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Vernacular Encounters with Aristotle's Politics in Italy, 1260‒1600

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Vernacular Encounters with Aristotle's Politics in Italy, 1260‒1600 Vernacular Encounters with Aristotle’s Politics in Italy, 1260‒1600 Grace Allen A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Combined Historical Studies The Warburg Institute University of London 2015 1 I declare that the work presented in this dissertation is my own. Grace Allen 2 Abstract This dissertation explores the use and dissemination of Aristotelian political theory in Italian literature from the late medieval period, when the first fragments of Aristotle’s political thought appeared in the West, to the sixteenth century, when vernacular Aristotelian literature flourished. I show how late medieval and Renaissance authors employed Aristotle’s Politics in various ways, according to their political background and allegiances, their approach to the text and their intended audience. I also demonstrate how, reciprocally, the vocabulary and classifications in the Politics shaped their understanding of their own political context. The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter offers an overview, for comparative purposes, of the Latin and Greek reception of the Politics in Western Europe. The remaining chapters proceed chronologically. Chapter Two explores the place of the Politics in Italian vernacular literature of the late thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries. Chapter Three does the same for the fifteenth century, as well as considering the impact of Neo-Platonism and the ‘questione della lingua’ on vernacular political Aristotelianism. The three remaining chapters cover the sixteenth century. Chapter Four concerns Antonio Brucioli, who composed a series of Aristotelian political dialogues in the 1520s and in 1547 produced the first vernacular translation of the Politics. The subject of Chapter Five is Bernardo Segni, whose translation of the Politics, accompanied by the first full vernacular commentary, was published in 1549. Chapter Six deals with a representative selection of the wide-ranging vernacular material written on the Politics in the second half of the sixteenth century. The dissertation concludes with an evaluation of the changing uses of the Politics in Italy from the late thirteenth century to the end of the sixteenth, examining the different ways in which the treatise served as a key to understanding politics and political reality. 3 Contents Editorial Principles 7 Introduction 8 Chapter One 17 The Latin and Greek fortuna of Aristotle’s Politics in Europe, 1260-1600 Chapter Two 44 The Earliest Reception and Transmission of Aristotle’s Politics in the Italian Vernacular: 1260-1400 Chapter Three 73 The Vernacular Reception and Transmission of Aristotle’s Politics in Fifteenth-Century Italy Chapter Four 110 The Sixteenth Century: Antonio Brucioli’s Dialogi and His Translation of the Politics Chapter Five 145 The Sixteenth Century: Bernardo Segni’s Translation of and Commentary on the Politics Chapter Six 174 Vernacular Works on the Politics, 1560-1600 Conclusion 227 Bibliography 234 4 Table of Figures Fig. 1: The copy of Brucioli’s translation of the On 137 Generation and Corruption (Venice, 1552), held in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice (shelfmark 32D 235), which shows the deletion of Brucioli’s name. Fig. 2: Title-page of Aristotle, Gli otto libri della republica, 138 transl. Antonio Brucioli (Venice, 1547), published at the Brucioli brothers’ press. Fig. 3: Title-page of Aristotle, Trattato dei governi, transl. and 157 comm. Bernardo Segni (Florence, 1549). Fig. 4: Title-page of Aristotle, Trattato dei governi, 158 transl. and comm. Bernardo Segni (Venice, 1551). Fig. 5: Aristotle, In hoc libro contenta. Politicorum libri 164 octo..., transl. Leonardo Bruni and comm. Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, f. 74v. Fig. 6: Aristotle, Trattato dei governi, transl. and comm. 165 Bernardo Segni (Florence, 1549), p 242. 5 Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Jill Kraye, for the immense support and inspiration she has given me over the past four years. I am extremely grateful not only for her vast erudition but also for her kindness and understanding. Thank you to the members and associates of the ‘Vernacular Aristotelianism in Renaissance Italy’ project, for your generosity with your time and knowledge: David Lines, Simon Gilson, Eugenio Refini, Eva Del Soldato, Jayne Brown and Luca Bianchi; and thank you to Claudio Ciociola and Fiammetta Papi for making my research exchange to the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa a rewarding and enjoyable experience. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to study at such an unique and wonderful place as the Warburg Institute, and I would like to thank my friends and teachers there, past and present, in particular Caroline Oates, Guido Giglioni, Charles Burnett, Shakeel Ahmad, Andrea Asioli, Camilla Caporicci, Anna Corrias, John Foster, Sietske Fransen, Roberta Giubilini, Jan Loop, Anne McLaughlin, Hussein Sarhan and Sarah Vanwelden. My friends outside the Warburg Institute have also been a source of laughter and strength. Thank you to Domenica Bartoli, Eleanor Cornford, Joanna Duncombe, Letitia Graham, Sophie Hosking, Keval Mallick, Simon Norton, Sophie O’Gara, Poonam Shah, Amanda Taylor, Sam Whittaker, Duncan Wilson and especially Louisa Cornford. Finally, thank you to Rob, Kate, and my parents Janet and Quentin, for proofreading this dissertation and for your faith in me. 6 Editorial Principles Translations: All translations are my own unless otherwise stated. Transcriptions: When transcribing from manuscripts or unedited printed works I have expanded all abbreviations, including ampersands. I have preserved the source spelling, apart from changing v to u and j to i where necessary, and have preserved punctuation and accents, except in the rare instance that this is confusing (for example e meant as è). Citations: When citing Aristotelian works as simply title and Bekker number, my source is always Aristotle, The Complete Works, ed. J. Barnes, 2 vols (Princeton NJ, 1984). Pagination/Foliation: Where I have assigned page or folio numbers, this is indicated with square brackets. An additional asterisk indicates that my assigned numbers are for pages of a text which precede existing pagination or foliation. 7 Introduction Aristotle, ‘Il maestro di color che sanno’, the master of those who know. In one short phrase, Dante sums up the place which Aristotle held in late medieval culture and scholarship: the teacher of all knowledge. Aristotle was not merely a philosopher, but the Philosopher. The assumption that this ceased to be the case with the arrival of the Renaissance and the rise of Neo-Platonism was challenged three decades ago by, in particular, Charles B. Schmitt, F. Edward Cranz and Charles H. Lohr, who initiated a wave of scholarship which has affirmed the enduring and dominant place of Aristotelianism in Renaissance thought. The extensive bibliographical research of Cranz, Schmitt and Lohr was a cornerstone of this reassessment. Cranz’s Bibliography of Latin Aristotle Editions, revised and substantially enlarged by Schmitt,1 and Lohr’s comprehensive account of medieval and Renaissance Latin Aristotelian commentaries,2 document the sheer quantity of Aristotelian texts produced in Latin in the Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance, comprising manuscript and printed editions in a myriad of different forms. In addition, Schmitt’s magisterial Aristotle and the Renaissance demonstrated not only the persistence of Aristotelianism but also the tradition’s variety, subtlety and ability to adapt to changed intellectual and cultural circumstances. He argued that we should speak of Renaissance ‘Aristotelianisms’ rather than a unified and monolithic Aristotelianism, and he described the concept of ‘eclectic Aristotelianism’, the incorporation of ideas from other philosophies which strengthened the Aristotelian tradition.3 The work of these scholars and of others has been expanded and refined in the decades since, giving ever more detail to the reception of Aristotle in different 1 F. E. Cranz, A Bibliography of Aristotle Editions, 1501-1600, 2nd ed. rev. C. B. Schmitt (Baden-Baden, 1984). 2 C. H. Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, rev. C. B. Schmitt, 5 vols (Florence, 1988-2013). 3 C. B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge MA, 1983), chapter IV: ‘Eclectic Aristotelianism’. 8 branches of knowledge,4 the writings of individual Renaissance Aristotelians,5 and the continuing dominance of Aristotle in the universities,6 especially Padua.7 Luca Bianchi’s article, ‘Continuity and Change in the Aristotelian Tradition’, published in the 2007 Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, offers a recent assessment of the field, accepting Schmitt’s conclusions about Renaissance ‘Aristotelianisms’ but emphasising the inadequacy of standard demarcations (‘scholastic’, ‘humanist’) to describe the diversity which it encompassed.8 Recognition of the central place of Aristotelianism in Renaissance scholarship has paved the way for scholars to expand their investigations beyond the corpus of Latin translations and commentaries. The project ‘Vernacular Aristotelianism in Renaissance Italy, c. 1400‒c. 1650’, jointly run by the University of Warwick and the Warburg Institute, and of which this thesis is a part, has begun exploring the many manifestations of Aristotelian philosophy in Italian. While Schmitt’s assertion that most learning and teaching of Aristotle occurred in Latin is unquestionably true,9 the study of the vernacularisation of Aristotelian philosophy offers a view into
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