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Rudolph Agricola's Life of Petrarch

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Theodor E. Mommsen
Theodor E. Mommsen*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Among the many personal faults with which Petrarch, in his dialogue entitled The Secret or The Soul's Conflict with Passion, let himself be charged by St. Augustine, there was one which he found harder to renounce than any other. In reply to Augustine's reproach: ‘You are seeking fame among men and the immortality of your name more than is right,' Petrarch could only say: ‘This I admit freely and cannot find any remedy to restrain that desire.' In fact, throughout his life Petrarch was well aware that ‘to the whole people I have been a favola,' as he declared in the introductory sonnet of his Rime Sparse, and he showed himself constantly determined to perpetuate his fame beyond death, as his Epistle to Posterity and numerous other autobiographical documents demonstrate. His effort bore fruit, for the life of no other literary figure of the fourteenth century, not even that of Dante, was told more frequently and fully by the writers of the Renaissance than that of Petrarch. Among his biographers we find some of the greatest Italian humanists, including Giovanni Boccaccio, Filippo Villani, Leonardo Bruni Aretino, Pietro Paolo Vergerio and Gianozzo Manetti. But, interestingly enough, for the period of the first century after Petrarch's death in 1374, there exists not a single biography which was composed by a non-Italian writer. This fact is the more notable when we remember the tremendous reputation which Petrarch enjoyed, during his own era and afterwards, in France and Germany, and even in remote England, where Chaucer, in The Clerk's Prologue, sang the praise of ‘this clerk whose rethoryke so sweete enlumed al Itaille of poetrye.' The anonymous Bohemian scholar who, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, brought together an anthology of Petrarch's works, did not himself write a biography but simply used the one written by Vergerio. Interest in the personalities and achievements of the great poets and artists arose first in Italy, and it was there that the traditional literary form of ‘the lives of the illustrious men' was filled with a new spirit and content. From this point of view it appears characteristic that the first biography of Petrarch by a non-Italian was composed only after the passage of a hundred years following his death and that it was written by a man like Rudolph Agricola who was more than any of his northern fellow humanists influenced by Italian traditions and who, at the same time, was to become ‘the founder of the new intellectual life in Germany.’

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Articles
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Traditio , Volume 8 , 1952 , pp. 367 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 This paper was first read in the University Seminar on the Renaissance at Columbia University.Google Scholar

2 Petrarca, , Opera Omnia (ed. Basel 1581) 364; compare the translation by Draper, W. H., Petrarch's Secret (London 1911) 166.Google Scholar

3 See the collection of biographies published by Solerti, A., Le vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio scritte fino al secolo decimo sesto (Milan 1904) 237–359.Google Scholar

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5 Geiger, L., Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland (Berlin 1882) 334. On Agricola see esp. von Bezold, F., Rudolf Agricola: Ein deutscher Vertreter der italienischen Renaissance (Munich 1884); Ihm, G., Der Humanist Agricola: Sein Leben und seine Schriften (Paderborn 1893); Woodward, W. H., Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance, 1400–1600 (London 1906) 79–103; van der Velden, H. E. J. M., Rodulphus Agricola (Dissertation Leyden 1911); Ritter, G., Die Heidelberger Universität I (Heidelberg 1936) 467–474.Google Scholar

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11 On this Stuttgart manuscript, see Pfeifer, F., ‘Rudolf Agricola,’ Serapeum 10 (1849) 97–107, 113-119; Hagen, H., in Vierteljahrsschrift für Kultur und Literatur der Renaissance 2 (1886) 265 f.; Allen, P. S., ‘The letters of Rudolph Agricola,’ English Historical Review 21 (1906) 302 f., 307; van der Velden, , op. cit. 2 f.; Bertalot, , op. cit. 383 n. 1.Google Scholar

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13 See the letter (ed. Pfeifer, , op. cit. 99) in which Dietrich von Plieningen asked his brother that ‘locos insuper dialecticos et reliqua sua opuscula excribi unumque in volumen redigi facias.’ Dietrich concluded his letter as follows: ‘Debes preterea hoc universe reipublice litterarie, quod cui satisfacies, si curaveris omnia monumenta sua unum in volumen scribantur, quo tandem, quemadmodum cupio, imprimi in vulgusque edi emittique possint.’ Google Scholar

14 See the letter in which Johann von Plieningen told Dietrich about the completion of his collection (ed. Pfeifer, , loc. cit.): ‘Satisfecit desiderio tuo … Johannes meus Pfeutzer, adolescens optimus; locos namque dialecticos Rhodolphi Agricole, preceptoris nostri, viri doctissimi, et reliqua sua opuscula, que aut nova fecit aut e Greco in Latinum convertit, excripsit unumque in volumen, quemadmodum voluisti, perdiligenter emendateque redegit. Omnia namque cum exemplaribus ipse contuli.’ Google Scholar

