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A Layman's Life of St. Augustine in Late Medieval Italy: Patronage and Polemic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2016
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During the century before the Reformation, lay elites on the Italian peninsula composed a striking number of classicizing Latin texts about the saints. These narratives are little known, although some — for example, Leonardo Giustiniani's life of St. Nicholas, Francesco Diedo's vita of St. Roch, and Giovanni Calfurnio's passion of Simon of Trent — went into print early and have thus been more or less available for centuries. Others, such as Giovanni Carrara's life of Clare of Montefalco, have been recovered and edited only recently. Some remain unstudied, even unrecognized — among them Nicolaus Secundinus's translation of a Greek account of Gregory Nazianzus. Yet others depend on an uncertain manuscript tradition (such as George of Trebizond's passion of Andrew of Chios) or are lost entirely (e.g., Pier Candido Decembrio's life of Ambrose). I propose here that the authorial ambitions, the details of style and content, and the complications of context embodied in this minor literature make it very much worth knowing.
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References
1 The following abbreviations will be used:Google Scholar BHG = Bibliotheca hagiographica graeca antiquae et mediae aetatis , ed. Halkin, François, 3rd ed. (Brussels, 1957).Google Scholar BHL = Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis , ed. Bollandist Society, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1898–99; repr. Brussels, 1949 and 1992). Sup. ed. Fros, Henri (Brussels, 1986). Cf. BHLms = http://bhlms.fltr.ucl.ac.be/.Google Scholar CNCE = Ministro per i beni e le attività culturali (Rome), Censimento nazionale delle edizioni italiane del XVI secolo = http://edit16.iccu.sbn.it/web_iccu/ihome.htm.Google Scholar DBI = Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1960–) = http://www.treccani.it/Portale/ricerchesearchBiografie.html.Google Scholar DIP = Dizionario degli Istituti di Perfezione (Rome, 1974–97).Google Scholar ISTC = British Library, Incunabula Short Title Catalogue = http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/.Google Scholar Kristeller, , Iter = Kristeller, P. O., Iter Italicum: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries , 6 vols. (New York, 1963–92).Google Scholar LA = da Varazze, Iacopo, Legenda aurea , ed. Maggioni, Giovanni Paolo, 2nd ed. (Florence, 1998).Google Scholar Lind, , Letters = Lind, Levi R., The Letters of Giovanni Garzoni, Bolognese Humanist and Physician (1419–1505) (Atlanta, 1992).Google Scholar A version of this article was originally prepared for the 2008 Université de Nice seminar “Les Humanistes et l'Église: Pratiques culturelles et échanges entre les litterati laïcs et ecclésiastiques (Italie, début XIIIe–début XVIe siècle)” and will appear in the conference proceedings; I am grateful to organizers Cécile Caby and Rosa-Marie Dessi for allowing me to publish this longer version here. Other aspects were presented at the Medieval Academy of America (2008), the Center for Epigraphical and Paleographical Studies at Ohio University (2004), and the American Academy of Religion (2003). I thank the respective panel organizers — Mark Vessey, Frank Coulson, and Theodore Vial — for their comments.Google Scholar Work on this article was facilitated by a fellowship from the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar Corrections and suggestions by the anonymous reviewer for this journal, by Monfasani, John, and by Karl Gersbach, O.S.A., greatly improved this article. The errors that remain are my own.Google Scholar
2 Giustiniani's, Nicholas (BHL 6128) was first printed in the bilingual collection Poetae christiani veteres published by Aldus in 1501/4 [CNCE 36115]. Diedo's Rochus (BHL 7273) appeared in six incunable editions — on their importance see now Rigon, Antonio and Vauchez, André, eds., San Rocco: Genesi e prima expansione di un culto; Incontro di studio — Padova, 12–13 febbraio 2004 , Subsidia hagiographica 87 (Brussels, 2006). Calfurnio's account can be read in the forthcoming facing-page edition and translation of selected humanist texts on Simon of Trent, prepared by Bowd, Stephen and Cullington, Donald.Google Scholar
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22 Cf. ibid., 175 and n. 28, corrected here. Lind, , Letters (n. 1 above), x, dates Garzoni's return to ca. 1457; Hunt, “A Token” (n. 7 above), 145, to ca. 1458. Battista held a chair of rhetoric at the university already at the age of twenty-one: Woodward, W. H., Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (Cambridge, 1897), 159–60, and Chines, Loredana, La parola degli antichi: Umanesimo emiliano tra scuola e poesia (Rome, 1998), 90, date Guarino's appointment to ca. 1455–57; Grendler, Paul, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore, 2002), 217, citing Ugo Dallari, prefers 1456–58.Google Scholar
