Textmanuscripts - Les Enluminures
i (paper) + i parchment + 64 (paper) + i (paper) folios, three watermarks, a crown resembling Briquet 4713 (Genoa 1434; quires iii, v-viii), a tulip-like flower resembling Briquet 6641 (Siena 1434; quires i-ii), and an unidentified motif probably a star (quire iv), modern penciled foliation in arabic numerals upper right corners rectos, complete (collation i-viii8), horizontal catchwords center bottom margin last versos, frame-ruled, 4 full-length vertical and 2 double-column width horizontal lines lightly ruled in lead (justification 195 x 125 mm), written by two hands (ff. 1-51v, 51v-61) in Italian semi-cursive scripts in two columns of 25-35 lines, first line of each section in decorated capitals in brown ink, six 3-line and two 2-line initials alternating blue with red flourishing and red with mauve flourishing, small losses to blank outer corners f. 1, slight foxing to outer margins. Eighteenth-century binding of speckled calf over pasteboards, marbled endleaves, red edges, red leather lettering piece (“PLUTA”) on spine (minor wear to spine and board edges). Dimensions 268 x 196 mm.
The recovery of Greek language and literature was one of the most influential achievements of the Italian Renaissance. This handsome manuscript, signed and dated by its scribe in a detailed colophon, presents four of the earliest Renaissance translations from Greek into Latin by two important humanists, Leonardo Bruni and Guarino of Verona. The treatises reflect important concerns of Italian humanism, the proper education of the young and the nature of government. Although each of these works survives in hundreds of manuscripts in institutional collections (the text by Xenophon is very rare on the market), the full context of their transmission and of the present collection have never been fully explored.
1. Copied in Italy, in Genoa to judge from the origin of the paper in five of the eight quires in the manuscript, and completed on March 31, 1439, as shown by the inscription on the verso of the vellum flyleaf (formerly a pastedown): “Mccccxxxviiiio die xxxio Martii. Noverint universi et singuli Quod hoc volumen in quo conscripte sunt vite Basilii cuiusdam viri religiosissimi ac honestissimi, et Marci Antonii illustrissimi et duo opuscula que sequuntur videlicet de liberorum educatione ac de tirannica et privata vita transumptum fuit per me Johannem de Logia notarium licet alterius manu completum fuerit aliis agendis occupatus etc.” (March 31, 1439. Be it known to one and all that this volume in which are written the lives of a certain Basil, a most religious and honorable man, and of the most illustrious Mark Anthony, and the two works which follow, namely, on the education of children and on the private life of a tyrant, were transcribed by me Johannes de Logia, notary, although it was completed by the hand of another when I was occupied with other affairs.)
The scribe, Johannes de Logia (Giovanni della Loggia), who was responsible for the greater part of the manuscript (ff. 1-51v), identifies himself in the colophons of two other manuscripts as a notary of Genoa. Those codices are Gdansk, Biblioteka Gdánska Polskiej Akademii Nauk (formerly Stadtbibliothek), MS 2324, dated August 1401 in the colophon, but after 1426 according to Baron’s dating of the three works by Leonardo Bruni contained in the manuscript, Oratio in hypocritas (1417), Isagogicon (1421/24), and Laudatio Johannis Strozze (1426) (Günther, 1909, p. 295; Baron, 1928, pp. 164, 168, 173; see also Online Resources); and Vatican, MS lat. 11567, copied for Gotthardo Stella (Gottardo di Sarzana), Chancellor of Genoa, completed November 26, 1441 (Ruysschaert, 1959, pp. 318-319). In addition, the copyist signed Genoa, Biblioteca Durazzo, MS 50 [A.IV.16], completed March 16, 1445, for Antonietto Grillo, a Genoese patrician and humanist (Puncuh, pp. 45, 118-120; see also Online Resources). The latter two manuscripts both contain Curtius Rufus, Historia Alexandri Magni.
2. Occasional contemporary manicules, nota bene marks, or indexing words in margins, ff. 1-51v.
3. Explicit added later at end of text f. 61: “Explicit Deo Gratias Amen” (The end. Thanks be to God. Amen).
4. Three unidentified ink ciphers, perhaps of early owners, on verso of vellum endleaf and repeated following end of text on f. 61.
5. Later manuscript title, upper margin f. 1 (partially torn away): “manoscripto De edu<catione> liber<orum>” (manuscript on the education of children).
