Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

In 1438, Cosimo instituted the famous Platonic Academy of Florence, the special purpose of which was the interpretation of Greek philosophy. The gathering in Florence, in 1438, of the Greeks who came to the great Council, had a large influence in stimulating the interest of Florentines in Greek culture. Symonds (possibly somewhat biassed in favour of his beloved Florentines of the Renaissance) contends that the Byzantine ecclesiastics who came to the Council, and the long series of Greek travellers or refugees who found their way from Constantinople to Italy during the years that followed, included comparatively few real scholars whose classical learning could be trusted. These men supplied, says Symonds, “the beggarly elements of grammar, caligraphy, and bibliographical knowledge,” but it was Ficino and Aldus, Strozzi and Cosimo de’ Medici who opened the literature of Athens to the comprehension of the modern world.

The elevation to the papacy, in 1447, of Tommaso Parentucelli, who took the name of Nicholas V., had the effect of carrying to Rome some of the Florentine interest in literature and learning. Tommaso, who was a native of Pisa, had won repute in Bologna for his wide and thorough scholarship. He became, later, a protégé of Cosimo de’ Medici, who employed him as a librarian of the Marcian Library. To Nicholas V. was due the foundation of the Vatican Library, for which he secured a collection of some five thousand works. Symonds says that during his pontificate, “Rome became a vast workshop of erudition, a factory of translations from Greek and Latin.” The compensation paid to these translators from the funds provided by the Pope, was in many cases very liberal. In fact, as compared with the returns secured at this period for original work, the rewards paid to these translators of the Vatican seem decidedly disproportionate, especially when we remember that a large portion of their work was of poor quality, deficient both in exact scholarship and in literary form. To Lorenzo Valla was paid for his translation of Thucydides, 500 scudi, to Guarino for a version of Strabo, 1500 scudi, to Perotti for Polybius, 500 ducats. Manetti had a pension of 600 scudi a month to enable him to pursue his sacred studies. Poggio’s version of the Cyropædia of Xenophon and Filelfo’s rendering of the poems of Homer, were, from a literary point of view, more important productions. Some of the work in his series of translations was confided by the Pope to the resident Greek scholars. Trapezuntios undertook the Metaphysics of Aristotle and the Republic of Plato, and Tifernas the Ethics of Aristotle. Translations were also prepared of Theophrastus and of Ptolemy.

In addition to these paid translators, the Pope attracted to his Court from all parts of Italy, and particularly from his old home, Florence, a number of scholars, of whom Poggio Bracciolini (or Fiorentino) and Cardinal Bessarion were the most important. Bessarion took an active part in encouraging Greek scholars to make their homes and to do their work in Italy. The great development of literary productiveness and literary interests in Rome during the pontificate of Nicholas, is one of the noteworthy examples of large results accruing to literature and to literary workers through intelligently administered patronage. It seems safe to say that before the introduction of printing, it was only through the liberality of patrons that any satisfactory compensation could be secured for literary productions.

During the reign of Alfonso of Aragon, who in 1435 added Sicily to his dominions, and under the direct incentive of the royal patronage, a good deal of literary activity was developed in Naples. Alfonso was described by Vespasiano as being, next to Nicholas V., the most munificent patron of learning in Italy, and he attracted to his Court scholars like Manetti, Beccadelli, Valla, and others. The King paid to Bartolommeo Fazio a stipend of 500 ducats a year while he was engaged in writing his Chronicles, and when the work was completed, he added a further payment of 1500 florins. In 1459, the year of his death, Alfonso distributed 20,000 ducats among the men of letters gathered in Naples. It is certain that in no other city of Europe during that year were the earnings or rewards of literature so great. It does not appear, however, that this lavish expenditure had the effect of securing the production by Neapolitans of any works of continued importance, or even of bringing into existence in the city any lasting literary interests. The temperament of the people and the general environment were doubtless unfavourable as compared with the influences affecting Florence or Rome. It is probable also that the selection of the recipients of the royal bounty was made without any trustworthy principle and very much at haphazard.

