Tacitus and Bracciolini. The Annals Forged in the XVth Century

by John Wilson Ross

CHAPTER III.

BRACCIOLINI SETTING ABOUT THE FORGERY OF THE ANNALS.

I. The Proposal made in February, 1422, by a Florentine, named Lamberteschi, and backed by Niccoli.—II. Correspondence on the matter, and Mr. Shepherd's view that it referred to a Professorship refuted.—III. Professional disappointments in England determine Bracciolini to persevere in his intention of forging the Annals.—IV. He returns to the Papal Secretaryship, and begins the forgery in Rome in October, 1423.

I. About this period Bracciolini commenced the forgery of the Annals. In noticing the preliminary steps to that fabrication, and then glancing back at a few circumstances peculiar to his age, while touching upon some incidents hitherto passed over in his biography, we shall have all the necessary lights and shades in his life that will be of use to us in the maintenance and illustration of our theory.

Although he received in exchange for the living of 120 florins a year another of the annual worth of £40 with slighter duties attached to it, he still continued to express dissatisfaction at his fortunes, and desire a sinecure canonry in England that would enable him to live in literary ease at home. When, however, an alternative was presented to him of returning to the Pontifical Secretariate, through the intercession of one of his powerful Italian friends, Cardinal Adimari, Archbishop of Pisa, he rudely scouted the overture upon these grounds: that he would "rather be a free man than a public slave"; that he had "a smaller opinion of the Papacy and its limbs than the world believed"; that "if he had thought as highly of the Secretaryship to the Pope, as many did, he would long before have gone back to it; and that if he lost everything, from what he now had, he would not want."—"Video quae Cardinalis Pisanus scribit de Secretariatu. Sane si ego illud officium tantum existimarem, quantum nonnulli, ego jamdudum istuc rediissem: sed si omnia deficerent, hoc quod nunc habeo, non deerit mihi. Ego minus existimo et Pontificatum et ejus membra quam credunt. Cupio enim liber esse, non publicus servus" (Ep. I. 17).

Just as he was in this bad humour, disgusted with his patron and the world, and in the most cynical of moods, a proposal reached him from Florence, which, as set forth to view by himself in communications to his friend Niccoli, is so dimly disclosed as to be capable of two interpretations: The Rev. William Shepherd in his Life of him understands his ambiguous terms as having reference to a professorship, the words of Mr. Shepherd being:

—"Piero Lamberteschi … offered him a situation, the nature of which is not precisely known, but which was probably that of public professor in one of the Italian Universities" (Life of Poggio Bracciolini, p. 138). Now I conceive, and shall attempt to prove that the proposal was not about a "situation," but to forge additional books to the hopelessly lost History of Tacitus.

Niccolo Niccoli seems to have been at the bottom of the business; at any rate, he appears to have advised his bosom friend to undertake the task; for Bracciolini says that he "thinks he will follow his advice, while writing to him from the London Palace of Cardinal Beaufort, in a letter dated the 22nd of February, 1422, respecting "a suggestion" and "an offer" made by his fellow- countryman, Piero Lamberteschi, who, he says, "will endeavour to procure for me in three years 500 gold sequins. If he will make it 600, I will at once close with his proposal. He holds forth sanguine hopes about several future profitable contingencies, which, I am inclined to believe, may probably be realized; yet it is more prudent to covenant for something certain than to depend on hope alone." "Placent mihi quae Pierus imaginatur, quaeque offert; et ego, ut puto, sequar consilium vestrum. Scribit mihi se daturum operam, ut habeam triennio quingentos aureos: fient sexcenti, et acquiescam. Proponit spem magnam plurium rerum, quam licet existimem futuram veram, tamen aliquid certum pacisci satius est, quam ex sola spe pendere" (Ep. I. 17).

Speaking further on in the letter about Lamberteschi, he says: "I like the occupation to which he has invited me, and hope I shall be able to produce something WORTH READING; but for this purpose, as I tell him in my letters, I require the retirement and leisure that are necessary for literary work." "Placet mihi occupatio, ad quam me hortatur, et spero me nonnihil effecturum DIGNUM LECTIONE; sed, ut ad eum scribo, ad haec est opus quiete et otio literarum."

