BOOK: Francesco Petrarca, "Selected Letters"

Francesco Petrarca: Selected Letters. Vol. 1. Translated by Elaine Fantham. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 76. Harvard University Press, 2017. 9780674058347. xlvi + 747 pp.

Francesco Petrarca: Selected Letters. Vol. 2. Translated by Elaine Fantham. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 77. Harvard University Press, 2017. 9780674971622. viii + 807 pp.

Petrarch seems to have been quite a prolific writer of letters, and also took the trouble to preserve them and publish them in the form of several collections: Familiar Letters (350 letters), Leters of Old Age (128 letters) and several others, and a few letters are also extant that he didn't publish that way (vol. 2, pp. 573–4). The present ITRL edition of Selected Letters contains 97 letters selected from the Familiar Letters and the Letters of Old Age.

In my previous posts about collections of letters in the ITRL series (Poliziano's, Fonzio's, and Valla's), I occasionally complained about how insubstantial many of those letters seemed, concerned only with relatively mundane everyday matters. By contrast, Petrarch's letters in the present collection are on average significantly longer and more interesting. He often enters into long discussions on religious, literary or moral topics, and he constantly quotes numerous ancient authors to support his views (but doesn't hesitate to disagree with them if necessary).

In this selection, the letters are arranged by topic rather than chronologically, which is probably a good idea as I'm not that familiar with the details of Petrarch's life and thus wouldn't benefit as much from a chronological arrangement of the letters. Many of the letters are to a handful of his close friends, of which Boccaccio is the best known nowadays, but he also didn't hesitate to write to princes, emperors, popes, chancellors and the like. Even in this latter group, there isn't nearly as much hustling and asking for favours as we saw in the previously mentioned volumes of correspondence by other authors.

There are a few frequently recurring subjects: plague epidemics, which ravaged Europe during Petrarch's time and took the lives of, among others, Petrarch's beloved Laura, several of his friends, and his ne'er-do-well son; rants against the corruption at the papal court in Avignon (which he likes to call “Babylon” :]); his introspective obsession with his supposed moral or religious shortcomings, which can be annoying at times, as I already complained in my recent post about his Secret Book; but overall, his letters are varied and interesting, and I definitely liked this collection better than the previous volumes of letters in the ITRL series.

I think there is perhaps something of a discrepancy between how a naive outside observer like me sees Petrarch vs. what he really was like (or how he saw himself). Nowadays we mostly remember him for his Italian love-poetry and are thus perhaps inclined to imagine him as a youthful and romantic character. But in fact that was only a small part of his work, and probably far from the most important in his eyes. There's a very interesting bibliography of his work here in vol. 2 (appendix II), from which we can see very clearly that his output in Latin was much bigger than in Italian, and mostly on much more serious subjects, often having to do with religion, history, moral philosophy and the like. Vol. 2 also includes a chronology of his life, which I also found quite useful as I didn't know much about his life before and his frequent movements were a bit hard to follow (sometimes it seemed like nearly every letter is written from a different town).

So all in all, I really enjoyed these two volumes. There's a long and interesting introduction in vol. 1, lots of explanatory notes, a useful chronology of his life and bibliography of his work, and the letters themselves were for the most part longer and more substantial than the ones by previous authors in the ITRL series. In the remainder of this post, I'll point out a few passages that struck me as particularly intersting.

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II.1 — includes an interesting account of Petrarch's ascent of Mont Ventoux (a mountain in Provence) together with his brother (§5–11). Unfortunately he seems to be mostly interested in using this story as a starting point for religious meditations, and the translator's notes (vol. 1, p. 592) express some doubts whether the climb really happened at all, or is it just an allegory.

II.2 — Petrarch describes the sights he has seen while on a visit to Rome. He seems to have been so immersed in ancient history and mythology that the town as he describes it is an odd mixture of the real and the mythical: “Petrarca pictures the locations of many historical or even legendary episodes as if they were still recognizable in fourteenth-century Rome” (translator's note 5, vol. 1, p. 596).

He often mentions the plague (II.3, II.5), which raged again and again in mid-14th-century Italy, and laments the people he has lost to it. This is perhaps a useful reminder that Renaissance Italy wasn't all colour and light, as we sometimes imagine it — or perhaps I just played too much Assassin's Creed. Petrarch's lamentations can get a bit wearisome, but at least he was aware of this himself, and he imagines his critics saying: “We were expecting an epic poem from you, but we read elegies: we hoped for narratives of distinguished men, but we observed only the one narrative of your own grief; what we thought were letters, are laments;” etc. (II.3.5). A sense that death can come at any time (IV.11.14–16) seems to loom much larger in his mind than it does for most of us nowadays (I remember him mentioning it in his Secret Book), and perhaps the endless plague epidemics had something to do with that.

His brother Gherardo was a Carthusian monk; letter II.4 includes a touching account of how his monastery was struck by the plague, leaving Gherardo as the only survivor, burying his dead brethren and eventually reforming the monastery with new monks from elsewhere (§4–8).

II.6 — an interesting account of Petrarch's efforts at collecting manuscripts, especially of Cicero's works. He also obtained a manuscript of Homer in Greek and, as he didn't know Greek himself, he commissioned a Latin translation of it (¶14).* The letter ends with the sad story of Petrarch's beloved teacher, Convenevole da Prato, who struggled with great poverty in his old age. At one point he borrowed two rare manuscripts from Petrarch ‘for research’, pawned them off, and died soon afterwards.

[*Later there are two more letters about the translator, Leonzio Pilato — III.21–22, including an account of his unfortunate death: he was struck by lightning when the ship he was travelling in got caught in a storm (III.22.17).]

