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THE RECOVERY OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN THE CULTURE OF HUMANISTS AND THE COMMUNICATIVE ORIGINS OF THE REFORMATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2019

JORGE LEDO Open the ORCID record for JORGE LEDO [Opens in a new window]
JORGE LEDO*
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Universidade da Coruña
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Abstract

Ideas and opinions about communication and intellectual exchange underwent significant changes during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The rediscovery of parrhesia by the humanists of the Quattrocento is one of the least studied of these changes, and at the same time, paradoxically, one of the most fascinating. My main argument in these pages is that the recovery of Hellenistic “freedom of speech” was a process that took place from the thirteenth century through the first decade of the sixteenth century; thus it began well before the term παρρησία was common currency among humanists. This is the most important and counterituitive aspect of the present analysis of early modern parrhesia, because it means that the concept did not develop at the expense of classical and biblical tradition so much as at the expense of late-medieval scholastic speculation about the sins of the tongue and the legitimation of anger as an intellectual emotion. To illustrate this longue durée process, I have focused on three stages: (i) the creation, transformation, and assimilation by fourteenth-century humanism of the systems of sins of the tongue, and especially the sin of contentio; (ii) the synthesis carried out by Lorenzo Valla between the scholastic tradition, the communicative presumptions of early humanism, and the classical and New Testament ideas of parrhesia; and (iii) the systematization and transformation of this synthesis in Raffaele Maffei's Commentariorum rerum urbanorum libri XXXVIII. In closing, I propose a hypothesis. The theoretical framework behind Maffei's encyclopaedic approach is not only that he was attempting to synthesize the Quattrocento's heritage through the prism of classical sources; it was also that he was crystallizing the communicative “rules of the game” that all of Christianitas implicitly accepted at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Taking the three ways of manifesting the truth considered by Maffei and fleshing them out in the figures of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Celio Calcagnini, and Martin Luther just before the emergence of the Protestant Reformation could help to explain from a communicative perspective the success and pan-European impact of the Reformation.

Keywords

history of communicationparrhesiaπαρρησίαfreedom of speechmedieval sins of the tongueclassical traditionHumanismReformationLorenzo VallaRaffaele MaffeiDesiderius ErasmusCelio CalcagniniMartin Luther
Type
Research Article
Information
Traditio , Volume 74 , 2019 , pp. 375 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University 2019 

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Footnotes

I would like to express my gratitude to Chris Celenza, Eric MacPhail, Mercedes García-Arenal, David Robertson, Anna Laura Puliafito, Xavier Tubau, and Roland Béhar for their commentary on this text. Needless to say, all the remaining mistakes and unintended omissions are my own. The following abbreviations will be employed: Allen = Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen, H. M. Allen, and H. W. Garrod, 11 vols. and index (Oxford 1906–58); ASD = Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami (Amsterdam and Leiden, 1969–); Copeland = Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter, Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300–1475 (Oxford, 2009); CTC = Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries (Washington, DC, 1960–); CWE = Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto, 1974–); DCOO = Doctoris ecstatici D. Dionysii Cartusiani Opera omnia, 32 vols (Montreal, 1896–1906); DG = Corpus Iuris Canonici… Pars prior: Decretum magistri Gratiani, ed. Äemilius Friedberg Friedberg and Äemilius Ludovicus Richter (Graz, 1959); Faral = Edmond Faral, ed. Les arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1962); ITRL = I Tatti Renaissance Library (Cambridge, MA, 2001–); JGOC = Jean Gerson, Œuvres complètes, 10 vols., ed. Palémon Glorieux (Paris, 1960–73); NCTUIR = Nuova Collezione di Testi Umanistici Inediti o Rari (Florence, 1939–76); and VBSQ = Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum quadruplex sive Speculum maius: Naturale / Doctrinale / Morale / Historiale. 4 vols. (1624, repr. Graz, 1965). Except where noted, I cite the translations provided in these editions.

References

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5 Both Franciscans and Dominicans insisted on instruction in disputation; on this point, see Roest, Bert, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) (Leiden, 2000), 133–37 and 276–77Google Scholar, and Mulchahey, M. Michèle, First the Bow is Bent in Study … : Dominican Education Before 1350 (Toronto, 1998), 167–75 and 222–36Google Scholar. For the role of the disputatio in the faculties, see Grabmann, Martin, Die scholastische Methode im 12. und beginnenden 13. Jahrhundert, vol. 2 of Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode (Berlin, 1957), 13–27, 217–21, 480–82, and 558–60Google Scholar; Maierù, Alfonso, University Training in Medieval Europe, trans. Pryds, D. N. (Leiden, 1994), 62–69 and 117–41Google Scholar; Lawn, Brian, The Rise and Decline of the Scholastic “Quaestio Disputata”: With Special Emphasis on Its Use in the Teaching of Medicine and Science (Leiden, 1993)Google Scholar; and Weijers's and Novikoff's essays mentioned above, n. 1.

6 For a critical discussion of these genres in classical literature, see Taub, Liba, “‘Problematising’ the Problemata: The Problemata in Relation to Other Question-and-Answer Texts,” in The Aristotelian Problemata Physica: Philosophical and Scientific Investigations, ed. Mayhew, Robert (Leiden, 2015), 413–36Google Scholar; in early Christian literature, Zamagni, Claudio, “Is the Question-and-Answer Literary Genre in Early Christian Literature an Homogeneous Group?,” in La littérature des questions et réponses dans l'Antiquité profane et chrétienne: De l'enseignement à l'exégèse, ed. Bussières, Marie-Pierre (Turnhout, 2013), 241–67Google Scholar; and in letters, Byzantine, Ermilov, Pavel, “Towards a Classification of Sources in Byzantine Question-and-Answer Literature,” in Theologica Minora: The Minor Genres of Byzantine Theological Literature, ed. Rigo, Antonio (Turnhout, 2013), 110–25Google Scholar. Its success in medieval literature and the difficulties for classification have been studied by Reiss, Edmund, Schmidt, Peter Lebrecht, and Ronquist, Eyvind C.; see de Hartmann, Carmen Cardelle, Lateinische Dialoge 1200–1400: Literaturhistorische Studie und Repertorium (Leiden, 2007), 4–10, 43–45, and 60–77Google Scholar, and Weijers, Olga, In Search of the Truth: A History of Disputation Techniques from Antiquity to Early Modern Times (Turnhout, 2013), 28–30, 40, 50, and 262ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Fredborg, Karin Margareta, “Rhetoric and Dialectic,” in The Rhetoric of Cicero in Its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, ed. Cox, Virginia and Ward, John O. (Leiden, 2006), 165–92Google Scholar. See also Murphy, James J., Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley, 1974), 104–8Google Scholar.

8 The most comprehensive study on the topic during the Middle Ages is still Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio, I peccati della lingua (Rome, 1987), which I follow closely in my account. So far as I know, we lack a study on the survival and transformation of the sins of the tongue during the Renaissance, with some exceptions regarding particular sins, such as Craun, Edwin D., Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Boer, Wietse, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan (Leiden, 2001), 148–54Google Scholar; Elizabeth A. Horodowich, “The Unmannered Tongue: Blasphemy, Insults, and Gossip in Renaissance Venice,” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2001) and Horodowich, , “Civic Identity and the Control of Blasphemy in Sixteenth-Century Venice,” Past and Present 181 (2003): 3–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lindorfer, Bettina, “Peccatum linguae and the Punishment of Speech Violation in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times,” in Speaking in the Medieval World, ed. Godsall-Myers, Jean E. (Leiden, 2003), 23–42Google Scholar; and Veldhuizen, Martine, “Guard Your Tongue: Slander and Its Punishment in a Late Medieval Courtroom,” in The Voices of the People in Late Medieval Europe: Communication and Popular Politics, ed. Dumolyn, Jan et al. (Turnhout, 2014), 233–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Wathen, Ambrose G., Silence: The Meaning of Silence in the Rule of St Benedict (Washington, DC, 1973), 179–223Google Scholar.

10 Grayzel, Solomon, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century: A Study of Their Relations during the Years 1198–1254, Based on the Papal Letters and the Conciliar Decrees of the Period (Philadelphia, 1933), 26–35Google Scholar; Landgraf, Artur Michael, Introduction a l'histoire de la littérature théologique de la scolastique naissante (Montreal, 1973), 48–50Google Scholar; Cantin, André, “Sur quelques aspects des disputes publiques au XIe siècle latin,” in Études de civilisation médiévale, IXe–XIIe siècles: Mélanges offerts à Edmond-René Labande par ses amis, ses collègues, ses élèves (Poitiers, 1975), 89–104Google Scholar; Stock, Brian, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983), 91, 322–29, 522–31Google Scholar; Brown, Stephen H., “Key Terms in Medieval Theological Vocabulary,” in Méthodes et instruments du travail intellectuel au moyen âge: Études sur le vocabulaire, ed. Weijers, Olga (Turnhout, 1990), 82–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mulchahey, M. Michèle, “Dominican Educational Vocabulary and the Order's Conceptualization of Studies before 1300: Borrowed Terminology, New Connotations,” in Vocabulaire des écoles et des méthodes d'enseignement au moyen âge: Actes du colloque, Rome 21–22 octobre 1989, ed. Weijers (Turnhout, 1992), 110, 114–15Google Scholar; Lawn, The Rise and Decline of the Scholastic “Quaestio disputata,” 12–17, 21–25, 39–44, etc.; Périgot, Dialectique et littérature, 42–56; and Novikoff, “Toward a Cultural History of Scholastic Disputation,” 133–71.

11 de Bruyne, Edgar, Études d'esthétique médiévale (Paris, 1998), 1, 525–27Google Scholar; Leclerq, Jean, L'amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu (Paris, 1957), 191–92Google Scholar; Lubkin, Gregory, A Renaissance Court: Milan under Galleazzo Maria Sforza (Berkeley, 1994), 11Google Scholar; Novikoff, “Toward a Cultural History of Scholastic Disputation,” 358–60, and Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation, 190ff. I collect examples of the sins of the tongue in canon law below at nn. 28–30.

12 That is the approach in William Peraldus's famous eighth chapter (De peccato linguae, ca. 1230) of the Summa de vitiis et virtutibus (ca. 1250), see Casagrande and Vecchio, I Peccati della lingua, 4, 116, and 141; Craun, Lies, Slander, and Obscenity, 15–16: and Lindorfer, “Peccatum linguae and the Punishment of Speech Violation,” 27–28.

13 So far as I know, the most populated list of sins of the tongue (43) is the one collected by Jean Gerson (JGOC 9, 158) in his Enumeratio peccatorum ab Alberto posita (1400–15). This list is not mentioned by Casagrande and Vecchio.

14 Peraldus studies twenty-four sins: blasphemia (blasphemy), murmur (gossip), deffensio peccati (excusing sin), periurium (perjury), mendacium/falsum testimonium (lie), detractio (detraction), adulatio (flattery), maledictio (reviling), convicium (insult), contentio, bilinguium (hypocrisy), rumor (hearsay), iactantia (boasting), revelatio secretorum (revelation of secrets), indiscreta comminatio (blunt threats), indiscreta promissio (promises made lightly), ociosa verba (idle words), multiloquium (loquacity), turpiloquium (base talk), scurrilitas (buffoonery), bonorum derisio (mocking good people), pravum consilium (evil counsel), seminatio discordiarum (sowing discord), and indiscreta taciturnitas (imprudent taciturnity). The influence of his Summa de vitiis (ca. 1250) was strong all across Europe and had an early impact in vernacular languages through translations into Catalan, French, and English.