15 Johann von Plieningen's Life of Agricola was published by Pfeifer, , op. cit. 101–107, 113–115.Google Scholar

16 According to the letter to his brother (ed. Pfeifer, , op. cit. 99) Dietrich did not take upon himself the preparation of the edition, but rather entrusted Johann with it, dum assidua negotia reipublice me impediant.’ Google Scholar

17 See the passage quoted above (n. 14). On the shortcomings of the Stuttgart manuscript in general, compare Hagen, , loc. cit. (n. 11 supra); Hartfelder, K., Unedierte Briefe von Rudolf Agricola: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Humanismus (Karlsruhe 1886, also in Festschrift der Badischen Gymnasien, gewidmet der Universität Heidelberg, pp. 1–36).Google Scholar

18 On the Munich manuscript, see Bertalot, , op. cit. 383.Google Scholar

19 See Allen, , op. cit. (n. 11 supra) 310 f.; Bertalot, , op. cit. 399.Google Scholar

20 Antonio Scrovigni is first mentioned as professor of medicine in Pavia in the year 1493: see Memorie e documenti per la storia dell’ Università di Pavia e degli uomini più illustri che v'insegnarono (Pavia 1878) 121.Google Scholar

21 Allen, , op. cit. 312: Woodward, , op. cit. (n. 5 supra) 89; der Velden, van, op. cit. (n. 5 supra) 78 f.; Lindeboom, , op. cit. (n. 10 supra) 83.Google Scholar

22 The pages, here as elsewhere in the paper, refer to the edition of the Life of Petrarch by Bertalot, , op. cit. 383–398.Google Scholar

23 According to Bertalot, op. cit. 399, it was begun in 1473 and finished in 1474.Google Scholar

24 Ed. Pfeifer, , p. 102: ‘Id quoque temporis, precibus ac suasu Anthonii Scrophini, viri haud illiterate, permotus vitam Petrarchae, viri prestantissimi et quem cunctis ingeniis seculi sui haud cunctanter pretulit cuique sua sententia omnis eruditio seculi nostri plurimum honoris debet, doctissime descripsit.’ Google Scholar

25 From Johann von Plieningen's biography we learn that in fact Agricola ‘pictura … mirum in modum delectabatur’ (ed. Pfeifer, , p. 113 f.); on Agricola's interest in drawing and in the other arts, cf. Woodward, , op. cit. 81, 92, 103.Google Scholar

26 In this case we must assume that the beginning of the Life, in which Agricola dealt in a rather personal fashion with Antonio Scrovigni and his grandfather Enrico, was added later, when he edited the speech for publication. On several other orations composed by Agricola in Pavia, see Allen, , op. cit. 310 f.Google Scholar

27 Squarzafico's Vita F. Petrarchae was first published in the two editions of Petrarch's Opera which appeared at Venice in 1501 and 1503; on Squarzafico's life, cf. Quarta, N., ‘I commentatori quattrocentisti del Petrarca,’ Atti d. R. Accad. d. Archeol., Lett. e Belle Arti di Napoli 23 (1905) 280–287.Google Scholar

28 See Bertalot, , op. cit. 401.Google Scholar

29 On these editions, see Fowler, M., Catalogue of the Petrarch Collection of the Cornell University Library (London and New York 1916) 71–73.Google Scholar

30 See Fowler, , op. cit. 75 f.Google Scholar

31 See Quarta, , op. cit. 274 f., 288–292, 317. The longer version was first published by Solerti, , op. cit. (n. 3 supra) 329–335; the shorter one, which appeared in the early editions of the Rime Sparse, was republished by Solerti, pp. 335–338, and, more correctly, by Quarta, pp. 320–322. In the following I shall always quote Agricola's source, the short Italian Life of 1471, from Quarta's reprint.Google Scholar

32 See Quarta, , op. cit. 290.Google Scholar

33 Geiger, L., in Zeitschrift für deutsche Kulturgeschichte, N. F. 3 (1874) 225 n. 3, and Lindeboom, , op. cit. (n. 10 supra), passim, assumed that Agricola used the Epistle to Posterity. Bertalot, , op. cit. 400 n. 4, believed that Agricola undoubtedly knew the Epistle but made no direct use of it.Google Scholar