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30 I do not know of any study of lay authors' early exit from the production of saints' lives. Certainly there was no explicit ecclesiastical decree to exclude the laity. Their absence seems to date from the end of the period of martyrs and the emergence of the confessors, that is, from the fourth-century consolidation of ecclesiastical institutions. It thus preceded the emergence of literatus in its medieval meaning, as traced in the classic article by Grundmann, Herbert, “Literatus-Illiteratus: Der Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Altertum zum Mittelalter,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 26 (1936): 1–66. Indeed, to judge from Abbot Eugippius's rejection, in the late fourth/early fifth century, of a layman's offer to help with the vita of Severinus, the problem was that the laity might be too learned: Bieler, Ludwig, The Life of Saint Severinus (Washington, DC, 1965), 6. Cf. Hen, Yitzak, Culture and Religion in Medieval Gaul, a.d. 481–751 (Leiden 1995), 21–42; van Uytfanghe, Marc, “L'audience de l'hagiographie au VIème siècle en Gaule,” in Scribere sanctorum gesta , ed. Renard, Étienne et al. (Leiden, 2005), 155–77. Neither am I aware of studies of the relative weight of religious versus lay patrons or dedicatees for vitae sanctorum across the medieval period. Saints' lives that treat royalty were often written in court settings by religious about and for laypeople: for some examples, see Klaniczay, Gabor, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (London, 2002).Google Scholar
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47 On the reading: Lind, , Letters, no. 69 to Bandello (undated). Since Garzoni notes that the prior (monasterii princeps) acceded to the invitation, the reading cannot have happened in 1488–89, when Bandello himself was prior at San Domenico (Tavuzzi, , Renaissance Inquisitors, 250). Cf. Lind, , Letters, no. 196 to Leandro Alberti (undated), evidence of another mealtime reading of the vita Dominici. Google Scholar
48 Lind, , Letters , no. 69; similar phrasing in no. 344.Google Scholar
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51 Lind, , Letters , no. 344 to Paci (undated); Garzoni addresses Paci as princeps monasterii, i.e., prior, and therefore this letter has a terminus ante quem of 1496. For the dates of Paci's several appointments as prior at San Domenico, see below.Google Scholar
52 Lind, , Letters , no. 387 to Paci (undated); Garzoni addresses Paci as optimus antistes, an ambiguous phrase that might indicate either priest or prior. Garzoni describes the success of his Dominic: “Opus regium atque magnificum dum cibo potuique satisfaciunt fratres legitur. Quanta ex eo percipiatur voluptas nullis possum verbis consequi.” Google Scholar
53 Cf. Cicero, Phil. 2.17.42; quoted in Suet. Rhet. 5, “nihil sapere disceris.” Google Scholar
54 Lind, , Letters , no. 344: “Si hoc onus imposueris te unum omnes esse affirmabunt a quo monasterium quorundam errore prolapsum ad rectam vivendi formam traducatur.” Google Scholar
55 Elm, Kaspar, “Augustinus canonicus – Augustinus eremita: A Quattrocento cause célèbre,” in Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento , ed. Henderson, John and Verdon, Timothy (Syracuse, NY, 1990), 83–107, with extensive bibliography, including the foundational work of Arbesmann, R., O.S.A. Garzoni's naïveté in undertaking the Vita Augustini contrasts with the sensitivity of Erasmus, who as a canon and a devoté of print did appreciate the dangers. Although he had written an innovative vita of Jerome to introduce that father's Opera (see n. 18 above), Erasmus tried to find someone else to write a vita for the volumes of the Opera Augustini, settling his hopes on Gerardus Moringus: see Allen, P. S. and Allen, H. M., eds., Opus Epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami (Oxford, 1906–58), 7:396–97. In the end, Erasmus printed Possidius's account, placing it at the tail of the collection rather than the head. On his predictable choice of Possidius, see further below with n. 86. Moringus's life of Augustine was finally printed at Antwerp in 1533.Google Scholar
56 Warr, Cordelia, “Habits and History — The Dress of the Augustinian Hermits,” in Art and the Augustinian Order in Early Renaissance Italy , ed. Bordua, Louise and Dunlop, Anne (Aldershot, 2007), 17–28. The discussions of dress by Henry of Freimar and Jordan of Quedlinburg are especially important. On Jordan, see Saak, Eric L., High Way to Heaven: The Augustinian Platform between Reform and Reformation, 1292–1524 (Leiden, 2002), 234–334, with further references.Google Scholar
57 See “Canonici regolari,” in DIP 2:46–63, at 48. The Regular Canons claimed a vita apostolica, turning to St. Augustine as the charismatic historical figure on whom to anchor their claims, though they used a variety of rules (ibid., 54–59). In the premodern period, the order of Regular Canons, lacking standardized dress, was an easy target for Hermit sarcasm, e.g., from Olmi, Paolo in Apologia religionis fratrum eremitarum ordinis s. Augustini (Rome: Francesco de Cinquinis, 18 July 1479), sign. a5rb–vb (ISTC ip00162000).Google Scholar