II. The expression of his hope that he would "produce something worth reading," and the mention of his want, in order that he should accomplish what was required of him, "retirement and leisure for literary work," quite set at rest Mr. Shepherd's theory that the proposal had reference to a Professorship. In the first place, professors in those days did not collect their lectures and publish them for the behoof of those who had not the privilege of hearing them delivered. They did not give their addresses an elaborate form, nor introduce into them the novel views and profound and accurate thought with which Professors now dignify their vocation from chairs in Universities, especially those of Oxford and Cambridge, or places of public instruction, as the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, with its Professor Tyndall, or the Royal School of Mines and Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, with its Professor Huxley. They could not then "produce something worth reading." In the second place they did not require the "retirement and leisure necessary for literary work"; they talked about what they knew in the most simple and artless manner; made no preparations beforehand; walked into a class room, and, book in hand, Greek or Roman classic, discoursed to their pupils about the meaning of this or that passage or the rendering of this or that word benefiting the juvenile class with the spontaneous harvest of their cultivated minds, and giving the opinions of others a great deal more freely than they gave their own: all that they said, too, was detached and trite; and if books are valuable, as consisting of perfectly combined parts, and new or extraordinary contents, the lectures of the fifteenth century professors would not have been worth the paper on which they were written. Bracciolini, then, would never, in the contemplation of turning a professor, have spoken of "producing something worth reading"; nor, for the discharge of professorial duties, would he speak of requiring "retirement and leisure for literary work." It is clear that Mr. Shepherd is altogether wrong in his conjecture.

And now as to mine. If the dim revelations concerned a plan about forging the Annals, then "something worth reading" Bracciolini certainly did produce; for the Annals is,—taking the circumstances under which it was composed into consideration— about one of the most wonderful literary creations that we have; on every page there is indication of the "labour limae,"—the filing and polishing that are the result of the "retirement and leisure necessary to literary work"; and, though not bearing a very striking resemblance to the History of Tacitus, of which it is intended to be the supplement, it was, nevertheless, contrived with so much artfulness that, for more than four hundred years, it has deceived the scholars of Europe: yes, indeed, the author

"Gave out such a seeming
To seal their eyes up,—close as oak,—
They thought 'twas Tacitus."

The more the passages in these interesting letters are considered, the stronger becomes the impression that they are all about a scheme for forging the Annals of Tacitus. Even those which seem to give a colouring to Mr. Shepherd's view in reality favour mine.

A part of the original scheme appears to have been that Bracciolini was to go to Hungary: what for is not mentioned. It then becomes a matter of conjecture. Mine is, that, on account of the belief current in those days that singular treasures of ancient history were to be found more readily than elsewhere in barbarous countries, and that the more barbarous the country the greater the chance of recovering an ancient classic, so Bracciolini was to go, or feign that he had gone to Hungary, and then on returning give out that he had there found some of the lost books of the History of Tacitus. If this be not the right conjecture, it can barely be understood why Bracciolini should make a mystery about this visit. "If I undertake a journey to Hungary," he says, "it will be unknown to everybody but a few, and down the throats of these I shall cram all sorts of speeches, since I will pretend that I have come from here," that is, from England. "Si in Hungariam proficiscar, erit ignotum omnibus, praeter paucos; quin simulabo me huc venturum, et istos pascam verbis." (Ep. I. 18). This intention to keep the journey to Hungary a secret looks as if his going there were connected with the wrong act suggested, seeing that men usually resort to concealment when they commit a wrong act, and endeavour to lead people astray with respect to it (as Bracciolini showed an inclination to do) by misstatements and falsehoods: then Bracciolini knew well that the commission of a forgery would be immediately suspected were it bruited abroad that he had come from Hungary where he had found a long-lost classic because those were days when book-finders were in the habit of first forging works, and then visiting far distant lands to report on their return that they had there recovered MSS. which they themselves had written.