34 Quarta, Ed., p. 320; compare Agricola's Life (p. 384 f.).Google Scholar

35 Quarta, Ed., p. 322: ‘di singular vista in sino nella sua vechieza.’ Google Scholar

36 Ed. Carrara, E., ‘L'Epistola Posteritati e la leggenda Petrarchesca,’ Annali dell’ Istituto Superiore di Magistero di Torino 3 (1929) p. 298 § 4.Google Scholar

37 See Fowler, , op. cit. 72 ff.Google Scholar

38 Under this title the work was listed by Villani, Vergerio, and Manetti; see Solerti, , op. cit. 279, 299, 317.Google Scholar

39 Ed. Quarta, p. 322.Google Scholar

40 In the list of Petrarch's works in the Italian Life of 1471, the pamphlet was merely called ‘Invectiva contra medico bestiale,’ Google Scholar

41 Ed. Quarta, p. 321.Google Scholar

42 The Italian Life of 1471 said simply (ed. Quarta, , p. 320): ‘[Petracho] senando Avignone, dove la corte Romana nuovamente era transferita.’ Google Scholar

48 See Squarzafico's, Life of Petrarch, ed. Solerti, , pp. 348, 353.Google Scholar

44 A comparison of Agricola's enumeration of Petrarch's works with that given in the Italian Life of 1471 shows that his list can be called quite complete. For, although he did not mention the Septem psalmi poenitentiales and the little Itinerarium Syriacum, which were listed there (ed. Quarta, , p. 322), he added, on the other hand, as a separate item, Petrarch's Latin rendering of Boccaccio's Novella di Griselda, which was contained in the collection of Petrarch's Seniles (8.3); the title given to the work by Agricola, , De constantia Griseldis, is very similar to the one used in the editio princeps, published in Cologne around the year 1472 (cf. Fowler, , op. cit. 47).Google Scholar

45 Agricola referred here to a tradition which is to be found in both Vergerio's and Manetti's biographies of Petrarch; see Solerti, , op. cit. 300, 317.Google Scholar

46 Cf. Blass, H., ‘Die Textesquellen des Silius Italicus,’ Jahrbücher für classische Philologie, Supplementband 8 (1875/6) 162–172; see also J. Duff's preface to his edition of the Punica (London 1934) I p. xvi.Google Scholar

47 See Blass, , op. cit. 168 ff.Google Scholar

48 On this curious question, see the long note which G. Fracassetti added to his translation of Petrarch's Variae 22 (in Lettere delle cose familiari V 290–292); see also de Nolhac, P., Pétrarque et l'humanisme (2nd ed. Paris 1907) I 193.Google Scholar

49 In the Life of 1471, the work is simply listed as ‘Invectiva contra i Franciosi’ (ed. Quarta, , p. 322).Google Scholar

50 See the discussion of Petrarch's polemical writings by Carrara, E., Petrarca (Rome 1937) 77–84; Jean de Hesdin's treatise and Petrarch's reply to it were edited by Cocchia, E., in Atti d. R. Accad. d. Archeol., Lett. e Belle Arti di Napoli, N. S. 7 (1920) 91–202.Google Scholar

51 Cocehia, Ed., p. 140: ‘mihi nec vultu nec noiqine notus est.’ Google Scholar

52 See de Nolhac, P., ‘Le Gallus calumniator de Pétrarque,’ Romania 21 (1892) 598–606.Google Scholar

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54 It seems quite possible that Agricola saw such a manuscript in Pavia, for it is well known that a number of Petrarch's books and of his own writings were preserved there at that time; see de Nolhac, P., Pétrarque et l'humanisme (2nd ed. 1907) I 100 ff.; Billanovich, G., Petrarca letterato I (Rome 1947) 372 ff.Google Scholar

55 Compare the remarks made by Bertalot, , op. cit. 403, concerning ‘die Seelenverwandt-Schaft des Friesen und des Toskaners.’ Google Scholar

56 Pfeifer, Ed. (see nn. 15, 11 supra) pp. 101 f.: ‘Ac primis annis iuris civilis auditor fuit magisque id agebat, ut suorum obsequeretur voluntati quam quod eo delectaretur studio. Fuit namque in homine animus excelsior atque generosior quam ut ad levia illa exiguaque rerum momenta, quibus magna ex parte, ut ipsius verbis utar, ius civile constat, abjici posset neque passus est se ad ipsum alligari, precipue cum putaret vix constanti fide ac integritate a quoquam posse tractari. Relicto itaque iuris studio ad maiora eluctans, litteris pollicioribus et artibus, quas humanitatis vocant … animum applicuit.’ Google Scholar

57 Ed. Billanovich, G. (Florence 1943), p. 180.Google Scholar

58 See also Petrarch's remarks concerning law and justice in his Epistola Posteritati , ed. Carrara, (see n. 36 supra), p. 302 § 17.Google Scholar

