficult to ascertain, but it seems to have been finished by the end
of 1489.12 It enjoyed moderate success in the sixteenth century, as far
as can be discerned from its influence on kindred texts.13 Thereafter it
suffered centuries of neglect until a facsimile of a Cinquecento edition
was eventually reprinted in 1992.14 Finally, Guglielmo Bottari produced a
modern critical edition of the text in 1999.15
The scant attention De latinae linguae reparatione has received is inversely
proportional to its value, both in terms of its literary merit and as a source
of information for humanist identity. As I have argued elsewhere,16 the
dialogue is a complex and subtle piece of literature designed to vie with
the ancients in the genre of criticism. Its aim, which it achieves with
understated grace, is to outdo Cicero’s Brutus and other similar texts by
being the first of its genre to offer a critical review not only of the great
authors of the past but also of living writers. But Sabellico’s text is much
more than a piece of literary criticism. Like Cortesi’s De hominibus doctis,
it is one of the first thorough histories of humanism.17
The dialogue sets out to answer two discrete questions that, through its
exposition, become one: (1) “whether in the great mass of new writings
10 Chavasse, “Humanism Commemorated,” pp. 455 and 459. For an image of the tomb by Antonio
Lombardo, see Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New
Haven, 1996), p. 240.
11 Emblematic of Sabellico’s reputation among modern scholars is the opinion of Martin Lowry, World
of Aldus, p. 183, who dismisses Sabellico as a second-rate philologist and journalistic popularizer.
12 Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), pp. 22–25. According to Lowry, World of Aldus, p. 29, it was
first printed in 1493.
13 Including Lilio Gregorio Giraldi’s De poetis nostrorum temporum (1553). See Bottari, “Introduzione”
(Sabellico), pp. 10–11.
14 Di Stefano et al. (eds.), La storiografia umanistica, vol. II, pp. 197–229.
15 Sabellico, DLLR. Bottari’s introduction and notes constitute the most in-depth and informative
scholarship on the dialogue. See also Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame”; and Konrad Krautter’s
short but insightful “Marcus Antonius Sabellicus’ Dialog ‘De latinae linguae reparatione.’” For
partial treatments and sundry observations on the dialogue, see Francesco Tateo, I miti della
storiografia umanistica (Rome, 1990), pp. 210–214 [in ch. 8: “Venezia e la storia esemplare di Livio in
Marcantonio Sabellico,” which is a revised version of his earlier “Marcantonio Sabellico e la svolta
del classicismo quattrocentesco,” in Florence and Venice: Comparisons and Relations. Acts of Two
Conferences at Villa I Tatti in 1976–1977 (Florence, 1979), vol. I, pp. 41–63]; Ferraù, “Introduzione,”
pp. 20–22; and Lowry, World of Aldus, pp. 36–38.
16 See Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame,” pp. 230–237.
17 On the historical nature of the dialogue, see Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame.”
which have appeared in our studies in the last few years, the Latin language
seems to have been made richer or more correct than it was before;”18
and (2) “what we owe to each of those who in modern times have aided
the Latin language.”19 These questions are posed at the outset of the
dialogue in an outer dramatic frame, in which Marcantonio Sabellico has
a casual conversation with two Veronese friends visiting him in Venice,
the humanists Iacopo Conte Giuliari and Virgilio Zavarise.20 Giuliari asks
Marcantonio to give his opinion on “those who in modern times have
aided the Latin language.” Marcantonio refuses but offers to recount two
speeches he heard on the same subject earlier that year. Thereupon begins
the dialogue’s inner frame, which constitutes the lion’s share of the text and
is composed of two long speeches.21 The first is by Benedetto Brugnoli, a
long-time teacher in Venice and the beloved and revered master of its San
Marco School (where Sabellico also taught).22 The second is by Battista
Guarini, the son of the great educator Guarino of Verona and himself
a teacher and the author of a popular educational treatise.23 Both men
trace the modern history of Latin language and literature by means of
a critical review of the outstanding humanists of the fifteenth century,
cataloguing the contributions they have made in the form of written works
and teaching. Brugnoli treats humanists from the movement’s founding to
about the third quarter of the fifteenth century, at which point Guarini takes
18 Sabellico, DLLR, 86.10–12: “an in tanta novorum scriptorum copia quanta paucis annis in his studiis
emersit, aut locupletior quam antea sibi latina lingua aut emendatior facta videatur.”
19 Ibid., 87.27–28: “quid cuique eorum, qui recentissimis temporibus latinam linguam iuvere, debea-
mus.” Quite similar formulations are found in the dedicatory letter: “what is rightly owed to each
of those on account of whom we have ceased speaking so clumsily” (83.23–24: “quid eorum cuique
per quos tam inepte loqui desinimus deberi oporteat”); and later in the dialogue, where it is said to
be a “conversation about those who in recent times have made a contribution to the Latin language”
(91.7–8: “sermo de his qui recenti saeculo aliquid in communem latinae linguae usum edidissent”).
20 On Giuliari and Zavarise, see Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), pp. 13–15 with notes. For an
explanation of the dramatic structure of the dialogue, including the functions assigned to outer and
inner dramatic frames, see Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame,” esp. pp. 214–216.
21 With all its different characters and complex structure, the dialogue presents a complicated problem
of interpretation, one I have tried to resolve in my “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame.” There I argue
that Sabellico has constructed De latinae linguae reparatione in such a way that most of the opinions
expressed by his several characters, and all of the judgments on humanists rendered by Brugnoli and
Guarini in their two long speeches, can be taken as representing Sabellico’s own point of view. For
clarity’s sake I will often note which character says what, but I will also attribute their utterances to
Sabellico, the true author of their speeches. See Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame,” pp. 234–235.
22 On Brugnoli, see Sabellico, DLLR, 91.3ff. See also King, Venetian Humanism, esp. pp. 342–343
(where he is called Brognoli). For a treatment of his teaching career, see Lowry, World of Aldus,
pp. 181–183 (where he is called Brugnolo).
23 On Guarini, see Sabellico, DLLR, 89.1ff. See also Gino Pistilli, “Guarini, Battista,” in DBI, vol. LX
(2003), pp. 339–345. His treatise is De ordine docendi et studendi, available in Latin–English parallel
text in the I Tatti Renaissance Library: Humanist Educational Treatises, pp. 260–309.
over, focusing specifically on humanist commentators – those involved in
the philological explication and emendation of classical texts – down to
the present day. In this review of the great Quattrocento humanists, the
sum of their achievements (question 2) becomes the answer to the question
about Latin (question 1): yes, humanism has, as indicated by the title and
echoed throughout the dialogue, “restored the Latin language.”24
Even more so than Cortesi, Sabellico uses a complex literary form to
transmit a holistic vision of Italian humanism. On the basis of a careful,
close reading, this chapter aims to reconstruct that vision from his liter-
ary creation, divided into four main parts. First, it considers the cultural
meaning Sabellico assigned to humanism. Then it traces his history of
humanism, divided into successive phases under the leadership of various
individuals. Third, it surveys the nature of humanism that emerges from
his account. Finally, it focuses on Sabellico’s insightful observations on the
relationship between commentaries, printing, and libraries to humanism.
The liberation of Latin and the refoundation of civilization

Good Latin had broader parameters for Sabellico than it did for Cortesi.
While the latter based his reputation on the faithful imitation of Cicero,
the former had a more catholic taste.25 To judge from his own style in the
dialogue, Quintilian enjoyed pride of place, followed by Cicero and Livy.26
Nevertheless, Sabellico does not limit himself to these personal preferences.
He names no one author worthy of imitation but rather a literary epoch:
the Latin of the Roman republic and the empire down to the Gothic
invasions of the fifth century. Thus even though the word “classical” had
not yet been adopted in the Renaissance, much less consistently applied
to the stylistic register and time period indicated here, it seems the most
proper way to translate Sabellico’s usage.27
24 See Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame,” pp. 228–230. The title, “De latinae linguae reparatione,”
is reiterated in the dedicatory letter (83.20) and slightly modified within the text: “de romanae linguae
reparatione” (168.16–17) and “de latinae linguae instauratione” (204.3).
25 Tateo, I miti, p. 210, views the matter differently, conflating Sabellico with Cortesi’s Ciceronianism.
26 Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), pp. 66–67. Sabellico’s taste accords with his extremely high
praise of Lorenzo Valla and Angelo Poliziano.
27 On the thorny concept of the “classical,” see Salvatore Settis, “Classical,” in Grafton, Most, and Settis
(eds.), The Classical Tradition, pp. 205–206; and James I. Porter (ed.), Classical Pasts: The Classical
Traditions of Greece and Rome (Princeton, 2005). In the sense of denoting a high stylistic register,
membership in a group of authors approved for correct linguistic usage, and by extension a time
period in which these flourished, “classical” (classicus) was first used by Aulus Gellius (Attic Nights,
19.8.15), in a figural borrowing from the jargon of tax brackets. It was not used in medieval Latin,
and it first appeared in the Renaissance in the commentaries of Sabellico’s contemporary, Filippo
Instead of “classical” Sabellico, adopting Lorenzo Valla’s terminology
in the Elegantiae, says “Roman.” Yet the term connotes different things in
Valla’s and Sabellico’s writings. For Valla, lingua romana suggested not only
the language of the bygone empire but also the idiom of his own Rome,
the place of his birth. By calling Latin romana, Valla forges a link between
past and present, stressing both political and cultural continuity.28 More
will be said below about Valla’s cultural politics and their relationship to
Sabellico’s. For now let it suffice to point out that when Sabellico says
romana lingua, he wants his reader to think not of the Rome of his own
day but rather of ancient Rome. Yet he, too, projects continuity between
past and present; for him, as for Biondo Flavio, Latin stands as the eternal
patrimony of Italy and Italians, rooted in the glory of the ancient Roman
empire with its center on the Italian peninsula. Latin is the cultural sinews
of a perennial Italian identity. On the one hand Sabellico associates Latin
with ancient Rome by freely interchanging latina lingua with romana
lingua, latinae litterae with romanae litterae. On the other he connects it
to his own time and people with the equally free substitution of nostrae or
nostrates litterae for latinae or romanae, and of patrius sermo for romanus
sermo.29 To drive the point home, he twice refers to Latin as “an ancestral
right.”30 The achievement of Renaissance humanism is that “Rome and
the rest of Italy has gotten its language back.”31
Sabellico has a very precise sense of Latin’s history, which he depicts
as an heroic tale of decline, fall, and renewal in which much more is at
Beroaldo. See Mario Citroni, “The Concept of the Classical and the Canons of Model Authors
in Roman Literature,” in Porter (ed.), Classical Pasts, pp. 204–234, esp. 204–211. Interestingly,
Sabellico’s (1490) and Beroaldo’s (1493) commentaries on Suetonius were printed together in 1496
and several times in the sixteenth century. See Chavasse, “The studia humanitatis,” pp. 31–32, and
Paolo Pellegrini, “Studiare Svetonio a Padova alla fine del Quattrocento,” Incontri triestini di filologia
classica, 7 (2007–2008), pp. 53–64, at 54.
28 See D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, pp. 118–119; Garin, L’umanesimo italiano, pp. 66–69; Alan
Fisher, “The Project of Humanism and Valla’s Imperial Metaphor,” Journal of Medieval and Renais-
sance Studies, 23 (1993), pp. 301–322; David Marsh, “Grammar, Method, and Polemic in Lorenzo
Valla’s Elegantiae,” Rinascimento, 2nd ser., 19 (1979), pp. 91–116; Jensen, “The Humanist Reform of
Latin and Latin Teaching,” in Kraye (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism,
p. 64. For the text of the prefaces to the Elegantiae, see Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, ed. and
tr. Eugenio Garin (Milan, 1952), pp. 594–631. A critical edition of the first preface is available in
Mariangela Regoliosi, Nel cantiere del Valla. Elaborazione e montaggio delle Elegantiae (Rome, 1993),
pp. 120–125.
29 E.g., latina lingua: title, 84.5–6, 87.28, and passim; romana lingua: 83.10, 95.22, 109.6; latinae litterae:
92.12; romanae litterae: 87.1, 96.17; nostrae litterae: 87.4; nostrates litterae: 91.9; patrius sermo: 121.1;
romanus sermo: 87.11, 168.6.
30 Once in his own name, in the dedicatory letter: “latinam linguam quasi postliminio recepimus”
(84.5–6); and once in the mouth of a character (Guarini): “veteres scriptores postliminio receptos”
(171.12).
31 Sabellico, DLLR, 203.10–11: “suum Roma caeteraque Italia recepit sermonem.”
stake than the aesthete’s inner enjoyment of high style. As his characters
several times describe it, Latin’s restoration has finally occurred after about
a millennium of slavery to a cultural interregnum of barbarism.32 The
carriers of this barbarism – Goths, Huns, and Longobards – invaded Italy
starting in the early fifth century after the peninsula had been weakened
by the transfer of the empire’s capital from Rome to Constantinople. They
laid waste Rome’s people and temples, its buildings and monuments, and
even its public and private libraries. They obliterated its civilization in every
respect. Charlemagne eventually subdued them, but the process of cultural
and specifically linguistic decay continued. Once “squalid barbarism” and
the “deformity of language”33 had infiltrated the ruins of Rome, no one
cared any longer for proper speech or desired language’s earlier form. This
was the state of affairs until roughly the early fifteenth century, when the
first humanists arrived to rouse the Latin language from its slumber.34
In the dialogue, humanism is portrayed primarily as a struggle to over-
come this millennium of linguistic barbarism. Sabellico sounds this note
right from the outset in his dedicatory letter, proclaiming, “classical Latin,
which long lay neglected and nearly dead in the darkness, has now been
saved by the effort of a few men from every kind of filth and horrible
barbarity.”35 Giuliari echoes him in the outer frame of the dialogue, giving
thanks that “Latin has emerged from all the filth, all the barbarity, all the
squalor under which it had long been sunk.”36 Brugnoli continues the
theme in the inner frame in his exordium, decrying the “vile devastation of
32 For a more complete exposition of the history of ancient Latin in Sabellico, see Baker, “Labyrinth
of Praise and Blame,” pp. 221–224.
33 Sabellico, DLLR, 95.17: “illa foeda barbaries”; 95.14: “sermonis foeditas.”
34 This reconstruction of Sabellico’s history of Latin is mostly based on the beginning of Benedetto
Brugnoli’s speech: 93.5–96.3. The Gothic invasions as the beginning of Latin’s decline are also
mentioned in the outer frame by Giuliari: 87.4 (“gothica tempestate”). Charlemagne’s role in
subduing the barbarians is found in the section on Donato Acciaiuoli, in reference to Acciaiuoli’s
biography of him: 151.5–6 (“Caroli – qui Italiam langobardicis armis diutissime pressam, barbaris
victis, in antiquam libertatem restituit”). About one thousand years as the period of linguistic
barbarism is given explicitly in the biography of Gasparino Barzizza: 97.5–98.1 (“quum mille et
amplius annos ex quo gethica illa tempestas terram Italiam invaserat”) and Battista Guarini’s
peroration: 203.8–10 (“qui romanam linguam mille circiter et amplius annos indigno pressam
servicio in antiquam libertatem vindicarunt”). The early fifteenth century for the beginning of
Latin’s recovery is an estimate based on the dialogue’s date of composition (ca. 1489) and 95.20–23:
“For (to tell the truth) after that calamitous age until about fifty years ago no could be found who
could speak classical Latin” (“iam enim [si vera loqui volumus] nemo post funestissima illa tempora
ad annum hinc circiter quinquagesimum romana locutus lingua videri potuit”).
35 Sabellico, DLLR, 83.10–12: “qua paucorum hominum industria romanam linguam, quae diu inculta
ac pene extincta in tenebris iacuit, ab omni sorde diraque barbarie servatam videres.”
36 Ibid., 87.11–12: “romanus sermo omnem exuit squalorem, omnem barbariem, quibus sordibus diu
fuerat immersus.”
Italy” and lamenting that “barbarians in their thoughtlessness desecrated
all things human and divine.”37
Complementing the theme of barbarism is that of slavery and impris-
onment. The “moderns” are declared “worthy of great praise” for having
“undertaken to free the glory of Rome from its ancient slavery.”38 Guar-
ini describes humanists as “the ones who returned classical Latin to its
ancient freedom, liberating it from more than a thousand years of unwor-
thy servitude.”39 The metaphor is also used in reference to the discovery
of lost texts and the emendation of corrupt ones. Poggio Bracciolini, for
example, is said to “have set free Quintilian, . . . who was unknown, filthy,
and infested with the foul lice of his prison,”40 and the early humanists
“liberated Cicero, Quintilian, and Catullus from slavery.”41
It is noteworthy that Sabellico, like Cortesi, nowhere uses the metaphor
of renaissance in the dialogue, but rather those of barbarism and slavery,
and to a lesser extent of darkness, filth, concealment, and sleep. He does
not conceive of Latin as having died and come back to life, the paradigm
preferred by contemporary theorizers and historians of the visual arts.42
Nor was this decision a casual one. Indeed, these chosen metaphors are
repeated time and again, ultimately surging to the level of a massive polemic
against the language and culture of the Middle Ages. For Sabellico does
not merely criticize the medium aevum for living in darkness but rather
accuses it of creating and perpetuating that darkness. Latin is described in
the dialogue as “holy” and a “divine gift,” one that was first “neglected”
and then whose “very memory was sunk into dreadful oblivion.”43 This
37 Ibid., 94.21–22: “Italiam foeda populatione vastarunt”; 95.3–4: “omnia divina et humana barbara
prophanavit temeritas.” The reiteration of important themes and arguments at various structural
levels of the dialogue – as here is done with the theme of barbarism – is one of Sabellico’s techniques
for stressing and legitimating the central aspects of his cultural vision. See Baker, “Labyrinth of
Praise and Blame,” pp. 220–226.
38 Sabellico, DLLR, 83.13–16: “recentiorum hominum ingenia . . . ob id laudibus efferenda, quod
romanum decus vetusto vindicare servitio sint adorta.”
39 Ibid., 203.6–10: “hi sunt igitur . . . qui romanam linguam mille circiter et amplius annos indigno
pressam servicio in antiquam libertatem vindicarunt.”
40 Ibid., 105.1–4: “Fabium Quintilianum . . . quem ignotum, squalidum tetroque pedore carceris
consumptum in apertum rettulit.”
41 Ibid., 120.2–3: “vindicarunt servitio quidem Ciceronem, Fabium, Catullum.”
42 See Chapter 3 above, note 192.
43 Sabellico, DLLR, 95.18–20: “Auxit id malum longa aetas, quae non solum negligentiam peperit,
sed divini etiam muneris memoriam dira oblivione immerserat.” Latin is also called a “divine gift”
(divinum munus) in 203.20. Language is called “immortal God’s most useful gift to man” in 93.8–9
(“sermo quoque, quo nihil Deus immortalis homini utilius dedit”) and, similarly, “nature’s most
useful gift to man” in 121.12 (“sermonem, quo nihil ab ipsa natura est homini utilius datum”). Latin
literature is also described as a “holy treasury” that was destroyed by the barbarians, 95.7 (“divino
etiam litterarum thesauro”). Cf. Prosatori latini, p. 596, where, in his preface to the first book of
the Elegantiae, Lorenzo Valla refers to the magnum latini sermonis sacramentum.
neglect was the cultural stain of the Middle Ages, a sin only atoned for by
Renaissance humanism’s veneration and restoration of the divinum munus
of Latin.
One way that humanists overcame this millennium of (self-imposed)
barbarism was to re-establish a cultivated setting for the new old language.
Sabellico does not make the more sophisticated link, as does Cortesi,
between good speaking and good thinking, but he does recognize the
symbiotic relationship between audience and language. When describ-
ing the supposed barbarism of the Middle Ages, Brugnoli says, “no one
could be found who spoke classical Latin. And if there was anyone who
was able to, he would have appeared to his listeners to be speaking some
unknown language.”44 Although not as explicitly as Biondo Flavio, Sabel-
lico seems to admit the fact that eloquence had not died out entirely
between antiquity and his own time. Yet he is not at a loss to explain the
phenomenon, as Biondo was when it came to the eloquence of Bernard
of Clairvaux. One swallow doesn’t make a spring, he seems to say; one
eloquent individual is not enough. A language requires a community of
speakers in order to flourish, not a few gifted individuals. An eloquent age is
necessary.45
By instaurating such an age of eloquence, humanists have furthermore
recovered an essential aspect of Roman and Italian civilization. We have
already seen above that Sabellico considered classical Latin to be Italy’s
birthright. In addition, Guarini portrays Latin eloquence as an essential
characteristic of Italian identity. In his peroration he argues that, if human-
ism had not saved Latin, it would have been better for literature – all the
historians, poets, orators, and great luminaries – never to have come to
Italy from Greece in the first place.46
Many peoples are ignorant of literature and thus do not even desire it. Italy,
however, not only perceived this divine gift but also gave it to . . . others.
What greater disaster could befall her, into what greater and more enduring
mourning could she settle – since fortune left her with nothing from her
once-great empire beyond the pride of her literature – than if she were
ultimately stripped even of this refinement and true praise?47
44 Sabellico, DLLR, 95.21–96.1: “nemo . . . romana locutus lingua videri potuit, aut si quis extitit qui
potuerit id praestare, non magis est inter suos auditus, quam si ignoto aliquo sermone fuisset
locutus.”
45 On the other hand, he seems implicitly to contradict Cortesi’s argument that no individual can rise
above his times.
46 Sabellico, DLLR, 203.14–18, referring, of course, to the first translatio studii, in ancient times.
47 Ibid., 203.18–25: “Multae gentes litteras non norunt atque ob id ne desiderant quidem. At terra
Italia, quae id divinum munus non solum senserat, sed aliis etiam gentibus . . . dederat, cui nihil ex
In one of his higher rhetorical flights, Sabellico’s Brugnoli explicitly
describes humanism as a refoundation of ancient Roman civilization, com-
paring the efforts of Latin’s modern saviors to the Romans’ repelling of the
Gauls, who, as Livy recounts, had sacked their city in 390 bc:
They held off the assault of riotous barbarism, but they could not beat it
back. They freed Cicero, Quintilian, and Catullus48 from slavery, but this
was like [Albinius] bringing the sacred relics and the Vestal virgins to safety
on his wagon. They taught rhetoric, and some taught grammar with a bit
more care, and this was like [Fabius] conveying the sacred relics through
enemy pickets to the Quirinal. Many wrote histories in Latin or translated
Greek ones, a feat equal to [Manlius] driving the Gauls from the Citadel
with his shield (although they were still within the city walls), besieging the
Capitol, and rousing the allies, their standards ranging far and wide. But
there was still need of a leader like Camillus to drive the defeated barbarian
out from Rome and beyond Italy’s borders.49
This comparison is no mere piece of show-rhetoric. Brugnoli had begun

his speech by comparing the fifth-century (ad) Gothic invasions of Rome
with that of the Gauls eight centuries earlier, concluding that the latter
had been redeemed through eventual victory and rebuilding, whereas the
former had not been overcome in antiquity and had resulted in a millen-
nium of barbarism.50 That was the state of Italy when the first humanists
began their work. To compare the humanists to the Romans besieged by
the Gauls in the Capitoline Citadel, and to call upon the aid of a new
Camillus – Livy’s legendary “father of his country and second founder of
tanto imperio quantum olim habuit, nihil praeter litterarum decus reliquum fortuna fecerat, qua
maiore cladi affici potuisset, aut in quem maiorem luctum incidere aut magis perpetuum, quam si
hoc quoque cultu et vera laude fuisset demum spoliata?” The image of Italy “giving” her language
to others echoes Valla’s claim in the first preface to his Elegantiae that the imposition of Roman rule
on the provinces was accompanied by the liberating gift of Roman language. See Prosatori latini,
pp. 594–601.
48 Textual emendation of Catullus is erroneously attributed to Guarino Veronese in 113.3–7. See ibid.,
p. 113, n. 2.
49 Ibid., 120.1–11: “Sustinuerunt itaque plerique grassantis barbariae impetum, propulsare tamen non
potuerunt; vindicarunt servitio quidem Ciceronem, Fabium, Catullum, sed hoc sacra Vestalesque
curru in tutum deferre fuit; docuere rhetoricen, alii aliquanto accuratius docuere et grammaticen,
et hoc in Quirinalem per hostium stationes cum sacris transire, non nulli latinam edidere historiam
aut graecam in latinum vertere, neque id aliud quam Gallos ex arce umbone deturbare (erant
nihilominus hostes intra moenia), Capitolium obsidere, finitimos sollicitare eorum signa longe
lateque vagare: Camillo duce opus erat, qui barbarum acie victum non solum Urbe sed Italiae etiam
finibus eiiceret.” Albinius, Fabius, and Manlius are not mentioned by name in this account, but I
have added them in the English translation to make the comparison more readily intelligible. The
events mentioned by Sabellico correspond roughly to Livy, Ab urbe condita, V.40–55.
50 Sabellico, DLLR, 92.23–94.18.
Rome”51 – is to argue by way of analogy that humanism was on the verge
of finally overcoming the second, Gothic, sack of Rome.
Who was the new Camillus? Who was the one to put an end to one
thousand years of so-called barbarism? None other than Lorenzo Valla, he,
too, a Roman, and the source for Sabellico’s historical paradigm here.52
In the preface to the first book of his Elegantiae, Valla had declared his
intention to “imitate Camillus” and exhorted his contemporaries to do
the same.53 Brugnoli takes full advantage of the comparison. If Camillus
brought the legions back to save Rome, Valla composed the Elegantiae
to save its language. Their achievements were similar, but Valla’s were “of
greater worth, since it was certainly better to give the citizens back their
language, nature’s greatest gift to man, than their city.”54 The meaning
is clear: Camillus’ was a political refounding, Valla’s a cultural one. The
ancients refounded the city of Rome in the wake of a barbarian invasion.
The humanists, however, refounded the essence of Roman civilization.
There is yet another, subtler layer to this comparison, one that equates
humanism with the pious observance of sacred religious rites and duty
to the fatherland. Sabellico chooses three specific episodes in the ancient
defense of Rome to correspond with the modern efforts of the humanists.
First, Albinius’ accommodation of the Vestals and sacred relics is likened to
51 Livy, Ab urbe condita, V.49: “Dictator . . . Romulus ac parens patriae conditorque alter urbis haud
vanis laudibus appellabatur.”
52 In the preface to the first book of his Elegantiae, Valla also compares humanism to a struggle against
barbarism, compares Latin’s calamity to the Gauls’ sack of Rome in 390 bc, and calls on a new
Camillus to save the language of ancient Rome. He also compares distinct stages in humanism’s
development to episodes in Livy, as Sabellico does. But Sabellico chooses different episodes, thus
giving the comparison a different focus. Furthermore, his imitation of Valla is not slavish, and it is
clear from Brugnoli’s expansion of the historical paradigm to include the destruction of the Gothic
invasions that his exordium has a different focus from Valla’s harangue. For the similarities between
Sabellico and Valla, see the final “exhortation” Valla addresses to his fellow humanists (“qui et vere
et soli Quirites sunt”) in Prosatori latini, pp. 598–601 (quotation on p. 600). Sabellico’s use of
Valla has also been noted by Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), pp. 37–38, who, however, does not
consider the depth of the similarities and differences.
53 Prosatori latini, p. 600: “Equidem, quod ad me attinet, hunc imitabor; hoc mihi proponam
exemplum; comparabo, quantulaecumque vires meae fuerint, exercitum, quem in hostes quam
primum educam; ibo in aciem, ibo primus, ut vobis animum faciam . . . Ideoque plures pro se
quisque in hanc rem elaboremus, ut saltem multi faciamus quod unus effecit. Is tamen iure vereque
Camillus dici existimarique debebit, qui optimam in hac re operam navaverit.”
54 Sabellico, DLLR, 121.10–13: “uterque dignus qui pater patriae nominetur, sed eo alter dignior,
quod plus certe fuit sermonem, quo nihil ab ipsa natura est homini utilius datum, quam Urbem
civibus restituisse suis.” Here we also hear the echo of Valla’s first preface to the Elegantiae: “Qui
enim imperium augent, magno illi quidem honore affici solent atque imperatores nominantur; qui
autem beneficia aliqua in homines contulerunt, ii non humana, sed divina potius laude celebrantur,
quippe cum non suae tantum urbis amplitudini ac gloriae consulant, sed publicae quoque hominum
utilitati ac saluti” (text in Prosatori latini, p. 594).
the humanists’ search for and editing of lost ancient texts. In his flight from
Rome in the wake of the Gallic victory at the Allia River, Albinius evicted
his own wife and children from his wagon to make room for the virgins and
the sacra, the sacred objects of their cult. Second, the teaching of grammar
and rhetoric is equated with Fabius’ walking through enemy pickets to
perform sacred rites on the Quirinal. This duty was the responsibility of
Fabius’ family, and he performed it despite almost certain death. Third,
translations and original works of historiography are compared to Manlius’
driving the Gauls from the Citadel with his shield. Manlius reacted to a
night attack by the Gauls, who had crept so silently up the hill that not
even the dogs took notice. But the sacred geese of Juno, who had not
been eaten despite the defenders’ famine, did hear them. Their honking
wakened Manlius, who rushed to the point of attack and knocked the first
of the enemy back into the rest with his shield, thus causing some Gauls
to tumble down in a snowball effect and others to expose themselves to
slaughter while searching for a sure grip.55
The meaning of all these episodes in Livy is that the public good is more
important than the individual good, and that the public good is safeguarded
through pietas, the distinctly Roman sense of scrupulous duty, related to
religious observance, that has the ability to triumph over immediate self-
interest. Livy describes pietas as having gradually declined in Rome, and he
depicts the Gauls’ success as the result of divine anger. Fresh demonstrations
of pietas – in dignifying the priestesses and symbols of Roman religion, in
performing sacred rites no matter what the cost, in tending sacred animals
despite the very real threat of starvation – is what enabled the refounding
of Rome.56 By way of comparison, humanists made a fresh demonstration
of pietas – not to the religion or the city of ancient Rome but to its
civilization, which is bound up in its language. For Sabellico, pietas, the
most important of the ancient Roman virtues, lives on in modified form
in the Renaissance.57
At times Sabellico also seems to imply that humanists participate in
an actual refounding of ancient Roman economic, political, and military
55 The three episodes occur in Livy as follows: Albinius brings the sacred relics and the Vestal virgins
to safety: V.40; Fabius conveys the sacred relics to the Quirinal: V.46; Manlius defends the Citadel:
V.47.
56 For my interpretation of Livy I have relied in part on R.M. Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy: Books
1–5 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 723–752.
57 Cf. Prosatori latini, p. 598, where Valla announces that his Latin crusade is the result of mea in
patriam pietas.
might. For example, Brugnoli, again following Valla, notes that the bless-
ings of Latin were not limited to ancient Rome but rather were extended
to the territories of the empire.
The Romans of old were a most warlike people, troublesome to a host of
nations and ruinous to many, but their language was useful and pleasing to
all and was therefore the most precious.
It facilitated “the welfare of so many nations, such noble exchange, such

great erudition, such great humanitas.”58 As has often been noted with
regard to Valla’s preface to the first book of the Elegantiae, language acts
here as a metaphor for power.59 Ancient Romans spread their language,
and their dominion, past the borders of Italy to other peoples, and their
greatness was symbolized, perhaps even contained, in their literature. Is
Sabellico saying that their descendents in his own Italy, by restoring the
ancient language of empire, are now in a position to achieve the same
thing? And might the metaphor redound to Venice? After all, Sabellico
wrote his dialogue in part to praise the city, which was in the process of
attempting to claim this very inheritance.
It is unclear how far this metaphor is meant to be taken, or even if it is
being taken in the right direction by these questions. With regard to Valla’s
statement romanum imperium ibi esse, ubi romana lingua dominatur, John
F. D’Amico explained that it indeed communicated a parallel between the
power and language of the Roman empire on the one hand and the power
and language of the Roman Church on the other.60 In his view, though,
the metaphor underlying the Elegantiae and Valla’s later Oratio in principio
sui studii (1455) was only a metaphor: “a cultural construct, not a political
manifesto.” Valla, the “great enemy of papal territorial claims,” did not
seek to empower the papacy as an institution of dominion.61 Ultimately,
58 Sabellico, DLLR, 94.2–4: “fuit populus ille ferocissimus pluribus olim gentibus infestus, multis
perniciosus, at sermo omnibus utilis ac iucundus atque ob id longe charissimus”; 94.5–6: “tot
gentium bona, tam nobile commercium, tantam eruditionem, tantam humanitatem.”
59 Valla’s emblematic phrase, as discussed in Chapter 3 above (p. 179), is “ibi namque romanum
imperium est ubicumque romana lingua dominatur” (text in Prosatori latini, p. 596). Cf. Valla’s
dedicatory letter to his Latin translation of Thucydides, in Lorenzo Valla, Oraciones y Prefacios, ed.
Francesco Adorno (Santiago, 1955), pp. 278–289; as well as its interpretation in Camporeale, Lorenzo
Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, pp. 249–256 (translated in Christianity, Latinity, and
Culture, pp. 280–286). See also note 28 above.
60 D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, pp. 118–119.
61 Ibid., p. 118. On Valla’s opposition to the temporal power of the Church, see Camporeale, Lorenzo
Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, pp. 463–589 (translated in Christianity, Latinity, and
Culture, pp. 17–143).
“a cultural phenomenon assumed the position once occupied by a political
institution.”62 For Valla, the proper role of the Church, pope, and curia was
to act as the mechanism for spreading the Latin eloquence that he, much
more than even Sabellico or Cortesi, both craved and worked to realize.
One can think of Valla as standing Augustine on his head: instead of the
Roman empire spreading the Good Word throughout its culturo-linguistic
realm, he wants the Roman Church to spread good Latin throughout its
culturo-religious realm. The pay-off, as Valla sees it, would be a renovatio
of all culture:
in the Roman language are bound up all the disciplines worthy of a free
man . . . Who does not know that as long as it thrives, all studies and the
disciplines thrive, but when it falls, they fall too . . . If we exert ourselves just
a little more, I am certain that we shall shortly restore the language of Rome,
much more so than the city itself, and with it all the disciplines.63
There is no indication that Sabellico intends to take the metaphor any
further than Valla did, although it is clear that he applied it in a different
way, at once making it more and less geographically expansive. As noted
above, Sabellico envisions Latin as an “ancestral right” of the Italians,
as a keystone of Italian identity. Thus, unlike Valla, he does not infuse
the metaphor of language and cultural empire with a particularly Roman
hue. The Church has no place in his scheme. On the other hand, the
circumscription of Latinate identity to Italy represents a contraction of
Valla’s conception of universal citizenship in the imperium latinum. In a
jingoistic comparison with the Greeks, Valla exclaims, “among us, that is
among many nations” – and the nations are clearly the former imperial
provinces listed just prior: France, Spain, Germany, etc. – “everyone speaks
Latin.” And later, at the emotional climax of the preface, he urges not only
the men of his “fatherland” but “all those zealous for eloquence” to join his
cause, declaring programmatically: “men of letters and cultivators of the
Roman tongue are citizens of Rome – the rest are just resident aliens.”64
62 D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, p. 119.