6. Number 29 in an unidentified collection (inscriptions on vellum endleaf and upper margin f. 1).
7. Aristophil collection, sold at Aguttes in Paris, 16 June 2018, lot 15.
ff. 1-8, incipit, “Ego tibi hunc librum Coluci ex media ut aiunt grecia delegi ubi eiusmodi rerum magna copia est et infinita pene multitudo … Neque enim digni sunt de quibus verba fiant. Et iam Basilium audiamus in quo animedvertere quaeso quanta gravitas sit. [f. 1v, text] Multa sunt fili que hortantur me ad ea vobis consulenda que optima esse duco queque vobis si illa sequemini profutura confido … Quod vos non patiamini nunc recta consilia aspernantes”;
Saint Basil the Great (c. 330-379), Bishop of Caesarea (from 370), Oratio ad adolescentes, (also known as Epistula or Homilia) translated from Greek into Latin by Leonardo Bruni, with Bruni’s preface in the form of a letter to his mentor Coluccio Salutati. This version of the work was extremely popular during the Renaissance, surviving in nearly 450 manuscripts (Hankins, 1999; Hankins, 1997; Schucan, 1973). The Latin text was first printed in Verona, c.1471-1472, under the title De legendis antiquorum libris, sive de liberalibus studiis, and reprinted under that title in a number of incunable editions, frequently together with other similar texts (see below, and Online Resources). Naldini’s edition of the Greek text, with a modern Italian translation, also reprints Bruni’s Latin text (Naldini, 1984, pp. 231-248); Bruni’s preface was previously printed by Baron (Baron, 1928, pp. 99-100).
ff. 8-38v, incipit, “Marci Antonii vitam multiplici ac varia historiarum serie contextam et vel magnitudine rerum vel mutabilitate fortune admirandam te Salutate in hoc libro mittimus ex greco sermone in latinum traductam… vel quia has historias scripsit vel quia omnino remotus est a grecanica levitate. Sed hoc plura etiam quam satis. Nunc ipsum Antonium videamus. [f. 9v, text] Marco Antonio avus fuit Antonius orator quem sillanas partes secutum C. Marius necavit … quartus ab Antonio per gradus successor”;
Plutarch’s Life of Mark Antony, translated from Greek into Latin by Leonardo Bruni, with Bruni’s letter of dedication to Coluccio Salutati as a preface. The work survives in some 120 manuscripts (Hankins, 1997). It was printed ca. 1470 in Rome in the first edition (in Latin) of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, edited by J. A. Campanus, and in subsequent Latin editions based on this one (Guistiniani, 1961; see also Online Resources). Bruni’s preface was reprinted by Baron (Baron, 1928, pp. 102-104).
ff. 39-51v, incipit, “Maiores nostros Angele mi suavissime non admirari et maximus prosequi laudibus non possum … Qua in re abs te peto ut magis atque magis oro ut illustrissimo in primis Chrisolore gratias habeas suumque attolas ad sidera nomen quoniam eius viri opera simul et humanitate factum est ut grecarum splendor litterarum ad nostros redierit homines quos ob earum ignorantionem non parve dudum involuerant tenebre. Sed de his alias. Plutarchum ipsum audiamus. [f. 39v, text] Quid nam est quod de ingenuorum educatione liberorum dicere quispiam posset … et nature bonitate permultaque insuper diligentia indigebit At humano offici posse constat ingenio“;
Pseudo-Plutarch, De liberis educandis, translated from Greek into Latin by Guarino Veronese, with a preface by the same writer addressed to Angelo Corbinelli (ca. 1373-1419, one of the humanist circle surrounding Coluccio Salutati and a student of Guarino). Kristeller, Iter Italicum, records 128 manuscripts (see Online Resources). The text was first printed in Padua in 1471 and reprinted in subsequent incunable editions (see Online Resources). The introductory letter was published by Sabbadini (Sabbadini, 1915).
ff. 51v-61, incipit, “Xenophontis philosophi quendam libellum quem ego ingenii exercendi gratia e greco sermone in latinum converti ad quem pocius Nicolae scriberem … in hiis primitiis studiorum nullo modo ausi sumus attingere. [f. 52v, text] Cum ad hieronem tirannum Simonides poeta aliquando venisset essentque ambo ociosi sic illum affari cepit Simonides … Que omnia si tu feceris cunctarum que in humana sunt vita pulcherimam ac beatissimam rem possidebis felix enim cum sis nemo tibi invidebit. Explicit deo gratias amen”; [ff. 61v-64v blank].
Xenophon, Hiero or De tyranno (also known as Tyrannus or De tyrannide), translated from Greek into Latin by Leonardo Bruni, with his dedicatory letter to Niccolò Niccoli as a preface. The work survives in more than 200 manuscripts (Hankins, 1997; Marsh, 1992 and 2003). The Latin text was first printed in Venice ca. 1471 and in a number of subsequent incunable editions, usually in combination with other related texts (see below, and Online Resources). Bruni’s preface was reprinted by Baron (Baron, 1928, pp. 100-101).