15 On the fortunes of Beauvais's Speculum, see Blair's, Anne M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven, 2010), 43–55 and 241–42Google Scholar; Blair, , “Revisiting Renaissance Encyclopaedism,” in Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. König, Jason and Woolf, Greg (Cambridge, 2013), 388–91Google Scholar; and Franklin-Brown's, Mary Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing in the Scholastic Age (Chicago, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The lexical influence of Beauvais's encyclopedia is not always distinct in early humanist texts, but it is clear that early humanists were aware of the existence of these catalogues. See, for instance, Salutati's list in De seculo et religione 1.5. 8–9 (ITRL 62: 30–33): “And to put it in a nutshell: here are the heresies, infidelity, apostasy, blasphemy, dullness of sense, and blindness of intellect; here that depression that weighs on human minds so that they do not want to do anything good; here malice, rancor, small-mindedness, lethargy, a straying mind, despair, envy, hatred, whispering, carping criticism, exultation in the misfortunes of a neighbor and affliction in his prosperity; here is the contentiousness [contentio], the enemy of the peace that all things long for, discords [discordie], schisms [scismata], wars, quarrels [rixe], seditions [seditiones], scandals [scandala], imprudence [imprudentia], haste [precipitatio], rashness, thoughtlessness [inconsideratio], inconstancy [inconstantia], guile [dolus], carnal wisdom, trickery [astutia], fraud [fraus], concern for temporal and future affairs; here injustice, regarding of persons, homicides, slaughter, injuries [iniurie], acts of sacrilege [sacrilegia], thefts, acts of pillaging, unfair judgments [iniqua iudicia], calumnies [calumnie], betrayals [tergiversationes], false testimonies [falsa testimonia], slanders [maledicta], derision [derisiones], deceptions [deceptiones], illicit gains, usury, simony, curses [execrationes], misdeeds, spells [fascinationes], casting of lots [sortilegia], divination [divinationes], superstition [superstitiones], idolatry [ydolatria], augury [auguria], avarice [avaricia], betrayal [proditio], falsehoods [falsitates], lies [mendacia], perjury [perjuria], acts of violence, deceit [fallacie], cheating [fraudes], pretense [simulatio], hypocrisy [ypocrisis], boastfulness [iactantia], irony [ironia], adulation [adulatio], and lawsuits [litigia].” I provide Salutati's original in Latin only for the terms recognizable as sins of the tongue in medieval catalogues.

16 I am not counting Ps-Beauvais's tentative list of the sins of the tongue in the Speculum morale 3.1, dist. 1 (VBSQ 3, col. 871), adduced by Casagrande and Vecchio, I peccati della lingua, 131 and 139 n. 44. However, they overlook that the list offered at the beginning greatly differs when, thereafter (VBSQ 3, col. 1003–1283), Ps-Beauvais studies one by one the items as related to the deadly sins. Thus, when he deals with superbia, he studies the following sins of the tongue: curiositas, which works as one of the thresholds for the sins of the tongue, levitas and superbia verborum, inepta laetitia, iactantia, singularitas (which includes sanctior apparere, mainly limited to monastic life; arrogantia; praesumptio; defensio peccatorum; simulata, fallax, or superba confessio; rebellio), hypocrisis, ironia (which includes adulatio), discordia or seminatio discordiarum (which includes pravus consilius, revelatio secreti, multiloquium, turpiloquium, scurrilitas, vaniloquium, promissio indiscreta, comminatio indiscreta, taciturnitas indiscreta or vitiosa), contentio (which also includes pertinacia), scandalus, etc. When he deals with invidia, he appraises detractio and susurratio (which includes derisio); in ira, he includes contumelia, maledictio, blasphemia, blasphemia illorum qui passim Deum negant, blasphemia eorum qui se diabolo reddunt, blasphemia proprie dicta, blasphemia annexis criminibus et poenis, blasphemia in Spiritum Sanctum; rixa is considered here only as a physical confrontation. Acedia includes, again, multiloquium, vaniloquium, murmur, mala taciturnitas, and indiscretio; mendacium and periurium can stem from avaritia.

17 Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale 4.165–75 (VBSQ 2, col. 395–401).

18 Beauvais, Speculum historiale 1.44 (VBSQ 4, col. 17b): “Peccatum oris multiplex est, in sermone enim requiruntur tria, scilicet veritas, bonitas, æquitas siue rectitudo. [1.] Contra veritatem peccatur in uerbo tripliciter: aut quia veritas violatur, quod sit per mendacium; aut quia contemnitur, quod sit periurium; aut impugnatur, quod sit contentionem. [2.] Contra bonitatem vero dupliciter scilicet contra honestatem per scurrilitatem: contra utilitatem per vaniloquium, et multiloquium sive garrulitatem. [3.] Contra rectitudinem dupliciter scilicet in laude, et vituperatione. [3.1] In laude quando laudatur non laudandum, quod sit dupliciter: vel in laude aliena, quod sit per adulationem, vel in propria per iactantiam. [3.2] In vituperatio similiter quando vituperatur Deus, quod sit per blasphemiam, aut proximus, et hoc dupliciter: aut imprecando poenam, quod sit per maledictionem, aut improperando culpam, & hoc dupliciter: aut aperte, quod sit per contumeliam; aut occulte, quod sit per detractionem. mendacium triplex est scilicet pernitiosum, officiosum, iocusum.” My translation.

19 The parallel of this passage with Giovanni della Rochelle's Summa de vitiis, fol. 105va, is evident. See the quotation of the latter in Casagrande and Vecchio, I peccati della lingua, 205 n. 19.

20 Contentio already appears as a sin of the tongue in St. Paul (Rom. 1:29–30); see Lagrange, M. J., “Le catalogue des vices dans l’Épître aux Romains I. 28–31,” Revue biblique 20 (1911): 534–49Google Scholar. The criticisms of verbal confrontations during the High Middle Ages have been studied by Lim, Richard, Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (London, 1995), 130–33, 140–44, 171–75, and 199–213Google Scholar and Gioanni, Stéphane, “Les joutes oratoires dans les textes latins (Ve–XIe siècle): Du ‘bon usage’ d'une technique antique dans les sociétés chrétiennes du haut Moyen Âge,” in Agón: La compétition, Ve–XIIe siècle, ed. Bougard et al. (Turnhout, 2012), 199–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Quint., Inst. 7.6.9; Serv., on Verg. Ecl. 7.16; Leonardo Bruni, Historiarum Florentini populi libri XII Proem. 1; 2.28, 2.73, 2.115; 3.69; 4.17, 4.50–51, 4.77, 4.87, 4.100, 4.109, 4.113; 5.4, 5.6, 5.41, 5.51, 5.67, 5.69, 5.70, 5.80, 5.126, 5.129, 5.131, 5.147–48; 6.55; 7.2, 7.12; 8.8, 8.23, 8.125; 9.25; 9.21, 9.56; 11.8, 11.18, and 11.21 (ITRL 3: 1–2, 136–37, 182–83, 226–27, 306–7, 318–19, 392–93, 416–17, 426–29, 444–45, 454–55, 458–59; ITRL 16: 4–5, 6–7, 34–35, 42–43, 58–59, 60–61, 72–73, 116–17, 120–21, 122–23, 136–37, 206–9, 284–85, 292–95, 400–401, 414–15, 522–23; ITRL 27: 29–30, 126–27, 160–61, 174–75, 184–85, 186–87); Pietro Bembo, Carminum libellus, Appendix A 8. Sarca 160: “On my part there will be no opposition to your words” (Nulla tuis per me fuerit contentio dictis), ITRL 18: 138–39.

22 Cic., Tusc. 2.22.51 and 55; Leonardo Bruni, Historiarum Florentini populi libri XII 7.13; 10.1; 11.35 (ITRL 16: 294–95; ITRL 27: 106–7 and 200–201); Pier Paolo Vergerio, De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus adulescentiae studiis liber 6 (ITRL 5: 8–9), see also his Letters 38 and 115 (Epistolario, ed. Leonardo Smith [Rome, 1934], 85 and 304–5); Valla's, Lorenzo De voluptate 1.43.2, ed. and trans. Schenkel, Peter Michael (Munich, 2004), 102Google Scholar, and Elegantiae 6.4. In eundem De contendere, in Opera (Basel, 1540), 200–201; A. Rinuccini, Oratio exercitationis gratia edita ab Almanno Rinuccino in creatione Calisti pontificis maximi de anno MCCCCLV (NCTUIR 9: 8, 9, and 16); Budé, G., De philologia, ed. and trans. de la Garanderie, M. M. (Paris, 2001), 5Google Scholar.

23 Cic. Off. 1.43.152, 2.2.8; Rhet. Her. 4.15.21, 4.54.58; Quint., Inst. 9.3.81–86; Marbod of Rennes, De ornamentis verborum (PL 171, 1688b–1689a); Matthew of Vendôme, Ars versificatoria (Copeland: 569); Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Summa de coloribus rhetoricis (Faral: 322); Everhard the German, Laborintus 449–50 (Faral: 351); Dybinus, Nicolaus, Declaracio oracionis de beata Dorothea (Copeland: 833)Google Scholar; Agricola, R., Letters, ed. and trans. van der Laan, Adrie and Akkerman, Fokke (Assen, 2002), 104–5Google Scholar; Manetti, Apologeticus 5.68–69 (ITRL 71: 258), employed here to refer to contradictory testimonies of the Old Testament; Melanchthon, Elementa rhetorices, ed. and trans. Volkhard Wels (Potsdam, 2011), 264–67. On its use as a technique or method to expand examples, see Cic., Inv. rhet. 1.30.49 and, especially, Erasmus, De copia (ASD 1.6: 240–41; CWE 24: 616–18). This seems to have been the origin of the medieval term collatio, not related to the famous definition of dialogue found in Isidore, Etym. 6.8.2.

24 Cic., De or. 3.53.203, Orat. 37, 45–47, Div. Caec. 10, 37, etc.; Quint., Inst. 3.6.44 and 9.1.29.

25 Cic., Off. 1.36.132 and 2.14.48–49, Fin. 1.8.27–28 and 3.1.2, and Fam. 1.1.2; and even Isidore, Etym. 18.15.4. For the manifestation of this distinction in Plato's Soph. 222c–d and Phdr. 261a, and for Quintilian's objections, see Remer, Gary, Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration (University Park, PA, 1996), 26–27, 27 n. 91, and 30–31Google Scholar on the corresponding differences with regard to decorum. With respect to this distinction, Arist. Top. Θ 161a16–161b5 and its differentiation between contentious and dialectical disputation (δυσκολαινόντες οὖν ἀγωνιστικὰς και οὐ διαλεκτικὰς ποιοῦνται τὰς διατριβάς) should also be taken into account; see Rubinelli, Sara, Ars Topica (New York, 2009), 6–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Some influential Renaissance treatises on rhetoric and dialectic considered contentio as the part of the oratio that contained the arguments: Trapezuntius, Rhetoricorum libri quinque, ed. Deitz, Luc (Hildesheim, 2006), 53–59Google Scholar; Agricola, , De inventione dialectica libri tres, ed. and trans. Mundt, Lothar (Tübingen, 1992), 2.7 and 2.12, 240 and 274–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Melanchthon, Elementa rhetorices, 264–67. This is the basis for the division made by Sigonio in 1562 of dialogue in praeparatio (κατασκολή) and contentio (ἀγών) in De dialogo liber, ed. and trans. Pignatti, Franco (Rome, 1993), 164Google Scholar.

26 Arist., Rh. 1413b2–22; Cic., Orat. 85, Off. 1.37–3, 133–7; and Rhet. Her. 3.13.23–15.27.

27 Merrill, Elizabeth, The Dialogue in English Literature (Hamden, CT, 1969), 25–32Google Scholar; Riquer, Martín de, Los trovadores, 4th ed. (Barcelona, 2001), 65–70Google Scholar; and Badel, Pierre-Yves, “Le débat,” in Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters 8.1 (Heidelberg, 1988), 95–110Google Scholar. For Latin debate poems and a good number of edited texts, Walther's, Hans Das Streitgedicht in der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (Munich, 1920)Google Scholar still offers a firm point of departure. The term was still used with this connotation during the fifteenth century; see Kristeller, Iter Italicum 2: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Fondo Rossiano 999 (XI 149).

