Francesco Filelfo As a Writer of Invective

Francesco Filelfo as a Writer of Invective

David Marsh

As in other literary genres, the writers of Renaissance invective often drew inspiration from Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), whose four polemical writings revived a classical tradition that dated back to Cicero, pseudo-Sallust, and Jerome.1 In the Quattrocento, many humanists gained notoriety by pub- lishing invectives against rival scholars, most notably Antonio Loschi, Poggio Bracciolini, Lorenzo Valla, Bartolomeo Facio, and Antonio da Rho. Oddly, it seems that the singularly contentious and combative Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481) wrote nothing that he explicitly called an invective.2 Indeed, on several occasions the humanist dismissed invective as distasteful. The tirades of Antonio da Rho (c. 1398–c.1450), for example, were notorious for their viru- lence; and in 1443 Filelfo accordingly deprecated the friar’s “insane” attacks on the humanist Pier Candido Decembrio, whom he often considered an enemy.3

1 On Cicero and Roman invective, see Arena 2007, and Booth 2007. For an introduction to all four Petrarchan invectives with Latin text and English translation and notes, see Petrarch 2003. Enenkel 2010 distinguishes Contra medicum from the Ciceronian model of In Pisonem: Petrarch rejects the urban social values of Roman invective (he despises Avignon and lauds solitude), and employs Scholastic forms of argumentation. For the humanist invectives of the Renaissance, see Laureys 2003, Helmrath 2010, and Marsh 2016. On the wider context of polemics, known in German as Streitkultur (agonal culture), see Laureys-Simons 2010, and Lines-Laureys-Kraye 2015. 2 I here echo De Keyser 2015, 15: “Oddly enough, Filelfo wrote nothing which he explicitly called an invective; but the majority of his writings, in numerous literary genres, contain ad hominem attacks, including, most prominently, on Poggio.” 3 PhE·05.21 (30 December 1443): “Vellem equidem, pater optime, ab omni istiusmodi scribendi genere te continuisses, neque cum insanienti Petro Candido Decembre desipere ipse volu- isses. Id certe fuisset et ordinis et dignitatis tuae, praesertim cum non esses ignarus quam natura sit iste Candidus maledicus ac fatuus. Quae enim (per immortalem Deum) fanatica ratio te commovit, ut perinde atque infesto quodam eoque inimico afflatus spiritu in virum illum doctissimum atque disertissimum tam insolenter, tam iniuste, tam impie invehereris, ut non res solum poene innumerabilis consulto male interpreteris, sed nomen etiam viri depravare studueris, utpote quem Lactentium pro Lactantio nomines?” (‘I would have pre- ferred, most holy father, that you had refrained from any kind of such composition, and not chosen to be mad with the crazed Pier Candido Decembrio. Such behavior would have been consonant with both your order and your rank, especially since you were aware how abusive and foolish Candido is by nature. What fanatical notion, by immortal God, moved you to rage – as if inspired by some deadly and hateful passion – against this most erudite and eloquent man so insolently, so unjustly, and so impiously that you not only misinterpreted nearly countless matters, but even in your zeal distorted the man’s name, writing Lactentius

A decade later, he composed a letter in which he sought to reconcile Valla and Poggio, asking them to refrain from the use of invective as practiced by Sallust, Cicero, Demosthenes, and Jerome.4 All the same, his vast output of Latin prose and verse contains remarkable quantities of ad hominem attacks, including both the anti-Medici defamation of his dialogue Commentationes Florentinae, and the polemics vented in most of his one hundred Satyrae, in a handful of his fifty Odes, and in a few of his forty-eight books of Epistolae. The present study offers a survey of Filelfo’s invective works, and attempts to situate them in the context of Quattrocento humanist polemical literature. Although modern readers often react to humanist polemics with marked distaste, if not outright abhorrence, we must strive to understand their rhetorical strategies, which derive in large part from the fountainhead of Latin invective, Cicero. Recent studies of Ciceronian invective have shown how the orator ridicules his opponents by exploiting various topics that isolate them from the elite community of Roman senatorial class. As the four principal themes employed in such ad hominem attacks, Anthony Corbeill proposes the following: physical appearance (especially deformities), unflattering cog- nomina and nicknames, the os impurum (the mouth as tainted by obscene utterance, sex, and drink), and accusations of gluttony and effeminacy.5 To these we may add the insulting epithets and vocatives that characterize the opponent as an animal or repugnant object, and hence an inhuman or sub- human being excluded from civil society. Let us then examine the main texts in which Filelfo employs such rhetorical weapons.

for Lactantius?’) On Antonio da Rho, see Fubini 1961; Rutherford 2005; and cf. Blanchard 2006. Filelfo’s letter is erroneously referred to as “IV 5” in Hankins 1990, vol. 1, 148, n. 83. 4 PhE·10.52 to Poggio and Valla (7 March 1453): “Non modo me Sallustius iis non delectat, quae scripsit in Marcum Tullium Ciceronem, nec item omnino quae Cicero in Antonium, aut in Timarchum Philippumque Demosthenes, sed etiam vir sanctissimus ac disertissimus Hieronymus non sine molestia a me legitur, cum invehitur in Rufinum. […] Quare si sapitis, Poggi atque Laurenti, missam facite tantam istam tamque abominabilem maledicendi licen- tiam” (‘Not only do I take no pleasure in Sallust’s attacks on Cicero, or even in Cicero’s attacks on Antony, or Demosthenes’ attacks on Timarchus and Philip; but I cannot read Jerome. A most holy and eloquent man, when he attack Rufinus […] So come to your senses, Poggio and Lorenzo, and give up this great and execrable wantonness of your insults). On this letter, see De Keyser 2015, 16. 5 Corbeill 1996, 8, 124. See also Opelt 1965 and Koster 1980. There is some precedent for defor- mity as a source of laughter in Aristotle, Poetics 5.2 (“the laughable consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive”): see Rabbie 2007, at 210.