Another passage strengthens my view, though, at a first glance, it favours Mr. Shepherd's. After observing that his friend "knew well how he preferred liberty and literary leisure to the other things which the vast majority held in the highest estimation and made the objects of their ambition," Bracciolini proceeds thus: "And if I were to see that I should get that which our friend Picro expects, I would go not only to the end of Europe but as far as to the wilds of Tartary, especially as I should have the opportunity of paying attention to Greek literature, which it is my desire to devour with avidity, were it but to avoid those wretched translations, which so torment me that there is more pain in reading than pleasure in acquiring knowledge."—"Id primum scias volo, me libertatem et otium litterarum praeponere rebus caeteris, quae plures existimant permaximi, atque optant. Sique videro id me consecuturum, prout sperat Pierius noster, non solum ad Sarmatas, sed Scythas usque proficiscar, praesertim proposita facultate dandi operam Graecis litteris, quas avide cupio haurire, ut fugiam istas molestas translationes, quae ita me torquent, ut pluris sit molestiae in legendo, quam in discendo suavitatis." (Ep. I. 18.)

This is the passage that must have particularly induced Mr. Shepherd to think that what was offered to Bracciolini was a Professorship; and as Bracciolini spoke of the opportunity that would be afforded to him of studying Greek literature, that the Professorship was of Greek. But Mr. Shepherd ought not to have conjectured that the Professorship must have been in some Italian University; it is clear that if Bracciolini was to carry out the proposal of Lamberteschi, he was, from the original plan, to have gone to Hungary. The Professorship must, therefore, have been in Hungary. But in 1422 no professor was wanted in that country, because it had no university: Hungary then was, and remained a wilderness of unlettered barbarism for nearly half a century after, it not being until 1465, half a dozen years from the death of Bracciolini, that Matthias Corvinus established in Buda the first Hungarian University, filling it with valuable works which he got copied from rare manuscripts in the principal cities of Italy, especially Rome and Florence, and inviting to it men as learned as Bracciolini, not only from Italy, but also France and Germany. What Bracciolini really alludes to is not a professorship, but the money he was to get for his forgery,—the 500 or 600 gold sequins; and as money was then worth about twenty times more than it is now, it was a moderate fortune of ten or twelve thousand pounds; and when he should have such means at his disposal, he would have quite sufficient for his purpose; he could then forsake the clerical duties which were so onerous and distasteful to him, to devote himself in peace and comfort to his favourite study of Greek literature, with which he became specially captivated just at this period of his life from reading for the first time in the magnificent library of Cardinal Beaufort the works of the Greek fathers, above all, Chrysostom, whom he looked upon as the greatest of all writers; for writing to Niccoli from the London palace of Cardinal Beaufort in the summer of 1420, he speaks of "preferring Chrysostom to everybody else whom he had ever read,"—"Joannes Chrysostomus, quem omnibus, quos ego unquam legerim, praefero" (Ep. I. 7); and, on another occasion, in a letter to the same friend, again referring to Chrysostom, he bursts into the enthusiastic exclamation: "this man by a good shoulder, or more, overtops everybody":—"hic vir longe humero supereminet omnes" (Ep. I. 8). A still greater, nay, "the greatest reason for his desire of returning to Greek literature," he gives in a letter to Niccoli dated London, the 17th of July, 1420, that, in "skimming over Aristotle during the spring of that year, not for the purpose of studying him then, but reading and seeing what there was in each of his works,"—he had found that sort of "perusal not wholly unprofitable, as he had learnt something every day, superficial though it might be, from understanding Aristotle in his own language, when he found him in the words of translators either incomprehensible or nonsensical." "Ego jam tribus mensibus vaco Aristoteli, non tam discendi causa ad praesens, quam legendi, ac videndi, quid in quoque opere contineatur: nec est tamen omnino inutilis haec lectio; disco aliquid in diem, saltem superficie tenus, et haec est causa potissima, cur amor graecarum litterarum redierit, ut hunc virum quasi elinguem, et absurdum aliena lingua, cognoscam sua."

III. As Bracciolini gave his assent to the fabrication of additional books to the History of Tacitus, his friends Niccoli and Lamberteschi as well as himself were of opinion that his presence was required in Italy, in order that the three should take counsel together, and, discussing the matter in concert, deliberate fully what was best to be done: "nam maturius deliberare poterimus, quid sit agendum," he says in a letter addressed to Niccoli from London on the 5th of March, 1422; and as he left England for Italy in the summer, and did not begin his forgery till the autumn of the next year, he spent the interval of some eighteen, nineteen or twenty months in continually holding cabinet councils with his two friends, and secretly devising with them on what plan he could best execute the addition to the History of Tacitus; no doubt, he thought they had so cleverly arranged matters in providing against all mishaps that he never would be found out. "Veniam ad vos," he continues in the same letter; "et tunc propositis in unum conditionibus, discussisque in utramque partem rationibus, meliorem, ut spero, eligemus partem."