In II.12, Petrarch writes about his simple life in the countryside: “I do not see the face of any woman except that of my steward's wife, and if you saw her you would think you were contemplating the Libyan or Ethiopian desert: [. . .] her face is such that, if Helen had owned it, there would have been no Trojan war; if Lucretia or Virginia, Tarquin would not have been driven from his kingdom nor Appius ended his life in jail.” (II.12.3)

There are endless complaints and whinging about everything from his own health to international politics. “The Ligurians of the seaboard [. . .] are conducting their affairs and dividing their time in such a way that, according to their long established habit, the end of foreign war is the beginning of civil war.” :)) (II.13.6)

II.17 — a longish letter to his friend Boccaccio, who had advised him to stop working so hard at his literary pursuits now that he is old. Petrarch argues that his literary work is relaxing and he'd just die sooner if he started idling. There's an interesting passage (§21–4) where he refutes certain claims that people used to live longer in ancient Roman times than in his own day. This letter was also an inspiration to the translator of this book, Prof. Fantham, who worked on it in her retirement (vol. 1, pp. xlii, xliv, 581).

There are a few letters on the subject of Petrarch's coronation as poet laureate (III.2–6). He admits that there's an aspect of vanity to it, “[b]ut this is human nature” (III.4.7).

The pope offered Petrarch a job as a secretary, on the condition that he could write in a sufficiently plain style. He didn't fancy this idea, probably also because he'd have to live at Avignon, which he hated, so he failed the test on purpose: “So when asked to compose something that would make it clear I could fly close to earth and fit myself to simple statements [. . .] I made every effort to unfurl the wings of my poor wits [. . .] what I composed was unintelligible to a majority of them” (III.10.14–15). :]

In III.12, Petrarch thanks a Byzantine diplomat who had procured a manuscript of Homer's works in Greek for him. He also describes his not very successful attempts to learn Greek; he studied with a Greek from Calabria, Petrarch teaching him Latin while learning (or trying to learn) Greek from him (§7–9).

III.14 — Petrarch encourages his correspondent to persist in his study of law, mostly on the argument that it's a waste of time to switch professions halfway through learning them (§36–7). He is, of course, aware that the situation is a bit ironic since he himself used to study law, at his father's instigation, but disliked it and gave it up (§3–4).

III.16 — Petrarch defends himself against accusations that he is jealous of Dante's fame; but I couldn't help feeling that he looks down a little on Dante because the latter concentrated his literary efforts on Italian rather than Latin. Petrarch's father and Dante had both been exiled from Florence at the same time (§7).

III.18 — some ideas on how to imitate other authors (especially ancient ones), always a topic of interest for neo-Latin writers. “I am a man pleased by resemblances, but not identity, and the resemblance itself should not be too close” (§20).

After a tirade against astrologers: “Shun doctors, flee from astrologers; the former harm your bodies, the latter your spirits.” (III.20.132)

III.23 — a long letter with an allegorical interpretation of the Aeneid. It reminded me a little of the just-so stories that Boccaccio invented to explain ancient myths in his Genealogy of the Pagan Gods.

In IV.4, while inveighing against lust, Petrarch includes a delightful rant against incest. “Certainly we read that many men had intercourse with their sisters and slept in the arms of their unhappy mothers.” (§4) (Nowadays we usually don't read about such things but watch them on Pornhub instead, and the (step)mothers involved are usually quite happy :P) He goes on to list a few concrete examples, and then points out that even horses are more chaste than people in this regard, because in the few instances when horses have been tricked into incest, they were not happy about it: “we read in the old writers that a horse was forced by the trick of his groom to have intercourse with his* mother: when he had finally thrown off the cover and recognized his mother he instantly cast himself down as if rejecting this crime and breathed his last breath as if a criminal.” (§5) [*Given the context we can at least be reasonably sure that “his” refers to the horse and not the groom — whew :))] What kind of sick pervert gets his jollies from tricking a horse into incest? :))) Well, the translator's note 6 on p. 665 says that the motive was “to concentrate the bloodline of a champion through inbreeding”.

He then moves on from incest to adultery: nowadays “a young man who has not achieved a successful adulterous relationship [. . .] is thought by his peers to be a poor failure” etc. (§8). :))

On a more wholesome note, in IV.6 Petrarch urges two of his friends to reconcile after a quarrel; in IV.7 he advises Pandolfo Malatesta to marry, more for the sake of his country and dynasty (§8) than because Petrarch would think that marriage is a very good idea in general (see also IV.8 on that). He never got married himself, admired his Laura from afar, and had a couple of illegitimate children whose mother's name has been lost to history (vol. 2, pp. 565–6), and apparently gave up sex some time in his forties (vol. 2, note 7 on pp. 710–2). :S

In a number of letters (IV.8–12) he extols a plain and moderate lifestyle with an emphasis on virtue rather than pleasure. In the process of doing so, he has a few funny remarks on how highly valued cooks are nowadays, which he sees as a sign of excessive, decadent luxury: “among our ancestors the cook was the cheapest of all slaves, but now he is head of the household. You ask why? You will find no answer except gluttony” (IV.8.21). “The cook [. . .] was once the cheapest of slaves among our ancestors, but finally began to be valued when Asia had been conquered” (IV.11.2) I wonder what he'd say about the celebrity chefs of today :)

There is a longish rant (IV.14) that contrasts the austere military discipline of the ancient Romans with the laxity and decadence of the various companies of mercenaries that were dicking around Italy in Petrarch's own day (and getting nothing done except prolonging the endless warfare that characterized so much of Renaissance Italian history). “You would not think you were entering a camp of men but brothels of whores and booths of gamesters and cookshops.” (§14) :)) By contrast, he praises the English for their recent successes in the Hundred Years' War: “When I was a young man the men of Britain [. . .] were thought the most timorous of all barbarians; now that race is most warlike and has laid low the Gauls” (§2).

A very interesting factoid from translator's note 2 on p. 679 of vol. 1: we usually hear that Diogenes lived in a barrel, but apparently that's just an approximate translation; it was actually “a pithos, or round earthenware jar”.

IV.15 — Petrarch writes to cardinal Colonna to express condolences on the death of the latter's brother, who had been a friend of Petrarch's. He points out that at least you don't need to worry that anything bad will happen to him now (§21–2), plus you will see him again in the afterlife eventually. “Do not think your brother dead, for he lives, but we are dying each day without noticing it, and we fear the beginning of true life like death — sheer blindness!” (§39)

V.4 — Petrarch writes to one Paganino, advisor to the ruler of Milan, advising that it's better to live in stability and friendship with your neighbours than to try to expand and dominate them by force. There are also two much longer letters giving advice, in the mirror-of-princes style, to the new king of Naples (V.5) and the ruler of Padua (V.6). The latter surprised me a little by also including his opinion on a few oddly specific and local issues, e.g. on the draining of marshes (§47–8) and on whether pigs should be allowed to graze freely in the city (§44–6; the translator's commentary summarizes this last issue very delicately as “unusual traffic problems” :)); vol. 2, p. 616).