58 On the papal organization of the various eremitical groups, see now Saak's, Eric L. reevaluation of the Great Union of 1256 under Alexander IV, “On the Origins of the O.E.S.A.: Some Notes on the ‘Sermones ad fratres suos in eremo,’” Augustiniana 57 (2007): 89–149.Google Scholar
59 Airaghi, Laura, “Gli ordini religiosi nel sec XV: L”osservanza' preludio alla riforma,” in Diocesi di Milano , ed. Caprioli, A. et al. (Varese, 1990), 1:351–74, at 367–69, distinguishes the originary group of Augustinian Hermits at San Marco from the Observant Augustinian Hermits of the Lombard Congregation at Santa Maria Incoronata. The latter group is at issue here. On Sforza patronage of the Observant Augustinian Hermits, see Perer, Maria Luisa Gatti, Umanesimo a Milano: L'Osservanza agostiniana all'Incoronata (Milan, 1980). The stakes at Milan were raised by the fact that Augustine's body at nearby Pavia was under the care of the Hermits, having been removed from the care of the Canons by John, XXII in 1327. The situation in fifteenth-century Pavia was complex, with Hermits and Regular Canons sharing San Pietro Ciel d'Oro, each having a prior, each responsible for different parts of the liturgical year, and “viventes simul et in societate iamdiu divina officia celebra[ntes].” The status quo required that partisan representations of Augustine be strictly confined to each group's assigned space; shared spaces were to have neutral depictions. See the important document of 1509, reflecting new claims by the Lateran Canons but alleging long precedent, in Maiocchi, Rodolfo and Casacca, Nazario, eds., Codex diplomaticus Ord. E.S. Augustini Papiae (Pavia, 1905–13), vol. 3, 1501–1566, at 45–52. Cf. ibid., doc. DCCXIV, at 58–59, and n. 1; doc. DCCXV, at 59–60, with n. 1; doc. DCCXX, 63–64; and doc. DCCLXVII, 102–3. Background in vol. 1, 1258–1400, docs. CV, CVI, CXV, and CXXIX. On developments in the seventeenth century, see Stone, Harold S., Augustine's Bones (Amherst, MA, 2002).Google Scholar
60 For the place of Paul and Antony, and more generally of Elias and John the Baptist, in the Augustinian Hermits' construction of identity, see Henry of Freimar and Jordan of Quedlinburg on dress (n. 56 above). In the second half of the fifteenth century, information about the Augustinian Hermits' early history was most easily accessible to all sorts of reading audiences in early printed editions of general histories such as the Chronicon compiled by the Dominican archbishop of Florence, Antonino Pierozzi (Chronicon III.24, 14 reproduces Jordan of Quedlinburg's Liber vitasfratrum 1.15); or Book 9 of the ostensibly neutral but in fact partisan Supplementum chronicorum by the Augustinian Hermit from Bergamo, Jacopo Filippo Foresti (see n. 76 below); and in the Sermones ad heremitas, which was regularly printed with concluding excerpts from Bede, Ado, and Pierozzi on Augustinian Hermit history (e.g., ISTC ia01316000).Google Scholar
61 On the statue, no longer extant, see n. 79 below. For artistic comparanda at Pavia, see Bordua, Louise, “Entombing the Founder St. Augustine of Hippo,” in Bordua, and Dunlop, , eds., Art and the Augustinian Order , 29–50.Google Scholar
62 See Appendix 2. Paola Farenga analyzes the drift of the quarrel in imprints to 1484 in “La controversia tra canonici regolari e agostiniani attraverso la stampa: Ambrogio, Domenico da Treviso, Paolo Olmi ed Eusebio Corrado,” in La carriera di un uomo di curia nella Roma del Quattrocento: Ambrogio Massari da Cori, agostiniano: cultura umanistica e committenza artistica , ed. Frova, Carla, Michetti, Raimondo, and Palombi, Domenico (Rome, 2008), 75–90. Fonseca, Cosimo Damiano, Medioevo canonicale (Milan, 1970), 37 dates the conclusion of the quarrel to 18 January 1564, identifying a lull during the years 1503–60. Both Farenga and Fonseca rely on imprints and papal pronouncements for their datings, but marginal notes in a range of imprints show that sniping continued even during the lull (e.g., San Marino, Huntington Library, incunable 100318 = ISTC ia01311000).Google Scholar
63 On the origins of printing at Milan by 1469, see Ganda, Arnaldo, I primordi della tipografia milanese: Antonio Zarotto da Parma, 1471–1507 (Florence, 1984). On the astute use of print, see Farenga, , “La controversia,” 82–83.Google Scholar
64 See n. 41 above. The most important reforming congregation of Regular Canons that appeared in the fifteenth century was the Lateran Canons, originally of Santa Maria di Fregionaia: see Widloecher, , La congregazione (n. 41 above), esp. 17–35, 53–72. At Bologna, Garzoni would have known them at San Vittore e San Giovanni. He would also have known the Regular Canons of San Salvator, founded in 1408, who moved to San Salvator at Bologna in 1418 and were joined to the Lateran Canons in the nineteenth century.Google Scholar