Bracciolini was, notwithstanding, undesirous of leaving England just yet, from keeping his eye fixed upon the main chance. There was the pleasant prospect before him of his living, which had such heavy duties attached to it, being exchanged for a sinecure worth £20 a year, "all," he said, "he coveted, and no more"; but it being uncertain when such good fortune would attend him, he knew not what to do,—whether, as things now stood, he should return to Italy, and lose all chance of getting the free benefice, or stay a little longer in England and wait the possible exchange. "Credo me inventurum pro hac beneficium liberum, et sine cura XX librarum: hoc si fieri poterit, satis est mihi, nec opto amplius; veruntamen nescio quando hoc inveniam; neque scio, an sit melius isto venire, prout res nunc se habent, an expectare paulum, quaerens an possem hanc facere permutationem" (Ep. I. 18). Three months passed without the exchange being effected, whereupon as time progressed, his hopes, like the courage of Bob Acres, "oozed out at his fingers' ends." Still he was unwilling to lose what had cost him a great deal of importunity, as well as much time and anxiety of mind by any fault on his part, such as being in too great a hurry over the matter; so he told his friend Niccoli when writing to him in June; as that "there was nothing else which detained him in England but the business of effecting the exchange of his benefice, which from the badness of the times was a much worse living than it was considered to be:" he also came to the definite determination that if in two months what he had been looking for turned up, he would make his arrangements immediately and be off to his two friends at home; and even if he got nothing, still he would start for Italy in August at the latest. "Ut alia epistola ad te scripsi, nihil aliud me hic tenet, nisi cura permutandi hoc beneficium, quod defectu temporum multo tenuius est, quam ferebatur. Nollem enim, id quod tanto et temporis impendio quaesivi, et animi sollicitudine, nunc amittere vitio festinandi. Si his duobus mensibus emerserit aliquid, quod cupio, concludam statim, atque ad vos veniam; sin autem nihil invenero, etiam veniam ad vos." (Ep. I. 22 in.)

Cardinal Beaufort had in the April of 1422 promised to get him a prebend for his church,—a simple, as distinguished from a dignitary prebend. If without a dean and chapter inducting him into a prebendal stall, which he did not want, he could go to Italy and there draw every year the stipend granted for the maintenance of a prebendary out of the estate of an English collegiate church, possibly in the diocese of Winchester, he would not have visited England in vain. But when he reminded the Cardinal of his promise, and claimed its performance, Beaufort receded from his position. "To trust the speeches of such persons," said Bracciolini, "is like holding a wolf by the ears," (quoting what the old Greeks used to say, [Greek: ton oton echein ton lukon] when they wanted to denote the awkward position of a man holding on to something when it was difficult for him to cling to it, and still more dangerous for him to let it go). From that moment Bracciolini ceased to place any further trust in Cardinal Beaufort, and turned with redoubled zest to the proposal of Lamberteschi as one on which he alone relied: "Quidam me duobus jam mensibus suspensum tenet promittens mihi daturum praebendam quandam pro hac ecclesia: nunc autem cum rem urgerem, et ad calcem cuperem pervenire, recessit a promissis suis. Credere verbis istorum est, ac si auribus lupum teneas. Tu vero da operam, et cum primum Petrus responderit, me de eo facias certiorem: nam hoc solum expecto" (Ep. I. 21). From this time his mind was made up: he would leap the Rubicon: he would go in for the forgery, and his friend must have confidence in him. So speaking of his powers for the great task which he meditated he proceeds thus interestingly in the letter to Niccoli bearing date London, the 10th of June, 1422: "I want you to have no distrust: give me the leisure and the time for 'writing that HISTORY'" (the nearest approach this to a disclosure of the grand secret so frequently hinted at by him in the London letters of the spring and summer of 1422), "and I will do something you will approve. My heart is in the work, though I question my powers." Then quoting the sentiment from Virgil about "labour overcoming everything," he proceeds with unabated interest: "I have not for four years devoted any attention to literature, nor read a single book that can be considered well- written,—as you may judge from these letters of mine which are not what they used to be; but I shall soon get back into my old manner. When I reflect on the merits of the ancient writers of history, I recoil with fear from the undertaking" (mark that); "though when I consider what are the writers of the present day, I recover some confidence in the hope that if I strive with all my might, I shall be inferior to few of them." He then implores his friend to let him know the reply of Lamberteschi as soon as possible. "Nec dubites volo; si dabitur otium et tempus DESCRIBENDI GESTA ILLIUS, aliquid agam quod probabis. Cor bonum, adest mihi; nescio an vires aderint: tamen 'labor omnia vincit improbus.' Quatuor his annis nullam dedi operam studiis humanitatis, nec legi librum, quod ad eloquentiam spectaret; quod ex ipsis litteris meis potes conjicere. Non sunt enim quales esse consuevere; sed tamen brevi tempore redigar in priorem statum. Cum priores rerum scriptores considero, deterreor a scribendo; cum vero nostri temporis, nonnihil confido, sperans me paucis inferiorem futurum, si omnino nervos intendero. Tuum vero sit studium, ut quam primum certior fiam responsionis Petri" (Ep. I. 21).