A nice bit of casual misogyny from VI.1: “All women conform to one law: they want foolish things and absurdities.” :))) The context here is that his addressee's mother had wished that he would have a long life and be wealthy, while his father had wished that he would be eloquent and renowned, and Petrarch clearly approves of the latter much more than of the former.

The following interesting passage is probably an allusion to the medieval and early modern folk traditions that transformed vague memories of the ancient poet Virgil into stories that presented him as a magician: “I myself, more hostile to divination and magic than any other living man, am sometimes called a wizard [nigromanticus] because of my affection for Vergil.” (VI.5.29)

There are a few letters occasioned by political turmoil in Rome: Petrarch initially expressed support for Cola di Rienzo, the self-styled tribune (VI.4), but later withdrew it (VI.5). Subsequently he wrote a long letter arguing that the people of Rome should get a share of political power as well, rather than the city being ruled only by noblemen, foreign prelates and the like (VI.6). In doing so, he draws on many examples from the early history of ancient Rome. “Have we lived merely to sink to this, [. . .] that [. . .] the question should be raised whether a Roman citizen may be elected to the Senate, when we can see foreign-born men ruling for so long and so many Proud Tarquins on our Capitol?” (VI.6.12)

VI.8 — Petrarch writes to the doge of Venice, urging an end to their war against Genoa. His argument is that this is almost like a civil war and that Italians should stick together; but the doge replied with “a clear explanation of the economic reasons that made a war between Venice and Genoa unavoidable” (translator's comment, p. 636 of vol. 2).

There are several letters concerning Emperor Charles IV (VI.9–12). Petrarch hoped he would bring peace to Italy, but Charles only visited Rome briefly for his coronation and then returned north of the Alps. In VI.11, Petrarch describes his meeting with the emperor when the latter visited Italy. I was impressed by how cheerful and informal a conversation they had; it included a friendly disputation on the subject of whether Petrarch's plans for a solitary life are a good idea or not (§18–21).

In VII.1, Petrarch rebukes a particularly greedy cardinal. “For whom are you building up treasure, except for the devil and his minions, who watch you attentively, count your days and most greedily await your inheritance, planning to set up most grateful trophies inscribed with your names on the threshold of Tartarus from the spoils of the poor you have plundered?” (§17) :))

There are a few letters about religious subjects, e.g. VII.3 “to a friend wavering about the Catholic faith”. I was not particularly impressed by this one; as far as I can tell, there's not a single argument there that would make any sense unless you were already a believer. Talking about how merciful god is and what sacrifices he had made for mankind is completely nonsensical from an atheist's perspective. Well, I suppose that as long as Petrarch's friend was merely wavering a little and hadn't actually lost his faith yet, the letter was perhaps persuasive to him.

VII.6 is a long letter to Pope Urban V, urging him to move the seat of the papacy from Avignon back to Rome. Some of the arguments that were apparently involved in this debate struck me as a bit ridiculous, e.g. which town has a more pleasant climate (§224) and better food (§229) :) To my shock, Petrarch also calls for a crusade, not against the Turks, but against the Greeks: “the Turks are enemies, but the Greeks are heretics, worse than enemies” (§289). Even more ignobly, his argument is basically one of convenience: “our enemies, who now occupy Jerusalem” are hard to reach, but “there is nothing between us and these Greeklings except our own sleepiness and sloth [. . .] they are powerless [. . .] I guarantee that with two Italian cities [. . .] they will quickly [. . .] either overthrow that unwarlike empire or bring it back under the yoke of the Church” (§294–6). Wow. I always thought that it was despicable and disastrous when the western christians took Constantinople in 1204, but evidently Petrarch thought that it would be great to do it again. :(

Anyway, the pope did in fact move the papacy to Rome; there's another letter from Petrarch (VII.7) thanking him for this and responding to arguments that had been put forth by Frenchmen objecting to the move. This reminded me a little of one of his invectives on the same subject (see my post from some time ago); again he pretends that Italy = ancient Rome, the pinnacle of civilization, and France = ancient Gaul, filled with hairy and stupid barbarians. “In terms of common behavior I admit the Gauls are witty fellows of elegant gesture and speech, who gladly sport, cheerfully sing, often drink and hungrily party together. But true seriousness and real morality was always to be found among the Italians” (§100–1).

There's an interesting sequence of ‘letters to the ancients’, addressed to various ancient authors. He wrote two letters to Cicero (VIII.2–3), who lived in politically very turbulent times and often had to change his opinions about certain people or shift his loyalties a bit; Petrarch reproaches him for this, perhaps a bit unfairly so, given Cicero's circumstances (vol. 2, p. 677). In another letter (VIII.4) he upbraids the philosopher Seneca for serving, and even flattering, emperor Nero, that insane tyrant. He doesn't, however, say anything about the thing that always bothered *me* the most about Seneca: namely that he preached stoicism while being filthy rich himself and wallowing in luxury, the damned hypocrite. Petrarch also writes to Varro (VIII.5) and Livy (VIII.7), expressing regret that so much of their work has been lost. There is also a long letter to Homer (VIII.8), dealing partly with the question of whether later poets had failed to properly acknowledge the influence of Homer's work on theirs, and partly with the recent efforts to study Homer's work in Italy and translate it into Latin. In Petrarch's time, it seems, the devotees of Homer in Italy could pretty much be counted on the fingers of two hands (though not of one).

I liked the following passage, which combines two of Petrarch's favourite subjects: complaining about the loss of ancient literature and complaining about other nations. “The products of Homer's wakeful nights have largely perished”, he says, even among the Greeks “who, to avoid yielding to us in any matter, outdo our neglect in literature too: they have lost a great many books of Homer, like losing the light of one of their eyes” (VIII.9.12).