59 In a letter written in Ferrara (ed. Hartfelder, , op. cil. [n. 17 supra] 17 n° 8), Agricola spoke about his own studies as follows: ‘studia nostra eadem sunt que semper, hoc est steriles et contumaces melioris consilii litterulae nostrae, quibus omnem dedicavimus vitam.’ Google Scholar

60 See Cicero, , De fin. 1.4.12. Agricola used the same phrase in his treatise De formando studio (ed. Rivius, J. [Augsburg 1539] 77), where he talked about the study of law and medicine and then continued: ‘Et quas certe uendi biliores, qt Ciceronis uerbo utar, sciam et plane fatear, aliis nonnullis, quas steriles et ieiunas uocant, ut quae magis possunt animum explere quam arcam.’ See also Cicero, , De off. 1.42.150–151.Google Scholar

61 Johann von Plieningen again used exactly the same words in his Life to characterize Agricola's devotion to these studies (ed. Pfeifer, , p. 102): ‘… studiosissime non solum attigit, sed totum eis se ingessit.’ Google Scholar

62 See n. 59 supra. Google Scholar

63 Italian Life of 1471 (ed. Quarta, , p. 321): ‘Inquesto tempo mosso pergiovinile desiderio divedere nuove regioni lafrancia et lamagna accerchar simisse’; this is a literal translation of the statement made by Petrarch himself in his Epistola Posteritati (ed. Carrara, , p. 303 § 21): ‘Quo tempore iuvenilis me impulit appetitus, ut et Gallias et Germaniam peragrarem.’ Google Scholar

64 On Enrico Scrovigni, see Bertalot, , op. cit. 404 n. 3.Google Scholar

65 On this quotation, see the interesting remarks made by Bertalot, , op. cit. 390 n. 7.Google Scholar

66 According to Bertalot, op. cit. 391 n. 8, this is a reference to Timaeus 36 and 43; one may also think of Phaedrus 245 C-E.Google Scholar

67 Agricola probably derived this information concerning the views of the Stoics and the Peripatetics from Cicero, , De fin. 3.10.35; 3.12.41 ff.; Tusc. Disput. 4.9.22 f., 17.38 19.43, 21.47.Google Scholar

68 Italian Life of 1471 (ed. Quarta, , p. 321): ‘Et quantunque livolse essere data perdonna adinstantia di papa Urbano quinto ilquale lui singularmente amava concedendoli ditener colla donna i benefitii insieme; nol volse mai consentire; dicendo che i fructo che prendea dellamore ascrivere dipoi; che lacosa amata conseguito avessie tutto siperderia.’ Google Scholar

69 See n. 66 supra. Google Scholar

70 See n. 80 infra. Google Scholar

71 When Agricola (p. 387) called Stoicism ‘asperioris frontis philosophiam,’ it seems likely that he thought of Pro L. Murena 29.60, where Cicero spoke of Stoicism as ‘doctrina paulo asperior et durior.’ Google Scholar

72 See n. 74 infra. Google Scholar

73 When Agricola (p. 383) said: ‘ora ut dicitur praebere capistro bene monentis,’ he referred probably to Juvenal, , Sat.6.42 f.: ‘… si moechorum notissimus olim / stulta maritali iam porrigit ora capistro.’ Google Scholar

74 On this belief, see Boas, G., ‘Fact and legend in the biography of Plato,’ The Philosophical Review 57 (1948) 450 n. 21. Bertalot, , op. cit. 393 n. 3, did not identify the passage in Seneca's letter but quoted a remark very similar to that of Agricola made by Ficino in a letter written in 1477, that is, shortly after the composition of Agricola's Life of Petrarch .Google Scholar

75 Italian Life of 1471 (ed. Quarta, , p. 322): del male della epilensia diche per la eta sua era stato molto molestato lo extremo di della sua vita virtuosamente concluse.’ Google Scholar

76 The same explanation of the name ‘morbus comitialis’ is to be found in the writings of some of the later humanists, e.g., Erasmus and Johann Agricola; on this whole problem, see the detailed study of Temkin, O., The falling sickness: A history of epilepsy from the Greeks to the beginnings of modern neurology (Baltimore 1947) esp. pp. 7, 83, 131, 152 ff.Google Scholar

