Download PDF | From Byzantium To Italy Greek Studies In The Italian Renaissance Bloomsbury Academic (2017)
245 Pages
Preface to the First Edition
This book is a sequel to Scholars of Byzantium (London 1983), in which I described the preservation of the classical heritage and the use made of it by the intellectuals of Byzantium. It was the story of a long struggle against great odds, with as many defeats as victories. Relief came only just in time, but when it came it was effective.
What the Byzantines had preserved was transmitted to a vigorous culture; the fate of the Greek legacy in territories occupied by the Ottomans makes an eloquent contrast. But though it is a commonplace, repeated in every book about the Italian Renaissance, that the Greek influence was a significant factor, no one has tried to chronicle the stages by which a lost culture was recovered and so to make clear how its effects began to be felt in various fields. If the narrative were continued beyond the death of Aldus Manutius, this last point would assume greater significance, because it was in the following decades that Italian science and mathematics reached the stage where Greek texts could be more fully used as a stepping-stone to further discoveries.
But after a good deal of thought I came to the conclusion that 1515 marks the end of an era and is a less artificial terminal date than others which might have been chosen. Perhaps at some time in the future I shall turn to the task of describing developments in the middle of the sixteenth century.
In the meantime the present volume is a sketch and a challenge. It is a sketch because a full treatment of the subject, even with the chronological limit imposed as it has been, would entail postponement of publication for many years, and there is much to be said for offering a provisional account. It is a challenge to others to continue the inquiry in order to see whether the conclusions put forward retain their validity.
One deliberate omission should be mentioned: there is no attempt to describe the early stages of archaeology in Greece, partly because it made so little impact in intellectual circles in the period under discussion - it was Roman ruins that inspired architects - and partly because Roberto Weiss’s book The Renaissance discovery of classical antiquity is a good account, now available in revised form.
In Scholars of Byzantium I was very sparing with bibliographical references in the footnotes. In this book I have again tried not to overload the reader My failure to cite such-and-such an article should not automatically be taken as proof of ignorance; it may simply mean that the article did not seem to offer a real contribution to the point I wished to argue.
Lincoln College, Oxford N.G.W.
In the last two decades a great deal of research has been undertaken in this field, and I feel that it is time to revise my work in order to take account of discoveries relating to the major figures. In the text of this edition various adjustments have been made, and a large number of the notes have been brought up to date. For help with the proofs I am much indebted to Dr Almut Fries.
The Beginnings
i Precursors
In western Europe during the middle ages Greek was not generally known. On rare occasions from the ninth century onwards attempts were made to increase knowledge of the language and produce translations of a variety of ancient texts. It was usually Aristotle, Galen and some early fathers of the church who were thought to deserve attention.
Few of these enterprises had an outstanding or enduring success. The earliest of any note are due to Henricus Aristippus in Norman Sicily in the twelfth century and his contemporary Burgundio of Pisa. Their efforts resulted in a product which was judged very crude by later generations.
In the meantime some Greek works, in particular Ptolemy's Almagest and various Aristotelian writings, found an alternative and roundabout route to the West: in Toledo during the second half of the twelfth century translations were made from Arabic versions into Latin. A rather more successful attempt to tackle the original texts was made in the thirteenth century by the Dominican William of Moerbeke.
In 1260 he made quite a good job of Aristotle's Politics, and he also did his best to deal with the very difficult treatises of Archimedes and the Neoplatonist Proclus. Yet he does not appear to have established a school.
The immediate predecessors of the famous humanists fared little better than their medieval counterparts. This negative judgement seems to apply even to a group of translations of undoubted importance which has still not been fully investigated, the medical texts rendered by Nicholas of Reggio for the Neapolitan king Robert of Anjou (1308-1345).
The latter had received as a gift from the Byzantine emperor Andronicus III a copy of Galen which apparently included some unique texts, and since that precious volume can no longer be traced Nicholas’ versions assume a much greater significance than they might otherwise have deserved.'
But even his work, praiseworthy in intention and valuable to his contemporaries, not to mention its value to modern students of Galen, was not continued by others. A court circle in the south of Italy seems not to have been able to exploit the advantage of its close proximity to the Greek communities of Calabria, Apulia and Sicily, which were still quite substantial and in the region of Otranto, if not elsewhere, continued Byzantine educational practices, with little or no change.
