Download PDF | (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 32) Federica Ciccolella - Donati Graeci_ Learning Greek in the Renaissance (2008).
673 Pages
INTRODUCTION
Few phenomena shaped Western European culture as significantly as the rediscovery of ancient studies during the Renaissance. As Jacob Burckhardt has pointed out, “though the essence of the phenomena [i.e., the cultural aspects of the Renaissance] might still have been the same without the classical revival, it is only with and through this revival that they are actually manifested to us.”2 As the ideal training for the ideal citizen of the new era, the system of humanist education replaced the medieval curriculum, which had equipped individuals with complex skills appropriate to specialized tasks, but was based on the authoritative message of a few selected texts.
The influence of the culture of antiquity had not died out in Europe during the Middle Ages. The revival of classical antiquity promoted by Charlemagne in the ninth century was already a form of Renaissance; even some aspects of monastic scholarship can be understood by considering the direct influence of Latin writers, whose works had continued to be copied, studied, and imitated within the walls of medieval monasteries. Despite the increasing spread of vernacular languages, Latin kept its role as the language of the church, law, and international affairs, as well as of science and learning, throughout the Middle Ages, especially in Italy, where the Roman past had left the most outstanding traces. However, the Renaissance’s attitude toward classical antiquity was very different from that of the Middle Ages.
The rebirth of city life, which started in Italy in the fourteenth century, favored the rise of a new culture and, at the same time, the rediscovery of the past: “Culture, as soon as it freed itself from the fantastic bond of the Middle Ages, […] needed a guide, and found one in the ancient civilization.”3 Men of culture continued to study the Latin authors of the medieval curriculum, but expanded their knowledge by adding other authors and literary works. Recovering ancient texts that, for a long time, had lain neglected in monastic libraries of Europe became the goal of many humanists.
The new manuscripts made up large collections, and the texts they contained reached a wider audience: the use of a simplified handwriting in manuscripts and, later, the invention of printing sped the reproduction of books and made their circulation easier. Translations spread the knowledge of these texts among a wider public.4 This new culture had enormous effects on education. In the humanist system of global education of the perfect citizen, the humanities acquired a significant place, along with the seven liberal arts and more practical disciplines, such as law and medicine.5 At the same time, ethical and religious values were nurtured: finally, the conflict between ancient pagan culture and Christianity found a solution in the West. By the first half of the fifteenth century, the studia humanitatis became a clearly defined circle of scholarly disciplines: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy.
In each of these disciplines, the reading and interpretation of Latin and Greek authors played an important role.6 The humanities were not regarded as an encouragement to otium, but as a necessary support of negotium, a stimulus to action; the imitation of the style and content of the works of the classical writers provided an excellent source of inspiration.7 The picture, however, is not homogeneous. Although the crisis of medieval pedagogy had already emerged during Petrarch’s time (1304–1374), there was no conscious break with the past until the fifteenth century. For a long time, humanist teachers continued to use medieval teaching methods, readings, and schoolbooks, and to regard repetition, memorization, and imitation as the students’ main tasks.8 Moreover, in spite of the steady rise of the vernacular languages, the prevalence of Latin as the medium of instruction remained unchallenged for a long time.9
The manifold aspects of the humanist revival of ancient culture have been extensively studied. In the last hundred years, the discovery and publication of many documents has offered a more precise and detailed picture of Renaissance education. Evaluating the relationship between the new pedagogy and medieval culture and education, however, is much more difficult:10 the interpretation of the extent and effects of the changes in humanist education, as well as the evaluation of its continuity with the past, are still being discussed. However, it is undeniable that the classical revival was extremely important, at least in the intentions of humanist educators: the idea of an indissoluble bond between past and present inspired the pedagogical theories of the Renaissance.11
The re-introduction of Greek studies in the West represented a significant innovation in Renaissance culture. Most contemporaries were aware of its importance and described it as a sort of “miracle,” due to the initiative of some individuals (Coluccio Salutati and the Florentine humanist circles) and to the ability of a Byzantine teacher (Manuel Chrysoloras) who taught Greek to Westerners. Actually, the Greek revival was the culminating point of a long process; the alternately friendly and hostile relationships between Byzantium and the West had contributed to the mutual knowledge of the two worlds. Interestingly enough, the West and Byzantium followed parallel paths in their mutual approach: the interest in Greek culture that, during the fourteenth century, began to develop in the West, corresponded to the spread of Latin culture in Byzantium.12 The migration of Byzantine scholars to Italy, which had started long before the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453),13 disclosed to Westerners a culture almost unknown to them: Greek writers, whom Westerners had forgotten since the end of antiquity, were read, translated, commented on, and imitated. Gemistos Plethon’s lectures challenged centuries of Scholasticism and, in this way, the foundations of medieval culture.