63 Prosatori latini, p. 598: “in qua lingua [romana] disciplinae cunctae libero homine dignae conti-
nentur . . . ; qua vigente quis ignorat studia omnia disciplinasque vigere, occidente occidere? . . . si
paulo amplius adnitamur, confido propediem linguam romanam vere plus quam urbem, et cum ea
disciplinas omnes, iri restitutum.”
64 Ibid., pp. 598–600: “apud nos, id est apud multas nationes, nemo nisi romane [loquitur] . . . Quare
pro mea in patriam pietate, immo adeo in omnes homines, et pro rei magnitudine cunctos facundiae
studiosos, velut ex superiore loco libet adhortari evocareque et illis, ut aiunt, bellicum canere.
Quousque tandem Quirites (litteratos appello et romanae linguae cultores, qui et vere et soli
Quirites sunt, ceteri enim potius inquilini), quousque, inquam, Quirites, urbem nostram, non dico
domicilium imperii, sed parentem litterarum, a Gallis captam esse patiemini?”
Sabellico did not agree that all eloquent Latin men, wherever they may live,
were citizens of the metaphorical Rome. Only Italians could figuratively
say civis romanus sum.
As for the possibility that Sabellico intends to connect Latin eloquence
with Venetian empire, in light of all the foregoing considerations it seems
highly unlikely. Furthermore, it would not have been fitting. The foun-
dation of the so-called “myth of Venice” was laid not on Rome’s imperial
heritage or language but rather on a supposed Trojan ancestry, relations
with the Byzantine world, and the city’s own peculiar political constitution
and maritime empire.65 Thus it should not be surprising that De latinae
linguae reparatione evinces none of the vulgar patriotism that characterizes
Sabellico’s Historiae rerum venetarum, which was written in the interests of
Venetian power and thus is a monumental, mendaciously heroic account
of the city’s rise to world domination.66 When Venice is praised in De
latinae linguae reparatione (as we shall see in what follows), it is not for its
political regime or military might, not for being a “new Rome,” but with
regard to the humanism that flourished there.
Ultimately, the imperial power of Latin is cultural, not political in
Sabellico’s dialogue. If the unity with which it endows Italians may one
day lead to a politically coherent peninsula, he is silent about how this
ought to happen. Instead, his focus is squarely on Latin language and
literature. His pride lies in humanism’s success in restoring that aspect of
ancient Rome, in overcoming the ostensible barbarism of the Middle Ages.
It appears that that triumph, and the cultural unity Italians then enjoyed,
sufficed in Sabellico’s mind. And why not? As Biondo shows, it would
be wrong to underestimate the emotional power of the sheer concept of a
post-barbarian, culturally whole peninsula. For all of Sabellico’s excitement
over this achievement, however, he is soberly aware of the gulf between
antiquity and his own age. His final position can be adequately summed
up with a statement from one of his characters:67
Therefore I am accustomed to think myself particularly blessed, and I give

thanks to nature that I happened to be born in this very age. Even if the
65 Cf. Brown, Venice and Antiquity, esp. pp. 32–37, 44; Craig Kallendorf, Virgil and the Myth of Venice:
Books and Readers in the Italian Renaissance (Oxford, 1999).
66 Cf. Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, pp. 84–86; and Renata Fabbri, “La storiografia
veneziana del quattrocento,” in A. Di Stefano et al. (eds.), La storiografia umanistica, vol. I, pp. 347–
398, at 389–398, esp. 391, where the Rerum venetarum is called “una storiografia che costituisse un
efficace strumento politico e propagandistico.”
67 For an extended treatment of the relative status of antiquity and modernity in De latinae linguae
reparatione, see Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame,” pp. 228–230.
language is not flourishing as it once did, or is not of the kind which the
Golden Age, in which so many great men shone at once, left to posterity,
we see that it is better and has somehow been completely restored.68
The great restoration

How exactly did the restoration of Latin come to pass? This is the question
which the dialogue as a whole is meant to answer. Its central speeches
present not only a lengthy and considered review of the great humanists of
the fifteenth century, but also a full account of humanism’s development
over time. Sabellico has been criticized for lack of historical rigor in this
enterprise, and he has been compared unfavorably to Biondo Flavio and
especially to Paolo Cortesi.69 It is true that Sabellico lacks the chronological
awareness of these two with respect to the earliest phase of humanism, but
his history of the movement nevertheless embodies a sophisticated and
precise historical vision. Sabellico identifies causal factors, describes the
mechanisms of change, and accounts for the rate at which that change
occurred. Furthermore, he develops a much more nuanced periodiza-
tion for humanism than has hitherto been realized. Sabellico has likely
been underestimated because he does not offer his readers a straightfor-
ward narrative; rather he embeds the narrative in the speeches of his two
main characters, Benedetto Brugnoli and Battista Guarini. These speeches
must be followed closely in their entirety, and special attention must be
paid to their many apparently casual observations, in order to reconstruct
Sabellico’s history of humanism.
In the opening to the demonstrative section of his speech, Brugnoli
admits that humanism first appeared in a quite unexpected place, and for
us, keeping in mind the visions of our previous authors, it will be doubly
68 Sabellico, DLLR, 87.12–17: “Soleo iccirco me beatissimum putare ac naturae gratias agere, quod hac
potissimum tempestate nasci contigerit, qua si non linguam ipsam florentem ut olim, aut qualem
aetas illa aurea, qua tot viri summi una claruere, posteritati tradidit, meliorem ac quodammodo
omni ex parte instauratam videremus.” Cf. Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame,” pp. 229–230.
69 See Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), pp. 46–47, who credits Sabellico with a much less precise
historical sense than I argue for here, and Ferraù, “Introduzione,” p. 21, who claims that Sabellico
does not differentiate writers accurately by time period and who, in n. 29, imputes to him “certa
sordità storica.” Ferraù might be correct in general that Cortesi’s dialogue preserves a better sense of
chronology than Sabellico’s. I disagree, however, about Sabellico’s supposed inability to differentiate
time periods. Ferraù adduces the grouping of Antonio Tudertino and Lapo da Castiglionchio the
Younger with Petrarch and Boccaccio in support of this point. In my view, however, the object of
this comparison is to criticize these later humanists for not doing much to progress beyond the
style of their forerunners. Sabellico aims equally to critique humanists and to trace the history of
their movement, and it is only with a grasp of the difference between historical time periods that
his criticism makes any sense at all in this case. See also note 104 below.
strange. Manetti saw the renewal of good Latin as beginning with Petrarch.
Biondo linked it to the teaching of Giovanni da Ravenna and Manuel
Chrysoloras. Cortesi focused on the latter teacher, depicting humanism as
a translatio studii from Greece back to Italy. Now Sabellico places the rise of
humanism squarely in northern Italy and gives the palm to the grammarian
and rhetorician Gasparino Barzizza:
Classical Latin, as we have shown, had disappeared and long lay hidden,
unknown, neglected, and without any hope of a better fortune. Then, in
northern Italy, which hardly anyone would have predicted, scattered sparks
of it, still uncertain of catching aflame, began to glow as if from out of some
thick and remote darkness.70
The first to tend that flame was Gasparino Barzizza. He was famous for
his teaching in Venice, Padua, and Milan, “which he undertook more
as an auspicious choice than out of any hope of repairing the damage
done to Latin.”71 More importantly, he was “the very first, so I hear, to
cast his glance on the shadow of ancient eloquence (for the shadow was
all that remained of that once so noble possession).”72 Heartened by his
discovery of lost works of Cicero, he emended and published them to great
fanfare, spurring “many to the cultivation of eloquence with his example
and encouragement.”73 Thereafter he emended the newly discovered text
of Quintilian and wrote commentaries on Cicero as well as original works
such as letters, orations, and a treatise on orthography. His style was lacking,
as was natural for his times, but his efforts spawned a broader movement:74
It was necessary for the beginning of such a bold undertaking to be weak.
But as is often the case, what rises from even modest origins grows over time,
and thus it happened that many others followed in the footsteps of those
intent on aiding his purpose. In a short time the enterprise advanced to the
point where its future promise was equal to its initial determination.75
70 Sabellico, DLLR, 96.16–20: “Perierant (ut aperte ostendimus) diuque sine nomine, sine cultu, sine
spe ulla melioris fortunae romanae litterae in occulto fuerant, quum in cisalpina Gallia, quod vix
quisquam futurum putasset, rarae admodum nec satis certae reparandae rei scintillae velut ex densis
quibusdam repositisque emicuere tenebris.”
71 Ibid., 96.24–97.2: “hic Gasparinus . . . multa nominis celebritate litteras docuit, magis foelici con-
silio quam quod tantae cladis resarciendae spes ulla praetenderetur.”
72 Ibid., 97.2–4: “Primus omnium, ut audio, ad veteris eloquentiae umbram – nam ex re tam nobili
nil tum praeter id unum supererat – oculos retorsit.”
73 Ibid., 98.6–7: “multosque ad eloquentiae cultum exemplo et hortatione excitarit.”
74 The previous paragraph is a summary of ibid., 96.16–99.5.
75 Ibid., 98.14–99.5: “oportuit . . . infirma . . . tam audacis conatus fuisse principia, sed quemadmodum
saepe evenire solet, ut quae vel modicis orta sunt initiis maiora in dies accipiant incrementa, ita
accidit ut, iam inde multis aliis quidem post alios ad id consilium iuvandum prodeuntibus, brevi
res eo processerit, ut non minus iam spei adesset quam ab initio animi fuerat.”
Two more figures now join Barzizza as inspirers of the humanist movement:
Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini.76 Bruni, as we are used to hearing,
is said to have been “of all the men of that time worthy of especial praise.”
He was “famous for his studies of philosophy and his eloquence, and no
less renowned as an historian.”77 Apart from his countless translations,
Bruni distinguished himself for his History of the Florentine People, thus
winning “new praise for reviving the neglected genre of historiography.”78
Poggio was Bruni’s equal in expression (elocutio), although “ultimately his
writings are more remarkable for their charm and fullness than for their
elegance.”79 His greatest contribution was in seeking out the works of lost
authors. His enduring fame stands on his discovery of the first complete
text of Quintilian, “the second light of the Latin language,”80 which, as we
have already seen, Barzizza went on to edit.
The early efforts of Barzizza, Bruni, and Poggio on behalf of humanism,
here called meliora studia, acted as the true spur to a wider movement:
For many, inspired by the example of these three men and a desire to emulate
them, were filled with the hope not only of imitating their excellence (virtus),
but also, if they were willing to work a bit harder, of surpassing them.
With unbelievable determination they directed their energies towards the
cultivation of eloquence.81
Among these were first and foremost Guarino of Verona, Maffeo Vegio,
and Pier Paolo Vergerio, followed by Francesco Barbaro, Leonardo Gius-
tinian, Carlo Marsuppini, Vittorino da Feltre, and Biondo Flavio.82 They
strengthened humanism through the discovery and editing of ancient texts,
teaching, translations of Greek literature, and the composition of orig-
inal works, especially orations, historiography, treatises, fiction, poetry,
and letter collections. It is worth pointing out that Sabellico’s Brug-
noli mentions two compositions of that age as still enjoying immense
76 The following paragraph is a summary of the treatments of Bruni and Poggio: 99.6–105.8.
77 Ibid., 99.6–8: “omnium qui sub id tempus extitere . . . praecipua dignus laude occurrit, vir
philosophiae studiis et eloquentia clarus, nec in historia minus celeber.”
78 Ibid., 101.7–102.1: “quod et de Thimagene Fabius: intermissam scribendae historiae industriam
eum nova laude reparasse.” As the full citation suggests, Sabellico applies Quintilian’s judgment
of Timagenes to Bruni. The precise reference is to Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 10, 1, 75. See
Sabellico, DLLR, p. 101, n. 2.
79 Ibid., 103.2–104.2: “ut breviter dicam, omnia illius venustate potius et copia probantur quam
elegantia.”
80 Ibid., 105.1–2: “alterum latinae linguae lumen.”
81 Ibid., 106.1–5: “Horum igitur primi illi in meliora studia conatus non nihil sane profuerunt: plerique
enim partim exemplo, partim aemulatione in spem maximam adducti non solum illorum trium
virtutem imitandi, sed, si paululum anniti vellent, superandi etiam, incredibili studio animum ad
eloquentiae cultum erexere.”
82 The contribution of these men is recorded in ibid., 106.5–118.6.
popularity in his own: Vergerio’s educational treatise De ingenuis moribus
and Poggio’s Facetiae, a collection of witty stories.83
This generation of humanists made inroads against linguistic barbarism,
but the turning point in the campaign to reclaim ancient eloquence came in
the person of the new Camillus, Lorenzo Valla.84 In Sabellico’s estimation,
Valla is important both for his writings and because of the cultural space
that he prepared for classical Latin. Valla’s greatest single contribution was
his massive usage and style manual, the Elegantiae, in which “he did not
so much treat the precepts of classical Latin as save its sinews.”85 To that
he added translations of Greek historiography and poetry and numerous
original works of literature spanning many genres, including letters, ora-
tions, and dialogues. Sabellico admits that some people find the character
of Valla’s original compositions “somewhat rough,” but he defends them to
the utmost.86 Valla and his writings not only represent a great achievement
in the renewal of classical Latin, but they are also, according to Sabellico,
one of the likely causes for the widespread entrenchment of the broader
movement of humanism:
With Valla there were many great men in Rome and the rest of Italy who
wrote a somewhat more correct Latin. This might be because they happened
to have at hand, so to speak, such an excellent model to imitate, or because
it was possible for them to come upon his writings.87
Through either personal contact or the proxy of his writings, Valla became
the praeceptor of the fifteenth century.
Sabellico is the only one of our authors to characterize Valla in this man-
ner, much less to assign him a leading role in the diffusion of humanism. At
the same time, he goes to the greatest efforts to explain how that diffusion
83 De ingenuis moribus: 106.10–11; Facetiae: 102.8–9. Poggio’s translation of Diodorus Siculus is also
“widely read” (103.1): “Diodorus, quem latinum fecit, vulgo legitur.”
84 Following is a summary of Sabellico’s treatment of Valla, 120.11–124.5.
85 Ibid., 121.15–122.1: “Tradidit ille Elegantiarum praecepta, romanae linguae nervos, sed nihilo accu-
ratius tradidit quam servavit.”
86 Ibid., 124.3–5: “Is there anything purer than this man? Some people also find his letters, orations,
and dialogues somewhat rough, but there is no doubt as to their erudition” (“An est eo homine
quicquam purius? Sunt qui in his [epistolis, orationibus, dialogis et aliis plerisque] quoque eum
duriusculum existiment, sed eruditio illa, ni fallor, est”). Although “duriusculum” could describe
the style, as opposed to the tone, of Valla’s works, it seems unlikely given the previous sentence
(“is there anything purer”), the tone of the whole biography, and the larger role that Valla plays for
Sabellico. The characterization of Valla as “duriusculum,” if this interpretation is correct, would be
the only allusion to the bitterness of his invective and to his unbounded unpopularity in certain
circles, which Cortesi describes frankly (Cortesi, DHD, 142.5ff.).
87 Sabellico, DLLR, 124.6–10: “Floruerunt cum eo Romae et reliqua Italia viri multi illustres atque
aliquanto in scribendo emendatiores, quod iccirco fortasse illis contigit, quia ad manus, ut dicitur,
habuerunt quem potissimum imitarentur, aut, quod evenire potuit, in eius scripta inciderunt.”
occurred and how the new canons of style came to be established firmly
throughout the peninsula. But while he identifies in Valla an important
catalyst, he is careful not to attribute too much to the Roman humanist.
Valla is a pivotal figure, but he is only one of several factors responsible for
the spread of humanism. Sabellico posits another possible reason for which
Italians strove for classical Latin:
And yet the cause could also have been that when they saw that the earlier
style of writing was being widely scorned, and that those who did not say
everything accurately and with care were taken for barbarians, each one
decided that he, too, would produce nothing except what was correct and
well thought-out.88
After Valla, the leading lights of this generation were men like Francesco
Filelfo, whose eloquence extended to a multitude of genres; Pius II, a
gifted poet and orator; Leon Battista Alberti, marked by unparalleled pow-
ers of expression (elocutio); Niccolò Perotti, second only to Valla in his
zeal for Roman elegance; Theodore Gaza, who combined moral with lin-
guistic virtue; and Pomponio Leto and Platina, each one a “great lover of
antiquity.”89
This generation of humanists, however, did not scale the heights of
classical eloquence. For despite its determination and dedication to the
cause, it was still stunted by the impoverishment of its roots:
Truly, then, the men I am talking about are worthy of some esteem, although
their writings have a mien that is not entirely classical. For what we learn
when young has a terribly strong grip on the mind. Once established there,
it is loath to admit new things, even better ones, into its domain if they
seem in any way contrary.90
Thus more time was needed, at least another generation, before humanists
could fully escape the barbarism of their more recent cultural heritage, and
before classical Latin could be restored.
88 Ibid., 124.10–14: “Quamquam id quoque esse potuit in causa, ut, ubi illi pristinam scribendi
formam vulgo repudiari viderunt ac pro barbaris haberi qui non omnia exacte et accurate dicerent,
ipsi etiam quisque pro se ad id animum intenderunt, ut nihil inemendatum, nihil temere in apertum
referrent.”
89 On Filelfo, see 124.20–128.1; on Pius II, 128.3–130.3; on Alberti, 130.3–9; on Perotti, 133.3–136.4;
on Gaza, 143.5–144.4; on Leto and Platina, 148.4–151.1; “great lover of antiquity”: 150.2 (“vetustatis
amator egregius”). For a full list of the humanists in this generation, see the Appendix, consulting
the names running from Valla to Giuniano Maio.
90 Sabellico, DLLR, 124.14–19: “verum sic quoque visi sunt hi de quibus loquor aliqua suspitione
digni, quamquam eorum scripta aliquid habeant, quod non omnino romanum dici possit: usque
adeo tenaciter haerent quae a teneris didicimus, ita inquam ut, ubi semel recepta sint, ne meliora
quidem, si aliquo modo contraria videantur, amplius admittant.”
As it turns out, there was also need of a new literary genre, one of an
entirely humanistic stamp: the philological commentary, now in printed
form.91 Guarini’s speech – and thus the entire second half of the dialogue’s
inner frame – is specifically dedicated to this next generation of humanists
and its fresh literary undertaking. By dividing the history of humanism
between his two speakers, Brugnoli and Guarini, and by having them
single out commentaries as the hinge in that history, Sabellico emphasizes
that that history is itself best understood as divided between periods before
and after the commentary, which correspond to two distinct stages: one
focused on recovery, the other on perfection.92 Despite the several levels of
development explained by Brugnoli, it becomes clear in Guarini’s speech
that the advent of the printed philological commentary heralds a new era
in humanism.
The first great commentator, according to the dialogue’s Guarini, was
one of Sabellico’s own masters, Domizio Calderini, a Veronese humanist
active in Rome in the 1470s as a teacher of rhetoric and Greek and as a
papal secretary (to Sixtus IV).93 He is treated here as the next preeminent
figure in humanism’s history after Gasparino Barzizza and Lorenzo Valla.94
The first was responsible for beginning the movement of humanism, the
second for reviving proper classical Latin, and now Calderini begins the
tradition of commentary, i.e., of establishing correct text editions and
explaining their often abstruse language and content. Guarini’s speech
notes the contributions of twenty-eight commentators, praising not only
the greats like Calderini, Giorgio Merula, and Angelo Poliziano, but also
the up-and-coming generation of philologists like Cinzio da Ceneda and
91 On the development and nature of the humanistic commentary, see August Buck and Otto
Herding (eds.), Der Kommentar in der Renaissance (Boppard, 1975), esp. Buck’s “Einführung,” pp. 7–
19; Francesco Lo Monaco, “Alcune osservazioni sui commenti umanistici ai classici nel secondo
Quattrocento,” in O. Besomi and C. Caruso (eds.), Il commento ai testi, Atti del seminario di Ascona.
2–9 ottobre 1989 (Basel, 1992), pp. 103–154; Marianne Pade (ed.), On Renaissance Commentaries
(Hildesheim, 2005); and now Karl A.E. Enenkel and Henk Nellen (eds.), Neo-Latin Commentaries
and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1300–1700)
(Leuven, 2013). See also note 186 below.
92 See Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame,” pp. 224–226.
93 For Calderini, see Perosa, “Calderini, Domizio”; and Campanelli, Polemiche e filologia; further
bibliography in Sabellico, DLLR, p. 172, n. 2. It is worth noting that Calderini was a student of
Brugnoli, and, as mentioned above, a teacher of Sabellico.
94 Sabellico, DLLR, 172.1–4: “As Brugnoli ascribed the proper method of speaking to Lorenzo’s
efforts, thus I attribute to Domizio the excellent description of the ancient poets and writers”
(“Domitio veronensi . . . cui, quemadmodum Prunulus modo laurentianis studiis emendatissimam
hanc loquendi rationem, ita praecipuam poetarum veterumque scriptorum enarrationem audeo
ascribere”).
Giosippo Faustino – humanists who for the most part now reside in
scholarly limbo.95
For Sabellico, the wide proliferation of commentaries through the inven-
tion of printing represents the final step in humanism’s evolution, as well
as the foundation for permanently establishing its program of restoring
classical Latin. It is the sine qua non of humanism’s success, providing the
two things lacking at the founding of the movement for the fulfillment
of its project: knowledge and communication. As we shall see later in
greater detail,96 printed commentaries served three valuable, intertwined
functions. They acted as (1) durable repositories for the knowledge recov-
ered by individual humanists; (2) places for the accumulation of knowledge
(when one humanist built on the work of his predecessors); and (3) vehicles
for teaching that did not require the physical presence of the humanist who
wrote them. Their circulation allowed humanism to move faster and to
more places than before, and their mass production and durability meant
that they enabled the lasting restoration of classical Latin which their con-
tents helped to effect. Printed commentaries were like an army of itinerant
teachers of the kind described by Biondo Flavio, only much larger and
more effective.
Incidentally, Sabellico’s assumption that philological commentaries can
be unproblematically characterized as massively mobile teachers corrobo-
rates one of Robert Black’s major conclusions regarding education in the
Italian Renaissance, namely that grammar was emphatically not a moral art
and that Latin education, including that at humanist schools, had no, or at
least no major, moral component.97 Launching his own research from the
surprisingly similar observations of Paul Grendler, Paul Gehl, and Anthony
Grafton and Lisa Jardine to the effect that humanist commentaries focused
mostly on grammatical, rhetorical, and poetic concerns but showed little
or no trace of moral considerations, Black found that the same was the
case in the marginal glosses of school textbooks. He thus concluded that,
on the basis of what we can know from the available physical evidence,
moral lessons were not taught in the pre- or non-university classroom in
95 For a complete list, see the Appendix, consulting the names from Domizio Calderini to the
end. For the poet and commentator Cinzio da Ceneda, whose real name was Pietro Leoni, see
Sabellico, DLLR, 160.2–161.1 (with bibliography), as well as Laura Casarsa, “Pietro Leoni (Cinzio
da Ceneda),” Repertorium Pomponianum (www.repertoriumpomponianum.it/pomponiani/cinzio
da ceneda.htm). For Giosippo, a teacher in Belluno, see Sabellico, DLLR, 200.1–202.4, and Pierio
Valeriano, Piero Valeriano on the Ill Fortune of Learned Men: A Renaissance Humanist and His World,
ed. and tr. Julia Haig Gaisser (Ann Arbor, 1999), p. 289 (with bibliography).
96 This topic is also treated in Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame,” pp. 225–226.
97 Black, Humanism and Education, esp. ch. 5. For what follows, see pp. 24–33.
late medieval and Renaissance Italy. As we saw in Chapter 2, Grafton and
Jardine explained that the gap between humanist educational rhetoric and
the tedium of classroom practice could only be bridged by a charismatic
teacher. Sabellico, however, assumes that commentaries can do the job of
teaching the great Latin authors in the absence of a Guarino or a Luigi
Marsili – and he puts the arguments for this position into the mouth
of Guarino’s own son! He does so, furthermore, albeit acknowledging that
the humanist educators Guarino and Vittorino displayed remarkable virtue
and passed it on to their students.98 If Sabellico thinks that philological
commentaries can replace humanist teachers and even spread humanism
more effectively than actual human beings, we must conclude that he did
not consider moral lessons part of the package.
This account of humanism, which traces its development through several
distinct stages from origin to perfection – perfection in the related senses
of both evolutionary completion and teleological success – is of a mixed
character. On the one hand it is highly sophisticated, indeed the most
sophisticated of all those examined so far. It charts the intangible process
by which a cultural movement comes into its own, noting the roles of
founders and heroes but also paying keen attention to popular perception,
will, and participation. It accounts for humanism’s gradual evolution with
a view to a number of necessary, interrelated factors of varying importance.
It evinces farsighted understanding of the import of a new technology. It
is also exceptionally balanced, in that Sabellico refrains from taking sides
in the vicious polemics that characterize so much of humanist culture.99
For example, he does not favor Valla at the expense of Poggio, or Calderini
at the expense of Perotti, despite the antagonism between them (and their
followers) and his own obvious opinion on their relative worth.100 Nor does
Sabellico take the opportunity to detract from Giorgio Merula, with whom
he personally had strained relations.101 Instead, like Cortesi he evaluates
humanists on the basis of strict linguistic criteria, and this (in addition to
98 See below, p. 224.

99 Cf. Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), pp. 52–53, 64, although Bottari ultimately takes a different
stance, with which I disagree, on p. 34: “considerate le caratteristiche e le finalità dell’opera,
Sabellico si sforza di mantenere un certo equilibrio, un’imparzialità di giudizio che, comunque,
non riesce a raggiungere.” For Sabellico’s generally moderate, well-balanced character, see ibid.,
p. 16. On humanist polemics, see Rao, Curmudgeons in High Dudgeon; Helmrath, “Streitkultur”;
and Marc Laureys, “Per una storia dell’invettiva umanistica,” Studi umanistici piceni, 23 (2003),
pp. 9–30.
100 See Sabellico, DLLR, 121.5–124.5 (on Valla); 102.4–105.8 (on Poggio); 171.15–176.7 (on Calderini);
133.3–136.4 (on Perotti); and related notes.
101 For his treatment of Merula, see ibid., 177.1–178.5. On their strained relations, see ibid., p. 177,
n. 1.
several decades of additional hindsight) is what gives him keener insight
into the modern development of Latin than that possessed by Manetti,
Piccolomini, Facio, and even Biondo.
On the other hand, Sabellico’s personal and civic allegiances, as well as
his determination to present humanism in a specific way, give his work an
idiosyncratic character, marked by a myopic appreciation for Roman antiq-
uity, a factual flexibility with regard to early humanism, and a decidedly
northern, and especially Venetian, point of view. First, the choice of Barzizza
as the founder of humanism is somewhat puzzling. We have been partially
prepared for it by Biondo’s description of Barzizza’s role in the movement’s
beginnings, but the status accorded him by Sabellico is entirely novel.102
Furthermore, certain key figures, such as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Salu-
tati, and above all Chrysoloras, are surprisingly absent. The first, whom
Manetti lavishly praises as a humanist, and whose relative unimportance
Cortesi felt obliged to explain, has no place in this dialogue.103 The second,
often considered by modern scholars to be the founder of humanism, is
said, in an aside, to have contributed something to the recovery of Latin
but to have achieved fame primarily for his vernacular poetry.104 Boccaccio
receives half a line and no overt praise.105 Salutati, who plays the part of
Piccolomini’s whipping boy, Manetti’s early hero, and Cortesi’s nearly for-
gotten forerunner, here has no part at all.106 And Chrysoloras, a founding
figure for Piccolomini, Biondo, Facio, and Cortesi, only appears obliquely
in Sabellico’s dialogue; he is mentioned as the teacher of several of the early
humanists, but his own accomplishments are nowhere recounted.107
102 See Chapter 1 above, p. 60. Facio, DVI, p. 28, also says that Barzizza was “one of the most important
for reawakening long-dormant eloquence” (“Gasparinus Bergomensis unus ex iis vel in primis fuit,
qui consopitam diu eloquentiam excitaverunt”).
103 For Dante in Manetti, see Chapter 2, passim; in Cortesi, see Chapter 3 above, pp. 141–142, 158,
180–181.
104 Specifically, Sabellico denigrates the style of Lapo da Castiglionchio, Antonio Pacini da Todi
(Tudertino), and others by saying that “their writings were somehow useful to Latin studies, but
no more useful in recovering what had been lost than what Petrarch and Boccaccio had written
much earlier” (119.1–4: “Florentini Lapi, Antonii tudertini et aliorum quorundam scripta aliquid
certe commodi latinis studiis attulerunt, sed ad id quod amissum erat reparandum non magis utilia
quam quae non paucis ante annis Franciscus Petrarcha et Ioannes Bocatius scripsere”). He then
continues (119.4–120.1): “Franciscus Petrarcha . . . clarus . . . rythmis eminens.” On the fortuna of
Petrarch’s Latin and vernacular poetry, see Sabellico, DLLR, p. 120, n. 1, with related bibliography;
and Hankins, “Petrarch and the Canon of Neo-Latin Literature.”
105 Sabellico, DLLR, 119.4–5: “Ioannes Bocatius . . . clarus . . . mythica historia.” Thus he is remem-
bered only for his De genealogia deorum.
106 For Salutati in Piccolomini, see Chapter 1 above, pp. 40–41; in Manetti, Chapter 2, pp. 112–113,
116, 121; in Cortesi, Chapter 3, pp. 143–144.
107 For Chrysoloras in Piccolomini, see Chapter 1 above, pp. 40–42; in Biondo, Chapter 1, p. 59;
in Facio, Chapter 1, pp. 73–74; in Cortesi, Chapter 3, pp. 144–146, 158. Sabellico mentions
Chrysoloras’ marginalization must result at least in part from Sabellico’s
vision of humanism as the renewal of ancient Roman language and lit-
erature. Sabellico had to have been aware of the Byzantine’s importance,
considering the latter’s long residence in Venice. What is more, after intro-
ducing Guarino of Verona as one of the first humanists to be spurred on
by Barzizza, Bruni, and Poggio, Sabellico states: “Whatever greatness he
achieved, no one doubts that he owed it to Chrysoloras.”108 Thus Sabel-
lico seems to grasp, along lines similar to Piccolomini, Facio, and Cortesi,
the role played by Chrysoloras in early efforts to approximate classical
Latin. Yet he seems intent on obfuscating this contribution. As opposed
to Cortesi, who trumpets the return of a shared classical literary culture
from Greece to Italy, Sabellico mutes the part of Hellas. This is all the
more surprising considering the great importance Greek Byzantium had
for Venetian identity and the very real influence of Byzantine culture on
Venice in the Renaissance, including on the humanist milieu.109 It may
be explained, however, by Sabellico’s Roman roots and his closeness to
Valla. As noted in Chapter 3, Cortesi’s formation in Pomponio Leto’s cir-
cle probably bore some responsibility for his marginalization of the Greek
language when portraying the humanism of his own time. Sabellico, as we
shall see, is even more radical than Cortesi in his disregard of Greek. Thus
the model of Valla was probably even more important. In the Elegantiae,
to whose vision of linguistic and cultural renovatio Sabellico is so heavily
indebted, Valla wages an overt polemic against Greek. He argues that the
language of Rome is superior precisely because it is unitary and widespread
and thus can act as a conduit for a single, sophisticated culture worldwide.
Greek, on the other hand, is splintered into the dialects and Koine: “the
Greeks cannot agree amongst themselves, much less hope to bring others
to their own language.”110 Unlike Latin, Greek is not a culturally imperial
tongue. With this in mind, it makes more sense that Byzantines who made
names for themselves in Italy in the fifteenth century – men like Bessarion,
George of Trebizond, and Argyropoulos – are given short shrift in the
Chrysoloras as the teacher of Vergerio and Francesco Barbaro (107.2) and of Guarino (111.2–4),
and as Gianmario Filelfo’s grandfather (139.1–2). Marsuppini’s Greek is said to have been so good
that he seemed like a student of Chrysoloras (111.1–2: “dicitur et ipse grace tractasse studia, ut
merito suspicari possis hunc quoque ex Chrisolorae officina depromptum”).
108 Sabellico, DLLR, 111.3–4: “quantuscumque fuit, ab eo [Chrysolora] factum nemo est qui dubitet.”
109 Cf. Marianne Pade, The Reception of Plutarch’s Lives in Fifteenth-Century Italy, 2 vols. (Copenhagen,
2007), vol. I, pp. 180–182.
110 Prosatori latini, pp. 596–598, quote at 598: “Graeci inter se consentire non possunt, nedum alios
ad sermonem suum se perducturos sperent.”
dialogue.111 Only Theodore Gaza, one of Cortesi’s heroes, receives fuller
treatment and special, albeit generic, praise: “It is not an overstatement to
say that there was nothing more cultivated, nothing more chaste than this
man.”112
Similarly idiosyncratic is Sabellico’s quirky account of humanism’s ori-
gins. Despite all the respect we should have for his understanding of the
mechanisms of historical development, at times he does not seem to be
in command of the basic facts of chronology. Consider the attribution to
Barzizza of influence on Leonardo Bruni, who was only nine years younger
and actually made his first contributions to humanism (his earliest trans-
lations from Greek, ca. 1401113 ) before Barzizza began his teaching career
(1403 in Padua), or on Guarino, who sought out Manuel Chrysoloras in
Greece as early as 1388. It is even more absurd to think of Poggio (b. 1380)
as influencing Guarino. On the other hand, perhaps Sabellico composed
the triad of Barzizza–Bruni–Poggio to be representative of generic con-
tributions to humanism rather than because he believed it constituted a
precise chronology: Barzizza was the teacher and textual critic, Bruni the
historiographer and translator, and Poggio the manuscript-hunter. There
is, moreover, a perfect symmetry in identifying Barzizza, one of the first
humanists to write commentaries on ancient authors, as the founder of
a movement that purportedly reached its perfection in printed commen-
taries. If this interpretation is correct, the profiles of these individuals act,
at least in part, as an ideal characterization of humanism in its early stages
and show the roots of its later glory, which for Sabellico was bound up
entirely in its revival of Roman, not Greek, antiquity (hence the demotion
of Guarino and the expulsion of Chrysoloras from the canon). There is
also a much simpler and reductive explanation for the order of the early
humanists in the dialogue: Sabellico may simply have been following the
example of his friend Jacopo Foresti’s Supplementum chronicarum (1483), a
massive universal chronicle that also presented Barzizza, Bruni, and Pog-
gio in this order of historical importance.114 As for Foresti’s preference for
111 Bessarion and Trapezunzius get a combined five lines (Sabellico, DLLR, 130.9–132.1); Argyropoulos
is not treated but is mentioned as having instructed Pietro Marsi in philosophy (181.5–182.1).
112 His biography runs a total of ten lines, which is an above-average length: 143.5–144.4. Praise:
143.9–10 (“Nihil eo viro cultius, nihil castius, nec vereor ne ambitione id a nobis dictum videri
possit”).
113 For Bruni’s early Greek translations, see Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, vol. II, pp. 376–
378.
114 Noted in Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), p. 62. Krautter, “Marcus Antonius,” pp. 640 and
645, n. 22, points out that the correspondence continues beyond the initial three and also accounts
(although not exactly) for the perhaps odd ordering of Maffeo Vegio, Pier Paolo Vergerio, Francesco
Barbaro, Leonardo Giustinian, Carlo Marsuppini.
Barzizza, it is likely explained by patriotic motives: both men were from
Bergamo.115
Finally, like Foresti’s, Sabellico’s choices also have something to do with
his personal attachment to a place: Venice. Despite protestations to the
contrary within the dialogue,116 the work’s general tenor confirms as much,
and it seems clear that De latinae linguae reparatione belonged to a group
of writings that the humanist penned to ingratiate himself to his adopted
home.117 This helps to explain better Sabellico’s attribution of the founda-
tion of humanism to Gasparino Barzizza, who was famous for his teaching
in the Veneto, especially as a university teacher in Padua (appointed by
the Venetian Senate) and as a private tutor in Venice itself, where one
of his students was the first great Venetian humanist, Francesco Barbaro
(whose nephew, Ermolao, is also praised in the dialogue and is an audi-
tor to the disputation between Brugnoli and Guarini).118 It also accords
with the concentration of Veneto humanists profiled before the advent of
Valla,119 as well as with the focus in Guarini’s half of the disputation on
commentaries and printed works, which flourished in Venice at the time
of the dialogue’s composition.120 Yet it would be wrong to make too much
of Venetian sympathies. For example, if the point of the dialogue were
simply to praise Venice, we might expect some mention of Chrysoloras’
association with the city or a more laudatory biography of George of Tre-
bizond, who taught in Venice during two distinct periods and was one of
the first to teach humanistic studies publicly there.121 Instead Chrysoloras
is almost totally ignored, while George’s tenure in the city is passed over
in silence and he is compared unfavorably to Bessarion.122 It is difficult to
believe, if the praise of Venice really had been Sabellico’s central purpose,
that the internal politics of Roman humanism or his own personal grudge
with Greek would have prompted him to leave out such details.
115 See Krautter, “Marcus Antonius,” p. 640.

116 Sabellico, DLLR, 142.1–6 and 147.2–5. Such statements, of course, give him away.
117 On Sabellico’s Venetian focus and the place of De latinae linguae reparatione in a larger literary
project in praise of Venice, see Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), pp. 9, 12, 32–34. See also Tateo,
I miti, pp. 211 and 188, who warns, however, against taking Sabellico’s association with Venice too
far.
118 For Barzizza’s teaching career, see Mercer, The Teaching of Gasparino Barzizza; and Grendler, The
Universities of the Italian Renaissance, pp. 207–209.
119 See above, pp. 202–203 and below, note 159.
120 See Virginia Cox, “Rhetoric and Humanism in Quattrocento Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly, 56:3
(2003), pp. 652–694, esp. 675–678. For Sabellico’s use of the dialogue to showcase humanism in
Venice, see Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame,” pp. 216–220.
121 On George’s teaching in Venice and its later status among humanists there, see Cox, “Rhetoric
and Humanism,” pp. 661–665.
122 Sabellico, DLLR, 131.1–132.1. Probably due to George’s spirited attacks on Bessarion, an ally of
Sabellico’s teacher, Leto.
As interesting as it is to search for the personal, intellectual, and civic
allegiances that shaped Sabellico’s work, it is also fruitful to consider how
De latinae linguae reparatione can help us see past our own scholarly com-
mitments and habits. For now let us focus on the issues raised in this
section. First, Barzizza has long been recognized as an important figure,
if not a turning point, in early Quattrocento humanism, but he has been
relatively little studied and his works are not widely available.123 Should we
be paying more attention to Barzizza, not to mention a squadron of other
figures flying underneath our radar, when trying to come to terms with
humanism and its appeal in the fifteenth century? More important than
the fate of one individual is the status of an entire city. Sabellico reminds us
that, contrary to what was once widely assumed, Venice was a great center
of humanism by the turn of the sixteenth century, and a very important one
for the integrity of classical Latin.124 And finally Greek. We proudly tell our
students, and rightly so, that the recovery and proliferation of Greek in the
Latin West was one of the great achievements of Renaissance humanism.
But Sabellico tells us what we are wont to forget, namely that Greek was
seldom valued in its own right but rather was seen as a handmaiden to
Latin. Indeed, Sabellico even whispers the dirty little secret of humanism:
that many (most?) humanists were relieved to forego Greek as long as Latin
translations were available.
Latinae linguae reparatores