The collection ends with two autobiographical letters. One is a long letter to a friend (IX.1) and consists partly of reminiscences about Petrarch's life, partly of lamentations about how much worse nearly everything is now than it was in Petrarch's youth. He is aware that this is a stereotypical complaint of old people, but argues that in his case things really are objectively worse: plague epidemics, marauding bands of unemployed mercenaries, earthquakes, etc. As an example, he says that the markets of Venice are now overflowing with slaves from remote Scythia: “while once a vast quantity of corn each year was imported to this city by ship, the ships now come loaded with slaves, whom their wretched parents are selling, being overwhelmed by starvation” (§127). According to translator's note 57, this refers to “regions northeast of the Black and Caspian seas [. . .] Slave trade with these regoins greatly intensified with the Mongol invasions since the thirteenth century” (vol. 2, p. 705–6).

In §151 of the same letter, he mentions that in trying to visit the emperor, he had to “seek him out in the remotest barbarian region”; according to the translator's note, this turns out to have been in Prague :))

The second letter (IX.2) is addressed “to posterity” and is a kind of short autobiography. It includes an interesting description of the process that led to him being crowned poet laureate by king Robert of Naples; it included a sort of examination lasting three days: “I came to Robert, that supreme philosopher and king [. . .] so that he would pass judgment in person of how I seemed to him. [. . .] In short, after countless verbal exchanges on various topics and after I had shown him my Africa, which so delighted him that he asked as a great tribute that I should dedicate it to him [. . .], he appointed a fixed day for the hearing I had come to seek [. . .] When he had explored my ignorance over three days he judged me worthy of the laurel on the third” (§28–9).

BOOK: Lorenzo Valla, "Correspondence"

Lorenzo Valla: Correspondence. Edited and translated by Brendan Cook. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 60. Harvard University Press, 2013. 9780674724679. xxii + 417 pp.

Valla was a 15th-century humanist author, whose work seems to fall mostly in the area of philosophy and classical philology. I had read a couple of his books before — first his debunking of the Donation of Constantine and, more recently, his Dialectical Disputations. I enjoyed the former quite a bit, the latter not so much as it was too technical for me, but even in that book I couldn't help feeling that he has a knack for writing in an engaging and enjoyable manner whenever he stepped away for a moment from the more technical philosophical stuff.

So it is perhaps not surprising that I also enjoyed the present volume, containing his correspondence, more than the similar volumes of letters from earlier in the I Tatti Renaissance Library — those of Angelo Poliziano and Bartolomeo Fonzio.

Unlike some of the other humanists, he doesn't seem to have taken any steps to systematically preserve his letters or edit them for publication, so what we have in this volume is a relatively small and more or less random subset of things he had written over a period of many years. One thing that I particularly liked is that it also includes letters to him, not just from him, and in a few cases we are even so lucky that a letter and a reply to it have both been preserved and are included here.

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In terms of subject-matter, the letters here cover relatively similar topics as in the previously mentioned volumes by other authors. One frequent topic are Valla's writings and other people's reactions to them; sometimes he sends copies of manuscripts to others, sometimes other people ask for such copies, etc. “I have just finished my book On Dialectic and Philosophy, which none will criticize save those few that regret wasting their time on dialectic.” (#11, p. 67.) I must admit that while reading that book of his I did think that the whole subject is a bit of a waste of time :P

Another topic is business, with Valla writing to current or prospective patrons (#9), sucking up to popes (#5) and cardinals (“I am currently exhausted from writing three letters to as many cardinals today”, 40.1, p. 213), and occasionally writing letters of recommendation on behalf of other people (often impressively glowing ones; #27, 42, 49, 53).

There are a couple of interesting letters (#22, 25) where Valla wants to return to Rome for a visit (he grew up there but later moved to Naples, where he worked for king Alfonso) and is asking for a safe conduct from the pope — apparently his debunking of the Donation of Constantine pissed off the church quite a bit and he was worried that they might prosecute him if he entered the Papal State. But this scandal calmed down after the death of pope Eugenius (p. 330), and we later find Valla living in Rome and evidently on quite good terms with the popes. I guess there was no such thing as tenure back then; there's a letter from Valla to a papal official, asking for clarification whether his teaching job in Rome got cancelled by the pope or not (#50, p. 249).

Due to his reputation as a philologist, people occasionally approached him with questions, leading to some of the more interesting letters in this book. See e.g. #19 with Valla's translation and explanation of a Greek inscription from Naples.

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One particularly prominent topic of his correspondence, which is not present to the same extent in the aforementioned volumes by other authors, are his quarrels, which he seems to have been somewhat notorious for. He was by all accounts a very brilliant Latinist, but he also seems to have had a disappointingly strong urge to not only be right, but to prove other people wrong, and to do that in a needlessly combative manner.

“I send you this little work which I have just completed; the subject is canon law and theology, though it contradicts all canonists and all theologians.” (#12, p. 71.)

“Meanwhile I have written on dialectic with the object of humiliating Boethius, among others. [. . .] I criticize Priscian, Servius, Donatus [etc. etc. etc.] — no one escapes.” (17.1, pp. 109–11.)

Probably the longest letter in this volume is #13, in which Valla attempts some sort of self-defense. He argues that he is just criticizing incompetent (mostly recent) authors who deserve it, while upholding the authority of good (mostly ancient) authors; that the ancients themselves did the same — pointing out the errors of their predecessors if there was a good argument for it, etc. But clearly he is one of those who believe that the best defense is a good offense, and he goes all-out on his hapless victims: “[. . .] not one of those I mention can be numbered among even the modestly learned” (13.8, p. 81); later he calls them the “dregs of humanity” (13.10, p. 83) and lists a large number of them by name. “If they [= the ancients] were to rise from the dead and return to life, I think they would be much more savage than I am in correcting these persons who stray needlessly from the footsteps of the ancients” (13.9, p. 83).

Another fine example of his brazen approach to self-defense: “I will readily confess, and actually accuse myself, of giving the appearance of sparing neither man nor god, as Lactantius says of Lucian. Anyone who wants to criticize me will in consequence not lack for material.” (25.2, p. 163.)

