sign in sign up
<<
Home , Renaissance humanism

CHAPTER SIX

ELOQUENCE AND

1. and

Since the publication of Paul Oskar Kristeller’s article ‘Humanism and in the ’, rhetoric has been seen as one of the most important distinguishing characteristics of Renaissance humanism.1 Although in later years he was careful to emphasise that humanism was far from ‘reducible to rhetoric alone’,2 Kristeller nevertheless argued that ‘[t]he humanistic movement did not originate in the field of philosophi- cal or scientific studies, but . . . arose in that of grammatical and rhetori- cal studies.’3 Although it is not possible to contend that humanists were ipso facto professional rhetoricians,4 eloquence was the medium for—and sometimes the inspiration of—the humanistic interest in classical and philosophy.5 For Hanna Gray, ‘[t]he bond which united humanists,

1 Kristeller, ‘Humanism and Scholasticism in the Renaissance,’ reprinted in Kristeller, Studies in Renaissance Thought, 553–83 and P. O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought. The Clas- sic, Scholastic and Humanist Strains (New York, 1961), 92–119. All page subsequent refer- ences to this article relate to Renaissance Thought. For an interesting examination of the conceptions of the Renaissance offered by Kristeller and Eugenio Garin, see C. Celenza, The Lost : Humanists, Historians and Latin’s Legacy (Baltimore, 2004). 2 P. O. Kristeller, ‘Rhetoric in Medieval and Renaissance Culture,’ in Renaissance Eloquence. Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric, ed. J. J. Murphy (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1983), 1–20, here 2. 3 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, 100. 4 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, 102. See also the vigorous debate between Hans Baron and Jerrold Seigel on this subject. J. Seigel, ‘ “Civic Humanism” or Cic- eronian Rhetoric? The Culture of and Bruni,’ Past and Present 34 (1966): 1–48; H. Baron, ‘: “Professional Rhetorician” or “Civic Humanist’’ ’ Past and Present 36 (1967): 21–37. 5 The bibliography which has grown up around this point is too vast even for a pre- tence at comprehensiveness to be attempted, but the classic statements remain Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, 102ff; Gray, ‘Renaissance Humanism’. More recently, see Monfasani, ‘Humanism and Rhetoric’. For the place of this idea within the broader context of com- peting interpretations of humanism and Renaissance, see, for example, W. J. Bouwsma, ‘Changing Assumptions in Later Renaissance Culture,’ Viator 7 (1976): 421–40; idem, The Culture of Renaissance Humanism, (American Historical Association, 1973), 9; D. Weinstein, ‘In Whose Image and Likeness? Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism,’ Journal of the of Ideas 33/1 (Jan.–Mar. 1972): 165–176; D. A. LaRusso, ‘Rhetoric in the Italian 278 chapter six no matter how far separated in outlook or in time, was a conception of eloquence and its uses.’6 This conception of eloquence was not such that would allow humanis- tic writing to be characterised pejoratively as ‘merely rhetorical’. Mirroring the close relationship between chairs of moral philosophy and rhetoric or at Italian from the fifteenth century onwards, the vera eloquentia was identified closely with ethical concerns and contrasted with ‘sophistry’.7 As Gray has observed, ‘True eloquence, according to the humanists, could arise only out of a harmonious union between wisdom and style; its aim was to guide men toward and worthwhile goals, not to mislead them for vicious or trivial purposes.’8 The idea that ‘true’ eloquence should urge the listener or reader to adhere to the good was the basis for the humanistic critique of scholasticism. While scholasticism and humanism developed in parallel in and did not clash over substantial philosophical issues, humanists from the early fourteenth century were accustomed to attack the schoolmen for the ugliness of their style and for their failure to concentrate sufficiently on the inculcation of wisdom.9 Although the eloquence of the humanists retained many links with the rhetoric of the medieval artes dictaminis, especially as a result of French influences, it is generally held that this association between wisdom and eloquence—or between rhetoric and philosophy, as it is sometimes expressed—was inherited primarily from classical treatises on the subject.10 As John Ward has pointed out, the ‘sustaining didactic

Renaissance’, in Renaissance Eloquence, ed. Murphy, 37–55; Gouwens, ‘Perceiving the Past: Renaissance Humanism after the “Cognitive Turn”,’ esp. 62f. 6 Gray, ‘Renaissance Humanism,’ 498. 7 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, 109–110; Gray, ‘Renaissance Humanism,’ 498; Sei- gel, Rhetoric and Philosophy, xi–xvii, 173; C. Trinkaus, ‘A Humanist’s Image of Humanism: The Inaugural Oration of Bartolommeo della Fonte,’ Studies in the Renaissance 7 (1960): 90–147. 8 Gray, ‘Renaissance Humanism,’ 498. 9 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, 110–17; Gray, ‘Renaissance Humanism,’ 499–500; Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy, 215–18. On scholasticism in Italy, see, for example, H. Rashdall, The Universities of in the , ed. F. M. Powicke and A. B. Emden, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Oxford, 1936), 1: 234ff; B. Nardi, ‘L’averroismo Bolognese nel secolo XIII e Taddeo Alderotto,’ Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 4 (1949): 11–22. 10 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, 102–3; idem, ‘Rhetoric in Medieval and Renaissance Culture,’ passim; Gray, ‘Renaissance Humanism,’ 499–500; Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy, 173–225; Ullman, ‘Some Aspects of the Origins of Italian Humanism,’ Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 27–40. In the past 25 years, this view has come under increasing criticism and the decisive influence of medieval dictatores on humanistic style has been brought more clearly into focus. It is, however, still generally assumed that the association between wis- dom and eloquence was received primarily from classical, and not medieval treatises. R. G. Witt, ‘Medieval “Ars Dictaminis” and the Beginnings of Humanism: a New Construction