As in the texts of our previous authors, the humanists of De latinae linguae
reparatione are called docti viri (learned men) and viri illustres (illustrious
men). A specific individual might be more properly an orator, a poeta,
perhaps even a vetustatis amator (lover of antiquity), but as a group the
humanists are bonarum litterarum studiosi (devotees of good literature –
synonymous with nostratium litterarum studiosi, or devotees of our native
123 As early as Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums, pp. 220–222, Barzizza is described
as instrumental for moving humanism beyond the simple continuation of Petrarch’s legacy. Unlike
Sabellico, however, Voigt identifies Barzizza’s main contribution to be his equal emphasis on
Greek and Latin studies. For recent studies of Barzizza, see Chapter 1 above, note 32. An attempt
is underway to publish his De orthographia, but so far only a censimento of the manuscripts has
appeared: Giliola Barbero, L’Orthographia di Gasparino Barzizza (Messina, 2008). See also Letizia
A. Panizza, “Gasparino Barzizza’s Commentaries on Seneca’s Letters,” Traditio, 33 (1977), pp. 297–
358; G.W. Pigman, III, “Barzizza’s Studies of Cicero,” Rinascimento, 2nd ser., 21 (1981), 123–163;
and Pigman, “Barzizza’s Treatise on Imitation,” Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance, 44 (1982),
341–352.
124 See Tateo, I miti, p. 212; King, Venetian Humanism, passim; and the insightful discussion in
Kallendorf, Virgil and the Myth of Venice, pp. 18–30.
literature). They are those qui recenti saeculo aliquid in communem latinae
linguae usum edidissent (who in recent times have made a contribution
to the Latin language).125 The humanists are engaged in recognoscenda
vetustate (investigating antiquity) and in meliora studia (better studies),
elsewhere called humanarum litterarum studia (study of humane letters)
and eloquentiae cultum (the cultivation of eloquence). They are responsible
for successus hic litterarum (this success of letters) and praesens studiorum
successus (the present flourishing of our studies), which consists in latinam
linguam iuvere (aiding the Latin language – equivalent to romanas litteras
iuvere, or aiding classical Latin), romanam linguam servare (saving classical
Latin), tam inepte loqui desinere (ceasing to speak clumsily), latinam linguam
recipere (recovering the Latin language), romanas litteras suscitari (waking
classical literature), multo emendatiorem latinam linguam habere (possess-
ing a much more correct Latin), romanus sermo suum veterem splendorem
recipere (recovering the ancient splendor of classical Latin), and romanae
litterae in antiquum statum restitui (restoring classical Latin to its ancient
state).126
The humanists who populate Sabellico’s De latinae linguae reparatione
are plainly united first and foremost by their devotion to classical Latin
eloquence, and necessarily also by a passion for antiquity. Perhaps as a
corollary (as in Cortesi), they are not necessarily devoted to any particular
discipline(s) or area(s) of study, not even those commonly associated with
the studia humanitatis. The very nature of their enterprise and of ancient
Roman literature dictated that they would of course spend most of their
time with grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy, but
they were not limited to them. The keen observer will have noticed that
studia humanitatis was not one of the very many ways listed above to
say humanism (although humanarum litterarum studia does, admittedly,
come close). It is unwise to make too much of an omission, but this one
seems significant. On the one hand, it suggests that Sabellico did not
perceive a necessary or even a strong association between humanism and
the bibliographic cycle of the studia humanitatis or the teaching of the
125 Some occurrences, with no attempt at completeness, are: docti viri: 83.4; viri illustres: 124.6; orator:
125.2, 128.4; poeta: 124.20, 125.2, 128.3; amator vetustatis: 150.2; bonarum litterarum studiosi: 203.1–2;
nostratium litterarum studiosi: 91.9–10; qui recenti . . . usum edidissent: 91.7–8.
126 These references are rather complete but not exhaustive: meliora studia: 106.1; eloquentiae cultum:
106.5; in recognoscenda vetustate: 149.6; humanarum litterarum studia: 142.7; successus hic litterarum:
87.23–24; praesens studiorum successus: 83.22; latinam linguam iuvere: 87.28; romanas litteras iuvere:
87.1; romanam linguam servare: 83.10–12; tam inepte loqui desinere: 83.24; latinam linguam recipere:
84.5–6; romanas litteras suscitari: 171.11; multo emendatiorem . . . linguam habere: 175.2–3; romanus
sermo . . . splendorem recipere: 168.6; romanae litterae . . . statum restitui: 156.5–157.1.
so-called humanista at universities.127 This is important not only because
such an association was central to Kristeller’s understanding of humanism,
but even more so because this is precisely the period when studia human-
itatis began to have the exclusive meaning of a clearly defined cycle of
academic disciplines.128 One wonders if Sabellico is not consciously avoid-
ing a term that suggests an alien institutional and educational context. On
the other hand, Sabellico’s usage harmonizes with the fact that his human-
ists engaged eloquently in studia and literary genres that largely remained
outside the proper province of humanism in the other authors we have
considered in this study.
One is devotional literature, in which Sabellico’s Brugnoli praises Pietro
Barozzi, bishop of Padua, for his excellent prose and poetry. Of his poetry
he says, “I have never seen anything more weighty, more pious, and more
in line with religion”; of his prose: “I very much desire to see his work
On Dying Well . . . , in which I hear he has arranged everything” – note
the all too obvious pun – “divinely.”129 In addition, the Carmelite Battista
Spagnoli (better known as Mantuanus) – master of theology, later prior
general of his order, and eventually declared blessed – is here singled out
as one of the greatest living poets, especially for his carmina on the life of
the Virgin and on despising death.130
Another new setting for humanistic virtuosity, and somewhat surpris-
ing, considering that it leaves no space for poetry and little for rhetoric,
is mathematics. Yet we read that “no one, as far as I know, treated mathe-
matics more elegantly” than Leon Battista Alberti.131 Previous authors had
noted humanists’ expertise in mathematics, and Facio specifically mentions
Alberti’s, but here the case is different. Instead of presenting mathematics
as something to be pursued in addition to humanism, Sabellico treats it as
a proper context for “elegant” language.
127 Cf. Campana, “The Origin of the Word ‘Humanist’”; and Kristeller, “Humanism and Scholasti-
cism,” p. 366 (reprinted in Renaissance Thought and its Sources, p. 99).
128 Kohl, “The Changing Concept of the studia humanitatis.”
129 On Barozzi, 142.6–143.4. The quotations come from 143.1–4: “nihil gravius vidi unquam, nihil
magis pium magisque religioni accommodatum. Cupio vehementer videre opus ab eo de optimo
genere moriendi . . . , in quo audio omnia divine ab eo disposita.” For the identification of the
“opus . . . de optimo genere moriendi” with De modo bene moriendi, see Sabellico, DLLR, p. 143,
n. 2.
130 For Sabellico’s treatment of Mantuanus, see Sabellico, DLLR, 161.1–162.2. The specific poems
mentioned are identified in ibid., p. 162, n. 1, as the Partenice Mariana and De contemnenda
morte. On Mantuanus, see John F. D’Amico, “Baptista Mantuanus of Mantua,” in Bietenholz and
Deutscher (eds.), Contemporaries of Erasmus, vol. II, p. 375; and Lee Piepho, Holofernes’ Mantuan:
Italian Humanism in Early Modern England (New York, 2001).
131 Sabellico, DLLR, 130.4–5: “Nullus, quod sciam, nostra tempestate mathematicas artes elegantius
tractavit.” For Facio, see Chapter 1 above, p. 81.
More importantly, in De latinae linguae reparatione humanism comes to
embrace natural philosophy and theology. Francesco Filelfo’s “works clearly
show that he did not shrink from the study of philosophy,”132 and Ermolao
Barbaro and Marsilio Ficino brought good Latin to bear on philosophy,
“a rather weighty study,”133 with their translations of Themistius, Aristotle,
and Plato:
In my view, they show – and this is something that no one else since the
decline of eloquence had done – that the subject matter itself was not to
blame for the fact that philosophers down to our age have not spoken
classical Latin; rather, it was the fault of the previous translators of Greek
philosophy.134
That the Latin of the scholastic Aristotelians was not Aristotle’s fault had
been a commonplace since Petrarch, and Bruni had often criticized scholas-
tic translators (especially in his De interpretatione recta) and had already
brought humanistic eloquence to bear on Aristotle’s Ethics in his own new
translation. Nevertheless, Barbaro and Ficino represent something new:
their translations have ostensibly revealed the eloquence of metaphysics
and cosmology, not just of moral and political philosophy. In theology
(divinae litterae), “which is cultivated more and more every day,” Pico was
the central figure. No one was “more refined or elegant,” and “no one since
Lactantius and Jerome was better at safeguarding Latin elegance in this
genre.”135
Once again Sabellico makes us rethink a notion sacred to Kristeller,
namely that “the Italian humanists on the whole were neither good nor
bad philosophers, but no philosophers at all.”136 For this reason Kristeller
132 Sabellico, DLLR, 125.3–126.1: “nec a studiis philosophiae abhorrens, quod aperte eius opera
declarant.” For the nature of these studies, see ibid., pp. 125–126, n. 3. It is possible, however,
that Sabellico simply means traditionally humanistic moral philosophy, as is suggested by his
explicit comparison of Filelfo to Seneca, 127.5–7.
133 Ibid., 145.2: “studiis tamen gravioribus.”
134 Ibid., 146.2–147.2: “Praestiterunt meo iudicio – quod post inclinatam eloquentiam nemo – osten-
deruntque hi non rem, sed eos qui eiusmodi opera antea in latinum vertere in causa fuisse, quod
qui ad nostram usque aetatem philosophati sunt parum romanae sint locuti.”
135 Ibid., 147.5–9: “divinae litterae in dies . . . magis excoluntur . . . . Quid enim . . . Mirandulani Pici
Heptaplo vidimus aut cultius aut elegantius? Nemo . . . post Lactantium et Hieronymum melius
in eo scribendi genere latinam custodivit elegantiam.”
136 On the separation between humanism and philosophy, see Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and
its Sources, pp. 28–32, 90–91, quotation at 91. For Kristeller’s treatment of Ficino and Pico, see
Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Stanford, 1964), pp. 37–71, esp. 37–38: “I
cannot agree with those historians who want to see in Ficino and Renaissance Platonism nothing
but a special sector or phase of humanism; I prefer to consider Renaissance Platonism a distinct
movement within the broader context of Renaissance philosophy.”
mustered Ficino and Pico out of the ranks of the humanists. Their con-
temporary Sabellico, however, accepted them into the fold. Yet he did
not do so on the basis of the works that have made them so important
to modern scholars, such as the Platonic Theology and the Oration on the
Dignity of Man,137 but rather because of their efforts in translating ancient
philosophical and theological texts into elegant Latin. Admittedly, Ficino
is not known for the purity of his style, but the fact remains that Sabellico
portrays both Ficino and Pico as humanists precisely for making significant
contributions to the restoration of classical Latin. What is fascinating is
that there need be no essential disharmony between Sabellico’s and Kris-
teller’s views. As Kristeller himself once noted, “[Ficino’s] scholarly activity
as a translator and commentator of Plato, Plotinus, and other Greek philo-
sophical writers may be regarded as a continuation of the work done by
his humanist predecessors.”138 The main difference between Kristeller and
Sabellico, then, lies in which aspect of Ficino’s literary production each
considered most important. For Kristeller it was Ficino’s original contribu-
tion to philosophical thought. For Sabellico it was his work as a translator
of philosophical texts, and thus he considered Ficino, at least in this respect,
a humanist like himself.
The case should not, however, be overstated. Ultimately, the pursuits of
natural philosophy, theology, and devotional literature are not central to
humanism and are rather a specialty interest. Of the eighty-one humanists
treated in the dialogue, only the six just now mentioned are specifically
noted for engaging in them.139 Furthermore, as we have just seen, what
seems important to Sabellico is not so much a contribution to the matter,
or content, of natural philosophy or theology, but rather that a humanist
engage in them eloquently. Therefore he cannot be thought of as lending
support to Garin’s view that humanists “understood that they were doing
137 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, De hominis dignitate, Heptaplus, De ente et uno, e scritti vari,
ed. Eugenio Garin (Florence, 1942); Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, ed. James Hankins with
William Bowen, tr. Michael J.B. Allen and John Warden, 6 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 2001–2006).
138 Kristeller, Eight Philosophers, p. 37.
139 Two earlier humanists, it is true, are cited for their study of philosophy, but it is clear from
the context that moral, not natural, philosophy is meant, or that philosophy predated and did
not continue after their interest in humanism. See the treatments of Bruni (99.6–102.5), whose
reputation as “famous for his philosophical studies” (99.7–8: “philosophiae studiis . . . clarus”)
mostly likely relies on his Isagogicon or on his numerous translations of Plato, Plutarch, and
Aristotle; and of Pier Paolo Vergerio (106.10–107.1), whose “very weighty judgments” are attributed
to his earlier study of philosophy, which is explicitly said to have preceded, and not continued with,
his humanistic activity (106.13–107.1: “gravissimisque respersus sententiis, utpote qui philosophiae
prius operam dederit quam ad scribendum venisset”).
the work of philosophers.”140 Instead he praises the purity of Barbaro’s and
Ficino’s philosophical translations, Pico’s “safeguarding of Latin elegance”
in theology, and Barozzi’s “divine arrangement” in devotional literature.
He does not praise their arguments or ideas. As a movement to restore clas-
sical Latin, then, humanism will comprehend these genres to the extent
that it reforms their modes of expression. Or, put another way, individuals
will engage in these areas as humanists to the extent that they do so elo-
quently. Thus, although Sabellico clearly thought humanism transcended
the standard disciplines of the studia humanitatis in its project to save Latin,
nevertheless humanists were primarily literary men. And although he did
not exclude philosophy and religion from humanism proper, they did not
often constitute any given humanist’s field of endeavor. As for the other
rival disciplines of law and medicine, they are, as usual, not mentioned in
relation to humanism.
The importance and reach of classical Latin are by now clear, but what
about the place of other languages, ancient and modern, in humanism?
As our other authors have led us to expect, Greek sits at the right hand
of Latin in Sabellico’s linguistic hierarchy. Knowledge of it seems to be a
given, albeit seldom a stated attribute, of nearly all the humanists treated
in the dialogue, and translations from Greek into Latin form an important
component of the revival of classical Latin before Valla. Yet Greek has
at best a relative value. Sabellico’s reticence regarding the contribution of
Byzantine émigrés and the Greek studies they brought with them extends to
the language itself. On the one hand, one’s sense when reading the dialogue
is that Greek is by now so common that it need no longer be singled out
as a special accomplishment. On the other hand, Sabellico’s humanists
display a demonstrably greater interest in Latin than in Greek authors,
especially in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. In the second half of
the dialogue, which deals with humanists from the 1470s on and especially
with living and up-and-coming ones, and which is specifically devoted to
commentaries, there is less emphasis on translations from Greek, and most
of the commentaries mentioned are of Latin, not Greek, authors. Insofar as
the second half of the dialogue acts as an apology for the commentary genre,
it does so emphatically with reference to the Latin tradition.141 Considering,
140 Garin, Medioevo e rinascimento, p. 8: “gli umanisti . . . intesero fare opera di filosofi” (translation
mine).
141 The vast majority of commentaries mentioned in the second speech are of Latin poets. There are
only two mentions of commentaries on Greek literature: Domizio Calderini’s work on Sappho
(172.6), and a vague reference to the contribution of Poliziano’s forthcoming Miscellanea to
then, that Sabellico portrays printed commentaries as the natural end of
humanism, Greek’s value drops even more. Furthermore, Sabellico’s only
observation on the Greek language is a dubious one. Regarding Theodore
Gaza he muses:
He was a Greek, as I said, but when I read his Latin translations of
Theophrastus or Aristotle . . . , I cannot stop being amazed and wonder-
ing whether we get our astounding eloquence from the Greeks, or whether
Theodore got his from us.142
The question is as polemical as it is rhetorical. In the preface to a translation
of Aristotle, Gaza had impugned Latin for being lexically impoverished with
respect to Greek, only to be unmasked by Poliziano for having plagiarized
significant portions of that very Latin translation.143 It is worth noting,
finally, that Sabellico’s own knowledge of Greek was likely either weak or
nonexistent. He claims in one letter to have studied the language for nine
years, but this seems to be rather a literary trope than a precise reckoning of
his effort. He sprinkles Greek quotations, words, and spellings throughout
his writings (e.g., fama is consistently spelled phama in the dialogue, and
the two titles of his universal history have the scent of Greek: Enneades
and Rhapsodiae historiarum), but he never translated anything from Greek,
nor did he compose anything in Greek, and his philological work betrays
a poor knowledge of the language.144
Greek and Latin (194.7–195.3). It might also be mentioned that Sabellico does not have in mind
commentaries of Greek philosophy, such as Bruni’s and Acciaiuoli’s of Aristotle, or Ficino’s creative
compositions based on Plato. Cf. also Lowry, World of Aldus, pp. 73–74, who notes the total absence
of Greek scholarship in Venice ca. 1490.
142 Sabellico, DLLR, 143.10–144.4: “Fuit ille graecus, ut dixi; verum quum eius Theophrastum lego,
quem, dico, latinum fecit, aut Aristotelis libros . . . , admirari non desino ac dubitare utrum
incredibilem illam verborum proprietatem nostri a Graecis acceperint an ille a nostris potius.”
143 See John Monfasani, “Angelo Poliziano, Aldo Manuzio, Theodore Gaza, George of Trebizond, and
Chapter 90 of the Miscellaneorum centuria prima (with an edition and translation),” in Mazzocco
(ed.), Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism, pp. 243–265; Monfasani, Greeks and Latins in
Renaissance Italy: Studies on Humanism and Philosophy in the 15th Century (Aldershot, 2004), esp.
ch. 6 and p. 211; Monfasani, George of Trebizond, pp. 76–78. By all accounts, both then and now,
Gaza was an excellent Latinist, and he was considered the king of Latin translators from Greek.
Until, that is, Poliziano, for whom Sabellico had the greatest respect, revealed in Chapter 90 of
the first century of his Miscellanea (printed in 1489, just as Sabellico was composing his dialogue)
that Gaza had plagiarized significant portions of his translation of Aristotle’s De animalibus from
the previous translation of George of Trebizond. It is in the preface to this translation that Gaza
claimed (as Poliziano reports) that “we Latins suffer from the defect of having many fewer terms
for things than do the Greeks” (Monfasani, “Angelo Poliziano,” p. 263, n. 56 quotes Gaza’s original
preface). Thus in ostensibly filling in the gaps of the Latin language, he had needed to rely on the
Latin of another. That the Latin plagiarized by Gaza was the work of another Byzantine and not
of an Italian did not keep Sabellico from making his joke.
144 Greek words appear, e.g., in the dedicatory letter of DLLR (83.21). On the role of Greek in Sabel-
lico’s philological work, see Chavasse, “The studia humanitatis,” pp. 33–34; and Pellegrini, “Studiare
Other languages fare worse with respect to Latin. Regarding ancient lan-
guages, Pico is praised for being “the only one of the moderns to join Greek
and Aramaic with Latin studies.”145 This is the only mention of an ancient
language other than Latin or Greek in the whole text. The remaining
instances regard the vernacular, and they are not approving. For example,
Sabellico’s Guarini criticizes Cristoforo Landino for his translation of Pliny
the Elder, and mistakenly for one of Livy as well,146 into Tuscan. His neg-
ative judgment rests as much on the quality of this particular effort as on
the general inappropriateness of vernacular translation from Latin:
You would wish . . . he had put his most blessed eloquence to a greater
use than wishing to serve the ignorant multitude. He sinfully made Livy
and Pliny, two lights of the Latin language, available to the common
man . . . [His] Pliny is harsher as a Tuscan than he was as a Roman . . . and
Livy has lost nearly all of that distinctive “Paduanness” for which Pollio
criticized him.147
Sabellico’s disdain for the “ignorant multitude” is obvious, as is his disap-

proval of the translation of a Latin text into the vernacular, since it has
thereby been made to lose something essential to its original character. At
best, vernacular translation appears to be a wasteful distraction. The text
continues:
Perhaps [Landino] had the interests of his native language in mind, thinking
that in this way it would be spread far and wide. His intention was good, for
we owe a great deal to our fatherland, but I think he could have ennobled
himself, his fatherland, and the whole Tuscan name better with his own
Svetonio,” p. 57. The possibility that Sabellico translated several speeches from Thucydides’ His-
tory is raised by Marianne Pade, “Thucydides,” in Catalogus Translationum Commentariorumque:
Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries. Annotated Lists and Guides (Wash-
ington, DC, 1960–), vol. VIII, pp. 103–181, at 128–130, but the passages adduced indicate, to my
mind, rather an industriously manipulative cribbing of Valla’s earlier work.
145 Sabellico, DLLR, 148.1–3: “contigisse illi adhuc uni, quod et recentiorum nemini, ut graeca et
chaldaea studia romanis iunxerit.”
146 No such translation is known. See ibid., pp. 185–186, n. 1.
147 For the full assessment of Landino’s vernacular translation: 185.4–187.6. This quotation is 185.4–
186.2: “velles . . . beatissimam illam dicendi facultatem ad maiorem usum comparatam quam ut
imperitae multitudini servire voluisset. Titum Livium et Plinium, duo latinae linguae lumina,
non sine piaculi suspitione omnibus vulgavit . . . duriorem esse Plynium iam tuscum factum quam
antea romanus fuisset . . . ut patavinitas illa, quam Pollio in Livio depraehenderat, quantum in eo
viro fuerit vix extet amplius.” For Pollio’s criticism of Livy for incorporating too much of his native
Paduan, or Patavinian, dialect into his Latin, see Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 1, 5, 56 and 8, 1,
3. On Landino’s translation of Pliny, see Riccardo Fubini, “Cristoforo Landino, le Disputationes
camaldulenses e il volgarizzamento di Plinio: questioni di cronologia e di interpretazione,” in
Fubini, Quattrocento fiorentino. Politica, diplomazia, cultura (Pisa: Pacini, 1996), pp. 303–332.
work and effort. And he really could have, for nothing is fuller, nothing more
suited to treating all the parts of eloquence, than his natural ability.148
Sabellico draws attention to Landino’s much advertised belief that vernac-
ular writing was a patriotic duty of Florentines.149 As we saw in Chapter 2,
the vernacular had a long and hallowed tradition in Florence, and Landino
had made a name for himself by putting Tuscan on par with Latin. By
the time of Sabellico’s writing, Tuscan had been applied for decades not
only to original works of prose and poetry but also to Latin classics and
even to humanist works; among the most popular vernacular authors in
Florence was Leonardo Bruni in translation.150 Incidentally, the translation
of Pliny to which Sabellico refers was undertaken at the behest of Ferrante
of Naples. When Ferrante asked one of his own humanists, Giovanni Bran-
cati, to ascertain its quality, the reaction was nothing less than horror at
the impenetrable “Etruscan” text. Sabellico himself could not have phrased
Brancati’s punchy response better: “I derive far more pleasure from a single
verse of Latin than from all the books translated in this fashion.”151
Sabellico does approve, however, of Landino’s patriotic sentiment. But
what does he mean by “with his own work and effort?” Francesco Tateo152
has argued that Sabellico specifically means Latin historiography here, and
that the proper way for Landino to ennoble Florence was the one Sabellico
chose for Venice: to write its history in Latin, and thus to spread its fame to
a wider audience than that reachable by any vernacular. Such a deprecatory
attitude towards the vernacular is also found in the description of the Vene-
tian Leonardo Giustinian, whose works, it is lamented, “easily demonstrate
what he could have contributed to Latin if he had not dedicated himself
to vernacular poetry.”153 Ultimately, the vernacular, if perhaps of worthy
service to the unlettered, was a diversion from the real task of humanists:
to contribute to the restoration of classical Latin.154
148 Ibid., 187.1–6: “habuit fortassis ille patrii sermonis rationem, quem longe lateque propagatum iri
eo modo putavit; recte quidem; nam multa et magna patriae debemus, sed meo iudicio rectius
se patriam omneque tuscum nomen proprio labore et industria nobilitare potuisset; potuisset
quidem, nam nihil est ea natura uberius, nihil ad omnes eloquentiae partes tractandas aptius”
(emphasis mine).
149 See Mazzocco, Linguistic Theories, p. 97.
150 Hankins, “Humanism in the Vernacular,” pp. 20–29; Witt, Footsteps, pp. 453–454; McLaughlin,
“Humanism and Italian Literature.”
151 See Bentley, Politics and Culture in Renaissance Naples, pp. 69–71, quotation at 70.
152 Tateo, I miti, ch. 8: “Venezia e la storia esemplare di Livio in Marcantonio Sabellico” (pp. 181–221),
esp. 212–213.
153 Sabellico, DLLR, 109.7–9: “facile declarant quid ille in communem linguae usum afferre potuisset,
si non ad rhythmos animum adiecisset.”
154 Guglielmo Bottari takes a narrower view, arguing that Sabellico had “scarsa simpatia” for Tuscan
(Sabellico, DLLR, pp. 185–186, n. 1) and that he had nothing but disdain for the vernacular (Bottari,
“Introduzione” [Sabellico], p. 80). In support he cites a textual variant to DLLR, 202.5–12 – which
Despite their unconcern with Italian vernaculars, the humanists’ single-
minded restoration of Latin is, in Sabellico’s vision, emphatically a geo-
graphically and culturally Italian enterprise. We have already seen that good
Latin properly belongs to Italy as an inheritance of the Roman empire, and
that it was claimed by Sabellico’s humanists as “an ancestral right.” We
have also read the section of Guarini’s peroration where he reinforces the
essential link between Italy and good Latin: “Many peoples are ignorant of
literature and thus do not even desire it. Italy, however, not only perceived
this divine gift but also gave it to . . . others.”155 If literature was the cul-
tural lifeblood of the Italians, it should come as no surprise that foreigners
play almost no role in the dialogue. Only one foreigner – Coriolano Cip-
pico of Dalmatia, who celebrated the deeds of Doge Pietro Mocenigo –
is mentioned for having contributed to Latin literature. Echoing Cortesi’s
snide disposal of Janus Pannonius, Sabellico remarks, “hardly anyone in
this age would have expected eloquence from that coast of the Adriatic.”156
Cippico’s participation in humanism is all the more surprising to Sabellico,
since, as Brugnoli explains, he is too old to have been a student of Palladio
Negri, “who in recent years has restored classical Latin to its ancient state
in that country.”157 Despite the consistent presence of Italian humanists
abroad – from England to Hungary – throughout the fifteenth century, and
despite the appreciable number of foreigners who had studied in humanist
schools by Sabellico’s time, the dialogue mentions only one other person
does not represent Sabellico’s final intention, however – in which it is suggested that humanists
of low quality should stick to vernacular composition rather than publishing bad Latin. The final
version omits mention of the vernacular and says simply that such humanists should be more
careful in their publications. Bottari concludes there that this was “un intervento d’occasione che
finiva col tradire, in fondo, l’originario e autentico pensiero dell’autore, che nei confronti del
volgare non sembra mai aver avuto il benché minimo ripensamento.” The context (202.12–203.4)
of the passage in question, however, does not to my mind regard the vernacular, but rather Latin.
Guarini says that bad Latin infuriates humanists and makes them disdain works whose content
is otherwise worthy. Thus the meaning of the variant would actually seem to suggest that the
vernacular is an appropriate vehicle for passing on information, albeit one unworthy of true
humanists, rather than good for nothing at all. However this may be, the upshot for humanism is
the same: the vernacular has no place in it.
156 Sabellico, DLLR, 156.1–2: “vix ex dalmatica illa ora dicendi facultatem hac quisquam tempestate
expectasset.” In point of fact, although he was born in Traù, his eloquence came from Padua,
where he received his training. See Fabbri, “La storiografia veneziana del quattrocento,” p. 374.
Cippico’s book was entitled Petri Mocenici imperatoris gestorum libri tres; text in Per la memorialistica
veneziana in latino del Quattrocento: Filippo da Rimini, Francesco Contrarini, Coriolano Cippico,
ed. Renata Fabbri (Padua, 1988), pp. 163–230, which also contains extended biographical and
bibliographical information on him, pp. 139–161.
157 Sabellico, DLLR, 156.4–157.1: “nec est ut ad Palladium Nigrum – per quem proximis annis romanae
in ea terra litterae in antiquum sunt statum restitutae – eius studia referas.” On Negri (also known
as Palladio Fosco), a teacher best known for his commentary on Catullus, see ibid. and 200.1ff., as
well as Gaisser, Catullus and His Renaissance Readers, pp. 97–108.
besides Negri as having taken humanism abroad: Filippo Buonaccorsi,
whose work in Poland is recorded.158
Within Italy, Sabellico has, as we have seen, a decidedly northern perspec-
tive and focuses especially on Venice. He places the origins of humanism
in northern Italy and identifies its founder in Gasparino Barzizza, who was
born near Bergamo and taught in Venice, Padua, and Milan. Furthermore,
the plurality of the early humanists he praises hail from north of the Po.
They make up the vast majority of the central figures before Valla159 and
a fair number afterward. In addition, the dialogue begins with an explicit
praise of Venice, central to which is its book and specifically its print
culture.160 Finally, the setting of the dialogue is intended in part to high-
light the nature of Venetian humanism: exuberant, established, ubiquitous,
free, and exceptional.161 Brugnoli’s and Guarini’s speeches arise out of an
informal discussion started spontaneously by a group of learned patricians,
whose various business concerns at the Doge’s palace happen to bring them
together. This is a far cry from Cortesi’s dialogue, set in the intimacy of a
private estate and with no learned audience. In Venice humanism seems to
be on the tip of everyone’s tongue.162
After Venice, Sabellico explicitly singles out Rome, Florence, and Padua
as great centers of humanism, his Guarini calling them “the three most
famous schools of Italy.”163 Naples, too, although never named, comes to the
fore through the treatments of Panormita and Pontano.164 Several scholars
have suggested the possibility that Sabellico pursued an anti-Florentine
polemic, but this seems unlikely to me.165 Not only is Florence one of “the
most famous schools of Italy,” but two individuals with close ties to the
city – Bruni and Poggio166 – stand near the head of humanism’s family
158 On the diffusion of Italian humanism, see Chapter 3 above, note 142. For the poet and histo-
rian Buonaccorsi, also known as Callimaco Esperiente, see Sabellico, DLLR, 165.1–166.1; and, in
addition to the bibliography in ibid., see Harold B. Segel, Renaissance Culture in Poland: The
Rise of Humanism, 1470–1543 (Ithaca, 1989), ch. 2; and Michael T. Tworek, “Filippo Buonaccorsi,”
Repertorium Pomponianum (www.repertoriumpomponianum.it/pomponiani/buonaccorsi filippo
.htm).
159 Specifically, Barzizza, Maffeo Veggio, Pier Paolo Vergerio, Francesco Barbaro, Leonardo Giustinian,
Guarino Veronese, and Vittorino da Feltre, making seven out of the fifteen humanists named before
Valla. Their greater comparative importance is clear from the length and content of their treatment.
160 Sabellico, DLLR, 85.1ff. See Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame,” pp. 216–217.
161 Described in Sabellico, DLLR, 88.22ff. See Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame,” pp. 216–220.
162 Sabellico’s portrayal is confirmed by Lowry, World of Aldus, p. 189. Cf. also note 124 above.
163 Sabellico, DLLR, 191.6–7: “tribus celeberrimis Italiae gymnasiis.”
164 On Panormita, 124.20ff., 128.1ff.; on Pontano, 157.4ff.
165 Cf. Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), p. 54–55, and 185–186, n. 1; Krautter, “Marcus Antonius,”
p. 640; Tateo, I miti, p. 210.
166 Neither was born in Florence, but their reputations and careers were firmly bound to the city. On
Bruni, 99.6ff.; on Poggio, 102.4ff.
tree and receive extremely high praise. Furthermore, the leading humanists
of Laurentian Florence – Ficino, Pico, Poliziano, and Bartolomeo della
Fonte167 – come off quite well. Landino, it is true, does not, but Sabellico’s
criticism regards only Landino’s penchant for the vernacular; otherwise,
he praises his powerful eloquence.168 Finally, if Sabellico had wanted to
marginalize contemporary Florence, it would have been better to ignore it
like Cortesi169 rather than saying of Poliziano, “regarding his poetry, there is
no one, unless I am mistaken, of those considered famous today whom you
could prefer to him.”170 Ultimately, despite his distaste for its vernacular
politics, it is hard to think of Sabellico as an enemy of Florence.
Within that holistic view, Rome is certainly the most important human-
ist center after Venice and even rivals it.171 Valla, the great turning point
in humanism, was born and educated in Rome and, despite two decades
of employment all over Italy, ended his career as an influential figure in
Nicholas V’s circle. Domizio Calderini, the fountainhead of the commen-
tary tradition, was also active in Rome. Moreover, Sabellico received his
own humanist training under the direction of Calderini and Pomponio
Leto, the latter of whom was also a student of Lorenzo Valla.172 Thus
Sabellico’s own humanism traces its roots to Rome and is explicitly said
in the dialogue to be in a direct line of intellectual descent from the sec-
ond Camillus. Therefore this dialogue, in large part a praise of Venetian
humanism, is the product of Roman humanism. And although Sabellico
likely aims to show that Rome has passed the torch to Venice, which as the
rising star of printing plays the central role in the new kind of philological
humanism, Rome had not yet relinquished its importance in the effort to
restore classical Latin.173
We have now seen where and to what purpose humanists cultivated
Latin eloquence, but in what capacity did they do so? Unfortunately
for us, De latinae linguae reparatione gives scant information on the
employment of humanists, preferring to highlight the fruit of their otium
167 On Ficino, 145.2ff.; on Pico, 147.5ff.; on Poliziano, 193.2ff.; on della Fonte, professor at the
Florentine Studio, 187.7–8, and see Raffaella Zaccaria, “Della Fonte (Fonzio), Bartolomeo,” in
DBI, vol. XXXVI (1988), pp. 808–814.
168 On Landino, see above, pp. 219–220, and Sabellico, DLLR, 184.4ff.
169 Noted, although given less importance, in Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), p. 55.
170 Sabellico, DLLR, 194.5–7: “etenim si virtutes eius carminis attendas, non est, nisi me opinio fallit,
quem ex iis qui hodie illustres habentur illi praeferre possis.”
171 The importance of Rome has also been noted in Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), pp. 12, 22.
172 Cf. Sabellico, DLLR, 148.5–6: “Sabellici nostri praeceptor, et . . . Laurentii Vallensis auditor.”
173 Tateo, I miti, p. 212, emphasizes what he calls the “asse Roma–Venezia” in supporting Latin against
the vernacular, whose vogue was increasing in the other great traditional center of humanism,
Florence.
rather than the details of their negotium. We can, it is true, delineate three
sources of income – ecclesiastical benefices, secretarial work, and especially
teaching174 – but the references to them are desultory and, except in the
last case, they receive no further elaboration. The role of patronage, which
emerged so clearly in the works of Facio and Cortesi, remains essentially
hidden here.175 Nor does the dialogue give any indication of how the up-
and-coming generation makes a living. It is doubtful, however, that they
lived on textual editing alone.176 More important than any specific kind of
employment, the humanists in Sabellico’s dialogue are defined, categorized,
and judged according to their contributions to Latin, which, as we are now
used to hearing, they made in two basic forms: teaching and writing.177
The one often crossed the line into the other – good examples are Valla’s
Elegantiae and the commentary genre – but they can easily be considered
separately.
The importance of the early humanistic schools comes to the fore in
Sabellico’s treatment of the beloved teachers Gasparino Barzizza, Guarino
Veronese, and Vittorino da Feltre, but the content of the education they
offered is not as clear. Barzizza is featured as a teacher of rhetoric and gram-
mar, which corresponds with the description of humanist teaching before
Valla seen above: “they taught rhetoric, and some taught grammar with a
bit more care.”178 Guarino is specifically said to have instructed his stu-
dents in both Latin and Greek. Moreover, both Guarino and Vittorino are
praised for passing on not only their knowledge but also their outstanding
moral virtue.179
For the proliferation of good Latin style, however, schooling seems
to have played less of a role than the availability of proper models of
174 The dialogue specifically identifies the following humanists with these employments: ecclesiastics:
Pietro Barozzi, bishop of Padua (142.8), Battista Spagnoli, a Carmelite (161.1–2); secretaries and
chancellors: Bruni and Poggio, both employed as papal secretaries and then chancellors of Florence
(99.8ff., 105.6ff.); teachers: Barzizza (98.25ff.), Guarino (111.4ff.), Vittorino (113.8ff.), Valla (149.1),
Trapezuntius (131.4–132.1), Leto (148.5), Palladio Negri (156.4ff.), Giorgio Merula (178.2–3).
175 Sabellico’s speakers allude to patronage a few times, but they never say anything specific. The
allusions are to the speaker Battista Guarini’s and his father’s service to the Este in Ferrara (89.2–4,
115.6), Beccadelli’s to Alfonso in Naples and Filelfo’s to the Visconi in Milan (124.21–125.1), and
Vittorino’s to the Ganzaga in Manuta (115.6).
176 On the limited remuneration available to editors of printed volumes, see Brian Richardson, Print
Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470–1600 (Cambridge, 1996),
pp. 15–18.
177 Cf. Guarini’s peroration, 202.7–9: “Brugnoli’s purpose was to talk about those men who by either
teaching or writing something elegantly made the Latin language fuller and more correct” (“Sed
de his ille [Prunulus] dicere voluit, qui aliquid aut praecipiendo aut eleganter tradendo latinum
sermonem locupletiorem emendatioremque reddidere”).
178 See note 49 above. 179 Sabellico, DLLR, 111.3–113.8 (virtue at 113.8–114.1).
imitation, plentifully available in humanist writings. Translations from
Greek into Latin compose a large, if not the largest, share of humanist lit-
erary production mentioned in the dialogue up through the mid-fifteenth
century. Although Sabellico praises the early humanists, and even some
later ones, for these efforts, he considered them less worthy than origi-
nal compositions. He shows his preference early in the dialogue, after a
summary of Bruni’s translations: “but these might seem minor accomplish-
ments, for it is easy to be well spoken in someone else’s book, but difficult
in one’s own.”180 Similarly, Marsilio Ficino and Ermolao Barbaro “seem to
me to have won a great and new kind of praise, although only in translating
the works of others.”181
The hierarchy of original compositions is difficult to establish and shifts
over time. In the earliest stage of humanism, from Barzizza to Valla, his-
toriography stands out as a great achievement, and treatises also receive
a large amount of attention.182 In Valla’s generation, humanists continue
with these genres but are also said to produce orations, commentaries,
letters, and dialogues. The poetry of the whole period seems not to have
achieved the same level of excellence as prose, though, with fewer poetae
than oratores treated and even fewer praised as highly.183 In the second half
of the fifteenth century (especially from the 1470s), in contrast, the literary
landscape is dominated by poetry and commentaries.184 We have already
seen that Sabellico believes the printed commentary to be the final turn-
ing point in humanism’s history, and he dedicates a substantial portion of
the dialogue to illustrating its status and importance. Considering as well
that none of our other authors so much as mention commentaries, it will
therefore be worth our while to investigate Sabellico’s treatment of them
in full.
180 Ibid., 100.6–101.2: “Sed haec minora videri possunt: facile est in alieno libro esse disertum, sed in
suo difficile.”
181 Ibid., 144.4–145.2: “Grandem novamque praeterea laudem consecuti mihi videntur, et si in alienis
rebus interpretandis.”
182 Historiography is given great weight in 120.6–7. Bruni is praised for reviving the genre (101.2ff.),
and Biondo (although not without criticism) for contributing so much to it (115.9ff.); for treatises,
see Vergerio (106.10ff.) and F. Barbaro (108.1ff.)
183 Vegio is criticized for his style (106.10) and Beccadelli (128.1–2), Filelfo (127.1–7), Porcelio (136.5–6),
and Andrelini and Cleofilo (163.1–164.2) for their content. Sabellico preferred epic and religious
poetry and had an aversion to lascivious verse. See Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), p. 43.
184 Of the twenty humanists in the second half of the dialogue about whom specific information is
given (ten more are simply named), fourteen are said to have written commentaries, and seven
poetry. Also, Brugnoli characterizes commentaries as “a kind of gloss on the verses of the poets”
and Guarini speaks specifically about “commentaries on the ancient poets” (see below, p. 226),
although commentaries on prose writers are also mentioned in the dialogue.
Commentaries, printing, and libraries

The wide proliferation and popularity of commentaries through printing
was indeed something new in humanism, although the genre itself was not.
Commentaries, albeit of a different sort and with a different focus, had
been a standard scholastic genre of the Middle Ages.185 In the Renaissance
the commentary genre exploded, although scholars are only now beginning
to explore the full reach and impact of this (until recently) vastly under-
studied text type.186 One important novelty of the humanists was to apply
commentaries to the task of textual criticism, using them as a locus for
lexical but also historical and encyclopedic explanation. Sabellico’s portrait
of Barzizza, by mentioning the teacher’s commentaries on Cicero, shows
that the genre was alive and well in humanism’s early stages. Nevertheless,
at the end of the fifteenth century the commentary’s importance had not
yet achieved universal recognition or acceptance, as Sabellico stresses by
putting the following observations into the mouth of his Guarini:
First of all, friends, I think we should ask – and I see it is a common issue
for learned men to debate – whether it is worth the effort at all to provide
ourselves with commentaries on the ancient poets. Although many people
exult in having composed them, others not only do not praise them but
even disparage them.187
Cortesi, writing at approximately the same time as Sabellico, treated some
of the same humanists who are here celebrated for their commentaries –
above all Domizio Calderini and Niccolò Perotti – either without empha-
sizing those works or not mentioning them at all.188 And Sabellico, finally,
185 See Buck, “Einführung,” p. 7. Medieval commentaries were not philological, which is precisely
the kind Sabellico has in mind, and they had a more restricted canon of ancient literary authors
as their subject.
186 In addition to the bibliography in note 91 above, see: Karl A.E. Enenkel (ed.), Transformations
of the Classics via Early Modern Commentaries (Leiden, 2013); Michael Weichenhan, “Gassendis
Kommentierung von Diogenes’ Laertius Vitae philosophorum X – ein Beispiel für die Verwis-
senschaftlichung der Antike?,” in Thomas Wabel and Michael Weichenhan (eds.), Kommentare.
Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf eine wissenschaftliche Praxis (Frankfurt am Main, 2011), pp. 91–125;
Ralph Hafner and Markus Völkel (eds.), Der Kommentar in der Frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen, 2006);
Glenn Most (ed.), Commentaries – Kommentare (Göttingen, 1999); Deborah Parker, Commentary
and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance (Durham, NC, 1993).
187 Sabellico, DLLR, 169.21–170.3: “Primum itaque omnium illud quaerendum arbitror, viri amicis-
simi, de quo inter doctos quaeri solere video, fuerit ne operae precium id facere, ut in veteres
poetas, quod plerique praestitisse gloriantur, commentarios ullos haberemus. Nec desunt qui id
non solum non laudent, sed vituperent.”
188 Cortesi does not mention Perotti’s philological work and only does so casually with regard to
Calderini. See Cortesi, DHD, 159.6–161.10. Cortesi also alludes to commentaries at the end of his
dialogue but does not indicate what their special importance might be. See ibid., 187.16–19.
has his character Benedetto Brugnoli, who was in fact one of the most
authoritative humanists in Venice, confess his ignorance of commentaries,
saying:
I knowingly passed over many who have pursued a totally different tack in
our enterprise, and who might seem to have done not less but, as I think,
maybe even more for Latin studies than those whom I did mention. But
since the burden of advancing age has caused me to abstain from reading
their works, which are a kind of gloss on the verses of the poets, I have
nothing to say about them.189
Brugnoli then chooses Guarini to take up the charge, asking him to “discuss
in turn what you think about this new literary genre, to which many men
of our time dedicate all their energy.”190
Accordingly, Guarini begins his speech with a digression on commen-
taries that considers their value pro et contra, ultimately declaiming an
apology for the genre. The arguments against commentaries stack up fast
and furious, condemning them as an ignoble crutch incommensurate with
the grand aspirations of humanism.191 One objection is that there are
already too many books available, and more are not needed. Another is
that true humanists will find things out for themselves rather than rely on
other people’s work. The ancients, furthermore, are more reliable than the
moderns anyway. Moreover, commentaries stunt the mind, which under
their influence stops discovering, contriving (comminisci – the root verb
of the word commentary), and thinking for itself. And finally the most
damning criticism: commentaries allow the young and ignorant to embark
on teaching literature without the proper education and judgment. Such
teachers make a mess of their subject matter, fill their students with foolish
ideas and false opinions (so as to appear to have at least taught something),
and thus instill in them a hatred of Latin authors before they are of an age
to understand them.192
189 Sabellico, DLLR, 168.7–13: “Praeterii, sciens, multos qui diversa omnino meditatione ad hoc
ipsum efficiendum usi, non minus, ut arbitror, ac nescio an etiam plus aliquid quam illi quorum
mentionem feci, latinis studiis profuisse videri possunt, verum quia illorum quasi glossemata
quaedam poetarum carminibus cohaerentia, quorum lectione ob aetatem iam ingravescentem
consulto abstineo, non habeo quid de his dicere possim.” If the historical Benedetto Brugnoli was
actually ignorant of commentaries ca. 1489, he would eventually fill this lacuna by editing one of
the greatest commentaries of the age: Niccolò Perotti’s Cornucopia. See King, Venetian Humanism,
p. 342.
190 Sabellico, DLLR, 168.34–36: “quae de novo hoc scribendi genere ad quod multi nostra tempestate
omne suum studium adiecere sentias ordine disserueris.”
191 Lowry, World of Aldus, pp. 37–38, considers the criticism of commentaries to be the definitive side
of the debate and does not mention their defense.
192 The objections to commentaries listed above are summarized from 169.21–170.28.
Guarini then offers a definitive defense of printed commentaries, por-
traying them as manifoldly useful, indeed indispensable, to humanism.
There was not always a surfeit of books, he notes, and it was not always
possible for everyone to furnish whole libraries at will. Furthermore, not
everyone has the same energy, the same industry in finding things out,
the same diligence in preserving discoveries, and the same judgment in
emending texts. In addition, commentaries conserve the advances of past
humanists and thus make the restoration of good Latin permanent; with-
out commentaries, hard-won progress likely would have been lost, and no
one would speak classical Latin any longer. As for the audacity of the igno-
rant and their abuse of commentaries, such is, alas, the nature of things;
there will always be people who want to seem more learned than they really
are.193 Two further planks of the defense then emerge from the ensuing
description of humanist commentators. First, the obvious: commentaries
make difficult texts more accessible. Thus we read that Francesco Matu-
ranzio’s commentary on Statius’ Achilleid made the text “more manageable”
(tractabiliorem). And Ubertino Clerico da Crescentino’s commentary on
Cicero’s Epistolae ad Familiares cleared up much of the difficulty of the
letters’ language, revealed their hidden aspects, and – as if responding
directly to one of the initial charges against commentaries – opened up
a once-intimidating work to the young.194 Second, commentaries act as a
locus for accumulating, if not compounding, knowledge over time. Guar-
ini notes, for example, that Domizio Calderini’s commentaries on Martial
and Juvenal built on the earlier work of Niccolò Perotti, Pomponio Leto,
and Angelo Sabino, and Oliviero d’Arzignano’s commentary on Valerius
Maximus was based heavily on Ognibene da Lonigo.195
This mini-debate tells us not only about the uses and disadvantages of
commentaries but also about the world of humanism in which they served
such an important function. It was a world deluged with books and dotted
with personal libraries. These books conserved not only the writings of
the ancients but also the advances of the moderns. In doing so, books also
seem to be on the verge, at least, of replacing people as the primary carriers
of humanism. What had once been the privilege of a few to learn from
193 The foregoing arguments are summarized from 170.28–171.14.

