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Polydore Vergil and Ecclesiastical Historiography in his De Inventoribus Rerum IV–VIII

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Jonathan Arnold
Jonathan Arnold*
Affiliation:
Worcester College, Oxford
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Extract

Polydore Vergil (c.1470–1555) was a controversial critic of the church of his day. As this essay will show, his radical solution to its problems was based upon his reading of the church’s history. An Italian cleric on English soil for much of his life, Vergil is most famous for his Anglica Historia (1533), the first Tudor history of England. However, he was also responsible for another great (although now neglected) work, De Inventoribus Rerum (‘on the inventors, or discoverers, of all things’). Consisting of eight volumes, it is an example of early encyclopaedic technique from original Latin and Greek sources, including the Bible, Josephus and Eusebius, as well as observation from contemporary life, in which ‘invention’ is depicted as a category of historiography and a means of examining scientific and cultural history. The first three books were published in 1499 in Venice and deal mainly with scientific phenomena. The other five books, with which we are concerned here, consider the origins of Christian institutions (initia institutorum rei Christianae) and were published much later, in 1521, although Vergil continuously revised the entire De Inventoribus Rerum until his death. The topics covered range from early church history, baptism, clerical and religious orders, penance, prayers and simony, to heresies and schisms, martyrs and the triumph of Christianity. An extremely popular work, with over forty editions in Vergil’s lifetime, it was, nonetheless, censured for its criticisms of the church. Indeed, the purpose of Books IV–VIII was to demonstrate what was initiated by Christ and what the true nature of the church was, not by examining its doctrine but by seeking the origins of its practice.

Type
Part I: The Churches’ Use of the Past
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 49: The Church on its Past , 2013 , pp. 144 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2013

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References

1 Hay, D., Polydore Vergil: Renaissance Historian and Man of Letters (Oxford, 1952), 58–9 Google Scholar; Atkinson, C., Inventing Inventors in Renaissance Europe: Polydore Vergil’s De Inventoribus Rerum (Tübingen, 2007), 97.Google Scholar

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4 Beginnings and Discoveries, ed. Weiss and Pérez, 527–8 (DIR 8.7); see also Arnold, J., The Great Humanists: An Introduction (London, 2011), 36–8.Google Scholar

5 There are many biographical sketches of Vergil’s life, including Galdieri, L. in Richardson, David A., ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography, 132: Sixteenth-Century British Nondramatic Writers, First Series (Detroit, MI, 1993), 316–21 Google Scholar; ODNB.

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12 Hay, Polydore Vergil, 70; Beginnings and Discoveries, ed. Weiss and Pérez, 278 (DIR 4–6).

13 ‘Saepe more fungorum subito oriri solent’: Hay, Polydore Vergil, 71, quoting the edition published by Elzevir, Daniel: Polydori Vergilii … De inventoribus rerum (Amsterdam, 1671), 446 Google Scholar (DIR 7.2).

14 Hay, Polydore Vergil, 72.

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19 Ibid. 270 n. 88.

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22 Hay, Polydore Vergil, 264; see also Calvör, Caspar, Rituale Ecclesiasticum (Jena, 1705)Google Scholar, which used Vergil’s work on liturgy.

23 See n. 3 above for references to these works.

24 Atkinson, Inventing Inventors, 100.

25 Beginnings and Discoveries, ed. Weiss and Pérez, 247 (DIR 4, preface).

26 Ibid. 294 (DIR 4.10).

27 Ibid. 395 (DIR 6.2).

28 Ibid. 478–9 (DIR 7.6).

29 Ibid. 494 (DIR 8.1).

30 Ibid. 15.

31 Ibid. 16, 374 (DIR 5.10).

32 Ibid. 17–19.

33 Ibid. 334–5 (DIR 5.4): Matt. 19: 5–6 (Christ); 1 Tim. 3: 2, 12 (Paul); Titus 1: 5–6; 1 Pet. 1: 16; 1 Cor. 7: 5.

34 Beginnings and Discoveries, ed. Weiss and Pérez, 340–1 (DIR 5.4).

35 Ibid. 20, 494 (DIR 8.1).

36 Ibid.

37 Hay, Polydore Vergil, 73, quoting De inventoribus rerum, ed. Elzevir, 495–6 (DIR 8.5).

38 Beginnings and Discoveries, ed. Weiss and Pérez, 513–14; De inventoribus rerum, ed. Elzevir, 495–6 (DIR 8.5).

39 Lupton, J. H., A Life of John Colet, D.D. (London, 1887; 2nd edn, 1909), 302 Google Scholar; Knight, S., The Life of Dr. John Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s (London, 1724; 2nd edn, 1823), 248.Google Scholar

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