The same inability is observable for a time in the wealthier and more developed cities of the north. A recent discovery has demonstrated that in the Padua of the so-called pre-humanists at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries one learned man had obtained a copy of the Moralia of Plutarch (Ambr. C 126 inf.), manufactured recently for Maximus Planudes, the leading Byzantine scholar of the day who had served on a diplomatic mission to Venice in 1296. Yet Pace of Ferrara (fl. c. 1299 - post 1317) probably never learned Greek at all. Certainly he believed that Sophocles was the author of both the Iliad and the Odyssey. His best chance of learning the language would have been through Pietro dAbano, then resident in Padua, who had been to Constantinople and was able to translate Galen and other scientific works. But there is no sign that contact between them, if any took place, was beneficial.’
The episode is puzzling. So is another curious story from Padua later in the fourteenth century. During a court case someone cited Homer; indeed it seems that he did so twice. The report comes from Leonzio Pilato, of whom more in a moment. He says that he was in Padua at the time, and the date must be shortly before 1358-1359. The passage or passages in question must almost certainly have been among the ten quotations from Homer found in the Digest. Pilato says that the Greek, badly written, was shown to the court. One wonders how the lawyer obtained his text, since ordinary copies of the Digest omitted all passages of Greek.’
Petrarch, Boccaccio and Pilato
Every schoolboy knows, or did so in the days when Macaulay coined the phrase, that Petrarch wished to learn Greek. He owned a copy of the Iliad (usually identified as Ambr. 198 inf.)* and of Plato (perhaps Paris gr. 1807),° and suffered the frustration of never being able to read them, despite having taken lessons with the Greek scholar and diplomat Barlaam (d. 1348). Another chance seemed to present itself some ten years later when Petrarch was in Padua and Petrarch, Boccaccio and Pilato
Every schoolboy knows, or did so in the days when Macaulay coined the phrase, that Petrarch wished to learn Greek. He owned a copy of the Iliad (usually identified as Ambr. 198 inf.)* and of Plato (perhaps Paris gr. 1807),° and suffered the frustration of never being able to read them, despite having taken lessons with the Greek scholar and diplomat Barlaam (d. 1348). Another chance seemed to present itself some ten years later when Petrarch was in Padua and
came across Leonzio Pilato, a man from Calabria whose education and culture were essentially Greek rather than Latin. In 1359 he must have discussed with Boccaccio the idea of obtaining a complete translation of Homer from Pilato. It is notable that such a plan should have been the joint initiative of the leading poet and the leading prose writer of Italy. Recent research suggests that the credit for this belongs at least as much to Boccaccio as to Petrarch.° Pilato is soon after found in Florence, teaching under the auspices of Boccaccio, who later held the chair of Dante studies there.
Boccaccio’s admiration for Homer is attested by a fine drawing he added to his autograph copy of Dante, with the caption ‘Homero poeta sovrano, an allusion to Inferno 4.88 (Toledo Cathedral, Zelada 104).’ Homer was not the only author to be lectured on; Pilato also found time to begin work on Euripides. Although no record survives of any stipend paid to him, the minor humanist Domenico Silvestri tells us that he gave public lectures,* and so it is no longer strictly true to say that Chrysoloras’ appointment in 1397 marks the beginning of the teaching of Greek in the Renaissance. Pilato’s brief stay in Florence from 1360 to 1362 has been studied carefully and shown to possess a greater significance than was previously attributed to it. He had already given Petrarch a small specimen of his Homer translation; during his stay in Florence he managed to produce versions of both the epics, which after some delay found their way into Petrarch’ hands.’
They were studied carefully by the poet in his last years, as is evident from the many notes he made in the margins of his copy of the Iliad (Paris lat. 7880), in which however some of the annotation may be due to Boccaccio.’ Although Pilato’s work now seems crude and mediocre, it can be said in his defence that when allowance is made for the limited resources available to him and the tradition in which he had been educated, he did as well as could be expected.'! This is fair comment, especially if his task was purely and simply to take each word in turn and render it for the benefit of a class of beginners. But if it was clear that other readers could be envisaged, such as men of letters like Petrarch who had to rely wholly on a translation, Pilato’s achievement looks more modest.
It is perhaps rather surprising that it did not prove possible to find someone from the Italo-Greek communities of southern Italy with a better command of Latin than Pilato possessed, and if some members of his Florentine audience felt a measure of disappointment at his performance, one can sympathise with their feelings. On the other hand, the existence of several manuscript copies of each version suggests that they met a need. Two brief specimens will serve to give an
impression of them.
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