On the other hand, both Byzantine scholarship and Western culture were heirs to the homogeneous Greco-Roman κιν of late antiquity. Thus, for example, Byzantine and Western scholars practiced the same methods of teaching and approaching ancient texts; the focus on studia humanitatis in humanist schools resembled the rhetorical training of Byzantine schools in the Palaeologan age.14 For this reason, Byzantine curriculum and pedagogy could be easily transferred in the West; Western scholars who wanted to practice their Greek read the same texts and did the same exercises as Byzantine students. The re-introduction and the spread of Greek studies in the West, however, required important transformations with respect to the ancient Greek and Byzantine traditions; for example, it became necessary to adapt Byzantine grammar, conceived for native Greek speakers, to the needs of students who approached Greek as a foreign language, usually through Latin. Only those changes could grant to Greek studies a permanent place in Western culture. So far, scholarship has paid little attention to grammar books, lexica, and dictionaries: in other words, to the tools that made this revival possible, as well as to the methods that teachers followed to impart to their students a knowledge of Greek.15 Even a partial analysis of these tools reveals that the return of Greek studies to the West was everything but a straightforward process; its history includes bright triumphs and depressing failures, consent and criticism, acceptance and resistance. Byzantine emigrés who taught Greek in Italy became rich and famous (e.g., Manuel Chrysoloras) or were frustrated in their ambitions (e.g., Michael Apostolis); Westerners who spent their energies learning Greek could reach an impressive mastery of the language (e.g., Bruni, Filelfo, and Politian) or remain obscure and mediocre scholars.
More importantly, this “minor” grammatical material, still largely unexplored, reveals that Chrysoloras, the author of the first Greek grammar for Westerners, was not the demiurge or the deus ex machina that his contemporaries described. First of all, Byzantine scholarship of the Palaeologan age already had promoted a rethinking of Greek grammatical tradition; during the Palaeologan age, Byzantine elementary grammar was slowly undergoing a process of simplification to meet the demands of students for whom the Attic Greek still used in literature and documents was like a foreign language. Secondly, Chrysoloras’ main innovation—the use of the Latin system of declensions based on the ending of the genitive singular for Greek nominal inflection, anticipated by Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century—was not the only case of application of a Latinate scheme to Greek grammar.
The four Greek Donati, the object of this book, represent four attempts to create a Greek grammar modeled on Latin; thus, students could learn Greek using patterns as familiar to them as those that they had used to learn Latin. A study of the four Donati graeci must take into account the complex balance between continuity and innovation in grammatical studies and pedagogy, as well as the interaction and exchanges between East and West during the Renaissance.
The Greek Donati are Greek translations or adaptations of the so-called Donatus or Ianua, an elementary book used during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in learning Latin. By unveiling the origin, function, and fate of the Greek Donati, it will be possible to analyze an almost unknown aspect of the revival of Greek studies in the Renaissance. As Greek grammar books, in fact, the Greek Donati are failed experiments: they were not deemed worthy of a printed edition, nor, apparently, did they circulate outside of Italy and/or Crete. One of the four texts, version a, probably originated as a simple word-for-word translation of the Latin textbook for Greeks who wanted to learn Latin.
During the fifteenth century, this version, perhaps originally written in the interlinear spaces of a Latin text, became an independent grammar and was used to learn Greek; apparently, Greek Donatus a did not undergo the process of adaptation of Latin morphology to the “target language” that led to the composition of Donati in modern languages.16 More advanced and improved grammars replaced the Greek Donatus, but the replacement may not have been complete. In fact, when the extant manuscripts of version a were produced, the Greek grammars of Manuel Chrysoloras, Theodore Gaza, Constantine Lascaris, and some other Greek scholars already existed.