IV. He did not remain in England long after this; soon after the midsummer of 1422 he left this country. His motive for taking this step may have been that he ended by giving up all hope of exchanging his laborious living for a sinecure free benefice, or of obtaining a permanent appointment to a prebend that was without any jurisdiction attached to it; or, what may be far more likely, he resolutely abandoned every object he had in view in England for the far brighter prospects that opened out before him at home if he undertook the forgery which had been proposed to him by Lamberteschi, and to which he had been invited by the promise of, in the first instance, a magnificent pecuniary reward, and afterwards the possibility of many rare advantages.

Only a fortnight after the last letter to Niccoli he addressed to him another, the last he wrote from London, on the 25th of June, 1422, couched in language which showed how deeply involved his Florentine friend was in the plot of the forgery: "If Lamberteschi would only place something certain before us, which we could adopt or approve," he wrote; and "How heartily I hope that Lamberteschi will do what would be so agreeable to us both." "Si Petrus certum quid responderit, quod sequi ant probare possimus"—"Quam maxime exopto, ut Petrus perficiat, quae vellemus" (Ep. I. 22).

From this day we hear no more of him in London. Sometime during the summer of 1422 he returned to Rome, and, following the advice of the Cardinal Archbishop of Pisa, went back to his old employment in Rome at the Secretariate, but now, it would appear, as the Principal Secretary to the Pope,—a post which he obtained with little or no intercession, as borne testimony to by himself: —"Ego effectus sum Secretarius Pontificis, et quidem nullis precibus, vel admodum paucis" (Ep. II. 2).

Here then was Bracciolini again in Rome, not then a city of saints and sacred things, but of scoffing priests and absolved sinners: we all know what Luther said on returning to Wittenberg, after his first visit to Rome: "everything is permitted there except to be an honest man." If that was true at the commencement of the sixteenth century, it was much more true at the commencement of the fifteenth.

Count Corniani, in his "Ages of Italian Literature," is of opinion that Bracciolini had been in Hungary (II. 76). If so, it must have been after he left England; he could not then have been so soon, as I have stated, in Rome: he was there, however, for a certainty, as some of his letters now extant show, in the earlier portion of the spring of the following year; even this is against his having been in Hungary, except on the ground that almost immediately after he had arrived there, he found that whatever it was that Lamberteschi had offered to him was neither practicable nor agreeable; therefore he relinquished it and accepted the office of Secretary in the Papal Court. Bracciolini, however, does not seem to have gone to Hungary; nor was there any necessity that he should have done so, if my theory be correct; for then, so far from Lamberteschi's offer being neither practicable nor agreeable, it was both so feasible and pleasant, that it was in order to accomplish it, he expressly accepted the Secretary's post in the Court of Rome. He could not have carried out the forgery had he remained in England, because he would not have had the necessary leisure, on account of the heavy duties attached to his cure; and we have seen how he could get neither a sinecure nor a simple prebend; but to be in the Secretariate of the Papacy was to be the holder of an office with little or nothing to do, which gave him ample leisure for literary pursuits. He, therefore, became reconciled to accepting the Papal Secretaryship; "it being the way with a wise man," he observed in a philosophic spirit, "to do the best he can under circumstances, and be satisfied." If by being Secretary to the Pope he saw he could procure what he wanted, which was "obtaining a support," stick to the Secretariate he would; accordingly, he staid in Rome, devoting himself to his books. "Parere temporis semper sapientis est habitum. Si videro me hac via consecuturum, quod cupio, hoc est aliquod sustentaculum, tum adhaeream: quiescens in studiis, hic manebo" (Ep. II. 2).