194 On Maturanzio, a longtime teacher in Vicenza, 187.9–13 (with bibliography); on Clerico, a teacher
of rhetoric at the University of Pavia, 187.13–188.9 (with bibliography).
195 On Calderini, 175.3–176.4; on d’Arzignano, a grammar teacher who had studied with Ognibene
in Vicenza, 188.9–189.3 (with bibliography). Regarding Calderini, Sabellico’s intention is clearly to
defend him against charges that he stole, or plagiarized, the work of others in his commentaries:
“he not only related what he might seem to have gotten from them, but he also added many things
on his own account, things incredibly useful to know” (176.2–4: “non solum quae ex illis accepisse
videri potuit est executus, verum per se multa etiam addidit atque ea ipsa cognitu utilissima”).
gifted teachers in a classroom setting or through direct personal contact
was now available to a broader group in book form.196 And thus what
Guarino and Vittorino had once imparted while living, Calderini and his
ilk could provide even after death. As Sabellico presents it, these paper
teachers were instrumental in completing humanism’s mission to restore
classical Latin, as the knowledge recovered through such great effort, if
not conserved in widely available commentaries, ultimately would have
been lost yet again with the death of crucial individuals. The implication
is that the artisan-like tradition of passing on knowledge and skills, which
had prevailed in humanism down to Sabellico’s time, never would have
sufficed for enduring linguistic change. Finally, commentaries transformed
the very nature of humanism, making it possible for efforts that were once
uncoordinated, confined to a more or less local setting, and often pursued
by several individuals simultaneously without each other’s knowledge, to
become concentrated, streamlined, rationalized, and universally available.
In a phrase, group philology facilitated the broad restoration of the language
and literature of classical antiquity.197
The dialogue emphasizes that behind these developments lay the tech-
nological innovation of printing, which enabled the mass diffusion of
commentaries and thus also of this new type of philologically oriented
humanism. According to Guarini, it is “this astonishing and fast method
of printing that has brought forth such a great mass of books in the last
few years.”198 Moreover, since the commentaries to which Sabellico refers
were generally printed with the texts they undertook to explain, their
spread accelerated the increasingly broad diffusion of the literature of clas-
sical antiquity. If the proliferation of commentaries and the availability of
authoritative text editions represent the mature phase of humanism, the
one in which the project of restoring classical Latin can finally be com-
pleted and assured for the future (as Guarini argues), then printing is the
mechanism behind humanism’s enduring success. Sabellico was one of the
first humanists to successfully use the nascent technology to his profes-
sional and economic benefit,199 and he fully understood its potential, still
hidden from most, for the movement of humanism in general.
196 Cf. Lowry, World of Aldus, pp. 188–189.

197 Cf. Anthony Grafton, “Quattrocento Humanism and Classical Scholarship,” in Rabil (ed.), Renais-
sance Humanism, vol. III, pp. 23–66.
198 Sabellico, DLLR, 170.4–5: “tanta librorum copia, quantam paucis annis miranda haec succinctaque
imprimendorum librorum ratio peperit.”
199 This is the argument of Chavasse, “The studia humanitatis”; see also Lowry’s comment, cited above
in note 9. Aldus Manutius would also praise printing in his prefaces as the preserver of classical
Greek and Latin culture; see Aldo Manuzio, Aldo Manuzio editore: dediche, prefazioni, note ai testi,
ed. and tr. Giovanni Orlandi (Milan, 1975).
His dialogue shows that printing, like commentaries, wrought significant
changes in humanist culture beyond the preservation and coordination of
knowledge and the partial replacement of people by books.200 For example,
book shops, which none of our other authors mentioned, are portrayed
as a locus for humanism. The dialogue begins with a description of the
wonders of Venice’s bookstores, where Sabellico’s friend Giuliari is said
to have spent his whole day browsing the new arrivals.201 Related to this
is what we might call a culture of literary expectation. At several points
in his speech Guarini mentions that forthcoming works of prized authors
are eagerly awaited from the press. In one instance, he notes that Giorgio
Merula “is now rumored to have written a work of history, which his vast
literary production has caused his many fans to want to see.”202 Some
fifty years earlier, Piccolomini had already expressed his anticipation for
the future works of young humanists, but his was a general interest in the
promise of the next generation.203 Here the case is different, since specific
works of contemporary authors, whose titles and contents are already
vaguely known, are hungrily awaited by an admiring public. Finally, printed
books seem to have partially corrected the great defect of the manuscript
form they were on the way to replacing: the limited diffusion, over space
and time, of any given author’s works. Guarini mentions books printed
not only in Venice but also in Brescia, Florence, Perugia, Rome, and
other cities, and the living humanists praised by Guarini are in no way
confined to northern Italy.204 In another work Sabellico marveled “that
one workman could print as much literature in one day as the fastest scribe
could produce in two years.”205 Print had not, however, bridged the gap
completely. Thus Brugnoli says he has not seen any works of Giovanni
Pontano, who was so highly praised by Cortesi.206 But Pontano was active
in Naples, and his works would not be printed, and thus widely available,
200 For Sabellico’s attitude towards printing, cf. Bottari, “Introduzione” (Sabellico), pp. 51–52, 57–58.
201 Sabellico, DLLR, 85.1–86.4. See also Baker, “Labyrinth of Praise and Blame,” pp. 216–217.
202 Sabellico, DLLR, 178.3–5: “nunc constans phama est animum ad historiam adiecisse, in cuius
videndae expectationem iam multos frequentia litterarum ad amicos erexit.” Other examples are
Filippo Beroaldo’s commentary on Propertius (184.1ff.) and Antonio Costanzi’s commentary on
Ovid’s Fasti (190.2ff.).
203 E.g., Piccolomini’s hopes for Patrizi and Marsuppini (see Chapter 1, p. 44).
204 The place of publication of the various works mentioned throughout the dialogue can be found
passim in Bottari’s notes to Sabellico, DLLR.
205 Marcantonio Sabellico, Rapsodiae historiarum ab orbe condito, in Opera omnia, vol. II (Basel, 1560):
Enneades X, lib. VI, col. 958 (cited in Chavasse, “The First Known Author’s Copyright,” p. 11).
Sabellico’s letters also testify to his awareness of the possibilities of printing. See Lowry, World of
Aldus, p. 28.
206 Sabellico, DLLR, 157.4ff.
until the 1490s. Of course, these insights about printing are not news
to modern scholars, who have been aware of them and others at least
since Elizabeth Eisenstein’s seminal study, The Printing Press as an Agent of
Change.207 What is extraordinary, however, is that Sabellico grasped them
as they were developing.
Finally, Sabellico directs our attention to one further significant devel-
opment then taking shape in the new humanism of the printed page: the
Vatican Library’s growing role as a central repository for humanist literature
and as an independent source of authority in creating a modern canon.208
The library had existed as a private papal and curial resource ever since the
Middle Ages, and during the residency in Avignon it could already boast of
a respectable number of literary titles. In the papacy of Nicholas V, however,
it was consciously transformed into a humanistic collection of ancient and
modern classics, and in 1475, under Sixtus IV, it became a public lending
library. By the time Sabellico wrote De latinae linguae reparatione, it was
one of the leading libraries in all of Europe. Twice it is mentioned as the
library in the dialogue, with mere inclusion in its collection a signal of an
author’s inherent worth.209 In one instance, regarding Tito Strozzi’s poems,
we read: “not only their reputation but the papal library itself, where they
deserve to be housed, highly recommends them.”210 Even more telling is
the description of Angelo Sabino’s Belgicum carmen, as it shows the library’s
influence on literary opinion: “we have not read it, but since they say it
has been placed in the papal library, we are forced to approve it without
having seen it, even though there are some who say they have read it and
plainly criticize it as not polished enough.”211 The library has such great
critical clout that a work in its collection must be praised ipso facto, even
without having been seen, and a Vatican shelfmark apparently trumps all
other criticism. The status Sabellico accords the library gives us insight
into two important trends. First, it is a testament to the wide availability
and the easy movement of books at the time. Otherwise the contents of
207 Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural
Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1979).
208 On the Vatican Library, see Miglio, “Curial Humanism”; Anthony Grafton (ed.), Rome Reborn:
The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture (Washington, DC, 1993), esp. pp. xi–xx, 3–45; and
Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, pp. 282–286.
209 This has also been noted in Mercati, Ultimi contributi, p. 17.
210 Sabellico, DLLR, 158.1–3: “Titi Strotii poemata praeter phamam ipsa pontificis bibliotheca, in
quam reponi meruerunt, praecipue comendat.”
211 Ibid., 154.4–7: “Angeli Sabini turrensis Belgicum carmen non legimus, sed quia in Pontificis
bibiotheca repositum aiunt, cogimur nondum visum probare, et si non desunt qui se legisse dicant
damnentque aperte opus ut parum elaboratum.”
its collection would represent an eclectic or local taste restricted by the
exigencies of time and place, rather than the result of careful consideration
and a selection from among the vast number of available titles. Put a differ-
ent way, only a library that has the means to acquire everything can claim
truly to have given form to its collection on the grounds of quality alone;
both its own resources and those of the market must be near to boundless.
Second, the Vatican Library embodies a centralization and homogeniza-
tion of humanism. All of our authors portray humanism as a pan-Italian
movement, but their texts also highlight local traditions and peculiarities
that underscore its decentralized nature. Sabellico is no different. Yet in
this respect he indicates that a center of critical judgment and opinion was
forming in Rome, that an authority was rising to which all humanists must
give due consideration when writing their own works or reading those of
others. The fact that a Roman library could be cited as an authority for
literary opinion in Venice means that humanism had taken another giant
step towards transcending the local context – a step similar in magnitude
to the proselytization wrought by Petrarch’s writings. Much more so than
ever before, we can now speak of Italian humanism.
The Vatican Library as an official repository for the great literature of
high culture, as the authority for a new canon of auctores, symbolizes one of
the most important differences between Marcantonio Sabellico’s account
of humanism and all the others considered in this study. Here, the stylistic
and bibliographic poverty that marked both the Middle Ages and the early
phases of humanism has disappeared. The ravages of invaders, of time,
of oblivion, have been mended. The classical form of the Latin language
has been restored, and with it the hope for a broader, permanent cultural
renewal. We are far from Piccolomini’s desire for future generations to
achieve full mastery of Ciceronian speech, from Facio’s proud reckoning
of the ongoing renaissance of letters, from Biondo’s exultation in the army
of teachers spreading the Good Word of humanism, and from Manetti’s
naı̈ve satisfaction with the Latin of Petrarch. We have even transcended the
cultural achievement proclaimed by Cortesi; for his humanism flourished
in the private company of a select few. Here humanism reigns triumphant,
not only in its project to recover what was lost, but also in its aim to secure
the blessings of Latin for generations to come. The Vatican Library acts as
a foil for the barbarian destruction that Sabellico’s Brugnoli evokes in the
exordium of his speech:
Unspeakably [the Goths] kept their hands from no human bloodshed, no

temples, no place at all either sacred or profane. The barbarian heedlessly
desecrated everything human and divine. But these events, being in the
hands of fortune, are perhaps less to be mourned. The greater misfortune,
more worthy of grief and lament, is that no hope was left to posterity. For
once Rome was taken, not only were its citizens expelled and its public and
private monuments disfigured, but also the divine treasury of its literature –
which if it alone had remained intact could have acted as a symbol for the rest
of Roman civilization – together with public and private libraries was lost to
flames and plunder.212
Ancient Roman civilization was inextricably intertwined with its literature:
when one was wiped out, so was the other. By philologically reconstituting
the language and literature of classical antiquity, humanists figuratively
restocked the “divine treasury” of Rome’s lost library. This is the extent of
Cortesi’s vision. Sabellico goes further. With the mass printing of books,
the resulting mass proliferation of Latin literature and scholarship, and
the attendant rise of the Vatican Library as a central repository for bonae
litterae, humanists physically reconstructed the “symbol for the rest of
Roman civilization.” In this way, in their own minds at least, humanists
overcame a thousand years of barbarism and lent hope to posterity. They
created the conditions for a new Golden Age.
212 Ibid., 95.1–10: “Non hominum caede, non templis, non sacro ullo loco aut prophano infandae
manus abstinuerunt; omnia divina et humana barbara prophanavit temeritas, sed haec, quia in
gremio fortunae sita, minus fortasse lugubria, illa clades multo maior, illa et dolore et lamentatione
dignior, quod Urbs capta non solum civibus est exhausta, publicis privatisque operibus deformata,
sed divino etiam litterarum thesauro, qua una re incolumi caetera suo stare vestigio videri potuis-
sent, bibliothecis publicis et privatis flamma vel rapina consumptis, nihil spei reliquum posteris
facere” (emphasis mine).
c h a p ter 5
Humanism in the mirror
Piccolomini, Biondo, Facio, Manetti, Cortesi, and Sabellico all have their
own distinct voices, and their texts can at times seem quite disparate.
Time of composition was one factor. Earlier texts project humanism onto
a broader cultural landscape and view its accomplishments within that
general context. Piccolomini, for example, portrays humanism alongside
law and mendicant preaching as one of the outstanding aspects of a pre-
eminent Italian civilization, and Giannozzo Manetti draws connections
between the studia humanitatis and scholastic university education. By the
end of the century, however, Cortesi and Sabellico only mention human-
ism’s cultural competitors in passing, and they leave no doubt that their
own pursuit of eloquence constitutes the height of human flourishing.
Identification with a certain city or region also led writers to set different
priorities. In terms of local color, Piccolomini gives special attention to
Siena, Biondo to the Romagna. Manetti’s Florentine pride leads him to
insist on the humanist credentials of the Three Crowns. Cortesi’s affilia-
tion with Rome and Sabellico’s with Venice are patent. Finally, an author’s
personal profile and education also affected his presentation. For example,
Paolo Cortesi’s commitment to Ciceronianism undoubtedly influenced his
portrayal of humanism as the return to Ciceronian Latin. In contrast,
Sabellico’s more inclusive taste allowed him to appreciate broader trends.
For his part, Manetti’s connection to the monastic humanism of Santo
Spirito and Santa Maria degli Angeli, as well as his own religiosity, led him
to depict humanism as a holy pursuit.
Yet it is the continuity rather than the differences between these authors’
views that deserves greater attention. For despite dissimilarities in time,
place, and personality, their respective visions of humanism are funda-
mentally congruent. At the most basic level, they show that humanists
had developed self-awareness as belonging to a pan-Italian movement not
bound to any one city or leader. Instead what held humanists together was
a common goal – the restoration of classical Latin eloquence – and a shared
234
Humanism in the mirror 235
sense of group identity based on a collection of salient characteristics, such
as: personal investment in an intellectual and cultural tradition descending
from Petrarch, Chrysoloras, Bruni, the manuscript-hunters, and the early
humanist educators; a linguistic orientation that put primary emphasis on
classical Latin, secondary on Greek, and that in general disregarded the
vernacular; the conviction that eloquence had enormous cultural signif-
icance; love of antiquity; and the sense of standing at the forefront of a
transformative cultural renewal. It would of course be incorrect to apply
the humanist self-conception that emerges from six authors to every single
Italian humanist of the fifteenth century. The point here is not to develop a
strict profile for all “real” or “authentic” humanists, but rather to establish
a rubric that accounts for the way humanists tended to view themselves
and their enterprise, and that, through its broad application, helps us to
understand the nature of humanism better. What follows is a review of
the common themes addressed throughout this study and, to the extent
permitted by our authors, a synthesis of the self-conception shared by
humanists in fifteenth-century Italy.
The essence of humanism

On the whole, when humanists looked into the mirror of their individual
or collective soul, what they saw was the striving for Latin eloquence. The
only real debate among our authors in this regard – and it was minimal –
was over what specific kind of Latin ought to supplant the uncouth, rustic,
and barbarous language they believed they had inherited from the Middle
Ages. For almost all of them, and for most of the fifteenth century, it was
the language of Cicero. The Roman Paolo Cortesi was alone in positing a
theory of strict Ciceronian imitation, but others, like Biondo Flavio and
Giannozzo Manetti, recognized in Cicero the greatest Latin stylist. For
Piccolomini he was the apex of ancient eloquence, a summit by which
humanists oriented their own efforts in speaking and in written com-
position; the highest compliment Piccolomini could give was simillimus
Ciceroni. Only at the end of the century and in Venice does Marcanto-
nio Sabellico abandon the cult of Cicero and embrace a broader range of
authors, still honoring Cicero but preferring Quintilian above him and
Livy shortly after.
Giannozzo Manetti dissents to this conception of humanism, but he
ultimately shares the vision of the others more than it might initially seem.
In his Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vita he equates the stu-
dia humanitatis with the artes liberales, traditional scholastic philosophy,
theology, and even Paris disputations. Nevertheless, there and in his other
biographical works, he also recognizes the revival of classical Latin as a
distinct field of endeavor, and he places it at the beginning of a cultural
tradition whose other components include the revival of poetry, the hunt
for manuscripts containing lost works of literature, the collection of books
and the foundation of libraries, and the revival of Greek studies. All of
these activities are recognized by all or almost all of our other authors as
subsidiary aspects of humanism which aid it in achieving its primary goal
of restoring classical Latin. Therefore, although Manetti seems determined
to make humanism seem bigger than all this – by turning one of its tradi-
tional names, studia humanitatis, into an umbrella for the larger intellectual
culture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – he implicitly recognizes
the centrality of classical Latin to the project initiated, as nearly all agree,
by Petrarch. Moreover, by acknowledging that his humanist audience does
not consider the Three Crowns to be real humanists precisely because of
their bad Latin and good vernacular reputation, he puts the central feature
of humanism into higher relief.
A secondary but still essential characteristic of humanist self-identity
was a general love of antiquity. The primary focus of this love was the
language of ancient Rome. It also manifested itself, however, in a broader
antiquarianism, as in Facio’s and Manetti’s Niccoli, who revered not only
ancient script and books but also statues and paintings, as well as in
Sabellico’s Leto and Platina, each one a “great lover of antiquity” (vetustatis
amator egregius). Nevertheless, as Cortesi’s treatment of Dante shows, a
love of antiquity without a knowledgeable appreciation for its eloquence
was not sufficient. Ultimately, proper Latin was at the heart of antiquity’s
appeal for humanists and was what endowed the rest of its trappings with
meaning.
The success of humanism

Humanists generally possessed great optimism about their own success.
The uncertainty we find in Bruni’s Dialogi, the outright pessimism of
Alberti’s De commodis litterarum atque incommodis, are absent in authors
tracing humanism’s triumphal history. The least sanguine is Piccolomini,
who displays an awareness that the central project of reviving ancient
eloquence is far from complete. In his view Bruni, although simillimus
Ciceroni, suffers from serious defects, such as an inability to speak extem-
poraneously and poetic dumbness. And even though “in writing” Bruni
“exceeded everyone,” Piccolomini already looks to a future of better stylists
in Carlo Marsuppini and Francesco Patrizi. His contemporaries Biondo and
Manetti are more optimistic in their assessments of humanism’s success. For
the Florentine Manetti, the studia humanitatis had flourished since Dante’s
time, and Petrarch had restored Latin to its ancient state in one fell swoop
thanks to a scholastic education and his “divine genius.” Biondo, perhaps
strengthening his credentials as a “scientific historian,”1 more subtly traces
good Latin’s return along a more complex path of multiple causality (inspi-
ration, teaching, discoveries, books) and historical development, but he,
too, believes that the “full flower of Ciceronian eloquence” graces “so many
men of our own time.” Facio makes no programmatic statement about
the state of Latin, but his confidence in the power of his own eloquence
indicates a high sense of accomplishment.
It is perhaps inevitable that humanists writing nearly four decades later
would look back on the Latin of their forebears as a half-formed creation.
Cortesi recognizes the advances made, for example, in the teaching of
Guarino and George of Trebizond, or in Valla’s lexicographical research,
but he denies that authors of their time – explicitly naming Manetti, Facio,
and Biondo – enjoyed the full flower of anything. The modern triumph
of Cicero required nearly a century of work in recovering the lost ars of
rhetoric, which alone secured the possibility of the correct imitation of the
best model from antiquity. For Cortesi, the beginnings of proper style are
to be found in Piccolomini, Campano, Gaza, Platina, Leto, and Pontano,
but true perfection was not achieved unless in himself and in his own
generation. Sabellico similarly describes the history of humanism as a
gradual improvement of Latin style until perfection is achieved in his own
time. In his view, however, eloquence was restored with Valla but was
only secured permanently towards the end of the Quattrocento, by the
subsequent growth of the commentary genre and its mass distribution
with the invention of printing.
Excepting Piccolomini, each author posits the restoration of classical
Latin in his own time. Manetti thinks that it was simul et inventum et
perfectum with Petrarch. Biondo, Cortesi, and Sabellico, on the other
hand, see perfection as the result of an historical process of development
resting largely on humanist teaching (especially the teaching of Greek
émigrés) and the progressive recovery of knowledge of the rules of language.
1 For the refutation of Biondo Flavio’s strict status as a “scientific” or “scholarly” rather than a
“rhetorical” historian, the product of a school of interpretation founded by Burckhardt and developed
by Eduard Fueter, Geschichte der neueren Historiographie (Munich, 1911), see Hay, “Flavio Biondo
and the Middle Ages,” esp. pp. 98–99 and 114–122.
Biondo and Sabellico also emphasize the role of newly recovered ancient
literature, particularly the rhetorical works of Cicero and Quintilian, and
the restocking of the library of classical antiquity.
The language of humanism

Humanists most consistently called themselves oratores and poetae.2 Our
authors use the latter term to refer exclusively to writers of poetry, but the
former can point either to prose stylists in particular (as in Facio) or more
generally to all humanists (as in Manetti and Sabellico), as their primary
characteristic was their concern with and excellence in Latin oratio. Cortesi
also has this sense in mind when he withholds the title of oratores from the
humanists, calling them instead homines docti, a denomination also used by
Facio. The precise force of homines docti is unclear in Facio, but for Cortesi
it underlines the learning, especially in the ars of rhetoric, that humanists
needed to amass in order to become true oratores. Thus humanists were
learned, and learned in a way different from medieval writers and similar
to ancient ones, insofar as they knew the rules of speech that were at the
root of ancient eloquence.
If their primary occupation was with the Latin language, it is worth
asking what the grounds are, beyond custom, of continuing to call these
cultivators of eloquence “humanists,” as opposed to introducing a more
descriptive appellation like “Latinists” or, following Michael Baxandall, a
more contemporary equivalent such as “orators.”3 After all, one can hardly
imagine a more efficient way to avoid anachronism, obviate conflation with
vague notions of human values or humanitarianism, and relieve scholars
of endless discomfort.4 Yet there are good reasons for retaining the usage.
The most obvious is the interest in terminological continuity. Second, the
2 Cf. Billanovich, “Auctorista, humanista, orator,” esp. pp. 160–163. Litteratus is another term com-
monly used by humanists to describe themselves, such as in the title of Pierio Valeriano’s De
litteratorum infelicitate, but it does not occur in our authors. See also James Hankins, “Humanism,
Scholasticism, and Renaissance Philosophy,” in Hankins (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renais-
sance Philosophy, p. 31. For the history of the term, see Herbert Grundmann, “Literatus-illiteratus:
Der Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Altertum zum Mittelalter,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 40
(1958), pp. 1–65.
3 See Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators, where “orators” is used as an ostensibly more historically
correct substitute for “humanists.”
4 For the origin and meaning of the term “humanist,” as well as problems associated with its use, see
Campana, “The Origin of the Word ‘Humanist’”; Kristeller, “Humanism and Scholasticism,” p. 366
(reprinted in Renaissance Thought and its Sources, p. 99); Kristeller’s later essay, “The Humanist
Movement,” which I have consulted in Renaissance Thought and its Sources, pp. 21–32, at 21–23;
Giustiniani, “Homo, humanus”; Charlet, “De l’humaniste à l’humanisme”; Celenza, “Humanism
and the Classical Tradition.”
alternatives “Latinist” and “orator” have their own problems, the most
important being that they are just as likely to cause confusion with alien
concepts. A Latinist is someone who studies Latin, not someone who
dedicates his life to speaking and writing it, much less who considers it
(any longer) to be the essence of civilization. Ditto for “orator,” which
conjures up nineteenth-century windbags and misses the fact that many
oratores never orated. More importantly, though, there are justifications for
continuing to use the word “humanist” that derive from the humanists’
own lexicon.
As we have seen, humanists call humanism studia eloquentiae and stu-
dia doctrinae (Cortesi), studia litterarum (Piccolomini and Manetti), bonae
litterae (Biondo and Sabellico), bonae artes (Facio, Manetti, Cortesi), hon-
estissimae artes (Cortesi), at times even studia humanitatis. Taken together
these denominations combine notions of study and zeal (studia), eloquence
(eloquentia), learning and knowledge (doctrina, artes), literature, language,
and culture (litterae), beauty and moral excellence (bonae, honestissimae),
and humanity or human nature (humanitas).5 This lexical nexus indicates
an organic link between the cultural refinement of eloquence and some-
thing distinctly human: the striving after the beautiful, learned, correct
expression of the human intellect that in its capacity for perfecting the
particularly human traits (humanitas) of complex thought and language is
a consummately moral (i.e., humanizing) activity. If in his highest nature
man tends towards what is good (in the broad sense of excellent, morally
proper, and beautiful), then the connection between humanitas and the
obsession with eloquence, achieved through the moral medium of bonae
litterae, becomes immediately intelligible. If man’s essence is encapsulated
in his development of language, as Cicero suggested, then studia human-
itatis must comprehend the mastery of language necessary to the orator’s
attainment of eloquence.6
Thus, if we keep in mind how the humanists conceived of the tight
connection between human nature, language, moral goodness, aesthetic
beauty, and culture, we can justifiably continue to use the term “human-
ism” without fear of slipping back into antiquated and anachronistic associ-
ations with vague human values, modern secularism, or humanitarianism.
5 Cf. Ernout and Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, pp. 73 (bonus), 363 (littera),
and 658 (studeo).
6 See Giustiniani, “Homo, humanus,” pp. 168–169. Charlet, “De l’humaniste à l’humanisme,” pp. 29–
32, shows that this sense of the word humanitas was widely adopted in the Renaissance. Consider,
too, that Lorenzo Valla defined man not as a rational animal but as an animal loquens (a speaking
animal). See Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, pp. 566–568 (translated
in Christianity, Latinity, and Culture, pp. 121–123). See also pp. 85–87 above.
Moreover, if studia humanitatis is understood not as the “studies of human-
itas” but rather as the “accumulation of zeal for humanitas,” then it is
perfectly reasonable to translate studia humanitatis as “humanism.” Admit-
tedly, studia humanitatis is used sparingly by our authors. Facio employs it
consistently. So does Manetti, although his usage is idiosyncratic. It appears
once in Cortesi. But in light of the above considerations there seems little
reason not to translate, for example, Sabellico’s bonarum litterarum studiosi
(rendered in Chapter 4 as “devotees of good literature”) as “humanists” or
Cortesi’s studia eloquentiae as “humanism.” A common word root may be
lacking, but the common conceptual root is healthy and clear to be seen if
we are willing to scrape away the ideological humus that has accumulated
between us and the culture of the Renaissance. Finally, to refer to human-
ists as “orators” or “Latinists,” even if such words were not conceptual false
friends, would merely shift the focus from the final to the material object
of humanism, from the wherefore to the what. For at a basic level all our
authors are agreed, and in a way quite commensurate with that argued
consistently by Eugenio Garin, that the study of classical Latin language
and literature promotes humanity, in the sense of enhancing the essential
quality of man qua man.7 If a certain kind of study of Latin is thought to
perfect human beings or move them towards perfection, i.e., to raise the
essentially human part of them to its highest potential, then the movement
dedicated to reviving and entrenching that study can justifiably be called
“human-ism,” and those who considered themselves cultivators, saviors,
lovers of that humanizing Latin “human-ists.”8
The cultural importance of humanism

As this short excursus on language suggests, the essentially literary
and rhetorical movement of humanism had a much broader cultural
importance for its practitioners than the mere revival of antique aes-
thetic criteria. Rather it was intimately related to human, cultural, moral,
political – in short, civilizational – ideals and flourishing that, according to
7 See, e.g., Garin, Medioevo e rinascimento, p. 109.

8 See similar conclusions about humanism’s humanizing nature in Rico, El sueño del humanismo,
esp. ch. 3: “Paradigmas”; and Hankins, “Humanism, Scholasticism, and Renaissance Philosophy,”
pp. 30–32. Hankins, however, follows Giustiniani and Campana in admonishing that “it is apt to
be forgotten by students of the Renaissance that the abstract noun ‘humanism,’ with its cognates in
Latin and the modern languages, is not attested for the period of the Renaissance itself, but began to
be widely used only in the early nineteenth century.” And thus, in line with Kristeller’s conception
of humanism as a cycle of disciplines, he translates studia humanitatis not as “humanism” but as
“humanities.”
humanists, had been absent during the Middle Ages. With the exception of
Piccolomini, who is silent on this issue, all our authors enunciate their own
peculiar view of what the humanist restoration of classical Latin meant for
their age.
Humanism is first and foremost seen as a force for the cultural renewal
of a backward and barbarous Italy. All of our authors agree that the original
decline of Latin came at the hands of invading barbarians, and Cortesi
and especially Sabellico emphatically portray its return as a triumph of
civilization over an intervening period of barbarism. Biondo sees humanism
as the backbone of a general cultural renewal in Italy. Cortesi more explicitly
views humanism as a modern translatio studii, the return of ancient Roman
culture and its hallmark, eloquence, from Greece to Italy and ultimately
to its traditional residence in Rome. Similarly, Sabellico sees in humanism
the final overcoming of the ancient sack of Rome by the Goths in 410.
He celebrates the new learning and its libraries (most importantly the
Vatican Library) as replacements for what had been destroyed in the fifth
century, and the invention of printing as the mechanism for the permanent
restoration of ancient civilization.
Giannozzo Manetti seems unconcerned with humanism’s possible
import for Italian cultural greatness, envisioning it instead as a vehicle
for individual moral perfection. Under the stroke of his pen the Three
Crowns become paragons of Christian virtue, and the maledicus Niccolò
Niccoli metamorphoses into the lay image of monastic purity. Even for
those not so singularly blessed, the studia humanitatis provided the oppor-
tunity to pursue the contemplative life of study and solitude. Others shared
Manetti’s focus on virtue, but they ignored the Christian connotation in
favor of a general sense of human excellence. Facio, although nominally
admitting the equality of all ages, ultimately concludes that revived elo-
quence will endow his own with greater deeds and virtue than the preceding
one. He further implies that eloquence itself is virtuous, as does Cortesi,
who for his part, like Manetti, portrays a life of intellectual study as supe-
rior to one of political or military glory. Cortesi and Manetti also concur
that true glory is to be won on the field of letters and that a desire for
this glory provides the impetus for humanism. Finally, Sabellico attributes
to humanism a unique kind of virtue: a renewed sense of pietas – not for
ancient Roman religion but for its language, which he several times calls
a “divine gift.” The barbarians spurned the munus divinum, and then the
medieval inhabitants of Italy lost the custom of cultivating or worshiping
(cultus) it; modern Italians have regained this sense of pietas and cultus, the
firm, moral foundations of true culture.
Intellectual and political claims were also made for humanism. Cortesi
connects good expression with good thinking, predicating the highest intel-
lectual flourishing on eloquence. Human ingenium, so goes his argument,
relies on ars to reach its full potential. Thus an age without the ars of
rhetoric, such as that of Dante and Petrarch, will necessarily stunt what-
ever genius its great individuals have. Humanism’s recovery of rhetorical
artificium opened the way to creative excellence. Sabellico combined intel-
lect and politics, implying (following Valla) that language is power – not
military might or the political power of any one city, state, or regime, per
se, but rather the power and the fruits of civilization that he and other
humanists believed were inherent in Latin. As the symbol and bearer of
ancient Roman imperium, Latin would restore to modern Italians the sta-
tus, prestige, and cultural preeminence they enjoyed when they were at
the center of the Roman world. Biondo Flavio takes an even more overtly
political line. By restoring Latin, the essence of ancient Roman empire, he
believes that humanism can lay a firm foundation for Italy’s future political
fortunes. In his view, the revival of good Latin and other aspects of Roman
culture is in the process of revivifying Italy as a valid political and cultural
unit, whose coherence derives from its ancient status as the center of the
empire. A single ruler of a united Italy is unlikely and perhaps undesirable,
but peace, unity, and defense against invasions from northern Europe can
be achieved through the revival of a common culture and common sense
of identity – both of which, Biondo stresses, are being provided in his
day by humanism. To our mind these ideals are frustratingly vague. And
in retrospect, considering the calamità d’Italia and the cultural tremors
sent out by the Reformation, they appear hopelessly naı̈ve. The fragility of
humanism’s promise would be felt only too well in the aftermath, as Pierio
Valeriano’s De litteratorum infelicitate attests.9
Before the unforeseen turmoil wrought by Charles VIII, Martin Luther,
and the Landsknechte, however, grand visions of humanism’s importance
naturally led to optimism about the times in general. All our authors agree
(with the exception of Piccolomini, who is again silent) that the present is
far superior to the Middle Ages and approaches the excellence of antiquity.
Petrarch’s disgust with his own times is no longer in evidence; his hopes for
a grander future seem to be fulfilled.10 Earlier writers (Biondo, Facio, and
9 Cf. Julia Haig Gaisser, Pierio Valeriano on the Ill Fortune of Learned Men: A Renaissance Humanist
and His World (Ann Arbor, 1999).
10 For Petrarch’s dissatisfaction with medieval culture and hopes for the future, see his Contra medicum
and De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia in Invectives, ed. and tr. Marsh.
Manetti) are more sanguine about their approximation to ancient greatness,
with Manetti even declaring modern superiority in one area: the bequest
of a public library. But the sense of distance between the founding deities
of eloquence and the modern revival grows over time, likely intensified
by greater expertise, knowledge, and experience. Cortesi refuses to call
his predecessors oratores and only indirectly implies that his own time
has achieved that worthy status. Sabellico, for all of his excitement about
current advances, stresses again and again the inferiority of the present to
the earlier Golden Age. Eloquence might have been restored, but it was
not yet flourishing as it once had. All in all, humanists are confident and
proud of their own successes, but there is no trace of a querelle between
ancients and moderns.11 The fifteenth century was more characterized by
cultus and imitatio than by aemulatio.
Despite hesitating to claim equality with, much less superiority over, the
ancients, the humanists’ sense of triumph over the Middle Ages is palpable.
According to Biondo Flavio, who cites Leonardo Bruni, the Middle Ages
had been a period of “long exile” for “the study of eloquence,” which has
now returned. Manetti called the age of Guido Cavalcanti “illiterate and
uncouth,” and Petrarch supposedly “brought [good Latin] back to light
out of darkness after it had been nearly defunct for over a thousand years.”
More ornate flourishes are added by Cortesi and Sabellico. According
to the former, the Middle Ages were the “dregs of all time,” when the
“ornaments of writing were absent” and “eloquence had utterly lost its
voice.” Humanists freed eloquence from (the prison of ) barbarism, woke
it from its sleep, saved it from ruin, restored its voice, and returned it
to light. Sabellico uses many of the same metaphors and adds a few of
his own: freeing eloquence from slavery, washing off its filth, removing it
from squalor, and, recognizing it as a divine gift, reinitiating its worship.
If humanists had not yet achieved ancient excellence, they had at least
overcome barbarism.
Humanism and renaissance