65 Elm, , “Augustinus,” 91, speaks of survival as an ongoing concern for the Hermits (and other post-1215 mendicant orders) from the thirteenth well into the fifteenth century. The Canons were not in an easy spot themselves. To appreciate the anxieties felt by both groups, it is helpful to consider the analogy of early modern family strategy, which aims at reproduction and socio-economic advance. Celibate organizations reproduce by attracting new members; they advance by winning new implantations, canonizations with their related liturgical privileges, and positions both bureaucratic and ceremonial. Evidently, young men who might enter orders were greatly affected by the human and textual exemplars offered, so that arguing the falsity of the rival order's historico-ethical claims made that order's reproduction and advance more difficult. Ceremonial advantages (e.g., forms of dress, favorable placement in a procession) might thus represent symbolic approval of order truth-claims, and by extension, of order life-models. The fact that premodern families tended to have long-standing order preferences complicates the analogy.Google Scholar
66 Widloecher, , Congregazione , 283, 288. Farenga, , “La controversia,” 78–79 with n. 17 addresses Padua, Biblioteca Universitaria, Sec. XV 1088/1, the sole extant copy of his Defensio canonicorum regularium contra heremitas (Milan: Christophorus Valdarfer, 1474–76); Farenga provides evidence for a date as early as 1473 or as late as 1479 (ISTC if00279860). The title does not include the author's name, but beneath it has been written “Domenici de Tarvisio” and the author identifies himself in his opening remarks as “ego Domenicus praedicator indignus qui beati patris Augustini habitum inter canonicos regulares ante annos xxi sumpsi.” The eight-part argument is set out in a pamphlet of nine leaves (a quarto with an added first leaf whose stub is visible inside the back cover of the libellus) in a semi-gothic font, with full-page layout, lacking titlepage and colophon. It is bound with a sixteenth-century bull in favor of the Franciscans in causa heremitica. The whole is in a parchment wrapper that bears a two-column late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century manuscript copy of pseudo-Augustine to pseudo-Cyril De magnificentia Hieronymi, i.e., one of the transitus Hieronymi pseudepigrapha (BHL 3867).Google Scholar
67 Walsh, Katherine, “Corradi, Eusebio,” DBI 29 (1983): 412–13; Farenga, , “La controversia,” 77–78. Especially important is a collection with the unassuming title of Augustine's Opuscula, published at Parma by Ugoleto, Angelo, 31 March 1491 (Farenga, “La controversia,” 86 n. 40; ISTC ia01220000). It proposes a text by Augustine for students of every age and thus, despite its folio size, is a schoolbook; I am grateful to Paul Needham for his observations on this designation. The collection, edited by Corradi with Severino Calchi, opens with Corradi's tendentious life of Augustine. See Farenga, , “La controversia,” 86, on another work by Corradi, , an attack on Paolo Olmi, in quarto, entitled Brevis annotatio in errores scribentium Augustinum fuisse eremitam (Rome: Schoemberger, 1483) (ISTC ic00847000). This work was frequently reprinted and bound into many partisan collections (e.g., ISTC ia01324000).Google Scholar
68 Widloecher, , Congregazione , 335–39. As Celso Maffei was prior at San Vittore e San Giovanni in Bologna during 1472–75 and 1488–89, it is not impossible that he had some role, direct or indirect, in Garzoni's composition of a vita Augustini. Cf. Celso's own Defensiones canonicorum regularium contra monachos published in quarto at Venice by Petrus de Quarengiis of Bergamo in 1497 (ISTC im00014000) and again there, probably by Torresanus, Andreas, 17 April 1499 (ISTC im00014500). His Apologia appeared at Brescia in 1502 (CNCE 57611, quarto) and his Congruentias atque differentias canonicorum regularium et secularium eorumque excellentias dignissimas at Venice in 1503 (CNCE 51151, quarto).Google Scholar
69 On Agostino, a correspondent of Matteo Bosso, see Farenga, , “La controversia,” 79 and n. 19. Frazier, , Possible Lives (n. 12 above), 345–47 notes a short life of Augustine in his Elucidarium (CNCE 23228), and, following Fonseca, , Medioevo canonicale, a Libellus contra fratres heremitas pro canonicis regularibus extant in a single, seventeenth-century manuscript of 129 folios, now Venice, Bib. Marciana, MS lat. 4, 72 (2216), originally from the library of the Lateran Canons of S. Giovanni in Viridario. Agostino's preface launches right into a defense of the Canons' attire, and some notion of its tone can be gathered from references to the Sermones ad Heremitas as rusticanos illos sermones containing deliramenta and mendacia (4v) and the preface's closing plea that statements about Augustine as a Hermit de breviariis abradantur omnino (5v). I have not been able to trace a De antiquitate et dignitate ordinis canonicorum regularium s. Augustini, supposedly published at Milan in 1503, but Novi's Propugnaculum Canonici ordinis was published at Florence in 1512 (CNCE 27889, quarto).Google Scholar