As if preparing for some great literary undertaking connected with antiquity, he wrote from Rome on the 15th of May, 1423, to his friend Niccoli to let him have without the least delay all his notes and extracts from the various books (and they not a few and miscellaneous) which he had read; here it may be observed that what Cortese, Bishop of Urbino, says of the Camaldolese General, Traversari, is strictly applicable to him:—"Such was his inexhaustible love of reading, he regretted a moment spent away from his books; and every day, when not engaged in writing, devoured the compositions of the ancient Greeks and Romans": ("Erat in hoc homine inexhaustus quidem legendi amor; nullum enim patiebatur esse vacuum tempus. Quotidie aut scribebat, aut aliquid ex Graecis Latinisque litteris mandabat"):—"Mittas ad me, rogo, singula commentariola mea, hoc est, excerpta illa ex variis libris, quos legi, quae sunt plurima, ac dispersa; collige simul omnia, oro te, et ad me quamprimum mittas" (Ep. II. 2).

Having, no doubt, obtained in due time the notes and extracts wanted, apparently in the autumn of 1423, he then set about the commencement of his immortal and wonderful forgery, or, as he styles it in the fabrication itself, his "condensed and inglorious drudgery,"—"nobis in arto et inglorius labor" (Annal. IV. 31); for in a letter written from Rome in the night of the 8th of October that year he makes a reflection about "beginnings of any kind being arduous and difficult," following up the remark with these striking words: that "what the ancients did pleasantly, quickly and easily was to him troublesome, tedious and burdensome"; a remark which he could not have made unless he was attempting something in the way of the ancients; unless, moreover, he was just setting about it; then he consoles himself by again repeating his favourite sage old saw from Virgil: that "hard work gets over everything":—"In quibusvis quoque rebus principia sunt ardua et difficilia; ut quod antiquioribus in officio sit jucundum, promptum ac leve, mihi sit molestum, tardum, onerosum. Sed 'labor omnia vincit improbus'" (Ep. II. 5).

A month after this significant declaration he was hard at work forging the Annals of Tacitus; for we find him earnestly plying for books that were indispensable for any one writing the history of the early Roman Emperors. In a letter to Niccoli dated Rome, the 6th of November, 1423, he begs his friend to do all he can to get him some map of Ptolemy's Geography; to bear it in mind in case one should happen to fall in his way; also not to forget Suetonius and the other historians, and, above all, Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Characters: "Vellem aliquam Chartam Ptolemaei Geographiae, si fieri posset; in hoc cogita, si quid forte inciderit; ac etiam Suetonium, aliosque Historicos, et praesertim Plutarchi Viros Illustres non obliviscaris" (Ep. II. 7).

If it be said that Bracciolini wrote a History of Florence, and that these remarks which, unquestionably, refer to some "history" from the expression "describendi gesta illius," apply to that work, it must be borne in mind that he did not write that history until towards the close of his life, that is, more than thirty years after these letters which passed between him and Niccoli, for the events recorded in his History of Florence are carried down to as late as the year 1455; that that historical work is the only one he wrote under his own name; that it is no more written in imitation of the ancients, than any other of his acknowledged productions; and that even if it were, he would not have required for its composition such maps as Ptolemy's, nor such works as those of Suetonius and Plutarch. In fact, the most acute ingenuity cannot rescue Bracciolini from the charge that in October 1423 he, then resident in Rome, began to forge a work with the intention of palming it off upon the world as written by an ancient Roman: as I proceed I shall convincingly show that that ancient Roman was Tacitus, and that that work was the Annals.