We are accustomed to referring to this period of cultural flourishing as a
“renaissance.” Yet, except for a few instances in Manetti and Biondo, our
authors do not generally conceive of humanism in terms of a metaphorical
11 On the querelle as it was manifested in Renaissance humanism, see Robert Black, “Ancients and
Moderns in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and History in Accolti’s Dialogue on the Preeminence of Men
of his Own Time,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 43:1 (1982), pp. 3–32.
process of death and rebirth.12 Instead, as we have just seen, they think
of it as a reawakening, a rebuilding, a liberation, a restoration, a rescue,
a salvation, a cleansing, an illumination. It would seem, based on these
accounts of humanism written in the fifteenth century, that if a linguistic
error has been made in the scholarship on humanism, it has not been so
much in the terms “humanist” and “humanism” as in the larger concept
of “renaissance.”13 This notion, which has been applied to humanism since
the earliest modern research on the subject – one thinks of Voigt’s Wieder-
belebung, Burckhardt’s and Symonds’ Renaissance, Sabbadini’s rinascenza
and risorgimento (later to become rinascimento in imitation of the French
renaissance)14 – is a culturally foreign one that has been (unwittingly?)
transferred from the realm of art history. Following the elder Pliny, Lorenzo
Ghiberti was the first to talk about the “rebirth” (rinacque) of the visual
and plastic arts in his time, and this concept was popularized especially
with Vasari’s Vite.15 As Eugenio Garin pointed out, there is an important
difference between the artistic concept of rebirth, which suggests a kind
of natural life cycle, an inevitable return, and the humanist’s own notion
of renovatio: a hard-fought, revolutionary program intended to liberate
mankind from medieval darkness with the light of antiquity.16 That the
concept of renaissance has subsequently been applied to humanism is an
irony of scholarship and of the popular imagination, which have since come
to see the artistic production of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the
central component of culture, whereas in the contemporary worldview
artists were doubtless of secondary importance.
Despite increasingly positive attitudes towards the artes mechanicae,
artists continued to occupy a lower rung on the social and cultural ladder
than humanists did.17 As Peter Burke has written, “the poor humanist, as
12 In addition to the quotation in the preceding paragraph, Manetti says once that Dante called
poetry back to light about nine hundred years “after it had been moribund (demortuam) or asleep
(vel sopitam)” (Manetti, VD, 47). Cf. Luke Houghton, “Introduction: Veteris vestigia flammae? The
‘Rebirths’ of Antiquity,” in Lee, Péporté, and Schnitker (eds.), Renaissance? Perceptions of Continuity,
pp. 19–26, at 19–20; Robert Black, “The Donation of Constantine: A New Source for the Concept
of the Renaissance?,” in Alison Brown (ed.), Language and Images of Renaissance Italy (Oxford,
1995), pp. 51–85, esp. 51–53.
13 Cf. Ferguson, Renaissance in Historical Thought, passim and esp. the comments on p. 2.
14 All from the titles of foundational pieces of scholarship on humanism: Georg Voigt, Die Wieder-
belebung des classischen Alterthums (Berlin, 1859); Jacob Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance in
Italien: Ein Versuch (Basel, 1860); John Addington Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy (London,
1875–1886); Remigio Sabbadini, Storia del ciceronianismo e di altre questioni letterarie nell’età della
rinascenza (Turin, 1885), which on p. 1 also refers to the “periodo del risorgimento.”
15 See Chapter 3 above, note 192. 16 Garin, Rinascite e rivoluzioni, pp. 3–47, esp. 39–47.
17 Cf. Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York, 1979),
pp. 191–192, 205–207, 244–249.
an educated man, might enjoy a status higher than that of the successful
but ‘ignorant’ artist.”18 The status of artists would only begin to improve in
the second half of the fifteenth century, and even in the sixteenth century
just a small elite was able to achieve parity with the status of courtiers.19
Interestingly enough, when efforts were made to raise the status of art from
a mechanical to an intellectual activity, they came, as Richard Goldthwaite
has pointed out, from the humanists themselves.20 Alberti, for example,
consistently strove to enhance the social and intellectual status of fifteenth-
century artists, both in his De re aedificatoria and in his dedicatory let-
ter to Della pittura (to Filippo Brunelleschi). In the latter he praises the
accomplishment of “Pippo architecto” in building the dome to Florence’s
cathedral, and he groups humanists with artists as “intellecti.”21 Matteo
Palmieri also groups visual artists and humanists together in his descrip-
tion of cultural flourishing in his Vita civile, as does Cristoforo Landino in
the preface to his Comento sopra la Comedia.22 The exclusively Florentine
provenance of these writings must make us wonder if such efforts made it
past the Arno.
However that may be, the realms of the arts and humanism did not in
general overlap, and humanists were certain that they, not artists, stood at
the forefront of civilization.23 Indeed, as far as humanists were concerned,
they themselves were not part of the cultural renovatio of the Quattrocento;
18 Peter Burke, Culture and Society in Renaissance Italy, 1420–1540 (London, 1972), pp. 63–71, generally
tries to present a positive picture of artists’ status, but he notes that the medieval prejudice
about artists as mechanical practitioners persisted in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and
was sometimes used by humanists to denigrate them. Quotation at p. 70.
19 Francis Ames-Lewis, The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist (New Haven, 2000); and
Martines, Power and Imagination, pp. 244–249.
20 Richard A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300–1600 (Baltimore, 1993),
pp. 145–146. Martines, Power and Imagination, pp. 246–247, denies, however, that humanists had
any part in actually raising artists’ social status. This resulted, he argues, from artists’ increasing
social contact with leading citizens.
21 Alina Payne, The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance: Architectural Invention, Ornament,
and Literary Culture (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 75–76, argues that the primary purpose of De re
aedificatoria was to ennoble architecture and establish it as a legitimate context for intellectual
discourse. For the dedication to Brunelleschi, see Leon Battista Alberti, Della pittura, ed. Luigi
Mallè (Florence, 1950), pp. 53–54, esp. 53: “pictori, sculptori, architecti, musici, geometri, rethorici,
auguri et simili nobilissimi et meravigliosi intellecti oggi si truovano rarissimi et pocho da lodarli.”
22 See D’Ascia, “Coscienza della Rinascita,” pp. 8–13. D’Ascia notes, “La figura di Giotto assume un
rilievo fondamentale, paragonabile al ruolo svolto da Leonardo Bruni nella storia della ‘rinascita’
della prosa Latina” (p. 11). Further evidence for this trend is offered in Panofsky, Renaissance and
Renascences, pp. 8–18.
23 Cf. Charles Hope and Elizabeth McGrath, “Artists and Humanists,” in Kraye (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Renaissance Humanism, pp. 161–188, esp. 164: “Most humanists seem to have taken
no more interest in the art of antiquity or that of their own time than artists did in humanism.”
Cf. also Clavuot, “Flavio Biondos Italia illustrata,” p. 70: “Weder für Biondo noch für die meisten
seiner Zeitgenossen zählten Künstler zur gebildeten Elite.”
they were the renovatio.24 In Piccolomini’s review of European politics and
culture, jurisconsults and humanists are the only men of culture treated,
and artists have no place. Biondo’s procedure is similar but on a much larger
and thus a more impressive scale. Sixty percent of the approximately four
hundred famous individuals he names and describes are men of learning,
the vast majority humanists (with the second largest bloc composed of
jurists), whereas artists and musicians are almost completely ignored.25
Facio, too, gives humanists the lion’s share of glory in his De viris illustribus.
This emerges not only from his organization of material – humanists come
first and artists last among men of culture – but from sheer numbers: forty-
one humanists are treated and only seven artists.26 Cortesi mentions the
visual arts once but only to use them as a less noble foil for the paramount
ars of historiography,27 and Sabellico does not mention artists at all. It
is true that these last two authors are solely concerned with eloquence,
but both make a point of emphasizing the excellence of the times, which
excellence they attribute purely to humanism, not to the arts. Manetti,
who extols the contemplative life of holy otium, portrays his paragons of
virtue deep in study, thought, and writing, not occupied with the belle arti.
In fact, he condemns the “money-grubbing arts” of mercantile activity,
under which rubric he likely grouped visual and plastic artists, who were
craftsmen and either directed or labored in workshops.28
Manetti’s peculiar conception of the studia humanitatis presents a slightly
different view of the relationship between humanism and the period called
the Renaissance (and which I, too, shall now return to calling the Renais-
sance, as is customary, without apology). Like the others he keeps human-
ism at the center of culture, but he extends it backward into the fourteenth
century and has it include the artes liberales and vernacular poetry. This
accords with the paradigm elaborated by Eugenio Garin, who saw Dante as
the hinge between medieval and modern: for Dante eschewed the authority
of the medieval auctoritates, replacing Aristotle et alii with Virgil and the
other new humanistic authors, and thus prepared the way for Petrarch.
24 Cf. Hankins, “Humanism in the Vernacular,” p. 14: “Indeed, for him [Bruni], the revival of Latin
is more or less synonymous with the whole Renaissance of culture going on around him.”
25 Precisely six artists and two musicians. See Clavuot, “Flavio Biondos Italia illustrata,” pp. 65–70,
esp. 65 (and n. 43) and 70 (and nn. 75–78). Clavuot stresses that Biondo’s view was shared by his
learned contemporaries (p. 65).
26 For Facio’s treatment of artists, see Facio, DVI, pp. 43–49, and, for an English translation and a
superior Latin text, Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators, pp. 103–109 (English) and 163–168 (Latin).
Facio emphasizes the small number of exceptional artists: “de iis paucis pictoribus atque sculptoribus
qui hac aetate nostra claruerunt scribere pergamus” (ibid., p. 164).
27 Cortesi, DHD, 136.10–137.6. 28 Cf. Martines, Power and Imagination, pp. 205–207.
Garin therefore considered Dante a humanist (or pre-humanist) and used
“humanism,” much like Manetti, as an umbrella term for the combined
thought of the long Renaissance.29 Garin insisted that his view of Dante
and of the humanistic continuity between Tre- and Quattrocento only
followed that of the humanists, but he cited, significantly, only Floren-
tine authors in support.30 The combined opinion of Piccolomini, Biondo,
Facio, Cortesi, and Sabellico suggests that Garin’s argument is yet another
example of the dangers of Florentine exceptionalism.
With the centrality of humanism to the culture of the fifteenth century
in mind, let us return to the concept of rebirth. Pointing out its marginality
to humanism serves a cause greater than mere pedantry. On the one hand,
Garin’s observations about the meaning of renovatio remind us of human-
ism’s revolutionary nature, of the humanists’ self-conception as topplers
of medieval culture. On the other hand, the metaphors predominantly
employed by the humanists highlight the timelessness they sensed in their
undertaking, the great sense of continuity that men of eloquence felt with
their predecessors – and not only in antiquity. It is true that Cortesi posits
a complete lack of eloquence after the barbarian invasions, as does Piccolo-
mini after Gregory the Great. Nevertheless, Sabellico implies that there
were eloquent men throughout the Middle Ages (who were, however, not
understood by their contemporaries), and Biondo explicitly names two:
Bede and Bernard of Clairvaux. If humanism is equivalent with the stu-
dia eloquentiae, then these men were also humanists in a way, as were
29 See Garin, Rinascite e rivoluzioni, ch. 2: “Dante e Petrarca fra antichi e moderni.” The conflation
of humanism with all of Renaissance thought was a key point of contention between Garin and
Kristeller, the latter considering humanism only one of many intellectual strands in the period.
See above, note 19 of the Introduction. Nevertheless, Kristeller also considered Dante a humanist
(at least on one occasion). See Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Petrarcas Stellung in der Geschichte der
Gelehrsamkeit,” in Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, vol. IV, pp. 27–51, at 28 [reprinted
from Klaus W. Hempfer and Enrico Straud (eds.), Italien und die Romania in Humanismus und
Renaissance, Festschrift für Erich Loos (Wiesbaden, 1983), pp. 102–121]; the passage seems so unchar-
acteristic of Kristeller that it is worth citing in full: “Was den Humanismus der Renaissance betrifft,
so hat man Petrarca lange Zeit als den ersten Humanisten und als den eigentlichen Begründer des
Humanismus angesehen. Da es nun aber garede für einige charakteristische Züge im Lebenswerk
Petrarcas Vorläufer gab, wie z.B. Lovato und Mussato, Giovanni del Virgilio und sogar Dante, so
mußten diese Vorläufer sich mit dem bescheideneren Titel Prähumanisten oder Protohumanisten
begnügen. Ich ziehe es mit Roberto Weiß und anderen vor, sie als Humanisten gelten zu lassen, und
Petrarca nicht als den ersten Humanisten anzusehen, sondern als den ersten großen Humanisten,
der durch seine Persönlichkeit, seine Autorität und seine Schriften der neuen Bewegung einen
stärkeren Impuls und ihre definitive Richtung gab und für ihre große Verbreitung auch außerhalb
Italiens weitgehend verantwortlich war.” Consider also Kristeller, “Il Petrarca, l’umanesimo e la
scolastica,” Lettere italiane, 7 (1955), pp. 367–388, at 368 [cited and quoted in Angelo Mazzocco,
“Petrarch: Founder of Renaissance Humanism?,” in Mazzocco (ed.), Interpretations of Renaissance
Humanism, pp. 215–242, at 220, n. 16].
30 Garin, Rinascite e rivoluzioni, pp. 71–73, where he names Landino, Pico, and Bruni.
the great ancient heroes like Cicero, Quintilian, and Livy. The continuity
proposed here, it should be pointed out, is different from that posited by
R.W. Southern.31 In making the case for “medieval humanism,” indeed for
a “literary humanism” of the Middle Ages, he defined it not in terms of
Latin or literature but in terms of a belief in the essential concepts of human
dignity, the natural order of things, the power of reason, and the intelli-
gibility of the universe. None of our authors, however, takes his bearings
from these concepts, and thus it is not only an interest in periodizational
comprehension that encourages us to restrict the term “humanist” to the
Renaissance imitators of the ancient oratores. Still, it is essential to realize
that the humanists considered their stylistic ideal a timeless pursuit, one
open not only to ancients like Cicero and moderns like Bruni but also
to medieval authors like Gregory and Bernard. That humanism (broadly
construed) had never actually died but had merely fallen asleep or been
buried or exiled to Byzantium is central to the humanists’ understanding
of their own activity, which consisted not in nourishing something that
had been reborn, but in rediscovering, uncovering, illuminating, or wak-
ing something that had always been available if one simply looked for it.32
To make recourse for an instant to the initiator of these topoi, Petrarch
had called the medium aevum “dark,” not “dead.”33 It needed light, not
a necromancer. Thus humanism emerges as a timeless pursuit available,
theoretically, to all human beings in all ages. The fact that it flourished in
the fifteenth century is therefore, in the minds of humanists, a mark of the
superiority of modern Italians, since it is they who recognized the value of
what had long been neglected through ignorance or bad taste in the “Dark
Ages.”
Languages, ancient and modern

The primacy of classical Latin cannot be questioned. It was the bedrock of
humanist identity.
31 Cf. R.W. Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970), pp. 29–132, esp. 29–32;
Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, 2 vols. to date (Oxford, 1995–).
32 It seems worth suggesting that the case was different for the fine arts, whose renaissance began in
painting, the classical form of which could not be found even if sought. Thus painting needed
to be reborn, through the imitation not of the ancients but of nature. Interestingly, Donatello’s
subsequent accomplishments in sculpture and Brunelleschi’s in architecture, whose ancient artifacts
were still visible, were often described with the same metaphors used by our authors for humanism,
not that of rebirth. Cf. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, pp. 18–21.
33 Cf. Theodore E. Mommsen, “Petrarch’s Conception of the ‘Dark Ages,’” Speculum, 17:2 (1942),
pp. 226–242; and Black, “The Donation of Constantine.”
Greek appears as the second language of erudition. Indeed, it was so
common that several authors refer to the pair of Latin and Greek as “both
languages,” with the understanding that every reader would know what
was meant. Greek is portrayed primarily as an ancillary language for the
betterment of Latin, especially in the first half of the fifteenth century. In
the second half Greek becomes a less significant component of a humanist
profile, its noteworthiness diminishing along with its novelty and perceived
necessity as a tool for the correct composition of Latin (as in Cortesi). The
subordinate status of Greek also emerges from the fact that humanists are
not generally said to have spoken it or to have composed anything in it.34
Feats that modern scholars might regard as great accomplishments – Bruni’s
description of the Florentine constitution in Greek, Traversari’s and others’
communication with the Greek delegation to the Council of Ferrara/
Florence, and Poliziano’s excellent Greek poetry – were not common, nor
were they considered worthy of note by our authors.35 Nevertheless, Greek
literature seems to have been valued somewhat for its own sake, as can
be inferred, at least to some degree, from the fact that Greek studies and
translations continue to merit attention after the flag of humanism had
been planted on the Ciceronian peak of Latin style. In addition, Manetti
reminds us that Petrarch and Boccaccio longed to learn Greek before its
usefulness for Latin was appreciated. Indeed, Manetti explicitly attributes
their Greek studies to a dissatisfaction with available Latin literature; in
search of new books, they turned to Greek. Manetti’s testimony is especially
valuable considering that he is the only one of our six authors to have
known Greek well.36 The desire to learn Greek was also certainly related to
prestige. Nowhere can this be seen better than in Sabellico’s use of Greek
orthography in certain Latin words and in his sprinkling of Greek in his
own writing, all despite his doubtful knowledge of the language.37 Indeed,
34 An exception is Manetti’s biography of Carlo Marsuppini, in which the latter is complimented

for speaking “Greek as fluently, tastefully and impeccably as if he had been born in Athens”
(Manetti, CJEG, 33: “ut graece faciliter ac prompte, quasi Athenis natus esset, eleganter et congrue
loqueretur”).
35 Cf. Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, p. 119. On Bruni’s work, see Bruni,
Opere letterarie e politiche, pp. 771–787. On the humanist interpreters at the Council of Florence, see
Stinger, Humanism and the Church Fathers, ch. 5. For Poliziano’s Greek verse, see Angelo Poliziano,
Prose volgari inedite e poesie latine e greche edite e inedite, ed. Isidoro del Lungo (Florence, 1867;
facsimile reprint = Hildesheim, 1976).
36 The only other to have surely studied Greek was Facio, who is credited with a translation of Arrian’s
Anabasis. Nevertheless, the translation was not an original work of scholarship but rather a revision
of an earlier attempt by Pier Paolo Vergerio. Nor did Facio make great progress despite consuming
three years on the project. See Kristeller, “The Humanist Bartolomeo Facio,” p. 275.
37 See Chapter 4 above, note 144.
the prestige of Greek was so great that Sabellico had to pretend to know
it well despite believing Latin was the only language that truly mattered.
Thus Greek was a hallmark of humanist identity, but, as long as one made
the proper motions, one did not actually have to know it to be considered,
or to consider oneself, a great humanist. We need look no further than our
own authors for proof of that.38
Other ancient languages emerge as marginal to fifteenth-century human-
ism. Facio records Manetti’s knowledge of Hebrew. Manetti reports the
same expertise in Marco Lippomano. Sabellico marvels at Pico’s Aramaic.
These are the only mentions of ancient languages besides Latin and Greek
across hundreds of pages of praise for scores of humanists throughout the
century.
If Hebrew and Aramaic were considered peripheral by humanists, the
vernacular ranked even lower. This conclusion flies in the face of a tradition
of scholarship, pioneered by Paul Oskar Kristeller, that emphasizes the
double-helical fortunes of vernacular and Latin composition throughout
the fifteenth century.39 It is not in doubt that some humanists, including a
few of the exemplary humanists highlighted in this study, foremost among
them Leonardo Bruni, composed in both Latin and the vernacular.40 Yet
of our authors only Manetti places the volgare within the purview of
the studia humanitatis, and then with a much greater focus on poetry
than on prose. The others either do not mention the vernacular in the
context of humanism (Piccolomini, Biondo41 ), or they explicitly exclude it
as a cultural competitor. Facio laments that humanists cannot participate
qua humanists in deliberative rhetoric, since it is the bailiwick of the
volgare. Cortesi and Sabellico even see the vernacular as inhibiting the
38 Cf. Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, pp. 119–120, who emphasize the
marginality of Greek to school and university curricula – a state of affairs that even pertained in
Florence at the end of the fifteenth century.
39 His fundamental contributions were: “The Origin and Development of the Language of Italian
Prose,” in Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and the Arts: Collected Essays (Princeton, 1990), pp. 119–
141; “The Scholar and His Public in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” in Kristeller, Medieval
Aspects of Renaissance Learning: Three Essays, ed. and tr. Edward P. Mahoney (Durham, NC, 1974),
pp. 1–25; and “Latein und Vulgärsprache im Italien des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts,” Deutsches Dante
Jahrbuch, 59 (1984), pp. 7–35 [English translation = “Latin and Vernacular in Fourteenth- and
Fifteenth-Century Italy,” Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association,
6 (1985), 105–126]. A summary, elaboration, and critical review of Kristeller’s work in this area
is provided by Mazzocco, “Kristeller and the Italian Vernacular.” See also Mazzocco, Linguistic
Theories, pp. 82–94; and Garin, Rinascite e rivoluzioni, p. 71.
40 Cf. McLaughlin, “Humanism and Italian Literature.”
41 Not only does Biondo omit the vernacular from his account of humanism, but he barely pays it
any attention throughout the Italia illustrata. See Viti, “Umanesimo letterario,” pp. 717–718. For
Biondo’s possible support of the vernacular, see the reference to Mazzocco in note 44 below.
development of proper Latin style, since gifted writers like Dante, Petrarch,
Leonardo Giustinian, and Cristoforo Landino frittered away their time
on vernacular composition rather than contributing more to Latin. These
polemics indicate that the place of the vernacular was a disputed question in
fifteenth-century humanism, that it enjoyed its greatest support in Florence
and Venice, but also that it had far more antagonists than defenders.
Even humanists interested in vernacular poetics like Cortesi considered
the language less important than Latin. At best – Manetti excepted – our
authors present vernacular composition as a parallel activity to humanism
that was at heart unrelated to it, like political involvement, the composition
of music, or the practice of law.
Contrary conclusions have been reached by Gabriella Albanese in an
article on multilingualism in Renaissance humanism.42 She argues, on the
basis of many of the same texts investigated here, that Italian humanism
equally embraced Latin, Greek, and the Italian vernacular as proper vehi-
cles for literature. Her point is not that all were used to the same extent
as languages of literary creation, but rather that all were considered valid
sources of literary inspiration and acceptable vehicles for composition.
Albanese draws a continuous line from Boccaccio (Genealogia deorum)
through Bruni (Vite di Dante e del Petrarca, Novella di Antioco) to Biondo
Flavio (Italia illustrata) and Manetti (Dialogus in simposio), to Cristoforo
Landino (Comento sopra la Comedia) and Paolo Cortesi (De hominibus
doctis), portraying them all as exponents of trilingualism. Her work is par-
ticularly valuable for emphasizing the importance of Manuel Chrysoloras
and Greek for humanist Latin, as well as for establishing the high status
enjoyed by the vernacular in the thought of Leonardo Bruni.43 Neverthe-
less, Albanese attributes Bruni’s trilingualism to Biondo and Cortesi in
a way incompatible with our close reading of their texts.44 Furthermore,
42 Albanese, “Mehrsprachigkeit.”
43 An issue also discussed in Hankins, “Humanism in the Vernacular,” and Mazzocco, Linguistic
Theories, ch. 3. Mazzocco, however, stresses that Bruni only argued for the equality of the vernacular
for poetic composition, not for prose writing (because no grammar for vernacular prose had yet
been developed), and that Bruni was motivated more by “patriotism” than by a “dispassionate
concern for truth” (p. 42).
44 Specifically, Albanese assumes without justification that Biondo adopted Bruni’s trilingualism along
with the latter’s periodization of Latin literature and positive assessment of Chrysoloras’ importance,
despite Biondo’s silence about the vernacular in his history of humanism. Consider also that Biondo,
in his De verbis Romanae locutionis, regarded the vernacular as a corruption of Latin resulting from
the barbarian invasions, on which see Mazzocco, Linguistic Theories, p. 17. Mazzocco, however, does
argue that Biondo believed the vernacular equal to Latin in theory, though he (Biondo) eschewed
the Florentine vernacular and hardly ever used his native Romagnolo; see ibid., pp. 46–49. See also
note 41 above. As for Cortesi, Albanese ignores his criticism of Dante and his belief in the inherent
she does not consider Piccolomini, Facio, or Sabellico, whose respective
silence on and denigration of the vernacular greatly undermine the status
it is given by Boccaccio, Bruni, Manetti, and Landino.
Even though we, like Biondo, ought to regard Bruni’s testimony as
authoritative, in this case his thought does not seem to be representative
of the broader phenomenon of fifteenth-century humanism. Indeed, one
cannot help but notice that Boccaccio, Bruni, Manetti, and Landino were
all associated primarily with Florence, whereas outside Florence there was
significantly less sympathy for the vernacular in the humanist milieu.45
Apparent exceptions only redound to the rule. In Filippo Maria Visconti’s
Milan and Ferrante’s Naples, two contexts noteworthy for non-Latin pro-
duction, the humanists commissioned with vernacular works were less
enthusiastic than the princes who desired them, at times even daring to
smear the hand that fed them with embarrassment and disgust.46 As our
authors illustrate, only in Florence did the interests of rulers and humanists
coincide, sometimes, regarding the vernacular. And as Angelo Mazzocco
has shown, for nearly the entire Quattrocento the question of the vernac-
ular’s validity as a language of high literature was indissolubly linked to
Florentine patriotism and political pretensions.47 Since only the Florentine,
or Tuscan, vernacular could boast of a distinguished literary heritage and
was considered sufficiently mature and developed, only those writers with
a vested interest in the Florentine literary tradition explicitly defended,
much less promoted, its use.48 This state of affairs would only begin to
change towards the end of the century in a few cities such as Naples (with
Sannazaro) and Ferrara (with Boiardo), and the pan-Italian use of Tuscan
would not become standard until Bembo and others definitively established
weakness of the vernacular as a literary language, as well as his description of the entire fourteenth
century as “the dregs of all time” and a period in which “eloquence had utterly lost its voice.”
45 Mazzocco, Linguistic Theories, ch. 5, shows that humanists at Leonello d’Este’s court in Ferrara
contemned the vernacular, as can be seen in Angelo Decembrio’s Politia Literaria (ca. 1460), and
that Guarino of Verona, in his De lingue latine differentiis (1449), characterized the vernacular as a
“linguistic malady that forever corrupts the purity and integrity of the Latin language” (p. 57).
46 For Milan, see Massimo Zaggia, “Appunti sulla cultura letteraria in volgare a Milano nell’età di
Filippo Maria Visconti,” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 170 (1993), pp. 161–219 and
321–382. Of the three humanist translators on whom Zaggia focuses most attention, Antonio da
Rho (pp. 194–196) was perhaps amenable to the task of translating classical texts into the vernacular,
whereas Pier Candido Decembrio (p. 333) and Francesco Filelfo (p. 357) would have preferred to
work exclusively in Latin. Filelfo, however, engaged spiritedly in the composition of original verse
in Tuscan (pp. 361–364). For humanist abhorrence of the vernacular in Naples, see Bentley, Politics
and Culture, pp. 69–71.
47 Mazzocco, Linguistic Theories, passim.
48 See, however, Kristeller, “Origin and Development,” pp. 134–135, who provides evidence for the use
of non-Tuscan vernaculars on the part of fifteenth-century humanists, as well as of the growing use
of the Tuscan vernacular outside of Tuscany. Cf. also note 39 above generally.
the worthiness of the vernacular per se in their debates over the questione
della lingua in the sixteenth century.49 Until then, it is no wonder that
humanists in other locations, especially Rome and Venice, would view the
Tuscan vernacular with suspicion, indeed as a threat to their own proud
civic traditions and identity.
Activities
In the view of our authors, participation in the humanist movement
consisted in writing, teaching, and, to a lesser extent, speaking classical
Latin. Other pursuits are mentioned – such as hunting out, copying,
and collecting manuscripts (and later buying books), connoisseurship of
ancient art, and participation in learned conversation with patrons or other
humanists – but they are secondary and non-essential. An active and espe-
cially an original contribution to the revived culture of classical Latin is the
touchstone of humanism. Niccolò Niccoli therefore becomes the excep-
tion that proves the rule, the one figure consistently treated by our authors
who, in spite of never writing anything and refusing even to speak Latin,
is grouped with the humanists. Niccoli is saved by his zeal for the human-
ist project, his towering erudition, his function as a critic, his activity in
collecting and copying manuscripts, and his famed library. Nevertheless
his stock falls towards the end of the century as the emphasis on original
literary production grows.
Writing is the most important activity, but great teachers – especially in
the first half of the century, before humanism had spread as far throughout
Italy and while Latin was still being cleansed of its impurities – are con-
sidered some of the most important and exemplary humanists. Somewhat
surprisingly, however, for a movement dedicated to linguistic propriety,
speaking is of decidedly secondary importance. According to Piccolomini,
Bruni’s famed eloquence evaporated when he was forced to speak extem-
poraneously. Our other authors make no reference to impromptu speeches
and only rarely mention conversation in Latin. Even when they use the
verb dicere it is often with the force of “composition” or “expression” rather
than “speaking,” and it is sometimes employed as a simple synonym for
scribere. Loqui rarely appears.50 Even the formula ars dicendi retains little of
49 Kristeller, “Origin and Development,” pp. 103–105.

50 One example is Piccolomini, DVI, p. 35.13, in reference to Niccoli’s never speaking Latin:
“numquam . . . locutus est latine.” It is used a second time on the same page (35.10–11) to describe
Niccoli’s verbal attacks (in the vernacular) on Bruni: “non scribendo, sed loquendo carpebat illum.”
Another is Cortesi, DHD, 144.6–10: “tam diligenter Valla de ratione verborum Latinorum scripserit,
its ancient connection to oratory proper and is here confined to a rhetorical
practice that is almost exclusively written. As explained in the excursus on
oratio in Chapter 1 and emphasized in the discussion in Chapter 3 of the
difference between Cortesi’s and Cicero’s oratores, humanism is largely a
movement of the written, not the spoken, word.51 Nonetheless, by writ-
ing dialogues that purport to have actually taken place, both Cortesi and
Sabellico imply that speaking classical Latin conversationally, in an infor-
mal setting, was a standard humanist practice.
Humanist teachers worked either as private tutors or schoolmasters and
sometimes as both. Teaching could also be understood in a less formal
sense that did not necessitate the exchange of money for services, which
seems to be the case with Paolo Cortesi’s relationship with Platina or
Niccolò Niccoli’s with Luigi Marsili. The content of this education can be
partially gathered from descriptions in Biondo, Manetti, and Cortesi. All
three describe a rhetorical education focusing on the reading and analysis
of texts, Latin declamation, and sometimes additional training in Greek.
Teachers are generally recognized as the force behind the spread and
development of humanism. Biondo praises them for training an army
of humanists throughout Italy. Cortesi attributes good Latin largely to
their recovery of the ars of rhetoric. Sabellico places humanism’s origins in
the northern schools of Barzizza, Guarino, and Vittorino, and he regards
Lorenzo Valla’s teaching as the turning point in early humanism. The
teacher par excellence is Manuel Chrysoloras, whose students, specifically
thanks to his instruction, are generally recognized as the first generation
of true humanists. The importance accorded teachers underscores the fact
that humanism spread by direct personal contact and was conceived as
organized into informal schools, such as those of Chrysoloras, Guarino,
Valla, or Leto. But teaching could also take an indirect form. As the
example of Valla’s Elegantiae shows, teaching eventually becomes partly
independent of personal contact, relying instead on the written (and then
printed) word – a trend that is reinforced by the proliferation of printed
commentaries towards the end of the century.
Our authors carefully distinguish between two types of written works:
translations (from Greek into Latin) and original compositions. Facio,
Cortesi, and Sabellico indicate that translations predominated in human-
ism’s early stages, but, whereas Facio heralds each translation as a triumph,
ipse non bene satis loqui Latine videatur,” where it has been translated as “speak” but might actually
have the sense of “compose.” See above, Chapter 3, p. 148.
51 See above, pp. 70–72 and 153–154.
the latter two stress the inferiority of translated to original works.52 Biondo
and Cortesi explain that translations were especially useful as guides to Latin
style, but such works lose their cachet for Cortesi as knowledge of good
Latin becomes more widespread. This is not indicative of a decline in the
actual number of translations, but rather of their diminishing importance
for humanist identity over time. They play a conspicuously subordinate
role towards the end of the century, as the ability to translate from Greek
ceases to be a novelty and as the focus of humanism shifts definitively
towards original works of Latin composition.
Of original compositions, prose works were more popular and reached
maturity quicker than poetry. Earlier writers speak proudly about a wide
variety of Latin genres – histories, letters, dialogues, orations, treatises, style
guides, and biographies – but later ones clearly place historiography at the
top of the hierarchy. For Sabellico, the new genre of the printed, philological
commentary represents a major accomplishment with the potential to
establish humanism permanently on the intellectual landscape of Europe.
Oratores generally outnumber poetae, but meter comes into its own in the
second half of the century. Facio congratulates Panormita for reviving the
elegy, but according to Cortesi it is Giovanni Pontano who truly restored
poetry to greatness. In Sabellico’s view as well, the writing of good poetry
was a characteristic of humanism only after mid-century. Manetti is alone
in praising the vernacular poetry of Dante and Petrarch.
Professions
Since Kristeller, Anglophone scholars have tended to categorize humanists
as a professional class of teachers, notaries, ambassadors, and secretaries –
in short, as rhetoricians.53 Apart from teaching, however, our authors do
not portray the professions exercised by humanists as central to their
group identity. Piccolomini and Facio provide the most detailed infor-
mation regarding employment, though such details tend not to occupy
the foreground. In their pages humanists appear much as they do in the
52 In personal correspondence unrelated to his De viris illustribus, Bartolomeo Facio also claims the
superiority of original compositions to translations from the Greek. See Kristeller, “The Humanist
Bartolomeo Facio,” p. 275, who sees behind this comment defensiveness on Facio’s part about his
poor knowledge of Greek. Such might very well be the case, but it seems safe in light of Cortesi’s and
Sabellico’s statements to take Facio’s at face value. The two motives are, at any rate, not mutually
exclusive and seem rather to reinforce each other. Cortesi and Sabellico also had limited (if no)
knowledge of Greek, but their preference for original composition is clearly linked to the primacy
of Latin in their views of humanism.
53 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and its Sources, pp. 23–25.
Kristellerian interpretation: as secretaries, chancellors, ambassadors, and
teachers. Some are members of religious orders, and Niccoli, relying on
family wealth, is the gentleman humanist. Cortesi and Sabellico, on the
other hand, give almost no information about the employment of human-
ists, though one could note that several of the figures they treat are bishops
(including two popes).
Ultimately, it seems reasonable to make as much of humanist professions
as our authors do. How a humanist earned his living, even if he did so with
the Latin of his humanist activity, was at most of secondary importance and
perhaps was of no importance at all. Manetti, furthermore, portrays mak-
ing money as a necessary evil; employment, in his view, inhibits humanism.
Certain positions were important, though. For example, Bruni’s and Pog-
gio’s employment as apostolic secretaries and chancellors of Florence is
consistently reported with pride. These were prestige posts, and they lent
glory to the whole humanist community. They were not, however, always
filled by humanists, nor was sitting on one what made a particular indi-
vidual important.54 Consider Bruni: if he had not been an excellent stylist,
he would have mattered as little to other humanists across Italy as did
Benedetto and Paolo Fortini, two brothers not noted for their eloquence
who acceded to the Florentine chancellorship after Salutati.55 Similarly, in
the eyes of socially elevated non-humanists – whose regard was another
important ingredient in humanists’ perception of themselves – what made
humanists important was not that they worked as rhetoricians, but that
they glowed with the aura of bonae litterae. Indeed, without the distinc-
tion of that literary je ne sais quoi, the relatively humble positions they
tended to fill would not have made them worthy to commerce with the
city’s captains.56 Some jobs typical of humanists were so menial that they
earned the scorn even of the humanist community, indeed even of the
54 Non-humanists held the post of Florentine secretary between Salutati (d. 1406) and Bruni (1410–
1411, 1427–1444). See Demetrio Marzi, La cancelleria della republica fiorentina (Rocca San Casciano,
1910). On the position of apostolic secretary, see Partner, The Pope’s Men, pp. 15, 79–80, 86–90.
Partner calculates that only forty-two percent of secretaries appointed between 1417 and 1487 were
“well known for their accomplishment in the humanities” (p. 15), a proportion that diminished
after the office became venal under Innocent VIII. He concludes that “literary laymen did not find
it easy to get a foothold in the Roman court as papal officials, in spite of the few brilliant careers
enjoyed by lay papal secretaries. Competition among humanists for the papal secretary office was
ferocious, and some of the most distinguished scholars of the fifteenth century emerged defeated
from this struggle” (p. 79). D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, pp. 29–37, provides a more positive
portrayal of humanist fortunes in the secretariat, but his findings are based on inferior data and are
extrapolated from the state of affairs under two popes who were extremely favorable to humanists.
55 For the tenures of the Fortini brothers, see Marzi, La cancelleria, pp. 153–187. Bruni served a short
stint as chancellor (December 29, 1410 to April 4, 1411) after the death of Benedetto Fortini. He was
succeeded immediately by Paolo Fortini. See ibid., pp. 159–160.
56 See Martines, The Social World, pp. 238–262.
very humanists who worked them. As Robert Black has pointed out, the
status of grammar teachers was never high and declined as steadily as it
did precipitously during the fifteenth century. Eminent humanist gram-
marians such as Giovanni Conversini da Ravenna and Pier Paolo Vergerio
complained of the sordidum munus, the infestum fedumque negocium, the
sordida et humilis catedra of the grammaticus.57 Does our authors’ silence
with regard to professions reflect a sense of shame? They certainly would
have been relieved to hear Eugenio Garin insist that humanists were not
“solo maestri d’eloquenza e grammatici.”58 However that may be, rather
than connecting humanism with a range of professional careers, our authors
regard the pursuit of humanitas as a vocation in the pure sense of the word.
For them, humanism was a life’s calling.
When considering the professional context of humanism, it should pique
our interest that two groups are conspicuously absent from the accounts
studied here: notaries and printers. While the omission of printers is a
reminder that the star of Aldus had not yet risen, that of notaries is signif-
icant for the way we understand the institutional origins and parameters
of humanism. Emphasizing continuities between the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, Kristeller argued that humanism grew out of the medieval
rhetorical tradition of the ars dictaminis.59 As he writes:
The humanists were not classical scholars who for personal reasons had a
craving for eloquence, but, vice versa, they were professional rhetoricians,
heirs and successors of the medieval rhetoricians, who developed the belief,
then new and modern, that the best way to achieve eloquence was to imitate
classical models, and who thus were driven to study the classics and to found
classical philology.60
Kristeller makes it sound as if professional interests drove humanists to

embrace classical eloquence, as if, once having obtained their jobs in
chanceries, they then began groping around for a new stylistic register
by which to distinguish themselves. Yet our authors, despite the very real
fact that humanists often filled the positions once held by the dictatores,
would shudder at the thought that they had anything in common with
those medieval rhetoricians. As far as they were concerned, their movement
was born outside of institutional and professional parameters and owed its
maturity to the teaching of Chrysoloras and other Italian educators, as well
as to the discovery of lost works of ancient literature. Much more in line
with the humanists’ view of themselves is that of Ronald Witt, who has
57 Black, Humanism and Education, pp. 31–32. 58 Garin, Medioevo e rinascimento, p. 5.

59 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and its Sources, pp. 23–25, 89–90. 60 Ibid., p. 90.
argued that chanceries, rather than spawning humanism, offered human-
ists a new venue in the Quattrocento to display the eloquence towards
which they had been working outside of institutional parameters for more
than a century.61
Disciplinary boundaries
The scholarly tradition that sees humanists as a professional class also draws
a straight line between humanism and a concrete group of disciplines. Kris-
teller famously defined humanism as “a cultural and educational program
which emphasized and developed an important but limited area of studies”
that “might be roughly described as literature.” More specifically:
By the first half of the fifteenth century, the studia humanitatis came to
stand for a clearly defined cycle of scholarly disciplines, namely grammar,
rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy, and the study of each of
these subjects was understood to include the reading and interpreting of its
standard ancient writers in Latin and, to a lesser extent, in Greek.62
Yet we have seen that, although humanists undoubtedly focused their atten-
tion on “literature” that could generally be said to fall into these categories,
they did not conceive of humanism as an “educational program” or as a
“cycle of scholarly disciplines.” They did see it as a “cultural program,” but
less as one devoted to “the reading and interpreting of . . . standard ancient
authors” (though this was of obvious importance) than to the creative
production of their own new works in a Latin style that imitated those
authors. More importantly, although humanists very often read, wrote,
and commented on works that could be said to fall into one of the above-
named categories, our authors do not show cognizance of being constrained
by, or ordered into, these boundaries. Furthermore, considering the priv-
ileged status of the term studia humanitatis among modern scholars, it is
surprising that Giannozzo Manetti, the one author to consistently use it,
gathers under it the artes liberales, poetry, theology, natural philosophy, and
a holy life. What is more, Manetti’s humanist par excellence, Niccolò Nic-
coli, adheres to no disciplinary boundaries whatsoever but devotes himself
simply to Latin literature.
Benjamin Kohl has demonstrated that until the second decade of the
Quattrocento the term studia humanitatis was merely “a vague way to
61 Witt, Footsteps, summary on pp. 497–498.