28 Proem. PL 161, col. 58–59; Pars 3. De Ecclesia, chap. 46, col. 207–8; chap. 75, col. 214; chap. 201, col. 246; chap. 205, col. 247; chap. 283, col. 263–64; Pars 4. De observandis festivitatibus, chap. 46, col. 274; chap. 215–16, col. 311–12; chap. 229, col. 314, also collected in DG Pars 1, dist. 37, I pars, chap. 6, quoted in note below; chap. 245, also collected in DG Pars 2, causa 5, quaest. 4, chap. 3; Part 5, chap. 106, col. 360; Pars 6, chap. 2, col. 440a–b, chap. 161, col. 483; Pars 7, chap. 107–8, col. 568–69; Pars 13, chap. 52–63, col. 814–15.

29 PL 162, Ep. 32, col. 44–45; Ep. 85, col. 106–7; and Ep. 138, col. 146–47.

30 DG Pars 1, dist. 37, I pars, chap. 6. Item ex responsione Adriani Papae ad Carolum, chap. 49 (DG: col. 136–37); Pars 1, dist. 90, I pars [Litigiosus quoque prohibetur ordinari, quia qui sua potestate discordantes ad concordiam debet attrahere, qui oblationes dissidentium prohibetur recipere, nequaquam litigandi facilitate alios ad discidium debet provocare], chap. 5. Corripiantur, qui rixas et contenciones amant [In Cartaginensi Concilio IV, chap. 93–94] (DG: col. 313–14), this distinctio collects a number of items that will frequently appear in the systems of the sins of the tongue; ibid., chap. 12 (DG: col. 315); Pars 2, causa 3, quaest. 6, chap. 10 (1959: col. 522); Pars 2, causa 5, quaest. 4, chap. 3. In cognitione causarum contentiosi locum non habeant [In Tolletano Concilio XI, chap. 1] (DG: col. 548–49); Pars 2, causa 16, quaest. 1, chap. 39 (DG: col. 771–72); ibid., De penitentia, disct. 2, I pars, chap. 1 (DG: col. 1190–91); etc.

31 Radulphus Ardens, Speculum universale 13, quoted in Casagrande and Vecchio, I Peccati della lingua (n. 8 above), 303 n. 24, my translation. The definition in the first sentence — est contentio impugnatio veritatis per confidenciam clamoris — stems from Ambrose's Glossa super Epistola ad Rom. 1:28 and was very popular during the Middle Ages thanks mainly to its presence in the Glossa ordinaria.

32 “Socrates disputes scientifically, and he does not dispute contentiously; therefore, he disputes and he does not dispute” (Sortes [sic] disputat scientifice, et non disputat contentiose; ergo disputat et non disputat), Ps-William of Ockham, “Elementarium logicae venerabili inceptori Guillelmo de Ockham adscriptus,” in Opera Philosophica VII: Opera dubia et spuria venerabili inceptori Guillelmo de Ockham adscripta, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert et al. (St. Bonaventure, NY, 1988), 294.

33 Jerome, St., Tractatus in librum Psalmorum. Series altera 91.74, in Obras completas. I. Obras homiléticas, trans. Celestino, M. Marcos (Madrid, 2012), 777Google Scholar; Letters 46.10, in Obras completas. Xa. Epistolario I (cartas 1–85**), trans. Juan Bautista Valero (Madrid, 2013), 380; Commentariorum in Epistulam ad Titum 3:9, in Obras completas. IX. Comentarios paulinos, trans. Manuel Antonio Marcos Casquero and Mónica Marcos Celestino (Madrid, 2010), 696.

34 JGOC 9: 191; 2: 35, 36–37, and 41. In De quatuor virtutibus cardinalibus (JGOC 9: 149), Gerson opposes contentio to tranquillitas, but in other instances relates it to envy (JGOC 3: 320), to curiositas (JGOC 5: 54) and to arrogance (JGOC 5: 337); cf. Leon Battista Alberti's Pictura, in Intercenales, ed. Franco Bacchelli and Luca D'Ascia (Bologna, 2003), 172–74. See also, JGOC 3: 38–39 and DCOO 12: 91n–92b (Enarratio in cap. 14 Lucae, art. 37).

35 On the risks of contentio for the schism of the Church, clearly influenced also by canon law, see William of Ockham, De Papa haeretico 4.28 (quoting Romans 2:8–9); 5.15 (quoting Luke 22:25–26); 6.3; 6.79, which contains Ockham's own list of the sins of the tongue; 7.11; and 7.25 (ed. John Kilcullen et al., trans. Allesandro Salerno [Milan, 2015], 364, 488–89, 634, 1100, 1408, and 1522); Petrarch, Liber sine nomine 13.1 (ed. Paul Piur and Laura Casarsa, trans, Casarsa [Turin, 2010], 116); Leonardo Bruni, Letters: Gregory XII to Peter de Luna, Called by Some, in This Pernicious Schism, Benedict XIII, in Hope of Peace and Union, 11 December 1406 (The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni, trans. Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins, and David Thompson [Binghamton, NY, 1987], 324); Jean Gerson, Letters 49 (JGOC 2: 233), In Marc. 1:7 (JGOC 3: 105), Contra curiositatem studentium (JGOC 3: 239), De theologia mystica (JGOC 3: 277–278); Trilogus in materia schismatis (JGOC 6: 75, 79, 95); Propositio facta coram Anglicis (JGOC 6: 135), Sermo habitus Tarascone coram Benedicto XIII (JGOC 5: 83–84), Contra errores Johannis Parvi (JGOC 5: 192), etc.; Denis the Carthusian, Dominica V post Trinitatem, Ad religiosos, Sermo 4, De unanimitate, pace et fraterna bono concordia (Opera omnia. Sermones de Tempore (Pars secunda), ed. Monachi Sacri Ordinis Cartusiensis [Monstrolius, 1905], 241); Leonardo Bruni, Historiarum Florentini populi libri 12.3.20 (ITRL 3: 254–57); Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini's Commentaries 1.16.4, 1.15.2, 1.33.1, etc. (ITRL 12: 72–73, 122–25, 162–63, etc.); Ficino, Marsilio, Commentarium in Epistolas D. Pauli, quoting Deut. 31:27 (ed. Conti, Daniele [Turin, 2018], 84–85)Google Scholar; Erasmus, Annotationes in Lucam 3:27 (ASD 6.5: 506): “Et Paulus non vno in loco monet piis hominibus huiusmodi genealogias et nunquam finiendas quaestiones esse vitandas, quod non solum nihil conducant ad pietatem, verumetiam pariant lites et contentiones, pestem christianae concordiae”; and Agrippa, Cornelius, Apologia adversus calumnias, §§ 2, 5, and 35 (Cologne, 1533)Google Scholar, sigs. c7r, d1r, and h7r.

36 On Aquinas's position, see also his remarks in Summa Theologiae I-II q. 28 a. 4 arg. 1: “‘Sed contentio repugnat amori;’ Super Rom. II, lect. 2: ‘Et quantum ad culpam tanguntur tria, quorum primum est contentionis pertinacia. Quae quidem, primo, potest intelligi hominis ad Deum, beneficiis ad se vocantem, contra quem homo contendere videtur divinis beneficiis resistendo.’ Deut. XXXI, 27: ‘Adhuc vivente me et ingrediente vobiscum, semper contentiose egistis contra dominum.’ Secundo potest intelligi de contentione hominis contra fidem. II Tim. II, 14: ‘noli verbis contendere.’ Tertio potest intelligi de contentione hominum ad invicem, quae contrariatur charitati, quae est mater virtutum. Iac. III, 16: ‘Ubi zelus et contentio, ibi inconstantia et omne opus pravum.’ Secundo ponitur duritia eorum, scilicet, qui non acquiescunt veritati. Quod potest, uno modo, intelligi de veritate fidei. Io. VIII, 45: ‘si veritatem dico, quare non creditis mihi?’” Liber contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem, part 4, chap. 3, ad. 1; and Super II Cor., chap. 12, l. 6.

37 Gilbert, Neal W., “The Early Italian Humanists and Disputatio,” in Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. Molho, Anthony and Tedeschi, John A. (Dekalb, IL, 1971), 203–26Google Scholar.

38 For the appearances of the opposition in classical literature, see Gavoille, Laurent, “Contentio et les noms latins de la polémique dans l’épistolaire,” in Conflits et polémiques dans l’épistolaire, ed. Gavoille, Élisabeth and Guillaumont, François (Tours, 2015), 33–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It was introduced in Christian morals in early times thanks to Ambrose's De officiis 1.22.99–100. Remer, Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration (n. 25 above), 26–41, pointed out the role played by this coupling in the foundation of the idea of tolerance during the Renaissance that could serve as a complementary approach to mine. It should be stressed, nonetheless, that I am not interested in the impact of classical rhetoric on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century literature or philosophy in these pages.

39 Petrarch, Invective contra medicum 2.86–87 (ITRL 11: 68–71); Familiarium rerum libri 1.7, in Familiarium rerum libri [I–V]. Le familiari [libri I–V], ed. Vittorio Rossi and Ugo Dotti, trans. Dotti and Felicita Audisio (Turin, 2004), 100–109; De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia 93–94, 106 (ITRL 11: 302–5, 314–15); Contra eum qui maledixit Italie 70–71 and 94 (ITRL 11: 426–29 and 450–51); Res seniles 10.2.122, in Res seniles, Libri IX–XII, ed. and trans. Silvia Rizzo and Monica Berté (Florence, 2014), 176–77; etc. This comparison was not limited to Italian humanists in the fifteenth century, as can be attested, for instance, in Jean Gerson's Contra curiositatem studentium (JGOC 3: 242–43). In the late fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century, the identification of contentio with (scholastic) dialectic was still a commonplace; see for instance Codro, Antonio Urceo, Sermones (I–IV), ed. and trans. Chines, Loredana and Severi, Andrea (Rome, 2013), 60 and 96Google Scholar; Pace, Richard, De fructu qui ex doctrina percipitur, ed. and trans. Manley, Frank and Sylvester, Richard S. (New York, 1967), 82–85Google Scholar, and Agrippa's, Cornelius De vanitate scientiarum. VII. De dialectica (Cologne, 1531), sig. d1vGoogle Scholar.

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45 See now Deneire, Tom, “School Colloquia,” in Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World: Micropaedia, ed. Ford, Philip et al. (Leiden, 2014), 1174–75Google Scholar. However, it should be considered that the teaching of Greek during the Quattrocento was partly based on questions or erotemata, as Chrysoloras entitled his grammar –– abridged by Guarino of Verona and still known in the sixteenth century first thanks to the Aldine press, which took as a reference Ludovico Pontico Virunio's edition, then by Giunta in Florence, Gilles de Gourmont in Paris, and Arnald Guillén de Brocar in Alcalá — and also by the exercises of translation of Lucian.

46 See Robinson, Christopher, Lucian and His Influence in Europe (London, 1979), 15–16Google Scholar: in this classic study on the fortune of Lucian in European letters, Robinson argued that some of his production can be seen as a counterpart of the dialogue in utramque partem, either in the Ciceronian or in the Platonic vein. Besides, there is a clear interest in fifteenth-century authors and translators in calling their readers to the fact that these texts were humorous recreations of all that was contemptible in a serious classicist disputation. Hence, the use of the term contentio in many titles was not only inherited from medieval poetry and letters — for instance the fabliaux, clear in Poggio's Facezie, ed. and trans. Marcello Ciccuto (Milan, 1994), 196, 334, and 366 — but also refers to a subversion of commonly accepted values in educated interaction as can be easily seen in the titles of fifteenth-century works; see Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum: 1: Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale, Fondo Principale (II), VC 39 fols. 278–81; 3: Dublin, Trinity College C 2.17 and Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Nouvelles acquisitions latines (I) 596 fols. 16v–55; 5: Basel, Universitätsbibliothek (III), F VI 35, fols. 126–35; Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, MS Codex 829; and Thomas More's Letter to Ruthall (The Complete Works of St. Thomas More. 3.I. Translations of Lucian, ed. Craig R. Thompson [New Haven, 1974], 4), who uses a synonym, digladiationes, to refer to Lucian's Necromancers. For the different terms employed to refer to verbal confrontations in the Latin of the humanists, see Ledo, “From Wit to Shit,” 106–7 and notes.