Thus, Greek Donatus a, the Donatus translatus, may have been transformed into an independent grammar in an area where such books were not circulating. Many elements point to Crete or some other Venetian colony in Greece as possible places of origin. It is highly probable that some Venetian officers and their families brought the most widespread elementary Latin schoolbook, Ianua, and that the book was later translated into Greek. Versions b, c, and d, on the other hand, are clear and conscious attempts to create “real” Greek elementary grammars using Ianua’s structure. Some parts maintain a tight link with the Latin text, while some other parts are taken from authentic Greek grammatical material, especially from Moschopoulos’ erôtêmata or from his source(s). In all three Donati compositi, for example, the paradigms of the section on verbs are derived from the same source, which was probably an improved Greek translation of Ianua. Most probably, Donati compositi were just some of the many compilations of grammatical material available at that time.
In any case, compiling seems to be a typical method in the composition of Renaissance Greek grammars: for example, some sections of Chrysoloras’ Erotemata closely echo Moschopoulos’ work. As Greek grammars, in spite of their many differences, the four Donati graeci show some common features. All of them consider five nominal declensions and four regular verbal conjugations (with the addition of a variable number of irregular verbs, all modeled on Latin). The parts of speech expounded are the same and in the same order as in Ianua: this means that in Greek there is no article, but, as in Latin, there is an interjection. Greek nouns lack a dual but have an ablative (and Greek prepositions can take the ablative, too); Greek verbs lack both the dual and the middle voice but have the impersonal voice, the future imperative, all tenses of the subjunctive (in a), and even a supine and a gerundive (in a). The Donati compositi, on the other hand, acknowledge the existence of the aorist, but often confuse it with the perfect.
These four grammars build up a type of Greek grammar that I would call “Donatus-type” or “Pylê-type.”17 The Greek Donati are closely connected with Latin elementary grammar: they represent the introduction of Latin parsing grammar (Poeta quae pars est, etc.) within a different system, which privileged definition (τ στιν νμα, etc.). Greek Donatus a, first of all, is a translation from Latin. Therefore, the first chapter of this study deals with its Latin original, the PseudoDonatan Ianua, by sketching out the evolution of Aelius Donatus’ Ars minor in its medieval forms; Ianua was just one of them.
Chapter Two examines the rediscovery of Greek culture and the revival of Greek studies in the West. After a brief description of the study of Greek in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, this chapter describes and evaluates the role played by Byzantine emigrés in re-establishing a Greek curriculum in the West. Three aspects receive particular emphasis: the creation of a new Greek grammar for Westerners, the similarities between Byzantine and Latin pedagogy, and the position of Greek in Renaissance schools. The last two chapters focus on the Greek Donati. Chapter Three offers an analysis of the texts, describing the manuscript tradition and the content of the four versions, with particular emphasis on version a. Since, however, a critical edition of a grammatical text makes sense only if it takes into account the pedagogical context within which the text was produced,18 the final chapter deals with the questions raised by the Greek Donati: chronology, authorship, place of origin, and use in classrooms and/or for the self-study of Greek.
The anonymous translator(s) of Greek Donatus a probably did not intend to write a Greek grammar and Maximus Planudes did not know that his Greek translation of the Disticha Catonis would become an elementary reading for Western students of Greek. In the same way, I did not approach the Greek Donatus originally for its significance in Renaissance Greek studies. This project started as a final paper for a graduate course on the reception of antiquity, taught at Columbia University by Professor Suzanne Said in the fall of 1998. While inquiring into the reception of Latin culture in Byzantium, I came across Maximus Planudes’ translations from Latin; among the works of this extraordinary polymath, the (supposed) translation of Aelius Donatus’ Ars minor still awaited a critical edition. I decided to undertake this task in my dissertation: the limited number of manuscripts transmitting the text—six, five of which are in Italian libraries and directly accessible to me—seemed to offer an ideal condition for textual criticism. Also, that topic granted my study a fair level of originality; in fact, the only existing monograph on the Greek Donatus was an unpublished dissertation that Wolfgang Oskar Schmitt defended in 1966 at the Humboldt Universität of Berlin.