70 On Massari, see now Caby, Cécile, “Ambrogio Massari, percorso biografico e prassi culturali,” in Frova, , ed., La carriera , 23–68. On his contributions to the polemic, see Farenga, , “La controversia,” 84–86. In 1476, just as the polemic was breaking into print and the affair of the statue was in its early stages, Massari became the new prior general of the Hermits (1 June). He visited Bologna, where he was welcomed with an oration by the Carmelite Baptista Mantuanus, whose very popular hagiographic epics do not include Augustine or Monica.Google Scholar
71 Farenga, , “La controversia,” 80–85; Frazier, , Possible Lives, 450–51; Perer, Gatti, Umanesimo (n. 59 above), 73; Ossinger, J. F., Bibliotheca Augustiniana historica critica et chronologica (Ingolstadt, 1768), 522–24.Google Scholar
72 Frattini, Lucia Megli, “Foresti, Jacopo Filippo,” DBI 48 (1997): 801–3; Sist, , “Elena Valentinis” (n. 35 above), 121–40.Google Scholar
73 Farenga, , “La controversia,” quotes from a lively selection of passages.Google Scholar
74 Elm, , “Augustinus,” 86–87. In sheer quantity, publications on the Turk and on the plague — which certainly had religious aspects, if not the same bitter, internal hatred — trumped this quarrel.Google Scholar
75 Appendix 2 builds on the bibliography given by Elm, , “Augustinus,” nn. 1–2, and Saak, , High Way (n. 56 above).Google Scholar
76 Note as well that new editions may be significant reworkings. Foresti's world history, the Supplementum chronicarum (1483), began in a humanist vein, though the syntax slipped in successive editions towards the vernacular; an Italian translation, not by the author, appeared in 1491. Following five Latin incunable editions, Foresti expanded the Supplementum (1503) to include contemporaries. Thirteen further Cinquecento editions followed (1506–81), only the first preserving the author's Latin (CNCE).Google Scholar
77 Luther, of course, was an Augustinian Hermit (on Erasmus as a Canon, see n. 55 above). For notice of the Reformers' appreciation of the quarrel about Augustine, see Elm, , “Augustinus,” 86; Saak, , “On the Origins” (n. 58 above), 91–92, addresses Luther in particular.Google Scholar
78 Elm, , “Augustinus”; Farenga, , “La controversia,” 77–78. There is no extant copy or depiction of the controversial statue, but see Bentivoglio, Enzo and Valtieri, Simonetta, Santa Maria del Popolo a Roma (Rome, 1976), plate 9 (cf. plate 27) for a representation of Augustine acceptable to the Hermits, executed shortly after the Lombard Congregation was given the church in 1472 and the Canons were evicted. On Augustinian iconography more generally, see Schnaubelt, Joseph C. and Fleteren, Frederick Van, eds., Augustine in Iconography (New York, 1999); Gill, Meredith, Saint Augustine in the Renaissance (New York, 2005); and Bordua, and Dunlop, , eds., Art in the Augustinian Order (n. 56 above) — all three take up only the Augustinian Hermits. See the following note.Google Scholar
79 DIP 1:278; Elm, , “Augustinus,” 87. Before 1969, in other words, “Augustinian” might mean either Hermit or Canon (not to mention other orders also bound by Augustine's rule), an ambiguity not reflected in current scholarly discourse, which has neglected the Quattrocento Augustinian Canons. Cf. Irena Backus's complaint about the incoherence of the concept “Augustinianism,” in Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation (1378–1615) (Leiden, 2003), 6–62; Backus points out that scholars at that time had no consistent approach towards citing or identifying Augustine's own writings. The present essay makes an implicit case that the composition and dissemination of derivative and polemical vitae Augustini — outside the elite scholastic milieux considered by Backus — is also an aspect of early modern historical scholarship and hence of our own construction of Augustinianism.Google Scholar
80 Dates from Sist, , “Elena Valentinis,” 157 n. 350.Google Scholar
81 Lind, , Letters , no. 36 from Garzoni to his former student Vincenzo dei Barattieri, O.P., mentioning the Vita Augustini among other saints' lives, including a vita Gregorii that can be dated to 1478 (Frazier, Possible Lives, 204 n. 158).Google Scholar
82 Lind, , Letters , no. 249 from Garzoni to his former student, Leandro Alberti, O.P. Google Scholar
83 The minimum list of books that Garzoni might have been able to consult for this project must include his own library as described by Manfré, Guglielmo, “La biblioteca dell'umanista bolognese Giovanni Garzoni,” Accademie e biblioteche d'Italia 27 (1959): 249–78, and 28 (1960): 17–69, and the library of the Hermits, described by Guttierez, Davide, “De antiquis ordinis eremitarum sancti Augustini bibliothecis,” Analecta Augustiniana 23 (1953): 180–82. The early sixteenth-century inventory of San Giacomo recorded by Laurent, Marie-Hyacinthe, Fabio Vigili et les bibliothèques de Bologne au début du XVIe siècle d'après le MS Barg. Lat. 3185, Studi e testi 105 (Vatican City, 1953), 122–36, does not include any promising material.Google Scholar