47 Vasoli, Cesare, La dialettica e la retorica dell'umanesimo (Milan, 1968), 28–32Google Scholar.

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49 For the influence of Valla's corpus in Agricola and their vision as complementary authors by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century printers and editors, see Vasoli, La dialettica e la retorica, 64–65, 76–77, 83–84 n. 7, 157, 205, 215–16, 233, 249–50, 261– 62, 283–87, 346–50, 472, and 624–34; Jardine, Lisa, “Inventing Rudolph Agricola: Cultural Transmission, Renaissance Dialectic, and the Emerging Humanities,” in The Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Grafton, A. and Blair, A. (Philadelphia, 1990), 56–60Google Scholar; Mack, Renaissance Argument; and Nauta, Lodi, “From Universals to Topics: The Realism of Rudolph Agricola, with an Edition of his Reply to a Critic,” Vivarium 50 (2012): 190–224CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the impact of the prefaces to the Elegantiae on Erasmus and his early Epitome of the work (his very first work), see Garin, Eugenio, “Erasmo e l'umanesimo italiano,” Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 33 (1971): 16–17Google Scholar; Tracy, James D., Erasmus: The Growth of a Mind (Geneva, 1972), 24–25, 109, and 152–53Google Scholar; C. L. Heesakkers's and Jan Hendrik Waszink's introduction to Erasmus's Epitome (ASD 1.4: 191–205); Chomarat, Jacques, Grammaire et Rhétorique chez Érasme (Paris, 1981), 1, 225–65Google Scholar; Schoeck, Richard J., Erasmus of Europe: The Making of a Humanist, 1467–1500 (Edinburgh, 1990), 99–100, 141, 154–59, and 211Google Scholar; Jardine, Lisa, Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print (Princeton, 1993), 65–67, 74, and 78Google Scholar; and Brown, Christopher Boyd, “Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg: The Ecclesiastes and the De doctrina Christiana,” Archiv für Reformations̠geschichte 104 (2013): 16–17Google Scholar.

50 Marsh, David, “Grammar, Method, and Polemic in Lorenzo Valla's Elegantiae,” Rinascimento 19 (1979): 114–16Google Scholar, and Rico, Francisco, El sueño del humanismo (Barcelona, 2002), 19–23, 35–39, 61–63, and 113–14Google Scholar.

51 Ps-Hugh of St. Cher, Expositio super Apocalypsim,16; Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 158 a. 1 ad 2; II-II, q. 158 a. 2 ad 4; and Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard III, dist. 15, q. 2, a. 2, ad ob. 3. For the differences between medieval speculation on good and bad anger and the discussion of the humanists of the Quattrocento, rooted in political philosophy, see Baron, Hans, “The Florentine Revival of the Philosophy of the Active Political Life,” in In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism (Princeton, 1988), 147–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Coluccio Salutati, De laboribus Herculis, 3.8.11, 188. The opposition between ira and iracundia is reflected in Patrizi, De regno et regis institutione libri IX (Paris, 1567), sigs. x5r–y1v. See also St. Augustine, Enarr. in Psalm. 87.7; Poliziano, , Una ignota Expositio Suetoni del Poliziano, ed. Fera, Vincenzo (Messina, 1983), 161Google Scholar; Beroaldo, , Commentationes conditae a Philippo Beroaldo in Suetonium Tranquillum (Venice, 1510), fol. 220vGoogle Scholar; and Beroaldo, , Commentarii Questionum Tusculanarum (Venice, 1499), fol. 47vGoogle Scholar.

52 Persius and, most fundamentally, Juvenal (Sat. 1–3.1–9) defended indignatio, which stems from anger, as one of the fundamental reasons to write their satires, in contrast to Horace's approach to the genre. As such, the commonplace was repeated by medieval and Renaissance editors of both Roman satirists; see Dorothy Robathan et al., “Persius,” CTC 3: 222b, 230a, 238b, 250b, 252a–b, 268b, 274b, 289a, and 303a; E. M. Sanford, “Juvenalis,” CTC 1: 182a, 183b, 185b, 187a, 189b, 194a, 196b, 198b, 206a, 208b, 224a, and 229b; and F. Edward Kranz and Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Juvenalis: Addenda et corrigenda,” CTC 3: 1976: 434a, 435a–b, 436b, and 444b. However, satirical indignatio seeks to write a reprimand (reprehensio) of mores rather than a restitution (restitutio) of justice or truth and “always seems … to be rooted in the highly contingent and personalized historical moment.” Rosen, Ralph M., Making Mockery (Oxford and New York, 2007), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This indignatio took deep root in Renaissance letters thanks partly to Petrarch, Liber sine nomine (n. 35 above), 6, 20, 26, 30, 38, 46, 66–68, 88, 124–26, and 186, where it is transformed into an intellectual stimulus and a therapy for the soul, to produce a vindication that serves as a private defense for him, his friends, and his patrons against slander and injustice. On the other hand, Valla's approach to indignatio, it seems to me, can be seen as an expansion of this idea of anger as an illness of the soul (ITRL 60: 188–89 and 294–95) and writing as a means to alleviate it, on the one hand, but, on the other, always keeping in mind that it is closer to forensic indignatio, that is, a rhetorical device that reinforces the virtue of a speaker — that is, what Aristotle calls pistis dia tou ēthous, Rh. 1387b5–15, 1408a16–25; see also Cic., De or. 2.51.205–9; Quint, Inst. 6.2. 26–27 — who aims to denounce injustice publicly.

53 Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 38 a. 1. co: “Si autem contentio dicatur impugnatio falsitatis cum debito modo acrimoniae, sic contentio est laudabilis”; Super II Tim., chap. 2, l. 2; Super Tit., chap. 3, l. 2; and Super Sent., IV, dist. 38, q. 2, a. 4, qc. 3. Cf. Albert the Great, Summa Theologiae 2, tract. 20, quaest. 127. De contentione, mem. 1–3, in Opera omnia 33, Summae Theologiae. Secunda Pars (Quaest. LXVIII–CXLI), ed. S. C. A. Borgnet (Paris, 1895), col. 419a–421b. Among the sins of the tongue (De peccatis quae in verbis consistunt), Albert considers only lying (mendacium), talkativeness (multiloquium), contentio, and abusive words (maledictum).

54 Casagrande and Vecchio, I peccati della lingua (n. 8 above), 298–99.

55 Casagrande and Vecchio provide the following as examples of the idea of a praiseworthy contentio: Umbertus de Romanis's De eruditione praedicatorum (ca. 1270–77); Astesano da Asti's Summa de casibus (1317); Rainerius de Pisis's Pantheologia (ante 1351), which has been called “one of the longest books ever written in the Middle Ages” and which saw five printed editions already in the fifteenth century, with its princeps in 1473; see Rhodes, Dennis E., “Notes on the Bibliography of Rainerius de Pisis,” British Library Journal 22 (1996): 238–41Google Scholar; and Antoninus of Florence's Summula confessionis (ante 1459, princeps 1473), which was equally popular both in Latin and in the vernacular. See also Denis the Carthusian, Dominica V post Trinitatem, Ad religiosos, Sermo 4, De unanimitate, pace et fraterna in bono concordia (DCOO 30: 243–44), and cf. by the same, De fide orthodoxa III, 84 (DCOO 18: 409). The same applies to di Vio's, Tommaso Docta, resoluta, ac compendiosa de peccatis Summula (Lyon, 1528)Google Scholar, fol. 49v–50r and 213v, cf. 162v and 170r. On the other hand, Erasmus's opposition to bona contentio is clear from the Enchiridion — Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Annemarie Holborn and Hajo Holborn (Munich, 1933), 131–36; CWE 66: 123–26 — to the Ecclesiastes — ASD 5.4: 398; CWE 67: 643. Ulrich von Hutten, who had a wonderful ear for these technicalities, uses it in the Epistulae obscurorum virorum 2.43, ed. and trans. Saladin, Jean-Christophe, Lettres des hommes obscurs (Paris, 2004), 547Google Scholar.

56 See John Monfasani's quite clear statement on this regard: “Italian Renaissance humanists were a contentious lot. They quarreled among themselves. They assailed politicians, philosophers, and clerics. They even turned on the ancients. Valla attacked Aristotle; George of Trebizond, Plato. Antonio da Rho did not spare a Church Father in his Dialogus in Lactantium.” Monfasani, John, “Episodes of Anti-Quintilianism in the Italian Renaissance: Quarrels on the Orator as Vir Bonus and Rhetoric as the Scientia Bene Dicendi,” Rhetorica 10 (1992): 119CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the fortune of some of these polemics in the fifteenth-century printing press, see Bianca, Concetta, “Contentiosae disputationes agli esordi della stampa,” in Forms of Conflict and Rivalries in Renaissance Europe, ed. Lines, David A. et al. (Göttingen, 2015), 29–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Further examples and analyses of the different character of these diatribes in Mattioli, Emilio, Luciano e l'umanesimo (Naples, 1980), 122–39Google Scholar; Allen, Michael J. B., “The Second Ficino-Pico Controversy: Parmenidean Poetry, Eristic and the One,” in Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone: Studi e documenti, ed. Carfagnini, Gian Carlo (Florence, 1986), 417–55Google Scholar; Godman, Peter, From Poliziano to Machiavelli (Princeton, 1998), 26–30, 39–51, 54–56, 76–77, 82–100, 253–60Google Scholar, etc.; Rao, Ennio I., Curmudgeons in High Dudgeon (Messina, 2007)Google Scholar; Helmrath, Johannes, “Streitkultur: Die ‘Invektive’ bei den italienischen Humanisten,” in Die Kunst des Streitens, ed. Laureys, Marc and Simons, Roswitha (Göttingen, 2010), 259–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The Art of Arguing in the World of Renaissance Humanism, ed. Laureys, Marc and Simons, Roswitha (Leuven, 2015)Google Scholar; and Rizzi, Andrea, “Violent Language in Early Fifteenth-Century Italy: The Emotions of Invectives,” in Violence and Emotions in Early Modern Europe, ed. Broomhall, Susan and Finn, Sarah (Abingdon, 2016), 145–58Google Scholar.

57 See, for instance, the epistles by Giovanni Conversano (Coluccio Salutati, Epistole 12.1, 309) and Pier Paolo Vergerio (Epistolario [n. 22 above], 262) to Coluccio Salutati, to Niccolò Niccoli by Poggio Bracciolini (Lettere. I. Lettere a Niccolò Niccoli, ed. Helene Harth [Florence, 1984], 173–76), by Maffeo Vegio to Lorenzo Valla (ITRL 60: 114–15), or to Francesco Tranchedino by Francesco Patrizi da Siena (Le lettere di Francesco Patrizi, ed. Paola de Capua [Messina, 2014], B.60, 355).

58 “Verum enimvero quo magis superiora tempora infelicia fuere, quibus homo nemo inventus est eruditus, eo plus his nostris gratulandum est, in quibus, si paulo amplius adnitamur, confido propediem linguam romanam vere plus quam urbem, et cum ea disciplinas omnes, iri restitutum” and “Camillus nobis, Camillus imitandus est, qui signa, ut inquit Virgilius, in patriam referat eamque restituat; cuius virtus adeo ceteris praestantior fuit, ut illi qui vel in Capitolio, vel Ardeae, vel Veiis erant, sine hoc salvi esse non possent. Quod hoc quoque tempore continget, et ceteri scriptores, ab eo qui de lingua latina aliquid composuerit, non parum adiuvabuntur. Equidem, quod ad me attinet, hunc imitabor, hoc mihi proponam exemplum; comparabo, quantulaecumque vires meae fuerint, exercitum, quem in hostes quam primum educam; ibo in aciem, ibo primus, ut vobis animum faciam.” Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, ed. Eugenio Garin (Milan, 1952), 598, 600. There is a knowledgeable summary of Valla's “anti-classicism” regarding Latin language and history writing in Cataudella, Michele “L’Antidotum in Facium di Lorenzo Valla,” in Valla e Napoli: Il dibattito filologico in età umanistica, ed. Santoro, Marco (Pisa, 2007), 53–60Google Scholar.