One of the most influential achievements of the Italian Renaissance was the recovery of the Greek language and literature. In the Middle Ages Greek was not generally known in Europe. In fourteenth-century Italy both Petrarch (1304-1374) and Boccaccio (1313-1375) evinced interest in Greek but made little progress with it. The language was first taught systematically in Italy when Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of Florence and a leading humanist, persuaded the Byzantine diplomat and scholar Manuel Chrysoloras to come to Florence for three years 1397-1400. Chrysoloras taught translation according to the sense, rather than literal translation word by word, and among his pupils was the young Leonardo Bruni (c.1370-1444), himself later chancellor of Florence and a prolific author of translations from the Greek and of historical works in Latin, several of them based on Greek sources. The present manuscript presents four of the first works to be translated from Greek into Latin. Bruni’s translations found here were among his earliest: Basil’s Advice to Young Men was completed in 1400 or 1401, Xenophon’s Hiero by May 1403, and Plutarch’s Life of Mark Antony before March 1405 (Baron, 1928, pp. 99-104, 161). The treatise De liberis educandis, attributed (erroneously) to Plutarch, was translated by Guarino of Verona (1374-1460), who became one of the most notable educators of the Italian Renaissance. In 1403 Guarino accompanied Chrysoloras when he returned to Constantinople, where he remained for five years and became the first Italian humanist to study Greek in the Greek capitol. His translation was probably made between 1410 and 1414 when he taught Greek in Florence. Among his pupils were the brothers Angelo and Antonio Corbinelli. Guarino dedicated his translation to Angelo, and Antonio left his important collection of Latin and Greek manuscripts to the Badia of Florence (Blum, 1951).
This collection of apparently disparate texts reflects important cultural and political concerns of the early Italian Renaissance. Both Basil and Pseudo-Plutarch address the question of how to educate the young. Basil, writing in a Christian context, explained how students can read pagan literature in order to find and study examples of virtue; in doing so, he outlined a program for adapting the classical curriculum to Christian use, one that continued to attract interest for centuries. De liberis educandis, on the education and in general on the raising of children, would naturally have been of interest to Guarino, known for his role as an educator and the developer of an influential classical curriculum. Plutarch’s Life of Mark Antony and Xenophon’s Hiero discuss indirectly political issues that were of interest in Renaissance society, that is, the question of government by a tyrant and the qualities needed in a ruler. The Hiero, a fictitious dialogue between Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, and Simonides the poet, claims that a despot who rules without the consent of the people is less happy than those he rules, and that a despot who exerts himself to win the affection of his subjects will win happiness for himself. The Life of Mark Antony, while recounting the events of a critical period in the history of ancient Rome, reveals the flaws of a reckless and dissolute political figure, military commander, and would-be ruler.
These four texts appear to have circulated widely in fifteenth-century Italy, often in the company of other similar works; the Mirabile database lists large numbers of manuscripts of them in Italian libraries (see Online Resources). In general, however, they appear to have had more or less independent traditions. No incunable edition includes them all. The Life of Antony was consistently omitted from 15th-century editions of these texts, whereas Basil appears most frequently, in company with De liberis educandis and/or Hiero. In many of the incunable editions, these texts are accompanied by other works relating to education, most frequently Pier Paolo Vergerio’s De ingenuiis moribus et liberalibus studiis, sometimes by St. Jerome’s De officiis liberorum erga parentes admonitio, and occasionally by other works (See Online Resources.) A survey of the manuscript tradition could be accomplished most easily by cross-checking Hankins’s listings of Bruni’s translations (Hankins, 1997) and comparing those results with Kristeller’s listings for Guarino’s work (see Online Resources). Beyond these results, searching in catalogues or databases is complicated by variations in the names of authors or titles of texts as taken from individual manuscripts or supplied by cataloguers. Much therefore remains to be learned about the fortuna of these four texts in relation to each other and in their historical context.
These texts, including the Life of Mark Antony as detached from Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, are rare on the market. No manuscript containing all four works, other than the present one, has been sold in the past century. Hiero by Xenophon is particularly rare; the Schoenberg Database (see Online Resources) records only two recent sales of individual texts: two copies of the Hiero, one offered in 1959 by Bernard M. Rosenthal, Catalogue 9, no. 64; the other, having belonged, among others, to Charles, Duke of Burgundy, and Sir Thomas Phillipps, sold at Drouot, March 21, 1973, and subsequently offered by Heribert Tenschert, Leuchtendes Mittelalter III (1991), no. 12. De Ricci and Faye and Bond identify twenty-five manuscripts containing at least one of these texts in America libraries, the majority of them at Yale, Harvard, the Morgan Library, and the Newberry Library, the remainder at various other institutions.
Baron, Hans, ed. Leonardo Bruni Aretino, Humanistisch-Philosophische Schriften, mit einer Chronologie seiner Werke und Briefe, Leipzig, 1928.