77 On this belief, see Temkin, , pp. 152 ff.Google Scholar

78 Suetonius, , Divus Julius 45.1.Google Scholar

79 This fact is correct; see Enciclopedia Italiana 2 (1929) 829 f.Google Scholar

80 Bertalot, , op. cit. 397 n. 2, referred this quotation to Jesus Sirach (= Liber Ecclesiastici) 13.20; but Agricola's phrasing (‘in veteri proverbio est pares paribus facillime convenire’) makes it more likely that he quoted from Cicero's De senect. 3.7.: ‘Pares autem vetere proverbio cum paribus facillime congregantur.’ See also Otto, A., Die Sprichwörter der Römer (Leipzig 1890) 264.Google Scholar

81 The proverb is, however, not listed in Werner's, J. collection, Lateinische Sprichwörter des Mittelalters (Heidelberg 1912).Google Scholar

82 Life of Petrarch (p. 389): ‘hominis magis proprium nihil videri potest quam hominem nosse.’ Google Scholar

83 Charron, P., De la sagesse (Bordeaux 1601) I 1: ‘La vraye science et le vraye estude de l'homme, c'est l'homme.’ Google Scholar

84 This statement was repeated by Johann von Plieningen in his Life of Agricola (ed. Pfeifer, , p. 102): ‘[Petrarchae] sua sententia [i.e., that of Agricola] omnis eruditio seculi nostri plurimum honoris debet.’ Google Scholar

85 Italian Life of 1471 (ed. Quarta, , p. 320): ‘Et ebbe tanta gratia dingegno che fu ilprimo che questi sublimi studii lungo tempo caduti in oblivione rivoco alluce.’ Google Scholar

86 Solerti, Ed. (see n. 3 supra), p. 289: ‘[Petrarca] ebbe tanta grazia d'intelletto che fu il primo che questi sublimi studi lungo tempo caduti ed ignorati rivocò a luce di cognizione.’ — The same phrase is to be found in Gianozzo Manetti's Life of Petrarch (ed. Solerti, , p. 306 f.).Google Scholar

87 See, e.g., Bruni's, Life of Petrarch (ed. Solerti, , p. 290): ‘Petrarca fu il primo … che riconobbe e rivocò in luce l'antica leggiadria dello stile perduto e spento, e posto che in lui perfetto non fusse, pur da se vide ed aperse la via a questa perfezione…; e per certo fece assai, solo a dimostrare la via a quelli che dopo lui avevano a seguire.’ Google Scholar

88 See the edition of the Dialogi by Kirner, G. (Livorno 1889); compare Vittorino, D., ‘I dialogi ad Petrum Histrum di Leonardo Bruni Aretino,’ Publications of the Modern Language Association 55 (1940) 714–720.Google Scholar

89 Voigt, L. G., Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Altertums I (3rd ed. Berlin 1893) 381; see also Carrara, E., in Annali dell’ Istituto Superiore di Magistero di Torino 3 (1929) 338 ff.Google Scholar

90 On Squarzafico's stay in northern Italy during the 1470's, see Quarta, , op. cit. 283.Google Scholar

91 Solerti, Ed., p. 357.Google Scholar

92 Compare, e.g., the letter Agricola wrote to his friend Friedrich Mormann in 1480 (ed. Allen, , op. cit. [n. 11 supra] 316); in this letter he congratulated Mormann particularly for the reason that ‘tantum eruditionis, hunc literarum cultum, hanc gratiam Musarum assecutus es, et assecutus quod difficillimum est in medio stridore rudis huius horridaeque barbariae, quantum in mediis penetralibus ac, ut ita dicam, officina illa omnis politioris eruditionis Italia hique Itali frustra sperarunt, pauci rettulerunt.’ Google Scholar

93 See Allen, , op. cit. 321, n° 21; Ihm, , op. cit. (n. 5 supra) 67.Google Scholar

94 The whole passage in the Ciceronianus concerning Petrarch reads as follows (Erasmus, , Opera omnia [Leyden 1703] col. 1008): ‘(Bulephorus:) Age redibimus ad aliud scriptorum genus nostro seculo vicinius. Nam aliquot aetatibus videtur fuisse sepulta prorsus eloquentia, quae non ita pridem reviviscere coepit apud Italos, apud nos multo etiam serius. Itaque reflorescentis eloquentiae princeps apud Italos videtur fuisse Franciscus Petrarcha, sua aetate Celebris ac magnus, nunc vix est in manibus: ingenium ardens, magna rerum cognitio, nec mediocris eloquendi vis. (Nosoponus:) Fateor. Atqui est ubi desideres in eo linguae Latinae peritiam, et tota dictio resipit seculi prioris horrorem. Quis autem ilium dicat Ciceronianum, qui ne affectarit quidem?’ Cf. the English translation of the Ciceronianus by I. Scott (New York 1908) 94.Google Scholar