59 Not only his enemies, but also Valla's friends wrote letters to advise him to refrain from his customary contentiousness. See Blanchard, W. Scott, “The Negative Dialectic of Lorenzo Valla: A Study in the Pathology of Opposition,” Renaissance Studies 14 (2000): 149–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Some time after Valla's trial by the Inquisition in Naples in 1444, fellow humanists, such as Francesco Filelfo, recommended, without polemic overtones, that he remain silent with regard to the Church, to the Pope, and, in general, to religious matters in the Satyrarum Hecatostichon 2.4 (Satyrae. I (Decadi I–V), ed. Silvia Fiaschi [Rome, 2005], 95–98); see the remarks by Blanchard, W. Scott in “Patrician Sages and the Humanist Cynic,” Renaissance Quarterly 60 (2007): 1136–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 “Calumniatus sum magistros tuos: suscipe tu illorum patrocinium cum tua laude et gloria, presertim parato tot hominum favore atque assensu…. Certe ex tanto numero aliquis existere debet qui contra me rescribere audeat, non omnes contra unum pariter illatrare. Sin nemo audet rescribere, iam te mihi imparem confiteris, idest malam te causam habere teque improbum calumniatorem esse, non me, te invidum, te superbum, te malignum ac stolidum, qui tue tibi conscius infirmitatis non manus vis mecum conserere sed verba, nec pugnare more hominum sed canum ritu servire.” Correspondence 13.6 (ITRL 60: 78–79); my emphasis appears in italics.

61 “I ask you, was there ever anyone among the Romans so good and so upright as Cato? And yet there was not a single evil citizen that he ever failed to prosecute. As a result, Cato was charged no less than eighty times by wicked citizens — a record surpassed by no one — and yet this made him no slower to launch prosecutions. On the contrary, his accusations gained new vigor each time he left the courtroom victorious, as always, acquitted of every charge. And since none of these men who accuse me has yet proven his case, I shall take comfort in my good fortune alongside Cato and the wise men of history. Nor will I desert my principles, for I know that this will earn me more glory than disgrace, and bring me more joy than grief.” Correspondence 13.6 (ITRL 60: 77).

62 “Redeo nunc ad alteram partem, quod mihi semper aliquem deligo ad reprehendendum. De qua re nuper ad amicissimum mihi Serram scripsi apologetica epistola longa sane et uberi. Qui autem hic responsum a me spectant, sic habeant et consuesse me et consueturum posthac magis ut stilum ita opiniones veterum sequi tam Grecorum quam Latinorum et more illorum libere loqui.” De professione religiosorum 1.14–15, ed. Cortesi, Mariarosa (Padua, 1986), 10Google Scholar; the emphasis appears in italics and the translation is my own.

63 “Quod si prudenter ut dixit sic fecisse existimatus est, qui inquit, ‘nolo scribere in eos qui possunt proscribere,’ quanto mihi magis idem faciendum esse videatur in eum, qui ne proscriptioni quidem relinquat locum? … Nisi forte putamus patientius hec esse laturum summum pontificem quam ceteri facerent. Nihil minus, siquidem Paulo, quod bona se conscientia conversatum esse diceret, Ananias, princeps sacerdotum, coram tribuno, qui iudex sedebat, iussit os verberari, et Phasur eadem preditus dignitate, Ieremiam ob loquendi libertatem coniecit in carcerem…. Verum non est causa, cur me duplex hic periculi terror conturbet arceatque a proposito. Nam neque contra ius fasque summo pontifici licet aut ligare quempiam aut solvere, et in defendenda veritate atque iustitia profundere animam summe virtutis, summe laudis, summi premii est…. Facessat igitur trepidatio, procul abeant metus, timores excidant. Forti animo, magna fiducia, bona spe, defendenda est causa veritatis, causa iustitie, causa Dei! Neque enim is verus est habendus orator, qui bene scit dicere, nisi et dicere audeat…. An non Paulus, cuius verbis modo sum usus, in os Petrum coram ecclesia reprehendit, ‘quia reprehensibilis erat,’ et hoc ad nostram doctrinam scriptum reliquit? At non sum Paulus, qui Petrum possim reprehendere: immo Paulus sum, qui Paulum imitor, quemadmodum, quod multo plus est, unus cum Deo spiritus efficior, cum studiose mandatis illius optempero.” De donatione Constantini 1–2 (ITRL 24: 2–5). My emphasis appears in italics.

64 “I would not dare to say that others, instructed by me, should prune with steel the papal seat, the vineyard of Christ, which is teeming with undergrowth, and force it to bear plump grapes instead of emaciated berries. When I do this, will there not be someone who would wish to stop my mouth or his own ears, to say nothing of calling down punishment and death?” (Non ausim dicere, ut alii per me edocti luxuriantem nimiis sarmentis papalem sedem, que Christi vinea est, ferro coerceant, et plenas uvas, non graciles labruscas ferre compellant. Quod cum facio, nunquis erit, qui aut mihi os aut sibi aures velit occludere, ne dicam supplicium mortemque proponere? De donatione Constantini 3 (ITRL 24: 6–7).

65 “Those who think that this person spoke the truth and defend him make themselves his allies, complicit in his foolishness and insanity [cuius stultitie atque vesanie affines se ac socios faciunt]. Yet they now have nothing with which they can decently excuse their opinion, not to say defend it. Is there anything decent about excusing an error when you refuse to accept a manifest truth just because some great men thought otherwise? They were great, I say, in rank, not in wisdom or virtue [magni, inquam, dignitate, non sapientia nec virtute]. How can you tell whether those whom you follow would have persevered in their view, rather than abandoned it, if they had heard what you have heard? Furthermore, it is highly inappropriate to want to give more credit to a man than to the truth — that is, to God. For some who have been overcome by all arguments are apt to answer me: ‘Why have so many supreme pontiffs believed that this was true?’ You are my witnesses that you urge me where I would not go, and you force me unvillingly to speak ill of supreme pontiffs over whose mistakes I would rather draw a veil [et invitum me maledicere summis pontificibus cogitis, quos magis in delictis suis operire vellem].” De donatione Constantini 71 (ITRL 24: 116–19). On the origins in Valla's thought of the corruption of the proto-apostolic era, see Camporeale, Salvatore I., “Lorenzo Valla's Oratio on the Pseudo-Donation of Constantine: Dissent and Innovation in Early Renaissance Humanism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 57 (1996): 17–19 and 24Google Scholar. For precedents in the context of humanist culture, see Black, Robert, “The Donation of Constantine: A New Source for the Concept of the Renaissance,” in Languages and Images of Renaissance Italy, ed. Brown, Alison (Oxford, 1995), 63–70Google Scholar.

66 The indictment was not a novelty. In 1433, Nicholas of Cusa denounced the falsity of the document in his De concordantia Catholica 2.2–3. Valla's awareness of the work by his predecessor has been proved by Setz, Wolfram, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift gegen die konstantinische Schenkung, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione: Zur Interpretation und Wirkungsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1975), 28–29Google Scholar; Fubini, Ricardo, “Contestazione quattrocentesche dalla Donazione de Costantino: Niccolò Cusano, Lorenzo Valla,” in Costantino il Grande dall'Antichità all'Umanesimo, ed. Fusco, Franca and Bonamente, Giorgio (Macerata, 1993), 403–16Google Scholar; and Fubini, , “Humanism and Truth: Valla Writes against the Donation of Constantine,” Journal of the History of Ideas 57 (1996): 79–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Although the political interests of Alfonso of Aragon as a motivation for the De donatione Constantini to be written should not be discarded, there is an important move made by Valla that is not usually stressed and that is directly related to the state of affairs in the councils of Pisa (1408–9), Constance (1414–18), Basel-Ferrara-Florence (1431–49), and to the way that the idea of the Church as universitas fidelium was presented there: Gill, Joseph, “The Representation of the Universitas fidelium in the Councils of the Conciliar Period,” in Councils and Assemblies: Papers Read at the Eighth Summer Meeting and Ninth Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. Cuming, G. J. and Baker, Derek (Cambridge, 1971), 177–95Google Scholar, and Black, Antony, “Popes and Councils,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, VII, c. 1415–c. 1500, ed. Allmand, Christopher (Cambridge, 1998), 65–86Google Scholar. Valla's expansion of the concept, which Marsilius of Padua and Jean Gerson presented before him, goes beyond prelates thanks to the new philological method developed in the context of Quattrocento humanism, and will prove fundamental in his development of parrhesia linked to Christiana veritas as detailed below. For Marsilius of Padua and Gerson's ideas on the subject, see Battaglia, F., Marsilio da Padova e la filosofia politica del Medio Evo (Firenze, 1928), 85–91Google Scholar, and Koch, Bettina, “Marsilius of Padua on Church and State,” in A Companion to Marsilius of Padua, ed. Moreno-Riaño, Gerson and Nederman, Cary J. (Leiden, 2012), 145–48Google Scholar.

68 Compare, once more, with the Letter to Serra 23 (ITRL 60: 96–97).

69 “Orationem quandam Plinii non dico eloquentem sed admirabili eloquentia haberi aiunt; eam si tu vidisti, velim per litteras me certiorem facias. Est enim de laudibus Nerve apud ipsum Nervam; de qua ipse Plinius meminit in prima epistola, ubi ait se imitatum esse Calvum quasi Latinum Demosthenem: tam et si miror quod ‘prope tota sit in contentione dicendi,’ ut ille testatur, si in laudibus tota versatur. Eam si penes te habes ad meque mittes, mittam ego tibi vicissim orationem meam, que et ipsa prope tota in contentione versatur, De falso credita et ementita donatione Constantini.” Correspondence 21.2 (ITRL 60: 138–41).

70 Camporeale, Salvatore I., Christianity, Latinity, and Culture: Two Studies on Lorenzo Valla, with Lorenzo Valla's Encomium of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Baker, Patrick and Celenza, Christopher S., trans. Baker (Leiden, 2014), 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. de Caprio, Vincenzo, “Retorica e ideologia nella Declamatio di Lorenzo Valla sulla Donazione di Costantino,” Paragone 29.338 (1978), 36–56Google Scholar, and Celenza, , “Lorenzo Valla, ‘Paganism,’ and Orthodoxy,” Modern Language Notes 119 (2004): S77–S78Google Scholar.

71 “Write back and let me know if you have seen my speech On the Donation of Constantine: despite its length, it is the purest piece of oratory I have ever written. If you have not seen it, you will receive it from me (Orationem meam De donatione Constantini, qua nihil magis oratorium scripsi, sane longam, rescribe an videris, habiturus a me eam, nisi vidisti).” Correspondence 23 (ITRL 60: 156–57).

72 Regoliosi, Mariangela, “Tradizione e redazioni nel De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione de Lorenzo Valla,” in Studi in memoria di Paola Medioli Masotti, ed. Magnani, Franca (Naples, 1995), 43Google Scholar, and Monfasani, John, “Disputationes Vallianae,” in Penser entre les lignes: Philologie et philosophie au Quattrocento, ed. Zini, Fosca Mariani (Lille, 2001), 237–39Google Scholar, have convincingly shown that the following excerpt from the letter to Tortelli refers to De donatione and not to De professione religiosorum: “In the meantime, 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” (Interim mitto ad te opusculum, quod proxime composui, rem canonici iuris et theologie, sed contra omnes canonistas atque omnes theologos). Correspondence 12 (ITRL 60: 70–71). Camporeale gave an equally unsatisfactory explanation of the letter to Tortelli and to Aurispa in the review of his monograph on De donatione. Camporeale, Salvatore I., “Lorenzo Valla's Oratio on the Pseudo-Donation of Constantine: Dissent and Innovation in Early Renaissance Humanism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 57 (1996): 26Google Scholar.

73 Camporeale (Christianity, Latinity, 27), states: “Therefore, Valla's Oration must be understood within the coordinates vis verborum/vis rerum of this kind of inductive, rhetorical analysis. Only on the basis of this kind of interpretation can we understand the full meaning of what Valla wrote to Giovanni Aurispa.” In a subsequent essay on the Ecomium of St. Thomas (Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” in Christianity, Latinity, 272–73) he links this magis oratorium both to Valla's appreciation of St. Jerome and to Quintilian's use of the term “to describe the application of philological and historical analysis to a literary or diplomatic text, e.g., the ps-Donation of Constantine.”