84 For Garzoni's appreciation of the Confessions, see, e.g., Lind, , Letters , no. 116, at lines 74–81, where he draws on Augustine, among many others, to defend his own classicizing.Google Scholar
85 ISTC ia01251000. On the possibility that Johannes Bonus, O.E.S.A., was publishing out of the convent, see Perer, Gatti, Umanesimo (n. 59 above), 36. Three freestanding incunable editions of the Confessions were produced north of the Alps: ISTC ia01250000 (Strasbourg; three copies extant in Italy); ia01252000 (Cologne; one copy extant in Italy); and ia01252500 (Deventer; no copies extant in Italy).Google Scholar
86 For Corradi's attention to old manuscripts: Augustinus, , Sermones de vita clericorum (Padua: Matthaeus Cerdonis, 1484 = ISTC ia01324000), sign. 1r, where Corradi claims “non dum latinam legere, sed etiam langobardorum litteris scriptam videre et perlegere volui, ut emendaciorem haberem.” Canon Corradi then accuses Hermit Olmi of manipulating Possidius's account in the Hermits' interests. On “Lombard letters” see Rizzo, Silvia, Il lessico filologico degli umanisti (Rome, 1984), 122–26, giving references to earlier bibliography on “Beneventan.” Corradi's usage should be added to the witnesses recorded by Rizzo, .Google Scholar
87 Derived, that is, in the same way as Paci, with others present advising him (“secutus eorum sententias qui affuerunt”), had constructed a vernacular account of Helen of Udine from an unidentified Latin source and then assigned Garzoni to translate that vernacular account into humanist Latin: see Lind, , Letters , no. 457, reedited by Sist, , “Elena Valentinis,” 151–52, with discussion 157–60; Frazier, , “Les Augustins” (n. 37 above). Sist follows Lind in dating Garzoni's composition of the vita Helenae utinensis to 1497–17 April 1501, but neither scholar accounts for that dating. If, as I think, Garzoni's source-text was Jacopo Filippo Foresti's life of Helen from De claris mulieribus (published at Ferrara with a colophon date of 19 April 1497 = ISTC ij00204000), then the terminus post quem might be set at June 1497. It is unclear whether Garzoni's first assignment was the Augustinus or the Helena, though the author's small enthusiasm for Helena leads me to hypothesize that Augustine may have come first.Google Scholar
88 ISTC ic008810000, with Veneziani, Paolo, “Chi era Georgius Teutonicus?” in Editori ed edizioni a Roma nel Rinascimento , ed. Farenga, Paola (Rome, 2005), 127–46. Massari also addressses Augustine's life in the course of his Defensorium (ISTC ico0877000 with Veneziani “Chi era”); see Elm, , “Augustinus,” 86 and nn. 3–4; Farenga, , “La controversia.” On Massari, see Caby, , “Ambrogio Massari” (n. 70 above) and for observations about Massari's supposed humanism, ibid., 32; Pincelli, Maria Agata, “La biblioteca di Ambrogio da Cori,” in Frova, , La carriera (n. 62 above), 690–74; and O'Malley, John W., Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521 (Durham, NC, 1979), esp. 101–4.Google Scholar
89 Massari, , Vita Augustini, sign. a2r (preface); he goes on (sign. a2v) to adduce contemporary standards of canonization as a guide to Augustine's saintly virtue: “sagax solers diligensque ecclesia non tam miraculorum quam religiose vite in examinandis sanctorumque cathalogo inscribendis hominibus est indagatrix.” Google Scholar
90 Massari's truth claim: “ex vetustissimorum graviumque virorum auctoritate necnon ex eius egregio Confessionum volumine aliisque plerisque libris huius perhennis diveque memorie veritatem hauserim” (Vita Augustini, sign. a2v). Cf. LA, chap. CXX “De sancto Augustino” with Colledge, Edmund, “James of Voragine's ‘Legenda sancti Augustini’ and Its Sources,” Augustiniana 35 (1985): 281–314.Google Scholar
91 Saak, , High Way (n. 56 above), Appendix D, 774–810, discusses Jordanus's “intricate pastiche” (778), and edits Jordanus's, Vita Augustini from the autograph (Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, MS 251), as does Smetana, Cyril Lawrence, Life of Saint Augustine by John Capgrave (Toronto, 2001), 79–111.Google Scholar
92 Frazier, , Possible Lives (n. 12 above), 192–202, explores these three levels of revision in some of Garzoni's vitae sanctorum. Google Scholar
93 Neither pope can be right according to the accepted chronologies today. Retelling the life of Augustine in the 1491 Parma Opuscula Augustini, at sign. R1v, the Canon Eusebio Corradi ignored chronological systems but challenged Massari's birthdate of 377 by claiming 358 (354 is currently accepted).Google Scholar
94 Webb, Diana, “Eloquence and Education: A Humanist Approach to Hagiography,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31 (1980): 19–39.Google Scholar
95 Massari, , Vita , sign. a3r. Cf. the narrative order followed by the LA: the first observation after etymology and information on origin is notice that Augustine's artes liberales education made him an outstanding philosopher and rhetor, such that he could teach himself all of Aristotle. Similarly, Jordanus (no etymology) follows remarks on origin with notice that Augustine's parents, unknowingly guided by God, saw to his eduation in the studio literalis so that he surpassed his agemates and superiors.Google Scholar