62 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and its Sources, p. 22.
describe cultural and literary accomplishment and especially rhetorical and
philological expertise.”63 Thereafter it slowly took on the connotation of
an educational program composed of the five disciplines identified by
Kristeller, first in northern Italy and then by mid-century throughout the
peninsula, but it only assumed that sense exclusively much later, perhaps
not even until the sixteenth century. As we have seen, our authors never use
studia humanitatis in this sense, and it is perhaps on account of its growing
association with an institutional cycle of disciplines that Cortesi uses it
sparingly and Sabellico not at all as a term for humanism. That is, once
studia humanitatis gained the meaning Kristeller ascribed to it, it stopped
being used by humanists whose intention it was to give a global account of
humanism. Instead, these authors talk about studia eloquentiae and latinae
linguae reparatio. When they do use studia humanitatis, our authors (except
Manetti) intend it in a way commensurate with Kohl’s earlier definition, a
similar form of which Aeneas Sylvius once explained in a personal letter:
“We use this term to designate the literature in prose and poetry that is
typical of the Latin tradition but unknown to most others.”64
When disciplinary boundaries are stressed it is in a negative way, not
to define what humanism is but to clarify what it is not. This happens
most in the works of Facio and Manetti, both earlier writers. Manetti
distinguishes humanism from “money-grubbing arts,” including business
and law, whereas Facio separates humanism from all traditional university
disciplines – natural philosophy, theology, law, and medicine – and also
excludes liberal arts like music. Facio’s position is basically in line with James
Hankins’ description of humanism as occupying “a middle ground between
purely practical studies such as law, medicine, or the mechanical arts on
the one hand, and purely theoretical studies such as natural philosophy,
advanced logical theory, metaphysics, and theology on the other.”65 It was
not an all-or-nothing game, though. Facio’s point is not that humanists
never engaged in pursuits like theology or natural philosophy, but rather
that they took their humanist hats off when doing so. Still, the case of
Alberti shows that too great an interest in non-humanistic studia might
disqualify an individual from membership in the group (when the heuristic
task of categorization demanded an absolute decision, at any rate). Thus
humanists policed the boundaries around their own field of endeavor
63 Kohl, “The Changing Concept,” p. 194.

64 Text in Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, De Europa, ed. Adrianus Van Heck (Vatican City, 2001), p. 221:
“hoc enim nomine volunt nostri oratorias et poeticas litteras designari, que apud Latinos late patent,
apud alios plerumque ignote.”
65 Hankins, “Humanism, Scholasticism, and Renaissance Philosophy,” p. 32.
rather conscientiously, but we find none of the nasty polemics against the
intellectual and institutional competitors to humanism that characterize,
say, Petrarch’s Invectives. To the extent that humanists’ defined themselves
against “others,” they did so with relatively little rancor, at least when
talking to their own community and when not trying to justify or sell
humanism to outsiders.
These disciplinary boundaries dissolve somewhat in the second half of
the century. Cortesi and Sabellico portray humanists as active in natu-
ral philosophy and theology – and in a specifically humanistic way. For
Cortesi, Aristotle plays an essential role in recovering the ars of rhetoric,
and Sabellico extols Ficino and Ermolao Barbaro for bringing humanism
to bear on philosophy (including metaphysics), as well as Pico for theology.
Cortesi himself wrote a work of theology, basically a Ciceronian transla-
tion of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Sabellico also praises a few humanists
for their devotional literature. Such examples, however, are rarely adduced,
so that these pursuits should probably be considered marginal. It is stun-
ning to see that the substantial humanist contribution to theological and
philosophical thought, so energetically investigated in modern scholarship,
is not recorded by our authors. The theologia poetica of Salutati and Pico,
the theologia rhetorica of Valla, and the theologia platonica of Ficino are all
equally ignored.66 There is nothing about the dignity of man, Neoplaton-
ism, Hermetism, or humanist contributions to the field of logic.67 Even
moral philosophy, an area of thought in which humanists were heavily
engaged, appears only in the titles of a few eloquent works.68 For it was
form that was at stake, not content. Our authors indicate that humanists
pursued philosophy and theology, as humanists, not by the application
of any kind of humanist ideas, but rather by the application of classical
66 The chief work on humanist theologies is Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness. See also Camporeale,
Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia; Ficino, Platonic Theology; and James Hankins and Fabrizio
Meroi (eds.), The Rebirth of Platonic Theology (Florence, 2013).
67 The literature on these topics is immense. See at least Charles B. Schmitt et al. (eds.), The Cambridge
History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge, 1988); Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John
Herman Randall (eds.), The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago, 1948); Paul Oskar Kristeller,
Renaissance Concepts of Man and Other Essays (New York, 1972); Kristeller, Eight Philosophers;
Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance; Lodi Nauta, In Defense of Common Sense: Lorenzo Valla’s
Humanist Critique of Scholastic Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 2012); Lorenzo Valla, Dialectical
Disputations, ed. and tr. Brian P. Copenhaver and Lodi Nauta, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 2012);
Claudio Moreschini, Hermes Christianus: The Intermingling of Hermetic Piety and Christian Thought,
tr. Patrick Baker (Turnhout, 2011).
68 See the overview by Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Humanism and Moral Philosophy,” in Rabil (ed.),
Renaissance Humanism, vol. III, pp. 271–309; and for a recent contribution, Timothy Kircher,
Living Well in Renaissance Italy: The Virtues of Humanism and the Irony of Leon Battista Alberti
(Tempe, 2012).
canons of style to the Latin in which they wrote. Perhaps this is why law and
medicine, in contrast, are consistently portrayed as incommensurate with
humanism. No proof having been provided that they could be engaged
in eloquently, they were perceived, like the vernacular, as competitors to
humanism – in terms of time, audience, and prestige.
Patronage
Bartolomeo Facio, Giannozzo Manetti, and Paolo Cortesi give the impres-
sion that humanism would not have been possible without patronage.
Their writings encourage a tentative distinction between four different but
overlapping kinds. One is nearly indistinguishable from simple employ-
ment and takes the form of powerful persons (or cities) specifically choosing
humanists as secretaries, chancellors, tutors, or courtiers – all posts that
could also be filled by non-humanists. A second is the commissioning of
special humanist projects like translations from Greek or histories of cities
or princes. A third uses not money but rather honor to encourage humanist
activity, like Sigismund’s crowning of poets laureate. A fourth regards not
individual humanists but rather the underwriting of resources useful to
many, such as Florence’s hiring of Chrysoloras to teach Greek in the city,
or the founding, funding, or stocking of public libraries.
The great patrons of humanism turn out, unsurprisingly, to be Cosimo
de’ Medici, Nicholas V, and Alfonso of Aragon. Cortesi adds Piero and
Lorenzo de’ Medici for a later era, but he provides no details of their largesse.
Cosimo, Nicholas, and Alfonso are all praised for financing the efforts of
individual humanists and for their founding and support of libraries. Facio
specifically describes how Nicholas provided salaries for Greek translators
and subsidized voyages to the East in search of Greek codices. Cosimo and
Alfonso are consistently remembered for keeping company with humanists
as well as for their own great learning.
Cortesi and Facio generally take the patron’s point of view in their praise,
which is aimed at garnering new patronage for themselves and others, but
Manetti gives insight into how humanists themselves perceived patronage.
According to him, it was the assistance of princes that allowed Petrarch
to enjoy his life of literary otium and thus to write so many great works.
He criticizes Boccaccio for refusing to become a courtier and thereby
condemning himself to a life of poverty; or rather, he criticizes Boccaccio
for complaining of his poverty, since that poverty was the direct result of
his unwillingness to serve. Cortesi concurs that the best thing a humanist
can do is to find a patron who will support his writing. Neither seriously
acknowledges the loss of freedom, lamented by Boccaccio, entailed by
turning oneself into another’s retainer.
Even more reticent is Sabellico, who says nothing about patronage,
and Biondo and Aeneas Sylvius drop only a few hints.69 Yet all three
benefited so much from patrons. Piccolomini spent his life in the service of
cardinals, popes, and the emperor before becoming pope himself. Biondo’s
career took off thanks to Eugenius IV. Sabellico was Venice’s de facto
official historiographer in addition to being one of its two publicly funded
humanist teachers. The role of patronage emerges in the very fact of
Biondo’s dedication to Nicholas V and Sabellico’s to Marco Morosini,
but neither author (and this is especially arresting in the case of Biondo)
provides specific details about his dedicatee’s underwriting of humanism.70
Should we expect otherwise? Patronage was a class-five rapid of social
negotiation that permitted the client no straight run to communicating his
status, needs, dissatisfaction, even his gratitude.71 A gentleman like Niccoli
might (for a stretch) portage around the whitewater of dependency, angst,
and psychological violence, but most poetae and oratores had to get wet in
order to get moving, in order, in the words of Christopher Celenza, “to
engage in the . . . art of Renaissance humanism and not go broke in the
bargain.”72 Even when blessed with success, clientage was unavoidably and
enduringly humiliating – especially when the client considered himself the
intellectual equal, if not the superior, of his patron. This was the case for
Biondo Flavio, who certainly thought he knew better than Nicholas V, the
pope who dismissed him from the curia. As for Piccolomini, he had escaped
his house-poor youth by serving men of eminent power; now, having risen
to the rank of bishop and perhaps already dreaming of the tiara, there was
no reason to remind his readers, even obliquely, that he had once been the
creature of other men’s fortunes. Thus the incomplete picture of patronage
69 In his De Europa, however, written in 1458, Aeneas Sylvius does praise Nicholas’ patronage of
humanism. See Piccolomini, De Europa, p. 243: “adeo enim ingenia excitavit fovitque Nicolaus, ut
vix evum inveniri possit, in quo magis humanitatis et eloquentie ceterarumque bonarum artium
studia quam suo floruerint.” Biondo does not mention patronage in his history of humanism, but
he does praise humanist patrons at various points in his work; see note 73 below.
70 Biondo only describes Nicholas’ building projects, not his patronage of humanists – an omission
that is likely explained by Biondo’s resentment for having been expelled by Nicholas from the curia.
See Hay, “Flavio Biondo and the Middle Ages,” p. 101.
71 Cf. Robin, Filelfo in Milan, esp. pp. 3–55; Lauro Martines, Strong Words: Writing and Social
Strain in the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore, 2001), pp. 13–36; Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and
the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre (New Haven, 2000); Ronald Weissman, “Taking
Patronage Seriously: Mediterranean Values and Renaissance Society,” in F.W. Kent, Patricia Simons,
and J.C. Eade (eds.), Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy (Canberra, 1987), pp. 25–45.
72 Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance, p. 121.
we find, even from flatterers, should not be surprising. That our authors
say little or nothing about Eugenius IV, for the employment of humanists
in his curia, or about Federigo da Montefeltro, for his library, or about
the Este in Ferrara, the Gonzaga in Mantua, and the Visconti and Sforza
in Milan, is most likely an indication of how difficult – practically and
psychologically – communication about the indispensable institution of
patronage could be.73
Virtue and the contemplative life

The same authors who emphasize the importance of patronage also give
virtue a place in humanism. Facio equates eloquence itself with virtue,
as does Cortesi, who, echoing the humanist educational treatises, situ-
ates virtue in the reading of classical authors, in the very study necessary
for achieving eloquence. Hence his description of Guarino’s school, whose
purely rhetorical education is portrayed as a foil to traditional titles to honor
and glory such as battlefield heroism or noble lineage: it is the home of
the honestissimae artes, honestissimae connoting honor, nobility, and virtue.
Similarly, moral excellence and human flourishing are connoted in the very
terms bonae artes and studia humanitatis, and they are integral to the visions
of cultural grandeur associated by our authors with the humanist mission.
Manetti sees things differently. He locates virtue not in any particular cur-
riculum but in the teacher himself, from whom it flows to the student
through close personal contact and the desire of the latter to imitate the
former. Furthermore, Manetti equates humanist virtue with specifically
Christian ideals and virtuous behavior, especially self-abnegation. Accord-
ing to him, Petrarch and Boccaccio were chaste despite the impression given
by their amorous writings, and Petrarch engaged in fasting and divine con-
templation. Niccoli, furthermore, pursued a near monastic asceticism: “He
remained poor, unknown and celibate, entirely free of all worldly cares,
living happily with his books in the greatest quiet and tranquility.”
73 Facio notes in his De viris illustribus that three individuals were employed by Eugenius – George
of Trebizond, Aeneas Sylvius, and Tommaso Parentucelli (later Nicholas V) – but the pontiff
does not receive a biography of his own (this is perhaps unsurprising considering the strained
relationship between Eugenius and Alfonso, the work’s patron). Biondo, though he does not treat
these individuals’ or families’ patronage in his discrete history of humanism, does mention the
contribution of the Este (Biondo, II, vi.74) and, more generically, the Visconti (Biondo Flavio’s
Italia Illustrata, vol. I, p. 135). As for the Gonzaga, Biondo mentions their humanistic learning
but not their patronage of humanism – not even their support of Vittorino, except obliquely by
reporting that Francesco I employed him as a tutor to his sons (see Biondo Flavio’s Italia Illustrata,
vol. I, p. 109).
If Manetti conceived of humanism as a secular version of the monastic
ideal, retaining much of the form and the content of Christian asceticism,
the other authors evince a more purely secular outlook. Their predilection
is for pagan writings, their stylistic ideal embodied by pre-Christian writers.
None of them senses a dissonance between the love of Cicero and religious
orthodoxy, though, an issue on which Manetti consumed a fair amount
of ink. Without compunction they called each other oratores, thereby
co-opting an identity for themselves that was emphatically secular, pre-
Christian. In medieval parlance oratores were clergy, or those who pray.74 By
availing themselves of the term orator, humanists divested it of its spiritual
connotation and infused it instead with a purely classical meaning. Yet for
all the secular elements of their identity, our authors manifest no evidence
of secularization, of the desire to subvert ecclesiastical hierarchy, the clergy,
and religious values that Riccardo Fubini associates with humanism.75 If
there is anything subversive or irreligious in their secular outlook, our
authors do not seem to be aware of it.
Nor do they betray a civic consciousness, a commitment to bringing
their studies to bear on the cities in which they operated or on a salutary
tradition of political thought. As we have seen consistently throughout
this study, the notion of civic humanism, either in Hans Baron’s original
formulation or in the republican modifications suggested by J.G.A. Pocock,
Quentin Skinner, and other historians of political thought, is foreign to
the humanists’ sense of themselves and their project.76 If humanists did at
times write works charged with a political message (e.g., Leonardo Bruni’s
funeral oration for Nanni Strozzi) or were themselves active in politics, it
is not for these things that they are praised but rather for the eloquence
they brought to their task.77 Much like Sabellico’s description of humanist
engagement with philosophy, it was form, not doctrine, that mattered.
That humanists often worked in the interests of political power, both civic
and princely, and that they shared responsibility for developing several
different political discourses, some of them republican, is indisputable.
74 See Georges Duby, Les trois ordres ou l’imaginaire du féodalisme (Paris, 1978).
75 Fubini, Umanesimo e secolarizzazione.
76 Cf. Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance; Hankins (ed.), Renaissance Civic Humanism,
esp. Hankins’ “Introduction” (pp. 1–29) and William J. Connell’s essay, “The Republican Idea”
(pp. 14–29); Jurdjevic, “Hedgehogs and Foxes,” pp. 252–260.
77 See James Hankins, “Rhetoric, History, and Ideology: The Civic Panegyrics of Leonardo Bruni,”
in Hankins (ed.), Renaissance Civic Humanism, pp. 143–178. It should be noted that Bruni was
politically active towards the end of his career, when he held several important magistracies in
addition to the chancellorship, which was itself, however, not a political office.
But such activity does not seem to bear on their identity as humanists
within the larger humanist community.
When our authors do speak about active engagement in political or
commercial affairs, they show a clear preference for the vita contemplativa.
As the description of Niccoli indicates, Manetti viewed the contemplative
life as most suitable to humanist virtue. He depicts Petrarch, Boccaccio,
and Niccoli as seeking the solitude and otium necessary for a life devoted
to study and writing. Accordingly they rejected the professions in law and
commerce which their fathers thrust upon them. Only Dante chose to lead
an active life of political involvement, and Manetti is at a loss to explain
his literary accomplishments in spite of it. Cortesi advises against political
involvement, and he criticizes humanists who attempt to mix letters with
politics, a life of study with one of intrigue. Thus both men stress the role
of patronage, without which, they imply, the vita contemplativa would be
all but impossible for most humanists.
These overtures to virtue and the contemplative life, however, find no
echo in the works of Aeneas Sylvius or Biondo. What is more, Sabellico
portrays humanism as flourishing in a civic context where many of its fore-
most participants are patricians whose central occupation is with affairs
of state. One of Sabellico’s interlocutors, Battista Guarini, is admittedly
a courtier of the Este in Ferrara, but it is in Venice’s atmosphere of the
free exchange of goods and ideas that he airs his views publicly. This is
the context, according to Sabellico, in which humanism will flourish in
the future. Furthermore, the other speaking characters in the dialogue
include teachers at the San Marco School (Brugnoli and Sabellico) and
a chancellor of Verona (Giuliari) – hardly representatives of a withdrawn
vita contemplativa.78 Nevertheless, we should be wary lest we think Sabel-
lico encourages an active life for humanists or portrays any kind of civic
humanism. His dialogue’s disputation is significantly set outside the ducal
palace, when the participants and audience are at leisure, and its content
is literary, not political or civic or even moral. Finally, very few of the
humanists treated in De latinae linguae reparatione were active politically,
and those who were (like Francesco Barbaro) are not praised in this respect.
Geography, nationality, and patriotism

Our authors consistently present humanism as a pan-Italian movement.
Only Manetti focuses largely on one city (Florence), whereas the rest give
78 On the individuals who appear in Sabellico’s dialogue, see Sabellico, DLLR, pp. 13–15 and below,
p. 290 (Appendix).
broad coverage, treating many humanists in Lombardy, the Po valley, the
Romagna, Rome, Naples, Tuscany, and other regions. No author men-
tions humanistic activity south of Naples, although a few humanists from
Sicily figure into their accounts. The major centers within Italy, as could
be expected, are Florence, Naples, Rome, and Venice, but their relative
importance shifts according to the author and the date of composition of
each source. Earlier writers tend to put Florence in relief, whereas in the
second half of the century Rome and Venice are depicted as leaders of
the movement. These foci partially reflect the facts of the matter, partially
the civic and geographical affiliations of the writers. Local allegiances can
be seen most clearly with regard to Florence, both in Manetti’s apology for
the Three Crowns and in efforts to downplay Florence’s role in humanism.
Florence is marginalized less by Sabellico, who still praises certain mem-
bers of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s circle despite his criticism of Landino and his
general emphasis on the North. But there is a clear polemic in Cortesi,
who effects a kind of damnatio memoriae of Florentine humanism. In
their attempts to vie with Florence for preeminence, these exponents of
Roman and Venetian humanism admit Florence’s great past in figures like
Bruni and Poggio only to then claim that the baton has been passed – in
Cortesi’s case to Roman Ciceronianism, in Sabellico’s to Venetian philology
and printing. One way to avenge the Florentine exceptionalism so often
commented upon in this study is to realize that Florence, while retaining
its status as a cradle of humanism, was perceived as increasingly isolated
from developments in the rest of the peninsula as the century moved
forward.
The peninsula establishes the geographical perimeter of humanism.
Manetti is alone in locating humanism, in line with his peculiar vision
of the studia humanitatis, in France as well as in Italy. When he speaks
specifically about the revival of Latin, however, he does so in the context
of Italy and especially of Florence (and to a lesser extent Venice). Human-
ism’s italianità, moreover, is reflected in the nationality of its participants.
Nearly all the viri illustres treated by our authors are Italian, the only
exceptions being a handful of Byzantine émigrés, the Hungarian Janus
Pannonius, and the Dalmatian Coriolano Cippico. Piccolomini, despite
taking a broad European perspective in his De viris illustribus, counts only
Italians and Manuel Chrysoloras among the humanists. Facio includes two
northerners (Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden) among the artists
in his collection, but none among the humanists. For Biondo, humanism is
at the core of modern Italian identity and is perhaps the one thing beyond
natural geographical boundaries that makes Italy a coherent unit. Identity
turns to jealousy in Paolo Cortesi’s De hominibus doctis, where the praise of
Janus sets the stage for the jingoistic defense of humanism’s Italian nature.
According to Cortesi’s Alessandro, “barbarians” are “less receptive to the
Muses.” It is in all likelihood this association between humanism, ancient
Roman history, and modern Italian cultural pretensions that explains the
absence of transalpine figures – even of individuals highly regarded both in
their own time and by modern scholars, such as Nicholas Cusanus, Konrad
Celtis, or Rudolf Agricola.79 One wonders if it is also the reason why the
efforts of Italian humanists outside Italy are barely recorded.
Byzantine émigrés occupy a middle ground between Italians and
transalpine Europeans. Although they obviously do not belong to the
former, they are nevertheless not excluded like the latter and are instead
treated as full participants in humanism. This might have to do with
the fact that, especially after 1453, Greek scholars settled permanently in
Italy, some of them arriving as refugees. But it must also be related to the
Byzantines’ usefulness to humanism as teachers. Unlike Janus, for example,
Chrysoloras came to instruct the Italians, not to learn from them. Of all
our authors, only Sabellico passes over humanism’s debt to Chrysoloras
and minimizes the importance of other teachers like George of Trebizond
or Argyropoulos. In general, Byzantines are seen as playing a foundational
and formative role in this otherwise Italian movement.
Community, honor, and distinction

The restriction of humanism to Italians and Byzantine émigrés is a tes-
tament to the exclusivity of the res publica litterarum in fifteenth-century
Italy and to the strict patrolling of its borders. Christopher Celenza has
encouraged us to think of humanism not as an ideological movement or
a professional class but rather as a tight-knit community of individuals
publicly striving for distinction in the realm of language and literature, a
community ordered by codes of behavior and relatively strict guidelines for
79 For Cusanus, see Christopher M. Bellitto, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Gerald Christianson (eds.),
Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man (New York, 2004). For Celtis, see Lewis Spitz, Conrad
Celtis, the German Arch-Humanist (Cambridge, Mass., 1957); and Jörg Robert, “Celtis, Konrad,” in
Franz Josef Worstbrock (ed.), Deutscher Humanismus, 1480–1520. Verfasserlexicon (Berlin, 2005–),
vol. I, coll. 375–427. For Agricola, see Peter Mack, Renaissance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the
Traditions of Rhetoric and Dialectic (Leiden, 1993), ch. 6; and Albert Schirrmeister, “Agricola Iunior,
Rudolf,” in Worstbrock (ed.), Deutscher Humanismus, 1480–1520. Verfasserlexicon, vol. I, coll. 10–23.
The exclusion of Agricola is all the more striking considering that he was acquainted with Battista
Guarini, the second main speaker in Sabellico’s De latinae linguae reparatione. Cf. Hirschi, The
Origins of Nationalism, pp. 142–152, esp. 142–143.
who was in and who was out.80 As he has shown in his studies of the curial
milieu of mid-fifteenth-century Rome, humanists were concerned primar-
ily with honor, that is with their reputations as men of letters, and this
concern manifested itself not only in honorable behavior but also in con-
stant competition, bitter fights, and nasty, public polemic. Considered in
this light, the sources discussed in this study are honor rolls of humanism,
fasti of the consuls of humanist distinction.
The concern for honor is palpable on every page of each source. Indeed,
honor is tabulated, the reasons for a given humanist’s status clearly itemized:
so many works, of such a nature, of such a quality, that earned so much
respect from contemporaries and posterity. Cortesi and Sabellico both
explicitly state that they will only discuss the contributions of humanists
who have earned a reputation for their contribution to Latin in the form
of writing or teaching. Facio and Cortesi are obsessed with the glory that
can be won from literature. Sabellico even describes the quest for literary
distinction that drove the humanists on:
when they saw that the earlier style of writing was being widely scorned,
and that those who did not say everything accurately and with care were
taken for barbarians, each one decided that he, too, would produce nothing
except what was correct and well thought-out.81
Not everything was permitted in the humanist competition for distinction,
however. For example, certain rules of sociability applied. This is somewhat
surprising considering the vile nature of so much humanist invective. Yet
Niccolò Niccoli and Lorenzo Valla – eminent humanists who behaved very
badly – are consistently censured. Cortesi also criticizes humanists who took
their competition beyond the proper arena of discourse, turning it, he says,
“to injury.” Remarkably, these standards of decency are also upheld by the
authors themselves in their portrayal of the humanists. Although in a god-
like position to rain down terror on their stylistic foes, they demonstrate
restraint. Even Facio, who made his own reputation by trying to ruin Valla’s,
treats his adversary with dignity in his De viris illustribus. More than just
behavior was at stake. Paolo Cortesi enunciates rules of engagement for the
humanist glory game that prescribe modes of production and standards
for judgment. Humanists should shun active participation in politics or
civic life, specializing instead in literature. There, too, they must specialize,
choosing poetry or prose if they hope to achieve glory in either one. In
80 See Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance, pp. 115–133; and Celenza, Renaissance Humanism and the
Papal Curia, pp. 151–161, esp. pars. 11–13.
81 See Chapter 4, note 88.
the best case humanists find a prince to pay the bills, but, as his discussion
of Filelfo shows, there is a fine line between loyal servants and hired pens.
Finally, the humanist community itself must be the judge of quality within
its lettered walls. The vulgar mob must be excluded.
The pantheon of humanism

By singling out the great heroes of the movement, by holding up their
deeds for admiration, imitation, and emulation, our authors construct a
pantheon of humanism.82 In Cortesi’s parlance, these are the homines docti
“whose efforts opened the way to eloquence” and “who have done the most
to achieve some praise for [it].”83 For Sabellico, they are the ones “who in
modern times have aided the Latin language,” the ones “on account of
whom we have ceased speaking so clumsily.”84 These are the founders, the
carriers, the champions, the core group to which those who considered
themselves humanists felt they belonged. They represent the tradition and
shared history which aspirants were determined to carry forward.85
Certain exemplary figures are perched at the top of the pantheon.
Leonardo Bruni was without a doubt perceived as the most important
humanist of the first half of the fifteenth century. He is generally acknowl-
edged to be the princeps of his age, the first one to approximate Ciceronian
style. His massive corpus of translations, his many works of historiography,
and his fame as apostolic secretary and chancellor of Florence made him an
authority on humanism and a model for others. Even a more critical later
age could not disavow his accomplishments. Similarly, Poggio’s status as an
orator and especially as a manuscript-hunter earned him enduring fame.
Among teachers, the pair of Guarino Veronese and Vittorino da Feltre
stands out (although Guarino is sometimes considered the greater man).
They educated the humanists in Greek and Latin who went on to diffuse
the new learning throughout Italy. The founder of the whole tradition, in
the opinion of the majority of our authors, is Manuel Chrysoloras, who
reinstituted the teaching of Greek in Italy and thereby provided humanists
with the necessary sensitivity to classical canons of style.86 It is Chrysoloras
82 Cf. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, pp. 104–105 (towards the end of the
section “Glory” in Part Two: “The Development of the Individual”).
83 See Chapter 3, notes 20 and 21. 84 See Chapter 4, note 19.
85 This group is assembled in the Appendix, which lists all the humanists treated by our various
authors.
86 Cf. Vincenzo Fera, “La leggenda di Crisolora,” in Maisano and Rollo (eds.), Manuele Crisolora
e il ritorno del greco in Occidente, pp. 11–18, esp. 15–16. For a different view of where exactly to
place Chrysoloras in the genealogy of humanism, see Mazzocco, “Petrarch: Founder of Renaissance
Humanism?,” pp. 228–229, 237.
who enabled the humanists to move beyond the classicizing Latin of
their predecessors and simply to write classical (especially Ciceronian)
Latin.87
One level below these Olympians of humanism hover two individ-
uals whose importance proves a matter of controversy. One is Niccolò
Niccoli, whom Piccolomini, Facio, and especially Manetti considered an
outstanding humanist. In addition to his prodigious erudition in Latin
and activity hunting out and copying manuscripts (and virtuous life, in
Manetti’s account), Niccoli’s glory lay in his donation of his book col-
lection for the creation of a public library. To a later age, however, his
humanist credentials were suspect. Cortesi calls him a friend of humanists,
not a man of eloquence, and Sabellico ignores him entirely.88 The other
controversial figure is Lorenzo Valla. Biondo mentions that his Elegantiae
spread standards of humanist Latin throughout Italy. Cortesi praises him
as a teacher but criticizes his style and also depicts him as “annoying and
abusive.” For Sabellico, however, Valla represents the great turning point
in early humanism, the first person to recover truly classical Latin and to
effect its acceptance as a new norm throughout Italy.
Finally, a few other humanists stand out who, however, are depicted
by only one author as playing a central role in humanism’s develop-
ment. Giovanni Malpaghini da Ravenna comes to the fore in Biondo’s
account as the intermediary between Petrarch and the generation of Bruni,
as the teacher who passed on Petrarch’s longing for classical Latin to
the individuals who would ultimately satisfy it. In Sabellico’s dialogue,
Gasparino Barzizza is portrayed as the first to “cast his glance on the
shadow of ancient eloquence” and as the fountainhead of the tradition of
humanist teaching. When considering a later stage of humanism’s evo-
lution, Sabellico identifies Domizio Calderini as the first great philo-
logical commentator, thus putting him at the head of a literary tradi-
tion with the potential to re-establish ancient eloquence permanently;
his heir is Poliziano. As for poetry, Facio highlights Panormita’s revival
of the elegy. Cortesi, however, maintains that the Muses languished until
87 This distinction follows Witt, Footsteps, p. 28. Classicizing Latin is Latin written with the intention
of imitating classical style but which does not necessarily succeed (though it might). Classical Latin
is that which more or less accords with classical canons of style (as understood both by modern
classicists and by fifteenth-century humanists).
88 Biondo seems to have the same misgivings as Cortesi. He does not include Niccoli in his history of
humanism but says of him elsewhere in Italia illustrata, “In our day Niccolò Niccoli, although he
wrote nothing, was both learned and helpful to many young men in applying themselves to study”
(Biondo, II, ii.29: “Nicolaus Nicoli aetate nostra, etsi nihil scripsit, doctus tamen fuit et multis
adulescentibus ut litteris operam darent opem attulit”).
Pontano’s reintroduction of metrical and stylistic varietas. Regarding prose,
Cortesi singles out George of Trebizond and Pomponio Leto as partic-
ularly influential teachers. Their instruction was largely responsible for
the true recovery of good style, which Cortesi places in Aeneas Sylvius
Piccolomini, Antonio Campano, Theodore Gaza, Platina, and lastly, in
himself.
A case apart is Petrarch, although less because of disputes among our
authors than on account of his reputation among modern scholars. The
latter have long been disposed to consider Petrarch the founder, or father,
of humanism, although Ronald Witt has firmly placed him in the third
generation after Lovato dei Lovati and Albertino Mussato.89 The strength
of Witt’s argument is, in his own words, that “only when [Petrarch] is
seen as a third-generation humanist can his enormous contribution to
humanism – indeed, his single-handed rerouting of the movement – be
appreciated.”90 The irony, as we have seen throughout this study, is that
fifteenth-century histories of the movement tend to consider Petrarch at
best a proto-humanist.91 Furthermore, their aloofness from Petrarch had
nothing to do with his ideas or outlook, but solely with the quality of
his Latin. This observation has little bearing on Witt’s argument, but it
does underline the fact that Quattrocento humanists believed they had
completely superseded their Trecento forerunners. Manetti excepted, our
authors present Petrarch as a kind of Moses of humanism: he initiated
the journey to the promised land of eloquence but was himself destined
not to enter in.92 Or to put it another way, rather than the father or the
grandson of humanism, to fifteenth-century eyes he appeared as a kind
of grandfather in his dotage. His child – the notion of classical Latin
as an ideal of broad cultural and moral renewal – had to join with the
teaching of Manuel Chrysoloras in order to give birth to true humanism,
which entailed not merely the yearning for, but the actual achievement
of, real eloquence. Nevertheless, there was an influential group within the
89 Witt, Footsteps, pp. 18–19, claims that before him only Roberto Weiss truly considered Petrarch’s
forerunners full and not “pre-” humanists. Mazzocco, “Petrarch: Founder of Renaissance Human-
ism?,” pp. 215–221, depicts post-war scholarship on Petrarch’s predecessors differently, but he does
not engage directly with Witt’s arguments. An astounding indication of Petrarch’s status in the
scholarly and popular imagination is the ca. 32,300 Google hits generated by the string “Petrarch
father of humanism” (accessed December 17, 2012).
90 Witt, Footsteps, p. 21.
91 For a different view, based on some of the same texts, see Mazzocco, “Petrarch: Founder of
Renaissance Humanism?,” esp. pp. 221–238.
92 To use a metaphor previously employed by Hans Baron: “Moot Problems of Renaissance Inter-
pretation: An Answer to Wallace K. Ferguson,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 19 (1958), pp. 26–34
(cited in Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance, p. 37 and p. 172, n. 6).
humanist movement according to whom Petrarch was a true humanist.
Such men could be found not only in Florence but all over the peninsula.
Thus even the authors who dismiss his style most forcefully feel obliged
to pay him lip service and to justify his effective exclusion. Theirs is a
defensive position, and it gives the impression that they are combating
what they consider to be a common but misguided opinion. The most
that our authors are generally willing to admit is that Petrarch was a noble
forerunner, the first to recognize the value of eloquence but ultimately
blind to its true form.
Less indulgence is shown for other fourteenth-century figures. Preced-
ing Petrarch, Dante is called a humanist only by Manetti and is either
ignored or criticized by others. Those who come after Petrarch are gen-
erally censured, though less for not surpassing him than for not even
approaching his achievement. Aside from Manetti’s uniquely sympathetic
portrayal, Boccaccio is either ignored, disparaged (Cortesi), or mentioned
as an afterthought (Sabellico). Biondo considers Giovanni Malpaghini da
Ravenna an important founder but one who failed to achieve a proper
style, and Cortesi comes to similar conclusions about the other Giovanni
(Conversini) da Ravenna. Coluccio Salutati, in part because his proximity
to Bruni and the school of Chrysoloras encourages too close a compari-
son, is treated even worse, his Latin generally condemned.93 Like Petrarch,
these figures are mentioned as if by obligation. The impression given by
our authors is that, much more than Petrarch, they are wrongly considered
humanists by others and the record must be set straight: they should not
even be considered forerunners.
The individuals at the top of this pantheon of humanism are not those
commonly identified by modern scholars as leaders of the movement, and
vice versa. If one had to name the two most prominent figures in Italian
humanism, a knee-jerk reaction might be “Petrarch and Valla,” or “Pico
and Poliziano,” but probably not “Chrysoloras and Bruni.”94 Bruni was
93 Biondo, too, discounts Salutati in the same place he describes Niccoli: “Coluccio Salutati was
considered eloquent, though he had been schooled before imitation of Cicero’s eloquence began
to be known to the young men of his age, and he wrote extensively, though leaving an impression
more of good sense and learning than of eloquence” (Biondo, II, ii.29: “Colutius vero Salutatus,
etsi prius didicerit quam Ciceronianae imitatio eloquentiae sui saeculi adulescentibus nota esse
coepisset, et eloquens est habitus et multa scripsit prudentiam magis et doctrinam quam eloquentiam
redolentia”).
94 Consider, to take two emblematic examples, that Garin’s Ritratti di umanisti depicts the following
seven grandi umanisti: Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Paolo Toscanelli, Guarino Veronese, Filippo
Beroaldo il Vecchio, Poliziano, Savonarola, and Pico; and that Albert Rabil, Jr.’s edited collection
Renaissance Humanism contains discrete treatments of only two individual humanists: Petrarch (chs.
4–6) and Valla (ch. 13, where Valla is referred to in the section title as “Italy’s Leading Humanist”),
the most widely read contemporary author of the Quattrocento. Yet he
has been consistently underestimated in modern scholarship relative to his
contemporary popularity, and here we see that that popularity is confirmed
by his singular status among leading humanists.95 As for Chrysoloras, most
scholars would acknowledge his contribution to humanism but would
stop short of calling him a proper humanist, on account of either his
Greek origin or his poor Latin credentials. But fifteenth-century humanists
generally considered him not only one of their own but also the true father
of their tradition.96
One final observation must be made regarding the pantheon of human-
ism: it is entirely male. Not one woman appears in these catalogues of
illustrious men. That humanism was largely a man’s world, and that its
leaders considered it a boys’ club, should come as no surprise, but this
omission is nevertheless important. Scholars have gone to great pains
in the last several decades to document the contributions of female
humanists.97 Furthermore, three women in particular, all from north-
ern Italy (and thus certainly known to Sabellico, if not to Cortesi), had
achieved widespread fame by the final decades of the fifteenth century:
Laura Cereta, Cassandra Fedele, and Isotta Nogarola.98 Margaret King
has noted that some “male humanists praised learned women extrava-
gantly” while others reacted to their accomplishment with uncertainty,
defensiveness, or hostility.99 Our authors, in contrast, simply ignore
them. From their point of view, to adapt Kristeller’s famous quip about
in addition to which one could add ch. 28: “Quattrocento Humanism and Classical Scholarship,”
which focuses on Poliziano.
95 A point made several times by James Hankins, especially in his Repertorium Brunianum: A Critical
Guide to the Writings of Leonardo Bruni, vol. I: Handlist of Manuscripts (Rome, 1997), pp. xv–
xxi. Hankins notes (p. xx) that Valla is the most studied of all humanists despite his very small
contemporary audience, whereas Bruni has been largely neglected despite his massive contemporary
popularity. What Hankins has concluded based on manuscript survival is fully confirmed in
this study of the self-conception of humanism: Bruni was undoubtedly the leading figure of
Quattrocento humanism.
96 Incidentally, Chrysoloras continued to be seen as the father of philological humanism well into the
sixteenth century. The German Hellenist Martin Crusius, for example, in his Germano-Graeciae
libri sex (Basileae, 1585), made a point of tracing his own scholarly genealogy back to Chrysoloras,
by way of Johannes Reuchlin (p. 234). See Walther Ludwig, Hellas in Deutschland: Darstellungen
der Gräzistik im deutschsprachigen Raum aus dem 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1998). I would
like to thank Prof. Dr. Ludwig for this reference.
97 For example in the series “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe,” edited by Margaret King
and Albert Rabil, Jr.
98 See Margaret King, “Book-Lined Cells: Women and Humanism in the Early Italian Renais-
sance,” in Rabil (ed.), Renaissance Humanism, vol. I, pp. 434–453. The fame of these three women
is noted on p. 434, n. 2. Cf. also Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities,
pp. 29–57.
99 King, “Book-Lined Cells,” pp. 441–445 (quotation at 441).
philosophers, women were neither exemplary nor monstrous humanists,
but no humanists at all.
Beyond the mirror

