"Oft unwearied did they spend the nights,
Till the Ledaean stars, so famed for love,
Wondered at them from above—
They spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine;
But search of deep philosophy,
Wit, eloquence, and poetry,
Arts which they loved."
Of these men, the most extraordinary for superlative qualifications, and, apparently that inseparable companion of the highest order of genius, indefatigable energy, was Bracciolini. Muratori, in his "Annali d'Italia" (anno 1459) speaks of him as "letterato insigne di questi tempi," and, as leaving behind him when he died on the 30th of October, 1459, "molte opere e gran nome" (Vol. XIII. 481).
When Bracciolini first joined the Papal Court, Guarino of Verona, Aurispa and Filelfo were making continuous voyages to Greece in order to fetch home manuscripts of Greek authors yet unknown in Italy; at this time were found and first brought to the West of Europe the poems of Callimachus, Pindar, Oppian and Orpheus; the Commentaries of Aristarchus on the Iliad; the works of Plato, Proclus, Plotinus, Xenophon and Lucian; the Histories of Arrian, Cassius Dio, and Diodorus Siculus; the Geography of Strabo; Procopius and some of the Byzantine historians; Gregory of Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and other Greek Fathers of the Church. In emulation of these men Bracciolini and a band of bookfinders, assisted and rewarded by the wealth of Princes and Popes, went up and down the countries of Europe to find manuscripts of the ancient works of the Romans that were supposed to be lost; and it is generally believed that the republic of letters is more indebted to him than to anybody else of his manuscript finding age for the numerous books that were found, and which without such timely recovery we are given to understand, from the decaying state of the manuscript and the pernicious place where it was lighted on, would very soon, in almost every instance, have been irrecoverably lost.
When Bracciolini accompanied the Papal Court in the capacity of Secretary to the Council of Constance in 1414, he, one day, went with two friends, Cincio, the Roman gentleman and scholar of fortune, of the family de Rustici, and the eminent schoolman and finished writer Bartolommeo de Montepulciano to the monastery of St. Gall about twenty miles distant from Constance for the purpose of finding new manuscripts; his companions found Lactantius, "De Utroque Homine," Vitruvius on Architecture and the Grammar of Priscian, while he himself found, in addition to the Commentaries of Asconius Pedianus on eight of Cicero's Orations,—the three first books, and half of the fourth of the Argonauticon of Valerius Flaccus. On this discovery being communicated to Francesco Barbaro, the latter in his reply spoke of other discoveries of Bracciolini's, of some of which we have no account as to where they were found, nor when, except before 1414: Tertullian, Lucretius, Silius Italicus, Ammianus Marcelinus, Manilius (his unfinished poem on "Astronomy," clearly a forgery), Lucius Septimius Caper, Eutychius and Probus; and, adds Barbaro, "many others,"—"complures alios," among which Aulus Gellius may be included. All these were found not by Bracciolini alone, but always in the company of very remarkable characters, and more frequently than any other, Bartolommeo de Montepulciano, of whom nothing is known, except that he was a splendid scholar, and great bookfinder, or forger (the terms are synonymous), and that he resided in Rome in a pleasant villa situated near the Lateran Church (Pog. Op. p. 2).
In the oration which he delivered over the remains of his friend Niccoli (Op. 272) Bracciolini says that he found in French and German monasteries, besides Quintilian, Silius Italicus, and part of the poem of Lucretius, some orations of Cicero and Nonius Marcellus. In his Treatise "de Infelicitate Principum" (p. 394), and in one of his Letters (II. 7), he mentions having found Cicero's Orations along with Columella in the Monastery of Cluny in the Maconnois district of Burgundy; he gives the number of the Orations of Cicero, which were eight (Ep. IV. 2), and which are generally supposed to have been those for Caecina, Rubirius and Roscius, against Rullus and Lucius Piso, and those relating to the Agrarian Laws. He also found Cicero's two treatises De Legibus and De Finibus. In his Descriptio Ruinarum Urbis Romae he states that he found in the Monastery of Monte Casino, near Naples, Frontinus on the Aqueducts of Rome, and it was, as we know from one of his letters (III. 37), in July 1429. The Abbé Méhus, in the preface to his edition of the works of Traversari, adds that he found the eight books of the Mathematics of Firmicus, which is confirmed by himself (Ep. III. 37). While in England he recovered the poems of Julius Calpurnicus who wrote pastorals in the reign of the Emperor Carus; he also lighted in the monasteries on part of Petronius Arbiter (Ep. IV. 3), also part of Statius, and book XV. in Cologne in 1423 (ib.); six years after he found the following twelve plays of Plautus: Bacchides, Mostellaria, Mercator, Miles Gloriosus, Pseudolus, Poenulus, Persa, Rudens, Stichus, Trinummus and Truculentus. In fact, he was occupied nearly all his days, as long as he was in the vigour of life, in traversing Germany and other lands in search of ancient manuscripts, which he recovered in monasteries at different times and in different places; nor was he to be deterred from these toils, which have been likened to the labours of Hercules, by any stress of weather, length of journey or badness of roads.