96 Massari, , Vita , sign. a3r.Google Scholar
97 Leonardo Bruni's 1406–12 translation of the speeches of Demosthenes and Aeschines responded to pedagogical suggestions found in Cicero and Quintilian: see Botley, Paul, Latin Translation in the Renaissance (New York, 2004), 19, 23, and 170.Google Scholar
98 LA, chap. CXX, 842, sentence 28; also in Jordanus of Quedlinburg.Google Scholar
99 But note Garzoni's substantial deviation on the subject of Monica's famous dream: Appendix 1.3. See also n. 107 below.Google Scholar
100 Similar to the LA and Jordanus, both Massari and Garzoni report Ponticianus's name as “Pontianus.” Google Scholar
101 Cf. Jordanus in Saak, , High Way , 786–87.Google Scholar
102 Cf. ibid., 789.Google Scholar
103 Ibid., 789, gives a longer list of compositions and at 790 gives Augustine's age at baptism as thirty-two rather than — as Massari and Garzoni — thirty.Google Scholar
104 Appendix 1.16–17, with direct discourse. On this insertion into the Hermit identity of Simplicianus as hermit-teacher and Augustine as organizer of the Tuscan Hermits — not found in Possidius, Jordanus's, vita, or LA — see Arbesmann, Rudolph, “The Edition of the Vita S. Augustini in Boston Public Library MS 1483,” Revue des études augustiniennes 11 (1965): 43–54, at 45–50. See also the following note.Google Scholar
105 The special role given to Simplicianus is elaborated by Henry of Friemar from Augustine's Confessions; see also Arbesmann, R., “The vita Aurelii Augustini hipponensis episcopi in Cod. Laurent. Plut. 90 sup. 48,” Traditio 18 (1962): 319–55. The Laurenziana manuscript is one of two sixteenth-century manuscript compilations known to me in which texts by both Hermits and Canons have been carefully gathered. The hybrid nature of the codex does not enter into Arbesmann's analysis.Google Scholar
106 Saak, , High Way , 791–92.Google Scholar
107 Cf. Saak, , “On the Origins” (n. 58 above), giving earlier bibliography. Proof that the very word regula could be troublesome is found here in Garzoni's omission of it. He had responded similarly when retelling Monica's famous dream, dispensing entirely with the “wooden rule” (regula) that featured in the Confessions and medieval vitae of Augustine, and representing the dream as an Annunciation. Unless Garzoni was indulging in some aggressive philology (did he correct regula to tegula?), he evidently meant to avoid the incriminating word, which would be especially damaging to his chronological argument (on which see further below), since the mention occurs so early in the narrative of Augustine's life.Google Scholar
108 Franchi, , Defensio , in his first, historiographical argument, surveys the pronouncements of Innocent III, Alexander IV, and Gregory VII, to conclude: “Augustinus annis octingentis uel circa ante eremitarum ordinem fuerit nec illorum habitum detulit nec illis regulam suam scripsit sed canonicis suis qui sibi habitu conformes sub tanto patre vivere meruerunt” (fol. 1v, my foliation).Google Scholar
109 E.g., Franchi, , Defensio , quotes three of Augustine's sermons and the liturgical office, and represents Possidius speaking: “Lege vitam illius quam conscripsi et nusquam reperies illum eremita fuisse, sed semper cum clericis deo servientibus habitasse” (fol. 4r–v, my foliation). Franchi also summons a variety of other authorities to speak on the problem.Google Scholar
110 De cura animae is sermon no. 1175 in Machielsen, Johannes, Clavis Patristica Pseudepigraphorum Medii Aevi , vol. 1 (Turnhout, 1990); see PL 40:1328–32, Sermon no. 48. Jordan presented his manuscript collection, now Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, MS 251, to the Parisian Hermits. It was based on a collectio primitiva of twenty to thirty sermons, attributed variously to an anonymous twelfth-century Belgian, to a Flemish or French author not before the early eleventh century, and to bishop Godfrey of Bath (d. 1135). See de Kroon, M., “Pseudo-Augustin im Mittelalter: Entwurf eines Forschungsberichts,” Augustiniana 22 (1972): 511–30, esp. 526, on the importance of Jordan's collection. Also useful are articles by Saak, Eric L. and Vessey, Mark in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists , ed. Backus, Irena (orig. publ. Leiden, 1998; repr. Boston, 2001).Google Scholar
111 Appendix 1.24. ISTC records at least twenty-one incunable editions of Augustine's sermons, entitled variously Ad heremitas, or tellingly, De vita clericorum: see Appendix 2.Google Scholar
112 See n. 107 above.Google Scholar
113 Garzoni otherwise avoids the words clericus and canonicus; cf. LA, 849, sentence 128: monasterium clericorum. Google Scholar
114 See nn. 118–19 below on a lost dedication copy. Fassini, D. (Dionysius Sandellius, pseud.), De vita et scriptis Joannis Garzonis Bononiensis … (Brescia, 1781), at 20, no. 1, lists two printings of the vita, but I have been unable to trace these editions.Google Scholar