74 Valla, Repastinatio. 2, Proem. 6 (ITRL 50: 4–5): “And just as we dress one way to go out in public, another way when doing something at home, one costume for the magistrate, another for the private person — the reason being that one must respect the public gaze — so also the dialectician, whose speech is domestic and private [cuius domesticus et privatus est sermo], will not try for that elegance and grandeur of expression sought by the orator, who must speak before the whole community [orator, cui apud universam civitatem dicendum et multum publicis auribus dandum est] and whose public audience is much to reckon with, requiring much skill besides in matters of great import and needing that most difficult science of managing emotions, as well as experience in all sorts of business, knowledge of every people, and every record of events and — above all — living with integrity, with a certain exceptional dignity of mind and excellence of body and voice, the reason being that the orator is like the public's guide and leader [et — ante omnia — sanctitas vitae, ac eximia quaedam animi dignitas et corporis vocisque praestantia, siquidem orator est velut rector ac dux populi].” On the passage, see Monfasani, John, “Lorenzo Valla and Rudolf Agricola,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 28 (1990): 184–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 For the scarcity of rhetorical discussions on parrhesia inherited from classical antiquity and for complementary gnomic and historical sources, see Ahl, Frederick, “The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome,” American Journal of Philology 105 (1984): 185–208Google Scholar; Spina, Luigi, Il cittadino alla tribuna (Naples, 1986), 96–99 and 100–103Google Scholar; and Colclough, David, Freedom of Speech in Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 2005), 25–37Google Scholar.

76 “But in this first speech of mine I do not wish to encourage rulers and peoples to restrain the Pope as he surges ahead in his unbridled course and to force him to stay within his own borders, but only to counsel him, when perhaps he has already recognized the truth, to move back voluntarily from a house that is not his own into the one where he belongs and into a haven from irrational tides and cruel storms. But if he should refuse, then we shall gird ourselves for a second, much more aggressive speech” (Verum ego in hac prima nostra oratione nolo exhortari principes ac populos, ut papam effrenato cursu volitantem inhibeant eumque intra suos fines consistere compellant, sed tantum admoneant, qui forsitan iam edoctus veritatem sua sponte ab aliena domo in suam et ab insanis fluctibus sevisque tempestatibus in portum se recipiet. Sin recuset, tunc ad alteram orationem multo truculentiorem accingemur). De donatione Constantini 97 (ITRL 24: 158–59).

77 “Instead they [the ancient theologians] devoted themselves wholly to imitating the apostle Paul, by far the prince of all theologians and the master of theologizing. His manner of speaking, his power, his majesty were such that what fell flat when spoken by others, even the apostles, he uttered loftily; what in the mouths of others stood its ground, rushed from his into battle; and what from others shone dimly, from him seemed to flash and burn, so that it is not off the mark for him to be represented holding in his hand a sword, i.e., the word of God. This is the true and, so to speak, the genuine mode of theologizing. This is the true law of speaking and writing, and those who pursue it doubtless pursue the very best manner of speaking and theologizing. Therefore the ancients, the true disciples of Paul, should not be criticized by modern theologians or placed second to our Thomas on account of not having mixed theology with philosophy” (qui non sunt hunc in modum theologati sed se totos ad imitandum Paulum apostolum contulerunt, omnium theologorum longe principem ac theologandi magistrum. Cuius is est dicendi modus, ea vis, ea maiestas ut quae sententiae apud alios etiam apostolos iacent eae sint apud hunc erectae, quae apud alios stant apud hunc proelientur, quae apud alios vix fulgent apud hunc fulgurare et ardere videantur, ut non ab re gladium, quod est verbum Dei, manu tenens figuretur. Hic est verus et, ut dicitur, germanus theologandi modus, haec vera dicendi et scribendi lex, quam qui sectantur ii profecto optimum dicendi genus theologandique sectantur. Quare non est ut illis veteribus, vere Pauli discipulis, hoc nomine, quod ab his philosophia theologiae non admisceatur, aut detrahant novi theologi aut noster Thomas sit praeponendus). Valla, Encomion Sancti Thomae Aquinatis 20, in Camporeale, Christianity, Latinity, and Culture, trans. P. Baker, 310–11.

78 It should be mentioned, once more, the importance of sodalitates for the recovery and development of this idea, as is eloquently expressed some thirty years after Valla by Paulo Antonio Soderini in his oration addressed to the Senate of Venice, read in the Platonic Academia of Florence in December 1473 and collected in the Declamationum liber by Benedetto Colucci da Pistoia (NCTUIR 2: 28, lines 25–29, line 6). There is an English translation of the relevant passages in Edelheit, Amos, Ficino, Pico and Savonarola: The Evolution of Humanist Theology 1461/1462–1498 (Leiden, 2008), 135–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 “The point is not that Pythagoras called himself a ‘philosopher’ but that he and they were right to call themselves ‘philosophers.’ It was not a man they followed but truth and excellence, which was their immediate aim wherever they found it, without regard to anyone's authority. Consequently, no one after Pythagoras was called a ‘sage,’ and philosophers have always had the freedom to say straightforwardly what they think, not only against leaders of other groups but also against their own [Itaque et nemo post Pythagoram appellatus est sophus, et libertas semper philosophis fuit fortiter dicendi quae sentirent, nec solum contra principes aliarum sectarum sed etiam contra principem suae], which is even truer of those not committed to a group.” Valla, Dialectical Disputations, 1. Proem 3 (ITRL 49: 2–5). Monfasani's appreciation of the problem seems, therefore, more than just: “The sophisms of De professione, the quirkiness of De Eucharistia, the inconsistencies in his treatment of the Trinity in the Dialectica and hypocrisy of his several defenses of the De vero bono all suggest someone who had a serious purpose when swimming in theological waters, but not primarily a theological one. His aims, depending on which work is at issue, were rather primarily cultural, social, philosophical, or even political. Valla was, if I may end with an oxymoron, a seriously flippant theologian.” Monfasani, John, “The Theology of Lorenzo Valla,” in Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Stone, M. W. F. and Kraye, J. (London, 2000), 13Google Scholar. See also Nauta, In Defense of Common Sense (n. 48 above), 270–72. My approach differs from Camporeale's division between civic and Christian freedom as the framework of Valla's Oratio.

80 In view of the passage already cited from Valla's Encomion Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, his last work, it must be stated that Valla is quite clear about the separation of philosophy and theology, at least from the preface of his De libero arbitrio; in Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, 524–25.

81 “For 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. In addition there is the most recent charge: I am censured for harassing not only the dead but the living as well, and for this some men have even threatened me…. Nor would I write to you about this, nor make supplication of anyone, but remain content in a clear conscience, fortunate in my discoveries, nourished by the noble freedom of saying what I think [contentus animi conscientia inventionibusque felix ac generosa quod sentiam dicendi libertate me pascens].” Correspondence 25 (ITRL 60: 163–64). Cf. Zappala, Michael O., Lucian of Samosata in the Two Hesperias (Potomac, MD, 1990), 3, 98, and 170Google Scholar and Marsh, David, Lucian and the Latins (Ann Arbor, MI, 1998), 6–7Google Scholar, both of whom comment on this passage.

82 See, e.g., Leon Battista Alberti's Momus, Proem. 6 (ITRL 8: 6–7). Good overviews on the use, production, and consumption of Lucianic dialogues during the fifteenth century are presented in Lauvergnat-Gagnière, Christiane, Lucien de Samosate et le lucianisme en France au XVIe siècle (Geneva, 1988), 25–57Google Scholar, and Geri, Lorenzo, A colloquio con Luciano di Samosata (Rome, 2011), 31–117Google Scholar.

83 This form of parrhesia or licentia is discussed and attacked many times during the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, mainly through Hor. Sat. 1.4, 1–5 and Quint. Inst. 10.1.65 and 94. See, for instance, Petrarch, De remediis utriusque fortune, ed. and trans. Carraud, Christophe (Paris, 2002), 1.69, 326–27Google Scholar; Poggio's letter to Antonio Beccadelli (ITRL 42: 130–39); Tortelli's, G. Orthographia (Venice, 1493), sig. i1vGoogle Scholar; and Poliziano, , Commento inedito alle Satire di Persio, ed. Martinelli, Lucia Cesarini and Ricciardi, Roberto (Florence, 1985), 9–13Google Scholar. Patrizi, Francesco (De institutione reipublicae libri novem [Paris, 1569], 2.5, 49Google Scholar; De regno et regis institutione libri IX [Paris, 1567], 2. Proem. and 2.9, 45 and 89–90) stresses the dangers of its use with princes; and Rudolf Agricola (De inventione dialectica libri tres 3.4 and 3.9, ed. and trans. Lothar Mundt [Tübingen, 1992], 462 and 500) and Erasmus (ASD 4.3: 68; CWE 27: 84; and my note to Moria de Erasmo Roterodamo [Leiden, 2014], 58 n. 1–4) advise of its limits. See the latter's letter to More in the Encomium Moriae: “Now for the charge of biting sarcasm. My answer is that the intelligent have always enjoyed freedom to exercise their wit on the common life of man, and with impunity, provided that they kept their liberty within reasonable limits” (Iam vero vt de mordacitatis cauillatione respondeam, semper haec ingeniis libertas permissa fuit, vt in communem hominum vitam salibus luderent impune, modo ne licentia exiret in rabiem).

84 For the concepts of isonomia and isegoria as conditions for parrhesia, see Scarpat, Giuseppe, Parrhesia greca, parrhesia cristiana (Brescia, 2001)Google Scholar. Further discussion on the value and the connotations of the three concepts appears in Momigliano, Arnaldo and Humphreys, Sally C., “The Social Structure of the Ancient City,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa: Classe di Letteratura e Filosofia, ser. 3, 4.2 (1974): 338–49Google Scholar; Spina, Luigi, Il cittadino alla tribuna (Naples, 1986), 61–95Google Scholar; Raaflaub, Kurt A., “Stick and Glue: The Function of Tyranny in Fifth-Century Athenian Democracy,” in Popular Tyranny: Sovereignity and Its Discontents in Ancient Greece, ed. Morgan, Kathryn A. (Austin, TX, 2003), 62–65Google Scholar; and Raaflaub, , “Aristocracy and Freedom of Speech in the Greco-Roman World,” in Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, ed. Sluiter, Ineke and Rosen, Ralph Mark (Leiden, 2004), 41–62Google Scholar. Although it is arguable that early texts such as Bruni's Oratio in funere Iohannis Strozze (§§19–23) or Filelfo's third book of De exilio include hints at classical parrhesia, in truth, the use or commentary of the Greek term is very scarce during the Quattrocento and limited mainly to its rhetorical connotation. See, for instance Angelo Poliziano's Enarratio in Sapphus Epistolam 21. Lusibus (Commento inedito all'epistola ovidiana di Saffo a Faone, ed. Elisabetta Lazzeri [Florence, 1971], 33) or Marco Musuro's introduction to Aristophanes (ITRL 70: 276–77).

85 Setz, Wolfram, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift gegen die konstantinische Schenkung (Tübingen, 1975), 151–76Google Scholar; Camporeale, Christianity, Latinity, 131–32; Antonazzi, Giovanni, Lorenzo Valla e la polemica sulla donazione di Costantino (Rome, 1985), 161–64 and 189–90Google Scholar; and now Whitford, David M., “The Papal Antichrist: Martin Luther and the Underappreciated Influence of Lorenzo Valla,” Renaissance Quarterly 61 (2008): 26–52Google Scholar. For the role of the disputatio in utramque partem as enacted by the young Valla in the “sensibility” of Luther, see Hösle, The Philosophical Dialogue (n. 1 above), 388–89. For Luther's admiration for Valla, see Trinkaus, Charles, “The Problem of Free Will in the Renaissance and the Reformation,” Journal of the History of Ideas 10 (1949): 51–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fois, Mario, Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla nel quadro storico-culturale del suo ambiente (Rome, 1969), 192 and 637Google Scholar; and Regoliosi, Mariangela, “Lorenzo Valla e l'Europa,” in L'humanisme italien de la Renaissance et l'Europe, ed. Picquet, Théa et al. (Aix-en-Provence, 2010), 87–89Google Scholar. There are fresh approaches to Luther as a parrhesiastes based on very different premises to the ones I defend here in Traninger, Anita, “Libertas philosophandi,” in Neue Diskurse der Gelehrtenkultur in der frühen Neuzeit: Ein Handbuch, ed. Jaumann, Herbert and Stiening, Gideon (Berlin, 2016), 282–87Google Scholar, and Springer, Carl P. E., Cicero in Heaven: The Roman Rhetor and Luther's Reformation (Leiden, 2016), 89–100Google Scholar.