Schmitt’s outstanding work—which, unfortunately, had almost no circulation outside of the former German Democratic Republic—contained a thorough discussion of the problems related to the Greek Donatus (especially of Planudes’ authorship) and a critical edition of the text.19 I began my work by checking the existence of other manuscripts containing the Greek Donatus; I was able to use catalogues, electronic resources, and data banks that were not yet available at the time when Schmitt was doing his research or were not accessible to him as a scholar living beyond the Iron Curtain. The result was the discovery of five new manuscripts, containing three different versions of the same text. In my dissertation (Columbia University, 2004), I presented a critical edition of the “Planudean” Greek Donatus, i.e., version a, as well as an overview of other two versions, i.e., b and what I believed was the only extant part of c, the section on verbs.20
In my edition of the text, the new manuscripts allowed me to confirm or to correct many of Schmitt’s assumptions. Further research has led me to discover the missing parts of version c, as well as a fourth version, d, in the grammar attributed to Zacharias Calliergis in one of the manuscripts of version a. Another significant result has been the identification of some elements that point to Crete or the Northeastern part of Italy as the place of origin of the four Greek Donati. 21 These new discoveries have immensely widened the field of inquiry. One Greek Donatus—the “vulgate,” version a—might still be viewed as the result of the initiative of an individual or as the authentic or spurious work of a Byzantine scholar and, as such, as a contribution to literary history only. But four versions of the same text, which probably originated within the same environment, indicate that they were created to respond to precise cultural demands; thus, we must consider the four extant Donati graeci in general, within the context of the revival of Greek studies in the West, and in particular, as products of the search for adequate tools for the teaching of Greek, which distinguished the first stages of that revival.
Working on Renaissance Greek grammar represents a challenge and requires, so to speak, the spirit of a pioneer. First of all, no modern critical editions are available for the most important Byzantinehumanist grammars: Manuel Chrysoloras’ Erotemata, Theodore Gaza’s Introduction to Grammar (Εσαγωγ γραμματικς), Constantine Lascaris’ Summary of the Eight Parts of Speech (Επιτμ τν κτ λγων μερν), and, of course, minor works such as Chalcondyles’ and Calecas’ grammars. Secondly, there is no general survey of the study of Greek in the Renaissance comparable, for example, to Robert Black’s 2001 extensive study on Latin education. A monograph that may consider not only the products of “high” scholarship, such as translations of classical texts, but also the tools available for elementary instruction in Greek is still a desideratum for the study of Greek culture in the Renaissance. Also, we need systematic studies on the structure, sources, and use of Greek grammar manuals in the West, but not without the preliminary, careful work of collecting and cataloguing all the immense amount of extant material scattered throughout European and American libraries. This book is intended as a first attempt to fill this gap by describing a tradition of Greek studies somehow connected with Venice and Crete; this tradition was certainly inferior in quality and circulation when compared with the Florentine scholarship, but it is still important in the cultural history of the Renaissance .
The edition of grammatical texts raises particular problems. It is true that Renaissance texts present the advantage of being closer in time to our age than classical texts.23 However, texts created for school use were subject to continuous modifications. As a matter of fact, a grammar was not merely read but used: like all secular books, grammar books were not made to last.24 In the past as well as in the present, a grammar was continuously open to corrections. Unusual forms were likely to be “corrected” and replaced with more normal forms or perhaps deleted entirely. Teachers were free to modify the text by excluding superfluous material or including what they considered appropriate to their own pedagogical methods and to the demands of their classes. Typically, later editions of schoolbooks are better than earlier ones: this reverses the idea of an “archetype,” in Lachmann’s sense, as a possible goal of a critical edition. We should also consider that elementary school texts were usually much more tolerant of forms of the spoken language than literary texts. Theoretically, then, an excess of “normalization” of language and style would be inappropriate. Practically, however, we should not exclude that some “modern” or extravagant forms were introduced in the copying of manuscripts unintentionally by copyists rather than intentionally by grammarians. Applying common sense or skeptical suspension of judgment is often the best solution: in some cases, abandoning the idea of correcting the text or even using cruces desperationis may be not signs of defeat, but ways to respect what is no longer accessible to minds educated in “analogical” Greek grammar.