One of the few instances in this volume where we have a letter and a reply to it are #29A–30. A humanist named Lauro Quirini took issue with Valla's tendency to denigrate all sorts of earlier authors, and even had the guts to ask Valla for copies of his works so he could scrutinize them further. Valla replies with a hefty dose of rage and concludes by pointing out mistakes in Quirini's letter: “we say ‘on the Ides,’ not ‘on the First Ides.’ I omit your other barbarisms and solecisms. Again farewell.” (30.3, p. 187.)

After all these examples, I had a hard time believing Valla when he says: “I should prefer, in fact, to be and seem a good man than a learned one.” (51.3, p. 265.)

While reading this book, I was often reminded of the famous line from The Big Lebowski: you're not wrong, you're just an asshole. We often find him having quarrels with people that used to be his friends, e.g. Panormita (see #18, Valla even includes two scurrilous poems against him), then Antonio da Rho (pp. 115–9), and later Poggio Bracciolini. The last of these quarrels was particularly intense, with both Poggio and Valla writing invectives against each other. There's an interesting letter from Francesco Filelfo (#51A), who tried to mediate between them and pointed out, very reasonably, how unseemly it is for two grey-haired intellectuals to be bashing each other like that (51A.3, p. 269). There are also a couple of letters (#3A, 17A) from Maffeo Vegio, urging Valla towards moderation: “why do you consider it so important to prolong your grudges, why do you find so much beauty in strife?” (17A.5, p. 119.)

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On a less important note, an interesting recurring feature of these letters are comments or complaints about the people that were carrying them. Clearly there was no regular postal service yet in Valla's day, so people like him had to rely on messengers, acquaintances travelling to the destination city, etc. See e.g. #2E (p. 31: “Such is the unreliability, or at least the carelessness, of those disgraceful couriers”), 10.1 (p. 65), 15.2 (p. 103), #29 (p. 177: “to be brief, with the messenger waiting and urging me to hurry up”), 33A.1 (p. 193: “I had resolved to write to you whenever I found a messenger making the journey to your parts”), #50A bis (p. 255: “the messenger is just about to depart, and he has made a nuisance of himself demanding this letter once again”).

An interesting factoid from the translator's notes, p. 385: at some point Valla translated Homer's Iliad into Latin, but changed it “from poetry into the sort of prose associated with the Roman orators”. What a very odd idea; I never had a good opinion of people who translate poetry into prose (which sadly includes a lot of translators in the ITRL series!).

In one letter he complains about “my head, which aches from the wind” (31.1, p. 189). The translator adds in the notes: “Valla is suffering from a colpo d'aria, an ailment unknown outside Italy” (p. 388). I hadn't heard of this phrase before (I see that the wiktionary explains it as “a cold, speficially one caused by bad weather or cold air”), but I am surprised that the translator says it's unknown outside of Italy. The belief that drafts of air can cause cold or headaches seems to be unknown in the English-speaking countries but is widespread in many parts of Europe, as can be seen from e.g. frequent reddit threads on this topic: 1, 2, 3. From what I understand, there is supposed to be no medical foundation for this, but even knowing this there seems to be some sort of negative placebo (nocebo?) effect at work here, such that being exposed to a draft does actually give me a headache, and I wouldn't be surprised if it gave me a cold as well.

A fine contribution to the ‘honi soit qui mal y pense’ category, from a letter from Niccolò Perotti to Valla (43A.1, p. 219): “I may declare with Cicero in his letter to Brutus that ‘I regard epistles as Aristophanus did the iambics of Archilochus: the longer the better.’ ”

It's funny to see what sort of things the popes used to have to deal with. There's a letter from Valla to a papal official, complaining about his living arrangements in Rome: “when I had you intercede with the Holy Father on my behalf, I did so in the hope that you would also get for me the kitchen next to the two smaller chambers [. . .] The beadle is keeping this room for a certain fellow who actually sleeps in the kitchen” etc. etc. (46.2, p. 235). In another letter, this time directly to the pope, Valla is asking for help in assigning a guardian to his orphaned cousins (48.1, p. 243).

In a letter from Niccolò Perotti to Valla, there's an interesting anecdote (52 bis A.2, p. 299) about a certain Tisias who studied rhetoric with Corax and promised him a huge payment if (and only if) he won his first case in court. Corax then sued him, arguing: ‘if I win, he must pay me because the court will have ordered him to; if I lose, he must pay me because this is his first case and he will have won it’. Tisias defended himself along the lines of ‘if I win, I don't have to pay him anything because this is what the case is about and I just won it; but if I lose, I don't have to pay him because our deal was that I pay him only if I win my first case’. A nice paradox, but I particularly liked the court's reply: “A bad egg comes from a bad crow” (p. 301). I was reminded a little of that old xkcd comic where one guard always lies, one always tells the truth, and one “stabs people who ask tricky questions” :))

*

I think this is definitely the most interesting volume of letters I've read in the ITRL series so far.

BOOK: Bartolomeo Fonzio, "Letters to Friends"

Bartolomeo Fonzio: Letters to Friends. Edited by Alessandro Daneloni. Translated by Martin Davies. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 47. Harvard University Press, 2011. 9780674058361. xviii + 233 pp.

Fonzio was a humanist author from Florence, and in the last part of his career a priest, who lived in the late 15th and early 16th century. This book contains a small selection of his letters to various people; apparently he mostly selected and edited the letters by himself, though he never quite got around to publishing them.

This is not the first time we've had a volume of letters in the I Tatti Renaissance Library — see my post from a few years ago about vol. 21, the letters of Angelo Poliziano. My impressions about Fonzio's book of letters are pretty similar to what I wrote back then about Poliziano's: they give us a few interesting glimpses into his life, especially as they are arranged chronologically, but most of them don't really have anything terribly substantial to say. Typical subjects include general expressions of affection to friends, and looking for patronage, either for himself or for his students or relatives. One thing that surprised me is how little detail these letters tend to go into, even when arranging things like jobs where I would imagine that more detail would be important. What if the recipient needs to ask for clasification or for more information? I imagine that waiting for messengers to carry the letters back and forth could take weeks.

