Renaissance literary theory and practice

by Charles Sears Baldwin

Medieval Latin had departed from classical usage because it was a living language, so widely active in communication as to grow. Men used it without being disconcerted by changes from place to place, from time to time. Such changes are inevitable so long as a language is used generally. Denotations are extended or contracted, connotations are modified or superseded, even by written use. Oral use adds changes in cadence. From the seventh century on through the Middle Age Latin was accentual. The speech tune of Cicero had faded; and no one had tried to resuscitate what had been supplanted by other cadences. The Latin hymns had carried medieval measures to the heights of poetry. Not till the seventeenth century did humanism succeed in having them revised classically; and fifty volumes have since been spent in recovering their medieval forms.[21] The extreme form of Renaissance classicism, by ignoring the historical development of language, tended to inhibit the use of Latin in immediate appeal.

So rigid a doctrine did not, of course, enlist all Renaissance humanists. The more judicious were content to select certain expert habits, especially Cicero’s strong and supple wielding of sentences. But the extremists, such as Christophe de Longueil (Longolius, 1488-1522), got fame; the doctrine continued in teaching and in practice; and as late as 1583 there was point in Sidney’s scornful allusion to “Nizolian paper books.” His readers knew that he meant the use of the Cicero thesaurus as a handbook for composition. Even where it did not enlist devotees, Ciceronianism confirmed the prevalent idea of the standard diction of the great period. Yet before the end of the fifteenth century both the general assumption and the particular cult had been exploded by Poliziano. As university teacher, in the introductory lecture (praelectio) of his course at Florence on Quintilian and Statius, he challenged the doctrine of the ideal classical period by a plea for the pedagogical value of later Latin.

Finally I would not attach undue importance to the objection that the eloquence of these writers was already corrupted by their period; for if we regard it aright, we shall perceive that it was not so much corrupted and debased as changed in kind. Nor should we call it inferior just because it is different. Certainly it shows greater cultivation of charm: more frequent pleasantry, many epigrams, many figures, no dull realizations, no inert structure; all not so much sound as also strong, gay, prompt, full of blood and color. Therefore, though we may indisputably concede most to those authors who are greatest, so we may justly contend that some qualities which are earlier attained and much more attainable [i.e., by students] are found in these [minor authors]. So, since it is a capital vice to wish to imitate one author and him alone, we are not off the track if we study these before those, if we do some things for their practical use.... [So, he adds, did Cicero himself when he turned from the Attic orators to the Rhodian and even to the Asiatic.] So that noble painter who was asked with what master he had made the most progress replied strikingly “With that one,” pointing to the populace; yes, and rightly too. For since nothing in human nature is happy in every aspect, many men’s excellences must be viewed, that one thing may stick from one, another thing from another, and that each [student] may adapt what suits him (Opera, Gryphius edition, Lyon, 1537-1539, III, 108-109).

Perhaps nothing else so pointed and telling against Ciceronianism was written during the Renaissance as Poliziano’s letter to Paolo Cortesi.

Nor are those who are thought to have held the first rank of eloquence like one another, as has been remarked by Seneca. Quintilian laughs at those who shall think themselves cousins of Cicero because they conclude a period with esse videatur. Horace declaims against imitators who are nothing but imitators. Certainly they who compose only by imitation seem to me like parrots or magpies uttering what they do not understand. For what they write lacks force and life, lacks impulse, lacks emotion, lacks individuality, lies down, sleeps, snores. Nothing true there, nothing solid, nothing effective. But are you not, some one asks, expressing Cicero? What of it? I am not Cicero. I am expressing, I think, myself. Besides, there are some, my dear Paul, who beg their style, as it were bread, piecemeal, who live not only from the day, but unto the day. Thus unless they have at hand the one book to cull from, they cannot join three words without spoiling them by rude connection or disgraceful barbarism. Their speech is always tremulous, vacillating, ailing, in a word so ill cared and ill fed that I cannot bear them, especially when they pass judgment on those whose styles deep study, manifold reading, and long practice have as it were fermented. But to come back to you, Paul, of whom I am very fond, to whom I owe much, whose talent I value very highly, I am asking whether you so bind yourself by this superstition that nothing pleases you which is simply yours, and that you never take your eyes from Cicero. When you have read Cicero—and other good authors—much and long, worn them down, learned them by heart, concocted, filled your breast with the knowledge of many things, and are now about to compose something yourself, then at last I would have you swim, as the saying is, without corks, take sometimes your own advice, doff that too morose and anxious solicitude to make yourself merely a Cicero—in a word risk your whole strength (Opera, Gryphius edition, Lyon, 1537-1539, I, 251).

The writer of that letter, in spite of his youthful triumphs in the vernacular, gave his mature years to the writing of Latin and the teaching of Latin and Greek literature. Unfortunately his expert Latin did not move Renaissance classicism to abandon either the practice of Ciceronianism or the theory of the ideal great period.

Some forty years after the destructive analysis of Poliziano, Ciceronianism was still active enough to draw the satire of Erasmus in the Dialogus Ciceronianus (1528). This reductio ad absurdum, beginning with the error of using a Cicero thesaurus as a handbook for composing, proceeds to the affectation of using for the Christian religion the terms proper to classical paganism: Jupiter Optimus Maximus for God the Father, Apollo for the Christ. Erasmus amuses himself by thus rewriting the Apostles’ Creed in Ciceronian terms. His point is not merely the pedantry of such paganism, nor its irreverence, but its unreality. Only the words can be taken over; the meaning or the suggestion, in one direction or the other, is violated. The point had been made more forcibly, because more practically, by Poliziano. Preoccupation with past usage thwarts the expression of actual present things and thoughts. Further Erasmus makes his Ciceronian admit that the cult is illusory, a dream which according to its own adepts has never quite come true. Incidentally the names thus brought up in the dialogue are not only of those Ciceronians who had at least a transient fame, but also of some whom history does not even know.

In spite of this destructive satire, Giulio Camillo reaffirmed Ciceronianism with undisturbed simplicity.