86 The first is Georgio Valla's De expetendis ac fugiendis rebus opus (princeps 1501), the second Gregor Reisch's Margarita Philosophica (princeps 1503), of enormous success, as it saw more than ten editions in the first decade of the sixteenth century; the third is Petrus Crinitus's De honesta disciplina (princeps 1504); and the fifth is Symphorien Champier's De triplici disciplina (1508). Although Maffei's approach to encyclopedism is nurtured by a vast amount of sentences taken from classical and medieval sources, it should not be confused with a polyanthea such as Ravisius Textor's Officina — supposedly printed for the first time in Basel in 1503, although no copies are extant today — or Nanus Mirabellius's (1507). As is evident, I leave aside from this list the encyclopedias written or published before 1500 with the exception of Valla.

87 That same year Maffei abandoned the Roman Curia. For an account of his life and his literary production, see D'Amico, John F., Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of Reformation (Baltimore, 1983)Google Scholar. A still useful but quite succinct presentation of Maffei's Commentaries can be found in Dionisotti, Carlo, Gli umanisti e il volgare fra Quattro e Cinquecento, ed. Fera, Vincenzo and Romano, Giovanni (Milan, 2003), 35–47Google Scholar.

88 Grafton, Anthony, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship. 1. Textual Criticism and Exegesis (Oxford, 1983), 43Google Scholar.

89 In 1511, 1515, and 1526 in Paris by Badius Ascensius and Jean Petit; in 1529 in Turin by Baudius, Bremius, and Ferrarius (András, Emődi, A nagyváradi római katolikus egyházmegyei könyvtár régi állománya: Altbücherbestand der Bibliothek der Diözese in Großwadein. I. Ősnyomtatványok. XVI. századi nyomtatványok. Régi magyar könyvtár. Katalógus [Budapest, 2005], Ant. 55, 28); in 1530, 1544 and 1559Google Scholar in the Frobens’ press in Basel; in 1552 in Lyon by Sebastian Gryphius; in 1565 by Lucius in Heidelberg; and in 1599 in Lyon. I use for my commentary the princeps, Commentariorum urbanorum Raphaelis Volaterrani octo et triginta libri, printed in Rome by Johannes Besicken in 1506.

90 “Prudentia igitur prius actingenda [sic], quae unica cum aeque intellectu ac voluntate consistat, sub ea doctrina continetur, utranque vero coniunctam Graeci sophiam, nos sapientiam dicimus, in qua monstratore prius est opus. Scribit enim Aelianus De var. histor. quod prisca fuit consuetudo ut viri magni iuxta se magistros alumnosque haberent. Sic Ulysses Alcynoum, Achilles Chironem, Patroclus Achillem, Agamemnon Nestorem, Telemachus Menelaum, Hector Polydamanta, Hiero Syracusanus Simonidem Chium, Polycrates Anacreontem, Proxenus Xenophontem, Antigonus Zenonem, Alexander Aristotelem.” De honesto [1.] Ac primum de prudentia et doctrina quod magistri in ea necessarii, fol. 404r.

91 De honesto [2.] Qui aptiores ad doctrinam, et quid aut quomodo discendum, fols. 404v–405r.

92 De honesto [3.] Quod doctrinam cum prudentia ac iustitia coniungere opus: “Cleanthes dicebat homines absque disciplina et literis tantum forma distare a feris. Plato scientiam ait citra iustitia ceterisque virtutibus calliditatem pocius quam sapientiam. Zeno dicebat quod in disciplinis quidam erant philologi, quidam logophili, id est, amatores pocius verborum quam scientiae, item nonnullos esse philosomatos, id est, corporis amatores pocius quam philosophos, sive etiam philotimos, aut philocrematos, id est amatores honores ac pecuniae.” fol. 405r.

93 De honesto [4.] Quod doctrina omnis ad philosophiam ac theologiam referenda, fol. 405r–v.

94 De honesto [5.] Quod docti semper in praetio fuere and 6. Quod unus quandoque in populo sapientia praeditus, plus ceteris videat, fols. 405v–406r.

95 De honesto [6.] Apophthegmata septem sapientum ex Demetrio Phalereo, fol. 406r–407v.

96 De honesto [7.] De noscendo seipsum, fol. 408r–v.

97 De honesto [8.] De impudentia loquendi, ac primum de parasitis, fol. 408v; [9.] De nobilibus parasitis et adsentatoribus, ex Athenaeo, fol. 408v; and [10.] Dicta contra parasitos et adsentatores, fol. 409r.

98 De honesto [11.] De veritate: “Tres sunt causae ob quas promissis non stamus. Aut enim animo fallendi dicimus, vel postea nos penitet, seu certe volenti praestare quod promisit, deest facultas. Prima est malae voluntatis, secunda infirmi iudicii, tertia inopiae facultatis. Hec omnia minime deo conveniunt, qui ob bonitatem non decipit, ob stabilitatem non retractat, ob potentiam imperfectum non relinquit…. Veritas apud deos hominesque bonorum omnium potissima est, cuius imprimis [sic, sc. in primis] eum participem esse oportet qui futurus est felix. Infidelis autem est cui mendacium voluntarium existit amicum, cui autem involuntarium, stultus; utrumque igitur fugiendum, cum uterque tam infidus quam imprudens non sit amandus.” fol. 409r–v. See also the last chapter of De honesto [15.] De stultitia, fol. 411r–v; and compare Valla's criticisms on the historical process of corruption of the Church above at n. 66.

99 Arist., Eth. Nic. 4.7 1127a13–1127b30; Plut., De laude ipsius, Mor. 539b–547f.

100 De honesto [12.] De ironia et iactantia officiosa: “Iactantiae quoque plura traduntur exempla. Plutarchus, qui super hoc pulcherrimum edidit tractatum, ait: ‘ob delendam calumniam nos ipsos non inepte laudare possumus, ut accidit Pericli invidiam sustinenti.’ Sic enim in concione: ‘mihi viri Athenienses subcensetis tali viro, qui in his quae necessaria sunt reipub. obeundis aut summa experientia ac fide providendis nemini me cessurum profiteor.’ Et apud Romanos Scipio accusatus, hodie inquit, ‘P. C. Annibalem vici, Carthaginem tributariuam feci, hanc patriam maximo periculo liberavi, eamus hinc in Capitolium, et gratias di[i]s immortalibus agamus.’ At quam fatue et inepte Cicero saepius extra propositum liberatam a se patriam a Catilinae coniuratione iactat? Legimus item apud Virgilium: ‘Sum pius Aeneas, fama super aethera notus.’” fol. 409v.

101 De honesto [11.] De loquendi libertate: “Loquendi etiam libertas, quam Graeci παρρησίαμ vocant, ad veritatem pertinere videtur. Est enim philosophorum et perfectorum hominum, sicuti Diogenes ad Alexandrum, et ex nostris Nathan ad David, Helias ad Achab, Heliseus ad Ioram palam criminibus variis obnoxios reprehenderunt. Sunt tamen qui illam impudenter exerceant, ut Thersites homericus, et Drances virgilianus, ut Demochares, Demosthenis nepos…. Hanc igitur ob causam, magis quam ob ebrietatem, Alexander Clitum interfecit, quod audientibus multis eum vituperasset. Aristomenes quoque Ptolemai praeceptor, quod eum dormientem praesentibus legatis excitasset, ab eodem necatus est…. Deinde ne irati moneamus, ut magis ex libidine nostra impelli quam ex amici charitate videamur.” Fols. 409v–410r.

102 The problem is also appraised by Francesco Patrizi da Siena in De regno et regis institutione libri IX 2.11. Dicteria, prudentie condita sale principibus honesta, 87–88. Maffei adds to Socrates the examples of Samuel and David: “apud nostros quoque Samuel ad immolandum domino venisse se ait, cum potiorem causam aliam haberet, et hoc facere nihilominus decrevisset. David quoque Saulis servuum sibi insidiantem dicebat, cum Saul potius ei insidiaretur, I. Reg. XVIII. Praeterea Abraami de coniuge, et aliorum multa huiuscemodi.”

103 “Plato ait civitatem Atheniensium omnes Graeci existimant esse, ut philologam, id est, variae doctrinae, ita et polylogam, id est, multarum legum, magis quam polylogam. Laconicum igitur genus, pro brevi capiunt, ut Philippus Macedo cum peteret ab eis, an eum in urbem recipere vellent, rescripserunt tantum literis maiusculis ‘NON,’ author Plutarchus Περὶ ἀδολεσχίας. Ubi etiam [De garrulitate 21, Mor. 513a–b] tris ponit responsionum modos: unum necessarium, ut interrogatus, ‘est ne intus Socrates?’ dicat tantum, ‘est.’ Secundum ad iucunditatem, quando dicit: ‘Intus est, nunc fere ingressus.’ Tertium ad nugationem, ut quando plura alia adduntur non interrogata, neque ad rem pertinentia. Ex quo dicit: ‘plus fastidii adferre virum bonum alioquin inepte et intempestive loquentem, quam pravum et indoctum, tempestive.’ Sed iam nostros adeamus. Ambrosius, De officis: ‘silendi patientia, opportunitas loquendi et contentus [sic, sc. contemptus] divitiarum, maxima sunt virtutum fundamenta.’ Isidorus: ‘si cupis tuas augere virtutes, prodere noli, nec loquaris nisi interrogatus, nec prius quam audias.’ Denique David in toto psalmorum libro, nihil pocius [sic] quam linguae innocentiam ac silentium petit, aut extollit. Brevitate sermonis inter Romanos maxime….” De honesto [12.] De taciturnitate, fol. 411r.

104 Beroaldo, F., Apuleius cum commento Beroaldi et figuris noviter additis, ed. Calcagnini, Celio (Venice, 1516), fol. 157vGoogle Scholar; Orationes, Praelectiones, Praefationes, et quaedam Mythicae Historiae Philippi Beroaldi: Item plusculae Angeli Politiani, Hermolai Barbari, atque una Iasonis Maini Oratio; quibus addenda sunt varia eiusdem Philippi Beroaldi opuscula: ut de terrae motu et alia addi solita: cum epigrammatis et eorum commentariis (Paris, 1515), fols. 56v–57vGoogle Scholar.

105 “Diogenes cuidam philosopho, qui contentiosus aliquid disserebat: ‘Miser,’ inquit, ‘quod optimum in vita philosophi ac praecipuum verbis philosophando corrumpis.’ Aegypti Harpocratem mutorum deum celebrabant, Romani vero Angeronam deam cum digito ad os adalligato in ara Volupiae colebant, quod videlicet silentium magnam in posterum voluptatem praestaret.” De honesto [12.] De taciturnitate, fol. 410v.