Nevertheless, here are some of the letters that I found interesting:

1.16 — Fonzio has just returned from a trip to Rome, and is describing various sights to his friend Battista Guarini. This was pretty interesting, and some of the ancient ruins he describes have since been ruined for good (see n. 34 on p. 203). However, I was disappointed to read that much of his description is actually based on a book called De varietate fortunae, written some 25 years earlier by Poggio Bracciolini (see n. 27 on p. 202 and n. 37 on p. 203).

1.17 — a fine letter to the same friend, trying to console him about the death of his wife. I was glad to hear that Fonzio has no patience for the useless sort of advice that you find in the works of Stoic philosophers: “I do not ask that you should be the Sage of Stoic theory, which requires us to feel no anguish at all at the passing of deat friends. I do not share the view that we should never be moved by any human emotion.” (1.17.2) However, I'm not sure if Fonzio's advice is terribly helpful either: he points out that death is inevitable, the soul goes on to a more pleasant afterlife, and in any case Battista should just focus on his scholarly work to forget his grief more easily.

A nice pun from 1.21.2: “there's no medicine available for our sick body politic while the Medic's away” (referring to Lorenzo de' Medici's temporary absence from Florence).

Letter 1.22 is also very punny. Fonzio was sending some manuscripts to a French nobleman named Beauclair, first The Golden Ass and now a cookbook: “I have decided to take account not just of your stable but of your kitchen too” (1.22.2), etc.

1.24 — a delightful, no-holds-barred invective against Angelo Poliziano (he and Fonzio were rivals as professors in Florence at some point). “Your impudence will not further abuse my modesty, nor will that reckless insolence of yours any longer launch itself against my patience.” (1.24.1) “Was it some acquaintance with the liberal arts that gave you this puffed-up idea of yourself? — though if you had even a modest mastery of any of them you would not be so devoid of all traces of humanity.” (1.24.2) “The erudite and upright generally consign their thoughts to writing and do not conduct debates on the truth by means of disgraceful insults but with useful writings.” (1.24.4) Pot, meet kettle :))

He apparently spent some time in Rome, working for the church, but eventually left in disgust at the level of corruption he saw there. He gives an interesting and frank description of this in two letters from 1484, to Lorrenzo de' Medici (2.4) and to Bernardo Rucellai (2.5). See esp. 2.4.2&ndash3, 2.4.6–7, 2.5.5–6. “By God in heaven and our lord and master Jesus Christ, what powers of oratory would be equal to describing the vices of this [papal] court?” (2.4.2) “I could see that here no account was taken of either right living or true knowledge. [. . .] men here who dress in sheep's clothing and behave like ravening wolves [. . .] Their greed and wantonness can never be satisfied.” (2.5.5)

2.7 — an interesting letter about the discovery, in the April 1485, of a remarkably well-preserved corpse of a young girl from the Roman era. I was really looking forward to this letter as it's even mentioned in the publisher's description on the front flap of the dust jacket; however, I was a little disappointed as it goes into less detail than I had hoped for. On the plus side, Fonzio actually made a drawing of the corpse and its sacrophagus, which is included in this volume on p. xviii.

Anyway, the amazing thing is how well-preserved it was: “rather pale and as if she had been buried that very day [. . .] small ears, a short forehead, dark eyebrows, the eyes beneath shapely and bright. The nose was still intact, and so soft that if it was pressed by a finger it would flex and yield. The lips were a pale red, the teeth snow-white and small, the tongue from the roof of the mouth all scarlet. The cheeks, chin, neck, and throat — you'd think they belonged to a living person.” I find this hard to believe, TBH; I wonder what really happened. The only hint of a possible explanation appears early in the letter: the corpse was “lying on its face, covered by a layer of fragrant bark two inches thick; all of the inside of the casket was likewise smeared with the same fragrant mixture like some sort of plaster”. Fonzio says that her name and the period in which she lived are unknown as no inscriptions were discovered on the tomb. “Two days after it was found, by order of the Conservators it [= the corpse] was taken to the Capitol amidst vast throngs of people”, but unfortunately Fonzio doesn't say anything about the subsequent fate of the body.

Several other contemporary authors mention this event; the translator's note 18 on p. 209 recommends a suitably obscure 19th-century German paper: Christian Hülsen, “Die Auffindung der Römischen Leiche vom Jahre 1485”, Mittheilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 4(1883):433–49. (To be honest, it isn't that obscure — the journal appears to have been scanned by Google at some point and you can find it on archive.org. Or if you feel like you have too much money, Messrs. de Gruyter will be happy to sell you access to another scan of this article for a mere 30 euros! :)))) In any case, my German is a bit too rusty to read Hülsen's article, and he quotes the text of the original descriptions of the corpse in Latin, which I don't understand at all, so I had to look for some other source. A bit of googling led me to Rodolfo Lanziani, Pagan and Christian Rome (1892), pp. 295–301 — see this excellent web page; Lanziani includes Fonzio's drawing as well as generous extracts from three other contemporary descriptions. This event is also mentioned in Symonds's Renaissance in Italy (Vol. 1, The Age of the Despots, ch. 1).

2.10 — the senate of the Republic of Ragusa offered Fonzio the job of a professor there; he was pleasantly surprised by this as he hadn't actually been asking for anything of that sort. In this letter, he politely refuses their offer. I found this episode interesting as an example of the strong ties between Dubrovnik and Italy during that period.

There are several letters to various Hungarians, including some to king Matthias Corvinus himself. The king was trying to establish a new library and Fonzio prepared for him “a book listing all authors, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, in every field of learning, which I have compiled with considerable labor and care, so that you can see how the library should be arranged” (2.13.1; from a later passage in the same letter it appears that Fonzio also helped organize the copying of some books in Florence). I wonder if Fonzio's list is extant and published somewhere; unfortunately I didn't notice anything about this in the translator's notes.

2.19 — a perfectly decent letter but one that becomes funny when read by an incurable pervert like myself. A friend is asking Fonzio for help with finding a suitable servant, and Fonzio's reply makes him sound like a high-class pimp: “I have looked and do still look with all energy and persistence for a youth such as you seek, one fitted for reading, writing, serving, and carrying out all your orders. But there's a remarkable shortage of such young men here [. . .] I'll press on, however, with the gramar schools, I'll investigate the households of citizens, I'll write to all the nearby towns.”