The self-conception of Italian humanism reconstructed here resurrects a
world of defunct paradigms and discarded clichés. At times humanists even
appear as farsighted world-shapers, bearing the light of ancient culture to
dispel the decadence of a benighted, stultifying medium aevum. Obviously,
we must resist the temptation to be transported back to an era of scholar-
ship before the “revolt of the medievalists,” when far too much credence
was given to the humanists’ own boasts about their accomplishments.100
Equally important, however, we must resist the temptation to discount the
humanists’ self-conception as alien to reality, as useless for understanding
wie es eigentlich gewesen ist. Although the object we now behold is admit-
tedly no universal truth but a subjective perception, it is nevertheless a
perception that lies at the core of humanist identity. And in this sense it
is largely coextensive with what humanists were, although not necessarily
with what they actually did. The humanists’ own self-conception reveals
which aspects of their activities had the greatest importance to them, thus
helping us to understand more reliably what it was that individuals saw in
themselves and others that they identified with humanism. Furthermore,
the way humanists viewed themselves, their own understanding of their
ideals, accounts in large part for the decisions they made, including the
decision to join the humanist game rather than some other; it supplies a
rationale for humanism.
Needless to say, a mere six authors, no matter how important they
may be, can hardly provide a new paradigm for defining humanism. They
can, however, indicate a new interpretive direction, one that gives insight
into facets of the movement heretofore unstudied, that enters into the
humanists’ mental world with categories that they themselves fashioned,
enunciated, and cherished rather than with ones immediately meaningful
to modern scholars. And in so doing it can lay bare the affective connection
to the studia humanitatis, or studia eloquentiae, that so many humanists
forcefully evinced but that so far has eluded historical explanation.
100 On the “revolt of the medievalists,” see Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought, pp. 329–
385; and, for a recent evaluation, William Caferro, Contesting the Renaissance (Oxford, 2011),
pp. 8–12.
Furthermore, the insights gained from this approach open the way to
grasping humanism as a unitary phenomenon from the thirteenth through
the fifteenth centuries and beyond, especially when harnessed to Kristeller’s
combined work on humanism and to Ronald Witt’s study of Renaissance
literary classicism.101 The stylistic ideal, informed by grand cultural goals
and visions, spans from Lovato and the Paduans, through Petrarch, Salutati,
Bruni, and Valla (and yes, apparently even Ficino), to Poliziano, Bembo,
Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Vives. It makes “Renaissance humanism” more
than an umbrella term for “intellectuals” in the era between high scholas-
ticism and science. That this period itself can be broken up into distinct
phases and classified according to varying and competing currents (and
different notions of what in practice constitutes proper style) does not
undermine the enduring constant of classical Latin eloquence as a source
of inspiration, as an object of longing, as an expression of excellence. From
a broader perspective, the stylistic ideal also connects humanism meaning-
fully to (while in no way equating it with) other distinct traditions, both
later and earlier: to the great age of philology in Leiden (embodied in figures
like Scaliger, Heinsius, and Salmasius), to the classicism of Charlemagne’s
court, and to the very Golden and Silver Ages of Latin. It helps us grasp
why humanists thought what they were doing was not something new but
rather something ancient, something eternal.
Another benefit to this interpretation is that it explains how individuals
oriented in such diverse intellectual and even ideological directions could
nevertheless recognize each other as being in the same class. Clearly some
humanists tried to educate the ruling elite, others to change the nature of
education, some to defend republics, others to praise principalities, some
to increase religiosity, others to promote secularization, some to inculcate
moral reform, others fundamentally to alter the fabric of society – all seem-
ingly disparate if not mutually exclusive activities. But if one starts from the
position that humanists were generally united in their yearning for classical
eloquence, then each of these undertakings emerges as a different cultural
application of one common endeavor. Thus the worst thing one could say
of another humanist was not that he was a republican or a monarchist, a
religious or a pagan, but rather that he was a poor stylist.102 This view also
adds a layer of comprehensibility to the enduring success of humanism and
its appeal for the ruling classes: on the one hand, humanism was linked to
101 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and its Sources; Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and the Arts; Kristeller,
Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters; Witt, Footsteps.
102 Cf. Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance, pp. 128–130; and Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti, pp. 50–57.
attractive cultural aspirations and ideals, to moral and intellectual excel-
lence; on the other, it was malleable enough to be fitted to any number of
specific aims and contexts.
Finally, this particular mode of understanding humanism may dissolve
the haze that has accumulated around humanism’s significance since Euge-
nio Garin and Paul Oskar Kristeller wrought their powerful interpretations,
thereby shaping vastly different scholarly traditions. For Garin, humanism
constituted a transformational period in human history, a moment of
awakening in which a searching dialogue with specific ancient authors
attuned Petrarch and his heirs to the true nature of their being. He recog-
nized the importance of Latin, of rhetoric, of eloquence to this enterprise;
for this was the mode in which humanists communed with the ancients
and with each other, thus bringing “humanity to self-awareness through
the relationship established with others in their strenuous effort to reach
an ever higher form of life.”103 Whatever the merits of this understanding
of humanism as a meta-argument or in the sense of Wirkungsgeschichte,
it does not reflect the sense the humanists had of their own enterprise,
at least insofar as we have been able to reconstruct it from their own
testimony. There are important points of overlap, to be sure, such as an
orientation towards antiquity, a dedication to eloquent Latin, and a belief
in the revolutionary nature of their program. But their program, from their
point of view, was not the one Garin identified. The humanists did not
want to construct an ideal city of virtuous citizen-thinkers; they wanted
to restore classical Latin eloquence. Garin saw these goals as inextricably
linked insofar as Latin was the medium for transmitting a set of ideas and
ideals. Therefore he criticized humanists in the late fifteenth and sixteenth
century who, as he saw it, “impoverished” litterae by turning them into
“rhetoric divorced from every concrete value.”104 Yet as we have seen, the
humanists assigned primary value not to the content of the literature they
sought to imitate but to the form. Indeed, our authors barely talk about
ancient sources at all. Their focus, rather, is on modern works, and even then
they hardly mention content. This is the great difference between Garin
and the humanists, despite his acute receptiveness to the civilizational sig-
nificance they ascribed to humanism. This is why Garin could consider
Petrarch a humanist on par with Bruni and Poliziano but the majority of
Quattrocento humanists could not. For Garin it was Petrarch
103 Garin, Medioevo e rinascimento, p. 115: “umanità fatta consapevole attraverso il rapporto stabilito con
gli altri uomini nell’operoso sforzo di raggiungere una sempre più alta forma di vita” (translation
mine).
104 Garin, L’umanesimo italiano, p. 90: “retorica staccata da ogni valore concreto” (translation mine).
who had approached literature and the studia humanitatis in the full knowl-
edge of their significance and of the value which an education of the mind
through conversation with the great masters of antiquity was bound to have
for the whole of mankind. These masters alone had understood the full
importance of the soul which was to result from the study of the highest
products of the human mind.105
Maybe so, but humanists after Petrarch seem unaware of this importance.
For them the stylistic ideal was not a degeneration of the studia humanitatis,
not “rhetoric divorced from every concrete value,” but rather a cultural
ideal of great magnitude – an ideal that Petrarch, with his bad Latin,
did not live up to. Similarly, Garin explained the humanist contempt for
scholastic writers thus: “The ‘barbarians’ were not barbarians because they
were ignorant of the classics, but because they did not understand them
within the truth of their historical situation.”106 For Biondo, Cortesi, and
Sabellico, however, the “barbarians” were barbarians precisely because they
could not write classical Latin, not because they failed to grasp the historical
Cicero.
Above I adopted Garin’s division between form and content, verba and
res.107 But to distinguish between the two is to miss the humanists’ point.
They believed the form itself had content, a talismanic power to transform
the “the dregs of all time” into a budding Golden Age. How exactly was
this supposed to happen? I am not sure that we can answer this question,
nor am I sure the humanists could have explained it precisely, either. It
has more the quality of an assertion than an argument; it is, as they would
have said, apodictic, not demonstrative. Cortesi comes closest to provid-
ing an explanation with his theory of increasing the potential of ingenium
through ars, but even he does not account for how the leap to civiliza-
tion should follow. In the Elegantiae Valla claimed that all culture stands
and falls with language, relating and conflating the imperium romanum
with the lingua romana.108 Before him Petrarch had equated virtue with
knowledge, the knowledge of Rome and its history, rumbling mantically,
“for who can doubt that Rome would rise again instantly if she began
to know herself?”109 The idea is that by renewing the essence of Roman
antiquity, all the other components of its greatness would return as part
of the package. Was it simple good fortune that, as Biondo Flavio reports,
105 Garin, Italian Humanism, p. 19 (Italian original = L’umanesimo italiano, p. 26).

106 Garin, L’umanesimo italiano, p. 21 (as translated in Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance, p. 35).
107 See Garin, L’umanesimo italiano, p. 90. 108 See Chapter 4, pp. 190, 197–198.
109 Francesco Petrarca, Rerum familiarium libri, vol. I: I–VIII, tr. Aldo S. Bernardo (Albany, 1975),
p. 293 (Ep. fam., VI, 2).
the recovery of Ciceronian eloquence coincided with a period of economic
flourishing, increasing military strength, sundry decades of relative peace,
and apparent stability within Italy? Did the humanists confuse cause and
effect, or perhaps correlation with cause? At any rate, they got heady on
their own wine, and they metamorphosed into maenads of eloquence.
Kristeller argued that it is wrong to read humanism as a chapter in the
history of philosophy or theology, as it was not characterized in the first
instance by philosophical tendencies, schools, or positions, nor was it pro-
pelled primarily by theological currents; a few humanists made undeniable
contributions in these areas, but humanists on the whole were not nec-
essarily deep thinkers. This is no reason, however, to discount humanism
as anti-intellectual or anti-philosophical or, as Kristeller did, define it in a
thought-vacuum sealed off, as Garin would have said, from every concrete
value. For the humanists did have shared ideas, values, and ideals, the most
powerful of which was the belief in the transformative power of classical
eloquence. It was this ideal that generated humanism’s momentum, that
made it attractive to others, that sold it to elites, and that convinced gen-
erations across centuries, long after humanism itself had perished, that an
education in literae humaniores was indispensable to a proper and good life.
Thus if we feel compelled to read humanism as a chapter in the history of
something, then in the history of mentalities or, better, in the history of cul-
ture broadly construed (Kulturgeschichte). Humanism is the chapter whose
protagonists believed, consciously or less so, that participation in the world
of eloquent Latin literature had profound civilizational consequences.
What to do, then, with the Kristeller thesis? Its painstaking precision
and sober frankness with regard to so many aspects of humanism have
made it the sturdiest interpretation, grounded most deeply in palpable
facts. Yet none of these facts, in the way they are presented by Kristeller,
can explain why anyone wanted to be a humanist, why humanism picked
up speed as a movement and achieved such remarkable success. Kristeller
famously sought to de-ideologize humanism, to divorce it from both mod-
ern ideological concerns and teleological or Whiggish understandings of
history. In the process of trying to get to the bottom of “the thing in itself,”
however, he neglected the ethos of humanism, tending to view humanists’
cultural claims as inter-disciplinary bickering or professional jockeying, or
simply ignoring them altogether. Yet no cultural movement exists without
an object of striving, i.e., the very thing towards which a “move-ment”
proceeds. This telos may be elusive, seeming to change too often to permit
of scientific classification, but to describe a movement in a way that is
hermetically sealed off from that striving, however difficult it is to discern,
is necessarily to render it in a radically distorted image. Indeed, the more
precise one becomes with regard to all other details the less sense they make,
like a painting put under such high magnification that one no longer sees
any color but only the microscopic makeup of the pigment – precise and
fascinating, but lacking meaning unless one is interested in color produc-
tion, not the master’s hand. There is presumably less intentionality in a
cultural movement like humanism than in a museum Meisterwerk. But
though the former should not be viewed in a naı̈vely teleological way,
neither can the importance of foresight, programming, or aspiration be
underestimated.
When Kristeller’s image of humanism is focused through the lens our
authors provide of the humanists’ self-conception, however, the total pic-
ture is brought into sharp relief. It makes sense why humanists attached
such importance to rhetoric – because this art underpinned eloquent oratio
more than any other; why they tended to work as secretaries, chancellors,
ambassadors, teachers, and tutors – because these occupations provided
the best context in which to exercise eloquence, or at least to make a living
off the eloquence they had worked so hard to attain; why they tended to
avoid sophisticated, systematic debate on theology, metaphysics, cosmol-
ogy, or logic – because they were primarily interested in eloquence, not the
scholastic philosophy of their time; and why they focused on studies and
literature that came to be grouped institutionally under the term studia
humanitatis – because grammar and rhetoric provided the foundation for
eloquence, while poetry, history, and moral philosophy were realms per-
fectly suited to eloquent expression (and certainly much better suited than
scholastic philosophy and theology, law, and medicine). Why, finally, the
obsession with eloquence? Because, far from being a mere aesthetic con-
cern, it was the portal to past and future greatness, individual perfection,
cultural renewal.
Placing humanism on the cultural landscape in this way may even
recoup the disciplinary disadvantage that has resulted from the last cen-
tury’s exacting revision and reduction of Burckhardt’s romantic thesis, and
especially from the equation of humanism with Latin style. As Eckhard
Keßler lamented, humanism now seems “a minor concept within the sin-
gular discipline of literary history,” cut off from the wider historical trends
it was once thought to explain.110 As we have seen, humanists who pursued
the stylistic ideal did not therefore conceive of themselves as occupying a
mere chapter in the history of literature. On the contrary, they thought they
110 Keßler, “Renaissance Humanism: The Rhetorical Turn,” p. 182.
were making history itself, reanimating civilization with the high-voltage
current of bonae litterae. For while the humanists were materially obsessed
with rhetoric, Latin, and eloquence, three interests that might seem to us
idiosyncratic, specialized, even boring, they also dedicated themselves to
the eternal, transcendent goals of cultural rejuvenation, human flourishing,
and the good life. Few ideals could be more noble, and few movements that
embodied them were as successful or influential as Renaissance humanism.
Appendix
The pantheon of humanism
This appendix enumerates the humanists treated in the main sources for
this study. NB, it does not contain all the names mentioned in the respec-
tive accounts, but only those expressly said to be involved in humanism.
Thus, for example, Piccolomini mentions that Eugenius IV sent Ambrogio
Traversari to the Council of Constance, and that Bartolomeo da Montepul-
ciano was a faithful servant and good friend of Martin V, but neither pope
appears in the pantheon of humanism since their mentions seem casual.
Unavoidably, a certain amount of subjectivity subtends these distinctions.
The basic intention is to provide a schematic overview of the individuals
deemed worthy by their associates of inclusion in the humanist corona.
A perusal of these lists reveals how cohesive the movement was, in that
so many of the same individuals consistently appear as leading humanists
despite differences in the chronological, geographical, and authorial prove-
nance of the sources. It also shows how tiny the movement was, at least
in its upper ranks. Even in the more comprehensive (and later) accounts
of Cortesi and Sabellico, the total number of humanists named, including
ones whose fame has not stood the test of time, does not reach one hundred.
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, De viris illustribus (1445–1550)

Leonardo Bruni
Coluccio Salutati
Manuel Chrysoloras
Francesco Petrarch
Niccolò Niccoli
Ambrogio Traversari
Guarino Veronese
Poggio Bracciolini
Andrea Biglia
Antonio da Rho
281
Bartolomeo Aragazzi da Montepulciano
Giovanni Aurispa
Antonio Beccadelli (Panormita)
Carlo Marsuppini
Berto di Antonio Berti
Francesco Patrizi da Siena
∗
Francesco Barbaro
∗
Cosimo de’ Medici
∗
Francesco Filelfo
∗
Vittorino da Feltre
∗
These individuals are mentioned with reference to humanism in other
biographies, but they do not appear in the history of humanism included
in the biography of Bruni.
Biondo Flavio, Italia illustrata (1448–1453)

Giovanni Malpaghini da Ravenna
Leonardo Bruni
Francesco Petrarch
Pier Paolo Vergerio
Ognibene Scola
Roberto de’ Rossi
Jacopo Angeli da Scarperia
Poggio Bracciolini
Guarino Veronese
Vittorino da Feltre
Manuel Chrysoloras
Gasparino Barzizza
Nicola de’ Medici
Gerardo Landriani
Cosimo of Cremona
Biondo Flavio
Leonardo Giustinian
George of Trebizond
Francesco Filelfo
Lorenzo Valla
Pietro Perleone
Jacopo Perleone
Porcellio Pandoni
Tommaso Pontano
The pantheon of humanism 283
Tommaso Seneca da Camerino
∗
Giovanni Pontano
∗
Giovanni Pontano is mentioned with reference to humanism in another
section of Italia illustrata, but not in the comprehensive account of human-
ism included in the description of the Romagna. Many other humanists,
such as Coluccio Salutati and Niccolò Niccoli, appear in the context of
the cities with which they were affiliated. I have made no attempt to track
them here.
Bartolomeo Facio, De viris illustribus (1456)

Antonio Loschi
Francesco Filelfo
Giovanni Marrasio
Tito Strozzi
Giovanni Pontano
Manuel Chrysoloras
Pier Paolo Vergerio
Leonardo Bruni
Ambrogio Traversari
Niccolò Niccoli
Carlo Marsuppini
Leonardo Giustinian
Leon Battista Alberti
Vittorino da Feltre
Niccolò Perotti
Guiniforte Barzizza
Leodrisio Crivelli
Francesco Griffolini
Francesco Barbaro
Antonio Cassarino
Poggio Bracciolini
Guarino Veronese
Giovanni Aurispa
Giannozzo Manetti
Jacopo Bracelli
Basilios Bessarion
George of Trebizond
Niccolò Sagundino
Girolamo da Castello (a.k.a. Girolamo Castelli)
Lampo Birago
Lorenzo Valla
Pier Candido Decembrio
Timoteo Maffei (a.k.a. Timothy of Verona)
Giovanni Tortelli
Gregorio Tifernate
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini
Jacopo da San Cassiano (a.k.a. Jacopo of Cremona)
Theodore Gaza
Gasparino Barzizza
∗
Alfonso of Aragon
∗
Alfonso is not given his own biography among the humanists but rather
among the kings and princes. He is, however, consistently memorialized
for his patronage of individual humanists in their respective biographies.
Giannozzo Manetti, Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum

vita (1440)
Dante Alighieri
Francesco Petrarch
∗
Barlaam
Giovanni Boccaccio
∗
Leontius Pilatus
∗
Barlaam and Pilatus do not receive independent biographies but appear
in the vitae of Petrarch and Boccaccio, respectively
Giannozzo Manetti, De illustribus longaevis (1439)

Francesco Petrarch
Coluccio Salutati
Niccolò Niccoli
∗
Luigi Marsili
∗
Manuel Chrysoloras
∗
These figures do not receive independent biographies but appear in the
vita of Niccolò Niccoli
Giannozzo Manetti, Contra Judaeos et Gentes (1452–1458)∗

Dante Alighieri
Francesco Petrarch
Giovanni Boccaccio
Lombardo della Seta
Barlaam
Leontius Pilatus
Giovanni Villani
Benvenuto da Imola
Zanobi da Strada
Filippo Villani
Coluccio Salutati
Antonio Loschi
Matteo Villani
Domenico di Bandino of Arezzo
Roberto de’ Rossi
Leonardo Giustinian
Francesco Barbaro
Marco Lippomano
Leonardo Bruni
Ambrogio Traversari
Carlo Marsuppini
Sicco Polenton
∗
The vita of Dante is preceded by entries on Guido Cavalcante, Brunetto
Latini, and Pierre Bersuire
Paolo Cortesi, De hominibus doctis (ca. 1489)

Manuel Chrysoloras
Dante Alighieri
Francesco Petrarch
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Conversini da Ravenna
Coluccio Salutati
Leonardo Bruni
Guarino Veronese
Niccolò Niccoli
Giovanni Aurispa
Pier Candido Decembrio
∗
Niccolò Sagundino
Pier Paolo Vergerio
Sicco Polenton
Maffeo Vegio
Ambrogio Traversari
Cosimo de’ Medici
Leonardo Giustinian
Carlo Marsuppini
Giovanni Tortelli
Nicholas V (Tommaso Parentucelli)
Francesco Barbaro
Ermolao Barbaro
Giannozzo Manetti
Palla Strozzi
Benedetto Accolti
Poggio Bracciolini
George of Trebizond
Pomponio Leto
Antonio Loschi
Vittorino da Feltre
∗∗
Gasparino Barzizza
Ognibene da Lonigo
Lorenzo Valla
Alfonso of Aragon
Giovan Pietro da Lucca
Rinuccio da Castiglione (Rinuccio Aretino)
Cristoforo Romano (Cristoforo Persona)
Leonardo Dati
Bartolomeo Facio
Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger
Pietro Odi da Montopoli
Gregorio Tifernate
Giorgio Merula
Antonio Pacini da Todi
Biondo Flavio
Francesco Filelfo
Senofonte Filelfo
Gianmario Filelfo
Porcellio Pandoni
Giovanni Pontano
Sigismondo Malatesta
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II)
Domenico Domenici
Giovanni Andrea Bussi
Basinio Basini da Parma
Roberto Valturio
Antonio Campano
Niccolò Perotti
Domizio Calderini
Theodore Gaza
Basilios Bessarion
John Argyropoulos
Donato Acciaiuoli
Matteo Palmieri
Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi)
∗∗∗
[Jacopo Ammannati]
Settimuleio Campano (il Campanino)
Paolo Emilio Buccabella
Niccolò Valla
∗∗∗∗
[Antonio Cortesi]
Janus Pannonius
Andrea Contrario
Francesco Griffolini
Angelo Sabino
Bonino Mombrizio
Cola Montano
Andrea Brenta
Paolo Marsi
Giovan Battista Capranica (Flavio Pantagato)
Antonio Geraldini
Martino Filetico
Daniel Francinus
Bartolomeo Lampridio
Cherubino Quarqualio
Antonio Lolli
Francesco Accolti d’Arezzo
Bernardo Giustinian
Lorenzo Bonincontri di S. Miniato
Francesco dal Pozzo (Poetonus)
Ludovico Carbone
∗∗∗∗∗
[Cosimo de’ Medici, Piero de’ Medici, Lorenzo de’ Medici]
Characters in the narrative frame:

Paolo Cortesi
Alessandro Farnese (Pope Paul III)
∗∗∗∗∗∗
Antonio
Dedicatee:
Lorenzo de’ Medici
∗
Erroneously listed twice under different names: Niccolò Euboico and
Niccolò Sagundino
∗∗
Could also be Gaspare da Verona (name in text given as Gasparinus
Veronensis)
∗∗∗
Named as someone associated with humanism but unworthy of true
inclusion due to absence of writings
∗∗∗∗
Named in a digression whose purpose is solely to honor Paolo Cortesi’s
father, who was a famous jurist
∗∗∗∗∗
Praised as patrons of humanism in the dedicatory letter
∗∗∗∗∗∗
This mysterious character has been variously identified as Giovanni
Antonio Sulpizio da Veroli and Antonio Augusto Baldo (or Valdo)
Marcantonio Sabellico, De latinae linguae reparatione (ca. 1489)

Gasparino Barzizza
Leonardo Bruni
Poggio Bracciolini
Guarino Veronese
Maffeo Vegio
Pier Paolo Vergerio
∗
[Manuel Chrysoloras]
Francesco Barbaro
Leonardo Giustinian
Carlo Marsuppini
Vittorino da Feltre
Biondo Flavio
Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger
Antonio Pacini da Todi
Francesco Petrarch
Giovanni Boccaccio
Lorenzo Valla
Francesco Filelfo
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II)
Basilios Bessarion
George of Trebizond
Gregorio Tifernate
Niccolò Perotti
Porcellio Pandoni
Gianmario Filelfo
Ognibene da Lonigo
Bernardo Giustinian
Pietro Barozzi
Theodore Gaza
Marsilio Ficino
Ermolao Barbaro
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Pomponio Leto
Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi)
Giovanni Simonetta
Donato Acciaiuoli
Antonio Campano
Galeotto Marzio
Angelo Sabino
Coriolano Cippico
Palladio Negri
Giovanni Pontano
Tito Strozzi
Giovanni Stefano Emiliano (il Cimbriaco)
Cinzio da Ceneda (Pietro Leoni)
Battista Spagnoli (Mantuanus)
Francesco Ottavio Cleofilo
Publio Fausto Andrelini
Niccolò Lelio Cosmico
Calimaco Esperiente (Filippo Buonaccorsi)
Giovanni Tortelli
Giuniano Maio
Domizio Calderini
Giorgio Merula
Paolo Marsi
Pietro Marsi
Antonio Volsco
Bernardino Cillenio
Antonio Partenio da Lazise
Filippo Beroaldo the Elder
Cristoforo Landino
Bartolomeo della Fonte
Francesco Maturanzio
Ubertino Clerico da Crescentino
Oliviero d’Arzignano
Giovanni Britannico
Antonio Costanzi
Giovanni Antonio Sulpizio da Veroli
Angelo Poliziano
Giovanni Calfurnio
Francesco Negri
Cornelio Vitelli
Giovanni Aurelio Augurelli
Alvise Cippico
Francesco Cinzio Benincasa
Giosippo Faustino
Giovanni Antonio Matteazzi
Cantalicio (Giovanni Battista Valentini)
Antonio Lepido
Cristoforo Pierio Gigante
∗
Mentioned as a teacher but given no independent treatment
Characters in the inner narrative frame:
Marcantonio Sabellico
Benedetto Brugnoli
Battista Guarini
Ermolao Barbaro
Girolamo Donà
Marco Dandolo
Sebastiano Priuli
Niccolò Lippomano
Daniele Renier
Filippo Buonaccorsi (Calimaco Esperiente)
Characters in the outer narrative frame:
Marcantonio Sabellico
Virgilio Zavarise
Jacopo Conte Giuliari
Dedicatee:
Marcantonio Morosini
Bibliography
ABBREVIATIONS
Biondo, II = Flavio, Italy Illuminated.
Cortesi, DHD = Cortesi, De hominibus doctis (ed. Ferraù, 1979).
DBI = Dizionario biografico degli italiani.
Facio, DVI = Facio, De viris illustribus.
Manetti, CJEG = Giannozzo Manetti, Contra Judaeos et Gentes, in Manetti,
Biographical Writings.
DIL = Giannozzo Manetti, De illustribus longaevis, in Manetti, Biographical
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VB = Giannozzo Manetti, Vita Ioannis Boccacii, in Manetti, Biographical
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VD = Giannozzo Manetti, Vita Dantis, in Manetti, Biographical Writings.
VP = Giannozzo Manetti, Vita Francisci Petrarchae, in Manetti, Biographical
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VSen = Giannozzo Manetti, Vita Senecae, in Manetti, Biographical Writings.
VSoc = Giannozzo Manetti, Vita Socratis, in Manetti, Biographical Writings.
Vita = Giannozzo Manetti, Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vita, in
Manetti, Biographical Writings.
Piccolomini, DVI = Piccolomini, De viris illustribus.
PL = Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina.
Sabellico, DLLR = Sabellico, De latinae linguae reparatione.
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Index
Accademia Pomponiana (Accademia Romana), Annius of Viterbo, 55

