Chapter 3 Three Studio Courses of the and 1460s

1 Landino’s Praefatio in Tusculanis Ciceronis (1458)

In of 1458 Landino began his first course as holder of the chair of Poetry and Oratory in the Florentine Studio, lecturing on Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. The course lectures do not survive, but there remains his Prae- fatio in Tusculanis, his opening public lecture in before the students and “most excellent fathers.”1 Given the philosophical nature of the text, Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations is an odd choice for the opening course of a new Pro- fessor of Poetry and Oratory rather than the more common rhetorical works associated with Cicero, the De inventione or Ad Herennium.2 Prior to gain- ing the chair of Poetry and Oratory, he had already lectured on Dante in the Studio in 1456, so this was not in a sense his first course. Cardini’s dating of the preface to 1458 does place the work at the time of the Signoria’s decision to divide the “Marsuppini” chair of philosophy and grammar between two people. Since in the preface Landino specifically points out he was a student of Marsuppini, it well be that he had hopes of proving he was worthy of holding Marsuppini’s chair. This goal is also suggested by the fact that while he tended to repeat his courses during his career, this is the only time we know that he lectured on Cicero’s Disputations. Later in 1465–66 he again lectured on Cicero, but at that time he used Cicero’s Epistulae ad familiares to teach letter writing. The main section of the oration falls into two parts, a lengthy discussion of Aristotle and then issues raised by Cicero, especially the immortality of the soul and the nature of philosophy. Cardini sees the oration as evidence of Landino’s rhetorical-moral approach to philosophy.3 It is true that in the

1 Landino, Christophori Landini viri clarissimi Praefatio in Tusculanis Ciceronis habita in Gymnasio Florentino, in Cardini, Scritti, I:3–14 (hereafter Praefatio). See also Manfred Lentzen, “Cristoforo Landinos Antrittsvorlesung im Studio Fiorentino: Einleitung und Edi- tion,” Romanische Forschungen 81 (1969): 60–88. Frank la Brasca, “’Scriptor in Cathedra’: Les cours inauguraux de Cristoforo Landino au ‘Studio’ de (1458–74),” in L’écrivan face à son public en France et en Italie à la Renaissance, ed. Charles Fiorato and Jean-Claude Margolin, De Pétrarque a Descartes 53 (Paris: Vrin, 1989), 107–25, analyzes five inaugural orations by Landino for his courses on Cicero, Virgil, Petrarch and Dante, showing the pro- gression in Landino’s thought about language, philosophy, and poetry. 2 Witt, Footsteps, 352–3. 3 Praefatio, 3.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004389526_004 Three Studio Courses of the 1450s and 1460s 29 oration Landino says repeatedly that he is a teacher of rhetoric not philoso- phy, and what philosophy he knows comes from having read some and learned much from his teacher Marsuppini.4 He claims that his ability to lecture on Cicero is due to the fact that rhetoric is able to treat all subjects. He will later make the same claim of poetry, though he will say that what gives poetry the ability to treat all subjects is divine inspiration, which he does not attribute to rhetoric. He certainly gives no indication he will consider Cicero’s text allegori- cally, the method he will later follow with other texts. Landino says that his purpose is to teach students both eloquence and how to live well, and that nothing is better for this than Cicero, who teaches what is useful, pleasurable, and conducive to living and speaking well.5 Cicero’s teach- ings also enable us to live a quiet, tranquil life so that all our actions and duties are carried out with virtue, which is our highest good.6 This is the only occasion in the works we will consider in which Landino claims that the highest good is in virtue alone. In his other works he says virtue is a means to the highest good. After reviewing the topics to be covered in the course and citing Cicero as the best source in which to study these topics, Landino encourages the stu- dents: if they work hard they will learn to speak and live well, becoming use- ful to themselves, their families, and their city.7 In this way Landino indicates that his teaching will contain a certain amount of civic mindedness, at least as far as combining instruction in classical texts, virtue, eloquence, and social usefulness. Since Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations is a philosophical work, naturally Landino’s understanding of the nature of philosophy is prominent in the

4 Ibid., 7, “Quam ob rem, cum inter legendum muneri mihi publice imposito pro viribus sat- isfecero, tum etiam si qui ex philosophia loci occurrent, eos non tanquam huius facultatis professor, sed ut homo qui nonnulla legerim, plurima etiam de praeceptore meo, viro om- nium quos nostra saecula viderint sine controversia doctissimo et in litteris tum Graecis tum Latinis exercitatissimo, Carolo Arretino, audierim, explicabo.” 5 Ibid., 5, “ut non modo quae ad eloquentiam comparandam, sed multo etiam magis quae ad bene beateque vivendum pertineant praecepta exponat. Quonam alio in loco utrunque simul et dicendi et philosophophandi genus uberius complexus est?”. 6 Ibid., 6, “Agite vero, quoniam in rebus humanis finis aliquis certus nobis propositus esse debet, quo cunctas nostras actiones, cuncta vitae officia referamus, quid potuit ab eo aut verius aut sapientissimo eodenque fortissimo viro dicimus exprimi, quam ultimum extre- mumque finem et summum homini bonum ita in sola virtute collocatum esse …”. 7 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1960), V.72, “Transeat idem iste sapiens ad rem publicam tuendam.” Cicero in V.71–72 describes the wise man as having knowledge of virtue which leads to a happy life, to using reason well, and to caring for public matters. This is Landino’s goal in the preface.