106 “Loquendi etiam libertas, quam greci παρρησίαμ vocant, ad veritatem pertinere videtur. Est enim philosophorum et perfectorum hominum, sicuti Diogenes ad Alexandrum, et ex nostris Nathan ad David, Helias ad Achab, Heliseus ad Ioram palam criminibus variis obnoxios reprehenderunt…. Quapropter Socrates dicebat, ut scribit Stobeus, ‘Sicuti nec gladium obtusum ad incidendum, ita nec loquendi libertatem sine effectu aut utilitate esse oportere, ut non odio magis quam iudicio contendere videamur,’ eamque ex disciplina non tradi, sed ex natura. Aristonymus dicebat: ‘sicuti mel gustu quidem dulce ulcera mordet ac sanat, sic sermo philosophicus.’ Eusebius: ‘Fiducia,’ inquit, ‘loquendi a libero animo veritatemque amante procedit, hoc praestabis si non cuicunque nec semper putabis convicium aut obiurgationem facere, sed pro tempore personis et modis.’ … Diogenes recte apud Platonem: ‘Quid,’ inquit, ‘utilitatis philosophus adfert, si neminem in dicendo mordet? Melle igitur utatur oportet apud exulceratus et medicina egentes homines’ [Stobaeus, 3.13.68, Plut., De disc. adulatore ab amico 17, Mor. 59d]. Plutarchus insuper in libro de vero amico et adulatore [36, Mor. 74c] multa praeclare ad hoc propositum disserit ex quibus nos pauca in medium adducemus: ‘Diogenes,’ inquit, ‘dicere solebat quod aut benevolentissimos amicos, aut infestissimos inimicos habere oportet; alteri enim monent, altero vero redarguunt.’ … Sed haec veritas multas habet cautiones. Primum ne praeterita reprehendamus quae corrigi nequeunt, quum sit opus potius inimicorum. Deinde ut modestiae gratia nosipsos simul in eadem culpa connumeremus…. Non enim amici, sed sophistae officium est ut a praesentibus laudetur, alienis erroribus exornari, veluti chirurgi faciunt, qui artificium coram multis ostentant…. Haec enim veritas inter amicos pars potissima …’ fols. 409v–410r. Following his custom, Agostino Nifo copies almost verbatim the second part of the passage in his De re aulica: La filosofia nella corte, ed. and trans. de Bellis, Ennio (Milan, 2010), 205–7Google Scholar.

107 Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum (Περὶ τοῦ ὅτι μάλιστα τοῖς ἡγεμόσι δεῖ τὸν φιλόσοφον διαλέγεσθαι, Mor. 776a–779c). It was a well-known opuscule of Plutarch during the Quattrocento, frequently cited by humanists and translated into Latin by Teodoro Gaza. See Bevegni, Claudio, “Teodoro Gaza traduttore del Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum di Plutarco: Primi appunti per un'edizione critica con particolare riguardo alla lettera dedicatoria ad Andrea Bussi,” in Mosaico: Studi in onore di Umberto Albini, ed. Feraboli, Simonetta (Genoa, 1993), 33–42Google Scholar. The most popular translation during the first half of the sixteenth century was that of Erasmus (ASD 4.2: 225–31), who published it under the title Cum principibus maxime philosophum debere disputare. Erasmus's rendering was published for the first time in 1513 at Badius Ascensius's press in Paris, and not in 1514 in Basel as was previously supposed. See Rummel, Erika, Erasmus as a Translator of the Classics (Toronto, 1985), 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See my discussion on this edition in Ledo, Jorge, “Erasmus's Translations of Plutarch's Moralia and the Ascensian princeps of ca. 1513,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 68 (2019), forthcomingCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

108 Erasmus had a copy of Maffei's Commentaries in his private library: Husner, F., “Die Bibliothek des Erasmus,” in Gedenkschrift zum 400. Todestage des Erasmus von Rotterdam, Historische und antiquarische Gesellschaft zu Basel (Basel, 1936), §284, 242Google Scholar; Vanautgaerden, A., “Item ein schöne Bibliothec mit eim Register: Un deuxième inventaire de la Bibliothèque d’Érasme (à propos du manuscrit C via 71 de la Bibliothèque Universitaire de Bâle),” in Les humanistes et leur bibliothèque: Actes du Colloque international, Bruxelles, 26–28 août 1999, ed. de Smet, Rudolf (Leuven, 2002), §284, 105Google Scholar. And so did Calcagnini: Gighnoli, Antonella, “Chartacea supellex”: L'inventario dei libri di Celio Calcagnini (Rome, 2016), §§697–99, 204Google Scholar.

109 Allen II, 304; CWE 3: 17–23.

110 CWE 3: 114–15, lines 93–101; Allen II, 337, 86–94.

111 CWE 3: 116–17, lines 162–66; Allen II, 337, 154–58.

112 In scholastic theology, there was no guilt when a sin was commited due to “invincible ignorance” (invincibilis ignorantia) — P. Abelard, Ethics, ed. and trans. D. E. Luscombe (Oxford, 1971), 62–66; Aquinas, Super Sent. II, dist. 22, q. 2, a. 2, c, and Summ. Theol. I–II q. 76 a. 3 ad 3. Because ignorance did not depend upon the will, but on (the lack of) knowledge. The idea became a commonplace. See, for example, Bonaventure, Opera omnia: Tomus II. Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi. Tomus II. In secundum librum Sententiarum, ed. PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura (Ad Claras Aquas, 1885), 514a–b, 521–27, and 724–26; Scotus, J. Duns, Opera Omnia, III [Lyon, 1639] (Hildesheim, 1968), 451bGoogle Scholar, and Opera omnia, VI. 2 [Lyon, 1639] (Hildesheim,1968), 1061a; de Rimini, Gregorio, Lectura super primum et secundum Sententiarum, VI. Super secundum (Dist. 24–44), ed. Damasus, A. Trapp and Venicio Marcolino (Berlin, 1980), 148–49Google Scholar; Ockham, William of, Opera philosophica et theologica, Opera theologica VIII, ed. Etzkorn, Girardus I., Kelley, Frank E., and Wey, Joseph C. (St. Bonaventure, NY, 1984), 354, cf. 365–66Google Scholar. For the nature of the debate on “invincible ignorance” among the Oxford Dominicans, see Gelber, Hester Goodenhough, It Could Have Been Otherwise: Contingency and Necessity in Dominican Theology at Oxford, 1300-1350 (Leiden, 2004), 267–307Google Scholar.

113 On the friendship between Erasmus and Calcagnini, which started with the visit of the former to Ferrara in 1508, see Aguzzi-Barbagli's, Danilo “Celio Calcagnini of Ferrara, 17 September 1479–24 April 1541” in Bietenholz, Peter G. and Deutscher, Thomas Brian, Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation. 1. A–E (Toronto, 1985), 242–43Google Scholar, and Schoeck, Richard J., Erasmus of Europe: The Prince of Humanists, 1501–1536 (Edinburgh, 1993), 68, 257, and 304Google Scholar. Some interesting notes on the impact on Erasmus of Ferrarese culture of the time are presented by Fiorenza, Giancarlo, Dosso Dossi: Paintings of Myth, Magic, and the Antique (University Park, PA, 2008), 65, 132, and 186 nn. 48 and 50Google Scholar.

114 For the dating of Calcagnini's Descriptio silentii (490–94) (so far as I know, printed for the first time only posthumously in 1544) see my forthcoming edition and translation into English of the work. Besides Calcagnini's use of his sources, the strongest argument for proposing such an earlier time of composition is the prefatory letter to the opuscule, directed to Tommaso Fusco and unnoticed by scholars until now. Tommaso Fusco died in 1514, and from 14 October 1506 was bishop of the archdiocese of Ferrara-Comaccio (jurisdiction of Comacchio). Considering Calcagnini's appointment to the chancery of Ippolito I d'Este in 1510 after three years as a chair of Greek and Latin at the University of Ferrara, and Fusco's death in 1514, it seems plausible that the Descriptio was composed not before 1506 and not much later than 1510. Calcagnini also dedicated a funebrial poem to Fusco, collected in his Apologi, in Caelii Calcagnini Ferrariensis, protonotarii apostolici, opera aliquot: Ad illustrissimum et excellentiss. principem D. Herculem secundum, ducem Ferrariæ quartum. Catalogum operum post præfationem inuenies, et in calce Elenchum. In dicanda enim erant retrusiora quædam ex utriusque linguae thesauris, quæ passim inferciuntur, et ad ueterum scripta intelligenda pernecessaria sunt (Basel, 1544), 633–34.

115 Calcagnini (490) states in his prefatory letter that the Descriptio was, in fact, a request made by Fusco: “You have imposed on me, most excellent Thomas, an excessive and utterly difficult task: to praise silence, something that can only be done by remaining silent. Hence, someone rather more cunning could strike back at me with my occurrence — I talk whilst I would heed the others that keep their mouths shut. I do expect, nonetheless, that both my obedience to you and your affection for me could easily dilute all calumny; for denying you something, most noble man, there shall be a sin. But, with perfect justice, I will emulate the Lacedaemonians talking on silence, and I would rather not be considered to be deviating from my intention, since silence and talking minimally are closest. Farewell, remember your Celio. (Rem arduam ac prorsus difficilem proposuisti mihi, Thoma uir maxime, laudandum scilicet silentium, quod nemo faxit qui sileat. Proinde quispiam paulo argutior possit me meo calculo replodere qui garriam dum caeteris tacendum consulam. Spero tamen meam in te obseruantiam, tuamque in me pietatem posse omnes calumnias facile diluere, tibi enim uiro undecunque absolutissimo quippiam negare, piaculum esto. Sed, iure optimo, de silentio uerba faciens Laconas aemulabor, ne uidear omnino a proposito diuertere, proximum enim est tacere ac loqui paucissima. Bene uale, tui Caelii memor)”; I use here my forthcoming edition and translation of the text.

116 I am referring to the classic studies on the topic by Ginzburg, Carlo, Il Nicodemismo: Simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell'Europa del 500 (Turin, 1970), 163–65Google Scholar and Biondi, Albano, “La giustificazione della simulazione nel Cinquecento,” in Eresia e riforma nell'Italia del Cinquecento: Miscellanea I (Florence, 1974), 61–65Google Scholar, which do not mention the Descriptio as a nicodemitic manifesto.

117 See the Nasi Romani in Martinum Luterium Apologeticus (ca. 1518–19) of Raffaele Maffei, extant only in manuscript form and critically edited by D'Ascia, Luca, “Martin Lutero e il ‘Genio Romano’: L’Apologeticus di Raffaele Maffei; Studio ed edizione,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 29 (1993): 128–29Google Scholar: “Et quamquam fides eloquiumque sacrum nec philosophia nec dialectica ad suam propriam requirit auctoritatem, attamen ut res melius ac luculentius in contradicendo videantur et ut debiliores credendo non erret aut adversariorum argumentis apparentibus non opprimantur, ita nostri per disputationem in utramque partem restitunt ut non pugnantia, ‘non contra naturam’ neu contra ius fasque sentientes ut illi opponunt nos christiani Petro sic iubente ‘precepto’ simus nostre fidej rationem reddere paratij. Talem itaque modum a maioribus neglectum Alexander de Ales in scholis fidelium introduxit longe postmodo locupletiorem Aquinas reddidit Hunc ergo simul cum ceteris refellere tu audes teque omnibus his et auctoritate et doctrina hoc modo preferre? Nam qui explodit se pociorem exploso reiectoque facit: Tu inquam Theologus Aquilonius frigus in corde patrium gerens litteram in hac parte non spiritum sapiens, lector non degustator: scholasticus ipse potius qui alios hoc nomine taxas appellari dignus Est enim scholastici proprium luxuriantis vigore ingenij ac de schola recentis: famae potius quam alicuius utilitatis, itemque exercitationis magis quam veritatis inquirendae studio multa supervacua iactare. Tyrones more qui veteranos imprudenter avidus gloriae provocat. Sive indomiti equi qui per avia dumosque erecta iuba fremens ac freni adhuc indocilis errat, seu vitulj ferocioris et iam pedibus spargentis arenam et cornu matrem petentis. Causam igitur videamus cur tantos ac tales non recipit Martinus Quod inquis que si nec per Canones neque per Concilia decreta sunt tibj dissentire liceat ac eatenus credere qua ingenio sensuique tuo quadrare videatur: Per me quoque tibj licebit si Augustino similis ‘esses’ idem de se quodam loco refenti fueris. Hoc iure suo ille quidem quod ante ipsum nihil sacris a doctoribus scriptum suis fortasse comparandum Eius primum commentari sententiaeque iurj canonico et universae theologiae fundamenta iecerunt. Huic tu te similem facis? Post eum secutos omnes derides? Doctoremque hoc modo Quintum illis priscis constituere videris?”