VII. SAPPHO IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE
How long after the seventh century Sappho was read we cannot say, but in mediaeval days men were either entirely ignorant of her or had erroneous ideas. By the ninth century she seems to have become almost unknown, otherwise the critic and compiler Photius[160] would have preserved some of her works. He refers only to the tradition of her love for Phaon and the Leucadian Leap, and to the hypothesis that she was different from Sappho the courtesan, as she had been branded by that father of the church, Tatian (about 140 A.D.), who called her a female harlot, love-mad, γύναιον πορνικὸν ἐρωτομανές. That idea undoubtedly led to the burning of her books, according to Cardan, under Gregory Nazianzen, about 380 A.D. According to Scaliger, the burning took place in Constantinople and Rome in 1073. In any case, no manuscript has survived in Europe; and it is strange that now not even her legendary adventures with Phaon appear in the popular literature. The Etymologicum Magnum (1000 A.D.?) mentions her only five times, but in that way preserves for us five fragments. After the time of that lexicon and Suidas, the mediaeval encyclopaedias and the Speculum Historiale of Vincent de Beauvais of the thirteenth century make no mention of her, though they cite many another Greek poet. Georgius Cedrenus (1015 A.D.?), a Greek monk, who in his Compendium Historiarum said that she was “the first of the Muses,” is about the only one of this time who notices her. Anna Comnena,[161] daughter of the Emperor Comnenus I, quotes as Sappho’s the verses supposed to be addressed to Sappho by Alcaeus (E. 119). And the archbishop Eustathius preserves a few fragments. Dante makes no reference to her, unless possibly very faintly in the verse “le muse lattar più ch’altri mai.” Boccaccio (1313-1375), who seems to have been forgotten by modern writers on Sappho, includes her among his Delle Donne Famose, “ma confortata da più caldo fervore d’animo (i suoi versi sono famosi) ... e certamente non sono più famose che la sua corona le corone dei re, nè le mitre de’ sacerdoti, nè le lauree de’ trionfanti.” Petrarch (1304-1374) mentions Sappho in his Triumph of Love (IV. 25):[162]
Una giovane Greca a paro a paro
Coi nobili poeti già cantando
Ed aveva un suo stil leggiadro e raro.
In his Tenth Eclogue he dedicated four verses to her:
Altera solliciti laqueos cantabit amoris
Docta puella, choris doctorum immixta virorum
Cinnameus roseo calamus cui semper ab ore
Pendulus et dulces mulcebant astra querelae.
Petrarch’s friend, Domenico di Bandino of Arezzo (1340-c. 1415), professor at Bologna, gave her a brief article in his encyclopaedic Fons Memorabilium Universi. The other commentators on Petrarch ignore her. Giorgio Merula (1424-1494), Poliziano’s adversary, accepts the whole Ovidian legend as historical fact and even adds a new item to Sappho’s life by giving her a son Didas by her wealthy Andrian husband, Cercylas.
The Renaissance. There was now a second “floruit” of Sappho’s fame, but like her previous popularity among the Romans the second renaissance was not favorable to Sappho, and there was no true understanding of the historical Sappho. It was in the fifteenth century that Ovid’s perverse epistle was discovered and from that time on it biased all Sapphic literature. The great humanist Poliziano knew her slightly and has left a Latin version of the epigram on Timas. Domizio Calderini (1447-1477), the learned though not overcritical humanist, based his little knowledge of Sappho on an uncritical use of Suidas. He even falsified Horace’s querentem by forging in its place gaudentem, and transformed Sappho from the leader of a sacred sorority into a tribade[163] or lover of her pupils, even of the famous poetess Erinna. The result was that the great injustice done Sappho by Horace and especially by Ovid was much aggravated. Thanks to Tatian and Calderini, working at different times and in different fields, Sappho was even more misjudged in the seventeenth century. It would be idle to cite the many authors who mention or malign her but who give us little material of literary importance: Giraldi (1489-1552), Ludovico di Castelvetro (1505-1571), Giorgio Carraria (1514 A.D.), Iacopo Filippo Pellenagra (1517 A.D.), Francesco Anguillac (1572), who well renders the second ode, “Parmi quell’uomo equale essere à i Dei,” Lorenzo Crasso (1625?), Ugo Foscolo (1776-1827), and many another.[164] One needs only to read the long account with many references in the famous Dictionnaire historique et critique (1696) by that learned compiler, Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), who because of his scepticism lost his professorship of philosophy three years before (1693). In his ignorance he assumed that Sappho must have been bad and repeated the usual errors about her. I quote what he says ironically with regard to the charity of Madame Dacier: “charité de Mlle Le Fèvre qui a tâché pour l’honneur de Sappho de rendre le fait incertain; mais je la crois trop raisonnable pour se fâcher que nous en croyons nos propres yeux.” Anne Le Fèvre[165] in 1681 had made the first real defense of Sappho’s character, long before Wilhelm Heinse’s Ardinghello, and one hundred and thirty-five years before Johannes Friedrich Welcker,[166] who so influenced Goethe and Comparetti and Wilamowitz.