The letters in this collection cover a span of more than 45 years. Of course, a lot happens in such a long period, which led to a few touching moments: in letter 1.20, we see Fonzio writing (in 1480) to the head of the monastery which his younger brother Mauro had just entered; and then in letter 3.1, written in 1506, a much older Fonzio mentions with some regret the recent death of Mauro and several other friends and relatives. For the reader these two letters are separated by a couple of days, by a few dozen pages — and yet behind this there was twenty-six years, long enough for poor Mauro to live out the bulk of his life, and to die.

There are several letters on theological subjects ahd church politics, mostly written late in his life, after he had become a priest (see e.g. 3.4, 3.5, 3.9). In 3.5.7, he refers to Dante approvingly as “that fine poet and great theologian”.

3.8 — a nice overview of various ancient Roman units for distance, area, weight, etc. I don't doubt that all this stuff is already written up in a Wikipedia article somewhere, but I'd never read it there so I found this letter quite interesting. The Romans appear to have delighted in unnecessarily inventing lots of specialized terminology for this: “A triens is a third of an as or four ounces, a quincunx five ounces, a semissis half an as or six ounces, a septunx seven ounces.” (3.8.9)

3.12 — an interesting letter on how to become an eloquent orator. Fonzio presents all this as a quotation of advice given to him by his old teacher, Bernardo Nuti; I liked his sober ideas about avoiding excessive reliance on the rhetorical theory and imitation of classical authors. This was like a breath of fresh air compared to the unreasonably extremist positions about which I read some years ago in the ITRL volume on Ciceronian Controversies. “The system, though it was devised by noting down the sayings and writings of the eloquent, does not in itself make men elouent [. . .] Whether they had earlier learned such rules or had never come across them, they never thought of them when they were speaking.” (3.12.7) “[I]t is better, safer and more laudable for a talented writer to trust in himself and not tread in another's footsteps.” (3.12.16) His recommended approach sounds a bit romantic: “There's no briefer or easier way than a burning love of virtue and a noble thirst for glory [. . .] keep this always at the forefront of your mind, attentively rereading for yourself all the authors that may guide you to eloquence, finding out and arranging in your own mind all that they write” (3.12.8).

A couple of the letters in this collection are basically fakes — written by Fonzio but not actually sent to their recipients: 1.18 (which is basically a short autobiography of Fonzio's early career, dated 1472 but apparently written some 20 years later, according to note 42 on p. 204), 1.19 (a discussion of the immortality of the soul, suitably full of theological wharrgarble, based on a theological book which Fonzio had written earlier in his career; see the translator's note 49 on p. 205).

There are a few glimpses into the mechanics of how letters were actually sent back then — as there was no postal service in the modern sense, it was up to the sender to find a messenger that would actually carry the letter. “Your letter reached me at Rome, but I decided not to write back since I had no messenger I could rely on” (1.16.1). “Though the importance of the matter calls for greater leisure and more prolonged examination, I shall use your same messenger to set out the whole question as best I can” (1.19.2). “Since leaving your country [Hungary], I have so far written you nothing because on the journey I had no one I could send to Buda” (2.13.1).

I was impressed by the editor's notes at the end of this book — Fonzio and the recipients of his letters lived around 500 years ago, and yet it has been possible to find quite a lot of detail about nearly all of them. The translator says on p. 193 that the notes are a condensed form of the notes in Daneloni's Italian edition of Fonzio's letters. Unfortunately, it appears that Daneloni died in 2014 (see this obituary) before he could finish the second volume of his edition (the first volume having been published in 2008). :(

BOOK: Angelo Poliziano, "Letters"

Angelo Poliziano: Letters. Vol. 1: Books I–IV. Edited and translated by Shane Butler. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 21. Harvard University Press, 2006. 0674021967. xiii + 362 pp.

Introduction

Poliziano was a 15th-century humanist; I've already read one other book of his from the ITRL series, namely Silvae, which contains his didactic poems about literature. This present book, on the other hand, is a small selection of his correspondence, containing not just letters written by Poliziano but also letters written to him by various correspondents, mostly other Italian humanists of that period.

Perhaps unusually for a book of letters, this one was was initially edited and published by Poliziano himself; according to the translator's introduction here (p. ix), the whole thing consists of twelve books, of which the present volume contains the first four, so I guess there will eventually be two more volumes of Poliziano's correspondence.

Lucio Phosphorus, bishop of Segni, writes to Alessandro Cortesi (3.10.1, p. 163): “I have read Poliziano's letters very attentively and with the greatest pleasure, both of these being nearly inevitable”. How I wish that I could say the same :( But, as on a number of previous occasions, I must sadly say that this was one of the most boring I Tatti Renaissance Library books I've read so far (perhaps even the most boring one altogether).

I was disappointed to see how little of substance these intellectuals had to say to one another. Most of the text of these letters consists of mutual compliments — they just can't help praising each other, with an intensity that looks extremely weird by present-day standards. Their abject grovelling would make even the Usenet Oracle blush. The contents of most of them can be summarized as “You are so wonderful, can I be your friend?” or (if the writer is already the addressee's friend) “My friend X also thinks that you are so wonderful, can he be your friend too?” or “X and me both think that your patron / influential acquaintance / etc. is really wonderful, can you recommend us to him as well?” Perhaps one of the greatest services that LinkedIn and Facebook will do to humankind is to rid them of the need to write, and read, letters like these :)

The other major concern of these letter-writers (especially Poliziano's own, I suspect) was showing off their erudition in front of their humanist peers — they are constantly trying to be clever and polished, employing all sorts of rhetorical technicalities, reams of classical allusions, etc. According to the translator's introduction (pp. x–xi), the originals of some of these letters are also preserved, and comparing them to the text as it was printed by Poliziano shows that Poliziano sometimes changed the letters a little bit to improve them stylistically — not only his own but even those of other people!