115 Poncelet, , “Catalogus” (n. 45 above), 326, no. 1 for Bologna, Bibliotheca Universitaria, MS 737, fols. 1–54v, which has autograph corrections. See also Manfré, G., “La biblioteca dell'umanista bolognese Giovanni Garzoni” (n. 83 above), 28 (1960): 33, and Frati, Lodovico, “Indice dei codici latini conservati nella R. Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna,” Studi italiani di filologia classica 16–17 (1908–9): 256, no. 429. Cf. Bologna, , Biblioteca universitaria MS 1622, iii, fols. 267r–280v, a sixteenth-century regularization of the autograph that introduces some small divergences.Google Scholar
116 Lind, , Letters (n. 1 above), 433–434, verse by Caro, Giovanni.Google Scholar
117 Horváth, Richárd, “Tamás Bakócz of Erdöd (ca. 1442, Erdöd—15 June 1521, Esztergom),” in Mathias Corvinus, the King: Tradition and Renewal in the Hungarian Royal Court, 1458–1490, Exhibition Catalog, Budapest History Museum (Budapest, 2008), 272–73. Housely, Norman, “Crusading as Social Revolt: The Hungarian Peasant Uprising of 1514,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 49 (1998): 1–28, argues that Bakócz's effort to direct a crusade derived from his failure to win the tiara. The resulting peasant revolt had unfortunate consequences for the cardinal's historical reputation. For the crusading context, see also Banfi, Florio, “Giovanni Garzoni ed il cardinale Tommaso Bakócz Primate d'Ungheria,” L'Archiginnasio: Bollettino della Biblioteca comunale di Bologna 31 (1936): 133 and n. 1, and 134 n. 4. In 1517, Bakócz had a less happy encounter with the Augustinian Hermits: see Erdélyi, Gabriella, “Tales of Immoral Friars: Morality and Religion in an Early Sixteenth-Century Hungarian Town,” Social History 34 (2009): 184–203.Google Scholar
118 Lind, , Letters, no. 249 to Leandro Alberti (undated): “Mihi igitur iocundum est atque gloriosum quod cardinali Strigoniensi viro et mea et omnium sententia in omni dote praestanti libellum quo sanctissimi viri Aurelii Augustini vitam sum complexus dicandum curavi. Nec vereor quin ei maior accessura sit auctoritas.” Cf. no. 248 to Bakócz (undated). For Garzoni as teacher of Bakócz's two nephews, see Banfi, , “Giovanni Garzoni,” 120–39. Garzoni dedicated to Bakócz a passion of St. Symphorianus, now lost, and a panegyric (Bologna, Biblioteca universitaria MSS 741, fols. 59r–63r and 1896, fols. 29v–32r). Cf. the dedication to Bakócz by another Bolognese humanist, Filippo Beroaldo, of the Opusculum de simbolis Pithagorae, addressed by Celenza, Christopher C., Piety and Pythagoras in Renaissance Florence (Leiden, 2001), 52–63.Google Scholar
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120 Lind, , Letters , no. 387 to Paci (undated); see above and n. 52.Google Scholar
121 Lind, , Letters , no. 69 to Bandello (undated; Lind, , Letters, xxviii, proposes 1493–96).Google Scholar
122 I paraphrase Lind, , Letters , no. 334 to Paci (undated): “Quod in scribenda Augustini vita sententiae tuae accesserim complures et hi quidem canonici regulares moleste et acerbe ferunt. Nam quod vobis summis philosophis summisque theologis primas partes tribuendas dixerim me fidem excessisse affirmant. Quae in historiis vestris continentur a nulla veritate abhorrent. Non me terrebunt.” With a telling military metaphor, Garzoni continues, “Ego et constanti et firmo animo illorum impetum excipiam.” The Canons had evidently written up a counter-vita or hostile evaluation: “Quidam (de suis loquor) eam provinciam deposcit. Libellus ad me allatus est.” In evaluating it, Garzoni resorts not to factual arguments but to style: “non Ciceronem, non Demosthenem sapit, non Livium, nullis iuncturis, nullis numeris, nullo ordine utitur. Ut legentibus repente stomachum moveat, schemata quae orationi dignitatem afferant [see esp. Quint. Inst. bk. 9], exilio mulctat.” He would respond accordingly: “illud vitio dant quod vitam tanti viri paucis fuerim verbis complexus. Est haec Graecorum scriptorium consuetudo ut ea conquerant quae a rem nihil attinent, ut quod scitu facillimum est id cognitu difficillimum putatur.” His own procedure had been different: “Ea memoriae prodidi quae mihi memoratu digna visa sunt et a sapientissimis viris tradita.” Google Scholar
123 I cannot identify this counter-libellus. Google Scholar
124 Lind, , Letters , no. 412 to Paci (undated). The Humiliati followed the Regula Augustini, as Garzoni acknowledges. In notes to letter 412, Lind translates sartor as “tailor.” It is possible that the family name Sarzio (Sartius) is intended, and if so, the name may provide another clue to the nature of Garzoni's intellectual circle. An Alexander Sartius brokered Poliziano's relationship with Bolognese printing entrepreneur Francesco de' Benedetti: see Godman, Peter, From Poliziano to Machiavelli (Princeton, 1998), 5.Google Scholar
125 My reading of the phrase, “quod vobis summis philosophis summisque theologis primas partes tribuendas dixerim” (letter 334), disagrees with that of Lind, Letters , 517.Google Scholar