Chapter 5 The Disputationes Camaldulenses Books I and II

1 Title and Overview

Apart from the Virgil and Dante commentaries of the 1480s, Landino’s best known work is his Disputationes Camaldulenses. This dialogue in four Books, completed in 1472, covers the nature of the best life, the highest good, and his famous allegorical interpretation of Virgil’s Aeneid. It was printed six times between 1480 and 1511, after which only Books III and IV were printed. Set in the monastery at Camaldoli, the main characters in the dialogue are Leon Battista Alberti and Lorenzo de’ Medici, with Marsilio Ficino making some comments at one point.1 In Books I and II Alberti presents various arguments to which Lorenzo presents counter-arguments; then Alberti draws a conclu- sion, which is usually a synthesis of both sides. In Books III and IV Alberti sim- ply presents the Aeneid allegory based on the one Landino had first presented in his 1462–63 lectures on Virgil. Actually, all the characters should be taken as Landino himself since their arguments mirror and develop topics he has previ- ously discussed in lectures and other writings. The title to Book I found in the first printed edition of the Disputationes is “Book One of the Camaldulensian Disputations by Christophoro Landino of Florence to the most illustrious Federico Duke of Urbino on the contemplative

1 Cristoforo Landino, Disputationes Camaldulenses, ed. Peter Lohe, Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Studi e Testi VI (Florence: Sansoni, 1980). All Disputationes references are to this edition. On the dating, see Lohe’s introduction, xxx–xxxiii, and his “Die Datierung der Disputationes Camaldulenses des Cristoforo Landino,” Rinascimento, 2d ser., 9 (1969): 291–99. The other characters present in the Disputationes are: Alamanno Rinuccini, Donato and Pi- etro Acciaiuoli, Antonio Canisiani, Marco Parenti, Giuliano de’Medici, Cristoforo and Petrus Landino and Abbot Mariotto of Camaldoli. For Camaldoli, see Tudor Edwards, Worlds Apart: A Journey to the Great Living Monasteries of Europe (NY: Coward-McCann, 1958), 100–105. One of the most famous monks at Camaldoli was Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439). Dubbed “il famoso Greco,” he spoke fluent Greek and translated many Greek fathers into Latin. Mariotto, the Abbot of Camaldoli who welcomes the disputants of the Disputationes, was a pupil of Ambrogio Traversari. Landino might have chosen Camaldoli as the setting in order to associ- ate himself with Greek learning. His ancestor Gabriel was a Camaldolean monk, poet, and student of Traversari according to Bandini, Specimen, I:43.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004389526_006 The Disputationes Camaldulenses Books I and II 95 and active life happily begins.”2 Several lines later Landino describes the nature of the entire work as the sermones:

Which I remember Leon Baptista Alberti to have held on the two manners of living which is proper to men and on the ends of good and evil from the divine figments of the poet Virgil.3

Based on these statements it is easy to assume that the “two manners of living” to be discussed in Book I are the “contemplative and active life” of the title, an assumption which is misleading. Nowhere in the Disputationes does Landino use or discuss the phrases vita activa or vita contemplativa; nor are the phrases

2 Disputationes, 3, “Christophori Landini Florentini Ad Illustrissimum Federicum Principem Urbinatum Disputationum Camaldulensium Liber Primus De Vita Contemplativa Et Activa Feliciter Incipit.” In the introductory notes to his critical edition of the Disputationes, Lohe discusses the manuscripts and the first published edition of the work. There are two translations of Book I of the Disputationes: one in German by Eugen Wolf; and one in Italian by Eugenio Garin. Cristoforo Landino, Camaldolensische Gespräche, tr. Eugen Wolf, Das Zeitalter der Renais- sance Ausgewählte Quellen Zur Geschichte der Italienischen Kultur, Ser. II, Bd. VII (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1927); and Prosatori Latini del Quattrocento, ed. and tr. Eugenio Garin, La Letteratura Italiana Storia e Testi, 13 (Milan, Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1952), 715–91, 1132. There are two English translations of Books III and IV: Thomas Stahel, “Cristoforo Landino’s Allegorization of the Aeneid: Books III and IV of the Camaldolese Disputations” (Ph.D. disser- tation, Johns Hopkins University, 1968); and an excellent unpublished translation by Abigail Young. Wolf used two manuscripts for his translation: the Laurentiana Plut. 53,78 of Piero Cennini (which Wolf places in 1476 rather than 1474); and the Alamannus edition of 1481 (Wolf, 127). The Laur. Plut. 53,78 ms. ends, “Excripsit Florentiae Petrus Cenninus atque ad ar- chetipum emendavit anno salutis MCCCCLXXIIII declinante vere (Disputationes, 262).” The Laurentiana manuscript does not have titles for each Book, but the Alamannus ms. does, which Wolf uses for his translation. Thus Wolf entitles Book I, “Erstes Buch über das be- schauliche und tätige Leben,” and places notes in the margins that reinforce this division into genera of life. For example, 28, “Lorenzo als Anwalt des tätigen Lebens” and, 47, “Cicero ver- einigt in sich die Tugenden des tätigen und beschaulichen Lebens.” Garin translated Book I into Italian (with Latin text facing) from the Laurentiana manuscript and the Alamannus edition of 1481. Garin also uses the titles from the Alamannus edition and entitles Book I, “La vita attiva e la vita contemplativa (Garin, Prosatori, 717, 1132).” This title, which I discuss below, has led Wolf and Garin to give misleading translations for Landino’s text in several instances, mainly associated with naming operations of the mind as genera vitae. 3 Disputationes, 4, “quos Leonem Baptistam Albertum … de duplici quod proprium hominis sit vivendi genere atque de bonorum malorumque finibus etiam ex divino Maronis poetae figmento habuisse meminerim.”