If we ignore the politenesses and the mutual praise, most of the letter here don't really have a whole lot to say. One relatively commonly recurring topic has to do with books — this was fairly early in the age of print, many books weren't readily available, and the letters often involve requests for help in finding some obscure work, or having a manuscript copied, etc.

Another frequent subject has to do with a book, the Miscellanea, which Poliziano published around that time (1489), and many of the letters contain his friends' comments (mostly praise) regarding the book. For example, Jacopo Antiquari writes (3.18.1, p. 195): “I ran into a large number of young men [. . .] who [. . .] vied keenly with one another to read a book they had in their hands, its pieces distributed among them. When I ask, ‘What new work, pray tell, has come out?’ they reply, ‘Poliziano's Miscellanea.’ ” I am especially intrigued by “its pieces distributed among them” — poor book! but it shows how itching they were to read it.

Lorenzo's death

The longest, and perhaps the most interesting, letter in this volume is 4.2, in which Poliziano describes the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the de facto ruler of Florence and Poliziano's patron and friend of many years. The letter describes Lorenzo's final days on his deathbed, followed by his death and funeral. It was fairly touching to read. Perhaps Poliziano embellished the truth somewhat to make it more touching and edifying, but if not, then I must say that Lorenzo was really a model dying person. I was also impressed by his insistence on avoiding a state funeral and having only a small one, such as would be suitable for a private individual (4.2.5, 4.2.17); he was a de facto rather than a de jure ruler of Florence.

In 4.2.3 (p. 229), Poliziano writes about Lorenzo's illness: “Lorenzo de' Medici had suffered for roughly two months from those pains which, since they settle into the cartilage deep in the body, are called, on that basis, hypochondrian.” This is interesting because I wasn't familiar with the etymology of this word until now, but, in the light of the present-day meaning of the word ‘hypochondria’, this passage is quite hilarious. Poor Lorenzo, seems that nobody told him that he was just imagining it, and he just went and died :-))

On the rather silly last efforts to save Lorenzo's life (4.2.6, p. 235): “Next, your Lazzaro, a very creative physician, as indeed became apparent, arrived from Ticino. Although he had been summoned too late, in order to avoid leaving anything untested, he tried a very expensive kind of remedy by grinding pearls and precious stones of all sorts.”

Other interesting letters

Another of the more interesting letters was 3.17 (pp. 189–93), written to “Cassandra Fedele of Venice, most learned girl”. Poliziano is quite effusive in praising her skill and talents, and encouraging her to keep going in her studies of the humanities. His writing seems to be quite free from the sexism and misogyny with which women's efforts to educate themselves and have all too often been greeted throughout practically all the periods of history.

Another interesting letter is 4.8 (pp. 271–5), in which Poliziano writes to his friend Francesco della Casa, describing “the self-propelled device which recently was constructed by a certain Florentine named Lorenzo, in which the movements of the stars, in accord with the logic of the skies, are revealed” (4.8.1, p. 271). The translator's note on p. 352 says that the inventor's full name was Lorenzo della Volpaia — see e.g. this web site for more about him.

There's also a letter (4.10) that Poliziano wrote to one Ivan Gučetić of Dubrovnik (pp. 279–81), who apparently dedicated some of his poems to Poliziano. He warmly praises Gučetić's work, although he is also “stunned to heard that a man from Illyria, employed ‘in buying and selling merchandise’ (as Plautus says), has made, while still in the flower of his youth, such great strides in poetic art” (4.10.2, p. 279). The translator's note (p. 353) says of the poet: “Celebrated in his day for works in Latin, Greek, and Croatian (of which, however, only a single Latin poem survives) and still famous for the villa and garden (with arboretum) he built outside Dubrovnik.”

Miscellaneous

At the end of a letter to Jacopo Antiquari, Poliziano adds (3.19.6, p. 205): “Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who resembles no one more completely than he does himself, has instructed me to append a hello to you in his own name as well.” Seems like someone overdosed on his tautology pills that morning :)

I was interested to learn, from the translator's note 3 to 3.10 (pp. 342–3), the source of the anecdote of the cobbler and Apelles the painter, which is famously referred to in one of Prešeren's sonnets: it's from Pliny's Natural History, 35.36.85 (Latin, English).

In one of the many passages about friendship, Poliziano writes (to Ludovico Odasio; 3.4.1, p. 147): “But genuine love does not need proof [. . .] nor does it engage in public boasting, since friends, according to Epicurus, are for one another a sufficiently large theater.” This ought to win some kind of ‘hypocrisy of the year’ award. No public boasting, huh? And then he goes and publishes this letter, along with several dozen others, in a book for all the world to see. No public boasting my ass.

A fine calumny against physicians, from Poliziano's letter to Niccolò Leoniceno (2.6.1, p. 93): “it pained me to consider the current condition of the human race, which for such a long time has allowed this depressing ignorance to victimize it and has gone on buying, at a price, the expectation to live from those very persons who are the source of detain death. Who, indeed, cannot see that more danger comes from a doctor than from disease, since treatment is for one disease instead of another, and these remedies are used instead of those?” This reminds me somewhat of Petrarca's invective against a physician — apparently doctors really weren't popular in the Renaissance.

Apparently Poliziano's erudition made him the target of importunate requests from all sides: “For if anyone wants a motto fit to be read on the hilt of a sword or the signet of a ring, if anyone wants a line of verse for a bed or a bedroom, if anyone wants something distinctive (not for silver, mind you, but for pottery pure and simple!), then straightway he dashes over to Poliziano. And already you can see that every wall has been smeared by me (as if by a snail) with diverse themes and inscriptions.” (He goes on for a whole long paragraph. This is from his letter to Girolamo Donà, 2.13.2, p. 127.)

Conclusion

Despite these sort-of-interesting things that I mentioned in the previous paragraphs, the book as a whole was really boring to read and I'm very much not looking forward to the remaining two volumes of Poliziano's letters. I would recommend this book only to people who enjoy witnessing academic mutual masturbation and those who are in a position to enjoy Poliziano's much-vaunted skillz in the composition of Latin letters (which I'm not, since I can only read the English translation, and there doesn't seem to be anything terribly impressive about the style there).