135, 184 Antiquitates (Annius), 55
Acciaiuoli, Donato, 163, 166, 191, 201, 228, 287, antiquity, 182
289 Cortesi and, 158–159
Accolti, Benedetto, 20, 141, 166, 286 eloquence and, 27, 137, 158
Accolti, Francesco, 163, 287 Facio and, 53–66, 88
Achilleid (Statius), 228 humanists’ investigation of, 213
active life humanists’ love of, 53–66, 75, 88, 204, 212,
Boccaccio’s, 121 236
Bruni’s, 121 Manetti and, 110, 114, 125
Dante’s preference for, 120, 265 Niccoli and, 75
Manetti’s, 121 Sabellico and, 193, 208
primo umanesimo and, 118–119 Antonio da Massa Marittima, 46
promotion of, 120 Antonio da Rho, 44, 49, 282
Sabellico and, 265 Aragazzi, Bartolomeo. See Bartolomeo da
studia humanitatis and, 118 Montepulciano
Adorno, Rafaele, 45–46 Aramaic (language), 219, 250
Aeneas Sylvius. See Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius Argyropoulos, John, 163, 164, 166, 176, 177, 209,
(Pope Pius II) 210, 267, 287
Agricola, Rudolf, 267 Aristotle, 40, 100–101, 117, 148, 163, 216, 218,
Albanese, Gabriella, 251–252 246, 260
Alberigo da Barbiano, 63 De caelo, 84
Alberti, Leon Battista, 6, 32, 64, 81–82, 204, 283, Ethics, 215
286, 288 Metaphysics, 84
biography, 81–82 Arrian, 68
De commodis litterarum atque incommodis, ars dicendi, 253
236 ars dictaminis, 257
De re aedificatoria, 81, 245 ars oratoria, 155
Della pittura, 245 artes liberales, 14, 90, 96–97, 127, 235–236, 246,
Intercoenales, 81 258
Alberto da Sarteano, 46, 48 artes mechanicae, 244
Alfonso of Aragon (the Magnanimous), 33, artificium, 145, 147, 149, 150, 155, 156, 162, 163,
76–77, 119, 169, 261–262, 284, 286 177, 180, 182, 242
Alighieri, Dante, 95–97, 108–109, 113–115, 120, Augurelli, Giovanni Aurelio, 290
142–143, 158, 180–181, 246–247, 251, 272, Aurispa, Giovanni, 40, 44, 47, 74, 155, 282, 283,
284, 285 285
Divine Comedy, 96–97, 99
Ammannati, Jacopo, 281, 287 Baldassarri, Stefano, 92, 93, 101, 109, 113, 124
Anabasis (Arrian), 68 Baldo, Antonio Augusto, 288
Andrelini, Publio Fausto, 225, 289 barbari (barbarians), 164–166, 175–178, 183,
Angelinetum (Marrasio), 84 190–192, 241, 267
324
Index 325
barbarism. See culture and civilization Roma triumphans, 54
Barbaro, Ermolao, 166, 211, 225, 260, 286, 289, students, 59
290 on success of humanism, 237
Barbaro, Francesco, 45, 100, 202, 211, 215, 282, on teachers, 254
283, 285, 286, 288 on translations, 255
Barlaam, 111, 131, 284 on writings of Cicero and Quintilian, 60
Baron, Hans, 6–7, 10, 23, 50, 167, 264 Birago, Lampo, 284
Barozzi, Pietro, 214, 217, 224, 289 Black, Robert, 11, 34, 257
Bartolomeo da Montepulciano, 44, 45, 282 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 15, 91, 99, 114, 121–123,
Barzizza, Gasparino, 45, 60, 103, 147, 201, 208, 208, 251, 272, 284, 285, 288
210–211, 222, 224, 226, 270, 282, 284, 286, biography, 99, 121–123
288 De genealogia deorum, 143–144
Barzizza, Guiniforte, 283 De mulieribus claris, 15
Basini, Basinio, 287 Trattatello in laude di Dante, 95
Baxandall, Michael, 21, 238 Boiardo, Mateo Maria, 252
Beccadelli, Antonio (Panormita), 31, 33, 44, 45, Bologna, 60
52, 68, 75, 140, 149, 163, 222, 225, 270, 271, bonae artes, 75, 85–86, 128–129, 171, 239, 263
282, 283, 286, 288 bonae litterae, 14, 27, 29, 61, 75, 85–86, 134, 239,
Bede, 57, 247 256, 280
Belgicum carmen (Sabino), 231 bonarum litterarum studiosi, 212
belle arti, 64, 84–85, 246 Bonincontri, Lorenzo, 137, 153, 287
Bembo, Pietro, 136, 161–162, 252, 275 Bottari, Guglielmo, 187
Benincasa, Francesco Cinzio, 290 Bracciolini, Poggio, 33, 36–37, 41, 52, 59, 60, 149,
Benvenuta, 129 192, 210, 256, 269, 281, 282, 283, 286, 288
Benvenuto da Imola, 285 De avaritia, 49
Benzo d’Alessandria, 15 Facetiae, 203
Berdini, Alberto. See Alberto da Sarteano Whether an Old Man Should Marry, 43
Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint, 57, 193, 247 Bracelli, Jacopo, 283
Bernardino of Siena, Saint, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50 Brenta, Andrea, 287
Beroaldo, Filippo (the Elder), 190, 230, 272, 290 Brescia, 212, 230
Bersuire, Pierre, 285 Britannico, Giovanni, 290
Berti, Berto di Antonio, 44, 282 Brugnoli, Benedetto, 188, 191, 193, 194, 200, 205,
Bessarion, Basilios, 166, 177, 210, 211, 283, 287, 227, 232–233, 290
288 Bruni, Leonardo, 1–2, 8, 12, 18, 27, 31, 33, 40–48,
Biglia, Andrea, 44, 49, 75, 84, 281 56–58, 65–68, 72–74, 80, 82, 84, 87, 89, 108,
biographies, 15–17, 18, 39, 68–69, 73–74, 81–82, 122, 126, 127, 130, 133, 140–141, 143–144,
83, 90, 92, 93, 95, 99, 100, 106–107, 112–113, 146–147, 151, 153, 161, 162, 164, 166, 175, 181,
116–117, 121–123, 126–127, 130, 134–136, 255 202, 209–210, 215, 216, 222, 224, 225, 226,
Biondo Flavio, 21, 53–66, 88, 175–176, 202, 282, 235, 236, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250,
286, 288 251–253, 256, 264, 266, 270, 273, 275, 276,
chorography and, 55 281, 282, 283, 285, 288
Decades, 54 active life of, 121
on European politics and culture, 246 and Barzizza, 210–211
on humanism, 65, 242, 266 Bracciolini’s funeral oration for, 36–37
Italia Illustrata, 18, 21, 53–57, 63, 67, 79–89, Ciceronian style of, 52
282–283 as civic humanist, 50–52
on Italian identity, 65, 266 Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, 40, 58,
on Lorenzo Valla, 270 94, 100, 104, 236
on Middle Ages, 243 History of the Florentine People, 51, 107, 202
multilingualism and, 251 Laudatio Florentinae urbis, 51
oratory, 149 Memoirs, 1–2, 14
patrons, 262 on Middle Ages, 243
renaissance of belle arti and, 64 multilingualism and, 251
restoration of Latin and, 201 Oratio in nebulonem maledicum, 71, 94
Roma instaurata, 54 orations, 173
326 Index
Bruni, Leonardo (cont.) Cicero, 21, 24–25, 33, 41–43, 52–54, 58–60, 62,
in pantheon of humanism, 269, 272 72, 74–75, 86–87, 89, 96–98, 114, 115, 120,
revival of ancient funeral oratory, 149 133–183, 192, 194, 201, 226, 235, 237, 238,
on Salutati’s Latin, 105 239, 248, 264, 277
vernacular translations, 220 Brutus, 15, 19, 137, 154, 156–157, 177, 182–183
Vite di Dante e del Petrarca (1436), 94, 114, 119 De oratore, 41, 51, 59, 60, 110, 145, 160
Brutus (Cicero), 15, 19, 137, 154, 156–157, 177, Epistolae ad Familiares, 110–111, 183, 228
182–183 Letters to Atticus, 60, 110–111
Brutus, Marcus Junius, 182–183 Orator, 60, 110, 148, 151
Buccabella, Paolo Emilio, 287 Ciceronianism, 19
Budé, Guillaume, 22 Cortesi and, 136, 139
Buonaccorsi, Filippo, 222, 289, 290 linguistic orthodoxy and, 179
Burckhardt, Jacob, 6, 9–10, 64, 269 Roman, 168, 183, 266
Burke, Peter, 244 vernacular and, 161–162
Bussi, Giovanni Andrea, 160, 287 Cillenio, Bernardino, 290
Byzantines, 165–166, 176–177, 209, 267 Cinzio da Ceneda. See Leoni, Pietro
Cippico, Alvise, 290
Calderini, Domizio, 151, 186, 205–206, 223, 226, Cippico, Coriolano, 221, 266, 289
228, 270, 287, 289 civic humanism, 37, 119, 167, 168, 170, 264, 265
Calfurnio, Giovanni, 290 Baron’s theory of, 6–7, 167
Camaldolensian Order, 43 Bruni and, 50–52, 89
Camillus, Marcus Furius, 194–195, 203, 223 Sabellico and, 265
Campano, Giovanni Antonio, 151, 153, 171, 287, Claudian, 107–108
289 Clavuot, Ottavio, 21, 53, 63, 246
Campano, Settimuleio (il Campanino), 152, 162, Cleofilo, Francesco Ottavio, 225, 289
287 Clerico, Ubertino, 228, 290
Cantalicio (Giovanni Battista Valentini), 290 Coccio, Marcantonio. See Sabellico,
Capponi, Nicola. See Cola Montano Marcantonio
Capra, Bartolomeo della, 45, 46 Cochrane, Eric, 68, 176
Capranica, Giovanni Battista. See Pantagato, Cola Montano, 170, 171–172, 183, 287
Flavio Comento sopra la Comedia (Landino), 105, 245
Carbone, Ludovico, 153, 162, 287 commentaries, 226–233
Cassarino, Antonio, 283 Brugnoli on, 227
Castellesi, Adriano, 139, 140 Guarini on, 205, 226, 227–228
Castelli, Girolamo. See Girolamo da Castello Sabellico on, 20, 206–207, 226–233
Castrum Cortesianum, 135 Constantine the Great, 176
Cavalcanti, Guido, 99, 106–107, 108, 243, 285 Constantinople, 60, 112–113, 176, 177–178, 225
Celenza, Christopher, 4, 12–13, 174, 262, 267 contemplative life, 118–120, 122, 124, 126–127,
Celtis, Konrad, 267 132, 170, 171–172, 183, 241, 246, 263–265
Cereta, Laura, 273 Conti, Giovanni, 152
Charlemagne, Emperor, 191, 275 Contra Judaeos et Gentes (Manetti), 18, 93, 99,
Charles VIII, King of France, 242 106–107
chorography, 55 Contrario, Andrea, 166, 170–172, 287
Chronicon (Benzo d’Alessandria), 15 Conversini, Giovanni, 18, 257, 285
Chrysoloras, Manuel, 1–2, 14, 208–211, 235, 251, Dialogues, 143–144
257, 261, 266, 271, 272, 281, 282, 283, 284, Cortesi, Antonio, 287, 288
285, 288 Cortesi, Paolo, 19, 21, 32, 287, 288
humanist eloquence and, 134, 158, 176 on ancient orators, 172–173, 238
as humanist teacher, 58–61, 254, 267 on arts and humanism, 246
Latin eloquence and, 87, 144–146 biography of, 134–136
as an orator, 71–72 Ciceronian Latin eloquence and, 133–134,
in pantheon of humanism, 269, 273 144–146, 147, 148–149
revival of Greek language and, 111–113 Ciceronianism and, 136, 139, 235
as teacher of Bruni, 40–42 on cultural importance of humanism, 241,
Ciceronianus (Erasmus), 19–20, 21 243
Index 327
De cardinalatu, 136, 139, 161–162, 174 De curiae commodis (Lapo da Castiglionchio), 17
De hominibus doctis, 19, 21, 135, 136–140, De excellentia et praestantia hominis (Manetti),
154–157, 158–159, 161–162, 175, 179, 267, 119
285–288 De hominibus doctis (Cortesi), 19, 21, 135,
eloquence and, 157–175 136–140, 154–157, 158–159, 161–162, 175, 179,
on eloquence and barbarism, 175–183 267, 285–288
on Florentine humanism, 266 De illustribus longaevis (Manetti), 18, 93, 112–113,
on Greek eloquence, 162 115, 126–127, 285
on Guarino’s school, 171 De ingenuis moribus (Vergerio), 203
on hierarchy within humanism, 172 De latinae linguae reparatione (Sabellico), 19,
on historiography, 159 184–185, 187–189, 199, 212–225, 265
on human ingenium, 242, 277 De liberorum educatione (Piccolimini), 79–80
on humanism’s disciplinary boundaries, 260 De litteratorum infelicitate (Valeriano), 20
on humanism’s restoration of Ciceronian De mulieribus claris (Boccaccio), 15
Latin, 141–157 De oratore (Cicero), 41, 51, 59, 60, 110, 145,
Liber sententiarum, 136, 260 160
on Lorenzo Valla, 270 De poetis nostrorum temporum (Giraldi), 20
on Middle Ages, 243 De re aedificatoria (Alberti), 81, 245
multilingualism and, 251 De situ orbis (Mela), 55
on pantheon of humanism, 269 De viris et feminis aetate nostra florentibus
on patronage, 168–170, 261 (Giovio), 20
on restoration of ancient literary genres, De viris illustribus casinensibus (Peter the
149–150 Deacon), 15
on specialization in prose or poetry, 160–161 De viris illustribus (Facio), 19, 21, 39, 66–67,
on success of humanism, 237 68–69, 71–72, 76–77, 85, 246, 268, 283–284
on teachers, 254 De viris illustribus (Jerome), 15, 68
on translations, 255 De viris illustribus (Piccolomini), 18, 38–53, 67,
on vernacular language, 161–162, 250 85, 266, 281–282
on virtue and humanism, 241, 263 Decades (Biondo), 54
Cosimo of Cremona, 282 Decembrio, Pier Candido, 155, 252, 285
Cosmico, Niccolò Lelio, 289 della Capra, Bartolomeo, 45
Costanzi, Antonio, 230, 290 della Fonte, Bartolomeo, 13, 166, 223, 290
Council of Basel, 43, 50 Della pittura (Alberti), 245
Cristoforo Romano. See Persona, Cristoforo della Seta, Lombardo, 284
Crivelli, Leodrisio, 283 devotional literature, 214, 216–217, 260
culture and civilization Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum (Bruni), 40,
barbarism and, 175–183 58, 94, 100, 104, 236
classical, 74–75 dictatores, 257
European politics and, 246 Divine Comedy (Dante), 96–97, 99
Cusanus, Nicholas. See Nicholas of Cusa docti viri, 212, 213
Cyriac of Ancona, 17–18, 22 doctrina, 177, 180, 181–182, 239
Itinerarium, 17–18 Domenico di Bandino of Arezzo, 100, 285
Dominici, Domenico, 287
Dal Pozzo, Francesco, 287 Donà, Girolamo, 290
D’Amico, John F., 197–198
Dandolo, Marco, 290 Education of Boys, The (Piccolimini), see De
Dante. See Alighieri, Dante liberorum educatione (Piccolimini)
D’Ascia, Luca, 9 Egnazio, Giambattista, 186
Dati, Leonardo, 286 Eisenstein, Elizabeth, 231
De avaritia (Bracciolini), 49 Elegantiae (Valla), 61, 184, 190, 195–197, 203,
De caelo (Aristotle), 84 209, 224, 254, 277
De cardinalatu (Cortesi), 136, 139, 161–162, 174 Elogia virorum doctorum (Giovio), 20
De commodis litterarum atque incommodis eloquence
(Alberti), 236 Alberti, 81–82, 204
De contemptu mundi (Pope Innocent III), 119 antiquity and, 27, 137, 158
328 Index
eloquence (cont.) glorification of humanism, 84–85
barbarism and, 175–183 on humanism’s disciplinary boundaries,
Barzizza, 60 80–85, 259
books and, 61 on humanist professions, 255
Bracciolini, 60 on humanists’ passion for classical culture,
Bruni, 1–2, 8, 12, 18, 27, 31, 33, 40–48, 56–58, 74–75
65–68, 72–74, 80, 82, 84, 87, 89, 108, 122, on jurisconsults, 82–83
126, 127, 130, 133, 140–141, 143–144, love of antiquity, 53–66, 88
146–147, 151, 153, 161, 162, 164, 166, 175, 181, on orators, 70–75
202, 209–210, 215, 216, 222, 224, 225, 226, on patronage, 67, 76, 78, 88–89, 261
235, 236, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, on poetry, 74, 75, 84, 255
251–253, 256, 264, 266, 270, 273, 275, 276, on poets, 69–70
281, 282, 283, 285, 288 on role of Greek in humanism, 73
Chrysoloras, 87, 134, 144–146, 158, 176 on success of humanism, 237
Cicero, 87 on translations, 254
Cortesi, 133–134, 144–146, 147, 148–149, on vernacular language, 73, 250
157–162, 175–183 on virtue and humanism, 79–80, 263
Dante, 142–143, 158 in younger years, 67–68
Facio, 241 Farnese, Alessandro (Pope Paul III), 138, 142,
Guarino, 147 147, 152, 154–155, 157, 158, 164–165, 168, 170,
Niccoli, 151, 204 172, 178, 182, 267, 287
Petrarch, 42, 57–58, 87, 107–108, 115, 142–143, Faustino, Giosippo, 206, 290
158 Fedele, Cassandra, 273
in poetry, 61–62 Ferrante, King of Naples, 73, 220, 252
praise of, 80 Ferrara, 44, 53, 60, 249, 252, 263, 265
rebirth of, 60 Ficino, Marsilio, 150, 215–216, 225, 260, 289
Sabellico, 193, 199 Filelfo, Francesco, 31, 45, 60, 129, 171–172, 215,
teachers, 60–61 225, 282, 283, 286, 288
Traversari, 80 Filelfo, Gianmario, 286, 288, 289
Valla, 148–149 Filelfo, Senofonte, 286, 288
Vergerio, 80 Filetico, Martino, 160, 161, 287
Emiliano, Giovanni Stefano (il Cimbriaco), Flavio, Biondo. See Biondo Flavio
289 Florence, 6–7, 18, 32, 50, 53, 59, 60, 65, 89,
England, 221 166–168, 184, 212, 220, 222–223, 230, 249,
Enneades (Sabellico), 186, 218 251, 252, 266
Epistolae ad Familiares (Cicero), 228 Fortini, Benedetto, 256
Epistulae (Sabellico), 186 Fortini, Paolo, 256
Erasmus, 22 Foscari, Francesco, 45
Ciceronianus, 19–20, 21 France, 198–199
Esperiente, Callimaco. See Buonaccorsi, Filippo Francinus, Daniel, 160, 287
Este, Niccolò d’, 39 Frederick III, Emperor, 38
Ethics (Aristotle), 215 Fubini, Riccardo, 48
Euboico, Niccolò, 288
Eugenius IV, Pope, 38, 43, 50, 262, 263 Garin, Eugenio, 8, 9, 21, 23, 29–30, 64–65, 91,
Europe, 39–40, 50, 54, 55, 63, 76, 186, 231, 242, 105, 118–119, 128, 167, 179, 246–247, 257,
255 276–277
externi (foreigners), 164–166, 177–178. See also Gaspare da Verona, 288
barbari (barbarians) Gauls, 194–196
Eyck, Jan van, 266 Gaza, Theodore, 68, 151–152, 153, 163, 166, 176,
204, 210, 218, 284, 287, 289
Facetiae (Bracciolini), 203 Geertz, Clifford, 17
Facio, Bartolomeo, 19, 21, 33, 66–69, 286 Gehl, Paul, 206
De viris illustribus, 19, 21, 39, 66–67, 68–69, Gennadius, 15
71–72, 76–77, 85, 246, 268, 283–284 Genoa, 67
on eloquence, 66, 72, 78–81, 83, 241 geography, 63, 141, 265–267
Index 329
George of Trebizond, 61, 147, 163, 177, 211, 271, hagiography, 130–131
282, 283, 286, 288 Hankins, James, 9, 51, 101–102, 115, 173, 259
Geraldini, Antonio, 287 Hebrew (language), 27, 72, 100, 102, 250
Germania (Tacitus), 55 Helmrath, Johannes, 28
Germany, 55, 60, 198–199 Historiae rerum venetarum ab urbe condita
Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 244 (Sabellico), 186, 199
Gigante, Cristoforo Pierio, 290 historiography, 153, 159
Giosippo, Faustino, 205 history, 13. See also studia humanitatis
Giovan Pietro da Lucca, 286 History of the Florentine People (Bruni), 51, 107,
Giovanni da Imola, 47 202
Giovanni da Ravenna. See Conversini, Giovanni; Holmes, George, 105
Malpaghini, Giovanni humanism, 23, 165–166, 279
Giovio, Paolo, 6, 20 barbarism and, 175–183, 184, 190–195, 199,
De viris et feminis aetate nostra florentibus, 20 203, 204, 233, 241, 243
Elogia virorum doctorum, 20 civic, 6–7, 50–52, 167, 264, 265
Giraldi, Lilio Gregorio, 20 community and, 28, 267–269
De poetis nostrorum temporum, 20 contemplative life and, 118–120, 122, 124,
Girolamo da Castello, 284 126–127, 132, 170, 171–172, 183, 241, 246,
Giuliari, Iacopo Conte, 188, 191, 290 263–265
Giustinian, Bernardo, 153, 155, 202, 287, 289 cultural importance of, 4–5, 13, 21, 27–28, 54,
Oratio apud Sixtum IV, 153 66, 134, 199, 240–243
Giustinian, Leonardo, 71, 149, 220, 251, 282, 283, definition of, 258
285, 288 disciplinary boundaries, 95, 258–261
Goldthwaite, Richard, 245 disciplines of studia humanitatis and, 13, 23,
Gonzaga, Gianfrancesco, 45 28, 36, 37, 75, 86–87, 90–117, 118–132, 157,
Goths, 176, 179, 189, 191, 194–195, 232, 241 235–236, 239–240, 241, 258–259
Grafton, Anthony, 6, 11, 79–89, 128, 174, 206 distinction and, 267–269
grammar, 7, 13, 86, 90, 196, 206, 213, 258, 279. early, 118–119, 144
See also studia humanitatis essence of, 235–236
grammarians, 56, 60, 65, 103, 201, 257 Florentine, 166–168, 222–223, 265–266
grammaticus, 103, 257 founders of, 1, 36, 208, 269–274
Gray, Hannah, 11–12, 25–26 geography and, 53, 63, 141, 164–166, 265–267
Greece, 2, 13, 112–113, 134, 156, 176, 193, 201, 209, group identity, 36–37, 235, 255
210, 261–263 honor and, 28, 82, 134, 174, 261, 263, 267–269
Greek (language), 59, 61, 73 Latin language and, 27, 106–111, 189–200,
Boccaccio and, 111 200–212, 212–225, 238, 248–253
Chrysoloras and, 87, 112 metaphors for, 134, 189–192, 196, 200, 243
Cortesi on, 162 modern identity and, 64–65
in Cortesi’s humanists, 162 multilingualism in, 251–252
Facio on, 73 nationality and, 164–165, 265–267
humanism and, 87–88, 217–218 pantheon of, 269–274, 281–290
influence of Byzantine culture on Venice, 209 patriotism and, 265–267
Manetti on, 249 patronage, 75–80, 121–123, 168–170, 224,
Roman eloquence and, 177 261–263
as second language, 73–74 poets, 12, 62, 68, 69–72, 75, 84, 92, 94–95, 96,
as second language of erudition, 249–250 100, 104, 107, 109, 111, 114, 116, 118–120, 130,
Three Crowns of Florence and, 111–116 149, 150, 152, 160, 193, 205, 214, 217, 225,
Gregory, Saint, 42, 57, 247, 248 226, 227, 238, 255
Grendler, Paul, 10–11, 128, 206 praise and, 75–80
Griffolini, Francesco, 170–172, 283, 287 professions in, 4, 7, 9–13, 23, 28–29, 69–72,
Guarini, Battista, 188, 192, 205, 226, 227–228, 79, 88–89, 170, 174, 255–258, 265, 267
229–230, 265, 290 Renaissance, 1, 4–5, 108–109, 243–248,
Guarino Veronese, 40, 41, 44, 59, 71, 79–89, 251–252, 275
127–128, 129, 147, 171, 179–180, 202, 209, Roman, 134, 168, 179, 185, 211, 223
224, 269, 281, 282, 283, 285, 288 schools, 171, 179–180, 224
330 Index
humanism (cont.) Institutio oratoria (Quintilian), 60
sociability and, 28, 119, 134, 268 Intercoenales (Alberti), 81
studia humanitatis, 4, 7, 11–12, 13, 23, 28, 36, invectives, 71
37, 75, 86–87, 90–117, 118–132, 157, 235–236, Invectives (Petrarch), 260
239–240, 241, 258–259, 279 Isidore of Seville, 15
success of, 236–238 Isocrates, 73
teachers, 254 Italia Illustrata (Biondo Flavio), 18, 21, 53–57, 63,
terminology, 2, 4, 7, 11–12, 13, 23, 28, 36, 37, 67, 79–89, 282–283
39, 52, 75, 86–87, 90–117, 118–119, 132, 138, Italians. See nostri (Italians)
154, 157, 175, 178, 202, 212, 213, 235–236, Italy
238–240, 241, 247, 248, 253, 258–259, 263, Brescia, 212, 230
279 coherence of, 63
Venetian, 33, 211, 222, 223, 266 culture and barbarism, 175–183
vernacular and, 1, 23, 24, 27, 48, 70, 71, 73, Florence, 6–7, 18, 32, 50, 53, 59, 60, 65, 89,
90–91, 94–96, 100–101, 104–109, 113–114, 166–168, 184, 212, 220, 222–223, 230, 249,
131, 132–133, 143, 161–162, 175, 180, 219–220, 251, 252, 266
250–251 humanist teachers, 60–61
virtue and, 10–11, 14, 26, 37, 51–52, 55, 59, 67, Latin language and, 108–109, 189–195, 198,
75–80, 83, 85, 86, 119, 122, 127–129, 159, 163, 200
169, 171–172, 196, 207, 224, 241, 246, Milan, 53, 60, 123, 201, 222, 252
263–265 Naples, 19, 32, 33, 53, 62, 76–77, 105, 222–223,
as a widespread movement, 1, 3–4, 7, 8, 10, 230, 252, 266
15–22, 24, 28–33, 36–37, 48, 54, 56, 61, 66, northern, 186, 201, 212, 222, 230, 259, 273
69, 85, 87, 102, 133, 139–140, 185, 188, Padua, 2, 60, 144, 201, 210, 211, 222–223
200–203, 205–210, 217, 232, 234, 253–254, Perugia, 212, 230
257, 265–267, 269, 271, 272, 274, 278–280 reintroduction of Greek into, 87–88, 111–116
humanist teachers, 59, 61, 147, 210, 254 Rome, 105, 107, 152, 154, 156, 166, 168,
Barzizza, 40, 147, 224 178–179, 183, 184, 191, 192, 194, 212,
Chrysoloras, 40–42, 58–59, 60, 254, 267 222–223, 230, 232–233, 234, 236, 241, 252,
Guarino Veronese, 224 266, 277
Landino, 105–106 Tuscany, 11, 112, 266
Vittorino da Feltre, 45, 59, 60, 82, 103, 147, Venice, 22, 32, 53, 59, 60, 65, 67, 133, 184, 185,
202, 207, 222, 224, 229, 254, 263, 269 199, 201, 209, 211, 212, 220, 222, 230, 232,
humanists, 4–5, 30–31 234, 235, 251, 252, 266
activities, 253–255 Itinerarium (Cyriac), 17–18
biographies, 15–17
classical culture and, 74–75 Jacopo Angeli da Scarperia, 2, 59, 68, 282, 283,
global accounts by, 17–19 284, 285
love of antiquity, 236 Jacopo da San Cassiano (Jacopo of Cremona),
orators, 69–75, 255, 264 284
original compositions, 255 Janus Pannonius, 152, 164, 178, 266, 287
patrons, 75–80, 168–170 Jardine, Lisa, 11, 79–89, 128, 174, 206
poets, 69–70, 255 Jerome, Saint, 15
proficiency in language, 72 De viris illustribus, 15, 68, 69
translations, 254–255 jurisconsults, 82–83
women, 273
humanitas, 31, 85–86, 92, 127, 197, 237, 239–240, Keßler, Eckhard, 279
257 Kohl, Benjamin, 258–259
Hungary, 43, 222 Kristeller, Paul Oskar, 4, 7, 9–10, 23, 29, 31, 119,
Huns, 191 129, 215–216, 250, 256, 257, 258, 259, 275,
276, 278
iambic dimeter, 62, 70
Ildephonsus of Toledo, 15 Lampridio, Bernardo, 287
ingenium, 180, 181–182, 242, 277 Landino, Cristoforo, 105–106, 150, 219–220,
Innocent III, Pope, 119 251, 289
Index 331
Comento sopra la Comedia, 105, 245 Manetti, Giannozzo, 18, 32, 72, 90, 208, 283,
translation of Pliny’s Natural History, 219–220 286
Landriani, Gerardo, 282 on active life, 121
Landsknechte, 242 on antiquity, 110, 114, 125
languages. See also Aramaic; Greek; Hebrew; on contemplative life, 119, 170, 265
Latin Contra Judaeos et Gentes, 18, 93, 99, 284–285
ancient, 27, 197, 219, 243, 250 on cultural importance of humanism, 241
modern, 219–220, 227, 228, 243, 248–253 on Dante, 113–115, 120
multilingualism, 251–252 De illustribus longaevis, 18, 93, 112–113, 115,
vernacular, 27, 73, 94–95, 161–162, 180–181, 126–127, 284
219–220, 250–251 disparagement of grammatici, 103–104
Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger, 17, 22, 286, early years, 91–92
288 on Florentine humanism, 265–266
Latin (language), 27, 127, 248–253 on Greek language, 249
barbari and, 165 on humanism’s disciplinary boundaries, 259
eloquence in, 87 on humanist professions, 256
history of, 42 literary and intellectual personality, 102
humanism and, 27, 212–225, 238 multilingualism and, 251
liberation of, 189–200 on Niccoli, 117
original works in, 74 on Petrarch, 115–116
restoration of, 188–189, 200–212 restoration of Latin and, 201
revival of, 106–111 on Salutati, 116–117, 121
study, 127 on studia humanitatis, 246, 258, 266
Three Crowns of Florence and, 106–111 on success of humanism, 237
Latini, Brunetto, 99, 285 Three Crowns of Florence and, 106–117
Laudatio Florentinae urbis (Bruni), 51 Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vita,
Leoni, Pietro, 205, 289 18, 92, 94–106, 113, 119, 235–236, 284
Lepido, Antonio, 290 on vernacular language, 250
Leto, Pomponio, 31, 133, 135, 152, 166, 170, 186, on virtue and humanism, 263
204, 209, 223, 228, 271, 286, 289 Vita Boccacii, 92
Letters to Atticus (Cicero), 60, 110–111 Vita Dantis, 95–96, 101
Liber sententiarum (Cortesi), 136, 260 Vita Petrarchae, 97, 99
libraries, 88, 118, 185, 189, 191, 228, 231–233, 236, Vita Senecae, 102, 103
241, 261 Vita Socratis, 101–102
lingua romana, 179, 190, 197, 277 Mantua, 45, 60, 263
Lippomano, Marco, 100, 250, 285 Mantuanus. See Spagnoli, Battista (Mantuanus)
Lippomano, Niccolò, 290 Marrasio, Giovanni, 84, 283
Lives (Plutarch), 92 Angelinetum, 84
Lives of the Caesars (Suetonius), 15 Marsi, Paolo, 152, 287, 289
Lives of the Grammarians (Suetonius), 15 Marsi, Pietro, 210, 289
Livy, 189, 194, 196, 219–220, 235, 247 Marsili, Luigi, 91, 128–129, 207, 254, 284
Lolli, Antonio, 153, 285, 287, 289 Marsuppini, Carlo, 44, 53, 202, 282, 283, 285, 288
Longobards, 191 Marullo, Michele, 135
Loschi, Antonio, 68, 80, 100, 141, 149, 283, 284, Marzio, Galeotto, 289
285, 286 mathematics, 81, 82, 90, 97, 99, 100–101, 124,
Lovato dei Lovati, 144, 271 127, 157, 214
Low Countries, 110 Matteazzi, Giovanni Antonio, 290
Lowry, Martin, 186 Maturanzio, Francesco, 228, 290
Luther, Martin, 242 Maximus, Valerius, 228
Maxson, Brian, 35
Maffei, Timoteo, 284 Mazzocco, Angelo, 252
Maio, Giuniano, 204, 289 McLaughlin, M.L., 139
Malatesta, Sigismondo, 169, 286 McManamon, John M., 14
Malpaghini, Giovanni, 57–61, 65, 98, 143, 270, Medici, Cosimo de’ (the Elder), 45, 76, 129, 168,
272, 282 261–262, 282, 285
332 Index
Medici, Lorenzo de’ (the Magnificent), 23, 36, Oration on the Donation of Constantine (Valla),
140, 156, 179, 261–262, 287, 288 50
Medici, Nicola de’, 282 oratores. See orators
Medici, Piero de’, 169, 261–262, 287 oratorium artificium. See artificium
medicine, 83 orators, 69–75. See also humanism, terminology;
Mehus, Lorenzo, 18, 20, 21, 66, 81 humanists; oratio; poets
Mela, Pomponius, 55 ancient, 172–173
Melanchthon, Philipp, 22, 26, 72, 275 audience, 173
Memoirs (Bruni), 1–2, 14 contemplative life, 264
Merula, Giorgio, 166, 205, 207, 230, 286, 289 definition of, 238–239
Metaphysics (Aristotle), 84 homines docti and, 154
meter (poetry), 70 politics and, 173
Middle Ages, 192, 193, 243, 247, 248 prose works and, 255
Milan, 53, 60, 123, 201, 222, 252 Orsini, Cosimo, 152
Mocenigo, Pietro, 221
Mombrizio, Bonino, 152, 287 Pacini, Antonio, 208, 286, 288
Monfasani, John, 161–162 Padua, 2, 60, 144, 201, 210, 211, 222–223
Montefeltro, Federigo da, 263 Palmieri, Matteo, 166, 245, 287
moral philosophy, 9, 13, 40, 74, 86, 92, 97, 98, Pandoni, Porcelio. See Porcellio
100, 124, 163, 213, 215, 258, 260, 279. See Panormita. See Beccadelli, Antonio (Panormita)
also studia humanitatis Pantagato, Flavio, 152, 287
More, Thomas, 22 pantheon of humanism, 281–290
Morosini, Marco, 262, 290 Barzizza, 270
multilingualism, 251–252 Boccaccio, 272
Mussato, Albertino, 144, 271 Bruni, 269, 272
Chrysoloras, 269, 273
Naples, 19, 32, 33, 53, 62, 76–77, 105, 222–223, Cortesi, 269
230, 252, 266 Dante, 272
nationalism, 164–165, 265–267 Guarino Veronese, 269
natural philosophy, 81, 84, 90, 97, 98, 99, 100, Niccoli, 270
101, 124, 215, 216, 258, 259, 260 Petrarch, 271–272
Negri, Francesco, 290 Poggio Bracciolini, 269
Negri, Palladio, 221, 289 Sabellico, 269
Nepos, Cornelius, 15 Salutati, 272
New Rome. See Constantinople Valla, 270
Niccoli, Niccolò, 18, 36, 43, 52, 58, 71, 75, 93, 105, Paris, 22, 95–96, 98, 130, 131
112–113, 117, 120, 126–127, 128–130, 151, 159, Partenio, Antonio, 290
204, 241, 253, 254, 268, 270, 281, 283, 284, patriotism, 50, 51, 199, 251, 252, 265–267
285 Patrizi, Francesco (da Siena), 44, 230, 237, 282
biography, 112–113, 126–127 patronage, 75–80, 168–170, 224, 261–263
Nicholas of Cusa, 31, 267 Biondo Flavio, 262
Nicholas V, Pope, 39, 62, 76, 169, 231, 261–262, Boccaccio, 121–123
285 Cortesi, 168–170, 261
Nogarola, Isotta, 273 Facio, 261
nostri (Italians), 164–166, 177–178 Traversari, 169
Valla, 169
O’Connor, Joseph F., 102 Paul III, Pope. See Farnese, Alessandro (Pope
Odi, Pietro, 286 Paul III)
Ognibene da Lonigo, 228, 286, 289 peripatetics, 148, 163
Oliviero d’Arzignano, 228, 290 Perleone, Jacopo, 282
oratio, 43, 71–72, 86, 238, 254, 279 Perleone, Pietro, 282
Oratio apud Sixtum IV (Giustinian), 153 Perotti, Niccolò, 31, 204, 226, 228, 283, 287, 289
Oratio in nebulonem maledicum (Bruni), 71, 94 Persona, Cristoforo, 286
Oratio in principio sui studii (Valla), 197–198 Perugia, 151, 230
Oration on the Dignity of Man (Pico), 216 Peter Lombard, 260
Index 333
Peter the Deacon, 15 Facio on, 255
Petrarch, Francesco, 6–7, 13, 42, 57–58, 87, 97, meter, 70
107–108, 110, 115–116, 119, 123, 124–126, Sabellico on, 255
142–143, 158, 242, 243, 251, 271–272, poets, 12, 62, 68, 69–72, 75, 84, 92, 94–95, 96,
276–277, 281, 282, 284, 285, 288 100, 104, 107, 109, 111, 114, 116, 118–120, 130,
Invectives, 260 149, 150, 152, 160, 193, 205, 214, 217, 225,
philology, 25, 153, 184–233, 257, 266 226, 227, 238, 255. See also humanism,
philosophy, 81, 163, 279 terminology; humanists; orators
moral, 9, 13, 40, 74, 86, 92, 97, 98, 100, 124, Poland, 222
163, 213, 258, 260, 279. See also studia Polenton, Sicco, 22, 285
humanitatis Scriptorum illustrium latinae linguae libri
natural, 81, 84, 90, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 124, XVIII (1437), 17
215, 216, 258, 259, 260 Poliziano, Angelo, 31, 136, 166, 205, 270, 290
Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II), 18, Pontano, Giovanni, 31, 62, 70, 150, 167, 230, 255,
32, 39, 58–59, 116, 150, 169, 204, 284, 286, 283, 286, 289
288 Pontano, Tommaso, 283
on Bruni’s eloquence, 253 Pope Pius II. See Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius
on Church involvement in politics, 50 (Pope Pius II)
De liberorum educatione, 79–89 Porcellio, 150, 155, 225, 282, 286, 289
De viris illustribus, 18, 38–40, 47, 50, 53, 57, prehumanists, 144
67, 85, 266, 281–282 printing, 22, 25, 206, 223, 226–233, 237, 241,
on European politics and culture, 246 266
on history of Latin language, 57 Priuli, Sebastiano, 290
on humanist professions, 255 proto-humanists, 144
ingenium and doctrina in, 181
on Latin eloquence, 87 Quarqualio, Cherubino, 152, 287
patrons, 262 Quintilian, 86, 149, 189, 192, 194, 201, 202, 235,
on Petrarch’s Latin eloquence, 58 237, 247
on revival of ancient eloquence, 236–237 Institutio orataria, 60
simillimus Ciceroni, 235, 236–237
stream-of-consciousness style, 47 ratio dicendi, 148
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 9, 26, 32, 72, Reformation, 23
166, 168, 215–217, 219, 223, 247, 250, 260, Renaissance, concept of, 1, 108–109, 243–248,
272, 289 251–252, 275
Pilatus, Leontius, 111, 284 Renier, Daniele, 188, 290
Pius II, Pope. See Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius renovatio, 65, 198, 209, 244, 245, 247
(Pope Pius II) republicanism, 3, 6–7, 10, 51, 173, 264
Pizzolpasso, Francesco, 46 Revest, Clémence, 35
Platina, Bartolomeo, 135, 151–152, 204, 254, 287, rhetoric, 7, 11, 12, 13, 26, 70–73, 86, 90, 96, 110,
289 116, 131, 137, 149, 157, 166–167, 177, 181, 194,
Pliny the Elder, 219, 220, 244 196, 207, 213, 237, 238, 242, 254, 258, 260,
Pliny the Younger, 118 279. See also studia humanitatis
Plutarch, 15, 40, 71, 118, 216 Rinuccini, Cino, 103–106, 130
Lives, 92 Rinuccio da Castiglione (Rinuccio Aretino),
Pocock, J.G.A., 51, 264 286
poetae. See poets Roma instaurata (Biondo), 54
poetry, 2, 7, 12, 13, 16, 24, 39, 44–45, 52–54, 57, Roma triumphans (Biondo), 54
61–62, 70, 84, 86, 88, 90, 91, 95, 95–96, 99, Romagna, 56–57, 234, 266
100, 105, 106, 108–109, 112, 114, 116, 124, 131, Roman Church, 174, 197–198
143, 149–152, 155, 160–161, 164, 168, 172, Roman Empire, 57, 65, 179, 190, 197–198, 221,
186, 202–203, 208, 213–214, 220, 223, 225, 242, 277
236, 238, 244, 246, 249, 250, 255, 258, 259, Rome, 105, 107, 152, 154, 156, 166, 168, 178–179,
268, 270, 279. See also studia humanitatis 183, 184, 191, 192, 194, 212, 222–223, 230,
Cortesi on, 160–161 232–233, 234, 236, 241, 252, 266, 277
eloquence in, 61–62 Rossi, Roberto de’, 2, 100–101, 124, 282, 285
334 Index
Sabbadini, Remigio, 60, 244 Sabino, Angelo, 228, 231, 287, 289
Sabellico, Marcantonio, 19, 33, 209, 211, 214, 235, Belgicum carmen, 231
290 Sacchi, Bartolomeo. See Platina, Bartolomeo
active life and, 265 Sagundino, Niccolò, 68, 155, 284, 285, 288
on age of eloquence, 193 Salutati, Coluccio, 12, 36, 40, 93, 114, 116, 117,
ancient language and, 219 121, 143–144, 208, 272, 281, 283, 284, 285
on arts and humanism, 246 San Marco School, 265
on barbarism, 190–192 Sannazaro, Jacopo, 252
on classical Latin as Italy’s birthright, 193–195, schools, 2, 9, 11, 12, 22, 30, 33, 61, 98, 122, 127,
198 147, 171, 179, 180, 206, 221, 222, 224, 254,
on commentaries, 20, 226–233 263, 272
on contemplative life, 265 Scola, Ognibene, 59, 282
on cultural importance of humanism, 241, Scriptorum illustrium latinae linguae libri XVIII
242, 243 (Polenton), 17
De latinae linguae reparatione (ca. 1489), 19, secularism/secularization, 31, 48–50, 98, 124, 129,
184–185, 187–189, 199, 212–214, 215–218, 131, 239, 264, 275
219–220, 223, 225, 265, 288–290 Seneca, Tommaso, da Camerino, 283
Enneades, 186 Sentences (Peter Lombard), 260
Epistulae, 186 Sforza, Galeazzo Maria, 170, 263
on Florentine humanism, 222–223, 266 Sicily, 266
Greek language and, 217–218 Siena, 44, 45, 47, 53, 60, 234
Historiae rerum venetarum ab urbe condita, Simonetta, Giovanni, 289
186, 199 Skinner, Quentin, 3, 264
as historian, 185–187 Smith, Christine, 102, 145
on humanism and philosophy, 264 Southern, R.W., 248
on humanism’s disciplinary boundaries, 260 Sozzini, Mariano, 45, 46, 47
on humanism’s origins, 210–211 Spagnoli, Battista (Mantuanus), 214, 289
on humanistic schools, 224 Spain, 198–199
on Latin eloquence and Venetian empire, Starn, Randolph, 167
199 Statius, 228
and Lorenzo Valla, 184, 189, 190, 192, 194, Achilleid, 228
195, 196, 197–198, 203–205, 207, 209, 211, Stinger, Charles, 168
217, 219, 223, 270 Strozzi, Nanni, 264
mathematics and, 214 Strozzi, Palla, 2, 286
metaphor of renaissance and, 192–193 Strozzi, Tito, 231, 283, 289
on Middle Ages, 243, 247 studia doctrinae, 138, 154, 239
natural philosophy and, 215–217 studia eloquentiae, 142, 154–155, 157, 175, 178, 239,
on pantheon of humanism, 269 240, 247, 259, 274
patrons, 262 studia humanitatis, 4, 7, 11–12, 13, 23, 28, 36, 37,
personal attachment to Venice, 211 75, 86–87, 90–117, 118–132, 157, 235–236,
on philological commentaries, 206–207 239–240, 241, 258–259, 279
on poetry, 255 studia litterarum, 36, 39, 52, 239
on printing, 229–231 Suetonius
restoration of Latin and, 200 Lives of the Caesars, 15
on Roman humanism, 223 Lives of the Grammarians, 15
on romana lingua, 189–190 Sulpizio, Giovanni Antonio, da Veroli, 288, 290
state funeral for, 186 Switzerland, 110
on success of humanism, 237 Symonds, John Addington, 244
on teachers, 254
theology and, 215–217 Tacitus, 55
on translations, 225 Tateo, Francesco, 220
on Vatican Library, 231–233 teachers, 59, 60–61, 147, 210, 254
on Venetian humanism, 222 Barzizza, 40, 147, 224
on vernacular language, 250 Chrysoloras, 40–42, 58–59, 60, 254, 267
vernacular translations from Latin, 219–220 Guarino Veronese, 224
Index 335
Landino, 105–106 Vegio, Maffeo, 150, 202, 285, 288
Vittorino da Feltre, 45, 59, 60, 82, 103, 147, Venice, 22, 32, 53, 59, 60, 65, 67, 133, 184, 185,
202, 207, 222, 224, 229, 254, 263, 269 199, 201, 209, 211, 212, 220, 222, 230, 232,
theologia platonica, 260 234, 235, 251, 252, 266
theologia poetica, 260 Vergerio, Pier Paolo, 2, 45, 59, 80, 202, 257, 282,
theologia rhetorica, 260 283, 285, 288
theology, 90, 97, 98, 100, 215, 216, 258, 259, 260 De ingenuis moribus, 203
Theophrastus, 117, 218 translation of Arrian’s Anabasis, 68
Three Crowns of Florence, 91, 92, 106–117 vernacular language, 1, 23, 24, 27, 48, 70, 71, 73,
Tifernate, Gregorio, 284, 286, 289 90–91, 94–96, 100–101, 104–109, 113–114,
Timothy of Verona. See Maffei, Timoteo 131, 132–133, 143, 161–162, 175, 180, 208,
To Nicocles (Isocrates), 73 219–220, 250–251
Tortelli, Giovanni, 284, 286, 289 Verona, 60, 62, 188, 202, 209, 265
translatio imperii, 176, 177, 179 Vespasiano da Bisticci, 33
translatio studii, 176, 177, 178, 179, 241 Villani, Filippo, 107–108, 285
translations, 40, 43–44, 53, 54, 59, 61, 68, 73–74, Villani, Giovanni, 100, 285
81, 88, 101, 115, 146, 160, 162, 196, 202, 203, Villani, Matteo, 100, 285
215, 217–220, 225, 249–250, 254–255, 260 virtue, 10–11, 14, 26, 37, 51–52, 55, 59, 67, 75–80,
Trattatello in laude di Dante (Boccaccio), 95 83, 85, 86, 119, 122, 127–129, 159, 163, 169,
Traversari, Ambrogio, 43, 49–50, 53, 71, 74, 80, 171–172, 196, 207, 224, 241, 246, 263–265
89, 91, 130, 169, 249, 281, 283, 284, 285 Visconti, Filippo Maria, 252
Trinkaus, Charles, 13, 14 Vita Boccacii (Manetti), 92
Trium illustrium poetarum florentinorum vita Vita civile (Palmieri), 245
(Manetti), 18, 92, 94–106, 113, 119, 235–236, Vita Dantis (Manetti), 95–96, 101
284 Vita Petrarchae (Manetti), 97–99
Tuscany, 11, 112, 266 Vita Senecae (Manetti), 103
Vita Socratis (Manetti), 101–102
umanesimo civile, 6–7. See also civic humanism Vite (Vasari), 244
Vite di Dante e del Petrarca (Bruni), 94, 114, 119
Valeriano, Pierio, 20, 238, 242 Vitelli, Cornelio, 290
Valerius Maximus, 228 Vittorino da Feltre, 45, 47, 59, 60, 68, 82, 93, 141,
Valla, Lorenzo, 8, 26, 31, 33, 48, 50, 61, 67, 68, 147, 202, 207, 222, 224, 229, 254, 263, 269,
76, 86, 87, 141, 148–149, 155, 166, 169, 179, 282, 283, 286, 288
181, 189, 190, 192, 195, 196, 197, 198, Voigt, Georg, 5–6, 20, 244
203–205, 207, 209, 211, 217, 222–225, 237, Volsco, Antonio, 289
239, 242, 254, 260, 267, 268, 270, 272–273,
275, 277, 282, 284, 286, 288 Weiss, Roberto, 144, 271
Elegantiae, 61, 184, 190, 195–197, 203, 209, Weyden, Rogier van der, 266
224, 254, 277 Whether an Old Man Should Marry (Bracciolini),
Oratio in principio sui studii, 197–198 43
Oration on the Donation of Constantine, 50 White, Jeffrey, 64
Valla, Niccolò, 170–171, 287 Witt, Ronald G., 12, 26, 31, 38, 144, 257, 271
Valturio, Roberto, 287
Vasari, Giorgio, 244 Zanobi da Strada, 103, 285
Vatican Library, 76, 231–233, 241 Zavarise, Virgilio, 188, 290

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ITALIAN RENAISSANCE HUMANISM IN

This important study takes a new approach to understanding Italian

p a t r i c k b a k e r is a senior research associate at Humboldt-

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

Acknowledgments page viii

Appendix. The pantheon of humanism 281

This book began in 2004 in the Biblioteca Berenson of Villa I Tatti in

Italian Renaissance humanism entered its heyday in the second quarter

33 Ibid., p. 500. 34 Ibid., p. 498.

37 Charles Edward Trinkaus, “A Humanist’s Conception of Humanism: The Inaugural Orations of

latinae linguae reparatione’: Bemerkungen zur Struktur humanistischer Literaturgeschichtsschrei-

The alternative they proposed was no philosophical system or program

63 Gray, “Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence,” pp. 498–499.

69 Campana, “The Origin of the Word ‘Humanist.’”

The renaissance of eloquence

Group identity is born in retrospect. Founders of cultural movements

The sense of loss expressed by Poggio is personal, the lament of an old

7 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 22.18–27.

Piccolomini conceives of Latin historically and in terms of a natural pro-

18 See below, pp. 145–146.

20 Piccolomini, DVI, p. 36.22–23: “nam simillimus Ciceroni fuit.”

to discover if, through the practical experience of the history of Italy I

In the process of compiling this bio-geographico-historical descriptio,

At the same time, Manuel Chrysoloras of Constantinople came to Italy,

Like Piccolomini, Biondo puts Chrysoloras at the moment of humanism’s

Biondo’s explanation is clear: the practice of translation provided the bridge

83 Biondo, II, vi.28: “ . . . ex deperditis Romanorum et Italiae olim libris.”

99 Clavuot, “Flavio Biondos Italia illustrata,” pp. 57, 64–76.

Poetae and oratores

Praise and virtue

The salient difference between ages is the presence or absence of eloquent

152 See below, pp. 127–129, 171, 206–207, 263.

Looking past the factual inaccuracies of this description of Alberti’s oeuvre,

179 See note 177 above.

The scholastic studia humanitatis and the

If the similarity of Piccolomini’s, Biondo’s, and Facio’s presentations

Things human and divine

In the context of Paris and the scholastic-style disputations in which Dante

These grammarians and “mere professors of literature” have to be humanists

The Three Crowns: Fathers of humanism

Let us overlook this additional fifty-year shift in the decline of poetry.

And a bit later:

69 Manetti, VP, 18: “inexhausta quadam legendi cupiditate ferebatur.”

81 Ibid., 13: “nulli cessurus veterum.”

Here is yet another implicit positive comparison of a major figure in the

By nature he was so irascible and resentful that, though terribly harassed by

Lest this passage be seen as a justification for money-making and profit,

A blind grammar school teacher finally succeeded in meeting him after

The triumph of Cicero

From homines docti to oratores

33 See Ferraù, “Introduzione,” pp. 38–39.

Like Dante, Petrarch possessed the rhetorician’s signature capacity to per-

The humanist milieu

I began with Chrysoloras . . . because eloquence generally seems to have risen

Accordingly, two humanists – Martino Filetico, a student of Guarino and

Why are you extolling this foreigner (externum) so highly, as if he really

Here we have a case of Italian exceptionalism: humanism is Italian, and

Despite recognizing that “Latin classicism in Renaissance Rome . . . meant

Regardless of the factual accuracy of this statement, its reasoning neglects

To emphasize the virtue of this purely rhetorical education over that of

Culture and barbarism

Constantine’s translatio imperii from Rome to Constantinople weakened