I have corrected or modified the texts only when they appeared clearly altered or corrupted and when their alterations could be explained by the manuscript tradition.26 In general, however, I have tried to preserve elements that I consider as constituent features of the Greek Donati and closely bound to their Latin model, such as the confusion between declensions and verbal tenses or the Latinate lexicon and syntax of some passages. Similarly, I have preserved forms that reveal the influence of demotic Greek in the study of Greek classical grammar. In fact, I have not aimed to make the Greek Donati similar to grammars in the modern sense, but to offer to readers and scholars four texts that, with their imperfections, might document a particular stage of the revival and spread of Greek studies in the West. In laying out the texts, I have tried to offer a complete picture of the variae lectiones found in the manuscripts of versions a and b by presenting them in parallel columns when they represent different branches of the manuscript tradition.27
Often, I have given my preference to readings contained in the manuscripts bearing the most recent version of the text, which happen to be more complete and correct than the earlier versions. On the other hand, I adapted punctuation and orthography to modern usage. In the negative critical apparatus, I did not mention the mistakes of iotacism, psilosis, and orthography in each manuscript, unless they represent significant (possible) textual variants. Versions a and c have been edited with a Latin translation facing the Greek text. In c’s case, I have offered a transcription of the Latin text as it appears in the manuscript, with all its orthographic peculiarities, its gaps, and its mistakes. In a’s case, I have not offered an existing text, but a sort of ideal “Ur-Ianua a” that may or may not have been the original of Greek Donatus a, but that functions as a point of reference and a support for better understanding the Greek text. For this reason, unlike the c-text, for a I have maintained the standard classical writing (e.g., ae and oe instead of e).28 I wish to express my gratitude to my advisors, Alan Cameron and Carmela Vircillo Franklin, who have supervised my dissertation with patience and care and provided invaluable intellectual and moral support during the various stages of the process. I am also grateful to the other members of the defense committee, Consuelo Dutschke, Kathy Eden, and James Zetzel, for their constructive criticism and suggestions. Alexandros Alexakis and Roger Bagnall were very helpful at the first stage of my research, while Maria Luisa Angrisani and Maria Grazia Jodice gave me the opportunity to present the first results in a lecture at the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” in April 2001.
The questions raised during that lecture and the other presentations that I gave on Renaissance Greek grammar have stimulated me to reconsider many of my assumptions and widen the field of my research. Two grants from Texas A&M University have allowed me to explore some Italian libraries in order to find the Latin originals of the Greek grammars edited in this book; I wish to thank in particular Isabella Fiorentini of the Biblioteca Trivulziana in Milan for her assistance.
I completed the revision of the manuscript as a fellow of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Like all those who have had the privilege of working at I Tatti, I benefited from a stimulating intellectual environment and invaluable resources. I am extremely grateful to my colleague Craig Kallendorf and to Christopher Celenza for their continuous encouragement and their patience in reading the manuscript and pointing out mistakes and omissions. Giuseppina Magnaldi helped me solve many doubts concerning the constitutio textus, while Wolfgang Haase, Steve Oberhelman, and three anonymous referees were lavish with advice when an article based on my dissertation appeared in the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (2005). Their contributions have been so numerous that it would be impossible to acknowledge all of them as they occur.
I thank Concetta Bianca, Msgr. Paul Canart, Guglielmo Cavallo, Mario De Nonno, Elizabeth Fisher, James Hankins, Umberto La Torraca, Athanasios Markopoulos, Antonio Martina, and David Speranzi for many useful conversations, for a wealth of bibliography, and for often making available to me their works before publication. I am grateful to William Harris and the editorial board of the Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition for accepting this work in their prestigious series, to Krista May for revising my English carefully and patiently, and to the staff of Brill for solving all kinds of editorial problems. My professors and fellow graduate students at Columbia, my friends in Italy and in the U.S., my colleagues at Texas A&M, and the other fellows at I Tatti have shared in one way or another the long process that has led to this book. Particular thanks go to my family, especially to my mother Paola and my husband Marco, for tolerating my long absences and making me feel their warm support in all ways possible. I consider this book as a point of departure rather than a point of arrival. Much research still needs to be done on Renaissance Greek studies, and I hope that, in the future, new discoveries will add new information, widen the perspective, and even challenge the conclusions reached so far. Florence, May 2007
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