A production of Beccadelli’s, perhaps the most brilliant of Alfonso’s literary protégés, is to be noted as having been proscribed by the Pope, being one of the earliest Italian publications to be so distinguished. Eugenius IV. forbade, under penalty of excommunication, the reading of Beccadelli’s Hermaphroditus, which was declared to be contra bonos mores. The book was denounced from many pulpits, and copies were burned, together with portraits of the poet, on the public squares of Bologna, Milan, and Ferrara.[416] This opposition of the Church was the more noteworthy, as the book contained nothing heretical or subversive of ecclesiastical authority, but was simply ribald and obscene.

Lorenzo Valla, another of the writers who received special favours and emoluments at the hands of Alfonso, likewise came under the ecclesiastical ban. But his writings contained more serious offences than obscenity or ribaldry. He boldly questioned the authenticity of Constantine’s Donation (a document which was later shown to be a forgery), and of other documents and literature held by the Church to be sacred, and the accuracy of his scholarship and the brilliancy of his polemical style, gave weight and force to his attacks. Denunciations came upon Valla’s head from many pulpits, and the matter was taken up by the Inquisition. But Alfonso told the monks that they must leave his secretary alone, and the proceedings were abandoned.

When Nicholas V. came to the papacy, undeterred by the charge of heresies, he appointed Valla to the post of Apostolic writer, and gave him very liberal emoluments for work on the series of Greek translations before referred to. Valla never retracted any of his utterances against the Church, but he appears, after accepting the Pope’s appointment, to have turned his polemical ardour in other directions. He engaged in some bitter controversies with Poggio, Fazio, and other contemporaries, controversies which seem to have aroused and excited the literary circles of the time, but which turned upon matters of no lasting importance. It is a cause of surprise to later literary historians that men like Valla, possessed of real learning and of unquestioned literary skill, should have been willing to devote their time and their capacity to the futilities which formed the pretexts for the greater part of the personal controversies of the time. Professor Adams says of Valla: “He had all the pride and insolence and hardly disguised pagan feeling and morals of the typical humanist; but in spirit and methods of work he was a genuine scholar, and his editions lie at the foundation of all later editorial work in the case of more than one classic author, and of the critical study of the New Testament as well.”[417]

During the two centuries preceding the invention of printing, it was the case that more books (in the form of manuscripts) were available for the use of students and readers in Italy than in any other country, but even in Italy manuscripts were scarce and costly. Even the collections in the so-called “libraries” of the cathedrals and colleges were very meagre. These manuscripts were nearly entirely the production of the cloisters, and as parchment continued to be very dear, many of the works sent out by the monks were in the form of palimpsests, that is, were transcribed upon scrolls which contained earlier writing. The fact that the original writing was in many cases but imperfectly erased, has caused to be preserved fragments of a number of classics which might otherwise have disappeared entirely. The service rendered by the monks in this way may be considered as at least a partial offset to the injury done by them to the cause of literature in the destruction of so many ancient writings. This matter has been referred to more fully in the chapter on Monasteries and Manuscripts.

One of the Italian scholars of the fifteenth century who interested himself particularly in the collection of manuscripts of the classics was Poggio Bracciolini. In 1414, while he was, in his official capacity as Apostolic Secretary, in attendance at the Council of Constance, he ransacked the libraries of St. Gall and of other monasteries of Switzerland and Suabia, and secured a complete Quintilian, copies of Lucretius, Frontinus, Probus, Vitruvius, nine of Cicero’s Orations, and manuscripts of a number of other valuable texts. Many of the libraries had been sadly neglected, and the greater part of the manuscripts were in dirty and tattered condition, but literature owes much to the monks through whom these literary treasures had been kept in existence at all.

Poggio is to be noted as a free-thinker who managed to keep in good relations with the Church. So long as free-thinkers confined their audacity to such matters as form the topic of Poggio’s Facetiæ, Beccadelli’s Hermaphroditus, or La Casa’s Capitolo del Forno, the Roman Curia looked on and smiled approvingly. The most obscene books to be found in any literature escaped the Papal censure, and a man like Aretino, notorious for his ribaldry, could aspire with fair prospects of success to the scarlet of a Cardinal.[418]