Notes on Fam., XXIV, 7, to Quintilian
[62]. Lapo di Castiglionchio gave Petrarch a copy of the Institutes in 1350. (For further details [see n. [72].)
[63]. How very much like a prophecy this reads! But it was a most natural exclamation for the “first modern scholar,” who stood at the threshold of the Renaissance, when so many of the classics had as yet to be discovered.
In a footnote of the Latin edition (Vol. III, p. 278), Fracassetti informs us that in one of the codices the following remark is added: “This turned out to be true, for the complete Quintilian was found at Constance.” This refers to the discovery of a complete manuscript of Quintilian in 1416. The Florentine scholar Poggio Bracciolini, while attending the Council of Constance in the capacity of apostolic secretary, found this copy in an old tower of the monastery of St. Gall. It is, perhaps, the same as the one now preserved at Florence—the Codex Laurentianus.
The story of the discovery is well told in a letter by Poggio. This letter gives such a faithful picture of the enthusiasm of the humanists, and is of such great interest that, although rather a long letter, it has been thought best to give a translation of it here in full (from the Latin text of Jacques Lefant, Poggiana, Part IV, pp. 309-13):
POGGIO TO GUARINO OF VERONA
I am well aware that, in spite of your constant occupations, the receipt of my letters is always a source of great pleasure to you—so great is your politeness and singular kindness to all. I beg of you, however, to be particularly attentive in reading the present. I beseech you the more urgently, not because I am the possessor of that which even the most learned of men may be anxious to share, but rather out of respect due to that which I am going to tell you. I feel certain, since you are so pre-eminently learned, that the news will bring no slight enjoyment to you and to the other scholars.
For tell me, pray, what is there, or what can there be more pleasing, or agreeable, or acceptable to you and to others than the knowledge of those things by the study of which we become more learned and (what is of even greater moment) more discriminating in our likes and dislikes? Our great parent, nature, gave to the human race a reasoning mind, which we are to consult as our guide in the conduct of a good and happy life, than which nothing better could be imagined. I am not so sure but that, after all, by far the most extraordinary gift of nature is the power of speech, without which the reason and the intellect were of no avail.
Speech, in giving external expression to the workings of the mind, is the one faculty which distinguishes us from other creatures. We should therefore consider ourselves under deep obligation to all those who have developed the liberal arts, but under deepest obligation to those who, by their patient and unremitting study, have handed down to us the rules of oratory and the norms of correct speech. In short, although mankind is especially superior to all other living creatures through its use of speech, these scholars have striven that in just this respect men should excel themselves.
Many illustrious Roman authors devoted themselves to the study and to the development of the human speech, as you know. Chief and foremost among them was M. Fabius Quintilianus, who describes the method for the development of the perfect orator with such clearness, and with such characteristic carefulness that, in my opinion, he lacked nothing as regards either the broadest knowledge or the highest eloquence. Even if we possessed nothing of Cicero, the father of Roman eloquence, we should still attain to a perfect knowledge of correct speech with Quintilian alone as our guide.
Hitherto, however, among us (and by this I mean among us Italians) Quintilian was to be had only in such a mangled and mutilated state (the fault of the times, I think), that neither the figure nor the face of man was to be distinguished in him. [For the parts then missing see Sabbadini, Scoperte, p. 13, n. 64.] You yourself have seen him [Aen., vi, 495-97]:
“His body gashed and torn,
His hands cut off, his comely face
Seamed o’er with wounds that mar its grace,
Ears lopped, and nostrils shorn.”
—(Conington, ed. 1900, p. 195)
A grievous fact, indeed, and an insufferable, that in the foul mangling of so eloquent a man we should have inflicted such great loss upon the domain of oratory. But the greater was our grief and our vexation at the maiming of that man, the greater is our present cause for congratulation. Thanks to our searchings, we have restored Quintilian to his original dress and dignity, to his former appearance, and to a condition of sound health. [Andreolo Arese seems to have found a complete Quintilian in France as early as 1396. See Sabbadini, op. cit., pp. 35, 36.]
Forsooth, if M. Tullius rejoices heartily in having secured the return of M. Marcellus from exile, and that too at a time when there were at Rome many other Marcelli who were just as good men, just as prominent and well known both at home and abroad, what are the learned men of today (and especially students of oratory) to do, seeing that this matchless glory of the Roman name (because of whose loss nothing was left except Cicero), and that this work, which but recently was so mangled and fragmentary, have been recalled not merely from exile but from utter destruction?
By Hercules, unless we had brought him aid in the nick of time, he would have died shortly. There is not the slightest doubt that that man, so brilliant, genteel, tasteful, refined, and pleasant could not longer have endured the filthiness of that dungeon, the squalor of that place, and the cruelty of those jailors. He was dejected and shabby in appearance, like unto those who have been condemned to death. His beard was unkept, and his hair matted with blood. [A quotation of Aen., ii, 277.] His very features and dress cried out that he was sentenced to an undeserved death. He seemed to stretch out his hands to me, to implore the assistance of the Quirites to protect him against an unjust judge. He seemed to be making an accusation, in that he, who once had been the means of safety to so many with his resourceful eloquence, could now find not a single patron to take pity on his misfortune, not one who would consult for his safety or prevent his being led out to an unmerited end.
Often by mere chance, things come to pass which we do not dare to hope for, as Terence says [Phormio, 5, 1, vss. 30, 31]. And so Fortune (and not so much his as ours) would have it that, when we found ourselves at Constance with nothing to do, a sudden desire should seize us of visiting the place where Quintilian was imprisoned—the monastery of St. Gall, twenty miles away. And so several of us proceeded thither [among whom Bartolomeo da Montepulciano and Cencio Rustici: Sabbadini, op. cit., p. 77] to relax our minds and at the same time to search through the volumes of which there was said to be a great number. There, among crowded stacks of books which it would take long to enumerate, we discovered a Quintilian, still safe and sound, but all moldy and covered with dust. For the books were not in the library, as their merit warranted, but in a most loathsome and dreary dungeon at the very foundations of one of the towers—a place into which not even those awaiting execution would be thrust.
I for one feel certain that if there were any today who would tear down these barbarian penitentiaries in which such men are held prisoners, and would submit them to a most careful search, as our predecessors did, they would meet with the same good fortune in the case of many authors whose loss we now mourn.
In addition to the Quintilian, we discovered the first three books and half the fourth book of the Argonauticon of C. Valerius Flaccus [books i-iv, 317: Sabbadini, op. cit., p. 78]; and explanations or commentary on eight orations of Cicero by Q. Asconius Pedianus, a very eloquent man mentioned by Quintilian himself. All these I transcribed with my own hand, and somewhat hastily [the Quintilian in thirty-two days, Burckhardt, p. 189], for I was anxious to send them to Leonardo Bruni of Arezzo and to Niccoló of Florence [Niccoló Niccoli, for whom he was acting as agent].
You have now, my dearest Guarino, all that could be given to you, for the present, by one who is most devoted to you. I wish I could have sent to you the book as well. But I had to please our Leonardo first. Still, you now know where it is to be had, so that if you really want to have it (which I should judge to be as soon as possible), you can easily obtain it. Farewell.
At Constance, December 16, 1416.
The real date of the discovery is in June or July, 1416; cf. Sabbadini, op. cit., p. 78.
[64]. Cic., De inv., i, 6 extr.