Becchi, Francesco. “La traduzioni latine dei Moralia de Plutarco tra XIII e XVI secolo,” in Paola Volpe Cacciatore, ed., Plutarco nelle taduzioni latine di età umanistica: Seminario di studi Fisciano, 12-13 luglio 2007, Naples, 2009.
Blum, Rudolf. La biblioteca della Badia Fiorentina e i codici di Antonio Corbinelli, Studi e Testi 155, Vatican City, 1951.
Botley, Paul. Latin Translation in the Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Leonardo Bruni, Giannozzo Manetti and Desiderius Erasmus, Cambridge, 2004.
DeRicci, Seymour. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, 3 vols, 1935-1940.
Doty, Ralph E., ed. Xenophon, Hiero – A New Translation, Lewiston, 2003. Greek text and English translation.
Faye, C. U. and W. H. Bond. Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, 1962.
Fedwick, Paul J, ed. Basil of Caesarea: Christian, Humanist, Ascetic, 2 vols., Toronto, 1981.
Fedwick, Paul J. Biblioteca basiliana universalis, 5 vols, Turnhout, 1993-2004. [Not available for consultation.]
Giustiniani, Vito R. “Sulle traduzioni latine delle ‘Vite’ di Plutarco nel Quattrocento, » Rinascimento, ser. 2 (1961), pp. 3-62.
Grendler, Paul F., ed. Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, 6 vols., New York, 1999.
Günther, Otto. Katalog der Danziger Stadtbibliothek, vol. 3, Danzig, 1909.
Hankins, James. “Bruni, Leonardo,” in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, vol. 1, New York, 1999.
Hankins, James. “Chrysoloras and the Greek Studies of Leonardo Bruni,” in Riccardo Maisano and Antonio Rollo, eds., Manuele Crisolora e il ritorno del greco in Occidente, Naples, 2002.
Hankins, James, et al., eds. The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni: Selected Texts, Binghamton, 1987.
Hankins, James. Repertorium Brunianum: A Critical Guide to the Writings of Leonardo Bruni, Rome, 1997.
Kristeller, Paul Oskar, and Sigrid Krämer. Latin Manuscript Books before 1600: A List of the Printed Catalogues and Unpublished Inventories of Extant Collections, 4th ed., Munich, 1993.
Marsh, David. “Xenophon,” in Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, vol. 7 (1992), pp. 75-196, and vol. 8 (2003), pp. 341-344.
Naldini, Mario, ed. Basilio di Cesarea, Discorso ai Giovani: Oratio ad adolescentes, con la versione latina di Leonardo Bruni, Florence, 1984. Greek text with modern Italian translation and extensive commentary in Italian; also includes Bruni’s Latin translation.
Naldini, Mario. “Sulla ‘Oratio ad adolescentes’ di Basilio Magno,” Prometheus 4 (1978), pp. 36-44.
Pade, Marianne. The Reception of Plutarch’s Lives in Fifteenth-Century Italy, 2 vols., Copenhagen, 2007.
Puncuh, Dino. I manoscritti della raccolta Durazzo, Genoa, 1979.
Ruysschaert, José. Codices Vaticani latini, Vol. 14 : Codices 11414-11709, Vatican City, 1959.
Sabbadini, Remigio. “Epistolario di Guarino Veronese,” in Miscellanea de Storia Veneta, ser. 3, vol. 8 (1915), pp. 15-16, no. 5.
Sabbadini, Remigio. La Scuola e gli studi di Guarino Guarini Veronese, Catania, 1896. Reprinted in Sabbadini, Guariniana, Turin, 1964.
Sabbadini, Remigio. Vita di Guarino Veronese, Genoa, 1891. Reprinted in Sabbadini, Guariniana, Turin, 1964.
Schucan, Luzi. Das Nachleben von Basilius Magnus ‘ad adolescentes’, Geneva, 1973.
Weiss, Roberto. “Gli inizi dello studio del greco a Firenze,” in Weiss, Medieval and Humanist Greek: Collected Essays, Padua, 1977.
Wilson, N. G. From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 2nd ed., London, 2017.
Wilson, N. G., ed. Saint Basil on the Value of Greek Literature, London, 1975. Greek text with extensive commentary in English.
Zuolo Federico, ed.,Senofonte, Ierone o della tirannide, Rome, 2012. Greek text and Italian translation.
ISTC: Incunabula Short Title Catalogue https://data.cerl.org/istc/
Krämer, Sigrid. Scriptores possessoresque codicum Medii Aevi https://webserver.erwin-rauner.de/#scriptores
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Iter Italicum https://italicum.itergateway.org/
Mirabile: Archivio digitale della cultura medievale = Digital Archive for Medieval Culture https://mirabileweb.it/mediolatino
Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts https://sdbm.library.upenn.edu
TM 1263