IV.—The account which he gives in his Dialogue "De Infelicitate Principum," while dwelling upon a custom of his of going from one country to another in far distant and barbarous parts for Latin books, opens our eyes to a very strange state of belief which obtained at the beginning of the fifteenth century with respect to the refined works of the ancients;—that, because a number of these manuscripts were discovered by him, and his band of bookfinders, in obscure monasteries in barbarous countries, there was to be deduced therefrom a definite conclusion that many more were to be discovered in that way; and that this conclusion was so firmly lodged in the minds of men it prevented Popes and Princes from continuing to offer that pecuniary aid and those other rewards which they had been for a long time in the habit of tendering for the recovery of such manuscripts:—"When these," says he in the above-mentioned treatise, "had been brought to light by him, and when the very sanguine and certain hope was held forth of more being found, never after that did either a Pope or a Prince give the slightest attention or assistance to the recovery of those most illustrious men out of the convents of barbarians:"— "haec cum ab eo fuissent in lucem edita, cumque uberior et certa spes proposita esset ampliora inveniendi, nunquam postea aut pontifex aut princeps vel minimum operae aut auxilii adhibuit ad liberandos praeclarissimos illos viros ex ergastulis barbarorum" (p. 393). This statement is so remarkably curious that it requires a little consideration.
We can easily understand how the valuable works of the Greeks and Romans, from the importance attached to them and the appreciation in which they were held, were safest and longest preserved in their respective countries, and that, therefore, they could have been found, sooner than elsewhere, in Greece and Italy; but after those countries had been thoroughly ransacked, it is not so clear to comprehend how it should follow that their works were to be just as rapidly and easily found in other, and those barbarous countries, nay, indeed, more rapidly and more easily. To put this forth was to endeavour to prepare people's minds for the numbers of discoveries that were made, or, perhaps, more properly, pretended to be made in foreign parts. It was, in fact, to pursue this course of reasoning:—If those works had remained in civilized hands, centuries would not have elapsed without the world being cognizant of their existence; the learned could not have lost sight of them; the select few would have transmitted copies from generation to generation; but when they passed into the possession of unlettered men living in barbarous countries, they would then be altogether hidden from view; such people would treat them as swine treat pearls; spurn them; not keep them in libraries, but throw them away as useless lumber into cellars, pits, dark holes, dirty passages, dry wells; fling them away as refuse into dustbins or upon dungheaps. Nearly as much says Bracciolini by these shadowy phrases: "in darkness"; "in a blind dungeon"; "in a dirty dungeon;" "in dismal dungeons," and "in many dens," as for instance, "for the sake of finding books that were kept by them in their convents shut up in darkness and in a blind dungeon" (Op. 393)—"He had rescued renowned authors out of the dismal dungeons in which, against their will and without being used, they had been kept concealed (for they were shut up in many a den and foul dungeon" (ib.):— "in tenebris"; "carcere caeco"; "foedo carcere"; "diris carceribus," and "multis vinculis," e.g.:—"librorum perquirendorum gratia, qui in ergastulis apud illos reclusi detinentur in tenebris, et carcere caeco" (Op. 393)— "Autores praeclaros … ex diris carceribus quibus inviti obsoletique opprimuntur eruisset (sunt enim multis vinculis et foedo carcere abstrusi" (ib.). Books thrown away in such places must be regarded, when recovered, as found by the purest accident; hence it was at once comprehensible how they had remained unknown to the world for hundreds of years; for who would think of looking for books in such places?
Yet it was precisely in such places that Bracciolini and his companions looked for the books that they wanted; what is still stranger, they always found in such queer places the exact books they were in search of. It was so, for example, when they recovered the books in the monastery of St. Gall; the books were not found where, Bracciolini admits, they ought to have been, on account of their excellence, on the shelves of the library, but where slugs and toads are more frequently looked for and found than books and manuscripts, in an exceedingly dirty and dark dungeon at the bottom of a tower and one of these books, Quintilian, though described as "sound and safe," is also described as being "saturated with moisture and begrimed with mire," as if it had been made dirty expressly for the occasion of the recovery: "Quintilianum comperimus, adhuc salvum et incolumem, plenum tamen situ et pulvere squalentem. Erant non in bibliotheca libri illi, ut eorum dignitas postulabat, sed in teterrimo quodam et obscuro carcere, fundo scilicet unius turris." (From a letter of Bracciolini to Guarino of Verona, preserved in St. Paul's Library, Leipzic—printed at the end of Poggiana, and dated Jan. 1, 1417).
V. This kind of reasoning, when admitted, throws the door open to fraud and forgery; but it cannot be admitted, because it is fallacious in reality, sound in appearance only, as will be seen by only putting a few natural questions:—How came these books into such places? Who took them from Italy, Greece, or other enlightened parts of the globe? If some learned monk, made abbot or prior of a convent of Germany or Hungary? or some equally learned priest sent as bishop to christianize the heathen in still more barbarous lands in the North in a far distant age, why should succeeding monks, fonder, be it granted, of ploughing and reaping than reading and writing, treat as refuse books which, though not deemed by them of any value, as far as their own tastes and inclinations were concerned, they, nevertheless, knew were held in the very highest esteem by the studious in more civilized parts; and that these studious people, understanding the language in which they were written, and considering their contents most precious, would willingly give in exchange for them at any time not large, but enormous sums of money?
These are questions that cannot be answered with satisfaction: they seem to give the highest colouring of truth to what has been suggested, that there was a wholesale forgery of these books; and one is almost inclined to give Father Hardouin credit, for being quite right, when he expressed as his belief that, perhaps, not more than two or three of the ancient Latin classics were really written by the old Romans. [Endnote 208]